How to use this Page

The Power of (Certain) Words...

Sunday morning my son, who is 3-and-a-half, dropped the F-bomb. Yep. Out the F-word came from his innocent little mouth. Twice. Do they still make Lifebouy soap? thought I. Crap--I hope he never says that in front of my mother. Or at preschool.

My husband was witness to this. After a What did you say? to confirm, he asked Murray where he heard That Word. "From you," he said to his dad (AHA! I KNEW IT!), "And my mommy."

Um--I don't think so! It couldn't have been me! I don't say it much. (And if I do, it's more likely I'll say it at the office, and even then, under by breath.) But if not us, then who? He's only got basic cable in his room. All his DVDs are rated G. He hasn't seen our potty-mouthed friend Jerry since summertime. We must be the guilty party. What a proud moment in parenting!

And how do you explain to a kid his age just why that's not a nice word to say? Why can one little word can have so much power? The F-word. Scrotum.

The fact that's it's ALA awards time, along with the fact that my son suddenly curses like a sailor, reminded me of the whole The Higher Power of Lucky/Newbery/scrotum controversy happening around this time last year. Based on my quick BookScan check, Susan Patron's Newbery winner seems to be selling just fine, controversy or not. At home, I haven't gotten Murray to use the s-word when discussing his anatomy, but these days I'm not sure if it would be preferable to the daddy-taught terms he currently uses. I suppose I should go Google Lifebouy. Just in case.

The builders arrived at 7:00 a.m. for the second morning in a row--which meant that I woke up at 7:00 a.m. for the second morning in a row. They're just trying to beat the heat, which I totally respect, but they're killing me here. Now what am I supposed to do? Work? Geez.

You can see from the black tarp that they've prepared the patio for concrete. Does that mean an Explosives Supply Company truck will be paying a visit today? Perhaps. That long board set across the black tarp is for them to slide their leveling board across, which means the patio isn't going to be nearly the drop we worried it would be. It'll still be a tad below the inside floor level, but not so much of a step down.

As I write this, the guys are prepping the sheathing. This one is going to be trickier, due to the door and windows cut into the wall. I watch what they're doing--and how easily they do it--and I think about our original plans to do all this work ourselves. In addition to our day jobs. We were insane. In the time it would have taken us to put up just one wall, these guys will be done with the whole first floor. It would have taken us years to do what they're going to do in a month.

Okay, I'm off to get some work done. Yesterday I made great progress on The Brooklyn Nine, finishing the new First Inning and then planning out in detail and actually starting the rewrite on the Second Inning. This is the one that takes place in the Civil War. The most tedious thing about this rewrite has been shifting from first person chapters to third person chapters. It's a simple thing to translate, really, but I catch myself slipping into the first person time and again because that's the way I first wrote it. The biggest challenge though has been to rethink the short stories as tales that can only be told about these particular kids. This was one of the suggestions from editors Liz and Brad, and it was a great one. Doesn't make it any easier to do, but it's going to make the stories way stronger if I can pull it off.

The idea is that a short story--I suppose any story, for that matter--will be much stronger if the plot can be only about your protagonist. In other words, there is no other person for whom this story would be the same. Now, you can argue that changing protagonists will change any story, but not always fundamentally. Yes, the dialog might change, the attitude might change, but has the story really changed? That's what they're getting at. If my protagonists in the short stories are interchangeable, the protagonists aren't unique. That's a problem.

In a few of the stories I got it right right off the bat. (So to speak.) Those will be much easier to handle. A few though, like the Civil War era inning, are taking some serious rethinking. I don't want to make all these kids "gifted" in some way--I resisted this early on because I don't want to create a fictional family in which every generation was unbelievably exceptional--but I do need to make sure each stands out as a unique character, with assets or flaws or tics that make that kid the only person who could star in their story. That's tougher than it sounds.

I'll be getting back to that now, unless the guys ask me to come out and raise another wall . . .

(Yes, this is the first one without Macaulay Culkin, which doesn't bode well. Or does, depending on your point of view. But hey - IMDb says Scarlett Johansen was in it, so that's something.)

Wendi and Jo are gone for the last time this summer, and I have a few days to tackle The Brooklyn Nine without distraction. Well, unless you count the house being built outside as a distraction. Ugh.

This is a rewrite on The Brooklyn Nine, the first major revision, and I have a good game plan based on editor Liz's comments. I'm very happy with how the first "inning" has worked out, and I'm well into the second. Here are today's totals - since yesterday I spent the day in Asheville at a baseball game:

Pages (re)written: 17!

Mellow Mushroom pizzas eaten: 1

Wii played: None! :-(

Books read: One (I had a two-hundred page head start)

Episodes of No Reservations watched: 2

Walls erected: 1

Wendi and Jo are at Wendi's parents' for the week, which means I home alone to write.

And play Wii.

Here are my totals so far:

Chapters written: 3.5

Pages written: 28

Bowling high score: 207

Home runs hit in a row: 10

Best nine holes of golf: Par

Episodes of Doctor Who watched: 4

Mellow Mushroom pizzas eaten: 1