The Bottom Line

In my real life, with four kids, three dogs, one cat, one hedgehog, a parrot, a snake, a career, visiting parents for a month, cooking, cleaning . . . the whole nine yards, I have become a "bottom line" person. If someone wants to tell me a story? Just cut to the end.

I find it even in my own bottom lines. If I don't tell my Significant Other my emotions WHEN they happen . . . if they are delayed a couple of days because we never see each other, then by the time we DO, I can't be bothered explaining that I was sad three days ago. Consequently, I bottom line much of life into "is this something I need to deal with right now." If not and it's over, I try to let it go. I have enough clutter. Emotional and otherwise.

So it was interesting . . . I brought two scenes to my critique group on Tuesday. Both . . . good feedback. BUT . . . particularly in one chapter set in Chernobyl? They wanted MORE detail, more depth. Me? I'm constantly worrying I'm BORING the reader, so I move it along, cut to the chase.

I think we have to be cautious, as writers, that we don't bring our "nature" into the story unless it serves us well. I have been bored to tears by some manuscripts so full of details I can't wade through them all. My guess? The writers are the type of people to take two hours to tell a simple story in minute detail in real life. Then again, I am sure I can add more--a lot more.

So what about you? What's your bottom line?

Solace

So when I came home last night, my work in progress was open.

Writing is truly a solace at times.

When I feel ANXIETY? I cannot write. Just can't. Words don't come and the great cloud of anxiety sits above my head.

But sadness? I found I wanted to climb into my fake world. My fake world--my work-in-progress--isn't a happy one. But I found that breathing in that world is easier, that I like wandering amongst the characters.

Escape? Solace? Your playground? What are the times you seek to be in your work-in-progress and when can you not even open the file?

The Lonely Moments

After many years of not cooking, I have discovered God's gift to cooking-challenged and exhausted mothers everywhere: The Slow Cooker. I bow down before its glory.

In addition, I have expanded my repertoire by learning to make a few carefully selected and well-loved recipes like cold soba noodles with red bell peppers and broccolli, and I bought rice paper to try something new today. But, more often than not, my kids looks askance at me . . . and we eat pizza.

Yesterday, I went with my two daughters to see Julie and Julia.

I loved it. Yes, it was about foodies and cooking. Because I have Crohn's disease, I am not a foodie. I enjoy a good meal, but frankly, I more often than not can't eat what's served . . . so . . . I'm happy with the dinner rolls and maybe a bit of potato. But I like the social part of meals, conversations amongst friends, and I really did love the movie--it showed that shared aspect of a meal.

But unbeknownst to me, each part of the movie was also about a writer. Julie, the blogger, wanted to get a book deal. And Julia, the chef, wanted to publish a 700+-page cookbook in an era when women were making things with marshmallow Fluff (a humorous one-off line in the movie).

And the scenes in which Julia either received a rejection letter, or was told she would have to start from scratch and rewrite ALL 700+ pages (on a typewriter with onion skin paper) were so magnificent and heartbreaking. This woman labored for YEARS to have her book published. Years and years. Obviously, it's no spoiler to say eventually she succeeded and the conveyance of her extreme nervousness when she got the letter in the mail and then her joy . . . it's about a full minute on screen of what every writer goes through.

When my agent calls and leaves a message, "I need to talk with you"--it's either an offer or a rejection. I had forgotten the sort of mental games I play internally as I dial and wait to hear what he has to say. Then the rollercoaster of ups and downs bringing anything to fruition despite really long odds.

So much of this blog is about process. But there's this other forgotten piece sometimes. We can console on rejections and cheer on each other's successes, but there is always that moment (in Julia's case, in the movie, she opens a letter from a publisher alone on a porch, careful not to go inside in case it's bad news, and wanting to be alone when she received the bad news) that you and you alone have to steel yourself for and then overcome. If you don't, if you quit . . . the world will be without your souffle.

I had forgotten, until I saw it on screen . . . the most solitary moments for me aren't the writing. It's the "news"--good or bad. The waiting. The mental machinations to ready myself for any outcome. THOSE are the lonely moments.

Thoughts? What are your lonely writer moments?

Emotional Talismans

I have a few talismans. Though I know, technically speaking, most people wear talismans around their neck, I tuck mine in pockets, or stick them places where, when I am rummaging through my purse, I will come across them once in a while. In my spiritual way of looking at the universe, I am always convinced I will run across them when I need them most or need a reminder.

My favorite talisman was once lost to me for two entire decades. The short version is my old boyfriend bought my deceased grandfather's old car. My grandfather kept the key on a serenity prayer key chain of two praying hands. That key chain was a familiar sight to me my entire life, so familiar that I don't think I thought much about it. My boyfriend and I eventually broke up on amicable terms. He moved to Japan. He then went to Fiji. Then South America, wandering, it seemed, for years. Somewhere along the way, I got married and moved about four times. Got divorced. Then he got married. And we vaguely kept in touch once in a blue moon. Then one day, out the clear blue sky, I got an envelope. The handwriting kind of looked familiar. Inside was a note. "I found this as I was preparing to move to Oregon. I thought you should have it." Inside was the key chain. I immediately burst into tears. It was the most wonderful gift I had ever gotten in my life. And now, it's around. Where I can see it when I need strength.

I think every character should have one or two external emotional talismans. Something on their desk. Game ball from a Yankee game. A paperweight that looks like a rock but is actually a turtle that a child made (I have one of those . . . it actually turned out not to be a turtle but an EAGLE, so go figure). A picture is too easy. So instead a coin. A . . . something. Something unique to the story. In the world of symbolism, the talisman should express a hidden emotion that the character cannot.

My key chain expresses a secret fear that the people I love most in the entire world will one day die and I will be completely and utterly alone. An orphan. In the natural order of things, my parents will die before me. The idea leaves me feeling so alone that I shove it away. And when I see the keychain, it's both the loneliest feeling in the world and the most grace-filled. Which is I suppose how feelings often are. Not one thing or another but some jumbled mess.

In Magickeepers, Koyla wears a key around his neck that grows hot and has actually imprinted a scar on his chest. The greatest delight of the cover for me is if you look close, you can SEE the key around his neck. But it's rather like an "Easter Egg"--you'd have to know it's there and look close to see it. The talisman expresses how he feels about his mother, a person he cannot remember. But instead, throughout the book, he says she "is there in the spaces" between he and his father.

So what is your emotional talisman? And do your characters have any?

Emotions: Courtesy of Billy Joel

All right, so how many friggin' times am I going to point you over to the Genius that is Mark Terry? Really . . . will you just take my word for it? He has a blog series over there that is required reading. First, you can check his older blogs for a FANTASTIC series on freelancing for a living. And now he has one on what makes a "good" writer. And today he kind of called me out to blog on creating emotions.

You see, there are a couple of guys I know that I routinely ask about their wonderful writing, "Where's the emotional core?" when I critique, or something along those lines. Now . . . look . . . I cry at this. I cry at Kodak commercials. I cry when Oldest Daughter plays the violin. I cried the first time I heard her sing in public and realized, Holy crap, my kid could be a violinist OR a singer. How can one person have that much talent? And while I'm at it, How can I be so blessed? I cry when Demon Baby's eyelids flutter and he sighs or smiles in sleep, knowing he is having a good dream and I have the gift of watching that cross his perfect face. Yesterday, I cried over my less-than-three-hours-old Demon-Baby-destroyed brand-new vacuum cleaner. But really, crying over a Eureka? Yeah. I can do that. So if I am a muddled mess of crying tears of joy and tears of mourning (over a vacuum, no less), is it any wonder some of it ends up on the page? Oh, there's laughter too. And JOY! Lots of that. Happy tears, sad tears. Swelling heart. It's all cliched but true.

So here is the bookend to a scene in Magickeepers. In the scene, the young hero meets the oldest member of the clan (at least 100 years old). When he is shown into her room, she is staring out the window, lost in her thoughts, staring at snowflakes falling. Finally, she acknowledges him and explains her silence:

“I like to sit here and remember. I miss the snow. I miss how it smelled just before a snow, the sky as white as cotton. I miss my girlhood home. This is all,” she waved a hand, “designed to re-create my home, but I cannot re-create my family. I cannot recapture my girlhood. I am old, Koyla. But I like to look at snow.”

After a long and sad conversation, he leaves. And these are the final lines of the chapter.

He nodded and walked to the door. He started to say good-bye but he could see she was already lost in the snows of her childhood, gazing out the window and remembering her family.

With all emotion, I think I try to create bookends. Feelings that call upon other feelings. I believe that every emotion comes with it a tangled mass of other emotions, tied together by the story of our lives. Why do I cry at Kodak commercials? Because it's not the commercial, it's the damn grandpa. And even if I don't "think" of my grandfather, long lost to me, that emotion is instantly recalled but jumbled and distorted by the clever marketing of Kodak.

S0 I think, if I was to, as Mark wrote, say, "This is Part I," I would say no emotion anywhere in a book is in isolation. We are each to call upon the well of the reader's past and our own. So with that said, I leave you with perhaps one of my favorite songs. Ever. It makes me cry. Of course, it does. It makes me cry because it is not THIS song, but all it stirs.

And So It Goes

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.

Creating emotion is about calling on heartbreak every person has.

And so it goes.

Thoughts?

The Difference Between Writers and Normal People

So yesterday, I had a moment of sheer terror. Baby Girl's school called me and told me she didn't stay after for her favorite activity in the world. Which would be totally strange. She loves this afterschool club. "So she must have forgotten and gone home on the bus," said the woman. "We're just checking."

Forgotten? My kid? Miss Straight-A Perfectionist Little Writer/Poet/Artist? No. Totally unlike her. I looked at my watch. I had ten long minutes until the bus got to her stop. Ten minutes in which I wondered where she was. Ten minutes of terror. Ten minutes with my mind filled with all sorts of thoughts, none of which were positive. I raced to the door, and one of her busmates walked by--a kid she usually walks from the stop with. So now I'm freaking out . . . and then, she came in sight and relief flooded through me. She forgot. Totally unlike her--but she just forgot. I hugged her, didn't tell her how worried I had been. And thanked God. And then I thought, "I can use that terror someday in a book."

When I went into anaphylactic shock in March and ended up in Bellevue after fracturing my skull? Totally can use the Bellevue scenes. The woman next to me screaming for methadone. Using it.

When I go to a funeral, a wedding, a party . . . I'm using any oddities I see. I even use the mundane stuff. When this certain mother in the neighborhood approaches me, usually to make snide comments . . . does she realize I use it? I totally use it. She may be the b-word. But that makes her USEFUL.

Writers are like scavengers picking through the giant garbage heap of life. Using this. Tossing that. Making piles--useful, not useful . . . BIG pile for the "maybe someday."

I don't write moms-with-children-in-jeopardy books. Not right now. But I can't swear I'll NEVER write one. Or maybe I'll just use that fear response. Either way . . . it's now tucked away.

That's the difference. Even more of a difference? The stuff most people want to FORGET? The grief stuff, the pain stuff, the fear stuff? The acute feelings that most want to bury down inside? THAT'S the most useful to writers.

Yeah. We're different all right.

Thoughts?

Even Keel

I am just in a very awful mood today. Migraine last night--slept with ice packs on my head. Oldest Son driving me crazy at the moment. Demon Baby shrieking that he is going to drop out of pre-school before it even begins. Yesterday, in anticipation of his first day of school today, I forced him to take a shower. He acted like I had holy water coming through the showerhead. SCREAMING doesn't do it justice. It was the soundtrack to a horror flick. We're in Naked Strike, Week Five, I believe, and the shower/bathing strike was days in the making. My dad's blindness had a setback. Did I mention the migraine?

And it's dreary today. And I find myself just feeling rather empty . . . and yet I've got a deadline beckoning. And it dawns on me . . . I don't write well when in a dark place. I don't write well when I am hyped up to any extreme. I write best . . . when things are even. Neither high nor low, but just in some peaceful place. With four kids and no childcare help, little partner help . . . um . . . EVEN KEEL? Excuse me while I collect myself after laughing and falling on the floor. Oh, that's better. Let me wipe the coffee I just spurted off my desk. Even keel.

See the waveforms? That's what life tends to be like. But EVEN is how I write best. Achieving that even keel is at least part of my battle as a writer.

You don't have to live in the House of Demon Baby with Holy Water Showers to have chaos or ups and downs. All writers have the struggle with words--and the struggle to produce. Is your inner battle a piece of your writing battle? And is an even keel part of your writing?

Shades of Joy, Shades of Pain

When Iwas going through my divorce, I was hopelessly broke and horribly stressed. I was waiting tables and bartending, a single mom, when out of nowhere, while stopped at a red light, a guy recklessly speeding on a rainy night hit me from behind and pushed my car down an embankment. I blacked out when my head hit the rearview mirror, which fell off the windshield. I had a concussion, and I was so confused, I thought a Mack truck had hit me--that's how loud the "boom!" was. It left me out of work for over a year and with migraines that plagued me for a decade. I still have a bad back--L2 and L4 are nicely herniated, and occasionally, I sneeze, I lift a laundry basket wrong, whatever . . . and bye-bye back. Anyway, in the midst of this, my doctor recommended joining a support group for divorced moms that he knew of--thought I might get some needed support for dealing with my injury while out of work and divorced. I went for a little while, but I always found it odd. At the beginning, they passed around a face. Around the face were about 10 different "emotions" --happy, sad, angry, worried . . . whatever. And the woman leading the group said it was to help people identify their emotions. WHAT?!?! I was a walking, breathing, bleeding emotion 24/7. How could some of these women not know how they really FELT inside? Eventually, I left the group.

So it was that yesterday, I recalled that, and I was very grateful--as a WRITER and as a person--that I can always identify what's going on with me. Hence, I can always write about it. Because if there's one thing I believe about writing, it's wringing from it all you can--all the action, the tension, and emotion you can. And that is about SHADES of emotion, and finding ways to show them.

What do I mean? Well, there's the general "sad." But what does that tell me? Not a whole helluva lot. Because, really, you could lump intense grief into sadness, couldn't you? Grieving people are . . . well, sad. But yesterday, I noticed that I ACHE. I miss Oldest when I hear certain songs, and it feels like a thud in my heart. Like a stone has settled there. I am not GRIEVING per se. I am not SAD in the true sense of the word, because I am happy she has this opportunity. But I ache, and after a few days, I realize the ache is sort of permanently settled there. At least for now as I get used to her being gone.

When Demon Baby was born, he was intubated and in the NICU and a machine helped him breathe. I used to sit in a rocking chair by his side for 8 or 12 hours at a stretch, not eating, not doing anything but WILLING this child to breathe on his own and get better. Was I sad? I wouldn't even CALL it that. I was DESPERATE, I was prayerful, I was in a special kind of mother-agony.

On the flip side, there is joy, elation . . . easily lumped with "happy." But to me, happy is a general state of being. As in, "I consider myself a happy person." And I do. Even with my ache, my happy-meter is pretty high most of the time. BUT, yesterday, Demon Baby came into my room and after a long and rather silly series of Naked Escapades on his part (we are in the third week of nakedness--I do get him dressed to leave the house but on the way home from ANY errand, etc., he's already back there in the seat saying, "I just can't WAIT to get naked."), he and Baby Girl and I were tickling and wrestling, all over my king-sized bed and he fell into SQUEALS of laughter and I was reminded for the thousandth time that there is joy in a child's squeal. It's not "happy." It's something elevated above that. Some other quality of happiness that wells inside of a mother.

Now, I don't know if in the middle of an action book anyone has time to describe all the shades of emotion, but I do know that so much of writing is nuance. It's why, as we grow as writers, we move away from the words of our middle-school and high school years. We lose "happy," "nice," "beautiful." We learn to shade our writing--and our characters' emotions--along a whole spectrum.

Thoughts?

I Wrote a Book and I Fell in Love

Occupational hazard.

For writers, it's generally a good sign if they cry while writing a particularly poignant scene. In Freudian Slip, my next Red Dress Ink title, at a key moment when Julian makes a courageous but heartbreaking choice, I literally wept. For two days afterward, I didn't really want to eat . . . had trouble sleeping.

If I laugh out loud at certain parts in my comedies . . . it's a good sign. If I find that I am smiling when I am writing, it means I am onto something.

I have felt a physical ache for some of my characters. In The Roofer, when I wrote the scene when Tom and Ava rode the subway as teens, observing "normal" families, knowing (as only the writer would know) what was shortly going to happen to Tom, I felt a real pang.

And while working on a children's book of all things, I have fallen in love with the cousin character. He's Russian and he kind of looks like the model above. He's arrogant and charming and brilliant. And he's threatening to overtake the book, which is something I have to guard against--he's just that clever.

And I am convinced only other writers "get" this phenomenon, wherein your characters are so developed, or your story is so real to you, that they intrude on your real life. They become so real that they butt into parts of your book you don't want them in. So real they can make you cry knowing their fate.

Writing? Or mental illness?

I wrote a book and I fell in love. Happen to anyone else?