Where I'm from

Future writer in Sears polyester

By Karen Harrington

I am from being the second daughter of a second daughter.

I am from a yellow brick house with a red front door; from a yard that grew cantaloupe and tap water that tasted like dirt at summer’s end.

I am from hand-me-downs and hand-sewn stuffed animals and kitchen haircuts and mortal embarrassment and wistful nostalgia.

I am from rock and roll while house-cleaning and silence while writing.

I am from the computer keyboard is my piano and though sometimes it sings, sometimes needs tuning, I commit to make daily music anyway.

I am from loving a great sweater.

I am from Kerouac and Hemingway and Carver and Faulkner and the college writing professor who caught me in the hallway after making an example out of my bad writing and said, “I’m not telling you to stop writing. I knew you could take it. Keep going.”

I am from ten years later bringing my first published novel and a grin that wouldn’t quit to that professor.

I am from making my house smell like autumn using the trick my mother taught me: pressing cloves into oranges until your fingers almost bleed.

I am from believing Prayer would make a beautiful name for a baby girl, but adoring the names my husband picked out.

I am from believing my dog is fur covered affirmation.

I am from a closet that belongs to a woman with a different life, where tailored business suits have given way to jeans and a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt.

I am from pick up your socks, put away your backpack, stop annoying your sister, is it time for Chardonnay yet?

I am from contradictions and gentle critics and second chances.

I am from using my passport, but loving my own bed.

I am from the School of Mistakes is the best teacher and hanging that degree on my wall.

I am from by the grace of God, there go I.

I am from discipline and creativity and collecting every word inside a drugstore notebook.

I am from visiting Hotel Rejection and leaving the next day in a fast car with the sunroof open.

I am from having the windows open as much as possible and getting easily distracted by that squirrel on the fence.

I am from encouraging high drama and conflict on the page, but peace in real life.

I am from sitting in the elementary school car-line and watching hope in a backpack and pink socks sprint from the school door.

I am from searching twenty minutes for my favorite pen.

I am from being the mother of one girl who wants to believe in Santa Claus, but requests proof - and another who doodles on her notebook: Wonder + Believe = Magic and how does she know this already?

I am from faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.

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p.s. – I am also from this announcement that just came out from Publishers Weekly  - Karen Harrington's SURE SIGNS OF CRAZY, a coming-of-age story in which a precocious 12-year-old writes letters to Atticus Finch for help understanding her mentally ill mother, her first real crush, and life in her small Texas town, all in the course of one momentous summer, to Alvina Ling and Bethany Strout at Little, Brown Children's, for publication in Spring 2013, by Julia Kenny at Markson Thoma (World).

The inspiration for this post came from this poem:  http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html 

You can find me at www.karenharringtonbooks.com and www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com 

Dedicated To The One I Love

by Karen Harrington

I just finished reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLane. This is must-read material for writers and their spouses. The story follows a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway’s courtship and first marriage to Hadley Richardson in the early 1920s. The novel, which was drawn largely from letters exchanged between Hadley and Hemingway before he gained fame,­ is told through Hadley’s eyes with a few chapters dedicated to Hemingway’s point of view. The reader gets an up close look at her role as supportive friend and spouse to an aspiring writer. I was riveted by the ups and downs Hadley experienced. So often, she felt like an outsider, excluded from her husband’s writing life. (He even rented a tiny office and left each day to write.) Other times, Hadley felt certain she was playing a supportive role in birthing Hemingway’s career. We’ll never know if his early career would have flourished without her, but she was certainly remarkable in her support. Not every spouse would have been as long-suffering and encouraging as Hadley.

In my case, I might have the closest thing to the kind of support Hadley offered – only in male form. Sure, my husband wouldn’t be keen on my going and renting another room to write or moving to Paris just so I could soak up the atmosphere. But here’s what he has done for this writer’s life:

-         Arranged our lives so I could be a stay-at-home mom/writer – which is my dream job!

-         He frequently takes the kids out all day so I can have the house to myself to write.

-         Each November when I take on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, he slides coffee and cinnamon rolls into my office.

-         He tolerates notebooks all over the house

-         He lets me chatter on about plot twists and problems and character names

-         Encourages the purchase of turtle-necks which he calls “writer wear”

-         Tells all his friends about my book, often bringing me a few copies to sign for his colleagues

If he’s had an influence in my writing, it’s when he challenges my subject matter. He’s often said, “Why are you writing THAT?” My first attempt at a novel was about a Viet Nam vet returning home. “What do you know about that? Why Viet Nam?” Because it interests me, I replied.

Around the time I had my first child, I began writing sketches for what would become JANEOLOGY. The genesis of this story was my curiosity about mothers who kill like Andrea Yates and Susan Smith. I wanted to know everything about their backgrounds; how they were raised; and, did anyone suspect or see anything in their behavior that might predict their infamy? One day, a package was delivered that included the books Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the "Prom Mom"  and Where Is Baby’s Belly Button?

My husband jokingly remarked, “Just so you know, whoever packed your order at Amazon is wondering if they should have someone check on you.”

He will tell you that at first he thought I was weird to choose infanticide as a subject while I was new to motherhood. Later, he realized that it was my protective instincts as a new mother that drove me to the story. I don’t know that I could have written it so forcefully without that fuel.

Lately, I’ve written about a fanatical cult in Texas and one family at the center of it. (You should see the books from Amazon now!)

He shakes his head as if to say, There she goes again.

Thanks, Hubby. You make a huge difference in this writer’s life! This post is dedicated to you.

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Karen Harrington is the author of Janeology. You can visit her at http://www.karenharringtonbooks.com 

On nature and nurturing your inner Gladys Kravitz

by Karen Harrington

One of my former professors suggested that writing should be like taking a mirror with you as you walk down the road. That your words should reflect what you see. You should get out of the way and let the words do their job.

For a long time, this advice was a good guide for me. It was, after all, a short story class made up of young college students. We hadn’t lived a lot of life yet. Imagining oneself carrying a mirror down the road helped ensure that we weren’t just figuratively walking – but looking. He wanted to make sure that we didn’t just write “The man had a tattoo.” He wanted us to write “The man had a Superman tattoo.”

But now that I’ve put 20 odd years between that time and now, I’ve taken his advice and added to it. When I read something that really resonates, it’s usually because all five senses are at play on the page.

Writer E. L. Doctorow states it this way:

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."

Lovely butterfly 

It’s not just taking that mirror down the road and writing what it what it reflects. That is reporting. The trick is capturing the feeling of rain, too.

This is why taking long walks outside informs my writing. It’s not only the much needed exercise of the body, but the experience with nature. How do things smell? How do things sound? How can there be so many different shades of green? And butterflies? Don't get me started. I photographed this one (pictured above) on one of my daughter's recent field trips.

But it's not always the sensations of the outdoors that inspires. It's the people we share this world with. 

Here’s a confession: I am something of a Gladys Kravitz when it comes to looking at people’s houses. Unlike Gladys, I do not go looking in people's windows. (If you are of an age where you don't know Gladys Kravitz, go here. I realize I'm dating myself.) 

Where and how people live sparks so many character ideas. When I walk, I get all kinds of ideas about who might live in the house with the black shutters. Do they realize one of them is cracked? Why so many seasonal lawn ornaments over there? Do they put these out there for grandkids? And why, for the love of nature, would you display a potted plant on top of a dead tree stump in the middle of your front yard? Did a mad housewife put it up there because her hubby refuses to take the stump out and this is her rebellion? (This stump caused me so much curiosity that I did, in fact, have to write a story about the people who lived there. Made up, of course.) 

And then, in my dad's neighborhood, there is this vehicle. (Yes, I have my camera with me most of the time. You just never know.) Wouldn't I like to know these neighbors? My inner Gladys Kravitz sort of explodes with questions about who would buy The Mystery Machine and did they ever pick someone up for a date in this van? I mean, Zoinks!

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Maybe these aren't nature walks in the truest sense, but they never cease to inspire thoughts of human nature.

I’m still learning how to write the difference between rain and the sensation of being rained upon. I suppose the only true way to do this is to keep taking walks. 

Even in the rain.

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Karen Harrington is the author of Janeology, a novel about nature and nurture. 

Visit her blog www.scobberlotch.blogspot.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

3 Thoughts On The Challenge of Writing

by Karen Harrington

I have three disparate thoughts on the topic of writing challenges:.

1. Radio host and author Dennis Prager’s philosophy on the importance of happiness
2. The novel A Thousand Splendid Sons by Khaled Hosseini
3. Embracing discomfort

Bear with me. In that giant Mash of Random Sticky-Note Thoughts (also known as my brain) these three subjects have a connection to the topic of writing struggles.

From my own experience, there hasn’t been a time when I didn’t ride a roller coaster while writing. I’m prone to getting very excited about a new story. That first rush of adrenaline sends me to the blank page and I write, write, write until a raw story appears. This is probably the time when I experience the pure joy of writing. This is the discovery draft. There aren’t any mistakes yet. My internal editor hasn’t switched on yet. And this is probably the only time I could say that writing is fun.

But then the editor doth appear and with it, struggle. 

And so it goes. This is the cycle of writing for me. I think one of the ways writers are uniquely challenged is that they must play both a sensitive creative role and an objective, analytical role during the creative process. These two forces can and do produce good work, but they are at odds with one another. It's a little bit like having a scientist tell a five year old that surprise is not the color of confetti. They are both right, right? Well, this is probably why E. L. Doctorow said "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." 

This is where my three disparate thoughts come into play. I have three ideas that help me stay on track, if not totally insane. Perhaps they’ll aid you, too.

First, allow me to introduce you to Dennis Prager and his philosophy of happiness. Prager suggests that we have an obligation to be happy because it makes us better people; that this road will always be challenging and requires a constant counting of blessings to maintain. His ideas have influenced my personal and writing life. Like most writers, I’ve had a healthy dose of literary rejection (my publisher folded, my first book went out of print, my subsequent book is in the black hole of "gee, this is great, but....) Sigh. But I always give that sadness a deadline. I feel responsible for my own happiness and part of that is getting up and going on with life because I’m blessed to have a life where I can write at all. 

Which brings me to disparate thought number two: Khaled Hosseini’s remarkable novel A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS - a book every woman in America should read. Why? It depicts, among other things, the bleak existence of a pair of strong women in Afghanistan. Their every move is scrutinized. They can be reprimanded for making rice wrong. They aren’t allowed to get an education, read whatever they choose or even go to a store without a male companion. Worse yet, their focus is so much on daily survival that they don’t have the luxury of dreaming. Yet, they do! They dream. They hope. So during my writing struggles, I like to stay mindful that the very fact that I am in pursuit of writing a story is a gift. Because there are women out there somewhere who live lives of subdued, desperate dreaming, I am compelled to work even harder on their behalf.

This brings me to my third and last disparate thought. The notion of discomfort. If you are going to write, one of the struggles you will (and must) embrace is discomfort. Discomfort has been my unwelcome companion and my faithful muse. I’ve come to believe that discomfort is a key ingredient in the novels I've never forgotten (The Prince of Tides, To Kill A Mockingbird, The English Patient, Ellen Foster, etc.). Here’s a quote that describes this idea and changed my life: “So much of successful fiction hinges on one successful ploy: discomfort.” – Robert Newton Peck

If you think about it, this speaks volumes of truth. We love to read stories filled with the kinds of conflict we probably wouldn’t want to personally experience, but being a voyeur during the reading hours is an adventure. My novel, Janeology, is a story so many readers tell me they were afraid to pick up, but then were glad they did. Its genesis began with my own discomfort over the topics of nature and nurture and what makes one person snap and another remain sane. So I’d expand Peck’s quote by adding that successful fiction WRITING also hinges on discomfort. The discomfort a writer feels over a subject – those questions that keep you awake at night, that angst one feels to complete a project – are going to be fuel for the story you will wrestle with for a year or two.

I’ve been Karen Harrington, author of Janeology. Visit me sometime at www.karenharringtonbooks.com or drop me a line at kharrin2003@yahoo.com

All best wishes,

kh

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