ROLAND'S 8 SIMPLE RULES

I've just read Leigh Moore's post for THE KINDNESS PROJECT.http://leightmoore.blogspot.com/

It reminded me of Rule #1 of the 8 rules I live by. What eight rules you ask.

Here they are and how they came to be.
******

Some time back, I read an article entitled "Rules That Warren Buffet Lives By." No, not the guy who sings "Margaritaville." Though I suspect Jimmy has more fun than Warren despite Warren being one of the wealthiest men in the world.

There was obvious merit to them. He didn't get the wealth he has by chasing the wind.

But the phrase "lives by" bothered me. As King Solomon wrote : "Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter. The advantage to wisdom is that it also remains when all else is gone."

And in thinking about that quote, the time came to mind when my home had burned to the ground. My dog, my cat, my possessions {the most dear being the Bible my mother had given me with her thoughts, doubts, and funny one-liners scribbled in the margins} were gone.

My savings had been wiped out by trying to pay my mother's medical bills from her fatal struggle with cancer.

My face and hands were badly burned from crawling back into my house in a vain effort to save my cat. I was living in the back of a massage school, courtesy of a good friend.

I remember sitting on the corner of the bed, after having talked to my best friend, Sandra Thrasher. She and I had our stores next to one another for years in the Mall.

After she had moved out of the Mall, we remained close friends. She helped save my sanity in that black time. And another thing saved it : remembering something Viktor Frankl had learned in a Nazi concentration camp :

"Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

I also remembered reading in that day's newspaper that the TV show EIGHT SIMPLE RULES had just gone into pre-production. And it puzzled me what I would say were my EIGHT SIMPLE RULES to live by.

I took out the only scrap of paper I had to my name, a Hallmark store envelope from the "Thank You" card I had bought for Sandra. And I thought for a good bit, then I wrote them down.

Upon reading the Warren Buffet article, I searched through my apartment until I found the carefully folded envelope, kept safe in a drawer.

I sat down and re-read them. I felt like a butterfly reading notes written by the caterpiller it once had been. But the words were true. And I still live by them. I thought you might be interested in what they were. So here they are.

Roland's EIGHT SIMPLE RULES :

1) Since everyone is having a harder time than they appear, be as kind as you can to each person you meet. You'd feel really lousy if you had made a bad day worse for someone who had been through the wringer, wouldn't you?


2) When faced with two paths, the more uncomfortable one is usually the right one to take. And try not to hurry so down whatever path you take. If you're heading in the wrong direction, going faster won't get you where you want to go any sooner.

3) When faced with a major decision, take overnight to decide. If pressed by someone to make an immediate one, always say "No." If they don't want you to have time to think it over, guess to whose benefit that is?

4) No battle goes as planned. Especially the Battle called Life. Expect things to go wrong. That way if they go right, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Commit yourself to staying flexible. Bouncing is better than breaking. And as no battle goes as fast as you'd want, learn to be patient or you'll become one.

5) If you treat people as extensions of yourself, you will always be lonely, for you will become the way you look at life -- alone in the sandbox of life with unfeeling toys called people.

6) Don't get mad at the sun for being hot. People will always be true to their natures. It's not their fault you mistook their iron for steel. So don't get mad at the rust in the lives of others. Don't blame the rain for being wet. Just get an umbrella and get on with it already.

7) Always keep your walk in sync with your talk. Divorce your ways from from your words, and the alimony payments will be bitter indeed.

8) Always stand up to a bully. Always deny him what he demands. Yes, you will get beat up more times than you want. But physical bruises heal. Some emotional ones never do. If you let them, bullies steal that which is difficult to replace : self-respect, pride, affection for yourself {and in turn, for others - one stems from the other}, and inner peace.

*) What did Susan Sontag say? Oh, yes. "I envy paranoids. They actually feel people are paying attention to them." Hope someone is paying attention to this list and gets some use out of it. If only to laugh.

*******************
Right now, I'm listening to "When The Coyote Comes" by one of my favorite artists, Fernando Ortega. In Lakota myth, Coyote was also called "The Trickster," often bringing death and heartache with him.

Oh, and Epi and Louie were Fernando's beloved cats. And here is this oh, so cool song :

TO HAVE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING__THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

I am Day.

I am Night.

I am the World.

I am the Turquoise Woman.

And a traveler like all of you.

You walk miles. I spin through the vastness of space, listening to the ghost songs of the solar winds.

I awakened already spinning through space, hugged to the sun's warmth by his invisible arms of gravity.

But the sun is a distant lover and following his own path through the stars, drawn by bonds of his own.

He is caught like a glistening bead of dew in the web of the solar system.

Together, he and my sisters journey in a cluster which is itself part of a moving community of stars you call the Milky Way.

Travelers all, we can neither turn to the left nor to the right of our own volition.

We are children of gravity and explosion, cast into the darkness by forces we little understand or know.

I used to envy you your freedom of movement, of choice. But the longer I watched your scurrying over my surface, the more a dark truth spoke to me :

You, too, are children of the gravity of your species and the explosion of the times around you which you little understand or know.

You bristle with denial?

If you cannot understand your own heart, how can you understand another's?

Which choices are yours totally?

As gravity and momentum send me on my path, so do your DNA, location, and experience spread the pattern of the paths before you.

You are no more free than I am or the goldfish wandering the narrow confines of its bowl.

From within its bowl, the world seems so large to the goldfish. Yet, it is trapped within invisible walls.

As are you.

Freedom is an illusion to the goldfish, to me, and to you.

Do we choose or do the choices choose us?
***

THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT_FIRST PARAGRAPH

CHAPTER ONE

TIME TRAVEL ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE.

“After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.”
- Victor Standish.

Time travel.

I used to dream of it in the libraries of every mean city Mother dumped me in. To travel through time seemed to be the perfect escape from the street gangs who made my life miserable. No matter the library, I would find the copy of H. G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE, and I would read it from cover to cover in one sitting. I would fantasize about finding an abandoned Time Machine in the end of a little-used alley.

IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***
There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

KNIGHTS OF MICRO-FICTION_"How young can you die of old age?"

Kathy McKendry of IMAGINE TODAY:
http://imagine-today1.blogspot.com/2012/07/komf-prompt.html#comment-form

has a fascinating idea for a blogfest:

To join in, just post your entry before the end of the 15th (midnight EST) and leave a comment on her post with your post link.

Then go check out as many entries as you can. By the 17th, she and the other infamous McKendry, Jess, will choose two winners to be featured on their blogs.


Ok. here is the prompt:


In 200 words or less write a flash fiction using the phrase: The sky darkened...

then for an added challenge include a sound that surprises one of your characters and a foul smell.

Captain Samuel McCord, the undead Texas Ranger, has taken up the challenge. But despite his curse, he is a Southern gentleman. He doesn't want to take any prizes away from the ladies, so his micro-fiction is 281 words.

HOW YOUNG CAN YOU DIE OF OLD AGE?


The sky darkened as I looked at the house. Its empty windows seemed like vacant eyes. The building looked like some discarded skull of a lost god.

Lt. Trifle called me out here in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere being on the outskirts of Metairie -- which is on the outskirts of New Orleans -- which, itself, is on the outskirts of Hell if you listen to some preachers.

She said I was needed out here and then hung up. Or got the phone snatched out of her hand.

Was I in time? Time. I could stop it for awhile -- if I was willing to pay the price.

It hurt like hell. I deserved worse.

The time-snared air felt like heavy invisible water pressing in against me.

I lumbered to the back.

The house was deserted: Smell of urine. Lots of needles. Discarded rubber tubing.

A crack house.

I made it to the front room. It wasn't empty.

A punk had Trifle dead to rights. Mostly dead if I didn't act fast. How he got the drop on her was obvious. She was cradling a feverish girl.

I released time.

"How young can you die of old age?" I asked.

The addict yelped in surprise. He jerked his gun towards me.

"What the fuck?"

Sad last words. I sped up time all around him. He squirmed like a worm. He aged into an old man.

He crumbled into dust right in front of Trifle. The mound started to disappear in the faint breath of the stale breeze. She turned hollow eyes to me.

"You're a monster."

Oliver Goldsmith had written : Silence gives consent.

I left without saying a word.

NO GRAVES IN THE SHADOWLANDS_Ghost of Raymond Chandler here

A long time ago in a blogverse far away ...

I wrote a blog serial, GHOST OF A CHANCE,

Its first chapter: http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/07/chapter-one-living-in-crosshairs.html

where I found myself on the run in my own prose universe. Each post depicted a page from the seared journal that the ghost of Mark Twain found, the only clue to my ultimate fate.

Here is a post from GHOST OF A CHANCE written by the ghost of Raymond Chandler with a few tips for writers of any age:



{"If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
— Ernest Hemingway.}

Chandler here. Raymond Chandler. Or rather his ghost.

I started with that quote from Hemingway because it was too damned appropriate not to.

Some of you are dropping in, expecting to read something from Roland. He’s been on the run in the Shadowlands, falsely accused of the murder of Hemingway’s ghost.

The same ghost who has been laughing up his sleeve here in Roland’s apartment, pontificating on how to write good literature. Apparently, he forgot how to live a good life or be a good friend.

No, he was too jealous of how the ghost of Marlene Dietrich felt about Roland.

He’s been rubbing his hands in pure joy as the ghosts closed in for revenge and others in the darkness bayed at the kid’s heels, seeking to tear the secret of how to kill ghosts from him.

Now, where is Hemingway? On his way to Hell if there's any justice. But there isn't.

Word in the Shadowlands is that he is just walking aimlessly into the darkness, his eyes deep holes into nothingness.

I only have the cold comfort that I knocked him on his arrogant ghost-butt. How did a Hollywood hack like me do that? Easy. I cheated.

I surprised him. I walked into Roland's apartment looking clean, neat, and sober, smiling my best "ain't we chums?" smile. Then, I let him have it with the blackjack in my fist.

He went down hard. Not hard enough.

"Good news, boxer," I grunted. "Word in the Shadowlands is that Roland's dead. Died in the arms of Marlene."

His eyes fought to focus. "Is she --"

"Yeah, hero. She's dead, too. Killed by the one who poisoned you. I hope you're --"

I didn't get the chance to finish. The most godawful yowling came from the head of Roland's bed. Then, I saw her -

Gypsy, his ghost cat, all covered in sand. I could have sworn she hadn't been there when I first came in.

Her head was reared back, her eyes full of tears. Hell, his cat was crying. Crying.

And Gypsy howled like her guts were being cut out of her. I can hear it still. It seemed to go on forever.

I pray to God I never hear such a sound again. She stopped abruptly and looked at me with eyes gone sick and insane.

Then she just slowly faded away into the darkness like an old photograph left out too long in the sun. I shivered. And I knew. I knew.

I would never see his cat again.

I turned to Hemingway as he struggled to his feet, and I managed to get out the words. "Roland trusted you."

My grief and anger were battling so inside my heart, it felt as if I was standing outside myself. "You hid in his apartment, knowing he was being blamed for your murder, knowing he was being hunted by things that would make a pit bull puke."

I realized I was literally shaking with my anger. "You could have stopped this. You should have."

He turned hollow eyes to me. "Right on both counts."

And with that he walked out through Roland's door. And I knew something else. I would never see him again either.

So here I am, sitting in the dark at Roland's laptop. What do I write that would express just what the kid meant to me? It's all too fresh. I - I can't.

There are no graves in the Shadowlands. No place where I can lay one black rose. To die there is to disappear utterly both body and spirit. But I have to do something. Something.

What I will do is reach out to you, his friends. He wrote to you, trying as best he could to help you write better.

So that is what I'll do. Just a short post. I don't have a long one in me.

Besides, I'm not sure how delicate this thing is -- if tears on the keyboard will short something out or not.

All right. I'm a big boy. I can do this.

Where to start?

Rules. Most struggling writers think there are mysterious magic rules out there that if followed will insure success.

There aren't. But I'll give them to you, anyway.

Rule #1 :
The most durable thing in writing is style. I had mine. Hemingway had his. We're both imitated.

Be inspired by your favorite authors but leave them be. Keep the original. Lose the copy. Be yourself. But a self that grows each day.

Rule #2 :
Unlike the age of Jane Austin, this age is not remote. It is as intimate as a lonely heart and as intense as the bill collector over your phone.

Do not cliche your words. Brutality is not strength. Flipness is not wit. Do not mistake cool for character, attitude for competence.

It is not funny that a man is killed. But it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

Rule #3 :
It's the journey, the struggles of the hero that grab the reader and keep him turning the pages. Make the hero sweat. But let him get the girl. Even Roland -- no, I won't go there. I can't.

Rule #4 :
Pull your nose from the computer keyboard and live life -- don't just write about it. Tasting each drink, feeling each breeze, touching the soft skin of the woman who loves you and only you.

God, I hope Roland did that with Marlene ...

if only for a moment.

Sorry, you don't need to read an old ghost's keening.

Rule #5 :
Remember that human nature has learned nothing over the centuries, yet has forgotten nothing either. Men do things for reasons.

Your characters, if they are to be believed, must do so, too. You cannot shove them into actions that your prior words would not imply they would take.

Yet human nature is fickle : a man who is steel in the fires of adversity will melt at the glance of a pair of ice blue eyes. Eyes like Marlene had ....

Sorry ... that ... that is all I have the heart for.

I will sit out on Roland's terrace now and look out as the night fog slips away from the bordering bayou.

The rains are over. The fields are green.

And with my ghost eyes I will look out over the vastness of America to the Hollywood Hills and see snow on the high mountains.

The fur stores will be advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen year-old virgins will be doing a land-office business. In Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees will be beginning to bloom.

And none of that will matter ... for my friend is dead.

The French have a saying that to say good-bye is to die a little. They are right. I am a ghost, and I thought I was past feeling dead inside. I was wrong.

I think I will always see him driving down lonely roads, sitting in lonely rooms, saddened but never quite defeated.

Down those mean streets he went who was not himself mean, who was neither tarnished nor afraid ... only mortal.

I will miss you, my friend.
****
He liked this prayer, so I will end with it:

WHY DO YOU BLOG? Ghost of RAYMOND CHANDLER here

{"All men who read

escape from something else into

what lies behind the printed page;

the quality of the dream may be argued,

but its release has become a functional necessity."

- Raymond Chandler.}

The effort to keep from thinking of the things only the dead know sometimes reduces me to the mental age of seven.

It suddenly seems the things by which we live are the distant flashes of lightning in a dark sunset.

I think Clemens is hoping to distract my sorrow by asking me to help the visitors to Roland's blog out.

It seems some of you are unclear on how to make your blog popular.

Join the club. If writers really knew the key to drawing droves of followers, they'd have swollen bank accounts ... and keep it to themselves.

Human nature is like that. But I'm a ghost so I'll share what I know on how to write well ... on your blog ... in your novel.

First though : A good title is one of the keys to a successful blog. A beautifully jarring picture in your header draws the reader in. Now, to the meat of my thoughts :

1.) A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

In other words, you must write, then re-write. Sit back, mull it over, re-read your post, then polish the rough spots.

A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

It's not about ability either. Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Which leads me to ask :

2.) Why do you blog?

A) For approval?

You're going to get precious little of that from editors.

You'd better try developing a thick skin now. And what if you get it? Will it teach you as much as one sharp but accurate criticism? You know the answer to that one.

B) To use as a form of Writers Anonymous?

If you talk so much about writing, about queries, about summaries, about agents that you don't write, don't blog.

If you visit so many blogs that you have scant time to do any real writing, don't blog.

Writers write.

Do I sound harsh? Maybe it's because when I was alive I stayed up all night, writing letters to friends,

when I could have been actually writing a novel worthy of being dedicated to my beloved wife.

Don't be me. Learn from me. Like Clemens says :

Life is a coin. You can spend it any way you want.

But you can only spend it once. Spend it wisely.

3.)" From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away."

Which is my wry way of saying : Let there be more than mere style to your blog -- let there be substance as well.

Cotton candy may be good for a lark. But if you want people to come back to your blog time after time, serve steak.

The challenge of blogging is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

Write to have people feel at home, and they'll return to relax when the world presses in on them.

And make no mistake : The streets out there in America are dark with something more than night.

Be a flame of friendship and of what wisdom your bruises have bought you.

4.) There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

Have your blog serve you. Once you find yourself serving it, being a slave to its deadlines. Revolt.

Leonardo da Vinci frittered precious years away,

designing intricate, short-lived party favors for princes.

Imagine if he had used that time painting masterpieces that would have lasted centuries?

5.) One last thing -- Forget your blog for a moment :

it is all about the story :

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.

It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure.

He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion in your story. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder."

Finally, write your blog on subjects you'd like to read if you were stumbling upon it like a stranger.

Be there for your fellow writers. Sometimes it's a dark world out there for people whom you think haven't a care in the world.

Be a light for those people. Be a hero.