Writer Wednesday - Writing in A Small Town

Window Over The Sink 

with Liz Flaherty 

Writing in A Small Town

I found this when I was looking for something else. I laughed some when I read it, a little self-consciously, because I'm not a fan of my own snark. But it's as accurate for me as it was then. The real reason I laughed when I read it was that then was in 2014. 

There are always trends going on in the writing of romance, and right now that’s a good thing for me because one of those trends is toward small-town or even rural romance. In the first place, this makes me snicker, because the definition of “romance” is fairly absolute—I don’t think small-town or rural people feel one bit different than their urban counterparts when it comes to falling in love. 

In the second place, from the vantage point of having spent my whole life in what is often classified (usually by those who don’t live here) as “the middle of nowhere,” I am in the smug situation of knowing the truth about life in a small town—or outside it, as the case may be. Speaking of truth, there are a few that are absolute.

1. People don’t mind your business in small towns unless it somehow involves them or unless you’re particularly entertaining, rich, or snotty.

2. Country folks can be smart, educated, and even sophisticated. You can dress well, eat healthy, and pay too much for a haircut. Many of us do not drive pickups with guns in the back windows. Personally, I’ve driven an SUV since 2006, which I consider quite cosmopolitan of me.

3. We are not all waitresses with bad grammar and hearts of gold or men who sit out in front of the general store and play checkers and spit.

4. If you’re in a town of less than 1000 residents, don’t talk about calling a taxi—there probably isn’t one.

5. Don’t say “ain’t.”

6. Don’t assume that kids in rural or small-town high schools never get to college or know what to do when they get there. They do.

7. Fort Wayne, Indiana had a population of 254,555 in 2012. It’s fine to refer to it as a small town, but I wish you’d explain to me how it qualifies. I live near Deedsville, population 101—now that’s a small town.

8. We go to plays, concerts, and movies (first run!). We travel, love our kids and pets, and worship at will.

Those are my truths, and I only write them out in this rather snarky fashion because I’ve rolled my eyes at (and not finished) too many books where the authors didn’t do their homework on life on the non-wild side.

And now there is the other side. There is the fact that sometimes when I write about large cities or even suburbs, I’m not always sure of what I’m saying. What would a city mouse say or do in the circumstances I’m writing about?

I think I have a tendency to give city-dwellers less common sense than those of us from the boonies. I make them unable to change their own tires or fix their own drains. I make them less sympathetic to the human condition. Less likely to attend church, cook well, or put together a nice outfit from the thrift shop if that’s what they need to do.

Really? I mean, come on, really? And I was being condescending about how country people are portrayed? Makes me think that, as well as sharing the truths I do know, I should pay some attention to the ones I don’t.

And I'm probably not the only one.

©2023 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 - All About Inspiration...When It's Ready

Window Over The Sink 

with Liz Flaherty 

All About Inspiration...When It's Ready 

When my younger son and his wife married, they moved to Vermont the day after the wedding. Since I couldn’t keep them in Indiana forever—it’s amazing how independent kids get—I comforted myself by saying at least now I’d get to visit Vermont, which I’d wanted to do since reading Understood Betsy when I was eight or nine. (And several times since.) 

You know how sometimes you anticipate things until you’re practically jumping up and down with the great expectations that are skating wildly through your mind, only to be disappointed? Let down because...well, what actually came to pass was somehow less than you’d hoped?

Vermont wasn’t like that. 

The first time I went there―during springtime’s mud season, no less―I felt as though I’d come home. Over the next 15 years, I visited close to 20 times, and it never got old. Its beauty, culture, and the people who live there filled a huge place in my heart I never even knew was empty. Naturally enough, I wanted to place a book there. This would require several research visits, of course. So I started a story. And another.
And yet another.

What was wrong? I had the inspiration, acres and acres of it. I had people (I always get them first. Do you?). I had a story. Why wouldn’t it work?

I still don’t know the answers. I only know that when we visited Ireland, the storefront of a pub in Kinsale caught my writer’s eye (not to be confused with my regular eyes, which never watch where they’re going, but that’s a different story) and never went away. When I finally gave my pub a name and a home, its setting was a small town in Vermont. The writing of Back to McGuffey’s went quickly enough I never got a chance to go back for a research trip—though there were many, many emails exchanged with Vermonters who could look out their windows and see what I was trying to imagine.

I love inspiration. As a writer without much of an imagination, I depend on it. But I think it would be nice if just once in a while, it came around when I wanted it instead of in its own time.

©2023 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 - If You're Saving it for Good, The Time is Now

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

If You're Saving it for Good, The Time is Now

I’m not a collector. I’m also not a saver-of-new-things. About the only thing I collect or save up is dust, and I’m told that’s not in demand on the resale market. While I enjoy other people’s collections, I don’t want any of my own. (In a disclaiming aside here, I will admit to having more fabric than I’ll ever get sewn and two more laptops than I actually need, but I’m not collecting them. Exactly.) 

To try put my shattered focus into semi-one-place, let me try this again. I don’t save things for “good.” I don’t have Sunday dishes or company towels or candles that have never been lit. The quilts I have from previous generations are on beds, not put away to be passed on. I’ve learned not to maintain a three-size wardrobe, because even if I lose enough weight to wear the smallest size, I don’t like the clothes anymore. 

My grandkids’ drawings are not kept neatly in scrapbooks for them to have and laugh over when they are grown; they hang on the refrigerator until the paper is yellow and curled and has footprints on it from hitting the floor too many times. Sometimes they hang there even longer. My first granddaughter’s drawing of a lion is held in place by a business card magnet. Mari was probably five when she drew the lion and now she’s a banker with a husband and a new home. I might take it down if she drew me another, but then again I might not. I like it where it is, the way it is. 

The drawing would probably look much better if it had been kept clean and flat for fifteen years, but I would not have enjoyed it every day. I wouldn’t have taken a fresh mental snapshot of our own little red-haired girl each time I looked at it. I wouldn’t remember the day of her birth so often. 

Several years ago, my daughter-in-law Tahne gave us a set of Christmas dishes. My first thought was to use them just during the holidays, and then only when we had a sit-down meal. This way they would not get broken and sometime in the future, the aforementioned granddaughter would inherit them and look at her mother and say, “What am I supposed to do with these? I don’t think Nana’s washed them since 2005.” 

Instead, we use the dishes all the way through the holidays and whenever else we feel like it. That none of them are broken yet is both miraculous and maybe a clue that they are meant to be used and enjoyed whenever the mood strikes, not just at Christmas. 

Christmas, by the way, is the reason I’m writing this. I know I’m not saying anything original here. I’m pretty sure there are Lifetime movies based on this very premise. But we’ll get and give gifts at Christmas, which is going to be here in seven months, which translates to about fifteen minutes in old-people time. Some of those gifts will be complete failures, some will be okay, some will be fun, and some will be keepers. Ones you put up to use at the perfect time and the perfect place. 

I hope you don’t—keep them and put them up, I mean. Use them. Wear them out. My other daughter-in-law, Laura, made me a quilt as a reward for quitting smoking over twenty years ago. It’s queen-size, beautiful, and never gets too far from my bed, but I told my son after I washed it once that I thought maybe I should put it away so it wouldn’t be worn out when it came time for Laura’s and his son to inherit it. He said he thought something well-loved might be a better gift than something well-preserved. I didn’t put it away.

Collecting isn’t bad, by any means, but I’m kind of glad I don’t. I’d rather wear the things in my life out by enjoying them. I don’t want the gifts I give or the ones I receive to be keepers. I’d rather they were things remembered or regifted if the receiver doesn’t really like them than things passed on to the next generation in good shape. 

As another side note, remember what my son said about well loved being better than well preserved? I think that goes for people, too. Even though I’d like to be a whole lot better preserved than what I am, well loved is better. I wish it for all of you. Till next time. Be nice to somebody. 

©2023 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 - Potholders and Memories

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Potholders and Memories

My friend Karen had a pretty potholder at church that someone had made for her from Christmas fabric, and I thought, What a great idea! I could do that between other projects. When I was a kid, Mom had one of those looms where you used circles of fabric--usually cut from the tops of worn-out socks--to make potholders that were both ugly and indestructible. Once you gave one to your grandmother, she couldn't ever throw it away. 

While I have never been above mediocre as a cook--and sometimes mediocre is a bit of a stretch; ask my kids about cube steak at our house--the kitchen is still my favorite part of the house. It's a place of color, cherry cabinets and dark blue walls. It has shelves and windowsills full of memories, junk drawers I need to clean out someday, and windows that frame my life. Including one over the sink. Kitchen appliances are third only to computers and sewing machines in my power tool inventory. 

The kitchen aisle is my favorite one in any store, and at the top of my list for gifts both given and received is a package containing dish towels--nice, absorbent, colorful ones--and dishrags. They don't even have to match. And it occurred to me just a few years ago that I don't have to wear the old ones completely out before I get new ones. What a concept! 

Oh, but I was talking about potholders, wasn't I? Sorry. I use them all the time, another reason I thought they'd be a good project. I still have a few of my grandmother's. They're not pretty, but they've been in use since the middle of the last century, and when I use one, I think of Grandma Neterer. She wasn't much of a cook, either, but I sure did love being in her kitchen. 

So, one afternoon early this week, I made a hot pad from scraps of Christmas fabric. I knew just how I wanted it to look.

Well, not like that! It is such a mess that even Duane laughed when I held it up to show him. Really, he laughed, and what does he know about potholders? He's probably never left one close enough to a stove burner to start it on fire, dropped it into the dishwater accidentally when he needed to use it as a trivet, or left it somewhere when he used it to carry a hot dish into a pitch-in. 

Since I obviously couldn't use it as a gift, I kept it for myself. It works really well. I used a layer of insulated batting, so I haven't had to mumble swear words when the heat came through it at a time I couldn't set the pan down. I like its colors, and I don't much mind that it's a mess. Grandma's are kind of a mess, too.

Most of our memories are that way, aren't they? I suppose it's okay that we clean them up and remember ourselves as more heroic and smarter than we actually were. To recall that our kids were always truthful and obedient as well as gifted. To insist our own childhood behavior was exemplary because our parents would have settled for nothing less. It gives a certain amount of pleasure to lend perfection to things that probably weren't. 

But the memories we laugh longest and hardest at, that we hold the closest even decades later, are the less-than-perfect ones, aren't they? They're the ones that soften the scars on our hearts just as the messy and old potholders keep us from being burned. 

Make memories. Be nice to somebody.

©2023 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 - Things of Fascination

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

Things of Fascination 

I'm sitting here before the sun is completely up watching the skeletal cottonwood tree against the western sky. That's beauty enough--I love trees in any incarnation--but squirrels are running up and down the the heavy branches, leaping across the expanse between the widespread of the Y-forked trunk. I'm not sure how long I've been watching them, but I am wholly fascinated.

The Christmas tree sits where it has sat for years. We haven’t taken it down yet because I so enjoy its peaceful presence in the room.The lovely flocked pre-lit tree has some lights that don't come on anymore, some holes in the branches that are hard to fill, and ornaments unevenly distributed throughout. I turn its lights on first thing each morning and off last thing each night. I watch it and remember, because Christmas memories are especially poignant, especially bright and glittery like the silver garland and the glass ornaments on the tree. I am endlessly fascinated.

I love churches. I mean, I go to church, I am a Christian, and I'm not one of those who believes your devotion to the Lord depends on whether you enter a house of worship every week or whenever, but I love the buildings. Not just the United Methodist ones where I feel immediately at home, but other denominations as well. I love the architecture and the changes in it from one century to another and yet another. I am ever fascinated by the differences in churches and denominations, comforted by the likenesses.

I'm not a bird-watcher, not really, but sitting in my daughter-in-law and son's home in North Carolina watching the birds from their mountain-view deck holds me in thrall. The blue jays almost glow as they swoop across the valley below, then skid to a stop on the bird feeder platform to have a peanut or two.

My husband is a singer who plays guitar, so music has been part of our married life from its beginning. Our kids were in choir at school and several of the grands played instruments in band. One of our grandsons plays trumpet. He played "Amazing Grace" as a solo at his grandmother's funeral so beautifully that listening to it was almost unbearable in its poignancy. We watched the Get Back documentary, and I am drawn into the Beatles circle of amazement as I was in the 1960s. I am not musical--playing the radio is a challenge--but my fascination with music is even greater than my love for it.

As a writer, I often share and write about things I love. People I love. Even turns of phrase. But these things that catch my senses and hold onto them with special gifts to the senses are the things that feed passion in different ways. They are enriching and joyous and accompany me on paths where I might otherwise feel alone. Fascination is good company.

What are your things of fascination? I'd love to hear what they are and why.

©2023 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/