Well, PEARL real first word: PEARL, PEARLIE, PEARL CUTIE PIE—me.
So, PEARL, CHEESE both real first words. And with PEARL, CHEESE, all
fall within paw!
“Pearl–you want to PLAYBALL?”
PLAYBALL not CHEESE, but go in mouth and run run run sniff good.
“Hey Pearl – let’s go OUTSIDE.”
OUTSIDE not CHEESE, but wood-stuff, grass-stuff, PEARL NOT ON MOM’s–rrrrrun run run run!
DOGFOOD not CHEESE. Yech! (They sure wouldn’t eat it!)
Sniff wait sniff wait sniff wait wait wait.
“Mom, we can’t let her starve.”
CHEESE!
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I am posting the above for dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt by Fred Rutherford re a first person narrative (though perhaps not exactly first PERSON.) The above is a very old video of my (now very old) dog Pearl and one of my beautiful daughters.
And below is a re-posting of a crude animation I did on an iPad. Dogs and cheese are one of my archetypical topics. (As always, all rights reserved!)
One week until Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) begins.
I confess that I am writing about Nanowrimo mainly to steel myself to actually do it.
National Novel Writing Month, in case you haven’t heard, is a month in which you try to write a novel (or 50,000 words) in the month of November. You and a zillion other people.
Yes, it’s arbitrary.
Why not write a novel during the month of August? Or from mid-January to mid-February? (Better yet from mid-January to mid-December?)
And why make the effort to write so public? With so much hoopla?
Many of the good (and silly) reasons to try Nanowrimo can undoubtedly be found, somewhere, on the very comprehensive website–www.nanowrimo.org.
One of my favorites is the excuse Nanowrimo provides–the justification (good for at least a month) to put your writing first. Here is how it works:
“Clean the fridge? Yes, I did notice that green sphere (too furry for cabbage), but I’ve got to get to work on my Nanowrimo.”
“You say we need new sheets, towels, glasses, winter coat, blender and they’re all on sale this Veterans’ Day? (But I’m only on Chapter 3!)”
“You expected Turkey?”
PS – sorry that the video is not exactly up to snuff! I really don’t have the hang of it yet, still don’t have camera, and don’t have a clue about editing commands, or uploading, and it takes forever. Agh.
The good news: This morning, I finished a re-write of an old Nanowrimo novel. This does not mean that I actually finished re-writing it, but that I finished another complete round of revisions.
The bad news: I haven’t done my laundry yet and the laundry room here gets really crowded Sundays.
The good news: This afternoon, I started another round of revisions on this same old Nanowrimo novel, going through it one more time. For a while, the whole thing just seemed to work.
The bad news: Then, I ran into a chapter that I seem to have over-edited my last time through, trying to break up the scene. Now I think I have to seek out some of that old deleted material.
The good news: I have a bunch of laundry to do.
As I’ve mentioned before in posts on writer’s block, my block does not arise in my initial writing, but in the editing and revising.
Part of my problem is that I sometimes want to make the manuscript to take a shape it doesn’t want. I will try a major restructuring, hoping that certain kinds of manipulation–flashbacks, changes of view–can supply the momentum and drama that the plot is lacking.
This type of re-organization may work for some writers. I’m not sure I’m not one of them.
Please understand that I am not saying here: “first thought best thought.” I strongly believe in revision and editing. (Except perhaps on this blog–sorry!)
But, for me, the editing sometimes works best on a sentence to sentence basis. Or, even better, through cuts. (One can get very enamored of sections that don’t move a story forward, especially when you’ve heavily re-written these sections on a sentence to sentence basis.)
But changes that involve fitting the manuscript into a different framework, or inserting a… device… tend to be less successful for me.
A good test of whether structural changes are useful is whether you can actually carry them out. If, as you go through the manuscript, the changes feel increasingly hard to write, they are probably not helping you.
Again, I’m not saying that re-envisioning of a manuscript is not sometimes important. Filling in blanks or making blanks can help you find your voice and your audience; it can feel both creative and compelling.
The key word is “compelling”.
Good writing does not re-write itself, but if it becomes too much of a tussle, you might consider a return to your initial, rawer, vision. This at least will have a certain energy and drive.
Here’s the point: be realistic about the true nature of your first draft. If you have made an amuse-bouche, don’t try to stretch it into a full course meal. If you keep trying to inject further substance into it, you may end up with something that can hardly be chewed (much less digested).
I woke up today feeling terribly depressed. Yes, it’s probably my chemistry (the down side of the m-word), but, as I browsed through the online New York Times, I also feltthat I had every right to blame my hopelessness on the world in general.
Everything seemed to bring up Reagan’s old (deficit-producing) supply-side economics; they seemed not just to have been swallowed by the American people but to have become an integral part of the body politic–its eaten-out heart (as in “eat your heart out’); the idea that compassion is bad while greed is good (for society as well as the greedy), almost a moral imperative.
There was the article about the refusal of politicians to support improvements in infrastructure despite the terrible need both for the improvements and the jobs the improvements would provide. Then the negativity towards healthcare (in one, a Florida politician whose company was indicted for massive medicare fraud.)
Then there were the little children bullying other little children, seemingly egged on by parents who are happy, primarily, that their kids are at the top of the popularity heap.
I don’t want to detail the stories of truly horrific brutality, stories where even the words “lack of compassion” can’t be squeezed in.
Normally, I try to spend Saturday re-writing one of my old children or teen novels. (I have a few that for years have seemed sort of finished, and yet still aren’t quite “done.”) But, suddenly, my little fictional tales seemed ridiculously trivial. Sure, they all promote compassion; but they are also, due to my lack of talent and vision, not particularly life-changing, society-changing. Not even, perhaps, life or society-nudging.
Of course, one would like to write life-changing books! But what if you just don’t/can’t.
Feeling grandiosely whiney, I looked over at my very conveniently located muse–that is, my good old dog Pearl, snoozing at the bottom of my bed.
Talk about a lack of grandiosity! Talk about forging ahead!
Pearl might very well like to be a noble dog, a celebrated dog (a Balto!) even just a big, strong dog. But she was born cute and fluffy and a little bit clownish.
Pearl might even like to be young again, with fully functioning limbs.
Nonetheless, Pearl presses doggedly through life each day, doing what she does as best as she can. And not doggedly just in the sense of persistently and dutifully–but with a joy us non-canines (and blocked writers) can only wonder at.
I sometimes think that if I truly wanted fame and fortune, I would start a blog called “Pearlmydarling,” and focus on my fifteen-year-old dog.
Why do people love dogs so much? There’s a huge variety of answers probably starting with “because they (dogs) deserve it.” But the facts are also that (i) we love that that we truly take care of; and (ii) we love that which loves us back.
Pearl is, more or less, a loving-back dog. I mean, yes, she has, despite an absolute hatred of water, plunged into roaring streams and frigid lakes to catch up to us (when we were canoeing or taking a brief dip).
She definitely wants to share our bed.
And dinner. (She doesn’t mind our germs at all.)
But she’s also very much her own dog. Meaning that she’ll plunge into frigid streams and all that, but don’t expect her to sit quietly next to you if there’s food happening in the next room.
Pearl is, if not exactly a role model, a survivor. I won’t go into the mouse poison incident, or the dognapping, or this summer’s semi-paralysis, but just say that she knows very well how to negotiate her world. As a puppy, she quickly cottoned onto the fact that she wasn’t going to power her way into treats (not top dog) and developed three alternative tools: (i) cuteness; (ii) persistent cuteness; (iii) persistence without that much cuteness. (These are, unfortunately, often the tools of creatures in dependent positions.)
I have sometimes thought that she is not super-smart–I’m not sure how well she could figure out a maze, for example, especially in the absence of steak. She, however, always begs to differ.
PS – I enclose a video of Pearl, which doesn’t do her justice. I don’t have an actual video camera, and she really is fifteen and nearly blind so I didn’t want to derange her too much. But–a first try- and I hope, sort of fun.
ManicDDaily 
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