More Useless Ideas

I made an offhand comment last month that I’d list a few methods for curing writer’s block that don’t work. I started to have second thoughts when I sat down to do that. Why would I write about things that aren’t helpful? That sounds very… not helpful.

Then I remembered that quote about not failing 100 times but finding 100 ways not to do something. Maybe my list can shorten the number of times someone else doesn’t fail.

1) I already covered freewriting.

2) Trying to write in a new environment has been suggested. Think about this for a minute. This advice basically says, if you’re having trouble concentrating on your project, go look for distractions. If your familiar quiet room isn’t working for you, try to write at a restaurant where people will be banging and chattering in the kitchen, or at a public park where strangers will think the fact that you’re staring at a notebook means you’d like to talk about the weather. That’s wonderful for concentration.

3) I’ve seen more than one list of ideas that includes drinking coffee. There are two types of people in the world: those who don’t drink coffee and those who already drink too much. More coffee is unlikely to make a difference for the latter and sounds like a hassle to the former, who don’t have it in the house and probably don’t like it anyway. Unless you want to write authentically about following bad advice, skip the coffee solution.

4) Some people say writing prompts are a good idea. I don’t completely disagree. These can be useful in a general sense. Trying to write about different settings, emotions and actions can help stretch and strengthen the writing muscles. But it doesn’t help when a specific part of your story isn’t working. You can think of ten different ways someone might react to a bad Christmas present, and none of them will get your spaceship off the ground.

5) One of my favorite pieces of advice is to try to think out loud. This goes back to the coffee thing where there are only two types of people. There are normal people, and there are people who don’t need this suggestion. Anyone who hasn’t figured out that talking to yourself is a great way to accomplish many tasks, including sorting out the dialog or direction of a story, is unlikely to be convinced by some random person putting it on a list.

I guess this random person probably shouldn’t be making lists either. I’ll go back to talking to myself. I mean, I’ll go back to writing a story.

The Best Cure

This month I’m going to offer amazing and totally serious advice for aspiring writers who might be facing the dreaded blank page.  Draw on the wall.  This might turn out to be metaphorical depending on whether or not you have any drawing talent and who owns your wall. 

Let me back up to explain.  I’ve been doing this writing thing long enough that I’ve had to break through a lot of blocks.  I’ve read a fair amount of advice, and I know what works and what doesn’t.  The most important place to start on this topic is to be clear that there are two very distinct types of writer’s block.  Type 1 is I love writing and I’m trying to create a story I’m excited about and I just don’t know what’s going to happen right here.  And then type 2 is I have to write a paper for school on this subject I don’t care about or I’m trying to write a memo to the boss where I call him an idiot without calling him an idiot.  I’m only an expert on type 1.

At the top of the list of things that don’t work is freewriting.  This is a “technique” where you just write without caring if it’s good or even makes sense.  This advice makes no sense.  If I could write something, I wouldn’t be stuck.  I already expect to go back and improve my story.  That’s called editing.  Maybe this advice is only meant for those poor type 2 people.

I’ll go over some of the other bad advice next month so I can move on to what does work.  Take a break from writing to do something fun.  But not just anything fun, it has to be something you do poorly.  I decided to paint a picture on my wall.  Now the problem I’m struggling with isn’t that my main character got roasted and has no comeback.  The new problem is that my drawing of a boat looks like a banana with a piece of toast stuck in it.  That first problem suddenly seems easier to fix.  When I’m trying to puzzle out how to paint a white dove on a white wall, I’m also daydreaming about where my characters are going to go on a first date.  The more times I erase something on the wall, the more confident I am that my book will be much better, and I can’t wait to get back to writing it.

I promise this is good advice for everyone.  Even if it doesn’t resolve your immediate block, you still get to do something fun.  Plus, it will almost certainly prove useful in a future project where you can write realistically about a character dropping an open can of paint down the stairs. 

Permission to Keep Writing Whatever I Want

I thought I had a great plan for writing my blog post this month.  I had scheduled several hours of sitting in a hospital waiting room.  (No worries, everything went smoothly.)  It seemed as though being trapped in a quiet room with nothing else to do would be the perfect place to knock out a few thoughts on writing.

Somewhere, someone who has spent time in a hospital waiting room is already laughing at my plan.

What was the problem?  It was only mostly quiet.  If the waiting room had been crowded, I could have easily tuned out the hum of overlapping voices.  I only heard one voice at a time though.  It wasn’t the same voice, only the same type of voice, the kind that doesn’t care if everyone around it hears every word. 

I have the type of brain that starts spinning on whatever input it’s forced to receive, even when it’s supposed to be ignoring the intermittent loud voices to write about writing.  I wasn’t listening when one woman told another about her visit to a shop run by Mennonites.  I still heard her friend ask, “What’s a Mennonite?”  My brain took the time to wonder how this second woman got to be 70 or so without ever hearing of Mennonites.  My brain kept spinning as the first woman tried to explain that they are sort of like “those other people.  It starts with an A.”  The second woman immediately guessed, “Agricultural People?”

I was still trying to write about writing, but my brain completely stalled out at that point.  It thought that guess was super strange.  It also worried that if someone nearby could read my thoughts, would he be wondering how I got to be 70 or so without ever hearing of Agricultural People?  I know I’m still more than two decades from turning 70.  My brain knows I’ve been offered a senior discount in my 40s too often to count and couldn’t rule out the possibility I was way off on my guess of the other woman’s age.  It was a little mean of my brain to remind me of that.

I tried to focus on something about writing.

Another female voice loudly proclaimed that she’d never forget the best pizza she’d ever had.  She said it was covered in a pile of cheese, which she’d never cared for much.  This confused my brain for a couple of obvious reasons.  The woman’s friend, for some unfathomable reason, skipped the comment about liking something covered in something she didn’t like and only wanted to know about the crust.  She asked if it was crispy or soft in the middle.  Was it thick or thin?  Could you fold it?  The first woman couldn’t seem to remember anything about the crust.  My brain was still spinning back to the start of the conversation I was trying not to hear when a phone rang.

It was a cell but with a very old-fashioned ring.  This was fortunate.  If it had sounded like anything else, I might have thought it was the fire alarm.  I jumped so bad I momentarily levitated.  When the old dude casually pulled it from his pocket on the third ring like it wasn’t the most jarring thing he’d heard in days, I suspected he was hard of hearing.  I was therefore not surprised when he answered the phone by yelling into it.  I was surprised when the first words out of his mouth were, “I’m doing pretty good.  I went to a funeral yesterday.”  My brain fought hard not to laugh at something that wasn’t remotely funny.  Maybe I could have thought about writing if he had simply paused long enough to take a breath between those two sentences. 

I didn’t get to write anything in all the hours I spent in the waiting room.  But I did leave with assurance that real people will always be weirder than anyone I put in my books.  Especially that one who refers to her brain as though it’s a separate entity. 

The Problem with Interesting

Dirt is super frustrating. And that is not a sentence I ever expected to write.

If I think about it, I can come up with times I’ve been sort of annoyed with dirt. It refuses to grow anything I plant and insists on growing stuff no one would ever want in a yard. It gets tracked into places it isn’t welcome and stuck in crevices that are hard to clean. I never thought to blame the dirt for those things. And in all fairness, it might not have been the dirt’s fault when that cabbage wouldn’t grow after I hit it with a lawn mower.

This time, however, I’m certain the dirt is not cooperating. I’m trying to make a cover for the new Wisherton book. The theme is dirt. Not really, but they all have dirt as the background because I decided on dirt as a background for book 1, and now that’s the background for all of them.

The front cover didn’t take long to come together. Then – what should have been the easy part – I only needed to spread some plain dirt on the back to go under the blurb. That’s when the dirt got mad at me or something. All it needed to do was fade into the background and roughly match the dirt on the front. I had no idea dirt could be so colorful. This is partly because I’ve given dirt very little thought (Is that why it’s mad at me?) and partly because I’ve never used the word colorful to describe eight million shades of brown. None of those shades match the front.

As far as fading into the background, when you look closely at a spot of dirt, there’s some ridiculously eye-catching shapes. In this patch of dirt, we have a few grains that are three times the size of the others. In this other patch of dirt, we have a clover. We have one clover that managed to grow all by itself in the middle of dirt I didn’t inspect enough before taking a picture. I didn’t know I needed to inspect it. And since when do rocks photobomb? All my dirt is entirely too interesting for background. That’s why I’m mad at it, too.

This probably won't be the last time.

 Welcome to another episode of conversations with myself.

 

Q. How’s the next project coming?

A. Well… I’m sure I’ll have some direction soon.

Q. Direction?  Are you telling me you haven’t started yet?

A. Of course I’ve started.  I’m always working on something.  It’s just too soon to talk about it.

Q. I don’t know what you mean.  You can talk about your plans so far.

A. What if my plans involve only vague ideas?

Q. That’s still interesting, and it still sounds like you haven’t started yet.

A. Maybe if I didn’t have to answer all these questions, I’d –

Q. No excuses.  It’s time for you to be an open book.  <hee hee>

A. Why is that funny?

Q. Because you’re an author.  You want people to open your books, and I’m asking you to be one.  Figuratively.  That’s… kind of funny.

A. Is it figuratively funny?

Q. That’s not a thing.

A. Are you sure?

Q. So… about that book you haven’t started…

A. The one I’m not talking about?

Q. Yeah.  Why aren’t you talking about it?

A. I don’t have anything interesting to say yet.  I have lots of ideas on what I want to write, and I haven’t decided which ones I’ll use.

Q. I think you just admitted you haven’t started yet.

A. Every book starts with an idea.

Q. But you haven’t started writing the book yet.

A. I’ve written down some ideas.

Q. Why does it feel like we’re talking in circles?
A. Wait.  Who’s we?

Q. Me and… uh, all the people who want to know about your next book.

A. My newest book came out only two weeks ago.  Maybe “we” should remind everyone to read Simon’s Mother before we talk about what comes next.

Q. That’s a good point.  It does seem a little soon to bug you about writing something new.

A. I don’t know why we even had this conversation.

Q. Well, someone might have laughed.  It was funny.  Figuratively.

Gathering the Ingredients

I was asked recently how I organize my thoughts to write a whole book. Honestly, at the start of a project, my thoughts don’t seem very organized so I had to think about this. How do I organize my thoughts? Given that I should probably start working on my next book, it’s a very good time to answer this question.

Let’s pretend I want to write some sort of fluffy romance. I’ll need three main ingredients: a man, a woman, and an obstacle.

Who is the man? And I don’t mean his name. If I tried to start with names, I’d never get anything written.  I mean what qualities are going to make him attractive to the woman? Is she interested in someone who feels responsibility towards younger siblings because their dad died when he was a teenager? Or someone who quietly pulls off epic pranks that no one ever realizes he’s behind? I’ll need to think about who else is in his life. Is someone bugging him to “settle down” or just giving him a hard time about that thing he does that irritates everyone? These minor characters are especially important if I’m writing a series.

Who is the woman? I’ll name her later, too. How is she attractive to the man in my story? Is she self-conscious about the fact that her hair sticks up at a hint of static or that she once went bowling and hit pins three lanes to the right? Who in her life is going to keep her humble with these things? Does she have family nearby? If she’s living with her parents, they might be a bigger part of her story. One of her friends should probably be set up to be the woman in the next book, that way she already has a name.

And now what is the obstacle? The story is over on page two if there is no obstacle to the relationship. Sometimes the problem is simply that they just met. Even the most hopeless of romantics knows love doesn’t happen on sight. But variety is good so sometimes the obstacle is fear. Is this a story where neither wants to be the first to admit feelings? Is it a story where someone was hurt in the past or someone else is insanely stubborn? Is there a miscommunication that absolutely cannot involve the words “Now what were you going to tell me?” Maybe a bad first impression is the obstacle. Thank you, Jane Austen.

What if I want to write something other than light romance? I guess I’d have to organize my thoughts around some other ingredients. I hope one of them isn’t dirt.

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

In my newest book (Simon’s Mother), a character (Grandpa Will) shares a story of a time his truck was accidentally stolen. This is loosely based on a true story. I changed a few details to fictionalize it. The real vehicle stolen by mistake did not have a broken gearshift. That was a different true story. Sometimes the most unbelievable things in my books are the things I didn’t make up.

While I don’t currently have plans to use these ideas, I have observed things just in the last two weeks that may one day make it into a work of fiction. There is a house I pass regularly with a truck cab propped up on stilts in the middle of the large front yard. My kids have asked me what in the world is going on there, and I don’t know the answer. But I think I could have fun inventing a reason it’s there.

Another house has a line of cement blocks in the yard. These are not decorative stones – some are even broken – yet they are lined up on their sides like a giant is playing with dominoes. I can picture someone doing this as part of some sort of challenge. I can also picture someone breaking a toe trying to tip them over like dominoes, and then having to explain the limp.

I was driving home on a highway I only travel a few times a year. The name of my exit had been changed so I almost passed it. There are no numbers on this highway, though there is a toll. If I ever need a character to get lost or be late somewhere, this is now a plausible excuse. As is the indignity of paying a higher toll because someone randomly changed the name of a street.

I don’t even have to drive to see potentially funny things. I now know eight different ways teenagers can play with an old curtain rod. If a future character is ever mercilessly mocked for commenting that a tiny piece of trash “looks like fun,” or for saying “good thing that was plastic” right before sweeping up tiny shards of glass, it’s possible I didn’t make that up. And if I ever have a character who uses a horrendous mouse that jumps backwards every time she uses the scroll wheel but she’s so used to it she doesn’t really notice it until someone else sits at her desk for a minute and threatens to hurl the thing across the room… well, sometimes I need to pause to thank God my life has so much joyful inspiration.

What happened to my book cover?

I went on a journey to create the cover for my upcoming book.  There were some frustrating stops along the way because it should have been a short, simple trip.  The first three books in the series gave me a good view of the destination.  Simon’s Mother, though not exactly a Christmas book, primarily takes place in December.  Red and green flowers seemed appropriate.  Simon is a musician and composer.  I thought the black and white keys of a keyboard would have great contrast with those flowers on a red background.  All I needed to do was put it together.  This was my first attempt.

What happened to the black and white keys?

It turns out I was picturing a piano.  A keyboard doesn’t have a clean look.  The one I have has lots of symbols and words and even some scribbling and a prominent brand name I’d have to edit out.  While trying to find a good angle to focus on the keys, it occurred to me that sheet music is also black and white.  Meanwhile, the flowers I used are fading into the background.  Time for another batch of pictures.

What happened to the red flowers? 

I tried to get more green by using flowers with larger leaves.  I guess I forgot I wanted red though.  I ended up with this picture that has not enough red and way too much bland.  And I don’t know why I didn’t flatten that weird curling leaf.  I pulled out the camera again.

What happened to the red background?

I don’t know.  I just changed the one thing that was working because I needed to change something.  At least I finally found some red and green flowers.  Sort of.  Anything green blends in with this new background.  (Why does this sound familiar?)  The red “flowers” are actually plastic beads.  And I got a weird angle on the sheet music so that it doesn’t say music.  It says lines.

By now we all know what happened to my covers.  Me.  I might have been having too much fun creating options.  After a few more attempts I’m not showing anyone, I finally landed on a cover I like.  Does it have piano keys?  Does it have red or green flowers?  Did I have a more brilliant idea?  Find the answers and preorder the kindle version at the same time. 

My Next Book

My next book, which anyone paying attention knows will be the fourth and final book in the More Love in Andauk series, has a complete draft.  It still needs work before it’s ready for release.  Between editing and formatting and all those other necessities, I need to give more serious thought to what I’ll write next.  Who wants to know some of the wonderful and maybe not-so-wonderful ideas I’ve floated so far?

1) Sabbatical.  That’s not a title, it’s the absence of titles.  Since I haven’t felt pulled towards a specific project, I wondered if I should give myself a break to refresh.  But my lack of direction has more to do with too many ideas.  I should work on something.

2) Fairy Tales.  Lots of people have done modern versions of classic tales.  It’s difficult to get a good balance between changing enough to make it unique and changing so much that it’s unrecognizable.  I can’t imagine getting this right for everyone.  And yet… I still like the idea of something that isn’t a full retelling (a possibly futile attempt to sidestep that difficulty) but is instead a modern story with nods to fairy tale elements like Prince Charming, especially Prince Charming.  Some version of him would need to show up in each story.

3) Aging Wisherton.  No, I wouldn’t give it that horrendous name.  I have, however, given a bit of thought to a sequel series with my current characters old enough to have some love stories.  Just because they’re children doesn’t mean I haven’t already picked some characters who could be well-matched in the future.  What kind of romance author would I be if I didn’t look for romance?  I still have a few ideas for that series though, and I have to finish it before I start a sequel.  Maybe another Wisherton book should be my next project.

4) More of the same.  I could invent another small town with a small cast of characters and come up with amusing stories about how some of them fall in love.  I have some experience in this area.  And at least I know it’s something I’d want to read. 

5) Bible stories.  Along the same line as fairy tales, I wouldn’t retell stories I couldn’t possibly improve.  I do like the idea of a Bible theme to a series, that anyone who knows to look might spot shades of Goliath or Esther in the characters or maybe a burning bush.  I see potential for laughs about unexplained fire or weirdly multiplying food. 

6) Something completely different that’s actually more of the same only combined.  I also had an idea about starting a series of fantasy romance.  It wouldn’t be anything paranormal, just a fictional world where I could create customs and freeze technology.  The books could stay evergreen without the bother of researching some historical period.  No, that’s not being lazy.  Inventing a setting takes as much brain power as learning about one.  If I’m honest, I’m not sure world-building is my forte.  I think I’d like the opportunity to grow that skill. 

What will be my next book?  Simon’s Mother.  Remember, I already said I’m finishing More Love in Andauk.  But what will be the next next book?  I don’t know.  I probably need more ideas.

The 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party (Part III)

Start at Part I here.

    Audra’s eyes danced from person to person as they all looked back at her for instructions. Her enthusiasm was contagious, though the fact that it was Christmas Eve likely had everyone predisposed to excitement. “Okay,” she said, “I’m going to work on a bit of setup while Violet assigns the roles.”
    Six pairs of eyes shifted to Violet. She scrambled to come up with a way to randomly assign eight roles. The box of cards was already in her hands so she decided to use that. “Uh… everyone stand in front of a chair. I’ll deal out the cards face up and whoever the dragon lands in front of will be the first Great Lord. Then I’ll do it again for the Lord and so on. The empty chair will represent Audra.”
    Audra couldn’t be expected to stay still while she was engaged in preparations. She’d already replaced one chair with a pillow, presumably where the wretch would have to kneel, and had draped a blanket over the back of another chair. Violet turned up the dragon on the fourth card and congratulated Logan on starting the game in the top seat. For the next assignment, however, she went through most of the deck before the dragon landed in front of Katie.
    As she gathered up the cards to reshuffle, Alison said, “I know Audra put you on the spot to do this, but if she’d told you ahead of time, do you think you could have come up with a method that takes even longer?”
    Violet had been getting self-conscience about the delay, but the joke let her laugh with everyone. “I thought it’d be faster,” she said. “Maybe this time, we’ll just say the first ace I turn up?”
    “No!” Audra answered from where she was wrestling an arm chair in the living room. “It’s not fair if it’s not the same.”
    “It’s still fair if it’s still random,” Ryan said.
    Logan moved to help Audra get the comfortable chair to the Great Lord position at the table.
    “It has to be the same.” Audra was sticking with her logic based on stubbornness rather than actual logic.
    “Fine. Looking for the dragon.” Violet simply dealt the cards as fast as she could while sharing a few more laughs over how long her “simple” method was taking.
    Alison ended up as the wretch, which meant that in addition to the least comfortable position, she’d have to give up her best cards. “I hope you all expect me to fetch a few drinks because that’ll be the only time I get out of this spot.”
    Despite her pessimism, she moved up two spots after the first hand, and Ryan played all his cards first to dethrone Logan as the Great Lord. Violet moved up only one spot to switch with Audra somewhere in the middle. She prepared to apologize to her friend if Ryan filled the role inadequately. The one other time the eight of them had played Grand Seigneur, he’d refused to do any acting.
    This time he immediately demanded that Cameron, the current wretch, deal faster. And then he demanded he do it without accidentally dropping cards on the floor. The whole table was amused by his faux regal air. Violet knew Ryan was being a good sport for his sister mostly to make Violet happy. And that did make her happy. She also enjoyed the fact that she made it through the entire game without sinking to the wretch, even if she never made it to the top seat.
    Audra won what they’d all agreed would be the last round of the night. “Oh, nuts,” she said. “I finally get to be Great Lord, and I don’t actually get to play as Great Lord. Are you sure we can’t do one more round?”
    Alison shook her head. “My sisters’ kids are spending the night. They’re going to get me up at 5 am for presents.”
    “And I need to lead the pre-Midnight Mass caroling in like an hour so there’s no way I’d get to the church in time if we keep playing.”
    Audra rolled her eyes at Ryan’s less serious answer. Violet laughed. Katie smiled and said to Audra, “You can command us all out if you like.”
    “Oh, yes.” Audra was satisfied with that concession. “I insist that all of the gentlemen now help the ladies on with their coats.”
    They all complied, though some with more flourish than others. Ryan held out Violet’s coat even though she wasn’t leaving her own apartment. As she slipped her arms into it, Audra said, “And I command that Violet walk us all out so she has a reason for putting her coat on.”
    Several people chuckled at that, including Violet. She stepped outside with her friends. The full moon was low in the sky, perfectly framed by the houses she saw it between. It seemed to have a purplish halo. The beauty of the sight enhanced the beauty of the moment as she waved and calls of “Merry Christmas” bounced here and there. Ryan hugged her and said he’d see at church later. Audra hugged her and said, “I can’t wait for the 3rd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party!”

----

Thanks for reading.  I'll leave you with a couple last minute Christmas present ideas, though any of my books make great gifts. 

The Christmas Project

Heart Games 3: A Christian Romance (Christmas) Puzzling Experience

The 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party (Part II)

 Read Part I here.

    It had been only about three months since Audra moved out, but it still felt like welcoming visitors when Violet opened the door for her and her new husband. She yelled, “Merry Christmas!” and gave her old roommate a quick hug.
    Then she hurried them both inside to see what Logan was carrying.
    “Don’t show her yet,” Audra said.
    “Do I have to wait until everyone is here?” Violet asked.
    “I hope I don’t have to hold it that long.” Logan pretended the canvas was heavy.
    “Only until Ryan comes out of the kitchen,” Audra said. Then she raised her voice. “Why are you still in the kitchen, Ryan? Don’t you want to wish your sister and brother-in-law a merry Christmas?”
    “No!” he yelled back, though they heard the laughter in his voice, and he stepped out a moment later drying his hands on a towel. “Let’s see the new masterpiece.”
    Logan began to turn it around, but Audra stopped him when someone knocked on the door.
    Violet moved to answer it. “How did you not notice someone right behind you?”
    “It’s probably Trevor,” Audra said. “He obviously didn’t come early with Ryan, and I would have noticed anyone else’s car. Plus, he’s the only one who wouldn’t have called out for us to wait for him. Except maybe Cameron…” The thought she was putting into what had been only a teasing remark reflected the nerves she still felt about showing off her new work, despite the number of times her friends had raved about previous paintings.
    And Violet did find Audra’s brother Trevor behind the door. She waved him inside as the others called out greetings and holiday wishes.
    “Now I can show this?” Logan asked Audra.
    She nodded and grinned nervously.
    Violet watched as the front of the canvas was presented. Her eyes tried to take in all the details at once so she could give an informed opinion without making Audra wait in suspense. It depicted a pristinely manicured garden with flowers and shaped hedges along an oval footpath. The side of a castle poked onto one side of the canvas with several gargoyles perched along the top. While the flowers were prominent because of the bright colors, the castle stood out to Violet as different. Audra’s landscapes rarely included buildings or other man-made structures. She’d done an amazing job with the details on the stones and the stern features of the gargoyles.
    Trevor was the first to comment. “I’m surprised it’s not a Christmas picture.”
    “I’ve been trying to get this one right for like four months,” Audra said. “I wasn’t thinking of Christmas when I started.”
    “Oh! The shadows…” Ryan’s eyes popped as he discovered what Audra had done to make her work kooky. “That’s genius!”
    Violet studied the shadows and quickly saw what he saw. The gargoyles’ wings were tightly furled on the ledge, and yet their shadows showed the wings spread as though they were about to take flight. “That is very cool,” Violet agreed.
    Audra soaked up the praise. The others admired the painting as they arrived as well. Although Trevor didn’t offer a compliment directly to Audra – he’d told his sister before that someone had to hold back for the sake of her ego – the way he pointed out some specifics to Alison showed that he was impressed.
    Violet and Ryan heard a few nice things about the meal they prepared. She would have felt bad about asking him to cook on his day off if he hadn’t repeatedly assured her that he enjoyed cooking with her far more than any of his coworkers, and that it was most fun when they sparred over how much fruit to add to certain dishes. As soon as everyone was finished eating, the group worked together to clear the table that was actually two tables pushed together.
    Trevor grabbed one end to pull the tables apart, but Ryan stopped him with a wave of his hand. “We’ll need them together for Grand Seigneur.”
    “What?” Trevor sounded more surprised than confused.
    “You told him!?” Audra stepped closer and gave Violet a friendly punch in the shoulder.
    “You knew I was going to tell him,” Violet said.
    “Yeah, but… but… I thought Ryan would have enough sense to cover for you and pretend he didn’t know.”
    Trevor glanced around the room and apparently saw no one else questioning the situation. He addressed Audra in a dry tone. “Go ahead and tell me your plan so the rest can pretend not to know.”
    “This is the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party with a Full Moon.” Audra took a deep breath before she launched into her explanation of what that meant. “So naturally we have to do something a little different and since it’s not Friday you already had your regular Tichu and Grand Seigneur is almost Tichu anyway and… and this way we all play together, which is a very Christmasy thing to do.”
    Violet expected Trevor to go along with the plan only grudgingly. She expected him to give everyone a hard time for keeping it secret to try to trap him into agreeing. But he surprised her and everyone else when he said, “Let the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Pary begin.”

To be continued...

By the way, did you spot Audra's kookiness on the covers when you read the series?

The 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party

If the title tells you what to expect from the following short story, you can probably skip right to the story.  If it doesn’t, this story takes place a few weeks after The Art of Proposing ends.  I don’t think there are any spoilers aside from who ends up with whom.  But you definitely want to read the entire Romance Arts series first anyway.

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    Violet looked at her phone flashing on the counter. “It’s your sister,” she said.
    “Go ahead.” Ryan nodded at the phone. “I’ll finish cleaning up while you see what she wants.”
    Violet smiled at his exasperated tone as she answered the call.
    “I have the best idea ever,” Audra said.
    “I thought the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party was your best idea ever.”
    “I thought of a way to make it even better.” Audra squealed into the phone. “But wait… Is Ryan there? He’s not supposed to know yet. Don’t tell him about this improvement. Is he there?”
    “Yes, he’s here,” Violet said.
    “Can he hear me!? Go somewhere he can’t hear me.”
    Violet was watching Ryan and saw him nod when Audra asked if he could hear her. She wasn’t on speaker but tended to talk loudly when she was excited. Violet sent him a look that said she was going to humor Audra as she moved out of the kitchen and towards her bedroom. “Okay. You can speak freely now.”
    “So I was thinking about plans for the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Pary and then… I looked at a calendar.”
    The pause was long enough that Audra seemed to want a prompt.
    “And what did you see on the calendar?”
    “Do you know what happens on Christmas Eve this year?”
    Violet could look at a calendar herself – though she didn’t know what it might say other than Christmas Eve – but she could tell that despite the questions, Audra wanted to be the one to tell her. “I don’t. What happens on Christmas Eve?”
    “A full moon!”
    “Oh. I guess that’s cool,” Violet said. “How does that change the plan though?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?” The excitement in Audra’s voice was building.
    “No. You’ll need to tell me.”
    “It means it’ll be the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party… with a Full Moon!”
    Violet laughed. “That part is obvious. But what’ll be different other than adding extra words the guys will refuse to say?”
    “Instead of separate games, we can combine to play Grand Seigneur.”
    “That’s what a full moon means?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you think the guys will agree to that?”
    “Sure,” Audra said. “Logan’s already on board because I told him he’s on board. But you have to get Ryan on board without telling him exactly what’s going on because he’s more likely to tell Trevor and he really can’t know yet. If he doesn’t have time to think of arguments, he’ll be more likely to play along.”
    “Well, I think it sounds fun,” Violet said. “I’ll play along.”
    “Great! I’ll let you get back to hanging out with your brand-new fiancé.”
    “See you soon.” Violet put the phone back on the counter as she rejoined Ryan.
    He had her kitchen back in order and was waiting for her. “What am I not supposed to know?” he asked.
    “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
    “Are you really not supposed to tell me or is Audra being Audra again?” He came a step closer and took both of her hands in his.
    The proximity made her brain foggy so it was good that Violet already knew the answer to his question. She also knew that Ryan was going to enjoy the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party with a Full Moon as much as he enjoyed getting the information out of her. And that he’d groan at the new name.

To be continued...

Part II now available here.

So Many Lessons

I figured out something important this week.  Don’t laugh.  I figured out why writing a book is hard.  Practice makes perfect, right?  The more you do something, the easier it gets.  I was thinking about these maxims while staring at a blank page making no progress on book 4 in the More Love in Andauk series.  I’ve written enough books by now that it should be easy for me.  Some aspects of it are easier.  I’ve learned quite a bit in the years I’ve been doing this whole writing thing.  Let’s not talk about how many years or I’ll have to pretend I’m sensitive about my age.  I’m not.  I just can’t tell anyone because all the people who keep trying to give me a senior discount will feel bad if they find out how many years I am from qualifying.  Seriously, it’s more than a few.

Next week I will figure out how to avoid tangents.

I was staring at the page where my new book was supposed to appear, and it occurred to me that all the practice I have writing books involves different books.  I don’t have any practice with this book.  It’s perfectly reasonable that it still feels like hard work from time to time.  I haven’t had any practice figuring out why this particular character is having so much trouble with her love life.

On a related note, I haven’t had any practice writing this particular post.  Because it’s related, it’s not another tangent.  It’s called “making an excuse.”  And I haven’t had any practice writing the short story I’ll start posting next month even though I should have had practice last year.  Someone gave me an idea for a Christmas story.  Somehow, I forgot to write it.  I can’t say much else about it yet, only that it will involve some familiar characters.  This is called “building suspense.”  I’m sharing a ton of lessons this month, one of which is called sarcasm. 

Let’s hope next month’s lesson isn’t “Don’t tell people you’re going to post a story you haven’t written yet because you might have to admit you didn’t figure out how to write it in time.”

The Moon Diamonds

I’m writing about a new book this month, but it’s not my book.  Now you might be wondering why I’m writing about someone else’s book.  I’m glad you brought that up because I have a whole list of reasons.  Some of these are my reasons and some are the author’s reasons.  I’m not telling which is which.

1) The first reason is simply because I want to write about someone else’s book.  It’s my blog.  I get to do whatever I want.

2) I said I would write about this, and I do my best to keep my word.  It must have been many years ago because I don’t actually remember saying I’d someday share news of this first book.  But it sounds like me, and I’m doing my best to keep what sounds like my word.

3) It’s a good book.  I have read and enjoyed it.  It has some political intrigue that isn’t usually my cup of tea, and I admit I had trouble keeping track of the large cast of characters.  But there is a ton of action and humor, which are my favorite parts of a fantasy novel.  If it makes me laugh, I like it.

4) This counts as a good deed.  I’m usually wary of authors promoting each other’s work because I know there’s a lot of tit-for-tat that taints the enthusiasm.  In this case, because it’s me and I know me, I know I’m not getting anything in return.  And because I know the author, I believe she is trying to forge a path God has laid out for her.  It feels good to have a small part in that.

5) I needed a topic for this month.  Any suggestion that I complain about a lack of ideas every other month is a total exaggeration on top of a mountain of hyperbole.  Still… I’ll take the low hanging fruit when it’s offered.

6) Consistency is important.  I have mentioned this author several times over the years.  She was writing entertaining interviews at a young age.  She helped populate a fictional town even younger and has understood for years that a real book needs real effort.  And there was that disastrous time we tried to write together.  It would be a glaring omission if I failed to comment on her published work, or the fact that I’m delighted she’s following in my footsteps.

7) Even though it’s not my book, I still get a teeny tiny bit of credit because of how I ended reason six.  Try to read The Moon Diamonds without seeing traces of my influence in the writing.  It’s not possible.  This is why I think some of my readers will enjoy it even though it’s a different genre.

8) Read reason one again if you need another reason.  Then after you’ve finished my latest, you can check out this newer book.

Heather (part 2)

Start with part 1 of this short story if you haven’t already read it or want a refresher.  Did you guess the guy?  You’ll find out in the first line of part 2 if you’re correct.

--

    Heather tried to look for butterflies on the shelf, but her attention kept shifting to Adam, who was doing a better job looking for butterflies. He’d pointed out two more suggestions. Heather didn’t think either of them would be something her mom liked.
    “What was that word you said before?” he asked. “Butteriflied? Is that how your mom describes her collection?”
    “Uh, no.” Her face warmed. “That was just something that slipped out when I tried to explain that she only collects items where the butterfly is the first thing you see.”
    He nodded. His eyes sparkled with amusement. It wasn’t mocking or derisive. Heather allowed herself to smile at the nonsense word. She relaxed enough to actually think about her mom’s gift again. Nothing on the shelf in front of her seemed appropriate.
    Adam rounded a corner ahead of her, and a minute later his voice called, “Hey! Isn’t this what you were holding when I came in?”
    Heather caught up to where he was holding a tall, skinny vase. She recognized the slippery neck and took in the square base for the first time. It was covered with beautiful butterflies. The wings were colorful metallics, mostly in shades of blue and purple on a silvery background. “That’s perfect,” she said. “Mom will love it.”
    “Then why were we looking for something else?” Adam tipped his head in confusion.
    “I didn’t see the butterflies.”
    “On the thing in your hand?” His confusion turned into disbelief.
    “Well, Mrs. Johnson had just picked it up when you walked in, and – ” Heather clamped her mouth shut on the rest of that thought. She was not going to admit she’d freaked out at the sight of him.
    Adam stared at her for several moments, searching her eyes for the other half of the sentence. He must have read at least a hint because his expression softened. “I messed up so much with…”
    Mrs. Johnson’s footsteps made him cut off what he was about to say just before she reappeared at the bottom of the stairs smiling cheerfully. She was holding a lidless shoebox full of plastic toys. “Most of these light up. I think someone was collecting novelty lights, then sold the whole thing for five bucks when he got tired of it. I knew I couldn’t sell it here, but something made me buy it anyway.” She handed it to Adam. “Then I remembered the summer fling coming up at the church.”
    “These will be great prizes for the kids’ games,” Adam said. “Thanks.”
    Mrs. Johnson turned back to Heather. “Now we need to get you squared away.”
    “I’ll take this.” She held up the vase.
    “Good choice.” Mrs. Johnson smiled. “Of course, you do know your mom is likely to continue being stupid, especially after you show your appreciation.”
    Heather laughed.
    “Moms are like that,” Adam said from behind her.
    Heather had sensed he was still there, but she assumed he was slowly making his way to the door. She turned at his comment and saw him standing there as though he was waiting for her. Was he waiting for her? Heather finished her transaction as quickly as she could while still being polite.
    Adam moved towards the door in time to open it for her. “Heather?”
    She hadn’t processed what, if anything, she wanted to say before they parted at the sidewalk. She was relieved that he seemed to have something to say. “Yes?”
    “Um…” He rattled the box he was holding. “Mrs. Donnelly is waiting for this, but… I was on my way to Pans and Plates to try Noah’s alien pizza. Have you eaten? Do you… have time to join me?”
    “I’ve been wanting to check that out. Emily said it’s really good.”
    “Great. So you’ll wait for me while I drop these at the church? It’ll only be five minutes.”
    “Sure. I’ll save you a seat.”
    Adam nodded, tucked the box under his arm, and moved past her at a jog.
    Heather walked slowly, trying to sort through a million thoughts that all wanted to talk to her at once. She and Adam used to get along. That last interaction had been surprisingly natural, almost as though they’d returned to the time before Kayla imploded a bunch of relationships. Heather couldn’t help reminding herself that in the present Adam was unattached. She wished he would eventually see her as more than a friend, that he was coming back into her life in a significant way. But she managed to push those thoughts away and focus on being content that he was coming back for lunch.

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Don’t forget to preorder Eve’s Brother. That can be the next thing on your to read list.

Heather (part 1)

Here’s a brief never-before-published scene I imagined somewhere between Love in Andauk and More Love in Andauk. (Minor spoilers if you haven’t read the former.) Notice that the guy’s name is not mentioned. Have you read enough to guess his identity?
__

    “I need a present for my mom because she’s being stupid.”
    Mrs. Johnson didn’t even blink. She walked around one of the glass shelves and returned a minute later holding something in each hand.
    Heather barely registered either item before she heard the door open behind her. When she saw who was coming in, she lost all ability to focus and, for some unknown reason, the feeling in both her legs.
    He tried to hang back near the door, but Mrs. Johnson smiled and urged him forward with a question about how she could help.
    “I don’t want to interrupt,” he said. His eyes searched Heather for how upset she was by the interruption.
    She wasn’t upset. She was delighted to see him, despite the shock and mortification, despite being unable to tell him that, despite still just trying not to fall over.
    “We’re going to be awhile picking the perfect gift,” Mrs. Johnson said. “If you have a quick need, we can do that first.”
    He took another step forward, still trying to gauge Heather’s reaction.
    She managed to nod a little, which she meant to give him permission to continue. Heather was having trouble remembering why she was there so Mrs. Johnson was likely right about her not being quick.
    “I was just at St. Jude’s,” he said. “Mrs. Donnelly caught me leaving and sent me here to pick up… She said you had a box of… um… trinkets for the festival next week.”
    “Oh, it’s sweet of you to save me a trip. I’ll just run upstairs to get those.” Mrs. Johnson pressed the items in her hands into Heather’s hands. Then she pulled a key from her pocket to unlock a door on the side of the shop. Her footsteps tapped lightly on wooden stairs after she disappeared.
    Heather looked down at her hands. There was a snow globe in one and an awkwardly tall vase in the other. Both were glass and dangerously slippery in her sweaty hands. She’d seen him at church and around town in the year and a half since Kayla made the idiotic decision to dump him – since Kayla had cited Heather being in love with him as the reason for her idiotic decision – but this was the first time she’d been in a position to have an actual conversation with him.
    “Who’s the gift for?” he asked.
    “My mom.” Heather’s eyes slipped over a pretty cross on one of the shelves as they lifted to meet his. It filled her with courage and a bit of clarity, though her legs were still jelly. “I’ve had some car trouble, and she’s been giving me rides everywhere. I was going to get a friend to take me to pick it up this afternoon, but she insisted she could do that, too. I wanted a small thank you… something.”
    “Doesn’t your mom collect butterflies?”
    She tried not to gasp audibly that he remembered. It was a tiny fact not worth gasping over. “Yes,” she said.
    “Got to be a butterfly in here somewhere.” He turned towards the shelves.
    He was going to help her find a silly present for her mom? Heather quickly stashed the items she was holding on the closest shelf. She knew that wasn’t where Mrs. Johnson had found them, but there wasn’t much organization in the second-hand shop. And the fragile things were safer there.
    “What about this one?” He pointed.
    Heather moved closer to see what it was. It was a plaque with a lame platitude engraved. A butterfly graced one corner amid a blur of flowers, but it wasn’t the focal point.
    He laughed at the expression that apparently gave away more of her opinion than she intended. “Not even close, huh?”
    “Well, it’s… uh… it’s not… butteriflied enough.” Heather cringed. What in the world had she just said?
    “I’ll… I think I’ll try again.” He focused on the knickknacks spread out before them, but there was an earnestness in his voice that somehow reached beyond the trivial present to a hope Heather had never dared to have before.
    She prayed that hope wasn’t as obvious on her face as her previous thought.


To be continued...

The Order of Operations

We’ve all been tempted to skip ahead while reading a book.  I’m not talking about a bad book where a reader skips to the ending to more quickly move on to something worth reading.  I mean a good book where the reader gets impatient for even better scenes with thoughts like, “I suspect he’ll eventually win her over with his pirate impression, and I need to know if I should be tracking every mention for possible foreshadowing,” or “I predict she will find the magic portal back home under that spooky shed when she accidentally burns it to the ground, and I just can’t wait to know if I’m right.”  These are universal thoughts.  But we all resist the urge to look ahead because that’s just not how you read a book. 

I have to admit I’m occasionally tempted to skip ahead with books I write as well.  Sometimes in the early chapters I’m thinking about how much more fun it’ll be to write the super romantic thing he says or does to really cement the relationship.  I have to wait.  I can’t write the super romantic line until it becomes romantic through everything that happens first.  I need to multiply the feelings before I add the people.

Let’s examine a real, non-romantic example.  One of the best lines in The Lord of the Rings is when Sam says, “Come, Mr. Frodo!  I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.”  Starting the book from this line makes the amazing quote dumb.  What is this thing that Mr. Frodo can’t carry?  And why does Sam think carrying it with the added weight of a person will be easier?  Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  And if you read just enough to know they’re trying to get to the top of Mt. Doom, it’s even worse.  Anyone trying to climb something literally called Mt. Doom must be a moron.  It’s the rest of the story that makes it awesome.  Reading it out of order makes as much sense as a math problem with only half the equation.

It's the same with a romance.  I can’t skip to a scene where the heroine swoons over a plate of deviled eggs when the hero peels off the tin foil, puts it on his head, and says, “Pro nobis.”  By itself, it’s a terrible scene.  But… if I’ve written the part where they meet at a picnic reaching for the last deviled egg at the same time, and the part where he works to overcome his fear of mustard bottles to make the recipe he got from her mom, and I’ve written several scenes about her recurring dream where she’s married to a guy she can’t see but always makes her feel safe and cherished and has tin foil on his head, and I included the bit that specifies her love language is Latin… then it’s a beautiful moment.  Right?

Don’t worry about any of that being a spoiler for book 4 though.  I’m still working on the multiplication, and I haven’t added any deviled eggs.

Not Wrong

I had trouble coming up with a topic for this month, which should surprise no one. I’ve already used not knowing what to write about as a topic to write about. More than once.  More than twice actually, but I won't try to list them all.  You're welcome.

I may have exhausted that non-topic.

I did have one idea. I checked the stats on this blog to see which posts have gotten the most attention. Perhaps seeing what’s been popular would let me know what people want to read. I discovered that two posts near the top of the list have the word wrong in the titles. One was called “I think I’ll keep doing it wrong.” And the other from about a year later was called “Still Wrong.” This suggests people enjoy reading about me being wrong.

That can’t be right.

But in an effort to remain entertaining, I tried really hard to think of other times I’ve been wrong so I could share those. There aren’t any. I’m sure I’ve been right about absolutely everything else.

I did, however, think of a recent example of someone else thinking I was wrong. This person read an early draft of my next book and made only one comment in the whole thing. It was an entire paragraph about how wrong I was to have the main character paint a room yellow. I was wrong to have others approve the choice, wrong for having someone assure her it wasn’t bold because yellow is totally bold and wrong. The person who tried to convince me of this may or may not be related to me.

In all honesty, yellow is probably the last color I’d choose for paint. But I didn’t choose it, my character did. She’s allowed to like things I don’t and have opinions I don’t share. I might have considered this feedback if I hadn’t already designed the cover based on the color in that scene. Starting over on the cover would have been very, very wrong.

Cover Secrets Revealed

I’m going to continue the exciting, behind-the-scenes thread I started last month by letting everyone in on some secrets behind the covers for the current series.  Notice the pretty flowers on Evelyn’s Granddaughter and Sarah’s Friend.  Secret #1: Those flowers are fake.  This is probably not the most shocking secret.  I wasn’t trying to get away with anything.  I only wanted to use flowers I could manhandle into fifty different photo arrangements without them looking bedraggled halfway through.

Secret #2: The flowers on the cover of book 3 are not fake.  There was a bunch of unusually strong-smelling flowers in my house.  People (sometimes my kids but mostly me) kept commenting on how powerful the scent was as they passed those flowers.  I thought what anyone would think in that situation.  “Those are pretty.  I should use them for a book cover before I chuck them in the trash because I can’t stand the scent anymore.”

Notice that book 1 has a burgundy background and book 2 is blue.  Secret #3: That’s really the same background.  I used a scrap of fabric for the background of the first cover – narrowly avoiding the velvet starfish – and liked the way the texture turned out.  I used the same scrap of fabric to take a picture for book 2, then digitally altered it to be blue.  Actually, I turned it purple and turquoise before I decided blue was better than both of those. 

The third cover will be yellow, cheerful yellow to be specific.  I didn’t think I could turn the dark fabric such a light color without causing other problems.  Secret #4: The yellow background is really part of a Link costume.  It was the only yellow I could find.  It seems no one here wears yellow outside of Halloween.  Secret #5: That yellow background is really tan is really yellow.  I don’t know if it was bad lighting or a bad camera or simply my lack of photography skills, but the yellow shirt turned tan in all my pictures.  I ended up having to digitally turn it yellow even though I used yellow fabric.

Secret #6: I turned something else yellow, too.  It won’t be difficult to guess once I post the new cover.  But first I need to figure out which version of stinky flowers, something yellow and a costume is most awesome.  That has been difficult.  Check back soon to see the decision.

Sneak Peek

One of my characters didn’t recycle something.  It was annoying until I realized she didn’t realize it.  This kind of thing happens embarrassingly often when I’m typing out the first draft of a new book.  My handwriting is… So in my defense, I write everywhere.  I carry around my notebook whenever I expect to have some downtime.  I’ve written in the dark.  I’ve written outside on a windy day.  I’ve written left-handed (I’m not left-handed.) while trying to do something apparently far more necessary with my right.  Sometimes this causes my handwriting to suffer.

And I scribble when I’m just sitting in a comfy chair concentrating on my work.

When I’m typing up the draft, I occasionally need to pause to figure out why what I just typed didn’t make any sense.  In this book, I typed, “There was a fear and a bucket of supplies.”

Wait.  What?

And I probably didn’t mean that “Noah was an excellent distortion” either. 

I typed, “It got me a bunch of other stuff.”

That could make sense by itself.  I still had to pause because the context revealed that it should have been, “It got me thinking about a bunch of other stuff.”  Sometimes what I write is wrong even when my handwriting is readable because I skip words when my brain is moving faster than my hand.  Sometimes I have to pause before I type because it doesn’t make sense in the notebook.

That was the case for a sentence that read, “And they almost always indided some joking and random tangate.”  I had to stare at that for a moment before I saw that I’d been trying to write about something that included random tangents.  At another point in the story, I found a super deep question about reflecting on the “unpertive” of a holiday.  That’s what it looked like anyway.  I’m still reflecting on what I meant to write. 

I also wrote that someone “wanted a break this break.”  I think my brain wasn’t working faster than my hand there, it just wasn’t working.  One of my favorite puzzles so far has been where I wrote, “He was probably only there because of those other people so it made sense”

I find plenty of crossed out words in my drafts, but this was the first time I didn’t write something else in its place.  It just ended there and moved on to the next sentence.  I forgot to correct myself.  I hope what I came up with is as good as what I forgot to write three months ago.

Yes, all of these examples are actual fragments of my next book which has not yet been released.  It doesn’t even have a release date.  This is a thrilling sneak peek behind the scenes of my unfinished work.  Oops, not sure how I mistook vague and uninteresting for thrilling.  Maybe I was writing upside-down.