Category Archives: Holidays

Holidays

On teaching a cat patience: cause + effect = conflict

Holidays, Pets, Writing, ,

My big, handsome, fuzzy boy cat Scooter is not happy with me.  He’s had a bad stomach this morning so I hid his food.  He’s sure that it he meows and prances ahead of me to the food place in my study, I’ll feed him because, after all, that’s what I’m for.  That’s what I do—whatever Mr. Scooter wants.

Have you ever TRIED to explain to a pet WHY you’re doing something?  Cause (bad tummy) and effect (no food bowl) aren’t their strong points.

As a writer, I know too well about problems with cause and effect.   A writer has to use very careful motivation.  If a cat is sick and wants food but the owner gives him none, there is conflict.  If a man is sick and the heroine gives him ice chips instead of the steak he wants, there is conflict.   If a villain wants whatever the heroine has and she refuses to give it to him, conflict. 

In the very first book I attempted, I loved my characters so much that I didn’t want to make them unhappy.  Hence, no conflict.   The book was short and dull.   A writer lives on cause and effect which leads to conflict.   We may not like it in our “real” lives, but we love to put our characters through agony, to give them every conceivable—and inconceivable—hardship and twist we can.    We torture our characters to make the book interesting, to draw the reader in because a book without conflict is a short book.

And it’s so much fun to make or characters suffer!  Writers have great power over life and death and happiness—at least in our books.

Excuse me.  Scooter wants my attention again.  He meows and I leap to my feet:  cause and effect.   I’ll pet him but he’s not getting food: conflict. 

Oh, and about that “teaching a cat patience”?  Can’t be done.

With deepest appreciation

Holidays, Musings, , , ,

My father fought in World War II.  Although he was nearly 40 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, married with three young children, and attempting to see up him medical practice, he signed up immediately.    He landed at Normandy and served in general hospitals around the Battle of the Bulge. 

When we went to Europe many years later, we drove to the beaches.  The pill boxes that spit death at those brave soldier coming across the beaches were still there, covered in sand.   I still can’t believe anyone survived that.   We then went to a military cemetery with rows of crosses and stars of David, hundreds–perhaps thousands–of graves far away from, home for those who fought.

You are not forgotten.  Whether you served back then or are serving now, thank you.  You are my heroes.

I’m guest blogging–twice! About TWO books! Hope you’ll visit.

Holidays

Connie Almony graciously invited me to blog on both of her sites.  She interviewed me about how I write here

http://infinitecharacters.com/2012/05/23/jane-perrine-and-the-welcome-committee-of-butternut-creek/

A lot of this has to do with Butternut Creek and all the nice folkls who live there as well as my writing process.

 

 

 

I’m dyslexic and still struggle with even the simplest tasks such a remembering number and telling the difference between a b and a d.   I blog about that disability and the book that five writers for Love Inspired compiled about our efforts to overcome this.   http://livingthebodyofchrist.blogspot.com/2012/05/im-dyslexicby-jane-perrine.html

Which do you celebrate?

Holidays

Two big events today:  cinco de mayo and the Kentucky Derby.

Because George grew up in Kentucky, we watch it.  I usually cheer for the horse that won The Bluegrass  Stakes at Keeneland or, because we are seasoned gamblers, we shout for the horse withe the best name. 

And because I taught Spanish, I at least say, “Happy cinco de mayo.”  This is an obscure observance in Mexico but very popular in the US because it’s an excuse–as if anyone needs one!– to party.  Have fun.