Jun14

Fiction Friday:

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By Leslie Lindsay Fiction Friday:

You know how reading a really gripping book can get your creativity flowing?  Well, it worked wonders for me this past week as I dove (quite literally) into Deb Caletti’s book, HE’S GONE (Bantam, 2013). 

While this book is about remarried woman who wakes on a typical Sunday morning only to find her husband is missing, it has little to do with first love, which my novel is about.  Dani (Caletti’s female character) can’t remember them coming home the night before, she’s stumped.  Over the course of 10 days, she recounts every last moment together, the words they said, the moments they shared trying to recreate the possibility of what happened.  I was particularly taken with Caletti’s well-crafted sentences, the gritty language, and overall gripping tale that our lives–and our marriages aren’t always what they seem.

Interested in how HE’S GONE sparked my own creativity?  Here’s an excerpt written just last evening that will go into Slippery Slope (working title). 

“I can’t sleep.  The sheets are all baggy and sweaty.  Joe lies next to me, the hill of his shoulders lifting up with every inhale, a valley with every exhale.  He says I am his ocean, deep and pure.  Love can move mountains. 

The notebook I bought for these interrupted nights rests on the bedside table, amid the reading glasses, pens, and catalogs.  We write to taste life twice.  God, I love that quote.  Hearing the words pour from my internal dialogue, seeing the letters fall on the crisp paper, the sweet taste of those letters.  They pop-sizzle-pop like cheeries on my tongue, encompassing all of my senses.  Yet, I can’t make myself roll over and reach for it. 

My eyes glance back at Joe sleeping peacefully in the moonlight. It’s amazing how much the human eye can see in a darkened space.  Rods and cones, pupils and irises.  The mind’s eye.  Is he dreaming?  Of what?  His body is splayed like an exclamation mark, a warning.  What, Joe goes on inside of your mind as you are drifting into sleep, when you are stuck in that limbo land of awake-not-yet-asleep state?  Are there microcosms of thought twisting around an impetus of me and our family? 

Are there strobes of light and color gnarling, shaping, molding images of sprightly love?  Innocence and remembering.  Her. Your first love. 

I groan and reach for my notebook.  I’ve got to get these ideas down.  I pick it up; it feels of cool—malleable—those thoughts and ideas bending, my brain molding the thoughts into words I can transcribe. 

Joe mumbles something in his sleep.  It doesn’t sound like anything intelligible.  He huffs and jerks the sheet away from me, rolling his body onto his side, facing away from me; two lovers split, a bifurcation.  I swallow and twist my legs to the edge of the bed, dangling them over the edge.  Inhale, exhale.  The room smells of sticky, sour sleep.  The notebook beckons me.  Open me.  Write onto my pages.  Your secrets are safe here.

I lean forward snapping the notebook into my grasp.  The problem with words, once spoken they can never be retracted; once written they remain forever, like fingerprints on a heart. 

In the master bath, I flip on the light, close the door.  My legs are wobbly and weak, I let my body slide down, broken and confused.  The notebook falls from my hands, a splat on the tile, splayed open to a blank page.  I lean forward, rubbing my face in my hands.  The thoughts need to go away.  They need to get out my head.  I take the pen from the coiled binding of the notebook  and let my hand flow along the pages.  I have no idea what I am thinking, no idea of what to write.  My mind seems to know something I do not. 

1868.  You and me.  In the English countryside.  Stonewalls and moss.  Gray-blue skies.  Flowers and clover.  Violet.  Secret rendezvous.  Violent.  A class difference.  A life-long chase.  A marriage.  A binding.  A contract.  You promised. Steve.  SFK.  ILY.  Make the thoughts go away.  Violent, violet.  Again.  Violent, violet.  Again.  Violent, violet.    

Again.

My eyes assess the words, they mean nothing.  My head pounds, a loud banging, pulsing between my ears.  I am spent, tired.  Bound and broken on the floor. I reach up and grab the doorknob, stretching with my fingertips.  It feels so far away.  I press my body on the door, twist the knob.  The door opens and the weight of my body pushes me forward into the room.  I lay there for ten seconds, two minutes.  Honestly, I don’t know how long my body lays prone. 

I stir to the sound of Joe’s snoring.  He says he doesn’t snore, but he does.  The wind blows through the crack in the window, the curtains dance, moonlight falls on my bare legs.  I stand, ruffle the wrinkles from my nightshirt and shuffle to the medicine cabinet.  A past dental procedure.  Vicodin.  It glows like an amulet, a promise of good fortune.  It’s old, but I don’t care.  Maybe the half-life has expired; it’ll be less potent now.  I twist the child-safety cap and pop a pill into my mouth.  I turn the facet on, tip my head and cup my hands as I slurp the medication into my body.”

[Remember, this is an orginal work of fiction.  Copying or distributing as your own is strictly prohibited.]

For more information on Deb Caletti or HE’S GONE, please see:  Product Details(image retrieved from Amazon.com 6.14.13)

Jun11

The Teacher is Talking: Summer Literacy Fun

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By Leslie Lindsay

It may be summer but your kiddos still need to stretch their brains.  Here’s a fun way to keep the words a coming!375cc-summer-reading-draft-031609

  • Visit your library and stuff a basket full of books.  Try some new genres!  My 8 year old daughter was found browsing in the juvenile history section. Her favorite selections–Ancient Egypt, and the history of the Titantic. 
  • Start a journal.  Pick one up at your favorite discount store.  Write in it everyday…simple things like what you did and where you went will suffice.  If you (or your child) feels like going deeper, go for it!
  • Make a list of your favorite foods, put them in ABC order.  Maybe it’s a list of all of your favorite summertime foods: corn on the cob, watermelon, pasta salad.  Ask your mom to make some of those favorite dishes as a way to count down the days.
  • Stage a scavenger/nature hunt, create a map, make a list of things to find.  Gather some friends and go!
  • Read a book to your younger siblings or neighborhood friends.  Can you be the teacher? 
  • Look for words in hidden places.  Can you find words within words on street signs, billboards, around town?  What about in the pile of junk mail (ask mom and dad what mail you can sort through, first).
  • Sort through some magazines and catalogs and create a collage.  Make it all the same color, or make theme be that everything starts with the same letter/sound.  Get really challenging and make the same color/same sound. 
  • Read anything today!  An instruction manual, the back of a cereal box, a magazine or newspaper…then write a one paragraph summary of what you read.
  • Grab a friend or a sibling and write summer time words on your driveway or sidewalk.  Or, make a list of all of the things you’d like to do this summer: eat ice cream, catch butterflies, go to the splash pad, play kickball…maybe even dream a little…go to Disney, run on the beach.  The possibilities are endless!
  • Write and then perform a short play.  Adapt this to make it like Reader’s Theatre (read the script/no need to memorize, no props). 
  • Observe the night sky.  We do this on “Firepit Friday.”  Have a bonfire, roast some marshmallows and lean back and look at the sky.  What’d you see?  Can you describe it in using a new array of adjectives? Shimmery?  Sparkly?  Vast?  Bring a dictionary or thesarus with you.

What other ideas do you have?  Share them, share them!! 

Class dismissed…

Jun5

Write On, Wednesday! Writing about Home

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By Leslie Lindsay

Lately, a lot of the books I have read for pleasure have this underlying theme of home–and so does the novel I am working on.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  We tend to be better writers when we read content that interests us–and that’s written in a compelling manner.  We also tend to gravitate towards information that may have some connection to what we are currently working on, struggling with, or have an innate interest in–it’s all the power of the subconcious. 

So, what have I been reading? 

  • THE GLASS WIVES by Amy Sue Nathan.  Home and family shifts for Evie Glass, but she still remains rooted in family. 
  • IS THIS TOMORROW by Caroline Leavitt.  A 12-year old boy goes missing in 1950′s suburbia. 
  • WHAT ALICE FORGOT by Laine Moriarty.  This one is actually a re-read.  Since the main (suburban) character loses her memory, I was drawn back to this one as research for my novel-in-progress, hoping to glean a few instances I may have…ahem…forgotten.
  • BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell.  This guy always fascintates me!  His other books line my bookshelves, too.  Okay, it really doesn’t have a ton to do with “home,” but it has a lot of great information on priming, which is the psychological term for preparing yourself/your unconscious for generating ideas, feelings, concepts.  Will it help with my novel?  You bet!

Since today’s topic has to do with writing about home–a concept woven into many books and so dear to our world, I wanted to emphasize–and share–some of the techniques I learned from the Writer’s Institute in Madison this past spring. 

I attended a session called “The Trail of Breadcrumbs:  How to Find the Way Back Home.”  It was taught by Angela Voras-Hills, (a Madison writer, editor, & intructor) and it really got me thinking about my childhood home.  While I realize not every project that encompasses “home” will have to do with childhood, this particular class did.  Some tips I gleaned:

  • Home is where you are your truest self
  • Home does not always equal house
  • Home is a psychological journey; it’s dynamic
  • Tie in regionalisms to your home story.  (“A schmear of horseraddish” was used as an example in class.  What other regionalisms might you incorporate for your hometown?)
  • Incorporate sensory details.  How did that see/feel/taste?  In writing we use auditory and visual details a lot…throw in something lovely, but unexpected.
  • Try to leave out the nostalgia. You must be slightly detached to make “your” memories of home come alive to a reader who didn’t experience it first hand.

So what are you waiting for…Write On, Wednesday!!

 

Jun4

The Teacher is Talking: Getting Resourceful for Summer Break

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By Leslie Lindsay

It may be summer break in most areas of the country, so your classroom is bound to be shifting a bit.  Instead of neat rows of desks lined up in your neighborhood school, your child’s classroom is now the playground, the nature trail, the swimming pool, or perhaps a friendly day camp. 

There are plenty of ways to “sneak” in summer learning without being overly teacher-ly.  Here are some ideas uncovered in just the last few days for little or no cost to you.

  • Michaels Craft Stores have two summer tracks you may be interested in following.  Track One:  Kids Club. Meets every Saturday, starting June 1st and going thru July 6th.  For ages 3+, kids can benefit from a 30-minute hands-on crafting activity (all supplies included) with a Michaels staff member and bring home a craft. ($2/child). (Examples:  Father’s Day Card, Father’s Day Duck Tape Frame, Silly Shells,  4th of July Hat, and Summer Games).  All classes run every 30 minutes from 10-12noon. 
  • Michaels Craft Stores Track Two: Passport to Imagination. Explore the 7 continents and their amazing landmarks and icons in this 7-week voyage “around the globe!” For just $2 and 2-hours, kids can participate in a crafting adventure Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays beginning June 17th.  You must register to join the fun and reserve your spot.  www.Michaels.com/Passport
  •   Check your local library!  Remember those fun summer reading book programs from your day a child?  Chances are, your library is still doing something similar for this generation.  Our library hosts a reading group, book logs, suggested titles, and small prizes for achieving certain levels.  Libraries often have low-cost or no-cost afternoon and evening programs designed just for kids and families. 
  • You may also consider hosting a pee-wee book group.  Pick a theme or a classic title geared to your child’s ages and interests. Invite a few friends (3-4 is a good number to start) and get reading. Parents, you read the book, too!  Pick an interval that works for you–meet weekly  (or twice weekly) to discuss your progress, or when the book is complete.  Make it fun!  Bake, draw, paint, or craft an activity to go along with your book.  (At our house, we’re planning to read several chapter books about 3rd grade).  For younger kids, try a series of picture books like Fancy Nancy or Thomas the Tank Engine.  Double-duty:  get reading hours for that library summer reading log while spending time with friends!
  • Panera Bread offers a BIT Kids program.  That’s Baker-in-Training.  Great for scouts and other service-minded groups, but also for kiddos who love to bake!  Reservations must be made in advance, classes are typically 1.5 hours and require a minimum of 10 kiddos ages 5-12 years.  An adult chaperone is also required to stay for every 5 children. 
  • Gather up a group of friends from your kiddie book group, neighbors, or moms and tots group.  For more information, http://www.panerabread.com/about/bit/

More ideas coming up next week!  For now–it’s summer–keep it fun, fresh, and educational!  Class dismissed…

May31

Fiction Friday:

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By Leslie Lindsay Misc Feb-March 2013 012

Working on something new to piece into my novel-in-progress, this is meant to show Steve, a biomedical engineer’s obession with his first-love, Annie.  Let me know your thoughts! 

“The only thing I know is promises should have been made.  A contract, an algorithm of love: 

Girlfriend says she needs spaceàbreak-up.  End of relationship.

Option Two:

Girlfriend says she needs spaceàgive her space but not too much. Keep her hanging in your world.  Because you love her too damn much. 

It’s like the fine art of balancing a chemical equation.  God, but Annie hated chemistry.  She was the entropy agent, blasting into the relationship generating thermodynamic heat, a contrast between order and disorder. 

I will her into my mind, fast-forwarding the years. Annie is small, delicate, frail.  She sits in a chair at a sunny window.  Her hands are mottled with age spots, prominent veins blistering blue and purple.  I cup her hand with my own, watching it transform before my eyes—youthful, slender straight fingers spread forth.  I lean in and kiss her cheek.  “You’re only getting better,” my voice raspy, riddled with emotion.  She looks up at me, blue eyes glassy.  I clasp a necklace around her, brushing her gray hair from the back of her neck.  She shivers as she turns to face me.  A beautiful woman. Mine. 

Again, and again.  And again.”

[This is a work of fiction.  Working title, "Slippery Slope."  Please do not share or take this original work as your own without person.  Thank you!]

May29

Write On, Wednesday: Author Amy Sue Nathan Talks about her Debut Novel, THE GLASS WIVES

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By Leslie Lindsay

Apraxia Monday: He Talks Funny Author Jeanne Buesser & Give-a-Way

I am honored to introduce Amy Sue Nathan to “Write On, Wednesday.”  Amy is a mother of a college-age son, a high school daughter and two dogs.  She is also the recently published author of THE GLASS WIVES (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013).  She’s generously offered a complimentary copy of the book to one lucky reader.  Amy resides in the Chicagoland area.  I just started reading the book, and already I can tell it’s going to be a great journey.  (image retrieved 5.26.13 from Amazon.com)

Product Details

L2:  First—the book!  Congratulations on such a wonderful accomplishment many of us only dream about.  What’s it like to finally have your book “out there?” 

Amy Sue Nathan:Having my book out in the real world is surreal on one hand, and very tangible on the other. I have likened it to an expected surprise, like a baby. You know it’s going to happen, you’ve been preparing, you’ve read all the books, made all the plans—but when it happens, it’s still full of unknowns, twists, turns, and surprises. Hopefully, most of them good surprises!

L2: THE GLASS WIVES is all about family.  Of course, many women readers can relate to that topic, but what makes THE GLASS WIVES different is that it is based on this idea of an unconventional family.  How do you see the vision of ‘family’ changing in the 21st century? 

Amy Sue Nathan: I think what is changing is the idea of what is unconventional.  One of the reasons I wanted to write a novel about a “newfangled” family was because I felt there was a lot of lip service given to families that weren’t mom/dad/kids.  I’d heard people say that family is what you need it to be, or want it to be, or what you make it, but when I divorced in 2002, after being with my ex for 20 years, all of a sudden (or so it seemed), I was not longer part of a full-fledged family in the eyes of many people, and in a way, even to myself. I wondered where all the acceptance had gone and realized it was idea of a single mom family that people (or the people in my life) were okay with, but the actual fact of it, no, they didn’t really deal well with it. I had to get a grip on it, so I did. But most people still look at a single-parent headed household as a whole missing a part. I think that once people actually accept families as equal in weight, no matter their configuration, then the vision of family will actually resemble the fact of family.

L2: As I was looking over your website, I came across your definition of family, “home isn’t broken unless there isn’t love inside it’s walls.”  Do you believe that home truly is where the heart is?  Can you expand a bit on this quote? 

Amy Sue Nathan: I’m a homebody. No matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, I’m always drawn toward my home, which for the past 14 years has been a ranch house in a tiny suburb of Chicago. I shudder when someone refers to kids of divorce being from a broken home. Often, divorce fixes a family more than it breaks it.  Obviously the word “broken” has negative connotations, and that bothers me. I may have a broken chair in the dining room, but neither my home, nor my family, is broken.  It’s the matter of another perception of unconventional families that I try to dispel in THE GLASS WIVES. 

L2:  How did you arrive at the title, THE GLASS WIVES?  I am assuming a sense of fragility, the fact that families can crumble and break…or was there something more? 

Amy Sue Nathan: Honestly? The book had several different titles, but the one that stuck was The Glass House. Then, about six weeks before my agent was going to start submitting to editors I was working on a final edit or two and the title hit me. The book was about The Glass Wives. I knew at that moment it was a keeper.  And yes, there is an element of the metaphorical glass, and also the literal. The main characters’ last name is Glass.

L2: On to agents…can you give us writers some sense of what your journey was like when you set out to find an agent?  What advice would you give a writer who is determined to have their work represented? 

Amy Sue Nathan: It might be cliché to say DON’T GIVE UP but it’s the truth. I’ve come across many aspiring authors who send a dozen queries and stop.  If someone is determined to be published traditionally, as I was, then they need to be in it for the long haul.  I sent 116 queries over 10 months before signing with my agent, Jason Yarn, of Paradigm.  I’d also recommend listening to any advice any agent gives you.  You don’t have to follow the advice, but it’s a good idea to think about it, see if it makes sense, and make changes if need be.  Another thing to do is to continue writing while you’re querying.  Write short stories or a new book or essays or something else to remind you why you’re sending queries.  That’s because you want to keep writing and you want to be published by a publisher.

L2:   You’ve been blogging since 2006 as a “mommy blogger.”  Would you say this was the beginning of your writing career, or was this simply a by-product of your love for writing?  [Be sure to check out Amy's blog Women Fiction Writers at http://womensfictionwriters.wordpress.com/]

Amy Sue Nathan:My professional writing career started in the 1980’s. I was a writer at a few nonprofit organizations and corporations before becoming a fulltime stay-at-home mom.  I had a variety of part-time jobs over the years, some included writing and some did not.  I started writing for myself again around the time leading up to my divorce, when I realized the only creative thing I was doing was adding peas and carrots to macaroni and cheese. In 2006 I went on a date (a one-date-only date) and the guy asked me if I’d ever considered blogging, because my writing style in the emails we’d exchanged seemed really suited to it.  I never saw him again, but that week I started a blog, and by the end of the year I’d had my first essay published in The Chicago Tribune, where I published pieces in about 10 issues through 2009.

L2: WomenFictionWriters.com was founded in 2011.  Can you tell us a little more about your blog and what type of resources exist there? 

Amy Sue Nathan: I started the blog because I was looking for a place to connect with other writers who wrote what I define as women’s fiction—which are stories about a women’s journey that do not center on a romantic relationship, at all. At this point I’m seeing that there are many definitions for the genre, and a bunch of perceptions, not all of which I like, but to each her own. Right?  At WFW I try to focus on the authors, books, and craft of women’s fiction. I interview authors and often it’s as much about the author as a person, his or writing and life, as it is about the book.  The craft posts are really popular, because I think so many writing posts are either very generic or very specific—and on WFW we try to bring everything back to women’s fiction, which doesn’t happen many other places.

L2: Can you give us aspiring writers some words of wisdom on the craft? 

Amy Sue Nathan: My most recent advice to myself is to separate business from craft.  When I’m writing I can’t think about selling the book or even about the readers, I just have to tell the story in the best way I can.  There will hopefully be time later to think about the needs and wants of others. Writing, even when you want to publish, has to be selfish at first. Write YOUR story as YOU see it.  Tweak it later.  But never write to the market because by the time you’re finished, the market will have changed. Write on, Wednesday: Decontrusting a Novel

L2: Finally, will we be hearing more from you?  What’s next?  Another book?  Can you give us a glimpse inside?

Amy Sue Nathan: My work-in-progress is about a single mom, blogging, secrets, and lies—and where it all can lead if you’re not careful. Or even if you are.  [note from Leslie--this book was just sold to St. Martin's yesterday!  Stay tuned]

Thank you for having me on your blog, Leslie!

Apraxia Monday: He Talks Funny Author Jeanne Buesser & Give-a-Way

***WANT A COMPLIMENTARY COPY OF THE GLASS WIVES?***  Of course you do!!  Just drop me a line at leslie_lindsay@hotmail with “GLASS WIVES” in subject line.  Tell me to enter you in the give-a-way.  I will.  Pay attention…I’ll contact you by email if you name is chosen at random.  Contest ends Friday, May 31st.  Good luck!! (Your email won’t be saved, or used for anything else–just the contest!)

Amy Sue Nathan‘s debut novel, THE GLASS WIVES, published by St. Martin’s Press May 2013.  In addition to blogging, her stories and essays have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times online, The Washington Post online, The Huffington Post, Chicago Parent, Grey Sparrow Journal, Rose and Thorn Journal, Scribblers On The Roof, The Verb, Hospital Drive Journal and The Stone Hobo. She’s also a freelance fiction editor, and a reader for literary agents.  I’ve also been fortunate to contribute to four amazing writing sites, Writer Unboxed, Beyond The Margins, The Book Pregnant Blog, and Girlfriends Book Club. I’m currently serving as Secretary for the RWA-WF chapter, a contributer to the Writer Unboxed newsletter, and a member of the 2013 Class at The Debutante Ball blog. 
May28

The Teacher is Talking: Establishing Rules for Summer

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By Leslie Lindsay (image source: kidssummerprogram.com)

We try to be timely and topical here on “The Teacher is Talking,” so with that in mind, I’d like to share with you a little glimpse of our Sunday morning family meeting.  The topic:  summer rules and expectations. 

Kate, my 2nd grader and her little sister, Kelly (kindergarten) affectionately refer to themseleves as “red-year-olds,” are sitting around our round kitchen table grasping at breakfast items, lifing their skinny little bottoms up out of their chairs when my husband and I locked eyes across the table.  “I think it’s time to talk about summer rules and expectations,” he grumbled. 

That got the red-year-olds attention.  They sat down and looked at their daddy, “What do you mean?” 

“He means,” I pause and look to the girls, “That summer is not going to be a free for all.  We’ll have rules, boundaries…but also some fun.” 

The four of us mapped out some summer rules (we’ll call them expectations–it sounds less jail-like that way) and some fun challenges…as well as rewards/fun things to do. 

Here’s our Rule List: 

  • Use the garage door only.  (NO kitchen door, no front door)
  • Shoes have a place–in your bin in the laundry room.
  • Do not feed friends without asking first (their parents as well as yours–think allergies!)
  • Stay in sight of the house at all times.
  • If you go farther from house, ask an adult
  • Use the buddy system
  • You will given a warning before it’s time to come in.  Use that time to clean up and say good-bye to friends
  • You should spend at least 30 minutes a day reading or doing something academic

Fun Activities/Challenges:

  • Get all the way across the monkey bars (that’s for our kindergartner)
  • Read a Junie B. Jones book on own all the way through
  • Participate in an orienteering project created by dad
  • Okay, there’s more…just not remembering everything!

Rewards (girls earn points for completing the above challenges.  Points can be applied to rewards):

  • A trip to the rock climbing place
  • Bounce Town
  • Special 1:1 with a parent
  • Have a friend over
  • Go swimming
  • Slumber party
  • Go to the movies

The girls seem game for something like this.  Whew!  : )  Today, I stocked up on poster board, glitter glue pens, stickers, and markers.  Over the course of the next few evenings we’ll work on our boards and when summer’s out–we’ve got it in the bag!

Remember, keep your discussion about summer activities and expectations open, fun, and then post in a highly visual place (accessible)…because out of sight, out of mind!

Class dismissed! 

 

 

May24

Fiction Friday: Excerpt from Slippery Slope

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By Leslie Lindsay Write on, Wednesday: Imagine a Better Writer

Combing back through that novel-in-progress–trimming, saving, adding–general revising.  Here’s one of the early chapters.  [Remember, this is a work of original fiction and is not intended to represent anyone living or dead.  It it a figment of the author's imagination.  Borrowing or making your own is strictly prohibited.  Thanks for your understanding].  Enjoy!

An excepert from Slippery Slope:

“I married Joe for several reasons.  One, he asked me.  Two, he had good genes.  And perhaps three, I was in love.  With a mass of coiled PhD brains in his head, I knew he’d pass on intelligence, a trait 86% of the population finds valuable, along with a sense of humor, creativity, and problem-solving ability. 

And so we made babies.  Two of them to be exact, at the preferred two-and-a-half year interval, enough time physicians believe a woman’s body has healed and returned to normal, and psychologists have determined is the “appropriate developmental spacing.”  But now I wonder, would Kenna and Madi’s sweet chatter somehow sound differently if they had been conceived with Steve, and not the deep, profound adult love I made with my husband

 I was torn.  I wanted Steve go away, but I also wanted him to show up again.

In reality, he had.  He left a bit of himself behind, a trace.  Actually, it was a crumb.  A Dorito that attracted a colony of ants.  My girls screamed when they found it on the front stoop and came running to me in the backyard where I was preparing the flower beds for winter.  Digging up and dumping plants that wouldn’t survive, covering the furniture with tarps. 

“Mommy, mommy, mommy!  Bugs!  Get ‘em!” 

Setting down my trowel and brushing my soiled hands down the front of my jeans, I made my way to the front of the house where I saw the pile of ants covering the orange crumb beneath the movement of tiny black bodies.  I could barely make out the chip anymore. 

Steve. 

I picked up the bug infested Dorito, tossed it into the trashcan and smothered it with Raid. It was an unusually warm fall and I felt sort of guilty for taking away the ant’s food source.  They, too were probably gearing up for winter, hoping to take it back to their ant friends in the colony so they could munch on it for months to come. 

But could it be that it was also a source of food for me?  Food for the thoughts he consumed, nibbling at my essence and eating my conscience?  Did that make me his food?

He left that day almost as unexpectedly as he’d arrived.  He always did have a way with arrivals and departures.  This time, after professing his love for me once again and my flippant response, he gathered his legs up from under him like a baby colt and said, “Thanks for lunch.” 

 He got into his shiny SUV and started it with a click before disappearing with a nearly silent purr. 

It was big change from the car we used to make-out in, a red Cavalier that started with a rumble that never ended because of an old muffler. 

***Be sure to LIKE my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/LeslieALindsay1?ref=hl***

May22

Write On, Wednesday: Playing with Cards

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By Leslie Lindsay  (image source: www.benzinga.com 5.22.13)

Yesterday I booked a trip to Vegas, so it’s no surprise I have been in my kitchen playing cards.  And what the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China…or writing for that matter? 

The trip is to celebrate the wedding of a childhood friend and the cards well, they have nothing to do with gambling and everything to do with something just as risky–my first novel. 

Affectionally, I refer to myself a ‘pantser,’ that is someone who writes by the seat of her pants.  I don’t plot.  I don’t like it.  I feel it stifles the creative process, rather than juicing them up (my critique partner claims plotting excites her to delve into the story).  I like to deliberate and then get hit with a burst of inspiration I can’t possibly let slip by. 

So when my completed Slippery Slope had some holes and a few too many overall words (doesn’t that sound like an oxymoron…how can a story have holes and be too long?  Beats me), my critique partner determined it was time for me to “pull out the cards.”  As in Tarot cards?  Nah…those are in my story, but not in my real life. 

I painstakenly sat at my laptop, a stack of pastel colored notecards at my side and went through my manuscript chapter by chapter, almost word-by-word.  I assigned a color to each main POV character and then other colors for backstory, section headings, etc.  Here’s how the chips fell (sorry, can’t get out of that gambling metaphor): 

  • Main POV female character is pink
  • Main POV male character is blue
  • Random tertiary character is yellow
  • Female backstory is purple
  • Male backstory is green
  • Section headings/quotes are white

This afternoon, I spread them out on my kitchen island and studied them.  In my hand, I held several cards (for note taking) and a sheet of tiny smiley face stickers. 

Soccer spring 2013 037 Soccer spring 2013 038

  • Red face = cut &/or severely revise
  • Green face = BATP (big-ass turning point)
  • Yellow face = I really like this, even if it’s not relevant.  And sometimes the yellow and green overlapped.  When that happened, I cheered!
  • But the problem is, there are a lot of cards that are left blank.  Meaning, they have plot points on them, but I am not sure if I like it, if it needs to be cut, if it’s even relevant.  Some of those cards are just transition chapters…and do they need to stay?  I don’t know yet. 

Now the big task of weeding out those chapters with the red sticker.  You’d think that would be easy, but not really.  It’s not that I don’t want to cut some of my work, it’s just that well–it impacts the flow I thought I developed. 

In the end, it working with the cards was a little madening, but it did help to be able to look at things as a big picture and then be able to manipulate them (by moving around my counter top, stopping to scrutinize) and the ones that are crud…well, they just may go to Vegas.

Write on, Wednesday!

For more information, look to the July/August 2013 issue of Writer’s Digest, specifically the article, “5 things Novelists Can Learn from Screenwriters.” I just did.  Here’s what the author, Scott Atkinson says: 

“A story can be built in scenes.  Some novelists start on page one and knock out a daily word count until they type “the end.”  But if that doesn’t work for you, don’t worry.  It doesn’t work for [screenwriter], either.  He never starts on page 1 of a screenplay.  He starts with the basic theme and overall journey–what screenwriters call controlling idea–and lets it come together, scene by scene–and not necessarily in order. 

He thinks, “What am trying to write about?….You may have some ideas for scenes and you jot them down as quickly as possible, and start to imagine where they might fall into that mauscript/screenplay.  And then gradually you start piecing tigehter a collage of those things either on cards or colored pencils, in a notebook, or on a piece of paper, and then you start figuring out what happens when.”

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May17

Fiction Friday: Meet a New Character from my Novel-in-Progress

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By Leslie LindsayWrite on, Wednesday: Decontrusting a Novel

After culling through  my completed manuscript and making notes…okay, about 100 color-coded notecards, I have come to the conclusion that I need another layer woven into the tapestry of my story.  Meet Nolan Baxter.  He’s there for a reason: to impart information to the reader that main characters Annie and Steve may not know or have access to.  He’s there to make readers say, “WTF?”  and he’s going to help tie things together in the end. 

Take a peek.  Let me know your thoughts.  Remember, this is an original work of fiction. Please do not make your own. 

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“Nolan Baxter wrote the obligatory ghost story on Halloween, the stories of lasting love on Valentine’s Day and interviews folks around the Bean about homelessness.  Worse, Nolan Baxter was a chameleon, his colors changing based on who he was around—and how he could please them, never fully understanding who he was and what made him tick.

          Human interest stories became his passion.  What interested others surely would interest him.  But, it didn’t. 

          Still yet, he had a job to do.  When the senior editor got wind of a special exhibit at the art institute, Nolan armed himself with a notebook and trucked down Michigan Avenue. 

          The flags flapped in the wind as Nolan traipsed up the steps of the massive stone building, his Converse sneakers ill-matched with his wide-whale cords and Gingham shirt.  He nodded to the overly large bronze lions standing guard—now weathered and turning green—commissioned from sculptor Edward Kemeys.  He found it interesting that the lions had unofficial names—the southern-most sculpture called “stands in an attention of defiance,” whereas the northern- most lion is referred to as “on the prowl.”  He knew all thanks to a past story he penned for the Trib on the 120th anniversary of the building. 

           When Nolan reached the front windows of the Art Institute, he flashed his press pass and followed an elderly docent inside. He marched forward and headed down the main staircase to the lower level where the traveling exhibits were on display.

           To his luck, one of the resident art professors shuffled about the lower level rounding up folks for a tour.

 “Art is like magic,” he began.  “Not many would identify art as magical,but I am not just anyone.”  Nolan rolled his eyes at the professor’s pretentious comment. He thought he had escaped the brainy type after graduating from journalism school.  No such luck.   “You see, artists have been employing the visual illusion since the fifteenth century, when Renaissance painters invented techniques to trick your brain into thinking that a flat canvas is three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes in a still life is a bowl of luscious fruit.  It’s not—we all know it’s oil on canvas.”

           The crowd stirred, shifting their backpacks and hips, a mass of smelly bodies bathed in bad clothes and body odor.  Nolan nestled his pad of paper in his palm and feigned interest.  

            The Art professor began again, “Renaissance painters realized they could manipulate atmospheric effects by making tones weaken and colors pale as they recede from view.  They used shading, occlusion, and vanishing points to make their paintings…hyperrealistic.” 

          Nolan stifled a yawn and cracked his knuckles. 

          “Now, let’s fast-forward to 17th century Netherlands.  The Dutch developed a style of painting the French referred to as Trompe l’oeil.  That means, “trick the eye.”  These life-like paintings seem to jump from the frame.” The professor jumped a foot or so off the ground to illustrate his point. 

           Nolan Baxter clenched his jaw.  The professor side-stepped to a piece of art hanging on the creamy white walls.  “For example, if you’ll look at The Attributes of the Painter by Gysbrechts, you’ll see just that.” 

         Several overweight women huddled to the painting on the wall.  Sure enough, what appeared on the completed art was a three-dimensional depiction of the supplies of a painter.  A wooden frame with a darkened piece of canvas rolling off at the corner, paint brushes, and a pallet seemed to dangle from a painted-on nail.”