mary june brown

I became motivated to write today…my novel stretched out it’s rough fingers and tapped me on my bare arm, saying, “Lady, your casual behavior toward me is an insult.”

My novel is right. I owe it something for giving me so much–purpose, understanding of self, exploration, a place to vent and weep and feel and love and create and drop my poise, reach for something, give something, move in trance, awaken, fulfill the ego, impress you, impress me, become bigger than the myriad parts that make me up, exist on screen, live on paper, hope for more, become fabulous, exude heat and charisma, receive insight, twist and turn and massage into accurate expression, perceive and be perceived, imagine my face on a slick jacket (what would my eyes say in that picture?), my name in bold along the seductive spine of the book itself.

Yes, little novel…I owe you.

in future tense I see a home
in past tense I wonder where it went
third person, she says what went wrong
first person, I forgot the words to

hum

an arc of beginning, middle, end
three acts muddled by human error
(sin)
no awards for a life, no contract for

plot, POV, character development, story grids
I tore up all those papers or

she’d torn up all those papers

loosed them into the waters of some
undeveloped, nondescript, told-not-shown

setting

So there’s the infamous 50 and 55 words competitions, which I personally loathe because…well, because I don’t succeed at them well. The aim is to write an entire story in 50 or 55 words, usually a twist in the story helps. Here is my recent attempt. Try it–you’ll despise love it, too!

Rejections poured down on the would-be author. “Thanks, but no thanks” and “you can write! But, sorry–not for us.”

Time to go into the publishing business, he thought. He approached the bank with his idea. “Thanks, but no thanks,” they said. “You can dream! But sorry–not on us.”

When I was in college, I became very fond of the movie, Postcards from the Edge. Have you seen it? Featured are two female members of a family…well, let’s be clear here–they are mother and daughter, always a potent and complex relationship. I loved the movie for its depiction of a mother’s overeager desire for her daughter to present a ladylike, charming, poised facade while living in a vortex of family dysfunction. Did I love the movie because I could relate? Maybe yes, maybe no…that’s for me to know, and you’ll never find out! But I digress.

The movie positioned humor and charm into a situation the viewer could see was essentially untenable and often, implicitly unbearable. And so, one learns by watching this kind of comedy that given space and a sense of remove, we can indeed laugh at the things that are difficult to experience in real time.

So, Postcards was me in my 20s.

I’m older now. And recently, a friend pointed out that I’m playing captured patient to my very own Nurse Ratched. Of course, he’s referring to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Through this lens of pop-culture match-up, I find levity where normally there wouldn’t be any. So maybe in this very simplistic way, that’s what pop culture does for us: it allows us see our lives with the variance of humor attached.

Woody Allen says that humor is tragedy given space and time. I agree.

Posed for my civil servant card today. Can one be a starving writer and a servant to the public at once? I hope so. Trying to keep up with my writing, but “real” work interferes. Here I am…respectable worker. This is the pic on my namebadge. I don’t know if this girl looks like a struggling, passionate writer…but inside, she is…she is!

Well, Merry Christmas to all. I am hopeful and excited about the new year. 2008 promises to be action-packed, what with the election coming up. In general, change seems to be in the air.

For those of you still working on your writing, best wishes to you in the New Year. Please wish me the same. If you didn’t figure out, I failed dismally at NaNoWriMo. But November 2008 is only 11 months away!  I shall try, try again.

In other news…I will begin my employ as a public servant with Marin County at the end of this month. I am thrilled…anticipating a year of learning, growing, contributing.

So as we head into 2008…I leave you with the Desiderata:

http://nanowrimo.org

All (two) of you who’ve waited with baited breath…here’s my contribution to Farmhouse Magazine:

http://www.farmhousemagazine.com/14Pbrown.html 

So this is a departure from my usual. Most of you know I write about writing, or about parenting.  But…here’s another side of me.

I’m going to make a sweeping generalization and guess that many of the visitors to this site, who happen to be male, will want to stop reading right about

NOW.

See, this post is going to be all about…da da dum da…cosmetics. If you are one of those amazing women (and I secretly admire you if you are) that cares not a bit about the wonderful world of face paint, you’ll want to stop reading now, too.

Okay, so that leaves the rest of us…those who are interested, or who (like me) are fascinated with the idea of transformation via lipstick, a smudge of color placed smartly on the eye or the cheek, lashes fanned out in thick black mascara, a bit or razzle dazzle sparkle pretty pretty…oh make me stop or I’ll just carry on.

Get it? I love, make that lurve, cosmetics. I love to play with palates of color and with the illusion of good skin, bright eyes, a pouty mouth. For those who are interested, check out my cosmetics reviews at: http://makeupalley.com/product/myreviews.asp

These are my reviews of various cosmetics, and I love the site makeupalley.com. If you are (even remotely) interested in makeup…check out this site.

Boston Literary Magazine prints “dribble” in their issues. Dribble is a story with 50 words exactly…no more and no less.

Like drabble (100 words), the idea is to tell a story with beginning, middle and end in a short space.  Dribble is even more difficult than drabble in my opinion, and as BLM notes–it’s half the words and twice the work (of drabble).

Dribble typically employs irony or shock, something that punches the reader in a short space.  Practicing dribble tightens your writing–you get rid of everything that doesn’t add to the story.  All writers should take a stab at it; it’s fun and rewarding.

Here’s my dribble, published this issue in Boston Literary Magazine:

http://www.bostonliterarymagazine.com/spring07dribble.html#spring07bane.html