WORLDS THAT NEVER WERE

The title of this post is the subject line of an e-mail I received yesterday. I thought it was a spammer offering me money if I’d only provide my banking information, so I almost deleted it. I am happy that I didn’t. My speculative fiction story “To Live Again“,won $100 and first place in Write Around the Block’s January short story contest. I have never won a contest in my life. I am thrilled.

“To Live Again“, holds a special place in my heart. It is the first story that I wrote back in 2002–a dog story with a twist. Second, as I previously posted, it was the first of my stories to appear in a print publication, so it became one of my milestones. I think that seeing that story on the printed page will always be my greatest thrill.

Those of you who know me will realize that “To Live Again” is loosely based on my life. The woman in the story who learns to take charge of her life through her dog is me. I drew on my own experience in an abusive marriage to create Allison’s character, who is too frightened to get out of bed and turn on a light at night. And during the day, she is too scared to leave her house. Then she adopts Vanquisher, a scrappy pit bull terrier mix facing euthanasia.

And so the story was born. I modeled Vanquisher after my dog Buddy, who I am sad to say, most likely came to the same fate as Vanquisher did in the story. Heavy sigh–if he hadn’t, there would be no story.

When I learned that Write Around the Block accepts previously published stories, I revised the story–the first version rambled a bit and had some other issues–and submitted it to the contest. I am thrilled that it won.

I will never consider “”To Live Again”” to be my best story, but writing it helped me learn the art of writing fiction. It will probably always be my favorite, especially because Harry and I recently adopted a black lab. Alex is sweet and mischievous and as beautiful as Buddy was ugly–like Sam in the story. He is intelligent and makes us laugh every day, especially when he squeaks his little plastic bone and does tricks for food. I love him, but he can’t completely fill the void in my heart left by Buddy.

Here’s to strays, shelter dogs and rescued dogs who continue to rescue their saviors.

“The career of chart-topping mystery novelist takes a new twist with her first historical murder mystery,” says Jordan E. Rosenfeld of Writers Digest.

Tess Gerritsen has become my favorite author over the past few years, so I read the interview in Writers Digest with rapt attention. It is not just the way she weaves suspense that pulls me into her books, it is also her well developed characters. They have problems and hang ups like the people that I know (including me), but they are also complex.

Gerritsen touched on character development when asked this question:
DO YOU HAVE ADVICE FOR WRITERS TRYING TO GET PUBLISHED IN THE THRILLER OR MYSTERY GENRES?
Besides reading a lot of them? When you write any book you have to pay attention to your emotions. What makes a really salable book that people grab onto is one that tells a story that causes you to feel something. That’s what I base my ideas on. Does the premise evoke some really strong emotion in me? Intellectual mysteries are interesting but it has to have something that moves you. I find action on the page very boring. If I read about a car chase, it’s ho-hum for me. What gets me on the edge of my seat is an interrogation, in which you know the answer is around the corner and it’s just two people talking in a room. New writers don’t understand tension or suspense—they think it’s about gunplay.

Writing is a matter of trusting your heart and gut more than logic, because people aren’t logical. Characters should do crazy things because that’s real life and I think that’s what we should write about.

This interview inspired me not only to keep reading Gerritsen, but also to use her as an example to improve my own writing. Gerritsen has the same problem that I do, not wanting to stick with a book. Unlike me, however, she overcomes and finishes her books.

YOU’VE WRITTEN A NEW BOOK EVERY YEAR SINCE HARVEST WAS PUBLISHED. WHAT’S THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF WRITING A NEW BOOK?
I don’t plot my books ahead of time. Like a lot of writers, I’m a plunger rather than a planner. I have an idea but somewhere in the middle I start to feel I’ve lost my way for the trees. Every single book has given me trouble and made me depressed because two-thirds of the way through, I think it’s a total disaster. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you stick with it. But it means that your second and third drafts will be pure drudgery.

I remembered reading something similar that Gerritsen had said in a previous interview, so I did a Google search and found this on Writers Write:

What was the greatest challenge in writing that first book?

Maintaining the drive to finish it. It’s a terrible temptation to give up on a book and start something new. Over the years, I’ve learned to persist through thick and thin, even when the book is not going well. Only after you’ve written “the end” can you truly evaluate whether you’ve been writing drivel or a masterpiece.

So, I am going to use Gerritsen as my motivator. I have resolved to finish my YA novel in progress. I want to write “the end.”

As part of my New Year’s resolutions to finish every story that I start, I’ve just finished Good Game, a story about a man visited by his dead father, although I think the dog steals the show—see below. For you chess players, the story is centered in the world of chess, hence the title. For anyone who doesn’t play chess, you won’t hear players wish each other “Good luck.” That would be considered bad chess etiquette. Since chess is a game of skill, most players would be offended if you wished them luck. The term used before a game and also coinciding with the handshake at the end is “Good game.”

Finally, I’m getting to the point of this blog: when does gender matter? I play chess, but I am unusual in that–I am a woman. Very few women play chess. In fact, when I taught chess both as an elective chess class and an after school chess club for middle school students, almost all of my students were boys. I had one girl only one semester in the chess elective class. I had a couple of other girls start the class and then drop it after a few days. Chess is simply a boy’s sport. Therefore, the audience for Good Game will likely be men.

Here was my dilemma. The main character in the story was a woman who plays chess. I wondered, would men read 2,900 words about a woman? Could they relate to her? And would women want to read a story about a chess player? I wanted to keep her, but I rewrote the story from a male point of view. Did I cave or was I being smart? The male perspective changed the story completely. Men react and show emotion differently than women. A man won’t cry so easily, for example. Since the story is written in first person, it is now a different story than the first draft. But, like my dog trainer says about our dog, “He is what he is.”

As a side note about dogs, in researching the role of the dog in Good Game I ran across the Carolina Canines Web site. Service dogs trained through Carolina Canines for Service, Inc. are able to perform the following tasks for their partners:

• Retrieving dropped/distant objects
• Pulling wheelchairs and loading wheelchairs into vehicles
• Opening doors
• Carrying items/packages
• Rising to high counters
• Physical support for mobility and transfers to/from wheelchairs
• Physical assistance to recover from a fall
• Dressing or undressing
• Assisting with household tasks such as bed making and laundry

Now, we’ve got to quit working with Alex on his aggression issues–as a result of his history before being rescued–and start training him to do household chores. I’ll let you know when he starts making the bed and doing laundry.

I was not surprised to learn that the extensive training required for each service dog takes 18-24 months in basic training and 6-12 months in advanced training. These dogs are provided free of charge from Carolina Canines to people with disabilities including: cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke, spinal cord injury and seizure disorders. This is a savings of $2,000 - $12,000 for the disabled. What a worthy endeavor. Some people do have a two to three year wait for a service dog, though.

As far as my progress on my young adult NIP, I have reached a standstill. I’m still trying to decide whether to include Pocahontas and, as a result, have lost momentum. I’ll get back to it, though. I always do. Meanwhile, I’m trying to set realistic goals and then focus on one goal at a time. My goal for today is to revise Remission, a story I wrote earlier this year, and submit it to the Doris Betts Fiction Prize. Deadline is February 1. Wish me luck.

High Treason is still in progress. The end. I have not yet written those two little words that would see her finished. Regardless, I am happy with my recent writing progress. Except for Christmas and New Year’s Day, I wrote for several hours on each of the twelve days that I was off from my day job (December 21 - January 2). I polished my way through chapter 13, of the 24 chapters in High Treason. Because of the trickle down effect from the later chapters, the first half of the book needed a lot of rewriting. Fixing minor plot flaws, correcting some point of view issues and deciding which minor characters need bigger and smaller roles took up most of my editing time. The ending chapters will not need as much work.

In the original version of High Treason (The Magic Quilt), I had Katharine traveling to several places and time periods, both in the past and future. Minor characters from those places, including Jamestown, Virginia, visited Katharine in the present. As a result, Pocahontas was in several scenes. I had decided to remove her character from the novel, including a middle chapter where she had a central role. I thought the chapter slowed down the plot and didn’t add anything. The women in my writing critique group felt differently, that the chapter is needed to both lighten the novel and show another side of Katharine’s character.

So, I decided to let my thoughts on High Treason percolate in the background for awhile, and I did some organizing. Looking though my computer files, I was shocked to discover that I have written 19 stories, of which only 3 are published! Yikes. I had neglected these stories, some for several years. Why? Short attention span. I hate editing, polishing and submitting. I love the thrill of first draft writing: getting to know the characters, discovering where the story goes. After that the story and the characters get cold to me. This is why my YA novel is not finished.

Looking back over my older writing, I discovered something else. I have really grown as a writer. I recognize some novice mistakes in my older work, like POV issues–I couldn’t seem to find the MC’s voice, plot holes and leaps, telling instead of showing, needless description, repetition, dialogue tag problems, and tense changes. In fact, some of my older stories are real stinkers. Back when I wrote them, thinking they were awesome works of art, I sent each to friends and family. I apologize for that—I should have sent a clothespin with each story. I even submitted some of these stinkers for publication. Many stunk as much as the bad story JA Konrath wrote to illustrate newbie mistakes. Not surprisingly, I accumulated many rejections

So, over my 12 days of Christmas, I polished three stories, submitted two to a contest and one to a periodical. In so doing, I cut 1,450 unnecessary words from Stand-in Santa, a whopping 40% reduction in the story. Eh gads. Similarly, I cut almost 400 words from Project Golem, a futuristic story about WWIV. I apologize to anyone who read the earlier versions of these stories.

I’ve got a lot more work to do. My new edict for 2008 is: Write. Edit. Polish—Submit. With this in mind, here are my New Year’s Resolutions.

1. I will finish High Treason
2. I will choose my next book length project and begin working on it
3. I will research the market and agencies representing YA historical fiction/fantasy and search for an agent
4. I will always have at least three stories—YA or adult—(and one article idea) on submission, while working on a fourth
5. I will finish every story I start
6. I will submit every story I finish
7. I will subscribe to the magazines I submit to and read them
8. I will read the Newberry winners and finalists from the last two years to grow in my YA writing
9. I will continue to blog – the process improves my writing
10. I will update my website after reviewing other YA writer sites
11. I will attend at least one writer’s conference, and introduce myself to agents, editors, and other writers
12. I will refuse to get discouraged, even in the face of daunting odds. I love to write and my imagination contains stories that only I can tell. For now, that is my reward. I will not dwell on the fact that I have written drafts of three novels – not finished any, penned over 175,000 words. Although I have earned 135 rejections, I have sold only one story and one essay. I received nada in the way of monitary compensation for the rest of my publications.

I am a better writer than I was when I received all those rejections. To illustrate the point, here is the original opening from “Her Sister’s Ghost,” written in 2002:

Ashleigh Richards stepped into the rear of a small commuter plane and walked past an attractive man, with long, wavy, black hair and sunglasses, who was seated in the last row of the plane. She glanced at him as she passed him; an intense look indicating her attraction for him, which she noticed was reciprocated. She immediately cleared him from her thoughts as she walked toward the front of the plane. She was relieved that seat 4D was a window seat; she would be able to look out the window and think. She stowed her black cashmere coat and carry on bag in the overhead compartment. Ashleigh had her driver’s license and $200 cash in her jeans pocket. Her Gateway, Solo 1200 notebook Ashleigh kept with her. The laptop computer barely fit under the seat in front of her and Ashleigh didn’t have room for her feet with the computer there. One of the drawbacks of being tall is there is never enough legroom. Ashleigh knew that even a shorter person would have trouble compacting themselves into the small seating area of the Express Jet.

I am embarrassed to admit that I submitted this story for publication. The one long opening paragraph screams novice: telling instead of showing, needless description, repetition … Who would want to read more?

The new opening, while still not pefect, is much stronger:

The police would find him, dead in her house. It didn’t matter that he had deserved to die.

Ashleigh Adams shoved her crutches into the back seat of her Cavalier, wincing in pain as she lowered herself carefully into the driver’s seat. She accelerated down the long driveway, tires spitting gravel. As she entered the onramp to the highway, she was already traveling at over eighty miles per hour, speeding to get away from the fear that caused her hands to tremble on the steering wheel.

“Ashleigh, I had to kill him. He gave me no choice,” Erica said.

Sighing, Ashleigh turned toward her sister.

Erica was gone. The passenger seat empty. Ashleigh was left only with the image of Erica standing over her husband, holding the .45 with two steady hands. A bullet hole between his sightless eyes.

Which Harry Potter character has the same personality type as you? I am Severus Snape.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Thanks to Pirate Monkeys, for the combo Harry Potter/ Myers Briggs test.

How do I transmutate humans into animals?

I’m editing two chapters from the middle of High Treason, where Katharine, her grandmother and Sara Revere have transmutated into animals. I have been struggling with the narrator’s POV. Should I call Katharine “the cat” or “Katharine.” Likewise, should I use “the red bird” or “Grandma.” And should the narrator refer the animals as it or she?

Here is an excerpt where I’m struggling with POV:

“Come. Follow me.” The red bird flew, sun reflecting off its necklace.

The bird’s eye twitched before her grandma said, “If wizards went around changing history for their own purposes, the world would be in constant and utter chaos. Now, we must go back to the school. Follow me.” She flew back to the tree overhanging the schoolyard.
The cat climbed to the top branch and sat next the red bird.

Likewise, when the evil wizard transmutates into a cockroach, should the narrator call him “Dr. Ziegawart” or “the cockroach”?

Here is an excerpt that shows the POV problem.

Cafeteria trays clanked, the sound nearly deafening the small creature. Unaccustomed to these eyes, he could see only a kaleidoscope of large shadowy figures. The cockroach turned his head for a better view of the room, his antennae twitching. The corners of nearby tables and chair backs loomed like mountains. And the smashed cookie next to an almost empty potato chip bag on the floor could feed him for over a week. He was delighted that children were so careless and sloppy.

Four of his legs suddenly slipped from the trashcan. He shuffled all six legs, clinging harder to the slippery plastic. What was happening? He could …not … not … remember … His great mind had became muddled. With that realization, Dr. Ziegawart felt an emotion that was foreign to him, fear. He turned his head slowly … could hardly move his head. It was too heavy. His heart thumped once and slowed. Mustering his strength, the roach crawled up the trashcan to hide in the dim light under the rim.

I posted this POV question on the Writers Net Discussion Forum to get some help.
Here is the advice that I received. Thank you to the writers who took the time to reply to my question.

If Katharine is your main character, then it’s important that the reader never loses her in the text, that’s what having a POV is all about. If it’s strictly Katharine’s POV then you can’t leave that without it feeling awkward (except in certain circumstances).

it’s good that you recognize something is off. That instinct will help you become a better writer.

I am so happy that I asked. I can see that in the section from Dr. Ziegawart’s POV, I was writing as a cockroach. I had researched roaches (gross) and wrote from his POV with roaches in mind, even including that light shuts down the roach metabolism. I knew I liked that section, but hadn’t considered why. I haven’t written Katharine as a cat from a cat’s POV consistently. I need to be more aware of what the animals are capable of.

To plagiarize from a former post, Children’s fantasy demands the strictest logic, consistency, and attention to detail. It’s damn hard to “build the lie” that fantasy demands.

This post comes after I debated about what to submit to my writing group for critique. I wanted to work on a new story that exists currently only in my imagination. It will be titled “Into the third and fourth generations,” about the personality disorders passed down through the generations. I believe the beginning will be a young girl in a psychiatric hospital and the story will follow her family tree to the origin of the personality disorders. Or, I thought about submitting a story that I wrote several years ago around this time, Stand-in Santa. I’ve never submitted it to my writing critique group and it would be fun to hear their feedback. It is almost December, after all.

Then I reminded myself of my goal. Finish High Treason by December 31st. If I work on anything else, I won’t finish the YA novel. So I reluctantly looked through High Treason’s table of contents and struggled over which section to submit? I thought about a chapter which I’ve just finished polishing, and am rather proud of. I resisted and submitted the chapters that need the most work. This was a hard choice for me, because I am reluctant to let anyone, even my critique group, read my work before I’m happy with it.

I spent some time this morning revising the categories on this blog and added “Life coming at me fast” just for this post. Last Tuesday, after I went for a swim in the morning, I locked my keys in the car, followed by a comedy of events that made me an hour late for work. After getting grease and dirt all over myself finding the magnetized set of keys that I keep under the car out of necessity, I was nervous. Nervousness caused me to get on the beltway going the wrong way. I pulled off at an exit and got back on going in what I thought was the right direction, only to be funneled back the wrong way. I took the next exit trying for an alternate route on 70, but instead got lost in Durham. But that’s not the reason that I added this category.

Yesterday, life slammed me hard. The hammer it chose was my emotions about my father. I haven’t seen my dad in ten years. During that time I’ve talked with him twice on the phone, once two months ago and once yesterday. When people ask me if I’m close to my father, I say no. I never expand upon that unless someone asks. Usually they don’t, and when they do I almost never tell the whole truth. It has taken me years of therapy to reach the level of denial I thought I had achieved. See my essay: Yes I Have a Therapist–and I Believe Everyone Should.

I thought I had worked through my sadness and anger toward my father. I didn’t think I had any feelings for him left. Then I got an e-mail from my aunt, my father’s sister.
I just talked with him (my father) on the phone. He does not have email because he is not able to use it. He has a walker with a seat on it and a wheel chair. He went to the doctor again. The doctor said the radiation killed 20% of his nerves. He is like a very old man. He has not been out of the house for 2 months. They simply cannot get him into the car. He is very helpless. He sleeps in his chair. He would like to hear from you girls. He says he can’t get well unless God heals him.

After reading the e-mail I found myself crying while driving to the swimming pool. I turned the car around and came home, too upset to swim or go to work. My father has recovered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But after the tumors were removed from his spine and he endured the chemo and radiation that was necessary to treat the cancer, his muscles are atrophying from lack of use.

I picture my father, the man who raised me, in a wheel chair unable to leave the house. The man who took me on 30 mile bike rides as a little girl, who taught me to play chess. (He always gave me his queen, and still I never beat him). My father might be sleeping in a wheelchair.

So I did a little research and found out, after a call to the Department of Human Resources in the county where he lives, that my father actually has excellent home care assistance in place. He has a nurse, a physical therapist and a person who takes care of his hygiene, who each come out several times a week. He’ll be starting occupational therapy soon as well. He has a recliner chair that he sleeps on. And he can walk some. It comes and goes.

So the writer in me decided to put this memory in storage and bring it out when I need an emotional hammer to build a character. I shouldn’t bury my emotions, I should use them. When I develop my characters I can keep this experience with my father in mind. Most of the women characters I relate to in the books that I love to read are flawed, many due to their childhood. In David Baldacci’s Simple Genius the lead female’s personality changed due to an event from her childhood. I can’t spoil the book to say what it was. In Kathy Reich’s series of books that the TV show Bones is based on, the lead character, Tempe, is a divorced recovering alcoholic who has trouble with relationships. And it goes on.

Fiction writers must create imperfect, flawed characters because that is the way people are.

Girls model their male romantic ideal on their relationship with their father. Women’s attachments are “mirror images” of how they related to their fathers. We instinctively repeat what we experienced in childhood, thank you Dad, even if it was the worst thing in the world. It’s what we know. It is from our fathers that girls learn lessons about the world of males. From our father women gain first-hand knowledge of how ordinary men think, act and speak. Fathers teach us how we should expect to be treated by males when we get older. They teach us by the way they speak and act toward us and the women in their lives.

So, I can write about a woman who does not have a loving dependable father. This imaginary character may actually seek men who deny her needs or reject her. She may always be haunted by the thought that she is unlovable. To compensate, she may become sexually active prematurely or she may fear intimacy. She will be imperfect and readers will be able to empathize with her.

In my real life, Harry is my rock. We took a walk yesterday morning. He listened to me talk and hugged me when I cried. He was late getting to work. So I’d like to share again this excerpt from a former blog: March. Sometimes, life has a way of reminding you that there’s nothing more important than being with the ones you love. Thank you Harry. I want to offer my sympathy to everyone who’s had a loved one pass away suddenly or had to deal with long term care for those they love.

I’ve made steady progress on my young adult novel. I’ve enjoyed finding Katharine’s voice and watching her character grow. But as Katharine has grown, the original title, The Magic Quilt, doesn’t seem to work. The focus of the novel is no longer the quilt. So, I’ve changed the title to High Treason, which fits both on a literal and figurative level.

I’m optimistic that I will finally be able to finish The Magic Quilt. Working 5 mornings a week on the book has helped the characters to stay alive in my mind. What I struggled with before was that when I did have an hour or two or five to work on The Magic Quilt, usually on Saturday or Sunday morning, it took me at least an hour to get back into the world of 1775. I would read my historical notes and skim chapters before I was there in my mind; I need to feel what Katharine feels and experience life with her.

So, I’ve set aside Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings to write from 6 to 8 am before work. Two mornings were short writing sessions this week due to pressures from my day job — final deadline for delivery of test items to one of our clients. Even with only an hour, it was enough to keep me in the story and keep Katharine alive.

My goal now is to finish rewriting the historical portions of the novel first, because they are the most difficult to get the emotional interplay right between and among the characters. I did finish a rough draft of a rewrite of the final chapter, and I’m going to start by finishing the ending. I have the history correct, but I don’t yet have Katharine’s voice consistent. Her character grows throughout the novel, so I want to make sure the chapters reflect that growth and match her voice. So I am making what I hope is the final rewrite of the novel for consistency, tightening, and pace of action. I also am cutting where necessary, which is hard for me because I’ve fallen in love with several scenes that do NOT move the story along; they have to go. I have started a folder of unused scenes. I’ve called the folder “sequel.” When I delete scenes and sometimes whole chapters I move them to this folder on my computer. I may never use these scenes in a sequel, but at least I don’t feel like they are lost.

In the words Diane Chamberlain of one of my favorite authors, writers need to give the reader some credit to follow the story without telling them everything:

Even though my work-in-progress is my seventeenth, I’m still having to dial back my desire to over-explain all the relationships and past events early in the story. The chapter I’m revising right now. . . I actually think I can cut it out altogether and trust the reader to fill in the blanks. Otherwise, the pace will slow down and that’s the last thing I want. I need to remember that my reader will enjoy a feeling of discovery as she makes her way through the book. I don’t need to weigh her down with information she can figure out on her own. Read Diane Chamberlain’s blog.

If this blog is silent over the next couple of weeks, it is because I am making a tremendous effort to finish The Magic Quilt. Wish me luck.