Versatile, me?

Oh, happy weekend surprise! Jen over at Jen's Bookshelf gave me a Versatile Blogger award! Thank you, Jen. I hope my blogs continue to warrant such an award!

 
The rules of the award are:
1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you. (Thanks again, Jen!)  
2. Share 7 random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 0 - 100 deserving blogging buddies.
4. Contact those buddies to congratulate them.


Seven random facts? Let's see...
1. I try to reread the Harry Potter series every summer.

2. I try to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy every winter (and usually more often than that).

3. I'm a huge fan of the New York Yankees and I enjoy movies about baseball, especially Field of Dreams.

4. I wrote my master's thesis on the use of fear appeals to promote behavior change in teens, specifically related to drug abuse. Think of the "This is your brain on drugs" campaign. General question: can you scare teenagers into changing their behavior? Or do communicators run the risk of missing the "sweet spot" and creating communications that are so scary they either turn humorous (Brain on drugs campaign) or scare people into inaction (common among smokers who think they'll already die of lung cancer, so why quit now?)

5. I have an unhealthy addiction to coffee, pad thai, and chocolate chip cookies. I suppose I should also add Grain Belt Nordeast and Strongbow to that list.

6. I'm writing this while watching Serenity for the umpteenth time. You can't stop the signal, Mal...

7. My favorite animal is an elephant. I will go to Africa on safari and see them live in their habitat, not in a zoo. And I'll try not to cry, but no promises.

I am passing on this blogging award to two bloggers whose posts make me laugh, think, and continually strive to better my writing.


Claudie A is a writer scientist. While she has authored many cool blogs of her own and on her joint site, Wicked & Tricksy, I love her latest endeavor. Claudie is working on a series of posts on great (overlooked) women in science. Check out her latest post on Rosalind Franklin!


If I had a blogging twin, it would be Erik Setterlind. He's a writer runner who's been known to blog about both topics, which immediately got my attention. But it's his newest writing journey that I find most compelling. Erik recently put his current event fiction piece, Rapture Dinner Party, online for sale. You can read more about his new short story, here.

Using non-fiction to make fiction

So here's a question for you...

My mom gave me her collection of letters that her parents exchanged while my grandpa was overseas during WW2. There are A LOT of letters neatly typed out on beautifully thin correspondence papers that span the course of a number of years. (Don't ask me how long--I haven't gone through each letter to put them in chronological order.)

My grandma kept the letters in an old file box, complete with a magnetic flap. Over the years, the box has yellowed with age but has protected the precious letters within.

Fast forward to now, and I'm eager to get into the file box and see what secret love letters my grandparents exchanged. I love the idea of waiting (im)patiently by the mail box, waiting for that one letter to arrive telling you that your beloved is not only still alive, but misses you more than you miss them. In this era of instantaneous messaging, the agony of the wait has been reduced to minutes or hours instead of days into weeks.

Okay, back to my question...

Strands of a plot are pulling in my brain. I so badly want to go through these letters (and dare I say, scan them for future/safety?) and find a love story. I want to pull together two time lines and two love stories and somehow toss them gently in the air like a pot of cooked pasta and find a masterpiece beneath all those pages. (Have I mentioned there are A LOT of pages? For a woman of very few words, my prim and proper grandma sure wrote some letters!)

I once attended a writing course and this idea came up. One of my classmates said I couldn't write a story using these letters as material because it would read like a memoir even though they weren't my memories.

My bigger concern is reading through these pages, eager to find some trace of mystery or intrigue, just to find the military redacted any juicy bits or worse, that my grandparents expressed their love in stale paragraphs that leave my eyes begging for Visine.

And my even bigger concern is leaving the comfortable world of writing fantasy for a story based on historical romance, something I openly admit I know NOTHING about.

Have any of you used real source material from family members to inspire a story? Or have you ever hopped genres into something entirely out of your comfort zone? How did it work out for you?

Losing focus

Spring isn't really my time of year. Don't get me wrong--I love the idea of sunshine and short sleeves. But with spring comes a noticeable drop in my writing productivity. It's so easy to brew a pot of tea and shuffle around in my sweatpants with Classical Minnesota Radio in the background as I work on that new scene.

But now? Now it's beautiful outside and I really don't want to be inside. I have so many more things to do outside then I possibly have time for. I can spend a whole Saturday in the yard and come in exhausted around 6pm, ready to hold down the couch for the rest of the night instead of rewriting a section.

I keep putting my creative pursuits off for another day in the spring. But then the spring turns to summer. The NaNo CreateSpace proof copy deadline passes by like a dream. My book sits, stagnant. The characters wait, frozen in motion, until I can move them to the next place on my imaginary chess board.

And that's just my 2010 NaNo book. Let's not even talk about my 2009 NaNo, which is likely to be retired to a place of honor on the shelves as "The First Book." You know, that dreaded first book all authors talk about? Yeah, I feel like I'm well on my way to becoming a "real" writer because I already have that first book filled with darlings, stereotypes, cliches, and poorly-constructed rules of magic and society in a fantasy world.

Then I have this blog. This lovely outlet to the creative world, waiting at my fingertips. And I'm terrified. I've read and re-read most of Sommer Leigh's College of Blogging series and I know it's filled with great info, but all I can grasp is that I don't have a platform.

I don't know what to write about.

I made a Venn diagram when I first toyed with the idea of blogging. There were three main themes: writing, travel, and running. I have topic ideas from each theme and even some topics that cross both (running races in another country?).

But I come back to my first question, why would anyone care?

I have a funny feeling this is just a very long pity party. I feel overwhelmed right now because I know the CreateSpace/NaNo copy code expires at the end of June. If I have any shot of getting a free proof in the next six weeks, I need an ending, a massive re-write, and cover art (and let's use that last phrase "cover art" very loosely).

I need the outside world to stand still for only a few days so I can catch up on the inside. I need it to be January again. I need dark nights that start at 5pm and a tv lineup of repeats. Snow showers. Long weekends filled with crap weather that leave me no option but to hole up inside armed with a pot of Irish Breakfast tea and my fuzzy bathrobe while I frantically scribble words.

Them there are sacrilegious thoughts for many Minnesotans. But Spring is messing me up. I want to be outside mowing, weeding, planting, hanging laundry on the line, running up hills, walking around lakes, and doing anything but sitting in my office trying to patch my book together.

So when all else fails? Blog.

The Curse of the Eternal Romantic

I'm cursed. I've tried to find loopholes, work arounds, and technicalities, but it's official. There's no hope for me. I am cursed to be an eternal romantic. I have to accept my fate and everything that comes with it, including:

• First date butterflies.
• First date freakouts. (OHMYGODIHAVENOTHINGTOWEAR!)
• Shazam! The electricity when your hands first touch.
• Kisses that leave you weak in the knees.
• The deep shade of red that climbs into your cheeks when they wink/smile at/flirt with you.
• The constant vigil, checking and rechecking your phone, email, snail mail, smoke signals, all in hopes they contacted you.
• Post-first date recaps with bestest girl friends, preferably with copious amounts of wine and giggles.

Source

Then finally, just as all of this settles down and you feel like you can return to a life of normalcy, the second date is planned and the whole vicious cycle repeats. New outfits must be purchased, new shades of lip gloss are tested, and you start reminding yourself to not get too ahead of things. It's only a second date.

There are many aspects to this Curse. Some of the better-known effects include irrational emotional responses, pining, over-evaluating/analyzing, shopping, thinking, freaking out, and the possibility of making excuses for poor behavior on their part.

Seeing as I'm also cursed blessed with being a writer and therefore possess an active imagination, The Curse of the Eternal Romantic has one final, wretched effect.

The "I wonders." And warning: these can be both positive and negative...

I wonder what our kids would look like.
I wonder if this person would help support my dreams.
I wonder if they don't really like me and are just using me.

I wonder why they asked me out in the first place.

I wonder if we would get along on trips.

I wonder if they see themselves doing something I see myself doing.
I wonder if they're honest.
I wonder if this person is damaged and I should run for the hills.

And the Granddaddy of them all:

I wonder if this person is the one...

Damn you, romance writers! You make it look so easy, so effortless. All I need is a swank marketing/publishing job in London and THEN I'll find Mr. Darcy Destiny! Or worse, I just need to become the Quirky Damsel in Distress and Mr. Right will be there to help solve the problem. Gah. I have more integrity than that, unfortunately.

There's no anecdote to the Curse of the Eternal Romantic. Unfortunately, the only thing we can do is Wait. The Wait sucks as it can be accompanied by Doubt, which when combined, have the potential to leave you a slobbering mess of tears and regret while you pour another cup of wine.

And yes, us Eternal Romantics drink our wine in cups--not glasses. It helps stimulate the overactive imagination.