THE WRITE PATH with Ruth Andrew

Ruth Andrew

In this series, guest bloggers tell us about finding their way through the writing landscape. My guest today is author Ruth Andrew, whose Write Path has been anything but straight.

So let me hand over my mic. The next voice you’ll hear will be Ruth’s.

HOPE AND HAPPY ENDINGS

1. What made you want to be a writer?I can’t remember not wanting to write. My first short story, ‘Geometry from the Standpoint of a Spider’ was written when I was in high school. It was the way I worked out problems, but also the way I celebrated joy, and I loved geometry. This story was about a spider named Suzie who wove complicated webs in triangles, arcs and circles. By the time I reached college I knew that writing essays, humor and short fiction came easy for me.

As the years went by (college, marriage, children) I published short stories, essays, humor pieces and interviews in newspapers and magazines with large circulations. Marketing was also easy. I couldn’t imagine not selling anything I ever wrote and had the clippings to prove it. I even had one reprint article under my belt.

But one day life intervened, and I allowed a sad divorce to flatten me. The week I packed up my home office for a move to a small apartment I received two pivotal letters, one from an Avon editor asking me to write a library-edition teen romance, and another from an editor at Good Housekeeping, asking me to edit a short story I’d written. Suddenly editors were coming to me, even sending me Christmas cards that I had pinned to my bulletin board. I’d dreamed of this happening. But who can respond to writing requests when a grenade just blew up in your life? It took years for me to cross paths with those letters again. I abandoned an essential part of myself without even realizing it. Working, remarrying, and keeping my little family together were all I could manage.

2. What is the toughest part about writing?Writing about problems in the past had helped me understand them. Except that now it no longer worked. I decided I needed to write something longer, like a novel, to write myself out of the deep pit of despair into which I’d sunk. After all, every job I’d ever had involved making order out of chaos, and I wanted order back in my life. When my energy returned I drafted out a novel with a knot in the middle, similar to the knot I could not unravel in my own life. I’d asked my protagonist to work out this problem, since I had been unable to myself. What was I thinking? No matter how many craft classes I took on plotting, deep POV, synopsis, character development or dialogue, no matter how many writing conferences I attended, how many critique groups I joined or how many agents asked for my unfinished novel, nothing worked. I stalled, quit writing, and told my writing friends and agents waiting for my novel that plotting was my nemesis. I couldn’t do it. And like we all hear from our mentors, if we think we can’t do something, we can’t.

At this point the short stories and essays I wrote no longer gave me joy, and humor wasn’t even on my radar. Even being newly published in a number of anthologies did little to re-light my writing fire. I wondered what the hell had happened. Writing had let me down. For me, wanting to write again proved to be the most difficult part of writing.

3. Can you share a moment where YOU suddenly saw the light?My aha moment came while reading Time is a River by Mary Alice Monroe. It concerns the main character, Mia, who held my heart throughout this story. Near the end of the novel Mia was helping to unearth long-hidden water colors by a woman fly-fishing journalist. The painting was of a small brook trout caught by an elaborate dry fly with a hook firmly in its mouth. I will never forget the moment I read this line: The fish was rolling to its side, as though relinquishing the long fight. The words pierced my heart like an arrow.

In my mind I pictured the trout thrashing about in the midst of bubbles, being pulled into a net, exhausted, and relieved to give up the long struggle. Tears sprang to my eyes. I wanted that relief for myself and for the character I’d created for my unfinished novel. I’d given her a knot she could not unravel any more than I could unravel the knot in my own life.

It’s OK to give up. Sometimes it’s the only thing to do. Reading this line over and over, I knew that I had just programmed myself to let go of the knot in my own life and rework the knot in my novel as the responsibility of another character to resolve. It seemed so simple. As soon as I did that the words and ideas began to flow again, after far too long a time. Just let go. Friends we trust give us this advice. But it isn’t their knot, and it doesn’t always work. For me this did. And I have saved these words at the cellular level.

4. Whose style do you admire, or is there a line you wish you’d come up with?I have admired the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald since college. I’d love to have written this line from Gatsby, where Nick describes Daisy’s friend, Jordan: She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage. Simple words, but I have loved people like this for years. The words rang true for me on many levels. Whenever I read Fitzgerald his descriptions hit a nerve.

5. Describe your ideal reader. I want to write cozy romances with characters who succeed in spite of insurmountable odds. Years ago a writer friend told me that a good book informs, a great book entertains, and a superior book changes you. I keep those words pinned to the bulletin board in my office and read them every day. I want to give readers hope in the midst of chaos. Hope is what I am all about as a writer.

 

You can read more about Ruth Andrew at her blog, www.beeconcise.com, or her website, http://ruthandrew.com. She is finishing her novel, Benson’s Cove, & hopes it will be a series.