TalulaZoeApple

Choices - The Old and Familiar or the New and Untried?

I became so frustrated with the lack of quality stories on TV and in the theater that I began to write again. I stayed at it and fully edited the first half of my novel. I began to fall in love with the characters again.

I think i know how I want the story to end. I need a little help from the few readers that still follow. If you had a choice between the man you have always wanted but who had not always wanted you and something totally new (but all good so far) What choice would you make and why?

I wrote a first version of the ending and I was hesitant to let the character have it all. So I ended it two ways - one in which she does not get the guy of her dreams and one in which there is a cliff hanger. Someone told me, "Hey this is your story, why can't the girl have happily ever after." The truth is I do not know a lot of happily ever afters.

 

Could I create one? Would it be worth the read?

Ugh!!! Now you see my dilemma.

A Streetcar Named Desire - My Thoughts

As a freshman in undergrad, I began taking a lot of fiction classes. One particular year I was on a serious Tennessee Williams kick. I read everything I could find; The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, The Sweet Bird of Youth. Later when I became obsessed with old movies, I got into A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Paul Newman was BRILLIANT as Brick Pollitt) and  Sweet Bird of Youth (also starring Paul Newman).

I watched A Streetcar Named Desire last night and it was disturbingly good. Vivien Leigh is brilliant in her insanity as Blanche DuBois. Marlon Brando is genius as brutish husband Stanley Kowalski.

I have to admit that I was a pretty naive back then. I totally missed the overarching themes of homosexuality in William's plays. I totally missed the fact that he himself was homosexual. He frequently wrote from his life experiences- his mother being a hysteric, his sister's mental illness and lobotomy, his father's preference for his more masculine brother.

Williams was also the brand of writer who chose to live life in order to write about it. He moved to New Orleans which became the setting for A Streetcar Named Desire. I , too, suffer from this malady. I am trying to balance practicality with the desire to experience as much as I can. If I had a million dollars, I would so travel the countryside, travel the world with nothing but a camera and a notebook.

Although a dreamer, I don't suffer from mental illness. So,writing about adventure and escape will have to do for now. I have a semester to finish and a career to launch.

You can read more about Tennessee Williams here.

How To Spot An Angel

I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR while driving the other day and learned how to spot an angel.

Terry Gross, the host, was replaying older interviews she had had with Maurice Sendak, the author of Where The Wild Things Are.

Sendak has an interesting life story. For example, his father was the only surviving member of his family. The rest died in the concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Sendak was a sickly child during the 30's growing up. His parents feared he would die. He had had pneumonia twice, plus illnesses that we are now immunized against. Well his father and mother would dress him in all white so that if an angel would come to take him away. They would mistake him for being an angel already and leave him there.

Sendak said that his father once told him that if he stared out of his window and did not blink he would see an angel. He told him if he succeeded that he was a very lucky boy.

Sendak tried to stare but his eyes would hurt so much that he would eventually blink.  Well, one day he kept his eyes open, even though they hurt really bad, and he said that is when he saw it. He described the image of a being in all white moving in slow motion from the left to the right pane of his window. He screamed, his father ran in. Sendak explained that he had seen an angel. His father responded, "You are a very lucky boy."

I wrote previously of my angel experience. Have any of you experienced a supernatural event that you care to share?

Interview With Ntozake Shange

This is a gem of an interview with Ntozake Shange done by KETC in St. Louis where she grew up. Shange describes an upringing in an upper middleclass black neighborhood the likes of which no longer exists. She is nearly sixty years old and her slurred speech is due to a recent stroke but the choreopoem For Colored Girls . . . still resonates with audiences today.

Lorraine

The following is an excerpt from my next novel (when I finish writing the first lol). Let me know if it's any good.

Remembering everything coach had said, ‘pace yourself, control your breathing, there is nothing between you and that finish line but time,’ she raced forward. Her muscles pulsated as heel hit pavement. Feeling that the next runner was gaining an edge, she pressed harder. Lorraine looked up to see the finish line grow faint and distant. Her chest felt as if it could explode at any moment. She looked around for encouragment. Her coach faded into the green stands. Her dad sat blindfolded with a grimacing Ana by his side.

In a flash, she was on an Interstate 35. Fear grasped at her heels as a tractor trailer sped by. Her face in the dust, she lay unsure of her next move. The earth began to rumble as another vehicle came near. Her senses told her that the car was slowing then stopping. Footstep after footstep became louder as she rolled over to view her impending fate. She saw the green Cadillac, the black boots and Jonathan’s hand reaching down to help her up.