My memory is very sensory, mainly auditory and olfactory. Play me a song and I can call up a myriad of events tied to it, or feelings, or states of mind. Ditto for scents (for instance, under no circumstance should you ever give me any Yankee Candle floral fragrance — the scent immediately and accurately recalls first trimester nausea). This ability is quite useful as a writer. When I’m writing a scene about a teenager, I like to listen to songs from my teen years. I like to think that the music tricks my mind into thinking like a kid again and allows for more realistic dialogue and characterization. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

“Desperado, you’d better come to your senses…”

I feel like with all the moving we’ve done over the last several years, I’ve gotten used to being the newbie all the time. And it really irks me that so little is done by the established community to welcome newcomers. Take, for instance, moving to our new neighborhood. While my immediate neighbors were friendly and welcoming, it took the official welcoming committee over 3 months to come visit me with a bag of coupons and last year’s directory (and my personal welcome wagon actually mentioned how it was unlikely we’d ever see each other again — welcome to the neighborhood!). The experience has been the same with other social organizations I’ve encountered: they’ll take your money, but they don’t really want to deal with The New Guy. I’ve tried to use these groups as a way to meet new people, but most members cling to the group as a way of organizing their friends. Eventually the New Guys get together, form their own network-in-a-network and the cycle repeats. Then there’s this whole parent-of-a-kindergartener experience. I guess once you’ve been there a while you just know how things work, like when you volunteer for the PTA in May, nobody will contact you about it until sometime in September (and then they won’t need your help anyway). But would it kill anybody to roll out the welcome mat? To find a friendly person who can genuinely welcome The New Guy to the school/neighborhood/organization? The answer is yes. Okay, maybe they wouldn’t die but they’d certainly be confused. Too many people mistake social people for friendly people, but these are two separate characteristics. Just because someone is social and likes to be in the thick of things doesn’t make them friendly or inclusive, which is exactly the first face a New Guy needs to see. Apparently I’m the only one who openly complains about not receiving a warm welcome, but the New Guys I’ve dealt with (Hi. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.) seem to appreciate the unexpected greeting. My only problem is that it’s unexpected.

Last weekend I started (and finished) Lion Brand’s 4-Hour Bias Baby Blanket, again knit on ye olde Speed Stix. I think it took me about 6 hours due to a missed increase while watching one of the Bourne movies on TBS then frogging not quite half of the piece (pull hair here). It looks quite nice despite (because of?) the extra effort involved, and hopefully my niece-in-waiting will one day love having a hand-knit blankie from Aunt Beth. I skipped the tassels called for in the pattern, and chose a three-color purple scheme instead of four (doubling up on the Lavender Sachet and subbing Baroque for the Waterfall and Spring Green). I also overcame my dislike of Lion Brand’s Homespun yarn by placing each skein in a separate Ziploc baggie and cutting a hole in the end. The yarn did not break, shred, fuzz or tangle like it usually does for me.

Next up: finishing a pair of legwarmers for Anna’s ballet.

Last week at the library I found I had some time to kill after picking up my books on hold. So after wandering about just sniffing the library (I love the smell of new paper and dusty jackets and the stale cool air), I found myself in a fiction aisle of S’s. I flipped through my inner catalog for an S author and came up with Jane Smiley, one of my all-around favorites. Then I marched back up the aisle and found the O’s and Stewart O’Nan, another favorite. I left the library that day with Ten Days in the Hills (Smiley) and The Night Country (O’Nan).

I began the O’Nan first. O’Nan’s books often have some literary gymnastics in them that can make them a bit tough to grasp at first (his A Prayer for the Dying is written in the second person like a sophisticated Choose-Your-Own Adventure book without the choices), but the reward for sticking with him is great. In The Night Country the narrator is a first person, omniscient ghost. That’s tough to get at first, but the payoff is the vivid imagery throughout the book. It’s a setting, a feeling, a look, a smell that immerses you into this world. In the end I felt the plot was fantastic and his choice of narrators spot on, but it is his descriptive language that made this a great, haunting read.

The next day I picked up Smiley’s novel. I cracked it open (mmmm, library binding) and was immediately put off by the typesetting. I know, what an odd thing to react to, but it had too many words per page and goofy typeface. I read the first several pages, then had to stop. I love Jane Smiley, I think she is an amazing writer, but this was awful. Her opening scene which should have been fast-paced and exciting (they’re in bed! Naked! Kissing! They’re kissing naked in bed!) is very clinical and dry. The characters seemed flat and I could care less about them. The dialogue was bad. I am quite disappointed, but at least I didn’t buy the book.

So a recap: O’Nan, good. Smiley, don’t waste your time on this one.

For me, writing a novel is not natural. My tendency — my specialty — has always been short fiction, even before I was tainted by the writing workshops in college and left to believe I needed an MFA. But the market for publishing short fiction is quite small (some say it is a dying art), and I have a few ideas that probably should be explored in the form of a novel in order to present them well. That said, I still prefer the short story. I have dreams of reviving it, of bringing it back to the masses. My ideal story content would fall somewhere between the fiction of The Atlantic and the old Redbook stories. It wouldn’t be too literary, but it wouldn’t be frivolous. It would be something easily read at the doctor’s office, or before bed. I imagine parents and babysitters at the pool, sneaking in a story while the kids splash nearby. I myself read them while waiting for my kids outside of ballet or piano lessons. The words can be read in one sitting (who said that originally? Fitzgerald? Hemingway? Neither?), but the content stays with you for much longer. It’s fast food for the mind without the guilt of brain candy.

I’ve made several attempts at novel writing. I admit that, yes, I’ve even tried those sensational books that promise anyone can write a book in a month or a year or whatever. And my damn Internal Editor does interfere quite a bit (how do I shut her up?), but my brain also bombards itself with too many ideas that soon I don’t know where to start or stop and then I’m staring at an Epic.

But short stories, those can come almost unbidden, complete with beginning and end — and that all-important middle!