The Snow Lay on the Ground

Watching the pictures of the storm that blasted through the East Coast (much more interesting than watching the Bears - they might have been better off to miss their flight after all), its a sign that winter has arrived.  Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, which means the days are getting longer now.  Can I get a yippee?  Some friends of ours throw a solstice party every year, but since they live 200 miles away, we don't usually have the opportunity to go.  Maybe next year . . .

Lots of druidic rituals attached to the solstice times of year, which reminds me to sharpen my research there.  Always wanted to write a druid book.  On my list for the New Year, but for the moment, I think I'm going to take that leap and try my hand at a Christmas story.  Of course no one will want to read a Christmas story in February, or July, but by next Christmas.  Considering the time I will have to polish it up, maybe it will be a welcome relief to some of the drivel I've seen this year.

Already the stores are stocking up for Valentines Day, and Christmas isn't over yet.  A sure sign of the times when they start skipping over Christmas to get to the next holiday.  I thought Christmas was THE holiday to market.  And the news markets are starting to revisit the year 2009 as it comes to a close.  The most fascinating people, the biggest news stories, etc.  For me?  I'm going to enjoy today.

My own pace of life tends to be way too fast so while I have a break from the day job, I'm going to watch the snow fall.  I'm going to bake some bread.  I'm going to watch yet another Christmas movie (because that's what I do this time of year - but I'm going with the classics today).  And then I'm going to watch the snow fall some more as a backdrop while I transcribe the story that is building in my imagination.

Next week I'll set my New Year's goals - after Christmas.  In the meantime, enjoy the peace and love of the season. 

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays

Happy Hannukah to my Jewish friends, and Merry Almost Christmas to my Christian friends.

Today is decorating day.  Finally making festive around the house and doing some holiday baking.  With Thanksgiving falling late this year, I feel a little behind, and yet, not.  We have snow on the ground (it came early this year) and the temperatures have been plummeting.  Yes, it definitely feels like Christmas.  Now if I could just get my shopping done . . .

Haven't started watching Christmas movies yet.  DH has been humoring me since I don't have my children around to help me celebrate the coming of the season (isn't he wonderful?), but not sure how many Christmas movies he can stomach.  And we have shopping yet to do.

Every year at this time, I'm sure I want to write a Christmas story, and yet it seems they've all been written.  How many variations on a theme can you do? - but they still keep coming.  It seems almost as if its getting so diluted now that the stories aren't very imaginative any more.  Do I want to add my name to that list?  The trend this year seems to be single mothers catching new husbands that bond instantly with their kids.  Seems a bit of a stretch, but I suppose there's always hope, and isn't that what Christmas is all about?  I'm sure one day I'll try my hand.  Last year I had a decent idea, but I never sat down to compose it into a story.  Keeping my options open.

Catch me if you can

I am an animal lover.  To that end, I am the proud adoptive parent to two cats.  The one (my old guy) is so well behaved as to be boring.  I've never had a cat that got into so little trouble in all my life.  Then there's the "blonde" cat.  She learned her manners from the old guy, but she is much more mischevious and also a lot more cuddly.  She's also a psycho cat. 

The blonde cat came to me at 6 weeks old, near death.  A feral cat, she had a horrible upper respiratory infection that lasted the next three months of her life.  My opinion is that had a lasting effect on the development of her lungs, because through the years, she's continued to have sneezing and breathing issues, although never very serious.  Lately, she's sounded more and more like a snufflupugus, to the point of my calling the vet to make her an appointment (she's now 10 years old).  This little psycho cat is accustomed to hiding from everyone, only making herself known in small groups of people (one or two is her preferred "crowd" size), and although she's very affectionate, she's also very skittish.  Easily spooked.  The old guy cat used to sit at the bottom of the steps and wait for her, then jump when she rounded the corner.  That gave her fits for a week, where she was afraid to move.

But I digress.  I made the vet appointment for her, concerned that her wheezing is somewhat worse than usual.  So I came home from work.  Who says cats don't understand?  She kept her distance from me, led me on a chase around the house for 45 minutes before she finally threatened to go to her hidey hole where no one can get near her in any way, shape or form.  So I called and rescheduled with the vet.  I had the last appointment of the day and I was already late.  Funny thing.  The minute I hung up the phone, there she was. Standing at my feet.  She knew it was too late to go.

Tonight, I figured I'd just grab her and go - no chasing her around the house, no offering her treats or trying to get her into a kitty carrier of any shape.  But guess what?  She was already in her hidey hole when I got home and 3 hours later, she still hasn't come down. {sigh}  So I've rescheduled with the vet yet again.

After our skirmish last night, once I settled in to watch some television, she showed up and curled up beside me very close (as if to apologize for her bad behaviour).  Something tells me she won't be coming out to cuddle tonight - and she didn't even have any advance warning tonight.  But tomorrow, there will be no saving her.  Once I catch sight of her, I'm going to corral her where I can get to her easily.

Reminds me of when I fed vegetables to my son.  You'd think I was trying to poison him!  At least with children you can explain the benefits of what you're trying to do, even if they don't appreciate it. (He eats his veggies now, but such a fuss when we was growing up!).

So still playing catch me if you can with the blonde cat.  I imagine she'll surface at some point later this evening. 

And the old guy cat?  He'll go.  He was jumping into the kitty carrier last night, following me around.  "I'll go.  Look Stupid (speaking to the blonde cat), it's not so bad.  C'mon.  It'll be fun."  Yeah, but this from the cat that used to jump out of hiding and scare the fur off her!

Fun and games.

Routine

Routine - it's something we all need in our lives in some way, shape or form.  For a writer, its essential to keeping his/her skills sharp.  As with anything, the more you do it, the  better you are at it, like playing the piano or competing in sports.

I always love the stories at writer's conferences, and Nora Robert's comments always surface about when she's writing and her kids used to call for her.  Her response was that unless the house was on fire or someone was dying, writing was HER time and she shouldn't be interrupted.  That reflects her dedication to her craft and certainly she has a routine.

When I first started writing seriously, and I hear this from many people as the way they start, my kids were young and my husband worked a third shift job.  So from 8:00 pm on, I had the run of the house to myself, and my love for writing kicked in with the free time.  The kids grew, the husband changed and routine changed, but the writing remained.  The important part was that it remained.  I continued to make time for it and to fine-tune it.  The difference is in altering the routine - the when part of writing.

We all live by a circadian rhythm.  We go to bed at a certain time, we wake up at a certain time.  Our pets expect to be fed at a certain time.  These are all routines that we live our lives by.  Even the homeless on the streets find their haunts at certain times of the day.

While there's something to be said for spontaneity, routine is inescapable.  And as a writer, it is essential.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing everyone enough food, friends, family, and a holiday to remind us all how fortunate we are to have what we do - sparse or surplus.

Making it to the end of a novel

As I sit struggling to complete my current novel, and as I reflect on Diana's novel, it occurs to me that "The End" is a difficult piece of the writing.  For Diana, she didn't end.  She ran out of pages.  The story just stopped - until the next one.  I don't mind that quite so much as, say, Anne Rice, who leaves you hanging at the end of her stories.  I'll never forget reading the Vampire Lestat and at the end of the novel, the Queen of the Damned climbs into Lestat's coffin.  What??  That's the end??? What happens then?  YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME!  She has done that in several of her books, in fact in The Witching Hour, I swore I wouldn't read another one of her books because of the fast switch at the end of the novel and the hanging ending.  That novel was too long not to finish (but I did read Lasher, the sequel).

For my part, I can finish the story.  I can wrap up the loose ends, but it's difficult to get to that point because you become so involved in your characters, your story.  The end means a parting of the ways.  They move away to a different state, in a manner of speaking.  You can revisit, and sometimes they come back to star in a subsequent novel, but it still marks the end of an era.  Bittersweet.  Some friends do that when they read.  They don't rush through a book, they read as slowly as possible to savor every word, every moment with the characters because the end is . . . well . . . the end.

Another reason writers postpone "The End" is that it means then they have to move on to the next one.  Generally I have the next one sketched out - a very rough outline on one page, of characters, motivation, general plot lines, and quite often I'm already putting down rough chapters.  But if that subsequent story isn't flowing, there's a certain amount of "I can't finish this one until I have somewhere new to go."  It's an excuse, and a classic case of procrastination, and yet it is what it is.  Outside distractions can also keep you from putting down that final chapter.

One of the girls that babysat me when I was growing became an author - Mary Doria Russel, The Sparrow.  She came "home" last weekend and one of the things she said was that it made a huge difference to have a husband who could support her so she could spend her time writing (reminder:  being an author is NOT a lucrative careeer, unless you're JK Rowling).  For those of us that are still in the working world, we have those other responsibilities that fight for our time, and that creates one more excuse not to finish a novel (although a much better one than the ones previously outlined).  I tell you what - a contract in hand would be a mighty strong motivator! 

But until then, I just plod along, setting a more leisurely pace.  My current work in process, tentatively titled Giselle, will be finished, and the next one will get started.  I'm still shopping Epitaph around and with the positive feedback I'm getting, I feel pretty good that someone will like it enough to take a chance with it, and when that happens, my pace will pick up again with renewed vigor and interest, like a new relationship, until I reach the point where I don't want to stop again, and postponing The End means I'm still writing, and still living with my characters - for a little while longer.

Coming up for air and a review of Echo in the Bone

I've been working too hard again.  A necessary evil.  This is the point where we (my coworkers) and I say to each other, "well, at least we have a job."  But the stress levels are intense and the work load is heavy.  Nevertheless, I take great pride in my work and continue to strive to be better, even after 23 years. That's the whiny part of my post.

I finished Diana Gabaldon's new book!  Yes, I borrowed it from the library, and it's on the "maybe I'll buy it" list.  I generally only purchase books that I know I will read again, and I do read them again.  I have all of Diana's previous works, and after the last one (which is, coincidentally authographed), I decided I would read this one first, buy it later (which I have now done, the read it first part).  I like Diana Gabaldon.  I enjoy her books (mostly).  This one (An Echo in the Bone) is long, like the other ones.  Outlander I never noticed the length.  A Dragonfly in Amber I never noticed the length.  Voyager got a little long and actually dragged through a couple of spots, although I still enjoyed it.  The Fiery Cross was the first of her books that I can't say I liked all that much.  I enjoyed Roger Mac, but I still don't like Brianna.  She was tolerable in A Breath of Snow and Ashes, although that book was VERY long and hard to slog through (at least for me).  In this latest book, I enjoyed it (but I still don't care much for Brianna and her whole story could have been left out), but having finished it just tonight on my train ride home, it ended rather abruptly.  Kind of like "I'm only allotted 800 pages, and this is it.  Guess I have to stop the story now."

An Echo in the Bone doesn't really have a beginning and a middle and an end.  For devoted readers who are in love with Jamie and Claire (raising my hand), it was a warm, endearing family chronical, much like we've come to expect.  I'd read reviews about how these aging characters are still too adventurous for their ages considering the times they lived in.  That may be true, but I was able to buy into it, and there are references to their aging (which were notably lacking in the last book).  I still love Jamie and Claire and it was like visiting old friends to read their story.  The whole Roger and Brianna portion of the book seemed superfluous to me.  Not necessary and could have cut out a whole bunch of pages.  The William subplot was integral, and I enjoyed that, and then there's the Ian thing.  Ian is integral also, and I enjoyed reading his story, but it ended with the Ian story, which was a minor subplot, not the major focus of the book, which brings me back to what was the major focus of this book?  It's a tender rendering of the life and times of Jamie and Claire, which remains an ongoing saga, but there's no real plot, per se.

For 800 pages, there is an awful lot of information that could have been cut - including the obligatory trip home to Scotland.  Not a necessary trip, in my estimation.  Don't get me wrong - after reading the first two in the series, I made a trip to Scotland to experience the wilderness first hand (I loved it, by the way).  In this book, it's an easy edit out without losing anything in the story.

One gets the sense that Diana is trying to wrap up all the loose ends from all the characters that you meet along the way, but there are so many scattered so many places that it just isn't necessary.  We've moved on.  Let's keep focus.

There will obviously be another installment in this series, and I will read it when it comes out - probably another three years by Diana's reckoning.  Hopefully she will be able to conclude the Revolutionary War by then.  As to Roger and Bri - I'm thinking she ought to just give them their own series, the way she has with Lord John (I haven't read any of the Lord John books).  Then those folks that care about those characters can have their fill (and I can skip over them).

One person's opinion.  Now, from a writer's perspective, Diana has broken so many writing rules.  Again, I enjoy reading Diana's books and if she wants to break the rules, she has gifts that counterbalance, so far be it for me to criticize the writing.  Her ability to bring her characters to life far outweights wondering which point of view you are reading because she hasn't identified the speaker in a chapter.  Her overuse of "ten dollar words" doesn't bother me, I have a ten dollar vocabulary.  I can only hope I write well enough for people to overlook the rules I break!  In the meantime, I'll have to try not to break the rules.

Cheers.