Ideas for February Doldrums

We all procrastinate. For me, it seems to get easier to do so the deeper into a book I write, especially when I’m not at all sure what’s next or if I run into roadblocks or writer’s blocks. Every writer, no matter what they tell you, has experienced both in some way or other. Here are a few things I do if I find myself in either situation.

I break the project down to the littlest chunk I can deal with. If I’m working on a poem that stalls I might go looking for words and make a list, telling myself that’s all I’ll do. The words kick start my sluggish mind and having the pressure off to produce is a great motivator.

If I’m working on a novel, the list of words gets my mind off the story and into the world I’m creating. I often find when the work is coming hard for a novel it’s because I’ve become removed, instead of inside the story

Or I’ll research the subject—Poem or novel. I can’t tell you how often I’ve found inspiration for my best poems from hard, dry facts. That process makes me smile because it just seems so at odds with poetry writing, but I always think of a quote I heard many years ago:

Facts is stubborn things and can’t be drove. —Mrs. Gamp

Facts just are and as you go looking for them, I think you’re mind stops trying so hard and genius slips in. (I hope.)

Another small chunk I do is force myself to write one sentence. It is amazing how often that one sentence leads to more. If the one sentence doesn’t work, I’ll use my timer. It’s an old trick I use to use on my kids when they didn’t want or think they needed a nap. I’d tell them all they had to do was close their eyes for five minutes. I even set the timer for them. I never once had them only nap for five minutes (of course, I snuck in their rooms and took the timer out of the room, turned it off, snuck it back in. I’m not stupid, not even back in those days. Do I feel guilty about trick my kids. Um, no!) I’ve never only written for five minutes.

The best part about doing the smallest thing possible is anyone can do that. Take one step, cut out one dessert, write one word, walk one block and inevitably you can do another, then another and then, there you go.

I’ve been known to take a bribe. Oh, yes and I don’t feel an ounce of guilt about that either. I’ll coerce myself with promises: All I got to do is write 100 words today, then I can go antiquing, have a taco burger (I have no idea why this is such a guilty pleasure, but it is and so fraught with memories, too. The perfect bribe.) or a seafood salad. A new notebook or pen would work or a new houseplant. Hey, I can think of dozens of bribes and I’m so easy I’ll work hard for every one.

Get away from the work. This doesn’t mean I take a vacation, although, sometimes that’s exactly what my mind and body are saying I need. As I’ve mentioned before I’m the primary caregiver for a ninety-four year old parent. That challenge is becoming more and more time intensive. And I am still a mother and wife. The responsibilities and demands challenge my mind and my body every day. And they could easily take over every minute.

So a nice pampered vacation is not in the cards, but all the same I have to be kind to myself for all I do for others. And believe me often the only one looking out for me is me. That has been one of the hardest lessons to learn.

The thing is my writing is my lifeline, the one consistent thing I do for me, but when I am overwhelmed by other’s needs sometimes my work, that lifeline, just won’t come. What do you do when you need a change, a rest, a vacation and it isn’t going to happen? What I do is, first, I breathe: in for 5 counts, out for 5 counts. I just breathe and let stillness surround me.

Sometimes, all I can manage is a glimpse out of my office window, but the sight of trees and rain or snow, of wind, of the old wooden fence, the garden is enough. I can feel my pulse slow, my breathing relax.

Sometimes, I listen to music. Music fills spaces in my soul, it works on the words stuck inside, it puts me in a place and time I’m writing about. It soothes the savage beast. It does.

Sometimes I walk. Outside is best. There is something elemental about the swing of arms and legs, the quiet, the sight of sky and clouds, wind in the trees, leaves scuttling across the ground, the song of birds.

These small escapes are sanity. The worst part about it is my stupid guilt feelings I can’t seem to shake, but I can live with them. I can write with them, too.

Not Do or Do and Finding

Not-To-Do-List:

·       Worry about things I have no control over. Most of the things I worry about never happen, but when I worry about them the stress does.

·       Diet to get ‘skinny’. Instead, I’ll eat and exercise for what’s good for me, makes me feel better.

·       Please everyone. Too damn hard. I’m going to start treating me like my own best friend.

·       Watch make-over segments on TV, wondering if I should die my graying hair or cut said hair.  

·       Worry about my aging looks. I’ve earned every bit of and it ain’t so bad considering.

·       Be unappreciative of my body ever again. It has fought the good fight and (this is especially gratifying to say) won. I never want to take it for granted again.

·       Let ‘mean girls who have turned into mean women’ get to me anymore.

Today:

I’ve been playing Whitney Houston music all morning. It took some doing to find the cassette stored away in old Pepsi wooden crates and a little finger-crossing that the old cassette deck would still work, but after listening to the short stanzas played over and over on the news, I ached to hear the whole experience of her voice. The excavation was worth it.

It was the best way I could think to honor and thank her for what she gave us.

Singing is so connected to a person’s heart, I think. Singing (or listening to someone else) of heartbreak, love, God brings it out into a reality. It is deeper than tears or smiles. We carry music with us throughout our lives. It is connected to our memories, our histories. As Dick Clark says, Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and we each have a personal playlist that introduces the chapters of our life. So when we hear a song we recognize, we hear a memory too.

Finding:

There was an antique show Saturday and, of course, I went. The crowd made the treasure hunt difficult and not as pleasant as I hoped. It was hard to make way through the crush into the booths and once in the booth moving through to look at all the items was more than a little frustrating. Still, for all that, I had fun and found some great things. Notably a wooden desk organizer, perfect next to my printer. As I was cleaning the dust from the wooden shelves, I found a bunch of papers shoved into the back. I love that kind of thing.

I found several staplers and two garden sprayers to add to my collections and the book, Westward by Rail.

Speaking of finding treasures, I’m still going through dejunking and organizing my office, making progress, thinning out old books, I’m no longer using and reassessing  decorating choices. Of course, there are files to go through, copy or get rid of, but with every step I’m improving the function of the room and my work.

Progress is slow, but steady, but I’m not putting it off. I’m moving forward one step at a time.

If you strike a thorn or rose,

Keep a-goin’!

If it hails or if it snows,

Keep a-goin’!

‘Tain’t no use to sit and whine

‘Cause the fish ain’t on you line;

Bait your hook an’ keep in tryin’,

Keep a-goin’!

                   -Frank L. Stanton, Keep a-goin’

Favorite things:

Homemade chocolate cake with chocolate frosting like my mother made. The kind of butter frosting that went hard after a few days (if the cake lasted that long.) Oyster stew with sautéed green onions and celery. Oh, the memories.

Homemade frozen jam—making and eating. Even the pleasure of seeing the jars tucked away in the freezer. The pantry full of home-canned produce, the shelves glittering like gems. Homemade fudge, the kind you stir forever. The perfect homegrown peach dripping juice down my arm as I peel it. Children swinging and laughing on a tree swing.

The smell of garlic sautéing in butter. The amalgamated scent of my herb garden. The scent of loamy soil coming out of its winter freeze. Roses, ‘Lady in Red’ salvia and lavender perfuming the air as I brush past tidying up the garden. Buttered popcorn. Fresh sheets hung outside on a cold, crisp day in April.

Butterflies in September, the monarchs, in early spring, the Mourning Cloak. Crocuses peeking through the snow. An empty road. Moonlight on an empty road. Good morning sun on that same empty road. Window Boxes. Window boxes sprouting salmon geraniums.  Freshly washed windows in spring.

 Fog rolling in with the muffled silence. Being read to by my mother, no one does ‘The Raven’ quite like it. Homemade rag dolls. Homemade doll clothes.  A handwritten note. A flea market find of old recipe books, especially those gathered together for a fundraiser. A box of handwritten letters, ribbon optional. A diary found in an antique shop: another life, a story.

On a gloomy, midwinter day, write about your favorites. If nothing else it gets you started writing and smiling.

Making a Trail and Pictures

As I’ve been working on rewrites for Ella and the Tie-down Man and Heart’s High, developing Heart’s Ease and writing the blogs about character, I’ve been learning and, maybe, relearning.  I’ve come to several conclusions, too.

You can never have enough notes for your novels, especially on rewrites. Now, I know most writing goes from developing the story to first draft to rewrites to editing in a nice chronological and linear fashion. I’m also certain, many writers have done as I have—written books that didn’t work or were out of favor and years later revisited them. I’ve heard of writers taking many, many years to work on a book.

To do that well, you need notes, good solid notes on what you are thinking on a particular character, setting, plot point. I’ve been lost in this world I made, several times wondering what my thoughts were, where I was heading. So, I wished I’d done a better job of making a trail. And I wished I’d done one other simple thing. I wished I had attached a picture to each character sketch or the name of an actor—just something solid to envision. For me, on character, a picture or actor sets more than the look. It cements an attitude.

I search through magazines, pay attention in movies and TV for characters. Pictures are good, also, for costume and set design. It isn’t a waste of time or ‘busy’ work to find the perfect snapshot of clothing, setting, objects that serve a role. Looking through a few magazines, copying a few pictures out of books is great, but for Western Historicals that can sometimes be difficult and slim pickings.

That’s where a camera comes in. And great western scenery, native flora and fauna, animals and people. I have a wonderful camera I keep in my purse. I find the best props and locations when I least expect to and with a camera always with me, I catch it. I just purchased a little bigger camera for research, with a little more zoom, a little better quality and ability for photographing in museums and antique hunting.

Antiques are a passion of mine and one of the reasons is the stories behind the object. As I wander through the antique booths and shops, I can’t tell you how many props I find. The stories come, too and I can dress them with real finds I’ll never be able to afford, but ‘find’ for set design. I always ask permission before I photograph and have never been refused. I’ve grown a wonderful detailed ‘catalog’ of authentic props and ‘dressed’ many a setting with them while I browse.

So, as I read somewhere: To keep from getting lost, stay found.

And take pictures.

Character and Setting Specifically: Books and Lists

Many elements go into sculpting the characters and setting of a book. As I’m in the middle of learning the characters in the fourth book in my series, I’m finding new truths and new ways to put depth in character and setting.

For character and setting to become real, it takes specificity added with a light hand. To do that, I must know these details, not just pick interesting details out, but I must know them in the history of the character, in the history of the setting. It is a backstory, of sorts. It isn’t just the cabin, the landscape; it is the character’s feelings and attitude, too. It isn’t just the character moving through the story; it is the emotions and reasons when a character reaches for a hairbrush or a shotgun.

Sometimes, especially when I’m first sculpting a number of characters to people a book, I need some triggers.

A few tools I use before the Interview Worksheet or Character Worksheet:

Lists: I make lists, many lists, and lists of tens:  ten articles of clothing, pets, likes, hates, favorites

For ideas, I look through My Listography, My Amazing Life inLists by Lisa Nola or Listography, Lisa Nola, The Book of ME, A Do-it-yourself Memoir.  I do either/or, even both, with my main characters. 

I, also, look through, Who Are You? by Malcolm Godwin (1001 ways of seeing yourself).  Which reminds me of an interview I read with Anson Mount about how he has developed his character in Hell on Wheels. (I found this such an interesting approach, and as I’ve thought the way actors develop character very helpful to a novelist’s development of character, I remember it.)He thinks of himself as a horse. Horses react in specific ways as horses, they’re watchful, and have their own set of rules for right and wrong, their honest in the horse world. A little research or knowledge of animal behavior helps with this.

 There is a chapter in, Who Are You? titled The Animal That Hides in Your Heart, that explains animal personality (according to the Chinese)—the positive and negative. (I sometimes get the feeling the writers of the TV show Grimm read this chapter, then gave it a tweak. The show uses fairy tale characters rather than animals. How do they act in the old fairy tale stories? This is then what hides in their heart. Another chapter that’s great is titled, Do Your Emotions Rule You? Well, do they rule any of my characters? If they do, then this is how they will react to this or that happening in my book and it is how they reacted when such and such happened in their backstory. Other layers to characters and their actions, emotions.

There are chapters on horoscope, palm reading and questions such as: do you think with your feelings or are you imaginative, good at letting go?

On setting, too.  I try to be specific with detail and how it relates to my character, how they relate to the details of setting. So I have to look at setting, through my eyes, through my characters’ eyes and emotions.  I take tons of pictures. I use a magnified flashlight and study old pictures of the time period I’ve seeped myself in.

Another book for setting I love to use is Curious Lists, but I tweak the lists for settings, such as ten places you could hid in, ten places you could hid money or valuables in, ten places in need of repair in the setting, ten places just repaired, ten sounds, tens signs of seasons.

Another tool for both character and setting is simple observation and note taking. I make notes of actions in every kind of setting and situation.  I make more lists of particular settings: ten things I noticed first, then things it took a while to notice, ten sounds I heard first, last, ten gestures of people in the scene, best guess of conversation, emotion, etc.

You are unique. Just like everybody else. —Anon

Sculpting Characters

As I retype/rewrite the first book in my Heart’s series during the morning hours, the characters for the last book are beginning to form. After a morning of rewriting, I work on character sketches and plot for that fourth book. Something about doing that is giving depth and clarity to the first book.

I’ve been delving into my tear sheets and workshop notes, compiling them into one document of concentrated notes and information about character development, mostly as reminders. Truth is I know most of it by heart and only need a nudge or two to implement it. I have five different character worksheets from the workshops and conferences. Each similar, each with one or two smart items the others didn’t have. I consolidated the whole of them into my own worksheet and deep-sixed the lot of them.

I had to take a deep breath, exhale and close my eyes to do it, but I never really used them anyway. I held on to them though, as if that would be the secret to wonderful character development. But really, what works for me is what’s best, right? I did the same with the character interview. I sorted and shifted through the stack of them I had, wrote my own with some of the questions on the worksheets and some of my own, then tossed the old ones.

It has been liberating and frightening. I’m so worried I’ll forget something and yet, I did this once before on setting a scene. I read and studied everything I had gathered in all the workshops, classes and conference pertaining to setting struggling to write perfect settings for the scenes of my book, only to realize I was perfecting the heart and soul and me out of the scene, so I tossed everything and made my own checklist. Sure, some of the suggestions were there, some of my own ideas were, too, and that made all the difference in the way I felt about my story.

It’s time. Time to trust what I’ve learned and now, I must let it spin out from me. All right, I’m a little insecure—a lot insecure. After all, I have not published in novel form. Maybe, trust is the secret.

On that note: Several years ago, I read an essay printed in the paper. It changed the way I sculpt character more than anything else I’ve ever heard, better than the best writer’s workshop or lecture, better than every book I’ve ever read on character development. The title: Take Time Today to Reflect upon Best Memories by Bob Swift. It was a Christmas essay, just a list of Swift’s best memories. It tugged at my heart, took me back, made me smile and cry. It was perfect. It was amazing at just what it was, but it got me thinking. I knew this man. I had some of the same memories.

 With that one essay, I knew Swift’s history, age, attitude, loves, childhood, and heartbreak. I knew he liked Louis Armstrong’s horn, dogs, mountain mornings, walking in the rain, New York delis, and the color red.

Had he written a sister essay of his dislikes, I would have known him even better. That beautiful, simple essay, written as if I was sitting across from him, (though Swift even added rhyme and rhythm, bless him) in his words was the perfect character sketch. It was so simple in form and intention.

It’s my gold standard, my blueprint for character sketch. Two essays written from a character’s voice about best and worse memories. It works better, for me, than the interview, although the interview as a guide can help you remember all you need to include, if you tend to forgetfulness.

I read an article many years ago, can’t remember from which magazine, but the article talked about getting addicted to books on writing. Reading them rather than writing. Trying everything in every one. It is tempting. I’ve even tried; think it would spell success for me. I always go back to the way I think and work, no matter my determination to be ‘better’. I likely always will. So, along with cleaning out of my files, I’m taking hard looks at many of my writing books. I must admit, I love reading them. The writing and the passion in some of them gets my juices flowing, gives me that kick in the pants everyone needs, but they don’t get the words down, do they?

All I am doing is pointing. You must find it true yourself. —The Buddha

Epiphany

For me, building a story starts with character and I love building new characters. Figuring how they look, feel, react. Seeing their backstory, feel it from their point of view. I, even, love how the idea of the character, the first beginning seed, nags and tickles and seeps into my mind and just won’t let me go. I love the way it makes me feel that I’m in my world and theirs, too, for long periods of my day.

I love that tension, that urgency I feel as the character/story grows, has needs and wants that I have to fulfill. That I have to research, find, makeup. Only it doesn’t really feel like making things up. It feels like uncovering or excavating this hidden story. And there is always this intensity, this craving to find it all, right now.

Since I began rewriting the first book in my Hearts series, I’ve been in that state and it took me by surprise. When I began the series many years ago, I knew there were four brothers and I knew three of their stories, but the fourth eluded me. Most because I had a hard time visualizing the fourth brother, Gallagher. He was there, but his face was blotted out and every time he was in a scene, I struggled with his actions and motives. Who was he? What did he want?

But as I do, I just kept stepping forward; driven by the other stories I thought I knew. There was so much I loved about this series and the three books I finally finished, yet when I sent them out, I didn’t have great luck. At the time, Western Historicals had fallen out of favor, too, but I just kept writing.

It wasn’t until I started rewriting that I finally saw the fourth story, the fourth brother and that the stories, though separate, intertwined, and of course they did. Lives are like that, though each brother’s story was his own, it couldn’t really be told completely until I knew Gallagher’s. It didn’t matter that none of them happen simultaneously, that Gallagher’s story was the last chronologically. What mattered was they were family and what happened to one affected all.

An epiphany.

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, novelist and essayist