Perfect Sentences and Other Lies

Some people promise to diet or to exercise every day or to be more patient. Do you do that? Swear you’re going to be different and somewhere between three minutes and three days that is all shot to hell?

Mine is that I’m going to be less neurotic.

I’ve been trying to come up with one sentence that captures the feelings/mood/idea of my novel. I felt like I’d been left alone on the edge of a mountain with the instructions to fly down or don’t come down at all and all I’ve got are some feathers and duct tape.

But really. All I have to do is write a sentence. Why I have to make it difficult is beyond me.

So, I’ve come up with a sentence. Here’s my first draft. I’m not happy with the word ‘trauma’ but can’t think of a better word right now.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, best friends, use magic and their wits to recover from trauma and to get revenge.

Thoughts?

Why is it dark in here?

my art + photoshop elements

Recently I joked, “I could’ve written a light comedy.” And my husband replied, “I don’t think you have light comedy in you.”

A friend said, “It’s odd because you’re a funny person.”

Hey, I didn’t set out to write a dark, emotional novel. I started with an image and went from there. But I don’t sit down with an agenda. I always start with an image.

The novel that is to be published this winter began with the sound of marbles hitting a wood floor. Just that. No characters. No plot. But I asked, why would the marbles be spilled on the ground like that? And all these words later there is a tale of abuse and violence and survival and friendship.

Another novel started with an image I’ve had since childhood–a girl with a paintbrush that can change whatever she wants. That became a story of murder and jealousy.

And another novel started with the image of a young man who loses the ability to sleep–which is about jealousy too, and secrets, curses, and death.

And another with a young woman putting on red lipstick–which became a story about falling in love with the wrong person and going through hell for them.

But for all I know I could write a comedy. You never know.

As I edit my novel, I’m having to think about some of the things I’ve put a character through, and I think, she may be too damaged to come out all right in the end. Then again, I know people in the real world who’ve been through very real hell, and on the surface anyway, they seem to be doing fine. It’s hard to know though, isn’t it?

You have to find a way to do justice to a character’s suffering. I don’t mean that the bad guy will end up in jail or realize the error of his ways. If you put a character through trauma, that character can’t just shrug it off and be fine.

Something JK Rowling said recently about how Harry Potter would function after all he’d been through–not very well. Don’t you imagine he suffers from bad dreams that wake Ginny up in the middle of the night? Or that sometimes he’s a morose and remote father–loving, and generally good, but a man who needs time alone to brood. Wouldn’t his children sense his sadness at all his losses?

JK Rowling doesn’t put that in the books, but she doesn’t make it an impossibility either.

My character is going through a dark time, and I’m not sure how she’s going to be.

I’m not sure what it is about me that compels me to write stories of loss and trauma, and I can’t afford the therapy to find out.

You? Are your stories mostly happy? Sad? Funny? Why is that do you think?

The Dreaded “A” Question

I hate the “A” question.

So, I read a blog post by my friend JES regarding the “A” word–as in What is your novel About?

An agent is currently looking at my first novel, and this “A” question is on my mind. My first novel is about a difficult subject…a conversation stopper subject.

Now let’s be clear. I didn’t begin the novel intending to write about dark and difficult things. I started writing about marbles.

I was with my writing group (which is now no more) and the writing prompt pulled out of the box was “marbles.” Okay. Well, I didn’t want to write about a game of marbles because that seemed too obvious and I don’t know anything about the game. The sound of marbles hitting a hard floor came to mind. This became the sound of marbles hitting wooden stairs.

Why would marbles be spilling down the stairs? Someone dumped them on the stairs. Hmm. Who? A girl. She comes to mind. She stands at the top of the stairs pouring marbles out of a blue jar.

Why would she do this? It would make a mess. Marbles would probably be lost. So they must not be her marbles.

So again–why would she do it? Oh, they are her brother’s marbles and she is angry at him. She wants him to know she is angry.

Why is she angry? He has done something wrong.

And he sees his marbles falling down the stairs, go in different directions, and he yells at her. He chases her. I see them in my mind and she is about 16 and he is about 5 years older…still living at home.

Because he can’t hold a job.

Because he’s an addict.

Because he does terrible things.

And he chases his sister into her room where she hides. He finds her, but she pulls out a knife she keeps hidden her boot to protect herself.

Why would she need a knife?

Because he is violent obviously.

What violent things has he done?

And before you know it (if ten years count as a before-you-know-it explanation), I’ve written a novel with drug addiction, incest, rape, and prostitution. (First chapter here.)

Hmm. What is your novel about?

Ummm…?

Well, the novel does have a reasonably happy ending. Does that help?

Usually when people ask the “A” question, I say something vague, “It’s about loyalty and friendship in difficult times.” Yes. I’m a chicken.

I have had a few agents reject the novel because of its subject matter. Which surprised me a bit because these are not new issues for fiction. Maybe if the novel were about a detective hunting down a serial rapist murderer instead.

Anyway, I don’t think of my novel as being about those dark subjects. Crazy as it sounds, i think of it as a novel about friendship–two girls saving their friendship.

All right. So I guess if I struggled to be honest about what my first novel is about, I’d have to say that it is about a girl whose brother raped her best friend, and perhaps it was a secret the girl had kept hidden from her best friend and everyone that allowed the rape to occur.

There. Said it.

Reading posts like this about women writers doesn’t make answering the “A” question any easier.

What is your novel about? Marbles.

Still Thinking about Hitler

Okay, I’m not exactly thinking about Hitler.

But the last post discussed the idea of killing in a time traveling sense, which meant if-this-then-this thinking.

Writers do this kind of thinking all the time. If I have my character go here instead of there or say that instead of this…

And if you’ve written the story and go back and rewrite particular scenes, well, what you change has ramifications for the rest of the plot.

I decided a character didn’t have enough motivation to visit her brother in the hospital. She certainly feels no sympathy for him. Finally, I figured out why she would risk seeing her brother when she obviously shouldn’t…but now I’ve got to change little moments throughout the entire manuscript.

So in a way, if you go back in time and step on a butterfly, you do change the future. And if go back in your manuscript and send a character to steal a lock of her brother’s hair, you change your plot.