On the Futility of Heroism

Sad news about Dandelion. We set our adolescent rabbit free as she was large enough to defend herself against cat attack and was about to be renamed Houdini for all her attempts to escape her cage.

I didn't see her for a little over a week, but sadly this morning I found her body in the middle of the sidewalk. She'd clearly been hit by a car and very recently, her body was still limp and warm. (Silver lining - at least the cat didn't get her, they hunt at night and hide their victims). I knew it was Dandelion because she had a unique white stripe on her face and a red ruff behind her ears.

I cried a lot and buried her under the ferns she found fascinating when I first set her free in our back yard.
My tears weren't only about Dandelion. When I stopped the cat from killing her a month ago, I felt like I'd done something important, like a hero. Now I feel like a fool. A fool for thinking I'd made a difference in the baby bunny's life, a fool for feeling so much grief that she's dead, for being full of hope that I'd see her with her own brood of kits in our back yard next spring.

Will I try to save baby rabbits from cats in the future? Yes, I think so. I can't bear the way cats toy with them. But the experience will be less sweet and lacking hope, more bitter and shadowed by ambivalence.

Notes from an Historian

I had the pleasure of hearing a plenary address from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich last evening. In the history world Ulrich is known for her work on early American women, and in particular her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Midwife's Tale.

Most people don't know that she's the person who coined the phrase: "Well behaved women rarely make history."

For all the accolades she's received Ulrich is an incredibly humble and gracious woman. In her remarks she had two points to offer that I thought were particularly salient to aspiring authors.

One: "You're not in this alone."

The writing world is a collaborative one. What would we do without families cheering us on, beta readers giving hard, but fair critiques, fellow bloggers sharing their experiences and aspirations, agents championing our work? Writing is often a solitary activity, but at the end of the day we're part of a community that we couldn't survive without.

Two: "You can't be rejected when you know you belong."

This point derives from the fact that Ulrich's prize-winning book examined the life of Martha Ballard, an eighteenth-century midwife whose existence had been dismissed as "unimportant" by historians for decades. Laurel Ulrich brought Ballard's harrowing experiences into the world at a time when women's history had barely drawn its first breath and still had many years to fight for the legitimacy of its existence.

Writers face rejection constantly. The mantra of authors, agents, editors, and writing gurus remains the same - keep writing. We write because we have to. We write because we know we belong. It will happen, keep writing, keeping dreaming.

And finally, in honor of Utah (where I'm at a conference for the weekend), I give you one of my favorite teen dance vids from bygone days when I had big hair and I wish you all "Something Good."

Form Follows Function

Elana J. posed a wonderful quandary about the writing process that plunged me full-on into posting on the topic here.

The subject in question: outlining.

To me an outline sounds like a nice, safe idea. It's a part of writing that I rely on when I'm doing analytical pieces for my work as a historian.

But when it comes to fiction I cannot outline for the life of me. After a bit of hand-wringing over this obstacle, I decided it doesn't matter. Why?

Because writing works differently for each author, and I believe in being true to (and comfortable with) one's own unique process.

I'm a stream of consciousness writer. When I write it's very much like being in a trance, I move deep into a mental space from which I find it difficult to climb back out into the world. But that space is where I do my best writing, in it I'm surprised by turns the plots takes, startled by the dialogue that pours readily from my characters' mouths.

Outlining works directly against the mental frame I need to create. It insists on logical, dissociative relation to the story. I look at outlines and think maybe I "should" try them, but I know it wouldn't benefit the story.

However, I do believe that in creating a novel the writer does need to have a sense of direction, a plot and character compass. Outlines offer an obvious way to achieve such an end.

So what if they don't work for you?

Try something else.

In my case, I map the plot with systems that are best explained through two metaphors that derive from the same idea:

Newton's Third Law of Motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

My books are born out of a single problem or question belonging to the protagonist, so my "outline" functions more as a web, scenes or chapters are the thread that link this character and his/her problem to other characters, places, choices. The web expands outward, creating ever more complex links that create the story arc. It's much more about who is connected to who, how and why than a single line of the novel's chronology.

The climax and conclusion draw all those threads back to the center, focusing again on the protagonist and bringing her/him to the next level of self-awareness, resolving the problem, or setting up a new one (go series!)

The other form my "outlines" take is the patterns created by a stone dropped in a still pond. Again, the stone is the central problem faced by the protagonist, and the ripples that move outward are the scenes/chapters that move the novel's action. The conclusion manifests in the ways the ripples finally reach the shore, returning the surface to its original stillness , problems resolved or taken into a different place.

These thoughts lead me back to the central motivation for this blog post: whatever your writing process it should mirror who you are as a writer and how you write best.

Even though many pieces of advice, books, and mantras exist about "how to write," you're the only person who knows the way you need to write. Try to contort one's creative self into impossible writing exercises because we think we "should" do it a certain way will only make you pull mental muscles and leave you wondering what went wrong.

Help (The Good Kind)

Shel Silverstein might be my favorite philosopher.*
(Reader: "Huh? Isn't he a children's poet?" The answer: Yes, but bear with me.)

Silverstein's darkly funny, unpredictable descriptions of life ring true to experience and keep me hopeful in the face of its daily pitfalls.

One of my favorite pieces, "Helping," appeared in Free to Be You and Me.


Writers need to become well-versed in the necessity of asking for and graciously accepting help.

I knew my agent would be great for my writing because he loved the story and he "got it," when we discussed the full arc of the series he made suggestions for the plot that I'd already written (but he hadn't yet read.) Even so, engaging another person (other than my critique partner) in the revision stretched the boundaries of my comfort zone.

As much as we long for public acknowledgment and that fabulous "yes!" from an agent, once your work is out there it's no longer yours alone. Editing becomes a shared exercise and investment of time and effort.

My agent's ideas are fabulous and reflect how much he understands my writing and the story I'm creating, so when I wrote the additions he'd suggested they took the novel to a new level and I was thrilled. Scenes that hadn't existed prior to our conversations have become some of my favorites. But that doesn't mean that making the changes to a book I'd submitted as "complete" was easy.

Without help from family and friends (who support, love, and believe in us), crit partners (who help us through the rough patches in writing), and agents & editors (who bring us to the finish line), writers would be lost at sea without a compass.

Don't be afraid of help. As my yoga teacher reminds us in each class during the balance sequence: "Don't be afraid to fall, everyone falls. When you fall just get right back in it. This isn't about perfection, it's about progress."

*My one exception to Silverstein's work is "The Giving Tree." I hate this story, it's about an abusive relationship - I realize that's a controversial statement, but it is true.