Archive for June, 2026

writing

Avoiding Conflict

One of the commonly repeated bits of writing advice is to write the book you want to read. You’ll be reading it quite a bit, so you’d better like it, and the passion and joy you bring to it will come out to the reader. The problem comes when the book you want to read isn’t a book most other people would want to read.

I realized that while looking at the book I’m currently drafting. I realized I was writing a book with almost no conflict. It was about reasonable people doing reasonable things in an interesting place. They only had minor disagreements, and people would hear conflicting views and say, “That makes sense, you’re right.” The action/danger involved thinking they were being followed, then either easily losing the tail or being wrong about being followed.

That is kind of what I want to read right now. I’d be fine with interesting people exploring an interesting place, with no opposing force to deal with. I guess I’d be better off reading travelogues or memoirs, but even those tend to have conflict. But I have to admit that what I was writing was boring even to me. This is supposed to be an adventure story. The conflict is human-scaled, in that the bad guys are people, not Dark Lords commanding vast armies of orcs, but it’s still a kingdom-level conflict, and on the interpersonal level there are disagreements over what to do about it. Or there should be. There will be, once I finish rewriting the scenes so they aren’t merely, “That makes sense, you’re right.”

I’m having to dig deeper to find the story here instead of skimming the surface, and it’s going to make the book better, but it’s really challenging for me. I’m having to take a lot of breaks, the way I sometimes have to do if a book I’m reading gets too intense. That may explain this week’s curtain obsession.

Mind you, I’m not talking about intense conflict, even with the revision. There are more intense and scary children’s books.

I guess it’s just that the world is so tense right now that I want to escape. There are people who turn to genres like horror in times like this to provide some sense of catharsis, and then there are people like me who want to hide in a soft, cozy safe space and avoid the outside world’s conflicts.

This is a book that will build from seeming to be nice to getting more intense, so I’m getting the chance to ease into it by letting the characters disagree with each other, and I’m showing the bad guys as an actual threat. I’m glad I caught this in the first half of the book rather than getting to the climactic confrontation with the villain and having him say, “That makes sense, you’re right. I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

Though, these days that’s more of a fantasy scenario than the armies of orcs.

Life

Curtains

I have spent this week getting really sidetracked about curtains, blinds, and window treatments. I think some of it has to do with my brain loving to solve problems, and it won’t let go until I have a solution.

The issue is my bedroom windows. While the actual windows—the glass in the metal frames—are a standard size, the window frames in the house that the windows are set into are not at all standard. They’re the kind you often see in old houses, with really thick woodwork framing the windows. When I was buying shades for the bedroom windows before I moved in, I found that the window frame was about half an inch too small for one size of shades. The smaller size would cover the glass part, and I figured that would work. What I hadn’t counted on was the fact that the lower window pane, the one that raises to open the window, sits out about 2 inches in front of the upper pane, which meant that while the shades covered the lower pane perfectly, there’s a big gap on the upper pane that lets a lot of light through from behind the blackout shades. From May through August, this is pretty important because the sun rises very early. It starts getting light before 5 a.m. around the summer solstice.

I put up some lace curtains and concentrated the gathers on the sides, which helped some, and then I resorted to a solution I used in my old house, throwing some lined curtains I had from my previous apartment over the curtain rods to help block light. I did this in the old house when they put a super-bright bulb in the street lamp right in front of my bedroom window. This solution has worked pretty well. The curtains block a lot of light but let enough in that I can let the sun wake me up. It doesn’t start getting too bright until the sun is more fully up. The problem is that throwing curtains over the rods holding the lace curtains is kind of tacky. The initial idea was to just put them up at night, but then I end up just leaving them there. I have to move them if I open the windows so that air can actually come in.

So I’ve been brainstorming ideas to solve this problem. Getting blinds cut to fit the window frame would be expensive, and I suspect there would still be light coming in around the edges. Another idea I had was to get roller blinds to fit up under the lace curtains. When rolled up they wouldn’t show, but I could pull them down at night. Then it occurred to me that I could just get larger curtain rods and hang the lined curtains over the lace curtains. I have tie backs to pull them aside during the day. It turned out that I’d bought the wrong size of curtain rod for one of the windows, so I already had the 3-inch deep one for one window, and I had an extra 2-inch deep one to put the lace curtain on. I just needed to buy one more 3-inch deep rod.

But then when I was buying that one, I saw that they had roller blinds that you can get cut to fit, so now I’m wondering it that might be a better idea. Put the lace curtains on the deeper rods, then fit roller blinds under the curtains to pull down at night. The room darkening ones aren’t that expensive, and I’m not sure I want total blackout. Between these and the blackout shades I already have, it should cut the light. Or maybe that’s a project for next summer. If I situate the rods for the lined curtains right, all I’d have to do is take out the smaller rods and move the lace curtains to the big ones. Then I found some other blinds you can adjust to fit yourself that aren’t that expensive and that I can get locally. So I ended up deciding to go that way and am just going to put up the deeper rods to use the lace curtains to cover the blind roller. I figured out that because the curtains are behind furniture, the curtains wouldn’t go back in place after I pulled them back, so I’d end up where I am now, with the curtains just hanging all the time. With blinds behind the lace curtains, I could at least see the lace and I might actually get around to raising the blinds occasionally.

I had to go through the process of planning to hang the curtains to come around to this conclusion, so the time spent thinking about how to hang the curtains wasn’t wasted. It merely consumed a lot of brain space.

But then during all this I started pondering the kitchen window, which is awkward because it’s behind the air fryer oven, so I don’t want curtains that hang down, but it’s on the front of the house, so I want some privacy. I have tall hedges along the street in front of the yard so you can’t see directly into my house, but you can kind of see into the kitchen from down the road. I currently have some faux stained glass privacy film on the lower part of the window, so you can’t see me from the neck down, but while researching various blinds options I found a really pretty valance that matches some placemats I already have. I’d have to replace the privacy film because it would clash, but the film I’ve got wasn’t great and I’ve been meaning to replace it. I found one that’s colorless, so it looks like etched glass. That would make the window look finished, leave me a spot to look out, but also block more from view outside.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about putting my last set of lace curtains on the front window because when I walk around town I love the look of lace curtains in the front windows. I’d been thinking of putting those curtains in the spare room but they’d be prettier in the front window. I wanted something on the spare room window because it’s right across from my neighbors’ front porch, where they spend a lot of time, and because of that same size issue there’s a slight gap around the edges of the miniblinds I have in that window. I do yoga in that room, and I feel like I’m giving the neighbors a lovely view when I do downward dog in front of that window. I don’t know how much they can actually see, and maybe you’d have to get close to the window to really see into that room (it’s on the second floor), but I feel self-conscious. That room will also be the guest room, so I want to give guests some privacy and block some light. But then the last set of lace curtains has different dimensions, and I don’t think it would fit in any of my windows. I may get a set of Roman shades like I have on my front door to go on that window, and I’ve found new lace curtains that would be pretty in my front room windows. The smaller curtain rods currently on the bedroom windows can go there.

See, curtain and blind obsession. I have managed to get work done in spite of all this, but mostly because I use curtain research as a reward for getting writing done. When I write for a certain amount of time, I’m allowed to get on Wayfair or Ikea and browse curtains. Having made all these decisions, my brain has finally let the subject go. I’m going to start with picking up the shades the next time I go out, and then putting those up and putting up the new curtain rods will be my weekend project. I’ll roll out the rest of the window projects over time.

writing

Character Change

Doing that ID List exercise I mentioned in my last post has already paid off. One item I came up with was “the ditz goes steely,” which is when a frivolous or comic relief character gets serious. I noticed how much I liked this kind of thing when I was watching Wicked: For Good and got such a thrill out of the moment when Glinda took charge. That movie has a two-fer, with Fiyero doing something similar (though he was already getting serious in the first movie, so it wasn’t so abrupt). You also see that in Legally Blonde, and it’s what the whole Barbie movie was building to. There’s just something about a seemingly shallow goofball getting serious and putting the startled villain in his place that makes you want to cheer.

And what that boils down to is a character transformation. It’s really satisfying when you can see a character change, and it’s more dramatic when a character makes a big change, like from ditz to badass. It’s even better when it’s not just the audience who sees the change, but the other characters are also taken aback when the fluffy lap dog growls and bites them.

Then I realized that I don’t really write this. My main characters usually have it more or less together even at the beginning of the book, and their growth is more subtle, bringing out hidden parts of them or just a bit of increased awareness. I seem to resist or be afraid of letting a character be a bit of a mess at the beginning of a book. But the book I’m currently working on is one where it fits. The heroine isn’t actually a ditz. She’s quite brainy, but she is naive. She’s also a big chicken who wants to be braver but hasn’t figured out that to get braver you have to be in situations that require bravery, and she recoils from those. Only I wasn’t really writing her this way. She and other people accuse her of playing it safe, but the first moment she’s required to be brave, she has no problems with it. I’m writing her at the beginning the way she should be at the end.

So I’m regrouping and doing some rewriting, and I can already see that this is lighting a spark to the story. It’s funnier and it’s more interesting with more internal and external conflict, and I suspect that the moment when she finds her courage and takes a risk is going to be even more satisfying when I get there.

But this does mean going back to the start and doing a fair amount of rewriting because it changes most of the scenes, and each change means more changes later. It’s good that I figured this out before I got halfway into the book.

writing

What Lights My Fire

I attended an online conference a couple of weeks ago at which someone brought up the concept of the ID List. This is a term coined by author/psychology professor Jennifer Lynn Barnes (those who’ve followed me since the early Enchanted, Inc. days may remember me featuring her as part of the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit blog tours), and it refers to the list of things that your brain wants, whether or not they’re good. In fiction, these are the things that make something an autobuy/read/watch if you see them in a book, TV show, or movie description. Or they’re the little elements that make your brain light up as you’re reading or watching.

The idea is that you as a writer can maintain and convey your passion for your work by being sure to include items from your list in everything you write. Jennifer also says she finds she gets better response from her marketing when she lists these things than when she gives a description of the book. The people who also love those things have a gut reaction to hearing about them. They can be tropes, but they can also be plot elements, settings, moments, character types, and activities.

So, I started playing around with making my list the other night when I was at a band concert in the park (I noticed the number of people playing on their phones during these concerts and decided it wouldn’t be any more rude for me to bring a pen and notebook and journal, brainstorm, or do other work during the concert).

The first item on my list had to be that romantic road trip thing I’m always talking about, in which two people have to travel together, usually because of some mutually beneficial arrangement that forces them to overcome their reluctance to get stuck with each other. Along the way they develop respect, then friendship, then maybe love as they face obstacles together. I first realized how strongly I react to this sort of thing when I was watching a Fantasy Cheese movie, and the moment they made an agreement to travel together I stopped the movie and went to make popcorn because I knew I was going to love it, even if it was cheesy and had terrible special effects.

I realized while making my list that the Rydding Village books are pretty much pure ID List for me. To a large extent, that was why I started writing them. I was a bit burned out and maybe even in a very minor depression, so I started throwing a lot of things I love into a story idea. There’s tea, for one thing. Friends sitting around and having tea. Conversations around a kitchen table. Bread and cheese. Town festivals. Bonfires. Dancing. On more of a trope level, I love stories about starting over and rebuilding a life, and I love the particular flavor of amnesia story that I call “who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?” There are a few more, but they’re spoilery for the book or the series.

Bonfires seem to show up a lot. I love a good bonfire or camp fire. I love the smell of wood smoke, and I’m mesmerized by watching the flames. The main reason I have any desire to go camping is to sit by a campfire. I was excited when I bought this house and found that there’s a campfire ring in the back yard, so I could get what I want out of camping while having indoor plumbing and sleeping in my own bed. I haven’t used it yet (at the moment, it’s full of tall grass, raspberry bushes, and English ivy, plus we’re in a drought, so fires are restricted), but I hope to get it cleared out enough to use at least once this fall (I found a stash of firewood in the shed). I have a small tabletop fire pit/stove that I also haven’t used. I just need to find an evening when it’s nice outside, not too windy, and I have the time to just sit outside. In the meantime, I have a big wooden wick candle in a campfire scent, so it crackles and flickers like a fire and gives a hint of the smell. But I definitely write fires into my books and incorporate them into the rituals of the village.

I have actually started a book using that journey trope. I’m just not happy with it yet. I love the first half, but then it seems to fall apart at the midpoint, and I definitely don’t stick the landing, so that book is resting until I can look at it with fresh eyes and maybe replot it.

Making that list has given me ideas for more things to throw into my books to make them more fun for me to write, and maybe more fun for readers.