Five years ago today I left behind the name Bond, Lisa Bond and became L.R. Burt. While going through files on my Mac in search of our wedding ceremony (which I wrote), I found something else I wrote, three years ago, which I have absolutely no memory of writing. It amused me, though, so I cleaned it up and, in honor of the day, thought I’d share it with y’all.
Quite a Character
Since it took me 80,000 words to have my star-crossed lovers meet, fall in love, and break up, I was figuring on it to take me anywhere from 40,000-80,000 more words to put them back together again. (I called the king to ask for all his horses and all his men, but they were busy with this egg chap…)
However, now that I’m a few chapters into the getting-back-together phase of the story, my characters are quickly showing me that they dislike being apart every bit as much as I dislike writing them apart. (Actually, I enjoy writing lovers’ quarrels, it’s just that it’s a lot easier to write flirtation. But if writing novels was easy, more people would do it, and it wouldn’t be a job, would it?) My characters still have lots of issues to work through and even more pain to deal with, but they surprised me today by doing things that indicate they want to get back together sooner rather than later.
Now, I understand that as Author, I wield phenomenal cosmic power over the characters I make up. In the life of a fictional character, there is no concept of free will. Yet as you write characters, a strange thing happens. You’re not simply making up everything about them and everything they do. They take on lives of their own. It’s almost as if the act of writing is like chiseling away at a block of stone in which a human form already resides. You’re not making so much as finding — finding out enough about these characters that you know what direction their stories should take even if it deviates from your original plan.
That’s why, even though I swear by planning what you’re going to write before you write it, I also swear that you have to be flexible to be a writer. Where you might have planned for a character to retain the emotional control and distance of a Vulcan until the very end, she might tell you instead that she needs to be vulnerable. After all, even though your characters aren’t real people, you want your characters to be like real people. And real people aren’t (usually) Vulcans. (Unless you’re writing, you know, Star Trek novels. Which I’m not. Although I am, clearly, a geek for making the reference at all.) Real people are vulnerable. And said character is going through a situation that would definitely leave a real person vulnerable and lowering her emotional guards. So I think the new direction I took today was, though completely unexpected, the right one.
Speaking of real people and characters…
I don’t know if this is a common problem, but I’m never able to picture clear faces or features of characters when I’m writing or reading. They’re just faceless blurs to me. Yet whenever I see a film adaptation of a book I’ve read, I know whether the actor in a particular role fills in the (enormous) gaps in my imagination. For instance, when Eric Bana was cast as Henry in the upcoming movie The Time Traveler’s Wife, I said a resounding oh yes. On the flip side, any number of actors in the Harry Potter movies make me scratch my head ask whether the casting directors read the same books as I did. (One of my many complaints about the Harry Potter film franchise, though that’s an entire blog post in itself…)
None of which is to say that I sit around thinking about who I’d like to play my leading characters if I not only get lucky enough to see my book in print, but also to have it adapted into a movie. (Well, not very often, anyway…) For one thing, it’s hard to cast characters who you can’t even picture yourself. (I’ve had vague characteristics in mind for the leading lady, Laura — tall, naturally curly dark hair which she sometimes straightens, dark eyes, wide grin, toothpaste commercial teeth — but since the leading man, John, is the point of view character, I’ve managed to get by without describing him except as having thinning light brown hair.) For another, I don’t want to base my characters off actors, lest parts of actors bleed into my characterization. Unless, of course, that’s what I’m going for. In this case, it’s not.
Recently I came across some reference or other to Anne Hathaway. I hadn’t even really thought about The Accompanists yet that day, but immediately my thoughts went to it because it suddenly hit me that she looked exactly like the Laura I didn’t quite see in my head. (Also, as I recalled a recent episode of SNL, she can sing, quite well, so if my book ever does become a movie…) Even more jaw-dropping was when I clicked on Anne’s IMDB profile and saw a still from one of her recent films featuring her in the arms of an actor who looked exactly like I hadn’t clearly imagined John. (Patrick Wilson, if you’ve seen Watchmen, The Phantom of the Opera, or The Alamo. Who also happens to be musical…Hmm…) And again, it’s not like I need actors as reference points for my descriptions or characterizations. I just think it’s kind of nice, after a year’s work on this book, to see more than blurs when I’m crafting scenes for John and Laura. So now you can see them, too.
It’s strange to me how you can recognize someone you didn’t even know to look for — how the brain can supply you with only the vaguest of mental images, and yet you can feel very strongly about whether a depiction of someone or something is spot on or not. I wonder if it’s at all connected to how you can forget the face of someone you know extremely well if you haven’t seen them in a while (sometimes a very little while, some people have told me).
Motivation
There’s about a two-mile circuit around my neighborhood that I jog every day. Or try to jog every day. Or at least intend to jog every day. This week I’ve managed to do it three times, motivated by the couple of pounds I gained last week at Disney World. (Which was a dismaying discovery considering we were on our feet walking the entire time we were there; but I guess we took in an obscene amount of calories with the Disney Dining Plan.)
Anyway, I guess I should preface this story by saying that I don’t actually jog the whole two miles. There’s a big stretch that’s uphill, so usually by the time I’ve made it up that hill, I need to walk a bit. If I hazarded a guess, I probably walk about 1/4 of my two miles.
Yesterday when I went out for my jog, big dark clouds were building up in the area, and a few drops of rain were falling every now and then. But the time I made it to the place where I usually start to walk a bit, it had begun to lightning. So, not fancying becoming a fried Tater I did not walk, and I was quite impressed with myself when I reached my own street, having jogged the whole way.
Until I realized that this meant I can jog two miles, and therefore must do it from now on.
Thus determined, I set out this morning under an overcast sky, pretending that at any moment it would come a gullywasher and I needed to haul my butt home.
As it turned out, when I crested the hill where I’m normally tempted to walk, something else inspired me to run like hell.
I was watching a cop pull someone over for speeding, when I heard a dog barking from across the street. Reluctantly tearing my eyes from some other person’s misfortune, I turned to see a dog running through a front yard, aimed at me. Not being a dog person, I couldn’t tell you what kind of dog it was. I can tell you it wasn’t huge. Or even big, really. Maybe one of the larger kinds of terriers? I didn’t really care what kind of dog it was — I just wanted to get the heck away from it. (When I was about three, a spastic dog wrapped me up in his chain and scared me half to death, and I flashed back to that when I saw this dog running full-speed ahead.) So I ran full-speed ahead, thinking I could outpace this dog, and not thinking he’d cross the street anyway, as I was coming up on an intersection with lots of cars stopped at a light.
I was wrong.
About the street-crossing and the outpacing.
No sooner had I purposed to outrun the dog, when I felt the nip of dog teeth and the scratch of claws against the back of my calf. Fortunately I didn’t feel any pain. (And an awkward glance down at my calf revealed that no skin was broken.)
I spun around and shouted at the dog in my best authoritative voice. “Go home! Go away!”
The dog kept barking. Where was that cop when you needed him? What was writing a speeding ticket when he could be rescuing a sweaty young woman from the jaws of a not particularly deadly terrier? Out the corner of my eye, I saw a car at the stop light, the window rolled down and both driver and passenger gawking out at me. I couldn’t tell if they pitied my plight, or were amused by it, if they were sorry for me, or for the dog. I didn’t stick around to find out, because with another shout and a kick of my foot (in the air, in the dog’s general direction, not actually into the dog), the dog backed off, and I darted off — and not at a jog, because what do you know but that stupid dog came after me again? At least he stopped at the corner and came no further, just kept barking.
Looking back, I probably should have gone back to the house where I’d first seen the dog and asked if they knew their dog was out (if it was even theirs), but I’m not really that good of a citizen when I’m being chased by an animal.
I think in the future I would prefer the threat of being struck lightning to keep me running.
Coda: the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure
Imagine that last April, almost exactly a year ago from today, you began your current novel project, The Accompanists. A departure from your first novel, it’s a contemporary romantic dramedy about a pianist and a singer who just can’t quite get their relationship in tempo thanks to an ex, a nosy pastor’s wife, a smothering older sister, a drug addict, and romantic rivals. It’s set at a fictional Methodist church in Waco, Texas, and in the very real Baylor University School of Music, where you yourself spent a semester studying vocal performance — though the story’s not based on personal acquaintances or experiences. Much. (Though who knows? Maybe if you hadn’t changed your major to English literature, it would be autobiographical. Ah, the endless drama of musicians!)
In a year, you’ve written sixteen chapters, totaling upwards of 80,000 words. You’re either two-thirds or half of the way finished with your first draft. You’re not really sure which. All you know is that you’ve finished the first of two “movements” and at this point have no way of gauging how long the second will be. You know the end of the novel — the end was actually the starting point of the whole thing — and you know the major plot points between the first movement and the end. But only the actual writing will tell just how long it will take to get from here to there. Or how to get from here to there. Which scares you a little, because writing blind is the surest way to write yourself into a corner, though you did manage to avoid that with the first 80,000 words, which you also wrote blindly till you got to the end.
80,000 words sounds like a lot to a non-writer. Or even to a writer. Until you break it down into the number of days you work per year and get something like an average of 450 words per day. And then you think about the other writers you know, who have written entire 100,000 word novels in 100 days, and then you start to wonder what the heck you’re doing wrong. (Or maybe they’re doing something wrong?) So it’s best not to think about other writers or break it down into numbers and averages, and instead just revel in the fact that this year you’ve written 80,000 words that a couple of other writer friends really like, and, even more importantly, that you like (or at least don’t think are utter crap), and oh thank God that terrible eighteen month dry spell that followed your first novel is long gone!
For now, you can spend seven nights and eight days at Walt Disney World, and worry about increasing your average daily word count when you get back.
How to Survive When the Economy’s in the Toilet
Even before the economy got bad, I loved to save money and get a good deal. It’s fun to get a lot for a little. It’s even more fun to get something completely for free. Like airline tickets. (Though you don’t want me to get started on Mr. Burt’s current credit card enterprises.)
But even getting something small for free is hugely thrilling. For instance, the other day I bought seven boxes of cereal because A) they were on sale for a really good price and B) you got a free package of Pop Tarts and three free gallons of milk. It’s a sensible combination for a deal, isn’t it? Cereal, milk, Pop Tarts — all breakfast foods. However, I’m at a loss to see the sense in this manufacturer’s coupon offer from the past Sunday’s paper:
Possibly I could see the connection if this were any other soda being offered for free with the purchase of eggs — a lot of people do drink soda with breakfast, and eggs aren’t just a breakfast food. But Big Red? Who over the age of eight drinks Big Red? (Also, I must register my astonishment that there’s actually a Diet Big Red. Are people who don’t find liquid bubblegum sickeningly sweet really that bothered about sugar?) In any case, this is one coupon I did not clip with the intent of squirreling away a little extra money while our economy goes down the toilet.
Speaking of the economy, some brave soul has decided to start a new business in our area. About a week ago, I went out my front door to find a nylon bag hanging on the knob, accompanied by a flier advertising a pick-up dry cleaning company. As in, on Tuesday morning, you put your clothes in the bag, leave it on your porch, and they pick it up and return my clothes to my porch on Friday, starched and hung neatly on hangers. If you never intend to use the service, you put the empty bag out on Friday for pickup.
Is it just me, or does this strike you as a highly naïve operation? First of all, does someone really expect me to be trusting enough to leave my good dry clean only clothes on my porch? If you’ve ever been to my neighborhood, you’d know that stuff left outside your home is fair game for scavengers. It won’t last five minutes. And this is suburbia!
I myself am proof of the kind of property rights mindset people have around here: on the first Friday pickup day, I did not return my blue nylon bag. Truthfully, I forgot to put it on the porch, but that was probably more a case of out of sight, out of mind. As in, the bag was out of sight, in my laundry closet, because I thought it would make a great laundry bag for wet clothes when traveling. If you put a bag on my doorstep and invite me to take it into my home, it’s not coming out again. It’s mine, my own, it came to me! We’re in a recession, I must hold on to anything useful that should fall into my possession.
On one last money-saving note, this week I’ve been stricken with a nasty sinus infection and cough. While debating whether to drag my sorry tail up to the pharmacy for cough syrup, I googled Robitussin to see if it actually would help. According to Wikipedia, “some cough medicines may be no more effective than placebos for acute coughs in adults, including coughs related to upper respiratory tract infections” and “Recent studies have found that theobromine, a compound found in cacao, is more effective as a cough suppressant than prescription codeine. This compound suppresses the “itch” signal from the nerve in the back of the throat that causes the cough reflex. It is possible to get an effective dose (1 g, though 0.5 g may be sufficient) from 50g of dark chocolate, which contains 2 to 10 times more cacao than milk chocolate. Cocoa powder contains roughly 0.1 g per tablespoon. Theobromine was also free from side effects in the blind tests.”
So, I have not spent money on Robitussin, and have instead been drinking many mugs of Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate Sensation. Which may not have saved me money…But even in an economy like this, a spoon full of sugar — or in this case, a mug full of dark chocolate — makes the medicine go down in a most delightful way.
