Tag Archives: writing

And now for something really spooky…

I love Halloween. Maybe it’s because I watched too many horror movies when I was a kid, but I absolutely adore figuring out new ways to scare unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. (I know, that’s a little demented.) Our annual visit to the local Halloween store has become one of our favorite family traditions, and we spend a ridiculous amount of time there testing all of the latest animated ghouls, zombies, and skeletons to see which ones pass our this-will-make-someone-wet-their-pants test.

It’s weird that one of my favorite holidays should center so much around fear, because I don’t really like to be scared myself. There are definitely things that’ll do it: flying and spiders, for example, reduce me to an incoherent, blubbering puddle faster than you can say arachnophobia (or spell it). Haunted houses are pretty bad, too–those scare the daylights out of me, even the lame ones. The last one I entered when I was in my mid-twenties, and I wound up so hysterical that I had to be escorted out the secret back entrance by a very compassionate but very un-Taylor Lautner-like werewolf. Before he left me, he very helpfully found a paper bag to try to stop my hyperventilation and waited with me for my sister to come out and laugh herself silly at my abject terror.

Yep, fear’s a funny thing–unless you’re the one wetting your pants in the parking lot of a haunted house; then it’s funny and humiliating.

But seriously: In its milder forms, fear can provide a thrill. Do you like roller coasters? I don’t, too close to flying. But I hear some people do, and part of that thrill comes from the exhilarating shiver of fear coursing through you just before you plunge to your death–um, I mean, plunge to the end of the ride. Sorry, got carried away there.

Fear can also be a powerful motivator. Scared of speaking in public? Go and take a class. Afraid of dying young from heart disease? Exercise and maintain a healthy diet. Terrified of flying? Take some lessons. (Yeah, not in this lifetime, pal.)

In its more serious forms, however, fear not only doesn’t thrill or motivate, it prevents you from doing what you want to do. (To be clear, I do not want to fly.)

Publishing Widow Woman, for example, terrified me. There were many, many steps on that journey that involved overcoming serious fears, many times where it would have been easier, would have felt safer, just to give up. From the design, editing, and print vs. e-book decision, straight on through to the marketing and promotion, I’ve been scared every step of the way, right down to the tips of my fuzzy slippers. (And don’t get me started about reading reviews–terrifying.)

So how did I get past it?

The same way that everyone who’s ever chased a dream does: I asked myself what it was that really frightened about me about each step. The answer to that question was the same every time I asked it: I was afraid to fail.

Once I realized that, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. That’s all that’s standing in your way? Fear of failure? This you can manage. And once I understood that was my true fear, the fear began to lessen.

Why? Because everyone fails, at least once in their lives! Some fail small, some fail on a spectacular scale. Some failures are catastrophic, others are merely embarrassing. But if you let that fear keep you from trying, then that is the greatest failure of all, because for the rest of your life, you’ll be haunted by the most terrible ghosts, the ghosts of all that might have been, all that you might have achieved, but didn’t because you were afraid. That’s pretty damned scary.

So often, when we examine our fears more closely, a strange thing happens: They shrink, and we wonder that we were ever so scared of something so small. Suddenly, you realize you have all the courage you ever needed.

Unless you’re talking about a haunted house–I’ve got nothin’ there except for an urgent need for Depends and a cackling sister. For everything else, I’ve got a freaky scary zombie waiting for you in the yard. And I’m not going to tell you where…

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Breaking News…

The Trip Is Almost Over

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Wow–hope you’ve got time for a longer read, because I’ve got a lot to say today. First, I should find out today how my expert is doing with the conversion and upload; sounds as though the Go-Day may be approaching. With that in mind, I’ve been engaging in a flurry of promotion preparations, many of which came out of a fantastic writers’ retreat this weekend.

My head is spinning so fast, it’s a wonder I haven’t been stopped for a DWI–yet. Since Monday, I’ve revised my website; updated my Twitter background with my book cover; fleshed out my Goodreads profile; signed up for ifttt.com/ and adopted a handful of recipes (holy crap, that site is cool!); arranged a publicity consult with a contact through the writers’ retreat; set up a launch party discussion with a local force of nature who expressed an interest in helping me with it–I can’t even remember all the platform-building steps I’ve taken this week!

Hopefully, it will all help, because Widow Woman is on its way, and soon.

So. Continuing my interest-building efforts, one of the tips shared at the retreat was to share with readers the stories behind the story. Of course, I know that’s true–I’m a reader myself and I love to hear how a writer’s work came into being. So in that vein, as the release date for Widow Woman draws near, I want to share with you some of what went on behind the scenes as I wrote this book.

Often, one of the first things readers want to know is “How did you come up with the idea for this book?” Well, in this case, my book is a work of fiction. Having said that, however, it’s also true that there are some things in it that, while fiction at their core, were inspired by things that happened in my own life.

One of the early scenes of my book involves the death of the main character’s mother. The following excerpt was very much inspired by my memories of scattering my own mother’s ashes back in the spring of 1997, in the lovely, rolling hills near my uncle’s cabin in Virginia:

For long moments, only the hum of the swaying birch trees broke the silence, whispering a dirge for my mother. Eventually, Peter gave another little cough: the time had come.

Stepping back from Catherine, I opened the urn, startled by the sight of a silken, drawstring pouch. When I wrapped my fingers around it, it felt full of coarse sand or cement. That’s what I thought, at first: The funeral parlor had played a cruel trick. No wonder the urn felt so heavy. Then I realized with a grim start that it was no joke: that bag of sand or cement or ashes was all that was left of my mother.

It took me several attempts to widen the pouch’s mouth. As I fumbled with the strings, I realized how much I’d romanticized the concept of scattering Mom’s ashes: I’d envisioned her floating off into the sapphire sky, dissipating on the breeze, like a dandelion gone to seed. The awful reality entailed upending the pouch a little at a time, shaking her remains unceremoniously into the brittle, brown grass at my feet. When I’d emptied the pouch, I couldn’t stop staring at the chunky, grey dust clumped on top of the dead weeds and wildflowers.

Suddenly I wondered what to do. Shove the pouch in my coat pocket? Crumple it up and throw it in the garbage back at Mom’s house? My stomach jolted. What if a few flecks of Mom still clung inside it? What parts of her would they be? Her hand? Her smile?
In my interview for “It’s A Woman’s World,” I spoke of how cathartic much of my early writing was, and this scene, though part of a larger work of fiction, was, also–it allowed me to release some very difficult and somewhat surreal memories in a way that allowed me to make sense of them.

Anyway, I hope that that whets your appetite a little. If you’d like to know more about the book, its back story, my inspiration, secrets behind my character development, drop me a line.

Road Trip, Day 37, Give Or Take

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Okay, last week was a little bit of a downer, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, sometimes you’ve just gotta put on your big-girl panties and get on with it, even if they chafe a little bit.

So, where am I, now that I’ve gotten rid of the most recent super-wedgie? Well, I’m proceeding apace: I have decided to allow an expert to finish this final part of the task for me.

The thing is, we all have gifts, things at which we just naturally excel. We also all have things at which we just naturally don’t. I know, there’s all that inspirational writing out there (some of which I’ve actually written myself) about never, never, never give up, etc. But if I’ve learned anything from this self-publishing process (and in life in general), it’s that in some areas of life, you simply have to rely on an expert. Examples of expert-required situations: 1) Anything electrical or plumbing-related; 2) Any type of surgery; 3) Anything that is just too important to settle for crap results–i.e., taxes, wedding day makeup or hair, etc. For proof of my personal maxim, all I need to do is look at a couple of old pictures:

This is me, at around 5 weeks. Cute, huh? Except for the protruding forehead. Lots of babies are born with less-than-perfectly round noggins, but in my case, it was from a rare defect, craniosynostosis. My parents had to make a difficult decision, because not only was the condition rare, but in 1969, the surgery to correct it was still somewhat experimental. Complicating matters, the neurosurgeon told my mother that if he didn’t operate by 6 weeks, it would be too late–brain damage would already have begun.

Yep. That’s right. They called in an expert. I’m glad they did. It must have been terrifying for them, but this is just one of those situations where you need an expert.

Now, I’m not saying that my publishing Widow Woman is remotely on a par with craniosynostosis (okay, I am. But I’m allowed, since I own them both). What I’m saying is that I’m glad that in 1969, there was a neurosurgeon named Dr. Manno who was an expert, and that that’s the man my parents trusted to save me.

I think, all things considered, that today most folks would consider my surgery to have been a resounding success, and that whatever fears or costs bringing in that expert entailed, the results were worth it. The only evidence today of that surgery is a large scar, and that’s pretty well hidden. Of course, I do struggle with some things–maps, math, chess, technology–but they tend to be things that are common struggles for many people. We’ll never know if the things I struggle with come from brain damage already occurring by the time of my surgery or if I just suck at math, but I do have strategies to deal with my deficiencies, as we all should. When I have to deal with those areas, I look for aids (Google maps, thank you); work harder (remember my GRE travails?); defer or avoid (chess and football diagrams fall into this category) or–you guessed it: I call in an expert.

There. Now you get where I was heading with this. We all have weaknesses, and yes, some of those things you can fight and conquer, but others? Well, that’s when you find someone else who has the strength you lack in that area. I believe, in my heart, that that is why we have all been made so different–it forces us to work together, to complement each other. I would never perform surgery or try to teach math–it’s simply not my strength. But I also know that there are many people who would never try to write. “How do you do that?” they ask me. I don’t know–how do you solve an equation or perform the Queen’s Gambit (Google tells me that’s a classic chess opening)? I only know that I know where my strengths lie and where they don’t, and I’m happy that there are other folks out there who can fill in those gaps for me.

Road Trip-Day Whatever

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Who cares what day it is? I’ve been stuck in the ditch for a week now, so time is losing all relevance.

Can you tell it’s not going well? Writing this from a deep well of frustration. I went back and, I thought, fixed all of the formatting problems, followed KDP’s publishing guide step-by-step, went back to the beginning and uploaded my shiny, clean, sparklingly new file…and it STILL is telling me I don’t have a cover, I don’t have a TOC, I don’t have an NCX file (whatever the heck that is). I can see the cover thumbnail is there! I can see and use the TOC in the preview! What do you mean I don’t have them? Plus, it’s listing 47 pages of HTML errors, which is a foreign language to me (not one of the 3 I speak, unfortunately).

This is so disheartening, because I am so close, I can almost taste it, but technology is just dangling the tantalizing spoon in front of me, taunting me for my lack of technical skills.

Grrr!

All right. Veni, vidi, vented…Back to the drawing board. Getting very close to just saying screw it and turning it over to a pro…

But I want to do this myself! she wailed.

Send me some good mojo, folks, we’re heading for a bumpy landing!

Just Scribbling

Writer Julia Tagliere shares work and other stuff