Twice in the past decade or so, Bill and I have had occasion to spend time in the UK. Having watched fascinating scripted BBC dramas on PBS, we eagerly turned on the hotel TV sets. What a disappointment! Once we saw a national lawn bowling tournament, and once we were treated to an endless loop of shows about meerkats. Between lawn bowling and meerkats, I prefer meerkats.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s something to remember. Watching a writer write is a spectator sport akin to watching paint dry or lawn bowling. And if you don\u2019t believe me, ask my husband. He\u2019s been standing on the sidelines watching me do it for the past twenty-nine-and-counting years. Due to my blog, several times in the last weeks, I\u2019ve sucked my readers into watching the writing process, too. And so, as Paul Harvey would say, here\u2019s the rest of the story.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking about a book with no name, hereafter referred to as BWNN. The book had a name once, but the first one ended up being used as the title for a novella when I yanked seventy pages or so out of the book-in-process because that part of the story was causing a distraction. Then BWNN had a new name for a day or so last week, but the marketing folks didn\u2019t like it. So, as I write this, it\u2019s still BWNN, and I can tell you that writing it has been a struggle.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an Arizona book; a Walker\/Beaumont combo book; a reservation book. Over the months I\u2019ve done battle with it\u2014literally night and day\u2014sitting over my keyboard by day and tossing and turning about it at night.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week we saw a movie, The Hotel Budapest. At the beginning a character, who is presumably the guy writing the story, says words to the effect that writers aren\u2019t just writers when they write. They are writers all the time, searching out stories and finding connections.<\/p>\n
Part of the problem with BWNN was that I actively disliked one of the characters. If he got knocked off, who cared? There was no one to mourn his passing, and I couldn\u2019t mourn him, either.<\/p>\n
Then, in December, I accompanied my daughter and grandson to a Christmas Eve service at church\u2014you know, a service about the Greatest Story Ever Told. And while I was sitting there in the pew, a miracle happened. Yes, the service was all about the story of Baby Jesus, but to my astonishment, another baby was born that night, too. While people were singing the final carols, I learned that one of my characters, the one I didn\u2019t like, had a daughter. That meant he DID have someone who cared about him, and if she could care about him, so could I.<\/p>\n
That put BWNN in a whole new light. It was about that same time when I reached the conclusion that the distraction part of the story had to come out. I was in the process of doing just that when we arrived in Arizona. I\u2019ve often said that I don\u2019t have to BE somewhere to write ABOUT it, but it turns out that isn\u2019t true, at least not this time, because until we arrived here with the blue skies and sunshine overhead, my story still wouldn\u2019t sing. <\/p>\n
When we arrived, the house here had been empty for months. There was no food in the pantry or the fridge, so that first morning we went to Chaffins on Broadway for breakfast. (By the way, as far as I know, Chaffins is the only place in the universe that makes and sells real live Sugarloaf Cafe Sweet Rolls.) As we were leaving the restaurant after breakfast, we walked out to the end of the parking lot while chatting with a man and a woman who looked as though they were probably of Tohono O\u2019odham stock. When we reached our car, I asked them if they were from the reservation. The man said yes, they were. I said, \u201cI worked out at Sells for a number of years. I was the school librarian.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to quote his response, but I\u2019m also going to try to duplicate how it sounded. The Tohono O\u2019odham are very soft-spoken, and they tend to swallow final syllables of words which makes it seem so as though there are full stops between each word. \u201cOh,\u201d he said, \u201cso . you\u2019re . the . lady . who . writes . all . those . books.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve not been on a reservation, you have no idea of what a remarkable conversation that was between two strangers, Indian and Anglo; Tohono O\u2019odham and Milgahn. Remarkable! I walked away from his comment feeling lighter than air; as though I\u2019d just received a blessing; as though he\u2019d just patted me on the back and said, \u201cGood job.\u201d<\/p>\n
So now I\u2019m back working on the book, and it is singing. The feel and the sounds of the desert are in my heart and they\u2019re also in the words going into the file. The characters are talking to me at night, and that\u2019s all to the good. The little linch-pins of legend that fit into each chapter are clicking into place like parts of a giant jigsaw puzzle. But it\u2019s still not easy.<\/p>\n
When I got my first computer, the best my 128 K Eagle could do was a max of 2500 words per file. Believe me, that made for short, choppy chapters. And that\u2019s how I constructed the books on my PC for a very long time, short and choppy; chapter by chapter. Doing it that way, however, came with two major drawbacks: 1. Printing the whole document when I finished doing the writing, and 2. Finding something in one of the earlier chapters and then, if changes had to be made, tracing all the threads and making similar changes throughout the manuscript.<\/p>\n
Now, on my Mac, I tend to write books that are \u201call of a piece,\u201d as my mother would say. Everything goes into one long string of story and one very long file. Sometimes I\u2019ll need to go back and find something in a previous chapter and follow that through the entire manuscript. With a single key word, doing that is a breeze. And when I finish writing BWNN, I won\u2019t even have to print it. I\u2019ll just put it in a file and e-mail it to my editor in New York.<\/p>\n
But early this week a new problem raised its ugly head. I discovered I had two chapters with 30 plus pages. Oops. That is WAY TOO LONG!! So I\u2019ve spent the last few days restructuring the book\u2014adding chapters and pieces of legend and shuttling material back and forth among them. There were times yesterday afternoon when I thought my head would explode. But now the restructuring is done. Today, once this blog is finished, I get to write new material instead of battling with old stuff. It should be fun.<\/p>\n
The Tohono O\u2019odham have a tradition of \u201csinging for power.\u201d That\u2019s how I\u2019m feeling today\u2014powerful. The parking lot blessing is still working.<\/p>\n
By the way, if you\u2019ve been bored to tears by this blog and by peeking behind the curtain at this writer\u2019s life, then I suspect you wouldn\u2019t like watching lawn bowling very much, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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