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Writing the Romance with Cynthia Joy My Life as Fiction November 1, 1999 Tirtsah: *********Welcome to Inspired Love! Tirtsah: ********Our guest tonight is Gail Martin! Tirtsah: ><><><><YEAH><><><><> JansEMail: Welcome Gail! GailGMartin: Thanks! Tirtsah: Now........Gail please introduce yourself to us. GailGMartin: I'm a freelance writer and novelist - writing for Barbour Heartsong Presents and recently received a contract with Steeple Hill. That novel will be out next year - but I have 2 published with Heartsong. Tirtsah: Great! Thankyou. <G> Gail has agreed to address the topic "MY LIFE AS FICTION" HOW TO USE YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCES IN FICTION! GailGMartin: Right! Tirtsah: Gail your up! Please let us know when you'd like questions. ga GailGMartin: Okay fine. I'd like to present a few thoughts -- few ha ha1 and then I'll open it up for questions. Every writer uses him/herself in her writing naturally. That's a given. People read your work and say - Oh I can hear you saying ying that! We use our beliefs, expessions, etc. but sometimes we might over look some things that will really help in writing a novel One thing that I try to do is use things that I know about as a major part of the story but as well -- I use experiences from my friends and family GailGMartin: I try to select careers, for example, that someone I know is in - so that I can just make phone calls and get info. I use my interestts - which most of you probably do - you'll find music in various things, travel, for example. GailGMartin: One thing you can do is really study the people that you know so that you can come up with some very realistic charactersand really capture their idiocyncracies. For example I have outlined a series that I'd like to do for Steeple Hill and one character is an elderly woman who is very eccentric GailGMartin: I'm patterning her after some one that I know - (she's dead now) but naturally, I have to be very careful to make her different enough -yet capture her strange ways. GailGMartin: I love to travel as I mentioned and so whenever I travel in this country or out, I gather all the info I can get on an area -- all the brochures, pamphets, maps, activities of the area, etc. especially those magazines about an area that tells special events, stores, etc. That way you can use this place as a setting and it will save you a lot of time researching. GailGMartin: Also I have used many experiences in my life to bring out real feeligns and emotions. I know we all try to create emotions (realistic ones)in our writing But as you write you can take yourself back to a similar experience. GailGMartin: Let me give you some examples. In my first novel, Seasons I write about a widow. She is going through a grief recovery workshop. I've never been through one but I have been divorced and did go through a divorce recovery - so I used that experience to imagine what it might be like to lose a mate to death. GailGMartin: Many of my feelings are expressed in that novel. For example, I never had children so being alone meant really be alone -- no longer being a family. I had experienced that feeling in my own life and so I gave that feeling to my heroine - she felt as if she were no longer a family. That's just one example. GailGMartin: In my novel Dreaming of Castles I wrote about some true experience that I had while traveling in Europe - some of them were horrible at the time - but they became humorous when I put them in the at the time novel. For those who read that novel - you might remember being stranded alone at night on a dark hillside and not know how to get down. Having my car towed away and paying a lot of money to get it back, etc. GailGMartin: Upon a midnight clear is about a women who give a child up for adoption. I have never done that or never lost a child to death, but my sister has, and I was able to draw from that horrible experience to capture the feelings in that story. This is the one that will be published by Steeple Hill next year. GailGMartin: I'm presently writing a novel called A Walk in the Garden which is about a woman who must have knee replacement surgery - for those who know me, you know that I've just gone through that - so the feelings and emotions are very real. GailGMartin: I'd like to show you an example from a novel I wrote called Desire of Her Heart - and then I'll let you ask questions. That novel recalls some memories of mine from experiences up north - when the family got together and once a year we would go out and pick wild raspberries. We looked forward to this every year - and the children would get so excited waiting for tht right time of year. The berries and emotions involving them run thorughout the novel as a motif. GailGMartin: Let me give you some examples from the novel. The heroine is on a hill in this scene where the berries grow. She wandered to the bushes, smelling the fragrant growth and seeing the tiny numbs that would weigh the boughs with berries later in the summer. Memories made her smile. Carrying her sand bucket, she and her father would climb the hill in early September and pick the clusters of deep read raspberries She ate more than she put in the bucket and her father would tease her . . .GailGMartin: <<Then she goes back up later looking for the berries>> GailGMartin: Two or three ripe berries hung from a bow and she plucked them and popped them into her mouth. The sweet juices tantalized her tongue, and she searched among the brambles but found only a few more ripe berries. GailGMartin: <<later a poem appears in a journal that she forgets on the hill>>
GailGMartin: This is a Haiku and she doesn't know who wrote it in the journal but she guesses its a college student who keeps following her around town - he has a "thing" for her. GailGMartin: <<Then I use the berries as a simile >> GailGMartin: Instead she'd leter her feelings grow, edging in her consciousness, then bloosoming like the raspberries on the hill, until now her emotions were lush and bursting like the succulent ripe berries. GailGMartin: <<Then an analogy is used with the berry theme>> GailGMartin: The hill was different, and she was different. No more moping. Take life for what it was -- berries and brambles. If she wanted berries, she ahd to take a chance at getting pricked by the brambles. If she wanted to smell roses, she ahd to take a chance getting pricked by a thorn. That was it. Life was a blend of good and bad, joy and sorrow. GailGMartin: <<The conclusion pulls the berries back into the story.>> GailGMartin: <<Someone kept picking the berries that she'd go for - and she goes to the hill thinking she's lost the man she loves, etc. and this is what happens.>> GailGMartin: Clay stepped toward her, his eyes drawing, pulling them together uncontrollably like a magnet to metal filings. He didn't speak, but help the bright bucket out like a gift, an offering, filled with plump ripe raspberries. Clay lowered the bucket to the ground and opened his arms. The empty bucket and dewy rose dropped from ehr hand, and she ran like a gale, throwing herself into his arms. Her emotions rose, dancing, and she felt the rhythm of his heart beating against hers. His hands brushed her cheek, traced the line of her eyes and her mouth. His lips touched hers, soft and sweet as the berries. GailGMartin: <<And so the ending>> GailGMartin: You see how a single remembered experience in your life can bring about a whole theme for a romance novel. I've done the same thing with a peom I wrote my niece once called 'The Kite Flyer comparing love and flying a kite. That is now the theme of a novel at Steeple Hill and my a agent is sure they'll buy it. I used music as a theme in the other . So now it's time for me to shut up - and you to talk. GA JansEMail: ? Tirtsah: LOL, Jan ga JansEMail: sorry, i started typing and got wingdings... Gail when you develop a character from someone you now, or have know, do you find that the H/H changes to his or her own person JansEMail: as you write? ga AKBWRITES2: Jan's a wingding, too. JansEMail: I sure am! :) GailGMartin: LOL When I use a real person to develop a characater I really only use little pieces of that person - they are never really the same - and yes, they start with some known qualities, but they do become totally different individuals. For example, the hero in the story that I just sketched out - Clay is based on two men, I know, but one most particularly. He is an engineer. Everything is precise - and must be well-planned. Everything charted and graphed. And that's the Clay in my story, but he is really nothing like this particular man in other ways. He is so quiet and keeps things so hidden within himself - unlike the real man. I think this happens with all characters. Don't you.? ga GailGMartin: By the way, I should mention that Clay's precise planning is a major conflict in the novel. Tirtsah: Can you explain that a little more Gail? ga GailGMartin: You mean about the conflict? Tirtsah: Yes please. ga Sandie129: ? GailGMartin: Clay has fallen in love with the heroine (Sandy) but he has left a career behind that he loved because of the guilt over his wife's death. He feels that he cannot be a whole person. Until he gets rid of his "ghosts." Though he loves her and knows that he wants to be with her - he cannot do it until he completes his "plan" and nothing will change his mind. JansEMail: ! Tirtsah: Jan ga JansEMail: I just wanted to agree with you about the characters. I think it's really neat when they start to devlop before our eyes. ga GailGMartin: Sometimes I hear myself saying -- Why are you doing that? They go off in a direction I don't understand - but later I always know why it happened. It fits usually something that will occur later in my novel - sometimes something that I didn't plan to have happen, but it does. Scary! Tirtsah: Sandie Ga (sorry missed you :(( ) Sandie129: Since your characters are based on people you know, I was hoping you might see your way clear to set me up with Spring's Prince Charming from "Castles"? We could save a lot of time since I've already fallen in love with him! GA GailGMartin: Cute! GailGMartin: I'll have to see what Ican do. <<gg>> ga Tirtsah: LOL GailGMartin: Wait until you meet the hero in Upon a Midnight! Tirtsah: I think we'd better wrap it up. Tirtsah: Gail to you have any parting words? ga GailGMartin: He's dark and brooding - but oh so lovelable when you get to know him. GailGMartin: Yes GailGMartin: I think it might be fun somenight to share ways in which we create our characters and gather our emotions and situations. YLehman: sounds like a good idea. GailGMartin: I shared my ideas - but I know each person has neat techniques. GailGMartin: GA Tirtsah: Yes, that would be neat! Tirtsah: Are you taking notes Cindy? LOL......... Cynth Joy: lol Tirtsah: Well why don't we wind down now...... GailGMartin: We could call it "Spilling our Guts." Ugh! Cynth Joy: lol JansEMail: I am! LOL Tirtsah: I'd like to thank Gail so much for being our guest tonight! Tirtsah: ><><><YEAH><><><>< Cynth Joy: I would be afraid of lawsuits... JansEMail: Thanks Gail! You are always sooo much fun! GailGMartin: Thanks! TFowler277: Thanks Gail. Flutterz: Thanks, Gail ! Great job! : ) >> Cynth Joy: <><><><><><>clapping wildly><><><><
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