Spring Cleaning

There is more to the season than cleaning cobwebs from corners, although that is an excellent metaphor for what many of us are doing with regard to our personal and professional time at this time of year.

When my family lived in Maine, Spring weather arrived several weeks later than the rest of the country. As evidenced by this year’s snow fall on the ‘technical’ first day of Spring, the state of Maine, most northerly of the lower 48, has a long winter. Once in a while, that long winter can be from first snow in October to first thaw in April.

My home town under snow, a typical Maine winter.

In one such year, the house was closed up with snow covering the ground floor windows. The front path was dug out to the road and the snow piled six feet high on both sides. My elder brother used the surplus to build an igloo over the slope leading down to the sidewalk. He dug openings at the top and at the bottom where it opened to the road.

At that time of year, there was no real danger of any child ending up under the wheels of a passing car on Lincoln Street, but the thrill of shooting through the igloo and onto the icy road kept us outdoors and sledding for weeks. Since I was never keen on snow, this was a boon to my mother who preferred all  play to be restricted to the outside, no matter what the weather.

This particular winter, the back parlor had been used earlier for our Christmas celebrations. The wood-burning kitchen stove was used to heat the upstairs bedrooms through ducts into open grills in the floor.  Ducts were closed to the back parlor to keep other rooms warmer.

Spring cleaning meant that all the windows in the house could be opened as soon as the patches of grass were at least eight inches wide and more numerous than the piles of snow. Several doors to rooms on the ground floor had not been open since the first signs of winter and others had been closed since Christmas.

My mother began her cleaning and airing out from the attic. The kitchen was the center of family life and had already been cleaned but it was mid-April before she reached the back parlor. Our Christmas tree stood in the corner, all ornaments and lights intact, four months to the day after it had been decorated. Under the tree, instead of presents, was a thick pile of reddish brown needles.


My mother had better things to do with her time than cleaning house. 

The Story and the Teller

The ClassicAndCozy blogging group is made up of writers who were all published by Avalon Books, well-known as a publisher of clean and sweet mystery, romance, westerns, primarily for libraries. Now, that option has expanded but the premise, for most of us, has stuck.

My particular genres are romance and women’s fiction. I like a happy ending. I like building a world where things work out for the best, no matter what traumatic events my characters have to face. Whether it’s infertility, child custody battles, professional jealousy, office bullying, ethnic prejudice (Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls), or divorce and lost love (Wait a Lonely Lifetime), abandonment, the death of a parent, losing a job (Nights Before) or seeking a home, war, oppression (as in my historical novels), my characters triumph.

And that is not always a simple task, even for the writer of the story. There is no guarantee that characters behave as you expect, nor that their difficulties have a believable solution. The objective is verisimilitude or, at least, plausibility. The exceptions are Fantasy and SciFi but, even then, there are rules and conventions.

As a reader, I want to be included, drawn in and given an opportunity to learn something new, experience a new world. As a writer, making that possible for readers is hard work, especially if we want it to look easy.

I once heard a writer describe himself as “a difficult poet,” taking pride that his work is obscure, intentionally beyond the comprehension of the reader. To me, that reeks of arrogance and a wish to appear superior. A former colleague told me she did not trust the audiences of her dance performances to understand so she explained everything—talking down to them. What is the point of either position?

We all have a story to tell, our story, important to us. The impulse to tell our stories is part of our primordial DNA, from the first recognition of a common language, from the first fireside chat, our species has told stories and every one of them has been told and retold in a thousand different guises over the millennia of human history. And yet, we still tell our stories, whether they are about our own experience or based on the seven plots of humankind, or twenty or thirty-six depending on who has written the analysis!

Here are the seven basic stories: 1) human versus nature; 2) human versus human; 3) human versus environment/society; 4) human versus machine/technology; 5) human versus supernatural; 6) human versus self; 7) human versus god/religion.

We love these stories because they are about us. We all face these conflicts: ask my husband about #4!

Vladimir Propp defined thirty-one functions of a hero’s journey beginning with ABSENTATION: A member of a family leaves the security of the home environment and ending with WEDDING: Hero marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded/promoted).

Where is your story in the scheme of human storytelling? What do you expect from a writer when you enter the world of their story?

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This is the 100th blog post for Classic & Cozy. Happy Centennial Blog!

Classic, Cozy & Cunning

We've all read books set in different countries, regions, time periods with characters from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The attempt to capture the sound of speech and cultural nuances is all part of the craft of setting a sense of time and place.

Regional dialects lend authenticity to stories set in specific localities. Regional dialects give authors nightmares and headaches. Regional dialects give readers nightmares and frowns. Walking the narrow line between authenticity and insult is an art. Achieving a sense of place and depth of character without confusion or irritation is an art.

In my most recent endeavor, the novel-by-installment, Nights Before, I returned to my childhood home state, Maine. I had been working on an historical novel set in a small town in Oxford County, and was inspired then to write a contemporary romance as well. I had clear visions of the streets of Portland from childhood and more recent visits, but it is the Maine accent that distinguishes the sense of place more than the images of snow and falling leaves. The whole of the Northeast can boast the brilliant colors of Fall and the quiet of a snow-blanketed scene. Only Mainers talk like Mainers. 

I was born into a family of native Mainers, I remain one myself though I've lived far away for most of my life. When I began this book-by-installments, I wanted to pay tribute to that distinctive way of speech, but, except for a few vague recollections of my mother saying 'cunning' or the proverbial 'down the rod apiece' and 'ya cahn't get theah from heah,' my Maine vocabulary was sadly lacking. 

I realized I had to research my first language!

Fortunately, there are Internet sites for that. I went to several, including How to Talk Like a Mainer which was a lot of fun and reminded me of all I'm missing here on the West Coast. And I realized that the Maine accent is a serious topic for wide discussion. There is something about the way we talk that fascinates those who don't — or I'm just putting a proud face on what the rest of the English-speaking world thinks is plain 'odd'. 

In any case, I had to get it right. The more I went through the pronunciations and the vocabulary, I heard the words in my head, spoken as they had been spoken by my parents and siblings before the great exodus to the other side of the country. They came more easily from my own lips. Ayuh is now my first response in the affirmative and has started to spread to other members of my west coast family. And as I developed the dialogue in the first story of the novel, I went all out.

Howevah, too much of a good thing spoils the affect. Here's an example: 
“Sure. Take it easy goin’ over tah Rosemont. The road’s open now, but I’ve heard theah’s a dip where theah weren’t one.”

Easy enough to read, but what if I'd written it like this: "Shu-ah. Take it easy goin' ovah tah Rosemont. The rod's open now, but Ah've hehd they-ah's a dip whey-ah they-ah wehn't one."

Not as easy. In Elements of Style, Strunk & White make it clear that an over abundance of apostrophes and colloquial spelling curtail the flow of reading. Giving a hint of a different dialect is desirable on all accounts relating to the senses of authenticity, place, time, character, personality. In this novel, I distinguish between native Mainers and those 'from away' or who've been away or have abandoned their roots. 

Although I will never knowingly abandon my accent, the ability to talk like a Mainah fades, returning only when I write like a Mainah and I have to admit, I'm wicked glad I've had the opportunity.

Here is a taste of the vocabulary in these stories: 

• bug - lobster
• cunnin' - cute, sweet
• finest - term of endearment, the best
• wicked - very