The Red Cross in the Orange Grove

at a birthday party in an ice cream parlor

The end of Overlook Drive was dark. First there were houses, 1970s split-level houses. But they stopped before the wide curve where an orange grove took over. At night, sitting beside my father in the car, it looked like the road ended in darkness. Then around the curve and a 7 Eleven lit the next curve, which was much sharper.

One day in the early 80s a church bought a strip of that first curve and built a log cabin church. In the steeple of the church they put a window in the shape of a cross. I didn’t know until we were coming home late one night that the glass was red.

There were no other lights, but the red cross floating in the dark between the curve and the orange grove.

Later they built an ark in the side yard as a gift shop. I assumed the worst about the church, and wondered about the family that later bought the church and turned it into a home.

You put symbols into your fiction you never know how a reader will take it. What inspires one soul may disturb another–like a cross or the color red. Do you find that you go back to the same symbols in your fiction? Or have you not yet noticed?

What your love says about you.

I’ve asked you what your favorite stories are, but now what do you think your love says about you? Call me crazy, I love Torchwood and my hero is Captain Jack Harkness. What does that say about me?

Riding a Bike with the Virgin Mary at 3 a.m.

my first college apartment--summer 1988

I remember the Virgin Mary best. She stood at an attic window and glowed in the dark.

That summer work either began or ended at 3 a.m. I watched the front desks at different campus dormitories–answering phones, signing in guests, keeping an eye out for smuggled alcohol. I had no car.

To get through the Terre Haute streets in the middle of the night, I rode my borrowed bike on the yellow line. There was a drought that year and even at 3 in the morning I’d be a sweaty mess whichever way I was going. Most of the time I saw no one else. But on one street with houses pushed up to the sidewalk and attic windows over their front porches, stayed the Virgin Mary. At least, a large plastic light-up statue of her stood watch.

I could not help but look for her. One night she was turned off, and I didn’t like the idea of her owner not being home. Or maybe it meant the owner actually was home. Maybe before the owner had always been out. I considered taking a different street, but told myself I was being silly. I read too much into these things. I’ve an overactive imagination.

Do you ever look for signs (omens) that you’re meant to be a writer, that this book is the one, that this agent is meant for you? Maybe a story you wrote in the fifth grade got the highest grade in the class, you dreamed about the hero of your novel, or the agent you’ve queried has the same last name as your first crush. Something. Anything.

When it comes to your writing, do you have any superstitions or rituals? What symbols trigger hope or despair? Why or why not?

Being a Girl

mom and me at home

My mom would be there any minute. I decided to hide at the neighbor’s house. It was easy to lie to them. “My mom is coming over,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I’m not allowed to see her. Dad said so.”

I was 12. They believed me because they never liked my mother. I’d called my dad at work and told him mom was coming to the house. When he asked why, I lied to him. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to. Do what you think is best.” He’s confused. Mom has never come to the house without talking to him first.

I peeked out the neighbor’s kitchen window. Mom parked her ’78 Toyota and walked up to dad’s front door. She knocked and waited. She had a bag in her hand. I knew she would worry and I didn’t want to worry her. But I didn’t want her to talk to me either.

A empty lot was between my house and the neighbor’s. A cow pasture stretched far past out backyards. A lake filled with cattails and alligators was the front yard. The road cut through our properties. Mom walked around dad’s house and looked through windows.

The neighbors chattered behind me while I spied on my mom. They never suggested I tell my mother where I was. I knew better grown ups would’ve done something proper. I wondered if mom would call the police or wait in her car until I showed myself.

I put my hand on the kitchen door and then stepped back. I could think of no way to explain my cowardice. She wanted to talk to me about girl things. I wanted to say, I’ve read Judy Blume and loads of other books. I’ve talked to older girls. I know, I know, I know. Leave me alone. Mom had given me a preliminary chat in the car a few weeks prior.

Mom stood in the driveway for a while and stared out at the lake. Then she got in her car and drove away. She never said anything else to me about. Even later when I lived with her, she didn’t ask me where I had been that day.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room wishing I’d been born a boy.

Now I’m trying to get an agent. I’ve got to choose a category, right? Literary fiction, fantasy, women’s fiction… What is that? Women’s fiction? I’m a woman and my main character is female. Is that it? Why? I don’t want to lose readers because of gender. Can only a woman enjoy my novel? Do men have to wonder if their novels are men’s fiction? What would that be anyway?

How do you decide what category/genre you should be in? Does a label like women’s fiction help or hurt?

Bad Shoes and Bad Guys

who knows what we were doing in junior high

I picked out the wrong shoes. The shoes were wrong because I thought they were neat. Yep. Neat. S., a girl who wore pink Oxfords and skinny ribbons in her hair, made it clear to everyone that my tennis shoes were uncool. The shoes weren’t the ordinary canvas. S. probably said it best when she strolled over to me during phys. ed. and said, “Nice shoes, Terrycloth-Tugger.”

All the girls laughed. She and her pretty friends called me that for two years. Sometimes in high school the name would pop back into her head and she say it when she passed me in the hall. She never said anything nice to me, but she still asked to borrow my pearl earrings for our graduation photo. S. was, of course, a cheerleader. Isn’t that a cliche? Bad, mean cheerleader!

Thanks to Darcknyt, I’ve been thinking about cliches and bad guys. In my fiction, I worry if my antagonists are cliche, cardboard, flat, not scary enough, or over-the-top. On Darcknyt’s blog people talked about why. Now, I want to know how not to. How can we see these flaws in our own bad guys? What are your bad guys like? Any favorite bad guys in fiction?

Editing Music

If you’re a writer and need a laugh…

Thanks, Ami!

Hand Over Your Favorite Character–Or Else!

the kiddo sleeps in his fort made of books

My friend Sophie in the Moonlight had an idea–The Writing in the Water Book Exchange.

If you wish to participate, you send me your favourite book – you pick the WHY component (is it your favorite because of the plot, the characters, the environment, the personal autobiographical space we were in at the time…) – and I’ll shuffle them around and send one back to each participant and keep one for myself. (Of course, I might already have the book, so let me know the title before you get out the postage.) When we’re all done, we can have a roundtable-like discussion on what makes a character memorable, etc. Maybe we can all learn a bit about one another through the exchange & find out why a character connects to a reader.

There is the issue of getting your book back. We could either send out books without expecting them back (hard for any book lover), promise on our favorite writer’s soul to send the book we get back, or send along postage to add incentive and guilt.

And hey, if you participate, I’ll send you a copy of one of the three novels I’ve finished–which may or may not be encouraging, but there you go.

I’d love to know what you’d want me to read.

He’s so logical.

dad's birthday many birthdays ago

“Are you scared?” my dad asked.

I nodded. I was 7.

“Do you want me to turn it off?” he asked.

I peered out from behind the sofa. “No!” On TV, a giant cave floated through space about to eat the Starship Enterprise. “Leave it on!” I ducked behind the sofa again and then peered back. Dad laughed.

Thirteen years later, another Star Trek movie came to my hometown. I was home from college for the summer. Dad and I had seen all the other Star Trek films together (and Star Wars). They were the only movies he and I agreed on. “Dad,” I said. “You want to go see the new Star Trek movie?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“A. can’t come.” A. was his live-in girlfriend (now wife).

“She doesn’t like space movies,” I said.

“I know. But it will hurt her feelings if I go to the movies without her.”

“Dad. She’s out of town. For a week.”

“But I can’t go without her.”

I tried to match this with the A. that I know. She’s not like his second wife. She wouldn’t care if he went to a movie with his daughter. “Dad. She doesn’t like Star Trek and she’s out of town.”

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked.

“Don’t you want to see Star Trek?” I said.

“There’s chicken and yellow rice. And green beans.”

I went to see Star Trek V with my mom. A love for space movies, as far as I ever knew, was the only thing my parents had in common.

The other night my dad called. “Hey Dad,” I said. “I saw the new Star Trek movie last night.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “How was it?”

“I loved it.” I told him a little bit about the plot. I didn’t tell him I went by myself or that I took my novel with me to edit while I waited for the film to begin.

“Spock was my favorite,” he said. “I liked him because he was always logical.”

Some characters stay with you for years–why? Think of characters you love (whether from Shakespeare or Gene Roddenberry). Why do you care about them? What do they mean to you? Do you like them because they are similar to you or different? Do they make you laugh or cry or feel something new?

I can only hope that one day I can create one character who stays long in someone’s life.

Bitterness in Creativity

Can a child make art?

Do artistic standards make you bitter?

Why is it that we can get so angry when we don’t like a work of art or a book? What are your standards for a good picture or a good book? How do you know that something is good? What does the work have to do for you?

Take the Blame

near the edge in Greece--New Year's Eve 1994

“She didn’t have anything nice to say about you,” my dad’s wife said to me. “But I told her that we’d always gotten along just fine and I didn’t have anything to say about things that had nothing to do with me.”

“What’d she say to that?” I asked. I was 20.

My dad’s wife shrugged. “She said I was lucky.”

I laughed. “I guess it’s good know they still hate me.”

My dad’s wife, A., was talking about a woman that had come into the store to order flowers. That was my dad’s wife job then–silk flower arrangements. The woman was the sister of my dad’s second wife. Once the woman found out who A. was married to, she explained how I’d ruined that marriage.

The sister was right in a way. I’d left. Leaving brought the lawyers, child protective service people, the judge, and the old police records. Leaving brought in a machine that changed our lives. And Dad and my step-mother divorced.

I’ll take the blame.

When I wanted to leave my dad, I asked my mom to take me in. She did. While sending out query letters isn’t exactly the same as breaking up a family, there is that–take me, take me quality. I want out of my job and into this other, this creative life. Please help. But agents aren’t our mothers. They get to say no.

The agents who take the time to write a real note with the rejection say the same thing–well-written and compelling but not for us. Sometimes they add–enjoyed reading. If they’re not being polite, then I’m choosing the wrong agents to approach. I’ve gone over that Writer’s Digest book and the Jeff Herman guide and P&E and google and magazines and author acknowledgment pages, but I’m still picking the wrong people.

I’ll take the blame.

So, how do you pick the right agent? What keyword am I missing? How do you know you’re reaching out to the right person? What do you look for? Or how do you realize that your work is unmarketable and therefore unpublishable? Or does that sound pretentious?

The amazing thing about my art, is that I walked into this shop the other day, met the owner–a woman I didn’t know–and she accepted me on the spot. “I can sell these,” she said. “Bring them in and I’ll hang them today.”

My art is on store walls. My novel is on my desk. What does that mean?