What I’ve Been Up To
First, there’s the novel’s new scenes. Done, plugging in, and suffering the consequences of three different formats. Working on it.
Then I did beta reading for two fellow writers. I’ve critiqued one. Working on the other.
I just finished the 30 Blessings Project at Rising Upward, a month-long challenge.
My town was flooded May 3rd. As a result, I’m actively writing for Clarksville Cares as well.
In between I find great ways to procrastinate and I’m developing several new novel concepts.
In other words, I’ve been busy writing, though I haven’t been writing here.
Just One
The video below is nearly a year old, but that’s okay. I’ve been spending time thinking about teaching the love of writing, especially after taking over the Clarksville Writers Group. This video is one reason why I feel any time spent instilling the love of writing is never time wasted. I found the video originally on Lighter Footstep.
Do All Writers Want to Retreat?
All my adult life I’ve dreamed of cabins tucked away in the woods or the idea of running a retreat center. As Sally Field said after a divorce, “I have a high need for alone time.” The extroverts in our lives are clueless.
The past six months have brought a new level of desire. I’m not just day dreaming about cabins. I’m designing them in 3-D, researching optional heating sources, looking at construction methods. It seems an impossible dream. My city-raised husband thinks our town of almost 200,000 is too small. There’s no way he’ll move to that cabin with me, especially if I plan to live off the grid.
I’m not sure what generates the desire for a retreat. I mean, obvious introverted behavior aside, I have a job, electricity, running water and the internet. Why the drive to give it all up (well, except the running water) and retreat to write in the woods?
Part of it may stem from the distractions of life. The job, the internet, even the husband, can distract me. I have no quiet place to go for my writing time and can’t always work another location into my schedule.
I am never alone except in the car for ten minutes twice a day. I’m sure this has caused stress for my introverted personality as well.
I dream actively and often of getting away for a week, two weeks, or a month. Just me and my notebooks, though I’d prefer electricity for a laptop. I imagine all the writing I could get done and how relaxed I would be. The truth is I’d probably do a lot of sleeping!
Is this yearning common to all writers or just the introverted ones? Have you ever taken a writer’s retreat? Was it worth it?
Editing Relief
The first third of Gold Hill (working title) was a mess. Out of sequence, out of time, untransitioned, and just plain messy.
I liked the individual scenes well enough, but their relationships to each other left me with my head in my hands asking if I really could write at all.
They were so disorganized my overwhelming feeling was shame. It was the first novel I’d written in scenes and I wrote them out of order. I really hope its the last novel to demand being written that way. If it isn’t, I’m buying shares in Bayer and Valium now.
Just when I was planning how to tell my editing partner that we might want to scrap this one, something great happened.
The middle third is really decent.
It flows. It relates. I progresses the story and relationships and develops key elements. It does its job.
Talk about a big sigh of relief! I watched my editing partner make a few ticks here and there for typos and dialogue tags and then move on. Yes!
Faith has returned. Energy is renewed. The sun burst out from behind the clouds. Choirs sang. Really. Well, for me they did.
I know there are two scenes in the last third that are trouble, but today I am happy. Today is a good day.
Finding Themes in Fiction
I’ve had the opportunity to really think about the characters I’ve worked with the past 12 months. I’m always interested in the themes that come out in a writer’s work, my own included. Writing is, at least for me, a form of therapy after all.
I was able to identify several common themes in the lives of the last five main characters I’ve worked with. they all live on the fringe of social groups, either from being new to the area or from being shut out or misunderstood. they all struggle with the desire to feel accepted, even though some of them already are. None of them want to be liked so much they would compromise their personal values.
The most profound thing they have in common, though, is loss. Lillian loses her independence; she must learn to trust the friendship of others if she is to succeed. Charley loses her best friend and a few dearly held beliefs. Raelyn loses any hope of normality along with her innocent view of the world. Evan is poised to lose his marriage. Liz…well, Liz loses everything but her life.
The stories are very different as are the personalities, circumstances, and eras of the characters. Their losses and reactions to them have one common thread. they all draw from some aspect of the losses I have experienced personally.
As I look at the common themes in my fiction, I recognize more elements in myself. The characters all deal with their losses in a far different manner than each other or their writer, which I also find interesting.
How much of your own experience makes it into your plots or your characters’ lives? Are you aware of it at the time or only in hindsight?
