Character Crisis (in the wee hours)

The neurotic insomniac finds herself with so many tantalizing options. She can wile away the hours wondering if she took her slacks out of the dryer, or enumerating her snoring husband’s shortcomings. She can ponder the precariousness of her finances, contemplate the erosion of her physical abilities, or there’s the ever popular inevitability of death to keep her eyes wide open. If she’s working on a book, the possibilities for relentless inner debate are endless. 

But the theme of tonight's sleeplessness in Glendale is an upcoming workshop I'll be giving on Creating Credible Children's Book Characters. 

I’ve given this sort of talk many times and am not afraid to speak in front of strangers, not afraid they won’t like me or laugh at my jokes. Nor am I afraid I’ll forget to put on my pants. We all know the  drill of writing character is to build back story, and get to know your character’s world, what she wants, and fears, and needs, and thinks she needs, blah, blah.

But, in the nether-time betwixt night and morn, it hit me that The less we know someone, the easier it is to sum them up. The less we know them, the easier it is to hate them, or to be giddy in love with them, or even to be utterly indifferent. Example: We know only enough about political candidates to feel VERY STRONGLY about them. Ditto Celebrities.

We’re sure we know enough about the guy who cut us off in traffic to sum up his whole nature.  Add in the kind of car he’s driving (expensive or junker) to bring him into even sharper focus. Two little facts. 1. He cut us off.  2. He’s rich/poor.  Either way, we’ve got him nailed.

Likewise, we believe we have all the info we need on the mom smacking her kid in the market. Put her in a too tight tank top in Walmart, or dress her as an account exec shopping at Whole Foods and either way we're instantly sure we know everything about who she is, why she’s frazzled, what her life is like, and how her kids will turn out. 

Same with the old man walking his lumpy old dog.  And the boy on whom we have a debilitating crush. The less we know them, the clearer they are. Add in a few more details about any of them and they'll get muddied --- because the more you know about any person, the more confusing complications, contradictions and gray areas there are, right? 

A play writing teacher once told me that Romeo and Juliet, and early Disney princesses and princes, had to be bland and featureless. 

Why? Because NOT EVERYONE LIKES THE SAME PEOPLE.

Creating a character with distinct characteristics gives your readers something not to like about him. Conversely, keeping him harmless and vague, pleasant and attractive, makes him universally likable and sympathetic -- unobjectionable. Readers automatically supply the missing parts drawing from their personal assumptions and experience, and the more blanks the better.  

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare saved all the interesting, specific, quirky traits for the character parts, Mercutio, the nurse, the priest... Comics, villains, side kicks.

What’s that got to do with my upcoming workshop for which aspiring writers are paying hard, cold cash? 

Well, am I to tell them that if they want readers to recognize and sympathize with their characters they should write caricatures? Choose two traits from column A, and two from column B?

He: Deep, brooding, tough on the outside  ---  Cream puff on the inside.
She: Free spirit, rebellious on the outside  ---  Scared, hurt little kitten on the inside.
He/She: Socially inept loner with obsessive interest in something arcane --- Loyal and loving on the inside.  
She: Pretty, peppy and popular on the outside --- evil on the inside.
He: Macho jock on the outside --- Sensitive scared puppy on the inside. 

Trite, predictable characters are easy for the reader to recognize. The iconic short hand of sit com characters as representatives of a type, require no effort for the reader/audience to grasp.  

But, isn’t that what perpetuates racist, sexist, ageist, stereotypes?  

We all want to sell our books and see strangers reading them on the bus. And as a speaker, I want to share whatever I think I know about how to achieve that. 

And maybe writing interesting, complex main characters that NOT EVERYONE WILL LIKE defeats the purpose of writing -- because it keeps readership and sales numbers low, and gets mixed reviews, if it gets published and reviewed at all...

But wait, we want to write good books, right? And the workshop is about creating credible characters...  See the problem?

xo Amy 

Tomato Tales

In preparation for the planting of tomatoes, I spent months carting banana peels and coffee filters out to my compost bin, taking solace when my novels resisted writing, that at least I was making brilliant dirt. 

Come spring, I spooned my homemade compost into planters and then went off in search of a few, needy, inexpensive vegetable plants, to love and to cherish, until death do us part. Thus far, it has been exclusively their deaths. Their depleted corpses sent to the compost, but we both know the plant world will eventually get its turn to feast on my remains.  

Meanwhile I tuck the wee plants in like babies in a crib. I don’t name them, but I watch them grow, each, as is the nature of things, differently. I take pride in this one’s height, in the strength of that one’s young stalks, in the texture of their leaves and their yellow blossoms, as if all are a reflection of their devotion and gratitude, as well as proof of my exemplary worthiness. 

In my benevolent, omnipotent way, I tend to their needs, propping up a branch there, scattering fertilizer, banishing the weeds. 

I neither threaten nor bully. No need to rub their little noses in the precariousness of their fates. If they just peer out of their planters they’ll see the dry yellow grass I’ve abandoned to the drought. They’ll notice cacti and succulents growing where their needier brethren once grew.  Lift their little plant eyes and they’d see the surrounding hillsides have become heaps of kindling, just itching to burst into flames. 

My tomatoes get breakfast in bed, straight from the hose. 

And in exchange, I occasionally pluck their perfect babies from their arms and pop them in my mouth.  Their bodies, sweet, juicy and still warm from the sun, explode between my enormous teeth. 

I hate to think they offer their fruits like desperate villagers sacrificing their choicest virgins, fearing my wrath, and my fickle nature as clearly evidenced by the hard packed dirt where once a green lawn flourished...

And I hate to think they don’t offer them at all, but are simply unable to defend them from my insatiable, hairy, bipedal, heartlessness.

In the end it is hard to know what they think of me. Try as I do to think like a plant and see things from their point of view, it is difficult to know if I got it right. As I wander the yard of a morning, coffee in hand, nodding to my fig tree, saluting the eggplants, do they see Kindly Old Amy bringer of Water? Or do they smirk and make snide comments about my ass?  Do they tremble and quake asking one another if this is the day their young will be wrested from their bosom?

Parallels aplenty. The boss who believes he is beloved, because everyone laughs at his jokes and feigns interest in his grandson’s little league prowess.  Store manager who doesn’t even suspect he has a nick-name, let alone its nature. The principal who believes he is adored by the faculty. The Marine Sergeant who thinks he is respected. The PTA president who is sure that everyone loves her pasta salad with prunes. The politician, the coach... 

It occurs to me as I write these thoughts, that many things are amiss here. For one, as a vegetarian, personifying my garden could lead to starvation. And two, this may mean my fiction writing has expanded past the reasonable boundaries of keyboard and screen, implying time to up my meds. And three, it is possibly my utter powerlessness over my publishing fate that inspires me to lumber as a gristly flesh-eating monster loose and terrifying in the yard. 

Luckily my plants don't seem to hold a grudge. Or they think life at any cost is worth the imperfect trade. This is evidenced by the eager volunteer tomato plants springing up from last years crop as if to say, “I’m back! Let’s do it again! Absolved! 
xo
Amy


The edited version of this blog appeared in the L.A. Times 
on Sunday July 15, 2012.  Here's the link:


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-garden-20120715,0,1209653.story

Plum Tree Blues

Once upon five or seven years ago, I planted a plum tree too close to the street which was a bugle-call to passing neighbors: 

FREE PLUMS! 

Why stop at two or three? 

All you can carry! 

Bring the car!

And to squirrels and birds: 

FREE PLUMS! 

Please Scatter slimy purple plum bits everywhere! 

No need to eat the whole plum!

One bite is best! 

So this year I went out early to outfox my nemesises -- canvas bag in hand, to pick as many as I could reach. Never mind that they were still hard greenish rocks, the point was THEY WERE MINE!

But it was difficult to pluck the plum babies off the branch when they were so young and helpless. They didn't let go easily. I could practically hear them cry, NO! NOT YET!!!!

So I only took a few. Put them on the windowsill. Squeezed them daily like the witch in Hansel & Gretel. 

Meanwhile, the plums on the tree put on their dusty gray disguise so I wouldn't recognize them. But I was way smarter than any plum so I tested and retested, carting samples off to the windowsill where they joined the others, ripening strangely.  

I just wanted to pick and eat one plum, ok eleven plums, soft, sweet, juicy, perfectly ripe, warm from the sun.  Was that too much to ask in exchange for all the fertilizer and water????

Plums FELL!

Hey! I would have eaten those! I told the tree. But she dropped even more before their time. 

Was she telling her babies, Enough is enough, get the hell outta here and get your own life? Or was she saying, Be free little seeds! Be fruitful and multiply!?

Either way, she was crazy to plant them there! Did she really want another plum tree just like herself to take hold and grow so close at her side? Did she want to spend her life battling her own offspring for water and light?

That's the stuff of Greek tragedy! 

It didn't make sense. So I decided I'd be helping all concerned by picking the rest of her plums, gobbling them up and carrying away the pits. 

Apparently I was not alone in that thought. You saw this coming, of course, and I should have too. But this am I crept up on my plum tree, canvas bag at the ready... and I was too late. Not a one left on the tree. 

xo

Amy

To Miss & Not to Miss

Among her many kick-ass writings, Nora Ephron left two lists. One was a list of the things she’d miss and the other the things she wouldn't. 

They inspired me to make lists of my own. 

Here they are as of June 28, 2012 (I assume they will change)

Things I Won’t Miss

Waiting

Trying on clothes

Mosquitoes

Hot flashes

Tech support

The need for tech support

Headaches

Insomnia

World news

Rejection

Religion

Fear 

Grief

People dying

Pets dying

Traffic

Things I Will Miss 
(besides family & friends)

Chocolate

Coffee

Smell of cut grass

Crickets

Inappropriate giggles  

Gardening

Reading in bed

Bunnyness

Wally and other dogness

A long awaited pee

Spring

Foot rubs

Bread

Laughing

Pie

Watermelon

Writing

Hanging out in bed with my kids

Sitting under shady threes

Comfy chairs

Walking on the beach with my Freen
Fireworks

Fireflies

What are yours? 

xo 

Amy

P.S. People do keep dying. It almost makes a gurl feel like it could happen to anyone. 

P.P.S. Keep breathing!

Things my poppa made

It is Father's Day and I'm thousands of miles from my poppa.

But here are some pictures he painted.
He said he painted because they couldn't afford art for their walls.

Here are some things he built.

He built the harpsichord with his brother, my uncle Hyme. 

First they had to build the tools to build the harpsichord. It took 8 years.  

And here are some people he built.

Here are some people who exist as a result.

The moral of this story is to take more and better photos.
xo Amy

The Wait

First we’ve got the classically horrific waits; for the dad to emerge dead or alive from heart surgery, the husband to call from a war zone, the daughter’s CAT scan result to come in re. the effectiveness of chemo. 

 Then there are the middling annoying waits -- not fatal but certainly life-eroding. Our accumulated eons lost waiting for buses, appointments, dates, planes, repair men, lunch, in line at the DMV, on hold with tech support, stuck in traffic, waiting for the meds to kick in... 

And this I know to be true: Surviving the big waits does not make us any better at handling the lesser waits. Even if we bring a book, or our knitting, catch up on our texts, or have a vivid fantasy life... a wait is time irretrievably squandered by the drop-by-drop seeping bleed of normal life. 

Onto the third type of wait. The career wait. The one where you've done all you can do and your fate and future, income and sense of worth are now in someone else's hands, off screen.

Perhaps to those Serenity Prayer types who can wrap their heads around accepting the things they cannot change, waiting for a thumbs up or down from an editor is a snap. 

Some humans even seem to be distractable. My husband for example, can glance down at the newspaper and laugh at a Dilbert cartoon while we are in the middle of a fight. 

Some people are optimists and assume all outcomes will be rosy. Others are tra-la-la about what is or is not meant to be.  

And if the point is to live as l-o-n-g as possible then the way time warps into slow motion while we’re waiting for a call should be cause for gratitude! THANK YOU WORLD for the fluid and inconsistent nature of time! Thank you for adding to my life span in this remarkable way!

But alas, people like me can not be distracted from our obsessions and we don't assume all travails will end in delight or even mercy.  

So, as we await career news we do not find ourselves accepting or celebrating the wait. Instead, as the time elongates, we implode, growing stooped, wizened, bitter. A new eye twitch develops, the lip curls. We swear at the cat and snarl at the dog. 

Karl Wallenda, of The Flying Wallendas once said something like, To walk the high wire, that is life! Everything else is waiting. 

Well, Karl, I’m waiting.

xo

Amy

Barbie!

There were three types of girls in Detroit, where I grew up. 

First, there were the girls of no significance to this discussion, meaning the ones who didn't care for dolls at all.

Second came those who longed for Easy-Bake Ovens, Betsy Wetsies (a baby doll that peed), Chatty Cathies (that talked) or Ginny dolls, whose figures were as boring and flat-chested as our own. I suspect these girls saw themselves growing all the way up and getting married and having babies, like their moms. These were the girls, I assume, for whom Mattel created Barbie's Dream House and pink Corvette convertible, as if Barbie herself were not enough.

The third group, my group, was grossed out by babies and dreaded the prospect of motherhood and ovens and houses and cars and all things that put the "dull" in adult. We found our goddess in Barbie because she was about having fun, and she was pretty and had evening gowns (as did no one we knew in real life) and tiny bracelets and a different pair of high-heeled shoes for every outfit. But we'll get to her shoes in a minute.

I was 5 when she entered my consciousness via commercials during the "Mickey Mouse Club." My instant longing for her is the closest I've come to feeling a spiritual connection: Suddenly and desperately, I wanted a Barbie of my own -- and to be a teenager when I grew up. 

And 50 years later, if given the choice, I'd still like to be a teenager when I grow up.

My best friend, Roberta, was older, so she got her Barbie first. Hers was the classic -- a breathtakingly beautiful, blond, ponytailed Barbie. We lived in a neighborhood that was entirely Jewish and African American, where there wasn't a blond to be seen. So of course the exotic, blond, obviously Gentile Barbie was utter perfection -- as anyone but my mom understood.

My mother preferred short hair. Hers was a tidy, brown helmet. And as long as I was under her control, my own brown hair was vigorously maintained in a home-cut pixie. Neat and crisp and, above all, short.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when, on my 8th birthday, after three years of near-constant begging, the Barbie I finally got was the 1962 dark-haired doll with the (short, neat, crisp) bubble cut. The Jewish-looking one.

There are still people who persist in believing that girls should have dolls that reflect them, but they are wrong! Trust me, if you are a green, rashy Cyclops, you do not want a green, rashy Cyclops doll. You want a beautiful, blond, goyish, ponytailed Barbie so that in your green, rashy Cyclops imagination, you can be her!                                                    
                                                    

Needless to say, I was devastated.
And then, just as I was learning to love my decidedly inferior Barbie, her left foot was gnawed off by Ralph, our dog.

Those were difficult times, emotionally. I wrestled with issues of unconditional versus conditional love, of guilt versus anger. I believe that was when I learned to sigh.

My daughter and her friends grew up with heaps of Barbies, which they often left naked and abandoned with the dirty socks and dust bunnies under the bed, their heads twisted impossibly, arms and legs in agonizing positions. But back in my day, at least in my world, no one owned multiple Barbies. You had your Barbie; she was sacred; you loved her. Period. The end.

So, while Roberta's Barbie tossed her silky blond ponytail and stood propped against the wall wearing two shoes, mine toppled with her empty pant leg flapping. There were no Barbie wheelchairs. There were no Barbie crutches or prosthetic devices other than crunched-up tinfoil, which, even to a wildly imaginative kid, didn't look so hot.

Nonetheless, we spent countless magnificent hours playing pretend, my Barbie and I, dressing and undressing, preparing for dates, or prison breaks, or terrifying adventures in the yard. She was always game and uncomplaining, willing to have a go at even the most perilous or romantic plans.

She was a great pal, inspite of her tiny waste, her missing foot, her gigantic boobs. That's why I wish all the anti-Barbie grown-ups would stop judging her by her looks! I mean really, who among us has had successful careers as a pilot, pediatrician, flight attendant, astronaut, veterinarian, lifeguard, firefighter, cowgirl, teacher and, most important, teenage fashion model, appeared in many books and videos and controversies, and had their portait painted by Andy Warhol? 

And whereas most of us would fetch much less on the open market than we used to, an original Barbie, which sold for $3 back in 1959, now commands up to 8,000 bucks. But that's not why I wish my beautiful, short-haired, one footed Barbie was here today. I just wish I could see her again, catch up after all these years, hang for a while, maybe play the Barbie Queen of the Prom board Game, one more time! 

xo Amy

P.S. This is a re-worked version of an LA Times piece I wrote in honor of Barbie's 50th birthday March 9, 2009.