Holiday Research

Tags

hjälmargården, research, vacation, visby, writing

Image via Wikipedia

The past two weeks have been  filled with fantastic opportunities for  research. Last week we visited the Medieval Festival in Visby, Sweden. I was like a kid in a candy shop. We explored the remnants of the medieval town, watched the recreation of the Battle of Visby, attempted some archery and discovered I was quite good at it, tasted wild boar, got lost in the market, laughed at the jesters, sailed on a replica cog in the Baltic sea, and delved into history with some historical re-enactors, not to mention spending some quality time with my biggest supporter, my husband. It was a fantastic trip and we hope to make it an annual tradition.

This past weekend, I also attended an international church retreat at Hjälmargården, Sweden. A beautiful and peaceful campgrounds next to the lake. I met and spoke with people from at least seven different countries. We broke bread together, learned about each other and our individual customs. We marveled at our differences and laughed at our similarities. We huddled together in the pouring rain, laughed together at the volleyball field, and froze together during the polar bear swim. It was a fantastic trip and I hope to go again sometime.

What I enjoyed most about both trips, however, was the sheer potential for ideas and knowledge each provided me with. Ideas and details I hope to incorporate in my writing. And the reminder, and expectation, that every day life teems with juicy tidbits waiting for me to snatch them up, remember them, and honor them by bringing them to life somewhere again.

Energy Source Needed

Tags

exhaustion, time, writing

I’m sitting in my room staring at the computer screen while my eyelids close, then open, then close, then open, and I’m wondering why I keep trying so hard to keep them open.

Today is like almost every day in my world. From the time one of the children wakes me early in the morning, until late at night, I spend every moment chasing after toddlers. I’m beat. I’m numb with exhaustion. I’m not sure I can even crawl off the bed. And this has been a good day.

There are so many days I long to write. My soul craves it, and yet, there is no time when I’m jumping to rescue one child from falling off the sofa, or cleaning up the lake another child has created in the middle of my living room because the ‘sheep’ are thirsty, only to run and rescue another child from climbing up the bookcase and just as I’m doing that, another child has fallen into the ‘lake’ and is screaming bloody murder. It’s non-stop. It’s like being in battle all day, but a lot more fun with loads of laughter, interesting situations, and adorable sayings.

I see the quotes that say ‘if you don’t have to time to write, you’re really not interested in it’ and I want to throw my son’s highchair at the author. After a few deep breaths, I forgive the authors of those quotes because obviously they have never been a stay-at-home parent with multiple children.

Thirst

Tags

books, bookstore, reading

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spend in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” — Samuel Johnson

A close friend of mine is moving back to the states in a few months. I’m saddened to see her go, but I’m excited for the journey she herself will take over the next few months, and even years.

We’re both mom’s of small children and it’s extremely rare when we’re both free to spend some time together alone, so today was a special treat. We met in the old city, sat sketching by the river and chatted about life, children, expectations, and dreams. When our stomachs began rumbling, we grabbed some cannelloni from a small cafe and followed it up with a visit to the local bookstore.

We could have spent hours in the bookstore and I ran across so many authors I’m dying to read. I want to read everything. Biographies, non-fiction, how-to, mystery, suspense, romance, fantasy, and the classics all call out my name. I remember a sermon once where the pastor talked about how camels could go months and months without water, while the deer thirsts after water all the time. I feel that way with books. I’m a deer, thirsting after water and as I put each book down, I thirst for the next one.

In the end, I placed most of the books back on the shelf and only walked to the register with three. Until the next visit.

 

The Details

Tags

characters, details, traits, writing

I once had a friend who coordinated lip gloss, nail polish, lighter, purse, sandals, bra and panties on a daily basis. She was smart, she was diplomatic, she was friendly, she was someone you’d want to talk to and she had so many positive attributes that made up her personality, you’d think that would be what I remember the most about her. But, nope. When I think of Natalie, I find myself wondering if I saw her today, would it be a Cotton Candy Pink day, or a Coral Dreams day, and if there would be matching pom poms on her sandals.

As I work on digging under five layers of skin for each of my characters, I’m discovering unique quirks and habits in their life. Tiny details, like the coral hair combs my main character wears and the scene where her mother gives them to her unfolds before my eyes. Something that will never, ever make it into my book, and yet it’s important because that small detail became a bittersweet memory that shaped my characters life.

We all know to put the basics in, hair color, eye color, shape, clothing, some pertinent facts about her past, and if we’re feeling especially creative, we’ll go ahead and throw in her nervous habit of biting her fingernails. Off to write!

Chapters 1 and 2 are fantastic. We leave out unnecessary back story, we jump right into the story, and we quickly establish an emotional bond between you the reader and poor Helen Protagonist. Somewhere in Chapter 3, she switches her nervous habit to biting her lip, instead of her fingernails. We decide it’s ok, it’s all biting, right? In Chapter 6, she’s now biting other people. Well, that’s not so bad. We hear vampires are all the rage. In chapter 9 she’s biting pieces of inanimate furniture. Hmm, ok, maybe she needs a rest.

My point is, we (myself included) tend to focus on just enough to get us going. We HAVE to TELL the story! We makes mistakes, we switch out details, or change them as we go, or we ‘wing it’ and the story becomes second rate filled with shallow characters who don’t seem to have a heartbeat. How much better would it be if we spent weeks, and weeks, and sometimes months, letting our characters come to life before our eyes, before we even set one drop of ink to the paper to tell their stories?

How a character is born

Tags

characters, writing, writing quote

Image via Wikipedia

 Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.

— Eudora Welty

Give me birthing people over creating characters any day

Tags

characters, lukeman, profile, writing

“A writer should create living people; people, not characters.  A character is a caricature.”
Ernest Hemingway

I thought I knew the characters in my novel. I knew exactly what they would say to each person who entered their lives, and I knew how they would respond to each landslide that came their way. I knew how they would feel during each obstacle, sacrifice, and successful moment.

As I work on my revision, I’ve discovered I was wrong. I barely know them. Oh, I know them on the surface, and if someone gave me a pop-quiz on them, I’d pass. But, they weren’t alive yet. They were just ‘characters’.

I had a basic character profile sheet on each of them, but little did I realize that this is just the first step. Of course, everyone should know what they look like (even if physical description is never revealed), little tidbits about their past and how they got to be in the situation they are in. I had the type of clothes they wore and their driving motivations and personalities mapped out. I had ‘bad habits’ nailed and scars jotted down. And for all that, I only had a shadow of what they are, or could ever be.

So, I created a four page in-depth portfolio for each of my characters, not just the protagonist and antagonist, and for the past two weeks, I’ve been breathing life into them. I’ve taken much of Noah Lukeman’s advice in The Plot Thickens and altered it to my needs. My novel is a fantasy and while asking questions like ‘how much money is in his bank account? where does he bank? does he save? does he have a financial adviser? does he drive a Volkswagen Jetta or a Porsche?’ don’t exactly apply, they provide a good platform on which to revise the questions to become relevant for my needs. And as with most writing, thinking about one thing springboards into others and I’ve added questions or details to my portfolios that are more suited to my books.

The result? I’ve discovered plot lines I never knew existed. I’ve unearthed past sorrow and glimpsed dreams for the future. I’ve encountered tiny quirks that will send them into a rampage, and others that will instantly restore calm. In essence, my characters are not just characters any more . . . they breathe. They laugh. They weep. They dream. They hope. They yearn to be seen.

Why a blog?

Tags

why, writing

To post random thoughts on my journey.

To post interesting articles and thoughts on the craft of writing in an easily accessible library for me, and perhaps others to use for easy reference.

To post recommended research articles and tools.

To encourage me to write every day.

To vent.

To inspire.

To encourage.