How to Get Your Husband to Buy You a Horse, and more...

 Couldn't resist--just for fun...

And now I'm going to get serious--dammit.

On the last blog I mentioned my novel Song of Africa, and that I had 35,000 words to go--still have almost. I don't think I can do it. I’m too cryptic; to afraid I will bore people, too much to the point. I've been discouraged all week, and here I am wanting to spread good-will and a happy life. (Don’t count on me.)

Yesterday I looked up the Gambia online--one editor told me to never use google in your research for people will laugh at you, yeah, like everyone googles everything. I just wanted it to spark something in me. When I began this novel I had no pictures same the Encyclopedia, and talk about cryptic, but there are pictures online. Don't know if I want my romanticized view of Africa clouded with facts, but I looked up The Gambia, a river in West Africa. To ride that river is my character’s dream. She heard it looks like the Hollywood stereotype of an African river—and so that was her choice, her river. (Now it is called The Sara Rose by her lover.) The adventure begin at the river.  Well, no, it began on the first page where the postmistress tells Patrice and her mother that her grandparents are dead—lost on what the world calls the Dark Continent. Strange to call Africa dark when the sun shines for nine months of the year, but isn’t the light level that has motivated the word, “dark,” it is the mystery.

I got to thinking about my characters. The book ends in 1996. That means Patrice, the young 15-year- old girl in Africa would be 34 years old now. And Sara, my heroine was 77 in 1998. I have fallen in love with my characters, which is the way it ought to be with a novel, but I’m feeling sad about them, for with them, like with me, and those around me, time marches on. I wonder what they have been doing for the last 19 years. 

The Gambia River flows through Senegal West Africa.

Bird by Bird*

“It is no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.” –Mark Twain

If a gun appears on the wall in act I, it must be fired by act III.

It’s a fiction rule, like the one shoe dropping. We hear the man upstairs undressing, one shoe drops, and we wait. No fair if the guy upstairs quietly sets down his second shoe.

Suspense is created by foreshadowing.  The gun on the wall, a palmist gasps when she examines the hero’s hand, you see a torn letter stuffed into a mail box and knows it has significance, but what?

I’m contemplating my novel Song of Africa, one that has been on my shelf, in my drawer, in the computer, traveled from California, to Oregon to Hawaii to Oregon—it’s still in my computer, added to, written over, and finally an ending found. It’s a miracle.

 The problem? I have written 40,000 words and I need 75,000 by the end of the month. I read about foreshadowing, structure, plot, beginnings, middles, endings, style, technique, suspense, all of which is overwhelming. Like Real Estate study, you throw too much at a person and they become catatonic.

“Take it bird by bird,” Anne Lamont’s father told her brother. He was collecting bird names for a school project, and felt there were too many birds, he couldn’t do it. “Just take it bird by bird.” Anne uses that advice in her writing and *Bird by Bird is the title of one of her books.

Right now, after attending a concert and wondering about art, and the artist, and realizing that while they (those authority figures) tell us to “Give our gift.” “To do what you love.” “Built it and they will come.” You know the drift. “Do what you love and money will follow.”That sort of thing. I wonder, though, there is a fine line between entertaining and self-indulgence.  

  

What Have You Done in Your Life?

Well on Saturday I wrote six pages. On Sunday I deleted them all.
 All in all it was a pretty good weekend.

And this week I spun about as a Real Estate Agent.

I would never have known lis pendens from an appendix had I not taken a Real Estate course. Daughter number two said lis pendens sounded like a body part. (It means "suit pending" the most common is the notice served beginning a foreclosure procedure.)

My Real Estate license is now parked with the state--that is I am not associated with any agency and thus I have lost my lofty title REALTOR. I read a quote by Billy Crystal, "I learned over the years that if you're not happy doing what you're doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." that pretty much sums up my relationship in being an agent. I have not, however, given up on houses...

Here is an example of the feeling a person gets when doing what they love. Daughter number one's counselor asked her what she was doing for herself--that was on top of working plus caring for her son, husband and house. "Oh," she said, "taking walks, soaking in the tub, but afterword I feel just just as exhausted as before." The counselor said, "What about your art?" 

Daughter awakened the next morning raring to sculpt. Thus this carved avocado pit. And it put a smile on her face too.

 http://foodlifeeverything.wordpress.com

Dragoncado

I don't know how she held that slippery pit. I know she peeled off the pit's brown thin film revealing a white pit beneath. The white turns this coppery color after being exposed to air.

If we were to talk about juxtapositions Daughter number one and I would be a great example. While she is into preparing food--and photographing it, I get out of cooking every chance I can.


Finally before I sail off into the blue, I am offering, for a limited time,  a FREE ebook, Mother's Letters...and mine. This book is not for everybody, but it will be for somebody. Are you one of those bodies? To determine if you are check out:

 free-ebookletters.blogspot.com

If you are sure you want it click on this email. 

grattisebook@gmail.com 

(Just copy and paste, I hate it when the computer asks for tons of information. It's just an email address for heavens sake..)

The eBook will come as a Pdf file on your computer. 
Many thanks,
Joyce

Wishing You “The Luck of the Irish”

Is this St Pat’s day? I think it is. Normally I don’t keep track of such things—I have to be reminded of Thanksgiving Day and such, but I wrote the date for this blog, and saw that it was time to go out for a green beer.

St. Patrick was born around 387 C.E. in Scotland, and turned to God once he was kidnapped by slave traders and brought to Ireland to be a shepherd.  He is accredited to bringing Christianity to Ireland and he used the shamrock, a three leafed plant, to explain the trinity to the people.

According to Catholic Online. St Patrick said, "I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain."

For decades following the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century, the shamrock was popular among the Irish as an icon promoting, at least for a day, the rejection of British rule in Ireland. And because the church lifted the ban on drinking on the Sabbath on that day, everyone went out for a beer.

But, I wondered, why has the four leaf clover become associated with St Patrick?

Apparently it was a mix-up. The luck of the Irish, the green, the shamrock, and the four leaf clover which is a good luck charm. This is the stuff of myths, and symbolism, and since we love celebrations, that too. My grandson would call this a “mixel.”

During the gold rush in America, the most famous and successful miners were Irish or of Irish American birth. Over time this association with mining fortunes led to the expression, “The Luck of the Irish.” Of course it could have been that it was not so much luck as brains.

Fascinating, that some of the most down-trodden people have risen above adversary to become great. And these once thought to be less-than people are now celebrated.

Ha ha. To life! the ancestors must be laughing.

Picture of Cinderella's Castle, Disneyland Paris France, green for St. Pat's day.