Miss Demeanors

When I heard that Sue Grafton died, my first thought, beyond intense sadness, was to go to my bookshelves and pick up “A” is for Alibi. Since the day I first read it, back in 1982, I’ve kept that book nearby. I never met Sue Grafton, yet I can say that she and Kinsey Millhone were my close friends.  Reading through the book today, 36 years after the first time, I’m struck by how vivid Kinsey still is. She’s a living, breathing and very funny person. Some of my favorite lines: “The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind. I’m a nice person and I have a lot of friends.” While making coffee: “The gurgling sound was comforting, like the pump in an aquarium.” Of her VW Beetle: “I like my cars cramped and this one was filled with law books, a briefcase where I keep my little automatic, cardboard boxes , and a case of motor oil given to me by a client.” “In addition to the junk, I keep a packed overnight case back there, too, for God knows what emergency. I wouldn’t work for anyone who wanted me that fast.” And my favorite: “The basic characteristics of any good investigator are a plodding nature and infinite patience. Society has inadvertently been grooming women to this end for years.” 

Some writers string ordinary words together–a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph–in ways that have as much in common with what most of us read as Belgian lace does with the friendship bracelets I made in second grade. These writers capture scents from far away places so perfectly that I’m sure I can smell them; they paint settings with such detail that I’m certain I remember being there. They describe emotions I didn’t know I had until I read their words and feel that way, too. Michele’s question last week about which writers we’d like to spend time with led me to think about the writers whose words stay with us; the writers we can’t stop quoting. For me, The Princess Bride springs to mind (“Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise is obviously selling something!” and “As you wish…” and “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” and … ) So, I asked my fellow Miss Demeanors to pick their favorite quotes. Being the writers and the readers they are, they had a lot to say. I contemplated editing for the sake of brevity, but decided the answers were all too good to cut.   Fellow writers and readers, I hope you enjoy these wonderful quotes as much as I do. When you’re finished reading, please add your own. These winter nights are long; and there’s nothing quite as wonderful as snuggling into a warm blanket and a good book. Robin: That’s a tough question. So many to choose from. I find at least one nugget in just about every book I read. A line that comes to mind, though, is from a poem in the Fellowship of The Ring by JRR Tolkien, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Aside from the fact that it’s one of the most popular quotes ever written (and often misquoted), I remember it because it resonated with me when I first read it in middle school and it resonates with me still. When I was young, the line elicited the dreams I ultimately ended up living – I’ve traveled the world on a shoestring budget, first class, and in-between. I’ve partied with rock stars, watched meteor showers in a desert, spent a night in a major city jail, been chased by a bear. I’ve met lots of interesting people, loved fiercely, and suffered devastating losses. The Tolkien quote sums up my commitment to follow my passions wherever they may lead, no matter how humble, lofty, or fraught with various types of danger. Wanderer? You bet. Lost? Not yet. Cate: This is my fave in our genre of the last five years. GILLIAN FLYNN, Gone Girl: “Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.  I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)” I read that at thirty and I felt like Gillian took my life between the ages 17 to 23, crumpled them up into a ball and threw them through a basketball hoop into the trash. I will never romanticize that period of pageantry for the opposite sex again. I never ate chili dogs, but I definitely pretended to like sports. I dated the MVP of the baseball team in college. For nearly four years, I pretended to like college baseball played with aluminum bats. You know what happens when someone hits a home run in college baseball? You hear a really loud ping and then you watch someone run around the field because in college ball you can’t get cocky and jog. Worse, I convinced myself I liked it. I sang the national anthem at nearly every game and cheered my a cappella nerd butt off because I thought that being a good woman meant accepting the inferiority of whatever you actually liked in order to be likeable. (The ex was also a painter… I actually liked that, though). So happy I grew up before I settled down with someone whom I was too insecure around to be me. Preach, Gillian. PREACH!!! Susan: Much as I love Christmas, it’s also a time when I remember those I have lost, especially my son, Will, who died almost 11 years ago. So when I read William Kreuger’s book, Ordinary Grace, about a family that experiences loss, I could have underlined just about every word in the book. This passage, that comes toward the end of the book, from a pastor’s funeral service, hit home:  “God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn’t suffer, that we wouldn’t feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love. And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all. That there would be surcease. That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our loneliness, that we would be with him and know him, and this would be heaven.” I also like this one:  “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”  Paula: Ordinary Grace is one of my favorites, too. But I could never pick just one book. So I’ll go with what I’m reading right now. Right now I’m rereading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. Not only does Umberto Eco write a lot of quotable prose himself in this novel, he also quotes myriad saints, philosophers, and scripture, often in Latin, Greek, even Medieval German. So I am spending as much time looking up the translations (thank you, Google) as I am reading. Here are some of the best:“In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.” I searched for quiet everywhere, and found it nowhere except in a corner with a book.“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…” “Mundus senescit.” The world grows old.“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.” “Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn rührt kein Nun noch Hier.” God is a pure nothing, neither Now nor Here touches Him.“Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”“De hoc satis.” Enough of that. Tracee: Uh oh, the pressure is on. Tolkien? Eco? I am tempted to cheat and find a few quotes, but that would definitely not be in the spirit of the season – or of the question. I find myself loving lines in books I’m currently reading, but not necessarily to the point that I can quote them without looking. The lines I do remember off hand tend to come from books I read while young. Maybe my memory was simply better? However, I think that it is because so many concepts were new and resonated strongly. Because of this I remember lots of bits of Dickens and others, including the famous “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” line from Gone with the Wind. (“Frankly” was added for the movie, but that’s splitting hairs.) I read Gone with the Wind the summer before I turned eleven and it stayed with me. Scarlett was close enough to my own age for me to understand she was a girl up against the world, but also to see that she made mistake after mistake, grasping at dream worlds, torn between being who she wanted to be and who she thought others wanted her to be, and ultimately losing everything because of her own selfishness. It’s also fair to say that this may have led to my love of Russian literature – early indoctrination into inevitable tragic endings.  In this, I’m with Cate. We remember what informs us. It doesn’t have to be a line from the greatest literary mind, but something that speaks in that moment to our world.  Alexia: Does it have to be a book? Because my favorite source of quotes is Casablanca. Every. Single. Line. My favorites among favorite quotes are: Yvonne: Where were you last night?Rick: That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?Rick: I never make plans that far ahead. Because I totally get Rick’s attitude. I love characters like Rick–good guys who either don’t realize they’re one of the good ones or who have been hurt and put up bad guy walls to protect themselves. It just takes the right redemptive moment to let the good guy shine through. My second favorite: Rick: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.Captain Renault: That is my *least* vulnerable spot.And Third:
Ugarte: You despise me, don’t you?Rick: If I gave you any thought I probably would.Ugarte: You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.(Yes, I like Renault and Ugarte, too.)  If I have to go with a book, Alice in Wonderland is my favorite.Curioser and curioser.We’re all mad here.Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.”Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked. “There isn’t any,” said the March HareAnd (finally) “Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!” which is from “Jabberwocky” which is from Alice Through the Looking Glass but it’s still Alice.Alice has always been my hero because she’s a fearless girl who goes on adventures and uses her own wits to get herself out of trouble. And Lewis Carroll was a genius–weird, but a genius–whose works are delightfully snarky. Michele: I love this question and the answers it is inspiring. There are so many, too many inspirational quotes from books that I love to chose just one. But the one that I like best reminds me about the folly of human relationships. It may be odd coming from a seasoned family law attorney, but Mr. Darcy’s beleaguered proposal to Elizabeth melts my heart. “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’’ It reminds me that loving and being loved is the universal theme for all humans. I am a hopeless romantic. And now, please add your own favorites and why they resonate with you.

  Today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Reykjavík gets four hours and sevenminutes of sunlight; Fairbanks only three hours and forty-one.  I don’t know much about the celebrations that mark the day: Alban Arthan in Wales, Brumalia in Ancient Rome, Dongzhi Festival in parts of Asia, Korochun in some Slavic countries and Sanghamitta Day for Theravada Buddhists. The point I take away is that since the neopagans observed Yule, human beings have celebrated when our days go from getting darker to getting lighter. Maybe it’s my Scandinavian genes, but I like this time of year because it lends itself to introspection. When it’s cold and dark outside, I like to be inside–both physically and emotionally. It’s a good time to take stock: think about those parts of my life that are serving me and also look at those habits and behaviors that could use a little tweaking (or, maybe, habits that I want to chuck altogether). When it’s warm and sunny, it’s much easier to shrug off making changes that would make me more mindful, kinder, and healthier. Somehow, with chill in my bones and my hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea in front of the fire, I’m better able to observe my own life.  The promise that tomorrow will be just a little brighter than today–even if it is only one more minute of sunlight–helps in those efforts. I completely understand the people who don’t like the idea of setting personal goals. Me? I’m an unabashed self-improvement junky. So far, my efforts haven’t led me to enlightenment, but I do keep trying. If there are any of you who also belong to my tribe, I’m wishing you all the insight that comes with the darkness and all the hope that comes with the light. On the practical front, here’s a link from an NYT article on how to make meaningful change with the greatest chance for success: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/resolution-ideas.  Writing goals? Personal goals? Health goals? If you are so moved, please share your thoughts here or on our Facebook page…along with any tricks you’ve picked up along the way. 

 Alison McMahan has trudged through the jungles of Honduras and Cambodia, through the favelas of Brazil and from race tracks to drag strips in the U.S. in search of footage for her
documentaries. Her most recent film is Bare Hands and Wooden Limbs (2010) narrated by Sam Waterston, which won Best Directed, short form documentary; at the Santiago
Alvarez in Memoriam Film Festival in Santiago, Cuba.
Her historical mystery novel, The Saffron Crocus (Black Opal Books, 2014), won the Rosemary Award for Best YA Historical and the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Award. On top of that, she’s written numerous other short stories and non-fiction anthologies.  Between writing and filmmaking, I managed to pin Alison down and ask her a few questions about her life and her craft. D.A. Bartley: Do I remember correctly that you lived in Spain as a child? If so, how do you think that has affected your writing? I grew up in a fishing village about eighty kilometers south of Barcelona, a place of great natural beauty, during the last years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. My village is in Catalonia, but at the time the Catalan language and most aspects of Catalan culture were banned. The recent drive for Catalonian independence is just one aspect of the rebellion fomented by that repression. Growing up an American expat in that environment politicized me while I was still very young. The village where I grew up was formerly the Roman province of Tarraco. Every day on my way to school I went past a Roman triumphal arch, a Roman amphitheater, and my high school was nestled inside of Roman walls. The musical conservatory where I studied solfege had a foundation laid in the Celtic era, walls from the Roman era, and the upper stories dated back to the Renaissance. The village church I attended was built before the U.S. became a country. Anyone who grows up in a place like that is bound to become a history buff! My siblings and I attended Spanish schools, so I’m bilingual. Charles V is quoted as saying something like German was for military talk, Italian for friends, French for lovers and Spanish for God. I think he knew what he was talking about. Spanish is the language of the ineffable, its DNA is poetry, its aspirations divine. No wonder the first magical realists were writers who wrote in Spanish. D.A. Bartley:  The Saffron Crocus is categorized as an historical mystery romance set in 17th century Venice. Stopping right there, I’m already intrigued. Can you tell us a little about the story? Alison: The story is set in Venice in 1643, that is, about eight years after the city was decimated by the black plague. The heroine, Isabella, is fifteen, and wants to sing in Monteverdi's choir in San Marco’s Basilica. But only boys are allowed to sing there. Her singing teacher, Margherita, convinces her to tryout for this new thing called opera, but just as Isabella is about to do that she finds her singing teacher murdered. Now she and Margherita’s handsome rogue of a son, Rafaele, have to solve Margherita’s murder, before the killer gets to them. I’ve visited Venice about eight times over the years and came to love the city. I also love opera. The story is carefully researched. Yes, coffee was the drug of choice in the seventeenth century,comparable to how we see pot now. And yes, when a chorus needed sopranos, they preferred to castrate young boys rather than to let girls sing in public. Most of the plot twists were inspired by little-known historical facts. D.A. Bartley: Your writing background is as broad as it is long. What advice would you give someone just starting out? Alison: If you are starting out as a fiction writer, then turn off your TV, stop going to movies, and read. Then read some more. Keep reading. I’m fairly new to fiction writing myself (I got serious about it just a few years ago), but here are the main craft skills I’ve identified that I think every writer needs to know:CHARACTER: You need to put down your cell phone and learn how to observe and engage with people. That’s really hard, I know; I’m more introverted than most. But you have to do it. You need to know how to create interesting characters, characters that automatically conflict and complement each other. YOU CAN’T PANTS A CHARACTER. Writers are mostly boring people (at least on the outside) so don’t just base a character on yourself. Stretch yourself. Imagine the inner life of the homeless person who sleeps in your bank foyer or the woman who makes your coffee at Starbucks or the Russian businessman sitting next to you on the plane. This skill set is essential to writing good dialogue. Nothing matters more than built-in character opposition. Really observing people — really looking at them, really listening — often pays off in magical ways. People are frail and strong, beautiful and revolting, cruel and tender. Can you capture that? Because that’s your job. To capture that.SCENES: Another skill you can learn from a good screenwriting course is how to structure a scene. I’ve done my share of judging for various contests and it just amazes me how often I read fiction where the writer starts a scene, then leaves it to start another scene before anything has happened. A scene is your novel in miniature: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, at least two characters who come into conflict and by the end of the scene someone has won something and someone has lost. Yes, every single scene. Seventy two to eighty scenes to a novel at today’s word counts. That’s your job. To write scenes. You need to know how to write action. The only way to write action is to know how to do action. David Morrell is a great example of this. He goes out and learns race car driving or spends thirty days in the wild before he writes a book with those elements. He’s a master. Learn from him. I studied fencing while I was writing The Saffron Crocus, as there are swordfights in that book, as well as studying seventeenth century fencing manuals. If you are writing an action scene that involves something you can’t do, like fly a plane, then talk to someone who can. Don’t worry, they love talking to writers.WRITE: Write a complete rough draft of your novel before you start editing it. Ignore the voice of your inner editor until you are done. If your internal editor is telling you “this novel sucks,” you can ignore her during the editing process too. Learn something about reading levels. In general, reader comprehension is dropping. It used to be that we could assume eight grade reading levels were the norm. Studies show that now we can only assume a fourth grade reading comprehension level across the board. I’m not saying dumb it down. I’m saying be aware. Personally, I have found it works better to have beta readers than to be in a writing group. A writing group develops a competitive dynamic, it quickly becomes not about the writing. Your beta reader will do their best for you so you will give them the best beta read you can when it’s their turn. Make sure at least one of those beta readers is a “typical audience” reader, not another writer. They often give the best feedback. Bonus advice: write short stories (2500 words or less) and read them in public. You learn a lot about what works, and what doesn’t work, with an audience.GO READ SOME MORE! 
 

 I used to hate this picture.   My mom loved it. I was in second grade when it was taken, but I remember it like it was yesterday. The hand-smocked blue dress scratched my neck and the sleeves dug into my armpits. I wanted to go outside and play soccer. The photographer was an overworked man whose job was to take pictures of elementary-school children in Utah. There are a lot of school children in Utah. When it came time for him to take my photo, I didn’t want to smile. The poor photographer was tired. He tried to coax me to grin. He said I looked beautiful. He tried to tell a joke. Finally, he pulled out a ratty, rust-colored stuffed animal with a missing eye. I smirked. Did he really think he could coerce me into smiling by showing me a tattered toy? He snapped the camera. I don’t think he cared what I looked like at that point. My last name started with “B.” He had a lot more photographs to take that morning. When the picture came home, I knew it was bad. I didn’t look pretty. I wasn’t smiling like a delightful little girl. I looked skeptical…cynical…not sweet or nice at all. My mom kept a framed version of this photo on her dresser. She passed away three years ago after journeying through the various cruel stages of Alzheimers.  I never had a chance to ask her why she loved this picture, but I think I know the answer now. This picture shows me as I am: a little skeptical, a little irreverent. I was never perfect like the other girls at school or church. My mom loved this picture for the very reason I hated it: it was the real me, not the version of me I wanted to project into the world.  This picture sits on my dresser now…and I love it.