Meditative Parts of Speech

I used to diagram sentences for fun. I did it for hours. From the age of ten to thirteen, it was something that pleased my brain in a way that little else ever did. That adolescent time is so awful, so awkward and ungainly, but sentences: they always made sense. Even the longest ones could be stripped down to their most essential parts, identified, categorized, labeled, and pinned like parts of a butterfly.

I filled whole notebooks with diagrammed sentences. While other girls drew horses or scribbled their first names next to various boys' last names, I separated subjects from predicates, adverbs from adjectives, hanging them from precarious-looking lines and rewrote them entirely if I ran out of room on the page.

It made me pretty popular, I can tell you that. Between the knitting, the glasses, the braces, the acne, and the tendency to obsess over parts of speech, I was a preteen CATCH. And now, looking back, I don't think I even possess the skill anymore. I'd have to brush up on the rules before I broke out the old diagramming pen. Much like my mad spirograph skillz, my diagramming abilities are rusty.

But just thinking of those notebooks, filled with words (it didn't matter what kind of words -- I was home schooled during part of those years, and I remember diagramming Latin sentences, too), calms my heart rate. It was a meditation of sorts, and I didn't know it.

I just did it because I loved it.

(Photo source)

How To Knit A Love Song Release Day!!!!

More pics on the weekend but right now a quick shout out "CONGRATULATIONS!" to Rachael for the release of How To Knit a Love Song.




Lynn, Juliet, Lisa, Rachael, Gigi and the BOOK! :)

The Wrath of Rachael

I'm terrible at revenge. Given a good night's sleep and a sunny morning, I'll forgive most people most things. I stubbornly refuse to see the worst in people, even when they're displaying their ugliness for all the world to view. Even when they're pointing at it, showing it to me, saying, "Look here, I'm a terrible, awful person, and I hate you, you're ugly, and your mama's ugly, too," I'm the one saying soothingly, "Oh, no, you don't mean that, it's just been a long day and you're tired. Just have a rest and a sandwich. You'll feel better tomorrow."

So when people are actually mean, I don't understand it and I can only think that they're sad and scared. When people are actually angry, I can only think that they're hurt. I'm not sure that mean or angry really exist, except as mile markers, signposts for sad and hurt. (Don't say that to an angry person, though. They won't buy it, and you might get clobbered.)

But revenge, in writing, is so interesting. As is anger. And meanness. And pain. I always need to UP those things in my writing. I can't run around to all my characters soothing them (although I try), making every little hurt better. What I'd like to do is let them all sit around chatting, engaging in funny banter. Then, ideally, someone would stand up and say something mildly rude. Then my characters would spend the next hundred pages engaging in friendly therapeutic encouraging dialogue, and then everyone would sing a rousing kumbaya around a pretty campfire and turn in for an early night.

However, my editor won't let me do that (DAMN IT). Something about "emotional depth" and "real conflict." Whatever. Books with plot. Ahem. (I jest, of course. I want to read books with depth. They're just slightly harder to write than books without.)

So revenge. I need to dwell on the possibilities, even if I can't seem to act on them.

(The urge to insert a smiley face is almost physically unbearable. So...)

:)

Rachael's Shoes Have Personality

Shoes. Oy.

This is a hard one for me. I like shoes. They're nice. They keep my feet warm and safe, and I like cute ones as much as the next girl.

But I'm one of those who can have five pairs of shoes for five years and not feel like I'm lacking. One pair of tennies for the beach with the dogs, one pair of running shoes for running, one pair for work, pretty Danskos for most other occasions, and black heels for going out. Oh, and my Croc slippers for at home. (Don't laugh! They're awful and ugly and the best things ever.)

I guess I just don't get it -- it's right up there with shopping for me. I hate the mall. I don't like to shop. I don't like to spend money on things like shoes when I have serviceable shoes already.

Serviceable. That's the operative word. Oh, how BORING. But my shoes usually have stories. My red Danskos were bought with my first real writing check. The beach tennies I have on right now (that I put on to walk the dogs earlier) were passed on to me from a friend who bought them on a rainy day in Venice -- her feet were wet, and I'd convinced her to pack light, only one pair of shoes. She'd listened to me, and she was miserable, so she bought this blue pair of knock-off Keds with a fake Nike swoosh. At the end of the trip, she didn't like them, and they fit me, so she passed them on. Ten years or so later, I still wear them. They have a stripe of yellow paint where I stepped on a paint roller while painting the bathroom of the first place I owned. They're beat to hell, and I love them.

I guess it comes down to this: I only like shoes with stories. With character. And if you have too many shoes, how can they have personality?

*I do, actually, own more than 5 pairs of shoes. Maybe 10. But I only wear about six regularly. Shameful, I know. Someday, perhaps, I'll expand my horizons. But for now, I'm happy with what I have.

La Serenissima

I despaired when I thought of this theme. I don't have a muse, I wailed. If I had a muse, I'd have her propped on my desk, hanging in front of my eyes. I'd know about it, wouldn't I?

Oh, yeah. Then I guess I do have one. Just one.

Venice is my muse.

In front of my desk, hanging on the sliver of wall that divides my two windows that look onto our street, is a map of Venice. Not that I need one, though. You could dump me in Venice with no money after travelling for seventy-two hours straight and I could have a place to stay and a hot meal within twenty-five minutes. That's not bragging; that's the happy, happy truth. I love the city with all my heart, and I'm as at home there as I am anywhere in the world.

I know a few (a very few) of her secrets. I've taken people there and said, "Follow me," and turned down back alleys, leading them down labyrinthine trails that open onto astonishing vistas that the normal tourist would never, ever find. I know secret patios and when Marco will give you his homemade grappa (hint: it's when his wife is out of town and don't fall for it).

I know how to be there alone. I know how to smile darkly and how to pretend to be one of her citizens, so that Italians ask me for directions (which I can actually give).

I know how to be there with a lover. I know how to fight passionately after too many bottles of wine and cry alone under the Doge's watchful eye, and I know how to make up and dance at midnight in Piazza San Marco while ignoring the rose vendors hawking their wares.

I barely notice that the map is there in front of me, until I'm sitting at desk, stumped. Bored. Wondering why the hell I took this stupid gig.

Then I think of Venice and promise myself a trip. You know. When I'm Really a Writer. And I am aMused again.

* I took this shot during a solitary trip from a little pizza joint I like just under the Accademia Bridge. Notice what's IN my glass of prosecco? Look closely, if you please. I didn't see her until I got home and developed my film. That's my muse, right there. Yup.

Rachael's New Year's Resolutions

I always make the same New Year's resolution.

I resolve not to stab anyone this year.

There. I made it again.

Having never stabbed anyone before and not having a huge problem with my temper makes this a pretty easy resolution to carry out. It gives me a feeling of satisfaction to realize that once again I've made it successfully through another year.

You could do the same thing! Resolve not to shoot anyone! Or not to ride a go-cart at DisneyWorld! It's not exactly setting the bar low, it's just setting the bar where it can be reasonably reached.

And honestly, I don't need resolutions. I have goals. In 2010, I'll finish two (maybe three?) books. At least one will hit the shelves (in five countries). I'll learn how to sign them and give readings. I will write every day. I'll always be the professional with whom other professionals want to work. I'll promote the hell out of myself. That's really all I need to do, isn't it? Screw resolutions, I have gumption.

And I'm not stabbing a soul. I swear it.

She's Crafty, And She's Just My Type

Um, yeah. I'm crafty. You may have heard that I knit. It's not an idle threat. I didn't write a knitting romance because it was the In Thing to do. I did it because I couldn't do anything else.

I've been known to be crafty in many ways over the years, cross-stitch, crochet, quilting, sewing, but it always comes back to the knitting that I learned when I was five. Knitting feels like breathing to me. People who say it feels meditative? Feh. I don't know if I ever felt that. It's autonomic. It's part of my body, and I don't have to think about it (unless I'm REALLY thinking about it, and that's fun).

So, a photo-essay of some of my favorites over the years. (Forgive all the self-portraits -- I'm a selfish knitter.)

Cromarty:














Cromarty is a classic Alice Starmore design, and it took months on size US1 needles. But I was so proud of it when it was done, and it's worn like iron. I wear it now to write in the early mornings.

This next one was one of my first original designs, done in alpaca which was way too hot for me to ever wear. I think I wore it twice, but I remember it being the moment I decided that yes, I did kinda know what I was doing:















Then I took up spinning fiber. I never really got into dyeing, but this was my first hand-spun sweater, and I dyed the fiber with Kool-Aid. This was Black Raspberry, I believe, and sometimes, if I get caught in the rain, I still get a whiff of it (and it matches my cheeks!):















This next one is the sweater I'm most proud of:















It's a replica of a Norwegian sweater my mother had commissioned for herself in the 60s when she was there. I reverse engineered it from my mother's sweater and knit a copy of it. As I knit the sleeves (I always knit sleeves first), I could almost see my mother's arms growing from the ends of my needles. So many hundreds of times I had been held within the safety of that sweater growing up, and to see another sweater, growing from my hands, was truly wonderful.



















My wedding stole. I designed it from a couple of Babara Walker motifs, in alpaca, so it sheds like crazy, and I never wear it now, but I love it. It was perfect, just like that drizzly, happy day in Vancouver.
















The Cade Sweater: This is the sweater that goes along with the plot (pattern included) in my book How to Knit a Love Song. A non-traditional Gansey with raglan shaping, this actual original sweater will be raffled off at some point in the future. (Sign up for my mailing list to keep up to date!)

So really, when it came to writing a novel, when I cleared out all the stuff I thought I "should" write and finally wrote what I wanted to write, it wasn't surprising what came out. And I'm so happy I got what I did.

Write Now, Research Later

During the first draft, research means asterisks.

First drafts are for moving fast. If I were to spend the five minutes it might take to click over to Google to look up how, exactly, one would go about cutting a brake line, it wouldn't end up taking five minutes. It would be an hour, at least, because once I'm online, I'm almost powerless. I need to check email, just in case someone needs me to do something. Then if I find out something really funny about cutting brake lines (because nothing says humor like coasting brakeless down a hill at seventy), I need to Twitter it. Then I need to click over to my Google Reader and see if any friends have updated their blogs, and then I wonder if I should update mine.

Of course, I was actually just supposed to be doing a bit of research. While I was writing.

Wait, writing?

Oh, yeah. That's what I was doing.

So instead, I write, "Nadine reached under the * and cut the *, using the * to * the *." (It's a breathlessly gorgeous piece of prose, isn't it?) Then I get to the meat of scene, the dialogue, the action, the heart of it. Later, when I'm revising, that's when I can take the time to go to the auto shop and find out how to really do it, and I'll use those details where I need them.

When I wrote How To Knit A Love Song, I had a passing acquaintance with a sheep ranch, having come from a family of New Zealand sheep farmers, but it had been a few years since I'd been to one. So every time my rancher needed something to do, I just had him go check a fence line. He leaned on lots of fence poles and I threw in a lot of asterisks.

When I was deep in revisions, I went out to a local sheep ranch and talked to the owner. Charlie Foscalina scratched his chin when I asked about chores, and he said, "Well, you kinda got that right. Always a lot of fence needs fixin'."

So I don't worry about the research, not at first. That comes later. I'm not writing historicals, and I don't have to worry about intricate timelines. An asterisk will do in the first draft, and it keeps me writing. And later, I'll learn how to cut that brake line.

Rachael is Sparkly

Sometimes I think I should try harder to be a grinch. I'm often (but not always) surrounded by them. People make very, very good points about holidays lights going up right after the 4th of July. And it's true, it seems like we just finished summer, and we're eating turkey for dinner next week, and then the Christmas shopping season will be upon us (BOOKS FOR EVERYONE!), and then eggnog will keep us merry, and then POOF! it will be all over again.

Sometimes I do a good job of hiding my excitement. How crass. How commercial. How gauche.

But inside, my heart is doing little shiny sleigh-bell cartwheels and hoping it will snow in the East Bay, like it did once when I was about six (I'll never forget my disappointment when Mom told Christy and me it was snowing and ushered us outside to look at the flakes -- I could barely see them, and WHERE WAS ALL THE WHITE STUFF? The world just looked like the world! I could not make a snowman! She was full of crap!).

Last year was hard. It was the first year without my family's holiday center: our mother. She'd died over the summer, and we were terrified to do it without her. We weren't grownup enough to hold the traditions without her. No one could cook the stollen, the lebkuchen, the fruitcake, the plum pudding but her. Who would play the piano while we pretended to not want to sing? I felt sick every time I thought about it, and I was grateful that I had to work (and felt guilty about feeling grateful -- good times).

But on a fluke, in early December I went to New York on a cheap flight found online with some friends. We found our holiday spirit. We tried to make it to the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center and failed to make it through the crush of the crowds, but found beer instead. We marveled at the skating rinks. We watched the lights go up all over town. We listened to carols being piped out into the cold air. I visited my agent and my publisher for the first time in my life:


I remembered again what that happiness felt like, that excitement that came from looking at sparkling lights reflected in happy, loving faces. And I found it, when I went home for a Christmas that had been delayed until the day I could get home after my shift, for a Christmas that had been made less traditional and more about being together, remembering. It was hard, but good.

And still surprisingly sparkly.

Rachael Crushes On NaNo

NaNoWriMo is sexy.

I knew that the first time I set eyes on him. All 50K of him, long, stretched out over the month, like I couldn't handle that many words.

He didn't think I could handle that many words? Did he have any idea what the idea of a challenge does to me? I'd show that NaNo who could write a novel in a month. Bring it.

By November 15th that first year, 2006, I knew I was in deep. I was doing it. I was writing every day. I was making it work. I was actually getting words on the page that were making me laugh. Plot was happening in front of my very eyes, and sometimes things felt smart and fresh, and every once in a while, I barely had to try.

Other times, the words looked like fish on dry land, flopping and gasping, waiting to die ignominiously. I ignored them, because NaNo was still whispering in my ear, "Ignore them. Let them flop. You'll gut them later. Ignore the smell."

Then, two days early, I hit 50,000 words with the word "stabbed." The hero and heroine were making out in a pantry, and he got punctured in the thigh with a knitting needle. It was appropriate, I thought. I did a victory dance like none I'd ever done before.

And then, as Sophie posted yesterday, I kind of never stopped writing. Three years later, I write every day. Today I'm 2K words into Book Three of a contracted work, and I'm headed out to San Francisco to find a good cafe in which to sit and write 2K or so of my NaNo.

I love that I'm writing both at the same time. It feels like I'm cheating on Book Three with my NaNo. It makes it dirty, and naughty; therefore it makes it FUN.

And we're back to NaNo being sexy. Mmmm. I'm gonna unwrap ALL those 50,000 words and make 'em my own.

Come here, big boy. Talk to mama.

The Sound Blood Makes

I hear a lot about blood.

When I'm not writing books, I'm a 911 fire/medical dispatcher. People call me when their loved ones are bleeding from places they shouldn't be. Even though I have the computer in front of me to give me the cues to read, I have the responses memorized. "Do you know where the finger is? Get a clean, dry plastic bag. No, DON'T put it on ice. That can damage the tissues. No, really, no ice, I mean it."

I hang up and look at my own fingers, grateful they're still neatly attached, still able to tap the keys on the keyboard, still able to move stitches across my knitting needles.

Or maybe their elderly mother has just fallen and cut her head open: "Get a clean, dry cloth or towel," I say as I press the mute switch and take another bite of my oatmeal -- I'm on hold while they look for a towel. "Got one? Good. Now press it firmly against the wound. Don't lift up. If it bleeds through, just get another towel."

Or maybe it's multiple gunshots. "He's GUSHING blood," they say. "Blood is EVERYWHERE. I can't STOP it. Which wound do I pick?"

"Just push more firmly. Pick the worst one. Do your best. I know you can do it."

The paramedics arrive. I disconnect. Finish my scrambled eggs. Take the next call.

And it just goes with the territory, I suppose, that with the disconnection, I remain so disconnected. I'm able to hear people screaming and crying, and then go back to chatting with my coworkers about what we're planning for the weekend. I can hear the vivid descriptions of pain and blood and gore, can hear the ribs breaking when I give effective CPR instructions, can hear the sobs as people realize that this is it, this is moment their life will be changed forever, and I can really, truly honor the fact that I'm the one with them in this important moment, and we're both doing the very, very best that we can, but then I'm the one that gets to hang up and remain unbloodied.

I don't have to clean anything up.

I don't have to figure out whether to wash the towel or throw it out.

911 is the first call. I don't have to decide who to call second.

My desk remains clean, and somewhere a siren is screaming.

Hell, it might be part of the reason I write romance. I saw District 9 over the weekend, and I was truly freaked out by it -- all that blood, pain, sadness. I know it's a good movie. Maybe even a great one. But while it's a science fiction movie about aliens, it's also about how awfully badly humans can behave, and how much pain people can end up in. Is it wrong that I don't really want to be reminded of that? I get enough of that at work. So I combat that with episodes of Glee and The Amazing Race and romance novels and happily ever afters. Blood stays inside the body and kisses heal everything.

Nothing wrong with happily ever after, in my book.

For a chance to win an advanced reader's copy of Rachael's first novel HOW TO KNIT A LOVE SONG, please visit her at Yarnagogo.com. Spoiler alert: Happy ending guaranteed.

Chasing Grace

There's a line in a Slaid Cleaves country song that I love. "Just give me one good year, to get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace, but grace ain't so easily found."

I was in the car one time with my sister, driving up the Cuesta Grade, bellowing these lines at the top of our lungs. I remember thinking, as I so often did when I heard them, So profound, so true, so true.

We looked up, and we saw the single word printed on the back of the tractor-trailer driving in front of us: GRACE.

"Well," said Christy, "I guess it's more easily found than he thought."

I never forgot that moment. Just because someone tells you something's hard doesn't mean that it is. Just because he said grace wasn't easily found didn't make it true. I love the idea, the romance of that poetic line, but I see grace all the time.

I heard that same songwriter speaking once, between songs, and he spoke of how he learned to write songs. He said he'd listened to Woody Guthrie songs for so long that he just took them and basically broke them apart and put new words to them and then put them back together and called them his own.

Isn't that what we're doing when we write? Nothing we're doing is really original. When I think about that, there's an element of relief. Sure, my voice is my own. Slaid Cleaves's voice is his own. No one is going to sing his words like he does, and no one is going to write my novels like I do. But these stories we're telling are as old as the hills, so let's not stress about Being The Very First and Being Original.

Let's just find truth, and guts, and loveliness, and bits of gore and ribbon if that's what it takes, and we'll find our own grace because we're that's what we're all chasing and really, it's more easily found than we originally thought.

Nora Roberts Has More Free Time Than I Do

Recently, I saw Nora Roberts speak in a video chat. She's a wonderful speaker, engaging, charming, and witty. She seems to be a straight-shooter, and she tells it like it is. She gets a lot done because she works a lot; it's as simple as that. She works five to six days a week, six to eight hours a day.

I heard her say that, and I thought, huh. I can do that.

Hey, wait a minute. I do that.

This week, I'm working 60 hours at the 911 day job. Monday is an overtime shift, then I'll do Wednesday-Saturday, all 12 hour shifts, like normal, 6am to 6pm. I get up between 3:30am and 4am to write for about an hour, before I leave the house at 5am for my commute. I get around a thousand words done before work, unless I accidentally make the coffee too weak.

On my days off, I write for four to seven hours, depending on how the words are treating me, unless I'm editing under deadline, and then I can be at my desk for ten hours or more. As my last deadline approached, it wasn't uncommon for me to be at my desk for twelve hours on every day off. (For those doing the math, that's an 84 hour work week between both jobs.)



La Nora, whom I adore, is working her ass off, yes, but she's putting in a writing work week of between thirty to forty-eight hours.

I can DO that. Let me AT it! I feel like a leaping animal, wild to try. Let me get to the point where I can support myself by the writing, let me get to the point where the royalty statements allow me quit the day job. (A girl can dream, can't she?) Let me know what it feels like to be completely self-employed, and to feel (mostly) safe being so.

I'm passionate enough to do the work to make it happen. I'm putting in the time now, and I'll put it in then, too. But on the flip side, I'm savvy enough to know that putting in the time doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to make it. Nor does being talented. Nor, even, does being in the right place at the right time. There's no magic formula, except, perhaps, continuing to get up after you get knocked down, again, and again, and even that might not work.

But I'll keep writing. Keep putting in the time. Nora inspires me. "Discipline, guilt, and guilt." That's how I get to the page every day. Yep. I get that.

Rachael Is a Fan Girl

There's an ad campaign where a famous person is lounging in some hotel (I want to say it's W, but I can't swear to it, so I guess it must not have worked that well) and the copy just says, for example, "Judy Dench is a fan." I could be that kind of fan. I'd like to try.

But none of us are ordinary fans. Sure, we get everyday crushes. I'm a fan of Alexander Skarsgard. Of course. Yum.

But I'm also a fan of African violets.

I'm a fan of Shetland wool.

I'm a fan of Venetian lace and the smell of diesel on a wet Venetian morning.

I'm a fan of broken pens from the fifties.

I'm a fan of cleaning the grease from around the edges of stove tops.

I'm a fan of forgetting to dust baseboards for years on end.

I'm a fan of medals with no purpose.

I'm a fan of yoga and accidental Buddhism.

I'm a fan of mothers and sisters and wives. Brothers, sons, and fathers ain't too shabby, neither.

I'm a fan of novels with dangerous curves.

I'm a fan of memoirs that make me homesick for someone I never was.

I'm a fan of yellow.

I'm a fan of kissing, even though I sometimes forget to practice enough.

I'm a fan of fans (electric, in particular).

I'm a fan of ukuleles.

I'm a fan of sweetened condensed milk, eaten with a spoon.

I'm a fan of tomorrow.

And I'm liking today, too.

Rachael Deletes A Lot of Scenes

Hahahaha.

Oh, hi.

Hahaha. Ha.

Excuse me. It's just that this topic is so flipping funny. I can't take it. It's like a joke. Except the punchline... Oh, it's killing me. Just killing me. Stop already, okay?

Deleted scenes.

Okay. Here's the set up for the joke. I have a book due in seven days (that sounds longer than a week, right? Right!). I'm almost done! I'm figuring it will be right at about 90,000 words, which feels good. Feels right.

When I sold this book (in paragraph form, as part of a package deal), it had a bit of underlying suspense. You know, not heavy romantic suspense, but there was a Bad Guy in it, so I wrote the book with a Baddie. Killed him off at the end with lots of gunfire and ka-blammo action. Good stuff.

But I didn't like it or him and it didn't feel natural and it was, worst of all, OBVIOUS.

So back to the drawing board.

I came up with another Bad Guy, only I made him a her, and changed the whole book around. Major rewrite. Maybe it was a bit better, but it still wasn't working. You know why? The book wasn't meant to have a Bad Guy. It was meant to have some knitting and lots of romantic tension, but it wasn't meant to have guns and pipe bombs, damn it.

And thank GOD my agent and I figured that out in time and that my editor, god bless her socks, agreed.

So now, after the biggest edit of my life, DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY WORDS ARE IN MY "CUT FILE?" You know, that file that Sophie talked about yesterday, that file that we create where we dump all those scenes that we're too sentimental about to simply throw out (in case we need them again--as if we EVER would)?

There are 60,000 words in my CUT file. (That's roughly 240 pages or so.)

60,000 words comprising scenes that used to be in my manuscript that aren't any more. Do you know how much I loved some of those? I lost a scene where her brakes lines have been cut and she carooms down a hill and crashes into the front of her brother's bar. I lost the scene where she SHOOTS HIM IN THE LEG because he scares her by coming into her bedroom in the middle of the night (I loved that scene).

Deleted scenes. Oy. Yeah, I know about 'em. I know ALL about 'em.

Ha! Ha.
Now excuse me while I go gibber in my corner over there.

Rachael Starves Her Characters

No one eats in my novels.

I forget to make them hungry. I'm the opposite of the food writers in that way. There are no recipes, no drool-worthy descriptions of [cream/spice/sugar/fill in the blank].

I think what it comes down to is that I'm really not that great a cook. I've learned that simple is the best way to go. If I get any fancier than a meat and a green, it's bound to get a little funny, and my characters have the same problem.

In the novel I'm working on now, my main character Lucy gets so flustered that she cracks two eggs into cold water and then tries to convince the hero that she's going to poach them. I had to go into my own kitchen and try it myself to see if she could get away with it (it's not pretty and raises lots of white foam, but it's doable). That and a dessicated Hershey bar that ends up getting thrown into the rafters of a de-sanctified church is the extent of the food in the current work in progress. Poor characters.

Maybe if I fed 'em better they'd act right. I know I act better after a good meal. I might try it.

Good Tastes

I get cravings for movies like I get cravings for food. I know that whole grains and steamed vegetables are good for me, but sometimes I just need grilled cheese, you know?

Take Bridget Jones’s Diary, for example. Maybe it's not a classic, but it’s the movie I want to watch on a rainy day off when the house needs cleaning and the dishes are still piled in the sink. Colin Firth, so grumpy and aloof, and Hugh Grant, so foppishly, annoyingly charming. It does the trick, reminding me that love, declared on a street, sealed with a movie kiss, is what we all want, what our romantic dreams are made of.

Or Strictly Ballroom (I do think this is a great movie). That’s the movie for when I need inspiration, when I’m not sure about what I’m doing, if I’m still headed the right direction. It's the classic Cinderella story, ugly duckling turns to beautiful swan, capturing the prince’s heart along the way. When she calls him a gutless wonder and cusses him three ways to Sunday, all our hearts rise to meet her. We want to be her. We are her.

Practical Magic is my go-to movie for feeling connected. It’s a sister movie. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman—there aren’t two better examples of heroines we want to watch side by side, are there? Sandra, so girl-next-door; Nicole, so glamorous-siren. Even if Aiden Quinn weren’t the hero, we’d watch, but since he is, we swoon.

And Breakfast at Tiffany’s is always right, for every occasion. I can’t think of a moment that it isn’t appropriate to watch Holly Golightly whistle, shrug expressively, and say, "It's easy."

I can enjoy a highbrow indie movie, just like I can enjoy expensive cheese. I’ll get into a soul-crushing documentary with the best of them. But when I’m tired, sleepy, or just plain worn out by the everyday grind, give me a romantic comedy that melts my heart while the American cheese melts into my buttered sourdough.

One Small Word

Creativity within constraints. My favorite way to work.

A surefire way to topple me into insta-panic is to say, "Here! A blank page! Put something creative on it, why don'tcha?" Not that people come around saying that to me. That would be weird.

To sit in front of a monitor and try to write something, anything, is just too hard. But if you know you need to write something which involves a papaya, a banjo, and a twelve-year old evangelist, something's gonna cook on that page, and you'll hardly have to try.

The same thing happens everywhere. If you go to the grocery store in order to make something for dinner with nothing in mind, you leave and head to Taco Bell, overwhelmed by the choices. (What? You don't? Oh.) But if you constrain yourself to the ingredients in your pantry and fridge, unless you only have tonic and dying limes, some awesome meals happen. (Or Taco Bell happens. As Taco Bell does.)

(If I may go slightly meta for a moment, that's one of the things I love about our blog set-up. At my own blog, I often try to Write A Post, with nothing in my head but the desire for more coffee. Here, we get a word. This week, it's Creativity. I can work with a word. It's just one small English word out of all the words in the world. That's a great constraint.)

Waiting For Fall

Ah, summer.

I hate it.

Okay, there are a couple of nice things about summer, I suppose. I admit them if pressed. I like it when I'm in Yosemite and the air smells of heat and pine and dust. I like long evenings on the porch with wine and fresh tomatoes. I like swimming in the lake and drying off on the bank. I like....

Whoops. I ran out of things.

I hate heat -- my naturally sunny disposition turns sour as soon as the mercury soars anywhere above a brain-melting 72 degrees. Too much sunshine gives me a headache, which then turns into a migraine, from which I try to hide in the bedroom with too much light, in a house with no air conditioning. And I whine, and whine, and whine.

See? Summer makes me annoying.

Give me a cool, fall day, when the edges of evening are crisp like the top of an apple crumble. Or a stormy winter night when you worry if the roof can take the weight of the water. Or a drizzly spring morning when you wonder if it will ever dry out enough to mow the newly happy grass.

I know I'm an odd duck, but I love the problems of inclement weather. I like worrying about oil slicks on the highways, and whether my windshield wipers work. I like making sure my umbrella still opens (although I never want to carry it). I love it when the house is too cold when I get up to write, when I have to stumble around the house making coffee while wrapped in layers of wool, waiting for the heater to fire up and take off the chill enough to put my fingers on the laptop and start working.

Heat ennervates me. I have no brain. No creativity. Certainly no drive. On really hot days I lie in my front of my fans in a wet dress and turn my sound machine to the rainstorm option. Over the rain, there's a computerized plink-plink that I can just imagine is a stubborn drip hitting a bucket outside.

I spend summer writing storm scenes and waiting for fall.

Dating Your Characters

by Rachael Herron

I like my characters. When my characters talk, pull out a chair and watch the fireworks. Sometimes they get the best of me, and leap off the page and run around and have their own little party under my desk, and it's damn hard to round them all up and herd them back into my computer.

(Plot? Suspense? And the dirtiest of all words: Conflict? Yeah, I'm way more comfortable with characters. More on that dilemma another day.)

Of course, my characters don't start off as real, and I think one of the best things I've learned in recent years is not to try to force anything on them. The longer I write a character, the more real they become, without me trying to make them Be anything or Act Certain Ways because they should (they hate that).

It's kind of like dating. On page one, you go on a blind date with your character.

Let's call this blind-date/new character Anna. (See? I just spent less than a second naming her. That's another thing I don't get hung up on. I name them, and if they tell me their real name later, that's a perfect time to sit back and enjoy the magic of Find and Replace. Last names are really fun: I use Oakland city streets for all my main character's last names: MacArthur, Harrison, Bancroft.) Anna doesn't have a last name, though. She's just Anna. Or maybe Anna Pensfatales (pronounced pen-fet-ahl--I know you were wondering). I like that name.

So I take Anna Pensfatales out for a spin. First page = first date. We know nothing about each other. I'm horrified to learn she doesn't eat cheese, and she thinks I'm crazy for having four cats (well, she's right. So I've learned she's smart).

By the second chapter I've learned that she's a little bit snippy first thing in the morning if she doesn't inject caffeine straight into her veins. In the third chapter, I put her in a lace negligee and she gets so annoyed that it takes me the next four chapters to figure out that there's no way in hell she'd ever get into a negligee of her own volition, and she's still ticked and that's why she's being such a donkey.

By the end of the book, though, I know her. She's mine. I get to go back and fix all the times I screwed up, changing her sentences to lines she'd actually utter, changing her actions to things she'd actually attempt and carry out. And by now, she likes me, too, and she's willing to work with me. A little more, anyway.

(Now, crazily, I'm a bit fond of this Anna and may give he a little walk-on part in the novel I'm editing now. See? She suckered me!)

Yep. Characters are just people, and I am very like Kenneth on 30 Rock who stated, "There's only two things I love in this world: everyone and television." Amen, Kenneth, amen.

First Lines Suck

Rachael Herron


The first line of my novel-in-progress is "'I need excitement,' Lucy said."

I hate it. It's an awful first line. I've hated it since I wrote it more than ninety-thousand words ago. But that's okay. It's a trick I play on myself. I want to hate my first line, because there's no way it's making it through the second draft alive. It's a constant reminder, every time I open the document, that changes will come, that revision is good.

Right up there with killing your darlings (I scream louder than they do), I believe in killing that first scene after the book is written, after you know what you were really writing, not just what you intended to write. After all, it's the first time those characters have breathed since their invention, and they tend to be a little asthmatic when they hit the light.

So if I start with a dud of a first line, I have no qualms about slicing it out later, no sense of regret that genius didn't shine on the work from day one. Heck, no, it didn't. There were days during the writing of the first draft when it felt like I was rearranging random words out of the dictionary and that perhaps my border collie could do it better.

The magic comes when that final scene is written, when I type "The End."

It's a lie, of course. It's not the end. It's the just the beginning. The first draft being finished means only that I know a little more about where the book should go, about who the characters might end up being. Now I can go back and revise the first line.

I'm in the second-draft of my novel-in-progress now, and my first line is "'Nothing ever happens here,' said Lucy." It's still not good, and it won't last to round three, but Lucy has a real voice now. She would never say "I need excitement." It's not in her quiet, careful nature, something I didn't know when I sat down for the first time at the blank page. So I'm getting closer. The first line eventually has to be perfect. It just doesn’t have to be perfect right now. Thank God.

The Kind of Writer Who Pinches

I’m the kind of writer who still can’t believe she has a contract. I’m writing a series of novels and I’m getting paid to do it? Seriously? How did this happen? It feels like it’s all rushing by me so fast, but then I realize that I’ve been working for this since I was five. I guess that thirty-one years isn’t what you’d call overnight success. But I still have that heady feeling that keeps my cheeks pink and a stupid grin stuck to my face.

I’m the kind of writer who slacked off for years. I’d putter around the house in the morning, a pen tucked behind my ear. Before I quit smoking ten years ago, I’d take a spiral bound notebook onto the front porch in the sun. Just me and the coffee, the smoke in wreaths around my head. A perfect time to write a perfect story. Brilliant diamonds of words were almost ready to drip from my pen. I could feel it. Then I’d scribble a journal entry instead about my emotions and what my cat just did and call it a day.

I’m the kind of writer who’s finally figured out she has to write first, before anything else, or it won’t get done. If it means getting up at three-thiry in the morning to get the writing done before my twelve-hour shift, that’s the way it has to be (although there really isn’t enough coffee in the world). On days off, I go to the computer first, and work until I can’t bear not to look at email or Twitter for one more second.

I’m the kind of writer who has to pinch herself when she wakes up. When I meet people and they ask what I do, I get to say, “I’m a writer,” and it’s not wishful thinking anymore. I am a writer, and it has nothing to do with my contract. It has to do with the fact that I’m writing.

I’m the kind of writer who is finally writing. Every day. That’s the best part of all.