Waiting for the voice

The first fifty pages of a novel are always the hardest for me to write. I keep thinking surely as I become more experienced at this the first five chapters will become easier to write, not harder. An experienced marathon runner doesn’t struggle with those pesky first five miles, does he? No. Does the prima ballerina bite her nails over the first five minutes of Swan Lake? No. Does the mason lose sleep over the first fifty bricks of a new bridge? I seriously doubt it.

But there’s something vast and bottomless about the novelist’s blank page. And since I do much of the research and big-picture-plotting before I start, I begin each new book with a brain congested with facts and possibilities and no confidence in the best way to expel them onto the page. The release must be perfectly timed, expertly sifted. The blank page is terribly blank. The full head is terribly full. Full head and blank page should be perfect partners. But they are not. Not for me.

Over the last two months I have started the New Book three times. I have three files in my computer: Girl in the Glass, Girl in the Glass2 and Girl in the Glass3. All three have been edited and massaged over many cups of java and cans of Diet Coke. Lest you summon too much awe, you should know 2 and 3 are actually morphisms of the first. But all are a superhuman attempt to grasp the thinnest of things: the unwritten story. The characters aren’t dimensional yet, they don’t trust me, they don’t reveal all to me. Not yet. And the place where they live, even if it is the very place where I was born- the place I know better than any other place in the world, is not quite the same place for them as it is for me. It is almost like the geography of dreams: When you dream of your house, but it is not quite your house. Everything is just a little off.

And it’s this way every time I begin a new book. I have finally come to expect it. Expecting something nasty doesn’t change the nastiness but it does remove some of the fear factor.

I think I have at last have figured out what the secret is to finally having the reins of the story and why it takes so many attempts to finally have them in my hands. I have to hear my main character talk to me. Yes, I need to hear voices in my head before I am sane enough to begin writing. And dash it all, she will not speak to me until I pound out those first fifty pages without her.

This is how it goes. I study her. I interview her. I clothe her and give her backstory and childhood trauma and joy, and a high school diploma and her best friend and her favorite dessert and a few quirks and talents and habits, good and bad. And then I concoct a life for her that is to be tested and I toss her into this carnival of choices and I follow behind her with my little note pad.

But the story does not begin until she turns around and speaks to me. And she will not speak to me until I begin the story.

It’s as simple as that.

And as spectacularly hard.

So now I know. Get ready to write. Get ready to listen. Write. Keep writing in the silence. Keep listening. Keep writing. She will speak. But only when you are already writing.

Maybe now that I know this it won’t take fifty pages to hear her speak.

I’d be happy with twenty-five. . .

My someday words

I’ve been playing Scrabble since I was a little kid. My grandmother, a Scrabble queen, always had her board out by the pool. Summer days in San Diego were spent in her backyard, with our warm skin smelling of chlorine and Coppertone, eating nectarine cobbler right out of the oven, and communing with those little smooth tiles made of pine that we’d move about with pruned fingertips that had been in the water too long.

It amazes me – all these years later – that she stooped to play with us and our impoverished vocabulary. We got smarter, of course, as the years went by. But there were a lot of summers my grandmother was forced to play off words like hat, toe, and bun. My sisters and I had no idea you could play ZA and QI and XU and get away with it. Grammary probably did but she never slapped down any of those words. She played it our way, bless her heart.

Now you can play Scrabble just about anywhere – I see the board on people’s smart phones all the time – and no one has to worry about those slippery tiles sliding off into gibberish when someone bumps the board. There is no board to bump. There are even apps and websites that will keep track of your game and tell you what word to play – I refuse to use those. Scrabble is cool again.

I play Facebook Scrabble with my mom and sisters, my daughter, a very good friend and writing colleague and not looking for more games to play, but I DO have a little list of words I am longing to plunk down – on good Scrabble real estate of course. Here’s my list:

Phlox – Love the flower, love the word in all its Seussian sass. Would bring in some good points if played well, too. I won’t lay it down without a double-word score at least.

Moxie – Okay, so yes, I like the letter X. But isn’t this a great word for verve? You don’t see moxie much these days. It has morphed into snark – also a good word. But not sure if it’s in the dictionary yet. Anyone know?

Savvy – Speaking of verve and double Vs (I don’t like to draw a V despite the 4-point value. They are snarky without an E), I would gladly allow the versatile S the start-up to play “savvy” if given the chance, just to plunk down those twin Vs without their Es and tell them to take that. I usually save my S to pluralize a meaty word and create a second meaty plural. But I would give it up to play “savvy.”

Quinoa – I just love that word. I love the way it looks and the way it sounds and I even love the way it tastes. I would play this without prime points if I had all the letters and could just lay it down. And in case you are wondering how to say it, it’s Keen Wha. And it’s yummy with fresh cucumber and Asian ginger salad dressing.

Bucolic – I actually don’t like the sound of this word. It doesn’t sound like what it is and if a word should do anything, it should make us think of what it is. Noodle works for noodles. Tart works for tart. Smooth works for smooth. Vibrant works for vibrant. But bucolic makes me think of vomiting buffalo. And that is NOT what this word means. Still, I would like to play it. Not really sure why. . .

How about you? Got a favorite word you are just dying to play on Scrabble? Do tell. . .

We have a winner!

Congrats to screen name pinkdaisyjane! She has won the signed copy of Meg Moseley’s When Sparrows Fall. Thanks to all who entered.

For your reading pleasure today, I’d like to suggest a nutty, fruited brie on crunchy baguette slices and paired with this interview of notsolongago — insights into my brain regarding the writing of Lady in Waiting at Christianbook.com

On Monday I will share with you all the words I am longing to play on a Scrabble board sometime. . .

When Sparrows Fall giveaway

Happy Monday morning, everyone! Let’s start the week off with a book-giveaway, shall we? On Friday I had as my guest fellow WaterBrook author Meg Moseley and we chatted about her debut novel, When Sparrows Fall. She had some very thoughtful answers to my questions. Take a look.

If you would like to enter a drawing for a signed copy of Meg’s book, just drop a note here in the comments section. A winner will be drawn on Friday at 9.a.m Pacific. Have a great week!

Chattin’ it up with Meg

Today my guest is fellow WaterBrook author Meg Moseley, whose novel When Sparrows Fall debuted this week. It’s been a good week for us WaterBrookians. Also in the news today, The Christy Awards 2011 nominations were announced. I am happy to say Lady in Waiting is on the short list for contemporary standalone. Pretty cool. I share this joy with many fabulous authors, including WaterBrook colleagues Kirstin Heitzmann, David Gregory, and Jonathan Rogers.

Meg grew up in California, loves vintage bungalows, twisted oaks on rolling hills, and the rocky beaches of the Central Coast. As a young adult, she worked at a variety of jobs, from candle-maker in a tourist town to administrative assistant at a Christian college. She married a Michigan man and lived north of Detroit for seventeen years. That’s where she started homeschooling her three children, a journey that she finished in Georgia when her youngest graduated from high school in 2009. She and her husband live near Atlanta, close to the foothills of the Southern Appalachians.

Susan: When Sparrows Fall is your debut novel, but you’ve been writing for awhile, right?

Meg: When I was six or so, I sometimes played in the office of my father’s menswear store while he worked. He often gave me blank sheets of paper to staple into miniature books. The empty pages begged to be filled, but it was an exercise in futility because I couldn’t spell many words. Sometimes I banged away at his late mother’s old typewriter instead. That was frustrating too, but it made me feel connected to “Gran.”

I never knew Gran, but even as a child I knew I wanted to be like her. She was a writer whose magazine articles, poetry, and children’s stories helped keep food on her table during the Great Depression. My dad was the keeper of Gran’s unpublished family stories, in which she made her ancestors live again as pioneers, circuit riders, and gold miners. She made me feel the sway of her grandfather’s Conestoga wagon, see gold flakes glimmering in the pan, and taste the juicy peaches her father raised near Los Angeles before it became a metropolis.

But as a young adult I fell prey to the warped belief that if a novel wasn’t overtly Christian, it had no redeeming qualities. For years, I avoided general market fiction. It wasn’t until I was homeschooling my children that I knew I was starving for good stories. Classic children’s books wooed me back into reading a broad range of novels for adults.

Susan: You were in your forties when you wrote your first book – so was I! What has the process been like?

Meg: I didn’t know the first thing about the process. Happily deluded at first, I thought my first novel was pretty good. Nobody agreed with me, but I kept writing. One of my best learning experiences was my stint as a “community columnist” for a suburban section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I received the promised pay of “all the newsprint you can eat” plus an occasional dinner with the other columnists. The experience gave me confidence, if nothing else. I kept writing fiction too, but with growing frustration. Like my six-year-old self, I knew what I longed to do but I didn’t know how to do it.

That began to change when I discovered writers’ groups and critique partners who helped me learn the craft. I wrote six novels before I produced one worthy of publication, but the ones that didn’t sell weren’t a waste of time. Each one brought me closer to knowing what I wanted to write. Not just boy-meets-girl stories, although they’re fun, but woman-meets-patriarchy stories, or man-meets-racism stories. Now, instead of filling homemade books with first-grade words, I fill a blank computer screen with words that I pray will matter. It’s really all I’ve ever wanted to do.

Susan: So tell us where your main character, Miranda, emerged from:

Meg: Although I didn’t name Miranda after the heroine of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, I soon saw the parallels. Shakespeare’s Miranda lives on an isolated island where she’s controlled by a manipulator, much like my Miranda lives in isolation under the thumb of a conniving clergyman. I scoured The Tempest for appropriate lines for Jack to quote to Miranda, but none of them worked so I scrapped that idea. Jack does quote a variety of playwrights, poets, and songwriters, though. If you pay attention, you’ll find tidbits from Robert Burns, Stephen Sondheim, and many more. I had a lot of fun with that, and—dare I say it?—I think Jack enjoyed it as much as I did.

I liked Jack right away, but I didn’t like Miranda in the early drafts of the story. Because her marriage had made her not just submissive but subservient, she had all the backbone of a wet dishrag. As I revised the story, though, she turned into a fighter with opinions and nerve and a sense of humor, which she needed for her dealings with the sometimes difficult Jack.

Susan: I’ve long been in awe of friends who’ve homeschooled their children into amazingly smart and socially-adjusted adults, but in When Sparrows Fall, you paint a picture of a church/homeschool subculture that perhaps many people aren’t aware of. Does your plot stem from personal experience?

Meg: Anyone who reads When Sparrows Fall might wonder if the story is drawn from my own experiences. Am I like Miranda, a homeschooling mother whose six children have never heard of the Beatles or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Am I like Miranda, whose husband taught her that fiction is frivolous, if not downright wicked?

Well, no. Although my husband and I homeschooled our three children, we backed away from extremist views before we got in over our heads.

Most of our homeschooling experiences were positive, and we treasure the friendships we made during those years. I loved homeschooling. I’ll always be a defender of the many positive aspects of the movement, but I also want to point out the negative extremes. I’m using a specific, fictional situation to make people think about the real-life teachings and practices that bring harm to lovely, sincere Christian homeschoolers. Most homeschoolers are beautifully normal and admirably stubborn non-conformists who think for themselves, but I worry about the ones who’ve been sucked into fear-driven legalism.

Unlike Miranda, though, I don’t see the government as my adversary, I’ve never been married to an abusive man, and I certainly don’t have Miranda’s qualms about enjoying fiction. Like her, though, and like parents everywhere, I want my children to be safe and happy, no matter how old they are.

My fictional characters are my children too, in a sense, birthed in my imagination. I daydreamed Miranda into existence by asking myself, “What if?”

What if a homeschool mom is a single parent, raising a large family on her own? What if she has a secret that someone uses against her? What if she encounters spiritual abuse in her church but isn’t free to leave?

Yes, I’m like Miranda in some ways. From the day I started playing with her story until the day I typed “The End,” I learned lessons with Jack and Miranda. One of them is that it’s all right to admit that you don’t have all the answers and you never will.

Susan: I learn from my characters all the time! So, what’s next on the horizon for you?

Meg: I’m working on a novel about a young woman who lost her father to a deep mountain lake when she was a teenager. His body was never recovered. Now it seems he might have faked his drowning and fled to the wilderness. As she and her longtime friends search for answers, they uncover memories of a mysterious event in their childhood that might explain everything but might break all their hearts.

Glad to have had Meg here on Edgewise. Hope you all have a lovely weekend, and if there is someone here on the planet who mothered you, tell that person how much they mean to you. . .

A Dozen Lessons from Jane Austen

Today Literary Critic Bill Deresiewicz has a lovely summary of the 12 life lessons Jane Austen reveals to us in her collection of novels (which you can read right here and you surely should), including this one:

#5 Don’t believe everything you think
“We do not come to things with open minds, we come with all the ideas we’ve already acquired, and we can’t wait to project them onto everything we encounter. Instead of discovering the truth, we end up with a very elaborate theory that bears no relationship to what’s actually going on in front of us.”

And this one:

#7 Too much money makes you miserable
“Being able to get whatever you want makes you awfully unhappy when you can’t get what you want. And if everything is easy, then nothing really matters.”

Missed the link? Here it is again:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-deresiewicz/jane-austen-life-lessons_b_854579.html#s270254&title=You_arent_nearly