And Then One Day…

My girl loves stories. Not just before bed, but any time of day, all day. As we march up the stairs for breakfast each morning she usually says “momma, will you tell me a story?”

I usually respond that I need coffee first, but she will eye me like a hawk, and as soon as I’ve got that mug in hand she will repeat the request (and repeat, and repeat), until I start spinning the morning’s yarn.

Lately, my stories have all been about carrot and sandwich. They have had some great adventures. They hitch-hiked across country to visit our friend Jacqui in Virgina, they opened a dry cleaning shop, and fought pirates for treasure on Carrot’s private island (that he bought with his riches earned through dry cleaning).

It’s a fun ritual, even if sometimes I don’t feel up for it first thing in the morning, but the thing I love the most is what I’ve learned about my girl’s sense of story. When I’m setting up the story sometimes I get to rambling. I’ll tell what carrot is wearing, or what trouble sandwich is having with his wife, or whatever, and when it’s gone on too long my girl will say in a loud voice “and then one day…”

Brilliant.

I know she’s just bored and wants me to get on with it, but really, she is illustrating one of the core principals of story telling. You open on a world with a status quo, and then one day something upsets that status quo and viola – you’ve got a story.

Even kids get this, and yet, I feel like a lot of writers struggle with it. I’ve heard young writers talking about telling a “true” story where nothing contrived happens, or worse yet, where nothing at all happens because that’s life, man.

Bah, I say. If that’s life, then my four year old is living it better than you.

Is it Really Only Wednesday?

Both my kids seem to have some sort of stomach thing going on. I’ve been thrown up on so many times that I might stop showering afterwards and just wait til the end of the day when I can wash it all off at once (okay, not really). I’ve changed sheets 3 times in the last 8 hours, and the washing machine can’t keep up. The whole hose stinks of stomach acid. I’m exhausted, cranky, and slow. So this is parenthood.

I kept my girl home from school and am waiting for the doctors office to open so I can call and ask when I should worry. Hopefully this will all pass quickly. She’s watching Ice Age while I try to get a little work done, and frankly, I think she’s loving being sick. I remember loving it when I was a kid – stay home with mom, eat lots of yummy soup, watch movies – what’s not to like? Being (or acting) sick always seemed like a small price to pay.

Anyhow, assuming I can find any time, I’m plugging away at the novel today. I’m trying to look at it scene for scene. What I’m finding is that as I wrote it, I put scenes in some places that aren’t really scenes. That is to say, nothing happens. Still, as I look at the overall structure, I think my instincts were right, there needs to be SOMETHING in the places I put those scenes. Now I just need to figure out ways to bring in conflict and or revelation so that the scenes aren’t just place holders, but actually serve to move the story along.

I’ve been dying to re-read Winter’s Bone, but I can’t find my copy. I hate that. I remember the structure of that book being really satisfying. No long flashbacks or rumination, and yet you get the sense that you really know the main character. I want to look again at how he did that.

Anyhow, I’m rambling. Check back Friday when I have (hopefully) gotten some sleep and can present my thoughts in a more organized fashion.

Getting Back Into Fiction

It’s a little painful.

I described it to Daniel last night like this: it’s as if I was training for a marathon (writing the novel). Then I switched to sprints (the Nor Cal book, written in 200 word segments). Now I’m ready to run that marathon, and I set out to run each morning and I’m tired so quickly.

Yesterday was a little better. I actually managed to write a whole scene, but it took me all day. And many, many times throughout the day I thought “I’ll just go do (laundry, facebook, anything but this),” but caught myself trying to avoid the task at hand and forced myself to work a little longer.

This was a good week to jump back in, as the freelance work was light (just that short magazine assignment), but Monday I have a meeting with a client that will hopefully bring on a new wave of work. So I’ll just try to enjoy today, lounging (battling) with the fiction.

The good news is that I’m actually not too far from the end of this draft. All the basic parts are in the right place, I think. I still need to develop some of my subplots, but all in all I feel like it’s coming along.

Here’s hoping.

Indonesia, baby.

This is my first post since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Did I fall off the map, you ask? Kind of. My guy got a call that Saturday, one week ago today, asking if he could come to Indonesia immediately to help out on a film.

Do you remember the scene in Ghost Busters where Bill Murry’s character says “if somebody asks if you’re a God, you say yes.” That’s always been my take on travel. When someone says “hey, would you like to go to ______,” you say yes. It won’t always work out, but I always start with yes – I want to go.

So when Daniel told me he would be gone for the month of December, but would only take the job if we (me and the kids) could come with him, I said yes, only half believing it would work out anyway. And here we are. We arrived Thursday morning after about 30 hours of travel. Talk about whirlwind. I still can’t really believe we got all four of us here for such a long stay on such short notice. And just in case you’re thinking about robbing us while we’re here – let me just say for the record that we were able to find a house sitter – I wouldn’t be announcing all this to the world if we hadn’t.

So far, it’s awesome, though the jet lag has been pretty rough on the little one and (as if that wasn’t enough) he seems to have come down with the chicken pox. We’re staying in a hotel on the island of Batam, just a short ferry ride from Singapore.

The most wicked storm just passed over. I mean, it’s probably just another day in paradise for anyone who lives here all the time, but it kind of blew me away. The thunder and lightning and deluge of rain that came out of nowhere were amazing. Three hours ago we were in the pool and I was worried about getting sunburned through my spf 50.

Because Janet Fitch taught me well, and because I was lucky enough to have both kids down for a nap, I took some time to write about the storm as it built, rattled the windows and eventually passed over, and the process of getting it all down made me miss my fiction so much.

I’ve enjoyed the other writing that I’ve been doing, but there’s something so engaging about writing a scene. Teasing out just the right words to paint a unique time and place – the sounds, the smells, the light. I just love it.

So that’s what’s up with me. I will make every effort to keep up the blogging, but frankly, we have a lot of exploring to do. You’ll have to forgive me if I put aside the cyber world for a while to indulge in a slice of real world that I’ve never seen before.

Carving Out Time For The Fiction

I met with my writer’s group on Wednesday and we got to talking about how hard it is to focus on our fiction sometimes, in the light of all the distractions that are available via the internet. One of my writing buddies told me that she sets aside time every morning to write before she allows herself to do anything online.

For her that means sitting down to write as soon as she wakes up around 8, then by 10 she clicks over to check emails and start her regular business day. She told me that really, there’s nothing in her life that can’t wait that one business hour for her to attend to it. 

It made me realize that my life is in a pretty similar spot. I can’t start writing until 9 when I sit down in my office (I’m busy with the kids before that), but really, most of the time, my career will not collapse in on itself if I don’t check my email for two hours.

So it’s been two days now. I come into my office, sit down and just start writing. It sounds like such a small thing, but it’s been awesome. Something about giving my creative work priority – before my brain is cluttered with daily life – allows me to make some real progress. I hope I can keep it up. 

I know at some point I will have clients with a rush job or some other thing that demands my attention early in the day, but generally speaking, this is a habit I’m going to try to keep.

So if you need me (I mean REALLY need me) before 11, call me. 

It Only Works If You Work It

I blogged a while back about my writer’s notebook. It’s something I learned from Janet Fitch in a class at USC. Write down everything. Any time a verbal tick or landscape catches my attention for any reason I pull out my handy little notebook and write it down. Unfortunately, with all the distractions in my life, I have fallen short on the second, and vitally important part of transferring those notes to some sort of organized filing system. 

This morning I am working on a scene where my character’s crush is blossoming.  A few months ago I had this very visceral memory of a crush I once had. I don’t know what sparked it, but I was smart enough to not question and instead just pull over and write down what I remember it feeling like. 

The trouble is, this morning, when I could totally use that note, I can’t find it. I have two notebooks and two separate files for notes that I tear out, and it doesn’t seem to be anywhere! Arrrgggg! I wrote it down so I wouldn’t HAVE to remember. 

On the plus side, as I was sifting through my notes, I found I actually have a wealth of story ideas and character quirks that I might be able to use. I just need to get more organized so I can find them when I need them. So I guess some time soon I will need to go through the files and notebooks and type everything up. Then I can print them out and stick them in a binder I keep (or used to – it hasn’t been updated in a long while) for that precise purpose. 

Sweet. Another thing to add to my to do list.