This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
The Object

It was Natalie’s third Christmas — that is, she was two years old — when she was given her first Barbie doll.

Barbie was a gift from a member of the extended family with whom we would not meet until well after Christmas was over; the package had been passed along to us, and we let Natalie open it at home on Christmas morning. When she tore a corner of the paper open and revealed the bright bubblegum-pink box, I knew what it must be even before I could see the logo. Immediately I felt my heart sink.

The thing is, Barbie is a complicated issue for parents of little girls. She is a prominent symbol of the ongoing struggle over cultural indoctrination as relates to body image issues and a woman’s place in society. Barbie, with her completely unrealistic figure and her propensity for dressing up as a princess or a shopaholic or a supermodel, with her feet incapable of wearing anything but high heels, allegedly sends a very strong and specific message to children at a very early age about gender roles and the ideal of femininity. We had not yet discussed what we thought of this and whether we wanted Natalie exposed to that or not. The very appearance of a Barbie doll in our house threw me into a whirlwind of confusion and second-guessing about how I should parent my daughter. I wasn’t ready for this decision! I was supposed to be worrying about what to feed her and when she should be potty trained, not what message her toys were sending her!

But we wound up letting her play with it, and gradually I began to realize a couple of things.

One is that efforts to shield Natalie from Barbie — or any other such things — are utterly futile. Guess what? She doesn’t exist in a vacuum! She goes to daycare, and amazingly enough, daycare has a sizable collection of… yeah, Barbies. Even if she didn’t have that available, she interacts with other kids. She comes shopping with us, and while that doesn’t entail a lot of Barbie exposure specifically, it does mean she sees things like the Victoria’s Secret window displays at the mall. She sees and hears lots of things, and soaks them all up in the way that only a preschooler can. Here’s the cold, hard truth: We cannot wrap her in bubble wrap and insulate her from every potentially negative influence in the world around her. And even if we could, I’m not convinced that would be a good idea. How do you build up an immunity to something? How do you learn to deal with a situation? Not by avoiding it.

The other is that however pervasive Barbie or any other controversial influence is in my daughter’s life, there is another side to this story. And that’s… well, us. She plays with Barbie for a while, puts her away, and comes back days or weeks later. I’m here all the time, telling her that she’s my beautiful girl, encouraging her to develop healthy habits without emphasizing weight or shape, praising her progress in learning and her intelligence. She has no shortage of good role models in her life, both male and female. She soaks these things up, too; she may appear inattentive at times, but will pop up with an unexpected correction or bit of information at the strangest times. Am I to believe that a doll, however entrenched in popular culture, is going to undermine everything she has been taught by the real, living people who are closest to her and to whom she is most attached?

Maybe. It’s worth keeping an eye on. But the solution would seem to be counterinformation rather than total isolation. And that’s why I didn’t flinch, or wince, or hesitate much when the question of her recieving another Barbie was floated this past Christmas season. It will be fine. She will be fine. We will undoubtedly completely screw her up in some way (I think it’s in the job description), but this won’t be it.

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
Borrowed Words.
The nearest thing with words on is a notepad covered in ultimately useless notes from a few months back on a work side project. The word, chosen by randomly setting my finger down on the page, is…
…”filtering”. This connection may be a little tenuous; bear with me, please.

So we’ve been doing this Not So Novel thing for a little more than two months now. How’s it going?

There is a part of me that looks back and cringes. I have posted things that were perhaps ill-advised, experiments that did not turn out to my satisfaction, like the Twitter-fiction and the haiku catch-up. I have, by contrast, not posted things because I get to the end of writing them and realize that they’re horrible or that they’re just retreads of what I’ve already done. There’s a whole draft I could have posted in response to The Object, but I wrote it about the same time as the Wet and realized as I was typing up the latter that I was using a lot of the same language and themes and had managed to get repetitive despite somewhat different subject matter. “Wet” turned out the better of the two, so it won. I have also wished several times that I could go back and un-suggest some of the prompts that originated with me. Things like Painting really seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I actually had to write about them… Not so much.

On the other hand, I’ve also produced some stuff I rather like. Some of it I was pretty happy with right off, and proud to post — Fly, for example, or Sounds Like Rain. Some of it I had to take some time to warm up to, most notably The Trailer of the Movie of the Book I’m Not Writing Just Now. (I also feel like that one actually advanced my Nia project a step or two, if nothing else because it forced me to name and describe Caitlyn, which helps bring her into focus in my mind.)

So there’s been good and there’s been bad. Does the bad mean that I need to develop better filters? Well… Yes and no.

The “yes” portion of the answer relates to the prompts, mostly. I think in the beginning I had a tendency to try to come up with prompts that became exercises, ways to stretch our writing skills and refine our techniques. That’s not a bad thing, but what I lost sight of was the point of all this: To write more. Exercises and stretching and refinement are wonderful things, yes, but when you’re just trying to write at all, I think they can actually get in the way. You start to feel like you have to improve, and you maybe forget that writing something is an improvement over writing nothing. The act of writing, in and of itself, is an exercise. How do you get better at walking, or speaking, or drawing, or cooking? Do you have to have an organized approach to methodically building up specific subsets of skills? No. You just do it. And then you do it some more. As you do it, you learn what works and what doesn’t. You find your balance, you refine your technique, you develop your palate. Which is not to say that an organized agenda isn’t useful, either, but it’s not necessary. And it isn’t the point of the prompts; the point of the prompts is just to get our brains working on writing at all.

Which leads nicely into the “no” portion of the answer. Although I don’t care for some of the work I’ve posted, I am also not sorry that I posted it. If anything, I need to stop filtering so much out just because I think it sucks. After all, the point of this is practice. Practice is going to involve some unsightly results. They are still results, and still valuable for that. And if they suck that badly, hey, feedback will help me figure out how to improve my writing, won’t it? And I can’t get feedback on things I don’t post.

I think my filters are just fine. The point is not to produce perfect writing; the point is to write at all. And even if I am several prompts behind, and even if not all of the results have been satisfactory, and even if some of my efforts in helping other people to write as well have been perhaps a little misdirected… I am writing. And that is a good thing.

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
Of Interest

It all started with a brownie pan. I saw it as I was putting the dishes away and it started one of those crazy chains of ideas that you wind up sitting down and tracing backward because you can’t quite remember how you got from Point A to Point F. In this case, it went like so:

1. I have Monday off; I could bake brownies.
2. Last time there were brownies, they had mint chips on top. I wonder if there are any mint chips left.
3. Oh, but I’ve really been more about chocolate and cherry lately. I wonder if I could get cherry chips?
4. OOOOH! Double Chocolate Chip cookies! But with cherry chips!
5. Er. Wait a sec. Can I even get cherry chips around here?
6. Probably not. Dammit. So much for the baking thing.
7. Wait! I have cherry extract! I could just do regular chocolate chip cookies, but replace the vanilla with cherry! And maybe some sort of cherries in the dough too?…

Discussion on Facebook and the actual shopping trip for supplies refined the idea, and it became a reality. My ingredients of choice were Ghirardelli Twilight Delight 72% Cacao squares, chopped up into little chunks, and Sun Maid dried tart cherries. I used the standard Nestlé Tollhouse recipe, but substituted cherry extract for vanilla, the Ghirardelli for chocolate chips, and the dried cherries for the optional nuts the recipe calls for. I also cut the recipe in half since I knew I would likely be the only one eating them and I don’t really need four or five dozen cookies, no matter how yummy they are.

Results?

Unexpected. The chopped chocolate was much more melty than chips generally are, which was cool in that the cookies came out with a marbleized look, but also made them really messy and difficult to remove from the pan. I think next time I’d either go back to chips or cut the amount of chocolate in half. I suspect the problem is that when you measure 1 cup of chopped up chocolate, there’s less space between pieces than there would be in 1 cup of chips; I should maybe have gone by weight. I’d also try to make them more obviously “cherry” — either add some red food coloring or perhaps use something like candied cherries or maraschino cherries that would add a pop of red.

But how do they taste?

Oh, dude. Delicious. You should totally try these.

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt, although for once I might have written it anyway:
Happy New Year

Last Christmas, I got a pocket-sized weekly planner in my stocking, and decided the following:

I need more positive thoughts in my life. I focus too much on the negative, not enough on the positive. Every day has a little magic in it, no matter how bad. So this little day-planner is going to be my good year. One good thing every day, written by hand so I have to think about it. Because life is good.

You can refresh your memory here, if you like, in the blog I wrote on the subject. Also possibly here, in a very slightly later update.

It wasn’t easy. It turns out that although there must be something good in every day, sometimes the day is so normal and so average that it’s difficult to look back at it and say, “Yes, this made me smile today.” Sometimes the good things don’t stand out very well, and you have to really hunt for them.

And all the best intentions can fall by the wayside occasionally, under the wrong circumstances. This text is scrawled over the days from October 12 to October 30:

Here we begin a series of days during which I was laid off and did not remember to record a good thing every day. Some days I’m not sure there was anything to record.

It was long

and difficult

and stressful

and while not every day was bad, sometimes it was hard for me to appreciate that.

Breaking the routine of the work day didn’t help. I forgot to write anything even on days when there were lots of good things just because I was out of my normal routine.

But…

The good thing for October 31 is then, “BACK TO WORK!” After that, every day is filled in. Before that stretch, every day is filled in. That two and a half weeks when it seemed I could barely manage to do anything was the only time I dropped the ball. Otherwise, no matter how dull or dreary or oppressive the day was, I found some good thing to record. I’m kind of proud of that, especially given the whole depression thing — which made this both more difficult and more important.

I thought it would be a lark to tally up what categories my good things fell into. I won’t bore you with the whole list, but there were a couple of interesting trends.

What hit me full-force in the face right away was the discovery of which category held the most entries. If asked what my biggest stressor was this year, my answer would have been quick and decisive: Work. I’ve swung back and forth between heavy overtime and no work at all, and even as I type this the negotiations over my contract are still ongoing. Often we’ll get down to the last day of the latest extension before we have word that another couple of weeks have been approved. (Though I have a little better assurance than I did that this will probably not mean an interruption in my paycheck, at least.) We’re massively behind schedule and under a lot of pressure. And yet I noted the most positive things about work, too, racking up half again as many mentions as the next category down. A full 20%+ of my days in 2011 included a mention of something good happening at work, or related to work. One day in five. An average of not quite one and a half days each week. It’s a lot of days.

I’ll pause here and add a caveat: This is partly because I split up family-related stuff into more specific divisions. If I combine those, even allowing for some overlap between them, it equals or outranks work.

Something else I noticed was that the categories didn’t necessarily line up with my actual personal priorities. For example: The food, drink, and cooking category topped Natalie by ten entries, but of course I don’t care more about cupcakes than I do about my child!

Both of those patterns are surprising and a bit counterintuitive at first glance, but I think that with a little bit of digging and untangling they can be understood.

There are a couple of explanations for the predominance of work-related items. The easy one is that it’s just kind of taken over my brain right now, and thus occupies a higher proportion of all my thoughts — both positive and negative — than it otherwise would. There’s more to it than that, though. The darkest shadows also create the most contrast with the light, which in turn make the light more prominent. The harder any given area of my life is, the more the not-as-difficult things in that area stand out, and the brighter they seem.

Which doesn’t explain the October lapse, because by that theory I should have found it the easiest of all to cover. It was the most difficult ordeal I went through all year. The problem is, seeing those good things and noting them for future reference requires being awake. And I wasn’t. Literally. I spent more of that time on the couch asleep than I care to admit to. When I wasn’t actually asleep, I found it difficult to wake up and notice the light in my surroundings figuratively either. I was moving through life in a dim fog that obscured my metaphorical vision, and it was difficult to see or remember the bright points through it.

The mismatch between priorities and good things is sort of a variation on the theme. What I hadn’t thought about going into this is that “priority” and “makes me happy all the time” are not necessarily equivalent. The things that are important to me are things I am driven to work for, to fight for, to learn about, to explore. That isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. The outcome is ultimately something I feel is worthwhile, obviously, and some of my good notes did indeed involve the resolution of or improvement upon issues related to really important concerns like family and parenting. That doesn’t mean that everything always goes just swimmingly; it means that getting the inevitable problems worked out is that much more satisfying.

The flipside of that is, of course, what happens when there are no big problems to be worked out for long stretches, when life does actually run smoothly. I am almost ashamed to say that marriage does not appear in my Year of Good Things very much. Does that mean the sparkle has gone out of my relationship with Tim, though? Absolutely freaking not. I feel like we had a good year overall. We might often be a bit low-key and very private about it, but I believe that we’re stronger than ever. It is not necessary to have lots and lots of specific things I can point to and say, “On this day, my husband really made me happy by doing this particular thing.” There is a sort of quiet, comfortable good energy that permeates our lives together most of the time, excepting the occasional minor spats or fleeting tension that any two people living in such intimacy will encounter. While that might not produce a lot of noteworthy occasions for specifically extolling each other’s virtues, it means more to me than I could possibly express.

There is also this: One day that simply reads, “I feel loved,” is worth more than an entire year’s worth of really good TV and new jeans. That’s doubly true, if not even moreso, when the day in question was one on which I felt utterly unlovable and unworthy of love. I don’t remember what actions or words from which specific people occasioned that particular entry, but I remember the pure wonder, the relief, the humility, the sense of gratitude toward those closest to me that I felt as I wrote it. Not all Good Things Of The Day are created equal. A purely quantitative tally will never tell the whole story.

It’s been an interesting exercise, all in all. I don’t know that it was as valuable each and every individual day as it was looking back at the data in aggregate. I don’t think I’m interested in continuing it for another year; I think it’s served its purpose and is starting to become a chore. I’m glad I did it, though. It’s good to have this record, and to see this and understand it.

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
Whyfore?

April raised one dripping arm. Beads of water rolled from wrist to elbow, leaving long irregular trails. From there, they plummeted to the linoleum, where the force of impact broke them apart into a thousand tiny pieces.

Why… am I wet?

She stood staring at it, unable to answer any of the questions she was asking herself. Why? Who? What? How?

Slowly her awareness began to creep outward. Linoleum. Yes. Cool beneath her bare feet, as drenched as she was, and dangerously slick. There was a sink, which shone in the sunlight. It was pristine, untouched by the deluge. So was the countertop. The light danced across its polished surface, catching flecks of shimmering stardust in the granite.

There was a whisper of a giggle behind her. She spun and nearly toppled under her own momentum. The kitchen behind her was empty. She squinted against the blazing glare reflecting off the table, but could not see past it. That didn’t matter. She knew what was behind the dazzle: nothing. No one.

Don’t be ridiculous, she thought to herself. Of course someone’s there. I just heard –

– didn’t I? –

She stepped cautiously forward. Her mind’s eye, repeating too many thrillers seen too late at night, showed her a slight form in white darting across the doorway. Her physical eyes, having none of it, showed her only the empty hall. Even when she mustered the courage to inch out of the room, the results were no different.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Sunbeams danced around the kitchen. It was beautiful, perfect except for the puddle she had been standing in and the two trails of watery footprints she had left.

Two.

She looked again at the floor. There was another tiny pond forming around her feet. Her trail led to it…

…and away again.

She followed it to the stairs and was startled to find smears of moisture on the soft carpet there. She traced a path upward, so intent upon her hunt that she reached the top without realizing it and nearly fell. She wobbled ungracefully for a moment, arms flailing, before she regained her balance.

It was only that interruption which broke her concentration enough to realize that she was hearing water as well as seeing it. The sound was so gentle, so unobtrusive, so familiar, that her occupied mind had not even registered it.

Sound and track both led to the same place: the tiny bathroom squeezed in beside her bedroom. The door stood ajar. She edged in, no longer so much frightened as she was simply bewildered.

The bathroom was as uninhabited as the rest of the house had been. The shower poured an icy rain down on mint-green porcelain and nothing else. She reached in and gave the knob a quick twist, stopping the flow, and then stood there numbly for some time.

She blinked. Her eyes, absurdly, felt dried out.

How long have I been up?

The folds of her nightgown clung to her legs as she shuffled back to the linen closet. She peeled it off and tossed it in the direction of the bathtub. It made a squelching sound as it landed; she didn’t look to see where.

By the time she had toweled off and returned to her room, she almost felt awake again. The last vestiges of the nightmarish half-dream dissolved as she flopped down onto the rumpled bed.

She sighed as she reached for her phone. Her thumb fumbled for the appropriate button, found it, held it down. The voice-control system chirped perkily at her.

“Set. A. Reminder,” she told it slowly and distinctly.

After a brief pause, it chirped again. A pleasant female voice answered her. “Okay. Just tell me what you want to be reminded about.”

“Make. Appointment. With doctor. R. E. Sleepwalking.”

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This was written in response to the following Not So Novel prompt:
Painting
The painting in question is Vermeer’s The Little Street. This piece is incomplete, and needs a lot of work, but it’s a post…

In the town there is a little street, and in the street there is a big brick house. In the doorway of the house there is an old woman, and in her hand is a white shirt. In the shirt there is a small tear, and she is mending it.

Near the woman there is a closed window, and near the window is a long bench. Near the bench there is a young girl. Near the girl there is a little boy, and they are playing a game.

Behind the boy is an open door, and behind the door is a long-handled broom. Behind the broom is a pretty maid, and behind the maid is a barrel full of water. Behind the barrel is a pile of laundry, which she is washing in the water.

This came together when I realized that the style of the first paragraph was being influenced by a source I had never thought of as an influence before: children’s books. I started thinking of it as a children’s story, and the words flowed more freely. I wonder if I could do something with this — and perhaps illustrated with art from Vermeer and others of the period — for Natalie. Probably I’d have to adjust the text in order to reference multiple images rather than just this one, but that could be done…

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I’m so far behind on Not So Novel that if I don’t catch up somehow I’ll just give up in despair… And yet I have so little time for writing that four full essays or scenes or stories or whatever seem impossible. The great thing about Not So Novel, though, is the flexibility of format. The point is to write, not to write long pieces.

In that spirit, I present my efforts at catching up… in haiku.

Two for the prompt Red:

Scarlet with snow trim
Pine green, night black, candle glow–
Colors of winter

Crimson in the snow
Life in the frozen wasteland
Winter at its end

One for A Stranger:

By the door she waits
For the life that ran away
She cannot chase it

One for Inspiration:

The story begins
Life changes before my eyes
A new world revealed

And one for Infamous:

Not one life altered
But a world torn asunder
O infamous day

(There has been a new prompt posted since I started these, but Vermeer deserves a little more than 17 syllables, so I thought I’d try to actually write that one. Besides, as it was just posted, it doesn’t count as being “behind” exactly.)

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
Hear/Listen

Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Rain.

When people describe hearing the rain, they often use violent words like “beating” and “drumming”. What you hear is something else. It is not the cadence to which an army of clouds marches, followed by the barrage of thunder and the blaze of lightning from the war machines of the storm.

Not tonight.

Tonight, what you hear is the soft patter of feet trotting through the damp undergrowth. It is the tinkling cascade of a small stream winding its way through dark boulders and verdant moss. It is the splash in the bath that washes the world clean, and it is the happy burble of a glass being filled to nourish life.

Enjoy it.

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This was written for the following Not So Novel prompt:
Revision

It’s an alternate take on the Footsteps in the Hall prompt, starting from scratch and going in a different direction rather than revising the existing piece. Mostly it’s an experiment with form; I don’t claim that it’s going anywhere interesting; my main goal is to portray a coherent series of events. If you don’t speak Twitter, click here for a quick primer.

everalight: Hanging w/ @shevran watching movies from @EW’s Stars’ Worst Films list. Currently @christiancbale: Equilibrium. #whyohwhy
spinspinagain: @everalight Better movies & company at my place.
everalight: @spinspinagain Promised. Haven’t seen her in forever. Can’t back out, will see you tomorrow.
spinspinagain: @everalight Fine. I’ll come to you then. #problemsolved
everalight: @spinspinagain DO NOT DO THAT. I AM SERIOUS. #reversepsychology #doit
spinspinagain: @everalight Heh
shevran: @everalight I know, it’s so awful, just another stupid dystopia thing. #conversationsfromthesameroom
shevran: This is so bad it’s funny. Wonder if stars realize how dumb these movies are at 1st or if it’s like, “Shit, this is bad,” after the fact.
spinspinagain: @shevran Contract deals. Prob know it sucks but can’t do much about it, they have to show even if they hate it.
shevran: @spinspinagain Yeah, but you’d think A-listers would have more pull. I guess maybe not before they were big though.
everalight: @spinspinagain Where are you?
spinspinagain: @everalight Back door. Open?
everalight: @spinspinagain Be right there
shevran: Only cool part of the movie just happened while @everalight off for potty break. Two words: Gun. Kata.
shevran: Must compare to Ultraviolet’s. #gunkata #notetoself
shevran: Thought I heard footsteps in the hall. Was it @everalight returning from her epic restroom break? #noitwasnot #infinitepee
shevran: Movie over. No sign of @everalight. Bathroom empty. #wtf
shevran: @everalight I know you get these on your phone. Where are you? #wtf
shevran: Anyone seen @everalight?
shevran: More footsteps. Do not see her. #creepy #notfunny
shevran: @spinspinagain Know where @everalight is? We were watching movies & she disappeared. #noreallyseriously
spinspinagain: @shevran Check the garage? Always where the busty blonde is in horror flicks, right? Sounds like you’re stuck in one.
shevran: Just found bodies of @everalight & @spinspinagain in garage. #notreally #fantasy #assholes
shevran: Guess Bad Movie Night is over.

A Quick Twitter Primer:

The bold part is obviously the username of the person speaking, other names preceded with an @ are other Twitter users addressed by or mentioned in the tweet (message), and anything preceded by a # is a hashtag, used to categorize or add shades of inflection to the tweet. Twitter imposes a limit of 140 characters per tweet (which includes @mentions and #hashtags), which often leads to abbreviations and nonstandard construction in order to conserve space. When a tweet begins with an @mention, most often only the people mentioned in it will see it since it is considered to be a reply — it’s available for others to read, but will not generally automatically show for anyone not mentioned in the tweet.

Observant Twitter-fluent readers will note that usually you’ll see tweets displayed in reverse chronological order, with the newest at the top, whereas this is written with the oldest at the top. Someday I’ll experiment with doing it in the proper order, but I thought it would be less confusing for more people to just let time flow forward here.

Click Here to Return to Top

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This was written in response to the following Not So Novel prompt:
Places/Spaces

A place, a space
Whispers of sound
The earthy aroma
Of fresh-trod ground
The leaves, the trees
A glimpse through the brush
A skeleton building
Around it, a hush
The green, the scene
Abandoned and cold
Succumbing to weather
To rot and to mold
Away, today
And never return
But leave the house
To moss and to fern

Inspiration credit: this image — thanks to Liz for reblogging it on Tumblr.

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