Thursday, May 5: Femme Fatale
BENEATH THE SURFACE
by Deborah Elliott-Upton
I feel like I’m treading water in a sea of Olympic swimmers sailing past me. My friend Jennifer Archer just published her first hardback, Through Her Eyes, a young adult novel that has a touch of mystery and a ghost and a fabulous cover. My friend April is in the midst of adopting a baby from Ethiopia, though she already has two biological children and home schools them in a beautiful home she keeps by herself. My daughter works an evening shift, attends college full time, is an award-winning published writer and has just presented us with a beautiful granddaughter. And me? I’m thinking about writing a novel.
Okay, so the thinking isn’t just thinking. I allow my characters and their friends and where they live, die, and sometimes plot crimes or solve them, to develop almost in utero. I have scribbled a brief outline and a character study where I still need to fill in some blanks. I don’t fully know my heroine yet, so how can I understand her motives, much less the friends she will make or why she would even attempt to solve this mystery? I feel like Mary in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” sitting at the ice cream counter not able to make a decision about what she wants from the soda fountain. “I’m still thinking,” she says. Then when she does make up her mind, the young-but-already-knowing-what-he-wants-from-life George Bailey tells her she’s an idiot not to like coconut, and doesn’t she even know where coconut comes from?
People are always happy to point out:
- I should write romance because it sells more. (These people haven’t seen my attempts at romance!)
- Mysteries have more competition in writing contests, so it makes sense there is more competition in the publishing world, too.
- Short stories are a hard sell and there’s less money in them when you do sell them.
What works for one person rarely does for his neighbor (except maybe when it comes to fences). Yet I still listen to counsel from those who “are in the know” about such things. I also listen to those who have my best interests at heart. That Muse that flits around sometimes is fun, but she doesn’t always know what’s best for me; she just knows what I’ll enjoy playing around with her for a while.
I am listening to my own heart. It may look like I am drifting on that water, but underneath my legs are in constant motion. If they weren’t, I would sink from sight.
I’m still here. I have great plans. But for this moment, I’m still thinking.
We’ve all been there! But the problem with the arts is that you not only have to love them, but you do.
Good luck with the novel.
LOL…..I know the way you think. You will write that novel and be an ‘overnight success’ like so many that were thinking for awhile!!
Lissa, you crack me up. Overnight success it is!
You’re already in the water. Makes me think you have made the decision. Don’t worry about genres. Your words on the paper will tell you where you belong
I think it’s time you dove right in.
First hardback or not, I still feel as if I’m treading water, too. And I also have a flitting muse. I am constantly reinventing myself as a writer. I have written adult romantic comedy, funny women’s fiction, serious women’s fiction, paranormal romance, two personal histories. I ghostwrote a business book and a romance. Now I’m writing YA. I would probably be much further along in the traditional sense of “success” if I had stuck to one genre. But it wouldn’t have been half as creatively challenging and interesting! You have had great success, too! Success is in the eye of the beholder.
LOL, I’m not saying I feel like quitting. Just that when someone asked me the other night what was I writing now, it made me realize perhaps I am writing mostly for me and not thinking commercially…but I do have a few ideas up my sleeve, so it ain’t over. LOL I could never quit anyway. I can see myself on a deathbed reaching for a pen and one more scrap of paper for that great plotline that just came to me.