Is It Wednesday?

If it's a Wednesday than it must be a blog day.  Although what time of day I actually blog is erratic at best, I at least try to stick with the Monday, Wednesday, Friday format.  (You may not have noticed seeing that's more like a guideline than an actual rule - to borrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.)

I suppose that's kind of like my writing style.  There are authors that swear by the rule of writing so many words every single day or writing for a set amount of time each day.  I think it's like anything you pursue, you have to find what works for you.  

I definitely have to set aside time to write, and then jealously guard that writing time.  But I'm also a wife and a mother and a volunteer and a . . .  So, despite my best efforts to sabotage my writing with all of my other activities, I've managed to complete my novel in six months.  

During the school year my schedule is more solidified, but during the summer with kids home . . . lets just say it's not quite as structured.  I've written in the mornings or late afternoons or, after several busy non-writing days, all day long (with prior notice to all family members).  I've written in the middle of the night when all is quiet and I am left alone with my characters who have missed me.  

Quite honestly I didn't know if my haphazard approach was going to work.  But this is something I really wanted!  I wanted it so much I could taste it.  And somehow or other it has worked.  No one is more surprised than me, but no one is more pleased as well.  I said "worked," but that is a bit of a misnomer.  The work is not actually in the past tense.  There is much more ahead, for instance I don't have a publisher or agent yet.  But that will come too . . . somehow or other.

The Power of the Written Word

I talk a lot in my blog about writing fiction, or writing books.  But whether you are an author or not you use the written word all the time.  These days it is more likely in the form of a text or an email, but it is writing all the same.

In a departure from my typical blog, I want to focus on that writing we all can or should do.  I'll narrow it down even further to the writing that seems to be a dying art - the thank you note.

When was the last time you wrote a thank you note?  When was the last time you received one?  Some of the short but sweet notes I've received have been so precious that I have tucked them into pages of my journal.  It is such a pleasant surprise to receive a hand written note full of praise and appreciation, especially these days when it doesn't happen very often.

If you know how wonderful it feels to receive a thank you note, then write one today.  Be the sunshine in someone else's life.

Turning Over a Leaf

Have you thought recently about the phrase "turn over a new leaf?"  If you remember being a child, with all the wonder that a child embodies, you might remember turning over fallen leaves or rocks or logs only to discover a whole new world underneath.  Often bugs of all shapes and colors are exposed, completely hidden from view until the leaf was disturbed.

I just finished writing my novel, Apple of My Eye, including my first major edit.  I'm sure there are many more edits in the future, but for the moment I have set it aside awaiting editorial comments.  That left me free this morning to start my second novel.  I had many different ideas scribbled in notebooks and computer files that left me wondering which one to explore.

I was grateful for my scribbled notes, because the idea that caught my attention the most was one I had forgotten about.  And so early this morning I wrote 1000 words of a novel titled, I am Seven. (I'm sure I'll write more later today - it's calling to me.)  It's really like turning over a leaf and discovering a whole new little world since it is a huge departure from my other novel.  The narrator of this book in a seven-year-old boy.  It is not a young adult book, as you might think.  But it examines our lives and the challenges we face as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy.

Because of that child-like wonder so apparent when turning over a leaf, I'm excited to put life in a whole new perspective.  I hoping my little protagonist takes me on an intriguing adventure!

It's contagious!

I realize since I've become a serious writer that I view the world around me differently, and I especially view books differently.  Never again will I read a book merely to be entertained.  I may be entertained in the process, but other motives are always afoot.

It doesn't seem possible anymore to read without analyzing.  Mostly it's not to criticize other writers, rather it's to learn.  However, when I'm not learning something, when the writing seems juvenile or sloppy, I usually can't find it in me to even finish the book.

My daughter recently recommend I read two books that she was about to read.  That way we could discuss them over the phone.  An interesting thing happened.  As she was talking to me about the books she kept describing things in terms of how they might be viewed by me, the writer.  She was ahead of me in my reading, but she urged me on with the first book because of the techniques that would be good for me as a writer.

The second book I put down after the first chapter, determined not to pick it back up.  My daughter had finished it by then, but agreed with my decision.  (She had finished it because of an agreement with a friend.)  She then told me why it was a good decision by critiquing the writing in the book.

Now, to be honest, she has always had an editor's eye, my being a writer has not changed that.  But the depths of analysis and the discussion of what would be beneficial to me is a new wrinkle.  I kind of liked it!  It's nice to know she's got my back.

Dear Blog . . .

Recently a family member experienced the dreaded "blue screen of death" - his computer died!  Very sad indeed!  I've been experiencing the "white screen of death" - the blank computer screen just waiting for my words of wonder.

It's not that I actually have writer's block - in fact I just finished writing my book!  (Woo Hoo!!!)  Of course I'm talking about the first draft, but even the modifications and additions are already going well.  However, it seems I'm only allowed so many free flowing ideas, and all of them seem to be going into my book.  So, this blog post page has been sitting open on my computer all day long, waiting . . . waiting . . . faithfully waiting . . . for me to actually pay serious attention to it.

I must apologize dear little blog - but this is all I have left.

Residue

I have a little sore on my foot.  It's small, but annoying so I put a band-aid on it a few days ago.  The bandage has long since fallen off, but the sticky outline of where it was remains.  It is interesting what thoughts that outline conjures up.

If someone were to see that outline, they would immediately know that a band-aid had once been there.  More than likely, without even realizing it, their eyes would wander to find the wound - the reason for the bandage in the first place.

In novels when you come across characters with old band-aid outlines, it makes you wonder what their original wounds were and what caused them.  The residue can take many forms: an unexplained sudden temper, nightmares or cries in the night, an air of superiority, or simply a dark cloud.  At times we don't realize we're looking at old bandage outlines, we think a character may be mean or timid by nature, and sometimes that is true.  But not always, and often the old bandage and the need for it are the whole point of the story.

Sirens

I was outside yesterday, weeding my vegetable patch.  (It's not big enough to call it a garden.)  And while bent over pulling weeds I heard the loud sirens of an ambulance and a fire engine as they raced past our corner.

We hear sirens on a regular basis; we figure it's because we live at a prominent corner of a neighborhood of young families and elderly ones.  But the wail was much louder to my ears, having no walls to interrupt or insulate the sound.

My curiosity got the better of me after a few minutes, since the noise had ceased shortly after passing our house.  Sure enough, when finding a better vantage point, I could see the emergency vehicles maybe a half dozen houses down the street.  Being fairly new to the neighborhood, I have not met those neighbors yet.  However, they have a life story and something significant was happening at that moment.

Shortly afterward the ambulance sirens sounded again leaving that residence.  I did not know what had happened, but I wondered - not in a rubber-necking kind of way, but in a what-just-happened-in-your-life kind of way.

Everyone has a story.  Everyone has a mother and father, whether they knew them or not.  Everyone has good days and bad.  I wonder sometimes walking past strangers on the street what their lives are like, what are their successes and what are their heartbreaks.  Letting one's imagination run wild can lead to novels, reading them allows us to glimpse what might be someone's life.

But still . . . I wonder what has happened in that home down the street.

The View From Up Here

It’s not often that you get a bird’s eye view of the world.  But today, I can see for miles.  The endless sky stretches over office buildings and churches, schools and apartment buildings.  Some rooftops are brown by design and others are so by neglect.  By observation, every shape and size of roof can be seen: domes, spires, peaked and flat.  I can see buildings with red brick and green, stone mixed with glass, decorative touches and merely functional ones.  People move about unaware of my watching eye above, hurrying along or sauntering slowly, beating their own rhythm on the sidewalk, even if I cannot hear it.  Cars are lined up in parking lots, neat and orderly as if at an auto dealership, their bumps and bruises invisible from this height.  Semis move about, stopping to discharge their contents, the life blood of whatever organization they are servicing.  Buses likewise admit riders while pulsing out others.  It is a living, breathing city, moving people about along various veins and arteries.

But then maybe I have a jaundiced view.  I’m observing it from a hospital room in the heart clinic.

Great Characters

Lately I have been focused on character development.  Various articles I have read about writing point out how critical great characters are.  Readers are drawn to (and will come back for) interesting characters.

When I think about this in terms of my fictional characters, I am reminded of one very real one, my great-grandmother.  We called her Grandmother Martha.  Anyone who knew her would quickly agree that she was an amazing and fascinating woman.

Grandmother Martha was a little bit of a woman in physical stature, but in every other way she stood tall.  She was ready with a smile and a word of good cheer.  She lived to be one hundred years old, and her mind was sharp until the very end.  She was constantly reading, and towards the end of her life we would search for large print materials for her.  I remember one time (she was probably in her nineties by then) when she related a joke she had either heard from her son, my grandfather, or read in the Reader's Digest, I don't recall which.  Later my grandfather told us the same joke.  She had related it word for word as he had, remembering it perfectly.  I can't do that and I'm half the age she was then!

Grandmother Martha, when I knew her, lived alone in a little apartment close to the center of town.  She would walk to town for what she needed.  I didn't think about where she got her groceries at the time, I can't even recall where the nearest grocery store was, but I do remember that she would walk to the post office to mail birthday cards.  She never forgot a birthday.

She was always encouraging and supportive.  I remember making homemade bread for the first time.  We shared a loaf with her, and she called to tell me it was the best bread she had ever had.  I was floating for days.

When you know more of her life you would be surprised that she was not bitter, but that is not a word she understood.  She married my great-grandfather and inherited a lot of work in the process since they ran a hotel for quite some time.  She was housekeeper for the hotel and cook for the accompanying restaurant.  One of my most treasured possessions is a "crumber" from the hotel.  It is basically a fancy dustpan with no handle.  It is painted with fancy designs and has a lacquer finish.  A long handled brush accompanies it, used to brush crumbs off the tables into the "crumber."  It reminds me of my loving grandmother.

She had four children, but one died too young because of a drunk driver.  Apparently she took it hard, but like with everything else she never let it dim her radiant spirit.

There is more I could tell you, after all, you can fit a lot into one hundred years, but this is just a blog not a book.  So, the last thought I will leave with you is about how much she loved.  I always felt loved in her presence and with her birthday cards and eating her snickerdoodle cookies.  It was so easy to love her because she loved so immensely.  Being the youngest in my family, when we would visit her the conversation would often be over my head, but I didn't care, I just loved to be in her presence.  And I will tell you I continue to feel that love from beyond the grave.  A couple of my children have had a great affinity for her, and they never met her in the flesh.  But they know she loves them; that is the power and immense circle of her love.

Great Literature

As I've become a full-time author I've thought a lot about what I hope to achieve.  Yes, I would love to sell books.  (Who wouldn't?)  But there is more.  I would like to write a book that makes people feel and think, one that stays with them, one that they tell their friends, "You've got to read this book."  

I would like to write a book that gets favorable reviews, but this is a tricky one.  This is such a subjective thing.  What has prompted this blog today is the current book I'm reading.  It is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I hate it.  I have been trying to find redeeming features in it.  The language has a nice flow to it.  I'm not sure what else to say.  It has two running themes: suicide and adultery.  If this book were a true snippet of reality there is no marriage out there that has not experienced adultery at some point.  And suicide is something everyone considers on a regular basis.  

So, I guess if I can't see why this would be a Pulitzer Prize winner, I'll never be writing one.  Well, what a relief!  Now that I've accepted that fact, I need never feel disappointed by not achieving that level of success.

I do hope, however, that one day you will read one or more of my books and you might say to your friends . . .

Anti-Climax

My post today, like most days, is highly influenced by my life.  When reading a book, no one likes being jacked up, expecting something amazing and then having nothing real transpire.  It is a let down.  And while it can make a later revelation come with more impact (you're expecting nothing this time), doing it too often will disappoint a reader, possibly turning them off for good.

So, my son was supposed to get on an airplane early this morning, leaving home for two years.  We've been focused on this day for months.  We were ten minutes away from heading out the door, when we stopped to print boarding passes.  When I entered his confirmation number what came up was an entirely different flight!  And not only that it leaves this evening!  Apparently his original flight was delayed; however, it seems it's really being cancelled because the airline is rebooking everyone.  Now in the grand scheme of things, a half day delay is not a big deal.  But, at the moment it doesn't feel that way.  One is all ready to go and suddenly there is nowhere to go.

Oh, well.  What can you do?  Hopefully it won't be like that bad book where the let down happens repeatedly.  Here's hoping he leaves tonight without a hitch!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! part 2

I last left you with tales of girl's camp and critters galore - most of them actually harmless.  The skunks and raccoons were also I suppose harmless, but they did create a fair amount of mischief and mayhem.

Since raccoons are common in this area, we knew to put any kind of foodstuffs in cars at night.  But that doesn't mean that sometimes someone didn't forget!  The first couple of nights were okay, but the next night one of my tent mates forgot about the trail mix baggie that had been passed out to everyone.  When she heard the raccoon right outside the tent, she suddenly remembered.  Plucking up her courage she hit the tent where the noise was coming from, with accurate aim to where the raccoon was on the other side!  He left and did not return.

I slept through all of this excitement.  But sometime around this time the skunks joined the fray.  I could smell them strongly, enough that it permeated my sleep.  I remember thinking how smelly they were, but I was in the tent and they were outside so I may as well sleep.  (Do you get a sense of how exhausted I was?)

The next morning revealed that we had forgotten to empty our late night garbage -now spilled and pillaged, and that we had left a few snacks inside the supply tent - also now pillaged and smelling strongly of skunk.  The front of the supply tent remained smelly for the rest of camp.

But the real excitement came the next night.  Some first-year campers had neglected to secure some beef jerky.  The raccoons sniffed it out in no time, and at least five of them joined the party!  Several 12-year-old girls in a tent together did not appreciate the raccoons outside of their tent!  They quickly became hysterical.  Their leaders were in a nearby tent, but could not get to them, being pinned down by the same raccoons.

The ensuing conversation (if you could call it that) could be heard all over camp.  The girls were screaming and screaming.  They begin to call for the male leader (we'll call him Mr. Brown) two campsites over.  Again and again we could hear, "Mr. Brown!!!!!  Help us!"  And then after a "1, 2, 3," all of them together yelled, "MR. BROWN!!!!!!!"  The problem was that for that evening another man had pitched his tent beside Mr. Brown's with the advance apology that he was a snorer!  So, Mr. Brown had put in ear plugs and was snoozing away, oblivious to anything transpiring.

The girls continued with "They're going to eat us!"  Followed by a calm leader voice saying, "No, they don't eat people.  It's okay, girls"  Then there was the, "Mr. Brown had a gun.  MR. BROWN, BRING YOUR GUN!!!!"  The leaders, in between trying to help calm the girls, were laughing hysterically by now!  The dialog went on in one form or another for a good half an hour.

Can you see now why the skunks and raccoons needed their own blog?  Skunks and raccoons, Oh My!  (And what good material to tuck away for later.)

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

When I went camping a few weeks back, I met up with some interesting creatures.  I may have taken just a wee bit of literary license here with my title, but be assured we did have critters to contend with.  And if I may be so bold as to say it, in many ways they were more frightening than the above mentioned lions, tigers and bears.

To start with, there was the spider.  Now let it me known, when my husband is around, I call on him (in a very calm manner, of course) to squish any bug or spider I come across.  But at girl's camp I had to "be a man" so to speak.  On the first day of camp, one of the girls came screaming out of her tent about the horrific spider inside.  Leader that I was, a stoic face was necessary.  I went after the beast with only my shoe.  But it was not to be the epic battle you might expect.  Inside the tent was one of the teeniest spiders you've ever seen.  Okay, it was a bit of an anticlimax, I must admit.  But the young camper was truly terrified.

The next beast to appear only appeared in theory.  We were scheduled to take rafts down the river, but it was uncertain if we would be able to do so.  Rain had been plentiful of late and the river was deemed too high and swift to be safe.  Finally, right before our scheduled time, it was announced that we would be allowed on the river, but the campground wanted us to send as many adults with the girls as possible.  This was a problem for one of my fellow leaders.  Rafters from the previous year had informed her about the snakes in the river.  She and snakes were about as good a combination as the young camper and spiders!  But given the circumstances, this leader had no choice but to go, threat of snakes and all.  In the end, it was a similar anticlimax.  I kept my eyes pealed for snakes, knowing she was behind me on the river, and honestly, also knowing that snakes weren't my favorite as well.  To the relief of both of us, we saw no snakes!

Now, lest you think there were actually no terrifying creatures at all, let me tell you about the raccoons and skunks.  Or maybe I'll just save them for my next blog . . .

It's a Monday, but a good one!

I probably should start by asking you to forgive me for being a little personal, but I kind of tend towards that anyway, so I guess I'm a little late with that.  But I suppose that today is just a little more personal than normal.

I have a seven-year-old son.  He just had a birthday, so he's the six-year-old I've referred to before.  We just learned he has asthma.  It's not that uncommon these days, and it's probably not a big deal to a lot of people, but it is to us.  We have been dealing with a child who coughs for hours each night and can't fall asleep because of it.  Or he wakes up in the middle of the night coughing, and is awake for hours continuing to cough.  It has been hard to watch him struggling with what seemed like endless colds.

It is amazing to have four nights in a row with no coughing fits!  And then last night, for the first time since we started treatment he began to cough at bedtime.  My husband and I both wondered how many coughs added up to enough to warrant using his inhaler.  But as he coughed a little more, we recognized the pattern leading up to a bad night.  I gave him a dose from his inhaler.  He coughed once right after and once maybe an hour later.  That was it.  This may not seem like much to you, but I had a hard time choking back the tears.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with writing?  I guess it that's emotions can come from surprising sources.  And while you may not be choked up about my son have a normal night's sleep, if he had been the main character in my novel, and you had grown to know him and care about him, maybe you would be.  That is, if I had written it right.