Learn as You Go

"It was broken. It was haunted. Just like her.

               But it had bones, and it had memories, and it had the ability to be something strong again. Just like her."

~Fix You

 

 

There's an old saying that no one ever learned how to ride a horse without falling off a few times. It's very true. I have the grass stains to prove it. Because, you could read every book, every magazine article, watch every instructional video in existence, and you'd still clutch at the pommel for balance the first time you slung your leg over a horse. Riding takes hours and hours and hours of practice, and even then, you never reach some imaginary plateau of talent; you could always be a better rider. There's always something new to learn. There's always more practicing to do.

 

The same is true of writing. You write and write and write, learning, growing, developing those unconscious skill sets that you can only acquire through repetition. Every finished project is another lesson learned. Sometimes, unfinished projects are our falls. And the more we write, the better we write, the less we fall - at least, that's my philosophy.

 

Fix You is complete! I'm hoping to announce that its on sale sometime next week...and announce the sale I have planned to celebrate the end (for now) of the Walker series. So now that those four books are in my rear view, I'm looking back on what I learned in the process.

 

My big take-away was about character development. This is a very character-driven series, and while writing the books, I really worked toward making those characters not just interesting, but likable too. I hope I succeeded, but either way, I'm going to have a hard time letting go of these characters; I'm attached! Maybe...one of these days...maybe even sooner than that...I'll revisit them.

 

In the Dark

 

 

 

Monday afternoon, a storm knocked out the power. No big. The roof was still on the barn and all the trees were still upright; after the insane, roaring build of the wind, it was just a relief to see that everything was still in tact...and y'all, I'm not exaggerating. It's a damn good day when a storm blows by and the funnel cloud skirts around the edge of the property.

 

So the power was out, but the county's good about getting it back on, and it was daylight, so it was no big deal.

 

But then it didn't come back on. And then the dark came creeping in; the shadows got long and the chill set in and night fell without a single light to keep the shadows at bay. It is dark in the country. No ambient city glow. No backup generators. And if you have a well, like we do, then there's no running water either. It's just the night, and the sound of coyotes celebrating a kill; a few dancing candles, the yellow-eyed things flirting with the flashlight beams, and a vivid imagination make for an unsettling evening. The horses don't like the flashlights: they snort and stare at the woods, their eyes white around the edges.

 

The next morning, the sun is radiant and the sky is the color of a robin's egg, and it's hard to believe there was anything to to be uneasy about the night before.

 

Anyone who claims not to be at least a little nervous in the dark is, I think, fooling himself. Even if you're not afraid, even if you're fearless, there's some basic, instinctual part of us all that tells us it's not safe in the dark.



That Weekend

You know that first warm weekend? The first one that isn't cold and gray and doesn't keep you indoors? The first one that feels like Spring? That was this past weekend here. The pears bloomed and the daylight lingered until eight and it was so nice to unplug for the weekend and recharge.

My truck got a much-deserved bath.

I did some editing on Fix You.

I played around with cover images for Made for Breaking - which will be completed and released sometime this summer.

On a farm, weekends are a chance to dig in deeper and work a little harder. Planting and painting and repairing and mowing and riding and washing - cars and horses and dogs alike. I need that. Now that I'm no longer just writing for me - and my work is "out there" - I'm exposed to the overabundance of information out there on the web about book writing/marketing/editing. By the end of the week, I'm a bit of a doubting mess, reeling from all that I've read, wondering if I'm doing what I should. The weekends on the farm are a reminder that no one can know what I "should" do. Writing pulls me the same way the farm has always pulled me, and it's nice to get back to the natural, instinctual side of creativity and step away from the web.

I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend! I've got some deleted scenes coming up this week and a peek back into Made for Breaking.

The Ides

Happy Ides of March...day? Best wishes on this the Ides of March...? Is that something you can even wish a person? Dunno. So...have a happy anniversary of the assassination of Caesar. That's not morbid at all.

Julius Caesar is my favorite Shakespeare play so I always take note of this day. Plus, Roman history is interesting, so there's that too. But back to Shakespeare. "Beware the Ides of March," has become one of those cultural phrases that everyone says. Most people don't know it was said by a soothsayer in a play, but they know the line all the same. And how cool is that? I love to know that Shakespeare, even all these years later, still transcends pop culture.

After

Jess sat in the slow-burning sunshine and listened to them

 

 with a smile on her face. She was home.

 

 

~Fix You

I don't know what novels are to other people; I can only speculate. For me, they they are bigger, stronger, wilder than what they appear. They are not just lines on a page; they are journeys - alive and breathing - trapped between covers, waiting to be turned loose. They have the power to evoke laughter, tears, longing and heartbreak. Their paths become familiar and well-worn. Their people become friends. Their colors are brighter behind our eyes than ever possible in the real world. And all that a novel is to a reader, it is still more to its writer. We crack open our own fears, dreams, worries and wonders and weave them into the fiction. We slave and worry and spend sleepless nights wondering just how our hero will find his way out of this newest scrape. It is a lonely thing, sometimes a thankless thing, and even still, when it's over, we are sad.

I finished Fix You today. It still needs editing and proofing and all kinds of tweaking, but I wrote my final line today. I ended not just the novel, but my four volume series of novels. And it's...strange. I've thought all along that I would be elated to complete the series, and instead, it's a quiet sort of gladness. What do I do now that it's done? What comes after?

In the last six months, I've written more than I ever have in the past. It's been a concentrated, focused obsession - writing out the lives of these characters. Now that it's over, I'm left with all those artless, practical questions I hate: Should I have focused my efforts elsewhere? Should I have written a different kind of book? A different kind of series? Was this all a waste of time? Will I look back and be glad I got to meet the Walkers in my imagination?

I don't know the answers to these questions right now. I think, for tonight, I'll just be glad and sad that I am where I am. I don't know what's harder: writing, or what comes after.

Springing Forward

I love Spring: it's a predictable beginning. The tender shoots of grass; the slow burst of pear blossoms; the first brave red wasps; the rain of loose horse hair falling off the curry comb - it's all familiar, all missed, all welcome. Other beginnings, though, aren't as comforting.

I'm staring down the barrel of the last 4,000 words or so of the last book of my series. It's bittersweet: it's a relief; it's a terror. Once I finish Fix You, I'll start working on something else. Not because I want to, but because I have to. Writing is a disease for me; I'm manic, and I can't remember a period in my life in which I wasn't writing something. Even if it was a short story in the margin of my history notes, I've always had some sort of fiction project going. I can't stop. I have a problem. Hello, my name is Lauren. I can't stop writing...

The change of season feels like a good time to do some springing forward of a personal nature. The Walker series has been all about family and the complicated way it links people to one another. It was my pet project, my passion. The men were the kind of men who really deserve to be loved; the girls were the kind of girls you'd want as sisters and friends. They felt real to me, and I meant for them to. But the more I look at the market, the more I see that my books don't fit into what readers are terming romance these days. So what's a manic writer to do? Stay the course? Crank out my own carbon copy erotica novel?

I think the answer, for me, is neither. While I might be ready to go a little darker and a little more exciting with my next novel, I might as well face the fact that I have a style and I need to stick to it. I want to continue to write emotional, character-driven stories. Like Shelter, my next novel will bring a little murder into the mix. And I want to build it around a character who makes a cameo in Fix You: a stand-alone piece that doesn't need the Walkers, but tips a hat to them.

I want to write about this guy:

           Ben looked every inch the businessman, save the black motorcycle boots he opted for instead of dress shoes. “You ever try to chase down a meth addict in wingtips?” he’d asked once. Over the side of the plate, Chris recognized those black boots standing beside his table, and heaved a sigh.

            “Two days in a row. How’d I get so lucky?”

            Ben flashed a tight, humorless smile as he slid into the booth across from him. “I figured I’d find you here pouring grease over your rotting liver.”

            “Don’t you have a dead body to find?” Chris asked, shoveling in eggs. “A crackhead to run down?”

            “In a minute.” Ben pulled a napkin from the dispenser, wiped a patch of table, then folded his arms over it. “I went to see Jessica,” he said, and Chris’s eggs got stuck in his throat.

**

And his story is a mystery. And his girl is too good for him.

A Little Bit of Jessica...

There's something very Dr. Frankenstein about character development. There's no bolts or haphazard stitch-work, but writers are, in essence, creating humans from disassembled bits. For me, this is the best part of writing - developing new characters. It can also be the most challenging. Especially when taking a supporting character from one book and setting her up as the star of her own book. Shifting gears can trip you up. This is Jess, I remind myself, not Jo. Don't make her sound like Jo!




http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fly-Sara-Evans/dp/B00004YRGJ

 I love this album so much. Every song. I love Sara's voice; I love the odd touch of bluegrass woven through the notes of what are already strong country songs. "Born to Fly" was my dumb-kid-dreaming-in-my-room anthem: it fueled my writing...still does, for that matter. I dusted the album off a while back and every song made me think of Jess in some way.