WordSisters

Category: Writing

  • What To Do When Your Editor Has Your Manuscript

    ostrich-with-head-in-sand 2Surprisingly enough, I don’t have any nervous energy waiting for her response. I’m looking forward to her feedback. And, as soon as I receive her comments, I know that I’ll stick my head back into the manuscript and write, revise, and write.

    An ostrich doesn’t bury her head in the sand but she does dig a hole in the dirt to use as a nest for her eggs. Several times a day, the ostrich puts her head in the hole and turns the eggs.

    Since winning the 2013 – 2014 Loft Mentor Series in Creative Nonfiction, I devoted my time to babying my book. Every spare moment I had went into the work that would result in this baby growing into a manuscript worth publishing. I had a vision. I purged what wasn’t working and kept writing what was.

    With my newfound free time, I turned my attention to the cat room. It had become a stockpile of possibly useful stuff. Every time I walked into this room it bugged me. I’m a purger by nature. I don’t like stuff.

    Transforming this room became a creative process. I had a vision for the room. I knew that it could be more than it was. Focus, hard work, and purging would bring my vision to fruition.

    I’m the purger in our house. That’s my role. I enjoy it. For me it is creative. When Antonio and Crystel get to the point that even they can’t stand their bedrooms, they’ll turn their rooms over to me. I’ll go through every slip of paper, every drawer, every pencil box and organize, toss, give away, and rearrange. At the end of the day they have bedrooms they don’t recognize as theirs.

    Of course, there are those moments when I discard something I shouldn’t. Crystel asked me where her grocery bag of papers were. She said, “They are in the memory box like the pictures you took down off the wall, right?”

    Sorry, honey, I thought. That paper bag went straight in the trash.

    “Ms. Hutton said we’d need those later in the school year.”

    “Oooooh,” I replied.

    Jody, also enjoys when I get in this state of mind. I can bring orderly to chaos to any kitchen cupboard or linen closet.

    Maybe I am a good purger because I don’t have an attachment to stuff.

    There isn’t much that I won’t give away. I am one of twelve children and my mother would stack our clean clothes on numbered shelves. We each had a number that corresponded to our birth order. As the fifth child, I was number five. Even so, one day I couldn’t find a pair of blue jeans that I got for Christmas. Finally, I figured out that number six brother was wearing them. Possession became ownership.

    173314-stock-photo-sky-movement-head-sand-power-forceI tackled that cat room with the same intensity and focus that I used to write my book.

    Within three days, it wasn’t recognizable and I had a new sitting room.

    Soon, I’ll be burying my head back into my manuscript. I’ll be a mother to my words. Turning each one over and over. The only difference being … will be where I’m sitting. The cat room has become my favorite creative space. I’m confident I’ll emerge with a book worth reading.

  • Why I Listen To Books On Tape

    mojave_crossing_9780553276800Almost all of my reading takes place in the car. So much so that in the evening if I have any free time I wonder what to do because I don’t have a book on the end table calling to me.

    In the car, I have a horse neighing for my attention. Tell Sackett is running from gunshots.

    Louis L’Amour’s, Mojave Crossing, is a William Tell Sackett book. Sometimes I just need a good Western to take my mind off things. It’s also a way to look forward to Monday’s and the 45 minute drive to work. Listening to the narrator I find myself wanting to twist, turn and yell, “No, don’t go there, Tell.” But, of course he does.

    As a writer, I find value in listening to books on tape the same is if I was reading the paperback. Louis L’Amour’s description of the landscape, the people, the saloon, is a ‘how to’ lesson for me. She had the clearest, creamiest skin you ever did see and a mouth that fairly prickled the hair on the back of your neck. I also listen for how he places summary with action.

    He’s found the formula to give me just enough summary so I don’t get bored and then he slingshots me back to the present.

    Often, I click Stop while listening to a book on tape and ask myself, Ok, how did he or she just do that? Or, what is making me want to continue listening to this book?

    It will take me a few miles to ponder these questions. I am at work in no time at all.

    Sometimes, I will hit on a series of books and I can follow the writer’s growth. Tamarack County was one such book by William Kent Krueger. I had listened to a number of his earlier books and there were some where I skipped to the last CD to hear the ending. With Tamarack County it was interesting from the first CD to the end. I tried skipping and had to rewind.

    I was eager to listen to his latest book Ordinary Grace. After finishing Mojave Crossing I slid in the Krueger CD. I fell off my horse. It took me a bit to get used to the change of pace – from constant danger – to a walk on a railroad trestle.

    Besides listening to westerns and mysteries, I like to skip around to memoir, literary fiction, and self help books. One thing that is good to know, I can always come back to a Louis L’Amour western and find a Sackett lying still on the wet ground, shaking with chill, knowing he has to get warm or die.

    I encourage you to try books on tape. I’ve listed below links to information on what others consider good books.

    http://bestfantasybooks.com/blog/top-10-best-fantasy-audiobooks/

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/juliafurlan/books-make-everything-better

    http://pjhoover.blogspot.com/2009/08/ear-or-eye-what-makes-for-good-audio.html

    http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/the-best-narrated-audio-books-167299

    http://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/audiobook

    http://airshipdaily.com/blog/the-10-greatest-audiobook-narrators-insomniac-guide

     

  • “I’m Not Afraid”

    Cheryl Strayed at Concordia College
    Cheryl Strayed at Concordia College

    Saying “I’m not afraid” over and over got Cheryl Strayed from the Mohave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State – over an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. I tried it myself this week–the mantra, not the hike–and it worked. I got through another moment. Cheryl Strayed had many moments on the trail with dangerous animals, a snowstorm, and misery.

    Monday, October 20th, I was with over 2,000 people listening to Cheryl as she spoke from the lectern at Concordia College.

    She dropped bits of wisdom throughout the night.

    “Don’t make fear my God.”

    Her book reading was different from all others that I’ve attended in that she never read a word from Wild. She talked to us. We could have been gathered around a very large coffee table.

    I had her book, Wild, for as long as it took her to do the hike – a summer–before I read a word. I was resistant because I didn’t want to be disappointed. I thought the praise for her writing might be because she was a local girl done good, and if I picked up the book the story would fall apart in my hands.

    Enough people recommended Wild that I finally opened to the first page. Whoa.

    I looked around the gymnasium at Concordia. A couple thousand people, including me, could relate to her story. How did she do that?

    “It’s the only book that spoke to me,” said my friend sitting next to me. Her husband passed away eight months ago. “People know that I like to read. I got a lot of books, but this was the only one….”

    “How can I bear the unbearable?”

    October 22, 2014 091Cheryl called her hike a universal journey. A journey of finding who we are and then coming to peace with that. “Grief is love,” she added.

    Therein lay my answer. Universal truths. Truths that apply to all people.

    “Love is the nutrient that we need.”

    “Alone with something I couldn’t lift but I had to lift it.”

    December 5, Wild will be coming out in movie theatres.

    Cheryl invited me to the after-party. She invited all of us. How did she make me feel included in her trajectory?

    Her author page on Facebook has 105,627 likes. She’s been accessible, not losing herself in her climb.

    In my research of her many interviews and talks around the country she didn’t lose herself in the publishing process or the making of a movie.

    “In a heroic battle to make my way back to myself.”

    During the evening Cheryl spoke about refusing to allow herself, her writing, or her story to be pigeonholed. Wild isn’t just for women. 50 percent of her correspondence is from men.

    She left me with a ‘how to’ for when my book sells: Go in expecting respect and politely inform others. An artist shouldn’t defend his or her work.

    Her book is powerful but she is even more powerful.

    “I’m not afraid,” I can imagine her … me … and all of us … continuing to say on our own personal hike.