Betrayal Beneath the Spanish Moss, Leslie Stern,’s novel about  Emma, a beautiful, rich, and intelligent woman who gets involved in a relationship with, Jake, a drug addict is a real page turner.    I have discovered that, Leslie Stern, who I met at author, Rosemary Daniell’s, Zona Rosa writer’s workshop here in Savannah, has included some good advice in her book. 

She talks about the “Giant Killer” philosophy which is based on the story of David and Goliath.  She explains this theory to Jake, hoping it will help him kick his drug habit.   The philosophy goes as follows:  Do the difficult tasks in your path first, then do the easy ones.  This builds up your confidence.   Simply put, do the things you don’t want to do  right away.  (For instance, don’t check your e-mail or get on Facebook when you should really be working on your writing, write the 1000 words you promised you’d write today and then check your e-mail, etc.) 

Doing the difficult first is called using your mind instead of just doing.  “Think first. Giant killers take the high road, the more difficult path.  Giant killers not only see what they want but what the outcome will be,” Stern says in her novel.  Thanks for the great advice, Leslie.   I feel certain I’ll be getting more tips from reading your compelling novel.

Okay now that the “Giant Killer” philosophy has kicked in to get my blog updated, I’m going to nudge Tessa and Claudine, the sisters in my current novel back into action.   Much to Tessa’s dismay, at almost nineteen, Claudine is now engaged and about to marry Frank.

When I am working on a novel, I sometimes have to take a fork in the road and work on something else, just for a breather.  At a local writer’s group, I suggested that we write a short piece about our past involving our parents or grandparents.  I wrote about my great grandmother, Mae Stone, who lived in our home when I was a child, and I’d like to share it with you.  Feel free to leave a comment.  I’d love to hear from you. 

July, 1944

            Mae Stone took a tray of oatmeal raisin cookies from the oven and set it down on top of the stove to cool.  From the dining room hutch, she retrieved a silver tray to hold the cookies and a two small crystal bowls, one for mints, the other for the mixed nuts.  Her friends loved to munch while they played cards.  She heard a familiar squeak as the back porch door opened and then slammed shut.  Her great-granddaughter, Charlotte, ran into the kitchen.

            “It sure smells good in here.  May I have a cookie?”  Charlotte darted over to stove and stood beside the tray.

            “Just one,” Nana said.  “You girls can each have a cookie. The rest are for my friends.  “They’ll be here before long.  Take a cookie outside to your sister, and then both of you girls have to come inside and get cleaned up.”

            “Did you make those fancy sandwiches you cut up in little triangles?”

            Yes, honey.  I have the pimento cheese sandwiches in the refrigerator, and the iced tea, too.  Your mother set up the card table in the living room before she left for work.  Using the spatula, Mae took the cookies off the metal tray and put them onto the oval serving dish.  Next, she filled the crystal bowls with mints and nuts.  Charlotte popped a two pale pink mints into her mouth and then ran across the red linoleum floor and she headed back outside, her dark brown pigtails flying behind her.

            “I’ve got a cookie for you,” she hollered to her sister, Lisbeth, who was sitting with a neighborhood friend underneath the weeping willow tree in the side yard.  Her sister ran over to get the cookie.  “We have to go in and wash up now,” Nana’s lady friends are coming soon.” 

            “I’m clean enough,” Lisbeth said, looking down at her shorts and T-shirt.

            “No, you’re not.  Besides you have to put on a dress.  Follow me, or I’ll get in trouble,” Charlotte said.  Lisbeth ate her cookie, said goodbye to her friend, Ruth Ann, and then sauntered toward the back porch.  

            After taking her flowered apron off, Mae arranged the food in the living room, putting the sandwiches and cookies on white lace doilies on the mahogany serving table, and the small crystal bowls on the corners of the dark green card table.  Then she hurried into her bedroom past her sewing corner where she’d spent hours hand sewing quilts..            

            She used a hexagon-shaped piece of cardboard as a pattern to cut out the pieces from whatever cotton material she could find.  She often took the dresses her great-granddaughters had outgrown and used the material for her quilts.  The girls liked to help select which pieces to use next..  She’d made both of them a quilt for their twin beds.  “Remember when I was really little and wore this dress,” Mae often heard the girls say to one another as they pointed to their quilts.  She figured stitching quilts for them was a way of giving them a part of herself.  She often thought about the girls as she stitched.  She had been seventy-six years old when the girls were born.  And now they were five and six.  My, but the time had flown past.

            Mae returned to the living wearing a navy dress, a triple strand of pearls given to her by her late husband, Henry, and her new navy shoes with a wedge heel.  A small German lady, even with the one-inch heel, she still did not stand five-feet tall.  Mae had powdered her pale skin, added a touch of rouge, and pulled her white hair back into a bun.  She rather liked the new round, wire-rimmed glasses she wore.    

            “Nana, they’re here,” an excited Charlotte said when she heard the tires on the Cousin Ella’s black Ford hit the gravel in the driveway.  Charlotte ran to the window and peered out.  Lisbeth stayed in her room at her desk playing school.  She liked to pretend she was a teacher.  And besides, she hated having Cousin Ella and Nana’s other two friends, Bess and Ada Jane hugging her to death. They were nice enough, but they wore strong perfume that about gagged her.  Lisbeth always waited until they were seated and playing cards before she said hello.  At that point, the ladies were unable to give full hugs, only pats on the back or a half hug.

            “They’re here now,” Charlotte ran into the bedroom and said.

            “I know silly.  I can hear the noise.”

            “Nana wants you to come in and say hello.  You’d better come right now. You can sneak food.  Those ladies are so busy talking, no one even notices,” she said before she turned and ran back into the living room. 

            Lisbeth smoothed out her blue ruffled pinafore and walked into the living room, her Mary Janes clicking on the hardwood floor.

            “Well, don’t you look like a little princess?  I love those blond curls,” Ada Jane said.  “Come over here and see me honey.”   Lisbeth hesitated, then headed to Ada Jane’s side and received a small pat on the arm.  “Want some candy, dear?”  Ada Jane held up the bowl.  Lisbeth  took several mints.

            “Thank you,” Lisbeth said, smiling.  She quickly grabbed a few more mints.

            “How old are you now, dear?” Cousin Ella asked.

            “I’m five, but I’ll be six in September.  I’ll start first grade at Lincoln School,” Liisbeth said.

            “Well, good for you.  Oh my goodness.  Wait until I tell your uncle you’re going to first grade.  He’ll be so excited.”

            “You mean Uncle Adolph?” Lisbeth said.  All four women turned and glared at her.  A confused Lisbeth scrunched up her face, glancing at Nana, who put her short pointer finger to her chin and shook her head back and forth, gesturing no.  Lisbeth didn’t understand.  What was that supposed to mean?  She had no idea what was going on.  Was she interfering with their card game? 

            “Charlotte’s waiting for me.  I’d better go back to my room,” she said, wanting to get away from the women..   She tiptoed out of the room. 

            “She’s just a child.  You can’t blame her,” she heard Nana say as she left.

            “Did you eat more cookies” Charlotte asked when she got back to her room.

            “No, just candy,” she said.

              That evening when it was time to tell Nana goodnight, Lisbeth kissed her on the cheek and then finally got the nerve to ask what she had done wrong at the card table that afternoon.  “Honey, you must remember this.  You cannot call Cousin Ella Dieckmann’s father anything but Uncle.  No one dares to call him Uncle Adolph any more.  I’m certain I told you that.”

            “Well, why not.  That’s his name?” Lisbeth said.

            “Trust me.  It’s simply not a good idea.  Some day you’ll understand.”

Believe me, it takes true grit to write every single day.  And it takes a double dose of grit to revise a manuscript and turn it into a finished product.

I mean there is that first draft.  I struggled through that with my current book, Tessa and Claudine, and then I plodded along on a second draft, and still I found myself saying to no one in particular, “Who wrote this drivel?  Surely, not I.”

Now, I’m back at the drawing board with revision number three, and with the help of an insightful leader and encouraging cohorts in a novel writng workshop, I finally see the scenes coming to life. 

I love dialog.  It’s comes natural to me.  However, I get so involved in relaying my story via conversation that I forget to let the reader inside my protagonist’s head.   I need to pause and slow down the action.  I’ve been told that I need to blow up the balloon.  My readers need to relate to my main character.  Is she hurting?  Is she ready to make  a decision?  Is she gaining ground or losing?   Does she feel abandoned or loved?   Is she hiding her true feelings?  What is she learning?

It takes true grit to keep on revising, and it take a double dose of grit to plod along when you and your characters are running into brick walls.  But, the more you face  the truths inside the characters, the easier it gets.  And the reward will be a better finished product.

I’m beginning to like this idea of  blowing up the balloon. 

Happy writing and Happy New Year.   By the way, I saw True Grit on New Year’s Eve and loved it.   Any other movie recommendations? Perhaps this year’s blogs will revolve around movie themes.  Who knows?

I can see the light of January just around the corner, and even though the temperature outside is a bit nippy, it warms my heart. 

January means more writing time.  Hurray. 

I’m ready to shake my characters back into action on a daily basis.  That means:  sit butt on chair in front of computer and crank out the words.   I worked on Chapter Eleven yesterday. 

Tessa had to buckle up and help her Mother get ready for her marriage to  Harry, even though Tessa and her sister, Claudine, were not invited to the ceremony.  Go figure.  Her mother, Eva Mae, is a strange one.  Tessa begged to attend, but no, her mother says she and Harry want to keep it small.  Good grief the woman really is crazy.  I tried to get her to change her mind, but no Eva Mae has to have her way.  Tessa worries that having Harry move in to their small apartment will cause problems.  She’s pretty much on target.  

Her sister, Claudine, is ignoring the whole situation.  She simply wants to finish her senior year in high school, get a job, and move on with her own life.  “But what about  me,’” Tessa says.  Claudine acts like she could care less about her sister.  It’s all a big mess, and I have to figure out how to get these two girls back in synch, because after all, that is what this book is all about.  Tessa wants more than anything to have a relationship with her older sister.  I’m not so sure that’s going to happen.  This family has its share of problems.  Tessa is beginning to think she should get the heck away from them.  I can hardly blame her.   Chapter twelve awaits.  I’d better get back to the action.

Have a great New Year’s celebration.  Happy writing to all of you writers.   Remember to just sit yourself down and write.

“Sometimes real life takes over my fictional fantasies. I recently found myself in ambulance on the way to the ER after suffering a coronary spasm while driving my car.  Not fun, I can assure you.  The ambulance driver asked me if I’d been under any kind if stress.  “Not really,” I said.  After all, I had walked three miles that morning with my good pal, Phyllis, and that afternoon I planned to give a talk to a book club.  Life was rolling along at a normal speed.  I almost mentioned that Tessa and Claudine were driving me a bit batty, but I kept my thoughts to myself.  Think about it.  If that guy found out that Tessa and Claudine were fictional characters, he’d be sure to question my sanity.

Just for the record, I’m home and doing much better, but I must mention my twelve hours in ER land.  Here goes:  I was placed on a gurney in the hallway that was mobbed with doctors and nurses scurrying in every direction.  The rooms were all filled.  Gurneys covered every inch of space.  A young doctor named Aaron stopped by and asked me a list of questions.  He looked like he just stopped playing with his Brio train and didn’t need to shave.   He took notes.  I imagined him writing down.  “Older woman.  Typical chest pain case.. “I’ll report this to Dr. Rogers, my boss, he said and walked away.  In side my head, I started humming,  “Oh, its a wonderful day in the neighborhood…”

I got wheeled into a small room and hooked up to a heart monitor.  My husband paced the floor.  We were in a supply room which became a great people-watching center.  We heard voices and saw all kinds of action outside the door.  A new patient arrived, a woman on a gurney.  “Ma’am, why did you call an ambulance,” an attendant asked.

“I was feeling lousy,” she said.

“Do you have pain in your chest?”

“No.”

“Any vomiting?  Didn’t you say you’d been throwing up?”

“No, I never said that.”

“Did you fall?”

“No.  I didn’t fall.  My bones are just fine.”

“Why did you call?”

“I just did.  I feel real bad.”  The man sighed.

A male nurse took my blood pressure.  He said they were trying to get a  hospital room for me, but the hospital was full.  My husband went out to get us a sandwich.   After we ate, they moved me out of the supply room, rolled the gurney out the door.  That’s when the real circus began.  It was 9 pm, and life in the ER had begun to escalate.

I got wheeled past an African American man who refused to lie down on his gurney.  Like a jack-in-the-box, he sat up.  The nurses laid  him back down.  Up, down, up down.  It continued.  He talked in a loud voice.  He pointed at me as we passed by.  He jabbered and laughed, pointed at other patients, and shouted.  It seemed he was flying high on something, feeling no pain.  The other patients scowled,  acting irritated at his noisy behavior. 

“Cleveland,  now just where did they pick you up this time?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t reckon I recall,” he said, with a sly grin.  “I jes don’t recall.”

I made a trip to the restroom, right next to Cleveland’s gurney.  I had left my long pants on.  I’d seen enough people walk past with hospital gowns on, their rear ends hanging out.  “Hey, girlie,” he said, pointing at me.  I refused to make eye contact with him.  When I headed back to my room, I noticed a  husky, strong-looking police officer walking with a huge ER patient  in handcuffs.  Once this patient got onto an oversized gurney, they handcuffed him to the rails. 

Barney, the transport nurse, kept busy wheeling patients to X-ray.  He took me down the hall, on what he admitted was the hospital’s squeakiest gurney, for a chest X-ray and then brought me back.  At this point, we’d been in the ER for nine hours.   On the way back to my ER cubicle I watched as nurses and doctors rushed from patient to patient  I saw all varieties of patients young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, Asian, Caucasian, Spanish, African American, and who knows what else.  Cops hung out in every corner.  A black woman over six feet tall walked in limping, her hands handcuffed behind her, a strong-looking female police officer at her side. 

“Do you think my wife will get a room tonight?” my husband asked a nurse. 

“I’ll check,” she said.  “She’s been here a long time.  A lot of people won’t.”  She came back an hour later and said,  “Consider yourself  lucky.  You’ve got a room.  It still needs to be cleaned, however.” 

We left the ER after 12 1/2 hours.  I felt like I’d had enough real life for one day.

I love it when I’m reading a book and I come across dialogue, especially after I have plowed through several paragraphs of description and exposition.   All of a sudden the characters are talking to one another, and the story really rolls along.  I feel so good because I get to listen in on the conversation.  I’m anxious to hear what the characters have to say.  I never want to know too much about what they are thinking about.  I just want them to spit out those wonderful words.  

And, I want the characters to sound like real people.   If they speak in long sentences, it doesn’t work for me.   People don’t talk that way.   Really good dialogue sounds clipped.  It includes both what is said and what is left out.   What is not said allows me to wonder.  I learn a lot about the characters by noting the way they speak. 

Often in good dialogue, I can tell that one person is not listening.  Instead, just like in real life, they are thinking of what they are going to say next.

As for me, what I am going to say next, is that it’s time to go back to revising my novel, Tessa and Claudine.   Tessa just gave her sister, Claudine, a tongue lashing.   As usual, Claudine ignored her. 

Bye for now.

Hello there:  I’m taking a fork in the road.  No major writing tips this time, though I am sending you to a fun writer’s site to enjoy:  www.mamasweat.blogspot.com

In her latest blog, Kara Thom has written the most hilarious piece, complete with fun photos about her son’s (and I might add my grandson’s) first race.  This guy has three older sisters who all participated in a family race.  They tried to get the little guy to race. Take a look and see what happens.  It is priceless.  And so well done by writer, Kara Thom, who has co-authored a new book which will be out soon:

Hot(Sweaty)Mamas:  Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom

I’m a workshop junkie.  I attend these gatherings to get a critique of my work.   I used to come home, look at all of the pen marks on my chapter, and then begin to make changes.  I don’t do that anymore.   Now, I return home and mull over the questions my workshop leader and others in the class asked about my protagonist, about the relationships between my characters, and about the structure of my story.  I check to see if certain scenes move my story line forward.  I remind myself to trust my reader.

The next day, I work on the next chapter of my novel, and get excited thinking about the new directions in which my plot can flow. 

I also begin to correct small changes in my critiqued chapter but save major changes for down the road, when I can see where the story line is taking me.  I make notes in the margin and clip or stick-on notes regarding changes I’m not exactly sure about.   And, eventually it all comes together.

I find that, after a critique session,  taking time to think about revision is valuable.   I learn more this way.  I often take a walk and rehash my story.  I focus on the scenes and recall the constructive comments I’ve received.  That’s when the creative juices begin to flow. 

Sometimes, when I go out to dinner with my husband, Doug, I still have the juices flowing.  He gives me this look and says, “So how many characters are out to dinner with us tonight?”

“Only a couple,” I say with a sly grin.  “And they don’t eat much.”

Here we go –  more about emotion in writing:

In my last workshop session, I once again got margin notes indicating that I needed to add emotion.  I must be a slow learner.

This professor doesn’t mince words.  In one spot, he said, “Make your character speak like a 16-year old, humanize her or else the reader will close the book.”   He’s slap-you-in-the-face direct and admits it but says he knows we can take it.  We can.

In my revision.  I’m using more internal thought, and  I’ve eliminated some surface statements which do not show Tessa’s feelings.  If the reader doesn’t understand what she’s feeling, they won’t relate to her.

For instance, the day Tessa goes out the door to leave town with her sister, Claudine, and her mother, she wants to tell her stepfather, Luke, goodbye.  But, she doesn’t.  I don’t explain why nor do I give the reader the visceral sense of the scene.  As you can see, I have some deep revision to do.

By the way, I’d like to report that further along in this same chapter, the professor actually pointed out a few pages that he thought were “great. ”  He said what I’d written worked well because I’d not only let the reader see the scene, but the reader could also feel the emotion.  (Whew, it felt good to tell you something positive for a change. )

I hope my revision tips have been of some help.  Keep on writing.  I  write because I honestly don’t know how to stop writing.   It’s kind of like breathing for me.

And you?  Why do you write?

Lisbeth

Hello all.  Glad you stopped by.   I got my chapter back from the 3rd the summer workshop session, and it was covered with a gazillion pen marks. 

It turns out that I’m only touching the surface of my main character’s emotions.  Stephen King says in his book, On Writing,  ”Don’t stop writing a scene because it’s hard emotionally.”   I think that’s why I’ve been simply skimming the surface.   (Twenty lashes with a wet rag for me.)  When Tessa’s sister, Claudine, goes after her boyfriend while she’s lying in a hospital bed after getting her front teeth knocked out in a car accident, I don’t show her emotions.  I’ve got to let my readers know that she feels like she’s been stuck in the gut with a sharp knife.  And it hurts like hell. 

A second critiqued comment was about my tendency to jump into a journalistic mode.  I did just that in a scene where Tessa’s friend Lisa comes by and insists Tessa get her butt out of the house where she’s been  hibernating while her face heals.  The teenagers walk downtown.  I have a golden opportunity to show character in this scene.  Instead, I give a journalistic report.   In my revision, I plan to let the reader see the buildings, smell the doughnuts in the bakery, get a glimpse of what other shoppers are wearing, hear the clerk comment on Tessa injuries and Lisa’s trendy outfit, have Tessa see her face in a store mirror and get teary-eyed, and listen to the two girls share their thoughts.   Tessa may even notice the sawdust on the floor of the remodeled drugstore when they stop in for a milkshake.  These are only ideas, but it will be a real scene, not a newspaper report.

I hope my ramblings have helped you realize the importance in digging deep for emotion and in setting a scene in your writing.

Happy writing.  Have a good day.