Redheads, Unite!

See, I just started this 15-Day Writing Challenge led by the amazing Jeff Goins. Day 2: Get up two hours early and then write about something you've been afraid to write. Doesn't sound like any kind of fun challenge I'd want to do. But then again, he's trying to make me ACT like a writer because after all, I am a Writer. (Declaration was Day 1).
Incidentally, I sort of suggested to my  husband that maybe we could do a 15-Day Love Challenge. He asked what that was, and I said I didn't really know, but maybe it would involve love notes. He gently pushed me back toward my computer, and said, "Why don't you go back to your writing?" He gets scared sometimes of my brain, I think.


We had a Diversity Training for work yesterday (nothing like The Office), and while the speaker was giving us some things to think about, I had a memory from childhood that popped up. Actually, it reared its ugly head and I was surprised by the thought of it. Now, I realize that there are far more serious disadvantages in life, and that some people have had terrible experiences because of those disadvantages. But I had an issue that kept me "different" in a time when no one wanted to be different: I was a redhead.


My hair was red, but it was not frizzy or orange, and for that I could be thankful. But I was conscious of it every day. Not only was I a redhead, but I was shy (until I was around my closest friends) and I was smart. I had a few freckles, but at least I wasn't covered in them, which would have made things worse. Of course, today I think they're beautiful, but I'll get to that in a minute. I had no role models to look up to, and the only redhead that my peers knew was Orphan Annie. Annie's cute and all, but with her red, frizzy hair and spunkiness, she just wasn't someone I aspired to be. 


You may have noticed my "forever heroine" picture on the right. My mom introduced me to the book "Anne of Green Gables," and maybe things turned around for me at that point. Just a little. Anne was of course, another orphan, but she had a different path. She was brought into a family who wanted a boy, but by mistake, came home with Anne. She used all her negotiating skills to make them keep her. Anne was brave, she was smart, she was talkative, she was pretty, she was funny, she was lovable, she was a good friend, and she was PROUD to be a redhead. When Gilbert, later the love of her life, called her "Carrots" in school, she broke a slate over his head. Who hasn't wished they could do that to someone?

Orphan Annie today- Aileen Quinn

Things all changed in Junior High. Suddenly, without reason, people wanted to be redheads. They were dying their hair. It was cool to be me. Actually, it was cool to be different because this was a time when we were trying to form some identities that didn't match the next person. I changed, and the world around me changed. It's almost impossible to even believe I felt that way today, when I look around and see all the diversity. That's why I was surprised to have those feelings creep up on me. Today, my hair is not as red, and I have added some highlights. Some people don't even think of me as a redhead, which is weird. I wish they would.  It's who I am.

A Few Words About Words

By word count, I am halfway through the first draft of my novel. I have been writing for four months. That is not long. But I've never written this many words in such a short time. It's easy to become impatient and want to be finished! Then again, right now, I have no pressure. Nothing on the line other than my own sense of accomplishment. It's all just fun to create something out of nothing.

Have you ever found yourself saying something you have never uttered before? Like 'Stop smacking the blue monkey against your sister's leg' or 'I blew the plug of black gunk out of the tubing so the fountain would work'? There are just some moments you stop and say, Wow. I wonder if anyone has ever said that?

This is how a writer is like an artist. We strive to put words together in a new way that will convey some meaning to the reader. Then of course, they must be put into an order where the story moves along, with tension and emotion. On top of that, the words themselves must be raked over, scrapped or kept, chosen carefully, and not overused. Why do we care so much? Words are beautiful. Words are weird. We want the right ones.

Right now, I worry about word count so I can keep to my goal. Possibly, in about four more months, my very first draft will be finished. Then on to revisions- by me, by others, word by word, line by line. I'll need beta readers. These are the ones I'm most excited about! Let me know if that could be you.

Did you know that you just read 283 words? Words are powerful. And I happen to love that words are funny. What have you done with words lately?

Dreaming of The Snow Child

Sometimes you come across a book that makes you think only someone who has lived here could possibly write this way. This is what I felt with The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. It is like falling into an amazing world where there are countless ways to describe snow and ice-- the beautiful description of this Alaskan wilderness landscape defies belief. Ivey lives in Alaska, and is truly an expert on her setting, to the smallest detail. She weaves these little gems throughout.


The story is adapted from a Russian fairy tale about a snow maiden. From the website, here is a synopsis of the book:

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for a couple who have never been able to conceive. Jack and Mabel are drifting apart—he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone, but they catch sight of an elusive, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and leaves blizzards in her wake. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who seems to have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in the Alaska wilderness, life and death are inextricable, and what they eventually learn about Faina changes their lives forever.


This is Eowyn Ivey's first book, debuting in February 2012. The writing is outstanding. I loved the freshness of it, no cliches, almost as if the story itself came out of the snowy wilderness, having never read or seen another book. There is nothing about it that makes me think "I have seen this before." However, the emotions were familiar and the characters full of life. The author used an interesting technique when writing Faina's words, one which completely added to her mysterious nature.


I had to read this next section aloud to my daughter, lying next to me, just to hear the words. I will close with this for you, and encourage you to find this book.
It was like an extraordinary dream: Faina's quiet sighs and the occasional pop and crack of river ice and tree branches snapping in the cold; the stars everywhere in the broad, deep night, broken only by the jagged horizon of the mountain range. Illumination behind the peaks shot up into shards of light, blue-green like a dying fire, rippled and twisted, then spun circles into ribbons of purple that stretched up and over Mabel's head until she heard an electric crackle like the sparks from a wool blanket in a dry cabin at night. She looked directly up into the northern lights and wondered if those cold-burning specters might not draw her breath, her very soul, out of her chest and into the stars. 


When I finished this book, I felt as though I had just wakened from a long, cold, beautiful dream. My soul had been fed by this piece of perfection. 


Find out more at www.eowynivey.com.

Capturing a Castle-- in Words

Maybe others, like I, had not heard of this book. It was another gem I picked up somewhere and promptly fell in love. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is narrated by 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. She is living in a ramshackle castle in Britain with her eccentric family-- which sounds intriguing already-- and it is through her point of view as a fledgling writer that we learn their story. What struck me when I started the book is the VOICE of this narrator. It is absolutely charming and witty.


The story is set in the 1930's, when the Mortmain family's estate is crumbling into poverty. Cassandra lives with her lovely sister, Rose; her father, a novelist facing crippling writer's block; and  Bohemian stepmother, Topaz. They are struggling to maintain their day-to-day existence, but Cassandra refuses to give in to this sad state.


She gets hold of a journal and writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."


Things begin to change when two wealthy American brothers move into the estate next door. The sisters' romantic isolation begins to come to an end, much to Rose's delight and Cassandra's dismay.


Dodie Smith published this in 1948. She of course, is most well-known for her masterpiece, The 101 Dalmatians. I just discovered that she wrote a few other books, available for e-book on Amazon. I will definitely be checking these out!


Not surprisingly, this is also a movie. There are some fabulous actors in this; I've seen them in other things, so it is on my to-be-watched list. I have some hope that it will come close to the book. 


Which movies have you seen that did excellent justice to the book on which they were based?

What If. . .

My 10-year-old son recently asked me if I would dedicate my book to him and his sister. I said, Sure! Then he let out a gasp * What if it doesn't get published? another gasp * What if you're doing all this work for nothing??

I had to smile as I thought over this question. What IF it never gets published? Can I live with that? At this point in time, I would say yes because things would really be no different than they are now. But what if, when I hit that point where my work is polished, and I have a creation bigger than anything I've ever created, something that came from my heart and soul, and stole hours of time away from my family--What if no one wants it then? After all the dreaded rejections and efforts made in finding the right agent at the right time? Nights of lost sleep? Jealousy every time I walk into a bookstore? I guess I'll have to find out at that point. 


But I can honestly say that I'm not doing all this work for nothing. For one thing, I've already accomplished more than I thought I could. For another, I've met wonderful authors and friends, gained a writing mentor, and joined a group of writers, willing to help me solely on the basis of who I am and what I'm attempting to do. I've educated my brain with more on the writing craft and industry than I ever thought I could absorb. I've written some book reviews, whereas in the past, I never really thought these important and didn't take the time. I'm putting words on a page, one after another, that have never been put together in this combination before. I've followed a passion which has given me a bright new outlook on all of life, a goal to follow which has brought me joy already.


It's NEVER for nothing. There's a reason I picked up a book off the shelf at the library last October that was the first spark in this blazing fire. I hope that if you have a dream, you can begin to follow it. If you're following it, never give up. It's not in the arrival where you find your joy. It's along the road if you know where to look. 

The Weird Sisters and Giveaway with Eleanor Brown

I happen to remember exactly where I was when I read The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I was on vacation over the July 4th holiday, and this was my "getaway" reading. Each night, I holed up in the spare bedroom I occupied, with a small lamp and a cupcake, and read into the wee hours of the morning. Then during the day, I carried the book around with me just because it was so BEAUTIFUL, I wanted to gaze at it. People would say, "Hey, what's that you're reading?" and I'd be like, "Oh, just The Weird Sisters. It's pretty good so far" and they'd be like, "Oh," and I'd stick my nose back in it so they wouldn't bother me. . .

The Weird Sisters is a fun peek into a quirky family who have to bond in order to help each other through a gut-wrenching ordeal. As a firstborn, I could relate to Rose, the oldest daughter in many ways. I think everyone could find something in this book that they have experienced to some degree. I was easily swept into the drama since all of the conflict is set up in the beginning. This is no "slow plot" story; I found myself aching for each one's separate dilemma and cheering for Rose (the oldest, of course) to get past her firstborn instincts and get onto living her own life.

In case this book hasn't made it into your hands yet, here is a summary about the book from www.eleanor-brown.com:

The Andreas sisters were raised on books - their family motto might as well be, 'There's no problem a library card can't solve.'

Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard's most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind - As You Like It), Bean (Bianca - The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia - King Lear), but they have inherited those characters' failures along with their strengths.

Now the sisters have returned home to the small college town where they grew up - partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don't know where to go next.

Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she's thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it's finally time for her to grow up.

The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

Welcome, Eleanor! Congratulations on your success! As of today, the book is #12 on the NYT Bestseller List. What does that feel like?

It’s thrilling! When it hit the list, I was completely surprised – I had expected two people to buy the book: my mom, and my editor’s mom. So when it was that successful, it was totally unexpected. But the more I think about it, the more wonderful it is, because what it means is that I’m not alone in the questions I was struggling with when I wrote the book. None of us is alone. And that’s a comforting feeling.

I loved the theme of Birth Order and its influence on us. How did you research birth order, and how did you use it to completely form each character, personality, behaviors, and even the conflict each was experiencing?

I’ve been fascinated by birth order theory for a long time – my research project for my psychology major in college was on birth order! So when I sat down to create the Andreas sisters, I drew on the archetypes and built them from there, creating their motivations and, yes, their conflicts from those traits.

What inspired the idea of this Professor of a father who only spoke in "Shakespeare"? I completely adored how the sisters could still understand what he was saying despite his cryptic sonnets.

Every family has its own language, comprised of nicknames, quotes from books or movies (or plays!), references to experiences they had together. I wanted the family in The Weird Sisters to have its own language, so I tied that idea in with a question I had about what would happen if someone in a family were obsessed with something, and, voila! Shakespeare!

One of my favorite parts was how they all read books, laying them around the house, picking up one in the kitchen, then putting it down to read something else when they reached the living room. Also carrying them in their purses to be pulled out whenever they wanted to not communicate. This is kind of a description of my dream world. Did you grow up this way, or know someone who did?

I’m grateful to have grown up in a house full of books and music. Reading was what we did – aloud, silently, together, alone. It’s allowed me to explore lots of different ideas and live different lives, all through the pages of a book or a magazine. The family’s love of literature definitely mirrors my own!

I did my research and noted that you love Maeve Binchy, too! Hello! I wrote a post about her since one of her recent novels was starred on my list. Can you pinpoint what it is about her writing that has touched yours?

Isn’t she wonderful? Reading one of her books feels like chatting with an old friend. The most important lesson I took from her is how to weave together multiple storylines. She so deftly juggles multiple characters and then brings them together in surprising and thoughtful ways. I studied her books a lot in order to be able to write a story with three main characters.

Lastly, what is your advice for aspiring writers?

Read everything. Write everything. Then do it all over again!

Thank you so much for taking your time to answer my questions! I can't wait to see what you have in store for your next book!

Readers, it is your turn! Eleanor is graciously giving away a signed copy of her paperback, newly released! To enter, just leave a question or comment here. Or tell us how birth order has influenced you. The winner here will be drawn randomly on 4/19/12. (US/Canada only, sorry!)

For more information you can like Eleanor Brown on Facebook or visit her website.

Our randomly selected winner is. . . . jpetroroy! Congratulations! Thanks for participating, everyone!

Lisa's Parting Words. . .but Not Quite

Lisa Potocar's Farewell Comment was a special little tidbit for me to read this morning. I'm not ashamed to admit I teared up a little. Yes, it was early and I was waiting to go into a meeting. . .but she gave me such a neat image to think about.


Then it occurred to me that I just can't wait for her next book to read more from her. She's so funny and creative! So good news: I have invited her to be an honorary guest on my blog anytime she wants! This will be her new clubhouse on the web! There is no set schedule so anytime she wants to share something with the club, we'll be here, in our pj's! Of course, she'll be back when that sequel appears.


So go out and find Sweet Glory! Congratulations to our book winners, Debbie and Marne Ann, and now here's Lisa!

I can't thank Christina enough for inviting me to be a guest on her "A Story Club" blogspot, and I'm grateful to all of you who took time out of your busy schedules to stop by and show your appreciation for my ramblings with a comment. Speaking of rambling----whew----that was some loooooooong opening sentence. Anyhow, just the other day, Christina said something like this about the outset of my interview: Last Friday was fun. It felt as though we were going to a party where no one cares how you show up. This stuck with me, and I must respond to it now in my parting words. Everything about "A Story Club" blogspot made me feel right at home: the name conjures up images of childhood sleepovers where my friends, clad in pajamas and slippers, would sit Indian style in a circle on the floor and swap mostly imagined ghost stories; the backdrop with its lovely and peaceful aura; and the thoughtful and gentle interview questions which fostered laid-back conversation. I'm glad Christina allowed me to feel cozy and comfortable enough to show up at her house party in my pajamas with mussy hair and no makeup to talk about writing----a subject near and dear to my heart. I had great fun! 

So did I! Come back soon!