Paint Me a Picture

Got back yesterday from a whirlwind trip to Manhattan with Oldest Daughter. We had a fabulous time . . . we walked all around the city, holding hands, and talking. She is too thin! No Freshman 15 for her. So I tried to stuff her with good food and pretzels from the sidewalk guys. It is so wonderful to know she is pursuing her musical dreams. The bonus, of course, is that I was in New York City.

So we were on 5th Avenue watching the Columbus Day Parade. During parades, cars can periodically cross at even streets, pedestrians at odd. We were at 54th. This old couple, well-dressed, comes up and wants to cross and the cop near us tells them no. They start arguing. They tell him he's an idiot . . . they go on and on about having to go out of their way ONE block. Cars are RUSHING through the intersection during a break in the marchers, and they are whipping awfully close to them--and the cop--as only Manhattan drivers can. Finally, the cop told them if they didn't move they would be hit by a cab (which came PRETTY close), and they shuffled off, CURSING him under their breath. The cop looks at me and says, "Nice old lady." I was reminded for the thousandth time that my hometown isn't like any other hometown.

Living where I do in Virginia, I dislike how homogenous it is. I hate that my kids have the ONLY Hispanic surname in their classes. When they occasionally stumble on a Gonzalez or a Martinez, I am practically giddy! In NYC, because all the cops were directing parade traffic, I saw every cop's name on his or her badge. Irish, Vietnamese, Italian, Spanish, and every possible enthnicity of last names under the sun. I saw many, many hajibs (Muslim head coverings) as I walked along, I saw several Siekhs in turbans and long beards. I heard every possible language I think, as people walked past us chatting in their native tongues on their cellphones. The guy who sold us Oldest Daughter's pretzel was Lebanese--and very funny.

But if you have never lived in New York, you might not know. You might guess at this melting pot, but the rainbow is really astounding. So bringing it back to the writing . . . my opening scene in Freudian Slip has a siekh driving a cap with a Buddha bobblehead on his dashboard and a picture of Pope John Paul II paperclipped to his viser. I tried to paint my city the way I see it. Oldest Son has an English teacher. He had to write an essay and he mentioned candy canes in it. The teacher, for Oldest Son's rewrite, said, "Add more description. Don't assume I know what a candy cane is or what it tastes like." So the essay was turned in again with glowing description of peppermint.

My trip to New York was a writing reminder that you shouldn't assume. Paint a picture--not back story, don't drown it with boring details--but slip it in there. You know, come to think of it, that's why Travis's My Town Monday blogs are so fun.

So tell me a detail about where you live. Something you'd have to be observant or an insider to know.

Authentic Schmootz

As a New Yorker, I have my Yiddish expressions. I'm not Jewish, but the fact is you can't grow up near Manhattan without picking up some Yiddish, some Spanglish. And my favorite word is schmootz. As in (as a mother), "Come here, Demon Baby, let me get that little bit of schmootz off your face." Then, like a true mom, I use a little spit to wipe away the chocolate or whatever it is that is on his cheek or chin. Come on, all moms do this (maybe without the Yiddish). Now they even have THIS. (You MUST check this link out.) What an inspired bit of genius for THAT product.

Now here's the thing, there are some details so spot-on that without them, frankly, I don't buy a character. Maybe the mom in your work in progress doesn't wipe away schmootz, but there are some things about moms that are universal. And I don't mean mothers. See . . . anyone can be a mother. It takes a special kind of woman to be a mom.

As a student of life, I look for the authentic details to get "just right" about my characters. Until wine became trendy in the last 10-15 years, with people actually--besides the very upper class--becoming interested in tastings and so on, no self-respecting man ordered wine in a bar. As a former bartender, I know. They ordered beer. NOT that some didn't, but if you wanted, in a character, say a cop, to have made him a bit different--give him a nice pinot. Because that was uncommon. And white wine was a chick drink. And I can tell you, still, only a woman will order the abomination that is a white zinfandel (sorry to anyone who likes the stuff, but it's not real wine).

As writers, we notice the details without even noticing that we're noticing (at least that's what I think . . . I don't even realize how much I notice about scenes and people until I go to write later, and I don't take notes). In THE ROOFER, when Ava sticks her finger into the nicotine glaze on the walls of the bar, that was real. I know. I did the same thing.

Only a mom will use her sleeve in a pinch to wipe a runny nose and not think about it. Only someone who hates to lie will come up with something complicated when telling a lie. Lying makes them nervous. They embellish so it sounds better. Liars--habitual liars--know the simplest lie is best.

Anyway, you get the idea. So what's one authentic bit of schmootz or detail from your work in progress? And how many of you are rushing to buy that product I linked to? Come on. You know you want to.

Me and Mike, Part Deux

Hello all:

Thank you for all your well wishes . . . and for all the emails flooding my box. You are all great. Love and peace to you all.

Mike Tyson's blow has now spread down my cheek . . . and I look a fright. A real fright. If I do my makeup "just right" I look clown-like. My eyebone . . . I am pretty sure is fractured . . . so not fun. Even my hair brushing against it hurts. What do prize fighters do????

And no, I still have no idea what I am allergic to. But next week . . . tests.

And tomorrow, I am meeting my new editor. For Magickeepers, my middle-grade fantasy series. (I just have to figure out how to "spin" my appearance so that he understands I am not a prize fighter but . . . without being too dramatic. I prefer a "funny" spin.) Now editor meetings are a wonderful thing. I have never left one without being utterly energized.

Editors are an overworked breed, and I don't know a single one who doesn't preface the reason for their career with an "I love books." The editor-author relationship, to me, is usually just wonderful . . . and so far, from the comments I've seen him give me on the first 75 pages of the book, I am blown away by the absolutely brilliant insights and thoughts he has given me. This is a man who has done his homework, who "gets" the genre. So I am looking forward to it.

As for my family, Oldest Daughter is coming to Manhattan with me as escort (and so she can shop), and my epi-pens will be in my purse, and she has instructed me, "Eat nothing weird at lunch." So there you go.

And now a question . . . because we ALWAYS bring it back to the writing.

As I went through my blackout . . . I was rather observatory about the whole thing. When I was losing my vision, I noticed how my eyes divided up the vision field into a thousand "pixels" and I had a buzzing sensation. And then . . . I had a sense that blacking out would be blissful. Like this horror and pain would just end.

And then when I woke up with a black eye, it looked back. But I have discovered day TWO of a black eye is WAY worse than DAY ONE. And that given the bruise is spreading down my face, day THREE doesn't look promising at ALL.

So . . . have you ever experienced something and realized . . . gosh, there are details you never KNEW? Details you may even have gotten WRONG before? As a writer?

Do share.

Peace,
E

Like Butter

Yesterday was a monumental day in the life of Erica Orloff. I learned how to use my rice steamer.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I only learned to use the coffeemaker last year. I used to buy McDonald's coffees--extra large--six at a time, and then microwave them as needed. I owned a coffeemaker, but the contraption overwhelmed me. So, I have had the "Rolls Royce" of rice steamers, a gift when I went macrobiotic over a year ago . . . but always had to ask Significant Other (the giver of the gift) to make my rice. Turns out all you have to do is put two cups of water to one cup of rice. Close the steamer. Press the white rice or brown rice button. And wait. That's it. Voila! Rice! As a macrobiotic eater (most of the time), rice is a staple, and so I am delighted. But Baby Son has had medical issues and was diagnosed with "Failure to Thrive" meaning my baby couldn't gain weight if he tried. And trust me, we stuffed him. So . . . he is on a high-fat diet thanks to the doctors at Children's Hospital--and high fat is the exact opposite of macrobiotic. So he gets butter on his rice. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Adding butter yesterday, I was at the last of a stick, and was using the waxed paper to spread it on Baby Demon Boy's rice. Because I am "cooking challenged," the P.C. version of I can't cook at all, I ended up with butter all over my hands. (And if you have somehow concluded that smearing butter on steamed rice isn't really "cooking," then clearly you are not as "cooking challenged" as I am.) So I went to rinse off my hands. Butter is not easy to get off your hands, and it felt like I was slathered in thick moisturizer, and I was suddenly carried away to a book. To the MOMENT I read it.

I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale 22 years ago. The details of it remain vivid. I can't tell you, for sure, the names of all the characters, but the real details remain. Deprived of anything to enhance beauty, the captive Handmaid saves little bits of butter from her meals, secreting it away in her spare pair of shoes, to use as moisturizer on her dry hands. That little detail, and how her hands ached for the butter . . . felt so tragic in the confines of the novel. Twenty-two years later, it remains part of me to such an extent that I don't even look at a simple item like butter in the same way.

The best of books will do that. Plot details will fall away, character names will fade. But the best of books will have a moment of heart-wrenching pain, or a moment of pure undistilled joy--defined not by the words of emotion but the small details--and will remain. Those moments when real book lovers will say, "I'll never forget . . ."

So, do you have an "I'll never forget . . . " moment from a book? A movie? In your own work in progress . . . a moment you are aiming for?

It's All About the Details

The picture at left is not my dad, but it is my dad's apartment when he was a kid. That couch was his bed. Yes, take a good look at those cushions.

Now here's the thing, we used to go visit my grandmother in the city when I was little, and she was still in the same coldwater tenemant flat. And so when I wrote scenes in The Roofer, set in apartments like that, or bars like John's, the details were dead on. My father used to make fun of a certain writer who I don't want to defame here, who interviewed my dad's friends for a certain book about the Westies. And they all told him lies. On purpose. To see which ones would make it in his book. Said book is now being made into a movie. He's the screenwriter. He THINKS he knows these guys, but guess what?

You see, whether it's the underbelly of New York, or writing about diving off the coast of Costa Rica, or performing brain surgery . . . you have to get the details right. And that's more than just research. When I wrote Mafia Chic, I heard from a lot of restaurant workers who loved the details of the kitchen crew. Guys missing fingers, guys with dredlocks and blasting music as they prepped, whatever. It was born out of my working in restaurants. But it wasn't about the recipes, or the "front of house" details. That crew in the kitchen was what made that book real. I KNOW those guys.

On the flip side, I've edited manuscripts for aspiring authors with plot holes . . . but honest to God, a plothole is often fixable. You might need to adjust said plot, but you can often fix it with an inserted chapter, or finessing a scene. But there is NO fix, other than completely rewriting, someone who doesn't get the flavor right. Who can't describe gritty in a way that is really gritty. Who gives mobbed-up guys dialogue that sounds either like college-educated former choir boys, or so Joe Pesci as to be a cariacature. Research can only take you so far. THAT'S what they don't tell you about writing . . . that's what classes on writing don't reveal. That's, I might opine, the difference between writing talent and just being able to write. You can research until you have notebooks full of it. But if you don't get the street language just so, if you can't get the cadence of the dialogue right, you're just not re-creating that world. You can bog a scene down with all the details you want, but if you can't BE in that world and that scene in a more visceral sense, I think you're just reporting.

Thoughts?

A View Up Close

My last post was about going wide--expanding the themes while digging deeper. This one is about going in tight, small, close, claustrophobic.

I first learned about writing close when observing my kids. I could tell you one of my son's marches to his own drummer, is unique in a wonderful, day-dreaming, yet math-intensive way, BUT . . . it's still hard to describe him. However, one time when we were in a rush to get to school--he was a preschooler, I think, and I may or may not have been pregnant again. With four kids, seems like I spent a lot of time pregnant. But I do remember rushing along, and one second he was behind me on the way to car from the front door. The next second he wasn't. When I turned around he was completely stopped, backpack on the ground. Then he seemed to walk like a drunken man. And when I, exasperated, went back to collect him, I realized he had stopped to watch a line of ants. He squatted down to them, putting his finger down, watching them march around him. THAT is my son. Stopping for ants or butterflies, rain, babies, cats, dogs, a cool cloud, the moon. Pretty much anything. And that, describing him, is going in for the tight shot. I tell you more about him with the ants, than I do with big sweeping generalizations.

In THE ROOFER, Ava collects the stuff of childhood--a parasol from a drink, smooth rocks, subway tokens--in a cigar box. She has to hide it because of the abuse in her life, and when her treasures are found, they are taken and destroyed. It's not a huge moment of abuse. It's a small microcosm of abuse--of the way in which a tiny soul is destroyed in a small moment.

In Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, Lily's small "huge" yet small moment is when she has sex and reveals her mastectomy to her lover. I don't pan back--in fact at no point prior has Lily talked about what the scars look like. I don't discuss how she feels about losing a breast. I don't even let the reader SEE it. It's the small moment when her new lover kisses the scar, licking along its edges. It's small and tight and intimate.

You can go wide . . . you can go really small. Each is for revealing what you want as writer.

Thoughts?

Peace,

E

Swedish Porn

See? I got your attention.

This post really isn't about porn though. Not really. You see, the first time I ever saw porn, it wasn't run-of-the-mill Playboy porn. I was 12, and it was my best friend's older brother's secret stash of hard-core Swedish porn. Stacks of it. And 95% of it was of beautiful, VERY buxom blonde Swedish maids and nurses spilling out of their uniforms, being shocked to open the door to find some sexy stud guys (usually two or three) that she just was only too happy to get it on with. The stuff was strange, most of it was interracial, and it was highly stylized. So now, when a character in one of my books (like a mystery) finds a stack of porn in an investigation, it's always weird Swedish porn. Why? Because I find that a more interesting detail than Playboy. What does it say about a man who goes to the trouble of getting his hands on nurses from Sweden in porn he can't read (I know, it's never about the storyline) versus going to the local truck stop and buying Penthouse. It says something about his motivation, about how specific his attractions are.

Whenever my characters have flowers, they are always lilies of the valley. Why? Because I used to lie down under the trees at my grandparents' summer cottage and smell the lilies of the valley and look at them, thinking they really did look like bells that fairies would ring. I would escape to the flowers and tell them my problems. When I got married for the second time, I had them in my bouquet. And whenever that floral detail is in a book, I sometimes have the heroine tell some whimsical tale about fairies because I think that detail says something about her sentimentality.

Whenever a parent in my book has a photo of his or her child on a desk, it is never a school photo. It is always a photo of the child captured mid-laugh--a precise moment that makes the picture seem to come alive. They always choose the photo for that reason. It's often a blurry shot, as if it is more important to have that bit of laughter on their desk than to have their child perfectly combed and lovely, to me revealing something about them as a parent.

When a character drinks tequila straight, no ice, intensely . . . it says something to me, versus someone sipping a glass of fine red wine--or someone knowing what region the wine's grapes were grown in.

The point of all this is . . . writing is all about the details. What you put in versus what you leave out. When people say they read a book and "skip over" all the details, to me it's usually because the author is just piling on visual details of a room or what someone is wearing, description overload. Instead, I try to tell a few details to simply get the reader into the room or a scene. But the DETAILS, like the above, are important. It isn't about getting you, as reader, into a room. We've all been in an office, a bedroom, a kitchen. It's the little things that REVEAL--those details make it into my final draft. They are quirky details, specific details, and as you can tell, they mean something.

To me, that is one of the best writing tips . . . control your characters and scenes by choosing the right details.

Thoughts?

What's Different?

Another great quote:

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like.

Tell them what makes this one different.

Neil Gaiman

I love this quote because this goes along with discussions about detail here at the blog. When I described John's Bar in The Roofer, I didn't just tell readers it was a Hell's Kitchen bar. Unless you've been to a bar there, that description would actually be rather useless. Instead, I described the patina of nicotine, how you could use your fingernail to scratch your name into the wall. I remember standing there, another wake, another time years ago, and I had been away from the bar for years, and when I found I could literally write with my nail in the nicotine stains, which had the drips of Jackson Pollack and the color of diseased lung, coating the walls, I knew I needed to write about the walls. What made them different from the walls of most bars. When I wrote about the smell . . . a combination of urine and vomit permeating the bathroom--with a single bare bulb in it . . . well, it was home. I love the place. Loved it (past tense) since it has now closed. We "waked" the bar. Honest to God. We said good-bye to it--and the place was packed so deep at the wake that you couldn't walk.

So there it is. What's different? When I speak to kids, I tell them to banish words like pretty from their writing. Evil. Strange. Eerie. Bizarre. Ugly. All meaningless. Utterly meaningless. A beautiful place full of memories for me--truly wonderful memories--would likely be a place most of you reading this would rather run from, a bar whose door you would never darken without bringing along your own security detail. You certainly wouldn't want to use the restroom. Or touch anything. Or order food, heaven forbid. To make it come alive, I have to tell people what's different.

So what makes your hero different? Your heroine? Your setting? What's different? Is this a concept you use when writing?

It's All in the Details

Do you ever meet someone, or do something, and smile to yourself because you just KNOW you are going to use that detail in a book?

I recently met a gentleman in a restaurant and was introduced. He was confident, tall, and he shook my friggin' hand like he was going to break it while looking at me intensely in the eyes. I hate "fish"-limp handshakes, but THIS, this was bone-crushing. And I thought, what gives? He cannot be oblivious that his grip is like a vise. So I decided, for character's sake, that he had something to prove. He may not. It's immaterial . . . I am going to USE that particular character trait and decide that it's a "something to prove" ego thing.

I love details.

Take Neccos.

If you read my books, no matter what the genre, at some point, my most beloved characters are going to eat Neccos. In Diary of a Blues Goddess, the characters play POKER using Neccos.

When my significant other went to CVS with my eldest daughter (almost 17) and bought me Neccos, she rifled through ALL the packs looking for the rolls with the most WHITE ones. They taste the absolute best. Through some bizarre genetic fluke, she likes the same Necco flavors as I do. We both hate the chocolate ones. Don't like the licorice ones. We hunt for the white ones--sort of cinammon-flavored. Significant Other stood there, dumbfounded. "They have different FLAVORS depending on color?" Of course, they do, idiot. And any true Necco-loving fanatic knows it. And that detail? Goes in the book.

Martinis for my characters have three olives. They like flannel sheets. They hate Jay Leno and love David Letterman. They're often Buddhists. They light candles in Catholic churches, even though they're not Catholic.

You get the idea. I use little details, and sometimes, like I said, I meet someone and think, "You don't know it, buddy, but I'm using that."

How about you? What sort of details do you put in your books or stories?