A day gone amuck chases away the doldrums

 

If a day could go amuck, this one did. I could have happily lingered in bed this morning. Sophie was asleep and not desperate for food, and I was comfortable, trying to recapture a pleasant dream. But I had things to do—groceries would be delivered at ten, company was coming for happy hour and supper. And there was a to-do list on my desk.

Along about nine-thirty I realized I’d never gotten a confirmation from Central Market nor the cheery email which says, “We’re working on it.” Checked my computer and twenty-seven items were still in my cart. Rescheduled the order for late afternoon.

Then Jean emailed that she had picked up some kind of bug and would not be leaving her apartment today. I was sorry but of course grateful she didn’t bring us whatever it was. Then the happy hour guests cancelled—a long story, but it meant I had to quick cancel one errand I’d asked Christian to include on his morning run.

And finally, Jordan came out and said she and Christian hadn’t communicated well and they wouldn’t be eating with me tonight because good friends were having a birthday dinner party for their daughters. There went my plans for good appetizers and crab nachos for supper. I hastily refroze the crab. Maybe we’ll have it tomorrow, maybe we won’t. I should learn that I am alone in my compulsion to plan ahead!

So what do you do when you’re home alone for dinner on Saturday night? You fix a cold salad plate with a small can of salmon. And use some of that huge container of guacamole I ordered this morning.

And so is the fact that I wrote 800 words this morning, may do more tonight. I’m not sure if the day going amuck chased away the doldrums or not, but I wrote those words in less than an hour. Of course, I’ve not re-read them. They may all need to be deleted, but for the time they moved the story ahead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing today, and I’ve decided I’m a bit defensive about my writing. On a small writers’ listserv that I really value there’s been a thread about magical realism, one of those literary terms I never can quite grasp (I don’t think anyone talked about it when I was in grad school). A couple of posts really helped me grasp it, especially one linking the movement to the spirit world of Latina culture and citing Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So this morning I was all primed to enter my two cents worth, as the author of cozy mysteries, but overnight the thread had taken a deep turn into mythology, Greek and Norse and other, and Jungian archetypes and the like. Here’s a confession: that stuff is too deep for me.

I may have dealt more seriously with history when I was writing about women of the American West, but these days I am a storyteller. I write to give readers a good story, something to engage, amuse, puzzle them, and something to distract them briefly from the daily grind. Entertainment writing. I make no claim to plumbing the depths of the human psyche or tracing the origins of certain behaviors, or changing a reader’s life. That is not to say that a good mystery can’t weave in elements of the spirit life or insights into humanity—it should, but that’s not the reason for the story.

Right now I’m reading an older Murder, She Wrote, subtitled Highland Fling. I picked it up because of the Scottish setting. Turns out the setting involves a lot about the history and punishment of witches in Scotland—surely an element of the spiritual life (if a negative one) and mythology of its own, when you think back to the sixteenth century and the brutal punishments inflicted on suspected witches (specifically in this book, a pitchfork through the heart and a cross carved into the throat—pretty brutal for a Jessica Fletcher’s story). When a contemporary murder imitates that, Jessica must find the villain (if you’ve read any of the books, you’ll know the pattern.) To me, it’s crackling good reading, with just enough history, Scottish culture and landscape, food and brogue to lighten the mystery, and it’s fun. When I finish this blog, I’ll go back to it.

One of my core beliefs is that we each must leave the world a bit better than we found it, and sometimes that worries me in relation to my writing. I think of it as light stuff, not world-changing, and maybe I should be putting whatever skills I have to better use. My friend, Susan Wittig Albert, a prolific and popular writer, assures me that by bringing readers pleasure, I am contributing to the well-being of the world. Her China Bayles mysteries always have an underlying social theme, whereas my Irene stories don’t. But I’m working on that.

Enough rambling. I want my salmon supper and then I’ll settle down with Jessica. Wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Stay happy and cool. Sweet dreams.