Book Review | Cathy C. Hall Writes

Once upon a time, there was a writer who sat about, bemoaning her writerly problems. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m stuck in a writer’s block!” Or, “Heavens to Betsy! How will I ever get any writing done with home, family and work responsibilities?” Until finally, she foolishly plopped down in the middle of the floor, putting off the whole writing thing altogether.

Fortunately, a wise friend (coincidentally, her name was Cathy) knew of Kristi Holl and her book, More Writer’s First Aid, a book jam-packed with answers to just about any writerly thing that ails you. She asked Kristi a few questions, to get her friend back on track. Let’s listen in, shall we?

So, Kristi, what’s the writing problem you most often hear about from struggling writers? And what’s one way to handle it?

The overall most common problem I hear about is how to juggle everything and still have time and/or energy for writing. Many new writers are starting at the same life stage that I began writing—with a houseful of small children. Your energy is low, your time to yourself is almost non-existent, yet you have this drive and burning desire to write stories and articles and books. (You wouldn’t mind some second income either.) Or your time/energy crunch might be for another reason: poor personal health, being a caregiver for an elderly relative, working a day job, marital problems or problems with teens that sap your energy, you name it. Lives today are so busy. This is why I started the “Rx for Writers” on the Institute of Children’s Literature website back in 1998, and why I wrote Writer’s First Aid and More Writer’s First Aid. My students—many of them very talented—weren’t quitting because they couldn’t figure out dialogue or description. They were quitting because life issues were sapping their energy and stealing their time.

One way to handle this? No matter what the issue, learn to write in tiny bits and pieces of time if you need to. Be ready, even if you only have ten minutes, to sit down and write. Have your story outlined so you know which piece to work on next. “Pre-write” or “pre-think” about the next part while doing those non-thinking activities (pushing kids on the swings, sweeping, pulling weeds, etc.) Then when you have ten or fifteen minutes free, dash to the keyboard (or keep a notebook and pen with you) and write like crazy. (I wrote my first five middle-grade novels this way.)

I know you’ve been writing for more than 30 years and published nearly 40 books! What do you know about writing and getting published that we don’t know?

Two things that experienced writers know that beginners usually don’t can make all the difference in whether you make it as a writer or not. (1) I know that persistence is more important than talent. That stick-to-it-iveness factor wins out every time. Talent is much more common, but talent won’t take you nearly as far as you might think. I’ve watched over the years which of my students went on to have books published by some of the biggest publishers. They were not the students I first predicted. Seldom were they the most talented, and occasionally I couldn’t see much hope in their work at all. But each of the students who went on to publish well—and repeatedly—simply didn’t give up. They studied and wrote and grew and wrote and read books and wrote and got critiqued and wrote and submitted and got rejected and kept writing. (2) The second bit of knowledge is this: every writer gets rejected, and the rejections don’t stop unless you stop submitting. Rejections are simply a part of the writing life. They’re a job hazard, like firemen who occasionally get burned. It just goes with the territory. If you don’t know this, you can erroneously believe your career is over when you get a string of rejections after several acceptances. Not true. Rejections happen to even the most famous writers—and they happen routinely and throughout your career. It won’t hurt that much after a while either—which is more good news!

What’s the writing obstacle that you most often deal with? And how do you deal with it?

It’s the same writing obstacle I’ve always had, I think. I have difficulty balancing everything and not feeling guilty about devoting so much time to writing and marketing and blogging. When my kids were little and I was writing, I was afraid I might neglect them. (They’re grown now, and they’ve turned out beautifully.) At this stage of my life, I’m afraid I’ll neglect my grandkids (they all live within ten minutes of me) and not give my grown daughters enough breaks. All my life it’s been a 90% needless worry. I’ve always been very involved with my kids and grandkids and some ministries at church. But sometimes I wish I could clone myself. One self would be the full-time writer who did nothing but write and read writing magazines and do writing exercises, etc. The other self would be on-call and involved full-time with family. I used to laugh that I prioritized according to guilt—but I was only half joking! One way I deal with it is to put things on the calendar and look ahead month by month. If it’s been longer than I like since I’ve seen the grandkids, I set up individual lunch dates with them or longer overnight stays. I don’t trust my memory.

Since this book is More Writer’s First Aid, there must have been a Writer’s First Aid. What’s the “more” in this book?

Some of the “more” is simply “more help” along the lines of the first book. Another “more” is more actual articles/short chapters (48 instead of 40). And the last “more” is because I’ve included a section this time on “Family Matters.” I think for most writers that juggling family and writing is a big issue, and it’s big whether you’re a single mom writer or a working dad writer or a grandma whose adult child and grandkids just moved back home and now “live” in her former writing office. Combining families and writing (successfully) is an ongoing challenge.

And finally, if you were a tree, what kind would you be? Hahaha! Just a little April Fool’s humor there. (Um, unless you really would like to be a tree…) But if you weren’t a tree, and you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be doing now?

If I were a tree, it would be a white pine Christmas tree—the kind with the long needles. When the kids were growing up, we grew our own white pines on the farm (in Iowa) and cut our own Christmas trees. Nothing ever smelled so good!

If I weren’t a tree or a writer, what would I be? I have no idea! It would have to be book related, I think…like work in a bookstore or library. But I might get fired the first week—once they found me curled up in a corner with a stack of books. I wouldn’t handle that kind of temptation well!

Thank goodness, Kristi is a wonderful writer. You can read her blog, Writer’s First Aid, for a daily dose of writing hope, and you can purchase her book for your Kindle, or get the paperback or the e-book. And because she’s extra swell (or maybe because I sorta begged), she’s giving away an e-book of More Writer’s First Aid for one of my lucky commenters. Make sure that I know where to get in touch with you, or Kristi won’t be able to send you the e-book!

So, friends, don’t make me write another story called “The Foolish Writer Who Plopped on the Floor and Turned Into a Big Giant Blob.” Because now there are no excuses—you know where to find all the answers to your writing problems—and coincidentally, I bet you’ll find your happy-ever-after writing ending, too!

Big happenings going on at the Hall of Fame today! Mary Lynn Archibald is dropping in with her book Accidental Cowgirl: Six Cows, No Horse and No Clue on her WOW! Blog Book tour.

As it also happens, a couple of roofers dropped in today to work, so I hope you’ll excuse a couple of bang bangs here and a bang bang there. If you’d read Mary Lynn’s funny memoir about her experience living at Twin Creeks Ranch, you’d laugh at this coincidence. ‘Cause if there’s anything I learned from reading Accidental Cowgirl, it’s that it’s always something. But I should let Mary Lynn tell you more…

New challenges can actually keep you youthful, but I was unaware of that when my husband and I found ourselves living on 120 acres of amazing steep land in a remote forest in Trinity County, California, trying to raise cattle.

Actually when we saw a gorgeous meadow with pretty white and caramel colored cows meandering through, it never occurred to us somehow what was involved in keeping it that way.

What we saw was a magnificent view, acres of streams, two burbling streams (with waterfalls) and a lovely two acre pond in which we would swim and laze on all the wonderful relaxed days we intended to spend at our wonderful country retreat.

Little did we know that we were poised to enter a whole new, strange and wonderful period of our lives, and an almost mystical connection with the land. Twin Creeks Ranch. Our own private Shangri-La.

It turned out that the cows we had seen went with the place. Who knew? Indeed, who knew anything about cows? Not these two fifty-something suburbanites. The whole experience was so unique and fascinating that I faithfully kept a journal the whole time we were there. I knew nobody would believe me otherwise.

We soldiered on for twelve years at the ranch, doing the best we knew how (which wasn’t much) for a herd of cows we grew to love; a herd that grew from six to nearly thirty. I should mention that these were beef cattle, so the object is to raise them and then to sell them-something we found difficult to do. Ours were Polled Herefords, which most any rancher will tell you, have the sweetest nature of any cow there is.

They were sweet. We named every one: Peaches, Paco, Pansy, Curly, Hortense, Hamburger, and so on. That turned out to be a mistake as you can imagine.

They became our largest pets and our biggest worry. And then there were few other things to worry about: the flower garden; the orchard; the two ranch cats we’d inherited that, according to the previous owners, had spent their whole lives on the ranch and couldn’t be moved, and the half-acre vegetable garden. Add to this that we had a four hour commute each way from home to retreat, and our retreat quickly became our home.

We were challenged, all right. We were also tired. I can’t say our “Fountain of Youth” ran over, but I do know I got in a lot better shape, charging up and downhill from the house to the barn, from the barn to the pond, from the pond another half-mile to the neighbor’s fence, in search of wayward cows.

The folks who owned the porperty before us, a sweet couple in their 70’s who loved the animals and land as much as we did, looked fit but weary. My predecessor swore that her doctor said she had the heart of one much younger, due to altitude (2500-3000 feet) and exercise (see above). She seemed youthful and happy.

But then, she was leaving.

Mary Lynn writes about her life on the ranch with humor and pluck, but she also writes about tons of stuff that’s so foreign to this Georgia gal that I was simply fascinated, page after page. I learned quite a bit about that area of our country, and quite a bit more about cows. Which may not sound exactly riveting, but honestly, I couldn’t put her memoir down. Maybe because I sat there thinking, Hmmm. I’m about the same age as Mary Lynn was when she started her adventure on the ranch. And mowing the lawn is kind of an adventure for me.

Oh, I also asked Mary Lynn a writer-ly question, for those of you considering your own memoir-writing. I wanted to know how she fleshed out her book, and how she remembered those (Ker-plunk! Falling roof debris-hold on a sec-) days so well. As you read, she kept a journal. But she also researched Trinity County, with the added good fortune of having access to many first-hand accounts from local historians (from the 1960’s). Mary Lynn wrote that “it really helped me in writing the historical background of the memoir, and in addition it helped me understand something about the personalities of the people who originally settled the place.”

You’ve got to be tough, to embrace that kind of living, says Mary Lynn. As one mountain woman told her, “When the power goes out around here, we don’t get upset. We just open another bottle of wine and wait till it comes on again.”

And that pretty much sums it up, says Mary Lynn. But if you ask me, there’s much more. So you’ll want to check out her memoir, Accidental Cowgirl, here. Or snoop around where Mary Lynn Archibald blogs here or where she talks business here.

Or you know what? (Dril-l-l-l-l! Sheesh-I can’t think!) Read her book for an inside view of ranching, cows, and wine. I’m giving it away to one lucky commenter. So leave a thought or two, and your email, if I don’t have it. I’ll draw a name on Friday (when the gutter guys are here , banging away).