Author Archives: Sue Remisiewicz

Me and My Dead (?) Snow Blower

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2015-02 Pic 1I think my snow blower is dead.  Back in November, I changed the paddles and scraper then started it up to make sure it worked.  The engine turned over nicely and chugged right along.  If it hadn’t, I’d have a new one sitting in my garage today.  Instead, I didn’t know that would be its last breath.  It failed me the first time I went to use it, two months later in January, with the first significant snowfall of the season.  What a pain!

I haven’t taken it in for service, but I’ve tried everything else within my power to revive it.  I siphoned out the old gas and put in new fuel.  I changed the spark plug.  I’ve tried using starting fluid.  All efforts have been to no avail.

It’s not as if I should be surprised.  The machine is ten years old, and I’ve been a neglectful owner.  I let old gas sit in it, over the summer and fall, year after year.  And then there’s the day in 2012 when my neighbor, Don, came over to find out if I could use some parts from his old machine since he bought a new one.  “Have you changed the paddles and scraper yet this season?” he asked.

“No,” I responded.  “I haven’t changed them since I bought the machine.  I didn’t know they would ever wear out.”

To his dear credit, Don didn’t roll his eyes.  He just asked if he could look and then showed me the shreds of what remained of the scraper.  He pointed out how the holes in the paddle that warned you they needed replacing were long gone; that the edges of the snow blower were starting to be eaten away from dragging on the rough pavement.

Don took my snow blower with him that day and brought me back a hybrid between his old machine and mine, having to put my engine into the case of his old snow blower.  Don warned me that the scraper and paddles would need replacing soon and told me where I could get the parts.  He offered to help me if I needed it.

I am somewhat mechanically inclined, but not particularly motivated to work on equipment.  It’s just not something that I enjoy.  So with the 2012/2013 snow season being unusually light, I didn’t get around to changing the scraper and paddle until the start of the 2013/2014 season.  It was a good thing I did because Detroit had a record snowfall of 94.9 inches – more than double our usual average.

2015-02 Pic 2The fact that my little 16” Toro Powerlite handled all that snow is remarkable to me now.  Considering its age and history of neglect, it truly is on a par with the ‘little engine that could.’  It never failed me during that time and went the extra mile as I helped neighbors clear their sidewalks.

Now it sits in my garage awaiting its fate.  I thought I could make it through this season the old-fashioned way using a shovel and buy a new snow blower at the start of the next season.  The sixteen inches of snow we got on February 1st and 2nd has me rethinking that strategy.  Unfortunately, the pickings are slim in the stores right now and even online.  I have considered taking it in for service, however, I’ve heard that can cost as much as half of what a new machine will cost.

So I sit trying to make up my mind on what to do.  Crossing my fingers and hoping we don’t get another sixteen inch snowfall seems foolhardy.  Neighbors have been helping me out with the snow, but I don’t want to take advantage of their good nature.  Calder, my cat, shows no signs of wanting to get outside to help me.  My call for minions in last month’s post has gone unanswered.  Neither have I found a good reference for someone I can pay to come and take care of the snow for me.

I’m happy to hear your suggestions to help me decide on a solution.  For now, I’m watching the weather reports closely, stocking up on Epsom salts, and rooting for an early spring!

Help Wanted: Minions

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I have a lot of stuff to do.  First on my list are the things I have to do to maintain my life.  Obtaining food/water, shelter, and clothing make up the basics.  It’s what people have been doing from the dawn of humankind.  If I don’t do the modern equivalents – work my job, buy groceries and clothes, maintain my house – I may very well become extinct.

Second on the list are the things I should do.  Guilt often goes hand in hand with the ‘shoulds.’  Losing weight, exercising, volunteering – all are well and good, but not easy to fit into a busy schedule.  That creates major stressors.  Cavemen had their stressors, too.  However, I think that once you managed to outrun the saber-toothed cat of the day, you could pretty much let it go and enjoy your mammoth meat without ruminating over whether or not it would make your thighs bigger.

Last on the list are the things I want to do.  You know, travel, hobbies, writing, entertainment, socializing, etc.; all the stuff that gets put on the backburner in favor of the ‘must dos’ and the ‘should dos.’  How ironic is it that modern life imposes so much overhead to the basics of obtaining food/water, shelter, and clothing that we don’t have more time for leisurely pursuits?  We have to obtain and maintain cars.  We deal with endless paperwork that must be read, filed, filled out, paid, and tossed or shredded.  Electronics are meant to be fun except when they aren’t because they’ve gone on the fritz and you have to deal with the problems.  The list of upkeep duties is long and large.

What’s a person to do?  I’m thinking having minions is the answer.  I admit to being somewhat inspired to this thought from seeing the trailer for the cartoon movie “Minions.”  Having a bunch of these lovable goofs doing my bidding sounds kind of fun.  However, the “Despicable Me” movies notwithstanding, minions have a bad reputation given they are usually depicted serving the needs of evil masters set upon ruling the world.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a minion as “someone who is not powerful or important and who obeys the orders of a powerful leader or boss.”  See that?  It says “powerful leader or boss” not megalomaniacal madman out to become overlord of the human race.  A secondary definition is “one highly favored.”  I know I would certainly appreciate someone who does all the stuff I don’t want to do.

So, I’m putting out the help wanted sign to bring in some minions.  The salary: zero.  I mean, a minion will do the job just for the satisfaction of serving the leader – right?  I won’t require any evil deeds to be done, but if it makes a minion happy I can produce an evil laugh when assigning him or her to shred my finance statements.  I can wear grey suits while my cat, Calder, sits in my lap being stroked as I give orders.  See?  This can work!

Care to apply?  No experience required.  Leave comments for more details.

A Writer’s End of Year Reflection

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What I like most about this time of year is the unique, collective opportunity it offers for spending time on people and things that we might not do otherwise: gift giving, sharing meals, travel, being with friends and family.  Sure there may be irritations along the way, but in the end the goodwill intended ought to bring some light into our lives.  No matter how things go, it’s a rich breeding ground for great story ideas.

However you plan to spend this time, my wish is that it nurtures your spirit and health, and brings you closer to the people you love and the things you like to do.

Take care and may you receive all the best the New Year has to offer!

Vacation Suspense – Part 2

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Television producers try to get you to come back for more by showing scenes from “the next exciting episode” of whatever program you’ve just watched.  Writers have to do the same thing sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, and chapter to chapter.  Suspense is one of the tools of the author’s craft that helps pull the reader along.

For me, suspense is the essence of a story that makes me skim a few pages more because I have to know what comes next before I put the book down for the night.  Though most easily seen in cliffhanger thriller and action pieces, suspense is also present in more subtle ways when a story has engaging characters or a compelling storyline.  Will the young lovers stay together in the face of pressure from their parents?  Will the social activist win against the sea of opposition?  Stay tuned for the next sentence, paragraph, or chapter to find out.  That’s suspense.

A few days prior to my vacation in October, John McCarthy challenged the members of the Deadwood Writers Book Study Group to write a paragraph containing suspense.  I took the idea on the trip with me not knowing if I’d do anything with it.  While sitting on the beach I wondered how I might describe the scene around me in such a way to make it interesting.  What started as an exercise in scene setting became one for developing suspense:

A warm breeze passed over Sarah as she scanned the overcast sky.  The clouds kept the sun from making it scorching hot, yet enough blue shown through to make it a pleasant day at the beach.  Sunbathers spread out across the sand with no one closer than a hundred feet between.  The more cautious among them sat beneath the colorful umbrellas that peppered the landscape.  When screams rang out from the ocean, Sarah’s heart raced and her eyes scanned the surf left, right, left, right for the source.  It took her several eternal seconds to find the sounds came from a young surf boarder having a good time.  “Calm down, Sarah,” she told herself, as she wiped sweat off her face that had nothing to do with the midday heat.  “No one’s caught in a riptide like before.”

There are questions this passage provokes that I hope would cause a reader to want to know more and keep reading:

  • Who is this character named Sarah? A lifeguard, tourist, or maybe a resident on the beach?
  • Who got caught in the riptide? Was it someone close to Sarah?
  • Did the person drown or get saved?
  • Why did the incident affect Sarah so much?
  • What role did she play?

As writers, we must always be aware of what will keep a reader tuned in for more.  Thinking about the questions our passages inspire is a good check on the suspense we are trying to create.  As we begin to answer those questions, we need new ones to continue the process until we reach a conclusion.  Does that mean you have to answer all the questions by the end of your piece?  Not necessarily.  Sometimes you want to leave a person on a thought provoking note.  If you’re writing a series, you might leave the reader with something that nudges them to read the next book or blog post.

Consider these memorable ways that writers/authors have tempted their audiences:

Same bat time, same bat station.

Luke, I am your father.

Happiness is…

Elementary, my dear Watson.

Even if somewhat misquoted, people were so taken with the lures that the lines have become part of the modern lexicon.  How can you reach that level of popularity?  It all starts when you figure out how to entice your readers to ‘stay tuned.’

Vacation Suspense – Part 1

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One of the biggest challenges writers seem to face is finding the time to write. If you don’t have the privilege of writing for a living, one must contend with a day job, spouses, kids, pets, or any number of things higher on the priority list than putting word to paper.  This month held an extra challenge for me in that I dared to take a vacation.  Oh the horror!  The blog deadline!  The explosion of submissions for critiquing!  The book study!  Blog editing!  Would I ever be able to keep up?  The answer, in a word: no.

On the first day of vacation, I let my Twitter followers know that I would try to answer the question: Will a writer write while on vacation? After that, I kept them updated with daily statuses on how things were going telling them each time to ‘Stay tuned.’  Did I write anything?  Yes, on the third day I penned a paragraph while sitting on the beach.  Yea!  On the fifth day I caught up with email, sent out some tweets, and wondered if that counted as writing.

In the end, my writing mind rode the vacation trail and did not create a blog post or anything more than that paragraph on the beach. As I read that sentence, I realize I’m falling into a trap many writers set up for themselves which is to think you are only succeeding if you achieve some arbitrary amount of specific work.  The truth is that I did compose something.  I also thought about what I might write which is an important part of the process.  So, despite being on vacation, I produced this piece on my first day back.

It is, however, two days late to my editor. Will she forgive me and find a way to help me polish it in time for posting on the 24th?  Will Part 2 offer interesting and helpful insight on suspense?

Stay tuned…