by Roseanna White | Aug 20, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
When I was very little (as in, from 2 to 4 1/2 years old) my family lived in a split-foyer house. There are things I remember about this house–my room. The kitchen with the breakfast bar separating it from the dining room.
The stairs.
Why, you ask, do I remember the stairs? Interesting and weird story. I have a few memories relating to this. The first few are of approaching the stairs, pausing to make sure no one else was looking, and then jumping. Three years old, mind you. Jumping down the stairs. Now that I have a 3-yr-old of my own, this is even more terrifying.
But I did it because for some reason, I knew I wouldn’t fall on those stairs. I knew–knew–that I could leap down that first flight to the landing and would just float along, landing oh-so-softly on my feet.
And I knew that if I tried it on the second flight down to the basement, I’d fall and hurt myself.
There were a few other things I knew. First, I couldn’t tell anyone about it or do it when they were watching. Second, I could only do it until my next birthday.
Had you asked me at the time how this was possible, I would have said, “Angels carry me down.” Another thing I just knew. And interestingly, my family didn’t attend church back then. I had no “religious upbringing” to-date. So how I knew this . . . Eyes of a child, I suppose.
But I was a stubborn child. (Who, me? Never! LOL.) On that birthday, in spite of knowing I couldn’t and shouldn’t, I checked to make sure no one was watching and then took a flying leap . . . and a giant tumble. My mom came running, and couldn’t understand why in the world I’d tried to jump down the stairs.
Years later I finally told my mom about this, and she got this strange look on her face. “You flew down the stairs?” she asked. Then she shook her head. “I did the same thing when I was a kid. It was angels.”
Maybe my family’s just weird. Or maybe this a priori faith in the world beyond our vision is something inherent in children, something they understand the rules of . . . but something they grow out of.
Makes me wonder what my daughter sees when she looks out over a revival meeting and asks, “Why’s there an alligator on that man’s head?” Or when she looks to the corner of the room and smiles. I’m willing to grant imagination on a lot of things, but I also remember so clearly that certain knowledge that there were angels there, waiting to give me a ride . . . for a time. So long as I obeyed the rules.
In all my life I don’t remember ever seeing an angel–certainly not since I became a believer and grew up into adulthood. But I find it even more interesting that my one personal experience with them pre-dates my education in faith. Just goes to show you, I guess–there’s a lot we can teach kids about God.
And a lot they can teach us.
by Roseanna White | Aug 13, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
It’s a topic I’ve written about before. Romance in novels–what we expect from them, what we expect from life because of them. There are some people who have been adversely affected by them, drawn astray or given unrealistic expectations. There are others who had found inspiration and the draw of the Lord.
I firmly believe that the call of a Christian Romance writer is to try for that second option–we want to pain a picture of love and romance as God intends it to be. Maybe not perfect from the get-go, mind you, but with characters who are all messed up and find the one the Lord intends for them anyway.
We’ve been discussing this on one of the groups I belong to, and one thing that came up was how quickly things tend to happen in romances. Ignoring the disturbingly-fast tendency to jump into bed with each other in secular novels, even in CBA a story usually only covers a few weeks. Is that really enough time to fall in love? To know?
Yes and no. In my opinion, it’s plenty of time to feel that burst of love and know this is one God has in mind for you–it’s just not enough time to be ready for marriage (generally speaking). And in thinking about this, it occurs to me that in the majority of my manuscripts, I avoid this problem by having main characters who already know each other very well by the opening of the book.
In Fire Eyes, they grew up together. In Mafia Princess they grew up together. In Peculiar they grew up together. In Note to Self, the one I just finished on Tuesday (woo hoo!), they’d known each other for about five years. Sure, once in while I’ll write something where they don’t–but it’s an issue for them. One that requires certainty from the Lord and some serious prayer before they make any decisions.
This is a broad topic, and I might touch on other parts of it in later weeks. But for now, I’d love to hear other opinions on the pitfalls and virtues of the romance novel (Christian ones in particular) and how they should be handled–in writing and in life.
by Roseanna White | Aug 6, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
My daughter has this thing. Instead of, you know, looking to see where I am, she’ll call out, “Mommy! Where are you?”
Now, usually I’m about two feet away, just behind her. So I’m obligated to give a silly answer, right? I mean, I can’t just say, “Right here.” That’s way too obvious for someone with my caliber of wit (ha. ha ha ha.). So I’ve taken to saying, “On the moon.”
Depending on her mood, she might ignore me, she might laugh, she might insist, “No, you’re not!” she might then pretend that the woman in the living room is someone else and talk about her mommy, who is currently on the moon . . . or she might pretend like she’s on the moon with me.
That’s the most fun–to see the imagination come to life in my toddler. I’m constantly amazed by her recall and the things she’ll put together. And I get a little flutter in my heart when she tells me she’s going to write books someday too. Yeah, she’s only three–chances are pretty darn good her goals will change a few times, lol. But still.
Yesterday she sat down at my computer, asked me to give her a blank page, and just sat there typing. Most of it looked like this:
asdfahghasduoijangaehrlausdfoivasrueioransdghosdb8ibf fsiorutawlktj
With the occasional “xoe” thrown in. =) But it was so cool for me, because my little girl’s sitting there trying to do what I do, saying as she does it that she’s writing it for me.
It’s those little things that make it all worthwhile. That get my imagination going. Because you just never know what you might discover when you’re on the moon with your little girl.
~*~
FYI, I just redesigned my website. If you’re curious, or want more of my breathtaking wit (ahem), hop over to www.RoseannaMWhite.com. And feel free to leave a note in the guestbook so that I feel special;-)
by Roseanna White | Jul 30, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
As I near the end of a manuscript (which I’m doing now), my mind starts moving ahead to the next project. With me, there are always other projects waiting. If someone were to look in my My Docs folder, they may just shake their head. In addition to the three dozen or so “loose” documents, I have folders. One for ABA (containing another few dozen ideas I’ve worked on to some extent or another), and then a folder for each CBA idea I’ve carefully hewn out. Once an idea earns more than one document, i.e. notes as well as a few pages of text, they get a folder. (There are six, at the moment.)
The real challenge? Figuring out what to dedicate my time to. There are the sequels to books currently under consideration. These will obviously have to be written at some point (see, optimism!), but I need to wait to see what sells first. There are the off-the-wall ideas that often form in a flurry of “what if”s throughout a single day, spurred by who-knows-what. (Like, what’s something my friend Stephanie [YA writer] and I could work on together that we could pitch to Andy Meisenheimer of Zondervan [who’s looking for weird stuff and is hilarious about it]? Oh, I know! . . .) There are the ideas that I am totally in love with, but which may be a hard sell.
Part of me says, “Who cares what’s selling now? Don’t write for the trends. Write for the heart.” And part of me says, “Yeah, but Janet (my agent) specifically requested I keep to American-set historicals or else contemporaries. And I trust Janet.”
For instance, I have this awesome idea for a Victorian-era story that must be set in England. I could contort certain aspects of it and make it New England instead, but then I’d lose the identity of my characters. So what do I do? Write it anyway, and hope that my Victorian novel already out there sells by the time I finish it? Wait until I have a relationship with an editor and then say, “Look, I have this idea. What do you think?”
Because the research for this one is going to be daunting. But I not only believe in the story, it occasionally haunts me. (Now being one of those times.) I’ll occasionally pull out the prologue I wrote and read through it, sigh a little, try to feel the characters. Until now they hadn’t been real enough for me to really dive into now. Now though . . . well, yesterday I took that 9 page prologue, ditched it, and wrote a new 5 page one. So I’m kinda in the groove.
I’ve heard non-writers ask writers, “Where do all your ideas come from?” For me, the answer is EVERYTHING. Seriously. I get ideas constantly–just ask my crit partners, who are occasionally treated to rambling emails on my various unpersued projects. The harder question is, “How do you know what to focus on?”
The answer? Prayer. And then I keep an eye open for the pointing of the Lord. A year ago, He showed me pretty clearly it wasn’t time to write this new Victorian (even though I’d just spent $75 on research books). But now it’s time to break out that prayer again. Maybe He’ll say, “It’s time for this one.” Or maybe He’ll show me something else. Maybe another contemporary. Maybe an American historical. Maybe that weird “What if” idea. Who knows?
Either way, it’s an exciting time, this point where one project will be finished and another picked up. A time when you get to see the flower of one project bloomed full and another bud right beside it, still perfect with its closed petals, no blight or flaw upon it.
“What,” you get to wonder, “might you be in a few months?”
by Roseanna White | Jul 23, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
I confess. I’m an optimist. Not just a fleeting optimist, mind you, an eternal one. As the hero in my Work In Progress just said to the heroine, “You go way beyond optimist. You don’t just see the glass half full–even when it’s empty, you say, ‘Yay! Now I get to fill it up with something even better!’” That, as my husband and critique partners will tell you, is the perfect description of me.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s a joke. If someone else is called an optimist, they’ll reply, “Oh, I’ve got nothing. You should meet Roseanna.” Seriously. When the Lord was writing genetic code, he gave all the worry genes to my sister and left me with this attitude of “all’s well until you prove me otherwise. And even then I won’t be convinced for long!”
Amid my critique group, the joke has led to a new name. I said something about optimism being my middle name. Carole Brown replied with “Are you sure it’s not your first?” LOL. We all decided that maybe it was hyphenated–Roseanna-Optimist.
I now sign all critique emails with RO, the agreed-upon abbreviation. And it suits me so well that I almost always start to sign ACFW emails that way, too. And HisWriter emails. And every other email.
Sometimes I wish I weren’t always so hopeful, since things rarely go as well as I think they will. But in general, this is a really handy attitude to have in the publishing industry. Whenever I get a rejection (not that I ever get rejections, ha ha ha), I usually reply with, “Oh well. There must be a better contract out there for me!” Of course, my wonderful agent then has to try to find it, LOL. She said a few months back, “You’re always so cheerful! I hate giving you bad news. I want to sell something for you!”
Me too. And it’s coming soon. Says RO. =)
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.