Category Archives: Writing

Book #3: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Posted in Life Ramblings, Reviews, Writing by

It’s only 5 a.m., and already this Monday is a bit disappointing. We were supposed to wake up to more snow and treacherous roads. Now, I’m aware that my grown up job has never closed for bad weather – which is ludicrous, we live in the arctic and are prone to blizzards – but I had decided if it was really bad I was simply going to report I couldn’t get out of my neighborhood.

It wouldn’t have been a lie. I (me, myself) couldn’t (as in, do not have the ability because of my irrational fear of driving in icy conditions) get out of (my tiny old car could get stuck in anything) my neighborhood (prone to not being plowed).

But the streets are clear. There are people zooming past below me as we speak. They aren’t even driving a little slower, to give me hope the roads are slippery. The schools won’t be canceled after all. And my teeny tiny weekend that barely got started is officially over.

So, Monday, here we go…

Book #3: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

The Paris Wife

Barnes And Noble

My biggest complaint about this book is that it didn’t last longer – I was sad to see the characters go. In just the few nights we had together, I got attached.

I’ll admit I’ve always had a soft spot for the 1920s. I was convinced I should have been living in the days of Gatsby since the first time I picked up Fitzgerald – who, it just so happens, is an important character in this  book.

And, on top of my love for the 20s, I’m even more devotedly in love with Paris.

The 20s + Paris = I was convinced just a few chapters in I should have married Hemingway myself

Paula McLain took on something here that could easily have backfired – learning everything she could about Hemingway, and then writing a fictional story from his wife’s point of view with all the right facts in place. It reads like an honest, heart-felt autobiography, even thought it isn’t. Hadley is endearing and lovable, even in the moments you want to sit her down and tell her what to do.

But amazing story aside, the thing that really stuck with me about this book was the way she wrote about Hemingway writing. It’s what has kept me from writing about a book I finished weeks ago. Because part of me knows this isn’t really Hadley talking – the author could have gotten it all wrong. But that’s really just me making excuses.

Hemingway didn’t just write in flashes of brilliance – he slaved over his work. Day in and day out he almost drove himself mad, sitting in a rented room and writing from dawn until dusk. Words didn’t just flow, he did battle with them. And when they did flow, he went back to them and whittled away at them until they were perfect. That isn’t how I picture great writing.

Back, around the time I dropped my creative writing major in college, a professor wrote me a letter at the end of the semester. She told me that I was the best writer in her class, but I was never going to be great unless I committed to my work. She knew I wrote in quick moments if inspiration. She said that in my mind, when my work was brilliant, I was brilliant. And when my work was bad, it meant nothing because I didn’t put any real effort in anyway. She told me then, that wasn’t how great writers wrote. 

At the time I thought I understood her, but I didn’t. I tried to prove her wrong by putting the time in, teaching myself to write novels. But I never really learned the lesson. I’ve never slaved over every word. I’ve never been conscious of refining every sentence. I’ve never rewritten an entire novel because the tone wasn’t quite right.

This book brought the book I was writing to a screeching halt. I haven’t been able to add a word to it. But my mind keeps going back to another story, one that’s hidden away on a corner of my computer. One that I love, but has never been quite right. I’ve revised it, and revised it again. But I’ve never slaved over it, not like Hemingway did to get the perfect balance of detail and simplicity. I’ve never perfected it.

So I picked it up – thinking this flash of inspiration was going to make it easy to see what I didn’t see before. But the truth was, once I finished rereading it I felt defeated. It isn’t a quick fix. There are moment I love, and things that need to be rebuilt from the ground up. And after all of the time I’ve put in, I’m not sure I want to put in anymore.

But now I can’t write anything else.

The Lessons Of NaNoWriMo

Posted in Life Ramblings, Writing by

I succeeded in completing my first NaNoWriMo challenge with one hour and eighteen minutes to spare. It nearly didn’t happen. But at the last moment, I pulled it out. 6,000 words on the last day.

I was on track during the first week. Then I started a new job, and my after hours writing challenge took a serious hit. I considered giving up a few times, especially when I fell behind, but something kept me going. Probably the fact that my Facebook account had become a NaNo billboard and I would have bad to admit to my entire social network that I gave up.

I’m glad I didn’t. I know there are a lot of NaNo critics out there, but I’m not one of them. I learned a lot this November, both about writing and about myself. I learned that:

  • Excuses are more about fear than anything else. After three years off, I’m rusty. The pressure I put on myself now is different than the pressure I put on myself just out of college. Back then I felt like I had my whole life ahead of me. Now I feel like I’m running out of time to get started. Fear that your writing isn’t going to be good enough prevents you from every getting any words out.
  • Being married is one giant distraction. The last time I undertook a novel, I lived alone. When I got home at night there was no one to talk to, to watch TV with, to have dinner with. I’ve struggled to get back to writing because there’s always something else to be doing. But making this commitment, with my husband’s support, changed things. We’ve found a different balance. He found time to do the things he puts off for me, and I learned how to get into my own little world even with someone else around.
  • I am not, and probably never will be, a linear writer. I just can’t do it. I decided to try as I took on this challenge, because I never have and piecing scenes together into a cohesive story can take a lot of organizational time that I didn’t have. But about a third of the way through, I lost it. I don’t imagine a story in order. I imagine it in moments. And if I don’t write them when I’m inspired, I lose them.
  • Sometimes you have to write yourself somewhere, just to know you need to come back. I’ve learned to become less attached to my own writing. Sometimes you can’t get past an idea until you write it out and realize it really doesn’t work. That opens your mind to new options that can. I have a few scenes in my NaNo word count that are immediately followed by almost the same scene going in a completely different direction. Normally I would have wasted weeks pondering where to go and putting off writing until I was sure, then feeling too attached to my decision. NaNo got me to just write, and make decisions later.
  • Moments of brilliant writing and vivid ideas come out of nowhere, most often in the middle of less than brilliant writing. But you never give them a chance if you don’t just write.
  • National Novel Writing Month is less about word count and more about a goal that puts you in front of your computer and gets your fingers moving. I’ve heard a lot of people say it encourages bad writing jut for the sake of writing. But I think it just encourages writing, in the face of everything that normally keeps us from writing. I didn’t write garbage just to hit my word count, but I also didn’t hold myself back second guessing everything. I just wrote.
  • Writing is a major piece of my identity. A bigger piece than I understood. I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. Writers write. And when they don’t, a little piece of them starts to fade away. I feel like I’ve gotten that piece back, and that is an amazing feeling.

My novel is nowhere near finished. It has gaping holes, no ending, and scenes that need to be reevaluated. But if I hadn’t done this, I might never have gotten this far. And now that I’m in the grove, I actually want to keep writing. It’s been hard to even take a weekend off. That’s the kind of habit I need to make things happen.

Congratulations to all the other winners, and everyone who just gave it a shot. I hope you learned something too, about what holds you back and how you can get past it. And then I hope you got to take a really long nap.

Winner-180x180

NaNoWriMo: Initial Panic

Posted in Life Ramblings, Writing by

It’s Wednesday morning, November 1st.  And I’m on my blog, rather than having a single word started for my novel.  If you think this looks like it’s not a good sign, you’re right.  It’s not.

Last night we went out for dinner to celebrate our Halloweenaversary (or, for those of you who don’t celebrate my made up holidays, the anniversary of our first date, which happened to be on Halloween).  I decided not to stay up to start writing at midnight because by 11 I was already exhausted, and in a food coma from a too tasty dinner.  I said I’d start first thing in the morning.

I woke up at 6. I went back to bed. It was cold. The bed was toasty. I would write better with more sleep, right?

I got up at 8:30, and it was gone.  Gone.  The story wasn’t in my head.  The ambition to get it out on paper, missing.  I had no drive.  I had no inspiration.  It was all GONE.

So of course my brain jumped to, “this was a stupid idea anyway!”

NO!!! I’m going to do this!!! I’ve been plotting for weeks! I’ve been wanting to for over a year! NO GIVING UP BEFORE I START!

So I went on Facebook.  And I updated my cover photo and my profile pic to NaNo badges.  If you tell everyone you’re doing something, you won’t walk away, right?

Then I had to get off Facebook because I set up these rules for myself.  Rules to make me more productive starting November 1st.  Like a 10 minute limit on Facebook, and I could only check it when I woke up, once in the afternoon, and once before bed.  That limit also includes any scanning of trashy celebrity websites, any reading of the news that is not actually crucial for me to know, the sassy Suri’s Burn Book, Twitter, or Pinterest (unless I’m actually ON my NaNo Pin Board).

It turns out the only things I didn’t ban myself from on my Bookmark Bar include online banking (depressing), a job posting website (depressing), a blog one of my friends in the peace corp posts on when she gets internet in a small village in Africa (ever few months at most) and my blog. So, here I am.  Maybe you’ll hear from me more than I expected in November.

I think that planning and plotting and turning this story over in my head for so many weeks has made it even HARDER to start, rather than easier.  Now it’s daunting to get it down on paper correctly.  Now the ability to put it all into prose just seems fleeting.

I will start. This morning.  I promise.  I might try the “get ready, quarantine yourself at Starbucks” method.  Maybe that will help.  When in doubt, bribe yourself with a pumpkin spice latte, right?

Right.  Wish me luck.