Welcome To The End...Of Chapter One

I recently had to say farewell to something I have clung to for a while, a year anyway,...I turned an age older and had to say farewell to one age and welcome in another.  Okay, welcome may be a bit strong of a word and don't worry I am not really that overly dramatic that getting a year old was that upsetting.  Why do I all of a sudden hear the laughter of my family in the background on that statement?

Anyway, I have always said that beginnings are usually exciting, scary and exhilarating.  Endings are almost always sad but it is the middle that makes up the story.  That probably describes most of your relationships, friendships, stories and life adventures if you think about it.  I know that it does for me.  Endings can mean moving on to better or even a chance to learn and grow, which as nice as that sounds often involves a few tears.  The tears though come from remembering the story in the middle.  The good times that were shared and the bad times that are remembered, the scary times, the laughing uncontrollably times, the sad times when you just need a hug from a friend.  Stories are what a writer thrives on.  Yet, even a writer must have their beginnings...and their endings.  In fact, writers have many endings.  I realized this when I was writing chapter one for sure.  The trick with writing as in life is to have a good ending that makes it easy to step into the next chapter of the book or life.

I was so excited when I finished the prologue with all the teaser characters and the quick glimpses I got to give into the story I was watching unfold in my mind.  I knew the story I wanted to tell and as I finished my prologue I would go to sleep and dream about it, I would think about it during the day and make little notes and I would envision it during those quiet moments on the commuter train when I did not want to talk or get to know the person that sat down next to me for the long ride home.  The problem was that I had to go from the prologue where I gave little glimpses into the action and idea of the story and where it originated and then jump forward in time by over a hundred years to the modern time and cross over an ocean and come back to America as well.  It was the fastest ocean crossing I have ever been on.  I realized that though I was starting chapter one I was already in the middle of my story since I thought about it so often in my head.  I could look down at my trusty notebook and see the jotted notes I wrote to remind me where I wanted to start it all and how I wanted to being the real story. 

So I dug into the beginning of chapter one and introduced one of my main characters and in a manner gave her breath.  I showed you into her life and introduced you to the thoughts in her head.  Chapter one is often used to step into your story and as a way to introduce yourself and your writing style, as well as the characters the reader will be following throughout.  Chapter one is like the job interview.  I hate job interviews.  You have to sell yourself, describe yourself, allow the potential employer into your thinking and work methods.  Then, if you make it past all the job interviews and descriptions you may have landed that dream job.  The problem though is that you want to leave your new potential employer with a lasting impression so that they will always remember you and bring up your name and ultimately decide you are "the one."  So at the end of the interview you say goodbye and hope for the best...you hope to be remembered so that they continue into your life and story by hiring you.

I plotted out my chapter, I introduced some of the main characters, I gave them actions and feelings and appearances.  So then how do I end my first chapter so that you want to keep reading.  My sister always says that you should read at least until chapter five and then if you still don't like the book then it may not be the best fit for you.  Well, for a writer the trick is to get them to continue to chapter five, then ten, then twelve, all the way to the end of the book and The End.  The problem was that I knew how I wanted to end the book but not how I wanted to end the first chapter.  YIKES!

So I took a breath and just started writing chapter one and didn't even think of how to end it.  When I looked back up from my writing I realized that I had just finished chapter three.  Endings can be sad but the best kind of ending are the ones you don't notice and let you just continue on with your life with ease, amusement and maybe a desire to keep reading the story....

Now as I sit here, I realize that I am a year older, having said goodbye to many things in my life, and yet I am also starting a new chapter as well.  I am starting my own chapter two in a sense after discovering who I was for a number of years (no, I am not putting the age down, nice try!) and now I am starting to move into the passion of my life and taking action and control of it, I am writing my first novel.  So as I say goodbye to another year I also look down at chapter one and say the end.  Onto chapter two.

Happy Birthday!...Or Embracing The Crazy

Tomorrow is my birthday and it made me start to think about the celebrations of life.  They are not always big ones like birthdays or christmases.  Sometimes it can just be a sunny day after a week of constant rain...I know that feeling this week also.  Sometimes it is just getting a compliment from a stranger that makes you feel so good inside it is like a celebration.  Life is full of just as many little celebrations as big ones.

As I am writing my first novel I have certain celebrations also that are big and small.  Everytime I finish a chapter or a section I do have a bit of an internal celebration with myself.  Yes, that may sound a bit crazy, but I am learning to embrace my inner crazy also.  Finding that one word or phrase that had been eluding you for so long.  Coming up with characters and story lines that you can control and yet feel are so real is an accomplishment to be celebrated.  These little celebrations sound a bit silly maybe but they help push you forward to continue writing that next chapter and thinking of that next idea.  Without the accomplishments being celebrated when you are writing your novel then it can become daunting and lose its purpose and your story will reflect that.  So again, I remind writers and readers that taking a little time to celebrate accomplishments is better, it makes you a better writer and makes writer easier and more fun and not just hard work.

I know that some of the little celebrations seem a bit crazy of course.  Putting in a word does not sound very exciting to you maybe.  Yet, to be a really good writer it probably helps if you have to have a little bit of crazy inside of you.  It is the interesting, or crazy, part that allows one to come up with characters and story lines and lives as if they are real.  It is the interesting, or crazy, part that reads a book and gets so engrossed in a character that they hope there is a sequel or runs right out to get the next book in the series or even pre-orders a book because they don't want to miss out on the chance to read it and discover what happened in their favorite character's lives.  As a writer, I am learning to embrace my crazy and share it with the world.  I am sharing it with my first written novel.  I am giving you the characters that I have created in my mind and the lives that I follow and shape. 

I am learning to "celebrate" this inner crazy of mine.  Maybe that is why I am just starting to write my first novel now but it is also why I am sharing and opening up to everyone about the process that I am experiencing.  Not everything I put here will be a lesson on writing your first novel or a remark on the experience I am having and today that is the case.  Today I am just reminding people that celebrating the small things in life are what really make the stories of your own life.  Some of my favorite memories from childhood are sitting around with my family and talking.  My family loved to talk and we would do it about music or history or politics.  The best and funniest times though were the stories that we would tell about past events, usually they were Dad stories, but these are the little celebrations of life we remember and can recall in a good story.  In fact, we have so many Dad stories they could fill an entire book or two...or three and they all makes us smile and celebrate those moments.

These events did not always take place on a major day but could have happened on a random Tuesday and yet they are celebrated by being remembered, laughed about and retold.  Writing a novel is a celebration of the story you have created and shared with a reader who may then talk about it or recommend it to other readers and celebrate the story. 

Sounds a bit crazy I know but then I will say Happy Birthday to the Crazy Lady writing her first novel.  Did it make you smile?  Good.  Celebrate that.

The Purpose of the Ruby Slippers

Have you ever watched The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland?  The movie always fascinated me.  It started out in black and white and drab.  You had to imagine what the characters looked like and what color their clothes were.  You could guess by the lighter shades on the screen what they may be but the grainy, darkness of the beginning forced you to imagine the colors the scene would be.  The movie did not give any of that away to you.  The scene made you feel sad almost with the farmers living a life that was hard work and a rather small Kansas existence.  Then, you are thrown (literally) into the land of imagination where you stored all those colors and it shows you, in a sense, what you would picture if you were in your head coloring the scene yourself. 

You have the yellow brick road, so yellow and bright, the munchkins dressed in a green so vibrant and rich.  Then...you have the ruby slippers.  The red unlike anything you may have actually seen in real life.  The ruby slippers are so vivid and dazzling you knew they were a real treasure for Dorothy to guard. 

You may be asking why I am recapping The Wizard of Oz and the colors.  It is because as you start to write your characters into a chapter one of the most important elements becomes the description.  You can give a lot of description so that every wrinkle, mole and eye twitch is revealed for the reader.  Or, you can give a small bit of description in the beginning and leave it up to the reader's imagination.  One way is more like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz where everything is in shades of gray and it is up to the person watching the movie to add in their colors and descriptions.  The other being the opposite once she falls over the rainbow and you get to see how our imaginations of a character can be colorful, vibrant and meaningful.

So, I came to the end of the prologue, finished my edits and was ready to start the first chapter.  This was where I would introduce many of the key players in the story.  I would also form their world.  I would choose a setting and a life for my characters.  All of this takes description.  The first few lines can be a trigger to set the tone of the action, but it is the first paragraphs and pages that will describe the life you are about to enter.  Each scene involves a bit of description. 

This is again where my love of words comes in to give a person attributes and a physical appearance that the reader can imagine.  I form their world and their home and their relationships and can do this by saying just one phrase or using one color.  I mean would the woman in The Wizard of Oz really be scary if she didn't have hair pulled back tight to reveal her thin, drawn face, a pointy nose and a wart right in the middle of that nose.  She was thin to the point of being gaunt and dressed always in a thin, black cotton dress that hid any shape she may have.  It is the combination of words that create the character.  If I said she had long blond hair framing her heart shape face and deep soulful brown eyes and loved to wear pink and then follow that by adding she had a wart on the end of her pointy nose, well, she is not so scary then.  Descriptions become important when you are writing your characters into a scene because that can be a way to slyly shape the personalities and scenes that will follow.

When my son was little he would color in his coloring book all the time.  He liked to give everything only one color though, purple.  The sky was purple, the people were purple, animals were purple.  But, if he colored with his mommy we would take and change the sky to different shades of blue.  We would make the people all different colors and give the animals unique blends and shades.  For me, my characters were a blank page on the coloring book and it was up to me to add in the shades and the colors just as I will be adding in the story. 

So I pay homage to Dorothy and those red ruby slippers which would not have meant so much if they were a burnt amber in color and all she did was complain that they were too tight the entire trip down the pea green brick road  

Snap, Pop, Bang, Pow!!!

Words. As a writer I obviously love words.  I will say though that there are certain words I like more than others.  For example, I really do not like the word disintegrate but I love the word buzzard.  I hate the word racism but I love the word bubbles.  If you take what Shakespeare says, "What is in a name?," it is not the word that should matter but the fact that we associate meaning being them.  That may be true.  Shakespeare after all was a great writer.

As for me, I am not sure I believe him.  I love the word buzzard.  I don't really find buzzards all that attractive though.   In fact, I have seen turkey buzzards practically in my backyard and they are the ugliest birds I think I have ever seen.  So, if all the buzzards in the world decided to change their names to Fluffball Birds, they would still be ugly, carnivorous and scary to me.  It is actually saying the word or even reading the word and the sound it makes that then makes me smile.  That is also why I love the word bubbles.  I not only think of the round orbs of water, soap and rainbows but I think of the sound of the word itself.  If you ever want to get me to laugh just say those two words and I am giggling. 

Recently, as I was writing my prologue, I recalled learning about onomatopoeia in school (and yes, that is another funny sounding word).  That was a fun English class.  We were given the assignment of writing a poem completely with onomatopoeia words.  From that I learned that words do not only convey pictures or ideas but a well placed word or phrase can also convey sound.  I ran into this as I was writing my prologue as well.  I was trying to make the reader picture in his mind a scene where a person is on a horse being chased.  I used certain words so that they could imagine hearing the sounds of a horses hooves as they are beating hard against the ground or the rider breathing hard and fast.  It was with words that I was able to affect so many of the reader's senses.

I then noticed how much of that is done in our world...just ask Rice Crispies.  There is a reason you have three little icons called "Snap Crack and Pop" instead of them using the tag line, "Rice ovals with sound."  It is fun to say snap, crackle and pop and what kid who has eaten them has not taken their spoonful of rice crispies and held it to their ear to hear it and repeat that same line.  When I was a kid, my brother and I would watch Batman on TV and we would love when he would go to hit someone with a punch and see the word bubble come on the screen with "Pow!" or some other descriptive word.  We never heard them getting hit.  It was enough to read that and then our imaginations filled in the meaning and even the sound of the hit. 

The power of words is obvious, especially as you are writing.  So I leave you with an excerpt from my long ago English class.

Pop, Pop, Cackle, Crack
Fizz, Fizz, Slow Giz
Eek, Shriek, Yelp, Yap
Slap, Smack, Bump, Thwack
Swoosh, Swish, Squishy Fish
Snap!
And I am done with this.

As I reread those words written so long ago as a lesson for my English class I dedicate them to Mrs. Sorrows and all my other English teachers though the years who showed me that I was able to write one of the loudest poems I had ever written.

Dr. Seuss, A Prologue and Action Movies...Oh My!

I was recently spending a relaxing evening at the bookstore with my son.  As I was walking around I was looking at the interesting titles, books with bright covers and the newest editions.  Basically, I was acting like I had literary ADD.  I was jumping from one book to the next with no clear intent.  Then I stopped and had to go back because I saw a book that interested me by the title.  It was a book by Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within.  That was how I felt at that moment exactly. 

I had my game plan, I had named my main characters and I even had my editing philosophy.  Now, it was time to start putting all the planning and thinking into action and free my inner writer.  That was the whole point after all.  I have always enjoyed writing and felt an emotional connection when I wrote.  Sometimes though we get caught up in the planning for something and then lose interest in the actual action.  I did not want to lose my creativity and knew it was time.  It was like having the image of a Dr. Seuss clock that was human sized with legs running after me as the hands moved around in funny circles.  It was more than time to actually start writing.

Since I had my outline and characters the story had already been forming in my head.  I also knew that I wanted to set my novel in two different periods of time, as well as, two different countries.  So I thought it would be a great way to introduce this fact with a prologue.  Plus, a prologue can be a fun, short, exciting way to introduce an idea or theme or plot of a story and entice the reader.  For me a prologue is a bit like sneaking a bite of dessert before the entree arrives.

So I got out my pen and my paper (yes I am a bit old fashioned in my approach) and I started to write the story that has been locked in my mind up to that point.  I love taking an empty piece of paper and filling it with possibilities.  The hardest part is often just finding those first words to introduce your story.  Once you have a beginning though the story often continues almost on its own.  Since this was the prologue I knew I wanted to introduce the past and set the scene for my novel and then at the end of the prologue I would use the last lines written to introduce the theme.

"How long do our memories survive us? Can those memories rest after finding peace and resolution or do they start all over again?"

I always knew that was the theme of the story I wanted to write and so I actually had the last sentence before the first sentence.  I will admit I am a bit directionally challenged but always end up where I want to be, it just may take me a little longer.  This was no different.  I had that last sentence of my prologue but now I had to work the story around that idea.  And then it hit me!  If I am watching the story in my mind on a movie reel how would I really want it to begin...with action of course...with action and horses that is.  An action scene set in the past where everyone is on a horse just seems more romantic and exciting to me.  That may be why I am such a fan of old movies.

Then I did it.  I had the first sentence in my head and before I knew it I had written out my entire prologue and after a few edits to my work was ready to move back into the modern time setting and my main character and begin Chapter One.  That is something I will discuss later though as you digest the excitement for now of a finished Prologue.

Hurricanes and Editing

Really?  Hurricanes and editing.  How does a hurricane make someone think of editing. Well, the simple answer is because I am editing chapter two right now but the longer and truer answer is that when I started writing I realized in order to accomplish the task of a writing a whole book I had to also think about editing.  So I created my own personal "editing philosophy."

Okay, so that may a bit dramatic but if you ask my family that is who I am.  This is not about my crazy self though.  It is about discovering a philosophy in life.  I feel that you need many philosophies in life when you are passionate about something or anything really.  So of course it is no surprised that once I started writing and then had to edit what I wrote that I decided to have an editing philosophy.

Simply stated, I write one section or chapter and then edit it once or twice and then file it away.  Once I am done with the novel I will read through it again to make sure it still flows smoothly but I don't want to over-edit.  The continuous edits do work for many writers but for me it would be too daunting, so I knew if I edited the piece just once or twice that would be much better for me. 

I learned this difference because my old boss is writing his novel which I type out for him and he likes to edit as he is writing and then continuously.  He is a good writer himself and that is his editing philosophy but when I first started to write and tried that same track I was overwhelmed with the writing and the continuous editing.  Instead, I realized that I had to take my own path and, thus, I created my own personal editing philosophy.  Again, I will state it is better to create your own philosophies and paths in life and, if you adopt someone else's philosophies, spin them a little to make them your own.  Be original!

I know you are asking, how does editing go with hurricanes then.  Well, a hurricane comes in and often leaves destruction and can change the way an area looks.  When you edit you can often destroy what you wrote and as long as you like the way the area looks once you are done with cutting and re-writing then your process is working.  Okay, the truth is I just made that up.  Editing has nothing to do with hurricanes.  I am just stuck at home tonight and I am editing chapter two so I had editing AND hurricanes on my mind.  That is how they go together for me right now...not everything needs a metaphor or lesson, sometimes its just timing.

So on this quiet, rainy, blustery Saturday night I will sit and edit and then file away the next chapter of my book and with a clear mind move on to chapter three and the continuation of my character's lives and dramas and adventures which have paled to the adventures of my own life this week with an earthquake and a hurricane to contend with.

Earthquake! How Life and Mother Nature Intervene

Yesterday, I had written out this wonderful blog for my next post.  It was about actually beginning the writing of your novel now that you have the game plan and main characters decided.  However, Mother Nature had her own game plan....EARTHQUAKE! 

Yes, yesterday, as most are aware at this point, there was an earthquake.  I was working in DC and in a tall-rise building on the 9th floor.  I had never gone through an earthquake before so at first I thought it was my boss shaking my wall as a practical joke, then I thought it was people moving furniture on the floor above me.  Of course working in DC and being that it is close to the anniversary for 9/11, my next thought was "Oh no it is an explosion."  I thought it was lasting a bit long for that though and slowly the idea started to seep in that I was in an earthquake...Oh my goodness this is an earthquake.  Yes, I know, I think a lot in a matter of a minute and a half.  The shaking finally stopped.  I have been through tornadoes and hurricanes and flooding but never an earthquake.

I grabbed my purse, my cell phone and of course, since I am always cold, managed to also make sure I grabbed my sweater.  Once I got outside it was quite a site to see all the buildings in the area being evacuated.  It was like the biggest block party ever only everyone was a bit "shaken" (pardon the pun) and not quite sure what was happening. No one could get their cell phones to work.  I finally got a call out to my sister after about half an hour.  The whole office was safe though and we decided to evacuate the city. 

Sounds like an easy enough task when you state it simply, "evacuate the city."  Well, everyone in the DC/MD/VA area had the exact same plan.  Someone I work with offered to drive me and two others from our office so that I didn't have to worry about the trains.  Others got different rides and one woman did take the train home.  Everyone had the adventure of being one of thousands heading in the same direction.  Traffic was not what that was.  It should have been called Chaos; it was a chaos of cars.  At one point we saw that there had been an accident that blocked two of the four lanes and one of the people involved was in a wheelchair.  It took me three hours but I made it to my son who instantly asked, "Mom did you feel the shaking?  Wasn't that COOL!" 

Needless to say, since I evacuated the building with only my purse, phone and sweater I did not have my writing with me.  I didn't even have my journal.  Well, the lesson for me is that sometimes things like earthquakes, illness or just life get in the way of your writing but to use that to your advantage.  I took the time to think about what I wanted to write next and I even thought I could incorporate some of the drama into my writing.  I am trying to take a bizarre yet eventful situation and the experiences I went through and put it into my writing.  Well, ok that was the plan.  What really happened?  I used it as an excuse to take a night off and that is just what I did.  Now, I am back and refreshed so sometimes when life does get in the way...or a very upset mother nature, it is also good to just relax and go with the flow.

I survived trembling Tuesday and now I am back for writing Wednesday.