Where Does a Writer Go?

by Rachael Phillips

Are you the kind of writer who can write in a parked SUV until your muddy soccer players (at least, you hope they’re yours) pile onto your seats? Can you outline a novel while sitting in a drive-through line, not bothering to look up when you shift gears to edge ahead? Can you pound out a chapter in a Starbucks invaded by an entire middle school of coffee connoisseurs armed with video games?

Then you, my writing friend, are blessed with qualities of concentration I can only dream of.

In order to write, I need a peaceful place where I can park my creaky frame in a cushy sofa or chair. Desks stifle my creativity. So do real waistbands—elastic, please, or none. I want a room with windows I can open or shut, according to my body’s hot flash weather report, with a view of something green or pretty that doesn’t need watering, trimming, or re-potting. Two cups of real coffee early in the morning are a must, then a large, steaming pot of decaf to warm me throughout a fall or winter day. When temperatures rise, a pitcher of iced tea or water is my constant writing companion.

But most of all, I need quiet—sweet silence or muted small-town noises, enhanced by the audio velvet of classical music.     

I am spoiled because I began my writing career during midlife—after my children had lost their last residue of mom admiration and either rolled eyes or ran screaming when I addressed them. As they left, one by one, for college, I grew accustomed to my everyday quiet writing kingdom, where I can plan my schedule and wear jammies all day, if I so choose.

However, small, not-too-distant rumblings have begun, barely perceptible now, but growing louder with every day … retirement.

My husband’s, not mine.

He is a considerate, supportive spouse, mindful of my need for solitude.

But if he reads, sitting near me, he just has to share passages that excite him.

Deeply spiritual, he loves to discuss what God has been teaching him. In great detail. 

He sneezes. And flushes. He crunches big bowls of mixed nuts and guzzles ice cream my diet-starved soul longs for.

Can it be that I may have to banish my laptop and me to my [gasp!] office?

How about you? What writing-space issues have you faced, and how did you solve them? 

Too Many Pets

by Rachael Phillips

The week my first grandchild was born, I stayed a week with my daughter and her family. Looking back, even her husband, a Dr. Doolittle clone, admits they owned too many pets. The birth of their beautiful baby girl constituted enough drama. The addition of a large, needy dog, whom I privately nicknamed Droolius Rex, and eight cats (a total of 148 kitty claws) in the house detracted from the main event, rather than adding to it.

In a similar way, pet words and phrases can diminish, rather than enhance a story. Like my daughter’s cats, 148 “suddenlys” leave 148 claw marks that puncture a suspense novel and drain it of its potency. Suddenly, readers fall asleep.

The overuse of another pet word, “literally,” and its cousin, “actually,” jumps on readers the way Droolius jumped on me at his dinnertime. Instead of being convinced by such adverbs, readers feel an urge to back away. Or chain them outdoors. Excess “verys” and “reallys,” even in dialogue, can produce a similar effect.

All pets exhibit a sneaky side, and words are no exception. Some, however, possess exceptional covert abilities. Words such as “it,” and “there” can take over a story before an author realizes they have slipped en masse through the back door. Before we know it, litters of “the” and “that” increase exponentially. Pronouns, too, can overpopulate a manuscript if preventive measures are not taken.

 Perhaps you, like me, cherish particular words for your own reasons. I like the word “angst” because it sounds like its meaning. When I crunch the word between gritted teeth, I feel my character’s fear and frustration—expressed in streamlined five-letter form. However, my critique partner pounced on its overuse in my romance as telling rather than showing. Some people just don’t understand pet lovers . . . and in my case, that’s a good thing.

How about you? Have you made a watch-list of your pet words to keep them under control? 

                                 

Sent to the Prose Fat Farm

by Rachael Phillips

Perhaps you are one of the Ernest Hemingways of the writing world—an author whose lean, perfect prose moves over a page like a dancer in a sleek black dress. Your writing rarely has to go on a diet—it works beautifully as you’ve written it. No more. No less. Agents love it. Editors love it. The reading public loves it, because you have supplied spare, artistically written stories that satisfy, yet don’t leave them feeling stuffy and overfed. 

  

Then there are the Charles Dickens writers who love words, love them all and use them all any way they can. Dickens, for example, wrote four paragraphs at the beginning of A Christmas Carol simply to establish that Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, was deceased. He included a 79-word side discussion as to whether a door nail is deader than a coffin nail.

I have always savored reading such paragraphs. And I love writing them. I love feeling overfed! However, the last time I attempted to slip something like that past my crit partner, she sent me to a literary fat farm, where they took away all the heavy tangents that marble my writing.

“What are you thinking! The fat is what makes it taste good,” I protested. “It gives my voice its unique flavor.”

“It kills your readers,” said my cruel trainer. “Nobody these days can digest all that.”

But that’s not all. They also denied me my favorite fluffy adjectives, claiming they smothered my nouns. The sugary ly adverbs also stole the impact of my action.

“What action?” my trainer said. “Your verbs are so flabby, they can’t stand on their own. Get them moving! Make your characters sprint, cling, shriek, crawl, fling, leap, and plop. Stop adding pounds and pounds of other words to prop them up. Is it really necessary to use ‘suddenly,’ ‘actually,’ and ‘literally’ 453 times in one manuscript?”

“I kind of like them.”

“You also used ‘kind of’ 177 times.” She glared at me, then at my manuscript again. “Once we get rid of all those, we’ll start cleaning out these extra ‘thats’—”

“Nooooh! Not my thats!” I shrieked (see, I can use an action verb when I want to).

“Too many uses of ‘the.’ You don’t need all those possessive pronouns, either.”

She says she’s trying to keep me from killing my readers. She’s killing my manuscript—not to mention, me. My poor book and I will starve to death.

But when my trimmed-down words move across the page, they now fit in their jeans and move without huffing and puffing. Perhaps even a slim little black dress is in the future. …

How about you? Have you ever been sent to a prose fat farm?

Or sent somebody else? 

      

         

   

I Want to Be a Writer Like Castle

by Rachael Phillips 

Perhaps you are of noble literary stock, having sworn off television forever in order to perfect your craft. I, however, am married to a man who enjoys this kind of “together time,” and lately, we have succumbed to the Castle series.

For you who study adverbs together instead, Rick Castle is a internationally best-selling author who writes mystery and suspense novels. He works daily with a gorgeous, street-savvy New York City detective, Kate Beckett. Together, they put all the bad guys and girls in jail—she, wearing the appropriate bulletproof vest labeled “police,” and he wearing one labeled “writer.”      

Castle produces a new best seller with every episode—except when writer’s block strikes. Then he releases one every other episode. All this is accomplished in exactly one scene out of hundreds in which Castle actually plants his rump in a chair, sits at a computer and writes ... for exactly 13 seconds.

His reviews soar to the moon and back. Readers bow down and worship him on the streets. He never has to worry that his book-signing attendees only ducked into the bookstore to find Karen Kingsbury and/or a restroom.   

Did I mention he’s a millionaire? With a few estates dotted here and there that he kind of seems to forget about?

Unless my memory is worse than I thought, I don’t have extra mansions stashed away in Martha’s Vineyard.     

But, then, no muggers, mobsters, crazed scientists, crooked politicians, loco cowboys, pathological doctors or salivating tigers have chased me lately.

Hordes of readers do not visit shrines built in my honor. But one recent widower told my husband, his doctor, “I always look forward to Wednesdays, when the paper publishes your wife’s column. On Wednesdays, I know I will laugh.”

So, curled beside my honey on the couch with our February-appropriate lap robes, I can live vicariously through Castle’s blessings. And count my own.

Except for one thing.

I really want one of those vests with “writer” on it to wear to conferences.

Really.  

      

             

Editing for the Tooth Fairy

by Rachael Phillips

My grandson hunched over a piece of wrinkled paper, thinking faster, I knew, than his small fingers could write. “Are you making up a story, Joey?”

He threw me a jack-o’-lantern grin. “Nah. Writing a letter.”

An upstanding member of the Nosy Grandmas of America, I had to know. “To whom?”

“The Tooth Fairy. She’s late.” He shook his head at such inefficiency. “But I better edit this again before I put it under my pillow.”

Words to warm a writer grandma’s heart. Perhaps some of my poor grandchildren have inherited the big ears that run in my family. Maybe I have passed on my poor map reading so that someday, they will end up in Cleveland, when the interview was in Chicago (hey, they both start with C).

But Joey’s Tooth Fairy correspondence gives me hope my descendants will make this world a better place because of wisdom they learned from Grandma, namely:

• Most sentences don’t end with semicolons, no matter how local newspapers read.

• Restaurants whose menus offer hamburger’s and french fry’s should be closed by the Grammar Board of Health.

• “Laying down” often involves losing cash, whereas “lying down” involves a nice, soft sofa or bed and a brief vacation in Dreamland. The wiser choice is obvious.

• Slapping a, comma, in random, places, does not necessarily, a good, sentence make.

• “UR gr8” may impress some Tooth Fairies. Some may even like “Your great.” But if we aspire to higher quality and possibly bigger bucks, grammatical fairies prefer “You are great.”

Finally, spelling and grammar checks are our friends, but they can be sneaky. The best final check is one—no, two, according to Joey—done by exacting humans. And not that I’m prejudiced or anything, but he’s the smartest eight-year-old in the world.

How about you? Any writer wisdom you hope to pass on to your family? Any perfect child/grandchild stories? Pictures?   

Do Your Verbs Need a Workout?

by Rachael Phillips

As a writer, I sometimes receive compliments about my books. A reader may appreciate my characters or my humor. Once I received kudos about food in my stories (“When I read your books, I know somebody will eat something scrumptious. I’ll devour a blow-by-blow description without swallowing a single calorie!”)    

But no one has ever said, “Rachael, I just can’t get enough of your verbs!”

Yet try writing a story without them. In romances, heroines and heroes would not flirt, flounce, fight or kiss. In mysteries, nobody would deduce, shiver, quiver or solve. Or die. Who reads mysteries in which everyone stays alive? Verbs keep the story interesting.

Given their importance, perhaps they should receive more attention. Too often, my verbs degenerate into couch potatoes, content to be, not do. “I AM” never denotes lethargy when the expression refers to God Almighty, the source of all creativity and energy. But too many forms of “be” (am, are, is, was, were, been) stagnate my scenes.

Superfluous “ing” verbs also drain a scene of vitality. They often clump together, clogging my manuscript, but a quick search helps me identify and smooth them, restoring movement to the story. Do you use “going to” in your writing, as in, “She is going to study platypuses in Australia”? Colloquial phrases such as this work in dialogue, but in narrative, the scholar and maybe even the platypuses (if they’re English majors) will fare better if she “plans to study” or “aspires to study.”

Bottom line, present or past tenses project much stronger action than “ing” verbs, so use the former whenever possible.

Verbs in active voice (“The octogenarian drives a purple convertible”) also trump verbs in passive voice (“A purple convertible is driven by the octogenarian”).

Lastly, experiment with vivid verbs. Overuse produces a big-plaid-with-floral-print effect (“She detonated the room with her presence and disseminated hellos, guzzling drinks and demolishing hors d’oeuvres”). But a well-placed, unique action can polish a paragraph to a spit-shine. 

So drag those verbs off the sofa and prod them into action. If we exercise to stay in shape, why shouldn’t they? 

I Don't Want to Write Today

by Rachael Phillips

Writers love their work 24/7. Intriguing plots flow from them like chocolate from a wedding reception fountain. Passionate wordsmiths, writers read the Chicago Manual of Style at the beach.

They would not prefer dusting ceiling fans to writing proposals. Or watching five hours of Gilligan’s Island in Spanish rather than writing chapters. They would never, ever choose exercise over sitting at their beloved computers, expanding word counts and derrieres.

Because writing is a magical, spontaneous, inspirational experience.

It’s like marriage that way.

But suppose—just suppose—a writer experiences a day that wanes from ecstasy to ennui. What then?

First, he can take a mini-vacation to recharge his creative batteries: brew a mug of his favorite coffee, read a funny blog, or call a friend. He might take a refreshing walk . . . to Chile.

Eventually, though, his editor’s lawyer will track him to Chile and strongly suggest the writer fulfill his contract.

At this point, pleasant self-prompts can signal it’s time to write. Classical music often serves as mine. On gloomy days, I light a fragrant candle. Some writers don a special writing outfit or hat, á la Little Women’s Jo March. Leg irons can also be helpful.     

Should leg irons fail to inspire, grit your teeth and write two sentences, taking care to leave the second unfinished. 

Then dust ceiling fans. Banish alien fuzzes from your refrigerator. Dig out eaves. Scrub smelly trash cans. Even [shudder] balance your checkbook. Slave at household projects that have distracted you for days. Your mind eventually will wander to the sentence you left incomplete. (Writers dislike unfinished sentences the way musicians abhor unresolved chords.) Play with that half-sentence until it gels. Then mull over the chapter that hit the wall. Does it need a different point of view?

Stick with household slavery until writing seems like a wonderful idea. Pleading a cranky back, return to your computer and finish that sentence. That paragraph. That chapter. Switch the POV from the smiling brush salesman’s to the serial killer librarian’s.

Yesss! You just fractured your writing block’s cement-like hardness. Even if the results are immeasurably bad, terrible writing—unlike zero writing—can be edited into something that makes you want to write tomorrow, too.

How about you? Are you still hiding in Chile? Or have you, too, developed a cure for I-don’t-want-to-write days?

Experiencing Conflict About Conflict

by Rachael Phillips

Will we earthly writers also write in heaven?

 Your current sinking scene and malfunctioning computer may push you toward kicking it out the window and praying for its eternal perdition. But if you are a true writer, you probably fish computer and story out of the yew bushes and try again.

And yes, you hope we will write in heaven.

I know I do.

We will, however, need to rethink our entire approach to storytelling, because in heaven we will experience no conflict. God will have perfected our minds and natures. Our circumstances. Even our computers. Our glorified stories there will dwarf the tiny, ragged tales we patched together while on earth.

But the Rapture has not yet taken place, right? Please tell me I’m right. For my sake and my computer’s.

Thank you! [Wiping sweat off brow.] Where was I? Oh, yes. Until we go to heaven, conflict remains an important element of every story, even God’s. Conflict fuels plots, illuminates themes, fires characters, and ignites passion in readers that keep the pages turning. If you have attended recent classes, you have heard it preached like a catechism: fill your books with conflict. Every chapter. Every page. Every word. Soak your story in conflict; poke, provoke, even choke your reader with conflict.

Hmm. At this point, I experience conflict about conflict.

In real life, I try to avoid it. I may even read a novel to escape conflict. To relax. Yes, relax.

So why would I choose one in which not only the heroine and hero are at odds, but their co-workers, neighbors, weather conditions, pets, cars, appliances, zippers, and plastic wrap are engaged in all-out cosmic war?

A constant diet of conflict will give a reader ulcers—probably not an author’s intent. Unless you want to make him wish fervently for heaven, which is one form of pre-evangelism, I suppose. But real life already does that.

How about you? Do you find yourself pairing a nice evening of novel-reading with extra Zantac? Or Prozac?

Do all genres require similar amounts of conflict? In your genre, where do you draw the line?    

 

       

You May Be a Writer If…

 1.      …as a kid you made up stories about people in the car next to you, who they are, where they’re going, and what difficulties they’re facing. This is especially true if you’re still doing it as an adult.

2.      …your spouse finds you weeping uncontrollably because the character you sketched has led such a tragic life. 

3.      …you just bought an extensive book of baby names for your fifty-ninth birthday.

4.      …you ask the emergency room nurse to hurry and get you a paper and pen before they put you under so you can capture what it feels like to have your appendix burst.

5.      …your purse or billfold contains more scraps of paper with story ideas and turns of phrase than money.

6.      …you get excited when you take a wrong turn at midnight in the inner city of East Chicago and your car breaks down because—just like your protagonist—you’ve never felt fear that intense.

7.      …your spouse offers to take you out to eat and you opt for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and writing time on the computer.

8.      …you’re not sure if the story idea you fleshed out is in the folder marked “ideas”, the stack of papers on your desk, one of your journals, or on the back of an envelope you tucked into a cookbook.

9.      …you not only listen to strangers while sitting in restaurants, you actually join the conversation so you can find out more details.  

10.  …you intend to “edit this one paragraph” before going to bed and the next thing you know the sun is coming up.

Mary Allen may be a writer. She thinks about story-lines, characters, and events all the time. Even a simple walk on the lake turns into an interview with an ice fisherman. She's having so much fun she's embarrassed when somebody says, "So you write. Sounds hard. I could never do that." 

Say It, Don't Spray It

by Rachael Phillips

Playground culture in my childhood corner of the world taught me numerous new words and phrases. I learned to say “ain’t and “crik” (as in “the crik don’t rise”). We cursed each other with cooties. Talkative schoolmates with overactive salivary glands or tissueless sneezes were ordered to “say it, don’t spray it!”

 

The last memory induces me to towel off with disinfectant wipes. However, weighty literary observations can be salvaged even from such barbarisms.

I refer to the manner in which we writers assign actions, or "beats" to characters during dialogue. We do this for valid reasons: a) to inform readers of who is speaking without using the dreaded tag “she said.” b) to make readers aware of the setting and the characters’ relationship to it; c) to build emotion, especially tension, as characters act out inner thoughts and feelings; and, most important, d) to make editors happy.

They will not be happy, however, if we overuse certain expressions, spraying readers with repeated hydrant blasts of “her cheeks heated,” “he raised his eyebrows,” “she stared,” “he glared,” and “the corners of her mouth turned down.” (Do mouths have corners?)

On the other hand, writers may work too hard to avoid the mundane and instead, pelt readers with action. Upon reading a scene, including my own, I sometimes wonder if the characters would benefit from large doses of medication. They pace, sit, rise, turn, weep, babble, wheeze, sneeze and snort within the first three sentences.

Extreme efforts to produce original work may also prove self-defeating, as in “Rosalinda’s pink smile decayed into a slimy sneer.” (Eww. We need more wipes.)     

“He said” sounds positively elegant, right? It is—and so are beats, blended smoothly and sparingly into sections of dialogue. Some spoken lines may not even require identification. A carefully crafted conversation’s content will often point out who is saying/doing what without a sloppy spray of language that makes the reader want to duck.

Any say-it-don’t-spray-it advice you would care to offer? (And, by the way, has anyone ever discovered a cure for cooties?)

Sneaking Off to God

by Rachael Phillips 

How dare He?

 Everyone was looking for Jesus, including desperate people with nasty diseases and nastier demons.  

Yet He had the nerve to sneak off.

Jesus’ fans harassed His disciples, his closest friends, for information. They had no clue where He was.

Duh. How embarrassing.

They discussed the possibility of buying Jesus a cell with better coverage, but declared that idea futile. He’d turn it off, anyway.  

When they finally tracked Him down, Jesus heard a mantra far too familiar to mothers, pastors, doctors—and writers: “Where were you?”

Jesus didn’t attempt to justify His time alone with God. He didn’t worry about how his actions would affect contributions or His marketing statistics. He affirmed the direction God had given Him: “Let us go somewhere else … so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.”

How simple.

How impossible.

As Jesus’ ministry grew, even He, though perfect, found it difficult to spend intimate time with His Father.

C.S. Lewis, who wrote these lines from The Weight of Glory in 1949, echoed that complication: “Even where someone is left physically by himself, the wireless has seen to it that he will be … never less alone than when alone. We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

Why do we, married to our phones, think we should find it easy?

Today I hear the Father’s call. Not an audible one.

More than audible.

I just flushed the afternoon’s to-do list down the toilet.

Unlike Jesus, I don’t always respond to Him with immediacy.

But I feel empty and gooshy as a hollowed-out pumpkin today, a jack-o-lantern smile carved into my face.

My mom has terminal cancer.

I need new direction in my writing.

I must hear from God. I need to touch His hand.

Where can I go?

When a young mother, I sat just inside the open garage doorway where I could keep one eyeball fixed on my toddlers watching Sesame Street. Or I breathed prayers while in the bathroom during the 2.3 seconds before small fists banged on the door and indignant wails shredded my concentration.  

Surely, I can find a place of prayer now. After all, I live near a Christian college with a beautiful prayer chapel that includes small private, glassed-in rooms. I’ve also tucked myself into corners of college libraries, especially during breaks. Lakes, cemeteries, museums, bookstores and nooks in shopping malls during the day can serve as prayer “closets.” One can even pray in a church. (Beware, however, of vacuum-wielding janitors or those who lie in wait in shadowy hallways, recruiting for committees).

Today my destination is a tiny, well-kept though neglected park, with a bench where Jesus and I can sit and hold hands in the fall sunshine.

Where do you sneak off to be with God?        

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

How to Tame the Post-Deadline Bear

by Rachael Phillips

 

Two weeks ago, I emerged from my writer’s cave after finishing a book. Friends and family urged me to celebrate the accomplishment. Those who know me best, however, stayed out of my way because I resembled a grizzly bear that awakened from a long hibernation—groggy, growly, and ready to snap at anything that moves. Not only could my appearance, as well as demeanor, have terrorized the neighborhood, but my writing ability plunged to an all-time low.

Now, having recovered somewhat, I join my husband in offering a few survival tips for those near and dear, including critique partners and writing friends, in how to tame a post-deadline writing bear.

Let the bear sleep. In fact, encourage the bear to snooze extra minutes in the morning, to retire early at night, to take naps. Nothing will increase the life expectancy of those in a writing bear’s path like a few additional zzz’s. Conversely, nothing will guarantee the loss of at least one limb like the question, “Why are you so tired? You don’t work.”

Give the bear some honey. In the face of bared fangs, this presents a challenge even tougher than letting her/him sleep. But trust us, it works. When insecurity looms 3.5 seconds after the author hits send, pour on reassurance: “You’re a good writer. You worked hard on this book.” Even better: “We prayed about this book. God will use it.” Accompanied by bear hugs (also chocolate and other sweet things), this approach can’t go wrong.  

Kick the bear in the butt. Only use this tactic when the other two have been applied assiduously. If, after generous amounts of sleep and support, the bear remains unbearable and spends valuable writing time playing infinite games of free cell or watching Saved By the Bell reruns and the insurance channel, do what you’ve been aching to do for months. Give the bear a good boot in the bootie: “God has gifted you. Is this the way you propose to use His gifts?” Then again offer honey from the Rock in the form of questions like “What would you really like to write? What has God been saying to you that should come out in your next book?”

So far, these tips have helped tame this writing bear recover. Any hints on how to handle the animal at your house?  

 

 

 

 

 

Three Cheers for Anonymous

by Rachael Phillips

 

If there’s one thing I love, it’s to see my name on the cover of a book.

You, too?

Neither of us would object, either, if our names outsized the titles of the books, sure signals that our literary babies, regardless of title (The Love Song of the Garbage Man? Vampire Recipes?) have hit The New York Times Best-seller List.

Yet some of the most famous literary works in history were written by people whose names have never appeared in Publishers Weekly, ancient epic poems such as Gilgamesh and Beowulf, and stories like Arabian Nights. Think of the long-term marketing opportunities those authors missed. Not to mention, the royalties.

The Bible itself embraces numerous works written by “Anonymous,” including some of my favorite Psalms and the book of Hebrews. Not surprising, I suppose, as the Bible teems with unnamed God-followers who thumbed their noses at earthly “immortality” and instead, imprinted His name on history.

All of us, for love of Jesus, have written or edited anonymously at one time or another. We've banished lousy spelling and offending apostrophes from congregational song lyrics, bulletins, and signs; rewritten church holiday programs and VBS skits that feature Dick and Jane; and slogged through eager friends' and relatives’ manuscripts that make us want to disappear into the Writer Protection Program.

Though no spotlights shine on us for such service, and our names may be forgotten on earth, they will show up one day, shiny and indelible, in the book that really counts.

The Book of Life. 

 

 

 

          

My Word Count and Stephen King

by Rachael Phillips

 

Today my word count will multiply like dandelions.

Like the amorous rabbits who devour my newly sprouted green beans.
Like the number of unanswered e-mails in my exponential account.
Well, all right, I’ll answer the important ones.
Ninety minutes later, I’ve subtracted twenty-five from eleven thousand and two.
And I’ve liked all the people who already finished their books.

Today’s word count stands at zero.

Well, actually at negative two.
I deleted an adjective from yesterday’s writing.
I wrote “The” to start today’s chapter,
Then decided that if the previous seventeen began with “The,”
I should start the eighteenth some other way.
Not that I’ve completed three-fourths of my book—
I’ve rewritten chapter one seventeen times.

Today my word count will multiply like the screamers

Who inhabit the neighboring school playground
Like the phone calls from telemarketers who can’t speak English
Like the lawnmowers in my neighborhood with arrhythmia
Parked outside my window.
Along with four dozen cars suffering from spastic car alarms and
Three off-key ice cream trucks.

I usually don't read Stephen King because his stories

Make me want to hide under the sofa.
However, he once said something to the effect that
Writers are like oysters. Oysters do not create pearls
By going to pearl-making conferences,
They make pearls by turning life’s irritations into something beautiful.

True, and quite poetic. At the rate

Irritations are multiplying today,
My word count should grow enough to
String necklaces for the entire population of Indiana,
Plus one,
Which I will send to Stephen King.

However, the pearl-making miracle hasn’t happened today,

At least, not to me.
How about you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             

      

 

A Good Romance is Like Strawberry Cheesecake

by Rachael Phillips  

Have you ever read a romance that left you with that [*sigh*]-if-only-that-book-lasted-forever feeling? Better yet, have you written one? Then you know exactly what I mean when I say a good romance is like strawberry cheesecake.

Do I have a food fetish? I’m afraid so. One friend, having read my romances, even complimented? me, saying I always blow my quota of adjectives describing food.

True. Probably more than I spend on the hero.  

Still, I stand by my hypothesis. 

 First, romance, like all writing and all yummy food, is best when authors begin with fresh ingredients: exceptional characters, riveting dialogue, unique settings and ingenious plot twists.

Romance, as well as cheesecake, also consists of a delicious balance of the sweet and the sour swirled together to create a flavor blend better than the original ingredients.    

A contrast of textures, including crunchy graham cracker crust, creamy filling, and fruity topping, reinforce this in cheesecake. Likewise, nitty-gritty research (often historical, geographical or occupational); rich, luscious language; and wholesome, flavorful everydayness together enhance a romance’s appeal.

Like strawberry cheesecake, excellent romances usually take time to solidify before the writer layers on the final elements that make it taste out of this world.

John Steinbeck, in his book Travels with Charley, deplored chain restaurants that boasted their generic offerings were “untouched by human hands.” He wanted a dinner imprinted with the cook’s own fingers. Likewise, an excellent romance should bear an author’s special touches based on her background and personality, distinctive as an unrecipe-d sprinkle of cinnamon or even an opulent layer of chocolate.     

Yes [*eye roll*], dieticians don’t consider strawberry cheesecake a critical element of the food pyramid. Likewise, theologians and pastors don’t regard Christian romance an essential nutrient. Some even see both cheesecake and romance as harmful.

 Yet how many of us avoid those who religiously stick to their uncompromising diets—and expect everyone else to, as well?    

The Bible does not stuff truth down our throats without regard to taste. In fact, the frankly sensual chapters of the Old Testament book Song of Songs celebrate married love. The romantic theme of Christ’s love for His Church resonates throughout the entire Bible, including a rescue of the damsel in distress—on a white charger, no less, as Robin Jones Gunn says—the Great Elopement (a.k.a., “Rapture,” no ladder necessary), and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (notice the food reference, here?), which celebrates His becoming one with his Church forever.

Strawberry cheesecake, right? With a gazillion chocolate dribbles on the plate.

Certainly, something is wrong if our diets consist of nothing but yummy dessert-type fiction. Even the most avid romance readers and writers should fill their lives with a variety of nourishing genres.

 Yet somehow, a bowl of oatmeal doesn’t celebrate life and truth the way strawberry cheesecake does.

I say, “Mmmmmmmmm. Bring it on!”

Uh, yeah . . . the well-written romance, too.

What do you say? 

Gift of Gab or Dialogic Flab?

by Rachael Phillips

 Like all good little fiction writers, we attend conferences, classes, and webinars that forbid us to pad the narrative in our novels. Books and articles, too, shake a finger in our faces and demand that we keep our descriptions lean, clean, and healthy, with only a small dollop of adjectives to sweeten our offerings.

 With all the caloric concern about narrative, I’ve heard little about indulging in too much dialogue.

 Except from my critique partner. She pinpointed several scenes in my current novel—consisting mostly of dialogue—that she believed served no purpose.

I had to admit I encouraged my characters to talk because I like to talk. We find each other fascinating conversationalists. My partner, less than mesmerized, insisted our dialogue should further the plot.

But that wasn’t all. She said my last novel’s epilogue needed to shed some pounds. Half its weight, actually.

She was kidding, right? I agreed that I’d set the action in three different scenes—too many for an epilogue. But I’d crafted those last encounters between my characters to summarize the camaraderie they’d experienced in my novel. I’d put rich words into their mouths that readers would roll on their tongues for days afterward.      

My partner complimented me on my wordsmithing. But she still suggested I trim down the exchanges: “Seems like you’re taking awhile to wind it up, like you don’t want to let go of the characters.”

Tell me, what right does a critique partner have to be right?

After spending survival camp with my characters for months, huddling at 4:30 a.m., interviewing them, arguing with them, clobbering them, and rescuing them, I wanted to coffee klatch with my buds one last time. So the dialogue ran on . . . and on . . . and on . . . .

Meanwhile, the future reader would no doubt give up on the book, give in to weighty subliminal suggestions, and head for the refrigerator.

How about you? Have you ever had to put your dialogue on a diet?

Are You a Piler or a Filer?

by Rachael Phillips

Over the years, I have discovered that God designs writers with His usual love for diversity. However, when it comes to the organizational aspects of our profession, we fall into two basic groups. With a scratch-my-head bow to our Father (I never will understand why He created people the way He did), and an apology to Jeff Foxworthy, I suggest the following:

You might be a piler if:

·         You have an office but never write there because you can’t find your computer.

·         Does your office have carpet? You’ve forgotten. Also, whether it has a window.

·         You just moved into the house next door because the books you bought have taken over the first one.

·         You still haven’t unpacked from the 2006 ACFW conference.  

·         The number of your undeleted e-mail messages exceeds that of the national debt.

·         Your smartphone, having given up on organizing you, has run away from home.

·         You still have every story you’ve written since kindergarten. And every story your children have written. And every story your grandchildren have written. Plus all the rough drafts.

Contrariwise, you might be a filer if:

·         You can see the top of your desk. No respectable piler would permit such a thing.

·         You have programmed morning, noon and night tweets through the year 2021.

·         You color-code your rejection letters.

·         You actually know where your writing goal list is.

·         Every friend of yours on Facebook has been categorized according to relationship, location, hairdo, and Popsicle flavor preference.

·         Your idea of a good time is to alphabetize your recycling.

Yes, God knows where your membership belongs. So does your spouse. And your friends.

How about you? Fill in the blank: you might be a filer/piler if you                         .

  

So How Did You Start Your Writing Journey?

by Rachael Phillips

Are you one of those people who knew, the moment you picked up a pencil in first grade and wrote your first ABC’s, that you would become a writer?

I’m not.

I wanted to be a singer. And a missionary. And a ballerina wearing a poofy tutu.

In second grade, I did like writing poems and constructed little books of my poetry out of construction paper. For a few years, I produced a flurry of poems, plays and stories.

But I never envisioned being a writer. Perhaps because, in my mind, real books were written by exalted human beings only a notch or two below godhood. And because writing was too much fun. At the ripe age of nine, I already had applied flawless evangelical logic to the possibility, namely: if you really liked doing something, God didn’t want you to do it.

So writing and wearing a poofy tutu went out the window. Singing could be rated as far more spiritual, so I figured God was okay with that—even if it was fun.

Fast forward several decades. At that time, I was serving as a worship coordinator at a church with typical pastoral staff and administrative board—and a secretary who comprised the real power behind the outfit. She lined up all of us and decreed we each would produce an article for the new church newsletter by the tenth of each month.

Or else.

No one wanted to spend his eternity locked in the deep, dark furnace room with Satan’s creepy-crawlies, so they complied. Me? I loved writing. The people in my congregation seemed to know I loved it. They passed my articles on to family and friends, patted me on the back, and told me I should write a book.

Right.

A writing workshop flyer from a local college, a hometown editor in desperate need of articles so he wouldn’t have to write them, and encouraging friends all played a part in jump-starting my writing career, as well as the church secretary with a .45 in her desk drawer.

As I devoted increasing time and effort to writing, a few friends regarded it as a sort of mysterious disease I’d contracted. Before long, I’d feel better, get over it, and carry on life as usual.

Fortunately, my husband didn’t see it that way. “God has given you a gift,” he said. “He’s made you a writer.”

He called me a writer.

I couldn’t—even after I’d published four biographies. Somehow the word caught in my throat like a double negative.

Maybe because writing was too much fun, and if I actually called myself that, God might notice.

He did. And He clapped for me.

He’s also offered plenty of constructive criticism. And plenty of life experience—much of it not so pleasant—that translated into writing fodder.

But He has walked beside me every step of this writing journey.

How about you? How did your writing journey begin?      

  

 

 

 

We Interrupt to Bring You This Important Message

by Rachael Phillips

You’ve never been interrupted in the middle of a writing session, have you?

You’ve never experienced a spouse’s announcement of the dire lack of his favorite toothpaste. The outbreak of head lice or equally pestilent math homework in your daughter’s class. The phone call from a distant relative—only, not distant enough—who imprisons you for an hour with pleadings for a) money b) sympathy c) more money d) more sympathy and e) all of the above.

Right.

If you haven’t been interrupted, may I move in with you? I’m dying to see what it’s like.

I bet I will—die, not move in with you—before I experience a writing session or project without some sort of disruption. 

Still, why should this surprise me? After all, people interrupted Jesus’ work, whining at His elbow, yanking on His robe, tearing off roofs (at least, my grandchildren haven’t tried that yet). 

I certainly do not rate above the Master Author, who has written His love on the lives of so many and has imprinted His love on our hearts.

Yes, we can and should eliminate as many secondary distractions as we can in order to follow the calling God has given us. We may have to sacrifice membership in the Lacrosse Preservation League or the Church Carpet Committee. We may even have to say “no” to excellent causes and defy our personal Guiltzilla, who stalks us every time we don’t sign our names on someone else’s dotted line. Occasionally, changes in our phone numbers, Facebook screenings or front door locks are absolutely necessary. Our mates may even have to [*gasp*] buy their favorite toothpaste without our assistance.

Sometimes, though, opportunities appear, disguised as interruptions. 

A child who is struggling in school—and the fact his mother lives a thousand miles away.

An aged parent who slogs our brains and patience with endlessly repeated stories well past their expiration date. 

Fun friends who contract awful diseases.

Opportunities.

Opportunities offered by God to stretch, to share and help absorb the pain—and to feed it in a redeemed form into our writing.

So we can interrupt others’ lives with the enriched messages He has given us. 

What about you? What “interruption” has God sent you lately?

A Peachy Parable

by Rachael Phillips

Once upon a time there was a peach tree.

I know, I know. I should never begin a story with a cliché, a passive verb, and a protagonist with a wooden personality. But grant me a little literary license here, and the peach tree and I might make it worth your while (think peach-pecan praline shortcake).

Now that we understand each other [clear throat], I repeat—

Once upon a time there was a peach tree.

It aspired to be the best peach tree in the whole world. It opened its leafy arms to the sunshine. It devoured plenty of nutrients from the rich cocoa-brown soil and drank deeply of the freshest silver rainwater. It even went to ACFW conferences to improve its production. …

I know, author intrusion. Sorry. To resume—

 The tree’s creative juices flowed, its ideas flowered, and it just knew this was the year it would happen. Success! Shortcake! Bubbling hot, crusty peach pie, fresh from the oven!  

Brrrrrr. Instead, the tree was given the cold shoulder. The deep freeze, even.

Timing was everything, and everything went wrong.    

Nothing grew on the tree’s branches, not even itty-bitty nubbins of opportunity [sniff].   

Disappointed crows perched, squawking, “I thought you were doing something, here. Where are the peaches?”    

The peach tree wished it had a BB gun. Still, it preserved—er, persevered. Even the year after a particularly disappointing season, it conducted its usual drill. It opened its arms to the sunshine. It devoured plenty of nutrients from the rich cocoa-brown soil, drank deeply of the freshest silver rainwater, and, yes, attended even more conferences, though it knew the same old thing would happen.

But the same old thing didn’t happen.

No cold shoulder. No deep freeze.

Instead, warmth and showers of affirmation and, ta-da! A contract.  

Well, yes, it’s true I’ve never met a peach tree that signed a contract, but, hey, this is fiction. Camels can go through the eyes of needles, right?

Yes, I know I just mixed metaphors. Jesus did, too, sometimes. Deal with it.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The peach tree signed a contract, and then another, and suddenly its branches were loaded with dozens of big, delicious marketing opportunities. Dozens.

Whoa.

The proud, happy tree tried to support them all. Sometimes, though, she drooped and pooped out and even thought she might crack, especially when bunches of big, yummy prospects dropped from the tree’s branches before they even ripened. Plunk! Plunk! Plunk!

Ack! I can’t let those get away! God, why the feast or famine?

The Creator said, “Do you really want Me to halt the feast?”

The peach tree paused. Um, no.

She could re-learn to like what she loved. Not so hard, especially when she could share her flavorful bounty with dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people.

The droopy tree stood straight (more or less). “Thank You for the feast, Lord. I know You’ll be with me whether life’s a peach or the pits.”

“Don’t forget the pie in the sky isn’t fiction.” He smiled. “All this may have happened once upon a time. But you will live a for-real happy ever after.”