Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 12
October 21, 2019
As Above, So Below
Important news from the stars for writers here on earth. Mercury will be retrograde from Halloween until November 20. I had to look at my calendar twice this morning because obstacles are already throwing themselves in my writing path. Luckily, I am in revision mode with the WIP, and Mercury Retrograde is an absolutely awesome time for revision.
Not such a great time for signing contracts or making new electronic purchases. Communication is a bit fraught during Mercury Retrograde, so watch your words, in manuscript and real life. That goes for delivery of mail electronically or through USPS, Amazon or any other kind of mail system.
Yesterday I was determined to get down to business on my WIP. I’ve been doing okay, more or less keeping up with my schedule despite some minor setbacks, but felt it was time to put all the pieces into one pile, read through everything I have, and see what needs to be cut and what still needs to be added.
Got all the various files into one master document and decided to print the whole damn thing out. I’m about halfway through my revisions, and know what still needs to be fixed and written. I even know how I’m going to do it. I have a plan plus notes and an outline. Not flying blind, here.
Was happily printing out my 62K words so far, when things started going !!!!! Literally. Laptop printer icon said !!!!! and printer flashed same !!!!! Also, the last twenty or so pages printed made it clear I needed to change the ink cartridge. Alas, my grand plan was foiled for the moment. And my tech guy (Al) was at the football game. He had recently ordered extra ink cartridges and so even though it was a new printer, and laser not ink jet, I figured I’d try to change the cartridge.
Things did not go well. I figured okay Al will eventually come home and when he gets time he will fix everything for me and I will be humming a happy tune once again. Also, I don’t use the printer on Mondays because I blog and everything is online. Then I remembered I was hosting my book group on Thursday and I needed to shop, clean, and cook before then. So…maybe I can finish what I started on Friday.
As long as things get sorted before Mercury appears to move backward in the sky, I’m good. For more on exactly what Mercury Retrograde is, see Susan’s post here.
October 14, 2019
Studying the Stars
Last night’s full moon was in Aries. The constellation is an actual place in the sky, so “full moon in Aries” just means that’s where the moon is located in the sky for the next week or so. Full moons are significant scientifically because the moon’s gravitational force is greatest at this time, affecting the ocean tides more than any other time.
The fact that the moon rules the ocean tides amazes me. How can that be? How can the moon pull the ocean waves around? The moon has its own gravity is the short answer. The long answer is like higher math, incomprehensible but also beautiful, at least to me. For a long time, I used science facts about the moon to defend my reading of the stars.
These days, I don’t try to convince anybody that astrology has merit. It’s the same with reading the tarot. I interpret tarot and astrology because divination is in my blood. My great-grandmother read the cards and tea leaves. During the Great Depression, her readings kept her large family fed. That impresses me. Having been a single mom, I know how hard it is to raise a family on a woman’s wage.
The taboo against astrology began with the advent of the One God. Astrology was a pagan tool from ancient times, which is why believers in the One God were schooled not to look to the heavens, not to look to the stars, for answers about the meaning of life, for predictions about what happens next, for a clue about which path to follow. Not looking to the stars seems ironic, because the One God is in heaven, right?
I use tarot and astrology to spark ideas. They’re starting points for me, and they’re about possibilities more than predictions. The more esoteric meanings of a full moon in Aries engages passion, energy and courage. It’s a time to take action, break chains that would hold us back, and savor the freedom and confidence that ensues.
This moon may see a sudden and drastic change in your life. Or maybe not. What I like to do is be ready. Just in case. So far, I’ve not had any sudden or drastic change in my situation, but I will keep you posted if it happens. 
October 6, 2019
Renewing Writing Practices
Reading and journaling these past weeks with Colleen Story’s game changing Writer Get Noticed, so many of my writing plans have come into sharper focus, including how best to adjust my writing practices. Specifically, I’m looking at changing writing routines when my husband retires at the end of the year.
When I finish Jane in St Pete in December, I have no plans for a next novel. Al’s retirement is not the only reason it feels right to take a break from writing novels. Since I’ve been publishing books, I’ve steadily released at least one a year. I noticed a slow down with Lily White in Detroit, my tenth novel.
At first I attributed my decreased output to the added research that comes with writing crime novels, but after studying Colleen’s writer’s self-help guide, I realized I’ve come to a natural stopping point, at least for now, at least as far as writing novels.
As I worked through the illuminating exercises Colleen lays out in a genius step process, I learned that while adjusting to a new life passage that involves fun, travel and moving out of my home state, I still want to keep some portable writing practices. Writing a novel takes a big chunk of time, a room of my own and steady commitment, day after day, month after month.
My life is not going to have those long stretches of time in a writing room, at least not for a year or maybe even longer. Although…I start every day with morning pages, and have done for many years. I won’t give up my journal and gel pen. And I don’t want to give up my fiction writing groups and friends, either.
Short stories helped me fill the gap after Lily White and gave me something to bring to my critique groups. Stories kept my craft skills sharp. And eventually, they led to Jane in St. Pete. Like many writers, I started writing fiction with short stories. I published a few of them, but mostly they were a way to begin to figure out my voice and how to write a narrative.
Things can get stale for me if I keep doing them over and over without hitting refresh, and that happened recently with morning pages. I’d write a half page and sit there with nothing to say. Julia Cameron, who introduced me to morning pages, recommends three pages every morning. That’s still what I shoot for. Answering the questions Colleen poses became a way for me to write not just three pages every morning, but four, five, even six pages. All while discovering what to do next.
I was on fire as I got deeper into the heart of what I really want out of my writing life now. More flexibility. Less sustained attention. Writing I can finish in a couple of hours or days. Long before I began the daily discipline needed for writing novels, I was a blogger. I also published book reviews, personal essays, poetry and short stories. All things I enjoyed and could do around my teaching job.
With the help of Colleen’s therapeutic method of writerly inquiry, I was able to figure out how to keep the writing I love close while figuring out how this new adventurous phase of married life will look in retirement. I have so many new goals. I’m looking forward to finishing Jane and going through the editing process with my publisher’s guidance. I can’t wait to gear up for the marketing aspect of a new release–Colleen also helped me clarify how to do publicity my way.
I’ve learned what does and does not work for me as a writer. I love morning pages, social media, my blog. I especially enjoy giving my website a fresh design, which will happen in 2020 along with that novel I’ve been working on for a while now.
September 30, 2019
Teenage Parents
I had no interest in reading Demi Moore’s biography until a reviewer mentioned she’d had a tough childhood. The adjective was stronger than “tough” maybe “horrific” — something that made my ears perk up. To come so far from where she’d started, enduring some form of ongoing abuse as a child, was a story I wanted to hear.
As a scandal rag addict, I knew the public parts: the marriages, the movies, the Kabbalah. I didn’t know much about her childhood or how she got from there to stardom. I’d seen her on General Hospital back in the day. I remember she was on a bed typing on a keyboard with the laptop sitting in front of her. As an image, it was all wrong. Writers sat at desks, like I did in those days, or, like I’m doing now, they have their laptops in their…laps.
“Jackie Templeton” was no writer, but all these years later, Demi Moore has achieved that status. Her story touched me and kept me glued to my chair, my eyes on the pages until the end. I thought I knew about the marriages, but she went deeper. She did an emotional dive, revealing the lack of a strong intimate connection with Bruce Willis and her age-related insecurities with Ashton Kutcher. She talked about raising her three girls and the heartache of their teen rebellions. She was brutally honest about herself and her various addictions to alcohol, pills, dieting, and Ashton.
She looked at her childhood in all it’s messiness, without disguising the very worst aspects of her rocky road to growing up. It inspired my post today. Demi’s parents were 18 when they married, and she gave them lots of leeway because of that, but no way around it, they were about as emotionally abusive as you could get. Sure, they were young. Is that an excuse? Maybe so. My mother was 16 when I was born. Barely. She’d had her 16th birthday the month before I made my appearance. When she was barely 17, she had my brother, and then, not even yet 18, she prematurely had my younger brother. Finally, the Pill came and she scored a prescription as soon as humanly possible.
Like Demi’s family, we moved a lot. The difference was, my mom was always leaving my dad and bringing us with her. One year we went to three different elementary schools. My mom worked as a waitress and we hardly saw her, and my dad never visited us at all. He once came to the door and he stayed there, out on the stoop. I ran up to the door and said “Hi, Dad!” I was eight and so excited to see him. He said “Hi honey,” and a few weeks later we all moved back into the family home. It was a dream come true for me. I loved my dad so much. My mom? She was a heartache.
Of course I loved her, but I never felt loved by her. We kids were always told to go outside and play and we were not allowed in the house. If we wanted a drink of water, there was a hose outside. We came in for lunch and then were told to get right back outside. Before we were all in school, she would often say she couldn’t wait for us to be gone all day. She gave us grudging kisses goodnight, with no bedtime stories or any affection, ever. If we were sick, well, we weren’t allowed to be sick. She never believed in tummy aches or anything like that.
She did all the things a mom is supposed to do. She fed us three meals, washed our clothes, made sure we took baths and got to bed on time. She kept a clean house. But it was always abundantly clear to me that we were a bother and she couldn’t wait for us to be anywhere but in her sight. She used the line a lot “Get out of my sight.” My dad, when he was home, if they weren’t broken up at the time, was a loving presence. I knew why he stayed out at the bar. She wasn’t nice to him either. Mom was a screamer. She never talked if she could yell. And when she talked, her tone was never nice. Always nasty.
I knew there was something not right with her. She didn’t act like other moms. In my young mind, she didn’t love us, she didn’t really even like us. We still loved her. She didn’t physically abuse us other than a slap across the face when we talked back. She liked to say “Wait until your father gets home,” but my dad was a pussycat. He was a loving affection guy. One of the first things I remember him saying to me was in reply to a question I asked from my crib. “Are you going to spank me?” and he said “I never spank little girls.” He smiled at me and gave me a kiss on top of my head.
At the time, I thought that couldn’t be true. Because it’s one of my first memories, I never figured out why I thought that he wasn’t telling the truth. Now I realize my mom had probably scolded me and said Dad was going to give me a spanking. Well, he didn’t. And that wasn’t the only time he intervened when my mother was inflicting some form of punishment on me. She got more inventive and vindictive as I got older. I had to wear the clothes she chose for me, and the older I got, the less I liked her style.
When I was fifteen, the age she was when she got pregnant with me, she brought a few empty grocery bags into my room, told me to pack and leave the house. I was scared but I wasn’t sorry to go. Years later, it occurred to me that she’d been trying to live her life through me, and I was not cooperating. I smoked pot and refused to wear a bra. My boyfriends had long hair. She wanted me to be an airline stewardess, utterly impossible because I wore glasses and was too short. She wanted me to wear the clothes she thought were cute and have the boyfriends she liked. I was so much my own person we were in constant conflict.
And when I turned the age she had been when I was conceived, she shoved me out, no qualms. I tried to live on my own but I couldn’t even legally get a job at first. I bounced around with family and friends, finally I quit school for a semester. I wanted to finish with my class and graduate, so I begged her to let me move back. She agreed I could live in her garage. September was fine. October was chilly and finally by November that garage got too cold.
My dad, as he had so many times in my life, came to my rescue once again. He’d moved out and had his own house by then. He was getting back together with my mom (they were always breaking up and making up) and I could live in his house for my senior year of high school. I did have to pay the bills and buy groceries with my little fast food job, but he didn’t charge me rent. So my family lived on one side of town and me, the black sheep, lived on my own way on the other side of town. Somehow I pulled it together enough to graduate with my class.
When I finally had children of my own, Mom warmed up to me. She loved my boys. She was so angry with me when I divorced their dad, but cooled down when I met the man I’m married to still today. Everybody loves Al, including my boys. As you might expect, I’ve had a shitload of therapy. I’ve got more baggage than a movie star on vacation. But I’ve learned a lot, and always the hard way. These days my mom has been saying she never had a childhood. I do have sympathy for her, but I don’t tell her what’s in my heart: for some of us, childhood is just something to be endured.
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September 23, 2019
Kindle Math
Three months ago, I was going through my credit card statement and noted with alarm that I’d spent $400 on Kindle books that month. That’s more than $10 a day, which is too much. Books now cost more, especially new releases. I’ve seen them for $15.99! A big increase since I began buying books on Kindle in 2007. I don’t blame Amazon. The price is set by the publisher. I don’t blame them, either.
I blame my own out of control book reading habit. I often read a book in a day. I became a very fast reader when I was a book reviewer and an English teacher. Both those professions mean reading, reading, reading. Also, I like to read. I would rather read a good book than do just about anything else. Still. $400!!! I knew I was spending too much money on books. I decided to try to cut down. Maybe buy fewer new releases and more paperbacks. It worked! Last month I only spent $200 on books.
I even read a few of my old favorites plucked right from the many shelves of books in my house. This has been my plan all through my reading life, to read all my favorite books again. Now the time has come. Because even “only $200” is too much to spend on books. Although I don’t spend a lot of money on anything else.
I’d rather be reading than shopping. Reading a wonderful book is my happy place. But when you read as much as I do…not every book is going to be great. Lucky for me, every book on my shelves was a great read. Except. My reading tastes have changed.
There was a novel (it shall remain nameless) I used to read every year when I went back to school. It was about a college instructor who was smart and funny. She was single and went on dates that didn’t always work out. She loved her little house and somehow reading about her adventures set me up for the new school year.
I tried reading that novel again the other day and could not figure out what I ever saw in it. There was no conflict! No plot! It made me wonder how many of my 1000 books are going to disappoint me upon rereading. I’d estimate that I have started to read ten titles from my shelves and only one grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen. I’ve read it more than once, saw the movie, more than once, but still, young Jane just drew me in. Again. My Jane Austen collection is one of the oldest, although almost every writer I collect first pulled me into their orbit a long time ago.
This month, my book bill was $150. That is still too much, but it’s progress. I’m trying for $100 next month, which is only $25 a week. Hope I have not already spent that! It’s possible. I’ve purchased more than a thousand books on my various Kindles. They’re all stored in the Cloud. So I can re-read those too. But the difference is, I only kept the real books I loved. Kindle books, bad reads and all, are forever.
Kindle was invented for people like me. Book lovers with poor impulse control. But in other ways I’m a careful planner. I collected all my books with a specific goal in mind. When I was working, I’d look at my books and think “someday I’ll read you all again.” I looked forward to that time of my life, when I was retired, when life moved slower. And here it is.
September 16, 2019
The Social Side of Writing
I’m still reading and journaling with Colleen Story’s book Writer Get Noticed. It’s been so enlightening. Light bulb after light bulb. Today I worked on identifying my strengths as a person and as a writer. I don’t focus on my strengths very often. I take them for granted. Maybe because they’ve hardly changed since I was a child: creative, organized, introspective. I’m social, too, but I’m always looking for the balance between being social and being alone for essential-to-me writing and reading time.
One way I combine being social with my need for writing time is in critique groups. I have two groups I meet with regularly plus another writing group I love in Florida. I’m a member of Michigan Sisters in Crime. Saw those folks Saturday (In photo, I’m sitting next the Mr–yes we have men in our group!) and will see them again on September 28 at Elizabeth Buzzelli’s workshop. Elizabeth always gives good workshop. This will be no exception. It’s open to the public, so if you’re a Michigan writer, you should come! We can be social together
September 9, 2019
Feeling Published
Remember flame wars? In 2002, this same week, I got torched on a Yahoo Fan Page. Which led me to leave a group I’d really loved. It was so hard, and so much on my mind, I told my son about it. I shocked myself when cried a little bit before wiping my tears away and laughing at myself.
My son Mike asked me what I’d liked so much about the group. I thought about it. I finally said I liked talking about writing. Which was something we did a lot in that group. I’d miss having that outlet. Mike said “Mom, you should start a blog.”
I sniffed and said I wouldn’t know how to do that, and anyway, weren’t blogs over? He replied that he’d set up the site for me and also, no, blogs were not over. They were only going to get bigger. He was in IT, so I figured he knew more about the internet than I did. I said yes, thank you, that sounds like fun.
I hadn’t published a book yet, just some poems, short stories and book reviews in magazines, but the minute I posted my first blog entry, I felt published. It was an incredible validation. All these years later, I still feel so good about my blog, which my son continued to help me with for more than ten years, until his first son was born.
I have such happy memories of this adventure. Choosing wallpaper for a custom template, learning to write a key lines of code, blogging every single day about the novel I was working on. In 2002 there wasn’t any software that did tech things for you, so Mike did them for me. He was so patient when I wanted to change my blue stars wallpaper to pink flowers. The blog was a joint project and my son was my teacher. What a gift.
Mike said he could still do the work on my blog after the baby came. By this time we had been through Blogger and Moveable Type and were firmly into Word Press. I’d met Barb of Bakerview Consulting online and was sure she could do the housekeeping chores. I was also sure Mike was about to be way busier than he could begin to imagine. Both of these things turned out to be true.
What started out as a way to talk about writing became my author platform and I didn’t even know it until I read Colleen Story’s “Writer Get Noticed!” I’m learning more about my writing self from Colleen’s book…like what specific things I want from this writing life I’m living. The answers will be different for everyone, but the discovery process is the same.
It starts with the question Mike asked me all those years ago: What do I like about doing this? Why do I like it? These days I’m revisiting those questions and so many more that Colleen poses. Doing the exercises in Colleen’s book is an illuminating way to fill my morning pages. Which is the way I always start my day. Why? Because I like it.
Why do I like it? Any of it? Morning pages, blogging, writing novels, participating in a Twitter hashtag? It’s all one reason, really. It’s the best way, the perfect way for me, to communicate with the world. And I didn’t really put it all together quite like this until I read Colleen’s book, so thanks Colleen. And thanks to Mike, who set me off on this adventure. And most of all to you, whoever you are, wherever you are, reading this. 
September 2, 2019
Writing the Mystery Synopsis
It’s Labor Day here in the USA and any writer will tell you…writing a synopsis is hard labor. After checking multiple author websites, and my own writing manual (free PDF here) I have refreshed my memory on exactly how to organize one. These tricky summaries of plot are basically story outlines in sentence form.
No subplots. Few characters, just the main one (or two). Include all major plot twists and/or turning points and spell out the ending with a super spoiler. Also, make the first sentence a sensational hook. And, use the voice of your book, so if it’s comic, write a funny synopsis. If it’s dark, write a spooky one.
That’s my best advice plus a wing and a prayer. Why am I putting myself through this grueling process? I want to get eyes on my work and Pitch Wars! has agents, editors and authors looking at synopsis and first chapter near the end of September. The window is only open for a few days. There’s still time, but not a whole lot of it.
Today I’m working on the synopsis with an eye toward sending it to my Michigan Sister in Crime Pitch Wars! partner, Zoe. We have already vetted each other’s first chapters.
August 26, 2019
How to Fix a Book
Novels are easy to write if you turn off your thinking and dive into the story stream. They might be easy, but the results are not always pretty. Such was the case with my WIP, Jane. I got a first very bad extremely horrible draft done in a couple of months last year.
This year I am revising. Jane needs to be almost completely rewritten, despite the fact that I really kept the first plot I came up with and all the original characters. I had to lose one subplot, snip an annoying thread and significantly improve upon one character. Nobody who read my early draft liked her, they wondered why she was even in the book. I considered cutting her but I couldn’t do it.
I liked her even though I didn’t know her very well. She intrigued me. That was good news but also a problem. I’d written Barb into a short story I wrote after Lily White was finished and I needed something to bring my critique group. I caught a charming criminal and pinned him to the page. It felt effortless. And just as easy to sketch was his foil, an FBI agent who captures him and suggests he change his ways.
Short stories are fun. In and out. None of this hundreds of pages stuff. But novels propel themselves from the inside out and after a few short stories, I had one in me, begging to be let out. And it involved the reformed and relocated criminal. Also, the FBI agent, Barb. Also a few other people, but Barb is the one my critique group was hung up about, she felt like air. How right they were.
In the short story, I’d been able to do quick and dirty FBI research. After months of thinking about it, trying not to think about it, making excuses to myself, and continually running into walls with Barb, I sat down and did my homework. With revision, I have to stop rewriting and do some research, because I don’t do much research in the first draft. When it becomes apparent to me that I need to research, I’ll just take a day to read, jot notes, form a first scene and, most important, adjust my attitude.
When I started Jane, I promised myself it would be a lighter book than Lily White. More caper than crime. Amateur sleuth falls into murder mystery. Sure there was a cop because with murder there’s always a cop. But the FBI? I decided to let Barb be on vacation. No FBI business to attend to. No FBI rules to follow. What I concluded was that Barb’s vacation was in fact my own vacation. From research and the hard work of revising a weak first draft.
When I first begin a novel, I have some set ideas. I have a firm concept of the overall theme. I want this character of this age with this background in this setting. I want X point of view voices. Usually there are at least a few elements I’ve never tried before. I like to challenge myself to try new things with each book.
For this particular book, I was determined to write the whole thing in one point of view. One character tells the entire story. That would be Jane. The problem before me was Jane. She is a law abiding civilian. She knows nothing about the FBI. From Jane’s pov Barb is just a woman in love with her friend who has come to St Pete on vacation. Sure she’s in the FBI but that doesn’t impact the story from Jane’s pov.
You can see where the problem comes in. I had to decide if I wanted to keep trying to stay in one person’s head the entire book. I’d never done it before. I just wanted to see if I could do it. By the end of that excellent FBI book in the featured image photo above, I had a lot of ideas about Barb, none of which I could convincingly convey via Jane. That’s fine. I know enough about revision to stay open to new ideas, to be flexible with my first idea wish list.
So I wrote a scene starring Barb. I like it. I think I just solved several problems, one of the biggest being the book was way too short. It needed a substantial meaty subplot. I’d made a start before I gave Barb a primo role, and it was good. But she’s going to take things up a notch. Sure, now there’s a huge problem I didn’t know about before my research weekend.
But huge problems are conflict by another name and novels thrive on conflict. Almost the minute I cracked open the book, I read this FBI mantra “Never fall in love with your informant.” In fact, agents are not allowed to socialize in any way with informants. It apparently always leads to tears. The pages I’d written for Barb on vacation and in love with George blew up and scattered around me like gleeful confetti.
Fine. I already knew this was a major rewrite. Now I at least have an idea how to fix it. And more conflict. Always a good thing.
August 19, 2019
A Mysterious Character
For years, more people than I can count, people close to us, friends and family, have told me my husband Al is a workaholic. That’s how they view him, but I never thought they were right. I didn’t reply to these remarks, maybe a short laugh or a shrug, but I never wanted to argue the point. I was certain I knew my husband better than anyone, and we were just fine, thanks.
In my current novel, Jane is a recent widow who is not mourning her loss. She’s not evil. She didn’t kill him. She just hadn’t loved him in a long time. Jane is one of those wives who stay “for the children.” I’ve always been curious about those women. How could they do it? I know I couldn’t.
What kind of marriage did they have? I thought I’d sorted these smallish pieces of character very early on. I knew everything about the dead husband that Jane knew. He was still one part mystery, even dead. In fact, his death meant she’d never know one crucial thing about him. And not knowing that affected everything about her behavior.
The NEVER KNOWING part really bothered me. I had to give her some justification for staying with this man who suddenly without explanation, cut off all marital relations when they were still quite a young couple. This behavior is not unheard of, but just uncommon enough, I thought, to be fresh.
Then I read Three Women by Lisa Taddeo and one of the women has just such a husband. He claims he doesn’t need or even much like sex. Three Women is reportage; it’s non-fiction. It’s also very, very good. I wasn’t going to lift that reason, which still makes me ask the question WHY anyway. Why doesn’t he like sex? Why does he refuse to kiss his wife? How can this marriage be saved?
You’ll have to read Lisa Taddeo for those answers because I am not going to use that reason. Still, I really wanted to do a version of “they stayed together for the children” because I am interested in people who are able to do that. I sure couldn’t. Curiosity about people who are unlike me fuels my fiction. I want to know what drives them, so I write to learn answers.
The problem I came up against quite quickly after discarding the Taddeo solution is Jane needing a new reason not to mourn. I thought a few minutes until the idea of a workaholic husband presented itself. I didn’t know much about workaholics except they worked all the time. I took a day for research yesterday and after ten pages of juicy notes, I knew everything there is to know about workaholics. I also knew that my dear Al is one of them.
The facts don’t lie. If it was just one Wikipedia article, or one of the “Top Workaholic Traits” I might have kept that open secret from myself a little longer. As it is, I have accepted that yes, I’m married to a workaholic. But he’s not the shade of workaholic I’m writing about. I found a treasure trove of disturbing workaholic behavior that will make Jane a merry widow, but my own worker bee is happily alive and wearying of his frantic pace. He’s ready to get out of the rat race and we have a date set in the very near future for unlocking those golden handcuffs.
