Thinking In My Mind

You work and study so hard all your life.  You meet mental challenge after mental challenge.  You become very confident in your intelligence and astuteness.  People come to know your brain as quick, agile and acute.  They tell you so.

Then you do it.  You say something so stupid you surprise even yourself.

This happened to me last weekend.  I was having coffee with the ladies and of course talking about our story line.  I was mentioning an idea I’d had.  I don’t remember what that idea was now. All I remember is what I said.

“I was thinking in my mind..” said I.  Dead silence.  Whereupon one of my dearest and sweetest friends (won’t say who) turned to Karen and beamed “I am writing a novel with her??”

Humility, meet my keyboard.

Say it over and over to yourself.  I write well. I write well.  I write well.  Know it.  Believe it. Think it in your mind.

Jean

We’re Getting Better….

Earlier this week, Mary posted about how We’re Getting Serious.  At our meeting over the week-end we added more detail to our plot structure, worked on creating and fleshing out some of our non-central characters, and gave ourselves specific writing assignments until our next meeting.

We were sitting on Mary’s deck, diligently working with our laptops on the table in front of us and coffee at hand.  I had a brief moment where I wished Mary’s husband was home so he could snap a picture of our storm of creativity.  (Poor guy gets banished every Sunday morning so we can write the next Great American Novel….)

And while I had this moment, the thought occurred to me “We’re getting better.”  The months of reading about writing, doing the writing itself, and hashing out the logistics and specifics have begun to pay off.  We sound like we know (or at least, are truly beginning to know) what we are doing.

And frankly, what we are writing is actually better.  (Thank goodness!)  I have edited, and edited, and edited my chapters from several months ago, so that some of them are barely recognizable as the originals. I think this is good.  My writing is tighter, more focused, more “alive” (I hope!) and more interesting.  Mary read one of her chapters to us a few weeks ago, and all three of us were sitting on the couch in tears.  Jean’s powers of description (which were already impressive) are grippingly conveying her character’s crisis.

We Rock.

Okay, enough with the bragging on us!  It’s time to go write more.  Later, folks.

Karen

Photo credit:  SJ photography via Flickr

We’re Getting Serious….

Since I write the 1st blog of each week … it’s the order we came up with back in Feb when we began our blog … I get the first crack at sharing what we discussed at our weekly Sunday get-togethers.  I think it makes it a bit easier for me.  Sorry, Jean and Karen!  We can revisit this at some point, if you’d both like.

Until then … Our get-together on Sunday was serious.  Not that it wasn’t fun, or that there wasn’t a lot of laughter.  It was, and there was.  Anytime 3 good friends have a chance to visit, fun and laughter will be had!

But we were productive and focused.  We even left with assignments.  We have a “buckle down” mindset at this point, complete with deadlines, a plot sequence and timeline for our book, and defined, somewhat complex and quite interesting characters.

We are very close to being ready to post bits of our chapters on our blog.  We have been putting it off until we all felt comfortable.  We almost do.

We are serious.  Driven.  Time for our ‘writing to meet the road’.

Mary

Photo credit:  robij via Flickr

Show. Don’t Tell.

Good writers don’t tell how their characters feel, they show how they feel.

This was a lesson in writing that I learned many years ago.  I remember it well.  I am trying to remember this rule as I write portions of our novel.

On the plane back to Connecticut from South Carolina, I was reminded of the rule by a young man sitting next to me.  Tyler from St. Louis was a marine returning from a short vacation to his base in California.  He had explained to me that he was in the infantry and had been to Afghanistan.  He was in a unit that flew helicopter missions.

Let me paraphrase our dialogue, using the rule.

Me:      “Oh, Tyler, that must have been so frightening.”

T:         “Yes, ma’am.  The first time I got on the heli was the worst.  There is no door and no one wears a    seatbelt because everyone has backpacks on.”

Me:      “Did you fly at night?”

T:         “Yes, ma’am.  You get in and you look out the door and can’t tell how far above land you are.  It    is completely dark.”

Me:      “How did you deal with your terror, that first time?”

T:         “I just grabbed on to the guy next to me and told him if I was going to fall out, he was going with     me.”

Me:      “Oh honey.  You must never tell your mother this.  Or at least tell her you always managed to get     into the helicopter first.”

T:         “I can’t ma’am.  My job is always to be the last one in.”

God bless you, Tyler.  I will always remember you, and the rule.

Jean

Secrets, Lies and Our Book

Two threads of awareness have converged inside me recently regarding something more that our book needs from us.

First, in different posts (most recently in this post of Mary’s) we have all come to the conclusion that while there may be autobiographical aspects to our characters, they need to be individuals separate from ourselves with their own identities and stories.  All the better for the quality of our story.  (To say nothing about being better for the privacy of our lives!)

Second, I have become increasingly aware that fiction writing is about creating emotional experiences for the reader.  And in fact fiction is often about creating *difficult* emotions for the reader.  All happiness, joy and light is just plain boring.

I was a late “convincee” to the second principle.  I like my romance novels and their fairy tale endings.  They are an escape from my real life world as a psychotherapist where people are plenty emotional, thank-you very much, and share heart wrenching, traumatic and difficult stories with me on a daily basis.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my work and derive great satisfaction with helping people heal their wounds.  But at the end of the day fairy tales are just fine with me.

So this week the universe took me by hand and led me to just the right romance novel. I was reading a novel where the protagonist and her sister did some pretty hurtful, dishonest things.  Things involving secrets and lies.  Secrets that harmed others.  Lies!  Big, fat, damaging lies!  Yes, the protagonist kept a big secret from everyone.  Yes, the sister lied to the protagonist.  And the combination of these secrets and lies created a five year, painful odyssey for everyone.  Horrors!  (I may have given too much of the story away, but I want to give a nod here to An Heir of Deception by Beverly Kendall.)

Now, since this is a romance novel, it of course ended happily.  But I was struck by how much I was drawn into the story as a result of these secrets and lies.  And the story kept floating back into my mind during the day, and even the day after I was done reading it.  A bit unusual for me.

Hmm.  I guess the story was interesting.  And it was interesting because of the secrets and lies.  Hmm.

So this past week-end on our writer’s retreat when Mary suggested we really “bump up” the story for our characters, I was open to this in a way I hadn’t been before.  (Don’t think I’m going all altruistic here.  It was Mary’s suggestion so –  Ha! – her character gets to do the dirty deed!)

But now I got to think up a dirty deed for mine.

Karen

Photo credit:  Pinar Yanardag via Flickr

Fact, or Fiction?

Jean, Karen and I spent the weekend at Jean’s wonderful South Carolina vacation home. A writer’s retreat, we told ourselves. And, it truly was.

We initially wondered if we’d actually be productive, or simply enjoy the beautiful weather, surroundings, and all that the South has to offer. Happy to say, we did some of each.

We brainstormed, strategized, and wrote. And, we had an important realization. Or, I did, anyway.

I realized that I had been thinking about Susan, my character, in too much of an autobiographical way. Initially, I thought that approach would keep it a bit easier… “write what you know”. And, while that is true, in part, it also became limiting. Susan wasn’t developing the depth that she needed to have. I wasn’t allowing her to delve into life situations, challenges, and growth that she deserves to experience. To be totally candid, she was becoming a bit boring. Too ‘vanilla’.

I needed to remind myself that our book is one of fiction. Susan is not me. Well, there will always be a part of her that is, in fact, me. (And, it’s a very fascinating part, trust me!) But, the blinders have been yanked off, and the creativity has been kicked in!

Susan will have strengths, weaknesses and experiences that I can only imagine. And, imagine them I have.

Mary

Bring on the weekend!

Heading out on Thurs night for a long weekend to South Carolina. A mini-vacation? Yes. But, this long weekend will be a first. For me, Jean and Karen. We are heading to Jean’s southern vacation home to have a writing retreat.

We have all been feeling that we need a chunk of time….a big chunk of time…to get a considerable amount of writing done. And for the overall creative process. The logistics of 3 friends, all with busy jobs, living in different towns, communicating in real-time on story ideas and character development, are challenging.

We’ve talked about weekly Skype or Facetime calls from 6-7 am and will probably start next week. If we approach them with organization, we should be able to accomplish quite a bit in that hour.

But, until then, 3 days away will do the trick! We hope. Not without it’s own fair share of challenges. I mean, 3 days with 2 great friends in a beautiful, almost-paradise, spot, complete with weeping willows! Nothing says “the South” like weeping willows!

Warm temperatures. Golf cart. A “ladies weekend”. Red wine. Conversation and loads of laughter. Sleeping-in. A pool, and the ocean.

And, working. What?? How’d that get in there?? Ok, the challenge has been identified.

Well, being a believer that everything in life starts, and stops, with our attitude, I will adopt a new one on this. Maybe if I begin to view the writing aspect of our weekend not as “working”, but “creating”. That sounds better. More fun. OK, I’m ready.

South Carolina….here we come!

Mary

Facts About Artifacts

Not one of the three of us is a stranger to the joys and challenges of research.  Mary regularly performs research on many topics and the guests who will speak to those topics on her radio show.  As a psychotherapist, Karen constantly researches issues of concern to her clients and how best to help her clients deal with those issues.  And as a lawyer, research is of course a main tool of my trade.

But research concerning an artifact that will be central to the story in our novel?  This artifact may have archaeological or geological significance, or both, and none of us has experience with research of this nature.

So what to do?  Shall we go to the textbooks to identify the sort of artifact we need for our story?  Shall we endeavor to commence months of study and research?

Well, we may have to do some of that.  I think most authors do have to perform a fair amount of research on topics that may be foreign to them, in the interests of crafting credible storylines.  But…geez…we are three fully employed professional women, each of us juggling so many things at one time….there must be a way to short circuit this effort…

And so there may be.  We are calling upon an expert in the field of archaeology… we may be contacting someone who has expertise in the field of Native American history…perhaps also a geologist or paleontologist.  These very knowledgeable people may be instrumental in helping us identify an artifact that will work for purposes of our storyline….or they may keep us from making a big scientific blunder with our storyline….either way, these contacts will prove invaluable to us.

And we are very grateful for their help.  We are learning that it takes a village to craft a credible story line…..

Jean

Photo credit via Flickr

This Is My Brain On Writing

A funny thing happened when I sat down at my computer to write last week. 

In an earlier post I joked that now that I am finding my voice as a writer, I won’t shut up.  And it’s true that my writing voice has taken a deep breath and has been talking, singing, yodeling, yowling and otherwise letting itself be heard.

What this means it that I am not only writing this book with Mary and Jean, but I have branched out to writing in other forums as well.  I have returned to blogging on my professional website with new energy. I’m posting daily my professional Facebook page.  And I have started drafting a self-help book, which I hope to publish as an e-book.

So last Thursday I sat down to write with a germ of an idea on the topic of adult adoptee rights, a cause near and dear to my heart.  And I just started writing.  Typety-type-type-type.  Tappety-tap-tap-tap.   Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la.

About an hour later I looked up.  And I had……what?  Not a blog post.  Not a book chapter.  Not an article.

I’d never written anything like it before.  I didn’t know what I had done.  I didn’t know what to call it.  I didn’t know where to put it.

Finally I decided I could call it an “essay”.  And perhaps it wasn’t too much of a stretch to call it a “poetic essay”.  Whadda ya know?

By the next day I had edited it, titled it, and spelled checked it.  Then I submitted to a magazine editor for possible publication.  (They like it.  How cool is that?)

From my work as a psychotherapist, I may know a little bit more than the average bear about how neurons (brain cells) in our brain wire and rewire, based on how we use them.  Basically, if you use your neurons in a particular way (say, by writing), it increases the blood supply to those neurons.  And the connections between the fired neurons grows stronger and more complex, and they fire more easily.  What we use, we strengthen.

So over the past few months I’ve been using my “writing neurons”, so to speak.  The little buggers have been firing, and re-wiring, and growing a better blood supply and thicker myelin sheaths and becoming more interconnected.  And in their newfound complexity and richness, they popped out a poetic essay.

Now how cool is that?

Gotta go now.  My neurons are firing.

Karen

Photo credit:   Ars Electronica via Flickr

Ups and downs….

Life is filled with ups and downs. Always. I am learning that it is true with the writing process, as well.

During our weekly Sunday get-together and brainstorming session, Jean, Karen and I discussed the progress we had made since we’d been together. It had been two weeks, due to Jean’s trip to South Carolina.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I had been sick with a bad cold/sore throat for a week or so and though I had the time to write….since I spent a great deal of it on my couch….I only had energy to do a word count on what I’ve written so far. Time, but no energy.

Jean has already posted that while she was away, she didn’t do any writing. She was in “paradise” and thoroughly enjoying every moment of her vacation. As she should have. (Karen and I had commented during the week that we had hoped Jean would not feel obligated to write, or post….her time away was just that. Time away from her usual obligations and productivity of any kind. We’re so happy she complied!) Time, but time away.

Karen on the other hand, has been a research/reading/literary “whirling dervish’. She has been inundating (in a good way) our Inboxes with website links, articles and ideas. Her motivation and focus have come from a place of inspiration that I’ll leave to her to explain. And, she has done that in part, in a previous post. Time, well-directed and spent.

I am now back to feeling 100%. Jean is back from vacation. Our “down” time is back “up”.

Karen…if you feel a “down” period coming on, we got it covered!

Mary

Photo: Lamtom