Jinxing Myself

ork on The Beer Flower Limited (The Girl Who Cried L-v-) has temporarily stalled while I tend to other matters that require attention. Yeah, I'm not happy about it either, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

That being said, a writer/editor is taking a close look at Any Color You Want. We'll then consider how to pitch it to some of the agents and independent publishers that she knows. For as much as I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, it is fun to think about a possible book tour and how I would present myself and my work in an engaging manner. More on this later, like, when it gets closer to being a reality.

Getting Wet

ow many Chinese holidays or festivals can you name? Well, until very recently I couldn't name any. To correct this, I read a book from the Chinese Classic Cultural Stories Series on traditional Chinese festivals. In some ways, this took me back to Frazer's The Golden Bough, one of the first histories of religions and, by extension, history of festivals.

I read up on Chinese festivals to get a better idea of when in the year I should set my story and what, if any, festival or event, I could set the story around. I have a few festivals in mind, but the winner may be the Water-Splashing Festival which usually takes place around April 12th. According to Traditional Chinese Festivals, "young people are divided into two camps, one of young men and the other of young women, throwing floral bags to each other. If a young man cannot catch the bag from a girl, he has to plug a flower on her coiled peacock bun. If a girl fails to catch the bag from a boy, she has to put a flower on his chest. With the lapse of time, a favorable impression and a tacit mutual understanding will develop between them [that the bag] will always land in each other’s hands, as if it had eyes. This is the unique Dai style of expressing love by young people, romantic and unforgettable."

Cool story, eh? And one I think I could have some fun with.

Mining the calendar

n Any Color You Want I used the lead-up to and the outcome of a kids' soccer tournament to build tension (along with a historic Election Day, a mammoth financial meltdown and other goodies). In The Beer Flower Limited (The Girl Who Cried L-v-), I have a rivalry between two individuals (Pijiu and Houston), two countries (China and the U.S.), (at least) two media outlets (East and West) and other factors to build tension, but it never hurts to consult the calendar.

In this case, I'm consulting the Chinese calendar, in particular, their calendar and history of cultural festivals as described in Traditional Chinese Festivals (2007) from the Spring Festival to the Harvest Festival. Until I actually get to make the trip to China, this book and others have greatly enlightened me as to Chinese traditions, history, culture and language - all bits that can only make my story richer and more poignant.

Working with a particular festival can also help me time my story as a community/country prepares for a festival, celebrates a festival and then recovers from it essentially providing its own arc which the rest of the story can run parallel to, if I so choose.

Lastly, thanks to Jessica Hische for the capital "I" that lead off this post. She has made such caps available for free through her Daily Drop Cap site.

9 down...11 to go

Yeah, another one down, another one added. No biggie. It just means that I'm getting into the story more, getting into detail more and making each chapter more defined and tight. I might end up doing some consolidating down the road - needless to say, there's a lot more road to go down if the last book, its multiple drafts and two years of writing are any indication.

Meetcha at the corner!

"She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations." I came across this quote in Salinger's Nine Stories, "For Esme - with Love and Squalor". And smiled to myself. And I thought people only over-exclamated with the advent of e-mail and text messages.

8 chapters written, 11 to go. Yes, I added a chapter. Have been looking over a chapter's outline in the morning and making notes, before writing after work at night. Seems to move the process along faster.

Back to Salinger for a moment. In an earlier post I discussed how he wrote without an edge to a certain degree, that is, he didn't use literary handicaps like murder, sex, violence, drugs or the cops to grab a reader's attention. He also wasn't afraid to abandon the traditional arch of a story. The dependence on an arch to guide a reader along is something I also look forward to abandoning as I gain a reader's trust.

I'd like to think that with President Obama in office and his way of speaking without sound-bites, ie, taking the long way around giving us context as well as content, that full-bodied stories will see a bit of a revival. I know, I'm a sucker.

6 down...12 to go

That's the score, folks. Definitely not on track to make 2/27, but am making progress nonetheless.

Telephone poles, hedgehogs and rigor mortis

As I did for my African characters in Any Color You Want, I've done some research into Chinese proverbs and idioms for The Beer Flower Limited (The Girl Who Cried L-v-). Some that I've come across include:

Using telephone poles as chopsticks - putting much material to petty use.

A dog snapping at a hedgehog - having nowhere to bite.

A hand stretched from a coffin - asking for money even when dead.

A swarm of ants on a hot oven - milling around in a panic.

These come from 100 Chinese Two-Part Allegorical Sayings.