On Vacation!

I am taking a break from my musings to do a revision of my novel! Enjoy these photos of my garden....

On Going "Down the Shore"

I’ve just returned from my annual “anchor” trip to Somers Point, NJ, on the bayside near Ocean City. New Englanders don’t get the Jersey Shore at all. Off season, give me the Cape or the southern coast of Maine, but in the summer, there’s room enough for all of us “down the shore,” from the brash and bustling casinos of Atlantic City, to the well-appointed mansions of Margate and Longport, and the year round suburban towns that dot the coast. Here is a sampler of what I like:

• Key lime margaritas overlooking the Bay
• Long walks on the bike path from Somers Point
• Minimal traffic jams
• Beautiful, well-kept gardens
• The little ranch house we call home
• Pancakes and omelets at the Bayside Restaurant
• Splitting entrees at fancy restaurants
• Finding bargains
• Quiet nights, sunny days
• Wide beaches, soft sand
• Real surf
• Decompressing and de-stressing
• Childhood memories of Margate
• Lucy, the Giant Elephant
• Buying Jersey tomatoes at Mazzeos
• Walking the Boardwalk at Ocean City and Atlantic City
• Catching up with my friend Jackie and planning our lives for the next year

Not surprisingly, the Jersey shore serves as the place of inspiration for the protagonists in the story that Jackie and I created originally as a screenplay, and that, I hope, will be my first novel.

On Markers, Anchors, and Routines

[Musing alert. The following entry will probably make no difference to your life.]

My annual car inspection seemed to come up very quickly this year. It’s a marker for me, signifying the passage of time. There are others. Some are odious, like my mammogram or my three times a year dental cleaning visits (I hate all the scraping and high, whiny machines that strip of tartar and stains). Some are potentially pleasurable, like birthdays. Some are sad, like the anniversaries of the deaths of family members.

In contrast, anchors are like comfort food. Anchors are recurring positive events, activities, TV or radio programs, or routines that help to center me. I look forward to them. Without them, something seems missing. For many years, “A Prairie Home Companion” was an anchor for me. Then one day, Garrison Keillior went off the air, and I felt quite bereft. Fortunately, he returned, though perhaps having been abandoned once, I was more reluctant to allow the show to resume its anchor status. When an anchor disappears, some major readjustment is necessary.

Holidays often serve as anchors. Christmas with my family in London used to be an anchor. I lost that anchor when my family members passed away. In contrast, Thanksgiving was never an anchor holiday. My husband and I rarely do the same thing twice.

And then there are routines. Whereas an anchor might play out differently from occasion to occasion, routines rely on a fixed set of activities and may occur with more regularity—like the morning cup of coffee with the sports section—but they may be infrequent as well. Most of us take some pleasure in our routines. On my first day of that trip to London, I had a routine. Arrive early in the morning, be picked up by my sister and brother-in-law, have a small breakfast upon arrival (usually toast and a soft boiled egg), a couple of hours’ nap, a little lunch, and then a visit to my mum and dad for tea and cake.

For many people, their annual vacations to the same spot serve as anchors. I am about to leave for my yearly anchor trip—my pilgrimage, as I call it, to the Jersey Shore with my long-time friend, whom I only see once a year. For a few days each summer but one since 1995, we have occupied the house of a friend while he is away. It’s a simple ranch house in a suburban bayside community, but it feels like home. We have watched it morph from its original 70s decor of gold shag carpet and dark paneled walls to a brighter, cleaner look with new appliances and central air conditioning. Though relatively brief, the trip serves a major source of recharging for both of us. During this time, we also have our routines--our daily walks on the bike path, our trip to Mazzeo’s to buy local produce for our healthy eating intentions, our check-in at Talbots sale, our visit to the local gallery, our final breakfast on the deck of a little café. In its way, the trip is a marker.

I suppose it’s possible that one can become too dependent on one’s anchors and not venture out of one’s comfort zone. But for me, it’s the anchors that make the adventuresome turns possible, like writing. Writing is not an anchor activity, and although it is something I do regularly, neither is it a routine. It requires some gearing up. But once inside the zone, I can go for hours. And then how nice it is at the end of it all to shut off the computer and delve into the bedtime routine.

On Using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to Create Character Personalities

A challenge for any fiction writer whose books are not solely plot driven is to develop memorable characters. These characters should be distinguishable from one another by their quirks, styles of speech, and patterns of behavior, and as they change, they should act in believable and consistent manners. Over the span of 300 or more pages, this is no small feat. There are tools we can draw on from other fields to provide a framework. One of my favorites is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which I enthusiastically embraced in my former lives as a career counselor and administrator.

Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Meyers expanded on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types and made it more accessible. Although developed several decades before, the MBTI came into vogue in the 1980s when a number of books about it were published, including the second edition of A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Isabel Briggs Myers and Mary H. McCaulley, Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., 1985) as well as the more popular Please Understand Me (David Kiersey and Marilyn Bates, 1978; new version now available). For awhile the MBTI was a very popular in corporate settings.

In brief, the MBTI poses four dichotomous scales designed to describe a person’s preferences in relation to her perceptions and actions. The names that were assigned to these scales can be a bit misleading in that they may conjure up images different from those intended. Simplistically put, the four scales are:

Introversion (I)-extroversion (E): Where does your psychic energy come from? Extroverts obtain much of their energy from being with others; introverts prefer being inside their own heads and may be drained by spending too much time with others, especially large groups. (Many actors and writers are introverts in this sense; many salespeople are extroverts.) Note that extroverts are much more common than introverts.

Sensing (S)-intuition (N): How do you collect and generate information? The sensing person focuses on concrete information and details gathered through their five senses. The intuitive person prefers the world of possibilities and ideas. (For examples of a sensor versus an intuitor, think George W. Bush versus Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln.) However, although we may associate creativity with intuitors, sensors can also be very creative.

Thinking (T)-feeling (F): How do you process information, especially to make decisions? The thinking person uses analysis and logic. The feeling person is more concerned with values and emotions. (Think Barack Obama versus Bill Clinton.) Note that women are more likely to be feelers, and men thinkers.

Judging (J)-perceiving (P): How do you operate in the world? The judging person likes to organize their world and prefers closure. The perceiver is more spontaneous and continues to collect information. (Think Felix versus Oscar in The Odd Couple.)

After completing a multi-item assessment, each person can be classified into a four letter type, and each of the 16 resulting types also has distinct characteristics beyond the sum of its parts. (Of course, on some scales, people may be more of a mixture; in others they may have much stronger preferences.) However, I’ve found that even a knowledge of the four scales provides useful information, especially to truly grasp why someone may think or act differently from you. As a partner, manager, subordinate, co-worker, or friend, you can manage your own expectations of others’ behavior much better if you understand their type preferences. Setting aside the arguments that the MBTI doesn’t describe all aspects of personality (and has its detractors), it covers a lot of the ground where tensions between people can arise.

Back in the world of fiction, these inherent tensions between types can also provide the fodder for conflict in fiction. Imagine the high J (judger) becoming very frustrated with the high P (perceiver), who seems incapable of making a decision. At the same time, the P accuses the J of being rigid. Or the high T (thinker) may ridicule the high F for being illogical while the high F may think that the high T has no heart. The high E can stay at a party all night, but the high I has had enough after a short while and would rather go home and read a good book.

There are hundreds of references on the MBTI. A useful, though not definitive, URL is ODportal.com. To use the MBTI in the way it was designed to be used requires formal training and certification, but for the writer, the fun is in the description of type and seeing how these different types might aid in character development.

On Taking the Plunge and Other Ways to Open a Story

Image:FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I start most of my stories by leaping headfirst in scene, into the action. But the opening to my first novel isn’t working, and I couldn’t figure out why. It has high stakes, lots of tension, an unusual setting. Why, after countless rewrites, is it still not doing its job?

Recently, for the long drive back from my college reunion, a friend had lent me some short stories on tape. I listened to these stories as much to learn something about structure as to be entertained. What struck me was that several of these began somewhat languidly, laying out a back story, poking around the head of a key character, or stepping way out for a view of a place or a time in history. If I believed that a novel should start in the middle of things, I had even surer convictions that a short story must catch our attention even more quickly. How else to do this than to plough right in? Clearly, despite regular evidence to the contrary in my own reading, my vision had been clouded by something I had learned or heard that had etched itself in my writer’s brain.

A few days later, thanks to Grub Street Writers instructor, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, and her informative three hour workshop, “Nailing the Opening,” I now have the language to apply to my analysis. Ms. Beach-Ferrara laid out a framework (along with easy to remember names) of five different kinds of openings that could also be combined with each other. These are:

• “The Plunge.” That’s me. Immediate, out of the gate, immersion into the action.
• “The Wind-up.” A more deliberate entry that may cover a lot of time, maybe even recounting a backstory.
• “The Rumination.” I begin a lot of chapters with these, but I’ve never begun a story this way. In this opening, a character ponders “life’s truths.” The rumination is particularly useful to introduce the voice of a first person character and may give us some sense of the theme of the story/book.
• "The Aerial View.” This kind of opening orients us to the world we are about to see. It is useful when that world operates differently from the one we know. The aerial view is distancing.
• "The Hook." We all know this as the clever sentence or two that immediately snares us, intrigues us, surprises us, makes us take notice and want to know more.

Of course, many stories combine these kinds of openings. Later, I went back to some of my favorite novels to see how they began. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest introduces us to our narrator, Chief. At first glance, it looks like “The Plunge.” We are in the middle of a scene, but it is a scene that has probably played out before. Kesey skillfully lays out the unfamiliar world of the mental institution for us, giving us an “aerial view,” but at closer range. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden insists he doesn’t want to give you any back story, but then he does (A Windup)along with some rumination until he gets us to where his story begins. We have an immediate idea of who this character is, and we are along for the ride. Memoirs of a Geisha, another first person narrative, begins with a short rumination before leading us into the tale that takes place in chronological order. In contrast, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, takes a short plunge, gives us a piece of back story to help us understand the narrator, and then brings us back to the action.

In that short evening class, we had the opportunity to apply four different opening techniques to a piece we were working on. In just eight minutes each, I spent time in my narrator’s head making observations about this new identity she had assumed (rumination), had her consider the past that brought her to that place (wind-up), described the strange world she inhabited (aerial view), and had her jump in and out of the water more quickly than I had before. What a simple, yet brilliant exercise that forced me out of my comfortable patterns! Now I am so giddy with the possibilities, I hardly know where to begin….

On What I Realized after Attending My College Reunion

• We look older than we feel.
• In late midlife, people want to write about their stories not just talk about them.
• I feel less nostalgic about the past than I was when I was closer to it.
• Reunions are easier without the presence of one’s spouse.
• Spouses generally don’t care for college reunions.
• No one understands the kind of work I do for a living.
• Many of us are less interested in talking about our work than we used to be.
• I really am an introvert--three days of solid talking and listening has exhausted me!
• Your true friends are the ones you can pick up with where you left off.
• People’s personalities don’t change over time, though some of the edges are softened.
• Death of loved ones is a common denominator for all of us.
• Folk songs from the 60s/early 70s were far superior to what passes today for folk music.
• Peggy Seegar is a true talent and a wonderful entertainer.
• Some people will always be sad.
• Some people will always be angry.
• Some people are dauntingly accomplished.
• Some people have an astonishing capacity to remember.
• Some people can get everyone to listen to them.
• Some people will never come to reunions.
• Most people who seemed to be from another world all those years ago are really very nice.
• Some people in our cohort are grandparents—how can that be?
• Buildings on college campuses should “be in conversation with each other.”
• College dorms are soulless places without students.
• The people who knew you when you were young know you in a way that no one else can know you.
• I am not the only one who saved all our college newspapers, but I do need to downsize!
• Time is whizzing by—it seems like I just attended my last five-year reunion.
• We attended college at an extraordinary time.
• The events—both internal at our college and external in the world--of that extraordinary time bind us together in a special way.
• Although we meant it at the time, we will not follow up on most of those promises to make contact with the people with whom we do not already have contact.
• Most of us will be dead or too infirmed to come to our 70th reunion.

On Creative Symbiosis

Before I wrote regularly, I took photographs. I bought my first “real” camera right before college graduation. That summer I traveled across the USA to California for the first time, followed by two months in Europe (in the $5 dollars a day era.) Film was expensive, and I think I used up exactly one roll of 36 slides without having tested my camera.

Over time and with a larger budget at my disposal, I switched to print film. Along the way, I figured out what I enjoyed capturing. I began to find my photographic “voice.” And sometimes, I produced some pretty good photos. Occasionally, someone even paid me to take photographs. I took workshops, but mostly I just kept taking pictures and figuring out what worked. Never a lot, just regularly over a lot of years. There’s much to be said for practice.

Digital photography has allowed me to be more adventurous. With no film to waste, I can take some chances, look for different angles, zoom in to the details, zoom out to catch the entire context (with my trusty wide angle to zoom lens). Even better, I can see the approximate results instantly. I compose my shots as carefully (or as impulsively as before). Other than a little cropping, I try to keep my fiddling around with the images afterwards to a minimum. (I’m not into the technology of photo-editing. I want to get it right when I hit the shutter.)

But now that I write, photography is even more satisfying as a creative outlet. The two activities complement each other, using different parts of my brain. There are similarities. Both involve using my imagination, telling a story, deciding on the focus. They are both visual media—in one case I must decide which part of the visual world I want to represent and in what way; in the other, I must paint that visual world with words.

But they are very different, as well. Novel writing, though enjoyable, is a labor intensive, indoor, and lonely pursuit. In contrast, photography for me is an outgrowth of other activities, such as travel. Because my husband is a photographer, I often have company. And the turn around time is quick. Go home, download, select, edit if needed, and print.

Each year, I choose one of my favorite photos and make holiday cards for my friends and family. Many a time I have visited a friend in July only to see my photo on the mantle. Instant external approval and gratification. And then there are the occasional requests from friends and colleagues for enlargements, with no marketing on my part.

In contrast, after months of writing a first draft, there are the revisions, feedback, more revisions, fine tooth editing, query letter creation, etc. before one even thinks of sending out the precious novel into the world for professional scrutiny. Then come the rejection letters, often months after the initial query was sent out. The self doubt. Renewed scrutiny of the manuscript. More revisions…..I can tell myself that the real accomplishment was completing such a mammoth project, that if I want to see my book in print, I can self-publish (sort of like printing up one of those photo books). But after all the expenditure of energy, after each revision, I am even more reluctant to give up. I am too invested. (It’s like waiting in that long line; once you’ve been there an hour, you’re not going to leave, or it will feel like you've wasted your time.)

Maybe I’ll get out my new camera instead. Maybe today will be the day I’ll shoot the photo that will be worthy of the annual holiday card, or maybe I’ll just stumble on an interesting pattern. And if I don’t, it doesn’t matter. With a blink of an eye, I’ll feel my creative spirit renewed, ready to tackle the character that needs some extra “spark,” or that scene that isn’t quite credible. It’s a symbiosis that works for me at the moment.

Of course, there’s always my blog. Not as quick as a photo, but it looks very professional up there on the screen. Just like a real writer….and once in awhile I even get a real reader!