clairdevers.com

view my 10 on 10, short stories and more at: clairdevers.com

Moving On Up

MWD is helping me set up my new website. I just spend days transferring all my blogs over. Lost my comments and views, but this will be better I think.

Checkity Check It:
http://www.clairdevers.com/

Still working . . and stuff

I think I'll start to post my assignments via twitter (and maybe here) going forward. It probably won't catch on right away, but maybe eventually someone else can write something based on the same picture and we can compare notes. Seems fun.

I actually started a short story today with a woman character for a change (assignment picture below). It's dark as usual. I should acquiesce and start writing true crime stories, since MWD thinks I would be good at it. Anyways - this story is a little creepy. It will be Wednesday before I finish it since I have the newsletter to work on tomorrow then right back on it.

Reading seems important, but it is distracting me from writing. Kind of frustrating. I have always looked at reading as relaxing and winding down, so I feel guilty reading for some reason. I’m trying to read Stephen King's book right now On Writing. And I am also reading a book MWD got for me on building a process. I am taking some and leaving some. The proper method for me, will need to be one I come up with not someone with a formula.

I have started trying to find and follow other writers through twitter. I read a cool short story today. A good distraction, oops I mean good research. Heh.

We are paying someone to paint the common areas in the house. It means we can’t buy the kids a playscape yet, but it will save some serious marital issues. MWD doesn’t want me to do it, so dragging it out for months with the house torn up will annoy him. And in turn I will be annoyed that he is not appreciating me for painting or helping me. We like to like each other, so this will help us to avoid the opposite. Painters come tomorrow. May have to do some writing in MWD’s office, since mine is a common area (which sometimes sucks when I am writing while someone is watching TV, so close I can hear every word).

Here is the picture I am using for today's assignment:

Short story

I wrote a short story inspired by this picture last night.

 It's a little longer than the last one, so click here to read it.

Music brings us together?

I have heard many times that music is what brings us together. Really? Are you sure? When I think about it, I’m conflicted. I turn to music constantly in my life and I do bond with the other people who like or listen to things that I like. But, it’s much more complicated than that though. I won’t even go into the music “business” side of this discussion. I don’t think I am ready for that blog yet (oh, it’s coming). But, I see so many ways in which music has driven a wedge between people.

In high school there are always cliques. And people (me included) stereotype these groups. When I was in high school it was the skaters/punks, the goths, the preps, the stoners, the jocks, the kickers, the gangstas, the nerds and more. Surely there are versions of this now that are pretty similar. There are a lot of factors that place people into their appropriate groups like style interests and more. But really it always boils down to music.

You weren’t going to see a skater guy driving down the street listening to Celine Dion or Whitney Houston. Not too many preps were listening to Black Flag or Minor Threat. But, why not? This has really bothered me over the years, since I listed to such a range of music, but specifically two things have really bothered me lately about this.

#1 – My good friend J.Ball came to visit recently and I knew he was a Texas Music fan so I took him to our recently sold store. He was in heaven. I made a comment about how I never thought I would have been selling country music or something along those lines and that I never would have pictured him listening to this stuff (our crowd was mostly the skater punk crowd). And he told me that he really liked country music as a teenager, but there is no way he would have told his friends. WHAT? WHY?

#2 – My daughter loves the worst music. No really. Noah (and even Jack) has some sweet taste (Pixies, White Stripes), but Emily is the Bubble Gum Queen. She loves Hannah and Jonas and all that typical little kid stuff. She does like a few good things (Foo Fighters – w00t), but she listens to the evil top 40 station. I don’t even know what to call the music they play, but in my mind it is AWFUL. And for a while I told her that. I wouldn’t play it in the car for her. I wanted to rid her of this infliction. I wanted to help her. And then one day during the move, I was walking past her bedroom and I caught a glimpse of her in her room packing. She had her radio on and she was groovin’ (to some real crap) and movin’ and singin’. Man, she was so happy. She knew every word and every note was bringing her joy.

At that moment I couldn’t believe I would try to deprive her of that joy. I truly realized what the word SUBJECTIVE means. She wasn’t showing off or trying to be cool for anyone, she was just happy.

And that’s what it is really supposed to be about right? You listen to what you like. It is so personal. I am not all the way better yet, but I am working on my musical tolerance. One man’s crap is another man’s love ballad.

I'm Looking Through You

Sheeeww. I have a plan and I’m gonna try to follow my own rules. Even if I am not writing on my book (paused for tweaking my complicated outline). . .

I. Am. Writing. Every. Day.

So – I made up my own assignment. Based on my true hobby – photography. I take a ton of pictures. I try to keep a handle on how many I post, because it could overwhelm the 3-4 people that follow what I am up to. No one is going to look through 240 pictures of one event, so I usually try to sum thing up in 15-40 pictures. That leaves quite a few left overs. I love to take pictures of the random details I notice in life and I rarely capture how beautiful or interesting (or disgusting) they look in my mind.

I plan on going into my photo hard drive and randomly selecting a photo. Then I will try to create a moment to write about. Maybe not a complete story. Who knows? It was simple for me to come up with this assignment, because I do this all day long. Every day.

While I drive down the street and I happen to notice some guy sitting on the curb with his kid and a car seat – I make up a story. Usually a tragedy. In reality, he probably dropped his car off to be fixed and was waiting for a ride. In reality, his wife was probably at work. But in my mind he had found his wife murdered in their house when he arrived home late last night while his little boy was in bed asleep. His name was Sergio and he had a long criminal record and was afraid he would be blamed, even though he had turned his life around. So he took off. He loved his son more than anything and refused to have him raised by his wife’s family, so he grabbed a few essential things and loaded his son in the car. Then the damn car broke down 100 miles into his escape. Now here he was sitting on the side of the road trying to figure out his next move.

It's not a gift. It’s annoying as hell. When I want to veg out, I have to turn the music up really loud and sometimes I still make up stories about the piece of trash or the broken brick or the jogger with the ripped pant leg. Or I call you while I am driving. And you distract me from these details.

OK, Folks. Here I go. I’ll post some of them here, don’t worry I will try not to post them all. I’m trying to make something of this annoying habit. I can’t deny it any longer. Even if I'm not good at it, I'm going to write some of this messed up stuff that goes through my head and hope someone receives a level of entertainment or something. Of course if they do, I will probably make up a story about how messed up they are too!
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Here is my first assignment to myself for today. Strangely enough, it turns out that this was the first picture I clicked on that wasn’t one of my kids. But I didn’t even take it – MWD did. Weird . . .

The porch creaked under Luther’s weight as he sat on the top step with one leg perched under him for support and the other lazily stretched out spanning the other four steps. He was a tall, thick man and he made everything around him look miniature as he now did with the stairs and porch. It had been about 30 minutes since he arrived and he hoped to avoid going inside a bit longer. The guilt was overwhelming and everything in him told him to race back to his rented car and drive right back to the airport.

He passed some time by nervously picking at a spot on his right knuckle. Jenny, his wife, called that his worry spot. If she were here now, she would gently cover this spot with her hand to stop him from messing with it, but he had not allowed her to come. This was his responsibility. This was his family. Luther turned his hands over and looked at the palms, comparing how much lighter and tan they were to the dark sable skin on the other side. He looked beyond his hands out into Granny Byrd’s small yard. This little patch of earth was her favorite spot to be. Now the grass was so overgrown that it didn’t look like a yard, it looked like a tiny wheat field. It bothered him that no one had mowed it for her and that her last days were probably spent wishing she had her lawn mowed. It was hard for him to criticize anyone since he had not been to this porch in seven years and hadn’t mowed this yard himself in nine years.

Seven years ago he sat in this same spot and visited with Byrdie. At that time she was 84 years old and Luther was in a hurry. He was always in a hurry and Byrdie never was. He sat and visited with her and he now wished he would have given her his full attention instead of thinking about how much work he had to do and about the plans he and Jenny had for that evening. They seemed so important that day, but he couldn’t even remember what they were now. Byrdie spent all of her time on this porch. As soon as there was daylight, she would rush outside to sit and soak up the sunshine. She had a few tin bowls out on the porch that she scooped cat food into for all the cats she visited with as they stopped by to grab a bite throughout the day. The neighbors complained that she was attracting strays to the area that were multiplying and infesting the place with dirty cats, but she never stopped. Luther assumed this cat food baking in the sun all day with dried little bits from the day before was the reason it smelled so bad on her porch. Even though he loved Granny Bryd, he hated to sit out on this porch. All he could think about while he was there was everywhere else he was supposed to be.

Now she was gone and things seemed different. He was here now to watch her be placed in the ground and Luther wished he could have one more conversation with her. He wished he had been a better grandson. It was probably hard for anyone else to understand, but he really did love the woman. She was a light to him. Someone that loved him regardless of the stupid choices he made or how little he showed that he loved her back. Even if he only saw her for a moment, she always told him how proud she was. Byrdie had great stories to tell that would capture his attention away from his rushed life even if it were only for a moment. Once she started into a tale of days past, he was hooked. He really loved it when she told stories of her life with his Grandpa Earl. She met Earl Ramsey in the factory that they both worked at when she was 24 and they both continued to work at the same place for almost 40 years. He couldn’t imagine having Byrdie’s life. The same job, the same town and even the same house for almost 70 years. Grandpa Earl died when Luther was only 10 years old. Byrdie seemed like an old woman to him even then, but she still lived another 25 years without him. There was no chance Byrdie was going to love another man. Grandpa Earl was the only man for her.

She had lived through a time of great intolerance and she barely seemed to notice. She simply sat on her porch feeding cats and chatting with people who walked down the street. It was hard to picture her as the young mother of three kids. In the pictures she looked like a very plain woman with an intense sparkle in her eye. She always wore her hair smoothed down and squeezed into a little ponytail that barely fit into the black rubber band that held it in place. Little jagged spikes of hair shot out of it with varying lengths that never were longer than an inch. He imagined that if she were to wear it loose, she would have hundred of tiny curls, but they were glued down causing little waves along her head. He had never seen her or even a picture of her with her hair another way. Luther was only 35 and he now had such short hair that he might as well shave it off, but he had many hairstyles in his life. Thinking about the giant afro he sported when he was in his early twenties made him smile. His girlfriend talked him into dreading it up after a few weeks, but it was a fun while it lasted. At one time he thought he could never be that unchanged, he could never commit to the same thing everyday for the rest of his life. Jenny was the most consistent thing in his life and they had been together for nine years now. She had moved around with him for the first few years, but now they had lived in the same house for 6 years and she was going to have his baby in only a few weeks.

He had meant to call and tell Byrdie about the baby coming, but he never had time. It was going to be her first great grand baby and he knew she would have been thrilled. Now that he was here and taking his time about going inside he realized there were plenty of chances he could have called and talked to her, but it was too late. She was gone.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder, “Luther Ramsey, how long you been here, Baby? Come inside, we’ve got all kinds of good food cookin’ and your mama is here too.” His aunt Carmen had discovered him, so his hope for escape was gone. Now Luther would have to go in and face these people he had not made time for in seven years.

processing . . . processing . . .

Apparently everything has a process. I’m not very patient (shut up) and I jumped right into writing this book. This is my first actual written material over a few pages and I decide it should be a book? Technically it is a 3-book story. WTF? So I started it and I am finished with the first 7 chapters and now I have a mess!

A little more than a decade ago, I worked on databases while I was in corporate training. I was the go between for the users and the programmer. And I even designed a few easier ones myself. I had basic knowledge in both areas (understanding what people want and basic database design). The reason that job is important is that you have to design the entire database (or most of it) before you can start making tables and linking them together. It is really quite complicated and if you don’t know what you want in the beginning then you can create a ton of extra work in the end.

The process I used was starting at the end result. I used to say “tell me every report you could ever want to print” then from that I would work backwards and figure out what tables should be included and information should be collected and entered. It was so much easier to make adjustments when you start that way.

This is what I need to do. I need to figure out my process on this book. I need to quit writing for a few days and map this damn thing out on paper before I have more mess than I can clean up. Damn. Crap. Damn. Well . . at least I know now instead of 3 months from now.

BTW – I did not type the word “just” even once in here. Now that is progress.