Knock on Wood

I am almost afraid to write about this, for fear of jinxing things, but we’ve been having a mild winter.  And NO, Snow Gods, there is no need to interpret that as in invitation.  It’s just that folks who have been following Middle Passages for a long time may recall I’m not a fan of the season, especially when parked in our family room where the temps, for some reason, hover ten degrees below the rest of the house.  

Being of the frugal, New England Yankee sort, we keep our thermostat on a timer.  It maintains the heat as low as tolerable during the day (tolerable being a relative term).   In previous years, I have transitioned my writing desk at the back of the house to a winter residence in by the laptop in the warmer (again, think relative term here) front living room.  In spite of this improvement, to survive over the last two winters, I climbed into a cold-weather writing costume before sitting down at the computer. Let’s just say a scarf, a knit cape, fleece boots and occasionally, a hat were involved.

 

This year though, I’m still camped out in my cubby in the back corner, and though I won’t call it warm, my daughter’s plaid flannel scarf suffices.  I have no complaints.  But it struck me recently, as much as I hate to admit it, there are parts of winter I'm missing.  Other than a dusting of snow that melted by noontime yesterday, we’ve had none.  We have yet to wake up to the cotton quiet of a muted dawn after an overnight storm.  The cement meeting pond, on the town common across the street from the building where I now work part-time remains liquid, absent of toddlers pushing around chairs while learning to skate.  The thwack of hockey pucks fails to echo down the street from our house, because the rim of ice around the edges of the pond there surrounds black water.  The down jacket I inherited from my daughter two years ago hangs on the hook in the closet where it’s been since last March. 

I can do without the singe of cold that ices the inside of my nose when the temps drop into the teens, but when the thermometer does register that low, there’s something alive about stepping into breath-gasping air to pick up the paper in the morning.  When dressed right, a walk in those temperatures defies something powerful, and celebrates a determination to muscle through, no matter what. 

  

Folks who move out west, or down south after living in New England often say they miss the seasons.  When  I hear that, I roll my eyes. “Try me,” I say and for the time being, I guess Mother Nature is calling my bluff.  I'd be lying if I said it doesn't feel more than a bit off. 

But then there's this; at least when unexpected visitors arrive, I don't have to run and hide.

Tap, Tap, Tap

If you can hear that, it’s me, mentally drumming my fingers.  On December 28, I finished the first draft of my current WIP and now seek patience while I listen to the experts.  Jodie Renner,  an editor I discovered through The Blood Red Pencil recently offered a detailed list on her blog called How to Revise and Polish a Novel. 

Knowing I was going to get to that stage soon, I bookmarked her page.   She offers a wealth of process thoughts, as well links to posts on point of view, dialogue and style.  As per her instructions, I have put my draft away “for at least two weeks.”  Technically, two weeks is up on Wednesday, but I'll go longer to ensure when I open the file again, it is reads fresh and new. 

  

This is hard though, since I’m eager to get back at it…to revisit this thing I started writing last winter.  Other than presenting early chapters to my writing group, I have not allowed myself to go back and read, for fear of drowning in necessary changes and sputtering to a halt before completing the story at all.  And although Jodie says right now I should send it to Beta readers while I’m waiting, I’m not there yet.  I know how scattered my writing can be. It wouldn't be fair to do that to anyone.   Instead, I'll go through one revision before letting anyone read it…with the exception of the aforementioned writers’ group, whose members have patiently been commenting chapter by chapter.  As I complete this first revision, I’ll incorporate their comments. 

So in the meantime, the clock ticks slowly and I wait, trying hard not to bite my nails.  The upside? I’ve got more time to write blog posts.  And, I’m spending my middle-aged, sleepless nights, deciding if I have an idea for the next WIP.

Scene Storming

When I get really stuck, as I was yesterday, I scene storm.  Using a word, or in this case, a set of words, I try to write around them.  I’m happy to say, it almost always works.

I pulled today’s inspiration from Dancing with the Gorilla by Darnell Arnoult.   Historically, the author has offered weekly scene storming prompts.  It’s been a while since she’s updated, but if you go to past posts, you’ll find other suggestions designed to get you writing.  

Today’s words were:  Head, drive, ridges, reach, body, ground, voice, fog, refugee, sleep and here’s what I came up with:

Fog floated like a trail of refugees, weaving threads through bare fingered bushes.  It glided over ridges and congealed in the middle of the winter gray pond.  Water lapped a rhythm to the slap of sneakered feet on wet ground.  Ducks muttered back-up to her measured breaths, the swish of the borrowed nylon jacket, its wet hood spanking her back.  

Alongside the road, strands of bittersweet climbed from beds of composting leaves.   Their lethal tendrils wrapped around high limbs, screening the entrance to the woods with a ropy tangle.  Years ago, she and Ashley had created forts and shelters behind those thick curtains, unaware the creeping plants shading them from adult eyes pulled at tall branches with a pressure that weakened the trees, before yanking them to their knees.  

She hadn’t known when she’d woken from her restless sleep this morning she could still run this far, that she’d reach the bend in the drive marking their childhood shelter.  In the beginning, she and Ashley had pulled rusted beach chairs and an old milk crate underneath the gauze of vines.  Grandmother’s tattered tablecloths served as capes, sarongs, and the turbans they wrapped around their heads. They were older when Robert arrived in town.  Not long after, the hiding place provided an invisible spot to cough down the whiskey he’d pilfered from his father’s stash.

He’d come upon them unexpectedly that first time, in unlaced canvas high-tops covered in mud, his gold and white striped shirt ripped at the shoulder. She and Ashley had been talking, giggling really, about how Thomas Rodomont had kissed Ashley the day before, when something in the woods behind them cracked.   Ashley had screamed, her voice a bird cry on a still night when she’d seen Robert, his angled body slouching against a fat oak behind them, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his cut-off shorts.

 

He’d given them a long stare.  Then he’d run his fingers through his mop of hair, cocked his head, pushed off his resting place and sauntered toward them.  

Happy Weekend All!

January and the Insecure Writer

This is January's post for  Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.  Click on the link to find other participants.

I have always been a late bloomer, one to consider things, to analyze the ramifications before moving forward.    (I wish this trait had resulted in the practice of thinking before I speak, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic, as they say.)   This quality has resulted in a long life of waiting before I act –and you know what they say about “she who hesitates.”  

 

Anyway, experiences in more recent history delivered the message that chasing after what I want feels a lot better than delaying—which is why I dared myself to write Novel #1, the first draft of which I completed early in 2011.  I went through one re-write before abandoning it. I didn’t know how to make it any better than it was, and trust me, it wasn’t good.

Novel two was born, no word of a lie, when the first sentence came to me in the middle of one sleepless night.  I wrote it down and let it sit on my desk for several months until I was ready to write the story it belonged to.  During the time I was writing it, I took a fiction writing workshop and joined two writing groups, where I have learned more about conflict and back story, character building, dialogue and story arcs.  As a result, well, I have a little hope for it this second work

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott says, “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."  The insecure writer in me is well aware that my own first draft is a piece of mud covered dung. I have a goal now, one that looms large and scary, of editing the heck out of it and then letting some folks I trust read it and critique it.  

For the year ahead, I’m wishing for the vision to see what is broken, the openness to listen, the strength to respond to difficult criticism, and the skill to make my story cohesive and readable.  

Then we’ll see if there is a query letter in my future.

I guess my practice of taking things slow hasn’t changed much after all.

Gifts of Stone

It’s been too long since my husband and I have walked in the woods behind the house.  So on a sunny, snow-free holiday noontime, before settling in front of the fire and football, we pulled on our heavy boots and hiked through rugged land, now dotted with hanging branches and broken trees, evidence of one hurricane and the many wind storms that have battered the land over the last years. 

When our daughter was young, she and her next-door cousins ran through trails back there, vaulting over ledges.  They settled into a fort they claimed under the brush by the wetlands and played on a plank balanced over sawed-off tree stumps.  Sunday, we stepped over rotting tree limbs, under branches held via tenuous strips of bark, beside trunks leaning at impossible angles.

Picking our way through the woods, we explored the uneven paths tumbling down to the swamp, then climbed up to the yard of around-the-corner-neighbors whose property provided the destination at the end of many hikes during our girl’s childhood—a country lot accommodating chickens and goats, a multi-tiered tree-house, and raspberry bushes from which they invited us to pick.  I can’t remember the last time we were there.

As we stepped onto their land on Sunday, I realized that sometime, when we weren’t paying attention, life altered directions.  As a result of that turn on the map, we missed something true and clear. Over the years  we’ve not been climbing through the back woods, our neighbors have been busy, clearing their property, creating adornments from the granite that sprouts from our earth as easily as any flower.

On their lot, towers of stones stand in careful compositions, each labeled with a specific designation.  Stepping from one to another we found “Serendipity,” “Perseverance,” and “Hope.”  Two small rock statues, marking the entrance to a path through thick myrtle have been dubbed “Love” and “Light.” Tucked into slight spaces we found “Power” and “Creator,” and “Fertility.”  Three statues situated on a slight ledge held no identification tags— in my mind I dubbed them “Protectors.”  

Wandering through their green velvet acre, we marveled at our good timing.  How meaningful to come across this treasure of composition and peace on the first day of a new year.  It was a captivating beginning, a moment of depth that grounded us in all that we need to value.  Circling the land, I opened myself to the strength of stone, to the message of balance and patience—and a new-found clarity that when life makes it challenging to maintain either,  “Contentment” and Understanding” are only a walk-through-the-woods away.