Write with the spirit of an Olympian...

In honor of the 2010 Winter Olympic Game, which my family and I are greatly enjoying watching, please indulge me as I compare my fellow bloggers to Olympic athletes in their efforts to combat writer's block. (It's been a long week.)

Robin has all the grace and elegance of an ice dancer. Her writing flows with lyricism and musicality. When she's stuck she plays something called bedazzled and chuzzles. (I don't know what that is, but it sounds like something a skater would do.)

J.B. in his binge writing rushes down an icy course like a luger or whatever you call an athlete that does that skeleton event. If he falls, he picks himself up quickly and barrels onward.

Trager's methodology is like ski jumping. She heads down a linear ramp until it stops and then shoots herself off, executing a number of fancy tricks before landing somewhere far down the mountain.

Urania hasn't posted her blog, but it is my understanding that sometimes she is like a biathlete whose event is actually ten combined into one. If she is having trouble hitting the target in a story, she switches to another.

Ellen is a little harder. Maybe ice hockey, where the object is to get the puck into the goal while avoiding being sidetracked by defenders. Or, don't laugh, curling, where the players attempt to direct large stones across the rink by sweeping in front of them to clean the ice. (Perhaps I just wanted an excuse to mention curling?)

As for Me, I'm going to go with the snowboard event called the halfpipe, even though I'm sure I have next to nothing in common with the red-headed flying tomato.

In the halfpipe, the snowboarders move from one side of a cylindrical snow tube, gaining momentum to fly above it and perform tricks. When I'm stuck, I find that it helps me to go back to the beginning and work through all of the plot/character issues that have become jumbled in my head. This gives me the drive to then push through to the other side and hopefully go further and faster, with niftier acrobatics.

This is how I've worked as a journalist too. The lead is very important as it directs the flow of the entire article. If I get into the body and find that the building blocks are not falling into place, it helps to redirect by reworking the beginning.

With my current manuscript, I was struggling with some plot choices in Chapter Seven. I knew I wanted to make some changes to the previous six chapters based on critiques/suggestions, and needed to go back and get them on paper to achieve clarity.

I don't have much hope of winning a medal in the Olympics, but maybe this strategy will help me achieve publishing gold. (Wow! And you thought this piece couldn't get any cheesier.)

Under the boardwalk...down by the sea

My grandfather emigrated to the United States from Italy when he was eleven-years-old. After a circuitous route (including a six-month stint in the hoosegow for operating a speakeasy), he found himself a legitimate bar owner in Wilmington, Del. and in want of an Italian wife.

In 1925, he went back to Pettorano, a small village in the Abruzzi, and picked out my grandmother from among the ladies in the piazza. Luckily, it had always been her dream to marry a man with clean socks who would take her to America.

Skipping ahead to the 1950s, like many families in the tri-state area, the Monacos vacationed at the Jersey Shore. Wildwood was a boomtown during that era with a wide, beautiful beach, a two-mile boardwalk lined with amusement rides, games, restaurants, and even sideshows, and clubs that attracted entertainment like Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell.

My grandmother saw there was money to be made and asked my grandfather for $5000 to buy a hotel. One led to another and they ended up owning five. When my grandparents were ready to retire to Florida, their eight children were given the opportunity to purchase the properties. My father joined four of his siblings as part of a corporation that would run several of the businesses, including a new parking lot and a commercial property on the boardwalk.

I spent every summer in Wildwood until I turned 21. It's a place of magic, adventure, and, truth be told, testing boundaries. I always thought that if I made the jump to fiction, I'd like to use Wildwood as a backdrop. I just needed a hook, and I think I've found one in my pirate adventure story.

My biggest challenge with using a place so familiar has been scene setting. I forget that people might not know that the boardwalk is raised, or that the amusement rides sit on piers that stretch out onto the beach. It's a good thing no one in my writers' group has been to Wildwood, and so they tell me when more detail is needed. Who knows? Maybe my redone descriptions will give them the urge to go down the shore.

(If you couldn't tell, I also find my family history fascinating on both my paternal and maternal sides. Perhaps if I ever finish this first novel...)

Photos: My dad is in the front right. He is on Wildwood beach with his brothers-in-law. The boardwalk building on the left is what their commercial property used to look like. Next to it is the boardwalk chapel.

My grandmother and three aunts are in the other picture. I think the building behind them is one of the old dance halls.

Sneaking Around

OK. So here I sit in Borders. I think this is the first time I've ever sneaked out in the middle of the day to write. My mother-in-law is watching the kids. She told me to go get some errands done. I grabbed my purse and flew out the door without mentioning that I really only had one small thing to do.

Now I find myself sipping a latte, thinking that this probably wasn't what she intended when she sent me out and offered to empty my dishwasher. Although it's possible that she wouldn't mind once she found out what a real treat this is to me.

Like a few of my fellow bloggers, I usually only get to write after my family has gone to sleep. Don't get me wrong. I'm a night owl and the later it gets, the more creative I become.

Except for the last few weeks. I seem to be suffering from writer's block. In fact, it's worse than block. I've been avoiding the computer altogether for a few days. I've got a lot of decisions to make about my storyline and I think I'm unsure how to do it.

I'm applying for a writer's retreat and a manuscript review, which means I will have to revisit my first 20-25 pages. Maybe doing so will clarify things.

As for the above picture, we don't have a furry pet, only a fish, and he is not very photogenic. I don't like to be left out, so here is a photo from my children's menagerie. His name is Faris and he makes a great pillow when I'm called in to chase the monsters away. Come to think of it, I actually have had a number of great plot ideas while performing this duty. Hey, maybe it will be Faris who helps propel me out of this funk.

However, it's probably best not to depend on a $3.99 donkey pillow from Walmart and to use my remaining stolen time at this bookstore to try to make my own story magic happen instead.

Old Dream, New Dream

I once wanted to be an astronaut. Seriously.

My father says it's because I "sat around and took up space." (This same sense of humor landed me the name Monta Carla to go with Monaco.) But really, I worked tremendously hard to squeeze the required high-level math and science into my surprisingly normal life as a teenager and succeeded. I got accepted to Cornell.

Great, right? Except one day early freshman year, it dawned on me. I didn't actually like math, science or Cornell (but that's another story). Equations and experiments suddenly seemed less a means for "slip(ping) the surly bonds of Earth," and more like a punishment in one of Dante's Circles of Hell.

What I did enjoy was writing. I'd loved working on my high school paper, and the off-campus office of the Daily Sun was one of the few places I fit in at Cornell.

As soon as I was able, I switched majors (eventually schools too) and later landed a job working for a wire service in Washington, D.C. As a 22-year-old kid, I found myself doing things like going to the East Room in the White House for a joint press conference by President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and participating in an interview with former Secretary of State James Baker.

(And having a haircut interrupted so the hairdresser could go cover up Larry King's bald spot with black paint. Totally irrelevant, but I've always wanted to tell that story.)

After working for a publisher of magazines and newsletters and going to graduate school for a Master's degree in American history, I passed up an assistant curatorship at the Navy Museum to try my hand as a freelance writer. Newly married, I liked the idea of something I could continue after I had children. I still write today, albeit not as much, while staying at home and homeschooling my two sons.

Why try my hand at fiction? My journalism career has been about informing people. I'd like the chance to captivate them.

About a year ago, I put fingers to keyboard and started a young adult novel where the life of a 16th century pirate has repercussions for a contemporary teenager. (It's set at the Jersey Shore, but I swear, no one is named Snookie. If you have no idea who I am talking about, count yourself lucky.)

It's exhilarating to be in control of my own fictional world. It's getting less terrifying to let the real people in my wonderful critique group read about it. It's rewarding when they understand, and I'm thankful that they are able to explain when they don't.

I still would like to "trod the untrespassed sanctity of space," but it's more likely that I will write a story about it, than actually go. Unless...one of my books makes enough money for me to afford a commercial flight on the space shuttle. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Quotes are from one of my favorite poems: High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.