Too Much of a Good Thing? (Musings on the art of writing)

I’ve been sitting in front of my laptop for a solid fifteen minutes staring at the vertical cursor blinking insistently at me from the blank screen.  I’m clueless as to what today’s blog post should be about.  I don’t have much to say, but I feel that I should say something.  After all, I should have something monumental or miniscule that I want to share with the world today.  Right?

Sure, I’ve got lots of ideas floating around my mind.  Maybe a book review for one of the many Sci-Fi books I’d just read, or maybe a movie review on one of my recent rentals, or possibly a reflection on MLK’s words in honor of the recent holiday or even an analysis of Cicero’s “Treatise on Friendship” if all else fails.  But, none of these ideas sound appealing in the least.

It seems criminal though, to take up a modicum of cyberspace with just any sort of nonsensical babble.  So, if I am going to post something today, as I desperately want to, shouldn’t my writing hold at least half an ounce of value to someone out there? 

With that, the metaphoric light bulb goes on.  I suddenly realize that there’s a very valid reason for my lethargy.  No, I’m not feeling lazy or unproductive or unwilling to dig a little deeper today.  It finally dawns on me that I am just all “written out.” 

For the past three weeks, a friend and I have been hard at work at JaNoWriMo.  Essentially, beginning January 1^st we committed ourselves to creating our own version of National Novel Writing Month (normally held in November and known as NaNoWriMo).  The only rule we had to remember was that we would begin with a novel idea and commit to writing about 1,650 words a day so that by the end of the month we would have a nicely-packed approximately 50,000 word manuscript as a starting point to build upon.  Oh, and one other stipulation—we’re not allowed to read anything that we’ve written until the month is over.

And so the month began with ups and downs.  There were days where the words literally flew off my fingers and onto the page of their own volition.  Characters basically created themselves and complicated plot twist were resolved completely on their own.  And of course there were days where the only words that filled the page were long lines of “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” 

As we pass the midpoint of the month, I’m beginning to understand the magic of forcing out “unforced” writing.  You may decide to set an egg timer for uninterrupted writing time, or get a little less sleep, or type away at your laptop while waiting to pick up your kids afterschool.  No matter what way works best for you, “finding time” to write that novel is the only way our stories will ever be told.

True, I may never want to write again after January 31^st—but I highly doubt that.  As another good friend once told me-- “If you write, you are a writer.”  And the writer in me refuses to quit.  With that bit of wisdom, today’s blog post comes to a close, and I realize how painless the writing really was and how enjoyable the journey.  J

        --SuzyIsmail

Ho Ho…No?

“So are you guys all ready for Santa?”  the well meaning Target clerk stoops down to ask my children.  My son replies plainly, “Santa isn’t for real.”  The woman’s eyes turn to saucers and I have to explain, once again, that we don’t do Santa.  For us, it’s just a Jesus thing.  The woman looks over each of my little ones sadly and then returns her disapproving eyes to me as if she’s just caught me beating my children. 

So, here it is:  we don’t do Santa…or the Easter Bunny…or Halloween…heck, we don’t even do the tooth fairy.  Wait!  Put down the phone.  Before you report us, let me explain our reasoning.  Good.  Now slowly step away from the phone, nice and easy.  Here is why:

Jesus was born at the North Pole in a stable because there was no room for him in Santa’s toy shop.  Yeah, not really.  But the duality of Christmas can get confusing, especially for the little ones.  I mean, my kids have always been taught there is no Santa, but my daughter, who is four, is still not sure because she overhears other children talking. The influence of peers is evident already.  And let’s be honest.  Which is more appealing?  An imaginary guy who brings you lots of toys or the birthday of some guy you’ve never met. 

Okay, hear me all the way out for this next part.  I try very hard to always tell my children the truth.  Yeah, I admit I’ve been known to say, “Yes, I ate my peas in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner.  Now eat yours.”  But I try very hard to keep my fibs to vegetables.  As a Christian, I’ve been handed the mammoth task of leading my kids into a relationship with the God of the whole universe.  A God they can’t see or touch.  And I have this reoccurring nightmare of a teenaged version of one of my kids, screaming in my face because he or she doesn’t want to go to church—accusing me of lying to them about Santa and the tooth fairy and how dare I expect him/her to believe in an imaginary God.  When I tell my kids about God, I don’t ever want to give them reason to doubt me. 

For the record, I am not a Santa hater.  I don’t turn off Santa Christmas music if it comes on and I don’t turn off Dora or Olivia at the mere mention of the fat guy.  We have a tree and we have presents.  What’s a birthday party without presents?  It’s just my kids know exactly who the presents come from.

And so, nice Target check out lady, may we please reach an agreement?  I will do my best to teach my children not to spoil the secret for yours.  I will not look down on you or judge you because you chose to include Santa in your Christmas.  I acknowledge that your comment to my children was meant as a friendly gesture and I am not offended by it in the least.  In exchange, please don’t look down on me for following my own, personal convictions.  Let’s respect each other.  And for the love of God, please put the slip of paper with the DYFS hotline number back in your drawer.  J

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Happy Hanukkah/Shalom/Peace on Earth/Happy Birthday, Jesus

          -Suzi Ryan

Angels Among Us

Headlines read: 

• Red haired mermaid falls in love with the handsome prince she rescues from drowning. 
• Bibliophilic beauty falls in love with a grouchy, unrefined beast. 

Like it or not, Disney has us adults and the next generation of girls all set to repeatedly swoon for stories of forbidden love.  I just had the pleasure of spending an evening with a literary agent and editor where the question was raised—when will the paranormal bubble burst?  For the record, I predict no time soon. 

Because the last two books I reviewed were both on fallen angels, my good friend/co-blogger Suzy asked me what my thoughts were as a Christian about humans getting physical with fallen angels.  The question made me crack open my Bible.

Upon examination of the Old Testament, in the very first book of the Bible, I found an account of angels, who came to earth and took human wives and impregnated them.  Now obviously these were not the cute, chubby cherub angels you see in the form of resin knick knacks in the Hallmark store. These were clearly man-like beings, equipped with all the parts necessary for getting intimate, if you know what I mean (wink wink).    

Lauren Kate and Becca Fitzpatrick did not need look far for their inspiration for angels who fell for/lusted after human girls.  I’m sure there are many Christians who would be offended by such use of fiction.  I am not among them for I (drumroll please) am a lover of make-believe. 

Disney princesses aside, my journey began when I was four years old, perched upon the armrest of a movie theater seat, my neck craned and my mouth agape in bedazzlement at the wonders of X-wing fighters and light sabers.  Next came my mother’s reading to me about the shire and a race of little people with big hairy feet and a dragon who could talk.  I knew fantasy would be my genre of choice for the rest of my life.  Ah, and then came the human Aragorn who loved an elf named Arwen.  I suppose from that moment on I was destined to be weak in the knees over the love between a human and a non-human. 

And whether it be the attraction between a clumsy human girl and a hundred year old vampire, a longing between a human/fairy hybrid of the Summer Court with one of the Winter Court fey, a werewolf boy, watching a girl from the woods longing to turn human again, or an angel who left the wonders of Heaven to be together with his earth-bound desire, I guess I’m just a sucker for forbidden love. Impossible love.  A love many would disapprove of.  A love that never should have been in the first place…but was nonetheless (sigh). 

And so the trend in paranormal fiction trudges on.  Move over, you books on vampires—you’ve been bled dry.  And all the glamour in the world can’t stop the fall of the books on fey.  Leash up your werewolves and put them out with some puppy chow.  And so I say enthusiastically: Open up the floodgates of Heaven and let the angels descend! (Fictionally speaking, of course).  You just never know—one might choose you over glory.    J

The Ultimate Test

For all you writers out there, closet and otherwise, one of the hardest transitions to make in writing is taking that scary first step towards going public.  I’m not talking about ‘publication public,’ but the steps that precede – letting someone other than yourself peek at what you’ve poured onto paper.  Putting your writing out there for someone else to read and judge is the first step in admitting and accepting the inevitable… you are a writer.  Maybe your first readers consist of the small group of people in your critique group, or your sister, your friend, your pen pal, your mother, your spouse, your dog (assuming the family pet will stick around and listen to you read) or anyone else you trust enough to allow a glimpse of the part of you that you are broadcasting to the world.

As often as published authors run anxiously to check the Amazon reviews and to grab the first issues of relevant magazines and newspapers to read those reviews, the apprehension towards reading these often anonymous or professional reviews is nothing compared to that initial anxiety when you are asking readers you actually know to pass judgment on your writing.

Assume now that you’ve made it through round one of the process and Mom’s given you the thumbs up and swears left and right to Aunt Betty, Uncle Joe and anyone else who will listen that you’re a prodigy and a true writing genius.  The next step to test Mom’s theory that you’re the next Tolstoy might be to workshop a page or two with a formal critique group or even at a first page session.

Interestingly enough, I recently attended one of these first page sessions where an agent and publisher pass judgment on the first page of your writing.  Talk about anxiety!  Possibly the most interesting thing to gain from this session is the benefit you receive from hearing someone else read your writing out loud.  It’s amazing how different your words sound when someone else reads them to a room full of listeners.  It’s a little like hearing your voice on an answering machine or watching yourself on TV (trust me, that’s weird).  All the things you thought you didn’t do come to the surface and you find yourself nodding with the critique and thinking “Wow, how did I miss that?”

So, if you’ve put some words on paper and are ready to share with the world, you might want to take a second look before you leap.  It’s definitely a hard market out there, and finding your niche is sometimes harder than the writing itself.  Sure, let Mom and company read what you’ve written, but also take it to the experts and realize that any constructive criticism can only make your writing that much better.  After all, it took Tolstoy over six years and several revisions to complete and publish “War and Peace.” If you’re still on year one or two with your first draft, then you’ve got plenty of time to spare. J  

          -Suzy Ismail

Ever have one of those dreams where…

You feel yourself slipping back into consciousness and a part of you screams and tries to claw your way back into the fantasy because it was just that good.  You open your eyes with a groan and stare at the ceiling.  Not wanting to forget, unable to let go, the blu-ray of your brain replays the scenes over and over again, committing them to memory.  Stumbling through the necessary activities of the day, the dream whispers in the back of your mind, haunting you.    

It happened to me over a year and a half ago.  Finally, out of desperation to get the images out of my head, I did the only thing I knew to do.  I flew to CVS to purchase my first Mead notebook since college and with a possessed fervency, I scribbled down everything I could remember, and interestingly, the few new scenes that my brain had conjured up.  And again, I did what I always did, I tucked the notebook away, random scenes and an unfinished story. 

And then I rediscovered my love for reading (see post Thank you Stephenie Meyer).  I looked up Stephenie Meyer’s webpage, amazed that authors had these things now.  I read about how she came up with Twilight.  She was a stay at home mom of three kids who woke up one morning with a dream stuck in her head that she couldn’t get out.  And after not writing for a really long time, amongst all the mommy things she had to do, she sat down and wrote Twilight.  As I read her story, tears ran down my face. It was exactly what had happened to me.     

So, for the first time, I opened Word 2007 on the laptop my husband had bought me for Christmas, the absolute best gift of my entire life (though I’m sure if he knew what a nut his wife would turn into, he’d never have bought it for me in the first place) and I did something I swore I’d never do: I wrote by typing.  I had always been an old fashioned pen and notebook kind of girl.  But it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the click click click of the keys…the speed at which my words could flow… the ease of erasing a “what drugs was I on when I wrote that?” moment.  I wrote like a woman possessed.  And I have probably written almost every single day since then. 

I even took a dream I had had back when I was nineteen, one that had stayed in my brain all these years, and I completed my first book in three months.  Just like Stephenie.  The first three chapters of that book currently sit with an editor and the waiting game is on to see if a full submission request will be made.  And I am now back, working on book based on the dream that started it all.  A book that may have remained a few random scenes, jotted down on a notebook, tucked in the top of my closet, if I had never looked up Stephenie Meyer’s website.  And so for the second time in my life I say, thank you Stephenie Meyer.  If I am ever blessed enough to be published, I owe you a huge thank you note, perhaps one with a field of wildflowers on it…   
   -Suzi Ryan                        
                                                                                

From A Totally Team Edward Fan

Ahhhh… the Stephenie Meyer phenomenon.  Just how many writing phoenixes must have arisen from the ashes of the tortured Bella, Edward, and Jacob saga with a little light bulb and an “Aha!” moment of “maybe I can do this too?” The beauty of the Twilight books was not limited to the “cha-ching” sound jingling in the well-lined pockets of agents, publishers, and merchandisers who jumped on the sparkly vampire bandwagon.  Instead, Meyers’ stories provided great fodder for a massive exodus of closet writers and sworn-off readers who concealed their copies of teeny-bopper romance novels behind the New York Times on their train rides into work or on the park benches while their children played, (although my cover-up of choice was actually The Wall Street Journal).

What was astounding to me as I breezed through the series was that a nearing middle-aged mom of three was able to single-handedly incite a mass following of adoring fans through her writing.  This had to be a clear sign that there was hope for us all.

And in that same vein of hope, I forced fingers to keyboard and began to type, type, type—but a love saga was as far away as possible from what I happened to spill out onto the pages.  Part social commentary, part self-help book, and completely not children’s book, even I was surprised by where my fingers took me when I first restarted that writing journey. 

I guess there’s a lesson in there somewhere.  Something corny along the lines of follow your dreams and find the rainbow or the silver lining or maybe the chicken that crossed the road.  Moving beyond mixed-up metaphors, though, I think there’s a more important message, which may not be so lame-o.  I set out wanting to write another children’s fiction book—preferably MG—so that I wouldn’t have to get caught up in a decidedly uncomfortable PG-13 scene.  Yet, somehow I found myself writing an adult book about divorce cases among Muslim couples instead.  Way to veer off course, right? 

The funny thing was that after all was said and done and the book was published, I realized that the course I’d originally charted was probably not the best one to begin with.  So, in the spirit of rolling with the punches, I’ve resigned myself to accepting the fact that the next Harry Potter or Twilight Saga may not be what comes gently gliding off my printer.  But, whatever does happen to make its way off my keyboard and onto the semi-permanence of clean white paper, will in itself be a small victory.  Because every time I write, I know that I am putting a small piece of myself out into the world and just waiting to see what the world might have to say in return.  So, even if there isn’t quite a resounding “cha-ching,” a Hollywood contract, or a mass following, there is that satisfaction that a nearing middle-aged mom of three put something out there that may eventually gain an adoring fan—even if that fan is just herself.

-Suzy Ismail

Thank you Stephenie Meyer

I was a holdout.  A naysayer.  A denier.  I was too much of a snob to get involved in a cultural phenomenon (Star Wars was enough for me, thank you).  But sitting at a family barbeque, I was a clueless idiot.  My teen niece was hanging with the much more ‘in the know’ aunts, passionately discussing Edward, Bella, and Jacob.  And I had nothing to add.  I knew nothing of this.  Even my insanely intelligent sister -in-law from West Virginia was hooked.  I felt <gasp> left out.

So I did it.  I jumped into the ocean of Stephenie Meyer.  Well, I must confess I dipped my pedicured big toe in the water first by watching Twilight on DVD.  And it was okay.  Quite honestly, the best parts for me were the longing stares—across the cafeteria, across the parking lot, in the hallway, etc.  And so, with trepidation swirling in my belly, I went to Target and picked up the first book. 

And I read like a reformed cocaine addict who’d just fallen off the wagon (I purposely did not use heroin as an example because of one of my most despised lines in literary fiction—you know the one, all you Twi-hards.  Sorry Steph).  The only thing I’d read in five years was Sandra Boynton board books (Barnyard Dance is my favorite, just in case you were wondering).  And so, I devoured Twilight in less than a day and found myself again at Target (how did I ever live without Target?) with New Moon firmly gripped in my hands, spittle dribbling from my chin.  I needed another fix.  One hit was most assuredly not enough. 

Prior to even finishing New Moon, I found myself once again standing in line, my head fuzzy from the literary high.  Eclipse and Breaking Dawn were happily scooting down the check out conveyer belt and I wielded my credit card like a sword.  The woman running the register rolled her eyes at me.  She apparently had seen many in my demented, strung out state.  I was one of “them” now. 

Fast forward.  I finished all four books, though I confess Eclipse and the last fourth of Breaking Dawn was absolutely painful (so sorry Steph).  Much can be said of the journey.  I could talk for hours now about Edward, Bella, and hunky, ‘loved him better with long hair’ Jacob.  Can’t tell which team I was on, can you? 

But the journey for me was an inward one.  I was once again the same chick (albeit it a much fatter chick) from high school and college who stayed up ‘til three a.m. because I just couldn’t put down Terry Brooks or Tad Williams.

And so I stand before you now, a book-loving phoenix, arisen from the ashes of children’s rhyming books*, a born again bibliophile. 

For that, Stephenie Meyer, I sincerely thank you.   

(*No books of any kind were actually harmed in the writing of this post)

-Suzi Ryan