Who Do You Lo-v-v-v-ve... And Why

Much as I've had George Thorogood shrieking this refrain in my head for days now (oh that sleep deprivation is so much fun), this is not a blog about late twentieth-century rock and roll. This is a blog about what it means to love.

A close relative and I got into a bicker recently. There's always been a sort of rivalry for attention between her and another of my close family relatives. She said, "You love her. You have to love her. She's family."

To which I responded -- and I was tired and frustrated at the time -- and therefore less apt to spare feelings, "You don't HAVE TO love anybody. You can care for somebody without loving them."

As much as that might offend some people and much as that might have surprised her into silence, which was, at that moment, a relief-let-me-tell-you, I'm going to stand by that statement. Nobody has to -- nobody is obligated to -- love anyone else. Even family.

I think the thing that made her go silent at that moment was the not-so-coincidental fact that I was caring for her, since she was approaching the end stages of a terminal disease and making it very difficult all around for all of us who had to tend her. So that left open the very real possibility that I might be tending her, but not necessarily out of love.

In the midst of taking care of everything that went along with her dying, I was still working, and the project I had to edit was a particularly shallow romance novel. The characters were thrown together, barely spoke, then awkwardly made love and improbably lived happily ever after. Their secrets were revealed in the narrative but never to each other, and their conversations were kept to a bare bit of snarls and glib replies, but somehow she realized he was a man of strength and caring and he realized she was kind and giving and ....

Oh, who knows. The thing was...all tell, no show. No depth.

So I started thinking about love, and what constitutes love, and what authors should strive to do and by extension real people should hope enters their lives -- and why it's important to recognize and grab hold of and never take for granted.

Love -- love is when someone tells you something they admire or think is great about you without adding "but...". Love is when you can see someone at their worst, know them well enough to realize they can also be dazzling -- and they see the same in you. Love is when you can be together and be silent and comfortable in that quiet, when it's just a matter of holding a hand or saying something intimate or funny or sympathetic. Love is getting each other -- it's about communicating, and not necessarily by talking everything to death. Love is about forgiveness when the other person's being a total pain in the ass, because you know maybe sometimes you are, too.

And it's about listening. About reassurance and discovery and growing together. And valuing that relationship and respecting it. There is no trouncing on feelings or physical or emotional abuse in real love; there's no need to separate the one you love from others or trying to outdo them if they earn more money or draw better pictures or make a better cheeseburger.

We've all seen, or some of us have even experienced -- relationships where people tolerated horrible treatment because they thought it was love, and they thought they had to stay and take it. Sometimes because they thought they would never meet anyone else, or because that person was "family", or because they thought that was the way it's supposed to be when you're in love. It isn't. It really isn't.

So when you write love, you need to be sure your characters show -- in their words, gestures, actions -- what it means to love. Make them sensitive, strong, full of heart. Don't make them cruel, or let them forget to develop their feelings. Let them show them, grow from the foundation that you start with that initial connection, that reason for coming together and maybe staying that way.

And try, really try, to do that in your own life. Seek it out, love with all you've got and value those who treat you with love. Forgive if you can, but remember your own worth, too -- love makes you happy, tender, ever-changing -- but it also gives you strength you might never have realized you had. It grows. It holds but never binds. It lifts you up and fills you near to bursting at the best, and even the worst, of times.

  

When Does It Count As Writing?

"I feel like a poser." 

This came from a friend who is an aspiring author, who's so far had a very difficult time finishing something she's been working on. She's a good writer --imaginative, careful, determined to learn her craft -- and she'll get there, but someone recently told her that unless she sat down every day and wrote a certain amount of words every day she was never going to get published and she wasn't ever going to be a real writer.

So I suppose I am not a real writer, either. At least by that hack definition, that is. Like everybody else, I've been up to a few other things for a while. I've attended weddings, helped one kid lease a car and another get into college. I've sent out one book proposal and one follow-up query letter. I've helped my husband ship out books and volunteered at a health fair (where I lost a kid, but don't worry -- they found him). I celebrated International Turtle Day (May 24) and July Fourth, and done all of the other crap that comes with being the person who works at home.


I did not sit down at my keyboard and write a pre-determined amount of words every day. I did write, but I tend not to be able to force out words on a daily schedule. I tend to mull, research, talk out dialogue, hash out scenes with my husband or with another writer or two, put things down on sticky notes or on my nook or index cards (but not on white board, ever since the stomping puppy debacle). I hear I also stare into space a lot. Then I sit and write about 4 or 5 thousand words at that sitting. In between editing assignments. And they have to be good assignments, since I'm absorptive -- if I'm reading badly done romance I will spout out badly done whatever-I'm-working-on.

What happens to white board plot notes when there's a toddler with fur in the house.

Recently a writer friend said she always expected her first draft to be terrible. That works for her.

I once heard Anna Quindlen tell an audience, at a Random House open house, that she sometimes just thought about a book for ten months before she put a word of it to paper. That works for her.

Someone else I know says she writes a certain number of pages every day, with the goal of having a book in six months, based upon her page count.

Some people do NaNoRiMo, which  -- wow, a book in a month. That takes my breath away. But that works for them.

Some people write right through a manuscript indicating where they'll figure out the details later, and some do their research and get their facts straight as they go. Some people need to do their research ahead of time.

The point of this is that it's a process. Writing is Discovery, Invention, Planning, Researching, Drafting, Talking to Yourself, Talking with Others, Journaling, Assembly, THINKING, Typing, Scrawling, Reading, Wondering What the Point Of It All Is, Seeking Depth, Seeking More Depth, Editing, Re-writing, Seeking Even More Depth, Deleting, Inserting, Crumpling Up What Doesn't Work and Yelling "Aha!" When It Does. Writing is having that little idea come from something as simple as a picture in the paper or pulling up a weed or nearly having a car accident or inadvertantly eavesdropping at a restaurant -- taking the inspiration where you find it and turning it into something cohesive and compelling that gives others pleasure or makes them think and feel.

It's a process. And that process is determined by the person doing the work. Having a similar goal to others in your profession doesn't mean you all take the exact same path to get there.

I told my non-poser friend if she wanted me to, I'd lure her judgmental frenemy into a dark alley and give her a talking to. Then I told her to get back to work.

What's your process?

Trouble With the Pitch

In a week my writer's group will have its biggest annual event: a luncheon with over one hundred twenty attendees. Each year several agents and editors are invited, and the many writers there network and acquaint themselves with them, hoping to generate interest in their latest works. You mingle among the crowd and speak with prospective future publishing partners, and during this time you can make your pitch, which is what it's called when you present an extremely brief summary of a project, making it intriguing, coherent, and somewhat memorable. 

I do not do well with the pitch. Anyone who's read any of my blogs or my nearly complete (I swear!) novels will tell you I am not exactly what you'd call succinct. So, in the interest of not going on and on and on, what usually happens is the opposite: Someone asks me, "What do you write?" and I open my mouth and go "uhhhhhh...."

I also do not do well in big groups. I don't think of myself as shy, exactly, but I have never been comfortable with drawing too much attention my way. My favorite colors are grey and blue. If I haven't had at least one gin and tonic and I don't know you, I might just let you do all of the talking. Tell me I've got to speak with a stranger about something I've struggled to write and still feel I could make better -- completely sober and while meeting their eyes -- and basically I'm going to need to pee really badly. Even if I'm already dehydrated from sweating nervously for a couple of hours.

I know what a pitch is supposed to be. I know how long it should take. I've been told it should be something you could present if you found yourself with the agent/editor of your dreams in an elevator. Just hit the main points. Give the hook. Make it interesting. Know your characters. Know your conflicts. To that I say: 

Well, okay. Just how long is this elevator ride? Are we talking small suburban medical building, or Empire State? Am I allowed to hold down the "close door" button if I'm not finished, if I even work up the ability to say something introductory beyond, say, "Nice shoes"?  If only my story had something to do with footwear.

It does not. 

A few years ago I had an assignment to proofread the memoir of a supposed hero, about a horrific event he came through. The book was already out; I was just working on a new version, and I found several disturbing inconsistencies. I wondered if he was lying about many of the episodes he described. I mentioned seven different points to the publisher, who told me they'd fix them, which disturbed me even more. I wondered if the author would be told about my findings, if anything I'd said would make him upset enough to seek me out. He was certainly capable of being dangerous. 

Around that same time, we had a visit from a uniquely outgoing, comfortable-in-his-own-skin guest. He stayed with us far longer than we initially expected. The BHE and I are generally quiet people and this person threw us for a loop. Now we laugh about it but at the time we were at a loss how to handle the situation. 

These were the seeds for Frannie Buckets -- a quiet, slightly uptight freelance editor who simultaneously takes on what initially appears to be a straighforward project and an unexpected visit from her obnoxious half-uncle Walter, in town for a friend's funeral. The project is the memoir of an unsolved murder, and in no time Walter's decided they're going to solve it. He manipulates Frannie into helping him and his ragtag veteran buddies --driving her to distraction while he's at it -- and inadvertently their notes, which tie all the clues together, make it back to the killer. 

Not too bad on paper, right? Now if only I can get past "Nice shoes" or "uhhhhh..." 

Wishing good luck and successful pitches to all of my wonderul, braver writer friends!!

Good Things in All Kinds of Packages

At the beginning of the year, Child Two announced she was going to look for something good that happened to her every day. I thought of this conversation last night when I was watching the very last episode of "How I Met Your Mother", which had a funny bit about the character Marshall only saying positive things about work despite the fact that he had a horrible boss. When Child Two mentioned this in January, we talked about the kinds of things she meant.

She could point out things like "Got a great grade on a test", or "Friend brought me an extra cookie", or "My hair looked fantastic". I asked her what she would resort to on days when things didn't go so well, and we had a really funny time coming up with ideas, the penultimate of which was "I didn't catch malaria today." That would be reserved for extreme occasions, when something like "At least my underwear weren't inside out" wasn't good enough as a positive point.

Things have been more than the usual crazy in our house these days. The BHE is in the midst of shipping out hundreds of copies of a book he's produced that has buyers all over the world -- the printer has made every mistake possible along the way and he's still, after nearly four months, waiting for the third form of the finished book to arrive. My work schedule has been so busy that my own writing is done in odd little spurts that leave me bleary-eyed and leaving notes everywhere. There's a second puppy, and he's like a toddler on Red Bull. We got him to keep the first puppy company, thinking if she saw him getting along with my son, she might get along with my son, which she has not for oh... six months now. She is, instead, on what I think of as Doggie Pot, which isn't helping. So we have one sort of stoned dog and one dog who acts as if he's been sneaking shots of espresso from the Keurig (Note to self: Move the Keurig machine away from the puppy's crate...).

So I've decided this blog is to remind myself of all the good things that have happened so far this year, to maybe help to cope with the bits of chaos:

1. I discovered two new wines. A friend brought over Badger Mountain Reisling in January, which was crisp and clear and made me happy. Then we had dinner at the Red Fish Grill in New Orleans in February, where I had a wine with a kick-ass name: Kung Fu Girl Reisling. Also fresh and simple and awesome.

2. I got an assignment to read a book by an author I hadn't heard of before and it was AMAZING. The story was "Wolf" by Mo Hayder, and it was complex and scary and I couldn't tell how it was solved by chapter three. It's not out until May but when it is and if you like mystery, run. Run like heck to the bookstore and plan on not sleeping.

3. There was a trip to New Orleans, during which my daughter's culinary leanings turned into a personal tour of the kitchen with the executive chef at Emeril's. Then there was... well, New Orleans. We walked (a lot), we ate, we listened to street music, we bought hats, we went to ComicCon. My husband's neighbor at the show was Vera Baby, and you have no idea how much a man loves you until he is seated near Vera Baby and is not gaping at her and her very (ahem) interesting costumes. She and her assistant were really nice, too.

4. We had a ghost hunting weekend. Not so sure about finding ghosts, because we were ghost hunting with about 80 other people, but I was on a road trip with one of my best buddies and there were Twizzlers. Who wouldn't have a good time?

5. I reconnected with a LOT of old friends in March. I was reminded that the best friends of all are the ones you might not see all the time but that when you do, you pick up right where you left off because it's always been that natural, that close, that good. I've been friends with the Nancys (yes, that's how you plural Nancy; don't give me grief because I get paid to know stuff like that) for 37 years and I love them both more now than ever. And the Laura, of which there is only one, which is really all I need.

6. I was cleaning out the linen closet (to avoid dusting, actually) and found a whole bunch of old letters and cards from friends, old boyfriends, and family members, and they reminded me why it was good to be alive, good to laugh, and good to love. If you ever want perspective on your troubles, find letters from when you were 17 or 25 or even newly married, and realize that troubles come and go, and change, and sometimes you can laugh about them after, even if you might cry a little bit first.

So tell me: What do you count as something that makes a day good? What have you discovered -- new or old -- that makes you happy? Surely there's something you can think of, right?

Or if you can't, if you're really just having a bad day, just go with: "At least I didn't get Malaria."

***

OH! DAMN IT! I almost forgot! Best thing of all -- I have finaled, inexplicably, in the New England Romance Writers' First Kiss Contest. That quirky scene in the closet made it past the first round. So there you go. Another thing to be happy about.

When Would You Walk Away From The Hero?

Let's get this out of the way: I am not a Feminist. I believe in equal rights and self-esteem and basic mutual respect between the genders (and that means all of them). I believe in holding the door for the person after you, no matter whether they are male or female, young, old, hairy, bald, snooty or friendly. I think it doesn't hurt to be nice to other people on a regular basis, because maybe they'll pass it on to someone else. Maybe you'll change their day for the better with your little gesture. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a niece -- and I don't want to pass on any negative "-isms" if I can help it.

I also happen to think that people learn from what they are exposed to. I do not mean this as a generalization -- surely not everyone who watches horror movies decides to turn into Freddy Kreuger just as not everyone who reads a biography about Mother Theresa gives up their corporate position to go take care of the poor in third world countries -- but I think, in the absence of seeing different aspects of different subjects, impressionable people might feel certain behaviors are normal and what they should aspire to or expect from life. 

Recently I've encountered some "romance" stories with couples -- the hero and heroine, and sometimes even the supporting characters -- who made me cringe. I thought, "Would I want my niece to read this? My son? My daughter?"

The answer was a resounding NO.

This made me wonder -- have any of you ever encountered, or read, a character or even a real person you just had to walk away from? Someone you wanted to tell the heroine/hero to run like hell from? Someone you wouldn't want to introduce to your friends or family? Someone you wouldn't want to be with? And if someone you loved was exposed to this person, how would you deal with it? What are the boundaries that would have to be crossed in order to make you take action?

Real life example: I was dating someone a long time ago that seemed funny and warm. He had a decent job and a home and southern gentleman manners. One day I walked in on him, after being invited over, to find him beating his dog with a bat. I never found out what the dog did to enrage him, but it had no impact on him at all when I shouted for him to stop. On an upswing, I reached out for the bat and grabbed it, and he turned and growled at me to let it go or I would be next.
I do not know where it came from because at the time I was not the most confident person. Those of you who know me personally know I'm not exactly linebacker-sized. I'm more the opposite of linebacker-sized. Maybe it was that I was terrified and upset for the dog. I looked him right in the eye and bluffed. I growled back, "Oh, you really don't want to do that."
And apparently, he did not. Maybe he suddenly worried that I had some inner ninja he hadn't counted on. Maybe he thought with a growl like that I would be willing to act physically and kick his scrawny (okay, at the time I didn't think it was scrawny, but in retrospect...) ass. That was it for us. Everything that had come before was null and void and that sort of cruelty, that threat -- wow. I just got out.
I heard the dog went to his ex-wife. I will never, ever, forget the look on his face when I grabbed the bat. For a long time I wondered how I'd missed signs in how he'd treated me before that. For months I had nightmares about letting go of the bat, and what could have happened when I did.

The heroes that have recently put me off have controlling, demeaning tendencies that their authors have somehow packaged as romantic. Characters do have flaws and secrets, and sometimes those elements drive the story and make you feel for them. But when does behavior go over the line and make you want to sit down with your niece, for instance, and say, "Look. Don't ever let someone treat you like this. It is not romantic and it is not respectful and it is not an example of how people who love each other should treat each other."

Examples extracted from text:

"Shut up and just take off your [article of clothing] like a good girl."

"I am not giving you the key (this said to a newlywed about their home) until I can trust you to behave."

"Why are you so fat?"

"You're going to wear what I like and you're not going to give me any [expletive] about it. And I will know if you take it off and you will be punished."

Heroes insist on carrying their heroines everywhere, and not always because they've been injured. Or they have the heroine's friends spy on her and report back. They begin as attentive and overwhelmingly romantic, too good to be true. The story becomes so focused upon the couple that friends and family are slowly eliminated from the picture.

Does anyone know the classic beginning signs of emotional, physical, or sexual battering? Would you want someone talking to you, or your friend or family member, that way? What would you do?

So there are things I want to know:

Have you ever encountered a character that you could not stand? Are there characters in classics or bestsellers that you couldn't believe other readers thought were wonderful but that you wished had never been published?

Have you ever encountered someone like that in real life and what did you do about it? Have you encountered someone like that and not done anything?

I am truly curious about how people feel about certain kinds of actions within relationships, both real and fictional. I wonder how we help or teach those around us to understand that some forms of behavior -- negative, disparaging, physically or emotionally uncomfortable or hurtful -- are just not right.

Please let me know what you think. 

Making Lattes out of Language

Years ago, part of my training at a major coffee retailer was to understand coffee as a process -- how it went from bean to that seemingly essential liquid that many of us need to get through any given day.  From its early harvesting, as a bean from a plant, or (ew) as digested material from an animal that had eaten the beans from the plant, it went through several steps until it became the processed grind that is now the root of all lattes.

I wondered on a semi-regular basis who had come up with these steps and how: at what point did someone say, "hey, let's take this mountainside bean, dry it in the sun, sort it by size, color, weight, origin, then mash it up, then put it in not-quite-boiling water for a certain amount of time, then add cow juice and sugarcane, then ...." Coffee's been around a long time -- how did it go from something chewed on as a stimulant to being combined, in its liquid form, with caramel syrup and whipped cream?

The process evolved over years and years, from the first guy who experimentally gnawed on a bean and found it made him feel more energetic, through many stages and many people later -- all the way to the eventual group in a conference room discussing the addition of pumpkin spice or peppermint syrup for the holidays.

Sometimes I feel that way about words. Lately in my profession, I see a lot of words that are simply not in any dictionary I have access to. People are making stuff up, changing the way words are used, making language evolve.

Admittedly, sometimes I get an education. Lost in Brooklyn on Sunday, we drove through some pretty sketchy areas. We wondered about "tenement". For the record, it's a 14th-century word. It's Middle English from Middle French from Medieval Latin, the Latin term "tenere" being the root, and meaning "to hold". "Tenement" came to mean "property held from one person to another".  Last week I had to copy edit an historical romance, where one of the heroes complained of his "bastardy". Since "bastard" is still a fairly common term, you might easily derive the meaning: This is a 15th-century word, indicating the quality or state of being of illegitimate birth. 

But what about more recent additions to our language? Here are three I've encountered: 

Badassery -- this refers to when someone is tough, full of bravado and able to back it up with physical or psychological superiority. "His badassery was legendary: he could take on any guy in the bar with his right  hand and win without even spilling the beer in his left."

Defecacious -- this term basically means one is full of feces, or the state of being a bullshit artist. "Dude, you are such a liar -- that's totally defecacious!"

Ballin' -- Now I know that some people will say this term has been around for a long time. It has; but it is the evolution of its usage that causes me to list it here. Rather than its implied sexual indications, the term is presently used as an adjective to mean something that's interesting, relaxing, or just great to be a part of.  "It was a ballin' party, especially after they handed out the Jell-o shots."

In our house, we've recently made up one or two: There's "frenchtoastinated", which is the pleasant state of being after you've been served some delicious, hot, egg-battered toast, usually on a weekend, with or without syrup and butter or jam or cinnamon. This is similar to the joy of being "waffleinated", except it's better because you don't have to clean the waffle maker afterward. 

I also sometimes use the word "shdrool", for which I must credit my ex-boyfriend Steve, who wore Capezios (so you know how long ago that was) and liked to name lobsters and let them "play" together on the kitchen floor before tossing them into a pot of boiling water and then serving them whole. I still have an aversion to eating anything in a shell, previously named Spike or Lucy, that might make me feel guilty about it by seeming to be looking at me, but I kept this word. It means, in essence, "extraneous stuff". He used it most frequently to tell me, when we got into his battered Mustang, "There's plenty of room for your feet if you just push the shdrool to the side." 

Usually that "shdrool" involved discarded and smelly coffee cups. 

So, language evolves and changes and adds on. What words have you discovered lately? What words have you just plain made up?

Addendum: I have been reminded, off-post, of the word "scrudja". I've asked my reminderer (yes, I made that one up, too -- take that, etymologists!) to give me his definition. But what do you think? Prize to whoever comes closest in a comment, and to whoever comes up with the most unusual guess.