First Overnight Guest!

Lynne just called from FAT – Fresno Air Terminal on her way to SFO then direct to San Antonio. We’ll pick her up at 6:35 and go to River Walk in spite of it being another very hot day. If it’s too hot, we’ll find a cool place inside where we can have a nice cold beer and crisp salad.  She’ll be here till Thursday. We have a whole list of things to do from art to writing.

My toe is healing.  There is a yin/yang sort of scab, half oxblood, half tan, where my toenail should be. I wonder what it will be like when it falls off? I know many people say they’ve lost toenails and it’s no big deal, but I also have stitches, so don’t know how this will affect the new nail.

In 1987, a summer day on Venice beach, I was with John de Persio. He was pet sitting for a very sweet Doberman.  When I went home, I reached for my car door but must have been looking somewhere else. My hand hit the handle in such a way that a fingernail on my left hand split right down the middle.  To this day it is split. This is because the nail bed suffered a trauma. (The doctor who stitched my toe explained this to me.)

I find it fascinating how the body heals. Sometimes there is no evidence of injury or illness. Other times we scar.  I suppose the same is true emotionally.   Which brings me to my writing.

I’m working on my memoir and having great days, okay days and some distressing days.  I took the first five pages of chapter The Bay Theater to writing class Tuesday. Everyone there (6 others) liked it. It brought back memories, etc. However, the teacher circled all the times I used  “was”.  She said I might want to consider not using the passive voice so much.

I was so bummed. (There I go again with the passive voice!) I had to call Katherine. She said there is always a lot of editing to be done, to keep writing. This is what the teacher said, too. But I can’t stand the idea of writing two or three-hundred pages then going back to the beginning for edits.

So I waited another day, then went back to the manuscript. Lo and behold there were many instances where I WAS able to change the wording to make the language more active.  Not in every case, of course. I think of the opening of  A Tale of Two Cities - “It was the best of times, it was the worse of times.”   Or, “It was a dark and stormy night.”  Passive voice can set a scene.

The other thing we went over in class was structure. Supposedly 25% in to your story the protagonist should have a “shift”.  Then the action continues to a peak, then a set back, followed by the climax and the denouement.

I took a piece of lined paper and oriented it horizontally. I drew the plot line, moving from left to right.  Then I turned the page back to vertical and wrote the chapters down the left side of the page, with how many pages I’ve written, and how many more there are to write.

I thought I had written so much, but I’ve only done 85 pages – 40 of which were taken from the three pieces I recorded for Valley Writers Read.  This means I’ve only written about 45 new pages.  Worse, it means I have between 150-200 pages still to go. Yikes!

So perhaps this is a good time to have a guest. I’ve organized all my papers, folders, notebooks, files and put them away.  When I look at them in a week, I hope fresh eyes will make me see that the task isn’t as daunting as I had thought.

In the meantime, John bought netting for the garden. Mockingbirds have been absconding with my cherry tomatoes!  He is out in the garage assembling a portable air conditioner. The garage was 100 degrees yesterday. Poor Jane Kitty  - although she doesn’t complain, it can’t be good for her. John says he can vent the AC through the dryer vent, which is in the laundry room and has Audrey’s’ litter box.  If the door to the garage is open and the laundry room door to the kitchen is closed, it means Audrey can’t get into her box. So it'll have to be back in the house.

I think Jane will just have to stay out when we go fetch Lynne. She can seek shade under a bush. Better than sweltering in the no-window garage. (You also can’t open the garage door just a little, it’s all or nothing.)