Mallory's Camera

Elmore Leonard is one of those writers who occupies the demilitarized zone between genre writing and high literature.

I don't read him myself, but I take his Rules For Writing very seriously! Particularly #10: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Except... How do you know which parts readers tend to skip? Different readers skip different parts, right? Plus when you reread a book, the parts you skipped the first time may be the parts you linger over the second time around! It's so confusing!

Anyway, Elmore Leonard's adage was much on my mind as I labored on the Work in Progress yesterday. Did I write three sentences? Maybe. I am describing Flavia's reaction to Neal's death, which she learns through a phone call from Mimi. The problem is that I've already described Mimi's phone call to Flavia—as imagined by Grazia. As imagined amusingly by Grazia!

Grazia is an amusing character.

Flavia is not.

But the novel's structure alternates between points of view from different characters. Flavia's POV focuses on the nitty-gritty of maintaining a poly relationship, plus what it feels like to be super-rich and embarrassed about it, so it's not without its own fascination.

Still.

I have to set up Neal dropping dead and all the busy work that entails for Flavia.

Is there new information I can include about the phone call in its second evocation? I mean, how would you feel if you got a phone call telling you the person you loved most in the world was suddenly gone?

This has never happened to me, so I'm a bit at a loss.

###

Apart from struggling and failing to get anywhere on the Work In Progress, I made money and did a mini-Taylor Hackford film festival, An Officer and a Gentleman and Against All Odds.

It was a rainy day, so I didn't have to torture myself: Really, you should go outside and do something useful.

Against All Odds stars my movie boyfriend, Jeff Bridges. We have grown old together, and I must say, my health has maintained considerably better than his! In his youth, Jeff Bridges was the kind of adorably blurry, blue-eyed blond boy I lusted after—not dumb exactly but not intellectual in the way that I (for better or worse!) am intellectual. Very physical. Our bond would be sexual! Very wholesome athletic sex, lotsa orgasms but lite on kink.

Jeff Bridges was never more adorable than he was in Against All Odds—unless it was in Starman (be still my beating heart!)

I mean, don't get me wrong! Jeff Bridges could also be louche (c.f. The Fabulous Baker Boys and the brilliant, under-rated Cutter's Way), but that was a Sydney Carton kinda thing, doncha know, the romantic who's so-oo-ooo sensitive he has to hide it behind a wall of cynicism.

And the first part of Against All Odds is actually quite good, though it falls apart into total plot incoherence at the halfway mark. I mean, Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward having hot, sweaty, naked sex in Chichén Itzá! Does it get any better? I believe they actually got permission to film in Chichén Itzá!

Of particular interest to me was the way Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward kissed, taking nibbles of each other's lips. This is not my preferred way of kissing, which involves mouth flowering into mouth deep soul kissing, but I figure in my next reincarnation, I will teach Jeff Bridges how to kiss properly—which is something I had to do with my first husband! I mean, it's ridiculous to give up on someone just because their sexual rhythms don't match yours; teach them your sexual rhythms!

Anyway, it was a fun day. Guiltless sloth!

But today, it is not raining, and moreover, temps are supposed to hit 70°, so I must harken out to my garden and figure out the soil sieve situation.