The conclusion — for now.

It can’t be helped.

As I crawl out of the other side of my depression, I find that writing is too much a part of my life to quit it.

My characters are almost family members, their stories important to tell. My husband and I talk about them:
“Do you think Grace’s parents had talents?”
“No, but I think they figured Grace had a latent music talent, and that’s why they hid her in the Renaissance Children school.”
I sometimes wish I could have coffee with one of them — the fey Josh; the acerbic Lilith; androgynous, impish Amarel; intense and troubled Greg.

Their worlds are hidden in plain sight from mine, and if I turn around just right, I’ll be at Barn Swallows’ Dance or the coffeehouse where Jeanne and Josh met or the Ancestors’ Room in the Chinese restaurant in McKinley Park neighborhood or the meeting room in the main Kansas City library, sitting in while Future Past meets. I have not managed to find these places in real life, so I write to create them.

About publishing — I’ve decided I will try Gaia’s Hands, the one that’s currently not winning the Kindle Scout process, with a Quaker press. My only sadness about this is, if it’s published, it will be preaching to the choir. I’ll turn Voyagers in to Kindle Scout somewhere around then. If those don’t sell, at least I’ve published and can kick that off the bucket list.

I will always be looking for leads. If you have a friend of a friend who knows of an unusual publishing house, please let me know.

Dissecting Gaia’s Hands and Learning Nothing Yet.

Maybe Gaia’s Hands wasn’t the best book to enter to Kindle Scout.

I’ve proofread it, demolished it, paired it with another book, trimmed that back so that I have two instead of four main characters, re- and re-proofed it, and still when I look at it I wonder if it’s a solid novel.

I’ve never known what to do with it. I love its plot lines — discovering one’s mystical abilities, a convincingly menacing pattern of harassment to one of the main characters, a taboo May-December romance (taboo because the woman is older than the man). I adore its characters — a talented botany professor, a precocious young poet, his best friend the surly engineer, the refined yet hangdog lab assistant Ernie, enigmatic waitress Annie, and even the smooth dean and hostile department chair Jeanne has to face.

But I’ve never known what to do with the book. The scenes almost come off as vignettes, with the connections between strands unapparent at first. The plot is subtle, not as action-packed. The characters carry it, but I always wonder if the book starts too slowly. I edit it again and feel something’s not quite there, I don’t know what the “something” is. With all the improvement I’ve done in writing for the past six years, there’s something in Gaia’s Hands too quirky for prime time.

Gaia’s Hands strikes me as a YA, except the male protagonist is too old at 20, the female protagonist is way too old at 50, and there’s not enough angst. (For all the harm Twilight did to women’s expectations of men — it’s okay to be a stalker? Really? — it did angst exceedingly well. And it sold.)

I look at Gaia’s Hands and feel like it’s missing something. Despite my greater level of experience, my writing skills, better knowledge of writing dynamics — my writing is missing something, and I can’t tell what. Maybe my style, my “voice” isn’t acceptable. I don’t know, but I wish I could figure it out.

Flawed Characters

I’m thinking of the DC vs Marvel universe movie franchises, specifically two characters that are green: The Hulk (Marvel) vs. The Green Lantern (DC).

According to The Hulk’s origin story, Bruce Banner is a mild-mannered physicist who gets clobbered by gamma rays, and turns into a huge, green creature of the ID when he gets angry. As such, he’s a great superhero if one keeps him from smashing innocent bystanders and buildings. Bruce loathes his alter-ego, and this conflict adds depth and feelings of compassion toward his character.

The Green Lantern is a feckless dudebro who finds a lantern and a ring that link him to a network of intergalactic peacekeepers and superpowers. Readers are left wondering if a feckless dudebro should be allowed superpowers. Worse, though, is that we are left with the Hero’s Journey of a privileged male getting more privilege.

One of these is the more interesting character, and it’s not the dudebro.

We want our characters, especially our heroes, to have flaws that get in the way of their quest.

Dan Brown’s books (Inferno, etc.) feature a protagonist named Robert Langdon, who seems at times childishly helpless in his books, which is an intriguing flaw. He comes off as almost on the autism spectrum — focused on cryptology and solving puzzles, a bit clueless about people, led by the hand at times. However, Brown glosses over this with female characters who fall in love with him at the same time they want to mother him*, so there are no consequences of his flaw to him. In addition, everyone thinks he’s this cultured, articulate genius

Bella Swan in the Twilight series has an almost minuscule flaw — she’s clumsy. Unless she walks through mountains and upon tightropes without a net and almost falls while returning the Treasure of the Incas to the Incas, this flaw won’t affect her meaningfully. This is part of why Bella is discounted as being a Mary Sue, a perfect character designed as wish fulfillment for the author**.

Examples of good character flaws? In mystery, J.D. Robb created Eve Dallas, a horrifically abused child who grew up to be a good cop, but regularly struggles with nightmares about her past, difficulties in fathoming the rules of relationships, and being triggered by events from her professional life. Any character in Lord of the Rings (with the exception of Merry and Pippin) have baggage — Boromir is so focused on saving his country he is blinded to evil; Aragorn really, really wants to be king; Galadriel is tempted by power, Frodo struggles mightily with the Ring; Eowyn has a painful crush on Aragorn, who marries Arwen in a pragmatic marriage.***

We love reading character flaws, because imperfect characters becoming heroes give us the reassurance that we too, with all of our character flaws, can become heroes.

**************

* I wish other people considered unrealistic, but there is this charge laid upon American women to “change” their husbands, who don’t want to be changed. And who can blame either for this dynamic?

** The second reason is because female authors are routinely denigrated as writing Mary Sue characters, with the critics not noting that near-perfect characters like James T. Kirk (classic Star trek) and the aforementioned Robert Langdon are Marty Stus, the male equivalent of Mary Sue.

*** The movies portrayed Aragorn and Arwen as a love match. The book is much more pragmatic about that marriage. I wish the movie had followed the book in this case, because the triangle would have much more poignancy.

Returning to a work in progress

I’ve decided to write on Prodigies again, and it’s been at least three months since I’ve touched it, because I’ve been working on my NaNo book, Whose Hearts are Mountains. I’m being drawn back to that book because of a few things:

First, the mystical sense of the book. One character survives a fatal shooting, and another can bring the freshly dead back to life. Discussions . We have a character who dreams. Characters have to deal with their religions, their morality, and where these change.
The group of four main characters are in close space a lot, and they’re being pursued because of their talents. They get on each other’s nerves.
There’s humor. I wasn’t aware of how little humor there has been in Whose Hearts are Mountains, as if nobody laughs after the collapse of the United States. People laugh in even the worst of circumstances. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think some of the best situational humor I’ve written is in Prodigies.
I love the characters — two teens and two slightly older adults: Grace, who is by turns blunt and guarded, denies her talent; Ichirou, an odd introvert, is so interested in the effects of his mind-influencing art that he doesn’t consider the moral implications; Ayana, Ichirou’s teacher, holds secrets that may endanger their lives; while Greg’s talent disturbs their sense of what is possible.
It’s a coming of age story from the viewpoint of Grace, an emancipated minor who spent her childhood in boarding schools.

I’m going to have to re-immerse myself into the characters, their conversations, their goals and purposes. I’m going to work back into feeling their voices in my head and heart. And then, hopefully, bring that attachment back to finish Whose Hearts are Mountains, which I feel has been lacking the humor and the heart that I’d been developing in Prodigies.

Open Questions and Characters Again: Conflict

My character sheets — the ones from Scrivener — have two categories on them that I’m not happy with: Character’s internal conflicts, and Character’s external conflicts. I fill them with short, telegraphic statements:

William’s conflicts: Internally — because he deserted his lover, who was killed 18 years later; Externally — With his employer, Free White State; with Jude, who he feels is hiding something.

Jude’s conflicts: Internally — For not fitting in with other Archetypes/Folk; Externally: With his Archetype parents, for deserting him; With the Commune, for sheltering humans and Nephilim; With Free White State, for moving slowly with their plan.

One of these is a flawed good guy; the other is a sympathetic bad guy. How can you tell?

Conflicts can cause anger, fear, fury, hopelessness; sadness; and many other emotions. Can you tell what emotions come up with each conflict? You can assume, and you might be wrong, even if they’re your characters.

Conflicts can stir up desires for reconciliation, revenge, murder, wallowing in self-pity, petty bickering and passive-aggressive snapping — and more. Do any of the segments above give this impression? No!

I want to feel my characters — their loves, their dislikes, their conflicts — so I’m about to take another approach: Open-ended questions.

*****

Me: Jude, tell me about your conflict with your parents.

Jude: I understand that in InterSpace, engendered children seldom have contact with their parents after engendering. But they’re quickly apprised of their purpose — or were, until the Council of the Oldest gave the humans their cultural memories back. Archetypes engendered Earthside — that is, from the renegades — have contact with their parents and other Archetypes, at least occasionally. I was left in a privy, the abandoned result of unauthorized intercourse between two Archetypes. There I was, a freak who served no purpose and who was born fully adult. I would kill my father if he hadn’t already died saving the humans. I don’t know why they deserved more than I did.

Now, for a similar situation with William:

Me: Tell me about your conflict with your parents.

William: My situation was interesting. Six thousand years ago. the Archetypes calling themselves the Triumvirate staged the Garden of Eden in order to control society’s women, and thus the entire society, through religion. The Triumvirate engendered a male Archetype called Adam and a female Nephilim — half-human — called Eve. You may know the story. What you probably don’t know is that a couple Archetypes — Su and her apprentice Luke — engendered a female Archetype named after an older legend than Adam and Eve, called Lilith. Adam chose Lilith, not Eve, as his consort, and the Triumvirate tried to get Lilith, but not Adam, killed. Adam and Lilith went into hiding Earthside.

At that point, my parents, the female Norwegian Archetype and the male Bering Strait Archetype, decided to subtly go rogue, vowing to stand against the Triumvirate just as Luke and Su had. They had me in defiance, and placed me among the Aleut. What I discovered was that parentage among Archetypes was as nothing, the humans held parentage in great esteem. Not only did I not know my parents, but I couldn’t speak of them because Archetypes were not open to the humans.

Someday I will demand an explanation from my parents.

****

So different, huh? It’s a lot of work, but I’m getting a good idea of the characters, their conflicts, and how they intend to deal with things. I may not do this for all the characters, but the main ones: Anna, Daniel, Jude (listed above), MariJo, and William. Especially Daniel, because all he is right now is aLove Interest. (Although it would be a nice way to counter all those useless female love interests endemic in fantasy, comics, and damn near everything else written, I will not put Daniel into that spot.)

I have my work cut out for me today, and what I really need is to hole up in a coffee shop and start talking to my characters.

Food and your Story

Seasoned writers often recommend that, if you want to enrich the scene you’re writing, you include food, What can food do for a story?

Sometimes food drives the plot — the poisoned glass of elderberry wine in “Arsenic and Old Lace”, for example, or the cookbook in the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”.

Sometimes the food drives the theme — for example, the lavish descriptions of food in “The Hunger Games”, or the lavish presentations of chocolate in the movie “Chocolat”.

Sometimes the food develops the characters — the residents of the ecocollective “Barn Swallows’ Dance” in my Gaia series eat mostly vegetarian diets they’ve grown and raised themselves.

Sometimes the food sets the mood — if a character picks at his food, we know him to be upset or distracted; if he gobbles the food, he’s rushed or famished.

Sometimes the food simply engages the senses in its descriptions. A character eats freshly fried, breaded cheddar cheese curds — are you hungry yet?

So let’s play with this: You have a character, female, college age. She hasn’t been able to eat for several hours, because she has been involved in a clandestine operation to stop the bad guys who wish to hijack a large political event. The action she and her group have taken has been marginally successful, and the group chooses a restaurant to eat at. She feels ambivalent about what she has done, because she has had to exercise the secret power she dislikes having. What will she eat, and how will she eat it? Will she gobble the food? Savor it? Eat it mechanically, not really tasting it?

How will this differ from her co-conspirator, a college-age Japanese man who practices vegetarianism and feels compelled to use his secret power to fix the world?

Our Families Shape our Worlds and our Words

It’s Father’s Day here in the US, during which we celebrate our fathers. Mother’s Day passed by a month ago. Today I think of my parents, and my relationship with my parents, and how my view of it has changed over time.

When I was much younger, I thought only of the injustices of my childhood (of which there were many — enough that a social worker once wondered aloud how I could have come out of that childhood with my personality intact). I think I focused on these when I was younger and less experienced because, face it, when you’re younger and less experienced, you’re afraid you’re not going to make it and you berate your parents for not equipping you with the skills you need.

As I got older, and I realized I would survive adulthood and that the quirks I developed from surviving my childhood weren’t fatal, I began to see the shining parts of my parents’ personalities as well as those parts where they were all too human:

My father just turned 80. He has a strong (and humanistic) sense of right and wrong. He took care of my sister and me through very difficult times in the family. He stayed in a job he’d grown to dislike rather than indulge his dream as a chef because he was the breadwinner for the family. He remarked that if any of my suitors would have asked for my hand, he’d have said “ask her yourself!” He always supported our right to make our own decisions.

My mother died eight years ago. She recognized her eccentricity a long time before and lamented that she wasn’t rich or famous enough for society to accept it. Mom was what is now termed as “a maker”, never wanting to be a beginner at any hobby she picked up. Her eye for design — and my eye for design — led to us collaborating on a few one-of-a-kind embroidery projects. She excelled at putting together outfits for my roles in school plays. She forever debated whether artifice pulled away people’s perceptions of substance.

My characters capture some of the traits and characteristics of my parents. The 6000-year-old Luke’s stoic commitments mirrors my father’s commitment to his family (not to mention his sense of humor). Jeanne Beaumont, the botany professor, captures my mother’s mature beauty. Chasity Howell throws a phenomenal hissy fit that reminds me of my mother as well.

Again, our lives are in our writing as much as our writing is in our lives.

*****
Update:

After passing five FEMA short classes, I’m back to writing. Yesterday’s fun searches: what is the Russian mob called? How do you say “He hit on her” (it’s not a direct translation, but slang) in Japanese?

Why you are not in my book.

Writing characters can be tricky. What do they look like? What is their backstory? What is their function in this story? How would they react to rejection? Danger? Challenge?

I have written characters that remind me of people I knew almost thirty years ago (I met many interesting people when I was in college). I have written characters that remind me of people I’ve known more recently. But when I say “remind me of”, this means “their appearance reminds me of this person” or “their voice reminds me of this person” or their personality or maybe even just one cherished belief of theirs reminds me of that person. My characters develop as a combination of looking like someone I know (because I have trouble constructing a visual appearance in my head), sounding like another person (because that’s how I hear that character in my mind), the interests/vocation of yet another person (because that’s an interesting hobby), the emotional intelligence of yet another person …

This is why you’re not in your book. Someone with a characteristic or two of yours may be in the book. But the character is not you, reacts differently than you, makes different choices than you.

So when I write the standard writer’s disclaimer — the “Any resemblance to people living or dead is truly unintentional” that’s what it means.

******
Also, tomorrow I’m going to the wilds of Wisconsin for a couple days to see my dad and eat in Mad City (Momos! I get to have Momos!). I might manage to get online then; I might not. I’m hoping to write, however; but you’re not one of my characters.

Drinking With My Characters

Baudelaire, C. (?). Be drunk. Available: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/be-drunk

My characters motivate me to write. I meet them in my mind over coffee in the cafeteria I remember from my college days — butterscotch and white walls and pale green formica tables. Or over pints in a tavern with dark wood scarred with the names of years of customers. Or in a gazebo under glowering clouds as the wind picks up.

They tell me stories: “Did I mention the time when I spent three hundred years looking for the famed Shaolin Temple in China? I could not find it no matter how I tried, so I gave up trying and settled in a monastery in the South of China for some eighty years. Much later, I discovered that I had found the Shaolin Temple in that most unprepossessing of places.”

Or “Su approached me one evening because I had apprenticed myself to her, given that I had just been engendered and she was the oldest and wisest of the Archetypes, having been engendered to serve the pre-human Denisovans. We transported to a strange place — a cave in the middle of InterSpace, with stars where there was no sky. She whispered to me, ‘I need your help — our compatriots hatch a plot that would hold the humans in subjugation …’ It was at that moment that I knew I would surrender my life to assist her, whatever that meant to a near-immortal species…”

Or “If you ask me about the story of my life, at this late point, I will start by pointing out that it doesn’t have a plot. I have been a Jewish girl who became a convinced Quaker in college, a pacifist who nonetheless knows how much damage can be done with a picket sign, a liberated woman who chose as a lover an abuser, and who walked out of that relationship — literally — with my infant son. I have organized protests, shouted down political figures, and founded an ecocollective, which I think I will be most remembered for. But I have never been in love.”

My characters develop and interact with each other. They walk into stories, which weave around each other. My characters are not me, but the creations of my imagination. When the stories are written, my characters occasionally wander back to have a drink with me.

Editing as a form of Revisiting

I have been participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this April, pledging 60 hours to editing a book (which turns out to be all five) by the end of the month. I can only edit as much as my writing knowledge and my fallibility let me, and my husband and co-pilot looks at them afterward (more slowly than I do). I MAY HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE TO EDIT.

The fun part, though, is that I get to revisit some of my favorite people — the thoroughly modern psychologist Lilith (yes, that Lilith) and her consort, the fey Adam (yes, that Adam); Lilith’s father Luke, a 6000-year-old supporter of humanity and suspected Serpent in the Garden; Adam and Lilith’s daughter Angel, the iconoclastic creator of immortal cats; the practical botanist Jeanne and her younger and mystical lover Josh and their relationship with Gaia; Amarel, who was born on the point between human and Archetype, old and young, and male and female.

If you’ve read the previous paragraph, you will catch some of the issues that may prevent me from getting published — subverting the Garden of Eden to find a different message; a young transgender individual (who will fall in love); an exploration of No One True Religion; an older plump woman in a relationship with a much younger man.

Other issues stay hidden: a battle plan without bloodshed; corporate plots to bury opposition; liberals that act in opposition to their morals; no vampires, werewolves, or over-the-top sex scenes.

I worry that this isn’t “marketable”, because it’s not urban fantasy, romance, or sword and sorcery. It’s not what the Sad/Rabid/Dead Puppies want to see. I write about the Peaceable Kingdom and our failures in getting there. If you know of someone who will publish this (not self-publishing yet) let me know.