Friends

 

 

I think it’s safe to say I’m very self-reliant. I’ve always had to be. 

The extroverts among you can most likely say you have lots of friends. You can probably say you have a core of friends you can rely on. You can even, I suppose, say that there are people who encourage you in your endeavors.

I cannot.

I’ve met with a lot of you can’ts in my life. Once I was responsible for myself without parental interference in my decisions, there were a lot of “hold my beer” moments from me, some successful, some not.

This runs through every aspect of my life, most importantly, my professional life. I’ve had bosses who had a certain image of me – usually wrong – and tried to stick me in the corner as a gopher to do their bidding, without any interest in what my professional interests were. As the youngest in my family, I will take the liberty of saying, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner!”

And I left each of those jobs because I won’t work where I’m not respected.

When I was studying for my career, I had teachers who simply weren’t available. They were either too busy cozying up to the higher-ups who might advance their careers, or trying to be cool by ingratiating themselves with students they wanted to socialize with. And some were just not interested.

I remember going to see one instructor during her stated office hours to discuss an issue with a project for her class. It would have taken less than 5 minutes of her time, but she simply breezed on past with, “Make an appointment for another time,” and left with another instructor.

One wasn’t supposed to need an appointment during office hours. And when something in my project was wrong as a result, she wanted to know why I hadn’t bothered to ask.

Well, I tried. She blew me off. I was putting the finishing touches on the project when I went to her to ask the question. I had already waited a few days until she actually had office hours, and the project was due the next day, so “making an appointment at another time,” wasn’t feasible.

I had other instructors who, after complaining about how needy my classmates were, couldn’t understand why I hadn’t asked for help.

Well, past experience had taught me, for one, and their attitude for another. They wanted us to stand on our own two feet and be independent, then complained when we did just that.

I didn’t have friends from class to get feedback from, either. My classmates were too busy, didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered.

And I’ve always loved the, “If you didn’t understand the assignment, why didn’t you come to me to ask?”

Really? See above for the answer. I recall telling one instructor that I wasn’t aware that I didn’t understand the assignment or I would have tried coming to her.

One teacher told me my mind always seemed to be elsewhere. Yeah, it’s trying to figure out a solution because I couldn’t get hold of an instructor who would take two minutes to answer a question. I also spent two solid years of being a commuter student who was utterly exhausted all of the time.

The job I truly loved, writing, hasn’t met with much success. Oh, I have books out there. On Amazon, because I can’t seem to entice an agent, a publisher or anyone else. Good story, but not what we’re looking for just now. (Form letter, and they probably didn’t bother to read the story.)

No, they’re looking for mystery stories or romance novels. I never read mystery stories because they make no sense to me, whether in book form or on TV. Romance novels make me ill. I can’t write what I can’t fathom.

Or they’re looking for non-fiction. I’m clearly in the fiction world. Real life is too hard and angry and – Kardashian. Fiction is far more interesting. Besides, if I tried to write non-fiction, my sarcasm gene would kick in too strongly.

I’ve participated in Author’s Day at Princeton Library several times. Sounds like something that should be really cool, right? I’ve seen people there who have great success. Once or twice some of my friends even attended – and I tell everyone I know every time I’m going to be part of it.

Once or twice I even sold a couple of books there. But most of the time people look, but don’t buy at my table. They don’t stay long enough for me to attempt a conversation with them, while they cluster at the next asking the other author all sorts of questions, and buying those books.

I’ve listened to fellow writers in my friend set, who have far more success than I have, talk about email lists and all sorts of things that are mysteries to me. How do they find these people? Where do these lists come from?

Oh, ask your friends. I have 10. Maybe. Now what?

Get your colleagues to fill out questionnaires. I’m retired. 

Even when I wasn’t retired, I knew no one in my life who would bother with a questionnaire. I did try.

Not long ago I asked someone I didn’t know well to read a piece. It was far from finished. In fact, I was just getting my feet wet on the story, and didn’t have a good direction for it yet. After some initial questions, I didn’t hear back. Since I didn’t know the person well, I simply concluded after several months that I wasn’t likely to.

I was surprised to get feedback long after I’d despaired of it. It was actually quite harsh. It was kind of a relief from the, “That’s really good!” that I often get with no other comment. That’s not what I’m looking for. I want to know what works and what doesn’t. What’s interesting and what’s boring?

This person told me what was boring, what didn’t work and what they didn’t like. It actually sounded angry. Kind of like handing in an assignment late that the teacher didn’t like, harsh. I let the comments sit for a bit – a couple of weeks, actually. Then I read them again, along with the story.

The person was quite right. I was telling, not showing, etc. But it was only more of a concept of the story I wanted to write than the actual story. And the critique actually spurred me on to rewrite the whole thing (I’m glad I wasn’t farther than chapter 5, and the chapters were all short). I have, so far, written far more than is going to be in the book because I need to know the background, history, geography, civics and characters of the world I’m creating. But at least now I know what I’m not putting into the story because it doesn’t work as part of the story.

Not long ago, my husband finished writing the novel he’s been working on since before I ever met him – we’ve been married for 31 years. About the same time, I finished my most recent novel, one of which I’m particularly proud. It took far longer than any of my others to write.

I read his novel. I think it’s well thought out, and a fantastic story, even if that seems like a biased statement. Ever since then, he’s been doing re-reads and revisions of his book, getting his friends to read it and give critiques. He has some friends who are really brutally frank about giving critiques, and have great suggestions.

Oh, has he read my novel? He has not. He never reads any of my novels, ever. And it isn’t because I haven’t asked. The only writing of mine he’s ever read/edited/critiqued are my blogs, and he gave me excellent advice on those.

But I seldom ask anymore. I got tired of begging. Have you read the blog yet? No, I was too tired. No, I didn’t get to it yet. Three weeks later: did you read the blog yet? Oh, I forgot all about it. Then, perhaps spurred on by guilt, it gets read and critiqued.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been re-reading, editing and so forth with my novel.

I tried taking a page from his book, and asked if any of my friends would be interested in reading and critiquing  any of my novels. Three people raised their hands, so they were sent manuscripts.

One of the three came through for me with some helpful critiques. That’s a first for me.

The others? I assume life got hectic, but I had no response. I got back to them. They apologized and said they would read it. They didn’t. When several months later I got back to them again, they had not read it, and now had reasons why they could not do this for me.

I suppose I’m unreasonable expecting people to do something if they said they would. But that’s probably just my internal ethic, not theirs. Am I the only person on the planet who, when I give my word to do something actually does it?

So, I am self-reliant out of necessity.

I told my husband I wished I had friends like his. He claims he had to hound his friend to get their responses. Yet when they’re together, they’ll spend hours discussing plot and structure.

What has happened for me in the past is this: The first time, the response would be (if there even is one), “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to finish reading it because of X,Y, & Z. My life is busy. But I’ll get to it.” The second time, perhaps weeks or months later, the response would be, “You know, I just don’t have the time to do this. Sorry.” I’m simply bothering them by even asking if they’ve done what they promised to do. How dare I?

This makes me want to scream. Why did you volunteer if you couldn’t do it?

I mean, really I should know. Even my blogs don’t get a response. Maybe five blogs out of the over one hundred I’ve written since 2017 have had a comment, and some of those have been sarcastic comments that are an attempt to be funny.

I was told to start a writing Facebook page. I did. No one responds to anything on it. I’ve invited people to follow, and apparently they missed or deleted the invitation, and because they didn’t respond to it, I can’t re-invite them. I don’t know how. There doesn’t seem to be a way.

I was told to go onto Twitter, or whatever it’s called now. I did that. What do you do there? No one was home. Where are the people on Twitter?

Oh, you have to follow people. Where are they? And even if I followed them, then what? That’s their interests. Even if I respond to them, I would either get nothing more than a thumbs-up or get blasted because they didn’t agree with what I said. I did make a post there once. Apparently to the void. No one responded.

And if I bring up my writing, maybe someone will say, “Oh, you write? That’s cool.” And then silence. I don’t have to go on twitter to know that.  I’ve lived it on Facebook, in AOL chatrooms, on Myspace. Why would yet another forum be any different?

I recently tried Reddit. It took forever to find anything. It looks more like a space for the tall-thin- gorgeous- raccoon-eyed blondes of my youth who now have followers and are called “influencers.”

I’m not looking for people to influence me. I’m not a sycophant who distributes cutesy hearts on people’s fan pages. Nor am I looking for people to do that to me.

My husband provided me with links in Reddit that specifically are supposed to be for writers. I read some posts, even replied to a few, and made my own post.

Silence. Well, not silence, exactly. I did get a thumbs-up. One.

All I want is to be able to engage in serious conversation about writing, exchange information and not be called names by someone trying to inject politics into absolutely everything. I would like someone who knows answers to the questions I have to provide me with information the way I provide information to people who ask questions that I know answers to.

I thought about going back to college to get a master’s in writing, just so I could get some critique of my work. My husband doesn’t think I need a master’s degree. According to him, I already know the necessary things to be a writer.

But I’ve been told the most horrible thing: Somehow, I’m supposed to find strangers somewhere, and talk to them. Be able to think of questions to ask them that would further my chances of getting my books out there. Actually talk to them, send emails and follow-up emails if they don’t answer (how many times are you supposed to do that before you finally realize that they will never reply?)

Are you kidding me? Talk to strangers? Actually be able to say something, follow them, don’t take no for an answer until you get a door slammed in your face (which believe me, happens faster than you’d find a second question)?

Put me on the stage at Carnegie Hall and let me sing for thousands by myself – or, hey, I’d gladly sing a duet with Josh Groban. Or Johnny Mathis. Or Paul McCartney. Piece of cake. I’d love it. I’d have the time of my life!

Let me act in a play, as long as I don’t have to do some dance routine. Equal love there. I don’t need to win an award, just have the chance to do it.

Don’t get me wrong; I love writing as much as I love singing or acting. It’s like breathing for me. I couldn’t not do it. It’s all the other stuff that goes with promoting my work, the begging with zero results because I don’t know how to do it, the finding things when I don’t know where to look that’s so maddening. There's no card catalogue! I need someone who knows how to do those things. Yet, those are the same people with the form letters: sorry, we’re focused on a different type of writing just now.

But talk to strangers? Are you kidding? I don’t know how to do that.

Yeah, yeah, the people who know me will swear I talk non-stop. They’re not strangers, and we have common talking points. And yes, I’ll ask a stranger – usually a policeman – in New York for directions.

But talk to a stranger? Do you have any idea how hard that is? Have you ever tried it, especially when you’re asking them for a favor? I wouldn’t know what to say. I’ve been through this before.

In college, I went through 11 roommates in 13 terms. I know people are thinking (although they don’t say it), “What’s wrong with you?” Well, beyond asking their name, their major and where they’re from, it’s desperately hard to think of something to say to them. Sometimes, “What kind of music do you listen to?” works, and you are lucky enough to find common ground. Often, we don’t like the same music, and maybe after several weeks I’ve thought of some other things, but by then, usually, they’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like them, or we’re not compatible or whatever their excuse is, and they move out. Sequence rewind.

Yes, alone, I could probably formulate questions, and maybe even anticipate replies. But then, try whipping out a piece of paper when you want to talk to someone. They’re gone before the paper is unfolded. And if they stay, they never stay on-script. How can you ask the follow-up when they go off-script?

Maybe I should just try to figure out a way to get a singing gig at Carnegie Hall and hope Josh Groban hears it and is interested in joining in.

About Books: What Inspires Me?

 

 

Some time ago a friend asked me to write a blog about where I get my inspiration for my novels.  This set into motion my mid-month series of blogs on writing. I’m not sure whether or not I got the assignment right.

Many of those, while they discuss where my inspiration came from for individual novels or series, are more of a summary of the story.

I’ve now covered every series and individual novel not in a series that I’ve written so far.

So, what’s left? Until I finish another novel, not much, really. But I don’t think I really addressed where my inspiration comes from.

I’m not sure I understand how my mind works any more than anyone else does.

Frequently, the image of my mother shaking her head and saying, “I wish I knew what was going on in your head,” comes to mind. She clearly didn’t understand me. In fact, my summary of my relationship with my mother has always been, “She wanted a daughter, and got me instead.”

My thoughts that lead to stories come from all sorts of places. In the case of the Nicholas Keating stories, they started as a single short story that grew into seven. Those seven short stories morphed into two novels, and the other three grew out of a desire to continue to play with those characters a bit longer.

The inspiration for the first of those short stories was simply walking down the main street of my town on a December afternoon after we’d had what is now an early snow. The snow was the dirty shade snow gets several days after a storm. 

The day was overcast, and as I walked along, letting my mind wander, I slipped on some black ice. I didn’t fall; it was just one of those near things. But it reminded me of a pair of high-heeled boots I had in the ‘80s. They were perhaps the most ridiculous things I ever bought.

By the time I returned home, I had the beginnings of the story. A simple thing.

The Dark Faery series had its inception with Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series. I thought some of the changes she made to the vampire trope were just wrong. But they allowed me to make some interpretations of my own.

While she didn’t inspire me to write a vampire novel, a discussion of her novels with a teenage friend did. I hadn’t considered writing a vampire novel until my friend suggested it. She thought I could do a good job. Personally, I needed a different hook from any I’d seen.

The idea of vampire fairies just kind of flew into my mind. It was one of those things you throw out to see if it sticks to the wall.

And it stuck for 5 novels.

The Schism novels (still unpublished) grew out of my reading two books: The Front Runner, a novel, and And the Band Played On, a work of non-fiction documenting the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

When I was in college, my core group of friends happened to be a group of gay men. They saw me as an ally – or perhaps just a beard, I don’t know and didn’t worry about labels – and wanted me to understand their culture, so they directed me to the novel.

I read it and was furious with the ending. Once again, for absolutely no reason, the author killed off the gay guy, for no better reason than that he was gay. I decided I could write a better gay novel, and there would be no killing off the gay guy.

Then I read And the Band Played On. That book affected me personally, since I knew people who died of AIDS.

The non-fiction piece was the ultimate push for me to write Schism, which begins during the early years of the AIDS epidemic (back when it was still called gay cancer), but – spoilers – the person in the stories who ends up with AIDS isn’t gay. It’s part of my twisted thought processes that I don’t make things easy.

The Unicorn novels started out as a single story about a day in the life of my childhood, which is why The Snow Unicorn, while the blueprint for the subsequent novels, doesn’t exactly follow the idea of the other novels being about a weather event that frightens the main character.

I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now started out as a joke. I wanted to play with children’s novels, but I didn’t especially want to be a children’s book author. I just wanted to see if I could do it.

As it turns out, there’s a formula for writing children’s books. I didn’t know that, and consequently, I didn’t follow the formula. I only knew children’s books needed pictures. I couldn’t afford an artist, since my books aren’t “really” published; they’re only on Amazon, so I drew my own.

Of all of the things I could imagine doing, drawing is the one for which I have the least talent. I was barely able to complete assignments in art class. There was certainly no talent involved.

Well, once, in 5^th grade, I had an art project that was good enough that my teacher actually hung mine up. That was a lucky fluke, and the only time an art project of mine was ever hung up. I was in high school before I could color in the lines – more or less. And my family made no secret of laughing at my attempts at artwork – as they laughed at most of my ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My 9/11 story, Love of my Life, came naturally from the idea of what it would be like if you were supposed to be in the towers on 9/11.

I heard stories of people who called out sick that day, were running late, or who had just stepped out for coffee right before the planes hit the towers.

There is also a sub-theme of being the favorite child, as well as what if you have a child you simply don’t like. For as short a novella this story is, it tackles a variety of subjects. In a way, it’s as ADD as I am.

Probably my least favorite novel is Fiona Finn. Ostensibly a story about the challenges of being different, it hits close to home.

I spent elementary school being bullied by different people at times, and often simply being excluded. I took that memory and expanded it to include people with challenges.

The fin is a metaphor for any reason others have to not accept you, so anyone can feel included by what Fiona goes through.

I think just reliving the indifference of the adults in my life made me want to get away from the novel. However, I felt it was an important message to put out there.

Wolfbane highlights my weird bent. I had read the Thomas Covenant novels and hated them because I thought the main character was both a drama queen and stupid. He waited until the last possible second to save the day. It didn’t heighten the excitement; instead, his lack made the reader do an eye roll, sigh and say, “Oh, come on!”

So I wrote one in which my character also enters an alternate universe, but who uses whatever he has at hand to accomplish his mission -- without becoming McGyver. While he doesn’t have magical powers, he actually thinks about things. He just doesn't take the alternate universe seriously.

The Search came from my love of things medieval, and is kind of a combination of the renaissance fair and Dungeons and Dragons. And none of these things.

It’s also pulls from the British Royal Family. There was some media hype about Charles being single into his 30s, mainly because at that time the royals still clung to the idea that the heir had to marry a virgin, even though the common man had long since abandoned that notion or caring whether or not the monarchy did. Later, Prince Edward apparently had some words with his father about being single.

While my story has nothing to do with the British Royal Family – or, in fact, with this world, per se, it does involve a young heir who thinks all he needs to do is be the heir and be popular to get on in life.

He knows nothing of the things he’s supposed to study, and has been the cause of more than one scullery maid being dismissed.

It isn’t until his father threatens to disown him that he is forced to buckle down and re-learn things his younger brother and his twin sister can do with ease.

In the course of his study of weaponry he is injured, and on recovering, decides he needs to go on a search, a wandering alone into the deep forest, to prove himself.

Few ever attempt a search, and fewer still return. No heir to the throne has ever attempted it, and his father, the king, is inclined to refuse permission. But he sees that the search is the first thing that has ever kindled any sort of passion in his son, and finally allows him to go.

Usually my current novel is my favorite.

The Invisible Twin, my current novel, is near and dear. I used a lot of information I have about twins from having a mother who is an identical twin, as well as having known many sets of twins in my life. I also enjoy novels where the main character is trying to work out life, since that’s what most of us do on a daily basis.

But my all-time favorite is the Nicholas Keating series. I’ve read those novels several times, and I enjoy them. It actually amazes me that I wrote them. I always feel like I’m reading someone else’s novel.

Until I write another novel, I won’t have any comments on writing to make, so this is my final "About Books" blog for the time being. It’s back to a once-a-month blog. But if anyone has an idea on something you’d like me to write about, let me know.

About Books: I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now

         

With a title like that, I surely can't be serious?

Well, no I wasn't.

This started as a joke. I wanted to see if I could write a children's book, even though I had, until then, never seen myself as a children's book author.

But why not?

For one thing, preschool books are often written in poetry form. While I've written poems from time to time, my poetry teacher's little sermon on why he gave me an A always comes back to haunt me. 

Normally, I didn't ask teachers about grades, but in the case of my college poetry-writing class, when my grade report arrived, poetry was marked NG. I went to his office to find out if that meant "no good." Yes, I was being sarcastic. At 20 I thought I was a much better writer than I actually was.

He explained that it meant "no grade," and I wasn't alone in receiving that on my report. He hadn't turned in the grades on time. But he assured me that the following term my grade point average would be fixed and reflect where I was.

"What did you think you got?" he asked. 

I have always hated teachers asking that question. If I say a grade that's too high, they think I have too high of an opinion of myself -- or perhaps that kind of reasoning is the result of 12 years of nuns deflating any vague hint of self-worth that I ever showed (that may be the subject of a future blog). If I say a grade that's too low, I might give them ideas that perhaps that's what I truly deserved and they might lower my grade.  

"I don't know?" I replied wondering if I should be so bold as to say a B. He hated the fact that I'd tried for a few weeks to write villanelles, and pointedly asked me to stop in front of the whole class. He made fun of some of my rhymes as contrived and overused. This was the Snydley Whiplash guy who was also my first short story writing teacher as well as my guidance counselor. While I could joke with him at times, I didn't think he thought much of my writing.

"Well, you got an A, of course."

Before I could congratulate myself on being a better poet than I'd thought, and that all of his attempts at humiliation were simply his way of making me a better poet, he followed up that statement with, "I had to give you an A since you handed in at least twice as many poems as anyone else in the class."

So it was quantity, not quality for which I was graded. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure my feet were firmly planted on this earth.

No, there was more.

"But I want you to promise me that you'll never ever try to become a professional poet.  You just don't have the talent."

Then why, regardless of how many poems I handed in, did he give me an A? I would grade according to quality. But I wasn't going to argue the point. An A was better for my GPA than any other grade.

Of course, his telling me not to become a professional poet gave me ammunition for humor whenever I went to his office. He happened to hate Hallmark cards. So, whenever I stopped by, I'd casually say something like, "I was thinking of trying to get a job working for Hallmark. I bet they'd like my poetry." It was worth it to see the look on his face.

Of course, if I'd ever applied to Hallmark, I would have also tried to get them to start a line of humorous sympathy cards. After all, when do you need cheering up more? And after that, who knows? Divorce cards? Your cheating heart cards?

But his disparaging remarks stayed with me, and I didn't imagine even Sam I Am would be satisfied with my rhymes. And after trying to find a rhyme for tiger, I became frustrated, and decided to write a story without rhymes.

Next on the list of necessary things for a children's book are pictures. I may be able to write, but art was never my strong suit. In high school, when we were forced to take an art class when I would have had much more use for typing than trying unsuccessfully to color in the lines, I consistently got the lowest grade in the class for my work. My drawing is generally on the level of a three-year-old, although I have progressed to coloring like a six-year-old. I can, at least, tell you what's wrong with my work, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Well, I was writing a story for three-year-olds, so why not have drawings on their level?

I gamely started my story, tongue firmly planted in cheek, about a baby tiger who is left behind when the circus leaves town. He approaches one animal after another in an attempt to find home. Each one, in an attempt not to be killed, plays with him, shares food, and makes suggestions. But none of what they do is very helpful, so when he finishes playing with each one he thanks them and says, "I think I'll have to eat you now," to which each animal gives him some justification why it would be bad manners to eat them after all they've done for him. Then they pass him along to the next animal until he finally meets a human. Humans, of course, can fix things.

What I was trying to do was something like what the creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle had done: create something for children that adults could get a chuckle out of.

I read my story to a class of third graders. They had questions, like what was the Tiger's name (he didn't originally have one) and where was his mother. They insisted he needed a name, so they each wrote their suggestion on a paper and the papers were put in a hat. Then the teacher pulled one out, and that's how Isaac the Tiger was named.

The third graders were very kind about my art. They told me my pictures were very good, except, "and I don't want to hurt your feelings," one little girl said, "but your bunny looks like a dog." (Bunny pictured above)

So, I asked the third graders if they would be willing to draw some pictures for me, and they jumped at the chance. Many of their pictures were so good that I hope some of the now college-age students are pursuing art.

I can't say I've sold many copies of that book, but it was fun working with eight- and nine-year-olds, and getting their perspective. And for something that started out as a joke, I think it turned out okay, even without poetry.

                

When the Well Runs Dry

 

I am plagued with a malady that probably bothers all writers: a fear of running out of ideas.

When I was first starting out, I had a book that I worked on for years. I started it in study hall of high school, and I re-wrote it in various ways, from several different points of view. The one thing I never managed to do was finish it. I had the beginning and the end, but there were huge gaps in the middle.

Writers tend to have a variety of superstitions. At one point I said aloud what I’d secretly feared throughout the years of writing that book: What if I finish this story and never get another book idea for the rest of my life? (To put this in perspective, my mother wrote a book when she was 12 and never wrote another. And it's pretty good for a 12-year-old.)

I couldn’t imagine life without creative ideas surrounding me and assorted characters knocking at my brain to come out and play.

To date, that book that I started when I was about 16 has never been finished. I put it away, deciding I would never get the middle bits right. It became my talisman against running out of ideas. The reasoning (unreasonable as it is) is that if I ever do finish that book, I will, indeed, never get another story idea.

So it sits in a folder in my filing cabinet ( and on a thumb drive somewhere -- or maybe it was lost on a 5 1/2" floppy) with completed novel first drafts, and I go on to other adventures.

But I don’t rest on a simple superstition. I also have some proactive (I hate that word, but a better one escapes me just now) protection against writer’s block. I also have a folder of “story starts”. These are ideas that I thought were great at the time – and possibly they are – but that never went anywhere because I got distracted by an idea that interested me more.

Until I went through this folder, I had no idea I was so frequently distracted.

These beginnings aren’t bad, if I do say so myself. I’ve read most of them many times and thought, “That’s pretty good. I wonder where I was going with that. Someday, though, I’ll get back to it.”

That is usually enough to spur me on to a new idea, and yet again, the original story start is left in the dust of a different novel.

Other writers are probably not as distractible as I am. Some carefully plan their stories. I know this because I’ve taken courses in writing particular types of fiction, and the instructors in nearly every one teaches how to do just that. But I’m sure that not all ideas, no matter how carefully planned, pan out the way an author would like. Some ideas simply have to be left by the side of the road.

Just once I’d like to run into an instructor who says, “Here’s an idea: Come up with a name for a character. Decide where they’re from, what they look like, and then look in catalogues and magazines and try to find a picture of your character. Then try to find pictures that look like what they may have looked like as a child, a teen, etc., and then start a rumor about them.

Yes, this is one of the ways I have started on my journey to create a novel. I always start with a character. I may not need the catalogues and magazines anymore, but I will make a family tree. I’ll come up with something that happens to the character, and thus begin my story. But I have never started with a plot.

“‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, 1868) and “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” (David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, 1850) were the two most influential story beginnings for me.

Both stories begin with a main character setting up the situation that makes the reader say – or at least think – I wonder what that’s about?

The stories I rejected as a child were those that began with long-winded descriptions of scenery, and pages of “stuff” before a character ever appears, much less says anything. To me, they were like going to an art show, and since I was never any good at art class, I was never much interested in looking at an endless array of still-life paintings.

Yes, people look askance at me in art museums as I quickly wander around a room of pictures, thinking, “That’s nice,” or “That one’s blurry. Why didn’t the artist put his glasses on to paint it?” I don’t spend time studying the two-dimensional-looking portraits from the Middle Ages where the faces look hinged. And sculptures are nice lawn ornaments, but they’re just kind of bland.  I always want to paint them. I guess that’s why so many of them are naked: to generate some interest.

When I went on a tour of the Hermitage in Russia, I didn't need as long in each room as we were given, and I confess, most of my time was taken up looking at the architecture of the room, or perhaps, Oh Heaven! if I found a Faberge egg on one of the mantles. The pictures? Eh! The were nice, I guess.

Before I am burned at the stake by art lovers and critics, let me just say I could spend hours in the Medieval Room of the art museum looking at the armor and swords and such. And I do love Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” And to put things in perspective, I don’t spend any more time in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum than I do in an art museum. I’m just not into reading a bunch of tiny plaques and drooling over paintings and space ships.

I require action.

And the same can be said for novels.

I like people – not being in crowds of them, just being a safe distance away and watching them, listening to their conversations and seeing what they’ll do next.

I don’t like all people. Those who are pompous and full of themselves and those who pretend to be stupid just to attract others make me want to flee.

The fastest way for a person to make me dislike them is to hear them say to someone, “Do you know who I am?”

No. Should I for some reason? Do you know me at all? Is there some reason I might even care who you are? Actually, you’re just a person like me, no better and no worse.

Characters like that don’t last long in my stories, if they make an appearance at all. They are the foils for the good guys or something happens to them to finally make them wake up. And if they don’t, I’ll probably kill them off. (I have a tea mug that says, "Please do not annoy the writer, she may put you in a book and kill you." and yes, I know that comma should be a semi-colon, but it's a direct quote.)

Novels are my way of watching people, and even sometimes getting close enough to play. It’s safe, they’ll never turn on me, and so far they’ve never left me scratching my head asking, “What was that about?” as real people sometimes do.

So I guess I’ll keep my talisman story in the drawer unfinished just to keep the ideas flowing. And just maybe one of these days, after I finish the four or five ideas that are on hold at the moment while I complete another story, I’ll do something with that folder full of beginnings.

About Books: The Nicholas Keating Novels

 

 

The Nicholas Keating novels began as one short story titled, “Coffee.” The idea came to me as I was walking through my town one December afternoon. It had snowed a few days earlier, something that rarely happens anymore in December. The snow had been plowed and the sidewalks were clear except for occasional black ice where the snow had melted on the lawns and flowed onto the pavement. I nearly slipped on one bit of it.

That reminded me of a pair of boots I had in the 1980s. They were fleece-lined boots with 2-inch stiletto heels. That height heel isn’t that bad on high heels, but in my opinion, has no place on a pair of boots. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought them. Yes, I wanted a dressy pair of snow boots, but that’s kind of a crazy thing to want. Snow boots are meant to get through snow. Dressy boots are not.

As I walked home, I thought about a woman wearing boots like that and falling because of black ice. And an image popped into my mind of a young man for whom chivalry wasn’t dead, who helped her up and made sure she wasn’t injured.

Of course, in stories, help is never simply a random act with nothing more to it. My town has a coffee shop that is quite popular, so I made coffee a center point for a thank-you mini-date.

The story was not without it’s amusing bits. The young man, it turns out, is a violinist on loan from a Welsh orchestra. The woman’s second run-in with him shows him with his violin case, but his youthful appearance makes her think the 25-year-old musician is still in high school.

Throughout the twists and turns of the short story, the two, of course, are attracted and end up becoming an item despite the woman’s (Rachel) certainty that men leave and the fact that the young man (Nicholas) is only on loan for 6 months.

When the story ended, it was a case of me wanting more of my characters. These two had quickly become friends I wanted to know more about. So, the short story quickly became a trilogy of short stories.

That trilogy, alas, wasn’t enough, and I ended up writing a second trilogy of much longer short stories. While the first three were told from Rachel’s point of view, the second set were told from Nicholas’s.  Then there was a connecting short story between the two so I could make a novel out of it.

Once I was finished with writing and editing, I tried to get the book published without success. On recommendation, I had a professional editor work on it.

When a professional edits a novel, they don’t cut things out or change things around.  They redline things and make suggestions on changes. Some suggestions are general (e.g. there’s too much dialogue that doesn’t go anywhere. Try cutting some of it down) some are direct suggestions of how to change a sentence. Many of the suggestions were right on target. I cut out two or three chapters  that didn’t further the story. But there were others that were ridiculous. For example, they took the most poetic description in the entire novel and suggested I change it to something bland. My husband was incensed about that. He had read that paragraph, and thought the sentence was perfect. In fact, he jokingly said he’d divorce me if I changed it.

The “professional” also commented that the book was too long and needed to be shortened. There was no way I could adequately cut as much out as they suggested without destroying the integrity of the book.

When a book is edited this way, there is no requirement that the author follow every suggestion made. It is what the editor thinks will make the novel more likely to be published.

I went through each suggestion, following some, like cutting chapters, and ignoring others, such as cutting a fantastic description. But in my desire to follow the request that I shorten the novel, I came up with an idea that the editor hadn’t suggested: I cut the book in half and made two novels. The first novel was the first three short stories and the bridge story. It formed a natural break. Since the second trilogy was longer than the first, it ended up making a novel slightly longer than the first.

I still had no success attracting a publisher. The ones who take unsolicited manuscripts – ones submitted by an author rather than by an agent – take very few novels every year. They are usually publishers that are smaller, so they don’t have the budget of, say, Simon and Schuster.

I also tried finding an agent with no better success. So, having heard of Amazon’s publishing branch, I thought I’d try self-publishing. At that time, self-publishing was finally emerging from a taboo that would guarantee no “real” publisher would ever touch your work to being the preferred route to go to prove to a future publisher that you had a following that would guarantee future sales.

Having decided to take the plunge, I discovered Amazon publishing encompasses a wide range of choices. They have generic covers for use, although that can mean your novel’s cover may have been used by others. Or you can pay a fee to have one of their artists design a cover for your book. Another alternative is doing your own cover. They give you all of the measurements needed to do that yourself.

You get to choose what size your paperback will be from 5 or 6 sizes. Making your book an e-book – only available on Kindle, of course – is another choice. You can do paperback or Kindle or both, and they make it easy to do each one. (Recently they have launched hard-cover book publishing as well.) There is no charge for any of this, since you're putting everything together on Amazon yourself.

Amazon allows you to decide on your royalty amount for the sale of each book, either 35% or 70%. The percentage you want to make also determines the minimum price for your book.

There are many things you can do with Amazon, like having them do marketing, editing and so on, each with a price tag. I chose to simply publish on their site. My sales depend on word of mouth. My husband has been kind enough to design most of my book covers (and a few have been pictures I’ve taken that he’s then designed as covers with the title and author placed on them). It does save me several hundred dollars from letting Amazon do all of the work, but I also don’t get the exposure they might provide. Of course, exposure doesn’t guarantee sales.

All of the homework aside, once I had finished those two novels, I realized I still wasn’t finished with my characters. I wanted to know about Nicholas’s childhood in Wales. So I wrote another book. Then I wanted to know how things worked out with families on two sides of the Atlantic. So I wrote another novel. Then, after some sorrows I wanted to know what happened next, and I wanted to know more about their son as he grew up. So there was a fifth novel.

By that time, I felt that I had written as much as I could about these characters. I didn’t want to over-write them. I’ve read series where this has happened, and it’s disappointing to me. I think it’s important for an author to know when to say when.

There are authors who have 15-20 novels about the same characters without making their characters boring. Bernard Cornwell has written 22 novels in the Sharpe series, and 13 in the Last Kingdom series. Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country Doctor series stands at 16 novels and counting without becoming repetitious or boring. That, particularly, could have become very repetitious in less skilled hands.

So far, I have limited my series to five books. My Dark Faery series was originally supposed to be four books, and it came as a bit of a surprise a few years after those four were complete that I had an idea for a fifth book, based  on the main Vampyre of the novels. But nothing has convinced me to write anything about those characters since the fifth book was finished.

I have made a conscious effort to have limited sequels to any of my books. So far, by the time I’ve written four or five novels in a series, I’m ready to move on and find new characters to write about. I’d rather leave readers wanting more than have them – as I did with one author – toss the books aside saying, “Enough, already!”

I also like to write my novels in such a way that a reader can start with any of the books in a series and not feel lost. There are references to things that happened in other novels, but with enough background that they’re not frustrated by having started in the wrong place. I think of the stories as somewhat circular in nature, so that the final story often circles back to where the first one started, yet each one is complete.

This didn’t happen with the Nicholas Keating stories. The novels progress from when Nicholas is 25 to when he’s in his 50s. But even still, a reader can start at any one of the novels and not be lost.

The Nicholas Keating novels are my favorites of all of the novels I’ve written. They’ve become comfortable friends, and I know them the way most people know their closest friends. Of course, I know far more about them than I’d ever tell. They are friends, after all.

 

To Blog or Not to Blog – Is That Even a Question?

 

To say I’ve always known I’d be a story-teller is probably not entirely true. It stems from something that happened when I was three or four years old.

My mother read me a bedtime story every night. Sometimes they were from the big fairytale book, and sometimes they were Little Golden Books of my choosing.

I chose my book by the cover. I don’t think I ever chose The Happy Little Dump Truck because the truck driver looked like the bad guy in Popeye, and I thought he was ugly. The one I picked most often was called A Day at the Playground. I didn’t pick it for the story. For all the times my mother read it to me, I couldn’t have said what it was about. I only knew there was a cute blonde girl and two little boys on the cover.

My mother hated that story, mainly because it wasn’t really a story, merely a string of possible activities to do at the park.

I didn’t know that. I had my own idea what the story was about.

When she started to read one night, I stopped her to tell her that’s not what the story was about. She handed me the book and told me to read it, then. At three or four I was unable to read.

Undeterred, I began telling the story I wanted on those pages, naming the people, and telling a tale of what they were doing from page to page. My mother was impressed.

“You’re going to be a writer when you grow up,” she said.

“No, I’m not!” I replied, thinking that was definitely a boring kind of job.

But I made up stories about my various dolls while I played. I tried to figure out the plot of our play when I was playing with my friends, and even occasionally told them what they should say so that the plot in my head could advance.

My friends resisted. They clearly didn’t want to be told what to say. We weren’t in a play, after all. That was a source of many of my arguments with my friends.

I learned how to write in school. It wasn’t the sort of writing I wanted to do. Creativity wasn’t encouraged beyond trying out synonyms of commonly overused words. Our compositions, though, were precursors of my blogs.

Had anyone told me when I was 10 that I’d willingly write what I knew then as a “composition” or an essay, I would have told them they were crazy. At 10 I was trying without success to write a novel. At 13, I was writing terrible poetry. Only when coerced by teachers did I write essays, and those essays were uninspired, to say the least.

Perhaps if we’d been given the chance to write about something that interested us instead of expecting a student whose parents never took us on vacations to write an interesting essay on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” things might have gone better. I didn’t need a whole essay about my vacation; I could have summed it up in one sentence : We didn’t go anywhere.

Of course, if I’d dared, I could have invented the vacation I wished I’d had, and written about that. But Catholic school teachers didn’t want fantasy and invention. They wanted truth, and my truth was, we didn’t go anywhere.

We couldn’t afford it (or we needed a new roof, so our money was spent on shingles, and my dad spent his vacation putting them on the roof.)

I don’t know whether or not my writing is any good. I like my novels because I write what I could never find in the library. I write for me.

But my books don’t sell well. Maybe it’s because people don’t know they’re available on Amazon, or they don’t know just how many of my books are actually there (16 at present). Perhaps it’s just that people don’t know I use a pen name, Bridget McGowan. I’m sure in large part it has to do with my lack of knowledge about marketing. (Nudge me to keep me awake after saying that word.)

One thing that my novels and my blogs have in common is, I don’t know if they’re good or if they’re rubbish. I can’t get feedback from people. A few will say, “That’s really good.” I don’t know what that means.

I think it means people are impressed that I can write because they don’t think they could. No matter what I say, people who don’t think they can write don’t think they have the right to criticize someone who does. (Do they think that's lit shaming?) Perhaps they think I just want compliments, and I’d get mad if they told me what they didn’t like. This is not true. I really appreciate when people are honest with me about my writing.

I’m not interested in someone saying, “That’s horrible,” and nothing more, either. I’d like to know what you liked, what you didn’t, what didn’t work, or if the piece was simply a subject that didn’t attract your interest.

When I can get people I know well to give a critique, I often ask a lot of questions and sometimes explain what I’m trying to accomplish in the work. Sometimes people just miss things. If I know what they missed, I can fix the narrative. It’s definitely not just being argumentative – although, if you tell me the grammar is wrong and I know it isn’t, I will argue with you on that.

I’m not defensive about my work. It’s my baby, but if my baby doesn’t behave as it should, I want to know so I can correct it.

The most honest critique I ever received was from a class of third graders. Eight-to-nine year-olds get it. They were kind and very aware of not hurting my feelings, but they asked questions about what they didn’t understand. They were criticizing a book for preschoolers called I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now, about a tiger that is left behind when the circus leaves town.

I learned what they thought was important. “What’s the tiger’s name?” “What happened to his mother?” “I think your drawings are good, except – and I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but the bunny looks like a dog.” “Could you maybe have more pictures?”

Based on that, I was able to make improvements. They got to participate in naming the tiger, and I invited them to draw some pictures for me, which were much better than mine.

My blogs seem to be hit or miss. Some attract 30 or 40 readers; others attract fewer than 10. What do people  want to read? After four years, I still don’t have a good read of my audience.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s an advance committee of two or three people who brave the blog and then pass along a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to the rest of the group, which determines whether or not they read it. Or maybe that’s just a conspiracy theory.

I know I have one reader who reads all of my blogs, and you know who you are.

I have asked whether people preferred short stories or essays, what subjects interest them, and what they would rather not see. I’ve been met with crickets. I’d really like to know.

If I write something that people really don’t like, I want to know so I don’t write something else on a similar topic that will send people away in droves.

I realize summer is difficult. People are on vacations and probably don’t want to read a blog. Holidays are also tough. With decorating, parties and religious obligations, not to mention shopping and dealing with relatives, people don’t have the time. But I don’t have a better idea of what people want the rest of the year.

What I’d really appreciate are comments. There’s a comment section on the blogsite. If it’s difficult to get to, make a comment on the page where you found the link to the blog. I think they have even added a way to be anonymous. Just keep in mind we all need to be respectful of one another. No blasting someone one who didn’t like a blog you thought was good.

If you’d rather a bit more privacy, I have no objection to PMs about the blog.

Just a line or two about what you liked or didn’t like, or what previous blogs you really liked – or didn’t. It doesn’t need to be long, or even in a sentence.

I try to make my blogs humorous whenever I can, unless the subject matter shouldn’t be joked with.

You’ve heard from me; now, I’d like to hear from you.

About Books: The Dark Faery Series by Bridget McGowan

 

Sometimes my books aren’t based on what’s running around in my head.

Back when the Twilight saga was about to appear on the big screen – does anyone remember the huge outcry when it was announced that Robert Pattinson was going to play Edward? – I hadn’t yet read the books.

I had, however, read several vampire novels. Some of those, like the Anne Rice novels, were mostly good reads. Others were simply abysmal. One author used the same words to describe his character so many times that if I ever see or hear someone described as having a rictus smile again, I will have to at least maim the person describing it. And the same goes for the word orb.

My nieces introduced the Twilight books to my husband and me. It was nice, light summer reading. And we finished the first two books in time for the opening of the first Twilight movie.

Later in the summer, I was visiting a friend of mine for the weekend. She had a daughter who was about 15. She was enamored of the books – and Robert Pattinson – at the time. She also knew I wrote stories, although I didn’t know whether or not she’d actually read any of them.

During a visit to my friend’s house, the girl and I were having a conversation about what we liked best in the movie and some of the terrible vampire novels I’d read when she said, “I bet you could write a good vampire story.”

I had never considered doing that.

I thought for a moment.

“Well, mine would not sparkle. And no one would have a rictus smile. I’d need to do something unique.”

She agreed, and we went on to discuss other things.

“How about vampire fairies?” I asked sometime later.

“Oh, I would definitely read that!” she replied.

I had my audience. All I needed was my world and a cast of characters.

A little later her mother, the girl, a few of her mother’s friends and I were out exploring and came upon an old graveyard. We decided to explore. As we were walking along, studying epitaphs, I saw the name Teilo on one of the gravestones. I’d never encountered that name before, but I liked it.

Pretty soon, Teilo, who was to be the hero of my story, had a last name: Feather.

By the time I got home, I had a village or four made up of fairies. They lived under bushes, in trees or in the remains of things humans had left behind. But I changed the spelling. They were Faeries. They had a pre-medieval culture, consisting of priestesses and druids to take care of the religious aspects of their lives, and the faeries were divided into clans according to what jobs they performed.

The Celestials were the astronomers as well as the sea-faring clan. They sailed the small sea (a.k.a. the Irish Sea) in craft made of walnut shells.

Occasionally, if the need arose to visit the island across the small sea (Ireland), they might stow away on a Human ship. They could easily hide, and the amount of food they needed would never be missed by the larger beings.

The Cantares were the singers and musicians. They received training in music and went on to entertain or provide music for solemn occasions.

The Mercifuls were the medical people: Doctors, nurses, midwives, apothecaries, and other scientists of similar interest.

The Benevolents were mainly everyone else. They provided the blacksmiths, leather workers, seamstresses, bakers, bankers and so on.

Being born into a clan wasn’t a life sentence. If a child from a Benevolent family was musically inclined, he or she could join the Cantares once basic education had finished. Or a doctor’s child could grow up to become a Benevolent. There was free mingling among the clans.

And then there were the Dark Faeries. The priestesses had an uneasy and only occasional relationship with the Dark Faeries. They knew what the Dark Faeries were: Vampyres.

The only reason there was any relationship between priestesses and Vampyres was that a plague had spread through the Light Faery population. It had decimated the Light Faeries. And the Dark Faeries required blood. So there was a truce agreed to between the priestesses and the Dark Faeries that the Vampyres – except for the renegades who answered to no one – would leave the Light Faeries in peace and feed on Humans, instead.

This was beneficial to both. Humans wouldn’t be hurt or killed by being bitten by a Dark Faery. It was no worse than a mosquito bite, if it was noticed at all. While their blood wasn’t as tasty as Faery blood, they didn’t need to be bitten on the neck. Their veins were large enough for the Dark Faeries anywhere on a human body. The only danger to the Dark Faery who attacked a human was that it might be squashed if the Human happened to feel the bite.

This also saved the Light Faery population from being further depleted by Vampyre bites. Only those who ventured out into the deepest woods at night had to fear the renegades.

Enter Shauna Faun. This is a musical band. Their music is sought after by the young Light Faeries, who look for concerts given by the band. But parents have heard non-specific whispers about the band, that they have some evil about them.

The truth is, Shauna Faun is a band made up of Vampyre Faeries. These Dark Faeries have sworn an oath not to attack concert-goers, and the youth flock to them, despite the condemnation of the band from the priestesses, because no one has told the young people that these band members are Dark Faeries.

Now, with my world created, I was ready to write the first novel in the series: Dark Faery: The Benevolents.

 

Muse Clues

 

“You write? It must be really hard to write a novel.”

That’s been said to me many times over the years. I think most people picture someone locked in a small room, ink-stained hands, and pieces of paper wadded up, lying about the room, the writer red-eyed, with hair tangled and standing on end from all the times they’ve run their hands through it in an anxious attempt to find the perfect word.

So, when I say, “Not really; it’s kind of like breathing,” I destroy their image. They don’t know what to do with that.

If I’m sitting and not reading, I’m frequently writing something.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is another question I’m asked, especially by those who aren’t so awed by hearing someone admit they write novels.

Often ideas hit at 2 a.m. on those nights when my brain won’t shut down, and old scenes from my life – especially upsetting ones – invade my head, magnify, and keep sleep from being a possibility. Mental rants and things I wish I’d said, morph into a scene, as yet unwritten, for whatever story I’m working on.

Or not.

Sometimes those rants morph into blogs or just something to keep me from falling asleep.

Unfortunately, 2 a.m. to sunrise is usually not a good time for me to write. If I’ve gone to bed, I’m tired. My usually meandering ADD mind is even more unruly than usual, making it difficult to put pen to paper – although I have done it once or twice. Instead, I toss and turn, trying to embed a particularly desirable turn of phrase into my mind to commit to paper the next day, when I can actually hold a pen.

And pen to paper is how I write. I’ve never been able to compose at a computer, I suppose because computers didn’t come into my everyday life until I was in my 40s. Yes, I’d used them before that, but I never had one of my own until then. I can write an email or a paragraph or two, but nothing longer.

Sitting in front of a keyboard doesn’t inspire me. In the dark ages, I couldn’t compose at a typewriter, either.

But whereas a typewriter only had keys and that cute bell at the end of the line, a computer is a dangerous thing, with many enticements: I wonder if I have any emails. Did I do my Wordle today? Is it time to make a click to feed shelter animals? I can’t think of the word I need; maybe if I play a game of solitaire, I’ll think of it – just one game (HAH!)

No, it’s safer to stay with what makes writing come easily: a pen and paper, and the satisfaction that my cursive looks relatively nice sometimes (yes, cursive).

I admit I’m as undisciplined as they come. Add a layer of attention deficit, and it’s amazing I’ve ever finished anything. It certainly explains why, although I started writing at about age 10, I didn’t finish a novel until I was 38. I actually had to put away one I’d been trying to write since I was 18, and decide it was never going to be finished. I started something new. It’s actually more surprising that I’ve written 25 novels and a cookbook.

As I said, I’m undisciplined. I can’t say I’m going to write from 10-12 every day. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a writer to work at it from 9 to 5. I write whenever and wherever. I use loose leaf, notebooks, legal pads, paper towels, whatever is available. I actually love writing on C-fold paper towels. I write at a desk, a table, floating in the pool, in railway stations, in the doctor’s office. All are fair game as places to write. (That sounds so Dr. Seuss: I will write on the train, I will write on a plane. I will even write by the Seine. But I will not write on a phone!)

I am your high school English teacher’s nightmare. He or she likely told you writers plan out novels and make outlines. They consult a thesaurus, and have the very best dictionaries. They consider every word carefully, and plot the story climax, leaving heaps of foreshadowing along the way.

My response to that is a carefully-planned eight-letter word beginning with B and ending with T.

I once had to do a research paper at my university for an OT class. Our teacher had us do an outline first, before we even did a review of the literature. I thought that was stupid, since I didn’t know whether or not I’d find the things I thought I would. But it was a good way to organize ideas, and have a sense of the order of the topics.

But even when you do a review of the literature, some books on your list may have only a mention of your topic as an aside, with no useable information.

I assumed we would do a revised outline once we found out what topics were out there. I thought that was a reasonable assumption, but when it wasn’t listed as part of the project, I asked the teacher if I could revise mine, because some topics I wanted information on had not been researched. She said no, that the outline was just a preliminary guide.

So I wrote my paper, and handed it in, along with the footnotes, bibliography, review of the literature list, and the outline (which she’d already graded.) I did get a B for the paper, which was on brain lateralization and handedness (yes, we lefties are always on about that stuff), and she said it was well-written. She also wrote in the comments that it didn’t receive an A because I hadn’t covered all of the topics in my original outline! Apparently, I was supposed to make something up about the things that were not to be found in other people’s books! It makes me understand why some people falsify their data.

It also makes me resist the idea of using an outline unless I write it after the fact.

Perhaps writers of historical fiction, or non-fiction writers use outlines and find them useful. But I’m not them. I find a character – or build one – and chat with them for a while. Then I give them a name, a particular height, hair and eye color, nationality, and other particulars that are only of interest to me as background information. I often make a family tree for them so I know their relationship to the other characters. If I like them a lot, I’ll make them left-handed (because I am). Then I give them a nudge to see what they’ll do.

They take me on their adventures, and I discover their story along the way. I don’t plan anything in advance. The characters tell me when it’s finished.

Yes, I have some idea of what the story is about when I start, but it doesn’t always stay quite where I expect it to. That’s why writing is an art, not a science.

Sometimes I want a character to say some phrase I particularly like. Having a great title or an interesting remark is better than icing. It’s more like cocaine (from what I’ve read).

But some characters aren’t enablers. They will put their hands on their hips and tell me, “I’m not saying that, and if you make me, I’ll make it sound stupid.”

Often, it takes several pages to even reach the point where the character will say the line. And usually, it sounds stupid. Then I have to delete all of those extra pages.

It’s usually best to simply trust the characters.

“I don’t want to be some character in one of your novels!”

That line has been flung at me more than once when someone was angry with me for something I’ve done or said (and never having anything whatever to do with my writing). My response is usually, “You wish!” or, “Not bloody likely!”

I write fiction. I do not use real people as characters. I don’t even base my characters on real people. I find that characters I’ve made up are much more amenable.

Something I actually do when I’m not writing or reading is to observe. I watch people. I pay attention (yes, really!) to situations I’m in or that others are in. I store them in my head for later use. Then I will use the situation, only peopled with my characters, who behave as themselves, not like the people who were in the actual situation.

An example is when my father died. It was obvious to me that he was already dead when the EMTs took him out of our house. He had CHF, and his heart simply slowed to a stop. He went peacefully.

However, the doctors at the hospital worked on him for well over an hour before anyone came to the waiting room to tell my mother and me that there was nothing more they could do.

I suppose because I knew it was coming – or perhaps I was in shock – I felt like an observer in the situation. When the nurse came to tell us, and asked if we wanted to see the body, my immediate thought was, “No, that’s all right. I believe you.” I had seen the arms and legs sprawled as he lay on the ambulance gurney, before they got him appropriately positioned at the house. I didn’t actually say anything to the nurse. My mother immediately said, “Yes, of course.”

So, when they were ready, we were led into the room where his body lay peacefully, dressed in a hospital gown and his trousers. I felt like a video recorder, observing as my mother smoothed his hair, kissed his forehead, remarking on how his head was still warm – which I thought was a bizarre thing to say.

I have never and will never kiss a corpse. I know, other people have no problem with this. The person is no longer there. Frankly I find many of the rituals associated with death somewhat on the grotesque side.

But I watched and the memory of everything about that room and my mother’s actions are etched in my mind. And then I accidentally brushed up against the icy hand and was shocked. She’d talked about his head being warm. His hand was not. I knew from experience that the body hoards its warmth in the core to protect the brain and other vital organs, so hands and feet are the first to lose heat. I simply hadn’t expected to come into contact with that hand.

I used the loss of heat in a hand of someone who had just died in a story, although the other circumstances were completely different.

And I used the hospital scene in another, as yet unpublished, novel.  The person in the same position as my mother in the story had nothing in common with my mother beyond being a woman who had just lost her husband. The experience fit the story. I just didn’t use real people.

While I can’t write the original on a computer, I can edit there. Once I put the written story onto the computer – which in itself involves several edits, I can read and edit, then let the story rest before having another go at editing.

My blogs are edited several times from being put on the blog site and scheduled months ahead of when they go live, until – sometimes – 10 minutes before the blog is available for anyone to read.

So, while I don’t prepare for writing the way my English teachers taught me – and English teachers and lit. majors are often some of the worst writers I’ve encountered – I do have my own methods, even if they’re somewhat scattered.

I mainly write the stories I want to read, but can't find in the library.

I’m sure many, if not most writers have their own method of creating a story that is not necessarily in keeping with what their teachers taught them. You do what works for you, and if it happens to be what the English teacher taught you, all well and good. If it isn’t, that’s okay, too.

When I’m From

 

 

When I was in elementary school in the 1960s, there was no such thing as a learning disability – at least not at my school. Children didn’t have things like dyslexia, ADHD or any of a myriad of other challenges. If you got things right away and excelled, you were smart. If you took a long time to learn things, you were slow, and if you took a very long time to learn things, you often repeated a grade. If you were considered the “R” word (I use that because that was the word used at the time), a designation given by a doctor, you went somewhere else, and often didn’t live with your family.

Sometimes families fought against having a child institutionalized, and tried, with varying levels of success, to have their child educated in a regular school. I knew a few people like that from my neighborhood.

They repeated grades and eventually learned enough to move on until they reached 16 – usually by eighth grade because the school didn’t want them repeating a grade more than once – and they were legally allowed to leave school. Then, if they were able to get jobs, it was at a basic level, and they stayed in the same job for the rest of their lives.

But those with learning disabilities, rather than the R word, were given different designations, mainly because teachers often didn’t have knowledge of disabilities, and didn’t know how to teach students how to overcome such obstacles. 

Some were called lazy because they could do the work but had difficulty paying attention, or because they could learn but somehow couldn’t make sense of the textbooks they read. Some were considered troublemakers or attention seekers because they called out in class or couldn’t stay in their seats.

And if you happened to be left handed, anything you did incorrectly was blamed on that. Whether you were punished for being left-handed in my school depended on whether you were a boy or a girl, and whether or not you had the misfortune of having a teacher who had it out for your gender.

I was in the left-handed category, blissfully unaware that any of the other “nonexistent” challenges applied to me.

When people learn that I attended Catholic school and still managed to grow up to be a left-handed adult, they are generally stunned.  In fact, other than one of the safeties who patrolled the aisles in our overcrowded first-grade class to help the teacher during handwriting class, no one ever bothered me about being left-handed.

But the same could not be said of the left-handed boys in my class. One told me years later how he was repeatedly hit with a ruler by the nun. It was fairly well recognized that she didn’t like boys.

Being left-handed, I tended to start writing my letters backwards from the wrong side of the paper. My mother, early on, corrected this tendency, but she was never satisfied with my handwriting ability. She considered my best to be nothing short of lazy and sloppy, and my homework was frequently torn up. I would then have to do it over. But on the bright side, because writing spelling words was an every night assignment, I became an excellent speller simply because I had to write my words so many times.

What they did not know about me at the time was that I am mildly dyslexic. I had a bit of difficulty when we first began learning to read because I didn’t understand some of the rules we were given. We were told that words that ended with tails – a term my teacher used for silent e on the end of a word, although I missed that part – had a long vowel sound. To me, a tail was the loopy bit that went below the line. My mother didn’t understand why I pronounced every word that ended with p, y, or g with a long vowel sound.

It wasn’t until I explained about tails that my mother realized that I was too concrete a thinker to understand what my teacher was telling us, and she then explained that the teacher only meant an e. After that, my reading pronunciation and comprehension picked up so much that I went from the second reading group to the first in under a month.

I must have some subgroup type of dyslexia. While I do have difficulty at times going from one line to the next while reading – bookmarks aren’t just for closed books – and sometimes important words jump out of one sentence and into another, making a jumble of the page, my major problem is with textbooks.

I can read novels, and even biographies without difficulty. But textbooks and technical manuals are somewhat beyond me. I can’t retain the information by simply reading. I need to either hear it or write it. And even then, I’ll never be able to find the facts I’m looking for again in the textbook.

I didn’t learn until college that outlining chapters was a lifesaver. As I read my assignments, I outlined what I read. That way, even though after reading it I couldn’t tell you what I’d read, I had notes to refer to, and I learned from those.

I managed to breeze through elementary school – often on the honor roll – without ever doing my textbook reading homework. If I heard it in class, I could reproduce it on a test.

When I didn’t do quite as well as my parents and teachers thought I should, they agreed that I was lazy, and if I weren’t so lazy, I would do better.

The proof of this to them was that, other than handwriting and art, my two worst subjects in school were history and geography. Those two subjects mainly only require one to be able to read. But it was a textbook that had to be read. And often, not everything we had to know was discussed in class. They knew I could read quite well. But I didn’t do well in those subjects. 1492, 1942, 1249 ans 1294 are pretty much the same number to me, as the numbers dance around and show off.

Phone numbers are a nighmare. If you say the number aloud, I can copy it correctly. If I am copying from a page, I frequently transpose numbers, and I have to very slowly, digit by digit check to make sure I've copied it correctly.

I did do really well in history and geography one year. In history, we were studying the Middle Ages, an era I’ve always loved, and in geography we were studying Europe. We started off with the UK and Ireland, and I did a fantastic job, since my ancestors were from Ireland and Scotland, and the Beatles were from England (and I loved The Beatles).

As we progressed through Western Europe, my grasp of the subject slipped until, by the time we reached Spain and Portugal, my grades were as bad as when we studied US geography (So many states and capitals!).

That year convinced my parents it was sheer laziness when I didn’t do well in history and geography. They didn’t understand how difficult it was to stay focused on a textbook.

Every year I vowed to do a much better job academically, do all of my homework – even the reading part – and be at the top of my class. And every year, that lasted about a week.

I really tried. I was one of the top 10 or so students in my class, but I just couldn’t hold onto the elusive textbook knowledge.

What I also didn’t know until I was an adult was that I also have ADD – unfortunately, I didn’t have the hyperactivity, which I could have used a bit of. I’m sure the ADD played a role in my lack of focus.

Because I was a very good reader – and loved an audience – my teachers rarely called on me to read. Instead, they called on those who had very little ability to read aloud. I had to pretend I wasn’t paying attention to be called on – they loved to embarrass children back then. Once I demonstrated I did, indeed, know where we were, and had read a sentence or two, someone else was called on to struggle through two or three paragraphs.

When it came to independent work, I was either hyper focused or off in that land I go to where my invisible friends all know me.

When the teacher was teaching a new concept, like expanding numbers, Roman Numerals or points of grammar, I understood the technicalities very quickly and was ready to move on to something else. Unfortunately, that never happened, so I’d zone out for the next few days while she retaught the same thing.

Most of my real difficulties in school were social. I didn’t get the subtleties of my classmates’ behavior. My so-called friends picked fights with me (arguments, not fist fights) for unfathomable reasons. I didn’t know how to fight with them or why they wanted to, so I just went off by myself. And they all grew up emotionally before I did (some say I still haven't), so my friend set kept getting younger.

How ADD mainly affected me was at home. My mother had a rule about how close you could sit in front of the TV. You had to be on the rug, and even then, I was often told to move back. It wasn’t because I was in anyone’s way. It was that early TV belief that the radiation from the TV would get you.

My problem was that if I sat on a chair or the sofa, there was too much space between the TV and me. Aside from it being more difficult to become one with the characters at that distance, even the airspace between the TV and me was a distraction.

This was so much of a thing with me that, to this day, I can recall what shows I watched as a small child, from Bertie the Bunyip and Captain Kangaroo to Lost in Space and The Twilight Zone, but I can’t recall a single episode – or in some cases, the characters themselves – unless I’ve seen the shows in syndication as an adult. I may have been facing the TV and wanting to watch, but if I weren’t right in front of the screen, I couldn’t maintain any attention to the show.

When people would tell me I was smart, I always felt like a fake. Of course I was lazy: my teachers and my parents said so. Every year, despite what my tests and report cards reflected, I was sure I was going to be left back to repeat the grade. Of course, I thought teachers could fail you if they didn’t like you, and I thought none of my teachers liked me. I doubt any of them remembered me once I was out of their class.

I once told my mother that school to me was like hanging outside a second-story window, holding onto the window sill, afraid someone would close the window on my fingers and I’d fall to my death.

That’s also how I’d still describe my social skills.

I like the idea of parties, but I don’t like being at them. I never know what to say, so I end up saying all the wrong things. People tend to avoid me, and when they don’t I’m just waiting for something terribly stupid to fall out of my mouth. Stage fright, to me, is going to a party where the only person I know is the one I came with.

But put me on a stage, and I’m in my element. I have never experienced stage fright on a stage. I’ll sing, I’ll act, I’ll play my guitar, and I’ll have the most fun a person can have because I don’t have to interact directly with the audience. There’s airspace separating us, and I’m not them.

One thing I did learn because of the stage is that I can’t memorize lines by reading them repeatedly. When I was in a play in community theatre, I knew everyone’s lines but mine. No matter how much I studied my lines, I didn’t hear them, so I had difficulty remembering them. Too late, I realized I should have read them on tape and listened to them. Ah well, next play. Someday.

Ironically, I write novels. I love playing with words. But it’s on my terms. It’s a conversation between me and my invisible friends (aka characters). And sometimes my invisible friends won’t talk to me, either.

Years ago, a group of my (visible) friends and I would get together every week. We all wrote stories, and we’d read them to one another and critique everyone’s work (kindly). At one point we discovered that out of seven or eight of us, only one wasn’t dyslexic.

So the question was asked: What one word did all of your teachers use to describe you?

And the answer was the same for every one of us.

Lazy.