Emily Josephine Writes

Back in the days of the Great Depression and World War Two, people learned to be super-frugal. They were admonished to wear things out, do without, and fix things.

But sometimes, things break and they can’t be fixed. At least, not so that they will maintain their original purpose.

Such was the case with the first two chapters of my latest novel in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series.

Based on the advice from this writing podcast episode, I completed the most thorough outline I ever had before putting pen to paper.

A-hem, fingers to keyboard.

I was stoked (that’s ‘80s lingo for “excited” if you’re under the age of thirty-five and don’t tell me “thank you” for defining it for you because then I’ll feel old and then I’ll have to lie down and take a nap because that’s what old people do and then I won’t finish my novel and then the world will be really sad).

Um, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I was gung-ho to start my latest novel. I got the prologue written, then started on the first chapter. Finished it, went on to the second chapter.

Didn’t finish it. Something wasn’t right. So I thought about it a little, went back to the first chapter, and rewrote large portions of it. Ditto for the second chapter.

A-a-annd…still something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Frustrated, I set it aside. Stared at my outline. Maybe the whole plot was wrong. Maybe I just wasn’t supposed to be writing this story.

AARGH!!

Two days of trying not to think about it, and the answer came: the story was fine. The characters? No problem. Where was the problem? I was trying to write a scene that the book didn’t need, in fact which was dragging the whole beginning of the book – despite the fast-paced, interesting prologue.

Solution?

I trashed the first chapter and a half. And started the story with the next scene I had planned.

BOOM! Success.

I couldn’t fix the first couple of chapters that I had planned for the book. They were unfixable, because they weren’t supposed to be part of the story.

I am now 7100 words into the novel (as of 2-9-19), a little less than 10% finished. Yay!

I’m stoked.

P.S. – Do you see a run-on sentence in the above article? Quote it in the comments section, and I will give you an A+ on today’s English assignment.

The following short story is, unfortunately, based on real-life events. I may have taken a few liberties in assuming the thoughts, words, and actions of the main characters. Since I did not actually witness the tragic event.

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“I have a treat for the rats! Who wants a treat?”

Yes! Just like clockwork. I got up on all fours, stretched, and poked my head out from under the nest I had built underneath the shed.

Which the humans seemed to have built especially for me.

Being a rat, I’m one of the most clever animals in the forest. Per my intelligence, I know they didn’t exactly build the shed just for me. But instead of placing the bottom of the structure right against the ground, they built it so that there were several inches of space between the ground and the bottom of the shed, which is the perfect height for a packrat like me. And so I think they had my species in mind when they constructed the little building. That they wanted to help us out by providing us with a safe dwelling.

Also per my intelligence, I had trained the female human who lives near me to feed me her kitchen scraps.

And those words called into the front opening of my home let me know that she had not forgotten me that day.

Used to be that to collect goodies such as apple cores, pieces of carrot, fruit tea bags, and butternut squash seeds, I’d have to traipse from my nest under the cozy shed all the way to this pile of trash several yards away. And I’d have to do it in the middle of the night, when owls, coyotes, and bobcats wander around looking for a tasty bit of meat.

My relatives have often been that tasty bit. Though, being Florida woodrats and therefore on the large side of the rat spectrum, the bobcats tend to leave us alone.

Be that as it may, I never liked having to expose myself in such a way to get to the snacks that the wasteful humans leave.

And so, I trained the lady to leave her tasty bits right outside my home. How did I do it, you ask? Easy. One day when I heard footsteps going by the shed, I poked my head out just long enough for the person to see me. As I ducked my head back in, I heard the person – who turned out to be the lady – say, “Jerry, there are rats under the shed again!”

Now, my relatives tell me that such words when spoken by humans are usually spoken with dismay or disgust. Not so for this female human. For some reason, her words sounded glad, almost excited.

And starting with that day, I began to hear her voice by my front door, announcing the arrival of “treats.” Now, generally speaking I like to sleep during the day. But being the clever creature that I am, I knew that if I wanted to train her to continue to leave the tasty morsels at my door, I would have to rouse myself whenever she called and go retrieve them.

So it happened this day. She called out to me, I counted to ten, and then I went to the front door to see what she had left that day.

Ooo, my favorite! Baked butternut squash skin with some seeds and squash. There were also three date pits, and apple core, and one fruit tea bag. I had it all pulled under the shed and near my nest in a manner of two minutes.

It was almost too good to be true.

I ate to my heart’s content, and when I was full, laid down to rest again. Of course the treats weren’t quite enough to fill me up for an entire day and night, so I would still have to go out and forage for a little while that night.

A few hours later, I woke up, yawned and stretched, and waddled to the front door. As I did, I heard the sound of munching. I stopped and sniffed. Apple. Oh, that’s right, I’d left one piece of apple near the hole for later.

And now…someone else was eating it!

I got angry. But being smart, I knew not to just march on out and confront the thief. First, I had to figure out what manner of thief I was dealing with.

My sharp sense of smell had it figured out in no time flat: a skunk. While skunks are not known for attaching large rats such as myself, I knew that they nevertheless had to be approached as cautiously as I would have to approach a cat.

I shuffled to the front opening of my home, and cleared my throat. “Excuse me, but I believe that’s my apple core you’re eating.”

No reply.

I tapped my left front paw on the ground. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.” The smooth voice sounded unrepentant. “And did you never hear that one shouldn’t speak with food in one’s mouth?”

“I’ve never heard anything of the kind.”

“Hmmph.” My vision is bad, but at that moment I could see the skunk’s nose come close to my own. “Of course you haven’t. Rats are such a vulgar bunch.”

I took a deep breath, trying to hold my temper. I knew I had to at least remain civil, or risk dire consequences. “Just so you know, from now on if you see a piece of food at my door, it’s mine. The female human who lives around here gives all her kitchen scraps to me.”

“Is that a fact?” The skunk shoved her nose into mine.

Startled, I backed away as her eyes appeared before mine. “Oh, my, this looks like a nice place to live. How rude of you not to tell anyone else about it.”

At that, she poked the claws from both her front paws into the dirt and began to dig.

“Wha – what are you doing?”

She laughed. “Why, moving in with you, of course!”

Instinct kicked in. I leaped forward and bit her on the nose. 

She shrieked, yanked her head out of the hole, and whipped around so fast with her tail in the air that I barely had time to realize what was coming. Her instinct had kicked in.

“NO-O-O-O!” I began scuttling backward, but it was too late. A stream of nasty, burning liquid squirted me. I leaped out of the way as quickly as I could, bashing my head against the bottom of the shed, but the stream kept coming.

I won’t horrify you with the gruesome details of how the next few days proceeded. Suffice to say that rats lick themselves in order to keep themselves clean. I wanted to run to the human’s house and beg for a bath, but three things stopped me. First, I had no idea where their house was. Second, being a wild rat I couldn’t trust them. Third, the humans didn’t like the stench anymore than I did.

I found this out the next day when the human came to the shed early in the morning. “Eew, skunk!” And then she said a lot of words I’d never heard her say before as she stomped around above me for about five seconds. Then I heard her open the shed door again, but not close it.

Despite the stench, she continued to come and give me treats. But after a few days, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to find a new place to live. That night I moved out of my cozy, warm house and sought shelter under a brush pile that wasn’t too far away, but far enough away that the skunk stench hadn’t touched it.

The next day, I heard the lady calling. “I have treats for the rats! Who wants a treat?”

I wanted to come out and show her my new home, but I didn’t dare. It was daylight, and instinct made me think that I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t hungry for roasted rat. I think she was as sad about my move-out as I was, because I heard to say to one of the other humans that she missed the rat. I, at least, could still find the treats piled up in the woods as long as I got there before the raccoons did.

My new home isn’t nearly as nice as my old one, but I’ve learned an important lesson. If you’re going to argue with a skunk, do it far, far away from your home.

When we went to Minnesota this past Christmas, we thought it would be fun to go see Mary Poppins Returns.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and are planning to, you may not want to read this post.

On the other hand, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, and are planning to…well, let’s just say that the general rule of thumb for sequels not being so great was true for this one.

Moving right along…B and I had both seen the movie trailer while watching YouTube. We liked what we saw. The trailer did its job in deceiving persuading us that the movie would be really entertaining.

There isn’t a decent movie theater within two hours of where we live, and I thought watching a matinee would be a good excuse to get us out of the hotel room for a while. (It was late December, in Minnesota. Read: too cold to spend much time outside.)

So we went. We watched it. I spent half the time comparing it to the original, and it came up short every time.

Hey, cut me some slack. I’m almost forty-nine years old and watched Mary Poppins on T.V. every year for like a decade. So I’m a little bit biased.

And I’m a little bit off track. Moving right along…

Despite my disappointment in the movie, one of the last scenes in the movie caught my attention like a skunk with its tail raised.

No, wrong metaphor. It wasn’t a bad thing. Caught my attention like…hmm…let’s see…like a…nope, not that one; this blog is rated PG…caught my attention like…like a chocolate-cherry smoothie in a tall, sweating glass when it’s 100 degrees outside and I haven’t eaten for days.

Okay, that’s wrong, too. It wasn’t that superb of a surprise.

Let’s leave it at that the scene caught my attention. It was when the owner of the bank, Mr. Dawes, Jr., came out and declared that he was taking it back over from his unscrupulous nephew.

Time to back up. You may recall that in the original movie, Dick Van Dyke played the character Burt. You may also possibly know that Dick Van Dyke also played the elderly owner of the bank, Mr. Dawes, Sr.

So, I’m watching this old guy come out from some back room, and he looks – and sounds – exactly like the elderly owner of the bank from Mary Poppins. My eyes widen.

I turn to J and whisper, “If I didn’t know that Dick Van Dyke was dead, I’d swear that was him!”

I was thinking they had found a really good impersonator to play that role.

I scrutinized the guy, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t Dick Van Dyke.

Because Dick Van Dyke was dead, right?

The movie was over a few minutes later, and as J and Be stood and began to walk toward the theater exit, I made a last-second decision. I was going to watch the actor credits. Just to make sure.

Even though I knew he was dead.

The credits began to scroll, and I fixated on the screen like it was the last piece of chocolate left on earth. (Now, THAT’S a good metaphor!)

And then, there it was.

“Mr. Dawes, Jr.———–Dick Van Dyke”

Oh.

Oh!

It was a “knock me down with a feather” moment.

I practically ran out of the theater to catch up with J, and excitedly told him, “He’s not dead! It was Dick Van Dyke playing the old banker!” (And this time, he didn’t have to wear a ton of makeup to look old.)

J looked at me like, “Um, okay. Glad you’ll be able to go to sleep tonight.”

I just might be the drama queen of the family.

So, Van Dyke wasn’t – isn’t, as of this post – dead. Well, why should he be? Angela Lansbury was in the movie, too, and she’s about the same age.

Here’s my theory about why I thought he might be dead: I had it in my head that when Michael Jackson died, a bunch of other celebrities died within the same month. It was actually within the same six-month period, but Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon having died the same day as, or two days before, Michael, I got it stuck in my head that all these deaths occurred within a few weeks of each other.

And because I was raising a wild preschooler at the time, I couldn’t remember exactly who all they were.

And since good ol’ Dick was old, somehow I got it into my head that he had passed on.

When I told my mom of my discovery later that day, she looked at me funny and said, “Of course he’s still alive!”

She would know. She actually reads the newspaper.

Hmm. Maybe it’s time I start glancing over headlines online once in a while. Would definitely help with developing stories for my novels.

Then again, if I became a know-it-all, I wouldn’t have the fun of being surprised by things like people being alive who I thought were dead. 

Like Dick Van Dyke. He’s alive. And probably thrilled that I’ve cleared up those nasty rumors about his demise going around in my head.

I changed my mind.

In a recent post, I announced that I was going to set aside the “Pine Mountain Estates” series for which I’ve written two novels, and work on the “Rock Star Husbands” series instead. But when I took a close look at Tony’s Rose, the first book in the “Rock Star” series, I came to a jarring, and for a while dismaying, conclusion:

Much of the story is boring.

It isn’t nearly as interesting as most of the other novels I have available in the Kindle store. Which is backwards. An author is supposed to improve her writing with time, not get worse!

Another problem with it is that the major problem in the second book in the series also appears in Tony’s Rose. It’s in a different form and not quite as important, but the similarity would be obvious to anyone who reads both novels. And since the entire story in the second book revolves around the problem, I would have to completely rewrite it with a completely different problem to distinguish it from the plot line of Tony’s Rose.

I’m not going to do that.

On the other hand, I introduce an internal conflict for the male protagonist in the beginning of Tony’s Rose, which I drop not too far into the book. In other words, I make no move to resolve that conflict for him. Poor guy.

In author-speak, I imply a promise to my readers, and don’t fulfill it.

However, right now the story contains a small problem, currently resolved toward the beginning of the story, that I can easily blow up to become major and continue throughout the entire novel. It relates to the internal conflict, and is the perfect impetus to creating conflict between the two main characters. Resolving that problem could lead to a much more satisfying climax.

So, I’m going to have to rewrite the novel, almost completely. When I’m finished, I’m going to re-title both novels, one reason being that the two reviews I have for Tony’s Rose right now won’t pertain to the new story. And as soon as I finish this blog post, I’m going to go unpublish both the “Rock Star Husbands” books.

The bummer about that is that I’ve already invested $100 each for the covers of those two novels. Oh, well. I may be able to get the original artist of Tony’s Rose to simply redo the title, at a discounted price. Or I may figure out how to make my own nice covers with Canva.

I made this decision, to work on “Pine Mountain” right now and set aside “Rock Star Husbands”, just a day or two after publishing the blog post in which I stated I was going to do the opposite. Why?

When I looked at Pine Mountain Secrets, the first book in the series, I realized that the only big problem was toward the end, when I had a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. I remedied that by first, adding a chapter toward the beginning for the minor point-of-view character; and second, by inserting flashback scenes of one of the major characters in chapters where the narration was from her point of view. Thus, when you get toward the end of the book where she is explaining her background to the other characters, you mainly get a quick summary because you’ve already seen the thorough descriptions in the flashbacks.

The second book won’t require any rewriting beyond adding some foreshadowing that leads into the third book. So my next goal is to plan out that third book as much as I can. I hope to actually start writing it within the next week.

There you go – my latest novel-writing update. And now you have a slight idea about how the blood, sweat, and tears that novelists go through in order to produce good stories. 😉