Novelty

Fiorella leaps out of bed every morning with brilliant ideas which she jots down on a tablet on the bathroom counter. She is just hopping to start writing on her new novel. But her ardor cools as she brushes her teeth, fixes her hair, dresses, and makes the bed.

Downstairs, there's the newspaper, which includes the daily crossword and the jumble, to which Fio is addicted. Then breakfast. Then she looks at her desk for communications that need to be handled immediately, which she proceeds to do. Finally she opens up her laptop and checks out the weather, the latest news, and her e-mail. Then she goes to her blog to proof and edit whatever is coming up. Sometimes she writes a new piece--or two or three if she's really rolling, like today.

Meanwhile the dog needs in and out every time a squirrel runs down the back fence, and sometimes there are phone calls to make or receive. And there's usually some kitchen clean-up too, which Fio does bit by bit as she fetches herself a Kleenex or indulges in her mid-morning orange juice.

By then it's almost eleven and she decides to take a break and read a little in Dearly Devoted Dexter or whatever else she has at hand. Finally, about 11:15 she goes to Documents and pulls up the file generically titled New Story. She works on it for four hours without blinking, which is the reason she procrastinates so shamelessly: writing captures Fio, compels her, sucks her in, and she is not a girl who enjoys being controlled.

But now Chapter One is finally straightened out, the Styrofoam peanut bomb having been disposed of so the story can actually lead in the direction Fio wants it to go. She can rest on her laurels for today.

You can tell why Fio projects her top book-length output for the year will be just three 80K-word manuscripts.

Not all writers are as good at procrastinating as Fio. She knows of some who turn out virtually a book a month. She suspects they do it by never getting up in the morning, just lying in bed all day and writing, writing, writing-- like Colette, but without the threatening husband.

Maybe Fiorella should try that some time--nawh, she'd just go back to sleep.

Update on Uplift

My Name's Jeanell, I look like hell,
But I can't resist the urge to tell--
My lids are red, my eyes are green
The scariest Christmas you've ever seen--
In fact, I look like Halloween!
So I can hardly wait till I am healed
And my new look will be revealed.

Dexter Dreams Delightfully

Fiorella has been reading again, reading and writing rather than keeping up the house. Her mother would have been strongly disapproving.

Fio's mother would have preferred her to be more like Dexter Morgan, who is very neat and tidy. Of course, Dexter also happens to be a serial killer, but we'll let that little personality glitch pass us by because his victims, as our Arnold claimed for his character in True Lies, are "all bad." Besides, Dexter's creator, Jeff Lindsay, is a marvelous writer. Not only is the main character skillfully drawn and the plot tight, but the words just seem to trip off Lindsay's tongue. The prose is beautiful, poetic even.

Younger Son alerted me to Dexter on television last year and I peek-a-booed a couple of episodes--which means I flipped channels whenever stuff got too gory, then came back a few minutes later to find out what had happened. Now that I've read one of the books, I am amazed at how well the whole idea transferred to the tube.

Anyway, I highly recommend Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and Husband and I plan to further enrich the overflowing coffers of Barnes and Noble by purchasing the rest of the series.

The housekeeping will just have to wait. Sorry, Mom. At least I don't litter the place with severed limbs and headless torsos.

Naming Characters

Fiorella puts a fair amount of time and thought into naming the characters in her literary endeavors. Unlike new mothers, she knows what her characters are going to be like as adults, and she can name them accordingly. That's a perk that writers have.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," Poe used his characters' names as a kind of shorthand to tip us off as to their--well--characteristics. Fortunato, the antagonist, has money and luck. Montresor ("my treasure"), the protagonist, contends that everything Fortunato has should have been his. Since Montresor is a wascally wabbit, Fortunato's name becomes ironic, thus adding to Poe's gallows humor.

In Roth's "The Conversion of the Jews," the protagonist's name is Freedman, an obvious choice for a young adolescent who challenges closed-mindedness. His rambunctious best friend's name is Lieberman, which a German exchange student told me is sort of like "homey." Ozzie Freedman's inhibiting rabbi is named Binder. Seems obvious, but I taught this story for two semesters before I caught on.

In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Bierce doubles back on us by giving his protagonist a name promising Tara-type romance--Peyton Farquhar. It's a hero's name, the name of someone who wins every battle and the girl besides. Then Bierce turns the tables on us.

This is the parade in which Fiorella marches. After all, how do you think she herself was named?

Vanity, Thy Name Is Fiorella

Fio has finally come of age--of a certain age that is. She keeps a perm in her hair and gets it streaked regularly. She paints on nail strengthener and has actually had a manicure for the first time in her life. She rubs Hydroquinone on three tannish spots on the back of her left hand. And her eyelid surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.

All day she has been looking in the mirror and lifting the skin in front of her ears and wondering.

Doggerel

I have a dog
Whose name is Frog--
He can hip
And he can hop--
He can do
The Dirty Bop,
Or any other
Dance required
That darn dog
Is really wired.
That is why
I wrote this blog--
To tell you about
My Frog-named dog.

(Except I admit
It's all a lie
Manufactured by
My fevered brain
To amuse, confound,
And entertain.) Fiorella

Glittered As She Walked

I would have given my right arm to be Micki Greene, which would have completely invalidated my purpose because Micki Greene lacked for nothing.

Eighteen-year-olds aren't mature enough to be called beautiful, but Mickey was headed that way. Her eyes were blue slate, her short, coiffed hair riotously blonde, and her complexion clear. She had the most adorable way of talking, in excited, almost lisping bursts that absolutely entranced me. There was something vulnerable and charmingly confused about Mickey. Pehaps she cultivated it, but it worked.

It was the first time I had encountered an actual person named Michaela, although nowadays, of course, the name is fairly common. But her name was not the only thing that made Micki unique. One way or another, she could always make everyone aware of her. I remember how we all laughed when Micki sneezed thirty-one times in a row from the upper back side of the auditorium during a particularly boring philosophy lecture. The teacher called her down, saying she was deliberately disturbing class, but we knew it was just Micki.

It was a wonder that this magical creature and I both lived in Cranfill, the oldest women's residence on campus, but I was there for economy while Micki was there for tradition. Her family was prominent and her father was rich. She wore pearls in her pierced lobes when no one else was even wearing earrings. She pledged Pi Phi and zoomed around in a powder blue MG sports car--illegally, of course, since only upperclasmen were allowed to have automobiles, which only added to the legend. Her handsome father regularly appeared to escort her and her roommate to dinner, and she talked casually of visiting her mother in places like Monaco and Madrid.

Micki may have acted confused, but she was no dummy. She was in the liberal arts honors program, although everyone knew she wasn't destined for Phi Beta Kappa. This was the era when prizes like Micki considered their college time well spent when they left after their sophomore year to marry up-and-coming young lawyers.

I think I ran into Micki on campus once more after our Cranfill stint, and she was as gracious and charming as ever, almost remembering my name.

Oddly enough, I was the one who married following my sophomore year, although, after getting my ears pierced for pearls, I did stick around long enough to pick up a history degree, magna cum laude, thank you very much. Somewhere between the laundry and the senior thesis, I have a dim memeory of reading in the newspaper society section that Micki had married an up-and-coming young lawyer in a lavish ceremony worthy of her.

My husband, who had gone to high school with her, said she was crazy.

Ten years later, my next bit of information about Micki came from a friend telling me about a total stanger, a woman named Micki, who had sat next to her during thir children's swim class and poured out her breaking heart about her cheating and abusive husband. Micki told my friend she had hired a lawyer out of Houstion who would cut her husband's balls off.

My friend's husband, who had known Micki's mild-mannered spouse since childhood, said Micki was crazy.

Ten years further down the line, when my oldest was in high school, I saw Micki again, at a high school football game. Her daughter was a cheerleader and my son warmed the bench. Micki entered the bleachers two rows ahead of my husband and me, and I recognized her immediately. Her short silver-blonde bob was now a long pewter-blonde braid, and her slender teen-age shape had rounded out into womanly curves. She was beautiful now, with that same charming aura of fragilty and confusion. Going with the current fashion, her skirt was romantically ethnic and she had topped her embroidered Mexican blouse with a long, trailing scarf.

Micki didn't have anyone to sit with at the game because by then she was divorced from her second husband too. I knew this from my friend, who passed on all the lawyer gossip, and because the year before I had seen a newspaper feature on Micki and her daughter--hard to tell which was which, of course--and Micki's house in a stylishly gentrified area of the city. The photographer and writer were ovbviously as entranced by Micki as I had been.

She picked her way down the row and finally set her stadium seat down beside some people she knew, expensive people with whom she could make references to old friends and old times. I caught a thread of their conversation now and then, but the couple seemes to tire of her and their replies became shorter and shorter. Finally they ceased altogether. At halftime the couple moved three rows down and across.

Micki, all alone, rocked herself back and forth on her stadium seat, lisping softly to herself as she played with her long, trailing scarf.

Micki was crazy.