Author Archives: Wendi Knape

Dancing on Stilts

The paradigm shift was like a blast to the heart of me, peeling back the shadows that have long lingered, filtering in the sun and enlightening my mind. It hasn’t happened at the best time. The shift starts to move, its future on stilts. A small man with dollar signs for eyes looks up at me poised to run the sharp and wicked teeth of a saw across my newly born legs. I don’t know which way I’m going but I know I want to get there.

A step forward and I’m racing to catch up momentum carrying me, my balance precarious. I stop, hop and readjust. The stilts are very uncomfortable. I try again when a fork in the road appears before me. Which path do I take? There’s the black one. It’s poured and rolled to perfection, the double yellow line telling me not to cross, to stay on course, my destination is directly ahead. I see a sign adjacent to the road written in gold telling of untold riches dead ahead. The other road is uneven, made of dirt, rocks and clay, the dust a cloudy mass, making the road barely visible. I inch forward and test the road with a single stilt. I watch it disappear and pull back quickly, stumble, and nearly fall.

A sudden breeze brushes my skin and it carries a familiar young whisper. Should I turn back? No. But I answer, sending my voice on the same wind. A sense of calm turns the voice away and I look back to the path. The way is clear. There are large gaping holes and no lines of sight to help me on my way, no signs telling me what might wait for me ahead. These boarders meander to mysterious pockets of forest calling me, small voices daring, beckoning me to enter. What lay in the hidden knolls, waiting for discovery? My heart tells me to go.

Hugging one stilt, fortifying my choice I look ahead before I move. From this height, what I see on the craggy path makes me smile. Letters large and small paint a picture of wild passion. Structures thin and wide made from the trees, burst above the canopy dotting the landscape opening wide the sounds like a hurricane. However, each comes with trappings and danger, my mind spinning with the flux of images, the barrage of letters making my mind spin and my fingers twitch. Are they trying to tell me something? My breath hitches and my heart races but I look further ahead trying to see where it all ends. The images change to ones of hope and love. I reach for them, want to grab hold, and never let go, their light embrace a wish in my heart, each a start helping build something beautiful and lasting.

Then I look down and see the small man. He smiles and I shiver, his small flat and pointy teeth seeming huge as if I were seeing them through a magnified glass. He taunts me. He knows my weaknesses.

“Leave me alone!” I yell, stumble, and right myself quickly, the wake and power of my words causing a ripple in the vast line of trees.

The little man laughs. I make my way to the dirt road.

The little man claws at my stilts with one hand, banging the terrible saw on my tall wooden legs. I wobble and tip back. Bending at the waste, my momentum carries me toward the road. I hold on tight afraid I’ll meet the ground.

If I fall, will I be able to get up again? To find the end of this journey where I can start a new one, it is a chance I have to take.

I, jump, and lift my legs dancing out of his reach trying to flee, kicking him away. In a flash of light, he is below me again banging and banging and banging, laughing. He forces me one way when I’m leaning, reaching for another. I kick him off again and run, gripping tight to the handles of the stilts praying I won’t fall and I’ll find my way.

When the uneven road connects with the burden attached to my feet, I sigh with the reprieve. I am careful. My balance strengthens. My confidence grows. The dirt road is mine and the little man is far behind, but I still feel him watching. My eyes look to the road ahead. My dreams are there. I don’t care that it is laden with potholes and dust storms. I will dance around the ruts and cover my eyes through the storms until I get to the destination that awaits me.

A Talisman, a Tool

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What does a tarot deck, an athame, a grimoire, silver and a cross have in common? I’m sure you can guess. They all are tools used in the paranormal trade that are staples in any number of different manuscripts. But how do your characters use them, and how can you as a writer find authentic information that will read true within your characters? Some tools you’ve probably read or heard about come from perceived truths based on lore passed down from generation to generation. Others stem traditionally from religious practices, be it Christianity or Paganism.

I am Christian, not Catholic, but the first symbol of Christianity besides Jesus and the cross that comes to mind is the rosary, a string of beads used specifically for prayer and meditation. It’s an important part in the daily lives of a Catholic. But what about those that are not practicing Catholics? Did you ever wonder why someone dangles a rosary from a rearview mirror of his or her car? Or why they might place a rosary on a mantel next to a picture of a deceased loved one. At some level that persons mind has a powerful connection to the rosary. It gives him or her some assurance that God is with them. It’s a visible reminder of something greater than they are, seated deeply in their faith.

Near the opposite end of the spectrum is Paganism, not to be confused with an Atheist who doesn’t believe in God. Definition no. 2 on Dictionary.com lists a pagan as a person that is not Christian, Jewish or Muslim. The definition of a pagan I like most is, “a follower of any various contemporary religions that are based on the worship of nature or the Earth; a neopagan.” Do they have something similar to the rosary?

What am I alluding to here exactly? Consider the creation of a talisman. A talisman, an object with special meaning for its owner, used by a witch or Wiccan, is no different from a Catholic that clings to their rosary. I know some might think differently, but in both cases, each person believes the items hold power based on their faith, so it’s important to understand how it holds that power for the character you are building.

Even if you’re not developing a witch or a Catholic, what if the girl next door carries a worry-stone in her pocket because her mother said it would lesson her anxiety. Would a blue-eyed, glass broche pinned to a baby’s onesie help ward off evil? Could the mother of the baby become obsessed in her quest to hide her baby from evil, the broche being the catalyst? Would she do something drastic making future events spin out of control?

Wrapped tiger iron pendant by WjK DESiGNS

A very mundane character could be similar in my own beliefs. I occasionally wear stones that have meaning for me. It’s not because I believe in witchcraft, it’s because when I wear a stone it has a purpose–besides looking nice—placing a specific intent in my mind as to where I should focus my creativity or thoughts. It acts as a reminder. The photo on the right shows a tiger-iron stone I purchased from Earth Lore in Plymouth, MI, that I made into a necklace. Defined by the expertise of the owners of Earth Lore the stone brings the bearer confidence, strength, and insight of the tiger-eye with the grounding energy of jasper and hematite, or it can boost creativity.

The use of a talisman, a tarot card or rosary gives the writer a different avenue, draping their characters in thick layers of back-story. They add elements that are significant to the characters helping move them toward his or her goal, enriching your story.

Even looking back on the way I used the Hermit tarot card in my last post, the paranormal tool used, helped flush out a purpose or path to get around writers block for character development. Still that same use, drawing a tarot card, could be something a witch, a psychic, a telepath, uses to gain knowledge for his or her goals.

Developing a ghost story where the protagonist is hunting ghosts might add a very long list of technical and scientific tools, but the key word is scientific not supernatural. But what if your character were sensitive to ghosts, what tools introduced could press the tension up in the story?

In this case, might the tool be his or her body or consciousness? Could it be the ghost becomes the tool in your manuscript? The main character is a medium in this case, channeling the spirit of the ghost. On the other hand, the ghost could be malevolent, similar to a poltergeist or one that possesses, controlling your character. Maybe he or she becomes your antagonist instead and the ghost becomes his tool to terrorize because of a symbiotic relationship. The outside source or tool, the ghost, can give you a vast number of options for developing a characters mannerisms, flaws, and idiosyncrasies.

Another great example of a tool in a paranormal world (this one is fantasy) is the ring in Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s one of the most iconic tools in a fictional world. Many scholars could go on and on about the symbolism of the one ring, fashioned for the most evil being in Middle-Earth, or a king, or a Hobbit, and let’s not forget Gollum. If you look at all of these characters, the ring did something different for each of them, driven by Tolkien’s imagination and words.

It’s fascinating to me, the idea of a talisman. Look to your own lives, your surroundings. What’s on your desk, your nightstand? Did you have a box filled with little things you’ve collected over the years, each having a memory attached to it? We all have them in some form or another, a necklace, a coin, a stone. Maybe we don’t know why we carry them, but the need is within us, even if it’s on a subconscious level.

If I give a character a particular item, how does it move them through a story, does it corrupt, does it help, and does it give him or her power? Does an enemy want it for his own, and what happens to your hero or heroine then? So many things can cascade into something else, when you give a character a tool. But be careful. If you see it throughout a story, it has to have meaning, a past, a present, a purpose. All you and I have to do is choose what that purpose is.

Happy Writing!

Writer’s Block: 8 Strategies to Bust Out

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In my last blog, A Picture is worth a Thousand Words, I talked about free writing. The pictures I used sparked my imagination, but pictures aren’t the only way to get out of a creative rut, they were just one example.

Writers know that a slide into the white abyss of a blank page will eventually happen; the dreaded writers block. We also know how to influence our writing style for the best results, what exercises we can use to push our thoughts into a colorful explosion of images created by our words. Even if we’re trying to start a new project, develop a new character, or find a crazy and different meet-cute that will attract readers, we all have certain exercises we like to use. Or we find the ones that help our creative process unfold.

Here are some of my favorite ways to break down walls that are stalling my creativity, or what I use to come up with something fresh.

Tarot Cards

A few years ago, one of my favorite mystery writers was having issues with character development. Her main protagonist in her series is a psychic. The first idea that came to mind was to suggest the author pull a tarot card and use it to develop character traits.

Zach Wong, Revelations Tarot

I randomly pulled one of my own tarot cards while writing this and drew The Hermit card. In Zach Wong’s depiction of The Hermit from Revelations Tarot–based on Arthur Edward Waite’s and Pamela Colman Smith’s tarot deck–the image represents “a teacher, someone wise, or an old soul who can point you in the right direction.”[1] The card, “recommends wisdom and forethought before making a decision.” [2] If I draw the card in reverse (upside-down), “the card reflects the need to run away from situations and to hide from problems.”[3] The interpretation of the card is completely up to the author. My take on the card is the character could be on an internal journey that will lead to answers that he/she has been searching for, finding happiness. In reverse, it could mean the character mired in his or her mind, morphs into an unreality that threatens them or others. Hero or villain, draw your own conclusions.

Word Association

Another exercise I like to use when I’m stuck is word association. Even though in your own work you’ve developed everything down to the single gray hair that your character can’t seem to get rid of, he or she might not be moving in a direction you foresaw. So what do you do? Try listing words in a column, by hand—a change of medium might help too—that relate to an inner turmoil or flaw your character has that is keeping him from getting to the end of his journey. In an adjacent column, write down where you want your character to end up, what place you might want him to go physically, or something he might need to find, a person he needs to see, things that make him feel good, or bad, etc. It’s all up to you. Nothing may come from the exercise, but you might also light a fire that you don’t want to extinguish.

A book that shows a slightly different take on word association is Plot & Structure: Techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips readers from start to finish by James Scott Bell. Bell talks about the use of mind maps.[4] He breaks it down into three steps: ready, fire, and aim.

Ready, invites you to pick a concept you want to develop. Pick a word the story should revolve around. Bell gives baseball as his example.
Fire, inspires a scrawl of words with connections and associations to the one word concept.
Aim, allows the writer to sift through words they have written down. Bell’s exercise inspires the writer to find direction to their thoughts and gives a good sense of the journey the writer might want to take as the story unfolds.

Books

A great place to find writing help are the old trusty books about writing. We all have them. A few I’ve found very helpful are Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark, Make a Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld, which I spoke of in an earlier post, Clarity, and Write Starts by Hal Zina Bennett.

In Writing Tools, Clark gives clear editing tools allowing us to improve on what we’ve written, which once done helps engage the reader more. With the use of chapters like, Tool 6, Take it easy on the –ings, or Tool 28, Put odd and interesting things together, he helps us in the editing process. For the latter, Clark gives an example from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. The author uses ironic juxtaposition to enhance a scene and make Madame Bovary oblivious to Rodolphe Boulanger’s true intentions.[5] What if you did this with your own work? Take one of your scenes and change it up. How can the background give you focus to the mood or motives of your character, while leaving the other character in the scene in the dark? It might allow you to richen your dialogue or give a dull scene a glow that never would have come about if you hadn’t taken the time to look into tools that work for you.

The examples above might not be perfect for you, but they could give you a jumping off point to do your own search on the internet. Below are a few places you might want to start your search.

Fiction University by Janice Hardy takes you through several areas of the writing process and answers many questions that might motivate you to write again.
One Minute Writer – This blog is a place where writing from a prompt can help you get words on the page; any words.
13 Famous Writers – Read about famous authors own solutions for writers block.
A Map to Get Out of Writer’s Block – A great diagram of questions you need to ask yourself to help clear your thoughts and get writing again.

[1]Zach Wong, Revelations Tarot Companion, Llewellyn Publications, 2005, 29.

[2]Zach Wong, Revelations Tarot Companion, Llewellyn Publications, 2005, 29.

[3] Zach Wong, Revelations Tarot Companion, Llewellyn Publications, 2005, 30.

[4] James Scott Bell, Plot & Structure: Techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips readers from start to finish, Writer’s Digest Books 2004, 45-46.

[5] Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools, Little, Brown and Company, 2006, 137.

A Picture is worth a Thousand Words

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When you read the title, A Picture is worth a Thousand Words, I bet most of you think of an award-winning photo. Maybe you think of the famous photo in Times Square with the sailor kissing the girl on V – J Day. Or, maybe it’s the little girl running naked and burned after the bombing of Hiroshima. Maybe it’s a more romantic image, say of Marilyn Monroe getting her skirt blown up from the air vent. The question I’d like to ask you is, what do all of these images have in common?

They each tell a story.

For this blog, I decided to do a writing exercise with you. I went to my Pinterest account where I have a board called Scene Inspiration and another one called Possible Character Images. I picked the images below and combined them together to tell a story. When I’m brainstorming or have writers block, I find it helpful to pull inspiring images that help me flush out a character, setting, etc. that I’m interested in adding to my many manuscript ideas. It especially helps when I’m just starting a project. In this case, it was because I was having trouble deciding where I wanted to go next in an existing manuscript. Stumped on one thing, it’s helpful to free-write when your creative mojo decides to take a hike, so that’s what I did. I encourage you to do the same thing if you’re having trouble.

As I was writing, something interesting happened. I’ll discuss what it was after the free-write below.

GQ Magazine UK, 15 February 2010, Sienna Miller: Out in the Open, Photo by Simon Emmett

Imgur.com, 2012, Gallery, 1000 Year Old Yew Trees in West Wales

I call it the Central Park incident. The only thing I remember of my life before then is my name, Anna Maria Bonite, and a majestic white speckled horse that felt like he was a part of who I am, and trees so gnarly, black, bloodied, and twisted, they give me nightmares. My driver’s license, which the police found in my pocket, said I was twenty-four at the time, and that I lived in New York City.

It isn’t that I don’t try to remember my life before then, it’s that I can’t. Every time I try to open up that part of my memory, it’s as if I’m drowning in a sea of emotional pain so thick, it gives me the cold sweats and shakes bad enough that the symptoms hold me immobilized in bed for days.

It has taken me a long time to control the blank pockets of time locking that part of my consciousness away even though I desperately want to know what happened before stepping into the park. What made all those memories disappear? The one and only time I entered Central Park, there was a flash of memory that brought the insidious image of the trees to life. The memory was evidently so painful my brain decided to fritz out, protecting my psyche. It felt like my head split wide-open as sharp daggers sank into my skin, then only darkness. When I woke up, it was in a bed, a week later, at Mount Sinai Hospital. The doctors told me they could find nothing wrong with me physically, but whoever I was before that day was a dark, blank canvas. I was a functional, healthy person, able to do normal things. I was perfectly educated, but with no personal identity, no memories of going to school, of friends, of where I grew up; nothing.

Lately, things have been slipping pass my hard built walls, the walls in my psyche made of layers of steel and barbed wire. I can no longer keep my fear at bay while working and I have to fight the mounting panic. If it wasn’t for the blaring horns, the racing taxis that zig and zag through traffic, pedestrians at all hours, the sounds of people jabbering on phones, friends talking at the sidewalk cafes, the construction machines moving steel and concrete through the air as I walk the paved streets of my city, I would have gone mad years ago. It’s when I’m near a living landscape surrounded by trees that my memories deliver the sharp pain.

Six years have gone by since the Central Park incident, since all the smaller attacks in between.

Because of my “condition”, I’m not able to hold down a job for very long. Employers don’t take too kindly to me being absent more than a couple days a month. Well, okay, more than a couple days a month. Looking back on that morning getting fired never got any easier.

***

“I’m sorry, Anna Maria. I’m gonna have to let you go,” my latest boss mumbled while looking at his scuffed shoes. He felt bad, she knew. They always did.

I heard his words and I felt the weight of them on my shoulders. Was I surprised? No. That’s why that morning I decided for a change of scenery. The words still hurt though.

That morning, when the sun leaked into my tiny Manhattan apartment, I crawled out from under my favorite white satin sheets and down comforter–my only luxury– and made my first cup of coffee. Wandering over to the map, tacked to the wall, the fifty states stood out in a pastel array of colors. Lifting my mug, I blew out a breath, watched the steam float away, and took a sip, hoping my first delicious swallow of Columbian goodness would help me decipher my troubled thoughts.

“Where should I go?”

***

I didn’t want to leave New York, but I was feeling a pull in my gut toward something, I just didn’t know what. My eyes kept drifting toward the west coast but eventually they moved over the map’s mitten state. I felt it in my stomach, a small flutter getting wilder and wilder every time my eyes landed on Michigan.

A shiver raced up spine and out my fingertips. There were too many trees in Michigan. Why was my brain telling me to go there?

Maybe if I moved to a larger metropolis, I would be okay.

Moving closer to the map, scanning the bigger cities, my eyes landed on Detroit. It was no Manhattan, but I could make it work. I just had to forgo all the great parks that the state touted.

Another sip of coffee and I made my decision. I was moving to Michigan.

Would the change in location give me answers? I didn’t know. Whatever the pull was, I had never felt it before, so my gut was my compass and I was following it.

It wasn’t quite a thousand words but it was a worthwhile exercise. Because my thoughts are on the series I’m working on, the characters are always present in my mind, be it consciously or unconsciously. While writing, the Anna Maria Bonite character popped into my head and it created a new direction for her character. Right now in my story, the reader will presume she is dead. Therefore, even though I am stuck on the manuscript I’m working on now, something good happened trying to get myself unstuck.

The Monarch

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Knape, Wendi. Monarch Butterfly, 2008.
Ink and watercolor on paper.

In my last blog Clarity I talked about how much my work has improved since I started writing. What you don’t know is the inspiration that started my writing journey was a monarch butterfly.

Laid off from an at-will company (the company didn’t have to tell me why they let me go) in 2003, I felt lost. My mind spit out all sorts of detritus about why I was let go, bogging me down in a depression that had its claws deep. I was unsure of my talent in my chosen field, which was architectural design. I didn’t know how I should move forward with my career, though I knew that I needed to do something that I would enjoy. At the time I decided to focus more on my family; it just wasn’t going to be enough. The stay-at-home-mom label wasn’t for me. There’s nothing wrong with the designation. Parenting is hard work, and raising my children so they become good adults is important to me, I just wanted something more, so I let my thoughts percolate.

Drawing and painting is a passion of mine, but having the time to do it was hard with a full time job so, I always put it off for another day. Reading is another joy that helped me through some awful days too. Getting lost in worlds that other people create was something that helped pull me out of my mental fog. Eventually, the idea of taking my talent in art and my love of reading got me thinking about pushing my career in a new direction. I asked myself, was it viable? The problem was I didn’t know what it was. Did I have what it would take to make something out of my love of art and reading? Could I help support my family by drawing or painting? How could I take the joy of reading and make it into something worthwhile? I didn’t know, so the thoughts kept going round and round, making me undecided on what street to walk down.

My mind was in a continual loop of worry, as I drove to the store, when a monarch butterfly flew past my windshield. The first thing that popped into my head was, I should paint that. The second thing was what if I wrote a story about the monarch. Could I write as well as the authors I read? I was reading children’s books at the time, my two girls ages were five and three, and those books were illustrated. Could I write and illustrate a book?

That was my ‘aha’ moment. I felt lighter than I had in a long time and got excited about what it could mean for my family and me. Seeing the butterfly wasn’t the only factor, but a primary one, allowing me to throw away thoughts circling in my head that weren’t doing any good. I started illustrating and writing my first picture book, Becoming Lucy, a story about a painted lady caterpillar being bullied because she had yet to go through her metamorphosis.

Knape, Wendi. Painted Lady w/ Ladybug, 2008.
Ink and colored pencil on paper.

You’re probably wondering how I went from writing and illustrating children’s picture books to writing paranormal romance novels. It was a gradual shift, moving from the picture book to middle grade stories, to young adult and finally to adult stories. It was a better headspace for me. Some people would tell you children’s genres are easy to write, but they are not. Getting into the mindset of a child, pre-teen or teen is difficult. I was too serious as a kid and I couldn’t remember how to be a kid and wasn’t able to capture the essence of one. Therefore, I shifted my thinking and tried my hand at something I love to read, romance, eventually paranormal romance.

Already in the Deadwood Writers Group, with their support and encouragement the other writers told me I should try my hand at the romance genre. The change was nerve racking, but I gave it a go and wrote my first sex scene, jumping head first into the deep end of the pool. It felt weird and exhilarating all at the same time, I even laughed aloud because I couldn’t believe I was writing one. It was like a river racing toward a waterfall. Ideas started pouring from my mind into a large pool, it harboring ideas for later. It was fun and I haven’t stopped since. I’m comfortable here. It’s not an easy business to break into but I keep my hope close to my chest that one day it will pay off. I still draw and paint, but writing is my inspiration, and I’m very satisfied.

Happy writing!

Deadwood Writers Voices

Exploring writing with & for writers and readers.