Inspiration

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about inspiration. About where it comes from, how we receive it, whether we have any control over it. You know, the easy questions.

Take the story behind my first novel. At one point, one day, I got the image of one of those old station wagons, with the wood-paneled sides--I mean a really old one, from the forties, maybe. I'm not a very visual person, nor do I have much of an imagination. But suddenly I had in my imagination the image of this car. Where it was painted, the paint was old, faded, chipped and dented dark green. The wood panels were scarred, marred. A really old car.

I watched (in my head, remember) as this car turned in to a tree-shrouded lane and disappeared. The road, I noticed, was dirt. There was a small cloud of it still hanging in the air after the car was gone. I also saw that there was no sign naming the road, as a street or as a county road. And I suddenly realized that, though I hadn't seen them, the inhabitants of the car were two women. Old women--or at least older--as would befit a car of its advanced age.

About a dozen or so years ago, I joined one of the offshoots of what was then the Austin Writers' League. The group was called Novels in Progress, and its members were NIPpers. We came together to share what we wrote, the novels we were beginning, struggling with, or polishing up for publication. As it became clear that I'd have to produce something for the group to push around and poke at, I sat down one day in front of my Mac and--didn't have to wait too long--suddenly there was an image in front of me. A child's sneaker, red and empty. And I began to write.<

Couldn't get much beyond a first chapter, though my group got quite a bit of mileage out of it. But I couldn't figure out where the story wanted to go. Was the owner of that sneaker, a small boy, going to make it to the end of my novel? Had he been kidnapped? And who was this person who had seen the sneaker? She was a woman, I knew that much, and she was not a terribly worldly woman (sort of mirrored me, her creator. Imagine that!). But was she going to fall in love with the policeman who answered her question in that first chapter? And--oh my goodness, look at that! One of those two women in that old station wagon had also showed up in that first chapter. Where did she come from? And where was she going to wind up? What part was she going to play as the whole thing unwound?

Those questions just ran around in my head like a herd of loose cats. I had no idea how to corral them, to manage them into a story that those NIPpers would approve of. Until one day, when my friend Joanne and I wound up in a car together with a couple of hours to entertain each other. I mentioned my story, she asked me to tell her about it, and I did. I told her about that first chapter, with its red sneaker. And when I'd gotten to the last page of that first chapter, my mouth continued to move and a second chapter manifested, and then third, and by the time we'd reached Brooklyn, our destination (almost under the bridge, as I remember it), I was mentally typing "The End" on my narrative.

Where the heck did it come from? And I could also ask, where did it go? I didn't have a tape recorder on that trip, which was something I regretted for a long time, because neither of us could remember everything--or even most of the things--that I had said. I thought for some time--years, actually--that I had lost that story. But it wasn't lost. It was waiting for me to reach the point where I was ready to put it down in a more permanent form. When that time came, last November, elements had changed, endings turned up in very different locations, characters disappeared and were replaced by more interesting ones. This time, the story made it onto the page, all the way to the end, and it flowed just as easily as the first one had, and the place it came from was just as mysterious as ever.

And I still don't know where that place is or how it works, or how--or even whether--we can have any control over it. But it sure is fun to be dipping my toes in that stream, to be catching some of the ideas and urges that are available when we tap into it. In fact, I'll tell you about some of that fun, maybe in the next post.

Till then, buy the book, Awakening, if you haven't already, write a review if you have, and in either case, tell all your friends about it. That's your job. Mine is to write the next book. And then the next. And I'm on it!

Pie in the Sky

I wanted to talk a little bit about dreams. About how far you can go. About how far is too far. About what might hold you back. In essence, I'm talking about pie in the sky. 

I looked that phrase up just now, and I found two slightly different meanings. The first is an empty impossible wish, but the second is something that is not likely to happen--but is not impossible. I'm hanging my hat on that second meaning.

So now, what does pie in the sky--in either form--have to do with Patsy in Writer/Wonderland? Well, it's like this. Think Howey and Hoover, just to start with. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal talked about one Hugh Howey, who wrote a short piece about apocalypse and put it up on Amazon for, I think, $.99. Sort of like what I did on Monday, only 1/3 the price of my book. But that's okay--his was just a short story, or rather part of a story.

After a bit, he put a second part of the story up--maybe he upped the price, a bit--I can't remember. Anyway, a third followed, then a fourth, and finally, a fifth. And I think by that fifth installment, he was charging a bit more. And by that fifth installment, he had garnered a huge following! To condense his story, he condensed his stories--into one volume that he has titled "Wool" and that he's selling for $5.99. And he's selling 'em by the cartload. He's made a million simoleons, as my dad used to say. Traditional publishers are knocking his door down to take over his book, make paperbacks, hardbacks, movies, all kinds of media. And he has said, pretty much to everyone, no, my electronic publishing empire is not broken, it does not need fixing, so no, I'm going to keep taking care of that part of things. Now, I will consider selling the rights to the other media. . . And I think Mr. Howey has done that, garnering himself another cartload of simoleons. Good for him.

Then there's Colleen Hoover. Actually, Colleen came before Hugh, both in the alphabet, and chronologically in the publishing world. Before I tell you about Colleen, I must disclose the following: Colleen is the niece of my daughter's next door neighbor, and Aunt Jean Ann made my daughter aware of what I'm about to tell you long before most of the rest of the world knew about it. I want an Aunt Jean Ann in my life, for reasons that are about to become clear. 

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, Colleen Hoover decided to write a book--or perhaps she finished one that she'd been working on for a while. Or maybe it was the 31st book she'd penned since she was a romantic teenager. Whatever, she wrote a book, titled it "Slammed," and put it up on Amazon, like Hugh Howey, for a mere $.99. I don't think Colleen and Hugh were talking, but they both had the right idea. Colleen talked about her book (and so did Aunt Jean Ann, and probably every other member of her family and all her friends) on Facebook, in a blog (sort of like this one, actually) and wherever else anyone would listen (I don't know that last for a fact, but I'd bet my book sales on it). 

And pretty soon, there was another book up on Colleen's Amazon bookshelf (and that's actually what Amazon calls it. I have a bookshelf, now, too, though there's only one book on it), This was called "Point of Return," and people who'd bought "Slammed" and loved it now lined up to by "POR" (that's how Colleen refers to it). Then came "Hopeless"--that's the point that I hopped on her boat. I bought "Hopeless" for--I think--$1.99 or $2.99? Something like that.

And now Colleen's getting high six-figure advances from traditional publishers and she's doing all right for herself. If you want to know just how well she's doing, read all the way to the end of that article I added a link for up there. She's mentioned there--and Publishers Weekly lists her as their #2 ebook author for the first quarter of 2013. How 'bout them apples!

She said it (or something very like it) herself: never in her wildest dreams 18 months ago could she have imagined it'd go this far. Well, that's probably not quite true: she was probably dreaming pretty regularly about pie in the sky back then. The thing is, there actually was pie in her sky, and she's chowing down on a big thick slice of it even as I write this.

So can you guess where this is going? Yup! I think there's some more pie up there, enough so that I can have a slice of it, too. There's enough for Hugh, for Colleen, for the millions of other authors out there, and for me. That is, if everyone I know and everyone they know and everyone they know. . . . will buy a copy of my book, Awakening. And then a copy of the next one--which, by the way, should be out before I even get the first royalty check for this one! YAY!

I'll take a slice of blueberry, please--and yes, heat it up and slap a scoop of vanilla on there, if you don't mind. Mmmmmmmm. 

An Overnight Sensation!

I guess I should consider changing my blog title to "Patsy in Writerland," because that's where I live these days. But it's also, in many ways, still Wonderland, too, so I'm not going to fix it. At least not until it appears to need fixing.

And yes, I'm back. After nearly four years of silence, the floodgates have opened and words are spewing forth, gushing forth, flooding forth. This flood of words first showed up on my computer and then in my iPad. Then it overflowed into my emails, and now the waters are lapping here, at my blog, where the drought has been harshest and has lasted for many, many months.

But no longer. I'm writing--novels, emails, and blogs, not to mention letters, notes, and grocery lists. Anywhere there's a keyboard, my fingers tap and words fly out.

Today, in this "rebirth of a blog," I'm focusing on this novel thing, this mushroom of creativity that suddenly--almost overnight, it seems--pushed its way out of whatever soil it had been sleeping in for more than 70 years and grew to a size, shape, and solidity that, finally, demanded that it be plucked and laid out on the groaning banquet table of self-published novels for possible consumption by--you the reader!

The seed was planted more than ten years ago, when I brought a fledgling chapter to a writing group in Austin for their gentle ministrations. Taking to heart some of what they told me to do, I gave that chapter a new set of feathers and tried pushing it out of the nest again. Splat! Not very successful. So back into the recesses of the nest it went, to lick its wounds and work on yet another set of feathers.

My first title page--home-grown, yes, but
adequate to the purpose--at least for now! 

Comes November 1, which many in the writing world know as the start of NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, or NaNoWriMo. For the third time in nine years, I took on the challenge: write at least 50,000 words of a novel before midnight, November 30. I torpedoed that poor bedraggled first chapter and started in from scratch, sending words onto the page as fast as I could get them there.

And the words just poured out. In the middle of the month, I flew from here, Murray, in western Kentucky, up to Maine for Thanksgiving with my son and his family--and every day, while the rest of the family worked or went to school, I sat at my iPad, bluetoothed keyboard smoking, and continued to write. Took Thanksgiving Day off for some excellent turkey, but was right back at it on Black Friday. By November 30, I had over 53,000 words. I had met the challenge! But I didn't stop for even a day, and, by February 19, the word count was more than 145,000. And it was pens down.

What amazes me now, looking back, is that there was never a moment where I sat, hands poised over the keyboard, and wondered what to say next. Never. At night, I'd write scenes in my head, changing dialogue, redressing this character or that, choreographing a love scene or a rape. By day, the words flowed out of me as if they'd been fashioned into a chain that could be pulled out, one link after another, in the right order (mostly) and ready to be engraved onto the page.

Even before that February day of completion arrived, I'd already begun scripting the second novel in my head. So there was hardly a gap between "The End" of one novel, and "Once upon a time" of the next. Hey, man, I thought, this novel-writing thing is unbelievable! So easy! And what the heck is writer's block, anyway--something to eat?

In a nutshell, that's how, at the age of 71 and a half, I became a novelist. It's like those middle-aged film stars who are suddenly--overnight, it seems--the talk of the town. Yeah, right, never mind the fifteen or twenty years of struggle, of bit parts, of waiting table hoping for those bit parts. And that's sort of how I feel about my sudden career change. It was overnight--but it took years to get here.

But more of that next time. For now, just let me give you a link to that first novel, if I haven't already emailed it to you.  Put the following into your browser, and you're there:  www.amazon.com/dp/B00CD7WQUK. And, if you read it and like it, don't forget to write a review! Thanks.