The Middle of Nowhere

*****

I’ve turned my attention to a little nonfiction project. My workshop instructor, Gail, is encouraging us to enter The Sun’s Readers Write contests. So I’m plugging away at the March 1 deadline theme: The Middle of Nowhere.

This theme screams to me for so many reasons. The middle of nowhere is my childhood encapsulated. I am an only child. I grew up on a farm that had been allowed to return to prairie. I spent my ‘tween years making long, lonely bike rides into town, my bike whizzing through the middle of nowhere. And there’s an avalanche of sharp emotional stuff that’s hard to share.

A favorite memory is walking home from the middle school I attended. On nice days, I’d get this wild need in me to be free the moment the final bell rang. The buses sat parked, waiting in front of the building. All the kids streamed like lemmings toward them. But I’d sneak out the back and hike across the playground, across the baseball diamond and the long expanse of purposeless grass. I’d feel that yoke of peer pressure and school garbage melt off me as the schoolyard melted into the woods. I’d walk along the edge of the woods, forest on one side, tall grass on the other, for a mile or more until the woods faded away into a patchwork quilt of muddy corn fields. In Spring I was careful to stick to the rutted tractor path, picking my way across the matted bleached grass. Eventually, the path led to a small brook. There were a few well placed stones that even I (never graceful, no matter how I tried) could cross without getting my feet wet. A little further along the cornfield and I’d clamber up the ditch onto the road in front of my house. Sometimes the bus whooshed past me in a gush of gray exhaust as I stood on the tractor path, waiting to cross to home.

For the most part, it’s nice revisiting those memories. As for my contest entry, I don’t have any cohesive thesis. My plan is to write and write and write. Eventually, I suspect I’ll find a focus. I guess the middle of nowhere is where I am right now, wandering through my memories, trying to find my way.

Confession of a Busy Mommy/Writer

*****

I have to confess, every Tuesday morning, sometime between the first cup of coffee and actually stepping into a productive day, I come to a horrible realization: I have to write a post for this blog.

I wish I could say I write the first draft of these things Tuesday night, just hours after the previous week’s entry was posted. That I polish it all week, then spit-shine it one last time. But I don’t. Usually, I get that oh shit feeling that comes with remembrance, shove my kid in front of the Disney Channel and glue my butt to the office chair. I crank out whatever comes into my brain during the last fifteen minutes of Bunny Town.

I do let my post age on the hard drive while I check to make Julia’s still conscious and hasn’t, say, fingerpainted the cats. But beyond the aging, all I really do is tinker a bit. My last thought after clicking the POST button is inevitably thank God THAT’S done for the week. It’s hard enough trying to juggle mommyhood, writing short fiction, editing two novels, researching markets and finding time to submit, and then following up on my submissions. Once I send a post to cyberspace, I don’t have time to give it another thought.

Any writing teacher worth his or her salt would caution against my slapdash method of posting. They'd remind me that this blog is a showcase and should contain my best work. And my training and instincts as a writer agree. But there’s something to be said for off-the-cuff posting. I like the immediacy, honesty and freshness of a work that hasn’t been edited to the nth degree. Maybe it’s like those confessions you get from drunk coworkers at the company picnic. Once the internal editor’s off, anything can creep out. And what you get is usually ripe and intriguing.

So this is where I ask myself: if I had more time, would I do it differently? My answer: probably not. The honesty is like a drug and I can’t get enough. Some people have nightmares about being caught naked in public. I’m more likely to dread being caught in a lie. So I write what comes out and hope you’ll forgive my mad-dash ramblings. I don’t have time to change anytime soon.

Stories in the Night

*****

I don’t know about you, but my best time to come up with story ideas is between 2 and 5 am.

I’ve often woken up in the middle of the night and, after a quick pee, realized I’d figured out an entire storyline while I was sleeping. I used to tell myself I’d remember it when I woke up, so I’d lay back down and fall back to sleep.

Somehow, I always forgot.

For awhile, I’d lay awake long enough to work out more details, try a few mnemonic devices. Then I’d go back to sleep. And immediately forget everything.

Eventually, I got smarter. I put a notepad and pen in my nightstand drawer and, as soon as the ideas came to me, I’d scribble away in the dark. I’m sure my husband dreamed we had mice in the house, with all my scritch-scritch-scritching. A lot of times what I write is illegible to even me, but there are always enough clues for me to piece together what I was thinking and turn it into something worth writing.

All this nocturnal creativity begs the question: why? This writing in the night is so inconvenient. I’ve woken up too many mornings after a particularly productive night of brainstorming with a splitting headache and bleary eyes, feeling completely unfit to do anything other than crawl back in bed. Parenting? Forget it! I long for the days of my office job, where I could sit in my cubicle and stare at my monitor, occasionally pecking out words of wisdom like Press ENTER to add the record.

I believe therein lies the answer: my days are so busy that those silent hours between 2 and 5 am are the only times quiet enough for my imagination to fly free.

I woke up last night with a solution to a writing problem. I’ve been working on something for an upcoming contest. Yesterday, I came up with a character and a setting, but I had no hint of a storyline, even after scratching out a scene. I’d tried to think my way through the story, during my walk with Julia, while cooking supper, between commercials during Dancing With the Stars. Zip. But in the middle of the night, I remembered something I’d written the day before, a line of dialogue offered tongue in cheek: All God’s creatures just want to be free.

Free.

At 3:30 this morning, it suddenly came to me. The idea of being free was the key to my story. Now I need to figure out how to show that through scenes, but that’s cakewalk once I have the key. I drifted back to sleep, pleased and content. Problem solved by my nighttime muse.

NaNoEdMo: Serendipity...Please?

*****

I love first drafts. There’s magic in those first words to hit the page, an energy that crackles as my fingers fly across the keyboard. First drafts are where I unearth those precious secrets held close in the hearts of my characters, where I see their strengths and their beauty and their frailties. This is where they first reveal themselves to me, their hearts fluttering with nervous trust.

By comparison, editing slogs along. This is where I assure my characters that I know what they’re capable of, that it’s time for them to open up that little bit more, to risk that bit of extra danger. I nag them, I push them, I make them push back. I fill in the gaps and sweep up the mess I left my first time through. Editing is wringing potential from the first bare bones of my story. It’s the last leg of the journey before I let my baby go. Editing is hard, uphill work.

It’s no wonder so many novels never get past the first draft stage. For every minute I spend productively editing, I spend 10 minutes checking my email, sighing and staring at the monitor. I can’t tell I how many times I’ve looked at a rough draft of a scene and thought, “This is it. This is the scene that’s going to bust this book’s balls for good.” I find myself literally panic stricken. I rub my forehead, scrub both hands over my eyes, let out a heartfelt sigh. Sometimes, when I’m really flummoxed, I even grrr at the monitor.

But then I hit that moment of kismet, that serendipitous split-second where everything clicks into place. Suddenly, I see what I need to do—cut this, add to that, scrap those three lousy pages. As the story shapes up, a tremendous high carries me aloft. I know I’ve given my characters the best vehicle I could. I did them justice. Somehow, I made them live and breathe.

I’m trapped in a scene that’s killing me right now. The last precious EdMo hours are ticking away. Beth is lost to me, somewhere beyond the fog that’s clouding my consciousness. I rub my forehead, sigh, but I can’t hear her voice. Without her, my work is empty. I wish she’d come home.

So I stare at the monitor. Somehow, I have to hang on to what I have: faith in kismet, faith in the process. I’ve been through this before, trod this uphill road, felt my feet too heavy in my boots. I have to believe. She’s out there. I trust serendipity will bring her back.