A Little Thing Called Drama

"Oh, yes, he loves me. And you know that can't be bad." Beatles. Really? Is it really a good thing to be loved by someone who's truly WEIRD? Scott's a never-ending soap opera. Maybe that's why I accept his calls, read his texts without automatically hitting delete. He kills me slowly, but he's never boring. He's a three-ring circus with tigers who've got fangs; he's a tight rope walker without a net. Anything but dull.

Today's another story. He texted me a million times (yes! I know. YES! I'd blocked his texts from Verizon), though I have NO idea how he got through. He wanted to make sure I got to school today, that the blizzard here wasn't too dangerous, that I had a ride home, that I was OK. GAWD.

OK, "Dumping-guilt" I thought to myself. Then came the flirting texts, and a freaking nudie shot. Then he had the audacity to call me. I took the call (since I'd deleted his custom ringer, pictures and phone from my email) as it only "ding-donged" and I thought it was Jen.

All around Mr. Nice Guy. Also said he had some "other things" he wanted to chat with me about, but not today. Mr. Pleasant and Attentive. Whatever.

It's like the minute he knows I'm SO DONE, he's all about me. But at least I'm not sad, depressed or anxious. It's more like, "OK, Houdini. What rabbit you going to pull out of your hat next?"

Broken Hearted

He did it again. He dumped me. This makes three times, and after three strikes doesn't the umpire call "You're Out!"? Feb. 1, 2008; June 24th, 2008 and now; March 22, 2009.

Only this time, besides being torn and beaten, one thing is different. I'm not continuing my friendship with him.

This is the only time I've ever had to do this. Normally, I continue my relationships as "friends," but then nomally, I have been the one doing the breaking up. I asked myself why, why can't I be friends with him. The truth is, if I have to wittness him falling in love with someone new, and actually making it work, knowing it couldn't be me, knowing I just wasn't quite good enough, is more than I can bear. I just can't do it. It's lead me to an new relationship rule.

Unless a break-up is agreed upon by both parties, you cannot be friends. End of story. No exceptions. There's too much yearning on one side, "Maybe she'll come back to me." "Maybe if I'm a good enough friend, he'll realize what he was missing." The ONLY way it can work is after a good deal of time has passed and you have gotten a NEW LOVE in your life. That's the only way.

At first I felt like I was a bad person for thinking this. Rob guilted me saying, "You should move on and wish him nothing but happiness and luck in finding true love."

Well, guess what? I'm not Mother Teresa. I do not wish Scott happiness and great luck at finding true love--sorry. Not now. For now, all I can wish him is good health. That's as good as I can muster, and even that is harder than hell.

Love and relationships should NOT be this hard. If you would have told me at 26, hell even 36, that I'd be alone and just coming down from this LONG and EXTREMELY TURBULENT relationship with a guy like Scott, I would have laughed. I would have said, "No way, I'll be happily married by then to a great guy."

He loves her, but she doesn't love him. She loves him, but he can't love anyone. Love shouldn't be this complicated.
Sigh.

How would you like a criminal element visiting you next door? How would you like an extension of the arm of the reforms department approximately twenty feet from your front door every day for the rest of your life from 5-7:00 p.m. and 7-9:00 a.m. every day 365? You'd be a NIMBY, right ("Not In My Back Yard"). When you wake up, there they are. When you get ready for bed, there they are, up and down my alley, all over the place crawling like roaches.

Welcome to MY world. A world I wasn't even asked upon if I wanted to participate, a world that without a democratic vote, assumed it would be OK to put a "24-7" program in the parking lot RIGHT NEXT to my house. Folks, I'm talking 20 feet from my door step.

For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a program developed (probably all over the U.S.), but in MY county, Pennington County, South Dakota, for repeat alcohol law offenders. I don't mean the once-in-a-lifetime, whoops of a DUI. What that means in laymen talk is people who've had so many DUI's that they are ONE step from committing a felony and going to prison. They come to a little building twenty feet from my house for a urine analysis twice a day, every day of my life starting this week.

Let me clarify some things. I live downtown. I realize that living anywhere downtown means loud noises, public buildings, traffic. That applies to any city or town, large or small. But this, when you get right down to it, is a drug-enforcement program in my yard.

This needs to be held in an area that is NOT residential.

Let me paint you a picture. Every day now, since its inception this week, a tiny area, the size of a tennis court, is filled with 75-200 cars, all honking, doing burn-outs while leaving, trying to fit into a tiny area to get an urinalysis test. Let me also fill you in. The majority of these are not polite people. This isn't a senior citizen center or a Big Brothers Big Sisters Center. There's honking, fighting. Two fights already broke out between men waiting in line. There's constant horn-honking, swearing, screaming, burn-outs. And all this, outside my door.

In fact, as a single woman, many of these people waiting in line are men, men who are obviously troubled. Am I a sitting duck for trouble? What about the children in this neighborhood, too? The elderly walking their dogs in what was a quiet neighborhood?

My neighborhood is a landscape full of families and retirees. This is not the place for a drug-rehab business operated by the county. Property values will sky-dive.

And who's responsible? N.A.U., the college next door are the culprits. They decided to lease out one of their buildings not in use (I'm sure due to declining student numbers).

Thanks, N.A.U. What a paragon to higher-education you are. And thanks for what you've done to this old community.

Fist fights, screaming, yelling, honking, already a criminal element. Don't think I'll take this lying down.

I've been giving this "Poor Communication" thing a lot of thought. You can have poor communication with your best friend, kids, spouse, lover or boss. The bottom line is that it can ruin a great relationship/bond/career. But lately, I'm wondering just how many people truly are good communicators. It seems the more work/study I do on it, the more I see others are awful at it.

Top Signs of a Poor Communicator:

1. Avoids talking to you about a particular subject. Ex. Shuts the phone off, Leaves the room, leaves the city, leaves the country.

2. Makes plans around you if sensing you'll bring up a topic. Ex. "I'd love to talk to you about your new work-from-home-plan, but I have a board meeting. Can it wait?" Or, "I'd love to talk about our relationship, but I'm really busy at work right now. Can we talk about it later?" (But, guess what? "later" never comes).

3. Gets hostile and brings up your weaknesses when you DO try for openly communicate assertively. Ex. "I see what you're saying, but you always ________."

4. Doesn't answer your phone/e-mail/page/memo until much later. Then when quizzed about this, responds, "I was busy."

5. Changes the subject when at all possible (also known as non-sequitor) or reverts to number #2. Ex. "I know you would like a raise, but have you seen the material Quality Control has put out lately?" OR, YOU: "So where do you see our relationship going these days?" HIM: "Clint Eastwood has a Clint-fest on at AMC."

6. Uses defensiveness to thwart any discussion at all. Ex. "Can't you see I have a migrane now? I absolutely cannot talk." or "My job is VERY important and/or dangerous (or substitute "and has a big merger"), so you KNOW I CANNOT talk right now." Or finally, "If you KNEW how many calls we were getting in Customer Service, you wouldn't be asking such questions right now."

7. Uses everybody's favorite "Get out of hot water" line of all time: "I'd like to get into that, but I'm REALLY BUSY these days.

It's great, isn't it? Got any to add?

Poor Communication, a Poem

Communication for Crash Test Dummies 101

(for Scott, and Tony Hoagland, 3-09)


They say it takes two to communicate.
Otherwise you're just talking to yourself,
standing in the corner of the room, asking the mirror how its day went.
I open my mouth and the words come out slowly,
like an LSD dream or talking underwater, yet I'm learning how to communicate.
But it ain't easy; each word like giving birth to broken glass.

He's not listening.
The microphone always gets unplugged whenever I'm on stage.
I'm talking to an empty theatre,
his seat vacant, only an Exit light burns, reflecting red on my sleeve.
He always has to go, traffic's bad, the dog knocked over a vase.
And I'm left texting cyberspace where words bounce to Mars before hitting earth, broken, the "I" now looking like an "L," all the letters re-arranged like a cryptogram.

I want to be heard. I need to hear words,
but it's like commanding a man in a wheelchair to walk.
Though you hope there's feeling in his legs,
you could poke him with an ice pick and not even get a flinch.

"Get out of the chair. Rise. Walk!" I command,
but only meet silence,
then the groan of rusty wheel bearings
as he silently rolls
away.

The Trail of Nerds

Groovy looking, dude, right? I can't remember where I got this picture. I think it was a long time ago, some dude from Match, I think, wanting to date me.

Which leads me to a new and interesting question. It's a question that one of my new "nerds" on-line has asked me, aka, a new guy wanting to meet me and ask me out.

He asked, "What is edgy?" He asked that since it's a requirement listed on my site. It's kind of like one of those things that if I have to explain it to you, you shouldn't be asking in the first place. But it did raise my intelligent ponderings. It could be obviously completely subjective. So this is what I said.

"Well, edgy. . .
John Lennon, not Paul McCartney.
Robert Mitchum, NOT Tom Cruise.
Andrew Dice Clay, not Conan O'Brian (though Conan is funnier and more PC, he's NOT edgy nor hot)
Charlie Sheen, not John Cryer (granted, Sheen's a jerk, but he IS edgy)
Micheal Hutchins, not Huey Lewis
Jim Morrison, not The Beach Boys.
Henry Rollins, not Seinfeld
Quinten Tarintino, not Ron Howard
Cormac McCarthy, not Steinbeck
John Trudell and Russel Means, not Newt Gingrich
Gimme more Rob Zombie, Guy Richie, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood.


Picking a new thrash band to go see, even though you never heard of them before.
Following your passions, your heart, hell may care.
Dressing in all black or wearing something hip and cutting edge, or trippy or rock-star not something conservative that looks like Mom picked it out.That's a start anyway."

I could have gone on and on and on, but I drank too much coffee and shot off the VERY first thing that jumped into my head.

So how do you define edgy?

How to Become a Novelist, or My Experience Anyway

Ever wonder just how a novelist goes about being one? Read on.

I read an article once called, "The 24 steps to Publishing a Novel," and here's how it goes.

The very FIRST step is getting an agent. Then it leads you to the last step which is your novel coming out. However, what they didn't tell you is that there's about 50 steps you take BEFORE you even get an agent (and you have to HAVE to have an agent these days unless you want to "self-publish" known as "vanity publish" like a granny).

Firstly, you must write like a bandit before even trying to get an agent, like, writing thousands of practice pages (that no one should ever read except your best friend, mom and you), and that might mean, you have to write a few, yes, more than ONE, finished novels, and then learn how to REVISE them, (two things they don't teach you in any college). And well, you should probably spend 10 years studying novels in college, too. LOL. Then, after you do all that writing/studying , then you're ready to submit to an agent.

But what the article doesn't tell you is that's VERY hard. Agents on their sites will tell you this: 1. they reject 99% of all manuscripts each month and 2. they get anywhere from 400-5,000 submissions per month.

Yup. Crazy, huh? Also, you just don't send out ten letters then think you're going to bag an agent. My first agent took me about 125 letters/rejections to finally get one to take me on. The second agent took about 200.

Then, you're still not published. You're only at step 1. Then the agent starts submitting to anywhere from 4-15 publishers. If they don't sell your book, the agent drops you like a hot potato, and you start all over again. But guess what? A new agent usually doesn't want your book either if it's been "Shopped" so you have to start over and write a new one. BTW, you don't make a cent, until your novel is SOLD. And often, you have to pay your agent fees (copying, postage) to run out and sell your work.

Then if you do get a contract, you have to give Uncle Sam 30% and your agent 15-30%. Typically, you don't make much on a first novel. What you make is called "an advance," towards future prospective sales. It can be as low as $2,000 or as high as $100,000, usually LOW for a first novel.

I wrote a very commercial (big reading audience) novel, so Victoria was aiming high. I've written: Wide Open Places (a historical western), Eating at the Tall Corn Cafe (women's fiction and all the rest are women's fiction), Searching for Galileo, The Fat Chicks Club (comedy), All My Friends are Men and now . . .Welcome to Rock County.

Of those novels, I came PAINFULLY CLOSE to getting a big novel deal with Eating at the Tall Corn Cafe. I was VERY lucky to get Victoria Sanders in Manhattan to rep me (she reps huge stars like Queen Latifah and Karen Slaughter). She got the biggest, brightest stars in publishing to READ my whole novel in ONE sitting in a matter of THREE WEEKS. I came so painfully close, my secretaries were notified to get me out of class if my agent called. I made it straight to the top with the readings. First, I got Penguin to almost publish me through Ellen Edwards. She called me, and I almost had a heart attack on the phone. But she was, very, very vague and had poor communication. I couldn't understand what it was exactly that she wanted from me. She wanted me to re-do the storyline, but she didn't tell me 1. why or 2. what she wanted changed. I changed a few minor things, then I was rejected. Heart-breaking!

Then Victoria got Hyperion/Disney/Miramax Film/Publishing interested in me.Again, I got an interview on the phone. This time it looked GREAT! The editor was my age, had grown up in the midwest on a farm like me. She communicated fabulously. We were on the same page, literally. She totally DUG the novel, and with this Miramax connection, if it did well, it would be made into a film! She gave me GREAT notes on how to make the novel's revision even better (you ALWAYS have to re-do the novel, btw, you can NEVER just write it "as is" until you're Cormac McCarthy), and I was ready to go. But she was ONLY a "junior editor" which meant she needed unanimous approval in committee to "buy me." One editor balked because I'm an "unknown," so the contract was cancelled.

Crushing, huh? So you can probably see why I'm NOT ready to throw down my cards, leave teaching and get a 9-5 job just yet. This all happened in 2003-2004. Then I took some time to just develop my craft and I wrote the next few novels.All My Friends are Men, felt like it was worthy, so I gave it to Victoria, but she didn't care for it, and I was dumped. Back to the slate I went and got a new agent, Joan, in Florida. But Joan's not a famous agent, and the novel went no where. So, back to the slate I went and I wrote this new novel Welcome To Rock County in 2007-2008.

I'm now revising it, and I think it's my best work to date.Hopefully, I've learned enough that this will NOW be the break out novel. I'm confused though. When the time comes, which agent should I submit it to? Joan, the nice helpful agent who's a nobody? Or Victoria, the famous ex-agent who's hard to get along with? Victoria is good at what she does, but she's a HUGE crank to work with. That's where I'm at.

I've had some short stories and poems published in academic literary journals which were prestigious (but no pay), like last year I was published in 13th Moon, out of University of New York-Albany. They asked me to present my work with 12 others at a convention in Cincinnati, but my school wouldn't fund my plane ticket to go (cheapskates). So that's it in a nutshell.

Want to know about Welcome to Rock County or ever feel like reading something, just ask.

Anyway, there's your glimpse into the world of a novelist and why I'm not quite ready to abandon it just yet. Wish me luck.