This Thing I Do

I was asked by Jeannine at Distilled from the Stars if I would be willing to answer some questions about my creative process as part of a virtual blog tour. Uh . . . do I want to write a bit about my favorite thing ever? Why yes, I do! So here are my answers to the four questions posed:

What am I working on?

I’m about ninety percent done with the first draft of a novel. It’s about Dex Flowers, a forty-two-year-old man who is out on parole after serving fifteen years for murdering his wife. He’s trying to live clean and straight, making amends for his past, and is determined to stay away from the things that plagued his life before prison—cocaine, whiskey, and women. But he’s haunted by memories of his dead wife and is being stalked and threatened by her father who has a history of drug abuse and violence. And . . . other stuff happens—I struggle to put into words what my books are about while I’m still writing them. It’s a little too left-brained for me right now.

This is something that I wanted to write about since I first had the notion that I needed to write a novel to avoid insanity, but because it’s (oh-so-loosely) based on something that happened “for real” in my life, I couldn’t figure out the right way to approach it without it seeming trite or maudlin. Once I figured out whose story I wanted to tell, the book opened up to me and wrote itself on my brain. I became impassioned by the realization that this story would never get told, there was no way anyone would ever tell it . . . unless it was me.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I would say that the main difference in this work is in who is telling this story. My heart did not want to let my main character tell this story, it rebelled against the idea, but my gut insisted on it and ultimately won. The heart is a fickle beast anyway. The main character in this novel should be an unsympathetic character. We should hate him immediately on page one. But instead, the reader is rooting for him and forgiving him and seeing bits of themselves in him.

Why do I write/create what I do?

Once upon a time, I was a weird kid who lived in my head. I was really comfortable there and things made sense. Now, I’m a weird adult who still enjoys quiet time alone with my thoughts. Writing is a way to get my head out there into the world. I hate having to think of things to say to actual people face-to-face, that’s really stressful for me. But with writing, I can think about it, change it, sleep on it, change it again, until it’s perfect (or good enough). That’s a special kind of freedom.

I wanted this novel to be about people. Not big, showy people, but everyday people grinding out their lives day after day. The things that interest me are not necessarily the things that interest a lot of folks. I’m fascinated by the ordinary, the base, the other side of the tracks. I drive slowly through the wrong parts of town, trying to soak it in. It seems to have such a different depth than my sterile, easy life. What do I even know about suffering, heartache? I want to write about those people. I almost want to pay tribute to them.

How does my creative process work?

Oh, wow, it’s not organized in the least.

Ideas come from everywhere. Someone will tell me about something that happened to them and I’ll use it, or someone will behave very badly and I’ll use it (I love this! I wish people behaved badly more often around me!), or I’ll have a dream and I’ll use it. I have hundreds of scraps of paper floating around town with lame ideas on them.

A lot of my plotting comes to me while I’m running or cycling, when my brain gets to that place where it is in total misery and shuts down, then I’ll figure out how to make a scene work and take the shortcut home across muddy fields in my shiny running shoes to write it because my fingers will be on fire. Exercise is a kind of meditation without the candles and trippy music.

And speaking of music, it is the backbone of my creative process. I get so much inspiration from music. It helps me with the feel of the novel more than anything, setting the tone. I couldn’t write without music. I’ll spend the morning listening to the same five songs over and over and over, and then crank out twenty pages. [Shout out to The Killers!]

I write everywhere: in my car while waiting for my kids to get done with sports, at my kitchen counter while waiting for coffee to finish brewing, on my couch, on the floor, in my bed, but never at a desk. I had to kill a character a few weeks ago and got up in the middle of the night after a thunderstorm and wrote it in the darkness of my living room . . . then passed out cold on the couch. It was disturbing and magical—the best of what writing should be.

I don’t know.

It works how it works.

Sometimes I read poetry.

That helps.

Check out next week’s participant!

Emily P. DeLoach is an Indie author and blogger living in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Besides her first loves, reading and writing, she also enjoys making crafts with her children, traveling, going to the beach, and consuming massive quantities of coffee and oranges. Her first novel, Escaping the Mirror, was published in January 2014 and is available on Amazon. She can be found at www.emilypdeloach.com

My newest story found a home. Aww, look how happy my story is curled up by the fire.

Making Memories

And this Christmas came and went too fast just like last year and the year before that and the year before that. As we wrap up the fragile ornaments in the Sunday paper and I find a safe place for my most prized possession—a tiny frayed and faded stocking with my name on it, a plastic baby Jesus inside, that a nurse put on my bassinet two days after I was born, on my first Christmas—I find myself wishing we had done so much more. All those movies we neglected to watch and songs we didn’t listen to. We forgot to go ice skating. And did we ever even make hot chocolate with the kids? Read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas? Making memories can be exhausting. Then when it’s all put away in plastic boxes and stored in the attic, I find him--a stowaway Santa in a snow globe--hiding under a pile of discarded packaging on the desk. And, like every year, I don’t know what to do with him. It’s too exhausting to pull out the ladder, haul it upstairs, and climb back up to the attic for one little Santa, but if I store him somewhere else, I will forget about him next year. I surely can’t leave him out, he doesn’t belong in our life anymore. I shake the snow globe, watch the flakes saunter down and understand somehow that the best memories are not forced, not made, but just happen, like the weekend we went to Virginia Beach for a soccer tournament and it was so wet and cold and muddy and we had to go to the Laundromat to wash our clothes and it was all so very . . . nice . . . in the warm Laundromat, the smells of soap and fabric softener in the air, a football game on the TV, my family safe and dry around me. One of those moments I will never forget but that I can’t tell anyone about because they probably wouldn’t understand. When we left, Husband and I looked at each other and both said hesitantly, “That was fun,” aware of how odd it sounded. I put the Santa on a shelf in the garage. I’ll find him when we move.

Marking Time

This whole scene is what the best moments of my life are—me in the kitchen taking a break from cleaning an extraordinary mess from a particularly good supper, the kids in the living room being too wild (any moment now, I’ll have to shut down my computer and break up a fight), the clock three hours from the new year and I have still not showered from my morning at the gym and I know that out there beyond my front door are all sorts in Sunday best, music pumping, toasting and exuberant, who will they kiss, and I know who I will kiss, the man with the Xbox controller, battling our son in a game, and he is smooth-shaven today though yesterday he was gruff, there will be no rasp against my cheek this year, no prickling on my bottom lip, and maybe I won’t kiss him at midnight after all, maybe I’ll fall asleep on the couch like last year and he will tap my leg, nudge my arm, “the ball’s dropping,” and I will raise my head with sleepy eyes and yawn and say in my choked morning voice, “Happy New Year,” and go back to sleep and tomorrow the gym will be too crowded and everyone else will be walking zombie-like through the stores, another hangover behind their eyes, and it will be another day and another year, another way to drop a pin, set a marker, tell that time is indeed passing me by.

Sunrise in Winter

The dark-skinned lady in her fur-trimmed coat sits on the tartan blanket a few feet from me, her eyes turned towards the sea. And my butt is numb from the cold sand dune I chose as my seat. Sea oats stab at the backs of my legs. How long should I stay? Then the sky puts on a spectacle—the darkness of evening giving itself over to the color of dawn. A gift. A new day. An awakening. I watch until my eyes burn. Stay as long as I like. And the lady walks towards the sea, turns her shoulders north and then south. And I long to know her story. A lone jogger plods his way across the beach, barefoot in the winter sand. And my children are warm in their beds at the house while my fingers are numb from typing in the chill of morning. A heavy-set woman in jean shorts and crocs removes her shoes and wades in the sea up to her ankles and then walks away—that is all. And the dark-skinned lady turns towards me and her ears sparkle with jewels and her neck is wrapped in gold. And I long to know her story. The jogger returns and chats with her and I watch from my writer’s perch on the freezing sand and stretch my ears for their words. The wind carries their conversation and drops it in my lap—the cadence is dull, small talk, tinny laughter and I feel the pit of disappointment, a sticky ball in my stomach. And I will walk all the way to the rock jetty on the south end of the island to discover something. But then, when I find the jetty, it has nearly disappeared, covered by sand, shards of stone sticking out. The beach has changed since I last was here. A photographer sets and snaps photos of seabirds with the ocean as his backdrop and I envy his simple way of capturing the human existence—point and click. And I walk back, not sure if I’m full or empty again.

Flash fiction piece I wrote only partly based on my threat to leave Husband if he didn't rid our house of all four-legged critters who thought they had the right to live in my bedroom merely because they possessed the quality of teeth able to knaw through sheetrock. Enjoy! http://thickjam.com/no-179

Runs with Pen

I completed my first half-marathon this past weekend. It was odd for me, an odd goal, born purely out of my desire to button my pants and maybe wear a bathing suit this summer. But, I suppose that people have accomplished more for lesser reasons than those. While I was training for it, I had a difficult time balancing my writing life with my running life. The running seemed so all-consuming, so opposing the creative life, that my brain couldn't put a sentence together in a logical order. But during the half-marathon, something occurred to me—running and writing are really not that different. You need the same sort of things to accomplish both of them, like:

Inspiration. My inspiration for running and writing come from vastly different sources, but are essential, nonetheless. For running, I'm inspired by people (the very few) who don't do it as well as I do and for writing I'm inspired by the people who do it way better than I could ever dream of doing it. Usain Bolt (or Husband) are not inspiring at all to me when it comes to running. In fact, they frighten me a little and make me not even want to try. But the girl who just started out, who is struggling, but still lacing up her shoes everyday and putting one foot in front of another until she gets her miles in—she keeps me moving. With writing, I look to the writers that I admire and try to dissect what they do. Where do they use humor? How do they weave backstory in so seamlessly? When is it okay to indulge your desire to describe every detail and when do you need to add action? The writers who can do all this, and do it well, are the ones who inspire me.

Comparison will steal your joy. I have to recite this mantra to myself often when writing and running. If I compare myself with Husband who literally runs twice as fast as I do then I'm going to get discouraged and give up, but if I remember that the only person I have to worry about letting down is myself, then it's easier to push through. In writing, it's so tempting to let jealousy take over, but I'm on my journey and it's not going to look like anyone else's journey and that's okay.

Sometimes you suck. Sucking is okay as long as you don't let it eat your brain. You have to use it as a humbling experience instead of an excuse to quit. Let yourself screw up big, but don't quit. We all suck sometimes. Deal with it. At least you tried. Get up the next day and try again.

You need a place. Find your place where you feel comfortable. Husband likes to run down busy roads, I guess so that everyone can see how awesome he is. I like to run down blind alleys and cul-de-sacs, hoping that no one is peeking out of their windows to see my pitiful form lurching down the road. I bought a desk this year that I put in the living room and sat my laptop upon, excited to "write at a desk" like a "real writer." I'm sitting in my bed right now writing this blog post. Daughter uses the desk way more than I. Find your own place that works for you.

You need people. Running and writing are both solitary pursuits. You can do them on your own, but you won't achieve the same things you can achieve when you share them with other people. I have never gone on a run with another person and probably won't ever do it, but I do talk about it with other runners and share my milestones so that I can feel some sense of camaraderie and a feeling that I'm not in it alone. I wrote in isolation for many years and only started to see a significant improvement in my writing when I joined a critique group and opened myself up to the judgments of others. People are essential.

So, go write a book or run a marathon. They're kind of the same.

Yay! My first short story is unleashed on the world, courtesy of Brawler Lit! I hope you were ready world. Sorry about the worty dirdy! Clever and brutal? All at the same time?

How to Write by Not Writing

Okay, so, I'm working on a new novel at the moment because my previous three were such blockbuster hits and the world can't get enough of me. You asked for a fourth novel world (actually, just my mom) and now you're going to get it.

The problem is . . . I don't especially want to write it. I just want it to be written. I also don't want to cook supper tonight. I just want it to be cooked. And in case you're wondering, no, I don't want to go to Pilates tomorrow. I just want to magically have sculpted arms and a flat belly.

Alas, life is not that simple.

I know what you're thinking—all that, "the joy is in the doing," crap and "peace can be found in simple things." I maybe could get behind that, but it's graduation season and I am over motivational speeches for a while. Check me in August and see how I feel. Right now, if I read another post on Facebook that summarizes Oh the Places You Will Go, I'm going to vomit.

So tonight, First Son was at soccer tryouts with Husband, and Second Son and Daughter were immersed in TV (don't worry, it was educational!), so I thought I would tackle the novel that doesn't want to be written.

I wrote a few paragraphs of my characters walking around, scratching their butts, and complaining about the weather just because I felt like I needed to do SOMETHING with these people I've created. I've written about a hundred pages and I was starting to feel like I left them all hanging off a cliff with the promise that I would come back at a later date and rescue SOME of them, not sure who just yet.

I felt sick with myself and my boring pages and I slammed the laptop shut (don't tell Husband) and decided that I was done writing. Not only was I done writing this novel, but I was done writing in general. Hopefully my kids won't need any more sick notes for school, because I'm not going to write them! They will have to have unexcused absences, because I HATE writing and I'm never, ever writing another word for as long as I live!

I go through this from time to time. I know, it's disgusting. Usually, what gets me out of it is physical activity of some sort, but unfortunately, I decided last week that I was done with running. Not only was I done with running for exercise, but I was done with running in general. In fact, if I am ever chased by a big man with a knife, he's going to have no problem catching me because I HATE running and I'm never, ever running for as long as I live!

So, I went into the living room and cuddled with Second Son who tries to pretend to be a big tough seven-year-old, but is really a big soft teddy bear who loves his Mommy. I held him and watched Sesame Street, breathing in, breathing out, doing one of the things that I was truly meant to do in this life—love my children. Who cared if I was stuck on a scene? Who cared if every word I typed was dull? What did that matter? It was words, pixels, maybe ten people would read it if I was lucky. Second Son would touch countless lives (Hopefully not with his fists—he can be a rowdy little thing).

An image came to my mind unbidden—two of my characters, hanging on so tight to that cliff where I left them, in a tender moment. The scene presented itself fully formed, dialogue and punctuation already in place. I actually cried as I wrote it like Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone.

Peace can be found in simple things. Huh.

How I Write

All these bestselling authors out there are selling even more books about how they went about writing those other books. To me this is a little like an artist painting a picture of himself painting a picture. But . . . if it's good enough for bestselling authors, than it's good enough for an unpublished author of three completed novels and about a dozen novels with the first chapter written. Yeah, me.

There are two ways that I write.

Way number one—Husband/Children will be at work/at school/away for the weekend/sleeping/playing at the neighbor's house/all of the above and I will think to myself: I should take advantage of such a divine opportunity and write something. Yes! I will write undisturbed!

I turn on my computer.

Wow, this computer is filthy, I need to get some of those computer wipey things. What the heck have I spilled on here? I think it's milk. I shouldn't eat cereal in front of the computer anymore. Ooh, cereal, I'm hungry. I'm going to have a bowl of cereal.

I eat cereal.

Hum, there was something I was going to do . . . yes! . . . I was going to write computer wipey thingy on my shopping list.

I write computer wipey thingy on my shopping list.

Okay, I should write some since I have free time. Let me open up Microsoft Word. Okay, that's taking FOREVER to open. I'll get on-line real quick. Ooh, look, Keane has a new album out, I should download that.

I download Keane album and listen to it while I do my toes or something.

Ehh, I don't really like this one. I think I'll listen to it again. I still don't like it. Okay, I'll listen to it one more time and then I'm going to write.

I listen to album one more time.

Okay, I kind of like it. Now I'll write. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of time." . . . wait, that sounds familiar. Hmm, let's see . . . what should I write about? Maybe something about a boy who's really a wizard only he doesn't know it and he goes to this secret wizarding school and it can be call Warthogs or something!!! Wait . . . I think that's been done already. Hmm, I'll check Facebook while I'm thinking about what to write.

I check Facebook.

Wow, that girl who sat next to me in study hall in the tenth grade had a ham sandwich for lunch. That's really . . . not interesting.

You get the gist.

Way number two—I will be in the middle of cooking supper/folding laundry/helping kids with homework/cleaning the house/all of the above when a few sentences of inspiration will hit me. I run to my computer to turn it on, only to find that the battery is dead. I delve into the laptop bag, unable to find power cord. I race around the house and finally find laptop power cord hanging from ceiling fan with a GI Joe guy attached and only find out later that power cord was the essential element in an elaborate device meant to defeat Cobra.

I plunge the power cord in the wall, repeating the inspiration sentences over and over in my head. I turn the computer on and hop from one foot to other like my kids do when they have to use the bathroom REALLY bad.

The chicken needs to come out of the oven, so I quickly take it out while repeating my inspiration sentences that are being infiltrated by words like, "Mom, watch this," and "he hit me," and "how do you spell Powhatan?" I yell quickly at children that if they just don't speak for five minutes, I will buy them each a pony.

My computer asks me if I want to update my whatevs and I yell at it too. Finally, I get on Microsoft Word and type furiously at a twenty page per minute speed with three children screaming in my ear and me shushing them the whole time. I decide that my main character has no children.

Husband comes home from work and mutters something about how I am always writing. I decide that main character's husband is a deeply understanding man who loves the superfluous doings of his dear wife.

Children try to see how many times they can say, "Mommy, watch this," before I throw something at them. (Not that I ever have, so you don't need to call child protective services just yet.) I decide that my main character lives on a dessert island all by herself, with no hope of rescue. I think I'll title it: A Hundred Years of Solitude . . . Sounds Like a Good Start.

But . . . when main character is without all a sundry distractions, then main character can't do what she most wants to do. It is only with a few essential, sometimes irritating, elements that main character can achieve what she most desires.

Who said that art imitates life anyway?

They’ve Got a Month for Everything

November is upon us which means that NaNoWriMo has begun. For those of you who are not writers who routinely troll the web looking for tips on getting published, NaNoWriMo stands for National November Writer's Month, or something or other. The purpose is to write 50,000 words in the month of November (BTW, 50,000 words is almost never enough for an adult novel, just to let you know) and you "win." Don't ask me what you win. I think it's one of those things that my lazy five-year-old will do. If he wants something, but doesn't want to get up and get it he'll say, "Whoever gets me a blue crayon, wins!" Funny enough, but my two other children will usually run to get the blue crayon. He is wise beyond his years.

I've never done this before because usually with writing I need someone to tell me, "Hollie, STOP WRITING!!!! It's three o'clock in the afternoon and the kids are still in their pajamas and today was a school day, ya know!"

And I'll say, "Lemme just finish this chapter and I'll get them to school."

But lately, I've kind of lost some of my umph. I don't know if it's because we moved recently and I'm still settling and trying to get my reality straight before I delve into fantasy. Maybe I've lost heart because of piling rejections. Maybe the writing thing was just a phase and I've moved on. Whatever, the reason, I miss it.

I miss creating worlds and characters and then being surprised by those very things that I created. I miss writing something and then stepping back and reading it and saying, "Daggone it that's good!" I miss taking humorous/tragic/ordinary things from my life and giving them to someone else to deal with. I miss knowing for a fact that everything is going to work out in the end one way or another.

So I will be a part of this NaNoWriMo thing this year. If anyone wants to sign up, it should be fun. They also have these forums where you can meet up with writers in your area and write together and stuff. I may pass on this. Us writers, we're not the coolest crowd of people. You know those kids in high school who the geeks and nerds rejected? Yeah, that's us.

Sorry if I've hurt any feelings out there, but if this is true about you, then you probably already knew it.

Self-Doubt and Other Things I Wish Had Been Wiped Out in the Flood

I did it. It's done.

I have cut and copied and pasted and edited and deleted and rewritten my novel . . . again. Now, I am ready to send it out into the world again for another round of rejections . . . again. Perhaps it sounds as if I am being a bit negative, but I like to think of it as preemptive self-pity.

Querying a novel causes so much self-doubt to well up inside of me that when I look in the mirror I expect to see a fourteen-year-old girl who is worried that no one will ask her to the dance.

When I come up with an idea for a novel and when I am writing a novel, I feel so good about myself that sometimes I giggle at inappropriate times. I'll read the New York Times bestseller list and picture my name on it. I'll visualize myself sitting at a table at Barnes and Noble asking eager fans, "Who should I make it out to?" I will even go to bookstores and find where my novel will be shelved one fine day (between Sanders and Seth if you want to know).

When I'm editing my novel, a little hole opens up inside of me and some of the good feelings start to drain out. I find myself going red with embarrassment when I see some of the things that I've written. Maybe I'll even bang my head on the kitchen table a few times and mutter, "stupid, stupid." But then I'll fix the book and patch up the hole and tell myself, "Okay, maybe not the bestseller's list, but still a table at Barnes and Noble."

But when the rejections start rolling in, that is when the hole is blasted open and I can't believe that I ever thought that I would ever, ever have a chance at being published and look at all the hours and hours I've spent crafting this novel and no one even wants to read sample pages and don't they know that in the seventh grade my English teacher told me that she would be surprised if I didn't make it as a writer one day and oh, wow I feel so stupid for ever getting my hopes up and I'm never ever going to get my hopes up about anything ever again and I'm never ever going to ever try anything new and oh yeah, I even burned super tonight and I can't do anything right why do I even try to do anything, I am a failure at every single thing in my life, it shouldn't even surprise me anymore!!!!!!

It's true, I think this and more. But . . . at heart I am a cheery person and only sometimes a brooding artist, so I usually bounce back . . . eventually.

With every rejection, it gets harder and harder to keep sending the book out there, because it's one more person who doesn't think it will succeed and if they think it won't succeed and they're the experts, why should I think it will?

Ants. That's the other thing I wish was wiped out in the flood. Ants.

Dancing about Architecture

You know that movie where Angelina Jolie falls in love with Ryan Phillippe when he has blue hair. I would totally google it and tell you the name, but that's a whole thing and I don't really feel like doing it. Anywho, there's this one scene where Ang and Ry (that's what I call them when we're hanging out) are talking about love and Ang says to Ry, "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture." That's sort of how I feel about writing—writing about writing is like dancing about architecture. It's nigh impossible and a little pointless. But I'm going to do it anyway.

For me, writing is . . . not an option. I don't ever say to myself, "Hmmm, maybe if I get time today I'll write," or, like I've heard some writer's do, "I will sit down and write 3,000 words today no matter what!" For me, when I want to write I MUST!!! Resistance is futile. I HAVE to do it. These phrases or images will come to my mind and I literally have to get them out of me or else fear that they will bore a hole in my head and get out that way and then I'll never see them again and I'll have this ugly hole in my head that I'll have to do something about. Though losing the images is a little more frightening then having a hole in my head.

The relief I feel when I do get these words out is indescribable. I am in love with my words. I want to marry my words and have babies with them. I want to snuggle by the fire with them and toast to our future. I want to grow old with them and hold their hand when I'm on my deathbed and whisper in their ear that I will see them on the other side.

I have tons of hobbies and the balance with writing and real life is the hardest one to attain. I don't feel like I'm going to go crazy if I don't finish knitting that blanket. I don't put PBS Kids on for hours a day (I know—bad mom!) so that I can plant mums and arrange them around pumpkins and gourds. I don't sit for so long that my butt goes numb from sewing pajama pants because I was transported to another world. I don't sacrifice anything for my other hobbies because these other hobbies are merely rearranging elements that already exist.

Writing is different. Writing is creating something from nothing. Writing is escaping for a moment. Writing, on a good day, is discovering that you're a little in awe of yourself. Writing is making your dreams come true even if it's only on paper. Who could resist that? Who would want to?

Anyone care to dance about that with me?