Mighty Oaks From Tiny Acorns

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

To me, story ideas are like acorns. You cannot guess the mature size or shape of the story, or even see that the seed is a story until you see them sprout. That moment of story germination is what I call what if.

The what if of SEALed with a Promise happened as a result of my research for SEALed With A Kiss.

I initially chose a SEAL was because I needed a military hero who was away from his family for long periods and one who wouldn’t be doing what he was doing if he didn’t love it. I knew no more about them than any romance reader—and truthfully, didn’t want to know much more.

Here’s the deal. I didn’t want to write a “military” romance, and I certainly didn’t want to write romantic adventure/suspense. So when I sat down to do my research I wasn’t looking for the finer points of body armor or the difference between a Glock and an AK 47.

I thought I’d get a few background details, absorb some lingo, and since the story wouldn’t be set on a battlefield or even a military base, I didn’t think I’d need much.

But a funny thing happened on the way to getting up to speed with SEALs. I became fascinated. Oh, still not with weaponry or spy craft but with the character of the men themselves.

The question that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go was what kind of men are these?

I found out the Navy has been asking the same question for forty years, ever since that task of developing a Special Operations force was given to the Navy by President Kennedy.The Navy wants to know because training a SEAL is expensive—over a million dollars per—and time consuming—three years plus—and fewer than twenty percent graduate. They give them every sort of test known to psychology, and they know a lot about them. But though they’d love to get better at figuring out what the magic ingredient is that makes a man able to become a SEAL, they never have.

I wanted to know because these are men who have pushed themselves to, and beyond, what most people accept as “human” limitations. I became fascinated with the question of what did it feel like to be them? What is it like to have chosen to live on the other side of the stopping place?

SEALs are also men who have been de-socialized. They have been trained to go beyond the limits of civility, to never fight fair, to loosen the constraints of morality. They have been taught to lie, cheat and steal—and of course, to kill. To kill really, really well and in lots of inventive ways.

The most amazing and fascinating thing about SEALs to me is that going beyond human limitations has not de-humanized them. They are not the grim-faced Dirty Harrys or anger-displaced Rambos.

On the contrary, there is about them a joie de vivre that springs from their extreme self-confidence. Life does not intimidate them. If they don’t see the humor in a situation, then they create some. Sometimes the humor is so crude and earthy, you’re laughing uncontrollably while you’re thinking, I cannot believe he said that!

Sometimes it’s so sly and understated, you wonder if the humor was accidental—like the SEAL, ready to climb into a tub of ice water for a NatGeo channel program, who deadpans into the camera, “A SEAL will do anything for science.”

SEALs demonstrate a generosity of spirit, and an open-hearted willingness to care. They have a rather touching (to me) innocence. I find myself wanting to protect them.

Occasionally readers think I disrespect SEALs by showing them doing things a "knight in shining armor" shouldn’t do. But I have come to respect them too much to ever diminish their character by idealizing them. The harsh reality of being warriors has not taken away their humanity. I will not cheapen or de-humanize my SEAL characters by holding them to an imaginary standard.

As former SEAL John Roat, said when it was suggested that a hero should act more “heroically” in a certain scene, “We are not Superman.”

They are not Superman and to me, that makes them more heroic—not less.But I’ve digressed. I was telling you about the “what if” that led to SEALed With a Promise.I learned how SEAL training takes young men—unacquainted with hardship, smart but naïve as only middle-Americans can be, well brought up, healthy in body, mind and spirit—and turns them into focused, disciplined and deadly unconventional warriors. All I could say was, “Thank God, they are on our side.”

And then I thought, but what if a recruit was none of those things—except healthy and smart? Smart enough to cover up his criminal career, begun at the age of ten. When it came to the lying, cheating, stealing and dirty fighting part, a guy like that would be a natural.

What if, in the course of SEAL training, he learned honorability, accountability, generosity, loyalty, and trust? Beleive me, he wouldn’t become a SEAL if he didn’t. The men who run the SEAL program might not be able to put their collective finger on the precise ingredient, but they are well aware that ultimately, what makes a man a SEAL is character.

And then, what if, once he was a seasoned, battle-hardened SEAL, with a full complement of SEAL skills, he suddenly had a chance to settle an old, old score?In SEALed With a Kiss I explored what makes a hero, and what sacrifices a hero must make.

But Caleb “Do-Lord” Dulaude, the hero of SEALed With A Promise has sacrificed nothing to be a SEAL. On the contrary, joining the Navy, and then becoming a SEAL has rewarded him with everything he wanted—everything that seemed impossibly out of his reach when he was a kid, growing up on the dirty, ragged edges of society.

There’s plenty of action, plenty of challenge, and lots of scope for his talents. Without having to buy in to American middle-class values, he has found respect, friendship, and the opportunities to satisfy his mind’s voracious appetite for knowledge. Higher education and continued personal development is encouraged among SEALs. He’s already earned two PhD’s and he’s thinking about another.

That being the case, he doesn’t understand why being a SEAL doesn’t do it for him anymore.He reckons he’s just tired from a long deployment in Afghanistan. And then the past, a past he buried seventeen years ago along with his mother, suddenly comes alive again when he sees the only man he ever wanted to kill.

As a SEAL he has all the skill he needs to finally a keep the promise he made so many years ago. The only thing stopping him now is that he canot allow other SEALs to suffer dishonor on his account.

I know. That sounds like a set up for romantic suspense—which I’ve already said I don’t write. I want to write stories that, at heart, are about the development of a relationship.

I want to look at how love changes people, makes demands on them, requires sacrifice. I want to write, not about winning wars, but about winning love.So I added another what if.

What if, with revenge on his mind, he meets the woman of his dreams—dreams even being a SEAL had never fulfilled. What if, by getting close to her he can have his revenge without implicating any other SEAL?
Creating a nice love story for Jax, the hero of SEALed With a Kiss wasn't too difficult. Jax didn’t give me a hard time even though SEALS do not readily accpet direction from anyone who is not a SEAL. I assured him if he would work with me, I’d solve his problem.

SEALed With a Promise was another story (in every way!) Caleb and I had quite a power struggle over our two very different agendas. I was determined to write a romance. He wanted a techno-thriller.

It took some doing to convince him a happily-ever-after had more to offer him.In the end, I’m not the one who persuaded him. That was quirky Emmie Caddington’s doing. She showed him there was something else he’d wanted way back then. She showed him what love means.

That's the story in a nutshell--or in this case it's the what if in an acorn shell.

What do you think of bad-boy-gone-good heroes?

Who's The Alpha-ist of Them All

By Mary Margret Daughtridge

I love alpha heroes. Love ’em. Even the ones who make me so mad I want to give them a good, hard thump.

Unfortunately, my heroine of SEALed With a Promise, Emmie Caddington, PhD, has very little use for alpha males. She calls them jocks.

She’s a lowly biology instructor who has to teach the science for non-majors elective, Understanding Ecology. Even though most of her students aren’t there by choice, she tries hard to make it interesting and relevant.

But those jocks. Secure that their place in the universe has guaranteed them the top of the heap, they shove their well-muscled bodies through the classroom door, talking in too-loud voices. They’re oblivious to how they violate other students’ space. They’re not being deliberately rude. They think all the space is theirs—or at least that they get first pick.

First pick of all the girls too. To their way of thinking, a woman who isn’t beautiful is beneath contempt. She’s watched their lips curl with disdain for her plainness and heard the names they call her—while making lewd speculations about her.

They think, having put themselves out to show up, she should be honored that they have added to the luster of her class by attending. And she should show her appreciation by giving them a grade good enough to keep them playing whatever sport is underwriting their education.

As if.

Oh yes, she’s familiar with jocks.

True, Chief Petty Officer Caleb Dulaude isn’t a college athlete, he’s a member of a military unit with an animal name. But really. Miami Dolphins, Navy SEALs—what’s the difference? She knows the type. All of a sudden he’s turned on the charm? Hah! She’s learned the best way to deal with them is to let them know she’s in charge, and never give them an inch.

I think Emmie is a little harsh in her judgment, but her experience is limited—she’s basing her opinion of alphas on eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds.

But there’s no doubt that, despite being born to win, an alpha male has some serious shortcomings. An alpha’s greatest strength is his rock-steady self-assurance. Fundamentally believing only his opinion matters can also be his greatest weakness. Alphas can end up emotionally marooned, never realizing that they are alone in their world until it’s too late.

Emmie’s not completely wrong about Caleb. SEALs are alpha males with remarkable athletic ability. What Emmie hasn’t reckoned with is that a jock with SEAL training becomes something else.

SEAL training is the ultimate school of hard knocks. Recruits are stripped of any belief that they are cock of the walk, and the world is their oyster. Everyday is hard, and there are no stars.

SEAL training is so harsh partly because while ratcheting alpha traits like competitiveness and aggressiveness to the nth degree, the recruit is also being forced to learn to cooperate. Cooperation is not natural to an alpha and it doesn’t come easy.

SEALs must work together, so their training pounds in the notion that all must pay the price for anyone’s failure. Any carelessness or inattention that causes another’s injury is severely punished. They must learn to be aware of the other men and to care for their well-being as they do their own.

They wouldn’t put it this way but I’m going to: They’re not allowed to kill each other; their nature won’t let them submit; so there’s nothing left to do but love each other.

A SEAL can come on as the most alpha guy you ever saw. Every natural alpha quality has been honed to the nth degree and the biggest alpha weakness has been somewhat neutralized. He has become a sort of super-alpha.

He is smart. He is driven to accomplish his objective and nothing will stop him. He has sublime self-assurance, and he doesn’t think “the rules” apply to him. He can be extremely irritating—which, of course, he doesn’t care if he is. But he’s also able to listen. He can be tender, caring and sensitive.

That’s Caleb, all right. It’s true Emmie might never have appeared on Caleb’s radar if he hadn’t seen a way the extremely well-connected academic could help him get inside the perimeter of Senator Teague Calhoun—with whom Caleb has an old score to settle.

But he’s not planning to do her any harm. To his way of thinking, he’ll probably do her some good. No woman who dresses as she does is likely to be getting much masculine attention. She is on his radar now, and that means he responsible for her.

Emmie thinks she understands the kind of man he is. There’s only one problem. He keeps taking care of her. And listening to her. And treating her with respect. And making her life easier. To her, it’s all very confusing.

There are all kinds of alphas. Which ones make you mad? Which ones are irresistible to you?

Process in Progress

Okay. Another learning experience.

I didn't post here early this morning. I thought I "knew" where the work would take me today.

I rearranged the order of one sentence, changed the punctuation of another and added exactly one word--all in the space of three hours.

Productivity, that is not.

So what happened?

Two things. Okay three.

(1) I was stymied by the time line.

I've never been good at time line in everyday life. Is it any surprise I don't work well with it in plotting? Now that I force myself to look back at the two previous books, I understand the the time line didn't solve itself until I was more than three quarters of the way through. I can't see how many weeks or days I have ahead of me. The only way I've ever been successful with time line was to go to the goal and stepwise work backwards.

In plotting terms, the only thing that's going to work well for me is to write the story and accept that the time line will need to be adjusted--maybe even invented--after the story is written. I'm hereby setting a rule. No worry about about time line until I've written "The end."

(2) I was floundering trying to figure out what Riley's "problem" is. Here's the right question, what problem does David need? I invented Riley in the first place because JJ needs him. For economy it would also be good if Davy can learn a lesson from him. Which leads me to the third way my thinking was un-useful.

(3) I know how I plot. I must go from emotional stage to emotional stage--I can't think of things to happen until I understand the emotional stage the thing will take the characters through.

I understand my end goal. Davy and JJ must go from the decision to get married--seeing marriage as a way to defend themselves from unchosen fate, move through all the stages of falling in love complicated by being forced to adjust to each other at the same time, and finally to commit to be married.

Unchosen fate. Davy and JJ enter into marriage as a way to sheild themselves from the pressures life is putting on them to change. But they have a deal. Living up to it institutes a series of changes and new experiences. The new experiences take them through the changes, some of which they choose, some they resist, until we get to the deepest part when they must make the deep choice to live or die.

Muse Two

Yesterday's exercise was so productive, I think I'll continue it today. I found the way for the almost-fiance to reveal his true colors.

The answer, as it almost always does, lay in his character. I know, I know--like DUH! I worked with his self-interest and his fundamental insensitivity. Add that he loves to talk about himself. Let JJ ask the right question--voila.

A question for today is what shall I do with Avery? Avery is David's youngest brother, a special needs kid. I'd been moving between Asperger's and Down Syndrome. Suddenly cerebral palsy occurs to me. I like it. He can have hero-worship of his strong, tough big brother. Now I need to find a reason he's in a special school rather than at home.

But now I'm realizing I need another name for him. I have too many long A sounds with JJ and Dave and now Avery which will inevitably shortened to Ave. After perusing boy's names, I think I'll go with Riley.

I wonder if there's something specific about using the internet that draws the muse? I've circled the problem of Avery/Riley for a couple of weeks. Thirty minutes on the blog and I know what to do with him.

Calling the muse

I'm stuck on a scene for the work in progress.

The man my heroine is almost-engaged to demonstrates that he is not the hero. I need him to unconsciously reveal that he is marrying JJ for her money. Unconsciously, like a Freudian slip.

She wasn't cynical or hard-nosed enough to see marriage as a purely business transaction. While she didn't think they had a love match, she had believed they could make a real marriage based on respect, shared values and mutual support--or if not real, something that would pass for real.

Now she realizes for him it is a business deal--one that he's not sure he will get enough out of. I need to drive her to the point she's willing to out-and-out buy a husband, a man she hardly knows.

The hardest part about writing a contemporary marriage of convenience plot is to motivate it. Fortunately, modern women have many more choices than marriage to solve their problems.

So I know where this scene ends her up emotionally. I want her to feel seriously bleak about her future, but still willing to go forward, thinking it was good she got disillusioned when she did.

So what does the almost fiance say to reveal his true colors?

Bored With Writing Yet?

When I told a friend I'm working on the third SEALed book, she commented, "You're not bored yet with writing romance?"

She knows me too well. Romance novelist is only the most recent of work identities I've had. And it's not because I can't stick to things. I stick. But in a year or five or ten, the day comes when I feel, "Okay, I've done that."

On the Myers-Briggs I'm an ENTP--an entrepreneur. I love planning. I love stepping out on untried ground. There's a literal and figurative rush as I cram enough background to get myself up to speed.

While needing challenges is crucial to my makeup, the real fuel that drives me is that I love to learn. There's nothing I would rather do and I feel actual, physical pleasure closely akin to sexual turn on when I acquire new understanding.

Which brings me to the purpose of this blog.

I resisted writing a blog for a long time. My accomplishments from yesterday aren't all that interesting to me. I don't want to spend time writing about them. And I already know my opinion. Oh, and I don't care for expository writing. All those things would be the very definition of putting up a blog by rote.

Then it occurred to me, I could use a blog to explore learning to write. My blog will be a place to bat around ideas for stories, to study the creative process, to inch my way toward understanding of how the thousand interlocking pieces of writing craft fit together.

That's where I'm going with Wrote Leaning. There's room on this bus for anyone who thinks the trip sounds like fun.

Love,

Mary Margret

If I Wrote Like I Want To

I was bragging the other day about the praise SEALed With a Kiss, my first novel--ever--has garnered since its release last April.

(Yes, bragging. Shamelessly. It turns out modesty does not befit a romance writer.)

My sister smiled in approval as the list went on and on. "And just think," she said, "how wonderful it will be when you can write the novels you want to write!"

What does she think? Somebody is making me do it?

No, if I could write exactly as I wish, I'd write romance. I love the genre. I even love the formula.

It's like bread-making. Did you know all yeast bread is made of flour, salt, oil/fat, liquid, and yeast? Understand how to mix them in the basic proportions, and you can create bread. If you don't kill the yeast, your bread will be...bread. You can't fail.

To write a romance requires a formula just as simple. Take one man. Add a woman. Create something that will keep them apart. Put them together anyway. Mix them up thoroughly.

Mixing is fun, but requires an understanding of how love, like yeast, moves through different stages. Like yeast, love is tough and can tolerate a good bit of mishandling, but it's a living thing, and it can be killed. Both yeast and love have a stage at which they are said to 'bloom.'

Next you add heat--gentle at first. Sure love, like yeast, can grow even without it, but if you want some drama, you're gonna need some heat.

Here's where the analogy fails. Or becomes very metaphysical. The final heat of bread making, baking in a hot oven, kills the yeast. The yeast has done its work of transformation and now it is sacrificed.

For the literati who write love stories killing the love or if that can't be done, killing the lovers, is good enough. To switch metaphors in mid-stream, they appear to believe, if the bowl is beautifully crafted, the soup will be nutritious.

Snort.

Craftsmanship alone not good enough for me, thank you very much. I have to apply the heat--hot enough to burn--and yes, there will have to be a sacrifice. But I'll be damned if I will sacrifice the lovers or their love for the dubious honor of being taken seriously.

It's hard to pull off the happy ending in a way that's believable and satisfying. The writer must grasp the subtleties of human nature, the greatness of small things, and the mechanics of miracle-making.

I might not always succeed, but I will always try. My book will not end until the love, far from being dead, has been brought back to life--transformed, and far more potent than before. It will now transform not only the lover's lives but the lives of all those they contact.

How could I settle for only writing well, if by reaching further, joy is within my grasp?

Love,

Mary Margret