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.

Change What You See: Flash Fiction

I'm participating in another flash fiction project this month. +Becket Morgan put it together for the +Flash Fiction Project. This time, we have three images to incorporate into our pieces.  If you've never tried these sorts of prompts, I highly recommend it.  It helps push your mind in new directions, which can be wonderful for your life as well as your writing. Here are the images we're using this time (see below the pictures for the piece by me):

Anderson sat in the coffee shop, picking at the dry coffee cake with the questionably clean fork and letting his gaze wander the room in search of anything or anyone worth contemplating.  He wondered if the coffee cake would be any better if he picked it up and dunked it fully into the mug. The coffee was hot and tasted like coffee. At least they did something right here. 

Giving up on finding anything interesting in the room, he turned his head to look out the window. The sky was grey with non-specifically threatening clouds. It might rain, or it might just stay grey and boring all day.  Anderson sighed. Nothing interesting ever happened around here.

The table bumped and Anderson turned to see that another man was seating himself across from him in the small booth. He opened his mouth to protest, but the man cut him off before he could speak.  "Hi, Anderson. Mind if I join you?"

Did he know this man? He didn't think so.  Though the man definitely seemed to know him. Knew his name at least.  He eyed the intruder cautiously over his coffee mug.  A dark haired man of indeterminate age. Anderson's best guess was that he was somewhere between thirty and fifty. He had nothing in front of him. No newspaper. No phone. No coffee mug. He just sat with his hands lying flat on the table top, his head turned to look out at the grey landscape.

"Beautiful day, huh?" Anderson quipped sarcastically.

The man turned and met Anderson's gaze, sharp blue eyes looking at him searchingly.  "It could be," he said, slowly. "If you change what you see."

"What do you mean? Change what I see? I see what there is." Anderson gestured broadly at the long, dirty street and cloud-entombed sky. Then at the dull, uninteresting people in the diner.

"Do you?" The man reached across the table and snapped his fingers in front of Anderson's eyes.

Anderson blinked. The man was gone. No one was across the table from him.  Had he fallen asleep? He looked around the room. It all seemed normal, people having their breakfast. There was that guy with the old fashioned hat. The one who dressed like it was 1950 still.  He was smiling at the waitress with the scar across her cheek.  She gestured with her shoulder at the fry cook, who was so tall he had to stoop so as not to bump his head on the racks of cooking implements hanging from the ceiling.

Anderson found himself wondering who these people were, what their stories might be.  When his waitress came back around, he smiled at her and held out his cup for a refill. The coffee smelled fabulous.  "How's the coffee cake?" she asked. He noticed the way her bracelet sparkled in the light streaming through the window.

"Wonderful," he answered.

Change is Good

I'm participating in another flash fiction project this month. +Becket Morgan put it together for the +Flash Fiction Project. This time, we have three images to incorporate into our pieces.  If you've never tried these sorts of prompts, I highly recommend it.  It helps push your mind in new directions, which can be wonderful for your life as well as your writing. Here are the images we're using this time (see below the pictures for the piece by me):

Charlie's mother always said, "Children will change your life."  He understood that, he supposed, in the general sort of way you understand anything you haven't experienced for yourself. It made sense. Adding new people to your life changes things. Even just a new friend, or a new boss. And a child, that was someone who couldn't take care of him or herself without you.

So Charlie told her that he liked his life, so he guessed he just wouldn't have any.  She'd shaken her head at him wordlessly and handed him his hockey bag and he'd run into the Sportsplex to get his gear on. That was the last time he ever saw her. Her minivan was hit by a wide turning truck and suddenly, Charlie was an orphan, just two months after high school graduation.

His mother had planned well, and Charlie still went to college as they had planned, still played for the team, as they had planned. He looked for her in the stands every game, and it broke his heart over again every time that she wasn't there. But he went on, as people do. He graduated. He got a job.

He wasn't good enough to make a career of hockey.  He was a good, solid player, but just didn't have that extra something.  He knew that, had planned for it.  But, still he loved it.  He played in the adult league at the Sportsplex he grown up playing at.

From time to time, he'd think about that last conversation with his mother and wonder.  But he had not married. He hadn't met anyone that felt right. Children didn't seem likely. Even though he'd always said he didn't want them, that made him sad somehow.

Maybe that was why he decided to take the job when he was asked to coach the Rink Rats, preschoolers.  He was looking for that change his mother had promised him.

Change came in the form of Ryan Whitaker.  He was the littlest guy on a team of little guys.  He had a wide face that became even wider when he smiled.  He worked hard for his age.  When Charlie came in to skate or practice, Ryan was always there, a look of fierce concentration on his face that Charlie recognized because he'd worn it himself. 

One day, Ryan brought his mother to one of Charlie's games so she could meet his hero.  The game had been a good one, and Charlie was drenched in sweat when he pulled off his helmet and stumped over to the stands dripping wet slush from his skates and uniform to let Ryan introduce them.  "Charlie! Charlie! This is my mom, Annie."  Charlie took her hand, apologizing for his post-game stink. She smiled. She smiled and his heart fluttered in a strange way.  He asked if they would wait. He wanted to take them out for ice cream.

She said yes.  Some months later, she said yes again, in front of their family and friends.  Charlie swore he saw his mother in the pews, just for a second, clasping her hands under her chin like she used to in the stands. She was proud of him.

Novel as Unintentional Autobiography

I finished a rewrite of my first novel a few days ago (look out publishing world--submissions coming your way!).  Reading it again, I realized again how much of myself can be in a piece of writing even when I don't know that I am writing about myself.

I already knew that the germ of this particular novel came from my own life. When my littlest child was still just a baby, I took her grocery shopping. I had parked near the cart corral, so I placed her in her car seat and walked the few feet to put the cart away.  On the way back to the car, I had this sort of day-mare in which I got hit by a car and she was left in the car alone. That was the starting thought that became His Other Mother.

I gave Sherry, my main character a few things that came from me. She's female, not too much younger than me. I made her a middle school teacher. I gave her a love of baking and the use of it as a stress reliever. Those are all me. But other than that, I'm not much like Sherry.

Still, as I wrote the first draft, I realized at some point that some of the relationship dynamics between Sherry and her husband, Kirk, were similar to those between me and my first husband. Apparently, I had some things to work out and understand about how that relationship had gone. (It ended better for me than it did for Sherry and Kirk).

Sherry wasn't necessarily mentally ill when I started writing the novel, but along the way, it became clear that she was schizophrenic.   There are some people in my life that live with schizophrenia.  Apparently, I had some things to work out and understand about that, too. Even Sherry and Kirk's fertility struggles echo somewhat the struggles of some people who are close to me.

As I wrote the second draft, I found some of my ambivalence about organized religion and medical practice coming to the surface.  Apparently, my issues with doctors run deep--they're coming out in the second novel, too. 

I haven't decided what all this means. In the moment of writing, autobiography is about the furthest thing from my mind. I've never set out to tell my own life story, and Sherry's story is definitely not my own in that sense.  My own life, thankfully, lacks the kind of conflict that makes a good novel. But it was surprising and a little disconcerting to find all this personal truth in my fiction.

It has made me regard the novels I am reading a little differently as well. What issues is the author working through in these pages? Does my enjoyment of the book reflect my own issues?  How many novels could really be called "An Autobiography of my Subconscious"? Apparently, mine can.

Mayday! It's May

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Ah, spring.  The season of hormones and drama in middle school. Just in time for end of year testing, too.

My sixth graders are weepy. Sometimes they don't even know why. My seventh graders are wired or angry. They don't know why either. The eighth graders are either so sleepy they seem inert, or so excited about moving on to high school that they can't contain themselves.  Sometimes both at the same time. They can't tell me why.

They're all doing all of this for the first time. They have no idea what's going on. It's confusing. It's wild.  I've been here for years, watching, and even I don't understand this energy, this strange movement in the middle school symphony we call May. 

Couple this with where teachers are at this time of year--stretched thin, burnt out, worn out, exhausted, stressed out, frustrated, frazzled.  It can be a very difficult combination.  Tempers flare easily in May.  Even though it has rained a lot, you should assume the kindling is dry and tread very lightly in this forest.  The slightest spark and we've got a conflagration on our hands.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that May Day when written as one word (mayday!mayday!) is a cry for help. 

Prisoners to the Test

Today I was held prisoner in a small, poorly lit and rather airless room with five other captives, all quite young.  Arrangements were made for the younger captives to have access to restroom facilities, but the two older women in the room were not allowed to leave.  No one had access to food or drink until after 1:00 p.m. The young captives were forced to take a seemingly endless test while the older captives watched, ensuring that they stayed on task.

Yeah, that's what we call End of Grade Testing. 

Physically, emotionally, intellectually, and other -ly you want to add . . .it's torture.  If it lasted longer, I'd think I'd have a case for having my rights under the Geneva Conventions violated.

I wonder if anyone's done a study on teacher attrition and end of grade testing. 

So here's my brief soapbox about End of Grade Testing:  it's a waste of time and money.  You could garner the same information about student comprehension by asking their teachers.  We're already being paid (embarrassingly little in North Carolina, but still, paid).  The whole industry has sprung up around the idea that somehow the people we entrust to educate our children cannot then assess them.

Today, my theory is sexism. Teaching is a female-dominated field. Government is a male-dominated field . . .and it doesn't even represent the best that the male half of our species has to offer.  If we just trusted teachers to do their jobs and gave them the resources to do it, we could drop the whole thing.

Check back soon for other conspiracy theories and railings at the heavens. There's a lot more testing to go.

Now We Are Six

Now we are six.  We are missing two teeth and like to stick our tongue in the hole and roll it up like a taco.  If we knew how, we'd blow bubblegum bubbles through it.

When we were a baby, and had no teeth, we'd get tired and bounce our head against mom or dad's shoulder making a bwah-bwah-bwah sound.   Woodpeckering, mom and dad called it and smiled.

Now we are six.  Our legs are so long and slender, they look untenable for support, yet we run like the wind laughing.  Sometimes, we stretch our arms behind us and run like the Ninja Turtles.

When we were one, and not yet walking, we bounced around the house on our knees, a comical method of movement that amazed and dismayed the adults around us.

Now we are six, and we are very punny. We are a word-nerd in the making, loving to learn new words, even better if we can read them by ourselves. We recently made a joke that made sense.

When we were two and three, we loved knock-knock jokes, but we didn't get them. We'd say, "Knock knock," and when you'd say, "Who's there!" we'd say something random like "hot dog in a bucket!" and run away laughing.

Now we are six and we are heartbreakingly beautiful in the way that only six year old girls can be. That's no surprise, though, we've always been amazing.