Writer Wednesday - What If Something Happens...

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

What If Something Happens... 

I'm sitting here at my desk on January 30. Watching the clock. Because my phone says that in 15 minutes, snow flurries will start. And over the course of the next day or two, something like 10 inches of snow should arrive. Since we are retired and since we have plenty of milk, bread, coffee, and toilet paper, I'm not worried a lot about it. My husband's not looking forward to dragging out the snow blower, for which I don't blame him.

And there's always this little itch at the back of my mind that I can't reach to scratch.

What if something happens?

We are what is euphemistically referred to as elderly, so it's always a bit of a concern, I guess, although I doubt we worry as much about it as our kids do. We have lived long and prospered, not to mention we've loved and laughed a lot. And we've been happy.

But that's not even why I brought that up. I brought it up because What if something happens? is the beginning of every story we tell. The only advice about writing I ever give with any surety is to start the story when something changes.

When something happens.

This seems...no, it is a simple concept. It's also one I have some trouble with. Because I like introspection. I like dialog. I love humor. I tolerate conflict. I can go on for days writing those things, and sometimes that's exactly what I do. Of course, all the time I'm writing this lovely prose, nothing is happening in the story.

The word for it in publishing is "pacing." I know this because it's been mentioned to me so many times. Usually, the word "slow" is in there somewhere, too.

I know I'm largely preaching to the choir here, but the lesson is a good one. I hope I learn from it by writing this. Now, snow flurries are supposed to have already started. They have not, but one of the cats is meowing worriedly, and bare branches are moving fretfully against a moody sky.

Something is going to happen.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - The Woman in the Mirror

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

The Woman in the Mirror 

Do you ever feel as if you lost yourself somewhere along the way? If you've had a bad time or an extraordinarily good one, do you ever look in the mirror and wonder exactly who's looking back at you? Because you've changed, and you're not sure what to do with the person who's there.

I'm feeling thoughty here--can you tell? I'm always, always whining about how much I hate change, yet when I look back--over bad times and extraordinarily good ones, it's an ongoing cycle, isn't it? It's what keeps life new and interesting. And, yeah, sometimes awful.

But if it weren't for change, and my kicking-and-screaming caving to it, I would:

Never have changed jobs and I'd have been stuck with working one I hated.

• Never have married the man I did because he wasn't the first person I loved.
• I'd never have had a third child.
• I'd have given up the first time a publisher said Nope.
• Or maybe the second.
• For sure by the twenty-third.
• I'd have kept my hair short.
• And let it go gray.
• I'd still be writing longhand on lined paper and thinking I wasn't good enough.
• For anything,

So, no, I don't always know the woman in the mirror, or, for that matter, the man I'm married to. I don't always like either of us. There are days when I do feel like I've lost the person I was. Because I have. Because every re-invention in every time of life is change, it's often hard, and it's always necessary. I think maybe I like it.

The post above isn't new. I found it when I was out cruising around trying to avoid the place in the scene I'm writing when I realize I turned the wrong way at the last corner. I thought maybe I shouldn't use it here because this is, after all, a writing blog.

But what is writing if not the recording of change? What we write--including fiction--wouldn't have much purpose if the story didn't start where something changes. I love knowing this. It feels almost like that "secret handshake" we used to laugh about published authors having.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - Let's Talk

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Let's Talk 

It is amazing the things that invite discussion, you know it? Tonight, sitting at a table with two other writers, we have tried to figure out what is making noise in the woods beyond the deck of the house where we're staying. So far, we still don't know what it is.

This afternoon, one of the other writers yelled because something was on her toe. She didn't know what it was or what to do. It wasn't all that funny until she figured out it was cake icing. Now it's hilarious and it's up in the air whose book it will appear in first. How it got there to begin with? Well, that's up in the air, too, but I'm all about making things up.

Duane and I talk about things upon which we disagree. Because, you know, we're married. We talk about them, over them, around them. We raise our voices, we say let's just not talk about this anymore, and sometimes we lapse into cranky and slightly childish silence. When we start the discussion again, we realize what we should have known in the first place--we're mostly in agreement; we just say so in different words.

A funny thing about discussion is the memory of it. Because the participants never remember it the same way. The discussion of a discussion can be as enlightening--not to mention horrifying--as the discussion itself. Only when it sinks to the level of, "No, you said...I distinctly remember. I didn't say anything" is it time to give over to talking about the weather.

If you've discussed politics or religion and the language gets inflammatory, give it a rest. You can't un-call those names because no matter how often you say, "That's not what I meant," it's still what you said.

This morning, at this table full of laptops on this retreat in the mountains I'm sharing with writer friends, we've talked about being fixers and

pleasers, about Facebook, about what kind of wives we were, and (incidentally) about the stories we're writing. We've talked about the books that most deeply affected us--Little Women; after all, I AM Jo March--about how long books have affected us and about books we haven't read and written yet.

With discussion comes learning. Comes truth--although not always absolute, because subjectivity often rears its head. Comes gasping laughter and gut-wrenching grief. In Steel Magnolias, Truvy said, "I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence."

That is, I believe, what lies at the bottom of every discussion well. As long as minds and hearts stay open, talking about it will help most everything. (My husband doesn't agree with this, by the way.) But at the end of the back-and-forth meeting of opinion, you need to be able to share tears and laughter.

It's something we're not all good at, isn't it? Maybe we should try harder. Have a great week. Talk to people. Be nice to somebody.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - About Writing…and Other Things

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

About Writing…and Other Things

About writing. And the virus. And fiction. And real life. And facts. 

I'm glad I write fiction as opposed to true-life, because fiction is negotiable. It's pliable and you can be assured of a happy ending. Although you're led by the characters you write, in the end the pen is still in your hand. 

Another thing about writing fiction is that one of its primary rules is that you check your facts before you put them on paper. If you're going to mention someone having six heart bypasses (which I did), you need to make sure it's a possibility. If your hero in 1865 is going to be singing "Little Brown Jug," he needs to reconsider--it hasn't been written yet. If you're writing about the Revolution, don't use the word mesmerize--no one did until 1829. 

There's more than one reason to be careful with facts in fiction. One is that you can be sued for defamation. Another is that many readers believe if something's in print, it must be true. (You can mess with that statement a lot. If it's on Facebook...if it's in the National Enquirer...if it's on YouTube...or my own choice--if it's in People...) 

Unfortunately, there are too many pens in too many hands in the virus, aren't there? Too many "if it's in..." quotations. 

Another facet of writing fiction is characterization. The better you are at it, the better your stories are. If you have a bad guy, you need to make sure he's not all bad, or the reader can't sympathize with him. If you have a hero and/or a heroine, you need to give them flaws so that the reader can be him or her. (I'm always relieved when a heroine has bad hair and some extra pounds.) 

All fiction stories have an arc that shows the growth of the story's protagonists from start to finish. Of course, the arc more often looks like a roller coaster, because it swoops up and down and goes in loops and occasionally goes completely off the rails, but, when you're coming down that last screaming drop, it's still an arc. The thing to do is not quit in the middle or there you'll be. Just hanging there, not sure whether to believe YouTube or science, this doctor or that one, a Facebook meme or a journalist. 

We can't quit in the middle--I still have grandkids to watch grow up so that I can take the credit for what fine people they are, don't you? We need to continue to search out the truth, to do our best to take care of others (whether we like them or not, no matter who they voted for), and to be really careful of what sources we quote from. I love People. It's probably my favorite "social media," but it doesn't pretend to be science. I love YouTube, too--it's where I listen to music. (And sing along, although I really shouldn't.) 

But if I quit reading in the middle, before I've looked at other sources and weighed them out, I shouldn't quote anything I've seen. I can't do that as a fiction writer; I most certainly should not when it comes to true-life. 

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved 

Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - Love And Heartwarming

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Love And Heartwarming 

For a happy trip during my writing journey, I wrote Harlequin Heartwarming books. We tried to define Heartwarming more than once, I think. We used the words wholesome, sweet, clean, and they all worked. But it was more than that for me. Writing them and reading them and working with the other women who write (and read) them was just the greatest gift, so even though my post today has nothing to do with writing, it does have to do with gifts. If I've used it before, I so apologize--please just pretend you've never seen it. 

In 1990, I had a brand new daughter-in-law I hardly knew. She hardly knew us, either, yet there she was living with us while her husband was at basic and then AIT with the army. She was young and scared and pregnant, giving birth to their first daughter while Chris was at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Their budget was so stretched as to be nonexistent, but one day when Tahne went to town, she came home with a bottle of gardenia cologne for me. It was her favorite scent, not mine, but she didn’t know me well enough to know what I liked—she just wanted to give me something. Over 30 years later, I’m not sure what ever became of the cologne, but I still have the daughter-in-law. 

We passed a car down to our grandsons. It was a car that had problems and created problems and should have been made into a nice meringue pie, but it was a pretty SUV, and the price made fixing its relentless foibles a viable option for the boys and their parents. Shea, the one who drove it the most, was thrilled beyond words to be driving the car. He worked at an orchard, and when he found out I loved Honeycrisp apples, he kept me in them until the orchard ran out of them. 

My daughter teaches special education. As the mother of three sons, girly isn’t part of her lifestyle, and she misses it sometimes. She decided she wanted to have Tiara Thursday for her girl students—Kari still wears her 40th-birthday tiara every chance she gets—but the cost of the sparkly headbands that she found for all her girls was prohibitive. When I found some in the clearance aisle at the Dollar Store, I texted to find out how many she needed. 

That Thursday morning, I took the yellow sack of purchases up to the school, thinking to leave them at the office for Kari to pick up, but she asked me to bring them to the classroom. Where I got to hand tiaras to five squealing, excited little girls who were very happy to pose for pictures and give me hugs and huge smiles. Even the boys in the class put on the tiaras for pictures. I’m pretty sure the tiaras were the best $7.50 I ever spent, and the gift was to me. 

No matter how much or how often I write about it, I don’t know how to define love any more than I can define Harlequin Heartwarming—I don’t think anyone does—but I guess if I had to, I’d say it was made of Honeycrisp apples, little-girl tiaras, and gardenia cologne. 

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved

Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - A Little Splash

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

 A Little Splash 

I've taken the day off. No, I mean it. As soon as I finished washing a load of towels this morning, I declared that to be the end. Yesterday was long and exhausting just by nature of the beast--helping someone move--so today I wasn't doing diddly. So there.

But yesterday we brought a bookcase home from my in-laws' house. It's a barrister case. Nice and roomy. It will be good for storing fabric. So I've done some rearranging. Some cutting. Cutting fabric is soothing. Sorting it is less so--I'm not good with color. Balance escapes me. I have to separate flannel from cotton. I have to decide how small of a scrap is too small to save. To cut. To sort.

It starts with just a little bin of material. Mostly black-and-whites, and I remember as I fold and arrange, that I've used these prints in my grandson Shea's quilt. And in smaller quilts I've made in case a child from the school needs that kind of comfort. Sometimes they do. If they are hungry or hurt or the next day looks impossible to survive, a quilt helps to warm the cold places. I put some red pieces into that stack of newspaper-colored fabric, because red, black, and white are the school colors. Colors that can make a child feel less hurt, less alienated, less cold. Safe.

Oh, on the bottom shelf in a narrower bin I find brights. Lavenders and aquas and yellow polka dots and some bold chevron stripes. I don't mean to be sexist, but they fit into quilts for little girls. Because sometimes they need the softness of those pinks and mints, but the bold circles and the waves-on-shore slap of teal? They're every bit as necessary. In Summer in Stringtown Proper, I called it splash.

I have a ton of fat quarters on the shelves. Because it never costs much to just buy one or two or seven and I can never resist the jewel-tone display of their colors. But I've grown weary on this day that I will do nothing. The fat quarters will have to wait for another day to be sorted.

It's like writing. I get so tired of it. My muse is napping in the corner. I ask myself (and my husband, poor guy) over and over if I should call it a day. Just use the computer for Facebook and playing solitaire as I watch the sun go down both literally and figuratively. Because it's hard. And I can't get the colors right. And I'm tired of thinking, Oh, that will work, and finding out I've got half smooth cotton and half flannel in my process and it doesn't work at all.

But wait, just as those scraps will go with those fat quarters, the words will go into place. If I push them and pull them and look for the balance. Combine the gentleness and the bold. Create warmth and comfort and a safe place--because you're never alone when you're reading.

It's okay to be tired. To be discouraged. But in the end, you just need to sort the colors. The fabrics. And don't forget the splash.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - Thin Spots and Tenderness

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Thin Spots and Tenderness 

I wrote this article a few years ago, and even then I had to start it 10 times or so--I think that's what happens when a person blogs too much, which I have a tendency to do. My subject matter gets sparse and the quality of what I write thins out to where I'm not always proud of what I'm putting out there. For those of you who read what I write, I thank you for doing so and apologize for the thin spots.

Which opens me up to asking questions of writers who are way, way more prolific than I. Ones who release six or seven books to my one, who get five- or ten- or twelve-book contracts. I’d like to read everyone’s answers, though, including ones whose writing and publication times are more like mine.

How do you do it?

Do I want to? No. That ship sailed long ago--I'm more a rowboat kind of writer now. A book or two a year is enough for me. But at my best and fastest of writing times, I couldn't have done it. I'd say it was because I was also working, raising kids, etc., but in truth, so were most other writers I knew. No, the fact is that I never had that kind of productivity in me. I wish I had--sort of. Maybe I'd have gotten a bigger name, a longer back-list, and more money. So here's another two questions for those of you who out-write me six ways to Sunday.

Do you like it that way? What would you do different if you were starting over in this business?

I would change my own way some. I’d have been more driven, but I don’t know how you insert that into yourself. I suppose I’d have developed a brand, but I think I might have become bored with who I was—which wouldn’t bode well for readers. 😊

Thanks for answering. And now on to something else that is connected. Sort of.

I was thinking about romantic fiction this morning—actually, I think about it, read it, and write it every day. But I was musing about the things that matter so much to me in it. Happily-ever-after, empowerment of women, realistic looks at issues that matter to us, strength. I thought of favorite books, favorite authors, favorite scenes, and realized the common thread of what calls to me. And I was surprised by it.

Tenderness.

I re-read a Kristan Higgins book and cried for the several-th time over the death of a dog. I'm not going to say which book or which dog, but I will say the scene and the ones that followed it created a new and powerful definition of tenderness.

In my favorite (this week) of Kathleen Gilles Seidel's books, Till the Stars Fall, the relationship between Quinn and Danny (who should have had his

own book, but Kathy says he’s too old now) was as compelling as the romance between Quinn and Krissa. They were manly men--hilarious and flawed and oh-God sexy--but the bonds of their friendship were held together with tenuous threads of tenderness.

A scene in a Pamela Morsi book wherein the heroine described her husband's illness and death compelled me to write an embarrassingly gushing fan letter to Ms. Morsi. The fact that she'd experienced what she wrote made the tenderness all the sweeter. All the stronger.

So now, one more question (if you've stuck with me this far)--what common thread runs through your favorites? Extra credit if you share scenes or books that demonstrate it.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

Writer Wednesday - Don't Have Time? Sure You Do.

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Don't Have Time? Sure You Do. 

The other day, I was talking to some people at a craft fair when a pretty young woman heard one of the others mention that I am a writer. She waited till the conversation was over, till I'd been stung by a woman saying, "Oh, yes, I read those when I was about twelve," when I said I wrote for Harlequin. At least, I thought, she didn't ask when I was going to write a real book. Or where the restroom was. I suppose that would have come later.

But I regress. When the conversation ended, the young woman--her name is Whitney--introduced herself and asked about writing and we talked a little bit. She reads "everything," the best kind of reader there is. She was pretty, bright, and interesting. It was fun talking to her. She said someday she wanted to write a book. And someday, when she had time, she was going to write.

Which led to me giving advice she didn't ask for. Not that I'm a stranger to doing that, but just this one time, I was right to do it.

"Whitney," I said, calling her by name beause I love her name, "don't wait until you have time."

And I know, really I do, that I'm not the first person who ever gave that advice, but it is undoubtedly the best advice I ever gave.

I went on to tell her that I'd written my first three books sitting on bleachers. That was, in truth, an exaggeration, but I did do some writing there. And in the car while I waited on kids. And during my lunch hour. And in the early morning hours before work--I had to get up at 3:30 AM anyway, so we're talking really early--I wrote the first draft of One More Summer in 83 days.

Just last week I waxed pompous to my friend Margie Senechal, telling her I didn't know how I'd managed writing books and working fulltime all at once. I still don't know, but I do know this. I never had time, so I guess I made time. Thank goodness for coil-bound notebooks and pens that write well.

So, to Whitney, and to any other young writers out there, that's my best piece of advice: make time. My second-best is, when you meet a veteran writer, walk right up and talk to her the way you did to me. It makes our day.

And, from the veteran writers who are visiting us today, what's your best piece of advice? Leave us a link to your newest book while you're here--we were all readers first. Good ones like Whitney, who read everything.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

A Writer's Words - The Cluttered Mind

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

The Cluttered Mind

I’m not a very attentive person. Well, I’m attentive, just not when and where I should be. I’ve said before that if I were in school now, I’d probably be diagnosed with some kind of horrifying but hopefully treatable acronym. As it is, I’m unfocused to the extreme. I would blame it on age, but that’s become such a huge umbrella that I’m reluctant to push anything else under it. So I will have to think of something… 

Green is muscling its way into the grass in the lawn outside my office window. It is a Yes! moment. Birds are picking their way through. We saw a fat robin in the field yesterday. I wish he’d come into the yard as I watch—it would make the picture perfect. 

Oh, yes. I don’t really know what to blame it on, or if I’ve always been this way. I got pretty good grades when I was a kid, but I don’t remember paying that much attention in the process.

You put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up…

I have tried to improve my concentration. It would make writing much easier if I did. I sometimes wonder how I’ve ever completed a book when I rarely type more than a paragraph without…

Que sera, sera, what will be, will be. The future’s…Farmers of America. They had cool corduroy jackets…why don’t I just stick with a nine-patch instead of trying to go all Mary Fons?

Without what? Oh, without my mind going off into a dozen different directions. To make it all more complicated, I’m a pantser, not a plotter. While my people come pretty much named and fully formed, the story itself…

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah…

…just kind of evolves, but I’m really not sure how it happens. Many times a scene will start to map itself out as I’m falling asleep. I used to keep a pen and paper beside the bed, but there were several truths involved with that. (1) I was usually too sleepy to write the ideas down, (2) if I was awake enough, the pen was out of ink, or (3) I’d dropped the pad of paper and it was somewhere under the bed, and (4) if I got under the bed for anything, I had to go get the vacuum cleaner, because there was no possible way I could go back to sleep over that much dust.

Flowers are for the living, Mom always said, so this week I remembered to send flowers to my mother-in-law. Because she’s been ill. Because I love her. Because I wish my mom was here to send them to as well.

Good Lord, what Mom would say if she saw the dust under that bed! And what was that scene all about? I know it would be a good one if I could just remember it.

Occasionally thoughts will circle around to where they are together and almost harmonious. More often they clang…

…clang, clang went the trolley…

…more like a cacophony in my head.

And I have decided this is all right. In truth, I’d like to have an orderly mind (and an orderly under-the-bed, too, but we’re not going there), but I just don’t think it’s going to happen at this point. I remember cleaning out something one time, though I don’t remember what it was—surprise!—and in the mess I was cleaning, someone had spilled a box of those little sticky-back stars teachers and parents used to give as rewards.

Oohhh, shiny.

I didn’t think of it then—or maybe I did—but that’s the way life and the unfocused mind are. There’s a lot of clutter in both, a startling lack of direction, too much discordant noise, handwriting both across and up and down the page the way they wrote letters in days gone by.

And bright stars, and joyous walks, and music, and stories I love. It’s not so bad…

Starry, starry night…he cut off his ear, for heaven’s sake…tulips are up…when the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along…

There he is. There’s the robin. He left too fast for me to get the picture, but it was perfect. See? Harmony.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

A Writer's Words - Of Shamers, Bullies, and Snots

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Of Shamers, Bullies, and Snots 

I read on Facebook that actress Kristen Bell said her mother told her, "If you do decide to go on a prescription to help yourself [with depression], understand that the world wants to shame you for that..."

People are "shamed" for being obese, for being Christians, for not being Christians, for being liberal, conservative, vegan or carnivore. Young girls are shamed for not having the ubiquitous thigh gap and boys for...I don't know, not wearing their jeans low enough. Rural people are shamed because--obviously--you can't be smart if you don't live inside city limits. Urban people are shamed because...well, because they're urban, I guess.

It's obvious that One, I spend too much time on Facebook, and Two, shaming has become an epidemic. And I'm feeling bereft.

Because.

I'm a Christian, I'm fairly liberal, I once took medication for two years because of clinical depression, any thigh gap I might have boasted closed (I think for good) more years ago than I can remember, and I'm probably doomed to being overweight because I love to eat far too much.

But no, that's not why I'm bereft. It's because I've never been shamed. I pray when and where I want, I vote my conscience, and I wouldn't hesitate to medicate again if I felt hopelessness circling my life's perimeter. I think people who love me wish I'd lose weight (and keep it off) to keep me healthy, not because they're ashamed of me.

I will admit, I remember being made fun of because I was poor and dressed accordingly, because I was a geek, because I was shockingly uncoordinated, but I don't remember "shaming" even being a word when I was growing up. I was very familiar with "Shame on you!" accompanied by a shaking finger and a frown of motheresque proportions, but that was mothering, right? Not shaming.

And people who made fun of me were being rotten little kids, weren't they? Rotten like I was being when someone had a lot of trouble reading aloud and I snickered. Or when someone I didn't like tore her dress on the slide and I snickered. Or when someone else I didn't like started her period during 7th grade English class and I snickered.

But I wasn't shaming. I was being a snot. While I'm not saying it's okay to be a snot, I do think it's part of the human experience and that the recipient of said snottiness and shaming is often better and stronger because of it. And maybe they learn a little about forgiving, about taking the high road, about how not to treat a person who's different than their particular definition of cool. And the snots grow up and cringe at what they said or did to someone else. It's not necessary to brand them for life, is it?

But there's another part, too, that I have to admit to. Not all snots do grow up; some of them stay that way forever. And they will pick on people because that's what they do. We need to recognize that, roll our eyes, say "consider the source," and go on better and stronger. What we don't need is to ever say the world's going to shame you, to indicate that the world is full of bullies and...er...snots, because in truth it's full of pretty nice people with some crummy ones on the periphery. Keep them there. Do what's right for you and don't hurt anyone else in the process. That's not really hard, is it?

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

A Writer's Words - The Story Of My Stories

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty

The Story of my Stories 

How do I start a book? 

Sometimes it’s because I see a building—especially if it’s a deserted one with pretty lines—and I think about what’s happened there. Who’s been hurt, who’s come laughing down the stairs and tripped over the second from the bottom step, who’s cooked a thousand meals in the kitchen at the back of the house. I can hear the sounds and feel the memories and experience the wistfulness of a house abandoned by the people it’s sheltered. 

Other times―actually, most times, I will meet the people first, although I never see their faces. Their hands, sometimes, and their hair. Often their eyes. And there will be something wrong. Dramatically wrong. Usually, with me, they already know each other. They’re best friends or one-time lovers or even former spouses. Because that gives me the immediacy I need as a writer. I have trouble making a relationship born from scratch in the first pages of a book real. I want the people to know where each other’s scars are, who they voted for, and what makes them laugh and cry. That’s just me. 

It gets difficult then, because I have to find out what that “dramatically wrong” thing is, and I have to admit sometimes I go through two or three or four to get to the one that works. (This makes for a lot of hand-wringing scenes, believe me, since I have to scrap all but the bones every time.) 

I write in silence, always, yet much of my inspiration comes from music. Mostly, I think, because I’m married to a musician and have heard his singing voice and his fingers on guitar strings every day for nearly 50 years. Just now, for instance, I heard Vince Gill sing “…I get weak in the knees…” and that will stay with me when I write. 

Halfway, or thereabouts, through the book, I become convinced I can’t finish it, and I go through the tortures of the damned because I have to decide—every single time—whether to go on with the book, start over, stop writing and become a recluse who makes quilts, or persevere. So far, I have always persevered, but I live in fear of the time I won’t. 

The first and last chapters are always the easiest to write. The first one because it’s all new and exciting, the last because it’s my reward for surviving the paragraph above. 

I don’t write fast anymore, and social media plays havoc with my attention span, but I can easily say that I am still happiest when I’m consumed by a story, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s one of mine that I’m writing or someone else’s that I’m reading. 

That, then, is the story of my stories. What about you? Want to share?

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved

Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

A Writer's Words - I Remember A Book

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

I Remember A Book 

I Remember A Book…

 
I thought today of a book I read in 1973. I don’t remember its title or the names of the protagonists, but the heroine’s baby was stillborn and her little boy, named Chris just as mine was, was killed in an accident. I had nightmares about her Chris and mine, and I knew then that I’d never have a child die in a book. Children die, I know they do, but I can’t bear it any better now than I could then. (My Chris is now six foot six and a husband and a dad.)

I read a book once where a chapter ended with the words “…she cried and cried and cried.”

I read a book where the author made liberal use of the word “quipped.” No one ever joked or grinned or snickered or snorted laughter, but every-damn-body quipped.

I read a book called The Silver Cord. The heroine’s mother-in-law was possessive and vindictive. She didn’t have a single, solitary redeeming trait, yet her otherwise very intelligent son could see no wrong in anything she said or did.

I remember from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm the verse:
Woodman, spare that tree;
Touch not a single bough.
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.

And from Little Women I remember to "…don't let the sun go down upon your anger. Forgive each other, help each other, and begin again tomorrow."

And from another book the warm comfort of “…murmured wordlessly…”

And from yet another, the punch of a one-sentence paragraph at the end of a chapter or scene. Do the words “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” ring a bell?

These are only a few things I remember from books I have read. There are many more. Some of them have improved or changed my own writing—I never use the word “quip” and I don’t write characters with no redeeming qualities or men who think their mothers are perfect. I probably use the one-sentence paragraph ending too often and I’m sure I’ve plagiarized the words “cried and cried and cried” though I’m not sure when or where. I’ve learned, from reading things like “…murmured wordlessly”, that for my writing at least, emotion is the driving force.

Some have impacted marriage—I don’t go to bed mad. Some, like the verse in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, haven’t changed anything.

But I remember that verse 60 years after I read the book. I “knew” Vermont 30 years before I went there because I read and reread Understood Betsy. When we went to Ireland, I felt Nora Roberts’ Born In… Trilogy everywhere we went.

Writers get asked a lot about why we write. Why we struggle on and on in the ever-changing world of publishing. The answers are as varied as we are. But this article is about why I read and have done so nonstop since the very first book in the Dick and Jane series. The first word in the first book was “Look.” I remember.

I read not only for the pleasure of doing so, but for the things I remember. The things that change me. Or don’t. The things that make me laugh and cry and wait. After reading that first “Look”, I never looked back.

What do you remember? 

© 2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/