So I invented a new character last night. She came out of nowhere, she’s incredibly messed up, and I love her to pieces already. I’m trying to figure out who she physically looks like at the moment. I like to pick out celebrities to physically model my characters after because it makes them come to life for me. This girl is hard to figure out so far, though. Not sure who she looks like! Funny, the male characters are easy…. they all end up either looking like Jensen Ackles or Mark Salling. (Mainly Jensen these days because holy crap do I love that man.) I’m sure her physical characteristics will materialize for me soon. I love new characters. YAY! Of course, this is derailing my other writing plans but as long as I jot down all the notes I can about her, she’ll be ready for me to write when I’m ready to write her. At least my brain is wanting to write right now. Progress!!!
Writing
A little s-e-x… or a lot?
Can we talk about sex, please? Well, not the act of it, per se, but attitudes toward it in the past versus the present. I think a lot of people are inclined to believe that in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and right up to the start of the sexual revolution in the 60s, premarital sex just didn’t happen. And if it did, there was an intense level of shame that rode piggy-back on the person who’d had the sex. For example, my dad was born in May of 1945, after his parents had been married only seven months. Later in life, when he questioned their wedding date as compared to his date of birth, he was told that he had been a premature baby. Pictures of my dad as an infant show a robust, downright roly-poly, healthy baby. Dad always joked that had he been carried to term, he would have been an 18 pound newborn. It’s obvious that my grandparents engaged in a little pre-wedding hanky-panky but even when my dad was 50 years old, they still couldn’t tell him the truth. So it seems that sex, while obviously a part of life, wasn’t an open part of life.
Fast forward to today, where attitudes toward sex are blase. Television, music, movies, books – everything is designed with sex in mind. As a result, kids are growing up way too fast and with more knowledge than they need at a young age. The reason I’m even talking about this is because the novel I’m working on takes place during the 40s, where sex, as a point of conversation, wasn’t treated the same way it is today. It’s a topic that also has to be addressed because the actual act of it is apparently becoming pivotal to my story. (The reason I say “apparently” is because the novel I had planned is not the story that’s coming to fruition. The characters have other ideas and they’re letting me know, one detail at a time.) The thing I have to remember when writing is that, while sex certainly happened – think of all the soldier boys leaving home for God only knows how long and that whole “last night on earth” mentality that must have been present – my characters wouldn’t have openly talked about it like characters would in a novel that takes place in modern day. The thing is that today, sex sells. Even badly-written, questionable sex sells. (I’m thinking of a certain terribly written fanfiction story-turned-novel that involves the “hero” (and I use that term under great duress) yanking a tampon from the body of his heroine so that he can bang her for the 14th time that day.) Since sexually charged stories are so popular, the more the better, right? I have think about those things when writing this novel. Sex is pivotal to the story line, yes. It’s a catalyst for so much of what comes later. And even though I know that graphic details and titillating descriptions are what attracts an audience, my biggest challenge is staying true to the era. A conversation that would easily happen between girlfriends today almost certainly wouldn’t have happened in 1941. There wouldn’t have been any “OMG we totally did it” moments to share between squealing girlfriends. Any conversation would have been had in hushed tones with one eye toward the door.
So I guess the question I’m posing to myself is how much sex is too much sex? Where do I draw the line between keeping a modern audience happy and telling an authentic story? I love writing sex just as much as the next gal, but I have to find my limits with these particular characters, because I don’t want to turn my readers off when attempting to turn them on.
Disconnecting to connect
Spending an afternoon with my grandparents is like falling into a time warp. For one, they live in the middle of flat Indiana farmland, their house butting up against a thick stand of trees. There’s no T-Mobile coverage out there, that’s for sure. They also wouldn’t dream of owning a computer and the neighbors are far enough away that the hijacking of an unprotected wireless network is an impossibility. Emails don’t come in, calls won’t go out, text messages won’t even send. In a word, when I’m at my grandparents’ house, I’m simply disconnected.
At first, I’m fidgety. I’ll check my phone a hundred times, willing emails to magically come through. That lasts about a half hour before I finally give in to the inevitable – I’m not going to be able to connect with the outside world as long as I’m inside those brick walls. It’s at that point that I get up from their dining room table (which is the center of all family gatherings), go into the living room, and slide my phone into my purse. My eyes move over their ancient Zenith TV, which I know will come on later, after everyone leaves, so that they can watch their favorite shows on the RFD channel. Once I drop back into the chair, I’m now more relaxed. No internet means no distractions. This is the point when the conversation actually starts.
Mamaw and Papaw were both born in 1934. They survived the Depression, then entered their formative years while the entire world was at war. They were both insulated from it, of course, growing up on farms in central Indiana, but they still have stories of rationing, of family members who went off to war, of the way things used to be. As they talk and as I ask them questions, I get lost in their world – the world of their past, but one of which is unceasingly fascinating to me. Before I know it, two or three hours have passed.
This was such the case on Saturday. As I’m in the preparation stage of my World War II-era novel, it has become startlingly clear that if I want to ensure that my manuscript feels authentic, they are the people I need to spend time with. They remember shortages of sugar and coffee, of how they felt when someone they knew went to war but didn’t come home, and how it was to only get bits and pieces of news. Researching those experiences teaches me a lot, yeah. But hearing about them first hand, having the opportunity to wrap my head around the emotions intertwined with those experiences – that stuff is far more powerful than any web query done in the name of research.
I’ve made plans to go back out to their house and ask a lot of questions. Most of these questions have never been broached by anyone in our family, so in a sense, I’m going to be recording family history. I want to know everything – from their earliest memories to their lives on their farms to how they met and fell in love. I want to hear any and all of their recollection of the war years – what it felt like, how they endured shortages and worry, and how it changed them. I’m so lucky at my age to have them in my life still and I need to take advantage of it before anymore time passes.
Still though, I know I’ll deal with the anxiety of being disconnected from modern society when I’m there. It happens every time, and my reaction is worse now, thanks to the invention of smartphones and tablet devices. I’m always, always connected. The question, though, is connected to what? Human connection with these people, who are absolute treasures, are worth having to wait a few hours to answer a text message or respond to an email. I’m wondering if frequent disconnection won’t help me connect to the world around me, and my writing, more. If that’s the case, I’m game.
Somebody that I Used to Know
About two years ago, I lost touch with someone very near and dear to myself: me. Up until that fateful day, I could be found toiling away in my house, creating new recipes, cooking things from scratch, and sewing by hand. I collected aprons, Depression glass, and old time radio shows. Then, I turned a corner. In some ways, it was fantastic. In others, though, it was detrimental.
See, two and a half years ago, I published my first fanfiction story. It was the first time that anyone had read my writing (outside of blogging) and the absolute first time that anyone had ever read any work of fiction by me. I did it because I loved to write, believed that I had a skill for it, and wanted to try it out. As it turned out, the community for which I wrote the stories was very receptive, loved my stories, and wanted more. Because I have an addictive personality, I threw myself into fic writing. Now, I have over 800,000 words of fic archived on fanfiction.net and when I look in the mirror, I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. Don’t get me wrong – sharing my fiction was wonderful because I realized that maybe I really did have a talent for turning words into stories that both captivated and touched the reader. Had I never published that first story, I’d still be wondering. The problem is that when you write fanfiction, you normally get involved in the fandom of the show/movie/book you’re writing fic for. And getting involved in the fandom is the problem, at least for me. (If you’ve never been involved in a fandom – let me explain it simply. “Fandom” is when you get really worked up about the most trivial and pointless of things regarding the show/movie/book that you love.) I have opinions on everything and everyone and I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that I get irritated by people I’ve never spoken to, other than in a Tumblr ask box or on Twitter. I really don’t like the fact that I’ve literally become addicted to writing two characters. A novelist has to move on from her characters when it’s time to focus on the next story. I struggle with saying goodbye to this couple that I’ve spent so long writing, falling out of “love” with them in a way, and moving on. And the thing is, I want to move on. I have two gorgeous characters (okay, actually 8 total, but I’m only focusing on two) waiting in the wings and their story deserves to be told. And the best part of all of it is that they’re ALL mine! No Hollywood conglomerate owns these two characters; they are completely my creation. They are beautiful and flawed and they have a strong story to tell – I just have to tell it.
So all of that brings me back to my first thought – reconnecting with myself. I have to flush fandom and those characters that I don’t own out of my head. I have to get up from my desk, log off Twitter and Tumblr, and do the things I used to do. It’s only once I shut off those influences that I’ll be able to dim the voices that have lived in my head for so long and let two others begin to speak loud and clear. That might mean picking up my yo-yo quilt for the first time in two years, or focusing on that unfinished cross-stitch picture. I have to reconnect with the person I used to be in order to move forward. It feels like a bit of self-detox and it’s highly challenging, but it’s my reality and what I’m ready to tackle. This past weekend, my husband and I did a few things around the house that allowed me to feel like the old Rachel, the one not chained to her laptop. It was nice. I actually like that woman. I need to let her shine through more because she has a fantastic story to tell. She just needs a little push in the right direction.
An interesting challenge (the writing process):
In the novel I’m writing (okay, in one of them I’m writing but in the one I’m focusing on right now), I have to tell not one but two separate love stories. The first one ends tragically, a casualty of war, and the second one is truly the focus of the story. That being said, the first relationship has to feel as authentic and true as the second one later becomes. It’s a hard road to traverse, I’m finding, because I want to focus so much on Lila’s relationship with Jack. However, I have to remember that Danny is Lila’s first love, her husband, the man she thinks will be coming home to her once the war is over. She and Jack are walking parallel paths and once they intersect, her world turns upside down for probably the third time in her young life. Walking these paths with all of them, and showing the beautiful love that Danny and Lila share and then not discounting it once Jack steps into her life, is going to be the biggest challenge of telling this entire story. I’m slowly feeling my way toward how to do it but it definitely requires a lot of thought (and note taking!)
“Now is the Hour” – a World War II-era short story
Ben told Iris a lot of things over the years as they played in the street or went ice skating on the pond. And as much as she told Ben about her hopes and her dreams, there was one thing she always held back. She never told Ben, or anyone else for that matter, what her biggest secret was. It was the kind of thing that Mama had told her girls should never talk about, especially not to the boy himself. A boy should be the one to come calling on a girl, not the other way around. “The fact is,” Mama told Iris as she dropped warm dollops of butter over the mashed potatoes on Sunday afternoon, “that good girls never chase after boys. Your job is to look pretty and smile – if it’s meant to be, he’ll notice.”
He’s about to go off to war and she’s not sure when he’ll be back. All Iris has to do is get up the nerve to tell Ben how she feels before he leaves. After all, he was the one always encouraging her to go after what she wanted.
Full story located HERE
“Chance and Happenstance” – a World War II-era short story
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and catapulted America into the war, Ella was just past her seventeenth birthday. Up until that very moment when her quiet Sunday afternoon had been torn apart by the steady but frantic words that poured through the radio speakers, the war was just something she heard Pa talk about in passing. Life inside their small but neat brick home outside of the Indiana town of Greensburg was unaffected by the news on the front page of Pa’s paper or before Mama’s favorite dramatic radio show. Living in a house tucked against the woods and surrounded by farmland that was thousands of miles away from the action meant that it had very little impact on the Lansing family. On that Sunday when it all changed, though, they were sitting around the big table that filled the dining room to near-capacity, eating dessert, drinking coffee, and talking about Pastor George’s Sunday sermon. They paid no mind to the orchestral concert playing on the radio; it was just background noise. The signal was scratchy that day, clouds thick between there and where it originated in Indianapolis, but the moment those words, “We interrupt this broadcast…,” cut through the calm reverie of the music and blasted into the room, all conversation ceased. Mama, Pa, Ella, and her younger sister, Louise, all sat ramrod still as the news poured in. Ella covered her mouth in shock but even right then, she knew that she wanted to help.
She meets him in a field hospital in Belgium in 1944. The Battle of the Bulge rages nearby but in his eyes, she finds a small respite from it all. Once he returns to the line, though, will she ever see him again or was it all just chance?
Full story located HERE
Getting back in the saddle again
I’ve spent the last 3.5 weeks (since putting Kyle to sleep) in various emotional states, ranging from super depressed to almost numb. For a while, I found a bit of respite in my old standby, writing fanfiction, but now I’m in the mood to pull away from that again. (There’s only so much fanfiction you can write when the show that inspired you to publish your works for others to see in the first place starts sucking and the characters turn into pod people!) It seems that each time I start working on my novel, something happens to make me stop. And by the time I’m ready to pick it up again, the story and the characters have changed in ways I hadn’t planned. My notes and ideas for this novel are so fragmented and when I go to write and get frustrated, I end up back in fanfiction-land again because it’s easy and satisfying. (And face it, we all can’t be EL James. Not that I would ever claim 50 Shades of Grey as my own since it’s both horribly written and moronic.)
So anyway, there really isn’t a point to this post other than to say that I’m trying to move forward and get focused on writing again. Something of substance, I mean, not fanfic. *sigh*
Life on Wild Hare Farm 