Creative thinking in Tucson

Ever since I was a child, one of my pluses from any long driving trip, where I was a passenger, has been time to think about all kinds of things that routine activities don't make so easy. I have used the time to create story lines, most of which didn't last longer than the trip, to work out plans for something, to daydream, and to think about my goals in a philosophical sense.

Of course, that works best when the traffic isn't heavy. If there is a lot of traffic, I think about that which is usually annoying to the driver-- the 'watch out that truck is too close' kind of thing.

On the long drive down to Tucson in April, I spent quite a bit of time thinking why I like to write fiction and how that differs from other kinds of writing I enjoy. I thought more about my goals for such writing than I usually do.

One thing I have acknowledged to myself-- so far anyway-- is I cannot write all kinds of fiction. Although I have completed a lot of fiction manuscripts which range in length from 80,000 to 140,000 words, they mostly fall into what I call romances with an edge. That means two people meet (or break up) at the beginning and the book is about whether they will reunite (it's likely they will) and will they survive whatever danger is part of the story (also likely-- secondary characters not so much). These are also stories of emotional development as the characters grow through the love they struggle to keep. Romance writing, however, is a genre with certain standards and expectations.

When I wrote most of my stories, I liked reading romances-- and then I stopped enjoying reading them and a problem arose for writing them. At this point in my life, for reasons I won't go into, I'd rather be writing anything but romances. Crone lit would appeal to me a lot as it's what I enjoy reading, but the ideas simply don't come except when I read something someone else wrote and I think, wow great ideas-- but they weren't mine.


So I wondered when I started looking at all these old manuscripts, for possibly becoming eBooks-- would they be unappealing even to me? Would they bore me and seem trite? If I can't stand to look at a romance in the bookstore, how would my own fare?

It turns out, at least for me, they are a lot like our children. They are ours and therefore we love them-- no matter what. So far, I have liked the characters and plots although I haven't been through them all yet. The ones I did edit, I felt good about. I tweaked dialogue, added increased motivations here or there, but overall they seemed like stories I'd enjoy reading which is my first criteria for what I write.

On the drive south, I had asked myself what am I trying to do with these stories? To be honest, where it comes to my art or writing, I don't generally do a lot of that kind of introspection. I prefer to do it, not think about why I do it. The drive gave me time to do the latter when I could not do the former.

When I write a story, I feel two obligations. The first is to me as a writer and any potential reader. I want the story to be believable but have the magic that takes the events and characters beyond the mundane to moments (and most of us have had a few of them) where we step out of the ordinary to live something that is bigger than us. Those events cannot, and we wouldn't want them to, come along all the time but through movies and books, we sometimes step into that 'other' realm for a few hours.

One of my goals then with writing fiction is to give the reader that kind of vicarious experience. I am not into tragedies. Life provides too many of those. Dwelling on disasters seems unhealthy to me. How does that improve our own lives?

Except in rare situations, I never liked to read romances with a lot of tears and never where tears are manipulated (and that doesn't just happen in romances). If someone feels moved by something, I want it to feel real, not forced by the author (whether me or someone else). I also want it to serve a purpose that is positive as otherwise it's wallowing.

Then came something I hadn't thought about before. When I write fiction, when I create characters, I feel an obligation to those creations who begin to seem real to me. I want to fairly tell their story and give who they are a full portrait with a set of experiences that stay true to who they are. I want them to learn something through those experiences and be further along the life road.

If you haven't written fiction before, keeping characters true to themselves isn't quite as easy as you might think. What is easy is for the writer to step in and try to help a character along in a way that isn't true to their nature. I never want to do that but have caught myself at it. When I see I did that, I back off and start that section over.

I also don't like to give my characters oratory to make some philosophical point that I really don't think that person would've thought but that I as the writer do. But I love to have a philosophy come from them that I think is very real to them and that will have the reader going-- ah ha.


On every level (except missing my cats), this has been a wonderful time in Tucson. We didn't hike nearly so much as usual, never made it out to the Desert Museum, which is usually one of our first stops, didn't get to San Xavier, which I love visiting, but we got more done on the house than we often have accomplished. It's been a bit of this and that with projects arising that we hadn't planned, and all the big ones working out to more give this house the character we hope for it to have. What I have loved the most are the surprises, things I had no idea we'd be doing when we drove down.

While I have been here, writing has been my main creative outlet. This home is so good for creative work. We have two spaces that work well for two different writers; which is good since Farm Boss, as well as doing the grunt work outside, has been working through phone and computer on his jobs in Oregon (the phone end of his project is why he gets the den and I get the back corner of the living room).

I only did one small oil painting looking toward Pusch Ridge of the cholla and palo verde, from alongside the house, which except for the photo below, is not going back to Oregon as I have a place to hang it in the Tucson house. Painting wasn't really where my heart was this time. That was with those characters, trying to decide what they would do next, and working on digital covers to possible eBooks.

(Photos all from the Tucson house.)