The Story Behind the Story: Achilles' Heel (Part 1)

I thought I'd try something different this summer. Instead of a new story on July 1st and August 1st, I thought I'd give a glimpse into my writing process. So, today, July 1st, I posted the first-ish draft of a new story: "Achilles' Heel." Next month, I'll post the revised version.

The idea for story "Achilles' Heel" came out of nowhere. I woke in the wee hours of the morning back in March with the image of a woman dipping her infant in the fountain at a shopping mall, holding the baby by the heel like he was Achilles. I rolled over and went back to sleep--it was the wee hours--and wrote the idea in my notebook later, after I woke up and started my day.

The idea stuck with me. At random moments, I found myself wondering why a woman would dip her baby in a public fountain and what effect did the incident have on the baby as it grew up. It took a few fits and starts of scribbling in my notebook to come up with the scenario: a grown man in therapy, trying to deal with the memory of what his mother tried to do to him.

The actual writing of the story didn't go smoothly, either. I started over half a dozen times. Wrote two paragraphs, deleted one. I started writing the story on March 8th. I finished the first draft June 17th. That's right: six weeks to write 1,494 words. I believe that's the definition of slow.

Early on, I had an image of how the story would end: the protagonist in his car in the parking lot of the hospital where his mother is a patient. However, on June 16th, as I began writing the end of the story, I realized that ending would not work. I did not have a Plan B. I was stuck.

This is what I wrote:

I had a self-imposed deadline of the next night (June 17th), so that I could submit the story to my writer's group. I put the story to rest and picked it up again on the afternoon of the 17th. I decided the last line had to return to the image of the heel used in the first line, and rewrote it accordingly. Then I went back in and added a few more heel-scratches into the story so that the last line would make more sense. I clicked SAVE and uploaded it for my writer's group.

You can read that first draft of the story here.

Next month, I'll share some of the feedback I got from my writer's group and post the revised version of the story.

Another Step Closer

It's getting real, y'all. I'm one step closer to sending The Novel out into the world.

I finished Draft 4 of the manuscript last weekend. (So, of course, I woke up every morning this past week with an idea of how to rewrite a sentence here or add another detail there. A writer's job is never really done.)

I spent my writing time this week researching literary agents and compiling a spreadsheet of agents to query. I even color-coded it. Ain't it purty?

I researched online classes about query writing and found one to try. The course starts at the end of July and lasts two weeks. So, allowing appropriate time to panic, I expect I'll be sending out my first query some time in August. Happy birthday to me?

Beach Reads

So last Sunday night, as I was watching the Chicago Blackhawks lose to the Los Angeles Kings, my Twitter feed began filling with summer reading recommendations from a fellow book lover. With each rec, I said "YES! I loved that one, too." A few times I tweeted back, "Since you loved Book X, you'll probably also love Book Y."

See, I love books. I can talk books for hours. Ask me for a recommendation and I'll give you ten. Inspired by Sarah's list, I came up with my own list of summer reading rec's. Here are ten, in no particular order:

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

I have never read a novel as slapstick as this one. Set in a world where historians study the past via time travel, the story is Murphy's Law in action: whatever can go wrong for the protagonist, does. Even if you don't like science fiction or historical fiction, give this one a shot, just for the humor. It's quite a romp.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books trilogy by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Imagine a secret library that stores old books so they will never be truly forgotten. According to Zafón, that place--the Cemetery of Forgotten Books--exists in the city of Lisbon, Portugal, and it forms the link among three brilliant books: The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, and The Prisoner of Heaven. Unlike most trilogies, these books do not tell a story in sequence and do not need to be read in any particular order. While they share certain supporting players, they focus on different decades in twentieth-century Lisbon and different main characters. The stories are not light--they are more like the literary equivalent of a noir film--but they are beautiful reads.

The Dreyfus Affair by Peter Lefcourt

Summer is not summer without baseball, and The Dreyfus Affair is a baseball book. But not any baseball book. Loosely based on the historical Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish officer in the French army was wrongly convicted of treason, Lefcourt's novel imagines what might happen if two professional baseball players fell in love with each other. Told with a deft touch and colored with humor, Lefcourt's story is a satire of the professional sports establishment, the media, and institutionalized homophobia. It most definitely has a serious message, but it still made me laugh out loud.

Anything by Bill Bryson

If you've never read anything of Bryson's, start with A Walk in the Woods, a memoir of his escapades on the Appalachian Trail. If you have read Bryson, you probably don't need any recommendations because you've already discovered his dry wit and penchant for misadventures. I have yet to read a book of Bryson's that did not make me giggle at least a little bit.

The Stand by Stephen King

I was torn about which Stephen King novel to list. To me, summer isn't summer if I don't have a Stephen King book to read. My original list had two books by King: IT, the story of a group of outcast kids who form a family and together face down the monster that haunts their town, and The Stand. I decided to go with the latter, a complex story of a disease-borne apocalypse  and the rebirth of civilization in its aftermath, including a good vs. evil civil war. That sounds so high-fallutin' but really the story is about people and the choices they make.

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The story of Peter Pan completely reimagined. The focus of this story is, obviously, Tiger Lily, but the brilliance of the book lies in its development of Neverland, which Anderson populates with new and diverse landscapes and characters. This Neverland is far more interesting than the Disney version, let me tell you. And Tiger Lily's account of Peter and Wendy? Well, that's not very Disney either.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

In 1899 Texas, young Calpurnia Tate is far more interested in becoming a scientist like her grandfather than becoming the young lady her mother wants her to be. Her narrative voice and misadventures in science and young-lady-hood create a most charming story. Rumor has it there's a sequel in the works, due out next year. I'm already salivating.

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray

Bray's Gemma Doyle Trilogy--A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing--is a wonderful blend of historical fiction and fantasy. After her mother's death, Gemma Doyle is forced to leave her childhood home in India to attend boarding school in Britain. She struggles with the confines of British society and boarding school life while discovering a magical legacy.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Where to start? Eleanor and Park are two high school misfits who fall in love. While that is an accurate statement of the premise, there is so much more to the story: bullying, race, abuse, body image, friendship, family. How good is it? There are groups out there actively trying to ban this book from schools and school libraries. That should be reason enough to give it a try!

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

A story of friendship and war and sacrifice, Code Name Verity is told by two narrators: best friends Queenie and Maddie, who meet on an RAF base during World War II. The narration in the first half of the book blew me away: a perfect mix of bravado, fear, and humor. And the plot twists in the second half...well, you'll just have to read them yourself. I don't want to give anything away.

The Story Behind the Story: Something Fishy

This month's story comes courtesy of the 2014 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. In Round 2 of the challenge, I was assigned the following prompt:

Genre: Science Fiction
Subject: Sushi
Character: Dentist

My task? In two days, write a 2,000-word story based on the prompt.

My NYC Midnight stori always begin with panic--minutes, hours, or days of "WTF am I going to do with that?" This was no exception.

I pretty quickly came up with the equation sci fi + sushi = alien fish. But where to go from there?

Then I remembered reading a novel called Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. If I remember correctly, it's the first book of his Robot series. What I remembered is that Caves is essentially a mystery story in a science fiction setting. I decided to take the same approach in my story.

From there, the words flowed quickly. It was like transcribing a movie that played out in front of me.

As I began winding down the story, bringing Jonah closer to whodunit and why, I checked the word count: 1,998.

I had two words left, and I still hadn't solved the mystery. Oops.

I gave the Delete button a work-out and quickly tied up the loose ends.

The result is the story posted here. It's not perfect, but it is a fun little romp. One of my writers' group compatriots said the light tone reminded her of stories by Connie Willis, who wrote two of my favorite books: To Say Nothing of the Dog and The Doomsday Book. (Thanks, Heidi!)

Someday, I might revise the story, fix the flaws pointed out by the NYC Midnight judges and my writers' group, but for now, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Click here to read "Something Fishy."

Dog Days

You know in the movie UP how the dogs had collars that translated their barks into human language? I want one. Desperately.

The last few weeks have been rather frustrating for me and el perro. It began with the indignity (for him) of a visit to the vet for his semi-annual senior exam. Everything checked out as expected except for one blood test, for an enzyme that measured heart function. A normal dog would have an enzyme count of about 900. A sick dog would have a count of 1800. My dog? A count of more than 3700. The vet and I were both shocked by the results. With a off-the-charts count like that, Benji should have a laundry list of symptoms, but when the vet ran through the list with me, I could honestly say Benji had not a single one. That left the dear doggy doctor scratching his head. What to do? What to do?

The answer, it seemed, was medication. Even though the dog was not acting sick, something was clearly wrong with his heart function. So, I went home with two medications and crossed fingers.

Things went well for about 24 hours. One of the meds--an antibiotic to knock out any possible infection--was supposed to be taken twice a day with food. Benji, at first, would only eat once a day. And then not at all. I kick myself for not anticipating this. He reacted the same way the last time I had to given him antibiotics. I ended up stopping the treatment that time just so he'd start eating again. I did the same this time, but now my dear beloved doggie won't eat dog food. At all. Last time, it took me two weeks to find a new brand of dog food that he'd eat. We're into week 3 this time and we're not even on the dog food continent.

But a dog has to eat. The question is, what? Turns out, my dog is a pickier eater than I am. So three or four times a day, we do this little dance over and over:

For the moment (i.e., until he changes his mind), he prefers freshly cooked ground beef. That's right: Freshly. Cooked. As in unless he watches me cook it and pour it from the pan into his bowl, he won't eat it. No cooking a whole bunch at once, storing it in the fridge, and doling it out as needed. Nope. Must be freshly cooked. I've spent more time at the stove for the dog than for myself. 

Also, I can't mix anything with the beef--which does not bode well for his kidneys. Because of his kidney failure, he's supposed to be on a reduced protein diet. That seems to have gone out the window. I tried mixing some rice with his beef. He ate the beef and picked out the rice kernels. I found them scattered around my kitchen floor.

I would give my right arm to be able to have a conversation with the dog, to find out what the heck is going on in his doggy head, and to explain why it's important for his health and my bank account for him to go back to his previous diet. Barring that, I'm thinking perhaps a personal canine chef might be the answer...