 For Authors: June 28, 2017 Issue [#8365] |
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This week: SummerThoughts Edited by: Fyn  
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Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~~John Lubbock
It will not always be summer; build barns. ~~Hesiod
Aaah, summer - that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It's a time to hunt for insects, master handstands, practice swimming strokes, conquer trees, explore nooks and crannies, and make new friends. ~~Darell Hammond
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. ~~Albert Camus
Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May;
but at length the season of summer does come. ~~Thomas Carlyle
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I remember Summer! School was out and there, stretched out before me was an infinite measure of time and space. It was a blank page just waiting to be penciled in with adventures, sketched full of swimming splashes and colored with lightning bug designs of a night's sky. Sleep-away camp and seeing friends from previous years. Riding my horse across our mountain.
I remember Summer! Months of bare feet freed from confining shoes. Running everywhere, feeling the grass beneath my toes or twigs and rocks on the trails. I could run blindly through the forest, knowing where I was by the feel of the earth beneath my feet. I remember Summer! Bi-weekly trips to the library and leaving with my arms full of the eight books I was allowed to check out and knowing I held in my hands the ticket to exciting places like Narnia, the door knob to another Nancy Drew adventure or the window seat on the train to Istanbul, County Cork or the far side of the galaxy..
I remember Summer! Finding worms as I helped my grandmother weed the gardens, the taste of a sun-warmed tomato fresh off the vine, munched much like an apple but with juice running down my chin, picking strawberries and raspberries and always having my bucket filled first because I didn't eat any. (Didn't care for them - but I loved picking them for my grandmother because it meant early, cool morning baking with her.
I remember Summer! My dad taking 'me out to the ball game' (in July 1966)' and eating too many hotdogs and peanuts while Mickey Mantle hit a grand slam home run. I remember getting in trouble because I never wanted to go to bed when it was still light out! (until I figured out that it was also light enough to read a few chapters more of what ever book I was reading!) Finally swimming well enough to swim all the way out to the island in our lake and discovering that it was the Blue gills in the lake that made all those circles in the sand. Diving beneath the water to retrieve snagged fish hooks and lures.
Then Summer wended down into trying new shoes on summer broadened feet, new clothes for the upcoming school year that always seemed too scratchy and warm to even think about wearing! New school supplies: new box of crayons - all sharp still and my favorites - magenta and sky blue - would be crying out for new pictures. new notebooks filled with empty pages just waiting for inspiration, assignments and new poetry, and a whole box of pencils that didn't have dirty, rubbed down erasers! But still, it was Summer and I was full of green leaf wanderings, sunset canoe trips on mirrored water and homemade lemonade out on the patio.
Summer evolved.
I remember Summer! Summer jobs babysitting or being a counselor at the camps I'd gone to. Working at a stable for Burgess Meredith was a summer that seemed to fly by! I was able to meet so many different actors that summer that I felt as if it passed in a flurry of being in a constant state of having to be totally nonchalant while being totally spazzing on the inside! The second summer I worked there, it became just another summer working for important people who had no clue of all what was involved in being sure famous celebrities and their kids didn't fall off the horses, feed them to much candy or didn't mistreat my beloved animals. Perspectives are simply amazing!
Summers evolved once again when I realized that 'summer' no longer meant 'vacations and doing nothing except for what I wanted to do!
I remember Summer! Kids off from school. The three of them feeling like fifteen when they were running in three different directions. Of course, they had friends over, so it was more like fifteen kids to keep an eye on or an ear listening for, because if everything was quiet, it usually meant trouble was brewing! I remember Summer! Summers of driver's training or frantic phone calls from kids babysitting and the "Mom! So and so cut themselves and there's blood everywhere!" phone calls!
All too soon it was time for the next evolution. Kids off on their own and summers meant working while hearing of other's vacations to far off places. Had a trailer at a campground and I lived for weekends of 'camp-fire crawls' and early morning coffee with the other weekend warriors. Time wound around and summers were gardens, grandkids allergic to poison ivy or bee stings, horse shoe games and getting ready for hunting season.
Summer evenings relaxing by our fire pit, listening to tree frog choruses and rehashing our day - mine of author meetings, edits and book releases, his of welding wonders, management issues and dreams of retirement. (Like the last one will ever actually happen!)
These days the time flies by in a blurred rush unless we consciously make it slow down to a fast crawl! No sooner is it warm enough to enjoy that cold glass of lemonade than leaves start turning and suddenly snow blankets the ground. I spin around to notice another year has zipped by. I realize the birch trees we planted are twenty feet tall and I'd swear we only planted them two years ago, to be reminded that no, it was four years ago!!! Okay. No wonder they've grown so much! Grandkids are in college or getting their driver's licenses or having kids.
The immortality of summers long gone has given way to how many summers do we have left? So we sit out on the porch or in our (as yet) unfinished 3-season room and simply stop. The lawn will wait. So what if a weed or three dares grow in the garden. The clouds are spectacular today. The baby birds are perched on the lowest branch of the maple tree trying their wings and getting up the gumption to ...oh look! ...fly to a branch nearby before ... flying all the way across the yard. A flower bulb we'd gotten from a neighbor that we had no idea what would be is a deep burgundy lily! My rose bush is covered in blossoms and yes, we did stop and take a long, lovely sniff! We turn on the sprinkler of an evening and watch as the neighborhood kids materialize to scamper and squeal across the grass. They are running and pretending they are gorses with all the accompanying sound effects. I ponder if this is where the word neighborhood sprang from! We head in to bed when the last light of day is fading because 5 AM comes early and take our vacations in wintertime these days.
I remember Summer. A time of running free and growing, a time of green trees and marshmallow-sticky fingers. Clear, intense memories. From yesterday, because no summer should be lost in the haze of things to be done, errands run and honey-do lists accomplished! The discourse of thrushes is not to be missed, the absence of Orion's Belt should be noticed and a meandering monarch is still a wonder! I took the time, made the effort and discovered a four-leafed clover. My hubby and I had a water fight that left is both soaked and laughing as we dripped our way into the house. Yet we went shopping for outdoor furniture for the new room because, while it is only June 25th, and Summer is technically only a few days old, that sort of thing is already on clearance at Home Depot! Halloween has already raised its head and is creeping in.
Remember the Summers! We only get so many of them and each evolution has much to offer. But we have to take the time, the moments, the odd-ball occasions to live in them. Especially as writers. We can't cheat our characters out of them for we do them no justice if we do. We want our characters to live and breathe. So it is up to us to breathe that life into them by having them go through the cycle of the year, to have them have the experience of that brief summer shower that cranks the humidity to high, to chase after a rainbow or do a cannon-ball into the pool. They cannot live if we do not! |
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It may take awhile, but sometimes we just have to finish what we start.
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brom21  says: I really appreciate this newsletter because I could use improvement in character hashing. A lot of times I go on with an exchange of dialogue among three people and I forget to display their personalities. It's generally nice and fine, but mastering the concept would definitely help me. Thanks for this insight!
Osirantinous  agrees: I agree totally. We may be writing fiction, but a lot of it is actually fact. I draw floor plans of my characters' houses so they (and I) know where they're going and how. And Google Maps (and Google Earth) is awesome!!! I'm actually aiming at spending a month in Chicago next year so I can really get down and research the city and environs for my novel that is set there. Also - like the idea of calling these researches a blueprint. I don't outline either, but I do keep lists and things. Blueprint suits this pantser nicely as a word to describe what I do. Thanks!!
Quick-Quill  questions: I realize one needs to have a plan, but what part of writer's license can you forgive? So the Coldwater you know is and hour from the Lake you know. When a reader opens a book, one may need to suspend reality. I picked my setting and put it in what is a undeveloped area. There is no town but it is near the real places I needed it to be close to. If someone tried to drive there they would never find it. I just googled a remote area and stuck a town there. I'd give the author a chance. You may know its fiction, but others just liked the story.
Suspension of reality needs to be believable. If the Michigan author had picked a fictional name for the town, there would have been no issue. But he picked the name of a fairly well-known town and that is what caused the 'suspensional crash.' Just as one would check the name of a book against what is out there, checking for a town name is also a good idea if you are not basing a place on an actual place or if you are but want to call it something else.
Bikerider  says:Another helpful newsletter, Fyn.
I thought I'd throw in my two cents about what I do to help me know my characters in a long story. I first find a picture of each character that fits with what I have in mind, (there are an infinite number of images to choose from online), young, old, man, woman, pretty, handsome..., you get the picture, right? (no pun intended) I name him/her, and then I write a short story about the character. I give them a history, a present, and a future, a future that will be the actual story. If I'm stuck wondering what he or she would do in a situation in the story, I just look back at their story to remind myself of who they are, what they've done, how they would respond to the present situation. This works well for me.
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