Wake Up

I know what you're thinking: how does he do it?

Sherlock Holmes, I mean.

Have you read Sherlock Holmes, or just seen the movies and shows? They're brilliant, by the way --all of them, that is. But how does he do it? How is it possible that one mere mortal can divine knowledge that only the killer and the victim could know? In all regards, no human can be that clever, so maybe we're allowing ourselves to be fully taken in by a character that is unrealistic.  Or maybe not; The new BBC Sherlock TV show (okay, not new like came out yesterday, but new in comparison to the rest of the adaptations) argues that Sherlock has high-functioning Aspergers or Autism, which is likely, though never explained in the books (not like Doyle in 1901 would have known what Aspergers or Autism was). But one thing is for certain: this character sees everything.

There's something to hero-worship that makes you think you can be like that, too. "Okay," I tell myself, "I need Sherlock-vision, too, so all I need to do is dress in tweed, read in genres I don't understand, and do all of the logic puzzles in the newspaper."

(Yeah, right.)

Okay, maybe I won't be someone with high-functioning Asperger's who can judge how many dogs you have based on the fur on your trousers, and maybe I'll never be able to identify your socio-economic status based on the soles of your shoes, but I can train myself to be more observant. Charles Harper Webb said that to be a funny poet, you had to train yourself to see things in a funny way. This is about waking up, my friends. This is about seeing things for how they are, not for how you assume they are. Novels need detail.

So today I saw:
-a tarantula while out on my morning jog (if that's not motivation to run...)
-an older man (possibly a retiree) who had dug a pit in his frontyard, had a burning bonfire in the pit, and was pointing a leaf-blower at it for more oxygen (I can't possibly imagine...)
-a line of law-abiding citizens honking at a teenager in a Lexus for not stopping in front of a school bus

I am not Sherlock Holmes, nor have garnered any funny life-meaning from today's observations. They are completely worthless, except as an exercise in detail, and no murder mysteries have been solved today...

...unless a teenager stole a Lexus and fled from the scene of a crime that involved killing someone with tarantula venom and burning the body in a neighborhood across town. Solved it. 

Literary Fizzle Moment

Confession by this Shopaholic: I buy writerly swag. I’m really good about living within my means until

it involves books (if you’re read my blog, this is obvious), typewriters, or accessories involving things related. I bought a Sherlock Holmes cover for my iPhone. I have a bracelet handmade in England from a company (Jezebel Charms) that embosses book text onto brass cuffs. They specialize in Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, and Moby Dick. Um, pretty much everything I like. I've actually considered blocking the web page from my browser.

So it’s a surprise to no one that I showed up to class yesterday looking like Miss Frizzle. Okay, Generation Ys and Millennials, do you remember Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus?

She came to class every day with a themed outfit. If the school bus was exploring the human body, her earrings were lungs and her seemingly-polka-dotted dress was really a repetition of the Ebola virus or something.

Yesterday, I wore a dress that I had made from a 1950s pattern featuring a coordination of blue and green stripes with matching blue and green typewriter keys. My earrings were typewriter keys and my necklace was a rare “Floating Shift” key that had only been featured on a few typewriters. The whole outfit was Miss Frizzle for creative writing teachers. 

I wasn’t going to say anything about Miss Frizzle, but when one of my students complimented my outfit at 1:59, I said at the 2:00 start-time, “Let’s go for a ride on the Magic School Bus!”

*crickets

To make things weirder, I said, “… in a non-drug reference way…”

*crickets

“Wow, that was inappropriate.”

*awkward giggles

That didn’t happen to Miss Frizzle. But one of the younger students gasped and said, “You ARE Miss Fizzle! OMG!” She summarily pulled out her phone and texted a friend which, of course, I told her to put away.

This is the real life of Miss Frizzle, my friends: Miss Frizzle makes you put your phone away. Four students dropped her class because she has a no late work no extra credit policy. We’re going to have fun on the Magic School Bus, but you’re not going to see anything if you don’t get on the bus. Lesson plan for the day. 

Cut the Crap

While I'm reading Bitter is the New Black and finding that "cut the crap" might be the mildest of Jen Lancaster's offenses, that's not what I mean.

After a morning of editing three essays for queries, I find that today more than ever I'm reflecting on the flabbiness of words. I'll realize this again in about three weeks when I'm grading the influx of short stories bombarding Blackboard (if they want a grade, that is), but over the summer, I've allowed myself to become blissfully unaware of how often my sentences strayed to say exactly what I meant -and with words that didn't work hard enough.

I'm thinking, right now, of Stephen King's lessons on nouns and verbs, and David Foster Wallace's aversion to "puffy" words. In fact, I had just watched a YouTube video of David Foster Wallace yesterday in which he addresses the economy of language. (http://youtu.be/E_sQrxAorDo)

And the economy of language is my focus today. It seems that no literary journal is looking for a creative nonfiction essay or book review over 1000 words (or at least none of the journals I was looking at). Three hours and three essays later, I finally removed past imperfect tense, and other flabby or careless word choices. Have you ever noticed that sometimes you don't know what to do with a sentence until you delete almost everything in it? Sometimes you need to cut to know where to cut. (My hairdresser said this, once, of my uber long hair.)

So here is my suggestion to you, dear reader: if you're stuck having to cut 1650 words down to 1000 (ouch), remind yourself that you need to cut the crap. No sentence fragment is so valuable that you need to go over it three times before finally deciding to cut it.

I mean, no one does that...

Books I’ve Finished This Year:

-East of Eden by John Steinbeck

-Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

-Silk by Alessandro Barico

-Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores

-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

-Animal Farm by George Orwell
-The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
-Grimm's Fairytales by the Brothers Grimm
-Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut-The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
-Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway
-On Paris by Hemingway
-The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
-The Thin Man by Dashiel Hammett
-Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
-The Road by Carmac McCarthy
-More F in Exams/F for Effort by Richard Benson
-Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
-Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald by Scott Donaldson
-Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
-The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
-The Woman Who Wouldn't by Gene Wilder
-The Time Machine by Felix J. Palma

Currently Reading:
-Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

Books I Bought This Week:
-Bleak House by Charles Dickens
-Bizarre Books by Russell Ash and Brian Lake
-The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
-Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories by Richard Dalby 

5 Tips for Catching a Pterodactyl

Jeopardy Question: What do Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens, and my friend Holly from grad school all have in common?

Answer: They've all -in their own natural, unthreatening ways- been convicting me about writerly procrastination.

When some writers procrastinate or go way out of their way to do other things instead of write, there's usually a reason for it. As a creative writing teacher, I hear these stories and say, "Well, it sounds like there's something scary in your writing that you're avoiding" or "Maybe your idea is just so big that you're blocking yourself." The latter might be true as there are just too many ideas floating in my head and I don't know which one to write first. But recently I've also discovered that it's a seasonal thing: as a teacher, I want to pack as much into summer as it can possibly hold, which so far has included Disneyland, Portland, and, unfortunately, tonsillitis. It's also included an increase in reading and I'm proud to look back and recognize that I've read:

-The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
-Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway
-On Paris by Hemingway
-The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
-The Thin Man by Dashiel Hammett
-Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
-The Road by Carmac McCarthy
-More F in Exams/F for Effort by Richard Benson
-Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
-Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald by Scott Donaldson
-Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
-The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Um, that's 12 books, guys. That's three books short of a grad school semester's load. Now all I need to do is write an annotation for all of them and I've just completed 12 credit hours. I don't slight it by any means, but no wonder I've only managed to write a short bit when my focus has been so unfalteringly upon reading -okay, reading with interrupting for grading ENG101, writing freelance articles, and day-tripping.

Someone kindly told me that freelance writing is still writing -writing that I'm getting paid for- so I shouldn't be so harsh on myself. But I am hard on myself, because what creativity comes from writing about pterodactyl sightings or "How to Properly Sit in a Kayak"? Some of these might take creativity to make them interesting, but at the end of the day, my artistic hunger isn't sated for it.

Then the reading started speaking to me. Hemingway was frustrated with Fitzgerald because Fitzgerald didn't take the time to write, and when he did, he would block himself so much that all he was good for was sweet little stories for The Saturday Evening Post instead of real, important work. Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist as a serial over the course of two years. For two years he'd committed to one story line, printing chapters weekly. No breaks. No apologies. No "Well, I just don't feel like it." I read The Paris Wife in two days, a historical fiction novel from the perspective of Hadley, Hemingway's first wife. Even through fiction Hemingway doesn't alter his course. He pisses people off because he needs time to write. He has vision. He is unapologetic. He has focus.

So in the vein of wanting to write creatively but stuck in freelance writing mode, here are five tips for catching a pterodactyl -or rather, keeping a consistent writing practice:
1. Show up. Nothing gets written if you just dream about what you're going to write about.
2. Outline if your ideas are too big.
3. Give yourself permission to only write about one facet of your big idea.
4. Set a timer and commit to the time. It doesn't have to be all day, it can be 20 minutes.
5. Give yourself permission to write all crap. The longer you wait to come back to writing, the harder it'll be, so it's best to write something -anything- now. Even if it's crap. Especially if it's crap. It can only get better from there.

Ready. Set. Go.

What Writers Say in Tragedy

By now I'm sure that you've heard about the 19 firefighters that fell in the Yarnell Hill Fire. It's made national news, and it was heartbreaking to see Andew Ashcraft's widow on the Today show yesterday.

What do writers say in tragedy?

People think that because we're "good with words" that we know what to say and how to say it, but how artificial would it feel if we as writers had practiced phrases that we whip out in these times? A writer's job is to be true to emotions and true to ourselves, and when we ourselves have been struck by tragedy, writers are no more expected to materialize words than other grievers.

My brother was on this crew a few years ago. It seems like a cliche to say that this "struck close to home." What does that mean, anyway? That we had a close call? Because we did. That we're thankful my brother is still with us? Because we are. That we are devastated for those families as if they were our own? Because it's true. My brother being on the crew drew me close to a group of men that I wouldn't otherwise have known, men that I would have merely thanked for being public servants. And while I only knew one who perished (Clayton Whitted, you're with your Lord and Savior now), by association I knew all of them.

I'm an active mourner. When stuff happens, my first instinct is to do something. It's funny that writing is only my second instinct, but if you think about it, it is still an active something. I may not be called to serve to these families directly, but through writing, I can serve them, and best of all, I can serve the firefighter's memories.

To you 19 who perished, I honor and respect your sacrifice. You went into every fire knowing that you might not come out, and for that I thank you for going into this fire honorably. Thank you for loving your community, and thank you for serving us by the greatest sacrifice. I promise to serve your families whenever I can and to keep your memory strong.

(This was the last photo taken by Andrew Ashcraft, and the last text he sent to his wife.)

See, in times of tragedy, writers don't need to say something that hasn't been said before (because I'm sure everything I've written has already been written), but it is up to a writer to speak what is true. Hemingway said that if he couldn't write anything else, he would strive to write one true thing a day. This is the truth today, and writing it down makes it as real and as immortal as the memory of these great men.

It doesn't feel like enough, but it feels like something.

Hairy Houdini and Other Reflections from Housesitting

I should write a book about this.

What is story? It's easy to get too compartmentalized with regards to story, like saying that books and movies are different from journalism and different from what happens when you come home from work and tell your spouse about your day. These are all stories, my friends, and the best and most interesting stories are ones in which unexpected things happen.

I housesit a lot, which suits me because I don't mind getting paid to read and work at someone else's house. Yes, there's more to it than that like watering plants, walking dogs, and the like, but it's just a lifestyle change for a temporary amount of time. I used to say that it was easy money. 

Past tense.

Because things happen when I housesit, and I guess looking back, weird things have always happened to me while housesitting. There was the time that the fire alarm beeped due to low battery which freaked out the little dogs resulting in one pooping all over the bed and the other running through it. Yeah, that was fun. And then there was the time when I took the trash out on a summer night and the door locked behind me so I had to traverse barefoot around the woods to get through the back door which I knew I had left unlocked. And then there was the snowy night when at 9pm someone was repeatedly ringing the doorbell. In the past, however, these have been just funny stories that I share around a campfire. 

But why do we read books? And what's the difference in reading a book around the campfire as opposed to telling stories around the campfire? 

I'm currently housesitting for Hairy Houdini. Yes, this dog waits until I'm not home to find the one place in the fence where he can somehow sneak through. On day one of my stay, the neighbor called because he'd gotten out so I had done as much fence repair as I could. Aside from pooping in the house, the rest of the stay has gone on uneventfully. Yesterday I was home all day, had a bit of a book-hangover as I'd stayed up until about 1am finishing Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and I started The Road by Cormac McCarthy after writing a few articles and grading for my online class. I thought the most unpleasant the day got was when I stepped in one of the yard's land mines, but then the next door neighbor got home and told me about Hairy Houdini getting out. After some conversation, I discerned that he's still been getting out, but she's been putting him back in the yard. We both mended the fence after some trouble-shooting, and then I went to dinner. In the hour and a half I was gone, Houdini got out of the yard 4 times. Yeah, um, I've since placed a long two-by-four in that gap so that he doesn't keep jumping that corner of the fence. We'll see if it works. 

But this isn't nearly as interesting of a story as two weeks ago when I was housesitting for a different family and the neighbors called the cops on me. Evidently dogs don't like when the fire alarm beeps due to low battery. I've already mentioned what ensued a few years ago when it happened, but this time I awoke to find the dogs sleeping outside without even entertaining the thought of going inside for breakfast. I only had a little bit of time before church started, so I ran outside, found a latter that was, of course, covered in spiderwebs and since it's early still, the spiders were moving along nicely on those webs killing and eating moths, etc. Gross. So I found a broom, brushed them off, carried the ladder inside the house aaaaaaaand it wasn't tall enough. Of course. So I took the ladder back outside (the spiderwebs were all re-built by mid afternoon), and tried to think of another option that didn't involve calling the homeowner's brother at 7:30 in the morning. Then I remembered that there was a sliding ladder alongside the other side of the house. I evicted the spiders again, and then realized that the ladder was too long to weed through the narrow hallways of the house to get to the master bedroom. Ta-da: I removed the window screen and led it through the window. This is when the neighbors called the police, because it's not natural for a stranger in a polka-dotted dress to be leading a ladder through a window at 7:45 on Sunday morning. After a dangerous climb and replacing a battery that was so far out of my reach that I couldn't even look at it as I did it, I accomplished the goal, replaced the screen and the ladder, and rushed off to be late for church, passing the police cars on my way out of the neighborhood. It wasn't until later that I realized that 1) I could have called the fire department to change it for me, or 2) that there was a curtained screen door around the corner in the master bedroom, so I could have gone through the screen door instead of removing the window screen. Oh, well. 

Maybe I've told these stories too many times by now, but isn't that indicative of a good story? The details, now, have been gone over so many times that I won't forget them. It's told in the traditions of The Iliad or The Odyssey, verbal and with memory, not altogether different from written versions of those same stories. And here these housesitting stories are now written down, too.

Kristen Kauffman, housesitter

Average duties: walking and feeding dogs, watering plants, running out garbage barrels, checking the mail, and doing the dishes and the laundry at end of stay.

Additional duties: Washing floors and furniture that have been pooped or barfed on, picking up pieces of lamps that have been chewed, mending fences, fixing fire alarms, fixing windows, transporting animals from neighbor's house down the block back to home, calling the Humane Society, receiving calls from Animal Control and the Police Department, and escorting uninvited crazy neighbors from inside the house.

Will charge extra for: items been chewed beyond repair such as phone cords and shoes. 

Jury Duty Meets The Thin Man

Other jurors hate me -or I guess to be more accurate they love me, because by saying that I want to be selected, they don't have to be. Today, I had jury duty and there I was, the cheerful prospective member with my journal and my vending machine coffee, bright-eyed and nerding-out about the possibility to exhibit my Sherlockian skills.

Yes, I did seriously think that.

I opened my journal to even write that thought down when the gentleman next to me commented on my being left-handed. He's left-handed, too, so we talked about hating pencils, 3-ring binders, and my penchant for fountain pens as I smear ink far less than with a gel-pen or a ball-point pen. Then I caught myself confessing: "And, as you can imagine, my left hand is stronger, so when I use the typewriter, you can always tell which letters are on the left side because I press the letters harder and the ink is darker because-" I was about to explain the technique of keys and typewriter ribbons, but seeing he was older (I would learn later that was 64), I said instead, "Well, you know."

"Say," he replied, "That would be a really interesting detective clue; you know, the detective reads the finished paper and then knows that the criminal was right or left handed depending on how strong the ink is for those letters."

"Ooh, I should write that down," I replied. "I could use that." And therein led to confessing my deep, dark secret: not only am I a writer, but I actually want to be selected for this jury. So when the Jury Commissioner led us through our rights and expectations, she reached one point that said, "You may not do any personal investigation, including visiting any of the places involved in this case, using Internet maps or Google Earth, talking to any possible witnesses, or creating your own demonstrations or reenactments of the events which are the subject of this case." He chuckled and raised an eyebrow at me. 

I hereby declare that I, Kristen Marie Kauffman, will not attempt to be Sherlock Holmes, that I do not have high-functioning Aspergers, I don't have a French accent like Hercule Poirot, and I do not arrive uninvited to people's homes like Miss Marple. 

I did, however, refrain from getting the mystery novel out of my purse, and I said nothing of having recently finished reading The Thin Man or having watched the movie last night. Suffice to say, I may be like Myrna Loy, though, and may coyly be more observant and smarter than I look. 

 
Did I get selected? Yes, I'm supposed to report back next Wednesday. What case am I on? I can't tell you that part, silly.