Say It With Music

by Jennie Bentley

So we're talking about music on the blog this month. Since I live in Music City - Nashville, Tennessee - I guess that's something I should probably be able to talk about, but the truth is, I don't listen to music that often. Some authors I know can't write unless they have music spurring them on. I'm the opposite; I can't concentrate on my own words if someone else's words are in the background.

That's not to say I don't like music. I do. I just can't multitask when music is playing. I either listen to it - actually sit down and listen, to the exclusion of everything else - or I prefer silence.

The funny thing is, I married a singer/songwriter. That's how I ended up in Nashville in the first place. And I admire his talent. I really do. Even if, at times, I wish he'd just shut the hell up, because his screaming at the top of his lungs in the shower is distracting me.

Songwriting is a discipline I've never been able to master. I can write. Sometimes, my sentences even approach brilliance. Or maybe I won't go quite that far, but once in a while, I manage to string words together into something that makes me happy, maybe even a little delirious. Most of the time I just write plain sentences, though. They say what I want them to say, in the best way I can say it, and they're perfectly serviceable. But every so often, on a rare blue moon, the stars align and the words come together in a way that comes off the page.

That's how I feel about a really good songwriter. The words are perfect; the kind that give me chills when I hear them.

There are authors out there who can do the same thing, of course. A friend of mine is a great admirer of Tim Hallinan. I had the pleasure of meeting Tim at Bouchercon last September, and I can attest to the fact that he's a lovely, lovely man. He told me I don't have an accent, I have a "lyrical intonation." How can you not love that?

Anyway, my friend Beth says this about Tim's writing: "I know all those words. Why can't I put them together like that?"

That's how I feel about songwriters. I know the words; why can't I put them together the same way? Why can't I write something that makes people cry? That makes them smile and laugh and feel?


Here's one that speaks to me. I can't listen to this song without tearing up. I can play it three times in a row, and cry each time. As story-songs go, it doesn't get any better than this.

So what about you? Do you like music? Or lyrics? Do you have a favorite song that brings you to tears? Or a favorite songwriter? Or for that matter a favorite author whose words make you weep with joy?

* * *

New York Times bestselling author Jennie Bentley writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime. Book 6, Wall to Wall Dead, will be released in September. As Jenna Bennett, she write the Cutthroat Business mysteries for her own gratification, as well as various types of romance - suspense, paranormal, and futuristic - for Entangled Publishing. Her next romance, Fortune's Hero, comes in November. You can find out more about her books and her personae on her website, www.JennieBentley.com 

Angry Bird Brain

Angry Birds by
Rovio Entertainment Ltd

I'm not sure what it is about my brain that makes me need to finish things. Not important things that keep the household running smoothly like doing the laundry or dishes, but more trivial things like a finishing a morning run without stopping, or completing a crossword puzzle, or killing just a few more pigs with Angry Birds.

Whatever this component is in my brain, I believe it is in high gear when I am writing a novel. Right now, I have novel characters that have become so real in my head, that I think about them when I'm not "with them" at my computer. I wonder what they're going to do next, and ruminate on what they've already done. They become as real as the young people I'm watching on American Idol week after week. I remarked to my husband the other night that I've watched these singers so long now I feel as if I know them somehow.

We went to the mountains last week for spring break. I wanted to write on the trip up, but the kids were in the car, so I opted to play games on my new gadget. I read first using my Bible app and made some very cool Biblical discoveries, then completed a whole crossword puzzle, a game of Sudoku, and several rounds of Angry Birds. When I got stuck on a level, I'd play over and over and over, determined to destroy their houses and kill those little pigs. "These are some smart pigs!" my family got used to me exclaiming. Finally, I had to flip that switch and let go of the pigs and the angry birds for a while. It took a minute or two for my heart to settle down and my temperature to cool.

The same thing happens when I'm trying to write a new chapter and crack its code. Sometimes I have to try over and over with different tactics until the chapter works. When it does, it's a feeling of immense satisfaction. It's clear to me, that writing a novel definitely uses that same Angry Bird component--the compulsive, have-to-keep-going-until-I-complete-this-thing part of my brain--and I'm grateful for it. I think it's a blessing.

So how about you? Do you have a teenager in your family who just can't stop playing video games or practicing basketball or doodling...or...fill in the blank? It might be a blessing in disguise. I have learned that God has wired me this way. I love to be fully engaged mentally. Now, I can either use this part of my brain for mind-numbing entertainment that gets me nowhere and helps no one, or I can use it for something worthwhile. My God-given stick-to-it-ness allows me to spend weeks training for a half-marathon or months in a fictitious world writing a novel. At Christmas-time I can complete massive puzzles of cats with a multitude of minuscule pieces...but I doubt that's ever helped anyone.

At any rate, I like this part of my brain. There is something there that produces euphoria, and although there is nothing scientific about this post, I'm guessing many of you understand and can relate to what I'm saying. It feels good to complete something, to work out long, complicated puzzles in novels, to solve the mysteries, to finally reach redemption for the characters who become larger than life. Before God flipped my switch and gave me my first novel, I wonder what I did with that part of my brain. Nothing quite as productive, I assure you. I think I watched a little too much t.v.

I wonder how you're wired. Have you learned to embrace that quirky thing about you and set it free? I bet if used properly, you could make a difference in the world somehow because God wired you that way. As surely as I write this, God is waiting to take your oddities and use them for his glory in a way that only he can do--only through you. All you have to do is ask him to flip your switch.

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Nicole Seitz is the author of six novels, the mother of two adorable kids, and the teacher of about 165 art students. She lives with her family in the Charleston, SC area where she is currently working on her next book. Find her and her work at http://www.nicoleseitz.com/.

The Best Advice I Ever Got

By Man Martin

“Experience is a dear teacher, but a fool will learn by no other,” Benjamin Franklin


I am a school teacher, and one thing life has taught me is that you have to be very careful what you say around students. The same child who cannot master a simple lesson you have drilled into his head for three weeks will be able to recall verbatim a random wisecrack you made in passing and quote it back to you, often in the context of a parent-teacher conference.

I myself, who have been educated to within an inch of my life, have often taken away more from a teacher’s passing comment than from all the carefully planned curriculum on earth, largely because most of what writing teachers have to offer is advice, and I have never been good at taking advice. This is not owing to a lack of good advice coming in at regular intervals from all sides. I am not proud of the fact I’m not good at taking advice. Had I taken advice, my teeth would be whiter, my cholesterol lower, my waist slimmer, my bank balance fatter. But, like I said, I’m not good at taking advice.

I do not know if this is because I’m cocksure, stubborn, or just a slow learner. Certainly being a slow learner is part of it. Usually I appreciate the value of advice – “Check your tire pressure every week” – only when I’m already stranded on the side of a long, deserted stretch of black top with a broken jack and a spare that is – also – flat.

I have received boo-coos of writing advice, all of which I’ve ignored, which is understandable enough when it comes unasked from friends and family, but which is downright inexplicable when it comes from respected professionals whom I’ve paid, at least in part, for the valuable advice they offer. I’m talking here about college professors under whom I’ve studied writing and who must have on more than one occasion shaken their heads in pained wonderment at my mulish stubbornness, persisting in doing things the way I want to do, dammit, and not listening to their seasoned wisdom which would have made my task lighter in oh, so many ways.

Or if not lighter, at least more productive.

Tonight as I type this the advice that comes to mind is from my dear teacher Tony Grooms. Grooms, author of Trouble No More and Bombingham, was one of my writing teachers at Kennesaw State University and taught me many things. He taught me the essential quality of a character is that he or she must care about something. “It doesn’t matter as much whether they care about their lover, their children, or their rosebushes, but they have to care about something or the reader won’t care about them.” He also said that while an ambiguous phrase might be very nice in poetry, it should probably be avoided in fiction. Clarity is the sine qua non of fiction. Next to characters we can care about, what the reader wants to know is just exactly what the hell is going on.

But all of this wisdom, plus much more besides, wisdom that I heard and neglected until I’d pounded my own fool head against the concrete for myself, testing that, yes, pounding your head on concrete probably is a bad idea and something that should be desisted from in future – Tony also warned me against excessive cleverness or “cuteness” in my writing, a lesson I may never learn – the thing that sticks in my head is one phrase.

Two hundred words a day.

He said this in an off-hand way during a summer workshop. He had graciously opened his home to his class, and we met there weekly to exchange and critique stories. It was there I debuted the first chapter of Long Gone, my novel and Masters Thesis, the only copies of which sit on a shelf somewhere in the KSU Library. The thing was never published and never will be; it was what we euphemistically call a “learning novel.” Too much ambiguity and the characters didn’t care about anything, is my post-mortem diagnosis.

Anyway, one summer afternoon before or after workshop when I was enviously admiring the tomatoes he’d already gotten from his garden long before ours were ripe, he said apropos of nothing much, “If you wrote just two hundred words a day, at the end of a year, you’d have a seventy-thousand word novel.”

He said this in the most casual way imaginable, a man nonchalantly observing that three hundred sixty-five times two hundred is seventy thousand, but what a light bulb went off in my head! Two hundred words a day. Anybody could do that! I could do that!

Thank you, Tony.

I have written two novels and am well into a third. Given my nature, I have had to learn the other lessons you taught me the hard way, pounding my head over and over against stubborn realities until the stubborn realities sank in. Stubborn Realities: 1, Head: 0. But I was able to learn what little I have because of that other thing. The two hundred word thing. I know I have a lot more to learn, and God willing, I’ll learn at least some of it before I die. But if I do, I’ll learn the hard way. Pounding my head. Pounding my head. Pounding my head.

Two hundred words a day.

Man Martin is the award-winning author of Days of the Endless Corvette and Scoring Bertram Wiggly, a novella.  His second novel, Paradise Dogs, was selected by Atlanta Magazine's December "Best Of" issue, as one of the top five novels for 2011.  He is writing a third novel, 200 words a day.  He blogs at manmartin.blogspot.com

Cupcakes and Creativity

Dressed as Julie in Julie and Julia with
Kathy Patrick of the Pulpwood Queens!

I'd like to talk about cupcakes for a while. Rather, cupcakes and writing and how the two go together.

See, there's this place in town where all they sell are cupcakes. I was there today. One cupcake cost me more than three dollars. A three dollar cupcake! Do I need to say more? I split it with a knife into three sections and shared it between my two kids and myself. I had a bit less than a dollar's worth. That was one hefty cupcake.

Seeing as that one was three dollars, it was pretty much out of the question to order 20 cupcakes for my daughter's class tomorrow. She's turning 8 years old over spring break next week, so we're celebrating early with cupcakes in her class. Last year as I was traveling with birthday cupcakes to her class, someone rear-ended my car and the cupcakes went flying, so I'm a little nervous about tomorrow, but that's neither here nor there.

So about these cupcakes...and about my daughter. She cares about people. She likes to please people, but she's not so much interested in pleasing the masses, per se. She's more interested in pleasing those whom she cares about. My daughter told me she wanted cupcakes with no eggs in them since a boy in class is allergic to eggs, which is why we were in this three-dollar-cupcake shop in the first place. Apparently, they make some without eggs. However, the cost is prohibitive.

So while the kids were in the dentist's office, I ran over to the grocery store and bought a cake mix, icing, and applesauce. On the Internet, I read that you could replace the eggs with applesauce and a little vinegar, and something else. The something else is what I couldn't remember because the Internet was down tonight. So I made the cupcakes with oil instead of butter and applesauce with a dash of vinegar instead of eggs. Sounds awful, doesn't it? I was worried. My mother, the baker in the family, said, "How are they going to rise without eggs?" I SO don't know. I write books. I paint pictures. But I don't bake much.

I poured the batter into the cupcake thingies and stuck two pans in the oven. Every few minutes, I checked to see if anything was happening. They rose, ever so slightly, barely a blip, but I saw them. I noticed. After twenty minutes, I pulled them out and saw that they were chocolaty and semi-firm. I let them cool. Later my daughter and I piped on whipped white icing out of a plastic bag, and my daughter insisted on not icing one of them so her other friend who doesn't like icing could have one. Great. An eggless cupcake with no icing. Delicious.

I made two dozen, so the four of us at home could each try one tonight and send in the 20 we needed for school tomorrow. I wrote a note to the teacher assuring her I did not put eggs in the cupcakes (as if she wouldn't notice), and then we tasted. I held my breath. And bit.

Scrumptious, melt-in your mouth, chocolaty goodness, rich, heavenly...yum. Almost like molten chocolate cake. I was very pleased and figure I'll be winning mom-of-the-week around my daughter's class tomorrow. What a surprise. Can't wait to tell my own mother.

So what do these cupcakes have to do with writing, you ask? This is a writing blog after all. Well, I'll tell you.

My daughter did not set out to please the entire second grade with these cupcakes, not even the majority. There were one or two people who had special needs, and she simply wanted to please them. This made her happy. This also made her (read me) take a risk. I have never baked a cupcake without eggs, never even heard of it. Even my mother, the baker, doubted it. But my daughter and I tried something new. Everyone knows a cupcake is made from mix, eggs, butter, and water (unless you're a by-scratch person), but we put it together with oil and applesauce and vinegar, and guess what? Maybe it's not a cupcake for the masses, but sometimes baking--or writing--for an audience of one is more important. And more memorable.

I try to write for an audience of one, for my father in heaven, and when I do, there are no set rules about what order to put things in, no set ingredient list, no mass of people clamoring for eggs and rising batter. Writing for an audience of one means sometimes you'll create an unexpected delicacy, an original idea, a decadent combination that a certain audience will find perfectly palatable.

I love taking risks with my writing. I love doing something I've never done before, something that may not even be doable. I like to write for an audience of one. It makes me happy. And if it flops, at least I got to spend time with my father in the kitchen and lick the batter off the wooden spoon.

___________________
Nicole Seitz is the author and cover illustrator of The Inheritance of Beauty, Saving Cicadas, A Hundred Years of Happiness, Trouble the Water, and The Spirit of Sweetgrass. The Inheritance of Beauty is a Books-a-Million Faithpoint Book Club Selection for May 2011. Nicole teaches art at a local private school in the Charleston, SC area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She is currently editing her sixth novel. http://www.nicoleseitz.com/

Death and Polyester

Portrait of the budding author in Polyester

By Karen Harrington

My mother once told me that she was sorry my grandmother died before the creation of Polyester. “It would've have saved her from ironing every single thing,” she said as she folded our clothes. “What a shame. She did so much ironing.”

That idea stuck with me. To this day, the combination of words won’t let me go. I knew then I wanted to write it down and savor it. Sure, I wished my grandmother got to enjoy Polyester, too. She grew up in the dust bowl of west Texas, married an oil rig roughneck and raised five kids. She did a lot of laundry. But what I liked most about my mother’s comment was how she pared death and Polyester in the same sentence. At age 8, I didn’t know you could do that.

Maybe that was the day a writer was born - or at least, a person in love with the unique juxtaposition of thought – which I think is what we writers like to do. (And why we are thieves of your conversations). Looking back, one of the first signs you know you might be a writer is that you start collecting words and sentences. You begin keeping an ear out for that next unusual idea, that next ‘what if.’ So since that time, I’ve always had a spiral notebook nearby, collecting ideas, sentences and story fragments.

Lucky for me, I was a Dunkin Donuts waitress all through high school. It was a great place to pick up humanity the way a lint roller catches fuzz. Every kind of personality known to man – good and bad – eventually makes his way into a 24-hour donut shop. I didn’t know it then, but this was one of the best training grounds for a story collector. What writer-in-training wouldn’t find it interesting that the night-shift baker allowed his toddlers to sleep on the 50 lb. flour sacks in the store room? I did.

While I sold donuts on the weekends, I had a very influential English teacher who was REAL LIFE author, G. Clifton Wisler. Knowing he was a published author was a little like having a celebrity in your presence. When you are fourteen, there’s something magical about meeting someone who has written a whole novel. The wonderful thing about being young and idealistic is that you get the idea in your head that it’s actually possible to write a novel simply because someone you know has done it. You think, "yes, I want to do that. I think I will."

It would take 22 years after graduating high school and hanging up my waitress hat to call myself a published author. Throughout those years, I had the kind of two-steps-forward, three-steps-back journey common to most writers. (75% rejection/25% encouragement). I wrote two novels in college, one that my professor used as a classroom example of what NOT to do. (Outside class he told me, “This wasn’t good, but I’m not telling you to stop writing.) I wrote short stories and collected rejections and cried. (Eventually one would earn an Honorable Mention at the Lorian Hemingway Story Competition.) I wrote a dozen screenplays and collected still more rejections, though one short script was optioned for an indie short film. (Thankfully, no one will ever see that film.)

Eventually, I took a hiatus from my corporate job as a speechwriter to devote myself to writing. (Why I left a writing job that actually paid my bills, God only knows.) But with the support of my wonder-hubby, we agreed that I could take off a year just to write. I remember that as I was leaving my corporate office for the last time, one of my co-workers, Bob, stopped me and quizzed, “Now why are you leaving again?”

“I want to finish my book.”

“One that you’re reading?” asked Bob. (Yes, I’m quitting my job because I can’t read AND work at the same time.)

Well, the joke’s on Bob because I actually finished writing the particular book I’d started during my one-year hiatus. That first draft would later become my debut novel JANEOLOGY - a story that explores the nature vs. nurture debate as it relates to mothers who kill their children. For this story, it was the painful headlines that I heard on the radio that captured my attention. They left me lying awake at night wondering why and how a mother could be capable of harming her own child. Why did did these women snap? Were they a product of bad genes? Poor nurturing?  I had to write the story to find out. 

I like to think JANEOLOGY draws its roots all the way back to my childhood curiosity and that day my mother was folding clothes, thinking back to her own childhood, and comparing her own life to that of her mother’s, Polyester-free life. I’m certain my mother was thinking about much more than just laundry. That idea set in motion an entire ‘what if’ scenario about how women are raised and what we take and reject from our own upbringing. From generation to generation, we keep some things and leave behind others. 

Today, I’m in another three-steps forward, two-steps back phase of my writing career. Earlier this year, my publisher folded and my book is just inches away from going out of print. That’s the way of this business. It doesn't feel great, but I have a plan. What is it? Keep writing.  I’ve written two more novels – stories I hope to share with you very soon. But I continue to write, ever seeking the next unique combination of ideas like death and polyester that won’t let me go.

Stop by and see the virtual me at www.karenharringtonbooks.com  Until then, happy writing and good reading!


karen

IT'S THE HEAT (OR IS IT THE HUMIDITY?)

IT'S THE HEAT (OR IS IT THE HUMIDITY?)

By T. Lynn Ocean
I'm going off topic this month, but I'm too darn hot to care. I was talking to my sister last night, who teaches for DODDS in Germany, and nestled outdoors to chat. So I'm outside, beneath the covered porch, with the fan turned on high. It was 5 p.m. my time (11:00 her time).  She was already past happy hour and flirting with bedtime, but I was just winding down. Since she's flying back to the states for summer and will be arriving in Florida on Father's Day, our conversation revolved around my dad, who passed away more than ten years ago, and who is still our hero. We miss him terribly, when we think about it too much. And we miss his advice, despite the lectures on annuities and the importance of staying out of the sun. (He was right, of course, on both accounts. Neither of us are great financial planners and we've both had skin cancer.)

Half an hour into our talk, I went inside to retrieve a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio, and sliding the patio door closed behind me, I realized that my tee shirt was drenched. My hair was soaked, too, even though it was pulled up into a pony tail. Returning to my patio chair, dreading being one of those people who talk about the weather, I did it anyway. In South Carolina, it's been damn hot lately. Hotter and more humid than I remember it being last year in June. Even my dogs lie around like beached whales, not even bothering to run and sniff the grounds for rabbits and other critters like they usually do. Which got me to thinking about writing and something a wise author told me years ago: embrace the senses of your reader.

As I sat talking on the phone, alternating between reminiscing over funny things we've done with our father and looking forward to getting together this summer, I embraced the heat and took it all in. The azaleas, whose leaves were limp, and the lack of birds flying around my backyard fountain. The neighborhood in general, which is usually buzzing with folks standing around in driveways, gossiping, but lately seemed to be a silent void, broken only by the hum of heat pumps circulating cool air throughout homes. The experience reminded me of something that is so important to writers of all genres and that is, SHOW, don't tell.

If you're writing a scene in the middle of summer in any sticky, humid, Southern town, show your reader that, yeah, it's freakin' hot. Don't say, "It was hotter than…" Rather, write that the dogs are panting, the plants are droopy, and the only sounds on the street are buzzing air conditioning systems. Paint the picture of shirts soaked through with sweat, and perhaps the sensual, visceral feeling of water droplets seeping through pores and running down the back of your character's neck or trickling, tickling, between her breasts. And remember that the weather certainly doesn't pertain only to one or two senses. Have you ever smelled a salt marsh at low tide when the heat index is into the 100's? Or a downtown city block at night, near a dumpster? Or, the sweet scent of confederate jasmine blooms mixed with warm, discarded beer?

Sitting in the smothering heat reminded me that writing is really all about painting a vivid picture in a reader's mind. When my editor first scrawled the notes, "Show don't tell" on a manuscript, I didn't quite understand what she wanted. I called her. She told me not to shove thoughts down the reader's throat, but rather to paint a scene and let the reader draw their own conclusions. Doing so makes for a much more challenging writing experience, but it pays off with a much more enjoyable read.

My point? If you're a writer, embrace the heat. Or the thunderstorm when it's raining sideways and dropping chunks of ice like little golf-ball sized air raid bombs. Or the blizzard that causes a vibrant northern city to come to a screeching halt in the middle of a January day. Writing begins with observations, and observations lead to wonderful stories. So instead of griping about this summer's heat, get out there and embrace, embrace, embrace! (An icy mojito may help, especially if it contains a few extra lime wedges.)

Happy summer reading (and writing),
Tracy
T. Lynn Ocean

T. LYNN'S latest book, SOUTHERN PERIL (St. Martin's Minotaur) is available download at your favorite online retailer. See http://www.tlynnocean.com/ for more info.

The One In Which I Argue With My Character

by Karen Harrington, author Janeology

Me: I wish I could quit you. I hate you. I love you. I want to break up with you!

Character: Gee, that’s a bit harsh.

Me: You keep changing and morphing and making me doubt if I should continue. Plus, you just informed me that you are NOT the neighbor's boyfriend, but the neighbor's BROTHER. Do you realize how much work it will take to make that change?

Character: Well, that’s my thing. Besides, now Nathan Fillion can play me in the movie version.

Me: We should be so lucky. Well, now I want to start a new story.

Character: You’d go cheat on me with some other characters?

Me: One of the bad habits of being a writer is the love of beginnings. Everything is possible.Nothing is yet wrong with the structure.

Character: But remember all those days when I was working out really well?

Me: Yes. That was when we first met. Our chemistry was quite good then. And YOU were still the boyfriend, not the BROTHER!

Character: You're not going to let that go, are you?

Me: No! You bother me. You pop into my thoughts and give me a new problem on a Sticky Note while I'm in the school car line that has a domino effect on the ENTIRE story. Do you know how much work that takes?

Character: Well, you ignore me some days now.

Me: Do not! I open your file…

Character: And you just stare at the blinking cursor and give me nothing to say. Admit it.

Me: I do that sometimes.

Character: You type nothing on those days. You vacuum. You reorder your spice cabinet. And, I caught you watching Dr. Phil!

Me: I really just want to curse at you on those days.

Character: But remember how you stumbled upon that particular scene where I discover the girl's biggest secret while we're watching The Price Is Right? Oh! That was good.

Me: Yes, I remember. I still like that scene. That was a good day.

Character: If you don’t finish me, none of those days will happen again. And worse, no one will read me about handsome I am.

Me: But right now, this thing looks like a bunch of colored quilting squares on the floor. I have NO IDEA what color goes where or how to sew this together.

Character: You exaggerate.

Me:  It's a job requirement.

Character: This ain’t your first rodeo. You HAVE written a novel before you know.

Me: I know, but….

Character: A cake just doesn’t go make itself, does it? It’s a bunch of random ingredients on your counter and then you follow a recipe and Voila, It’s a cake!

Me: You're comparing baking to writing? Whatever!

Character: Tsk Tsk. Nobody likes a whiny novelist!

Me: (rolls eyes)

Character: Still want to quit me?

Me: I want you to be BAKED already.

Character: Well, get to work and stop scobberlotching.

Me: All right. Just promise you'll stay put as the brother now and stop changing.

Character: No can do. It's a job requirement.

Me: Argghhh!

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Come say hello and distract me from writing. No really. Please distract me. www.karenharringtonbooks.com