Tag Archive for: Linda Rodriguez

Why It’s Important to Write Diverse Characters

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I’ve thrown another book against the wall—or at least, I’ve
wanted to. I’m far too respectful even of bad books to inflict physical damage
on them. And this wasn’t a totally bad book. It was completely unrealistic, but
unfortunately, it wasn’t set in some fantasy kingdom or far away on another
planet. It purported to be about life in a major city in these United States.
And it was full of white people. (And heterosexual people and people without disabilities.
Also huge blind spots in much of American fiction.)
No one else made even a walk-on in this book, even though
the city it was supposedly set in has a diverse population. The protagonist was
white. The love interest was white. The friends and confidantes were white.
Even the villain was white (and this is where you’ll usually find the people of
color in American novels and film… because, of course, all the good guys need
to be white). Even the walk-on characters were white. Even the maid in the
hotel seen for two sentences.
One would think that such a novel is a complete anomaly
anymore. Unfortunately, although they’re not as plentiful as they once were,
such novels can still be found. What we’re more likely to find, however, are
novels like the recent big prizewinner (almost 800 pages in length), which
contained two non-white characters only, both servants and about as unrealistic
as they could be. (A Caribbean housekeeper with children of her own to support
and care for who insists on continuing to take care of the wealthy white family
for free when they lose their money, neglecting her own kids? I’m sure many
wealthy white people have fantasies of such dedication to themselves and
selfless service by their servants, but I can’t think of any working person
like that in reality. Most people are working for money to take care of their
own families, and when the money goes, they have to find another job to pay their
own bills.)
Novels, films, and television shows with only minor,
peripheral characters of color—or villains, all non-white, while the good guys are
all white—still abound. And most of them are extremely unrealistic. Perhaps in
particular isolated rural areas or very small towns, such depictions might be
realistic, though many rural areas and small towns now boast large immigrant
populations. Books set in larger towns and cities must show the diversity of
the population to be believable.
About the only place you can find an all-white cast of
characters any longer in reality is in wealthy white suburbs where housing
restrictions keep others from moving there—and usually in such places,
non-white people are mowing lawns, taking care of children, taking care of security,
and many other duties. And such suburbs are part of metropolitan areas full of
diverse people, where the shortest drive for a bite to eat or to fill up the
gas tank will bring the populace in contact with people from different
backgrounds.
This is a situation Sisters in Crime has recognized, and the
organization is bringing lots of help to its members at this year’s SinC Into
Great Writing workshop in connection with Bouchercon in New Orleans on
Wednesday, September 14. The topic is “Doing Diversity Right,” and participants
will hear from instructors like the great Walter Mosley (of Easy Rawlins fame),
Greg Herren, Cindy Brown, Frankie Bailey, and me. At the end, all of us—and some
other industry professionals—will answer any and all questions participants put
to us about the problem of writing diverse characters and backgrounds and doing
it right.

The United States is truly a melting pot, full of a rich
variety of people from many backgrounds, in many physical and mental conditions, and of many sexual orientations. Take a look around at the audience at an event or at the
customers in a big restaurant, and you’ll see the diversity of people that
surrounds you. When we read, we expect to see a similar range of characters, or
we begin to feel something’s off with the book. When we write our own books, we
need to portray that variety, or risk more and more people throwing our books
against the wall, literally or figuratively. 

Writing While Sick

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
I’m a day late getting this blog posted. My apologies, but I’d been dealing with illness, which suddenly took a drastic turn for the worse. I spent yesterday and last night absolutely miserable with fever and chills and vomiting, and I just lost track of my blogging days. But better late than never.
Anyone who knows many professional writers (at least writers
of novels) knows that writers are self-employed and don’t get holidays or
vacation leave. That’s why, when everyone else is posting photos of their
holiday fun at the pool and the park on Memorial Day or Labor Day, writers are
posting their first-draft word counts or hours of revision/copy edits/page
proofs .

But what about sick leave? Nope, none of that, either. When
a writer is ill, s/he has to decide between going to bed like a normal person
when sick or trying to soldier on to finish the current book. Still, it’s not
the same as working on a holiday or during the time everyone else is on
vacation. Whether we can actually work depends on the type of work we try to do
and the type of illness we’re suffering.

If it’s just a cold, we can probably manage most of our
writing tasks, though the creative flow for first-draft work can be very hard
to achieve. If it’s been bad flu or some other more serious illness and we’re
in that stage of the worst is over but we’re weak and spacy, it’s even a good
fit for first-draft writing. We’re located much more in the right brain than we
usually are. However, it’s not at all easy to gain the sharp focus required for
revision, editing, dealing with copy edits, or proofreading. 

If our illness is something more debilitating, we may only
be able to write a short blog post—or perhaps not even that. In those cases, we
have no choice but to give up the work until our strength returns at least
somewhat. Those times, though we can hardly afford them if our writing is
paying the bills, can often hold a hidden benefit as we drift in fever or
weakness and dream often bizarre new characters and stories.


It’s all grist for our little cottage industry of spinning
the straw of daily existence into the gold of story. How does illness affect
your writing? How does it affect your reading? I know when I’m super ill, I
want to read Agatha Christie and other comfort novels that I’ve read many times
before. What’s your favorite illness reading?

Making a List and Checking It Twice

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez

I’m a big believer in using all the
help technology and professional writing books and programs can give me in
writing. I’ve tried using all kinds of workbooks, charts, and forms in working
on a novel. I’m even now learning to use Scrivener to write my next book. I’m
hardly on the cutting edge, but I’m also not one of the “if it was good enough
for Hemingway, it’s good enough for me” types. Still, sometimes we look around
and find simple everyday solutions to our problems, and it would be silly not
to take advantage of them.
One of the most useful tools I’ve
found in writing a novel is the simple, old-fashioned list. If you’re like me,
you use lists to remind you what you need to do during the day, what you need
to pack for a trip, what you need to buy at the grocery store, and dozens of
other mundane projects, large and small. It’s easy to assume we need something
more sophisticated for this complex novel (for novels are all more or less
complex) that we’re trying to hold in our heads and build on paper. However,
I’ve discovered that simple lists can help in several ways with making that
story in our head a reality in print.
First of all, I keep running character
and place lists. I write a mystery series. When I wrote the first book, Every Last Secret, I was creating all
the characters from scratch, as well as all the places in my fictional town.
 I wrote personality and appearance sketches for each character, but in
addition, I made a list of each character as s/he appeared with a few words to
note key characteristics. I did the same for places in my made-up town. This
meant I could look up the full name of walk-on characters easily when I needed
to much later in the book. It meant that I could easily look up the important
details of the buildings on the campus and the shops on the town square as my
protagonist, Skeet Bannion, walked past them or into them.
These lists tripled in value when I
started the second book in the series and then the third and fourth. No one will have brown
eyes in the first novel and baby-blues in one of the later books, unless I
forget to check my list. Old Central, the 19th century castle-like
mansion on the Chouteau University campus, will not morph into a 1960s Bauhaus
box of a building.
Next, when I’m plotting ahead, simple
lists come to my aid again. I’m a combination of outliner and
follow-the-writing plotter. I like to know where the next 25-50 pages are
going, plotwise—or to think I do, at least. I do this by making a list of
questions that I need to answer about the book. In the beginning, I have lots
of questions. The answer to only one or two may give me enough to start the
next several days’ writing. I stole the idea of asking myself questions and
answering them in writing from Sue Grafton. She posts to her website journals
that she keeps while writing each novel, and in these, she often asks and
answers these types of questions. I took it a bit further by trying to make
long lists of questions that needed to be answered, which often, in turn, add
more questions to the list when they are answered.
Answering the questions tells me where
the story wants to go, but these lists also help me keep the subplots straight
and make sure they tie in directly to the main plot, and they keep me from
overlooking some detail or element that will create a plot hole or other
disruption for the reader. These questions can vary from broad ones, such as
“What is the book’s theme?” and “How can I ratchet up the excitement and stakes
in Act II?” to more detailed, such as “What clue does Skeet get from this interview?”
and “What’s on Andrew’s desk?” Such question lists come in handy during
revision, as well.
During revision, I make yet another
kind of simple list. As I’m reading the manuscript straight through in hard
copy, I write down a list of questions as I go. I notice a weak spot and ask
myself, “How can I let the reader know how much Jake meant to Skeet, as well as
Karen?,” “Should I have Skeet attend Tina’s autopsy?,” and all too often,
“Reads competent enough, but where’s the magic?”
After going through my lists of
hundreds of big to tiny fixes and changes to make, and listing by scene where
in the book to make the fix (for major issues), I sit down to wrestle with 5-15
major structural problems from almost but not quite minor to huge and complex.
This final list is my guideline through the swamps of revision. The issues on
this list require changes that thread throughout part or all of the book.
Trying to do them all at once or even to keep them in my mind all at the same
time would bog me down—perhaps forever. Listing them and working my way one
item at a time through that list helps me to keep my focus even while dealing
with very complex situations that must be woven in and out through the length
of the novel.

In short, simple lists make the
complex task of writing a novel doable for me. What about you? Do you use lists
in your writing? Are there other tools you use for keeping track and keeping
focused as you plot, write, and revise?

Linda Rodriguez’s three novels published by St. Martin’s
Press featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every
Last Secret—have received critical recognition and awards, such as Latina
Book Club Best Book of 2014, the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery
Novel Award, selections of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, 2nd
Place in the International Latino Book Awards, finalist for the Premio Aztlán
Award, 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Barnes & Noble mystery pick.
Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for
film.
For her books of poetry, Skin
Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s
Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and
fellowships. Rodriguez is 2015 chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American
Writer’s Caucus, past president of the Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in
Crime, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers
Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of
Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Find
her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

Remembering the Dream

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez 


I had a dream for many decades, a dream that I would write
novels that would be published by a major publisher to great reviews and win
many honors. And for many years I had to put that dream on hold for lack of
time as I worked a demanding and fulfilling job while raising a family. I still
wrote whenever I could and still had my dream.

Poetry was shorter so I started writing poetry in those bits
and pieces of time I could steal, and eventually some was published and then
more. Finally, I had two books of poetry published to good reviews and even
some awards. I was happy, but… I wanted to write novels, too.

Ultimately, I had to leave my job for health reasons. After
a period of getting my health stabilized, I had time to write, and I wrote a
novel. This novel won a major competition and was published by a major Big Five
publisher. It got tons of great reviews and won some national honors. I was
happy with my editor and publicist and loved my book covers. 

My publishers were happy with the sales—for a first book. It
didn’t put me in line for the New York Times bestseller list any time in the
near future. And my publishers even wanted more books, but they didn’t want to
pay much in the way of an advance for them. The whole industry had gone this
way of drastically smaller advances, it seemed. I began to fret about sales,
following the BookScan numbers and Amazon rankings all the time. Even as
everything in my dream came true, I became depressed and stressed about my
sales and my future.


A good friend, a literary fiction writer who teaches in an
MFA program, came to town on book tour, and my husband and I took him to
dinner. As usual, we spent the night talking writing and the state of
publishing. This is what writers tend to do, I’m afraid. He asked me about my
book, and I told him about the Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month and the
national book club selection and the reviews. But, I added, not wanting him to
think I was more successful than I was, it wasn’t translating into real money.
My friend looked at me and gently said, “Linda, what you’ve got is what every
MFA student in America wants and most of the faculty, too.”


And he was right, of course. I had been phenomenally lucky.
Instead of celebrating and enjoying all that wonderful good fortune, a dream
come true, I had allowed myself to fall into the trap of moving the goal line
until it was once more out of reach. I wasted all the goodness of part of that
year with that silliness.

Then, just as my third book was published, I discovered I
had cancer and began a nightmare of multiple surgeries and treatments, not to
mention terrible side effects and lifesaving but pain-inducing and energy- and
strength-draining medicines. I haven’t had one undrugged night when I could
sleep the whole night long since. I couldn’t do necessary social media and
in-person events to promote my book during that time. I couldn’t write for much
of that time. I couldn’t even read for a good chunk of it. I berated myself for
wasting so much of what should have been the happiest years of my life now that
it once more seemed out of reach.

But I am determined to do no more of that. I’m finally
cancer-free, though I still have to take the meds and treatments for a number
of years to make sure it doesn’t come back. I’ve stopped being a patient and am
once again a writer. I’m living the dream I always wanted—my books in reader’s
hands with great reviews and up for awards. I no longer care what the BookScan
numbers are. I’m enjoying this dream come true right here and now.

I’ve decided that my focus needs to be on writing the best
books I can and doing all I can to see they connect with readers. The rest is
out of my control, so I can’t waste my energy worrying about it. I’m just going
to be happy living the dream.

Have you ever found yourself moving the goalposts as you
accomplish some desired goal or make some long-desired dream come true? Have
you ever let the things you can’t control mess with your emotions to the
detriment of the things you can? What have you learned in these kinds of
situations?

Linda Rodriguez’s third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, was a selection of
the Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and a Latina Book Club Best Book for
2014. Her second Skeet mystery, Every
Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, International
Latino Book Award, and a finalist for the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize. Her
first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret,
won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel
Competition and an International Latino Book Award. Her short story, “The Good
Neighbor,” has been optioned for film. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda,
on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites,
and on her blog http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

Taking Editorial Feedback Professionally

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
At the end of a course I recently taught, one of my students
sent me a scene-by-scene outline of her book. I could see as I considered it
where her problem lay—and it was a pretty major problem. I had to consider
whether to soft-pedal my response. This student had been very open about how
discouraged she was, and I certainly didn’t want to discourage her any more
than she already was. Still, I gave her my best detailed critique of what her
book’s problems were and what she could do about them. Then, I took a deep
breath and tried not to think about it.
I stopped doing developmental editing for quite a while
after a run of several clients who didn’t really want truthful, constructive
criticism, even though they were paying for it. When I did return to
developmental editing (at the request of a couple of students), I wrote a
one-page information sheet that I give to all prospective clients. It explains
what developmental editing is, what it is not, discusses the cost and details
of what it entails, and ends with this paragraph.
“This kind of editing entails clarity and honesty about the
manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses and how to improve it, always keeping in
mind the writer’s original vision. It is not for writers who have problems with
criticism of their work or who are seeking an ego boost. For such writers,
developmental editing is a waste of their money and of my time.”
One of my current clients laughed when she read it and said,
“It sounds like you’re trying to drive away business, not attract it.”
I nodded. “I am. If someone’s not serious and professional,
I don’t want to deal with them.”
My recent student came through like a champ, though. She
emailed a long thank-you for the critique, saying no one could or would ever
tell her what wasn’t working in her book. She’s now all enthusiastic about
doing the necessary work to make her book good. And I was grateful and relieved
to read that she has such a professional attitude.
Aspiring writers sometimes forget that, even when they have
publishing contracts, they will have editors who will point out ways in which
their books could be stronger. If they’re lucky, their agents will already have
done some of that. It’s a natural part of the publishing process. Almost every
change my editor ever wanted me to make worked to create a better, more
powerful book. Part of being a professional writer is being able to make good
use of professional editing critiques from teachers, developmental editors, agents,
and publishing house editors.

What are your feelings about editorial feedback? Are you one
of those writers who see the editor as a natural enemy? Or are you one, like
me, who sees the editor as the person who’s trying to keep you from looking bad
in public?

Linda Rodriguez’s three novels published by St. Martin’s
Press featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every
Last Secret—have received critical recognition and awards, such as Latina
Book Club Best Book of 2014, the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery
Novel Award, selections of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, 2nd
Place in the International Latino Book Awards, finalist for the Premio Aztlán
Award, 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Barnes & Noble mystery pick.
Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for
film.

For her books of poetry, Skin
Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s
Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and
fellowships. Rodriguez is 2015 chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American
Writer’s Caucus, past president of the Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in
Crime, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers
Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of
Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Find
her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

CLICKING OUR HEELS – Raw or Cooked Carrots?

/in /by

CLICKING
OUR HEELS

Raw or Cooked Carrots?

Welcome to The Stiletto Gang’s newest feature – Clicking Our Heels. Each month, on the
Fourth Thursday, a number of our bloggers will share
their opinions on the same question. Hopefully, after reading CLICKING OUR HEELS you will learn some new
things about all of us.
When Debra attended the University of Michigan,
entering freshmen were given a personality/general info type test. The odd
question on the test – Do you prefer raw or cooked carrots?
Here are some of our responses:
Bethany
Maines: “I definitely prefer raw. The snap and crunch of fresh veggies is
much preferable to the mush of cooked.”

Linda
Rodriguez: “I prefer them raw, although I do enjoy a good carrot chowder now
and then, and of course, cooked with a roast of beef or pork.”


Juliana
Aragon Fatula: “Raw. I grow carrots and eat them fresh from the earth. They
are sweet and taste like love.”


Marilyn
Meredith: “Cooked carrots. I like to doctor them with butter and brown
sugar.”

Dru Ann
Love: “I like shredded carrots in my salad and cooked carrots with a
crunch.”

Cathy
Perkins: “Raw! Cooked carrots are down there with boiled okra for
nastiness.”

Sparkle
Abbey: “Definitely raw and the best part is you can always share this
healthy snack with your dog.”

Paffi Flood:
“Cooked carrots. Roasted, actually. Nothing compares to its sweetness.”

Jennae M.
Phillippe: “I prefer roasted carrots, usually accompanied by roasted
potatoes and garlic. And butter. Lots and lots of butter.”

Kay Kendall: “I like both cooked and raw carrots.
Each has its charms.”

What Michigan interpreted the question as
showing:  Raw carrot types were
energetic, aggressive and had go-getter personalities while the cooked carrot
camp was made up of kinder, sweeter, and more passive students.  We’ll let you guess how Debra answered the
question. 

Creative Procrastination

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
People have been known to ask me how I get so many different
things done. After I do a double-take, trying to see who they were talking to
(because it certainly couldn’t be me with the huge, never-finished to-do list),
I reply that I do it by not doing what I was supposed to do.
My house was never so clean as when I was in graduate school
facing studying for finals and writing long papers on the literary critical
theory of Jacques Lacan—Désir! Désir
is all! I have knitted innumerable pairs of socks and mittens, purses and
even rugs, while delaying work on a tricky sweater promised to my husband. I wrote
one whole novel while avoiding finishing one that was under contract. I get
things done by doing things that aren’t the top priority on my list instead of
doing that top priority. I call it Creative Procrastination.
I’m thinking about this because one of my students just sent
me an abject email, beating herself up because she hadn’t been doing the work
for my class, couldn’t bring herself to do the assignments, had written 2,000
words about how awful she was and how ashamed she felt for not doing them. I
had to tell her that I knew exactly what she was going through, that most
writers did at one time or another.
There’s this thing called resistance. It means that, even when we love our work and want more
than anything to do our work, something inside us drags our feet, pulls us
away, and the beloved work doesn’t get done. It’s especially a problem for
artists—and even if we write commercial novels, that’s what we are. (Look in
the mirror and say ten times, “You are a writer. You are an artist.”)
I don’t try to fight it anymore. I make that nasty resistance
work for me. After cleaning house for a day or two, I’d get up with plans to do
some more cleaning/organizing and end up working on my Lacan paper to keep from
doing the cleaning I’d planned on. Halfway through the rug, I started sneaking
in a row or two on the husband’s sweater as a rebellion against it. Just before
finishing the last chapters of the uncontracted novel, I started being
unfaithful to it with the novel under contract (and deadline). There is a
method in my madness.
Along the way, I end up getting an awful lot of things
finally finished—usually while rebelling against something else that I’ve set
for myself to do. It may sound crazy, but it works for this aging hippy
radical. For example, I was procrastinating writing this blog post, so I gave
myself the assignment of writing a special handout for my class on how to
motivate yourself to write and find time to do it. Sure enough, I sat down
instead and wrote this post.

Now, what can I assign myself to do, so I can procrastinate
by writing that class handout?

Of Crises, Nurses, and Other Odd Thoughts

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez
This will be the shortest blog post I’ve ever written.
Primarily because it’s the middle of the night, and I just got home from many unexpected
hours in a suburban hospital. A good friend was supposed to have emergency
open-heart surgery at 6:00 a.m. Thursday, and I had agreed to sit and wait with
his wife, an even dearer friend for many years, since the surgery was to take
8-10 hours—many arteries to bypass and a hole in the heart to repair. Only the
doctors kept putting off the surgery, first until 8:00 a.m., then until 11:00
a.m., and again until 1:00 p.m., and yet again until 2:00 p.m., and finally
until 3:00 p.m., only to finally take him into surgery at 5:00 p.m. Both of
them went over 24 hours without food, and my friend, the wife, went 48 hours
without sleep (they had at least sedated the patient to sleep the night
before). And the delays were extremely stressful, causing them to run
constantly on adrenaline all day as each of them geared up to be strong and
brave for the surgery, only to have it delayed again and have to go through it
all over repeatedly. It was a nightmare situation in the first place and soon
began to take on the aspect of a psychological horror story. When I left the
hospital in the wee hours of the morning, things were going well with the
surgery, and my friend had wisely decided to go to the hotel next door to the
hospital to try to get some sleep since it was still going to take hours to
complete.
So I’m pretty brain-dead with not much blogging ability to
my name. This has come on the heels of a crisis involving a death connected to
my family over the holidays, and I’m kind of emergencied out right now. Any new
crisis that tries to come to my house will simply have to go away and come back
later. There’s just nothing left to give. But I have a few random,
crisis-created thoughts to share with you.
Nurses are the salt of the earth, angels, and every other
cliché that’s ever been written or said about them. They make a difference
every day and night in so many lives. Why are they paid so little when pro
sports stars are paid so much?
Crises and emergencies can bring estranged families back
together or drive them further apart. I’ve seen vivid examples of both just
recently, and I vote for bringing them back into touch with each other. Stop
letting the little stuff get in the way of being with the people you love. Hug
the people you love while you still have a chance.
A cosplay funeral is always a bad idea. The less said about
that, the better.
And nurses—salt of the earth, angels in scrubs. Pay them
more!

A Room of My Own

/in /by

by Linda Rodriguez

This holiday season is a time of excitement for me. I am
about to get that room of my own that Virginia Woolf warned all women must have
to write: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write
fiction.”

How can this be, you might well ask? I have written and
published six books and have five more in various stages of the publishing
process. Surely, I have had a room of my own in which to do all of this. And
yes, I did have a lovely workroom that covered half of the upstairs floor of my
house. Large and airy with many windows and a balcony, which I never used
because I had so many bookcases in front of the door to the outside.

This room was half writing office and half fiber art studio.
(At one point in my life, I was a professional fiber artist who made her income
from commissions and sales of her creations.) The fiber art studio was
well-organized with shelves full of baskets and boxes of spinning fibers,
yarns, quilting fabrics, spindles, a sewing machine table, a cutting table, a
quilting frame, two spinning wheels, several small looms, while downstairs in
the living room sat a large floor loom in place of a couch. The office had a
small antique desk with drawers used as a computer and printer desk set at
right angles to a huge, sturdy cherry dining table used as my main desk. It
also had a wheeled office-supply cart, two large bulletin boards, two metal file
cabinets, many large bookcases, stuffed full of books and overflowing the room
to range throughout the house. Off in one corner sat an old exercycle that I
could use for a break from writing or sewing or weaving. I loved this room.

I have always had a problem with keeping a space all to
myself. Most wives and mothers will identify with this, I think. Our children
and husbands want our attention. They want to be where we are. And so, too
often, when I had carved a little space out just for myself, my husband and
children eventually, bit by bit, encroached on it until it was no longer mine.
But when I set up this workroom, I was ruthless. Children were grown, and my
husband had promised to stay in his own, even larger, office across the hall.
And it worked for six books.

Then, breast cancer invaded my life. At the very same time,
my youngest son moved back home after getting his Ph.D. in Iowa. He moved into
part of my husband’s office, and my husband had to move many things over to my
office where he threw them on my big desk—“only for the moment.” It was a very
good thing that my son came home to live with us during this time since he was
able to take part of the caregiving load off my husband. But he brought all the
belongings that had furnished a large two-bedroom apartment in Iowa City. Much
of it wound up added to the pile on my big desk. My son moved my computer and
replaced it with his own on the computer desk, as he began his desperate job
search. I wasn’t using it at the time since I was in the middle of my own
desperate battle.

Somewhere during that time—I’m not sure when—my son broke my
comfortable, over-twenty-year-old desk chair, and the combined weight of all
the “stuff” piled on it broke my big dining-room-table desk in half, split
right down the middle. Eventually, I grew stronger and needed to go back to
work, but my lovely workroom had been destroyed. The things piled in the room
were much too heavy for me to pick up or carry (probably why the desk gave up
the ghost under their weight). My son was. by this time, adjunct teaching full-time
at a university an hour’s drive away from our house plus the online classes he’d
committed to teach before that job came open, but he said he’d get me a new
office chair and a new desk and fix up my workroom when the semester was over.
However, he was hired as permanent full-time faculty at that university in that
other town and immediately put in charge of some key aspects of their
accreditation, which was imminent. He had to move down there immediately so he
could work seven twelve-to-fourteen-hour days a week for over a month. My
trashed workroom stayed unusable. I wrote two more books and most of a third on a laptop in my
recliner, not an ideal situation.

Now, for Christmas, my husband and sons are cleaning all the
heavy mess out of my workroom, giving me a new office chair, and repairing my great
old desk (my choice over a new one because it was such a wonderful workspace).
I am looking forward to the new year in my comfortable, organized workroom
where everything is within reach, and I can switch when I’m stuck in my writing
to some fiber art project, which always shakes loose the solutions I need in my
novels.

Virginia Woolf was right. “A woman must have money and a
room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

REPLIES TO COMMENTS because Blogger…

Thanks, Margaret! It’s time for you, as well. Virginia was right.

Debra, you’re so right! It is just what the doctor and the muse ordered. Happy holidays to you–and to everyone else, as well!

Thank you, Judith! Enjoy the holidays with all of your new books. I recommended your novel to one of my developmental editing clients recently.

Yes, Kaye, it is lovely. I’m so looking forward to getting this workroom back in functional order. Merry Christmas to you, too!

Mary, you’re so right! I’ve often asked for help with some big project around the house, especially in later years as my health and strength have waned, but my boys would rather give me things. They’re very generous. My oldest has given me for Christmas a freezer when I wanted to replace my old one and a washing machine when I needed that, and my youngest totally surprised me with a big-screen TV and a machine to run Netflix (which he also gave me for a year) for my birthday a couple of months ago–because he had seen how much his helped me when I had bad nights during the cancer surgeries and broken wrist and decided I needed one. But household projects, usually not. I think it’s a time thing. They both find it easier to find money than time. So I’m really thrilled that they’re doing this.

I’ve Got an Idea!

/in /by
by Linda Rodriguez

Right now, I’m in the middle of a book. Actually, I’m
usually in the middle of writing a book or about to finish a book or about to
begin a book. It’s the cycle of life for writers, especially novelists. The
middle of the book, though, is the hardest because it’s where it all begins to
break down or bog down or seems to. I know of very few writers who haven’t
faced despair, or at least mild depression, somewhere in the middle of the
book.

That brilliant idea that sent me excitedly to the keyboard
to start this journey of words seems further away from actuality than ever.
It’s very hard work to try to get it on paper and make the reality the reader
will find on the page match up to the beauty of the idea in my head—and of
course, none of us ever quite manage it. That’s part of the reason why we keep
trying.

Right now, though, I’m struggling as I try not to drown or
suffocate in all the thousands of words I’ve typed and continue to type, which
seem more and more shabby and mundane—and very far from that shining thing in
my head that I’m trying to make real on the page. I’m tired and overwhelmed.
And I just want someone to come take this magnificent idea and make the book
for me. Isn’t it enough coming up with such a grand concept?

For a moment, I revert to the childlike person who
approaches writers so often to say, “I’ve got a great idea! You can take it and
write it up into a book, and we’ll split the profits.” We writers shudder when
such people come around, not wanting to insult them with the truth—“You want me
to do all the work and share my money with you?”—or—“Buddy, getting the idea’s
the easy, fun part.” But at this stage of the book, I have brief stressed
moments of the same kind of magical thinking.

I turn to some of my favorite writers at times like this.

“It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we
develop our own style.” – P.D. James

“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a
wild state overnight… it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it
every day and reassert your mastery over it.” – Annie Dillard

“One word after another. That’s the only way that novels get
written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes
into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it.” – Neil Gaiman

I go back to the mess of a manuscript because that shining,
brilliant edifice in my head will never become real to anyone else if I don’t
slog through the swamp of the middle and get it down on paper. And I hope that
some little sliver of its real gorgeous beauty somehow ends up sparkling on the
pages of the finished book. Never enough of it, of course, because that’s the
impossible dream that all we writers chase, but some small gleaming piece.

If any of you are facing the
same situation, please realize that it’s pretty universal among those of us who
try to write novels. We know we can’t recreate that perfection on the page, but
we have to give it our best shot. Because even our imperfectly realized vision
is still something only we can give the world. To quote Neil Gaiman again, “Do what
only you can do best.”


REPLY TO COMMENTS (because Blogger hates me):

Thanks, Cathy! We’ve finished books before, so we know we can finish these. Don’t we? 😉