Now that I’m finally in the last stage of the big home renovation project—the project that (with the help of the pandemic) upended my life for over three years—I’m wondering what I’ve learned from all of this. I know it’s changed me, but how will it change my fiction? I decided to sit down and make a list the lessons learned during this process. I sincerely hope that some of the better ones will stick with me and, perhaps, improve my storytelling.          One, when people say “things just work themselves out” what they mean is that YOU get that
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When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Lately, I’ve been saying that it’s time to reboot the Candy’s Monsters Blog. Yes, I’m working my way back from the brink. The brink? Not really. It’s more that I’ve been consumed by the renovation project; and then consumed by the distractions that keep me sane, in the face of that overwhelming project.          I’ve told myself it’s time and then…I’ve paused again.          When I get back to regular blogging it may be different—because I’m different. The world is different, too. And I think we’re all talking to ourselves with
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We’re all characters in our non-fiction stories. We don’t get many ‘happily ever after’ endings, or clear story arcs, but we do get stories that challenge and change us.          This prolonged pandemic is the big event that works its way into all our lives and changes our stories. One friend tells everyone that she’s had to reinvent herself. She’s doing a stellar job of moving from one, solid, predictable schedule working at a high-end hotel bar to unpredictable work as an extra on movie & tv shoots, plus erratic shifts mixing drinks at the bar of a restaurant. She
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I thought by now I’d be back to blogging and writing and tweeting and the rest, but I’m still stalled in a holding pattern as my home renovations roll toward the end. Why? I’m not sure. I’m speculating that the uncertainty of the moment—the pandemic—has created an atmosphere that mucks around with everyone’s brains, habits, and abilities. I’m writing stories in my head, but few are reaching the keyboard (or a piece of paper). And none seem to find a satisfying ending. It’s not writer’s block. There’s no lack of ideas. It’s something else. When I figure it out, I’ll
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I’ve been reading a great deal lately. Carrying my Kindle with me wherever I go and reading, reading, reading a wild assortment of books from a detailed biography of the Jim Jones (yes, the Jim Jones of The Peoples Temple infamy), a charming and dated mystery by Ngaio Marsh, a brilliant new work of historical fiction with Edgar Allan Poe as a central character, a silly cozy, a popular mystery, a terrible mystery, a vintage Agatha Christie, and ‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert.          That last one is an extraordinary book and it reminded me that reading—simply
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Today, I’m thinking about waiting on lines. NOT being online, but physically waiting in a line. During the lockdown, I remember a particular rainy morning, when I stood in a—carefully marked off for social distance—line outside the Whole Foods at Union Square. This was early in the pandemic experience, and I was wearing a homemade mask, a bright fuchsia floral print cut from a heavy cotton scarf. An elderly woman complimented me on the mask. “Most of them are so dull and ugly.” NO ONE was going inside to buy food without a mask. And that’s why we were lining
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I didn’t think the break from blogging would go on this long. I also didn’t think that the renovations and move into my new place would take over my life. It did. It has. And I’m just starting to work my way back to writing. I haven’t been idle. Packing, unpacking, and managing the renovations (aka yelling at contractors) takes up a great deal of time & brain capacity. I also got a few freelance assignments and working/writing felt good.          Am I back? Sort of… almost…          I’m writing stories in my head, but they are shy when it
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Many people subscribe to the theory that we all have a set point for our weights. You can lose a great deal on a drastic diet, but your body will naturally find its way back to the “set weight” that’s pre-determined by your DNA, metabolism, and the rest. It might be smart to accept your weight set-point if the alternative is a roller coaster of dieting and rebounding. But that’s not the set-point of interest to me right now. There is another kind of set-point which intrigues me as a storyteller and creator of characters, and that’s the character’s personality
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A while back I took a wine tasting class. It was fun and I learned some interesting things about wine. The teacher, a sommelier, instructed us to trust ourselves and to enjoy the fact that tastes and aromas are experienced by individuals in individual ways. I might sniff raspberries in the aroma of a red wine; and you might smell black cherries. Neither of us is wrong. The chemical portrait of that aroma reads as raspberries to me and cherries to you. It might impress someone else as a noxious cough syrup aroma or a heavenly blackberry. No one is
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I was at the Morgan Library—a wonderful small New York City Museum centered around J.P. Morgan’s library, personal study and art collection, plus marvelous rooms for the display of Art. It was my second visit to the current exhibition of works on paper. Great art can be inspiring and engrossing, so when another museum visitor kept calling out “Susan!” I was perturbed and then annoyed. I thought, “Susan, go find your friend.” A while later, the woman searching for Susan approached me, “Are you Susan?”          “No.”          “You look so much like her and…”          “It’s the hair.”         
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