In Praise of Art Museums as Sources of Inspiration

I’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art would affect my fiction writing.

I wasn’t a stranger to art, but I can’t say it was a major preoccupation, either. I had two semesters of art history in college; I took two, because the same textbook was used for both, and it was more expensive than the tuition. I’m also not an artist.

I know when my connection of art to writing fiction started. It was some 50 years ago. We were young twenty-somethings living in Houston, and we saw two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts. One was the works of Paul Cezanne, and it was stunning. But the one that captured me was “Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad.” Houston was one of five cities hosting it. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Painting: Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, by Anselm Kiefer, from collection of the artist on display at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The genre that came in from the cold: Why we love spy fiction – Andy Owen at The Critic Magazine.

 

Fierce, wild, intractability: Emily Bronte’s untameable spirit – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

Surf’s Up in Slop City – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

The Value of Writing Short Stories

In the seven months since my last novel Brookhaven was published, I’ve been focused on talking about it, writing about it, publicizing it, sending out copies, and all the usual things you do to promote your book. I haven’t done much writing of anything else or anything new. An idea for a new novel has been percolating in my mind, but nothing has seen the light of day. 

Yet the desire to write is there; it seems like it’s always there. I’ve had to stifle it a bit to keep focused on marketing Brookhaven. 

 

I was able to scratch the writing itch by what resulted from a coincidence.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Are These Mothers Starting a Revolt in England? – Dominic Green at The Free Press. 

 

At the London Library – Spitalfields Life.

 

Murders for August – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Simple Truth About the War in Gaza – Coleman Hughes at The Fre Press.

 

Why Would Media Report on Public Broadcasting Funding and Ignore their Financial Records? – Matt Taibbi at The Free Press.

 

Why Poetry Can Make You a Better Writer

Like most of my generation, I read poetry in English classes in high school. It wasn’t until I was a high school senior that I read poetry that stuck in my head. And it was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Four Quartets.” I read poetry in college as well, but my English literature professor gave brutal tests that put me off poetry for years. 

My professional career eventually led me to corporate speechwriting. I enjoyed the work, the executives I wrote for liked what I did, and I had that sense of “this is what I was meant to do.” It was a good friend, one who wasn’t a speechwriter, who suggested that if I were really serious about it, then I needed to read poetry. He sent me three books – the collected poems of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. He told me to read them and others on a regular basis.

 

And I thought, seriously? No speechwriter I knew read poetry regularly. Most then and now would read books about current events, developments in science, politics, and a lot of speeches written by others. But poetry? Really?

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph by Nick Fewings via Unsplash. Used with permission.

When Research for Your Historical Novel Changes Your Understanding

For more than a year, I’ve been researching / writing/ researching / writing a historical novel set during the American Civil War. It’s loosely based on the experiences of my great-grandfather, but the more I write and research, the looser it becomes. 

I thought I knew the basic story of the war. What I soon learned is that, for a very long time, historians focused on the war in the East, which specifically meant Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. But in the last two of three decades, the war in the West – in particular, Tennessee and Mississippi – has come to be recognized as almost as significant as that in the East.

 

It was certainly significant for both sides of my family. My father’s family experienced the Battle of Shiloh and Grierson’s Raid (the basis for the 1959 movie The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne). My mother’s family experienced the Union occupation of New Orleans (starting in 1862), both the Creole French and German immigrant sides of the family. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph: John Clem, who "enlisted" in the Union army at age 9 in 1861 and became a soldier at age 12.

 

When You Face Too Many Ways to Open a Novel

How many openings can a novel have? Let me count the ways. 

I’d never experienced the problem of too many ways to open a novel. Five novels, and five fairly straightforward beginnings, meant that I never struggled over how to open a story. Somehow, I always knew, and it wasn’t an issue.

 

Until now.

 

I began to write the draft like I always had. I had an idea, and image, in my mind, and that’s how I’d start the story. I wrote it. I read it over several times. It seemed to work. I started writing beyond the opening, and I bogged down. 

 

Something seemed slightly off, and I knew it was the opening. So, I reworked it. And reworked it. I revised it to the point where it was almost unrecognizable from the first version. It still didn’t work. I discarded it and started over. I tried something entirely different. At one point, I thought I had it, finally, only to realize I didn’t. I went back to the first and tried it again.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at ACFW. 

 

Photograph by Ankhesenamun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

How Research Fills the Gaps in a Family Story

The idea has been in my head for years – a story about my great-grandfather. But I knew only a few facts about him, passed down by my father. Research has filled it in – a little bit. 

Too young to enlist as a regular soldier, he’d been a messenger boy in the Civil War. He’d lost two brothers and a brother-in-law in the war, leaving him the youngest and surviving son. When the war ended in 1865, he had been “someplace east,” likely North Carolina rather than Appomattox. He had to walk home to southern Mississippi. When he arrived, he discovered his family was gone, having fled to Texas.

 

That was as much as I knew. When I finally decided to consider a story about him, I turned first to the family Bible, with its records of births, deaths, and marriages.  The records, written over a period of 50 years, were in the same hand – my great-grandfather’s. They proved more revealing that I’d realized.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog. 

 

Photograph hy by Anne Nygard via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Family History as a Source for Stories

A single comment by my father nearly six decades ago led to a story idea.  

“Your great-grandfather was too young to enlist in the Civil War,” he said. “So, he signed up as a messenger boy when he looked old enough to get away with it. And then he had to walk home when the war was over.” My father must have heard that from his father; he was four when his grandfather died, with no memories of him at all.

 

A year ago, when I decided I wanted to know more, any family member who might have known something was long buried. 

 

The records in the family Bible provided few clues. One of millions published by the American Bible Society in the 1870s, it included family records inserted between the Old and New Testaments. The earliest recorded date was 1803, the year of the Louisiana Purchase; it noted the birth of my great-great-grandfather. But almost all the entries, stretching from 1803 to the 1890s, were in the same hand, if different inks – my great-grandfather’s handwriting (my great-grandmother had died in the 1880s).

To continue reading, please see my post toward at American Christian Fiction Writers.

Photograph: First Presbyterian Church, Kirkwood, Mo., March 2021.

When You Hit the Writing Wall

I’ve learned there is more than one kind of writing block. 

I’ve been blessed with never to have experienced writer’s block, that immobilization that often afflicts writers and stops them cold from writing another word. I’ve sympathized with people who’ve had it, and I know it’s real. They stare at a blank page or screen, and – nothing.

 

The sources of writer’s block are legion – stress, tension, deadlines, family tragedy, accidents, illness, writing one’s way into a dead end with no resolution, finances, success of a novel (creating high expectations for the next one), the end or beginning of a relationship, and more. F. Scott Fitzgerald had it. So did Herman Melville. So did composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Writer’s block is so well known and so well-documented that there are scores of books on the subject, classes you can take, and writing coaches who can help guide you through it. 

 

Most writers experience it to one degree or another.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at American Christian Fiction Writers.

 

Photograph by Ryan Snaadt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

In Praise of the Writing Pack Rat

I admit it. When it comes to writing, I’m a pack rat.  

I keep everything: blog posts that never saw the light of day, book reviews I write 13 years ago, ideas that I excitedly wrote down and then rejected later, emails I’ve sent to readers explaining something that might have been confusing, whole manuscripts, partial manuscripts, and fragments of stories that might (one day) become something more. I’ve kept scenes I’ve cut from my novels to shorten them or because they really added nothing to the story. I bookmark online articles that I want to read and refer to again. 

 

I don’t do these things in hopes of leaving my literary estate to a university. I do them because I’m a writer. Ideas and inspiration come from everywhere and all the time. I save, I file, and I hope I remember.

 

Recently, I went through a file that I hadn’t looked at in more than three years. It concerns a manuscript that I worked on rather erratically from about 2007 to 2018, and then set aside.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

 

Photograph by Wesley Tingey via Unsplash. Used with permission.

When Your Manuscript is Problematic

I knew the manuscript would be tricky. The story is about what flows from a hoax. The hoax itself occupies a tiny part of the story; the ramifications are the story. But I knew this would not be an easy road, especially in today’s cultural climate. I anticipated I would be paddling a canoe against a raging torrent. 

I was not wrong.

 

I researched my agents. I found one whom I thought would be fair and not reject the manuscript out of hand. The research paid off; the agent gave it a fair reading.

 

The response: I love the characters. The story is well-paced and compelling. It keeps you engaged all the way to the end. It’s an important story. But none of the publishers we work with would even consider publishing it.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at American Christian Fiction Writers.

 

Photograph by Karla Hernandez via Unsplash. Used with permission.

How Long Do You Write Before Writing It Down?

I spent almost four years writing my first novel before I put a single word on screen or paper. 

Writing a novel wasn’t intentional. A song had captured my imagination, a single image formed in my mind, and gradually a story unfolded to accompany that song and image – all in my imagination. I mentally nursed the story for years, changing the characters, adding scenes, and altering the story line.

 

How you imagine a story, or create it in your imagination, is very different than what happens when it’s time to actually write the story. In my case, what I was imagining was a cinematic story, moving from scene to scene while developing a story line. Writing that down had two benefits: it forced the story out of my head and on to the screen, and it made me realize how big the gaps in the story were. 

 

I could imagine a character participating in a bike race, for example, and gloss over the details in my mind. But to read it on the screen showed the gaps and shortcomings. It was missing color and depth. The imagined account has left out the emotion, because I could imagine the emotion in my mind. It took six years of rewriting to get the draft to a point where it not only made sense but also told a complete story. 

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog. 

 

Photograph by Mitchell Hartley via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Uses of a Novella

On July 1, with the publication of my fifth novel, I brought a five-book series to a conclusion. Each of the five was about 93,000 words in length, except for the last one. The last one has an additional 20,000 words, included as an epilogue but actually a freestanding novella.

It’s related on a minor way to the main novel; it’s mentioned as a manuscript one of the characters is writing. The idea for it predates the novel it’s part of; its genesis was years earlier from an article in Discover Britain magazine on the Celtic and Viking history that saturates the Orkney Islands.

I wrote it as part of a break from writing the novel. My novels are contemporary fiction; this novella is historical fiction, set a thousand years before the contemporary story. I wrote it without actually knowing what to do with it. What was likely in the back of my mind was an understanding of all the various ways authors use novellas.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog. 

Do Your Characters Talk to You?

The news report made quite a splash. Researchers at Durham University in the U.K. teamed up with The Guardiannewspaper and the Edinburgh Book Festival to do a study of authors. And the study reported that two-thirds of authors hear their characters speak while they’re writing. 

My first thought was, this is news?

The study was more of a survey. Some 181 authors who participated in the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2014 and 2018 were asked an array of questions. The biggest surprise, at least to the researchers, was that 63 percent of the authors hear their characters speak, and 61 percent say their characters can act independently. 

I’ve been listening to my characters speak since I’ve been writing. I’ve experienced characters getting a mind of their own and doing both the expected and the unexpected. Other writers I’ve talked with say they’ve experienced the same thing. Of course, characters speak. Of course, authors hear them speak. Of course, characters get themselves totally out of character and screw things up, at least temporarily. This is part of what makes them real to the author and the reader.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Five Things You Can Do After the Writing Storm

The manuscript sits with the publisher. A fifth novel, it’s the last of a series. The story arc that began with listening to an airplane music program in 2002 is coming to an end some 18 years later.

You’ve lived with the characters for almost two decades. Sometimes it feels like you know the characters better than your family and friends. You know their history, their quirks, and their strengths and weaknesses. You know their pasts. You know their stories because you’ve written their stories, and you’ve written the ongoing story they’re part of. You know how an agnostic, what today might be called a “none,” became a believer. You know when the hero was ridiculed and disparaged. You know when characters had nothing but faith and courage to go on. 

Now the story is ending. The story you had to tell, that dominated your waking hours and many of your sleeping hours, that story that often drove you crazy, is now finished. The characters who seemed so real to you and your readers are now turning out their lights.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Radu Florin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Editing as Writing, and Writing as Editing

A friend and fellow writer asked me if I edited my writing as I wrote or after I finished a draft. My answer was yes. I do both. I edit as I write, over and over again, and I edit once the draft is “finished,” if that’s possible. 

The question provoked a deeper thought. Is it possible for me to separate editing and writing?

The answer is no, and I suspect computers have something to do with it.

I was trained in journalism. At the time, classroom technology consisted of Royal manual typewriters. Electric machines were available, but my journalism school couldn’t afford them. I taught myself typing on a portable electric typewriter, but in-class assignments and tests were done on the manual Royals. I can still remember the sound of 20 journalism students pounding on typewriter keys. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Stanley Dai via Unsplash. Used with permission.

In Praise of Reading

I was an early reader. I don’t recall how early, but I do remember riding my red bicycle to the dime store when I was six, to spend 59 cents to buy Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion. It was the first of many such trips, for more Trixie Belden mysteries, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, and Tom Sawyer, among others, published by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. 

When fourth grade arrived, I could participate in the monthly Scholastic Book Club. Few things in school were as exciting as the teacher handing out the four-page order form for the new books available. Most were priced at 25 or 35 cents. One or two would be 50 cents. My mother allowed me a monthly budget of $1.50.

Scholastic Book Club ended with sixth grade, so I was more on my own. I found my way to and around the book sections of department store and local bookstores, including the ones opening at the new shopping malls sprouting all over my suburb of New Orleans. I still have great memories of one called the Dolphin Book Shop at Lakeside Shopping Center. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

Photograph by Annie Spratt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

In Praise of Reading Poetry

Like most of us, I read poetry – a lot of poetry – in high school and college English classes primarily because it was assigned. I was much more interested in fiction (Dickens!) and noir mysteries (Dashiell Hammett!) than I was in Tennyson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Elizabethans.

My attitude changed with T.S. Eliot and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It was first published in 1915, and Poetry Magazine published it only as a favor to Ezra Pound. The editors were so uncomfortable with it that they placed it at the back of the issue. But it was our first great modernist poem, and it changed poetry forever. A high school senior, I read that poem, and I was mesmerized. I went to the local bookstore and bought a small paperback edition of Four Quartets (I still have it; it’s now more than 50 years old).

It was at work as a corporate speechwriter that I discovered the practical advantages of poetry.

To continue reading, please see my post todayat the ACFW Blog.

Photograph by Thought Catalog via Unsplash. Used with permission.

From Breathing Britain to Immersion in the Civil War

Researching a historical novel is more than a challenge; it feels like a career.

 I’ve written four novels in a series, with the main characters staying intact throughout. Buzzing around my head is the fifth, but I’m departing from the series to do something completely different.

The new project is still a novel, but it’s not even remotely like what I’ve been doing for the past seven years. Since 2011, I’ve been writing, breathing, talking, reading, researching, marketing, and visiting (five times) all things Britain. Now I find myself in small-town Mississippi.

The idea is based on a piece of my family’s history, and it’s been sitting there, simmering for a very long time. It concerns the American Civil War, and specifically the months immediately after the end of the war. It’s based on an off-hand comment my father made more than 40 years ago: “Your great-grandfather was too young to enlist as a soldier in the army, so he did something else.” It’s the something else that intrigued me, and it was also what he found when he returned home in late 1865 – his family was gone.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Illustration: Images of the burning of Atlanta, November, 1864, via Library of Congress.