My Favorite Tyrants

So this has been a very, very long week.

If you've been reading along, you may remember that I once referred to my 2 1/2 year-old daughter as a gorgeous little Russian despot. A tyrant  with bright blue eyes and a killer left-hook.

Well. The Czarina has returned. Let me just say that this week involved all of the following:

tantrums
hitting
screaming
no no no no no no no no NO I WON'T!
running into parkinglots
late nights
early mornings
time outs
spankings
fingers caught in windows
broken toys
migraines
pizza

I know that God laughs at me. I mean to say, laughs with me.

No, at me. These days it's definitely at me.

This is okay. My life is pretty funny. And sometimes it's difficult not to laugh when your stubborn little Mossad-agent in training decides to stage all-out war.

But Mama is tired.

So, for today, in honor of my little Czarina, a list of 6 of my favorite tyrants of all time:

1. Cleopatra

The world was hers. She ordered men around like puppies. And she wore great eyeliner.















2. Genghis Khan

A big, bad meanie. Basically created the Mongol Empire and conquered most of Eurasia. And did it with a Fu Manchu.


3. The Lady MacBeth

Wild, erratic, nutso. At least in Shakespeare's version, intent on world domination.

4. Vlad the Impaler

The inspiration for Dracula. One scary son of Pete. (The name says it all, really.)


5. The Emperor Nero

Supposedly fiddled while Rome burned and liked to capture Christians. Enough said.  
















6. Czarina Wylie. Ruling Despot of Turnpike Road.

Notorious for tantrum-throwing (usually in front of visiting dignitaries), plate-launching, and yogurt-tossing. Also refusing to hike any further.

Endings

Note: If you haven't read or watched the final installment in the Harry Potter series, there are spoilers ahead.

Last night, my husband and I finally watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. In the midst of summer travels and work and toddler-wrangling and life, we'd missed it in the theatre. Not only had neither of us read the final book in the series, we'd also managed not to ask or overhear just how the whole saga ended. So when we sat down, excited, in our dark living room with our newly HDified TV, we had no idea what was going to happen.

I realize we're behind the times. But bear with me.

I was sure that J.K. Rowling was going to kill Harry. I thought, this is the only reconciliation for such a myth and magic-laden epic: sacrifice the boy. Save the world.

Happily, I was wrong. And the movie ended as it should have--our focus on the faces of three true friends.

But this made me, today, ponder on endings. Crafting a beautiful, memorable, and above all satisfying ending has to be one of the toughest things about being a writer. Creating an ending for a series must be even more difficult, considering that your readers have made a major investment in the lives and times of your characters.

One of my favorite historical authors, Sara Donati, ended her acclaimed Wilderness novels by utilizing a series of news articles and obituaries in her fictional town's newspaper--a newspaper her main protagonist, the heart of the series, had founded. It was a poignant and lovely way to close the book on a host of memorable and beloved characters.

But there are other ways of doing this. Cinematically, it just seems easier.






Butch and Sundance went out guns blazing.

Thelma and Louise drove a car off a cliff.

                                         And Rhett decided he didn't give a damn.

Movies have the luxury of outside influences--musical scores, set direction--to aid in just how deeply their endings affect a moviegoer. But writers have only words, and those words had better be the right ones if a reader is going to close the book truly changed from what he or she has read. This is no easy task.

Anton Chekhov once said, "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." And writers, as much as moviegoers, want to be there in that world and in that moment--whether they're captive in a dark theatre or huddled under the covers, reading by flashlight. They want to see the light on the broken glass.

I'm still not certain if I love the ending of the Harry Potter series, book or film. And this is interesting to me, because I'm utterly in awe of J.K. Rowling, profoundly moved and fascinated by the widths and depths of her imaginative powers. I can't read her novels or watch the films based on them without grinning hugely, even at the dark parts. My God, that woman has a gift.

But I wonder, at times, if it's possible to truly write a great ending. And has anyone ever really done it successfully? Or do we leave this to our readers, assuming that--despite our best efforts as writers--they will find a sort of imaginative closure off the page, in the recesses of their own imaginations?

Favorites List: Things I Love About Life-Long Friends

This afternoon my daughter and I are headed to Charlotte, N.C. to visit two of my oldest and dearest friends. One of these women I have known since birth, and another since I was in kindergarten. Years ago our parents forged a bond of friendship (involving quite a lot of adult beverages, Motown, and beach/lake time) for which I am forever grateful.

I'd include photos here, of our parents and us, but that could be trouble. Instead, I'll share one of our favorite places:

The Lawdy Mercy, Garden City Beach, S.C.

All friendships are blessings--some of the greatest in this life. Whether old or new, friends bring color and relief and magic to our everyday spinning through space. But for today, here's to life-long friendships, and life-long friends!

10 Things I Love About Life-Long Friends:

1. They don't let you lie to them.

When you've been friends so long that you learned to potty-train together, you forfeit all subterfuge.

2. They really, truly think you're beautiful--and say so.

This one's important: No matter how fat or thin you grow, no matter how your belly and boobs change after childbirth, or how many wrinkles form at the corners of your eyes, these friends see you as you were 20 years ago, and as you are now. And they love you for it all.

This is especially important in the case of my particular friends, because I suffered the zit and braces-filled adolescent years with them. Years when my mouth and my nose were too big for my face. Years when I had bouffant bangs. The year of the perm.

3. They know how to mix your drink.

Heck, they know what you like to drink, how you like to drink it, when you like to drink it, and when you need a drink.

4. They share with you.

Their clothes, their shoes, their children, their vacation houses, their favorite new music, their secrets, their recipes. Life-long friends love you like family, and when they find or have something or someone else that they love, they want you to be part of it.

5. They're there for you, good times and bad.

This is a biggie. When you are, and have been, friends for life, you endure it all together: weddings, funerals, births, cancer, moves, job losses and gains, hearts merged and broken. Whether you're in the room or over the phone, or a thousand miles away from each other, you are there. And there's nothing more important than this.

6. They make you do things you don't want to do--but they do them with you.

Even if one of these (many) things involves a lot of wine, a sunset over the marsh, a band, a microphone, and maracas.

7. They put sunscreen on you.

This cannot be overstated. Lathering someone up with sunscreen is tedious, annoying and messy. You have to really love another person to commit to making sure they're not going to get fried in hot pink patches. I've estimated that these friends and I have been putting sunscreen on each other for about 20 years.

8. Their hearts break and swell with yours.

When you hurt or get hurt, life-long friends feel it too. This is different than being there in spirit or being there physically when something happens in your life.

The simple fact is, when you've been friends this long, you're part of each other's DNA. You feel for each other like family... really, in many ways, like something more than family, because you've chosen each other. And it doesn't matter if you don't talk on the phone every week, or if there are years when you see each other only once or twice. When they hurt, you hurt. And you're on your knees, in the dark, begging for their relief. When they rejoice, you rejoice. And you send your love out into the stratosphere like shouting into an emotional bull horn.

9. It doesn't matter how far apart you live, or how long it's been since you've last been together. When you get together, it's as if time has stood still, and you pick up right where you left off.

We have lived as close as half a mile and as far as 700+ miles apart. We've gone months and even years since being together. It just doesn't matter: our connection is rooted in the blood.

10. You are forever friends.

Really.

Historical Research: Or, an Excuse to Feed My Book Habit

I'm a collector. I collect quotes, photos, images, art, random thoughts. I've been doing this since I was a kid. Later, in college, I covered the walls of my freshman year dorm room with the stuff--mostly any statement I considered inspiring, made by writers and artists I was enamored with at the time. I seem to recall a lot of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Frank Capra on my walls. (My collage also included a purely academic photo spread from Vanity Fair of Texas newcomer Matthew McCoughnahey. It was called "Lone Star." He was wearing blue jeans, boots, and a cocky little grin. I think I still have it.)

These days, when I begin a novel, I always begin with images--physical or imagined. If an image or scene pops in my head, I get it down. If it's something I see in a magazine or book--I've even collected quotes from tea bags and Nike ads--I pin the image to a bulletin board I use expressly for this purpose.

Filmmakers do something like this, but they call it "storyboarding." Though my version isn't nearly as organized (and how I wish it were), it's a fun, visual way to make an idea present during my creative process.

Here's what I've got going for the novel I'm working on now:

It all started with the guy in the center: it's an anonymous photo I've had--and been captivated by--since 2008, when I was a writing resident at the Vermont Studio Center. A friend of mine, another writer, had it, and let me make a copy. The grainy, blown-up image has been itching at me since then. I can only assume from clues about the man's dress and hair style that it's from the 19th century. Who the man really was, I have no idea. But now he's a main character in my new novel.

Whenever I have a random thought about the novel--plot, setting, what have you--I jot it down on a piece of paper and pin it to the board. It's not organized, and it's not neat. In fact, I'm in the early stages, so this is about as good as my storyboard is going to look over the next year. It'll be covered in Post-It notes and other cut-outs and pictures in no time, and will eventually resemble something like a framed scrap heap.

I don't have a system. I'm not a plotter (however much I'd like to be). A novel, for me, grows organically. I have to get it down, then figure it out. Hopefully, I'm learning how to do this better... and hopefully, my MFA program will help. 

What I do love (like a cold Corona Light with lime on a hot Carolina beach) is the research process. Right now I'm dipping my toe in the cotton boom of the 1850s in coastal South Carolina. It's a fascinating, dark, strange and glittering world. And I'm just getting started. So far, my physical research looks like this:

That's basically a short stack of Internet articles and a book I just ordered about James Petigru, a venerable Charleston lawyer who was against secession and didn't care who knew it. (This was a very big deal in the antebellum South, and especially in Charleston, S.C.) When he died in 1863, he was memorialized--indeed, lauded--by Confederate and Union sympathizers alike. I've found him fascinating since I first learned about him in the 8th grade. (Yes, I'm that girl.) And I want to know what life was like at that time and in that place for people who felt the way he did.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. When I research, I bury myself. I've got three other books coming in the mail, and four on order via interlibrary loan. On advice from an historical novelist I respect, I'll soon be planning a researching road trip to S.C. to delve into the newspapers of the time. (What I'll do with my two year-old, I don't know. But I'm sure she'll sit quietly by my side while I spend hours looking at microfilm.)

This novel has been on the backburner for a while now, ever since pregnancy and new motherhood threw a wonderful, exhausting wrench into my writing life. But now it's back. I'm back. And I'm learning to fit my old way of doing things to my new life. It may take me a helluva lot longer, and I may have to purchase stock in a Costa Rican coffee farm to stay upright during the process, but I can do it.

Book Heroin & Writer Lust

I've got a book problem.

I've always had it, but lately it's gotten worse. I am drowning in books.

Over the years--as recently as the Fall--I have made attempts to seek a cure. I've culled my books, my haphazard library. I've donated books to friends, to the county library, to women's and childrens' groups. I became a volunteer for Operation Paperback, and each month I send countless paperbacks overseas to soldiers who desperately need a good story.

None of this has helped my disease. Let me offer proof.

Exhibit A, one of the four bookshelves in my livingroom/kitchen:



This bookshelf just squeaked, "Save me!"

Do not believe my husband when he tells you that I haven't given away enough books. I have. But this is as far as I can go. I won't show you the other seven bookshelves in my house. They're not fit for company.

Some girls dream of shopping sprees at Sephora and Manolo Blahniks. I dream of built-in bookshelves.

Now that I've begun my MFA in Writing, my book problem has gotten worse. Short story collections and essay collections--slim volumes, true--have been added to the stacks. Aimee Bender, Katherine Mansfield, and Jim Harrison have now joined the ranks of William Shakespeare, Diana Gabaldon, Lauren Groff and William Bartram. The books on my shelves speak Cherokee, Gullah, Cockney English, Gaelic and vampire. Yet they get along. I think.

Yesterday, I continued work on a new novel, which opens up a realm of possibilities for research. Okay, fine. A new reason to feed my book problem. Still, the sky has brightened and the seas have parted on a whole new world of topics like the Antebellum women's movement, the cotton industry, and pirates. Ooh, and also horse racing and 19th century politics and riding boots.

I might as well just go ahead and open a vein.

As a result of my book problem, I recently purchased one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in years: A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness. This book, which I gobbled down in about two days last weekend, satisfied all my cravings. It's centered around a
young American historian in Oxford (a hereditary witch determined to ignore her witchy DNA); a gorgeous, bookish vampire-scientist, and an ancient text. This is no teenager's vampire story: The pace of the novel is lightening-fast, the settings gorgeous, the mystery fun, and since Harkness herself is a PhD in history and a research hound, it totally satisfies the egghead in me. I can't wait for the sequel.

Since I read it, I've been suffering from writer lust. Another of my unfortunate "problems." I'm not necessarily jealous of Harkness's success (okay, maybe a smidge). What I lust after is her skill, her power to meld intellect with imagination. This is the sort of story I always long to tell: one that fuses history and research and books and adventure, and, when necessary (and some could argue this is always necessary), love.

And on top of all that, to create a story readers enjoy--full-throttle enjoy, like I did. On a beach, at the lake, on their couches, on a plane. Heads bent over gripped pages or Ipads or Kindles, completely immersed. Reading into the wee hours, though they have jobs and kids and life to take care of the next day.

It also doesn't hurt that as a full-time professor and author, Harkness is engaged in almost exactly the dual career I've been working toward since I was 24. And she's only in her mid-40s.

Did I mention that A Discovery of Witches is her fiction debut? Debut. First novel. And already a bestseller.

Okay, maybe more than a smidge jealous. But it's good-natured jealousy, non-threatening writer lust. Because for all her success and writerly genius, I get to read what she writes. And that's a gift.

So now it's back to my own projects and the story I'm currently trying to tell. In two minutes, it'll be time to wake my daughter, whom I've already let chatter and sing in her crib for far too long. Then my day really begins.

It's a wild, complicated, frustrating, wonderful, exhausting, exhilirating life, choosing to be a writer. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I also wouldn't trade this for anything:

My daughter, 2 1/2, head in her own book.



Happy Thursday, all!

The Life and Times of an Author Web Site

My author web site, Katherine Scott Crawford, is officially up and running!

The thanks for this go to a dear friend of mine, Ben Muldrow. Ben is a partner at Arnett, Muldrow & Associates, an "urban planning firm" based in Greenville, S.C. (I like to think that Ben helps towns find their soul.) I basically hoodwinked Ben into creating my web site because he knows me, knows my writing, knows my good and bad and crazy, and he's just so ridiculously talented I couldn't stand to think of anyone else doing it. We've known each other since the 8th grade, so I guess I didn't really hoodwink him. When you've known someone since one or both of you were in braces, some things are a given.

I can't speak to what's it like to design a web site, because to say I lack those kind of skills is an understatement. I'm learning, in small ways, how to navigate the labyrinthine (at least to me) world that is technology, but it's not my world. As far as I'm concerned, my Toshiba laptop is just a really neat, flat little box with big keys that feel good to type on, holds my writing and my photos and lets me do all kinds of fun research. Oh. Also, something to stick DVDs in. That's about it. I can, however, speak to what it's like to formulate an idea for a web site, and to create content for it.

I'm lucky, because I have someone like Ben who knows how the media/branding/marketing + Internet world works, and who knew which Internet host to go with, and what type of design would best suit my needs and my vision. He took care of all that. And I did these things:

• Researched the websites and blogs of authors I admired.
• Researched the websites and blogs of authors who wrote books like (or sort of like) mine.
• Found images I loved and that I thought represented KEOWEE VALLEY, and collected them.

This, of course, basically consisted of me drinking copious amounts of coffee while fooling around on the Internet for days, reading all about the people and stuff I like. My favorite authors' sites had interesting and pertinent content, great design, and necessary features. In particular, I looked to the web sites of historical writers Darci Hannah, Diana Gabaldon, Kate Mosse, Katherine Howe, Wayne Caldwell, Jim Fergus, Sara Donati, A.D. Scott, and more.

• I then made a list of all of the above, with links to each.
• I also listed what I didn't like about some of them: Maybe the font was too small, the colors too pastel or too glaring, the photos blurred, the content cheesy, the design cluttered.
• I then culled to my top three, noting what I liked best about them: appeareance (fonts, photos, design schemes, colors, etc) and content (pages included, information given, order of pages, etc). What was too much? Too little?

After Ben constructed the design, I played with the pages on WordPress, deciding which order I wanted things, what information, and where. I knew I needed information about me (i.e. a bio), about the novel (excerpt, praise, and since it's an historical and I love research, an abridged bibliography), about my blog, about any events I may have, information for reviews/book clubs/bloggers, and a sort of miscellaneous page (for other writing, links to friends and organizations I support or who have supported me, etc).

While I constructed all the content myself, I had help, especially on the short and long versions of my bio. (My friend Brian Zufall, who is a fabulous copywriter and who works for Gibbons Peck in Greenville, S.C., was my go-to guy. Still will be, because there's a lot left to do....) Brian is another one of those friends who's known me since braces. And high school politics. And an unfortunate incident with a pom-pom.

I highly recommend having someone with the appropriate media and writing-savvy aiding you when you're coming up with this stuff. Yes, I've utilized Ben and Brian because they're my buddies. They know me extremely well, and have for a long time. But more importantly, I asked them for help because they're incredibly good at what they do.

My web site is constantly changing and evolving. And I'm still getting used to the fact that it's really a blog, too, even though The Writing Scott is my official one. I use the blog function on the author site for quick updates, like events, or when I have great news, like when Southern writer Ron Rash provided an especially cool blurb about my upcoming novel. I'm hoping there'll be more of those types of announcements in the future, and that there'll be real-life readers wanting to know about them.

It's sort of like what William Shakespeare did with all his plots: he borrowed and picked and chose and basically stole ideas from others, and then created something fabulous. He was the world's most innovative pick-pocket. Not that I'm comparing my writing, in any way, to Will Shakespeare. I'm not fit to trim his goatee. Or shine his girly, buckled shoes. Or darn his hose. But you see my point.

You look at what you like, what you don't like. What fits your personality, your novel, your project--and what doesn't. You get help. A whole lot of it. From good people who know their stuff. And then you work. You change what you need to. You engage. And you hope people will like it, and want more.

Leap Day List

Today is Leap Day. And since it only comes around every four years, I say we celebrate. (I'm always looking for a reason to celebrate. Today I'm celebrating by putting Cafe Mocha creamer in my coffee. I like to Go Big.)

For your pleasure, here are 10 fun facts about Leap Day:

1. Leap Day is basically the result of we humans trying to bend nature to our humanly calendar. The Earth actually does not orbit around the sun in 365 days, if you can believe it. It really takes 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds. So we do a little adjusting. If we didn't, eventually the calendar would be so off there'd be winter in July.

2. If your birthday is today, you can join the Honor Society of Leap Year Babies. I bet you get a trophy.

3. But if you're Scottish, you're, um, not so lucky. In the olden days, Leap Day babies were called "leaplings," and were thought to be sickly and difficult.

4. In the Leap Year of 1504, astronomy-savvy Christopher Columbus used the fact that he knew there was going to be a lunar eclipse to trick the Native Americans into offering him supplies. Scoundrel.

5. In the Leap Year of 1916 in my native South Carolina, goverment officials raised the minimum age for mine, mill, and factory workers from 12 to a seasoned 14.



6. In the first century BC, Julius Caesar tried to fix the calendar with the Leap Year, but things still weren't clicking. If we'd stuck with his plan, things would be "off" every 128 days. So in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII stepped in and changed the Leap Year rules.

7. Which are: 1) A year must be evenly divided by four to be a Leap Year; and 2) Any year that's evenly divisible by 100 isn't a Leap Year... unless it's evenly divisible by 400, too. And thus we abandoned the Julian calendar and adopted the Gregorian one.

8. It's true, the old Irish tradition that states that a woman can propose to a man on Leap Day. But if the gent refuses, he's got to pony up with a gift. The Irish believed that in this case, the proper gift was several pairs of gloves... to hide the poor lady's ringless hand.









9. In Greece, it's unlucky to marry in a Leap Year, let alone on a Leap Day.

10. The Irish believe that all Leap Year traditions began in the 5th century, when a plucky nun named Brigid petitioned a powerful missionary named Patrick on behalf of all women. She believed women should play a larger role in choosing their husbands. Patrick supposedly consented, allowing women to propose every four years. Brigid and Patrick were later made saints.

Now you'll all be Trivial Pursuit rock stars. Happy Wednesday!


* * Fun facts compiled using The Writer's Almanac, Wikipedia, Project Britian.com, and CBC World News.