(If you tried this link the other day and it didn’t work, try again; I re-pasted it.)

I don’t generally go for tests and such, but this one was fun, and gave me much to–ahem–smile about.

Click here to take the test.

Report your results. I got 12 out of 20, which surprised me. I thought I knew fake smiles!

There’s an article by Eric Miles Williamson in today’s Los Angeles Times about Cormac McCarthy and Oprah’s concern with moral fiction.

Click here.

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Anyone else see it?

I’ve reached the end of the second draft of Starletta’s Kitchen, or is it the fourth draft? In his new little book, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley says that reading through your novel completely is considered one entire draft. I’ve read through it twice, outlining it, making notes, following Carolyn See’s directions on revising, so I guess that means I’ll be going into draft number five.

Done through chipping away, every day, an hour or two, sometimes more. Making it a priority.

I have so much work to do! But the book is coming into focus. I need to take a look at the plots/subplots. Make sure enough is happening, make sure the structure is solid.

So, actually, there’s still no end in sight…

I’m at the end of the draft novel–the last four chapters or so. I’ve been spending days on it. Endings are so important. The climactic scene is here and trying to decide, Should it go this way or that? How much to tie things up, or not? I like when books don’t end entirely neatly, when there are some things left undone, left a bit vague.

I’m also working and reworking a love scene. How it should go–should they get together or not? What’s enough and what’s too much? If this were a romance novel, it seems that it would be easy. I could have heaving bosoms and rippled chests and purple prose. And that would be fine.

But what the protagonist ends up doing with her high school sweetheart is telling, in terms of her character, and his, and so I keep tweaking.

Love scenes are–ahem–hard to write. Elizabeth Benedict’s book, The Joy of Writing Sex is so good. Benedict is a literary novelist and essayist. I always enjoy her writing.

I never planned to read The Horse Whisperer, but I saw it in the UCI-Extension lending library and I borrowed it. It contains a very short but strong love scene close to the beginning. I was impressed with how Evans handled it. I’ve only read a little bit of the book, but I can see already why Redford bought it to make into a movie.

So I’m down at the beach, it’s low tide, and I’m searching through the rubble of shells and rocks and sand for seaglass when this man, late 60s, yellow teeth, with a little white dog, and rich (I think this because I saw him leave one of the multimillion dollars up on the hill as I descended the path; he didn’t look like the help), and asks me what I’m doing.

It’s illegal to pick up shells or sea life at this beach and I figure that’s what he’s going to ask me about, but he’s aggressive and wears a scowl (and as I said, his teeth are yellow) and so I say, “Why?”

“Because it’s illegal to take shells from this beach!” he says.

“I live here; I know,” I say, “I’m picking up glass–“

“–I live here, too,” he bellows.

I tell him I’m offended and he says, “You’re offended because I asked you that? You’re offended? Well, that’s too damn bad!”

Which is when I say, “I think you had better get out of my face,” and he backs off, huffing and puffing. He goes away, joins a woman wearing a visor, and I continue to pick up glass (which is what you see here, my find for the day), and all the while I’m thinking, If only he’d had a better tone. If only he’d been nicer, we could have had a conversation about how horrible it is that people come down to the beach and steal sea life and are wrecking the tide pools. I find myself feeling sorry for the woman, and the little dog, thinking: If this is how he treats strangers, how must he treat those close to him?

And I also begin thinking about tone in general, how so much is in the tone of how you say something.

E-mail can be a problem because the tone just does not come across. You think you’re being funny and someone takes offense.

And in fiction, tone is vital. Without scene setting, gestures, the facial expressions of our characters, the tone can be a problem.

The man wore a permanent scowl. Had probably been a bigwig at a corporation, used to ordering people around, used to being a pain in a butt. And so now he felt he needed to rule his beach because he no longer had a company.

But he was also picking up trash, not just being a jerk, and so there you have a complex character….a nasty person who cares about the environment. Which is also what we need to do in our fiction: create complex bad guys that are difficult to hate.

I tried to get a parking space at the Starbucks in my neighborhood (it’s close, but not close enough to walk carrying a laptop and files and books) but it’s street cleaning day so while one side of the streets are empty of cars, the other side is full.

So I drove back here, to the Starbucks near UCI, and I settled in. Mid-morning is even nicer—sunny. It’s spacious, light, and I like the music, which is loud, Latin. I hear voices but I can’t make out what they are saying. Some of the same faces, some different. Saw someone I know from the radio station and he stopped to talk for a minute. I like talking to John, but it was writing time and I began to worry that the morning would be taken up with conversation. My mind darted about: Where else could I work that was close to home but not too close? And then he returned to the counter to pick up his snack.

I have been thinking about self-censoring, how writers are so prone to that. My post yesterday about the downside of the Starbucks in my neighborhood….I considered deleting the part about the surgically enhanced boobies. I don’t want to offend and it’s also such a personal opinion. Then I thought: But it’s what you feel and think about working at that Starbucks. So I left it. We’re too often worried about offending—to the point that we drain the life of our work because we’re afraid to say what we think.

So I left it. No disclaimers, no apologies (almost none, anyway).

These photos are from my beach walk prior to writing. That sign in the first one is a bit nerve-racking.