Tag 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 Year I Finally Keep My Resolutions?

Posted in Life Ramblings by

2012 is finally ending. I can say with certainty that it was the hardest year of my life. I am completely content to see it go.

In fact, I don’t really want to look back. I’m curled up by the fire with a glass of wine, in a minor food coma from the amazing dinner my husband made for me. Why ruin that by focusing on the less-than-fabulous?

I have been looking forward. Bring on 2013.

The Birthday Of A Blogging Resolution

This blog was one of my resolutions last year. It’s the one resolution I’ve been somewhat successful at keeping. This blog brought me back to writing. It helped me find my inner word artist again.

Now that “writer” is my full time job, and I’ve found my way back to my first love, fiction, I considered hanging up my URL and saving my words for work and novels. But as I went to discontinue my domain before it renewed, I couldn’t do it.

Partly because I’ve learned the key to me keeping resolutions – telling people and documenting it. One of the reasons I survived NaNoWriMo was my plastering of NaNo badges all over my Facebook so that even people I haven’t spoken to since high school knew what I was up to.

Now, granted, if anyone from high school reads my blog they don’t know it. But as my journal of sorts, I think documenting my attempt to make 2013 the year of keeping my resolutions on my blog might make a difference. So here goes…

2013 New Years Resolutions

  1. 365 Days of Gratitude: One of the things I’ve learned over this past year, is that even on the worst days you can imagine, there are things to be grateful for. And sometimes just noticing them can turn things around. So I resolve to document one thing I am grateful for (not repeating), every day in 2013.
  2. Read 25 New Books: I feel like this number is lame. It doesn’t sound very challenging. But I had a hard time choosing. Aside from writing, reading for fun was one of the things I lost in law school. I want to get myself back into books. But not to the detriment of…
  3. Writing 250,000 Words of Fiction: Again, arbitrary number. But I’ve learned that if I don’t pick a concrete goal, I get lost. So what this comes out to is just over 20,000 words a month. And NaNo comes at the end of the year to play pick up in November. I wish I didn’t need to assign myself to write, but I learned in December, as my NaNo novel sat abandoned, I need to.
  4. To Hit My Goal Dress Size: I know. Really? So cliche. The number one resolution people make and abandon before President’s Day. But I’ve reached a breaking point. I’ve always been curvy, even when I was in high school and trained for a competitive sport 5 days a week. I actually love my curves. What I don’t love is feeling like a blob from all the weight I gained in law school. I don’t really care what the number on my scale is, I know what size I feel comfortable and health at, and I am determined to get there by 2014.
  5. Be A Straight-A Wife: There’s no good way to quantify your marriage, but as our relationship changes (and we don’t spend all day in the same apartment anymore) I want to do my part to keep our marriage healthy. I want to be less critical, snap less, and go out of my way to be show love more. Because my husband really is my best friend, and sometimes he gets the worst of me.

In fact, now I’m off to snuggle next to him on the couch to watch the ball drop. Good-bye 2012. I plan on making 2013 a year to remember :)

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