TWO THANKSGIVINGS TO REMEMBER

TWO THANKSGIVINGS TO REMEMBER

From the very meaning of the word, Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on what we have to be thankful for and to look around and see if you’re surrounded by family and friends.  If so, you need look no further.  I have two Thanksgivings that are indelibly printed in my memory bank.

I was about thirteen and times were hard for my family just as they were for most of our friend and other family members. My mother was a cashier in a grocery store and my dad had a small produce stand at the state farmer’s market.  I had a paper route and it took all the money the three of us made to keep afloat.  I also came down with a case of the mumps.

I couldn’t deliver my papers which meant I did not make the few dollars a week that came in from it.  My mother’s sister was home with three small children and her husband was not making that much money at his job, but they volunteered to deliver my papers until I was well.  The little money I got was given to them for gas for the car.  Thanksgiving was on the horizon.

My mother and her sister always planned a big dinner that day with turkey and all the other things that go with a Southern family dinner.  The only problem was no one could afford to buy a turkey.  A decision was made to buy a chicken and roast it.  I know they were disappointed but that was the best they could do.

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, I was home from school and there was a knock at the door.  I eased to it and opened it to find my boss from my paper route standing there. He first asked how I was feeling and we made small talk for a few minutes. Then he said, “I have something for you,” and went to his car. He came back holding a very large bag with a frozen turkey in it. “We had a drawing for all the paper boys and you won.  Here’s your prize.” It was the biggest turkey I had ever seen.

Did I actually win? Was it a gift from him? Divine intervention? I never found out, but we had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners any of us had ever enjoyed.

The second one was in 1968 at the height of the Viet Nam war.  As side note here.  It was, and is still accepted in some circles to call it the Viet Nam conflict. Anytime a stranger is shooting at you and you are shooting back, it’s a war.

I was a Lieutenant and leading a patrol of about fifteen men. We had been out for about three days when someone mentioned it was Thanksgiving Day.  We usually stopped around mid-day to take a break, check equipment, make radio contact with our base and other necessary things as we ate a meal of C Rations.  Another side note for those of you who have never had C’s.  You get a box of some of the most God-awful things that can be put in a can along with a variety of cookies, candy, powdered drinks, condiments etc.  I won’t go into the names given to some of the entrées by Soldiers, but one of the meals contained a small can of turkey mixed with something that none of us could ever identify.  Since we selected the boxes by random with the contents listed face down, we never knew until they were issued what we got.  I don’t remember what I was prepared to eat that day, but three of my men came up and said they had a special gift for me.  Knowing the men like I did, it could have been anything from a case of leprosy to my orders sending me home.  Instead they handed me the can of turkey from one of their meals.  “Happy Thanksgiving,”  was all they said.  One of them took a photo of me eating out of the can and gave it to me.  It’s one of my prized possessions, but it pales with the memories of those two very special days.

I hope you have similar memories and if you don’t…make some.  It’s not too late.

SAY THANKS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

SAY THANKS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

I started this blog because I like to write and sometimes I actually have something to say.  I’ve read other writer’s blogs and they talk a lot about writing but they also put in recipes, stories about their kids, their dogs and what they had for lunch and with whom.  I didn’t know you could do all that.  I thought a writing blog was supposed to be about writing and to get people to buy your books.  Maybe I had the wrong idea to begin with, so today I want to say a very belated THANK YOU” to the person who started all of this.  Not my mother but my English Teacher, Miss Boone.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but unless you’re family or have attended a book signing where I told the story, you can keep reading.

I was not a good student in high school.  My report cards which I did not realize my mother saved and showed to my two daughters proved it.  When she passed away, I found them in her effects and now my grandchildren have seen them.  As a friend of mine says, no one is ever a failure.  At your lowest point you can always serve as a good bad example.

When I was in the 10^th grade my option was not renewed at my high school and I was “advised” to find another place to go the following year.  That’s how I wound up in Miss Boone’s English class.  On the first day, she said we had studied enough nouns and pronouns and verbs and other things that we probably would never use again, so we were going to put them to use and WRITE.

A little background is needed here.  I was fortunate enough to get a job one summer with a traveling carnival of sorts.  It was billed as the Jack Joyce Jungle Caravan and it went from shopping center parking lot to another with animal rides, a snake show and a little petting zoo.  I traveled with the show for two summers when they were in the state of GA.  Back to English class….

Our first assignment was to write a short story.  It could be made up, based on facts or any combination thereof.  I wrote about my time with the carnival the previous summer.  Stories were turned in, graded and one day she pulled out a couple and explained she was going to read the best and worst of the group.  As I recall the worst one was really bad.  Then she said she wanted to read the best one.  She read a few lines and stopped and asked the class who they thought wrote it.  Guesses were Johnny Football, Suzi Cheerleader, Norman Nerd etc.  I knew who it was because she was reading my story.

My first thought was that she was going to have to walk home that day because my plan was to slice her tires on the way out of school.  Instead as I slid lower and lower into my seat she gushed over how good it was and when she handed it back to me it had a very large A+ on it.  The first one I had ever gotten.  (I also found it with my report cards as my mother had saved it as well.)

Each week we were required to write a story.  I continued to write and get very good graded and soon some of less scrupulous friends noticed and asked me to write one for them.  I readily agreed…for a fee of three dollars each.  My first paid writing assignment.  This lasted several weeks and a handful of short stories until Miss Boone caught on and busted me/us.  My afterschool counselling session with her consisted of her telling me I had a gift and not to waste it.  Keep writing.  I did but it took several years and a stint in an Army hospital in a war zone for me to try it again.  When I found out she was right and I had made a few sales I made an effort to find her.  Unfortunately, she had passed away by then and I never got to thank her.

Don’t let that happen to you.  If you need to thank someone, do it now while both of you are still able to understand the reasons.

Next week I’ll talk about cooking, or gardening, or my dog Teddy or the carnival or taking a box of KFC to a black tie catered lunch at Robert E. Lee’s mansion at Arlington national Cemetery on the 4^th of July…or something. Who knows.

HERE’S SOME MONEY…TELL ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW

HERE’S SOME MONEY…TELL ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW

How many times have we as writers heard a friend or fellow writer say, “I don’t want to send this to a publisher because I don’t want them to change a single word?”  I found out a long time ago that I did not write on stone tablets with a chisel.  My words were inspired, but they were not INSPIRED if you know what I mean.  I’m open for suggestions, especially if you’re willing to pay me to accept them.

We need someone to read our work and tell us what we are missing or the mistakes we made.  I tell my screenwriting students that any scene you have to explain, doesn’t work.  It’s the same in a novel or short story.  Your reader may say, “On page 23 she was a blonde and on 96 she has raven hair.”  Mistake?  Not in your mind because, you tell them…”Remember on page 49 she went to the beauty salon and had her hair dyed.”  Did you say so?  Probably not, but you saw her in the shop getting her hair done.  You’re not going to be standing in the editor’s office reading over his or her shoulder when they see the change in hair color so you can explain it.

But here’s where the problem comes in.  We finish the book/screenplay and want to sell it but we know it needs work.  There are multitudes of ads in all the writer’s (not riders if you were paying attention) magazines for people who will read and critique your work for a fee.  Sometimes for a very large fee. Are they worth it? Maybe but only if when you get the critique back its new information for you. Don’t pay to have someone tell you something you already know. 

Dear Writer, your protagonist seems a little cardboard, not well thought out. I don’t like him and I certainly don’t hate him enough to want him dead.  And I really don’t like the way she killed her husband. I mean who water-boards someone while they are sleeping? Wouldn’t they wake up? Even using warm water like she did.

You read the letter with the accompanying bill that is far more than you will get as an advance and say to yourself…”Yeah, I thought I needed to work on giving him a little more reason for her to kill him. And I thought the water board was a nice idea and a stretch, but I wanted to try it anyways.” You knew it wouldn’t work and if you sent it out it would get rejected, so you just paid someone to tell you something you already knew.

If you are an editor and you read this, don’t get me wrong. I think editors do a great job and I’m fortunate to have a great one at my publisher for my books and my manager can find things in my screenplays that I swear were not there when I sent it to him. If you need an editor, let it be when you have had several reads of your work, not only by friends and family, but by members of your writers group.  Don’t let Mama read it because she’ll tell you it’s perfect and you’ll be tempted to tell the publisher she said so when you send it out.   Get some serious feedback.  Get the piece as perfect as you can and then if you want paid help for formatting and professional details, go for it.

Don’t water board yourself.  You’ll have to trust me on this, but it’s not fun.