Being Enough

Lamott is fun to read because she is so very over-the-top nuerotic. There were parts of this chapter, the one called "Publication," however, that were downright irritating and others parts that rang with clarion-bell truth that engraved my bones. Glad you're along for our book club.

Many nonwriters assume that publication is a thunderously joyous event in the writer's life...They believe that if they themselves were to get something published, their lives would change instantly, dramatically, and for the better. Their self-esteem would flourish; all self-doubt would be erased like a typo. Entire paragraphs and manscripts of disappointment and rejection and lack of faith would be wiped out by one push of a psychic delete button and replaced by a quiet, tender sense of worth and belonging. Then they could wrap the world in flame.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

When people learn that I'm a published author of five novels, they assume I'm rich, as brash and adventuresome as Ernest Hemmingway, and famous. I am none of these things. I'm the manager of a household (including three toilets), the dog walker/poo poo picker-upper, the gardener, snow shoveler, and purveyor of sustenance (I shop at Wal-Mart). My self-esteem is not bulletproof, nor do I slough off rejection. I'm the same person I was before my first novel was published, only my expectations are more realistic, and I must deal regularly with issues of envy. (This may seem contradictory. Aren't we all?)

My life has been enriched by reaching a broader audience. Writing five novels has confirmed that I can accomplish big things. Composing a story weighing in at 100,000 words is like climbing Mt. Everest in the dark, without a camera or witnesses. It's big! Satisfying. Intoxicating. Privately, it's a golden handshake.

And people invite me to speak to groups large and small. Trust me, when I was changing diapers or teaching school, no one invited me anywhere to say anything. I thoroughly enjoy this perk because there are things I care about, and now people will listen to me--or pretend to listen while licking chocolate cake off the tines of their forks.

Over the last ten years, I've had amazing opportunities to share God's faithfulness, encourage artists and craftpeople to value their abilities as gifts, teach the craft of writing to aspiring writers, and convince rooms full of librarians that fiction is more truthful than nonfiction. I really, really like this part, but the invitations are dwindling since I haven't published anything in some time. Boo! Hiss!

All that I know about the relationship between publication and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings..."If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it."

Being a published writer is humbling. One day you're a rock star--your publisher is buying full-page ads in magazines, telling the world you're the fresh voice in fiction, and PR people know your number by heart--and the next day, a review comes out in your local paper. It's the worst review ever written, and now your neighbors are blushing for you and avoiding eye contact at the grocery store. Your mother even writes a letter to the editor. You're wondering if it's too late to crawl back into obscurity. It is, sorry to say. But you are still standing, and you're discovering other reasons to put yourself out there.

All of this is to say that you need more than being published to "be enough" for yourself. While plotting and researching, spend time with people who love you and some that you choose to love. Nurture those relationships as fervantly as you nurture your craft, even moreso. This includes the One who loves you most, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's crazy about you! He cares little about what you do. (Publishing contracts are used in bird cages in Heaven.) Jesus revels in who you are--a lover of the unlovely, one who reaches out a hand to the hurting, someone who says yes, yes, yes to all that He is and loves Him for it. People like this are enough for themselves. This should be your goal before publication.

Has publication been all you dreamed? What "gifts" do you welcome most from publication? Which challenge you? How do you prepare yourself to face the ups and downs of publication?

We have one more chapter of Lamott's book Bird by Bird to discuss. Any other suggestions?

Standing on the Shoulders--Writing as Gift

Something in the chapter of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott called "Giving" reawakened the reason I became a writer. Allow me to review, as briefly as possible, the legacy we join when we put pen to paper.

I returned to college full-time when I had a husband (Mr. Wonderful) and two school-aged children. I enrolled as an English Literature major and Education minor. The experience revealed a bull-dog tenacity I hadn't known I possessed that served me well. Tenacity is exactly what it took to dig into the literature of the Enlightenment, and Literary Criticism, and The History of the English Language.

During my final semester, I was required to take senior seminar, a tight group of twelve literary disciples who sat at the feet of the English Department's high priest, Dr. Crowell. Very intimidating. Fortunately, the topic was Women in Literature. Eureka! Something I could get my teeth into.

We started, of course, at the beginning of recorded female writings in the Middle Ages, the likes of Julian of Norwich and later Queen Elizabeth. Women's creativity was still quite suspect, unless you were the queen, and attributed to witchcraft and sorcery. You can see how discouraging that would be. Julian wrote of her visions--some I find very inspirational--and Elizabeth focused on the political and the rhetorical. In short, writing as an expression of the female experience was limited to topics of religion, and if you were the queen, you admitted to being a "weak and feeble woman" with the heart and stomach of a king. Even the queen had to hedge a bit.

The Enlightenment wasn't much better for women. Women were expected to focus on affectations and getting married but not getting old. A few--the Blue Stockings--broke away from the pack. I researched Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and her story of literary accomplishment is impressive and heartbreaking. She started translating classics as a child in her father's library. She became parlour amusement for her father and his friends. Later, she wrote dense political satire in iambic pentameter that was ridiculed for its female weakness by the likes of Alexander Pope. Eventually, she wrote her daughter, telling her that education for women was of little use. Ugh. You may better recognize these names from the Enlightenment (approx. 1800s): Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Brontes, Mary Shelly, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and all paid a high price for creativity.

The Turn-of-the-Century (the last) female writers were a confused lot, intransigent in their decisions to embrace society or to forsake it altogether--read that: marriage or spinsterhood. They saw no middle ground, because there wasn't one. A classic story in this genre is Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." Also writing at this time were Sarah Orne Jewett and Edith Wharton. Marriage or creativity? How many of us could make that choice?

The Modernists (1914-1939) female writers saw a turning of the tables. The men called the quarter century an "Age of Anxiety," but--with some notable qualifications--female writers expereinced an era of exuberance. Women finally gained the right to vote in the U.S. and they were entering into ever-increasing professional fields. Life was changing with the advent of new technologies--radio, nickelodeons, airplanes, and the automaobile. And WWI gave men the sense of being helpless rather than heroic. Enter the Modernist female writers we love and the experimentation they reveled in: Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein (love may not fit Ms. Stein, but you have to admire her verve), Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Katherine Mansfield, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and Zora Neale Hurston. Still, mental illness (i.e. Woolf's plunge with a pocketful of rocks) and controversy marked the period.

According to the the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, contemporary writers (1940-1984) "wrote out of a double consciousness; on the one hand, a newly intense awareness of their role as female artist who had inherited an increasingly great tradition, and on the other hand, a newly protective sense of their vulnerability as women who inhabited a culture hostile to female ambition and haunted by eroticized images of women...contemporary writers were consistently struggling to define the cultural forces that had formed their personal and artisitic identities." In the midst of that milieu Eudora Welty, Mary Sarton, Shirley Jackson, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Connor, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, and Joyce Carol Oates emerged as pacesetters for generations of women writers to come.

Soon after our class read about Sylvia Plath putting cookies and milk out for her napping children before sticking her head in an unlit gas oven, I asked my professor, "Are there any writers in the female literary canon who liked being married and didn't consider suicide?"

"We'll read her next," he promised.

And so we did, Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. I could have kissed Annie. If given the chance to stalk her, I will. Her book of essays assured me that a writer could grow up in a happy family, collect insects, eat snow off mittens, look for monsters during flashes of lightning, and still be a brilliant writer.

I'm old enough to remember the advertising slogan (for Virginia Slims cigarettes?) that announced, "We've come a long way, baby!" As female writers we have, but we stand on the shoulders of all the brave women who dared to expose themselves on paper, and, perhaps, to be burned at the stake for doing so.

We are wired as humans to be open to the world instead of enclosed in a fortified, defensive mentality. What your giving can do is help your readers be brave, be better than they are, be open to the world again.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

You must, must, must read Lamott's chapter "Giving" in its entirety. Her words refreshed my resolve to empty myself for others. Having reviewed the women of literature, are you ready to join their legacy, to not squander what took centuries to earn, the freedom of our words and stories? Do you see your writing as a gift to your readers? How does that influence what you write? How does the act of giving your art change what you are willing to surrender in order to write?

Shining a Light on Monsters

OOPS! I skipped a chapter in our discussion of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird last time. Here it is! Jump in whether you've read the chapter or not. Also, is there a writing book you would like to discuss together here? We're almost to the end of Lamott's book.

Lamott's chapter, "Finding Your Voice," opens rather predictably but wisely about how new writers tend to emulate their favorite authors:

It is natural to take on someone else's style, that it's a prop that you use for a while until you have to give it back. And it just might take you to the thing that is not on loan, the thing that is real and true: your own voice.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Early in my writing career, I read everything by Elizabeth Berg. I LOVED her voice, the truth of it, how I felt connected to her characters, with her. I loved her writing so much I attended a writers conference where she was a speaker, hoping to meet her. The poor woman was at the tail end of a book tour. She looked like she'd slept in motel rooms lit by strobe lights for weeks. The good thing for me? She was weak and easy to stalk. I wrangled a picture with her, a few words that I don't remember, but it didn't help me sound just like her.

As much as I wanted to write in her voice, I wasn't Elizabeth Berg. I hadn't lived her life, wrestled her monsters, eaten her breakfast, argued with her husband over moldy towels. My voice is my own, a product of all that is dull and magnificent about me. It's what I fantacize about, tremble over, do in dark rooms with the shades drawn. Oh my! My voice is also what swells my heart to love, rejoice, and worship. There's no getting around it, I can only write from my own core.

This, according to Lamott, means getting in touch with our monsters.

Really?

Oh yeah.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when pople let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead, we compare notes.

I worried about myself even as a child. We had exposed aggragate stairs to the second floor that sort of floated. No risers. Somehow, I had gotten into my head that if I stepped on the third step from the top, a monster would reach between the steps, grab my leg, and pull me into the 5th Dimension where unspeakable torments awaited children. My maturing brain knew this couldn't be true, but the self-doubting part of my brain kept up this practice for an embarrassingly long time.

No one ever knew.

Until, in an unguarded moment, as an adult, I told someone I hardly knew. As it turned out, she had rituals that kept her safe from monsters in the bathroom--touch the hot water knob, the cold, and tap the faucet three times. No monsters in the bathroom! And so, as Lamott suggests, my new friend and I compared notes. And that's what our readers want to do, compare notes. They don't want to brand us, banish us, or beach us (in case you're a whale). They share our need to know we're not as weird or damaged as we thought. We're not alone.

Recently, the gifted and gorgeous Katy Popa suggested a book to me: The 90 Day Novel by Alan Watt. The author took me by the hand to lead me through the process of structuring and plotting my work in progress through daily writing exercises. Some of the writing prompts took me aback. He made me write about my biggest disappointments, tell things that no one knows about me, and what the source of my greatest shame happens to be. I've filled five notebooks with entries for myself and my characters.

Somewhere in the process, I thought to myself, "Wow, my character's voice is changing. She's real." I'm not sure how my subconcious accomplished this (Bonnie!), but shining a light on my monster has deepened my voice, made it more unique and infused it with truth. It's more me.

Lamott summarizes that telling the truth in our own voices is our nature. "Truth seems to want expression." I'm not sure it's our nature to tell the truth, but I do agree that truth wants expression.

Fortunately, not all truth is a cold, cold lake we have to plunge headlong into. Perhaps your truth is that there is so much more to life than what can be seen. Life is mysterious, wondrous, and its Creator is good. Lamott includes a quote toward the end of the chapter that took my breath away. Stephen Mitchell wrote about Job, saying this:

The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama is delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.

Let me dare to summarize this seemingly disjointed discussion on voice: While we are in the toddler stage of our writing, we will emulate--or try to emulate--our favorite authors. It's possible this sort of play will lead us to our true voice. But it usually doesn't. What does strengthen and develop our grown-up voice is courage--to face our monsters and to "expose the unexposed." All this work will give us a truer voice, and truth will connect us with our readers like nothing else.

There was Interview With a Vampire. How about Interview with [fill in your name here]'s Monster? If you dare, interview your monster and see how the experience influences your voice. Be sure to report back! Are you buying this? Is it necessary to face your monsters to develop a strong, unique voice? Have you laid a book down because the voice wasn't true? And what about this kinship with truth? Have you experienced that with an author? Here's one sentence from this chapter that could start a great conversation: "Write as if your parents are dead." Let's not waste it!

More than Publication: Writing as Gift

JOY ALERT!!! Life has gotten a little sweeter. We just noticed: today (and we don't know how much longer) you can download the eBook of Blue Hole Back Home by Joy Jordan Lake FOR FREE!  Here are the places you can get it: 
Amazon (For Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (For Nook)
Christianbook.com (For just about any e-reader)


We've nearly reached the end of Anne Lamott's writing-book wonder, Bird by Bird. If you haven't been reading along with us, don't be shy about jumping into the conversation. Lamott has a way of jumpstarting a good conversation on the craft of writing. And this is a very good chapter.

The chapter "Writing a Present" is all too timely for me. Lamott tells of writing the story of her father's life and death and about the last days of her friend, Pammy. Lamott is the consumate observer and recorder. In the midst of her family's interactions and a tsunami of emotions, she took copious notes on index cards. And then, she actually presented her father and Pammy with completed manuscripts of their stories before their deaths. She considered her manuscripts love letters, artifacts that would keep memories fresh and in a sense validate the people she loved.

When my mom discovered my modest talent for writing--long, long ago--she suggested I write her story. It's a dramatic story to be sure. At sixteen and the oldest of seven children, her parents took off in opposite directions. Mom dropped out of school to take care of her siblings, but the state stepped in and her siblings younger than 14 were adopted out. My mom made sure they remained a family, even when a lawyer wrote a threatening letter over a birthday card she'd sent to the youngest. You have a admire that kind of tenacity. And a woman with that kind of tenacity, produces lots and lots of material.

As a teenager, I wasn't interested in writing my mother's story. I set my eyes on more exotic tales--which never got written. And then babies were born. Houses were built and remodeled. Careers blossomed and faded and reignited. Directions changed. Life didn't leave much room for reminiscing. If I'm to be honest, I wasn't eager to write my mother's story as an adult either. She's been battling cancer for 23 years, and, well, the thought of reliving all that nearly flattened me. Besides cancer, there are questions nobody wants to ask their mother and answers she most definitely wouldn't want to articulate. So when she would say, "You should write about my life," I would smile and say, "We should do that."

I'm deeply regretting my hesitancy now. We admitted Mom into a hospice program this week, and the disease isn't waiting for a memoir to be written. This writer is steeped in regret. That doesn't mean we've given up on the idea. We're chatting into a digital recorder, and because she is so generous, she's okay with that. Ugh.

People do not have to die for your writing to be a gift. I heard a story on "This American Life," an NPR production, last week. A 13-year-old Columbian girl had been waiting for her kidnapped father to come home for eleven years. When the Columbian military finally formed a rescue mission, they found her father tied to a tree and executed. Among his belongings was a fat journal of letters to the daughter, letters that recounted his youth and his treasured memories of her. He left a piece of his heart for her, but I promised that writing as a gift doesn't have to be about death, didn't I?

Is someone you love having a birthday? Write out a shared memory. Is a friend moving to another city? Write a story set in that city. For your children, keep a journal! Write about your everyday lives but also write about memories from your own childhood.

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else, " and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not every will be glad that you did.--Lamott

There's nothing so powerful as a good testimony. Think of Moses and the children of Israel. Lots of bondage and injustice. An evil captor. A mighty Deliverer! There's a story! But maybe your story isn't very dramatic. Maybe you asked Jesus into your heart as a child, and you've been living in a state of seamless grace ever since. That's a story! The keeping love of God is a very powerful story indeed. If you haven't written down your story of redemption, this may be the sweetest gift you ever pen, and a great place to start thinking of your writing as a present to be given in love.

How do you use your writing as a present to those you love? Was everyone glad you did? Please offer other ideas for how you use your gift to connect, love, and validate.

Buggy Pleasures or Draw a Sword?

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I did not forget. Honest! I've been waiting for the right moment to continue our book talk of Anne Lamott's contemporary classic, Bird by Bird. And wouldn't you know it, Anne comes along with a chapter on writers block? While I don't have an official diagnosis, I suspect I may be experiencing the dreaded WB. This description from Lamott's book comes pretty close to how I've been feeling lately:

A blissfully productive manic stage may come to a screeching halt, and all of a sudden you realize you're Wile E. Coyote and you've run off the cliff and are a second away from having to look down. Or else you haven't been able to write anything at all for a while. The fear that you'll never write again is going to hit you when you feel not only lost and unable to find a few little bread crumbs that would identify the path you were on but also when you're at your lowest ebb of energy and faith.--Lamott

So I read the rest of the chapter, looking for something to transform me back into the roadrunner. Beep! Beep!

Lamott's advice rings true enough: Write one page of ANYTHING per day. Do grocery lists count? Make a commitment to the characters rather than the novel. I like my characters. No problem. And "just take in the buggy pleasures" of everyday life to refill what must be running on empty. Really? How many legs do these bugs have?

Overall, however, I did not feel better or energized after reading this chapter. I. Want. To. Write. So I reached for another book on my shelf, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This guy takes no prisoners in the battle of Resistence, that inevitable battle when creating art. He's kicked me in the bum before. I think I even wrote about it here.

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. (Patti here: Well, it's a little hard, wouldn't you say?) What's hard is sitting down to write. (Yes!)--Pressfield

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Resistance can best be defined by what it keeps us from doing, like starting and finishing anything worthwhile--diets, exercise, and writing among those listed. And Pressfield characterizes Resistance with ominous adjectives: invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, impersonal, and infallible. All true.

If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. --Pressfield

This puts writers block in a new light, doesn't it? Evil? A little like burying our Master's talents? Hmm.

I've allowed Resistance to put my latest WIP on hold for a few months. I have my excuses, thank you very much. And it's not like I haven't been bubbling and stewing and mulling, even had a few false starts. But I do find myself wearing that "Writer" tee shirt Katy talked about. Truth is, I've been miserable not writing.

If I'm going to be honest here, time and/or exhaustion isn't my problem. Fear of failure is. Like Lamott, my last manuscript didn't evoke the love of editors or agents or anyone. I don't even think my mother liked it. Pressfield addresses that problem, and I'm going to copy the whole chapter for you. Here goes:

Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. --Pressfield

The battle goes on. Either that fact makes you reach for your sword or sends you to the bomb shelter. I'm off to war!

Whether Lamott's approach or Pressfield's makes more sense to you may be a matter of personality. Know this about me, I cannot wait to mount up and follow the Lord back to earth at the Second Coming. Yep, there's a warrior behind this mild-manner facade. It's time to wake her up. Writing novels is too important. I offer another view of how the world should look. I offer hope! I entertain! I like to think that I add a respite of beauty, too. So do you.

How do you wake up the warrior within? How do you write when everything is saying no? Is Resistance evil or just maddening?

Growing a Bigger Heart: Writers Groups

Writing groups? According to Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: "At worst, they will suggest that you have no visible talent whatsoever and should not bother writing anything ever again, even your name." At the best, you grow a bigger heart.

About ten years ago I was desperate for someone who wasn't my husband or my mother to read my early pages to see if I shouldn't beg for my job back or commit myself. After all, who believes they can actually write a novel? I needed a dose of reality.

So I attended a one-day romance writing seminar organized by a local writers group. I had no intention of writing romances, especially after outlining a story on a half-sheet chart as the teacher had suggested, but I'd gone to the seminar with quite another purpose in mind--to find a critique group to call my own.

At the end of the seminar, one of the organizers asked for writer news, like Grand Junction is the hotseat for all that's literary in North America. I stood up, swallowed hard, and asked for anyone interested in starting a critique group to talk to me afterward. It turns out I'd been sitting with the only three women at the seminar interested in starting a critique group. It was a divine seating arrangement.

We've been together for twelve years. Imagine that.

Anne writes about changes she saw in four of her students after they'd become a group: "...helping each other has made their hearts get bigger. A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out, like a baby's fontenel, where you can see the soul pulse through. You can see this pulse in them."

A critique group, which may sound too editorial for you, or a writers group, which may sound a little ambiguous, is an absolute necessity for a writer. (Actually, I think all Christians should be in a writers group.) This is where I learned to see the best in what others offered and to speak the truth in love about their homely "children" without eviscerating them. It's also where I learned to hear the truth spoken in love...and to listen. In other words, my heart got bigger. And my writing improved.

Our critique group's motto is something like this: We love each other enough to tell the truth about our writing and believe we are capable of choosing what to listen to and what to do with what has been said, even if that means totally ignoring everything.

Here's a typical conversation when my work is being critiqued. I'm the quiet one:

"I wasn't quite clear on what you were trying to say here, Patti. Did anyone else have a problem?"

"I was totally confused. Is the girl trying to scale a wall or emote on the history of bricklaying?"

"I loved it. I cried my eyes out. Although, you may consider taking everything out about the wall. You have twenty-three metaphors and two similies in this passage alone. Maybe limit yourself to one a chapter."

"I'm a little confused about the relationship between the baker and the rapper."

"I found the premise of their relationship flakey." Lots of laughing. "Sorry, no, really. Perhaps the rapper's brother knows the baker, maybe they served in the war together."

"That's brilliant! That way the whole motivation for what happens between the rapper kid and the girl makes sense. You should use that."

"Did you mean to use the word "emigrate" here or did you mean "immigrate?" According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "emigrate" is when someone leaves a country to live somewhere else and "immigrate" means to come to a certain country. But then, this is another one of your extended metaphors. You could delete that whole page without losing any meaning."

"Are you bummed about the metaphors?" She holds up a page from my manuscript. "Check out all the smiley faces. I loved the way you developed these characters. However, you are a little heavy-handed with the clever descriptions, and check out how many prepositional phrases you have in this one sentence. But, overall, this is your best writing yet. This is a New York Times best seller in the making. If anyone can get this passage to work, you can. I love what you're doing here."

"Me too."

"All it needs is a bit of tweaking, kiddo."

I may not feel loved at just that moment, but I do after I've gone home in a funk, tossed and turned in bed for hours, and finally gotten up to read my critique group's margin notes. Clearly, they looked at my manuscript with the intensity of surgeons. If my literary slip is showing after I've revised, it's nobody's fault but mine.

Are you in a writers/critique/blood-letting group? Online or in person? What is the greatest benefit of a writers group? Pitfalls? How did you find your group? Do you have a bigger heart?

Every Writer's Magic Key: The Interview

Writing books come and go. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird seems to be on everyone's must-read, must-underline heavily, must-dog ear list. It's about time we talked about it. So that's what we're doing. Today, we're discussing her chapter, "Calling Around." You don't have to read the chapter to share in the discussion.

There are an enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone. --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I didn't believe Anne, not the first time I read this. Was she crazy? I'd done plenty of interviews over the phone as a quasi-journalist. The people on the other end of the line kept asking, "Who is this again? Why are you calling me?"

But she is right.

When I call people, tell them I'm a writer, they invite me over to meet the family and fill out adoption papers. Well, that might be an exaggeration, almost.

Meeting people who are passionate about their hobbies, histories, families, occupations, travels is like finding bonus nuts in your brownies. Very enriching. Even if you don't end up using one bit of the interview material.

In the muling days of my last manuscript, I thought I needed to know more about the 10th Mountain Division, an elite Army division that trained in Colorado. A nice local touch for my historical fiction set during WWII. As it turned out, the 10th Mountain Division would have cluttered my story. That doesn't mean I'll ever forget the time I spent with Sgt. Herbert Wright, 95.

It was soon apparent that Herbert didn't hear well enough to do a telephone interview, so I scheduled an interview at his home, which turned out to be less than a mile away. Herbert led me through the livingroom to the kitchen. He trailed a tube from his oxygen compressor. Boxes of frozen dinners cluttered the counters.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked.

Dead flies mummified on the window sill. "No thanks."

Herbert sat across from me, the effort of walking from the front door had taken its toll. He shook his head. "I don't know what I can tell you. I'm not as sharp as I used to be."

"I don't need dates or facts, just what you remember, mostly about training and how things went once you got to Europe."

He smoothed back his impossibly thin hair. "You want to know about the guys?"

"I especially want to know about the guys."

Herbert looked up. A veil lifted. His eyes cleared. He was back at Camp Hale, reliving the cammaraderie of his buddies. "I sure loved those guys."

And then he told me the most amazing story.

The 10th Mountain Division arrived late to the war, not until 1945. The Germans had bunkered along the ridges of the Apennine Mountains of Italy and had no plans of leaving, though many had tried to hurry them back to Germany. Along with the usual infantry and tank support, the 10th Mountain Division consisted of skiers and mountain climbers. They came to the war late, but they incurred one of the highest casualties rates and conducted one of the fastest advances into enemy territory. These men were risk-takers not accustomed to failure.

Early in the fighting, Herbert's platoon had to crawl over a small rise of earth, nothing more than a bump, to continue their ascent. Herbert led the way, but he was shot in the pelvis only yards from his objective. His seargant crawled over the rise to bring Herbert back to the safety. As Sgt. Scott bent over Herbert, a sniper's bullet severed Sgt. Scott's jugular. He collapsed on Herbert and bled out. Herbert's chances didn't look good. They looked even worse when a U.S. tank started backing toward him. He thought, "Swell, I survived getting shot by the Nazis. Now, I'm going to be crushed by one of my own."

As it turned out, the tank provided cover for the men of Herbert's platoon to remove the body of their sargeant and evacuate Herbert. His voice caught as he talked about Sgt. Scott. Herbert considered him a first-rate hero for taking such a chance on his behalf.

Herbert was sent stateside to recuperate and rebuild his life. When he felt up to a journey, he drove the 600 miles to northern Idaho to visit the widow of Sgt. Scott and the young son he'd left behind. Herbert felt responsible for putting the sargeant in harm's way. He'd traveled to Idaho to apologize and to tell of Sgt. Scott's heroism. He did that. And then he fell in love with the widow Scott and loved her the rest of her life. He also stepped up to be a father to the boy. Herbert was quite proud that his son had two fathers who served in the 10th Mountain Division.

I didn't use what I learned from Herbert that day, not in the traditional sense. But his story rekindled something in me, maybe hope. I never looked at an elderly man quite the same. The stories they hold...

What's your take? Is Anne telling the truth? Are the words "I'm a writer" an magic key that opens doors to people's lives and passions? Have you conducted an interview that changed the course of a story? Provided a friend for life?

Is There an App for That? Index Cards

My lovely co-writers at NovelMatters have touched on elevated and challenging topics this week. Me? I’m writing about index cards, sort of. This is a continuing conversation—jump on in!—of Anne Lamott’s writing-craft classic, Bird by Bird.

I happen to adore index cards. They don’t ask much of the writer, just a few words, an idea, a recipe. That’s all. Honestly, I get a little nervous if my stockpile wanes.

I have a long history with index cards. I used them to make flash cards and flip books in elementary school. When marriage seemed like a reachable goal, I wrote out recipes like prayers, learned all the abbreviations, practiced my best printing.

Index cards have always been my choice for to-do lists. If I can fit my list on an index card—and I write really big—I can get it all done in one day, guaranteed!

In college, I made my first planner by stapling seven index cards together and labeling them Monday through Sunday. Crossing out completed tasks made my heart beat a little faster. Yep, I invented the planner. I also invented Jazzercize about this time, but I forgot to tell people about that, too.

I went through pallets of index cards in college--both times--for all the usual uses. I carried them in a special holder. It was yellow.

My most fiendish use of index cards came as a fifth-grade teacher. I tired of reading 12-page summaries of my student’s reading. My eager students—despite repeated lessons on main ideas—included every detail of even the most modest story twist. The index card came to the rescue.

I gave each student a 5X7 index card for their book report. At first, they tried writing 12 pages of summary, only with much, much smaller printing. When I reminded them about main events and sent them back to their seats, their frustration grew. Fifth graders are large by the end of the year, and I started feared for my life, until one of them—God bless ‘em!— finally succeeded. I was beginning to think I’d asked too much. (Note: This was long before texting…and they all progressed to 6^th grade knowing how to write concise summaries.)

As a writer, I’ve used index cards to record scene ideas and then shuffled them into a sense of plot. I have 163 index cards for one book. My husband made a special holder, so I could page through the cards. (Note: If you do this, be sure to number the index cards once you have them in order. Learned this the hard way.)

Although this chapter is titled “Index Cards,” it’s not really about lined pieces of cardstock. No, this is a chapter about collecting what we see in the world, recording it for use in our novels, and then remembering where that stinkin’ card went.

I used to think that if something was important enough, I’d remember it until I got home, where I could simply write it down in my notebook like some normal functioning member of society…But then I wouldn’t.

Anne uses index cards as portable journals. The quickest way to stop a conversation is to whip out a fat journal and start taking notes. A black curtain of silence falls over the room. Index cards are small, firm, and easy to stow—perfect for clandestine note-taking. Simply jot a few words or several lines of dialogue. As Anne mentions, they fit in a pocket and won’t make your bum look lumpy. See, there are no excuses for letting a great idea evaporate.

… unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child looking at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish.

These ideas come to us so vividly, so precisely, and oh so cleverly that we are tempted to believe they cannot be forgotten, but that is fairy dust, my dear writing friend. A Pulitzer Prize-winning idea will flit into your head and right back out again...unless you write it down. That’s what index cards are for.

My index-card life is not efficient or well organized.

Hey howdy! My question while reading this chapter was this: Anne, how in the world do you find that one brilliant idea when you need it? Who’s to say it hasn’t stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe and gone on its own adventure or slipped into the fifth dimension via the portal under the couch?

Anne doesn’t say, but she basically comes down to using index cards as a mnemonic device. For most of us, our visual memory is the most enduring, especially for converting short-term memory to long-term memory. That’s why so many of us take notes during lectures or sermons. Taking notes is turning auditory information into visual information. And if we're younger than 30 and very, very lucky, we won't have to look at that card again.

Still, the idea of hefting around a bale of index cards in my purse and then relying on my aging brain to remember what a few obscure words might mean, doesn’t fill me with confidence. I throw notes like that away every day.

We talked about journaling earlier in the year to capture ideas that alight on our overtaxed minds. Maybe the most ideal way to hold ideas is a marriage of index cards and a journal that is divided into categories: description, dialogue, titles, story ideas, in the news, etc. And then taping the cards in place, like a hinge so you can read both sides, in the journal.

Is it too late in this post to ask if index cards are passé? Is there an index card app? There should be. Did I just invent an app? At least I’m telling you about it.

I have some practical questions for you: How do you capture ideas at inconvenient moments? A recorder? Journal? Camera? The tried-and-true index card? How do you organize what you’ve plucked from an orchard of ideas?

For Writers Only: Is Jealousy Rotting Your Bones?

What a perfect week to talk about jealousy. Ariel's brilliantly constructed post on Monday about fear of fiction and Latayne's heartbreakingly beautiful poetry on Wednesday set this topic up perfectly. I'm so jealous! What amazing writers! I totally understand how Anne Lamott feels when she talks about jealousy in the writing world. And why are we talking about jealousy? Because we're still chatting up Bird by Bird, and today's chapter is creatively titled "Jealousy."

Jealousy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer, and most degrading. And I, who have been the Leona Helmsley of jealousy, have come to believe that the only things that hlp ease or transform it are (a) getting older, (b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and (c) using it as material. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

Jealousy has only gotten worse in the seventeen years since Bird by Bird was published. After all, we have the Internet now. With our smart phones, we can compare numbers of Facebook fans wherever we go, be alerted when our agents announce a yowza contract for another client, know who our publisher is taking to a conference, get weekly updates on the top ten bestsellers, know how many followers a certain author has on his or her blog, click into a storm of congratulations when someone else wins an award.

But then, Cain and Abel didn't have the Internet, and, well, that story didn't end well either.

A heart at peace gives life to the body,

but envy rots the bones. Proverbs 14:30

As someone who deals with rotting bones from time to time (don't ask how often, please), I have to disagree with Anne's advice in this chapter. Getting older may help some writers put things in perspective, but I'm not willing to wait until my death bed to see just how old is older. For me, talking about jealousy only seems to empower it. And as for using it as material? Perhaps, but this can simply be an excuse to give jealousy a place to grow in the dark until it's needed. And it will grow.

For me, jealousy is a God-Patti relationship issue. When I forget God's sovereignty, His perfect love, that He must become greater and I become less, the green-eyed monster gains momentum. Here are some of the ways I've battled and will battle jealousy as a writer:

• Keep my relationship with Jesus vital and intimate. For me, that means almost daily (daily IS my goal) personal bible study and an ongoing conversation with him. Nothing else convinces me of his love and sovereignty, the source of peace.
• Be part of a writing community that promotes love over publishing, like Novel Matters. Don't get me wrong, we all want to be published, to bring our art out into the light, but being published is not the measure of God's goodness to us. His Son is that.
• Look for ways to bless others who are living the writer's life. Those we envy experience good days and bad, tiramisu and hardtack, tsunamis of inspiration and a cold, white computer screens of doubt. Pray for them. Encourage them. They probably have hemorrhoids.
• Celebrate the "success" of others.
• Set my heart on what God wants for me, not on what God wants for others.
• Be grateful, for heaven's sake. God is using my writing. He is good in all things. The writing life is amazing.
• Use the Internet to build relationships, not as a tool for self promotion. Give your "friends" and readers a gift with your wit and wisdom.

Am I the only one who spurs the green-eyed monster into a gallop? Please say no. How do you deal with jealousy? Have you noticed times when you are more vulnerable to jealousy?

Quieting Opposing Voices

Be our 300th follower and win our cookbook, Novel Matters on Rice: What to Cook When You Would Rather Be Writing (or Vise Versa). Yes, you can download it for free, but this is a hard copy. Such a treasure! For the other 299 members, we love you to death, too!

Grab a cup of coffee and let's sit for a spell. I'm so proud of myself for finally recording a vlog for you. Oh, the angst of it all! Well, here it is. A bit long. Make that a tall cup of coffee. I promise to be less verbose in the future, but I was so relieved to get the thing done, well, I hope you don't mind.

We're continuing our discussion of Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird. I look forward to your comments. So, on with "Radio Station KFKD."

Listen to Your Broccoli!

Oh dear, Latayne wrote eloquently on Monday about getting snagged by the little things that lead to a sumptuous poem or novel, and I'm here to talk about broccoli. Now you see what I'm up against around here. I'll try to make this the best discussion on broccoli you've had today, because we've come to Anne Lamott's chapter in Bird by Bird, "Broccoli." I wasn't quite sure what a chapter titled "Broccoli" would offer about the writing craft, but Anne never disappoints. For one thing, I'm now very good at spelling broccoli . Please join in our discussion. You are my best teachers.

Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it. "2,000-Year-Old-Man," Mel Brooks, a quote from Bird by Bird

There are two things you don't want to go bad in your refrigerator--refried beans or broccoli. If that happens, freeze the container with its contents intact and throw the whole mess away on trash day. Do. not. Open. The. Container. Otherwise, the odor will ruin your hearing. I know this to be true from personal experience.

It's been over a year since my agent called to say my publisher had canceled my contract for a third book (stinky broccoli!). Sales weren't good enough to justify the investment in another Patti Hill book. How did that feel? Think of being hit by a Mack truck that backs up and hits you again and again. That's pretty much how it felt.

Today, I am a stronger woman. I write for totally different reasons, but the stink of the broccoli remains. I was about 2/3rds of the way through my WIP when I got the news. I toyed, seriously, with the idea of burying the manuscript in the backyard and turning my office into a craft room. I prayed for direction and God spoke to me--no kidding!--through someone who didn't even know I'd asked God whether I should keep writing or not. She said, "Keep doing what you're doing. Don't get discouraged."

So I sat down at the computer with the odiferous broccoli wafting around me.

According to Anne Lamott, the wisdom of listening to your broccoli to know how to eat it means this:

It means, of course, that when you don't know what to do, when you don't know whether your character would do this or that, you get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside. It will tell you what to do. The problem is that so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children.

Or had our contracts canceled. Ouch!

You need your broccoli in order to write well. Otherwise you're going to sit down in the morning and have only your rational mind to guide you.

That will not do. We need to trust our intuitions to write something that is honest and true--and fun. So, how do we get our broccoli back. Here are Anne's suggestions:

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side.

I'm starting a new WIP , so I'm working at regaining my sense of trust. How in the world am I

going to do that? This kind of confidence doesn't come from believing what others say about you or your writing. It's something that comes from within. I've set some toys on my desk to remind me that, first and foremost, storytelling is play. I never worried about the quality of my play or my daydreams as a child, I simply indulged. Must do that again.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.

As much as I'm able, I'm going to keep my new story to myself until it's written. I never told anyone about my daydreams when I was a child, because I would have heard, "Where are you going to get an Arabian horse? How will you feed it? Where will you keep it? How will you get a horse to Arabia? Do you speak Arabic? How can you race Seabiscuit? I think he's dead." This monologue may seem silly to you, but it's not far off from the uptight writer I've been for the last year. These kinds of questions can and should be answered of our writing, but not until the rough draft is written.

Sometimes, intuition needs coaxing.

My outline will be much looser this time around. I have plot points and an ending in mind. I'll jot these down on Post-it notes and start writing. This will demonstrate, at least to me, a new kind of trust in the gift God has given me, my story intuition. This should be fun...and terrifying but not boring.

I think a major step in learning to rely on your intuition is to find a usable metaphor for it...whatever you come up with needs to suggest a voice that you are not trying to control.

Oh boy. I need something a little more candid and active than broccoli, but not as general as "animal," as one of Anne's friends uses. How about that Arabian stallion I loved as a kid? His hooves are too hard. How about a monkey? They're expressive. Playful. They fling poo. Sorry, no. A puppy? They're playful and spontaneous, plus you can put them in a crate when their play or piddling gets out of hand. Okay, a puppy it is. Now, when I sit down to write, I'll let the "puppy" out to play. Release the hounds!

I know the whole discussion about intuition can be a bit esoteric. Weird. Out there. But trusting your intuition and/or imagination is vitally important for fresh writing. And I want to be known for my fresh writing. Don't you?

Do you struggle to trust your intuition? So how do you release your intuition? What's your metaphor for your intuition? Come clean!

What is True and Right

First things first! We'd like to wish our bonnie Bonnie a very happy birthday! Hope it's the best ever!

I especially like the chapter in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird that Patti wrote about on Monday, "The Moral Point of View." Anne -- I love that we're on a first-name basis with her on this blog -- stated, "You need to put yourself at [the] center [of your stories], you and what you believe to be true or right. The core ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing ... Telling these truths is your job" (pg. 103).

Ayn Rand, in The Art of Fiction, concurs. In the chapter, "How to Develop a Plot Ability," she writes: "You must start with the abstract idea of a conflict, but thereafter your own values (emphasis mine) and your personal imagination will be a reliable dramatic selector ... do not censor yourself or check yourself against your moral code. Simply tap your emotions; you can judge later whether they are right or wrong" (pg. 58).

Those quotes spoke to me on two levels: the micro and the macro. In the micro, I thought about some of the issues I've written about in my individual novels, all from the perspective of my moral center. For it's impossible for me to separate what I write from what I believe. I can write about characters who are my polar opposites, and about situations I hope never to find myself in. What I can't do is condone a type of morality that I don't believe in.

Anne Lamott says, "I'm not suggesting that you want to be an author who tells a story in order to teach a moral ... but we feel morally certain of some things ... and we need to communicate these things" (pg. 104). I completely agree. No one wants to read fiction that's written with a heavy hand, and I'm no exception. As I wrote in my previous NM post, Paying Attention to Detail, the novel I just finished reading was "nothing more than a treatise on the author's pet issues." I don't enjoy that any more than most readers. No matter how intense or deep the plot, I still read fiction for pleasure.

The key, then, is how we address our moral certainties in our writing. I think this is something Christian authors in particular struggle with, because we do believe so passionately in our values. We understand the implications of sharing truth from Scripture. But what we need to remember is that the blank page onto which we pour our words is not our bully pulpit.

Consider the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee didn't beat her readers over the head with the moral issues plaguing the South. She simply told a story -- an excellent story -- and let the story speak for itself.

So, does "writing what I believe to be true or right" apply to not only the ethics of what I write, but to the style and genre of what I write as well? I believe it does. It's what I mean by the macro. If a writer of CBA fiction based her writing choices on what sells best in CBA, her selection would be ... ahem ... somewhat limited. That's a topic the six of us discuss among ourselves, because, alas, none of us writes in those best-selling genres. All I can say about that is, DANG! Seriously -- oh, wait, that was seriously. Bottom line is we each have to write what we "believe to be true or right."

As I've mentioned before, I just finished a novel that took two years to write, and I have no idea if a publisher will ever pick it up. But it's a story I had to write, and I don't regret one minute of those two years. The few who have read it have said some remarkable things about it, and one way or another it will see the light of day.

A few days ago I received an email from a woman who won Lying on Sunday in a drawing. She liked it well enough that she ordered and read Every Good & Perfect Gift. This is what this woman -- who is battling pancreatic cancer -- wrote to me: "I saw my own health situation in Gabby and DeeDee. I have bent pages and written down passages for recall. The way you handled this illness between friends inspired me and broke my heart at the same time ... Suffice it to say this novel hit several notes just beautifully. My theme of late has been tears ... for pain, sorrow, grief, and the occasional pity party. People call me strong and admire how I am handling my cancer. I'm not, but He is. Thank you again, Sharon."

As you can imagine, I shed a few tears of my own after reading her words. Hitting notes with my readers is the exact reason I write, and the exact reason I write what I write. It's what is true and right for me. And comments like this are what keep me going.

How have you found what is true and right for you as a writer? How does that affect your work?

The Writer as the Cheese

Welcome to the continuing conversation on Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Sure, the book has been around for a while, but when have you had a chance to chat it up with fellow writers? This is your chance. No need to read the chapter, although it’s fabulous. You’re professionals. Speak up. We learn so much from you.

The book is organized in five parts, and we’re starting the second part today: The Writing Frame of Mind. My husband would consider this a bit scary. He’s been an observer of my frame of mind for several decades, and, well, he often has to ask, “Are we talking about one of your characters now?”

We storytellers are gifted with a certain set of proclivities, some more finely tuned than others. But there is good news: Those proclivities can be sharpened and refined. And that’s what we’ll be talking about today, the chapter titled, “Looking Around.”

My husband claims to be free of the whimsy gene. Where I see a woman strutting like a hen, he sees only a field of gray smudge. When driving down the highway, I’ll ask, “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Sorry, it wasn’t ESPN.”

“Oh. Then no, I didn’t see anything.”

Out comes the notebook and I write all about the runaway steer being chased by a cowboy on horseback. Before you think my husband a dolt, he diagnoses lawn diseases at twenty paces. The man’s a genius.

We’re writers. We should be the most observant people around. That’s how we learn about the world and how it works. That’s what Lamott is proposing in this chapter. There are so many quotables in this chapter that I will comment on several.

The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in “The Farmer in the Dell” standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes.

Lamott isn’t saying to remove yourself from life. Where would we get angst for our stories? Heavens no, she is saying that it’s all there for the taking. Pay attention. Keep something handy to write on or tip-tap on. See the world as your library. You’re always learning, always gathering.

Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others…I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect.

Lamott’s theory is this: If you can’t be compassionate about your humanness, how will you portray your characters compassionately, and then how will your readers relate? Who knew being a writer required so much internal work, but it does. It really, really does.

Just as I was gaining the interest of an agent and a publisher, I ruptured a disk in my neck. For 15 months, I lay as motionless as possible to reduce the pain until the docs agreed what was going on. In the meantime, I learned quite a bit about myself, and it was shocking. Pain flays you open and there I was, the real Patti. I had to avert my eyes at times, but then I took pity on the girl and saw that she was doing the best she could. Not coincidentally, I learned quite a bit about God and his compassion too. That blip in my schedule made me a better writer by forcing me to know the real Patti and like her. If I were you, I would skip the spinal cord injury part and make peace with who you are. You’re wonderful! God thinks so. And take notes!

This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of –please forgive me—wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds…I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world—present and in awe.

A trip to Africa will do this, so can a trip to the grocery store or out to the garden. Making observations and writing them down will train you to be present and to see the world around you with wonder. Your readers will join you. Here are six things I saw anew today:

• Are the hummingbird vines being stingy, or are they awaiting some clarion call?
• Two grim-faced sparrows wait inside the birdhouse for lunch to be delivered.
• Grocery shoppers lean into their duty, pointing the way with their noses to dinner. Something easy and exquisite, hopefully.
• The woman read the label with such reverence, I expected her to clench the jar of Prego to her heart.
• The sofa cushion smiles with use.
• Nasturtiums the size of lunch plates nod in the breeze.

It doesn’t hurt to have a two-year-old around, either.

How are you as an observer? Are you compassionate with yourself? Do you agree this is necessary to be a good storyteller? I can think of some counterexamples in literature, but I like the idea of giving myself room to grow. And you? Do you see things others miss? How do you cue yourself to be stay in the present? How do you realize compassion for your characters, even the stinkers?

Is Kvetching Absolutely Necessary?

Yay! We have a winner!!! Marian, choose one of the books listed below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks to all for your comments.

Thanks so much for taking time during your Independence Weekend celebration to drop by Novel Matters. You deserve a special treat. If you comment today, I'll enter you in a drawing for one of the four books I mentioned on Wednesday in our roundtable discussion, your choice--Home, Mudbound, Half Broke Horses, or The Book Thief. Yes, it will have been gently read, by me, but books shared among friends are the best.

So, here we are for our book chat of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. We're focusing on the chapter, "Plot Treatment" today. Remember, reading the chapter isn't a prerequisite for participation. Yammer away with me!

Everyone I know flails around, kvetching and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work. You are welcome to join the club.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Just to summarize:

Lamott spent two-plus years writing a beautiful story where nothing happens. Her editor refuses the manuscript, and, after a period of depondency, she gathers herself to try again. She rearranges pages, paragraphs, and scenes on the floor of her apartment. Satisfied that she has a string of story pearls, she travels from San Francisco to New York to discover she'd only managed to make the story prettier. The story brimmed with witty writing, stunning imagery, and well-developed characters doing absolutely nothing.

You've read novels like that. You wait and wait for the story to start, all the while marveling at the clever use of language and the fresh description. Within pages of the end, if you get that far, you're still wondering when the story will begin, which means there are wants and conflict to care about. Evidently, Lamott is lucky to have an editor who pushes her to "build" a story with sound internal logic before actually publishing it.

Here's a bit of wisdom from Lamott's story: Lamott went back to her editor, head in hands, and asked for help. He tells her to write a plot treatment for her story, which turns out to be a chapter-by-chapter super-charged synopsis. (Side note: A synopsis is a great way to discover holes, gaping or otherwise, in your plot.)

After the plot treatment, she says, "The book moved along like the alphabet, like a vivid and continuous dream."

I'm such a Girl Scout--be prepared and all that. Lamott's process of writing a complete manuscript, three times, sounds like pure torture to me. Perhaps you see her experience as a glorious, organic process you hope to emulate. Go for it. Absolutely, go for it.

Not me. I do tons of thinking about structure and plot before I start a novel--and I'm doing more now than ever. That doesn't mean I don't tweak, delete, and augment along the way, that the muse doesn't whisper in my ear, that I don't hit a wall at 30,000 words. I do, I do. I've been asked by editors to shore up a sagging middle and strengthen an ending, but, egads, rewrite a manuscript three times? Lamott has persistence. Perhaps that is the true wisdom of this chapter--listen to your mentor and keep trying until you get it right.

But let's go back to plot and structure. (I'm reading two books on the topic right now: Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell and The Anatomy of Story by John Truby.) Notice Lamott didn't discuss the how-to of plot and structure in this chapter, only that the struggle for plot and structure is worth the prize. I expected her to recommend a plot treatment or other such tool, but she didn't. I find that curious, especially since she experienced success once she'd had a plan.

I'm learning that plot and structure is so much more than deciding to write by the seat of your pants or to outline every scene and sneeze. Plot and structure is the logic, the motivations, the reader's satisfaction, the author's world view...sadly, it's too big of a topic to develop here. Sorry.

I hope what you'll take from this chapter of Lamott's book is that plot and structure make beautiful writing entertaining. It's worth all the agony and kvetching. Whether you work a plan or rewrite to strengthen plot and structure, it's hard work. No way around it.

Do you consider plot and structure before you start writing? Where have you learned the most about plot and structure? Do you have a story like Lamott? Have you done complete rewrites to bolster plot and structure? What kept you sane? Motivated? Do you outline? Write a synopsis? A plot treatment? Do you believe plot and structure can happen organically as you write? I'm so curious about this topic. Tell me everything!

Getting Past What Your Characters Aren't

Welcome to our book talk on Bird by Bird. I know, the book has been out forever, but I missed the discussion group! Finally, this is my chance. I’m glad you’re here to discuss the chapter, “False Starts.” If you haven’t read the chapter, you must forget your groundless inhabitations and jump into the conversation. I learn so much from you.

“Brother Lawrence…saw all of us as trees in winter, with little to give, stripped of leaves and color and growth, whom God loves unconditionally anyway…When you write about your characters, we want to know all about their leaves and colors and growth. But we also want to know who they are when stripped of the surface show. So if you want to get to know your characters, you have to hang out with them long enough to see beyond all the things they aren’t.” Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

All I have in my writing pocket right now is a seed of an idea. The story is peopled by shadows of characters—a middle-aged woman, her mother and father, perhaps a child, and another older man. Keeping the analogy of bare trees in mind, my characters are mere sprouts, indistinguishable from a stalk of corn or an oak at the moment.

I definitely need to hang out with them. Won’t you sit in? I heard an author interview on my favorite podcast, Pen on Fire. The author—can’t remember her name—interviews her characters as if preparing to write their biographies. She fills notebooks with notes.

Here is my first interview with Barb, my protag. We’re sitting at a sidewalk café in a small California beach town, because this is my interview, and I can do it anywhere I want. There's coffee and lots of chocolate on the table, so this should go well.

Me: You look nervous, Barb.

Barb: Shouldn’t I be? I won’t have a secret left when you’ve filled your notebook.

Me: We’ll start slow. There’s no rush. We’re both after the same thing, the truth.

Barb: Really? The truth? I’m not sure I’m all that familiar with the concept anymore. I thought I was, but in the last six months…

Me: You’ve had the rug pulled out from under you?

Barb: I’ve been swallowed by a whale. Which way is up, really?

Me: Perhaps we should start earlier. What is your earliest memory?

Barb: That would have been the Maple Street house, I suppose. Before Gary. That’s my younger brother. I don’t know…

Me: You’re thinking of something.

Barb: It’s silly.

Me: Go on.

Barb: Okay, if you insist. I was hiding in the broom closet. In fact, I was sitting on Mom’s Electrolux. She was calling for me from the kitchen. I should have gone to her. I knew I should have. I heard it in her voice. She was getting angry. But I stayed in the closet. I remember having to go to the bathroom. Number two. I’m sure there’s some deep meaning to that. I remember reading something.

Me: I’ll do some research.

Barb: You will?

Me: What happened next?

Barb: I was afraid of having an accident but more afraid of coming out. I’d waited too long. She would know I’d hidden from her. Our house was small, not a manor house where a little girl could get lost in her dreams. Mom wanted something from me. I don’t remember what.

That’s it. That’s my first memory. Your book is going to be awfully boring.

Me: Not at all. Besides, we aren’t finished yet. Was anyone else there, in the house?

Barb: I don’t think so. I remember other times, and, you know, they could have been before the closet thing or after, now that I think about it. Once I screamed my throat raw, trying to avoid a nap. My temper was legendary, the topic at many a family function. And another time, I remember eating tomatoes, still warm from the summer sun, with my dad under the apple tree.

Me: Tell me more about your father.

Barb: Dad? Well, he has his passions. Of late, he’s a bit delusional. I worry about his arteries hardening. That would affect his thinking, wouldn’t it? Anyway, he’s always been a bit of a showman.

Me: Is he a good father?

Barb: I love my father very much.

Me: Perhaps my question was too broad. Did you and your father get along?

Barb: Absolutely.

Me: Care to elaborate?

Barb: He’s not the man I thought he was. But then, I’m not sure I know my mother either.

Me: That’s quite a discovery to make at forty-eight. We’ll have to talk more about your parents, but I can see you’re about to bolt. Shall we set a time for tomorrow?

I’m not feeling great about the interview. Getting information out of Barb is like giving birth to a water buffalo…breach! I’m not even sure I like her name. Cynthia? Linda? Lady Gaga? Better? Not? Was this a false start? I’m not going to worry about it, much. After all, this was our first lunch. Once she trusts me, I’ll see her true colors. Her personality will bloom. She’ll tell me funny stories about her dog. Is she married? I’ll ask her tomorrow.

For now, all I know is she isn't all that close to her parents. She seems bitter. But she has nice memories of her father. Her mother, not so much. Chances are I'm completely wrong about her. More chocolate. Definitely more time.

How do you get beyond all the things your characters aren’t? Do you fill out an inventory? Use Meyers-Briggs personality types? Base your characters on people you know? When have you had your first impressions of a person changed by spending time with them? How much time are you willing to invest in getting to know your characters? How do you know when you know them well enough to start writing?

Bird by Bird Book Talk, sorta

I interrupt our regularly scheduled discussion of Anne Lamott's chapter, "Dialogue" to skip ahead. Such is the power of being the blogger of the day. But this isn't about power. We have a roundtable surprise for our readers on Monday on dialogue. I’m saving my best for that discussion. (Some of us—me!—have a shallow reservoir of knowledge and must siphon cautiously.)

For those of you just dropping by, we've been discussing Anne Lamott's classic writing book, Bird by Bird. Today, we'll be talking about her chapter, "Set Design." Let's say, for discussion purposes only, that you didn't read the chapter. By all means, chime in. We learn so much from what you add.

The very title of this chapter makes me squirm a bit. "Set Design" conjures up backdrops for school plays held in place with two-by-fours. Setting is so much more. In fact, setting should be a character in our stories. Setting moves beyond its generic role as backdrop to become a character when a landscape, an attic hideaway, or even a rabbit warren becomes a vehicle of change for the protagonist and his players.

Didn't you feel the grit of red clay on your face while reading To Kill a Mockingbird? Did you watch Cuba sink into the horizon in The Old Man and the Sea and feel your self-doubt growing? Did you luxuriate in the “moist hungry earth” in the company of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind?

A masterfully built story universe uses the elements of history and culture, geography and climate, and flora and fauna to shape the characters and the stories, and most importantly, to pull the reader irresistibly in.

Let's consider a recent bestseller, Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. She does a great job of developing her setting as character, a force of change and challenge for the main character. Walls wrote the real-life novel as a telling of her grandmother's life, perhaps as an explanation of how her mother and father came to be such disappointing parents( Read: Glass Castles). Whatever her motive for writing the story, it's a great read, real-life or not.

Walls opens the story in a soddy on the west Texas plains around the turn of the last century. The West is still a very wild place, and Texas, especially, is known for its get 'er done spirit. School is a luxury few can afford, and, quite frankly, educating women seems like a waste of time. Standing apart from that culture and time, Lily Casey Smith, Walls' grandmother, wants to expand her learning and her father agrees, to a point. A get-rich scheme gone sour drains Lily's tuition money. She’s sent home with little hope of returning. She breaks horses with her father until a former teacher suggests she take a teaching position left open due to teacher shortages during the Great War. She is fifteen and she rides a horse 500 miles over twenty-eight days to reach the assignment. Had Walls not created a place with history and culture, Lily would never have had her mettle tested so convincingly.

Lily lives on two ranches during her lifetime, one in Texas and the other in New Mexico. Both are hot and dry, but only Texas has tornadoes. The violence of one storm pushes Lily's family to leave for New Mexico. Geography and climate definitely press and refine Lily. New Mexico is yet another wild place, but different. The sky is wide open but canyons and sandstone walls give respite and adventure. Lily is ruined for city living, although she tries several times to enter the hubbub of urban life. She always ends up in the desert where too little and too much rain cause near ruin, and goodness--read that: water--is captured to sustain life and nearly destroy it. The paradoxical geography and climate of the West shapes Lily into a woman who can sell moonshine from under her son's crib and not wince.

We have to return to the soddy to understand how Lily can stand unblinking at the flora and fauna of the West. Worms, scorpions, and centipedes wriggled through the earthen walls to visit the family. In fact, a rattlesnake drops onto an Easter dinner. Her father pauses from carving the ham to behead the thing. Remember, at 15 she travels alone by horseback across 500 miles of desert. Lily isn't bullied by the cohabitants of her home. By living in such close proximity to all that is wild, she has simply learned to adapt, not romanticizing nor cowering. The flora and fauna of the desert west have made her a force to be reckoned with.

Half Broke Horses was a satisfying read because Walls didn't hang her characters against a generic backdrop. I don't think we should either.

What have you read lately where the author uses place as a character? Is it satisfying for you to read a story where the characters seem suspended in space? Why not? Care to give titles? Do you prefer books where you feel like you've traveled to another place and time? Please share. A reading list can't be too long. How do you develop setting for your novels?