This story was written towards the end of the summer in 2015, just a few months after we moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs. We knew nothing about our new town before moving here, except that the few people we met who'd heard of it said it was great for families. Low crime rate, excellent schools, people moved here just to raise their kids. Sounds good, right?
But we didn't really know anyone in the town when we moved. The kids were not going to camp. We didn't have a babysitter. No daycare. Because our former landlord screwed us over, we could not afford to join the town's community pool. So that meant a summer of just me and the kids finding things to do for nine weeks. We discovered a nearby skate park and my older son picked up skate boarding. We joined the nearby science center. I let the kids ride their bikes in the street. I set up kiddie pools in the backyard. None of this kept my kids amused for very long, and by the time the first day of school arrived in September I wept with relief.
I had this idea that when we moved in, suddenly families with kids would pour out of their houses on our street and my kids would be outside playing all day every day all summer long, but instead we met almost no one.
Things have changed, certainly. We have friends in town, the kids have plenty of play dates, we have babysitters, we've joined the community pool in the summer, and we know which camps the kids like. Our summers are now full of friends, camp, vacations, and spending long afternoons socializing poolside. But that first summer is burned into our psyches: long, empty days full of quiet and boredom. And that's where this story comes from.
Don't you hate it when people let months, even entire years go by without updating their blogs?
Me, too.
*ahem*
When I moved to New York City in 1996, I never intended to leave. About a year and a half ago, the fam and I moved to a small town in New Jersey. Most New Jersey small towns within a one-hour drive of New York City are considered suburbs, and ours is no exception. With housing prices in Brooklyn showing no sign of coming down any time soon, and with my husband working in Secaucus, moving seemed like a resigned evil.
So here we are.
That first summer in our new house -- like, a real house with a backyard and basement and a mailbox that doesn't require a key -- the kids were not in any kind of camp or daycare, I was working from home part time, and blogging seemed like one more chore to drag down my mood.
Then the kids started school and things got really hectic. There were issues. There was drama. There were problems. Getting us all through each day felt like a marathon. I kept waiting for that moment when everything would click into place and I'd finally feel like this was home, this was our life, and this was fine. Everyone kept telling me how happy I should be. So I kept waiting.
Every once in a while I go on a book-buying freeze because I find that my to-read pile has grown out of control. Whether they were given to me, I won them, or bought them and forgot, when I find I have more than two dozen unread books in my house, I force myself to read those before I buy any more.
Years ago I had attended Book Expo America and since it was the last day of the convention people were giving away free books. I picked up "Come Along With Me," a collection of Jackson's short stories and lectures. And then I forgot about it.
Reading this book at the exact moment when living in small town suburbia felt more like the American Nightmare than the American Dream tapped into something deep down in my psyche that I couldn't put my finger on. Of course stories like "The Summer People" and "The Lottery" resonated with me, but what really piqued my interest were the details of Jackson's life and her personal essays. I followed "Come Along With Me" by reading "The Haunting of Hill House" and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," and I felt like, "Where have these stories been my whole life?" It was like finding my literary True Love.
After "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," I bought and read "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons," both collections of Jackson's personally essays on raising children in small-town America. And though those stories happened over five decades ago, they resonate with me today with their timeless themes of stubborn children, household chaos, and small town weirdness.
Now we've settled in to our "quaint" little piece of the suburbs just fine: the kids have friends and get invited to birthday parties; my husband and I have game nights with other couples; we've been to enough restaurants to have favorites; we all have library cards. Sometimes I don't hate it here, and I'm no longer scared to drive. The summer camps are much cheaper, the schools are amazing, and I know where to find NYC-worthy bagels. But it still feels weird to me and probably always will. I'm a city girl. I feel safe in cities, with their crowds and anonymity. Growing up in Miami and living my entire adult life in New York City, I've never felt out of place as a Jew; here, I'm definitely a minority. My kids went from a school in Brooklyn where at least a dozen other children had their same Hispanic last name, to being the only ones with that name here. And though our town is known for its enormous, fancy houses, we live in a smallish house on the less-desirable end of town and on my really good days I don't feel self-conscious about that.
I've written three new stories in the past three months, and one flash piece before that, all with the same theme: the horror within our own families. I call it "domestic horror," and I fully admit I am inspired by the Shirley Jackson. My flash piece, "I Forgot to Lock the Door," was written during that first summer here when I kept waiting for the "good for families!" part of our new town to show itself and felt, instead, like we had made a huge mistake in moving here.
So yes, it's been tough at times but it's getting easier. And yes, blogging seemed like the last thing I wanted to do for a while. At least now I feel less alone, both in my real life thanks to the friends I've made, and in my inner life, thanks to Shirley Jackson.
I apologize for the delayed announcement, but my short story ATHEISTS IN THE CEMETERY, is now available as part of Burial Day Books' latest anthology, GOTHIC BLUE BOOKS IV: THE FOLKLORE EDITION!
Also, my short story TINY LIGHTS (formerly known as THE HEALER, formerly known as DEATH OF THE GOOD DOCTOR), has just been accepted by Fiction Vortex for either their November 2014 or December 2014 issue!
TINY LIGHTS has been out on submission for nearly two years, with sixteen rejections before this acceptance. It's had plenty of positive feedback from editors all over the genre fiction marketplace, but no love until now. I've always known it's a good story, and now my little baby finally has a home. Which just proves: determination is a writer's best friend. Believe in yourself. Remember that the only way to never get published is to quit.
A fellow author I follow, Tami Veldura, started holding herself accountable for her writing progress by posting a "WIP Wednesday." In that spirit, here is an update on my writing projects:
BLOODSISTERS
I have slowed down the query process on BLOODSISTERS, for various reasons. It's not in a drawer yet, but I will probably not send out any new queries at this point.
THE HEALER
Out for submission to an anthology.
KNIGHTLY TALES FOR A RAINY DAY
Out for submission to a contest.
ATHEISTS IN THE CEMETERY
Out for submission to a contest.
THE STONE AGE GAP
Out for submission to a pro market.
THEN AND NOW
Searching for a submission market.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
Searching for a submission market.
THE HOLLOW QUEEN
My biggest work to date is now at 107K words. My original goal was 120K, which -- using the Stephen King-approved method of paring down 10% of your wc in revisions -- I intended to revise to between 105 and 110K before querying it next year. That goal, unfortunately, had to be adjusted to 110K, with a revised draft goal of between 95 and 100K.
The reason for this was pacing. For most of the novel, I feel the pacing is fine. I have good lead-ups, plenty of foreshadowing, and lots of character and setting development. After I hit the 100K mark, though, I felt the action needed to be sped up -- but I ran out of smaller plot points that would lead up to my big, climactic finale. At some point while writing yesterday I realized I was stalling. I had to get to the point. My characters were where they needed to be; what needed to be revealed had been revealed; all that was left was the big showdown. And so, rather than keeping myself chained to a word count that no longer felt realistic, I cut it down to 110K, and with that, I should have a complete first draft by the end of tomorrow.
I'll take a one week break before jumping right into revisions: I've already made notes as I've gone along so I know the major changes I need to do, and I've promised my critique partners they'll have a draft by Labor Day. My goal is to have a query-worthy draft by spring 2015.
How about you? How are your writing projects coming along?
Just for fun, as a sort of check-in to keep myself on track, here's a rundown of all my current WIPs:
*Atheists in the Cemetery: My short ghost story for Fiction Desk's Ghost Story Competition has been returned by 2/3 of my crit partners. Feedback is positive, though there is still plenty of work to do. This was a tough one to write, which is weird: one of the first writing contests I ever won was with a ghost story for the Miami Herald when I was in 8th grade. My living room has a view of the nearby cemetery, which helped inspire the story. So...what gives? Maybe I went into this one with too much hubris. I figured it would just flow easily from my fingertips. The story itself is fine, it's just not very creepy -- a characteristic I believe ghost stories need for success. Will continue to inject as much creep factor into this one as I can before the May 30 submission deadline.
*The Stone Age Gap: I wrote this on a whim, inspired by my older son's love of robots and my fear of half-robot cyborg grandchildren one day. Once again, early feedback is positive, though it seems not reading a lot of science fiction is coming back to bite me in the ass. Not only is the theme of my story (sort of "Rise of the Machines" meets "Stepford Wives") been done to death, there's an actual name for it: near-future neo-Luddite. I like that, it makes me sound prophetic. I guess all those episodes of the Twilight Zone have rubbed off on me. (Rod Serling, writer of The Twilight Zone, was famously anti-technological takeover.) All I can do now for this story is hope that my take on the "near-future neo-Luddite" sub-sub-genre is creative and interesting enough to get published somewhere. Rod Serling, here I come!
*The Hollow Queen: I'm 46K words in, or at about 38% of my target word count goal of 120K. The reason for such a high word count goal is because I plan to pare it down in revisions to 100-105K. At this point the story is exactly where I need it to be, the action is coming along, and the characters are behaving themselves. If I can average 1K per day from now on - accepting that I'll have to do 2-3K on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the little one is at daycare, to make up for days when I can't write at all - I can have a complete first draft by the end of June, and a revised draft to send to my crit partners by Labor Day. Then, hopefully by next spring I'll have a query-worth draft to start pitching to agents.
*Wanderlust: Continues to collect metaphorical dust in the metaphorical drawer of my laptop's hard drive. I'm 55K in to a projected 100K first draft, so that's not nothing. But, it's had to take a rest while I bang out The Hollow Queen. Once THQ is out to my crit partners I'll revisit Wanderlust.
So there you go. Now I've said it, I've thrown it out there into the ether, now I *have* to finish those short stories and complete a first draft of THQ by June 30. Challenge accepted!
Last month I broke one of the Sacred Holy Commandments of Writing: Thou Shalt Not Stop Writing A First Draft Until It Is Complete.
The idea behind this is so ubiquitous on writing websites, in writing books, and among writers in online message boards and forums, that it feels almost like a real law, like something written into the Constitution of the United States: get the words onto paper (or "paper" these days) first, then see to everything else. Variations on this include: You can't revise what isn't written; the only guaranteed way to never get published is to stop writing; and all of NaNo.
Yet, upon reaching the 40K word mark for my second novel, THE HOLLOW QUEEN, I took a break.
I know, tie me to the writer's post and have me flogged with a whip made from Stephen King's "On Writing."
Why did I take a break? I had to. I had been pushing THQ so hard that the story was beginning to unravel. A new main character I hadn't counted on was starting to take over, and a subplot I never thought about had popped up. I also had two short story ideas that would not give me peace. I figured, if I took a break from the big project to focus on two smaller projects, I could go back to THQ refreshed, relaxed, and ready to pull the story back together.
And you know what? It worked.
Sometimes rules, even the most sacred and unbreakable ones, need to be broken.
I'm now ready to wrestle with the new main character, clean up the new subplot, and I have two new short stories to cast out into the world of markets, contests, and anthologies.
My final word count goal for THQ is 120K, and from there I plan to pare it down to 100-105K. If I write 1,000 words a day from here on out I can finish the first draft by the end of June and have a revised draft for my crit partners by September. After that I have another half-written novel, WANDERLUST, to finish up. Next year I plan to focus on more short stories and revisions, though, of course, I can always take a break to write another novel. *grin*
Do you ever take breaks in the middle of really big projects, or do you have to plow through to the end? How many writing projects do you usually have going on at once?
Usually I post on Wednesdays, but yesterday my wifi was slow. If it took half an hour for my Facebook page to refresh, what hope could I have of my blog updating before my next birthday?
Except for my book reviews, which I carefully craft and read over several times before publishing, I like to keep my blog fairly fresh. I generally write on the day that I post so I don't have time to overthink things or revise to death.
So let's jump in, shall we?
This week word around the 'webs was that it was the 30th anniversary of the day that the detention in "The Breakfast Club" took place. Therefore, I think this is as good a time as any to introduce you all to Meredith's Theory of the Perfect Movie.
I created this theory sometime during my studies at NYU, where I graduated with a BA in -- I'm not making this up, this is a real thing, all of it -- Dramatic Literature, Theater History and Cinema Studies, with an emphasis on American movies. Basically it was for people who like stories but didn't want to be English majors (I love books but detest being told what to read, just ask my husband), and liked movies but couldn't get into Tisch School of the Arts. (Shed a tear, if you will, to my dashed dreams of being a Jewish female Spike Lee.)
For my major I had to read a lot of plays and watch a lot of movies. Not all of them -- plays or movies - were good. "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" has gone down in my personal history as my most hated movie of all time, 91 minutes of my life I will never ever get back.
I hate you.
Some movies that are considered "classics" simply don't withstand the test of time. "The Wizard of Oz" does; most early Disney films do not. If "Snow White" were released today, I doubt it would do well at the box office. Today's audience just doesn't have the stomach for such a passive heroine, nor for a storyline that involves the hero and heroine falling in love after he kisses her out of a coma.
Not so much, no.
Which brings me to my theory. It's quite simple, really: sometimes, every so often, a movie comes along that is just plain perfect. The dialogue is believable; the acting is well-crafted; the cinematography is subtle but engaging; the music, direction, story, everything comes together in perfect unity and harmony.
People have movies that they love, that speak to them personally and for better or worse gets under their skin in some ways. For me, "Gravity" was more an active physical experience than a passive moviegoing one. But not everyone loves "Gravity," and I don't think it's perfect.
I think "The Breakfast Club" is perfect, though. You'll find few people who don't like that movie. Here's why.
"TBC" is storytelling boiled down to its most essential parts. There's no intellectual trickery going on here; no one feels stupid after watching "TBC." There's no bait-and-switch "surprise" ending. Yet it's not a stupid movie. It's subtle and shifting and reveals itself bit by bit with every line and every cut and scene change.
It also takes place entirely in one location. No sweeping vistas, no helicopter shots, no CGI, no pyrotechnics.
The story is a little predictable -- the love connections are entirely predictable -- but it works. It starts off categorizing the characters into single, two-dimensional roles, and ends with the revelation that they are deeper than that. At its heart, "TBC" lets audiences feel good about themselves because it helps us realize we, too, are more than our labels. We, too, are capable of being more than what people think we should be.
Judd Nelson: Fashion Icon
And the music is, of course, one of the best parts of the movie.
A familiar story told in the most straightforward way possible and yet it's anything but simple. It's what we writers strive for every day. It's what I work so hard to do with my own writing. No bells and whistles, nothing superfluous. Just a damn good story, told well.
Here's one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies.
P.S. For half a semester in high school I modeled my personal style after John Bender. It was the early 90s and grunge was all the rage, so despite living in Miami I somehow pulled off wearing sweatpants and flannel shirts to school every day.
What do you consider a perfect movie? Or a perfect book?
