Carol Newman Cronin's Blog, page 50

Rio 2016: An Open Letter to All Medal-less Olympians

Dear Olympians Without Medals,

Trust me, it will get better again soon. Right now, you are surrounded by the five rings of Olympic circus, where everyone you meet is a member of the same elite club. And you may be feeling like a second-class citizen, or worse still like a loser, because you don’t have anything shiny hanging around your neck and you weren’t standing on that damned podium.

But in a few days, you will leave the Olympic world and come back down to earth again. And almost instantly you’ll realize that, outside of that shiny five-ring bubble, your new status as an Olympian is incredible all by itself. More people get struck by lightning than get to do what you’ve just done. It’s special. You’re special.

Some of you will start training again right away for 2020. Some of you will take a break and then jump in again, deciding that the adrenaline rush is worth all the hard work and sacrifice—and maybe feeling that you and the Olympics have unfinished business. And many of you will decide, after reclaiming some perspective, that another four years of total devotion to your sport is too big a sacrifice: that instead you want to pursue a more stable career, or a steady relationship, or even just the daily pleasures of a less nomadic and less goal-driven life.

No matter what you decide to do next, being an Olympian will help you achieve your next dream too. Yup, it’s a great thing to have on your resumé. But besides the opportunities it can bring in sponsorship, or job offers, or just bragging rights at your favorite local hangout, competing at such a high level has already taught you more about yourself and what you need to do your best than you realize right now.

But don’t worry about your future just yet. The Olympic experience only comes around once every four years, so enjoy it—bask in it. Go to see other sports, and appreciate the grit and drive and focus of all those other athletes who are still competing. Best of all, go cheer on all of your fellow Olympians Without Medals, the ones who finish sixth, or eighth, or even last—they put in just as much hard work as the winners, and nobody else realizes that quite as well as you do right now.

Don’t worry about cheering on the medal winners; they’ll get plenty of attention from everyone else—and rightly so, of course. Instead, be the one who follows the race behind the leaders, that battle for twelfth place that happens after all the cameras have left that part of the track. There’s nothing like the Olympics, and that’s what makes the sacrifice and hard work all worth it—for each and every competitor, no matter where they finish.

As you’re cheering and flag-waving, focus on the achievement it is to be an Olympian—and try not to dwell on what you didn’t win. That gritty feeling of losing will fade a little, with time, but the shiny memories of doing your best on the world stage will not. Olympians are never former, never past—no matter what they don’t bring home.

Getting Away to a Different View

I’ve always wondered why people lucky enough to live in a beautiful resort community (like me) still feel the need to “get away.” I mean, all those cars are piling onto our island on Friday afternoons for a reason; we live in a fantastic place.

And then this year, I finally figured it out. Getting away is important no matter how ideal the location you leave is. Because it’s the best way to gain perspective on the life we live day to day.

Getting away means an instant transition from local to tourist.  It means seeing a beautiful view with fresh eyes. And it forces us to let go of everyday habits so comfortable, we don’t even realize they are choices in themselves.

This summer, a combination of circumstances made it possible for us to spend several weeks in a cabin overlooking beautiful Penobscot Bay. It’s the first time in twenty years that Paul and I have left our house (overlooking beautiful Narragansett Bay) empty for that long, and there was a little trepidation. Will our pesky fridge stop running? What about our resident groundhog—will he eat every flower in sight before we get back?

It’s not that Penobscot Bay is any more lovely than Narragansett Bay; it’s just that it’s not home. The simple act of getting away is what counts. From a greater distance, it was easy to figure out what was important to us: a morning workout, a few hours of work, getting on the water every afternoon, and the pure simple luxury of sitting together on a screened in porch with a view. We ended every day settled into our chairs, watching the light as it lengthened into evening, enjoying the vista in front of us.

The first night we watched a dramatic thunderstorm pass by, too many miles away to be audible. With no sound, the bolts lit up the clouds without threat or rumble—a natural light show. In the foreground, lightning bugs played. Until that night, the only place I’d ever seen both lightning and lightning bugs in the same zip code was in the famous Mark Twain quote: “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter—‘tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” That first evening, we found both the almost right word and the right word dancing together, in the same visual frame.

We were away long enough to settle into a new pattern, and yet not so long that we forgot to savor every one of those luxurious summer evenings. The rhythm of our days slowed enough to absorb subtle changes in light, sun angle, leaf colors. And almost every afternoon, we explored a new harbor or beach or lake on our stand up paddleboards. We learned details about a familiar coastline that before we’d only seen from the distance required by a larger cruising boat.

I’ve always associated slowing down down east with being on a boat, but it turns out the same inner perspective can be achieved while living on land—at least with daily access to the water. Because it’s not the actual harbor view that matters; it’s the fact that the view is a different one from home. Instead of worrying about the next recycling pickup or when the garden should be watered, we took time to watch, and listen, and sigh with pleasure.

Thanks to our neighbors (who watered the vegetable garden, and ignored the overgrown lawn), everything at home survived just fine—though when we returned, the groundhog and a skunk both seemed quite put out that we expected them to share our yard again. And now, as we slip back into our daily lives, we can still see what really matters to us: playing on the water, exercising our minds and bodies, learning new skills. We’re very lucky to live in a place where we can do all of that without going somewhere else. And by getting away once in awhile, we’ll appreciate it even more.

Social Media Maturation: 2016 Update

This post originally published in July 2012, about three lifetimes ago by social media standards. And yet most of its information still holds true. As part of my republishing plan after killing the first generation of this blog, I’ve updated it for 2016.

It seems like the more communication alternatives we add, the more ways we find ourselves mis-communicating. With so many sites, phones, and email accounts to check, sometimes I find myself wishing we were all still writing letters to each other.

And then I remember how many people I interact with on a given day, all without leaving my desk—and I wonder how we ever made plans, met people, or found out what was happening out in the real world, back in the dark ages before wireless, mobile phones, and social media.

In 2009, I set up this blog and registered for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I was excited to try out all of the big three new forms of communication, but I didn’t really understand how each would fit (or not fit) into my daily routine. Now after three seven years, I can tell you what works best for me.

1. Blogging: I’ve settled on once a week as a barely manageable schedule for posting new content. Having the link right in my email signature (thanks to WiseStamp) is a great way to promote my blog, but it also reminds me (when I see a return email) if the latest post is getting stale. That’s always good incentive to come up with a new topic.

I enjoy blogging because it’s a chance to delve into whatever seems most important to me at the moment—while hopefully remaining relevant to other writers and sailors. To those of you who have subscribed, left comments, or just plain enjoyed these weekly posts, thank you!

2. Facebook: I use Facebook for both pleasure and business, and it’s harder and harder to separate the two into distinct buckets. Pleasure includes maintaining impersonal but still satisfying “relationships” with people I’ve never met, reconnecting with people I haven’t seen in a few decades, or staying up to date with a friend I just saw last week. Business includes promoting book signings, new books, and blog posts. (Wave if you’re reading this after finding it via Facebook.)

Facebook has definitely evolved in the past three six years, which is why we’re all still using it. It’s easy to share photos and video, and most people include enough text to say something meaningful. And it’s also easy to breeze through the experiences of 250 people in about ten minutes.

2016 UPDATE: Over the past four years, it’s become harder and harder to see a wide range of friends’ feeds, as those we interact with the most get prioritized by the bots. That means that Facebook friends who post as rarely as I do have mostly faded from view. And as the variety of perspectives I see is reduced, the more my feed becomes dominated by those who publish more often. I now know way too much about the lives of way too few of these friends, so I’ve learned to skim through my feed even faster than I did four years ago.

3. Twitter: Only a few months after setting up my account I was already being described as a “tepid tweeter.” For the past few months I’ve been checking it about once a week, though I do get an email if anyone mentions @cansail. Twitter is a great source of up to the minute information, and sometimes I feel like I know who won a regatta before the sailors do. But on a daily basis, I’ve let it drop off my “must check” routine.

2016 UPDATE: I go on Twitter rarely, usually when someone retweets something from @cansail, which is set up to automatically post my weekly blogs. And once in awhile I will check there for up to the moment regatta updates.

4. LinkedIn: I never really warmed up to LinkedIn; it always seemed rather impersonal. I delete any requests to connect there, and though my contact information is listed I never go to the site. Who knows, maybe my new best friend is waiting there for me… two people, separated by the irrational social media choices we all make.

2016 UPDATE: Only thing to add is that I’ve considered deleting my acccount, for security reasons. So far, I haven’t bothered.

5. Google+: I have a Google+ account, and I keep thinking we should all move there since it has a lot of nice features. So far, only a few friends have set up accounts there—and all of them have some sort of promotional reason to do so. I’m sure this will become more popular as Google figures out how to better promote it.

2016 UPDATE: In spite of all predictions to the contrary, Google has finally given up on this platform. I feel badly for anyone who embraced it too eagerly, thinking (as I did) that such an internet powerhouse would eventually figure out a way to make us all move there.

New for 2016:

6. Other People’s Blogs: There’s a lot of great information out there, and I don’t tend to websurf on a regular basis. So if I see a blog I like, I subscribe (if possible). That way the info will come to me any time there’s a new post. I’ll include some of my favorites in a later post.

We’ve all matured together. No one can cover every aspect of social media, so I’ve chosen the ones that I enjoy the most and let the other ones go.

How’s your social media maturation going, and what do you think I’m missing in this list? Let me know via the comments below.

Let the Games Begin: Game of Sails for $2.99

Four years ago, just before London 2012 began, Game of Sails had its debut on the world stage of books. And now, to celebrate the opening ceremonies of Rio 2016, the ebook is on sale for $2.99.

Although readers today probably assume the story grew out of the 2004 Olympics, this novel’s first draft actually dates back to 1994. My goal was to capture the nomadic lifestyles of sailing’s Olympic hopefuls—or rather, of two fictional opposites with the same Olympic dream. Casey has a single-minded determination to make it to the Olympics, by working harder than anyone else. Spencer wants to go to the Games too, but he’s counting on a speed edge.

Back in the early 90s, either approach could win the US Trials. (And based on the successful 1992 Games, any American sailor who won the Trials automatically became a medal favorite.)

Today, the Casey philosophy (work harder than anyone else) dominates the world of Olympic sailing. Athletes with Spencer’s more casual approach, on the other hand, have hung up their Olympic dreams. It’s no longer realistic to plan on winning the US Trials just by showing up in Miami to escape the New England winter—even as a very successful college skipper with a custom sail design.

In the full-time world of 21st century Olympic sailing, Spencer would probably be hired on as a highly paid consultant—maybe even by Casey. He just doesn’t like training that much, especially once it becomes a job.

Olympic sailing isn’t the only thing that’s changed since 1994. Twenty years ago, the only path to getting a book published was to find an agent and then sell the rights to a publisher. Even if that first draft had been ready for prime time, Game of Sails would’ve been a hard sell—especially a decade before its author ever dreamed of becoming an Olympian. Fortunately, today’s authors can choose when to debut a book—and can also put it on sale to mark special occasions. It was a long road, with more drafts than I like to think about, but I’m glad I waited until 2012 to send this Olympic love story out into the world.

And I’m also glad I didn’t wait any longer. 2016 athletes will probably find Spencer (or even Casey) rather old-fashioned in their part-time approach to campaigning, so it seemed important to capture the end of the amateur era in Olympic sailing—if only to appreciate how far we’ve come since then.

Much as things have changed both in publishing and Olympic sailing, some of their traits are quite timeless. To publish a good book, you still need to start with a good story. For a successful Olympic campaign, you still need a burning desire to stand on that podium. And both, it turns out, can be their own reward—even for those of us who don’t bring home a medal or see our books on the bestseller list.

Good luck to all 2016 Olympians! And if you need a distracting read in Rio, email me—I’ll send you a code for a free download.

Read more about the story behind Game of Sails. You may also enjoy the stories behind my other two books, Oliver’s Surprise and Cape Cod Surprise.

Coaches and Editors: What They Have in Common

Next week, as we settle into watch the Rio Olympics, it will be easy to ignore one of the most significant groups of people on site: the coaches. Off-camera, staying well behind the scenes, these folks will play a very important role in making those medal dreams come true.

Of course, a coach’s most important work was done well before the Games even started. Just like an editor’s work is done long before a book is published. And that’s not the only thing the two groups have in common.

The best editors and coaches work hard to reduce distractions. At Athens 2004, for Gary Bodie, that included making some last-minute outboard repairs.

First off, neither group should be underestimated in importance to the final “product.” A good coach can see an athlete’s weaknesses and direct training accordingly—maybe, given enough time, even turn some of those weaknesses into strengths. The same middle distance required of a good editor is a very useful coaching skill (though “adding a skylight” will obviously mean something completely different).

Second, the best examples of both share a common personality type. While athletes and authors must be their own biggest fans, editors and coaches need to be satisfied with blending into the background. They are not the face of a victory (or defeat); they are instead the invisible backbone that makes a bestseller or medal possible. Dependable, unflappable, calm, and usually quiet, the best will be able to see the big picture—while still keeping a sharp eye on the details.

They must also be okay with never getting any credit for their work. All that unseen background effort to create winning prose or to win medals might not ever be publicly (or even privately) recognized, even by the lucky recipients. Maybe there will be a quick aside during an interview, or a name buried toward the back of a book’s acknowledgements. But most coaches and editors will find their rewards in the work itself, because if they do their jobs really well, observers won’t even see the changes and developments they worked so hard to implement. The best books read effortlessly, just as the peak performances of the best athletes usually look easy.

Day to day, of course, adding and subtracting words on a page or screen is completely different from molding athletes into medal-makers. Editing is quite sedentary, while Olympic coaching requires banging around in a boat often too small for the sea state. And the same place of honor held by the elegant hard-cover dictionary and thesaurus on an editor’s office shelves might, in a coach’s world, be reserved for a rough bunch of wind-noisy, proprietary, rough-cut videos.

These differences in detail explain why, when seeking a new career path, most editors would not think to apply for a coaching job. (Similarly, only a few lucky athletes would ever choose to become authors.)

So as we settle in to watch our favorite athletes perform in Rio, let’s not forget their coaches. They may be doing their best to blend into the background, but they are responsible for much of the success we will hopefully be celebrating.

And the next time you enjoy a book, flip to the back to see if you can spot the editor’s name. And if you do, murmur a quiet “thank you.”

SUP Yoga: Cross Training to a New Perspective

Since 2012, I’ve been stand up paddling (SUP) three or four times per week, year round. It’s a great way to combine time on the water with a workout, in a harbor that offers a surprising variety of paddling options.

Up until this year, the most frequently asked question was “What do you wear in the winter?” (I answered in Dress for Success.)

Now that I’ve added SUP Yoga to my weekly schedule, the most frequently asked question is, “Don’t you ever fall off?”

That answer, up until last Friday, was a firm “No.” Now I have to say, “Only once so far.”

SUP Yoga has been a great addition to my weekly workout schedule. I’ve increased my flexibility and range of motion, as well as improving my balance and comfort level on the so-called “mountain bike” of SUPs, the SIC Bullet, which I’ve been paddling since April.

Another beautiful morning for SUP Yoga, tied up astern of Matsya. Photo: PaulCroninStudios

When I fell in, I wasn’t even trying a new pose; I was just settling into a kneeling lunge/twist—and the next thing I knew, I was swimming. I climbed back on the board and tried again, but now my wet skin was too slippery to lock my right elbow against the outside of my left knee. So instead (after a quick chuckle) I moved on to another pose—though I’ll come back to that one again in my next session.

I have the luxury of moving on to the next pose whenever I’m ready, because for me SUP Yoga is a solo endeavour. I paddle my SIC Bullet out to our Herreshoff Fish Matsya (Sanskrit for “lord of the fishes”) and tie up astern, spreading out a yoga mat on top of the board for a little extra padding. Then I spend about forty-five minutes working through various poses, without a lot of pre-planning or forethought. I follow it up with a rewarding swim—diving in, rather than falling in.

I did try drifting, since that’s what I see the local SUP yoga classes doing, but I found it too distracting to wonder where I would end up. Having a stable location in the harbor allows me to drift off mentally, rather than physically—a key piece of why I find this new addition to my mornings so refreshing.

I don’t have a set routine, and there are definitely poses I’ve crossed off my list for now—though I hope to add them in as I improve. Floating yoga also rewards some modifications in form; once my feet move away from the board’s center line, a wider stance is best. And it helps to be planning on that after-swim anyway, just in case I do lose my balance again.

Standing, kneeling, and twisting on such a twitchy platform, I’ve learned a lot about my body’s center of effort—and that has already improved my sailing and paddling. I’ve also gained a completely new perspective on the harbor around me. Downward facing dog frames the nearby osprey nest between my knees and flips water over sky; on one recent reflective morning, it was hard to tell the difference between the two. And when I stand up to paddle back to shore, it always takes a minute or two for the right side up world to settle back into normalcy. Shaking up our viewpoints is something we should all do more often, even if it’s just looking at something familiar in a whole new way.

One of the best things about solo SUP yoga is that I was able to start off very small, with a few simple poses, and then add in something new each time. I also adapt what I do to the conditions. How much I need to focus on balancing the board (rather than just myself) varies moment to moment, depending on three variables: boat wakes, current, and wind. Opening myself up to what’s around me helps to determine my next move.

Here are a few basic poses to try the next time you need a change of perspective:

Downward facing dog

Child’s pose

Cat/cow

Cobra pose

Dolphin or Plank

Bow pose

And when you’re ready to get a little more adventurous, try a kneeling lunge and then work yourself up to a twist (either seated, kneeling, or standing). Who knows, you may even stay dry.

Editing Best Practices: The Middle Distance

Imagine you’ve built your dream house, painstakingly installed a lot of custom cabinetry, and have finally painted the living room. The walls are a creamy white, the ceiling a distinctive sky blue. You’re just about to carry in a new recliner and settle into it against the far wall, under that darling bay window, when your favorite architect arrives. Looking around with more of a frown than you expected, she tells you that the living room would be a whole lot more pleasant if you replaced that sky blue ceiling with a skylight. And while you’re at it, maybe you should convert that bay window to a sliding glass door, so you could more easily move onto the outside deck?

Fortunately, words are easier to add and subtract than ceilings and windows, and most editors are more tactful than this particular architect. But like a good designer, the best editors are able to see not only what’s already on the page—they know how to enrich a story by removing one key piece or adding a link to another.

The reason editors can see these potential improvements is because they work from what I call the middle distance: they are able to step back and see the work from the target audience’s perspective, while simultaneously knowing enough about the subject matter to edit it accurately. An editor can’t be as in love with the topic as the writer is. But she also can’t be so far removed that the topic isn’t familiar.

Writers operate within a world that colors their language. I speak sailing, so for me, “hiking” means leaning out over the windward side of a boat and “fall off” is a steering adjustment. For fishermen, “chum” is chopped-up fish tossed overboard to attract not yet chopped-up fish. For powerboaters, “WOT” means Wide Open Throttle, their favorite setting.

And that’s just two examples picked at random from within the marine industry. There are many, many words and abbreviations that mean one thing to a specialist and something else entirely to the rest of the world. Soldiers and Afghanis think “ISAF” stands for International Security Assistance Force. Sailors read it as the former acronym of World Sailing. Both are right.

Editors must understand the language of both the writer and their target audience—and where there’s a gap, span it with a bridge of words.

For me, making what’s on the page into the best it can possibly be is pretty straightforward. When presented with an existing collection of words and ideas, it’s easy to pick out what’s really important—even when it’s unintentionally buried halfway down the page, below a lot of unnecessary pontification or detail. Move that key idea to the top… follow it up with a bunch of supporting statements… make sure there’s a logical conclusion… and bingo! Another reader will now be able to follow the writer’s thought process.

The difficult part of editing is seeing what’s not there yet—having the vision to realize that adding the word equivalents of a sliding glass door would connect two parts of the existing story, making it deeper, more relevant, and more easily understood by the reader.

I’ve written before about the Editor Within, and ideally every writer should have this ability to refine a first or second draft into something close to finished. But only an external editor can operate from the middle distance—not so in love with the topic to forget what the audience doesn’t know, yet still comfortable in the world that makes this particular story special.

Editors provide a link between writer and reader. The best ones will tear out a story’s unnecessary ceilings and replace the darling bay windows, as well as suggesting entirely new rooms when needed. Whether we are writer or reader, we don’t know what we don’t know; fortunately, editors—at least those with the bridge-building perspective of middle distance—do.

What Wins Olympic Medals? Not What Wins Headlines

On August 5, 2016, the Olympic Opening Ceremonies will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—come hell, high water, or a presidential impeachment. No matter how many times the mayor cries poor, the money will be found—and then the Games will begin. And other than a few random golfers, Olympians will attend, because Rio is where they’re handing out the medals.

So it’s time to stop raining on the Rio parade.

I’m not trying to downplay Rio’s many health and security risks, and I certainly wish that officials had delivered a true Olympic legacy, what five-time medalist Torben Grael called a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” by cleaning up Guanabara Bay. Instead, the focus has been reduced to a much shorter-term goal: keeping sailing’s field of play free of large, floating, and potentially race-altering debris.

But despite what we’re reading and watching, the most successful Olympians won’t call up Rio’s many huge challenges as excuses or distractions; they will bundle them up with their very long list of less headline-grabbing concerns, like fitness and fueling and getting off the starting line in adverse current. Then they will manage that bundle, first by identifying the most important concern at any given moment, then by focusing on it—and most importantly, by putting aside anything else in the bundle. Since most of what happens in Rio is outside an athlete’s control, it’s likely that the only time most are thinking about the topics in today’s headlines is when answering a question from the press or the public—with a pre-rehearsed answer.

It will certainly take a little luck to make the podium in Rio. And the best athletes make their own luck: by training hard, having a plan but remaining flexible, and being prepared for anything that might come their way.

There’s a reason an Olympic medal is considered a pinnacle achievement in sport. There’s a reason sailors know Torben Grael’s name—and a reason why Ben Ainslie is now Sir Ben. The ability to focus despite all the distractions that crop up at any Games separates the best of the best from the rest of us. It doesn’t matter if those distractions are as big as a couch floating just downwind of the weather mark, as small as a mosquito buzzing around your head, or as annoying and unavoidable as multiple cameras desperately trying to capture every facial gesture. Even a seemingly tiny and insignificant distraction can keep an athlete off the podium if it’s not managed properly. And as one coach likes to put it, all distractions are tiny and insignificant when a medal is up for grabs.

When the Games begin in 36 days, today’s headlines will all be forgotten. All that will matter then is each athlete’s ability to focus on racing well “on the day”—because that’s what will win a medal at Rio 2016.

Avoiding Lloyd: Know the Bad Guy

Today’s post is brought to you by a guy named Lloyd.

Lloyd first hit 6’5” at age 15, and forty years later he still hasn’t found any good reason for being so tall. Any time he ever sets foot on a boat—even that glitzy megayacht he went aboard for a drinks party last summer—he smacks his head at least once, either in a doorway or on a ceiling beam.

His height could be very useful if it were intimidating to men as well as women, but instead of bulk, Lloyd’s size translates only into a looming awkwardness. When he deems it important (with bankers, potential dates, or his wealthy neighbors), he overplays this gawkiness in a way that comes off as innocent and charming—at least in the short term. He’s the perfect cocktail party schmoozer.

Despite his thinning slicked-back hair, you might think he was still a teenager—rather than a card-carrying member of the AARP.

Of course, he only joined AARP for the discounted insurance rates.

Somewhere in Lloyd’s past is an ex-wife named Joan. They are now in contact only through their lawyers, usually shortly after Lloyd sends Joan a fraction of the agreed-upon alimony payment.

The nicest thing I can say about Lloyd is that he didn’t turn in his teenaged daughter Alison when he caught her selling marijuana—though that was only because he was worried about how it would reflect on him as a parent. He’s utterly self-centered, always looking for the easy way out.

Which has, you may be pleased to hear, gotten him into some hot water lately.

Can you tell I don’t like Lloyd?

Which brings us (at last) to the real reason for today’s post. Lloyd happens to be the antagonist, better known as “The Bad Guy,” in my new book. And the only way to fill in the last few holes in this story is to get to know Lloyd better: to figure out how he got into so much debt, and why telling the truth is always his last choice. To understand what makes this guy tick.

And I keep putting that off. Because who wants to spend time with a slimeball?

In fact, I’d been hoping to avoid spending any significant time with Lloyd, hoping he would just appear on the page when needed and then disappear again, back to his dingy office or home to his McMansion. But there’s only one way I can figure out whether he has a plan to get out of all the hot water he’s heated: spending some time with him. Because I have a feeling that the face he shows to the world is even more of an illusion than his tax returns.

Weaving together the final plot points of a story is like picking up random jigsaw puzzle pieces off the floor; I can only hope they fit into the picture nearing completion on the table. There’s no guarantee that getting to know Lloyd will actually make those pieces fit together, but I have to keep trusting my characters to point me in the right direction—even the ones I don’t like.

What A Ringing Phone Doesn’t Tell Us

Several years ago, I was deep into “dictating” an argument between two main characters, fingers racing across the keyboard as I tried to ratchet up the tension, the voices in my head growing more and more shrill—when, suddenly, the phone rang. No, not my actual phone—the buff-colored phone in my protagonist’s small house, which was sitting on a bench next to the sliding glass door.

I could see the phone in my head (one of those state of the art 1980s units, with a really cool lighted keypad hiding under the handset). And I could hear it ringing (the electronic bells of the iPhone “classic” ringtone). What I still had to figure out was who it would be on the other end.

(Side note to millennials: Back in the late 1900s, landline phones did not have any sort of digital readout, so there was no way to know who was calling until you heard the voice or the name.)

I was reminded of this phone’s challenge by a recent question from author JB Chicoine. I’ve become Chicoine’s informal sailing consultant, and in a discussion sparked by her recent blog Waylaid by Research, she asked me how a sailboat would become disabled. I told her that sails often ripped, but the boat in her story was a yawl. And one ripped mainsail would not really disable a yawl, since they often sail under “jib and jigger.”

Hmm, she said. The boat needs to be fully stopped mid-ocean, for an hour or so. How would that happen?

I won’t disclose my suggestions, because she may or may not weave any of them into her next book, Portrait of a Girl Adrift. But it made me remember that ringing phone from years ago. Because who besides a fiction writer would know what happens next and then has to back-fill the facts, to make it all fit into the story?

The best novels read like a falling row of dominoes. But those dominoes usually don’t land on the page fully formed, in exactly the right location to take out the next one. Even once we understand what happens next, we have to carefully drop in the details that will make it add up for the reader.

I like to say that my characters determine the arc of a story, but they really only share the big bold facts with me. (We were arguing, and then the phone rang. Figure it out.) They knock over the dominoes, but they leave it to me to place the before and after details in just the right location—while making that placement seem like the only logical one. And building that progression takes time, effort, and yes, research—especially when the subject isn’t a familiar one.

The beauty of fiction writing is also its biggest challenge: once we build a world and set our characters free, we can’t always anticipate what happens next. Even when they show us the next big domino, we still have to line up all the others to make the story seem credible.

And for all of you wiseacres who figure that caller ID takes all the mystery out of this process, think again: today’s fiction writers can happily spend an entire morning staring into their imaginations, trying to figure out what number is showing up on a ringing iPhone. And the answer will likely be different for each and every one of us.