Sex Wars - What I'm Reading

It's post-Civil War New York. So what's the first thing you'd think of? A woman President, of course!  Based on the first real-life woman to ever run for the Presidency, this book is a rich tapestry of the Who's-Who of late Victorian NY. First we have Victoria Woodhull, a real life woman who starts out as a spiritualist medium attempting to get in the graces of millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt who is seeking to make contact with his dead son, then becomes the first woman stockbroker and later aspires to the highest post in the land. Through Victoria we meet suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friend Susan B. Anthony. as well as orator and statesman Frederick Douglass, Horace Greely and a host of other historical characters.

Contrasting the scheming and glamorous Victoria, we have a second fictional protagonist, Russian Jewish immigrant Freydeh Leibowitz, living in a tenement and who makes her living manufacturing and selling condoms.

Enemy to both, is Anthony Comstock, a moralist crusader who founded the New York Society for the Supression of Vice, and worked to make illegal the delivery or transportation of "obscene, lewd or lascivious" material or anything related to birth control. Playwright George Bernard Shaw worked to make a mockery of him, coining the word "comstockery," as "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality," but at the moment, he's thwarting both Victoria's rise to power and Freydah's livelihood.

Victoria Woodhull

Rich in history, intrigue, politics and betrayal, Sex Wars by Marge Piercy is brilliantly researched (Did you know that a married woman couldn't sign legal documents?) brutally honest and seething with sensuality as Freydah and Victoria battle the gender wars of their time.

Go Somewhere Strange - Keep Your Story Going

One of the tricks I like to use when I get blocked on my writing is to throw in an oddball location. The more incongruous to my story so far, the better.

So make a list - where's the last place you'd expect your characters to show up? Here are a few ideas:

The circus
A child's birthday party
A biker bar
A witch's sabbat
A parade
An antique sailing ship
The zoo
A greenhouse
A tour bus
A petting zoo
A nunnery
A dude ranch
The kitchen of a fast food restaraunt
A photography studio

Now if you're writing a story about a biker, then a biker bar won't be an odd place for your character to show up. And if your protagonist is a clown, then the circus or a child's birthday would be a normal location. But a biker in a nunnery? A clown on a sailing ship? That might spark some ideas.

Whole plots have come out of oddball locations. Put a second-rate Las Vegas singer in a nunnery and you have the beginnings of the plot for Sister Act. Throw an alligator egg into a birds nest and you have Flap Your Wings by P.D. Eastman. Have two kids run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we end up with From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, one of my (many) favorite books as a kid.

Focus on Contrast

Send your steady churchgoing mother of three to a strip joint or bordello to help out a friend in trouble. Put your fashonista in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. Throw your urban Sam Spade detective into a small Midwest town.

Why Are They There?

In Willa, I use a chase scene to get my characters through a petting zoo and onto a tour bus. And after that they get in even more trouble. Lets say your character is a fashion model turned amateur detective. What might bring her to any of these locations? Well she could be following a clue, obviously. Or maybe she's doing a fashion shot on a sailing ship when she finds a dead body hanging from the rigging. Perhaps your biker protagonist is conned into taking a friend's kids to the zoo.


Who Do They Meet?

At the zoo, the obvious characters might be:
A zoo keeper
A small child
A stall owner selling anything from touristy trinkets to cotton candy
A tour guide
The mother of a lost child

At a dude ranch:
A cowboy
Any number of patrons, also vacationing there
A horse or cow with a bad attitude
A wild mustang that needs to be saved from the knacker

Pick a character or two who would also be unlikely to interact with your character - or who might be at odds with them - and you have the makings for at least a chapter, if not an entire book.




Do The Research

If things start taking off, be willing to do more research into the location. For instance, learning that your local zoo has a herpetology expert might give you more information on snakes, and even if your character doesn't end up at the zoo, they may get bitten by a snake, or snuggled by a python.

Visit the circus and learn that each clown has their own personal makeup scheme. Or learn something about the rigging on ships and the history of figureheads or the difference between a belaying pin and a fairlead.

Or go into that fast food joint and find out what's in the Special Sauce. Of course you might not ever eat there again, but maybe the guy who works the fryer will tell you a story that leads to something else.

There's always the possibility that learning something new will spark a new plot direction or an entire book.

You Might Never Use It

Be prepared for the possibility that the scene you end up writing may never make it into your book. That's fine, if it gets you writing again and sparks other ideas. Even if the scene doesn't end up in your story, it may give you better insight into your character and how they react in strange situations. After all, this is just an exercise, right?

Or it may spark something that becomes a flashback, a future chapter or an entire new book.

So take your character somewhere weird and have fun.

Turn Trash Into Writing - Where to Get Story Ideas

No, I'm not going to tell you about how to take your old writing and recycle it, though that might be a good idea for another day.

Instead I'm going to ask you to take a walk around your neighborhood and pick up (or at least take note of) at least 10 items of trash that you find and bring them home. If like me, you live in the middle of nowhere, you can still walk around your property and find out of place things, or do this exercise when you take a trip into town.

Here's what I found on my walk:

Feathers from a dead bird, obviously killed by some critter.
A smashed beer can.
A flier for a local nightclub.
A wrapper from the local fast-food place and a plastic fork.
A page of coupons for the local supermarket.
A busted bicycle wheel.
A plastic water bottle.
A plastic shopping bag.
A child's sneaker.
Scraps of a busted tire.

Of course your first benefit in doing this exercise can be having a cleaner neighborhood, with less trash on the road. But there's a writerly benefit to this exercise as well.

Now, pick at least one of the objects you found and ask yourself how that item relates to one of your characters, and write about it. Or perhaps the item will spark an entirely new character!

Using the list above, here are some thoughts on what you or I might get out of it:

Feathers from a dead bird, obviously killed by some critter.

In my story, "Willa," I have the protagonist's mother bring home a dead bird in the first chapter. It ends up illustrating some interesting things about my characters:

Her mother is squeamish about handling dead things, but wants to preserve the natural beauty of the carcass.
Willa, on the other hand is not squeamish.
The manner in which they use the wings from the bird not only sheds light on their beliefs, but the bird wings (taken by her sister for Show-and-Tell) later lead to a crux point in the story, where Willa realizes her brother and sister are in danger.

In your story, a dead bird might send your character on a rampage against the local cats. Or they might be avid birders and need wonder what sort of bird it was. Or in a detective novel, the dead bird might be a clue. Was the bird poisoned?


A smashed beer can.

My present protagonist is a 16 year old girl who does not drink, so a beer can won't remind her of wild nights out partying and tossing beer cans out of the car, but it may for you. Willa would probably reflect on the sadness of people ruining the environment. Or she might pick up the can and give it to a local hobo for recycling. Or use it as a container to boil water in. How about your character?

A flier for a local nightclub.

Perhaps your character decides to check out the nightclub. Maybe they meet someone there. Or spend a lonely night reflecting on how this just isn't their kind of place. Maybe the flier contains a scrawled message that leads them to a clue.

A wrapper from the local fast-food place and a plastic fork.

This might lead to anything from a rant about how impossible it is for plastic to biodegrade, to a visit by your protagonist to the fast food joint. Or maybe they'll complain about their weight. Or if you're writing about a busy parent, perhaps they'll debate bringing home some food or the perils of getting their kids to eat healthy.

A page of coupons for the local supermarket.

Is it time for your protagonist to go shopping? How do they feel about clipping coupons? Do they consider it necessary savings? Do coupons clutter their house? Do they feel that coupons "force" them to buy products that they wouldn't buy otherwise? What are the coupons for? Do they suggest that your character needs to do the laundry? Make a microwave dinner? Bemoan the fact that they'd love some fries but their figure can't handle it?


A busted bicycle wheel.

Maybe your character takes a bicycle trip and the darn thing breaks down. Are they the sort to flag down a passing motorist for help? Will they walk home and drag it? Or leave it on the side of the road? On the way home do they see something of import? Maybe your protagonist hits a bump or a rock and goes flying. Do they need stitches? Are they whiny about the injury or do they take it in stride? Is it really an accident or does someone crash into your character? Could this be part of a chase scene? Does seeing a broken bicycle remind you of an incident as a child when bullies stole their bike? Or when they were the bully?


A plastic water bottle.

What kind of water is it? The expensive kind that athletes get? Just normal everyday bottled water? If the former, does that suggest a scene where your protagonist goes to the gym or otherwise gets themselves fit? Or meets a big burly gym-goer? Is your character thirsty? Why? Were they running? Is it a hot day? Do they buy a bottle of water for their dog?


A plastic shopping bag.

Does your character go for plastic or paper, and why? Did their bag of groceries break? Who helped them pick it up? Could your murder victim be smothered by a plastic bag? Is it time to go shopping again? What's the label on the bag and where could that take them?

A child's sneaker.

Where's the other sneaker? How did the child lose it? Does your character wear sneakers? Or only dress shoes? Does a sneaker reveal a past memory? Does your character jog? What happens when they go jogging? Do they play some other sport? How do they feel about sports in general?

Scraps of a busted tire.

What would happen if your character got a flat? Do they change it themselves? Call Triple-A? How did they get that flat? Driving crazy? Not maintaining their car? Something dangerous in the road? Someone slicing their tire? Is your character on a long journey by car or other vehicle? Are they afraid of big trucks or do they drive one? Maybe this leads to you writing about a tire swing. Or your protagonist's first car. Or their present car. Is there an accident ahead on the road? How does your character respond when they get stuck in the traffic from that?

Or maybe the entire exercise in trash picking causes you to write about trash, or about a garbage man, or a landfill or dumpster.

So pick up some trash and let it inspire your story.

"I'll Not" Write This Way and Other Regionalisms

Maybe its a southern thing. Two of my favorite authors (I won't name names but they both happen to be from the south) use the contraction "I'll not," and related contractions: s/he'll not, we'll not, they'll not, you'll not, they'd not, s/he'd not, I'd not.

It drives me buggy. One of these writers I've only caught in the act once or twice. The other one, I can count on her doing it at least three to four times in each novel. I read her work anyway, because she's a fabulous writer and I enjoy her style. But every time I come across it, my suspension of disbelief gets zapped to heck and I remember I'm reading a book.

Okay, color me nitpicky. As I understand it, the correct phrase would be "I won't, she won't," etc. Now I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the right to be the grammar police. For me, good writing is about learning the rules well enough, and then learning when to break them. And I start sentences with conjunctions. In fact the grammar checker on my word-processing program hates me. It often accuses me of writing sentence fragments. So I turn it off.

Maybe it is a regional thing. Her characters are from Georgia, and what do I know about how they talk there? So I deal.

Then one day this author brought in a character who was supposed to be from New York. And yes...you guessed it. He said, "I'll not."

At this point I had to take a short break from the book. I'm from New York. I know how we talk. New Yorkers do not talk that way. In fact we only say "do not" when we're ticked off or making a point. Otherwise we say, "don't."

So the moral of the story, if you're writing about a character with a background that's like yours, write the way you speak. If you're writing about someone from a different place, find someone who's from there and ask them to read over the dialogue. Or better yet, have them read it to you, over the phone or on voice chat.

What regionalisms have you noticed in your writing or another writer's and does it make "y'all" crazy. What good uses of regional dialect have you found?

Telling Lies for Fun & Profit - Indispensabe Books for Writers

The first time I read Telling Lies For Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block I was about twelve. Mom and I would take turns reading this one aloud while we did chores. It wasn't just an intelligent, useful book on writing, it was witty and a great read. We chortled, we cried, we read chapters over and over again, we went out to find his Matthew Scudder books, his Bernie Rhodenbarr books and anything else we could find by him. Yes, the writing in Telling Lies was just that good.

Block taught me a lot of important things about writing. Probably the most useful was when to give a bear a canoe.

The first part of the book is on the business of writing itself. And Block should know a lot about that. He has somewhere near 60 published novels, numerous short stories and articles; and his Writing the Novel From Plot to Print and Spider Spin Me a Web are also stellar books on the art and craft of writing.

Part Two of Telling Lies deals with getting your writing written, from setting writing hours, to dealing with writers block to revising effectively and where to find ideas to write about in the first place.

Parts Three and Four, however is where this particular book shines. Block teaches you how to start a story with a bang...or a body; and why you shouldn't start at the beginning. He handles details, transitions, creating a strong plot and a powerful, sympathetic character...and then making his life miserable. Then the details of making your writing exciting to read, covering dramatic dialogue, creating verbs with punch and sultry adjectives.

If I had to choose one writing book from my shelf and give up all the others Telling Lies for Fun and Profit would probably be the one I'd keep. Now excuse me while I marmelade some toast, and jump into my canoe to go hunt down a bear as I cuddle up with this old friend.

 Search Amazon.com for Lawrence Block

Catch As Cat Can - What I'm Reading

Just finished Catch as Cat Can by Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown (her cat), my latest in the Mrs. Murphy Mysteries.

If you're not familiar with them, Mrs. Murphy is a tiger cat who lives in Crozet, Virgina and likes to solve mysteries with the help of her human, postmistress "Harry" Haristeen, Tee Tucker, her faithful corgi companion and Pewter, her feline buddy.

In Catch as Cat Can, spring is in the air, the Dogwood Festival is about to start and BoomBoom Craycroft (not Harry's favorite person) is hooking Harry up with a handsome diplomat from Uruguay, which doesn't make Harry's ex, Fair Haristeen happy. Meanwhile a dead woodpecker and a set of stolen hubcaps lead to the inevitable dead body. This is a murder mystery, after all!

Crozet is a charming little middle-of-nowhere town with a host of quirky locals and seemingly a good number of murders and intelligent pets. There's Miranda, a sixtyish widow who works at the post office with Harry, bakes scrumptious muffins and can quote the Bible perfectly; Big Mim, the "Queen" of Crozet society; Little Mim, Big Mim's daughter who's still trying to find herself; the loveable Reverend Herb and Cynthia Cooper the sherrif's deputy, who's bound and determined to find the killer, with Harry and Mrs. Murphy's help. This book also introduces us to Pope Rat, a rather despicable rodent and Abraham a courtly and helpful old hound.

I've adored Rita Mae Brown's novels since I first encountered Six of One, a rollicking tale about a pair of sisters growing up in the prohibition era, in the equally amusing town of Runnymede, MD who have been "fighting like banty roosters" since 1905.

As with most of Rita Mae Brown's Mrs. Murphy books, things start off slow - after all, nothing ever happens in Crozet, right? - but soon leads Harry into danger, and her animal friends have to get her out. If you're like me and enjoy starting with the first of a series, I recommend Wish You Were Here.

Keep a Notebook by Your Bed - Where to Get Story Ideas

creFortunately it happened at a time when I was keeping a regular dream journal!

I had a very weird dream about dragging a small child through a park while he was handcuffed to a shopping cart. Somewhere in the same dream, evil faeries were peeking in my window. It was all very odd.

Now Freud might have had something to say about that one, but I'm a writer, not a psychologist, so after jotting down the dream I went to my computer and started writing.

Within hours I had the first chapter of the story that I'm calling "Willa" until I think of a better title. Several years later, the book is about halfway done. I haven't yet come to the point where they're getting chased through the park, but I'm getting close to that chapter.

So how do you remember your dreams?

Keep a Dream Journal

Keep a notebook - and possibly a flashlight - by your bed. Or get a voice recorder if that works for you. The sheer fact of doing so can encourage you to recall your dreams. As soon as you wake up give yourself a few moments in the morning to jot down your memories. Write down the basic idea of the dream and any strong memories or impressions.


Tell Yourself You're Going to Remember Your Dreams

Just before you fall asleep, tell yourself, "I will remember my dreams in the morning." Or make up some other visualization. Simple but effective. Just the intent to remember your dreams can help you recall them.


Get Enough Sleep

If you're tired it can be harder to remember your dreams and you may be too in need of sleep to bother writing them.


One of the best books I've read on dreaming is Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield

Warning! Dream Journaling Can Be Addictive

By the time I'd been keeping a dream journal for about a year, it was cutting into my time. I remembered so much that it usually took at least an hour to journal my night's adventures. If this happens, give yourself some time off. Stop journaling them unless it's a dream you really want to recall. Or be briefer in your journaling. Focus on the parts of the dream that were really interesting and might be fodder for your writing.

Ask For a Dream to Get Unstuck

When my plot is stuck, I go to bed and say to myself, "tonight I'm going to have a dream about (story name). Then I'll go through the story in my head, thinking about my characters, where the plot might be going, and so on. Sometimes I'll get a new idea even before I fall asleep. Other times it might take a few nights of this before something relevant comes up.


Using Your Dream Journal

Now that you've gotten the basics of your dream down, go to your computer/typewriter or other writing implement and see if the dream sparks something. Is it a situation that one of your present protagonists might get into or think about? Or does the dream offer an entirely new protagonist?

Maybe you just had a dream that you were eating oranges. Okay, let one of your characters eat an orange. Maybe you'll discover that they hate oranges and why. Or you might find that the oranges lead to a conflict where one character splashes orange juice on another. Or your character gets a cold and eats oranges to get rid of it. Or you may end up with an article on the history of the Screwdriver. Or a recipe for Orange Carrot soup.  Who knows what you might dream up?