A Writing Refuge

Happy Holidays!

Mike gave me a tremendous gift this year. He bought me a heated mattress pad for my writing bed. He hung up pictures on the walls of my office—a collection of owls, so smart, aware, and fierce; a horse in motion; the ocean showing off its waves; a road lined with trees in fall foliage; a black-and-white cat sitting in a window, staring at me, reminding me to try my best to get it right. Now I sit down to write and work, and I'm surrounded by images that mean so much to me. I'm toasty warm. When I walk into my office, I feel even more that I am in my cave, where, of course, cats are welcome. And with an electric blanket and a heated mattress pad, they visit often. With these changes, I have fallen more deeply in love with my office. What do you have in your work space that makes it so welcoming to you?

Fifteen Minutes

This week I continually reminded myself of the Fifteen Minutes Principle (my silly name to make it sound more official and professional and authorly in my mind). The Fifteen Minutes Principle basically states that if you can even give yourself fifteen minutes a day to work on your writing, you can accomplish a great deal. I first realized this years ago when I joined a guided writing prompt group after a lengthy hiatus from writing. The leader of the group would give us a suggestion, and we would write for fifteen minutes, and I would be amazed at the number of pages I could crank out in this short period of time.

When I decided that I finally had to sit down and write that novel that I'd wanted to write ever since I was a kid, I relied on this principle. Writing your first novel, at least for me, was frightening. I had tried in the past. I had left behind a trail of unfinished drafts. I had no assurance that I could actually make it to the finish line this time. So when I started out, I wrote for fifteen minutes a day three times a week. That was all I could do. But that was all right. I had begun.

Now I generally write for an hour a day when I can. But, three weeks ago, I finished a rough draft of The Sharpest Claw, the follow-up to The Loudest Meow. Stephen King would recommend that I let that draft sit for several months. I let it go for two weeks. And that felt hard. It felt difficult this time because it felt so good to let it sit. I actually didn't miss my writing practice. So then I worried. “Do I really want to write? Will I be able to go back to it when the two weeks are up?”

Last Monday, I sat down again to start on the second draft. This how I re-enter that writing world. I print out the draft, and I read it out loud and take notes. It usually takes me about two hours, or two writing sessions, to go through the draft in this way. Then I go back to Scrivener, back to Chapter 1, and fill in and take out and reshape and revision what I wrote before.

Along with being a writer, I'm an editor and transcriber. That's my day job. Holiday times are often slow, but it turned out last week that I suddenly had a great deal to do. I couldn't see how it all was going to get done, with or without my one-hour writing practice. Part of me panicked. “I have to write. It's time,” and then I heard the voice that reminded me of the Fifteen Minute Principle.

So that's what I did last week. During breaks from editing or transcription, I would write down notes for this draft. And ideas came in funny ways. For example, in addition to everything else, Mike and I also had Christmas errands to do. We're currently listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks on our drives, and at this point last week, Jim Dale, the narrator for these books, sang a Sorting Hat song. And that made me think. There are certain songs in this draft of this book. I hadn't thought of actually giving them lyrics and a melody. Now that seemed like opportunities I would like to take.

This is how the mind is funny. Today, I knew that, after breakfast, I would have a full hour to write. While Mike was making pancakes, I started constructing a game plan for that time. This early chapter had one of the songs in it. I played with ideas in my mind about that tune for a moment, then decided, “I will just jot down what I want to do here and then proceed. Songs don't come on command.”

And, at that moment, it showed up, a short little ditty, very silly, complete with a melody. I wrote it down, ran into the kitchen, sang it to Mike, then went back and recorded the song on Voice Memo so that it wouldn't be lost. Then I ate pancakes and went back to work, marveling at the mysteriousness of this process we call writing.

The Power of Audio

Somehow I missed writing here last week.

Here's my excuse.

I spent eleven hours listening to audio files of The Loudest Meow: A Talking Cat Fantasy. (With the help of Findaway Voices and narrator Kae Denino, I'm in the middle of creating an audiobook. It's actually five-and-a-half hours long. I listened to it twice.)

You have to know that I love audio. I'm primarily an auditory person. When I was young, I was prone to nightmares. I believed that if I closed my eyes, I could die. So sleep was a problem. One of my parents would lay outside my open bedroom door and read until I fell asleep. I also listened to recordings—mostly musicals, West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, The Fantasticks, Camelot . . . Somehow I believed that anyone who could stand on a stage and sing could defeat Death. No problem.

Later in life, when I discovered audiobooks, I fell immediately in love with the form. Mike and I have stories about the power of these books—how on a road trip, we missed our favorite restaurant by several hundred miles because we got so lost in a story. How, on that same trip, on the way back, we managed to get to the restaurant, but then we started the book up again and almost ran out of gas because we forgot to go to the gas station. But that was when we were new to the form. We are not that foolish today. We get to everywhere we need to go. We just have more fun doing it.

There is still room for reading books in my life. I'm primarily a bedtime reader, and I can't listen to audiobooks before going to bed. They do make me fall asleep. I’ve grown out of those nightmares. Now I want to keep track of the story. But, in other parts of the day, audiobooks give me more opportunity in life to experience books. Through audiobooks, I will listen to books that I would never read, like nonfiction. If it's a memoir and the author is reading it, I want to hear the story told that way. And oftentimes nonfiction feels like more serious study to me. It's not something that you pick up in order to drift off to sleep. It's something where you think and ponder and maybe take notes. Again, I'm an auditory learner. That's my best approach for these types of books.

In the week that I spent listening to files, I felt thrilled. Kae Denino, the narrator for my book, is incredibly talented. I believe that she gives the proper voices and truly invests in the emotions of the story. And somehow I didn't realize how emotional the story was until I heard it. That seems like it would be such a basic thing, but that really happened to me. For writers out there, I would say that preparing an audiobook is a great way to learn about yourself as a writer. You can really experience your strengths and weaknesses. You are able to get a whole different perspective on your story. I now feel closer to my characters. I understand the story more. I felt like this came at a great time because I have recently finished the first draft of the sequel to this book. Diving down deep and listening hard to Book 1 has led me to rethink some aspects of Book 2. I'll be writing more about this in the future, but let me just say right now that I am so happy with the audiobook. I can't wait for you to hear it.

Rocco

In all of my books, I write about teachers. There's two piano teachers in Joy Returns!, a riding instructor in Kate and the Horses, and a guide in The Loudest Meow: A Talking Cat Fantasy. Teachers have always been very important to me, and I think they will always have a place in my books.

Lately, I've been thinking about a teacher I had when I was a teenager. I've been reminded of her because, due to rain and snow, I've been staying in the house. I've found myself walking around rooms for periods of time, mostly with headphones on and listening to something or watching something on the bedroom TV. So I'll walk and march and then I find myself occasionally throwing in a dance move that Rocco taught me.

Rocco taught jazz dance at a studio on Monday nights. I don't know why I started going. It was near my gym. I was an awkward adolescent who just happened to be anorexic, which meant that I was isolated, perfectionistic, a compulsive exerciser, very concerned about how I looked, and what I weighed. For jazz dance, we wore leotards. Mine was bright green. There was a window overlooking the class where people could watch what we were doing. I stayed in the back and tried to forget about that.

Rocco reminded me of a young Cher, if Cher didn't have long hair. Rocco's hair was short and simple, like a bob, but more glamorous. Rocco couldn't have a bob. She was a woman of few words. She might seem gruff, but I thought she was kind.

When I started the class, I felt lost, underwater with a giant wave on top of me. But somehow I kept going. Rocco played Stevie Wonder—“Sir Duke” and “Boogie On, Reggae Woman.” She told us one time that she would have to miss a class, that she was dancing in the Academy Awards. They still had big dance numbers then. When my family was going to New Jersey for a summer vacation, I told Rocco I wouldn't be here the following week. “Send me a postcard,” she told me, which now seems like it was one of those offhand remarks that any cool person would say, but I took her at her word, and I did. I didn't know her last name. I just wrote it to Rocco. What did I say? I can’t imagine. We never exchanged more than one sentence at a time. When I returned to class, Rocco never said if she got it or not. I never asked her.

It's funny when you have a special class like that, and you can’t recall how it ended. Did I just go off to college? Did Rocco leave? I don't know. But I remember the steps, the kick-ball changes, and traveling across the floor, adding arms to a movement, inviting your shoulders to join in. I wish I could speak to Rocco now. I would tell her how important she was to me, how she gave me space and some really great tools that showed me how I could move in the world

Audiobooks and the Loudest Meow

Greetings, everyone,

I’m sorry this post is so late this week, but I’ve been immersed in a campaign. I am working with Indiegogo to raise money to create an audiobook of my latest novel, The Loudest Meow.

I believe that audiobooks are going to be very important in our reading life in the future. Even now, I love to “read” books by listening. I know in talking with people at book events that many share my feelings about this. So my goal is to eventually have all of my novels also available as audiobooks.

I have chosen a great company, Findaway Voices. I have selected a very talented narrator. I think the end result will knock everyone’s socks off. If you are able to help and have the inclination to do so, please visit my Indiegogo page. There’s wonderful gifts offered there and more information about why this is so important to me. Thank you very much.