Category: Uncategorized

Imagine . . .

~ patponderslife ~ 1 Comment

From a great distance, there are no physical borders erected to cordon off one piece of land from another on this planet. For example, in this country when you’re driving from one state to another, there’s nothing but a welcoming sign to let you know you’ve crossed an imaginary line. Most of the time the landscape doesn’t even change all that much. I understand that it’s easier to ‘govern’ humans when we are herded and then counted in individual states, but what’s really baffling is how or why we ever began to view people on the other side of an imaginary line as enemies.

How we ended up at odds with certain folks is a mystery to me. Has it always been true? Were pre-historic men hard-wired to want to kill people who looked a little different than they did? If so, was it because those people had more than they did? More food, a better location? More women? Maybe. These are questions for people way smarter than I am. But what I have learned is that governing the planet—everywhere—is in the hands (mostly) of men or man’s ideas handed down.

Masculine thinking involves competition. I could guess and I will that it springs from a place of fear. Or greed. What if they are smarter/stronger/more successful than I am? I can’t let them see that I’m afraid of that; therefore, I’ll make a lot of noise, back it up with a force of fighters, and let’s just see who’s afraid then. And then I’ll take something that’s theirs, and I will have won. Somehow, they have to know who’s winner and who’s the loser. To be the best is the goal. To be on top. It seems to be ingrained in the masculine psyche.

Right from the start, women knew they needed just the opposite. They needed cooperation. They needed help if they were going to bear these helpless babies, feed them, keep them warm and safe, and guide them to maturity. Especially if they had another one before the first one was even walking. So, women formed cooperative groups. Maybe they didn’t even need to talk about it or to make up rules and regulations. Maybe they simply knew what was needed, and they got to it.

No woman at any time ever wanted to send her beautiful baby boy off to fight and die for a piece of land. Or any other material thing. And if the women on that other piece of land had been in charge, they wouldn’t have wanted to send their babies to die trying to keep that piece of land. They’d talk. It’s what we do best. They’d see if they could share resources. That’s called feminine thinking—cooperation vs. competition. If we ever get a chance to run things, we’ll probably try that. Some women don’t meet this standard, granted, but they aren’t the majority and hopefully their voices will be drowned out by the voices of reason.

Fast forward to today. (It’s my father’s would-be birthday. Happy birthday, Dad.)

The longer the earth spins, the more obvious it is (to some) that international cooperation is the only way we will survive. Pulling in and declaring our way is the only way, that our belief system is the only right one, that we are right and you are wrong, and that we’ll go it alone if you don’t agree with us may sound patriotic and noble. It may stir your blood and make your proud, but it’s foolish. We, as a species, are interdependent. We need each other, all of us. We need to cooperate, not compete.

Everyone has something we don’t have and we have something they don’t have. We could share rather than trying to protect what we have and keep it to ourselves. It wouldn’t work with people who don’t want to share, granted, but like I said, if women were in charge everywhere. . .  For example, if women were in charge in Russia, the war would be over tomorrow. What the heck do we want more land for, they would say. Russia is vast and a lot of us are poor. Why would we want to take on more poor people to feed who are also struggling? Nobody’s child had to die; we all know that. Putin doesn’t care.

That, and several other international crises have brought an awareness of the need for cooperation to the consciousness of some men. Migrants fleeing the war in Syria in 2015 showed how countries needed to cooperate to manage national borders. Then Covid showed that political boundaries mean nothing to pandemics. We’ve seen that we have to work together for the common good. At least some of us have.

I’m encouraged by the first ever trilateral summit between Japan and South Korea. Their history of endless conflict is at least being set aside so they can present a united front. Secretary Blinken said that our engagement “is part of our broader efforts to revitalize, to strengthen, to knit together our alliances and partnerships . . . to help realize a shared vision of an Indo-Pacific that is free and open . . .where problems are dealt with openly, where rules are reached transparently and applied fairly. . .” Sounds like cooperation to me. Maybe it will all fall apart and they’ll go back to hating each other again. That’s our history. But it’s news. It’s hopeful. It’s a step away from conflict and competition toward cooperation. And there wasn’t a word in it that pulled you into the Trump drama unfolding and dominating every single news outlet.

Complaining/Not Complaining

~ patponderslife ~ 2 Comments

I entered a writing contest recently. Nominal fee to enter, and the contest was titled “First Chapter.” All of us aspiring writers know that readers’ attention spans are down to eleven seconds now, and if you hope they’ll want to read your work, you have to grab their attention. Immediately. Preferably with the first sentence. Turns out, “It was a dark and stormy night” captures the intent, even though it’s now become a cliché and therefore unusable. Drat.

There’s a lot of pressure to capture a reader’s attention, get them invested in your protagonist so that they care what happens to (in this case) her, set the stage with just enough sensory details so the reader can “be in it,” also to be relevant and clear with your intent, have an inciting incident that is a catalyst for your protagonist to be motivated or forced to “do something” that will play out as she is changed at the end.  You need a satisfying resolution. Your work needs veracity, integration, dynamics, resonance, and the mechanics of writing, spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation must all be perfect.

Of course, many real writers—the ones with best sellers, prestigious prizes, and critical acclaim—break those rules all the time. But they can afford to, can’t they? For us amateurs, it’s important that we follow all the guidelines.

In my case, I dragged out a novel-length story I wrote and self-published on Amazon KDP some years ago. I’m impressed by my former self’s ability to do all that, and I fear that today I lack the skills. But, I’m a better writer now, I think, and even though I still like the story very much, I’m pretty sure it could be told better.

The contest stated the chapter had to be 3000 words. I’ve never written a chapter that long, so I compiled my first two chapters into one and sent it in. Maybe they “like” everything that’s sent to them, who knows, but I got a thumbs up. Except for some not-so-great evaluations on several of those essential conditions I listed above. But here’s the thing: you get to revise your writing based on their feedback and re-submit it for the final decision as to who wins the contest. What have I got to lose, right? So I begin to revise. Over and over again.

One of their suggestions was peer review, so I sent one of my revisions to several of my peer writers for their feedback. I’m still waiting for two of them, but I have until the end of August to return my final revision, which is a couple of weeks away. And in the meantime, I’m still tweaking. I can’t help myself. I pull it up every day and change a word here and a word there, delete a phrase, put it back in, add something and then remove it again. It’s endless. Thank god I have only until August 31st. At least by then I’ll have to settle for whatever version I’ve cobbled together.

Along the way, I killed some of my darlings, some of the clever phrases I loved but that probably needed to go. I ended up with a lot more backstory than I had in the first one. In fact, a reader will now know that when Kate was seven her brother died or was murdered and her mother committed suicide the next year, leaving her and he dad to learn how to get through life as best they could. Which sometimes wasn’t good. I originally had no intention of telling all that this far up front, but if I wanted to “hook” the reader and make them care about my protagonist, I figured what better way than to elicit some sympathy, and maybe even a little admiration for the star of the story.

She’s prickly, my main character. Wouldn’t you be? Not terribly likeable, actually. Kind of a loner, sick of being the object of pity she has been in her tiny, tiny southern town for most of her life. But she doesn’t come off as a victim at all—probably because of the prickliness.

So why am I telling you all this? No earthly idea, except to get your sympathy, perhaps. Anyway, I persevere. And, I hope I’m not cutting the life out of my story of a damaged but strong young woman who, when all is said and done, will prevail, whether I win the contest or not.

Thanks for listening. You’re the best.