Adventures in Pantsing: A Plotter Tries to Cut Loose

The first ghost story I ever wrote sucked royally. It was derivative as hell, like everything I wrote in middle school. I named it after my favorite Julee Cruise song ("The Nightingale"), called my ghost heroine Mina (I'd just read Dracula), and made the hero kill the ghost of the woman he once loved (more shades of Dracula). My eighth-grade teacher made just one comment. He wrote "Good word use" next to "tentatively." I got an A. Then he read it out loud to the class. I was a little traumatized by having my private creation shared with the world.

I haven't written a true ghost story since.

Until now.

For the hell of it, I revisited two ideas I'm still uncomfortable with: pantsing a story and writing a ghost story. Let me preface this by saying I am SO NOT a pantser. I need things to be spelled out, plot-wise and character-wise, before I feel comfortable diving in. I like knowing where I'm going, so I can focus all my effort on the language and descriptions. If I'm too worried about the how, I can't think about the what. And as for ghost stories, mostly I don't write them because it's so hard to come up with something original. Hell, after nine and a half seasons of Supernatural, what's left for the rest of us?

I. The Prep Work
As a writer, it's my duty to try and grow as an artist, right? All right, fine, challenge accepted. As an exercise, I forced myself to pants my way through a ghost story. No pressure, no word count, no real goals other than to write for 30 minutes during my lunch break at work and just see what happened. I chose the first setting that came to mind--the area I live in--and what it's famous for--the gold rush. A long-ass time ago (okay, it was October of 2013), I watched a Discovery channel show on the Gold Rush. A couple of elements really stuck with me, so I tied in two of them: a struggling group of miners called the Boston Company and a cholera epidemic that struck the gold fields. And I started typing.

II. The Opening
Predictably, it was ASSLOADS OF HARD to get going. I began with a lame description of setting. Normally, my inner editor would take over and tell me to delete it all, but what the hell, I was pantsing, which meant I didn't know what I wouldn't need. I typed and typed. Blah blah starlight, blah blah cholera. I knew something creepy would have to happen, so about a page in, I casually mentioned that one of the miners had disappeared. When his horse returned to camp, they found him chopped into bits, stacked in the saddlebags. That took care of the whole "introduce a conflict" thing.

But then I had to figure out who had done this evil deed. (A ghost, of course. This is a GHOST STORY, after all.) That's why it really sucked when I realized a man had done the deed. An old man. A weird man. But a man. Damn it.

In keeping with my being a plotter, I could have overruled my gut. I could have made the man a ghost because it made more sense. But being a pantser isn't always about what makes sense. So I allowed the villain to take shape as a man inside my head. To further the conflict, I had to send my hero out looking for this man. Because I'm kind of a bitch to my characters, I made him half dead from cholera. Real hard to aim a gun straight when you're not even strong enough to hold it up.

Now I started to feel things coming together. I had a man, a conflict, a weakness, and a creepy villain. This was going to be easy, right?

Nope.

Shit.

III. The Complication
Once I put my hero on a horse and sent him in search of the old weird man's cabin, I realized I had no idea what would happen when he got there. Because I had no idea why the old man did it. Insanity only works in the legal system; it's not a good way to motivate a story. Stories need to be tied together more firmly than our minds are in real life. So the old man can't be a lunatic. He must have had a good reason for butchering that poor miner. But what the hell was it?

My hero approached the cabin at night and called out to the old man. When in doubt, generate more conflict, right? This was the most direct way of doing that, so I went with it.

I hesitated here...should the old man actually answer the door, or should my hero have to spy on him to get the information he needed? I decided to go for broke here, and have a direct conversation between them.

The old man opened the door and invited my hero in.

And then I realized why: the inside of the cabin was hung entirely with guns. Muskets. Rifles. Of all ages and types. Mounted on the wall. All pointing toward the old man's chair by the fire. Apparently, my old man was a suicidal paranoid kleptomaniac nut job. But now I'd given myself another problem: who was this guy, and how did he get a collection of weaponry that included guns that were 300 years old? And why was he in the Sierra foothills with this massive collection of Renaissance-era European weaponry? What the hell was happening?

The old man was running away with my story, writing checks my brain couldn't cash. I had no idea how I would explain any of this, but these are the images that popped into my head and that my fingers typed out on the page. In the true spirit of pantsing, I let him do it. It went against the very fiber of my being not to stop, think, and really figure out who this guy was before continuing. But I didn't. I wrote a garbage conversation where the hero asked the old man if he murdered the miner. The old man said he did. No surprise, and no tension. I felt the story floundering. Where could it go from here? And wasn't this supposed to be a ghost story? I had no ghosts, no whodunit, no motive, and a buttload of guns I couldn't explain. Because pantsing is AWESOME that way. You will never do this again, I told myself. As Bartok had warned, this would only end in tears.

IV. The Payoff...Maybe
But the next day, on the way home from work, I had an epiphany. I remembered something from a trip to Santa Fe I'd taken years before. The city was settled ridiculously early in history, in the late 1500s if I remembered right. And then I remembered...weren't all those early Spanish explorers looking for the one thing the miners had just found in California? Holy shit. That was it. The link that made my plotting self giddy: a historical connection. The Spanish explorers who came to New Mexico were looking for El Dorado, golden cities that would be overflowing with riches for everyone. And did they find it? No, but the miners did. Hell, I live in El Dorado County.

But now I had another problem: how does this historical connection translate for these characters? There's no damn way a dude alive in 1849 would have been alive in the 1500s...or is there? This was supposed to be a ghost story, wasn't it? So maybe the old man's a ghost after all. But if he was really a ghost, why all the guns? Are there guns that can kill ghosts? I was getting backed into a corner by my own pantsing. God, this is painful, I thought. Why do people do this? When did thinking really hard become passe?

V. The Reveal
So I had to nix the full-on ghost idea. The man is a man, which explains why he needs guns. He is also 300 years old, which makes him a kind of living ghost. But how? And why? What did I know about Spanish explorers? Only what I remembered from grade school. But that wasn't strictly true. A couple years ago, when I got obsessed with genealogical research, I discovered that my great-grandma's grandma was a Sevier.

A little online digging produced some circumstantial evidence that links the Seviers to the name Xavier, which was originally Javier. It was Spanish, or to be more precise, Basque. One member of this family became incredibly famous. His name is Francis Xavier, the Catholic saint. He traveled to Asia to spread Christianity, and died in the Philippines. So now I had a famous explorer (sort of), a connection to Spain, and the right time period. Now I just had to connect Xavier to my old man.

In typical Jenni fashion (overdoing it and over-thinking it), I created a grandiose link between the two men. No, I won't tell you what it is. That would ruin the story. But I poured out the whole story through the old man's lips, as his cholera-weakened adversary lay on the floor of the cabin in defeat. But there was just one more problem left to solve. The ending.

VI. The Triumph
So, the good guy is lying half dead on the floor of the bad guy's weird cabin after a brief skirmish. It hardly seems fair. I mean, the bad guy wins? Whaaa? Is that how it works when you pants a story? Not if I have anything to say about it. I had to create a way for the good guy to triumph...even if his cholera kills him. 

Going back to the basic mechanics of fiction helped here. I had to think about what it was my villain (the old guy) wanted. And then I took that away from him, with one sentence from the younger man. So, whether the younger guy gets away and dies of cholera, gets away and survives, or is killed by the angry old man, no one wins. I like stories like that. When I'm doing literary-style stories, I always aim for the gray area. Black and white is good for genre fiction, but not a story like this. In that, I might have succeeded.

Which brings us to the end of the story.

Or is it? I still have to figure out how to explain all those guns, after all.

Damn you, pantsing.

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all: Here's the Story of My Ancestor Who Was Hung as a Witch

My 10th great-grandmother was hung as a witch in Connecticut. You've probably heard of the Salem Witch Trials, which took place in the early 1690s. Well, my homegirl beat them to it by getting herself hung in 1663.

As we're eating turkey and giving thanks for how awesome things are in our country and our lives, don't forget that the path to all-American awesomeness is strewn with bodies: Native Americans, mostly, but also some white people other white people didn't like very much.

We're not really sure what her maiden name was, but her first name was Rebecca. (My middle name, in case you were wondering.) She married a man named Abraham Elson, and had a daughter named Sarah who is my 9th great-grandmother. Abraham died, and Rebecca married a man named Jarvis Mudge. He died, too, and she married a third time to a man named Nathaniel Greensmith. Rebecca Greensmith is the name she died with.

She and Nathaniel lived in Hartford, Connecticut. They were not liked. Nathaniel had been in trouble with the law at least three times, once for stealing wheat, once for stealing a hoe, and once for battery. A local reverend, John Whiting, called Rebecca "a lewd, ignorant and considerably aged woman." Because everyone knows being an "aged woman" is some intolerable shit for Puritans.  

People had been on the lookout for witches for awhile--the very first suspected witch in the colonies was hung in Hartford in 1647. But now, in 1662, shit really hit the fan. It started, as it did in Salem, with the accusations of a girl. Before she died, John Kelley's 8-year-old daughter Elizabeth cried out in her delirium that her neighbor, Goodwife Ayres, was "tormenting her."

Not long afterward, John Cole's daughter, Anne, freaked the fuck out. She started having "fits" and said Satan's minions were messing with her. She named Elizabeth Seager as a witch, and someone (it might have been Anne) said Rebecca was a witch, too. Nathaniel and Rebecca were already disliked within the community, so it's not hard to see how they fell under suspicion. Rebecca was arrested in late 1662.

Hard-ass Puritan ministers took control of the situation, interrogating the accused. Reverend Samuel Stone, Reverend Joseph Haynes, and Reverend Samuel Hooker played bad cop/worse cop/abysmal cop, and Rebecca admitted that under Haynes's questioning, she could have "torn him in pieces." Satanic strength notwithstanding, Haynes survived unscathed.

Under interrogation, Rebecca confessed to witchcraft. She said she and some other folks used to meet out in the fields at night to booze it up. One of the women present said she would do bad things to the town marshal if she could. That's all the evidence they needed back in the day. Empty field + night time + booze + (heaven forbid) dancing = a genuine goddamn coven. Increase Mather took Rebecca's confession as definitive proof that witches were real.

Anxious for all the dirty details, her interrogators asked her whether she made a covenant with the devil. She said no, but that she had promised to go with him when he called. He was supposed to be back on Christmas, and that's when the covenant would be signed. She said the devil first appeared to her as a deer, and other times as a crow. Lord knows you can't trust animals. Not even once.

On December 30, 1662, both Rebecca and Nathaniel were indicted on charges of witchcraft.

On January 8, 1663, Rebecca said that although he hadn't confessed, she had doubts about Nathaniel's innocence. She said he was pretty old and weak, but that he somehow did lots of chores and outdoor work. Plus, it was pretty damn suspicious that he was friendly with some foxes and other woodland creatures.

The jury found them both guilty.

On January 25, 1662, Nathaniel and Rebecca were hung on "Gallows Hill," the present site of Trinity College.

"Witches" were also hung in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Their names have all since been legally cleared, not helpful at all to the victims but somewhat helpful for the families and descendants. Not so in Connecticut. All of these folks are still officially on record as being guilty.

Even if the genealogical research that seems to link me to this woman proves to be faulty (as so much of it is), I'll always remember her story...and the dark side of what we celebrate every Thanksgiving.

Unsolved Mysteries: The Frank Rivers Saga

Unsolved mysteries bug the living crap out of me.  I can't help it.  The human race has put a man on the moon, built skyscrapers, cloned animals, and done all sorts of stuff that seems scientifically impossible...until someone does it.  (Internet, anyone?)  So why is it so hard to figure out what happened to some people?  How can simple things like bones and flesh and minerals just disappear, or become seemingly impossible to find?

Before they found the skeletons of the Romanovs, I lost some serious sleep wondering where on earth they were.  I still occasionally lose sleep over the Amelia Earhart thing.  I've spent serious time pondering where the Ark of the Covenant could be.  These are all solvable problems...or they should be, in my mind.

But in the past year, I've lost the most sleep over one of my own relatives:  my elusive great-great-grandfather.  I've become addicted to genealogy research.  It's my crack.  The computer has to be pried out of my sleepy fingers before I'll shut it off and let go of the elusive loose end that is Frank Rivers.  He's the guy on the left in this photo, with his hand on the dog.  The man you can barely see.  The man I can't find.

Frank Rivers.  Don't suppose any of you know who this guy is?  I sure don't.

According to family information I was given, he lived in Smith's Valley, Nevada in the late 1800s.  This picture was taken there in about 1902.  Based on federal census information, I think he showed up in Cache Creek by 1870.  He sold the Nevada farm and moved south, but I'm not sure exactly when--he died in Los Angeles in 1912.  I don't know how or when he headed west, but he wasn't born here.

He filled out his census information with several different birth dates ranging from 1841 to 1845.  Most of his census answers indicate that he was born in New York about 1844.  One says "L.I.," which I take to mean Long Island.  However, Frank's daughter Hazel (my great-grandmother, the little girl sitting on the porch in the photo) answered her 1930 census with a strange response for "Father's Birthplace:"  Michigan.


Michigan?  WTF?  Why the heck would she say Michigan when in 1900, 1910, and 1920, she said Frank was born in New York?  What did she know that I don't?

Another family member, a second cousin who'd begun a family tree in the 1970s, also lists Frank's birthplace as Holland, Michigan in July of 1842.  That's not New York and it's not 1844.  Why do my second cousin and great-grandmother think Frank was born in Michigan, when he himself told every census taker who asked him he'd been born in New York?  Was he lying?  Did he have something to hide?  Or, if he was telling the truth, why would my great-grandmother have lied?  Or did Frank lie to his kids, but tell the truth to the census taker?  What's the point of that?

It makes my head hurt.

I have spent HOURS on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org looking for leads.  This has gone on for over a year now.  For the past two nights, I've been up past midnight tracking down everyone by the name of Francis or Frank Rivers who lived in New York or Michigan in the 1840s.

So far, I've got two "Francis Rivard"s in Michigan, one born in 1843 and one born in 1835.

I've got two "Francis Rivers"s in New York.  One, born in 1844, was in the poorhouse by 1854 and indentured to a guy named William Buchan in Hopewell.  He shows up on the census in 1855 and 1860, but he's vanished in 1865.  Is this my Frank?  Did he head west when he grew up?

The second New York candidate was born in 1844 and lived in St. Lawrence, NY.  I need to go back and see where he falls off the map....if he falls off the map.  Maybe one of these guys is my ancestor.  Maybe none of them are.  It kills me to know that I may never know who Frank Rivers was.

It doesn't seem right that I can't find out who he was.  He was just a man.  An ordinary man.  No king, no oil baron, no one.  Still, he existed.  There are a few pictures of him and a record of a few land deeds and court cases in Nevada.  A man named Frank Rivers lived.  So why is it so hard to find out who he was and where he came from?

I'll probably never know the truth.  And I am having such a hard time with that.  Whoever he was, he's a part of me.  Did he murder someone and flee west, taking a new name?  Is he a humble farmer whose birth was just never documented?  How am I supposed to know where I came from when I can't figure out who this guy really is?

He's the major thorn in my genealogical side.  And it kills me that he's an unsolved mystery.  I feel like there's always going to be a part of me I don't know unless I solve this mystery.  It's silly, because I am who I am regardless of what Frank did.  But I began my genealogical quest in the hopes of finding answers as to why I'm so different from most of my family members.  When I spot others who are different, like Frank, it makes me think I might be like them.  But if Frank was a bad guy, what does being like him mean?  I want to know.  I need to know.  And I can't.  And it makes me want to tear my hair out.

Do you guys have any unsolved genealogical mysteries?  Which unsolved mysteries keep you up late at night?

The Dangers of Genealogy

Full disclosure:  when I discovered Ancestry.com last year, I literally did nothing else for the span of a month.  I had all kinds of fun tracing some of my mom's ancestors back to the 1630s in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  I've been getting back into it slowly this summer, wary of letting it suck away every living moment.

But tonight, I learned a good lesson that's also applicable to writing.  Here's what happened:

I traced a line back from my mom to the Gridley/Humphrey family in Connecticut in the 1600s. An immigrant from England, Michael Humphrey (1620-1695) married Priscilla Grant (sister to Ulysses S. Grant's ancestor, Samuel Grant).  Most of the other online family trees listed Priscilla's parents as Matthew Grant (1601-1681) and Priscilla Grey (1601-1644).

Hmm, I thought.  An English family named Grey.  Well, that's promising.  Even if it didn't end up being the Earl Grey tea guy, maybe they'd be related to Lady Jane or Elizabeth Woodville's kids from her first marriage.  Following the Greys backward, I found a cavalcade of names any Anglophile would drool over: Percys, de Hollands, even a Beaufort...and for you genealogy enthusiasts, you know Beaufort is the holy grail for linking oneself to the Plantaganets.

Of course, I started drooling.

But then a funny thing happened.  I came across several sources debunking the "Grey" myth for Priscilla Grant's origins, lamenting the fact that this mistake has made it into so many trees and published histories of the Grant family.

It bummed me out.  My visions of tiaras and castles crumbled like an overbaked snickerdoodle.  The diligent authors, of course, proved their point entirely:  Matthew Grant clearly stated his first wife's birth and death dates as 1601 and 1644.  The real Priscilla Grey, daughter of an earl, lived in England her whole life, never emigrated, was born in 1615, and has a monument in England that mentions her husband, John St. Nicholas--clearly not a dude named Matthew Grant. She is clearly not the Priscilla who helped Matthew hack out the wilderness of Connecticut.  So there went my dreams of a direct link to John of Gaunt.

Damn it all.

But then I realized something else.  Two things, actually.  First, it's still pretty freaking cool to be distantly related to Ulysses S. Grant.  Second, much like writing, genealogy should never be attempted with the end result already determined.  You have to give yourself breathing room and the space to discover what lies ahead.  You might think you're going to end up one place, but a magical breath of inspiration may want to redirect your footsteps.

Let it.  Let go of what you want and give yourself over to where the universe (and proper research) take you.

After all...who needs John of Gaunt when you have Ulysses S. Grant?