Lie-dar

Recently, I was enjoying a perfectly nice conversation with someone I don't know very well. It wasn't a serious conversation, just one of those getting-to-know-you, trading stories talks. And then my new friend said something and I did an internal double take. It was like the LP needle was dragged off with a scratch. In my head, a voice said, 'That's a lie."

In short, my baloney radar went wild.

She kept telling the story. It was probably funny and really, who cares if it was 100% fact? I am certainly not one to judge someone who, um, embellishes. But in my head, the voice kept saying, "Nope. Lies. Don't believe that. Not true." At the end of the story, I smiled and nodded, but the flow of conversation was interrupted and hard to get back.

Recently, I read a book a lot of people like. It was probably good and really, it's a book; who cares if it's 100% fact-like? But somewhere early on, one of the characters did something and I stopped reading and there was that LP scratching noise again. And the voice in my head said, "That's a lie."

It's all lies in fiction, I know, but I want truthiness. And a "that would never happen" realization kills a book for me. I may finish the book, but I become critical of everything I read, which keeps me in my own head and out of the characters' experiences.

These days, "careful" is one of my highest compliments for a writer. I want a writer I can trust not to seduce me in and then set off my baloney radar. I want a book where every word has been considered, where nobody has ever said, "Well, it will be fine like that." I want a book I can sink into, where even the biggest surprises make me say, "Of course" after I gasp.

And for my own part, I'm hoping for the energy and patience to make that book.

Snow! Snow! Snow!

In which we celebrate snow.

Is it snowing there? It's snowing here, and so cold my nose fell off on the walk home from Tink's school.

If it's snowing there, step away from the computer. Put on your coat and your boots, a hat and some gloves. Go outside. Don't shovel or sand or build anything. Find a clear spot where nobody's walked and lay down. Make a snow angel. Watch the snow falling. Examine the flakes as they land on your coat. Listen to the blanket of quiet a good snow brings. Let the wet cold seep into your bones.

When your lungs burn, run inside and stand near a fire or the radiator and strip your outerwear off and jump until you can feel your toes again.

When your fingers can bend, get a pencil, and write it. Write for 20 minutes without stopping or crossing out. What did you find?

If it's not snowing there, well, you can make a snowflake, or make a snowflake. Or you can go play at Raymond Briggs's magical website for his magical book, The Snowman, which every child should read.

Or you can read these:
Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, illus. Mary Azarian
Fascinating and gorgeous true story of Wilson Bentley, snow scientist

Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen, possibly the most beautiful poetic picture book ever written

Snow Crazy, by Tracy Gallup (my lovely critique group friend): celebrate a day in the snow, illustrated by hand made dolls












For the toddler set, there's Snowballs, by Lois Ehlert.

And when the kids are asleep, curl up with Orhan Pamuk's Snow, which is structured like a six-sided snowflake in a way that is so complex and cool it makes my brain hurt.


So, what's your favorite snow book?

You Know That Feeling

Regardless of how you voted or how you feel about the outcome, today you have to find yourself thinking, "This is important." I'm a little speechless* and exhausted, and I know others who specialize in such things will blog about last night far more eloquently than I can. So I'm going to stick to what I know, writing, though I get back to history eventually.

I used to direct plays, in high school and college and just after. One technique actors sometimes use is an emotion memory exercise, where, in order to put themselves into the shoes of a character experiencing a certain emotion, they remember a time when they themselves felt that emotion, and try to recall all the sensations associated with it. The joke is that any time anything happens to an actor, it's material. So when your actor friend gets dumped and he's miserable, you tell him, "Use it."

You can see the connection with writing.

Today I am wondering how I would write this feeling. You know that feeling? When you're shocked out of your everyday existence and you feel un-ignorably part of history. You come out from behind your sinking into the sofa with your laptop self and find yourself part of the world. There's a physical sensation: faster pulse, quicker reflexes, you're quick to tears or to giggle. There's frustration with people who don't understand,** with having to eat or drive to work or make lunch. How can I have to pick up the dry cleaning when All This is going on? All you want to do is talk about it, process it, celebrate it, in part because you're shocked there's not more to it. Why does life seem so much the same, when Something Bigger is afoot?

I can't write it. I can't even think of the word I want. It's not quite "shocked" or "important" or "overwhelmed." We may need to invent a new word. Can you help?


* And by "speechless," I obviously mean "able to blather at length."
** Who, say, upon hearing about the historic moment in which she is living, ask, "Is that whole English muffin for me or do I have to share?" She came around later, after some calories. No use trying to explain anything to an empty stomach in my house.

You Know That Feeling?

I am thinking of Proust today, and of his remarkable ability to describe subtle, very specific moments of human emotion.

Tinkerbell turns six this weekend, in case you are one of the two or three people in the world to whom she has not already announced it. She's having a Spiderwick Chronicles theme birthday party.* Everyone is asked to dress as his or her favorite character in the Spiderwick books. Tink is going to be Mallory, I am to be the green-eyed elf, the Mighty Thor has been asked to impersonate an ogre, and Captain Destructo is, of course, a house brownie. Our whole house will be transformed into Spiderwick mansion, with the forest outside decorated** to hint at fairies and unicorns living there. The cake will be covered with spiders, enough for each of the 11 guests to have one, and will read "Happy Birthday" in the same font as the book covers. The kids will go on a giant scavenger hunt, pound flowers into handkerchiefs to dye them, and have the best. party. ever. At the end of it all, Tink will be six, 6, SIX! No more baby five-hood, good bye, she will fly away on big, grown-up fairy wings.

Or so she sees it. We will try. But the disconnect between how kids imagine their birthdays and how birthdays can ever really be is vast and disappointing, I know. And the feeling I am pondering comes at the birthday party. It's the "this is not how the party is supposed to go" feeling. It's the "this house doesn't look like the Spiderwick castle, and the field sprites are paper, and my friends are supposed to be doing what I say, not playing in the forest, and hey! I feel the same just like I did when I was five, and where is my big moment? Where is the Magic Moment that was supposed to happen? And, now I have to wait a whole year which might as well be forever to do it right this time?" feeling. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

Today, I am thinking about that feeling. That exact moment when you realize just how vast the disconnect between your dreams and reality is. Before you get depressed about it, when you are stunned and casting around for someone to blame. You know that feeling?

In the meantime, anyone have good ideas for a Spiderwick birthday cake???

*the books, not the movie, which she's never seen and probably won't for a while given that she still sometimes freaks out during the chase scenes in Curious George
**in an eco-friendly way, of course