The Divide.

Between good and brilliant.

I don't know what it will take to the bridge that gap. More years. More time. More words. All I know is I'm not ready to be okay with good.
I want to be brilliant.

Lucky for me, I was born with a gene called "I know it all" which enables one to think they are completely capable of brilliance provided they work hard enough and long enough.

It's served me pretty well. Until I interact with other human beings that is...

This Sent A Chill Up My Spine.

I got an email from photobucket today---- photobucket? Uhh...oh yeaaah.---- The site that has visual proof of my vaginal delivering a melon-headed child (he gets it from his father).

So, I hoofed my way over there to delete that shiz before anyone found it and sent it to Oprah ahead of the interview.
Before deleting, I browsed the album to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything important.
And this.

This stopped me.

I remembered a million threads of emotions and actions. Events. Agony.

I don't have words for them. In fact, I used 95,000 of them in an attempt at capturing the feeling for others.

He is standing in our only working bathroom in Baltimore. The floor is broken and sagging. The sink was fifty dollars from home depot so we could have running water. He is shaving his hair for work as a police officer. In case the font is too small-- it reads:

My husband's greatest enemy is not the dealer or the terrorist.

But compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the militia-- all of which are the American dream.

The Differences Between Your First Book and The Other Ones.

Random Climbing Picture for funsies. Porcupine Crack at the New (I think).

First Draft:

First Book: Is this idea any good?
Subsequent Books: Let's see where this goes.

First Book: This stuff is awesome!
Subsequent Books: It's total crap.

First Book: It's crap. I give up.
Subsequent Books: It's crap. I'll fix it in revisions.

First Book: upon completion: pfft. Run spell-check on this bad-boy and call up Oprah, I just wrote a novel!
Subsequent Books: upon completion: *puts in a proverbial drawer* *goes to think about how to fix it for at least a month*

Chapter Breaks:

First Book: End a chapter at the end of a scene. Duh.
Subsequent Books: Split the chapter in a point of tension to keep the reader turning the pages.

First Book: How long should a chapter be?
Subsequent Books: Is that even a question people ask?

Dialogue:

First Book: I have so many passive verbs in my dialogue. I need to edit it!
Subsequent Books: All rules are off in dialogue.

Passive Verbs:

First Book: What's a passive voice? *Googles* Okay. I need to edit out all my uses of was/is/be.
Subsequent Books: A passive voice is defined by the subject receiving the action of the sentence, not necessarily the verb.

Beta Readers:

First Book: Please check my grammar. I'm so worried about my grammar. And my commas.
Subsequent Books: Does this keep you reading? Hold your interest?

First Book: Oh someone wants to read my book! Yay!!! Oh happy day!
Subsequent Books: *goes to snoop over their creds to see if they'll be useful before replying*

First Book: Silence? I didn't even notice. I'm sure they love it.
Subsequent Books: Each day I don't hear, I die a little more inside with the amount of revision I'll have to do.


Query Letter Writing:

First Book: Oh, a query? No big deal.
Subsequent Books: Query Letter Hell. For realz.

First Book: All I need is a great query and I know the agent will love my book.
Subsequent Books: I need a great query, killer first pages and a book that keeps the agent reading late at night.

Overall:

First Book: Am I a good writer?
Subsequent Books: Am I a good story-teller?

On Failure:

First Book: I can't fail!
Subsequent Books: Failure is one step along the road.

Southern Comfort

Random Shit:

• My husband had one of those rare and good moments in policing. He intervened in time to save a woman from getting raped/beaten. I think those moments weigh heavily against the weight of officials.
• Another week and we're heading north for my favorite place in the middle of nowhere. If I have roots anyplace in this world, it's at my grandparents cottage.
• I just realized I've lived in the South for almost ten years. No wonder I feel like I have roots here as well. That's longer than anywhere else I've lived by a good five years.
• It's been over 100 degrees. I took the kid to find the tobacco in the field and he whined that the grass was too hot. haha. If grass is too hot for barefeet, you know it's crispy.
• I'm mulling over a new book idea. My next book. It's scaring the hell out of me, and yet it feels like one of those "I was made to write this" moments. Strange.

Listening To:

Doing:

I'll be back to editing soon. But I'm enjoying the break.

Full of Fear

In life, I am pretty good at pulling up my big girl panties and getting over myself. 

Drug dealer from New York banging on my door at three am? *deep breath* *rack shotgun behind door*
No Problem.

Seventy feet above the raging water of the Potomac River Gorge? Let's do this...

But man. Writing fills me with fear. Everything scares me about it-- from the basic fear that I'm a talentless masquerader. That the person who told me I write "white trash with uninteresting prose" is right. All the way to the idea that I simply cannot write the book/idea/story I want to write. I've had dreams recently where whole people groups are haunting me because I've not written what I intended to write. I dreamed my husband's family were angry with me. Last night I dreamed my beta reader emailed me this whole thing about how terrible and horrible and juvenile the book was.

Full of fear.

In real life, you ask me to step out of the crowd and I'm like "Hate to break it to you, but I'm already there...". Counter-culture? Pfft...I don't even know the word. I was just born on a different rhythm as the world I live in (mostly because I was born a poor person and right now I'm living in a very rich world).

But ask me to send out a query that is a step away from the mainstream agent query and I'm like "hmm, let me think about it for six months."

Never mind. I just realized there is another area of life I am always full of fear--- parenting. I woke up from my nightmare to spend fifteen minutes thinking about what the hell I was doing with my kids.

I know the solutions to both--

stay on my knees.
never give up.

fail.

 

What Next?

I sent my baby *caresses word processor file* to a beta yesterday night. So, today I woke up with a wide open schedule. Fantastic! I can catch up on everything I've neglected for the last few weeks months years. 


I cleaned the house. Got the kids dressed in something other than pajamas or a diaper. I did the dishes. Did my hair. Folded all the laundry. Had my three-year-old make his bed and clean his room. By the time Dinosaur Train came on (that's 9:30 to all ya'll without kids), I plopped on the couch with uhhh.....


nothing to do. 


Hmm. 


To the fields! To the forests! Jump in the water and sing my chorus!

Frosting Hangover

Happy First Birthday littlest one.

Hill-Billy Noir & Literary Fiction

For awhile, my book lagged. I lagged. I'd written a young adult that probably was a failed concept book. I'd written the first draft of a strange redneck interracial romance that needed gutted. I got pregnant and let the book fester for...oh...nine months. My brain is glue during pregnancy. After I had the baby, I still couldn't figure out what to do with the plot. I knew what it needed, but I hadn't hit on the right thing to make it come together. And I couldn't figure out what I wrote. Young adult wasn't really panning out-- my execution kept veering into a gritty world not typical of gritty YA. My adult book wasn't sure what it wanted to be, though it had two strong characters who knew exactly what they were.

Then, Winters Bone showed up in my Netflix. J and I watched it. And both of us understood the other better for it. I walked away with that story-telling fire re-lit in my soul.

I'd never heard of Daniel Woodrell before I'd read an article reviewing Winter's Bone, the movie. And while doing research to figure out what exactly I had written, I came across the term:

Hillbilly Noir.

I wondered about this. So I looked up the father of this genre and found my way to a copy of Winters Bone.

I've read "literary fiction". I love the idea, hate the execution.  I tried to read The Marriage Plot recently. I wanted to smack myself with a tire-iron after reading the sample pages. Just what this world needs, another book about white, upper-middle class angst. I know, your life is just so sad because you're comfortable, bored and still crazy. And nothing against the Marriage Plot, but the first twenty pages was half info-dump and half college thesis gone bad.
Not my thing.

But when I opened the pages of Winters Bone. I found my chest crushing over the words. When I hit the opening of Chapter Five, I wanted to cry and call everyone I knew about it. It was beautiful. I wanted to read it over and over just to soak in the words. But it was beautiful about things I knew. Ree is walking down the railroad tracks and breaking a path through the snow. And Woodrell captured in glorious and perfect language something I've done many times. Woodrell captured whatever burns in your chest in an ass-frozen morning on your way to work. He wrote something literary and gorgeous about a world I felt like no one in my life even knows existed anymore. I feel like a freak, sometimes.

When I was a kid, my dad's family would sit around the table after Thanksgiving and tell stories. I looked forward to it all year long. My dad and his cousins were ridiculously criminal stupid growing up and despite finding God, they retained their redneck upbringing with a strong affinity towards the culture of Western Pennsylvania. When I was little I thought my dad knew about the world. He traveled the world and had served his years in the Navy, and under the influence. He framed his disciplinary actions from the service. He bragged about getting jumped by gangs in LA. Now I know he just talks shit like a five-seven redneck from the coal mines and oil wells of Pennsylvania. He was a pastor for half my childhood. And while he gave me a lot, he also felt like God didn't mind a heavy fist, or lying to the law.

When I was eighteen, I worked the night shift at a plastic's plant he worked the day shift on. I complained to him about the men making sexual comments and the shift manager who was well-fucked and far from home. He told me tough it up. So I did.

When him and Phil (my second cousin who loves to call as Santa Clause every which month of the year), get together, it's hours of howling and hooting over running from the cops and, remember when we robbed such and such- gas station? Twice in one week!

I told you they was stupid.

And there would be recent stories. I remembered the snake ones most of all.

Phil once came across a rattler on the way to work, hacked off the head and put it in his lunchbox. When he opened it at work to show everyone, the headless rattler leapt out of the box, the thick stump striking to bite over and over again. 

If I could ever write a beautiful sentence talking about a headless attacking rattler, I'd die happy.

So when I read Winters Bone and I read about coyotes and hunting and making venison stew. When I read about cousins, and worse cousins and cousins you don't talk to no more because they in deeper shit than you want to be around, I felt like I'd met my best friend. I found someone who saw a beauty in a world I grew up in.

And all along that's what I've been writing. Or trying to write. It's why my young adult romance has a main love interest who started getting tattoos from his cousin's kitchen at thirteen. It's why, freshman year of college, after hearing Jerry Falwells "God's Mountain" story for the first time, I sat in my dorm and wrote a short story called, The Devil and Jerry Falwell. (in the vein of The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Devil and Everyone The Hell Else in Americana Literature).
No one was amused by my-- what I thought--- was an amusing take on a ridiculous story.

It's why someone read the opening chapters of Bekah's part of this book and said they didn't read white trash books.

I'm still that person inside. I stash money all over the place even though I'm not poor anymore. (I'm not rich, but I know for damn sure I'm not poor).

Hillbilly Noir.

Source: karenchibana.blogspot.com.br via Sarah on Pinterest

A Post About Climbing (that's really about writing)...

Climbing is my soul-sport.

But it only became this once I learned how to overcome the fear of leaving the ground. Once I learned to trust the rope, to trust the smear of the shoe, the attention of my belay.
I fell in love, and love is often a challenge.

I know this next part will make ya'll think I'm blowing so much smoke out my ass, I could be a five-alarm fire, but listen...

I've only top-roped.

Yeah. Top-roping. Where you are always on the rope. Where you never take that big risk, because the rope is always there to trust. It's like riding a bike with training wheels.

Until this last climbing weekend, when I took the training wheels off and about swore off climbing.

Me leading on Daisy Cutter (5.7)

Come close. I'll tell you a secret about climbing.

Leading (placing the rope as you go) is pretty much the same thing as top-roping.
But it's also completely different.

Top-rope you battle the wall most.
Lead you battle yourself more.


I'll be honest-- in West Virginia I had one onsight that I completed. I almost panicked. The fear is so much bigger. But fear of what? Essentially it's the same. I know how to fall. I've fallen before. I will always be falling. You have to fall as a climber, otherwise you never get anywhere. But it was different. I didn't even trust the things I previously trusted. Suddenly I was scared shitless about the rope. My knots. The bolts. I didn't trust my fingers in a bomber hold. I didn't trust locking my entire arm into a crack! I hung onto the wall when I was anchored to it.

The climb pictured above was even worse. I didn't finish it. I got to the final bolt and said-- nope. (I did lead two middle bolts). It was a 5.7, a grade I'm solid at.
After that climb, I went up a 5.10 on top-rope and worked through the crux, taking multiple falls, but getting it.

It's all mental.

My skills are there. I know what I'm doing. I've practiced. I'm there.
But I won't send it if I can't overcome my fear of a fall and keep moving up the wall.

And this moment in my climbing life came at the same time in my writing life.

How Proper Soul Got its Name

I started with:

Midnight Urbanites and the Sparkly City. It was the name of the blog I sometimes wrote on while living in Baltimore. I love the title, but not for this book. But the title was something I wanted to write about. My Baltimore ghosts exhumed for fiction...

I made a quick stop at Midnight Urbanites. Someone said it sounded like a cult, so I scratched it. Didn't feel right anyways.

Then I think it was Take Me Home. Mostly because I had John Denver on repeat. Take Me Home will always be the name of that draft-- the one that is only Bekah's POV, would offend Muslims and the Nation of Islamists everywhere, and the reader is totally, 100% in the dark the entire duration of the book.
Yep. Thank goodness for excellent, gracious, and kind beta readers.

For a long time, while undergoing major revisions, it was Needs A Title.

Then it became, Still Needs A Title.

Finally, I hit on what felt like a placeholder, but a good placeholder-- Black Mountain Ash. I combined the Black's (protagonists), their chunk of mountain and "ash" plays a significant role. It felt good. Very good. So good I could definitely query with it if I couldn't find anything better. A variation I hit on, with more literal punch, was Black Mountain Crank. I thought crank was much more kick-ass. Ash more subtle.

The only thing I didn't like about it, was it made me remember Cold Mountain was sitting on my bookshelf unread for the last two years. Boo.

But it was good. I figured it would get changed later on though...

Me and J were talking about climbing one day recently. We'd just gotten back from New River Gorge and Prana had posted this video on their facebook, where Chris Sharma (the best climber in the world right now) is talking about the how climbing is a combination of finding the right strength, the right line and the right mental strength to climb at higher levels.. it's very similar to a piece of climbing lore about a climb, Proper Soul

Back in the nineties, Steve Cater wrote a guidebook for the New, which said

 "undoubtedly a 5.14 line will go up here, it's just a matter of the proper soul, finding the proper line."

When Brian McCray put up the line on Endless Wall, that would become the first 5.14 in the Gorge, and an instant classic, he remembered this line and named it Proper Soul.

But the quote will always be remembered with the name. And it sums up everything climbing is and everything life is for a climber.

the proper soul, finding the proper line.

This line especially sums up  Bekah and Logan's story. And it became Proper Soul, which feels exactly right.

(I know editors may change this, but that's fine and I understand it's part of the business)

Here is Chris Sharma's onsight of the actual Proper Soul (5.14a) at The New River Gorge:



And my creative time wasting while revising:

P.S. I actually have a copy of the guidebook Steve Cater said this in-- and on the back it has a little stamp that says it's Y2K approved. Bahahahaha.