Typing With Wet Claws: Plot Pants Puzzle Edition

March 4, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty is on a tight schedule today, with hunting for food (she hunts at a place called the “supermarket”) and writing things. She has some research to do for some upcoming articles, and then there is book work, which she thinks really ought to come first (I agree) but she also likes to be the strangest person in the Laundromat, so she likes to do the laundry early. Laundry time is very good time for Anty to sort through ideas in her head, and, if she has her headphone in, and keeps her head down and pen moving on the paper, people generally leave her alone to do exactly that. Well, sometimes, almost-grown-ups ask her how the machines work. If the owner is there (he was not there today, but the custodian was) she will chat with him some.

This week, Anty has a lot of feelings about what happened to Morgan and Garcia on Wednesday’s Criminal Minds, (or what will apparently not be happening between them in the future, because the writers decided to…what? Oh, sorry. Anty says no spoilers, so I will stop there.) but she did not have to write an article about that, so I cannot give a link to an article that does not exist. What I can say is that she and Uncle had a grumbly conversation about it yesterday -they are both on the same side, so it was not an argument- which showed Uncle’s impressive grasp of romantic arcs and character dynamics, as well as genre expectations and creative choices that limit options once a path has been chosen. Spend enough time around Anty, and these things tend to rub off on a person. Or kitty.

As Anty’s mews, I spend a lot of time around her. Pretty much all of it, except when she leaves the house, since I am an indoor kitty and only leave the house when it is v-e-t time. It is not v-e-t time now, so I have an up close and personal view of her creative process. When writers get to know each other, they will often ask if they are pantsers or plotters. That means, do they make things up as they go, with no firm plan (or a very loose one) or do they plan things out ahead of time? Anty has come to learn that she has to give a different sort of answer to that question: she is a puzzler. That does not mean she stares at a blank screen or page and puzzles over what comes next. Well, not all of the time.

these all fit together

What it does mean is that Anty does not always work from beginning to end. That may sound crazy to some -it did to Anty, at first- but that is how her brain works. Finding things that look like her story also help give Anty visual cues. Since Hero in Her Last First Kiss is an artist (she wanted him to be a musician, but he said no; Anty did not mind too much, because when characters tell her she got them wrong, that means that they are alive inside her head, which is a good thing.) the visual cues are even more important. They are another piece of the puzzle, and working in notebooks that look like the story helps her feel connected. That is why she is going to hunt at the craft store for some toile patterned cardstock so she can make better dividers for the binder where she keeps important story information. I like that, because I get to play with the strips of paper from the bottom of the cardstock; they are really fun toys. Anty holds one end and wiggles it, then I bat the other end with my paw. Sometimes, I get so into it that I even go back on my hind legs. Since my balance is sometimes special, sometimes, I fall over, but I get right back up, because I like to play that game. Falling over is worth it.

Anty is like that with writing. At one point, she thought that being punster was the ‘real’ creative path, and she tried that, but she soon felt like she was lost in the middle of the ocean, and did not know what was going on. Some of the stories during that time did not make it. Then, she tried plotting, and that worked better, but the stricter she tried to be with it, the more restrictive it became, and then she found that she could not move. Well, write, the same as when she tried to pay strict attention to word count. I think those actually happened around the same time.

This week, she played with index cards and listed scenes, then transferred that to her binder, color-coded, so she could see where she was missing things and what had to happen when. It literally can be a puzzle, when she sits on the floor with her index cards, or puts sticky notes all over her plotting board. When she can see what is missing, then finding out what goes there is a lot easier. That is probably why she has lots of sticky notes all over her notebook pages, because when the puzzle pieces start fitting together, they really start fitting together. Something that comes clear to her about the end of the book could fill in a hole about something she did not know near the beginning, so she can go back there, put down a sticky note and come back to it on the next pass.

I do not mind this at all, because it means more paper for Anty, which means more toys for me. Granted, I am in one of those learning how to play again phases, but Anty says that fits with her relearning how she works best. I guess that means we are in sync. That is about it for this week, so, until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Leap Post

March 3, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Not sure where I’m going with this, but an extra day in the month (all right, last month, technically) calls for an extra post. Right now, I am in my comfy chair, lap desk in my lap, a pile of pale yellow sticky index cards (how did I ever forget those existed; not thrilled with the yellow part, as that’s my least favorite color, but sticky index cards are the closest thing I’m going to get to cross breeding my office supplies) and Skye kitty snoozing in a sunbeam. Real Life Romance Hero is taking it easy after a hard week’s work, and I have the binder for Her Last First Kiss wedged between my hip and the arm of the chair.

In a bind(er)

Okay, not anymore, because I took it out so I could photograph it. I take a lot of pictures these days. Scrolling through my Instagram feed, I see it’s mostly my workspace and Skye, with a smattering of local food, current reads and art supplies, the odd bit of scenery and, surprisingly early this year, waterfowl. I did not expect to see ducks on Tuesday, but there they were, a pair of mallards, contentedly paddling their way along the greenish water I had last seen as a solid sheet of ice. Late winter/early spring in upstate NY is a curious thing, which I have come to accept.

Now that I’ve started talking, I have to keep going until I hit the magic number of 700 words. That’s the deal. Discipline is a big part of the writing process for me. Counting my words doesn’t work in the drafting process. Give me a pen and some paper and let me loose, and we’ll do the math when I come back up for air. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got this all figured out. It’s a long trip back up onto the horse when I fall off on things like this, but I do know that try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed works in actual writing as well as it does in fiction, though the real life version does not always play nice and follow the rule of three. Usually exactly the opposite.

I’ll haul out the old Japanese proverb here: fall down five times, get up six. Or sixteen. Or sixty. Or six hundred, if it comes to that. There’s a sweatshirt I saw once, in an ad (funny what pops up on one’s Facebook sometimes) showing clothing marketed toward drill sergeants, that said:

Sweat dries
Blood clots.
Bones heal.
Suck it up, Buttercup.

Summer, the heroine of my time-travel-in-limbo, immediately told me that was her favorite sweatshirt (she’s never been in the military, but she is a competitive dancer, and the words suit her, so okay, she can have it) and the words stuck with me beyond that. I don’t know when I’ll get that story written. I will, though, and it will likely be a far different tale than the one I’d found myself irretrievably stuck on, but, right now, I’m writing this book. Hero and Heroine’s book. Head down, eyes on my own paper. Keep on going until The End.

In the words of Elvis Costello, every day, every day, every day, I write the book. Monday through Friday means morning pages. By my count, I will need a new morning pages book in two weeks. Thankfully, I have a few candidates in my stash already. That fat stack of index cards turned into a page with scenes listed. Which turned into Scrivener files, which are easy to nip into an blabber upon. I actually like rewriting, so this isn’t staring at giant blank white wall, a strangled “uhhh….” rumbling in my throat because I’ve forgotten how to English. I’m a talker. I talk. I need to talk more.

I’m into the six hundreds now, and Skye is waiting on my left (her signal for “I really want your attention, Anty, and did you notice what time it is? Answer: treat time.) so time to wrap this up. Hypercritical Gremlins are grumbling behind their blanket in my office closet (blanket is hung over the hanger rod in lieu of a door) and, more importantly, the cat needs to be fed. To haul out another old proverb, (Japanese again, but don’t quote me on that,) the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Open the file. Open the notebook. Put something down. Anything will do. As a former writing group facilitator often said, the process begets the product. We got this.

Flowing Into the Next

March 2, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Yesterday, I ran out of white index cards. Yesterday, I saw two mallards swimming in the lake. when I walked home through the park after my weekly meeting with N. I’m not saying that ducks and index cards are related in any specific way, but that’s what came first to mind when I opened the window to write today’s blog.

Today, I danced in the Laundromat, listening to my Broadway selection playlist while I waited for the dryer cycle to complete. Today, I had a brief chat with the Laundromat’s other patron, because I always peek to see what book someone is reading, when caught doing so out in the wild. This time? Shanna, by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. I gave Other Reader a thumbs up and told her that was a great book she had there.

Other Reader responded that she loved everything she’d read by Ms. Woodiwiss, but this wasn’t the whole book. Someone had thrown it out somewhere, and a chunk was missing out of the end. Readers who love particular books know how big the book is, and this did not look anywhere near thick enough to be all of Shanna. I loved the determination in Other Reader’s voice when she informed me her next step would be the library, to pick up or request a whole copy of the book. I heartily approve of such actions.

Oddly enough, or maybe not, the book I was reading at the time, Angel in a Red Dress, by Judith Ivory (aka Starlit Surrender, by Judy Cuevas) is also falling apart. It was like that when I got it from the library, chunks of pages unglued from the spine (it’s a paperback) and part of me wants to ask the librarian if I can just have it if it’s going to be destroyed for said falling-apart-edness. Sign of a well loved book, to be sure, and I know, I could go buy my own copy, and probably will, but we’ve bonded, the two of us (but I’ll still do the right thing and return it; I’m not a savage, well, not in that respect.)

I got to page 338 of this particular edition, and I gasped out loud when certain information was revealed. This was one of those “I-did-n0t-see-that-coming” and “of course, how did I not know that all along” moments at the same time. This is a book that makes me gasp and choke and sniffle and want to bash heads and want to hug the pages back together and a number of other reactions non-readers would never understand, but readers and writers do understand. This. This is why I do what I do. This is why I write historical romance. This is what I’m aiming for when I open notebook and/or computer file, every day.

This is why I sat down yesterday, after passing the ducks on my way home after meeting with N, popped Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (okay, I had to watch the movie then, because it was my only chance before the library wanted the DVD back) into my old laptop and got out my stash of index cards, a black Sharpie, and wrote a short description of each scene I know is in Her Last First Kiss on each card. I ran out of cards before I ran out of scenes, which surprised me, but this does mean I get to buy more index cards. They look solid there, in their pile. Hefty, even. Substantial. Like a real book, because they are, encapsulated, the foundation of a real book.

It’s been a while since I had that feeling. The miscarried manuscripts never got to that stage, never put down that root. Maybe because I didn’t know that particular root needed to be there, but, once I started, there it was. One scene spilling into the next, into the next, into the next. Color coding the scenes, when I copied each one onto a sheet of graph paper, with felt-tipped pens, showed me where I have multiple chunks of Heroine scenes. What’s Hero doing through all of that? X, obviously. I’ll figure out the particulars of that later. I’ll know what I need to know, when I need to know it.

What I do know, right now, is that the focus, for me, doesn’t have to fit any prescribed shape, method, or form. Only what works for me. Life is going to happen (the alternative doesn’t make for a lot of writing, really, so good thing there) but as long as I move from Once Upon a Time to They Lived Happily Ever After, it’s all good. Ducky, even.

More-ning Pages

February 25, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

The rare Thursday entry, the natural product of having Monday’s entry on Wednesday. Blogging three times a week is a discipline that works for me, keeps my brain focused, so when I fall behind, I’m antsy until I’m current again. This entry should do it. Once again, no idea in mind, so winging it for the second day in a row.

Right now, I am in my comfy chair, laptop on lap desk. It’s not raining any longer, though we had a downpour hit shortly before I had to leave the Laundromat, freshly dried laundry in two, Crocs on my feet and raincoat left behind, because it was brilliant sunshine when I left the house. Go figure. “Helpless,” from Hamilton, is playing on my headphones. Very historical romance-y song there, both in setting and content. I have notes for today’s work on Her Last First Kiss, and will likely need to make a timeline, so I can track the progress of important items -what is where, and when?- and I’m looking forward to that.

12717620_1136794449693918_2810033261570317212_n

morning pages

I normally don’t like to have a lot of bleedover with my notebooks. The notebook above, by Punch Studio (part of my Paris notebook fixation; there is apparently a NY themed version of this same book, and I must have it) is my morning pages book, which means whatever I in my head goes down on that two page spread, and, when I get to the end of the second page, I am done. Doesn’t matter where I am. That’s it for that entry. I got this book in October, and it’s been one two page spread, every day, no matter what. So far, so good.

Here’s the thing, though. Sometimes, those rambles concentrate themselves fairly quickly. Like this morning. I don’t know if it was some alchemical convergence of my free-associating brain, the fact that I had not yet consumed caffeine, the recklessness of putting my Paris travel mug next to my Union Jack mug, which was next to my English muffin pizza breakfast. or what, but novel stuff started spilling onto my pages. I’ll copy it later, into one of the HLFK books, maybe take only notebooks and not laptop to the coffee house later on (though I sweat like an addict in withdrawal at the thought) and track the progression of some objects that are important to the story. Who has the X at what point, what state is it in, and how do we all feel about that?

My blood hums at the thought of this, and -aha, that’s where I’d intended to go in the first place, yay me- diving deep into what needs to be accomplished in a particular scene gives me electric energy. I can do this. I do this. This is what I was created to do. Natural habitat and all that other good stuff. When you’re in the right place, creatively, you know it. I’d originally planned to call this entry something like “Skating on the Surface and Diving Deep,” but if a title makes me cringe, that’s a pretty good indication of what it’s going to to do my readers.

My readers? Ulp. I have readers? That is not what my earning statement says for the last mumblemumble unit of time, but that’s okay. As with any muscle, the more I use my writing muscles, the stronger they get. Which is one of the reasons the disciplines of thrice weekly blogging and morning pages every weekday are disciplines that I want to keep. Doesn’t matter what’s on the page, as long as something is. It’s easy to put it off. Amazingly easy to put it off, but, as my mother always told me, the more I do, the more I will want to do. She was right. When I let myself into Hero and Heroine’s world, I want to stay there. As a family member, as it were, not an intruder or even a guest, which is one of the reasons I know I’m writing the right book, at the right time, and in the right way.

these notebooks have nothing to do with HLFK

at least I think they don’t.

These notebooks don’t have anything to do with Her Last First Kiss (at least I think they don’t) but they spoke to me, and thus, they had to come home. There will be hackage, possibly over the weekend. Hacking a notebook is an intuitive process for me, one that lets me dive happily into the realm of sticky notes and drawing frames, letting color dictate my path, the feel of the book, its covers, its pages, the spiral binding, in the case of the above, tell me what they want to be. Total pantsing on notebook hacking, which makes for a good contrast with how I need to know things about the characters and stories to fully grasp what I’m doing with a novel in progress.

My minimum for these winging it entries is seven hundred words (word count is not a problem with me for nonfiction or editing; go figure) so I am going to wrap this for now. There’s my Buried Under Romance discussion post to write, and then I have a date with Hero and Heroine. I think they’re going to show me an interesting time.

In Here, I Rule The World

February 17, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Right now, I am in a rotten mood. I mean really rotten. Things started early. I woke, exhausted, thinking it was about 2AM, so glass of water, trip to the water closet, and I’m good for four more hours. No such luck. 6:45. Well, crud. Tend cat, dispense Real Life Romance Hero’s morning pharmeceuticals, perform ritual albutions. Agree to disagree with hair about its direction for the day. Breakfast…okay, breakfast was uneventful, except for Skye leaving a deposit in Real Life Romance Hero’s office, but Housemate took care of that, so the two things even out.

Morning was meant to be for taking care of some routine errands. Obtain clothing from a favorite, reliable retailer. Obtain pen refills from office supply store. Possibly other errands if the first two went quickly. The first two did not go quickly. Both were abject failures, and most women understand the barren wasteland that is a sale at one’s favorite retailer, when there is not one single thing that will fit one’s body and/or color palette. One of those. Housemate fared better, but I left with a case of the grumps. Repeat fruitless mission at office supply store.

Housemate and I did not know Lunch Option A was not going to work out until we were actually there, so went for Lunch Option B instead. Rest of errands had to be put off for unspecified time in the vague future, because I had to get home in time for A) me to make a chat with a critique partner, and B) Housemate to get RLRH to work. No shot at getting in a certain part of the house where I could perform supplementary albutions and renegotiate with hair, and still make it to chat on time, so did the best I could and raced off. Made it with minutes to spare and…open email from critique partner, who could not make chat.

accurate depiction of my mood

This is, of course, the exact second I have my tea ready, notebook and sticky notes arrayed, so I’m committed now, even though I am technically free. We will now cue an instrumental version of “Song of the Lonely Extrovert” to play softly in the background. There are other people in the coffee house, but nobody I can talk to while working, and that makes a difference. Unless the college student scowling at his own laptop is interested in my Scrivener corkboard. I am going to guess that he is not.

I’ve had worse days. Nobody is bleeding or on fire, we have not needed any first responders, and are fed, housed and employed. Even so, the other irritations build. Gaming is a stress reliever for me, and, since my old laptop is currently refusing to play Sims 3, new laptop cannot support it, and we are still looking into other options, I’m going to have to accept the fact that gaming, right now, is not going to happen. Sure, I have Sims Free Play on my phone, but that’s not the same. Not even close. Bleh.

As I told Housemate, what I would like to do is huddle in a corner (under the covers in bed is also acceptable) and mainline ice cream. What I am going to do is crack open that notebook and Scrivener and transcribe some scenes. That, I can do, and it doesn’t require a lot of my brain. Transfer what’s on the page to what’s on the screen. Spend some time in my story world, and deal with Hero and Heroine’s problems instead of my own. I know what has to happen in the tailor scene, but where does the tailor scene actually go? Do I need to plant that plot point seed earlier in the story than where it actually sprouts? How is the balance between Hero scenes and Heroine scenes? Plus the joy of getting immersed in the story.

The rest of the daily inconveniences will still be there when I’m done. It’s not a permanent break from the practical world -one of the reasons I don’t use the word “escape” when I talk about reading or writing fiction; we do still have to deal with those things when we close the book, notebook or file- but it’s a respite, a place where I can order things the way I want, no matter how much time that might take; here, I control time. Heady stuff, when one stops to think about it. Uncap my new fountain pen, open my notebook, and I step back in time, where Hero and Heroine want to know what on earth I am doing to their lives, because it all looks like one giant catastrophe from where they’re standing.

In the end, it will all be worth the trouble. I’ve assured them this book has a happy ending, because that’s what romance novels do. No matter what I throw at them during the story, they will be safe, happy, and together by the end. At the moment, things look pretty sticky for them both, individually and together (not that they’re even thinking much about “together” at this phase of the game, because it’s early days, still) but they’ll thank me for it later. Right now, I’m thankful to them for giving my day some peace. We’ll have to see how the rest of it goes, but, for right now, I rule the (okay, their) world.

What Do You Want Right Now?

February 11, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

I started this blog entry multiple times, with multiple approaches, and none of them worked, though all of them were true. This morning had an exceptionally good three-hour writing stretch, when Hero and Heroine met me for breakfast, and we chatted, the three of us, at the kitchen counter, me perched on my stool, pen in one hand and phone with Pinterest board open in the other. Spotify playlist played through my earbuds, but it was their voices I heard, their heads poking over my shoulder, real and alive and chomping at the bit.

Surprised the heck out of me, that flow hitting when it did, but, when I came up for air three hours later, the pages filled with my chicken scratch going every which way (writing otherwise than with the subtly printed lines of a Paperblanks book? Shock horror!) and littered with pink and blue Post-Its, there was a good chunk of story in bullet point draft. No angsting, no agonizing, merely story.

How did that happen? I can’t point to one thing, but I will put a highlight on two things. Okay, three, as discussions with critique partners always jog some sticky stuff loose, though that ties directly into the two things:

What does (character) want right now?
Make a decision.

Super easy, those two. Instead of angsting about everything, take a step back and observe. Character X was doing one thing. Then they were done doing that thing. What thing did they do next? Odds are, they’re going to fulfill a want. In the first scene in question for me today, Heroine wanted Hero to not die in her study. To have him not die in her study, that meant he had to 1) stay alive, and 2) not be in her study. Both easily accomplished by getting Hero out of her study.

Okay, cross the threshold, and he’s technically out. Where to put him, though? Well, what rooms are available? Can’t get lost in too many options (one of my biggest bugaboos) if there is only one option. So, we have only Room Y? Put him there.

POV shifts to Hero, once he is in room Y. So, he’s there. Now, what does he want, right now? When in doubt, refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Since Hero is soaked to the bone wet and freezing, a pretty safe bet is that he wants a) out of those wet clothes, and b) to be warm. Remove wet clothes, wrap in blanket and wait for hot water to be brought up to him. Eighteenth century here, so it’s going to be a while. What does he want next? This particular hero is an artist, and he had his things with him, so check on the inks, check on the pens, check on the papers that are not drying in Heroine’s study. Phew, that thing is okay. Drat, that one isn’t. Can’t…find…the…other…thing. Calm down, it’s probably drying out downstairs. Etcetera and so on.

The movie in my head flitted between Hero’s scenes and Heroine’s, inserted the right servant who can tell Hero the thing he needs to know but can’t see. Hero has some feelings about this new information, and feelings about those feelings, Heroine sees something she wasn’t supposed to see, and has some feelings about that. Each learns something new about the other, and want to know more about that, but Mutual Friend Character, you ruin everything. (He really does.)

I learned things, like how Hero -an artist, duh- thinks better when doodling, a perfectly natural way to insert Heroine’s predilection for firearms, and how to get Hero and Mutual Friend Character to a place where Hero does something good (but not good enough, though he’s working on that) and Mutual Friend Character does something dumb that will bite him in the behind later in the story.

Three hours later, I set the pen down. Did a wee bit of notebook hacking (need to do a wee bit more, at that) and jotted a couple of notes so I’d know where I left off when I came back to this, which I promised myself -and Hero and Heroine- (Mutual Friend Character can go suck rocks because he is being a doodyhead here) would be as soon as humanly possible. There’s a little ache to leaving the characters when it’s time to take care of other things, but we do not have a self feeding cat, and domestic management skills were in demand, and I am the designated domestic warrior queen, so had to take a break there.

Even so, the movie in my head kept playing. Totally random life advice, not based off anything that ever happened to me, especially not today, no matter how good the book thing is that you just that second figured out while plunging the bathroom bowl, do not raise the plunger above your head in victory. It cannot end well. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

I’m not saying the rest of the book is going to be the writing equivalent of skipping barefoot through a field of daisies (I’d probably step in cow poop or something, anyway) but those two bits above are a good place to start. What does my character want, right now? Make a decision. Maybe it’s the wrong decision, but that’s what first drafts are for, innit? (See? Dialect. That was a decision.) If it doesn’t work, then do something else.

I suggest locking hypercritical gremlins in a closet. I think Hero and Heroine might have done that for me while I was rooting around the pantry for tea.

Forging Ahead, Reinvention and Learning to Dig

January 28, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won’t waste their time arguing with the characters they create…It is almost always a waste of time and people tend to stare when you do!

– C.K. Webb

I’ve noticed, lately, that I often get to the keyboard and find I’m not doing what I intended to do. Like with this blog, today. I’d intended to write this entry (well, not this entry, obviously, because today hadn’t happened yet yesterday) on the regularly scheduled Wednesday, because routine and discipline and all the rest of that good serious writer stuff. I did not write yesterday’s entry because I’d gone two and a half nights with no sleep, and my brain and body were so depleted that I couldn’t focus. (Apart from Pinterest, but we’re talking writing here.)

Originally I’d planned to make this a video entry, but A) forgot about that until I’d already set up for the afternoon at the coffee shop (video entries are best not made in public) and B) my hair and I could not reach an agreement about what we were doing that particular day, apart from a five minute span around breakfast time. I’d planned to still make this a video entry today, but nobody wants to see me with wet hair (trying my best not to touch it while it air dries with product in, because beachy waves, dagnabit, or at least that’s the theory we are testing today.)

There’s a reason I frequently trot out K.A. Mitchell’s advice to A) open the file, and B) change your seat. That’s because they work. So, when I sat in front of the screen this morning, my brain a muddle, that became a signal that it’s time to mix things up. When I retired the previous version of Typing With Wet Nails and started this new one, I’d come to a point where I couldn’t do the old blog any longer. Finding a new clip for Happy Dance Friday became a chore, and Saturday at the Movies, instead of being fun, made my head hurt. So, it had to stop. Clean sweep.

After clean sweep comes more layers. I’d been to a wonderful workshop by Jeanette Grey on making websites with WordPress, and figured it couldn’t hurt. What to put in it? What’s really in my heart and head. That was, and is, talking about the whole writing experience. I love seeing other writers showing off covers and talking about new releases and awards and reviews, and, trust me, I will be one of them in good time, but then there’s the other side of the matter.

There are all those notebooks I have, months of them, filled with venting about how hard writing had become, how arduous it was to get words on the page, how I despaired of ever fitting into the market, how, maybe, I missed my chance and was doomed to spend the rest of my life (a pretty darned long time, I would hope) as someone who could have been a writer. The voice of an acquaintance at a mutual friend’s book launch haunted me. “I knew the author when I used to write,” she said to another guest, and laughed. I didn’t laugh. I shuddered,

Used to write. I can’t think of more horrifying words. (Okay, genocide, fascism, polyester; but stick with me here.) I can’t not-write, and so the writing is worth the struggles. One of my favorite quotes is a Japanese proverb that says “fall down five times, get up six.” That resonates with me, and resonates deeply. In the last couple of days, two writers of my acquaintance have posted about their own difficulties in keeping motivated. I want to let that marinate before I expound (besides this, that is) because I think this is a fairly common malady.

There are a million reasons to quit, but all of them together don’t overpower the one reason to keep at it. I have to write, the same as I have to breathe. There is no off switch for this relentless pull into the story world. That, for me, my natural habitat is historical romance, that, too is organic. The market will change. My need to tell my stories won’t. Logic alone says keep going, and so I do. Muscles grow stronger with exercise, so I keep at it. Fingers on keys, pen on paper, show up, open the file (or notebook.)

When that’s not enough, time to change my seat, change direction. Change my wallpaper. Play different music. Put some goop in my hair. Browse the library stacks. Trust that what I need to go forward is out there, and, if I look for it, remain open to it, things will click. Sometimes that takes a while, and sometimes, it happens in an instant.

With fiction, I’ve come back around to something, I used to do when I’d only first started. Let the characters lead. I’d wanted Hero, for example, in Her Last First Kiss, to be blond and a musician. When he actually showed up, he had red hair and wanted to play with my pens. I tried wooing him back in line by playing the music that was supposed to be his passion; he responded by picking up one of my fountain pens and doodling. Okay, fine. Heroine was supposed to play the pianoforte to relieve stress. Nope. She likes guns.

This brings to mind certain questions- when did all that start? Why that interest? What are you doing with my pens, Hero? These things generally take me away from what I’d intended, but usually to a better place, and I am okay with that.

The good thing about characters being stubborn like this, when they tell me I’ve got it wrong, means that they are real and alive within their world and they are going to help me tell their story, rather than making me do all the work completely by myself. I like to think we make a pretty good team.

Typing With Wet Claws: Scribbling Furiously Edition

January 22, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. I am pawing it once again in regard to topic, because Anty is hard at work on Her Last First Kiss. Now that she knows she has an assignment to turn in to Miss N on Tuesday, she is not about to let anything stop her. This can be both a good and a bad thing.

The good thing is that a writing Anty is a happy Anty. She knows where this book is going, and she has the new opening roughed out, so it is now time to smooth that out and show it to an actual other writer human, in person. A writing Anty with a deadline is also a very focused Anty. When Anty does not have a tight focus, she will try and write in the living room, because that is where the glowy box is when she gets up in the morning. The problem there is that the rest of the family has access to the living room, because it is for everybody, not only for Anty, and they want to use the room, too. Since Anty is focused, she is doing more of her at-home work in the office.

The view from Anty’s seat

That room still needs a lot of work. You can probably see the big glowy box screen behind the pink glowy box. That screen goes with a glowy box that stays on the desk (well, next to it) but is too old to run the Internet or, more importantly, Sims. Anty is figuring out how to get a better big glowy box in there, but for now, Anty brings the pink glowy box into the office in the morning, makes a list of what she has to get done, and then she will come out when it is lunchtime. Specifically my lunchtime. Until then, she can put all her attention on the book, stick those pink things in her ears, so only she can hear her music, and get to work. What comes out of Anty’s head at first is very rough, and needs several passes before she can show it to anybody. With this scene, she grumbles a lot about too much happening inside Heroine’s head. Even I think she is going to have to fix that, and I am a kitty, so I can only imagine what other humans would have to say.

Besides the first scene, the other thing Anty has to do is make a list of all the characters in her book. When they make their first appearance in a scene, Anty has to write their name down on a separate paper (probably in a notebook, or copy it to a notebook from the scratch paper) and then write who they are and what their relationship is to the other characters. She can also put anything else she wants about the characters in that description, but that brings her to a place where she does not want to go.

I do not think I like overthinking.

I am talking about overthinking. Anty is really, really, really good at overthinking. She can think about one thing so much that she gets paralyzed in her thoughts and cannot go any farther on that topic. That has meant some miscarried stories in the past. She does not want to go that way with this book, so she is trying new things to make sure that does not happen again.

One of those things is writing her first-first pages in present tense. For example:

Skye sleeps in the sunbeam.

Rather than:

Skye slept in the sunbeam.

That way, for Anty, the story is something that is happening now, and she can alter it as she goes, rather than something that has already happened, and is set in stone. She did not know she was thinking that way until she talked with some other writer friends, and started reading books for almost-grown humans. Those are sometimes written in present tense, and it is a good way for her to get her brain working and moving forward. It lets her take in more of the scene that is in the movie in her head if it is happening “now,” so it is like noticing rather than remembering.

Once she has that on the page, then she can go back and revise what she has already written. She can put the present tense into past, and see if she can get things out of characters’ heads and into action or dialogue. That part can make her edge over to the crabby side, but it is all for a good cause. She will be better once she has the revisions made and can get some feedback.

Anty needs the computer back, because it is story time, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Typing With Wet Claws: Story Brain Edition

January 15, 2016January 15, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Anty did not tell me what to write about today, so I am going to have to wing it, or, in my case, paw it. I do not have any wings, because I am a kitty; only paws. I use them for walking. Only birdies have wings. Also bats, and some insects. Maybe also Pegasus (I do not know the plural form of that word, but it is a horsey with wings. I am not sure if they are real or fictional, but I do not want to find out by meeting one. They sound scary.) I think Anty letting me say whatever I want today shows a great deal of trust. I will try to show her she did the right thing.

Most of this week can be divided into domestic tornado management and writing. Anty also found time to get to the library, along with Mama, and bring home a bunch of books. Eight of them, which is a lot, even though Anty says it is a reasonable amount. These are the books:

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Anty picked them all. Mama did not find any books she especially wanted to read, but she wants to read some of the books Anty picked, when Anty is done reading them. So far, Anty is close to mostly through one. One. Anty needs more reading time. I would suggest that Anty try using some of the awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night time for reading, but the last time I did that, she looked at me like this:

That is not something I want to go through again, so that was the last time I will make that suggestion. Anty is doing laundry at least once tomorrow, so that is two hours of potential reading time right there. If it does not turn into writing time, that is. Which it might. One important thing to know if you have a writer in your life is that pretty much any time can turn into writing time. That comes with the territory, and does not only happen when they are in front of a computer or have a notebook at hand (although Anty usually does have at least one notebook within reach.) Many writers, including my Anty, do not have an off switch. Sometimes, it would be useful if they did, but they do not. At least mine does not.

We do not have any pictures of the Anty Has Story Brain look, and that is probably a good thing. Mama and Uncle and I have learned to recognize it, though, and I think some of the humans who work at the coffee house. Twice, this week, Anty has had a coffee house human remind her that her tea is right in front of her and she can sit down now. Some of them know it because they are writers, too, and give the gentle prompt as a matter of professional courtesy. The best way I can describe that look is sort of blank, staring off into some place that is not there. Maybe I should say it is something non-writers cannot see, because merely because something happens inside a writer’s mind does not mean it is not real. Making things in their heads become real is a big part of writers’ jobs, so it is no surprise that it happens when it happens. Sometimes, often in the car, Mama will notice Anty is too quiet, and ask “are you writing?” Almost always, Anty says that she is. Once, Mama asked, “How are Hero and Heroine?” Anty laughed, because that was where her story brain had gone.

a very small portion of story brain

Anty says that, at least for her, story brain is a sign that she is on the right track, and the characters are doing their parts. It is like a movie in her head that plays itself and she has to get it all down. Maybe it is somewhat like recapping TV shows, except that there is no remote to pause things and she has to do it all in her head. I think the inside of Anty’s head is probably very messy, filled with pictures and sounds and bits of movies and snippets of songs, remembered smells and parts of ideas that started out as something else, but took on their own form after they swam around with all the other stuff for a while. I can imagine it is very easy to get lost in there at times, and that is why it takes Anty a little while to come back from it when she has to do things like go to the grocery store or figure out where Uncle’s sweater went.

Story brain is a lot better than lack-of-story-brain. Anty wrestled with that for a long while, and it was not pretty. I am not sure that story brain is that much prettier, as her office looks like a tornado hit it. More books are coming out of boxes and going into her bookshelves, moving around so books she wants easiest access to, like the library haul, above, are the ones she can get to fastest, and books she never ever looks at can get ready to go to new homes. Right now, she needs books that will help keep her moving forward in telling Hero and Heroine’s story, and those that don’t, need to go away. She says I can share pictures when she gets things neat again, but not right now.

Right now, Anty needs the computer back so that she can write more about Hero and Heroine, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Midweek Rambles and New Book, Take Two

January 13, 2016annabowling Leave a comment

I dwell on love stories, on characters who struggle hard to become the best people they can be, who defy the odds to grab the brass ring of honor, and earn their way to a committed, healthy, loving relationship.

–Grace Burrowes

This isn’t the blog post I set out to write. I thought it was going to be, as my now-weekly Tuesday morning meeting with local writer friend, whom we shall call N for now, lit a spark, and when she asked if I knew what I wanted my writing focus to be this year, I didn’t even have to think about it. Her Last First Kiss, duh. I haven’t loved a story like this in a long time, and haven’t felt confidence in my own writing in longer than that. I was going to write about focus and purpose, and then I put fingers on keyboard and it all fizzled.

My first instinct was to apply a favorite bit of writing advice, and change my seat. In this case, that meant switching from words to images and photographing the notebooks and legal pad I am currently using to work on this project. There were several pictures taken before the one I used, and no, you cannot see them. You cannot see the picture of my office desk that was fine, except for the jarring addition of two legs covered in light wash denim, because my computer tells me I don’t have permission to alter the picture I took with my own phone and emailed to my own account, so that I could crop it, but whatever, I will survive. You cannot see the beautifully arranged and edited shot of open notebook pages, which I really like, because that has text I’m not ready to share yet, and I am not opening my old laptop and doing the do-si-do of transferring the picture to jump drive, waiting for the old laptop to boot, blurring the text in Photoshop Elements, transferring that to jump drive and then uploading that. If I go through all that trouble to boot that machine, forget it, I’m playing Sims.

I am giving that serious thought right now, because I set aside all the resources I’d need to get the work I intended to do at the coffee house this afternoon done, and then left one hundred percent of them at home. D’oh. Including phone, for obligatory workspace picture. Double d’oh. Is it Friday yet? No? Phooey. I want Friday. I want Friday and a pizza and a bag of gummi bears as big as my head (the bag, that is, filled with regular size gummi bears, not one giant gummi, even if it is skull shaped.) A bottomless cup of Lapsang Souchong wouldn’t hurt, either. In short, I’m tired and grumpy. Best thing I can do at this point is to craw inside a good book and trust that I will un-grump in time. (Though the pizza really would help.)

I’m not sure how much I want to talk about Her Last First Kiss at this stage of the game. I’m not sure I’m ready to even “speak” my hero and heroine’s names here. That’s new for me. I’m a talker, and there is no surer way to kill a story than to not tell anybody anything. Not sure where the reticence is coming from here. Maybe they need placeholder names so that I can talk about them without talking about them. I may need to clear that with them first.

Both my hero and heroine have trust issues, and, as I often find true in my stories, there are a lot of identity issues for these two. Hero (will he let me call him Hero? He certainly doesn’t think he is one. He’s never done one heroic thing in his life. Really more the opposite. Not cowardly, exactly. He’s not afraid, in the usual sense of the word, but he does acknowledge that there isn’t a good reason for him to exist. He doesn’t matter. He’d like to matter. He’d like to belong.) and Heroine (Pfft. Heroine. Look at the romance writer, throwing around those fanciful terms. She’d think I would know by now, after the time I’ve already spent with her, that there aren’t any such things as heroes, of either gender. Heroes believe in things. Heroes have causes. All right, she has a cause, but it’s a moral obligation, not an ideal. There’s a difference. She’s protecting her own. She doesn’t have any ideals. She wouldn’t know what to do with them if she did.) collide in their first meeting, and the fallout is messy. It gets messier.

Hero and Heroine have, so far, dragged me places I never thought I was going to go. The new opening, the one I raced home from my from last week’s meeting with N to furiously scribble with pink fountain pen, very firmly pulled one of my own personal triggers. Not the place I had planned to start a love story, but that is where the story starts. If this book has begun the way it means to go on, I am fastening my seatbelt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Which reminds me, I have a carriage accident scene to write.