IWSG Weds: Facing down inner doubts

A few years back, I attended a writing conference and was enthralled by the creativity of a speaker who somehow inspired an audience of about 70 folks to write poetry. Right there in the auditorium.

I don't remember her name, but I do remember after the presentation. She was surrounded by attendees. I courageously joined the group and told her how wonderful I thought she was. She stopped, held up her hand, and said, "Don't do that."

Her message was simply this: Don't put other writers on a pedestal. No matter how polished the writer or the presentation, never forget the hours of commitment and hard work that goes into that final result you so admire.

Sometimes when we look at other writers from the outside, we do not see their struggles and doubts that we may know too well for our own work. 

Writing from the gut requires that we have courage, stamina, and something indefinable -- perhaps a willingness to look past those doubts or outright fears, and ask what our inner editor is trying to tell us.

On the first Wednesday of the month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group asks us to post an update on where we are as writers.  

First view of the Rockies
 (Camp 2015)

Here's my update: We're just back from a three-week research trip to Canada, gathering some wonderful research on the lives of 19th Century fur traders for my current wip, Rivers of Stone. 

We visited museums for hours in Edmonton and Calgary, and I wrecked my feet tramping around in provincial parks (Jasper, Banff).

My greatest challenge? How to integrate this new research into my draft now at 90K. And to fill the holes in plot line and character arcs in ways that satisfy my overall goal -- to fairly reflect that era and somehow to windup with 'happily ever after' even if my characters don't seem headed that way just now. 

I'm recognizing my revisions may not be complete by the end of the year. Maybe that's OK. One writing day at a time. Weekly goals for reading and writing through A Round of Words in 80 Days will keep me on track. And I will seek to learn from my doubts. All will be well.

And now an opportunity. The Insecure Writer's Support Group just opened up its first contest, deadline November 2 to celebrate its anniversary. They want fiction entries (5,000-6,000) for an anthology. Why not consider entering?

Check out what other writers are talking about this month at the Insecure Writers Support Group. Members of IWSG post the first Wednesday of the month (did you notice I was one day late?). Here you'll find confessions, encouragement, and strategies for success! Thank you, Alex J. Cavanaugh, for inspiring us all. 

Writing Tips from The Gunfighter: Point of View

If you've ever struggled with point of view, here's a lovely little video recommended by Anne R. Allen that will make you smile as you dive for your red pen. This short video takes us immediately past 'he said/she said' to focus on the dreaded intrusive narrator.




Have you ever peeked inside a book online and virtually set it down? Anne's post also gives us helpful editing tips for those important first pages that readers dip into when thinking about buying a book on Amazon. Her bottom line: 

Writers: Take action on that first 10% of your book. Readers will appreciate your editing efforts if you persevere for the full 100%.

Read more of Anne's tips at "Your 'LOOK INSIDE!' Preview: Will it Turn Readers Away or Close the Sale?"

Editing tip? Lessons from Tess Gerritsen

This month's presentation at Spokane Authors featured  local writers Tina Bratcher and Sue Eller talking about character.

Sue suggested we build depth into our characters by thinking about four basic personality tests -- and recognizing the diversity of each individual. Tina followed by discussing four levels of character reaction -- physiological, physical, emotional, and mental. 

Both ideas sent me back to an exercise I've been playing with for my suspense/thriller (a summer editing project), Mothers Don't Die.

EXERCISE: What can I learn about editing my opening from reading the first few pages of a highly rated suspense thriller? What really grabs me as a reader?

I chose Tess Gerritsen's Die Again because the cover was compelling, and I've enjoyed her stories in the past. Imagine that once-in-a-lifetime safari to Africa. What could possibly go wrong? 

Gerritsen had my attention with the first page! Her narrator, on safari in Botswana, finds a leopard print just outside her tent. Gerritsen skillfully introduces her theme (predators), setting (deep in the wilds of Botswana), and 9 characters by page 7. I'm hooked, and I don't really know yet which character is primary.

Gerritsen easily sneaks in her narrator's discontent with her lover and her situation. Characters are deftly described so you know their physicality AND their emotional life, revealed through summary, action, and dialogue. 

Conflict spills out everywhere, sorting out which characters are alpha male/female, and all the characters are bundles of emotion as they feel their way into this new, potentially very dangerous situation: Doubt, irritation, fear, anger, frustration, and contempt. 

Perhaps one among this group of untried tourists is a predator.

According to Julie Beck, in her article "New Research Says There Are Only Four Emotions" (The Atlantic): "Conventional scientific wisdom recognizes six "classic" emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad." But studies conflate four of these emotions to two: surprise/fear (eyes wide open to gather information), and anger/disgust (nose primary to avoid breathing in pathogens). These older emotional/physical reactions are driven by our survival instinct, what Beck calls "early biologic" rather than social. Interesting.

NOW to return to editing that first chapter in Mothers Don't Die:

1. How many emotions do my characters reveal through dialogue and inner thought? 
2. How is conflict shown? By character actions? Reactions?
3. What unforgettable images set the scene? Do descriptions of people and places draw on the five senses? on emotion?

After doing a little more online reading about emotion (and how do readers connect to our stories except as our stories appeal to their emotions?), I'm realizing that writers do reveal their own emotional experiences through their writing, regardless of setting. Yes, we do tend to write what we know. And we may face curious blocks in expressing a full range of emotion.

So how do we develop fuller characters? Perhaps by investigating models of emotions and thinking about our characters, their inner emotional life, their needs, their motivation, and their behavior. Psychology again! And we can read writers we admire to peek behind the curtain, perhaps to discern how others create a compelling story. Die Again is not an easy read, but I think Gerritsen has the reader by the throat! Now, back to my own editing . . .

Read more about Die Again by Tess Gerritsen at Amazon.
Julie Beck's article on emotion is at The Atlantic.

Feeling insecure in July?

The new month begins with temperatures in the 90's for the next ten days. Summer reading? I've just begun Alex J. Cavanaugh's The Insecure Writer's Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond, a collection of short, motivational essays on writing, publishing, and marketing, currently free on Amazon.  

Already, I feel welcomed with advice from writers in this anthology of short shorts. The most important advice for me just now is very simple:  
Commit to writing 30 minutes EVERY DAY. 

Theresa Milstein in "Make Room for Writing," points out that we will NEVER have enough time for our writing. She notes: "Critiquing, reading for research, and blogging do NOT count." 

How many times, even in my current short-term editing of Mothers Don't Die, have I clicked away from writing to check out just one more bit of background? Just this morning I stopped writing to find out the difference between shifts that police work in large cities and rural areas. I discovered different hours, job duties, vocabulary, and a very different culture. Useful? Yes. Writing? No.

So Milstein's advice to write for 30 minutes every day is just what I needed to hear.

Now the Insecure Writer's Support Group is an actual blog hop where participants post the first Wednesday of the month. This is my first time jumping into this group. Their website has many resources for writers. 

Can't wait to read what others have posted! And if you are writing this hot summer, join in and write on!

·     

Beginnings and endings . . .

I'm working on Book 3, Rivers of Stone. The story begins as Catriona, disguised as a boy, arrives at York Factory, hired as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company. She's married to her sweetheart, Dougal McDonnell, the fiddler. It's 1842, and they've left Scotland behind.

All's well, right? At the beginning of the story, we already know that many challenges await. The wilderness. Bears. The journey west. But the main theme of lovers separated and reunited should inform the story that unfolds. After working on the story for nearly two years, I'm 90,000 words in, but the ending eludes me.

As women know who came of age in the 1960's, nothing is certain. We had no role models. The rebel who burned her bra shocked us. We wanted to be that housewife who happily lived in suburbia in a cottage-like home, with an adoring husband and 2.5 children. Blame Barbie. Going to college meant a pat on the head and an opportunity to find that husband.

I was already different. Tall, gangly. Wore glasses. Add the reality that my family was beyond poor, and I was a bookworm. I worked my way through college, taking in typing as if it were laundry. Two jobs. Three jobs. Didn't matter. The one goal that created a sense of direction was getting that degree.

And so it dawned on me this morning that my last book, Years of Stone, and this one are really about that unique quest for survival as a woman.

In Years of Stone, Deidre, standing in line aboard a sinking ship, says, "I know my place." But she didn't. 

In Rivers of Stone, Catriona, also aboard ship just arriving in Hudson's Bay, is chided by a sailor: "You there, no slouching about. Yer to earn yer keep, boy." Cat replies, "Dinna be pushing me."  But life and circumstance do push us. 

I still want that happy ending for Cat and for all my characters. When do our actions or the actions of our loved ones take us well past that outcome? And then what? Some happy endings are hard won.

Frances Anne Hopkins, "Voyageur Canoe (1869)
Wikipedia

Click on the image to see more detail. Notice the woman in the canoe. Frances Anne Hopkins. Married to a Hudson Bay Company official, she traveled throughout upper Canada with her husband in the 1860s; her paintings document the fur trade. 

Musings on writing a family history . . .

This month, I'm still musing about how to write a family history.  Writing about family -- even a family history that sticks to the facts -- presents some chilling challenges. 

How close do we write the truth? How do we put what happened into a context that either entertains or brings insight?

If I were famous or knew those famous, what to write about would be easier. But, the closest I came to meeting anyone famous was serving coffee at a bank meeting to one of the stars from the well-loved TV series, M*A*S*H. 

I wasn't a secretary, but I was the only woman at the meeting to discuss our loans/investment portfolio. I got grumpy because it was the 1970s, and I knew I was asked to serve coffee because I was a woman. What added insult was later my boss insinuated I would love to go out with this 'famous actor'. No less than four or five times that day, I was reintroduced to this guy as someone who'd really like to know me, ensuring my disdain.

If there were no trauma or drama, no hidden little secrets, no teen-aged mind-blowing experiments with drugs, no sex before marriage, no child given up for adoption, no affairs, no lies, no bank robberies, not a moment that stepped outside propriety, what is left to write about?

I did think seriously about robbing a bank for maybe a full minute.

Back to the seventies. I was a trusted bank officer, and one of our clients needed some fully negotiable stock certificates (anyone off the street could cash these in) stowed away in a safe place overnight. My boss (different boss, different city) asked me to put them 'somewhere safe and to not tell him where.' 

I knew instantly what to do.

I took these beautiful certificates worth several million dollars in my hands, fantasized briefly about running away to the Bahamas, sealed them in a plain, manila envelop, and took them to Jack, who worked the back room and was responsible for the bank safe. 

"Can you lock these papers up for me overnight and give them back to me tomorrow, no questions asked?" I asked. Jack didn't know what they were, but he didn't hesitate. He trusted me. I trusted him. End of story. But the real story played out on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal for the next several years.

Such an anecdote may be amusing. With more detail, it might be litigious. But, similar to fiction, the story telling of a family history serves a point, a theme, a sense -- even unwitting -- of moral purpose. We want to know why someone acted in a certain way.

But to the point, how do we balance the truth with privacy concerns? Even a family history presented as a gift will be read by a wider circle than we might expect.

Kerry Cohen suggests beginning by knowing your purpose. So IF I were writing about those years with the bank in the early 1970's, I might really be writing about the beginnings of the feminist movement and how it changed our social landscape irrevocably for many.

And IF I were writing about some terrible secret family history, Cohen again suggests we should write with compassion. For we do not know what motivates others to act as they do. Unless, perhaps, they write it all down.

"Time" by Vincent Huang (Flickr)

Just finished reading Kerry Cohen's article, "Writing About Family in Memoir." in Writer's Digest (November/December 2014), 60-61, excerpted from her book, The Truth of Memoir (2014).

Getting started with memoir

They needed a teacher. I said, "Yes." So for the next month, I'm reading and thinking about how to get started writing a memoir for an afternoon workshop.

Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir makes a very interesting distinction between writing an autobiography or biography (organized around key events in your own or someone else's life) and writing a memoir (developed around selected events in your life to support a theme).

I've wanted to write a bit of family history ever since my son-in-law asked me who the lady was whose picture I have in my bedroom. 

My grandmother, Sigrid Elizabeth Torgny, born in Chicago in 1888. This is her high school graduation picture. Daughter of a doctor, she traveled out west and fell in love with a cowboy, right around the time of World War I.

So I could write a biography around my family history -- adding my autobiography. But if I slide to a theme . . . Aha! I will be writing a memoir.

Bibliography so far:

Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir, 2nd. ed. Portland, Oregon: The Eighth Mountain Press, 2002.

Borg, Mary. Writing Your Life, 4th ed. Waco, Texas: Prufrock Press, 2013.

"Z" is a Broken Triangle . . .

The letter "Z" is
a broken triangle,
long ago, a pyramid,
its sides drifted apart,
a zig that zagged,
first right, 
then left, and right again,
now the soft sound of snoring,
zzzzzz. Zounds!
Vat vill zey say?
What was once that first mound
from which all life began 
is now a girl's name,
Zeta, born last,
ze end.

And so ends that Blogging A-to-Z Challenge, a full month of poetry. Some people prepare by planning and pre-writing their entries, but I tried to write each day those thoughts inspired by the letter itself, sometimes the first line arriving, like this one, in a half-dream. And now we are one month closer to summer, the promise of picnics, picking strawberries, more hiking . . .  and more writing on that current work-in-progress. 

Gardens at Giverny (Camp)

"Y" is for You . . .

You may never know
how a kind word
or outreached hand
may grace the day
for another.
Think of morning sun,
the fragile flowers of spring.
That brightness does not come
easily for everyone.

Spring Orchids at Manito Park (Camp 2014)

Read what others have written for the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge -- Tomorrow is the very last day, a poem inspired by the letter "Z". .

"X" is for Xylomancy . . .

I spent today thinking 
about the letter "W", not "X".
I wanted to write about wanderlust,
how even today, no one can rattle
the suitcases,
neither my husband nor I,
without some amazing trip ensuing 
-- maybe an exit of sorts,
leaving all that is familiar behind
to leap into the new:
shaking loose the detritus of routine
to explore the unexpected.

I cannot easily explain
that romance of crossing lives,
a moment of pretend
as we settle down for a week or a month
in a town far from home.

Perhaps we'll walk in the woods,
wishing to encounter just once
that witch who left crumbs
marking the trail to her lair. 
But if we found a certain branch
from a certain tree,
we might read our futures 
in the bare, rubbed wood
and extricate ourselves
just in time.

I truly did spend most of today mulling over "W" words. So when the time arrived to write today's entry, I was stuck. I found "xylomancy" after reading through the list for X-words at The Phrontistery, an online resource for unusual words.  

Xylomancy means divination by examining wood found in one's path. If only Hansel and Gretel had found such a branch. 

Path through Redwood Trees,
California Coast trip (Camp 2013)

Read what others have written for the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge as we wind down to "Y" and "Z" in these last two days of April.

"W" is for Wintersong . . .

I have learned to celebrate winter,
for here the snow arrives 
in surprising flakes, then
clumps and heaps
for months
and months
of cold and ice. 
I say: Deliver me 
from these rutted roads
and new car dents,
the week I grazed the garage,
as the car slid right 
when I turned left.
But that choke-cherry tree
outside my window,
flaked full with April's blossoms,
by winter time is limned with snow.
Our walks take us into
a pure country, all gray and white,
and a certain knowing that 
when the snow melts,
the world will turn to light.

Walking in Manito Park 

As April draws nearly to a close, only three letters remain. See what others have written for the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge here!

"V" is for Vanity . . .

We live on the thin crust
of the earth, distracted by weather,
the inexorable turn of seasons,
mostly oblivious to her workings,
and the magma beneath.
Sometimes
those tectonic plates shift,
and we run from our houses
in horror.
Aftershocks ripple
through our lives
and topple homes
and temples, where once
we played as children.
We cannot begin to imagine the loss.
Even from far away, 
we reach out to help survivors
clear the rubble away,
bury the dead,
care for the injured,
to ease the sorrow.

My husband once traveled in Pakistan and Northern India to hike in the lower foothills of Everest, a romantic and far-flung trip when he was young. Apparently, the entirety of Pakistan is in that zone between two great tectonic plates that grind against each other, one from Eurasia and one from India.

"Annapurna Range, Himalayas"
by Michael Royon (Wikipedia)

"U" is for Uptick . . .

What would spring be
without an uptick of tulips,
azaleas, clematis, and wisteria?
Those pale, green leaves that slowly
open on slender, spreading branches of willow trees,
all harbingers of warmer days?

A writer could wish for 
a sudden increase of words to spell
out the rest of her story,
a satisfactory resolution,
no pesky villains, 
unresolved threads,
with the heroine safely home,
perhaps where she wants to be?
Or is the muse waiting
for a downtick of seasons;
when we dread
our darkest dreams?

Today, such a debate doesn't matter,
for the words spilled out just fine,
the story structure shimmers,
and I can yet enjoy this
very sweet and cherished spring.

Wisteria at Longwood Gardens (Camp 2014)

Didn't think I could catch up today . . . but I'm happy to present this little poem for the letter "U" -- which means tomorrow will be "W" and I can have Sunday off, perhaps to recover from that all-day workshop on quilting I'll be taking. Enjoy!

Now hop over to that Blogging A-to-Z Challenge to see what everyone's UP to HERE.

"T" is for Tenacity . . .

To wake,
when others sleep.
To turn my face to the sun.
To persevere.
After all, 
even an old mermaid
has her dreams
of limitless sea
and rolling surf,
and diving deep
where heartsong thrums as simply
as breathing water
as once we all did
before that world we left behind,
as a child walks forward
into each day,
not looking back.

The merry month of April will soon end, as will the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge. Read HERE to find what others have written.

"Mermaid" by George (Flickr) 

"S" is for Still . . .

Still.
Listening.
Sometimes being still
means not listening.
Can I hear my heart beat?
A single breath and hold:
let go
of awareness, the yoga pose
acceptance,
yet that balance between
discipline (the doing),
being (the self), a part of
not-being (the not-self),
and becoming
(ego--ego--ego)
still.
A flash of wings,
my eyelids close,
and I remember the
song of sparrows.

"Sparrow" by Micola (Flickr)

Still a little tired from the drive up from Oregon home, still one day late on that Blogging A-to-Z Challenge. Maybe I will catch up on Sunday.

"R" is for Roughing It

When the fur traders crossed the mountains,
they traveled light,
pemmican, guns, tin plate and tin cup. 
Their ponies belly-deep in snow,
they wore snowshoes when the horses gave out.
They ate their moccasins when the game hid,
made friends and found wives when they could,
traded twists of tobacco for furs, 
drank rotgut at isolated posts, 
sang ribald songs to forget the bone-cold
and the howls of wolves.

Sometimes I wonder what they thought about
as they scanned the skies for sudden storms
or the ground for tracks.
They must have missed those left behind. 
Did they marvel at sweeping vistas,
unending pine forests, or stare up at the stars?
They must have worried about the miles ahead,
signs of an early winter, an unhealed cut,
frozen fingers and toes.
They might have wintered over at a trading post,
hunkered by the fire, trading stories, gambling,
passing a bottle. But when the snow melted, 
they would lurch outside,
sniff the air in all directions,
eager to leave.

I still get the itch to hit the road in the summer, to throw the tent in the trunk and all that camping gear, to hike along a trail anywhere close to wilderness. 

Read what others have written for the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge HERE.

Mystery bird at Yellowstone (Camp)
click on photo to see in more detail 

"Q" is for Quandry . . .

Half-asleep, I wrote yesterday's poem,
the lines lost as I recover
from all-day driving north and home,
one car in a line of trucks.

My quandry for a poem today 
could be fixed between quotations, 
as Natalie Goldberg says: 
"Write what disturbs you, 
what you fear, 
what you have not yet 
been willing to speak about." 

Or my uncertainty could be a form
of querulousness, 
tired feet, tired hands, tired
body and mind. I do not know
you, dear reader, well enough yet
to reveal what Goldberg demands.

What leads writers to flog the keyboard,
cajoling meaning
from this perfect day:
chokeberries flower in full, white bloom,
while sparrows build nests,
their incessant chirping a trill of sound
I hear and cannot decode,
all a backdrop to an unresolved quandry.  
Perhaps tomorrow?

Yes, I am tired tonight, but moving back on track after traveling all yesterday. Maybe tomorrow, the letter "R" will be more receptive. 

See what others have written for that Blogging A-to-Z Challenge HERE.

Meme from The Write Practice
"10 Essential Quotes on Becoming a Writer"
by Joe Bunting

"P" is for Perhaps . . .

Perhaps this morning I'm standing
in someone else's garden,
where later under the just flowering apple tree,
humming birds will gather, and
a stone salamander sleeps,
absent of friends.
The roses are not yet blooming,
but yellow primroses brighten the corners,
as does a line of colored tiles
gathered one by one. A serape casually draped
on a garden swing in the far corner
near pale pink rhododendrons
invites reflection.
Here and there, stone owls
and a raven stand guard
as the sky softens from gray
to pink morning, 
that moment before the world begins.
Even rain does not diminish
the light of this garden
where now the golden-crowned sparrow
forages in the grass.

"O" is for Online . . .

Do they have wifi?
We're on the road,
a different place each night,
but still connected, I think,
and protected, that upward link
to those I love. 
So busy, inbox full,
all those projects half completed,
smart phones humming,
slide fingers to discover
new options. Wait! I have just
the right answer here
. . . at my fingertips.
Were you listening?

Actually, my phone is dumb
and dumber;
we're unplugged
except for once a day.
Maybe this poem
is all that keeps me
online.

Short poem today for that Blogging A to Z Challenge HERE, as another hotel breakfast awaits, then a little packing and a drive south to Corvallis. If it's Friday, that means just one more day before Portland. And here are two wonderful photos found on Flickr by Wendell, the first taken near Corvallis, Oregon, and the second, also by Wendell, for a friend I'll see later today who loves birds.

"A Chance of Rain" by Wendell (Flickr)

"Make Room" by Wendell (Flickr)

N is for Not Here . . .

Not here, but there,
where yesterday resides.
I am visiting this rainy country
for a few, very few days,
not enough time
for more than half-remembered,
years-old conversations to resonate
as we drive up and back
along the 99W corridor,
dipping into concentric circles
of friends known once quite well,
the sweep of the Willamette Valley
rising to coastal mountains in the west,
Marys Peak, a gray shadow,
and unexpected sunshine ahead.
By the weekend, we’ll turn north
and home, feeling stretched,
a little unravelled, well-travelled,
yet still here and there.

"On Marys Peak" by Chris Ten Eyck (Flickr)

I've hiked on Marys Peak near Corvallis, but not this time. We're on the road again and headed to Portland and Fort Vancouver for research on the Hudson's Bay Company for that third book, and, yes, visiting friends along the way. I'm trying to keep up with that poem a day for the Blogging A-to-Z Challenge. Visit HERE to see what others have written.