Blog #4 - Barbara - Lessons from Conroy

I learned so much from the world of Conroy in Prince of Tides. I appreciate his framing technique, from the opening. By writing the prologue in the voice of Tom, Conroy effaces himself and pulls in the confidant-reader. that's one level of framing: the author has disappeared (like Melville in Moby-Dick by saying "Call me Ishmael") and now the main character has taken over. The next level of framing occurs with the continuous relating of incidents, anecdotes, and quotes throughout the work. As the reader walks the streets of New York of the marshes in Colleton with Tom, Tom repeats information from his past. The third level of framing happens with Dr. Lowenstein, Savannah's therapist, who wants to know about her patient's twin brother. The reader, who already knows Tom somewhat, gets to sit in on those sessions, unseen, like the author, and hear more wonderful or ghastly stories, and witness violent interactions (as when Tom tells the doctor that her son could easily kill himself, and she throws a hard object to his face, causing a nosebleed).

I also appreciate his varied style: memoir, travel journal, psychological, natural science, poetic, philosophical, and political, so that fiction and nonfiction get knitted together.

I respect Conroy's use of archetypes. Savannah is a modern-day Ophelia, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the oppressed and disturbed, love-starved young woman. Also I like the tiger--a real live one!--representative of the near-the-surface violence and destructiveness of the Wingo family, with a self-defeating father, an approval-obsessed mother, a near-autistic twin sister, a woman-fearing twin brother, and an action-oriented bully of an older brother. The tiger also relates to the classics. Shakespeare's rival, Robert Greene, described him as a tiger in a player's skin. Also, there's Blake's "Tyger, tyger shining bright" poem.

I especially like the guaranteed-conflict situations using the trio concept: the older brother and two twins; the two parents and the unit of three kids; two boys and a girl; Tim, his wife and his wife's doctor-lover; Susan Lowenstein, her violinist husband and Tom; and finally, Susan, her husband, and his flutist-lover.

I also appreciate the concept of duality or doubles. The two twins, especially fraternal, of two sexes, represent two sides of the complete (perfect) person. Also, Conroy juxtaposes the very rural and provincial small-town South to the very densely-populated and cosmopolitan big-city Northeast, namely New York City, target of past international terrorism. Because geography and setting take on the importance of a character, Conroy gives America a leading role. With his insistance on physical location, Conroy reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop, with her Geography III poem collection.

Blog No. 4 - Jessica Quinn

In Prince of Tides I absolutely loved Pat Conroy’s use of narrative voice. I loved how he would lead you through the pages and without even realizing it you would go from a remarkably crafted description of your location to an engaging conversational dialogue between characters. It was the ideal flow. As a reader, there wasn’t a gap or any misunderstanding of where you were or who was speaking. You knew “I” meant Tom and the rest went on from there. I’m writing my book in first person and I hope that I can set the PR stage of my book with even a smidgen of description that Conroy so eloquently uses and then tell the parts of the story I have to tell through dialogue and interviews as the book carries on.

What impacted me most though, through reading the dynamics of this family’s plight, was that it made me want to write a fictionalized account of many of the events of my youth. It was a reminder of what I mentioned in my discussion that there is nothing new under the sun, and that is what we are drawn to as readers. We’re drawn to stories with universal themes we can all relate to, but written in a unique way—set apart in some fashion. I want to do that. I want to try to accomplish that. Conroy does that with his descriptive settings—apparent he knows these places intimately, his character conflicts—another place where you see the truth of his past interwoven into the story, and his style—the man is truly Southern. For Conroy he writes what he obviously knows. I want to do that. However for me, I’ll wait a few more years until all who would be hurt by my fictional truth will be gone and I can write with peace of mind about an obsessive-compulsive, hoarding mother and a hurricane in the panhandle of Florida—maybe I’ll title it Scattered Treasures. For Conroy, his recent ex-wife Barbara was alive and well had to live with her ex-husband’s incredible success based on a book highlighting the main character’s affair. A main character based on himself. Even though they were divorced when he wrote it—that must have been painful. She already knew he wrote what he lived.

(And yes, Raymond, The Water is Wide was quite autobiographical. Barbara lived that story with Pat. Barbara used to be my husband’s boss at the DeKalb County DA’s Office. She is now retired and remains a dear friend. She and Pat are still close and he is a wonderful father to their three daughters—funny he gave Tom Wingo three daughters, a wife with long dark hair and in reality it was law school instead of medical school. ☺ Pat’s daughter, Melissa, also has a children’s book out, Poppy’s Pants, that gives great insight into her relationship with her father. Her parents are very proud of their now author daughter.)

Photos: Following Hurricane Ivan and the loss of my parent's home, the Red Cross brought us hot meals during clean up. I'm forever grateful to them!;My sister, Caron, deemed "Princess Ivan" wearing an old bridesmaid's dress from another sister's wedding, wielding my father's Navy sword, and Mardi Gras beads crowning her head--all found in the pile of "treasures" surrounding the house;Me standing in what was once my childhood bedroom. Two other rooms used to separate me from a view of the bay...

Blog #4 Characterization

True Confession: The Prince of Tides is the only book by Pat Conroy I have ever read. That being said, after completing it, I felt a bit awed and overwhelmed. His word choice alone made me decide to begin reading the dictionary every night. Quite frankly, the whole time I was reading it I thought—I am going to have to read it again so that I can analyze every jot and tittle. However, the one thing that I know I want to look at more carefully is Conroy’s excellent characterization.

I love his physical descriptions.

“When I looked up, Dr. Lowenstein was staring at me from the door of her office. She was expensively dressed and lean. Her eyes were dark and unadorned. In the shadows of that room with Vivaldi fading in sweet echoes, she was breathtakingly beautiful, one of those go-to-hell New York women with the incorruptible carriage of lionesses. Tall and black-haired, she looked as if she had been airbrushed with breeding and good taste” (58).

Collonwalde—“He was the largest, most powerful man I had ever seen…He grew out of the earth like some fantastic, grotesque tree. His body was thick, marvelous, and colossal. His eyes were blue and vacant. A red beard covered his face, but there was something wrong about him. It was the way he looked at us…that alerted us to the danger” (129).

“Isabel Newberry had the most soul chilling presence I had ever encountered. Her lips were thin and colorless and her mouth registered a most articulate narrative of unspoken disapproval. Her nose sharp and well made, was her one perfectly wrought feature, and it twitched prettily as she stood in the gloom of her house as though the smell of me was repugnant to her. Her hair was blonde, but with help. But it was the cold aquamarine glitter of her eyes enclosed in a harsh fretwork of lines that arrowed out toward her temples…”(232).

I love the way he uses dialogue to reveal his characters thoughts.

Discussing Savannah’s latest suicide attempt, Tom asks his mother, Lila, “How did she try to do it, Mom…”

“She slit her wrists again, Tom,” my mother said starting to cry. Why does she want to do those things to me ? Haven’t I suffered enough? …

“ Are you going to New York?”

“ Oh, I can’t possibly go, Tom. This is a real hard time for me. We’re giving a dinner party Saturday night and it’s been planned for months. And the expense. I’m sure she’s in good hands and there’s nothing we can really do.”

Being there is doing something, Mom. You’ve never realized that” (21).

Overall, I want to go back and carefully analyze how Conroy characterizes each character because he not only shows us how they look but also how the

Blog Post # 4: Ray will have the Raspberry Cobbler

The real problem with stealing from The Prince of Tides—excuse me, in being derivative of Pat Conroy’s writing style—is in choosing which particular technique or device to borrow. He does so many things so exceptionally well that it makes it hard to choose. It’s kind of like when they roll the dessert cart up to your table. The Key Lime pie looks as good as the carrot cake, and the peanut butter brownies appear to be just as tasty as the raspberry cobbler. Still, it would be unwise to have them all, so I guess I’ll choose the raspberry cobbler, also known as dialog.

In The Prince of Tides, as in Conroy’s other books, the conversations flow effortlessly, and the reader feels privy to an actual discussion between the characters. Conroy uses these conversations as a means to define the characters in his stories. He fleshes out his charactes with their own words. His dialog is the ultimate show, don’t tell device. I would say that his conversations are just as good as real conversations, but they are better than that. Often, real conversations are just controlled noise, but Conroy’s conversations have a function and a purpose.

He has the skill necessary to add layers to his characters using the words that they speak as the mortar. To illustrate this point, I will now open my copy of the Prince of Tides to a random page and quote some dialog. Okay, it’s page 141. Well, of course that was totally random. You’re just going to have to trust me.

“I want you to call me Coach.”
“The feminist coach.”
“Yes, the feminist coach.”
“Is there a part of you that hates women, Tom?” she asked, leaning toward me. “Really hates them?”
“Yes,” I answered, matching the dark intensity of her stare.
“Do you have any idea why you hate women?” she asked, again the unruffled professional, dauntless in her role.
“Yes, I know exactly why I hate women. I was raised by a woman. Now ask me the next question. The next logical question.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Ask me if I hate men, New York feminist doctor,” I said. “Ask me if I hate fucking men.”
“Do you hate men?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “I hate men because I was raised by one.”

This is obviously a conversation between Tom and Lowenstein, but I want you to forget about that for a minute. Put what you know about these characters out of your mind and concentrate on this conversation. If all you knew about this pair was what you could infer from this excerpt—which is clever, entertaining, and reads exceptionally well, by the way—you would know a great deal about the characters. And that is my point. It is why I picked the raspberry cobbler.

Blog 4 - Kathleen - Writing Large

If I could steal one writing skill from Pat Conroy it would be his big, bold, rich, facile use of the English language. Man, oh man! His plots are too big for my taste. I often feel like he needs to bifurcate his books, take a cutting from the plot of one, say, and transplant it so that it can grow into another book.

But, oh, his language! Thick, chewy, sensuous sentences just dripping with adjectives and similes and multi-syllabic words - sentences of epic proportions. And because he writes of the Lowcountry, the land I was also born in and deeply love, he's even more likely to make me swoon.

Take the very first sentence of the Prologue of The Prince of Tides, for example:

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call. (Me, too!)

And these, also from Prince, to capture but a few:

I was the son of a beautiful, word-struck mother . . .

My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

My enemy was indeterminancy . . .

And one particularly fecund paragraph on page 277 of my hardback edition of the book, that includes this sentence:

There is a river, the town, my grandfather steering a boat through the channel, my sister fixed in that suspended rapture she would later translate into her strongest poems, the metallic perfume of harvested oysters, the belling voices of children on the shore . . .

Heavy sigh.

Decades ago I read William Faulkner's novel, The Unvanquished. He unforgettably describes one of the characters, Druscilla, standing in a yellow ballgown under the crystal chandelier, holding out a pair of dueling pistols, as "the Greek amphora priestess of a succinct and formal violence." I love that. And there is Norman McClean, author of A River Runs Through It, who wrote this and gave me the shivers:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

I wanna write large and lofty and lyrical prose like the big boys.

Blog #4 Heather

I was completely blown away by Conroy’s novel. I had never read anything by him before, and because the book was long and the description on the back didn’t seem very interesting, I feared that I would have a difficult time reading the book. However, I was greatly surprised from the very beginning. In fact, he had me from the prologue. And what captured my attention at the outset was not necessarily the plot, but the writing style. Conroy’s writing is so flawless that it seems like he wrote the novel so effortlessly. His writing is convincing and his characters are very well rounded that I had a difficult time remembering that this was fiction and not an autobiography or memoir.

Besides the writing style and the beautiful descriptions of both New York and South Carolina, I appreciated the complexity of the characters. Although I don’t typically read 700 page novels, I enjoyed the fact that Conroy took his time to carefully and thoughtfully create these characters. Each detail about them, such as Tom’s inability to love women, Savannah’s haunting dogs, Luke’s compassion and protective nature, Lila’s love for her kids and for her position in society, and Henry’s failed entrepreneurship, create a world that is close enough to our own but far enough away to escape to. What was most essential in creating the complexities of each character, I believe, was time.

From Conroy’s Prince of Tides, I’ve learned to slow the pace of my own novel. Conroy’s book would not have been as interesting if the characters had not been so fully developed. In my fantasy novel, I’m going to strive to write the main character, Byrn, with more depth. Conroy taught me that every good novel has action, yes, but every great and beautiful novel also has interesting exposition. I want to explore each character in my work and even develop the setting, which is earth after the core has erupted, with a back story. And through this process, I hope to discover more about the characters myself.

Blog 3 _ Barbara _ Nuclear Blast!

§ I was born and raised in different countries. I was born in Paris, France, to a U.S. Foreign Service officer and to a French mother, and I lived in Malaysia, Norway, Spain, and the U.S.
§ Concurrently, I was raised speaking several languages. French is my mother-tongue, though my father spoke it fluently. English is my father-tongue. I learned Spanish at age eight, in Spain, at a Spanish private school. I learned Italian at age twelve, in Spain, at an Italian private school. I learned German in college. I learned Japanese some years back.
§ I grew up playing the piano, though, unfortunately, with a teacher who neither pushed me nor encouraged me to play in public. I attended a conservatory in Baltimore, MD, but quit from lack of my professor’s encouragement and from depression over my parents’ divorce.
§ I joined a cult in Virginia, which precluded me from marriage, from a career, and from seeing my own family. I stayed with it for eleven years, my entire youth.
§ When I left the cult I reconciled with my family, went back to college, and joined a dating service. I stayed in touch with my parents and my siblings, graduated in eleven months, and met the man I married and with whom I had a child.
§ After twenty-two years of marriage, my husband wanted us to go our separate ways. My name has reverted to Barbara Cramer.
§ I completed four semesters as a music major (pianist) but decided, based on memory slips, to change my major to English and to make music my minor. I graduated from KSU as an English major and music minor.
§ I’m now preparing for an amateur piano competition next spring.

§ I’d like to cruise around Alaska.

§ I’d like to go up and down the Rhine River in Germany.

§ I’d like to stay several week s in Provence, in the south of France.

§ I’d like to spend a month in Florence, Milan, Rome, and Naples, to visit leisurely all the architectural sites and all the artistic sites.

§ I’d like to spend a month in the Outer Banks of the Carolinas, a string of islands with little commercialism and noise.

§ I’d like to build a house in North Carolina, facing the Smoky Mountains.

I imagine managing the threat of a nuclear explosion, which involves team-work with specialists. I need to trust them and their expertise. I need to trust myself to ask pertinent questions. Ultimately, I need to trust them more than myself in order to eliminate or neutralize the threat. All I need to do is extrapolate on my past experiences dealing with danger, perceived threat, insecurity, and then remember the feelings and the way I managed those feelings.

Blog #3 By Brittany Leazer... My Daughter and That's It!

There have surly been multiple waves that have knocked me off course. I have suffered from anxiety most of my life, and sometimes writing has been to much for me to take. But the biggest thing that has come in my life that caused me to be completely knocked off course, was the love of my life, my beautiful daughter.

After I had Riley-Anne in July of 2008, I was completely convinced that nothing else in the world mattered and all I was here on earth to do was to take care of her. I stopped being a wife, I stopped writing, I stopped acting, and I neglected my family. I was so smitten with her that I could not believe that there was more for me to do than, love her. I just sat for hours at a time looking at her. I was so overcome with love and fear that I could not function. I was afraid for her life. I couldn't understand how something so little could even survive. I thought that I had to keep and eye on her 24/7. I did not sleep, at all, for the first five days of her life. I could not think of anything else, and I was definitely not going back to work or writing for that matter.

After seeing that my love was not just a that, but an obsession of the disorder kind, my husband called for reinforcements. My mother and a great mentor of mine helped snap me back into reality. They made me realize that the pressure and fear I was feeling, was something called, The Baby Blues, some of you may have experienced it yourselves, and that I need to get some medical help. They also made me realize that as a believer in Christ, it is not my job alone to care for my sweet baby, but that God holds her in the palm of His hand, and I have to trust Him. My mother reminded me that before this baby was born I was called to write, act, and disciple. And this fact had not changed. I was still called to do these same things, but now I had a little blessing for inspiration.

I realize now, though my child and husband are the most important things in my life, and I am first and foremost a wife and a mother, there are still things like writing that I am called to do, and I can not allow anything to get tin the way of that. (Unless otherwise instructed by God!)

Blog # 3: Experience vs Research: Jess Yaun

All of the difficult and unusual experiences of my life revolve around the heart. I’ve been abandoned and adopted, witnessed addiction and abuse. I’ve fallen in love and become a mother. I’ve witnessed the disintegration of my adopted parents’ thirty-six year marriage. These experiences fueled my writing since childhood. Learning early in my life that silence meant safety, I retreated into my words and they brought me redemption. I am ready to experience a different kind of adventure.
I love history and culture. My life has taught me that I can only understand a person when I know not only what has happened to them, but the larger context that shaped them as well. Once I dove into sociology for my Bachelor’s, I discovered that beyond an insatiable curiosity for understanding people, I delighted in following the threads of time and their revelations of how tribes and nations have developed into who they are collectively.
Yet I feel the limitations of research and my imagination. I would love to travel the world and see the cultures that I’ve read about. I want to feel the history in the century old buildings in Europe, see the tribes in Africa living the way humans once lived for thousands of years, (before they all disappear) and witness the unique rituals that define places and their people.
I’ve always played a game of sorts while walking in the woods or touring historic places like St. Augustine’s in Florida. I place my hand against something like a tree or the rough stone of an old building, close my eyes, and try to imagine who might have stood in that very spot a hundred or five hundred years before me. What were they like? What were their hopes and passions? What world had shaped them without them even realizing it? My idea for the novel I’m working on began from this game. I was hiking in the North Georgia Mountains when I suddenly needed to know what people had lived there and what they had loved and lost in that forest.
Consequently, I’ve been researching the Cherokees ever since, and slowly weaving a narrative that revolves around my protagonist going back in time to live among them. Although my research informs me on subjects ranging from their worldview and how it shaped them, their religious ideas and modes of behavior, even what they ate and how they prepared it, I can only hope my imagination can take me to the place where I understand what life was like for a Cherokee. The heart part of the story, at least the grief and the loneliness of my protagonist, those are the parts I’ll write from experience.

Blog Post #3: Ray Atkins Waxes on Research

The entire “experience versus research” question is an interesting one. There are those writers and educators who will tell you that writers can only write in a believable manner about that which they know first-hand. The opposing group of writers and educators would have you believe that if you can read about it, you can write about it. Which group is right? They both are, because good writing can come from both sources, and the richest, most satisfying, best writing occurs when both methods are employed simultaneously.

In my first novel, one of the characters was faced with a health issue that necessitated heart surgery. The character was not the main character, but he was still a fairly important part of the story, so I needed to handle the surgery in some detail and not just treat it with one or two lines. I hit several sources and found out enough facts about the procedure to write a believable passage, and after this research was complete, I wrote what I believed to be an acceptable couple of pages.

A year after I had written those paragraphs, I found myself in the ironic position of having to undergo the exact same procedure. Talk about life imitating art! You will be happy to know that I survived the operation and am, in fact, still here. But the point of the story is that I also learned a great deal about the procedure through my experience of it, but it was a different type of knowledge than I had gained from the medical articles I had consulted. My research had provided me primarily with the facts of the procedure, the step-by-step, but having the actual operation provided me with images, impressions, and small details that didn’t make it into the articles I had read. And these are the nuggets that make your writing fine.

From the encyclopedia I learned that they would stop my heart to fix it, but the article didn’t mention how cold it would be when they took me to the operating room in my flimsy paper gown. From the encyclopedia I learned that they would cut open my sternum with a saw much like a Dremel, but the article neglected to tell me that my breastbone would forevermore click where it had knitted back together. From the encyclopedia I learned that they would place drainage tubes against my ribs to prevent pneumonia, but the medical writer omitted the part where—when they snatch those tubes out—it feels just like you’ve been shot.

The punch line to this anecdote is that I went back and jazzed up that scene in my book just a bit. The facts had been correct, but when I placed the additional details and impressions into the text, as well, it began to sing. So yes, I believe that a writer can research a subject or experience to the extent necessary to be able to write about it with confidence, provided that research includes—in addition to just the facts—a first-person account of the experience, or an interview with a person who has undergone the experience.

Blog# 3 Samara: He knocked me down, but I got up again...

My first class, first semester in the MAPW program I encounter my biggest writing wave EVER! His name is not important, but he was a visiting professor in the program. I was looking forward to a fiction writing class, and quickly had my heart broken. This professor did not encourage my dream, but instead proceeded in crushing it. Halfway through the semester I met with him about my writing and he said, "I don't know how to help you. I think that you are not serious enough about your writing or dedicating enough time to writing." My heart broke that day, because I thought, I love writing! Who is this guy to tell me I am not serious enough? I did not take another fiction class for two years.

It was in advanced fiction last semester that I found myself again as a fiction writer. I was a bit shaky but gained confidence in my writing through out the semester. I had to learn that one person's opinion did not determine my worth as a writer. It also helped me learn that I needed to start growing a thicker skin. As I said, my wave may have knocked me down, but I was able to get up again.

Blog No. 3 - Jessica Quinn - Overcoming the Wave

I tremble slightly writing this down, so I’ll be a bit cryptic in order to save my place in the program. ☺ Recently in my writing I did face a “wave that almost put me out.” I hoped it would only be an off-balancing wave, not a complete wipe out, and thankfully that was the case. I was work-shopping my most recent chapter on faith-based public relations when the wave was building and the tide was coming at me so fast that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stay calm and face the wave. I couldn’t afford to lose sight of the goal—survival. The wave felt personal, vicious even…evil. What happened in the workshop isn’t as important as what happened after the workshop was over and I was once again back at my computer to work on my chapter.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t write. I was restless as if some foreign attention deficit disorder had overtaken my brain. What was happening to me? I just wanted to go lay on my bed and watch a TV show on my iPad or head for the beach and say to hell with it—escapism. Yet, there was a deadline and no matter how hard I’d been hit by the wave, I was determined that I was going to not only survive, but I would conquer this and navigate my way back to my goal. I was going to finish this chapter and finish strong. But I still couldn’t shake it.

My roommate for the time could tell I was having a hard time and offered some divinely-inspired advice at the most perfect time in the day. She encouraged me that I couldn’t allow my confidence to be shaken. I know my craft and I know my audience and I can’t allow this authority to steal that experience and expertise from me with his biting words. Wow. I literally felt all of the anxiety and block just fall off of me. She was right, God was right. I know what I’m doing. I might not have all of the ins and outs of putting it on paper mastered just yet, but I know my craft and I definitely know my audience and my agent wouldn’t be asking for my proposal fixes if I didn’t.

I learned a great lesson that day. The waves will come and they will feel insurmountable, but they are just waves. Tomorrow the tide will go out, the sea will calm and there will be a whole new set of obstacles to overcome. The important part is that they can be overcome—that in this instance, I overcame them and lived to write another day.

Blog #3 Heather Cook

Maybe, though unfortunately, a lot of you can relate to this…

About 7 years ago my parents got divorced. But it wasn’t an easy divorce (if there is such a thing) nor a short one. The divorce process lasted about 5 years, and it killed just about everything in me. Morning, afternoon, and evening meals were served with tears, and each day was so exhausting that I had no energy to write. Quite honestly, I had no desire to write. My perfect life that I thought I had was gone, and at the time, I didn’t remember, nor really care how cathartic writing could be.

Before the divorce, I was working on a children’s novel entitled Dolphin Dude on Duty, which I had written in fifth grade. The original story takes place underwater in an unnamed town. Dolphin Dude is a dolphin who is also a policeman. In the short fifth grade version, Dolphin Dude comes face to face with his arch nemesis, Sammy Shark, and after a somewhat anticlimactic scene, Dolphin Dude arrests Sammy Shark with the help of Gus Goldfish and Wally Whale. Because the story was so basic, I was developing a more complex storyline, one that would show maturity, and one that could be complicated enough to endure an entire child’s chapter book. However, after the divorce was final, I had a very difficult time coming back to the story because it reminded me of the period of time during the divorce process. Even trying to edit the story brought back bad memories.

I actually hadn’t opened up the manuscript until 11 months ago. In July of last year, I met my fiancé in my dad’s office at work—strange place, I know. The more we started talking, the more we realized that our backgrounds weren’t much different. Both of our parents had divorced with many of the same circumstances. It was only through listening to my fiancé speak about his struggles with overcoming the sadness and bitterness that I learned how to release my own past not only to write Dolphin Dude again, but also to fully write like myself again. He taught me that no matter what, divorce doesn’t really stop hurting, but it is what we do with those emotions that makes the difference. I had to make the decision that I would use my emotions to fuel my writing instead of letting the fears and distrust haunt me, consume me, and destroy my love of words.

Blog #3: Dina's Experiences vs. Research

I have so many story ideas that sometimes I'm not sure what to do with all of them: too many ideas, too little time, too little discipline? Most of the ideas are for things that haven't happened to me since my ideas are for romance, suspense, or fantasy. However, some of my ideas have the germ of something that happened to me mixed with something that hasn't. The following is a setting I know well mixed with a story line that I made up and would require research.

Experience
When I was five, my father found God and moved my family to a religious community in southern Georgia. Similar to Kristi's Pentecostal experience, there were rules about no television, no radio, skirts or dresses only for women, and shunning anything "of the world" (that was the phrase used). We lived isolated from others, only the men leaving to work at jobs not on the farm. My brother and I attended a small school with other children in the community; we attended church services Wednesday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night. We were assigned chores such as working in the garden or orchard, canning vegetables, feeding the pigs, and so forth. This would make an interesting setting for a novel.

Research
The story would revolve around a murder that takes place on the farm. Using a twelve-year-old girl as the protagonist, I would show what life on the farm was like, how she felt about the farm, then what she experiences after the murder is discovered, throughout the investigation, and afterward. Since there were no murders while I was there, although one of the mentally unstable people for whom the "elders" often prayed for healing did stab and kill someone after we left, I would have to research the police force in the area, whether any other police force would have to be called in to assist, crime scene protocol and techniques in the 1980s and so on.

I could do some of the research online but would also have to talk to police investigators and maybe visit the town we lived in and see what kind of police force they have. Using research, imagination, and my own experiences, I could write an authentic novel. I've only recently come up with this idea, and this is the first time I've written about it. I think it would be interesting to write, using some of my own cynicism and thoughts about my own experience there to flavor the story.

Blog # 3 Lisa "Research, the next best thing to being there"

The last time I was in graduate school, no one had ever heard of Google. Students at KSU in 1991 converged on a large room in the Library annex full of dot matrix printers and tiny screened computers using Norton Textra, as Microsoft Word was not yet the standard. I was in a historical research class. Searching for primary sources was mandatory; finding them required microfiche and making black copies with white text. I spent my evenings at KSU library learning about Civil War nurses from diaries of soldiers and the nurses on the field. I hated all the work in that class, but I loved what I learned. I felt like I had stepped back in time and carry on a conversation with Emma Edna Edmundson or Mother Bickerdyke. I also know that Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton were not really the “rock stars” of Civil War nursing. Mostly, I learned from an ancient graduate history professor that good research using primary sources is the next best thing to being there. Mostly, I learned from an ancient graduate history professor that good research, using primary sources, is the next best thing to being there.

“I am not a fiction writer.” That is what I keep telling everyone. Almost 10 years ago I was thrust into a very difficult experience that forced me to leave a church I loved. I was unable to deal with the betrayal and started writing my first work of fiction. I constructed a story to explain what was happening. The main character was searching for answers. My attempt at fiction began as a Frank Peretti (Piercing the Darkness) attempt, now it just haunts me. Writing the first few chapters channeled my pain and brought healing. That was enough. I put it down, but it keeps bothering me. Ichabod is a story that must be told – even as fiction.

I know that learning research skills in that graduate class will be useful in finishing this story. My research of the Civil War nurses will be woven into the fabric of my fiction seamlessly – I am just not sure how to do that – not yet anyway.