Prose To Go

Don't get too excited, but I'm putting together my next book. It's a biography about a phenomenal lady who fought four different primary cancers but lived to be 78. She never let the fight get her down, though. She continued to give her whole heart and soul to family, friends, even strangers.

Like a lot of writers, if I say much more I'll lose interest. Seriously. It can happen. You really have to make yourself sit at the computer and close your mouth, or you will lose interest faster than deflating a balloon.

I've been reading "Roberts' Rules of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know" by Robert Masello. He's no relation to me, so I'm not just pimping him.

Right now, I am breaking his first rule "Burn Your Journal." He says anybody can fill a paper with words, but good writing is building a narrative, laying out an argument, constructing a scene or articulating a position. Oh. In other words, it has to mean something. The only muscle a journal exercises is your hand.

You don't have to write a full chapter every day to succeed, Masello says. I couldn't agree more. Heck, I'm not always sure even where to end a chapter. Sometimes just putting two beautifully cohesive paragraphs together is enough.

I'm not saying you should be a slacker. It's easy to procrastinate and spend 10 years writing a book. I've spent even more time on my current cancer survivor bio because an influential man commissioned me to write a textbook. Hey, money is money and you need priorities. In the back of my mind, though, I knew the cancer survivor's story was riveting and important for all survivors.

All people who battle cancer -- even those who eventually lose the fight -- are survivors. By last count, 10 million or more of them live in America. Back in the day, even as recently as the 1980s, people were afraid to say the word. Many were certain it was a death sentence. Yet new treatments and prevention methods are discovered every day, and many people beat the odds and live for years, even decades, beyond treatment. Often they die of some other illness such as diabetes or a stroke.

No, I'm not going to tell you how the survivor's story ends. You have to wait for the book.

Every now and then God reminds me that I’m still here. Much work remains to be finished.

People who know me see that I daydream, live in my own world to some extent. It goes with the territory when you’re a creative person. Musicians, artists, writers – we all are thinking about the next song, painting or story. We’re only as good as our latest creation, because we’re in competition with so many other creative souls.

Fortunately, the Lord, an angel or even my boss sends me a signal to get back to reality. Get to work on time, finish that project, meet the deadline.

I don’t always recognize the signs. Sometimes it takes another message for us to wake up, come back to Earth, save a new idea for later. There’s always tomorrow, right?

Wrong. All around us are the signs that humans are fragile creatures, prone to self-destruct or maybe die in a freak accident. We never know what our expiration date is, as the triathlete David Martin, who died in a shark attack off the California coast this past week, liked to say.

It’s the big cliché. Every day is a gift, don’t take it for granted, hold me like it’s the last time. Yet it’s true. We take for granted the ones we love the most. We fight and fuss and explode over and over again, the same old stupid arguments, without remembering that we are here a short time. A blip when you consider the world’s history.

We hold grudges like clasping on to a life preserver, as if it will somehow make us feel safer, better than the next guy. We compare ourselves to Mr. Jones, who doesn’t have the latest BMW or the sexiest kitchen.

In the end, that won’t even matter. The jealousy and bitterness just eats us up inside and the person we can’t bear to look at doesn’t even care, because he’s caught up in his own little world. His own dreams, struggles, games … Candyland.

The older I get, the more I comprehend that God has given us gifts and we can’t squander them. No time for fussing and fighting over trivial issues. We have too much work to do, to spread a message of peace and love. Or just do something simple like smile at a tired mother of two small kids or open a door for an older woman who’s struggling with her canes or wheelchair.

We don’t get a second chance to see, to do, to live.

Sigh. Here we go again. Chicago, already infamous for Al Capone and the Mob, is rife with children shooting assault rifles in gang warfare. Will we ever learn?

Whether it's a 10-year-old boy trying to protect his family or the vicious murder of celebrities like John Lennon, our streets are inundated with blood. The killing fields.

When Congress and President Bush failed to renew the assault weapons ban last year, I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. Time and time again, we've seen magnificent men like Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy lose their lives for insane reasons.

We think we're doing better. The Brady Bill was passed, and it requires time limits. Yet the illegal guns continue to pour in faster than the hospital ERs can treat the victims.

The NRA never quits. Guns don't kill, people do. In a disaster, you have to protect your family from looters. During the Civil Rights era, black men banded together to try to stem the unceasing tide of racial hatred.

But for every hero who stops a murder or attack in their home, we hear too much about what happens when a baby or child gets a hold of one. Because somebody has been too stupid to lock it up and teach respect for the weapon. Or somebody hasn't been trained to use it and hasn't been practicing his shooting, and the predator grabs the gun and turns it on the homeowner.

Whatever the argument may be, it's a fact that nobody needs a killing machine like an Uzi or an assault rifle. Nobody.

Even Dick Cheney has joked about his shooting his friend, but did he do anything when it was imperative to put a Band-aid on and stop the bleeding?

When will we ever learn?

Late Baby Boomers, who grew up in the 1970s, remember gathering around the TV on Thanksgiving or a similar eat-a-thon cooped up with family members trying not to kill each other, for a free movie. It was always a classic like "The Wizard of Oz," "Gone with the Wind" or "The Sound of Music."

My teenage nephews reckon that this must have been right after the dinosaurs evaporated from an asteroid hitting the Earth, about the same time when there was no such thing as a remote control. Yes, kids, we had to go up to the TV and flip to one of about 5 channels. Yet now we can have 300 channels and still hear "There's nothing on."

Imagine my surprise when, bloated with turkey, three kinds of potatoes and every other starch known to mankind, my 16-year-old nephew whom I'll call Ian (names have been changed to protect the guilty) decided to sit through the marathon showing of "The Sound of Music," which ranks as the third highest grossing movie ever. It's right behind "Gone with the Wind" and "Star Wars."

Ah, even though "Moulin Rouge" in 2000 successfully spoofed "Music" and thousands of other musicals which I lost track of after about 3 minutes in, the story of Maria, the nun in training who falls in love with a handsome Austrian widower who has seven children and escapes the Nazis before Hitler completely pummels Europe, still resonates with teenagers. Even those who would rather have their toenails pulled out one by one than be observed crying during any movie.

"Is it over yet?" Ian kept asking, but his mother and I shook our heads. "No, this is what passed for entertainment when we were little," I said. No video games, no cell phones, no constant text messaging. "Sound of Music" doesn't even have "Star Wars"-like special effects. At the theater, managers even had a 15-minute intermission when Maria, confused and scared off by the worldly baroness, flees the huge home. Oh, how us small-bladdered people with a love of Diet Cokes would like to see the recent epics of three hours or more go back in the day.

"When does this end?" Ian asked, looking at the clock for the 3,000th time.

"Go to bed if you're bored," his mother and I told him. Normally, Ian is in bed long before 8 p.m., but this wasn't a school night. No joke, he has to have about nine hours of sleep every night; most teenagers do.

"Nah," he said. "What happens next?"

"You have to watch the movie," I said. My husband is someone who will always tell me who the killer is on "CSI," but I prefer to be surprised. He just knows, like ESP. He ruins just about every movie, because he's 98 percent accurate. Which is why he doesn't usually watch movies, unless it's a Western or about World War II. Well, we all know how WWII turned out. Something with action, at least. Exactly what my teenage nephews gobble up.

"Sound" is suspenseful, but there's no violence or sex, just the threat that the vonTrapp family will be captured on their way to freedom. The songs are beautiful and don't detract from the plot as many musicals do; each song has a purpose, whether it's showing the teenage angst of Liesel and her boyfriend Rolf or the blooming love between Maria and her Captain Georg. Even though the real family never fled from the Nazis over the Alps and the captain wasn't anti-Nazi, it's still an original plot. As, of course, are "Star Wars" and "GWTW."

Now that it's 2008 and nobody watches movies on the local channels anymore, it's easy to forget what made those movies great. It was the stories, stupid. Just like "Star Wars," the best movies make us forget who we are for 120 to 180 minutes and get immersed in the romance, the humor, the suspense and wonder of what will happen next. Something Hollywood tends to forget in these days of the 60,000th reincarnation of "Rocky." Come on, I loved actors like Stallone and Ford in their day, but they are getting kind of ridiculous trying to play Rocky and Indiana Jones over age 60. Even the best Bond, Sean Connery, knew when to hang up his gun. 

I digress, however. No matter if you are 9 or 92, you can always fall in love with a great story.

I know that not so many people are reading this, but maybe one day this could be worth a few bucks. When I'm famous.

Last night, after watching some scenes of two actors on "General Hospital" kissing, I got to thinking: Why do women like to watch that? Other than the obvious, that it's enjoyable and voyeuristic, what benefits does it have? Are there any kissing experts out there? Does watching romantic interludes make us happier? More optimistic? Do we see ourselves being kissed that way and do we dream about "sucking face" as my college roommate once un-romantically called it, with Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom or some other hottie?

Some professor in social science or psychology must have studied this. They're always telling us the obvious stuff, that cigarettes are bad for you or drinking too much hurts a fetus, but what about these seemingly commonplace things that have been done for zillions of years and we don't know why?

Perhaps a Web site that addresses such questions is out there. If anybody knows one, please tell me. I Googled the question, but no luck. About.com seems like a possibility; I'll check that out. But even Wikipedia may not have the answer.

Answering this would make a great Valentine's Day story. Writers, however, must not steal my idea! We are so highly competitive. It's too bad, sometimes, because mentoring other writers could teach us a few things, bring us new ideas about what makes life interesting and thus, fascinating news articles or even books.

Can't wait to hear from all two of my readers.