The Rocking Chair Creaks…

It’s like balm, hearing the world of my book (Adrift on the Dark Sea of Memory). Yet it’s also the edge of a dangerous cliff. Until I have the time for full immersion, I allow myself only that one sense. To see or smell or touch or taste anything would risk a tumble that I don’t have time for this exact minute.

And so I listen to the chair in Sylvia’s childhood bedroom. It’s creaking as her father rocks Cort to sleep that first night. I hear the boy’s waning hiccup of grief, the crack of the floorboards when the father’s weight comes forward in the chair, the low hum the man makes by habit now that he’s been rocking children every night for a year since his own wife died.

Slowly he rises, hoping not to jostle the boy out of the forgetfulness of sleep. There’s the rustle of the covers as he slides them slowly back, the indrawn breath of Sylvia (who’s only a delicate-boned four—but wait, that’s peeking) and the slow squeak of the bedsprings while he lays Cort down between his daughter and son.

The man sorrows. His tears will fall nearly soundlessly when he’s safe in the private loneliness of his room. Tomorrow the sun will rise and he will flip pancakes for his children and this new motherless boy who has crawled into him in a way he fears. He will whistle and sing because they need him to show the way out of grief.

I keep my eyes open as I listen to Cort’s even breathing, look out at the holiday lights of downtown Saint Paul as they brighten in the gathering dark, resist the urge to fall past this world into that other—into the touch of its velvet grasses and its silky puddings puddling on my tongue. I can resist the boy if I only hear him sniffle but show me the arm Sylvia throws around him in their innocent sleep and I will crumble.

This post was originally written December 4, 2007 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Stranger than “Stranger than Fiction”

This past weekend the movie Stranger than Fiction showed up in my mailbox courtesy of Netflix. I had found the idea intriguing when I’d seen the preview—a completely ordinary IRS tax agent begins hearing a narrator in his head accurately describing his life AND foreshadowing, not too subtly, his imminent demise.

I had time to watch the film because I was doing everything but writing. I’ve been blocked since the writing group reviewed my last submission, not because of feedback but mainly because, as the feedback showed, I had strayed into (for me) experimental territory and I wasn’t sure how to get myself back on the path of the story, which is to say how to get back to the business of killing one of my characters.

The movie began comfortably enough with the poor dull IRS agent brushing each of his 32 teeth 48 times (24 times up and down and 24 times side to side) and the voice of the narrator (Emma Thompson) comes in and starts describing this and the man freaks out a bit and I thought, “Oh what a lovely way to not write…er, I mean entertain myself for a few hours.”

Then cut to Dame Thompson, her toes over the ledge of a building tens of stories about the bustling city street. She jumps, but it’s only imagined. She’s a blocked writer trying to figure out the right way to kill her main character, the repressed IRS agent.

F**K! I can’t escape it even here, even nestled in my leather recliner with the cool night breeze coming in the window finally after surviving the day’s brutal humidity. For the next two hours I watch the tortured writer chew on the problem of her still-breathing character.

I didn’t resolve what to do in the book but I resolved to calm down about my process. I’m as captive to my own relationships with my characters as that writer was to her relationship with the ill-fated tax man. Of course, she resolves her problem in 123 minutes. The wait for me seems a bit longer.

This post was originally written June 13, 2007 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Details, Details, Details

SPOILER ALERT…THIS POST CONTAINS PLOT POINTS THAT MIGHT RUIN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE NOVEL.

So I’ve got Stella in Park Rapids. It’s 1959, December. She’s 16 and pregnant. No one knows she’s there except Jeanine (the woman who’s sheltering her) and Mrs. G. (the woman who brought her there).

Then something happens. Now she doesn’t trust either one. She’s ready to flee, fly, take a powder. She whips out her cell…she whips out her credit card…she fires up her SUV…okay, so what the hell DOES she do?

(Can you tell that I’m blogging because I don’t know the answer?!)

We talked this week about rules for zombies and vampires and shaghouls (OH MY!). What are the rules for pregnant teenagers in 1959? My mother was 19 and pregnant with me in 1959 but also married and living on a naval base so all she can help me with are the clothes.

Maybe Stella could simply walk away? My “waning gibbous moon” friend is telling me to get off my keester and do some research. Maybe it was unseasonably warm in north central Minnesota on a December day in 1959 and a long walk would be just the tonic for a teenager. (And if I go this way, I can always ask my intrepid “baby oil and dog dirt” friend to advise me at which mile the blisters will likely appear.)

The bus seem promising, but can she figure out the schedule and round up cash for a ticket?

Finally, I consider having her call Mrs. Donahue.

There is the phone on its own round mahogany table. There is the heavy, black phone perched neatly on the doily. There is the tastefully upholstered overstuffed chair next to the table and the phone, because in 1959 talking on the telephone was still a social pleasantry. You did it in your living room, not in the bathroom or while you were also clipping your toenails.

(June Cleaver rises in my mind and I can see the precise way her hand is gracefully cradling the unwieldy receiver against her pearled ear.)

And when Stella picks up the phone, I realize, it will have to be an operator who helps her. 1959. No direct dialing in a small town like Park Rapids. Will her voice squeak? Will she have the courage to ask for the person she really wants? So far in this story I don’t think Stella’s asked anyone for help, but now I think that’s all about to change.

This post was originally written April 4, 2007 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

God Help Me, I Did It…

SPOILER ALERT…

I finally made Aggie hit Stella. And not just hit her. Burrow her fingers into the soft flesh in her upper arm and pinch. A hidden cruelty, shielded by the mother’s unwashed body, which is pressing Stella so tightly into a corner the girl is afraid she might faint. Pain, pressure, body odor—I threw it all at the poor, helpless child.

I didn’t cry when I did it, but I wanted to.

I did it right there in the middle of the second chapter, after the morticians take Roy’s body away. I did it so no reader can say they didn’t know things would only get worse.

You guys told me I had to do it, and I knew you were right. Describing the already yellowing bruise or the memory of the sting of the slap wasn’t enough to be honest about the stakes. Now what happens to Stella and what she does can all make crazy sense.

Since you told me I had to do it I’d been stalled. And now that I’ve done it other parts are falling into place too. I hope it’s worth the damage. I don’t mean to me, because I can take it. But oh, my poor Stella.

This post was originally written February 21, 2007 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Going for a Swim

Outside my office window, the Mississippi is flowing by. Today it mainly reflects the blue-tinged white of the sky, then a darker gray where the banks cast their shadows. I am on the north bank watching its now westerly meander.

Amid the office chaos, I’m trying to writing, trying to throw myself down into that lazy drift from the eighth floor of this lovely old bank building where I (and a thousand like me) earn my daily bread. Then my neighbor coughs, I tighten in fear. I remind myself to breathe, look again out the window and remember that I can flow that easily too, let the words gush onto the page and dive to the depths of the poignant ache of Stella’s heart as she misses home but fears returning to it.

Eddies turn me around. Should Stella take up the great metaphorical hobby of knitting? How will this battle between the two mothers conclude? Does Willie crave war or cigarettes? Will anyone ever care as much as I do about these small matters of their lives?

Oh, yes, this river is very deep indeed.

This post was originally written January 10, 2007 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.