This morning we drove our youngest daughter to SFO to board a flight with fellow schoolmates headed for an eight-day stay in Japan.
Driving my SUV along the freeway to the airport, my husband in the passenger seat beside me, and our youngest in the back with her suitcase
Of Witty Aphorisms, “Shirley Temples,” and Yearning … Read More »
“I don’t need you. You need me. … I’m the mother. You’re the child.”
My mother’s statement to men when I was around ten or eleven years old echoed those of Danny DaVito, who played the father of the character, Matilda, played by Mara Wilson in the movie, Matilda.
“I’m big, you’re small. I’m strong, you’re weak. You need me. I don’t need you.”
My mothers’s words hurt.
Not until now
Of Being Needed, Appreciation and Matilda … Read More »
Learning something about a mother, who was not forward in sharing about herself allows deeper insight into those hidden aspects of ourselves as her daughter.
The yearning to know more about a mother who has hidden herself, kept secret her inner life, speaks to our desire to connect, both with our mother and ourselves.
If our mother has died, like mine who passed on nearly two decades ago, we have lost a most direct line of knowledge. But all is not forsaken. Not by a long shot.
The very fact that our mother died keeping all close to her chest speaks volumes. It tells us that we
Of The Silence of Mothers, A Daughter’s Yearning, and Gratitude … Read More »
In my recent interview with Tabitha Vinson of Praise and Worship ICU (PWICU), we discussed human intimacy, an aspect that, for Tabitha, played heavily in my recent novel, The House.
That night, it struck me that as with The House, and all good works of fiction, intimacy plays an important role in not simply the emotional narrative of a story.
Intimacy heavily contributes to the establishment of the opening of a work of fiction.
Through presenting the protagonist in a series of intimate relationships, readers get to know the personality of the central character, flaws and all.
From this we gain entrance into their yearnings.
And yearnings always relate to desires and wants, ultimately inner conflicts that get ignited once the protagonist enters the quest to achieve her or his goal.
Of Intimacy, Revelation and Redemption… Read More »
The road that led your protagonist away at the opening of your novel or story brings her or him home again during the final stage, but at a new level of awareness.
And since time has moved forward, while the central character has been gone, we could entitle the journey, Back to the Future and Home Again.
The central character of the story has traveled in a spiral, moving both vertically and horizontally.
They have broadened their perspective. This encompasses the circular motion of the spiral. Read the rest of this entry…
Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification… Read More »
The road that took the protagonist away, during the final stage of the novel, brings her or him home again, but at a new level of awareness.
And since time has moved forward, while the central character has been gone, we could entitle the journey, Back to the Future and Home Again.
The central character of the story has traveled in a spiral, moving both vertically and horizontally.
They have broadened their perspective. This encompasses the circular motion of the spiral.
Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification… Read More »
There stands an intermediate region in the life and structure of a novel, that place between crossing the border of the opening and beginning and entering into a series of actions that lead to the penultimate center of the journey.
It lies between the edge of that vast new world of survival that constitutes the protagonist’s path of growth and transformation, the steps she or he makes towards achieving their goal. It is a land filled obstacles of varied sorts, and the ultimate crisis that manifests profound change.
This area operates much like the night before that big game, the minutes ticking up to giving one’s debut concert. For writers this can function much like reading one’s novel for those last times wherein we institute final edits towards bringing the work to its brightest hue
Of Intermediate Regions, Hunger and Thirst… Read More »