Wedding Coordinators and Other Employment Opportunities

You can all breathe a sigh of relief. I found my copy of the novel. Meanwhile, though, I could have been writing about how I started watching shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway? and Wedded to Perfection to try to learn just how much the author missed as it's pretty obvious she has no idea what Angela should be doing as a wedding coordinator. The author is not a wedding coordinator and did not befriend any wedding coordinators. However, as I type this, I'm realizing she missed the mark with the unemployed sister, too—and the author has been unemployed.

That's not very fair to Bev. She's not unemployed. She's supposed to be taking care of Mama. That's her full time job. Who pays her to do that is very unclear. There are mentions of asking the church for help and how little money they have, but the book doesn't say anything about how the utility bills get paid, the hospital bills, the mortgage... Money simply isn't a concern. But even if I could tell you how the groceries get paid for, I have no idea when those groceries are purchased. It's really unclear how the house isn't falling apart. Bev has plenty of time to make love potions and read tarot cards. She's never faced with a stack of dirty dishes or a floor that needs to be swept or a school project that needs her attention. The weight of the world is not on her shoulders. Bev can go hang out in the garden and take a break from massaging Mama's feet or brushing her hair. Feeding Mama seems to be the only real thing on her to-do list and it always gets done without a problem. It never strikes her just how immensely sad and frustrating it is that she's spooning mash into her mother's limp mouth. She feeds Mama, she brushes her hair, she changes a diaper, she moves on. Her mother's dirty diapers never send her over the edge. She never lashes out at someone who hasn't provoked her because really she's upset that her mother is in diapers and can't talk to her anymore.

Enough about Bev and her lack of problems, though. This was supposed to be an entry about wedding coordinators. I went to Tumblr to start a new blog where I would spend 20 minutes every day writing a novel about a wedding coordinator whose mother has a stroke. But even before I started to do "research," I felt this was just too impossible. The coordinator would be faced at some point with having to give up her clients in order to help her mother.

Angela is supposed to be highly in demand. However, she never seems to be attending to any brides. Her phone never rings. She never has anything she needs to be doing—no linens to look at, no florists to visit, no cakes to taste test. The story is set during the summer. Wedding season. And yet there is nothing to do. I don't think Angela has to love her job—it might be more interesting if she flat out hated brides—but give us something. She's supposed to be planning the most important day in somebody's life and she approaches it like she's ordering takeout because she just doesn't feel like cooking.

All those episodes only made me want to forget about this story (and its potential counterpart on Tumblr) even more. There is more drama in watching these yahoos on TV pick a color for the napkins than there is in the almost 500 pages I read in this novel. Reconciling the woes of a bride who wants to be just plain tacky on her wedding day with the magnitude of a mother who is now in a vegetative state is too much to be a carefree writing exercise. If I were Angela, I would tell the bride to go frack herself, but that's probably because I'd just be angry I couldn't tend to such trivial things as decor on top of trying to heal my mother. And there you have it. A novel. Man versus himself. What happens when Angela is pushed that far? The wedding TV shows and this novel will never tell us.

The Dog

The other day it occurred to me that there was possibly a worse minor character than Chita. There was a dog. There was. And then there wasn't.

Emmett, the possibly-cheating husband, runs out of the house, all excited by the presence of Angela, the terrible possibly-main character. He needs her to take the dog (a basset hound? named Claxton?) to the vet. Angela seems to care about the dog as much as she cares about her son. (Hint: Not very much.) She invites the son to dinner. Angela never takes the dog to the vet.

I had thought the dog up and disappeared from the story completely after Emmett makes his request, but, no, there's a mention of the dog being on the fishing trip with the guys when Angela sneaks home later in the book. I know. This is either an amazingly thick plot or a ridiculously awful story.

Chita is by far a more offensive character. In the Chita vs. Claxton smackdown, Chita wins.

Chita, or One Minor Character, One Major Problem

"Mrs. Hauser, I want two weeks pay like always."
The voice belonged to Chita, the home care nurse who'd been watching over Angela's mother the past month. Mama had suffered a massive stroke that spring, and Chita became Doctor Robert's first choice for a nurse. Why she suddenly felt a need to discuss her weekly pay escaped Angela. She gave Chita a check every other Friday for two week's work.
"Of course I'll pay you for two weeks," Angela said. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I'm gone. You don't know this?"
"Gone? What do you mean?"
"You don't be talking to your sister?"
"Not today. No."
"She goned me."
"She what?"
"She goned me. You know. She makes me go."
"You mean, she fired you?"
"What?"
"She took away your job?"
"Yes. I tell you this. She goned me."
Angela could hardly believe she might be hearing correctly. ...

Where on Earth is Chita supposed to be from? I was so distracted by the choice of names that I never noticed until right now that we do know when Mama had her stroke: "that spring." Really?! The woman had her stroke just a few weeks ago? Because they don't act like it at all. With her "long white hair," I would have assumed she had the stroke five years ago. Angela wants to smother her with a pillow after only a few weeks? Bev fires Chita after only a few weeks? These are some crazy impatient women... But back to the ill-conceived Chita.

Is she a Gungan? She cannot possibly be Hispanic. She seems to have a mish-mash of "not Middle America" dialects. Which makes me think that, like Jar Jar Binks, she is a poorly conceived, more-horrifying-than-funny minor character who would cause anyone in her right mind to shut the book and throw it in the trash.

Jar Jar Binks, the goofy character from Episode I of the Star Wars saga, at least comes back to justify the need for him to be so stupid in Episode II. The idiocy of Chita never remotely serves a purpose. Bev could have just as easily fired a home nurse who spoke intelligently. The author could have learned what a "Spanish accent running full throttle" really sounds like. But, mainly, there are other ways to get Angela to show up on Bev's doorstep.

The above excerpt is almost her entire time in the novel—a short blip in a long story—but Chita's appearance is the kind of pothole that will rip off a wheel or a speed bump that will gut your car. The one person who really sounds moronic is the writer.

Gardening

My husband has begun reading the novel. We're not sure if he'll finish. Having started the novel, he felt he could finally come to the blog. And now the blog has gotten it into his head that there is nothing redeeming about the novel. I assured him there is no payoff. He's read 40 pages. That's enough for me. When we all sign the front inside cover of a copy as a memorial to time lost on this novel, he can sign his name.

So there we were yesterday, him reading the blog and me trying to enjoy doing nothing, when it popped into my head: Gardening. Why are BOTH of these women gardening in the story?

You might think this is a trivial complaint, but this is a trivial blog. Bev lives in her mother's house. That is her garden. What is Angela doing meddling with the landscape? Shouldn't this be something they fight about?

There are a myriad of reasons why a woman getting a divorce would be out spending gobs of money at the garden center and toiling away in the backyard, but these reasons do not surface. Again, it's thoughtless writing. You needed Angela to leave the house, so she goes the nursery. But we never see Angela planting the flowers she purchases. We actually don't even see her at the nursery. We just know she spends the entire day there and a young man tries to help her carry the load to her car based on what she says later.

We see Bev in the garden. Is she working out all the frustrations of her life, trying to do something productive or beautiful to counter all the dirty adult diapers and lack of response from Mama? No. Bev just happens to be gardening.

Could it be that both characters are gardening because you were gardening while you wrote this novel? And both characters are you?

That was my husband's first thoughts on the novel. "They're all pieces of her personality. Angela, Bev and Carolyn—they're all [the author]."

"Who's Carolyn?"

My husband seemed dumbfounded by this question. He's 40 pages into the story. He's just read about Carolyn, a.k.a. Miss Nevada. I assure him he will forget her name and the title of the book in another 50 pages.

So you only write what you know, which means that your characters aren't very good caregivers or wedding coordinators or mistresses or teenagers because you are none of those things. You go shopping at nurseries and buy plants, though. So now your characters do, too. Exciting...

We've figured out what the payoff should be: All of the characters are one person. They are all Mama. She is actually in a nursing home already and dreams the whole thing. She has no daughters, no grandchildren. She is just babbling in the corner to that portrait of Jesus. The end. Ta-daaa...

Problem 2: The Stroke Victim

What are the most stressful things that occur in a person's life? Death, divorce, moving... Angela seems to have it all. Oh, wait. Her mother hasn't died yet. For some reason—we never get a sense of why beyond the usual "she didn't love me enough"—Angela wants her mother to die. The old woman had a stroke and is gone according to Angela. At one point, Angela contemplates putting a pillow over the old woman's face. Yeah, nice daughter.

So... When did the old woman have her stroke? Was it last week? Was it ten years ago? We have no idea how long Bev, the younger sister, has been changing diapers and spoon feeding her mom in the spare bedroom. Why is Angela convinced her mom needs to be put out to pasture?

I'm not usually a fan of medical stories, but this was killing me. I'm half way through the book and I still know NOTHING about Mama except that she lies in bed and stares at a picture of Jesus that hangs on the "sick room" wall. When did she have her stroke? What caused it? How old is this woman? Her children are hovering around 35. Doesn't that mean she's like maybe 60? That's really young. There are no clues to what her health was like before or if she was really old when she finally kids. All we hear—too close to the end—is that Mama was much more beautiful than her older sister who comes to visit. We also hear that Mama has long white hair. Every woman I know who's close to 60 dyes her hair. How long has she been in this state?

The only thing more infuriating than the lack of details about when the stroke happened and who found her body and how long she was in the hospital before she came back home is how the characters address the current situation. Angela and Bev discuss what to do the way two people might talk about a leaky faucet. "I think we should call a plumber." "I think I can handle it on my own." "Whatever. I have to go to work." "Fine. I'll just stay here and try to fix it. Don't mind me." The faucet continues to leak. The end.

You treat Mama like a set piece. She has all the back story and humanity of a porcelain sink. Bev saw her smile once? I don't care. Give me more of a reason to be in either Bev or Angela's corner. Seriously, their mother is lying in a vegetative state, they need to figure out what they're going to do, and I just don't care. This is definitely a problem.

Problem 1: The Divorce

Because I said in the original post that I wanted to help other people if possible, I will address why your novel sucks one point at a time. First up, your plot. Yes, you have a lot of things going on here, but that doesn't make it a rich story. Explaining why your plot is so weak will take several posts.

The story seems like it is supposed to be about a woman who decides to move in with her ailing mother, kooky sister and surly niece after her husband refuses to talk to her about an affair he may or may not be having. The novel opens with the subplot of a mismatched bratty couple for whom the woman is acting as wedding coordinator.

Is this a comedy? With all you boast about on the back cover (another entry here all together), I thought this was supposed to be a drama. I mean, you did file it under "literature," so I'm a bit confused as to why your characters never address the very real problems with which you've presented them.

The first real problem Angela, who may or may not be the main character (it's kind of a weak ensemble cast), faces is that her husband has decided to meet up with another woman. And he doesn't tell her about it. And when she confronts him (kind of), he doesn't want to talk about it.

All of a sudden she's getting a divorce. We learn about the ONE conversation where he doesn't want to talk in a flashback. Forgetting for now that this flashback comes while she's apartment hunting (so she's still living with the guy after that ONE conversation where nothing is said), I have to say that I have no sympathy for your main character whatsoever.

Angela reads a letter that says, "I'll be just as giddy as you," or some nonsense and all of sudden the marriage is over. She's gone snooping through her husband's things, found a letter, reads it out of context, and then does nothing but brood until her husband comes home. Rather than build up what a terrible day that was for Angela—how agonizing that wait is, how much it kills her to think that her husband is even talking to this woman, all the reasons why she hates this mystery woman—we see her day pass quickly and get some lame back story about the other woman. (The title character! Again, an entry for another day...) Her husband comes home at 3 a.m. and she broods and expects him to read her mind. When he doesn't, she decides things are over. Your main character behaves in exactly the way you've always told me I should not. That I should loathe women who expect men to be mind readers. So, maybe it's just me? No, you didn't create a sympathetic main character. This woman should be going to dark and ugly places mentally if she has almost 24 hours to contemplate what her husband is up to and WHY he's doing it.

Yeah, you skipped the why.

Your attempts to keep Angela nice and to create a sympathetic character in the husband, telling us about how Miss Nevada (the other woman) played with his heart in high school, does not help us understand Angela, hate Miss Nevada, or care at all whether or not this marriage will work out. If anything, this event—finding the letter, coming back at 3 a.m. from a trade show that ended at 9 a.m.—only helps us think that this marriage has been dead for quite some time but you, the author, are not going to pull the plug on it. Instead you're going to have them get together in the end. And rather than work really hard to make that happen and be believable, you're just going to make Angela and her husband kind of wishy-washy and seemingly in need of good heart-to-heart.

Oh my God! There are another 450-something pages still left in this book. Now what? Do they ever talk? NO! They don't. Not even on page 494! Other people tell Angela to talk to her husband. (long pause) And that's it? That's all that happens? We don't even know why Angela decided she needed to leave. Why is she leaving? If her husband was unfaithful, why is SHE moving out? Shouldn't she be packing his bags? No, because then she would be DOING something. And your characters don't DO anything. Waiting for your husband to call apologize is not doing anything. We don't even get to experience the anguish of waiting for that phone to ring. We don't get to sit in her office with her and have her get excited that each and every jangle might be the sound of her husband and their relationship coming back to her.

Obviously, this major problem is just a weak plot device to put the two sisters together under one roof. Couldn't you have just had mold growing in the walls of her condo or a neighbor with a construction project she's decided is simply too noisy? Did Angela need to be married at all? No one ever talks to her husband. He'd be really easy to delete from the story.

My suggestion for making your first "problem" better: Either have Angela fly off the handle and very suddenly move into her mother's house (why is she taking the time to apartment hunt?) in a fit of rage that causes her to become incredibly embarrassed—so much so that she remains living at her mother's house to prove that she was right even though she knows she wasn't. Or have Angela be a spinster who suddenly moves in because she can't stand what's happening at her own residence. Some minute problem that demonstrates how vain she is. And if you take the first suggestion, please address the problem of divorce. Who gets the house, the kid, the dog, the car, etc.?