D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Notes from the Hart

The Learning Curve Ahead Shouts a Wary Caution

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I have created a monster. I’m off and running on a new project—interviewing authors for my blog. I’m excited to get going with this. I really am, but here’s the thing. You have to be organized to do this, and I am an organizer. But I’m also incorporating new tools into my web site and its email which are forcing me to learn a bunch of new stuff. (That word “stuff” is pretentiously literary, isn’t it?) So although I may be promising to get the questions out to my subjects “in a few days,” I’m using only the loosest definition of “a few” since I’m still working on them. It could be weeks. Curve!

The first new tool was a change in my email server. My web designer decided to move his email from his own server due to problems, and that necessitated a move for me as well. He kindly offered to take care of the tech end of it, and I am now all moved over to a free email hosting site. However, there are all these bells and whistles. I may not have to use them all, but some could prove very useful. Curve!

Which brings me to the question of a calendar to keep track of the schedule for the year. I didn’t want to use my phone calendar; it’s full enough with personal reminders. I started with Microsoft’s calendar, but it turns out the email server site has its own calendar. I transferred everything over to it, but I still have the Microsoft calendar running just in case. Curve!

A few days ago I announced on Twitter and Facebook that I was setting out on this new adventure. Now, I’ve filled the year up. I’m only going to post these interviews once a month, at least for a while. I have to see how it goes. With only 12 spaces to fill, it was pretty easy. (And the fact that I’d already set up an interview with a friend for January eased the transition.)

I hope to concentrate on female characters and their empowerment, but I will most likely tweak this aspiration as I go. What I really want is to get to know some new people, and if I reach a few more potential readers along the way, all the better. It should be an interesting year. Here’s to making new friendships and broadening my social media skills.

Why it Takes so Damn Long

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Inspired by a year’s end blog post from author E.J. Dawson, I found myself pondering the relative slowness with which I produce scenes, chapters, books. I am forever berating myself for my laziness, the fact that I sit around a good portion of my day staring at the television and not writing. Hart, I say to myself, look at how much everyone else is able to write in a day, a week, a year. Why are you so slow?

As I read E.J.’s post, “Write the Darkness Within,” I felt envy for her prolific pen—6 books in a year!—and recognized in her struggles with her demons something similar to my situation. I write to ease anxiety. I write to save my soul. I’ve known this for years. I know I feel better on the days I’ve sat down and punched out a page or two. What I did not recognize until now, however, was how very hard each of those pages was to produce.

My mother didn’t love me. Oh, I know, you’ve heard that sad cliché far more times than you can count. But it was more than that. By taking away anything I started before I could finish it—all in the name of protecting me from disappointment—she taught me that I couldn’t finish anything.

And to this day I can’t. I set out to clean the house. I do the floors and vacuum half the carpeting, promising myself I’ll finish up tomorrow or the next day; I don’t. I begin neatening up my patio, and I stop with leaves remaining to be raked and only the open areas swept. I’m even having trouble finishing writing this.

But here’s one thing I can do. I can write a book. I have, in fact, published 7 of them over the last 6 years, with an 8th written and traversing the dangerous territory of rewrite at the moment. The one and only thing I consistently finish is the creation of a story and the fulfillment of the fullness of its truth in tens of thousands of words—sometimes even over 100,000 of them.

How is that? I don’t know. Save for that save-my-soul thing which I’ve always discounted. Until today when I read the aforementioned post.

Most writers must practice the most meticulous discipline, often to the point of ritual, in keeping to their goals. It’s hard to sit down in that chair and open up to the muse day after day. Much like the mind in meditation, we writers are constantly bombarded by thoughts and distractions that would steal us from our work. I’m not alone in that.

But here’s the thing. It turns out, because of my mother’s intrusions in any process I began and my lack of trust in my abilities to finish anything, writing slow is the only way I can write at all. I plod along, and that plodding gets it done. Eventually. And the fact that I’ve finished 8 books serves as testimony to my perseverance. The one thing I can do, the one thing I can finish to its end, is the creation of a story.

I am prolific. I’m just prolific at a slower pace.

That Timey-Wimey Thing

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That’s my mess

With first draft done on my WIP, I have begun rewrite. I totally pantsed this one. Lots of notes in a notebook with a ton of Post-Its used to tag the stuff I’ll need eventually, but no outline, no 4 x 6 cards. I love that notebook, messy as it is. It’s a window into the process and a reminder of how far I have yet to go. (And yes, that’s a Wikipedia article on Komodo dragons slipped between the pages. Let that whet your appetite.)

But pantsing presents its own perils, one of which is the fact that one often can’t paint oneself out of a corner until she’s actually painted herself into it first. Well into it. Into it to the point where there are three coats of paint waiting to dry and there’s no getting out until the true color of the paint reveals itself and allows the painter to walk out without marring the finish.

In my case, the corner was a time thing. Or, rather, two time things.

Let me state right off that my current WIP is not a time-travel story. It is a story of a young woman who travels back and forth between earth and another world via a magic gateway (of sorts). But as I wrote, time became an issue. Or issues.

First, I needed time to pass normally wherever my hero (and sole POV character) happened to be at the moment, but no time could pass where she wasn’t until she was there again. This was easy. I gave her companion—a woman who appears to have traveled through the gateway many times before the story begins—a single line which will likely show up at the beginning of the second book. “It’s as though time holds our place and brings us back to precisely when we were last.” One problem solved.

Then there was the other thing. My hero must age from fifteen to eighteen from the beginning of the series to the end, but I don’t want to write a dozen books to get there. I’ve had certain “adventures” set out for her for a while now, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to expand on them. And yet, how do I get her from fifteen to eighteen without filling her days both on earth and in the alternate world with adventure?

I was stuck. I had story enough for four books, maybe five, but needed more to fill the holes created by the extended time required to let her mature. I knew how to get her from book 1 to book 2 with a five-month gap between stories, but I couldn’t use an angry separation between my hero and another main character every time. I’m a writer. I tell stories. I have to be original.

I looked to C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. He succeeded in bridging time by aging the children out and using a different method of accessing Narnia in each book. I had one hero whom I planned on aging out but not until I resolved her story and could end the series. I also had one means of transporting her back and forth which I rather liked and didn’t want to change. Especially since it includes another character I want to keep.

The “gateway” perhaps?

Turning to Lewis did prove helpful, however. I allowed the gateway to become an impulsive entity, sometimes receptive, sometimes not—and, hence, unavailable until it was ready—forcing my hero to repeatedly request access over time unsuccessfully until the gateway relented. And that eliminated the second problem.

I love the muse, don’t you?

The “Holls”*

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(Your humble narrator sighs, then carries on.)

As a kid in the 50s, I, like pretty much every kid in America who wasn’t Jewish, couldn’t wait for Christmas morning. My sister and I would get to open two presents on Christmas Eve—one of our choosing and the other one holding the new long flannel nightgowns our mother had sewn for us at times when we weren’t around to see. Our nightgowns themselves were no surprise—the color/pattern of the flannel was, though it was always holiday related.

Not me

Christmas Eve night was a sleepless affair. I’d lie in bed staring at the clock all night, wishing to sleep, wishing it was 6 a.m., the time of rising on Christmas day declared by my mother. It never was. It never, ever was. My sister slept the night through (lucky kid), and I’d have to wake her when it was time. I didn’t always get what I wanted, and that was disappointing. But after all, the anticipation of a moment is almost always better than the moment itself. And that was the Christmas of my childhood.

Not my tree

I continued to decorate as an adult, collecting ornaments and eventually a 4’ fake tree, until the year my dad died in 2008. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t for six years. Then, in 2014, I pulled the tree out and set it up again, early in December. I loved the lights, how prettily they twinkled, especially at night. But when Christmas Eve hit, I realized that tree hurt. My soul screamed in pain at the sight of it. I don’t know exactly why.

I’m not a child anymore. I have a tiny family, the members of which either celebrate Hanukkah or work many extra shifts the month of December, and are, therefore, not available. (Yeah, bring on the whine and don’t forget the gouda.) I’m alone, and it’s depressing. Why salt the wound with the presence of the tree?

I took the tree down, stored all the decorations dutifully and tossed the tree itself in the trash. It had seen better days, as had I, and it was time to let go of something that no longer worked in my life. I haven’t put up any decorations since.

Not a photo. (I mean, look at the shadows.)

That is not to say I don’t observe the winter Solstice—that moment when the sun appears to turn and head back to the northern hemisphere. That holiday has substance, requiring no faith whatsoever. It’s a scientific fact—the face Gaia presents to the sun will shift as she makes her way around her star.

That is also not to say that I disrespect those who celebrate any of the myriad of holidays which “coincidentally” land at this time of year. To all of you celebrating out there, enjoying your families (I hope) and expressing your faith, I wish you all the best for now and the new year. (And don’t forget my special holiday gift to everyone—Fractured and Tainted free through Christmas Eve!)

*From my Aussie friend who wrote of doing something “over the holls.”

How Hard Could It Be? (Plenty, but Worth It)

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I finished the first draft of my eighth book this week. It begins a new series for me, and finishing it proved to be quite the accomplishment. It’s a shitty first draft, of course, but I did write the last word, the last sentence for the very first time with great satisfaction.

This book surprised me in many ways. I expected the proverbial walk in the park—me having so much experience and all—but in many ways it was the most difficult project I’ve tackled. I had to confront the reality of doing some tough, very personal writing, and I had to open the veins in my soul and bleed on the page to bring the story to the life I wanted for it. The bleeding turned out to be more profuse than I’d expected.

But rather than continue with generalities, let me get down to it.

First, Arrogance

Despite the prospect of building a world anew and creating as-yet-unknown characters, I’d thought, in my unmitigated ignorance, that after seven books (six in a series, one stand-alone), the writing itself would be easy. I truly believed I could simply put my fingers to the keyboard and pound it out. Easy. Oh, I’d have to pause now and then to elaborate back story and pull a map together. I’d have to fight my way to a story, but I could pants my way through it. How many times had I done so before? (I do do some outlining, but less and less as I progress as a writer.) Again, easy.

Wrong.

I slogged my way through, and it took me from March to December to complete a 60K manuscript. Granted, I was dealing with life-threatening surgery and a recurrent infection, and the normal crises of making it from one day to the next often intruded. But at my usual speed of 1K a day, I should have finished in a couple of months. I didn’t.

Second, a Brand-new World

Here’s a hint of what you’re in for

I’d spent 40 years in Garla, a lovely spot to abide, and I’d come to know it intimately. Lovely to look at and, with its equal treatment of women and their roles in Garlan society, a paradise for this feminist. The characters were friends I would talk to in difficult times, and a few of them were better at telling the story than I was. In short, I was spoiled.

So, when I set out to create this new space for myself and my potential readers, the pain and struggles of putting Garla together had dissolved, much as the pain of labor evaporates in a mother’s mind when the baby is put into her arms. Man, was I in for a revelation. It required far more effort than I remembered from before.

And the hardest of all? Determining how to revert back to a sexist society without making myself scream in rebellion. I did eventually determine how to get some fairness in without copying (heaven forbid) everything I’d done in Garla to, in essence, “give women the vote.”

Finally, There’s Mari and Me

Mari, this book’s protagonist, is me. I mentioned this in last week’s post, and the prospect of opening up that cesspool of flaws (or wounds, as my therapist calls them) shook me to my foundation. So I moved slowly. I made a false start that I had to pull back on at two-thirds through that first draft. Some of it was usable; some, not. But I rebooted the project and pushed myself forward—always forward—if at only 200 words a day.

And I did it!

And I survived.

I’m proud of this book, and I can’t wait to begin molding it into a readable volume and ultimately sharing it with the world.

Fantasy Memoir?

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Lisen of Solsta

Like most writers, I find my characters within my soul, and I distribute my personal attributes and flaws freely but not fairly to characters far and wide. Molding the magic that makes for an intriguing character can be a complicated process, but once I know them, they become companions in the greater quest of creating and telling a story.

Lisen, my first protagonist, made her debut in the process by introducing herself to me as “Ann.” “It’s the shortened version of my full name, Ariannas.” “Okay,” I replied and proceeded to produce a story and define a character around that declaration.

The problem was Ann was boring. She’d been raised in a co-ed monastery where the hermits taught her to be obedient and passive. But after many years of working the story, I finally discovered her name was Lisen, not Ann, and she’d spent time on earth before ending up in Garla. She was 17 years old and sassy. And I realized I hadn’t liked her much before, but I really liked her now.

Writing from the point of view of a 17-year-old was relatively safe. Seventeen-year-olds sometimes think like adults, and they can certainly talk like adults. They may make unreasonable demands, but you can, at the least, talk to them. And despite what some people think, not all main characters represent the author. In Lisen’s case, she was the woman I’d always wished to be.

I finished Lisen’s story about a year ago and found myself faced with a dilemma. What next? As I cleaned up the text and formatted the final book for publication, I pondered the possibilities and made notes. I’d always hoped to write a memoir. But I’m a very linear thinker, and memoir generally requires a willingness to write on topics as they occur to you and worry about the organization later. So, how about a fictional memoir? A YA fantasy fictional memoir? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not much has actually gone wrong. I’m approaching the end of book 1, and Mari, my protagonist, is a 15-year-old me. Of course, the fantasy situations confronting her are not what I went through at that age, but her home life, her mother and the way she relates to others is ALL me. That’s scary. But equally as scary was her age.

Hart at 15

You may not realize this, but 15-year-olds live in a whole different world. Everything is more important than everything else, and they can be a little narcissistic without it being an actual psychological diagnosis other than “she’s 15 years old—come on.” On top of that, unlike in the Lisen of Solsta series where I switched POVs between nine or ten characters with every scene, the entire book is told through her eyes.

So, I have chosen to plunge myself into mid adolescence. Again. It was hard enough the first time. But a truth burns within me that must be told, and if I can’t do it as a memoir, I will, by god, reveal it in fiction. I’ve promised Mari I’ll make it work.