Category Archives: About the Writer Mom

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To Prologue or Not to Prologue?

Storm Brewing, Vancouver

 Photo credit: world of jan

I am getting ready to do the whole submit-and-reject thing again with my list of agents. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky this time. Like I’ve said before, my novel is much improved from the last time I tried to get an agent. And this time I have a little more hope for my query. The thing I’m nervous about, however, is the bit of story I’m submitting, the bit that will make an agent excited (or not) about my writing. The bit that kids will probably read and then decide if they want to spend their allowances on my book.

I recently attended a webinar with agent Mary Kole, and the first topic she addressed in her Q&A (and it also gets a good-sized section in her book Writing Irresistible Kidlit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers) is about prologues—and she strongly suggests not to write them. The argument against them is that the prologue will pack a punch, fooling readers into thinking the first chapter will continue being just as exciting. In actuality, the first chapter is a big disappointment, including back story and info dump and blah-ness. Why not just write a strong start to begin with?

I’d never considered prologues in that light before. I can think of plenty of books that had prologues that I really enjoyed, but in none of them did I feel cheated when I got to Chapter One. The first chapter of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone is like a prologue in that it starts years before the present of the rest of the story. Whether you call it a prologue or the first chapter, it is what it is, right?

The opening of my book is the same—an opening years (actually decades) before the main story. It sets up the plot and gives a taste of what happened to get us to the story. And beta readers like the book much better with this bit of fore-story included. So what’s a writer to do? I’m going to include it, dadgummit. But just for kicks, I’m going to put it here, see what you think. I’ve always hesitated to put my unpublished fiction online because, if readers like it, but it gets changed, they might be disappointed with the published work. Or if it’s terrible now, I’m metaphorically shooting myself in the foot. Well, I’m shooting away. Here it is, the prologue/opening/whatever-you-want-to-call-it of what is currently titled Kingdom of Secrets. Read below, or download the PDF from the My Fiction page, and then let me have it!

 

Kingdom of Secrets: Prologue Excerpt

by Sarah Cotchaleovitch

Ella knew she shouldn’t do it. Mama wouldn’t like it one bit.

After much lip gnawing and twisting of her brown hair between her stubby fingers, Ella decided she couldn’t let the poor pup die.

She ran inside to fetch her mother’s emergency kit from the cupboard over the sink.

Climbing onto a chair, Ella scrambled onto the counter and stood on her tiptoes, but the cupboard was still too high for a girl of four to reach. Not to be thwarted, she got down and dragged the stool up to the chair. She hoisted it onto the counter, stood on top, and swung the cupboard door wide, revealing Mama’s kit.

Movement through the kitchen window caught her attention, reminding her there was a sick pilfit pup waiting outside.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ella whispered. She nearly toppled off the stool in her haste.

Kit held in front of her, she scuttled outside. The pup lay panting in the shade of the hedge, looking for all of Terra like a cross between a raccoon and a dwarf rabbit.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make you all better.”

The pup gave a half-hearted yelp and closed his eyes.

Ella’s favorite thing about the emergency kit was the bottle of hot water. Whenever her mother bought another one, the merchant always promised her silver back if it went cold before two months’ time.

How often had she seen Mama brew a restorative? Into a bowl went a splash of hot water; steam spiraled into the air. The first part was a success, at least.

“Let’s see, let’s see.” Ella’s fingers played over the jars. She couldn’t read, so she trusted her memory of what the ingredients looked like. A bead of sweat formed on her brow and slid down her nose. She brushed it away, gave her concoction a quick stir, and held the bowl under the pup’s snout. “Drink, boy. It’s good.”

The pup opened his eyes and whimpered.

“It’s okay, I promise. Just—just take a sip.” She tilted the bowl toward him.

His black nose twitched, and the pup tested the liquid with his tongue. Starting slowly, he lapped every bit and licked the bowl clean.

Ella moved the pup’s head onto her lap, running her fingers through his silver fur. After a wash and a brush, he would be the fluffiest pilfit in Jackson Village.

The pup sighed. Ella held her breath. He opened his eyes: blue with brown flecks.

“You’re so pretty, Clumps,” she said, naming him without a second thought.

He sat up and yelped, an almost-human sound, the sound of a healthy pilfit.

“Oh, Clumps, you’re all better!” She hugged him to her chest.

“Ella!”

The girl stumbled upward, Clumps dangling without protest in her arms.

Her mother stood at the kitchen window. “Is that my emergency kit?” Dark-haired and blue-eyed like Ella, Mama was madder than a fish in firegrass at the moment.

“Mama! Mama, he was dying. I had to! His mama—she got into the poison mushrooms. All his brothers and sisters died, but I saved him, Mama! Oh, please, please can I keep him?”

Her mother’s face told Ella that she could not keep Clumps, nor would she be allowed a pet for the rest of her life. She mightn’t ever be allowed in the kitchen again, either.

But next second Mama was gone from the window, and that was worse. She was coming to Investigate the Situation.

“Clumps, maybe you’d better go.”

Too late, here she was.

Ella’s mother leaned over and scooped the pilfit pup into her arms. Gentler than her tone suggested, she scratched behind Clumps’s ears, prodded him a little, made him open his mouth. “I’ve got to be more careful around you,” she muttered. “You brewed that restorative perfectly. How did you figure it out?”

“Just. . . just watching you, Mama.” Ella pressed her lips together. This was turning out differently than expected.

“Well, you know I’m going to tell your father when he comes home. We’ll talk about whether you can keep this pup—”

“His name’s Clumps, Mama.”

“Oh, you’ve named him already?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Ella’s mother handed the pup back to her. “Let me be very clear,” she said in her this-is-your-last-warning voice. “You may never get into my things without asking permission again. And never brew a cloakbane without my help. Got it?”

Ella’s eyes were wide and tearful. She nodded slowly twice. Maybe it would be a while before she brewed another, but if she could save the life of a pilfit pup, she knew she could do other wonderful things.

She would give the whole incident some time to filter to the back of her mother’s memory before mentioning that, though.

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Stop Making Excuses and Write

“All I can do. . . is write daily, read as much as possible, and keep my vocabulary alive and changing so that I will have an instrument on which to play the book if it does me the honor of coming to me and asking to be written.”

Madeleine L’Engle

Writer's Stop

Writer’s Stop (Photo credit: Stephh922)

I just don’t get writers who don’t write. If you say you’re a writer, make sure you have something to back up that claim. And I’m not talking about struggling writers—people who desperately want to write but don’t have two seconds of free time to rub together or those other tormented souls who would only write if the mental block would move out of the way.

There’s a particular type of so-called writer that drives me nuts, the type that enters a writing course, presents a piece to a class full of writers, and is unprepared, even offended, when the other writers pick apart her precious offering. Or how about the guy who writes something that has potential but needs some major work before it’s submission worthy? After a round of constructive criticism, he knows his creative process wasn’t appreciated, and he refuses to revise his original draft because that would somehow mean that the words that poured from his imaginative well are no longer pure. I’ve gone to school with both of those types. Many drop out of the writing courses that they assumed would showcase them as beacons of creativity to the rest of us. One guy I knew wasn’t “feeling it.” When the requirement of the class is to apply the necessary changes your classmates recommend, and you can’t bring yourself to so much as fix your spelling errors, you not only don’t make the grade, but you also let yourself down as a writer.

Now, I am certainly not saying that everything we start must be publishable. There is a reason that we write first (or what some call “drawer”) novels. Maybe they are worth resurrecting, but if so, they most likely need considerable revision to make them readable. What I am saying is that there are so many of us who would love to have the time to make mistakes and learn from them, but that little thing called life makes it very difficult to for us. It’s why I abhor lazy, excuse-making writers.

I have an uncle who I don’t see very often, and invariably, when I do see him, he asks if I’m still writing. He asked me once when my elder son was a year old. I felt the question coming and squirmed in my seat. Write? I knew he didn’t mean my daily journal. He was asking about my story, and at the time, I was concentrating mostly on finding an agent, slogging through my old copy of Writer’s Market, hoping to find the perfect match. The problem was that I wasn’t trying nearly hard enough, and when I did send out the occasional query, my lackluster attitude showed whoever read it that I wasn’t ready to publish yet. That happens sometimes. At that point, I was not only a struggling writer, but an uninspired one, as well.

All writers go through those periods. And when we do, it’s best to be honest about them. Sometimes writers do need a break, either from a particularly difficult project or just altogether. (By the way, those little vacations are great times to read.)

For those frustrated writers, the ones who want so badly to say, “I’m a writer” and mean it, remember that writing isn’t the only part of your job description. Reading is a must, as well as being a part of the greater writing community. Years ago, when I first got involved in Fiction Fix, I had to attend and even participate in public readings, and there was little I dreaded more than getting in front of a bunch of people and putting myself in the spotlight. I want to share my work, yes, but I am shy in large groups. With the internet, however, I can choose how much I want to participate and be much more comfortable. If you have the time to read one blog a week to stay motivated, by all means, do so. If you don’t have the time to visit a bookstore or library, much less read the books you already have, consider picking up magazines or literary journals. There are great articles and short stories out there that you can read while you wait in line for a cup of coffee. (Shameless plug—check out Fiction Fix or my short story “Stranded” at Smashwords.com.) If you have a smart phone, welcome to your new e-reading device.

You don’t have to read to be inspired, though. Visit a museum if visual art does it for you, or listen to your music of choice. At a time when it was particularly rough for me, just getting pen to paper, I read my friend Amy’s blog and found new hope when she suggested that the act of thinking is part of the writing process.

If you do have the time, and you choose to join a writing course, workshop, or conference, you have an incredible opportunity to be motivated and also to grow like never before. Just be ready to find out that your considerable intellect and creativity are not enough to save you from criticism and rejection. Those are two facets of the writing (and especially publication) process and no reason to feel unappreciated and give up (but that’s for another blog). If you quit at the point when you think it hurts most, you not only stunt your own growth, but you might not be available when that perfect story shows up, needing to be shared with the world.

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And the Award for “Most Improved” Goes To. . .

Writer Wordart

Writer Wordart (Photo credit: MarkGregory007)

In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea, Anne and her best friend Diana are getting ready to host an esteemed author for the afternoon, and among other worries, Diana frets about embarrassing herself by forgetting good grammar and saying “I seen.”

I recently rediscovered some of my own “I seen” moments in my own writing. While transferring all of my documents from my eight-and-a-half-year-old PC to my MacBook, I found some files that have been following me around from computer to computer since my early teens.

One story has been kicking around since I was thirteen, and although I haven’t worked on it since I was a junior in college, I still think about it from time to time. (If you read last week’s blog, it’s one of my infamous books that I wish someone else would finish writing for me.) When I was fourteen or fifteen, my computer corrupted this story’s original file. Thank goodness I’d printed some of it, but even that was only about a tenth of what I’d written and an old version, to boot. Naturally, I became depressed about not being able to replicate all that I lost. Not that any of it was great, as I rediscovered when I re-read some of it. Granted, the awfulness I am about to shame myself with is from the story’s outline, not the narrative itself. But still, I wrote it. Ready? In the second point of my outline, a character “has a car accident that strikes her in more ways than one.” I am pretty sure that I thought I was being clever with this terrible pun-slash-cliche. The only thing I can say in my favor is that I wrote it in high school, but I wish that I knew better back then.

The story itself is better, at least. I’ve always been a good speller and proofreader, and my real talent is dialogue (although dialogue tags are another matter). But there is too much exposition, too much telling bogging down the narrative. I was worried about readers seeing hairstyles and sweaters and kitchens exactly as I saw them–a common mistake for new writers. And it really did take until college for me to understand that cliches are no-nos. Here’s another little gem (from the story this time) that I can’t believe I wrote: “The world is everyone’s backyard.” Ugh. No wonder I gave up and went on to other stories.

When I took my first fiction workshop in 2002, I thought I was pretty hot stuff. Naive enough to assume that I was one of the few unpublished future bestsellers just waiting to be discovered, I was knocked off my self-constructed pedestal when my first story was critiqued. I thought it was unique. Well, it was definitely different. No one really understood it, and the piece that I thought would be published in some well-known literary rag and set me down the road to stardom soon went into my own personal slush pile. I worked with it some, but once I began to see the flaws, I realized there were more problems than acceptable prose.

I was disheartened to discover that, while I was an excellent editor, my writing skills weren’t nearly as honed or appreciated. I continued to write but with more realistic expectations. The key is that I did not give up, and I published a couple stories. One of them, “Stranded,” made it into the University of North Florida curriculum for some literature classes, and I visited a couple of those classes to talk to students. I always liked that story, had fun with the ending because it doesn’t resolve in a gift-wrapped package, complete with little bow. But I always had this nagging feeling that something needed to change, that it could be better. I even thought it might have to do with the pacing, but I didn’t know how to solve the problem. And since it was already in print, there was nothing I could do about it anyway, right?

I moved on again, devouring adolescent lit in every spare second, and that’s when I discovered my true voice and style as a writer. I started and finished my first novel, then had it workshopped and critiqued by a room full of writers. It was rough, very rough (even though I’d already revised it once), but with those critiques, I started making changes that improved the manuscript. I read more novels, more advice from writers, and I kept working. I received rejection after rejection from literary agents, which made me second- and triple-guess every element in my book. Often I despaired and gave myself ultimatums: If I’m not published by such-and-such a time, I’ll just save the money and self-publish it, so I can at least show my family what I’ve been doing all these years. I could have done that at any time, but while I might have had the joy of seeing it in print, I would not have made some of the changes that have finally brought the book to life. Recently, I asked some of my original readers from years ago to read a little of my book in its current revision. The story that had a good start eight-plus years ago but still had so far to go was met with unanimous enthusiasm, encouragement, and praise, not to mention some incredulity that I have yet to find a publisher.

As for “Stranded,” which I liked but never quite felt was finished, there’s this new thing you might have heard of called e-publishing, and it’s awesome. It puts not only publishing but even formatting into the authors’ hands. Of course, it also means that there are more people than ever who are able to publish absolute crap, but the readers are ultimately the ones who decide which writers make it or not. Through the eBook distributor Smashwords, I finally reprinted “Stranded” with the changes that I wanted (but didn’t know how) to make years ago.

I’ll never stop learning. Every time I read a book that gives me the best advice I think I’ve ever read, along comes another one that delivers new revelations. I love the challenge of topping my personal best, of moving ever forward. Maybe one day I’ll pass the level of “most improved” to “most read.” (A girl can dream, right?) Until then, I’ll make sure I don’t revert to my personal “I seen” moments.

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A Story of a Scammer

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portabl...

photo credit: Wikipedia

It’s like being the unpopular girl for so long that when any old popular guy shows a bit of interest, you immediately latch onto him and proudly proclaim him your boyfriend, ignoring little things such as barely knowing or having anything in common with him.

What’s like that? you ask. Shopping a novel around with literary agents for nearly five years, and when one finally says, Sure we’d like to see it, signing up with her and e-mailing all your writer friends to say, I’m successful! I finally landed an agent! We’re in the money!

That was me in early 2009, when I thought my writing career was made. Easy Street? No. But I thought that at least any future rejections would be filtered through someone who would believe in and stand up for my novel. I completely ignored the fact that having an agent doesn’t equal publishing at all, and even publishing doesn’t equal book sales. I was just thrilled to be done (I thought) with the agent search.

If you take nothing else from this blog, know this: You should always, always, ALWAYS double–no, triple and quadruple check out literary agents before you query, much less sign a contract with one.

That said, I’m sure you can guess what’s coming. I didn’t check.

I thought I’d be able to spot a scam a mile away. I thought that finding the agency’s listing in Writer’s Market was the same thing as a writing industry stamp of approval. I was impressed by a professional-looking website. I was sucked in. And they got 68 of my dollars pretty quickly, too. What’s the first red flag you look for with a scammer? They want your money. You should never pay an agent for any services, until you sell books (unless they say up front they’re going to charge for postage or copies). And I knew this. But I rationalized that it was only a book critique, and I would pay a professional outside the agency more, so $68 really wasn’t all that much, if the critique helped me publish my book.

I did have this little twinge that said it was too easy, or that just because one agent was interested didn’t make her the right agent to represent my novel. But, as I mentioned, I’d searched–and been rejected many a time–for almost five years. I’d put my story through a number of revisions, some of them pretty drastic. Still, the rejections came, and they wore me down after a while.

When I first started querying agents, e-mail queries were a big no-no. Most of the agents I looked into had little more than an address listing on the web. And everything I read cautioned against simultaneous submissions. So I queried one at a time, via snail mail. As I am sure you can imagine, it took forever.

I compiled my list, starting with the agencies that seemed really promising. Some requested authors give them a month, and after that, no response equaled rejection. Others promised to respond but never did, even though I always sent SASEs. So I refined, searching for info online, just to make sure I had the correct address and the right person at a particular agency. I received one hand-written rejection that I remember. I cherished it, feeling like someone had finally read my query instead of throwing it away and stuffing a form rejection in the mail. I remember getting those self-addressed envelopes back, always thinking, Oh here’s that rejection I’ve been waiting for. I guess it doesn’t help to always have that defeatist attitude, but I thought of it more as, If I expect a rejection, I won’t get disappointed. But who am I kidding? I was always disappointed, even if only by the merest amount. And I think a big part of me was disappointed in myself for not being able to write a mind-blowing query that would convince them to beg for more. I wrote some kind of snarky queries, mainly to blow off steam. I didn’t mail those, although I did play around with some, figuring, What the hell? If they’re going to reject me anyway, I might as well have a little fun.

By the time 2009 rolled around, I wasn’t sending out queries nearly as often. I had a one year old who occupied most of my time, and it had been a long time since someone had lit a fire under me. But I still searched the web, looking for potential matches.

One day I found the website of one of the agencies toward the end of my list, one I’d never tried before. And it not only encouraged e-queries, but there was a form right on the website that I could fill out with all of my info. It seemed a little off-putting. Don’t send a nicely formatted letter? Well, okay. I typed away and hit “Submit,” and almost before I could blink, I received the wonderful news (I thought) that their children’s division would love to see my manuscript. It all seemed odd and informal, but then the contract came and all kinds of info that seemed legit, so I just ran with it, leaving my second-guesses in the dust.

First was the $68 critique. The agent explained that I really couldn’t get started without it, unless, of course, a professional had critiqued my book before. (Didn’t a workshop of more than a dozen fellow writers count? Well, no, not if I didn’t pay them for it.) At least the critiquer gave me credit for writing good dialogue, always my strong suit. Titles, however, are not, and that was also pointed out in the critique. So I changed it, no problem. But that wasn’t the only change I needed to make. Of course, I always expected a thorough edit (or two or three) before publishing, but I did not expect the critiquer to come right out and say that I wasn’t competent enough to follow through with necessary changes. I silently fumed and thought, I’m an editor! I know how to properly structure sentences and fix typos! Give me some credit–$%*&#@!!!

But I continued with other parts of the process. I filled out all sorts of marketing forms, keywords and loglines. I agonized over a brief (actually, I’d consider it a G-string) synopsis and a slightly longer one, neither of which I felt did my book justice. I was annoyed by the five or six articles my agent sent that had guidelines for writing said synopses because the guidelines all disagreed with each other. Was using a byline good or not? Should I put the title in italics or all caps? I did the best I could, sent it all to the agent, waited for some good news.

Then came the e-mails about a wonderful opportunity. The agent had a publisher who would sell my book internationally. I wasn’t quite sure why the Chinese market was a better fit than the American one, but why not? Publishing is publishing, right? Well, not if it’s self-publishing, and that’s what this publisher was. Of course they were “interested.” They didn’t have a clue what was in my book, and they didn’t care, as long as I paid them to print it. And I don’t say this to belittle self-publishing. It’s a lot of thankless work that usually goes unpaid. (I know–I’m an indie publisher, myself!) But if someone can tell me why a self-published author needs an agent, please enlighten me. I declined, and that’s when my agent started pressuring me about getting a professional edit. She gave me industry rates and said that she had a list of editors on hand (might as well have said “on staff”) who could help me. Yet again, I declined, started saving my pennies, and looked for editors on my own. At that point, I knew something was up. They wanted more of my money, and I already regretted the critique, which I knew was their ploy to show how desperately I needed their particular writing services.

This didn’t happen quickly, either. There were weeks or sometimes even months between our e-mails. After the agent told me I needed a professional edit, however, she refused to so much as lift a finger. As soon as you get your edit, we can move. . . I still have that list, if you’re interested. And I was torn, of course. I was saving money for website development and also for the second baby my husband and I hoped to have.

I don’t remember why I did it, but one day I Googled my agent, and one of the first searches that popped up had “scam” written in it. I almost didn’t go through with it. Ignorance is bliss, right? But choosing ignorance is really just stupidity. So I did the search, and oh boy did I find a lot of revealing stuff. That’s how I discovered WRITER BEWARE and Preditors & Editors. I found blogs filled with experiences that sounded eerily similar to my own. I felt sick. . . but also vindicated. No, those other writers’ experiences didn’t mean that I was a better writer than my critique let on, but they gave credence to the idea, at least. And I won’t deny that there were a few positive comments sprinkled in with all the negativity. But they were all from people who did self-publish and really just needed someone–like an “agent”–to guide them through the process because they were absolutely green when it came to publishing. Unfortunately for those authors, they don’t have any sales behind their books (and neither does the agent, to this day). After nearly two years of dealing with my agent’s shenanigans, I used the I’m-a-busy-mommy-so-I-don’t-think-I’m-going-to-write-anymore excuse to get out of the contract. I knew that she was just waiting for me to end it; after all, I wasn’t giving her any money, so why should she bother with me?

And you know what? I’m glad, as with many negative experiences in my life, that I went through it all. I don’t think of it as a waste of time, as if I could have found a legitimate agent and been in my third printing by now. Other life and writing experiences have caused my novel to grow in a way that it would not have if I’d given in and self-published, like my agent wanted. (That doesn’t mean self-publishing is off the table for the future, just that the time wasn’t right back then.) Also, I am now armed with a lot more knowledge about what not to do. Like that electronic contract? Completely bogus. Turns out that nothing was binding about our relationship, although I didn’t know it at the time.

The publishing industry has changed, big time, since I first started querying. E-mails are the norm now, although some agencies still use the good ol’ USPS. I reviewed The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent: Everything You Need to Know to become Successfully Published for a small publisher recently, and not only was much of what I already knew confirmed, but the author added that it’s crazy not to submit simultaneously; otherwise it could take years to even send queries to all the agents you like. (Tell me about it.) Also, indie (or self-) publishing has come a long way, especially for ebooks. And I know a great place (Smashwords.com–check it out!) where I can epublish for free and who distributes to all the big ebookstores, if I choose to go that route. (As I did for my short story “Stranded”–and other stories to come soon.)

As for my young adult novel, there is an honest-to-goodness agent looking at it right now. I researched her former and current agencies before taking her kidlit webinar, and both agencies passed the test. By the way, it is very common to meet agents through conferences, seminars, webinars, and workshops. I highly recommend it, to broaden your writing knowledge and contacts, if nothing else. Who knows if this agent will show any interest, but she is going to give me a critique, and I’ll go from there. When my book is ready, I will get it into the hands of young readers, one way or another. But the next $68 I spend will fill my children’s Christmas stockings, not some phony agency’s coffers.

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Five Years of Blessing

Peter Patter – November 6, 2007

The morning I decided to write this, I walked out the door ten minutes late, forgetting the baby’s blanket and leaving a sink full of dirty dishes for my sleep-deprived husband to deal with. I wondered if I really wanted to write this when my life felt more like “Five Years of Frustration and Disappointment.” When I allow something like running late to get to me, I turn into a mommy monster, complete with devil horns, forked tongue, and yellow eyes. While Peter, my elder son, moved at the speed of molasses, I frantically did everything that I had already asked him to do, and with my hands full, I saw that the baby had kicked off his shoes. I almost threw the things I was holding on the floor but caught myself and resorted to disgruntled muttering. Then Peter said, “But you know you still love us.” That’s his go-to line whenever I lose my temper, and it did the trick, yet again. I calmly replaced the shoes on the baby’s feet while Peter waxed eloquent about how adorable his little brother is and how much he loves him.

“Blessing” won. Let’s be honest, I was going to write this anyway, but making myself go through the exercise has made me hyper-aware of how I choose to live every moment. You see, five years ago today, I became a mother, and even with those many moments when my patience is tried to the limit, it is no exaggeration to say that these have been the best five years of my life.

When Peter was born on November 6, 2007, I understood what a friend meant when she said she fell in love with her daughter. During pregnancy, I knew I loved my baby, but until he was born, I really had no idea how much love was in me. I in no way imagined what becoming a mother would do to me. Those first few days, my husband and I just stared at Peter in wonder while he did nothing more than just lie there–asleep, awake, cranky, it didn’t matter to us. Everything Peter did was (and still is) art.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I loved my life before children. Thomas and I had a great time going to movies on weeknights if we wanted or going across town on a whim, not tied down by nap times or the endless chores that come with child-rearing. And if I didn’t get my coveted eight hours of sleep per night, I only had myself to blame. But when I had Peter, it finally made sense how my parents could love me so much, could sacrifice everything for my well-being. I never could understand how, when Mama’s mother died, she was able to cope, to seemingly love me so deeply when she no longer had a mother for comfort. I know now. When my boys need their mommy, I only pray that I can be as good a mother as the women before me.

I am not overstating it when I say that Peter’s a good kid, but he does have his moments when he tries me past my last nerve (throwing a shoe at me, for instance, then not understanding why I’m irate). And as stupid as I’m sure I look and sound, doing silly things just to hear Ian laugh, there are those dark times that I hope to never relive. Parenting is not all rainbows and unicorns, folks, although it’s my choice to either keep going or to throw my hands in the air and give up. With Peter, the bad moments were just that—moments. And they weren’t often. Since Ian’s birth, there have been much longer stretches of time when I have felt like a miserable failure. For the first five or six weeks of his life, if I slept at all, it was usually on the couch, holding a pacifier in his mouth while he screamed. There were times when I had to put him down, close the door, and walk away–for his sake as much as my own. Of course, it’s not his fault that he had colic and reflux–but so did Peter, who didn’t seem to cry nearly as much, nor spit nearly as projectile-y.

But there are those moments of peace, when both boys are happy (if not quiet), and moments of triumph (like when potty-training finally clicked for Peter or Ian started taking naps without screaming himself to sleep). And when those rough times come, they still somehow love me, even when I’m in the midst of a Sigourney Weaver-turned-Zuul type tantrum (minus the levitation, of course).

What did I ever do to deserve such love? No, what did I do to deserve them at all? There are women who have lost babies late in pregnancy, due to no fault of their own. There are children who have leukemia or other rare diseases, but the worst either of mine has had so far is reflux and the occasional ear infection. There are so many women out there who would do almost anything to just have one child, yet I have two. Sometimes my husband and I joke that people will look at us and say, “Who let them have two kids?” and whisk our boys away. Because there is no good answer as to why we have this double blessing.

Five years ago, almost to the very day, the recession hit my parents’ small business, where I am the bookkeeper. If I hadn’t gone on a two-month maternity leave and come back with a severe cut in salary, I would have lost my job completely. It’s been tough on our family, even tougher with the second child. If we’d been strictly logical about it, Thomas and I would have waited (might still be waiting now) and then probably only had one child. I could have bettered my job situation at a time when it still would have been possible, and today, I might look back on five years of financial blessing. Instead, I am a statistic, but the trade off is that I see my parents every day and can bring my children with me to work. And, of course, I’m struggling to do something with this writing career that has been taxiing on the runway since I graduated from college. Maybe it will take off someday. But if it doesn’t, I’m enjoying myself, even if I’m not raking in the cash. I’m glad that we risked it all to become parents. I would never trade a chorus of “Ian’s a Rockstar” (that’s a Peter original) or “Albuquerque Turkey” (accompanied by Ian’s squeals and “bluh-bluh-bluh” in place of the lyrics Peter can’t remember) for a career.

I hope for many more years with my boys. In the moments when Peter feels the need to remind me that I love him, I can be thankful that I have fodder for my blog–but most of all, thankful that, as my grandfather always used to say, “I am blessed beyond belief.”

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If It’s Good Enough for Madeleine L’Engle, It’s Good Enough for Me

In several recent blogs, I’ve quoted Madeleine L’Engle, and for good reason. If you have not yet discovered her (she passed away a few years ago, although her writing lives on), I encourage you to click on any of the links or book covers in this blog. I will talk a little about how she has inspired and encouraged me, but there is so much more than I can include in one blog.

I credit L’Engle with one writing practice that I’ve kept up with for five years now, journaling. A lot of people poke fun at me about it, as if I’m ten and writing about the boy I have a crush on. But journaling is so much more than “Dear Diary” entries. It’s something that I can do with total honesty, without the fear of criticism or rejection, something that I can turn to later and either laugh at myself or marvel at how much an experience shaped my life.

It wasn’t Madeleine L’Engle who introduced the idea to me. Someone gave me my first diary when I was barely old enough to write cohesive sentences. I still have it, with a pink cover on the outside and the progression of my wobbly handwriting through the beginnings of cursive on the inside. It wasn’t a regular thing, but something fun for me to do from time to time, something that made me feel grown up. As a teenager, I tried to keep a more regular journal, but I eventually gave up and checked in maybe once every few months or years to say, “Yep, I graduated from high school” or “Wedding date set for next summer.”

Then in early 2007, I found out I was pregnant. I owned a number of books that I still had not read, and I knew that there was a chance that a new baby would occupy most of my reading time. Included in the list of unread books were a handful of Madeleine L’Engle’s, starting with her famous A Wrinkle in Time. There was also one entitled Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life (Writers’ Palette), which is a compilation of material from her writings, speeches, and workshops. Before I even finished the book, I adopted the journaling habit with renewed enthusiam and vigor.

L’Engle gives three recommendations to writers: “read, keep an honest journal, and write every day” (188). Reading wasn’t a problem. And I wrote when I had the time or when inspiration struck, often in spurts. But journaling? I recalled my poor, neglected blank book (I did actually graduate from the pink cover to a Star Wars one at some point), and I had no idea when I’d written in it last. When I finally found the book, I realized that if anyone were to pick it up, my life would seem full of holes. There were many significant events that I had not bothered to document. Organizer that I am, I went through all my old calendars, looking at all that had happened in the years since I’d kept my journal somewhat faithfully, and I began the act of recording. Well over a month later, I sat in a hospital bed, waiting to welcome my first child into the world, and I finished catching up. I’ve kept it up daily ever since.

Sometimes I simply go through the motions: “I woke up late today”; “It was a typical Tuesday”; “I’m too tired to think straight, but here I am, anyway.” If I’m so busy that I hardly have time to pause and write in my journal, it’s even more important that I force myself to do so. Otherwise, it might be a day in which my writing skills become stagnant. Like playing scales on the piano or stretching before a run, this practice is necessary to keep a writer primed. I’ve gone months at a time when my journal was the only place I wrote, and I’m thankful that I had it. So ingrained is the practice now that not doing it would be like forgetting to brush my teeth.

I don’t know what inspired me to do so, but I recently re-read Herself. Due to its format (most sections are less than one page), I absorbed it one idea at a time and over the period of a couple months rather than a few days. If I came away with the discipline of journaling five years ago, I left with so much more in the way of writerly advice this time around. I think it’s safe to say that my blogs will contain quotes from her for a while. I admire her for her strength as a person as well as a writer. She stuck with her chosen vocation through a decade of rejection (and she’d already published successfully before that), which inspires me to hold on and persevere through the unfriendly publishing world.

Page 34 says, “Being a writer does not necessarily mean being published. It’s very nice to be published. It’s what you want. When you have a vision, you want to share it. But being a writer means writing. It means building up a body of work. It means writing every day.” Many people, knowing that I write but was (for the most part) unpublished called me an aspiring writer. Lack of publication, however, makes me no less of a writer. It’s writing that is the qualifier here. L’Engle gave me permission to call myself what I really am.

One final thing (and I’m culling the list quite a bit here) is her knowledge on writing for children. I do not consider myself a writer for children, per se. In fact, the two stories that I have published (one out of print, the other here at Smashwords.com) are not for children at all, although they do have children as secondary characters. If you’re familiar with A Wrinkle in Time, a book that is included in the elementary school curriculum of many schools, did you know that L’Engle did not originally write it for a young audience? She simply wrote it, and it was categorized for children later. “To write for children,” she says, “it usually synonymous with writing down to children, and that’s an insult to [them]. Children are far better believers than adults; they are aware of what most adults have forgotten” (157). I certainly want to write for an audience who believes, so that is the goal I keep in mind when I write. And on that future date when someone (I hope) finds my book worthy of publication, I can worry about which age group wants to read it.

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Beating My Metabolism Into Submission

 

I have struggled with weight my whole life, even if I appear to be in great shape now. I almost wish sometimes that I let myself put on a ton of weight before getting into shape to prove that I do have to struggle. It gets old listening to people say how nice it must be to have it so easy. I look the way I do because of choices that I make every day, and things could be very different, if not for an embarrassing trip to the pediatrician when I was ten or eleven. Instead of gently telling me that I needed to lose a few pounds, my doctor pinched my far-from-flat belly in one hand, jiggled it, and with an expression that said Do this or die, told me I needed to take care of that.

I was mortified. I knew that everyone on my dad’s side of the family struggled with obesity, and my dad had warned me on more than one occasion that if I entered adulthood overweight, it would be hard to take and keep the weight off. But I wasn’t worried—I was nowhere near adulthood, right? That doctor’s visit was the first time I felt degraded enough to do something about my body.

If I were to be reincarnated based on my metabolism alone, I would come back as a sloth. So for me it doesn’t come down to just diet or exercise but both. Over the years, I’ve discovered the tricks that do and don’t work for me. For instance, those cute little ten minute workouts don’t work. They simply don’t burn the amount of calories that I need to maintain weight, much less lose.

So when I come across something that works, I add it to my routine. The jump rope was the first tool that really helped me shed pounds, and I’ve used it regularly since my senior year in high school. Then in college I started drinking meal shakes, more out of convenience than anything else. I’ve drunk them ever since, from Kashi to Slim Fast, and now ViSalus. People have teased me about them, but if I didn’t drink them, it would be so much harder to maintain my weight.

I added P90X in 2009, and I love it. I supplement with the jump rope, a recumbent bike, and some circuit training to keep my muscles challenged. Someone told me once that I was crazy for trying an extreme workout. And I have no delusions of being on the next cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition—I’m still going to have knot-knees, no matter how fit I am—but with P90X, I did achieve the best fitness of my adult life. Never before could I do a real, unassisted pull up, but P90X helped me build up enough strength to finally do what I thought was impossible.

With P90X, I became a stickler for logging my food intake, something I only did sporadically before. Whenever I don’t do it, I gain weight because I don’t feel accountable. I finally found an app called SlimKicker that not only counts calories, but it also keeps a log of my weight and exercise, and it has fitness, diet, and lifestyle challenges that keep me on my toes.

I’ve organized my life to make sure that fitness is a priority (one of many). It takes discipline and sacrifice, but I hope to be a good example to my children. More importantly, I hope to be healthy enough to see them into adulthood.

 

 

 

 

 

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What Are You Reading?

Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L’Engle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Writers are terribly lucky because one of the ways of training our skills is reading. And of course I love to read. But in reading we discover things that the good writers always do. We discover things they don’t do. And in reading bad books, we discover things we don’t want to do.”                                                                                                                                       Madeleine L’Engle

Enough said, right? I don’t even really need to blog about this one because it’s such a no-brainer.

Well, not quite. Believe it or not, there are writers who simply do not read. In my fiction workshop days, my instructor, Ari, warned my class to always have a ready answer when he asked us what we were reading. Of course, a busy college student could stammer some excuse, “Well, I’m taking five classes and working part-time—I barely have time to write, so when am I going to read?”

I understand how busy everyone is, I really do. I had less sympathy before I had two children, but now that I do, I have to schedule my reading around two long, daily commutes, working five days a week, taking care of two kids twenty-four seven (well, the older one is in pre-school, but his little brother is worth two kids most of the time), and even writing this blog—but I do read.

The back of a box of cereal doesn’t count, either. I suppose if Cheerios started printing serial novels on the back of each box, I’d be all over it. But I’m really talking about books. Nowadays, with smart phone technology, iPads, or your choice of Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes and Noble’s nook, you can download classics for free. Never read Little Women? Now’s your chance. When you’re waiting to renew your driver’s license at the DMV, or if you’re in the theatre, waiting for a movie to start, you suddenly have that elusive time-to-read that you’ve been looking for.

Okay, so that’s a start on when you can read; now, what about the why? I’ve noticed reading makes a significant impact on what and how I write. I am at my best when I read something that inspires me to pick up the pen, a book that awakes the desire to create something that others will be excited to read.

I also love to read books written by and about the authors I admire. The quote above, from Madeleine L’Engle, is an example of one of her many nuggets of wisdom. The book Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life (Writers’ Palette) is a compilation of her own writings and advice to other writers. With every page, I find something that speaks to me. I can say the same for Stephen King’s On Writing, although it is a completely different book.

I can hear the excuses already: all of this sounds wonderful, but there are plenty of other things that inspire—good music, beautiful sunrises, people-watching—and I agree. But it’s not just about that. Many people read to escape or for entertainment. But we writers must also read as a part of our job descriptions. We’re just fortunate that we can enjoy this part of our vocation.

Writers who don’t read not only do their readers a disservice, but they ultimately harm their writing. And I’m not just talking about knowing what is and isn’t going to sell (although that’s part of it, if you want to publish); with everything we read, either good or bad, we grow. I think every writer should have a little bit of an internal editor, something that switches on when we read, looks for good things to glean and bad things to discard. If you read a book that makes you want to avoid that author for good, what turned you off? If you can pinpoint it, then you know not to do the same thing in your own writing. The same goes for reading something you enjoy. I remember when I first read Douglas Adams’s The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His style was so unique, not to mention hilarious, that I found myself trying to imitate him. Of course, my story was nothing like his, but I wanted to grab my potential readers, just as he grabbed me.

So you writers who don’t read—get with it! Is your writing so perfect that you don’t need to sample anything else that’s out there? Are you too “busy,” and you’ve chosen to sacrifice what I consider a necessary part of every writer’s job? I wouldn’t care to dine at a restaurant where the chef never eats, and I don’t think I would enjoy a book by an author who doesn’t read.

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My Story As Told by Music Part II

My husband and kids are used to it by now—me walking around the house and singing like I’m starring in my own personal musical. I won’t even realize I’m doing it, and my husband will comment that it’s been a long time since he’s heard that particular song. Music energizes me, inspires me to write, and gives me a creative outlet that I can share with others. I have been in one kind of chorus or another since I was in the first grade, when I started singing with my church’s children’s choir. Church, school, community chorale—the longest I’ve gone without singing in a group was the first year I homeschooled, but even then I tagged along with my parents to the Don Thompson Chorale’s rehearsals every Monday night. The members eventually got tired of seeing me sitting there and allowed me to rehearse with them. A year later, I made it to full-fledged performer, my first concert being the weekend of my fifteenth birthday.

Many important events in my life have been marked by music, from the day my husband and I started dating (which happened on a chorus trip) to our wedding five and half years later (the Don Thompson Chorale sang five pieces at our wedding) to the births of our two sons (I sang a requiem the day the first was due, although he didn’t grace us with his presence for another eight days, and I performed in a concert exactly one week before the second one was born).

Some of my favorite performances were in grand settings with mass choirs. I sang three times at Epcot in Disney World. My high school chorus performed in district and state festivals every spring, which allowed me to sing, among other places, at both the University of Florida and Florida State. With the Don Thompson Chorale, I have performed in the Florida Theatre and the Times-Union Center. My most memorable performance was in Carnegie Hall, but before you get all impressed, I was one of at least two hundred people. Even better than the setting, our conductor was John Rutter, the composer of the Requiem we performed (that’ll mean something to you if you’re a choral buff).

And now for my shameless plug—I have yet another opportunity to make wonderful memories in my near future. The Don Thompson Chorale, which has performed one hundred fifty concerts to date, is giving a free concert at the Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts on September first. Our previous performances there were with other choirs. This will be the first time we’ve done it on our own. And this concert is particularly special because we are celebrating our Director Emeritus Don Thompson’s seventy-fifth birthday. Students from his college directing days are joining with former and current Chorale members to provide an evening of choral fun in the River City (click here to listen to us). Oh, and by the way, it’s FREE! Check out the graphic below for details, and I hope to sing for you there.

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My Story As Told by Music Part I

I get it honest, even if I don’t have a lot of it. Musical talent, that is. My maternal grandfather was a percussionist and wrote snare drum cadences that were used for years in solo percussion competitions. My maternal grandmother was an organist, my paternal grandfather an organist and elementary school music teacher. Both of my parents’ sisters were/are singers and instrumentalists. My dad’s younger sister gave me piano lessons for almost thirteen years (poor thing). She taught my cousin fifteen years, and now he’s the worship director at his church.

But it’s what my parents did with their musical talents that matters most to me. My mother was in high school chorus, and I suppose if my dad had started singing back then, they would have met sooner. Instead, he was in the marching band, playing bass drum, or in the orchestra playing bassoon. He earned a full scholarship to FSU for his musical talents, but thank goodness he decided he wanted to go on a European tour instead.

Mama and Daddy in Leningrad, 1975

It was well-known in 1974 that the Florida Junior College (now Florida State College at Jacksonville) had a chorale whose director liked to take his students overseas every other year. My mother sang with him for the first tour in 1973. By the fall of 1974, she should have moved on to an upper school like the University of North Florida, but something made her stick around—that something being the upcoming trip to the then-Soviet Union and Austria. It was this same trip that attracted Daddy away from the band and to a chorus, where he met my mother, fell head-over-heels for her, and they’re still together today.

I grew up singing in my church’s children’s choir, and I was always in a chorus in school. High school proved a challenge because I chose to homeschool my last four years. Year one found me a chubby, reclusive couch potato, and my cousin (the worship director) suggested I join the summer musical program at his school, where they were performing Annie. I did, kind of kicking and screaming in my non-violent way. The male lead, it turned out, was my future brother-in-law. Despite myself, I loved every minute and was allowed to join the school’s chorus and musical theatre program, and that’s where I met my husband. Not as enthusiastic a musician as I was, still, he was involved so he could spend time with his elder brother and cousin before they graduated. He quite literally swept me off my feet as my dance partner in my second musical, Once Upon a Mattress.

So thank you, music, for bringing my parents and my husband and me together. In fact, the four of us (with several other aforementioned family members) sing together every Monday night with a volunteer choral group. . . the choral group that formed from the original chorale from my parents’ college days. It’s called the Don Thompson Chorale, and they even performed at our wedding in 2004.

The Don Thompson Chorale at our wedding, June 12, 2004 (photo credit: Joe Parker)

Stay tuned for a post about the Don Thompson Chorale’s free concert at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts on September first.