There’s a reason why “first draft” rhymes with “worst draft” Thursday, May 15 2008

This morning, I finished the rough draft of the text for Volume 3 of The Absent Classic. It took me three weeks, but I finally have sixteen pages of proverb-ridden folktales. I will not quote any of that, because I am in the First-Draft Doldrums, and all 10,271 words look stupid, trite, and awful.

            What do real writers do when they finish a rough draft? I imagine them striding into Fendi and ordering fur coats (“and can I have the midnight-blue sable delivered by Thursday?”), or tucking into chocolate cake, or booking a trip to the South of France, all with a sense of triumph and achievement. Maybe they call their grandmothers and say, “Guess what? I’ve finished my first draft!”

            Whereas I am sitting, scrolling though my sixteen pages, thinking, If this was a typed manuscript I would be tempted to take it out back and set fire to it. And, Why did I want to do folktales, anyway? I should have done that opera project instead. And, Someday my great-grandchildren are going to read this and wonder about my mental hygiene.

            I am going to resist the temptation to delete the whole thing, and instead let it percolate all weekend. On Sunday morning I will look at it again, and I am hoping it will look manageable. I mean, it’s a mess – the chapters need to be separated out, there are spelling and grammar problems, the illustrations need to be placed, and there are at least three major continuity issues to be addressed. After that, there is the Second Draft to be printed out and red-penciled, and the Third Draft, to be read aloud to my editorial committee (consisting of Husband, Toddler, and Baby) and then, if all goes well, I will have a Final Draft, which will be all tidied up and logical and nicely formatted, with margins like razorblades. Today, this all looks like too much to bother with.

            However, on Sunday things will look better. Or else I will set fire to the stupid thing, and do the opera project instead.

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Mmm, the luxury of fresh books. Saturday, May 10 2008

So I write a lot (too much?) about the book situation here in Dubai. The selection can be defined by two problems: A, there isn’t much, and B, it’s expensive. I could whine about either of those problems all day, but instead I will tell you about my strategy.

            This is to wander through the store looking for the biggest, thickest, most interesting-looking book I can find. If it takes me a week to read, has color pictures, and gives me some interesting tidbits about, say, trade routes between Persia and China in the first century, than I will grit my teeth and spend the equivalent of twice the US cover price. (Yes! Twice! It’s insulting!)

            What I’ve found is that, while it’s easy to wander through a bookstore and gather an armload of books, it’s much harder to pick just one. After an hour, I generally find myself sitting in the back aisle, bouncing a cranky baby on one knee while staring at five hundred dirhams’ worth of books and trying to decide: do I want the Maxfield Parrish- illustrated Arabian Nights? The book about Mughal-era Indian art would be an excellent reference, but maybe it’s too heavy to ship home? What about the book on the rise and fall of the de Medici family, with the color plates of Botticelli portraits? How long will The Complete Jeeves Stories last me? If I buy the Jane Austen biography, will it be more entertaining than The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wagner? Is the Illustrated Guide to Cuban Tiles a “want” or a “need”? Obviously, this is a pretty poor strategy; it’s no wonder that I sometimes leave without anything at all.

             Last week, after I managed to narrow my choices down to one, and emerged exhausted, broke, and trembling from the bookstore, a thought crossed my mind: I WILL NEVER TAKE PUBLIC LIBRARIES FOR GRANTED AGAIN. People in my future, I am counting on you to slap me if I ever complain about late fines, inter-library loan fees, or mis-shelved books ever again.

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Sometimes it can take years to really understand character motivation. Thursday, May 8 2008

Recently my mom sent Henry a video for kids with communication problems. It is designed to encourage kids to identify Words with Things and therefore help them start talking. Our video is on Feelings – Mad, Sad, and Happy – and the boy seems to really enjoy watching it, but he also seems to get a little mixed up between expressions and feelings. For instance, he frowns through the Happy segment and dances to the Sad music. I am worried he will be permanently confused, as well as mute.

          Yesterday, after receiving a time-out for throwing spoons, he greeted my lecture (“We just don’t throw spoons at each other, sweetheart. It’s not civilized. Please remember, we’re not the Goths and the Visigoths storming the gates of Rome.”) with a big, toothy, ANGRY smile. And, just like that, I understood why Janie’s mother (you remember Janie? From Harriet the Spy?) was such a basket case.

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Please don’t give me that nineteen-volume “Complete Annotated Dickens” until my 2010 birthday. Sunday, May 4 2008

Today I finished reading Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit. For those of you who are keeping track (hi Mom!) that is indeed two Dickens novels within a month. A new record for me, although not something I will ever attempt again. Why? Because there are too many similarities between his ’sombre novels’, as the prologue so charmingly calls them, and Little Dorrit has a plot with all the staples: suppressed inheritence, wicked aunties, abduction of bastard children, spells in prison, debts, ruin, soot, and mysterious unexplained happenings - spontanious human combustion in Bleak House, the sudden collapse of a building in Dorrit. After a few chapters, one gets confused, and starts looking for the Jarndyces.

Little Dorrit herself is also not the greatest heroine, and I doubt I would have made it through the novel if it was all about her gentleness, self-sacrifice, ‘quiet helpful ways’, etc. Throughout the book, she is stepped on by almost every other character, and by the end one is left wanting to shake some sense into the poor girl: she gets to marry the hero, sure, but is he worth it? Also, will she be required to cheerfully mend his socks and serve his meals for the next forty years?

Luckily we also have Little John Chivery, (who is constantly composing his own epitaph) Flora Fitching, (who speaks in the most amazing pauseless paragraphs I have ever seen in my life) Pancks the Tugboat, dashing young Ferdinand Barnacle (why read Dickens? For the names!), Mrs General, (a woman of vast deportment) Mr. Meagles the practical man, and scary Mr. Fitchwitch. They act like yeast on the Dorrit morality, and fluff the story up into good Victorian entertainment.

So even if the hero is dull and a little on the foolish side, and the heroine is highly slappable, it’s still a great novel. What can I say? Dickens was a genius. Even when I want to dislike him, like after a long chapter on how Little Dorrit tenderly nurses Arthur Clennam back to health as he is dying in Marshalsea Jail, he will go and do something like cause the Clennam house to collapse into an urban sinkhole, right in the next paragraph. And how is a person supposed to stop reading after that?

In the future, though, I am going to hold myself to one Dickens novel per year. The Circumulocation Office chapters alone are going to be giving me bad dreams for weeks.

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The Art of the Idiotic Proverb Thursday, May 1 2008

So in Absent Classic news, I am working on Volume Number Three, which I think will be the best one, because it is a compilation of folk tales. And what makes it funny (I think) is that each story ends with a proverb. A really stupid, pointless, idiotic proverb. What’s funnier than one of those?

 

However, it turns out that it’s harder to write a stupid proverb than it is to write a good one. Take this little baby, which I was fighting with all day yesterday: He who would argue upon a full stomach would give himself nightmares as well. Is it funny? I thought it was when I wrote it, but then I got to thinking about it, and I remembered that if you have an argument just after dinner – particularly one of those long, drawn-out, discussion-ey ones that married people tend to have every so often – you are liable to have trouble sleeping afterwards. So now my funny proverb is profound and meaningful, when it’s supposed to be stupid.

 

And this one: A man who walks by himself in the wilderness would be wise to carry extra shoes. Is that one funny? I like the idea of a bold hero setting off for the horizon with a pair of spare Nikes tied on top of his monster-slaying weaponry – but then, honestly, anyone who’s ever tried to walk barefoot in the woods would see at once that this proverb is not only not-stupid, it is downright sensible. What can I say? I’m a mom.

 

One more: He who weeps all day at the bottom of a well will only achieve self-drowning. Ha! But, wait – isn’t it true that if you sit around crying all day nothing gets done? Even if you’re not trapped in a well? Plus, isn’t it understandable to cry if you’re trapped in a well? It’s a sad situation. And, as we all know, sad usually equals unfunny.

 

But, anyway, the illustrations are coming along nicely, so that’s something.

 

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Bad directions I have been given Sunday, Apr 27 2008

In San Francisco: “Oh, it’s on one of those hilly streets. You’ll see it.”

In New Zealand: “Keep going until you see some sheep.”

In Boston: “It’s near a Revolutionary War historical site - I forget which one - but you can’t miss it.”

In Savannah: “You’ll see either a live oak or a magnolia tree, and then you take the next left.”

In Dubai: “Oh, yes, it’s near a mosque.”

 

And the worst directions ever: “Just keep going until you see a car. When you get to the next stoplight, turn.”

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