Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 54

My first review of Fling!

All writers need reviewers for their books so others can decide whether to read them or not. The review offers a perspective that some readers need before they invest in a novel. That’s why I’m pleased to post my first official review of Fling! by a reader I don’t know. In other words, it’s what’s called an honest review.

If anyone else is interested in reading and reviewing Fling!, I can give you a copy, free, in whatever format you prefer (paperbook or pdf) in exchange for your honest review.

N.N. Light’s has posted the review on her blog, on Amazon, and on Goodreads. I’m also including it below for those who are interested. https://princessofthelight.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/fling-by-lilyionamac-bookreview-literaryfiction-mexico/

The relationship between mothers and daughters has always been a complicated one, ripe with misunderstandings, love, betrayal, virtue, honesty and jealousy. In Fling, we delve into three generations of women, all looking for answers.

Bubbles receives a letter from Mexico saying they are holding her mother’s ashes and please come pick them up. She calls her daughter, Feather, and convinces her to go to Mexico. Feather, not knowing how long her mother has left, agrees.

What started out as a favor to her mother, turns Feather’s world upside down. There’s something magical about Mexico (old Mexico, I mean) and all three generations of women discover the spirit within.

A beautifully told story, we catch a glimpse behind the scenes through flashbacks. Normally, flashbacks are a pet-peeve of mine but I wasn’t bothered because I felt I was part of the story. I was enthralled by the narration as I got deep into each of the characters. Art, myth and the lure of Mexico blend perfectly in Fling.

Favorite Character: Bubbles was my favorite character because she reminded me of my great-grandmother. She’s a free spirit and has lived three lifetimes in one. She may appear to be enigma to her daughter, Feather, but to me, she is a woman after my own heart. Fun, feisty and flirty, Bubbles will steal your heart.

Favorite Quote: Like a snarl in Annie’s knitting, she’s waiting to be untangled and rewoven into the fabric, freed from the negative family stuff but not separated from kin. ~Feather

Filed under: Links

Fling! has flung!

Finally having one of my novels launched reminds me of what it’s like planning a major trip, such as the one I’m now finishing up in Italy, a month-long adventure from Rome to Venice with many stops in between. We spent a year talking about this vacation, plotting our moves, reserving apartments, and doing all of the other important things involved. We also discussed what we anticipated seeing during our excursion, savoring every possibility. It felt as if departure day would never arrive.

But then it did, and we dove headlong into the Italian culture, enjoying every minute of all the various pastas we’ve consumed, proseccos we’ve drunk, piazzas we’ve lusted after, and more. Now our stay in Italy will end on July 3, and it’s hard to believe we’ll return to our daily rituals soon. These glorious days and nights touring such a lush country will end. No more long rides on the Venice lagoons, absorbing the dreamy quality of this city. No more lazy days of lingering over breakfast before leisurely sightseeing.

Writing Fling! has been a similar undertaking as I followed it through its many permutations until it discovered its final form. There were times when I thought it would never coalesce. And there were even more days when I feared it would never find a publisher that loved it. But today, Pen-L Publishing launched the book (http://www.pen-l.com/Fling.html), and I’m catapulted into another dimension—that of being a published novelist.

This transition is not unlike visiting a new country. I’ll need to learn a different language and follow the twists and turns of what this new designation means. As with finally leaving on an anticipated trip, there’s something anticlimactic about this day. But there’s also something incredibly satisfying about seeing my creation finally find its place with readers.

I hope you’ll become one of them!

Filed under: Links

Are Writers Shape Shifters?

In August, I’ll be conducting a workshop at the event “When Words Collide” in Calgary, Canada. It will be entitled “The Origins of Fiction: A Personal Odyssey.” Preparing for the occasion has me thinking about narrative seeds, especially mine. What starts me on these explorations of others’ lives?

One of my bios states “Lily sprouted on the Canadian prairies under cumulous clouds that bloomed everywhere in Alberta’s big sky. They were her first creative writing instructors, scudding across the heavenly blue, constantly changing shape: one minute an elephant, bruised and brooding. The next morphing into a rabbit or a castle. These billowing masses gave her a unique view of life on earth.”

I do credit those experiences I had as a child for my impulse to write, my desire to explore (and expand) my immediate surroundings, to move beyond them. Being a writer is being a shape shifter, a mythic concept that Ovid capitalized on in his Metamorphoses. What do I mean here? While writing, we are constantly manipulating reality, making it do things that we actualize in our fictions. And it involves the psychological term transference where we are able to project emotions, ideas, and perceptions onto something in the external world that others resonate with because they share these same impulses, the foundation of what it’s like to be human. We are transferring these elements into our characters. But we are also conveying them to our readers.

When I read Faulkner’s Sound and Fury, I not only understood Caddy’s feelings, but I also became Caddy for a time. She inhabited me, reading in me similar impulses that I had had as a young woman. Faulkner had created a character that had such an effect because he could imagine and inhabit her world, thereby enabling me to imagine it too. So a reader’s shape is also shifted as a writer shapes and shifts his/her creations into a characters.   There’s a whole lot of shape shifting going on!

It isn’t just that our imaginations seek opportunities to alter the material world and recreate it. Odyssey is an important word here to describe the journey that each of us takes when we begin writing a narrative, whether it’s a short or long fiction.

In the Odyssey, Circe was the ultimate shape shifter, turning Odysseus’ men into pigs. We writers all share this impulse, whether we recognize it or not. We can’t bear to just take the world as it is. We are always probing, inquiring, analyzing, creating and turning things into other things: into clouds, into human beings, into fiction. And that’s how stories begin. It’s also why there are constantly new stories: there are always new combinations, fresh possibilities. How can we possibly stop searching in these clouds of perception for novel forms that will immerse us in new worlds that we have at our fingertips.

Filed under: Links

Becoming an Italian

Being in Italy has caused me to rethink my reaction to problems that accost us on a daily basis. Before leaving on this trip, if something went wrong, I would tighten up and lose my sense of humor, creating a concrete wall that was difficult to penetrate.

But I tasted a different way of responding when we picked up our rental car in Chiusi, the train station where we stopped in Tuscany after spending a week in Rome. From there we planned to drive to the apartment we had rented on an estate overlooking the hills of Montalcino. I had booked a car with Avis back in March and had called on several occasions to confirm our reservations. We would be spending 10 days in Tuscany, and we needed a car to explore the region. Each time I called, no one seemed to have a record of my reservation, and I had to start all over again. Each time I was reassured that, yes, the reservation was good.

The night before we left Rome for Tuscany, I called Avis to reconfirm our reservation. The agent who answered had no record of it. Finally, he said that Budget, their sister rental car service, might know about it. So he passed me to someone in Budget. He was right. The woman who answered at Budget did have a record of the reservation. I asked for the address where we could pick up the car in Chiusi and wrote down a number that seemed to correspond with the train station address. Since we are American and accustomed to picking up cars at airports or train stations, that address made sense.

However, when we arrived in Chiusi, we discovered that not only were there no car rentals in the station, but Budget didn’t have a visible address nearby. Avis did. By now we were reeling with confusion. Budget was supposed to be our car rental, but it didn’t appear to have a Chiusi location. We had been told that Avis didn’t have a rental office in Chiusi, but when we walked out of the station, we saw a large Avis sign.

By then it was 12:30 PM. We were both hot and mad and worried that we wouldn’t get our car before the office closed at 1 PM. After asking around, I learned that Avis did have an office about two blocks from the station. We wheeled our three bags there only to discover that it was already closed. I did notice three “emergency” numbers listed for people to call, so I tried them all. Finally, one responded, and a man who spoke broken English said he would pick us up in a few minutes and drive us to the REAL location.

Things were looking up. He arrived and piled our bags into his car. We ended up at an Avis office that was combined with a new car dealer on the outskirts of Chiusi. On the way, he told us he had three reservations for me. I thought he was joking, and we all had a big laugh. But he actually was correct. They did have three reservations under my name. Yet even though they acknowledged they did have reservations under Avis (not Budget!), they did not have the car I had requested, a Mercedes A180 (automatic transition).

Why am I telling you all of this? Because the guy who handled our reservation did not get bent out of shape by all of the confusion. He “went with the flow” as we Californians sometimes suggest but never actually do. He maintained a sense of humor and leavened our anger at the inconvenience we had experienced. Soon we were all laughing about the craziness of what had happened, and my husband and I drove off in our four door Volkswagen hatchback with a triptych gearshift (I don’t even know what model it is), but later, when we read our contract, we discovered that the agent had written Fiat.

What we experienced with this Italian is something we’ve encountered repeatedly in this country. Many Italians have the amazing ability to let these potentially upsetting instances to roll off their backs. Such things aren’t important enough to cause us to ruin our days.

So the ability to shrug one’s shoulders and say “that’s life” will be an attitude my husband and I will try to continue back in the States. I just hope it sticks!

Filed under: Links

How Vacations Challenge Perceptions

My husband and I are spending a month in Italy. I’ve observed us experiencing a phenomenon that makes me wonder if other couples go through a similar dynamic. Whenever we take a big trip like this, our relationship gets shaken up. Our usual routines and rituals left in California, we have to rediscover ourselves in a new context. In some ways it’s almost like living with a stranger. Who is this man I’m married to?

It usually takes us two or three days to find our bearings and to reconnect in a new way. We have to renegotiate many of the interactions we take for granted at home. What time will we rise? How will we decide on what to do or see once we have awakened? When will be find time to pursue our own individual interests? At home, we have our own schedules already set: I write and teach. My husband teaches and sees patients.

Vacations throw couples together in a vastly different way than what they are accustomed to. No longer can we depend on the various distractions in our lives that help us to manage our days. In a way, we are stripped down and made more vulnerable, forced to dig deeper into ourselves and into the other person. There is less to hide behind, so it’s an opportunity to see our partner freshly.

Major trips also take up a good deal of time in the preparation stage. Getting ready for such a vacation requires a journey of another kind: gathering information about our proposed destinations, making reservations for planes, trains, cars, and accommodations. Already we are so involved in living in this imagined world that when we finally do arrive there, it can be disconcerting. The place we had expected to visit can seem so much different.

The Vatican Museum, which we plowed through this week, didn’t enlarge our cultural dimensions, except that we did see the Sistine Chapel, the majorattraction there. It was a great disappointment not to have the leisure one expects when visiting a major museum for the first time to linger in front of the art. The crowds were so enormous that it was difficult to stop anywhere. We were just part of a herd being pushed through the place.

Nor did the other sights we had read about live up to your expectations. The Spanish Steps that looked so glamorous in a recent Woody Allen movie were only stairs that a bunch of tourists had claimed. The Trevi Fountain of La Dolce Vita Fame was under construction. No water. No fountain. Just the sculptures overlooking it. I understand that even in the movie, the director created a set to resemble the fountain, so Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni also didn’t have contact with the real thing.   

What am I suggesting here? Our relationships to others and to the world are often temporary and in flux. I need to expand myself in order to embrace the husband I’ve grown accustomed to. He is a different man in Rome. So am I. Similarly, our perceptions of another country are often romanticized, much different from the reality. Therefore, spending time there can bring us to a more realistic vision of the world, one where we too are ever evolving.

Have others had similar experiences?

Filed under: Links Tagged: italy, rome, spanish steps, trevi fountain, vacation, vatican

How to shut down discussion in a reading group

Dear Fellow Readers,

An experience I had the other night in my small reading group has caused me to think about how to read and respond to literary fiction without shutting down discussion. One of our fellow readers tends to immediately jump in and express her opinions before there’s an opportunity to explore a book’s many themes and characters. In this case, she said the book made her feel claustrophobic and it was difficult for her to finish it.

What can you say after a statement like that? I probed a little, asking what it was that made her feel claustrophobic, wondering if it was something in herself she was reacting too and not just the book. As Lionel Trilling once said, novels can read us as much as we read them. I forget what my fellow reader said, but the damage had been done. Her strong reaction dampened further comments. It’s natural to dislike certain characters just as we do people we run into in actual life. But as readers, don’t we want to understand what it is about the character/person we dislike? What psychological elements are at play in this situation? It’s an opportunity for self-reflection and self-knowledge, one of the main reasons I read.

We were discussing Italian author Andrea Canobbio’s prize-winning novel, Three Light-Years. The title suggests that the narrative will move at a lightning pace, but it doesn’t. It’s a sedate stroll through the lives of its three main characters, Cecilia, her sister Sylvia, and Claudio. The narrator, another character, has a minor role as the son of this triad, and the narrative is his attempt to piece together what had led to his birth.

The author/narrator does a masterful job of exploring the emotional dynamics (or lack of them) that brought these three people together, and as a reader I felt it deeply when Cecilia and Claudio failed to connect more fully. Therefore, I had hoped my fellow readers and I could have a serious exploration of the psychological dynamics operating between these two characters, as well as the cultural pressures they lived under. Both had been married previously. Both were still bound in multiple ways to their pasts. It seemed like a rich opportunity to learn something both about Italian culture, if one can generalize that much, and also about the interior lives of these three characters. I also had hoped we could discuss the work’s structure, images, and more.

When it comes to reading and responding to literary works, I believe it’s important to take the inductive approach, saving our judgments until we’ve not only finished reading the book but also until after we’ve been engaged in a thorough discussion of it. Otherwise we are prejudging and jumping to unwarranted conclusions. We also are missing out on the kind insights other group members can bring to the conversation.

Filed under: Links Tagged: Andrea Canobbio, discussing literary works, prejudice, reading literary fiction, three light years

In this interview, Karen Hulene Bartell highlights the features of her new novel, Sacred Gift, Volume II of the Sacred Journey Series

What kind of recurring themes tie your first and second book of the series together?

The supernatural is a recurring theme. Angela, the uncanny baby of Sacred Choices comes of age in Sacred Gift. Kissed by the divine and grazed by the ungodly, Angela’s proof there’s “more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of” when she opens herself to communication with the afterlife. She uses her sacred gift to resolve the deep-rooted pain of those around her and spur them to recognize their potential.

The divine ties together Sacred Choices and Sacred Gift. The main characters are each on a sacred journey, and the divine subtly intervenes to guide them along their paths.

In Sacred Gift, many of the characters complete the journeys they began in Sacred Choices. Now grown, Angela Maria becomes the catalyst, the mediator. Because of her, Judith tears off her defensive ‘Band-Aid’ of busyness to forgive herself, come to terms with her aborted child, and reconcile with the child’s father. The timely topics of abortion and adoption infuse Sacred Gift.

Ceren comes ‘full circle’ with her past, ties in with Develyn’s future, and releases Esteban’s earthbound spirit. Sister Pastora recognizes her concealed gift and its potential. Jarek meets his daughter and his ‘karma.’

What do you think your readers will like or respond to the most about this story?

The sequel to Sacred Choices, Sacred Gift blends the Tex-Mex nationalities. It crosses the generations and includes multiple ethnic and cultural groups. In Sacred Gift, north meets south, and the ‘twain’ do meet. Many of the characters of the first book complete their stories in Sacred Gift, yet new characters steep the sequel with unique trials, novel missions, and fresh approaches to life’s challenges.

Though the main characters range in age from eighteen to ninety-two, from early reviews, twenty-something Develyn seems to resonate with readers. A botched-abortion survivor, whose mother died trying to abort her, she hears God’s call and slowly transitions from Goth girl to Religious.

What would a story be without romance, both for the young and young-at-heart? Astronomy-student Kio introduces Angela to moonlit river cruises, horse-drawn carriage rides, and puppy love. After eighteen years of marriage, Ceren and Justin rekindle their passion with a paranormal nudge.

Most of all, I believe readers will respond to the astro-archaeological secrets at Missions Concepción and Espada in San Antonio. Apparently, the Franciscan friars knew quite a bit about sacred geometry in the seventeen hundreds. You might say their knowledge is ‘illuminating.’

How do you incorporate the central TX area into your story? What will be familiar to people from the area?

San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country make up ninety percent of Sacred Gift’s setting. Primarily Angela travels San Antonio’s Riverwalk and Mission Trail, where she encounters the eerie apparitions and wraiths. Readers will recognize local restaurants and other venues, but Hill Country areas, such as the Devil’s Backbone, Purgatory Road, Wimberley, San Marcos, New Braunfels, and Austin should also be familiar ‘haunts’ to readers in central Texas.

Roughly ten percent of Sacred Gift’s action occurs in Mexico at Mexico City’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Basilica, Puebla, and the pyramids of Cholula and Teotihuacan. I dovetail Mexican locations into the central Texan story using flashbacks and recollections.

Were there any particular challenges writing this novel? And if so, how did you overcome them?

Over forty years ago, I terminated my only pregnancy in abortion. That still weighs on my mind. Writing Sacred Gift, the sequel to Sacred Choices has not only been personally cathartic, it’s been the key to helping others who’ve traveled similar paths. Everyone has a different story, rationale, and history, but there are so many walking wounded. It’s my privilege to address these women who’ve been scarred by abortion or adoption and offer help.

How did I overcome my challenges in writing this novel? I presented both sides of the pro-life/pro-choice decision – and let each reader make their own choice. Sacred Gift explores the series of decisions that ultimately leads to that choice.

How do I continue to overcome these challenges? I make myself available to speak to women’s groups. After I give a presentation, it’s rare that one or two women don’t approach me to share their stories. I want these women to know there are ways to release their pent-up grief and move on. I want to encourage them to open their ‘gift.’ Everyone’s gifted, but some never open their package.

 

Karen Hulene Bartell is available for speaking engagements and can be contacted via email: info@KarenHuleneBartell.com. Check online: www.KarenHuleneBartell.com

Sacred Gift is available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Gift-Journey-2/dp/1942428146/ref) and Pen-L Publishing (http://www.Pen-L.com/SacredGift.html), as well as all major bookstore.

 

Filed under: guest authors, Links Tagged: divine, Karen Hulene Bartell, mexico, Mexico City, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pen-L Publishing, sacred, Sacred Gift, spiritual, supernatural

Blind Drawing vs Blind Poetry

I recently read an article in the New York Times Magazine describing the author’s experience with blind contour drawing. The process involves looking at the subject and drawing its contours without looking at the paper. Instead of carefully rendered replicas, the drawer ends up with fascinating interpretations of what s/he is looking at. They may not resemble exactly the person or object, but they will exude personality and offer another dimension to what is being viewed.

This process fascinates me, but I realize I already have been doing something similar in certain poems I write that don’t portray external images as our eye perceives them. Instead—especially if I let myself enter a trance-like state—an inner eye takes over, and I’m surprised by the results. Of course, I’m not the only poet that practices blind poetry. Many of us do it without realizing the parallel with blind drawing, giving the reader a view that s/he otherwise would miss.

Here is and example from the recent issue of American Poetry Review:

In a poem by Elizabeth Robinson entitled “[Young man feeding pigeons as they rest on his hand and wrist],” the last two lines read “The arm motionless as feathers lift a sleeve. / Fine, white scratches on the wrist and hand.” I love the various ways these lines can be read. The arm can be viewed as being light as feathers. Or it could be that feathers actually lift a sleeve. And fine could be a comment on the previous line, or it could modify “white scratches.” It also could be a value judgment of the white scratches or a commentary on how the scratches appear. And there’s an unspoken sense that the pigeons from the title may actually have left scratches on the man’s wrist and hand. Lots of ambiguity and a fresh take on a common scene.

Do you have any examples of blind poetry!

Filed under: Links Tagged: blind contour drawing, elizabeth robinson

Thanks to Lia Mack, author of WAITING for PAINT to DRY, for this interview!

What genres do you work in?

All of my books will be women’s fiction. I love and enjoy delving into the emotional journey we women must take to find ourselves, our place in the world. Everyone’s story of when they realized their sense of self, is a beautiful, powerful one. That said, my novels also have a vein of activism attached to them. Not activism in an IN YOUR FACE manner, but there’s a unique thread that streams throughout the entire novel that will hopefully bring about a sense of understanding and knowledge in my readers. And my novels will always have a spiritual side. Not religious, but spiritual. Sometimes there’s a spiritual pretense that hardly anyone ever picks up on, but it’s there. Adding to our lives, our stories. Pointing us in certain directions. Will my readers find the spiritual elements in my debut novel WAITING FOR PAINT TO DRY? I hope so :)

If a movie was made of your book, who would the stars be?

Fun question! Well, for starters, it can’t happen because she’s no longer acting… but definitely Meg Ryan. She’d be the perfect main character for WAITING FOR PAINT TO DRY. Everything from her quirky sense of self, to her beauty that always seems hidden behind a self-conscious smile, all the way to her short, sassy, sexy hair. She’s the perfect Matty Bell. Anyone else in my novel I’d have to have help casting. I love movies, but I hardly ever remember actors names. 

At what moment did you decide you were a writer?
I honestly thought everyone liked to write as much as I did. I was always the new kid, moving around from school to school – my father was in the Air Force – so I was never in one place long enough to be seen. No teacher ever picked up on my writing talent or, rather, no teacher ever had the time to let me know they saw that I had one. I was always that new student that showed up in February that didn’t come back following year. Then, when I was a junior in high school, I had this wonderfully imaginative creative writing teacher. She pointed out that I had something special. 
 
She had asked us to write a short story one day. The moment she said, “Go,” I was transfixed. I didn’t stop or feel or see anything outside the paper I was writing on until she said, “stop.” By then the hour had blown by and I had written the first two chapters to a novel. Of course, I hadn’t followed the directions (story of my life!) When I saw that everyone else had 1-5 pages written verses my 30 back to back, I knew I had failed the assignment. But then something magical happened. The next day the teacher read some of the best stories and left mine for last. I presumed she did so to show the class what NOT to do when writing a “Short Story”. Only, once she started to read what I had written, and I finally opened my eyes against the humiliation I felt,  I saw that everyone in the class too had become transfixed. They leaned forward in their chairs, wanting more. And when the bell rang and that was it – I only wrote the first two chapters – I didn’t stop hearing from my classmates that they just HAD to know what happened next! For the remainder of the year, students that never paid an ounce of attention in class still remembered my story. They stopped me in the hallway. Begged me to finish writing it so they could find out how it ended. That’s when I knew for sure this wasn’t a  talent that I could pass up. I could move people. I just needed to discover my voice. And a reason to write more.
As a result of publishing your book, what have you learned about yourself and/or the writing process?
I love this question… I learned that I’d rather be writing!  Writing is the EASY PART. Seriously. I think I may need to make a bumper sticker for my truck… Now that I know how painful publishing is, I will never groan about writing again. Getting a book from writing to publication takes a lot of ‘blood, sweat and tears’, with publishing is the ‘blood’. Although it had nothing to do with my actual publisher. Rather, it had everything to do with me. I’m comfortable being a ‘closet writer’. Publication brings you out into the spotlight like you’ve never been before. And what writer likes that? Social media is great in many respects, but it also brings us out into the open. That part, to me, is unnerving at times. Yes, yes. It’s exciting and the best type of stress I want in my life – the stress of having to be a published author. But it’s still stress. “Enjoy!” my publisher at Pen L Publishing keeps saying… I’m trying! 
What does your writing space look like?
I prefer to write at my writing desk. Just got one last year as a present to myself for signing a publishing contract! On it I have piles upon piles of notebooks filled with notes. I have post-it notes and pictures cut from magazines taped to the wall above my cluttered desk. But I can’t think if I can’t see it all spread out like that. I need to be able to ‘daydream’ with all my inspiration right at hand. Although, if I’m being completely honest, my writing space is anywhere I can hide! With two kids, two dogs, a hubby, and all the fixin’s of life, I sometimes have to hide to get some peace and quite. So anywhere I can find to hide and sit and dive into my head – either with paper and pencil, or my laptop – is my writing place. One of my favorite places is my local coffee shop. Even thought it’s no where near to quite (and I don’t drink American coffee), NO ONE BOTHERS ME. It’s actually pretty nice, being uninterrupted!
Where do your ideas come from for stories/books?
Honestly, they come from my life. I find a spark, a ‘thing’ that needs dissecting. For WAITING FOR PAINT TO DRY, that spark/thing was the need to move past a trauma from my life and find common threads from other survivors to heal from such trauma. But from that ‘spark’ I generate a totally fictional story that, sometimes, seem to just happen. Automatically. As if my subconscious takes over and my characters drive the story, decide what happens next. Why write from aspects of my own life? I like to write from a place of knowledge, of understanding, so as to bring forth characters who aren’t just formed from research, but from experience. To me that’s deeper, richer. And it’s very cathartic personally. They say, ‘write what you know’. Add that to my desire to be a fiction novelist, and I find the challenge very exciting. To take what you know and fictionalize it to the point that it’s so much more than just your experience. It’s now wide reaching and has the potential to help and heal others. And entertain! I love the challenge. 
Do you travel to research your book(s)?
YES!! It’s the best part of researching a book. For WAITING FOR PAINT TO DRY, I traveled to sunny, southern California more times than I can count. Of course, I wrote the novel over the course of 10 years, so I had time to travel! But it’s important to do so, in my opinion, to bring realistic elements into your story. While there, I do things that my character does, plus things they don’t, so I can see the whole picture. I read local publications to get a feel for the community, the happenings. And I buy a map of the area for when I get home and can’t recall names of lagoons, streets, beaches. 

What writing mistakes do you find yourself making most often?


I’m not honest enough. At first, that is. But with each iteration of the manuscript, I dig deeper and dipper to find the hidden truths that even I don’t want to spell out. It’s too painful to be that intimate with your characters, especially when you’re inside their head when writing in a first person POV. You know more than anyone would ever tell an outsider. You also feel, see everything. And you can see why that character would rather not let anyone know they’re hurting inside. But as the writer, there you are, writing about all their hiddens for the world to see. It’s quite a vulnerable feeling. Hence I have to force myself to do it.  What helps me the most is a quote from Stephen King’s ON WRITING memoir. To paraphrase, “This isn’t a church. This isn’t politically correct. This is writing. Tell the truth.” I have that in big, bold letters taped to the wall above my writing desk. TELL THE TRUTH. 

You can reach Lia at www.LiaMack.com
Filed under: Links

The Writer as Chameleon

The other night I dreamt that I had at least seven different selves that I circulated among. I wasn’t surprised. My roles in the outer world shift regularly from writer to teacher to vp of USF’s part-time faculty union, to mother, to wife, to social director, to cook. But I also realize that writing fiction, poetry, and non-fiction calls on very different aspects of myself.  

When I’m involved in creating a fictive narrative, I have to allow myself to enter into many different settings, characters, and feeling states in order to pull it off. For example, with Fling!, the novel that will be published in July, when I wrote the section on Mexico City, I had never been there. Nor had I visited the city in the 1920s, one of the time periods that occur in the book. But through research about the city, and inhabiting my own imagination, I somehow managed to pull it off. I not only created a believable environment, but I also established a character that fit into that period.

When I write poetry, something different happens. I don’t start with a particular character or setting. Instead, I’m motivated by a feeling or an image or an unexplainable nudge. Nor do I have any idea where the poem is going, though the same is true with fiction. I’m always heading off a precipice, never knowing where or when I’ll land. Poetry seems to be sparked by some inner urge and often leaves me with a quandary or unanswered question. The poem remains a mystery in many ways even to me, the creator.

Non-fiction draws on some aspects of the above two genres, but a very different self takes charge here. While I also don’t usually know where I’m going when I write non-fiction, I am less dependent on mood and characters to guide me. Here, ideas tend to rule, and I dance between them, letting one spark another until a mosaic forms and I have an essay.

Do other writers have a similar process?

Filed under: Links Tagged: chameleon, writers, writing fiction, writing non-fiction, writing poetry