The Dollhouse Chronicles

Books, Journals & Worksheets


When I pressed “send,” 5,000 words of my 12,346-word manuscript, The Dollhouse Chronicles, were included in a required package due this past Sunday, ahead of a writing mentorship masterclass I am invited to attend in April.

I was both relieved to meet the deadline and deeply gratified that my book—a novel I have been working on for over two years—was finally put to bed.

But that night, after already sending off my submission, I woke before daybreak from a dream, or maybe it was my subconscious telling me that The Dollhouse Chronicles had not yet been “put to bed.”

Whatever it was, it showed me one of my female characters barefoot. When I sat up, I silently cursed myself for not adding that all-important detail to describe her fleeing a harrowing situation. Of course, she was barefoot.

I charged down three flights of stairs and opened The Dollhouse Chronicles Word doc. I added the word “barefoot” to the end of the second-to-last sentence of a narrative-driven flashback in chapter five. Though labeling it a chapter is nowhere near an accurate description of the gut-wrenching scene.

I’ve been struggling to capture the sections of my book in a way that is laudable and meritorious. The narrative breaks involving the three main girls in my manuscript deserve a poetic description worthy of their gritty characters and thriving spirits, not a rote label like “scenario,” “chapter,” “scene,” or “episode.”

Those three young ladies deserve a description that is far more visceral and evocative—something that does justice to their resilience, courage, and resolve.

And then it hit me.

I could call each section a vignette, a fitting and descriptive homage to the three powerhouse characters in my book. Wait. Had I just created a subtitle for my upcoming novel?

THE DOLLHOUSE CHRONICLES

A collection of vignettes

Yes. My three heroes were part of a collection of vignettes, and just like that, my book had a new title. However, I’ll wait to review it with my writing adviser before making the change.

And then came night two after my submission—and nights three and four.

Those nights were chock-full of vivid, intricate, multifaceted layers that clearly needed to be woven into my already-completed novel.

Each night, I jotted down the myriad visions, and each morning I added them to my manuscript.

This book, which I thought was finished, seems to have taken on a life of its own—morphing, developing, and rewriting itself.

And it’s obvious from the reams of notes I’m taking and making that I’m not finished with the manuscript because the manuscript is clearly not finished with me.

And so, I’ve been listening to the novel and updating what it wants me to say.

It feels ridiculous to say I’m listening to a novel. That, as the writer, I’m not in charge of my own words. Is that even possible?

I say yes.

The words flow easily and connect so fluidly that I know beyond a doubt that my book is in control.

And now The Dollhouse Chronicles is transforming itself day by day through vignettes.

The rich complexities of the characters in my trauma-based novel continue to reveal themselves in endless, intricate detail. My novel has proven itself to be a work in progress.

Just like me.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Poetry


When I was younger, and my thoughts would snap, crackle, and pop, I’d keep them deep inside of me, hoping they would disappear.
I wasn’t ready to pull them out, so I repressed them out of love and respect—not for me, but for the others. I was in a vacuum of fear.

But after a while, I grew tired of protecting everyone but myself. I needed to eradicate the personal devaluation and the poisonous fright.
So now, instead of running from the snap, crackle, and pop, I sit down and write.

When a snap, crackle, and pop creeps into my brain, I have no choice but to write what it’s about.
I have to get that snap, crackle, and pop on paper before the next snap, crackle, and pop seeps out.

I realize in my twilight years that I can’t escape my thoughts. They snap, crackle, and pop when they want, and they don’t have to rhyme.
It could be a nightmare in the middle of a sleepless night or in the morning while I’m reading the New York Times.

The snap, crackle, and pop are annoyingly nonstop.
But now, instead of running from the truth, I run for my laptop.

The never-ending snap, crackle, and pop compel me to write, no matter the setting.
Hell, I was writing poetry in a bathroom stall at my own daughter’s wedding.

I could be sleeping, driving, walking, exercising, cooking, or cleaning.
Pretty much any time that snap, crackle, and pop leaks into my disordered psyche, my mind starts careening.

I have thousands of emails and texts I sent to myself, a jumble of words on tiny scraps of paper.
And endless lamentations written to a mom and dad, who I wish had never been my maker.

I have a gazillion notes on my phone and volumes of journals on my shelf.
And don’t judge me, but I even make ridiculously long phone calls to myself.

My mind doesn’t stop. With every snap, crackle, and pop, I’m like a robot trained to write it down.
I’m programmed to write. I compulsively spill and spell it out, just in time for another round.

I’m on a mission to block the snap, crackle, and pop, and yet I can’t help but remember,
what I fight every day to forget: the fire, the third-degree burns, and that devastating night in September.

I have no interest in turning every snap, crackle, and pop into a rhyme, a story, or a post.
But I’ve got no choice; otherwise, I feel like I’m nothing but a dried-up, burnt-out piece of milquetoast.

Genocide

Politics
THIS IS WHAT GENOCIDE LOOKS LIKE

These two photographs of Jewish corpses are impossible to imagine happening to any living soul, let alone to look at.

And yet, as unbearable as these images are to witness, the horror of what these tortured men, women, and children must have endured can never be captured in a photograph.

My father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, came to the United States in 1944, where he was soon drafted into the U.S. Army and bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

Of the many photographs he took as he liberated concentration camps, these two stand proudly framed and on display in the lower level of our house for all to see every day.

Some might say the graphic images of piles of dead Jewish bodies, front and center, are too haunting, too brutal, too violent to sit out so casually, but we vehemently disagree.

The brutality these images evoke serves as a daily reminder to us of the despicable acts committed against innocent Jewish men, women, and children.

A daily reminder that the liberation and the end of World War II came too late for these massacred Jewish souls.

A daily reminder that we must remember and NEVER FORGET the Holocaust as the generation of Jewish survivors passes, because too soon they will no longer be alive to tell their stories firsthand.

And now, here is why I shared these powerful, soul-stirring photographs with you:

Invoking genocide, the Holocaust, Hitler, the Nazis, and the Gestapo to describe Gaza, Minnesota, Chicago, Republicans, ICE actions, or anyone who isn’t on the same page as you is unconscionable.

The Holocaust was a systematic genocide, not a metaphor for policies you oppose.

Your metaphorical nonsense is a reckless lie that distorts history and disrespects Holocaust survivors and their descendants, including my husband, the son of two survivors.

Comparing illegal immigrants to Anne Frank is despicable. It willfully ignores the obvious—that Anne Frank was not violating immigration laws. She was a legal citizen of Germany, and was hiding so as not to be murdered for the crime of being Jewish.

Anyone who dares to compare the heartbreaking events of Anne Frank’s short life is pathetically unprincipled and ignorant of historical facts.

I am confident, given the nonstop, moronic comparisons to the Holocaust by far too many of you, that you are fully capable of coming up with some other creative analogy than comparing illegal immigration enforcement to the state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children in Europe by the Nazi German regime with the assistance of its European allies and collaborators.

Drawing parallels between the fear of deportation for being in the United States illegally and the brutal slaughter of two out of every three Jews in Europe is reprehensible.

SHAME ON YOU.

You, who are so adept with words, should be able to criticize politics without exploiting or trivializing the unimaginable Jewish suffering and loss.

You have, at worst, willfully and at best, ignorantly cheapened a horrific time in history.

SO, TAKE A LONG, HARD LOOK AT THESE PHOTOGRAPHS, AND PLEASE STOP USING A JEWISH HISTORICAL TRAGEDY FOR PARTISAN GAIN.

Does Truth Exist?

Observe & Ponder

Lisa, a Facebook friend of mine, recently posted a cartoon that said: “There are two sides to every story. Mine, and the one I’m not going to tell you about.”

My response was: “I always say, there are three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the truth.”

Estelle, a Facebook friend of Lisa’s, countered with, “The question is who provides the truth?”

I had no response for Estelle because her question made me realize that there are innumerable sides to every story.  And my “Yours, mine, and the truth” theory was hackneyed, naïve, and untrue, which is why I’ll most likely never use it again.

Instead of responding to Estelle, I took the easy way out and replied with a “Thumbs Up” emoji.

Thumbs Up? That’s all I had?

I couldn’t get Estelle’s question out of my mind, and she had me thinking about truth for a hot minute, but then, as usual, life took over.

That was until this afternoon, when I started streaming His & Hers on Netflix. Literally minutes into the psychological thriller, the narrator reflected on the many sides of a story by stating, “There are at least two sides to every story: Yours and mine. Ours and theirs. His and hers. Which means someone is always lying.”

And there it was: Truth can’t be trusted.

Truth can be uncovered, discovered, or often invented.

How many times have we confused truth with belief?

And how many times are those beliefs false?

And how many of us hold onto beliefs that we know aren’t true?

What is it about truth that makes it so elusive and untrustworthy?

When I went back on Facebook to respond to Estelle with more than a perfunctory “Thumbs Up,” about who provides the truth, I saw that Lisa had already done so with: “That’s what we are all trying to figure out!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.