Lynn Raye Harris

In no particular order:

1. Rent a Chrysler Sebring. Yep, it’s a convertible, and yep, you’re enjoying riding around with the top down, but I’m 99% certain you ain’t from around here. Wanna go local? Rent a Jeep. You can still take the top off.

2. Wear matching Aloha outfits. In very loud prints. That say “Hawaii” on them. Locals don’t usually wear his ‘n’ hers duds. Aloha attire is gorgeous and yes, we wear it here, but if it comes from a hotel gift shop and it’s really cheap, chances are it looks like something a tourist would wear. Want the real thing? Tony Bahama, Kahala, Tori Richards labels to name a few. They aren’t cheap. They are gorgeous. Best deal on Aloha shirts for men? Goodwill, I kid you not. And yes, Hilo Hattie’s has the real stuff.

3. Wear shoes. If you’ve got close-toed shoes on, you probably aren’t from around here. We wear flip-flops, otherwise known as slippers (or slippahs in pidgin). Tennis shoes are for jogging. Men may wear shoes to the Symphony, but women will still wear open-toed heels. I avoid shoes at all costs. I have worn knee-high boots to Borders in the winter, but that place is COLD. I also wore a wool blazer and a long skirt. Which brings me to another point.

4. It’s winter (roughly Nov-Mar), 70 degrees, windy, and it’s raining. You’re wearing shorts. You are NOT from around here. We get cold in winter. We wear jackets and jeans. We turn our AC off (if we have it; you’d be surprised at the amount of places that don’t). We even wear sweat shirts. Brrr! If you are a true Hawaiian, as in an indigenous person and not a haole transplant like me, none of this applies to you.

5. Two words: white skin. If you’re coming to Hawaii for a vacation, invest in a self-tanner first. Please. The glare off your white legs is killing my eyes. And, heck yes, I committed the same faux pas when I first arrived, which is why I am in a position to tell you this.

6. It’s dusk, or dark, and you’re splashing in the ocean in Waikiki. There’s a reason it’s called feeding time, you know. Strange creatures like to prowl the ocean in the dark and they are usually doing so because they are hungry. Remember this when you get that urge to plunge into the warm Hawaiian waters at night.

7. You turned your back on the ocean and now you’re a) being dragged out to sea or b) you just got soaked by that massive wave. Never turn your back on the ocean. Never, ever. It does not behave the same here as in other places you may have been when you had Aunt Bessie take your picture on the beach. Especially don’t do this in winter on the North Shore.

8. You just ordered a sno-cone from the nice ladies at Matsumoto’s Grocery Store. It’s not a sno-cone, it’s a shave ice. And Matsumoto’s really does have the best ones evah (Haleiwa, North Shore, Oahu). No sno-cone on earth looks like a real shave ice. Shave ice is fine, fine, fine.

9. You’re lying on the beach and you’re beet red. Locals know the sun is strong. Us lighter skinned locals wear sunblock (and maybe the dark-skinned ones too, but I can’t speak for them). Notice when you go to the beach the people who have big canopies set up under shady trees. Locals. Notice how they stay in the shade, too.

10. That puzzled look on your face when you ask directions and someone tells you to go mauka three miles, makai for a block, and turn left. Aloha ain’t the only word you need to know when you get here. Mahalo is a good one (thank you). Mauka and makai are pretty necessary too, especially if you plan to venture away from Waikiki and need to ask directions. On Oahu, we have two great big landmarks that you cannot miss. One is the mountains (mauka). Two is the ocean (makai). If someone tells you to go mauka, drive toward the mountains. If they tell you makai, go toward the ocean.

Okay, that’s the ten I could think of off the top of my head. This is from the perspective of a transplant. I’ve lived here for a year and a half now and I’m still learning. And I didn’t mention taking pictures of everything because, heck, you’re supposed to do that. I still do it, though not as much.

Aloha nui loa.

Because when one blogs, one inevitably surfs blogs. And blogs lead to more blogs, links to links, in a never-ending universe big bang kind of way. And you realize that there are ten billion writers out there with the same dreams you have–and that’s just the ones blogging because there are a whole lot who aren’t! And you realize that talent and ideas are rampant, no matter that you read industry blogs that indicate otherwise. Perhaps it isn’t that the talent and ideas are lacking so much as people really don’t know how to communicate those ideas, etc, which sounds ridiculous because we are talking about writers, people who toil with the written word and who ought to darned well know how to communicate.

But we don’t, not always. I, for instance, am a perfectionist Virgo. I’ll rewrite that query 500 hundred times and still think it isn’t good enough. And, probably, the best version was an earlier version that I’ve nit-picked myself out of by now. I couldn’t say it that way again if I had to, and the trouble might just be that I have to in order to get the project read.

The more I know, the less I know. Years ago, as a newbie writer who was convinced the first book was saleable, I got good responses and even some requests for material. I didn’t know enough to know I had to keep trying and keep writing, which is really dumb in hindsight. So, I packed up my writer’s kit and went back to school instead. I didn’t quit writing, though I wrote less and I figured I wasn’t destined to sell anyway (dimwit!). But of course the writing bug bit again, and hard, and I reentered the game with the idea of selling.

And I’m not giving that idea up again, but day-um! Why was I so dumb back then? Why didn’t I keep writing and submitting, because when I look at some of those old rejections, it was there. The encouragement, the secret if you will, that if you keep doing this, you’ll get there because you’ve got something. Do I still have that something? Hell if I know. And this is where the blogs come in. They’ve shown me so many more people with the same dream that I wonder if what I have is any better or any more saleable than the next guy’s is. What got me those “good” rejections then? Was it the greenery around my edges that translated into a certain freshness that’s lacking in more seasoned word warriors?

Do I know more now or less? I’m a better writer now, I know that for sure, but am I any better at selling myself to those I need to entice into reading me? I’m not sure about that at all, and as I sit here trying to write a two paragraph pitch, I know there are dozens of ways I could say this, dozens of angles I could exploit. Which one is best?

Hell if I know.

Who the hell is William Gerhardi, one might ask? Dig this quote from the dude, mined from the copious notes to Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas:

Never yet have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious fellow artists. I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who, endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace. Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us, cool our brow, while we bleed. If their sympathetic understanding may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for it! — From Memoirs of a Polyglot by William Gerhardi.

Apparently, Mr. Gerhardi (1895-1977) was considered the “English Chekov” of his time. But really, is it wise to publicly call oneself a genius and to leave it for posterity? Because Time, that cosmic equalizer of giant proportions, has decreed that the “polyglot Englishman” is little more than a footnote in a Virginia Woolf rant. Who’s rolling in whose grave now, eh? Spiritual helpers indeed.

In case you haven’t been reading Miss Snark (which I HIGHLY recommend), here is a tale of woe about a fee-charging self-proclaimed literary agent (someone posted link in the comments section). Miss Snark detests fee-charging literary agents and has embarked upon a one-woman crusade to convince us desperate writers that we do NOT pay agents for representation. They sell our books, we all get paid. Not before. Long live Miss Snark and her gin pail!

I love the New York Times. I read it every day. I send email links to friends and family all the time. A few months back, however, I noticed a change in how the emails were done. You used to be able to choose whether to send a brief synopsis and link or to send the whole article with a link. I always chose whole article because it was easier for those I was sending to. And for people like my hubby, who is on a firewalled out the ass server at work, it was the only way he could read the article. But then the NYT changed their options. Now there is no option. Synopsis and link is it. Annoying, yes, especially when I have to copy and paste the entire article if I want my hubby to read it. But, on occasion, when I want to have an article for my files, I just send myself the link.

Today, when I tried to access a link that’s only 3 weeks old, guess what. The NYT wants $3.95 to let me see an article I already read. Bastards. Maybe I’m viewing this all wrong, considering I get to read the entire NYT online for free every day when there are folks who pay to have the print version delivered, but I’m pretty sure the NYT is flush with moolah and doesn’t need nearly four freaking bucks for a two page article. I probably wouldn’t pay even if it were only 50 cents, but still. $3.95? Ain’t that a bit much? I buy the print version when I’m traveling and don’t have Internet, or when I want to sit at a coffee shop and read the paper. I also get inundated by all the advertisers, and I probably buy some of what they are hawking. Yep, the NYT is doing A-okay without my $3.95 per article.

On the other hand, I get the last laugh. All I have to do is log into my university library and head for dear old Lexis Nexis and voila, free article. But you know what, that’s a hassle and it isn’t that important to me at the moment. Lesson learned though. From now on, I cut and paste if I want the damn article.

From the divine New York Times today comes a story about alien abduction. Now I’ve never been abducted by aliens, but I have had that sleep paralysis thing happen three times in my life.

While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders.

I didn’t have any of that stuff, but I did wake up unable to move. Each of the three times, someone was standing there. Scared the hell out of me, and then I woke up fully to an obviously empty room, so I knew it was sort of a state between sleep and complete wakefulness. But imagine that happening to you in the sort of detail the article describes! And then your mind, already at work on War of the Worlds, tosses some aliens into the mix. Yeesh. I’d be a basket case.

Also from the NYT, an article that makes you mad.

More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

And no one did anything about this why?

That’s right, I changed my mind. Again. Pink was getting to me. How’s this for a new blog, eh? I have seen purple sky in Hawaii, btw, though maybe it wasn’t the WHOLE sky. Not sure how long I’ll be happy this time, but we’ll see. I have also enabled the comments section so people who aren’t members of Blogger can post too. Miss P tried to tell me she couldn’t post because she wasn’t a member, but I didn’t understand what she was telling me. Took me, oh, three weeks or so to figure that out? Duh. Blond moment.

I can dig it,I suppose! I do like speed, and I do like the beach. But I also have long, convertible-unfriendly hair. Guess I can braid it, or do the Gracy Kelly scarf thing.

Your Summer Ride is a Mustang Convertible

You’re out to experience the very best of summer. From the best beaches to the best tan, you want it all!

For 80 cents, you can substitute breasts for other body parts at Popeye’s Fried Chicken. I’m not knocking the policy, honest, but I just love a fast food menu that uses the words “Breast Substitution” on it. What else could they call it? Hell if I know, but I know it tickled my funny bone.

Wow, I haven’t posted since Thursday. I’ve been sick, mostly. Saturday, however, I dragged myself out of bed and dragged my hubby along with me and went to the Aloha Chapter meeting. Denby Fawcett was WORTH the trouble. What a nice, classy lady! I bought a copy of her book, War Torn, and she signed it for me. After hearing my name once, during the introductions, she remembered it. In fact, she remembered everyone’s name. I guess that’s a function of being a reporter for so many years, but she didn’t just remember names, she remembered statements. And she wrote about something I had said in her dedication to me. I was honored. Here was a woman who went off to Vietnam at the ripe old age of 23, and who reported from some of the worst of the fighting with the Marines up on the front lines. I will never forget something she said either. She said that, to her, Vietnam was less dangerous than Iraq. She went to the front lines in Vietnam, but she wouldn’t go to Iraq today. Too scary, she said. Wow, what’s that tell you? She also had a funny story about appearing on the Today show and being in makeup with a fat man she didn’t recognize. After he left, she asked the makeup artist who he was. “The fat guy? Oh, that’s William Shatner.” LOL!

Aloha nui loa.

BAC = big ass centipede. Okay, so it wasn’t that big, but I still don’t like finding one in my hallway in the morning, nor do I like picking it up with tongs and hauling it to the toilet only to wind up dropping it and having to scramble to pick it up again before it can get away. Eeeeek! This sort of crisis demands a man. The man was inconveniently at work, however, and I was alone with the ghastly creature. By Hawaii standards, it was little. Probably two inches long max. Fortunately, the three times a 5+ incher has been inside, hubby has been available. Best story of all is my friend who found the 14 inch centipede in her guest bathroom. She threw the centipede AND the tongs into the drain in front of her house. I’m glad it wasn’t me battling that monster.

I’m still battling the cold. I’m not happy about it either. I have an article due in a few hours and I can’t pull it together. It’s written, but I’m not happy with it. Hubby will have to preview for me. More later…..