Plotters and pantsers

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In the book writing world, in the part where the “pros” tell us “plebes” how to go about writing a book, the terms “plotters” and “pantsers” frequently make an appearance. Plotters are those who write an outline first and adhere to it — these are the writers who know their ending before they write word one of their novel. Pantsers, from the Latin pants, meaning “pants” and ter, meaning “seat of the.” They are way more fun; everything is spur of the moment. They have no idea where the story is going, i.e., I will let the words on the page direct me where I go next.

I am a plotter, in the flesh. No one plots like I do. Not just when writing books. My whole life is a plot, a giant to-do list. Everything is planned out. I don’t know how to spell spontinaity, and if I did, it sure wouldn’t be my middle name.

Plotters can write in any genre they want, but historical fiction is a natural for them. That, of course, is if as the writer, you want to be factual. If the War of the Roses breaks out on Thursday night, you can’t instead be having your hero cajoled into a night down at the pub with the boys at that point. You can’t be moving Thursday night’s war to next Tuesday just because your character wanted to tie one on and you are letting him direct you where you go next in the story. History doesn’t work that way. Unless of course it’s revisionist history. But that’s an entirely different genre.

I — a natural-born plotter — always have a good idea of what a post on my blog is going to be about before I sit down to write it. I’ve plotted it out, which is beyond easy for a blog: come up with a topic and a couple of points, and I’m away to the races. I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time doing this, but the time I do spend is not nothing. If I sit down in front of a blank screen and expect to be enlightened, it’s not going to happen. It never has, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it never will.

So, today, without a topic in mind, I went on a walk, first to clear my head and then to fill it with an idea, any idea. I stepped outside for the first time in 24 hours — a whole day spent inside away from the pollen. So there I was, bright-eyed and bushy tailed (what does that even mean?), ready to set off on my walk, ready to admire the spring gardens along the way — the forsythia and cherry blossoms in full bloom, the hyacinths and white and yellow daffodils, and those little blue things: a panoply of color. I sneeze, and out comes a tissue, blow my nose, sneeze again, a cough, another sneeze, and out comes the soggy tissue once more. Now all I see through my rheumy eyes is pollen-producing evil incarnate. Out went the idea of a “Colors of spring” post, replaced with “Evil plants and their offspring.”

But no, that wouldn’t work. Far too whiny. And by this time my head was so clogged up, I couldn’t think of anything else. So that’s where I was when I sat down just minutes ago, with no idea what to write about this week.

And just like that, a pantser was born.

For our listening pleasure today, Creedence Clearwater Revival …

I can do that!

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Probably it was the mid-’90s when I saw the Hawaiian ukulele player Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’Ole at the Lowell Folk Festival. His performance was one of the most memorable live music experiences I have ever experienced. He was electrifying, especially when he sang “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that segued into “What a Wonderful World” and back again. I couldn’t have been more stunned at the beauty of it.

So much so that I said right then and there, “I can do that!” Now, you’re probably thinking, based on how great this guy must have been, that no, I can’t. I wouldn’t want to dissuade you of that notion, not entirely, but wait. Because, you see, after all these years, I’ve recently picked up the ukulele again. And by all those years, I mean more than 60.

The ukulele was my first instrument (not counting the triangle in kindergarten), which my Uncle George gave me when I was around 6 or 7 years old. It came with a book of songs that included “Skip to My Lou” and “Turkey in the Straw.” I don’t remember any of the other tunes, but, honestly, I’m impressed that I can remember those two after all this time.

I took to playing the ukulele like I was born to it, totally gung-ho. Right up until one of the strings popped. It’s just not the same with three strings. At 6 years old, I wasn’t in the financial position to buy a new string, and I hate to say it, but my parents were probably glad that with no ukulele, the caterwauling was over. And thus came the end of my ukulele career.

But wait a second. A week or two after I finished writing my book last fall, there appeared in my town’s weekly newspaper an announcement for a ukulele group that met twice a month at a local theater. Beginners welcome.

Now, I just happen to have a ukulele, which I acquired in a roundabout way. What happened is, several years ago, we went on a family vacation to Maui, and on our last day there, we walked into a music store and my future son-in-law picked up a ukulele and started riffing. Cut to the future: With my elephant-like memory, when future son-in-law became actual son-in-law, I gave him what I thought was a brilliant present: his own ukulele. It turns out I was terribly misguided, and to make that story a little shorter, I am now in possession of said ukulele.

So, twice a month I now go to a ukulele session. The average age of attendants is well older than my late first ukulele (RIP), and we all have a great time. With a few sessions under my belt, I’m way past “Skip to My Lou.” I’m talking “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Octopus’s Garden.” This is the big time.

I’m starting to think my “I can do that!” when I heard IZ play all those years ago is maybe not too far off. You remember, don’t you, what happened the last time I said “I can do that”? Right, I wrote a book. One song is nothin’.

Here he is, my inspiration, Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole …

If it’s drowning you’re after, don’t torment yourself with shallow water

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Top of the mornin’ to ya. Ain’t life grand.

You can always trust the Irish to put a positive spin on everything, including mornings. Just suppose that last night, one of those monster flooding type of storms came through and wiped out your back 90, and supposing in the morning after surveying the damage, you put on your billy boots and start out on your five-mile walk to the village to suss out the bigger picture of the storm’s damage. You’ve not gone far on the road when you see your neighbor up ahead, and when you’re within shouting distance of each other, you call out, “Top of the mornin’ to ya.” Of course you do.

So let’s celebrate. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! The patron saint of green beer and drunken parades. You might not have known that. But the one thing you do know, I’m sure, is Patrick is the one who banished the snakes from Ireland.

Not so fast, leprechaun breath. That snake story is a man-made myth created by the Roman Christians, the would be invaders and conquerors of Ireland. The reality is that there never were any snakes in Ireland. What there was instead was the pagan religion with its Druid shamans. Druid art includes many depictions of the serpent, often coiled around a staff, an important symbol for the pagans.

What Patrick was sent to Ireland to do was not to banish the snakes, but to banish the serpents – the Druids. Which is what the Christians did. Out with the old and in with the new. It was in the fifth century when Patrick came to Ireland and Christianity took over, which, coincidentally, is when another Irish saint was said to be born, St. Brigit.

Pre-Christianity, the pagans in Ireland worshipped the supreme goddess Brigit. She meant everything to them; she was their morning, noon and night, and so the Christian leaders realized that the best way to convert the pagans to Christianity was to adopt and adapt some of the pagan rituals as their own and thus become easier to swallow. Thus the old goddess Brigit became the new saint, Brigit.

Celtic mythology is rich in legend. What’s most fascinating about myths for me is distinguishing the facts from the fantasy. I always thought the snake story was a fact, and here it turns out to be a euphemism, a mythical fantasy. I have to thank my friend Joyce for putting me on this fact-finding journey just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

Éirinn go Brách!

To celebrate the day, Van Morrison’s lilting Irish lullaby …

Remember what?

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Nestled among the foothills of Tipperary in Ireland lies a village called Ballingarry. Pretty much off the beaten track, its one claim to fame, at least historically, is this is where in 1848, a group of Young Ireland confederates met up with a police detachment and a bit of a battle ensued. The fighting took place in a farmhouse north of Ballingarry, closer to the village The Commons, but the history books call it Ballingarry, so at this point it’s a bit late to be switching out names.

Every year on the final Saturday of July, people gather at The Commons and walk over to the scene of the battle, a house that is now a wonderful museum that honors Young Ireland and commemorates The Famine. In 2016, I spent the summer in Ireland doing research for my book, and this reenactment/walk was a must on my to-do list (you can read all about that summer and my trip to Ballingarry here). Let me put a white flag here. (When I plant a white flag, I am saying I want to continue this conversation but right now I have this other important thing I want to say, and I’ll come back to the flag when I’m done with this other very important thing.)

In the years prior to my summer sojourn in Ireland, I’d spent a fair amount of time thinking about the book, story lines, characters, plot, fleshing out detail – not actually doing any writing per se, just thinking.

The good thing about thinking is you can think whatever you want, the crazier the better. For example, back then this writing project was going to be a trilogy, the first book was set in Ireland, the second in New Orleans and the third in Montana. I had stories mapped out for all three and was beyond excited to get started. The old champing at the bit. First things first: Every project has to have a name, and this one was no different. I named the trilogy “Avalon,” and scoring no points for originality, I named the three books “The Irish Book,” “The New Orleans Book” and “The Montana Book.” Working titles is what they call them. They are very much temporary, like placeholders.

Let’s go back to the white flag and the walk from The Commons to the farmhouse, which culminated that day in a gathering in the front courtyard. At one point I looked up at the house and above the front door, to a plaque that read “Remember ’48.” It was like a bolt of lightning. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was it. The real title for The Irish Book. I was thrilled. It was a perfect title. True, I did know it was a working title, only because my experience with editors has taught me that I could call it whatever I wanted, but the editor is always going to call it something else. Never once has an editor accepted the title of any piece I’ve submitted for publication. And even though I knew that, I was in complete denial. Surely, I said to myself, any editor would recognize perfection when she saw it.

It turns out she did. Only she, or maybe she was a he, wasn’t my editor.

Here’s what happened. A few days ago, I thought it would be a nice idea to get in touch with the Warhouse museum. I did a search online for the Ballingarry Famine Warhouse, and you know how those searches go: You start out looking up the prices of apples in Washington and before you know it you’re reading about sheep exports to Brazil. Web wormholes. Only three degrees of separation from the Warhouse I got sent to a publication page of a book by William Nolan. Guess what it’s called?

“Remember ’48: Young Ireland and the Rising”

Of course it is. … to be continued.

This morning we’ve got the sweet voice of Linda Ronstadt …

Remember Forty-Eight

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Shortly after I hit Send on my effervescently happy post last week, like maybe five minutes later, I realized that while, yes, I am an inherently happy person, the reason for my particular buoyancy last week was I’d just hours earlier finished editing (at least for this go-round) a chapter in the book that was in need of extensive surgical repair. That accomplishment made me feel like a doctor coming out of surgery who says, “Good job in there” with a very undoctory happy dance thrown in. I am two chapters further along in this surgical repair business, and I know that when I get this chapter edited, my happy quotient is set to go through the roof.

Before I get us too deep in the weeds on the travails of editing a novel, let me tell you about my novel. First things first, right?

I’ve set the story in 1848 Ireland, the unrelenting year of death, disease and starvation in the midst of the Great Potato Famine. Historians call 1848 the Year of Revolutions in Europe, a general revolt of the lower classes against the aristocracy. Italy had its Young Italy and Garibaldi, and Ireland had its Young Ireland, a group of radical thinkers who fought for Ireland’s freedom and independence from British rule.

Brigit, a servant girl in western Ireland, despairs of the horror that has befallen the people during the famine, and in looking for a way to help them, she discovers Young Ireland and their dream of independence and a way of feeding the population. In the feudalistic system in place at the time, Irish landlords shipped all their crops to England to pay their taxes. Young Ireland proposed self-government and keeping the country’s food at home.

Brigit receives a vision of a young man, lying bloodied in battle, and it comes as no surprise to anyone (except Brigit) that her vision is of Emmet, a newspaperman in Dublin who works for the most radical of Young Ireland’s leaders. She, in the desolate countryside of western Ireland, and he, on the other side of the country in the political hotbed of Dublin, are two sides of the same journey fighting for the freedom of their country, first separately and then together.

It’s not all blood and guts, but there is plenty of subterfuge and adventure, good guys and bad guys, truth and lies. Young Ireland has a story to tell about their country that year, and I’ve snuck in at this late date to do it for them.

You might not have heard this one before, a throwback to the 50s and 60s, Sonny Cleveland …

Happy as a lark, or is that a pig in mud?

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I’m what you might call a happy-go-lucky sort.

Hold it. That sounds like I’m frolicking in the fields where the deer and the antelope play. Let’s tone that down a bit. How about just plain old happy. And I am happy. But I didn’t used to be; I suspect being unhappy with one’s lot in life is not atypical – I see it all the time, and it’s a shame.

So tell me, Miss Happy Pants, how did you go from unhappy to happy?

Two pivotal events – one of them a movie scene and the other a picture in my mind. The first of those I will describe in some detail on the off chance one of you is a Pauline Kael wannabe and knows what movie I’m talking about. Because I have no clue. Here goes: the scene. Two boys are standing under a leafy tree in front of their high school. One boy is our hero, and he plays the nice, boy-next-door type. Like a John Cusack, think 1990s. The other boy, the hero’s sidekick and best friend, is a nerdy, somewhat overweight, non-chick magnet. Think a young Jonah Hill. These two boys are talking when out the front door comes the school Queen Bee with her entourage. As she walks past the sidekick, she knocks his arm and his books go flying. She walks on, giggling with her girlfriends. The hero says something I can’t remember but I’m pretty sure was something demeaning about the Queen Bee, prompting the sidekick to say, and I paraphrase, “You watch. Before she gets to the bus, she’s going to turn around and walk back here and apologize, then she’s going to invite me to the prom.” To which the hero says, and I paraphrase, “Good luck with that! Not in a million years.” To which the sidekick says, “It’s my life, my movie; why would I make it sad and depressing?” Of course, the girl never looks back and there is no prom invitation, and most people would say he’s living in a fantasy world.

I, on the other hand, said, “Exactly! This is my life. I’m the writer, star, director and producer of this movie, so let’s make it a happy one.

Again, the whole point of me capturing that magical moment in film history is I am always searching for the name of the movie, if for no other reason than it’s good to cite your sources. But also, the idea of my life as my movie caught me at a moment when I was listening, and it got me thinking, mostly that a course correction of such magnitude was easier said than done. This was going to take a plan. (Me and my plans.)

Simple life, simple plan: Picture this: A big plate, piled high with your life. A scoop for family, a scoop for job, for money, for friends – everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. Rule #1 (me and my rules): Identify one of the scoops on your plate that’s making you unhappy. Either fix it or get rid of it. Rinse and repeat. Rule #2. Don’t add any new bad things to your plate. Follow those two rules and eventually, every scoop on your plate will be a happy one. It took a lot of years to get my plate where it’s filled only with happy bits, but it was worth it – life is good.

And no, there will be no actual movie of my life to view on demand. I’d be so afraid the musical director might choose Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” as the soundtrack. Voluntarily adding that song to my life, well … see Rule #2 above.

Instead, this morning, in harmony, the Everly Brothers …

Well read

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Ask any historical fiction author, and 99.5% will tell you that doing the research is the best part of writing a book. The other point-5 percent? They likely didn’t understand the question.

The vast majority of that research involves reading. I bet if you surveyed all writers, 99.5% of them, when asked to list their favorite hobbies on their resume, would put reading first. And the other point-5? Well, you know.

You can count me in that number. The 99.5 one. Reading is my passion, and I’ve always had it bad. Back in ye olde college days, I was once asked, “If money was no object and you could do anything you wanted as a job, what would you do? Too easy. Without giving it a second thought, I said, “Lying on a beach reading.” Think big, right?

I can see now that I had nothing in there about writing a book, just reading them. And read them I did. I’ve got bookshelves filled with nothing but Irish books, each of them with a piece of notepaper sticking out the top doing double duty as bookmark and cryptic research notes like “p.46 Clarendon institutes curfew; p.122 typhus outbreak; p.87-94 potato rot; p.12 total deaths in 1848.” Cheery stuff, but it’s my own fault for setting my book in Ireland during the Great Famine.

Besides books, there are newspapers. Lucky for me, the subject of my novel, the revolutionary group Young Ireland, published their own weekly national newspapers – 1848’s version of the alternative media – and those papers handed me a treasure trove of goodies. Thank heavens for newspapers. I’m not sure I would have had a book if not for the newspapers.

Nowadays, we peg a newspaper’s editorial stance and journalistic bent as leftwing or rightwing, liberal or conservative. The Young Ireland newspapers were a different beast; they can’t be slotted into left or right. The Young Irelanders were rebels, anti-British rule, pro Ireland’s independence, so if anything, they were libertarians. A breath of fresh air compared with the contemporary establishment papers, those read by the gentry, the Anglos and Anglo Irish Protestants. Those papers skewed heavily conservative; not just the editorials but the articles, the facts manipulated to serve the establishment. We love to complain today about the untrustworthiness of the biased mainstream media. But that’s so old news, a yawn. Biased media has been the norm since 1848 at least, and my guess is it dates to the first newspaper to come off a press.

I just might have to research that one day.

Look what I dug up for today – the Zombies in a video straight out of the 60s …

Monday morning quarterback

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Actually, there will be none of that. No quarterbacking. Not here. Patrick Mahomes is not likely to come around here and tell me how to do my job, and I return the favor as I am even less qualified to tell him how to do his. So we’re even. No quarterbacking here.

Plus, I wouldn’t have anything to say that 12 million others haven’t said already. Football insight is not my bailiwick. But I do enjoy the game.

Football is excellent entertainment when a) your team is playing and b) they’re playing brilliantly. Otherwise, it’s agony. But you watch anyways because there’s always a chance, or if not always, just often enough.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement when your guy catches the ball at his 10-yard line and dekes his way past everyone until he’s knocked out of bounds on the opposing 35-yard line. I’m hooting and hollering and high fiving just like everybody else. Uh oh. A flag on the play. Leaving us contrite and back in our seats as the ball goes back to the 10-yard line, still first down. Ah, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. By some miracle, though, four plays later and we’re first and goal and I’m back on my feet, delirious. They score a touchdown, and kick the extra point, and the next thing you know, my team is off to the Super Bowl. Or again, in any given year, maybe not.

So what about all those “not this year” years when two teams you don’t know and don’t care about make it to the Super Bowl? What do you do then? I don’t know about you, but I tune in to watch the commercials. Not quite the drama, but, on balance, funnier.

The other thing I do to keep up my interest is place a bet. This year, I went big – $1 on the Eagles to win. That dollar had me on the edge of my seat all night. Maybe not so much for the game, but for the ads.

For those whose team wasn’t on the field last night, take heart, there’s always next year. Or if you’re a Saints (we was robbed!) fan, maybe the year after that.

This morning, a little bit of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons …

A bit of the blarney

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Last week, we discovered that what I wanted to do when I grew up was write a novel. The Great American Novel, no less. And by Great, I mean Big. Big like “Atlas Shrugged” or “Gone With the Wind” or “Anna Karenina.” (This bigness, it turns out, was my first big mistake. But we’ll save that for another day.)

So, I now had “Great” and “Novel” covered. All that was left to figure out was “American.”

Seemingly apropos of nothing … The year before my “I’ll write it!” eureka moment occurred (see last week’s post for eureka #1), I visited Ireland for the first time, and, boy, did I ever fall hard for its charms, hook, line and sinker. Ireland made me feel like I had been wandering all my life and had now come home.

Which is very poetic and all, until some years later someone told me that’s what happens to everybody when they visit Ireland. All of a sudden, I felt like tchotchke in a souvenir shop. With the air blown out of it.

Nonetheless, we soldier on.

My love of all things Ireland included their emigres. And there was my answer. I would write about an Irish immigrant who comes to America. The Great American Novel. Perfect. Except, 15 years and two children later, I still hadn’t written word one. Any notion of writing a book had completely disappeared. Children have a way of getting in the way. By then I was living in Massachusetts, and I found time to think about the book again. The Irish were a big part of Massachusetts history — Lowell especially, and of course Boston. The only thing was, everything I read about the Irish in Boston or the Irish in Lowell depressed the heck out of me, the antithesis of freedom and liberty. The politics were the worst. This was not the Irish in America story I wanted to tell. Massachusetts was a dead end, and once again, the book went on hold.

One of the things I loved most in Ireland was traipsing through the ruins of castles and churches and old abbeys, and that led me to start reading up on Irish history. Several books into my new hobby, I came to one in which the author devoted a couple of paragraphs to a rebel group called Young Ireland, who in 1848 led a rebellion hell bent on Ireland ridding itself of and attaining its independence from England.

My first reaction was who were these guys and why had I never heard of them before? And that was my second eureka moment: By golly, if no one else is telling the story of Young Ireland, then I’ll do it. It has all the elements I needed: freedom, liberty, heroes. Perfect.

And that, my friends, is how the journey of the Great Big Good Irish Novel began. It’s been quite the trip so far.

This morning’s sing-a-long comes from John Hiatt with the very talented Ry Cooder on slide guitar …

Delusions of grandeur …

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… or how I came to write my first novel.

The idea to write a novel came to me right out of the blue. This was back in 1986 if you can believe it. Thirty-eight years ago. (I just have to take a minute to get my head around how long ago that was. On the bright side, though, wouldn’t “All good things come to those who wait” apply in this situation? You’re all nodding, right?)

I say 1986 because that’s the year Barbara Brandon’s “The Passion of Ayn Rand” was published, and so it must have been that year she was the keynote speaker at the National Libertarian Party convention and autographing her book.

Late each afternoon of the convention, the speakers that day held salons, and as a convention attendee, I could choose whom I wanted to salon with. I chose Barbara Brandon. Not surprisingly, 38 years later, I don’t remember much of the discussion, except for this one question. Someone in the back asked Ms. Brandon why she thought no one since Ayn Rand had written a novel, like “Atlas Shrugged,” about freedom.

I don’t remember her answer, but to my ears it sounded weak. I shot up my hand.

It’s safe to say the tenor in the room was devotion to Ayn Rand. A lot of libertarians at the time came to that philosophy after reading Rand and had great respect for her writing. As for the person, Rand had a high regard for herself and did not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. She was not to be challenged.

So there went up my hand, certain I had a better answer: that likely everyone (or at least every libertarian) was too afraid to challenge Ayn in her domain.

Ms. Brandon did not agree with me, probably thinking I was a bit cheeky if not sacrilegious, and I sat down. And that’s when it came to me. My eureka moment: “If no one else is going to do it, then I’ll do it,” I said, although not out loud. “I’ll write the Great American Novel about freedom.” Like I was daring myself. I wonder, if I’d known then that it would take me 38 years to get it done, would I have been so eager to take the dare?

Funny. In the intervening 38 years, there hasn’t been a novel written with the major themes of freedom and liberty, so if nothing else, it looks like I have that niche pretty well sewn up.

A Monday morning treat – the angelic voice of Laura Smith …