A Madness in My Method

I've been me and worked with myself long enough to know how I roll.

Like the stages of grief to acceptance, I have my own way of doing things. I wish I had Visio on this PC. I'd draw you a picture. It's not a real process unless it has a flowchart.

Anyway, here's how it works:

Step 1. I am handed a new project. I am overjoyed. Here at last is the project for which I was made. My mother labored in a delivery room 54 years ago just for this specific moment.

Step 2. Boldly, I dive into the new project. I feel like I'm in a David Hockney painting because everything is so clear, no shadows, so linear, no toxic heaps on the floor. I swim flawlessly for 25% of the time. Then...

Step 3. I submit my work thus far for approval. Any confidence I had on steps 1 and 2 has by now disintegrated into jitters and the inability to look the project in the eye while I know my superiors are reviewing my work. I imagine them burying their heads in their hands, saying, "I'm not gonna tell her. You tell her. I know she was really counting on this, but for crying out loud, can't she even write a simple Whatever?"

Depending on my mood, the alternative is Ralphie Parker's fantasy in "A Christmas Story" when he hands in his "What I Want for Christmas" essay. The teacher is in such ecstasies that she writes "A+ + + + + +" all around the room.

Either scenario results in my hiding my head and playing Bejeweled 2 obsessively.

Step 4. I finally trank myself down enough to ask the question that seldom fails:

I don't know what to do next but if I did, I would ___________

Usually, it's simple to fill in the blank, even when I'm waiting for feedback.

I realize right now I'm operating in what feels like a vacuum to me and that does nothing to quell my nervousness.

Step 5. Accept that no answer will be immediately forthcoming and get to work. I realize that I may be leading myself down my own primrose path, but eh, it's something to do.

Step 6. Receive feedback. There are three possible scenarios here.

Scenario 1: They love me! They love me and think every word I write, including if, and, and the, is a perfect shrine to Strunk & White. Carry on, carry on!

Scenario 2: They hate me. I couldn't write my way out of a paper bag. The document is covered with so many corrections that it looks like it's bleeding. I hang my head in despair and wait for the axe to fall.

Scenario 3: They think it's good but it needs some work. Could I finish up with the task matrices?

This whole business will be repeated until, um, it ends.

Right Here, Right Now

When I write, I get this....itch to go to where I'm writing about. In fact, it quickly becomes an obsession.

The book about the photographer who finds out her mother is a duchess and her boyfriend's a prince who *might* be her brother and her bodyguard/assistant is really her father and all around them, the Berlin Wall is falling? (Please. Be kind. It was a long time ago.) I was desperate, desperate to go tearing off to Berlin. I've never been to Berlin in my life, nor have I otherwise shown much interest in going, but I tell you what, I was ready to put on my traveling shoes during that November.

And of course, her mother the duchess-in-exile lived in Paris (bien sur) as did her boyfriend the prince. And I was just frantic to go to Paris. Of course I didn't. I was unemployed and Xman and I were living off the rest of my savings and his salary, so there were zero trips to Paris. And I also got it into my head that I needed to go to Rouen, but I forget why, now.

The one about the librarian/part-time detective was an easy one. She lived in Orlando, where - gasp! - I happened to be living.
This was the time when girl detectives drove funky cars and lived in funky places, so I gave her my first car, a 1973 blue Camaro. And I found out that in Winter Park FL, there are small houses that line the canals there, almost like elevated houseboats, so I had her living in one of those. Checking out the orange groves and wandering the country side was easy.

Sometimes, I can't go where I'm writing about. I was knee deep in a book set alternately in the depths of Angola and London and while I knew I would never set foot in Angola, I learned enough about it to write passably about it before I hit the Drop Zone. It didn't make it across the Drop Zone, in case you were wondering. Go see 'Blood Diamond' instead. I have a feeling it's pretty much the same story.

Luckily, 'Had she been beautiful' takes place in the Hudson River Valley (about a two hour drive for me) and New York City, an hour's train ride away.

The amazing thing about all of this is that imagination is stronger than I had ever believed.

Nutbag, now an author of eight books (yes, published but just about always remaindered, heh heh), once wrote about the center feature of a London park during the Regency era. She called it something like the Grand Fountain and when reviewers commented on her detailed description of it, she laughed, "I made it up! It doesn't exist!" Ah, but it easily could have.

I guess I've seen enough movies set in Paris so that I described it accurately, confirmed by my one trip there many years after the book was consigned to the bottom desk drawer.

So why can't I describe a deserted hunting lodge, abandoned by Soviet bureaucracy, in a former satellite republic? Why can't I have the un-beautiful woman know the sound of a neighbor's sleighbells?

This is the only magic I know that's real, this magic of the mind. Maybe it all comes from some big-as-the-universe reservoir we all have access to. It's addictive, though. And that's both a warning and an enticement.

I'm ready to go to Happy Valley, located close to the scene where 'Had she been beautiful' mostly takes place. I hope I'll go up there in the middle of winter, too, with the snow deep underfoot. And old New York is still here, too. You just have to know where to look.