Writing is An Addiction

 

We’re having some work done on our condo and it will be a hectic week, so I’m taking the easy way out and populating today’s blog post with quotes about being a writer.

Why We Write

“I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn’t, I would die.” Isaac Asimov

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” Somerset Maugham

“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can’t help it.” Leo Rosten

“If you can see yourself surviving the rest of your life without writing, then don’t try writing. It’s a passion. It’s something that pushes you, that thrills you.” Stephen Bly

“You might be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.” Stephen Leigh

“Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)

It’s Not an Easy Job

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you—as if you haven’t been told a million times already—that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” Harlan Ellison

“I would never encourage anyone to be a writer. It’s too hard.” Eudora Welty

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades (1947)

***

Stay tune next week for quotes on other problems writers face.

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The image at the top of this post is an illustration created by Frank Merrill for a 19^th century printing of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Portraying a Character's Attitude Toward Slavery

 

One dilemma that a writer of historical fiction faces is how to make the story historically accurate without offending readers. As mentioned last week, I faced this dilemma when writing my middle-grade historical novel Learning to Surrender with a protagonist who grew up in a culture where slavery was the established way of life.

My protagonist has never thought deeply about the issue, but here is a quote from the first chapter showing her initial feelings.  

As Charlotte waited for the artillery to stop firing, she frowned. Why did the North want to get rid of slavery? The Gibsons had always treated their slaves well, and Benjamin and Nettie didn’t have to worry about anything. They had a comfortable place to sleep and plenty of food to eat, and her parents never beat them. Yes, there were some bad masters and mistresses, but that was the fault of the owners, not the system.

That passage takes place while Charlotte, her family, and their two slaves are cowering in a small cave as cannonballs and bullets fly around them. The danger Charlotte is in and the fear it causes her create some sympathy for her in spite of her attitude toward slavery. At the least, they give the reader a reason not to give up on her yet.

The story tries to be true to the historical context in which slavery existed and was accepted by the white community in the deep South, but it also shows my protagonist grappling with the issue and learning what slavery meant to those in figurative (as well literal) chains. Here is the book blurb:

When the Union armies surround Vicksburg, 12-year-old Charlotte and her family find themselves living in a cave. As she discovers what it is like to lose control of her life, will her attitude toward slavery change?

Of course it does. Otherwise, she would have been an unsympathetic character all the way until the end.

If the readers had gotten that far.

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My research indicates that the image at the top of this post, titled “The Auction Sale,” is one of six illustrations created by Hammet Billings for the 1852 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is in the public domain because of its age.

A Historical Dilemma

 

Last Sunday’s Bible class topic was Paul’s letter to Philemon, which deals with slavery. It reminded me of the struggle I had with that issue when writing Learning to Surrender, which has since been published and is available on Amazon. The story takes place during the Civil War siege of Vicksburg, and my dilemma over slavery was how to make the book historically accurate without offending my readers. This week’s blog post is a slightly revised reprint from February 19, 2024, just before the book was published. Next week I’ll tell you how I resolved the dilemma mentioned in the reprinted post.

Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

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The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.

Developing Characters

 

The protagonist in my current work-in-progress has to give a keynote speech on developing characters. The majority of the speech goes horribly wrong, but it starts well. In fact, I’m so much in love with her opening that I have used it in the next two paragraphs. What follows them is an abbreviated version of how Jo might have continued if she hadn’t been burned out. The writing project I reference is one of my own, however.

William Faulkner said, “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” That’s been my experience, too. As writers, we don’t create our characters. They create themselves.

So where do we find them, and how do we keep up with them once we do?

Every writer is different, but here is my process.

Unlike Faulkner, I begin with a plot idea, but, like him, it is my characters who shape the story. I find them in bits and pieces of the people around me in real life, and, occasionally, in books. My mind accumulates the knowledge subconsciously, and it pops out when I need a character.

Imagine Lewis Carroll creating the Mad Hatter and his friends. He can’t have known anyone with those exact personalities, and obviously the traits he used were greatly exaggerated. But he must have known people with the seeds of those characteristics or he couldn’t have painted such a convincing picture.

I create the characters, and I get to tell them what to do. But sometimes they have a mind of their own. When that happens, it’s my job to decide whether to let them follow it.

For example, I have been working on a story where a girl heads out west in a wagon train with her older sister and brother-in-law. Although all of them are inexperienced, my original plan was to make both the sister and the brother-in-law particularly naïve and helpless. It wasn’t long before the brother-in-law rebelled, however.

To put it in Faulker’s words, the character stood up on his feet and began to move, and I had to trot along behind him trying to keep up. Fortunately, he knew himself better than I did, and the book is better for letting him take the lead.

In the long run, it’s my book, and I get to decide how my characters will act. But forcing them to do things they don’t want to do creates cardboard cutouts. It also proves the truth of a quote by G.K. Chesterton, “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

Because sometimes the characters know themselves better than I do.

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The image at the top of this post is one of John Tenniel’s illustrations for the original 1865 edition of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Plotting a New Book

 

I’ve just begun the first draft of a new book. This one is women’s fiction about a writer who is burned out. No, it isn’t me, especially not the burnout part, although we do share the same writing philosophy and practices.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the landscape is set out like a giant chess board and Alice has to figure out how to get across it to change from a pawn into a queen. That’s sort of how I look at setting out to write a book.

What follows is a reprint of my July 20. 2020 post. The murder mystery that’s referenced is my still unpublished COVID-19 project.

The Power of Flexibility

Writers are sometimes classified as either plotters or pantsers. Plotters have every twist and turn planned before they even start writing, while pantsers start with a germ of an idea and then sit down and write by the seat of their pants. Then there are the many writers, like me, who fall somewhere in between.

I start with an outline. I know the beginning and the ending and then pencil in each chapter. That’s sort of like deciding where to go on vacation and then choosing the route to take. Maybe we want to get there quickly, so we stick to the freeways. Or we decide to take the scenic route. Or maybe we want to see specific places that require us to go out of the way.

The outline is what gets me started, just as a trip itinerary does. But although the destination rarely changes, the route may.

As a trip planner, I know every stop I intend to make. Then one site takes less time than we expected so we add something else nearby. Or another site is so fascinating that we spend extra time there and may cut something else out. We may even decide to leave the freeway and wander along the scenic route or vice versa. To be honest, though, that doesn’t happen very often. My trip planning is more rigid than my writing outline.

As I write, new ideas pop into my mind. They often fit within the current structure, but that isn’t always the case. I’ve already added two unplanned chapters to the first draft of my murder mystery because I need them to round out my main POV character. I have also cut—or rather combined—several chapters after I realized that my secondary POV character wouldn’t be present for those events and would have to learn about them second-hand rather than by participating in them. Sometimes telling is necessary, but it takes less space than showing does.

If I didn’t start with an outline, I would soon get lost. But if I stuck to it rigidly, I would miss out on the scenes that pop up along the way.

Flexibility is key.

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The image at the top of this post is one of John Tenniel’s illustrations for the original 1872 edition of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Celebrating Moms

 

This is the eleventh Mother’s Day that I will celebrate without mine. A year-and-a-half before she died, I wrote a poem to her and all mothers. I suppose it works best for mothers of young children, but it celebrates all of them. Here it is.

For Mother’s Day

 

More precious than diamonds,

     More fun than movie nights,

Sweeter than chocolate,

     Lovelier than roses.

 

Mothers.

 

Necklaces, rings, and bracelets,

     Tear-jerkers and popcorn,

Cadbury, Godiva, and Fannie May,

     Fragrant Damask and climbing Floribunda.

 

Mother’s Day gifts.

 

Best of all are happy children,

     Sentimental verses sincerely meant,

Gifts made with childish hands,

     Burnt toast on breakfast trays.

 

Love.

 

Happy Mother’s Day.

Cheap Art

 

My regular readers know that I love photography. I’ll never be an Ansel Adams or a Dorothea Lange, but I enjoy taking pictures and seeing what I can do with them.

Over the years I’ve used my images for jigsaw puzzles, placemats, note cards, mugs, and, of course, wall art. My office is decorated with photos from my travels and our dining room has a wall of Lake Michigan lighthouses, but my most recent venture is our newly remodeled bathroom. Instead of re-hanging the art we had before, Roland suggested using some of my photographs. And since the predominant color in the bathroom is now grey, I suggested using black-and-white images.

After going through some of my photos, we decided on a waterfall theme and selected three images to enlarge and hang. The one at the top of this post is Multnomah Falls in Oregon, which I took while on a cruise of the Columbia and Snake Rivers in 2025. The two that follow were both taken in Minnesota during a 2015 research trip. The first is the High Falls at Pigeon River, and the second was taken somewhere along Minnesota 61.

The title of this post is a little misleading, though. By the time I paid to get the images blown up to 20 X 16 inches, bought three nice frames, and replaced the original plexiglass in the frames with a non-glare version, it wasn’t cheap art. Still, I’m happy with the result and prefer what we have to something we might have bought “off the rack.”

It’s nice to have a hobby that I can get some use from.