Category: books

Let’s Have A Brainstorming Session

I just finished reading a book called “Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut.”

It is the biography of NASA Astronaut Mike Mullane, and it’s a pretty damn good book, not just because it’s about a kid who was raised in New Mexico (though many, many bonus points for that!), but because Mullane gets down to the nitty gritty details about what it was like to ride NASA’s Space Shuttle on three separate occasions.

Add to all of that, I personally think “Riding Rockets” is a fantastic title.

Which got me thinking…if I was going to write up the story of my life so far, what in the blazes would I call such a tome?

Tell you what…let’s brainstorm together, shall we?

Here we go…let me clear my mind…remember no idea is too outrageous, all have merit.

If Loving Cheese is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right: My Life from Velveeta to Camembert

Fart Jokes Are Always Funny: A Retrospective

Decision Points: Red or Green? (<== honestly, doesn't that truly sum up my life?)

Ain’t Got Sense Enough To Come In Out of The Rain: My life, and other things my father said

It’s 10:00am and I Already Ate My Lunch: The trials and tribulations of a perpetually hungry girl

Nina Karen: Wisdom of the Ages (<== I can include the time I let my toddler aged goddaughter grab onto an electric fence. Great moments of godparenting...)

I’m From New Mexico: You don’t look like you’re Mexican, so Find A Map @#$&hole

Mommy, Why Does California Act That Way: A New Mexican’s tales of living in the craziest state in the union

Whoops!: One woman’s life of “excuse me” for inappropriate bodily noises

The Audacity of Taking the Last Piece of Pie: One woman’s quest to become a better wife, except when there’s pie involved

I’ll keep working on it….

Cartoon from Noise to Signal by Rob Cottingham

He Spoke to Me

Do you have any idea how powerful it was when I read the following poem, written by Shel Silverstein as part of his book “Where the Sidewalk Ends?”

Listen to the mustn’ts, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.
Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me…
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

I don’t know how old I was, ten or twelve maybe? But to have an adult, especially such a surly looking adult, say something like that to me!

Whoa!

This past weekend, I pulled “Where the Sidewalk Ends” off my shelf and gave it a new read. It had been years. Maybe even decades.

And that poem, it still stopped me in my tracks.

I just finished a biography of Shel Silverstein called “A Boy Named Shel” that I found, of all places, at the Dollar Store.

I’m not going to lie to ya, the biography is not the greatest writing I’ve ever encountered. In fact, it’s pretty bad, worthy of the venue in which it was purchased. That said it did give me some (hopefully true) insight into the life of the very prolific writer, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright.

I learned from this biography that Silverstein’s mind was constantly in motion, constantly creating without restrictions.

I only know of a few creative people in my life that are *constantly* channeling The Muse. One of them might even be related to me.

I’m pretty creative and am usually chock full of ideas, but I also go through extended periods of time of writer’s or crafter’s block. Perhaps for me, these are quiet periods that are essential to my own creative process, because as frustrating is to be creatively constipated, I usually come through it stronger.

I have learned that The Muse will return if I just relax and let her go. She always comes back.

It’s funny, sometimes seeing art or meeting a creative person will touch off a creative spark inside of me, thus breaking through the blockades. Through the words of his poems, Shel Silverstein did that for me this weekend. I started a new art project and I did photography and I felt the creatives begin to whisper in my ear, which always gives me such satisfaction.

I understand that Silverstein was a mentor to many of his friends. He would push them to create more, to push the bounds of their art and to be better artists.

Silverstein died in 1999, but his words remain powerful. They speak to me as loudly today as they did when I was young.

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

Photo From BigHeartDesign.com

That Pesky Spell Check

I was rereading a few of my text messages the other day on my iPhone. I was looking for a bit of information a friend had given me, so I had the chance to read what I’d written.

I was a little bit embarrassed. Oh the violations of Funk and Wagnalls I’ve committed and sent out to the universe.

Since I have a full keyboard to use for texting, I tend to shy away from the internet approved shortened word uses. It’s a point of pride to write in full sentence form.

I don’t know why, it just is.

However…that very aggressive auto correct on the phone does tend to trip me up.

That got me to thinking about how much I rely on spell check and auto correct these days, which is bad. Spell check isn’t perfect. A 100% spell checked document could still have mistakes.

Gah!

There are a LOT of words that when spelled wrong, are actually still a word. But ya still look kinda silly using the wrong word.

Also, plenty of times, spell check suggests the wrong word entirely.

I see these misused but correctly spelled quite a bit online, in email and of course, on places like Facebook and Twitter.

You can find a few examples here:

10 Common Errors “Spell Check” Won’t Catch

(I’ll ignore the blatant use of unnecessary quotes in that headline)

Yeah, I’ve either seen or made (or both) all of the errors in the article.

There’s a few that get me that aren’t on that list…like:

Rein, meaning how you steer a horse and;

Reign, meaning how you rule a kingdom.

Right, as in I get to have it, and;

Rite, as in I get to dance under the moon about it.

Also troublsome…

To, too and two. I tend to put too many o’s in there at the wrong time. It’s hard to tell the two apart.

And one that makes me bonkers is lose and loose. I see a LOT of posts on support boards about “if I could only loose ten pounds.” It’s a pet peeve.

The article lists through versus threw. However…that’s not where my language and typing skills break down. Nope, I struggle with

Through, as in, I’m past it and;

Thorough, as in I did a complete job.

I even struggled typing that sentence. Gah!

I’ve noticed lately that even publishing houses, once the very model of correct spelling and grammar, are also slacking off in this department. The last four books I’ve read, all recent publications, have had typos, as many as six in one case.

And internet news articles! Ugh!

It seems no one is watching the chicken coop any more on spelling and grammar. Despite trying really hard not to slip, even I’m guilty as charged.

I fret that as our language continues to evolve, misspelling and bad grammar will become appropriate. English teachers of the world, unite!

On Rules and Flouting the Rules

There is a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama that goes like this:

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”

I generally agree with this sentiment. I’ve seen it applied beautifully to music and painting, and I personally break the principle rule of photography with gusto every chance I get.

The one area that I get a little persnickety about breaking the rules is the discipline of spelling and grammar.

In this area, I get out my schoolmarm glasses and become VERY strict.

I believe that both effective communication and indeed, the very fabric of the English language, depends on proper grammar and spelling.

Despite, of course, the daily assault on the English language lobbed by the texting/twittering/facebooking phenomenon.

I recently read the bestselling book, “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender.

It’s a sad, melancholy tale of a young girl who can taste the emotions of the person who prepared the food she eats. It’s an odd and slightly surreal book that delves deeply into the secrets and strange predilections of the family at the center of the story.

But as I dived into the book, I was brought up short right away by the complete lack of quotation marks to designate dialogue.

You know, dialogue is bit tough to follow when there are no quotation marks. Indeed Ms. Bender didn’t even follow standard dialogue format as often the sentences spoken between characters overlapped in a single paragraph.

I found it maddening and it made my progress through the book slow and rather difficult. I often had to re-read pages to be sure I knew what was going on.

I did get through the book, however, because Ms. Bender is a teller of beautiful stories.

There is a book that also eschewed quotation marks that I tried to read ten or twelve years ago that didn’t fare as well. In fact, I got a third of the way through the infernal book then got up the moment I’d had enough, got in my car, went to the library and dropped the blasted book into the donation slot. Literally. I got so mad I hesitated not a moment before I ejected the book from my home.

That book is one you might know, “All The Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy may be an award-winning author, but he’s no favorite of mine.

Mr. McCarthy’s style on display in his recent spate of bestselling books may be something of a driver to this now popular style of throwing out useful punctuation marks.

To be blunt, I blame McCarthy for the trend.

However, my blame may be poorly placed.

Recently The Good Man and I watched a documentary called “It/ll Be Better Tomorrow” about the author Hubert Selby Jr. Known best for his books “Last Exit to Brooklyn” and “Requiem for a Dream,” over his career, Mr. Selby also flagrantly violated the rules of punctuation, most notably his apostrophes are replaced with slashes. So she’ll becomes she/ll.

However, at least he’s consistent in his use, and there is some sort of mark designating what’s (or what/s) going on, so I can at least follow along.

Not so with ol’ Cormac.

It seems I’m not the only one who has noticed this literary shift.

In an October 2008 essay in the Wall Street Journal, author Lionel Shriver also notes the lack of quotation marks, quoting material from McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men” by way of example, but McCarthy is far from the only author out there employing this device.

To me, it feels indulgent on the part of the writer to expect that their readers will simply figure it out for themselves.

I think Mr. Shriver sums it up quite nicely at the end of his essay:

“When dialogue makes no sound, the only character who really gets to talk is the writer.”

And the thing is, as a writer, I’ve always thought my job was to get out of the way.

Ah well, as NewMexiKen and I discussed in the comments section of this post, art can be a tricky thing to define. The rules go all slidey* when we talk about what is or isn’t acceptable in creating works of art.

That means I get to keep my punctuation marks and while others can set theirs free.
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Oh…and then there is the inappropriate use of quotation marks. That’s a whole other discussion.

*Also there is my personal habit of making up words. Ah well, back to throwing stones at my own glass house…

And now for something completely different…

So lately I’ve been impossibly busy with work, life and all the joy that long summer days bring to my easily distracted brain.

As such, I’ve had the attention span of a gnat and have been really running to catch up on my blog.

In reading over posts from the past couple weeks, I feel like I’m starting to be derivative of my self.

And, well, that’s ass.

I had a long talk with The Good Man about maybe taking a break from blogging, or quitting entirely.

In fact, I considered it seriously.

But then again…I’m up to 939 posts over three years, and there is a part inside of me that *really* wants to top 1,000 posts on this blog.

So I dug deep inside and asked myself if I wanted to stop blogging.

The answer was clear. No. I don’t want to stop.

I love blogging and it’s done amazing things for my writing and editing skills on the fly.

And so….

I’m going to keep on keeping on here on the blog. But to keep things interesting, I’m going to try something different this week.

I shall dub the week of June 21 through June 25 as Flash Fiction and Fables Week.

On Monday through Thursday, my blog posts will consist of a no more than 1,000 word fiction story or essay, thus the very definition of Flash Fiction.

As the impetus for each day’s story, I will visit a random word generator and use the first word that is presented as the foundation for the story.

I will have to keep an eye on myself for no cheating! No hitting refresh until I get a word I like.

I have no idea what the stories will be about as this is all a fluid process.

I hope you are willing to come along on this ride, as it will be harder than it looks, I can assure you. This is really a task in pushing The Muse to produce. And sometimes she doesn’t like that.

Here’s a representative sample of her cranky face.

Four days writing a totally new Flash Fiction story each day may be tough to accomplish. We’ll see.

And then Friday will be a special day. On Friday I’m going to present a “Fable Friday” selection. This is a story I’ve taken from one of a couple books I have of fables and folklore. I will read the story aloud complete with funny voices, if necessary, and will also post a link to a scan of the story if you’d rather read it yourself.

This was inspired by a great night at a friend’s house reading fables and folklore aloud. It was a fun and touching night and I’m experimenting with making this a regular item on the Oh Fair New Mexico blog.

After my week of Flash Fiction and Folklore ends, I will likely go back to my regularly scheduled stream-of-mind posts that I’ve done for the past three years, hopefully with a renewed sense of creativity and verve.

Verve…what a great word.

Anyhow, do join me and give feedback on the stories if the spirit moves you.

Personally I’m both excited and scared about the week, but I’m also raring to go!

Wheeeee!!