Diane Chamberlain's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

I hope all you parents are making readers out of your children. When I think back to my own childhood, it's full of books. My Dad was a school principal, and nearly every day after work he'd stop in each of our bedrooms and toss two things on our beds: candy and books. We may all have bad teeth, but we love to read. For two of us, that led to a love of writing as well. In my case, that writing started very early.


I'm pulling together pictures to be used in a video presentation at a May event celebrating my twenty years as an author. While doing so, I stumbled across the cover for Witchville (or--ahem--Whitchville), the first book I wrote. What really cracks me up about this book is the synopsis on the flyleaf. Except for the spelling and sentence structure, the plot sounds like it could be from one of my current novels, doesn't it? I may have grown as a writer, but my imagination appears to be stuck in 1961 (as is my typing ability, I'm afraid).

So are you nurturing some excellent readers? Perhaps some future authors? I wonder what form your kids' books will take? Will we be able to hold them in our hands and store them on our bookshelves, or will they all be on Kindle-like devices or on little chips we have implanted in our ears? No matter how anxious I feel about the future of publishing, I have no anxiety whatsoever about the future of storytelling. We'll always need stories, and I hope you're sharing plenty of them with your children.

When I created the new videos about "my writing life" for my website, my plan was simply to answer the questions I'm frequently asked, so that when readers email me with those questions, I can point them to the videos for the answers. I was so pleased to learn that frequent blog commenter Brenda is using them with her students. Now I've learned that she's not the only teacher to find them valuable. I received emails today from three teachers in three different parts of the country who plan to use the videos with their students. I'm thrilled! Here's a bit from one of their emails:

I thought it was time I wrote to tell you how you're helping me teach my high school students. I've been a reader of your books for more than ten years, and when I read Before the Storm, I knew it would be an excellent book for my students to read, not only because it contains teenaged characters but because it deals with serious issues in an engrossing way. I knew my "kids" would be caught up in the story and not even notice that they were learning at the same time. Although I teach creative writing and English, this book has taught them bits and pieces about geography, psychology, health and, above all, values. When I saw the videos you now have on your site, I was over the moon! I'm developing new lesson plans using them, and I just wanted to take this time to thank you for creating them. (I need to add that I had to get parental permission for the students to read your book. It's a little spicy and salty for this age group, but every one of them agreed to let me use it!)

Isn't that cool? A big "hello!" from me to these teachers and all their students. I look forward to hearing from more of you.

http://dianechamberlain.com/blog/2009...

The contest continues! Win a vacation on Topsail Island and help me celebrate my 20 years as an author by clicking here to learn more. You may enter once a day.

Yes, it's that time of year when I start to lose my marbles. It always happens around now, three months before deadline. Deadlines are always challenging, but this one is particularly crazy making. You faithful blog readers may remember the following:

•I have nine months to write this book
•I spent the first month or so writing a proposal for a book tentatively titled The Midwife's Confession, which my editor, agent and I all loved
•I started working on the book. Then my editor realized the marketing "hook" was too similar to another book they had coming out around the same time. Much teeth gnashing on my part followed!
•Back to the drawing board. I took another couple of months writing a new proposal for what is now titled The Lies We Told, set partly in North Carolina and partly in Ecuador after an earthquake. The proposal was accepted.
•I outlined the book and began writing the story.
•About two thirds of the way through the rough draft (mid March), I decided I wanted to make a change and told my editor. The change would move more of the story to Ecuador. My editor and agent then decided Ecuador was a bad idea altogether. My readers wouldn't want to read about it. More teeth gnashing ensued.
•I decided my editor and agent were right, as usual. I moved the setting entirely to North Carolina and changed the earthquake to back-to-back hurricanes. The move changed absolutely everything in the story. No longer did I have the gut-wrenching drama of collapsing buildings and the need for my surgeon characters to mend many, many broken bones. No longer did I have the language and cultural barriers that had been such a necessary part of the plot.
•Early April already: cue heart-pounding panic.
•Mid April, everything started falling, magically, into place. My Ecuadorian pregnant woman became a backwoodsy North Carolina pregnant woman. The earthquake aftershocks became massive flooding. The person I was going to kill stayed alive. And best of all, I started falling in love with the story again. Finally!
So why am I going crazy now that things are a bit more settled? I have so much more to do and feel so behind! I've moved into the "can't sleep" phase, because as soon as my head hits the pillow I hear voices and see scenes. Dialogue. Action. I grab my pen and pad. Jot notes in the dark. I had three hours sleep last night, but wow, did I get up this morning with a bunch of great notes!

I'm also losing track of things, such as, my mind. Several times a week, I speak by speakerphone with bookclubs around the country as they discuss one of my books (sign up here, if you like!). I sat down the other night to call one of the clubs, thinking they were Central Standard Time only to realize I had them mixed up with another club. This one was EST, so I called them an hour late. Ugh. They were immensely understanding, but I don't usually make that sort of mistake. And yesterday, I took my notes and Alphasmart with me to the doctor's office and left them there! For a while, I couldn't figure out what I'd done with them, and was terrified that all the work I had on my Alphasmart (not to mention all my notes) was lost. But they were safe and sound and I picked them up this morning. And the staff at the doctor's office wasn't chuckling and smirking, so I don't think any of them read any of my very rough draft.

So, that's what I'm up to. Going crazy. And I know the drill: it's only going to get worse from here.

The contest continues! Win a vacation on Topsail Island and help me celebrate my 20 years as an author by clicking here to learn more. You may enter once a day.

How would you like to face this mess every day?

I'm in the revision process (on a page like this, the "rewriting process" is a more accurate term.) Every day, I go through a few chapters and scribble all over them, as you can see here. Then I start typing the changes into the document. It's arduous, though as usual, I must add it's not as arduous as fighting fires or teaching junior high. Still, with deadline looming (and a few other stressors in my life, which I won't go into here. . . Good stressors, for the most part), a page like this one really gives me the willies.

Here's a tidbit about this book and how I'm writing it: It has two points of view--sisters Maya and Rebecca, who are both doctors. I'm alternating Maya's first person POV with Rebecca's third person POV, but that confusion I'll save for another post. What I'd like to discuss here is the fact that their stories are wildly different from one another. Therein lies the challenge. Rebecca is working with hurricane evacuees in the closed environment of an airport. Maya is trapped in the backwoods with strangers. I found it impossible to work on their stories simultaneously--that is, shifting back and forth from a Maya chapter to a Rebecca chapter, etc. So, as I've done with other books that have a similar structure, I wrote all Maya's chapters first. Then, all of Rebecca's. Once I completed the rough draft of their chapters, I worked out the timeline to make sure what was happening to Maya matched the date of what was happening to Rebecca in the next chapter. (Ha! Easier said than done). Now as I revise, I'm doing the same thing all over again. I've revised all of Maya's chapters and am now working on Rebecca's. Then I'll once again be sure they flow well together. I will probably have to turn the book in at that point, although I know it will need more polishing, but it will be time to see what revisions my editor wants. After that, I can make it pretty. Right now, it's kinda ugly. But I love the story. Love it! I usually hate what I'm writing around this time in the process, so I'm not sure if loving it is a good sign or not. We'll see!

I just noticed it's already 7PM, so I'm going to grab a slice of pizza, take one of Rebecca's chapters out to the porch, and make a mess of it as I did with Maya's above. Wish me luck!

P.S. Remember, your comments on any of my blog posts give you a chance to win the cute tote bag in my current contest!

In the past twenty plus years of writing fiction, I've had plenty of time to ponder why I write about particular topics and revisit particular themes. I grew up a fearful person, something I'll post about at greater length one of these days. I think I've conquered most of my fears (with the exception of wide open spaces--shudder), but I find that I continually write about characters who struggle with their fears and who, by the book's end, have finally managed to lay them to rest.

That's certainly the case with my work-in-progress, The Lies We Told, in which Maya, a doctor, has been afraid for her physical well being ever since witnessing the murder of her parents when she was fourteen. It's also the case with Keith in my current novel, Secrets She Left Behind. Keith has always had a fear of heights, but ever since he was burned in a fire, he's feared fire as well. Of course, I put him to the test on both fronts during the course of the story.

Back in my days as a therapist, I was trained to view fear as a primary emotion, with other negative emotions being secondary to that fear. Anger is a perfect example. Think of the last time you were angry and dig deep into that emotion to learn what was really going on inside you. I bet you'll discover that fear was the underlying emotion. A good example is the woman who loses sight of her child in a grocery store. When she finds that child, she shakes him and yells, "Don't you ever do that again!" She looks angry, but she's actually terrified. Fear operates under many guises.

I think authors tend to write about the things they need to gain control over, whether that's loss, anger, betrayal, inadequacy, or simply a tendency to have one unsatisfying relationship after another (all of which, in my opinion, can be tied back to fear). In our stories, we strive to have our characters overcome the things we struggle with ourselves. I love that vicarious thrill of having my characters triumph over their demons.

If you were a writer, what demons would you be trying to lay to rest?

Secrets She Left Behind

Breaking the Silence will be reissued in December, and I thought you might like a sneak peek at the cover my publisher is working on for it. There's a lot going on in this story, as there usually is in my books: a mute little girl, an old woman with memory loss, a man and his hot air balloon, the CIA mind control experiments that took place in the fifties, and the woman who ties them all together! What more could you want?

Please visit my blog to see the new cover!
http://dianechamberlain.com/blog/2009...

I was recently invited to write a guest post for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance blog, and I wrote about my transition from Jersey Girl to Southern Writer. You can read the post here , and I offer it with apologies to everyone in New Jersey, especially my family, my friends and my agent. You know I love you all (ya’ll? youse guys?), but it’s too darn cold up there and finding ’shrimp and grits’ on a menu in New Jersey is almost as hard as finding pork roll here in North Carolina. (I say “almost” because there are so many Jerseyites down here that you can find pork roll in the grocery store, though I’ve yet to see it in a restaurant.)

It’s strange to be a part of two worlds (two and a quarter, since I left a piece of heart in San Diego as well). I feel fortunate to have experienced such different parts of the country, but it does make for a bit of an identity crisis at times. Am I the Italian kid with the out-of-control curly black hair who knew every exit on the Turnpike and every diner within a twenty mile radius of home, who took the bus to Greenwich Village just for a cappuccino, was afraid of the neighborhood ”dawgs”, and made out under the boardwalk? Or am I the auburn-haired woman who understands the difference between the barbecue in Eastern and Western North Carolina, knows to order her iced tea “unsweet” instead of “unsweetened”, hasn’t worn boots in years, has actually tasted peanuts in Coke, and doesn’t stumble over the town name Fuquay-Varina?

I occasionally envy those writers who have lived in North Carolina all their lives. They are so grounded in their setting. They know the history, the language, and above all, the people with a depth I’ll never be able to achieve. But I wouldn’t trade my experiences in the two worlds–north and south–for anything. I’m a Jersey girl who became a Southern writer, and I’ve loved every minute of the journey.

Years ago, my then-husband and I were driving through the countryside in a pouring rain. I was working on my second novel back then, and was utterly entranced with the process. As we drove through the downpour, I noticed a group of cows huddled together under a tree, and my heart broke for them.

“I feel so sorry for those cows,” I said.

“Because they’re stuck out in the rain?” my then-husband asked.

“No,” I said, in all seriousness, “because they can’t write.”

That about sums it up. Well, it sums up the fact that I’m a little insane, I guess, but it also illustrates how much I love and value the ability to write. In school, I was terrible at math and science (and I’m not even going to mention my painful memories of being picked last for every sports team, every time), but I always had a knack for writing.

Yet, writing is hard, no matter how much talent you or I may have for it. Having just completed the final final draft of my nineteenth novel, The Lies We Told, I’m newly reminded of that fact. The other night, I sat for about two hours moving the words and sentences around in one measly paragraph until it said exactly what I wanted it to say. Then I moved all the paragraphs in the chapter around until I was happy with their order. Then I scrapped half of the chapter and started again, because not only did it need to sound right, it also needed to express the characters’ emotions perfectly for that moment in the book, and I wasn’t satisfied I’d succeeded in that task. Sometime around two in the morning, though, after much teeth gnashing and pulling out of hair, I did.

I can look at cows without feeling sorry for them these days. I do, however, feel sorry for people who have a story inside them and long to put it on paper, but don’t have the skill. This is a plea from me to those people: take some writing classes and learn how to string words together clearly, wisely, and beautifully. It may take enormous effort on your part, but the payoff can be amazing. There is no better gift you can give yourself, your kids, and the rest of the world than being able to express yourself well through your writing. You can do it!

As long as you’re not a cow, that is.

We had a friend over for dinner tonight and the conversation turned to travel. Given the fact that I just bought beach property, I won’t be able to afford to travel anywhere else for quite some time, but dreams are free!

My dream is to visit Sicily, especially the village of Collesano where my grandparents grew up. It would be a moving experience to visit the places that were so much a part of their daily lives, and it would be fun to track down my Italian relatives. (If you’re a LoPresti or a Cinquegrani, email me a “hello”!) Although I’m setting my books in the southeastern US these days, I think I could toss in a little bit of Sicily, don’t you?

So how about you? Where do you dream of traveling?

I’ve reached the age where I know what I do well: I write well. I can structure the heck out of a novel. I can create characters who will make you weep. I’m a pretty good teacher. I enjoy public speaking.

Then there are other things that teach me humility.

Today, I sat in Starbucks running through my notes for a characterization workshop I’ll be teaching at the November 14th meeting of the Heart of Carolina Romance Writers. I have this giant folder into which I’ve thrown all sorts of writing class material over the years, and I was going through it, trying to figure out how to condense what I want to teach into an hour and a half. I came across something I’d written several years ago about God. I wrote about God as an experience rather than a “being.” I experienced God in the night sky, I wrote. In the fall leaves. In the sea. And in singing.

Whoa.

I stared at that phrase I experience the divine when I sing. I remember writing it. I remember feeling the truth in the words. But it is no longer true for me and I wonder if it’s a feeling I’ll ever be able to recapture.

When I wrote those words, I was singing regularly with an interfaith community choir, Mosaic Harmony, in Northern Virginia. Although we came from many faith backgrounds–Christian, Jewish, humanist, atheist–and our director often had to adjust the lyrics to make us all comfortable with the songs, we all had a love of the primarily Gospel music we were singing. I’ve never had a great voice, but I can carry a tune, and that was the only requirement. (Actually there were no requirements but I’d say most of us could manage that much). I had no choral experience (if you ignore junior high. I would dearly love to ignore junior high), but I was quickly swept up by the passion of the singing. We used no sheet music. When you’re rockin’ and clappin’, there’s no way to hold music. We had lyric sheets, which we quickly committed to memory and tossed–and we taped our parts and practiced them at home and in our cars until we had them down. We regularly performed one or two hour concerts, but we had months to learn each song and although we were by and large amateurs, we were good. We even cut a couple of CDs. Singing with MoHa, I had moments of rapture. There’s no other word to describe the feeling. At times, I sang through tears of joy.

Fast forward. I love my new church here in North Carolina, and I quickly joined the choir. As with most church choirs, we use sheet music and we learn songs quickly for upcoming services. I never did learn to sight read music and to say that I’m struggling is an understatement. This is a small choir with an excellent young director. The singers are so good! (If any of my fellow choir members are reading this post, know that you have my admiration along with my envy.) They’re handed a piece of music and start ripping through it–sometimes in latin, no less–while I’m still trying to figure out the first alto note. Determined, I take the music home and practice the alto part on my keyboard. But it is an intellectual exercise for me, not a spiritual one, and I can’t help it–that saddens me. I don’t foresee the day when I will have mastered this process enough to ever again feel the “rapture.” I’ve thought of taking music and voice classes, because I do love singing, but given my writing schedule I don’t see how I can fit them in.

I like to look at uncomfortable situations as learning opportunities. I don’t mean “learning how to sing.” I mean “What can I learn about Diane-in-the-world through this discomfort?” So far, I’ve learned that there are some things I simply suck at. LOL. A humbling experience, to be sure. I’ve also learned that I need to find ways other than singing to be in touch with the divine. I’ve discovered how hard it can be to learn new tricks, and I realize that I haven’t challenged myself this way in a long, long time. I may also learn that it’s okay to give up. Ouch. I’m not a good giver-upper. That could be an important thing to learn.

Can you relate to this? Are you stretching yourselves in ways that make you uncomfortable? Is it crazy to do so? I’d love to know what you’re learning about yourselves these days.