All That They Desire...

I saw this picture on Pinterest today, and it made me stop and think about my own characters. Do I give them all that they desire at the end of the book?

Yes, Jane Austen's books have happy endings. Yes, I tend to write happy endings, too. But I don't know that I give my characters "all that they desire." Why? Because that would be too easy. And, well, too unrealistic.

Life is made up of challenges. That's what makes it interesting. Sometimes, it's what makes it unbearable. But I am a firm believer in the saying, "One cannot know joy without first knowing sorrow."

I wonder if Miss Austen perhaps meant that they would have "most" of what they desired. I could live with that. Of course, it doesn't make for nearly as 'neat' of a quote.

Do you give your characters all that they desire, or do you deliberately keep them from having what they want the most?

Finally

The last time I was able to come back to my hometown and see my family was in March. My hysterectomy surgery made it impossible for a few months, and then the lack of paid vacation time put a further cramp in those plans.

But I'm happy to say that I've spent the last few days firmly within the arms of my family. It's been glorious.

Helping my mom bake when I was little.

I made chocolate chip cookies with my grandma, watched my nephew's high school football game, had a rousing discussion on politics with my dad, wandered around my brother's farm and pet cute little farm kitties, and reminisced with everyone about the good old days while sitting in my grandma's living room. Today I went to church with my mom and we just finished putting a cake in the oven. We're making jello cake, one of my favorite recipes from my childhood.

I've pretty much stayed off-line and I really haven't missed it at all. I've been far too busy enjoying the company of my family.

I've loved every minute of it.

This is exactly what I've needed for the past few months. The summer heat, the drought we're in (it's even worse in western Nebraska, where I'm at now), and the battles with my health have taken their toll. I needed a change of scenery, and coming back home has been a wonderful antidote to my less than stellar emotional mood.

As it's Labor Day tomorrow, I don't have to work - hurrah! - though I do have a six hour drive ahead of me. That's ok. It's been worth it.

The Creative Process

I tend to agree on all counts.

The Wisdom of Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle was perhaps one of the most beloved writers of our time. She is most well-known for her book, A Wrinkle in Time (which I read long ago, but barely remember - must remedy that). However, she also wrote a book on writing and Christianity that has a lot of wonderful insights on creativity. Called Walking on Water, it delves into some of the deepest issues that writers and writers of faith face. I'm reading it for the first time right now and really enjoying it.

The following quotes by L'Engle, though, speak to every type of creative person.

"Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it."

"Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling."

I experienced both of them in the last two days. Monday night, I decided to sit down and write despite feeling yucky with allergies and a pounding headache. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to write, only that I needed to. 

I started writing a scene that I liked, then realized it would work better in another part of the book. So I cut it, planning to paste it somewhere else. However, due to my befuddled brain (likely caused by the misnomer of 'non-drowsy' allergy medicine), I accidentally cut and pasted something else and ended up deleting the entire scene altogether.

Frustrating.

I sighed, muttered a few choice words, then decided there was nothing to do but rewrite the scene. But I started writing the scene again, and this time, inspiration struck, and the scene was much better than the first time around. 

Madeleine was spot on: inspiration comes during the work. 

Since my allergy symptoms had abated somewhat, I decided to tackle the novel against last night. I also naively thought I'd opened up the floodgates on writing. I was wrong.

Every word I wrote was agonizing. I couldn't get it to work. Yet I knew exactly what I wanted out of the scene. I deleted a whole swath of words and that helped, but it really was like I was battling between destruction and creativity.

Once again, L'Engle's quote was spot on.

In this writing gig, it helps to know that those who went before us and succeeded in the writing business were not so very different from us. They struggled with writing just like we do. 

Which is why community is so important among writers. It helps to know we're not alone.

Thank you, Madeleine L'Engle, for your words of wisdom.

A Respite

It's in the low 70s here today.

I am wearing my favorite outfit: jeans, a Victorian blouse, a blue sweater, and my black Oxfords.

Yes, jeans AND a sweater.

I walked downtown to get my lunch and the cool breezes felt heavenly.

Can you say bliss?

The weekend is supposed to bring more of the same, which means I should get a lot of writing done as this is my Optimal Writing Weather.

Hot summer days are probably still ahead - after all, we are in the dog days of summer with August and September, but if we can get these cool days interspersed with the hot ones, I'll be ok. (I think). But if the weather would like to stay this cool until, oh, next June, why, that would be fine with me!

Brain Fog

We all have times when we can't think of the right word. Usually, it comes to us after a bit of thought. Sometimes, like what has been happening with me lately, it just stays covered under a thick blanket of fog.

Maybe it's my hormones, maybe it's this terrible heat (my city is now under water restriction), or maybe I'm just going senile, but my brain fog has made it impossible to write.

I tried for two days to get the darn brain unstuck, and while I did write, what came out was pretty much crap. Still, I can fix crap.

To address this problem, I have taken a step back from the novel and done a few other things. The other night, I made a chocolate cake from scratch - something I normally never do as a box cake is a lot easier - but my daughter wanted cake, and I was in the mood to bake, so bake I did. I also whipped up a batch of baked burritos that my husband loves. I normally do not like to cook. But as it is a form of creativity, it was fun to do.

Last night, I finished reading an absolutely adorable, charming novel called The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart. It centers around a modern-day Beefeater who lives and works at the Tower of London. It's rare for me to actually laugh out loud when I'm reading, but this book made me do that more than once. It's very British, and as I am a certified Anglophile (I do have a certificate somewhere...), I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I feel better today, and I hope to get back to the novel tonight.

The old adage is true - sometimes, you just gotta refill that creative well.

How do you refill your creative well when it runs dry?

The Writer's Struggle

What I see in my brain is not what ends up on the page. In my head, it's a beautiful movie, with lots of gorgeous scenery and sounds and smells. Transcribing that onto the page is an exercise in madness. Why? Because it will never be exactly as we see it in our head. That is impossible.

But isn't it neat to think that what we end up writing will be seen differently by each and every person that reads it? Each person will relate to your words differently because they will bring their experiences, their memories, and their reactions with them as they read.

Of course, in the end, it all boils down to one thing: you must write. Because if you don't write, then your words will not be read and experienced in a multitude of varying ways by a variety of people.

Therefore, go and write. Get it down. Fix it later.

And above all...

Enjoy the process.

Ode to Messiness

This is me. I have a very slight memory of this day, though I couldn't have been more than two or three. My mother tells me we were making cabbage burgers at the time. I am not at all surprised that I was a messy baker back then because I am still a messy baker (and cook) today.

I have had to clean cookie dough off of walls because I let the beaters out of the bowl and dough goes flying everywhere. More than once, I've called one of the pets into the kitchen - either the cat or the dog - and told them to eat the food I dropped on the floor while cooking. Flour doesn't normally stay in the measuring cup, and neither does just about any other dry ingredient.

The garbage disposal in the sink has saved me from making even worse messes. Peeling vegetables is easier now that I can just throw the peels down the sink (though I think I still manage to get some on the floor in the process) and I just put an egg shell in the sink instead of leaving a trail of egg white on the counters in its trip to the trash can.

I must say, though, that despite my messiness, I manage to create some tasty meals and baked goods. Thanks to Pinterest, I've been trying a lot of new recipes and while some have turned out so-so, others have been a rousing success - especially this chocolate chip cookie recipe.

But I'm not just messy in the kitchen.

Ask my mother about the stacks of paperwork and books and stuff in my bedroom as a kid. Apparently she couldn't take it for very long stretches of time as I would sometimes come home from school to find it all organized. I loved that.

Contrary to what you might think, however, I keep a pretty darn clean house. My living room is very organized. Everything is in its place, and that's just the way I like it.

However, my office is another matter...

I blame my father for this one, as my mom would often try and clean his office. She gave up, though, when he couldn't find paperwork after she cleaned, and thereafter she had to grit her teeth and leave it in all its messy glory.

(As an aside, I am starting to think I owe my mother an apology for her cleaning so much...)

Yesterday I spent the entire day at home. We'd already bought groceries for the weekend, and as my daughter is finished with summer softball, we had no practice to go to. I was quite excited to write all day.

But the mess had accumulated in my office. Bills, stacks of paperwork, research, wayward notes, and piles of books had become too much. So I got to work. I organized, tossed stuff, filed paperwork, put books away, and made the place presentable again.

Every time I clean, I vow I won't let it get this way again. It does anyway.

There is probably a lesson in here somewhere, but I've failed to learn it so many times that I think I'm a lost cause.

However!

I have learned one thing about messiness in regards to my writing.

(Ah! you're thinking. She is going to tie this to writing!)

Yes. Yes I am.

My writing itself can be messy - words, phrases, descriptions, etc. - for the first draft.

But, the plot cannot.

The last novel I wrote began on a whim. I had the germ of an idea, so I sat down and began to write. I was blissfully unaware of what direction I was going and really didn't care. I would discover it as I went along. Unfortunately, what I discovered is that I am really good at making messes.

Granted, this was the first story I wrote where I didn't really have any sense of direction. Most of my other stories I've plotted out enough to know my beginning, middle, and end (though I still didn't have some very important elements worked out). But not this one.

Fixing that story cost me months of writing time. It was a huge, colossal mess. I resolved I wouldn't do this anymore with my novels, couldn't, in fact, if I wanted to make the best use of my time.

I realized that while I could be as messy as I wanted to with the pre-writing phase - and believe me, I tend to be all over the place in trying to figure everything out - I could not translate that messiness to the first draft. I needed certain things hammered out before I started. I implemented this new way of thinking for my next novel (thanks to this stellar book on plotting), and the actual writing process hasn't been nearly as messy this time around.

That is a good thing.

The moral of the story? Being messy in the kitchen is fine. It's even okay in the office for a short time.

But messiness in my plot? Nope. Can't do it. Does this make me a plotster vs a pantster? Probably. It's the method that works for me. I know it doesn't work for everyone, and that is the beauty of human nature.

I do find it fascinating, though, that I can be messy in some areas of my life - my office, my cooking, etc.- but not in others - my fastidious living room, the way I fold laundry, cups stacked just so in my cupboards, etc.

I am a study in contrasts.

And that's just the way I like it.

Heat Wave

Wow. We have had temperatures in the 100's for several days now, with not a drop of rain to cool us off. Those who have given up on watering the lawn (and because of the city's "recommendation" not to water every day) have brown, ugly grass. My evergreen bushes in my front yard are even turning brown. I have never seen that before.

Yeah, it's hot.

And I'm not happy about it.

Luckily, relief is in sight. We have a chance of rain tomorrow and the temperatures are supposed to drop back into the 90s. That's a heck of a lot better than the 100's!

I've been writing, albeit slowly. I've also been reading a fantastic novel - I love it when I read a book that I don't want to put down.

What have you been up to?

It Happens To Us All

Ah, yes. The bane of being a writer...

The Tools of the Trade

I started writing on my mother's manual typewriter in the 6th grade. I really didn't know what I was doing, having yet to take a typing class in school (that came later), but still, I plucked away, getting my fingers caught and using whiteout as I tried to get the thoughts in my head down on the page.

I also kept writing longhand on my yellow legal pads or just pages of loose leaf notebook paper. I remember getting cramps in my hand, but still kept at it.

When my Dad got a computer, I gladly exchanged the typewriter for the ease of clacking away on a nice keyboard. This was before Windows, though, so it was pretty much green words on a black screen. This made writing easier, and so did the typing class I took in school - on electric typewriters. Old school!

And then, of course, came the miracle of Windows (for the Microsoft users, like we were) sometime when I was in high school along with the ease of word processors. Ah! Black words on a white screen. It was so much easier on the eyes, and I could use the fun formatting techniques.

Around this time, I pretty much abandoned writing longhand. I could simply write faster by typing.

But then after college, I started journaling, and I wrote in longhand. I still journal today using an old-fashioned pen and paper. I love to write in cursive and despite our society's penchant for no longer teaching cursive in schools, I hope it never goes away. There's something organic and beautiful about those loops and curls that our words create.

What were your tools of the trade when you started out? How did they evolve?