The Screaming Woman

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 / Lisa / 7 Comments

Have you ever been in the forest, in the mountains, alone, at night? No street light a block down giving a muted halo. No LED lights from sound systems scattered like stars around the room. No reflected red light from an alarm clock. No cell phone with a handy bright screen or flashlight feature. No porch light or welcoming glow from a lamp.

It’s not just dark, it’s Stygian.

On the night I’m going to tell you about, there was no moon. The mountains, the ridge line, and the trees blocked out all but a tiny square of sky.

I wasn’t a city girl back then, having grown up in a farming town. But at the same time I definitely wasn’t a mountain girl either. And yet circumstances placed me in the Pacific Northwest mountains. Alone. Well, except for a dog who was equally out of her element.

In the middle of that very dark night, I woke to a woman screaming. What else can you do when someone is in desperate need of help, but grab a flashlight and go? I took the dog with me, who shook as bad as I did. I reminded her that she was half German Shepherd, but she didn’t believe me.

My imagination was vividly awake. A car accident on the road? Was some woman out there in the woods, lost and afraid?

I followed the wavering flashlight beam down the long, narrow driveway with nothing but trees crowding in. Trees that anything could hide behind. I listened so hard that my breath was held captive. I searched until the cold night leached under my skin and numbed my nerves.

I don’t remember how long I stumbled around before giving up and returning to the pile of blankets still retaining a warm pocket. The screaming had ended. I went to bed fully expecting to find a body in the morning.

By the way, this was before cell phones and where I was, there was also no electricity, let alone land lines. And in all honesty it never crossed my mind to drive out to the road and find a pay phone.

What I do remember is this.

The next morning was bright and sunny and clear and crisp. Early summer in the mountains. I drove to the nearby tiny town to open a post office box in the back corner of the general store. Outside the store three elderly men lined up on a wooden bench, watching life. I could hear one as I got out of the car.

‘Did you hear the cougar last night?’

Me, tentatively: ‘What’s a cougar sound like?’

‘Just like a woman screaming.’

I’ll end with this thought. I walked around in that dark night with a flashlight trying to save a cougar.

Blog Life

August 29, 2016August 29, 2016 / Lisa / 5 Comments

This is how it goes.

It’s been two weeks! I need to post something!

What can I write about? What haven’t I already written about? What can I say that hasn’t been said, and said better? What’s going on in my life right now that might be interesting? (not much, by the way)

I need photos. People don’t read long narratives anymore. They skim and look for photos. I don’t have much variety. I need new pictures. But my camera was dropped (by me), and broken in many pieces. I have to get a new camera and then wander around and take a bunch of pictures.

Wandering on vacation. Doesn’t this terrain beg for a murder mystery?

There’s still no idea simmering up from the layers of pressure and panic. I need to see what others are writing about so I need to go read blog posts first. That results in the inner critic rearing up to say ‘you’ll never write a blog post as good!’. I go hide in shame for a few days.

Searching for the elusive writer

Maybe if I skim Facebook real quick I might find some inspiration. Skimming Facebook! Like that ever happens. Facebook is a void that sucks you in until writing time disappears.

Maybe if I go read a new book first I might find inspiration. Or at least an excuse to write a review. But I’ve read all my books, many, many times. Okay, so I’ll add a trip to the library after the camera store. Then after taking pictures I’ll need to read the book. Or, what is more likely after a trip to the library, multiple books.

And so the days pass with the need to post something resting like a leech on my brain, sucking any creative juices dry.

Doesn’t get much drier than this. Even the house is dehydrated.

Blogs, and social media in general, are wonderful tools for authors. But they are there to share, to visit, to chat – at least in my opinion – and when used simply as a medium to sell books, they fail. And when they become something that feels more like a chore, or something that takes time away from actual writing, they also fail.

Luckily this never feels like a chore, as much as I joke around about it. And now I’ve completed a blog post and get a reprieve for a few days. I could write, but I still have that stack of books waiting to be read. And that new camera.

Not taken with the new camera – that’s me in the middle

Vital Simplicity

July 31, 2016July 31, 2016 / Lisa / 2 Comments

This past week I met with author Susan Schreyer for a writing gab fest. She asked me a simple question and I’ve been pondering on it since because it’s so vital to writing. I also had her give me advice on roses. She’s invaluable on both topics.

That’s water on the petals

We all know the important ‘what if’ question. It’s how stories are born. What if this happened, and then that? What if she’d said this instead of that? And so on.

But there’s the more important question once that idea is formed. What does each character want, more than anything else?

I know it’s obvious. So obvious in fact, that it gets forgotten, almost like an ignored cliché.

I talked to Susan about a character that is in jail to figure out her role in the protagonist’s life. Susan asked me, ‘what does she want?’. Yes, I’d thought of that before, because this is the fourth book the character will be in. But I hadn’t given it much thought as far as how roles have changed with jail, how this character will fit into the new role, and more importantly, how she will act within confines.

To answer Susan, I started listing off things I thought the character wanted. The things I thought were important. And then, almost as an afterthought, I said, ‘well, and freedom I guess’. Susan honed right onto that word. Freedom. And followed up with, ‘what would the character do to be free?’.

So while I know the question is simple and basic, it’s too important to forget, or to assume that you already know the answer. It’s a question that should be asked of every single character and really, it works out to a dual question.

What do they really want…and how far will they go to get it?

It’s one of those basic questions writers learn early on. It then gets buried because, after all, you know it and you’re sure that you’re using it in writing. But it’s not such a bad thing to occasionally pull out a tool that might be buried at the bottom of your writer’s tool kit, dust it off, and use it again.