A wise man once told me that the key to having a good life was stepping back and taking the mile high view. When you’re in the midst of an experience—any experience—you are too close to have a productive perspective. This gentleman, a professor at a major university who happens to have a moderate case of Tourette Syndrome, said that putting distance between himself and problems enabled him to be calm in the middle of a storm. Colleagues often found him infuriating, but they also relied on him to fix problems and rise above the fray. His attitude tempered his
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THE END is Nigh
I’ve hit page 300 in the first draft of the novel-in-progress. There are only a couple of things that have to happen before THE END and I’m feeling just a tiny bit nauseous and very distressed. This draft has kept me company since the end of March. I glanced away from it for a few weeks over the summer and again for two weeks in the fall, but we’ve been constant companions and I’m fearful of what will happen when I actually get to the end of the story. The protagonist has to discover the answer to two more questions.
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It’s Only the Wind
How many times have thought you heard or saw something only to realize it was nothing—just a trick of the eye, the shadow of a bird or only the wind. In fiction, those ‘only the wind’ moments tempt the storyteller with hints of the paranormal or raise the specter of a fraught memory. While in real life, only the wind is usually only the wind and not a portent of something more intriguing. The fact that most of our fanciful imaginings amount to nothing is beside the point because our brains are designed to seek out patterns and to assess
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The Gift of DNA
I was folding the laundry so I didn’t actually see the commercial, I just heard it, but I nearly hit the ceiling. One of the big ‘trace your family history’ websites was suggesting that people give genealogical DNA reports as holiday gifts to loved ones. I’m sure that finding out you’re 50% Scotch or 100% Eastern European, might be amusing, but can you imagine the scene around the Christmas Tree or at the table full of latkes when the members of a family open their reports and discover…That they are NOT all pretty much the same. Imagine the tall, thin,
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Observation Game
It’s all too easy to get swallowed up in your thoughts—or your phone—as you go from place-to-place in a city like New York. When I travel I sometimes become hyper observant. But that is usually when I’m focused on street signs or landmarks because I’m almost always lost when I travel. At home, it’s very easy to sail by interesting sites and intriguing people. They become background scenery for the main event—a story I’m writing in my head, a grocery list, a business call I have to make… Sometimes I fight the impulse to go internal and play an observation
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The FISH & the Cat
It’s called ‘The Cat in the Hat’ for a reason—and not just because of the easy rhyme. The character of the FISH in Dr. Seuss’s children’s storybook for early readers is definitely not the star of the show. Who is the much maligned and fearful FISH? Is he the conscience of the children warning them of the dangerous fun in store when the cat comes to visit? Is he a spoilsport—a killjoy, a bore? Or a classic goody-two-shoes? He’s certainly not as much fun as the cat, but he does provide a needed counterbalance to the chaotic kitty. I was
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The Darkest Moment
“It happened at the darkest moment of the night,” Grandpa Bert began his story. “Midnight!” Lucy shouted, although she’d promised to sit still and be quiet during what Grandpa Bert promised to be a true-life scary story. “Shush,” her older brothers hissed in unison. “No, my dear Lucy, midnight is not the darkest moment of the night. It’s usually sometime between two and three in the morning. It’s long after your night owl parents have turned off the TV, clicked off their laptops or closed the cover on their electronic books. The darkest hour of the night is the loneliest
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Circling Back to Historical Fiction…
I’m not sure how it happened, but in the last couple of years I seem to have circled back to my fictional roots. Way back in my reading past, I was swept away by historical fiction. It probably started with watching PBS/BBC historical dramas on TV with my family. The wonderful Derek Jacobi in ‘I Claudius,’ the historical context of ‘The Forsyte Saga’ and ‘The Eight Wives of Henry the Eighth’ sent me to bookshelves. Eventually I shook the historical fiction habit and wound up majoring in history in college. Real history—with its ambiguities and mystifying motives—all but erased my
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