THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

I’m done, I’m through, I’m exhausted and happy.

Just a few minutes ago I put the last period on the last line of the last sentence of my cozy. It’s not really finished. Nothing is really ever finished until you can’t change one jot or tittle of it. With a book that means after it’s printed. I’m only done with this revision, and boy, was it ever a lulu.

Tomorrow, after I make sure that all the ducks on my thumb drive are in order, I’m taking it off to Staples and having MY NOVEL printed on paper from the first word to the last. For me that is the achievement of a lifetime and I’m going to milk this happy glow for all it’s worth.

After that it’s more revision. But I want you know how much I’m going to enjoy this one.

1. it will be on paper. That means I can flop anywhere and read it, mark it up, scratch out whole sections and put others in.
2. it has been written from front to back. It’s a whole story and I can read it like one and make sense of it.
3. The pages can be flipped back and forth, I can see things more clearly, see where a sentence could be to better advantage if I placed it just so, where a scene might need more something.

Oh, you can do all that on your computer using state-of-the-art programs and what-not? Well I can’t. And I’ve heard the moaning and groaning that accompanies learning how to manipulate these programs. I am barely computer literate. Jane Austen did just fine without a computer program, but, unfortunately, I somehow sense that given one, and the computer to go with it, she would be able to make better use of it than I can.

But, nevertheless, I have reached a jumping off point in the revision process. I’m one step closer to being able to submit my cozy somewhere. I had set a goal to finish this revision by September, and I’m only a little late. I’ll have to work harder on paper.

I will be pitching this in November (beginning of!) to an agent (as yet unknown) at the annual New England Crime Bake in Massachusetts. It is organized by the New England Chapters of Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Sounds good, no? Heidi and Karen, fellow bloggers here, will be going also. The line-up of classes is very impressive and we’re looking forward to going. So, the next sound that you hear will be that of a whip cracking. Maybe several whips, if H and K are pitching also.

The life of a writer is a hectic one. If I’d started sooner I might have had several books under my belt by now, but I’ve always been a late bloomer, and life is as it is. So, hecticity stalks me, and I embrace it. What else can you do with a socially accepted addiction.

IS YOUR PLOT LINE SCREWED?

I just finished reading Richard Russo’s, Everybody’s Fool, which takes place in the present in a forty-eight hour time period. There are 447 pages in the book. That indicates a lot of detail crammed into those two days. My assignment was to unfold the the un-tangential secrets of his plot line.

I thought of a screw. Of course, why not.

Screws come in different sizes and types. Their job is to hold things together. A story is like a screw in that it has to hold itself together.

Screws are usually classified as Type A or Type B. A’s are coarse threaded screws; they have fewer threads per inch for holding together lighter materials. B’s are finer threaded screws with more threads per inch. They can hold together more and heavier materials.

Stand a screw on its head and imagine that the threads are the actual storytelling of a book which ascends in an orderly circular fashion along the core (or plot) of the screw (or story). You can tell at a glance if there will be a lot of description, or a little, if it’s coarse threaded or fine, if it is holding together a light weight book or a heavier tome.

Light writing, heavier writing; both are fine. They just need the right screws. They need to hold together and not have tangents that fly off the page.

Russo did a lot of plotting. Every character, even the dog, had his or her own plot line. The town and the physical terrain had plot lines. Maybe there was an instance or two of too much plot and the story line escaped and flew off the handle.You could feel it as you read. There the description, an added character, or a sub-plot line were impediments to the smooth turning of the screw. They were not firmly attached to the main core, they did not ascend in that even circular movement, with the rest of Russo’s neatly constructed plot lines, all the way to the denouement. They were irritating flanges on the threads that needed to be filed off. They were gluts of cream that escaped a centrifuge and slopped out of the book. A darling perhaps?

Everybody’s Fool is an example of a long screw with very fine threads; a tightly wound screw. I only used his, maybe only one, instance of unnecessary flange-ness, to point out that no book is perfect. For the most part Russo kept his character descriptions and plot and sub-plot lines in an orderly fashion, but not so orderly that it was boring, as they rounded and tightened the story. His writing drew the reader in, instead of flinging her out. The facets of the story were firmly attached to the core and to all the other characters even as they moved along and around each other and the story line.

I should be so meticulously careful in my writing!

I could add that all of Russo’s characters were screwed from the beginning, even the dog, as was the landscape, but for the main characters the ending was as redeeming as an ending should be.

2016 Short Story Award‬

The Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC (BWG), founded in 2006, is a community of mutually-supportive, fiction and nonfiction authors based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The members are as different from each other as their stories, spanning a range of genres including: children’s, fantasy, humor, inspiration, literary, memoir, mystery, paranormal, romance, science fiction, women’s fiction, and young adult.

Congratulations to our‬

‪2016 Short Story Award Winner‬

First Place‬

ELEANOR INGBRETSON, PIKE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

‪“STICK TO THE BYPATHINGS”

This is true. I did win. I’m still in a bit of shock, but good shock.

My story is pure fiction; a fantasy about a little boy who may or may not have abilities far superior to the abilities of others around him. It all depends on your outlook.

Shakespeare, Job, and Voltaire, among others, were convinced that there is so much more, here, in this world, that transcends what we mere mortals can perceive, believe or imagine.

We have to look beyond what we can see, aim to have a wilder imagination and a broader faith. We need to access that  so-much-ness, and sink into it with our writing teeth (should I mention that J. Ff. already has a lot of that on his plate?).

I do want to thank the members of my writing group, some of whom blog here with me: Mike, John, Linda, Mike, Karen and Heidi. They are, as Lewis Carroll might say, a much of a muchness. And who could ask for anything more from one’s critique partners? Without them I’m sure the sum total of my writing would still be my ubiquitous shopping lists. And if I never succeed again, they will still be a much of a muchness.

The Bethlehem Writers Group’s anthology, ‪ ONCE UPON A TIME: SWEET, FUNNY, AND STRANGE TALES FOR ALL AGES,  ‬will be coming out the end of October. Yes, I’m anxious to see it, but I’ll never mention this again, in this blog, lest my head begin to swell.‬

In Memoriam: The Pike Library Association

Small town libraries are closing. Even after cutting hours because of lack of funds some still can’t find a way to stay open. A few people complain, but the fact is that so many more people couldn’t care less if one of the pillars of society fails.

But it’s not the fault of the libraries. They aren’t the failures. Society is failing. Demographics are changing and interests are devolving.

Not to get into it too deeply, but if you are aware that your small local library has closed, you’re probably not the problem. The problem is that, seemingly, the majority of the population doesn’t read anymore

My own little, tiny, library in Pike, New Hampshire (a little, tiny town), that I’d been proud to be on the board of for more than twenty years, has just closed its doors. It did get by on the donation the town made to it, and to the three other libraries in Haverhill, NH, but just barely. It kept up-to-date books that its dwindling number of patrons liked to read, it had the best collection of children’s classics in town, and it was friendly. But it was doomed.

One hundred years ago Pike was a bustling, small town. Its whetstone factory was the largest in the world, producing sharpening stones for all sorts of purposes. The sharpening stone that my father, an engraver, used way back when, was probably a Pike sharpening stone.

Newspaper articles from the turn of the (previous) century said that the whetstone company employed over 100 people in downtown Pike, and more outside of town. Another article described Pike as:

“a little village of more than 500 inhabitants. There is a fine department store, whetstone mill, sawmill, box factory, wheelwright and blacksmith shop, grist mill, hotel, livery stable, a good hall and schoolhouse. The village has long distance telephone, telegraph, and six (!!!) mails a day.”

Pike had everything a small town should have, and then, just to put the icing on the cake, it got a library.

Over the years, things happened to this former bustling village. Artificial abrasives were invented which changed the course of the whetstone factory. Less customers meant unemployment for its workers, which led to an exodus of the former employees and their families. Schools closed. The auxilary mills folded or moved away. Obviously there was no need for a livery stable or blacksmith any more, and those workers and their families moved on.

Yesterday, literally, all that was left of the town proper were the library, the post office, and the ruins of the whetstone factory. Today it’s just the post office, the ruins and an empty building.

The Pike library starved to death. Or maybe, like Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis, it died of a broken heart. Take your pick, both are equally miserable endings.

Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis, can be found at most libraries.

(my thanks to Robert Fillion and his publication ‘Early Pike and Whetstone Works,’ 1994, Woodsville, NH, for the excerpts of newspaper articles, circa 1900.)

IT’S FOOT STUBBING TIME!

I’ve discovered the biggest boon to writers ever. A broken toe!

What’s the most difficult thing that writer’s face? It’s their own procrastination, I’m sure. Listen to ourselves: “Oh, I should sit down and write, oh, yes, I’ll sit right down and write after I scrub the bathroom, I’ll sit down and write after I make this call, I’ll sit down and write when the timer goes off, when the sun goes down, when the moon comes up.”

When hell freezes over could be more likely if procrastination has taken hold. I’ve spent whole days away from writing, doing anything else I could think of.

But, what if ones toe becomes broken (not on purpose, mind you, but because of an accident or even stupidity), and one is forced to sit down? (It doesn’t necessarily have to be through stupidity, I’m only writing from my own experience.) One does have to sit down a lot when something like that happens.

Of course there are many things you can do sitting down, you don’t have to write. You can read. Ah, but if you read. What happens then? When I’m reading a book that I genuinely enjoy, one that speaks to my genre, and has characters I can identify with, I drift away into an inward looking mode. The creative juices flow and the muses are tap, tap, tapping. I’m visiting my story, my plot and my characters in my mind. The book falls by the way/chairside, and I head over to my laptop. Now, of necessity, I must grab something nearby, hoist myself up and hobble off to my laptop, but the result is the same. Once seated I can get into the nitty-gritty of the problem that had banished me to procrastinationhood.

There was a sticky area in my cozy under revision (before I ran my flip-flopped bare toe into the wheel of the grocery cart), one that had driven me into a an outwardly delightful, but inwardly frustrating procrastination of several days duration. But because of the broken phalange I’ve been sitting more and reading more. I’ve been led into daydreams and back into a groove. I’ve beaten the inertia.

But, aren’t there less painful ways to achieve that desire to sit down and write?

Look on the bright side, oh ye of broken toe, six to eight weeks is a lot of revision and reading time.

REVISION IS AN EIGHT LETTER WORD . . and that equals two four letter words.

The dictionary says that to revise means to reconsider and alter, and I guess that that is what I’ve been doing.

(Have I ever mentioned Jasper Fforde in any of my posts? (I can hear groaning and moaning. What? I’ve mentioned him before? Too often? Sorry). In one of his Thursday Next books he goes into a long riff about the use of ‘that that’. Totally hilarious. But not to digress from an unsavory topic to a more pleasant one. Oh, no. Never that.)

I find myself revising my cozy- again. This time there’s a plan. I will go over it twice, perfect the first page and write a log-line. Then I will pitch it to whoever is (un)fortunate enough to be in my sights at the Maine Crime Writer’s Crime Bake in November.

That’s two revisions by November. The beginning of November. I think I can do it.

A long time ago I submitted to this post a triangle which delineated the hierarchy of revision. I thought it was a great plan. I need to dig it out and put it to good use. I need to put a lot of ideas to good use. I need help.

At our last Thursday evening’s group therapy, writer’s weekly critique, admonition, encouragement and jam and cookie session, the most horrible plan I had ever heard of, in regard to revision, was put forth. I didn’t say so at the time, but I was horror struck. This revision entailed putting aside your first (second, third, fourth, whatever) draft, let it rest, and then rewrite it without availing yourself of the benefit of whatever written draft you had just written! Rewrite blindly from scratch! Have you ever? One would have to be mad.

Maybe this works for some writers. I’m willing to bet they’re short story writers. And I bet that that (!!!) method wasn’t one of the levels on the hierarchy of revision triangle.

I’d be willing to try it on a short story. A short short story. Maybe flash fiction. An e-mail that disappeared before one’s very eyes, before send was hit, now that’s the place to try it. Actually, that has happened, and I think the resulting e-mail was worded a lot better than the first.

So, there are methods and there are methods, and they all lead to some form of madness. As the Cheshire Cat once said to Alice when she remarked she didn’t want to go among mad people:

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad,” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Here is where I am now. In the middle of a muddle of revision.

COUNTESS FOR A DAY

Actually it was only for a few hours last Friday evening when I participated in a Murder Mystery Dinner as a fund raiser for our library; the Haverhill Library. Strange things can happen when one is a trustee, and this was one of them.

I really didn’t want to be the countess for even a few hours. But they promised me a tiara, and that swayed me, only to find out it was cardboard and had Happy New Year 2015 written on it in faded silver ink. What a blow to my psyche.

Then I found out that my job description had me shimmying up fishing line and climbing into a cabin’s porthole to find this cardboard tiara. Really? I don’t think so. Especially after that particular cabin’s resident had recently been found dead.

That I shimmied up fishing line and squeezed my bod through a porthole was told to the audience as a done deal at the end of the evening. Fiction is wonderful. I never could have done those things in real life. In fact the general age of the participants forbade a whole lot of physical activity, with the possible exception of the young jewel thief. The main job of the actors, in case you’ve never participated in one of these things, was to go from table to table and regale the attendees with clues. I must have done a good job as no one suspected me at the end.

Now that those few hours that I agonized over before hand are done I can look back and say that in retrospect it was a fun evening. Most things were either fun or deeply regretted in retrospect. I’m reminded of Edith Piaf’s song, Je Ne Regrette Rien (I don’t regret anything). How is that possible? I don’t think she was a psychopath. They’re the only ones who never look back and are sorry for anything they’ve done. I guess her song was  literally licensed to make it seem she never did anything really wrong, or only maybe wrong but fun. Fiction again. Certainly I regret things, and it’s a great theme in a book. My characters regret lots of things they’ve done in their past lives, it makes it easier for readers to identify with them.

Do psychopaths read cozies? That’s a thought. What’s in it for them? If there’s no regret for what has been done then there’s seldom a turning point for the better for our characters, or our readers, and that’s rather important in a cozy, and not so important to a psychopath. Of course not all literature revolves around regret, but it’s a theme most writers can identify with being, as it is, a daily occurrence in most lives (I wish I hadn’t eaten that, I wish I hadn’t said that, I wish I hadn’t done that, etc.). And when you add a change because of regret it rounds out a character.

Do I regret being a countess for those few hours? Certainly not. I easily caught up on all the sleep I lost beforehand. And I thank Gloria B. profoundly for the loan of her real tiara to wear instead of the cardboard one.

BROWSING AMONG BOOKS

. . .was what I was doing the other day. I pulled down a dusty old thing I’d bought years ago because printed on the front of the brown linen bound book was a wood cut of a cottage covered in snow. It reminded me of a wood cut I’d made in shop class, lo these many years ago. that ended up in my Junior High School yearbook. Maybe I shouldda stuck to wood cuts!

The book, The Furnishing of a Modest Home, by Fred Hamilton Daniels, was published in 1908 and is in wonderful condition. Plenty of photos of stark mission and/or arts and crafts style rooms and examples of things that made them cozy. Not.

Those were the days of no cushioning on anything. Hard edges, chairs, lighting. Harder horsehair stuffed divans. Nowhere to settle in with a good book. The paintings were nice. Other décor, also. But the author’s choice to include a newspaper clipping from that turn of the century intrigued me. The article is called, “A PRETTY ORNAMENT”, and it’s from a write in column on decorating your home. Let me know what you think.

Dear Sisters- Here are directions for making a very pretty as well as useful ornament where your Thanksgiving turkey feet could be brought into use. I have one, which I have had for 13 years, and just as good and perfect as the day I fixed them. Get one nice turkey foot and leg, up to the first joint. Wash it nicely and allow to dry a little while over the stove or on the kitchen mantel. Now take a grape box cover and cover with black or red velvet or satin as one may fancy. Cut the satin or velvet about half inch larger than box cover, then notch or cut little slits, and stick the velvet or satin, whichever the case may be, down on the wrong side with some glue. This will quickly dry. Then get a small thermometer and prick a little hole to correspond with the thermometer and sew through the board with heavy silk to match in color with velvet or satin. Now, take your turkey foot and give it two or three coats of gold paint (this preserves the foot). Covering all parts with the gold paint, arrange the foot nicely and claws so it will look nice. The next day it will be ready to mount.

The writer of that bit of home décor goes on with directions on how to mount this monstrosity, adding at the end:

Every one that sees mine admires it so much. Very nice for a dining room but mine hangs on my parlor door. Wish someone would try it and report. I think it would repay them for their trouble.

The author of the book was not in favor of this piece de resistance I’m glad to say.

I noticed that my computer program automatically put the accent aigu on the e in décor (voila), but refused to add the appropriate accents to piece de resistance. Why is that, I wonder?

Anyway, I have absolutely no point to make in this recounting of the previous turn of the century’s signature household accoutrements except to say that if that woman, who signed her column as Shut in No. 1 (which temporarily guilted me for citing her idea in a negative way), had had something to read while reclining on a more comfortable piece of furniture than those pictured in this particular book, then I would have had nothing to write about today.

Let’s hear it for gold encrusted turkey feet.

WRITING WILL TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE!!!

It’s true.

It’s not bad, but it is true.

Before I began writing with my group, the Thursday Night Writes, I was happy and carefree. I’m still happy, but the cares, oy vey.

I had hit the floor running with a full length cozy. Now, six years later, I find myself staggering along with the same cozy. Sure it’s improved, I can see that, but I want it done. I want to stop thinking about it and I can’t. It preys on my mind constantly.

What should I do about it? Finish it, you say? I don’t have time to finish it.

This lack of time is problematic to say the least. What I need is an unlimited amount of time. Away from home and distractions. With meals brought on a tray. Well, maybe I’ll need to get the food myself, but there will be a tray, I’m sure.

The perfect solution appeared to me in a stressed out moment. I needed good quality jail time. Not prison, not anything longer than six months, just a half year stint in a upscale jail.

When I presented my idea to the group they thought I was surely jesting. Our resident ex-cop was aghast. I wanted to know what crime I could commit that would land me in swanksville for half a year. I knew how jails operated. Three square meals a day, semi-private room, exercise time, and privileges for good behavior.

A class B misdemeanor was what I wanted. It’s less than a felony, and quite possibly after my book was done I could get a good lawyer to have my misdemeanor expunged. Maybe I could pay off said lawyer with my royalties. Hmmm.

A class B could be shoplifting, or possibly drunk driving, among other things. These two are the most popular. Jean Valjean got a heck of a lot longer sentence for nicking some bread for his starving sister and her child, but we live in a more enlightened age. Six months, tops.

Or, if I were to say the F word in court, especially if I directed it at the judge, I could get six months. I’d have to be in court for something already, and this plus that would make my time add up to possibly longer than I’d intended.

The closest I ever got to jail was long before I began writing. More recently I rolled through two stop signs and was pulled over by a distinguished gent with a badge. I tried to bribe him with some freshly baked baklava. He could smell it as soon as I’d rolled down the window, but he was having none of it. He let me off with a warning. A verbal warning, not even one in writing that I could contest in court and perhaps have the opportunity of using the F word.

Possibly a simpler solution to my problem is simply to let writing take over my life. Imprison myself at home, handcuff myself to the desk, hypnotize myself into foregoing snack and meal breaks until the cozy is done.

Ah, then revision. There’s the rub.

SO, I SIGNED UP FOR DUOTROPE

I went for the free introductory week.

It will take me a full week, and probably more, to navigate everything they offer the writer who wants someone else to do her research. There’s nothing wrong with that. I feel totally inadequate to the task of finding someone, anyone out there, who might be interested in something I wrote. That’s what Duotrope does, and they say they do it best.

Does that include miracles?

Yeah, right.

When I cleaned off my desk several weeks ago I found bits and pieces of stories never finished, short, short stories, and other amazing things I’d forgotten I’d written. Some were, to me, good. Some I remembered as better than they appeared now in the light of many day’s (year’s) passage. Some were ‘gag’ me material. Gah.

Will Duotrope find homes for these treasures and for the ones I’ve been steadily working on for lo these many years?

Meaning a miracle?

Duotrope will not only do the search for an agent or publisher for my unique story, they will keep track of what I’ve sent out, when I’ve sent it, and how long it should be before I hear back from the recipient. They will refine the search for the perfect spot for my story to the smallest number possible, almost guaranteeing success.

But do they do miracles?

Is a miracle the same as pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Definitely not. The rabbit was hidden in the hat already. A miracle is when there’s no rabbit, but something manages to get pulled off anyway.

I have to write something way better than a ‘gag’ me story. I have to pull all the bits and pieces of a story into one homogenous whole. And I have to take a good story and make it the best I can.

Is that the miracle?

No, unfortunately. It’s called pulling a rabbit out of a hat.