travel

Inch by Inch

By Sparkie on Flickr

I’ve been out of it for quite a while. The explanation is simple: some life stuff happened. But I joined a writing critique group and am trying out a new (to me) tool called AutoCrit. I’ve signed up for a class where you focus on getting in-depth on a POV and I’m looking forward to using it to get a short story idea written out.

I’m hoping that this tool will help me with my plotting problems when I’m writing novels, keeping the pace and not bogging down with too much detail.

In the meantime, I’ve been focusing on short stories, which I don’t seem to have a problem with. Writing a novel chapter is like sweating blood, but writing a short story – for me, at least – is being in the zone and it always comes together fast and I’m always happy with it. Part of me is wondering if writing short stories is what I should focus on. And I have to say that’s a big fat maybe. That’s because I’m stubborn and it takes a lot of repeated fails before I give up on anything that interests me.

There was an old Vaudeville routine that the 3 Stooges revived in the 50s, where Moe told the story of the man who stole his gal and how he got revenge at Niagara Falls. And every time someone said “Niagara Falls” Moe would advance on Curly, saying “Slowly I turned, and step by step, inch by inch…” and then Curly would have the stuffing beat out of him, only for it to happen over and over again. So the Writing Life has been a little like that for me the last couple of years. Nobody’s saying “Niagara Falls” but life has been beating the stuffing out of me for a while and I figure what I have to do is turn that around. So step by step, inch by inch, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Maybe Your First Love…

wikipedia commons photo: farm road through Champaign County

Farm road through Champaign County – Wikimedia Commons

I forgot his name almost as soon as I heard it and there is probably no one now who could tell me what it is. The only things I really remember about him are that he had dark hair and he was a teacher. The car – it was a sedan, maybe foreign, but I don’t know what kind or remember what color. He drove us on the country highway for what seemed a long time, but possibly wasn’t. My mother told me later that he was the husband of someone she knew in college and it was a strange coincidence that led him to offer a ride to tall young woman and her four year old, half-Filipino daughter. He was animated and his voice smiled as he talked. I have no idea what they talked about, but somewhere along the drive, I fell in love with him.

We were hitchhiking to New York City from Los Angeles and we met him somewhere in the middle of the country. Then he had to turn off down another road from the main highway, so he left us at the crossroads and drove away past fields of growing things.  I did not want to leave him. Ever. I cried as I was lifted from the back seat and put on my feet on the dusty road. I cried even harder as his car receded into the distance and I have never forgot the feeling of connection and then loss.

There is a quote going around right now that starts, “Maybe your first love is the one that sticks with you because it’s the only one that will ever receive all of you.” When I read that, I thought of him.

The next line of the quote goes, “After that, you learn better.”

And again, I thought of him.