Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 65

12 Ways Writing is Like Running 50 Miles

It's so easy to do the first part. Everyone can write a few chapters. It feels great.

You start hearing about people who are doing better than you are. You feel like everyone is passing you. Maybe they are.

You need aid in the form of food that makes you happy and encouraging smiles from strangers or family and friends.

Sometimes it gets messy. You just have to keep going.

You feel like you are all alone. There is no one who seems to be doing what you are doing for miles around.

You have to keep going, making tiny goals.

You have to readjust your goals when you realize you won't be able to finish in your goal time.

You need to tell other people what you need.

You need a support crew to look after the home fires for a bit.

You may get lost and have to start over again.

When you can see the finish line, everything gets easy again.

After the finish line, there will be casualties and you will need to recuperate.

Complimenting Other Women

I have become more aware recently of how often women compliment other women on fashion choices, weight loss, hairstyles, makeup, and all things related to appearance. This is not something that I do naturally. I suspect this is because I was raised in a mostly autistic family. I honestly struggle to remember how female social interaction is supposed to work, which is based on the assumption that we give each other compliments on our appearance to show that we like each other and that we notice the small stuff. I am not necessarily oblivious, but I find myself more and more cautious about complimenting the physical because of what the act of complimenting automatically chooses to value.

On the one hand, I don't want to diss female culture. There is nothing wrong with women giving each other compliments that help their self-esteem. I get it that culture has told women for centuries that the only things they do that matter are look pretty and create babies. I don't want to give the message that I think those things are useless. I don't want to further put women down by suggesting that only male values like competition and making money matter.

On the other hand, I feel uncomfortable giving compliments that reinforce the message to women that they are just bodies, not people inside those bodies. Yes, we need to work harder on making sure that people understand that all body types are acceptable, that beauty can have many forms. But I also feel that we need to work harder at sending the message that appearance is not all that matters. This is one of the reasons that I know I became a writer, because I wanted something other than my appearance and my body to be judged. I know that the mind/body distinction is largely false, but it can be useful to pretend that we are not purely what our appearance suggests.

I was arguing with my two oldest daughters about this recently. I ended up pointing out that men in Hollywood will always earn more money than women, because female movie stars have to be pretty to get the big bucks. But as soon as they start to look older, they either have to have plastic surgery or they have to take smaller roles and give up the big bucks to the next generation of pretty women. The men, on the other hand, are not seen as losing their good looks at all and continue to earn more and more money because they are seen as "experienced." (I'm thinking of Harrison Ford, Anthony Hopkins, Martin Sheen, Kevin Costner, Bill Murray, Colin Firth, and on and on.) An experienced woman is not a compliment. It means she isn't pretty anymore, and therefore not valuable.

When someone compliments me on my skirt choice, a part of me wants to point out that no one compliments the men in the room for a nice tie, a nice pair of jeans, a good jacket. The men don't do this to each other and women very rarely do this to men in public (maybe a wife at home would say this to her husband). Why not? Because men are not perceived to need this kind of self-esteem builder and women are. Also because men are not valued because of their appearance. I wonder if a man would be offended if he were invited to speak and were told he looked very handsome. Wouldn't he want to hear that he had given a great speech and had inspired people to change their lives?

I don't want to embarrass other women, either, by pointing out the ways in which we trivialize ourselves by our focus on appearance. I suppose I am hoping that my attempts to turn focus into what I perceive are the right areas for my compliments will work at some point and that others will follow my lead, but I'm not going to hold my breath, either.

21 Reasons You Think You Don't Have Time to Write:

You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time (like clean your house or volunteer for things you feel pressured to do).

You can't live with the level of clean that the rest of your family accepts as normal.

You haven't decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

You haven't made yourself a writing space.

You haven't realized you need help.

You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

You don't let your kids and other people solve their own problems, even though they could—and should.

You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

You are spending your time doing things you actually don't care about (chatting on the phone or watching TV that bores you).

You do things for other people they should be doing for themselves (cleaning children's rooms or doing things that you should let go of).

You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write because it is easier to be distracted than to write.

You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

You have been talking about writing for a long time, but don't know what will happen when you commit to it.

You don't know what to do with a blank page.

You need to learn to turn off the internal editor that tells you that every thing you write in a first draft is crap. Yes, it is. That's normal.

You need to actually do a little planning and research. But not as much as you think you do.

You actually don't like writing. You like having written.

You need to write the first line of a chapter before you leave the office the previous day.

You need to spend time remembering what it is that you love about writing. This can be done by watching TV or movies or reading old books or new you love. The well is dry and needs to be refilled.

You have convinced yourself you need 2 hours to write and don't know how to use the chunks of 20 minutes you actually have.

You don't have notebooks scattered throughout the house, including the bathroom, for when inspiration strikes.

Monday Book Recs--Cat Girl's Day Off by Kimberley Pauley and Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore

Cat Girl's Day Off is a hilarious contemporary fantasy about a girl who is a member of an illustrious family of magics, and her magic is the stupid one--all she can do is talk to cats. But it turns out that talking to cats can be useful, after all, when a famous movie star is kidnapped, replaced by a double, and only her cat can tell the difference. Then follows a series of fun sketches where Natalie and her friends help to save the world--with cats. I loved the relationships between the trio of friends. I loved the high school scenes when the teens are trying to coordinate test taking with world-saving and magic. I loved the rivalry between Natalie and her sisters. I loved the parents who are far from perfect but very real. Most of all, I admit it--I loved the cats and the dogs. I felt like the conversation from them was absolutely spot-on (!) and wanted a whole series of books in the same vein. And I am not a cat lover.



Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore is completely different. It is set in what feels like a Victorian England on the slant, with a magical system that relies on pairs of Sources and Shields. Lee and Taro are a fun couple, he the fashion-obsessed dandy with a string of ladies waiting for him, she the uncomfortable, serious woman who gradually shows her flashier (and more passionate side). I found the unfinished romance interesting in terms of variations on a theme. I found the magic gradually more intriguing. I found the story of Aryne, the granddaughter of the queen who is raised in the tropics unknown and unknowing, even more interesting. The novel ends not with a cliffhanger but not with real closure, either. But I was content to tell myself I would get the next book and read on. A fun combination of romance and fantasy for a light day (or week) of reading.

10 Things To Do to Make Your Manuscript Stand Out

Have a killer hook—that matters to the rest of the novel.

Show you've read in the genre by naming a book that hasn't been made into a movie.

Use good punctuation.

Proofread your manuscript.

Don't ask the agent to read the new version a week after you've sent the first one.

Pitch one book at a time.

Have a killer setting.

Have good dialog.

Show, don't tell.

Do something uniquely well.

How Teenagers and Women are Caught in a Double Bind

My daughter who is 16 spent a lot of energy graduating a year early. She smashed her entire Senior year in with her last Junior semester, along with 5 AP tests. We were all pretty stressed about it, but no one more than she was. When people outside the family asked her why she was doing this, she would try to explain to them how tired she was of high school. The immaturity of the other students, their lack of ambition, their wandering inability to know what they wanted to do in life, and their pettiness, annoyed her to no end.

I actually think we sometimes create teens like this by giving them no responsibility and no consequences and making all the decisions in their lives for them. Of course, they whine about having no power. Because they have no power!

The interesting thing that happened when my daughter went through this explanation was that almost everyone nodded, and said something along the lines of—yeah, that is so immature of you to want to skip out of high school. You're just as immature as the other kids who are so immature you can't stand them. They interpreted her attempt to be grown up, responsible, and hard-working as a sign of her immaturity. Why? Because everything that teens do is immature.

As I reflected on this Catch-22, I thought of how annoying it was to me when I was in my twenties and had a PhD and was teaching at a university, everything that I said was treated with the same—you're so immature. My students would give me no respect because I was so young, and it was one of the major reasons I left the profession. I admit, I certainly had some immature moments. But I still have moments like that now. I'm not sure they were so egregious then.

I turned to writing in part because of some advice I got from Lois McMaster Bujold, who told me that the wonderful thing about writing was that no one saw your face. They only saw your words. They judged you on your words. I liked that idea. No more apologizing for my age. No more being the “petite young woman who thought she was brilliant.”

Now that I am 41, I find that people are frequently trying to compliment me by telling me that I “look like a teenager.” They say I could be my teens' older sister and think it is great to say that. But I do not understand why it is a compliment to be told that you are back at that time when no one takes anything you do seriously. I have earned my years to 40 and I don't want to give them away. Why is it that women are supposed to want to be forever young and immature? I don't. Give me wrinkles, gray hair, and some gravitas.

And for my daughter, I suppose what she has to do now is avoid as much as possible letting people find out what her real age is. She intends to push the fact that she's a high school graduate, that she has skills, that she's produced 3 independent albums.

Writing Wednesday: Start with Small Conflict

I had a friend (Grant Morgan) years ago who developed a theory of a first chapter genre book. He argued that it was too much to try to introduce the larger conflict of a big novel, especially an epic fantasy, in the first chapter. It just led to long paragraphs, endless explanations, showing rather than telling, too much jargon, and a general sense of lack of motion. It also ended up interrupting what he thought was the most important thing to do in the first chapter narratively, which was to get the reader interested in the protagonist/s and care about what happened to them next.

So, his solution was to start a novel with a small conflict. It was important that there be a conflict, because let's face it, it feels like something is happening and we're not just being treated to a long character description. There are authors out there who can get away with doing that in a first chapter (Stephen King comes to mind). They write so well about character that we can read almost anything that happens. It's not just pretty writing. It's knowing the human condition so well.

But for the rest of us, we need to show a character doing something. It helps define a character to see how they react in conflict. Do they get angry? Violent? Do they turn and run away? Do they think about other people they need to protect? Do they think about how their opponent feels? It helps us to see if the character is active or passive, what they are afraid of, who they care about, what matters, and what their worldview is. Really, all in one. It doesn't show us how they're going to change and develop in the course of the novel or what new obstacles are going to come along to shake them up, but it does what a beginning is supposed to do. It grabs you and throws you forward into the larger part of the novel.

The conflict does not necessarily have to lead to anything else. It can. If you are clever, that can be really useful. But the only real thing to watch out for is to make sure that the conflict isn't trivial. It can't be something easily solved by anyone with half a brain or heart. It can't be something that isn't real and is actually just a misunderstanding. It can be a conflict with one of the characters who will turn into an ally later on. In fact, this is one of the most effective ways to begin. It can be an internal conflict, though that is harder to pull off since you want some sense of motion in a first chapter. It can also be a conflict with nature or with the world at large, that is, it doesn't necessarily have to do with characters who will continue in the rest of the book.

Think of The Hunger Games, where the first conflict is simply finding food. Or Twilight, where the first conflict is being the new kid at school and feeling out of place. Or Ender's Game where the first conflict is the school bully. Or Assassin's Apprentice, where the first conflict is finding Fitz a place to stay, and a name.

Ten Things Not to Do to Make Your Manuscript Stand Out

Print it on specially colored paper.

Turn one of your pages upside down to see if the editor read that far.

Send it in with a bribe of some kind, like chocolate.

Declare that your kids and the neighbor's kids love your book.

Threaten the editor or agent.

Describe the publishing industry as a waste of time.

Diss books the agent or editor has published. Or diss books that have made a lot of money.

Talk about your book in vague terms, with no specifics.

Compliment yourself on how great your book is and how many copies it will sell.

End your letter with the words, “You don't want to miss out on this once in a lifetime chance” that sounds like something a car dealer would say.

Monday Book Recs--Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

I read this for my book club, but I was interested in it anyway because of the relationship to WWII and my background in Germanic Literature. I am fascinated with all things WWII, but am a little embarrassed to realize how this figure in German history had been completely missed by my previous study, most likely because he is a religious figure and academia tends to eschew religion.

I had seen the Tom Cruise movie “Valkyrie,” but am now pretty upset at the absolute fabrication of all of the events and of the character of that movie. Bonhoeffer was not a former solider. He wasn't blind. He didn't participate in the assassination attempts on Hitler, except as a liaison with the British government in an attempt to broker peace with them if Hitler was killed. He accepted in his heart that he was guilty of murder if Hitler died, but he didn't hold any of the guns.

Bonhoeffer is one of those Christians that makes you proud to be a Christian, if you are one. He wasn't a social Christian. He wasn't interested in being comfortable with his Christianity. He wasn't much interested in being saved personally. He was interested in figuring out what was right to do and doing it, no matter the cost. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out what a good person does when a government likes Hitler's takes over his country. And he decided that hiding behind the idea that murder is bad was a coward's way out. Saving his own soul wasn't his interest. If he made a mistake that damned him and saved the world, he was fine with that. I admire his courage and am persuaded by a lot of his arguments still.

Here is a quote:

“We must not confuse what we do naturally, such as 'wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing,' with prayer, which is unnatural to us and which must be initiated from outside us, by God. Prayer cannot come from us. 'For that,' he wrote, 'one needs Jesus Christ!' By praying the Psalms, we 'pray along with Christ's prayer and therefore may be certain and gkad that God hears us. When our will, our whole heart enters into the prayer of Christ, then we are truly praying. We can pray only in Jesus Christ, with whom we shall also be heard.'”

For my father on Father's Day

My father is not a paragon of virtue. We've certainly had our conflicts. On the other hand, the older I get, the more I appreciate certain things, especially the way that my father saw his children as equals. I never felt lesser because I was a girl. He had 6 sons but I didn't feel like he favored my brothers over my sisters and me. Sure, I had some sisters who were more feminine and seemed to get special girly stuff. But it was very much what those sisters wanted, and not something that was pressed on them by either my mother or my father. Some of the things I remember fondly:

1. Mowing the lawn. Yeah, when I was a teen, this was not something I expected I would ever remember fondly. It was hot mowing the lawn and it was a lot of work. We had a big yard. But I also felt strong while mowing the lawn. I noticed that in other families, it was mostly boys who mowed the lawn. In my family, it was just whoever volunteered to do that job rather than other jobs. I got hot and sweaty and no one talked about that being unfeminine. It was just hard work and hard work could be done by either boys or girls.

2. Scouts. You will be surprised about this perhaps, but I was a boy scout. No, I wasn't actually allowed into any troupe. But I thought at the time that it was obvious that girl scouts weren't real scouts and the boy scouts were doing all the fun stuff. I mentioned this to my father, complained about it. He listened to me carefully, then did a surprising thing. He handed me a scout manual, and challenged me to do everything in the scouting book I wanted to do. He volunteered to help me pass off anything I needed help with, said he would take me on camping trips if I wanted, and pretty much left it up to me. I spent several months learning the scout code, and reading through the book. It turned out it wasn't actually as cool as it seemed to be on the outside. I love camping, don't get me wrong, but the rest of it--not so much. I ended up doing what I wanted to do, and not needing to do anymore. But my dad's attitude of--it doesn't matter what the rules are, let's figure out what's good for you and do it--the perfect strategy for parenting and something I have tried to emulate myself.

3. Changing the oil versus making dinner. When I got older, my dad needed more helpers with the cars. This was mainly because I was on the younger end of the family and the older boys were out of the house or in college by then. On Saturdays, we always had chores. Sometimes hours and hours and hours of chores. Seriously, we were working until my dad had to turn on the lights to see by. We worked until midnight on occasion. This was not one of my favorite things in the world. I would much rather have hid in the tree and read a book. I actually did that when I could get away with it, but it happened less as I was a teen, since there were fewer kids to hide my absence. So my dad did a fairly logical thing. He presented me with possible chores and allowed me to choose which ones I wanted. I helped him with the car a few times. Then I decided I'd rather stay in the house and help with Mom's jobs like cleaning and cooking. I didn't have the sense that my dad cared one way or the other. So long as I was helping, that was all that mattered. To this day, I think this is an excellent way of dividing jobs, based on logic rather than gender. If you are good at something and want to do it, do it. If you want to contribute, do it. Don't wait to see if it fits your gender.

4. Work as time to socialize. We had a huge flower garden when I was a teen. When I was younger, it was a vegetable garden, but we moved and the priorities changed. I hated weeding. I would much rather mow the lawn standing upright than bend over and weed. Nonetheless, there were eternal weeding sessions that no amount of mowing could get me out of. My dad would point out what needed to be weeded, and then go on to other tasks. My brothers and sisters and I were supposed to get to work and do it. Well, we did and we didn't. We chatted a lot. Work got done. Mostly because we were afraid that Dad would come and yell at us soon. But it was also a time for sharing life with the other family members. I have fond memories of that. I bonded with siblings over this joint torture. It gave me a good sense of how work and friendship go together. I also admire the way that my dad trusted us to do the job. And by trust, I mean, he told us what he expected, and then he walked away. We still could choose whether or not to obey. Again, this is often a model for my parenting. I tell my children what I expect, and then walk away. It doesn't always result in a task getting done. But it does always result in children being independent and making choices and seeing consequences, far more important results of family life.

So to my dad on Father's Day--good job. You did some good things and I actually remember some of them!