Holding Two Things in Your Heart At Once (A Love Letter)

This is what we do as writers and humans (Also, More England Photos)

Cute Mill Street I walked down every morning on the way to our workshop.

Hello lovies,

Here I am in Wells, England, having the best time. Our writing workshop finished up on Friday and it was such a good one. Eager writers who were open and willing to share themselves and their work. Fun get-togethers each evening and new friendships formed. But now everybody has dispersed to points beyond, to walk in Exmoor, visit a castle in Wales, fly to Iceland. And after spending so much time with them every day, I miss them.

And also, I miss my people back home. I miss my husband and I miss my daughter and son and (don’t tell any of the afore-mentioned) most of all, I miss my grandchildren. All five of them. I miss what I call “boy smell,” grabbing the kidlets and inhaling their hair when they have been outside and then kissing them all over and telling them that they are the most brilliant, amazing, perfect children in the world. (Because they are. I’ll fight you on this.) I miss them telling me long, complicated, crazy stories and stealing my phone to play Minecraft. I know, I know, stop it. Too goopy. But I’m so grateful that I have people to miss.

So here’s the deal. I’m holding two things in my heart at once. I’m here, loving it, and I’m missing my people.

There’s a lesson for writing here.

Think about it. How often do we need to hold two things at once in our head (and our heart) while we write? Below are just a few instances that have occurred to me.

—Macro-micro. Holding the big picture in mind while also focusing on the sentence level.

—External-internal. What’s the character’s external goal, and what is her internal goal? Along the same lines, how does your proto’s¹ internal landscape compare or contrast with her external demeanor?

—What your character thinks of herself and what others think of her.

—Your opinion of your writing and what you fear the world thinks of it.

I know I’m missing obvious examples. Now that I’ve got this concept in my head I know I’m going to be pondering it more thoroughly. What can you think of?

Next Sunday I will be on a plane on the way home London. If I’m organized (and have gotten things sorted (as they say over here), I’ll have a newsletter posted ahead of time. But if not, don’t worry. I’ll be back the following week.

Love, light, and good writing,

Charlotte

P.S. This week I’m ditching my usual lists of articles and resources and books (though I’ve discovered a new-to-me Irish mystery writer I really like and have bought a book on swans) and replacing it with more photos from England. But before we get there, I do have one very important announcement so read on.

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Announcement

My wonderful friend and student (though she teaches me as much as I teach her) Shari Lane has had her novel published and you should go buy it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry—seriously, you will. It’s so, so good. I’ve had the pleasure to read it in several previous incarnations and from the first second I laid eyes on it I knew that if there was any kind of god in the world it would one day be published. So here it is:

Two Over Easy All Day Long by Shari Lane.

Giles Anthony Maurice Gibson, Manhattanite and president of ABC Toys, floats through life on a cloud of wealth and privilege.Until now. When his company's negligence results in tragedy, the judge, weary of a world where justice is rarely served, sentences Giles to a year of community service in rural Oregon, and supervised work at Sunnyside Up, a local diner. Renamed "Tony," and fitted with an ankle monitor to keep him in his place, he must find a way to make amends for the consequences of always choosing the easy way.

Shortly after Giles-learning-to-be-Tony arrives, the curmudgeonly cook finds a dead body in the dumpster behind the restaurant. Tony and the other misfits at the diner are soon suspects, but—though they will eventually work together to figure out "whodunnit"—Two Over Easy All Day Long isn't a murder mystery, it's a human mystery, asking how far a person can bend before breaking, and whether breaking isn't the point, after all. (I swiped this synopsis from the publisher.)

I have it on good authority that Shari’s book release party was a huge success!

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England Photo Dump

(To learn more about upcoming overseas writing workshops, check out the Let’s Go Write website.)

Our intrepid writers. No, that’s not Willie Nelson.

Wells Cathedral

Peace doves inside the cathedral (18,000 of them). More on this installation here.

Inside the Quire (choir) for Evensong.

Bishop’s Palace gardens with cathedral in the background.

High Street, the main street that leads up to Market Square (and the palace and cathedral beyond.) If you read any Brit novels, you’ll be familiar with the phrase the high street, and here is an excellent example of one. This was taken early-ish, and it is usually crammed with lots of humans. The best people watching ever.

Dinner out.

Moira, the swan whisperer, gave us a fantastic presentation on the mute swans who live at the palace.

And here they are! Grace and Gabriel and their babies. The cygnets are growing fast!

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1. I have adopted Heather Demetrios’s habit of calling the main character the proto, short for protagonist. It just sounds snappier to me.