The New Rudder

Oh hi. Yeah, juuust a little bit of a time gap since my last post. 

I imagine most folks reading this already know why, but just in case -- or for posterity, should this be found by an interested literary agent or a production assistant doing background for a biopic on my life or a post-apocalyptic historian looking for records from The Before Times -- here's what happened: I was moving right along with the second draft of my second manuscript when my fiancee started having health problems. Then those problems became more serious. Then they became "cancer here, there and everywhere and after a second, third and fourth opinion no one knows what kind of cancer this is" serious.

We moved up the wedding date and married over the summer. Needless to say, I put the manuscript and this blog on hold to focus on her treatment. She fought so hard and never gave up, but unfortunately the cancer had other ideas and she passed in November.

I was a mess, no surprise there. And I hadn't written a single word since then.

What is a writer who doesn't write? I'd been asking myself that a lot lately, and haven't been thrilled with the answers. The other weekend someone asked me what I do. I opened my mouth to respond and absolutely nothing came out. What do I do? Tend to the kids, churn through the day job, lose myself in video games and YouTube videos and cocktails and, what? Bide my time til my number is up? That's too rudderless an existence, and too bleak.

I need to start writing again. I want to start writing again, but writing what? The idea of returning to my second manuscript -- which was already a fairly heavy examination on the stages of grief -- was (and remains) ridiculous. No, I needed something simple. Something comforting. 

And then it came to me. So while I'm going to shutter up the House of Nolahn for now, you all can join me at my new rudder.

Write On: Achievement Unlocked

I did it! At long last, I've completed the first draft of my new manuscript.

Sure, it took about 27 months to complete. And I finished it while recovering from my second COVID shot, so I was feverish and crying the whole time which should make for an interesting re-read. And yes, I have to go back and fill in a couple of flashbacks that I just skipped over with tags like [INSERT FLASHBACK TO HS HERE]. And I know there's this one bit where I earmarked it with a note that reads "This suuuuuuuuuuucks!" because it reads like I wrote it at gun point and has no real purpose other than to remind readers that hey, this character is here, too.

But still: FIRST DRAFT COMPLETED.

I know there's a heap more work to do. But for now, I'm just enjoying the feeling of accomplishment, and it feels good.

The Birthday Check-In

 Hey, it's my birthday!

(Note: Okay, my birthday was actually the other day but it was my birthday when I first sat down to write this post. Then the phone rang and I saw something shiny and now it's a couple days later.  Whatever. It's my birthday.)

What better time than to check in with you all on my progress. And yes, I have been making progress:

Hacking away at Book #2

I know I've written vaguely about the mysterious "Book #2" for a while, but I'm at long last hitting the home stretch... of my first draft. Then I'll need to circle back to plug up the holes and give it a proper going-over before it's ready for anyone to read and/or tear apart. But it's getting there, and that's a good feeling.

What the hell is this Book #2, anyway? 

Fair enough. I've been vague and mysterious about it long enough. Also, I've been taking the occasional seminar to help me sell these things to agents (cuz I clearly need the help) and have put together a proper Elevator Pitch for my new story.

"A suicide reunites the surviving members of the Bleecker Street Six, and the childhood friends process the tragic news in different ways -- including one who doesn't think it was a suicide at all."

Wow, that sounds amazing! How are you not burning through your draft like a house on fire?

First, thank you! Second, I ask myself that same thing all the time and have come up with various reasons why, but a seminar I (remotely) attended the other week drive it home for me. 

In her seminar "Getting Your Story on the Page, from Idea to Execution," author Danielle Joseph talked a bit about knowing your book's mood -- the emotion that powers your story. And that's when it clicked, because you know what emotion powers my current story? Grief. Which explains why there have been so many days (weeks, months) when I can't bring myself to dig in and do the work.

Ah. So, are all writing seminars this insightful?

I wish. I did attend a couple of fantastic seminars by Rachelle Gardner over the summer. Then I attended three seminars from other authors after the new year and while Danielle Joseph's was quite good, the others were... not. 

I get that running seminars remotely is an adjustment but we're a year into the pandemic so it's not like the change in format was a surprise. Instead the other seminars were directionless and meandering, which makes for a really hard sit. The speakers often over-analyzed certain things to the point of meaninglessness while glazing over things that would have been interesting to unpack. The worst one was a completely formless session consisting of the speaker asking rhetorical questions, stream of consciousness-style. I bailed after an hour.

Sounds awful. Any good news?

Yes! My writers group has started back up after going dormant for much of the pandemic. The group has been all business, even going so far as to pledge specific goals for the month to hold each other accountable. It's been great.

Hope all is good with you, too. More to come.

Adventures in (Not) Leaving the House: You Are What You Build

 

I work from home. I’ll never complain because there are more advantages to that arrangement than I can even count, but there is one down-side: I don’t get out much. So on those occasions where I do leave the house to visit people or get away for the weekend or pick up a loaf of bread, it opens the door for Of course, no one gets out much these days, but that doesn’t stop me from seeking out

 

 

I recently joined Toastmasters, and this was the speech I gave last week. 

 

My family is very competitive. We love board games, card games, yard games, you name it. From summer nights in my youth playing hours of Michigan Rummy to vacations as adults featuring lip sync battles and cook-offs, this is just what we do as a family. It's always good-natured -- we never take it too far -- but we do go all-out to win. Today, I'd like to show you what I mean when I say my family goes all out.

 

 

 

This was what my parents put together during our last family gingerbread house competition. They love lighthouses, and as someone with an engineering background, my father couldn’t help but run electrical though it. That’s right: this is a fully functioning gingerbread lighthouse. For her part, my mother brought a glue gun. I have to say that bringing a glue gun to a gingerbread house contest is like bringing a machine gun to a knife fight.

We ultimately disqualified my parents’ entry on account that not enough of it was edible. No, that year my sister won with this entry:

My sister is the most artistically skilled of the siblings and the most sentimental. So naturally we greeted this entry with a chorus of boos. I mean, look at it: it’s text book emotional manipulation. But it did win, and rightfully so.

Neither of these houses were surprises. My father is an engineer, my sister is sentimental. You are what you build.

 

We obviously weren’t able to get together for Thanksgiving this year, but a local non-profit held a gingerbread house contest as a fundraiser, and my teenage daughters and I submitted an entry. While I was picking up supplies for Thanksgiving, I picked up a pair of additional gingerbread house kits for my girls. Not for any kind of contest, just to do whatever they want during the Thanksgiving break.  They really took that "whatever they want" to heart…

My older daughter, age 16, immediately announced her intention to build a gingerbread “house of ill repute.” She did not use the term “house of ill repute,” of course. But that’s my angel: she is smart and witty and charming and has a mouth that would make a sailor blush. I’m still trying to decide whether or not letter her build this makes me the Best Dad Ever or a terrible, terrible parent.

My younger daughter, age 14, would never use such language under any circumstances. She’s soft-spoken and still has her little girl voice, which makes it surreal that she’s the one who has become a full fledge horror hound. There’s nothing quite like having conversations with her that include lines like “It’s was fine, Daddy. The movie only had a little bit of cannibalism in it.” She announced her intention to build a “murderhouse” – a gingerbread cabin in the woods, complete with dismembered gingerbread people and gummy worm entrails. And she insisted that one of the gingerbread men be hung from a hook as a homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

 

So want to see their houses?

 

 

 

Yeah, so they confessed to talking up a big game, but when it came down to actually putting the house together, they opted to make cute and festive gingerbread houses. Sure, I was a little disappointed, but I wasn’t surprised. They’re teenagers and rascals, their core they sweet kids. You are what you build.

 

Oh, I never showed you what we entered into the contest:

 

 

As you can see here, Godzilla is ripping apart a Japanese pagoda at the base of Mt. Fuji and the Air Force has been sent in to fend him off. We included some sparkler candles to highlight the destruction, but they didn’t come out in the photo as well as we hoped.

I've shown this to friends and family, and absolutely none of them were surprised because of course I made a Godzilla-themed gingerbread house. I am a child. I am a 46-year-old child and with a strange, lifelong Godzilla fascination. So if I'm given the chance to make something creative, I’m gonna get all kinds of weird because you are what you build.

You might think "Godzilla destroying a gingerbread house" was the highlight of my Thanksgiving, but it wasn't. It was making this with my daughters. Because we built more than just gingerbread houses over the holiday. We built memories. We build relationships. And I hope I built an example of what a family can be for when my daughters build families of their own.

You are what you build.