Torture

A friend of mine with four children once gave me her definition of torture. She said it is to give an intelligent, capable adult a certain number of tasks to complete in a day, and then interrupting her every five minutes as she tries to complete them. This was said in response to her husband, who questioned her about why she never seemed to get anything done even though she was home all day.

Being a writer compounds that torture, although thankfully I have only one child to deal with, because the interruption is not every five minutes, but rather a constant stream of narrative in my head. It goes something like this...

"Oooh, look at that photo of a mountain on that magazine cover. That would make a great setting for that part of my story where they climb up to discover the... NO! Focus. What was I doing? Why am I standing here holding dirty clothes? Oh yes, going to the basement... "

(I go down the steps, passing the bookshelf.)

"Hey, vacation photos over there. Don't we have some great shots of the Alps? And that castle we visited, I should see what the sleeping chambers were like. But that was a later castle, a Victorian fake, really. What century would my story be comparable to? Do they use gunpowder, for example?... NO! STOP! FOCUS! Should I do whites or colors first? What are we doing tomorrow? What clothes does my son need? I can't remember!"

(I go back upstairs to look at the calendar, clothing still in hand.)

Yesterday I made a field trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to look at armor. What a fiasco! Because of the Welcome America activities, I didn't drive for fear of getting stuck in hellish traffic and took the train from New Jersey instead. I had to drive 20 minutes to the train station, catch the PATCO train across the river to Philly, then transfer to the subway, get off at City Hall and trek seven diagonal blocks up the Ben Franklin Parkway to the Art Museum. I left my house at 1:00 and arrived at 2:50. I couldn't believe it! I kept looking at my watch trying to calculate how the minute hand could have possibly gone around two full rotations since I left the house. I had to be home at six. So I gave myself exactly an hour and twenty minutes in the museum.

What I found when I went to the armour room is that princes and dukes and such could afford really, really nice armor. They even had - get this - armpit protectors. Their horses had nice armor too. The collection at the museum is mainly presentation armor. It looks really nice and is highly decorative, but is not very useful for helping me figure out how the average foot soldier kept himself from getting chopped to pieces on the battlefield, or what he did his own chopping with. I did find out however what a brigandine is. Basically, it's like high fashion Kevlar - a coat of mail with a decorative fabric covering. Those were cool. And they had a bunch of helmets (though they weren't call helmets but some fancy French name that I can't use because my story doesn't take place in France) that looked like long pointy bicycle helmets worn backwards. Anyone wearing one of those would look like a bird. Or an orc.

By this time I was feeling dehydrated and in great need of a place to sit down, so I hiked another couple of blocks through the museum, from the second floor of one wing to the basement of the other wing to the cafe, had a salad and a Frappachino (my first - what a wonderful thing Starbucks has invented!) and then hiked back up to the European collections with a little quick detour through the American furniture and pottery (my favorite part). I then made a very quick circuit through the period rooms - peeking into the Tudor room, the German kitchen and the Dutch room with the bed in the wall behind a red velvet curtain - and looked at a few paintings to see what the soldiers were wearing in the battle scenes. Not much armour, mostly just helmets and breastplates. Then I started the long trek home, about fourteen dollars poorer but not much richer in knowledge than when I started out.

At least I got some exercise! But I was so tired this morning I woke up late and didn't do any writing, and now my day has taken off again, barging through the hours like a stampeding elephant with lists of things to do and an essay to write before my education class tonight. C'est la vie! Or perhaps I should say, as my heroine Elinor would, "Gryphon feathers!"

Convergence, Part 1

There is a concept in mathematics called convergence in which elements of a particular kind of sequence, no matter how scattered they may appear at first, will eventually draw closer and closer together until they meet at a single point.

I have the odd feeling of approaching a convergence in my life. It is quite strange and even disorienting to realize, as I look back, how all the elements of my past seem to be converging toward an inevitable point. In Greek mythology, this would be called Fate or Destiny. In a universe ordered by a Master Designer and Mathematician, it is convergence.

It appears that I will most definitely be teaching Math, Science and Bible in a Christian school next year. When I look back at the course of my life and all of the decisions I felt drawn to make, it truly amazes me how they have uniquely prepared me for this undertaking. My decision to study mathematics rather than English in college. My dual major in Math and Physics (which became Math with a physics minor). My summer internships at NASA Lewis Research Center. My two years of classroom teaching as a T.A. in graduate school. My clinical trials experience. Even the dollhouse that a friend gave me when she moved, launching a hobby that contains multiple examples of how to use simple ratios, algebra and even a little geometry. The chemistry and biology that I use everyday as I garden and cook and maintain our backyard pool.

When I first started teaching fourteen years ago, my students would ask "When are we going to use this in real life?" Now I can tell them.

Being called upon to teach Art Camp and Vacation Bible School, which exposed me gradually to being around kids - something I hadn't really done up to that point, being too busy studying and working. Teaching various Bible studies and giving presentations at Mothers of Preschoolers meetings. Teaching 4-and-5-year-olds in MOPPETS this past year. The first time I ran that class, I was completely exhausted after the two hours. By the end of May, I was loving it!

Clearly, a divine appointment had been made when my husband and I walked into Principal Watts' office last October to discuss enrolling our son at his school, and walked out with an application for a teaching job. Teaching middle school was the last thing I would have thought of doing, but clearly God had other plans.

"What just happened here?" my husband asked. "We went there to interview them about enrolling our son, and he ended up interviewing you for a job!"

It was convergence.

Name of a Name of a Name

I was in high school and working on my first novel when my dad saw a baby name booklet in my room and had a minor heart attack. My mom, who is also a writer, laughed and told him he was not about to become a grandfather, it was for naming characters in my story.

I have never been great at coming up with either titles or names on my own. Right now I am really struggling with the name of the fictional country where the story I am writing is taking place. (The book itself is called The Legend of the Golden Gryphon which isn't terribly original either.) Thank God for Google... it turns out that several of the names I had so painstakingly thought up are actually in use by a role-playing game or are a brand of something. I did find a fantasy name generator on line that is pretty interesting, but I want a name that actually means something, not some random arrangement of consonants and vowels. I also want to avoid unintentionally swearing in another language.

Everything I think of sounds stupid, but I keep reminding myself that Narnia, Gondor and Rohan must have sounded stupid the first hundred times someone said them, too. I'm starting to think that, like Tolkein, I'll have to invent my own language just to come up with new names, but then I don't want things in my book to be too wierd or unfamiliar. I want the book to be comfortable and easy to slip into, like a favorite robe.

Actually at one point I had toyed with calling it Croatan (or some derivative) and having it be the place to which the Roanoke settlers disappeared, but abandoned that idea. Though, actually, it's not a bad concept now that I think of it again - what if the settlers had created an improved monarchy based on their English roots, rather than the representative republic we now have? But I can't call it Croatia, for example.

Anyhow, some of the names that are NOT taken are

Celadon (a lovely shade of light green), which could be transformed to Celadonia, although it sounds a lot like Caledonia which is a real place

Montaria (based on Mount Airy, New Jersey, get it?) which is also a postal district in Portugal but I don't think they'd mind

Halduran - which is composed of the Norweigan root "Hal" meaning rock and the Latin word "duran" (enduring), (which is similar to Aldaran, the planet Princess Leia lived on in Star Wars, probably based on the same linguistic roots - ironically the "enduring rock" was blown up by Darth Vader)

I really like the "enduring rock" idea, and thought of just calling it Duran or Durin, but then again Durin is the name of one of the Dwarf Kings in Middle Earth. Tolkein beat me to it. The balrog of Moria is referred to as "Durin's Bane". Duron is a brand of house paint.

See the problems I'm having here? Any ideas, people? Anything at all?

Now I know why Thomas the Tank Engine lives on the island of Sodor. I always thought that name sounded really stupid, but at least no one can confuse it with something else.

P.S. As I was composing this, I found a feminine name meaning "Rock" on a baby name website - Sela. So, I thought, what about Selador? Guess what, I googled the word and found a reference on Wikipedia to a famous interview with J.R.R. Tolkein discussing how the words "cellar door" could be transformed into a name - you guessed it, Selador. So everyone would think that I stole it from him!

Do you see the brick marks on my forehead? I'm beating it on a brick wall.

Time to go braid some yarn for dollhouse rugs. I need something mindless to do - I've had it for today. Maybe I could just call the place Dalharug and be done with it. Or better yet, how about Yarnia?

Good News about Copyrights

I have had a very frustrating morning, but finally found some good news! I have been agonizing over the fear that if I use a name that also happens to be the name of a product of some kind that I will be violating copyright laws. After a while I decided to see if I could find any information on copyrights and names, and discovered that according to the U.S. Copright Office...

Names, titles, and short phrases or expressions are not subject to copyright protection. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive or if it lends itself to a play on words, it cannot be protected by copyright. The Copyright Office cannot register claims to exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as:

Names of products or services
Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the name of a group of performers)
Names of pseudonyms of individuals (including pen name or stage name)
Titles of works
Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions

They do say that trademarks are a different matter, but that would only apply if I was trying to sell a product under a name that was already trademarked.

What a relief!!!

Stranger than Fiction

Yesterday I watched the movie "Stranger Than Fiction" starring Emma Thompson as a previously successful writer who is struggling to overcome writer's block, and Will Ferrell as her hapless main character. He starts to hear her voice narrating his life and realizes that she is going to kill him off by the end of the book. In a strange twist (he works for the IRS) he is able to locate the reclusive writer and actually visit her, begging her to save his life. I won't tell you the end.

The movie was not the crazy comedy that the previews made it out to be. It was actually a very moving commentary on the meaning of life and art. The fine supporting cast included Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah, whose acting skills blew me away in "Chicago". Like Will Smith, hers is a major talent that is destined to go far beyond rap music. Emma Thompson gives a marvelous, sarcasm-riddled performance as the anguished writer and Will Ferrell absolutely nails the dramatic role of Harold Crick, the sleeping soul that is about to wake up. Like Jim Carrey, there is more to this comedian than meets the eye. It is definitely a movie worth seeing, especially if you are a writer.

The whole thing was funny and tragic and more than a little surreal. It ties into this wierd sort of double life that authors live. I find myself wondering sometimes what the definition of reality is. Is it simply those things which have tangible evidence? Or is the creative power which our Creator has shared with us powerful enough to create valid people and places in our imaginations? Certainly dreams have a reality of their own, jumbled though they may be, and God speaks to us at times with great clarity through them. The power of the "waking dream" of fiction is just as undeniable; we all have felt that haunting loss or those tears of joy at the end of a great book or movie. This is an experience we seek again and again; it allows us to both escape from and enrich our "tangible" lives.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Harold walks into Karen (the writer's) office and she sort of crumples in amazed awe in front of him, murmuring "Your hair... your eyes... your shoes!" She stares at him the way a mother stares at the fingers of her newborn child, amazed that the thing that has been growing inside of her actually has the very shape she recognizes and expects. He says "I'm Harold Crick" and she replies reverently "I know."

I've tried to "cast" certain actors in my book, looking for the right person to play the parts in my mind. But the truth is, they are themselves and no one else. I can't say exactly how this happens, but it does. It amazes me. Elinor, the heroine of "The Golden Gryphon" and Ginger, the young widow in "Tea by the Sea" are so real to me that I half expect to meet them on the street one day. During the time I was working really hard on "Tea by the Sea," I made a trip to Ocean City, NJ as I often do. I found myself experiencing a sense of loss that the tea shop and its proprietors don't really exist and that I couldn't visit them. It was very surreal and poignant. Am I crazy?

How does this happen, this ability to create in one's mind? I have no idea. It feels very much like a little bit of the God-breath breathed into me. Part of the plot in "Stranger Than Fiction" involves Harold trying to figure out whether the novel he is living is a tragedy or a comedy and whether it is plot-driven or character-driven. What amazes me is how much the characters in even a plot-driven book can influence the action by their choices.

I wrote the following on Tricia Goyer's blog recently, when I was struggling with how to stay motivated to write when I'm not sure anyone will ever publish the book - meaning it will never be read by anyone else. One of the authors there responded that if I could answer that question, I could write a best-selling book for Writer's Digest and be set for life. My response was this:

I think the "Writer's Digest" answer to this question is this: I don't care any more if it's publishable or not. I am writing this manuscript because if I don't it will eat me alive! I have to know what happens to my characters... and so do they. They deserve to know if they will live or die, succeed or fail, be loved or be betrayed. It has taken on a life and existence of its own that cannot be denied now.

The End of All Things

Okay, it doesn't really feel like the end of all things, as in "Its's good to have you with me Sam, here at the end of all things," but it does feel like the end of several things.

Today is my last MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting. Ever. For those of you who have never heard of this indispensible organization, it is a fellowship ministry for mothers of young children, to help us get through those difficult early years without jumping off a cliff. I have made the best friendships of my life at MOPS and hope that we will be able to keep in touch as our children scatter off to Kindergarten.

Some of my friends have been able to reproduce again, which has the added goal of not only bringing a new person into the world but also to maintain membership in MOPS. I have not been able to do that and since I have reached the decrepit age of 36 (my eggs are ageing every second, I can just feel them wrinkling in there), I have started giving away all those little clothes I so painstakingly saved for the next child. As well as that stash of brightly colored summer maternity garments I ordered from JC Penny. So this is the end of my childbearing years as well.

My husband and I are on a diet. This is truly the end! The end of feeling young and calorically invincible. The end of cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings and lovely golden fries at McDonald's and Friday-night pizza. Perhaps I've been reading too many "Agatha Raisin" books but I feel distinctly middle-aged. I suppose I'll feel better when I drop a couple of sizes but right now I just feel frustrated and hungry.

What is the definition of middle-age anyway? I mean, if you assume a person will live about eighty years then the first third of that would be 0-27, then 28-54 would be the middle and 55+ would be in the last tier. Ew. I don't like that definition at all, but it does explain the concept of "55 and older" communities. As in, "If you move here you are on the downward slope of the hill so we're going to keep young people away so as not to remind you." Forgive me, friends, who feel that I am making you old before your time... I'm being mathematical here.

At least we're leaving for the Berkshires tomorrow. Like I had any idea what "the Berkshires" were before this vacation was handed to us. It sounds cool though, like "The Hamptons" or "The Outer Banks". It's someplace in the mountains in Massachussetts, on the border of New York. We won a weekend at a time-share in a drawing. I hope they're not too upset when they realize we have no intention of purchasing one.

So, now it's time to get ready for MOPS. I need to have some more coffee. Try not to think about the preschool graduation yesterday *sniff*, pack up the dog and all his things to stay with a friend, don't wear mascara because it's just going to run when I say good bye to all my friends at MOPS. Think about the summer and the beach and long hours of writing about "The Golden Gryphon." And stop reading Agatha Raisin, as much as I love the dear grouchy detective.

Not enough ideas

I often hear other writers say "I have so many ideas, I don't know which one to choose! My head is just full of them."

Lucky them. If I have an idea, I hold onto it for dear life. I've had exactly three in the past five years. All of them turned into projects, but I can't say that there was any competition.

I am not one of those writers whose mind is full of characters and plots jostling around crying "Pick me! Pick me!" I don't watch a movie and think "What if I made the main character a man instead of a woman, put him in Arizona instead of Alaska and made him a doctor instead of a fisherman? What would happen then?" Instead I think "Gee, Alaska has really nice scenery."

This is because for me, writing (and life) has always been about the scenery. I can't help it if I grew up in one of the most beautiful places on Earth... Northeast Ohio. No, I'm not kidding! Deep, snowy winters; rainy, dreamlike Springs; lush and seductive summers; riotous and abundant autumns. We roamed the fields and woods. We caught frogs in the pond, bass and bluegill in the lake and crayfish in the stream. There were blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, elderberries, wild grapes, apples, plums and walnuts, not to mention the tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes in the garden. And the flowers! Snapdragons, pansies, jonquils, roses, tulips, lilies-of-the-valley, spring beauties, jack-in-the-pulpits, the elusive mayflower, lilacs, buttercups, indian paintbrushes and Queen Anne's Lace. We made mint and strawberry tea for our dolls, played Little House in the Prairie in the woods and, when we were older, sang Olivia Newton John songs on the picnic table with an invisible microphone. Winters were spent huddled around the fireplace or the furnace vent and, more often than not, we were snowed in for Christmas.

For me, writing starts with a sense of place. Of setting. The characters have to be extruded from this into personalities distinct from their place and time. This takes a little effort, but when it happens they become like real people living inside my head: talking, dreaming, falling in love, making decisions, taking up quests and even dying regardless of what my plans may have been for them.

I am currently reading a book by a successful author on how to write a novel. He postulates that the way to write a novel is to plan out the entire book not just down to the chapter level, but in terms of what will happen in every paragraph. Now, he is definitely a successful writer because his books are everywhere, so this method must work for him. To me, it sounds about as exciting as writing a term paper.

Perhaps he is one of those "idea" guys. Perhaps he has so many possibilities in his head that he just has to pick some and put them in his outline. Perhaps ideas flow faster when you are working under contract. I wouldn't know.

But personally, I have no idea what my characters are going to do until they do it. I just give them a starting point and go along for the ride. I know I will have to go back to the beginning, which is probably somewhere in the middle, and restructure everything eventually. But for now I'm just along for the ride and enjoying every minute of it.