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