Bell Bridge Books

THE BLENDER APPROACH

by Mary Strand

I grew up loving blenders.  Much like my mom, the only thing I really enjoy doing in a kitchen involves a blender and rum, and she taught me how to make a killer daiquiri before I was old enough to drink one.  In college, I went on to become a bartender.

I’m sure this made her proud.  heh heh.

Before long, I left my bartender and college days behind for law school, then the practice of law, going from killer daiquiris to killer shoes and suits, killer mergers and acquisitions, and killer hours.  Lots and lots of killer hours.  All-nighters at the printer.  Making critical word choices in closing documents at three a.m. when we were blinking to stay awake.  Arguing over inane details that often didn’t matter as much as we pretended they did.

Here’s a not-so-secret secret:  lawyers daydream.

They daydream about not being lawyers.

When I started daydreaming in earnest, I thought about writing novels.  I didn’t have the faintest idea how to write a novel, mind you, but as a lawyer I learned to be ridiculously confident regardless of the facts.

I blithely assumed I could write a novel even though at that point I was entirely left brained (logical thinking) and hadn’t really used my right brain (creative thinking) in 15 years.  For my birthday one year, my husband bought me a software program that helps a left-brained thinker conceptualize a novel using a logical question-answer process.  Perfect.

My debut novel, Cooper’s Folly, was the first book I wrote, many years ago.  I started by using my left-brained software program, assisted by my completely unwarranted confidence.  When I began, I hadn’t taken a single writing class.  In the first draft, I changed point of view Every Single Time someone spoke, because, gee, the reader would want to know what everyone was thinking, right?  My first critiquers laughed.  I was too confident to know better.

I had a blast.

I also returned to blenders, but this time minus the rum.  I quickly learned it was easier to write about characters I already “knew”—so I put everyone I knew, everyone I’d ever met, into an imaginary blender in my head.  I’d turn on the blender, imagining it swirling them all around, then poured out characters made up of tiny pieces of my friends, my not-so friends, and me.  Lots and lots of me.  Cooper Meredith of Cooper’s Folly is chock full of pieces of me, and I wrote the book for that part of me:  a lawyer who daydreams of not being a lawyer.  Of having more fun and being more fulfilled.  Of figuring out what I was meant to do and be.

I still use the blender approach with every book I write, which means that pieces of my friends and me—especially me—are scattered all over all my books.

But which pieces?  Try to guess.  And good luck with that.  🙂

Go grab Mary Strand’s debut novel, COOPER’S FOLLY, out now!!!