The day wasn't over

It's not yet noon and I've already had enough excitement for a week. To begin with, when I thought my long day was over yesterday, it wasn't . I finally tore myself from the computer--you know that just one more thing feeling?--and went to tell Jacob he absolutely had to turn off the TV, use the bathroom, and brush his teeth. He was sound asleep, TV blaring. I wrestled his pajama bottoms off to put a pull-up on since heaven only knows when he last used the potty. (This morning he looked down and said, "How did I get this on?") Then I pulled him from the foot of the bed to the head so he could stretch out--50 lbs. of uncooperating dead weight--laid him on his back and told him to close his eyes, put eye drops in, said to open the eyes. "No, three!" he shouted. "Three what?" "Count to three!" "Okay, count to three." At this he scrunched up his face in a cry and said, "No, not me. You count!" When I told him to close his eyes again, he was out, and I left the room feeling like a bad grandmother.

But the night still wasn't over. About one o'clock, he crawled wordlessly into my bed. I really debated whether it was more trouble to endure the kicks, punches, and body slams or to try to maneuver this sound sleeper back to his own bed. I settled for endurance though at times I felt like a battered woman. His favorite place is the middle of the bed, thank you very much. This morning when I asked how he got to my bed, he gave me a look like I am fairly dense and said, "I walked." I asked why, thinking he'd had a bad dream, and he said, "My bed was wet." Swell!
One benefit: sometime during my off-and-on sleep and dreams, the idea for a short story came to me. Project for the day is to rough it out. I've promised to supply a short mystery story for an anthology this spring, and it's been worrying me because I don't write short stories easily unless an idea slams me over the head.
We had one more piece of excitement this morning: Sophie, the nine month puppy, escaped out the door. Before you could blink she was across the street and in the schoolyard. I was so desperate I told Jacob to look both ways very carefully and then follow her. Ran back foir a leash, treats for bribery, and went out the front door calling for my neighbor. The neighbor on the other side said, "She's got her," and there came the neighbor from two doors down carrying Sophie, with Jacob trailing behind them. Said Sophie is so friendly she ran right up to her  with delight! My heart is still pounding.
Jacob has gone to spend the weekend with a friend, the supper is cooked, and I'm looking forward to a visit with good friends. I need peace and quiet.

Sleep while you solve problems--yours and others

Mystery author Sandra Parshall (Under the Dog Star, The Heat of the Moon, and others) recently wrote about her method of working on knotty plot problems. Before she goes to sleep, she fixes her mind firmly on the problem and often wakes aware of the solution, the direction the plot should take. Well, I had recently written myself into a corner in the broken middle of my novel--I was moving along with the crime, only I didn't know who was the villain or why he or she was doing things. Major problem at 50,000 words. I've always had vivid dreams and remembered them clearly the next day, so I thought Sandy's method was a shoe-in for me. Years ago I used to dream articles and novels and short stories, but I rarely remembered them or the "perfect" way they worked in my dream. Unlike a lot of people, I don't keep a pad and paper by the bedside--I'm afraid what I write would be gibberish, and I don't want to wake up enough to turn on the light and write intelligibly.
Sandy's method was not a shoe-in at all. I tried it for two nights and woke as puzzled as ever. Then I got a stomach bug in the evening which kept me awake and in and out of bed for too much of the night. In between trips, I'd doze and found myself writing the entire end of the book, inventing characters--one really great one, sketching out scenes. Next morning, I got up, wrote it all down, and it really held together. Sleep therapy or whatever had worked. Of course, after I fed the dogs, checked my email and took a quick look at the Sunday paper, I was back in bed by 8:30.
But I was so elated by my success that I didn't write for two days. Then, yesterday, I began to write and the story came tumbling out of my brain and onto the computer. I've now written the climactic scene and simply have the wrap-up to do. Granted, it's a first draft, and I have a lot more work ahead of me, but I am so relieved to know how the story works out.
As my mother always told me, all things work to some good end. In this case, there was a plus side to having a stomach virus. Not that it's going to become my preferred way of plotting. But sleeping might be.

Overwriting--and a reason to sleep

Today was the Festival of Sleep. I'm not sure where I learned this, newspaper or internet, but  I had already put it to good use by sleeping really late. No Jacob to worry about. I fed the cat about 6:30 this morning and threatened him if he bothered me before 8:30--he didn't. And then this afternoon I crawled in bed for a good long nap. I'm sort of a dozer--I get warm and comfy in bed and can stay there a long time, my mind drifting in and out of light sleep, telling stories in my head, figuring out things that worry me, and reliving certain recent happenings.
One of the things I thought about today, while dozing, was the mystery I finished reading today. Once again, I'm learning by seeing what I don't thinks works in books by other authors. I liked a lot about this book--the setting (including a Jewish deli with all that good food), the protagonist who was spunky and determined, and the mystery, though I identified the murderer fairly early on. But I didn't think the author was in control of the characters. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have thought "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" but I think fictional characters have to be consistent, that is remain true to their character. And the characters here were all over the place--one minute despising someone and the next minute cozying up to them. The action began to seem like  ball of yarn that had become unrolled and tangled. Most fiction authors will tell you to listen to your characters and they'll tell you where the book is going, but you have to ask yourself the question, "Would the character I created really do this?"
Since I finished editing Skeleton in a Dead Space last week and was mentally in the world of Kelly O'Connell I decided to stay there--that would be the Fairmount neighborhood of Fort Worth and the imaginary characters I've peopled it with. So I began editing the rough draft of the sequel, No Neighborhood for Old Women. One thing I'm noticing about my writing is overwriting, and blog readers may notice it too. But as I edit, I delete lots of words--the word "very" is never needed, phrases such as "I semed to think" become "I thought."  That verbal garbage creeps in when you write quickly, trying to get action and thought on the page. First edit is a time to make your words lean and spare and match the action to that, while keeping suspense up (no mean trick).
This time I'm making an outline, chapter by chapter, as I go. For one thing I discovered characters for whom I staged a wedding later in the book were already married by the first chapter. But you know what? I'm having fun!

What Wakes You Up?

Sue, my former neighbor, remarked on how quiet it is at night in her new house, tucked away on a residential street. My houe and her old one are on a thoroughfare, with railroad tracks a little over two blocks away. Apparentlyshe heard the street cleaning machine that comes by at 3:30 (couldn't prove it by me--I've never heard it) and the driver who empties the dumpster at the school across the street (I used to hear that but go right back to sleep), the trains as they blew their warning whistles and the banging and clanging of the railroad yard a bit to the south of us. I never hear any of it, but then I'm a child of the city and have always lived with city noise except for one four-year stretch in a small Missouri town (I don't remember much about the quiet). Where I grew up there was a main street a half block away, and we heard sirens at all hours of the day and night. My friend Barbara's family had a second-floor apartment on a level with the elevated railroad tracks just four doors away, and I learned to sleep soundly there. (I'm also much more security conscious than Sue, which I attribute to a Chicago childhood vs. hers in a small Canadian city with a policeman for a father).
Sue's being awakened by noises made me think of my best friend in grade school and high school--Eleanor Lee. She lived in a huge old house with her mother and sister, and some stalker discovered there were three women alone. One night Elizabeth, Eleanor Lee's sister, awoke in their second-floor bedroom to see a man head and shoulders inside the window next to her bed. She screamed, he ran away, the police were called, and a long night ensued for everyone. It was early daylight before the girls could go back to bed, and Eleanor Lee sat up in bed and demanded, "Are those damn birds going to sing like this every morning!" She was probably ten.
No, it's not city noises nor birds that wake me. It's my own body. Sometimes I need to use the restroom; other times I have a cramp in my foot or leg. In recent years I've noticed that my hips ache in the morning, so that I toss and turn to find a new position, and sometimes if I lie on my right side,my bad shoulder suddenly complains. When peole ask how late I sleep now that I'm retired, my standard reply is, "As late as my body will let me."
Lately though I've discovered a trick. I get up when the cat starts yowling (or more particularly when the dog indicates he's ready to go out). I feed them both,  use the restroom, and go back to bed. I've been up just enough to work out the aches and cramps, and I can doze peacefully. My mother taught me to always sleep with my bedroom door open, so I can listen to my house. So I hear those comforting sounds of the furnace, the refrigerator, etc., and I'm alert to out-of-place noises like when one of the kids let the commode in my office bedroom run all night.  But city noises? I find it comforting to think that while I sleep the world is still working, there are people out there making life better. I wouldn't do well living in the country where dark is dark and quiet is really quiet.