Cidney Swanson's Blog

Three days without a phone? What? Seriously? Is that even possible in the modern world? I’ll tell you how it went…. But first I should probably explain how I came to be cell phone-less in the first place.

It would make me sound very cool if I said this was some sort of planned connectivity fasting period. It was not.

I most definitely did not plan to have my phone fall out of – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Three weeks ago, I rose very early in the morning to drive with Dr. Science up to Portland to catch a flight. We had a lovely empty-freeway drive and arrived in plenty of time for me to check my bags.

And that was where the trouble started.

It’s been awhile since I posted a pic of how I normally travel, but let’s just say that I never, never check bags, and that I’m very skilled at filling every square centimeter of my European-size carryon bag, even when I’ll be traveling for weeks on end.

This time, however, I had a little signing event to set up.

And that meant packing two suitcases that weighed … a lot. So Dr. Science sees a curbside check-in for Southwest and pulls up and we hand over my bags. And the sky-cap asks if I would like a printed boarding pass, and I think WHY NOT? How retro, how fun! A paper pass instead of using my phone!

So I say YES which means that when I go through TSA, it does not occur to me to whip out my phone. I just scan my (paper) boarding pass and I’m on my way.

It’s while I’m waiting at the gate that I realize I don’t have my phone. It takes me a good ten minutes to work up the courage to ask a total stranger if I could use their phone to call Dr. Science, and by this time he’s thirty-five minutes south of PDX and can’t get back to me before my plane leaves. But he confirms that, unfortunately, my phone is in the car, having fallen out of my pocket with neither of us noticing.

We agree I’ll catch my flight and figure out the phone situation later. (Seventy dollars later, as it turned out. But I digress.)

So what was it like not having a phone for three days?

My first taste of cell-phone-free me was when a fellow passenger on the flight came up to me and said, “Hi, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you, and I just want to say that you are now my example of how to remain calm in a stressful situation.”

I smiled and thanked her, thinking: I’m calm. I’m so calm that complete strangers tell me I am their role model. Wow. Maybe this will be a super-cool Zen-like experience after all!

So. Was it amazing and calming and all those things that are supposed to happen when we unplug?

I’m sorry to confess that it was not. Not even a little. I needed OTP’s (one-time passwords) at least six times in the first 24 hours, and it only got worse as entities with which I needed to do business flat out refused when I couldn’t provide the OTP. I can only say that while it might be a peaceful and calming experience for some to be parted from their phones, I am NOT among their number.

So there you have it. Me, not chill, not soaking in the vacay from the digital world. At all.

I flew on Sunday and I got my phone back on Tuesday, and I was very, very, very happy.

Here’s a picture taken of me the moment UPS delivered the package.

So even though some people might have a great experience cutting the cord, well, the picture says it all.

Now, as for that signing event? It was all kinds of wonderful. I hadn’t done one since pre-Covid, and I’d forgotten how fun it could be to chat with new and old fans. <3

Wishing my American readers a very happy Thanksgiving, with exactly the amount of cell service that makes you calm and happy.

I was asked a question about my writing process last month, and it got me thinking. (“A dangerous prospect; I know.”) Here was the question: how many revisions are normal for me when I’m working on a novel?

The answer is: a lot.

More than one or two. Or three. Or four. I am absolutely not one of those writers who can pound it out and get it right the first time. Nor am I one of those who can, by going at a snail’s pace, say what I want to say the first time I make the attempt. Fortunately, I actually like revision. Mostly.

For me, the steps go like this:

1) First draft: pretty much what it sounds like. This is where I get the bare bones of the story down.

2) Read the first draft (after stepping away for a week-ish) and decide that it is terrible. Like, really terrible. I probably shouldn’t even bother continuing.

3) Tell Dr. Science my dilemma, namely, that I have written dreck. (He tells me that I always say this, and that I should continue.)

 

4) Attack the story, looking for ways to make the dreck a little less awful. Change up a dull talking-heads scene into an action-packed, danger-laden scene. Repeat this a few times.

5) Attack the dialogue, trying to let my characters speak in their own voices, instead of in my (often pedantic) voice.

6) Ask Dr. Science to read it and give me notes, telling him that it is pretty awful and that he probably won’t like it, and that he might not even want to bother reading it.

7) Read Dr. Science’s extensive notes. Despair. Take heart. Begin another revision. Read the revision and decide it still needs work.

8) Revise again, changing key scenes, dropping huge chunks of writing that just. Isn’t. Working. I think cutting 24,000 words is my record?

9) Read the revision and conclude that I have lost the ability to tell a story well. Complain to Dr. Science, he of the long-sufferingitude, that I can’t tell a story anymore.

10) AFTER Dr. Science has talked me off the ledge, reminding me that I say this about EVERY book I have ever written, start revising again. (“Once more unto the breach!”)

11) At this point, I often start liking the story. And start seeing ways to make the action and suffering more compelling. I complete another thoroughgoing revision. Possibly an editor will see it and give thoughtful, inspiring notes. ;o) Which I act on.

12) Now I’m ready to edit on the sentence level. Does every sentence follow logically and clearly from the one that preceded it? Are there things I’ve left out that the reader will need to know? Is the romance sufficiently angsty while also remaining sweet and awkward and all the things a Cidney Swanson romance is known for?

13) FINALLY, I am ready to do a copyreading revision, searching for “the the,” overuse of “that,” overuse of adverbs, adjectives, and repetitious repeatings that readers don’t need because they are smart like that.

14) Proofread this final version. Then hand off to proofreader.

So that’s it, basically. Then, about 4-7 days later, I rouse myself from a stupor and start in all over again on the next book.

Honestly it is a miracle on the level of the Bernoulli Effect that any of my novels are ever published. 

I’m back from my all-too-quick visit to the UK last month. I re-visited Cornwall and Stratford-upon-Avon, doing a little research along the way! Here are the highlights:

 

Things look really good in pictures. I would LOVE to live my life there, in all those great moments. Look! Shakespeare’s schoolroom! Look! School boys walking there because it is STILL a school, and how cool is that? Look! Wildflowers! Timber-frame buildings! The ocean!

My trip wasn’t solid goodness, actually. I neglected to snap pictures of me, pulled off the motorway when the oil light on my rental car lit up 30 minutes after I hired it. No screen shots of my purchased phone minutes vanishing while I waited on hold for the car hire agency to take my call. And definitely no pictures of me sobbing when they said it might take two hours for help to arrive. (Happy spoiler: it took 20 minutes.)

Frank from Roadside Assistance met me with a huge grin and fixed everything. Having finished with my car, Frank could have zipped off to his next rescue. I mean, he did, but not before giving me a direct number to call if the car had more issues. And then he said, very kindly, “I want you to have confidence in your little Vauxhall Corsa. It’s a good car.”

It’s hard to explain what those words did for me. I mean, I can sort of explain. I’d been given a rental vehicle WITH NO OIL IN IT. While driving in not-my-own country. I’d lost 90 minutes on the side of the road. I’d burned through my phone minutes. There was no confidence. Confidence was not happening. Except Frank from Roadside Assistance said, “I want you to feel confident….”

I tucked those words in my pocket.

I repeated them as I drove down B roads where there wasn’t room for two vehicles to pass. And when I did a twenty-seven-point turn (maneuver?) into a teensy-weensy space at St Ives. And when I drove into S-u-A at rush hour and had to make repeated right-hand turns across oncoming traffic. The kindness of Frank made a ginormous difference. I had confidence in my little Corsa.

I write characters who are like Frank (looking at you, Harpreet and Sir Walter), but I don’t expect to meet them in real life when I’m in semi-crisis driving on the wrong side of the road. Erm, I mean the  “other” correct side of the road. Maybe I should have taken pictures of my car with its hood/bonnet wide open! (Would you??)

Anyway, I hope you’re having a wonderful July, with zero roadside drama. But if your car runs low on oil, then I wish you a Frank.

Like most writerly types, I am wordy. Verbose. When two words will suffice, I am likely to use twenty-six. Or two hundred. Or two thousand. (See what I did there?) (And here?)

I have a way of tidying up these (unnecessary) words that I’ve never heard anyone else suggest, and I want to share it.

Though I always try to remove the deadweight during one of the final revisions, I will often find myself with a larger word count than is ideal. Here’s how I tackle it: by deciding what final word count would make me happy, and evenly removing the words from each page.

That means that if I have an 85,000 word manuscript, and I want to get it down to 78,000, I will need to remove 7,000 words. If I have 365 pages, then I need to take out an average of 19 words per page.

I do this rigorously. If I have only removed 15 words, I start back at the top and look for 4 more. And here’s the thing: with VERY FEW exceptions, I can always find them. I keep track by writing the number on the back of the page I’ve just edited. If I found 19, I write “0” on the page. 25? I write “-6” because I have exceeded my number and removed 6 extra words. Yay! But if there is a page where the tension is already super tight, and I just can’t take out 19 words, I am okay removing what I can. If I remove 8 fewer than 19, I would be 11 words behind on my ideal count. So I would write either “+11” or if I were adding it to the previous “-6” page, I would write “+5” because I’m really only off by 5 excess words.

The amazing thing is that even when I’m sure a manuscript is tight, tight, tight, I can always find words I don’t need. The end result is a manuscript that is tighter, lighter, and cheaper to turn into a book. Yay!

This really hit home for me at a recent writing retreat, where an agent and an editor were both commenting on how they feel pressure to keep word counts low because of spiraling printing costs. (This would affect audiobook production as well, obviously. And copy edits and line edits and …. you get the idea.)

Here are the quick and dirty ones you can look for:

Create contractions for EVERYONE who would speak with contractions. (Could’ve for could have)20 years becomes “decades”in five hundred years = “in five centuries”finding out = “learning”it does not matter = “it’s irrelevant”I grab a Frisbee and send it sailing toward her = I send a Frisbee sailing toward herGet rid of adverbs! “my arms snake tightly…” = “my arms snake”Get rid of modifiers in general! “says my mom” = “says Mom”

I hope this helps anyone who has a too-high word count. Er, make that “wordy manuscript”!

(Got a go-to? Share it in the comments!)

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Diogenes and Astrid had at long last reached the duke’s cottage, where they would rest for the night. Diogenes set to, securing their belongings against foul weather. The not-princess herself saw to the horse, having explained that she loved such work.

Astrid was much pleasanter company than Diogenes had bargained on. He would never have taken her for someone who knew her way around horses, but she had removed its harness aright and asked for its brush, and Diogenes had surrendered the horse to her care.

He was thus the first inside the cottage. He found a simple clay oil lamp and struck flint against pyrite stone until sparks caught a small piece of straw on fire. This, he used to light the flaxen rope within the lamp. It sputtered to life, casting long shadows in the small cottage. He was finishing the lighting of two additional lamps when the girl came inside, announcing that the horse had been watered and secured for the night.

“This place is like a small storehouse,” said the girl, looking about.

Diogenes, too, had marveled at the rows of small barrels and stone jars that filled two of the walls of the dwelling.

“I suppose that if Lord Bartholomes were caught unawares by snowfall, he could last quite a while here,” said the girl. “Now, which of these barrels has that honey cake you promised? I can make nothing of your Rosiyska alphabet.” As she said this, she drew a finger along the curved lettering that indicated a barrel of dried fish.

“Let me see,” said Diogenes, making his way along one of the shelves.

“Oi!” cried the girl.

Diogenes whirled to see what was amiss.

“I think it’s dead,” she said.

“You think what is—” Diogenes broke off as he spied a dead rat near the girl. “Oh. Yes. Very dead.”

“There’s another over here,” she said, pointing.

“And a dead mouse in this corner as well,” said Diogenes, now intently observing the floor.

“How very unpleasant.”

“I’ll take them outside, shall I?”

“Oh, I can do it,” replied the girl. “I can’t read the labels on the food, so you must do that. I shall do … this.”

Diogenes nodded, pleased the girl was not squeamish. Searching a high row, he located a container marked “cake” and lifted it down from the shelf.

On opening it, however, he released a curse and hurriedly replaced the lid.

“What is it?” asked the girl, who was gathering the dead rodents into a linen sack.

“The food inside is spoilt,” said Diogenes. “I shall find another.”

“Spoiled how?”

“Rodent droppings and … and a mouse in an unpleasant state of decay.”

He reached for another barrel marked “cake.” On opening it, however, he found more evidence of visitation by rodents.

“Lord Bartholomes ought to have been more careful choosing whoever was tasked with sealing his stock of food,” remarked Astrid.

“This one looks well enough,” said Diogenes.

He reached inside to remove the cake for further inspection.

“We can eat this,” he said, after undoing its brandy-soaked linen wrap.

“Diogenes …”

He looked up and saw that Astrid’s face had gone pale and worried.

“What is it?” he asked using his knife to slice a large piece from off the cake.

“Do not eat that,” said the girl.

“What do you mean? Why ever not?” He cut a slice for the girl.

“The rats. The mice. Why should they have died in a room full of food?”

Diogenes shrugged. He brought the slice to his mouth.

“No!” Astrid batted the sliced cake, and it fell to the ground.

“Now look what you’ve done,” muttered Diogenes.

“I think the food must be unwholesome. Outside, when I went to … to dispose of the dead creatures, I found several more outside, also dead.”

Diogenes’ stomach rumbled loudly. “It doesn’t look unwholesome,” he said, eyeing the second slice of cake.

“Doubtless the mice and rats thought the same thing.”

Diogenes set the slice down. “It is odd,” he admitted. “Rodents dead inside a cottage stuffed with food?”

“I think we should not eat anything from inside this cottage,” the girl said nervously.

Diogenes exhaled heavily. “Well, there is the rest of the cake in the cart, and I suppose I could catch a fish or two from the lake.”

They exited the dwelling together. Outside, daylight was fast disappearing, and the whine of small insects left the two swatting at real and imagined pests. It was a good hour for fishing, however, and within a few minutes, the two were seated on a rock at the lake’s edge, eating bites of fruited nut cake and seeking a fish to round out their supper.

Because of the darkness of the hour, neither of them recognized the water worm for what it was when it raised its dripping head to stare at them from the lake’s watery depths.

I’m writing this down in hopes it will inspire anyone needing that push to keep trying for success on a difficult task/project/dream. If you’ve seen the video about making The Wedding Gown for the daughterling, then you know I met the deadline and gave my daughter a gown that was absolutely perfect for her. It wasn’t a huge challenge, because I have the background in pattern-making and costume design. I started patterning in December and slowly worked my way through sourcing fabric, perfecting the fit of the pattern in a “muslin” (fake fabric), buying and cutting the real fabric, sewing the gown, cutting up the lace embellishment, mosaic-ing the lace pieces to fit onto her bodice, embroidering crystal beads and pearls onto the lace, and attaching the lace to the gown. I would do about an hour’s worth of lace embroidery each night watching TV. (Inspector Lewis, Endeavor, and Upstart Crow, mainly.)

As July 6th drew near, I knew I would finish her gown in time, so I started thinking about my own Mother-of-the-Bride gown. I had maybe a month to go till the wedding. I didn’t think I wanted to make my dress, but once I went to stores, I realized I DID want to make it myself. So I went to Joann and found possible fabrics and then went home to try to make a pattern I liked.

I decided to make a full “muslin” dress for myself, since I wanted to be sure I liked the shape before committing to buying spendy fabric. I wanted a stretch fabric, so I couldn’t use actual muslin, which doesn’t stretch. Instead I used this old printed knit from my kid’s clothing business days, green with blue tree frogs all over it.

I patterned it, cut it, sewed it, and tried it on.

Ugh. Not even.

The problem wasn’t the tree frog fabric; it was the fit of the garment. I felt super yucky in this design. Not the feeling I was going for. At first I thought, well, that’s it. I have to buy something off the rack. Hmm . . . what stores can I hit up next? But when I tried (again) to find a gown in stores, I failed, again. Fine. Maybe I could try another style of pattern?

After searching all my closets for styles I had worn and liked in the past, I chose a dress that had belonged to my great grandmother Pearl, circa 1960, and decided this was it! Retro-chic and flattering. So I started from scratch again, copying the pattern off the actual dress and making another mock-up muslin, this time in slinky woven polyester. When I tried on this new muslin, it was even worse than the tree-frog disaster.

Now what was I going to do? The wedding was in two weeks. I hit the mall again and found two possible dresses at Macy’s, and I brought them home. Neither was really right, though, and as Wedding Week approached, I got more and more unhappy thinking of how the pictures from the wedding would show me wearing a dress I didn’t like.

The problem was, I’d already failed twice to make something for myself. I decided to try one final time, because really, what did I have to lose? I would go with a simpler pattern this time, and see how far I could get. Meanwhile I’d found a fabric that I was completely head-over-heels about, so that gave me a bit more motivation.

I cut and sewed my THIRD muslin, and managed to pin, cut, and adjust the front pretty well for a good fit, but I couldn’t reach around my back, obviously. Enter Dr. Science. I showed him the part of the muslin that wasn’t fitting well in back. He agreed. “Yup, that isn’t fitting well. What do you want me to do about it?” It took a few minutes and a small compact mirror held over my shoulder in front of the bathroom mirror, but I finally managed to explain to Dr. Science how to pin the not-fitting part so that it would fit more smoothly.

It took two more muslins to get the fit just right. (Off the shoulder is a little trickier than on.) But the third time I got it! My pattern fit beautifully! I was ready to go! I started cutting and sewing. The wedding was in five days, and believe me, I had more things to do than just sit and sew. But, by keeping at it, a little here a little there, I managed to finish the gown in time.

It is my all-time, favorite gown/dress/anything that I have ever worn. I came so close to giving up and buying a dress I didn’t like, and I’m soooooo glad I didn’t. How many favorite dresses do you really get in a lifetime? (My last one was a dress made by my grandmother Dorothy when I was six or seven. Emerald green taffeta covered with all-over lace.) Thank goodness I didn’t give up.

I started by saying that I was writing this in hopes it might inspire others to keep going on hard projects, but maybe I’m just writing it so I don’t forget the lesson myself. Fail all you need to—just don’t quit.

The week before last, I had the incredible privilege of being on a Zoom call with Astronaut Scott Kelly, who stayed on the International Space Station for just shy of a year. There were only fifty or so of us on the call. I really hope he can share his thoughts on isolation with a wider audience, but at the bare minimum, I felt like I needed to share some of the ways he said he coped, because they’re applicable to our situation today with the Covid-19 lockdowns in place.

A little background first. Kelly had been to space a couple of times already, including one six-month stint on ISS. Because of the level of isolation he experienced on that extended stay, Kelly told us he nearly turned down the twelve-month opportunity. In the end, he decided to go, but he said that he planned for it in a very calculated way.

Whereas he’d kept careful track of how long he was up on the shorter stint and how long he had to go, Kelly chose not to pay attention to either of these for the longer stint. That became tip number one for those of us on the call. He feels that you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out “how much longer” this will last. He also mentioned that the twelve-month stay felt shorter than the six-month stay. Seriously? Shorter?

Okay, he had our attention. So what else did he recommend? He stayed very scheduled on his second stay, which is probably true for anyone on ISS, but he did it a little differently the second time. He made sure that his weekends looked different from his weekdays. This provided him with something to look forward to–other than his eventual return from isolation. By having Saturday as “tidy things up” day, it felt different from the weekdays. He recommended for those of us at home now that we add something we enjoy to our Saturday routines. Tidying, a walk, a special meal, a movie you’ve looked forward to, and so on. He also kept Sunday different, spending a long time in the cupola gazing at Earth as it rotated past.

At this point, all of us on the call were like, “Where’s my cupola? I want a cupola view of planet Earth!”

Kelly went on to explain that in his Houston apartment currently, he and his wife make Sunday different by watching a lot of content on Netflix. He also said that spending time on his balcony provides him with a break from being stuck inside.

I started feeling very, very grateful for my ordinary suburban yard.

So there you have it. (1) Don’t try counting how long it’s been/will be. (2) Keep busy with a weekday schedule. (3) Make Saturdays and Sundays special so that you always have something nearby that you can look forward to.

I’ve been practicing these things for almost two weeks now, and I’ve gotta admit, it’s helping. A little. But we’ll take what we can get, right? I’ve never been good at tidying, and I actually spent several days looking forward to doing some cleaning the past two Saturdays.

I really hope this helps some of you. Oh, and besides helping me with tips I could use, Kelly’s talk also cured me of wanting to spend an extended period of time aboard ISS. I wouldn’t turn down the chance to experience micro-gravity for a shorter time though. Right?

I’m writing this down in hopes it will inspire anyone needing that push to keep trying for success on a difficult task/project/dream. If you’ve seen the video about making The Wedding Gown for the Daughterling, then you know I met the deadline and gave my daughter a gown that was absolutely perfect for her.

That wasn’t the challenge I’m writing about today. I had the background in pattern-making and costume design to nail Daughterling’s gown. I started in December and slowly worked my way through sourcing fabric, perfecting the fit of the “muslin” (mock-up), patterning, cutting the real fabric, sewing the gown, cutting up the lace embellishment, mosaic-ing the lace pieces to fit onto her bodice, embroidering crystal beads and pearls onto the lace, and attaching the lace to the gown. I would do about an hour’s worth of lace embroidery each night while watching TV. (Inspector Lewis, Endeavour, and Upstart Crow, mainly.) Easy-breezy.

As July 6th drew near, I knew I would finish her gown on time or early, so I started thinking about my own Mom-of-the-Bride gown. I had maybe a month to go till the wedding. After visiting stores, I realized I would have to make mine to be happy with it.

I decided to make a full “muslin” for myself, since I wanted to be sure I liked the shape and style before committing to buying spend-y fabric. I used this old print fabric from my kid’s clothing business days, pistachio green with blue tree frogs all over it. I patterned it, cut it, sewed it, and tried it on.

Ugh. Not even.

The problem wasn’t the tree frog fabric; it was the fit of the garment. I felt super yucky in this design. Not the feeling I was going for. At first I thought, well, that’s it. I have to buy something off the rack. Hmm . . . what stores can I hit up next? But when I tried again, I failed again. Fine. Maybe I could sew another style?

After searching all my closets for styles I had worn and liked in the past, I chose a dress that had belonged to my great grandmother Pearl, circa 1960, and decided this was it! Retro-chic and flattering. (Full disclosure: I’m not that size.)

So I started from scratch again, copying the pattern off the actual dress and making another mock-up muslin.

When I tried on this new muslin, it was even worse than the tree-frog disaster.

Ugh!

Now what was I going to do? The wedding was in two weeks. I hit the mall again and found two possible dresses at Macy’s, and I brought them home. I didn’t love either, and as Wedding Week approached, I got more and more unhappy thinking of seeing that dress whenever I looked at pics from Daughterling’s wedding.

But . . . I’d already failed twice to make something for myself. When I’m making a costume/gown/pattern for someone else, I can do all the pinning and adjusting, and this means it turns out perfectly, albeit with tweaks. When making something for myself, I couldn’t do all that pinning and adjusting.

Or could I?

I decided to try one final time, because really, what did I have to lose? (I can be really, really stubborn.) I would go with a simpler pattern this time, and see how far I could get. Meanwhile I’d found a fabric that I was completely head-over-heels about, so that gave me a bit more motivation.

I cut and sewed my THIRD muslin, and managed to pin, cut, and adjust the front pretty well for a good fit, but I couldn’t reach around my back, obviously. Enter Dr. Science. I showed him the part of the muslin that wasn’t fitting well in back. He agreed. “Yup, that isn’t fitting well. What do you want me to do about it?” It took a few minutes and a small compact mirror held over my shoulder in front of the bathroom mirror, but I finally managed to explain to Dr. Science how to pin the not-fitting part so that it would fit more smoothly.

It took two more muslins to get the fit just right. (Off the shoulder is a little trickier than on the shoulder.) But the third time I got it! My pattern fit beautifully! I started cutting and sewing. The wedding was in five days, and believe me, I had more things to do than just sit and sew. But, by keeping at it, a little here a little there, I managed to finish the gown in time.

It is my all-time, favorite gown/dress/anything that I have ever worn. I came so close to giving up and wearing one of those dresses from Macy’s, and I’m soooooo glad I didn’t. How many favorite dresses do you get in a lifetime? (My last one was a dress made by my grandmother Dorothy when I was six or seven. Emerald green taffeta covered with all-over lace.) Thank goodness I didn’t give up.

I started by saying that I was writing this in hopes it might inspire others to keep going on hard projects, but maybe I’m just writing it so I don’t forget the lesson myself. Fail all you need to—just don’t quit. Even if it means a doggy-looking tree frog dress or two.

(The finished product:)

For about fifteen years I was airplane phobic. I worked on this fear in several ways because it was important to me our kids could visit their grandparents, who lived 3,000 miles away. Eventually I got past my fears, in part by imagining my flights as “fun,” gradually transferring my love of Star Wars-style space flight to my own flights. Happily, in all those years of flying to grandma’s once or twice a year, we never experienced anything worse than lost luggage.

Skip forward to 2012. I now love flying. I’m still able to recall my fears, and occasionally they rear their ugly hydra heads, but mostly I love it. I write my MARS SERIES, about a girl who loves to pilot. Skip ahead to 2015: I’m ready to fully remember and inhabit my old fears, and I start writing a story about a girl who is so afraid of flying she won’t board a plane.

 Fast forward to Spring Break 2018. Some awesome friends offer to fly me and Dr. Science (DH) to the Bahamas! Yay! We load and board their little Cessna 310 four-seater in Ft. Pierce, Florida and take off into a beautiful Sunday sky. We’re all wearing headsets, so we hear everything the tower and our pilot friend say. How cool! As we circle orange groves and lakes, up past a thousand feet, then two, then three, I find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh! I get it! I understand why Jessamyn would rather be flying, all day, all the time. Why would you do anything else if you could do this?” (We’ll just chalk up Cidney having thoughts about imaginary people to the fact that writers are a bit … well, you fill in the blank.)

At this point I should probably mention that there were a few questions it hadn’t occurred to me to ask about this plane. (1) Can it fly if one of the propellers stops spinning? And (2) can it land safely if one of the propellers stops spinning? (Do you sense where this is going?) 

So we’re about to head out over the Atlantic for our quick one hour crossing when the pilot’s wife, seated beside me, points to some brown liquid spewing off the left wing locker. Now, the pilot is a little busy at this point, doing things like checking instruments, contacting the tower, and generally trying to ensure we all live to tell the story. Meanwhile, here’s me: I’m looking out the left window and the prop stops spinning. Stops. Spinning. I don’t know a lot about aerodynamics, but I know that left prop does something something something LIFT something something NOT CRASH.

It takes our friend about ninety seconds to do all the things he needs to do before he finally gets a minute to tell me and Dr. Science that it is perfectly fine to land a plane with only one engine.

Long story short, we make it to the ground just fine. It was reassuring that the tower kept asking us if we would require ground assistance (read: ambulances and fire trucks), but it was WAY more reassuring that our pilot friend kept saying, “No, I think we’ll be fine.”

Now, if I had been able to see into the future back when I was flight-phobic, I would have said to future me: Wow! That must have taken so much courage! And it did. Riding that plane down 4500 feet took a fair bit of my daily supply of courage. I didn’t panic, although my heart was pounding harder than I knew it could pound until our friend reassured us the plane could land despite the propeller, you know, NOT SPINNING. But that was a very passive sort of courage. I didn’t have a choice about being there or not. My “courage” was mostly the courage to sit tight and not panic.

 After we returned to the hanger, Dr. Science and our pilot friend went looking for the oil leak, found the oil leak, and did some testing to be sure it was done leaking. And that’s when I really got the chance to, in Shakespeare’s words, “screw my courage to the sticking point.” Did I have it in me to get back inside that Cessna?

I’m grateful to report the answer was yes. I had three hours to keep asking myself if I was sure, but the answer didn’t change. Whatever doubts I may have had about “am I REALLY over my flying phobia?” were pretty much settled that day. I got back on that plane. I buckled in. Put in the headphones—the same ones over which I’d heard the words “oil leak” and “emergency assistance” and the rest of it. I got in and I flew to the Bahamas like a boss.

And the Bahamas themselves?

Within a few hours of arriving I was crying over our anticipated departure. I didn’t want to leave, ever. I took picture after picture, and when I got home I made some jewelry to remind me of the incredible turquoise seas, the astonishing star-filled skies.

If any of you have a “I got back on that horse” story, why not share it below? I’ll enter you for a chance to win the Bahamas pendant.

 

This is NOT Edmund, but it might’ve been his teacher!

First off, writing time travel fiction involves research. Lots of research. Books. Internet. Museums. Rinse and repeat. All those activities informed my writing of Edmund and his world in A Thief in Time.

But in another way, writing Edmund was a job I began preparing for when I was just seven. That was the year I saw my first two Elizabethan-era dramas onstage. I don’t remember which I saw first—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or The Merchant of Venice—but I was at that golden age of language acquisition, and I soaked up the thees and thous and cansts and wherefores just like they were any other new-to-me words uttered by adults addressing other adults. I was smitten by the rhythm and sound of all those delicious words, chewing them like Halloween candy long after the weekend of play-going was over.

At that age, I wasn’t old enough to understand that Shakespeare (or Stoppard) wrote “difficult” plays using “complex” language. Are you kidding me? When you’re seven, everything an adult says is laced with confusion and must be parsed and interpreted using visual cues, tone of voice, and the occasional dictionary consultation. (Try finding “sooth” in any dictionary dispensed to seven year olds.)

Not long after hearing those plays, I noticed that my grandfather used this same toothsome language when he read to us from his King James Version of the Bible. Elizabethan and Jacobean English quickly became as comprehensible to me as any other form of English. For a kid addicted to the texture and flavor of words, this stuff was Nirvana.

While I was still young enough that my parents made me go to bed before Anne Boleyn’s head was struck off (The Six Wives of Henry VIII), I continued to receive regular doses of the English spoken in the 16th century, returning to Ashland, Oregon’s bard fest for even more Shakespeare during my 11th, 12th, and 13th summers. Well, at that point the deal was sealed for me. Shakespeare nerd for life.

In college, I enrolled in not one but two programs that sent me to the UK to watch—wait for it—Shakespeare! (And his contemporaries! And more Stoppard!) After that, I married Dr. Science, a guy equally interested in geeking out over Shakespeare. We were the honeymooners who skimped on lodging and camped throughout the UK to save money for important things. We spent a boggling £250 on plays in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. (Hey, that was twice our monthly rent at the time!)

Fast-forward to my more recent writerly life. Dr. Science and I returned to Stratford-upon-Avon twice in the past four years, spending as much time as possible visiting sites associated with Shakespeare. His house. His wife’s house. His school. His church. The hall where his dad was a magistrate. His mother’s family’s farmstead. All these buildings are still standing today. And some of them are in operation or are run as “living history” museums, where you can see how bread was made in the Elizabethan era or practice penmanship seated at desks that have survived five centuries of students.

When it came to the actual writing, obviously I held back on period-correct language, but probably the most fun part of writing Thief was figuring out the places where I could sneak in some “language.” Hopefully it wasn’t too distracting for those who don’t relish chewy language! So there you have it, my report on “How I Wrote the Character Edmund.” Really, it was child’s play.

Are there any remnants of childhood geekery in your job or pastimes? I’d love to hear in the comments!

P.S. In case you wondered, “Shaftesbury” is a nod to the tiny lane in London’s theatre district. Because I’m the author and I can.