The Annals of Eelin-Ok

I have been wondering what the name assigned to my home by the architects means. While Away — if only I could understand their symbols, I might understand more the point of my life. Yes, the point of life is to fish and work and make things and explore, but there are times, especially now since the red orb has been swallowed, that I suspect there is some secret reason for my being here. There are moments when I wish I knew and others when I couldn’t care less… Perhaps I think too much.
—Jeffrey Ford

The Annals of Eelin-Ok is one of those wistful stories that makes you appreciate life. I first discovered it in The Faery Reel. Read it again yesterday and it is as beautiful as I remember. It details the life and adventures of a Twilmish, Eelin-Ok, who waits centuries before deciding to be born. He finally discovers and inhabits a perfect sandcastle, and lives his entire existence in those few hours between the tides on a summer evening– not a long span of time for you or me, but to this rare faerie species it is a lifetime full of love, loss, friendship; work, adventure, and even danger.
It reads like a bedtime story, perfect to share with a special young friend after whiling away a memorable, meaningful day at the shore.

To understand the Twilmish, though, is to understand that in a mere moment, all can be saved or lost, an ingenious idea can be born, a kingdom can fall, love can grow, and life can discover its meaning.

We Three Steves

I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it.

—Stephen King, On Writing

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity.

—Steve Jobs, Wired Magazine, February 1995
(He was 40.)

You know what to do.
Sit down in your thinking chair and think, think, think.

—Steve Burns, Blue’s Clues.
(Will be 40 in October.)

Z

“Surrounded as I was by such ambitious, accomplished women, I couldn’t ignore the little voice in my head that said maybe I was supposed to shed halfway and do something significant. Contribute something. Accomplish something. Choose. Be… “My life was intended to mean something beyond daughter-wife-mother. Wasn’t it?
“Oh, just let it go, a different voice urged me. What difference could your puny achievements possibly make?
“All the difference, the other voice answered.
“Which of my many possible lives did I want to define me? Which one could I have?
“And the question that troubled me most: Was it even really up to me?”

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is a fictionalization of the onetime life of the party and wife of famed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda, dubbed the First Flapper by her husband, was young and daring, eager to fulfill her role as debutante of the expatriate Jazz Age royalty.

Zelda had talents of her own, for ballet, painting and writing. She was witty and clever, and according to Fowler (though not all her biographers), the Muse that made Scott famous.

I found a kindred spirit of sorts in Zelda. She was by turns moody and exuberant, jealous and flirtatious, wild at parties and suffering the colitis attacks caused by jealousy and nervousness afterwards. She wanted Scott to succeed, but frequently interrupted his efforts. She was both a help and a hindrance to his career.

While the book portrays her sympathetically: striving to have her voice heard, her accomplishments noticed, her talent recognized; it ends with Scott’s death, as if to underscore the theme that she was, or rather was only allowed to be, nothing more than a housewife and mother, the two things for which she showed the least aptitude. A recurring line in the book is: He’s such an extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let himself do nothing in the end. The abusive, alcoholic, selfish Scott was the star of the show, even in a book meant to shine the spotlight on Zelda.

I was left wishing she had finished her second novel, Caesar’s Things, or painted a masterpiece after Scott’s death. Instead she spent her final years in a hospital. The answer to her question, “Was it even really up to me?” appears to have been a resounding, “No.” Yet if it had been “YES” — if polite society had been ready to accept her, if her husband had celebrated the Flapper he helped her become, if she had been brave enough to embrace the modernism she admired in other women and strike out on her own— she would have been great.

I’ll end with Zelda’s own words, a witty little offering from a short story, “Eulogy on The Flapper,” which she published in June, 1922:

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure … she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart.

10 things I love about my mom

1. She calls me Dude. Also Mamerlips. But mostly Dude.
2. She’s a great storyteller. She can make me laugh, cry, holler, sometimes all of the above in the space of three minutes, by her made-up stuff and the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up stuff.
3. She loves my dad.
4. She loves God.
5. She’s a grandmother of ten, and took every one of them to Disney World… to celebrate her own birthday.
6. She likes what she likes, and to hell with what everybody else thinks.
7. She knows what she believes and she stands by it. She can’t always admit when she’s wrong, but I admire that she has a mind of her own.
8. She knows what I believe and she challenges me on it. Even when she thinks I’m dead wrong, she admires that I have a mind of my own.
9. I’m old and she still kicks my butt. Tough love, Dude.
10. She tells me she’s proud of who I’ve become. She loves me, and she says so.

I really need a new picture of us.   6/07: I’m 5 days away from giving birth, but aren’t we cute?

Six Tics to Fix

6 must be my lucky number lately.

I propose a toast to another great 6-pack, this one from Blake Snyder’s screenwriting bible, Save the Cat. The number 6 is arbitrary– make it 5, 9, or heck, 87 if you’re feelin’ ornery– but the idea is this:

In the setup to your story, introduce 6 problems that need to be solved by the finale.  The conflicts can be internal or external, and involve your main character. Other characters have their issues, too, which will overlap and interfere with your hero’s goals.

The dilemmas can be physical, metaphysical, philosophical, intellectual, serious, comical. Mild disagreements or all out war.

Example:

1. Tics. The story opens on a family arguing about what to do with their backyard. John wants to build a greenhouse. Jane’s thinking a fire pit. Jen and Jan are begging for a trampoline.

2. Tricks. The conflict develops or escalates throughout the story. John is a loner and doesn’t want Jane entertaining a bunch of tipsy women in his garden. Jane doesn’t appreciate John’s green thumb and insists he doesn’t need another mancave when he’s already got the basement. The kids are constantly jumping on the furniture in the living room, annoying the hell out of everyone.

3. Bricks. Add five more conflicts. I’m thinking one of each— wreak the whole spectrum of havoc on our hero. It’ll make him seem well-rounded.

Maybe John is your main character. He suspects his boss of shady dealings. He’s got a crush on one of Jane’s friends. He’s in a neck brace from when Jan and Jen jumped on his back. His orchids have aphids.

4. Fix. In the end it must be resolved. Maybe a meteor lands in their yard and leaves a crater and everyone agrees a swimming pool would be best. Whatever.

Consider the classic struggles in storytelling.
Here are 6 (six again!):

• man v. man
• man v. self
• man v. nature
• man v. society
• man v. God
• good v. evil

 

Now grab a martini shaker, your six problems and some fancy glasses.

Depending on your genre and tone, the conflict cocktail you concoct can be anything from a harrowing tale of “from bad to worse” to a running gag that (hopefully) gets funnier the further you go along. Make John’s life a waking nightmare or a series of comic mishaps. I recommend 50% alcohol and not too sweet, but hey, you’re the story Mixologist here.

Drop that meteor on his prize orchid.

Then shake, not stir, your ingredients together and serve with salty snacks that keep readers glued to their barstools and drinking in your brilliance until last call.