D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Writing

Writing Tools Part I

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DISCLAIMER: Nobody has paid me to talk about the program/app I cover in this post. I am not necessarily endorsing it; I am simply explaining why it works for me and hope that my experience may help another writer out there.

I don’t know about other writers, but I need a convenient writing platform and the appropriate tools to keep everything moving swiftly. For many, many, many years (maybe 20+) I have used Word to capture my text. And for a good deal of those years, Word was sufficient to my needs. Even when I started self-publishing, I could format a book—both print and digital—with some ease within its confines. But a little over a year ago, I discovered that my current version of Word (2016) had become cumbersome and twitchy when it came to formatting for print in particular. Then, a few weeks ago, Microsoft did an update to the app which turned things topsy-turvy, and I said, “Enough!”

I have known about Scrivener for a couple of years now. It’s a powerful program for writers of books. I tried it out a few years back but returned to Word because, well, change is hard, right? I wanted to keep doing what I was doing because it was working. If it ain’t broke… But then Word kinda broke, and I decided it was time to give Scrivener another try.

The first great thing about Scrivener is you get a 30-day trial. And it’s not just 30 days from the day you download it; it’s 30 days of use. So if you don’t open it for a day or two or a week or even a year, the remaining days are there when you do use it again. I think that’s damn straight of them. The second great thing is it’s a single purchase program. If they create a new version, you do have to pay for that, but I suppose you can always stick with what you have and not update. Updates within the version are free, however. And a plus for those purchasing it for Windows right now is they’re including the upcoming version 3 in the package.

But there’s more. Because it is specifically geared to long, broken-into-chapters-or-parts projects, you can open a “project” and put all your chapters (or whatever) in that project. They remain separate, but should you decide to print the entire project for a beta reader or to prep it for publication, all you have to do is “compile” the individual chapters in the order you’ve placed them in the “binder,” and you have a complete document.

Now, let me say one thing about this. The selling point for me came after I had compiled a beta copy of my WIP in Word, one chapter at a time, for my betas and partway through realized I had left out intervening material (I call them “interludes”). I looked at Scrivener after that and realized how much easier the process would have been from there. Purchased and done. I am now writing book projects exclusively in Scrivener.

And in case you’re thinking well, that’s nice, but what’s the learning curve. Not long, actually. It has a multitude of bells and whistles, a great many of which your particular process will never require. But what could be useful is more than likely there. I’m not going to give you the link to their site because that just feels like selling my soul. Just run a search—you’ll find it.

Next time I plan on discussing text expanders and how important they are to writers. If you’re not using a text expander (Autocorrect in Word is one example), you’re wasting a lot of time on fixing typos and typing other stuff. But that’s for my next post.

Confession

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Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Since I was in my early 30s, I’ve known I had a story to tell, a memoir to write, but I’ve avoided it because fear and self-loathing have shackled me. This story I have to tell takes place in my ninth grade year in school. I was 14 going on 15. It was the year JFK was assassinated. It was the year of the Beatles. And it was the year all my ambitions dissolved into nothing, in part because of something an old man in my church—an old man with authority—said to me. This year was the effing end of my story!

But I needed to get this story out of my gut, spew it out, so to speak. Unfortunately, the process of memoir—writing a piece at a time and figuring out when you’ve got enough pieces what the theme actually is and then organizing those pieces based on that—runs counter to my very literal, very linear personal process. I fought the fight, but I lost. And continued to work on my Lisen of Solsta series, now done.

Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I came up with a brilliant idea. What if I placed a character based entirely on me into a setting I know well—a YA fantasy? Was it possible? Could I do it? I began building my world and my protagonist—Mari, a 15-year-old fat girl with low self-esteem and a narcissistic mother, who finds an escape into an alternate reality of sorts and gains there what she lacks on earth. Where Lisen was the me I wished I’d been in my teens, Mari is me at 15.

Mari and I became friends. We talk nearly every night. We talk about the current movement of the story and where to take it next. When I’m stuck with a plot hole I can’t seem to climb out of, I turn to her. She is, essentially, my inner child, but in separating her from me ever so slightly, I have made it possible for me to talk to that child, respect that child, encourage that child. Now this is all psychological stuff which my therapist is applauding in me, but bit by bit a story has formed. And the one thing I have demanded of the story is to give Mari the redemption, the resolution, I never got. Because I’ve promised her this, and this is a promise I don’t want to break.

It hasn’t been the easiest of journeys. I’ve had to dig deep and give Mari all my flaws. But while doing so I’ve also discovered some wonderful things about her (me), and I like her. A lot. As I approached the end of the draft where I’d be sending it out to beta readers, my anxiety disorder ticked up to a constant attack. I’m dizzy and having palpitations with a queasy stomach. Now this anxiety disorder is the direct result of a life, especially as a very young child, spent with that narcissistic mother who knew how to care for me but had no interest in my personhood and was incapable of love. (It’s all in the book, or if not there, it will eventually show up in the series.)

The book is now out to my betas. This is always a difficult time for any writer. In this case for me, however, I have eviscerated myself on the page. It’s never been this personal before. And I held back telling my betas what this book was really about. Until now.

I lost it last night. I had to make the anxiety stop so I messaged each of them and told them to stop reading. They refused and asked to know why. I told them. Or am telling them now. It’s my story, all right. Mari Spencer is me. Chloe Spencer is my mother. All that stuff she does when Mari’s at home—that all happened to me.

So there you are, my confession. I have to do this, write my story down. I had to get all that vile, ugly stuff out of me before I die. And at my age, that ain’t so far away now. Blessed be, friends. It ain’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Anxiety – A Very Personal Post

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Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

I think almost all writers and other creative types suffer from some form of insecurity about their work. But I also believe that many of us who fight the good fight to get our stuff out of our heads and into the world, whether in words or the physical arts, struggle with some degree or another of mental illness. For me, the demon is chronic anxiety. Today I shall combine the two and write about my fear to show you how anxiety affects me.

Anxiety can freeze me to the spot. Anxiety can grip me by its ruthless talons and strangle the life out of me, and all I can do is sit there, frozen in place, helpless and unable to cry out. It fucking owns me, this anxiety. It has a hold on my soul that is relentless, and I am powerless against it.

I’ve lived with anxiety all my life but didn’t know that was what was wrong with me until I was in my 50s. I had seen therapist after therapist, and they were definitely helpful but offered no diagnosis, allowing my assumption I was depressed to prevail. I’d seen a couple of psychiatrists along the way as well who’d gone along with the clinical depression diagnosis. And then I saw this one guy who, after asking several questions, told me I had chronic anxiety. I walked away from that appointment nodding my head. Finally it all made sense.

Since then, I’ve watched myself cycle back and forth between barely anxious and anxious as shit. Often my anxiety has a reason I can pinpoint—electrical problem in the house, car making a strange noise even if only once, a physical ailment refractory to treatment. For these specific sources, I seek out solutions to ease those feelings I wish I could crawl out of my skin and out of my life to escape. And once the solution is achieved, I can relax. Mostly.

But then there are the I’m-anxious-and-I-don’t-know-why moments. It just hits me like an anvil over my head and I’m there and I can’t resolve it. I can’t logic-it-out. (Well, the truth is anxiety can’t be “logicked out” regardless, but understanding the source carries with it some comfort.) It simply is. It’s like the sky is falling, and I can’t stop it. There’s no reason for me to believe the sky is falling, but trust me when I say it is.

I have learned how to box anxiety up and set it to the side. I can tell myself what’s bothering me isn’t as real or as heavy or as frightening as it seems, that it’s feelings without substance and I don’t have to give it my attention. Sometimes that works, and rather well, actually. Other times, not so much.

What I’m trying to say is anxiety is real, and it can be debilitating, destructive. It hurts and it shuts me down to the point where all I can do is sit in one spot never moving. It’s not a life I’d wish on anyone, but there it is—my life, as it is.

Dancing with the Denouement

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(Originally published November 12, 2015)

This article is a favorite of mine, so I decided to repost it. I hope you enjoy it.

The best piece of writing I’ve ever experienced was not a book or a short story. It was a movie—The Terminator. I found myself thinking about this movie and its brilliant screenplay by James Cameron last night as I was considering how to approach an explanation to a writing friend of what I call the punch-line denouement. (According to Writers Digest, “the denouement is the final outcome of the story, generally occurring after the climax of the plot. Often it’s where all the secrets (if there are any) are revealed and loose ends are tied up.”)

For those who’ve never seen it, The Terminator tells the story of Sarah Connor, a 1980s college student working as a waitress. Sarah’s life is irreparably changed when two travelers arrive from the future. One—a cyborg—has come to kill her to keep her from conceiving the savior of humankind. The other—Kyle Reese—intends to stop the cyborg and keep Sarah alive.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead.

From a feminist standpoint, this movie is perhaps the first I ever saw with a female hero at the helm of an action film. Yes, Sarah is the hero. It is she who must change in order to make the future possible. She begins as a fun-loving young woman who by the end has gathered together all the strength she possesses in order to face that future straight on.

Back to my point. Storytelling. The amazing screenplay by James Cameron blows me away every time I watch the movie or even think about it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to taste the joy of how to tell a very complicated story in a couple of hours. Cameron hands us each piece of information required at the very moment we require it.

Two men are after Sarah. Who are they? Are they both bad guys? Or, if one of them is good, which one is it? Boom. It’s Kyle Reese, the young man who looks totally out-gunned by Arnold and who came back in time because he’d fallen in love with Sarah from a Polaroid picture. Why is Arnold after her? What does he intend to do with or to her? Boom. She’s the future mother of the man who sent Kyle back in time to save her. How can you tell these cyborgs from humans? Dogs can sniff them out. And it goes on.

If you haven’t seen The Terminator and you’re a writer of any kind of fiction, I highly recommend it as the next movie you stream. Don’t accept watching it on commercial television; they cut out the stupidest stuff, including any time a blow from Arnold connects, even when he punches through a windshield. Brilliantly concocted and shot on a budget that apparently precluded getting permits from the city of Los Angeles for all those street racing night scenes (they filmed them on the sly then slipped away into the night without getting caught), it is, in many ways, an indie film.

But, the most important aspect of this film is the way Cameron sets up his final scene. The movie reaches its climactic ending right after Sarah and Kyle have consummated their blooming love for one another. The terminator kills Kyle and then Sarah terminates the terminator. Glorious.

Cut to the final scene. Sarah in a Jeep driving through the desert, dictating into a tape recorder saying, “Do I tell you about your father?” Then, she rubs her very pregnant belly and continues on briefly about Kyle. A dog sits with her in the Jeep.

She pulls up to a little gas station out in the middle of nowhere. A boy runs up to the Jeep and exchanges a couple of lines with Sarah. He has a Spanish accent. He takes her picture with his Polaroid and then asks for payment which she gives him. It’s the picture Kyle had fallen in love with. The boy’s grandfather says something in Spanish, and Sarah asks the boy what he said. “A storm is coming.” Sarah looks off in the direction she’s headed and agrees when she sees the cloud. Then she drives off, and the credits begin with the Jeep heading away from the camera. Fade to black.

Now that all took far more time to describe than it takes on the screen. It’s a simple little scene, and every single aspect of it requires no explanation to the viewer because Cameron set it all up earlier in the movie. And that, my friends, is how to deliver the punch line to a story. Set-up is everything. You shouldn’t have to rely on explanations in the denouement. It should stand on its own.

Interview – Julie Weston

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Julie Weston

Julie Weston is a long-time online friend from our AOL days, and I’m pleased to welcome her to my blog today. Idaho is in Julie’s background and foreground. She grew up in a mining town in the panhandle and now lives in south central Idaho. In between, she attended law school in Washington and practiced law for over 30 years in Seattle. When she began writing (other than as a lawyer), she took classes at the University of Washington to get rid of the legalese. There, she met a group of women writers. They met every week for ten years and then slowly went their separate ways. Two of them are still her readers and she is theirs.

Her first published book was a memoir of place, The Good Times Are All Gone Now: Life, Death and Rebirth in an Idaho Mining Town (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). It won Honorable Mention in the 2009 Idaho Book of the Year Award. Her next two books, Moonshadows and Basque Moon, soon to be three with the publication of Moonscape, are mysteries set in Idaho in the 1920s, featuring a young woman photographer and her black Labrador dog—Nellie Burns and Moonshine. She has also written several short stories, many of them published.

Both she and her husband practiced law. Now he is a photographer and she writes. They live a lucky life in the mountains, skiing, biking, hiking, photographing and writing. Her husband’s photographs have been used by her publisher for the covers of all her mysteries.

Hart: Welcome, Julie. So tell me. What genre do you write in? What attracted you to that genre?

Julie: For now, I primarily write historical mysteries, set in Idaho. I have on the back burner a couple of other historical novels and a novel about law school. I began reading mysteries in about the 6th grade and have never stopped. When I was unable to sell a novel about a mining town and a labor union, I decided to try my hand at mysteries because I felt I knew so much about them. I learned a lot more as I began writing mysteries. Favorite mystery writers right now are Louise Penny, Anne Hillerman, Craig Johnson, Marvin Walker and Donna Leon.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

J: For my first book and short stories, I tried to write regularly—about three days a week for certain—and attended to other matters on the other two. The weekends were up for grabs. Now that I am retired, I have much more time available, but it gets filled up with other activities, e.g., skiing in winter, other sports in summer. I love the outdoors. I aim for 1,000 words of new writing or revision three to four days a week. I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out plot ideas in my head. When I sit down, I often have full scenes pretty much ready to go. I often begin a scene or write a scene long hand. When I input that writing into the computer, I usually am able to keep going for some time.

H: You, like our mutual friend Jan Maher, write about a place you know well, in a time long gone. What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

J: Because I write mostly about Idaho, I have much history in my head or through family stories. My forebears came to central Idaho in the 1870s. A great aunt wrote a book called Generations (Caxton Press, no idea of date) that also serves my writing well. The most helpful are those books written about towns and areas by local writers, photographic archives, old newspapers, and local libraries and museums. These have all been invaluable to helping keep my stories authentic.

I have a book Flappers 2 Rappers with language details that I consult regularly. My husband and I have regularly hiked around the areas where I set my mysteries. We have visited Craters of the Moon in Idaho, the setting for my new book, a number of times, and I did research in the Visitor Center library.

H: I used Flappers 2 Rappers for Soul Doubt, my paranormal romance set in the 60s. It’s a good one. So tell me, as a declared feminist on your web site, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?

J: For years and years, mysteries were always solved by men, even when written by women, e.g., Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and others. A few women detectives or amateur sleuths began showing up, and now there are a plethora of women in mysteries, both as protagonists and villains. Publishers finally “get it,” I think. I belong to Women Writing the West which emphasizes women’s roles. Although male authors still use men in the lead roles, I am doing my part to be certain strong women are featured in mysteries.

H: Do you have a current or earlier release you’d like to promote?

J: My two earlier mysteries, Moonshadows (2015) and Basque Moon (2016), both published by Five Star Publishing/Gale Cengage Learning, are still available. The former was a Finalist in the May Sarton Literary Award and the latter won the 2017 WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction. My new book, Moonscape, is due out this June and is available for preorder. Same publisher, same characters plus a few more, and same setting: 1920s Idaho. This one takes place mostly in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho (named a monument in 1924), an eerie lava-filled location with caves and tunnels. I am working on a fourth mystery set in the mines of North Idaho.

This year is the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing on July 20. Astronauts trained at Craters of the Moon on the supposition that the landscape there would mimic that of the Moon. I am going to be a featured speaker at the anniversary at Craters of the Moon, talking about Moonscape!

I always encourage readers to buy my book at local bookstores. Ebooks are available through Amazon. And you can find me at my website here.

H: Well, thank you, Julie, for participating in my blog this week. It’s been a pleasure. And to all my readers, the comment section is open again. Let’s give Julie some great comments.

Writing’s Hard

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Photo by Oleksii Hlembotskyi on Unsplash

Life is messy, and just when you think you’ve got the clutter picked up, an earthquake shakes everything up again and leaves you crying why.

The last few weeks have thrown me up against a wall and left my head spinning. It began when I took chapter 21 of my current WIP into my writing group. I read, they told me it was great, then they calmly, somewhat kindly told me what was wrong with it. I was grateful for the critique as I’d been tossing and turning in my head over the movement of the story, how it wasn’t moving. Or maybe it was. I’ve been so caught up in the thing—what with the protagonist being closer to me than any character I’ve ever placed into fiction before—that I knew my perspective was off.

I went home that week determined to resolve the issues they’d brought up. And I thought I had when I took chapter 22 in the next week. The ending of that chapter introduced a creature into the mix that had only been hinted at up until then. I thought for sure the ending was great. So I read, sure the BAND-AIDS® I’d placed on the open plot hole wounds would cover all the problems up. I was wrong. The group eviscerated it. Okay, a bit of hyperbole, but I walked out of the class during the break and didn’t go back. I was devastated. Now, I’ve been devastated before by critique. I’ve even cried about it. But this time, I’d been hit twice in two sessions, and it took me a couple of days to pull myself out of the hole and look at the plotting honestly.

And they were right. I was right. I’d known the story wasn’t working for me, but I’d pushed on through. Which is fine in first draft. After first draft, though, I should have done all I could to find the flaws and clear them up, and I hadn’t. I’d shifted the point of view and the verb tense, both changes that strengthened the storytelling, but the story itself was lacking, and I didn’t know what to do.

The advice most writers with even the slightest amount of experience will give you is to set the manuscript aside for a bit. Let t sit. Work on something else. Go for walks. Watch movies. Binge-watch TV shows. Whatever. I, on the other hand, tend to be fairly quick about coming around. Or I don’t come around for a year or two. I’m an all-or-nothing type of gal. Lucky for me, in this case, it was the former.

Here’s what I had to do: I deleted a character which left a great hole in the entire piece, but she was more baggage than necessity. I moved the revelation of the creature mentioned above to chapter 2. Yeah, twenty chapters ahead of its previous first appearance. I added a secondary character and gave her narration rights in tiny increments. All of which have brought me to a place where finishing this thing is going to take a whole lot longer than I’d planned, but it will be better for the work, and I know it.

So if anyone tries to tell you writing’s easy, they’re either liars or they’ve never glued their butt to a chair and made themselves do it for longer than a sneeze. Writing is work. It’s work that gives me a great deal of satisfaction and keeps me sane, especially on the crazier days. I wouldn’t exchange it for any other vocation. But the last few weeks have been messy. Is the earthquake done? Maybe. But the aftershocks will live on until I put this baby to bed and call it done.