Daffodils

I could have sworn I did a post with this title already, but I checked the archives and ... nope. How could I miss this opportunity?

On my walk yesterday, I noticed them. Bright yellow bursts of sunshine popping up out of the ground. I think this phenomenon - the daffodils blooming - must happen overnight, because I'm fairly certain I do not remember seeing them the day before.

In the South, by the way, I think they call them "buttercups". They've always been daffodils to me. Anyway, they're probably one of the simplest flowers around - existing just to be pretty, without much in the way of scent or substance - they bloom quickly and die quickly, and the world goes on around them.

Aren't there people like that?

Sad, but true.

From a writer's standpoint, a daffodil would make a good extraneous, tertiary character in a book - in a place where you need a body, perhaps, a character who isn't quite (or at all) integral to the story but still needs to be in a certain place at a certain time. Someone your protagonist passes on the street, or in a marketplace (I used this one recently).

There are those who would disagree with me on this point, I'm sure. It's a topic open for discussion, if you like. If I remember correctly, one writer once told me that every character should have a name, an identity. Maybe she meant every character who is a "part" of the plot, I don't know. But by my way of thinking, we meet people all the time - in real life - people whose names we'll never know. You might notice someone in a shopping mall or at the airport, someone who catches your attention for one reason or another - a little girl dressed all in pink, clutching her mother's hand; an elderly couple sitting in a coffee shop, sipping from their cups and not really saying anything but you can tell they're enjoying each other's company; two teenage girls in the mall, giggling in whispered discussion about the cute boy on the other side of the corridor. Our main characters will notice people like this while they're waiting for something to happen that actually does have something to do with the plot. And why not? If we're trying to make our books seem more real, isn't this one way of doing that?

The girls are off on a church youth retreat weekend, the WGH is at work, and The Boy is finding ways to occupy himself. I am (obviously) in the study, getting ready to write my little fingers off. Will today be as productive as last Saturday with my 2,157 words? Maybe. I have a couple of chick flicks from the rental place (and there's a story behind that, too - see below), two bags of popcorn and one giant Hershey bar (it was a package deal) and I'm going to have a day to myself. A friend from our Sunday school class was dropping his kids off at church last night and he asked me what I was going to do with the girls gone. I said, "I'm going to write and watch movies all day." Sound like a plan?

The story is this: For the walk yesterday I popped in a CD called "Classic Party", a mix of party tunes from the late-50s to mid-60s - hits like Do You Love Me, Fun, Fun, Fun, Louie Louie, and Wipe Out.

I have a tendency to associate songs I hear with certain memories or other meaningful events, and forever after, each time I hear that song, an image comes to mind. When Wild Thing came on the CD player yesterday, all I could see was Charlie Sheen walking out of the bullpen in Major League. Man, I thought, with my free day tomorrow, I could watch that and Bull Durham and be in high cotton.

So on my trip to the grocery, I stopped by Hollywood Video to a) return Stranger Than Fiction, which the kids and I had rented last weekend (fabulous movie, by the way); and b) pick up my two baseball favorites and the whole package deal.

Wouldn't you know it? They didn't have them. I did get into a 10- to 15-minute discussion with the store manager, who said he could stand around and talk movies all day, but he was off shift so after a fruitless search for my flicks of choice, he suggested I might check out the new releases just to see if there might be something I'd like to see. Sigh. Yeah, I guess so.

I came home with Little Miss Sunshine and The Devil Wears Prada.

Not quite the baseball afternoon I was hoping for - I even had The Boy check at his favorite video rental place up the road, but no dice. Still, they ought to make for a nice, cozy afternoon in the downstairs living room with the big screen TV and surround sound system.

I'm going to see if I can't crank out a few words of my own first, and then treat myself to an afternoon of sheer lazy indulgence.

Bet the writers of these two movies used daffodil characters ...

Read a book. Or watch a movie, whichever strikes your fancy today. Just enjoy yourself.

=) JB