Little Pitchers and Christmas Traditions

I was reading a magazine article that suggested Christmas is a good time for families to sit around the table and share stories as a way of bringing generations together.

I was immediately catapulted into Christmas Past when our family did that very thing.

With caveats.

One Christmas (or more likely, a composite of Christmases, the details of each having merged into one memory), after dinner had been eaten, and the food and dishes cleared away, the adults sat around the table and talked. I say the adults, because children then were seen and not heard. The children were me, my sister and baby brother, and our cousins.

We had traveled by train to Mom's parents' house in upstate New York.  After breakfast on Christmas Eve morning we walked to our aunt and uncle's house, across town. It was so cold the snow squeaked when we trod on it and our breath froze in a mist in front of our faces.

We went to my aunt's because Grandma's house was too small to host the entire family and although I don't know for sure, she probably had to work. Grandma was a waitress and proud that she had a job in the Depression. I can see her now in her white uniform with a hankie peeking  out of the breast pocket. The hankie would be edged in pink or purple or yellow lace that she crocheted in what spare time she had.

But we did all get together that afternoon and evening. Grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and cousins crowded around a table and shared a meal, after which the children were told to "go in the other room and play."

We pretended to obey, but our ears were cocked toward the kitchen where, after many cups of coffee and a few bottles of beer, the laughter grew louder and occasionally turned into guffaws as one tale after another was told: Do you remember when...?

This was how our family history was passed down -- unguarded stories and little pitchers with big ears.

Someone finally noticed it was getting late and the children needed to go to bed. We were once again bundled up to face the icy cold starting with leggings and adding jacket, galoshes, muffler, cap and mittens. We were so well padded we could have rolled down the hill to Grandma's, but we rode back  in someone's car (I have a fuzzy memory of riding with my sister in the rumble seat, but that was probably another occasion). The sky was clear with the glittering stars reflected in the ice crystals caught in the tree branches.

Once inside Grandma's kitchen, our outdoor clothing was removed in reverse order, by which time we were wide awake again. A bedtime snack of cocoa and cookies appeared. The goodies were not home made. Although our mother began her baking a month before Christmas, neither of my grandmothers had, to my knowledge, ever baked a cookie in her life. These were store-bought cookies from a tin, which were a treat to us because we didn't have store-bought at home.

Tucked in bed at last, we were given the conflicting orders to go right to sleep and to listen for Santa's sleigh.

I don't know if we'll sit around the table and tell family stories this holiday. I am pretty sure, however, that if we do the younger members will stay at the table and add their own.

Traditions aren't meant to be carved in stone.



 

Good advice

Writers get lots of advice. They get advice from other writers, from readers, from friends and family, from critique partners, beta readers, and sometimes from editors and agents (sent with rejection letters). We get advice from writers' magazines and blogs. We get advice from guest authors and agents at writing conferences and writers clubs. We get advice from countless books.

When I first started writing, I bought books by the score. At first they were craft books: how to write dialog,  plotting, and scene setting. Then I bought books that were focused on weaponry (in case I wrote a mystery) or the history of vehicles (what kind of carriage did an nineteenth century woman ride in?) or period fashion.

When I got nearer to my goal, I bought books that listed agents and publishers. These books also contained advice: how to write a query letter, how to write a synopsis,  how to format the manuscript.

Knowing the mechanics is good. If you can't spell and don't know when to start a new paragraph you are not going to attract anyone's attention except in a bad way. Knowing your facts is good. Readers pick up on mistakes and love to let you know about it.

I hope I have internalized all the advice I have read or heard over the years. After awhile it begins to blend together. That said, there are two pieces of advice I do try to follow.

One is to write every day. I do this, but not always on my work in progress.  I write two blogs every week. I write letters to family. I actually put them in an envelope and attach a stamp, because not everyone in my family owns or wants to own a computer. There are days when all I write is a grocery list. But I write something.

The other advice I heed is to be persistent. To keep writing even when I see no tangible results. To sit down and resume writing immediately after getting a rejection. To write when people ask when my next book will be out and I can't give them an answer because I haven't finished the current one yet and my others are either languishing on some editor's desk or have been filed away for future work and revision.

There are days when it is hard to follow either bit of wisdom. Days when my own best advice to myself is to give up and find a real job or a more fulfilling hobby.

Do other writers have days like this? And if so, how do you get over them?

Yeah, I know.

Sit down and write.







                                    

This year the phrase "Christmas will be here before you know it" has a special urgency. We just finished the leftover turkey for gosh sakes, and I need to be thinking about another holiday already?

I bought stamps today and thought it strange when the clerk asked me if I wanted Christmas stamps. I laughed, thinking he was jumping the season.

He wasn't.

I think the timing took everyone by surprise. The grandkids haven't a clue what they want. I needed to get their wish list yesterday, as the Amazon drone isn't ready to swoop down with my order  just yet.  So it will take the usual five days, not a half hour from order to delivery.

You'd think the rapidity in which the stores removed the turkeys and pumpkins from their decorations and put up tinsel and garland would have given me a clue. My argument is that they are always weeks early and one needn't pay any attention until closer to the actual date.

The problem is, we are closer to the actual date.

I don't know if I can do it. I'm used to having a week or so to ease into Christmas preparations. My mental clock isn't set for this.

I know I can't be the only one. Maybe we of the slow-reaction type can band together and declare Christmas will be observed January 1 this year. That way, since the kids will all have been up late the night before to welcome the New Year, they won't be waking us up at the crack of dawn to open their gifts.

Sounds good to me.
                                  

Happiness is...

Here it is, two days before thanksgiving, it's raining and the temperature is in the 30's and I have to go grocery shopping.

Yes, we went two days ago and got the turkey and most of the other things we need, but since then I have made an additional list--twice as long--of the things I forgot the first time.

I'm not complaining. Well, maybe about the weather, but as Mark Twain (or Charles Dudley Warner, depending on your source) aptly observed, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."

I'm happy because the stores are filled with food.

I'm happy because I can afford to buy it.

I'm happy because my family is going to share it.

Not everyone has access to well-stocked stores, and not everyone has enough money to buy what they need if they do. And some have no family to share it with, even if they met the first two criteria.

What makes this country great is how those who have reach out to those who have not.

One story that made me happy recently is the one about Coca Cola suspending its ad campaign in the Philippines this year, instead donating the money for typhoon relief.

I'm also selfishly happy they aren't suspending ads here. Sure would miss those Polar bears.

But if they did, I'd be okay with it.

I'm hoping in the midst of holiday preparations, shopping, visiting, and all the rest that goes along with it, we all take time to remember those for whom the holidays aren't quite
so happy. And maybe buy a few extra groceries and drop them off at the local food pantry.

Everyone should have a Happy Thanksgiving.

I hope you do.

.

A Thanksgiving story

Have  you been enjoying these perfect fall days? I don't mean the cold and rainy ones, but the ones we've had recently with warm air, deep blue skies and the fading colors of the autumn trees.

Jim has been mulching the fallen leaves with his riding mower. I gathered enough of them before he started to mulch the hydrangea. The directions I got with the plant said to trim it down before cold weather and protect it. It's supposed to come up again in the spring. I hope so, because I darn near killed it this summer by putting it out in direct sunlight. Plants get sunburned, too.

The humming bird feeders need to come inside and get a thorough cleaning, and be put away until next year. I haven't seen the little birds in several weeks now, so I imagine they have gone to their winter home in Central America.

Luckily, we have Thanksgiving to look forward to before the chill of winter sets in. I'm hoping it will still be warm enough to take a walk after dinner. We'll have the grandkids (and parents) this year, which is always a treat -- especially when they offer to do the dishes!

Here's a link to a chapter from "The Lunch Club." Jane Ann has her entire family coming for Thanksgiving, and wonders if she can cope with Larry's increasing forgetfulness. More important, can she keep his memory lapses from their children?

If you enjoy the chapter, I am putting the Kindle version of the book out for just 99 cents November 28-30.
Happy Turkey Day!

Percolating

A comment on my last blog said, "So you're percolating..."

That about sums it up. But now it's time to get to work.

I'm doing something different this time around. A devout "pantser*" I have converted to "plotter."

I am going to write my character sketches, outline my plot, set up conflicts, before I start writing. I even started a chapter-by-chapter outline.

This way, I can see where I'm going before I get too far off the path. Even if the pantser in me comes forward and teases me onto a side road, I can look at my outline and find my way back.

Another thing I need to do is set goals. I am a slow writer, as witness my books being some two years apart. People tend to forget you in two years.  A writer has to keep her name out there, building up a following.

So I need to write not only better, but faster. Maybe I'll take a page from the nanowrimo writers and try to churn out so many words a day.  In case you are unfamiliar with nanowrimo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which happens to be November. Across the country, writers are turning off their cell phones, hiding their iPads or Kindles (or Nooks), telling friends and family they are not available, and writing. Their goal is a 50,000-word competed manuscript by November 31.

I didn't enter, because I know my limitations. But I can also stretch myself. Limitations are meant to be exceeded, right?



*Someone who writes by the seat of her pants, like airplane pilots did before planes came with instruments.

I'm back!

My "Fall Fever" left me this past week. I blame the drop in temperature and the gray skies. At any rate, I've gotten back to business.

The business at hand now is...deciding what to do next. Maybe my previous inertia had more to do with the fact that I finished "Riverbend" than the nice weather. I have sent it out to see what happens, which is a waiting game all writers are familiar with. No joke, some writers get a rejection slip years after they submitted a manuscript. The lucky ones can write back with the cheerful news that their book has been in print for some now, thank you very much.

No writer I know sits back and waits. The kind of inertia I experienced last week can wreck a career before it starts. Kristen Lamb blogged today that success comes only with hard work (which we know, or should know). She likens it to planting an orchard. No one plants a seed and expects a tree full of fruit the next day.

A writer is planting seeds every time she blogs, Tweets or leaves a post on Facebook. But, like the farmer, she should not expect her work to yield an instant crop...of readers, not peaches.

Until I read that, I was getting discouraged. The agent I pitched "Riverbend" to told me gently that historicals just aren't selling now.  The new big thing is erotica, which I won't touch. I'm not against it if that is what people enjoy, but I don't enjoy reading it and I don't think I would enjoy writing it. Or maybe I would, because I would be laughing at myself as I wrote.

I'm toying with an idea now, running it around in my brain, trying visualize the characters, wondering what kinds of stumbling blocks I put in their way as they journey toward their goals. And what are those goals? Do they even know, or do they think they want one thing when deep inside they really want another?

Yeah, I may look like I'm napping, but inside my head the wheels are turning, folks.

And, I'm still cultivating my orchard ( 3 trees full now!) I need only two more reviews for "Angels Unaware" before I can submit it to a newsletter that suggests titles to its readership. It's just another way to get it noticed, which is the hardest thing for a new writer to do. Unless she changes her name to Nora Roberts.

But I think that's unethical, if not illegal.