Sandra Gail Lambert

How to revise a novel

 

Wander your kayak around mangrove islets.  Watch for crabs skittering along prop roots.  Surprise a burst of night herons.  Be ignored by an eagle.  Push against a rising afternoon wind to reach home. 

And in the middle of the post-kayak eating of shrimp and crab (caught in the same Gulf waters you just left) you will know what is important and how to begin. 

"My fingers press into clay.  I balance at the edge of my mind.  The excitement rises and wants to spill into bright colors and glare.  It whispers out of my bones and demands that I continue.  It says that I will not fail, that I know enough, everything."

Florida Love

 

What I like best about Decembers in Florida are the signs of spring. 

In my yard, Stokes Aster's first leaves flop over the top of this year's drop of oak leaves, and there are two poppy mallow stems almost hidden under the fall fluff of the garberia.  The blue-eyed grass is showing as tufts of stiff yellow-green.  The branches of the ash magnolia are topped with a pointed swirl of cream that looks like the tip of a watercolor brush.

      

This is my twentieth December in Florida.  Before, when I lived in Atlanta, I used to day dream about living among live oaks and palm trees.  And here I am. 

Native Plant Sale Tomorrow (and tonight)

 

Native Plant Sale - At the Morningside Nature Center, from 8:30 until noon, Saturday, October 4.  (And tonight from 4:30 to 6:30 for members.)

Twice a year I cashier at the sale here in Gainesville. (Making change out of a cash box is a dying art, but I was a retailer pre-fancy cash registers.) Let me tell you, it's a wild place full of rabid gardeners.  The cars leave with plants hanging out the sides, filling windshields from the passenger seat, and tucked in on every floor surface. 

Each time I get handed a pile of twenties and give back a bit of change I see the local economy meshing with the local environment.  These plants won't need fertilizer or pesticides and not much water if they're planted in the right places. And the money goes to nurseries that will now cultivate even more native plants and next spring we'll have another plant sale and more dotted horsemint, firebush, viburnums, anise, woodland sunflowers, and bluecurls will replace all the imported, drug dependent plants.  

Wherever you live, find out about the native plants in your area.   

Cynthia Barnett and Florida's Vanishing Water

Flamingo Campground, the Everglades, over a decade ago - I was perched beside the wooden benches overlooking the Florida Bay and waiting for the evening naturalist program to begin.  A tall ranger strode up through the crowd, tapped the microphone, and said his talk was going to be on Florida's water.  The first slide was a map of mish mashed lines, and I thought "this is going to be boring."  But I already had a nice layer of mosquito repellent applied, so I stayed.  Well.  Even his government-issued, try-not-to-piss-off-too-many-people version was like an espionage novel.  It had intrigue at the highest political levels, evil corporations, unrelenting natural forces, violence , and all sorts of Byzantine machinations.  

Tonight Florida's Eden hosted an event to "Celebrate our Springs, Floridan Aquifer, and the Water Which Defines Us."  They brought together forty artists, a jazz band, good food, and Cynthia Barnett, the author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern US.  I've only just started on it (sinkholes!) and, like that long-ago ranger lecture, it is the opposite of boring.

P.S.  Also, there was a painting of the view looking up from under the spring water to the sky that is exactly a scene I was trying to write earlier today.  Is it plagiarism if I take that image and put it in my character's eyes? 

Book research

 

Sometimes it's searching the web, sometimes it's flicking through microfiche reels, but sometimes this novel's research means returning to its geographic setting - the Silver River.   

My kayak friend and I were launched by 7:30 and had the river to ourselves.  A batch of baby alligators and their mama curled over downed branches, ibis waited on the top of the tallest dead tree for the first sunlight, and in a sandy cove, naked lesbians squealed as they dropped into the cold spring water.  

And I did do research.  I consulted with my kayak friend and the overhanging branches on how to describe the smell of cypress.  I found out exactly how far you have to go into the trees before the mosquitoes gather.  And, finally, I figured out a simile for how the air is on those mornings in the summer when even before dawn the humidity is hardcore. 

Afterwards, there was barbeque.  Yum.