M.J. Pullen's Blog, page 9

Saying Goodbye to 2016

Can I be honest? As I sit down to bid farewell to 2016, what I feel the most is… exhausted.

This has been a hard year for the collective “us” in so many ways: Brexit, the horrors of civil war in Syria, attempted coup in Turkey  the U.S. presidential election (not to mention the fallout of that election on families, personal relationships and international politics). Personally, I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to an election, never felt so unnerved by both the results and the sentiments expressed by friends and neighbors along the way. I found that I had to create a protective shell from social media for myself just to function.

Me at the beginning of 2016 vs me at the end of 2016 pic.twitter.com/35mqL7u2Yp

— Anna Marquardt ?? (@ajlobster) December 10, 2016

In 2016 the literary world said goodbye to Harper Lee and Elie Wiesel and Pat Conroy. All three have influenced who I am as a writer and a person. And maybe it’s a factor of middle age, but the cultural icons of my youth seemed to take an especially hard hit this year. In 2016, we lost David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher. The Goblin King, Severus Snape and Princess Leia. (Also R2-D2 and Admiral Ackbar for those tracking the Star Wars universe). Plus, Prince and George Michael and Glenn Frey and Leonard Cohen and Merle Haggard. The mixtape of grief practically writes itself.

On a more personal level, 2016 was my first full year as a combination parent, novelist and full-time corporate employee. For the most part those have all been rewarding roles for me, but making it all work (well, sort of) was more than a little challenging. I won’t lie to you, it’s been a strain on me and our family. I get up at 4:30 every morning to write until it’s time to get the kids up and ready at 6:00. I drop them off, commute for well over an hour, work a full day, and commute back home. We try to cram dinner, homework, baths, stories and some semi-quality time together in the next hour and a half — as the kids melt into impulsive, whiny balls of chaos. I fall into bed shortly behind them and it all starts over. Hubs is incredible and supportive – he works equally hard and fills in all the gaps; plus he keeps me going when I’m ready to give up. Which, I’ll be honest, is pretty often.

People ask me how I (we) do it all, and the straight answer is that I don’t. I have missed a lot this year: passed on countless volunteer opportunities, writing groups, and social occasions and even family gatherings in order to get everything done. Or not. Sometimes our family misses things because we desperately need time together, just to heal the strains of the daily grind on one another. Sometimes we simply drop the ball. We’ve dropped a lot of balls. Sometimes we’ve been forgiven by those we love, and sometimes not. Our house is always a mess, working out is largely a distant memory, and we eat more fast food and pizza than I’d care to admit. It’s not easy, but I can’t let go of the dream. Not yet.

And there have been some major bright spots this year, too. Both Regrets Only and Baggage Check were published in 2016, and I got to do several fun bookstore events related to each of them. I was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in romance, and while I didn’t take home the very cool candy dish prize, it was fun seeing new friends and old at the awards ceremony. I attended the Dahlonega Literary Festival in March, where I got to hang out with several of my author heroes, who have now become friends. I taught at the Atlanta Writer’s Conference in May, and attended both the Canton Festival of the Arts and the Decatur Book Festival as an author for the first time in 2016.

I was also privileged to be able to return to England this summer to attend an Arvon course at Lumb Bank, and to do some touring and research for the book I’m working on now. I made some amazing friends and can’t adequately describe how wonderful and helpful the experience was. (Though I did try). My critique partner and friend Emily Carpenter and I launched the Draft House this year, an accountability and support program for authors. It’s going really well and I’m excited to see where it leads our hard-working drafters.

Our family is healthy and mostly happy, a blessing I try to count every day. The people who matter most are hanging with us through all the trials and tribulations, and are understanding when we have to change plans (or leave the party at 9:00 p.m. because we are super lame). Our boys astonish me daily with their wit and hilarity and capacity for love. And while our beds never get made and we may be filing an extension on our taxes, we do manage to squeeze in quite a bit of fun.

We took the boys to Washington, D.C. this spring, braving the long car ride to visit a few friends, and most of the monuments and museums. We also went Opening Day at Nationals Field, which checks another MLB stadium off our family bucket list. We walked and took the subway almost everywhere, which was a cool experience for our very suburban children. Even though they often complained of boredom and aching feet, they had a blast. I love that the kids are old enough to understand and appreciate history, art and social activism — at least in their own way.

Sometimes a little goofing off is the best medicine.

On the other end of the vacation spectrum, over Thanksgiving break, we ponied up the cost of three years’ normal vacations and took the boys on a once-in-a-lifetime Disney cruise. This is a weird and wonderful vacation phenomenon (if you’ve been on one, perhaps you know what I mean). It wasn’t our typical vacation: we are more of the adventure travel/camping/visiting friends ilk. But this year, spending a few days being pampered and cared for, and having the boys constantly entertained, was exactly what we needed. It gave Hubs and me a chance to say “yes” a lot, and the four of us a chance to reconnect in a way that has sustained us for weeks afterward. Also, someone else made the bed, so there’s that.

2016 has certainly had its joys and hardships, and as 2017 approaches, I am hoping it will be equally fulfilling, if somewhat less eventful. I also hope to see you here more often as a result. Please stay tuned for new stories and updates; and in the meantime, I wish you a peaceful and happy new year.

xoxoxo,

M.J.

 

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Update from M.J. + New Free Short Story

Happy Holidays, Kids!

**Begin Rambling Mush**

I do apologize that I’ve been a little MIA for the last few months. Perhaps I’ll share more about this later, but suffice for now to say that it’s been a long, hard, wonderful, trying and generally exhausting year. Unfortunately I’ve had to cut out some of my blogging and social media time in favor of keeping other things in my small world afloat. Like my sanity. And my day job. And all that kindergarten homework.

Along with all the normal hardships and hassles in my life specifically, this year’s election and the state of the world at the moment have exacted a huge toll from me, as I know they have for many of you. To be honest, I just haven’t had the emotional resources lately to be the funny, honest break from reality I like to be for you.

I do miss you guys. I miss hearing from you when I post a blog and people comment — publicly or privately — that something in it resonated for them. I miss hearing that I made you laugh or cry, or dive headfirst into a bag of Oreos. And if you want to know the truth, it turns out I need you far more than you need me; I am going to try to be more present with you in 2017, for better or worse.

**End Rambling Mush**

WITH ALL THAT SAID, I have been working hard on some new material, which you’ll hear more about later. And in the meantime, I have something special for readers of The Marriage Pact trilogy!

This bonus short story, “Late for the Holidays,” takes place after the conclusion of BAGGAGE CHECK. By popular reader demand, it features the main characters Suzanne and Dylan from the popular second book in the trilogy, REGRETS ONLY.

To get your copy of “Late for the Holidays,” simply subscribe to my newsletter by clicking on of the buttons below. Of course the story can be read on its own, but if you hate spoilers, make sure you finish the full original trilogy first. And please share this page so others can enjoy!

If you are already a subscriber but didn’t get the story, or need a different file format, feel free to enter your email again. Don’t worry, you won’t get double subscribed!

I wish each of you a peaceful and warm holiday season, and a fresh start to all the potential 2017 holds.

Enjoy! 

(And let me know what you think in the comments)

Click Here for the Kindle story

Click Here for the ePub

Click Here for the PDF

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Listen up! THE MARRIAGE PACT Trilogy on Audio

As someone who does the majority of my reading during the daily commute — via audiobook, because apparently propping a book on the steering wheel while driving down GA 400 is frowned upon — I am thrilled to announce that The Marriage Pact series is now available in its entirety on audiobook. Get your romantic comedy fix while you drive to work, sit in the carpool line, run errands, or lie in a warm bubble bath with a shade over your eyes (hey, we can dream, right?).

The lovely folks at Macmillan Audio have made clips available on Soundcloud for each of the books, so you can try before you buy. Let me know what you think!

The Marriage Pact


Regrets Only

Baggage Check

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All I Really Needed to Know ABOUT Kindergarten

(A Working Mom’s Perspective)

Yeah. This post pretty much makes me the anti-Robert Fulghum. But here goes.

A few weeks ago, some friends of mine, with their first kids starting Kindergarten this month, asked me and another “veteran” elementary school mom what they should expect from their little ones’ first foray into big kid school. The other mom and I just laughed. Then we both took a suspiciously long gulp of beer, and gave each other that look. You know the one. The “you can’t know until you know,” look.

(By the way, this is the same look women exchange when men start talking about their “birthing experience.” Okay, buddy. Sure.)

Now that my littlest, Fozzie, is joining his big brother at our community elementary school [Single drop-off point in the morning! Insert the working mom happy dance!] I’ve been giving the Kindergarten question some thought. My own halcyon memories of Kindergarten — which it has to be said, took place at a Montessori School, not public school — are all of digging in the mud and eating flies on a log and insisting on wearing my ballet shoes to class. Because they were awesome, that’s why.

Since my frog-catching, boy-chasing days, the myriad roles that our schools play in the lives of children and their families have grown exponentially; and the scope of what teachers are expected to accomplish with our kids from 7:30 to 2:00 every day is massive. To be clear, we love our school and teachers; our kids are happy and thriving and learning. So this isn’t complaining, per se. It’s just a new paradigm, and if you’re not ready, it can knock you on your PTAss.

So. Here are some things I wish I’d understood before the Big K:

Kindergarten is your 5th year of college (or 9th). Surprise, Mom and Dad! You got through your own schooling at whatever level, earned your degrees and certificates, went out into the world and got a job and eventually made, adopted or purchased a baby. Now that baby is old enough to ride in a booster seat and walk through those big double doors with a backpack bigger than he is, carrying all your hopes and dreams and family pride and a superhero lunchbox. He’ll take it from here, right?

WRONG. Starting the first week of Kindergarten and continuing thereafter at whatever pace is least convenient for you and your day job, you are going to be busting it to meet course requirements. I predict:

Somewhere around the intersection of the “Animal Alphabet” module and the “Color Me Green” module,  you will spend two hours and endure multiple tantrums in order to send in three household items that are (a) recyclable (b) brown and (c) start with the letter Q. You’ll send these in only to discover that the project was actually last week. You just got a zero in Kindergarten. Dude.
By the mercury light of the streetlamp, you will gather leaves from your yard and glue them to a paper turkey, trying to make it look just messy enough that someone will believe your kid did it. Meanwhile, he’s upstairs asleep because you took the family out for pizza after work (celebrating the fact that you were too exhausted to cook) and forgot to open his backpack to look at the “Turkey Camouflage” assignment until long after he was down for the count. Your neighbor across the street will confirm to her husband that you actually are insane. Sadly, this isn’t even close to your low point.
On some important business day, you will show up at your workplace with sight words on sticky notes stuck to your ass. Those words will be “in” and “more.” Sorry.
Later, you will pat yourself on the back for buying a bag of 100 buttons, pipe cleaners or colored beads for the 100th Day class project, a week ahead (your fatal mistake), only to have them disappear into your house’s ever-present black hole. On the crucial morning, therefore, you will find yourself counting stale goldfish crackers into a baggie with your MASSIVELY and LOUDLY disappointed child berating you the whole time (he is totally right, btw, you only have 87 goldfish). So you’ll have to choose between (a) missing your 9:00 work meeting to drop him off, run to the store and go back to the school with 100 marshmallows or paper clips, (b) teaching him the hard lesson that everyone makes mistakes sometimes and hoping for the least humiliating classroom experience possible or (c) convincing him that 100 coffee beans are a perfectly acceptable substitute and don’t “smell SO gus-gusting.” My money’s on (a) or (c).


Kindergarten teachers run a tight ship. We’re talking “Von Trapp family before Maria” tight. With the whistle and everything. (Not that I blame them. Have you met our kids?) But if you are supposed to be the mystery reader or bring birthday cupcakes or similar at 12:45, that doesn’t mean the same thing as, say, a 9:00 meeting at work (i.e., by 9:02 you should be getting your coffee and seriously considering heading to Conference Room B). No. It means your allotted time slot in that classroom is 12:45 to 12:49. Don’t be showing up with that shit at 12:48 because their seven-minute recess period starts at 12:50, and the teacher will be forced to spend the single minute that remains explaining that we don’t call other people’s mommies mean names when they don’t deliver cupcakes on time.
As a corollary to the above, Your kindergartener only respects his/her teacher’s authority. You are nothing, with your constant feeding and clothing and singing him to sleep. That crap has revealed you for the weakling you are, and you’ve lost his respect. You can have your cute little “House Rules” but those are nothing compared to “Class Rules.” You may be able to capitalize on this temporarily: to get him to do something around the house if you let him be “Line Leader” or “Napkin Helper.” Don’t get cocky, though. This only works a few times before he smells a rat, so use it wisely. Also: if you’re absolutely desperate, your Kindergartener may believe once that you will call his teacher if he doesn’t behave at home, and vice versa. This is the parent-teacher version of a nuclear peace.
Kindergarten today is nothing like it was when we were little. It’s more like second grade in terms of behavior expectations and academic rigor. (They’re not allowed to use the word “ball” in my kid’s class. They have to say “sphere” because that’s what they’ll see on standardized tests in third grade.) Kids don’t get nearly enough free time to play and move and explore the way their bodies and brains are designed. Their day isn’t child directed or even teacher directed. It’s board of education and policy-maker directed, frustratingly and endlessly structured and assessed and crammed full of meaningless measurement activities by well-meaning people with PhDs and desk jobs — all of whom are pursuing a logical fallacy. It’s all based on the idea that success on tests predicts (rather than simply correlates to) success in college which predicts success in life; and that if 6th grade is good, 4th grade is better, and if we could just start prepping our six year olds to take the SATs now, we’ll beat China and Russia at whatever it is that makes countries “best.” This will make you angry and sad and confused when you notice it, and I wish I had a suggestion about making it better. Rest assured, your child’s teacher probably wishes that too. I couldn’t think of a funny ending to this point, so we’ll just move on.
But some things never change. Like boredom and delight and friendships and feeling left out and circle time and those little cartons of milk in the cafeteria. The good news is, your kid probably doesn’t realize yet that he ought to be getting an additional hour of recess every day, or that when you were in Kindergarten, your main focus was on learning your colors and letters and how to not push others in the line for the swings. Wait, your school had swings? Slow down, Houdini.
And like the one overachiever who ruins it for everyone else. No, I’m not talking about the smartest kid in the class (which is obviously your kid, duh). I’m talking about that one parent in the class who is always taking things to the next level and raising the bar for the rest of us. Store-bought birthday treats and those old school paper Valentines just aren’t enough for this mom (let’s be honest, it’s a mom – when dads have this kind of time on their hands, they take a nap like reasonable people). Her kid hands out little custom craft paper bags – decorated with thumbprint art and engraved gift labels in the shape of her child’s silhouette – with six dollars worth of disgustingly thoughtful goody bag crap in them, including the pencil bag her child hand-embroidered with your child’s name on her Little Miss Amazing sewing machine. It puts your tear-apart Ninja Turtle valentines — with the little frame part of the sticker halfway ripped off and a little bit of jelly where he was forcibly signing them at breakfast — to shame. You want to hate this mom, but she’s aggressively kind, volunteers in the classroom constantly and is always organizing the stuff your kid loves to do. Hating her just makes you even less awesome than you were before the 10 p.m. emergency valentine run to Target. But you still kind of hate her. No one said having young children made you a better person.
And the one it’s okay to hate a little. The “my kid’s so awesome” parent. This one supersedes Kindergarten of course, but the first years of school are when this charmer is in his (or her – happy to say this delightful archetype is non gender-specific) most concentrated form. This is before the dirty looks from other parents, and inevitable imperfections of every child, have made him or her slightly more tolerable. You find this parent everywhere: on Facebook, at birthday parties and… monopolizing the teacher at PTA night with super relevant, non-braggy questions like, “Should I send in some flash cards in case Mackenzie finishes all her work early?” “How soon will the advanced children be separated from the rest of the class? Little Connor always acts out when he’s bored.” (Pssst. Little Connor isn’t bored. He’s an asshole.) And, “I know you said not to discuss individual situations, but hypothetically, what do we do if our child already knows ALL the sight words?”

I’ll tell you what you can do. Hang on, let me spell it out with the Animal Alphabet…

 

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Pictures from BAGGAGE CHECK Launch at Eagle Eye Book Shop

Big, BIG thanks to everyone who made last night’s book launch for BAGGAGE CHECK a success: fans, friends, family, my “work family” from Rubicon Global, and the incredible staff at Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur, Georgia. I hope to do more events at this charming store in the future! If you missed this launch event, you can still catch me at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock on Saturday, August 6th, or at The Decatur Book Festival Sunday, September 4th.

My biggest supporter, Jon Cryer. #Justkidding #ItsHubs
My sweet friend Christy!
Doug and the rest of the Eagle Eye staff are wonderful.
Special thanks to  my coworkers from Rubicon Global for all their support!
The gifted writer Chris Negron, one of my invaluable critique partners..
Love, love, love!

BAGGAGE CHECK is a romantic comedy/women’s fiction crossover and the third book in the Marriage Pact series. Each book has a different main character but their stories are all tightly interwoven. You can read them in order – starting with THE MARRIAGE PACT – if you don’t like spoilers, or just pick up BAGGAGE CHECK on its own.

See you next time!

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To England, Where My Heart Lies

The view from Lumb Bank, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.

And from the shelter of my mind

Through the window of my eyes

I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets

To England where my heart lies.

From “Kathy’s Song” by Paul Simon

Okay, my heart is actually in Roswell, Georgia, or wherever Hubs and my boys happen to be. But I love that song so much, and it was in my head often as I travelled for the last two weeks in a place that I have loved since I first set foot there twenty years ago. [That’s right, Oxford friends. Twenty years. We are officially old.]

This time around, I went to England for a few reasons: first, to do some research for a novel I’m working on that takes place there (Well, sort of. More on that later). Second, I was able to attend a 5-day Arvon course in Romantic Fiction at their beautiful Lumb Bank Center, with two amazing authors as the tutors – Chrissie Manby and Mike Gayle.  If you haven’t read a book by either of them, you should. We also had a special guest visit from Jenny Colgan, who was spectacular and fiery and hilarious. And the setting was… well, I’m including some pictures so you can see for yourselves.

Writer’s Paradise: The Arvon Centre, Lumb Bank

Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire is an old mill house, which before it was the Arvon Center was home to poet and author Ted Hughes — a sometimes controversial figure because of his relationship with his late wife Sylvia Plath. I don’t register an opinion about that here, but I can tell you that Sylvia is buried up the road from Lumb Bank in the astonishingly cute village of Heptonstall. It’s tradition to leave a pen in the dirt over her grave when you visit, and I’m hoping she enjoys the obnoxiously loud pink Marriage Pact pen I left for her.

Gravesite of American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath. Heptonstall Churchyard.

From Lumb Bank, you can walk a few more miles down the hill to the larger village of Hebden Bridge, a wonderful and progressive community that was hit hard by flooding on Boxing Day 2015. Just before our group arrived, the village had just had a “make up Christmas” to celebrate the reopening of many of the town’s stores and to replenish the gifts many Hebden Bridge children lost in the floods.

During my time in Yorkshire, I went with two other writers on an excursion to Haworth and the parsonage home of the Bronte family, where Charlotte, Emily and Anne did most of their writing. The parsonage has been converted into a museum, where you can see, among other things, the actual kitchen table at which both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were written. It’s hard to imagine a piece of furniture with a more profound literary legacy. Shakespeare’s footstool, maybe?

The Bronte Parsonage

When the writing course ended on Saturday, I had a few days to travel on my own, so I visited the cathedral city of York to meet up with an old friend, who I met (sort of – it’s a long story) when I was backpacking in Wales back in 1998. York is another lovely city with a deep history and countless attractions for the wayward traveler. I found myself just wandering the streets, taking pictures and gaping at things. And also, getting an ice cream at a stall called “Game of Cones.” Winter may be coming, Ned Stark, but England had a heat wave last week and a chocolate scoop hit the spot. And, of course, a few congenial pints at the York Brewery.

The next day I hit the train to the tube to another train to a regional bus to travel aaaaaall the way across England from York to Glastonbury via London. I had a quick stop along the way at Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross station to stock up on Harry Potter swag for me. I mean, my family. Totally my family.

On a tour of the Tor and the Tower with Tor.

In Somerset, Glastonbury is sort of like England’s version of the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco: only much, much older. Its landscape in general – and the Chalice Well and Tor (hill) in particular – are considered magical and sacred places to people of more than 72 different faiths around the world, including pagans, druids and many sects of Christianity. It is also a stunningly beautiful place with incredible history and the best people watching since the New York subway.

I took an all-day walking tour there with Tor Webster, whose name really is Tor. So it’s Tor’s Tours of the Tor. No kidding. Tor has lived in Glastonbury nearly all his life, and has been giving tours there for twenty years, so needless to say he knew his stuff. I also met some great people at the St. Anne’s B&B there, which is situated in an orchard originally kept by the monks at Glastonbury Abbey for cider apples. Through my open windows at night, I was serenaded by a couple of drinkers at the pub across the street and one very persistent sheep. Glastonbury is sort of a combination of bucolic English countryside, medieval Catholic town with modern amenities, and New Age hippie commune. I found the traditional English tea with scones and clotted cream to be just as lovely as both the greasy fish and chips stand and the vegan buffet around the corner.

It’s weird to be in a place called “Bath” and still smell so awful, but I managed it.

After Glastonbury, I bussed back into Bristol and hopped on a train toward London – jumping off for a few hours in Bath, which is one of my favorite English cities. Any fan of Jane Austen needs no further explanation, but Bath is incredibly beautiful in its own right. Fighting off a cold and not enticed by any of the hot, airless historic buildings, I spent my time in Bath mostly outside, wandering around on the hot summer day and revisiting the Royal Crescent and Bath Circus, grabbing a Cornish pasty for the road and doing the *tiniest* bit of shopping in the SouthGate before hopping back on the train to London.

The great thing about London is that you never have enough time to do all you want to do there, so in a weird way the pressure is off. I’ve been to most of the primary tourist attractions on previous trips, so I focused my time on recovering from the cold (sigh), meeting up with a few writer friends, and visiting the Churchill War Rooms — a wonderful museum in Churchill’s underground bunker beneath Her Majesty’s Treasury in Whitehall. It was so good, and having just listened to Citizens of London by Lynne Olson made it all the more meaningful.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, around seven in the morning.

Despite my “been there, done that” approach to most of London’s big tourist spots, I found I couldn’t bear to leave town without visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral – long my favorite place in London. I woke up early before I had to leave the hotel for the airport, and hot-footed it down to Fleet Street and the Cathedral, just in time to hear the seven o’clock bells chime. It was too early to go in, but I wandered around the outside to Temple Bar and the Millennium Bridge (the one destroyed by Death Eaters in the opening scene of the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). I caught a black cab back — and had a fantastic conversation with the cabbie about falling down and falling in love, and also his grandkids. I got back to the hotel in time for breakfast, packing up, and hitting the tube to the airport for home.

It was a lovely trip, and as always, I can never leave Britain without wondering when I’ll next have the chance to go back…

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I’m Across the Pond, but my BAGGAGE is Here!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I’m actually off the grid at the moment, doing a writing retreat and some research in England for a few days, sans wi-fi (WHAT????). So basically while you’re reading this, I am somewhere in England in the fetal position, twitching from BuzzFeed withdrawals. And missing Hubs and my kids, of course.

In the meantime, however, my latest novel BAGGAGE CHECK is busy being born! Today is its official release into the wide world of books, even though I’ll have to hold off celebrating until I return (see launch events below). I do hope you’ll  take a moment to purchase your copy, or if you’ve already read Rebecca’s story in BAGGAGE CHECK, that you’ll be kind enough to share this post and your love. Or like. I’m cool with that too.

BAGGAGE CHECK is special to me because, while it still has a strong romance plot line and super hot hero (Alex Chen, OMFG), it’s also a much more personal journey than we’ve seen with any of the MARRIAGE PACT characters so far. After her behavior in the first novel, and then some, it was really satisfying to give Rebecca her time in the sun, and help readers understand what makes our favorite “frenemy” who she is. There are also more mental health issues present in this novel than I’ve written before, which is both fulfilling and terrifying for me as a writer/therapist.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy this latest (and final) installment in the MARRIAGE PACT trilogy, and that you feel you get to understand a different side of Rebecca as you follow her story — maybe seeing her the way Alex does, because none of us are quite so beautiful as through the lens of someone who loves us.

I’ll leave you with that thought for now, and a promise that while I’m away I’ll be working hard to bring you another deliciously satisfying read for the near future. Thanks, dearies, for your support, reviews, encouragement, and for sharing my books with your friends. Word of mouth is the very best marketing there is for authors, and the highest compliment you can give a book is to recommend it to a friend!

See you again when I’m stateside…

xoxox,

m.j.

PS – Come see me!

BAGGAGE CHECK Book Launches:

Thursday, July 28, at Eagle Eye Books in Decatur

Saturday, August 6, at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock

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Distracted Writer: Saying Goodbye to the Bear

“In writing, you must kill your darlings.”

~ William Faulkner.

Every writer has heard this is advice. Most, at one time or another, have secretly hoped it didn’t apply to them. Some have agonized over it. And the best writers have learned to apply it: painfully, judiciously.

It’s more than a platitude, more than a super-random movie with Dan Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg.

Killing your darlings means sacrificing — in the name of the story — the original ideas, the adorable moments, the BEST THING EVER you wrote when you first started working on your thing. Sometimes what started out as a touching, funny or scary scene didn’t work in execution the way it did in your head. Or now that you’re 30,000 words in, the story and the characters have evolved, and your darling scene, that adorable character quirk or snappy line of dialogue, no longer suit what the story has become.

New writers in particular are vulnerable here. [Unless you are just naturally insightful from the start, and have no blind spots for your own work, in which case, go away I hate you.] As newbies, our first indication that some part of our prose should be marked for death usually comes from friends, early readers and critique group members. They stand just out of punching distance and bravely confess, as gently as possible, that something about the story doesn’t work for them. This is exactly as easy as telling someone their baby is ugly, and often earns a similar reaction from the writer.

You’re just going to leave me here? But I brought the salmon dip!

We’ve worked so hard. And that one idea was so funny/sweet/terrifying when we came up with it; sometimes it was the reason we wrote the damn book in the first place. How can someone say that the scene where the bear falls out of the rowboat doesn’t work? It was the seed for the whole story!

But the truth is, it doesn’t work. Not anymore. Because somewhere along the way, that comic bear-in-a-rowboat scene became part of a horror novel or a coming of age story or a drama about an Alaskan fisherman with terminal cancer.

And the less palatable truth (one that experienced writers learn to recognize) is that you knew it. You knew before anyone told you that the scene with the bear in the rowboat didn’t work anymore, because:

It took you way longer to write than you thought it would.
You stalled out writing the scene before or after it.
It held you back from doing other things in the story, or you had to do some crazy tantric word yoga to make the rest of the story fit.
You got lost for hours googling “wet bear fur” to get the description just right because something felt off about the whole thing.
When you re-read your story, something about that scene felt different from the rest of the book, or
You rushed past it without reading too carefully because in your mind it was already perfect.

In any case, there was probably a split second between your writer’s intuition throwing a red flag, and your ego swooping in with a rationalization: “I’m adding a touch of humor here,” or “this is the heart of the story, I must be doing something else wrong,” or “I can’t change this part, I’ve already put a bear on the book cover.”

But for that split second, you knew. Which is why you must take your hand from the throat of your critique partner and put it on the delete key instead. The worst thing a writer can do in such circumstances is to ignore the warning signs, and contort the story to make it fit around that one device. Killing your darlings is about having the flexibility of mind to recognize that the very thing that got you started writing a story may no longer be relevant to the story itself. That’s a tough moment to face: many a mediocre book has been penned by an author who could not summon the courage it requires.

I have to say that I’m guilty of this. I’ve written stories that were inspired by a funny anecdote, or a lightning bolt concept at 3:00 a.m. At the time I was writing and even revising, those original seeds seemed elemental to me because I had an emotional attachment to them. But when beta readers looked at my stories, it was often those very pieces that were seen as confusing, boring or otherwise out of place. Rather than seeing things objectively, I sometimes found myself explaining, defending, or telling myself that the reader obviously read my story wrong.

Artists refer to this phenomenon as being “precious” about their work, which strikes me as appropriate because holding on to your darlings has largely the same impact as Gollum crouching over his life-sucking ring, alone in a cave. And also, because a bear in a row boat is… precious. I mean, come on. It’s a bear! He can’t use the oars! A bear in a rowboat. Classic.

 

Ahem. Now that I’m further along in my writing journey, I recognize the bear in the rowboat a little earlier each time, and I find it easier to say goodbye to him when I do. For me, it helps to honor the original idea that brought me to the story. I think of it as the scaffolding that allowed me to build the real story underneath. At some point in the construction process, the scaffolding must come down, but that doesn’t detract from its usefulness.

So. To make the new story work, you have to thank the bear for his service, hand him a towel, and move on with your writing life. If it makes you (or the bear) feel better, you can keep him in a file in your writing closet in case you need him for another story. I have a main folder on my laptop and a subfolder for every story I write called “Murdered Darlings,” because I can’t bear –sorry– to delete them in case I change my mind later. This is the writer’s version of hoarding and I am unapologetic about it.

That said, want to guess how many times I have fished a murdered darling out of the cold Alaskan waters of my deletion folder? Yep. Zero.

Because once a scene or device is gone, the story is usually better and I don’t need to go back. The bear served his purpose by allowing me to get into the story that really needed to be written, even though he wasn’t destined to remain part of it. So long, friend bear.

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Origin Story: My First Novel

Over on The Draft House page today, I wrote about the struggle to write my first novel, the amazing support I got from my family, and how my biggest obstacle to success turned out to be… me.

When I started my first novel, THE MARRIAGE PACT, in 2010 (or, I should say, when I started the first novel I actually completed) I had been tinkering with writing for years. There were probably six beginnings of novels on my hard drive in which I’d begun a draft, made it 20,000 or even 45,000 words in, and then abandoned the effort for any of the following reasons…

Read on at The Draft House blog.

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Six Lessons from Little League

(Little League Baseball: A Love Story, Part 2)

Last Saturday was the end of Skywalker’s first full season of little league baseball. His cute little team struggled all season long, with lots of losses and a few scattered wins. At the beginning of the season, many of them weren’t sure how to hold the bat, when to run, or how to drop the bat when they did run – to keep from creaming the catcher or those brave, underpaid umpires behind the plate. Their batting helmets were so big, they looked for all the world like life-size bobblehead dolls as they scooted around the bases, while the team in the field launched balls over one another’s heads into space and the outfield. As a former therapist, I can attest that watching a little league team try to learn the fundamentals is worth at least a month of traditional therapy. Win or lose, it’s the best.

When the regular season ended and the post-season double elimination tournament started, our little guys lost the first game so badly that we thought for sure the season was over. Ten to one, beaten soundly by the team we’d tied for last place. One more loss and we’d be out. And I’ll be totally honest, we busy parents with other children and end-of-school year chaos were… a little relieved. We never stopped cheering our guys on (or coaching them from the bleachers, something I SWORE I would never do — I’m seriously becoming my father, God help us all). But there were murmurings in the stands about recitals and swim team and the end of year parties, and getting to bed on time for once or having something other than rushed fast food for dinner. They brought the participation trophies to the second game of the tournament, knowing there might not be another shot at it.

But then, in that swan song of a game, our little team CAUGHT FIRE.

They started winning. Skywalker and a couple of the other less naturally gifted players started connecting the bat with the ball and eeking out infield singles, to their immense joy and ours. The stronger players converted infield hits to solid outfield line drives. Where the ball had been falling between confused infielders a few weeks before, running catches were made; and sometimes kids knew when to tag the base and when to tag the runner. Skywalker even got the game ball once, a thrill I doubt he is likely to forget anytime soon.

It was fun to watch them doing well, of course; even more fun to watch them grow into little players. Kids threw their gloves dramatically on the ground when they made mistakes (causing more than one adult to stifle a giggle in the bleachers). They started coaching each other up rather than relying only on the parent coaches: one kid yelling “keep your eye on the ball and swing straight!” while the other nodded his solemn, dirt-streaked face from the batter’s box.

By the end of it, we — I mean, they — played from the bottom of the losers’ bracket all the way to the championship game, where they lost a hard fought match to the same team they’d beaten two days before. The participation trophy from the regular season was joined by a second place trophy, well earned.

More important than any trophy, Skywalker got to experience being part of a team: winning and losing together, relying on one another. For me, this is the most compelling thing about team-based activities for kids. Experiencing the shared fate of winning and losing together, navigating personalities and abilities that range all over the spectrum — these are skills kids don’t necessarily get in the classroom or at home. And they’re extremely valuable in real life. In this age of information, where communication with others is the lifeblood of many careers, team skills might be more important than ever. Unless you’re a full-time novelist hermit, just about every vocation a person can pursue in adulthood requires being part of some kind of team. Hell, even hermit novelists must work with editors, publicists, designers, etc.

So, even though I’ll groan and roll my eyes when we get the next practice schedule (or the rehearsal schedule if it changes from baseball to drama or music) especially when we have two active kids to taxi around town, I hope I can always find a way to encourage my kids to be on a team in some way.

With that, here’s what I hope Skywalker has learned from baseball, and will take with him into the next season, or the next sport:

Don’t compare yourself to others. There will always be players who are stronger or faster than others, but the team wins or loses together.
Everyone misses a throw sometimes. Back up your buddies, and they will do the same for you.
Be first one to start the cheering when a teammate does well, the last one to criticize when he doesn’t.
Treat every trip to the batter’s box like a new opportunity. No matter how many times you strike out, the next pitch is always fresh start.
Get dirty. Stained knees and elbows are badges earned by giving your all.
Win or lose, enjoy your time on the field. Keep your head in the game, but don’t forget to enjoy the smell (and sometimes taste) of fresh dirt and grass.

 

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