All post

Fiction Comes Home to Roost: Making up with the Neighbors by Ellyn Oaksmith

9:04 PM Add Comment
Setting: my cul-de-sac
For me setting is the bird’s next outside my house. Inside the bird warms her eggs, waits to hatch a living thing and watches the world go by. What came first, the setting or the plot? 
Coming from a screenwriting background, plot is king. Screenwriters live and die by the 30 second pitch: “Snakes on a plane!” “Husband and wife assasins!” Laugh all you want but those screenwriters are working today.
My current title, Divine Moves takes place in my own neighborhood, something I've never done. The plot involves infidelity, drug use, snotty teens, a kid possibly setting something very expensive on fire (rhymes with Hercedes) and yes, a stripping grandmother who teaches a grandchild to pole dance. Luckily I have neighbors with a good sense of humor who enjoy my books. 
What I wanted to write was a compilation of every quirky suburban family drama that interested me. But I couldn’t see any other way than to stick it in my own cul-de-sac. In reality we are incredibly supportive, adore each others’ children and celebrate with wine at the drop of a hat. What I found interesting was to throw a grenade into my fictional world (inspired by reality in tone only) and see where the pieces fell.
Did it work? Most people, including my neighbors have found the book to be engaging because the characters felt real and their problems — the tension between public and private and how we deal with failure, is real. At the same time I worked very hard to keep it light. Laughter isn’t the best medicine, it is the only medicine.
And it’s the only way I know how to write.
Thanks for stopping by. This is my first post so I’d like to say thank you to my fellow writers for inviting me. I’m so excited to be part of The Girlfriends Book Club!



A native of Seattle and graduate of Smith College, Ellyn financed her MFA at The American Film Institute by working as a cook on fishing boats in Alaska. After several years as a screenwriter, Ellyn came to her senses and returned to Seattle, where she wrote her first novel, Adventures with Max and Louise, which was pubished in 2012. Her second novel, Divine Moves, was published the following year. She's polishing her third novel, Fifty Acts of Kindness and outlining her first YA novel, Finding Nirvana.
When she can find the right mix of humor, depression and hysteria, she'll write about her years in Los Angeles.
She lives near Seattle with her family and a shelter dog.
For writing news, sneak peeks at new projects and her blog, visit www.EllynOaksmith.com


Who's Crazy Now?

6:57 AM Add Comment
by

I tend to love my crazy.   Whether it’s obsession over invisible bedbugs we don’t have or certainty that it’s my attention alone that’s keeping the plane I’m riding aloft, I view my neuroses affectionately.  What’s the alternative?  Hating them, hating myself? 

Similarly, in novels, it’s the oddball I enjoy.   Think Flannery O’Connor’s wannabe Messiah in Wise Blood or Ignatius O’Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces.  I’m safely distanced enough to enjoy the ride, despite the fact that, in real life, I’d never in a million years stop along the side of the road to offer either of these unwashed protagonists a lift. 

They’re crazy but harmless.  Not Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates’ kind of crazy.  Thosemadmen drive a whole different genre, the crime novels I haven’t allowed myself to read for decades.  Scary-crazy is too much like the headlines, it’s too much like the worst nightmare that we understand can happen to anyone.  This is a recognition that most of us might face, but only in bits and pieces before tucking it away and whistling in the dark. 

The older I get, the more I seek diversion, not doom, in my entertainment.  And I try to write what I wish to read.

My first novel, DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN is packed with quirky characters, only one of whom is evil. The rest, from the lovely Diana, whose fear of insects mirrors my own, to Wally, a widower certain his dead wife is sending him “signs,” has something she or he does which distinguishes them from the completely stable unimaginative mass of humans we call “normal.”  Humphrey, a strapping seventeen year old is an unlikely domestic diva, nurturing his mother through a bad marriage. Eleanor, his half-sister, is four years old and a talented kleptomaniac.  Her mischief will eventually cause her all-too-arrogant father to rue his haste in dismissing the intelligence of his wife and children.  Audrey, Humphrey’s love interest, is Wally the widower’s blond-haired blue-eyed adopted daughter, out to save the planet on behalf of the Native Americans she’s convinced were her birth parents.  It’s a bit of a lunatic asylum, when you take the ensemble apart, but such is the stuff of comedy.   It is also the stuff of real life. 

No one goes to her grave without having had a time in which she’s seemed to others -- well, let’s just say – just a bit off.  It might be the confusing roller coaster of falling in love, be it with your soul mate or your newborn child.  It might be the madness of grief, with its necessary delusions: denial, bargaining, all those “unreasonable” behaviors.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” is not limited to epic battles or intercontinental pestilence and plague.   We will, each of us, find ourselves tested, and this is the “stuff” of drama.  We might be perfectly sane until we’re derailed by enormous sadness or exhilarating affection.  All stories focus on a time in characters’ lives when they’re drawn out of their stable existence and driven to the edge.   To their wit’s end.  Their last nerve.  Their crazy. 

In comedy, we have the pleasure of watching our protagonist adapt and learn and grow and heal.  In tragedy, well, not so much.  Too little, too late, or with the opposite effect he or she was seeking.  For eons now, the happy ending has been deplored by so-called ‘serious’ writers and reviewers.  Aristotle branded the comedic characters as less noble, less virtuous.  Shakespeare turned everything on its head, combining the two forms to great effect.  Even so, in his own day, the bard was considered vulgar, a playwright who pandered to the masses.  Jane Austen was dismissed as frivolous and Trollope was thought too concerned with drawing rooms and manners.  Oscar Wilde, too, caught his own share of “shite” for being too playful, too much fun, to be taken seriously.

I can’t help but notice the similarity between these elevated critiques from centuries past and current literary trends, when women’s fiction is derided for the inevitable happy ending, for the comfort readers take in the cushy world of fanciful shoes and pretty wallpapers.

  I would argue that women – far from being the naïve idiots these critiques imply – are all too familiar with death and decay, with poverty and loss.   Whether its nursing our failing parents, a frighteningly sick child, or suffering the blindsiding loss of a sibling or good friend, we’ve weathered the front lines of our emotional Waterloos, thank you very much.  We’re well aware that the nightmare scenarios will – like taxes – inevitably arrive at our doorstep.  Until then, or after the fact, we prefer to escape to a place in which the world is filled with laughter and forgiveness and, yes, even fashion.   Crazy?  Perhaps.  Delusional?  Absolutely.  Otherwise known as suspension of belief, a.k.a. willingly entering what John Gardener calls “the fictional dream.”   The point is, we’ll take what “she’s having,” in that famous line of Norah Ephron’s.  To choose pleasure over pain, diversion over doom, it’s the opposite of naïve.  We know what’s serious.  Serious is a heart attack, it’s cancer.  Perhaps those of us who write about other things do so not from ignorance about such matters but from a profound knowledge we keep tucked inside.   Let us amble down the garden path and whistle when its dark; all around us there are others who will hear and take heart.  They might even laugh, a sound which can, to the untutored, sound a lot like crying turned inside out.  A lot like crazy, just not the kind that kills you for the sheer mastery of it.


Bon Voyage to the Crazies!

9:00 PM Add Comment
By Laura Spinella

Last January, I did a crazy thing. I booked a cruise. It leaves in two weeks. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean, we were snowbound in Boston. Short of an igloo in Alaska, it doesn’t get more inspiring in terms of wishing for sea breezes and warm weather. Aside from this, I also had a subplot for choosing my cruise calendar. I was just getting into the heart of a hefty revision. Carefully, I anticipated how long it might take to address three and one-half pages of detailed notes, seamlessly integrating them into my latest novel. Pffffft! Can you say rewrite? Anyway, back then, I was determined not to head off for sun and fun with a book hanging over my head. I’d want one in my lap, an umbrella drink in my hand.
            Damn, if I wasn’t right on the money.  This week I am finished—or as close to finished as any of us gets. That stage where everyone in your house hates you, because you’re far more involved in the lives of characters than the people you live with. Here’s another great tipoff that you’ve reached the end: Randomly open your novel. Read a five-word sentence. If you can name its context within the manuscript, you’re toast. But the real kicker for me, the blue ribbon finish line, is the story. No, not the one in the book. The additional ones I start to write in my head. Sooooo, like, after the last page, what happened then?  Well, Aubrey moves to… Start entertaining those scenarios, and you know it’s time to call it quits.  Seriously, this book, while I think worth it, required every bit of know-how I had, and an awful lot of shit I had to make up.
            That’s not to say it’s a perfect book.  Far from it, as I’m sure some reviewer will point out in the future. Perfection in writing is elusive. What’s not so elusive are the twelve-pages of boarding passes I recently printed and the daily emails inviting me to sign up for Bottomless Beer Boat packages, dolphin swimming, and my choice of eight various types of snorkeling. A cruise? I don’t cruise. What was I thinking? I know, see paragraph one. January in Boston. It will rattle your bones and clearly your brain. “What a great prize for getting this book done and submitted... Sure...” So now it seems I am committed. How appropriate, really. After completing these revisions committed feels like a go-to kind of word.

            This brings me around to our new theme for this cycle: the crazies we write about. I considered covering that topic. There are more than a few damaged characters lurking among the pages of my books. But right now, I think I’m supposed to be in character uncoupling mode. I’m supposed to be packing, literally and figuratively. Apparently, I’m destined to climb aboard a luxury liner that wants to fill me with alcohol and sail me away to exciting venues. They want to dazzle me with adventure and inflict new people into my introverted, one-trick-pony life. But I don’t know. It feels as if there’s a “been there, done that”component to this pending agenda. Reluctant vacationer?  Perhaps. But it seems to me that I just spent six months in my writing room trying to achieve the exact same thing.

Laura Spinella is the very exhausted author of the award-winning Beautiful Disaster and newly released Perfect Timing. She'll be back from va-kay soon. Visit her at LauraSpinella.net.                 

Quirky, Crazy, or Plain Off Their Rockers

1:30 AM Add Comment
by Sylvie Fox

Until last month, my husband hadn’t read a book of mine in nearly a decade. But he got a free Android tablet and started reading on his way to work. He asked for a couple of my books, and I uploaded them for him.

After a few days of no reaction, I didn’t think much about it. On night as I was drifting off, he asked me. “Who are these people you write about.? Are they based on anyone we know?”

Waking myself, and turning over, I listened to his thoughts on the characters. He thought a lot of them were just plain nuts.

To say life is boring here at Casa Fox in Los Angeles, would be an understatement. I like a life free of drama. For writing, and reading, however—bring it on.

Why I like to read about quirky or nutty characters is easy to answer. Who doesn’t like to be a voyeur? I love to walk neighborhoods at night imagining what goes on behind the drapes. That curiosity translates to my writing.

I like to explore the lives of fictional people who push boundaries. Whether that push be lawful or not, moral or not, or even pathological or not.

I recently finished a book where the hero is a bit of a womanizer (to put it in the kindest possible way). Before writing his story, I had to think long and hard about why someone would act like that. What motivated him to get up every day and seek out the affection of random women.

It was an interesting journey, and Raphael Augustine the hero of my forthcoming release, Don’t Judge Me took shape.

I also recently completed a book (Under Color of Law) with a juvenile court judge who takes advantage of women who have cases before him. If they want to keep their children out of jail or foster care, they have to take care of Judge Eamon Brody first.

Abuse of power happens all the time, but what makes a man (or woman) take their control to such an extreme? In my world dominated by house repairs, dog walking, and child car pools, delving into the deranged mind of this man was a fascinating way to pass the day.

And in romance, the more difficult the heroine, the better. I like to think of the women in my books as prickly pears. A hero who can get beyond all the crazy hair (Sophie Reid in Unlikely), and off putting behavior (Hannah Keesling of The Good Enough Husband takes the cake) of my heroines, deserves the prize—finding a woman underneath who’s worthy of their love.


That’s the bottom line, I think. Each character, no matter how outsized their behavior, is deserving of our reading and writing time, a little consideration, and often our love.

JANE TAYLOR: ANTIHEROINE

4:04 PM Add Comment
by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

If you look around the internet, you can find a variety of definitions for 'antihero' or 'antiheroine,' some of which are rather involved. For simplicity's sake, I'll go with the one from Webster's Eleventh: "a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities." There. That sounds like a good person to hang out with, doesn't it?

Hanging out with characters in books - for some readers, that's what it's all about. You'll hear certain readers say, upon occasion, "I couldn't stand X book because I hated the main character." Just like some readers don't like books written in first person or don't like books written in present tense - or the opposites of those things, or any number of variables - there are readers for whom, unless the protagonist is someone they can cozy up to, someone they'd want to be friends with or even emulate, all is lost. It's valid. Hey, it's important for people to know what they want in books and there are times when the lack of likability in a main character is problematic for even those of us who don't mind or even embrace unheroic characters; some stories, after all, depend on reader sympathy to work.

Of course, if we made likability the sole criteria for protagonists and their books' worth, some pretty notable characters would need to be thrown out, Scarlett O'Hara and Ebenezer Scrooge among them - the former is a self-absorbed witch-with-a-B, while the latter is the Grinch in a top hat.

But for those of us who like variety, in our reading and our writing, thankfully there are those who embrace the antiheroic.

I've written more than my share of problematic characters in my time and none more so than Jane Taylor from my debut novel, THE THIN PINK LINE. At the beginning of the novel, Jane thinks she's pregnant. When she experiences positive reinforcement for this from others, and when her live-in boyfriend doesn't seem too bothered, she's thrilled. So when it turns out she's not pregnant, not wanting to lose the feelings she's found, she figures she'll just get pregnant...quickly. And when that doesn't happen in time, and for one reason and another, she decides to, oh, you know, fake an entire pregnancy.

OK, I admit it: Jane is spectacularly antiheroic. In fact, she's the most self-absorbed, misguided, borderline-sociopathic character I've ever created.

And yet, for some - by no means all! - readers, she works. Yes, for those who insist on likability, she's never going to work, despite some authorial sleight of hand: 1) shifting the mirrors, so that her family's even worse than she is and her coworkers aren't much better; 2) investing her with a best friend who readers do love and who loves Jane unconditionally, despite that he's the only one who sees all her warts clearly, knowing her better than she even knows herself.    

I didn't create Jane Taylor so that people would want her to move next door to them. I didn't create her so she'd give readers a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. And I certainly didn't create her so that anyone would try to emulate her by trying on a fake pregnancy of their own. I created Jane Taylor because I thought she was interesting, also because I thought it would be fascinating for me to see just how she manages to pull off - if she manages to pull off! - the insane task she's set herself.

Because that's the thing, isn't it? For those of us who don't mind problematic protagonists? Sure, it's nice if some protagonists are heroic. But not everyone has to be a role model. In the end, as a reader, I simply want characters who are interesting. I simply don't want to be bored.

If you want to check out just how crazy Jane is, so you can judge for yourself, for the next 24-hours-ish, THE THIN PINK LINE is just 99 cents!

So, how about you? Who's your favorite antihero/heroine?

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of over 30 books for adults, teens and children. Visit her at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com or follow her on Twitter @LaurenBaratzL 

Creating Crazy Characters

6:12 PM Add Comment
by Barbara Claypole White



I write stories about the damaged and the broken. My characters are messed-up people, and I take them on journeys that explore healing, acceptance, and the true meaning of family. Some of them are even crazy—bonkers, as we say in England. But crazy is the new normal, and I use that term with affection and respect. To accept your own craziness—as my characters learn to do—means to embrace the rich complexities of life and show incredible courage. In other words, to be a true hero.

“Tell us about your character research,” book club members often say. (Brilliant question, by the way. Love it.) So, here’s my crib sheet for creating crazy people, characters with invisible disabilities:

1) Research.
I climb deep inside my characters’ dark corners to understand their psychological make-up. Research, obviously, is the key. I read memoirs, blogs, and find support groups that might be willing to talk with me, but my favorite part of research comes from one-on-one interviews. I like to listen and not intrude with too many questions, because as people share their stories, they also reveal hidden truths. I could not have found Galen, the suicide survivor in THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR, without friends—and strangers—who confided in me about their struggles with severe, clinical depression. One person even helped me act out a particularly dark scene with this character.

2) Make it personal: People are not their disorders.
A character is still a character, not a stereotype. We all have different brain chemistry, and we all bring unique life experiences to pain, grief, love, and hate. My job as an author is to create believable, multi-dimensional characters, not cardboard cutouts that read ‘I am obsessive-compulsive disorder’ or ‘I am depression’.

James Nealy, the hero of my debut, THE UNFINISHED GARDEN, has OCD. Several readers insisted James didn’t, because he wasn’t a hand washer and bore no resemblance to Monk, the germophobic television detective. OCD is a highly individualized anxiety disorder. None of the OCDers I know and love—including my son, who wrote the above sign—are hand washers.

Bottom line: I work hard to avoid stereotypes. Stereotypes don’t create characters; they perpetuate stigma and myth. One-size-fits-all has never applied to human beings. Why should it apply to characters who battle mental illness, even the crazier ones?

3) Decide how the disorder has shaped the character’s life.
There is much potential here for conflict and plot development. Is this character open about his disorder or has he fought hard to keep it secret? If so, at what cost? James, for example, has never told anyone he has OCD. When he makes the decision to tell the heroine’s young son that he has a hiccup in his brain, this is a life-altering moment, and it sets the plot in motion.

4) To label or not to label, that is the question.
The answer has to come from the character. Does your character know he suffers from clinical depression? Has he ever been diagnosed? In THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR my hero Will’s dead mother is a vital part of his backstory. Mentally ill—batshit insane, according to Will—Angeline was never diagnosed nor treated, and the memory of her extreme behavior haunts the novel. Even though I researched her intensely, trying to decide if she suffered from bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder, I finally realized her label was irrelevant. What mattered was the impact of her mood swings on young Will.

Remember too, mental illness is often misdiagnosed. If psychologists don’t have all the answers, why should authors?

5) Flip the negative to find the positive.
The behavior of a character with issues can seem weird and off-putting to the reader. But if you turn a negative around, you can find a positive. For example, when James is a stuck on a thought, which is what happens when you have OCD, it can manifest as extreme self-absorption. But flip that obsessive trait, and you have a man who won't quit; a man will do anything to help someone who needs him. A man who is incredibly compassionate.

6) Fear is the key.
I think of myself as excavating my characters, and I always start by analyzing their fears. Because I live in the world of OCD, which generates crippling fear, I have a trick that I picked up from my son’s psychologist: Find the fear behind the fear. After all, fear is deeply personal, so where does it come from? James’s fear of dirt traces back to his mother’s death. When he was ten, his mother was outside digging frantically in the garden when his father told James she was dying of cancer. His OCD latched onto that moment and whispered that soil was the conductor of disease and death. (OCD fear is not rational, but it always has roots.)

Yes, I wrote a novel with a successful, sexy 45-year-old hero who is terrified of dirt, but James is also the least messed-up character in THE UNFINISHED GARDEN. He has a strong sense of self, and I adore him for it. Real people live, work, and love through the challenges of invisible disabilities in the same way that James does. And they often do so quietly, with unseen courage. I think it’s worth bringing their stories into the light.
_________________________________________________________

Barbara Claypole White is the author of THE UNFINISHED GARDEN, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt, which won the 2013 Golden Quill for Best First Book. THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR, which was chosen by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) as a Winter 2014 Okra Pick, is the story of two broken families coming together to heal in rural North Carolina. 

Visit her at barbaraclaypolewhite.com, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

The Art of Being An Artist

6:53 PM Add Comment

By Karin Gillespie

Painters, musicians, sculptors, actors and writers. They’re not like regular folk or at least that’s what we often believe.  Some people revere them and called them artistes; others are more suspicious and say, “I don’t care much for artsy fartsy types.”  (A statement often punctuated with the pop of a Pabts Blue Ribbon can.)

Moms and dads often freak out if their kids say they want to be artists.  They blame each other (You’re the one who gave him that Etch-A-Sketch! It’s a harmless toy. It’s a gateway drug!) For many parents the word artist is synonymous with deadbeat. They urge their children to do something more practical. They say, “Who told you the color of your parachute was fuchsia. Looks pinstripe to me.  Get thee to a law school.”

Sometimes it’s hard for parents to believe their children are true artists. They might believe the Creator only picked certain special people to be artists and the rest of us are supposed to be content as system analysts, accountants and peanut shellers.

In fact, if you’re at a cocktail party and dare to declare, “I’m an artist” you’re opening yourself to a host of snarky comments:  Have I heard of you? Has your work been displayed at the MOMA? Did you paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? No? Well, then I guess you’re just a dilettante.

Those elitist attitudes usually come from people who have squelched their artistic tendencies at an early age.  In my mind, the Creator didn’t pick only certain people to be artists, it picked us all:  Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mozart, and yes, even Bubba I-Brake-for-PBR Jones.

After all, we’re talking about a deity who came up with not one, but 40,000 species of spiders. (I’d have been perfectly happy with zero species but no one consulted me.). And since many believe that man is created in God’s image, it makes sense that every baby coming down the chute is an artist.

Sometimes our artistic tendencies are drummed out of us. (Trees are supposed to be green, not polka-dot.) Some of us are afraid of being artists. (Who wants to drink themselves to death like Hemmingway?) Some of are reluctant to be beginners. (If I can’t sing like Pavarotti the first time I open my mouth, I don’t want to sing at all.)

 But trust me, the inner artist is inside of you just waiting to be released so it can paint a watercolor, decorate a birthday cake or even make a sculpture out of beer cans. (I’m talking to you, Bubba.) It’s not artsy-fartsy; it’s artsy-smartsy, and we are all members of the same crazy, creative tribe.


P.S. If you’re having problems embracing your inner artist, read the Artists’ Way by Julia Cameron and do everything she says. You won’t regret it.   
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)