Author Archives: Heather James

About Heather James

Heather James is the author of the Lure of the Serpent Series, suspense novels that pack quick wit into the high heels of attorney turned vigilante, Evelyn Bonny. In addition, Heather is a practicing lawyer in California and columnist. Her columns focus on the humorous aspects of marriage and parenthood. Heather is married and works at home, raising two young sons.

Ten Steps to Writing While Raising Young Children

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I put this in a ten-step program format because I’m a momma on the edge and I need some intervention. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m at the tail end of summer vacation, the kids having been home now–asking for stuff and what-not–for way too long. Or, maybe it’s because I’m getting closer to a deadline and I’m not as far as I’d like to be in the process. Who knows? I surely don’t. So, rather than losing my cool with my kids because they keep interrupting me, or putting myself in a self-imposed time out (let me tell you, ONE of us is going to take a nap today and I’m rooting for myself), I decided to sit down and be realistic about how to accomplish writing goals.

Step One: Get use to disappointment. I don’t really need to belabor this point, do I? No? Okay. Moving on.

Step Two: Learn to survive on twenty-percent less sleep. Look, even if you can skip this part, I’d like you to try it now and then because it’ll make me feel better when I accidentally fall asleep on the couch right after Dora utters her first, “Hola!”

Step Three: If you have to give your children chicken nuggets or hot dogs repeatedly for dinner, make sure you let them know you’re doing it because you’re cool and you want to make them happy, not because you forgot to go to the grocery store. Again.

Step Four: Learn to cut out superfluous and/or extra obligations. We’re kissing Steps Five, Six, and Seven good-bye. Boom. Done. That was easy.

Step Eight: Cry. This works especially well in my household, where I’m the only female on the premises. Rather than ask again, for the gazillionth time, to let me write for an hour, sometimes it simply suffices to squirt some tears. People run. Heck, they flee. Oh, and then there’s that whole crying is cleansing business. Whatever works, right?

Step Nine: Let me be very, very clear on this step. Pinterest is NOT your friend. It doesn’t love you. It won’t make the beds, do the laundry, or even write one word toward your goal. Pinterest is the devil, if the devil is over-achieving, craft-obsessed, baking frenzied, tool-belt wearing Supermoms. (OK, fine, I’m just jealous because I suck at all things crafty. Last week, the glue gun ended up in my hair. Details aren’t important. Let’s just say, the crying was real on that occasion.)

Step Ten: Make a habit of visiting homes of other moms, especially other moms who write. Boo-yah! You haven’t cleaned your windows since 2007, either! Is that jelly on your ceiling? I feel better already.

Shocking You Softly

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I was once that kid on the playground telling my little friends every bleeped out word in the universe. To be fair, however, I didn’t really know what I was doing. This is elementary school we’re talking about, and my parents were naïve, or remiss at best, not thinking I was cataloging everything.

I’m sharing this because I find myself in a constant tug-of-war of what I can and cannot say in Christian publishing. To be clear, I am not an advocate of swear words. I am a reformed potty-mouth, and I intend to keep my writing free of curse words. To me, that is one of the many beauties of Christian publishing—untainted prose.

However, I can’t stop thinking that Christian publishing is in some sort of shifting paradigm, where two radically different generations are trying to see the whites of each other’s eyes.

Case in point: A beloved friend and fellow Christian author once urged me to take my work into mainstream publishing because the essence of my voice might upset some. She was speaking directly to my inclusion of certain words such as “sucks” and “stupid.”

I didn’t see the big deal at first. Now, however, I’ve been thoroughly acquainted with the big deal. It even locked me in the closet, took away my dinner, and told me to shape up if I ever wanted to see the light of day again. (Kidding. The edit wasn’t that painful.)

I’m not saying I wish to convert everyone to accept or speak my language, but the truth of the matter is I’m a born and bred Southern California girl, raised on MTV and the gag effect of adverbs. Totally.

I get that my style is too much for some, and that’s OK. One writer can’t please everyone. I’ll definitely have my niche, and I’ll walk away with the coziness of being honest to myself and with what I’m conveying to others.

As an example of the real Heather, consider this snippet of dialogue between my husband and me:

Husband: “Don’t you just love the sunset? All the colors coming together like a symphony God is orchestrating, telling us to enjoy ourselves and gaze at something beautiful.”

Me: “Eh. My back hurts. Are we done here? I feel like tacos. You feel like tacos?”

So yeah, if sunsets bore me, you can probably guess how painful it is to pretend me talk fancy.

I once tried writing an entire book the way I thought others would expect me to write. It sucked. And, it was stupid.

Even if it makes people cringe, I can only write the way I know how. That’s a good enough starting point for me. What else would you expect from a Southern California girl who gives up sunsets for tacos?

Have you had to modify your writing to make it work in Christian publishing? Do you regret it, or are you happy that you will be able to reach your audience more effectively?

I Will Prevail! (And Other Things I Tell Myself in the Shower.)

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One admonition I can’t seem to scrub from my brain is my mother’s bit about wearing the right underwear in case I’m in a car accident. Maybe your mother used the word, “clean,” when giving underwear life lessons, but mine specified “right.” Her reasoning was if I had on a pair of lacy deals or something even more scandalous, the attending physician in the ER might think I’m loose.

Yeah. That’s going to be a flash of thought for me, I suppose, when the doc is trying to volt me with paddles, and is tweezing shards of glass from my forehead. “Whoa, this chick might not live through the night, but, oh well. She’s got on frilly underwear, and you know what that makes her.”

Whenever I hear naysayer anthems in any walk of life, I have this strange tendency to contemplate the difference between the undies my mom wishes I’d wear, and the undies I do wear. (Yes, sorry, my brain works that way.)

One naysayer anthem I’ve heard relates directly to my newest gig in becoming a published author and venturing into the land of woe and book sales.

What’s said: “Don’t expect much because you won’t get much.”

What I hear: “Wear your granny panties.”                     

Well, you know what? I don’t want to wear my granny panties. And you know what else? I don’t care what I should expect. And I don’t care if an ER doctor thinks I’m loose, and I don’t care if people think I’m chasing unrealistic dreams.

(OK, I actually do care if an ER doctor thinks I’m loose, so don’t quote me on that. I got lost in the moment.)

One thing I do care about is what moves me. I need a juicy little nugget of hope, dangling just out of my hungry grasp. Yes, I know the odds are not in my favor of being a best-selling author. Yet, I still tell myself it’s a matter of when, not if, because anything short of that . . . well, if I didn’t have that particular hope to chase each day, then I’d be lying on the floor pressing a Life Alert button just to see if anyone comes.

I might have failure after failure, never even getting as far as putting one tiny finger on the first stair to success, but I’m sorry, I won’t stop striving and dreaming for more until I’m dead.

(Oh, and when it is my time to go, I hope whether or not the doctor resuscitates me isn’t predicated on my underwear choice.)

What moves you? What are your dreams? What kind of undies do you wear? (Kidding!)

Writing is a Muscle, Flex it

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    Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m not Ernest Hemingway, allowed to take hours at a time sipping aperitifs and people watching in Paris before I muster the requisite inspiration to sit down and write something. My goodness, if I did that and my husband subsequently found out, he’d feverishly protest the abundance of chicken nugget nights that seem to bottleneck when I get close to a deadline.

On the first manuscript I completed, however, I remember only writing when I felt like it. It took me two years to finish. And when it was summarily dubbed “Good, but not quite there,” I responded in a few ways. First, there was the shaking of my fists in the air. Second, there was the stint of self-loathing. (Which as a writer, I feel I have a natural right to exhibit, prancing back and forth, moaning, as if I’m original in my pain.) And third, an issuance of a new battle cry: I will never waste that much time again.

Two years of my life back then was the difference between a head of my own black hair, and a bottle of L’oreal Black Midnight to cover the greys that had suddenly popped up. When I began working on my next manuscript, I forced myself to work every day, for a set amount of time, or a set amount of words.

In my day job as an attorney, I have no problem writing piles and piles of drivel . . . I mean, well thought, and well-argued points of law . . . in a quick, methodic manner. Shouldn’t I be applying the same work ethic to a manuscript? And when I did, I wrote 120,000 words in just over two months. Of course, I have to give some credit to the story being an easy tell, but I give more credit to the fact I determined to make it a work task rather than a pipe dream.

I wanted to develop a rhythm with my writing, a habit if you will, that would self-execute even when—get this—I didn’t feel like it. And sure, sometimes I had whole pages that looked as presentable and appetizing as the floor of a gas station bathroom, but that has happened on occasion when I was trying my best.

When you train a muscle to work, when you exercise it daily and watch it tone and tighten, there’s this mental assurance that the next big set of weights—the next writing task ahead—is within your range. Further, if you work those muscles hard enough, they’ll keep working for you, burning for you, long after you put the weights down. They’ll even keep you going on days when you don’t feel like working at all.

Bottom line is that writing doesn’t come and go in these magical, muse-driven spurts, as if some wayfaring pixie is sprinkling special dust and making you transcend. It’s a muscle begging its owner to use and improve upon it. Getting it to its optimum is going to take you gritting your teeth. You may even have to pop out a neck vein here and there.

And once that’s done, you can pull out the Hemingway routine during your next vacation or when you’re trying to be aloof for your friends. That’s always a fun gig.