Baby Love

My new grandson came to visit me this last week with my daughter. They live halfway across the country from us. I was lucky enough to be there to watch his birth and to stay for a couple of weeks after. But he's changed so much in such a short time.

We had so much fun playing with him. He's almost three months old now. And we see contact sports in his future. Look at the size of those hands!



Or maybe a veterinarian. My cat, Sylvester, wanted to cuddle as close to him as he could. Oh, dear.



Look at those little folds!

He is such a sweet-tempered boy. Smiley all the time. He takes after his mom. When she was little she would wake up singing, making me laugh. She still makes me laugh.



I have a lot of friends who've had grandchildren. They all love them madly, of course. But just as no one could explain to me how I'd feel about my own children when they were born, that sweet ache of love that slides into you like sunlight, no one could have prepared me... Nobody warned me what would happen when this guy turned that smile on me.


Oh, help!

Writing Craft #2: One False Goal

I thought I'd talk a little in this post about something that I've encountered along the road to writing. Something that can creep up and bite you if you don't keep your eye on the prize. So, it's like this: You're tootling along with the story you're writing and feeling good. The road's ahead, you can't really see around the bend, but you're feeling pretty okay with that because your characters are talking. And talking.
And talking some more.

They've got lots to say, you know? Like, "Pass me the salt, please?" and "Holy Cow! When did you start losing your hair?"

But suddenly (Well, not really so suddenly because it's been coming for a while. You know it has...) you notice that your characters have begun to sound boring, even to you. Oh, and not only that, they've been in the same room for 40 pages and they can't find the door. And action? Well, that was a good idea, but what are they supposed to be doing again? And doesn't picking navel lint qualify?

Perhaps some variation of this is happening in your story. Believe me, it's happened in mine. Even today, after lots of books, it happens. Why? Mostly it's because I've taken my eye off the road. As the writer, I need to have better vision than my characters. I need to be able to see around that curve in the road to the destination or, to put a finer point on it, THE GOAL.

Why do characters need goals? To keep them from wandering aimlessly through your story, blabbing up the other characters and settling in for a good pedicure with that woman who has nothing to do with anything.

There are really two goals for each character: the TRUE GOAL and the FALSE GOAL. The true goal is the thing the character needs but doesn't know they need. The false goal is the thing the character THINKS they want (or need) but it's merely a path (or a roadblock) to finding the thing they really need. Got that? Like the rest of us in real life, mostly internal goals are invisible to our characters at the start. Slowly, they become aware of why they are really doing the things they're doing and why that other protagonist or force has been put in their path.

Essentially, an external goal is something you could take a picture of. (Like they want to start a B&B, or travel to Italy, or build a house on a rocky cliff, or put a murderer behind bars.) An internal goal might look like finding one's own power, coming of age, letting go of the past, believing in love again, or redemption. Internal goals almost always have to do with relationships.

Even a book about a man's singular search such as Jon Krakauer's INTO THE WILD, a book about a man vs. nature, is really about his quest for self-love. Why does this speak to us? Because as human beings, this is what we're all engaged in. The struggle is a common one.

The goal of your story, first the external goal (which will give them something to physically accomplish in the story) and then the internal goal (which gives them emotional arcs) will help you find the turning points in your story, which will also lead you to the action required to reach them. Having a road map for your characters' journeys in your book will not only help you avoid the unbeaten paths they want to aimlessly meander down, but will focus your story.

Try watching a movie you love and see if you can pick out the false and true goals. Pay attention to how those are revealed. When you get good at spotting it in a film, try it with a book you've never read. Then take a look at your own Work-in-progress. Are your characters' goals strong enough? Can you find a way to strengthen the conflict by strengthening your character's T & F goals?

As with any of the writing craft stuff I post, feel free to take what you like and leave the rest. There is no right and wrong about it.

Now, back to pondering all that snow on Mr. Frost's road less traveled.

Brrr.

Radio Silence

Sorry I've been out of the loop, so to speak, for the last week. Here's what I've been doing.
Himself is visiting and has taken over my life.
In a good way. I mean...look at those cheeks!
Oh, the deliciousness!
'Enuf said... See you very soon.

"Do you feel lucky? Well...do ya? Punk?"

I've been thinking about luck.

This may seem like a random topic, but I've been thinking about it for a while. What is it? Does it actually exist? Or is luck a confluence between circumstance and opportunity that is totally random?

Why do some people seem "lucky" and others not-so-much? Is it simply our perspective? Our personal vantage point from either a cup-half-empty or cup-half-full place? Is it because these people worked harder, had better karma, deserved it more? Or conversely, when things don't work out, does it mean you deserve it less, did something bad in a past life or have, somehow, been a wastrel all your days?

I listen to people like Oprah talk about her notion that there is no such thing as luck. She's all about the whole 'Secret' thing and making your own luck happen. Visualizing it. But then I look at her and think, "Did she create every opening she ever got? Or did she simply walk through doors that opened as she passed nearby? Maybe that just makes her less afraid than me. Does seizing that sword every day make her talent any the less? No. Does that make us value what she has accomplished any less? No. But was there any luck involved with her becoming who she was? Maybe.


Why, after centuries, then does this concept of good luck and bad luck still persist? Maybe it's simply superstition, or a way of explaining the unexplainable. If we're having a good day we "feel lucky" and a bad day can mean that things haven't fallen our way. Some days I feel luckier than others. The day my beautiful grandson was born, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. Yesterday, when our banker told us someone in Mexico had fraudulently used our credit card and cleaned out a bank account, I felt really, well...unlucky.

This was simply an exclamation point on an already crummy day, the sum total leading to this little rant. But maybe this was just random universal timing that someone put my credit card numbers together and then pulled the lever. I won the hacker's lottery. Or, rather, he won and I lost. Er...lucky for him. Bad luck for me. See what I mean? I guess I should feel lucky that eventually, we'll get it all back. If we didn't need that money right now, I guess we'd feel that way. Right now I'm just mad.

Oprah says believing in luck is just an excuse to let ourselves off the hook for not trying hard enough. And maybe she's right. Today made me realize I have to try harder to stay positive. To walk through all those doors and not be afraid. The laws of attraction and all that. I know that's probably the lesson in the crummy day I just had. And occasionally, I need a kick in the ass to make me see what I need to see. I can choose to be the victim or I can step out of that and take my day where I want it to go despite that little punk in Mexico. Because right now, I'm feeling a little lucky. As I write this my daughter's is flying toward me from across the country, and in a couple of hours I get to kiss her and hold my little grandson.

That's the funny thing about this life. It's always the bitter with the sweet...

Thanks for letting me rant.

Smoke gets in your eyes...

Cough, cough! Blechhkk!

It's a bit of a mess here. Four fires are burning in the Southern Cali hills kind of in a giant circle around the city. The air is thick with smoke. Our cars are covered with a thin coating of white ash.

There is this weird yellow sunshine burning through the smoke. It's hard to really tell from this poor shot through my scraggly tomatoes, but maybe you can see the psychedelic rays burning down through this thick cloud layer of smoke. No? Trust me, if you were here, I'd show you.



The light is distinctive when there's a fire. I imagine it's as distinctive as the green color of the sky when a tornado is about to touch down. And despite being about ten miles away (and posing no fire danger to us) it's scary to see that brown blanket of smoke creep over the valley and steal away the clear August blue. And the ability to breathe.

It's also like 104*. Hot.

L.A. routinely burns, accidentally through freak lightning, or spontaneous combustion (caused by all the angst in LA no doubt) or intentionally at the hand of some looney arsonist who thinks watching fire eat through other people's lives is fun. Our fire season used to be in the fall, when the green hillsides naturally turned brown. But we've been in a drought for a while now and the hillsides are crispy and brown most of the year and just waiting for a spark. Soon, tumbleweeds will start blowing around our streets and scary Western soundtracks recorded in Italy will start playing over the loudspeakers. But only if Clint Eastwood walks by.

What? It could happen.

We're rationing our outdoor watering now--down to two days a week. My flowers are very unhappy with me. My poor little coreopsis is struggling to stay green. A lonely little shoot amidst the crackly brown. They don't all look this bad, but I'm sad to say many do.

We're certainly not alone in this water rationing thing. I know a lot of cities around the country are doing it, too. Cities whose resevoirs are drying up, while others are buried under enormous levels of rain. What's going on?

Are we in for another dust bowl like in the 1930's? Is it global warming? Or is it just a natural swing of nature? What do you think is going on with our weird weather? Is it weird where you are?

Bet you wish you didn't ask...

Claire was sweet enough to honor me with the Me Me award today! Thank you so much, Claire. It couldn't have come at a better time as I was feeling a bit cranky as I sat down to decide what the heck to blog about today. And really, who can be cranky when someone sweet thinks of you in such a nice way? It was Claire's way of saying welcome to the blogging world, but the award also asks me to mention seven things you may or may not know about me and pass it along. Since I already gave out a bunch of awards last week, (And I don't know that many of you yet!) I'm only gonna pass it on to one. I hope that's okay.

So here goes:

1.) I used to be a ballerina! I danced for fifteen years as a kid, and into college. I loved to dance! I would do arabesques while setting the table and choreograph dances in my living room. My weird, dancer's arches will attest to starting on point at 11. Though peer pressure in junior high school tried to punch a hole in my balloon of happiness over dancing, I persevered! I even danced with a dance company for a while and did musical theater productions in the Syracuse University Theater. Oh, Carousel! Alas, water skiing put an end to my dreams of wearing a feathered costume one day in Swan Lake.


2.) I made my living for a while in LA as a commercial actress. I did probably 30 commercials over the years, including one particularly embarrassing,and long-running Head and Shoulders commercial where I'm best known for scratching my head! Someday, I'll post a link to it, so you can be embarrassed for me, too. I did a Hertz commercial with OJ Simpson and Jimmy Conners (for those of you too young to remember, he was a tennis player) when I was just pregnant with my daughter. All I remember of that nightmare is that it was 107* that July day and I had a three piece yellow polyester suit on in a closed, baking studio. Under hot lights. And I was nauseous. Somehow, I ended up on the floor with Jimmy hovering over me. (His wife was due right about then, so apparently he was empathetic.) The rest is a little fuzzy. But they miraculously let me finish with a fan and a glass of ice water nearby. Yes, Hollywood is glamorous.


3.)I met my husband in a bar. But before you get all judgemental, let me say in my own defense that I was employed as a waitress at that establishment, one of three jobs I was juggling in my quest for an Oscar. (Which, as you're no doubt aware, never happened.) He was the bar patron. I was so busy working I had no time for TV in those days. If I had, I might have known this guy I had a crush on was starring in a TV series at the time and worked all the time as an actor. I just thought he was cute. Anyway, it all worked out. Somehow, we've been married for 30 years and produced two wonderful--now grown--children. We just became grandparents!



4. I've published 10 books, all romance novels for houses like Kensington, Harper Collins and Harlequin/Silhouette.

5. I write screenplays, too. Part of the reason for the problematic slowness of my book productivity was my quest to learn this new skill. I took a few years off to re feather my empty nest, go back to grad school and enter into the Hollywood fray of screenwriting, like everyone and his brother here in La-La land. I finally optioned one a year and a half ago. It's still wallowing in development hell. But we're hopeful it will get made. Hopefully some time before Vampires are out of style....


6. Speaking of bats...I rappelled down a 180' cave once. Seriously. Down a shaft two feet wide and twenty-five twisty feet long of slippery, scary limestone (Did I mention I'm claustrophobic? What was I thinking?) and down into a cavern where I free-rappelled another 150' straight down. Toward a pile of ancient bones of critters and curiosity seekers who did not have a rope as they probed the opening I squeezed through. They didn't call it Moaning Caverns for nothing. And there were a few bats. *Shudder.* It was fun.


7. I conquered the subways of Paris. Well, my husband did it with me. They're beautiful subways. Clean and friendly. We found our way all over that beautiful city that way and I even left my reading glasses on a table at Montmartre just so I could take the subway all the way across Paris again the next day and race the little lift (that we missed) up the three hundred cute steps from the stop to retrieve them. I would have left them again, just to stay in Paris because I fell so madly in love with it. And even though we didn't speak French, the maitre d' at the restaurant saved them for me and was very kind. I long to go back there again. And someday, I will.

So that's me in a nutshell. Aptly. I shall forward this Me Me award on to someone I don't know well, yet, but would like to. Someone who's kindly been following my newbie blog and been very sweet in her comments to me: Snap.

My Characters Have Issues

One of the things about writing a novel is that it's a 24/7 kind of job. With the books I sell to publishers, there are no time clocks to punch. No boss standing over me with a proverbial whip. The deadlines are mine and mine alone to do with what I will. And being the kind of person who does not like disappointing editors, I'm pretty good about self-motivation when I have a deadline. But this is a double edged sword. It means that regular work hours are meaningless. That is to say, it's not like you can leave a plot point at the office and say hello the next day at 9 am.

Me: (Stretching luxuriously after a good night's sleep) "Oh. Morning, Jack. So, did you and what's-her-face resolve your conflict issues last night?"

A long, irritated pause.

Jack: "No."

Me: "Oh. Well, did you at least come up with some better dialogue than that idiotic patter you were muttering yesterday? Because seriously--"

Jack: "Uh, no. We were...waiting for you."

Me: "Waiting for me? What kind of lame-ass hero are you anyway?"

Jack: "All right, that's it. C'mon, folks. We're going on strike until we get some real revision here." Jack motions the other characters together, then tosses me a pointed glance. "And that's your job. Read your contract."


Yup. Regular hours are a dreamy, fantasy-world away. Because these characters you've conjured up will hound you. They will hunt you down in the middle of a perfectly good nights' sleep and demand their right to a decent resolution. They are relentless, difficult and for the most part, unhelpful.

By the mid-point of your book, as the sagging middle rears its ugly head and they just stand there, arms crossed, taunting you, it can make a sane writer...well, cranky.



(Picture Tom Hanks here, yelling:) "There's no crying! There's no crying in publishing!"

When my characters have reached this impasse, they are not capable of sorting it all out for themselves. Although, as most of you who write know, occasionally,they will lead you to the closed door looming ahead like a road block and helpfully point out that you took a wrong turn back there and it's time to retrace your steps. Here's where the familiar refrain of "Where did this stop working for me?" begins banging away at my sleep.

Nine times out of ten, it's because I've chosen the wrong Point-of-view for a scene. I'm trying to make some character talk when it really has little to do with them emotionally. By switching this to the other character in the scene, it's amazing how suddenly things loosen up. Characters put down their strike signs and belly up to the bar. POV usually finds its strongest ally in the character who has the most at stake in a scene (emotionally or physically.) Why? Because every scene is a mini-book. Each scene has a beginning, middle and end. Each scene starts with one or both characters having goals. And by the end, one character will win and the other will lose. Deciding who does and who has the most at stake emotionally for a particular goal is your choice. Try it both ways if you're stuck.

This all becomes so much trickier, of course, when writing in First Person (meaning the camera is always viewing from one POV--your main character. In that case, you don't have the option of changing POV. So your impasse probably has more to do with whether the scene you're writing has a strong enough goal, motivation or conflict.
Rocky Balboa

I'll talk more about GM&C in another post. For now, if you're not a fiction writer and you managed to get all the way through this post, I apologize. Maybe it'll all pay off and you'll notice this stuff when you read your next novel. But even if it's blogging, I'd love to hear: What kinds of problems keep you up at night when it comes to your writing?