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?

A Funny Thing . . .

Sue was my friend and coworker before she became my boss, and I'm grateful that she's found a way to stay my friend since moving up the ladder. She was one of the lucky masses who received a heads up about the launch of It Was a Cold and Stormy Night, and I could see from those magic Follower icons that she was one of the first to check it out.

For the next week there was silence.

When I finally got around to asking what she thought of the blog, she confessed she found it hard to read. Sue reads the articles I write as a freelancer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and she has always enjoyed my work. As she tried to put her finger on why the blog didn't grab her, one comment struck me:

"I'm not used to you being funny," she said.

Believe me, I get this all the time, and for this I blame Katz. It's what happens when you marry the funniest person you've ever known. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but Katz is a savant when it comes to funny; it oozes from his body as naturally as sweat! Verbally, he's a gunslinger--quick and deadly accurate. Add in his non-verbals and he is the complete package.

I've written plays for many years, a couple dozen darn funny plays for the most part, and it is not uncommon for people who know us to reference some laugh-inducing dialogue and say, "Katz wrote that part, didn't he?"

So, let me set the record straight: Katz's humour is innate and interactive. If you are in hearing distance, he will make you laugh, usually at your expense. However, he couldn't write a joke if you paid him. (Love you, sweetie!)

I think there were other reasons Sue didn't take to my blog, and I do understand. While I'm hoping for a loyal following, this isn't for everyone. But, for those of you who choose to read my postings and find something to laugh about as you read along, I have one thing to say: You're welcome!

Point of View

Perspective fascinates me. I love conversations with my brothers and sisters whenever we get together, the rehashing of our childhood, the recollections of who we were and what we did or how our parents related to us are often very different--sometimes a lot different! Who's right? Who's wrong? Who knows!

I decided within the last couple of weeks to change the narrative voice in my book, so I'm busy recrafting three chapters of work from third person into first.

How's it going? Slowly. It's much more challenging to do the switchover than I anticipated, and a lot of the difficulty is that change in perspective. Thoughts of a simple change of pronouns--one, two, three, viola!--have been replaced by the agony of rewriting whole portions to reflect a more limited point of view. Still, I've gone from observing my protagonist to being inside his head, and I got to say I'm liking the view. Unfortunately, getting there is like pulling teeth!

I love this quote from Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, vol 3:
"Dying man couldn't make up his mind which place to go to -- both have their advantages, "heaven for climate; hell for company!"

So there you go. It's all about perspective.

Follow, Follow, Follow . . . How To!

When you start a blog, you let all your friends and family know about it, right? Well, right or wrong, that's what I did. After telling people who I love and respect that following me would be a simple commitment, I discover there is a slight trick to posting your comments. Oops!

If you're still interested in checking out my blog from time to time and helping me out with your feedback, here's how to do it:

• Above the Followers icons on the right side at the top of the blog page is a white button that says "Follow". Click on that button and a screen will open with a display of accounts you might already have. Any of these accounts will allow you to interact with my blog. (If you already Twitter, you are in like flint and way ahead of me!)
• If you don't have one of these accounts, you can set up an e-mail account with Google (no need to use it for anything else!).
• On the bottom of the page are the words "Create a new Google Account"! Click on it, follow the easy instructions, and ta-da, you're connected.

I hope some of you will see the need to keep me in line, and believe me, I really appreciate it. So take the plunge and let me know how I'm doing.

Evolution

Here's the scene: Police Chief Tom Wesley (name subject to change) finds his office unlocked one night and his father waiting inside. Tom has just left a violent crime scene and his father is the last person he wants to deal with tonight. There's all that history between them, that power struggle that never gives Tom any peace, that anger. And then there's the question of how he got into his locked office.

That was a week ago. Since then, the person waiting for Tom has morphed from father to embittered former police chief to controlling mayor of the small, rural town where the story is set. Heck, for a micro-second, he was Tom's father and the former police chief!

I'm pretty sure the evolution of this scene is complete and if/when you read this book the mayor will be waiting for Tom to arrive, but you never know.

I started this book with a crime in mind, a good idea of my protagonist, and a setting I felt strongly about.

That was it.

While interesting ideas come to me at unexpected times (taking a shower, lying in bed, on the treadmill at the Y), much of what I write comes as I (figuratively) put pen to paper. For me, the physical act of writing starts the flow. I could spend time coming up with a whole cast of characters, motives, emotions, unresolved tensions, plot twists, and put it all down in some sort of outline , but that outline would become obsolete as soon as I started writing. That's because every word I put down takes me down a path. Put down a different word and my protagonist could be headed in a whole new direction.

And that's fine with me. It's always an adventure to see what's waiting just around the bend.

Permission denied!

It doesn't take much of a reason for me not to write, but that kind of thinking isn't going to get a book written, now, is it? Here are the days when letting myself off the hook is easiest:

Work Days. Well, this one is a no-brainer. Who wants to spend a couple of hours looking at a computer screen when you've already put in a considerable part of the day doing just that?

Cleaning Days. These don't occur with enough frequency around my house to be quick and painless , so if I have scheduled a date with the vacuum cleaner, dust rag, and mop, my computer most likely sits idle.

Gardening Days are both all-absorbing and exhausting. Enough said.

Days When the Party Is At Our House are too chock full of shopping, cooking, and cleaning (see Cleaning Days, above) to make room for creative thinking and word processing.

Ditto for The Day Before the Party.

And what would a Holiday be if you had to work? Well, it wouldn't be a holiday, would it? Unfortunately, this reasoning usually comes into play on Weekends, too.

I'd like to tell you that from now on it will be "Permission denied" when I ask if I can have the day off, but I don't have that kind of faith in myself. So how do I find the discipline to recapture many of these lost days? You tell me . . .