Beyond the Bridge

It’s been two weeks since I posted here, and what a two weeks it has been. I’ve been to Alaska and back, I’ve spent an hour parked at the end of a glacier, I’ve been on a drive all the way around Mt. Rainier, and I’ve even made airport stops in Las Vegas and Phoenix. I ate four-course dinners seven nights in a row and had my bed made every morning by someone else. I’ve enjoyed two visits with long-time friends, including some we hadn’t seen in thirty years. I’ve transfers more than a hundred pictures from my camera disk to my hard drive, and I’ve deleted a couple hundred e-mails.

I succeeded in canceling the book club before I went away, I discovered how to make the insert key overwrite and how to change the default font. With the help of the IT people at headquarters, I have my work e-mail operating on the new computer, and just today a son-in-law (bless him!) spent over an hour getting my Thunderbird mail set up with my three e-mails that come through it.

I did not get anything accomplished on Tangled Strands, as I had hoped, but on the flights home I did spend solid time studying my craft. I learned about action objectives, subtexting, and the four Ds that make up a good plot. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed with what I was learning, but other times I realized that, oh! I’ve already been doing what it says; I just didn’t know it had a name. At the same time, I made note of places where I need to do some of those things more.

Am I happy to be home? You bet! The suitcases are unpacked and back in the attic. I’m cooking simple meals and making the bed myself. I have to get out and walk by six a.m. because of the heat. Life has returned to routine, and that is fine. Though I whole-heartedly reveled in the pleasures of the last two weeks, I like my life and my routine. I’ve grateful to God for His blessings and His goodness. It’s been a busy summer, but it isn’t over yet. We have another celebration on our behalf coming up, and I may have a workshop to conduct, plus I have two manuals on which to do my annual proofreading. So I won’t be twiddling any thumbs, you may be sure.

Life is decidedly rewarding or blessed.

Getting Past the Bridge to Pleasures Beyond

You’ve heard about valleys of life that follow mountaintop experiences? Well, I have not been in a valley following the mountaintop last week, but I have been in a strange kind of suspension between frustration and anticipation. I feel like I’m on a swinging bridge high above a chasm. A most delightful experience awaits me in less than 72 hours, but first I have to survive the bridge.

This bridge is full of things that produce nostalgia for typewriters and a simpler life. Specifically, getting up and running on a new computer can be as frustrating as it is rewarding.

 Because things are not working as they should be, I’m still checking three of my e-mails on the web and my work e-mail on my laptop. I don’t have my primary IM program up and running.

 Because I couldn't access it effectively, I needed to stop the mail from my writers’ groups, including a course I very much need to take--but I went through all kinds of hassles before succeeding. Thankfully, when I can carve out the time, I’ll be able to access the course from the archives.

 I can’t find the way to decline this month’s selections from the book club, though I have done it many times before. That website keeps showing up with nothing on it.

 The insert key won’t work in my new Word 2007, but I don’t have time to ask those who I know will be able to help me.

 And I can't even count how many places are refusing my username and password. Could that too have something to do with the new computer?

While all this is happening, in our third bedroom open suitcases and piles of folded clothes are helping me keep my eyes on the pleasures that await me on the other side of the bridge. Awaits us—my Fred and me. In celebration of our 50th anniversary early next month, we’ve been gifted with a cruise to Alaska! I'm still not quite believing it. It's a Christian cruise, too, with times of Bible study and lots of music. I can assure you, I am looking forward to it, especially with the 100-degree temperatures we've had outside our doors here today.

I’m also looking forward to being able to think about my Tangled Strands story in settings of peace and beauty. Having never done this before, I’m not sure how it will work in practical terms, but the laptop is going with me. No, not for e-mail, but simply for me to work on my story. I’ve learned so many things in the last year that I’m eager to apply, things like "deep POV" and strengthening a story with layers. But not surprisingly, around here life keeps getting in the way. Writing efforts such as this can be done in snatches, but it is much more effective and enjoyable if one can focus and keep a smooth train of thought.

So I’ll live with this bridge for another 48 hours, but then I’ll walk away from it for a spell. If the frustrations above aren’t resolved, I’m all but sure they will wait for me until I return. Hopefully, the lovely memories and needed refreshment from beyond that bridge will provide inspiration and help uncover solutions.

Of Roots and Names

I’ve just come from two most unusual and memorable days. On Monday, along with my sister and her husband, my nephew and his three children, we visited the graves of sixteen ancestors and were graciously invited into two ancestral homes. Eight of the sixteen are third great-grandparents to my sister and me, which makes them fifth great-grands to my nephew’s children. One of the homes was built in 1860, and the stones in the basement walls were most surely laid by an ancestor, a stone mason, who was born during George Washington’s first term as President.

If Monday was a special day, Tuesday followed in its footsteps. On that day, we discovered the graves of a new set of great-great-grandparents that we hadn’t known were in the area. In fact, until a few weeks ago, we hadn’t even known their names. For genealogists, such a finding is a thrill, and this one was made even more special by the fact that Grandmother Maryette’s exquisite headstone carried the names of her parents, another generation that we didn’t have anything on.

With my interest in genealogy, I’ve ended up using a number of names from my family history for the characters in my Tangled Strands story. Agnes was my aunt’s name, and Porter is a major branch of our family. My maternal grandmother’s name works well in Fern Lake, Fernville, and Fern Haven. Betsey, mother of the stone mason mentioned above, is a fourth great-grandmother who died following the birth of her second child. And when I decided I needed to change “Sallie” because it was too close to another name in the story, I found a perfect exchange in “Mollie,” another great-great. Roxy, yet another, has a minor role in Tangled Strands but will have a major role in a later story called Silken Threads.

Given that every novel needs some unique touch that keeps it from looking like every other novel, I’ve thought a lot about whether genealogy could provide such a touch to Tangled Strands. However, since I didn’t include it from the beginning, I’m afraid it might feel tacked on (which it would be). If I ever sell TS and get to write the other books I envision in the series, I might be able to weave it effectively into that.

Speaking of names, we recently learned of some unusual names in our family tree. Ever hear of anyone named Consider Tiffany? Seriously—his first name was Consider and last name Tiffany. And we have two of them—a father and his son. We’ve done some speculating about what the ancestors might have had in mind in using “Consider” as a given name. If it had some other shade of meaning in those days, so far we haven’t a clue what it might be. I still have trouble picturing a person when my eyes rest on those words.

One thing for sure, I won’t be borrowing that name for a character in any of my stories. But I already have a good idea for how I can use Maryette .

Launch Parties

The topic of the week on my writers' loop this week was launch parties. Who would you invite and what would you do? I hadn't thought about it before, but once I did, I surely had fun. Tangled Strands will make wonderful launch parties! Below is what I wrote up for the Loop.

My story, Tangled Strands, is set in the late '50s, so it will be huge fun to plan a launch party. I'll be able to dig out my beautiful black-and-red-hibiscus circle skirt (yes, I still have it!), though my granddaughter will have to wear it, not me. If I can't find anyone else with circle skirts, I could make a couple. Anybody have one of those with a poodle? Of course we'll have to have some in those amazing crinolines we used to wear--and saddle shoes.

We'll have wonderful music like "Love Me Tender," "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," and "Moments to Remember," and of course we'll have to have hula hoops (again I'll defer to the grandchildren). Depending on the crowd, maybe we'll have some sing-along time with the music. I know the seniors at our church here could pull it off with class.

A theme of my story is watching God straighten things out after we've messed up, or tangled, the strands of our lives. Crocheting as an analogy is threaded through it (unintended pun, but it works for me). So at the launch party I'll have drawings for bud-vase doilies I've crocheted (I haven't decided on a pattern yet) and a grand prize of a larger one.

Who will I invite? Now that is a challenge because, as a missionary for many years, I have good friends scattered from Florida to Washington state, from the panhandle of Texas to the Hudson Valley. Even our children are in three states many hours apart. So I may need to do this launch party on a small scale in a number of places. I'll have to have lots of postcards for invitations, and I imagine a doily will be a motif on them.

I'm excited about the possibilities. Anyone ready to sign up for one?

Editors, Agents, and Conference

Registration opened last week for the ACFW writers’ conference in Minneapolis in September. It took a little scrambling for me to make final decisions on which editors and agents to request to see, but I took my courage in hand and got registered before the first day was over.

Even before registration opened, the conference buzz had begun on the forums. Pre-conference weight-loss challenge? Hone your tag line? (A tag line is a 20-words-or-less teaser for what your book is about.) Discussions of conference clothes? Searches for roommates, discussions of airline tickets—-everyone is getting into the mix.

With the registration fee, one gets a fifteen-minute appointment with one editor (from a major publishing house) and one agent (remember that agents are almost essential these days since publishers no longer accept unsolicited materials). On the registration form, you get to list four of each, putting your four in order of your choices (first, second, etc.). Between now and September, a scheduler works it all out.

I did my homework by reading the online descriptions given with each editor and agent. Those descriptions gave an idea of what a publishing house is looking for or what genre of fiction an agent represents. I say I did my homework, but that didn’t guarantee anything. Only God knows whom I should talk to, so when it came right down to it, I had to use my best judgment for my choices and then leave it in His capable hands.

The good news is that those fifteen-minute conferences aren’t the only times one can speak to a faculty member. Each dining table carries the name of an editor or agent, so we get to mix with them at meals, asking questions and learning from answers given to others. I’m told the faculty often go around the table asking each writer for a nutshell about his or her book. That’s one of those times when we have to be ready to pull out those one-sentence taglines--and then see where the conversation goes from there. I’m told we’re free to talk to editors and agents most any time during the conference—except we’re not to follow them in the restrooms to sneak a little one-on-one time. Horrors! I hope not.

Curious about my tagline? This is only one version of it, but it is one I hope will stir curiosity. “She tossed his love aside for a ride on a whirlwind—-until her iridescent bubble burst in the wind.” Now if I can just become comfortable enough with those first words to be able to launch into them on a moment’s notice. Hopefully by September . . . .

Tangling the Threads

I have been crocheting since I was a child. For many years it was with yarn and a fat hook. Then it was with big balls of thread bought at Wal-Mart. Now I do it with finer thread from spools my sister buys in South America, using a hook whose point is as fine or finer than the lead on a pencil.

In recent months as I’ve stared at my hook sliding into a space between threads, grabbing a strand of thread and pulling it back through, I’ve not been able to escape the impression that what I was simply “tangling” the thread. Oh, I was tangling it in a very organized manner, but nevertheless I was mixing those threads in a way that one could consider to be “tangling.”

Sometimes I tangle them in a wrong way. When I do that, I end up pulling the strands of thread out, sometimes several rows. I fix the mistake and start “building” all over again. When that happens, it isn’t fun, but if I want a satisfactory result, or end product, it is necessary. Of course if I would follow the pattern more carefully in the first place, I could avoid having to pull things out and having to start over.

I imagine by now you have an idea where I am going with this. Tangled threads? Tangled strands? There had to be an analogy in there somewhere. As I lay awake in the wee hours of one morning recently, the analogy sorted its way through the fog.

As we humans live our lives, we are the ones doing the “crocheting.” If we follow the patterns set by our Creator in the Book He has given us, we can produce, or build, a life that is beautiful and useful. Being human, however, we often mess up. When we do, we need to back track, maybe undo, unravel, and start afresh.

That’s what happens to the main character in my Tangled Strands story. As my “tagline” puts it, “She tossed his love aside for a ride on a whirlwind—until her iridescent bubble burst in the storm.” What happens when she comes back, how she has to unravel, undo, and “rebuild,” makes up the bulk of the story.

I’m confident the story line and the crochet analogy will work well together. All I have to do is find effective ways to make that happen. I’m working on it!

Retreat in the Smoky Mountains

The first week of June this year was one I will never forget. Our family gathered at a pine lodge in the Smokies as an advance celebration of my husband’s and my 50th anniversary a couple of months from now. We were eight adults, six kids, and three dogs in five roomy bedrooms. The two on either side of the game room downstairs each had two queen-size bunk beds, if you can picture that.

The setting was magnificent. To get to the lodge, we drove up and up and up a steep, curvy road till we were close to the top of one of the foothills of the national park. The view from the decks included nearby forest and in the distance ridge after ridge in fading hues of smoky blue,. The Big Dipper was directly overhead, and the stars were brighter than in the cities where we live. Quiet times with God in the mornings were especially treasured.

We hiked a couple of days and hit the nearby towns a couple other days for shopping and savoring the Smoky-Mountains atmosphere. We had six laptops among us, so we were able to keep tabs on our e-mail; for several of us it was work related. The kids and dads played hours of laser tag.

Three evenings after supper, the rest of the group indulged me in requested time to focus on some family history. The first evening I produced our wedding invitation, reception napkins, laminated newspaper stories of the wedding, the orchid from the center of my bouquet, and of course pictures. Most, including the professional ones, were black and white, but Grandpa Gross had a wonderful new innovation called colored film, and all the pictures he took have now come to us. One evening the two youngest put on a “party” that got all of us down into the game room trying out the various game equipment. Another evening we played a version of the old Newlywed Game. We who had fifty years’ to remember … lost. Oh, well.

So did I get any writing done during those six days? Are you kidding? Did I do any thinking about Tangled Strands? You’d better believe it. Have I had a chance since then to add action to my thoughts? Don’t I wish . But I’m looking forward to it, and it will come.