I like boys. I like stories about boys. Or maybe I should say stories about the relationships between boys (and men). Stories about brothers, either by blood or by choice. Frodo and Sam, Joseph and Hyrum, Morgan and Duncan, Hal and Alan, Jonathan and David, Mike and Fisk, Starsky and Hutch, Holmes and Watson. I just finished reading Clockwork Angel and found two more: Will and Jem. The best stories are about guys who got each other's back.
There is a story my mother told me more than twenty years ago. I was not living at home at the time, so I wasn't around to witness this firsthand, but I promise I'm not making this up. I love this story. The only problem is, I asked my mom about it a few years ago, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't remember it at all, and neither did any of my siblings that I asked about it. But I promise I'm not making it up. I am just related to people with sieves for brains.
One of my brothers did a thing called the 50/20. He had to go fifty miles in twenty hours. One part of me thinks twenty hours sounds like an awfully long time to go only fifty miles. The entire rest of me can't figure out why anyone would walk/run fifty miles in the first place. Whichever brother it was (I have four, but the youngest wasn't even a teenager yet, so I'm taking him out of the running for the moment) was getting close to the end of the fifty miles and was really struggling. He wanted to finish, but he had blisters on his feet, he was beyond exhausted, and was staggering along. One of my other brothers came and went the last few miles with him, literally supporting him to the finish line. I don't even know which two brothers I'm talking about (though I have my suspicions) and I have tears in my eyes. That is one of my favorite stories. It's what Sam did for Frodo, and I cry every time I read that passage. There is something about guys doing things like that for each other that is more touching than any romance.
Seeing as how that is my favorite kind of story, you would think that would be the kind of stories I write. You'd be wrong. I think it's like saying your favorite painting is the Mona Lisa so there's no way you would insult her by making a cheap imitation. However, my understanding is that when you really truly admire something, you can't just let it go (I live next door to an artist who has countless--amazing--renditions of Starry Night all over her home). So, I have a story about two brothers, Tristan and Grey, that I guess I'm going to have to write. I'm working on something else right now (romance, because that isn't a bad thing) but I can't let these boys go. I'm terrified I'll mess it up and won't have another Frodo and Sam at all, but I'm going to do my darnedest to get it right. In the mean time, if you know of any good guys stories, send them my way.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Thursday, April 21, 2011
R is for Robert Frost
(The last two days have been unkind to me as far as posting on my blog is concerned. I wanted to try to play catch-up, but seeing how I have less than an hour left of today, I decided to go forward from where I am and call it good. I'll have to save P and Q for another time.)
I was in junior high when I decided I wanted to be the next Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken was, I am certain, the first of his poems that I was exposed to and fell in love with, but Stopping By Woods On A Snowing Evening was right on its heels. He paints pictures with words, and the pictures he paints include forests and country lanes and old farm houses. Growing up in Oregon, these were images I was familiar with and held very close to my heart. I knew exactly what the places he wrote about looked like, and they were the places I wanted to be. He made me cry with a delicious ache for all of these places he described. More than anything I wanted to be able to paint my own pictures with my own words. I wanted people to see Oregon the way he showed people New England. I wanted to fill people with a longing for my home. I wanted to make people cry.
That's an odd life goal for a thirteen-year-old, but I knew, as Anne Shirley would say, that Robert Frost and I were 'kindred spirits.' When I read his poem Once By The Pacific, I knew it was true. Not only had he seen my ocean (I didn't realize that he born in San Francisco) but he 'got' it:
"The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before."
That is my Oregon coast. Cliffs and rocks and waves and wildness. Exactly how I like it.
Anyway, I set out to become a poet. I saw the world in poems. The words to the poems didn't always come to me right away, and I didn't pursue every poem and commit it to paper, but the feeling of a poem was practically a daily occurrence. Poetry was how the world spoke to me, and when the poetry was silent, I knew something was wrong. (I dated a guy for four months and realized after we broke up that I had not felt a single poem the whole time we were together. That scared the liver out of me, and I knew to pay more attention the next time around. If the next guy I dated quashed the poetry inside of me, then I wasn't going to waste four months on him. It turned out that the next guy I dated not only did not quash my poetry, but he wrote poems to me. We've been happily married for seventeen years.)
I am not going to be the next Robert Frost. Though I took some poetry classes in high school (near disaster) and college (wonderful), I don't even write a poem a year anymore. I took a creative writing class in college that required us to write a short story, and that was the beginning of the end of my poetry-writing days. My 'short' story was easily three to four times longer than any other story in the class (to this day I cannot write a short story) and the ONLY fantasy. It was crap, but once that bug bit, there was no going back. Aside from that, it's not like I actually have Robert Frost's talent.
Recently I read a quote by him that I must have read during the early days of my poetry mania but had since forgotten. The words are so familiar to me, and say so perfectly what I felt:
"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the word."
That's exactly what I mean when I say I felt poems.
Now I see stories. Everything is a story. I very seldom know what the story is, and I actually have a very hard time coming up with stories (I've never been able to make up bed-time stories for my kids), but every time I turn around I find another thing that wants to be a story. Maybe if Robert Frost was here I could explain it to him and he could paint a picture of my feelings with his words. I bet he could.
I was in junior high when I decided I wanted to be the next Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken was, I am certain, the first of his poems that I was exposed to and fell in love with, but Stopping By Woods On A Snowing Evening was right on its heels. He paints pictures with words, and the pictures he paints include forests and country lanes and old farm houses. Growing up in Oregon, these were images I was familiar with and held very close to my heart. I knew exactly what the places he wrote about looked like, and they were the places I wanted to be. He made me cry with a delicious ache for all of these places he described. More than anything I wanted to be able to paint my own pictures with my own words. I wanted people to see Oregon the way he showed people New England. I wanted to fill people with a longing for my home. I wanted to make people cry.
That's an odd life goal for a thirteen-year-old, but I knew, as Anne Shirley would say, that Robert Frost and I were 'kindred spirits.' When I read his poem Once By The Pacific, I knew it was true. Not only had he seen my ocean (I didn't realize that he born in San Francisco) but he 'got' it:
"The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before."
That is my Oregon coast. Cliffs and rocks and waves and wildness. Exactly how I like it.
Anyway, I set out to become a poet. I saw the world in poems. The words to the poems didn't always come to me right away, and I didn't pursue every poem and commit it to paper, but the feeling of a poem was practically a daily occurrence. Poetry was how the world spoke to me, and when the poetry was silent, I knew something was wrong. (I dated a guy for four months and realized after we broke up that I had not felt a single poem the whole time we were together. That scared the liver out of me, and I knew to pay more attention the next time around. If the next guy I dated quashed the poetry inside of me, then I wasn't going to waste four months on him. It turned out that the next guy I dated not only did not quash my poetry, but he wrote poems to me. We've been happily married for seventeen years.)
I am not going to be the next Robert Frost. Though I took some poetry classes in high school (near disaster) and college (wonderful), I don't even write a poem a year anymore. I took a creative writing class in college that required us to write a short story, and that was the beginning of the end of my poetry-writing days. My 'short' story was easily three to four times longer than any other story in the class (to this day I cannot write a short story) and the ONLY fantasy. It was crap, but once that bug bit, there was no going back. Aside from that, it's not like I actually have Robert Frost's talent.
Recently I read a quote by him that I must have read during the early days of my poetry mania but had since forgotten. The words are so familiar to me, and say so perfectly what I felt:
"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the word."
That's exactly what I mean when I say I felt poems.
Now I see stories. Everything is a story. I very seldom know what the story is, and I actually have a very hard time coming up with stories (I've never been able to make up bed-time stories for my kids), but every time I turn around I find another thing that wants to be a story. Maybe if Robert Frost was here I could explain it to him and he could paint a picture of my feelings with his words. I bet he could.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
More thoughts on e-books
I am in love with Hilari Bell's Knight and Rogue series. I have a serious, I'm-way-too-old-for-this crush on Mike and Fisk, and it all started MANY years ago when I read Hal and Alan, by Nancy Springer (Hal and Alan isn't the name of books, but the names of the guys in the books). I love stories about guy friends. Buddy stories. I think that's the term I saw when I was looking up Hilari Bell and came across a review for Knight and Rogue. I wasn't completely certain what that meant, but I was hopeful, so I found them at the library and blissfully devoured them. All of my hopes were fulfilled (well, most of them, but more on that in a second). I told my friend Anne that she had to read them, and when I said they were another Hal and Alan, she didn't wait several months (like she did with David Eddings) or years (like she did with Tolkien) but started reading them as soon as I was done. Both of us were hooked.
This is where the problem comes in. I wanted Mike and Fisk in my home all the time, even when I wasn't reading them. I didn't want to have a midnight craving and have to wait until morning when the library opened, only to find them checked out by somebody else. They had to be mine. Anne felt the same way (this is why we are best friends). The obvious solution was to buy them and bring them home (two copies, so Anne and I could remain best friends). That simple task proved remarkably difficult to do as they were not carried in any of the local bookstores (at least not the entire series and multiple copies). It's true they were on Amazon, but not all of the books had made it to paperback, and I wanted a matching set (if at all possible) and I simply couldn't afford to buy six new hardbacks. So I turned to my husband, who is The Finder of All Things on the internet (though not necessarily around the house). He got two complete sets of Mike and Fisk for Anne and me for Christmas because he is awesome and wonderful and We Love Him.
What does this have to do with e-books? I found Mike and Fisk in electronic format for considerably less than the hardback price, and even less than paperback. The problem is, I don't have an e-reader device, and until that point hadn't really wanted one. I like paper. I like holding it, feeling it, smelling it . . . I like it, and I never thought I would convert until Mike and Fisk were so tantalizingly close to being in my grasp. I briefly entertained asking for one for Christmas, but quickly realized that even six new, hardback books would never add up to the price of one Kindle/Nook/i-pad, so I couldn't really argue economy. In the end I got Mike and Fisk, which is what I really wanted, but it got me thinking about e-books in a new way.
Then came January and February and all the storms back east and mid-west (I was born in Oregon and now live in Utah, so I find the term 'mid-west' interesting since it's all east to me). It was not a time to be going to libraries or bookstores. I know that people were dealing with real, actual issues of not freezing to death, but once they weren't dead, you know what I was thinking? How are they getting new things to read? You couldn't go out in that. Then you start dealing with the freezing-to-death stuff all over again. But if you had an e-reader (and electricity), then you could still go online and get books! (I swear this is what was in my head during all of that Chicago-is-a-parking-lot disaster.) There I was, thinking about e-books again.
That's all as a reader. As a writer, I have even more thoughts that I can't begin to sort out. I'll just mention one, and maybe it still qualifies as a reader issue. One of my favorite series of all time is The Phoenix Legacy by M. K. Wren. I love them, easily as much as I love Mike and Fisk (though for different reasons--sort of). I have never bought or seen a new copy of any of the books, though through the years I have bought at least five complete sets of the series from used bookstores. I just looked on Amazon, and there is no electronic version listed there. I hope I am not stepping out of bounds by saying that I think Ms. Wren would rather have people reading her books than not. If they were published electronically, then they wouldn't 'go out of print,' and they wouldn't be so crazy hard to get your hands on. (The various copies of the series that I have acquired over the years were given to a carefully-selected group of people who would appreciate them for the precious commodity that they are. I know there are other intelligent people out there who would realize how great the series is, but there's a limit on the actual, physical copies of the books, and I haven't seen one in years. So many people are missing out on a truly moving story.)
So, there you have it. As a reader, e-books are more accessible in many ways (once you have the whole e-reader thing taken care of--and i-pods don't count because my eyes are too darn old to read entire books in that small a format). As a writer, I want my books to continue to be available, even if they don't hit the New York Times best-seller list and stay in print forever.
(Okay, one more reader pet peeve. There was a series of books I was looking at for a long time. The library didn't have them, I didn't know anyone who had read them, and I'm not made of money, so it took a while for me to finally decide to actually buy the first book. When I went to the store--no first book. The second book was out, and they were carrying that one, but not the first one. I understand about shelf space and all that, but it was very frustrating. I think I wound up ordering it off of Amazon. If I had had an e-reader, it wouldn't have been an issue.)
Very most lastly, after I finished my last post, talking about community, I realized I had completely neglected another community: the internet one. Blogs and Facebook and Twitter and all of this other stuff that I'm really only still dabbling on the edges of (I don't get Twitter at all). A lot of fans feel very connected to each other and their favorite authors because of online communities and that is something I need to pursue. I suppose in many ways they are not just a gathering of strangers that come together one time, but a group of friends that have not necessarily met.
And that's what the other hand thinks.
This is where the problem comes in. I wanted Mike and Fisk in my home all the time, even when I wasn't reading them. I didn't want to have a midnight craving and have to wait until morning when the library opened, only to find them checked out by somebody else. They had to be mine. Anne felt the same way (this is why we are best friends). The obvious solution was to buy them and bring them home (two copies, so Anne and I could remain best friends). That simple task proved remarkably difficult to do as they were not carried in any of the local bookstores (at least not the entire series and multiple copies). It's true they were on Amazon, but not all of the books had made it to paperback, and I wanted a matching set (if at all possible) and I simply couldn't afford to buy six new hardbacks. So I turned to my husband, who is The Finder of All Things on the internet (though not necessarily around the house). He got two complete sets of Mike and Fisk for Anne and me for Christmas because he is awesome and wonderful and We Love Him.
What does this have to do with e-books? I found Mike and Fisk in electronic format for considerably less than the hardback price, and even less than paperback. The problem is, I don't have an e-reader device, and until that point hadn't really wanted one. I like paper. I like holding it, feeling it, smelling it . . . I like it, and I never thought I would convert until Mike and Fisk were so tantalizingly close to being in my grasp. I briefly entertained asking for one for Christmas, but quickly realized that even six new, hardback books would never add up to the price of one Kindle/Nook/i-pad, so I couldn't really argue economy. In the end I got Mike and Fisk, which is what I really wanted, but it got me thinking about e-books in a new way.
Then came January and February and all the storms back east and mid-west (I was born in Oregon and now live in Utah, so I find the term 'mid-west' interesting since it's all east to me). It was not a time to be going to libraries or bookstores. I know that people were dealing with real, actual issues of not freezing to death, but once they weren't dead, you know what I was thinking? How are they getting new things to read? You couldn't go out in that. Then you start dealing with the freezing-to-death stuff all over again. But if you had an e-reader (and electricity), then you could still go online and get books! (I swear this is what was in my head during all of that Chicago-is-a-parking-lot disaster.) There I was, thinking about e-books again.
That's all as a reader. As a writer, I have even more thoughts that I can't begin to sort out. I'll just mention one, and maybe it still qualifies as a reader issue. One of my favorite series of all time is The Phoenix Legacy by M. K. Wren. I love them, easily as much as I love Mike and Fisk (though for different reasons--sort of). I have never bought or seen a new copy of any of the books, though through the years I have bought at least five complete sets of the series from used bookstores. I just looked on Amazon, and there is no electronic version listed there. I hope I am not stepping out of bounds by saying that I think Ms. Wren would rather have people reading her books than not. If they were published electronically, then they wouldn't 'go out of print,' and they wouldn't be so crazy hard to get your hands on. (The various copies of the series that I have acquired over the years were given to a carefully-selected group of people who would appreciate them for the precious commodity that they are. I know there are other intelligent people out there who would realize how great the series is, but there's a limit on the actual, physical copies of the books, and I haven't seen one in years. So many people are missing out on a truly moving story.)
So, there you have it. As a reader, e-books are more accessible in many ways (once you have the whole e-reader thing taken care of--and i-pods don't count because my eyes are too darn old to read entire books in that small a format). As a writer, I want my books to continue to be available, even if they don't hit the New York Times best-seller list and stay in print forever.
(Okay, one more reader pet peeve. There was a series of books I was looking at for a long time. The library didn't have them, I didn't know anyone who had read them, and I'm not made of money, so it took a while for me to finally decide to actually buy the first book. When I went to the store--no first book. The second book was out, and they were carrying that one, but not the first one. I understand about shelf space and all that, but it was very frustrating. I think I wound up ordering it off of Amazon. If I had had an e-reader, it wouldn't have been an issue.)
Very most lastly, after I finished my last post, talking about community, I realized I had completely neglected another community: the internet one. Blogs and Facebook and Twitter and all of this other stuff that I'm really only still dabbling on the edges of (I don't get Twitter at all). A lot of fans feel very connected to each other and their favorite authors because of online communities and that is something I need to pursue. I suppose in many ways they are not just a gathering of strangers that come together one time, but a group of friends that have not necessarily met.
And that's what the other hand thinks.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
pianos, cellos, and writing
Last Saturday we took our oldest son and my best friend to a Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson concert. (Those of you reading this thinking "I'm your best friend and you didn't take me to any concert on Saturday. What's going on here?" never fear. I am lucky enough to have several best friends, just like I have three favorite kids, and those best friends who didn't go to the concert are still my best friends. Though you may be annoyed that I didn't take you to a concert. I'll make it up to you with a Dr Pepper. Or Red Mango.)
If you don't know who Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson are, check them out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXtVBJDPs6k
It was an amazing evening. Truly a highlight to be remembered forever and not just because of the music. My son doesn't emote a lot, which can be nice in comparison to his brother and sister who hide not their feelings under a bushel. Ever. His 'blow-ups' are so mild compared to his siblings that you have to know him to know that he just blew up. On the other hand, as he said it once himself, "I am excited. It's just that my excited looks like everything else." Saturday night he hugged his dad several times and said how much he liked the concert. That is an unqualified success in my book.
Aside from the music, which was beautiful, and the actual playing of the music, which was unreal, was the joy of creation that filtered through the air and gave me goose bumps. Because of where we were sitting and how the stage was set up, I couldn't see Jon's face very well (unless he was actually looking at the audience) but Steve's face was right there, and there were times while he was playing that it shone with an almost holy bliss. And it made me think about writing, because that is the part of me that is creative. That is the place where I think I share that joy of creation that was so obvious Saturday night. Sometimes, when the words are coming and the plot is falling in place and I realize that all along I have been setting things up for the perfect solution without even realizing it, that is when I feel a little floaty inside, like I have done something magnificent, or maybe something magnificent used me for a lightning rod and this spark of brilliance came to earth in this place and this time because I was there to channel it.
Both of these men played their instruments supreme excellence, but they also didn't just play by the rules. Jon played the piano upside down and with his toes. Steve played the cello with every part of his hand except the back, and once even moved the cello instead of the bow. Undeniably, they were having fun. They knew what they did so well that they could play with it, and that is where a little, tiny ache crept into the concert for me. I have so much to learn about writing. I haven't honed my skills to the point where I can be given a word or a topic and write a story or poem off the top of my head. I still have to stress and think and work and think before I've got anything. I don't even tell my kids bedtime stories because I can't make things up that fast. So I have a lot of practicing to do before I become a writer on the level that they are musicians, and even then I don't know that I'll ever be 'like that.'
Last, but certainly not least for me, was the friendship between them. Many of the goofy mash-ups they played they had come up with at 2:00 in the morning. And that brings me to my friend who was there with us. Writing is often a solitary endeavor, but I never would have made it this far on my own. An extraordinarily close second to that high of being used as a conduit is brainstorming with someone who gets how you think, and that's Anne. She doesn't think exactly like me, but she thinks enough like me that she can take an idea and carry it forward in a direction I would want to go if I was only smart enough to get there myself. Those are some crazy awesome fun times, often at 2:00 in the morning.
So those are my thoughts on writing gleaned from a piano and cello concert. I hope someday to have more skill and fluidity in my writing, but mostly I want to work for more of those moments of bliss, when writing fills up the now to overflowing and I know it's exactly where I'm supposed to be.
If you don't know who Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson are, check them out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXtVBJDPs6k
It was an amazing evening. Truly a highlight to be remembered forever and not just because of the music. My son doesn't emote a lot, which can be nice in comparison to his brother and sister who hide not their feelings under a bushel. Ever. His 'blow-ups' are so mild compared to his siblings that you have to know him to know that he just blew up. On the other hand, as he said it once himself, "I am excited. It's just that my excited looks like everything else." Saturday night he hugged his dad several times and said how much he liked the concert. That is an unqualified success in my book.
Aside from the music, which was beautiful, and the actual playing of the music, which was unreal, was the joy of creation that filtered through the air and gave me goose bumps. Because of where we were sitting and how the stage was set up, I couldn't see Jon's face very well (unless he was actually looking at the audience) but Steve's face was right there, and there were times while he was playing that it shone with an almost holy bliss. And it made me think about writing, because that is the part of me that is creative. That is the place where I think I share that joy of creation that was so obvious Saturday night. Sometimes, when the words are coming and the plot is falling in place and I realize that all along I have been setting things up for the perfect solution without even realizing it, that is when I feel a little floaty inside, like I have done something magnificent, or maybe something magnificent used me for a lightning rod and this spark of brilliance came to earth in this place and this time because I was there to channel it.
Both of these men played their instruments supreme excellence, but they also didn't just play by the rules. Jon played the piano upside down and with his toes. Steve played the cello with every part of his hand except the back, and once even moved the cello instead of the bow. Undeniably, they were having fun. They knew what they did so well that they could play with it, and that is where a little, tiny ache crept into the concert for me. I have so much to learn about writing. I haven't honed my skills to the point where I can be given a word or a topic and write a story or poem off the top of my head. I still have to stress and think and work and think before I've got anything. I don't even tell my kids bedtime stories because I can't make things up that fast. So I have a lot of practicing to do before I become a writer on the level that they are musicians, and even then I don't know that I'll ever be 'like that.'
Last, but certainly not least for me, was the friendship between them. Many of the goofy mash-ups they played they had come up with at 2:00 in the morning. And that brings me to my friend who was there with us. Writing is often a solitary endeavor, but I never would have made it this far on my own. An extraordinarily close second to that high of being used as a conduit is brainstorming with someone who gets how you think, and that's Anne. She doesn't think exactly like me, but she thinks enough like me that she can take an idea and carry it forward in a direction I would want to go if I was only smart enough to get there myself. Those are some crazy awesome fun times, often at 2:00 in the morning.
So those are my thoughts on writing gleaned from a piano and cello concert. I hope someday to have more skill and fluidity in my writing, but mostly I want to work for more of those moments of bliss, when writing fills up the now to overflowing and I know it's exactly where I'm supposed to be.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Anne's birthday
Today is Anne's birthday. We met at Rick's College, the first week of Herr Schwartz's German class in September 1985. Any German I know, I learned in those two days of class before we started studying together. 'Studying' took the form of watching Starsky and Hutch, eating Wizard sandwiches (still the best subs ever, and so mystically named) and watching as many viewings of Ladyhawke as we possibly could (it was possible to watch it over a dozen times in those two semesters). Not only did we have the movie memorized word perfect, but we also had the audience reaction down. We knew when every sigh, every gasp, every groan would happen (never look up from putting your boots back on until after the groan so you don't have to see the blood dribble out of the Bishop's mouth).
And then there were the conversations about books. I think she won't disagree too strenuously when I say I had a longer list of books I thought she needed to read than she had for me. Of course, top of the list was getting her to read Lord of the Rings, which she didn't do until they made a movie of it. Somehow we stayed friends through all those years of her being uncultured and me being a nag.
There was Hal and Alan (thank you, Nancy Springer!), which to this day is code between us. If either of us finds a Hal and Alan book, movie or TV show, the other knows it will be good and can't wait to get her hands on it. Aragorn and Legolas had a Hal and Alan relationship (in the movies). Sam and Dean Winchester, Will and Jack, Frodo and Sam. You get the picture. Oh, and the biggest and most enduring, Duncan and Morgan, from Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books (and eventually Kelson and Dhugal, though how they could be blood brothers when Dhugal was never even mentioned in the entire first trilogy was always a bit of a concern). So many hours we spent talking about Duncan and Morgan. Which eventually gave way to David Eddings' Belgariad until Kathering Kurtz wrote some more. And then David Eddings. It went on like that for several years.
And we talked stories. At that point I wasn't yet a writer. Well, I wrote poetry, silly me, but I only talked stories. I had had other friends that I talked stories with when I was younger (I still remember some of those scenes so vividly it amazes me I wasn't watching them in a movie), but Anne was the first friend I ever had where the stories were fantasy (though the others were certainly not reality). To this day, we still have a group of characters stuck in a dungeon. We talk about them from time to time, but I'm afraid they are destined to live in limbo in a dungeon for all eternity. We've decided that though it may be mean and cruel to kill off your characters, truly, the worst thing you can do as a writer is to just abandon them in a dungeon and never tell the rest of their story.
Though I didn't become a writer until years after I met Anne, she is largely responsible for me being a writer today. (And when I say 'writer', I mean 'person who writes' (stories, specifically)). At some point, if/when I become an actual published writer (or 'author'), I have no doubt she will still be somebody I will be pointing a finger at for getting me there. Through the years of us writing our various stories (she's a little bit scifi, I'm a little bit fantasy) her brain has kept me going when my brain had thrown in the towel. Brainstorming with her is creative bliss. Even when I'm brainstorming her work, my work has benefited later. And she has talked me through more writer's blocks than I can begin to count. I can't imagine writing a book without using her brain along the way.
The only time we ever even went to the same school was that first year at Ricks. We've never been roommates. We often haven't even lived in the same state. Now she lives three houses down from me. It's almost as good as being roommates, but she doesn't have to live with my complete lack of motivation to dust. My kids call her Aunt Anne, and they adore her. My husband considers her part of the family (sometimes, I'm afraid, whether she wants to be or not). She's been my best friend and sister for going on twenty five years. I'm pretty darn lucky.
Happy birthday, Tarly
Love ya
Tawny
And then there were the conversations about books. I think she won't disagree too strenuously when I say I had a longer list of books I thought she needed to read than she had for me. Of course, top of the list was getting her to read Lord of the Rings, which she didn't do until they made a movie of it. Somehow we stayed friends through all those years of her being uncultured and me being a nag.
There was Hal and Alan (thank you, Nancy Springer!), which to this day is code between us. If either of us finds a Hal and Alan book, movie or TV show, the other knows it will be good and can't wait to get her hands on it. Aragorn and Legolas had a Hal and Alan relationship (in the movies). Sam and Dean Winchester, Will and Jack, Frodo and Sam. You get the picture. Oh, and the biggest and most enduring, Duncan and Morgan, from Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books (and eventually Kelson and Dhugal, though how they could be blood brothers when Dhugal was never even mentioned in the entire first trilogy was always a bit of a concern). So many hours we spent talking about Duncan and Morgan. Which eventually gave way to David Eddings' Belgariad until Kathering Kurtz wrote some more. And then David Eddings. It went on like that for several years.
And we talked stories. At that point I wasn't yet a writer. Well, I wrote poetry, silly me, but I only talked stories. I had had other friends that I talked stories with when I was younger (I still remember some of those scenes so vividly it amazes me I wasn't watching them in a movie), but Anne was the first friend I ever had where the stories were fantasy (though the others were certainly not reality). To this day, we still have a group of characters stuck in a dungeon. We talk about them from time to time, but I'm afraid they are destined to live in limbo in a dungeon for all eternity. We've decided that though it may be mean and cruel to kill off your characters, truly, the worst thing you can do as a writer is to just abandon them in a dungeon and never tell the rest of their story.
Though I didn't become a writer until years after I met Anne, she is largely responsible for me being a writer today. (And when I say 'writer', I mean 'person who writes' (stories, specifically)). At some point, if/when I become an actual published writer (or 'author'), I have no doubt she will still be somebody I will be pointing a finger at for getting me there. Through the years of us writing our various stories (she's a little bit scifi, I'm a little bit fantasy) her brain has kept me going when my brain had thrown in the towel. Brainstorming with her is creative bliss. Even when I'm brainstorming her work, my work has benefited later. And she has talked me through more writer's blocks than I can begin to count. I can't imagine writing a book without using her brain along the way.
The only time we ever even went to the same school was that first year at Ricks. We've never been roommates. We often haven't even lived in the same state. Now she lives three houses down from me. It's almost as good as being roommates, but she doesn't have to live with my complete lack of motivation to dust. My kids call her Aunt Anne, and they adore her. My husband considers her part of the family (sometimes, I'm afraid, whether she wants to be or not). She's been my best friend and sister for going on twenty five years. I'm pretty darn lucky.
Happy birthday, Tarly
Love ya
Tawny
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