The perfect age

The female main character of just about every novel I read falls into the young adult age group.

They are young and marriageable -- Jane Austen's Jane and Elizabeth, Emma. Older women -- Emma's poor mother is long dead -- seem to be powerless or silly. Just look at the mother in Pride and Prejudice.

I'm a huge fan of Laura Lippman's novels about Tess Monaghan. How old is Tess? I'm not sure but it isn't over 40.

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Every romance novel I've ever read. All young. Anne Tyler, I think, is the exception; her women heroines are older. I'm not sure how old they are.

I've struggled over my character's age. I want her to be 50, no! 27, no! 35. The question is what's the right age for her? I had been thinking she had to be young. See above list of books to understand my thinking. Books are about young women -- a whole life before them, endless possibilities, hopes and promise. They are inexperienced and have no past to worry about.

And that's just the problem I see here.

Jane has a past. I see her as damaged goods (lost love, disappointment in career, wounds that haven't healed.) Those memories have made this story possible. She needs to have the characteristics that have come from dealing with her past to make her future possible.

So how old does Jane need to be?

I really did start with her at age 27. But she was too young for all the troubles I wanted to throw at her. Poor young woman.

So I made her 50. But would she be pathetic still to be alone, for instance, or frightened or shy or struggling with a career change? I was afraid 50 was too old. And I wondered who would read a story about a struggling 50 year old woman.

So I gave her her youth back. Only this time, I made her 35. It didn't last.

I realized today that 50 was an interesting age. I know personally because I'm there.

At 50, all kinds of new possibilities open up. You suddenly realize 2/3 of your life is behind you so you better hurry up and live. Stop waiting; stop worrying. Love is different. It's just about you and the one you love now. Kids are grown; new kids are no longer a possibility. You're invisible. I thought that was pretty rotten when I realized it but being invisible means you can do as you damn well please. Wear purple (as the old poem goes). Jog down the street (dance if you want to even). Lots of other things, too.

Sorry, Jane. Your youth is behind you. But life is still ahead. Lots of life: a strong life, a hope-filled, love-filled life. And you don't care what anybody thinks -- finally.

As it turns out, perhaps 50 is the perfect age.

Eastern Shore...or Brandywine Valley

When I was writing the latest Frommer's Maryland and Delaware, I discovered Delaware doesn't have many books or movies that use its lovely ocean beaches, picturesque small towns or enchanting Brandywine Valley as a backdrop.

Such a pity.

So here I am 5,000 words into Souvenir Shopping (there's got to be a better title), thinking the Eastern Shore is a wonderful place to put a story -- and in fact Chestertown is one of the locations in my last (still unpublished) novel -- but that I could have a lot of fun in places like Dover, New Castle, Wilmington, and Brandywine.

Colonial towns could be a constant back drop, starting with Annapolis, then Dover, and New Castle and oh the Hagley, such a pretty place on the banks of a babbling brook, well really the Brandywine River, even if the Hagley had a tendency to blow up back in its day. Hmmm. There could be something there.

So maybe I'll back off the Maryland locations -- I was thinking old standbys of Easton and St. Michaels and adding Cambridge because I always like Cambridge. Michener used them all in Chesapeake anyway. (Oh, if this was a story of that caliber.)

Maybe I'll turn my imagination to another of my favorite places on earth. The Brandywine Valley. I look forward to my visits to the Inn at Montchanin, Winterthur, the Hagley, Nemours mansion and Longwood Gardens. With stops, of course, at my favorite restaurants, too.

Perhaps I can spend my summer there this year. At least in m mind.

Is Jane a hero for our time?

Three thousand words later and all I can think is uuuuuuuuuugh.

What is wrong with Jane?

She's as interesting (and self absorbed) as Carrie Bradshaw -- well, minus the sex.

She's not much to look at. But she could be, perhaps, but it's possible she is so self absorbed she doesn't even know it. Maybe we should ask Collin.

She's kind and resourceful. A regular Girl Scout.

No dark side. I like heroines to be saints. I like Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester had enough dark side for all of them. I like the Japanese businessman and his translator Jen in Bel Canto. They are good men, reserved, focused on surviving rather than rescuing -- but I'm only 100 pages into the book (it's the third time but I never remember how it ends for everybody).

And I actually like people who live well though in small ways. The kind that get up early to see the sun rise. Or who talk to small children or open the door for the person behind them.

One of my favorite stories is about St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, SJ. He wasn't educated enough and he was too old (35) to be a full-fledged Jesuit out preaching the Gospel and changing the world. He answered the door at a Jesuit house in Majorca. And he answered every ring of the door bell "I'm coming, Jesus." He treated everyone with the same kindness.

Alphonsus befriended a young Jesuit filled with zeal, Peter Claver. Alphonsus encouraged the future saint to go to South America. Peter took his advice and went to Cartagena. Talk about heroism. He made it his business to board every slave ship as it pulled into port, bringing water and comfort to the Africans chained in the hold. Other people called these enslaved people just cargo, but Peter Claver saw their humanity and did what he could to ease their suffering.

What makes a hero? And how does it differ from the hero of a novel? Does Jane have to be "bigger" than she is so far? Can her small, quiet ways support a whole book that someone besides me will read?

Setting the scene

Place is a character in many books. You couldn't have A Tale of Two Cities in New Jersey. I read a haunting book earlier this year The Stalin Epigram that needed its setting to be in Moscow and a prison camp.

But is it important in the hundreds of romances people read every year? Nora Roberts set a trilogy (eventually a four-book series, a quartology?) in Baltimore and the Eastern Shore. Could the Hamptons have worked as well?

Nevertheless, once a writer decides the setting, what's the best way to convey how it looks, smells, feels. It's important to spark the reader's imagination. Everybody knows what Narnia or Oz or Hogwarts looks like. (And they would even if they'd never seen the movies...)

Just as I want Jane to look a certain way, I want the places she's about to go to be clear to the reader. I want them to see her short, plump frame standing before the stone shops of Ellicott City or watching the Wednesday night sailboat races from Annapolis' city dock.

Souvenir Shopping (the title isn't sticking) -- can't you tell by the non-working title? -- includes a road trip. The scene might not be a character but readers will have to know where Jane is at all times. So will Jane.

An exercise, just for fun:

A butter-yellow swallowtail -- now two -- bob among the feathery flowers of the mimosa tree. The yard now crowded with trees, azaleas and banks of perennials was once a plain brown quarter acre. Ten years ago, only a few saplings stood sentry along the edges of the sunburned grass. If not for them, the suburban yard might still be barren. The grey and tan colonial houses set so close together once seemed intrusive, as if they were bending to hear the whispered conversations on our sunny deck. The oaks, maples, dogwoods and mimosas now shield the view and the family secrets. The air conditioners still hum nearby but the songs of birds make the din fade away.

First 1000 words

All it took was 1,000 words and suddenly I had a new friend. Even two and it's looking like there will be a third in the very near future.

And suddenly I'm thinking about "Jane" -- will I keep this name?? -- all the time. Where did she go to school? How much does she weigh? Why isn't she already married?? She can't be 27, no too young. Is 50 too old?

Jane -- it fits for now -- appeared in my imagination a week ago. I wasn't looking for her but suddenly she was sitting at her computer working from home when suddenly. Well, let's just say she complicated my life.

I left her waiting -- and no it wasn't quietly -- while I looked for a perfect first sentence. And maybe an outline for the story she was about to tell me. She introduced me to Brice (where did that name come from?) and Collin (she was shy about him) and her cat Brutus (isn't that an awful name for a cat?)

I wasn't sure about her friends' names and thought about them for a long time. Once a character gets a name it sticks. Sometimes, of course, it's all wrong and everybody who reads your story later will tell you -- that's a terrible name for that character! So I think about names a lot. I probably spent more time thinking about Robin's name in my last (unpublished) novel than I did thinking about Gina's name. But her name honors her great grandmothers so there was really no discussion about that. Names of characters in books are fanciful. They don't have to honor anybody but they really have to fit. Jane says plain -- but is Jane plain? Hmmm. What about Collin? Is it even spelled correctly? I think so; I don't want anybody calling him Cole-in. Sounds too anatomical.

By Sunday morning -- we're talking 3:30 in the morning here -- Jane was bursting out of my brain. So I wrote down whatever she told me. She introduced me to Brutus, showed me around her house and gave me a ride in her car. Not that she even wanted to take me anywhere. She felt compelled. And so did I. I wrote and re-wrote until I had 1000 words I didn't hate.

Still....I don't think I did her justice. That first sentence doesn't work. It's not the proper introduction. Dickens had great first lines: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." "Marley was dead, to begin with." Don't you just have to continue reading?

That's what I want for Jane. We're going to spend a lot of time together and if she's like Robin I'm really going to miss her once the story is finished. So I want to get the story right. And I want other people to read it. And like it. And like Jane -- unless it turns out she's rotten to the core. We just aren't that close yet.