Coffee Observation

Coffee and I are lovers with a dysfunctional relationship. We break up. I move on to green tea and water. Coffee and I get back together when days and nights of raising this bundle of demonic joy leave me wrecked and exhausted. So it is that coffee and I are once again in the throes of passion.

But yesterday, as I cleared four half-drunk cups from my desk, I realized something. In total, I "might" drink a cup. Maybe. Maybe 1.5 cups. My pattern is: brew pot, pour cup, add creamer, add sugar, bring to desk, inhale scent, sip, it's too hot, wait, sip maybe four sips, forget it's sitting there, sip, it's too cold.

The fact that I NOTICE that I, in fact, am NOT a coffee drinker, but someone who likes having it there, who goes through this whole exercise, who will even brew a second pot and STILL not drink it, is just . . . the ideal thing to put in a book.

In fact, that's how I go through life. Noticing people's oddities. My own oddities. I have a phobic character in my work-in-progress who can't get on an elevator. He's terrified, so he takes the stairs, even if it's a skyscraper and it's 45 stories. But he CAN go on the subway. When his new love interest asks him why, when the subway is even more claustrophobic than an elevator, he responds, "I like trains." Real people in real life invent all these rules that govern how they function in the world.

Jerry Seinfeld was the king at noticing all the oddities of humans. So was the late George Carlin. Seinfeld once said, "The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise." I live on a golf course. I can attest to that. One of my favorite George Carlin observations was, "Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

So what's some observation you've made in real life . . . that has made it into your work? Or if you're not a writer . . . Seinfeld-style, what's something you notice about people that's just plain odd?

Peace,

E

P.S. As many of you know, I have Crohn's disease, and a blog pal of mine is running a race in my honor--a half-marathon. It's creeping up soon. Here's his race site. Here's an old blog post about my life with this disease. If you can give . . . thanks. There are millions of people with this disease, and there is no cure.

Nothing Special

You know that meme that's out there asking you to list six unique, random things about yourself? Well, I am not going to do that. (Aren't you all relieved?) But I AM going to use that as a leaping-off point for a discussion of standing out in the marketplace when it comes to characters.

Let's see now . . . world-weary cop, noir private eye, recovering alcoholic cop/private-eye/anything, gambling addict cop/detective, world-weary vampire, bride having her doubts, it's ALL been done before. And judging from some queries I see out there on blogs . . . either (a) writers haven't figured out how to make these characters unique, or (b) they don't know how to construct a query that makes these characters sound unique. Either way, you're in trouble. Because if you can't do a unique-sounding query then you will never get read. And if you can do a great query but your character is nothing special, you're not going to get bought.

And it was a meme that actually got me thinking about this. You see over at Edie's blog a week or so ago, she posted the meme, and I mentioned something random. You see, I grew up playing cards (Rummy) with my grandma. Then I was introduced to poker. I also remember one Christmas Eve craps game. And then we (my family and crew of pals) moved on to the classic card game "Oh Sh*t." We always (once I was a late-teen) played for money. Not serious money. Silly money. Nickels and dimes and quarters. Everyone in my family has their "lucky" change jar. Mine is one I found in an antique store--a little porcelain herb jar that someone would have kept sweet-smelling lavender in years ago, and it has purple flowers painted on it. It's an antique, worth probably the two dollars I paid for it, and I love it--AND keep my money in it. My mom has a "Country Crock" plastic tub. But on Edie's blog, I shared that one day, burnt out on playing "Oh Sh*t" (and this was as a preggers mom of one, with one on the way), I took out the game of TROUBLE. You know, the one with the pop-o-matic. And we BET on the outcome of the game. Five bucks per game. On TROUBLE.

And my point is this . . . I have never been a gambling addict. I can play for fun. The five bucks just, as they say, "makes it interesting." My family . . . we like to make things interesting. But if I WERE to write about a gambling addict (and I have, in this book), I would have to "make it interesting." Someone who goes through life betting on TROUBLE, on whether it's going to rain. On any of a number of nutty things. I used to bet football with a friend of mine. We bet weird things--loser has to mail the winner something with polka dots, or something that tells time or temperature. I still wear my polka-dot scarf he got me. Alas, I lost the thermometer that he had added a woodland painted animal to (don't ask).

When deciding how to make your character have quirks, I think you have to "make it interesting." Being a gambler ISN'T a quirk. Betting on TROUBLE is. Being a bride with doubts, isn't a quirk. Deciding whether or not to go through with the wedding based on whether or not you get some "sign" from God, like seeing a bride form in the syrup pattern on your pancakes at the Waffle House one morning? That's a quirk. You don't even want to know how I decided to get married. Really. It was that random.

You have got to stand out in the marketplace. EVERYONE at a certain level of competition is "good enough" to be published. It's the really special characters and storylines that will actual elevate you.

Thoughts?

Bad Clowns

On the way to the circus yesterday, Baby Girl suddenly confessed a mortal fear of clowns. She might have told me this BEFORE I spent $150 on third-row seats. I spun a tale of the difference between "evil clowns working for the Dark Side" and the "good clowns who only spread cheer." She didn't buy it. Nonetheless, she ended up meeting some very nice clowns--not the evil ones--and had a wonderful time. There is even photographic evidence she laughed at the clowns, and she got to do a tug 'o war with four of them in one of the rings.

Which got me thinking . . .

We've had discussions on the blog before about 1) fears, and 2) quirks. When I ask what do you fear most on this blog, I get a lot of very serious answers: death, a child dying, Alzheimer's, fire . . . . illness.

But I realize too, that a lot of us have completely nonsensical fears. I mean, they make sense to US, but . . . to the rest of the world, we perhaps look a little nuts. Which then is more like a quirk. And we've talked before how sometimes writers can go on quirk overload. I've been asked to critique things that get so cluttered with oddity, and my only reaction as editor is WHY? So I think as writers, when we ponder quirks, they should feel less tacked on, more organic. They can still be completely nonsensical. Can still enhance the story. But . . . somehow they are rooted in that sort of nonsensical neurosis, which makes sense in the character's universe. That they are not quirks of the writer's cleverness but of . . . the character's reality.

For example . . . Baby Girl wants a hamster. But she cannot abide gerbils because they have tails. The logic on this one escapes me. But there you go. It HAS a logic. It might not be YOUR logic. But there's an order to it. A rule of quirkiness.

Me? In a strange hotel room when I am on the road, I cannot even contemplate sleeping until I look under the bed, in the closet, and in the shower. Now . . . I am not sure what I would do, should I discover the boogeyman in any of these places, but there you go. I was a chronic "check-under-the-bed" kid. Still am.

Another fear-quirk? Jumping spiders. You see . . . spiders are fine. I actually usually capture them and put them outside. But once, after I got divorced, I went to kill (pre-Buddhism) a spider. And it jumped. High. I was utterly freaked out. And for the first time, I didn't have a man in the house to kill it for me. Frankly, that was about the only good thing about marriage. Having a handy spider-killer. So I did what any self-respecting fraidy-cat would do. I called my best guy friend on the phone and he TALKED ME THROUGH killing the jumping spider. And the entire time, I kept shrieking, "It's trying to kill me. It's jumping because it wants to get up to my neck and kill me." Jumping spiders? Still kind of freak me out. Daddy Longlegs? Not so much.

I always make sure, in my humorous novels, to include these oddities. But I would never just have a character sketch that said, "Afraid of jumping spiders." I might put, "Afraid of jumping spiders. Long story." Or "Afraid of evil clowns. Don't get her started on the topic."

Maybe it's just a difference in my mind. But I really think when you talk about organic writing, it helps to not just "tack on" oddities, but root them in real lives.

So here are mine:

1) WHATEVER is under that bed

2) JUMPING spiders (only . . . regular creepy crawl ones . . . fine)

3) Evil clowns (not the good ones)

4) Rats (but not mice)

5) The serial killer up the street (he may not REALLY be a serial killer, but the guy seriously freaks me out)

6) Close talkers. PLEASE respect my space when you talk to me. Hence number 5.

7) Confined spaces. Even after death. When really . . . will I care? But I think I will. Hence I will be cremated and PLEASE no pine boxes, family. (It's all spelled out in my will, along with my song selections for the party I want you all to have.)

I could go on. And on. I am a neurotic mess. But in my life . . . it's organic.

Thoughts? Anyone afraid of evil clowns? Does anyone else think about the difference between neuroses and tacked-on quirks?