NO REWINDS TO LIFE

Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway (their ghosts rather) and I were playing poker at my table at Meilori's.

Dorothy Parker took a sip of her whiskey and smiled at me. 

"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.

The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

"Bah!" snapped Hemingway.  "The lemmings are throwing together words just as fast as they can to create hovels of novels."

Mark lit a cigar and grinned, 

"Well, I certainly believe in using the right word not its second cousin.  Hemingway, did you mean to rhyme?  Weren't you a poet, too, Dorothy?"

Dorothy bent down, grabbed a rubber doll whose throat was torn from ear to ear, and tossed it to her poodle -- 

who faithful even beyond death -- lingered beside her mistress.

"Ha! My verses. I cannot say poems. Like everybody was then, I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers.

 My verses are no damn good. 

Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated—as anything once fashionable is dreadful now. 

I gave it up, knowing it wasn’t getting any better, but nobody seemed to notice my magnificent gesture."
 

Fitz, as he liked me to call him, took a sip of his own champagne.  "Never confuse a single failure with a final defeat."

Hemingway gruffed, "We are all defeated in the end.  It is only the struggle that matters and why you struggle in the first place."

Hemingway glared at Ratatoskr (the Asgardian squirrel)

who scampered from ghost to ghost, looking at their hands and whispering in my ear.  "He's telling you our cards, isn't he?"

I shook my head.  "He's merely teasing you and telling me terrible jokes."

"How terrible?" frowned Twain.

I sighed, "What is the difference between snowmen and snowgirls?

"What?" asked Hemingway.

 I answered, "Snowballs."

Dorothy groaned, "Ouch!"

I said to her, 

"It’s a popular theory that there was much more communication between writers in the twenties. The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example."

 {Dorothy and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table}

"Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You’re all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We’re lost.'

 Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. 

Or irresponsibility. 

But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren’t.  

Fitzgerald, over there and the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time."

I asked, "Did the “lost generation” attitude you speak of have a detrimental effect on your own work?"

"Silly of me to blame it on dates, but so it happened to be. 

Dammit, it was the twenties and we had to be smarty. I wanted to be cute. That’s the terrible thing. I should have had more sense."

Fitz sighed, 

"At eighteen, our convictions are hills from which we look.  At forty-five, they are caves in which we hide."

Mark Twain nodded,

"Each day is like a coin.  We can spend it any way we like.  But we can only spend it once."

Hemingway lit his own cigar and puffed out the smoky words.  

"The living think they have more days than they do.  They look out at a thousand lives.  

At the end, they'll turn around and find only one --

and if they frittered away precious days investing in work that is inferior, that one life will be inferior."

Fitz looked into the shadows.   

"All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath, knowing it will not last."

Ratatoskr looked up at me from the table top.  "What do you think of this NaNo nonsense, Roland."

I smiled sadly.  "Some of my friends are for it.  Some of them are against it."

Dorothy asked, "And you?"

"I'm for my friends."

Ratatoskr groaned.

My Fans May Be Few, but They Are Loyal!

Tonja Drecker has just written a fine review

 of A SAMPLER OF SHADOWS!

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XKWX8H4

ALWAYS SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

5 Stars

99 cents

      I've read this author's work before and enjoyed this collection as much as the other tales. 

    There were so many things to enjoy about this book. 

    The large variety of tales promises a dive into something new with each short story. 

     The characters, scenes, times and settings varied as much as the plots themselves. 

    It was fun to hop from one tale to the next, never really knowing what each one would bring. 

      Each one is thought provoking in its own way, and most endings were hard to foresee. 

     All lean in a slightly dark or/and unexpected direction...something I enjoy about this author.

     Each tale comes with a quote at the beginning as well as a photograph. 

     This helped place the setting before diving in, but never gave the story away. 

     It offered a nice introduction and add a lovely 'something extra'.

  Not to mention that these stories are great for picking up whenever a little time allows. 

   Since each one is relatively short, 

     it was nice to grab up for a short reading break without having to worry about pausing the plot.

 

I enjoyed this one.

MY MOST POPULAR POST

WHEN LIFE KNOCKS YOU DOWN

The lab results that shook you to the core.  

The harsh retort that cost you a relationship.  

The needed car repair that costs more than you have.

Life has a way of continually knocking you to the ground without warning.  

Sometimes you don't know if you have it within you to get up one more time.

You don't have to continually get up.  

You just have to get up one more time 

than they knock you down.

And that means adapting to the present, thinking outside of our usual responses to stress.

We have been brought low by the myth of HAPPILY EVER AFTER.  

There is no such thing.

Our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. 

There is beauty, laughter, and friendship along our journey, 

but if we focus on the maybe happiness of a future with goal won, we will lose today ...

 We will have lost priceless treasures existing in our Now by the searching for Tomorrow's  fool's gold. 

The hidden thing about crossroads 

is that we never know we are at one until we have made our decision and are reaping the consequences.

Sometimes the way ahead is not clear.

Yet "Impossible" just gives birth to legends. 

* When I was abandoned at six on Skid Row in Detroit, 

* When my home burned to the ground with no insurance, 

* When the love of my life died in surgery, 

* When my whole city was forcibly evacuated from our homes --

 I hit bottom all those times.

Bottom gives us a place to stand, to rise, to reflect upon what is left ... 

to perhaps see a new path to old goals or hidden roads to new ones.

Wilde wrote that insanity was trying the same things repeatedly and expecting different results. 

We must take different steps to reach new destinations.

Each blow, each wound, each set-back has a lesson for us if we but stand back and reflect. 

Those things have shaped us and surviving them has made us stronger, wiser.

There is beauty, there is humor, there is hope ... 

perhaps those are the only lights in Man's dark world. 

In tragedy and in despair, 

when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization that the companion of night is not another night, 

that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, 

and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.

That is the great thing about life: 

  

Though it is often cruel, it is also mysterious, 

filled with wonder and surprise; 

sometimes the surprises are so amazing that they qualify as miracles,  

and by witnessing those miracles, a shattered person can sometimes discover a reason to live.

Often I am scared down to the marrow of my bones, 

but I keep telling myself that as long as I have laughter, I am not without hope.

In my blog, I always try to find something to laugh about.  

May laughter be our companion today, leading us to a new goal or the realization of an old one.

POKER WITH THE DEAD

The ghost of Hemingway scowled at his cards.

"Bad hand?" asked the ghost of Mark Twain, his eyes twinkling with mischief.

"Bad season" Hemingway gruffed.  

"Damn NaNoNites are wasting a whole month vomiting out quantity not quality."

"Their choice," I said, looking at a hand full of jokers I was sure Mark had double-dealt me.

F. Scott Fitzgerald sighed and sipped his champagne.  "They are making a gimmick of an art form."

The ghost of Jung frowned at his own cards, 

and I had a suspicion that Mark had jury-rigged another hand.

Jung said, 

"Perhaps it is the herd mentality which possesses mankind.  It can be harmful if the individual gives into it unthinkingly."

I said, "It gives stimulus to many to write each day."

Hemingway chewed his cigar.  

"If you need a kick in the pants to write, you are a wannabe not a writer." 

The ghost of Roger Zelazny said, 

"I made myself write three times during each day and insisted on completing at least a page each sitting.  

Not even close to 50,000 words a month, but I wrote a good many novels.  Even won an award or two."

Hemingway snorted, "And now, you are forgotten."

Roger shook his head.  "Roland still reads me."

Hemingway scowled, "Roland doesn't count."

"You must be talking to my past dates," I smiled 

and then sighed as I drew yet another Joker for the one I discarded.

Mark ignored my dirty look and said, 

"Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, 

unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which your words are trying to describe.  

And to do that, you must live not chain yourself to a desk!"

He lit his own cigar, saying

"I read that NaNo electronic page.  Why they say: 'You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing.'  

Am I the only sane person here to think 'writing a lot of crap' does not sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, 

even if it is November?"


Mark shook his head.

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. 

Lord, to condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence is worthy of a prize just by itself."

He sighed, 
"Anybody can have ideas -- the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."


I said, "They say that they can go back and edit ...."

Hemingway looked like he was going to slug me.  

"I have gone to their site, too.  'The world needs your novel' is their motto.  

The world does not NEED badly thought-through novels.  The world only needs to breathe, eat, and sleep."

Fitzgerald nodded,

"The joy of writing is not in deadlines and word counts, but in taking time to shape your work: 

to sit and let the ideas flow and then, when they ebb away, retreat from your keyboard 

until the next surge washes new fragments of story into your head."


Jung turned to me.  "What do you think, Roland."


"I believe writing is not a sprint but a marathon, 

a way of life for every day of each year, not just a competition for a month.  But that's just me."


Jung stroked his chin.

"I believe this competition, where word counts are paramount, forms bad writing habits. 

Habits such as overusing adjectives or bloating the pages with needless description. 

It takes 28 days to form a habit, Roland, so you can see how November can become a hothouse for writing problems."


I nodded, "Many think that NaNo made writing feel achievable."


Hemingway growled, 

"I put a gun to your child's head and say 'Write 50,000 words or I pull the trigger.'  

You will write that many words.  It is all a matter of motivation.  If you do not burn to write, you are a dreamer not a writer."


Jung frowned,

"No one convinced of the worth of this contest is going to be dissuaded by your words.  

Sad fact actually.  

You see, if their goal is to increase creativity, this contest will not help them.  Research has shown that anticipating evaluation -- 

even the mild stimulus of the Winner's Badge to pin on their electronic newsletter-- 

has a negative effect on creative performance."

Fitzgerald murmured,

"I am concerned for these NanNites. 

I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than they are prepared to pay at present.

 You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. 

This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, 

when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

 This is the experience of all writers. 

It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. 

Ernest’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. 

In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

And all of this takes time to distill into just the right magical words to conjure the images in the minds of the readers.  

Throwing them like dice onto the felt of the written page just will not do."

Roger nodded his head.

"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.

 If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, 

you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, 

so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together"


Mark smiled at me.  "What do you think, Roland?"

I scowled at him.  "I think you've been dealing from a deck of 52 Jokers."

He blew a smoke ring at me.  "That's the story of life, son.  The story of life."