Melanie Wells
Women's ROPES 2007 with LifeWorks  Writing during a K-Tel Hit Machine rehearsal. That's the sound room at Tequila Mockingbird in Austin. It's hard to concentrate when the band in the next room is having way more fun than you are.  Trish in the front yard in Park City, letting the lyrics bake. She hammered out three new songs while we were there.  Writing in the breakfast nook in Park City. Our house had a 6 burner commercial stove! We made pot roast.  Trish lamenting our annual writer's retreat puzzle fiasco. As usual, we finished it at 2 a.m. the night before we were supposed to leave. Some people never learn. |
Get me out of my headOkay - obviously, i've failed to blog reliably. Follow the thelma and louise, link, though, for thoughts on the creative life. This time, I won't let you down...  This is our house in Park City. Great writing mojo. That's me lying on the rock wall, wondering what on earth I was thinking becoming a writer... Coming soon - thoughts on my writing trip to Park City, Utah with Trish Murphy. Check out the photos while you wait. 25 August 2006 The heat. Let’s talk about the heat. Let’s talk about heat and writing. Many great writers have written while it’s hot. Hemingway had a thing for tropical weather. Eudora Welty lived in Jackson, Mississippi. I don’t need to add anything to that, do I? In fact, all the great southern writers, at least the ones who were writing before about 1960, probably did it without air conditioning. (I will refrain from discussing typewriters vs. computers – that’s for another day. But Eudora Welty used to cut her stories into strips and tape them all over her house to restructure the manuscript. Let’s all bow our heads and thank Jesus for computers.) * Pause here for a moment of silence * Okay - I live in the south, and may I just say, it’s hot here? It was 104 degrees today. So I got in my car today, and this little plastic thingy had actually melted off the dashboard. That’s how hot it was in Dallas today. Will somebody please tell me what this is about? Is Al Gore right? (He is, I think – have you seen his charts?) Whether he is or isn’t, I’ve been thinking that heat should produce great writing. Great writers – or at least writers who aspire to be great – use the heat to bake an idea. Adversity breeds creativity. There’s something moving about sitting at the keyboard, t-shirt a little damp, hair up off your neck, glasses on, pounding away. It’s like boxing. Those guys are always sweating. You look at them and you KNOW they’re working hard. Heat should be in great writing. Raise your hand if you sweated through every page of Heart of Darkness. My characters sweat. I like to make them sweat. If you don’t let them sweat, you’re protecting them too much and no one will care what happens to them. It’s sort of a Zen thing, really. BE the heat. Be one with the heat and maybe you can use it to bake you. Or bake your story. Or bake your characters. Or melt that little thingy off your dashboard. When I walk out into the oven that is my parking lot at work and smell the pollution and feel my ozone headache begin to throb behind my eyes, I try to think about translating that feeling, that horrid, sweltering moment, into fiction. Slapping it down on the page and helping my readers smell the pollution too. If nothing else, writers should be great observers. To feel the heat is to measure its effect on you and on the world around you. And then to share the sweat. It’s one thing we all have in common. God likes to turn up the heat on us, too. He uses the heat to make us sweat. And then He wipes the sweat from our brows and hands us a fan and says “get used to it.” At any rate, I’m tired of the heat. I’ve gotten everything out of it I care to. I’m ready to smell the rain.  Conquering my fears on the ROPES course (I'm the one with the helmet)  And you thought I wouldn't do it (so did I) 15 August 2006 Can I just say it's freaking HOT in Dallas? It's been 100 degrees for... ever. I'm bitter. Gunner is bitter. Everyone is bitter. So. I am heading out this weekend for two plus weeks anywhere but here. This weekend, I'll be visiting the New Jersey relatives "down the shore" in Surf City, NJ. Look for me in my groovy hippie-chick bikini. Gunner was not invited, unfortunately. After that, I'll be spending a week in Austin with my best friend, Trish Murphy (www.trishmurphy.com), writing and frying chicken. I'll be working on the third book in the Day of Evil trilogy, Suffer the Little Children. Watch this site for updates. Possibly I will actually make some progress, as I usually do when Trish and I spend writing time together. After that, it's off to Park City, UT, where Trish and I have rented a house - more writing, more fried chicken. Possibly a tuna casserole or two. And pie. I love to make pie. Then it's off to Phoenix for a spa weekend. Pedicures, massages, and a little flag on the pool chair that signals the need for another frozen margarita (with salt). If I can't wrestle my attitude in place after these adventures, I should be sent to time out. Hopefully, by the time I get back, it will have dropped below 100 degrees and the ozone levels will be survivable. Can I just say, Al Gore is right? Stay cool - MW |
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