Ginger Snapped

I am a slow writer. I am always astounded by people who say they write a draft in a month, or even in two months. I placate myself by saying such drafts must not be very good. Otherwise I think I would completely despair, close the laptop permanently, and take up life as a pig farmer.  When I write, I open my files, and my characters stare at me from the page patiently waiting for stage directions. I give them setting, and they tap their feet. I give them description, and they cross their arms. I say, “What do you want me to do? You’re the character! Do something! Make some plot happen!” Meanwhile, my characters look at their nails, stifle a yawn, and reply, “You’re the writer. What do  you  want me to do?” This continues until I’m so disheartened that I skip to the end and take a cue from Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll think about the middle tomorrow. So the whole concept of NaNoWriMo has always smacked of insanity to me. It seems as if you’re just setting yourself up ...

Well, friends, it seems as if a future in  pig-farming  is not imminent, thank goodness. I am beyond thrilled to report that NaNoWriMo was a success for me. Of course, it helped that there were no falling Christmas trees, no snowstorms, no power outages. There were no major illnesses, and only one trip to Urgent Care during the month of November. At the end of 30 days, I had a complete first draft: a beginning, middle, and end, not to mention characters who spoke to me. In fact, they often wouldn’t shut up. So what did I learn from the experience? 1. I can start and finish a project quickly. As I said in my last post, I’ve always considered myself a slow writer. Signing up for NaNoWriMo eliminated any prior conceptions or misconceptions I had about my writing speed. One caveat, though: some serious preparation was key. Before the month started, I designated a composition notebook for this project and brainstormed characters, settings, plot lines, and ideas. 2. ...

"[W]hat we really gain from the artmaking of others is courage-by-association."                                                                                                  -David Bayles and Ted Orland                                                  Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

I am currently obsessed with houses. Old houses. Giant houses. Houses with far too many bedrooms and bathrooms for my small family. Houses with porte cocheres and carriage houses and barns. Houses with fireplaces and tall windows and leaded glass. Houses with peaks and turrets and bay windows and balconies. Houses with libraries and butler's pantries and multiple staircases. I even found one with an elevator. I visit circaoldhouses.com more often than I should. I scroll through pictures when I should be organizing my tax documents. I look at house plans when I should be folding laundry. But laundry gets undone almost as soon as it's done, so why bother? If I lived in one of these houses, I would have a room of my own. In fact, I would have several rooms of my own. Probably one for each day of the week. One could be an office, one an art studio, one a dance/yoga studio, and one just for empty space where I could lie down on the floor and make snow angels, minus the snow. I...

Before practice or performance, dancers stretch their muscles, head to toe. Not only does stretching feel amazing, it prevents injury, and allows the performers to push the limits of their physical capabilities. See  here  for some favorite photos of dancers pushing their limits) Visual artists complete quick warm-up sketches or gesture drawings to loosen up the hand, and to practice before drawing more complex and detailed work. Singers perform vocal gymnastics in preparation for a performance. Lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-lolli-POP. (That used to be my favorite.) And we writers? We open up a scene and dive in. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve found in the past week that a warm-up really helps my process. These warm-ups are nothing elaborate, nor are they award-winning writing. They are simply meant to get the internal editor out of the way and get the words flowing when I finally do sit down with my work-in-progress. ...

Last week, I helped a woman who is moving from a very large house (probably over 3000 square feet) to a three-bedroom apartment. We sorted the contents of her garage into piles of garbage, piles of recycling, piles of donations, and piles of things to keep. Some things were easy to sort: the bags of trash that had been sitting for weeks; the broken picture frame; the dented metal garbage can; the bags of clothes that no longer fit. Some things were not so easy: the dollhouse that needed a few touch-ups but still had many hours of good Barbie time left in it; the unused $600 ski rack; the deflated soccer ball. It was not my stuff, so it was easy for me to be objective. I had no emotional attachment to any of it, no history, no story, no memories lacquering the surfaces of these objects. They were just things. If I were to sort the contents of my own garage, I might not have such an easy time. We humans have a touch of the squirrel in us, a touch of the magpie. A response of “...

You say you want a story? A true-life story, an end-of-the-road type story? — Yeah, yeah, that kind . A what’s-important story? — You got a story or not? Alright, alright, keep your shirt on. I’m thinking, ok? Ok. — Ok. Ok. I’ve got it. Here’s your story. So my grandfather used to fly planes during WWII. — Planes? Yeah, you know those things in the sky? — Pffft. He was a test pilot. And one day, he was supposed to test fly this one plane, only for some reason his emergency pack wasn’t complete. See, they were supposed to carry a bar of emergency chocolate, and his pack had no chocolate. Yeah, I know, right? They had emergency chocolate! Smart brass, eh? So my grandfather’s missing his chocolate. No, I don’t know what happened to it—maybe he ate it one night when the mess hall had fiber fish for dinner. Maybe it melted in the Georgia sun. Maybe the rats got it, or the cockroaches carried it away. Who knows? That part’s not important to the story. For whatev...

Ginger and her sister In the beginning was the Word. In her beginnings, there was a book. Her mother told her she could read before she started kindergarten, and she started kindergarten at age four. Each week, she would walk with her grandmother and older sister the nine or ten city blocks to their local branch of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, a low brick building down a side street. There, she and her sister would settle in the children’s section, while their grandmother browsed through paperback mysteries and Regency romances. She remembers little of that library—windows, low shelves, Ezra Jack Keats’  A Snowy Day , and the front desk, where a stereotypically severe-looking librarian stamped their books with a heavy rubber stamp— ka-thunk! By the time she was in fifth grade, her mother was in graduate school studying to become an elementary school librarian. Long Saturday afternoons were spent in Lockwood Library at the university: Mom at the copier w...

One of the most vital aspects of being able to fulfill one’s calling as an anguished writer is to have someone who understands. Today’s guest post is brought to you by William Johnson, also known as the Gingerbread Man. Ginger cannot confirm or deny any of the following allegations. From the outside, to a non-writer, there are only three stages to writing a novel. The first stage involves mornings when I awaken to the sound of pencil on paper, scribbling furiously. I see my writer intently pouring her soul into a small notebook. When I venture a question… “Honey, when do you think…?” I am greeted by a “Shhh, not now.” If the muses have been kind, these mornings may involve an hour of ecstatic outpouring, rarely more. The activity sometimes comes in fits and starts, but often seems to most resemble the gush of a firehose from brain to paper. At times, there is transfer of notes to computer with smiles and giggles abounding. It seems that a writer truly enjoys this part of writing...

Back in the old days, or at least in graduate school, Aristotle and I became quite close. We were buddies. Well. Ok. The relationship was rather one-sided. But being something of a structure freak and a lover of tracing one’s roots (be they genealogical, linguistic, or literary), I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with Aristotle and his Poetics. (Wouldn’t that be a great name for an English-nerd band?) Here’s what I learned: Aristotle’s unities (the unities of action, time, and place) went out of vogue around the time of Shakespeare, because of the wild and crazy influence of mystery cycles and morality plays. Aristotle was no match for Shakespeare, and his theories took on the patina of an antiquated relic, whilst Shakespeare shone. Dear Aristotle remains relevant, though, when you’re looking for a structural way to help convey emotion, shape tone, and dive into complex thematic content. Just for kicks, here’s a refresher on the unities. Having unity of actio...

Writing a novel has often been compared to giving birth. I’ve done both twice, so I can attest to the fact that it’s a good metaphor–you write for nine months, then in a final painful push, drug-induced or not, you give birth to a being that didn’t exist before. Too often, the metaphor stops there. It shouldn’t. Just as no self-respecting mother would send her baby out into the world after the snip of the umbilical cord and a quick clean up, no writer should ever send a manuscript out into the world so new and so fresh. It takes time and love and energy and dedication to raise a child. So, too, does it take significant effort to raise and revise a worthy novel. Some things cannot be rushed, no matter how much we writers seek validation or legitimacy, no matter how many times a well-meaning relative asks about “the writing,” and if we’re ever going to “finish that thing.” It’s ok to be a first draft for a while. Perhaps we need to stop thinking of our first drafts with Anne Lam...

On the last day of school, Indie Lee Chickory discovers a stow-away in her backpack: The Lobster Monty Cola, her pet golden lobster. In a series of misadventures involving a kickball, a chase, and a police siren, she ends up losing him in the ocean that day. Indie wants to make things better: to find Monty Cola with the help of her new friend Owen, to regain the relationship she used to have with her sister, Bebe, before Bebe went all perfectionista on her, and to be a better Indie Lee Chickory. But the Indie Lee Chickory she is when she’s looking for Monty Cola with Owen is a different Indie Lee Chickory from the one she is when she’s trying to be a better sister. The two Indie Lee Chickorys seem mutually exclusive. One wears Carhartts and works in the set design studio with a pierced and fierce Mohawk-hair girl named Sloth. That Indie Lee recites fish names and makes fish faces, like the trout pout, to make people laugh. The other Indie Lee wears French braids and matching...

Last month I taught a journal-writing class to a group of women at my church. Though I practically cut my teeth writing in my journal, I no longer write regularly. I justify myself by claiming that I spend my days writing other things, which absolves me from any sort of journal-writing guilt. Honestly though, at the end of the day I feel like I simply have nothing left to say. The details of my life are mundane: I eat, I sleep, I work. Repeat. Of course, there are variations, but not many. I eat, but I eat the same things on a weekly basis. (We follow a set menu at the Gingerbread House because of picky eaters.) I sleep, but not much because my body keeps a monk’s schedule, awakening usually at 3 or 4 am. I work: I write, I shovel, I cook, I clean, I drive, I organize. These days, there’s little that’s noteworthy but for the snow, and even that’s lost its newsworthiness, as it simply keeps coming. But then two weeks ago, I found myself in a situation that I ha...

In the woods across the stream, there is a pile of bricks. There are 79 bricks. I know there are 79 bricks because the gingerbread boys counted them once when they were much younger, when counting things was cool. The bricks are not close to any house, nor are they close to any structure at all. There's no barn, no sugar shack, no hunting cabin. Nothing. They are in a no-man's land of pine and ash trees, brambles and firebush. How did they get there? Did the deer bring them, nosing them along until they formed a neat stack? Did the ants go marching one by one (Hurrah! Hurrah!), carrying them on their backs? Did the rafter of turkeys fly them in? Do they mark the spot where treasure is buried? Are they there as some post-apocalytic stash? I have questions. In the woods past the old beaver dam, there is a tree with BUTTER spray-painted on it. There is also a tree with FLOUR  spray-painted on it. EGGS , too. This grocery list is in a vast area dubbed the Marshy Swamp by the gin...

Yesterday, after a solid day of BIC [Butt-in-chair for the non-writers out there], my brain was fatigued. The little decisions of revision -- To be or not to be? To keep or not to keep? Is this a separate scene or part of the same scene? Does it matter? -- immobilized me for any other decisions, like what to make for dinner. While most normal people would just order pizza or go for Chinese, the choices for pizza delivery and Chinese take-out in these parts are scant. I can't over-use them or I lose my sole ace. Sole ace. Solace. It's pretty lame when your sole ace/solace is take-out. No wonder writers tend to live in big cities. There are more options for take-out. Anyway, I turned to Facebook. Let's crowd-source dinner decisions. And Facebook came through. With one single note that I had cauliflower, I got recipes and links to aloo gobi, stir-fried rice/cauliflower, cauliflower alfredo, roasted cauliflower with tahini and yogurt, cauliflower and bacon baked with gruyere ...

I just finished reading an ARC of Ruta Sepetys's new novel Salt to the Sea.  It is the story of WWII refugees aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff . The story is told in four voices, with the first four chapters introducing each of the four characters. Sepetys begins these four chapters with "_____ is a hunter." Each character is given an emotion: Guilt is a hunter. Fate is a hunter. Shame is a hunter.  And finally, the last character: Fear is a hunter.   I'm not doing justice to this wonderful and heartbreaking story, but I'm stuck right now on Fear is a hunter. The emotion of fear is assigned to the despised character. I don't want to be like the despised character. And yet, I'm fearful. The fear of my inadequacies drives me to all kinds of activities other than what I should be doing (writing), what I want to be doing (writing). So I turn around and face the hunter. I'm not perfect, I say. I'm not invincible, I say. You can't hurt me, I say...