Moulage, or How to Make Volunteers into Victims.

Sorry I haven’t written lately, but I spent the last two days riding cross-country in a van in order to spend three days making volunteers into victims. It’s New York Hope time again, and my skill set in moulage gets a workout at a disaster training center nicknamed “Disaster Disneyland”.

I don’t have any pictures to post because they’re just too gory. For example, a long gash down one’s arm with plenty of blood. Or a broken leg with the bone sticking out. A crush injury with lots of bruising. That kind of thing. No burns on this round, but those are fun to make too. We make the injuries with wax and paints and gel and prop impalements.

What do we do with the made-up victims? We train them to emulate victims in a big exercise where emergency and disaster management students work in teams to search and rescue in various habitats, triage, and provide basic first aid. We want to make this as believable as possible, so we have the volunteer role-players.

I do two major exercises a year, this one here in upstate New York, and one in Maryville where I live. I also do some smaller exercises like the docudrama in Savannah this year.

This is something I live for, a hobby that means something, and appeals to my creative side.

Wouldn’t you like being made up as an injury victim?

Feeling the Tension

I’m once again querying, sending out a manuscript and all the trimmings to agents looking to see if any of them want to represent my book.

It’s a nerve-wracking proposition, especially as I have had no luck so far with getting agents to look. It’s difficult putting one’s best work out there, not knowing if this time it will get some traction. Face it, rejection is difficult to face, and no, I am not used to it.

I’ve sent ten queries out today and I don’t expect to hear from any of them today, as it’s Sunday. Tomorrow, the early rejectors will reply, and I will wait on the others as I send out more queries. I’ve done this before.

I have made some important changes to this version, some having to do with grammar throughout and the more important ones having to do with something I should never have attempted with the story.

Wish me luck!

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

As the End of the Summer Approaches …

I can feel the end of the summer. The County Fair is over, the weather is boiling, and I’ve done all my digital setup for the fall semester. I always do it early, according to my Facebook posts from years past, mostly to prepare myself for the fact that my days will be fuller and more carefree, and there will not be nearly as much free time to write.

School starts August 17, less than a month from now. Meetings start a week before that, and there will (hopefully) be a beginning-of-semester cookout for faculty and staff which represents the beginning of the semester more than any ritual could.

What have I accomplished? I’m a quarter of the way through one book, an eighth of the way through another, and I don’t know which one to write. I have finalized It Takes Two to Kringle, which is waiting only for some last minute putting together before I submit it to Kindle. I have edited an old but (in my opinion) outstanding book called Prodigies, which I hope to send off to agents soon. I neglected my garden again. I relaxed.

Life is good and I passed through the summer doldrums without much damage. Soon I will go through the beginning of semester highs (If this sounds like bipolar, it is, sort of). But it’s my cycle of the year and I will do my best to meet it.

Blessings in Disguise

I have a tendency to feel rejections keenly, thinking that they are a personal judgment of me. But what if they’re blessings? What if they’re there to keep me from really embarrassing myself with a mediocre (or worse) submission?

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

I’ve been going over old works I have written. I’ve written so many half-developed character sketches that aren’t stories, so many poems of the same, with no hook. Novels with plot twists that became deal-breakers.

I’m not a poor writer, but I want to be a better one. I want to be accepted for publication more often. Someday I want to have a novel professionally published. This won’t start happening unless I see these rejections as blessings in disguise. (Or even if I do, I suppose, but I’d like to be optimistic.)

Some Days We’re Not So Lucky

This errand trip is zero for three so far.

First errand: Get the car bra replaced on our ’09 Honda Fit. I don’t know why the car needs a bra, having no breasts, but there you go. We’re waiting for the dealership to call back. The dealership hasn’t called back.

Second errand: Get a digital picture for online application for passports. Walgreens takes passport pictures. They do not take digital passport pictures because there’s no such thing. So much for experimental government programs and red tape.

Third errand (current): Go to coffee and write. The atmosphere is fine, with its rough brick and floor tile and surplus of wood. The coffee is too acidic for me, as is every coffee I get here, which tells me their brewing parameters are off. For me to reject a coffee is strange; in consolation, I ate half a honey lavender bar. So there’s writing, but no coffee.

Fourth errand: I hope this errand goes better. There’s now an Asian food market in town. That might go well, if by well one means purchasing half the store. I cook Thai food enthusiastically, Indian vegetarian food casually, and Chinese food lackadaisically. I have a goal of picking up a package of frozen durian to make a durian custard over sticky rice, and some cans of curry paste, and some seaweed, and maybe some vegetarian chow mein, and some Thai eggplants, and … good news! They’re open today!

Photo by JAN N G U Y E N ud83cudf41 on Pexels.com

So I guess 1 out of 4 isn’t bad.

In Defense of Ugly Days

Can I compare thee to a summer’s day?

This day does not belong in a love sonnet. The skies are a mid slate-grey; the air is so humid it feels like I could wring a cup of water out of it; and I am underwhelmed by a scenery dominated by weeds.

Today is not a beautiful day by any measure of “beautiful” unless there is something in it to attract hydrologists. But I find something about it appealing.

This day is my inner child

Somewhere at home I have a stuffed toy whose fur sticks up in every direction and has a googly eyed smile. (See below) This is how I envision my inner child, so homely it’s delightful, ingratiating, happy.

Today is like my inner child. Nobody would seek it out or list it among their best days of summer. Yet I sat on the porch swing earlier, feeling attuned to the endless clouds and the slight breeze. Smudged nose, scraped knees, unkempt day. My inner child mirrored in the day.

Learn to love the imperfect

I am reminded to love the imperfect. The gloomy summer’s day, the homely stuffed toy, the scruffy child. They have their own appeal.

A Poem in Retrospect

I have a poem that I think is great — almost. Except for the last line:

Deep Touch

He took me on a tour of the city –

tumbling water and greenbelts

and always, always the wind fluttering flags

in concrete forests. Over coffee at Timmy’s,

he said he craved deep touch,

choirboy eyes showing bleak around the edges.

I asked him how that worked,

nervously eyeing the billowy bed

which whispered raw suggestions in my mind.

He crawled onto the comforter,

A wild brilliant bird. He whispered,

“Wrap yourself around me.” So I did.

I buried my face in midnight hair, and pulled

my arms around his chest — warm, warm

with muscles steel potential under his skin.

He took my hand in his and placed it

over his heart. I felt wind fluttering flags

in a concrete forest inside me.

I dreamed the bird revealed himself in my arms –

A rising phoenix, poised for flaming flight,

melting the tall city buildings in the night.

Without the weight of concrete, I, too, could fly

with wings made up of flags and colorful banners,

with the song I had lost as a child.

Five or more years after I wrote it, I think the last line is disingenuous and a copout. Maybe even everything after “Melting the tall city buildings in the night” is disingenuous and a copout. I begin to think so. The poem is about noise and silence and don’t forget sex.

Let me know what you think

Progress

I got 500 words written today on my book!

Technology Hates Me

I have so many things I need to do today — put up a TikTok video, insert some front and back matter into the latest book, and tweak the cover for the same novel (which will be a Christmas novel, It Takes Two to Kringle, out October 1).

But technology hates me today:

Atticus (a book formatting app) keeps stalling out.
Atticus also is missing its back matter section so I can’t put in an afterword, acknowledgements, or disclaimers in my novel.
Photoshop (where I design my covers) won’t let me copy and paste a picture.
Crazy Video Maker will not let me stretch out the time pictures stay on screen for as long as I need them to.
ProWritingAid thinks I am making run-on sentences. (I am not).

At least WordPress is not throwing hitches in my writing.

And, to be honest, Photoshop functioned well when I figured out I used the wrong command.

But the level of frustration! I had hoped to have my book ready on Amazon (just in case) this weekend, and that will not happen. I hate being derailed.

Oh, well, need to find something to keep me occupied.

Progress!

Now, finally, as the summer winds down, I’m feeling motivated! The book and cover for It Takes Two to Kringle are almost done. I have brushed up my query letter and synopsis of Apocalypse in case I get motivated to query it. I have done little with Avatar of the Maker, but I have reconciled myself with the fact that Leah is going to be a pregnant eighteen-year-old.

I think I’ve said this before — my mind needs to be split between two things for me to be productive in writing. I’ve proven this every summer, when the first half of the summer is free, while the second half sends me chasing down interns and expecting the beginning of fall semester.

It’s possible that this is what it takes to be distracted from my perfectionism. Maybe it’s inertia taking over during free times. Perhaps I just need the dichotomy of work and writing to turn my mind toward writing. The best use of my time is all or nothing. But at least I’m making progress.