Okay I admit I’m a little hung up on strokes. Any kind. Comments, hits, praise–of course–any attention. What it can mean is someone may stumble onto one of my stories or one of my posts and say, I like that!

Not sure I have anything of interest to share here except the previous post has been up for a while and I’m bored with it.

Been Busy.

Working on a TV pilot with a friend (keeping it underwraps):

a) to keep the concept A SECRET from would be claim jumpers

b) in case it doesn’t sell

c) in case I get kicked off the project

Spec scripts are like sand castles. You can put a lot of effort into them, even create a masterpiece, but most of the time someone is going to come dashing through it with size 14 EEEs or the next big tsunami will wash it out to sea.

Sister coming in for a landing, kids in tow

For her reunion. Let’s see. She’s still a kid herself. I think this is 30th? Won’t see much of her though since she’s up to her eyeballs with planning the whole thing. Facebook has proven to be the biggest boon to reunions since botox.

Hubby back from field trip

To Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Missed him especially with the Cinder thing.

Rejections coming in slowly

Waiting worse than watching paint dry (cliche, I know. I’m tired). Roxann G tracks these by number. Outstanding submits v. rejects v. acceptances. Let me count. 22 subs of 9 stories. At this rate, I’m not going to get anywhere. Goal for next week: Explore new markets for outstandings and rewrite w-i-p and explore starts.

On a positive note: Waiting for Rimshot to show up at Dogmatika soon.

The novel

Yeah, well, it’s been opened and read almost to page 109, but I got waylaid with the idea of writing a pilot!!

Okay. That’s it for now. Back to work.

When I redesigned my website, http://www.gaydegani.com/, I created links to my writing, but also to my jewelry and my painting. The writing link over there brings people to this blog, but the other two??? Dead as a flea in the freezer.

Once again Sarah Hilary has managed to blow my socks off, this time with a new piece in LitnIMAGE called “A SHANTY FOR SAWDUST AND COTTON.” It’s more rhapsody than shanty. Check it out, but be sure to put some suspenders on those GOLD-TOES.

Calle Mayor Boulevard cut like a wide river between a gently rising hill and the muddy flats that used to be Walteria Lake.

We were a little over a mile from the beach. A fierce ocean breeze swept through the valley most afternoons, bringing with it the smell of salt. Instead of stately oaks and elms, we were surrounded by palm trees and tract houses built after World War 2, simple three bedroom-1 bath stucco affairs with small patches of grass front and back, along Louise, Marion, and Mayor Drives.

There were two Mayor Drives, half moons, both streets changing names somewhere in the middle. On the east side of our neighborhood K-8 school, the other Mayor Drive turned into Juan Drive. On our side of the school, we shared the street with Theo. I never did know exactly where the division was.

This was my new world in the fifth grade after moving eight times and attending three other elementary schools. My parents had bought the house, painted it green, and planted a carrotwood tree. We were here to stay.

Named after its street, Calle Mayor the school was cutting-edge fifties, a low-slung institution designed to meet the needs of the onslaught of children born after the second world war. The entrance was a large grid of grass and cement with a flag pole and an American flag in the very middle. Behind that were administrative offices. Two wings of two long one-story buildings spread out in lazy vee-formation, grass between them, the furthest buildings opening onto black top and a huge grassy field.

On my first day of school, I wore a plaid dress with a white collar and long sleeves. Anxious to make a good first impression, I’d forgotten how hot it could be in Southern California in September. I had crescents of sweat under my arms by the time the first bell rang and we lined up in front of our classrooms, boys parallel to girls, all of us listening to the principal’s welcome to a brand new school year over the public address system.

While the sun burned hot against the back of my head, the principal made a few announcements about the cost of lunch in the cafetorium, the penalties for misbehavior, and the fire and drop drills that would be practiced periodically. We were in the deep freeze of the Cold War and we had to be prepared. I was eleven. I understood this. I’d seen a TV special showing what would happen if Russia decided to send an A-bomb our way.

Then the principal instructed us to stand at attention and put our hands on our hearts. The strains of the Star-Spangled banner boomed out over the speakers. The students stood perfectly still–that is my memory–and when the song ended, we said the Pledge of Allegiance.

I was proud to be an American and scared too because we’d emerged from a terrible war just fifteen years before, Korea seven, and new hostilities were evolving in Viet Nam, but I wasn’t so aware of these wars themselves as aware of the world created by them. America had been threatened by outsiders and was pulling into itself, trying to get on with the “Dream,” back when patriotism was still honorable.

I was too young to know about the Rosenbergs and McCarthyism and all the other awful things that had been perpetrated by fear. I understand clearly now that we are a flawed people, that we have often put people in power who make grievous decisions. We still do.

But I wonder if we’re letting too much slip through our fingers? We no longer say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. At sporting events many Americans no longer know the words to “America the Beautiful” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Are we so ashamed these days that we’re unwilling to admit we love our country? Isn’t there a way to be proud of our ideals, strive to accomplish them, and not condemn the whole institution because it is often run by people who are flawed just as we are all flawed? We’ve elected these politicians, but can’t we, if we care enough, elect them out of office? We can if we remember what the founding fathers believed in, what we believe in.

In the past, the Pledge sought to remind us of who we wanted to be and that we must always continue to strive for our ideals. Are we still reciting it now?

I can’t shake that moment on the Calle Mayor blacktop, relieved and proud to live in a country willing to make sacrifices for the ideals of freedom, justice, and honor.

For those who don’t remember, here is the Pledge. Recite it today of all days.

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

July 1-G. Lloyd Helm Tender
July 2-William Wood Recipe
July 3-J.C. Towler Legends Collide
July 4-Walter Giersbach Death in the Afternoon
July 5-Grant Bergland “I Love You”
July 6-Marc Bona Shakers
July 7-Tapes Alice
July 8-Aaron Polson Inked
July 9-Glenn Head On/Off
July 10-elissa vann struth A Little Bit of a Good Thing
July 11-Angela Carlton The Songbird
July 12-J.P. Tioga The Only Thing Left To Do
July 13-Jon Gibbs Wild West Justice
July 14-Jeanne Holtzman When the Moon is in the Seventh House
July 15-Lia Molly Deromedi Leftovers
July 16-Elizabeth M. Thurmond–Modern Love

Writer K. C. Ball has added a new title to her name, that of editor/publisher of the new e-zine, 10Flash. Debuting today, July 1, 10Flash is a quarterly which contains ten stories based on a specific theme and written in one of four genres: fantasy, horror, suspense, or mystery. K. C. writes about the forthcoming issue in her last post at 10FLash.

  At Flash Fiction Chronicles on Friday, I wrote a post using Heraclitus’s “Character is destiny” quotation. He wasn’t talking about “character” in terms of modern story-writing, but rather “character” in terms of personal integrity. However, those three words struck me as particularly appropriate for the writing of flash fiction. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve had a good week. One acceptance, one rejection, and finished–for all intents and purposes–my on-line story. Time to move on…

My mind wanders. Jumps around like Mark Twain’s frog, but today is about settling in. I need to assess and reassess and figure out how to get myself back to work.

BUT it’s not as easy as it sounds. I’ve challenged myself with “A Story A Day” challenge, 500 words, that a couple of my buds are doing in their writing group. And the first couple attempts were great. I even finished a story I sent to a contest. Maybe not my best effort in terms of overall theme, but, at least, I was pleased with the words themselves. I was feeling like I could lay them down in good order, specifically, vividly.

BUT this made me start to feel the need to be “serious.”

Wait. I mean: SERIOUS with all the letters dripping sweat and tears, but I haven’t been able to keep my butt in the chair since. Expectation of writing “seriously” always makes vacuuming the kitchen floor seem like Disneyland, my brain turning into Twain’s frog.

Part of this came about because Matt Bell and Dzanc Books have launched a new mag and of course I’m thinking, ooooo, new opportunity. The Collagist. Appealing to the writer–and artist–in me. I want to write something good for that.

BUT this made me hunker over Matt Bell’s How the Broken Lead the Blind collection.

I reread “Ten Scenes from a Movie Called Mercy” and TOTALLY FREAKED OUT. How the hell did he do that? And actually, what the hell did he do? I liked it. It felt effortlessly dense and beautiful and I had no idea what exactly it was.

So I sat down with a pen and began to deconstruct. Took the 10 scenes and split them into acts according to what I know about structure. And I see there’s a definite fully-conceived structure here, but it doesn’t quite fitttttttt the expected. Good, yes. Good for the writer in him and for the reader in me, but now I (the writer) have to think and consider and ponder.

Scene 1 is the beginning of a “movie, yes. Specific, but indefinite. The “writer/narrator” thinking about it. Three possible scenarios, long hallway, courtyard, the doorway of a country home, and two characters, a man and “you.” A great line “Two objects in motion moving down the length of a line cannot remain separated forever.” Fate, destiny, SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN.”

Scene 2, specific AND definite. Play of light and dark, the man again and a child ending in a scream. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.

Scene 3, not specific to the “movie,” but specific to the story, silence now, no scream, unbalance, the meaning…

Well, let’s just say it is powerful stuff, like that, something to be read the first time through for visceral impact, like the big ka-pow, something your body knows, but your mind can’t yet sort it all out until you read it again. Definite rewards for repeat reads.

The bottom line for me, really though, is paralysis, because as a writer, I sure as hell don’t have that kind of Nabokovian/Borgesian mind. But I’d like to!!! And there, right THERE, is the reality I’m trying to slip back into today. I CAN’T do what Matt Bell can do.

I have to be who I am. Not trying to be who I read because what I choose to read and appreciate is all over the intellectual spectrum. I just can’t write at all those levels.

I need to take one of those long deep down-into-the-belly breaths and let it out slowly. Stop taking all this so damn seriously. Do what I can do. I’ll get better the more I read and the more I write, and though it doesn’t hurt to take apart someone else’s work (I’ve done this with several pieces over the years–Julie Orringer’s “Pilgrims,” Bejamin Percy’s “Refresh, Refresh”), it’s GOOD to take apart someone else’s work, I can’t be that someone. I can only be me.

So now I’m going to sit down with my egg timer, no prompt, with a blank screen, fingers tapping, and see what happens. Then see if I’ve got anything in there that will come out if I tell it not to be afraid.

That’s all any of us can do. Let the frog mind go and have fun.

If you’ve read this piece before, in the version just before this current one, there’s not much change. I think this is it for now.