Her Last First Kiss

Sicko, pt 2

annabowling 2 Comments

If I can’t blend in, I may as well be who I am.
–Rainbow Rowell

Two days ago, I ran out of socks. The list of things I want most in life is as follows, in constantly shifting order:

  1. Tea
  2. pizza
  3. orange juice
  4. soup
  5. full use of my entire mouth, including but not limited to :
    • ability to wear lipstick again :pets lipsticks:
    • ability to brush teeth without having to work around large dome-shaped crust on lower iip.
    • expressions of affection to Real Life Romance Hero

Please note that “socks” is not on that list because I dragged myself out to the laundromat this morning and did a load, while listening to recordings from last year’s RWA Nationals. Also free writing while doing both of the above. Even under the weather, multitasking makes me happy.

This post was originally going to be another dip into the archives, with a continuation of my Duluth post, but it’s a big file and would need to be split into two posts, and I’m cranky. See item #1 on the list above. So, instead, I’m going to ramble.

Today’s quote comes from the fabulous Rainbow Rowell, and it fits with my current area of self-directed study. Today’s picture comes from my write-in with SueAnn Porter on Monday.  Since we both compose in longhand, we left the laptops at home and instead brought our notebooks. SueAnn worked with one. I brought three, because my brain was all scattered, unfocused and prone to wandering off without me.

SueAnn suggested that our first writing sprint would be brain dumping, which I sometimes call bloodletting, spewing whatever is in my head onto the page. That went in the black hardcover Picadilly, and I’d planned to use my black Pilot Varsity fountain pen for that exercise, but pen had other ideas, and my first page has a small, interestingly shaped blob of ink in the middle. I ended up using a different pen.

Note the absence of tea and presence of a can of seltzer with a straw sticking out of it.  The cookie, though labeled as “cookies and cream” was actually red velvet (thank you, Jess-the-Barista, for clearing that up; red velvet makes anything better) and ended up coming home with me, because with the writing and the talking, some things have to take a back seat.

The Abbington Park notebook did not get used in this session, as SueAnn suggested I face my hesitation about working on Her Last First Kiss by doing some character work . Maybe, she suggested, I’m balking at this particular jump because the themes strike too close to home. There is some truth to that. Granted, I do not live in the eighteenth century, am not a member of the nobility and Real Life Romance Hero and I have been happily ever aftering for some time now, so my love life is not as tumultuous as my characters’ romantic prospects.

The thing, though, is that, without knowing it, I had seeded this book with some personal issues. Not fitting into one’s family of origin? Yep, know that. Caregiving? Know that, too. This book isn’t about me; it’s about my hero and heroine, and those really are their issues, and it would change the story into something else entirely were I to take those aspects out and give my people other hurdles to overcome.  Well, okay, then. Guess we’re doing this.

Knowing what the roadblocks are doesn’t make them go away, but it does make it possible for me to look at them head on and see how to climb over or dig under them.  It’s not a bad thing. Part of that wandering around in the forest time was spent trying, often too hard, to write things to which I did not have a close personal attachment, and that went down in flames, so going to the other end of the spectrum seems like a logical step to take.

Maybe it’s a good thing SueAnn and I had this talk while my brain took frequent mini-vacations without me, because at the end of most of our sprints, I had pen (blue Pilot Varsity) in hand, scratching across the mottled ivory of the page, spelling out how my hero got from adorable cherub child to grown man with seriously warped self image, and responded with, “Really? Already? Are you sure?” and kept making a few more quick notes. Not a bad outcome, that. We’re going to have to have more write-ins like this, but next time, the cold sore is not invited.

 

Sicko

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For most of the last few days, I have been a lump under the blanket in the recliner. On Thursday night, I felt a suspicious tingle on my bottom lip. I’ve had enough of those to know what that meant: cold sore.

I hate cold sores. They’re painful. They’re  ugly. They sap my energy. They present a lot of complications for a lipstick loving tea drinker who was looking forward to pizza on Friday night. Until the scab drops, it’s goodbye to all of that and hello to ibuprofen and ointment and a brain whose new hobby is flitting off without me. In a word, not fun. Okay, those were two words.

Because I am me, the need to rest took a while to sink in. Friday, I did laundry and then hied myself off to the local CVS because all the ibuprofen in our house had expired last month. Saturday, I decided that I was feeling up to running the weekly errands with Housemate. I found out fairly quickly into that trip that I was not. I take some comfort in knowing I was mildly entertaining, and that I did have the presence of mind to replace toothbrush and two out of three lip products.

The adventure of Saturday errands over, I retreated to my recliner and blankey, played the Sims 4 game time demo until I’d exhausted the time allotted (will probably get the game with the next computer, but it’s a bit much for the current machine, as well as a more cartoony game than I generally like) watched DVDs, napped a lot, and wrote.

Today, I’m venturing out, ahead of the big snowstorm barreling our way, to meet SueAnn Porter for a write-in. I’m going to miss the tea, mightily, and spend my time sucking seltzer or iced tea, if I can make myself order that when it’s eleven degrees out and we will be buried under a blanket of white by nightfall. I have no idea what I’m actually going to be writing today.  Hopefully something Her Last First Kiss related, but if it ends up as freewriting or something else, that’s okay, too. I’m allowed a partial sick day.

Even when I feel like horse poop that’s been crushed by a steamroller, there’s still that part of me that wants to drag out of the energy-free sludge and head off to story world, because that’s my natural environment. So, the HLFK notebook goes into my bag, along with a fountain pen, because writing with those always feels like a special treat, and I’m going to give it a go. Total crash time afterwards, at least until it’s time to recap tonight’s Sleepy Hollow, but tomorrow could be a sick day and a snow day at the same time. Which I will probably spend writing. There could be worse things. Not being able to have hot chocolate while having a sick day and a snow day at the same time may be one of those, but I think I will live. There is something to be said for anticipation.

Floral Notebook Trio and Fountain Pens

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I think with pen and paper.
–Jude Deveraux

One of the things I’ve come to accept about my writing process in this past year is that I work best getting my initial ideas down in longhand.  This has always been the case, and it’s not going to go away.  I can stare at a blank screen and blinking cursor for hours, feel like a total failure as a writer and hate myself, but give me a pen and paper and zoom, off I go. Maybe I start off by freewriting, but that almost always shapes itself into something useful within a couple of pages.

What works best-best for me is when the right paper and the right pen for the right story all connect in my brain. This is not some artsy-fartsy time waster; it’s how my brain works, and I am done apologizing for it. In fact, for a writer of historical romance, it makes a lot of sense. My characters, most of them, would have done a lot of writing in longhand (barring those who are not literate, but we’ll get to them in another post.) The hero of Her Last First Kiss, for example, writes and receives letters, so that scratch of nib against paper is something he’d find very familiar.

Future bookmark, as soon as I make a tassel for it.

Even more gorgeous when in focus.

This past weekend, I had the chance to redeem a Staples gift card, a very thoughtful gift from a dear writer friend. I knew right off that I wanted to get backups for my Pilot Varsity fountain pens (recent fountain pen convert here) and so headed straight for the pen section. Three pack, black, blue and purple, the exact colors I wanted. Still need to visit the art supply store for red and turquoise, but that’s for another day.

Since no trip to Staples is complete without a full check of the perimeter, I headed for the back of the store and boom goes the dynamite. Paperchase display. Ohhhhhhhh. Insert favorite starry-eyed, drooling gif here. Stationery triage ensued, and lobster and seahorse themed fabric covered hardcover notebooks are on the agenda for next time (red and blue alternating lines inside, oh be still my heart.) What left with me, though, was a set of three cahier-style 5×8 notebooks, with plain, lined and patterened pages. Patterned.

See? Patterned!

See? Patterned!

The plain book is, of course, plain inside, but even the lined pages have me drooling, because we have images on every page. Every. One.

Shadow not included

Shadow not included

I cannot wait to start writing in this one. All three of them, really. Not sure what they will be for, though the most pressing need is Her Last First Kiss, though I already have notebooks started for that, but I can make these fit, dangabit. One can never have too many notebooks. One of my goals for the year is to get more into visual elements in my notebooks, so we will see if the patterned and/or plain pages can be useful for that purpose.

A friend asked me if I was going to use these pens in these notebooks, because they look like they go together. Still not sure on that, as I need to test the inks on the papers. Fountain pens can sometimes bleed through, and I haven’t used them on Paperchase before, so that remains to be seen.

One last shot before we go today, all three covers side by side.

My preciouses

My preciouses

The Magpie Phase

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When you feel you are on a wrong-headed path, the quickest way to get where you want to go is to turn around, head back, and start again from the point you went askew.
—William Fitzsimmons

Wise words for the start of the new year, from my newest musical crush.  Music and I tend to find each other, lately through the browse option on Spotify, which I love, and as soon as I heard “From the Water,” I knew I had found something to add to my magpie hoard for Her Last First Kiss.  I could go on about the intoxicating melodies, the raw emotion conveyed in poetic prhasing (how could I not love a singer/songwriter who can correctly and effectively use “soylent” and “picayune” in the same song?)

It’s a brand new year, this 2015, time to forge ahead and trust that I know how to do this writing-a-book thing. I’ve done it before. I can do it again, and the other stuff of life is going to have to get in line. I’m still not talking much about Her Last First Kiss (aka HLFK) at this point, because I am, contrary to my expectations (a favorite Dutch proverb states, “Man plans, God laughs.” Another favorite in that category says, “Pray to God and row toward shore,” which is also appropriate.) There are times when a story will look the writer square in the eye and say “I am more than what you think I am.” To which the writer often responds with something along the lines of nervous laughter, shifty eyes, and frantically sifting through notes because this thing was going to be all planned out, and…oh, very well.

The magpie stage is like preparing the nursery for a new baby. We’re going to need to babyproof everything, get a crib with sides that will both stay up and come down easily when needed, string up the mobile to keep baby occupied, because that rapidly growing brain is not  “doing nothing” while the kid is so young that it looks like all they are doing is lying there.  They’re doing tons, but since they don’t have language yet, they can’t tell us.  With books-in-the-making, this is the time for gathering all the stuff the writer is going to need to make this thing happen.

Notebooks and pens, yes. New file, sure. Scrivener and I basically stare at each other, as I’m still figuring that out, but one of the things I have learned from my NaNot this year is that I need to put the mechanics aside for a while. Feel the story. Know the story. Know how it feels, because I write romance. This is all about the heart, the broken, bleeding, barely beating hearts of two people who are absolutley convinced that love is not for them, because they’re too far gone. They are wrong, of course, and I can promise them a happily ever after at the end of the book. Between Once Upon a Time, and Happily Ever After, though, anything can happen. I do know what happens, but what happens isn’t enough.

How does it feel for each of them as they go through their lives? These aren’t plot points to them; to my story people (it doesn’t seem right to call them characters) this is their lives. My  hero, who really, truly, honestly believes there is nothing about  him that matters besides amusing others with his failures. My heroine, who really, truly, honestly believes there is no room in her life for joy, because she must give all to duty. They’re wrong, of course, and I can prove that, not only with the culmination of their story, which I know already, but with all the steps that lead up to it.

In this, my magpie stage, I flit about, collecting all the bright and sparkly things for this story’s nest. Historical background, yes, but here’s the thing – they don’t know they’re historical characters. The late eighteenth century is their now.  As for me, I’m here, so I have a few centuries more of resources, and even if they don’t know who Mary Chapin Carpenter or Rainbow Rowell  or William Fitzsimmons are, those creators have had a hand in stirring this pudding.

I’m reading like crazy, more outside historical romance than I had thought I would for this book, though HLFK is definitely that genre, but that deep-down heart trauma, I am going to take that wherever I can find it and let it soak into my marrow.  Dangit, this hero and heroine deserve that. They deserve everything I can give them and more. I am honored that they picked me, that they are letting me feel them, not merely acknowledge that they exist.  I am watching movies as diverse as The Smurfs (1 and 2) and Diner and Shutter Island and episodes of TV shows I’ve loved for years, and those I’ve never seen before, because there is a spark of something I can pluck from that and add to my toolbox.  There will be a Pinterest board, which will be secret, because I need current project boards to be secret; I’m surprised at that, but it’s one of the things I’ve learned about my own process, and that’s okay.

Chattering, too, as magpies do, when time and context are right.  Still learning the right balance on that one, but I do know that talking is a part of my process, which is a living thing. I’m looking forward to this new adventure 2015 will bring.