February by Nancy L. Eady

February is the longest month of the year, even though it’s also the shortest month in the year.  Maybe that’s why they stuck it into the middle of the winter, far enough away from Christmas that the Christmas glow has faded, but not near enough to the spring season holidays – spring break, Easter, Passover, etc. – that I can look forward to them.  It’s a difficult month in terms of budgets, weather, health and timing. 

There are only two major events that come to mind for February – St. Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras.  Valentine’s Day is my least favorite holiday/event.  During junior high school and high school, one school club or another would sell carnations as a fund raiser.  You bought a carnation to be delivered to another student of your choice.  I have too many memories of being carnation less year after year after year to take much joy in the holiday.  Those memories still sting, although you’d think after 40 years they’d start to lose their power.  Mardi Gras, alas, I have never celebrated. 

This year, I suspect that there are many people out in Texas who agree with me about this being the longest shortest month in the year.  I have watched the news and listened to stories from my friends that live there with immense pity and horror.  One friend out there told me that they were all laughing at the governor’s “boil water” order.  As she said, “How can we boil water when none of us have any power to heat it with?” 

But in the midst of my curmudgeonly grumping over February and my empathy for the people in the frozen tundra of Texas, my writer brain kicks in, and I start wondering what would happen if someone had to encounter, deal with and investigate a murder in the middle of such extreme weather.  And so in the back of my mind, a plot is spinning, and suddenly February isn’t such a long month after all.

What kind of situations provide grist for your story mill? 

Better Than Brawling

by Tina Whittle

I got into a Facebook kertuffle this 4^th of July. It started with the usual ingredients (politics and identity and contrasting ideas about symbology) and ended in the usual place—with neither party having shifted one inch in their opinion.

It almost makes me want to stop sharing material that I know will pull some person who disagrees with me out of the woodwork and into an online spat. I mean, the fact-checking alone took up more mental bandwidth than I wanted to give something that was destined from the start to be an irreconcilable clash. The emotional cost was high too—I'm still treating the cracked molar I got from stress-grinding my teeth.

In the end, I kept asking, is this how it has to be? Is it at all possible to have a reasonable exchange of contrasting ideas in a social media context? And if the answer is no—and I think 90% of the time that's going to be the answer—does that mean we should nip the bud of such debates? Should we self-censor what we share, curate our feed so that it's more puppies and sunsets and fewer lightning rods and vinegar?

Maybe. Maybe not. I don't think misinformation should go unchallenged. But I also don't think we need to place any investments in the outcome of such challenges. And perhaps we don't always need to indulge in a protracted back-and-forth that is always going to end where it began—with two people disagreeing.

Here's what I think we need to learn to do—we need to learn to listen. I'm not talking about conversation, or dialogue, or debate. I'm not talking about words that are back-and-forth. I'm talking about deep, active listening to another human being's story.

A story is not a mutual exchange. It flows one way. One person gives, and another receives. Our brains are story-making—and story-processing—machines. It's how we first begin to understand our world, how we first begin to perceive our own place within it. Stories provide our greatest meaning-making tool.

All of us here at this blog are writers (and of course, readers). With every story we participate in, whether in the telling or the receiving, we strengthen the empathetic muscle of the world.

I wish I could sit in a big circle with everyone on this blog, with everyone reading this, and have each person tell me a story. Such an event would take logistics beyond my pay grade. In the meantime, however, perhaps a snippet of your life will do.

Care to share something about yourself or your world? Something big, something small, something unusual, something true?

Tell me a part of your story.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph/Trey Seaver mysteries. The sixth book in this Atlanta-based series—Necessary Ends—is available now. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and has served as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.

DISNEY by Nancy Eady

          My family and I are going to Disney World soon. Most families take such trips to please the younger members of the family, but we go there for me. It is not the most relaxing place, of course; the planning I put into a Disney World trip rivals the effort I used to put into law school exams. But "The Happiest Place on Earth" is one of my happiest places, too. 

          I started attending Disney parks when I was in elementary school back in the early to mid-1970’s (a/k/a The Dark Ages to those individuals born never knowing the hardships we suffered without smart phones and Google.)  We lived in San Diego then, and visited Disneyland a few times. My memories of those trips are happy ones. I may be one of the few people who remember using tickets for the rides, rather than a single admission price for everything. The tickets were graded A through E, and cost different amounts. “A” tickets were for the smallest, slowest, least thrilling rides, and “E” tickets were for the most popular, most thrilling rides. Visitors bought ticket books at kiosks in the park with differing amounts of all 5 tickets in them.

            From the first visit, I was hooked. Disney keeps their parks scrupulously clean, and their service is impeccable. I’ve never had a bad visit to any of them.

            These days, since we live in the Southeast, we travel to Disney World. As I’ve gotten older and done more writing, I’ve discovered a second reason I love Disney parks – their total immersion in a story. Every ride at a Disney park has its own story. Every area of each park has a theme, and that theme is reflected even in the most minute details.

            When you wait in line for a ride (and trust me, you will be waiting in line for a lot of rides), the story behind each ride is set out around you in the decorations and displays designed to keep you distracted from the fact that you just spent 60 minutes standing in line for a five-minute ride.  The ambience created by the attention to detail is unique to each ride. I not only ride the rides for fun, but also to study the setting and details for the rides and try to glean lessons from Disney’s story telling methods to my own writing.

          The new Pandora area at Animal Kingdom is a perfect example of the attention to detail.  Based on the world of the movie “Avatar,”  called Pandora, rock formations float in the sky, and exotic flora and fauna line the pathways.  Pandora is especially striking at night – just like in the movie, the vegetation emits an otherworldly bioluminescent glow.  As you get near one of the two main rides in Pandora, called Flights of Passage, the line transforms into a hiking trail alongside a waterfall.  As you travel along the hiking trail, you learn that 100 years have passed since the time of the original movie.  A group of the Na’vi and humans are working to clean up pollution left by a mining company that threatens the entire planet.  You go through a deserted control room left by the mining company, but as you exit the deserted control room, you see that Pandora’s vegetation is beginning to reclaim the building.  By the time you reach the ride, a simulated flight on an animal called a banshee, you are completely immersed.  What a wonderful way to tell a tale!

            What places do you visit that help you tell stories?  

Back to the Cave

When I was ten years old, I was attacked by baboons. Spoiler alert: I survived. But it’s one of those stories I tell when people ask me to share something interesting about myself. There are others. I once saw a UFO. I own two chickens, Onomatopoeia and Chicken Whittle. I know all the words to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and have recited both to my freshman comp classes. I box—very badly—but enjoy it very much. And I once prepared to fight a grizzly bear with my bare hands.

In isolation, each of these facts will tell you very little about me, but when they are placed together into a context, they create a narrative. A story. A report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence. Your brain loves a narrative, loves it better than a list, loves it like bees love honey, with an instinctual affinity. This is why stories have been one of the sturdiest building blocks of our civilization, outlasting even castles and temples.

Storymaking is one of our oldest skills, going back over thirty-five thousand years ago to the Upper Paleolithic Age. One prime example of it can be seen in the cave paintings at Chauvet Pont d'Arc in France (you can read about them HERE).

During the dawning of our species, our ancestors eventually discovered that cave living was a fine idea. The world was a dazzling and dangerous place, and a cave kept out the larger hazards. Back then, every single day began with the same to-do list: survive until the next morning. Find food, avoid becoming something else’s food, don’t fall off a cliff, don’t step on a snake, don’t let the fire go out, don’t mess with that other tribe across the river because they will club you, don’t don’t don’t.

And yet, in those dark smoky caves, after what must have been grueling, back-breaking days of non-stop work and intermittent terror, we human beings made art. We daubed red clay on the wall and recreated what we saw out in that world: horses, mammoths, rhinos, lions. To our contemporary eye, these pictures may look primitive, childish even. The images blur into each other. The rhinos have six or seven horns, and the horses’ haunches overlap, as if someone were trying to draw a herd and just didn't have the skill to pull it off.

This would be an incorrect interpretation, however, a deception brought about by our modern eyes having grown accustomed to steady illumination. In the dark of the cave, lit by only the flickering glow of a fire, the images begin to move. In the dance of light and shadow, tails twitch, muscles ripple, and manes toss. The herd gallops across the plain, hooves and dust. The predator cat follows, fangs bared. These paintings were the world’s first virtual reality, and our prehistoric ancestors created them out of mud and memory.

Not just a collection of drawings. A series of connected events. A narrative. A story.

When you write or read, you’re participating in a human activity older even than writing or reading itself—storymaking. Stephen King called it an act of telepathy—two humans connected by neither time nor place, nonetheless together. A meeting of the minds, he says. Magic.

Consider this next time you pick up a book. Even if it’s too hot for a fire in the fireplace, imagine one anyway. Imagine that dance of light and shadow on the page. Invite your inner caveperson to move closer so that you can share the story together.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph mysteries for Poisoned Pen Press. The fifth book in this Atlanta-based series—Reckoning and Ruin—was released in April. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and serves as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.