Tag Archives: Books

A Resolution I Can Keep

07 Sunday Jan 2018

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The first week of 2018 is coming to a close.  How are everyone’s resolutions going?

I don’t usually make resolutions but, moving forward, I am resolved to be kinder to myself.  I tend to be hard on myself, demand a great deal of myself, and then fall into negative self-talk when I can’t meet my own expectations.  In 2018, I resolve to say positive things about myself and focus on what I believe is my calling.  Writing.

I didn’t always think writing was my calling and, by ‘calling’ I mean the one thing I loved to do above all other things.  Writing was a hobby, nothing more.  After all, there were many other worthwhile things I could be doing.  I liked reading, enjoyed words, and always wrote even if it was just in a journal but it was always the thing I did to keep myself sane while I pursued that worthwhile (i.e. more important) thing.  And yet, there was always an image in my head: an example a friend set for me that always had me asking myself, is this worthwhile thing something I love doing?

That friend is Tara Novak and the example she set for me occurred on a New York trip we had opportunity to take with our High School drama group.  Tara is an immensely talented violinist and she brought her violin on that trip.  In the early morning, Tara was practicing her violin in the stairwell of the hotel our group was staying in.  That has always stayed with me.  With her talent, no doubt Tara could have taken a few days off practice and no one would have ever noticed.  She didn’t.  No matter what others might think or say, Tara was running scales before breakfast, honing her craft.  I never asked her if she did so because she loved violin too much not to play: whatever her reasons, her example is the standard I have measured my choices against.

I have taken enjoyment in many things and, perhaps they were worthwhile, but none of them was the thing I’d do in a hotel stairwell.  The only thing I’ve never wanted to take a day off from and, yes, would do in a hotel stairwell, is writing.  I love words.  Reading them, writing them, finding that one word that perfectly expresses what I want to say.  Words are my passion.

Pursuing that passion isn’t always easy.  I have some physical limitations from the car accident that can make writing difficult and I am not always nice to myself when I come up against those limitations.  I tell myself if I was a better writer, more talented, I would be able to write less drafts and my book would not be taking so long to complete.  I find Tara’s example a comfort in these times.  She wasn’t in that stairwell playing Bach’s Chaconne from Partita in D Minor (though she could have done if  she wanted!): she was playing scales.  I like to think of my writing that way.  I have thousands of words and, even though they aren’t yet honed into the manuscript I can look at and say “it is finished”, each word is like a note in a musical scale: the necessary practice for the manuscript that will come.  I remember Tara in a hotel stairwell on those days writing doesn’t go well or I’m especially tired.  She reminds me to never give up and I am able to show myself kindness.  I will always be grateful.

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Not a stairwell but I did recently get some work done in a hotel room. It came equipped with a lounge chair.

If you’re interested in how practice truly does make perfect, you can find Tara Novak on Facebook    as well as her website.

Developing My Writing Brain

21 Sunday May 2017

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Writing Shelf

I would love to be a word genius: stories spilling out of my brain with no need for editing or grammar checks.  That’s not how my writing process goes, unfortunately, so I do a great deal of reading.  Reading is my favorite thing and, among the amazing fiction I read for fun and the history I read for research (and fun), I also read about writing.  Some of the books I read are craft and others are writers writing about writing.  Most I read and put back on my shelf but I just finished a book I thought worthy of mention: Fire Up Your Writing Brain by Susan Reynolds.

This book doesn’t cover craft-not really.  Rather, the book contains tips and tricks derived from neuroscience to take what I already know as a writer and make it work more efficiently.  This is a book I’ll have to study and my favorite part were the quotes included from different writers.

There were three things I read on my first pass through this book that stayed with me:

First, a little blurb about Mark Zuckerberg was included stating he buys multiples of the same shirt in order to minimize how many decisions he makes in a day.  He’s quoted as saying; “There’s a bunch of psychological theory that even making small decisions about what you wear, what you eat for breakfast, etc., can make you tired.” (Fire Up Your Writing Brain, page 162).  The TBI I sustained in my car accident years ago means it’s easy for my brain to get overwhelmed.  Planning my meals, multi-tasking at my job, researching, writing my manuscript, posting to my blogs…it can get difficult for me to keep it all straight.  This quote struck me.  I’ve already been looking for ways to simplify my life and reading this has caused me to make doing so a priority.

Two, no one is perfect and yet I keep expecting my writing to be so.  The section entitled “Your Expectations Are Too High” on page 194 spoke to me.  In it, Ms. Reynolds states “The best advice anyone can give inexperienced writers is to write a first draft as quickly as possible, as good books are not written, but rewritten and rewritten and rewritten.”  This is something I’ve heard many times from many sources but perhaps, this time, I was ready not just to hear it but take it to heart.  I finished a first draft years ago: all 612 pages of it.  It’s been whittling and paring and cutting that mass of research and character background into something more readable that’s been a problem.  I have difficulty not tweaking this, re-writing that, what if this, and would it be better if… What Ms. Reynolds’ book is helped me realize is it’s still too early in my process to expect perfection.  I need to turn off my editing brain for a while. Easier said than done but I’m pushing through.

Three, it’s important to have a writing space.  I’m fortunate to have an office downstairs where all my books are neatly on their shelves, I have a desk, a comfy chair, and a place to put my feet.  While simplifying my life, parts of my office have become a dump site for papers I have to scan before I can shred, blank cards I have yet to fill out and send to friends and family, and other detritus I’m can’t throw away before I look at it.  Writing in this room feels different than writing anywhere else in the house.  Because of my books?  I can’t really say.  However, I need to get the room organized so I can work there without feeling anxious about mess.  This too is now a priority.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads.  The information in it is bound to be more useful than I yet realize.  This is one that definitely goes on my bookshelf; just as soon as I get the shelf dusted and sorted.

Connect with me on Goodreads!

A Work in Process

11 Friday Mar 2016

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What is my writing process?  Apparently, all writers have them and all are unique.  Do you write standing up?  Write Drunk and Edit Sober or vice versa? Devote an hour a day?  Don’t stop until at least three pages are finished?  Don’t even think about your book until you’ve accomplished a half hour of free-writing?  I enjoy reading about other writers’ processes and there is a sense of community as I find writers share many of the same struggles, but though I’ve been working on my book for years, I still don’t have a process.  It’s constantly changing and has yet to be nailed down.

I try.  “I’m going to write an hour a day. Period.”  I begin with that goal but then I’ll have a day where I’m so tired I can’t string words together verbally much less type something other than gibberish.  Then there days when my arm will hurt and I can’t type or write by hand and, before I know it, days have passed with no progress on the manuscript.  That doesn’t mean I’m not writing if by ‘writing’ I mean thinking about my book and characters, plotting what happens next, or reading a bit by way of research.  In many ways, my process is to work on my book every waking moment-and some sleeping moments-even though words don’t always make it onto paper.

I hear advice like; don’t edit yourself-get it down on paper and then edit.  That makes sense but that doesn’t work for me.  I’ll be writing away and then I realize that both plot and characters feel dry and that a change needs to be made; often four or five chapters ago.  If I don’t go back and make the change, I CANNOT continue writing.  It’s like all creativity dries up.  So, I edit myself I great deal while working.

One piece of advice I have taken to heart is don’t throw anything away.  I have a dump file and, whenever I hit a situation mentioned in the above paragraph, I take the scene that isn’t working and stick it in the dump file.  This has been crucial for me.  There have been so many times I plopped something that wasn’t working in the file and forgot about it until I found I needed it; often years after first setting it down.  I recently copied in work I’d done in my earliest draft-almost ten years old now-into my current draft and was thrilled not to have to re-write the scene.

“Taking a long time” is definitely part of my process but my story arcs over seven books and I don’t want to make the mistake of introducing something in Book One that is utterly contradicted in Book Seven.  I hate it when authors do that.  I’ve had authors I like reference an instance from an earlier book that I remember happening differently and, sure enough, I scrounge up the appropriate book and find I’m correct.  Why does that happen?  Is it easier to tweak the facts for the current book?  I don’t know but it’s annoying.  I also have a hard time continuing to read an author that changes a character’s name in a later book.  Is the name unimportant because the character is a minor one?  No.  If you’re going to bring the character back in later books, make sure you use the same name!  I don’t know if that’s an author or an editor mistake but, again, it’s annoying.

I respect authors that go that extra mile in research and attention to detail.  The Denver Museum of Nature and Science recently had a Sherlock Holmes exhibit.  Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite characters and I enjoyed immersing myself in that world.  The exhibit had plenty of hands on activities and there was a mystery to be solved as I moved through the different displays.  Great fun but I enjoyed reading the letters written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  One such letter was to his publisher and Mr. Conan Doyle was requesting a copy of an early manuscript as he couldn’t remember all the details he’d set down and no longer had a copy of his own.  My writer spirit felt camaraderie with that: a writer respecting both his characters and his readers enough to research his early work.  Such an eye for detail and a respect for research-as well as great writing-keeps Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on my shelves.

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My Sherlock Holmes Collection

 

I knew Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote other books: I’ve seen The Lost World even though I haven’t yet acquired a copy of the book.  I did find a collection of stories I’d never known Conan Doyle wrote and I was especially interested in the Preface to The White Company written by Conan Doyle’s wife.  It begins:

My husband was intensely thorough in all his literary work.  He took enormous pains to have everything right.  For instance, before writing The White Company, he soaked his brain with a knowledge of the period he intended to portray.  He read over sixty books dealing with heraldry-armour-falconry-the medieval habits of the peasants of that time-the social customs of the higher fold of the land, etc.  Only when he knew those days as though he had lived in them-when he had got the very atmosphere steeped into his brain-did he put pen to paper and let loose the creations of his mind.  (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Historical Novels: Volume One; Preface to The White Company)

This, also, I deeply respect.  I do write a bit differently than this; I soak my brain in the period I’m writing in but there are things I don’t realize I should be researching until I’m already in the writing process.  For instance, merely having a character attend a public bath isn’t enough.  I need to know what the baths in both Ancient Rome and Ancient Arabia were like.  How did they differ from one another? Were there different rules for men and women?  Were there castes of society not allowed to attend at all?  What did one do with his or her clothes when bathing?  Fortunately for me, there are historians with these same interests and I can scare up a book or a documentary that will tell me what I need to know.

Maybe my writing should be more disciplined.  Maybe I take too much time.  Maybe I shouldn’t be getting wrapped up in these little details until a second or even a third draft.  Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to be part of my process.

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My Historical Volume Collection

 

Behold, Here’s Poison

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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Poison book

Of course I picked up a book at the exhibit

My membership at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is so useful to me.  I do a great deal of research for my books at the different exhibits and I was able to make a long visit at the Poison exhibit when it was in town.  I haven’t planned on any of my characters using poison to off another character but I never know when information will come in handy.  I try to take advantage of opportunities like the Museum’s special exhibits and I have a growing file full of bits of information I find interesting.

This exhibit was one of the best I’d visited.  I spent hours wandering through the displays, trying to stay out of the way of other museum goers while I took copious notes.   An avid mystery reader, I’ve been aware of how various plants can be deadly in the right doses.  As someone who lives on a plant-based diet, I pay close attention to the fact that some plants are both edible and deadly, depending on what part of the plant is used.  I couldn’t wait to find out what more this exhibit could teach me.

I was not surprised at the presence of foxglove at the exhibit.  Agatha Christie’s books first introduced me to the fact that digitalis, derived from foxglove, could be beneficially used by people with heart problems and as a deadly poison by those with nefarious purposes.  It’s such a beautiful plant and I marvel at how something so beautiful can be at once to useful and so deadly.

Books also introduced me to cassava, a staple among some cultures.  What I did not know is that cassava contains cyanide and can be deadly.  It is only dried and ground into flour that it can be safely used; something that may end up in a book someday.

I was not fully aware of the part plants have played in the medical field and this aspect of the exhibit was fascinating.  I know of curare being used as a poison but had no idea it was used as an anesthetic.  It’s effect wasn’t fully understood and I’m thankful I’ve never been subjected to a surgical procedure under its influence.  However, according to the exhibit, curare can be used as an antidote for strychnine poisoning.  If I can ever come up with a valid reason why one of my characters would have curare on hand and then be poisoned by strychnine, I’m using this.

I learned that an extract of the yew tree is still being used as a cancer treatment, although it’s made synthetically now because of the ecological cost.  I thought it amazing that a derivative of yew bark could help treat cancer and was curious what other plants were being studied..  I learned that scientists were turning to plants like sweet wormwood and the opium poppy in search of medicinal uses.  And, scientists aren’t just studying plants but animals as well.

What makes a person look for cancer treatment in the venom of the Deathstalker Scorpion?  Pain relief in the venom of a black mamba?  Can the monocled cobra point researchers to a new arthritis drug or the Brazilian pit viper reveal an ACE inhibitor?  I took my notes, went home, and began googling.  Sure enough, the exhibit wasn’t lying to me: these animals and many more and being looked at for everything from tumor paint to anticoagulants.

I learned so much from this exhibit though I don’t know how much of it I’ll be using in the series I’m currently writing.  Still, I have all sorts of ideas for stories to write when I’ve finished this series.  I like knowing my file of facts is there for the gleaning.

 

Note:  My title is also the title of a mystery by Georgette Heyer.  Want to know what was used?  You’ll have to read it!

Books, How I Love Thee…

20 Friday Feb 2015

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And I do.

I’ve been reading for as long as I remember. My mother tells me I started when I was two which I’ll have to take her word for as my memory is vague when I attempt to push it that far back. I do know there has hardly been a time in my life when I haven’t had a book of some sort with me and one of the joys of adult life is being able to build my personal library. Only the ones I know I’ll read again earn a permanent spot on my shelves and I have books that have been my favorites for decades along side new favorites. I find it interesting to see how my taste in reading has changed throughout the years but then I look at my shelves and wonder if it has, really.

One of my favorite stories is The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson. I can’t remember how young I was when I first read it but the adventure and romance captured my imagination then and continues to do so now. I think I understand more of it as an adult than I did as a child. All I saw was adventure and romance then, I see politics and racism now-but still adventure and romance.

A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorites. Over twenty years have passed since I first read it and I can still pick it up and become immersed in what is marketed as a children’s book. Island of the Blue Dolphins is the same. I was ten or eleven when I first read it and was amazed at Karana. I wondered if I would be able to survive the way she had and was fairly certain I would not. There are still times I pick up this book and spend an hour marveling at Karana’s strength and mourning her loss. Mary O’Hara’s books have stayed on my shelves for decades as well.

My shelves also have books I would never have considered reading when I was younger. I liked fiction. The worlds I read about were real to me so why did I need non-fiction. Thank God that, as an adult, I have found joy in non-fiction. Think of all I would have missed, like the history books written by Philip Matyszak. His books make me laugh until my face hurts. Oddly, Herodotus’ Histories also make me laugh, something I did not expect. I swear I can hear the tone of his writing change when he begins making stuff up. He fascinates me because I read that he was an oddity for choosing to travel so far from his home. I like oddities, being one myself, and I’d like to know more about Herodotus. Unfortunately-or fortunately, depending on your view-Herodotus disappears inside his Histories and I found very little of his character revealed in his writing.

I read Thucydides because I read somewhere he scorned Herodotus’ Histories and wanted to write a pure history of the Peloponnesian War. Just the facts, ma’am. Thucydides sits on my shelf between Tacitus and Xenophon: my shelves are sorted both by genre and then alphabetical. One of my joys is to reconsider my current sorting method and decide whether or not there’s a better one. Should my classic literature be separate from my modern literature? Does Mark Twain qualify as literature or should he be moved to my Children’s books section? I may need to get out more.

Anywho…when I’ve had my fill of history I turn to a Georgette Heyer romance or a Jacqueline Girdner mystery. Or Jack London. Or Mark Twain. Or Robert Louis Stevenson. Or Helen MacInnes.  Or Wilkie Collins. Or Jane Austen. You’ll find all of them on my shelves along with so many others.

As my collection has expanded, it has caused me to indulge in some deep introspection. All of these books must be dusted, cared for, and read. Which means, what do I really want to keep hold of? Am I keeping books because they make me look smart when I have no interest in reading them ever again? That answer was yes.

I’d read Gone With the Wind in the third grade sure I was going to be exposed to a great romance. Perhaps I was but I remember I liked Walter Farley and Anna Sewell much better. I read it again as an adult and still preferred Walter Farley and Anna Sewell. Gone With the Wind was traded for something I’ll treasure.

I had to admit I don’t care for Dickens. I felt like I could tell he was paid by the word. Not that I dislike his writing: I enjoyed his foray into banking in A Tale of Two Cities and could picture a young man being kept in a basement until he was old. My problem? I’d almost forgotten the plot by the time Dickens wended his way back to it. I much prefer Wilkie Collins. I dragged The Moonstone everywhere with me until I’d finished it. It took me a full two days and I don’t think I was of much use to anyone until I closed the covers for the last time but it was worth it. The Woman in White and No Name quickly found space on my shelves.

I’ve tried twice to read Anna Karenina and never finished it. I had a co-worker urge me to try again and it’s on my list: perhaps the third time will be a charm. However, I devoured Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons in one sitting. I haven’t purchased it as I don’t know I’d read it again but I remember how the words flowed so smoothly the rhythm of my read was never interrupted. Not a happy story but not sad either. It intrigued me.

So why the introspection now? I recently reached a point where I could not purchase another book unless I started stacking them on the floor or acquired another bookshelf. I had to take another hard look at what I was keeping and ask myself, are you really going to read these again? I found a few where that answer was no. I find I prefer reading Plutarch, Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius rather than fiction about Rome (unless it’s an incredible story) so a few of those could go. Akhenaten fascinates me and I found myself annoyed with a fictional account of his and Nefertiti’s building of Amarna so that went in the trade box. A ruthless and honest look at my taste in books made me pull The Works of H.G. Wells. This consisted of his lesser known writings: excellent writing but the stories are a tad depressing. Into the box it went.

I’m well known at a few of the used bookstores in town and all I need to do now is clear some time when I can do some trading. The problem with used bookstores is I recognize my old books on the shelf and feel a tug towards them. Did I really want to weed that from the shelf? Won’t I read that again? Should I consider buying it back? I’ve yet to actually buy one of my trades back but who knows…I’ve cleared some space on my shelves…

These will never be traded. My Argonautica is simultaneously English and Greek. I might learn Greek one day and read it in the original...

These will never be traded. My Argonautica is simultaneously English and Greek. I might learn Greek one day and read it in the original…