Baby Name Books? Really.

Plot springs from character…I’ve always sort of believed that these people inside of me—these characters—know who they are and what they’re about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don’t type. —Anne Lamott

“Are you trying to tell me something?” His expression is just a little panicky.

I just wanted to put my feet up after a day of baking Christmas pies and bury myself in the Baby Name Book and mindless TV. “No, why?”

“Well, uh, Baby Name Books scattered around are a little concerning.”

I sink into the love seat and twist around to look at him. “What you’re thinking is impossible, you know.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Double impossible.”

“Yeah, but…”

I look at the stack of books next to me, the scratch paper, clipboard, and pen. “You’ve never really been around when I’ve been building a character, have you?”

“I heard you talk about it, I think.” I always figured he wasn’t really listening, just sort of politely letting me yammer on and on. You know, husband and wife speak. I was impressed, he’d heard that much. “Build? And Baby Name Books figure into it?”

“Yes, for me, that’s first, along with the phone book.”

“You call them up?”

“No.” I smile. Wouldn’t that be great? Call the character and ask him/her about them self.

“Then what’s the phone book for?”

“Last names.”

His frown deepens. “Huh. Then what.”

“My cattle call binder and the horoscope book.” I point to the two five-inch wide binders and my dog-eared Linda Goodman’s Love Signs horoscope book.

“Do I want to know what you use them for? Cattle call binder?”

“I do try outs.”

“Try outs.” I get a blank stare.

“I go through pictures…of actors, magazine ads, what have you, until I find my character.”

“But now, it’s baby names. How do you decide on a name?”

A good question, but I don’t know how to answer, but I try. “There’s this shadow person, somewhere in my mind. Maybe, better called, a seed person. Once I learn their name, the details start coming to me. Until then, they kind of stay in the shadows.”

“I thought you were rewriting your Heart’s series.”

“I am.”

“Then aren’t the characters already…built?”

And he’s hit the nail on the head. When I started the series—I don’t even like to say how long ago…let’s put it this way, 3 computers ago…with all the information on floppies. My new computer doesn’t have one and thank goodness, for my computer guru—I started with the youngest brother and that is how it must progress, but I knew little about the others and it showed when they appear in the book.

Anyway, I’ve rereading everything—all of the first three books, found the gift of an editor’s notes all through the first three chapters of the first book when something happened. And then the dreams-day and night returned. Finally.

These last three years have been absent of the dreams or muse or whatever you want to say. I’ve worked along, writing or rewriting off the cuff, so to speak, figuring that was going to be the way I had to work from now on. It wasn’t as easy or as fun, and maybe, it would have been a blessing if I could have just stopped writing. I couldn’t. It just wasn’t going to be like before. It also left me a little disoriented. It just no longer felt completely like my way of writing, like there was this other layer or something. I didn’t dwell on it any more than I had to, but it did sadden me. I’ve always lived with that feeling of living two lives’s —mine, and the story life in my head. Hard, but familiar. I’ve been doing it all my life. Like a little twist to one of my favorite t-shirt quotes: I live in my own little two worlds but that’s ok, I know me there.

Recently there’s been a return of those day and night dream interruptions but gentle, vague proddings, not the vivid, attention-demanding interruptions I’m used to. Until I reread the series. As I said, as I wrote this series I worked away on the books, each one after the other, knowing where I was going, knowing the characters when I got to their book, but that fourth book—I couldn’t see any part of it. Could barely see Gallagher, the fourth brother, the brother everyone else looked up to. I tried. I did, but it just didn’t seem to happen.

Someone, I can’t remember who, told me not to worry, the story would get here when I was ready. But I was just blank about Gallaher’s story and worse, Gallagher. It was one of the reasons I stopped submitting the series. I think of it as abandoning it. I just kind of left it in mid-stride. Or it felt like that anyway. There was the rest of the story and I just didn’t know where or what it was. I felt certain it was there. I just didn’t trust it would arrive when I needed it. I find that a lot. The not trusting myself.

Last week, as I started the rewrite for the first book in the Heart’s Series, I bumped right into Gallagher and his romance. More than that, I realized what was wrong with the whole series. What was a missing piece, what was always missing? The series would never work, if I didn’t know, at least some of Gallagher’s story. Know his character, know the character of the woman he falls in love with. I couldn’t do a quality rewrite until I had at least a vague outline of his story and a great character sketch of him and his heroine.

Though the books needed to stand alone, they need to mesh, too. How else do you show a family of four boys and their love stories? I needed a name to go forward. And a woman. I needed a better character sketch for Gallagher. And just when I realized I needed it, it arrived.

Sometimes a name comes to you, but other times its gut knowledge, a recognition of a person. We know them, the characters in our books, like old acquaintances.

During this short week between holiday family get-togethers, I’ll be getting to know Gallagher and his lady. Finally.

A Gift

Amidst the files, old manuscripts, contest results from the Heart’s Series I’d stored away many years ago, I’ve found a…gift, a treasure, something so rare and wonderful, I was speechless and so very grateful. A rejection, but not just any rejection; a rejection dotted with edits from a very kind-heart, generous editor—Caroline Tolley, while she worked for Pocket Books.

Here is a case where better notations and explanations would answer questions. Why did I squirrel this treasure away? Why didn’t I grab up the gift given me and run with it? I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was at a time when life around here was having seismic changes—children marrying, first grandbabies, necessary kitchen and home office redo.

I know I would have been very aware of the kindness, the rare gift of time from a very busy person. Was I too overwhelmed, too insecure? Was the timing just wrong? I don’t remember that. I wished I did. I only know that sometimes the best gifts percolate and become much greater down the road.

The reason I went back to see how viable the series was, was the stories, three of them anyway, had been nagging me all these years, along with this niggling thought that the books and writing was worthy. Maybe, it was that little pluck of a memory of this kindness, this knowledge that someone took the time to give me some much needed help. This editor wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something redeemable about the story, would she?

And then the fourth and last of the series, showed up and grew.

The End of the Year; New Beginnings

The end of the year and I’m beginning rewrites on another book. It’s the first of a series. I’m really excited about it for all kinds of reasons. First, I love the story, not just of this story but the whole series. I think that’s important—to love what you’re writing. Second, I see so many possibilities for the story, ways to improve the good ideas and fix the bad; make the writing better, tighter, more who I am.

I think I was afraid to do that, then. I still am, but I’ve learned it’s Ok to be afraid, but do it anyway. And the best thing I’m finding is that the struggle, the difficulties I had with Tie-down Man (from writing to editing and everything in-between) has served me well going forward. I’m not going to waste a detail of what I’ve learned. Anyway, that’s what I’m determined to do.

I’m feeling positive and excited for the rewrites and the new year is the perfect timing, I think. Nothing to distract me like gardens calling or vacation on the horizon. Better yet, an article on the internet from TIME.com, titled Galley Girl: Linda Lael Miller and the Rise of the Cowboy Romance Novel, declares Alpha men are back with cowboys help to lead the way.

Sarah Wendell, author of Everything I know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels and cofounder of SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com says the cowboy has inherent nobility. I agree, besides there are the horses, too. (I haven’t yet outgrown my horse crazy past.) Past that draw is the nobility of those that people the West. I admire their strength and courage, the inventiveness, the landscape, the history. Maybe, because it is, in a small part, my history.

In the same article, Linda Lael Miller mentions authenticity and integrity. I think these two qualities are very compelling now. In an interview with Anson Mount, who plays Cullen Bohannon on the AMC series Hell on Wheels, (By the way, I’m loving this series) Mount explains that he sees Cullen as led by his gut—making choices on right or wrong, ideas of justice and vengeance gut calls. There is something very authentic about living that way and maybe, there is, also, the sense we’ve come too far from that. We don’t always trust our gut instincts or the idea of doing the right thing because it’s right.

So, I’m beginning the new year with high energy and hope. The best way to start.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year


Quotes for the year:

So many of our dreams, at first, seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and…soon, they become inevitable. Christopher Reeve

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning it?” My answer to that would be, “No.” Aaron Copland

Fools may laugh at me, but the wise understand.” Lin-chi

Always stay in your own movie. Ken Kesey
Go—not knowing where.
Bring—not knowing what. The path is long, the way unknown. Russian Fairy Tale

Each day a day goes by. Carlo Goldoni

Remember: information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best. Frank Zappa
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Robert M. Pirsig

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can thing, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one. John Ruskin

Be grateful for every detail because tenacity will get you there and gratitude will not allow you to be angry when you’ve arrived. Henry Winkler

Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm’s length. It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.
The thing to do when you’re impatient is…to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch the feeling that your companion is there watching you. Carlos Castaneda

Just A Note

I’ve been going through blog file, looking for something to write about today that wasn’t just a rehash of what I’ve written before. I’ve been bored with my blog writings(so I know anyone reading them must be bored, too. There aren’t that many, but I really don’t want to bore them. After all, a reader is dear.) feeling a little like I’ve been on a déjà vu train. You know, a vehicle without steering—willy-nillying along over the same old track.

I am ready to move on while my baby (Ella and the Tie-down Man) goes out in the world and finds a place. I’ve been poking around in my previously written Western Historicals: a series and several stand-alone books in various stages of completion. I abandoned the series when Western Historicals fell out of favor, but western are my love-to read and write. It’s the direction my heart and voice wants to go. I don’t know much, but I know there lays my strength.

I think of it a bit like a plant. I take pride and joy in my gardening, but of special joy is my inside gardening. A houseplant has needs to be met: the right soil, the right sunlight and the right amount of water. Given those things plants thrive, without, they may live, look all right but they never really take off.

I think writers are a lot like that. Some writers can write everything and thrive. I think I could do well enough in any kind of writing, but to thrive I need my westerns and my poetry. So if I know that, why not do that. It is my best bet to doing my best writing.

But where to start? A fresh story or finish one of those already in the works. It’s a dilemma for me. But as I was flipping through the blog file, I found a few sentences writing on a torn piece of paper. No attribution, which in itself is very strange. I’m obsessive about making sure the author of every pithy, smart or funny sentence is noted.

This is what was written on the note:

Thought you could use a thought or two. You cannot abandon what you do not know, to go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. Remember a voyage of discovery doesn’t begin with new lands, it begins with new eyes. Stay in touch.

I don’t know who wrote those words or whom they were for. Maybe to me, from someone who knew my oftentimes dilemmas. It doesn’t really matter, for they spoke to me when I needed them. So I’ve been rereading my old work, assessing what I’ve done, what I need to do next. And as I do, that spark of excitement has begun simmering. I feel it. I reach for it. All the scales of my illness, the frustrations of caregiving seem to slip away into I don’t-care-I’m-going-to do-this-for-me knot in my gut. A knot that’s been muffled too long.

Wished I could tell the author of that note: Thank you, I needed that.

Of Two Worlds

What is the matter with you people? Don’t you know whom you’re dealing with? What you’re dealing with? Doesn’t my history tell you what I’m like? You people are seriously leaving me in charge? With all these other….these other things…these lives, people, worlds I must, need, do deal with? Really?

You’re all depending on me? When half my brain is…working out other problems, for other people, in other places and…times? I wonder if you know what this ‘conflict’ is doing to me. —My Inner Voice

The first line of a poem by poet/mother, Laura Apol, to another poet and mother, Lucille Clifton says it best: Tell me again about the poems you lost and the babies you saved. I have lost poems and stories in the forests of motherhood and now, I’m surely losing them again in the wilderness of caring for my mother. Both, countries of my choosing.

And I knew going in with both I would lose poems and stories, but I would save children and my mother’s quality of life. (to paraphrase Apol) I never believed the lie that I could replace the writing lost. I only hoped the best would hang on, somehow.

I don’t know that that happened. What I do know, is sometimes, I’m completely disoriented, no matter what I’m doing. Writing and suddenly the panicked thought intrudes about mom’s medicine or an appointment I might have forgotten. Or I get a distressed phone call. Sometimes delegated help falls through or a sick day happens. Sometimes, I’m driving mom around and a scene rises up, clear, clean, and perfect for the story I’m working or a line for a poem. I’m never really completely here or there.

My kids knew. They labeled me eccentric, weird…just working in her head again. (This accompanied with a roll of their eyes and a long-suffering sigh) But how do you explain a sudden distraction in the middle of a shopping trip when for my mom remembering to buy OJ is the task for the day?

And the writing isn’t vital; no worlds hang on the work getting done. (Only the worlds I’ve made up and worrying too much about that can get a little hinky, if a writer gets too serious about it, right? I mean, this world only exists in my mind and …well, you see what I mean. Hinky. Going there could put into question the state of my mind, right?)

I’m clear on what’s truly important, I am, but that doesn’t stop the voices, the people, the scenes that co-occupy my mind, distract me and vie for attention. And sometimes, I feel like a computer asked to do too many tasks at once—frozen screen head.
Worse, writers need to silence their minds. It’s vital, but most often I’m of two minds, two trains of thoughts, two time periods. Silence is…impossible.

My prayer: I was writing—learning and growing along with the children—until eventually I was writing fiction worthy of publication. It might have happened sooner had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say. —Katherine Paterson, novelist