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?

Speaking of mug shots…

a book cover

Do you ever google people from your past?

Hmmm?

Well, okay. So.

I set my novel in 1985 because that’s when I was a teen and because I didn’t want to deal with cell phones and google.

I used my hometown as a starting point for my novel. But then my fictional town of Lake Belle became something more than where I grew up. The connections between the two are now almost nonexistent.

The novel isn’t autobiographical, but writing a particular scene did bring my former step-sister to mind. So, I googled her name. It was late and I haven’t seen her in 25 years. My dad ran into once while she was working as a cashier. He didn’t recognize her. My dad is like that.

Anyway. I google this girl of my past. She is forever that girl in my head. That young teenager who hit be with a baton and protected me from an aggressive boy. She’s the girl who when I found a way out of the crazy house we were living in said, “How can you leave me here?”

Saving myself.

She was such a tough girl. She could fight and shout, while I just sat quietly with my head down. I thought–she is so strong. She’ll take care of herself.

Googling her, I found her mug shot. For battery. It was a random search and I didn’t expect to find anything. But there you go.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about learning this information. Seems wrong for people’s mug shots to be online, doesn’t it? Feels wrong to search for people too–but also tempting. I’m as curious as anyone else, especially when I’m putting off the really hard work of editing my novel.

She isn’t in my novel, but some of her spirit is in an odd roundabout way.

So. Have you/would you google someone form your past? I don’t know if I’d recommend it.

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?

Investaphobia

All my eggs in one basket?

No one in the history of the universe invests money in a company knowing they’re going to lose all said money. Oh, some people may invest in losers because they know how to actually get more money later–yeah, real estate nightmare, anyone–but the plan is to make money eventually.

People lose money of course. Plans go awry. Hopes are dashed. Dreams are deferred.

I don’t really understand any of it. I confess a deep suspicion that making money without actually making anything in return feels wrong. This sort of thinking gets me nowhere and I’ll probably be a hair’s breath from living in a box and eating beans out of a tin when I’m old. Well, I’ll draw pictures on my box, so there.

Anyway, I want to be a writer. I guess I am a writer? (How does one even know? It’s not like I got a certificate saying so.)

And this has required the craziest kind of investment. Do you want to be a writer? Well, here is Book Street. How much are you going to invest?

How much time? I’ve written 8 novels and at least 80 short stories. That’s taken years. How much money have I made with my writing? $10. That’s less than a dollar per year.

(Thankfully, I like baked beans.)

Well, if you count the cost paper, ink, and postage, I think that $10. is, well, not going to cover it.

But I’m finally, FINALLY!!, going to have my first novel, The Blue Jar published. I am happy. Happy about this fact. Make no mistake. The feeling that I’m dragging my battered carcass over a finish line is nothing compared to the feeling of knowing I have reached that finish line.

Although, it isn’t a finish line, is it?

I’ve got all those other manuscripts, and more I want to write. And I’ll write even if they move the finish line across an ocean on fire and on the other side of a mountain of knives.

But it’s a lot to ask my family. Hey, sacrifice all this money and time on my dream! But else does a person say? Don’t mind me. I’ll give up my dream because you’re here.

No. Not going to do that.

There are no guarantees. No one can predict how a book will sell. My book could sell thousands of copies or next to none. All this work, time, and money and I could still be left with an unread book. And several never-going to be read books.

What kind of investment is the writing life and why do we do it?

I think Wall Street is too risky, and yet I do this.

Hope springs eternal. And foolishly. Gloriously.

“The point is that writing, for lack of a better occupation, is good. Writing is right, writing works. Writing clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Writing, in all of its forms; writing for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And writing, you mark my words, will not only save my life, but that other malfunctioning part of me called my soul. Thank you very much.”*

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*Totally lifted from the Gordon Gekko speech in the movie Wall Street. (Though I’ve never actually seen the movie.)

Just Give Me My Poisoned Apple Already

I wouldn’t literally eat a poisoned apple, but metaphorically I think I already have.

The evil queen in disguise is my own psyche, and the apple is seeds of doubt fleshed out with insecurity, neurosis, and fear. Hard to believe anyone takes a bite of that.

How long has it been since an agent asked me to write a book jacket synopsis?

Feels like a hundred years. Unfortunately time hasn’t cleared my head or given me any good ideas. To explore another fairy tale, it’s more like the brambles around my thinking have grown thicker and stronger, and I’m going to need a helluva sword to cut through it all.

In this scenario, I’ve got to be my own prince. Good heavens, what part of my personality is that?

Throwing away an opportunity to get an agent because I can’t get myself to write that book jacket copy is about as dumb and passive as any Disney princess has ever been. I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words, and yet these few feel impossible. I start and start and start, and I get angrier and angrier with myself. Don’t I know better?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
who’s the best writer of them all?

The one who writes instead of worries.

What is my novel about?

A girl. And her best friend. One has been hurt and everyone knows. Well, almost everyone. The other has been hurt, but it’s a secret. …

That’s rubbish.

She accepts a ride from her best friend’s brother. She refuses to talk about what happened, but she’ll try anything to forget. …

No, no, no.

Two girls go into the woods at midnight for magic and revenge. …

Well, that’s silly.

Maybe this means my novel should be shut away in a drawer and forgotten.

Do I really want my dream to die because I can’t write one page of explaining my own novel? What is the worst thing that could happen if my writing fails? Well, whatever it is, worse things have happened. Life doesn’t depend on publication. I can keep writing anyway. That’s the main thing.

I look though at published novels and then I look at my own unpublished work… I’m reminded of a professor I had in grad school who said my work lacked a certain…coherence. Now, this was the head of the department who had also called me–in front of an entire class–an idiot, but this professor told me he liked my writing. He said it was original. I had unique ideas. That I looked at things from interesting angles. Honestly, I don’t know what he meant. But he also said that I seemed incapable of putting my work together in a sensible form. That my work suffered from incoherence.

Writing this synopsis/book jacket shouldn’t be this hard.

Now. Where’s my apple?

Synopsiphobia Smackdown

So, an agent has asked for a synopsis that reads like a book jacket. I’m not to give too much away, but to sell the story.

I feel the same way about a synopsis as I did about an outline in school.

But anyway. Here is my dumb idea of the day. Let me rephrase that. Here is my idea to toughen my skin.

I’m going to post my little book jacket attempt here. I’d love some feedback. (Yep. Love!) The usual grammar and typo mistakes pointed out. Does it sound compelling? Should it be a little longer? What else might I add? Subtract? You know…tell me that vague inexplicable thing that I want! (You can do that, can’t you?)

So. Here it is: The Blue Jar

Two best friends, Fran and Chesnie, 16, fear the same thing—Chesnie’s older brother Charlie. They both know his violence and his need for control.

Fran wants to forget everything that happened the night Charlie gave her a ride home. Chesnie wants revenge for that night and many others, and she thinks she knows how to make her brother suffer. She steals the blue jar, a sentimental, precious object, from Charlie’s room and goes with Fran into the woods at midnight. With magic Chesnie learned from her grandmother, Milla, the girls cast a spell to get what they each want, but while Charlie ends up in the hospital, his anger and impulses remain intact.

The girls move in with Milla, a midwife and potions-maker, because she is the only adult who believes them and keeps them safe. Safety, however, fails to solve everything as easily as they expect.

Fran bewilders her boyfriend who won’t give up on her no matter how she rejects him. She ignores her parents whose marriage is ending. She underestimates Chesnie’s need for revenge and where it will lead—from a safe haven to a house of prostitution, from desire to violence.

Thank you.