Miss Demeanors

I practice yoga just about every day. Don’t worry, I’m not going to proselytize. I am going to pass on a bit of yogic wisdom, though: Stand on your head.  Its rather wonderful to see a room upside down. You notice things you hadn’t paid attention to before. You see space underneath things. You spot chips on chair legs that had been invisible before. When you turn back right side up, you understand the room in a new way (and you know where the dust bunnies are hiding). When you find yourself stuck, turn upside down. You don’t have to actually do a headstand,  although by all means do so if it sounds appealing. What you do have to do is come at your work from a different point of view.  That may mean putting yourself in your antagonist’s shoes. Think about him as part of a family.  What kind of grandpa would he be? Bad guys can be grandpas. They can even be good grandpas. I’ve done this exercise with my favorite antagonist. I don’t discuss his family in Blessed be the Wicked, but I know he has thirty-three grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Knowing my villain watches his granddaughters play soccer and reads stories to his grandsons changes the way I feel about him. That changes the way I write about him. Try it. You might discover something about your characters and their lives you hadn’t known before. Namaste.   

 When I’m in the creative phase, I must meet my word count…except when I don’t. When I’m in the editing and revising phase, I must meet my page count…except when I don’t. It’s good to have default rules for your writing. It can be time, page count, word count, whatever makes sense for you. Establish your rules and follow them. Yes, there are times when you have to make exceptions. Those times should be, by definition, exceptional. Only you can judge that. Each of us knows when making an exception is valid and when it’s not. We know when we’re being lazy. I’m not against laziness. I love laziness. I love it so much that I use the promise of being lazy as a reward. I promise my inner lazy writer whatever she wants after I finish what needs to be done. I will sit by the pool, sip something cool, or watch that show I’m embarrassed to admit I watch after I finish.  Writers write, whether they’re feeling lazy or not. If you’re like me, and the idea of doing nothing is appealing, use it. If you’re reading this, however, and have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about laziness, give me a call.  I have a garage that could use some straightening.

 It’s hot. It’s sticky. If you’re feeling anything like me, you’re feeling a little lazy. Okay, maybe a lot lazy, but writers write. So how to keep it up as we enter the season of vacations, naps, and picnics? I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write through the tough periods. You know those times when your blank screen mocks you and your fingers aren’t able to find the right keys. (If you’ve never experienced this, count yourself blessed.) I know deep in my heart that it doesn’t matter whether the words come easily or not, I must write regardless. I also know that’s it’s more fun when you sit down to your computer and everything just flows. It’s nice when you start typing and the next thing you know, your characters have taken you down a road you never expected and the next time you look up, you’ve written three chapters. That’s a wonderful feeling. Savor it. None of us needs help when we have writing days like that. It’s harder when each paragraph–each word–comes slowly. When you find that your fingers keep hitting the delete key. Or worse: your fingers don’t want to move anywhere. Since I’m in the middle of one of those stretches, I’m going to share whats getting me through: (1) Be honest with yourself about your level of commitment. Last week, Ellen Byron (the amazing talent behind the Cajun Country Mystery series) wrote a wonderfully insightful blog on Career Authors about the difference between being committed and being interested. I won’t try to revise what she wrote. Please check it out yourself. The take away is: If you’re committed, you’ll do what’s necessary even when it’s uncomfortable and difficult.  (2) If you’re committed, you will figure out a way through. When I turned thirty, I committed to running a marathon. That meant running increasingly long runs every weekend. I did those practice runs pushing my young daughter in a purple baby jogger. As the runs got longer, her patience grew shorter. Let me tell you, when your baby starts crying, it’s hard to not just turn around and go home. But. . . but I was committed to running a marathon. I found snacks and toys to keep her occupied as I ran 18 then 20 then 22 miles along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.  Finally, I was ready. Then September 11th happened. My original plan for when and where I was going to run changed. Instead of giving up, I searched for the next marathon I could run without causing undue hardship on my family. Turns out it was Baltimore. The route back then was known for being hillier than Boston. I hadn’t trained for hills, but I registered anyway. My lack of uphill training manifested itself some excruciating knee pain by mile 5. A volunteer medic told me that even though the pain was bad, I wasn’t causing any irreparable damage. I kept running. I finished. The end.  If you decide you’re more interested than committed, by all means take the summer off. There’s nothing wrong–and everything right–with taking a break when you need it. If, however, you are committed, you can check back here this week for tips on getting through the challenging bits. On Friday, my fellow Miss Demeanors will share their best writing advice for getting to the finish line.  In the mean time, consider where you are on the interest-commitment spectrum. If you take the summer off: enjoy! If not: I hope you’ll share your thoughts on writing when the writing gets tough.  

 Writing is exhausting. Forget all those movies and TV shows where an author sits down in front of their computer or typewriter or notebook and whips out a masterpiece without effort. The scene in The Shining where Shelley Duvall discovers Jack Nicholson has typed (*spoiler alert*) nothing but “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” feels more accurate. So after I finish a manuscript, whether it’s a first draft or an edit, I have to take a break from writing to recharge my mental and emotional batteries. This time around, I got sick right after I turned my manuscript in. I could feel the sinusitis coming on the night I sent the email to my editor. I don’t recommend getting sick. I have to remember that lack of sleep and self-care at my age is not as easy to bounce back from as when I was in college. Fortunately, a bout of illness is not usually the way I recover from a bout of writing. Usually, I watch crime shows. Seeing crime portrayed in a medium different from the one I work in helps me get out of my head and lets me study story development, characterization, and pacing without second- (and third- and fourth-) guessing every word I just wrote. (I confess I binge-watched Netflix while fighting sinusitis but I went for mindless entertainment rather than quality drama. It’s hard to concentrate while under the influence of decongestants.) I also try to do something in a field unrelated to writing. Right now, that’s embroidery. I embroider because it lets me exercise a set of creative muscles that were neglected while working on my fiction. Speaking of exercise, I decided it’s time I did some of that, too. I signed up with a Pilates studio. Two reformer classes and I already feel good, physically as well as mentally. What are some ways you recharge after finishing an all-consuming project?

  Michele: I once went to a mediation conference in San Francisco determined to find Barbary Lane from Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin. It wasn’t easy, especially with a foreign cab driver thinking he had a nut case for a passenger, but I did it. It felt like a religious experience when I finally came upon those long steps. Another time, a friend and I forced my husband to drive through a tiny Cape Cod village in search of the scene of the crime where the murder in a true crime book we both were reading occurred. I’m not sure whether these qualify as literary pilgrimages, but they were definitely pursuits of passion!I also seem to find myself touring writers’ homes wherever I travel. One of my favorites is the Mark Twain Home in Hartford, Connecticut where you can now write in the same room he did (for the price of a donation, of course)  So, the question of the week to my fellow Miss Demeanors is, what literary pilgrimages have you gone on, or if you’ve resisted the urge thus far, where would you venture?  Robin: That’s an easy one for me. I went to New York and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel to soak in the literary history and see the Round Table before the hotel remodeled and removed it. A year later I went to Pere Lachaise in Paris to pay homage to the cultural and literary luminaries buried there, like Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein. I planned the trip when I heard Jim Morrison’s grave was going to be moved to the States. It’s still there but the threat got me to Paris.Fun fact: after I rocked the New York Pitch conference and knew I’d be signed by a rock star agent in the next few days, I celebrated with a glass of champagne at the Blue Bar at the Algonquin.   Oh, and I’m fortunate that living in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are lots of local pilgrimages, too. Last summer I joined my local chapter of Sisters In Crime on a walking tour of Dashiell Hammett’s homes and haunts in San Francisco.  Paula: When we first moved to New England, my son and I took a literary pilgrimage to Concord, Massachusetts, and toured Walden Pond, Emerson’s house, and Louisa May Alcott’s house. It’s one of our favorite memories together. I try to find a literary pilgrimage wherever I go. My friend Susan Reynolds and I have been to Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, my daughter and I went together to the Dublin Writers Museum, I’ve been with my fellow writers to visit such places as Jack London’s house, the Algonquin Hotel, the House of Seven Gables, the Globe Theater, and all the haunts in the French Quarter where the likes of Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Anne Rice have written great work.I loved them all. But the most moving place I’ve ever visited was in Amsterdam, where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. I was 12 years old and I still remember that terrible empty space vividly. I went home and read her diary for the first of many times.   Susan: Robin, I would love to go on a walking tour of Dashiell Hammett’s homes. How wonderful! I have a lovely book called Seeds by Richard Horan in which he goes to various writers’ homes and takes seeds from their trees and tries to plant them. I was so inspired that I resolved to get pine cones from various writers’ homes, but so far I’ve only made it to Mark Twain’s library in Redding, but I did get a pine cone! I did once spend a considerable amount of time tracking down the composer Alexander Scriabin’s home in Paris. It was very moving to see where he lived. I had used him as a character in one of my novels. Alison: I love this question, Michele, but I have no answer. The fact is, I’ve never made a specific literary pilgrimage. I don’t know why I haven’t. Reading about yours, Robin’s, and Paula’s journeys, I want to start. Count me in for the Dashiell Hammett tour!  Tracee: I’m with Alison! Maybe I should plan a few.  Cate: Ditto. Though I am going to Ireland In August and plan to visit some of Oscar Wilde, Yeats and James Joyce’s haunts.   Alexia: I haven’t been on any literary pilgrimages, probably because most of my favorite novels are set in fictional places, like Wonderland, Midsomer County, and St. Mary Mead. I do go to places where I’m thinking of setting stories, like Irish villages, English inns, and ancient churches. I rode the train from Chicago to West Virginia (the Greenbrier resort) because Nero Wolfe traveled by train to a fictional resort based on the Greenbrier. I seek out existing pieces of Route 66 to travel because of the song, Route 66. Writing this reminds me of one trip I took that might count as a literary pilgrimage. I went to Vassar College, which is in the Hudson Valley, Washington Irving country. So, one summer, when my parents came to pick me up to take me back home to Maryland for summer break, I made them drive through Sleepy Hollow and stop at all the places associated with Irving’s short story. I still think it’s hysterical that Sleepy Hollow High School’s team is named the Horsemen.          

 Most of the books I have loved best have evoked a strong emotional response from me. I have cried, felt triumphant or despondent, but never indifferent. Those are the books that stay with me. To Kill a Mockingbird, Mystic River, Angela’s Ashes and so many more. As a writer, I long to create that emotional connection with a reader. But how?            I’ve started a silly little experiment, which will require that I confess what an emotional SAP I am. I adore good romantic comedies and am fanatic about Cinderella stories. I’ve noticed since I stopped teaching evening classes and watch more television that I occasionally react emotionally to commercials. Yes, I know they’re contrived. I am the daughter of a man who worked in television advertising. I am still not immune to the ploys of Mad Men.            Take the Sebastian Gets Into College McDonald’s commercial. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/AX01/mcdonalds-committed-to-being-americas-best-first-job I’m smart enough to know how phony it is and have read the scathing criticism about McDonald’s corporate practices and horrible food, neither of which McDonald’s college scholarship program fully mitigates. I can understand why people may think it is a racial insult to see a young African American male bring his college acceptance letter to his white boss. But there is something very appealing to me in Sebastian’s expression when his boss reads the letter aloud to his burger-flipping colleagues who shout with joy for him. The look on Sebastian’s face vacillates between joy and apprehension. I may not be inspired to run out and buy a Big Mac, but the commercial reaches a level in me that wants to see underprivileged young people succeed and be encouraged by a community of workers. I want to live in a world where we have a sense of community and celebrate Sebastian on the brink of a new world that will also celebrate and welcome him. You go, Sebastian!            The TD Ameritrade commercials are harder to explain. They feature a man with a beard and glasses conversing with everyday folks about their lives and finances in a room with a very green couch and green walls.  In one ad, the bearded man learns his client would like to run with the bulls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm2BGd1vcDo These ads have inspired some viewers to want to punch the guy-in-the beard. https://hauntedcoconut.com/2017/05/17/i-want-to-punch-the-td-ameritrade-commercial-guy-in-the-beard/ But I am as captivated as I am confounded by how they draw me in. I like that a professional trained to give financial advice cares about the lives of the people whose money he is trying to manage. I guess I’m looking for a world where someone can make a living without compromising principles. The guy-in-the-beard seems honest and earnest. I like that. I’ve become aware that his voice is soothing and that the room where he has these conversations is tranquil and green. It reminds the writer in me that you can’t underestimate the value of tone and the impact of setting.            I’m entertained by many of the Subaru ads, particularly the one where the dogs driving a Subaru have it washed by a team of other dogs. But the one that reaches me most on an emotional level is the one where Grandma tells Grandpa to have fun as he sets off in his ancient Subaru for a fishing trip, while his grandson is on a parallel road trip in his new Crosstrek. Their paths converge at the ocean as they head into the water with their surfboards and Grandson conspiratorially gets Grandpa to admit Grandma thinks he’s gone fishing. https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wBov/2018-subaru-crosstrek-ever-young-song-by-vetiver It’s a sweet moment that bridges generations and celebrates family. I already own a Subaru or I might go out and buy one.  I picture Grandma, who left home in her own Subaru shortly after she got rid of Grandpa. She’s heading for the mountains where she’s going rock climbing. Don’t worry, she’ll be back before Grandpa ever knows.            Inexplicably, each of these commercials seemed to have unlocked a longing in me. That’s what I’m looking to do for my readers.            Do ads ever reach you at an emotional level? What can you learn from those that do?