In this issue:
* Grandma's Here
* Writing the buffet
* Great quote
* Coast writing events
* Book report
Grandma's Here! Or at Least Her Book Is
I remember yelling "Grandma's here!" back in the '50s and '60s when my grandparents' baby blue Buick eased up the driveway. In those days, Grandma Anne was queen-sized, slow-walking, smelling of fabric and face powder, her curly hair turning gray. She never learned to drive, so she always came with Grandpa Al, balding, quiet, puffing on his pipe. Grandma would sit in the corner chair, holding court while Mom rushed around preparing a meal and dodging her mother's suggestions about how she should change the garden or the house or her hair. She drove my parents nuts, but my brother Mike and I loved her, loved her warm cushy hugs, the dollar bills she slipped into our pockets, her interest in whatever we were doing.
Ah, that was a long time ago. We lost Grandma in 1982 at age 80, 14 years after cancer and diabetes took Grandpa from us. They are buried together at the Catholic Cemetery in Santa Clara.
BUT Grandma Anne is on the cover of my new edition of Stories Grandma Never Told: Portuguese Women in California. Artist Andrew Cier of Newport Lazerquick took her image from her wedding picture and superimposed it on a photograph of a castle near Lisbon. In the picture, Grandma is in her 20s, younger and prettier than any of us ever knew her. Her dark eyes stare out from under a jeweled cloche hat. At that moment, her whole adult life lay ahead of her. What happened before that and what happened in the years between her wedding day and when we grandchildren arrived we'll never know. We didn't think to ask, and now we can only wonder.
For my book, I did ask dozens of women the very questions I should have asked Grandma. They answered honestly, sometimes with tears, sometimes laughing, often philosophically accepting that life has its ups and downs. Some are gone now. Many have lived through some of those ups and downs. I'll try to keep you up to date at my blog, www.portuguesegrandma.blogspot.com. Feel free to share your stories there, too.
The content of this book isn't new, just the cover and the foreward. Heyday Books originally published "Grandma" in 1998, releasing the rights back to me last summer. Now I'm a publisher. Working as Blue Hydrangea Productions with Rose Reed at Lazerquick, I formatted every word and picture of this edition, which is available. For ordering information, e-mail me at suelick@casco.net or click on my Books page, where you can order through Paypal. You can also assume I'll have copies with me wherever I go.
Meanwhile, my Freelancing for Newspapers book is in production at Quill Driver Books in California. The official publication date is May 1, although I'm told some stores might not have it until June. By summer, I hope to have a new book in each hand. And then it's on to other projects.
If you want to talk about the newspaper business, there's a blog for that, too. Find it at www.freelancingfornewspapers.blogspot.com. Starting next month, I'm planning to offer a weekly story idea or marketing tip.
The writing biz is like a buffet
Speaking of writing projects, it occurred to me that the reason I have partially finished work all over my office is that stories are like dishes being prepared for a banquet. You have to start the Jello salad early so it can sit and gel. The turkey has to go into the oven hours before you eat. Some dishes, like stir fries, cook quickly but take a lot of chopping, grating and sautéing before you put them in the wok. For some entrees, like my cheater chili, you just open a lot of cans of premade ingredients and mix the contents together. Some meals, thank God, you can just pop in the microwave for a few minutes and eat.
Some writing projects are more like homemade bread. You mix it, knead it, let it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, punch it down again and wait anxiously for the dough to rise up near the edge of the pan so you can put it in the oven, bake it for an hour and finally enjoy that first warm slice dripping with butter. It seems to take forever, but the result is worth it.
Have you ever worked hard on a potluck dish only to have somebody come in at the last minute with a bucket of KFC chicken and everybody eats the chicken, igoring what you brought? Writing can be like that, too, so make sure you like whatever you cook up well enough to take it home and eat it yourself.
Great quote stolen off the "Musings" site:
"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves." Don Marquis (1878-1937), U.S. journalist, poet, dramatist and humorist. Think about it.
Oregon Coast Writing Events
Get your calendars out. On April 10, Christina Katz, whose new book Writer Mama just came out from Writer's Digest Books, will be our guest at the coast branch of Willamette Writers. She's going to help us look at what kind of writing career we want to build and how to do it. We meet from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Newport Public Library, Olive and Nye streets. Admission is free, and there will be cookies. Some of us get together for dinner at the Chowder Bowl before our meetings. If you want to join us, either be there at 5:00 or let me know you're coming so we can save a seat.
On April 21, Writers on the Edge will present its second annual Haiku Poetry slam. Teams will be formed to write haikus (three-line poems of 5, 7 and 5 syllables) while being timed. Then judges will give them number scores ala "Dancing with the Stars." Prizes will be awarded. The fun starts at 7 p.m., and admission is free. We have a new venue, the completely remodeled Café Mundo at Second and Coast streets. For more information, see the WOE website at www.writersontheedge.org.
Book Report
***** The List, by Tara Ison, Scribner, 2007. Wow. My favorite Antioch University MFA professor writes even better than she teaches. This many-layered tale of twisted love is not only masterfully written, but has a plot that won't let you go until you have reached the end and read the acknowledgements, the author bio and the cover, like licking the crumbs off the cake plate. The premise is ingenious. Isabel, a star medical student, and Al, a video store clerk who gave up his movie career after directing one successful film, know they have to break up. They are so different their romance will never work long-term. But they haven't done everything they wanted to do together. They make a list, agreeing to part after item 10. Instead they keep adding to the list, their choices becoming more and more dangerous, leading to a wild and bloody conclusion. Ison's first novel, A Child Out of Alcatraz, was wonderful, but this is even better. Making it more fun, Ison incorporates familiar Los Angeles-area scenes and she clearly did her homework in the worlds of medicine and movies, getting the details just right. This book should win all the awards and make a great film.
***** Digging to America, by Anne Tyler, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Some famous authors lose the magic over time, but not Tyler. This is a beautiful book, and I love the originality of the subject. It begins with two families, one American-born, one Iranian, picking up their adopted Korean babies at the Baltimore airport. The little girls, Jin-Ho and Susan, pull the families together, despite their huge differences. Jin-Ho's parents, Brad and Bitsy, are all-American aging hippies while Susan's parents, Sami and Ziba are old-fashioned and proper. Both couples have big families and soon everyone is meshed together. The point of view changes among the characters so smoothly we barely notice. We have romance, we have conflict, and we learn a great deal about what it's like to be Iranian American in the 21st century, but the best part though is Tyler's gift for capturing life as it really is, using details that tell you she's really paying attention. A taste: "He passed her on the library steps where she was eating a snack with a friend, and her snack was not chips or cookies or Ring Dings but a pear, which she was slicing into wedges with a tiny silver knife like the ones his mother set out with the fruit tray after every meal." Digging to America nourishes the soul.
** Boomer Nation, by Steve Gillon, Free Press, 2004. This is not light reading. Gillon, a professor, history book author and TV show host, has taken an academic view of the effects of the baby boomer generation on American Life. He tries to focus on the lives of six outstanding boomers, including a Vietnam vet, a breast cancer advocate, a born-again Christian, an advertising expert, a TV writer/producer, and an architect. We read a bit about each character, then go off into such long passages of statistics and analysis that by the time we return to these people we can't quite remember who they were or what happened to them before. The book is educational and well-researched, but in the end, as one of those boomers, I just feel as if Gillon didn't get to the heart of the subject.
* Second Wife, Second Best by Glynnis Walker, Doubleday and Co., 1984. This book, purchased in hope of new insights on the question of childless second wives, offers very little on that subject. Most of the book is filled with bitterness, sexism, and legal "facts" that are so out of date they're useless. Walker operates on the premise that the second wife is universally treated as a second-class citizen, never as good as the first wife. She is burdened with the children and financial garbage of the husband's first marriage, has no legal rights, and gets no respect. The laws and the culture have changed tremendously since she published this book, but I became a second wife in 1985, and very little in this book is true for me. Unless you're an unhappy second wife looking for someone to share Walker's bad vibes, forget this book.
****************************************************************
That's it for April. This month I'm on call for jury duty, my first time in Oregon. I'll let you know how it turns out. Happy birthday, Shurnie and Tracy. Happy Easter to everyone. Spring is here. Hooray!
Hugs,
Sue
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All contents copyright Sue Fagalde Lick 2007
