“I’m not creative, like you,” she said. “I’m an editor. I guide things. I don’t pump things out quickly like you or Karyn, but I do what I can.”
I ponder the differences between what the ignorant perceive as vanity, and the wise perceive as knowing what you are good at.
Which I am guilty of is the real question.
~*~
Based on a real conversation, and Lance’s blog mention of “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. (One of my favorite inspirations.)
More to follow soon.
“A hurricane of laughter like a song
Your voice like a blue storm in my head.
You whispered,
(Kissed my soul)
I am a pebble in your river.”
~*~
Instead of cleaning, this happened.
Now back to scrubbing with bleach…
I used to think that children were like butterflies. They’d stay inside a cocoon you would shelter and watch until they would finally break free. You’d catch a glimpse of them floating by as young adults and then they would vanish into their own little world. Mysterious. Hard to fathom.
But as a teacher I came to understand children were not always sweet little things.
I found I had to wrap myself and my heart up tight with an Ace bandage in order to maintain control over my students. Had to feign cheerfulness or sternness as required. There wasn’t room for too much getting close. And yet somehow the children seemed to creep in anyway.
There was one I felt an affinity with, an odd thirteen year old that started with me when she was only eleven. I couldn’t say why, but she had become a sort of rock in my life. A reliable part every Tuesday evening, and she would make me laugh with her silly stories and wild opinions.
This week, she came into the room in tears.
“Whoa, whoa, what happened?” I asked, thinking it was just another fight with her mother.
She told me.
A local boy had just committed suicide over the weekend. He was happy. He was popular. “Everyone liked him,” my student said, scuffing her neon sneakers on the floor of the studio. “He was in high school but we were all still friends with him. A good friend of mine, she’s kinda overweight and gets bullied a lot. She says she’s feeling suicidal too.”
“What?” my hands slammed on the piano keys, startling her. It seemed out of the blue.
“We go to talk to the counselor and stuff. But she’s out this week. My friend said that the boy – Chris was his name – he was the only one that ever told her she was beautiful everyday. She doesn’t know what she’ll do without him.”
I started trembling.
“Okay, we can’t let this go,” I said in a stronger voice than I felt. “Sweetie, you need to take her to get help. Do you talk to her?”
She nodded.
“Will you talk to her tonight?”
She nodded again.
“You tell her from me: I used to be suicidal too. When I was her age, actually. But I got help, and I am much better for it now. Often it’s a mental imbalance – a hormonal imbalance. Did you know that?”
She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears again.
“Okay, well, sometimes a doctor will put you on herbal medication or harder medication and it straightens you out. I’m not saying that will happen to your friend but it might. She needs to go to therapy so they can talk about changing the way she thinks. Changing her thoughts from negative ones to positive ones. That’s what the therapy does. But you can’t let this go. This is important – her telling you that was her cry for help.”
I didn’t want to see another incident, I thought. Not another suicide so close to three accidental deaths the week before at the same school. I would not let this happen.
My student piped up. “At lunch today this random girl we didn’t even know said something about her dad and about maybe her not eating so much.”
“Geez… did you punch her?”
She laughed and I held a hand out. “I don’t advocate violence, but seriously, what did you do?”
“Me and my other friends went over to her table and said, ‘Hey, why the heck would you say that to her? Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much!” That was more like my strong student.
“Yeah, those bullies? That girl? You tell your friend they are just doing it for power. They just look for a weak link in the system. If it wasn’t her, it would be someone else.”
“Yeah, I told her even if she just like, yells in their faces or something, but doesn’t cry and take them seriously, that was fine.”
“Good.” I wrote down a number on paper and folded it up very small. I held it out to my student.
“You tell her,” I said as she clutched that piece of paper like a lifeline, “you tell your friend that her place in the world is so important that a complete stranger is willing to talk to her if she needs the help. You tell her.”
“I will,” my student said.
In those two words, she looked every bit the fragile thirteen year old she was.
I gave her a hug and sent her home, feeling that maybe I went too far, but hoping her friend would get help.
I saw myself as a thirteen year old, lonely and begging for help. Maybe that’s what had made me react so emotionally. I saw myself in that girl and wanted to stop her from having to go through all the bad things that I experienced in life.
I felt terrible. I cried and tossed and turned all night.
I had never been thrown into such a serious situation before. I had never dealt with it. What would another teacher do? What would anyone do? In this day and age, something as simple as offering your help could be interpreted in negative and damaging ways.
What a shame this world had come to that.
I looked to my family for advice and my cousin told me I had gone too far, that I should have just told her to get help and that was all. I overstepped my bounds, she said.
I didn’t know if I had. I fretted about that. I fretted about the girl. Was she all right? Was my student handling things okay?
The next day, mid lessons as I sat distracted with a piano student, her mother stopped by the studio. I went out to talk to her in a free moment.
“Did she talk to you?” I asked her. She said her daughter hadn’t. She was there for another reason. I sat her down and explained everything that happened.
“Did I go to far?” I asked. “Is it okay I said all the things I did?”
“You know her really well,” her mother said. “She’s tough.”
“Because I know going into detail about those things… I just thought to myself: another adult would just say: go get your friend help, and wouldn’t explain why. I wanted her to know why.”
“And you absolutely did the right thing. Thank you. I really appreciate what you did for my daughter,” she told me. “Her friend is going to get help, I promise you.”
“I just did what I felt was right.”
“And you were.”
That night I sat writing on my computer and my mother came in, knocking on the door. “You know,” she said, “you might have saved a little girl’s life.”
“Maybe I did,” I said. “Even if she isn’t suicidal, it’s a cry for help for something. I just did what I had to.”
I wondered, thinking to past heroes in history, if this is how they felt. Satisfied they did a good job, but not really feeling they did anything special. I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I just didn’t want to see a little girl hurt.
Such gossamer threads hold our lives together. Fragile, like a butterfly’s wing. We don’t see how they connect or help until one of them breaks and we all fall.
If we watch one another for the signs, maybe we can prevent that.
I cried again and my mother hugged me like I was just a child myself.
“You’re a good person,” my mother whispered. “That’s why you care so much.”
She was right.
Maybe caring was all it took to make the difference.
The Ace bandage around my heart had started to unravel, but I found that I didn’t mind.
~*~
So this is entirely nonfiction. This just happened.
This was written for Write at the Merge 3, which gave the prompt of the two words: “gossamer” and “Affinity”. And also, for the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Eric Storch gave me this prompt: The Ace bandage had become unraveled, but I didn’t mind.
I gave Andrea this prompt: The eyes are not the windows of the soul, they are the doors. Beware what may enter them. (A quote from “Doctor Who” but please don’t feel you need to write about him. Just a little inspiration!)
But in all seriousness:
If you notice anyone you love acting strangely, suddenly giving away old things, leaving a job, breaking up with or divorcing a significant other without much warning, keep an eye on them. Talk to them. Find out why they are doing these things on a whim.
The boy who committed suicide this past week was a popular child, and no one suspected anything was wrong. However, he did end a long relationship the week before he died, and he took the time to write letters to all the people he loved, (which definitely took planning,) which were found upon his death.
I believe that education about mental illness and depression are key to preventing teen death. I didn’t learn specifics about these things until high school, but I had already felt depressed and suicidal at the age of 13. It was only because a friend told on me to my parents that I am alive today.
People will tell you that the world is a much more progressive place than it used to be, that mental illness is no longer a stigma.
This is a lie.
I have faced bullying, misunderstandings, and I am fairly certain (but unfortunately have no proof) that the real reason my last job ended suddenly was because my boss found out I was seeing a therapist. While I only have a very mild case of depression that is now under control thanks to therapy, changing the way I think and a daily regimen of St. John’s Wort, there are hundreds of others afraid to get the treatment they need because they are scared what people will think of them.
We need to start educating our children younger, and not wait for a young life to snuff itself out before having that serious talk. By then, it’s too late. The damage is done.
I fully advocate teaching children about these things from a young age. Make them see that mental illness is not a sign of a bad person. Good people can have major problems. And some come out the other side – mostly – fine. I advocate a community where students, teachers, friends and families all communicate with one another. If I had not reached out to my student’s mother as well as my student, perhaps nothing would have changed. But I felt open enough to approach her anyway and do the right thing.
Say what you will. I am not a mental health professional. I would never say I could counsel a child. But I have been through the experience myself and I know what that little girl now faces.
I wasn’t sure at first if I should have said all I did to my student.
Now? I know I made the right choice.
Would you?
~jms
1. Write at least 1 challenge blog entry a week.
2. To lose 20 pounds and an additional 10 next year, the goal being my college weight. (But I’ll look damn good after 10 pounds because I know my body)
3. To appreciate those around me more.
4. To get a full time job that I enjoy and that challenges me.
5. To eat more fruit, vegetables, legumes and whole grains and to drink more water. (Earth made versus man made foods. No more chips or soda.). Drink more skim cappuccinos instead of lattes and make sure I’m only eating 1 “dessert” a day.
6. Send my newly edited manuscript back to the editor @kgwaite for one more check then on to the agents once more!
7. To exercise 30 minutes a day: walk 4 miles daily or do 20 minutes of full body strength training (like Pilates or slow controlled martial arts or swimming) or dance for 30 minutes every day. My herniated disc is going to make this goal hard but I will do it!
8. To get in touch with all old friends and enemies, even if its just once this year, just to say hi and get rid of old grudges that haunt me.
9. Take my anxiety meds every day when I am supposed to so I don’t have random panic attacks or depressive episodes. This one is a must.
10. Read a book a month.
11. Start taking voice lessons again so I am always in tip top shape.
12. Finish my album and start performing live again with merchandise in hand at last!
13. To love.
~jms
What are yours? Feel free to comment below.
Three mini Christmas trees were staked to a fence outside of a discount Mattress World.
“What, are they trying to warn off the other trees?” I asked from the back of the car. “Run! Run while you still can?” I laughed maniacally.
It was Christmas Eve 2012.
The strangeness had only just begun.
We arrived at the tiny, cramped rowhome that is my grandparents’ house. It was lovingly decorated and lit, my mentally retarded aunt successfully having taped all ornaments and stockings to the stair banister.
The tree had ornaments too, of course.
“You’re drooling all over your Christmas dress, honey,” my cousin told her nine month old baby. It’s all right. There were a plethora of doting aunts, uncles, and great aunts to assist with the bib.
Which the baby ripped off immediately as she gave us a look like: really? really, guys?
My aunt Monique brought her boyfriend-of-sorts. Friend. Boyfriend. Oh hell, no one really cared. He’s a fun guy around the dinner table that gets our sense of humor. And he also taught us the Stick game.
“This is the year of honesty,” my aunt raised her hands in the air. “This is the year I speak my mind.”
“Was every year before this the year of the liar?” My cousin mock whispers across the table.
“Julia, what did you do to your hair?” My aunt Monique asked suddenly.
“What?”
She held a hand up sideways in the air between us. “I can’t figure it out. If I look at you from this way, neck up, the hair is fine. If I look at you neck down, the dress is fine. But red hair and a teal dress? It looks terrible.”
A stocking plopped to the floor, its Scotch Taped existence on its last leg.
The table erupted into laughter, including me. “Oh, this is the year of honesty, huh?” I managed.
“The year she stops being nice,” my cousin said through tears of laughter.
It became the running joke of the night, other partygoers lifting their hand up periodically as they said: “you look great neck up but the rest is terrible.”
My mom replaced the stocking on the banister, securing the Scotch Tape once more.
My father, the overprotective sweetheart that he is, took me aside and said: “honey, I want you to know that you don’t have to stop going to the salon and cut your own hair to save money. I will pay for it if you want.”
“Do I look that bad??” I shrieked to the room.
Well, at least my boyfriend responded appropriately with a text of “you look beautiful.”
Christmas Eve as usual, as my cousin called from Florida and we shouted replies across the table.
“It’s 75 degrees here today,” she said over speakerphone.
“It’s snowing here, does that make you feel bad?” My mom shouted back.
“Haha,” she said, which I read to mean “no.”
Gifts were exchanged. My Babci retrieved an old metal lunch tray which she said was for the baby. It was Strawberry Shortcake, and if you can remember what that is, then good.
“It was mine as a baby!” My mom said.
My cousins interjected in between raucous laughter.
“It’s rusty!”
“Throw it away!”
“It was mine too!” My aunt replied, banging her fork on the table. “I want it!” She is just doing it to rile up my grandmother, which works.
“I didn’t get a gift for the baby! It’s for the baby!” My Babci shouted.
The baby in question banged her fists on the metal surface, giggling as she drummed away.
“That’s right!” I called, “little musician, yeah!” I was overly excited about this.
“It’ll be great until she closes her fingers in the tray accidentally,” my eldest cousin said, “which is why they stopped making metal lunch trays.”
My Babci gave all of my aunts her famous cherry Bon Bon recipe. I can’t make you understand how valuable this recipe is to our family. Every big event had these confections. And last night we talked of having a bake off at last.
“I’ve been wanting this for years!” My aunt Carol caressed her copy.
My aunt Monique flipped out upon not receiving one.
“You don’t bake,” we tell her.
“But I should always get one! Mom has always been fair! She always gives us everything exactly the same!”
My Babci wordlessly hands her a copy.
“See? I’m happy now,” Monique said, sitting back in her chair.
“I did give you the cherries with stems,” my Babci pointed out, “since you’ll use it for cocktails and not baking.”
“Hang on,” my eldest cousin shook his head, “you guys have been asking for this recipe for years and you just now get it for Christmas? She jipped you out a legit gift! She just photocopied the recipe and put it in a bag!”
“Not only that,” I told my cousin, “but she says she didn’t include the little tweaks she made over the years.”
“What?? Or brandy,” my cousin said. “See? Not even the brandy for the recipe.”
“Hey yeah,” my aunt Carol said, “where’s the brandy?”
My aunt Monique’s boyfriend was reading the recipe aloud. “1/2 cup brandy,”
“No,” my Babci said, “more like a cup. I just, you know,” she tilted her hand like it held a tipping bottle.
“You drink the bottle?” I joked.
“Let sit for a few hours,” the boyfriend said.
“She means sit with the bottle,” Carol laughed.
“Ohhh, that explains it!” I said.
“I’m going to let my cherries soak for a week,” aunt Carol grinned, “Soaked in brandy!”
“Let the cook off begin!”
I will keep you, dear readers, apprised of that situation as it continues.
The evening wound down, my eldest cousin and I sipping Alize out of tiny Christmas mugs while we talked of his time with the Coast Guard in Kuwait.
“Crazy times,” he said, shaking his head. “Crazy.”
There and here, apparently.
The stocking fell again.
We didn’t put it back up.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and I hope you all have found stories and excitement of your own.
More stories to follow as they happen and by god, they will happen! My family is nuts and always provides!
~jms
“What’s that?”
My bleary eyes couldn’t make out what my mother carried into the room.
“It’s an onion.”
I stared. “Oh god, my fever is getting worse. I swear you just said an onion.”
“No, actually your fever’s down a bit. And I did say an onion.”
“…why?”
Welcome to my holiday season, everybody.
It began this past week with the worst bout of a flu I’ve ever had. I have lost about ten pounds which is a miracle, but I’m either starving or nauseous with no in between. And then the fever returns. My mother went so far as to try old folk remedies like bringing an onion into the room to “absorb” the bacteria.
Yeah. That’s what I said. Anyone with supporting evidence it works, feel free to leave a comment. Otherwise, laugh in the joint-aching, feverish, eye-watering agony that was the rest of that day.
Ahem.
Christmas 2012! The decor is finally up chez Staley. Tree, lights, garland. No ornaments on the tree but I’m sure they will find their way prior to Christmas Day. If not? I like minimalist!
I mentioned in a previous post how my family is always sort of surprised by the holidays. My dad was crawling on the floor, pulling Christmas Spode china out and saying, “this year is the most behind we’ve ever been!”
“Dad, we say that every year. Mom didn’t go shopping until Christmas Eve last year, remember?”
“Really?”
“yes.“
And so we prepare for this year’s Christmas Eve, the holiest of nights (according to my mother, who has a severe case of the Roman Catholics.)
We are Polish-American Roman Catholic too, which for anyone familiar with their own ethnic strain of religiousness, knows that means trouble. Drama, that is.
Wigilia, great bringer together of families. Christmas Eve. When the first star shines, anyone wanting pierogi better be at the table or they are missing out. Also the crab dip and seasonal herrings might vanish.
Now that I’m dating a Polish-American National Catholic,
(there is a big difference there, mainly that they let priests marry,)
–we have comparisons to make.
“My family makes barscht.” He tells me proudly.
It’s not a contest. It’s not, but I get defensive anyway. “Mine makes mushroom soup.”
“Well, mine makes chruschiki.”
“Mine makes homemade pierogi and we are eating it this year! Hah! Top that!”
Here is my Babci, or grandmother, on the day we made them. She wanted me to take a “European” style picture. I had no idea what that was until she picked up her wine and said: “I guess I should be eating one of these, or something.”
I love her. She’s crazy.
When Christmas Eve arrives, we will tromp to her tiny townhouse in NE Philly, and go to the door singing traditional tunes.
These are called koledy, with an accent if you’re Polish, but I’m too lazy to install the proper keyboard on my phone.
Tradition holds you approach the door when the first star touches the sky, knock, and when they open, wish them a merry Christmas by singing a traditional carol.
Somewhere through the years, everyone in my family forgot all the carols. Except one.
Dzisiaj w Betlehem.
And you hear it not once, but at least ten times, as guests and stragglers trickle in throughout the night. Non-Poles hum along awkwardly, eyes dancing towards the meatless table, wondering:
“Why did I agree to come here?”
While the ninth strain continues, my father curses in the kitchen as he drops a knife on the floor and my Babci shouts some embarrassing story about sex with my grandfather as she downs her third highball.
Conversations wreck havoc through the room, too many and numerous to follow, but one does try.
I will sit at the back of the table, trapped. On one side, my mentally retarded aunt will be telling me about her cat in a very sweet, but very redundant way. On the other, my cool, but always emotional aunt, will be crying over the phone to my long distance cousin in Florida.
I will meet the eyes of my present cousins cross table and we will smile over our wine glasses before shouting a reply to one of the five questions lingering at once.
Yes, it is Christmas Eve.
And this year I may be sniffly, coughing, sick of pierogi and koledy, but nonetheless:
I will be content.
This is my family. And I love them.
A very, merry Christmas, one and all. See you soon, as the new year dawns bright and beautiful for us
Oh heck:
2013! Whoooooo! Boats and hos!
Love you all,
~jms
~*~
Lights!
I swear the year just started.
Barely
Had the chance to breathe.
How
To finish all the shopping?
Now,
Get out the door, let’s leave!
(Listen! Carols!)
Resulting drama
Christmas Eve?
Irreplaceable.
~*~
This short prose/poem written in response to Trifecta, asking us to reflect in 33 words or less on the holiday season.
Christmas always comes as a surprise to my family somehow, and there is always a lot of stress and yelling, and yet I consider my family to be one of the most festive and in the spirit. We have decor up right after Thanksgiving on good years. This is not one, but the drama is lovely somehow.
Speaking of:
Happy holidays to one and all. I will post this weekend about my family’s Polish American Christmas traditions and I hope you will share yours as well!
But first, a post on the flu.
The wood shone like water as the stage lights came up. She walked out. Realism was a fiction – all that mattered was her cool indifference and the Valium that allowed her to sing.
Her manager had warned her no one listened to classical music.
“If you bring that cello onstage again, you’re gonna lose ‘em!”
Screw the system. It was like the goddamn conservatory all over again.
They didn’t know her.
Her fans knew her.
“Tonight, you get a peek into my past,” she whispered into the mic.
They screamed for her.
She smiled. She played.
It was love.
~*~*~*~
Witten for Lance’s 100 word song challenge this week, based on Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?”
I consider this slightly autobiographical only because I face opposition from all sides in regard to my music. The record people tell me I need to make it more mainstream.
The conservatory people will deny I was ever serious about my classical art, because I do rock and pop. They told me I should write for Broadway, because in music terms that means they didn’t think I was capable of composing “real” music.
I don’t expose a lot of skin. I’m sexy in my own way. I don’t sound like Katy Perry and I’m not on drugs to get by (unlike my heroine above.)
But that doesn’t matter to me, because I do what I love and even if I NEVER get famous for my music, it’s okay. My fans love me.
I don’t need a panel of judges or a high powered executive to tell me I’ve got talent. Most of fame has nothing to do with talent.
Except for a prized few, days gone by, being themselves on the stage and shining bright as a star while setting fire to their guitars…
Are you experienced? Have you been experienced?……
~jms
So here’s a general question open to discussion, that I hope my readers will get involved with:
What is it that makes you hate a character in a book?
What is it that makes you simply seethe and want that character dead (or worse, expelled!)
I must plea self-serving purposes, I sort of want a general consensus on why certain characters are annoying to a large number of readers. Mainly so in my second book (which I am writing) my annoying character can be really annoying to MANY people and not just a select few.
I’m going more for villainous types, like Dolores Umbridge, but Bella in Twilight is also a reasonable answer! 
Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
-JMS
So I’ve been sending out my manuscript to agents for a little while now. I’ve gotten three solid rejections and three non-responses, which I suppose also count for rejections.
I decided maybe I’d better have a friend edit my manuscript because, you know, my computer spellcheck had decided to miss some very easy spelling errors- in my query, which I didn’t catch until after the first two rejections.
She asked me, after less than a week of reading, why I had italics represented as underlines. Well, I said, that’s what the websites say to do for manuscript formatting.
She wasn’t sure if it was right either, so I put it out on Twitter to my published buddies:
@juliamaestaley: @kellysimmons @rbwood @edenbaylee @AddisonFox Published friends: in manuscript form, do you represent italics as underlined?? @kgwaite
Here is what they said:
“@AddisonFox: @juliamaestaley Italics. W/ electronic editing it now takes longer for them to re-format w/ underlines”
@kellysimmons: @juliamaestaley @rbwood @edenbaylee @AddisonFox @kgwaite I have never done that — I just use italics.
“@edenbaylee: @juliamaestaley no, I don’t. I italicize it, but I guess it depends on whether you are able to do that.”
Wow. That was… Totally different than what I had read on formatting- from some supposedly reliable, MAJOR sources.
So I pressed one of my friends a little further:
@juliamaestaley: @edenbaylee but are you using 12 pt Courier? Because I do see it is hard to tell italics in that font.
She responded, kindly:
“@edenbaylee: @juliamaestaley no hon, I always use Times new roman. That’s normally a standard, and italics are distinguishable in that font.”
That was a total shock to me. Even books on publishing- put out fairly recently- stressed the use of Courier as the font. I personally have always hated it, and much prefer Times New Roman. And here was a published author saying it outright.
@AddisonFox: @juliamaestaley Glad it helped. No one will hang you up by your toes if you underline but the italics are quicker.
Why I get so frustrated is that many agents and publishers have switched to online submissions, (Which is great,) but nowhere online can you find cohesive, accurate information on digital publishing.
(It’s almost like they are trying to prevent people from knowing this information, like its some insider club. If that’s the case, I am infuriated.)
Even in the 2013 Writer’s Market, which always has a ton of helpful info, I could not find more than snippets on digital manuscript formatting.
So here I am, maybe getting rejected not for the content, but because they get an underlined, weird-font manuscript and think to themselves: man, this writer is totally out of touch. Slush pile, instantly.
So rather than rant about the major websites and published “help” books with very wrong or lacking information, I have decided to start up an ongoing series on formatting for digital publishing.
I would ask all my published friends, genre irrelevant, to please share their formatting tips and tricks via email to me, or in comment boxes on this blog which I will repost as an article. Of course, this only applies to friends that submit their stuff digitally!!
Let’s help one another out here! Getting published is hard enough without the additional problems of incorrect formatting due to outdated sources.
It’s not like it will create more competition. Wouldn’t you rather a publisher based their rejection on your content, rather than your formatting errors?
I would, anyway.
The digital revolution began a long time ago… So let’s help the publishing industry catch up, huh?
-JMS
Sources:
Published Authors:
Kelly Simmons, author of the dramatic and beautiful: “Standing Still” and “The Bird Cage” (Simon and Schuster)
Addison Fox, author of the hot paranormal romance series: “Sons of the Zodiac” and the latest: “Come Fly With Me”.
Eden Baylee, Canadian author of the “Four Seasons” erotica and an awesome indie writer/author.
