Addicted to Revenge

It’s Wednesday and this fall that means one thing: the latest installment of my guilty, TV-watching pleasure—ABC’s new soap-opera-y, over-the-top drama Revenge comes on.

I love this show and I’m only a little embarrassed to say so. Yes, I’ll admit there is a part of me that likes looking at attractive people cavorting around the beaches and mansions and yachts of the Hamptons. And I enjoy the ridiculous plot twists and over-acting and shocking hook-ups. My teen daughter and I pop a bowl of popcorn and curl up on the couch together, excitedly gasping during commercials and trying to pull the other members of the family in. (Typically, husband is at the computer, but he occasionally looks up when there’s a climactic shift in the music to ask what the heck is going on. Or son ambles in with his nightly bowl of cereal to make a derogatory remark about inane TV shows. My daughter and I roll our eyes. This show is GOOD, we insist.)

In case you haven’t tuned in, I will say here that it is not too late to jump on board. You can watch the earlier episodes online and catch right up with us. And now I will attempt to analyze the appeal. Because I am a writer who prides myself on having some taste in entertainment offerings. And because watching this show is a kind of assignment for me. You see, all of the necessary aspects of a story are present in Revenge, and watching it religiously can therefore improve my own story-telling abilities. (If I keep telling myself this, I might eventually believe it.)

It starts, I think, with a proper hook. The minute we meet the main character Emily Thorne (spoiler alert—this is not her real name) we are introduced to her quest. Emily’s father was framed in a spectacular way by his wealthy and powerful friends for a terrible crime he did not commit. And now Emily is out to seek revenge on every last one of them. She’s got a photo of the smiling, smug group and each episode she takes one down in a satisfying way and marks an X across his face.

So that’s fun.

The first episode began at the end, in a kind of flash-forward. A man is (possibly) shot on the beach during a Labor Day/engagement party. It’s Emily’s fiancé and we watch her react to the news and then we rewind back to the beginning of the summer when Emily is just moving into the Hamptons and setting her diabolical revenge plan into motion. I love this framework for a story because it gives the sense that the writers know where the plot is going. I’ve gotten sucked into complicated programs before (ahem, Lost) and the build up of sub plots and introductions of characters, etc., works up to a certain point in grabbing the audience’s attention. But eventually there has to be a pay off equal to or greater than the building up section. It’s nice if the writers have some idea how they’re going to tie everything together. Otherwise you have the sneaking suspicion they’re making it up as they go. Not a great tactic, by the way, for any kind of story creation.

No story, no matter how cleverly plotted, can last long without interesting characters. True, the ones in Revenge are exaggerations (I hope) of reality, but these people are much more complex than you realize at first. Take “Emily.” We are rooting for her to destroy her father’s enemies, but there are many times when she seems to go too far. And we don’t know her true feelings about anyone, including the clueless boyfriend/fiancé Daniel. The main antagonist in this drama is Daniel’s mother, Victoria Grayson. You really really want to hate this woman, but somehow in every episode there’s a little glimmer of humanity glinting behind her smirky smile. It’s like that with all the characters. One week we applaud Emily’s destruction of former supermodel, Lydia. But a few weeks later that poor woman is thrown out of a window and somehow survives. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her when Victoria keeps her bedridden and drugged in a back bedroom.

The writers could’ve rested on their laurels with the cool premise and complicated characters, but each week they up the ante, introducing more potential enemies for Emily and flashing intriguing pieces of the past at us. Victoria was having an affair with Emily’s father. Da da dum! And Emily’s reform school roommate, the one she switched identities with, is back, after murdering the Grayson’s evil security guard. Da da dum! And Daniel’s best buddy from Harvard is really a sociopathic lying hustler. Da da dum!!!

Each show is more brilliant and funny and ridiculous than the last. And I for one will be eagerly watching it all unfold tonight. (Pen in hand. To further conduct my story-building research. Not.)

Not Just Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons

One of the best things I ever got out of attending a writing workshop was a new friend. It was July 2008 at the amazingly inspirational and life-changing Children’s Writing Conference at Chautauqua and I was pretty much at a crossroads in my writing life. Did I want to keep writing for children? was one of the many questions I had going into it. That conference is on the expensive side and it was hard to justify spending money like that on myself, specifically on a hobby that didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the career sense.

I clicked with a lot of people that week, some just dipping a toe into the writing pool and others already treading water on the deep end. I was searching for a person somewhere in the middle, maybe one who was ready to pull off the floaties and dunk her head under. I found her waiting in line at a porta-potty. Donna was an aspiring picture book writer, and she had a couple of novels under her belt too and they sounded interesting to me. We had a few things in common. Kids sort of the same age. (But she has four!) We’d both been English teachers, and we were spending our child-raising years as uber-PTA volunteers. We nervously exchanged manuscripts that day.

I say nervously because there is always this element of fear when you first look at someone’s writing (and know she is evaluating yours too). The biggest worry is that you won’t like it and how will you tell her without hurting her feelings? Ideally, you’d both be at a similar level and looking for the same kind feedback. Up to this point I'd never found someone like that, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

But, whew. What Donna wrote was pretty darned good and apparently she thought my stuff was worthwhile too. After the conference we started emailing each other and this correspondence quickly turned into a twice daily check-in. Every morning we email each other our goals for the day and every afternoon we write what we call our "accountability." At the end of the year I scrolled through all those emails and found that they were a record of Donna's and my writing journey and our friendship. There are our goals, of course, but also snippets of daily life, books we’ve read and errands we’ve run. Stuff we make for dinner. Funny and/or annoying things are kids and hubbies do.

Once Donna wrote that a friend of hers wondered what she did all day at home. The implication was that Donna must be sitting around eating bon-bons. She certainly wasn’t out working. Or cleaning her house. That accusation became a joke to us. Yes, we were sitting around eating bon-bons all day. That’s what writers do. For a Christmas present that year I compiled all of our emails and had them printed and bound on one of those self-published book sites. I titled the book Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons and even used a picture of bon-bons for the cover art.

Now it’s an annual tradition, that correspondence book. I’m editing Book Three this week and it’s inspiring to see how far Donna and I have come since we met. I can’t count how many times we’ve talked each other out of quitting. And when one of us has any kind of success, the other feels it just as much, if not more so. Writing can be such a lonely activity. Also frustrating and exciting and heartbreaking and amazing. It’s a million times better when you have another person to share the journey with. All I can say is thank goodness Donna and I had the same inclination to head for the porta-potty when we did.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part (or not)

I wasn’t going to write about this, the potential book deal, PBD for short, that’s been pulsing in the back of my mind for weeks now, flaring up here and there during quiet moments or simmering on the back burner when I’ve been distracted by out-of-town visitors. But there are no distractions now. The visitors have departed. The carcass of leftover turkey has been picked clean. Yesterday I threw out the remaining plop of congealed stuffing because no one in my family could bear to look at it anymore. Today hubby is at work, and children are at school, and I am back in my office/guest room and there is nothing much to do but THINK about the PBD while at the same time trying NOT to THINK about it.

I wasn’t going to write about this because I have the niggling, superstitious feeling that writing about a possible dream-come-true may jinx, curse, doom (insert you negative verb here) the whole thing and I will be left looking like a fool/hopeless dreamer/naïve beginner. It seems silly to talk about something that hasn’t happened and possibly won’t happen. Don’t count your chickens, etc. So I was going to wait and not discuss it and then if/when IT happened, I could just burst out with the good news and cry happy tears on my keyboard and say thankyouverymuch to my supporters, yadda yadda ya.

But I started this blog because I wanted to create a picture of what life is like for an unpublished, persevering writer. I envisioned a person like the Me of fifteen years ago reading it, a person just starting on the journey and not knowing what she is getting into. And I think that person should know what it feels like at this point, when there is a PBD glimmering just ahead.

It feels like you're a nervous, pessimistic wreck.

I’ve heard stories from people, writers who came soooo close and then watched their chances slip away. I can imagine what this feels like. I was putzing around the grocery store the other day and I had a vivid flash of myself getting the call, but it wasn’t the one where your agent tells you there’s an offer on your book, it was the call where she says they changed their minds. Actually, this would probably happen in an email now that I think about it. Which is why I dread opening mine lately. In the supermarket I let the whole vision unfold. My few minutes of frustrated tears. My day or two shuffling around the house wearily wondering if I should just quit for good. The well-meaning reactions of family and friends. (They’re comforting yet also sort of like, yeah, that sucks, but did you really think this was going to happen to you?) And then I saw myself plunked out in my office opening up a new file and starting another book. Because that’s what I do in the face of rejection. I write. This whole vision flashed at me in the grocery store aisles and I went through the entire gamut of emotions and came to the check-out feeling completely fine. It hit me that I know exactly how I’d react because rejection and failure have happened to me before. Been there. Done that. I keep writing anyway.

But success. Now that is something I have no real experience with.

Seemingly pointless digression: Last year my son got cut from the lacrosse team at his school. It was a very discouraging experience for him, to put it mildly. He’d worked hard, attended grueling practices, done all of the things the coach suggested to get better. The way they tell the kids if they made the team or not is they have all of them come to the gym and then the coaches call each kid in one by one to have a little talk. It seems excruciating to me, that wait out there in the gym, the guys all looking at each other and wondering who’s in and who’s not. But my son told me the moment the coach called his name wasn’t too bad. It was the moment when he still had a chance to be on the team, so there was this feeling of expectation and possibility and hope and he could see himself in the uniform and running out onto the field in front of the cheering fans.

He got cut. But that moment right before he found out was the closest he was going to be to being on the team so he let his dream in and he basked in it.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with the book deal, but at this moment I think I’ll bask in its potential glory. And I promise from now on I’ll share every gory and/or delicious detail with you.

When a "Problem Book" Transcends Its Problem

I hate to admit this but I kept putting off reading my advance review copy Emily M. Danforth’s debut novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. I’d read the back cover, so I knew what it was about, something to do with a girl coming to terms with being a lesbian. Several months ago there was a big discussion in the YA publishing industry about this very topic. I won’t go into all the details here, but the gist came down to this question: how much of a market is there for books featuring gay characters? The issue exploded when an agent (there is dispute about whether this actually happened or not) suggested to a writer that a manuscript would be more palatable to readers if she changed a gay character into a straight one.

From a business/marketing perspective, I suppose that’s a safer choice. On the other hand, controversy can be good for sales too. There are some books that are called problem novels. I imagine them being cooked up in a marketing department. Someone throws out a hot controversial topic. In the past it might have been abortion or anorexia or incest. More recently it might be meth abuse or cutting. The books that are created this way are rarely good. The issue is the whole point and often it’s handled in a lurid, sensationalistic way. Sometimes these books sell very well but they quickly disappear from the shelves.

So this is what I was afraid of with Cameron Post. That it would be one of those books with a tag line like, “an important book on an important topic, blah blah.” Then I was hesitant when I read the first page and realized that it had that nostalgic-adult-looking-back-on-defining-teen-moments tone to it. You know what I mean—a book that’s not a YA book at all but more of a memoir. But I got past that because the voice of Cameron was so real and honest and funny.

When we meet her, she and her best friend Irene are hanging out like they always do in the summer in Miles City, Montana. Swimming at the lake, watching reruns of Murder She Wrote with Cam’s grandmother, daring each other to do crazy stunts like swipe a pack of gum from the minute market. Later they share a kiss in Irene’s barn, and it surprises them both. But what really turns Cam’s world upside down is the death of her parents. When her ultra conservative Aunt Ruth moves in to take care of her, you can guess that life is going to get pretty stifling for Cam.

Here’s another confession: I thought the book was going to disturb me. And it did. But not because of the occasional girl kissing a girl. What was disturbing was worrying about Cam. Her crushing guilt that her actions were somehow responsible for her parents’ death. Her heart being broken. Her struggles to conform. Her earnest attempts to change herself.

This book isn’t about homosexuality.

It’s about growing up. About fitting in (or not fitting in). About the painful and horrifying realization that sometimes the people in charge truly don’t know what’s best for you. I hope that kids who struggle with this “issue” will find this book. And I hope that others will read it for the reason that they would read any book.

Because it’s really really good.

Joy of Cooking Gets All Snarky about My Turkey

Maybe it’s strange but I love reading cookbooks. Flip through one and you get so much more than a collection of recipes. Old cookbooks are glimpses into the past. I’ve got a 1960’s book that tells me how to talk to my neighborhood butcher. It also contains cool, quirky photos of dishes that would look at home on the set of Mad Men. My favorite is a “crown roast” constructed out of hot dogs.

Many cookbooks have a voice. I’m thinking of course of Julia’s Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I can’t make her potato and leek soup without hearing her distinctive accent in my ear. Julia seems so imposing and authoritative. When I do her beef bourguignon I close the book when I come to the part where I’m going to skip steps. I just don’t want her to know that I can’t be bothered sautéing mushroom slices in small batches or that I’m too lazy to towel off my beef chunks.

The voice in my Victory Garden Cookbook, which I’m assuming belongs to the author, Marian Morash, is more forgiving.

Marian, going by her picture on the cover, is so happy and perky surrounded by massive heads of lettuce in her farmhouse kitchen. She’s always referring to her husband Russ, who I imagine is out in the garden doing the sweaty stuff while Marian follows behind with her big basket collecting the bounty. Marian makes beets sound so good I decided to grow them even though no one in my family including me likes beets at all. FYI: They do have pretty purplish leaves you can use in salad.

One of the funniest cookbooks (yes, funniest) is Being Dead is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays.

Sandwiched around super-rich, cholesterol clogging casserole recipes are tidbits about small town Southern life. And death. My favorite story is about a Southern girl who left home and returns after many years for a funeral. She rolls her eyes at the table laden with cream of chicken soup soaked concoctions and says something snarky like, “who on earth brought that canned pea casserole?” To which her mother replies, “I did.” The girl, without missing a beat, grabs the ladle, plops a big helping on her plate and says, “And Mama, don’t you ever stop.”

Snark is not something you often find in a cookbook. So when you do come across it, it’s always fun. Take Joy of Cooking by Irma. S. Rombauer. Many Thanksgivings ago I was using the book as a reference and I came across this little passage:

Today “roasting” (turkey) in aluminum foil has become popular because no basting is needed. So, if you decide, despite our Cassandra warnings about this method, that you’d rather clean the attic, improve your serve, or write Chapter IX of the Great American Novel than to baby-sit a bird, go ahead with the foil and take the consequences—which will be steamed rather than roasted.

You can almost hear Irma muttering the word, Idiot, under her breath.

A Bird, the Brain, and the Meaning of Life

I read two good books over the weekend that are still spinning around in my mind. Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley and an advanced review copy of Fracture by Megan Miranda (pub date is Jan., 2012).

Seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter in Where Things Come Back could be the millennial generation’s Holden Caulfield. He tries to be upbeat about his life in rural Arkansas, but it’s tough. At the beginning of the summer his cousin dies of a drug overdose. His younger brother Gabriel, a sensitive, brilliant oddball, is grief-stricken. But life goes on, Cullen wryly observes. He’d like to be a writer someday, but all he’s been able to muster so far are potential book titles. When a weird guy from out-of-state shows up proclaiming that he’s seen an extinct woodpecker in town, Cullen has tons of comic material to work with. The “Lazarus” bird, as it’s called, gives the dying town hope. Also new marketing possibilities. Cullen’s mom, for example, the local hairdresser, creates a Lazarus bird hairstyle that becomes all the rage for the middle school boys set.

Then Cullen’s brother Gabriel disappears and nothing in Cullen’s life makes sense anymore.

Spliced around this story of a mysterious bird and a missing boy, is another one, the tale of a floundering teenage missionary attempting to please his impossible-to-please father, and his friend, a boy obsessed with the Book of Enoch. If you don’t know this book, it details the fall of angels in the bible and the angel Gabriel’s battle against them.

These two seemingly unconnected narratives collide in a surprising way and allow the author to explore the timeless question: how do we find meaning in life?

The novel Fracture tackles the question too. Be warned: this book is a page-turner, so clear out your schedule for a few hours before starting. In the first few pages Delaney Maxwell falls through the ice of a pond near her house and “dies.” When she wakes up from a coma, to the surprise of everyone, she seems completely fine. No long-lasting physical injuries except for a few broken ribs due to CPR. No apparent brain damage.

Except Delaney knows there’s something wrong with her. In the hospital she is sure that she sees a shadowy figure lurking around her room. And there’s a strange tugging sensation in her head whenever she’s around someone who’s about to die. She’s got other problems too. Her parents are plying her with medication fearing she’s psychotic. The boy next door, the one who pulled her out of the icy pond, is alternately concerned and distant. And there’s another boy who shows up out of the blue, someone who’s also been in a coma and shares Delaney’s “talent” for sensing impending death.

But is he helping Delaney or is he out to hurt her?

What was interesting to me about this novel was that the author took it beyond the level of straightforward thriller, asking readers: if you knew a person was about to die, what would you do? And how do you live your life when it is surrounded by death?

Two great books by two new voices in YA literature. Be sure to check them out.

Musings on Cleanliness, Procrastination, and Italian Grandmothers

Today I need to clean my house. Relatives are coming in from out of town and eighteen people will be sitting down to dinner next week on Thanksgiving. So there is a lot to do and I must get right on it.

Or, I could delay all that and write about cleaning my house. I read this article once that Italian women are the best cleaners in the world. I think it was sponsored by the company that makes Swiffers or whatever they’re called. You know those mops with a cleaning cloth latched on for quick-dusting floors?

Apparently, Italian women weren’t buying that product at the same rate that other women were. The Swiffer people discovered that Italian women really get into cleaning, spending way more hours a week than anyone else. They have a different, cleaner, definition of clean. So the company began to market the Swiffer as a mop that would polish your already clean floors and their sales went up in Italy.

I don’t know if it’s true that Italian women are so much cleaner. I’m half-Italian, but that doesn’t seem to mean much, which you would see if you visited my house. My grandmother was extremely clean. The saying went that you could “eat off her floors.” And this was before Swiffer was around. 

I think my grandmother would’ve loved Swiffer (but only for post-cleaning, buffing purposes, of course). Once, I went to visit her and talk came around to her favorite hobby. She went through her weekly cleaning schedule with me. One day a week, for example, she emptied her kitchen cabinets and dusted them. Another day she washed out her washing machine. That was interesting to me.

I confess that I have never cleaned my washing machine. I guess I trust that it happens whenever I wash a load of clothes.

But I was feeling the pressure of my ethnicity several years ago when my Italian aunt came to visit. I went on a cleaning rampage through my house dusting corners that had never been dusted and scouring nooks that had never been scoured. It was then that I noticed that the mini blinds in all of the windows were filthy. (Possibly because I had never cleaned them.) This wasn’t the kind of dust you could simply Swiffer off.

I got online for mini-blind cleaning tips and the very first website I came to recommended throwing out your dirty mini blinds and buying new ones. Well, the half-Italian in me had a hearty laugh about that.

The next site was more helpful. Soak them outside in a baby pool was the advice. It happened to be like 100 degrees when I did this. I had sixteen mini blinds soaking and then drying out on my driveway. It took me all afternoon. It was a major sweaty production, to put it mildly, but I was committed. When they were all dry, I went to hang them and found that several of the mini blinds had broken during the process.

Long story short, my husband bought replacements that didn’t match the color exactly of the others, and in the end we bought ALL new ones.

They were only a few bucks apiece.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is. But I suspect my writing-a-blog-to-delay-cleaning tactic is drawing to a close. So with that I will sign off and begin the search for my dust cloth.