Letters

June 2008

For the past three months or so, I’ve been in the “deep-sea diving phase” of writing my new novel – the phase in which sounds other than my own breathing are muffled and the only things I see are those within range of my headlamp.  (Okay, I’ve never been deep-sea diving, but I’m imagining that’s what it’s like.)  Anyway, I’m coming up for a brief breath now – just time enough to balance the checkbook, run the Swiffer over the floors, and write this – and then will dive back into revising.

 

I’ve been spending most of my days thinking about 1945 and my characters’ lives, so 2008 has been going by more quickly than I can believe.  I guess out of a need or desire to connect with the present, I took a beginning yoga class.  It’s actually quite a challenge for me to “be” in my own body, considering all the hours I spend projecting myself into others’.  The class is over now, and I’m considering taking a “beginning” class again, because I’m definitely at the remedial level.  But I really did enjoy it, and, as a bonus, it also inspired me to begin a daily exercise routine.  I’m starting out small – a few sit-ups and push-ups and yoga stretches each morning.  I’ve never been one to enjoy exercising (I’d rather be reading, thank you very much), but, on the other hand, I do want to be healthy.  The idea I began with is that it takes 21 repetitions for something to become a habit… so if I could just get past those first 20 times, I’d be set.  Just like heading straight into the office every morning to write, without dilly-dallying over the newspaper, whether the writing is going well or going horribly!  Anyway, with the exercising (let’s not be so dramatic as to call it “working out” … maybe someday!) I believe I’ve officially hit the 26 day mark or something like that.  Home free!  Now there will be no excuse.  Next time you see me, I’ll have “abs of steel.”

 

And I hope that you will see me, and that I’ll see you!  The KEEPING THE HOUSE paperback is going to be released on July 15, and I’m thrilled to be celebrating the day at one of my very favorite independent bookstores, Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minnesota.  I’ll be traveling the Midwest throughout the summer and into the fall.  For all of my tour dates and locations, please visit my events page.

 

Also, if you’re in a book club, visit the book clubs page to sign up to win cookies (Dolly’s Lacy Raisin Wafer recipe) for your meeting!  I’ve sampled them (no, I didn’t make them myself…) and they’re officially yummy.  You can also sign up to get a phone call from me during your meeting.

 

Until then, I’ll just be here, doing sit-ups and imagining it’s 1945.

 

 

PAST LETTERS:

February 2008

Ironically, though I’m not a morning person, morning seems to be my best time to write.  I’ve become accustomed to the routine.  A little before eight, my cheerful husband comes and drags me out of bed (usually literally).  I stumble downstairs, feed Patches, brew a personal-sized pot of Irish Breakfast tea.  I’m in my office and at the computer ten minutes after waking.  I have an extremely comfortable couch in my office – all right, it’s not even a couch, it’s a chaise and half.  Like a loveseat with its feet kicked up.  I have three pillows and four blankets on it.  It’s my little writing fort, and, by design, I’m unable to access the internet from it – fewer possible distractions, that way.  I settle in there and start my work before I’m awake enough for the concerns of my own daily life to enter my mind.  By the time I really wake up, I’m (at least usually) totally absorbed in the world of my new novel.  Four hours later, it’s quitting time, and real life comes rushing back.

For a few months, I was as superstitious as a baseball player about the routine.  The slightest interruption – like the phone ringing at 9 a.m. (even if I didn’t answer it) – would throw me off, and at least an hour would pass before I could write even another sentence.  And going back to writing in the afternoon?  Forget it!  Now that I’m deeper into the manuscript, though, I find that the schedule doesn’t matter so much.  Tuesday I was sick and couldn’t write in the morning; I ended up writing 400 words between 4:00 and 4:30 in the afternoon (I wasn’t even in my office).  I’m finding recently that sometimes I can get as much done in a narrow window of time as in an entire gaping morning.  Wednesday, still not feeling great, I slept until ten then wrote until one in the afternoon (1100 words).

It’s such a relief to feel, finally, that the words just might come even if I’m not wearing my lucky socks, so to speak.  I was reminded of this reading Alexandra Enders’ article “The Importance of Place” in the new (March/April 2008) issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.  Although she’s discussing where writers write, rather than when, her article speaks to that issue of writerly superstition about routine and creative output.  She writes: “Writers need to find a way to access creativity and that can begin with the physical spaces they occupy when they work.  (Paradoxically, when the writer is writing well, is truly immersed in the project, this space dissolves and becomes irrelevant.)”

That really does happen sometimes, with both space and time, and it’s amazing.  On the other hand, I’m not quite ready to give up the idea of my daily routine.  I’m reminded of a quote from some baseball guy (I don’t remember who) – something to the effect of, “If a guy thinks he’s hitting well because of his socks, then there’s no harm in letting him wear the socks.”

 

January 2008

Last weekend I was in Jefferson, Texas, for the Pulpwood Queens’ Girlfriend Weekend.  This is not your ordinary book festival.  Picture a small, historic river town beset by women wearing tiaras, hot pink, and anything leopard print.  Throw in about forty authors, some bewildered and jet-lagged and missing luggage, some a bit closer to home, all warming up to the spirit of the weekend, playing at reluctance while their eyes spark with mischief.  Scent the air with gumbo, barbecue, enchilada sauce, frozen margaritas, chocolate pecan pie, and red wine.  

Enter Kathy Patrick, Head Queen of the Pulpwood Queens, and the author of the recently released book The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life – she’s literally the most tireless, enthusiastic and charming supporter of books and reading and authors you will ever meet.  She started the Pulpwood Queens about eight years ago, shortly after opening her bookshop/beauty salon, Beauty and the Book, and through sheer force of her exuberant personality has grown it into what has to be the largest book club in the world, with over a thousand members.  (The leopard print comes from her childhood fascination with Tarzan, and the tiaras signify her appealing notion that every woman should crown herself a queen.)

Kathy was our fearless leader throughout the busy weekend, introducing such fascinating memoirists as Kim Sunée (Trail of Crumbs) and Heather Hornback-Bland (God Said Yes), and fantastic novelists Judy Merrill Larsen (All the Numbers), Paulina Porizkova (A Model Summer), Andrea Portes (Hick), Janis Owens (The Schooling of Claybird Catts), Lisa Wingate (Talk of the Town), Cassandra King (The Same Sweet Girls), Cai Emmons (The Stylist), Virginia Boyd (One Fell Swoop), Lynn York (The Sweet Life), and Darnell Arnoult (Sufficient Grace).  Virginia, Lynn, and Darnell – besides being just about the nicest and most interesting and funny women you’d ever want to meet – give hope to writing groups everywhere by being members of a four-member writing group (fourth member Pamela Duncan was unable to attend the weekend) – unpublished when they started – who have now all been published by major publishers.

By Saturday night, after two full days of panel discussions on writing and reading (and a lot of good food), we were all ready for our Big Hair makeovers to get us ready for the Ball of Hair that would cap off the weekend.  Kathy Patrick did the honors for several of the authors, while another handful of us were lucky enough to put ourselves at the mercy of the talented Debbie Rodriguez, author of Kabul Beauty School.  I was honored to have my hair done by this amazing woman who operated the first beauty school in war-torn Afghanistan.  I didn’t even complain when she decorated my hair with Christmas ornaments off the tree in Kathy’s shop, including a peacock with majestic tail feathers (some said it lent me a Gatsby-esque look) and a large green ball (only visible from the back).  Here we all are with our hair and make-up done, pre-costumes.

As for the Ball itself, I watched in amazement the costume contest among the various book groups -- it was a tight contest, but the group all in leopard print dresses won.  Visit Kathy Patrick's blog for photos.  All in all, an incredible weekend!

 

 

 

December 2007

About three years ago in a workshop with J. Robert Lennon I learned a trick of character development, which is to complete a sort of worksheet that asks questions about everything from the character’s education to favorite music to hobbies to habits to formative childhood experiences.  Now I complete this worksheet for every one of my characters as I’m writing, and it’s amazing how much contemplating such details can help in making a character feel real and alive.  I’ve been thinking a lot about character details this month especially – maybe it’s just the holidays that bring out everybody’s rigid preferences, their best and worst traits.  For example, the differences between me and my husband would fill a couple of worksheets nicely and you could begin to see where conflicts would naturally develop.

Just to start: I find it exciting to visit a Christmas tree farm on a below-zero sunny Saturday, love tramping through knee-high snow to find just the perfect tree, digging the snow out from around the tree’s trunk to allow it to be cut, and then dragging it many, many yards through the deep snow to where the truck waits.  He finds below-zero weather to be cold and uncomfortable and believes that the pre-cut Christmas trees at the gas station near our house would be just as functional as the one we labored so hard to locate.  Add to this the fact that I work indoors at a computer and he spent many years (until just a few months ago) working outside doing hard physical labor, and our characters may begin to flesh out even more.  The thing that’s great about this “difference of opinion” from a writer’s point of view is that neither of the characters is wrong, and their equally valid feelings will automatically create a multi-faceted conflict.

Of course, you’ll want to keep adding more details.  He likes coffee, I like tea.  His favorite part of Christmas dinner is the mashed potatoes and gravy, while I love the sweet potatoes, my mom’s special Jell-O, cranberry sauce, and my dad’s bread dressing.  Baking cookies together, he’s in a hurry to measure and mix (yet doesn’t preheat the oven until the cookies are all ready to go into the oven) while I’m methodical, planful, slow, doing my best not to miss a single step.  I could listen to nothing but Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” all through December; he likes the radio because he never knows what’s going to come next.  His ideal gift usually comes from Tool Crib, while mine… doesn’t. 

Of course, there’s common ground, too: we both love pumpkin pie and make far too much fuss over our cat.  And this year we decided to buy cross-country skis for our Christmas gift to each other.  Skiing is something we both did as kids, but we’d both gotten away from it for various reasons; I hadn’t skied in more than twenty years, he in fifteen.  But, on Christmas Eve day, we set out for the local ski trail with all our shiny new equipment, stepped our new boots into our bindings and then we were off.  We were still in the parking lot when we realized that he had my poles and I had his, which, given the fourteen-inch difference in our heights, was no small problem.  We switched poles, and then swooshed into the woods. 

Through some miracle of motor memory, we both found skiing to be easy and heart-liftingly fun, and as we made our way around the “beginner’s” loop watching the sun setting through the trees, we vowed to come back again soon to try the harder trails.  The day after Christmas found us on the intermediate loop.  The snow was falling fast and every branch of every tree was covered in white.  There was no sound except our shouts as we whooshed down hills and herringboned our way back up, looking ahead to what would be around the next bend, looking forward to the next time we could come back again and try the next-hardest trail.

Listing cross-country skiing on each of our “character worksheets” as a “formative childhood experience” would seem a good trick for a novelist to use.  Despite all the evident differences between us, there is this one off-the-wall, base thing from our childhoods where we can find common ground, a way for us to surprise ourselves and each other after so many years.

Happy New Year!

 

 

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