Jane Austen Runs with the Bulls

       Jane Austen is an action figure.
      Yes, you heard right.

       Ms. Jane comes complete with "writing desk and quill." 

        If this doesn't offend your sense and sensibilities, you can pretend to have a clueless Emma match up Ken and Barbie and send them off to the prom.
        Personally, I think this is replete with possibilities and a lot more fun than G.I. Joe.  

      Let your imagination run wild.

      But wait.  Miss Jane is not out there all by her lonesome.  Oh, no. Amaze your friends. Collect them all.
      The pantheon of "literary action figures" includes Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe and  Shakespeare. Head shrinkers are represented by Freud and Carl Jung. Atom smashers by Einstein.
        Here's Edgar:

    

                  Please note that Edgar comes complete with a raven on his shoulder. Possibly "nevermore" is sold separately.
                  And here's Oscar:

             Oscar, dressed to party hardy, is dashingly accessorized with a walking stick. According to The Writer's Store, this is apt since Mr. Wilde was known, not only for his "comedic plays" and "quick wit," but also for  his "eccentric dress." Presumably the removable cane will allow Oscar to stab you in the front, rather than the back, as true friends do.  Another of my favorite Oscar quotes: "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
      Freud is holding something in  his hand. Can't tell from the picture, though, whether the object is just a cigar.

But perhaps my favorite is Ernest Hemingway:

         
       Not only does Papa come complete with "typewriter and shotgun" but he also appears to be wearing a Hemingway T-shirt and leaning on a saber. The promotional copy says that "a child can role play, pretending to roam in Africa, fish in Cuba, hunt in Michigan, and write the great American Novel."
       I figured if there was a Hemingway action figure, there should be one for F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps sitting drunk at a Paris cafe. Or dancing in a New York City fountain with crazy Zelda.  But alas. The author of The Great Gatsby apparently only rates a finger puppet:

  But he's in good company.  James Joyce has one too.

So do Hemingway and Mark Twain.

Four years of college have come down to this. It's all flashing before my eyes.

Speed Typing

         I used to write fast.  You have to when you write news and deadlines loom.
         But with fiction, I tend to wallow. This is a bad habit. Everyone who knows will tell you to plow a straight furrow from Once upon a time to to ...happily ever after without looking back.
         I can't do this.
         I go back to the beginning over and over, like the last line of The Great Gatsby,  a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. I caress. I stroke. I coddle.
         Often this procedure leads to more words.  More words are not always good words. Sometimes it is hard to pick and choose the best word. Mark Twain, who always chose correctly, had this to say about that: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. 
         I scrabble about for the right word. Sometimes there are too many applicants for the job.
         Lately, I have been trying my hand at shorter pieces of fiction, novella length.  It's been an interesting and entertaining exercise. I focus better. I indulge myself less. I play fewer games.
         This is not to say I write quicker. I don't.
         I still return to the starting gate time and again. Not always a bad thing for me.
         In my current story, I'd given my heroine a broken heel on her designer boots and put her into a sweatshirt belonging to the hero. But if I hadn't gone back before moving on, I might not have realized that she couldn't go racing across an icy parking lot. Or enter a public place with certain telltale initials emblazoned across her chest.  The concealment of the sweatshirt took the story in an unexpected direction. 
        Never saw that coming.
        And I wouldn't have without a return to the starting blocks.
       The good thing about the shorter length, though, is that I get to the finish line a helluva lot faster.