by Roseanna White | Jun 12, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
First off, big congrats to the winner of my Fashion Find Challenge!
Angi Griffis
Angi gets to lay claim to all those awesome books, and her entry from Sunday was the one Random.org selected.
Now on with today. Or, er, I guess I’m talking about yesterday, LOL. See, it was a big day for me. Not because I spent the day painting our old house to get it ready for the tenant moving in tomorrow. Not because that earned me blisters all over my hands that even made it hurt to hold my spoon to eat ice cream (but I persevered. Just so you know. I didn’t give up on that chocolate cookies ‘n’ cream!). That was all pretty big. But what really made my day was that my mom finished reading A Soft Breath of Wind and my hubby (whose birthday is today!) finished reading The Lost Heiress.
Now, I’ve had two critique partners and my hubby read A Soft Breath of Wind already, but my mom is the first to read it after I cut a POV that those first readers all agreed was superfluous. And while I haven’t had a chance to drill Mom on whether she ever felt like anything was missing (because I’m not totally sure I put back in some of the details I also deleted that I meant to reinsert, LOL), I figure it must have turned out okay, since Mom declared that this may just be her favorite–which is saying something, because though Mom has always loved all my books, nothing has thus far been able to steal that particular title from A Stray Drop of Blood. I love that its sequel has succeeded!
I talked to my mom on the phone yesterday in the mid-afternoon, at which point she was 86% done. But I didn’t dwell on her finishing up too much, given that I was cleaning upholstery, painting, cleaning the kitchen, painting, trying to unclog the bathroom sink, painting… I had brain power only for “why is this stupid paint not covering?? Why did we not buy good paint?!” (which we then did, and oh the difference it made!) So when I got a message from her on Facebook last night, it was almost a surprise. An “Oh! Right. She was reading…” A very pleasant one.
My hubby David finished The Lost Heiress in the morning before we got to work, and I had totally spaced that–though he’s the first to finish it, and I was pretty anxious for his opinion. When we were getting ready to go to sleep last night, he said, “This is your best version of this book yet.” Keeping in mind that he’s read at least three versions. Perhaps more.
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Diane Kruger is a pretty good match for Brook
photo by Nicolas Genin via Wikimedia |
To which I replied, “Well that’s a good thing, given that it’s the one I sold.” LOL. He went on to add the icing to the cake by saying how I captured such depth, that all my characters were so well portrayed this time. That I really nailed Brook by making her more obviously French (or rather, Monegasque), that Justin is great with the extra moodiness, that Brice was so great this time around, and that giving her a father and taking out her uncles was spot-on for the story.
There’s Joy in hearing something like that–and there’s relief. I can’t speak for all writers, but I can tell you that I’m always anxious when I finish a book, before I hear back from my first readers on what works and what didn’t. My instincts are usually decent with this sort of thing, but I’m too close to really know if “It feels strong” equals “it is strong.”
Sometimes the two halves of a writer’s life–the real world of cleaning and cooking and caring for kids, of remodeling old houses and waiting for test results on a little one’s blood work; and the writer’s world of characters and plot development and deadlines–clash. But sometimes they line up pretty well. June has thus far been a month of hard work. Trimming words from a manuscript, hauling junk from an old house. Yesterday was a day of good report on my two next books and on the progress at the house.
None of it is perfect. I still have cleaning out and moving around to do today in the physical world. I still have some tweaks to make to the manuscripts, some editing, some trimming. But it’s always such a relief to know I’m on the right track!
by Roseanna White | Jun 5, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Reality and our minds’ eyes very rarely agree. Depending on the type of person we are–and the situation–we tend to see things in extremes. As either terrible or grand, though it’s really somewhere in between.
Right now we’re doing some remodeling of our old house. And as I fill trash bags with all the stuff I didn’t want to take with us when we moved, I see that old house as something like this:
Which is ironic, because in my brain, my house should look something like this:
But as I grumble and pack and strip wallpaper and scrub and carry boxes until my back screams at me, I can hear that whisper in the deep places of my heart. The one that says:
I gave you a roof over your head.
I gave you heat in the winter, even if you had to build it by hand in the stove.
I gave you air conditioning in the summer, even if you had to put it in your window.
So many of my children don’t have that.
I gave you the means to buy all this stuff you now deem garbage.
I gave you enough, always enough.
More, I gave you plenty. I gave you bounty.
And I am shamed. And I have to pause and thank Him for providing. For always making sure what I have is sufficient. For the luxury I live in as an American. And I need to learn that what I make of those blessings is up to me. It’s mine to say no when someone offers what I don’t need, what will only clutter things up. It’s mine to say thanks for what I have. It’s mine to take care of it all and be a responsible steward.
I load all those boxes and bags into the back of our old clunker minivan that we bought for a song last year. And you know, sometimes I’m almost embarrassed to be seen in that thing. It’s not sleek and stylish. It’s not filled with cool features or storage compartments or the latest technology. It literally clunks every time we go around a turn. I often look at that old thing and see this:
when what I want to be driving is this:
Then I hear that voice again.
You prayed to somehow
have a van but no extra debt.
I you a van with no
debt.
I gave you wheels.
I gave you storage
space.
I gave you extra seats
for hauling around nieces or friends.
I gave you this to
keep you from spending money that I knew you wouldn’t have.
I took care of you
with this old machine.
And I remember how I knew, knew when the offer for the van came, that the Lord was preparing
us for changes. I knew, when I saw Him taking burdens of debt from us, that it
was because we’d have to be free of it—which meant financial change on the
horizon. And I thank Him again for taking such tremendous care of us.
So I scrub that old carpet. My husband crawls under it or
leans into the hood to fix what’s broken. My kids scrabble in with all the love
for that old clunker that they would give a shiny new car.
In April when I was on my writing retreat with my best
friend, we listened to a couple workshop MP3s from past conferences. The
amazing Susan Miesner said something that I found both hilarious and true. That
she doesn’t know why they call them “royalty reports.” Because when she opens
them up, she never feels like a princess.
For most of us, that is so, so true. I look at where my
books fall in the scale, and I realize I’m not at the top. I’m not a
bestseller. I’m not an award winner. In this business, it’s so, so easy to get
discouraged when we compare ourselves to others. But oh, how well I know the
whisper on this topic!
Your words are
reaching My children.
You’re telling the
stories I plant in your mind.
Publishers invest in
you.
Readers email you.
I gave you your
dreams.
I am humbled, and so very grateful. I praise Him for this
opportunity, and I put my nose to the grindstone and work as hard as I possibly
can to be faithful to this blessing.
But then…then there are the times we all know so well. The
times when we look in the mirror.
I’ve always been oddly confident in my appearance. I
honestly don’t know why. I’m not a super model by any stretch, my body is far
from perfect. I can no longer fit in those size 2 clothes I still had in the
back of my closet. I’m not willing to spend hours each day exercising or give
up the foods I most love. So yeah, my figure has changed over the years. It’s
not exactly what I want it to be. I still have a bump on my nose, and my
complexion hasn’t been clear since I was 10. But I’ve always thought it’s more
about how I feel than anything. So I make sure I feel great in whatever clothes
I buy. I’ll change my outfit five times even on days I’m not leaving the house,
because I need to feel right in
whatever I’m wearing on a given day. I like to think I carry myself with
confidence that people notice more than my actual assets or flaws.
I don’t always like the reality that looks back at me in the
mirror. I get self-conscience when I’m stuck wearing clothes that don’t make me
feel like a million bucks. I hate it when makeup won’t cover the flaws. Or when
an adorable outfit in the store doesn’t fit.
But I know that God doesn’t see that either. I know I’m His
daughter, precious in His sight. And it’s that whisper that matters most. It’s
what He sees there that is so very important.
I want Him to look at me and say:
You have a spirit that
seeks me.
You answer when I
call.
You love despite the
risks.
You feed those who are
hungry.
You clothe those who
are naked.
You nurture even when
you hurt.
You forgive when it’s
tempting to cling to offense.
You sacrifice when I
ask you to.
You teach your
children, My children, to love Me.
You speak the words I
ask you to speak.
You seek My reward
above man’s.
You are My daughter—well
done, faithful servant.
If that is my goal, if that is my achievement in life, then
I’ve lived a life worthwhile. And then it doesn’t matter what I wear or what I
drive or where I live. It doesn’t matter what I have or what I don’t. It doesn’t
matter what others say, though I still pray they see Him in me.
What matters is that, in His eyes, I’m more than the sum of
my parts. Because I have Him in me.
Masnion photo credit: Werner Kunz via photopin cc
Rusted car photo credit: GOC53 via photopin cc
by Roseanna White | May 29, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Last fall, we moved. But we moved in a rush, to a smaller house that was given to us by my hubby’s grandfather. We had a lot of work to do on the old one, so were in no rush to sell. We took what we needed right away…and then the bad weather closed in. It was not a good winter to move, and every weekend when it might have been possible, it was either snowing, raining, icing, our help was out of town, or there were more pressing repairs to be made to, say, automobiles.
So 9 months later, we’re finally getting to work–and on a tight schedule.
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A few boxes of books. Just a few.
Many more to come… |
As the one who will not be patching walls and rewiring, hanging new doors or plumbing, I’m on clean-out detail. And oh. My. Gracious.
When we moved back to Cumberland from Annapolis, Xoe was only 3 months old–she’s now 8.5. I was only a year and a half out of college. Now we’re planning our 10 year reunion. When we moved, I’d shoved a lot of clothes into a portion of a closet that’s hard to reach and unseen, and totally forgot about them. I just went through them last week and had to laugh. The wedding dress, okay. But seriously? That dress from high school? And that one from middle school? I still had that?? Why in the world did I still have that???
I discovered the amazing mess of items that the kids managed to lose under the bunk bed and behind the dresser in their room. I re-learned how few books you can really fit in a box. I found an insurance policy from our first apartment back in 2001. I scrubbed out a pretty-darn-gross fridge with nothing but elbow grease, cold water, and Windex. And I marveled at how much junk we’d accumulated–things that seemed so important at some point, but which I now threw out with no compunction.
And I wonder…what else in my life–in my emotional, spiritual, unseen life–is like that? How much do I cling to when I need to let it go? How much is begging for a good spring cleaning, a purging, a blank slate, but is still gunked up because I don’t have the time or energy or strength to let it go?
Then there are the things we’re looking for. For months, Xoe has been wondering where her little Ty hippo was. We verified it wasn’t among the toys brought over. So every time we went to the other house, Xoe looked for Humba. We checked all the likely places. The toy box. Under the bed. Under the couch. Downstairs.
Nothing.
She was starting to get upset about it. When I went on my own to do some cleaning on Tuesday, the first words from her mouth afterward were, “Did you find my hippo?”
Nope.
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My hutch, now filled with
all my china. =) |
Yesterday, we checked more places. Xoe sighed. We gave up and worked on other things–like moving my cabinet that would hold all my china, which had already been boxed and brought to the new house and now sat in the kitchen, taking up a quarter of my floor space. David and I (both sick) hefted the thing–and we hear Xoe call out, “There she is!”
She’d fallen, inexplicably, behind the cabinet. The last place we ever would have looked for her, there she was.
I was struck by the life lesson there too. That so many times we search and search for something. We work so hard for what we want, in the ways that seem logical. And we fail. Or at least falter. We never seem to attain that thing we’re reaching for.
So eventually we move on to other tasks. The ones that aren’t exactly what we want, but which are more important. And it’s there, in doing what we need to do, that we find that Thing. The one we’d been looking for. God knew all along what we needed to do to get us there, and once we gave up on following our own way–our so-called logic–we get where we need to go.
I’ve got a lot of packing and sorting, tossing out and selling ahead of me yet. No doubt I’ll have a lot more moments of “Why in the world did we keep this??” But maybe I’ll have some more realizations too. Some more opportunities to learn.
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| Humba the Hippo – home at last |
And maybe we’ll find some more treasures along the way.
by Roseanna White | May 22, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| Children on a Path Outside a Thatched Cottageby Helen Allingham, late 19th century |
With the first round of edits wrapped up on A Soft Breath of Wind, I moved on this week to my first round of edits on The Lost Heiress. (Lots of editing going on around here!) There are some changes I know I’m going to make, some inconsistencies I’m finding. An old (for me) story taking on new life.
But one of the major themes in this book has been there since I was 12, when I first started writing it–the one that involves Brook, this noblewoman raised in a country not her own, finding her rightful place. Finding her home. Finding her family.
When I was writing this in seventh and eighth grades, it was easy for her. She lifted her chin, screwed her stubbornness and faith into place, and took England by storm. Her family all adored her, London adored her, life adored her. The only people who didn’t were the bad guys, because they were evil and therefore couldn’t love.
When I was writing this in seventh and eighth grades, I was trying to find my place. Trying to adjust to friends who were suddenly interested in boys instead of Barbies, in being popular instead of being genuine. I was trying to figure out how to be who I knew I was in a world that demanded I be who they wanted to make me.
I was an outspoken 13-year-old. The kind that refused to be led by other kids my age because, frankly, I found them obnoxious. I was the one who thought about consequences. About right and wrong. I was the one who told the other girls at the sleepover that if they were serious about trying a seance, I was going to call my mom and go home. The one who said if they were seriously going to try to sneak out, I would lock the windows and stand guard. The kind who greeted gossip with, “Are your lives so boring that you have nothing better to talk about than me? Seriously? Sorry to hear it.”
Yes, I was an outspoken 13-year-old. But I also wanted those I liked to like me back. I didn’t want arguments for no reason. I wanted to please people, when I deemed them worth pleasing.
I remember one time in the cafeteria, talking about spaghetti, of all things. I proclaimed my mom’s homemade sauce the best (which it is. Just sayin’.). A friend asked, “Does it have chunks of tomatoes?” in a voice that I interpreted as meaning “because if it’s the best, it will.”
Now, my mom’s sauce is ground totally smooth. But I hedged and said something along the lines of, “I don’t know, maybe a few.”
My friend then said, “I hate chunks of tomatoes.”
And there I had a conundrum that brought me to an epiphany. My desire to make this friend agree with me made me lie–and now the truth, which would have been pleasing, couldn’t be spoken. That was the day when I realized that my yes must be yes and my no be no. That was the day when I realized that having someone’s good opinion didn’t mean squat if it wasn’t right opinion.
That was the day when I realized that my place in life couldn’t always be easy–but that it was only worth having if it was really mine.
I’ve never been one of those people to be found in a gaggle. I have some awesome friends, but the best ones are few. I have an amazing family, but I’m not the one always throwing parties, or going to them. I’m not the popular one. Sometimes I wish I were, sometimes I wish people showed up to things when I host them, that I knew how to draw a crowd. Sometimes I wish my place was what Brook’s used to be in my story–beloved by all, effortlessly.
But it’s not who I am. And it’s not my place. It’s never been my place, not when I was a kid penning her first novel in class, and not now, when I’m rewriting it.
Brook’s place has changed now too. Because though 13-year-old-me wanted to believe someone could have it all, 31-year-old-me knows better. Because while there may have been, in some point in history, one young woman who was beautiful and rich and popular and of strong faith and different from everyone else…that’s not the story most of us know.
And it’s not the story I needed to write this time around. This time around, I needed a story of someone who had to fight for her home. Someone who had to decide whether she was going to be molded or if she would do the molding. Someone who had to choose what path she would tread and then face the consequences.
Someone who is less who I wished I were back then…and more who I grew to be.
Someone whose place wasn’t just waiting for her–someone who had to find it. And when she does, she finds there are those in it who oppose her. And those who would do anything for her.
Because that is life. We can never have it all.
But we can have what matters most.
by Roseanna White | May 15, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I don’t often post purely writing-related articles on my blog, and I’ll try to make this one not just that, too, since I know only a few of you are writers. But as I’m revising and editing A Soft Breath of Wind, I keep thinking about some of the decisions I made in the story, and why I did it the way I did.
As a general rule, we writers are told to arrive late to the story, when the main action is upon them. As a general rule, I do just that. And since the main body of my story takes place when Zipporah is 18, that’s where I kept trying to start it. Over and again I attempted to begin this book there. I even had a few chapters written, one focused upon Zipporah on the villa outside Rome, then one with Benjamin and Samuel, my two male leads, in Jerusalem.
But when I came back to it, I knew it was wrong. And though it followed that “late arrival” rule, it was wrong because it was the easy way. It skipped over the turmoil that set them on their current course and picked up when the pain had eased.
That wasn’t going to cut it.
So though it required going back four years in time, I started earlier. I started on the day Zipporah received the gift that scarred her for life and set her future on its course. I then moved to a death in the family that set all my main characters reeling.
I did it because it hurt. And because without that hurt, my characters wouldn’t have become who I needed them to be. Sometimes it works to just have them already be that, and keep the why in the backstory. But not here. Here, I needed to show the shaping so that we could understand and love these injured, strong characters.
I’m so glad I started those four years earlier. Because then, when I knew the characters better, I could write the here-and-now so much more effectively. I realized that Samuel, who at first greeted a stunning revelation with calm and cool, would not be so unaffected. I realized that Zipporah, who greets adversity with a smile, was burying a world of hurt.
In life, we don’t often deliberately choose the hard way. Not if we see that it’s the hard way, LOL. We don’t want the underscore of pain if we can help it. Certainly I would spare my children those hard-won lessons if I could. It’s different with characters, but real people…we don’t want to learn that way.
But like with characters, how often do we miss the real blessings God wants to show us by choosing the path we think is easiest? How often do we miss His rich depths because it’s easier to skim the surface?
Maybe I’m still not going to seek out the hard way in life. But it’ll find me, that I know. And I pray that the lessons I’ve learned in fiction I can carry through to reality. Because it’s only through the hard stuff that the beauty really shows itself. It’s only through the pain that we find the strength to really find
Joy.
It’s only along the hard path that we find where we were always meant to be.
by Roseanna White | May 8, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I reached a major milestone on Sunday–I finished my book, for the, er… (one…two…three) fourth time. And I’m talking the fourth total, complete, toss out every scene previously written and start from scratch rewrite.
It’s a pretty awesome feeling to finish a book any time. But when it’s a book you first wrote “The End” on at age 13? Yeah–I’m still a little shocked that I’m doing it again, LOL, and so incredibly thrilled that I’m doing it again because that book, the one whose premise I came up with at age 12, is contracted by Bethany House. I can’t think of a much better example of how God leads us on some crazy paths that last a lifetime! (I had a guest post up on the rather amazing journey of this book on Go Teen Writers last week. If you haven’t seen it yet,
Read It Here.)
Making the feeling even better is that I really love the new setting I gave the story, and the new elements and plots that got worked in–or worked back in. In every previous version, Brook (my heroine) was an orphan. The legalities of that were tricky though, for things like inheritance laws, so I decided in this version that her father still needed to be alive.
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Whitby Abbey ruins – close to the new setting of the book
and where a big scene happens
Photo by Chris Kirk |
And oh my goodness. That changed everything–in ways I love! She now reunites with him in the first couple chapters, and their journey added such depth to the story–it just makes me grin to think about it.
In the first two versions, I put a great deal of emphasis on Brook’s maid. That’s something I took out in version 3 and its various revisions for a number of reasons. But I re-introduced the below-stairs point of view in this one, and I was so happy to get to do so. I love that dichotomy too, of the two different perspectives who both get to realize that family is family, no matter the circumstances.
I’m now to the point where I get to let the MS rest for a little while before I dive into edits and trim it down to size (not as much trimming required as usual! LOL). For me, that means editing
A Soft Breath of Wind and a slew of WhiteFire books in the meantime. I’m putting the finishing touches right now on WhiteFire’s historical that comes out next week,
Sweet Mountain Music, and having a blast. The characters in SMM are on the hunt for a certain legendary ape creature said to haunt the Cascades, and it’s a story that will make you laugh and sigh and cheer them on.
In not so happy news, one of the reasons I forgot to blog yesterday is that Rowyn woke up with a sore, swollen knee and spent the first hour of the morning (my blog writing time) on my lap. With no injury to link to this, we took him to the doctor, who suspects it might be juvenile arthritis. We would certainly appreciate prayers about this!
Hope everyone’s enjoying May thus far, and that all you moms have a special weekend planned. =)
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.