I’ve written a lot of posts on writing lately. That’s fine and good because I am a writer. One who’s been working to build her public platform because professionals more experienced in publishing tell her she needs to. This six-month foray into blogs about writing has been frutiful, and I send a HUGE “thank you” to 45,000 followers here, on YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. You guys, from twenty-six countries, are the best.

But I miss my first love. So starting next week, Tuesday’s blog will be about writing, and Friday’s about something dear to my heart: theology, archaeology, women’s or children’s issues, or maybe just the changing seasons surrouding my perch. I miss sharing this richness with you, and private comments from you to me indicate you feel the same way.

So let me start with the leaf. It’s the first orange aspen leaf I’ve seen this year—and won’t be the last. The tops of the mountains are looking sleepy and golden with grasses dying back for the hard months ahead. I am invigorated by the change, although summer seemed short this year.

The bucks are still hanging out together, in velvet they’ll scrape off in the next few weeks to prepare for the rut. The bears are consuming 30,000 calories a day preparing to hibernate. A huge flock of Cedar Waxwings tore through the serviceberries early this week, picking them clean of the smallblack fruit for which the bushes are named. Little spotted fawns are getting bigger and fiestier, building their strength to face their first winter in the mountains.

I’ll be baking Christmas biscotti in a month or two (watch for THAT recipe, the only one I posted last year). I’ll soon take my cross-country skis to be waxed, anticipating the opening of the course right after the first heavy snow sometime in December. And by the middle of next month, snow tires will replace the regular tires on my Toyota.

So hang around, and enjoy winter with me here in the High Country, way atop the Rocky Mountains. I’d love your company, and your comments, as we sashay through the snow together.[subscribe2]

(This post closes the series that summarizes an entire semester of Journalism 101.)

This series’ closing post is about why successful authors write. I hope you find these quotes encouraging, and you can relate to at least one of them, happy in the knowledge that you are not alone in your motivation.

Sara Gruen (Water For Elephants)     “I would write even if I couldn’t make a living at it, because I can’t not write. I am amazed and delighted and still in a state of shock about the success of ‘Water For Elephants,’ but that’s not why I write. I do it for love. The rest is gravy.”

Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm)     “When I write a sentence of a paragraph or a chapter that’s good, I know it, and I know people are going to read it. That knowledge — Oh my God, I’m doing it, I’m doing this thing that works — it’s just exhilarating. Lots of times I fail at it. . . . But when it’s good . . . it’s like going on a date that’s going well. There’s an electricity to the process that’s exciting and incomparable to anything else.”

Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City)     “Sometimes I write to explain myself to others. Thirty-four years ago I told my folks I was gay through the ‘Tales of the City’ character Michael Tolliver. . . . When Michael came out in a letter to his parents, my own parents were the ones who got the message.”

Terry McMillan (Waiting To Exhale)     “I jump up in the morning. I can’t wait to go see what my characters are going to do today. I get wired up. When my character falls in love, I’m in love. When somebody’s heart is broken, or feels jubilation, I feel all of that.”

Rick Moody (The Ice Storm)     “I always sort of thought I’d be a failure. I still sort of think I might be a failure. So just having a book out in the world makes me very happy. I didn’t much think, at first, about whether it was going to sell a lot of copies.”

So whether you’re afraid of failure, or in love with love, write on, my friends.

(quotes from Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do, by Meredith Maran)[subscribe2]

(This post is next-to-last in a series that summarizes an entire semester of Journalism 101.)

If you’ve ever parented a two year old, you’re prepared to deal with the “whys” of a manuscript. (Of course, you’re probably qualified to deal with every disaster known to mankind, too.)

There are dozens of reasons someone stops reading a book, but the saddest is when there’s just no point in continuing. The story isn’t compelling enough. Or doesn’t make sense. The sentences don’t flow to connect thoughts. The paragraphs jump. The chapters don’t build one after the other.

As an author, I know my storylines so well that I sometimes leave gaps that become sinkholes into which readers fall. And the road to reader rejection is paved with good intentions—and sometimes, good writing. To stay on course, I use two tools that take me beyond what I intend to write so I can discover what I’ve actually written.

The Crowd with Healthy Distance.    

An editor (or two). Beta readers. A writing group. A mentor. Even your mom. Or a combination of all of the preceding. I just asked a reader to tell me where chapters became sluggish and where she was tempted to skip. In every instance (thankfully, there were few), something bogged my logic flow and, as a result, my writing. Once I figured out the problems, the passages became smooth, and the reader barrelled through them.

You’ll probably find, as I have, that everyone picks up on something different. My healthy-distance crowd ranges from their twenties to their eighties to ensure I miss little.

Read it Aloud.     If there’s an author test for insanity, it’s locking yourself in your office to read your manuscript out loud to yourself. But you’ll be amazed—AMAZED—what you discover. Not only will you hear dialogue problems, but you’ll find passages that are hard to read aloud. Pay attention to these. They indicate issues with copy—where it doesn’t flow well or something’s missing. As much as I think I need to be committed every time I do this, it’s one of my most important tools as I approach what I believe to be the end of the editing process.

How do you deal with your manuscript’s “whys?”

(The ninth post in a series that summarizes an entire semester of Journalism 101.)

I’m going to branch out from a novel’s physical location to talk about the psychological setting. This topic deals primarily with your protagnoist and antagonist, and I think it’s important. How your characters became who they are creates a landscape that enables a reader to relate to your novel, leading to believable characters. And your characters’ mindset in each scene is a powerful tool for keeping a reader engaged.

The Past.    We’re all products of our past. Poverty, broken hearts, and opression—or education, opportunities, and success. (More realistically, mix up those influences a little.) Each becomes baggage or momentum that we carry to one degree or another for the rest of our lives. Our characters are no different. Share a little of your characters’ past with your readers. Enable them to understand why your characters are who they are. I have one villian who resents mistreatment from his childhood after immigrating to the newly formed State of Israel. I only mention his issues in a couple of sentences, but knowing about this period of his life provides a window into the reasons he makes bad choices.

The Present.    Sometimes one of the most interesting ways to convey a character’s mindset is to have them relate to their location. If my heroine blows past a florist’s display tumbling onto the cobbles in Paris and doesn’t slow down to “smell the roses,” then she’s pre-occupied, angry, or dealing with something catastrophic. But I don’t tell the reader about any of those emotions. I show them via her disinterest in one of her favorite things—flowers.

The Future.     Hope springs eternal. (You know that or you wouldn’t be writing a manuscript.) Foreshadowing how your characters anticipate where the story is going—or where they think it’s going—teases your reader through the story. Hope, despair, plans, longing…emotions are building blocks for the human condition and create a mindset your reader wants to understand. Quite a few of my heroine’s assumptions about the future are wrong, but we see her intelligence and humanity with each erroneous assumption. Dig deeply.

Of course, to provide a psychological landscape for your characters, you have to know them at least as well as you know yourself. To that end, here are few good resources to get you started: http://bit.ly/DfRlt, http://bit.ly/fLblr, http://bit.ly/Vnmpw.

Do you have any favorite tools for exploring the psychological landscape of your characters?

(The seventh post in a series that summarizes an entire semester of Journalism 101.)

Location, location, location. It’s a priority when buying and selling real estate, and it’s a priority when deciding where to set your manuscript.

Location is affected by the element of time. Speakers’ Corner in London looks different now than it did one hundred and fifty years ago. And as I’ve written before, there’s an authenticity to knowing a spot personally—seeing it, smelling it, listening to it—before writing about it. (Google Earth just doesn’t engage all the senses…yet.)

Setting as Environment.    Time, place, and circumstance are the classic elements of a setting. They form a kind of holy trinity, separate but equal (you’re lucky I’m not using theological terms—oh, what the heck—consubstantialis). Together, they impact each other and color your readers’ vision of their journey through your novel. Choose location carefully because a reader reads through the prism of location.

Setting as Character.    The more I write, the more I realize my settings deserve as much nuance as my characters. A setting is the envelope in which you put your letter (novel). You can have several settings. Settings have scents, like your heroine’s perfume. Sound, like a child’s voice. Show age, like a grandfather character. Treat the setting as carefully as your characters, and you’ll develop believable “time and place” that enhances your story, or even moves it along.

Setting as Metaphor.    Sometimes the worst things happen in beautiful places—a shark attack on a beach, or an avalanche in a mountain resort. Contrasting setting with story can enrich both. The added benefit can be a straight shot into redemptive values beloved by readers.

Setting as Active Element.    Weather is a great example of setting as an active element. I’ve touched on it in previous posts, and repeat that the natural world is full of setting markers that require few words to convey a lot of information. Saloon or Starbucks? The first telegraphs the Wild West, whereas the second is contemporary and, probably, urban. Tenement or Park Avenue penthouse? The first implies poverty and distress, whereas the second triggers thoughts of wealth and privilege. There are also inventive ways to provide contrast while using setting as an active element. For instance, what if you place someone who has just lost a family fortune in the penthouse? Pull in the distress and desperation your reader would expect in the tenement housing? Or strand an urban dweller in a tiny, Western saloon during the worst sandstorm of the century? Now that setting could create an apocalyptic masterpiece!

How do you use setting  in your work? I hope you don’t ignore it, or breeze past it without the thought and strategy it deserves. [subscribe2]