View from the Writing Cave

I've been in the writing cave so long, my eyes are having trouble adjusting to daylight. And, needless to say, a certain part of my anatomy is welded to the computer chair. No one ever told me writing was fattening, but it's hard to exercise on the computer.

Oh yes - I've tried it. I even posted here about the fancy gadget that lets me type while walking on the treadmill. That does work pretty well if you're only playing on the computer, but it's hard to stay focused on characters while huffing and puffing.

I entered the cave in January, tempted by the lush greenery and the lure of a new story. Well, not an entirely new story - I took a story I wrote for NaNoWriMo back in 2008, tore it to pieces and started again with only a root cutting to start the new growth.

My goal was to complete the story in time for Lori Foster's Reader Author Get Together in early June. I signed up for the pitch appointments before I'd written the first chapter. Talk about pressure! I rewrote the first two chapters a gazillion times, which is pretty normal for me. The view from the cave was gorgeous, and I was right on track.

It got a little trickier in March when I went on two out-of-town trips and attended a writer's conference, none of which were conducive to writing. I kept plugging away, but my word count wasn't quite up to par. It was April by the time I got back on schedule, and the beginning of June seemed frighteningly close. I had to get in some major writing - a mini-NaNoWriMo. Of course, that's when my brain froze up. The cave didn't seem quite as pleasant. The letters wore off my keyboard, and I swear the keys were glued down by bat droppings.

It was around this time subversive thoughts would come to me at night: "Why are you killing yourself over this? The story won't sell even if you do finish it. Why not give it up and get yourself a life? It's not like anyone is forcing you to do this! And you sure as hell aren't getting paid to write for ten hours a day!" The ugly voice of Imposter Syndrome had spoken. I wrestled with it for days - in the end, I beat it down. For awhile, at least.

By May, I was making real progress. My husband had long since stopped asking if I was ever planning to come to bed, and the cat disowned me. The words were doing their magic and I was back in the zone. June was just around the corner, but by God I could do this!

My daughter came into town two days before the conference started, and that's when I had a reality check. We had all kinds of activities planned with my writing buddies - activities that didn't include writing. Three days to go and I was at 60K out of a projected 85K. I told myself I could write at night. The day before the conference, I decided I could write in the hotel room. Yeah, that didn't happen.

Instead, I went into full blown panic. I had a pitch session in ONE DAY! Not only was the story not complete, I hadn't even taken the time to write the query, tagline or pitch! I brought a notebook to every event, and cornered critique partners for impromptu brain-storming sessions. My daughter took off with my friends while I went quietly (or not-so-quietly) insane.

Then I found out the lovely editor I was pitching to had to cancel due to health issues. Relief slammed me, and then guilt because - hello? - she was in pain, for Pete's sake! For a full two hours I relaxed. The editor requested a partial, but I could pull that together in a week, no problem. Reprieve!

My daughter Jessica, author Nancy Naigle, me - in a brief moment of non-panic - and author Gabriella Edwards aka Rosie Murphy

My friends - who are in equal parts wonderful and evil - insisted I pitch to an agent instead. At first I resisted until the voices in my head joined in. Damn those subversive voices, anyway! This time they nagged about my lack of professionalism. "Are you going to pass up an opportunity to pitch because you're too lazy to pull something together? Are you a writer or a wimp?" I left my daughter to her own devices as I shut myself in the hotel room and dug in.

By three a.m., I had a query, a tagline and a pitch. They weren't perfect by any means (another agent was seriously unimpressed), but the agent I pitched to that Saturday liked them enough to request 150 pages. She said to hold off submitting until the story was ready to go, because if she liked it she'd want the full the next day.

I was still in the writing cave, but it was sparkling.

The day after the conference, we headed up to Chicago - taking my daughter to see the family and to meet her new niece. I planned to write in the hotel room every night, which proved extremely difficult. I finally gave up and decided to work double time when I got back home. I should have known better - it's always a mistake to let a day go by without working on a story, much less a whole week.

By the time I got home, I had to read through it from the beginning to get myself back on track. I had two weeks to write before heading back up to Chicago (I swear I'm attached to that city by a bungee cord) to dog sit while my son and his significant other went on a cross-country road trip. I had a plan: my new goal was to finish before I left on June 23. Once again, I failed to meet my goal. I wrote about 1,000 words a day, and every word was like drawing blood.

I pushed on, and by the time I went to Chicago I was at 70K. Not where I wanted to be, but by then the remaining 15K didn't sound so bad. Chicago was great. I became I writing hermit - just me and the dog, and my old laptop. The A/C didn't work real well so I got up at the crack of dawn to walk the dog before the heat set in, and then came back and wrote like a maniac. I took breaks to walk the dog along the lakefront, which helped recharge my batteries and sweep the cobwebs from my brain. Finally, I could see the light outside the cave.

I wrote 31,500 words during my three weeks in Chicago, overshooting my anticipated word count significantly. Since I returned home I've trimmed 2,500 words, leaving at least 4,000 more to cut. The revisions aren't going as smoothly as I'd like - when do they ever? I'm still plugging away.

I'm not out of the cave yet, not until I push on and complete the revisions. I feel antsy because the submissions are later than I anticipated, but I'd rather submit a clean, polished story than pages that are rough but on time. It's nearly August, and I'd like to think I'll be done by then. Somehow I doubt it.

The cave is starting to feel like home. My family has adjusted to my state of distraction, and the cat is busy hanging with his raccoon friends. Life goes on.

Is it worth it? Well, I'm not writing the Great American Novel, but I hope I'm writing something fun. Now I'm heading back to the writing cave. Any other cave dwellers out there?

Happy 4th of July and Happy Canada Day!

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Living La Vida...Anglophile

When I got engaged to an Englishman, my mom wasn't surprised a bit. She thinks that when I was just over a year old, I soaked up all the details of Queen Elizabeth's coronation as she listened to the entire event, glued to the radio while I toddled around the apartment. At my bridal showers, I was inundated with Union Jack-motif gifts (including a metal garbage can), and lots and lots of china tea cups. If my parents could have afforded it as a wedding gift, I think my first sofa would have looked like this:

My first real introduction to all things English coincided with the British Invasion, starting with the Beatles. I was about twelve when I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - my life was never the same after that.

Along with the music, make-up and fashion influences quickly made their way "across the pond." Mary Quant, Twiggy, Yardley, Carnaby Street - anything with a hint of the Brit was huge at that time.

But it didn't stop there. I was hooked on British mysteries, too. I read every book ever written by or about Agatha Christie, and her books led me to others - from Philip MacDonald to Dick Francis to Mary Stewart and John Creasey's Gideon of the Yard series. I'm still a huge fan of British mysteries and police procedurals.

I loved English movies and memorized lines from Shakespeare's plays. I cried over Camelot and read everything I could find about Merlin and King Arthur. I was obsessed.

I met my husband through a mutual interest in music and the Beatles, and a few months later I visited England for the first time. With some difficulty, I finally figured out the money, which was pounds, guineas, shillings and pence back then. We had a fabulous time, cramming lots of sightseeing into a few short weeks. We even had a close encounter with a Beatle. We were walking by Apple's (it meant something different then) headquarters in Savile Row when John Lennon's famous painted Rolls Royce drove past, windows tinted to black.

A few years later we moved to England. I worked at Marshall Field & Company's London office in Regent Street. The windows at the back overlooked the rooftop of Apple, where the Beatles famously performed just a few years earlier. My co-worker was there at the time - she said it was loud and disruptive, all that racket making it difficult to work. *bangs head on wall*



We were young and broke, and lived on the wrong side of the river. Our house did NOT look like this:

We lived there seven years, moving back shortly after my first niece was born. I've been thinking of this a lot lately, since that same niece just became a mother for the first time. Both of my kids were born in this country, but they have lots of family spread across England. Genetically, they are half English, while I was just an Anglo-wannabe. True, my own family tree has roots in England, too, but it's not quite the same.

Here in Ohio, my husband and I regularly have Yorkshire tea and Digestive biscuits, and Heinz Salad Cream and Branston Pickle can usually be found in the fridge door. We toast the New Year with Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry and when we want a treat we'll pick up wine gums or Turkish Delight.

My husband and I are still fans of the Beatles, individually and en masse, as well as countless other British bands. I still reread my Agatha Christie's on a regular basis, and now I've added a lot of new British authors to the mix. Thanks to PBS, BBC America and Netflix, I get a regular dose of Britcom and other British TV shows - Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders, New Tricks and Inspector Lewis are all favorites. When we get nostalgic, my husband and I rent episodes of EastEnders or Coronation Street, or pull out our worn copies of The Good Life and Yes, Honestly. And, of course, Dr. Who!

My kids have both been to England a few times, and my husband goes to visit almost every year. I haven't been over in so long I'm hesitant to do so now. I know it's changed a lot in the years since I lived there - I see the "new" London on TV all the time - but I'd kind of like to preserve my memories of England as it was in the 1970s and early 80s.

Despite all this, I didn't really get into the Royal Wedding this time around. I was living in England when Charles and Di got married, and even though it ended on such a sad note, it will always be "the Royal Wedding" to me.

My ancestors came to America from England in time for the first U.S. Census in 1770. I'm proud to be American - don't get me wrong! But I'm glad a little piece of England lives on in our Cincinnati home.

I'm Addicted to Sarah Addison Allen

Reading this now - I can't put it down. I adore books with magical elements!

ROMANCE ADDICTS ANONYMOUS

ENGLISH TEACHER BUSTED

"The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI

LOVE THIS!! (Thanks to my brother for bringing it to my attention!)