You Say It’s Your Birthday…
9/11 memorial blog posts, retrospective TV shows, and new articles are all over the media this week, as I knew they would be. Many of them mention the “almost ten years” since the day we watched live as what we first thought must be a tragic accident turned into an act of terror we could scarcely comprehend, even though it happened right in front of our eyes. I can only imagine what the coverage will be like next year, when it really is the ten-year anniversary. It’s also my birthday. That 9/11 was my thirtieth birthday. I’ve written a little about that before, here. It’s a strange day to have a birthday. In the post-9/11 world, celebrating anything today always seems a little disrespectful, somehow. Kind of like having your birthday on Remembrance Day, I guess. But being an introspective person, my birthday is also about reflecting on where I’m going, where I’ve been, where I am. And I can – and do – give a nod of thanks to those who lost their lives that day for pushing me to live mine the way I want to. So I’ll do that, and celebrate, too, because I can, and when you think of all the people who can’t, that’s as good a reason as any. I think they’d understand. Share...
A Writer’s Mind… or Where do you get your ideas? (I know. Sorry!)
Work – in the form of my position as conference coordinator for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference – has been nuts, and is likely to stay that way until after the conference in October. I knew that would happen, but in a bid to at least keep a little piece of my head churning away on the book, for when I get back to it, I thought I’d talk a little about writing. Seems like I’ve encountered a bunch of people lately who don’t get the writing thing, and would like to. Some of them pop by here occasionally. So, with apologies to all my writer buddies for whom this won’t be anything new, I thought I’d start with a peek at the question I’ve had no fewer than six times this week, the one all writers cringe to hear: “where do you get your ideas?” Writers are an odd, nosy breed of humans, sponge-like in their absorption of the world around them. I’ve yet to meet one who doesn’t mine every experience, every person met, every trip to the ER and every beautifully presented meal, every glorious view and every bug-ridden hotel room… everything… for what it can offer his or her writing. We all do it. Any writer who tells you she doesn’t is lying. Of course, we lie for a living, so you never know…. I’ve often heard it described along the lines of having a tiny part of our conscious mind that thinks “So this is what it feels like to…” no matter what the experience may be, whether it’s a hot air balloon ride or an emergency root canal. With the details, of course, carefully tucked away to be brought out later, someday, in some bit of prose somewhere. That’s not to say we’re not present in the moment, living our lives like everyone else, because we are. But it all fills the research well, too. “Where do you get your ideas” has to be the most common question non-writers ask writers, and I know they get frustrated when we say “everywhere”. But it’s true. I think it’s just a matter of how the writer mind works. We see stories everywhere. Sometimes whole novels pop into being out of nothing more than a couple, seen from a distance, parting, their hands reluctant to let go until that last instant when the space between them exceeds their collective reach. So, to do this job, we have to truly see the world around us. Not only feel what we feel, but catalogue the feelings, remember the good and the bad so that we can write honestly about whatever we’re writing about. Because joy is joy, whether or not you’ve ever had the same experience as your characters. If you know joy, if you’ve paid attention to what it feels like and what it looks like when others have it, you’ll know how your character feels in that moment, experiencing something joyful you’ve never even dreamed of trying yourself. Same goes for sadness and anger and fear. You get the idea. So no, I’ve never watched in my rear view mirror to see if my blind date was still following me, like the main character in my first novel does. But I have driven down creepy streets in the dark, making sure the doors were locked and carefully checking my mirrors and even the back seat for imagined invaders. So I apply that feeling, and others like it, and I know how Jane feels. So that’s a start… next time I’ll tell you a bit about my current WIP. Share...
The Language of Relationships
I’ve been wanting to write a post about this for awhile, but somehow it never happened. It’s been in the back of my mind for long enough that I actually searched through my posts before I wrote this, wondering if I might already have said what I’ve been thinking about. Ever have that happen in a conversation, when you’re not entirely sure whether you actually said something or only thought about saying it when you were rehearsing the conversation in your mind? No? Maybe that’s just me… Forget I said anything. So the Language of Relationships. Yes, I know. Unnecessary capital letters. That’s just the way I said it as I was typing it. This is sort of a combo life/writing topic, because I think it’s something we need to be aware of when we’re writing, especially with dialogue, and all too often, I think it gets overlooked. Writers go to endless lengths to get the jargon in their books right, whether their characters are police officers or doctors or computer geeks or florists or maids or milkmen. And I’ve seen both brilliant and obvious efforts to get dialect just so, even to the more-than-slightly-painful point of characters explaining their use of it, along the lines of “No, it’s a boot, not a trunk. We’re in England now.” But what about the personal influences on the way we speak and think? Relationships of any length and depth, whether they’re close friendships or marriages or family ties or love affairs, develop a language all their own. It happens effortlessly, over time and with shared experiences, and I love that. I think it’s a lovely reminder of the depth and history of a connection every time you automatically use a phrase that no one outside the relationship would understand, or, if they did, wouldn’t know the significance of within the bounds of the relationship. Sure, there are all the nicknames, the pookies and sweeties and dears and honeys. But what interests me, what always makes me stop for an instant of gratitude for having someone of such long-term importance in my life, are the everyday bits and pieces, the phrases and quotes and ways of expressing things we’ve absorbed and re-use over and over so that they become part of the fabric of our relationship. If my family or my best friend’s family happens to be roasting a chicken for dinner, our answer to “what’s for dinner?” is always, “I cook a chicken,” said in the slightly staccato tone her grandmother, whose first language was French, would use to say just that when she was roasting a chicken. In my house, there are a handful of pop culture quotations that have become part of our everyday language. Some of them may make sense to you, others not. But even if you know the source, the associations, the memories associated with them, are the thing that make them part of the common parlance at our house. A few of those? Thirty-four fifty. I do not think it means what you think it means. Death by tray…. And of course, there are the more personal ones that develop all on their own, ranging from the romantic to the ridiculous. The people I share them with know what they are, but I’ll keep them to myself here. Too difficult to explain, for one thing. Too silly, if they’re not yours, for another. So how do you bring something so personal to your characters’ relationships and still have it make sense to the reader? Maybe the difficulty of doing so without tiresome explanations is why I don’t often notice much of it in the novels I read. But I think it’s something to consider including, in small amounts, where context would lend enough understanding to avoid explanation. I think, done well, it can lend authenticity and depth to your characters’ relationships. It certainly adds depth to the real ones. The challenge, of course, is not alienating the reader by locking him out of the POV character he’s going along with on the story. Can it be done? I think it can, with care. What say you? Share...
West Coast Summer
It’s been a beautiful and busy summer here on the west coast, as evidenced by my complete and utter lack of posting here. What’ve been your summer highlights so far? For me, a lovely week spent on my favourite island in the sunshine at the beginning of July is one. We explored beaches, visited the tiny local museum housed in a heritage property with lots of history of its own, and spent our mornings sitting on the deck chatting and enjoying the view. Bliss! Less than two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, held in Sechelt, BC. It was my first time at this festival, and I was impressed. The venue is gorgeous, with a well-kept garden and gravel paths leading up a slope to the festival pavilion, built among the trees with sides open to the fresh air, with seating for about 500. Each of the 21 presenters over three days had an hour onstage, reading from their books, talking, and answering audience questions. The festival was very well run in that way that makes the running of it pretty much invisible. Everything seemed to go as planned, though I know that’s probably an illusion created by a good team of people. The local vendors had great food on offer, and everyone I encountered had a smile and a friendly word. In addition to the festival itself, the time in Sechelt gave me a chance to catch up with old friends and meet some new people, as well as enjoy some time alone, something I think mothers forget to do for ourselves most of the time. The highlights of my weekend away included some wonderful speakers at the festival – Lawrence Hill, Denise Chong, Jack Hodgins, and SiWC regular Jack Whyte among them – and also some lovely moments outside the festival, including breakfast on the beach in front of my hotel, enjoying the view and a good book with my tea and scone, and then the splash of cool water over my feet when I waded into the Strait; wonderful company, good food, and a breathtaking sunset vista over dinner one night on the Inlet; the friendliness of the people involved, including coordinator Jane and Bev from the local bookstore; and a glorious few hours one afternoon with nowhere I had to be and nothing I had to do other than just be and enjoy the view. It’s something I should definitely do more often. Share...
What Do You Write?
Yesterday, I had a great meeting with kc dyer, SiWC webmaster Dale McGladdery, and a guy we’ll call “Chris” who will be bringing us a fabulous Saturday Night Owl event at SiWC. (Hmmm…. Could that be a clue? Those of you playing along with our mystery on the SiWC blog might think so, but I’m not saying either way.) Anyway, in separate conversations, both men asked me what I write. I answered, as I usually do, “Women’s fiction.” Both were utterly confused, if the blank looks on their faces were any indication. One asked me if that was a euphemism for chick lit. It isn’t. My last MS could most accurately be called chick lit, if half a dozen people wouldn’t immediately leap in to point out that “chick lit is dead”. But ignoring that, sure, the last book qualifies for what people think of when they hear the term. But I also have a couple of partially-written romances tucked away, and the book I’m working on now, the one that leads me to use the slightly vague “women’s fiction” is… a book. It’s fiction. There’s a romance in it. Two, actually. Maybe even three or four, if you count existing marriages and a possible date for a minor character. But it’s not a romance in the traditional sense. What it is is fiction written by a woman for a primarily female audience. And so I call it women’s fiction, and that’s how I’d pitch it in a query letter. Except that the men who’ve read bits of it for me have loved it, too. Clear as mud? This book would probably go on the fiction shelf at my local bookstore, the same shelf as every other book that doesn’t clearly fit into a defined genre like mystery, romance, or fantasy. There’s a huge variety of types of books on the fiction shelf. So I got thinking about the existence of the term. You almost never hear someone talk about “men’s fiction” even though there are lots of types of books that appeal more to men than women, generally speaking. So why women’s fiction? I know what I mean when I say it. I know who my intended audience is. They’re fans of other women who write fiction about women and mostly for women. So I guess women’s fiction really is as good a term as any, even if it makes men go blank when I mention it. Before I could get too wrapped up in definitions and labels, as interesting as the topic is to me, I came across something local blogger Steffani Cameron said awhile ago: “For all of history, arts and passion are born because of what makes our hearts swell and break. Wars and uprisings and cultural revolutions wage because of matters of the heart.” That reminded me of a keynote speech agent Donald Maass gave a few years ago at SiWC, in which he talked about firing up our writing by tapping in to our passions. With characteristic straightforwardness, he asked the audience, “What makes you hard? What makes you wet?” and then told us to put it in our books. Good advice, no? So how about I forget about the label for the moment? There’ll be time enough to define that when I’m ready to pitch this thing. In the meantime, Don’s and Steff’s words have reminded me to write with passion, whatever it is I’m writing. I love people, the way they think, the way their lives unfold, how they interact and how they love, why they get into the situations they get into and what they do next. I love happy endings and exploring the bumps and detours along the way and wandering down the ‘what if’ paths of human relationships. That’s what I write. I’ll be hiding out in my word processing program this afternoon if you need me. Share...
The Result
I spent an hour on my WIP yesterday afternoon. My concern about not being able to get back in were unfounded. And I made myself sniffly reading the first couple of chapters, which made me very happy, paradoxical as that may seem. After mulling it over for months, it turned out that the bit of distance gave me the, well, distance I needed to make some pretty drastic changes. I’d come to the conclusion some time ago that the book might be stronger if I cut whole chapters and POVs. It was a painful thought at the time, because months of work would go in the bin if I did it. But I’ve lived with the idea for a long time now, all through the break from writing, and somehow it was easier than I expected it to be when I actually started doing it. So far, I’ve cut 3650 words, and that’s just a start. It’ll take a while to complete the process, because not only do I have to cut whole chapters and scenes, but I have to find a way to work that information into what’s left behind before I move forward. I’m not sure yet how that’s going to go, but I’m looking forward to finding out. Off to find the machete and get back to it… Share...
Recent Comments