English Beauty over Time

It's been a busy, hot summer but I feel like it's finally winding down a bit. Hard to think about writing when the garden and beaches beckon you outdoors! 

"English Rose: Feminine Beauty from Van Dyck to Sargent" - Exhibit at Bowes Museum

As I start to put together my preliminary notes for the next book, "Snowbound Seductions," I don't have much trouble envisioning my hero. But the heroine is a bit more troublesome. Then I came across this article about a new exhibition: "The English Rose: Feminine Beauty from Van Dyck to Sargent" running at the Bowes Museum, County Durham, England. 

Think of it -- 400 years worth of how English society depicted its ideals of beauty in portraiture. Now that is a resource that I can use as a writer!  Here are some images over time --

Such a wealth of information -- dress, hats, hair styling, jewelry and other adornments.  It certainly makes it easier to begin to craft not only the heroine, but also secondary characters.  And as this novelette will be set during the Christmas holidays, that will be my next subject area to research.

So I hope you stay tuned for more updates on Snowbound Seductions -- 

Down Time from Writing:

What does a writer do in between books? The summer is such a hard time to sit in front of a computer and attempt to create a story when the sunlight flickers on the blinds, the birds are chirping and the garden is beckoning you from beyond the window! So now that my studio/writing den is completed, I decided to give myself several weeks off to empty the tired brain, ease up on the eyestrain and enjoy the remaining weeks of summer. Here in New England it's just a matter of time before the weather may take a turn for the worse.

This is my Cape Cod bowl of broken sea shells -- I call them my writing worry beads. Whenever I get in a jam for just the right word or phrase or a particular scene, I dip in and find a shell I can rub as I ponder. It also reminds me of my time on the beach at the Cape earlier this summer -- peaceful, relaxing, marvelous!

Another way to turn off the writing brain is crafting. I've been a crafter for years -- knitting, quilting, crochet, collage and painting. This is the current palette of colors I'll be working with, along with my stash of batik fabrics. I'm going to try to complete a log cabin quilt, probably just a lap quilt or a wall quilt to hang in my studio -- another source of inspiration!

This is a sample of one of the log cabins I finished this weekend. Now I'm interested in trying this pattern in crochet. Well, it's going on 3pm and I feel a need for a glass of chilled chardonnay and my latest read: Shannon Hale' Midnight in Austenland. I got such a kick out of the movie, Austenland, that I decided to try the book -- both quite enjoyable, although this one loosely follows Northanger Abbey so it has a bit of a Gothic twist! Have a great Sunday afternoon, everyone and thanks for stopping by!

After 20+ years in the lower level of our home, next to the laundry room and with very little natural light, I have finally emerged upstairs into a new creative space -- my studio and writing den . . .

I think I may faint!

 If I were Virginia Woolf, I would add to my famous quote: A woman needs a room of one's own (preferably with a lock), money and time . . . and natural light. 

When the last child moves out of the family nest, it is a bittersweet moment. And then the ideas begin to percolate. I am very lucky that my husband spent the past three weeks scrubbing down wood floors, buffing, painting, hauling teenage debris, especially in the 90+ degree heat we've been having (I helped, too!).

Although the space is a work in progress, here are some of the ideas I pulled from Pinterest. Windows are a big thing with me, as you can tell.  And color, lots and lots of color.

We copied the colors of our favorite place -- Cape Cod -- using bright white for the trim and windows and a soft, pale grey for the walls, leaving the wood floors clear of rugs.

Right now I'm working on some hand-crocheted mandalas, which I'll make into buntings for around the windows (no curtains) and perhaps along the bookcases.  Here's a sneak peek at what they look like --

Once I have enough, I'll string them together and hang. I like to follow two excellent crochet gurus:  Lucy at Attic24 and Wink in the Netherlands.  If you're into crochet or knitting, you must check out their sites.  

Well, what does this have to do with writing romance novels?  It's just another way to keep the creative right brain functioning, even when you're taking a break.  I've already begun the opening scenes for my next romance.  Hint: something set during the holiday season involving some merry widows!  

What is your favorite spot to create, read, paint, sew, dream?

Share it!  Pin it!  The more, the merrier!

Debut eBook:

Release date:  June 13, 2016!

This is an exciting moment for a debut author - how many months
and weeks you work on your story, lose faith, pull your hair,
buy multiple bottles of eye drops due to bloodshot eyes, stomach
lurching because you've drank so much coffee -- but it's all
worth it when the day comes.

I hope you'll enjoy Passionate Persuasions (click here to purchase) 
and, if you can, leave a review for others.  After all, it's for our readers 
that we write, and your input is valuable to the writers!

 

The Writer's Life

Putting the finishing touches to my regency novella ebook, Passionate Persuasions, and hope to hit the submit button this coming weekend.  

Scary stuff.  It's one thing to write, but it's another thing all together different to revise, edit, revise again . . . 

You cry, 

You tear your hair out because somewhere in the middle of all this creativity you changed the hero's name but didn't carry it throughout the entire story,

You changed the heroine's hair color, which now clashes with everything she wears,

You stopped writing for a few weeks and when you return, the story picks up in a different landscape, a different season, a different town . . .  where the heck are we?

And the list goes on. And that doesn't include any grammatical corrections, sentence structure, chapter endings . . . 

So why does one write?  Why torture oneself?

Here's the secret:  because it ultimately is fun, enticing, magical.  You get to create a whole world all your own (until you publish, that is) and live in this world forever.  Well, not forever but long enough to feel that your characters are part of the family.  You know their quirks, their passions, their problems, just like children.

Ah, there's the rub -- just like children.  Yes, they do tend to do what they want; they often do not do what you want them to do, and then once in a great while, they turn the tables on you and do something not in the script, thus forcing you to revise again.

And so it goes.

It's a misery.  It's a passion.  It's an enigma.  

But ask me if I'll continue writing, and I'll say yes, yes, and yes again -- until I'm halfway through the next editing/revising process on that story and the cycle comes round once again!

 

Creative Block and Writing

Creative block.  Ugh.  There's no excuse but when it hits, it hits hard.  The blank page stares back at you.  The white, glaring computer screen flashes in your face, mocking your lack of inspiration, increasing your perspiration.

Some writers advise to 'just keep on writing!'  Write anything, any piece of drivel that falls onto the page or the screen, as long as you continue to write.  My brain comprehends that, but my heart just feels too weary to continue the battle.

That's what struck me about the Agatha Christie quote you see above.  Inspiration can come at the oddest times and in the oddest places -- doing dishes, digging in the garden, waiting on line at the grocery store.  It comes in waves or it can dribble in like a slow leak.  

The thing is to be ready for it.  Some artists sketch on napkins; some writers scribble a few indiscernible notes on the back of a receipt.  But here's the thing:  I think the physical act of writing, whether it be with a pen or pencil, crayon or eyeliner pen, makes the mind retain the essence of the inspiration.  The kinetic movement of hand and instrument at the time of your flash makes the body and the mind remember more effectively.

So, yes, many of us dream of our "ideal" writing space -- perfect desk, perfect pen or laptop, perfect chair and cup of tea or java, perfect view (god, isn't this an awesome spot to write?) . . .
 

. . . but in the end it's simply capturing those flashes of inspiration on slips of paper and then plopping one's butt in the chair and writing.  When hitting those raw spots that are difficult to get through, move to long-hand writing.  Again, the physical act may prompt an even greater flow of thoughts and ideas, characterizations and plotting.  If editing and revising, that is a different process all together -- and I'll write more on that in a few days.  

What do you do to move through a creative block?

Share your tips with the rest of us!

Take a hint from Mr. Bradbury:

Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. He waited until the age of 30 to write his first novel, Fahrenheit 451.

 

Stuff your head. To accumulate the intellectual building blocks of these metaphors, he suggests a course of bedtime reading: one short story, one poem and one essay. These essays should come from a diversity of fields, including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature. “At the end of a thousand nights,” so he sums it up, “you’ll be full of stuff!”

I'm going to try some of these tips -- write swift, write short; diverse reading
to expand the old gray cells.  Works for me!
 

Ray Bradbury, recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91 after a long illness. He lived in Los Angeles.  A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award.