English: Fireworks on the Fourth of July, 2009; Happy Birthday America! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the greatest feelings in life springs from seeing physical manifestation of your work. I and many of my fabulous authors are experiencing that very feeling right now. Laptop Lit Mag has just published our second issue 
Be sure to read these wonderful stories and poems.
Also, let freedom ring.
Men who look like this:
do exist in real life. I swear they’re not all just on tv. I saw one driving home from work the other day. He was real.
I think I feel a story coming on …
So I know my last few posts have not necessarily concerned writing per se, and the reason for that being, I have not written much in the past week. I’m working on that, but I’ve been stuck in a bit of a dry spell which is ironic since New York decided to honor all its residents of Irish decent and rain like freaking hell for two weeks straight. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the green becoming greener since it really is my best color, however all the Yankee games have been messed up resulting in a 4 hour rain delay on the ONE DAY ALL SEASON I GOT TICKETS FOR MY WHOLE FAMILY!
Sorry, this event occurred a few days ago, but I’m still a bit bitter if you couldn’t tell.
Moving on the Relevant Topics, I believe I have discovered the Reason behind the Writing Rut: I’m sick of my story.
GASP! What did you say, Miss Rosemary? You are tired of Laura’s Letters, the one novel that has been with you the longest and features the imaginary man with whom you are passionately in love?
I am actually in love with this Real Man, but it brings back Horrid Memories of Embarrassment and I don't want to talk about it. Dear Friend Megan understands. Oh nights in Piccadilly ...
Well, yes quite frankly, I am. I’ve been focused on trying to finish this damn novel for so long that it’s all coming out forced. I’m forcing the story out, not letting it force me to stay awake until four in the morning because it so desperately wants to be written. My slight affliction with OCD doesn’t help; it prevents me from skipping little not so exciting scenes in the middle and jumping to the very exciting scenes in the end which is turning all scenes into forced scenes. This thing would be finished if I wrote what popped into my head when it popped into my head. I also think my plots would not change as much if I just wrote them down already instead of waiting for them to come chronologically in the story. But no, I cannot allow myself to do that, that would make sense.
So, due to this … let’s call it a Predicament … I have decided that Major Changes must be implemented.
The First Change
Laura’s Letters is being put aside for the Time Being. This Time Being may last one day, it may last one month, it may last one year. The conclusion is, I have to stop thinking about it and let other characters steer me for a while. I have three novels complete which are in desperate need of Revision.
As soon as I get home from work today, I will take up the task of finishing typing Damn Brits (a title which I hate but cannot think of a replacement for at the moment). This novel I began exactly two years ago, started revising and never finished. It is set in London, a place I do love despite their Snow Inadequacies (I’m sorry British readers. I will never be over it. Never) but I had only visited for three days when I wrote the original manuscript. Two years later I have lived in London. I know the great places. I know specific streets. I know the Underground lines. I’ve walked around the dodgy areas at night both completely clueless and completely pissed (both meanings of the term apply). What seems fake in the novel now, I can alter and authenticate.
The Second Change
When I do return to Laura’s Letters, I’m tackling it with a different approach. One of the other reasons this thing is not complete is that I have so much going on within it: two (possibly three) romances, brotherly tensions, mother-in-law problems, WWII, court intrigue, wealth vs. poverty, religious conflict, father/daughter struggles (for five different characters), kidnappings, maybe a death, 20th Century royalty, villains, heroes and ex-girlfriends to name a few. I’ve come to realize that this is going to be a Big-Ass Book. Like Margaret Mitchell or Diana Gabaldon big. I can’t decide if I want to cut it in pieces or leave it. The problem with breaking it up is, there’s no good place to cut it. The plots are very continuous and build too much to be fragmented. Big-Ass Book it is.
See? Big-Ass Book
This means that I have to keep my storylines straight. Since I don’t write first drafts on the computer, but rather in journals, this presents a problem when one storyline is progressing more than another. Fortunately, in addition to OCD, I am afflicted also with a disease known as Impulse Buying. Many of you may suffer from it as well, and you will know that once you see THE pair of shoes you just HAVE to have them. For me, it’s not shoes. It’s journals. I believe I bought over ten journals in three and a half months while traipsing around Europe. I had to ship them home so my bags would not be overweight (they were overweight anyway, but that fact is irrelevant).
So I have plenty of journals. The New Plan is to devote one journal to a specific storyline and combine them all later, rather than attempt to write the whole thing as it will appear in novel form. Thomas and Laura’s romance is the crux of it all, hence I will write their story first. This also includes her conflicting emotions about the family who abandoned her, trying to live peaceably with Thomas’s mother, adjusting to his wealthy circle and recovering from abuse she suffered as a child. That could possibly be enough for two journals of itself so Nathan’s struggle to best his brother and eventual romance with Gemma will be a separate one. Lance’s battle to stay alive on the battlefield and battle his as of yet unnamed ex for custody of their daughter gets one too. And the bad guys just get thrown in everywhere.
There you have it. Major Changes and a Big-Ass Book.
What do you do when you want to finish a story but just can’t? How do you keep your intertwining storylines straight?
Rise from bed and determine to finish writing the scene one has been trying to write for the past two weeks. This is not to say one has not written at all in two weeks, just not as much as one would have liked.
Shower. Now this may seem insignificant to The Plan Concerning Writing, but in fact it is not. For how can one write if one does not have the scene down pat in one’s head? Unpreparedness is unacceptable. Proper planning is essential for proper writing.
*Fine so I don’t really do much proper planning, but I do enact the scenes and conversations in my head while I am by myself in the shower or the car or whatever. The aloneness makes it easier for me to work through kinks and figure out exactly where I want the story to go.*
Go to work. A serious bump in the road to writing.
Step FourReturn home pumped from another hour and a half of internal planning via car ride. Totally ready to write this shiznit.
Stare ineffectually at a blank page, urging and coaxing the words to no avail, only jotting a few and drawing very little personal satisfaction from them.
Endeavor to find inspiration from veteran authors via one’s favorite books. Buryoneself in a world of another’s creation through their masterful words and pages.
Lose track of the time and fall asleep with book in hand.
Rise from bed …
*Note ~ The cycle can also occur in reverse when one is determined to finish reading a novel while engaged in an unofficial reading race with a best friend to finish an impeccable series first, only to be hindered by one’s own characters who will not leave one alone and insist on being written NOW. One loses the reading race but does not mind because of significant writing accomplishments.*
Everyone says it. Like literally every writer, “Write what you know.” “The best writing comes from truth.” “It’ll work the best if you really know what it is you’re writing about.”
But what in the name of God does that mean? Fantasy writers can’t really know anything about what they write, it’s fantasy! Anything that is concrete in their genre has been born in the mind of some other writer. And what about fiction in general? The whole point of it is to be fake. Unless you specifically state in the beginning, “based off a true story,” your story is yours and yours alone. You came up with the idea by yourself. You didn’t originally know it anywhere in the outside world.
For years I struggled with this. I never wanted to write anything I knew just for the principle of it. I wanted all my fiction to just be fiction. I made my stories as wild as they possibly could be, just to avoid writing into the old adage. To me, writing what I knew denoted school work, essays, homework. Writing was an escape from all that, and I tried my very best to keep my fiction as far-fetched as I could make it.
THIS is what I wanted to avoid:
What I did not realize was that writers, good or bad, write what they know just by default. We can’t help it. Sure your story as a whole might not follow a completely true outline or pattern that you experienced, but a scene might. For example, I recently had this conversation with my mother over the phone about our dog:
Ma: “Pearl, the dog is crazy.”
Me: “I know, Ma, he has issues.”
Ma: “I’m trying to do the laundry and he keeps eating - RILEY! PUT THAT DOWN!! He has my bra. He’s a pervert dog, Rosemare, a pervert dog.“
Interestingly enough, Rosella and her mother have this very same conversation over the phone when she goes abroad to London (where I will be in the fall.)
Another such mama scene (she tends to make scenes my mother, maybe that’s where I get it from) has gone into a story. She was having a dinner party and spit out “Maddon” for whatever reason and one of the men in attendance looked at her with eyes as wide as saucers and his face lighting up like Rockefeller Center at Christmas time and said in the softest whisper, “My God, Cynthia. You’re Italian!?” It was just so comical that it had to go somewhere.
Characters from life also end up in fiction. As was already semi-mentioned, Rosella’s mother is basically my own mother. Her heritage is my heritage and her family strangely acts and looks a lot like mine. An evil character in Rescue Me is named after a guy who broke my heat (muahahaha! Just kidding) and Thomas recently adopted a phrase that … let’s call him my buddy, uses on a regular basis.
It happens with settings too. Candace goes to Fairfield University in Connecticut and woah! So do I! Little things from my life and experiences I’ve had pop up all over my novels and stories, even if they take place in 1943.
Even though I didn’t plan it, intend it or even want it, I wrote what I knew. Life has a funny little way of popping up in everything. It’s not the whole story. The whole novels are still fiction. But some little bits of them are true.
Write what you know. You can’t help yourself.
Creative Writing Status and Goals
BMK: Almost finished editing. Send first chapter to an agent or two ASAP.
Rescue Me: Laura is almost in college, wahoo!! This is a good place to be. Fill final seven pages of the thrid journal by Saturday and start the next scene.
Damn Brits: Type some more, damn it!
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