A Holiday Rest

This is the time of year when all of us are supposed to be stretched to the max, worn to a frazzle, fried, tired to a farethewell. You can add your favorite cliche here because being tired out during the holiday season is itself a cliche. As a writer I work hard to avoid cliches, and I'm working hard to avoid this one.

I sent off a mss to an editor a couple of weeks ago, and now all I can do is wait. All writers go through this, and hard as it is, it is also a great opportunity. This is the time when we are free to daydream all the time, when we begin work on our next project, long or short, fiction or nonfiction. For me that project is another novel but I'm also using the rest period to participate in a holiday art exhibit with the Rocky Neck Art Colony. This is such a great change of pace for me that I have come to treasure the time when I can look at the topics that interest me--India, people, streetscapes--with an entirely different perspective.

The Winter Show 2012 will also include a number of opportunities for artists and others to get together and talk about their work, among many topics, and enjoy the season. The show is being held at the Cultural Center on Wonson Street, Gloucester. If you're in the area, drop by and let all those cliches about the holiday season fade away.

Why I Love September

A friend of mine has been teaching at various colleges ever since she received her graduate degree. When we talk about other careers we might have tried instead of teaching (for her) and freelance writing and editing (for me), she invariably remarks that she would find it hard to give up her summer months for a twelve-month-a-year job. I understand but I never think about those summer months. Still, I realized recently (actually Labor Day weekend), that I still think the year begins with the day after Labor Day. That was when school started (back in the dark ages), and the two or three weeks just preceding Labor Day included a lot of preparation for the change in activity.

I still think that way. This is fitting. September is, after all, National Preparedness Month. (I'll bet you didn't know that.) While others may start thinking about their New Year's Resolutions right after Christmas, I am blessedly free of that impulse.

September is when I consider what I want to accomplish during the coming months and get my plan under way. I clean out closets, go through stacks of book, find more things to set aside for the local charity thrift shop, and in general act like a big change is coming.

This year, in addition to tidying up the closets, I have tidied up my blog, attaching it more or less tightly to my web page. My web maven, a wonderful writer as well as the only woman I know who understands my computer blind spots, Kathleen Valentine, did the job, and I now feel very organized. It won't last but for the moment it feels good.

I've made a list of stories to finish and novel ideas I want to flesh out; I hope to begin one of them soon, when I get my current project into the mail.  Part of this planning comes out of my love of lists--things to do, books to read, little tasks to complete. Crossing things off those lists makes me feel enormously satisfied. And since these lists only contain things I want to do, I never experience wholesale failure, which is usually the case with New Year's Eve resolutions. For me, September is definitely a time of new beginnings.

Never Too Old for Surprises

Saturday, September 15, 2012

By the time you reach your fifties and sixties you think you know yourself pretty well. You've been through the crises of growing up, starting a life, managing a career, getting along with friends and family and co-workers. You've survived a few tragedies and disappointments, and learned to live life day by day. You think you know how you'll react when the end point comes. I cared for my mother and younger brother. I thought I knew how to listen to the patient, and how I felt about end of life care. I was wrong.

Two or three months ago our dog, a shelter Lab mix, started losing weight. He'd been my mother's dog, and we brought him home to live with us after she died. The cat refused to have anything to do with him, but he settled in. He never had any medical issues until this spring and summer, when he started losing weight and developed diarrhea.

Right now I have a kitchen table cluttered with pill vials--red, blue, green plastic bottles, a plastic bag with packets of powders, and a box of capsules (this doesn't include the other pills we returned for a different dose), and cans of special diet food--none of which we could get down him for more than a few days at a time. He's had an ultrasound, an internal exam, an x-ray, and numerous visits to the vet. He would have started on homeopathic treatments this week if his body hadn't made it clear that no more effort should be made. He can't get to his feet on his own, can't eat, and can barely drink water. His body has stopped shedding--gone are the clumps of black hair I find whenever I vacuum. He also smells different.

As I look back I'm surprised how many times I was willing to try just one more visit, one more possible treatment, one more test. The ultrasound terrified Rob, and why not? He was held down on a table while a stranger shaved part of his body and then ran a cold piece of metal and plastic over his bare skin. He had an x-ray. Both tests showed exactly nothing. He had no tumors, no noticeable cancer, no unexpected growths or decay. He had arthritis in his spine and hips, but we already knew that.

Rob is going to the vet's this afternoon for the last time. And I am going to spend the rest of the weekend (and longer) wondering what is it about a pet that pushed me to try three doctors and scads of medicine when it was obvious where the dog was headed. I wonder if it's because he can't speak. He can't tell me where he thinks he's going (and sometimes as I watch him standing on the sidewalk, I'm not sure he has any idea where he's going or wants to go). I wonder if it's because he seems so helpless that I'm driven to help more. We had no diagnosis because we didn't know what was happening to him; the various tests turned up nothing. The observation that he's old (13) and his body has decided it's time to quit is too simple and too non-medical. What was the trigger that told his body to quit?

Two or three weeks ago I sat on the floor beside him and was surprised to find myself starting to cry. Even if I couldn't admit it to myself, I knew.

It rained this morning when we got him outside for a short walk, but that didn't seem to bother him. Usually he dislikes the rain. He also dislikes the ocean, which is odd for a water dog. He wandered along his usual route, seemed to forget where he was going, turned around, wandered some more, which is when we brought him home. He's ready, and he's probably been ready for weeks.

Pets teach us many things--unconditional love is the one people usually cite. But Rob taught me something about myself. He didn't want treatment, and I had trouble catching on to that. He only wanted to lie on the grass in the backyard and watch the squirrels and rabbits and birds pass by. That's another lesson to remember.

Naming Your Characters

Starting out on a new novel or short story is exciting for me, with that sense of promise of interesting events and discoveries about characters. The first character, usually the mover of the story, appears well developed and named. I may not know this character well, but I can already see a form and personality. And, most important for this discussion, I don't have to work at choosing a name. Finding names for other characters is much harder.

Characters are not all the same, and their names shouldn't be either. I keep a list of characters as they appear and are named, to avoid basic pitfalls. First, I don't want all or many of the names beginning with the same letter. I did this in one mss and it lent a certain poetic quality to the story--that annoying dum de dum de dum de dum. Keeping a list of names prevent me from ending up with a list of characters like this: Paul, Pam, Priscilla, Peter. Second, the names shouldn't be too similar. It's confusing, for example, to read about Sandy talking to Randy about Mandy.

Third, the names of characters should reflect the culture of the story as well as the real world. If the story I'm working on, for instance, is set in South Philadelphia, or Boston's North End, the reader should encounter a lot of Italian names at least for the background characters, such as the man running the corner convenience store or bakery. If the story is set in parts of central Canada, the reader will expect one or more eastern European surnames.

Historical novels pose other challenges. During the 1940s girls were given what we now regard as common names--Ann, Carol, Catherine, Deborah, Linda. Today the names are more exotic--Olivia, Ryan, Shayla, Taylor. If your story is set in the 1700s, many of the names will be biblical--Ezekial, Jeremiah, Sarah (also a perennial favorite, along with Elizabeth).

Fourth, if you have inadvertently chosen the surname of a famous historical person, change it. If you have not inadvertently chosen that name, take a look at the character and ask yourself if your character reflects that person in a responsible way. Books live on after us, and whatever we think we're experimenting with can turn out to be the joke that falls flat at the dinner party. If you want to offer a commentary on a particular public figure, write an essay.

I once used the name Muir for a character intentionally because I have met a number of people named Muir and I felt the character was the kind of person who could have followed in the extended family lines of John Muir. I reread each passage in which the character appeared in order to be certain I had not insulted anyone with that name. In the end I kept the character's name. I also once inadvertently named a character after a famous baseball manager and when I realized that, I changed it. (This is what comes from not following sports closely, but hearing it only as background noise.) The character could perform his role in the story with any number of surnames.

Fifth, no matter what name I choose, if it looks at all familiar, and sometimes even if it doesn't, I check it in a phone book or on line. I also check the names with a google search. Someone somewhere is liable to have a name some writer invented for a novel, and I recognize that I can't guard against every eventuality, but it is important to make a sincere effort to avoid using the name of a real person.

Last, once you have settled on a character's name, live with it. You cannot change this in the middle of the story, or when you're revising for the last time. That is not the time to decide you've always liked the name Marylynne better than Eloise. Writers choose names because each one seems to fit the character, and to change the name means changing the personality of that character after it's already established. If you really want to do that, it's time to start writing another story, with a different character carrying your new favorite name.

Storytelling in an Age of Information

Some years ago my father told me a story. I asked him why someone didn't cry at a funeral we had attended. He replied with this story. A farm woman living out in the west came back from a trip to town to find her family dead--her children in the house, her husband outside. She could do nothing but bury them, and she did so, working all day. When she went into the barn she found the cow dead. At the sight of the poor dumb animal, she broke down and cried and cried. He ended this story with the explanation that "sometimes it's easier to cry over something small than something big."

Someone else might interpret this story differently. Perhaps the woman just needed that one more little push to break open her stoicism. Or perhaps she saw her last chance of survival dead on the barn floor. Or perhaps she was physically exhausted and tears were the result. One interpretation isn't right and the others wrong. The point of the story isn't my father's explanation or anyone else's. The point of the story is the way it stimulates each listener to think about why a farm woman would react as she did. The story pushes us to grow by thinking and considering the life of another.

I began to think about this recently while reading an essay by Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov" (1933) in which the author laments the decline in the art of story telling. Our world is awash in information, he points out, which is distinct from and, perhaps, antithetical to storytelling. The essay is thoughtful and provocative.

But the most intriguing part for me is a story he relates from Herodotus's Histories. Herodotus tells the story of the Egyptian king Psammenitus, who was defeated by the Persian king Cambyses, who wanted to humiliate his rival. He forced Psammenitus to watch as his son and daughter were paraded among the prisoners on their way to be executed or enslaved. Psammenitus stood stoically by, showing no emotion. When he saw an old man who had been one of his servants paraded by, the defeated king broke into loud mourning. Readers over the centuries have offered a variety of explanations for the king's behavior.

I don't think my father knew his story went all the way back to the Greeks. I certainly didn't. He had always been one to tell stories--sitting around the dinner table in the evening, among friends, or to his children when the time seemed right. I used to think the greatest compliment he ever paid me was right after I had told the family a story. I thought he would comment on how curious the behavior was of the people in the story, but instead he said, "That's a good story."

In some cultures people don't confront each other when something has gone wrong between them--they tell a story. And they do this for a very good reason. In India, life is crowded. No one can afford to be in conflict with others all the time, but each one needs a way to assert himself or herself. A story opens the heart and the mind, and nudges the listener to reconsider behavior.

My father belonged to a generation long before television, and even regular radio nights. His family sat around telling stories and jokes in the evening. His greatest gift was teaching me to tell stories, passing on a tradition that gave people pleasure but also gave them something more--a chance to learn and to glean wisdom from hearing about others and their circumstances.

When writers talk about trying to tell a good story, this is partly what they mean. There is no one interpretation, only an experience captured that is true to life and to human feeling. We are awash in information, as Benjamin so unhappily declares, and most of it forgettable the minute we hear it. What we really need is to be enveloped in stories, overheard experiences that can make us larger than we are and more able to live in the world.

A Working Vacation

I'm getting ready to go on vacation next week, to visit friends in Seattle. This brings me face to face with the usual dilemma of the traveler--what to take? But I'm not talking about clothes; I'm talking about mss to work on and books to read. I'm taking my computer and my camera. The camera won't be a problem, but the computer will call to me all day long and into the night if I don't put something on it. The question is what?

My choices are simple--a short story that is just in the idea stage, and a mystery novel that is more than three-quarters finished. I have a nice neat copy just waiting to be covered with ink, making deletions and adding new dialogue and descriptions, filling all the white space not already covered with type. 

And then there's the question of just how much time a guest can spend on her own work when she's supposed to be visiting with her hosts. My friends have a house in the Okanogan Valley, and "the ranch" as some of us call it always seems to need a bit of work, putting up blinds, putting in plants, fixing other odds and ends. Fortunately, they don't seem to need me for that, though I'm pretty good at pulling up weeds. My friends don't ask and they don't seem to notice how much time I spend staring at my computer, or working on hard copy. No one asks what I'm doing, or tries to read over my shoulder. (We have such good manners.) Am I being a bad guest?

I'm taking a few books with me, of course, and I never worry about that. My friends are great readers and I can count on time every evening to sit down with a book and read. The high country has deep quiet, a wonderful silence that is hard to find where I live, on a somewhat busy street, and I love to sit and read with only the sound of the river nearby or a light breeze passing among the tree branches. That's a real vacation.

How much work do you take with you on a vacation? Do you apologize for drifting off to work? Do your friends expect it?

Revising Old Work

This essay was first posted on Author Expressions, the blog for Five Star authors, on May 4. Some of the comments I've received from fellow writers have prompted me to reprint it here. 

Every once in a while I find myself with enough time to work on something, before I start the next novel in one of my series. This is when I usually pull out an unfinished manuscript from the lower desk drawer and try to revise. Sometimes this is successful, but I’ve learned a few lessons about how to do this. Right now I’m working on a Joe Silva mystery that I set aside some years ago, and I’m keeping those lessons in mind.

First, the person you are now is not the person you were then. You were a different person when you wrote the story the first time. If you don’t like the story, put it back in the drawer, or close out the file, and just leave it. This is not the kind of project you can bring “up to date.” If you feel so different from the work, don’t revise it; start over on something entirely new.

Second, if you read carefully you will find what made you put the work aside in the first place, and if that’s something you can fix, work on that. Did one of the characters fall flat on the page? Did the plot feel like a piece of swiss cheese? Some problems might be too big to fix but discovering them will help you in your current work. This is an opportunity to see how you’ve grown or changed as a writer.

Third, notice the language. If you’re like me, you’ll be surprised at the little verbal tics that managed to survive through all that earlier editing—a love of certain phrases such as examples always coming in units of three, longer sentences when the story is getting excited in stead of shorter ones to indicate rising tension, characters’ names all beginning with the same letter, weather patterns that don’t fit the story. Sometimes the problem is what one writer calls echoes—words repeated two or three times in a paragraph while the unconscious tries to figure out where it best suits the writing. These are the things will simply don’t see while writing and even while editing. But reading after time has passed shows us all the warts.

Fourth, if you find yourself disliking almost everything, then pull out that pen (I still edit on paper, though I compose on the computer) and draw a line through everything you dislike. You may have boxes taking out whole paragraphs, and lines crossing out entire pages. But look at what you have left. Do you have a perfect opening line buried deep within the third page? Do you have three paragraphs that on their own suggest an entirely new story, or a glimmer of what your old story might have been? Don’t be in a rush. Let the surviving sentences or paragraph cohere for a while, and then sit down with them and let your imagination give you a new story.

Right now I’m taking my own advice. I knew something wasn’t quite right about the Joe Silva book, and after thinking about a lot of other things for a few years it occurred to me what I could do about it. I’m rereading the novel to think about it with the slight changes in mind, to see if it will work, and then I’ll write. I’m not finding a lot of echoes (but a few) or any pages I’d like to excise, but I do find the occasional typo (to/two/too). And, to my relief, I find that I really like some of the characters, just as I did when I was writing the story the first time.

Susan Oleksiw is the author of the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva. Her Mellingham work in progress is about murder in Joe’s family. The second mystery in the Anita Ray series will be published in June. The Wrath of Shiva: An Anita Ray Mystery (Five Star/Gale/Cengage, June 2012).