From time to time my husband and I have been known to indulge in our Scrabble addiction in public places — restaurants, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, park benches. Unlike conversing or reading a book in public, a Scrabble game seems to be everybody’s business, always calling to mind the old joke, “How do you contact civilization if stranded on a deserted island? Start playing solitaire, and soon someone will come along and instruct you to move that six on top of that seven over there.”

The same works for Scrabble. Countless passersby invariably stop to ask who’s winning. Any women present will root for me, while any men will roll their eyes in sympathy or find some other way to silently encourage my husband. (They rarely support him out loud lest they receive a sharp elbow in the stomach from their wives.) Without fail, some stickler will stop to inform us snootily that we are not to use the dictionary when playing Scrabble, that it’s against the rules. Another kinder, gentler meddler will give us hints which would earn half the points of the plays we end up using. We thank them all for their concern, smile politely, and go back to our game.

Despite our propensity for playing in public, we never break out the board at home. It simply never occurs to us, and even if it did there are far too many distractions.

And then this evening, the following note dropped into my lap. I looked up to see my husband waiting hopefully for a response. In a flashback to middle school, he had folded it into a cute little shape (then gave up and taped it closed when the folds wouldn’t hold).

Note: If you have trouble reading it, click the note for a closeup version.

I ask you, how could I say no? Game’s on in T minus seventeen minutes.

Now you know one of our obsessions. What do you do for fun?

Update: People are already asking, so here’s the lowdown. Hubby won, 445 to 334. He rocked the board with three bingos (words that use all the letters in the rack). Go hubbs!

The other day someone referred to me as “creative”, and that got me thinking. Most of the time, I’m grateful for my imagination. It’s gotten me through many a meeting without having to spike my ubiquitous water bottle with something clear, strong and illegal in Utah. But it’s also responsible for such weird quirks as my never falling asleep in the passenger seat of a moving car without first envisioning in great detail what would happen instantly to my body upon our vehicle’s impact with another car — as if being awake to witness an accident would help all that much. So, yes, sometimes I’d like to drag my imagination outside and drop it off a cliff. I can just picture it: the mischievous little sprite crying and begging for mercy as I dangle it further over the abyss, all the while — see? There it goes again.

Despite my all-too-active imagination, however, I don’t consider myself particularly creative. Creative types wear flashy colors and dye their hair and spout weird poetry even they don’t understand. They can paint elaborate forest scenes with the brush held between their toes and weave blankets incorporating native styles from around the world. They are geniuses, whereas I feel merely adequate.

“Oh, but you write,” people tell me when I disclose such thoughts. “You must be creative to make up all that stuff.”

But I’m not so sure. It feels as if my task as a writer is not to create characters, plot, and dialogue, but to leave myself open to them. The characters (or Dolores, my cranky muse) then tell me what to type.

The secret is out: I don’t write. I take dictation. And how creative is that?

I’m not easily creeped out by bugs or rodents. Cockroaches rarely give me the heebie-jeebies, and the willies generally avoid me unless the spider is especially large. Sightings of mice bring on nary a shiver — I think they’re cute. And bats? No big whoop. They’re little acrobats, furry and adorable, diving and swooping through our neighborhood each evening.

But somewhere in my house tonight there lurks a spider. It is black and hairy, and well over an inch long. I assure you I’m not exaggerating, because although I did not have the chance to kill the beast, somehow I managed to measure it. It so impressed me that I even pulled out my camera and snapped a few (very blurry) shots as it crawled across the vaulted ceiling of our family room, then described it in detail over the phone when my brother called. The moment I hung up I set about dealing with it, broom in hand to brush it off the ceiling, heavy shoes on my feet to stomp it lest it survive the banging bristles.

Only to find that it had crawled into a crevice I could not reach.

I decided to wait it out. I made breakfast, took a shower, surfed the internet. And then I looked up again, and this time it was gone.

Everywhere I go, I picture the giant creature crawling out between the cushions on which I sit, rappelling onto my neck from a corner of the ceiling, scuttling out from behind the flour when I reach into the pantry for dinner supplies. And judging by the crawling skin on my back at the very thought of the hairy monster lying in wait, I am apparently not immune to the jitters after all.

Update: Did a little research before bed. (Yeah, bad idea. I know. Google Images + Big, Hairy, Fugitive Spiders do not make for sweet dreams.) At any rate, I think it’s a wolf spider. Aren’t they lovely? Don’t you wish you had one hiding in your house right now, lying in wait for you to go to bed so that it can come out and do whatever wolf spiders do their sleeping victims?

Each morning, my abundant houseplants glower at me as they begin another day with many of their basic needs unmet. When I return from work, they weep for attention. And when I shuffle to the kitchen for a midnight glass of water, I hear their jealous whispers above the rush of the faucet. It is a fact — not a fit of paranoia — that my plants regret the day I chose them from the jungled masses in the grocery store, the gardening center, the house of a friend who was moving. Even if I couldn’t sense their barely contained emotions, I could figure it out because every time I water them they sprout fresh leaves to take advantage of the temporary moisture, and their existing foliage takes on a jubilant shine. “Hurrah!” they seem to shout, “The girl finally paid attention to us!” I won’t even talk about the chaos that ensued the time they heard I’d bought a little box of fertilizer. Imagine, if you will, a conga line consisting of a rubber tree, two schefflara, a ficus, and three African violets. I’m still finding torn leaves and spilled soil from that little party.

Don’t get me wrong — plants rarely die on me. I have a near-action-hero knack for rescuing them at the last second with a dripping jug of water, a repotting spree, and a little music. The fact that my thumb isn’t black is unfortunate, however, because the successes that come from sporadic focus on my indoor greenery encourage me to buy new plants or start occasional ones from seed, even when time and energy are an issue, as they are now with my self-imposed book deadline.

All this brings me to my shameful confession: I threw out a dead plant a few days ago, and I may need to seek therapy for my belated attachment issues. You see, it seems I care most about a plant when it’s dying — or, worse, after the fact. When watering a hither-to-ignored drooping plant doesn’t cause perkage, and it continues to wither into dust, I feel a remorse so great I have trouble eating, but when a plant dies my heart aches. I know I could never manage a murder, because I can’t even kill a spider plant without a near breakdown.

Despite the painfulness of the subject, I’m focusing on the tragedy in order to dissuade myself from creating or purchasing any new plants to replace the old — after all, nothing perks a place up like a little foliage, even if said foliage doesn’t have the energy to flower. Maybe I should just get another cat instead; I’ve managed to keep three of the furballs alive so far, which is more than I can say for my dearly departed pots of ivy.

Yesterday afternoon I reached the sixty-first page of my newest manuscript — and the point at which I was officially sick of calling it by my protagonist’s name. Honestly, where’s the inspiration in Winifred—Book?

Since I’d already written my daily allotment of six hundred of words (716, actually), I decided a new title was the next order of business. After a half hour of puttering I came up with a list of titles, all rejects. Granted, I hadn’t given it a lot of time, but I called in reinforcements anyway. My husband took on the challenge, armed with enthusiasm and a dictionary of international slang. The former was helpful; the latter, not so much.

The story is a middle-grade novel with fairy tale elements, which is why we (very inaccurately) became stuck on the princess theme. Here are a few of the results, some suggested in earnest, some in fits of hilarity, many inspired by that blasted slang dictionary I could not wrest from my husband’s hands:

Your Basic, Everyday, Standard Princess
The Princess and the Peace
Pretty, Pretty Princess
Pretty, Gritty Princess
Pretty Ugly Princess
The Vainglorious Princess
Proto-Princess

The end result is that I’m no closer to a title, and the word “princess” has begun to sound strained and strange from repetition, but at least I can say I gave it a shot. Titles are usually fun, so I’m sure I’ll come up with something eventually.

Many of you write — books, blogs, etc. How do you come up with your titles? What, in your opinion, makes a good — or bad! — one?

Let me just save you a big, long, whiny post about the Great Migrating Cold of 2008 and sum it all up for you.

The best part of being sick:

The worst part of being sick:

This public service announcement has been brought to you by The Book Lady. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog reading.

In a far-away land many years prior to this, a statement such as, “My dear, I fear we must soon secure the windows with tapestries, as a storm approacheth” would mean something along the lines of, “Even though I’m a king, I myself will go close that window because my knees hurt and I think it’s about to rain”. Ah, yes. The ‘We’ that means ‘Me’. You may know this as the Royal We. Then there’s the ‘We’ that means ‘You’, as you (we?) will soon see.

Let’s conduct a short quiz. A statement such as “Honey, I think we should close the window because the weatherman said we’re expecting a storm” may best imply which of the following:

a) “Don’t worry about it. Since it was my suggestion, I’ll get out of bed and close the window myself.”

b) “We can do it together! It’ll be so much fun, and a wonderful bonding experience. Afterward, we can brush each other’s teeth. I can’t wait!”

c) “You should do it, because you’re closer to the window and, frankly, I’m comfortable and don’t feel like getting out of bed, but it sounds selfish to say, ‘My dearest love, you should close the window’.”

d) “Aw, forget it. One of the cats’ll get it if it starts to rain. They hate water.”

If you guessed c, you were, of course, correct. And you’re probably married, too, or have otherwise participated in a variation of the Married We on occasion. If you guessed a, you’re sweet and naive, and I find it cute. If you chose b, I think you should know that your expectations in a marriage are a little unrealistic and not a tiny bit disturbing. And if d was your answer of choice, well, you need a therapist, STAT. You know the cats are too comfortable to get up, even to make their own tea or hunt for the remote, so they certainly won’t close your window for you.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, unlike the Royal We, the Married We is the ‘we’ that means ‘you’. But don’t let the double meaning, which is on par with beloved phrases such as “I’m not mad, you stupid lug nut.” and “Please, my grape, tell me your feelings.” get you down. Now you have many exciting ways to tell your spouse to do something without sounding the least bit selfish. Use it wisely.

In the meantime, I think it’s time for us to take out the trash. Honey! Can you hear me? The trash is overflowing, and we need to empty it!

***

P.S. I know this entry may have looked familiar to some of you who have really amazing memories. As I mentioned, since my blog got eaten I will be working in occasional posts from the archives. Why? Well, I want them on here. And, anyway, enough people haven’t actually seen the old posts yet. Like this one. Have you seen it already? Probably not. And if you did, you probably didn’t remember it anyway. So there. Anyway, you can tell the reprints because, well, the category is ‘Reprint’. (We’re clever ’round these parts. You can decide who the ‘we’ may be…

After sailing through weeks of holiday cheer, we’ve chugged straight into that awkward phase of winter when the Christmas lights remain hung but not shining, the presents have been carted home but not forgotten, and the tree still lurks in its corner, unlit but not yet de-tinseled. The children are back in school, wearing clothes so new they bear the creases from their time in boxes beneath the tree. Across the street the blowup Santa that leered at us all December has deflated into a puddle of red and white plastic, spreading over the winter-brown grass.

Each year during this in-between-time after the festivities, and before the drudgery of winter and fulfilling resolutions and packing up the Christmas boxes for another ten months in storage have set in, I vow to appreciate Christmas even more the next time around. I promise myself to begin the carol blitz sooner, to write more cards, to really revel in the celebrations.

But after several successive seasons of diving into the holidays ever-earlier, so that by December first I want to hide in my house with the radio off lest I hear another droning version of “My Favorite Things” (which, come on, is not a Christmas song), I am making a new vow: from now on I will take the holidays as they come. The end will always seem abrupt and the detritus left afterward — those plastic Santas on the lawn, the unlit bulbs, the drooping trees — will always seem sad. I will relax more, and afterward I will shun the post-Christmas letdown, instead thinking of the joyous times spent with family and friends over the previous weeks and looking forward to the coming spring.

And that, six days late, is the only resolution I made this year.

I think I’m losing my mind. Even at the best of times my inner narrator provides an occasional play-by-play of my existence, but my current level of running commentary is reserved for the times when I’m almost exclusively absorbed in my writing, as I am now.

The source of this narratus intrusionous? I spend hours recounting the lives of my characters, and then I can’t seem to find the switch to turn off the narration. This means that I can’t do anything without a witness in my own brain observing all and synthesizing it into giant globs of first-draft text. Believe me, there’s nothing that will point out how mundane your life can be like having a blow-by-blow account of petting your cat or going to the bathroom. To illustrate, let me provide an especially riveting example from last night:

She pulled open the fridge door and scanned the shelves, searching for a snack. Nothing. The pantry? Still nothing. Perhaps the freezer would come through. Of course, last night the freezer yielded a half-empty bag of dehydrated peas and a frozen pizza, but there was always hope…

This commentary is disturbing for several reasons. First of all, I’m referring to myself in the third person. That in itself is a clue that I need to fire my narrator and get a new one. Nothing against third person — I use it in my writing all the time — but when it comes to my own thoughts, I should at least be the lead character in my own life. Which makes me wonder: if I’m not the one doing the narrating, who is? I’d like to say it’s a gorgeous muse with flowing hair and a benevolent smile, filling sheets of parchment with golden words. Naturally, her quill pen yields a graceful cursive and every line is poetry. The truth is more likely a cranky woman named Dolores residing in a shadowed corner of my brain. She has a smoker’s cough and the language of a longshoreman. In-between attempts to brush away the dust in the air, she bangs away on the keys of a typewriter that is at least as crotchety as she is.

Second of all, I can’t be truthful, even when I’m the only audience for my self-narrations. Sure, the quest for dinner didn’t stop with the freezer, but we certainly have more than a frozen pizza and an old bag of peas in there. That doesn’t make for good copy, however, so Dolores reworked the truth to add a little tension.

And, finally, it’s boring, despite the venture into hyperbole. Which is what I rediscover about my life whenever my inner narrator kicks in: There’s not a lot of drama, and when any does come along the hag in the attic actually shuts up so I can focus. That’s why I write. I get to give my characters exciting lives full of adventure and mayhem. Not that I’m complaining, really. That excitement often includes betrayal, war, pestilence, murder, and mass amounts of family turmoil, none of which I want in my own life. What I do want is for the voice to go away when I turn off the computer so I can have a little peace. <!– ckey=”2942F58A” –>