When I was a teenager, every year I’d go with my girlfriends to the State Fair. We couldn’t wait! Midway rides that made us all urpy. Cotton candy. Corn dogs. Enough dust to kill your sinuses for a year.

There were BOYS!

Oh, but the Midway games — now, THAT was life. There was always some leering guy in a stained white T-shirt, with a home-grown tattoo snaking up his neck, whose job it was to lure us to his game. Not that a gaggle of teenage girls needed luring. There were stuffed animals. STUFFED ANIMALS! We couldn’t pull our babysitting money out of our pockets fast enough. There were Coke bottle ring tosses, magic rubber ducks swimming in a water tank, basketball hoops just a squidgen smaller than the basketballs, little plinky guns with wobbly sights, balloons to dart, stacked-up dishes to toss dimes at. It was ALL there.

My favorite was the water pistol that shot a loopy stream into the mouth of a plastic head with a balloon on top. The better the aim, the harder the stream of water, the more the balloon filled. First one to burst their balloon got a prize. If you won enough times, you got the big stuffed animal. As the guy in the T-shirt and tattoos handed over your prize, he’d yell out over the crowd, “Winner, Winner, Winner.”

WINNER … WINNER … WINNER!!!

That’s how I felt yesterday when my cell phone rang. I was in the middle of J.C. Penneys looking at new beds for the guest bedroom (to match my darling new chairs and to-die-for bistro table). It was Pam Binder, Executive Director of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association calling to tell me my poetry entry was selected as one of eight finalists from (as she put it) an unprecedented number of entries. The winners will be announced at the PNWA Seattle conference in July.

WINNER … WINNER … WINNER!!!

The rest of the day, I felt like that teenage girl again … walking through the State Fair Midway with a big stuffed animal in my arms and a spot of corn dog mustard on the corner of my smiling, laughing, still-can’t-quit-smiling, mouth.

I’m humbled and stunned to be a poetry finalist this year. I figured last year’s finalist spot in Literary Fiction was a fluke. The other finalists were credentialed … published … polished … wowzy-wowzy really good writers. PNWA receives thousands upon thousands of entries in their well-respected yearly contest. Each entry is carefully considered, with agents and editors scrutinizing each word until only the best of the best are deemed worthy to fill a Finalist’s slot. This year, they selected only eight finalists in each category. To be one of eight out of all those hopefuls is more than amazing. But don’t let my cheezy smile fool you — I am overwhelmed.

So, to all my writer friends, I wish you your own Midway water guns that shoot far and straight, that always hit the center of the mouth, that always fill your balloons to bursting. May YOU be awarded the big stuffed animal to carry around for the day. May you too walk through J.C. Penney screaming into your cell phone, “HOLY CRAP! A FINALIST? ME?” Then may you wear the same cheezy smile the next morning because you’re so struck that you wrote something that someone else liked and because there’s so damned much humility in a simple string of connection between a writer and a reader.

But mostly, may you too hear those magical words —

WINNER! WINNER! WINNER!!!

I went to the Wallpaper store today to pick out something for our guest bedroom — just one wall. I found the concept in a magazine and couldn’t wait to reproduce it– something complicated, involving tape measures and fancy molding.

Honest! I went for wallpaper. It’s not my fault that the store didn’t carry wallpaper anymore, and I came home with two chairs and a table instead. Really!

Him: You’re back fast. Did you find your wallpaper already?

Me: Um, no.

Him: Oh, that’s too bad. (He’s doing the Happy Dance behind his eyes.) So, no wallpaper? (He’s doing the Twist, the Churnin’ Butter.)

Me: Um, no. I found something better.

Him: Better than wallpaper? (He’s stops doing the Vonage commercial Spank the Monkey dance — Mid-Spank.)

Me: Yeah. Um, I need some help getting it out of the car. It’s big.

Him: (Panic invades.) Out of the car? Big?

Me: Um, yeah.

Him: You need help? (Panic rising higher.) What’d you get?

Me: Just two fabulous chairs and a to-die-for table. I can get the chairs myself. (I offer.) I just need help with the table base and glass top.

Him: I thought you were getting wallpaper. (There’s no dancing going on anymore.)

Me: Um, no. This is way better. It was the same price as the spendy wallpaper (I REALLY offer.) Besides, now we just need to paint.

Him: Oh, good! (Sigh!!!)

God, I love this man!

Yesterday, I wrote about authors who screw around with punctuation and make a bizillion dollars with their flagrant disregard for all those nasty grammatical rules — as set down in third grade by Sister Mary Hercules and her wooden stick. Hah! I should talk. I wouldn’t know my comma from a hole in my semi-colon. I didn’t know it in third grade; I’ve certainly disintegrated since then. (Could it be all that boxed wine I drink?)

I just write stuff. Except for this bloggy place where all punctuation bets are off, I send my manuscripts to a professional editor who, once she stops laughing, puts all the little punctuation thingys in their proper place. She lives in another state, so I’m not in the least afraid of her wooden ruler. She sends my manuscripts back with little red-penned editor’s marks all throughout the pages. Sometimes I get a smiley face here and there. I love her for it. I pay her for it. She’s worth her weight in rulers.

There are a lot of very good private editors out there. Find one who is kind. That helps. It also helps to find an editor who knows more than punctuation. I want a professional who can spot a cliche from across the room and who will call me on the carpet for it. I want someone who can spot that my hero was blue-eyed in the first chapter, but changed eye color in the middle of chapter twenty-three. I want a genius, because I’m not. I want someone who knows the difference between to, too, and two … or farther and further. (That’s always a doozy for me.)

If you’re anything like me, you just want to tell your little stories and let someone else fuss with your grammatical errors. I pay good money for the privilege of those red marks on my paper. I don’t think the nuns hit people with rulers any more, but I wouldn’t chance it if I were you. Find yourself a secular in another state. It rilly werks fer me!

James Frey wrote a book. A work based both literally and loosely on experience. He tried to offer his manuscript as fiction, but somewhere along the line, someone decided it should be a memoir. So, memoir it was! A Million Little Pieces was filled with truth and fiction and punctuation that would drive the sanest mind wild. The book took off like a rocket, sold a million little copies — then all the little fictionalized pieces were noticed. James was then reprimanded. Ostracized. Poo-poohed. Banished. Forever, it was thought.

But James Frey is back, and he’s written a work of fiction with punctuation that still feels like bamboo needles under the fingernails. His syntax is completely out of whack. I can’t even bear to discuss his run on sentences. Still, for all that’s conventionally “wrong” about this book, it’s one of the best damned reads I’ve had in a long while. Bright Shiny Morning. That’s what he’s given me and anyone else who dares pick up something that breaks every grammatical rule, as well as, your heart — a Bright Shiny Morning.

No one knows how to review the thing. I think that’s because there’s so much history with its author. For some, it’s hard to separate the writer from the written.

Myself? I don’t care about punctuation. If I remember correctly, Frank McCourt didn’t bother with any rules in Angela’s Ashes. Remember all those missing dialogue quotes? But what do I and the Pulitzer Prize people know about those little marks that set dialogue apart from prose? Pfft! I also don’t care if one’s memories are immaculately preserved within absolute truthfulness.  I don’t believe for a second that big grown-up Frank McCourt remembered every detail of little Frank McCourt’s life without embellishment, literary license, a flaw here and there.  I took a class one time where the teacher arranged for some hooded guy to abruptly bang open the classroom door and “rob” him. You know where I’m going here. Each student remembered differently. So must it be with writing memoir.  Especially when it comes to the memories of your childhood or when you were screaming-whacked out on drugs.

And precisely why I write fiction … except for this bloggy thing, of course, which is totally (or at least mostly) truthful — oh, and those nuts-and-bolts articles that are so boring they make my eyes bleed. Oh, yeah — and ad copy, and the miserably truthful material I write regarding homelessness at haspa.org.

There ain’t no bugs on me … there ain’t no bugs on me. There may be bugs on some’a you mugs, but there ain’t no bugs on meee.

Here’s my favorite version of the classic Leonard Cohen song. My kids call it the Shrek song. I call it beautiful, haunting.

Hallelujah

I understand only part of its esoteric words, but misunderstanding something’s full meaning doesn’t make it any less meaningful.

I live in Arizona where the trunks of people’s cars are festooned with “Support our Troops” magnets, sometimes three or four of them in a row; they fly little tattered American flags from their antennas and spend fifty bucks a year for hoo-rah vanity plates. Everyone goes to church three times a week, everyone loves war, mom and apple pie. The people across the street have a yellow ribbon on their door. Their son is in Iraq on his third — or is it his fourth? — rotation, their voices tremble when they talk of him.

Hallelujah

They put out a flag on the corner of their house this morning. Their son’s job is to drive along choking dirt roads and look for IEDs. They’re scared he’ll come home in a box. They’re scared he’ll come home different. They’re scared. They’re scared.

Hallelujah

I’m scared too. I don’t know what to say today except to fill my throat with a song from an animated movie whose meaning is slightly beyond me. Maybe I should tie a little flag on my car antenna, and shout hoo-rah from the window. Or maybe my life is better spent fixing dinner for my neighbors who don’t know what to do but hang a flag and a yellow ribbon on their house, and hope to hell their son comes home okay.

Me: Do you remember Underwear Boy?

Dan: The one in the tidy whities that we could see through our bedroom window? Yeah, why?

Me: We need curtains.

Dan: We have shades.

Me: I know, but we still need curtains. What if I want to walk through the house in my underwear?

Dan: No one will care.

Me: I don’t want anyone to call me Underwear Girl.

Dan: Then sew some curtains. Didn’t I just buy you a killer sewing machine?

Me: Yeah, but now I need to buy the material.

Dan: Buy the material.

Me: You mean it?

Dan: Yeah, Underwear Girl. Buy the material. But make it see-through. That makes me wild.

Me: (beating my chest in my best Tarzan voice) Yaaah-eeeh-yaah-eeeh-yaah. Tarzan go golf. Jane go shopping.

It’s naptime at the McCanta house. Hubby’s on the couch, mouth open, sweet and softly snoring. Dogs litter the hallway with their long bodies, legs all akimbo. Now and then, I hear the thump, thump of a tail in half-wag, then that silly whimper-scamper that dogs do when they dream. I’m working in my office, sorting through some papers and wishing to heaven for a double shot of something espresso-like, hot and thick like syrup. Something that burns all the way down and keeps me up half the night. But no. Dan and I quit drinking coffee three weeks ago. We did it abruptly. Meanly. Part of my new get-lean-and-tough regimen. My body was mad at me for days. Parts of me are still angry. Like my half-lidded afternoon eyes … oh, and my feet. My feet are mad. They’d rather be on the couch cuddled up with Dan instead of walking back and forth from desk to file cabinet putting away this endless pile of nonsensical papers and bill receipts.

Pfffftt!!!

Oh, wait! Is that the ice cream man I hear? YES!!! It’s the ice cream truck — the one that plays Popeye the Sailor Man over and over again until you think your ears are going to bleed. Let the hubby and the doggies sleep. I’ll be the one at the curb getting some chocolate covered Bon Bons. It’s not quite as good as a nice thick coffee something-or-other, but it comes a close second on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Give me enough Bon Bons (and maybe a little ZZ Top), and I just might make it through the day. Of course, if all else fails, I can always move my hubby over a bit, turn off the ZZ Top, and turn on the Zzzzzs.

Wilson the Labradoodle is five months old now. He’s getting his big boy teeth. With the help of some nice hard Nyla bones, lots and lots of chewy toys, and a bizillion admonitions to “Leave it!” if he even looks at a contraband item, he’s managed to pop through a number of very impressive pearlies. Today I noticed four new canines just peeking above the gum line. I couldn’t be a more proud doggie owner. Big boy teeth. Way to go, Wilson!

So far (may I repeat … so far), the furniture legs are still intact. There’s not been midnight raids on the dining table or the living room couch. The cushions haven’t been de-stuffed; the floor molding hasn’t been gouged out by teeth worrying their way down to bare wall and beyond. So far. Wilson’s actually been quite graceful with this puppy teething business. We’ve all worked hard to help him through this difficult time in a young pup’s life.

Here’s Wilson showing off his new toothy smile!

At last, the scars on my hands from needle-sharp baby teeth are beginning to heal. I notice also that Scarlett the Golden Retriever and surrogate big sister has a few less boo-boos on her puppy-beleaguered skin.

Way to go, Wilson!

Next will be his big-boy neutering. Yep, way to go, Wilson.

I met writers today. REAL writers! Folks who have published books sitting right there on bookstore shelves. Published WRITERS!!!

As I slobbered after them, trying hard to maintain my last semblance of decorum while drool ran down my chin, I noticed something odd. They walked on two legs just like the rest of us. Their feet touched the ground. They smiled at the commoners around them. Like they meant it. They seemed … honest to goodness … NORMAL.

Then, one of the Goddess Writers engaged me in conversation. ME? Yes, me. She confided that she sent out sixty-five query letters before she got her agent. SIXTY FIVE!!! She said only three responded to her sixty-five kind queries. Suddenly, this lovely young writer was more than normal. She was me. She was you. She said encouraging things like, Don’t give up, and Just keep querying, it’ll happen for you.

I loved her.

I think she loved me.

I promised (silently) that I wouldn’t let her down. I’d get out my Guide to Literary Agents and find sixty-five agents to nicely query. I’d research these agents and personalize each of the sixty-five letters, all of which I’ll mail on Monday. Then I’ll track each letter and its response, or lack thereof. If I don’t find an agent in sixty-five letters, I’ll send out another sixty-five. There are over 650 listings in my Guide, and certainly ONE of these fine folks would like to take on a new client. Certainly there’s ONE.

There’s a big fat old blazing fire under me at the moment.

Wish me luck! I’ll hold good thoughts for you.