Lynn Jatania's Blog, page 4

Favourite Characters

My husband read my new book.

It was really hard for me to resist asking him whether or not he liked it. Because we all know there’s only one possible answer to that question, for the sake of my happiness and the continued success of our marriage, so why bother asking at all? So although of course I wanted reassurance, I managed to not quite ask.

Instead, I asked him if there were any stories or characters that he particularly liked. As with most people, I’m finding, his favourites were Tim and Claire.

Then I asked him if there were any characters he disliked, and that was much more interesting. There were two characters he did not like at all – not that he didn’t like the stories, or think that they were poorly written, it’s just that he didn’t care for the people who were starring in those tales.

I won’t tell you who he didn’t like. If you’ve read the book, you might have your own guesses.

But it was interesting to me because I like ALL my main characters. Even when they are struggling and making questionable decisions and being snappish, I understand where they are coming from. I’ve felt that way sometimes, I’ve made those same mistakes. They have my sympathy.

I was wondering after our discussion – is it even possible to write a character that you do not like? At least in some small way?

My writing friend Tudor Robins once told me that all characters act in a way that they genuinely think is for the best. They are trying to do the best thing for themselves, and maybe for others they care about. No “bad guy” can act purely out of spite or evil; it’s too cardboard, too unrelateable, not believable.

So if you understand the motivations of your antagonists, and you empathize with them in order to write from their point of view – doesn’t that mean that you like them, at least a little bit?

Did J.K. Rowling have sympathy for Voldemort? Did George Lucas understand where the Emperor was coming from? Did L. Frank Baum think of the Wicked Witch of the West with fondness?

Speaking from personal experience, I’m not sure I could write a character that I honestly did not like. The ten leads in Ten at the Wedding are like my kids – I could never choose a favourite, and I love them all.

How about you – was there anyone you especially liked, and anyone you disliked?

The post Favourite Characters appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

Coffee Shop

I wrote this little piece for a writing class I’m taking. It was a fail on several levels:

it was supposed to be a passionate argument, and instead I wrote the quietest little disagreement ever;
it was supposed to be all dialog, with minimal or no use of signifiers (“he said” and “she said”), and instead I used bunches of them; and
when I read it in class, most of my fellow students were pretty confused about what was happening in the scene.

But I still kind of liked it, and although part of me thought, you should work on it some more, part of me thought, nope, I like it for what it is.

What do you think – do you ever dig in your heels over something you’ve written, and refuse to change it? Is that the mark of a strong, confident writer – or a naive writer who refuses to improve through constructive criticism?

I wonder.

Anyway, here it is.

Coffee Shop

You said – Maybe it’s time.

Time for what – I said, although I knew.

Time to let go – you said.

I put down my coffee cup, and looked out the window. People hurried by in the street, going places.

I’m not ready, I said.

You said – I don’t want to have a shrine in the house. I can’t take it, looking at his room every day.

It was sensible. You did that thing where you bang your wedding ring against the side of your mug, making nervous chimes. Ping. Ping. Ping. I nodded.

You said – See, you nod there, but I know you aren’t going to do anything about it.

I like having his room the way it was. It’s a comfort to me, I said. I thought of the laundry still heaped on the floor, the poster peeling from one corner that I couldn’t bring myself to fix. The mess fit nicely into our space, my space.

You said – How about this weekend, I’ll ask my sister to come over and help box up a few things? Not everything, just some things? Tidy up a bit?

There was a time when I would have cried at that. This time I just swallowed the lump in my throat, choking it down. Progress, I suppose.

I said – Maybe later. Maybe soon. It hasn’t been that long, really. Six months is not that long when you lose a child.

You frowned, and looked out the window. I had a fleeting vision of you on the outside, walking. Part of the forward flow. Me still inside, looking out. Sitting with a coffee, frozen.

You said – When, then?

I said – I can’t name a time. I’ll know when I know.

You said – I can’t wait forever.

I thought – I can.

We sat in silence, sipping. Looking out. Staying put.

The post Coffee Shop appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

It’s Official – The Book Is Out!

I’m so thrilled to announce that my little book is now out and available for sale. Sound the cannons, pop the champagne, throw the confetti!

It’s called Ten at the Wedding and you can buy it in eBook or Paperback format at these lovely websites:

Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.ca

Here’s the blurb:

Love, laughter, joy, and bittersweet sorrow. Everyone loves a wedding and the messy soup of emotions it brings up. Whether they’re a junior bridesmaid looking for love, the groom’s co-worker suffering through another event as a single, or the mother of the flower girl trying to make a new start, each person in the room is drawn to thoughts of the past and future, of life lived and experiences yet to come.

Join ten guests at the same reception as they explore their own mixed emotions from different perspectives. Some are sentimental, some are heartbroken, some are lonely. But in the end, all will find hope at the wedding.

If you do buy it, and read it, I would love it if you could leave a review on Amazon (site of your choice). Starred reviews on Amazon are the bread and butter of book selling. It would mean so much to me to have a few thoughts there.

For those of you in the Ottawa area, I hope to have a release party sometime soon, and I’ll have a few copies available for sale there. More details soon!

The post It’s Official – The Book Is Out! appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

Cover Reveal!

I’ve been working on this project for a long time, but it didn’t really feel real to me until I saw the cover. Now it seems like it’s actually happening – I’m going to publish a book! Of fiction! That I wrote!

Thrilling, and scary, and delightful.

Here’s the cover, by Vivian Cheng of Blend Creations.

Squee!

The post Cover Reveal! appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

The Road to Self-Publishing

I’ve spent a lot of time reading about self-publishing, and I’ve definitely drunk the Kool Aid – I’m sold, all in, committed. Self-publishing has come a long way from the days when it was vanity publishing for those who couldn’t get a “real” publishing contract. These days, people are making a living as authors through the power of selling their work online by themselves – and they’re retaining copyrights, keeping much more of the profit, and working on their own release schedules, too. It’s a glorious new age, and I want to be a part of it.

I’ve been working on a slim little book of short stories and I’m going to be self-publishing it – soon! I wanted a small project to get my feet wet in the world of self-pub, and because the learning curve is a little steep.

But now, what started as a loose sort-of goal about a year and a half ago is actually in the works – I have an editor! and a cover! and a formatted book! It should actually be available for purchase within six weeks or so.

So, how do you go about self-publishing a book?

Step one – write a book. Make it awesome. Show it to awesome beta readers and take their feedback and rework it. Repeat until it is as awesome as you think it can be.

Step two – find an editor. Don’t skimp on this! Get a good copy editor and proofreader, at least. Take all their comments and think about every single one. Make it perfect. (Shout out to my amazing editor, Jennifer Jaquith of Morning Rain Publishing.)

Step three – time to think about publishing! You’ll need to format the inside of the book for both print and eBook (if you want to do both). You’ll need a cover. You can do both of these things yourself, or hire a graphic designer to do it for you. If it’s in the budget, a real designer is worth it – they say not to judge a book by its cover, but that’s what a lot of book buyers do. I personally am using a purchased template from Joel Frielander for the interior of the print version, and my editor is making the eBook version as part of my package. The cover is coming soon, and it looks so, so good – it’s by Vivian Cheng of Blend Creations.

Step four – got an inside, an outside, and an eBook? Time to put it all together – and list it for sale! I’ll be using CreateSpace to create my books; you can just upload everything, pick a price for it, and bam! you’re good to go. They are affiliated with Amazon, so your book should appear there within a few days, both for eBook download and the print version, which is printed on demand.

And that’s it! Okay, it sounds simple when laid out like this, but there are a few details and stumbling blocks here and there. But really, when it comes to getting your writing into the hands of your readers, doesn’t this sound much easier than going through the publishing process – sending your work out, waiting months to hear, possibly winning that 1 in 1000 lottery slot, only to have to wait, wait, and wait some more while they design a cover you don’t like, sell it whenever they get around to it, at a price you have no say over?

I think so. So it’s happening – cover reveal soon!

The post The Road to Self-Publishing appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

The Life and Death of the Written Word

I read an interesting article in Geist magazine recently that explained how Socrates was dead set against the written word. He felt that without the interpretation of an instructor, the nuances of meaning would be lost; anyone could read anything and totally take it the wrong way. Plus, he felt that the act of writing things down would make humans, as a whole, mentally lazy; they’d lose the power of memory because they’d know they could just look stuff up, instead of having to remember it.

It took a long, long time, but the internet almost seems to be proving Socrates right. Now, with so much information available at our fingertips, it’s overwhelming to even try to remember it all. Everything from the answers to science questions to lists of just the right word to recipes to my own to-do list is stored online, and I can look it up whenever I like. Thus, very little lives on in my own brain – my memory has gone external.

At the same time, I read another notice online about a brand new museum that opened in May in Chicago – the America Writers’ Museum. It’s a celebration of those wordsmiths who captured the American experience – and thus influenced the whole world of literature. It’s about Hemingway and Kerouac and Emily Dickinson, but it’s also a generic celebration of what it means to be a writer. There are exhibits that are just celebrations of words, that attempt to show visitors what it is like to be an author, and to encourage everyone to try their hand at the written word.

I like it that such a place exists. I’d like to go there.

So which is it: written words good, or written words bad?

There’s no easy answer. I’ve read that a writer is someone who writes – not necessarily someone who is published or paid for their work, but someone who processes the world by writing it down. People with diaries, or blogs, or avid letter writers. People who, when something exciting happens, are already composing a description of it in their heads, real time. You know who you are, you internal monologists, you who can’t sleep until something is written down where the beauty of it can be safely captured, safely preserved. You’re the writers.

I have to say, it’d be a sad world for me without writing. It’s where I sort out my thoughts, where I process. Socrates can stuff it, as far as I’m concerned.

But perhaps there is something to the idea of the oral tradition, and the idea of a working memory giving us greater mental abilities and flexibility. Maybe writing things down does make us dumber, in a way.

But I prefer to argue that it just clears space for new thoughts, and new ideas, and new stories. So I’ll keep writing things down, and celebrating the writers, and moving on to creating the new, I think.

The post The Life and Death of the Written Word appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

Bathroom Reading and the Positive Word Project

There are a lot of magazines in my house.

I think that’s something of a throwback, a retro way of getting information. I like the quieter pace of a magazine versus the immediate rush of flipping through the internet, clicking from link to link when something catches your fancy, going deeper down the rabbit hole with nothing much to show at the end. Not that I don’t spend my fair share of time – or more than my fair share! – surfing, but I do love the thrill of actual mail in the mailbox, a curated set of articles and fascinating information in one pretty, glossy package.

My mother does, too, and this past year she gifted my kids with a few subscriptions each to some fascinating and unique magazines for kids. I like reading them too, but the titles were starting to stack up a bit around here as we fell behind.

Then I had a brainwave: magazine rack in the bathroom.

The kids, or myself, will go for a bathroom break, and come out with some excellent tidbit of information. Maybe it’s about baby pandas and how zoos manage when twins are born. Maybe it’s behind the scenes information about the upcoming Star Wars movie. Maybe it’s a brief history of the periodic table.

The other day I was checking out Muse – sort of a magazine version of CBC Radio for kids – and they had this great article on words. Every writer I know loves words – finding just the right one to say what you want to say is some kind of nirvana.

This article was about a researcher called Tim Lomas, who has a project on the go where he collects unique words – words in various languages that are untranslatable, because there’s no exact parallel in any other language. And even better, he’s specifically interested in words about feelings and emotions, that have a positive bent – words that can help us understand each other better, share our experiences better, and most importantly, feel better. It’s called the Positive Lexicography Project.

There’s “bilita mpash,” from the Bantu, means a wonderful, positive dream – the opposite of a nightmare. “Whakakoakoa” from the Maori is how to tell someone to cheer up. “Tjuvsmaka” is Swedish for stealing small bits of food while cooking, when you think no one is looking – I’m having that one put on an apron. And my new favourite? “Chrysalism,” which is actually English for the warm, safe feeling you get when you are inside during a thunderstorm. I adore that feeling, and often tried to talk about it during a storm, and never knew there was an actual word for it. In my own language, no less!

It’s a beautiful thing, it seems to me, to discover glorious new words in a fascinating magazine right in your own bathroom.

The post Bathroom Reading and the Positive Word Project appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

First Draft

I’ve been working on a set of short stories for about a year. When I write it out like that, it sounds like such a big deal, a huge project, a whole year! But although this is a major step up for me as a writer – I’m planning to publish them together in a very small, very short book – I still think of it as a little hobby, a side thing that I do, just a lark.

This week I finally pulled all ten stories together for the first time in a single document. The official First Draft of my First Book. I have to say, it felt pretty momentous to type out a cover page that said, “by Lynn Jatania.” I felt simultaneously like a huge poser and the best writer ever. I guess the truth, as with most stories, falls somewhere in between.

I’m hoping to self publish the book this fall, so now I’m struggling to learn all about the world of self-pub. I spend my writing time reading about margins and fonts and PDF and HTML. It’s overwhelming, and exciting, but mostly a drag – this is the non-creative part, I suppose.

But it’s also the necessary part, the closure, the stuff that actually puts my writing out in the world, and I want that. So hopefully this fall, you’ll see a book available on Amazon – Ten At The Wedding, by Lynn Jatania.

The post First Draft appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

What’s in a Name?

For me, one of the hardest parts of writing fiction is naming my characters. It’s very rare, the character that emerges with a name already attached, fitting them perfectly like a glove. Instead, I usually try on dozens of names before I settle on one, and even then, I’m usually unhappy with it, always feeling like a better name is just around the corner.

It’s a great time waster, when I’m supposed to be writing, to spend endless hours searching baby name databases and flipping through baby name books and Googling for “the top 10 baby names of 1935” to find just the right name for each character. And even after all that research, it seems there’s always another name, a better name, just outside my field of vision.

Recently I came across this fantastic article, . I like a name with a little pizzazz, a little bit of something that sets it apart, although such names must be used sparingly – if everyone in your story is named Hammer or Pickle or Cinnamon Pie, then it does become a bit of a stretch. Plus, you need a character with a big personality to pull of an unusual name – I tend to write about the Kates and Jennifers and Michaels of the world, there’s not too many truly unusual characters in my world.

Still, that names list was inspiring. It has me thinking – maybe I’ve been doing it all wrong. Instead of writing a story, then trying to name my characters – maybe I should find a name, and then try to build a world around that. What kind of a person is Curley, for example, or Dorman, or Wardell? How would the name Lavada, Sister, or Texie affect a young girl growing into adulthood? It triggers something – a bit of interest, a bit of intrigue – and often that’s all it takes, one small thing, to launch a story idea.

I’m going to sit down with a cup of tea and mull over the full list and see what pops. Could be next year you’ll be reading about my new alter egos, Metro, Gust, Hildred, and Charlsie. I’m looking forward to meeting them.

The post appeared first on Lynn Jatania.

Tuesday, 7:30 a.m.

I haven’t posted any creative writing in a while – Spring is always the busiest time for my family and I’ve been having trouble finding the time for short pieces and to keep up with the gentle, low-pressure assignments in my writing group. But I dashed this one off the other day – the assignment was to create a conversation between two characters, using a few “tags” (like he said, she said) as possible. It turned out pretty good for fewer than 300 words.

Want to try your own? If you do, I’d love to read it – feel free to drop it or a link to it in the comments!

Tuesday, 7:30 a.m.

The coffee burbles cheerfully, almost offensively. She taps her fingers on the counter as she waits for caffeine, her eyes blurry, staring into space. He squints at a tablet at the table, re-reading the same email multiple times as he struggles to focus.

I think I got a total of five hours of sleep last night, she says.

I think we need to set up automatic billing, he says.

It was one hour up, one hour down. She’s just so stuffy, she couldn’t settle.

I keep forgetting to pay the hydro. If we approve the automatic billing it will just happen and we won’t have to worry about it.

I think I might have fallen asleep nursing. All I remember is the clock saying 1, and then 1:33, and I don’t know how I got there.

This website sucks. It keeps telling me I’m not authorized. Authorize this, idiots.

At least she seems calmer since I gave her some Advil. You think it was the right thing, don’t you? Giving her medicine?

I’m going to have to call them later. There’s no way the helpline is open yet, don’t you think?

There’s a bing.

Coffee? She asks.

None for me, he says. I want to get in early so I can set up for that training course.

He checks his watch.

I’m actually late, he says.

I’m also late, she says.

He chuckles. What are you late for? You don’t want to go anywhere today, the little miss isn’t up for it.

No, she says. I’m late-late.

There’s a silence and they turn and look at each other for the first time that morning, rumpled in jammies, grizzled with stubble.

She smiles, and he smiles, and they say nothing at all.

The post Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. appeared first on Lynn Jatania.