Kool Aid on the Floor and Crayons in the Dryer--Emotions to Draw From

It's messy work, being a mom. This afternoon I was in the throes of discovering a melted green crayon in the dryer had speckled and streaked and ruined an entire batch of whites when the 8yo and the 6yo entered the laundry room baring gifts of red-soaked dishtowels.

"What's that?"

"She dumped it. We told her not to."

Red Kool-Aid. All over the newly mopped kitchen floor. Thanks, 3yo chica. Making my day, here.

At least they were trying to remedy the situation. I do have pretty darn good kids.

But life does get in the way of writing a lot of the time. My goal was to edit another 20 pages today. I'm doing the hard stuff, cutting from 95,000 words down to 85,000. Whole paragraphs and scenes are getting the ax. It's painful.

Yeah, it's painful enough to see my words, my creation circling the drain--I didn't need destruction swirling around me too.

Then again, it's these moments that give me experience to draw from. One of the things we have to do as writers is to imbue our characters with strong emotions (frustration and despair included.) And even though I hope I never write a story about a haggard mom slogging her way through the drudgery of housework, I can tap these experiences, notice how I feel and put it into words. Then I can transpose these feelings (no matter what source they come from) onto my characters and into their situations.

So, it's not all a loss. Not entirely.

I guess.

Red Kool Aid is my nemesis. (Even though it tastes fabulous. Especially Tropical Punch.)

Click Here for How to Get Red Kool Aid Out of Carpet

Characterization (and 600 Otter Pops and counting)

I've been studying up on how to improve characterization in novels. In a book by Dwight Swain (a much loved writing teacher), I found a really great tip.

He said that if you want your character to come to life you need to imbue him/her with emotion, emotion strong enough to be felt by the reader. I'm not great at this--I tend to keep things in the character's head, rather than letting feelings get visceral--so I got excited when he suggested a way to do this. Here's what he said:

Mine your memory banks to a time when you felt an emotion similar to the one your character is feeling. It doesn't have to be the same circumstance, of course, just the same emotion: lust, greed, hatred, fear, humiliation, joy.

Just remember a time when you felt that emotion. Get down into it, relive it in your mind. His example was to think of a time when you were mad enough at someone you wanted to kill them. Once you're back there mentally, pull out your pen and write down all the feelings you have--the gut feelings, the setting of the jaw, the sweating of the palms, the qivering of the knee, the twitching of the eye, raised pulse, rapid breathing throught the nose--all of it. Get it down on paper.

Then you can use the description of that emotion and apply it to the character and situation you're writing about.

I took what he said and made a list of emotional powerhouse moments in my life, and then examined what categories of emotion they fell under (geez, there were quite a larrrrrrge number of moments that fit under the heading "embarrassment." I wonder why.) Then I started writing them out, putting those moments onto paper. It was interesting (and a little awful) to relive them, but now I've got this great database to turn to for future reference.

I'm hoping it will improve my writing, and help the reader to connect better with the characters I'm trying to express in my work.

Meanwhile, the main feeling I have this week is HEAT. It was 121 degrees in my car when I got into it this afternoon, after I burned my little fingers on the door handle. This is why we just finished our SIXTH box of (100 count) Otter Pops of the summer. Mind you, we're only four weeks in. I can see another 10-12 boxes in our future if we're going to survive.

But come on, how bad can an Otter Pop be? They're only 25 calories. They're fruity (and the ones from Costco even have real fruit juice in them) and they refresh, and they're most of all COLD. In this heat, we need it. The whole state is on fire, why not have an Otter Pop to fight back?

I left on an errand the other day and the kids asked, "How many Otter Pops can we have?" I actually heard myself answer, "Only ten."

Little Orphan Orange, Alexander the Grape, Louie Blue Raspberry, Sir Isaac Lime, Strawberry Short Kook, Poncho Punch.

Ahhhhh. I'll have five of each.

Spring Break. Time for Gingerbread.

What is it about burnt peanuts? What could make something sooooo good? I love them. I can't stop thinking about them. And they look so weird. Hmm. I don't get it. Maybe it's that crispy bumpy red outer layer that houses the sweet chewy inner layer that houses the yummy peanut?

I once wrote a children's book about peanuts. I wonder where that is...

But anyway, the burnt peanuts worked great on the gingerbread houses my kids made today. My six-year-old used one atop a dab of green frosting that looked like an ivy leaf. Holly and ivy--cool. Yeah, yeah, I know it's March. Spring break, in fact. And this is why we finally have time to get to this crafty project.

In the after-Christmas clearance I found this gem. It was not just a gingerbread house. It was a gingerbread village. That meant there were five tiny gingerbread houses, one for each of my kids. It came with frosting and (according to the outside of the box) "LOTS OF CANDY!"

Which I, naturally, didn't believe.

"Lots of candy" is in the eye of the beholder. Without even glancing inside I made a backup plan and bought the 50-cent bags of Sather's candies at the grocery store: licorice laces (love them!), burnt peanuts (crave them!), Good n Plenty (generic), gumdrops (don't love them but have to have them for gingerbread decorating purposes.) Thus armed, I felt ready for the challenge! (I view all craft projects as a challenge. Bless the hearts of those women who view them as relaxation. It will never be me.)

So we gathered everyone around, thanked them for doing their enormous list of jobs for which this activity served as a reward, and broke out the kit. Each kid picked their favorite little building--a toy store, a regular house, a gabled house, a bakery, something else--and got going.

It would have been fine. It might have even been fun, except I miscalculated. Instead of buying backup candy, I should have bought backup frosting. After several months on various shelves, that stuff had turned from malleable to crusty. Imagine~in March! Shouldn't frosting be more dependable than that?

Our houses didn't look nearly this good.

Yeah, I could have whipped out my powdered sugar and butter and made another batch, but instead I made them muddle through in crustiness, and the houses kept falling down every time they pressed a Spree onto the roof. There were some tears, and growls of frustration not a few.

Eventually I distracted them by taking them to the park.

I guess the lesson is that some things are better done sooner than later. I'm sure this applies to writing. For me it probably best applies to journal writing. Write while the emotion still tingles, while the details and feeling are still fresh. Journaling can be a great source of datamining for future writing. I don't necessarily have to write about my own experiences, but when I have a character who needs to feel a certain emotion, I can dig through the journals and find a time when I felt depressed or elated or incensed. Then I can more accurately infuse the character with the emotion.

An apology, Dickens, and how hubby slammed the Cadburys

First off, I must apologize for the mixed metaphor as title for my last blog post. I hope it bothers all my readers less than it bothers me. The truth is, I could go in and change it, but I choose to leave it there as a twisted form of "writer's punishment" for myself. Possibly as a motivator never to do it again. (Fodder and data-mining. One is food. One is mining. Honestly. I could have made an effort.)

So, I was reading (again) the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities the other day. I say "again" because I've read the beginning a LOT of times. I don't mean just the "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" part. I mean the first three chapters. Much as I love Dickens, (and I seriously do love Dickens and many of his contemporaries), this words on the pages of this book begin to swirl before my very eyes. I love the movie, I love the characters, it's magnificent. I just get stuck somewhere about halfway through.

I WILL conquer it, however. Someday.

In the meantime, I will continue to reflect on this little gem of writerly insight from the beginning. Dickens muses at the beginning of chapter three to this effect:

"A wonderful fact of nature to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."

He goes on, and waxes eloquent in expounding on this theme. I love it. You can read it here. I have reflected on this idea dozens of times, and probably mentioned it to YOU (if you and I speak on any kind of regular basis because I'm like that, repeating myself everywhere I go). Even someone I think I know very well, like my husband, or my sister, or my bestest friend, still houses secrets I will never know. The thoughts, dark and light, will only come to my knowledge if the person allows me in.

It's a gift God gives us.

And, a friend commented Saturday, "Plus, do we really know ourselves?"

This struck me. And suddenly I realized something about fiction, and why we love it, why we crave it, why we almost need it: fiction allows us a window into another person's soul.

The writer slits open the character and gives us a view of deep feelings, of motives, of fears, of doubts and misgivings, of anger, hate, jealousy, love, longing, despair. The list goes on. And the more expertly the author delivers the emotions, the greater the connection the reader will feel to it, and the more satisfying it will be. Perhaps this is because we long to understand others, or ourselves. The writer conveys a full banquet of emotions we ourselves have felt, and probably not expressed to anyone. It comes as a relief to us to recognize those same emotions lain bare in someone else, even someone fictional. It doesn't matter if it's fictional, because the more real the emotions, the more real the character is to the reader.

Readers read for character. Character revelation is plot. We feel a connection to a character, we're most likely going to read that book. The greater the connection, the faster we read the book. Period.

Connection. A glance at the secret inner workings of the soul. Sometimes the character expresses the feelings, and sometimes the author can convey emotion that the character himself cannot recognize honestly in himself. Both deliveries can be valid, if done well.

And now, I need a new delivery: another bag of Cadbury Mini-Eggs, if you please. The one I bought just over 24 hours ago is officially empty. I even shook the little candy shards left in the crevices into my hand and popped them in my mouth. Did I share with the children? Maybe one or two. When Gary tasted them, he disparaged them (is that the root of the term "dissed?") and was thereafter forbidden, even while we were watching Hulu retreads and mindlessly popping candy in our mouths. Instead, I tossed him mini Twix bars in pastel mylar wrappers.

I know, I know, I am leaving out important detail, as in how Gary slammed the Cadburys. (Shame on him!) It's not nice to repeat low gossip. But since it's about chocolate and not a *person*, fine. Fine! He said the chocolate wasn't quite right. It was of low quality. How DARE he!

He's a chocolate snob, though. And I'll love him through thick and thin(mint) of it all. So, I guess I need to go buy him a Dove Dark Chocolate Bunny that he can chip the ears off and leave melty shards (speaking of shards) of on my bedspread during Hulu marathons while I hog the Cadburys. But he better keep his mitts of them. They're mine.