The Fraud Effect

When can you say that you're a writer?  

I went to a doctor's appointment this week.  The physician's assistant, making small talk, asked me what I do for fun. I hesitated for a moment and said, "Well... I write."
"Really?  What do you write?"
Another hesitation.  "Young adult fantasy."
"Oh, wow!  Where were you when I was growing up?!"
She asked me how I had gotten into it and I told her about National Novel Writing Month, and how I had three partial novels.  I didn't bring up my published short stories, but she also didn't ask me what I had published.  And when I say that, what I mean is that she did not seek out my publishing credits to determine if I'm "really" a writer.

As we were having the conversation, especially the early part if it, I wondered if I had "the right" to call myself a writer.  Sure, I've published four stories.  Sure, I have three novels partly written.  But is that enough?  I don't write every day (even though EVERY successful writer says you must).  While I have been published, those publications have been by literary magazines with relatively small circulations.  It's not like people know who I am; it's not like I'm famous.

But I recall reading recently about the Fraud Affect.  It's when you feel like you don't belong to a certain group, you're not good enough for a certain honor, even though your peers DO feel that you qualify.

I remember reading an article by Neil Gaiman about this.  He recounts a story of how he was at an event, as a guest speaker I think, and was standing in the back of the theatre with "another Neil."  They got to chatting about how it still felt weird to Neil Gaiman to be invited places to speak, how he still doesn't quite believe his own celebrity.  The other Neil said he understood, that often when speaking in public would think, "but I didn't do anything special - I just went where the air force sent me."  In his story, Neil Gaiman counters this with, "but you went to the moon!" - revealing that "the other Neil" was Neil Armstrong.

So I guess it's OK, that maybe this is just something I have to get used to.  I am a writer.  I write.  I have published stories.  I am working on novels.  Therefore I can tell people, "I am a writer."

The Non-Super Superheroes

We all have a favorite super hero with a special talent.  Some superheros have super strength or the ability to fly.  Some have a special physical difference, such as claws or being able to transform into a different shape.  Most superheroes out there have useful - or even frightful - special powers.  You never hear about the super"heroes" that have the ability to do a mundane task incredibly well, or who have a power that, while impressive, is entirely useless.  Unless you're watching Mystery Men or the superhero game on Whose Line is it Anyway.

But if there were a collection of superheros out there, with mundane or useless powers, what would they be?  

I personally have a couple "super" powers:
-When going somewhere new for the first time, I will get lost.  I will make a wrong turn somewhere, even if I have very clear directions.  Even if it's not a complicated route.  It's guaranteed.
-I also have a magical cell phone.  It never fails that if I am stuck in traffic and think that I am going to be late, that my picking up the phone to call or text someone to alert them to my predicament alters something in the alignment of the planets.  Traffic will begin moving again.  That broken down car that was blocking a lane will finally be towed out of the way.  The jack-knifed tractor trailer will right itself and the stopped traffic will part like the Red Sea, allowing me to cruise along my merry way.  I will arrive on time, and whoever I called or texted will say, "I thought you said you were running late."

I realize the latter example is actually helpful, though it's so strangely specific as to only happen very rarely.

So let's close our eyes and imagine a special school for mutants and superheroes.  But not the gifted ones.  Not the elite ones.  The ones with the weird, unhelpful powers.  You have been recruited for your mutant power, and now it's time to share!  Is it the miraculous ability to always ruin a new baking recipe?  The power of coming in the front door and tripping over an item you thought you lost now that you've broken down and bought a replacement?  An amazing anti-charisma with dice that ensures you will always make the worst possible roll?  Revel in your amazingly-mundane abilities!

Know Your Audience

As some of you know, I recently had another story published - a piece of flash fiction called "Dying Flower."*  While this is a first for me, in that I've never had a flash fiction published before, all of my other published works are also quite short (under 2,000 words), and densely visual.  It also continues in my comfort zone of being vaguely historical (though this is my first about an actual historical event).

*This can be found on my My Works page, if you're interested: https://www.iveyink.com/myworks/

I actually wrote this story several years ago.  It was one of three or four that was in my very first round of submissions to contests and to a service that helps you determine, based on your style, what journals are best fits for you.  I wasn't sure what to do with it for a while, as I've only just recently started seeing "flash fiction" and "micro-short" or "short short stories" included in "we are currently accepting submissions of" lists.

About six months ago, I remembered this piece and took it, along with another flash fiction I wrote more recently, to my writer's critique group.  It was also the first time my group and our leader had been presented with flash fiction for critique and, while some of them were initially a little surprised at the premise (two complete stories, each in less than 500 words), the feedback was good.

My writing critique group is kind of a sounding board for me.  I write short, usually dark, literary pieces that generally straddle the history/fantasy line.  They all have rich sensory imagery - even the one that is much closer to a main stream humor piece.  In short, they're the kind of pieces I would enjoy reading myself.  

Because of that, it's helpful for me to have other people read my stuff and tell me if it makes sense, if they like it, if it's too wordy, too weird, too dark, etc.  I can read something and say, "gosh, this is cool/beautiful/awesome."  But having a children's author, a memoirist, a non-fiction humor columnist, a realistic/modern fiction writer, and others weigh in helps ground me as to whether my assessment of my on work is on point.  

Having a diverse group of reviewers also helps in that since I am so big on both history and symbolism, I often make vague allusions to stuff that make perfect sense to me, but are also perfectly likely to go over people's heads if they are not as well versed in history, cannon literature, and archetypes as I am.  

When I first wrote "Dying Flower," I asked my sister and my now-husband to read it.  Katrina, who, in addition to being very interested in history, like I am, also was particularly fascinated by the Titanic when she was in middle school (before the movie came out, before that was what all kids were into), said that it was TOO obvious that the story was about the Titanic.  Jason, on the other hand, is not a history buff, and asked, "is this supposed to be a reference to something?"

But Jason and I were discussing this this week, after I brought home my contributor's copy.  He pointed out that he's not my target audience.  He's into biographies, straight forward slash'n'hack adventures, and horror.  And that's OK.  But I do have to keep in mind my audience.  And I guess my audience is people like me - people who like fantasy, history, and literary works, with heavy imagery and rich allusions.

May Project Update

How is it that tomorrow is June 1st?  It seems like yesterday was May 1st...

I've spent this month wrapped up in name research.  As some of you may recall, my current project, The Wolf and the Sheath, is a novel I started writing during NaNoWriMo, lo, these many years ago.  When you're trying to squeeze 50,000 words into 30 days, you don't take time to do name research - you throw down a place holder and move on.  

But now here we are, coming up on 9 years in, and I still have place holder names for most of my characters.  And some of these are acceptable names; probably no one but me cares that Finn, Konstantin, and Markus aren't from the right linguistic background for these characters.  But I can't keep calling the antagonist "Whatshisname."

So after how satisfying it felt to pin down names for the major locations, I decided to completely change gears and focus solely on name research and replacement.  Now because this is a quasi-fantasy/quasi-historical piece, you would think I could just make stuff up.  But for me, I like to ground characters' names in real-world languages.  And because I'm... well... me, these names have to mean something or have some significance.  And as I've said it previous posts, they also have to be something that the audience will find relatively easy to remember, pronounce, and spell.  (Though I have actually given one character a name that is somewhat awkward intentionally, to put the reader slightly off balance with him.  But he's had his name for a while...)

Could I not do that?  Could I just slap Bob, Jim, and Steve on these characters and move on? Well, no, actually, I couldn't.  They don't suit the characters or the world.  Could I do this if I were writing a modern piece?  Well, actually, no on that one, too : )  Even the modern pieces (what few I have written) have some symbolism in the names.  Not as much research goes into it, but I do think about the meanings of names even in modern settings.  

So what did I do in June?  I sorted through a mind-numbing amount of research for names.  But I also named the main character's brothers and father, the most important secondary character, decided on how all these people say "mom" and "dad," and am very close to choosing the name of another major place.

And I'm not saying that every character is getting this level or research; the cook who gets referenced once is not going to be given the name of an obscure Serbian goddess of baking that it takes me hours to sort out.  The cook could be Hilda.  Except that I already have a Hilda.

The Costume Makes the Character

In a previous blog post a couple years ago, I talked about the importance of costume in character and world building.  You can read that here: 

Revisiting "Costume and Character" Post, April 2016

As a theatre major and a costume designer, I personally find that figuring out the character's costume really helps solidify who they are, what they are, where they are, and all those great W's of a character. Granted, there are times that going into too much detail can be distracting. As much as I love reading George R. R. Martin, he does have a tendency to go into so much detail that only a cosplayer who is going to be actually building this costume is still interested at the end of the description.

But it is helpful to know something about how a character is dressed and why. Did she pick out this outfit herself? Did she MAKE it herself, and what does that say about the world she lives in and the position she has in it? Does the character have a certain color, or range of colors that he wears exclusively? And again, is it a case of choosing that color, or is it more that he's in a position that he has to wear this for whatever reason? Regardless of the how or why the clothes were made or chosen, how does the character wear them? Does she take pride in her appearance? And is the pride related to her position? Does he just throw on whatever is lying around? Or has he specifically chosen clothes that make it LOOK like he has picked up whatever is lying around?

This is just as important in a contemporary peice as it is in a fantasy, sci-fi, or historical peice. I think it's something that maybe people think about less for modern peices, but showing the difference between a character who wears a nice dress even when she's working in a book store and a character who has just thrown on whatever rumpled khakis and t-shirt are lying around already tells you something about the two charatcers, even if you don't know anything else about them yet.

As I said above, I majored in theatre, and when I did so I chose a double concentration in performance and design. There was a decent period of time in college where I was always working on some costume project or another. But I was coming at it from the other side than I am now. In college, I was given a fully-formed character and told, "figure out what they're wearing." I had clues in the text to go by. Sometimes the playwright has very specific instructions. There's a Chekhov play, I don't remember which one now, where the dialogue indicates several times that a character is wearing a very tacky combination of a pink dress and a green sash. But this, of course, had it's reasons. Chekhov was pointing out not only that this character was awkward and didn't have a good fashion sense, but also that the other characters were petty enough to talk it up.

Now I come at it from the other side. I have to make sure that if I have pointed out what the character is wearing, that it's important. I'm the sort of person that reading a story I see it in enough detail that I don't necessarily need to know every nucance of a character's outfit. If you tell me they're at a ball, I see them in the finery of the time period you've already set up - unless you have made a point to note that one of the characters is wearing a suit that is at least a decade out of style.

This is actually something I need to work on for Brinyor. I don't know that I have ever described what Rigan (the main character) is wearing in any particular scene. (What makes this a particularly heinous oversight is that her mother dyes fabric for a living.) I do have one scene where I have described what Janus, another major character, is wearing, but really only because he is wearing it for an important ceremony and he's not happy about it. I really need to go back to the peice and figure out scenes where the reader needs to know what people are wearing and why. Maybe that's what I'll do next.

I have been thinking about this again lately, as I work on The Wolf and the Sheath.  I have, fortunately, done a little bit more to describe what Reyala wears in this piece than I had for Rigan in Brinyor, above.  But I still need to do more work on that.

Reyala travels from one society to another in this story.  The clothing of the two societies is different.  I have a very clear image in my head of what she wore in one place, and what she wears in another.  I still need to work on translating those to the page.  Are her clothes easy to move around in?  Can she dress and undress herself?  How does the difference in weather affect what she wears in one place rather than the other?

More than that, though, I need to work on the other characters' clothing.  It occurs to me that I have barely touched on ANY of the other characters' clothes, except one.  Even though Reyala is the main character, that doesn't mean that I can neglect what the rest of her society are wearing.

Athena's Tale

Sing, oh, muse, of the rage of Athena...

...no, seriously, tell me what she's barking about 'cause there's nothing there but she sounds really mad.

Jason and I have embarked on many adventures together.  Our most recent has been getting a second dog.  We'd been talking about it for a while - Baldur, our corgi/German shepherd mix - will be eight in August and we thought getting a friend for him might help keep him energetic and youthful.

We finally started actively looking this winter.  One of our neighbors volunteers for a private shelter and mentioned three dogs specifically that she thought might work well as playmates for Baldur.  With these three in mind, we started looking up dog profiles on their site and others.  One of the ones our friend recommended really stood out to us: a medium sized little girl who had been surrendered by her owners due to divorce, who liked playing and snuggling, and who was deaf.

Our hearts kind of went out to this little one - we thought that there might not be a lot of people willing to take a chance on a deaf dog, plus, according to her story, she had been very close to her previous mom.  Since Baldur is already very much a Daddy's Boy, we also thought having another dog that might bond with me would be a good balance.

We have had Athena for 3 months now.  She is still adjusting and, though it gets easier from day to day and week to week, we still have challenges.  We've been dealing with inside potty accidents.  She sometimes tries to steal Baldur's spot, toys, or food.  She has very smelly farts.  Athena is not a delicate flower.

Because she is deaf, she relies on her other senses.  We're not sure if her sight is so well-developed and precise that she barks at small changes in light that we can't detect... or if she maybe also doesn't see well and is barking at new yard signs that she can't see until we get close.  She has three barks; one sounds like a 6th grader left alone with a clarinet, another sounds like a normal dog bark, and the third... the third is a window-shaking bark she obviously got from her boxer mother.  Athena is not a delicate flower.

For a dog who is deaf, she is awfully noisy.  In addition to the barking (which, in her defense, she can't tell how loud she is being), she squeaks, squeals, grunts, snorts, and snores.  She might be part teacup piglet.  Athena is not a delicate flower.

But our new little baby is also a brave, strong girl who has come back from a lot.  

When we started going through the adoption process, we found out more about her backstory.  She was surrendered to the shelter in November.  She hadn't been to the vet in the year that her previous owners had her.  She weighed 22.5 pounds when she was returned to the shelter; she weighed 27.5 when we adopted her three months later.  She now weighs 29, which is what the vet says is a good weight for her. 

She used to squirm in a weird mix of panic and relief when we would come to get her up in the morning, or come home from work.  Now she's still excited to see us, but I think now she knows that Mommy and Daddy always come back.  

She used to gulp so much water that we had to take her out every hour, but now she knows that she will always have enough.

She used to be afraid of ceiling fans - we had a note from the previous owner that said that she wouldn't even come in the same room with one running.  But we have coaxed her past that.  Now our brave little girl sleeps next to one or both of us on the couch, not caring that the fan is on.

She might still have some things she needs to work on, but she has come along way.  And we know that one day she will be the good, sweet, brave, strong girl that she is already becoming.  Because Athena is not a delicate flower. 

Part of the Art

If you're on Facebook, you've likely seen "post the covers of albums that had an impact on you" thing that's been going around.  There are several versions of it, but the one that I did directed you to post 10 albums, 1 each day for ten days, with the additional note that you not provide explanations.

4 of the 10 that I posted were either movie soundtracks, or ballets.  I seriously considered even more movie soundtracks, film scores, original cast recordings, and ballets.  Why I eventually decided not to was because it had been not simply the music, but also the story, film, and/or full production that impacted me.  (I decided on this distinction after having posted my first cover, The Lion King film score.)

Why did I decide on this qualification?  I guess it's kind of the same reason that I won't list plays among my favorite books, nor playwrights among my favorite authors; plays are written to be performed, not read.  You lose a large part of the play - even that which is left up to the interpretation of the director, performers, designers, and in some cases musicians - if you only read it.

Likewise, the music of a film or musical is just one part of the art.  The full experience involves both viewing and listening.  Take, for example, a recent project of mine.  I recently went through my closet and, finally, after much debating, got rid of all of my favorite videos.  (I kept a list and am slowing buying the DVDs!)  In so doing, I also jotted down the soundtracks of some these favorites, with the intent to buy or download them.  I have recently added the soundtracks for Hook, The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and MuLan to my collection.  I love these films.  I love their music.  Or, at least, I remembered the music in conjunction with the films being awesome.  

And that's not to say that the music isn't as good as I remember, but I actually did feel like I was missing something listening to these soundtracks rather than watching the films.  And maybe part of it is that you physically can't fit the entire score of 90+ minute movie onto a CD; maybe the parts that I remember loving in the film weren't included, or were truncated.  

Or maybe it really is that you can't have the full experience when you remove one aspect of the art from the rest of it.
 

The Battle of the War Movies

Or, rather, the battle to stay awake during the war movies.

You kind of expect that when you go to watch a movie about a pivotal battle that it's going to be exciting.  When you go into a movie that you know is about a moment where the course of history hinged on the outcome, you expect it to be engaging, thrilling, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, even though you already know who won.  You don't expect confusion, characters you can't relate to, or to keep checking the time.

Last weekend, Jason and I watched Darkest Hour.

If you know me at all, you know I'm a big history enthusiast.  When I heard that Gary Oldman was playing Winston Churchill, I said, "dude, I have to see this movie!"  I didn't realize Churchill was a mumbler.  I didn't realize a lot of his peers were also mumblers.  I knew that King George VI had a speech impediment... but I didn't realize the actor playing him in The King's Speech spoke more clearly in a movie about a man overcoming a speech impediment than the actor playing him in Darkest Hour.  But maybe they were going for an accurate portrayal of a bunch of rich mumblers.  (Churchill's secretary, on the other hand, speaks more clearly than any of the men in the film.)

I also hadn't realized that Darkest Hour was going to pretty much just be about the bureaucracy of getting the Dunkirk evacuation off the ground.  The majority of the movie consists of Churchill arguing with other politicians in locked rooms of various sizes.  

I wanted to like Darkest Hour more than I did.  Then this weekend we watched Dunkirk.  And now I like Darkest Hour more by comparison.

The evacuation of Dunkirk: I knew, and had refreshed for me in Darkest Hour, that the Nazis swiftly invaded Belgium and France, giving the United Kingdom the nasty wake-up call that the enemy could very soon be knocking on their door.  This would be a bad situation even without the added predicament that the majority of the British army was now stuck in France with Germany rapidly closing in and no viable means of escape.  

*Cue rousing music and Every-man boaters taking to the seas with cries of "we're going to rescue our boys!"*

Or not.  The above was what I expected.  It was not what was delivered.  What was delivered was almost 2 hours of confusing story line that didn't focus on anyone long enough to connect or relate to them (and even if you did, most of them you didn't know their names anyway), grating music, and long, long shots of nearly-black and white scenery that seem more fitting for an art gallery than a war film.  Plus, starved and desperate soldiers standing neatly in lines with less urgency and motion than The March of the Penguins.

As Jason put it, we spent much of the movie waiting for it to "start."  Yes, you had action from the get go, but the actual understanding of what was going on, who these people were, was slow in coming (if at all).  It reminded me (unfavorably) of 2001 a Space Odyssey.  It actually had a very Kubrickian feel (and, again, not in a good way) to both the cinematography and the soundtrack.  After watching the film, I wondered if the intention was to confuse the audience and put them on edge, so that we would better relate to to confused, on-edge soldiers in the film.

I hate to deliver such scathing reviews of films of such an important event... but that's just it.  It was a MAJOR, pivotal moment in the course of modern history and I feel that it was most definitely NOT given its due.

On a side note, the best war movie I've seen in the past year?  Rogue One.

April Accomplishments

Writing accomplishments from this month in a convenient, bulleted list:

• 910 words added to The Wolf and the Sheath.
• Received what was technically a rejection, but was invited to submit more to them in the future.  So I did.
• Submitted a second story to a different contest.
• Worked on research for place names - chose names for 3 of the major places in the book.  
• Started on a map.  (It's not gonna be like a Tolkien map - just more so that when I go to start writing details about people traveling between places I have a better visual idea of what's there and how long it takes.)

It may not look or sound like a lot, but between bad headaches, sinus infections, and name change related stuff that needed to be done, I actually feel pretty accomplished.

The Importance of Humanities

On Wednesday, my boss and I had a meeting with the head of the Spanish, French, and World Language and Culture department.  She was late.  When she arrived, she apologized, as her Spanish students had been doing their "cooking show" presentations, and in cleaning up after college students making rice pudding and churros, she had completely forgotten our meeting.  I immediately forgave her, as I had fond memories of a very similar cooking unit in my sophomore Spanish class in high school, and we launched into a joyous discussion of why the history of food is important and why Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous for years. 

(The acid in the tomatoes ate away at the pewter utensils.  Pewter, being an alloy of silver and lead, leached lead into the food and made people sick.  The new world natives - and Europeans who were too poor to afford pewter - were not affected because they were eating with different utensils or with their hands.)

Obviously, a discussion of the history of food was not why the Registrar and the head of the Honors and Language departments were meeting that day.  But it did get me thinking about both my aforementioned Spanish class, and the humanities in general.  

The teacher I had for sophomore Spanish was awesome.  (All my high school Spanish teachers were, honestly.)  In this class, we did a lot of culture units.  We had the previously-mentioned cooking unit.  We did a dance unit.  We watched actual Latin American movies (as opposed to watching American movies in Spanish, which was the default for substitute teachers) and discussed the historical events important to the films.  And we had our art unit, which was spectacular.

We studied various artists: El Greco, Velasquez, Goya, Miro, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Salvador Dali.  We had to make and present a piece of artwork in the style of one of the artists we had studied.  Most people did Miro or Picasso, because Miro and late-Picasso are super easy.  I chose Goya (in his rose period) because the rosy-cheeked, picnicking couples appealed to my 15-year-old romanticism.

One of these styles is more difficult than the others...

Fast forward about 5 years.  I was in St. Petersburg, Russia on a summer abroad trip for my Russian minor.  I was in the Hermitage, one of their palace-turned-museums. I came around a corner and almost literally ran into a huge, doorway-sized painting.  I backed up a bit so I could better see what I almost hit.  Gaunt, long-limbed, grey-faced priests stared down at me.  "Oh, my god, it's El Greco!" I said, not even having to read the placard next to the painting (which I could have done in English, Spanish, or Russian) to know that this was "The Interment of the Count of Orgaz."

I'm not kidding, y'all, this is a HUGE painting.

A large portion of my college experience revolved around the humanities, actually.  I went to a school that was heavily liberal-arts leaning.  On top of that, mine was the first class that had the option of a 4-semester Humanities course for which we could receive credit for 7 or 8 core requirements (literature, history, religion, philosophy, art history, 2 writing-intensive classes, and possibly one I'm forgetting).  A lot of people took it as a way to get 8 requirements done in half the time.  I took it to "free up space" in case I decided to double major.

The course was set up by time period - 1st semester was the ancient world, 2nd semester was medieval, 3rd was early modern, and 4th was modern/contemporary.  In this class I learned about things in conjunction, rather than learning about art or literature or religion separately of the historical context in which they occurred.   We studied the wars, religious and social upheavals, ideas, and inventions that inspired these works, or that these works were reactions to.  It wasn't the first time that I had learned that these things were tied together - in that sophomore Spanish class, we had learned how the Napoleonic wars had influenced Goya's work, just as Franco's regime in the 30's is why we have Picasso's Guernica.  But it was the first time we started at the beginning of civilization and said, "these ancient beliefs influenced this art style and these literary works, then this war changed the way people thought about X and that influenced the music and the architecture and so on and so on, and it's still growing and changing and evolving today."

There's no way to explain all this in a blog post, really.  It takes more time.  It takes more study and investigation.  And its why you can't remove art, literature, or music from their historical contexts.  To really know, to really understand, you have to have the whole picture.
 

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name?" Juliet muses.  "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

Anne of Green Gables begs to differ.  She can't imagine that a beautiful flower called Skunk Weed would smell good.  (Apologies that I can't find the exact quote.)  But then, Anne is also quick to point out that she is "Anne with an 'E.'"  As someone whose last name (now maiden name) also has an 'E' where some people don't expect it, I relate

Names are important.  This is something that I've known for many years as first an actor and then a writer.  In fiction and theatre, a character's name gives you an impression.  The name Severus Snape, for example, gives you a drastically different image in your head than Luna Lovegood, even if you know nothing about the characters or the world they come from.

In real life you usually have less choice on the impression your name gives.  Your parents choose a name for you, based on family members, names they like, compromises, and other things.  My parents named me Jennifer Elizabeth.  It was a compromise.  My dad wanted something very "normal," like Mary Jane (that wasn't an actual combination suggested, but you get the idea).  My mom wanted something more poetic, like Anya Guinevere.  

As many of you reading this know, I haven't gone by Jennifer since I was 8 years old.  One day, actually right around this time of year, I decided that I wasn't Jennifer anymore - that I was Elizabeth.  The timing was good - it was almost the end of the school year and I would be going to another school the next year.  My parents agreed that they would call me Elizabeth at home; I would stay Jennifer at school and if I still wanted to be Elizabeth at the end of the summer, we would tell people at my new school that that's what I went by.

Fast forward many years.  I was called by Elizabeth (though often having to correct people) in high school, college, and my professional life. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to have simply "Elizabeth Ivey" printed on my diploma. I had to always remind doctors (except my dentist, who I've been with since I was in middle school), employers, and others that I go by Elizabeth.  I've received more emails, cards from people who don't know me well (and in once case, one who should have known better), and "thanks for shopping with us, Jennifer" from well-meaning cashiers than I care to think about. 

I considered legally changing my name on multiple occasions.  Everyone told me, "oh, no, that's expensive - wait and do it when you get married."  I didn't think to question that logic - my mom has also gone by her middle name all her life and successfully dropped her first name when she got married.  In 1977.

But 1977 was prior to identity theft, terrorism, and all those lovely things that create more rules and regulations in our digital age.  So after I got married in September and attempted to change my name with the Social Security office, I was told I still had to have a court order to drop my first name.

A lot of people suggested just tacking my married name onto the end of my name, or dropping my maiden name and doing as I've always done; go by my middle name.  But after 28 years of correcting people, explaining, and sometimes just deciding it wasn't worth the effort to tell people my preferred name, I really wanted to be who I am.  I didn't want to drop Ivey.  I've always been Elizabeth Ivey.  I've had a few people address me as Ivey either as a nickname, or because there were multiple Elizabeths in a group.  I've published stories as Elizabeth Ivey, and will continue to use that as my pen name.  No, it was time to finally drop Jennifer.  (Nothing against Jennifer; I've known a lot of nice people named Jennifer.  But it's not me.)

So after the end of a 6-month journey of paperwork, bureaucracy, and a lot of waiting, on Friday the 13th I officially and legally became Elizabeth.

Interestingly, one of our friends who we had over last night commented to me something along the lines of, "You just don't seem like a Jennifer to me."  You're absolutely right, Erin.  I don't seem like a Jennifer to me, either.

Speaking With Signs

Jason and I recently watched The Shape of Water.  For those of you who haven't seen it, it is a film about a mute woman who communicates with sign language.  She works as a cleaning lady in a government lab.  There she meets an aquatic creature who she begins to teach sign language to.  (It's an over-simplification, but for terms of this post that's what you need to know.)

The timing made it especially poignant for me: about 6 weeks ago, Jason and I adopted a deaf dog, and we use sign language as a method of communicating with her.  We've watched and enjoyed other films that are sign language-heavy, the new Planet of the Apes films being key among those.  But it was touching for me to watch it in this new context, of being the way I communicate with my fur baby.

Now, we don't "know" sign language - these are signs that she had already been taught by her previous family and while most of them are easy to remember and straightforward, I have no idea if any of them are accurate American Sign Language.

I also had a great aunt who was deaf.  She knew sign language, but we never really used it with her.  She could speak and read lips and, while she used sign language with friends who were deaf, she generally didn't with hearing people.  The only sign I remember learning from her is the one for "I love you" (which is easily confused with "rock on" symbol, so that's fun : )  

Left: "I love you in ASL."  Right: The "rock on!"/metal symbol frequently seen at concerts and parties.

I know that at some point I knew more.  I was in choir at church for most of my childhood, and I know at one point we learned the signs for "Jesus Loves Me" and "Hosanna in the Highest."  I don't remember most of those signs now.  I don't remember why we learned them (they were not at the same time).  Was someone at the church deaf?  Were were doing it in case we had a deaf visitor?  I don't think either is the case, as I think we would have done it more regularly and I only recall those 2 separate instances.

I remember at one of the many high school theatre competitions I went to that there was a signing interpreter for one of the plays.  I found myself more interested in watching her than watching the play.  I have always enjoyed watching sign interpreters - it's the only way of "speaking" (aside from acting) in which facial expression and body language play such a big role in context and meaning.  Watching someone "sing" in sign language is just half a step away from watching them dance.

I've been thinking about this subject to use as a post for most of this week so the timing is interesting, too, as a friend from work posted this video of Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" signed by various women.  It's worth a watch:
https://www.facebook.com/aimediaAUS/videos/10155926494549220/UzpfSTEwMDAwMzc5MjE4MjIxMDoxMjMxOTMzMDczNjA5NzU0/?comment_id=1232157433587318&notif_id=1523107934785344&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

March Marches On...

...And it is already time for my monthly project update.

This might actually be the first update post in a long time where I've been able to give easy to see, measurable progress.

As I have continued to work on The Wolf and the Sheath this month, I've done a lot of, what seems to me, small editing and rewrites: fix a sentence here, delete extraneous words there, write a short scene.  Any given night I haven't done a lot, or made what I would call major changes.  I think the largest amount of new material I've written in any one sitting is only about 700 words.

I've made... well, maybe not a LOT of progress, given that I wrote the bulk of this novel-to-be in 1 month... but at least progress that actually looks like progress this month.  

It didn't occur to me at any point recently that I should make a note of exactly how many pages, exactly how many words I had in the novel.  I wasn't actually thinking I'd get around to writing anything new this month.  I had made a very detailed breakdown of the order of what I had already written, to see if anything needed to move, to see where the climaxes of different plot threads were in conjunction to each other, and, most importantly, to see what that uncovered that still needs to be written.  After doing that, mostly to get my head out of the outline and back into the story, I started doing a reread.  And I thought, "well, while I'm here, I know this needs to change.  And this word doesn't work.  And now that I know the character better, I think she would say this differently."  And somewhere along the line, my 49,000-ish word, 81 page novel jumped to 85 pages and 51,800 words.  

I know that just doing the math there, it looks like I've written 4 pages.  My actual word count on new material (that I can find, 'cause sometimes I'd write a sentence or two here or there in the narrative, rather than writing a scene in a separate document and inserting it later) is 1,937 words*.  Both of those numbers are actually a bit misleading, 'cause I was also cutting as I was rereading and writing new material.  

*Admittedly, this is longer than my longest published short story.

But the cuts I've made and the scenes I've added are good changes and good additions.  It may not look like a lot, but sometimes less is more.

On (Not) Getting Things Done

As some of you might know, we adopted another dog about a month ago.  Athena had been at the adoption facility for almost 3 months.  Most of the time, she is a sweet, loving thing.  But as she gets more used to things, tries to push her boundaries, and continues to adjust to our routine, we sometimes have frustrating set backs.

She's still at a point where we have to give her a lot of supervision; she rips up toys, tries (and often succeeds) to get into places where she's not supposed to go, and we're still trying to figure out the difference between her "I want attention" whine and "I have to go potty!" whine.

Because of her still needing so much supervision, Jason and I have switched up our schedules a little bit.  He usually plays video games with friends on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights.  Those used to be the nights I reserved for writing, so that we could do stuff together on other nights.  But now, the nights that he plays I watch Athena, and the other nights, he watches her while I work on writing.  That's actually working out pretty well; I've gotten a substantial amount done since we've been doing this new schedule the last week or two.

But that also means that the nights I'm watching her, I'm not getting a lot of non-writing things done.  Housekeeping stuff, various follow-ups I should be doing...  It either takes longer 'cause I'll have to pause when she wanders out of the kitchen to go see what she's doing, or because she's in a mood where she wants attention and sits down on me.  Plus, Baldur is... not exactly jealous, but he is aware of the time and attention she's getting.  Often I am sandwiched between two doggies on the couch and both of them want to put their heads on my lap, which means I can't put my laptop there.  (I don't know how people with kids ever get anything done...)

Also, for almost a year now, I've been taking my laptop to work with me, to use on my lunch break to get things done.  But lately - between frustrations and not sleeping well with Athena, and with it being busy at work (we're in the middle of registration for the Fall semester) I find at lunch that I just don't have the mental energy to concentrate on doing something useful.  I spent pretty much all of my lunch break the last week or so just putzing around on the internet.

And that's OK - because sometimes to get things done you have to give yourself permission to not get things done.
 

Sh!

I really love language and linguistics.  If were more disciplined about learning languages, I could have been a linguist.  How languages evolve - how vowels shift, how a letter that is written or sounds one way in one language mutates into others in related languages as time goes - on fascinates me.

I've been thinking about this recently because I work in the registrar's office at a small liberal arts university and I was one of the first people outside of the humanities department to find out that we are going to be offering beginning Mandarin next fall.  The professor who told me about this is the head of the language department.  She specializes in Spanish and we often say "gracias" to each other in emails.  I was thinking about how I could start saying thank you in Mandarin.

I've known how to say "thank you" in Mandarin since I was really little; my parents always encouraged us to say thank you in the languages of the Chinese and Mexican restaurants we frequented.  Thank you in Mandarin is pronounced "shay-shay" (as best my European-language-familiar self can transliterate).  I also took ballet from a young age and knew that in French the "sh" sound is written with "ch," so I always pictured the Chinese thank you spelled as "che-che."  I was really thrown for a loop to find that it is usually written as "xie-xie" when using Latin letters.  

Where did the X come from?  It seems really random to me, of all the possible letters to make that "sh" sound, so why X?  (I just went to google it - it's a long complicated explanation.)

Thinking about the "'shay-shay' is really 'xie-xie'" conundrum got me started thinking about all the ways you can write the "sh" sound in various languages.  In some languages it has its own letter or character (Russian, Hebrew*).  In others it's made with a combination of letters - "sh" in  English of course, "ch" in French, "si" or "se" in Irish Gaelic (as in "sidhe"** and Sean), and "sch" in German.

*Oddly enough, the characters look similar enough that I wonder if that's where the Russian character came from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_(letter) 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_(Cyrillic)

**Pronounced "shee," but that's another post.

What does this have to do with writing?  If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that one of my conundrums is the decision between writing foreign names and words truly to their language (and therefor possibly having to provide a pronunciation guide) or writing them how they sound.  Of course, right now, none of my novels with "foreign" names takes place in the real world: the one with the Welsh and Latin inspired names and the one with the German and Italian inspired names both tale place in fictional worlds.  So I guess I can make up my own language rules : )

Write What Ails You

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that on occasion I will talk about how I've been late with a post or gotten less done than planned due to a bad headache.  In my case, "bad headache" generally means "migraine."  Now, thankfully, these aren't the completely incapacitating, "12-hours of crushing, vomit-inducing pain" migraines I used to get when I was a kid, but they are, according to my ENT, that type of headache.

What does this have to do with writing, aside from the fact that sometimes my left eye socket hurts too much to focus on a screen?  It occurred to me this weekend (a substantial portion of which I've spent laying down due to a "bad headache") that I have several stories where characters are affected by similar issues.  

In Bright Fire, the main character's brother suffers from migraines and chronic sinus and ear infections (though they don't call them that).  In Brinyor, the main character's little sister and mother suffer from sinus headaches like this - which means that she knows what to do when a friend of hers is dangerously ill and their healer doesn't know what else to try.  Her grandmother's remedy for this type of sinus issue ends up being an important clue to something else later in the story.  I have another story I haven't started writing yet, but have a solid story-line in my head, where the main character is a young queen who has identified 4 distinct types of headaches that affect her; the story begins as she develops one of her weather headaches as a "storm of the century" moves in.  Later when the same symptoms return, she realizes another monster storm is imminent in time to get people to safety.  

Oddly enough, the last story above is the only one in which the main character suffers from these kind of headaches (though Bright Fire has issues with being inexplicably cold, which is another issue I have).
 

Overdue Update

Why is February so short?  And how does it somehow work out that the shortest month has so much crammed into it?

I realized recently that I haven't done my monthly project updates in a while.  (Convenient, 'cause I haven't gotten much work done, ha!)

The last couple months I've been focusing on The Wolf and the Sheath.  Between Christmas and just getting back into the swing of things after that, I really didn't get anything done until late January and early February.  This doesn't mean I've written new material.  I've been doing some organizational things.

I started writing Wolf and Sheath in November of 2009.  My writing has improved a lot since then, so there are things that I need to edit, fix, and rework.  In addition, what I have "on paper" is maybe about 2/3 (maybe even less) of the finished story.  A lot of what I have done recently is start making lists and charts of what I still need to write and what I need to research, and looking for visual research and inspiration.  I have an idea in mind of what characters look like, what their clothes are, what their animals look like.  But I've also heard in workshops that it can be helpful to have pictures, for your reference when describing things.  We'll see if it helps.

So really what I've been working on recently is "pre-writing," I guess.  I haven't even gotten much of that done in the past couple weeks either, in large part due to our recently aquiring a new fur baby who is taking a lot of effort to get settled into our regular routine.

But I do like the idea of giving y'all these updates every now and then.  Here's hoping I'll have a more substantial update at the end of March.

Why YA?

One of my coworkers, who is also a writer, and I were discussing this the other day.  There are some people, publishers, and groups who consider Young Adult (YA) to be a genre.  But Maria and I were talking about how that's really kind of silly; sure, YA is usually about a teenager and topics that teens are interested in, but aside from that, there are as many genres as there are in adult or children's literature.

Really, when you get down to it, YA is a rating.  It's a marketing tool.  It's a lot of things, but it's not a genre.

Before we get too far into discussing what YA isn't, maybe we should define what YA is.  And the problem is, there is not a universal definition.  "Young Adult" is defined as literature written for, about, and sometimes even by teenagers.  The main character falls into a certain age range (which I'll expound on in a moment), and deals with things of interest to teenagers, from finding yourself and coming of age, to more serious topics like bullying and first sexual encounters (which can include negative sexual experiences like assault and its aftermath).  Sometimes these books are edgy, intentionally pushing the envelope, and sometimes they're just girls or boys of a certain age chilling.  

You would think the term "teenager" is pretty straight-forward, but for terms of defining what qualifies as YA, it's not.  I used to work at a public library that defined YA as appropriate for 11-17-year-olds.  However, many publishers define YA as being appropriate for 13-18-year-olds.  There is a big maturity gap between 11 and 13, not to mention a legal gap between 17 and 18.  That's on top of the problem that even going with 13-17, that's still a big range of what may be appropriate or of interest.

And that's before you even touch on the YA holy grail - the series.  Take Harry Potter for example - in the first book, Harry is 11; in the last he is 17.  By the definition of the library system where I used to work, that is YA.  And yet, the first 3 books are classified as "juvenile" (5th grade and under), while the last 4 are in YA.  Partly, this is because the first few books are relatively light and things start to get darker, serious, and more mature at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban.  Similarly, the Rangers Apprentice series is split between J and YA, though if I recall, the main character is actually a few years older than Harry at the start of the series.  But then you have other (admittedly older) series that are all housed in 1 section or the other regardless of the broader age range.  The Little House books are held entirely in the juvenile section, despite the fact that Laura is 5 in the first book and the last book covers the early years of her marriage, from the age of 16 to 20.  Anne of Green Gables and its sequels, by comparison, are all housed in YA; Anne is 11 in the first book and her books also follow her into her marriage.  Really, if you want to get nit-picky about topics, the last couple Little House and Anne books should be classified as "New Adult."

"Well, now, wait, what's this 'New Adult' thing?" you might ask.  New Adult is a growing classification.  New Adult, from what little I've read, is geared at 18-25-year-olds, and deals with things like leaving home for college or a first job, first serious romantic relationship or the early years of a marriage, sometimes even dealing with the birth of a first child.  Because of the material and the age, this classification can also usually get away with more graphic sexuality than books aimed at high schoolers. (Not that there's intense sexuality or overly mature topics in either Little House or Anne, but 4th graders may have a hard time relating to Laura struggling with making jelly on her own for the first time, whereas older readers relate to the fact that they are having to cook, clean, and "keep house" without Mom to help out.) 

A big part of why I bring this topic up is that the 3 novels I'm working on are right on the edge of YA, teetering into adult or NA.  By straight age my novels could be classified as YA or NA - for some reason, I'm writing about 17- and 18-year-olds.  I'm also writing in a "period" where the characters are considered adults with responsibilities as young as 16 and 17.  But then there's also the fact that even though there are going to be some mature topics, these books aren't going to be edgy or overly graphic.

I have an acquaintance who writes, among other things, children's novels.  She says that the target audience of YA should be 1-2 years younger than the main character.  (Which I could argue with, given that there are an awful lot of adult readers who read YA, but from a marketing standpoint, I can see that.)  But by that argument, every book about an 18-year-old should be read by 16-year-olds; every book about an 11-year-old should be read by 9-year-olds, and I don't think that's always a straight correlation.

So, really, when I go to publish these books, I'm going to have a hard time if someone asks me flat out "are you marketing this as YA?"  But I guess I need to actually finish writing them before I worry about that.

A Man Named Valentinus

Reviving a post from a couple years ago:

So as you may have gathered from my posts about Thanksgiving and Christmas, I like going back and examining the roots of holidays.  This week many of you will either take your significant other out for a fancy dinner, or bring them expensive flowers, candy, or jewelry.  Or, conversely, you may be the one expecting your significant other to step up their game a bit and provide you some (or all) of the items listed above.

But let's step back a moment, shall we?  Who is this Valentine that this day was named for?

Back in the early days of Christianity (and I'm not going to take the time to look up the date, ok?  Pre AD 300) when practicing and preaching Christianity was still illegal in the Roman empire,* there was a man named Valentinus.  He had been arrested and imprisioned for practising and preaching Christianity.

*Just as you'd get looked at askance today for spouting the teachings of someone who had been executed for basically rabble rousing.  

One of Valentinus's jailors was a man who had a blind daughter named Julia.  This man wanted his daughter to be educated, but in those days few women were educated at all, let alone one who was blind.  So, knowing that Valentinus was a well-educated man and that he really was not in a position to refuse, the jailor asked Valentinus to tutor Julia.

Julia's father began bringing her to the prison, where Valentinus taught her history and literature.  He eventually began to teach her about Jesus's life and works, as well.  Julia was obviously very interested in the stories of Jesus's healing miracles.  She bemoaned to Valentinus that with Jesus dead, there was no hope of her eyesight being restored.  Valentinus told her that if she believed deeply enough and prayed hard enough that there might still be a chance of a miracle.  So Julia and Valentinus began to pray together and her blindness was ultimately cured.

At some point after this - whether it was a case of the last straw for a man who had already been put in prison for doing exactly this sort of thing, or because it just took this long for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn - a date was set for Valentinus's execution.  It was to be February 14th.

The night before he was to die, Valentinus sent Julia a letter telling her not to weep for him, but rather to stay strong in her faith and continue her studies.  He signed it "from your Valentinus" (which is why we still write "from your Valentine" on Valentine's Day cards).

So St. Valentine's Day started as a day to commemorate a courageous teacher who was executed.  It's like Dead Poets' Society if the teacher had died rather been fired at the end.  Where the candy hearts and flowers came in, I don't know.

I guess my point is this - if you have someone you care about, even (and maybe especially) if it's not a romantic relationship, do something nice for them this week, but it doesn't have to be about gourmet chocolate, out-of-season flowers, or expensive gifts.  A sincere letter telling someone that you care more about how they are doing than about whatever hardships you may be dealing is worth a lot more than any of that.

You Had Me at "Virginia Dare"

We all have certain topics that if someone mentions it in conversation, puts out a movie about it, or publishes a book even tangentially related to it, we're there.  I have several: the last Romanovs, Joan of Arc, certain ancient Egyptian monarchs, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Black Death, to name a few (I have a lot).  Jason recently sent me a link to a board game he had seen that he didn't know much about, simply because it was about the Scarlet Pimpernel and he knows that's something I love.

One of the authors that I'll read pretty much anything by is Neil Gaiman.  A little while ago, I was searching Amazon for one of his books.  Down below that book's info, it has that little "people who bought this also bought" section and I started scrolling along to see if there was anything new or interesting I didn't already have on my (very long) "to read" list.  And what do you know, there was!  (Amazing how that happens...)  Up popped a book I hadn't heard of before (and as a Gaiman fan who worked in libraries for almost 10 years, that is saying something).  

It was a graphic novel that essentially boils down to the Marvel superheroes in the court of Elizabeth I.  (The actual title is Marvel, 1602.)  As a big fan of alternate history, genre blending, and just Elizabethan England in general, I was already very intrigued.  But then, as I read the summary, I came across a line about how the young Virginia Dare was traveling from Roanoke to the Queen's court.

Virginia. Freaking. Dare.

For those of you who may not be familiar, a brief history lesson:
In 1587, the English founded a colony on the coast of Virginia (present day North Carolina), called Roanoke.  Shortly after its founding, Eleanore Dare, the daughter John White, one the founders, gave birth to a daughter and named her Virginia.  She was the first child of English parentage born in the New World.  Shortly after this, Virginia's grandfather and others returned to England for supplies, promising to return soon.  But there was this little thing called the Spanish Armada... England was at war with Spain and the return was delayed by about 3 years.  When White finally returned in 1590, the colony was abandoned (or worse).  The fort was in ruins; the only clue to the whereabouts of the colonists was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post.  When white had left, John had made an arrangement with his Eleanore - if they had to leave, she would make sure they left the name of where they had gone.  Croatoan was a nearby island.  White immediately set out in search of his family, but found that the island had been obliterated by a hurricane.  The Roanoke settlement went down in history as "the Lost Colony;" America's first unsolved mystery (and favorite fodder of many conspiracy theorists).

Fast forward approximatly 400 years...  
One summer when I was about 10, we went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  While we were there we watched an outdoor play about the Lost Colony.  My mom also bought me a book (gee, go figure) about the Legend of the White Doe.  One of the old tales about what happened to the colonists is that they sought refuge with a neighboring tribe of natives*.  Virginia grew up as one of the tribe and when she became a young woman, had 2 rival suitors for her hand. And, as these things tend to go, the suitor who was not chosen sought revenge: he was a powerful medicine man and turned her into a white doe, so that she would not be able to be with the man whom she had chosen over him.  It was one of those tragic love stories that I have always been so drawn to...

*There may be something to this, as the next round of settlers to the Virginia Outer Banks reported that in one tribe in the area it was not uncommon to encounter someone with blue eyes.

While I don't often hear or see things about the Lost Colony or Virginia Dare, it is always something that piques my curiosity.  So, once I saw this title and read the "back cover" summary, obviously it also had to go on my (increasingly long) "to read list.

Neil Gaiman.  Elizabethan superheroes.  Virginia Dare.  I mean, really, what more could I ask for in a story?