I moved into a new apartment recently and thought I’d save a few bucks by buying unassembled furniture to help furnish it. Not that I had the time to start jacking around with a screwdriver, wrench, or hammer, but I figured the savings was big enough to make it worth my while. Besides, it wasn’t like I was a neophyte with a set of tools. When my daughters were younger, I did my share of assemblage. Swing-sets . . . ones that usually came with 12 extra screws and a spare thingamagig. Tree-houses . . . most of which toppled out of the oak tree the moment I stepped onto the floor to test it. And doll-houses . . .my middle daughter thought the lopsided structure worked better as a doghouse. Okay, so I might not be the best carpenter in the world, but I was good enough to make it good enough. Know what I mean?

Anyway, I started off with what appeared to be the easiest project first, a bookshelf. I ripped open the box and out tumbled—a bunch of stuff. Fortunately, an instruction book was amongst the ‘stuff’. Or at least I thought it was fortunate until I opened the damn thing. Get a load of this . . .

Bookshelf Instructions

Get the picture? This is one of the reasons why so few people are reading today! Everything in the instruction booklet was pictorial. Not one line of written instruction! Figures. Isn’t that the new standard in today’s society? Instead of focusing on literacy so more people can actually read a set of instructions, we’ve got to dummy stuff down to make it easier for those who can’t. Grrrr. . . .

Oh, yeah, the book offered another caveat. You know how most instruction manuals are tri-lingual? One-third’s written in English, another third in Spanish, and the final third either in French or German? Well, this stupid book was no different. What the heck is that about? If you’re going to dummy down, then just figure a picture is a picture, right? I mean, even if I only spoke German and every odd shaped screw pictured was labeled in French, I think I’d still be capable of working my way through the pictorial instructions for heaven’s sake. Or so I thought . . .

Let me tell you, friends, working with pictures alone ain’t as easy as it looks, no matter the language! It took me forever to assemble those shelves. Was sidewall A supposed to face finished-side up or down during assembly? And what purpose does that squiggly thingamagig serve? Does the bookshelf REALLY need it?

In case you’re wondering, the shelf did just fine without that stupid thingamagig. See?

I’ve just got to make sure to shove the books against the back of the case. Too close to the front, and it has a tendency to , uh . . . lean. What the hell, it’s good enough.

Anyway, seven pieces of furniture later . . . four kitchen chairs, an accompanying bench and table, plus a coffee table, and not one ‘extra’ screw or thingamagig…. I was feeling like Tonia the Tool-girl Taylor!

No doubt about it, I was really jazzed . . . until I tackled the final project.

Sitting in what was supposed to be my bedroom was a huge box labeled; QUEEN BED. I sucked in a breath, opened the box, and a load of lumber fell out. Literally. Accompanying that lumber was, of course, the ever handy-dandy pictorial instruction manual.

This twenty page booklet claimed it took only two hours to assemble the bed. Yeah, right. More like two days! It was the proverbial nightmare. Not one board was lettered or numbered, so you had to guess which plank went where by looking at the holes (size and/or number of holes) in the board depicted in the picture and match it to one of the thirty some-odd pieces of wood strewn across the floor.

I lost count of the number of times I put a section of that bed together only to take it apart again because I’d attached a board backwards. I also lost count of the times I wanted to chunk every friggin’ board out the window and head to the nearest furniture store.

Sadly, when the bed was finally assembled and the mattress didn’t cause it to collapse, I felt no sense of accomplishment. Just frustration and irritation. But I have to admit, I learned two valuable lessons throughout the whole ordeal.

1. Sometimes it’s worth spending a little extra money if it means saving your sanity.

2. When it comes to assembling furniture, the old adage, “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” does NOT apply.

Have you ever had a WOW! moment? You know, one of those rare times when the fullness of something you thought you knew and understood really comes to life inside you. Kind of like knowing there’s a recliner in a dark living room. You know it’s there because you’ve busted your shin against it a time or two. Then all of a sudden someone turns on a light, and the chair you knew was always there is now in full color and view. You can confidently walk towards it, sit in it if you want to, or walk around it if you choose because the path to it and the shape, colors, and texture of that chair are crystal clear.

Well, as fate and luck would have it, I experienced a WOW! moment recently. Here’s what happened . . .

A high school teacher contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in allowing his students to interview me. I agreed, of course, but since time schedules were tight on both ends, we decided to do the interview over the phone. So, on the agreed upon day, he called from his classroom and put me on a speaker phone.

At first the kids were a bit shy, hesitantly asking stock questions like, “Where do you get your ideas? How long does it take you to write a book?” While I’m answering the questions, I’m thinking, “Man, if I had a choice between sitting in a classroom and listening to some old broad blabber over a speaker phone about how long she’d been writing or me doing something else, I’d choose doing something else . . . like getting a root canal.” No, really, it’s true, I was boring myself.

I knew the teacher had prepared questions beforehand to make sure the kids participated in the interview, but I also knew that as soon as we hung up the phone, they’d forget 98% of what was said. And who could blame them? In truth, when you push aside the curtain of social niceties, 97% of the human population wants to talk about themselves, their issues, their accomplishments, their dreams. They’ll listen to you because it’s the polite thing to do, but few really ‘hear’ what you have to say. Why? Because all we’re yakking about is ourselves. —My book—My tour—My life—My kids—My this—My that. Blah—who gives a flip, really? Folks will hear you talk about these things, though, if what you have to say on the subject gives them something, like laughter, motivation, encouragement or hope. In the same vein, if your words stoke any of their emotional embers, be it anger, pride, fear, happiness, etc, you’ll usually find yourself with more ‘hearers’ than not. All that said, though, I knew I faced an even greater challenge here because I was talking to teens, and most of them have the attention span of a gnat. So I decided to gamble….

As soon as the next question was asked… “How old were you when you started writing?” I threw that slow-moving, boring train off the track with this answer…. “I started playing around with words when I was a kid, but I really didn’t start writing until the day I saw my first dead body.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.

The teacher cleared his throat. “Did you say dead body?”

I confirmed and gave a short summary of the first autopsy I’d helped with and how that changed the way I wrote. Truly, that’s when I really started ‘writing’ because I went from imagining what it was like (even with research) to hold a person’s brains, heart, liver, etc., in my hands, to knowing what if felt like, smelled like, looked like.

As I suspected, this opened a flood gate, and the kids couldn’t ask questions fast enough. Before I knew it we were all over the place, jumping from crime scenes to embalming rooms, to ghost hunts, and how all of these experiences fit into writing. Time flew by, making the hour-long interview seem like five minutes. When the teacher finally told the kids it was time to end the interview, I heard a loud collective groan. They didn’t want it to end.

Later that day, the teacher called to let me know that since the interview, his students had been hounding him for copies of my books, and he wanted to surprise them with autographed copies. Needless to say, I was thrilled. I had him send me the names of all the students who’d been in the class, along with a box of books, so I could personalize each copy.

My WOW! moment came when I signed the first book:

For Ana—remember to always keep it real—

As soon as I wrote those words, I flashed back to the sound of the kids’ excited chatter over the phone, their hunger to hear more, to understand more, their disappointment when we had to hang up. Thinking about that, I realized I had told them very little about Deborah or her writing process. Instead, I’d shared my adventures with them, fleshing out the stories with details of sights and sounds and smells, bringing the kids as up-close and personal as possible so each of them felt like they were standing beside me, experiencing those same adventures. I did it without the aid of hand gestures, facial expressions, or eye contact, and they heard.

So did I.

I’m a storyteller. I just happen to write my stories on paper more often than I verbalize them, which makes it all the more important for me to pay attention to every word I put on a page. The words have to have life—they need to breathe.

And I’m the one who needs to remember to always keep it real.

There’s a huge difference between writing a novel and creating a short story. I have a tendency to be verbose, so the structure of a novel fits me well. In it I feel I get more opportunities to bring my characters to life. I can add in a bit of their background and more of their mannerisms to give the reader a true flavor of what the character’s about. Doing the same thing, bringing a character to life I mean, in a short story takes pure damn genius in my opinion. And a genius I’m not. At the moment, I’m working on rewrites for two shorts that will appear in an anthology next year. ALL of the contributors are excellent storytellers and can make a short story sing like Whitney Houston on her best vocals day. Mine sounds like somebody’s Uncle Charles singing in the shower with a bad case of laryngitis.

Fortunately, one of the tools that has aided me along the road of short story writing, has been a plot outline that a friend shared with me. It’s been invaluable in helping me get to the point of the story without a lot of fluff and/or verbosity. Wait a second, ain’t fluff and verbosity one in the same? Yeah, ok, so add redundancy to the list as well.

Anyway, because it’s been so useful to me, I thought I’d share it with you. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the outline comes from the infamous, master storyteller of all times….Dr. Jack Williamson.

Here’s the crux of the concept….

In a 3,000 word (or 12 page) story, for example, the beginning is about 750 words, the body about 1500 and the ending about 750 with resolution/validation taking no more than a few sentences. Thus you have the following outline:

BEGINNING (3 pages)
1. Main character
2. Disturbing situation (conflict)
3. Character’s story purpose
4. Hazards or difficulties
5. Assets essential to the ending

BODY (6 pages)
1. Attempts to achieve purpose (usually 2-3, increasing in difficulty)
2. Results (usually 2-3, commonly failures)
3. Black (or bright) moments

ENDING (3 pages)
1. New stimulus
2. Final conflict (one last attempt as above, usually succeeds.)

RESOLUTION/VALIDATION

So, there ya go. The perfect formula for the perfect short story and/or novel…..happy singin’ everyone!

Two weeks prior to 9-11, I was flying back from Seattle, Wa. The flight was turbulent-free, smoother than silk on a baby’s bottom—yet, I sat white-knuckled throughout the flight. Something just didn’t ‘feel’ right to me, so much so that by the time we landed I was damn near in full panic mode. When I got off the plane, that feeling didn’t leave me, and no matter how unfounded the fear or the fact that I’d already flown about 150,000 miles that year, I knew it would be a while before I got on another plane.

Then 9/11 happened.

Reasoning told me that the fear I’d experienced on that Seattle flight had probably been precognitive, but I still refused to get on a plane after that catastrophic event. And so it remained for the next three and a half years.

Necessity finally got me flying again. There simply was no way for me to drive from Los Angeles to Atlanta in two days, then turn around and be in San Antonio, Tx. on the third day. Oddly enough, as determined as I was not to fly all those years, I slipped right back into the plane-jumping habit with few problems. No seat gripping, no hyperventilating, no panic attacks….. But wouldn’t you know it, just when things get back on track, when flying, for me, goes back to silky smooth baby’s bottom sailing…..the airlines decided to up the price on checked luggage. At first you were allowed one “free” checked bag, but to check a second bag would cost you $25. A third, possibly up to $100. Now they’ve even taken away the one “free” checked bag! My take on that? “What the #&$%?”

The airlines claim that a heavier plane means more fuel consumption, and they need the increase to cover the rising cost of fuel. If that’s true, then I think they should go up on their tickets straight across the board. Adding an additional cost to check baggage is discriminatory in my opinion. The way I see it, when I fly, the airline takes on another 170 pounds. 120 for me, 50 for my luggage, 2 bags maximum. But what about that 350 pound man sitting beside me who only brought a brief case? Why doesn’t he have to pay extra for his 150 pounds of excess?

Needless to say, this extra cost for baggage has me fuming. So much so, I’m considering driving everywhere again. It’s the principal of the thing, you know? Precognition might have nudged me about a pending disaster, but common sense tells me that where these extra baggage charges are concerned, somebody’s getting screwed, and it sure ain’t the airlines.

Some of you might have already heard, I lost my dad recently. July 12th, to be exact, the day after his 94th birthday. Although he’d been sick off and on for about a year, Dad loved life and hated to let it go. We were fortunate to be at his bedside when his body finally said, “Sorry, old buddy, like it or not, we’ve gotta go.” His passing was peaceful and quick, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

Dad was an extraordinary man. I say that not just because I’m his daughter but because of the effect he had on everyone he met. It didn’t matter if it was a man, woman, or child, when someone left Dad’s company, they left laughing, smiling, or more confident in themselves and/or the challenges they faced. Without question, the legacy he left behind was his life and how he lived it.
Through example, Dad taught us—

– You can achieve anything in life if you’re willing to work hard enough to get it.

– You learn a thousand times more by listening than you do from talking.

– Say what you mean and mean what you say and always look a person in the eye when you do it.

– Physical pain is just a road block in life. It’s not an impenetrable wall.

–Don’t take yourself or life too seriously–it’ll all change tomorrow anyway.

–It’s a guarantee that stuff will come about in life and knock you down, but the only thing that can keep you down is you.

–Success in life has little to do with material things. Real success is living life on your own terms.

–Life might have rules, but that doesn’t mean you have to live those rules just like everybody else.

–Stay true to yourself no matter how unconventional that may appear to the rest of the world.

–If you make a mistake, don’t keep beating yourself up over it–learn from the damn thing and move on.

–Self pity is a useless emotion that’s not worth your time.

–The cheapest thing in life is an excuse.

–Offer advice only when asked. Otherwise you’ll wind up only talking to hear yourself talk.

–Patience doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for life to toss something good your way–unless you’re sitting in a deer stand! Patience is really a synonym for tenacity–being patient with yourself whenever you have to push past something that feels immovable, knowing one way or another, you WILL get through it.

–Loving family doesn’t mean loving them only when they conform to your way of thinking. It means loving them for who, and sometimes in spite of who, they are.

There were truly so many wonderful things to learn from this remarkable man’s life. My only regret is not having asked Dad for one last piece of advice– How does a daughter move on once her hero is gone?

I guess I’ll have to figure that one out on my own. And I have a feeling that as difficult as some of life’s lessons have been so far, this one may be the toughest of all.
deb