Blowing on the embers

Posted on April 21, 2014 by ginachoward

shadow womanWriting was the perfect antidote to last week’s return to chilly bluster when the sun was a stranger but rain wasn’t. It gave me that emotional shot of sunny ‘70s that Mother Nature refused to offer.

With each day at my computer, Janelle began assuming a more defined personality. She had been a two-dimensional character languishing in the pages of her back story. Now, I realized what car she’d drive, what fast food joint she’d frequent (and what she’d order), and what she would carry in her handbag (not purse). With each detail, the reader learns a bit more about how Janelle thinks, what her values are and what she herself is like.

I rearranged paragraph order, revised sentences and sections, threw out the unsatisfactory opening and wrote the lines I should have written to begin with that encapsulates the book’s theme:

“Truth is a matter of perspective.

Reporting for the Chicago Tribune, Janelle Martin found Nietzsche’s oft-paraphrased philosophy to be accurate more often than not. A class at Northwestern University had put a name to the life-lesson she’d learned long ago as a truth-seeker growing up in rural Galesburg, Illinois.”

As always, this likely will not be my final iteration of the opening. I’ve submitted the first 2,500 words or so to my critique group, so other writers will read them with a critical eye and give me their thoughts in a couple of weeks. Their ongoing feedback can only make the book better.

This week promises warmer and sunnier days, but I don’t need the rain to prod me to write. Last week’s work rekindled the fire that only smolders when it’s neglected. It changed “write” from a to-do to a must-do because the call to write is too strong to resist.

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Making the big league

Posted on April 14, 2014 by ginachoward

baseballWith the city skyline gleaming above them, the Charlotte Knights played the first game in their new stadium last Friday night in front of a sold-out crowd. It was an auspicious beginning. The Knights tied the game before losing the season opener, but as the players left the field, they knew the entire season was ahead of them. With more practice and good coaching, they had every chance of making the playoffs.

Writers are no different from baseball players. Both careers are a lot more work than they look. We begin with talent, but must practice relentlessly and listen to coaches to correct flaws that we ourselves don’t see. We strike out more often than we’d like, but we also get frequent singles and doubles. An article here, a poem there. A steady paid writing gig.  Good enough to pay the bills, but not good enough to break out from the crowd.

As a Triple-A team affiliate, the Knights have to work even harder than major league teams for recognition. The players, like writers, not only want be become local stars, they want to break out from the pack to sign with the majors.

Superstar writers, like superstar athletes are the exception, rather than the rule. But with practice and by applying feedback from teachers, editors and other writers, good writing gets better and better writing can become great. We regularly begin hitting doubles and triples. And once in a while, when talent, skill, multiple revisions and the stars align, we hit a home run and move on to the big leagues.

But that’s not the end. Even as we promote our work, we have to be on to the next. Excellence – and success as a writer – means constantly writing, revising, listening to critiques and rewriting. It’s a job, like any other. And if we’re not at the top of our game, like a baseball player that goes cold, we will be sent back down to the minors.

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Finding Paul’s voice

Posted on April 7, 2014 by ginachoward

question mark on silhouetteI faithfully followed my time management plan last week, and I was clicking along:

    • Paid work – check
    • Volunteer commitments – check
    • Daily exercise, chores, reading for pleasure and plenty of sleep – check, check, check and check.

But I wasn’t feeling good about it. On nearly every calendar page, dark lines crossed through all items but one. Write.

It was scheduled; I had allotted time. As the week – and opportunities – slipped by, it became increasingly difficult to rationalize putting it off. By Wednesday, I had begun glancing only briefly at the day’s to-do list, taking in disjointed slivers of the page. As the weekend loomed, the word seemed to grow bigger and more accusatory, as if trying to edge into my peripheral vision and sear its message into my brain: WRITE!

I was puzzled why I faithfully crossed off everything else on my list, yet averted my eyes and laid down my pen when it came to “Write.” I didn’t have writer’s block; I knew where the story was going. Then, last night, it came to me. I can’t seem to find my voice. Paul’s voice, to be precise.

I had written pages of back story about Paul. His childhood, school and military experiences, his view of the world. But I had written it as an observer, not from Paul’s perspective. Getting inside a character’s head is what makes him or her live. It’s what happened to me with Father Francis. I never had intended for him to have as large a role as he will have, but as I got to know him, know he thinks, how he reacts and behaves, he took on a life of his own. Paul hadn’t done that yet for me.

Now that I’ve identified the problem, I feel liberated. I know Paul’s history and his temperament. Knowing that, I can re-approach the situation that stymied me and work through his thought process. I can be Paul. He will find his voice.

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Deconstructing a home

Posted on March 31, 2014 by ginachoward

Thoughts on a man slowly taking apart a house and the family that once lived there:

BrokenTreeReflection2The unkempt man hired to disassemble the house was in no hurry. He had no obligations and dropped by only when he needed the cash.

The boards groaned as his cracked fingers separated them from the nails trying to hold them together. No use complaining, he thought, as he piled the ribs in neat stacks. He had been instructed to salvage what he could, although to his jaded eye, nothing was worth saving. Perhaps there had been. Once.

The roof, now gap-toothed, yawned, swallowing rain and sun indiscriminately. But the elements could do no real damage. The heart of the home was long gone. Like a seagull pecking at a dead fish, the man picked at the skeletal walls, deconstructing what remained.

The work went slowly, this tearing down. It might take years before all that was left was a heap of rubble. He would be gone and neighbors would wonder what had happened. How it had come to this.

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Focus on the important stuff

Posted on March 24, 2014 by ginachoward

emailSelf-employment is proving to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated, and I don’t mean in terms of contracted work. Rather, with both physical and temporal boundaries between home and work smudged, I’ve been thinking of time as a continuum. Bad idea. Without a sense of beginnings or ends, I hit the bed feeling frustrated and unproductive.

Being deadline driven, I have no problem completing paid work on time. It’s managing the other pieces that had me stumped. I felt overcommitted and overwhelmed. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for when I walked away from my job. In fact, it was largely the reason why I walked away.

My “duh” moment came when I realized that a variation of what worked in the office, works at home: efficient time management. Told you it was a no-brainer. But, it’s taken me 10 weeks to begin adjusting to my new reality and find my rhythm. Here’s what helped:

  1. Make a weekly to-do list: I get tremendous satisfaction from marking through a completed item. I look at my week – Monday through Sunday – and make my to-do list for each day. As commitments comes in for that or future weeks, I slot them or say no (yes, saying no is an option). Sometimes, I move things around, depending on their importance (see below), but only items I’m committed to doing go on the list.
  2. Prioritize: This is pretty self-evident. Some items end up taking longer than expected. That means the to-dos on the bottom of the list either get bumped to the next day (where they gain a higher priority) or I work later to complete them.
  3. Limit email: Email is a giant time suck that can blow up the best-planned day. I check email two or three times, spaced evenly during the day. I have separate emails for work and personal correspondence, and check work email only between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. I also check personal email once in the evening. I delete junk email, dash off a response to those that can be handled quickly, and flag ones that need a more complex answer to address later. Checking email on my smart phone is quick and decreases the urge to respond to everything immediately.
  4. Bundle like items: I block time to handle all those items that are necessary, but don’t need to be addressed immediately. This keeps me from stopping and starting multiple times throughout the day. I go back to the flagged emails, group the volunteer-related to-dos, and deal with other miscellaneous commitments.
  5. Remember what’s important: I don’t know if I’ll have another 40 years or 40 hours, but I want that time to count. Whatever else is on my to-do list, I have made being with family and friends, getting exercise, making a difference, having some fun and writing my top priorities – every week.
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What a character

Posted on March 17, 2014 by ginachoward

SherlockHolmesI had a crush on Sherlock Holmes.

Not the TV or movie actors with their pale interpretations of the great detective, but the man Arthur Conan Doyle revealed in the red linen-bound 1927 volume of The Complete Sherlock Holmes I would tuck under my pillow each night before I closed my eyes.

I met Holmes in “The Speckled Band,” a fifth-grade reading assignment that introduced me to a character unlike any I’d ever encountered. It was love at first sight. Well after lights out, I’d turn the nearly transparent pages by candlelight, drinking in his keen intellect, tolerating his drug abuse and sure a woman who understood him – someone like me – could transmute his misogyny. I savored each page and at the end of each story, blew out my candle, sated like after a well-prepared meal.

I still enjoy well-written detective stories, Tony Hillerman’s, James Lee Burke’s and Elizabeth George’s being among my favorites. As with my first love, it is not the plots that bring me back to these authors, but the characters they create. I feel I know and care about Dave Robicheaux, drawn into the noir setting of Louisiana’s Cajun country; Jim Chee, balancing justice with Navaho tribal ways; and Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, struggling with their own messy lives as much as criminals.

For me, Elizabeth George’s What Came Before He Shot Her is one of the best examples of a character-driven novel and stands as one of my all-time favorites. There is no question as to “who done it.” The title and first line tell you that. Nonetheless, we’re rooting for 12-year-old Joel to make a different choice from the one that he inevitably does. We see his promise and understand all the wrong decisions he makes for the right reasons.

In recent years, I’ve begun reading my favorite authors critically, gleaning how they use a word, a look, a shrug, a setting to slowly reveal a character’s personality and motivation. I am reading One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life penned by Elizabeth George, a writing teacher herself, to educate and inspire me.

Complex, rich characters not only are memorable, but in driving the plots, they ensure the stories and books in which they appear stand the test of time.

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Step-by-step

Posted on March 10, 2014 by ginachoward

image“One, two. One, two. That’s it!”

The baby wobbles on legs unaccustomed to being vertical. Anticipation overcomes fear, as she wills first one leg, then the other to propel her. Her delight in the jerky, uncontrolled forward momentum is unabated by her hard landing.

“One, two. One, two. Keep going.”

My father urges my mother on. Parkinson’s Disease is slowly robbing her of her mobility. Her brain short-circuits the order for her legs to move, each step a triumph of will.

Between minus one and plus 80, we lurch through life with varying degrees of control. We might be cruising along, all blue-sky positivity when BAM! Down we go. Job losses or lost loves, disappointments, illnesses.

Our lives are jagged parabolas, learning, growing, achieving, two steps forward and one step back on our upward arc. But as they say, what goes up, must come down. And so we do. Our bodies complain, then loudly protest when we ask them to do what once came so easily. Our memories hiccup when we reach for a name or fact.

One, two. One, two. We can wallow in our setbacks or get back up and forge ahead.

The choice is ours.

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Superpower

Posted on March 3, 2014 by ginachoward

R E A DI have a superpower, and today I’m going to share its secret with about 30 eighth graders. However, I won’t tell them how to get it right off the bat.

No.

The Read Across America organizers at Whitewater Middle School asked me and other writers from the Charlotte Writers’ Club to read from our works or those of others, discuss the challenges we have overcome and talk about the value of pursuing our goals. “Be inspirational,” they said.

Having devoured books from the time I first could read, I wasn’t sure my experiences were particularly inspirational. I just always loved to read. I relish a good story well told, being transported to another place and time, feeling like the characters are people I know, and vicariously experiencing their emotions.

Then I discovered my superpower.

In reading voraciously, I become better informed, and more understanding of other perspectives and cultures. I think more critically. I become a better writer.

By being a reader, I gained power over myself and my future. It led me to a career as a writer, and the pen – and its modern-day equivalent – is indeed mighty. Not only does my career pay the bills, my feature stories help educate, and my ghostwriting helps form opinion.

Reading is a superpower. That is what I am telling the students. Better still, it’s a superpower that no one can take away from you.

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Watering our words

Posted on February 24, 2014 by ginachoward

wateringNo matter the weather, Crazy Cathy is in her yard watering her weeds. That’s not her real name of course, my round-the-corner neighbor. But she’s always out there in a hooded raincoat, knitted ski cap or floppy sunhat, holding that hose. Standing water from a torrential downpour? The garden hose is full open. Four inches of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t snow? She’s watering.

If we lived in a more buttoned-down neighborhood, the homeowners association would be knocking at her door. The weeds are so prolific, they are clogging the run-off pipes.

Walking home tonight in the afterglow of a darkening sky, I heard the familiar shishing of Cathy’s hose. The emerging night had bled the color from the yards and road and flowers. Skeletal branches cut black slashes in the monochromatic dusk. Yet, Cathy kept the faith.

We writers aren’t that different from Crazy Cathy. We water our words. From among our weeds, occasionally, we find an inkling of inspiration, a glimmer of greatness. We cultivate our words, paring and pruning. With any luck, perfect prose and poetry will bloom.

Maybe Cathy isn’t crazy after all. She just has hope that one day, against all odds, a flower will push through the weeds and grow.

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The message

Posted on February 17, 2014 by ginachoward

communications towerWhether selling toothpaste or terrorism, getting the word out is all important.

In her book What Terrorists Want, Louise Richardson says that the purpose of terrorists’ acts is not to defeat the enemy, but to send a message. The victims they choose and the acts themselves have symbolic political, economic, religious or social significance.

You see, terrorists operate from a position of weakness. If they were in positions of strength, they’d simply change the system. But terrorists believe that they can’t implement change through the usual channels, that only violence will draw attention to their causes and force change. However, random violence is meaningless without context. There needs to be a “why” for the attacks.

I thought about having my character leave notes at the scenes explaining the “why.” That might be how he or she starts communicating, but that plan is fraught with problems. Notes could be thrown away with the trash. They might not be taken seriously. They might be overlooked. Even if they were found, someone might see the perpetrator leaving the notes and be able to give the police a description. So, my character will have to resort to the tried and true method of getting the message out: the media.

The media, intentionally or not, is a boon to terrorists. In his 2006 lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science, “What Makes a Terrorist,” Alan Krueger pointed out that terrorists’ attacks affect only a small number of people. For the strikes to have the desired effects, media coverage is essential.

So, in the next week, I’ll be crafting the messages the media will have received. They’ll be in the police reports that Janelle reads. Her challenge will be to determine whether the perpetrator is indeed Paul.

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