Ouch!

‎"If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent." - Honore de Balzac

~~I saw myself in the mirror of this quote a writer buddy shared today. I realize I constantly see only the negatives in my writing. Guess what? That's a great way to reduce your productivity. Then you can get negative about that. ; )

~~So here's to finding ways to look for the positives. What do you do that is good? Did you jot down the good ideas you had today?

Opening Scene Remodel

~~Last week, I talked about the difference in repainting and remodeling when we're revising. I thought you'd like to see what I mean by remodeling. Here's the opening as of March 18, 2011. And now, the latest version. I still try to open a window into my MC, Laura Grace, without her sounding whiny. The other big change is that the child who will so change her life, Samantha, is now front and center.

~~Tell me what you think. Did my remodel help or hurt? Don't pull any punches--remember I asked for it. ; )

#

I wasn’t a mother, but I knew the look of a child whose parents were MIA. The girl at the end of the table had all the signs.

Her face was closed, contained as she watched the crowd of foster children at the party. What was her story? I might not want to know. In my thirty years of teaching teens, I’d seen the result of every possible abuse, neglect, and abandonment up close and personal.

Another cloud of sweet baby power drifted over me as one of the teens led a toddler toward the serving tables. So many little foster children made my heart ache. Most of this bunch was elementary age or younger. All of them placed with foster parents and not with their mothers on this Mother’s Day weekend. The noise of little children at play ricocheted of the block walls of the fellowship hall.

I didn’t have the stamina to do more than bake cookies any longer, but that I could do. My Tom, God rest his soul, would have been sitting cross-legged on the floor playing games with the kiddies. After all, we’d borrowed other people’s children for over thirty years in our classrooms. Church was just another chance to practice a bit of the love we had for children. Only he wasn’t here to share it with me.

“Isn’t it great, Laura Grace?” A grin crinkled my friend Jen’s eyes as she looked around the room and turned to me. “I didn’t expect so many foster kids, but we have enough goodies for an army. And it wouldn’t be a party without your tea cakes.”

I rearranged my cookies so they were closer to the edge of the tray. Now the little ones could reach them better. Turning toward Jen, I smiled. “Glad they’re a hit.”
She laughed. “Your teacakes will be gone before we’re halfway through the party.”
Rosemary joined us at the serving tables. She didn’t have to say a thing. All she had to do was look at me with that concerned gaze—the one she assessed me with every day since Tom’s death.

I raised my voice over the chatter. “Well, of course kids love cookies, but all of the rest of you have so much more experience with this age group.”

Rosemary snorted. “Of course Laura Grace should know by now what we want her to bake. She’s been baking for church parties for over thirty years.”

I scanned the crowd just in time to side step two little boys who nearly ran into me to grab for a cookie. The older girl caught my eye again. “I’m going to check on the girl alone at the end of the table.”

“Good. She’s twelve and you’ll know what to say.” Twin lines of concern between her brows marred Jen’s smiling face as she looked at the girl.

I grabbed one of my teacakes and a brownie. Maybe some chips? Collecting a cup of punch from the beverage table as I went by, I approached the girl who had riveted my attention.

Her curls were exactly the color of Tom’s when we were in high school. Then I saw her deep blue eyes and my step faltered. They were just like my Tom’s. Swallowing a sudden lump, I moved toward her.

Her eyes narrowed just a bit as I placed the plate of goodies on the table beside her. “Hi, I’m Laura Grace. I’m glad you came to our party.”
She looked at me, but her face didn’t change. No hint of a smile or ghost of a reaction moved the still face.

In the presence of such control, I knew I wasn’t going to get any response. I smiled at her and put the punch by the plate. “I hope you enjoy these. See you around.”
One of Rosemary's perfect brows arched as I rejoined them at the serving table. "You didn't get much response."

I almost said none, but the girl' s eyes had been wells of sorrow. "I hadn't expected much." The child had a foster mom, but it was obvious she needed her real mom. Did the woman in question have the resources to pledge to be there no matter what? "Jen, what do you know about her?"

Jen's sigh sent a chill through my heart. "Her mom was beaten to death by her live-in boyfriend. Samantha saw it all."

My throat clenched on a sudden taste of bile. A foster mom was as good as it was going to get. So much pain. No wonder she was withdrawn.

"That's horrible, Jen!" Rosemary look back at the girl. "Wait a minute. How do you know that?"

Jen's lips narrowed into a tight line. "Bob was still a patrolman three years ago.

I looked across the room. Bob Thomas was giving a little boy a piggyback ride. At least four more children hopped around him like fleas waiting their turns. Maybe not the most dignified job for the chief of police, but it revealed a sincere heart.

"He told you too much." Rosemary's voice hardened.

Jen turned face to face with Rosemary and would have been nose to nose if I hadn't been between them. The heat rose as they towered over me. "He has to vent some time or the job will kill him." Her voice was as tight as Rosemary's. "It's the reason he got the men involved in helping with the kids today. He knows several of these children’s stories." She looked down at me. "Laura Grace, surely you and Tom talked about the horrors in order to survive teaching all those years."

"Yes, we did, but it went no further. I'm sure the case workers would be horrified to know what Bob's told you. Maybe we should just let it go." But as I talked, I watched Samantha. So deep a wound and wounds that deep didn't always heal.

#

Throughout the party, I kept vigil over the girl who became the symbol of the intense pain families could inflict on each other.

Her still face never cracked, never registered more than a closed façade until her foster mom returned to collect her children. Then Samantha glowed with concern as she corralled the three small boys. Her pale hands twined with the two smallest – one Hispanic and the other black. The mom, who was black, balanced two tiny twin girls on either hip. The oldest boy clasped the smallest boy’s other hand after Samantha called him to attention.

There was love there and I could only hope it was enough to reach Samantha's core. If I knew how to help, I'd move the mountains to do it. But I was not a mother. That was what Samantha needed because her wound was rooted in her mother's murder. No one was going to replace that woman's love. Certainly not me.

As they left the room, I began picking up abandoned paper plates and cups. When I reached where she’d sat, I stopped. Only the tea cake was gone from her plate. The brownies and chips were untouched. Tears prickled my eyes. At least I've added a bit of sweetness to her life.

Repainting or Remodeling?

~~What's your take on revising scenes you've already written? Do you have a hard time deciding when to just repaint or when to remodel and tear down a few walls?

~~I'm afraid I err on the side of "repainting"--moving the clauses and annoying the commas--more often than not. I find I'm reluctant to really tear out the walls and re-imagine the scene altogether. Thanks to my writing buddies at Books and Writers, I'm working on a major remodeling of my climax for FRIENDLY FIRE. Check HERE for to first version and HERE for my rewrite of a bit of the initial scene.

~~What about you? Do you ever get stuck with a scene that needs a full overhaul? What helps you change your first take on the scene?

REVIEW: To Catch a Cop

~~I may be slow getting through my to-be-read list, but I know a good book when I read one:
Elle Druskin's To Catch a Cop is a delicious romance and a neat murder mystery rolled into one good read. With a tight plot that does good service to both facets of the story line. To Catch a Cop starts fast and doesn't let up.

Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

Forty-year-old single mother Lindy Kellerman needs a man, a secure job and an exercise program. What she gets is a dead student in her Sydney university nursing classroom.

Detective Fraser MacKinnon needs to meet a smart woman and can't decide whether to arrest Lindy or seduce her. With Lindy as chief suspect and threatened by the real killer, MacKinnon has his hands full.

Interrupted attempts at furthering their romance combine with Lindy's amateur sleuthing. Lindy's hunches and MacKinnon's skill leads them down a trail of false leads and university scandals with a murderer ready to strike again. Along the way Lindy and Fraser discover that love is definitely better the second time around.

~~By the way, Eve's "To Catch" series has another installment available. Check out To Catch a Thief, too. Yep, it's on my TBR list. ; )

The Curse of Knowledge

~~I think it's unfair--the more you know, the more you have on your to-do list. Especially if you're a writer. Take details for example. We know we need them to make a scene real, but which ones do we use and how many should be included? Recently Diana Gabaldon posted a Master Class on the Books and Writers Forum on using details. Diana emerses her readers in a scene, but you never feel like you're drowning in details, so it pays to give attention to what she says. One great example from the master class is:

Use description to describe the narrator (in terms of attitude, relastionship, etc.) as well as the person or situation being described.

This really made me stop and think. All of FRIENDLY FIRE is told from the POV of Laura Grace Chandler. How well am I describing my main character from the details included in each scene? Here's some examples and what I think I was saying. You be the judge. Did I pull it off?

Ex. 1: (Aim--a reduction of tension)
The dappled shade and bright patches of vinca and impatiens along the path began their calming medicine. Magnolia blooms heavy with vanilla and lemon scented the warm air. The beauty of the place captured my mind as I settled into my rhythm. A flock of Canadian geese honked at each other as a mother goose, followed by five fluffy goslings, sailed by. The little ones were puffs of downy yellow-gray as their legs worked overtime to keep up with their stately mother. Male mockingbirds strutted their stuff, raising their wings in the time-honored ritual to show how big they were in hope of attracting the ladies, and I found myself laughing. The sap was rising, just like spring at the high school.

Ex. 2: (Aim: fear, worry)
Silk ficus trees draped with dust like Spanish moss and park benches had replaced the plastic chairs, but nothing disguised the institutional nature of DFCS. Air freshener from one of the offices still clashed with the disinfectant used in the restrooms. Neither scent was a bouquet I wanted to bury my nose in. Hunching in my coat couldn’t block December’s cold that penetrated the block walls.

Ex. 3: (Aim: uneasiness)
Streetlights glinted on the neighbors’ cars except for the ratty Ford in front of the Talley house.  Frowning, I stepped further onto the porch to see it better.  Rosemary wouldn’t have let one of the boys buy a car like that, but it was the same one I had noticed outside the school yesterday.  I shrugged. 

~~I'll admit to being an impatient sort--I want every scene I write to be it's best the first time through, but that's not reality.  But I think I'll have to go back and assess every scene for Laura Grace's emotional POV to evaluate the details. Not to mention all the other reasons for revision.

~~I have to remind myself of the Ira Glass quote:

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

~~No one said write was easy. Well, maybe knowledge isn't a curse, but a goal.
Happy Writing!