We watch Mike Holmes from time to time, my fiance and I, and the episode of Holmes on Homes that is on as I write this entry included the spectacular idiocy of a contractor who notched floor joists and ran pipes through the notches, then reinforced said floor joists with plywood on either side of each joist. In case you were wondering, that’s not a good idea. You actually aren’t supposed to notch floor joists because it ruins the integrity of the beam, making it more likely to break. You can drill holes through the middle of the joists, but the top and the bottom have to be sound. They work together  to support your weight when you walk on the floor. The top is compressed and the bottom is pulled; the middle doesn’t really do much. If you cut a notch in the wood, the part that is left will break under pressure, because it doesn’t have the other half to hold it together.

The same can be said of our writing. We must have a handle on the foundations of writing before we can expect what we write to be worthwhile. My monthly newsletters try to shed some light on these foundations. I’m going to briefly outline some of the necessities now.

1. Spelling. Yeah, sure, there’s spell check, but it doesn’t catch everything, and the English language is full of oddities. In addition to which, you need different spelling if you are writing for a US audience vs a Canadian or British audience. (I’m sure there are other countries that use British spelling besides Canada and Britain.)
2. Grammar. If spelling makes it so people know what the words are, grammar makes it so people know what the meaning is. How we order our words is incredibly important when it comes to meaning.
3. Punctuation. So few people know how to use the semicolon and the colon properly. It seems that even fewer understand periods and commas. An incorrectly placed comma can do more to destroy the integrity of a sentence than mis-ordered words.
4. Facts. You need to get your facts straight. You might make up a lot of things (e.g., We’ll Write You an Opera You Can’t Refuse is about the Italian musicians’ mob and is set in the Italian district of Halifax – I have no idea if there’s an Italian district of Halifax, and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a musicians’ mob), but you need to get some facts straight in order to preserve realism (e.g., the same story talks about real historical people and events and mentions pieces of music that would actually be performed by an orchestra or an opera company).
5. Plot. Okay, if you aren’t writing fiction you have a theme, but the concept still applies: you need to have a reason to write the piece, a flow to what you’re writing, and something to hold it all together. I wrote an essay in university about the use of the name John in Jane Eyre. That sentence just told you what held the paper together.

These five elements constitute your foundation, your floor joists. If you neglect any one of these, your work will be less. It will be weaker, and it won’t hold up under pressure.

This is where outside editors come in. I like to have other people read my work and let me know where I fell down, where things could be stronger. It’s similar to having Mike and his crew come in to fix up a house that an idiot contractor screwed up, but when it comes to my writing, I’m the one who has to do the work to “make it right.”

Alas,  my little story was not accepted. I did receive a personal note from the editor, though, and it was, overall, a positive reaction – the story was just not right for that market. I turned around and found another market that looked promising, taking a hint from something the editor said in her kind rejection note, and sent it off. Still waiting to hear back on that one.

In the meantime, I’ve finished the most recent edit of The Power and sent it off to a few friends for review. I warned them that it needs a lot of work, that it may not make tons of sense, and that while there are strong evangelical Christian overtones to the story, I took a lot of theological liberties. I asked them to let me know what they like and what they don’t like, where they get confused and need more information (plot holes, ahoy!), and which characters need to be fleshed out more. After working on this thing for over ten years, I can’t tell anymore.

We’ll Write You an Opera You Can’t Refuse is coming along slowly. It started out well, but then I hit a wall. I know what’s supposed to happen in the scene but I can’t find the words. That is so frustrating! So right now, scenes that normally would get written in one sitting need at least two. This means that the story is probably not going to be finished before the end of the month, and it is putting me behind on my stated writing goals for the year. Already, I’m behind, and I’ve barely started! (Not helping matters is the fact that the next story on the list is also at a difficult-to-write place.) I will press on, though, and hopefully I’ll be able to catch up later this year.

I keep track of all of my writing projects in a table in a database my wonderful fiance made for me using MySQL. Hooray for free programs! I note the title, genre, hoped-for word count, and then the date I start writing, the date I finish the first draft, and the word count of the first draft. I also track the dates and word counts for two edits and the final draft. I have my original list in a spreadsheet in OpenOffice… and while I was updating it last week, I discovered that I had missed adding a couple of pieces to my database.

This means that I have a short story to edit into final draft this week. I’ve also moved up the next piece on my list for first edit from February to January – might as well keep working on these things. If all goes well with the final edit story, I’ll have another piece to submit next month.

So I keep working. Pushing through writer’s block isn’t easy, but it’s not really all that bad. Basically, I just keep trying. I sit down day after day, read over what I already wrote, remember what I planned to happen next, and try to find the words I need. If I write just one word, I’ve succeeded.

How did you discover your favourite author?

I found Robin McKinley when I borrowed Deerskin from a friend. I wound up keeping her copy for so long that I eventually just bought her a new copy.

I found Orson Scott Card when my aunt, who was living in Salt Lake City at the time, gave me Buffalo Girls for Christmas. It took a few years, but I did eventually read it, and I followed that up with Song Master and Ender’s Game.

But Charles de Lint… that was a roundabout discovery, to be sure.

What I recalled, until I started the search today, was that I had read Tam Lin when I was a young teen. I loved that book. I read it when we were on summer holidays, visiting my cousins in Ontario. They were in Canada on furlough; their parents are missionaries in Africa. We went to the library at some point, and one of them let me use their library card to borrow the book. I did finish it before we left, though it was a very thick hard cover.

All I really remembered of the book was that I found it in the ‘D’s. That and the cover art.

Until today, I was convinced that Tam Lin was the first de Lint novel I read. I was wrong.

As it turns out, Tam Lin was written by Pamela Dean. Now that I know the name of the actual author, I’ll have to see if I can order it in. The book is, however, a part of the Fairy Tales series, edited by Terri Windling. Each book in the series is a retelling of a fairy tale, written by a different author. Given my fascination with fairy tales and their retellings, I am somewhat enamoured with the whole idea. I found some others in the series via the cover art, and I own both Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose and Patricia Wrede’s Snow White and Rose Red. Eventually, I will locate and purchase a copy of each book.

But I digress.

Apparently, in my search for another book in the Fairy Tale series, I happened upon Jack the Giant-Killer, by Charles de Lint. It makes sense that this would be the next I found, given my certainty that the author I was looking for would be housed with other ‘D’ authors on the library shelves, and this makes clear my assumption that it was de Lint who wrote Tam Lin, as well.

I’m not sure what I read after Jack the Giant-Killer. I know that I have made it a point to seek out de Lint’s books in libraries and book stores (both new and second-hand), and I am currently reading The Little Country, having just finished Spirits in the Wires. I’m not concerned with reading the books in chronological order; I read Widdershins before The Onion Girl, and was pleased with myself when I figured out that Spirits in the Wires falls in between the two latter books, chronologically.

Charles de Lint is counted as one of my favourite authors because he is so good at drawing me into the between – that world that exists just on the edge of consciousness, where the fey live. When I am reading one of his novels, I believe that what I am reading is true – that it is real. I suppose I must halfway believe it anyway, or I wouldn’t write fiction myself.

But being able to make it real to someone else, if only for the time they are reading the work…

That, my friends, is the goal of a true writer.

The sound of the syllables
as they fall onto the page,
the phrases turning perfectly
in beautiful rage.

Writing words as music,
music as words.

Thoughts sound in my head
and drop from my fingers,
the words creating
a mood that lingers.

Writing words as music,
music as words.

Creating something from nothing
and putting it out there,
hoping that others
will truly care.

Writing words as music,
music as words.

I love words. I have, in fact, loved words for as long as I can remember – probably longer.

My mother says that, when I was two years old, I got up on a stool at a party (clergy parties at the bishop’s tended to include children, for whatever reason) and recited a poem about my new baby brother.

When I was three years old, my mother taught me how to read using those Ladybird readers about Peter and Jane and their dog, Pat. It was sight reading; phonics came naturally to me.

Before I knew how to form letters myself, I was “writing” stories in the little notebooks my parents kept me supplied with. It sure looked like handwriting to me! Never mind that the story changed every time I “read” it.

I was a voracious reader, and when I ran out of “age-appropriate” reading material, I would raid my parents’ book cases. I read parenting books at the age of eleven, which happened to be the same year I read Jane Eyre, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Gone With the Wind.

These days, I raid the library when funds are too tight to allow me to feed my habit at the book store. I toe the line and will never attempt to have more than the allowed 50 books out at one time.

I read practically anything. My tastes are diverse. Give me a well-written story, with characters I can care about, and I will devour the words as fast as I can.

I have my favourite authors, of course: L.M. Montgomery, Orson Scott Card, Lurlene McDaniel, Robin McKinley, Margaret Atwood, Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Ursula K. LeGuin are mainstays in my collection. They are the authors I look for in a book store – their presence on the shelves (all of them) tells me I am in a quality establishment, for it stocks the authors from whom I take my inspiration.

I read Young Adult novels (and I write them). I read science fiction novels (and am working on a science fiction screenplay). I read fantasy novels (and I write them).

I also read non-fiction, more than I do fiction, at times. I got into the habit when I was in University all those years ago, and it never quite faded. I read biographies, autobiographies, books by psychologists, books about writing, books about philosophy, about creation, about religion. I read to learn, to educate myself, to build the foundation for my fiction – and, more importantly, my life.

Though, I suppose, words are my life. I live in them. I move in them. I breathe them in and I breathe them out.

Yet, oddly enough, I sometimes think in pictures.