Ninie Hammon's Blog, page 7

Stephen King’s Boys in the Basement/Ninie Hammon’s California Raisins (Part 1)

Right out of the chute here I want to set the record straight: I have absolutely no idea how to write a novel. No idea how you’re supposed to write a novel, that is. When I began to write my first one, I hadn’t the foggiest notion how to proceed. I didn’t own a copy of Writing Novels for Dummies—if there was or is such a thing. I didn’t read books about plot structure, conflict or point of view. I have since done all those things, but not in the beginning. Starting out, I simply sat down at the computer and started typing.

Much of writing a novel—for me, the overwhelming majority—is intuitive. And that really shouldn’t come as any great surprise. I’ve been telling stories my whole life. But see, here’s the thing—so have you! You’ve been telling stories your whole life, too. We all intuitively know how.

When you were in first grade, you told your best friend in minute—and probably exaggerated—detail how the school bully stole your lunch money or how Susie Snodmotz fell off the monkey bars and broke her arm. Nobody had to teach you how to tell that story. You knew. How? Because you’d spent your whole short life listening to other people tell stories. You heard Dad’s fish-that-got-away stories and Mom’s plumber-worked-all-day-and-the-sink-still-leaks stories. You lay in the dark at night giggling as your older sister described how she accidentally spilled her jacks on the hall floor and Grampa choose that very moment to go to the bathroom … barefoot.

As you grew older, you figured out how to tell better stories, how to draw out the tension, keep your audience wondering how it all turned out in the end. Did the school bullies get caught? Did you punch one of them in the nose? Did Susie fall off the monkey bars … or was she pushed? You’ve been perfecting your story-telling skills over the course of your whole life. We all have. But our best teacher hasn’t been life stories. Our best teacher has been make-believe stories.

I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of hours we’ve spent watching made-up stories on television and at the movies, sat spellbound in darkened theatres munching popcorn and engraving the best parts, the scariest parts, the most romantic parts into our consciousness forever. Of course, for me the best way to mainline stories is through reading; the very best stories lie between the covers of books. Love, love, love that special ahhh feeling when a novel ticks all the boxes, when the characters are so real I miss them like lost siblings after I finish the last page and the plot is so intricate I have no idea what might happen next. When I stay up half the night to finish it because I gotta know what happens!

Did you ever wonder where all those made-up stories come from? Where do writers break out of the ranks of average (dare I say normal?) people? Where do we get the stories rattling around in our heads that have nothing to do with reality? No, not rattling around. That implies a handful up there in an otherwise empty room. My story room’s jammed. Standing-room only. We may all know how to tell stories, but we don’t all have a herd of made-up ones wedged so tight in our brains that the physical act of writing them down is a relief because it lets off the pressure.

I think most novelists would agree that the single question we’re asked most often is: where do you get your story ideas? Where did that herd of stories come from? Author Stephen King tells people his story ideas are generated by “the boys in the basement;” I say mine are produced by the California Raisins.

But actually, there’s an even better answer. I believe it’s the real answer—the one that also explains why we all know how to tell stories and why we all respond to stories, too. It’s not an original thought. (I’m not sure there have been any of those since: “I think I’ll call that one with the tall, skinny neck a hippopotamus and the short fat one a giraffe … naaa, the other way around.”)

If you’re interested in my take on the whole concept of story, come join me here next Thursday and we can chat about it. About the process a novelist—well, this novelist—uses to translate stories into books. And I’ll tell you about my California Raisin muses, too.

Do you have stories playing tag in your head? Ever thought about writing them down? Why didn’t you?

Book Clubs, Schools … here I come! (via Skype)

 

As anybody who’s ever spent more than half an hour in my presence will attest, I would crawl on my belly through five miles of fire ants for a chance to hang out with readers. (Ok, that was excessive, but you get the idea.) And I just had more fun than any author should be allowed to have. I just spent more than an hour talking about The Memory Closet with an absolutely charming group of readers in Houston called the Book Babes.

Later this afternoon, I’m speaking to a creative writing class in Seattle about the use of dialect in Black Sunshine.  

I can see your mental wheels spinning, hauling out your IPhones, burning up the Maps app trying to figure out how I can possibly make it from a home in the Houston suburbs to a school in Seattle before the final bell rings. Let me save you a cardiac infarction. Can you say “Skype?”

Skype may just be the best innovation for writers and readers since Zorro invented book signings. (He became famous for putting his signature on things—right?) Just a couple of mouse clicks and badda boom, badda bing you’re talking to readers anywhere on the planet.

I’m sure tons of other writers are using Skype just like I am, but I didn’t pinch the idea from any of them. I got it from my husband. Tom supervises Young Life in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scandinavia. Hard to be in nine countries at one time, but he takes virtual trips electronically almost every day. I happened to be passing by his rolltop desk/office once when he was Skyping with the man who oversees Scotland. Randy has read all my books, so I intruded into the conversation to say hello and we chatted for a bit about the last thing he’d read.

There a folks quicker on the uptake than I am, but that conversation planted a seed. The next time I heard from a reader that her book club had selected one of my books, I offered to Skype into one of their meetings. It was a blast!

I’d love to say that I Skype into clubs and classes, libraries and bookstores all the time, but in truth I don’t do it nearly as often as I’d like because the idea hasn’t really caught on among readers yet. But I’m promoting it as hard as I can and I’m hoping you’ll help me spread the word.

Contact me here with a comment to this post or by email if you’d be interested in having me show up electronically at a book club meeting, school, book store or library. (If it’s geographically possible, I might be able to show up in person–just know upfront that you must provide Cheetos. I mainline those babies.) It’s a lot of fun for me and hopefully for the group members. I’ve fielded questions as generic as “Where do you get ideas for your books?” and as specific as “Why did you let [character’s name deleted] die?” I can speak to English classes about author’s voice, style, syntax, grammar and point of view—how to put a story together and how to make characters real. I can speak to libraries and book stores about the turmoil in the publishing industry with the advent of eReaders and ePublishing.

Help me get the word out that there’s nothing I like better than interacting with readers. Well, ok, I like writing better—but hanging with readers is a close second. I hope you’ll help me make that possible more often.

Now … if I could just figure out a way to do a book-signing on Skype. Of course, that’s not my top priority. What I REALLY want to figure out is how I can Skype into a book club meeting and share the cookies!

 

Coal Is Black Sunshine

I got a letter about a week ago.

No, I mean a LETTER. Written on paper. Delivered by the mailman.

It was from a coal miner in Eastern Kentucky. He didn’t say how he had gotten my mailing address, but I suspect it was provided to him by the sweet ladies at the Coal Mining Museum in Benham, Kentucky.

“My wife made me read Black Sunshine and I was sure I’d hate it because I knew you would make fun of hillbillies just like everybody else does. But you didn’t do that. How do you know the heart of mountain people like that?”

I sank down onto the couch and read the words again. The handwriting was difficult to make out. The spelling and grammar needed some help. (I cleaned it up here.) But the message was so earnest and heart-felt my eyes filled with tears.

For those who don’t know, Black Sunshine is my latest novel. Released in February, it is the story of a disaster in the Harlan #7 Coal mine in Aintree Hollow, Kentucky. Before I set out to write the book I knew next to nothing about coal mining. By the time I had completed it, I had such an appreciation of the danger and difficulty of the job that I dedicated the book to coal miners.

“… who risk their lives in the dirty, cold, wet darkness every day to dig coal. To their families who carry the mine with them in their hearts every minute their loved ones are underground. And to the memories of more than 7,000 miners who went down one day and never came back up. May they rest in peace.”

The first place I went when I began research for the book was the Coal Mining Museum—a five-hour drive across the state of Kentucky and then down the Kingdom Come Parkway into another world. The mountains of Appalachia are more beautiful than you’ve heard, the people are genuine, real, friendlier than you can imagine and the culture feels like it was lifted out of another century.

The ladies at the museum pointed me to the acknowledged expert on all things coalmining and hillbilly. His name is Jerry Asher and he serves as the technical director for the television show Justified, which is set in Harlan County. I must have talked to Jerry two dozen times in the months that followed, changed the whole plot of the book because he said my original “wouldn’t never happen that way in a coal mine.” The more Jerry told me about coal mining, the more awed I became that anybody was willing to do a job like that day after day for a lifetime.

In Eastern Kentucky, the mines aren’t dug under the ground beneath your feet. They’re dug into the mountain you’re standing beside. So the shafts go straight in, not down—but they can go in as far as 15 miles deep. And the shafts are only 48 inches tall because that’s how thick the coal seam is. Miners work 10-12 hour shifts bent over or on their knees in the forever dark, forever wet. But not forever silent. The mountain pops, creaks and groans, speaks to the old timers. They say it is warning them, urging those with ears to hear to flee back out into the light while there is still time.

And so the letter from the coal miner—affirming my book—meant the world to me. It meant I got it right, I captured it, I tacked words onto a reality and brought coal miners and coal mining to life accurately on the page. I so wanted that to be the case. I so wanted those I had written about to approve of my story.

The question the coal miner asked was a really simple one to answer. How did I know the hearts of mountain people like that? I didn’t. I just understand the hearts of simple, decent, courageous people. They’re the same everywhere.

 

NOT my first blog post … really

This is NOT my first blog ever—on my brand new website.

I know it looks like it is, but it’s not.

Really.

It’s my second blog.

Writing the first-ever blog on a newly-designed website, a pristine format where you must line words up all neat and tidy and then launch them forever un-retrievable on their maiden voyage into never-ending cyberspace—that is waaaay too intimidating for me.

So I’ve decided to skip the first blog altogether and go directly to the second. Second isn’t hard. Been there, done that. Ahhh. I can relax and we can just sit down here and have ourselves a chat.

Even more informally than when I wrote newspaper columns a ten-year lifetime ago. Over the course of 25 years of journalism at four different newspapers, I have faced the first-column Boogie Man before. The hardest first column is…well, the first one. As I recall, it was a month before I was able to finally crank one out at The Lebanon Enterprise back in 1979. I’m older and wiser now. Well, older anyway.

Along in here somewhere I should tell you what this blog’s going to be about, but the truth is I don’t really know yet. All my plans for the content of this space would fit inside a girdle and still have enough room for Mahalia Jackson. And that’s Ok. Most blogs evolve over time caterpillar-into-a-butterfly style. Oh, the gurus in the hallowed halls of Blogdom will tell you there are rules about successful blogs. You can’t just write about whatever you feel like writing about, they’ll say. You have to write about what your reader wants to read! (Tough advice to follow when you don’t have any readers yet.) All good blogs have a goal and every word written in them must advance you closer to that goal! Can’t you just feel them flicking their know-it-all ashes all over you?

The Blog Police and I part company on that point. I don’t have a goal. Oh, sure, I would love for you to read my books, but I certainly don’t expect to get there from here. I suspect you showed up today for one of two reasons. 1. You already have read one of my books and you’re curious about the person who wrote it. Or 2. You used to read my column in one of the four newspapers it appeared over the years and you liked it—or hated it!—and either way you want to re-engage.

You’re not going to decide to read one of my books because I stick to a goal—which I don’t tell you is the goal—of writing a blog designed to manipulate you into doing that. You’ll read a Ninie Hammon novel or you won’t. Either way, you’ll decide that for yourself. So that frees me up not to have to twist your arm. I don’t know about you, but I like that arrangement a whole lot better.

Well, would you look at that! Here we are down at the bottom of my blog space. Ok, so the space expands—infinitely! Still, it’s probably a plan for me to shut up now instead of babbling on while you doze off and start drooling or switch to reruns of NCIS. (Random! Show of hands here, ladies. Who thinks Mark Harmon’s white hair just makes him MORE sexy?)

I’ll be back in this same spot next week and we’ll talk some more. Leave your comments and we can actually have a conversation instead of me talking and you listening. Write whatever you want. Why not? I do. Ask any questions you’d like. Over the course of the next few weeks I thought I’d talk a little about the creative process. Where on earth do you get an idea big enough for a novel? How do you set it up, design it, execute the design? Those topics interest me and they’re things I can speak to with some authority. If they interest you, ask some specific questions, come back again and we’ll visit some more. If they don’t, come back anyway and tell me what does interest you.

Now, see how easy that was.