Silver-lining Monday: Wallpaper nightmare

When I bought the house, I knew it needed a new roof. I also was more than unimpressed with the interior paint.

Everything had been painted a dirty beige, and I mean everything--walls, trim, baseboards, doors. Clearly the paint had been on sale that day.

What I didn't know was that all that dirty beige hid a desperate secret: the former owners had painted over wallpaper.

I discovered this only after the roof was fixed, the HACV repaired, and insulation put down. I couldn't figure out why the paint was bubbling and peeling until I could see the lines where sections met up.

So now I am scraping off layers of painted wall paper and thinking unkind thoughts of the person--or people--who took the short cut.

On the other hand, it does give me plenty of time to think about the next sentence, next crisis, next turning point in my books. So that is today's silver-lining.

Just a spoonful of sugar...or maybe a pound

I've spent a lot of time this summer thinking about the art of diplomacy.

In my current work-in-progress, one of my secondary characters is a diplomat. So far, he hasn't said a word.

And in a way that illustrates how art mirrors life, in all my job interviews this summer, I've been asked what former employers would consider my strengths and weaknesses (or "challenges" if the interviewer has a public relations background).

Now after a few years in the professional world, anyone with an ounce of self-awareness knows what she does well and not so well. So it's a fairly easy question to answer.

I am not a natural-born diplomat.

OK that's an understatement. I can be rather blunt, more than a bit cynical and entirely too likely to say what everyone else is only thinking. I've been told not to admit this to prospective employers, but I figure it's better to give them a heads up. No sense in having them think they've hired Shirley Temple only to find themselves across the conference table from a less-witty (but more sober) Dorothy Parker.

What's interesting is each time I give this answer, the interviewer has smiled and said, "sounds like me. I'm always saying things I shouldn't."

I laugh, but also wonder if he is merely being diplomatic or if diplomacy is truly a rarified skill that we all wish we had, but few actually do. Who among us hasn't said something he shouldn't? How many times have you blurted when you should have been reticent?

After a lot of thought, I've decided that diplomacy isn't the ability to tell someone to go to hell and make him want to go (that's charisma) but the genius to tell hard truths yet still make peace. Mary Poppins reminds us that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but finding the correct truth to sugar ratio is a skill worthy of a medieval alchemist.

This insight should help my diplomat character in his struggles to find the words that will prevent war (we'll know for certain after I write that chapter). And hopefully it will remind me to walk a little more carefully through the forest that is human interaction.

After all, writing requires we type what others only think, but reading it and hearing it are two very different things.

Burning my boats

Almost 500 years ago, Hernando Cortes set out to conquer Mexico--his determination so great, he burned his boats once he and his men came ashore. This act not only made sure his men would fight when they'd rather retreat, but also provided fodder for motivational speakers for centuries to come.


By burning our boats, we ensure we don't quit when the goal becomes too big or too scary or too far away. However, by burning our boats, we also ensure our commitment to a cause that we obviously don't agree with--at least not wholeheartedly. For if we were wholly committed there would be no need to burn our boats.


These thoughts have been twisting through my head the past several days after the heroine in my current WIP takes a step that could be viewed as the 12th century equivalent of burning her boat.


My hero chides her for taking such a narrow view of success: "There is always another way to get what you want," he says in the story that I've taken to calling the Yorkshire Gothic (even though it's set in Northumberland). "In fact, there are usually two or three different ways to get what you want."


These were not the words I expected to come out of my hero's mouth. Until that point, I'd pictured him as rather monomaniacal, and the scene was supposed to spark a moment of empathy with the heroine.


Instead, she took umbrage at his attitude, and they are further apart than ever.
Then I began to wonder if Rye was talking to me. The truth is I can become fixated on one thing to the near exclusion of all else. And for the past six months or so I've been determined  to find a way to shake things up--only I can't decide on the one way to do it.

• Travel?
• New job?
• Move to Key West and take up improv?

The problem is I've been looking for a way when there are multiple paths to get to where I want to be.

Overlooking the small fact that my characters are now talking to me, I've decided to try Option A and if that doesn't work, move on.  I'm not out to conquer Mexico, after all. I don't need to burn my boats.