Category: Columns

WRITE ANGLE

by Rebecca Forster

Consider the month of February. It is an odd and joyous month. Christmas is over but bills still trickle in. The New Year already feels a little worn. Odd.

Spring is just around the corner and summer is on the horizon. Joyous.

February is the month of odd days. How many? 29? 27? 21? Where’s the rhyme when I need it?

My last few books came out in February. Odd or joyous, who can say?

My husband and oldest son are Aquarius types. Their birthdates are the 8th and 9th days of February. Twenty-three years ago my husband, in the hopes of having my son born on the same day as he was, fed me a spicy burrito. It brought on labor, just not fast enough. Oddly joyous?

The point is that things that make us happiest, things we remember, are always a bit odd and a bit joyous.

There is an author I admire. His name is Richard Jordan and he writes a mystery series about old Hollywood and a wonderful woman named Polly Pepper. His latest novel, FINAL CURTAIN, is a Polly party. A veritable gala of memorable characterization.

Polly is such a delight because Richard adores the charmingly odd lady. Every word he writes about this woman is joyous. From her ever-present champagne to the disappointing revival of an acting career that embroils her in a murder investigation (a director is clubbed to death with an Emmy), Polly is Polly. Odd, joyous, charming, challenging. She is a reader’s delight; she is a character-in-waiting for some smart and talented actress. Rita Wilson, are you listening?

Just like February, FINAL CURTAIN ends too quickly. And, as February flies by me, faster than I care to admit, I am beginning a new project. As I do so I will be inspired by the odd month of February, by Richard Jordan and his joyful Polly and I will write with abandon. I will let my imagination spread its wings and will not allow the rules and agent warnings and ever-changing market forces to clip them.

That will be oddly, joyously, fabulously satisfying. This will be writing as it should be.

Rebecca Forster
http://www.rebeccaforster.com/
HOSTILE WITNESS
SILENT WITNESS
PRIVILEGED WITNESS

WRITE ANGLE

by Rebecca Forster

When the clock struck twelve on New Year’s Eve I kissed:

a. An Italian woman
b. Five French men
c. My husband
d. My mother
e. All of the above

The answer is “e”, all of the above.

We went to Paris over Christmas, a long-planned trip to celebrate my son’s graduation from college and my mother’s 83 years. On the plane, I met two ladies from Baltimore who invited us to their rented apartment for New Year’s Eve. We didn’t exactly forget about them, but the ensuing week was filled with chasing down all the sites of Paris and, suddenly, it was time go home.

On New Year’s Eve, we dined in a tiny restaurant where we sat close enough to a family from Ohio to know that their son wasn’t a big fan of escargot and their daughter was angling for an unaffordable Parisian wedding gown. My family and I talked about all the nice things we’d seen, the lines we waited in. Ours had been a good trip but I wasn’t sure it was memorable.

Ambling back to the hotel, fully intending to pack and get a good night’s sleep, we advertently stumbled upon the Rue du Mond – the street where the Baltimore ladies were staying. To call it a street, though, was generous. This was an alley and it was shadowy, cold and foreboding. High rock walls lined each side, above us towered darkened apartments. Still, we ventured in, rang what we assumed was a bell in an ancient green gate. When no one came, high-tailed it out of there, convincing ourselves adventure was not on the agenda.

But it was.

A note was waiting at our hotel. Baltimore had tracked us down! We called the number they left and, a few minutes later, armed with a security code and a warning that we would have to hunt for lights in the old courtyard, we traipsed back to the alley. Behind the green gate were three flights of stairs that had been worn into waves of uneven stone over generations. They felt treacherous and we went slowly. Finally, we found ourselves in a 16th-century apartment in the company not only of the two women from Baltimore but their Italian friends.

My husband ducked under doorways meant for men who stood at least a foot shorter than he. One of the Italian ladies spoke German. She and my mother were off, chattering in a language I don’t understand. I exchanged stories with the ladies from the plane. We drank wine and champagne and, at ten minutes to midnight, in a flurry of winter coats, we dashed for the Pantheon where we would be able to see the lights on the Eiffel Tower as midnight struck.

We were too late. A great roar resounded throughout Paris as people greeted the New Year. One of the Italian ladies grabbed my husband for a kiss. The other was bussing my mother’s cheeks. We passed one another along – friends for that night – wishing each one well. Arm-in-arm we made it to the square just as a group of drunkenly joyous and extraordinarily handsome young men burst out of a bar. The kissing started all over again. My mother giggled and raised her cheeks, my husband slapped them on the back as if they were his sons. We babbled good wishes in poor English and even worse French.

And then it was done. The night was over. The champagne was gone. We were all headed home, but now it was with memories. They wouldn’t be of churches and museums, palaces and restaurants but of New Year’s Eve and the unexpected.

I spoke to two women on an airplane, called a number in a note, walked through a green gate in an ancient wall, drank champagne on a Paris street, returned an Italian woman’s kiss on the cheeks, held my husband’s hand while I watched the lights of the Eiffel Tower, saw my mother turn back into the girl she once was as a handsome young man took her in his arms and wished her a Happy New Year with a kiss.

In the dark Paris night, in the course of only a few hours, I was reminded that stories are memorable only when filled with the unexpected, with choices, with characters who are larger than life. Good stories do not set us aside as spectators but draw us into the action. A good author, weaves into their story all the elements of the moment: the feel of the air, the sounds of the night, the touch of another person. Those are the things that etch a story into memory, a heart, a mind.

I will think of Paris when I find myself at a loss for words. I will make my characters speak, allow them an adventure, let them open the green gate to see what lies behind it.

Rebecca Foster

Rebecca Forster
rebeccaforster@aol.com
http://www.rebeccaforster.com/
HOSTILE WITNESS
SILENT WITNESS
PRIVILEGED WITNESS