Tag: Life

When a fictional scene can use a shot of reality

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While I’m thinking about visuals, let me mention a few ways they’ve helped me in creating my novels.

Not to slight dialogue, even when you nail it, or, for that matter, narrative, but a visual detail can be a great way to spark attention in a character development or a scene. It can make a passage visceral. It can rescue a connecting passage that’s gone flat or leaving you floundering for just the right idea.

I don’t know about you, but my memory overlooks a lot of telling specifics in the history I’m investigating. It’s not just memory, either, but so much that should be obvious but we simply block from awareness. That’s where I’ve found photographs to be a great prompt. Sometimes they even provide data, as my Orphan George blog demonstrates in posts examining family photos, when they’ve been available. Other genealogists can weigh in on ways snapshots and portraits have provided crucial data.

Through many of my moves, I didn’t even have a camera. I have no shots of many of the people who were central in my life, not even some of the lovers or places I’ve inhabited. The shots can counter my tendency to idealize. A bit of grit can restore some reality.

In the process of writing and revising my novels, I began collecting photos from magazines or other sources as prompts. This character in my book (often they’re a compression of several real people) might look like the one in this photo or wear something in that. Or here’s a small-town square that would work. They even allowed me to reconstruct a darkroom for Kenzie.

The Internet, of course, has made this backgrounding much easier.

Away she goes, Act 2

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Removing the old asphalt roofing and underlying sheathing and replacing them with standing-seam metal roofing promised to be an encore act of last fall’s drive on the back half of the house. A dustpan, or shed, dormer, connecting what had been two small dormers would be the biggest design difference.

This time the work would be in full view on a central pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare. By now, the renovation is a widespread topic of conversation, year-round residents and summer people alike. Yes, one more aspect of small-town living.

Once again, new rafters would replace the old ones, many of them charred in the 1886 downtown fire as well as a later chimney fire or two. And the new 2-by-12s would be more numerous than the old 3-by-4, 4-by-5, and 5-by-6 beams they were replacing. They would also be up to building code rather than sporadically placed. Better yet, they would be solidly joined to a ridge pole and the four central structural support columns our contractor had inserted last fall. Earlier episodes of this series discuss the intricate work of getting those significant details into place.

Once underway, this phase turned into something more than a quick encore. Removing the two dormers had its own complications, and then a series of rainy day forecasts prompted Adam to concentrate on the south end first rather than the full roof in one sweep.

Further complications came in finding the sheathing was doubled, unlike the back, and a desire to salvage as much of the timber as possible. Some folks in this project are hoping to make a dining room table or some such to recognize the home’s heritage.

Our thinking about this project has definitely changed. Adam is really rebuilding the top half of our house, not merely remodeling it. We’re most impressed. Technically, it’s still post-and-beam aka timber framed.

Would I have gone along with all this if I had known about all this at the outset?

We really didn’t have much choice. As we’ve been discovering, there was so much trouble just waiting to happen. Fortuitously, we’re addressing it all proactively rather than in a panic after an overhead disaster.

We’re no longer tempting fate, are we?

Let’s be clear, you do judge a book by its cover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With my training as an artist, I have some strong feelings about book covers. Most of the ones I see leave me cold. I think they’re too cluttered, and most of them lack a strong graphic element – I prefer a good photograph though am coming around on the painted image argument – and I like a clean, easy to read impression. Some of the typefaces used for the title or the author are nearly impossible to make out.

I did have a friend who was a professional illustrator for a Fortune 500 corporation. CAD (computer assisted design) was overtaking the field, and he felt it was destroying his artist’s hand, the one with the Rhode Island School of Design sharpened skills. His aspiration was to design old-fashioned book jackets, and while his style there wasn’t my cup of tea, I could see its appeal. Fortunately, he conceived a children’s book that took off, in part because it was based on a Pete Seeger song, which did get buyers’ attention. And led to many more all on his own.

I still don’t understand all the nuance, though. Is it true that a certain strand of fantasy is supposed to have a specific element woven into the cover to alert a potential reader that this is the subgenre she’s looking for? You know, maybe a touch of moonlight or a small bat in flight or a golden glimmer in someone’s eye?

I am learning, though. A cover makes a promise with a reader, so I’ve heard at Smashwords.

My thoughts on cover design and some of my favorites appear in earlier posts here at the Red Barn.

Self-publishing requires much more than merely producing a compelling text.

Naming a book is hard enough. For the record, I found naming What’s Left to be my most difficult, as I’ll explain in a future post.

In the world of books, and not just ebooks, a strong cover is crucial.

If you can afford to hire an illustrator or graphic artist to design yours great. I’m envious.

My first novel, in paper, wound up with an “art designer” misfire. Rather than respecting the black-and-white photo of passengers in a subway car, a flat yellow lotus shape was cut into the image with the title and author credits inside that field. It didn’t fly. In addition, my name wasn’t left as simply Jnana, as I desired. It was the full yoga version, an additional five syllables or 14 letters. Well, it kinda has a 1950s feel, even with some graffiti on its walls, but the action was all high hippie ‘60s and early ‘70s. I’m now wondering if getting a tagger to do the cover would have been a more successful alternative. I’m sensing it would have been a more in-your-face result. Buy me now!

For my first round at Smashwords, I hired a book designer who was, I seem to recall, living in the Czech Republic. Emailing made everything easier, including paying him via PayPal, which was new to me. Since he had a deal with a stock agency for low-cost photos, I rifled through its online pages filled with shots that might fit my need.

It’s harder than you’d think.

A good cover isn’t a poster. It’s more like a billboard on a much smaller scale. And your potential readers are zipping by.

The right photo turns out to be a rarity. It has to somehow reflect the story and still attract a buyer.

Even when you find a good fit, there can be problems. For instance, the photo I settled on for Hippie Drum was a black-and-white portrait of a shirtless young male playing a set of Conga drums. It even looked a lot like me at the time of the story. Little did I know how many viewers it repulsed.

There is debate over showing a person’s face on the cover. It can limit a reader’s perception of your central character, for one thing, and one reader’s ideal can be an instant rejection from another.

If you’re going the human face route, you may find the perfect photo with one slight flaw. She’s a redhead while your character’s brunette. It may be easier to tweak the book to fit the cover.

The experience of tweaking a character to fit the cover image.

There’s also a debate over a painted or drawn artwork versus a photograph.

When I got around to designing my own covers, I came upon a drawn image of a single daffodil bloom. How perfect and I still love it. And within the title I inserted a peace emblem for an “O” in DAFFODIL SUNRISE.

A few years later, when I changed the title, that cover went out of circulation. That peace emblem just didn’t work with the new version’s Kindle print-on-demand cover, either.

I have to admit a special fondness to the ones on Subway Visions, Yoga Bootcamp, and the Secret Side of Jaya – none of them photos.

Memories of places in the town I grew up in

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned a few others, such as the art museum, in other posts here. Now, to add a few more, in no particular order. Again, I’m looking at Greater Dayton rather than strictly inside the city limits.

  1. NCR: The National Cash Register Company’s world headquarters looked more like an open college campus with linden trees and pristine lawns than an industrial jumble behind barbed wire and hurricane fencing. It even had a fine auditorium and pipe organ, used for its gatherings of salesmen but also the concerts of the Civic Music Association – I heard a number of famed musicians there. And I was awarded my Eagle Scout badge and later my high school diploma on its stage. And, oh yes, I can’t overlook Old River, the employee park with the lagoon and boating, a fine miniature golf course, and a huge outdoor swimming pool – when one of my buddies whose father worked at NCR and thus had a pass to the park asked if I wanted to go, there was only one possible answer. Please!
  2. The corner display windows at Rikes department store: The pioneering retailer was the place to shop in town, and anytime we took the bus, say to the library or a movie, we’d wind up checking the latest display – especially at Christmas. During my senior year, some of my art work was used in the background of the featured fashion.
  3. The YMCA: I learned to swim at the indoor pool and sometimes applied my allowance to a grilled cheese sandwich later, over on the men’s side. And then, little kid that I was, I enjoyed the freedom of taking the bus home on my own.
  4. Frigidaire employee park: Thanks to my best friend’s father’s employee pass, we spent many summer nights enjoying free Starlight movies. My dad worked for another General Motors division in town, one that had no such benefits.
  5. Troop trails: My Boy Scout troop had a long hike one Sunday a month, in addition to a primitive camping weekend. Our routes often followed a river or crossed farmlands or even trekked along railroad tracks. I remember especially a few that traced the abandoned Miami-Erie Canal with its mule bank and its eerie remains of limestone locks left in vines and trees.
  6. Suicide Hill: A decent snowfall (quite modest by what I’ve experienced since) meant sledding at Hills and Dales Park. How insignificant the slope looks now, but there were some serious injuries. I had a near call.
  7. Memorial Hall: It really wasn’t designed for concerts, but it’s where the Philharmonic performed, and since my dad had access to tickets, I heard many top soloists. Hard to believe now, actually.
  8. Our big ugly high school: built in the 1960s and long since torn down. In my memory, I recall it more than the older but equally ugly elementary school.
  9. Yellow Springs: Once I got my driver’s license, the bohemian town in Greene County, home of Antioch College, became a welcome retreat. Its funky stores, before funky was a word in my consciousness, were mind-expanding. Nowhere else could we find Earl Grey or gunpowder tea or sticks of incense or perfumed soaps. Then there was the professional summer theater series at the amphitheater, itself a revelation. By that time, I was in love, at last. And that leads to mention of a covered bridge by moonlight: Yes, making out afterward in the moonlight at a covered bridge that’s no longer existent down an unpaved road.
  10. The Art Theater: Where I first saw foreign films, black-and-white alternatives to Hollywood’s commercial concoctions. And then there was the Lemon Tree coffee house next door with its folk music and blues.

My, all that was a world ago in my life.

 

The picture really can change in a day

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

It was one of those stretches where nothing seemed to be happening. For me, that translates into stuck, or more accurately, an emotional funk.

And then, in a single day, the dumpster arrived, opening way for the big front of the upstairs demo to begin.

The plumber showed up, after a few months on a big project in the Midwest. He made necessary moves preparing the upstairs bathroom and laundry room for walling, lighting, and flooring to be finished before the toilet, bathtub, shower, sinks, and washer and dryer go in.

He also removed our one outdoor faucet, with its leaking pipe in the wall and no indoor shutoff valve, with three new spigots and lines, all of them closer to our gardens. This was a huge quality of life improvement we do enjoy right now.

Three cords of firewood were delivered, about a month after being ordered. It was our first time dealing with them, and while I wasn’t worried that they wouldn’t show up before the first snow fell, this was reassuring and I’m satisfied with the quality of their product. Now I’m spending an hour or so most days stacking it. (Let’s not overdo it, not at my age.)

We heard from the mason, who was slotting us in with other projects around town. He and a helper were on the scene a few days later to repair the top of the chimney. Added to his work were repairs to the facing on the foundation – something noted in the building inspection when we bid on the property – and several future tasks, including moving the wood stove and metal chimney to another part of the front parlor. This was our first time dealing with him, and I can say he takes pride in good work.

Our contractor installed the flooring on the deck, restoring use of the back door to us. The railing is next.

Each of these lifted another obstacle from the horizon. Each one felt quite invigorating. The deck even has us in amazement.

Now, for standing on my head

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sure when or where I began drafting my yoga novel or where, but I know the bones were in place before I began my self-declared sabbatical in 1986-87. Perhaps it was during my month of unemployment before landing in Baltimore. For one thing, I had revisited the ashram in the year before my big writing spree and perhaps even driven past it the previous year. I was hoping to get some answers for questions regarding my manuscript must say the encounter was unsettling. I wasn’t even allowed inside the center, and the woman who had taken over as guru declared herself too busy to say hi. A deputy was dispatched for that, with tea, while I sat beside Swami’s grave.

Well, that was a perk of being “on the road” as a newspaper features salesman, otherwise known as “field representative.” I even got my name in brochures and full-color ads in the industry magazine Editor & Publisher.

My ashram residency a dozen or so years earlier had been life-changing, but the connection broke completely when I relocated to the Pacific Northwest in 1976. Swami had demanded a large chunk of my meagre salary, and besides, I was newly married with a wife in college. The upshot, quite simply, was that I felt ostracized. I was certainly shunned it that social call. In the bigger picture, the yoga movement itself had gone into eclipse and my own spiritual journey had resettled in the Quaker vein.

Still, the yoga life in America was a largely untold story, even if it had put “karma” and “om” into the American vocabulary and mindset.

When I began drafting the book, I had no idea where everyone had scattered and had no way of contacting them. I mean, if I was ostracized, what was the point of contacting the headquarters? Did I even know that Swami had died? Perhaps, though some communication I had with someone who had been a regular guest and went from being a rock-band manager to a Messianic Christian comedian. I managed to make that connection through a wire-service news story I came across before my leap to Baltimore. So now I’m thinking the yoga novel originated even earlier than I’d thought. (I really do need to sit down with my journals for a very deep dive.)

I do see that some of the outtakes from Subway Hitchhikers were woven into what became my second published book, Adventures on a Yoga Farm, which came out as pioneering PDF ebook from PulpBits.com in 2005.

~*~

What do you do with a rogue outfit like ours? I definitely wanted to avoid the sticky sweet guru worship I’d seen in other books, and I definitely wanted to avoid a scandal-mongering expose, though I would later find that nearly all of the religious imports from Asia would face financial or sexual embarrassment. Michael Downing’s 2002 Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center would cover that reality in one of the more prominent and, up till then, respectable organizations.

When I sat down to write my novel, I decided to stick to one day in the community’s life. I created a composite of eight young yogis and their woman swami guru. Each resident student represented a different stage of development. It also involved compressing the two years of my experience into a single day. I’m guessing the one-day focus reflected the Greek theater ideal.

And I do stand by my original structure of eight disciples within a single day.

The book was republished via Smashwords in 2013, this time with more popular platform choices than PDF. My, have times changed.

What I really wanted, I think, was my own version of Be Here Now.

I don’t think I could have adequately presented the inner turmoil of a charismatic leader without a college degree now having a tiger by the tail much less uncovered all that got covered up in the frenzy.

Would anyone really care?

Reshuffling the deck   

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The unexpected complication of discovering that all of the dumpsters in town were tied up until after the big Fourth of July events forced our contractor to delay the demolition of the front half of our upstairs. Our attention turned instead to the back of the house, where a wheelchair-ramp and small deck were seriously deteriorating. Think of it as a safety issue.

The project would fit into the interim.

Unlike a previous owner, we didn’t need the ramp. Basic stairs would do in their place, and that would free up more of our small yard. The existing deck, meanwhile, was too small for our needs, and my coconspirators already had dreamed up designs that included a ground-level apron. For now, we would focus on the upper level just outside the mud room door.

The old deck top and ramp walkway were deposited at the far side of the backyard, where they will serve as a platform for stacking our next firewood delivery, keeping the split wood off the soil itself.

The deck structure itself became more involved than I had imagined. This house renovation is, after all, a vast education for me.

For starters, the new concrete footers were more deeper than the amateur ones and large rocks previously used. Three feet rather than a foot max. No wonder the deck was sagging. I wasn’t surprised there, but I was definitely impressed by seeing the new ones done right.

The underpinnings for the new top were another matter. No 2x4s or X-bracing this time. I wondered if Adam was overbuilding this, but he assured me this was according to code and would support a roof, if we decided at some point in the future to turn this into a screened-in porch. OK, I’m on board.

Carpentry really is about building boxes, as I once heard. The framing above became the rigid system below, awaiting the deck top and railing.

The results so far really are redefining our backyard and its uses. Dining out there without having to consider those nasty fire red ants under your chair is a definite step forward.

 

Poetry has been an influence, too

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Through much of my adult life, I’ve spent more time writing and distilling poetry than I did with fiction.

Part of the reason was that poetry fit my once-a-week time for sustained “butt time” addressed to my literary efforts. A novel, in contrast, requires a bigger window, at least for me. I have to admire mothers who put something good together while toddlers and family meals gave little respite.

For me, the practice of poetry, both as a writer and reader, springs from the practice of meditation I took up as a yogi and continued as a Quaker, though now it’s once or twice a week rather than daily.

Prose simply feels more secular and aimed more at a general reader. And even there, I’ve come to see that writing hundreds of thousands of headlines for a living had a poetic component in its brevity. My personal writing was one way of staying sharp there. As for the hundreds of thousands of newspaper pages I designed? They did fall back on that intense visual art training in high school.

Like my fiction, my poetry originated in trying to remember and make sense of what was happening around and within me. Sometimes, when I got around to a manuscript of fiction, I would cannibalize a poem, especially if it hadn’t yet been published in a journal. That was especially true when it came to Nearly Canaan and the Secret Side of Jaya.

I wonder if any of this goes back to my childhood interest in chemistry and then being stymied when I wasn’t taught algebra when I needed it, back in fifth and sixth grades. Freshman year of high school was too late, my line of inquiry had shifted to classical music and visual art.

Poetry is a kind of equation, even geology, rather than the Friday night football game a novel can play.

~*~

My juggling act between the daily journalism that paid my bills and the literary aspirations that I hoped would finally free me did result in what I’ve come to see as literary graffiti – flashes written on the run, even when they then underwent much distillation and refining. I think that’s most obvious in Subway Visions, Nearly Canaan, and the Secret Side of Jaya but also befits everything except What’s Left, and even there may have crept in through the earlier outtakes I wove in.

~*~

Shortly after my books were up at Smashwords, a fine writer I know told me over coffee that I was more of a poet than a novelist. Ouch! He may have even said a better poet than novelist.

I hope I’ve improved since then and have arrived at a better balance in the revised books.