Location: Old New Castle, Delaware

Weather: 63º and cloudy

I appreciate Michelle filling in for me yesterday and I love how she highlighted some of those delightful detours on the journey by reminding us of the surprise characters who show up. What fun when that happens.

On Monday and Tuesday we talked about the call and the threshold—two of the milestones on the classic hero’s journey. Today let’s look at the third step—the challenges. Sometimes this stage is called “allies and enemies.”

Step Three: The Challenges

The hero faces a series of challenges or temptations. As the journey progresses the challenges often become more and more difficult. One of the greatest tests for the hero is to differentiate real helpers from “tempters.” (Tempters try to pull the hero away from their path using doubt, fear, or distraction.) Challenges reflect needs and fears— only by directly facing these weaknesses can the hero acknowledge and conquer them.

This step normally makes up the biggest part of the story. Those of you who are novelists know that to make a satisfying story we need to give the hero loads of conflict—piling trouble on top of troubles. We have no problem recognizing this step—challenges— as a part of the writer’s journey, right?

Let’s break this step down. As the journey progresses the challenges often become more and more difficult. Those writers who think the journey ends when they sell their manuscript don’t understand the hero’s journey or the publishing industry. That contract may just be the threshold. The writer then has to deal with market realities like sales numbers. If the first book is a success, then there’s even more pressure to come up with an even better second book. No one wants to be a one-book-wonder. We’re shocked to find out that it might be harder to get a second contract than that debut contract. What’s that about? And how in the world are we supposed to propose the next book while editing the current book and promoting the one before that? And if we are wildly successful the expectations and distractions are crazy-making.The further along we go, the tougher the challenges.

One of the greatest tests for the hero is to differentiate real helpers from “tempters.” (Tempters try to pull the hero away from their path using doubt, fear, or distraction.) We innately know the truth of this. Tempters abound in publishing. Before we are published many who disguise themselves as helpers are really tempters—trying to deflect us from our journey. Yes, even agents and editors. If the call is real we need to persevere. And when we’re already published we still meet tempters— unfair reviews, jealous fellow writers, a crowded market, changing tastes, changing technology and so many more. They may look like helpers at first but we need to be able to tell the difference between honest critique and the kind that grows out of a more complicated agenda.

Challenges reflect needs and fears— only by directly facing these weaknesses can the hero acknowledge and conquer them. Yes! Our challenges grow out of our own needs and fears. If we long for acceptance, our challenges will center around rejection. If we need success to affirm us, chances are our challenges will all threaten failure. It’s ironic but it’s what makes the writer’s journey such a heroic undertaking.

What is the biggest challenge you face right now on your own writer’s journey? How do you discern the difference between helpers and tempter? How can you face your own weaknesses and conquer them?

Location: NOT New Castle, Delaware where Wendy is busy with her brand-new first grandchild. (She will be back posting tomorrow.)

This week Wendy has been taking us through the heroic journey, likening novel writing and publishing to a grand endeavor. I’ve followed her posts and plotted my own course in parallel, but today I’d like to turn our attention to the surprise: a character who springs up in the middle of the story, or the quest, to ease some of the mounting tension.

In Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, Taran begins his journey to manhood with an uninspiring cast: a runaway pig and a broken-down troubadour toting a harp with a mind all its own. The first night out, their food stores are pick-pocketed by a character without a pocket: the hairy, leaf-covered Gurgi. His malapropisms and misplaced enthusiasm–but always loyal character–give the reader a pause of humor amidst the trials of the quest.

The hobbits Merry and Pippin serve a similar role in Lord of the Rings. The maid in Romeo and Juliet; Sancho Panza to Don Quixote; Prissy, the slave who doesn’t know about birthin’ babies in Gone with the Wind–they’re there, and the reader appreciates it when they arrive.

But how do you plan and plot for such a twist?

Madeleine L’Engle talked about writing her novel, The Arm of the Starfish, and finding a new character two-thirds of the way through the book: Joshua Archer. L’Engle was just as surprised to see him as Adam and the rest of the cast. His sudden arrival meant she had to rethink part of the novel, but as she wrote “towards” this mysterious new character, she discovered he actually was the moral heart of the story. L’Engle may not have planned for him, but she needed him.

In my own case, I wrote a novel several years ago and was shocked in the same way. I looked at my husband and said, “A chicken just showed up.”

My husband shrugged. “So get rid of it.”

He’s not a writer.

I spent three days researching chickens, continued writing with the chicken character in the background, and one day that chicken lunged–beak wide open–and changed the entire tenor of the novel in ways I never would have guessed.

Heroes can’t finish the quest alone. And neither, apparently, can writers.

Can you think of other examples of surprise characters who aid the hero in unexpected ways? Do they have to be funny? And do you  have stories of when your subconscious surprised your writing journey?

Location: Old New Castle, Delaware

Weather: 59º and sunny

As we continue talking about the writer’s journey let’s look at the second step.

Step Two: The Threshold

This is the jumping off point for the adventure. Once past this threshold, the hero enters the unknown—a world filled with challenges and danger. At the threshold the hero encounters beings or situations that block his passage (guardians or gatekeepers). When the hero is ready to meet the challenge the guardians will stand aside or even become a helper or friend.

This is where so many writers get stuck. We receive the call and embark on the journey but once we hit up against the realities of the publishing industry, which include seemingly insurmountable odds and some of the most ferocious gatekeepers, we shrink back.

A popular theme in writers’ blogs is the unfairness of the query system or the difficulties encountered trying to get the proverbial foot in the door. When considered in light of the hero’s journey, it makes sense. Many who answer the call will fail shortly after the threshold—the challenges seem overwhelming.

Tom Hanks was quoted as saying, “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” How true.

I thought Mark Healy, a columnist for The Globe and Mail offered an interesting premise in an April 21, 2009 article Generation Y Wants it Now:

“There is a generation coming through school now, just starting to hit the workforce, and already a powerful consumer segment, which hasn’t really waited for anything. Ever. And our business world isn’t quite ready for them.

Think about it. This generation — which sails under many flags: Gen Y, Millennials, Echo Boomers, Digitals, etc. — is growing up in an economy which is vastly different from that of Gen X (my cohort), the Baby Boomers, and the Old Guard before them. Millennials discover music they like and download it immediately. They process three or more simultaneous, continuous streams of information and communication — conducting history research, while texting friends, and updating Facebook. The idea of a store isn’t necessarily relevant. Nor is the idea of investing, or putting in your time. So — they don’t wait to communicate, even one-to-many, they don’t wait to accumulate and process mass amounts of information, and they don’t wait to purchase and consume. They are hyper-efficient. And that’s the problem. A lot of our business models either put up with, or to some extent depend on, inefficiency.”

When you realize that the threshold to the world of publishing is populated by gatekeepers who depend on inefficiency to help filter the masses, you can see the conflict. And in publishing, it’s not just the Millenials—I see the impatience cross-generationally.

The reality is that there are far more writers—even good writers—than there are publishing spots. Face it; there are more writers than there are potential readers for that writing. Not everyone who embarks on the journey will make it past the gatekeepers.

It will take heroic efforts.

How about you? Have you stepped over the threshold in your writer’s journey? What kinds of gatekeepers or situations have blocked your passage? What can you do to be ready to meet the challenge? Have you every had a guardian or gatekeeper become a mentor or an ally?

Location: Old New Castle, Delaware

Weather: Warm 57º and sunny

Each time I approach my blog week, I try to think back to some of the concerns of the past few weeks to see if I can offer something of value. Recently I’ve heard published writers talking about throwing in the towel, unpublished writers mourning the unfairness of the query process, and even an editor expressing concern about a contracted author who needs to spend more time writing an exemplary novel and less time blogging and tweeting. I’ve heard from authors with troublesome sales numbers that make it challenging to sell the next book. I’ve talked to others who are tired of getting so little return on the investment and others who are who are coming to grips with the reality that the bestseller list may always elude them.

Why so much angst to balance against those celebrating milestones and triumphs?

There’s no denying that the scales are tipped toward trouble. It made me think of the classic hero’s journey. If you are at all familiar with this epic story structure you know that the biggest proportion of the journey is made up of tests, allies and enemies. It makes sense that the trouble seems out of proportion. It makes the triumph all the sweeter when it comes. If we approach our writing adventure as a journey, the detours and seeming dead ends will not seem as unexpected or as permanent.

My daughter teaches mythology at Wilmington University. I borrowed her class notes to brush up on the classic structure and the parallels between hero’s journey and our writer’s journey amazed me. Over the next few days I’ll talk a little about each step in the structure and we’ll see if it applies to us as writers.

Step One: The Call

This invites the hero into the adventure, offers the opportunity to face the unknown and to gain something of physical or spiritual value. The hero may be willing to undertake the quest or may be dragged unwillingly.

There are several different ways of analyzing the hero’s journey. Sometimes the “ordinary world” is cited as the first step in the journey and that makes sense. It is that ordinary world that informs everything we will write—that made us who we are– as we embark on our journey, but it is the call that starts us on our way. The call is certainly part of the writer’s journey. All of those elements have been present in the stories I hear when writers tell why they decided to write.

Before we look at the other steps I’d love to hear about your call. Were you willing or dragged kicking and screaming into this quest? Are you seeking to gain something physical—like a career—or something spiritual? When you started, did you realize that much of your journey would take you into the unknown? Use the comments to share about your own “call to adventure.”

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I’ve written this week about how specific novels affected the early years of my marriage and thus my relationship with my terrific engineer husband. You don’t have to be married to have a book affect relationships–for either good or bad.

What books–fiction or non-fiction–have brought you closer to someone, given you insight into someone else’s life, or enabled you to enjoy the differences? And just how did they do it?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

They were sitting in the submarine wardroom on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean one morning, when the Commanding Officer entered and began his briefing for the planned war games. Two sentences in, the navigator looked up in surprise. Two more, and the executive officer cleared his throat. By the time the CO paused, all the officers were staring at him with wide eyes.

My husband, the chief engineer on the oldest submarine in the Atlantic that day in 1984, said, “Sir?”

The CO swiped his hand across his face. “Hmm. Is that what we’re really supposed to do, or was that in the book last night?”

Deadly silence in the service. Someone asked, “What book, sir?”

Can you guess?

That was our introduction to Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October.

Clancy deserves a post all his own–his writing story is amazing–but his early submarine books reflected our personal life like few before or since. It really was that true-to-life, and for years we told people interested in submarine life to read the book. Or see the excellent movie.

All you need for verisimilitude is the smell–so sit in a small closet with salty clothing, smoking a cigarette, spilling oil, and sweating like mad. Then you’ll really understand submarine life in all its senses–assuming you don’t take a shower for five days before hand.

It opened my eyes to what my husband experienced every day and made me appreciate him and his fellow sailors even more.

Clancy hit me again on an emotional level with his Red Storm Rising in 1986. The story of World War III, this one featured two submarine crews: men off the USS La Jolla and the USS Boston. When both submarines were sunk off the Greenland icepack, I had to set the novel aside.  I was crying too hard to see the words.

I knew the CO of the Boston, and had friends on the LaJolla. Submarines weren’t supposed to be destroyed in my world. I couldn’t return to the book until I got past the horror of what it would have been like to lose someone on a boat.

Clancy wrote about machines and men; I knew the life of the women who waited for those boats and men. He gave me uncanny insight into a mystery–information I needed, but which came in an “entertaining” form. It felt almost too powerful to be endured.

Do you know other books like this? Have you ever been sucked into a book that describes a unique setting in such a concrete and full way that you finish it feeling as if you’ve lived the story? How did the author do it?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

As aforementioned, my  husband and I became fans of PBS’s Masterpiece Theater early in our marriage. Back in those days, which seem almost Dickenesque now, the program aired once a week on Sunday nights. You saw it then, or you didn’t see it at all.

Fortunately, the program usually featured stories based on actual books, so if you missed an episode, you could obtain a copy of the novel and catch up before the next Sunday. Which is how we happened to read Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice--and fell in mutual love with the British author’s stories.

I mean, really, what’s not to like? Writing before, during, and after World War II,  Shute penned romantic tales of engineers and the women they loved.

What could be better than that?

It was like looking in a mirror.

Well, maybe not.

We were in the throes of naval submarine life when we started to read Shute, living apart for long periods of time while my husband “fought” the cold war and I handled children and collapsing machinery. Shute gave us a fantasy escape into orderly engineering and loyal women who exemplified courage when the chips were down. Not precisely our life, but close enough in feel and texture that we took pleasure in reading the stories together and dreaming about the future.

Curiously, though, we never touched Shute’s most famous novel, On the Beach–the story of an American submarine in Australia as the world suffered nuclear meltdown. It didn’t appeal, or maybe that one really was too close to home in the 1980s.

Our favorite was Trustee from the Toolroom, the story of a humble tool-and-die maker who traveled around the world to ensure his orphaned niece received her inheritance–at great personal risk to himself. In that novel, I recognized my husband’s character and integrity as well as his engineering competence in spite of great odds.

What about you? Have you ever found a book, series of books, or an author who seemed to understand your life in uncanny ways? (Other than Romeo and Juliet, of course.)

Location: Drizzly Santa Rosa, Calif., main office

I never had paid a lot of attention to my boyfriend’s reading while we dated. We attended college sixty miles apart, and while I was immersed in Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer and the horrors of Joyce’s Ulysses, my intended spent his hours fiddling with mathematical equations and engineering tomes. Because my fiance was, and continues to be as my husband, eclectic in his interests, we also enjoyed seeing Shakespeare plays together. Did it really matter, what we were reading as long as we enjoyed it?

We bought a television with our scant savings after my husband learned The Hobbit would appear on network television. Prior to that we had been committed to not owning a TV the first year of our marriage. It didn’t much matter since upstate New York at the time only had four stations in that pre-cable dark ages. But then we got hooked on Masterpiece Theater, in particular a sudsy romantic series called Poldark 2. Apparently Poldark 1 had aired back when we were in college.

Winston Graham began writing what turned out to be a lengthy series of books, after the end of World War II. Since some seven of these books had been required to produce the Poldark series, and we obviously were behind, we fell into an orgy of reading all the Poldark novels.

Thus began a halcyon period in our early marriage. Working shift work at a training nuclear reactor, my husband kept odd hours. Fortunately, the tiny library in Ballston Spa carried the old Graham novels.  We tried to ration ourselves: one book a day. I’d start and then pass it along, picking up the next one while my husband read to keep up with me.

We finished in about two weeks, awash in the romance of a Cornwall couple and their efforts to keep tin mines alive in the nineteenth century. Mining–you know–pumps, motors, gears. Romance–a young wife awaiting her husband’s return.

We’re certainly nicer than Ross and Demelza Poldark–but they made for a great fantasy couple on long summer days many years ago.

How about you? What kind of stories do you and your favorite snuggler like the best?

Location: The new main office in Santa Rosa, Calif.

My husband and I both majored in ENG in college. At UCLA, that meant ENGLISH. At Harvey Mudd College, that meant ENGINEERING. You can imagine how, theoretically, we could have been at cross-purposes in our literary choices over the years.

You’d be right to some extent, but not completely.

Prior to our marriage (a week after he was sworn in as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy’s nuclear engineering program), I spent a lot of time thinking about what book I’d take on our honeymoon. Oh, he knew I read all the time, but neither one of us worried about it since he, too, was an avid reader.

I hadn’t read War and Peace yet, and that’s what my bibliophile father was reading when I was born. No, that might feel too close to home. It needed to be something really spectacular, but nothing seemed a good choice. The Bible was obvious, but Gideon always left one behind in hotel rooms and so I didn’t bother.

I then made what to me was the ultimate decision to demonstrate my love for my new husband: I took no book.

My groom, meanwhile, received Lucifer’s Hammer, a hot-off-the-presses science fiction novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, as a gift from one of his groomsmen who actually had the book autographed in our honor as a wedding present.

There we were, holed up at the Benbow Inn in romantic, mist-filled Garberville, California, watching the redwoods shake in the rain. Terrific food, damp hikes, jigsaw puzzles in the lobby, winks and smiles from the staff–a lovely visit–until the groom pulled out his book.

I tried to be nice about it. I really did. But this was SO unfair.

“Why didn’t you bring a book?” he asked logically. “I can’t believe you don’t have one.”

“I thought you’d want to look at me . . . ”

Well, he did.

Eventually, we ventured out to the local bookstore in Garberville–a tiny hole in a redwood tree with three racks of dog-eared novels. The decision was tough, again, but not because of any romantic notions. They just didn’t have much of a selection.

Which brings me to…what would have been a good choice for two ENG majors on a romantic honeymoon in the redwoods?

Or, which book did you take on your honeymoon?

My final selection? CS Lewis–Perelandra. I don’t think I ever finished it . . .  

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: about 40 degrees

Like many of you I suspect, I’m wrapped up in the Winter Olympics. At a dinner party this past weekend, we had quite a discussion about what makes curling a sport, and is it a good idea for women skiers to use larger skis than men use.

Earlier this week I was thrilled watching Americans Charlie White and Meryl Davis and the beautiful Canadian pair Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir compete in ice dancing–my favorite competition.

During the event the commentator said that judges watched how close and symetrically a pair skates. Two humans skating precisely as one to the rhythm of music.  The affection the skaters displayed for each other at the dance conclusions was freer and more obvious than I remembered. Hugs and kisses all around at the end of performances. It seemed so romantic! Such love on display! Such happiness after all the trials and efforts!

I wonder what skaters read, how they stay in touch with what’s happening outside the rink and what disciplines they use to keep their minds focused. Do they plug in iPods as they practice? You could do that as a soloist but pairs have to think about the other person as well as themselves. Sounds somewhat like marriage, doesn’t it?

Surely there have been romance novels about ice skaters, but I can’t remember any titles. How do authors balance the hours of laborious practice, the disagreements with coaches, the injuries, the missed activities with friends against the glorious achievement of a good skating performance and finding the perfect partner?

It’s sort of an anomaly to associate love with ice rather than heat. Ah, but true love melts us all, doesn’t it?