Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 64

Thinking Memoir?

In September, DWW member Virginia Parker taught a memoir workshop. I sat in on her session and she hit on a hard question that comes up for me over and over again. What if the truth you write damages relationships with loved ones? Does writing matter more than the relationship(s)? If so, go ahead, but be aware, there will be consequences.

After the workshop, I thanked Virginia for that straightforward key to understanding memoir. I’ve got a closet full of darkness in my past and many is the time I’ve wanted to shine a light there. But I don’t. I won’t. And then I got a request for a short memoir piece about step-families. My kids have two step-parents. They don’t remember a time when their bio dad and I were together.

I wrote a tepid 800 words. Nothing sparked, it was kind of blah, I was holding back.

One night I decided to write the hard truth, even if I never published it. I don’t write at night unless something upsets me. And I was upset, and still am, because we are not taking a trip out west this year. I even proposed going alone, just two or three days with each of the boys. That wasn’t in the budget either.

I could have fought Al on it, but I held my tongue. Not my pen. I went upstairs and wrote the cold hard truth of why he became my children’s stepfather. This was days ago and I’ve been putting off looking at it again because the truth is stark.

I have always been a huge fan of my boys’ stepmom. That was pretty much the 800 words. In praise of her. But even then, I left off the meat. Not about her. About Al.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my husband. He was  and is a good stepfather. But more went into the equation when I married him than love. He’s always known it. It was not a secret. One of the reasons I married my husband is because my lawyer told me to. My ex was suing for full custody and lady lawyer said “You seeing anyone?” Yes. “Is it serious? Are you in love?” Yes. “You shoud get married. It will look better in court.”

And so that’s what we did. We got married. He tried to extend our engagement but I said no. I said if you love me you will help me keep my kids. We split up over it for a few weeks. I could not love someone who would not do this for me. He came back, and we married, but his resentment lingered. And why not? I had blackmailed my way into the marriage.

I’m not proud of that and maybe that’s why when he says “not this year” to a trip out west, I let him have his way.

#amwriting

My favorite hashtag on Twitter is #amwriting. If I do nothing else in my day, I want to write. And then I want someone to know. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I am writing. One project out of the way: A 15 page report on how to put together a writer’s conference that DWW members requested I write. I didn’t want to do it. I was over the conference and all the time it took away from my own work. But I did it, because I was asked and because the info was fresh in my head.

Tomorrow critique group meets here, so I wrote another chapter on the Sister Issues sequel. I am only at about 20,000 words into that one. I am not sure why I’m finding it so difficult to string together some writing days for just that fiction project, but something else too ofen calls.

I have another writing project, this with a friend. I can’t believe I’m collaborating on a book. I never thought I would do that. But this is a non-fic project close to both of our hearts and I’m giving a ton of time to it. It is time well spent and when I can I will say more.

Also working on an essay about Steps (as in step families) for possible inclusion in an anthology. I have a draft written but it needs more work. My sons have a step dad and a step mom and we’ve been in this step situation 28 years. So…I have a few things to say.

Congrats to everyone who is tackling NaNoWriMo. With several writing projects pulling me in all directions, I just can’t fit it in, but I #amwriting.

Braided Poems

So much information and writing wisdom is tucked in my little notebook from the conference last weekend. My favorite class was called “The Braided Poem” even though I don’t consider myself a poet. I am a person who sometimes writes poetry as a way to shake things up for my novelist self. A way to pay more attention to language and nuance. Reading great poetry helps, and so does writing some not-so-great poems.

If I am fortunate enough to teach creative writing again, I will use this method of creating a poem that I want to share here. My teacher was Christine Rhein, author of Wild Flight. She said right out that she did not come up with the concept of the braided poem, so it’s not like I’m stealing her idea. I think many of my poems are braided, just because it worked out that way. But to know there is a process fires up poetic imagination. Try it!

FIRST THREAD:

1. Ground the poem in a common experience you know enough about so that you can dig into it.

2. List everyday activities, then break those down into smaller bits.

Here’s an example from my list: Cleaning: silver polishing, cat box, closet. I ended up with 7 common experiences and had 3 or 4 specific kinds of the general activity. Lots to choose from.

SECOND THREAD

3.  This part is about emotional relationship issues, yours or someone else’s or imagined. The emotion can be joyous or devastating, an argument, a moment of peace, a death, a birth. Things that can be the emotional tie to the concrete activity in the first thread.

4. Brainstorm a list of names that have emotional resonance for you. I had a list of 14 names, with some comment after a few. Several of the names I came up with are people I already have written poems about.

5. Choose grounded common experience and person with emotional resonance. Write lines expressing both these things, not necessarily in a linear narrative form.

I surprised myself with this one, even though the person was the first name I came up with. It’s been an ongoing situation and brings up difficult emotions in me all the time. The common experience is my husband watching sports.

Here’s what I wrote:

Everyone left him, one by one

I watched this happen

While my husband watched sports.

“He’s laying on the lawn again” I said.

My husband, eyes glued to

hockey puck, football

swinging bat, does not reply.

“Is he drunk?” I ask, wanting an answer.

My husband shrugs, eyes on TV

We have lived next door to this guy for

25 years. First his wife walked out, then the

Kids, who left their dogs. One dog died

and we neighbors gathered in our common back yards

to grieve with him. Now his other dog has cancer

Neighbor and dog sprawl on front lawn,

Almost every day, his face in the crook

of his arm,

his other hand clutching the dog leash.

The dog isn’t going anywhere,

But the home team won.

Unlike my usual self, when she asked for readers, I put my hand up and read with no anxiety to the group. Her comment was to start with more action, like the neighbor laying down with his dog. I might try that, if I were a poet. I’ve been thinking about that. In a few years, when all my novels are out of my head and onto the page, maybe I will go back to poetry, ending up where I began. Also I have no idea why I cannot single space this poem. Because poems should be single spaced and Word Press should make it easy for poets to do that.

About the meaning of my poem. I’m concerned for my neighbor and my husband is not concerned for my neighbor or for me being concerned about my neighbor. The last line might not sound snarky but it is because I am not a sports person and my husband loves all sports, all the time. So there is a little bit of the unappreciated spouse in there. Doesn’t answer my questions.

Also, I don’t have a crush on my neighbor, not even close, but it seems so clear to me that he is lonely and sad and I wish he had someone to love him. Then I kind of juxapose that with my supposed someone who loves me but might love sports a little bit more. That’s unfair because my husband is a great guy. I know he loves me, and I feel lucky to have him. But I have these moments when I think “Why are good people who clearly would love a partner alone and then other good people who clearly wish their partner would shut up and make some nachos?” So there’s a little bit of that in there. We’re married 27 years. He takes me for granted sometimes and other times he is right there for me. I knew the sports deal when I married him. So did you get that from the poem?

Conflict Lock

I’m using a quick exercise (thank you Michael Hauge) to check on my story conflict because an editor I trust told me that I’m writing a “bigger book” than a romance, but she wasn’t sure the conflict would hold up. I have a history of weak conflict. It’s a skill I am actively working to improve. Here’s what you do:

Write down the goal of your protagonist. Skip a line and write down the goal of your antagonist. Next to each goal, write down the conflict, the reason why the goal cannot be achieved. If your antagonist’s actions are blocking the protagonist’s goal, and your protagonist’s actions block antagonists goal, you’ve got a good solid conflict lock.

Conflicts need to get bigger as the story moves forward. But that’s another Michael Hauge discussion here. There are lots of screenwriting techniques, but they work equally well with any kind of story, including a novel.

Sad Bad Gypsy

Well, I’ve been thinking about Gypsy manuscript since I read it. And I really think the paranormal world is awkward, the love story sucks, and some of the chapters drag. Revising this one may be more trouble than it is worth. At least right now. I’m glad I read it, I’m glad to know. Now I can get back to my first draft of the sequel to Sister Issues.

I think I have been putting off tackling that first draft again. It’s a little bit like being on a high wire. But that’s where I’m going next. My plan is to put Sister Issues out in paperback format at the same time as Cher’s sequel. If I’m indie pubbing this one, which really it looks like that’s what will happen, I may even make them one book. It will be a big fat juicy book:)

Another option would be to make Sister Issues a free Kindle download for a week or so, and hope folks will buy the follow up. Hey! I actually thought of a marketing idea:)

Career(s)

My husband and I have had a long disagreement about my retiring from teaching. It started maybe six years ago, when I found out that if I worked in the public school system for ten years, I was entitled to a retirement. Age 51 is not a great time to begin strategizing a career that had always felt part-time. Age 51 is a great age to begin dreaming of dusting off those accumulated rejected manuscripts, whip them into shape, and indie publish them.

I liked teaching because it gave me spending money, got me out of the house, made me think about more than just the current novel-in-progress. Writing, if nobody’s told you, is lonely work. Of course being the old lady in a room full of texting young people who do not want to learn to write is not so great either. Hence my life’s dilemma.

I did a short little teaching stint this summer at the college I work for. Six weeks, May into June. I took Fall and Winter 2011 off to get those novels on the internet, and since I only managed to publish two of them, am taking Fall and Winter 2012 off as well. I am adjunct faculty with senority at the top tier of our pay scale (which, believe me, is not saying a whole lot).

Our differences of opinion on this matter of me retiring, if I wanted to put in the time required to receive a pension, has two main prongs. The “how much will I get” prong and the “how long will I need to work” prong. Michigan Public Schools has a great website that let’s you see all this and calculate answers. We did this once six years ago, and have been disagreeing on it ever since. I think I’ll get $100 a month. He thinks it’s much more than that. I think I’ll have to work 3 or 4 more years, he thinks it’s much less than that.

It is long past due for us to go over the paperwork again, revisit the site, see who is closer to the truth. On the one hand, I am right. On the other, he is. I will qualify in as few as two or three semesters, depending on how my classes are distributed, but, after taxes, I’m not going to receive much more than that $100 I predicted.

Al is a numbes whiz. He quickly said “If you live 25 years, that’s $80,000.” I have no idea if this calculation is true or not. He also is worried about insurance. I could “buy” for both of us at a super-reasonable rate if something ever happened with the UAW. I point out that teacher’s pensions and benefits are being chopped just as quickly, but it all really boils down to one thing: will I do this? Al votes yes, but leaves the final decision up to me.

Reader, I think I have to do it. But not until Fall 2013.

Building a World

Every novel has its own world. My mom says my grandmother was always in “her own world.” But where world-building really counts is in paranormal stories. I saw a great presentation on it that gave all the reasons why you should build your world BEFORE you write your novel or series. Unfortunately, I saw that presentation AFTER I had written two novels.

The only way for me to build my world was to go through it. I don’t pre-plan my novels and did not pre-plan my world either. I hardly knew I was going to write a paranormal, never mind a series! It started with a little Halloween story I wrote for the blog several years back. Those characters and that setting would not leave me alone. So I splashed in, head first.

As I wrote, the world I was building grew and changed. Writing for me is an organic thing, and I can’t imagine writing a first draft any other way. It seems like it’s probably less efficient and more work, but still, it’s my go-to method. It works for this pantser.

When I still had an agent, she loved my first paranormal and submitted it without success. For so many years, I continued to write the next book, and then the next, never stopping new stories. I always had a deep plan–when I pubbed my first book, the rest would follow. And that’s what’s happened, but I never dreamed how time-consuming and meticulous the revisions would be. And in particular, the paranormal revisions.

The first glimmer came when I stepped into a bookstore and saw a dozen or so trade paperbacks with the word “Nightworld” on each one. “Nightworld” was the name of the series. And it came from nowhere to prime real estate in Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately, “nightworld” was also the name of MY world. I have a new name for my world, but I’m not using it. The first novel in the series was titled Gypsy and I’m changing that, too.

Even as I wrote and published romance novels, the paranormals were calling me from my closet where I’d stashed them in a shoe box. Finally, I opened an old Word document and printed out a first chapter for my critique group. It didn’t seem like the revised Gypsy, but I hadn’t pulled out the shoe box yet. Did that yesterday and found two complete manuscripts for the first book in my paranormal series. No note to self on which was the revision but I figured it out soon enough.

Here’s how I’m fixing my world: I’m reading through the first two books of the series to create a bible of the world. To make it fun, I’m going to just highlight what I need to save for the bible and continue reading. No corrections, no revision, just read through and track all the building blocks of the world. Not that I’m recommending my method, but if you’re a person who doesn’t know what your next sentence will be, let alone your next chapter, this may be the way you build worlds too.

Gypsy Time

Yesterday I got a note from my would-be editor who said I can expect some feedback on Blue Heaven in 8 weeks. That’s a long time. But not in publishing land. It’s the blink of an eye and I should be grateful and I am except now–

Well now there is nothing stopping me working on the Gypsy books. I built that world as I went along and it shows. I need to read both books and note every other world fact. I need to build a Gypsy bible. Wouldn’t hurt to do characters/eye color/height/hair color/age either. So, read. How hard can that be?

Stuff going on today but it’s first on the agenda tomorrow.

Into the Mystic

I’m a little bit of a mystic sometimes. One of the things that I feel was fated for me was being born at this time as a writer, both as an indie writer and with an established e-publisher. Online publisher The Wild Rose Press put out The Paris Notebook and they are part of that mix of my writing career  coming together with a 21st Century kind of synchronicity.

TWRP people are like a big happy family of book lovers. Romance, to be sure, but still quality books at reasonable prices and excellent terms for authors. This is the way the literary world is going. And I feel lucky to have hopped aboard TWRP. I sent the senior editor of my line a complete manuscript on Friday. Today she got back to me, having already passed along my manuscript to the woman who will be my new editor. If I get offered a contract. As far as I know, it’s always a one book contract with TWRP.

When I think back to the 20th Century and the six months or years it took just to hear a no–it’s like a bad dream. I went through that several times. That was my training and I’m happy for it. I wrote a lot of “practice” books and learned much of what I needed to break into actual published novel writing. I get a bit teary-eyed when I think that this is all I have ever wanted to do. As in career, not life. I wanted a life, a husband, children, a home. I wanted to be a housewife/writer but life conspired to take me places I never suspected I’d end up. Like a working woman. Single mom. College educated–hell college lecturer! Finally lasting love with a wonderful man and two sons who make me proud every day and grateful for the loving wives they found first time around:)

I feel very much like I am right where I am supposed to be, right here, right now. And I’m happy to be in this place of peace and contentment. Well, kitchen could use a bit of fixing up, but when you’ve lived in a house for 26 years, something or other always needs repair. That’s another thing I cannot believe. I think the longest I lived anywhere before I settled here is maybe four years. My parents moved a lot, I moved a lot. Those first two decades was always somewhere new. The only thing I’ve kept from that time is the desk I bought myself when I decided to get serious about writing. It’s a bit banged up, but it’s sturdy and it works for me.

I always knew I would be a writer. I didn’t know the meandering path it would take to get here, but I had fun along the way, learned a lot, surprised myself several times, and feel truly blessed. Now that may change once I hear from the editor who has my manuscript….am hoping she likes reading it as much as I liked writing it!

Wheat Belly Flop

Even as I read the first section of “Wheat Belly” I knew it was too good to be true. What is true is that I need to lose a significant amount of weight around my middle. Welcome to middle age! Have you heard yet about yo-yo dieters dilemma? (Hello, my name is Cindy, and I am a yo-yo dieter. I think 99% of us are) If you never gain weight, you won’t have that middle age gain. If you gain and lose a bunch of times, you are likely to keep the belly and no magic trick like not eating wheat will save you.

If you have Celiac’s, don’t eat wheat. Otherwise, it’s all about portion control wrapped in a new package. I eat too much bread and pasta. Period. So I decided I’d try to go “wheatless” and see what happened. Lots of beans and rice, fruit and veggies. Yougurt, peanut butter on a spoon instead of bread, cheese cubes but no crackers. South Beach, Atkins, done them all. More than once. I know that eating less carbs is going to help me lose weight.

So I tried it. And after a few days, I ate a sleeve of Saltines. Yes, the entire sleeve. I am not proud of myself but I did learn something. It is not good to cut all wheat from my diet. Some people under 50 might think, as I did, that there must be a magic age when you can stop worrying about your weight. And there is. But then that vanity worry is replaced with health concerns. Too much fat around the middle is the root of all evil and every disease on the planet.

This past year I let my natural hair grow in. It’s “salt and pepper” but the salt is silver and I really like it. It’s like a sheen over my hair. Plus no more three hour salon appointments at $200 a pop. That’s nice. So the truth is, there is a time when we can give up vanity. I have. But only to a point. I’m a litte worried about losing weight. I see what happens to my friends faces when they lose it. I think I’ll be okay with ten pounds gone, face-wise. But twenty? Which is what I really need to lose? (OK, 30 would be the doctor’s joy, but I can only kid myself so far…) All those sagging flaps of skin–a little scary.

I know for a fact that I’ll be losing some lbs this weekend. I have a colonoscopy (forget I mentioned it until you turn 50) scheduled so I’m going to be clean as a whistle without a crumb in my tummy come Monday morning. And even though the wheat belly flopped, I am watching my carbs again. They are my true weakness. Well, carbs and sugar. And wine.