Everything rests on the tip of my motivation.
Category: Choices
How the Killer Got in Here
Would we let them kill our younger selves?
Here’s What I Want from You
What I want you to know.
The Coat of Me
What color is my coat?
Green?
No. I do not like green.
But is it magic? Yes.
Wool? No.
Waterproof? Yes, when it needs to be.
Hurt-proof? Yes, when it can be.
(For without water or hurt, we do not grow.)
Warm? In winter or when I want it to be.
Buttons? Yes. Big FUN buttons.
What does it remind me of? My mom.
How does it make me feel? Authentic.
The best thing about it? It is my only coat! I don’t need twelve.
It has an endlessness to it. A timelessness. I wore it young and I wear it old. It is young Kathryn. Old Kathryn. All Kathryns: Daughter. Sister, Wife, Mom. Friend. ‘Nonna’ (grandmother).
My coat is like a second skin.
Aching to not sin.
Or break shins.
It is committed to begin
Living an open, shutterless life on the Island of Gunga Din.
Which is not real, but it could be. Why not?
My coat mon manteau, mon peau (my coat, my skin)
Wakes as me in the morning.
She has beautiful intentions. Her day is hers.
And then, one by one, her buttons fall off. Her pockets tear.
Wait. I was just there.
Where?
There. With dark hair. That was then. This is now.
My coat and my hair have lost their luster. Did the magic coat lose its magic? No. It lost its way. But that’s okay.
Because
It will be back.
Today.
The coats in the top image are from Pexels Free Images. Thank you!
AWE
…Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement… ~ Wayne Dyer
Things You Can’t Get Back
- Time
- Your kids as children
- Thoughtless words
- Youth (different from time in a way)
- Virginity
I was going to put innocence on the list, but I think older people can circle back to being innocent in their senility.
The other things on the list we should think about before we toss them away.
Another Way to Write a Story
Picture a stick figure in your mind’s eye. Got it?
The stick figure portrays a unique way to shape a story, poem, or song. Anything creative. Starting at the feet…create from the feet up to the head. One caveat: the left foot is the unhappy foot, the right foot is the happy one.
Let’s go.
Feet = Setup
Knees = Propelling
Hips= Escalation
Heart = Climax
Head = Resolution
[Setup.] A person of unknown origins walks along a curb in Any City. They are young. No old. Rich. No, poor. Doesn’t matter. Right foot moves. Left foot sloshes through the dirty gutter water. Step, sploosh, step, sploosh, step, sploosh.
[Propelling.] A truck rolls by. Drench sounds ensue. Our stick guy drips, shivers. Curses. The wind whips the chill down into his fleshless, skinny bones.
[Escalation:] The twigs that form our main character’s right arm break, the elbow crunches, the sticks snap as both the happy and unhappy feet lose traction and slip on oily city grime. Passersby pass by, worried that getting involved would get them overinvolved.
[Climax:] An Any-State Highway Patrol Officer sees our broken stick figure. The patrolman’s biceps bulge as he slows his off-duty cycle to a halt. “Hello,” he says. “Need help?”
Now the passersby cease passing by and stop. Phone cameras roll–as if that helps. The Good Samaritan Highway Patrol lifts our hapless hero from the gutter and whisks them to a hospital. News-at-Seven carries the video story from all angles, thanks.
[Resolution:] Everyone rejoices. The news is good that day… for a change.
Changing Names
I listened to a Duolingo French Podcast today, and it talks about a young man who discovers that his grandfather changed his surname from a Jewish name to a French name during the war. The young man tried to change his name to his grandfather’s name but was told he could not because of the French laws at the time. * Spoiler Alert*: Eventually, he was able to change his name. Times and laws change.
Photo by Djalma Paiva Armelin on Pexels.com
Our names are particularly important to us – both our first and last names. I changed my first name from Kathy to Kathryn, as I disliked Kathy growing up. There were three Kathys in my grade in elementary school, so I switched to Kathryn in college. Did I change? No. But my name did. And, my identity was now aligned with my name. I was lucky I liked Kathryn. What if I wanted a different name altogether?
I was lucky I liked Kathryn.
Some women keep their maiden names. Some give theirs up. Most men don’t change their surnames unless, like the person in the podcast, they want to achieve some goal. He wanted to honor his heritage.
Sharp left turn ahead:
I’m wondering if I want to find my bio mom and dad after all this time. I never looked for them growing up. Maybe I want to know who they were, or maybe not. It’s scary. If I did find them, would I change my name? Would I take hers or his? Either way, would it change who I am?
Wait. How can we identify with something we never chose for ourselves? We choose our dogs’ names. We choose our clothes. Our cars. Our friends. We never “choose” our names.
Maybe our names choose us. And we can accept them or not.
Checking Boxes
I took Seth Godin’s altMBA class. It had been on my list since 2017! Yay. I finally took it. Check.
I wanted a one-and-done. I wanted the magic ticket from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The golden ring on the Merry Go Round. You’d think I was old enough to know that checking a box and doing the work are two different things. I checked the box.
The checked box stares at me. I stare back. We know one of us will lose.
“I have to go on to the next box,” I say.
The box says nothing. Of course. Boxes can’t talk. But, if it could talk it would say, “You know, you’re not done yet.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you have just started.”
The box goes silent, as boxes do. I’m thrashed by a stupid box into stunned, meditative silence. I look out the window. I glance at the floor, my dog, and my computer screen. It’s right. The crazy inanimate lame little box has a brain around the checkmark that taunts me as if to say, “Do you want to uncheck this box? What about putting a question mark here?”
Oh. My. God. Maybe there’s power here. Maybe, just maybe, we have chanced on a tool to cause pause. A tiny flick of a mark on the page can change the way we think about the important stuff.
Checking boxes is fun, but is it right?
Villains
Novelists Need to Know!
What is a villain, anyway?
What do you think of when you hear the word villain? It’s the ‘bad guy.’ Okay. Yes, but it’s more than a bad guy. Villains are without remorse. They. Are. Evil. They have no moral compass. No sense of right and wrong. They are motivated by things we cannot fathom, but we know a villain when we see one. Most of the time. The Literary Terms site indicates that the villain “comes up with plots to somehow cause harm or ruin.” There is no good side to the devil villain, they say. He (or she) has no redeeming qualities. The villain’s goal is to sow chaos and despair, and a good example is The Joker in the movie “Dark Knight.” Writers of fiction might want to explore why their villains get that way. Was it a bad childhood? A broken home? Really? Why is the devil evil? They say he was cast from heaven… he was an angel at one time, but why would anyone want to leave heaven? Or rather what did he do to get kicked out of heaven?
Why would Hitler be such a jerk? Stalin? Mussolini? Any of those guys? These real-life human beings represent variations on a theme of a fictional villain, from the fanatic, to lunatic, tyrant, traitor, outcast, and everything in between. Or maybe they made it so writers could write more realistic villains. Should we thank them?
How does a villain differ from an antagonist or anti-hero?
That’s a great question. The antagonist as defined in the website above is “the character who causes a problem or conflict for the main character.” They might not be evil, but may just be someone who makes it difficult for the protagonist to reach their goal. The antagonist could be society, or a stupid little brother, or a BFF who keeps the heroine from becoming prom queen, or saving humanity.
If You Are a Writer…
… these are important questions. Villains and antagonists are at the heart of story. What is the protagonist trying to do? What is their motivation for doing it? How badly do they want it? Will the antagonist be their undoing or will the villain tear down their defenses, make it too hard, and set them on a path of despair and failure? Readers keep turning the pages because they want to see what will happen if the heroine will succumb to trials and give up or press onward. The readers will want to keep flipping pages. Then what happened? Did their hero lose? Did they fall? Did they go to the dark side? Will their friends be able to help them? Flip. Flip. Flip.
I Have a Villain and an Antagonist
In my novel, Deathlist, the Ultimate Hack, Death is my gorgeous, unhappy protagonist, the devil is the villain and God is the antagonist. Yup. God does a good job of getting in Death’s way of being able to quit her depressing job. The Deathlist is a receptacle of everyone’s death date, which would be a good thing to know, I think. You may not agree with me, but I believe it has value. In fact, if I knew I were going to die this week, I’d do even more not to die of Covid, wouldn’t you? What a crummy way to go.
Well, that’s a little ways from talking about villains, but I guess I’m done. Meanwhile, would you say Covid is a villain or an antagonist? Let me know what you think.
I’m really done for now. Over. But not out. Yet.