Jan Marquart's Blog, page 7

This morning I read an interview on one of the writer's blogs I get in my inbox. I don't have time to read them all, but today I took a moment to check out the interview.

There was a comment by the author interviewed about drama and how important it is. I'd like to plug the author; though I haven't read her books. Her name is Barbara Kyle. In fact, you might want to read it for yourself.
http://sugarpeach.wordpress.com/2011/...

In the interview Kyle states (this is a quote):

I’d say that the author’s job is to maximize the drama by throwing characters into situations of tremendous pressure, forcing them to make hard decisions. Readers respond to this empathetically, making us ask ourselves, What would I do in that situation? Drama? Bring it on!
(end of quote).

I do agree that every good story needs drama. It is the glue that keeps us forgetting the words we are watching as we read. I pondered about this for a minute thinking about one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Berg, and another, Paulo Coehlo. Their books have drama but not the kind that shoots you with a cannon, but instead a beebee gun and sometimes a strong breeze. Drama can be physical as in the CSI shows on TV; it can be soft, for instance, as in moral dramas but still wreck havoc in our minds. Drama can be funny as in Anne Lammot's books, I especially loved Rosie. There were sentences in that book that had me laughing and crying at the same time as the young girl, Rosie, has to find ways to live with her alcoholic mother. Whatever the drama is, readers need it in order to want to turn the page.

So whatever your story is about, whatever the characters are doing or not doing, whatever you want the reader to feel,think or know, when they close your book and put it back on the shelf, you want your story remembered for its drama.

Until next time,

Here is an excerpt from my book Kate's Way. Few fortunate individuals do not know the devastation of a heartache. For those who do, I'm sure this scene will become alive. Kate's Way is a story of one woman's journey to wholeness. It is a testament to everyone that life can begin anew at any point. Kate's Way is now an ebook on Amazon. Enjoy this small part of Kate's journey. If you choose to read the complete story in paperback, order it at www.createspace.com/3498926

I stuffed everything into the back of my car. Surprisingly it all fit; not a pretty picture, but I wasn’t concerned about pretty. My car was a story of heartache, why not look like it? I started to back down the driveway when Richard’s car appeared. A woman in the front seat with blond hair pulled tightly back in a pony tail, mascara smeared in the corner of one eye, bent her head as I looked into the car. I wanted to look her in the eyes, let her see the woman whose marriage she broke to pieces. In her mind I was the other woman, and I had an unnerving desire for her to know me, know what she did to me, make her suffer too. I wanted to sear her eyes with my glare. She didn’t look like Richard’s type. She looked like a mix between a bull dog and a pit bull. Richard casually waved as if I wasn’t staring into the reason he broke up our marriage. There was no embarrassment on his face, as if he wasn’t driving up to our home with another lover, as if I weren’t on my way out, no good-bye, no apology, nothing. I held up the bottle of wine. No smile, no laughter, no tears, no comments then put the car in reverse. Maybe I should have hesitated just long enough to stare into his eyes, eyes that were cold, hard, joyously narcissistic, reeking with the message look at me, as if he had won a prize. Only a sociopath could hold such arrogance. Maybe I should have held up the bottle, kissed it, threw back my head with a fling of my hair - look, free again! When someone tries to suck you down low, and you go there of your own free will, you always hate yourself in the morning. It’s difficult to know just how to act in moments that last shorter than a twitch but whose effects last forever. You never get those moments back to do it again. There are no retakes or edits. Best to keep it simple, stay honorable, and run, fast. I backed down the driveway, drove away, didn’t look back.

I hope you enjoyed this moment, the one that set Katie Abrams on her road to a new life.
Until next time,

I began studying philosophy in 1972 not because it was my intention. I went to college to find another path for my life because working for a lawyer on Wall Street, even though it offered excitement, wasn't working for me. I was good at my skills but taking shorthand at 110 words a minute, typing at 90 words a minute, and organizing an office for someone else only made me wonder what I could be capable of for my own life. I decided I should get educated and thus my search began. I was twenty-two when I took my first step on this journey. At the time, my friends were getting married, having babies, or graduating from college. I felt like the lone ranger.

I set out to Santa Cruz, Ca. for a summer session at the University to see if college was even what I wanted. I never saw myself as smart because I was a girl, and as far as I was told, smart was for men. Times have changed.

I chose to study philosophy for one reason: it allowed me to understand my own mind and made me aware that I actually had one. Thanks to my recently deceased professor, Dr. Carlos Norena, who inspired me with such passion for the thinking process, and to study philosophy,I matriculated in it. I ate it up. I absorbed it. I studied it ravenously.

Then I moved on to the psychologists, Carl Rogers, Ram Dass, the new agers, as they were soon referred except in those days they were just the thinkers of my time.

I moved on to become a psychotherapist and loved being a counselor. And here's the most amazing thing I discovered. People don't live by psychologies. No! Psychology is just the study of how people behave which does not a single bit of good when you are sitting in front of someone in great distress. Remembering a theory has little effect and anyone who has been in that position knows that the first emotion they feel when someone treats them like a 'theory' is anger. Rightfully so. No one wants to be reduced to a research finding.

Here's my enlightened realization: people live by their philosophies. That's what holds their lives together. That's what helps them build a series of actions, reactions, and decisions.

Listening to Oprah as much as I have over 25 years, the one human experience that has been on her show dozens of times is the concept of forgiveness. When it came to forgiveness in my own life with significant figures, I found it difficult to apply the easy and neat theories expressed on her show.
How do you forgive? What is your philosophy about forgiveness? Who have you not forgiven simply because you didn't know how?

Writing about these deep needs and the wounds that usually accompany them is quite powerful. In The Basket Weaver, www.createspace.com/3553668 I resolved, through forgiveness, a sharply painful wound I carried for decades. I tried and tried and could not work through it until I took pen to paper, gave the experience to a fictitious character and worked it through. Once the manuscript was completed by me, edited by createspace.com, and printed, something in me released, let go, forgave, and healed.

Writing is a way to healing. I have experienced a path to healing in each of my books. I have written a book to offer guidance for those suffering the way I used to. It is titled, Write to Heal. It can only be purchased through my site: www.JanMarquart.com.
I do hope you check it out.

I write a great many things for enjoyment but the most powerful aspect of my own experience of healing has been through the act of writing. Writing is a powerful act. Need help with this? I'd love to be there for you.

Until next time,

It makes you wonder, doesn't it, why we write? In what other job would any of us stay up all hours of the day and night sitting uncomfortably at a keyboard, slow-bleeding ideas, ignoring emails, TV, the heavy knock on the door writing jewels of entertaining stories and high points of wisdom appallingly doomed to become an addition in a folder of rejection letters and yet still continue to prostrate before blank screens and pages for salvation each day?

What other job would keep you working exhaustingly for 1 cent an hour once you add in all the writing time before publication (if you get one), with no health insurance, no vacation, and no holidays? What other job would keep you sitting in a chair breaking your back, keeping your fingers moving, your mind flowing and your bladder holding in four cups of tea until you get the last page written because you can't stop until you do lest you forget the perfect ideas you have right now?

I'm telling you, sometimes I have to truly wonder what's inside me that has kept me intimately connected to the pen or the keys on a daily basis since 1972 typing poems that get ignored, stories that go unwelcomed, books that go unsold, essays that disappear once they enter a mailbox, and query letters that go unanswered.

I used to save all my rejection letters but I stopped being a masochist (somewhat) years ago;there aren't enough moving vans in town to carry all the rejection-packed filing drawers.

I read that the book, If You Meet The Buddha On the Road, Kill Him, received 122 rejection letters in the 70's, and yet it is still selling well today. (I love that book). JK Rowling got turned down by 12 publishing companies. Aren't you glad you're not the person who turned her down?

A little rant and rage here as I sit trying to figure out a curious matter about a writer and its place in the univere and wonder, while I count my eight books and two booklets and look at my looseleaf folder full of stories and poems, why I'm not being sought after by agents or called up by Random House. So what is it? What is it in me and what is it in you that keeps us showing up with stories and tales of hope and woe to startle the blank page day after day after day, and if that weren't bad enough, we blog about what we have written because now its burdensomely upon us to market too -- what a reward --oh yuk!!

I take a sip of my tea, vanilla chai my cousin was kind enough to send me for Christmas last year, yeah I'm just getting around to it now, and relax just a little. Then it dawns on me, oh, I write because the tiny voice inside me has a lot to say and hates being tiny, it thinks all the time, it creates even when I'm sleeping. I can't keep that voice quiet no matter how much Cote de Rhone I down. In fact, give me half a glass of wine and I can write a 400 page book. Get me relaxed and my ideas flow like a pent up river released from a fallen tree obstructing its flow. I'm not a big drinker by any means but sometimes it takes the edge off the painful quest to find just the right word and eases the torment of my mind as it struggles to come up with an accurate expression of a mood or scene. No wonder most authors are drinkers.

In another vein though, it is the tension, the suspension, the excitement of an idea that keeps me writing without stopping even when I hear the onions sizzling in a frying pan and know that they have been sizzling too long. I'm not done with the sentence, the paragraph, the scene. I can't stop now. I have been seen saying words over and over so as not to forget them until I find a pen that works and write them on something tangible. In moments like this I want my mind crisp and sharp, alert and crackling. Don't try to relax me, you'll just tick me off. You should see my house. I have pens and pads everywhere. There is no remembering the perfect thought later on. You won't even remember that you had the perfect thought later on. No surprise there.

Sometimes, without warning, in a split second, eveything can make sense and I think, I'm made from the creative gene of God. What else was I made for except to be creative, right? The Bible says, first there was 'the word'. God's word was 'light. My word is 'write'.

Just like you, I have had times in my life when I needed help with a problem. I'd talk to people, read books, do research, even go to a counselor for advice or to examine my options. But no matter what I did there was nothing mightier than using one single ordinary object in my home. What was that object you ask? I would venture to say it is an object you use all the time.

Look at your hand. You might even be holding one right now. It is the old-fashioned pen. When you write about problems or needing solutions, wondrous things happen. I am now on my 90th daily journal and I can say through every day experience that nothing works to help you understand yourself and your mind like the pen.

Writers who write, even in novel form, write with the human experience in mind. How many times have you read a novel and received an idea for your own life? Writing is quite powerful and whether I have written daily journals, self-help books or my novels, I have healed some part of myself and given myself a path to a better life.

One of the biggest reasons people read is to know. We learn through the pen. we learn by the pen of others and from our own. The written word has a great deal of power.

Sure, we read for entertainment but as a writer I can say with all truthfulnesss that writing heals the everyday need to know who you are, gives ideas for problem-solving and pulls us directly into the experience of what it is like to be human.

That's one of the reasons I have added writing prompts in the back of many of my books. Check out:
Write to Heal, a 78 page booklet which can be ordered on www.JanMarquart.com
The Mindful Writer, Still the Mind, Free the Pen www.createspace.com/3546101 and Echoes from the Womb, a Book for Daughters www.createspace.com/3546083

In The Basket Weaver I healed a 35 year old wound I had due to a painful relationship. I wasn't able to heal myself any other way. So I just took up my pen. It worked. www.createspace.com/3553668

If you have a healing experience that you achieved through the use of your pen or you have an author whose books help you, I'd love to hear it.
Until next time,
Jan

I spoke to a book club in Hawaii the other night. One of the gals asked me why I wrote about past life experiences in my novel The Basket Weaver. She wanted to know how I could believe in such things. I explained why I believed in them and mentioned many of my own personal experiences that came to me in the form of flashbacks, unexplainable memories and physical sensations.

Twenty years ago I spoke with a channeler who mentioned some of the past lives she 'saw' in my energy that I lived through, which just happened to agree with some of my own flashbacks. However, the gal from the book club said that my belief wasn't possible. She wasn't willing to look further into this topic. Okay. I accept more than one point of view on this.

But on Sunday, I engaged in a philosophical conversation with a new friend. She mentioned that a few years ago she came across a scientific research study about past life experiences written by a scientific biologist who did a study on DNA and concluded that past life experiences was a fact. This information perked my interest. According to this scientist's research, he concluded that when DNA passes from one generation to another it carries experiences in the form of memories, fears, traumas, and more from the lives of its ancestors. In other words, inside the DNA of a person, lives more than just the biological components of eye color, skin color, behavioral and sociological implications. It also holds memories and experiences from previous generations and these experiences, desires, traumas and talents are what make you behave, think and feel what you behave, think and feel until you change that. Look at all the movie stars whose children are great actors. What about the musicians whose children are great musicians or the singer whose offspring are singers? What do we really say about this? Don't we say: It's in the family?

This study also leads credibility to the many experiences we often do not understand but experience nonetheless. For instance, if you have a fear of something with no apparent reason for that fear, the scientist would say that that particular fear was transmitted through DNA into your life. Buddhists call it Karma and believe that what you go through in this life might just be because of what you did or did not do in another life. For example, as a child I had a deep fear of dogs for no apparent reason. I also have a fear of being under water but there are no experiences in my life to justify such a fear. Don't you have fears or worries you can't explain? After I nearly died from toxic mold poisoning an acupunturist did a test on me and stated that this mold sensitivity was from an ancestor who once lived in Europe. This discussion leads me to the conclusion that there is truth to the fact that past lives affect us, be it ours our our family members.

The scientists research project adds another spin on past life experiences in that just maybe the past lives many people belive to have lived, come instead, from their ancestors. The topic is worthy of deeper dicussion.

Read The Basket Weaver, www.createspace.com/3553668 and let me know what you think about past life experiences.

You might or might not make an outline for your book. It's okay either way. Ken Follette, author of Pillars of the Earth, takes two years to write an outline. He maps out every detail and character before he begins to write. I almost can't breathe when I think of it. Outlines don't work for me. They restrict me, confine my characters, put the life of the page in a box and I can't move into a place of creativity having such tight borders.

I start with only a general mental plan and then begin to type. Inevitably my characters take over the page and where they want to go. Inevitably my plans change, and giving my fingers total permission to feel my way in the dark allows me to be creative and see what develops. It might be the only time in my life I like being lost.

That being said, there is one thing my main characters must have: a purpose. And my main character leads in that purpose. I've read lots of interesting story lines without the main character leading with a purpose and I find that those characters usually feel slightly one dimensional despite the interest I have for the plot.

If the main character of a story is an ordinary person with a purpose, a mission, a drive to accomplish or overcome something, the plot thickens, as the saying goes.

A book is much more powerful when the main character grounds you in the story with a purpose because they give you a suspenseful reason to continue reading. Make your characters extraordinary. Give them a clear purpose so the reader can endear to them rather than just be interested in how life unfolds. Characters are richer and hold more of our dreams when they carry the baton. Hand it to them and allow them to run with it.

To check out my novels, the main characters, and their purposes, go to:
Kate's Way (also in kindle $5.99) www.createspace.com/3498926
The Basket Weaver www.createspace.com/3553668

It's raining. I don a pair of sweats and tie my hair into a ponytail, then set off for the bookstore with a pad and pencil. (I love pencils; they allow me to erase mistakes.)

Bookstores are usually busy on rainy days so there is lots of people moving around, flipping open books. I like to pay attention to the books people spend time with. What do they do when they turn the book over? Do they then open and read? Do they put the book back on the shelf and continue?

I scan the shelves of books and read as many titles as I can, and write down the ones with pizzazz. Then I look at the front covers and make notes on themes or how the pictures and titles are placed. Last but not least, I open to page 1 and make a note of first sentences. I especially like the ones that lead me to read further, without effort.

Okay, maybe this isn't your favorite rainy day activity. Maybe you like to sleep late and listen to music. Maybe you like to go to the movies. Maybe you like to read the paper and sip coffee til three in the afternoon.

As a writer rainy days push me inward and I sit with thoughts for my next book. Bookstores are restaurants for the mind. I gravitate to the ideas of other authors. That's where ideas, philosophies and creativity abound. I get inspired by books;I get inspired by authors and how they manifested their manuscript into a book. It allows my own ideas to flourish. You know what 'they' say: birds of a feather...

This might seem as if I'm stating the obvious, but your characters and the situations you put them in MUST be realistic. I've edited several manuscripts in which scenes and the response of characters were off track. I'll share some of them with you and let you decide.

In one manuscript a young female scientist was assaulted by one of her co-workers with whom she was engaged in a short romantic relationship. The rape scene was written in excruciatingly realistic details. They struggled by the fire as she tried to break up with him and ward off his sexual advances. The struggle got violent. He took a knife and sliced open her cheek, ripped her clothing. There was blood everywhere. Afterwards he fled from the home and the woman got up, drove to her friend's home, sat and drank a cup of tea while trying to decide whether to report her co-worker. Okay, what is wrong with this picture? Would you sit and have a cup of tea with a woman whose face was bleeding and whose clothes were torn who had just been raped? Would you not call the police, get her to the hospital, give her clean clothes? None of the conversation or action went to anything along those lines. What would you do if you had been raped and cut? What would you do if you opened the door and saw your friend's face open and bleeding with torn clothing?

In another manuscript an alcoholic mother verbally abused her teenage daughter, denied her basic needs and slept with any man she met often with the teen in view of it all. But the author made references to the mother as a kind and caring mother. I know alcoholics can be Dr. Jeckyls and Mr. Hydes but show that discrepancy through the mother's behavior, not the author's description or commentary. In discussing these contradictions in the manuscript with the author, she told me she was trying to resolve conflicts she had with her own alcoholic mother. The author used her manuscript, which was a novel, as a way to proclaim her own love for her mother in spite of the pain inflicted on her. That's okay to do, but write it as a memoir if that's your plan. Work it out in a venue that makes it realistic and seduces the compassion of the reader.
Does this make sense to you?

A book I read years ago described a female character and her relationship to a man she met. The author revealed the woman's internal thoughts about that man as nontrusting but her behavior continued throughout the story as loving and desirous of a relationship with him. I kept waiting for an explanation of this discrepancy. Unless the story is about a woman struggling to keep herself safe from a sociopath, this dynamic was unrealistic. There was no mention of the woman having a mental health disorder either. Something to substantiate the actions of the woman in line with her thoughts and fears was missing. Perhaps if the author didn't describe in acute detail the thoughts of the woman, her desires for the man would have made sense. As it was written, this woman's behavior made no sense.

Examine your characters and the scenes they are in. Read them to several people and ask if the character and the scenes of events that follow are realistic.

When I wrote Kate's Way www.createspace.com/3498926 I had to make sure that the character Joker, a schizophrenic, was realistic in his behavior as well as the inpatient unit in which he was placed. Luckily, being a social worker and having worked with that mental health center, I had facts to draw upon. Even so, I had therapist friends read it just in case I missed something while I was working on the overall plot. Details need to be realistic.

Until next time,
keep it real,
Jan

Here is a link. Copy and paste it and listen to the wonderful Alice Walker talk on Writing. The clip is just that, a clip. It is very short. Enjoy.



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