Sprucing Up

Photo: BlackStarVideo via Pixabay

We've lived in our house for twenty-three years. Initially, we put a lot of sweat equity into it, re-painting, renovating or re-decorating every room. Some more than once.

For years, I tackled a project every summer (I was much younger then), but sometime after my daughter stopped taking naps and I started writing seriously, I stopped pouring energy into the house and started putting it into other things. Like writing books.

As anyone who's lived in the same house for more than two decades can attest, without small spruce-ups, at the very least, a house begins to look run down. But right now, with tuition checks taking top funding priority and multiple writing projects taking top creative priority, there are no home makeovers in our immediate future.

So this has been the summer of small spruce-ups. Replacing a shower head (necessary when the old one made showering with the garden hose seem more palatable). Getting new white lights for my office (when the old ones refused to be resuscitated even one more time). Buying new towels for the bathroom, new pillows for the mudroom benches and new furniture for the playroom/mancave/family room. These little changes don't erase the need for bigger projects (like repainting rooms in the house), but they have a positive impact nevertheless.

Characters are a lot like houses. After an initial investment of time, they become comfortable in their roles, each a sort of room of her own, and it's easy for them to slip into the status quo and stay there.

But after a time, they begin to feel neglected. They might stop working well, like the lights in my office, fading into plot oblivion. Or, they might threaten to let themselves go like the old cushions in our mudroom, too comfortable in their well-worn state to rise to the occasion with dialogue more fascinating than small talk.

Or, if they're like Marita, Charli, Bets and Angel, they might demand to heard. Angel, as you can imagine, is less demanding than the rest of the group, but she's got a few things going on. Marita and Charli don't really complain much, but every once in a while, they assert themselves in a scene, and do something I hadn't expected.

As I continue to work on the sequel to Chasing a Second Chance, I've been frustrated that I haven't been able to meet the idealized timeline I've been keeping in my head. I watch other authors write three books in the time it's taking me to write this one and I worry. When readers ask about the book, I tell them it's in the works, which is true, and taking longer than expected.

Also true.

What I've come to realize is happening, though, is that these characters are my home. I've come to know them very well, and I've become attached to them just as they are. Like a well-worn sofa or a pair of perfectly broken in jeans, they're comfortable and low-maintenance. It's easy to just sit down and shoot the breeze with them.

But that does not make for scintillating story.

Luckily, like my house, my characters know when it's time to shake things up. Not content with the status quo, they come at me with ideas I wasn't anticipating. At first, I blamed Bets, because she, more than any of the others, loves center stage. But one by one, other characters have surprised me as well (just as Charli did that night at youth group in Chasing a Second Chance). I'm moving along, typing a scene when suddenly one of them takes over and says, "No, this is where we're going."

Gregory Daniels to Marita Mercer in
Casting the First Stone

So far, they haven't steered me wrong. Every twist has brought a bit of intrigue I hadn't planned on, one that makes the story more interesting, if not better overall.

Lest you think this book is causing me to lose touch with reality, let me assure you of my sanity -- or at least as much of it as I've ever had. Through my characters, I'm exploring endless possibilities through the series of "what-ifs" that is the domain of the character-driven author. I'm ready to be the authoritative parent, bringing them back on track if they go too far astray, but so far, no one has.

So, as it turns out, the journey to the end of this (still untitled) third Marita/Charli/Angel adventure is going to take a little longer than I'd planned. But, like a Sunday drive or the scenic route, the trip will, I hope, be worth the time.

And I'm definitely having fun along the way.

Home

Pixabay

After a brave battle with stomach cancer, my mom passed away at the end of June. For a number of reasons, I don't want to write a long post laden with mournful sentimentality, and I'm sure you're even less interested in reading one. But not acknowledging this at all in the space where she loyally read every post....well, that didn't seem right either.

Just before we lost my mom, I stumbled across a plaque when my daughter and I were shopping. It said, "Home is where your mom is." Blinking back tears, I rushed off to look at earrings or notebooks or some other something, wondering how many other patrons had done the same thing.

I can't argue with that sentiment. But it got me thinking about the concept of home. After spending a lot of time traveling back and forth between my adopted home in Pennsylvania (no matter how long I live here, I'll always be a Jersey girl) and my parents' condo, I don't quite agree with Billy Joel that home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but I believe it can be lots of other things.

Home is where you grew up, whether the state or country, the town, the house or all of the above.

Home is the place you create for yourself when you take your first steps beyond that place and set up a space of your own.

Home is the place you create for your family, regardless of size, style, cost or location.

Home is the place where the grandchildren can play cards on the coffee table the kids weren't allowed to touch.

Home is hugs and laughter, even amid sadness, when everyone gathers together to celebrate, to mourn or to eat. Always to eat.

Home is the diner where you know all the waitresses, the Starbucks where you know all the baristas and any place where they smile and make you feel welcome when your day is not so bright.

Home is neighbors who become friends and colleagues who become family.

Home is where you can kick off your shoes, prop up your feet and hang out in your pajamas all day long if you want to.

Pixabay

Home is your own bed, your own stuff and your own space.

Home is warmth and affection, disagreements and discussions, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Home is the piece of your heart you give to someone who feels homeless and the piece of yourself that reminds you of where you came from.

Home is permanent and portable, constant and changeable, flawed and perfect.

Home is a place, a group of people, a state of mind.

Home exists within each of us. We take it wherever we go, revere it in our memories and create it when it is missing. More than a house or a cast of characters it's infinitely expandable so that although we may sometimes be lonely, we never have to be alone.

What is home for you?

Containers, Styles and Logical Homes: Where Did/Does/Should it Go??

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Now that you've got the right stuff, it's time to put it to use in a way that will establish a working system. When it comes to matching containers to your personal and organizational styles, the goal is not only to choose the right containers, but also to develop new habits that make the most of what you do naturally.

Remember my bathroom bins? When we organize by STYLE, we work with our habits, instead of against them. Two simple concepts lie at the heart of working with those habits instead of against them.

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We've already talked about the first one: the concept of a home for every item. A home is where something “lives.” While the containers we've been perfecting for a month are key to establishing home for our items, they're only half the equation.

In order to get from a pile of random containers to an organizational system, we need to master the concept of logical and consistent homes for all of our things. A logical home is one that:

• is close to where the item is most often used;
• is the right size for the item;
• takes into account how often the item needs to be accessed.

This is the reason we store food in the pantry, toys in the playroom and holiday decorations in the attic. It’s also the reason we don’t store a single pair of socks, for example, in an empty kitchen drawer. Too much space is wasted if we dedicate an entire drawer to a pair of socks, and, since we don’t usually get dressed in the kitchen, it makes no sense to store socks there. Location is just as important in storage as it is in real estate. 

Here are a few things to consider as you establish logical homes for your things:

• Store things that are used every day in places that are easy to access. 
• Choose a storage solution (container and location) that makes it as easy to put things away as it is to put them down. 
• Store things where you use them...or drop them...or naturally put them. 
• Store similar items together, and consider storing complementary items (things that go together or are used together) near each other as well. 

I'll have more on each of these next week. For now, take a look at some of those things you put down instead of away at your house and do a little strategizing. Do those items have homes? And if so, are they logical homes? Or, when you consider your personal and organizational styles, do they belong somewhere else?

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