It's Sad When You Have to Read Your Blog to Find Out What You've Been Doing

It's Sunday morning before Mass, and I'm blogging.

The writing life has not been part of my existence for the last few weeks.  I've been in graphic design mode.  I designed my darling niece Jane's wedding invites from top to bottom. No longer are brides content with an engraved invitation on white or cream linen stock.  They want color and all paper goods associated with the happy event coordinated.  It all started with the lovely shade of green the bridesmaids will be wearing. My niece sent me an email with a few Pinterest ideas which fleshed out the "vibe" she wanted in the design, along with her preferred fonts.  Before I knew it, I was learning about Pantone hues and belly bands and envelope liners. I was in contact with vendors for envelopes and specialty paper and teeny weeny tissues. I had to relearn calligraphy, but that is like riding a bicycle.  After two sheets of practice addresses, one would never know the last time I wielded a cartridge pen was fifteen years ago and I only ruined six envelopes with blobs and other mistakes.

The design my niece selected is so ... her.  When my sister, her mom, saw it, that's exactly what she said ... "That is so Jane!"  Mission accomplished on my end of things.  The invitations were all mailed from the Bradley Airport Post Office yesterday, so in a couple of weeks I will post the design on my graphic design blog.  I also designed some graduation cards for Greeting Card Universe, some Fourth of July cards and a series featuring the "Keep Calm" meme as it applies to boiled lobsters.

But I haven't been writing much.  I missed the deadline for the WIP It Blog Fest.  I had no new WIP material to present to my writer's group last week, either.  I did write two possible entries for WRiTE CLUB 2013, and spent a couple hours today working on the one I think will appeal to the voters (which is everyone on the Linky List) before I sent it in, but I feel ... rusty.

I thought to myself ... what the heck have I been doing?  Where did I lose so much time?  Then, I looked at my last blog entry and realized, "Oh, I went to Houston and was gone for five days."

How could I forget I did that?  My brother, Sam, is recovering from a burst appendix and my sister and I flew down on US Airways Buddy Passes.  We ended up spending an overnight in Charlotte, NC and got to Houston at 9:30 the next night. We didn't tell him we were coming so as not to disappoint him if we couldn't get there.  He was so glad to see us, and we were so glad to see him.  It was like an earthly foreshadowing of the "Angel of Happy Meetings" Prayer.

Then we spent the next three days cooking, going to doctor's appointments and watching the most appalling stuff on television.  If TV is the harbinger of things to come, the apocalypse cannot be far off. We spent a good deal of time visiting and talking and that felt as if we were doing what we were meant to do.

Fiesta Supermarket, Houston TX ... my new favorite grocery store with the most amazing produce section ... ever!

So, after seeing my blog and realizing that I had traveled, it occurred to me that if I am not writing on a daily basis, other faculties begin to shrivel.  Capacity for memory.  Easy grasp of ideas.  Patience with an unfolding story. Empathetic observation of character.  My life, little by slowly, becomes digital. A blog post here, a YouTube video there.  I don't even do household chores in a cohesive, satisfyingly analog way. I dart about, doing everything marginally.  That's it ... my life is meant to be lived in the body of the story and I'm scrawling out on the margins..

As soon as this post is up, I'm spending the rest of my pre-bed cup of tea visiting with my WIP. One of my goals this summer is to finish the first draft (and, yes ... summer goes all the way through September 20th.) I am going to invest in a notebook, something I can take everywhere along with my pens and paper.

I started this blog post at 9:00 a.m. and it's now 10:48 p.m.  I've come back to it on four separate occasions, and now it's done. A peaceful night to all, and if you're a writer reading this, I wish for you the writer's life in the days to come.  I wish it for me, too.

WRiTE CLUB!

WOW ... my favorite online writing contest is BACK ... the Hammon's WRiTE CLUB 2013!  I am preparing to cast my entry upon the waves of Linkylist opinion as I prepare to also vote in each round!

Sorry this post is so short.  I'm hoping to hop on a plane tonight to see my brother in the hospital down in Houston.  More on this awesome comtest when I return. Prayers for my brother Sam's recovery from a burst appendix would be most appreciated.

YESSSSSS!

"Expecto Patronus ... Taxidea taxus"

Uh oh.  I have not blogged since April 29th.  I've strewn comments all over the blogosphere, I've written a couple of short pieces, critiqued some stuff for others, went to a book launch, got to four writer's workshops, painted horse jumps and set up all the secretary's stuff for the 50th Anniversary Granby Pony Club Schooling Horse Show.

I also attended my 28-year-old son's Commencement at the University of Wisconsin on the evening of Friday the 17th.  We cannot call it a graduation because he is a PhD candidate and will not be defending his thesis until July.  But when he donned the black robe with the three velvet stripes on the arm and that blue velvet "hood" (signifying "doctor of philosophy") lined with red (signifying the University of Wisconsin), my heart swelled with pride.  He did not wear one of those floppy medieval hats, though, just a regular mortarboard.  Nothing's perfect.

I asked him if he would be good enough to hang onto his regalia for one more day so on Saturday he could pose in front of the capitol building in Madison, one of the most impressive state capitols in the country.  The dome is the largest dome by volume in the entire United States and is topped with a golden statue, "Wisconsin."  She is often referred to as "Lady Forward" since "Forward!" is the Wisconsin state motto.  She is over fifteen feet tall, holds a globe with an eagle sitting on it and wears a helmet topped by a badger, the state animal. I still can't get over it—this golden woman of ideal (albeit, large) proportions with a globe and a noble eagle under her control has ... a badger on her head. For some reason I cannot explain, I am enchanted by this.

So after visiting one of the most phenomenal farmers' markets in the country, we made our way up to the stairs of the capitol.  Jesse, Gordie's good friend and roommate, offered to take some photos for us.  Gordie pulled his commencement garb from his knapsack, put it on and when he was all robed, hooded and mortarboarded, empty leatherette diploma holder in hand, Jesse smiled and said:

"You're a wizard, Harry."

'Twas a grand day for these muggle parents, his dad and me.

Now ... back to writing.

The Things We Do For Love

Writing a book is like love-at-first-sight, especially when the idea for a book hits like a ton of bricks. "Best idea, ever!" "This is gonna write like butter!" "I can't believe I thought of this!"  Or, it may be more subtle.  Either way, there's a secret inner loveliness of knowing that you're going to write a book.

It's when the writing begins that the process appears to be more like an arranged marriage than a love match.

Inspired, the writer writes the first two thousand words of the first draft.  He's still on a pink cloud.  He goes to bed, gets up the next morning, fires up the laptop and ... wait, WHAT?

An experienced writer will see things like this: Clunkiness. Unwieldyness. Too many shiny-faced, clever little darlings seeking to hijack the process. Too much exposition.  Too little natural dialogue.  Head hopping. Bad grammar. Execrable punctuation. Misspelled words—lots of them.  On its face, this is most definitely NOT what the writer fell in love with, but he knows the story is still there.  He will take it to his writers' group willingly, craving those other sets of eyes.

An inexperienced writer will suspect his writing maybe isn't as good as it appeared first blush. He will take it to his writers' group and get feedback from the more experienced writers, and hopefully they will dispense the truth with kindness.  He will take what he needs and leave the rest.  He may feel a flash of resentment, but he will also see that many of the suggestions are spot-on and he'll intuitively know a good deal of what's been shown to him will help.

A non-writer will not see any of this. If he belongs to a writers' group and submits his work for critique and the writers attempt to remove the scales from his eyes, he will either take offense and storm away in high dudgeon, maybe never to return. Or he will sit and seethe, leaving at the same time as everyone else, maybe never to return. And he'll stop writing.

Or he'll write "at" everyone, finish his work and maybe become a writer just from the process of writing.  Many excellent writers have actually started out this way.

Whether a writer submits to a critique group or not, he must get to know his story at deeper and deeper levels. He must let her lead the way as she reveals her characters, point-of-view, plot, pacing, backstory —everything. Then she must let him write.  He's drawing her out.  Writer and story will find places they cannot stay, but the experiences in those places only serve to enrich the narrative. And the way he cares for her, builds the relationship and learns about her is by writing and writing and writing.

And she will be unlovely a good deal of the time, especially the first draft.  There will be lapses in chronology, abrupt changes in characters that don't seem authentic, too much of something, too little of something else, but if her truth is allowed to assert itself, he will fix what needs to be fixed, she will show him more, and they will journey on.

It's actually her "unloveliness" that causes the writer to assert himself, for he knows that if she is to be revealed, it's up to him.  But he can't do it without her, for if he forces whatever version of "loveliness" he craves on her, she will be ruined.

In case anyone is interested, here is a  book which describes a process for revealing a story that suits the way this writer writes— The 90-Day Novel by Al Watt of the LA Writers' Lab.  It's all about embracing the unloveliness, because unloveliness, if tended, is a progress in love.

When Evil Casts a Big Pall on Everyone

Last Monday morning, I posted about an exercise I intended to do for a writer's group I belong to here in town.  It was due on Thursday.

On Monday afternoon, around 3 p.m., I watched (along with millions of people) as two puffs of smoke photographed from an aerial camera on a helicopter trained on the finish line of the Boston Marathon turned out to be the most hellish of devices: home made bombs made to kill and maim as many people as possible based on the design.  The design.  Design implies thought, planning, creativity, ingenuity— plans to bring something into existence which was not there before.  Design is usually associated with positive outcomes; architecture, fashion, graphics, ships, airplanes, gardens, musical instruments, computers, medicines ... and the list goes on and on.  We forget the list also includes guns, weapons and the delivery systems for mass killing. We forget that things designed for good (computers, medicines, airplanes, ships ... even buildings) can, with only minor changes, deal death.  A pressure cooker, for many of us, has its design accompanied by images of a beloved grandmother canning the bounty of her garden or peach trees, or, in my case, my husband canning his delicious spaghetti sauce.

And just as a weekend gardener will design elements of his garden taken from the design for, say, Versailles, which he learned about from books or the internet (and perhaps he even took a class or two ...), there are terrorists like the young men who deployed the home-made bombs on Monday, using specific plans based on designs for IEDs found on the internet or in handbooks. (The older terrorist may have even taken a class on how to make these things.)


Monday afternoon and evening was kind of a blur, and my degree of separation from the event is pretty big.  But here in New England, everyone has some connection to the Boston Marathon. My son ran it four Aprils ago.  He knows a number of people, runners and their supporters alike, who went this year.  He was anxiously awaiting texts from them.  My niece, doing a semester abroad at University College of Dublin, skyped in tears Monday night.  How could she find out if her friends from the UConn running club were okay?  How could she find out if her friends who went to cheer the runners on were okay? We sent her a Facebook message with a local news station's website which had comprehensive links to help folks find their dear ones.

It's 1:15 here in Connecticut.  I'm sure there are victims and survivors thinking ... "It hasn't been a week yet ... another hour ... at this time last week, she was still alive.  He was still alive.  I still had both my legs.  I still had legs.  We still had our little boy.  We still had our daughter. Happiest day in Boston."

And two young men, although murder had entered their hearts, were not killers ... yet.

And since this kind of evil is one of the most confounding mysteries of our humanity, how do we, as writers, respond?

I think the very best response to this mystery is found on the blog of a remarkable young woman -- wife, mother, writer — and her post following  the Sandy Hook killings in December, Make Good Art.  It was the first thing I thought of when I loosened the grip the horror of the Marathon bombings had on me (for even my prayers were anguished,) as I wrenched myself away from the relentless news coverage.

Thank you, Faith E. Hough.

This Week's Writer's Exercise

I belong to a Writer's Workshop at the local public library.  It meets on Thursday mornings at 11 a.m. and has been the high point of my week for months now.  Over the last couple of months, those of us with WIPs have been doing exercises pertaining to them.

Last week, we wrote endings to our our books.  There's no guarantee that the endings we wrote are the ones we will use, but it was a compelling thing to do.  Completely different from writing a beginning in so many ways AND, if one is writing a series, sown with the seeds of the next book. 

Endings seem to have valves, where tension is let off in a controlled (but not controlling!) way.  Endings are peaceful and perhaps even resigned.  They are, after all, endings.  AND, since I am both an info-dumper and a banjo-player, endings are balm to an overly-expository writer.  They are chock-full of possibilities that the reader already knows about, so the temptation to "word-herd" the reader is gone.

Now we're working on characters ... index cards with physical descriptions and connecting lines to describe the relationships between the characters.  Sort of like those wonderful family trees one finds at the beginning of a Sharon Kay Penman work of historical fiction.

It turns out the entire room our group meets in has walls of fabric and pushpins can be used EVERYWHERE, all over ALL the walls. Kelly, the leader of our group and head of Library Services, said, "Yes.  Every bit of the wall.  Go for it."  I can't wait.

The problem for me is: I have so many characters, so here's what I've decided I'm going to do:  I will have three sizes of index card to choose from.  That's right ... I'm going to cut some cards in half and some in quarters. Now this isn't to say the characters will remain a particular "size" over the series, but for the current WIP, I have an excellent idea of the "weight" each character brings to the story.

Of course, this could just be the lamest idea ever, but I really want to give it a whirl.  I love a good visual, and the mental picture of a glorious union of the Excel file of my characters, index cards, sharpies and tumbtacks is already dancing in my head.

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES!

I Shamróg Aer Lingus (Because a shamrock is THREE little ♥s!)

I am waiting for the glacial uploading of pictures of my trip to Ireland to a Picasa album.  For some reason, they are taking a long, LONG time but I wanted to do a wee post regarding the lovely Aer Lingus convention of naming their airplanes. Probably other airlines do this, I just never noticed.

Here's the ACTUAL plane we flew on (photo online, courtesy of Tony Marlow) ...

... named after the patron Saint of the Emerald Isle. I was quite surprised, since the English spelling of the Saint's name was used.  The Irish are quite adamant about their language being in evidence everywhere (Ní tír gan teanga - There is no nation without a language.   Also: Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste, ná Béarla cliste - Broken Irish is better than clever English) and when one gets to the Dingle Peninsula and other points west, many of the signs don't even bother with English.

As we boarded the plane at JFK, we walked through a gate that had a rather long hall that went back on itself.  When we came in view of the front of the airplane, my sister, Ann, pointed and said, "Oh, look, Ro!  It's named St. Patrick!"

But you know, if it had said "Naomh Pádraig," I would have been equally comforted.