characters three

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Evolving Personalities or Personalities Being Evolved?

Continuing an exploration of Gore Vidal’s statement that every writer has a repertory of a certain number of characters. He guessed that Shakespeare might have as many as twenty basic players, while Gore assumed he came in himself around ten. I did a quick analysis of previous Reality Fiction Contestants, and came to the conclusion I have seventeen.

Wrong!!

On further reflection, I think I’ve got five.

Whoa! What caused such a turnaround in my thinking? Especially with my penchant for populating each of my “serious” works with at least fifty characters at a time?

I contemplated a conclusion I drew last week concerning the elusive Amaleh. I was confused because I’ve never even remotely seen Amaleh as any kind of alter ego, yet I feel she represents my sensibilities these days perhaps better than any other character I’m using. How did that come to be?

As Reality Fiction One was a necessary exploration of the issues plaguing my life at the time I wrote it, I decided it isn’t surprising to me in retrospect that the character who won the Contest turned out best to embody my own evolving points of view on those issues. My feelings on the themes I was writing about defined the character rising to the top of those themes, rather than the other way around. So naturally whoever that was, male or female, would best represent my own thinking.

I nominally state throughout Reality Fiction that the characters are driving events. But we all know — you, me, and the characters — that that can’t really be so. I’m creating situations in which certain characters may function better than others as I’ve decided they should act, but ultimately I’m looking for the best result to questions only I am asking. Within that boundary, I would say there are really only five different types of character I use to try to work out my problems.

And they are:

1.     The Investigator

2.     The Post-Fall Individual

3.     The Pre-Fall Individual

4.     The Eccentric

5.     The Agent of Chaos

And what is more, any character at any time will manifest more than one of those types within their personality. What it comes down to is that I might only have five voices in my repertory, but there are an infinite number of roles I can cast them in, and cross-cast as well.

Lets take a quick look at this reassessment, and the best examples.

1.    The Investigator

It’s a convention of the mystery genre that the Detective is the agent of order who restores balance to a disrupted world, usually thrown askew by murder or some other heinous crime. Which is why I prefer to call my characters Investigators, not Detectives. They’re not resolving chaos so much as investigating what’s going on. I have questions, they have questions. Those questions are commodified into supposedly concrete “crimes” for my investigators to look into and supposedly bring order to. But as I like to point out, the answers my investigators find are more likely to raise more questions than they answer.

Life, as I see it, and am constantly trying to figure out.

Not that my agents can’t bring order for awhile. But that order’s only a stopping point before taking the next step into mystery.

Best example: Jason Midnight, of course.

2.     The Post-Fall Individual

Sounds pretentious — not as bad as postlapsarian — but it sums up the concept best for me. Post-Fall characters have already experienced something that has either traumatized them or forced them to grow up way too quickly. They may or may not be at peace with these earlier issues. In either case, whatever has gone before will always be there in their minds affecting what comes next for them.

Sort of like surviving emergency open heart surgery. Or other developmental annoyances perhaps more personality related.

Good examples are Gwen, The Limp, and Amaleh. Or even Preacher Man. They’ve still got a lot to prove, and they know it. Some reject the ongoing questions, some try to continue with their lives based on precepts they know damn well aren’t the full answer but only the best they have to be going on with, some are still just baffled. But they know more than the next group.

3.     The Pre-Fall Individual

Best exemplified these days by Theda Bara Colman, as I’ve extended her name for Thirty-One Across. They are often as innocent as I believe a person can be, which often equates to clueless in many ways. Especially for male characters like Kent Wesley, Bucky the Trombone Player, or even the Evil John B. Who will remain eternally Pre-Fall no matter how many times I drop him off a cliff. That’s his charm.

These are people who have not yet experienced, or who are in the process of experiencing, the trauma that changes one of my roster from Pre-Fall to Post-Fall status. Their development is marked by either a change in their sensibility thanks to the traumatic event, such as Theda or Gwen manifest, or their lack of ability to evolve beyond the trauma. Such as Preacher Man.

Told you things would overlap.

Of course the most interesting character currently in development in this regard is Dusky Dredful.

4.     Eccentrics

These are necessary personalities to round out my comically absurd universe. They have to be there, because I think life would be so colourless without them. Always interesting and always unpredictable. The sort of people I look for in life itself. As one of my favourite personalities from this category once remarked (Murgo) “There’s a lot to be said for ‘odd’, you know …”

5.     Agents of Chaos

The Iron Clown. Polyphemous Blueberry. Mordecai the Tall Purple Demon. boB the Poet, even. The only group to successfully make it intact from my first assessment through the reassessment period.

They’re the characters who best exemplify this moment from my real life.

I was bicycling over to my parents’ from our first apartment, precariously carrying a plastic bag full of LPs in my right hand off the handlebars. I reached a small grassy hill — always a significant undertaking in Winnipeg — and halted my bike while contemplating my next move. It had been raining a lot, and there was an enormous mud puddle at the bottom of the hill. Should I walk my bike down carefully and maneuver around the mud on foot? Or should I throw caution to the wind, and just coast down trusting in my ability to steer past the puddle successfully at the last moment? There certainly was a narrow, clear path to take just to the left of the puddle. I cautiously assessed angles and likely projections of velocity, and decided with some confidence that yes, I could make that glide. Feeling quite chuffed with myself and the sensible manner in which I’d approached the problem, I remounted my bicycle and prepared to push off, to gracefully coast by the obstacle.

Just as I committed myself to going down the hill, the plastic bag broke.

Records flew all over the place, my balance was completely compromised, I wobbled down the hill and successfully fell over splat right in the middle of the puddle.

So much of life has been like that, really … You can never leave their possibility out.

Next Week: the obvious question. If there’s only five voices in my repertory, why do I write so damn many characters?

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REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

The fine art of maintaining dynamic equilibrium in your life, and on your walls. Denial will be involved. And I don’t mean the river in Egypt.

LIFE IMITATES ART!

The crossword puzzle in the real life Metro, created by Kelly Ann Buchanan — not a JH imaginary character — for last Wednesday, June 18, 2014, had the right question, but at the wrong number.

Fifteen Across: “Silent film star Ms. Bara (b.1885-d.1955)”

Just for the record, Thirty-One Across in the same puzzle was “How some music is stored, __ _ _” ON CD being the answer. And I got the idea for Thirty-One Across when I downloaded “Ride” having no idea who Lana Del Rey was, just like Theda, and Kelly Ann asked a question including her name that same week. And Lana Del Rey just released a new CD!!! Will the synchronicity never stop!

characters - two

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Questionable Characters

Last week I began exploring Gore Vidal’s statement that every writer has a repertory of a certain number of characters. He guessed that Shakespeare might have as many as twenty basic players, while Gore assumed he came in himself around ten. I did a quick analysis of previous Reality Fiction Contestants, and came to the conclusion I have seventeen. A total I’ve come to doubt on further reflection over the week, but more on that later.

Going through that list of my own left me with some questions regarding certain individuals I have put to paper. Namely:

1.   Dusky Dredful. Someone who starts off as a literally forgotten character, where I start writing her not even knowing what sex she is or what she looks like or what her name might really be. How does she turn into a player?

2.   Jason Midnight and the Evil John B. Are they really my alter egos? Were they ever?

3.   Amaleh. If the two bozos in the last question are supposed to be my alter egos, why does Amaleh feel like the character closest to my true nature these days?

Let’s take a look at where these people came from, and what that might say about these issues.

Dusky Dredful. Hmmm …

I was making random lists of characters I thought might be good for Reality Fiction Too, which was going to include a ridiculous number of players — and did. Wandering around thinking about all my characters, old, present, and the ones I was just inventing, I had what I believed to be a wonderful idea for a character that for sure had to be in the Contest. Then  I got distracted, and by the time I got home to write that afternoon’s ideas down, I’d lost it completely. Still don’t have a clue what I was thinking.

But I remembered I thought this character might be good for the Contest, so I strung some syllables together for a name and added it to the list, even though I had no clue any longer what they should refer to. Dusky Tex. I still had hope I might remember. As I went through the audition process I eliminated the name, because, obviously, I wasn’t remembering.

But then I got to thinking … 

And threw this formless concept into the mix anyway, just to see what would come up.

One of the villains immediately took the concept in hand, and shaped the name into a buxom young woman he could terrorize. A starting point. She had a gender, a look and a figure now, if nothing else. But she immediately asserted herself as someone who wasn’t going to just sit back and be tortured, so she sought help from what she thought might be a likely source. A minor league Contestant named Kent Wesley. Suddenly her and Kent’s role in the Contest expanded enormously.

The more she was in the story, the more she demanded to take shape! Two thirds of the way through she nabbed herself a father. Benny Dredful, a sufficiently mysterious character with a shadowy enough past to warrant the introduction of a previously unmentioned daughter.

But who was the mother? By the end of Reality Fiction Too, neither Dusky nor even Benny yet knew.

For that matter, neither did I.

So I decided I couldn’t keep her out of Reality Fiction Three, still in production, because she needed to know. A ways into that story the obvious answer came to me. Which I won’t reveal here, because Dusky still doesn’t know yet herself, where I am currently in the manuscript. But the revelation will round out Dusky’s character even more, and move her to the forefront of characters I’ll be considering for future properties.

If I remember who she was really supposed to be now, too bad. They’ll have to be somebody else. This woman has grabbed existence by the throat, staunchly refusing not to be abandoned until I’ve damn well figured her out.

So if a character can decide herself that she has to exist, how much input am I really giving here?

Alter Egos: Jason Midnight and the Evil John B

Both have been referred to by other people — never by me — as my literary alter egos. In my opinion, if I have a “literary alter ego” these days, it’s Ace, the Senior Judge from Reality Fiction. He looks a lot like me, and we are of similar temperaments. But he does carry a lot more authority, and doesn’t have half the things wrong with him healthwise that I do.

That being said, I will say the Evil John B used to be my alter ego. When I was 20 years old. And he served me quite well at the time, too. But he never grew up.

I stuck with him for a few years, and then, quite literally (pun intended), the Evil John B became a liability. Suddenly, I was stuck with him. I couldn’t move past him, couldn’t see past him, couldn’t develop my writing to the necessary next stage.

It was good to start out writing my longer pieces focussing on a character pretty much like myself, but I had to face facts. I’m not that interesting. A great novel was never going to come out of the Evil John B. But I didn’t seem to be able to realize that.

Luckily, my wife Renee just bluntly told me I had to stop writing about this guy, because he was stifling me. It was time to move on to someone new.

So I did. Jason Midnight. And immediately won a contest with his first story and earned my first prize for writing.

Jason Midnight is nothing like me and never has been. He’s a totally different person, not a reflection of my ego at all. There is no character I am more comfortable writing, but that’s because I find it so easy to visit his brain and know exactly what he’s going to do or say in any situation. Not because he’s lurking like some shadow of me in my own brain.

We get along quite well together, but trust me. We do not ever occupy the same space. Jake’s his own man.

So the Evil John B slid into Jason Midnight sometime in the eighties … and then suddenly in 2011 I brought Evil back. I needed a third judge for the first Reality Fiction Contest. The judges were meant to be reflections of me in a literary sense, Ace being my new nominal representative of myself in my fictional world, Susan Finnegan being a nom de plume I use when entering writing contests that demand you keep your own name concealed, and … who should be the third? There were a couple of other possibilities, but there was the Evil John B in back of the room, jumping up and down and yelling “Pick me, pick me!” waving his pale blue sun hat in a really annoying manner. So back he came. Maybe five years older than where I’d left him, which means quite definitely, he  certainly is not me anymore.

Now he’s a fun comic character to throw in whenever I need one of a particular style that quite frankly draws on a lot of qualities from some of the other player types I named last time, like the eccentric artists, unique men, and agents of chaos. I can use him again for the very reason that he is not me.

So — alter ego is not really a legitimate classification regarding my repertory company.

Then who are these two?

And finally Amaleh.

I created her for a light opera/fantasy piece I wrote in the nineties, “Scapegoat”, along with Mak Skeeter and a few others. Her role was very clear, but I liked her. She was a good character. Intelligent beyond her station.

So she was a name I was very comfortable with when I went searching for characters for the first Reality Fiction. Then over the Contest, she grew into so much more …

To the point where she won. And I honestly didn’t know who was going to win when I sat down to write the last Episode, but I decided I had to give it to her because she was the most proactive character. Always willing to do what needs to be done, regardless.

And then complain about it. Me, all over.

To the point where when I plotted out her novel as the winner of the Contest, and then suddenly realized her boyfriend Morgan couldn’t possibly have survived the injuries he received in the Reality Fiction Contest and wrote him out of her story, she jumped up in my face and said “Say what!” She wasn’t having it. She’d established her creds, and I wasn’t getting away with dissing her like that. No longer willing to do whatever needed to be done, she rejected what I willingly gave her. It took me awhile to come up with something to appease her …

Some people are never satisfied. And I guess that’s where she and I finally connect. She’ll tell you she doesn’t like me. But at a certain point, no matter how radically different our lives are, on any given matter we will be in complete agreement. Beating the other over the head with our point of view until he or she gets it. And generally, we’re right.

So if I’ve put my sensibility into any certain character these days, I feel it is Amaleh. She’s certainly not an alter ego. But as Reality Fiction was a necessary exploration of the issues plaguing my life at the time I wrote it even more so than a literary writing exercise/pseudo reality TV contest, it isn’t surprising to me in retrospect that the character who won it, whoever she or he might have ended up being, turned out to best embody my own evolving points of view on those issues.

Sometimes you really don’t know what you’ve put into a character until after you’re done writing them.

Further to my intro and the number of players I really have in my repertory, it occurred to me afterwards that trying to group eighty characters at once was overkill. It seemed to me on rereading that what I had really done was group them by calling, rather than type. I strongly suspect I do not have anywhere near seventeen types at my fingertips when I sit down to write. So next week, more analysis. Only looking at major figures, and how they might think. A much smaller group. I’ve mentioned a few today who I see as unique. Let’s see who else does stand out after all …

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REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Exploring the really important issues in life, like death. And family, and moving, and temps, and, of course, the utter necessity of crossword puzzles.

characters - one

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Learning Your Repertory

My recent search for personal rules and clever bits of advice from the famous writers of the world led to this interesting quotation from Gore Vidal:

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Says the man whose most famous books are arguably Burr, Lincoln, and Myra Breckenridge. All title characters based on the same player type, I wonder?

I recorded text books and novels for the blind for the Manitoba Department of Education as a professional narrator for over twenty years. One of the last big novels I got to do was the final instalment of J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series. I had also done novels two, four and six of the series, and had certainly read all six previous books, so I was familiar with the characters. Towards the end of the last book, in a scene Reality Fiction can only aspire to, Rowling draws back dozens of characters from throughout the series in one giant mob scene for the final battle. And she gives them all dialogue.

I don’t how many different characters I can write, but I know I topped out on voices after thirty. After that, like the man says in the opening quote, you start recycling the same sounds.

I have to admit to being equally intrigued and appalled by Vidal’s statement. I’ve read a lot of his books, and would credit him with many more players than ten. But you’d think he’d know for sure.

Taking that into account with my own penchant to overpopulate my books, I had to wonder … How many players do I have in my repertory? To examine this, I’m going to take a look at the full roster of Contestants for Reality Fictions One and Two, and see who I can group together and why.

Let’s see now … we’re talking eighty characters here!

I worked through the two lists, attempting to group players I see a relationship between, even if my readers might not. As I did this, something about Vidal’s statement became more apparent. People I wouldn’t have linked together off the top of my head ended up in the same list after some deeper thought on the subject. So it’s not so much how you typecast, as how you cast the type, if you’re smart.

Second, I’m not certain how to define some of these groups clearly so as to convey what I think I mean by relating them as a group. So I am definitely learning something about my repertory by performing this exercise. Hence, a very worthwhile undertaking.

I came up with seventeen groups. Higher than Vidal’s ten, lower than Shakespeare’s twenty. But that’s just my overrated opinion of myself. Maybe someone truly studying my writing — go ahead! You’re welcome to! — might decide there were really only five. Maybe as I get older, I’ll decide the cast wasn’t as varied as I thought either.

In order from largest group to smallest, with some attempt at defining the nature of the listing, here’s my eighty Contestants from Reality Fiction as published to date:

Player One — Ten Members: Yer basic good guy — sometimes sort of nerdy, sometimes flawed, sometimes essentially an administrator at heart

Billy Garlock

Bucky Winslow

Kent Wesley

Primary Prefect Reuben Baladis

Sir Edyrn, Son of Nudd

The Cat

Michael the Boat Guy

Indecisive Lad/Boy

Tsig Odomo

Jervis Mendrick

Player Two — Eight Members: Fun monsters -- with a tendency to the comic bookish

McBubgub the Little Orange Demon

Murdair LeBad

Constanzia Dementia

The Goth Moth

Crosshatch the Mute

Alphonse

Vixeena

The Prelate

Player Three — Seven Members: The good gals -- Again, sometimes flawed, but on the whole stronger in character than yer basic good guys

Princess Amaleh

Inspector Virginia Finn

Major Dez Rega

Scarlet the Vampire

The Ponytail Princess

Special Agent Carolyn Bolduc

Aunt Clara

Player Four — Six Members: Male protagonists of significant presence -- More of a match to Group Three than Group One is really

Coyote

Gully Bechet

Morgan the Vampire

Solitude the Vampire

Hobson the Hangman

Benny Dredful

Player Five — Six Members: Antagonists of significant presence

Preacher Man

Prevailer Char

Stephanie

Shadewulf

Knuckle Biter the Brain Drainer

Jaxon

Player Six — Five Members: The mystery femme

The Limp

Luna Damsel

McKenzie Telstar

The Dream Whisperer

Suki the Psychic

Player Seven — Five Members: The eccentric artist

Phoebe Hush

boB the Poet

Murgo

The Evil Sneed

Count Rolando de Orfeo

Player Eight — Five Members: yer professional gal -- Probably should be linked with Player One

The Velour Angel

Larysa Sandoval

Marysa Sandoval

Lyndsay Lovechild

Fifi LaFume

Player Nine — Four Members: Something more than an ingenue

Theda Bara, Dr. Lyjia Argullus:

     (The one case where Vidal truly nails me. Essentially the same character. They even look more or less identical. No surprise I got rid of one of them in the very first Episode.)

Elly Johnson

Dusky Dredful

Player Ten — Four Members: An agent of chaos

The Iron Clown

Dr. Tenderly

Polyphemous Blueberry

Mordecai, the Tall Purple Demon

Player Eleven — Four Members: A professional with something more to offer

Lou Moon

Suzi Coffin

Lady Helena Murray

Louise Moon

Player Twelve — Four Members: The Gothic ingenue

Scintillisha Evans-Holyrood

Ruby Skipstone

Lori Lightning

Annabelle Teach

Player Thirteen — Three Members: Surprising women

Gwen

Vispar Endmar

Sylvie Bourgoigne

Player Fourteen — Three Members: Unique men

Mak Skeeter

Mr. Snuff

Agent Only

Player Fifteen — Two Members: Entitled antagonist/protagonist

(someone I won’t mention)

Prince Eidolon

Player Sixteen — Two Members: the older, wiser hero

John T. Longhorn

Count Ormulan

and Player Seventeen — Two Members: The supposed alter ego

Jason Midnight

The Evil John B

Some of this I don’t have any more to say about. One of the side benefits of writing Reality Fiction is having the opportunity to explore which of my characters truly have legs. So I’m satisfied with how most of the groupings played out. But I would make further commentary next week on a few issues …

Dusky Dredful. Someone who starts off as a literally forgotten character, where I start writing her not even knowing what sex she is or what she looks like or what her name might really be. How does she turn into a player?

Jason Midnight and the Evil John B. Are they really alter egos? Were they ever?

And finally, Amaleh. If the two bozos in the last question are supposed to be my alter egos, why does Amaleh feel like the character closest to my true nature?

(And of course, all these characters can be checked out in detail at the blogsite listed below. Make your own decisions!)

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REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

When you least expect it, usually on a Monday morning, everyone will totally let you down.

rules: four

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

The Last Word on Rules For Writers

There's a rule being laid down to novelists I'm coming across more and more these days. Which is, have the most terrible things you can imagine happen to your characters.

Even Kurt Vonnegut said “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” Of course Kurt also said “To heck with suspense.”

I remember the first time I came across this bit of advice and thinking, uh uh, you've got to temper that one intelligently or you've got nothing but meaningless melodrama. You have to have conflict certainly, but develop it sensibly. No overkill.

I just finished reading the second novel in a new mystery series I'm interested in. The first one was really good, and I think the writer is quite a good writer. I would even go so far as to say the second book is very readable in its writing as well, I didn't have any trouble finishing it. But by halfway through the book, all I could do with her plot was laugh at it.

I may be leaving something out here, but the book featured at least three cases of incest, wife beating, sexual exploitation by a clergyman, rape, embezzlement by the same clergyman, homosexuality in another clergyman, abortion, arson, suicide, euthanasia, baby death and substitution, and at least four murders. All happening in a quiet little Cornish village, not even a large town.

Any one or two of these incidents done well would have been sufficient conflict to carry a book of this type. There is a brief note at the end of the novel stating much of the book was based upon “real events”. That I can accept. But I expect more plausibility from my fiction.

I started anticipating what was coming in the book long before it happened because it was always the worst. You don't want your reader reacting to the supposedly dramatic revelations in your story with "Oh good God, don't tell me there’s more …” It was probably the worst book I ever considered to be actually well written at the same time.

So yes, as a rule, I would say you can overdo it. And it's not a good thing. If the worst thing happens more than twice in a story it's not interesting anymore. The book had no drama left in it by the end.

Oops. I just remembered there were actually five murders. The older sister killed the brother she'd been sleeping with for years at the end, to make right the fact that he had killed the other four people. Before hanging herself. But it was all right because she killed her brother out of love for him, once she found out that he hadn't really raped their fourteen year old sister, necessitating the girl’s abortion by the village wise woman. That was somebody else. And the brother the sister killed is the romantic lead in the book. Because as the author assures us at the end, he was really all right, because he was kind to horses.

I’ll try the third book in the series by this author, but if it’s at all like this one, I won’t be reading any more.

So what’s my point here? Even advice from the greatest authors needs to be taken with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of common sense. It’s good to have these ideas in mind when you sit down to write … But.

When you sit down to write, write what feels right for that particular piece. Worry about applying the rules later. If ever.

I started off this series by listing seven principles I do tend to keep in mind when I write. There’s obviously a lot more to it than that. To get down to the real nitty gritty, given the way I turn out a manuscript, when I sit down to edit and really craft a story into something readable, these are the points I keep most in mind:

(in no particular order)

     smooth conjunctions

     eliminate unnecessary articles

     change static verbs to dynamic

     eliminate redundant phrasing (e.g. “round in shape”)

     clarify pronouns (I use a lot of characters)

     clarify exposition

     did I get my meaning across?

     strengthen vocabulary

     make certain there’s plot agreement: is what I say here consistent with what goes before and after

So at the end of all this, is there any one rule I’m surprised not to find in any famous author’s list, or barring genuine credibility in a source, something I haven’t thought to mention yet?

Yes! Absolutely!

Never — and I emphasize this again — Never! Ever! Trust your computer.

They might give the appearance of being useful, but in actuality they’re all just silently waiting to devour your best work when you least expect it. Always, always, back up your work on a separate drive from the machine you do the bulk of your work on, and be aware! Whatever word processor you’re using now will not be compatible with what you’ll be working on in three years! Constantly reformat your archives, or one day you’ll go to access something you’ll believe was safe only to discover you don’t have any software that will read it anymore. This does happen!

So there’s my final word on the rules of writing in the 21st Century.

Beware.

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REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Theda Bara’s winning novelletta Thirty-One Across continues this Friday at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

So far we’ve established she has a remarkably boring job, her brother is dying, and she likes a night out with the girls. Oh yeah — and there’s something really weird going on with the crossword puzzles she does at lunch.