Meet My Main Character (Blog Tour)

It's time for another blog tour. I love these things. It's like playing a writing game with your writer friends. I learn about so many great writers and great books!

This one is the Meet My Main Character Blog Tour, begun by Debra Brown.This tour asks the authors of works-in-progress to answer questions about the main characters of their fictional novels. I was invited by Ronda Reed. Ronda's novel, The Walking Bridge, is in editing now and Ronda hopes to bring it out early next year. I'm glad she invited me. You can read her answers to these questions here.

So enough about my writing friends, let's talk about my book, His Other Mother. :-)

Like most writers, I hate trying to classify my work, but I'll try. His Other Mother is women's issues fiction, by which I mean it is realistic fiction in a real-world setting featuring a female protagonist with issues to work through. In Sherry's case, the issues are infertility and schizophrenia. The novel is structured in five sections which mirror the phases of schizophrenia.

What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or historical?

Sherry Morgan is completely fictional. Like any of my characters, she draws from people I have met and even loved, but, mostly, I don't even recognize the pieces that stem from my own life in my work until after the fact. It's certainly not intentional. I suspect it's my subconscious working through my own issues.

When and where is the story set?

The story takes place in a contemporary setting, for the most part, in roughly 2010. It's set in Hilltown, which is a fictionalized version of my current hometown: Hillsborough, North Carolina. I didn't want to be tied to the actual geography of the town, so fictionalizing my setting allowed me to use things as I chose and ignore things that didn't serve my story.

What should we know about her/him?

Sherry wants a baby more than anything else in this world.

This desire is at the center of this novel. It affects everything and everyone around her, including her husband, Kirk, and Maxie and Corbin, the mother and baby she fixates on.

What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Sherry's problems begin when she and her husband, Kirk, decide to have a baby. They struggle with infertility and Sherry, in particular, is a mess over it. When she loses a pregnancy, she suffers a Brief Reactive Psychosis. She fixates on another woman's child and kidnaps him from the scene of an accident at the grocery store. As you might expect, this leads to trouble.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Motherhood.

Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

His Other Mother. I've posted some scenes from the novel on this blog over the year or so since I finished writing it.

Here's the kidnapping.

Here's the bread-baking scene.

And here's one of my favorite scenes: Kirk at the beach.

When can we expect the book to be published?

I'm pursuing traditional rather than indie publishing for this one, which means things like time tables are out of my hands. I really believe the book needs the publishing machine behind it to find its audience. So, it's out there in submission land, waiting for the next response. I've had two publishers ask for more before opting out, so I'm hopeful that the novel will find a home soon. In the meantime, I'm writing my other books (two superhero novels and a piece of historical fiction).

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That was fun.

If you'd like to read more of these posts, check out the blogs of my writing friends next week to see what they have to say about their characters!

Kristin Molnar is an urban fantasy writer and lives in North Carolina with her family.

Chad Clark is an independent author specializing in horror and science fiction.

Elizabeth Hein is a mother, author, and cancer survivor. She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Durham, North Carolina. She writes women's fiction with a snarky edge. When not writing, she is trying to raise two young women and a husband.

#SaturdayScenes: No. 8

#SaturdayScenes has been a lot of fun. As an unpublished writer, I long to have people read my work, so appreciate this opportunity to share my words with an audience. I've really enjoyed this venture, begun by +John Ward , which asks writers to share bits of something they have written for public enjoyment. Following the hashtag is a great way to get a little taste of a wide variety of writing.

I received some beta-reader feedback this week, and used it to do some mild rewrites on His Other Mother.  I've posted a couple of other scenes from this novel previously (chapter 3: the kidnapping; and a thoughtful chapter with Kirk at the beach). So, if you like it, you can check out some more.

This chapter comes in the second section of the book. It was one of the first scenes I wrote for the book. Sherry, the main character, is on a baking binge as a coping mechanism for dealing with her latest disappointment in her fertility struggles.

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Sherry had spent her sick day baking, trying to knead out her frustrations over the failed final round of Clomid. If Clomid wasn’t going to work for them, they were running out of options. In vitro was almost as expensive as adoption, with no guarantee of a baby at the end. Sherry wasn’t sure she could take it if they tried it and it failed.

Slamming down the last loaf, now ready to rest and rise, Sherry thrust her hand into the middle of the first one, punching down the dough and her worried thoughts—the usual litany of self-blame for past mistakes or for waiting too long--if, if, if, if only—the usual whining self-pity that even her subconscious recognized and scorned as weak.

The dough sank satisfyingly, releasing a burst of yeast-scented air into the room. The oil on the outside felt good between her fingers as she worked out the blisters. She began to form a round loaf out of this one, a “rumpy” as she called them. No-manners bread, Gram called it. She had been partial to it, too. Her bread was the kind you could tear hunks from when it was fresh from the oven, warming your fingers in the steam. Eating the bread like this was as much a part of the ritual as kneading and baking.

As Sherry cut the traditional criss-cross pattern into the loaf, she eyed the knife and thought about putting similar markings into her forearms, thought how that might let something out, relieve a pressure valve. She put the knife down with a clattering force, shoving the thoughts away roughly and turned up the volume knob on the little red CD player perched in the windowsill. She hadn’t done it, but her imagination had supplied a stunningly clear vision of what the cuts would have been like. Obviously, she hadn’t yet succeeded in shutting down her over-active brain. “Stop torturing me,” she said aloud, wondering if she was talking to herself, the doctors, or the gods.

Sherry was wrist deep in dough when she heard the front door open. Kirk didn't call out or come straight to her with his backpack still on and his keys still in his hand like he would have six months earlier. A year and a half made for eighteen disappointments; eighteen nights spent soothing his bereft wife—who could blame him if he was in no hurry to face another one? He knew the calendar as well as she did. He had hoped, too. She could hear him close the door gently, hang his keys on the hook, place his backpack in the closet and head quietly to the bedroom for a tee shirt and jeans.

By the time he appeared in the doorway, watching her with that careful, questioning look she had come to dread, the loaf was coming out of the oven. That was good because they didn't have to talk. She wondered if he had stayed out of view on purpose, listening for the sound of the oven door opening before coming in. She set the loaf on the stovetop, and, without giving it time to cool, ripped into it with her hands, glad to feel the mild burn on her skin, and offered a hunk to him.

He took it, stepping nearer, but still staying at arms-length, watching her while he chewed. They stood like that and ate the whole loaf while she finished making the others. It was the only supper they ate that night before taking their respective sides of the king-size bed and turning back to back to stare at opposite dark walls. That was probably when Kirk gave up. Sherry was sure he didn't even hope with her anymore. If there was to be any more hope, it was up to her. Sherry didn’t think their odds were good.

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My other #SaturdayScenes contributions:

Week One: Elopement Day from WIP, Cold Spring

Week Two: Linda Makes a First Impression from WIP, Her Father's Daughter, sequel to Going Through the Change

Week Three: Claiming Alex, from unpublished novel His Other Mother

Week Four: Things Get Hairy for Linda, from unpublished novel Going Through the Change

Week Five: a poem: A Clear Day in Kodiak, Alaska

Week Six: a snippet from an idea barely begun, Lacrosse Zombies

Week Seven: Mathilde's Visit, from WIP, Cold Spring

P: Pulp (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

I started my adult writing life as a bit of a literary snob. I studied creative writing at a small college. I wrote poetry. Formal poetry at that. I have an unpublished collection of sonnets called "Divorce Letters" for goodness sake.

But I also read a lot of "for fun" things. I loved old hard-boiled detective films and comic books. Tennessee Williams. In other words, over the top drama.

While I enjoyed reading and viewing that sort of thing, I never really considered writing it. It didn't fit my image of "real" writing. I was going to be Emily Dickinson (but, you know, with a boyfriend), not Mickey Spillane.

Then, I graduated. I got a job. I had kids. Even though I teach, I'm assuredly not in the ivory tower. It's a public middle school. The tower wasn't built of ivory in the first place and now it has holes and is held up by sticks we found in the yard. In other words, life got real. I had less time to read and write, though I still did both. I found that what I was reading was not what I was writing. That seemed weird.

Someone in my writing critique group talked about having fun while she wrote. I thought long and hard about that. Was I having fun?

I was writing a serious literary novel (His Other Mother, not yet published) about a woman dealing with fertility issues and schizophrenia. I felt good about it. I loved it. It felt important and real and good. But it was not fun. It was hard. So hard that I was having trouble getting to the ending. I knew it wasn't going to be happy and that was emotionally hard to do. I loved my main character, Sherry, and it was difficult to take her to the logical and necessary ending. I thought about Thomas Hardy, and how I'd read somewhere that he used to weep as he tortured his characters. But, his books are wonderful. They haunt me. I think Sherry could haunt people like that.

I decided that after I finished His Other Mother, I would be allowed to write a play piece. Something fun. So, I wrote Going Through the Change (also not yet published). It's a superhero novel about four menopausal women who develop incredible abilities through the machinations of a mad scientist. Writing it was still hard work--any good writing requires structure and rewriting and lots of real work--but it was fun. I laughed while I wrote.

So, now I'm working on two new novels. One is another serious literary novel, historical fiction this time. I think it will be called Cold Spring and it's about two sisters in rural America in the early twentieth century. The other is a sequel to Going Through the Change. I don't have a good title for it yet.

I'm finding that I need both sides of my literary brain. I need to lose myself in both tragedy and comedy. I need literary, beautiful language in my pulp and I need large, dramatic moments in my literature. The two kinds of writing aren't so completely separate after all, though their readerships are quite different.

I'm not sure what this means for my publishing life. My guess is a pseudonym for one or the other type of writing. But, for now, I'm pleased with the balance, letting both sides of my soul roll out onto the computer screen. So maybe I am Emily Dickinson and Thomas Hardy.  And maybe I'm Mickey Spillane, too . . .or Stan Lee. Just call me Emily Spillane. :-)
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This post is part of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

Writing about Mental Health

I didn't set out to write a novel about mental health.  But like a lot of my writing projects, at some point the project became what it needed to be, and I was along for the ride.

His Other Mother began as novel about fertility.  Sherry Morgan, my main character, wanted to be a mother, more than anything else in the world. But she and her husband were not having any luck. Then she saw the baby:

Sherry had been watching them for a few minutes now.  The baby had to be about a month old. He was all wide blue eyes and chubby cheeks, riding in his car seat in his mother's grocery cart, not yet big enough to sit up in the built-in seat. Whenever his mother came into view, his face relaxed, and every time she stepped out of view, picking up some broccoli, squeezing an orange, his brow furrowed and he shook his little arms and legs in silent distress.  Oh, how he loved her.
    And she didn't even see it, that mother. Didn't know her luck.  Didn't stop to coo over her sweet one or let him smell the oranges.  She just piled groceries into her cart silently.
    Sherry followed them throughout the whole store, aisle by aisle, picking things off the shelves that she didn't even want or need. From time to time the baby would meet her eye. It felt like the world stopped--no, like it contracted, everything else was gone except the connection between them.  Sherry found herself hating the mother, who could so casually push this little miracle around the store and not even notice him. If that were her baby, she would talk to him as she shopped, showing him the things she chose, letting him touch them. She would pause to kiss his toes. Or even better, she would carry him against her body, swaddled in a patterned cloth sling.  She would be able to feel the warmth of his body against hers, and smell his milk-sweet breath every time she glanced downward.

Her obsession began. When opportunity presented itself, Sherry snatched up the baby and took him home with her.

The mother was on the ground, the grocery cart she had been pushing dented and thrown some distance from her.  A young man was yelling for help.  People were running to the woman from all around the parking lot.  Suddenly there were so many people.  Where did they come from?
    Without really thinking, Sherry went to the Honda.  She reached in to the baby, offering one finger. He grabbed it.  In that one moment, she made her decision. She took the keys from the baby's hand and jingled them at him, smiling.  She put one finger to his impossibly soft lips and said, "Hush now, sweet boy. Mama's here." She pressed the release button between his legs—he had the less expensive version of the car seat Sherry had bought for her sister-in-law at her shower last month—and lifted the seat, baby and all, letting him rock gently and cooing to him as she carried him to her car and buckled him in. She even thought to grab the diaper bag.
    The baby fussed in her back seat and she twisted around awkwardly to stroke his cheek around his backward-facing car seat.  “It's okay, Alex,” she said softly, “we'll go home now.”  She pulled out of her parking place carefully, driving around the back of the store to avoid all the commotion in front.

Mental health is slippery. It's hard to know when something is temporary and when it's a break with reality.  It's hard to know when your fantasy has stepped over into unhealthy separation from the truths of life.

Like my character, I didn't know that Sherry was schizophrenic at first. Writing the novel, I discovered with her that she had a dissociative disorder.  I followed her to her therapy sessions and hoped with her that she would find her anchor in ordinary life, that she would learn to manage her medications without feeling dull and disconnected all the time. She was doing well in so many ways. Then, she saw the child again:

She heard him before she spotted them.  Her head whipped around, just like it did every time she heard a child, but she didn’t expect anything.  She’d almost shrieked when she saw that it really was him, Alex, The Child from That Day.  In all her talk with her therapist, in all her ideas about how to build her life from here, it had never occurred to her that she might see him again.  In all the coping strategies they’d talked through, there wasn’t one for running into The Child, her Alex, at the garden store.
    Sherry felt as though the rest of the world had grown fuzzy and indistinct. The only thing in the room in bright focus was him, the baby. Her heart sped up and she had to restrain herself from running to him, scooping him from his seat and covering him with kisses.  She had convinced herself that she didn’t miss him, since he had never really been hers, but it had been a lie.  Seeing him made her alive in a way she hadn’t been in months.  Her mouth was suddenly dry and her arms ached. She had to be mistaken. It couldn’t really be him. 

 Of course it was him. I don't want to spoil the ride for any future readers, so I won't tell you what else happens now.

I've done a lot of thinking and worrying about mental health.  Several people I know and love have struggled with dissociative disorders, depression or other problems.  I listened. I observed. Autodidact that I am, I read a lot on the subject.

But getting in Sherry's head was a revelation.  As I wrote her story, I was in the experience in a new way. I understood from within.  And I sympathized. 

My subconscious is a wonder, bringing to the surface things I didn't even know I was pondering. The novel is finished now and I'm shopping it around to agents and publishers. But whether I ever see it published or not, I'm grateful for Sherry for helping me understand.

I did it! Now, let's see if someone will pay me for this :-)

I finished my first novel today. If you're paying attention, you'll know that I said that about a year ago. But this time, it's really finished.

About five years ago, I joined a critique group for novelists. I was not, at that time, a novelist. I had written poetry, stories and essays, but never undertaken something like a novel.  But, I was in a time of new in my life: new husband, new child, new home, new job. It seemed like the perfect time to try new writing as well.

The members of the group have changed over the years, but what hasn't changed is the awesomeness.  I learn so much from working with other novelists.  Some of the group members are on their first novels, like I was. Some have written three or four novels.  Others have published novels.

Last summer, I finished the first draft of His Other Mother. I took it to my critique group and they found all its problems. (Sigh). They were right. It had some serious problems.  So, I shelved it for a while, and began working on a new project, another novel called Going Through the Change. Then, come Spring Break, when I had the time for some serious, intensive writing time, I took on the rewrite.

I finished the rewrite by the end of April.  Then I started the re-rewrite.  I was feeling pretty confident in the novel's ability to hold together, so I just started reading it aloud to myself. Good thing I did, because, besides all the skipped words and awkward repetitions, I found continuity errors. 

So, that's what I finished this morning.  I also finished my first query letter and this afternoon I'm sending my baby out there into publishing land to see if I can get paid for all this work.  Of course, I'm hoping to sell it.  But, you know, even if I don't, I have written something I am very proud of.  I learned so much from writing it, and writing my second novel is a faster, cleaner process for all the lessons I learned. Now I can say that I am a novelist.

How to Lie to Yourself Honestly

I'm rewriting my first novel this week.  While writing or first-drafting is something I can do in small chunks of time, 15 minutes here, an hour there, rewriting requires a longer chunk of time, focus.  At least that's what I've been telling myself as I played around in my new novel instead of taking on the work of rewriting that first one and making it complete. But maybe I'm lying to myself, avoiding the difficult task in favor of the lighter, honeymoon stage I'm in with the second novel.

The first novel (working title: His Other Mother) is a dark thing, exploring mental illness, infertility, marriage.  Writing the first draft, I was surprised to discover that I had, in part, been writing about my first marriage.  While the characters and the plot have nothing to do with the events or people in my lives, some of the marriage dynamics definitely did.  It's always interesting to discover what my brain has been doing behind my back, the devious ways it finds to make me confront the things I'd rather not.

Rewriting that novel now, I find that I have issues to work out regarding religion and religious leaders.  That's not so surprising in a thinking person in the twenty-first century. But striking me today is the theme of self-deception, the lies we tell ourselves to make it through. 

Lying to yourself seems like a bad thing, but I don't know that it always is.  Am I lying to myself when I put on a brave face so I can do the thing that frightens me? I'm refusing to acknowledge the truth of my fear. But I do it in good cause, to help myself take the first step. Surely, that's not the same as lying to myself about addictions or bad choices I'm making. Is it?

Sherry Morgan, my main character, knows that what she doing is wrong at some level. But, she's quite good at talking herself around morality, rewriting reality to make it allowable to do the things she wants to do, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Sometimes she almost convinces me, her author. The brain gymnastics are amazing.  In real life, as well as in fiction.

It puts me in mind of a poem I studied in grad school, "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.  It's a masterpiece in self-deception. You can feel the persona willing herself to believe the story she has concocted (this loss is no big deal in the scheme of things), and, that, at the same time, she knows it's a pretty lie. But a pretty lie she needs if she's to get through this. A pretty lie she has to let herself, even force herself to believe.

My character is no Elizabeth Bishop. She's just a woman who wants to be a mother and can't. But she can fool herself like nobody's business. And it takes a pretty elaborate fiction to fool her. So she writes one for herself (and then I record it for us and try to make it into good fiction for all you good people).

I can't tickle myself, because I know it's coming and surprise is part of the sensation.  But, I can delude myself and somehow exercise control over my own introspection to the point that I can keep myself from examining the hole in the story I've concocted.  So, on a small, and hopefully healthier scale, I am as big a liar as Sherry. I'm just more honest about it.

Flash Fiction February #5

This week, I'm participating in "February with a Twist" a project +Becket Moorby has organized through the +Flash Fiction Project on Google+.  These pieces are supposed to feature a twist of some kind.

I'm cheating a little tonight. I feel lousy (thanks schoolkids--so happy to have your newest virus).  And this picture seems perfect for this scene: one from my first novel (the one I'm trying to finish a rewrite of so I can start submitting). So, here's Kirk at the Beach in a scene called "Decisions."

Thanks for reading!

 

 Image courtesy of gillyberlin via attribution license on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

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Kirk sat in the damp sand. Sherry was asleep, and would be for a couple more hours, thanks to the Ambien her doctor had prescribed. Kirk was tired, too, but was still up early to watch the sun rise. It would be a waste to be at the beach and not watch the sunrise.

It was chilly this morning, and the dampness was seeping through Kirk’s pants. He shivered a little and pulled his knees in to hug them against his chest. Even before, well, before all this, Sherry wouldn’t have been with him this morning. Even on their honeymoon. “Vacations are for sleeping,” she said, and “I’m more of a sunset sort of girl.”

He had smiled, swallowing the disappointment that she wouldn’t share even one of the mornings with him. He didn’t want to push. Maybe he should have. He could have explained how special beach sunrises were to him, how he and his mother had shared them when he was a child, trying to sneak out of the beach house without waking his younger brothers. They would collect shells and spread them out on a towel by category. There were spindles, cups, spoons, and worry stones. After the sort, they would choose one of each kind to keep and throw the others back to the sea. In bad times, they would throw them with force. In good times, they would gently toss them or try and skip them across the waves.

He had never talked with Sherry about how he had taken his mother back to the beach one last time when the diagnosis went from bad to terminal and held her against the chill air like she was the child in his arms.

He didn’t want to push. And she never asked.

He’d always had the sense with Sherry that you don’t push her. She seemed tractable enough, a people pleaser, a go with the flow girl. But as soon as she felt forced to do anything, she could dig in her heels so hard that nothing could move her. It was one of their main causes of argument. The fact that he got this and knew when to back off was probably what had kept any of those arguments from escalating into something worse. He’d become a master of laying hints and dropping suggestions, gently manipulating her in the direction he wanted her to go. It was like sculpture. More delicate than it seems. If you force it, it’ll crack and break into pieces.

Sometimes he hated that he was good at it, that he could manipulate her. It made him feel dirty or mean. Like he was running an experiment. Other times, he thought it was just being a good husband, knowing how to handle the woman he loved, helping her the way she needed to be helped.

Still maybe he should’ve pushed. It would’ve meant a lot to him to share a beach morning with her. Had he ever really told he that? Did she even know that he wished she would go with him? There was a part of his soul that only came out early in the morning watching the sun come up on a lonely beach. He’d always imagined that, when he married, he and his wife would share everything. But here was an entire part of his life, the quiet pensive side. And she knew nothing of it.

There was something so soothing in a morning beach. Usually, there were no people, or very few. Anyone who was there wanted to be alone, too, and would smile or wave and move on. The sound of the surf was a glorious noise, tugging at the dark places in his mind and washing the ugliness out to sea. It would wash back up later, the trouble, but it would be smoothed out and bleached white. Somehow, he always left the beach feeling like he could handle it again. It was a kind of alchemy. You couldn’t analyze it. You couldn’t force it. It just was.

That’s why they were here. He said it was for Sherry, a little vacation, a chance to reconnect. But really, it was for him. He needed to think. He needed to understand. He needed to make a plan. And he had no idea what it would be.

Kirk was not a man who struggled to make decisions. He often said that the secret of his success was just a willingness to make a decision and see it through. At work, it was okay if his decision turned out to be wrong. At worst, they wasted some hours working down the wrong avenue or doing research that ended up not applying. But this was different. He had to look at all the ramifications. He had to be sure he was doing the right thing. If he left. If he stayed.

It had been two months since, since the incident. That’s what he had started to call it in his mind, anyway, an innocuous, nonjudgmental word, not a bit like “kidnapping” or “psychotic break.” It’s what he would call it if he ever spoke it aloud—The Incident.

It was November now. Pretty soon they were going to have to start the whole holiday machine. Kirk wasn’t sure he had it in him this year. He still felt sideswiped, wounded, empty, betrayed. So angry. He knew these feelings. This was grief. This was what it had felt like when he lost his mother.

But what had he lost? The baby that wasn’t a baby? That hurt. But he didn’t think it was at the heart of his grief. After all, he hadn’t even known about the baby until it was gone. Hadn’t opened his heart to him or her, hadn’t made plans for a person he hadn’t even known was formed.

Kirk got up. He was cold. He needed to walk. He hadn’t even known. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Sherry hadn’t told him anything. In all their months, hell, years, of struggling to make a baby together, she had never let him in the room with her when she took the test. He’d never been there for the moment of truth. She’d done her grieving alone and left him to do his own.

And, when she had reason for hope, she’d done that alone, too. She’d told him it had been six weeks. For six weeks, she walked around with a light inside her, a glow called hope. And she hadn’t shared it with him.

Kirk found he was throwing shells and stones into the sea. He stopped and looked down at the shell in his hand. It was a flat one, a shard that had been worn smooth by the sea. He rubbed his thumb along it. A worry stone. He put it in his pocket. It was going to take a lot of worry stones to rub this one out.

What hope did they have? He thought he loved her. He thought she loved him. But what hope did they have if they didn’t share the hope or the grief? Were they really only fair weather friends, after all this? Did she really have his back? Did he really have hers?

The Long Haul

About three years ago, I walked into the Open Eye Café, hoping to find a writer's group. I knew I needed one if I was going to get back on the wagon after the baby hiatus.  I'm not self-motivated.  I need deadlines, expectations to fulfill. Otherwise my writing gets shuffled lower and lower on the huge to-do list I call my life.

So, I was hopeful.  And nervous. For lots of reasons.

First, we were in the Open Eye Café, one of those coffee shops that has a really loyal clientele, the kind that makes anyone new that walks through the door feel like a real intruder, and judges you by what kind of coffee concoction you order.  I didn't know if my potential writer's group friends were regulars, or if this was just neutral ground chosen for vetting new members. I am not a coffee connoisseur.  I always order a skinny raspberry mocha. Always. And drinking one makes me talk too fast.

Second, I hate meeting people. Those first impression moments fill me with tremendous dread (strangely, this doesn't apply in teaching situations--I like meeting new students). And I didn't know anyone in this room. My husband had found the group for me through one of those "make a group" sites--I can't remember if it was gather or meetup or craigslist or whatever.  (I've often teased my husband that I dated him because I didn't have to meet him.  I already knew him when my first marriage ended.)

And lastly, these women wrote NOVELS. And they were serious about it.

Novels are long.

I'd never written anything longer than 75 pages--and that was academic. I didn't have to make it up. There was a lot of quoting. I was pretty sure that novels are longer than 75 pages. And that you have make up every word. Everything good I ever wrote was short--an essay, a poem, a vignette (nice little word for unclassifiable prose too short to be publishable).

I was intimidated as hell.


I've worked with this group for three (or is it four?) years now.  I love them. I know about their novels and their lives.  And I'm still intimidated as hell.  Nearly every woman in the group has actually finished a novel.  Some of them have even published them.

But here, at the end of 2011, I think I may actually finish my novel!  The end is in sight. I think I even know how it ends (if the characters will stop changing things on me).  I'm so excited--and scared.  It's the biggest thing I've ever made that wasn't a human being (and those human beings I made aren't done yet--they're still growing).

But still, I've made it through the long haul (almost).  I, at least, can believe that I will make it through.

Then the real work begins: rewrites!

Let's try this again

I like the idea of a blog. As someone who aspires to be a novelist, I should be writing all the time. In a way, I am. But the kind of writing I do in my teaching (lesson plans, explanations, classroom website, etc.) doesn't touch the same parts of my brain as my creative writing.

I like that part of my brain. I'd like to be in contact with it more often. It's a nice place, where unexpected connections pop up and fill me with a glow of epiphany. Like when I realized that Kirk and Sherry (protagonists in my novel--working title: His Other Mother) were dealing with many of the same issues that ended my first marriage. I had no idea, until I read a scene aloud to a group of writings I was spending a weekend with and was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness for Kirk and Sherry, the kind of sadness that is more personal than fictional. See, I don't need therapy--just some writing time!

Obviously, I have not, thus far, written much here. I'm hoping to change that. It's nearly Rosh Hashanah. A new school year has begun. This is the time of year that I feel the urge for new resolutions and self-improvement. So, here's the goal this year: write once a week. Here. About anything.

It's not like I've lacked ideas. I just haven't blocked out the time to do anything with them. I have always believed that the key to success in any endeavor is time invested: practice. So, if I want to get more out of my novel-writing time (a few hours every couple of weeks, assuming everyone in the house is healthy), I need to exercise that "creative writing" part of my brain, keep it strong and functioning.

I like me better when I've been writing. I bet other people do too.

So, let's try this again.