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Here’s a great writing exercise to do when you’ve absolutely no where else to go. (I learned this in a screenwriting workshop taught by Mickey Birnbaum.)

When you’ve got no idea where to go with a scene, write down the ten worst ideas you can think of. Pick there and utilize them in your scene.

This exercise is remarkable because it frees up your imagination and completely removes the fear you have of being corny and unsuccessful. Try to be bad. I dare you.

In the gym the other day, I overheard a few guys talking about their longing to play golf at St. Andrews in Scotland. The conversation drifted to the topic of being struck by lightning, then veered off into one of the guy’s lifelong interest in archeology.

There are two characters in my novel that are struck by lightning. The protagonist’s goal is to play golf at St. Andrews in Scotland. The murder victim has a Ph.D. in archeology.

Several years ago, I attended the New York state writers’ conference in Saratoga Springs and decided that I couldn’t bear to spend two weeks at a dormitory, so I stayed at a local bed and breakfast. On my second day, Kurt, the innkeeper, asked me if he could tell me about his wife. Yes, of course, I said, although I was thinking that something hugely inappropriate was about to happen. Joe was already unhappy with me since I’d chosen to attend this writers’ conference while we were still in the throes of a kitchen renovation. I really didn’t want to have to explain to my husband that my innkeeper was a bit of a lecher.

Kurt went on to explain that his lovely wife, Linda, was involved in an accident and had a brain seizure. She now lived in a nursing home because it was not possible for Kurt to care for her at home. He planned to bring her by for a visit this afternoon and wondered if I’d be interested in meeting her.

It seemed like more than coincidence that I was in Saratoga to workshop a novel about a woman who had to learn to adjust to the role of caretaker when her husband became seriously brain injured after a bike accident.

Most people think that when writing fiction, it’s okay to just make stuff up. But there are millions of tidbits of arcane information that need to be arranged and rearranged in something that grows organically from within itself.

For example, in my novel, Stoke Play, an EPA inspector has been inadvertently murdered by an evil business man. When my protagonist, Lee, discovers the dead body and then realizes that her husband may be implicated in the crime, she decides to dump the inspector’s body, Soprano style, at the bottom of Lake Erie.

That leaves me with a technical question: About how much weight would it take to make a body remain at the bottom of a lake? And more specifically, if Lee were to attach sacks of golf balls to the body in order to weigh it down, how many golf balls would there be?

Here’s something that writers think about: where’s the line between fiction and non-fiction? Fiction, of course, is true. It’s has to be or readers would never believe it. Non-fiction is something else. It may have truth, it may even be loaded up with facts, but true?

Here’s something that lawyers think about: Not guilty means that the state has not met its burden of proof to show that the defendant is guilty. O.J. Simpson was not found innocent, he was found not guilty.

So, non-fiction is more like not fiction, as opposed to being true, in the same way that “not guilty” is not the same as being innocent.

Since my novel involves golf as well as ancient native American mounds, I was thrilled to discover a place called the Moundbuilders Country Club in Newark, Ohio. It wasn’t too difficult to talk Joe into taking a roadtrip there.

I expected to find a country club with a philistine disregard for artifacts of a non-white culture. But, as is typical with the ironies frequently found in the game of golf– the ceremonial mounds are in tip-top condition and probably better maintained than if a governmental agency were charged with their care.

There are two mounds: a hexagon shape that incorporates about fifty acres and a circle that has thirty acres. Each of the mounds is built up to about six feet tall. Apparently, the mounds were barely visible when the club was founded in 1910. President Roosevelt had them rebuilt as a WPA project in the 1930’s and the country club has maintained them ever since.

The Moundbuilders Country Club uses an innovative design to incorporate prehistoric Native American earthworks as a hazard. Besides that, it has immaculate putting greens and fair women’s tee boxes.

But, don’t try to use your laser distance range finder. Joe tried to use his and the spirits were having none of that. It couldn’t read a distance from the ball to the hole on any of the eighteen.

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with my friend, Hedy. She, like many people, asked how the work on my novel was going. This is a more difficult question to answer than what is your novel about? In any case, I tried to explain that since I put a dead body in it, I’ve had to work from the beginning and the end simultaneously and hope that I’m going to meet somewhere in the middle. She seemed quite fascinated by the creative process.

After ruminating on this conversation for a couple of weeks, I’ve decided to take a new, more focused direction in my blog. Inspired by the bloggers who catalog their struggles for weight loss or training for triathalons, I’ll be blogging about my struggle to finish writing my novel.

“There but for the grace of God I” seems like a woefully inadequate phrase on this day, the day after thirty two students were randomly slaughtered at Virginia Tech. I like to think its serendipity that didn’t place any of my family members at this unfortunate place in time and space– this time.

There are awe-inspiring natural disasters like hurricanes or tsunamis and then there are these other things, disasters created by our own species that leave us speechless and reactionless. We name these events by the place they occurred: Kent State, Columbine, and now- Virginia Tech.

As thirty two sets of parents mourn, the rest of us breathe a sigh of guilty relief. Through some haphazard set of circumstances and fortune, this time, it wasn’t us.

Golf is a game played in a quiet place. Yes, the golf course is several hundred hushed acres, with an occasional whoop or torrent of curse words, but that’s not the quiet place of which I speak. The quiet is within. And when the voices in your head start to chatter and your insecurities declare a mutiny on your determination, that’s when your game starts to fall apart.

I’m actually quite a good golfer. I’ve hit 18 consistent long, straight drives in more than one game. I’ve chipped in from off the green between five and ten times. I’ve birdied several holes and, well, that’s about all I can brag about. But, the point is, I’m not a bad golfer, it’s just my score that sucks. So this year, I plan to take drastic measures to improve my game. I am not going to keep score!

I know what you’re thinking. Scooter Libby is going to jail, Ohio has proposed using green license plates to identify sexual predators– who cares about golf, or more particularly, Lori’s game of golf? That is exactly my point. Since no one cares except for me, it’s only logical that I stop keeping track of my score.

In theory, I love the idea of integrative medicine. Okay I just made that term up, although I’m probably not the first to use it. Integrative medicine is a blending of eastern and western medical systems. And in my mind, it gives you the best of both sides of the globe. From the east, we take the ideas of treating all of the body systems, including emotional, physical, and mental states, as a whole universe. From the west, we take the miracle drugs like penicillin and – well, maybe just penicillin. No more kamikaze style targeting of only the underlying cause of the symptom.

But like I said, this is all in theory. With regard to my vata imbalance, it seems that my doshas are still out of whack.

I’m convinced that daily meditation is a wonderful thing. And now, it’s one more thing on my list of unaccomplished stuff to feel guilty about. The shatavari gave me a stomach ache. Using a neti pot is disgusting and made me feel like I was drowning. Gargling with salt water and turmeric made me gag. So, in most ways, it’s not going so well.

On the other hand, it’s a lot of fun to drop the phrase vata imbalance at a cocktail party where everyone else is discussing their back surgeries and hip replacements. I have the coolest medical issue, hands down.