Remind Us Why the Novel Matters

This is a summer re-run originally published at the end of 2012 - a gift to our readers to remind us why the novel matters.


Throughout 2012 we've been holding a conversation here at Novel Matters, a year-long exploration of the question, Why does the novel matter?

To help us poke around for some answers, we invited ten writers to weigh in with their thoughts. Those writers, Joy Jordan-Lake, Alice Kuipers, John Blase, Tracy Groot, Rosslyn Elliot, Sharon K. Souza, Athol Dickson, Claudia Mair Burney, Cynthia Ruchti, and Julie Cantrell, all offered their thoughts, impressions, and perhaps even more questions to why the novel matters.

Today, as a gift to our readers this Christmas 2012, we offer this “conversation” between 10 writers we love, to inspire you to read, write, create, and become who you were created to be. It is a conversation that never happened, but, of course, it did.

Novel Matters: Make room for Joy, everyone. She’s last to arrive. The room is a bit tight, but we’ll make do. Everyone smile for the group photo! Great. Uh, John? Rabbit ears? Really? Never mind, I’ll photo shop it out later. Sit, everyone, let’s talk about why the novel matters. What good does it do anyone anymore?

Alice Kuipers: Personally, the thrill of reading, of being consumed by a story so much so that the real world ceases to exist, is one of the great joys of my life.

Sharon K Souza (nodding emphatically): The novel matters for the sheer pleasure it provides. I often read two or three books at one time, a non-fiction of one type or another, a book on the craft of writing, and a novel. The novel is always what I conclude my evening with. I’ll read an hour or two before bed, and that hour or two is the dessert I look forward to all day.

Claudia Mair Burney (waving a hand): Novels take the edge off a brutal reality. Sometimes they distract me. Sometimes they make me laugh. Sometimes they remind me that I am not alone in my suffering, and often, they fuel the most reckless, glorious hope.

Tracy Groot (standing to address the group): Totally agree. Novels supply society with needed diversion, needed respite, and needed truth that may not come when it's served up cold.

Novel Matters: Oh, sorry Tracy, I thought you were standing so we could all hear you better. Could someone pass her the veggie dip? Thanks, Athol. Tracy, I love what you said about truth.

Julie Cantrell: There is no better way to deliver truth than through fiction. It’s as simple as that.

Tracy Groot (high fiving Julie): If we're really lucky, truth may come through a kid named Huckleberry, a ghost named Marley, a hobbit named Frodo, or a place due east of Eden.

Novel Matters: A ghost, a hobbit, and the Salinas Valley. How could this trio possibly have anything to do with truth? How do those stories manage to tell the truth about life while still telling a story?

Joy Jordan-Lake (looking professor-ly, but still very kind): As novelists, we have to figure out how to spin our stories for the modern, harried, distracted reader so that the old-fashioned words-on-page print form makes sense, is worth the time and trouble because the reader comes away changed—becomes a part of the Story, and the Story, a part of them.

Alice Kuipers: Novels allow me to live other lives, explore other realities, exist in places and in ways I never could otherwise. 

Athol Dickson (wiping veggie dip off his fingers with a napkin): The novel is uniquely qualified to weave the spiritual and physical realities of life together.

Rosslyn Elliot: Stories need to be told in a way that ignites our passion for us to imitate their sincere and courageous example.

Novel Matters: Great point, Rosslyn, but doesn’t non-fiction do that just as well?

Tracy Groot: the world is always looking for a good story.

Julie Cantrell: I believe that’s where sermons and non-fiction books can be useful. Novels should tell a good story that encourages the reader to close the book with questions. I’d much prefer to read a book that makes me think, than to read a book that tells me what/how to think.

Sharon K. Souza: The novel matters to me because a novel is a window into the soul of a society, an age, an era.

Alice Kuipers: The novel . . . is one of the best contemporary ways to encapsulate story without visual influence – letting our imaginations as readers do the work that other mediums may not allow.

Joy Jordan-Lake: . . . to allow ourselves to be transported to a different world, to see things from someone else’s perspective, to allow ourselves to be moved and frightened and inspired and entertained---and changed. It’s that chance to slow down and step away and look deep into what makes us tick as human beings, what really matters, what really doesn’t.

Cynthia Ruchti (jumping in): Every novel I've ever read has informed me, influenced me. Some have taught me what not to do or challenged me to write in a more compelling way. Some have edged me forward in my understanding of the human spirit and what it's capable of enduring, or strengthened my grasp of concepts like hope and grace.

Sharon K Souza (after the shouts of “amen” and “yep” and that’s it! Die down): You learn the things that make one age different from another, and that in more ways than not, we aren’t that different.

Claudia Mair Burney: And when the pages are all read, we put the book down with a sense that our lives matter; our troubles and our trifles. We matter, because we see ourselves right there in print. And we find ourselves in the work. Sometimes we say, "amen." Other times we say, "I'm sorry."

(there’s a little hush here, while we all absorb the wonder of this statement.)

Novel Matters: What we’re talking about is transformation. Or, maybe better, human formation. The novel matters because it helps us form as human beings?

Cynthia Ruchti: Every time a reader opens a novel of any significance ... [she doesn't] walk away the same.

Athol Dickson: Art is one of the objective proofs that human beings have a soul or spirit, and novels, of course, are art, so novels matter for that reason. Only in a novel can we become a kind of proxy for the work of art itself.

John Blase (raising two fingers to indicate he has something for us here): For example, a lower middle class poet (me) can read about a man dying of ALS (Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth) or about two sisters being raised in Fingerbone, Idaho (Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping) or about the lifelong friendships of two married couples (Wallace Stegner’s Crossing To Safety) and to some extent I become a better person for it because I’ve entered into these lives that I have never lived and might not want to lead but nevertheless it stirs, I think, the sense of possibilities within life. . . You understand to some extent their lives, plus your own a little more, and to a greater degree this mystical incarnation we call life. It’s quite beautiful, really, this becoming more sympathetic or human. It entails becoming more compassionate and friendly and sensitive. I like that.

Novel Matters: Thanks, everyone. Can we try for another group picture, this time without the rabbit ears?

~

Where do I begin??

Patti began our Roundtable discussion on Monday talking about what to cut from your novel, particularly at the beginning of a piece. In the Comments section it was asked, how do you know where a story truly begins? And is there a rule about when backstory comes in?

Well, let's see what the pros have to say in reply.

Sol Stein in Stein on Writing (pg. 15), says:

Elia Kazan, brilliant director of stage and screen as well as a late-blooming novelist, told me that audiences give a film seven minutes. If the viewer is not intrigued by character or incident within that time, the film and its viewer are at odds. The viewer came for an experience. The film is disappointing him.

Today's impatient readers give a novelist fewer than seven minutes. Some years ago I was involved in an informal study of the behavior of lunch-hour browsers in mid-Manhattan bookstores. In the fiction section, the most common pattern was for the browser to read the front flap of the book's jacket and then go to page one. No browser went beyond page three before either taking the book to the cashier or putting the book down and picking up another to sample ... first sentences and first paragraphs ... are increasingly important for arousing the restless reader.

I can attest to the truth of the study. If page one of a novel doesn't engage me, I move on. My reading time is precious to me. I don't have time to waste or wade through a slow beginning.

Elizabeth George in Write Away (pg. 65), which is one of my personal favorites, wrote in her journal:

...I'm beginning to have more clarity on the novel. What I haven't seen yet is precisely how or where in the story to begin.

Then, regarding the decision of where to open, she goes on to say:

The way I see it, you have three alternatives. You can begin the story just before the beginning; you can begin it right at the beginning; or you can begin it after the beginning.


Huh?

Well, she actually makes sense as she continues:

Starting just before the beginning, you ... have to come up with a scene that illustrates the status quo of the main characters before the primary event occurs.

If you choose to start your novel right at the beginning, you are making the choice to introduce simultaneously both the characters and the primary event that gets the ball rolling ...

Beginning your novel after the beginning of the story means that you are choosing to start after the primary event has occurred. The ball, in other words, is already in motion and the reader is plunked down in the middle of the action.

James Scott Bell in Plot & Structure (pg. 56), cuts right to the chase and gives us a nice check list:

• Get the reader hooked.
• Establish a bond between the reader and the Lead character.
• Present the story world---tell us something about the setting, the time, and the immediate context.
• Establish the general tone of the novel.
• Compel the reader to move on to the middle. Just why should the reader care to continue?
• Introduce the opposition.

This is all great advice, and by examining our beginnings we can see if we're hitting any of these targets, but it can still be difficult to know if we've hit on the right place to start. Elmore Leonard, who wrote among other things Get Shorty and 3:10 to Yuma, once said, "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." Yeah, me too. That's especially important when it comes to those opening paragraphs and pages, because, like Sol Stein discovered, if a reader isn't engaged by then, he's not going to be.

As an exercise, turn to the beginnings of half a dozen of your favorite novels and study the openings. What was it about those first few paragraphs that kept you reading? Conversely, was there something that nearly derailed you---even if you're glad you kept reading? Judging by the advice of our pros, did those beginnings line up with the advice they gave?

I'll give an example from one of my favorite novels, Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan Lake. First of all, it was the cover that got me to pick up the book, which was a title I'd never heard of, by an author I'd never heard of. But the cover intrigued me, so I opened to the first page and read:

Likely it was only two dreams crisscrossing paths, one snagging on the other in passing, but somehow the face that walked by me this morning, not four feet away, got tangled up with one from my past ... And I swear time backstitched on itself ...

I loved that last line, loved how it sounded, loved the picture it drew in my mind. But this is what took me straight to the cashier:

In that moment, the smell of espresso got overpowered by the scents of my past: pine needles and boy-sweat, salted peanuts and Coke. I heard bluegrass guitar and banjo all mixed up with rhythm and blues and a rope swing ticking forward and back, keeping time. I was barefoot in the back of a pickup, believing that it was love that makes people brave and gorgeous and clever and kind. Believing, and being wrong.

Man, oh man, that was the line that hooked me. I've read the book several times and recommend it to anyone who will listen, and I grow fonder of it each time.

Besides Blue Hole Back Home, I highly recommend the three books I cited today. I've read each of them more than once, and I learn something new every single time. Write Away has so many notes and sticky tabs it's getting difficult to wade through. It may be time for another copy.

I'd like to hear your observations on the passages I cited. We'll talk about backstory when I post in a couple of weeks.

What's in a Name?

I know I've mentioned it before, but I proofread for a friend of mine who is a court reporter. I'm in California, she's in Wyoming, but we send transcripts back and forth via email. The hearings are usually boring (though I have read the transcripts for a murder trial or two, and those were not boring). I read a transcript the other day, and when I came across the name of one of the witnesses, I had to stop and laugh. Then I had to mentally flog his parents because, wow, it wasn't nice what name they saddled him with. He's a deputy sheriff and his name is ... I swear I'm not making this up ... Boot Hill.

For those youngsters among us who have no idea who or what a Boot Hill is (this only occurs to because, I'm amazed to say, my own two adult daughters didn't know), Boot Hill was the name of the graveyard in every old western ever made. Wikipedia says: "Boot Hill is the name for any number of cemeteries, chiefly in the American West. During the 19th century it was a common name for the burial grounds of gunfighters, or those who "died with their boots on" (i.e., violently).

I'll just pause here and blow the smoke away from the barrel of my six-shooter.

I can't believe this poor guy, a deputy sheriff at that, goes through life with the name of Boot Hill. Where on earth was his mother when the birth certificate was filled out?! Think of the jokes he gets with every introduction. Nor could I believe that, as he was sworn in, there wasn't a single snicker in the courtroom -- at least none that my friend recorded. Only in Wyoming. And only in real life. Because, as an author, if I wrote westerns, and if I named a character Boot Hill in one of my books, my editor would make me change it. If I had an editor. "Contrived," she would scold, "contrived, contrived."

As I sit at my desk writing my latest novel I have a collage of my main characters before me. When I create characters for a new book, their names have to be just right. I experiment with different names, as if they were a taste to be explored, until I hit on exactly the right one. I always know when I have it wrong, and I always know when I get it right. I love the name of one of the main characters in the latest book I'm working on. I can say that because, honestly, I didn't give her the name. She gave it to me when she introduced herself. That's really how it happened.

I was in a writers' critique group a few years ago with a lovely young woman who was working on an edgy paranormal thriller. Her main character was -- much like the author -- a sharp, attractive young woman named . . . Mabel.

Clunk.

With as much finesse as I could manage, I did my best to get her to rename her character. (Forgive me if your name is Mabel; it's not that I don't like your name, it's that I didn't like your name for that character).I told her Mabel did NOT fit the character. That it conjured up a whole different persona than the one she was striving for. No matter how hard I tried I could not convince her.

So names really make a difference to me. But not until three books ago, when I wrote Lying on Sunday, did I spend much time searching for the right faces to go with the names. Now as I develop my character profiles I spend a day or two navigating through "headshot" sites until I find the perfect image that correlates to the one in my mind for each of my main characters. The benefits are that I feel I know them better than ever before, and it's easier to keep track of their physical attributes, so I don't give someone green eyes in Chapter 1 and brown eyes in Chapter 12. For me it's added another dimension to the discovery process. And after all, that's what a novel is all about -- for the reader and the writer: becoming acquainted with new people and learning as much of their stories as they're willing to share.

But that doesn't mean I have to paint a portrait for the reader. In fact, the more I write, the less inclined I am to give details about physical appearance that aren't necessary to the story. It may be far more important to know that my protagonist has a scar on her ring finger than that she has blond hair or dimples. Here's a perfect example of germane description from one of my very favorite books, Joy Jordan Lake's Blue Hole Back Home:

"I watched the new girl swing her leg out from under her red skirt -- a brown leg, darker at the knee than the thigh, and darker still more at the calf. And I watched the boys watching the brown, or maybe the shape -- I wouldn't know what boys see when they watch -- of first one leg then the other, and not a one of them . . . able to talk. Me, I had a spasm of wanting to stay put myself, of fear that tripped up my feet and made me wish desperately I could miss this one trip to the Blue Hole with our mangy pack and the new girl. Because I was beginning to think what a bad, what a truly remarkably bad idea this whole thing might be."

Trust me, it only gets better from there. If you haven't read, I highly recommend it.

As a writer, how much time do you spend naming your characters? Like me, do you ever feel you haven't quite got it right? What's your favorite example of the perfectly right name for a character in a novel you've read. Or a perfectly wrong name? I'll start. For a perfectly right name, it doesn't get any better than Uriah Heep in David Copperfield. For a perfectly wrong name, I'll stick with Boot Hill.

Why Does the Novel Matter? A Year in Review Conversation with 10 writers.

Throughout 2012 we've been holding a conversation here at Novel Matters, a year-long exploration of the question, Why does the novel matter?

To help us poke around for some answers, we invited ten writers to weigh in with their thoughts. Those writers, Joy Jordan-Lake, Alice Kuipers, John Blase, Tracy Groot, Rosslyn Elliot, Sharon K. Souza, Athol Dickson, Claudia Mair Burney, Cynthia Ruchti, and Julie Cantrell, all offered their thoughts, impressions, and perhaps even more questions to why the novel matters.

Today, as a gift to our readers this Christmas 2012, we offer this “conversation” between 10 writers we love, to inspire you to read, write, create, and become who you were created to be. It is a conversation that never happened, but, of course, it did.

Novel Matters: Make room for Joy, everyone. She’s last to arrive. The room is a bit tight, but we’ll make do. Everyone smile for the group photo! Great. Uh, John? Rabbit ears? Really? Never mind, I’ll photo shop it out later. Sit, everyone, let’s talk about why the novel matters. What good does it do anyone anymore?

Alice Kuipers: Personally, the thrill of reading, of being consumed by a story so much so that the real world ceases to exist, is one of the great joys of my life.

Sharon K Souza (nodding emphatically): The novel matters for the sheer pleasure it provides. I often read two or three books at one time, a non-fiction of one type or another, a book on the craft of writing, and a novel. The novel is always what I conclude my evening with. I’ll read an hour or two before bed, and that hour or two is the dessert I look forward to all day.

Claudia Mair Burney (waving a hand): Novels take the edge off a brutal reality. Sometimes they distract me. Sometimes they make me laugh. Sometimes they remind me that I am not alone in my suffering, and often, they fuel the most reckless, glorious hope.

Tracy Groot (standing to address the group): Totally agree. Novels supply society with needed diversion, needed respite, and needed truth that may not come when it's served up cold.

Novel Matters: Oh, sorry Tracy, I thought you were standing so we could all hear you better. Could someone pass her the veggie dip? Thanks, Athol. Tracy, I love what you said about truth.

Julie Cantrell: There is no better way to deliver truth than through fiction. It’s as simple as that.

Tracy Groot (high fiving Julie): If we're really lucky, truth may come through a kid named Huckleberry, a ghost named Marley, a hobbit named Frodo, or a place due east of Eden.

Novel Matters: A ghost, a hobbit, and the Salinas Valley. How could this trio possibly have anything to do with truth? How do those stories manage to tell the truth about life while still telling a story?

Joy Jordan-Lake (looking professor-ly, but still very kind): As novelists, we have to figure out how to spin our stories for the modern, harried, distracted reader so that the old-fashioned words-on-page print form makes sense, is worth the time and trouble because the reader comes away changed—becomes a part of the Story, and the Story, a part of them.

Alice Kuipers: Novels allow me to live other lives, explore other realities, exist in places and in ways I never could otherwise. 

Athol Dickson (wiping veggie dip off his fingers with a napkin): The novel is uniquely qualified to weave the spiritual and physical realities of life together.

Rosslyn Elliot: Stories need to be told in a way that ignites our passion for us to imitate their sincere and courageous example.

Novel Matters: Great point, Rosslyn, but doesn’t non-fiction do that just as well?

Tracy Groot: the world is always looking for a good story.

Julie Cantrell: I believe that’s where sermons and non-fiction books can be useful. Novels should tell a good story that encourages the reader to close the book with questions. I’d much prefer to read a book that makes me think, than to read a book that tells me what/how to think.

Sharon K. Souza: The novel matters to me because a novel is a window into the soul of a society, an age, an era.

Alice Kuipers: The novel . . . is one of the best contemporary ways to encapsulate story without visual influence – letting our imaginations as readers do the work that other mediums may not allow.

Joy Jordan-Lake: . . . to allow ourselves to be transported to a different world, to see things from someone else’s perspective, to allow ourselves to be moved and frightened and inspired and entertained---and changed. It’s that chance to slow down and step away and look deep into what makes us tick as human beings, what really matters, what really doesn’t.

Cynthia Ruchti (jumping in): Every novel I've ever read has informed me, influenced me. Some have taught me what not to do or challenged me to write in a more compelling way. Some have edged me forward in my understanding of the human spirit and what it's capable of enduring, or strengthened my grasp of concepts like hope and grace.

Sharon K Souza (after the shouts of “amen” and “yep” and that’s it! Die down): You learn the things that make one age different from another, and that in more ways than not, we aren’t that different.

Claudia Mair Burney: And when the pages are all read, we put the book down with a sense that our lives matter; our troubles and our trifles. We matter, because we see ourselves right there in print. And we find ourselves in the work. Sometimes we say, "amen." Other times we say, "I'm sorry."

(there’s a little hush here, while we all absorb the wonder of this statement.)

Novel Matters: What we’re talking about is transformation. Or, maybe better, human formation. The novel matters because it helps us form as human beings?

Cynthia Ruchti: Every time a reader opens a novel of any significance ... [she doesn't] walk away the same.

Athol Dickson: Art is one of the objective proofs that human beings have a soul or spirit, and novels, of course, are art, so novels matter for that reason. Only in a novel can we become a kind of proxy for the work of art itself.

John Blase (raising two fingers to indicate he has something for us here): For example, a lower middle class poet (me) can read about a man dying of ALS (Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth) or about two sisters being raised in Fingerbone, Idaho (Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping) or about the lifelong friendships of two married couples (Wallace Stegner’s Crossing To Safety) and to some extent I become a better person for it because I’ve entered into these lives that I have never lived and might not want to lead but nevertheless it stirs, I think, the sense of possibilities within life. . . You understand to some extent their lives, plus your own a little more, and to a greater degree this mystical incarnation we call life. It’s quite beautiful, really, this becoming more sympathetic or human. It entails becoming more compassionate and friendly and sensitive. I like that.

Novel Matters: Thanks, everyone. Can we try for another group picture, this time without the rabbit ears?

~

We writers at Novel Matters wish you an inspired Christmas season, and a New Years filled with vision, transformation, and most of all, great literature.

Peace on earth. Good will to all.

An Interview with Joy Jordan-Lake, author of Blue Hole Back Home.

This year Novel Matters is seeking answers to the question Why does the novel matter?
We have hand picked ten novelists who will help us answer than question this year. Once a month from now until November, we will introduce you to a writer we love and hope you love, or will come to love too.

Our first feature author is Joy Jordan-Lake. Joy is the author of five books, including Blue Hole Back Home, winner of the Christy Award for Best First Novel and chosen as Baylor University’s Common Book for 2009.
Joy’s other works include a collection of short stories and reflections, Grit and Grace: Portraits of a Woman’s Life; an academic text, Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and two other nonfiction works, Working Families and Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous: Ten Alarming Words of Faith. Her current project is a novel, Tangled Mercy, set in Charleston, South Carolina.
Joy holds a Ph.D. and masters in English and American Literature, as well as a masters from a theological seminary. She has served as the associate pastor of a multi-ethnic church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a Baptist chaplain at Harvard.
With her husband and their three children, she lives just south of Nashville, where she continues writing fiction and nonfiction, as well as the blog “Writing in the Midst of Real Life.” In addition to leading seminars and workshops, Joy teaches as an adjunct professor at Belmont University. For more information, please see www.joyjordanlake.com.

You’ve heard us talk about Joy’s novel so many times in our blog, and now we’re so happy to offer you the chance to get to know the author behind the great work. She is as engaging in person as she is on the page. Grab a cuppa, and relax as Bonnie chats with Joy about writing, teaching, being iconoclastic, patience, and Hobbits.

Novel Matters: Joy, as an adjunct professor of creative writing and literature, you see students who are taking a real stab at writing a novel. Give us a peek inside your class.

Joy Jordan-Lake: I see students of all ages, and some of the most dedicated ones seem to be the older students who are returning to education after a time away. I think it’s a combination of determination and life experience, but it is often these students, in their late 20’s, 30’s and even into their 50’s who seem to be able to bring a greater depth to their writing.

Very often, these older students are making their first attempt to write a novel length story. At Belmont I developed a class that we ended up calling Beginning the Novel You Always Wanted to Write. It isn’t realistic to think students will be able to complete a novel within the three months the class runs, so the focus of that class is to write the first three chapters—good chapters, strong, well developed—and then to create the outline for the rest of the novel so when the course ends, they are able to go on with their story and complete it.

NM: Tell us about some of the strong positive trends you have seen with beginner writers you have taught.

JJL: One thing I’ve seen my students bring to writing is the opposite of what I struggle with. When I was very young, I fell in love with 19th-century novels, Austen, the Brontë sisters, all those lush books with lots of description and ambience. That’s not what modern readers seem to be looking for today. Many of my students understand this well and are able to approach their story with a sort of cut-to-the-chase approach that I have trouble producing in my own work. They totally get that part. Today’s novels are so much about movement and action. They are easily able to embrace brevity and the 21st-century pace. Another thing I’ve seen (and I wonder if it’s the influence of TV and film) is that many of my students have a natural affinity for writing good dialogue. I love dialogue, and when it is done well, it can accomplish so much.

NM: Tell us about some of the trends you’ve seen in new writers that may not be the best of habits to fall into.

JJL: I think what I see as the biggest barrier for new writers is impatience. This manifests in a few ways, for example thinking that you should be able to write something compelling, absorbing, and good without the self-discipline of writing every day. Writers who want to continue to write must be consistent with their writing time. It’s a big part of the craft. Also, many new writers fall in love with their first draft. Again, this is impatience at work. Students will think they can quickly write a first draft, tweak it a bit, and believe it should be done. Writing well takes patience and it takes time. There are no short cuts. As much as I, when I’m sitting at my desk late at night or early in the morning before my family awakes, would love there to be one, there isn’t.

NM: You said you fell in love with 19th century novels. Have they informed you as a writer over the years? Are there other novels that have influenced your writing?

JJL: Remember Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” the wonderful line “I am a part of all that I have met”? I think every novel I’ve ever finished (emphasis on finished, since I’ve put plenty down on the first page) has informed how I write. Sometimes it’s my thinking, “What an original voice” or “THAT character will be with me all of my days.” Sometimes it’s just “Well, there wasn’t much attention to craftsmanship here, but, geez, how—structurally, specifically how— did this writer’s skill keep me spellbound to the point that I ignored email, phone calls, need for sleep, everything in my life that wasn’t currently bleeding on the carpet or physically, forcefully, yanking my sleeve?” If I’m drawn into a book, then there’s something—or lots of somethings— I want to learn from its author.

That was the early fear, you know—when the novel form was just being born in Western literature—that good, dutiful citizens, especially women, would neglect their children and household duties and just sit reading all day. There are some priceless late 18th-century cartoons warning against the evils of novel-reading by showing a woman engrossed in a novel while naked children wail at her feet and the roof caves in around her. She’s oblivious to it all. Which is, of course, what every novelist wants to achieve.

The 19th-century British novelists were my first love: Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dickens…. That’s where I fell in love with the novel: how it can make us laugh or muse at ourselves and our culture, how it can move us to want to change the way things are in an unfair world. Perhaps the first character I remember jumping off the page and walking around in m head was Anne (with an “e”!) from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. And not insignificantly, Anne wanted to be a writer (who later struggled in her adult life, if you read the last of the sequels, with how to keep writing when faced with the demands of motherhood—but that’s another conversation.)

The Great Gatsby and Peace Like a River are two of many novels I go back to frequently just to admire the originality of the language and images. Ken Follett’s The Man from St. Petersburg is one I examine for multiple points of view beautifully woven into a page-turning plot that integrates intricate historical detail without feeling bogged down or pedantic. There’s so much to learn from other writers every, single day. I’m feeling exhausted right now just thinking about it.

NM: I can see people’s to-be-read list of books growing by the second, Joy. I know I’ll be looking up Follett’s work. With such a rich reading history, if you could sit down with any writer alive or dead, who would it be and why?

JJL: Could I pick a small group? I’d love to sit down with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Flannery O’Connor and talk about the novel, faith and social reform. If you’re forcing me to choose only one, then I’d have to pick O’Connor, since she’s so utterly unapologetic about her vision as a novelist, but always stops short of preachiness. I’d be intimidated by her extraordinary confidence in her calling as a writer. (One of my favorite writer stories is her “Why, because I’m good at it!” answer to being asked why she writes). But I’d soak up her sense of humor and feistiness. And maybe some of the confidence would be contagious, you think…?

NM: O’Connor always sounded like she knew exactly what she was doing every second of the day. But we know it’s not always so easy to be sure of where a story is going. Do you outline your novels before you write, or are you a feel your way through writer?

JJL: I’ve done it both ways. And if you’ll allow me to generalize, literary writers tend to feel compelled by a scene or a character and then just launch in, following that character through his or her journey. J.R.R. Tolkien spoke of this when he first envisioned a hobbit—and had no clue what a hobbit was.
By contrast, writers of suspense novels, thrillers, mysteries, etc. rely on outlines early on, since the plot must be carefully constructed in order for the suspense to work.

My first novel, Blue Hole Back Home, grew out of personal experience, so it wasn’t difficult to begin fictionalizing from there. The plot grew organically and gradually, with little outlining. (Although my beloved editor would likely tell you I might have avoided the early plot sags—hammocks, I call them—that slowed down the plot in early drafts.)

In the novel I’m currently completing, (working title, A Tangled Mercy), there’s a who-done-it murder mystery element, a love story, and the intertwining of an historical story involving slave revolt, escapes, a hanging, a curse…. So outlining in lots of detail, and being willing to move things around many times, has been essential. At the same time, I’ve often had to go ahead and write scenes even when I didn’t know just where they’d end up in the chronology, but just needed to get more of the story down.

I admire novelists who have one set way of, say, outlining meticulously and then writing, but my experience to this point is that every book, like every child in my own family (I have three kids), will demand different things from you, will have different needs, different ways you need to shape and guide and bop into line, and areas you need to let go some control and step back.

NM: I like the analogy of different books being like different children. They’re similar, but not the same. You need to stay limber. So, what is the one non-writing thing you do that helps you stay limber, to be a better writer?

JJL: Reading. Voracious and obsessive and wide-ranging reading would be Number One in making us better writers. But everyone says that, of course.
So let me also add as Number Two: NOT reading. How’s that for iconoclastic? For periods, at least, and in a life of prolific reading, we writers need times to pause and let our own voices form apart from the voices we’re “hearing.”

Here’s the thing: those of us who love to write tend to adore words and stories and images, right? So we’re easily pulled into Story and kept there. If you appreciate the artistry of a great novelist in the way you ought, you may also become paralyzed with the thought that you’ll never, ever, ever be that good. So why bother? Which, of course, is self-defeating—total death to a good, productive day of writing.

I find I need sometimes to step away from the fabulous classics, or even the latest dazzling book club sensation, and give myself the freedom simply to do what I can do the best way I know how. And then try to do better than that.

Oh, let me add a Third thing that helps immeasurably: exercise. I’m not the world’s most fit specimen of a human being for sure, but I do find that my creative mind kicks in more fully during or just after I’ve taken a long walk or hike or jog—or even just trotted from my upstairs office down to the pantry to scarf some chocolate.

Ah, and there would be the Number Four thing that helps: chocolate. Lots of it.
In other words, always take your writer’s notebook and chocolate along on that hike.

NM: Perfect! Nothing can stop a well appointed writer. Okay, you’ve got me thinking about agility. It’s rough out there in publishingland. How are you navigating the changing tides of publishing?

JJL: I live in Nashville, among music industry people who’ve lost their jobs or had to re-create what they do in order to adjust to the new world of technology. Book publishing is now facing the same sorts of challenges, and publishing houses that aren’t thinking creatively and innovatively about how to embrace the changes will go under. And lots of us as writers along with them.

That said, I’m trying to think as I finish up this current novel about what might accompany this story in e-book form. What music do I hear as the soundtrack? What links could be provided to give historical background, more information on the region, photos of specific places in certain scenes, recipes of cuisine that appears in the story…. What in this novel would be enriched by the new world of multi-platform technology?

And—confession time—since I tend to be a really verbose, love-those-excessive-descriptions kind of writer, it’s an important challenge for me to try to picture each scene as it would play out in film format. Most readers don’t share my taste for the 50 pages telling us how a tree looks—and the truth is, my own tastes have changed on this. So I’ve had to learn to speed things up, be ruthless in cutting.
I listen closely and well to agents and editors and writer friends whom I trust when they tell me if my writing drags in places. Modern readers, most of whom watch 100 or more movies for every book they read, won’t put up with that. Novels can obviously give us these holy moments of clarity and insight and interior monologue that films can’t, but we as novelists had better learn to make our scenes count just as if a producer were deciding whether to spend, say, $30,000 a piece to film them, or else cut.

NM: I love the soundtrack idea. And it’s important to listen to our advance readers, keep an eye on what’s popular, but remain true to the vision of what we’re writing. With all those plates spinning, what keeps you writing despite setbacks?

JJL: Obsession and self-delusion. Truly. Why else wouldn’t we writers devote our energies to pursuits that would offer better odds of fame and fortune?

There’s also the sense of where you feel “called” or “gifted,” what you feel most passionate about, what you feel God set you down in this world to do. If that involves writing, well, then, you have to write. That may be just a few minutes a day before your paying job. It may be in a corner of your attic, or at the kitchen table after the kids are in bed. But you have to write.
The truth is that I’m just not a very nice person when I’m not writing. I feel neurotic and angry at the whole world. Oh, and sorry for myself.

So it’s in everyone’s best interest that I’m writing at least five days a week for whatever time I can beg, borrow or steal. If that’s only a few minutes snatched early in the morning or late at night, that’s still helpful in keeping at bay all those voices that try to tell us writers that we’re kidding ourselves, that this work will never see the light of day, that we’re wasting our time….

NM: Every single writer reading this is nodding in silent agreement. We write because we must write. I’ve been thinking about what you said a minute ago about listening to lots of voices while working on a novel, and how helpful it is. But have you ever gotten bad writing advice?

JJL: How about the best and worst advice together? P.J. O’Rourke has said that we should not rest until every writing instructor who has ever insisted that students “write what you know” be rounded up and beaten soundly about the head and neck—which cracks me up. And there’s truth to this, you know.

Of course we should write what we know in terms of how we’ve experienced the human condition: forgiveness, betrayal, mercy, rage…. But also, part of the fun of being a novelist is getting to enter other people’s worlds and experiences, writing we sure as heck don’t know, but want to.

I don’t “know,” for example, what it feels like to be a conspirator in an 1822 slave revolt in South Carolina, or a white twenty-something single guy in 2012, a fairly self-centered musician who’s promised to care for his best friend’s child if anything befalls the friend. But I can imagine these things based on my own selfishness and compassion and anger and fear. I can research the details. And, potentially, at least, I could weave these into a journey the reader and I get to take together.
So we need to write out of what we know into what we don’t.

NM: I love how your brain works, Joy. That really is the worst and best writing advice. If you could sit down with each aspiring writer who is reading this today, what one piece of writing advice would you offer?

JJL: Make sure you have emotionally stable people in your life. Daphne Du Maurier said that writers as a rule should be read, but neither seen nor heard. The more I hang around writers, the more I chuckle, and think of this quote.

As a group of people, we certainly tend toward the extremes of life: lots of alcoholism, relationship disasters, depression…maybe because so much of producing a novel is just flat out a hideously lonely process—and not one in which there’s much guarantee of the end sales results, even for established writers. In some other professions, there’s a high correlation between hard work and success. In novel writing, well, you’d better be doing it because you love it, and have no other choice but to write.

Writers need steady, even-tempered, non-artistically inclined people in our lives, I’m convinced. We need to pay attention to international news and other people’s problems to keep perspective outside these insulated little worlds we build (and, by the way, to give us story ideas).

We have to be able to laugh at ourselves and hear criticism from well-meaning, well-read and trusted sorts (ignore the petty, the small-minded and the jealous) as a way of making us stronger and better at what we do. The many writer friends I’ve had along the way who were abundantly gifted but very thin-skinned simply haven’t continued to write. The rejection tore them to shreds, and they gave up. Limped away. Never came back.

Which suggests the last piece of advice: among the writer friends you do have—and you need these—be able to exchange war stories. Knowing that other writers doing excellent work are often struggling, too, helps keep you sane.

Try to find these writer friends in far-flung places, by the way, so you can’t waste time over coffee bemoaning how little time you have to write. Two of my favorite writer friends are in Texas and Canada. Just a two-line email or text from these people lets me know I’m not alone in the daily slog.

NM: Aw, shucks. Ahem. Let’s talk specifically about what you’re working on right now. Your story in this next novel, A Tangled Mercy, is set in Charleston, South Carolina. What role does setting play in your story?

JJL: This next novel is set primarily in modern-day Charleston, South Carolina, though to a lesser extent in 1822 Charleston, and in modern-day Boston, Massachusetts. The Low Country Carolina setting—exotic, haunting, gorgeous, a bit gothic, full of potential for horror and humor-- is enormously important for the kind of past-bleeding-into present story that this has become.

NM: What was the seed of your story idea for this novel?

JJL: Strangely enough, my research for my doctoral work. I kept stealing time from working on the dissertation and began writing an historical novel. The historical (which turned out to be pretty over-the-top dull) morphed over the years into a contemporary novel interweaving bits of the history as part of the suspense and mystery.

NM: I can’t imagine the historical falling flat like that. You were so successful at weaving a historical spell in your first novel. Let’s talk about that for a moment. What do you want your readers to carry away from reading your first novel Blue Hole Back Home, and what did you gain from writing it?

JJL: I want readers of Blue Hole Back Home to come away not only still thinking about the characters and conflicts from this story, but also musing back over the pivotal, coming-of-age moments in their own lives. One of the best rewards of writing a novel, particularly one like this that touches on racial violence and reconciliation, American culture, etc., is that readers give back their own stories from their own lives. I treasure getting to go to book clubs or conferences and hear readers begin with talking about my novel, and then launch into memories they have that have come back to the surface, stories of the moments that changed them forever.

A good story begets a good story, you know? It’s a gift we give each other.

NM: Changed forever. Okay, that gives me an idea of how you’re going to answer the last question. On the blog this year we’re exploring the basic yet somehow elusive question: why does the novel matter. Obviously, writers still believe that the novel is an important art form. From your perspective, why does the novel matter?

JJL: Oh, the novel matters more than ever in our fast-paced world. It’s that chance to slow down and step away and look deep into what makes us tick as human beings, what really matters, what really doesn’t--to allow ourselves to be transported to a different world, to see things from someone else’s perspective, to allow ourselves to be moved and frightened and inspired and entertained---and changed.

In our world of access to so many art forms available to us—often bombarding us—the best song lyrics, the best YouTube features, the best films all hook into our basic human craving for Story. As novelists, we have to figure out how to spin our stories for the modern, harried, distracted reader so that the old-fashioned words-on-page print form makes sense, is worth the time and trouble because the reader comes away changed—becomes a part of the Story, and the Story, a part of them.

NM: Joy, thank you for being our guest today. I’ve personally enjoyed this time and I’ve learned so much from you. A bit like sitting in your class and taking it all in. You’re so generous with your time and ideas. We’re very grateful.

Dear reader, do you have a comment or question for Joy? There’s so much here to talk about!

Musings of a Minimalist

I am not a packrat. Okay, let me try that again. I am not a packrat, except when it comes to books. I never have been, never will be. As I look back over the years, there are things I wish I'd kept for their sentimental value, but for the most part I'm not sorry that I regularly cull my possessions.

If you walked into my home, you'd see immediately that I'm a minimalist. The rooms in my house aren't cluttered. My walls aren't cluttered. The furniture in every room is evenly centered, aligned, arranged to everything else in that room, and kept as neat as possible at all times. Pictures are centered on the wall and straightened on a regular basis. I call that good housekeeping; my kids call it anal (although both our daughters are just like me now. Ha! I love it!).

A funny aside to this revealing info about me: My daughter Mindy's mother-in-law is the exact opposite of me. The 100-year-old Victorian home she and her husband have lived in for more than 40 years is chock-full of collectibles and ... stuff, from the basement to the upstairs bedrooms. There's a path that leads from the kitchen and goes through the dining room, into the living room, to the front door. Every other inch of floor space is filled up, and there's hardly an inch of wall space left to hang another picture or Gone With the Wind collectible plate. They were in town visiting Mindy & Corey when Jayden, now 5, was about 2. We all took a drive to Sutter Creek, a quaint little town in the foothills known for its antique shops. We entered the first little shop, which was wall-to-wall merchandise with little room for walking. Jayden took one look around and said, "Grandma? Is this your house?" I couldn't stop laughing.

I'm also a minimalist when it comes to talking. I know people who use 1,000 words to my one, and it boggles my mind that someone could talk that much. Boggles. My. Mind. I'm not the best conversationalist, but I am a good listener, I will say that. I'm not anti-social by any means. I just tend to be quiet.

So it's not surprising that I'm also a minimalist when it comes to my writing. I tend to write novels with just a handful of characters, and only a few plot lines. I'm always impressed with complex novels and wish I could pull off that kind of writing, but my story worlds tend to be small and anything but epic. Maybe that's because I so love to become emotionally intimate with my characters. I want to get inside their heads. Literally. I tend to write in first person, and especially love first person, present tense. In order to pull that off, there's a lot of internal dialogue on my pages. I find that reflective of me, internal dialogue going on inside my head all the time. I'm sure that's true of most writers.

The novel I'm reading now, And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer, is one of those epics I could never see myself writing. It's historical fiction and spans six decades, with a large enough cast of characters that a family tree or two would have been helpful in keeping everyone straight after the 2nd or 3rd generation. It's typically NOT the type of novel I read, because I much prefer contemporary to historical. But it was on my TBR list for the longest time (not sure how it got there). It took me months to locate it. Finally, my library was able to borrow it from another library so with that much effort I felt obligated to read the almost 1,200 page behemoth. I have about 100 pages to go, and I have loved every word. I plan to write a review about it before long.

What matters most to me in the novels I read, no matter the genre, is being able to truly connect with one or more of the characters. It's so much more important to me than the plot. That doesn't mean I must be able to empathize with a character's situation. I may never experience anything like what they're going through -- for instance, Katniss in The Hunger Games Trilogy. But I want to be able to draw near just the same. Like Debbie, I'm a fan of Stein on Writing (read her She Reads post on Everyday People). I remember reading the quote Debbie cites as I made my way through his book the first time: "I have seen talented writers hurt their chances of publication because they persist in writing about 'perfectly ordinary people' ... characters who are seemingly no different from the run of people we meet who do not seem in any way distinctive." I took exception with it. Because most novels I read and enjoy are stories about perfectly ordinary people ... who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, doing extraordinary things. I think of characters like Turtle in Joy Jordan Lake's Blue Hole Back Home, Ginny Young in Elizabeth Berg's What We Keep, Dara Brogan in Katy Popa's exceptional To Dance in the Desert. Ordinary people, caught in extraordinary circumstances. How else could I relate to them if that weren't so?

Reading preferences are so subjective that is seems rash to make such a sweeping statement as Stein's. I actually thought it arrogant, though that one statement doesn't alter my opinion of Stein on Writing. It's one of those books I read, re-read and refer back to as I write. But as my daughter Deanne would say, I chew the meat and spit out the bones, and there's a lot of good meat within its pages.

So what about you? If you're a writer, are you minimalist or epic when it comes to your story world? As a reader, which do you prefer? What matters most to you about the novels you read?

Wading and Plunking

There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish. No kidding. I love it. For me there's nothing like being out on a lake in a little fishing boat with my husband. I never go without him, because, you see, we have this agreement. He doesn't iron his own shirts, and I don't bait my own hook. It's a wonderful agreement. Except that I've done a lot more ironing than he's done baiting in the past couple of years. But he told me just the other day he's going to Montana in June for business, and that he's taking me with him so that after the business we can spend a couple of days fishing. There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish in Montana. I can hardly wait.

So Bonnie's post on Monday about "hook" vs. "invite" made me chuckle, especially when I went to the TBR shelf of my bookcase and found that Hooked by Les Edgerton was the very next writer's book I planned to read. It was right there beside Truby's book, The Anatomy of Story, which I stuffed back on the shelf after wading my way through the first two chapters a few months ago, underlining everything in sight, while simultaneously scratching my head. Like Katy, I do plan to read it. Really. I do. And soon.

But back to Hooked. It's a nice little easy-to-read, easy-to-follow book on beginnings, and nothing but. Edgerton writes, "...a story is a movement from stability to instability to a new stability." I like that. It makes sense to me, like simple math. And then he says, "What is different about today's story structure is that the first part of the equation--stability--has been shortened considerably and, in many cases, completely omitted ... Many times that period of stability is only implied." Well, he's the expert, but personally, I'd rather wade into a story than be plunked into it, as though I'd been pushed off the dock way out there in the deep end of the lake. There are genres where implied stability is perfectly suited, but the type of fiction I write and mostly love to read has more of a wade-in feel than a plunked-in feel.

~

Here are some of my favorite examples of wading in:

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"Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning." The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

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"Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still---'Folks,' he just said, 'we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look.' I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake." What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg.

~

"Lying on her daughter's bed, Dottie Puckett heard sounds as if they were magnified a hundred times that day. She heard the usual things you'd expect to hear--an airplane, distant traffic, the air conditioning turning on and off. And she heard other things, too--a high-pitched motorized whine from somewhere nearby, the chatter of a squirrel outside the window, a tree branch brushing against the gutter, the coursing sound of water through a pipe, her own breathing. Sounds told you a lot. Today they told her that people and things were going about their normal business in spite of what had happened here at this house only three weeks ago. Though everybody thought she was mild-mannered and good-natured, Dottie knew that what she felt right now was closer to anger than anything else. Not that she was angry at the planes and cars and water pipes, for goodness' sake, but why is it, she thought, that I have to go on breathing in and out when Bonita is lying in a box a mile down the road?" By the Light of a Thousand Stars, Jamie Langston Turner.

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"Likely it was only two dreams crisscrossing paths, one snagging on the other in passing, but somehow the face that walked by me this morning, not four feet away, got tangled up with one from my past. The way-back and way-faraway, all quiet and almost forgotten, got yanked up and placed alongside today, where two minutes before I'd have told you I was: in Boston. At the Public Garden. Not a stone's throw from Beacon Hill, where I live and work, and pay as much for my own private parking space as folks back home do for a decent slab ranch and enough acres for the dogs to tree themselves something other than city-soft squirrel ... And I swear time backstitched on itself, and at that very moment, I was barefoot--not with black pumps stowed under a park bench, but the right kind of barefoot. The kind of barefoot that went with the truck bed of a pickup. I was back with the wind standing my ponytail straight up over my head, the Blue Hole just around the next curve. And I was tracing my cheek where a kiss had just landed." Blue Hole Back Home, Joy Jordan Lake.

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Contrast these with James Scott Bell's thrilling suspense novel, Try Dying: "On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector ... Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV ... placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired." Plunked. Most definitely. With the former stability not even implied. And exactly how a fast-paced suspense novel should begin.

~

But back to fishing. I love to drop my line in the water and begin to entice; to wait as the bait lands, then sinks to just the right depth; to tug ever-so-slightly two or three times while the worm works its magic; to let it sink a bit more, then tug again. And then ... to feel the hit, to sink the hook, and reel in. I love it. Here is the writing equivalent to my fishing method from the opening to my WIP. "Grief, it is said, is a sea that ebbs and flows. Comes in waves that roll over the shore, then recede in a dizzying, lose-your-footing-in-the-sand sensation, leaving you unsettled but standing. Well. Whoever said that never felt the tsunami effect, the drowning, sucking, tidal wave of grief. I know, because I haven't come up for air in five days short of a year. A suffocating, black hole of a year, each day collapsing in on itself like sand too long unwatered. Eighty six hundred, forty hours; five hundred eighteen thousand, four hundred minutes; thirty one million, one hundred four thousand seconds of a smothering nightmare I can't wake up from. A long slow terror, like free-falling in the dark with no cord to pull. I don't plan to be here for the anniversary five days from now."

~

I understand completely where Bonnie's coming from when she says, "But 'hook?' If I recall, it ends badly for the fish. I prefer 'invite.' Semantics, right?" Right. She'll be happy to know that, often, for the fish I catch it's not an unhappy ending, because I typically catch and release. Especially in Montana. And that's what I like to do with my readers. Catch and release--but hopefully not to swim completely away. I want them to stay in the pond with me, so the next time I cast in, I might draw them back.

~

And speaking of lines, I laughed and laughed over Dina Sleiman's comment on Katy's post Wednesday. "I got my nose pierced last year, and it's so freeing because no one expects me to be normal anymore." I love it. It would make a great opening line for a novel. And, Dina, for that line I'd like to send you one of my novels. Just email me with your address and tell me which one you'd prefer.
~

Everyone else, leave a comment telling me what you think the "anniversary" of my novel deals with and your name will go into a drawing for a copy of Lying on Sunday or Every Good & Perfect Gift, winner's choice. Be specific with your guess. And creative.

Wrestling the Octopus

If you haven't read Blue Hole Back Home by Joy Jordan-Lake, Novel Matters wants to give you that opportunity--free! Comment on today's post to be eligible for the drawing. You will simply fall in love with Joy's beautiful story.


Months and months of showing up at my computer are paying off. The end is in sight! I’ve followed the outline for my WIP—more or less—throughout the first draft. Still, and this happens every single time, getting to the end is like wrestling an octopus into a mayonnaise jar.

I’m so immersed in the story that I’ve lost sight of the big picture. Where is this story headed? There are loose ends whipping around in my head, dropped story-lines littering the plot, and characters who have gone AWOL. Will the story ever end?

It must.

I have a deadline, for goodness' sake.

A FIRM deadline.

No time to panic. Take a step back— think and pray.

To regain my equilibrium with the story, I must remember where I’ve traveled in my story world. I’m a visual thinker. And so, I need to see the story. To do this, I go back through the manuscript, scene by scene to take notes on what happens. It’s laborious, arguably anal, but I create a new outline with color-coded scenes for the POV character and each character in the scene description is highlighted with their own color. It’s very pretty, very map-like.


Now, to get that octopus into the mayonnaise jar…I print out my colorful chart. I can see where one character is too dominant or where another has been forgotten. I note storylines I’ve left dangling. Weak motivations become obvious. Pretty scenes that don’t move the story along stick out like, well, a sore tentacle.

It’s tempting to charge ahead, but this is a time of serious prayer for me. Where my characters end up reflects my view of who God is and how he loves and interacts with his creation. I want to get this right. Once I’ve prayed and bounced ideas around with people I trust—poor hubby; he’s so handy—I build a new ending (and shore up mid-story issues), making sure there is resolution and a few questions left for the reader to wrestle. After all, I wouldn’t want to deny them the challenge of swimming with an octopus.

How do you keep track of the big picture of your novel? Do you find resolving all of the plot lines messy? Do you know the ending of your novel before you begin?

Words that Rankle

Our spring Audience-with-an-Agent Contest is underway. If you'd like a chance to have your manuscript read by agent Janet Grant of Books & Such Literary Agency go to our Promotions page and follow the guidelines.

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Every 10 days or so I spend about 3 hours ironing the clothes my husband and I wear. A lot of work, yes. Outdated, I know. But we wear cotton. Period.

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This photo is of me from 1st grade. It's one of my favorite pictures of myself as a child ... with one exception. The thick turtleneck sweater beneath the corduroy jumper is part wool (we won't even talk about the hair). I wore my brand new outfit that day, for that photo, and refused to ever wear it again. I love my mother, but wool? Why would she DO that?

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I can watch an old farmer walk into a coffee shop wearing a wool Pendleton, without even a T-shirt underneath, and for me it's like passing the scene of an accident -- I don't want to look, don't want to imagine how awful that shirt must feel against his skin, but I can't help myself! And a wool dress on a woman? I can never see that without taking time to ruminate on self-flagellation. It stops my thought processes. Literally. I watch old military movies with my husband and do you think I'm drawn in by the drama? No. I'm thinking, "The uniforms are wool. How did they stand that?" I'd have gone AWOL.

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What on earth does this have to do with writing, you ask? Okay, you saw my title so you probably didn't ask. But here's the thing. I've been known to stop reading a book because of the "W" word. I can feel it coming in a sentence, know the word is about to jump out and assault my sensibilities, and I can barely stand it. Extreme? Obsessive? Oh, yeah. "Hello, I'm Sharon and I'm a wool-hater."

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Maybe I'm this way because I have very sensitive skin, but the fact is that the words wool, cashmere, mohair, have a physical affect on my psyche. They create in me the most uncomfortable feelings, they disturb, they rankle.

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So here's my point. Words have the ability to move us. We're writers, we know that, and in fiction we need to stir all kinds of emotions. We need to inspire, appal, amaze, even rankle. But we sometimes forget the importance of one perfect word or phrase to achieve that. To be good writers we have to mine the dimensional words, the ones that emerge from the page and engage the senses. It's easy to settle for words that are comfortable and within reach, like well-worn slippers. But well-worn doesn't cut it if we want our fiction to be noticed. Here's an example from Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg. The passage is in the form of a letter from a woman to her husband:

I don't regret the fact that I was the one to stop working to raise Ruthie. When we brought her home from the hospital I hovered over you every time you even held her. I knew you were her father and half responsible for her in every way, but I have to tell you, Martin, as far as I was concerned, she was really all mine. I made her baby food, I picked out her toys and her clothes, I took her to school every first day, I pulled her shades down for her naps, I took her to the doctor, I braided her hair and buckled her shoes and mounted her artwork on the refrigerator. And I wanted to. I wanted to. Once she got into the teen years, you and she seemed to get closer and that was fine with me, too. I had had my hands to her when she was still wet, was how I saw it. Now I could step back -- keep watching, but step back. And then back further.

The line in red is a beautiful, breathtaking example of words that burst from the page. Ms. Berg could simply have written, "I know I'd left my mark on her." That would have made the point. But to have her character, Nan, write, "I had had my hands to her when she was still wet," depicts the type of effect Nan wanted to achieve, and conjures a far deeper stirring of the emotions in the heart of the reader than a stagnant phrase ever could.

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In Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan Lake, we find this fabulous passage where two girls, different in every way, are getting acquainted:

She looked startled, like our little exchange had been suddenly tossed, then retrieved -- and no reason for either. But she took -- after a second -- the rope-end of talk I held out.

The rope-end of talk... What an image those words create. I don't think there's anything that inspires good writing as effectively as good writing. When the bar is raised, it benefits writer, reader, publisher, everyone. We've been talking about books that are keepers the past few days on NM, and many of the books cited are ABA books. I want to see that expand to include more and more CBA books. If we choose our words expertly, avoid the cliche, and dare to strive for phrases that do more than get the point across, we've taken one giant step in the right direction.

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So now that you know more about my quirks, what words rankle you? And Happy 34th Birthday to my darling daughter, Deanne!

Be Yourself

"Joy in the act of creating ... When was the last time you enjoyed the writing process?" Ariel Lawhon

"Lap up masterful writing. Savor it. Celebrate it. But do not compare your writing to anyone else's." Patti Hill

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Good insight from Ariel and Patti this week. If you haven't yet read their posts, I hope you will.

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To answer Ariel's question, the last time I enjoyed the writing process was ... well, the last time I wrote. But here's the thing. It's been a while. Typically, I love slipping into my fictional world, getting to know my characters -- and often being surprised by them. I love the unfolding of their stories, many of the intricate details unknown even to me until I stumble upon them. I truly love the process.

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But having put my writing aside for the sake of the long holiday season, I'm finding it difficult to get back into the process. My characters knock at the door, telling me all sorts of things about themselves, and wait for me to pick up the thread and get back to weaving. But I look at the loose ends and think, WHAT am I supposed to DO with them? Yeah, there are a lot of morals to this story, like Don't put the writing aside, whatever you do! But that doesn't help me now.

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I mean to get back to it, I really do. Right after I clean the toilet and fold the towels.

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And when I do, I plan to BE MYSELF. I don't plan to copy all those other excellent writers I so want to emulate. The Joy Jordan Lakes, the Elizabeth Bergs, the five fabulous women I blog with. No, I plan to be me. I pledge to be me. If I only knew who that was exactly.

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Years ago I had a Sandi Patty album -- yes album. As I said, it was years ago. There was some humorous dialogue on this live album that comes to mind from time to time. Patti's post jarred it to the surface again. Sandi talks about trying to find who she was as a young singer. In the 10th grade she had a big identity crisis, and was very impressionable. There were a lot of great singers she admired, but she was drawn in particular to Karen Carpenter. She said, "I not only wanted to sing like Karen Carpenter ... I wanted to BE Karen Carpenter." Then she goes on to sing a portion of "Jesus Loves Me," Karen Carpenter style. "I was so immature as a sophomore," she continues. "I realize all of this now because I was such a mature senior in high school, and I realized it was so silly and so ridiculous and so immature of me to want to be Karen Carpenter ... because NOW I wanted to be Barbra Streisand." And again she sings a portion of "Jesus Loves Me," ala the funny girl.

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In the 10th grade I wanted to be Janis Ian, Rembrandt, and Jose Feliciano, in that order. Today I want to be ... I guess more secure in what I do. I want to feel that I've arrived, but I've no clue what that means. I want to write the stories the Lord has planted in my heart, and do it in such a way that they touch other hearts. There's nothing easy about the process, about discovering your voice as a writer, about knowing just how to tell the story that lives in your soul. But "easy" isn't a condition of what we do. Birthing is hard work. It takes the most private parts of you and exposes them to the world.

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But where would we be if Tolkien had ignored the little hobbit in his heart? If Harper Lee hadn't given voice to Scout? If Dickens had never picked up a pen? It makes me sad to even consider it. Many people want to have written. Relatively few want to write. Whose voice may you be silencing with your reticence? What tale may go untold for fear of failure? With the gift of another new year let's pledge to be true to our call, giving birth to the stories only we can tell. Let's be content with the peculiar style that is ours, ever striving to improve our craft, but not held back because we aren't someone else. So thank you, Patti and Ariel. Your words were the swift kick this writer needed. Look at me, I'm weaving again.

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What about you? What story are you NOT telling? What sidetracks you from your writing -- and what gets you back on track? And tell us, who did you want to be in the 10th grade?