Diane Chamberlain's Blog, page 30

Plotting and Playing

I’ve found the way to keep the dogs with me on the beach: bacon treats in my pocket. As a matter of fact, I can’t get them away from my side, but that’s okay. I love that dogs are allowed loose on the beach here off season, especially since we usually have the beach to ourselves. Those red things around my waist are their leashes in case I need them, but Keeper and Jet are really learning good beach etiquette.

The weather’s been absolutely perfect here this week, unlike the last time I was here with a friend and we were stranded in The Storm that had No End. I’m working on my next book (due in April. Yikes!) tentatively titled The Waif, and John and I had a fantastic brainstorming session at our fave restaurant last night, Sears Landing. (Between the yummy restaurants for dinner and Just Baked’s cinnamon rolls for breakfast, I think I’ve put on a pound a day while we’ve been here).

But back to the brainstorming. My characters are starting to emerge. I have a long way to go with them and one thing I have to figure out is whether to take the story in a “suspense and danger” direction or stick to ”strictly emotional jeopardy”. Which do you prefer reading?

This afternoon, we’re going to spend some time on the Surf City Pier, which I believe will have a small but significant role in my story. Tonight we’ll spend more time on the deck with my fabulous telescope, as we’ve done every night this week. The moon is as close as my fingertips!

For my bedtime reading, I’m rereading the converted scan of Reflection as I ready it for publication as an e-book. I love that story, but it’s striking me as quite different from many of my other books. Denser, somehow. Very layered with loads of description. Maybe too much for some of my current readers? I’m not going to change it, though, because I personally think the descriptions fit a story that has a setting as evocative as the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

So that’s what I’m up to this week. I leave you with the view from the second bedroom in our condo. I love this little peek at one of the Operation Bumblebee towers that dot Topsail Island, one of which my fictional Marcus in Before the Storm turned into his home.

Hope your week is going as well as mine!

Autumn with Topsail

Today we went to the “Autumn with Topsail” festival on Topsail Island. I made it through three artisans’ booths before I had to buy something (a beautiful beaded necklace). I was hunting for Ray McAllister’s booth. Ray wrote the book Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea, which was practically my bible as I wrote Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind. Ray and I have chatted back and forth online, but it was fun to finally meet him and his wife Vicki. Allan Libby, Director of Tourism for Surf City, was at Ray’s booth. Then John and I hit the food stands (he had barbecue and I had chicken teriyaki. Yum) and we bumped into Lori Fisher, owner of the wonderful Quarter Moon Books, while we were munching.

Back at the condo, we both did a little work. After being stranded here by the storm a couple of weeks ago, it was wonderful to see thesunshine and calm water again and the dolphins romping in the waves. We went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, then came home and set up my telescope on the deck and stared at the moon and a planet we have yet to identify because we’re new at this astronomy stuff. But the very coolest thing was the phosphorescence of the waves. I’d never seen that here before and it was beautiful.

Tomorrow is back to the grind. It’s been a great day, but I’m looking forward to getting down to business tomorrow. Actually, I can’t wait!

News from NINC

I wonder (and worry) that readers might be a little upset by some of the things that thrilled the authors at the Novelists, Inc conference this week. I’ll get to that concern in a minute. But now that the conference is over, let me give you a little taste of my experience of it.

St Petersburg is beautiful! What a great setting for a fall conference. Below is the beach, which I had no time to enjoy, but it was lovely to look at. Everything was lovely, as a matter of fact. Especially the food. It’s going to take me a month to undo the damage I did to my waistline this week, but whatever!

To be a member of NINC, a writer must have at least two novels with an advance-paying publisher, so the conferences are far more about the business of writing than the craft. As you can imagine, in recent years with the economy suffering, the news for writers hasn’t been all that encouraging. But the rapid proliferation of e-readers and e-books is changing the landscape. People are reading–and reading plenty. Nothing could please a writer more and we were all pretty happy campers this week! Yet I know that the majority of my readers still love their books-on-paper, and I wonder if they feel any anxiety or annoyance over the movement toward e-books? What do you think?

What I personally find exciting, as you know from some of my recent posts, is the opportunity authors have to make their backlists (their out of print books) available to their readers by self publishing those books as e-books. This was a huge topic at the conference. There is a lot to learn about self pubbing, and some of us are ahead of the curve on this. (I have Secret Lives available and should have The Escape Artist ready to go in a few weeks). I can’t tell you how bizarre this development is, though, when two years ago (or even a year ago), the words “self-publishing” would make a professional author shudder with disdain.

The conference ended at noon today, so John and I went out to lunch and then visited the Dale Chihuly museum. That’s one of his sculptures in the picture of me above, but the real beauties were inside and we weren’t allowed to photograph them. His glass is extraordinary and I’ve admired it in pictures for a long time, so I was so happy to have the opportunity to finally see some of it in person.

John and I also took one of the paddle boats into the little canals that run through the resort and it was a near death experience. Seriously, we thought we might have to be rescued. It was so incredibly hot, my seat back was broken and we could barely keep the boat moving. I think it’s time for John and me to get our butts back to the gym!

We leave in the morning. John has a bunch of new photographs to play with and I have a head full of information and excitement.

And some weight to lose.

You Never Sausage a Book!

You know how people say they don’t want to watch sausage being made? Well, I feel as though I invited you, my readers, to watch the writing equivalent of sausage making as you followed my painful progression through the creation of The Midwife’s Confession. It began a long time ago, when after a couple of months of plotting and outlining, I was told that I couldn’t write the story because it had too similar a hook to another book my publisher had in the pipeline. Oh, that was painful. But it was only the beginning. I came up with another idea and wrote The Lies We Told, which I ended up liking a bunch, so all was well. Then I finally got the go-ahead to work on The Midwife and her Confession.

As I neared the end of the first draft, however, I had a problem with the character Sam as he tried to take over the novel by changing all the proper nouns in the book to his own name.

Sam walked into Sam High School with Sam and Sam to see Sam.

That was fun (not), and about a month ago the character Noelle tried the same trick, but I caught her at it before she could destroy hours upon hours of work, as Sam had done. (and yes, I save regularly. That was part of the problem. I save so often that it was impossible to get back to a pre-Sam version of the book without losing a half day’s worth of work.) The Sam debacle prompted this hysterical blog by my friend, author Emilie Richards, so at least Emilie and I were able to get some blog mileage out of the fiasco. (I still haven’t solved this weird Word issue, but I’m getting closer. I think).

Then, when I finally turned in the manuscript, my editor decided that even though the midwife was dead, she needed to have a point of view, so I wrote about ten chapters from her perspective, which was absolutely the right thing to do even though, time-wise, it set me way back in my writing schedule. Then my editor felt the addition of the midwife’s point of view made my teenaged character Grace’s point of view superfluous. Again she was right (almost; I’ll explain), but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like slitting my wrists at that point (and perhaps my editor’s at the same time…). So I went back to the drawing board once more, removing Grace’s point of view until I reached a point in the story where I realized we simply, positively, needed to hear from her. I discussed it with my editor and she agreed. As a matter of fact, the last quarter of the book is now primarily Grace’s story, and what a story it is.

By the time I’d completely finished the book, I felt unsure of myself. I worried that pig parts and all variety of offal were spilling out of the casings all over my writing room. I turned in the final manuscript to my editor, then waited to hear. . . again.

Success! Better than success, actually. My editor’s comment on the last page of the manuscript? “Way to go, Diane! A great, great book!”

I actually think this is some of the best sausage I’ve ever made. I can’t wait until the end of April to see if you agree. Thank you for taking this journey with me.

What was YOUR Teen Obsession?

I post monthly on a group blog, The Lipstick Chronicles, written by a gang of writers who are funny, irreverent, political, poignant, and who tell it like it is day after day. Last month, I wrote the following post for TLC and I’ve had a few requests to repost it here. Hope you enjoy it!

Last night I had dinner with my oldest friend, as in the friend I’ve known the longest. Barb and I had fun reminiscing, although we had to keep it to a minimum so as not to bore other family members. One memory everyone found intriguing, though, was the time Barb and I saw The Beatles.

My family had a summer house at the Jersey Shore at the time and several of my friends spent a few days pre- and post-concert there with me, giggling and sharing secrets and wearing our black leather John Lennon caps even though it was insanely hot and humid. We came up with the idea of inviting the Beatles to the summer house. There was plenty of room if they wanted to stay over or they could just pop in for a glass of lemonade. My mother, who was so much cooler than I ever gave her credit for, wrote a nice letter to the Fab Four so that the invitation would come from a grown-up instead of five pubescent girls. Barb and I remember the actual handing off of the letter differently. I think we gave it to an usher to take backstage at the convention hall. She thinks my sister drove us to the hotel to give to a bellman. Either way, we went back to the house high from the concert and full of hopeful anticipation as we waited for a call from the boys as to when they’d be arriving, which of course they never did. Yet the imagining and yearning were so much fun. That was the start of my obsessive groupie days.

I became a concert junkie and had plenty of friends who fed my addiction with me. Most notably, I saw the Stones seven times before I was eighteen and even talked to Charlie Watts’ (the drummer, for the uninitiated) wife on the phone once. Charlie was my least favorite Stone, because I found him old (I believe he was 24 or so) and unattractive. Now I find him hot in his golden years. Seriously, the man has aged the best of any of them. But anyway, when my friends and I knew the Stones were in town (as in New York), we’d call every hotel to try to track them down. We gave up looking for a “Mr Jagger” because the hotels were on to us and always denied he was there, but we did find “Mr Watts” that one time, and when I got Shirley Watts on the phone I white-lied and told her he was my favorite. She was so gracious. I had the feeling not too many giggly young girls were after Charlie back then. Maybe I even made her day?

Then I got serious about my groupiness, and this is where it gets sort of shameful. No, I never slept with anyone famous, but I wheedled my way into getting as close as possible to my prey. Before I go any further, let me apologize publicly to anyone I ever met through nefarious means. It was the hormones and I’m sorry.

The prey in question were The Rascals. I had a friend who was as passionate about them as I was. Marilyn wanted Dino the drummer and I wanted Felix the organist and lead singer. Marilyn and I had otherwise normal social lives with normal (well, hers was normal) boyfriends, but we had this one shared maniacal obsession. We nurtured it by going to concerts every chance we could and by hanging out in New York trying to catch a glimpse of the guys.

Here is the worst, most dishonest thing I did. Through the network of RGs (Rascal Groupies), I was told to “show up at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night.” I was with some friends who were always remarkably good-natured about humoring me, and they went with me to Carnegie Hall where the featured event turned out to be a lecture by a Yogi, Swami Satchidananda. We sat in one of those wonderful little balcony boxes and tried to figure out what we were doing there. Then we began to have Rascal sightings. We spotted Eddie Brigati taking his seat in the orchestra. Then in another area, Dino Danelli appeared. And finally–omigod–in the balcony below ours and to the left, Felix himself.

“Bye,” I told my friends.

I went down to the box where Felix was sitting and stepped right in. The box was quite full of people both sitting and standing, so I didn’t look all that out of place. I could see my friends up in the balcony and they were jumping up and down and pointing at me and marveling at my chutzpa. I kept sidling closer to Felix. Finally, I was right next to him. I leaned over to ask him something about what the Swami had just said and he responded, then offered me his seat because the man was nice and I felt like a deceitful little twit. I didn’t take his seat. I just stood there and enjoyed breathing in the same air he was breathing, all the while becoming a fan of Swami Satchidananda. The only thing I actually remember the Swami saying that night was “Constipation is caused by a lack of concentration,” but I bought his book on Integral Yoga and started standing on my head in my dorm room regularly and going into the City to hear him speak as often as I could get there from New Jersey. Of course, I was always hoping Felix would show up on the same night, which he never did. Ironically, I gained an appreciation of chanting and meditation as part of a spiritual practice that has lasted through to this day. (Check out Krishna Das for a natural high).

A couple of months after the Swami Satchidananda event, my friends and I went to a Rascals concert, which found us once again at Carnegie Hall. We worked our way to the stage from our seats at the back of the hall as soon as the concert began, which was great . . . for a while. But I have an odd phobia about large places–I can’t stand them. I’ve beaten a bunch of phobias over the years, but this one remains. (I may have been the only kid in history who had a note from her shrink to excuse her from P.E. because she couldn’t tolerate the gym ceiling. But that’s for another post.) I was right in front of the stage when I began to have the “high ceiling panic attack.” I had to get out of there. I burst through the double doors at the side of the theater and into the hallway to calm myself down. When I felt better, I headed back inside, but an usher asked to see my ticket and of course my seat was nowhere near the front, so he told me I had to go all way to the rear of the theater. I couldn’t bear to be way in the back again, so I stood in the hallway quietly, pathetically, weeping as I tried to figure out what to do.

A man approached me. He was really old (maybe even 50!) and he asked me what was wrong. His exact words: “What’s the matter, little girl?”

I began blubbering. “I was right in front of the stage,” I said, “but I couldn’t stand how high the ceiling was and I came out here and now they won’t let me in again and–”

“Hush,” he said and took my hand, opening the doors to the sacred backstage sanctum. Only then did I realize who he was: Sid Bernstein, the Rascals’ manager and the guy who’d brought the Beatles and Stones and the entire British invasion to the States. We climbed the inside steps to the stage, where Mr. Bernstein deposited me next to a couple of roadies, just a few yards from you-know-who on the organ. My friends, still in front of the stage, caught sight of me and stared in shock.

When the concert was over, I slipped unnoticed upstairs to the dressing room and finally–finally–had Felix to myself, if you didn’t count the two dozen other people hanging around him. I was incredibly grateful for the time I’d spent with my Swami Satchidananda book because it gave us something to chat about. I asked him for reading recommendations about Yoga and he asked me for my address so he could send me his recommendations in a letter. Be still my heart!

Afterward, I stood in front of Carnegie Hall with my friends as the limo carrying the Rascals went by. The window was down and Felix called out, “I’ll write to you!” I leaned cooly against the building, while my fellow groupies stared at me in drooling wonder.

Did he write? Actually, yes. In fuscia ink, he suggested I read the Bagavad Gita (I dutifully did so). He also asked me to send him a copy of the picture he took of me. That, of course, was the end of that, as both he–and I–could clearly see that in spite of my bravado, I was little more than a really nervous eighteen-year-old almost-virginal girl from a state college in South Jersey.

It all seems so ridiculous to me now. I look at girls screaming over rock groups today and while I remember being that obsessed, I can’t quite recapture the feeling of being that obsessed–a good thing, I think. If only I’d put that much passion into my education, I would be, well, better educated. But I’d probably have less to blog about.

So what was your obsession when you were a teenager? I know you had one. ‘Fess up!

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life. . .

When I was a kid, my dad would take us out in the back yard of our summer bungalow in Point Pleasant, New Jersey to star gaze. We had these big Adirondack chairs and he’d tip one against the other so that when we climbed into them, we’d be nearly prone–perfect for looking up at the diamond-lit sky. This is such a sweet memory for me that I had a couple of my characters do the same thing in my very first novel, Private Relations.

Fast forward to this week. We’re at our place on Topsail Island, where the sky is jet black at night and perfect for star gazing. The long broad bench in the picture runs nearly the length of our deck, so the other night I took a big comforter, stretched it out on the bench, and lay down in the pitch black night to watch the stars.

I can’t think of a better activity for putting one’s life into perspective than star gazing. It makes me feel inconsequential, and for some reason, I find that inconsequential feeling strangely comforting. I lay there thinking about those people thousands of years ago who watched the same stars and listened to the same waves, and those people thousands of years from now who will do the same. I thought fondly about my Dad. I thought about one of the themes in the book I was revising–how we change, how we’re not the same person we were a decade ago, or even yesterday. My mind was filled with giant thoughts and giant questions, the sort that overwhelm in a good way and make you grateful for every breath you’re lucky enough to take.

And then I began to notice something out of the corner of my eye. On the railing above the bench where I lay, I saw a small dark mound, a silhouette against the slightly lighter sky. A shell one of the kids left on the railing, I thought, and I started to reach for it.

But then it moved. I turned on my flashlight and illuminated the biggest honkin’ cockroach I’ve ever seen. I was off that bench and back to reality so fast I nearly tripped over my feet. I had to laugh. I mean, what else can you do? Talk about putting things in perpective. Thousands of years ago, there were cockroaches under the stars. Thousands of years from now, they’ll still be here. Hopefully, we will be too.

So, that was the end of my deep reverie on the mysteries of life. I went inside, shuddering a little from my run-in with the natural world. I snuggled into bed (after checking under the covers for critters) and turned on my iPad to read. It was time to lose myself in someone else’s mysterious life for a while.

Project Midwife

I’m not a big fan of reality TV, but one show I love and never miss is Project Runway. I get such a kick out of the artistic personalities and seeing real talent ultimately rise to the top. More than anything, though, I’m fascinated by the process of creation. If you haven’t seen Project Runway, it goes something like this: the contestants are given an assignment, such as “make an outfit appropriate for a Times Square billboard out of things you can buy in a pet store.” Then they’re given, perhaps, ten hours to complete the task. Around hour five, Tim Gunn (who is impossible not to adore!) visits the workroom to check out what everyone is doing and offer helpful comments. Then around hour six, they throw a last-minute wrench in the works, such as: “You also need to add an accessory to your outfit and it must be in the color of Heidi Klum’s lipstick,” or something equally ludicrous. (Heidi is a pip. Seriously, how does a woman keep having babies and look like that? It’s utterly beyond me).

So what does this have to do with writing? It occurred to me as I was watching Project Runway the other night that the process of creating an outfit under a tight deadline is very much like writing a book under a tight deadline. There is the “make something from nothing” element, followed by the creation of the design or in the case of a book, the structure. Then there is the execution. Then there is Tim Gunn. When Tim spent time with the designers the other night, critiquing their half-finished projects, one of them said something like “We need you because we’re too close to our work and can’t see the forest for the trees.” Tim is very good at seeing the forest, and that comment reminded me of the reason writers need editors. (Listen up, self-pubbed people! Hire one if you don’t have one).

My editor is really earning her salary as she works with me on The Midwife’s Confession. What draft am I on now? I’ve lost track. Doesn’t matter. This is the one that counts. I’d mentioned that after my editor read my complete manuscript, she wanted me to add the point of view of the late midwife herself. I knew she was right, but that required rewriting the entire book, introducing a storyline that added layers of depth to an already packed tale. I thought I was done then. I knew I’d have some tweaking to do, but I wasn’t quite prepared for my editor’s last-minute suggestion: “Now that the focus is more on the midwife, we no longer need Grace’s (the teenaged girl) point-of-view.” Ack! Once again, I knew she was right. I was so immersed in my creation that, like those Project Runway designers, I hadn’t been able to see the forest for the trees.

So that is my task for this week. It will be the final major overhaul of this book, and it’s about as easy as creating an evening gown out of rawhide chips and dog food bags. See my computer screen above? The full manuscript is on the right, the new mansucript is in the middle. And on the left are the scenes from Grace’s point of view. I am going through them to see what information she gave the reader that the reader simply must know and which I’ll therefore have to seamlessly incorporate into other characters’ points of view. Even more crucial is the need to allow Grace to remain a whole and significant character in the story without allowing her to tell the story herself. Trust me, I have quite a challenge ahead of me!

I’m getting a kick out of it, though. Whenever a book feels like a puzzle to me, it gets my juices flowing. I feel as though Tim Gunn’s paid me a visit, shaken me up a bit, and then told me to “Make it work!” So that’s what I’m up to this week. I want The Midwife’s Confession to knock ‘em dead on the runway. You won’t even be able to see where I stitched the dog food bags together.

My iPad: First Impressions

Actually, these are my second impressions. My first weren’t so good, but that was because: a) I have no Mac experience; b) I wanted to learn to do many complicated things at once, and preferably by osmosis; and c) I am impatient. Oh, and d) I neglected to notice the User’s Guide, which really is a pretty handy little thing! But I’ve had my iPad for a couple of weeks now and I’m falling in love with it. I know I’ve only scratched the surface of what I can do with it. I’m a true novice. Still, for those of you who’d like a novice-eye view from a decidely un-techie person, I thought I’d share.

One of the things I love best about the iPad is that I can type a document on the screen. I bought an external wireless keyboard thinking I would need it, but I may just take it back. The screen is so much fun and easy to use. It’s especially great for typing a draft. I’ll probably never use it for major editing since I love a mouse for that, but I’m impressed with all I can do with this little keyboard alone. I use an ergonomic keyboard with my desktop because of rheumatoid arthritis, but the pressure needed to type on the screen is so effortless that–so far–it’s not causing me any problems. The keyboard also changes according to my needs. Trying to go to a website? The keyboard automatically offers me a ”.com” button. Very cool.

I use the Pages application for creating documents, as I’m doing right now. It’s correcting my mistakes as I type. There are zillions of applications you can download for free or very little money, and I’m only getting started exploring them. I have a calculator app to help when I’m balancing my checkbook online. I have Passport Wallet to help me remember all my passwords. . . as long as I can remember the password I used to lock the wallet. Hmmm. What was that password?

The apps I will never download are the games, and I’m making that statement here publicly. Games are my weakness. Years ago I blogged about my Freecell addiction. Back then, you needed a password to get to Freecell. I finally made up a long, complicated password that I knew I’d be unable to memorize. I jotted it down and gave it to my stepdaughter when she came to visit, telling her never to allow me to have it. But I called her before she’d even reached her own front door, pleading for the password like the addict I was. I’ve taken all games off my computer and I hope I have the strength to keep them off my iPad.

The iPad doesn’t take the place of a computer. You can’t use it to save a bunch of files, but you can email them to yourself or to a “cloud account” like MobileMe, then pick them up on your desktop or laptop. MobileMe is also busy syncing my calendar and contacts at all times, a huge convenience. I never did master the calendar sync function on my Blackberry, but so far it’s worked seamlessly with the iPad.

Surfing the web and managing email are easy and I love that I can change the size of a web image with a pinch of my fingers. I went with the 3G model, which means I can connect to the Internet even if there’s no WiFi connection available. I opted for this feature because I recently stayed in a couple of hotels (good ones, mind you) where I ended up needing to use a cord connection (ethernet? what do I know?) to physically connect my laptop to the ‘net. What a hassle, and with the iPad I would have been out of luck. Getting 3G turned out to be a good thing, because our household WiFi connection is apparently not all that strong in my home office and having 3G allows me to connect in my office as needed. But the 3G is a luxury. If you don’t mind being disconnected when you’re out and about until you can find a Starbucks or Panera with free WiFi, then don’t bother paying the extra money for 3G.

I love the airplane mode feature! By flicking this little toggle, you disconnect from the Internet, thereby extending your battery life. Whether you could still use the iPad to read on a plane during take-off and landing, I’m not sure. I think that’s the theory, but when I last flew we were told to turn off anything with an on-off switch, so that would include the iPad. That’s the negative about using an e-reader. Those around you on the plane are turning pages and you’re staring out the window at the runway. Still, the page-turners have five books in their suitcases while you have one little e-reader, so it all works out in the end.

Back to reading. How does the iPad fare? Well, it’s fantastic. . . but you can get other e-readers for far less money, so I’d only go the iPad route if you’ll be making good use of its other features. I’ve had a Kindle for a couple of years and I love it, but I never knew what the book covers looked like because they don’t show up on the Kindle. By installing the free Kindle app on the iPad, suddenly all my Kindle books appeared in front of me in all their colorful, graphic glory. Wow! I’d had no idea! I also love the backlight and the ability to adjust the brightness, but if you’re the type to suffer eyestrain from computer use, the Kindle or another more page-like e-reader might be a better choice. I do miss the dictionary feature of the Kindle. There may be something similar on the iPad, but it’s not intuitive and I haven’t checked the user’s guide to find out where it exists. With Kindle, if you put the cursor in front of a word you don’t know, you instantly get the definition. Beautiful.

Battery life. Well, it’s not the Kindle, which kept on ticking for a week or two on one charge, but that’s because the iPad is doing so much more than simply displaying books. I’ve been charging it about every other night. Not a big deal, but the Kindle spoiled me there.

I have a lot of travel coming up in the next few months and I’m wondering if I dare leave my laptop home. Right now, I couldn’t. I have too many documents and pictures on my laptop that I need. . . and that I can rarely predict I’m going to need. Promotional requests that require one certain buried image, for example. Or a document I’ve tucked away someplace on the laptop, never thinking I’d need again. But if I can get my act together well enough to upload the things I might need to MobileMe, I might just risk it. We’ll see.

I’d say I’ve discovered about 10% of what I will ultimately be able to do with the iPad. I still have a lot to learn and plan to take one of the free classes at the Apple store if I can ever find the time. If you’re using an iPad, I’d love to hear what you like–or don’t like–about it. Just don’t tell me about your favorite games!

The Writer’s Brain is a Weird and Exhausting Thing

A few nights ago when I was getting ready for bed, I had a nighty-night pill and my earplugs waiting for me on my nightstand. Not thinking, I reached for an earplug and my bottle of water, catching myself when I had the earplug an inch from my mouth (which is much better than the time I nearly swallowed my dog’s pill; I really need to pay attention to what I’m doing!).

As I realized my error, the following scenario took less than twenty seconds to run through my mind:

I swallow the earplug. It gets its soft, foamy mass stuck in my windpipe and I can’t breathe. I run into the dining room where John is working at his laptop and try to demonstrate that I need the Heimlich maneuver. How would I do it?? Omigod! Could I ever make him understand what I need? Would I have time to write down that I had an earplug stuck in my throat?? Would there be a pen nearby? Would I try to Heimlich myself, throwing my midsection across the back of one of the dining room chairs? Aren’t the chairs too tall? Would John think I was joking around? Would he be so absorbed in his work that he never looked up at all? Would I have to beat on his head to get him to notice my duress? Would I eventually collapse and die? Would the article in the paper read Local Author Chokes to Death on Earplug? How totally humiliating!

This is what it’s like to live inside my brain. If you are not a fiction writer, enjoy your sanity!

Leaving Mayo and the Cursed Research

Hey, blog readers, thanks for hanging out with me this week! We’re sitting in our hotel room tonight and John just gave me a thumbs up and said “Good week!” and he’s so right. It’s been quite an experience in many ways, and I’ll never again baste a turkey without thinking of “the oven” (I’m still finding splotches of purple on my skin). I fell in love with Rochester and the Minnesotans I’ve met and I’m so impressed with the Mayo Clinic. Best of all, of course, was getting good news–a diagnosis I can most definitely live with and one that hadn’t before been mentioned to me as a possibility, despite the various docs I’ve seen for the symptoms. I’m very, very glad we made this trip.

On another note, I’ve been working on a difficult and crucial chapter in The Midwife’s Confession while we’ve been here. My concentration’s been a little off (understatement!) and it’s been slow going, but I’ve had this scene beautifully rendered in my mind for weeks. Tonight, though, I did a bit of research to help me flesh out the scene and learned something that totally destroyed my plans for the action. It has to do with how maternity units have changed since I worked in one. I keep picturing the unit I worked in back in the day. For the sake of moms and babies, I’m delighted so much progress has been made in supporting that post partum bond. For the sake of my story, though, bring back the old days!

But every setback has a silver lining and the research opened up another approach to the scene–one that I think will be even better. So now I’m rewriting. Or re-re-rewriting. This is the book that just doesn’t want to end!

Have a great weekend, everyone. I can’t wait to get home to my pups!