April Update

yellow pollen spores,
grab your antihistamine!,
drifting on the wind

--------------


No literary allusions here, just a small hommage to the natural wonder of spring.

How's the writing coming along? Are you making inroads into your monthly goal?

My stated goal of April has yet to be touched, although I am doing well at the unstated goal of daily writing. I think the reason for the goal not yet getting off the ground is that although I tried to be slick and disguise the whole revisions bit, I was not slick enough.

However, there is still time, and I think I have a secret weapon. I'll let you know how things go.

Motivations and Results

plop! cold and wet snow
down the back of my jacket
i hear trees giggling

-----

Sarah threw down the gauntlet the other day by offering up a 12 day writing challenge. Surprisingly, I made it through. /ponders this miracle. I even carved out a daily window seat in time, in which to work on this challenge.

It is a weird experience to be successful at something like this. There were a couple nights were I had no idea what to write, but I wrote anyway. I tried to wrap up each night so that its effort could stand alone, even if I continued the idea the next night. I played with characters I had met before, and introduced myself to others that I had only seen through the mists of being half-asleep.

Maybe that is what motivated me enough to continue the challenge each day, the idea of playing.

What motivates you to continue, whether writing, revising, querying, etc.?

Positive Thinking

echoes of old words
nascent shapes of words unborn
mix on the threshold

---

When Dalida sings "Paroles," that is beauty. When Miriam Makeba sings "Pata pata," that is beauty. When Cesaria Evora sings anything, "Sodade," for example, that is beauty.


Is it wrong that when I feel particularly low as regards my own progress towards darn goodness (I really don't aspire towards greatness or anything like that) at the craft, I remind myself that even those three pearls of music making had to practice as well?

Newness All Around

shake the crystal ball
...The inspiration that flows from chaos and making change
snow flakes swarm like bees buzzing
...Give rise to ideas - blooming fields on the horizon
dream of spring honey
...And I wander through the flowers, intoxicated

--

It's a new year, and either the tail end of a decade or the head end, depending on your point of view.

I'm working along on my goals for January (the public one here on the blog, and the secret one in my head), and hope you are too.

Seasonal Update

black amidst dark green
wild hunter awaiting prey
the cat's in the tree

She likes the christmas tree, and doesn't care a wit that it's plastic. Silly beast.

The project mentioned before got slowed down a lot by other writerly concerns, but I still have hopes that it will be done before January 1. I do want to start the new year with a clean-er plate than it currently is.

Any things that you're in the middle of finishing?

Oh, and by the way, Season's Greetings from us to you. :)

Pre-emptive seasonal haiku

hyacinths in snow
spring's head eating winter's tail
an icy blue sky

It's coming down to the end of the year. I have a project that I'm trying to finish, and amorphous projects politely waiting in the wings for brain space to be freed.

What about y'all? Is there productivity, or a frenetic spinning of wheels?

The Joy of Index Cards

Index cards are one of the best inventions ever! Let me tell you why.

1. You can use them to jot down ideas and even whole paragraphs when you don't have time or space to expand them in your ms, for example, if you're in a meeting or at a stoplight. Then when you go back to writing, there's your idea waiting for you.

2. You can do quick character profiles that you can use later when you hit a plot snag and can't remember exactly what trait would cause your character to say... stick someone into the attic rather than the freezer. Instead of pulling up a file, grab the index card with the attributes.

3. Portability. A desktop is heavy, a laptop can be heavy, and there may be too many people sardined next to you on the train for a notebook. Index cards can be held in one hand and written on by the other hand, then slipped into a pocket.

I've given three reasons why I love to have index cards to hand. Are you a fan? Tell us why they are a staple. Are you not a fan at all? Tell us why you eschew them.


...Did you catch it? Hope not. :)

Character Interview -- Gerrit

For some reason I thought that Gerrit would have chosen an out of the way spot, perhaps a dingy hole in the wall with bad lighting and people looking around furtively. Instead he chooses a quick-eats place, with lots of light and lots of people; I guess he's taking advantage of group cover. We get our trays and food and sit at a table against the wall.

I pull out my recorder, but he stops me.

"It's less conspicuous if you just use a mic attachment." From a jacket pocket, Gerrit pulls out a small black cylinder attached to a long wire. "I'd have used wireless, but somehow I don't think you are quite there yet."

He's mocking me, but the mockery isn't malicious, at least I don't think it is.

"Okay, it looks like you should be set. Start the interview, except you can skip the name and place of origin questions, if you don't mind."

Obediently, I click on the recorder. The break in the ritual discomfits me; maybe that's why he did it. "How many scams were you running?" I figure to get right to the heart of the questions, and hopefully get a point back in my favor.

Gerrit looks up and then back to me. "Good start. Let's see..." His voice trails off as he thinks. "Zero. I wasn't running any scams."

"Well, you certainly weren't on official business for all of the jobs." I allow myself a direct stare and a raised eyebrow.

He holds up a finger. "True. I had 3 jobs running, besides the 9 to 5. Jobs, mind you, not scams." The finger wags at me for emphasis and then he takes a bite of his salad. He fills his mouth yet manages to chew without looking like a 2 year old. While he eats, his gaze meanders around the room and comes back to me.

"Can you tell me what the ... jobs were?"

Gerrit shrugs. "Why not? They're over and done with aren't they?" He eats another forkful of greens and reds. "I was running papers from the Tenir embassy, I was trying to catch Donovan with his pants down, and I was committing planetary treason. It's a great game out there; you should try it."

"And at the same time you were working as an intelligence agent for the interplanetary government?"

"I know!" The glee takes his voice up a couple notes.

"What would have happened if you had gotten caught?"

"But there's the rub;" He leans towards me. "I didn't."

"But you got caught in the end, though, didn't you." I force myself to keep the accusation inside. No sense in opening that particular can of worms. "Okay, granted you didn't get caught. However, in the event you did, let's just speculate, what would have happened?"

Another long look around the quick-eats. "Peons." He gives me his full attention. "If the first, then nothing more than a slight reprimand. For the second, perhaps a short suspension." A pause. "But if I had gotten caught with Reynor, it would have depended on the spin. I think I could have gotten away with it." A shrug, tossing the thought out as if it didn't matter. "And if I couldn't work the crowd, they would have killed me."

"Isn't that a bit harsh of a punishment?"

"_I_ think so. _They_ consider it a necessary example making, a refining of the workforce, if you will." He waves his hands in large slow arcs. "It's all about control."

"And you don't like being controlled?"

"They can't control me." His hands are still. "I've given them opportunities, but they don't even see them! It's no wonder that they couldn't," He stops short, and I'm glad to see there are some things he takes seriously.

"Back to something you mentioned before, this being a 'great game.' Is it all just a game?"

"Not just a game. The only game worth playing."

He gives me the first smile that I've seen on his face so far. It drifts over his face, and is so open that I find myself blushing.

"Then why did you call Thytira?"

The smile is gone. "I wanted to turn the game and needed help to do it. Thytira's a straight shooter, a good one to have as back-up."

"You felt you needed back-up?" This was getting interesting all of a sudden.

"Normally no, but in this case, yes. I'm not straight enough to turn a game like this on my own." He shrugs, acknowledging the truth. "It's one of my flaws."

There is a soft beeping from the inside of Gerrit's jacket. He pulls out a slim rectangle. "I have to go. But thanks for taking the time to talk to me." He stops me when I reach to unhook the mic attachment. "Keep it, it may come in handy another time."

A very different sort of man. I'm almost sorry he's dead.

Dialoguing It Out

I am a solitary type of writer. A hermit writer, if you will. And yet, even hermits need to go trading goatskins for matches and toilet paper (this hermit has a delicate bum, thank you very much).

Away from the metaphor a bit, and moving to reality, there are times when I need to talk about my various attempts at scribbling to other people not already in my head. Those are some of the most difficult conversations!

A lot of the difficulty stems from the fact that they aren't in my head. The people I'm talking to have no idea of the chunks of backstory I'm dealing with, and they don't immediately understand the motivations of my characters. But why should they?

I'm asking them to talk about characters who don't exist outside of my grey matter. When I think of Taliesin, I know exactly how she puts her hand on her hip, and the tilt of her head. I know which of Absinthe's jokes made Dace laugh even when he is angry enough to ask for his key back. How can people _know_ what I'm talking about?

Part of me concludes that I just shouldn't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated. The more sense-filled part of me admits that if I can't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated, and make them understand where my characters are coming from, if I can't get them to love Simon and his complaining as much as I do, then do I really know my characters as much as I think I do?

What do you think? Let's chat.

Apples all over the Place

I had another blog planned out... but I decided not to post it today. It feels unfinished.

So instead, I'll introduce a character from a story idea that I'm playing with, and natter on about how she is messing up my carefully arranged ideas. Her name is less important than her description, so she'll go by "the ambassador's daughter" for now. :)

Here's where I was with her and her motivation. She doesn't want to be known as someone's kid, she wants to be known in her own right. So she goes against convention and puts in a bid for personal recognition (= she works against the interests of both her father, the ambassador, and her home planet). The thing that could potentially get in her way is an accusation of "wanton behavior."

And here is where the first snag trips me up. I was planning for her to utterly ignore the accusation because point of fact, it impacts her father moreso than her (cultural details of the planet's social infrastructure), and she is so focused on her goal that small things like this are unimportant. But if she ignores the accusation, then her motivation for hiring my main character to find out who is behind the accusation falls flat. Which means that my storyline starts out contrived, which irritates me (since I poke at that issue in my critique partners' writing, I can't really let it slide in my own writing, now can I?).

The fix is for her to be deeply affected by the accusation's consequences. However, if I change the situation so that she has to pay attention, then the actions of my bad guy (the one doing the accusing) have to be modified as well. And if he changes his actions, then a beautiful chunk of plotline has to be radically changed.

And this is where the second snag surfaces (don't laugh now): I already feel overwhelmed by the amount of players in this story idea and their wants and needs; I really don't want to add more complexity to this idea.

But I don't think I have a choice... Because darn it, this idea is cool, and I should at least give things an honest go.

(Okay, go ahead and laugh. :) I know the effort not to is making your nose hurt.)

Found a Peanut

Well, actually it's more of found a plot hole and kinda filled it, but that doesn't scan nearly as well.

Here's how the story went. I had an idea, spawned from a monthly challenge back when we had monthly challenges (Or was it a holiday challenge? I don't remember and it doesn't matter. What matters is that there was a challenge and I had this great idea.), but it got stalled due to technical difficulties. The idea persisted, however, and I figured what the heck, let me ride it (= write an outline) and see where this baby goes.

The snag happened once I took my protagonist off-planet and sent her to a different planet. I knew what I wanted her to do on the planet, sort of, and I knew she had to go there, but once she got off the transport, I was stuck. Hit the wall. Ran out of gas. Had no change to make the call (for those who are anachronistically minded).

I was wallowing in this hole, getting my clothes absolutely filthy, but unable to pull myself out, when out of the... gray matter(?), a new idea burbled up: what goes on on this planet? It felt like a digression, a tangent, if you will, and yet I had no where else to be so I spent some time working on backstory for the planet. (Yeah, that sounds SO stupid when I type that, but let's continue on.)

This backstory turned out to be just what I needed. I still haven't any idea what my protagonist does once she gets off the transport, BUT I have so many new possibilities to pick from. Talk about going from famine to feast!

So. In conclusion. The peanut was not rotten. It was roasted, lightly salted, and a delicious blend of crunchy and chewy. Yum!

Break a Rule

The ubiquitous they like to comment on the way things should be done. These armchair humans try to tell the world how to run itself according to the they philosophy. For example, they say, "never run with scissors." I say what if you have to cut someone's hair that got stuck in the ceiling fan and that person is getting really dizzy and might hurl at any moment? I say run with the dang scissors. They say, "don't chew with your mouth open." I say, how's anybody going to see your purple tongue after you eat a grape jolly rancher if you don't? They say, "never pet a burning dog." Okay, well, maybe I can go with that one. Don't start petting, grab the garden hose first. The point is, there are exceptions to every rule. Come to think of it, I think they say that one, too.

They also have a lot to say about writing. "Don't let your characters think too much." "Make sure every word advances the plot in some way." "Never begin your story with characters waking up in the morning." "Never make the romantic male lead a pimply red head." The thing about all the they philosophy is that as a general rule, they are right. A lot of the they statements about writing are good things to know. But some rules were meant to be broken. There they go again.

I say let your characters think for a change. It's not often that people do that particular activity, so it might be refreshing. Let some of your words be there just because they are beautiful, whether they do anything or not. Wake your characters up with a tsunami wave in the middle of the night on page three and see what happens. Let that red head get the girl. She'll buy him Clearasil anyway, and everyone will live happily ever after.

I say, go ahead, break a rule.

Goads and Goals

Right then, I'm here writing a post when I should be doing my daily writing exercise. It's a procrasteling, but sort of a necessary one. When I get published, it would be a good thing were I to have an established web presence: le voici.

November is slowly getting closer to rising on the horizon, and it is an extra piece of dried pine to the hearth that is my writing. Currently the flame is sleeping, occasionally turning over and giving everyone a start, then calming back down, disappearing into the coals of my mind.

One of these days, if I don't punk out, the fire will get used to being fed, and will be crackling more than sporadically. Until then, having NaNoWriMo is a good way of keeping me alive, so to speak.

Which is another reason for the daily writing exercise: How am I supposed to pop back into the actuality of writing 1800 words a day if I'm currently averaging 100 (yes, I''m being generous)?

Fellow followers of the craft, let us continue on! Using whatever tools motivate us in changing intangible thoughts into visible words. :)

Pot on the Fire

Hi again! Vert here.

I was wondering what to write about this week, and Vikki brought the mule to mind. She was asking about revisions and updates on the process, which made me consider where I was, writing-wise, in the first place.

I find myself, these days, thinking more about what I want to do with the writing. Do I want to put more organized time into it? Do I want to shelve it completely for the next couple years and come back when I have more focus?

I look at the writing that I have been doing in the past 3 or so years, and I think, yeah, there are good parts in here, but do I really want to invest myself so deeply in what might end up encouraging schizophrenia?

Those are more mental questions than Vikki knew she was stirring up, perhaps.

I know that I enjoy the creative process that writing is. Even the process of revising has its small joys and victories.

...Maybe, for now, I will content myself with that, and write on...

Taking a Sounding

Today has snuck up on me. Well, not really. But I have had a hard time finding a topic to blog about for this week. Sure I could continue my meta musings (not to be confused with similarly named fiber product), but... frankly, I didn't feel like it. :)

So instead, I will meander briefly on the subject of dimensionality. Every character, place, scene even, needs depth in it. As a reader, I only have a certain amount of attention to spare for elements that are shallow or superficial. Therefore, as a writer, I owe it to my putative readers to make sure that my elements don't come off as cardboard cut-outs.

That being said, I also have to make sure that I am not just producing collages for the senses, without underlying activity.

Is it a balancing act? Will I get better at it as I go? I have no idea really. I hope so. :)

And since, in order for me to get better at introducing depth without inducing the floundering response in my critique partners and beta readers, I need more practice at the craft, I'll end here, and head back to other writing activities, in this case, exploring the Mongol lifestyle.

See you next time!

Meta Musings_4

If you have someone who figures they are going crazy because they hear voices, and there is no one to make a diagnosis of either demon possession or schizophrenia, what happens when that person meets another person who makes the voices stop?

Gale (we met her a little while ago) hears voices. And they aren't talking to her at all. They're talking about politics and succession, and killing people who get in their way. Sometimes they talk about sex. Obviously they have nothing in common with her and the village wherein her family lives, but their voices are so loud that they are all she can hear. The voices of everybody around her are reduced to moving lips and pantomime.

Gale has been hanging on to her sanity by working with the dye pots. It is a job that she knows by heart and she finds herself again and again when she is putting colors on fabric.

Loren is a traveling story collector. He bumps into Gale as she is on her way back to the dyehouse after bathing, and she notices the temporary absence of all thought but her own.

She discovers that when she is around Loren, the voices are quiet. The conversations continue, but they are outside of her hearing. However Loren is a traveller, so after collecting stories, his plan is to leave.

Is this enough of a motivator for Gale to leave her village and travel with him?

Meta Musings_3

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Joel. He is tall and looks gaunt in the face, as if he never got enough to eat as a child and still feels the lack. Under his signature brown and gray robes, his arms and legs are full of viney muscles and veins. He has a slight hunch to his upper body, and walks with a long staff.

Joel is old, and has survived the intrigues of court by cultivating the attitude of indifference plus increasing deafness. He is the Assistant to the Archivist, and has seen countless Archivists come and go. Joel believes in the power of history like others believe in the power of a god.

What will take this man from the rolls of paper and make him an active participant in history, instead of just an observer?

The inciting incident is the theft of some botanical texts dealing with the myths of plant warriors.

Meta Musings_2

I'm playing around with structure for the next few posts, not rambling completely, defining the parts of the ride as I plot through.

----

Ladies and gents, meet Gale. She's shorter than average, of average build, and has nondescript, faded brown eyes, one of which is slightly higher than the other. Her remarkable feature is her shoulder length, white blond hair. It stops people in their tracks the first time they meet her because everyone else in the villages around has brown hair.

Gale's mother works in the dying business, and so does Gale. Both their hands are perpetually odd colors from dealing with the dyes and the drying product.Gale enjoys dying and also enjoys drawing.

Here is the basis for Gale's inciting incident: She begins to hear voices after her family moves to the neighboring country because the war is getting too close for comfort.

The inciting incident: Gale can no longer function normally because the voices are so loud and insistent that they block out her other hearing and some of her sight. Her parents move her to/keep her in the dying house (and she works the physical processes while her mother does the dye powder making), as the repetitive and familiar process calms her more than anything else.

Now: how do we get her out of the village and headed towards the castle and her destiny?...

Points of View - Part 1

I feel like being a bit school marmish with today's blog post. -- Stop passing notes! No chewing gum in class! Stop picking on the boys! -- Do you feel like you're in grade school again? Good. Here we go. Point of View is one of the most basic aspects of writing fiction, however it has enough complexity that it can change the whole course of a story. In a recent post, Kalayna described how she had to change points of view to find the right voice for a story. I experienced something similar with a short story I am writing. I started to tell it from more than one character's perspective, but I lost the tension and, in the process, the plot.

There are four key aspects of POV--person, ensemble, distance, and omniscience. Each of these categories contains a range of possibilities with itself and the combination of the four makes for wildly varied creative choices. Most writers make these choices intuitively while they write a story, but being aware of the options will allow a writer more creativity, help them be more aware of POV inconsistencies, and possibly reveal to them why a particular scene or scenes don't work the way and author wants. I will tackle the two simpler aspects of POV today--person and ensemble--and wrestle with the more obtuse ones on my next blogging day. Why do hard work now when you can put it off, right?

The first key to POV is person. Person refers to the grammatical categories of first person (I, we), second person (you, y'all), and third person (he, she, it, them). Contrary to appearances, person in fiction does not define whether the reader is inside or outside of a character's head. Person does dictate perspective to a degree, but distance affects it much more. Person really comes down to pronouns--to what pronouns you use when you are writing. Most fiction is written in third person. Third gives the writer a greater choice in the other three aspects of POV, as well as being well known and well tolerated by the reading public. The next most popular person is first. First gives the reader full access into the mind of the character. First is limiting though, because it must be by definition close in omniscience and subjective in distance (see Part 2). Some readers are uncomfortable with first person because it is close to a loss of self or an invasion of someone else. Second person is rarely used in fiction, and it usually meets with poor results. People don't like being told what to do. Well, unless you're reading a blog. I personally write and read just as well in either first or third person. I attempted a second person story once, but I think I purged those files from my computer (I hope).

The second factor in POV is ensemble. Ensemble deals with how many characters will define your POV. We call the characters the POV character of the scene. The simplest ensemble choice is to go with one POV character--the writer follows one character all the way through the story. This can be done either through first or third person. Another popular tactic is to have an ensemble cast written in third person. This means that the entire book is written in third person and each scene or chapter follows a different character. The writer decides how many different POV characters they swap back and forth between. The POV character usually changes at the scene break. In omniscient view (again, you'll have to wait for Part 2), a writer can change POV character within the scene because the narrator keeps a distance from the action, but I'll get into that later. I wrote my first Nano novel in first person with an ensemble cast--the whole novel was in first person but I switched my POV character every chapter between the two main characters. Their voices were fairly distinct, so I think it worked most of the time, but the stronger, more sarcastic of the two definitely overpowered her sister in some chapters. She was just so fun to write.

The class bell is ringing, so you'd better stuff all your junk in your backpack and get out of here. I'll warn you, if you leave something behind, I'm keeping it. And if it's a caricature of me with dragon wings and snout, spewing fire, I'll hang it on my fridge, you sweet thing you. See you next time for more lessons in points of view!

Meta Musings

I read an interesting article the other day about places people write from, motivations for writing, that sort of thing. The author of the article said that in general people either write to repair their psyche, or because they have a story to tell. (Yes, I am paraphrasing like a bandit.)

I asked another person about the article and they were less precise; over their shoulder, they tossed: writers write. For this person, that was all it came down to.

Who is correct? Does it even matter?

I don't know.

What I do know is that I have a villain (throne stealing cousin), a princess (abducted at birth and raised in a country not her own), and now I need a hero to set things to rights. Any suggestions?