I’ve been holding monthly writing group meetings since February, on the assumption that there are other writers like me who want to connect with like-minded creative types. But last month, I really wasn’t in the mood to do it. I was frustrated over the lack of progress with the second novel and the rejections on the first, and just in general, was doubting my ability to write fiction.  But I had committed to it so there I was.

The focus that month was on the value of asking “what if” to elicit some options for your character, and asking questions in general (and then shutting up!) when conducting interviews.  Then the exercise was to pick out someone (a stranger) in the coffee shop and write down why that person was there, what was going on, who they were — really anything that was inspired just by seeing them. So there the group was, busily scribbling away and there I was—not. Looked around and couldn’t come up with anything. How embarrassing.

I left the table and walked around, hoping inspiration (or death) would strike me. Then I see it—or rather them. An older woman and a young boy, sitting at a small table by the counter. I came back to the table and here is the early scribbles of what has since (I hope) become a promising short story:

Sitting with the little boy… “My grandson,” she tells everybody and he doesn’t contradict her. She had told him it was a game the two of them played—that it was like make-believe or dress-up—and that she would tell them the truth before they left. But she never did…

(No I am not giving you more because I want to submit it when it’s done and yes, stuff written on your blog is considered publishing—at least, according to many of the small literary journal guidelines I’ve been reading!)

Since then, I have been working on it—well, two versions of it actually, a longer short story and a flash-fiction version. And each time, something new comes into focus. So I guess I can still write fiction.

As for Reinventing Rita, it was just getting too serious, too dark, too…well, frankly, too much like my life in some ways. I realized what I loved most about writing Finding Fran (even if the agents thus far haven’t agreed!) was that it was light-hearted. I mean, yes, she had a regrettable experience with her lover (the jerk) and yes, she was frustrated with her writing progress, but there were enough elements of humor and bizarreness (is that a word?) to keep it fun for me. I can and do write serious, dark fiction but only as short stories. I don’t want to be that serious for 65,000-plus words. Life is hard enough sometimes without reliving it in my writing.

In the spirit of Ernest Hemingway (or Twitter’s 140-character limitation!), use six words to tell your story. Then share it here!

My story:

Life changes but I’m always writing.

So in the Finding Fran story line, my character is beginning to understand not only the mistakes she made in the choices of the men she became involved with but also the inherent philosophy by which she lived her life: that she needed to be in a relationship to feel fulfilled. (Notice I said “feel” not “be.”) Along the way, she begins her new novel with a character named Cookie who is not only on her own and alone (rather than on her own and lonely—a distinction!).

Mind you, it’s not that Fran (or Cookie, for that matter) is opposed to relationships. It’s just that the first woman is learning what the second already knew: that you can’t look to someone else to define you or make you feel complete or fulfilled. You need to do that all by yourself. And that it is possible to be alone and happy.

And so what do I read in The New York Times’ article “One Is the Quirkiest Number” by Steven Kurutz? That while living alone can be a “breeding ground for eccentricities,” it also provides freedom, solitude and space (literal and figurative, physical and psychological). And in “Why Women Stay Single,” Skye Danzer lists benefits to the single life: to dodge the cardiac risks of staying in a bad relationship, to avoid involvement with a cheater (something Fran certainly knew about!) and to concentrate on your career (again, something Fran needed to do).

As for how many of single women are actually out there, another NYT article reported that in 2005, “51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000,”and quoted Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, as saying “Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage.”

We (I’m including myself in the single category) even have our own week: September 16-22, 2012 is Unmarried and Single Americans Week. So the premise behind Finding Fran—that it is possible to be single and happy, that self-definition and contentment and fulfillment must come from within, not from without—is right on the money from a marketing perspective. And in some weird and bizarre way, this has inspired me to keep pitching that book as I work on Reinventing Rita.

Not “If you write it they will come,” but “They are already here and waiting for it so get it into their hands!”

What is your idea of a perfect writing day?

Spend 15 minutes describing your perfect writing day: where you are (in your home office, by the ocean, in the woods) and what you would be writing about: the project or type of writing or genre. Then share it here!

Use the spring weather to inspire your writing. Sit outdoors for 10 minutes with your eyes closed. Use your sense of hearing and smell to focus on your environment. Then open your eyes and use that sensory experience as a trigger, writing about whatever those smells and sounds inspired. Then share it here!

Write for 15 minutes (narrative or dialogue) using this line as the opening:

“First, you’ll need a large, very sharp knife. Myself, I prefer a cleaver.”

Then post the results here!

One of my fantasies is to have a house large enough for a separate area where I could not only do my own writing (instead of in this converted bedroom I currently use) but also hold writing workshops or invite visiting authors and writers to give presentations. I have even seen the house I wanted. It’s near Lake Erie—a two-story structure that has a section jutting out into the backyard overlooking the lake. There are long windows on all three sides, giving a perfect view of nature. It’s the ideal spot for creative work.

I want that house. I dream about that house. But more than the house itself, I want that kind of space—something that says “This is where a writer lives.”

Which leads me to the next point: what kind of writer lives in that house? Who will I be if I had that house? More importantly, who am I now, writerly speaking, and what are my goals?

While I make my living as a magazine and corporate writer (after all, the money has to come in from somewhere!), my writing goal has always been to achieve success in fiction. And for awhile, it seemed I was on the right path. I made time for writing short stories, and even had a few pieces published in literary magazines. Then, I stopped. Cold. Why? Well, I could blame it on my work schedule or family obligations but the bottom line is, I stopped because I was afraid. I would sit down to write and nothing would be there. I’d turn the key (figuratively speaking) and the engine wouldn’t catch fire. Pretty soon, I avoided the attempt altogether because I didn’t want to face failure. I was successful in my other writing life but as a fiction writer, I was very much afraid I had reach “has-been” status without ever attaining success.

Then, as I have detailed in an earlier post, events pushed me into writing fiction again. Now, while my schedule is not as consistent as I would like and while I have as yet been unable to find representation for my first novel, I am still committed to writing fiction. For now, I have vanquished the Self-Doubt Demon who would whisper in my ear, “You’re no [name of whatever famous writer I was reading at the time]. You are just somebody who thinks she can write.”

I have learned (and have had to re-learn) that for me, fiction writing isn’t about being better than the other writers out there, but about giving voice to the voiceless—all those characters who are wandering in the wilderness, just waiting for someone to find them and lead them home to the page. And when I get them there, they talk to me. I don’t put words in their mouths but only write down the words that come out of theirs.

And when I do that, I know that I am doing what I was meant to do, writing what I was meant to write. This is not to say that, at some point, I won’t let fear get the better of me again. But I hope that, when it does, I can find my way over, around or through it and get back to the writer I want to be, writing the kind of pieces that I want to write, living the writing life that is right for me.

What I’m finding as I work on Reinventing Rita is that sometimes the multiple storylines just present themselves and I have to respect that. 

I had a rough idea of the overall story but, as I worked my through it, more conflicts presented themselves: not necessarily conflicts that Rita had to address (although she might think they were her problems!) but ones that indirectly shed some light on Rita’s thoughts and understandings of situations, as well as her relationship with her mother.

For example: her daughter’s pregnancy.  How did it make Rita feel about her own choice, since she had gotten pregnant unexpectedly too? And Alexa’s view of motherhood: was that just her daughter’s perception or had Rita somehow fed into it? What should Alexa do: have the baby? Have an abortion? And what is Rita’s role in all this: bystander or active participant?

Then there is Caro’s problem: her fiance’s family idolizes his dead wife. Here she is, at mid-life, in competition with someone who, by all accounts, was a saint, even through her breast cancer. Does he share his family’s feelings? Does he view Caro as second-best? Would she be making a huge mistake to marry him?

So many questions but instead of overwhelming me, they are making the project more interesting–perhaps because, in real life, I have faced similar situations where the answers are far from clear and whatever one I would choose, I would always wonder if I picked the right one.

Since I got behind working on my latest novel, I had to go back to the beginning to put myself in the right place, so to speak. But that turned out to be good for the book because I “learned” some interesting facts about Rita (the main character) in the process.

For example: she was pregnant when she got married, which was why they had to push the wedding up. (Her husband wanted to finish his PhD but had to quit to get a job). This explains why his sister hated Rita and also the trajectory of Rita’s life: first a mother, then her mother’s caregiver, with no time to become “Rita.”

I didn’t know that detail when I started writing the book but now I do. And it makes perfect sense.

In many ways, this is a harder book to work on than Finding Fran. For one thing, Fran was a writer, whereas Rita is a “worker bee”: she works for the postal service but really has no driving focus or dream.

And Rita is more serious–about loss of those you love and letdowns from those who remain–something I know about (and wish I didn’t).

We’ll see what happens. My goal is have the first draft (technically the first draft of the revised version) finished by 3.1.12.

Words of inspiration from Alec Baldwin…

Early this morning (6 AM to be exact), I watched a rerun of Inside the Actors Studio. It’s one of my favorite shows, in part because James Lipton is such a great interviewer — I pick up pointers from watching him that I use when I interview people for articles or blogs — and in part because the guests are so naked on the show. They are willing to talk about their vulnerabilities, their challenges, what matters to them and what they are, even at their stage of success, still trying to achieve.

So this morning, the guest was Alec Baldwin, and one of his final comments (when discussing performing in theater) was “Every performance…is an opportunity to prove yourself…” And I realized that I need to approach my writing that way. I need to always be trying to outdo myself, to push past not only my comfort zone but also my level of performance, to exceed what and how I wrote in the past to create something newer, better, stronger, deeper, richer.

In my “work writing” (my term for what I do for editors and clients) I, of course, am trying to meet their expectations: turn in that article or copy that does what they want it to do. But in my fiction, the only audience I have is myself. I am the writer but also I am the “client”: I need to satisfy my own expectations. I need to exceed my own past performance. I need to do it better this time than I did last time and the time before that.

And it’s hard. It’s damn hard. Because when you are the one not only doing the writing but also the person judging what was done, you start checking every paragraph, every line, every word the moment it’s put in fixed form.

You start second-guessing yourself, questioning if you still have “it” (and on bad days, if you ever had “it” to begin with!).

You get out there on the “stage” (the stage, in this case, being your computer or your notebook or whatever place and way you start the writing process) and write your sad line and wait for your audience-of-one to cry. Or write your funny line and wait for your audience-of-one to laugh. Or write your incredibly moving, inspiring, provocative line and wait for your audience-of-one to gasp or murmur in agreement or do something, for God’s sake, that means it hit home.

And you’re that audience-of-one which makes it all the more difficult.

But you keep trying because, in the end, what else is there but writing.

In the beginning, so says the Bible, there was the Word.

And in the end, if we are very, very lucky, we will have lots of words — all given to us by God or the Creator or the Universe or whatever we believe in — and it’s up to us to make sure those words are the very best we can write.