http://www.writerq.com/mobile/lucyr/ Latest updates from Lucy Ricardo http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/854/first-third/
The problem: right now I'm working on a novel that must be written in third person. There must be an all-seeing narrator who understands many perspectives, time and space shifts, and activities -- which slows down my writing. The words just don't flow as well.

Solution: I continue to write in my own natural way, that is, in the first person singular. The words flow as usual and the pages keep filling up. On a few experiments, then, I go back and change all the first person stuff into third person. I simply change all the "I"s into "his" or "hers"; and the "my's" into "theirs'". And you know what? It's working.

At some point I read the new stuff back and I can get a pretty good feel for its rhythms. In fact, I'm starting to forgo the first person writing altogether, in order to save time, and just write from the beginning in third-person. It's coming more naturally to me now and I'm guessing that if I keep up this practice, I will have taught myself a new skill.

If you have the same problem that I do, try this. You'll be surprised at how well it works.

Good luck, and happy writing!]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/854/first-third/ Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:41:23 +0000 Lucy Ricardo http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/839/the-hanged-man/
We were trick-or-treating: my little brother and two of my best friends from school, along with all the other neighborhood kids who would bunch together in one group at this door and spill along toward the next group at that door. I was a fairy princess that year, like 2,347,085 other little girls across the country. Nothing unusual. Lots of giggling and shouting as we made our way down and across the sidewalks in the porch-lit pumpkin-dotted night of the holiday.

Our neighborhood was made up mostly of old people. There was Mrs. Miller (the cat lady) in the big house on the corner, who always gave out homemade cookies shaped like cats and with any of her cats' names spelled with icing on the tops. Miss Owens lived two houses down from ours; she would give whole sandwich bags tied with orange and black ribbon, each filled with the exact same number and variety of penny candies (my little brother and always compared); there were 1 Snickers, 2 Smarties, 3 Mary Janes, 3 Squirrel Nut Zingers, and 1 Atomic Fireball. And Mr. Weathers, who's wife had died only the previous year, would give out nothing but candy corn. "Candy corn again," my brother complained. And my mother said, "Well, his wife just died." Now what his wife dying had to do with giving out candy corn every year, I didn't know but was polite enough not to ask about.

There was a house that all of us kids, and sometimes our parents, would refer to as "the poor house". Every neightborhood is burdened with one of these houses. It was a small, rundown house whose front porch leaned to one side, the paint was peeling and the grass was full of weeds. The house was usually empty; though occasionally a new family would move into it then move back out a few months later. My friend Sylvia had lived there the previous year and was gone again before school came back around, gone without a word. Of course this house, when it was empty, was also the house we kids would dare each other to approach. And on the night of the incident, that Halloween night when I was nine, there could be no avoiding the ritual.

"Just go knock on the door and run," my friend Cathy suggested, for this appeared to be one of those months in which someone actually occupied the place. There was a light on in the upstairs window and an old car in the driveway. The house was quiet, though. And the porch light was out, which we all knew indicated that tricks-or-treats were not welcome at whoever's door this currently was. At any rate, the dare was on, and I had a reputation never to back down from a dare; in front of our friends, this always made my brother proud of his big sister. So I approached the house.

As I crept nearer the front porch I saw something that I had not seen from the sidewalk; something behind the trellis that was hidden from view. Apparently the new family, perhaps another Sylvia, had decorated their front porch for Halloween. I saw something hanging there and decided the porch light being left off must be for spooky effect. This brave little feather in my cap will be a piece of cake, meanwhile my party stood transfixed and frightened several yards back on the sidewalk. Now if you've seen one corpse hanging from the American porch on Halloween night, you've seen them all. Some were better than others, I knew, but . . . Well, this corpse was especially great. At least they packed the shirt and pants full enough to represent the human body realistically, and they didn't just use a Styrofoam head and wig for the top. Somebody had gone all out.

I got closer in the dark, trying to see this dark swinging mass up close. And with every step, I admit, I was a little unnerved. For by now I, too, was behind the trellis and out of view of my friends out there on the sidewalk, my shoes clunking quietly on the hollow boards below. This was as perfect a hanging human corpse as I had ever seen (a lot better than the paper mache' one that Gary Leonard's family had strung up the year before); and I used my fairy wand, with the glitter on it, to nudge him . . . to turn him just a little so I could see how the face was made. I was surprised that the shoes used were real shoes, hard black shoes that shined now and again as he turned.

He turned slow and heavy, the thick rope creaking at the beam above him, his neck probably too long, I was thinking. Like a large pendulum he bumped slightly against me, vaguely rustling my candy bag. And looking up to see the corpse's face, I saw it: what at first I thought was a cigar was really a tongue, jutting in mock fashion from his swollen cheeks, the eyes bulging white, locked in a silent scream. The man was real. The man was real and the man was dead.

I walked back to my friends in a dream. I told them that I had changed my mind about knocking. And I never mentioned the incident. I waited over the next few weeks, listening for my parents to mention that a man had been cut down from his porch after suicide. But the news never came. Nothing came. The house was soon thereafter empty as usual. The car was gone. Only in an often recurring dream did I ever try to confess the experience to a teacher, say, or to a policeman. However, when I would open my mouth to utter what I had seen, there in the dark that Halloween night when I was nine, my tongue would pop out, stiff and swollen, and I would hear myself, somehow far away, screaming.]]> http://www.writerq.com/mobile/library/839/the-hanged-man/ Fri, 31 Oct 2014 19:54:41 +0000 Lucy Ricardo http://www.writerq.com/mobile/lucyr/ http://www.writerq.com/mobile/lucyr/ Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:59:29 +0000 Lucy Ricardo http://www.writerq.com/mobile/lucyr/ http://www.writerq.com/mobile/lucyr/ Sat, 14 Jun 2014 04:50:37 +0000 Lucy Ricardo