Who decides the dreams?

My teenage son told me at breakfast the other day that he had one of the more ridiculous dreams he's ever had. Most of the plot (and I use the term loosely) was compltely non-sensical. I can't even recall all the hapless details except that I remember he told me our cat was in the dream but it wasn't our cat.

I've had dreams like that. I'll dream I'm in my house but it's not my house. Or that I'm back at my high school but it's not my high school. Or I am holding my baby but it's not my baby.

And it just makes me wonder, who is in charge of the subconscious while I'm sleeping? I mean, really? It's like I go to sleep and a bunch of four-year-olds gather around a conference table in my mind and decide the dream's storyline for that night.

"Let's have her dream she's in her car."
"Yeah. But not her car."
"Yeah. And make her dog be in it."
"Yeah. But not her dog."
"And have her drive to her house."
"But it's not her house."
"And have her keys not work."
"And it's raining."
"And she's getting married."
"And she forgot to buy a dress."
"And then her other dog shows up."
"But not really her dog."

And if that's not ridiculous enough, my dreams' story lines deal with the same cliched plots over and over and over. The writer in me is appalled at the lack of originality. There's the No Way Out dream, also known as the No Parachute Dream. And the You Didn't Study for the Test Dream. And the Where Did this Baby Come From? dream. And the Yikes! I've Lost all my Teeth Dream. And yes, I've dreamt the I'm Late for My Wedding and I Forgot to Buy a Wedding Dress dream a dozen times, even though I am happily married and got that way in a dress I bought six months a head of time, 27 years ago.

Who comes up with this stuff? Which part of us decides what lifeskill we need to work on while we sleep? The four-year-olds in our brains could gain a lot by attending a good writers conference so they could come up with better material.

Am I right or am I right?

Written upon

Some writer friends and I were chatting about epigraphs this week (those are the poignant and pithy quotes authors like to put in the front of their books). Epigraphs are supposed to clue you in to the theme of the book. They are like little secrets the author whispers into your ear before you turn to Chapter One. They reveal a wondrous truth the protagonist will need 400 pages to figure out. They are lovely little things and I really like them. I always include one or two. The word epigraph is Greek and means "written upon."

The conversation reminded me, though, that there have been times I've read an epigraph and been left flummoxed. The whispered secret made no sense to me.

What does it mean? What was I supposed to get from those solitary, standalone words? Something important is imbedded here! Dang it, what is it?? So I'd read the entire book and then turn back to the epigraph, hoping to have been enlightened. But I'd be as befuddled as before. That ever happen to you? Tell me it has. I can't be the only person who's been mystifed by an epigraph. . . I wanted to make a list here on the Edge of all the epigraphs that have stymied me and I couldn't remember a one. Not one.

So I'm going to start making a list. When I come across an epigraph that floors me, I'll add it to the list. When the list is adequate, I'll post it. It will probably appear five years from now, give or take.

In the meantime, here are some epigraphs from books I really like and whose epigraphs I totally get. The epigraph precedes the book it is found in:

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." - Charles Lamb
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

"One must take off her fear like clothing. One must travel at night; this is the seeking after God." - Maureen Morehead
Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

"What power has love but forgiveness? In other words, by its intervention, what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?" - William Carlos Williams
Levi's Will by W. Dale Cramer

"Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector; the inner time is our wife."
- J.B. Priestley
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer." - Rumi
The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

"No one spoke. The host, the guest, the white chrysanthemums." - Ryota
The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama.

Got a favorite epigraph? Or one that has you perplexed? Let's hear 'em . . .

Letting the flavors mingle

I often get asked how I can write a 350-page book in three months. The first time I was asked this my answer was, "I don't know. It just happens."

But I kept getting asked and I soon decided my answer needed some work, because my answer was no answer at all. So I analyzed my process of taking an idea and turning into 80,000 words of story. What do I do on Day 1?

When I stopped to figure it out, I realized I don't start on Day 1. I start before. I pre-write in a way that doesn't involve much writing at all. I mentally flesh out my characters before I write about them. They spend several weeks with me, attached to my ankle like prisoners on a chain gang while I pepper them with questions. I ask them about their past, their future, their goals, their fears, their pet peeves, their greatest joys. I invite them to comment on my day, on their day as my prisoner, on life, on truth, on justice, on love. I file away their responses in my head, and each one of these responses adds tissue and muscle to their character.

I call this marinating.

My characters - who all want something and are opposed by someone or something because that is the very essence of story - are becoming more pronounced, more distinct, more flavorful, if you will. The story - their story - is marinating in my head. The story appears to be sleeping, I appear to be not writing.

But I am. I am just not using words at the moment.

And when enough time has elapsed and the story, the characters. the plot, has been tenderized, well, then I start writing. The story usually flows out - with considerabl effort, I assure you - in a span of three to four months. Sometimes two. Sometimes five.

I'm pretty sure it happens that way because of the marinating time.

And that sure seems like a better answer than, "Duh, I dunno."

Chapters at your beck and call . . .

Like those free samples at Costco and Sam’s Club? Wish you could sample books before you buy? The Edge is chatting up the Yahoo group, Chapter-a-Week today, where you can nibble new books and taste the pages before you plunk down your hard-earned money.

CAW gives readers the opportunity to read free sample excerpts from a broad range of Christian fiction every week. It''s a great way to discover new authors you might not have found otherwise. CAW doesn’t fill your inbox with needless emails. Only one email per week to get your free chapter and discover great new titles.

Founded in February 2002 by novelists Jane Orcutt and Angela Hunt, Chapter-a-Week has had a steadily growing readership. In honor of the soon-to-be-named 1000th member, Chapter-a-Week is giving away autographed books donated by more than half a dozen Christian novelists. CAW will send a box of books to the 1000th member, and if that person was recommended to CAW by you, you’ll get two free books mailed to your snail mail address too! Pretty cool!

Here are some of the authors participating in this celebratory giveaway: Robin Lee Hatcher, Tricia Goyer, Judith Miller, Camy Tang, DiAnn Mills, Traci DePree, and yours truly. Chapter-a-Week is a Yahoo! Group, so simply sign on to be a subscriber of the list and you'll start receiving your excerpts every Friday. Just go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChapteraWeek/ and click "join this group."

Happy free reading!

Still waiting for your Pi-Ku . . .

Pi in the sky

Math has never been my thing. I have lots of respect for it and I'm glad it rocks the world of geniuses everywhere, but my feet are firmly planted in the artistic and the abstract - except on Pi Day.

Today - March 14, the fourteenth day of the third month, very much like 3.14 - is Pi Day. I am not making this up. There is a website for it and everything. Today the beauty of pi will be celebrated by geeks across the universe and pie-lovers like me. Anything properly celebrated must involve yummies. And pi properly celebrated demands pie, of course. That's a no-brainer - even for a right-brained wordsmith like me.

Okay so it's not even 11 a.m. on West Coast at this typing moment, so I can't eat the pie yet. I don't even HAVE the pie yet. (Note to self: Pick up pie at Marie Callendar's before they run out. It is Pi Day, after all. . .)

Instead, to kill a few minutes, I hopped onto the Pi Day website and quickly learned Pi Day is 20 years old. The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Fransisco Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, and then consuming fruit pies.

There's a lot I could tell you about Pi from this highly rational site, like there's a special fraternity of people who can recite line upon line upon of pi's never-ending decimals, but the right-brained me likes the Pi-Ku the best (think Haiku with pi in mind). Here are my faves:

Three point one
Four
et cetera
(by Tricia)

Hello Pi
Oh...
Endless digits
(By Richard)

Only pi
Is
In the Bible.
(by Matthew, who also says, "Check it out for yourself; it involves the dimensions of the altar in the Temple")

How I love
my
perfect circle.
(by Mark)

Haiku is
hard
enough, okay?
(by Liz)

And the best of them all:

Apple Pie
Yum
No math for me
(by Jim K)

Jim, wherever you are, you rock.

And here's my own Pi-Ku:

Table leg
Curled
Pi's cute, right side
(by Sooz)

I include here a kicky little picture of pi so you can see how devilishly cute that right side is.

OK, now it's your town. Lay some Pi Ku on the Edge. Here's the formula: 3 syllables, 1 syllable, 4 syllables.

Don't by shy. Celebrate pi. . .

A visit with Robin Lee Hatcher

The lovely and talented Robin Lee Hatcher is visiting the Edge today to chat about her newest release, The Perfect Life. Here's what the back cover says:
"Katherine Clarkson has the perfect life. Married to Brad, a loving and handsome man, respected in their church and the community. Two grown daughters on the verge of starting families of their own. A thriving ministry. Good friends. A comfortable life.

She has it all—until the day a reporter appears with shocking allegations. Splashed across the local news are accusations of Brad's financial impropriety at his foundation and worse, of an affair with a former employee. Without warning, Katherine's marriage is shattered and her family torn apart. The reassuring words she's spoken to many brokenhearted women over the years offer little comfort now.

Her world spinning, Katherine wonders if she can find the truth in the chaos that consumes her. How can she survive the loss of the perfect life?"

Publisher's Weekly gave A Perfect Life a nice thumbs-up: "Hatcher is a dab hand with dialogue, which is one reason her characters are so well drawn: readers will feel empathy with all members of the family. Hatcher also gets kudos for creating, in Katherine's best friend, a sympathetic non-Christian character, something all too rare in faith fiction. This will be a surefire hit ."


Edge: So, Robin. Where do you get the ideas for your stories and what has been your greatest inspiration?
Robin: Ideas come from all kinds of places – from dreams, from bit of news on the television, from conversations overheard in restaurants. Sometimes I’m conscious of the exact moment an idea for a novel began. But for most my novels, the ideas seem to creep up on me. The Perfect Life was more the latter. One day I simply recognized I had the premise for a story rolling around in my head, then I began brainstorming the bigger picture and eventually the novel was born.
Some of my novels have come from deep personal experiences. Because God has walked me through dark places and brought me out on the other side, I want to share with others the grace He has shown me. Since I am a novelist, fiction is the main way I can do that. And naturally, the faith element of my novels comes out of my own faith experiences, from lessons God has taught me or is teaching me. Sometimes I’m looking for answers right along with the characters of my books, so writing is a form of discovery for me.

Edge: How does it make you feel to see your books, not only in print but on the shelves of stores?
Robin: I can honestly say it was every bit as exciting when I held The Perfect Life, my 56th book, as it was when I held my very first novel (1984). Every novel is a story from my heart, and I pray that each one will bring readers both enjoyment and new understanding. To see it come to fruition is an amazing thing.

Edge: Do you have a favorite of all the books you have written so far? Why is it your favorite?
Robin: I don’t have one favorite book, but some of my books are special to me for different reasons. For instance, I love Ribbon of Years because my protagonist, Miriam, is the kind of Christian I hope to be at the end of my life. I love The Shepherd’s Voice because God taught me that He can and will do amazing things with what I offer to Him, even when it is so imperfect. I love Beyond the Shadows because I long to let Christians who love alcoholics know that they are not alone and that there is always hope in Christ. I love Catching Katie because Katie was such a fun character and the research was fascinating. I love The Forgiving Hour because God poured that story into my heart and many of the scenes came straight out of my own life (albeit the experiences came more than 25 years before I wrote the book). I love The Perfect Life because I understand Katherine’s perfectionist tendencies and her need to control the chaos. And I always love the next book I plan to write because there is still hope that it will completely fulfill the vision I have for it.

Very cool. You might want to know that Robin is a winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction (Whispers from Yesterday), the RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance (Patterns of Love and The Shepherd's Voice), two RT Career Achievement Awards (Americana Romance and Inspirational Fiction), and the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, Robin is the author of over 55 novels, including Catching Katie, named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Library Journal. She blogs here!

On Friday: Pi and coffee, of course! 3.14. Geddit?

Not for the faint of heart

There are no easy stories of The Holocaust. It is not a huge surprise that Those Who Save Us was a hard read for me. I read it as a book club selection and at one point, when one of the others in my group asked me how I was liking the book so far I said, "I keep waiting for something good to happen."

Suffice it to say a lot of bad things happen. That's the awful truth behind any book with Nazi Germany as a backdrop.

Author Jenna Blum kept it real, so of course it was sad, depressing even. And something good does eventually happen of course, as is the case with WWII stories: The war ends. But the story wasn't about the war, really. It was a character study on the themes of desperation, hope, resilience, shame, regret and gratitude.

The story in a nutshell, which is told in alternating chapters between the past and present, is this: A young woman, Anna, falls in love with a Jewish doctor just prior to his incarceration at Buchenwald. Pregnant with the doctor's child, she is taken in by a baker who is secretly providing bread to the concentration camp prisoners. When the baker is discovered and executed, Anna picks up where the baker left off. A Nazi officer learns of Anna's complicity, however, and he strikes a cruel deal with Anna to allow her and her infant daughter to survive. Half of the story is told through the daughter's eyes 50 years later.

You begin to see the pattern of who saves whom subtly. Actually, everything about the story's more intimate details is subtle. Interesting, because war, especially a war like WWII, isn't subtle. Blum doesn't use quotation marks in any of her dialogue, a stuttering distinction that flies in the face of convention. But I love Blum's reason for it. She explains in her Amazon blog:

"My policy is, there had better be a danged good reason behind everything you do as a writer, especially if it's unusual. If you're employing some unorthodox authorial conceit such as not using quotation marks, you risk popping your reader out of the story. So yes, there is a reason I eschewed the quotes: they looked too lively on the page for this book. Quotes are like little firecrackers, telling the reader: "Hey, reader, pay attention! You get to eavesdrop here!" But for THOSE WHO SAVE US, I wanted to create an austere, sepia-toned atmosphere for these characters who dwell so much in memory. The quotes disturbed that."

It's amazing how it worked. Subtly and yet with force.

The cover on the paperback edition fails to prepare the reader for what lies in the pages. But maybe there is nothing that can prepare someone for a fictional treatise on hard choices. Everyone of us has to imagine what we would do if placed in the same situation, knowing we must live with our choices if we end up surviving.

A great read, but brutally honest. Best to know that up front. It's what makes the story shimmer.

My good friend Deborah Raney is dropping by the Edge today so we can chat about her new book, Leaving November, book number 2 in her Clayburn series. I have to say, you won't find a more genuine soul than Deb Raney. Even on my good days, I don't have the class and gentility that this Kansas girl has. And I love the premise behind this book. Check it out:

Daughter of the town drunk, Vienne Kenney has escaped Clayburn for law school in California. But after failing the bar exam—twice—she’s back home with her tail between her legs, managing Latte-dah, the Clayburn café turned upscale coffee shop. Jackson Linder runs the art gallery across the street and Vienne has had her eye on him since she was a skinny seventh grader and he was the hunky high school lifeguard who didn’t know she existed. Now it’s his turn to fall for her and suddenly Clayburn seems like a pretty nice place to be...until Vienne discovers that Jack is fresh out of rehab and still struggling with the same addiction that ultimately killed her father.

I just love that Latte Dah coffee shop image! And I love it that Vienne (very cool first name) is a protagonist with such lovely flaws. Failed the bar exam twice!

Edge: So, Deb. What was your inspiration for Leaving November?
Deb: When I was writing the first book in the series, Remember to Forget, Jackson Linder, a secondary character in the book, really intrigued me. Jack has struggled with something that is my greatest fear: being responsible for the death of another person. I wanted to explore how someone in his shoes could find forgiveness, redemption, and even happiness.

Edge: What are you working on now?
Deb: I've just finished the first draft for the third book in the Clayburn series, Yesterday’s Embers. I have a new contract for another three-book series, and a couple of stand-alone novels to write, but there are other characters from the Clayburn novels begging to have their stories told! I don’t know if I’ll get to write any more Clayburn books, but I’ve loved my time in this little fictional Kansas town!

Edge: What do you enjoy most about writing? Least?
Deb: Most: Having written! Because that means I’m getting reader feedback on my novel—the reward for all the hours of solitude! I also love that I get to be at home and make my own hours.
Least: First-drafting! I love rewriting—taking my editors’ comments and applying them to make my book the best it can be. But the blank page terrifies me! For me, it’s far easier to fix a horrible manuscript than to try to come up with something out of thin air.

Edge: What do you do when you're not reading or writing?
Deb: I love working in the beautiful garden my husband, Ken, designed in our back yard (for a peek, go to http://kansasprairiegarden.blogspot.com/) and I love decorating our home. It’s such fun to comb antique shops and flea markets for a great object from the past that I can use on my desk or in my kitchen, or a great piece of furniture to paint or refinish. I’m not much for pretty stuff just for the sake of having it on display, but I love “repurposing” antiques—like the old chamber pot I use for deadheading in the garden, or the antique bank mail sorter that serves as my filing “cabinet.”

As much as I enjoy my career, I’ve always believed that my most precious calling is wife to Ken, my husband of 33 years; mom to four great kids; and now mom-in-law, and “Mimi” to two darling little grandsons. In addition, I have some of the most amazing friends in the world, including a group of women who share my name. We affectionately call ourselves Club Deb. I think being in the solitary profession of writing helps you really appreciate the people you have eye-to-eye contact with!

Edge: Thanks for gracing the Edge today, Deb. On Friday, Edglings, a book review of Those Who Save Us.