I have been doing nothing productive these past few days– no writing, no grading, just reading Regency Christmas romances. The next couple of weeks will be brutal so I need the break.
It looks like I’ll start rewriting the Kringle novel when I’m on Christmas break in a couple weeks.
Today is Thanksgiving lunch at the Savoy Grill, followed by Wicked at the Screenland Armour. Very Kansas City.
Have a very good day, whether or not you celebrate.
I’m sitting in the controlled chaos of our living room next to a framed poster of the latest book in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, Reclaiming the Balance. It’s due out January 1st, with the usual little fanfare. I am thinking of having an online open house for people to drop in on, but the last time I did that nobody showed up. It is a bad time to expect people to show up, in the US at least.
The posters are a ritual, driven by the fact my cover artist, my niece Rachel, is quite talented and does iconic covers. I give her very little to go on, and it’s like she reads my mind. I have aphantasia, or the inability to picture things in my mind, so it’s very hard for me to imagine how she does this.
I write and I publish. I don’t have too many readers, so I feel discouraged at times. But I know there are so many indie books out there, and I can’t afford expensive marketing that has no guarantee of working. I have to accept things as they are, which is why I print the covers as posters. I want to feel like I’m accomplishing something.
I think I have the idea on how to re-re-revise this year’s Kringle novel. It’s going to be a little flexible with reality, but not in an unrealistic way. No, that didn’t sound so intelligent. Let me try again. I will have to introduce a slightly unrealistic scenario, but not one that requires a massive suspension of disbelief.
The problem has been how to keep my aspiring writer in town and at the lodge for long enough that she actually has time for relationship development from meet-cute to growing interest to the peak, the misgivings, the breakup, and the reconciliation. The writing retreat has to be about two weeks long, and she’s not independently wealthy, so two weeks at the lodge isn’t something she can afford (even though it’s not exorbitantly expensive to stay there).
Enter an artist-in-residence program. This is not completely unrealistic; Amtrak had one a few years ago (that I desperately wished I was well-enough regarded as a writer to receive). There’s no reason the lodge couldn’t have this, and in the winter, which is not the prime tourist season. I know in reality that the lodge I am modelling this after never has a down time and thus would not sponsor an aspiring writer. But it’s theoretically possible.
In this scenario, my female protagonist, a writer, would be invited for a two-week artist-in-residence stay at the lodge, which would last through Christmas. During this time, she would give a book reading, talk to local aspiring writers, and write some features on the area. So she would interview the local Santa and visit the surrounding towns as well as the park. And she would fall in love with the executive chef.
How does she have two weeks for a writer’s retreat if she’s also college faculty? This is the end of her sabbatical, and she will go back to work after the break. Not unreasonable assumptions again.
I think this is doable. All I have to do now is write it.
My (American) Thanksgiving break starts today after classes, for which I am very thankful. The thing about being faculty at a university is that you don’t get to schedule vacations when you want, but the vacations you get are generous. A week at Thanksgiving and Spring Break, three weeks at Christmas, and the whole summer if you elect not to work summers. (Many, if not most, faculty teach at least one summer class; I handle internships.)
Often, our breaks aren’t work-free. Many faculty members, like me, will catch up on grading over the break, or will set up classes for next semester in the spaces between semesters. But the change in routine, and that we won’t be dressing up and meeting students, is a break enough.
I plan on resurrecting my Christmas novel over the break, grading three homeworks, and playing Christmas carols (I know it’s early, but I need a little Christmas now with all the political bad news we’re going through). My to-do list also involves a certain amount of lounging on the couch. I will be going to Kansas City for a writing retreat and Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend, so don’t feel too sorry for me.
I need this break, because when I get back to work, there will be three major assignments to grade and then finals (including an essay final) in two weeks. And then there will be Christmas break.
I have given up writing my latest Kringle Christmas romance. I don’t like giving things up, but the premise of the book became untenable upon writing.
I had given up writing it once before, feeling that the timing was all wrong. Then I got an idea to expand the time period of the book so that I had more time to develop the relationship. It turns out it wasn’t enough; I don’t have enough time left in the story to develop the downturn of the relationship, where the couple starts second-guessing the relationship and their own fitness for it.
Let me explain: My Christmas romances generally run from a few days before Thanksgiving through mid-December. The relationship develops fast, but I have about three weeks of plot-time to develop the relationship. That’s enough to take them from developing relationship to devolving relationship and through the reconciliation. With Kringle All the Way (the book I just abandoned), the couple had from the 17th through the 25th to get through all those stages. Try as I may, I didn’t have enough time in which to develop the relationship. In a Christmas romance, the happy ending has to happen by Christmas. What’s more depressing than a breakup over Christmas? That’s why the timing is so important.
This is the first story I’ve given up! I have a story that I’ve set aside for a while with a promise to get back to it eventually, but that’s not the same. I don’t enjoy giving up, but this story is fatally flawed. To spend any more time on it is to waste that time. That’s why giving up is sometimes a good thing.
I’m in the busy time of year — grading upon grading; major assignments coming due — and that doesn’t bode well for writing. I am about 1/4 through the re-conceived version of this year’s Kringle novel and stymied because I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to write. I have plenty of time to finish it, as I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. I just don’t have time right now.
The thing I used to teach (and will teach again) in resource management — the importance of a task and the motivation toward the task should match. Nothing more motivating than angry students who need that assignment to be graded. Luckily I’m motivated to do the important task of grading, or at least motivated enough. Some music to motivate should help.
My top priority is to get the assignment graded. From there, other work. Maybe I will get to write this afternoon.
Wish me luck.
So I gutted the Kringle book and started it again. My female protagonist is now a writer who can spend a bit more time at the lodge and start her stay early enough that they might actually progress to a “breakup” before Christmas.
The romance novel has a structure. I use a Scrivener template called “Romancing the Beat” based on Gwen Hayes’ book of the same name. This lays out the romance in terms of four parts: Set up, Falling in love, Retreating from love, Fighting for love. Each of those parts has five steps that progress the reader through the story. (If you think that romance novels are too formulaic, there are beat sheets for your favorite form of literature as well. We have expectations when reading a story).
The problem with my original story is that the happy ending has to happen by Christmas (it’s a Christmas romance, after all). As the romance started less than a week before Christmas, the plot had no time for them to pass through the stages between doubt and breakup. I suppose I could have collapsed them, but part of the fun for the reader is to pass through those stages. It’s not only part of the plot, but gives the reader a satisfying emotional roller coaster.
So I am rewriting the story with a protagonist who can stay a little longer. Not even that much longer — she’s got two more days to be there. The days are important, not only for the timing of the novel, but for what can happen during those days. Because their getting together time is not as close to Christmas, they have time to do things together before the male lead (an executive chef) has to buckle down for the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day buffets. This is in closer keeping with the original plot. It’s not romantic if they don’t get to enjoy some courtship.
I wrote the first thousand words yesterday. I think this will be a better book, although I won’t be done by the end of November. At least I won’t spend all my writing time grumbling about how it’s not working.
I’m having to abandon the current Kringle (Christmas romance) story because of encroaching improbability. The way I set it up, romantic developments are supposed to happen in hours rather than days, which is just too rapid. There is no way to stretch out the time the book covers, because the female protagonist is a schoolteacher and would not get to the Lodge sooner than she has. Nor could she afford to stay there for two weeks; a week is expensive enough. The relationship needs to be resolved by Christmas. There’s just no time for the two of them.
This has been happening to me lately; stopping in the middle of a book and not feeling it. Here, I’ve not been feeling like writing for a very good reason: The book is untenable. I can resolve this with some plot tweaks, including a protagonist who can arrive at the lodge a few days earlier. Maybe a writer on a writing retreat. That would be writing what I know. I already have someone from the last book in mind.
Today I have to keep writing, even if I’m not doing NaNo, even if I’m having to start from scratch. This is my flow activity; I need to keep it in my life for my health.
It should be of no surprise that my favorite class in school was what we called ‘English’, or more properly, ‘language arts’. This was a catch-all phrase that included classes in grammar, literature, and writing. As a child, I loved writing and reading, and I even loved grammar, although that came naturally to me.
I have to admit I didn’t often pay attention in class during reading. In younger grades, we would take turns reading out loud. The class didn’t read fast enough for me, and I would read ahead. When it was my turn to read, the teacher would have to direct me back to whatever page we were reading. Most of my teachers didn’t yell at me for not paying attention because they knew I was reading ahead.
I discovered that I loved to write in third grade, when my teacher taught a unit on poetry. In third grade, then, I was writing poetry forms that were way over my head — simple rhymes were easy, but she had us writing haiku, limericks, and once even tried a diamante form. And I went along with it and wrote these to the best of my ability. A third grader’s diamante leaves a little to be desired. And the limerick:
A lion lived in a zoo
with a tiger, a bear, and a gnu.
“I can scare three or more,”
said the lion with a roar.
And the gnu said, “Shame shame on you!”
Don’t ask me how I remember a poem I wrote in third grade. I don’t remember the longer Groundhog Day poem that my teacher posted on the front door of the classroom, mercifully.
Language arts was the class I looked forward to every day. It’s not surprising given my love of words even today.
Today is going to be a busy day at home. I remember when I said, not that long ago, that I don’t do nothing well. Right now I’d like to do nothing exceedingly well. I am going through a sense of inertia, but I have miles to go according to Robert Frost, and I have to take those miles at a jog or faster.
Today I have this blog, papers to grade, a meeting with a student, a meeting with a committee (thank goodness for Zoom), and some of the book to write if I have time. I’m 1/3 the way through grading the assignment, and there’s another one on Thursday. I’m 17% through the 50k pages, but I’m 600 words behind even if I do my full words today. That’s the feeling that’s dragging me down. I hate a big pile of to-do.
I just noticed that my coffee cup is out of coffee and I don’t know how that happened. A definite “to-do” day. I will feel better as I cross things off the list, if I ever get that far. Life feels daunting today.
Words Like Me 