Found

It worked! The good old reliable method to overcome writer's block: write badly, write anything at all, just write. I wrote badly last night, today when I came back to it, the flow was there. I wrote some sentences I never expected to write and I like them very much. They needed to come out, I've been restless and potty all week and last night I was with lovely family and came home unhappy anyway. That is because I needed to write more.

There is still more to be written than I expected. I am so sick and tired of this damn book, so ready for it to be finished so I can go ahead and do other things, write other things, spend time with family, study other things but I have promises to keep -- to myself, to try my best at writing -- and there are miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep -- and so I keep on with this book which I must do my best at writing . . . R

Lost

I need to write the last pages of the book -- actually I've written the very last 3 pages, it's the pages that come right before I need to do. But I'm very resistant -- I wrote them once already and they've been lost. I am mad as hell because I wrote them well and I can't get it right and where on earth did they go and how could I lose my writing???? I THOUGHT I always saved the different versions of the book but I can't find the section where I sit in the American consulate in Guangzhou and look at the photos of the newly elected George Bush and Dick Cheney. I wrote it well a while ago. Could it be a year ago? Maybe longer. but it is gone now. I went through the hard copy I had in notebooks and the e-copy on my computer, then the copies on CD, then the copies on my work computer, then the file drawer, even the trash and gone, gone, gone. How could I have done this?

But it is gone, so now I have to write it again and the energy just isn't there in my writing. I must get it done anyway, just do it, like a task, a tedious task. Maybe I can liven it up later.

It is very difficult to write this last section and I'm not sure why. I wonder if I'm afraid to end this book? Somehow, the story feels more complicated here. but the story has been complicated in other sections and I've resolved it. Writing a story based on fact has its own problems. It gets sticky -- how much to tell when I am eager to be done with the telling, when I am sick to death of this story, when I want to get it right and somehow it is like walking through a bog.

One step at a time throught that bog. And if it is slimy, bring it to the writing group to have it cleaned up.

Reva

Creating a Different Kind of Landscape

I remember reading in my 20s a tome by a famous Russian that included a brilliant chapter about the cutting of crops. I can't tell you now that my age has doubled whether it was The Brothers Karamazov or Anna Karenina or something else. The chapter went on and on, describing in exquisite detail how the men with their scythes swept over the land felling the wheat. I'm not sure one word of dialogue marred the perfect narration.

I knew I loved literature then, even had been writing for years, but I never would have called myself a writer. Couldn't even conceive of claiming a neighborhood that was close to where that esteemed Russian writer wiggled his pen and created magic.

I still don't think I'm on the same block, but today I claim the same zip code. And it's because I understand that the characters I create are a landscape of a different sort. I can describe Lake Superior to you or the walls of a prison cell, but I'm much more interested these days in the intricacies of the hidden and blatent mind, in why the left eye squinches down tightly and the heart threatens to stop beating when a certain person enters the room. Their voices and silences are mountains and valleys in my head. Their tears are rivers and joy paints sunshine over the green, lush grass of their faces. And sometimes they cut down the ones they love most with the scythe they've sharpened on bitter fear. ~ Victoria Tirrel

Spending time with Monty Hall

Sometimes it just takes a while to figure out the right door into a scene. I might know what has to happen in the scene, I might even have some of the snippets of dialogue echoing in my brain, but they all have to wait until I figure out the door--whose eyes I'm writing through and where those eyes are focused on the exact moment of entry.

Some writers will tell you they just begin somewhere; I like to be economical. Most of the time my first-draft beginnings end up being the final draft beginnings. Everything else might change but where I begin is usually not one of them.

It's a little like I'm camped out at Let's Make a Deal, my fuzzy orange clown hair itching my scalp under the hot lights, waiting for Monty to propose something. Door #1? The beautifully wrapped box that the lovely Carol Merrill is highlighting with those perfectly groomed hands?

Maybe Monty doesn't choose me at all and instead after several hours I end up shuffling out the back doors into a deserted alley. I take off my wig and the crazy red polka-dot bow tie, and it's only when I open the dumpster to toss them that I envision the delicate ear of my heroine shoved tightly against her mother's door and claim the jackpot behind Door #3. ~ Victoria Tirrel