First Draft is in the Bag!

It's nice to be writing again

Hallelujah!

On Saturday, I completed the first draft of my short story, "Geronimo Jones Finds the Words" [working title], and sent it to my trusted reader/editor for a review.

Let me tell you something: after nearly six months without writing a single, blessed thing (except for the occasional Post-It note), it felt so good to crank out over 7,000 words of fiction in just five days. I was a gal on fire! The 90-degree humidity finally broke on Thursday, so on Friday and Saturday, I was able to sit out on the deck, type-type-typing away. It was glorious.

Since the short story takes place in a fictional little village in northern New York, part of my process included drawing a map of the town that included identifying the stores or businesses along the short two-block Main Street. I also wrote brief one- or two-sentence biographies for every character that may or may not feature in the story. And as I fleshed out the place and the people, I realized that there was more than one short story waiting to be written about the fictional town of Whartonville, New York.

My brother asked me last week if that was something all writers did. I have no idea. It's how I do it. I need to visualize the world I create. For me, it isn't enough to write that the town had a filling station and a diner. I have to see where they are located in black and white. I can't just give a character a name and leave it at that. I have to make that character as three-dimensional as the central characters of the story, even if he or she is only mentioned in passing.

With the first draft complete and out of my hands, I began to further flesh out the people who populate the fictional town of Whartonville. On Sunday, I spent about five hours expanding and tweaking each of the biographies on my character list. As I did, I uncovered three other short story ideas.

I'm a character-driven storyteller, not a plot-driven writer. I couldn't write a murder mystery or a spy thriller if my life depended on it. I'm no Agatha Christie. The mechanics of laying out a complex, unexpected plot are way outside my wheelhouse. Creating complex, unexpected characters, on the other hand? I love doing that.

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll surprise myself and crank a cracking mystery thriller. But I won't hold my breath.

The seeds of the next Whartonville Short Story are beginning to germinate. I am pretty sure it will be set in the 1920s and will feature three sisters, one of whom owns the diner in town. I expect to start writing it this week.

In the meantime, I am trying to catch up on my yard work, which I neglected last week while I was writing the first story. Today I got the front yard mowed and the weeds sprayed. I was going to prune the shrubs out front as well, but when I went into the shed to get the pruning shears, I discovered a paper wasp's nest as big as a cantalope hanging just above where I keep them.

Terrific.

I'm extremely skittish around those buggers. About ten years ago, I got swarmed when I accidentally bumped into a nest. I was stung over a dozen times. The wiley little shits even flew inside a rip in my jeans and stung me on the upper thigh and ass. What must my neighbors have thought watching me run like a madwoman around the backyard, slapping my ass and cursing like a character from an HBO series.

Upon discovering this latest nest, I slowly reached for the last can of bee spray and carefully backed out of the shed, all thoughts of retrieving the pruning shears lost. Once outside the door, I took aim and opened fire. I mean, I soaked the crap out of that cantalope-sized ball of paper. Then, I stepped into the shed, crouched down ever so slowly, and fired into the opening at the bottom. A chorus of angry buzzing emanated from the cantalope, so I fired a second and then a third shot into the hole.

I was like a soldier on Omaha Beach, aiming a flamethrower at a pillbox. Okay, no. I wasn’t. No D-Day soldier would've capped off the attack by scampering back to the house like a big chicken.

Anyroad.

I'll prune the shrubs tomorrow.

Last night, I started reading Mary S. Lovell's biography "The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family." In June, Britbox premiered a 6-part series called "Outrageous" that is based on Lovell's book. I enjoyed the series enough to want to read the book.

For those of you who don't know, the Mitford sisters were from a minor British aristocratic family. The eldest, Nancy, was a fairly well-known novelist. Two of her sisters, Diana and Unity, scandalized the family and horrified the country over their embrace of fascism -- Diana by divorcing her husband to carry on with British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, and Unity by leaving Britain for Germany to relentlessly pursue, and ultimately win over, Adolf Hitler. Hitler even attended Diana's wedding to Mosley, which, through Unity’s efforts, was held in the home of Joseph Goebbels.

Meanwhile, their younger sister Jessica (Decca) Mitford was an avowed Communist and anti-fascist. She ran away to Spain with her distant cousin (and Winston Churchill's nephew by marriage), Esmond Romilly, to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Decca and Romilly later eloped.

I suppose you can tell that the Mitfords were nothing like the Crawley girls of “Downton Abbey.” Of the six Mitford daughters, only the youngest, Deborah, had a life that followed the traditional trajectory expected of a peeress. She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, the 11th Duke of Devonshire.

The lives of the Mitford girls are fairly well-known on the other side of the pond, but aside from maybe Nancy Mitford or Diana Mosley, not so much here in America, which is why I decided to read Lovell's biography. It is smartly written and very entertaining. Early on, she notes that Unity Mitford was conceived whilst her parents were in Ontario, Canada, prospecting for gold. The little town where her parents had a cottage is called Swastika. In addition to that, her parents gave Unity the middle name Valkarie. Lovell jokingly notes that given her Wagnerian middle name and her place of conception, Unity's later love of Naziism and Adolf Hitler may have been unavoidable.

There’s some smart acting in the Britbox series, including from veteran British actors Anna Chancellor and James Purefoy, who play the girls' parents, David Freeman Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and Lady Redesdale, Sydney Bowles. I love Anna Chancellor. She's fantastic in everything she does -- beginning back in the mid-1990s when she co-starred with John Thaw in "Kavanaugh QC." Chancellor is the reason I purchased the series “The Hour” and watch it at least once a year. She was even splendid in the small guest appearance of “Downton Abbey,” as the aristocrat that Jimmy the footman used to work for. Purefoy is also excellent. I loved him as Mark Antony in the HBO series "Rome." The Mitfords' only son, Tom, is played by Toby Regbo, whom I totally did not recognize as the same guy who played the slimy and weak Lord Æthelred of Mercia in "The Last Kingdom."

Unlike your typical historical drama, "Outrageous" isn't stodgy or overly dramatic. The series makes Nancy Mitford its narrator, and the telling of the story reflects the biting and humorous style of her novels.

You may enjoy it. I certainly did. From the way the series ends, it is clear that Britbox intends to bring it back for another season. I mean, they hadn't even gotten to when Britain declares war on Germany, much to Unity’s dismay, or when the British government cracks down on Mosley and his party.

Huh.

I just noticed that I am much less of a bitch when I'm not writing about politics.

I'll have to remember that.