Five Words

Part of the process of writing is improving one's craft. The more I write, the more I learn, and the better I become. I assume this is true of other writers. Even so, I encounter fairly often a few slip-ups that grate on me, so I'm closing out the year with what matters most to me—words and how we use them.

 

Presently. This word does not mean now, at present. It means soon. Currently means now. Currently I'm reading Catherine Dilts, and presently I shall be reading John Floyd. And now you should be able to guess what I'm reading.

 

Uninterested/Disinterested.  These two words do not mean the same thing. Uninterested means to lack interest in something. You don't want the judge in your case to be uninterested in what's happening in the courtroom. You want him to be disinterested, without selfish or personal interest in the court activities; without bias; impartial. You definitely want the judge to be impartial. Ignore the suggestions in dictionaries that the words are beginning to share a single definition. There are some of us who will be massively confused by your writing if you do so.

 

Indifferent. Just to confuse things, we have the word indifferent. This word can mean the same as uninterested, but with nuances that make it less than a good substitute for it. The word means something that is neither good nor bad, or someone who has no interest in something, apathetic, or doesn't care. The word leaves us with a shrug.

 

And now a pesky reminder about I and me, she and her, he and him. In each pair, the first is the nominative case and the second is the objective. She and I gave weapons to him, and then he gave ammunition to me and to her. There is today among many speakers as well as writers an effort to sound correct. Hence we hear sentences like "Will you go with he and I?" I cringe. I hope you wouldn't say, "Me cringe." Talk (and write) as though you're with an old friend, or your grandmother, and let the words flow unselfconsciously.

 

As one of my favorite grammarians said in relation to the objective case, Use it with confidence. And so I do, and urge you to do so too.

 

 

My Notebooks

The holiday season is a time for getting together with family and friends, and this year though different has already brought out moments to be treasured and recorded. And, as I do year-round, I pulled out my notebook and began to jot down a few comments to remember—a book title that someone mentioned, an idea for a story that popped up when an interesting-looking stranger passed me on the street, a plan for a spring get-together, the name of a shop I wanted to return to. No one comments when I pulled out my little composition book, and I doubt anyone who knows me well even registers what I'm doing.

I have stacks of them. Each one usually covers about six months. The stacks are high enough to prevent the desk from closing properly, so I'm wondering about where I'll put them. Curious, I pulled out one from June 1998, when I attended a city planning meeting and noted the statistics someone gave. What would our little city look like if every lot were built on? This was all part of the city's master plan, and giving residents a chance to debate the proposals. I can't remember why I went, but the notes are evocative. 

 

A few pages later I had notes on Emotional Intelligence by David Goleman (1995), along with the Boston public library and its call number, followed by a few quotes.

 

In the beginning of one book is a short dialogue with two gay men, recorded moments after the fact.

 

First man to second: "You're a goodlooking guy. Here's a hug."

And then to me: "And you too."

Me: "I'm a distant second."

First man: "It's in the reading, not in the text."

 

This dialogue hasn't made it into a story yet, but other snippets overheard have. 

 

One of the best locations for catching dialogue is on Amtrak (sometimes even the Quiet Car), where riders are comfortable enough to shout over the rocking and clacking of the train. Coffee shops seem to be overrated for eavesdropping, but a hair salon is still a good spot along with certain grocery aisles.  

 

Sometimes I'm recording minutes of a meeting or drafting a grant proposal (when I was still working) or working out the idea of a letter I'm drafting. Lots of pages are filled with trial sentences. If the topics have changed over the years, my handwriting hasn't.

 

A colleague noticed my note taking one day and commented that she did the same thing. I asked if she reread her booklets at the end of the year. She said no, she threw them out. She never kept one.

 

My notebooks are inelegant, subjective, personal, and practical. They reflect my life and way of doing things, and I can't imagine throwing them out. 

 

Do you keep a journal? Any kind of record? Would you throw it out when it was filled? This is the kind of quirk that could lead to an interesting story character.

 

 

 

 

 

Characters not from Real People

A few weeks ago a friend taking a writing workshop was given the assignment to write a piece that included a description of someone she knew. She gave me part of the essay to read, and asked if her description of me seemed accurate. I was sure that it was, but I read it anyway.

 

Friends of writers have different reactions to hearing that we're working on a story and developing certain characters. Some are worried that they'll pick up a copy of the finished book and find themselves in it, and not appearing in a flattering light. Others pick up a copy of the same book and are blind to their appearance. I know one writer who regularly includes a sibling she's dislikes who never recognizes herself in her sister's work. And then there's the acquaintance who barely suppresses the hope that she is in the book, perhaps as the heroine or as a brilliant walk-on. 

 

Maybe it's the nature of the traditional mystery to attract this kind of fevered attention, emotions seesawing between avid desire for a moment of fame—or infamy—and a chilling, nearly paralyzing fear of being exposed, put on display for the babbling reviewers on social media. I haven't encountered the same concern highlighted to the same extent from thriller or romance writers, but perhaps that will change.

 

Fortunately, I've steered clear of including anyone I know in my fiction, but that hasn't stopped numerous people from quietly turning to me at a party or a meeting, when they think no one is listening, and asking, "Is that so-and-so?" Sometimes I'm shocked at the question because it tells me more about how the questioner see so-and-so than the idea that I might include him or her in a story. Usually I can't see the connection, and it's easy to say, "No, the character you're asking about came strictly from my imagination, except for the shoes. I saw a man wearing those on the T one day and never forgot them." And that is the truth.

 

During a reading at a book group populated mostly by older women, one guest asked after I finished reading a particular passage, "Is that your mother?" The question surprised me because I had never seen my mother act at all like the woman in the story, and said so. But thirty years later, as she coped with aging, my mother did indeed act exactly like the woman in the story. Either the guest was prescient, or I had given something away without realizing it.

 

Fiction is about creating a world in which characters the writer has invented behave in a way that is so true to life and their character, their personality and beliefs and expressed principles, that readers accept and follow them as though they were as real as the local mayor or postman or neighbor out mowing his lawn late on Thursday night. Fiction is a lie we believe because we can see that it is true to life as we have lived it. We take from people we know the off-hand remark that reveals a deeper sense of the person and give it to our protagonist at a crucial point in the story. We borrow a hair color, strawberry blond, to make a woman more distinctive. But the person we create will be nothing like the person borrowed from. She doesn't have to be; she only has to be true to her fictional self.

 

In her essay, my friend composed a revealing portrait of me, so much so that I winced, surprised that she had been so perceptive and able to express what she saw and felt so clearly. But if this had been fiction, the rest of me would have disappeared behind a new personality designed to carry an action and trajectory that I would not have taken. No matter how close some people think we might be getting to a real person, the writer borrows only details and remakes their significance to support a larger understanding in her fiction.

Naming My Characters

Most of my fiction begins with an image of a man or woman engaged in some act, caught in a freeze-frame of intent and purpose. I can see him or her, usually her, moving forward, the goal just out of view but I know it's there. This person's identity is only partly unknown. I don't have a name or full view of family and friends but I can see how she or he behaves. 

I spend time thinking about the names for my characters. Only once, after writing most of my first novel, in college, I had the bizarre idea that the main character's name was wrong for him, and decided to change it. The student who was typing my handwritten drafts was surprisingly upset. She said the story just didn't feel the same. And she was right. I took the lesson to heart. 

 

The name for any character may come as a sudden inspiration or after several minutes—or days—thinking about it. The name for my first series character, Chief of Police Joe Silva of the Mellingham series, reflects the Portuguese heritage of the area, as well as his approachability. Silva is a common Portuguese name in the towns and cities around Boston, and Joe, from Jose, underscores his basic amiability and implies all that he brings, from the Hebrew meaning "God will add." It also sounded very familiar, as typical of the Portuguese I encountered growing up.

 

In the second series, featuring Indian-American photographer Anita Ray, I wanted a name that could be both Indian and American, as well as having the lightness and cleanness of sound that most Indian names have. (This is just my bias.) I wanted the last name to also sound both Indian and American Irish, and gave considerable thought to both. When a friend casually remarked that another writer had once said her name was perfect for a character, I knew I was on the right track, and Anita Ray was born. Auntie Meena, who in India would be addressed as Meena Auntie, came easily after hearing a child call out.

 

The main character in Below the Tree Line, the beginning of a new series, had to express her Irish heritage but also her particular heritage of the female line, as a healer. The women in her family tree carried names that are mostly forgotten today—Justice, Charity, Faith—but I wanted one that expressed her character. Felicity O'Brien inherited the family farm, and practices her healing gift among friends. 

 

In a short story that first appeared in AHMM ("How Do You Know What You Want"), a social worker in child welfare delivers a teenager to a new foster family. It's a walk-on part but I knew who she was and her name just popped into my head. I didn't expect to deal with her again, but she has shown up in two more stories and is now the protagonist in a novel I'm working on. Ginny Means is forty, unmarried, and devoted to her work, but she has a secret that she carries uneasily, but someone else wants it exposed. In an online discussion I mentioned her and another participant said, "That's a good name for a social worker." 

 

When I struggle with naming a character, I think of Dickens, who was brilliant at this along with just about everything else in composing stories. Capturing the right name, one that doesn't feel "wrong" or "ill-suited" two months or two years later, takes time and effort. It doesn't have to be unusual or startling, like Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky or Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. But it should be like the name Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, able to tell you about the character on some level. The right name lifts the story and carries the personality.

 

That's where my thoughts are now as I ponder naming the minor characters in my current WIP, beginning with the various villains (and there are several) and the townspeople who encounter them.

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