Reading or Writing?

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice, or because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God . . ."
John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany

I've given up a few things to make time for novel writing, and one of them is reading books. I read the paper every day--much of it while I'm working out on the treadmill at the Y--and I have some periodicals I try to keep up with, but my book reading has diminished.

I picked A Prayer for Owen Meany from my too-full, too-neglected book shelf when I headed to Tim and Emily's last week to do my research. A week later, I'm all of 124 pages in to it--barely a dent. If I weren't writing a book, I'd be reading this one feverishly. It's got a sense of place and time that captures the reader, and Irving has created characters so precise and tangible they have come to life inside my head. That I can't sit down for a couple of hours and read, well, it's so sad.

Reading the work of great writers is inspiring. I read words like those at the top of this post and I invariably come away with an idea or a rhythm or an inspiration that will help me in my writing. Of course, if I read more, there's less time to write, and I need every minute of my writing time, even if sometimes I lack the inspiration to write another word.

So the question here is, which do I need most: Inspiration or discipline?

Catch 22, anyone?

A Place for a Book to Call Home

The morel mushrooms were in hiding, but the weather was beautiful and the small town characters were afoot, so it was a great trip! I interviewed sheriffs from two counties and a small town mayor, visited with an Amish woman newly transplanted and homesick for her family in Minnesota, and found out that a tree can not only be dead, it can be "too dead." (This distinction is going to make it into the book, so I'll save the explanation for now.)

I've visited this place many times, and now it's crept into my book. It's always been a place of bits and pieces, almost all of them full of beauty, spread out over miles of land loved by hunters and farmers and people who are small town born and bred. While it's not undiscovered, it is out of the way enough, isolated enough, and underpopulated enough to slip under the radar.

I want the setting to be a character in the book, so I came to visit in hopes of pulling all those bits and pieces together and making it whole . . . solid . . . formidable. I want the setting to be a force, and this place has the chops to pull it off.

I can't wait for you two to meet . . .

Road Trip

Life is a little crazy right now. Work has picked up at my "real" job and so have the demands, I'm preparing a major garden project that involves a daylong activity in May by my extended family, and I've decided a road trip to the place where my book is set is in order.

That means I'm hitting the road to Western Wisconsin tomorrow for a couple days where I've scheduled meetings with the county sheriff, a retired county sheriff, and a small town mayor. My brother Tim and sister-in-law Emily are putting me up, and I'm using Tim's connections to find my way around. He's told me the retired sheriff pulls his gun out and sets it across his lap when the dentist pulls out his drill. Too good to be true? Who knows, but you can probably guess I'm hoping to pick up lots of local color once I'm there.

In the meantime, I want to write about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel winning a Pulitzer, about a classy production of The Sweetest Swing in Baseball by Rebecca Gilman that we saw at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre this past weekend, and about my hopes to come home at the end of my trip with a bag full of morel mushrooms, but there is no time.

So hold that thought . . .

Teachers of Influence

The Journal Sentinel ran a column by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Kathleen Parker (2010 for Commentary) in yesterday's paper in which she talked about an influential high school teacher. As I'm sure is the case for many writers, Parker had an English teacher who helped her recognize her talent.

Maybe it was the era when I was in school, back in the 60s, but I never got lucky and landed an influential English teacher. Don't get me wrong, English was always my best subject and my teachers liked having me in class. I still have a creative writing piece tucked away somewhere, graded "A+++++", that I wrote for freshman English. But nobody took me aside and said, "This is your destiny!" even though being a writer was all I really wanted to be from the time I was 10.

I went to college planning on being a writer, only to have a terrible experience in my first creative writing course. The "B" I got in that class was as clear a message as any that I wasn't writer material.

It wasn't until a few years after I graduated that I even thought about writing again. My husband and I attended a school in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and I took a writing course for fun. The teacher was an aged, retired editor from True Confessions magazine and she loved, loved, loved everything I wrote. She told me I would be a published writer someday.

I didn't take to writing professionally until I was in my 30s, and even then I was always a bit of a dabbler. I wonder after reading Kathleen Parker's column if I might not have bloomed earlier and with more commitment if I'd only had a high school teacher of influence.

Of Meteors and Weekends . . .

Son Ben saw the big meteor that came down over Wisconsin Wednesday night. He has a first floor apartment with a big glass door that leads to a patio off his bedroom. He was lying in bed and looking out that glass door when he saw it. He said it was a thrill. Lucky kid . . .

A meteor would be good right about now, for entertainment and inspiration. Even though I cranked out 400 words yesterday, it felt like a slow slog. Today I'm talking my weekly walk with my friend Linda. She's interesting and kind and a great listener, so I rarely pass up our Friday morning ramble. Then I'm garden building with nephew Joe; we've scheduled 5 hours of hard labor. You can probably guess I'm already thinking writing will be a challenge today. Then it's the weekend, and you all know how my perception of weekends can impact any semblance of writing discipline I have. (See "Permission Denied" posting from March 25 for details!)

Anyway, I've changed the template, but you probably already noticed that. I guess with this blog program I'm using, I could change it up regularly, no sweat, so let me know what you think. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend and keep your eyes peeled for meteors. A thrill would be a good thing for everyone, don't you think?

Things Big and Little

It was double coupon day at the grocery store and I finished a chapter.

Good day . . .

Influences

My brother, Terry, teased me today, saying he felt sorry for my husband . . . in essence, for being married to a woman who writes about him. He was refering to an article I wrote on weddings for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel(http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/90371284.html) in which Katz was the comic foil.

Obviously, my brother hasn't peeked at It Was a Cold and Stormy Night, where my profile refers to Katz as "high performance" and tosses around risky words like "libido." Terry would really hate that kind of attention. Heck, if he finds out he got mentioned in my blog, it might make him a little crazy. In the unlikely case that this happens, I'm sorry!

Writers are a product of life's experiences and the people who touch them, and Katz has brought out the funny in me. I know for a fact that without him, I'd be lost in many ways. And I know beyond a fact that without him feeding my creative juices, my writing might still be good but it wouldn't be good enough.

Changes Afoot?

Katz's cousin Judy in California was nice enough to ask Joel, a relative and a writer, to take a look at It Was a Cold and Stormy Night and give me some of that feedback I've been asking for. He was kind enough to oblige.

Joel liked the easy flow of my writing and found me to be "readable." Hurray!

He acknowledged that he, too, knows "the pleasure of rewriting and playing around with words." To avoid getting stuck he suggested "setting a time limit on the daily rewrite and giving the blank page on the screen equal time." And he told Judy to tell me, "No dessert or new outfits unless she turns out two pages daily for a month." I hate to shop these days so no new outfits won't be a problem, but no dessert! Yikes!

Finally, Joel had a couple of suggestions for my blog, and I'd like to see what everyone else thinks. Should I:

-Eighty-six the white print on the black background because it's hard to read.

-Avoid blogging every day to take the pressure off my followers.(I haven't been every-day-faithful for awhile, so this may be a moot point.)

-Change things up a bit so the blog isn't always about "me, me, me." (I'm worried about this one. What do bloggers write about if they don't write about themselves? I'm going to need help, ideas, and direction to pull this off!)

Joel, thanks for inspecting my blog so carefully. As for the rest of you, tell me what you think of Joel's suggestions. With the right encouragement, I'm willing to give them a try, so keep that feedback coming.

The End of Lonely Man

Great day! I hit the computer early, the juices were flowing and Tom is now less of a lonely man. His deputy, who up until now was nothing but a name until chapter three, is now riding along with Tom on page 2 of the book. This rearrangement is creating the energy I was looking for, and, what a change! Instead of lots of reflection, we're dealing with snappy repartee and things are lively. Hurray!

My only concern is the amount of rewriting I'm doing. For weeks now I've been reworking the first three chapters when I was really hoping to be plowing into chapters four and five.

Still, I'm looking forward to writing tomorrow, and that feels good!

Taking It To Another Level

I've decided Tom has got to stop being "lonely man." As the protagonist, the story rests on his shoulder, but right now I've got him working alone. This means there's a lot of reflecting and observing going on. Now when I'm writing, this is something I'm pretty good at; it's one of my comfort zones. That makes it hard to shake free and move on to some serious action. Still, I'm thinking now is the time to get over the hump.

Maybe readers won't mind getting inside Tom's head, but I think if what I've written were in the hands of an agent/editor/publisher they'd be asking me (and Tom!) to be less cerebral.

Tomorrow, I'll give it a try.

Life interferes . . .

I've fallen behind, and so early in the process. Oh my! Kids home for the holiday weekend, family gatherings, nice (gardening) weather, work (my "real" job, as I call it) is picking up--these are all my excuses. Both my blogging and book writing have been neglected, and the rest of the week doesn't look good. Despite that, I'm going to try and turn it up a notch.

I do see that this year-long writing project is going to be a constant time management challenge, and I'm going to have to stay vigilant. That's why I called It's a Cold and Stormy Night an accountability blog: This is a tool I'm going to use to keep me on track, so hold me accountable. Set the bar high, give me feedback, encouragement, criticism, talk to me!

I am hearing from people that they are having a hard time figuring out how to comment. Being challenged by technology, I'm not sure I can help. While I appreciate the ease of setting up a blog through the g-mail program I used, having it linked to g-mail seems to create some barriers. Should I start over using another program? I dread the thought, but maybe it would pay off by proving easier to access.

Or maybe not . . .

I tried to answer Lynne's comment yesterday and couldn't get it to "stick." I'll try again tonight. In the meantime, for those of you willing to take the time to figure out this comment business, thanks! With friends and followers like you, I know I will be able to recover when I get frustrated, lost, when life interferes or when I fall behind. What more could a girl ask for?