{"id":742,"date":"2010-07-19T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/2010\/07\/19\/delivery-status-notification-failure\/"},"modified":"2010-07-19T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T18:04:00","slug":"delivery-status-notification-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2010\/07\/19\/delivery-status-notification-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivery Status Notification (Failure)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
This is flash fiction. Any resemblance to the events of this morning is purely coincidental.<\/i><\/p>\n

Stoic, I think. My character needs to be stoic.<\/p>\n

I wrote half the scene on my laptop but to finish it I must email it to myself on my main computer. For some reason, each time I Send, I end up with a Delivery Status Notification (Failure). In the middle of my third Delivery Status Notification (Failure), my mother calls.<\/p>\n

“What’s going on with the swim lessons?”<\/p>\n

I’ve put off this conversation two days. I try to explain about the cost of gas, the distance to her house, the other pool option. She doesn’t want to hear it. <\/p>\n

“He just doesn’t want your kids to spend time with their grandmother,” she complains.<\/p>\n

I email the attachment to a different address. This time it works. My file fills my screen. I put my cell on speaker phone so I can type without interrupting my mother. She is working out a number of different alternative schedules. Tuesdays and Thursdays or Wednesdays and Fridays, eight or ten o’clock, private or class lessons. I surf the net while she talks. From Epictetus, via Wikipedia, I learn to be stoic is to be “sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.” How should I show this in my character? Show, don’t tell, show don’t tell.<\/p>\n

The half-written scene is a mess, a number of mutually conflicting scenelets, bits of possible dialogue. Should I put in a flashback? Or would that drag the pace? I realize I don’t know if my character has parents or is an orphan. It’s always easier to deal with a character who is an orphan. Parents just complicate fiction. Parents, like flashbacks, seldom move the plot forward.<\/p>\n

“Are you listening to me or are you on the computer?” my mother asks.<\/p>\n

“I’m trying to work.”<\/p>\n

“I know you’re trying to work,” she says, “but we need to get these swim lessons taken care of. Why do they need to be at the same time?”<\/p>\n

“What?” I realize she must have asked me a question before, and I must have given her an answer which has made her imagine I require something to be at the same time. “I don’t know. I’m trying to work while the baby is still asleep. He’ll be up from his nap soon.”<\/p>\n

“You’re really annoying to talk to when you get like this,” she says. “It’s rude.”<\/p>\n

There’s definitely a scenelet missing, a bit I wrote last night around two in the morning, while nursing the baby. I was sleepy, but I distinctly remember writing it, on my laptop. Damn. I emailed myself the wrong draft. I’ve been working on the wrong draft this whole time. I go back to my laptop to email myself the right draft.<\/p>\n

The baby cries. I use this as an excuse to hang up. After I’ve changed the baby’s diaper and started to nurse, I check my email again. Delivery Status Notification (Failure).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is flash fiction. Any resemblance to the events of this morning is purely coincidental. Stoic, I think. My character needs to be stoic. I wrote half the scene on my laptop but to finish it I must email it to myself on my main computer. For some reason, each time I Send, I end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}