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Thursday, July 31, 2008

  • Story News.

    I think I just named my main character and her main squeeze.
    Her original last name is concrete and his original first name was also written in stone, but her first name "Pippa" has been bugging me for pretty much the past six months.  But tonight we have victory! 
    Introducing:
    Olivia "Liv" Anne Granger
    and
    Anastasios "Toast" Christopoulos

    I've also renamed the characters that are based on real people whose actual names I used when writing this piece.  I've decided to keep the two sisters names 'Mary' and 'Josephine' aka 'Josie'.  I think they're ok.  I fully believe that a woman named Magdelena Olive Granger nee Tisdale would name her three daughters Mary, Olivia and Josephine.

    OOooo, SERIOUSLY???  Should I change the mother's middle name to 'Olivia'?
    My mom never gave any of her daughters her middle name as their first name, but she did give Katie her middle name as her middle name and gave me her first name as my middle name - it could be something symbolic/sweet that she could have done for her children.  Yes?  No? 

    Note to self: I'm going to have to change the nephew's middle name from 'Philip' to 'Oliver' (it's a tribute to his aunt).

Saturday, July 26, 2008

  • The Next Step.

    I started reading my draft for the first time the other night.

    The entire opening needs to change, but I already knew that.

    I'm going out with L after we get off work this afternoon.  I think I'm definitely going to pick up a binder and I'm going to print that beast out and start reading it for real and jotting down notes and edits as I go along.

    I'm super stoked about this process.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Sunday, June 29, 2008

  • Help!

    I'm having major difficulties with the next part of my story.  I don't know if she should announce the cello player or if there ought to be a last minute switch and she's forced to announce Toast?  Or if she should be asked last minute to also announce Toast.
    I've also had him either send her a text message or leave her a voicemail, one of them . . . .
    I think I've got that part.

    "Toast was heading out onto the stage towards her carrying his violin.  He was smiling the way he always smiled when he took the stage but there was something a little bit forced about it.  Not wanting to let on to anything amiss, Pippa held her flight attendant-like grin and held out a hand to him as she had done with the cellist.
    Toast responded in kind and pulled her toward him and kissed her on both cheeks.  When he moved to the upstage side of her face she heard him whisper fiercely into her ear,
    "Check your phone, already, woman!"
    Before kissing her again.
    Bewildered, Pippa moved away from him, applauding and made her way into the wings and down to where the musicians stored their things.
    As she began to descend she heard Toast take the microphone.
    "Tonight is a very special night for me.  I am very excited to be back in this great city that I love, performing for you good people.  This next piece is very well known and I expect you all to sing along; but it is also very special to a dear friend of mine who is amongst our number this evening.  I dedicate this performance to her.  Thank you."
    Pippa watched in awe as he moved away from the microphone and looked her way.  His face was serious, as it usually was directly before a performance, but there was something else in his face.
    Phone, he mouthed to her, then turned back to the conductor.
    Pippa pulled her phone out of her sweater pocket.  She had three missed calls.  One from Barb, one from Mary and one from Toast.  They had all left voice messages.  Quickly Pippa dialed the number to check her messages.  The orchestra was playing the first few bars of music, but Pippa wasn't really listening.
    Mary's message was first.  Something about work and the vile people she worked with giving her a hard time about something or other and how much she needed her little sister to comfort her.  Pippa erased that one and moved on to the next.  It was from Barb.  Pippa skipped that one knowing it was something arbitrary about the Christmastime posters she'd sent to the client that morning.  Voicemail number three was from Toast.
    As his voice came to her through the little silver box in her hand, Pippa realized what the Orchestra was playing: it was a medly of songs from Fiddler on the Roof that Toast himself had arranged while at Julliard.  It was a good mix of the more well known songs, and heavy on the Hodel and Perchik duets.  He had arranged it for her knowing that Hodel's was her favorite storyline.  And now he was performing it, for the first time in nearly nine years for her.
    "Right now you are telling Arun all about how women never forget the ones they love," came his voice through the cellphone.  "And I am in agony.  We're here at you're brother-in-law's sister's engagement party, one of my best friends and you're pseudo-little sister are on the threshold of falling in love, you're convincing Arun that he has it made with Sarai, which he does, and you and I are here in the same place at the same time and I'm dying.  Ever since I saw you right outside this building that day, I have thought of nothing but you.  Forget that, for the past eight years I've thought of no one but you.  Every other woman I've dated has been compared to you, anytime I dreamed of the future, it was always with you.  Arun would call me a prat, but the thing is Pip, I love you.  I'll never stop loving you.  You just told Arun that men never forget love just as women don't and the fact that you believe thats possible gives me so much hope.  I know part of you is just trying to placate him, don't worry he doesn't notice, but you can't fool me, Pippa.  I know you far too well.  I'll be at the concert tonight, I'm performing actually, and don't be fooled by anything I might say: this performance is for you, and you alone.  I love you."
    Pippa closed the phone.  Shock and awe was battling with happiness and confusion within her.  There he was playing the very medly he wrote for her, the very medly his sister told her he played all the time, in private, with a kind of venom, and was always grumpy afterwards.  Here he was, pouring his heart out to her the only way he knew how.  The message was lovely, but the music . . . oh, the music!  The music was the best he'd played in a very long time.  His trills were exilerating, his crescendos uplifting, his piano tender and stirring, his forte exciting!  Everyone said so.  Reporters and commentators couldn't get enough of Anastasios Dranias' performance that evening.  And neither could Pippa.
    She didn't cry.  Tears threatened, but she was too happy for tears.  Her face could hardly contain her mouth, her smile was so wide.  She watched him putting all of himself into this performance and she was extremely pleased.  He was a lovely man, and she had missed him."

    Ok, I just busted that out.  Not sure where it came from but it just flowed.  So let me know what you think, cause I desperately need the feedback!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

  • Dans des Reves.

    Yah, I'm alive, I promise.  AND I'm still writing.  Even though I'm working in the office of a boys sports camp in western Mass this summer, I will actually have more time to write here than I do when I'm teaching at NC.  Interesting, no?  Today I wrote around 500 words (wicked stoked about that one) and I need the feedback of others on this.

    I really like writing dream sequences.  I wrote one in college in a wicked chick lit I was working on about a woman who's fiance was killed in action in Iraq.  In the dream he was alive and they were in her bedroom.  She was standing at the bureau looking in the mirror and he was behind her helping her put on this locket, I think, some kind of necklace.  Then he put his arms around her and held onto her.  And as they were standing there and she was admiring them in the mirror - the mirror broke into millions of shards and came flying out at them.
    I can't find a copy of that piece, but that image is still with me and I'm hoping to use it in something eventually.

    I wrote a dream sequence today that I started last week not sure if I really wanted to use it or not, but I like how it developed.  Let me know what you think:


                "That night Pippa dreamed strange dreams about windy Styrofoam breakers and lighthouses with black lights at the edge of an ocean of blood.  In the distance there was a boat heading straight for the rocks.  The stark-white ship glowed blue in the black light and did not seem to notice the blood soaked foam rocks.  From the breakers Pippa, dressed in a green off the shoulder Victorian ball gown feared for the safety of the ship and all the people that might be on board.  She wanted to shout and wave her arms, let them know they were in danger, but the restrictive gown did not allow her to raise her arms above her shoulders and her shouts were lost on the wind.

    She looked up at the starless, purple sky and screamed at something, someone, Buddha, Jesus, Ghandi, anyone, to save that ship from its inevitable fate.  As she called for some miracle from the great beyond, the wind suddenly picked up; it was so strong that it lifted Pippa, bustle and all, up off the breaker and dropped her into the sea of blood.  The layers of the gown pulled her down as she struggled to remain afloat.  Soon, her arms grew tired and she let herself sink.

    But not for long did she descend.  Pippa soon found herself rising again.  As she burst back across the surface she took a deep breath and filled her lungs with the sweet tasting air.  Groping with her hands, Pippa was able to pull herself back up on the foam rocks.  She looked around for the ship, but it was gone.  The black light lighthouse was still rotating its electromagnetic radiation and everything was calm.  Pippa was no longer dressed in the Victorian gown, but in a white mini dress that, like the ship, glowed blue, except for the black sash around her waist.  She looked around startled and confused by this change, the foam rocks scratched her bare feet and the light breeze blew her curls around her face.

    She stood at the end of the breaker and looked out over the blood-water wondering what it could all mean, when she felt a hand on her left shoulder.

    Pippa opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.  Danube was curled up on the pillow to her left, his tail swishing across the bare skin of her left shoulder.  Looking at the content feline, she sighed and gathered him up out of sleep land.  If she was going to be awake at a quarter to six in the morning so would he.         

    She scratched behind the cat's ears as she tried to piece together the dream in the fog of that liminal zone between asleep and awake.  Desire to save others from dangerous situations was understandable, reemerging from an ocean of blood instead of drowning, also, was easy to figure out.  The hard part was why?  Why did she feel reborn, cleansed, absolved?  And from what?  And who was there at the end?

    Pippa held tightly to Danube trying desperately not to think the name of the individual in the dream.  She knew that even if she thought it she wouldn't be able to take it back and as much as she wanted to acknowledge the true meaning of the dream, she didn't want to be wrong; and therefore must not think anything.

    "Crap," she said aloud and got up dumping Danube on the floor, free from her grasp, he ran down the stairs ahead of her as she headed for the shower."