Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Last night my daughter and I went to the American Idol concert. I could write a whole blog post on that experience, but won't. What affected me most as a writer was Danny Gokey.
Danny came out and did his usual songs and danced some salsa, but before his last song he told the audience that he was passionate about his next subject. He suffered a great tragedy a month before trying out for AI (he lost his wife), but due to a friend's insistence that he follow his dream in spite of the circumstances, great things happened for him.
What he was saying, this 28-year-old widower on stage in front of thousands --who a year ago was just a guy from the Midwest --made sense.
As he sang his song (I Wish for You), I sat in a stupor, barely listening. The wheels were turning . . .
I sat there and thought, Teresa, what's holding you back from pursuing your dream?
The answer came quick: Oh my gosh. I'm letting this stupid recession get me down!
Really? The recession?
Yes! Think about it --
All you hear is that
-- things are bad with publishing houses
-- editors are getting laid off
-- agents won't take newby's work
-- don't even think about making money on your book, because the big name authors aren't making money in this economy
-- e-books are taking over
-- you might have to put your book out there for free on your blog or self-publish
-- it might take a long time to get your stuff even seen by an agent
(shoulders droop farther, farther, farther)
Here's my question: Why am I listening?
I'm sure all of this is correct. But I don't need to hear it, because its effect on me as a struggling novelist is sheer discouragement.
What I DO need to do is work at being a better writer so I can fulfill my dream.
1)I need to set a goal for myself, a daily writing goal that I can aim for. Mine right now is to write a thousand words a day on my novel. Most days I do it, some days I don't. When I set a goal for myself, I know that I'll finish this book. Sooner rather than later.
2)I need to meet with other writers, in person and online. I'm so thankful for Lois and Billie and our every other Monday night sessions at Borders. They know my book almost as well as I do, and I love it when they question situations and word choice and correct my grammar. I do the same for them as well. The online . . . I'm working on that!
3)I need to study my craft. I'm NOT getting another masters degree, so no MFA for me. So I'm pouring over Writers Digest, The Writer, and tons of books and online articles on the subject of writing. I've been to two conferences, and can't wait for another. Cha-ching!
4)I need to be creative with marketing myself and my novel that I've worked so hard on. I need to be up on current marketing trends and flexible with how my novel is publicized. I need to be up on the social media craze. Thank you, Twitter!
So . . . okay! I'm going to pursue my dream, and I'm going to lend a deaf ear to the naysayers and the economic forecasters. There are enough negative voices in my head that threaten to rear their ugly heads and say far more wretched things than "that agency isn't accepting new writers."
In the meantime, I think I'm going to download Danny's song.
It's been plaguing me ever since beginning this daunting task -- what did a stockade look like, what did it smell like, what was it like to live there?
No problem. Just hit Google. Right?
Not hardly.
Well, maybe if I were talking about a generic stockade, the kind I picture when I think of the word. The kind of stockade that is synonymous with "fort". The kind I visited many times growing up in Texas. Fort Parker, for one.
However, the kind of stockade I'm writing about is different. I think.
Here's what I know for sure: 1) the stockades were built in the late 1830's in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee to temporarily house the Cherokees and other tribes who were being removed to the west in 1838 and 1839.
2)They no longer exist.
3)There are scanty recollections of life inside the stockades from survivors via diary entries or oral histories (these are more often told by survivors' children). However, because the time period inside the stockade was a short compared to the vast and more traumatic experience of the Trail of Tears, little info really comes out through these sources.
Unfortunately for me, a lot of my story takes places within those stockade walls.
So I'm faced with a decision, as a writer: do I make things up, based on the knowledge I have? Call it "artistic liberty"? I'm really not comfortable doing that.
At the same time, I can't allow my writing to come to a grinding halt because I don't know whether every person within the stockade was allowed to have a blanket or not. Or because I don't know how the campsites were laid out within the stockades -- a neat little grid, or mass of humanity? Were the Cherokees allowed to have knives? That's important to know for my birthing scene.
However -- today I happened upon the Georgia Trail of Tears website, where I saw that Dr. Sarah Hill has done extensive research in locating where the stockades once stood in Georgia. I downloaded her report and it was very helpful (and mind-boggling!) as to what the stockades looked like, how many Cherokees might have filled their walls, how long they stayed, and an idea of what the supplies were. Now as to who received those supplies, the army or the Cherokees, is another question.
I'm hopeful now that some of my questions might find answers!
This is part of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee. The mood of the picture is so melancholy you can almost see the march enacted before your eyes.
(Photo credit: Benjamin Nance for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation)
I just finished Chapter 14. A real feeling of accomplishment, because I was stalled for awhile. Why? Who can say. I allowed other things to get in the way of my writing -- like, anything! Also, I listened to those evil little voices in my head that told me I really didn't know what I was doing. I mean, who did I think I was, writing about another century, a far off place, an unfamiliar culture. Surely it would come off as false, and never see the light of day once it was finished -- that is, if I could even finish it! After all, did I really have a good story here? Would anybody really want to read it?
That's the great thing about a writer's group. They don't let you listen to those evil little voices that get you down. Thanks to those women, I didn't get away with laying off my story for long. They didn't even let me get away with changing my story in the hopes of making it more "contemporary"! They soooo weren't buying it. And I'm so glad. I got to hear them tell me the things they loved about my story, the things they couldn't live without if I changed it. It really gave me a boost in self-confidence. And boy did I need it. Scoot over, evil voices!
I'm always looking for pictures of stockades that were used with the Cherokees in the 1830's, and often I find nothing. There aren't many remnants of those stockades left, since they were temporary forts and holding pens. Still, I came across a few cool images that I wanted to share here. Enjoy.
Writing a book sounds so lofty. When you tell friends and acquaintances about your project, they oooh and aahh. But they don't know about all the peaks and valleys that go along with serious writing. People really don't want to hear more than the basics of what the story's about, anyway -- maybe a sentence or two, at that. They don't want to hear about how you get up at four in the morning to write for an hour so that you can get to your real job at seven; how you are often at an impasse in your story, thinking, is anybody going to want to read this, or is this terribly boring? Or how you labor over choosing just the right word, consulting your laptop's thesaurus, and when that one seems inferior, you run to the bookshelf and thumb through the really thick thesaurus on the hunt for that elusive perfect word -- only to return to your original word. Or worse, an extremely common, one syllable word instead. Writing is constant analysis.
What your friends and acquaintances also don't understand is that when writing works, it's like fireworks on New Year's Eve. It's elation.
It's falling in love.
I just fell in love with a new character, when my story took on a mind of its own. I thought I had it down. I knew where the twists and turns were, and it was exciting, all right. But frankly, it bored me. Because those twists and turns had already been written by history. Subconsciously I felt I had to stay within the bounds of the story as it had been written in time, even though I knew my characters would put their own spin on it.
But when a baby is born to a minor character, and this minor character tells Angeline that she will have to take care of the baby if anything happens to her . . . suddenly the story takes a turn I didn't know about. This baby puts a wrinkle on things that sure wasn't there before! What is it they say -- a baby changes everything.
And suddenly I'm seeing fireworks.
Call me obsessive compulsive. That's what I look like some days, writing this story like my life depends on it while the groceries, once again, aren't purchased, the bathtub isn't scrubbed, and those appointments that should have been made, haven't.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
I love bluegrass music. True, some of it is corny as all get out. But my Ipod is loaded with Cherryholmes' brand of bluegrass, and that gets me in a better mood, guaranteed. I also love the Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs collaboration, and can you say Allison Krauss? But oh my gosh: Cadillac Sky . . . now there's a band! Wow.
I sure wasn't raised with any of this fun music, but the first time I heard a fiddle played alongside a common tune my ears thought they'd died and gone to Heaven. And then when I married into a hillbilly-descended family -- well, I guess it was just a homecoming of the soul. My father-in-law and his cousins have regaled me with stories of their grandpa (Papa Jeppy) and his family playing their various instruments on the porch or in the front room in the hills of North Carolina. How I wish I'd been there all those years ago! Thankfully, Papa Jeppy and his kin went to the big city and made a recording of their mountain music in the forties, and we have it saved on a CD for prosperity. It's amazing. My husband, Jeppy's great-grandson, an accomplished musician himself, has a long legacy of music making in his genes.
This tradition of porch music plays a prominent role in my novel. How can it not? Music in Appalachia is paramount. To understand the history of the music of this region and its effect on the culture, listen to John Norris Brown's podcast from the Hillbilly Savants' blog.
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