Good goals and bad beans

We're in our RV, traveling back from a Christmastime visit with our son in San Francisco. The California coast is lovely, but Lord, did we have rain. Driving the freeways proved scary in the Pasadena area, but all in all was not bad. I had the good fortune to visit with fellow writer and book reviewer Jack Shakely in California yesterday, and we spent almost four hours talking about the Internet Review of Books and lots of other subjects. Jack is a fine writer and, I discovered, an equally good conversationalist.

Last night after we parked the RV, it rocked in the wind as a front blew through and brought cold air with it. We're in Tonopah, Arizona, tonight. The local truck stop served up an awful "Mexican combo" that included unappetizing rice and refried beans, Keebler crackers that smelled like an industrial chemical, and chips without salsa. They were out of salsa. But the tacos were passable, and the Miller Light was cold and good.

Now we're both at our computers, with blankets wrapped around our shoulders. I've been working on my review of the Kindle version of Mark Twain's Autobiography tonight, but the venue isn't ideal. My writing goals for 2011 are all set, spurred in part by other bloggers' posts. Publishing a new novel is high on the list, as is learning how to create and market a Kindle version.

Do you set specific goals for the new year? Most effective for me has been setting measurable goals. Last year I decided to lose 35 pounds but lost only 25. That's okay, though. It gives me a new goal.

Five Stories

Now and then, an incident in my life tickles people’s funny bones. It knocks around in my brain for a while or hides quietly in an unused synapse. When it comes back to mind, the question always arises: Can the humor survive the retelling, or did you have to be there? What follow are five such incidents.

The Flag

At a writers’ group in the early ’90s, ten of us sat in the home of a man who was attempting his first short story. He admitted he had no idea where the story was going, but he knew for sure that a murder had occurred in the lobby of an office building not unlike his place of employment. Witnesses found the victim stark naked, lying face-down, “with an American flag sticking out of his ass.”

That certainly caught our attention, but the author didn’t know what to do with the absurd calamity he’d created. Over several meetings, he re-read versions of his story, each including the flag in the butt. Finally, as he droned on, I leaned over and whispered in a woman’s ear, “Americans have landed on the Moon.”

The Guard

My brother Larry had been a guard at the county jail, and he liked working shifts no one else wanted, such as holidays and midnights. Often he had little to do but sit at a desk and read novels. He always told me he had a sweet gig. Then one day he died suddenly, leaving all who knew him in a state of shock. At his wake a tall uniformed deputy sheriff introduced himself to me, offered his condolences, and began telling stories about how Larry could make people laugh. One night the deputy walked in on Larry, who had fallen asleep face-first on his desk.

“Larry! What do you think you’re doing?” the deputy yelled.

Larry woke suddenly and sat up straight. “Oh, I was just praying,” he said.

The Moose

Shortly after my stint in the Air Force, I accompanied a group of Jaycees to visit inmates in the county jail. Several of us spoke to an audience of about 30 inmates. When my turn came to speak, my story went something like this:

Guys, I can relate to being in jail. I just got out of the Air Force, where my last assignment was a year on Fire Island Air Force Station up in Alaska. Fire Island is this godforsaken little island about three miles long and a half mile wide in Cook Inlet, within sight of Anchorage. The inlet has the second highest tides in the world, and at low tide the inlet turns into a mud flat that moose supposedly cross over. There were about two hundred guys on the island manning a radar squadron that was on the lookout for Russian bombers. Wives weren’t allowed, so my wife stayed home in Massachusetts. We spoke on a radio phone once every couple of weeks. All my letters to her were the same: I love you, I miss you, nothing’s happening. Once I was so bored that I slept 17 hours straight.

One day an earthquake shook the windows and briefly woke me up.  Another time there was a small plane crash on the island, and that was terrible. But that was all the excitement for the year. Outside in the winter you could feel ice crystals forming in your throat. Summer days were so long we played softball until almost midnight.

Anyway, I must have hiked every part of that island, down the dirt road to the shore line, hiking through the trees and bushes and around a little pond. So one day when I’d been there about six months I was walking alone back up the dirt road toward my barracks, and out from behind a small shack walked this moose. He—she—I don’t know—moseyed right up to me. It stared down at me with this bored look. Down, yeah. I’m six feet tall, and I only came up to its shoulders. I was a little scared of pissing it off, because it could stomp me to death or drown me in its drool. So I didn’t move, and eventually it just trotted off into the woods, and I was okay.

So that’s kind of why it felt like I’d been in jail too. I’ve gotta tell you, though, after six months without a woman, that moose looked pretty damned good to me.

The Wake

My brother Roy was married for twenty long years to an abusive, alcoholic woman. A meek soul, he took whatever trouble she gave him. Any time he displeased her, which was often, she screamed or threw things at him and threatened him with divorce.

In time, she developed terminal cancer, but her rants continued all through her illness. Even on her deathbed she was threatening to divorce poor Roy.

She died friendless. At her wake she lay in an open casket, for once at peace. The room contained a half dozen rows of chairs, nearly all empty. Roy stood alone until our mother arrived and gave him a hug. Then he said to her with complete seriousness, “Well, I guess this settles the divorce issue.”

The Goddess Diana

Years ago, I took part in a writing workshop in which each member read a person’s story in advance and came to the next meeting with a detailed critique. One person wrote a lengthy story about a woman named Alice who had difficulty getting pregnant. She tried everything she could think of, but without success. She even purchased a replica of the Greek goddess Diana, described in the story as the goddess of love. Even that tactic was to no avail.

I always tried to critique thoroughly, so when it was my turn to comment on the story I went through the usual set of nits and suggestions. At the end I said, “Oh, and one more thing. I looked up Diana in the dictionary. She’s the goddess of the hunt, not the goddess of love—so that’s why Alice couldn’t get pregnant.”

Writing goals for 2011

Tomorrow we're heading off in our RV to California for the rest of December to visit with our son in San Francisco. This may give me time to reflect and perhaps refocus my scattered energies.

Already one of my promises to myself and others was not to continue as president of Mesilla Valley Writers for a fourth year. Unfortunately, the person who volunteered to take over had a tantrum and decided to renege. You'd think someone about 70 years old would act like an adult, but no. No one else will take the job except one lady who has no experience running anything and never speaks up in meetings.  So we agreed she'll get tasks to help her prepare to become president eventually, like chairing some of the meetings. The job remains mine in the meantime. So that's one resolution already broken, and the new year hasn't even started.

The other writing group I'm active in is 40 miles down the road, in El Paso, Texas. They are a larger and more vibrant group, but El Paso is also five times larger than my home town of Las Cruces. The El Paso Writers' League held its annual awards luncheon and installment of officers yesterday. They awarded prizes in their writing contest, which is highly anticipated all year. I won a few prizes for fiction and poetry, though my non-fiction did less well.

One commitment for 2011 is to co-edit and produce Border Tapestry, an annual book for the League showcasing the contest's first-place winners. It will be the third year on this great project, and it's a lot of work. One of the stories in the book will be the first and so far only chapter in a novel I began about 5 or 6 years ago. The judges' comments were encouraging enough that I'd like to start working on it again.

As for Mesilla Valley Writers, our January program will focus on members' writing goals for 2011 and how to achieve them. My own focus will be to pay more attention to my own writing and less on these peripheral writing-related activities.

How about you? Do you use this time of year to plan realistic writing goals? What do you hope to do differently, or better?