I want to curl up in a ball and just stay there.
For a week, I was sick. I have lupus, it's a fact of life, blah-blah. I couldn't concentrate so I struggled to be just a little behind on school work (technically, I'm not behind in the two classes that I dreaded it most in...I just feel behind). My professors for the two classes I most worried about were great--understanding that it's a chronic illness, and if I could manage my work, so be it. In my 3rd class, it hasn't been an issue. It's just once a week on Mondays--I am a paper behind, but I've been averaging an A and the last class was canceled anyway. Now worries...
...X's "stomach virus" put him in emergency surgery to remove his appendix. (I wrote that and remembered this is not my journal and not everyone reading this knows that X is my husband. Now you know.) It was horrible. I was a little scared by the time that I got him into my brother's car to go to the hospital, but at that point, it was 1am; I needed to get my daughter and nephew to school in the morning and get myself to class, and I still believed that he'd get IV fluids and better meds than I'd gotten him over the counter. He called at 5am to tell me that his appendix had burst and they were about to prep him for surgery.
I was so not going to class. I explained the situation to the lovely two professors mentioned above with my assignments attached. They were great about it. So I foolishly didn't think to get anything on hospital letterhead explaining what happened. I was worried about how weak he looked, how I needed to feed him. They only kept him one more night, but he was so much stronger that I didn't question that. All I cared about was what I needed to know for his post-op care. So guess what Professor #4 wants to not smash my grade over my absences?
Hopefully, it will be easier to get in touch with someone who can give me something on hospital letterhead once the weekend is over. My bitchy-self says, "Or I'll just show her all the post-op info sheets and she can take 'em or leave 'em." My regular self is tired...tired from being so worried about my partner...tired from being worried about my grades...tired from my lupus flare...
I want to call in dead for the rest of the semester.
And I want to write.
In all the stress, I turned to fiction. Having read an *almost* satisfying novel, I want to put my own words on the page as though I might make a million and one mistakes, but I've been inoculated against those that made that piece of work *almost*. And that fear from suddenly learning that X was going into surgery and the awareness of what can go wrong even in simple procedures is with me in a little ball that I can't throw away despite it all ending well. I want to fictionalize it so it has a place outside my body.
But I can't phone the semester in so I'm going to hit the books.
...Screw it. I'll hit the books after writing for half an hour.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Strange young adult kinda dream
I was young, pretty, white. I loved him and he was gone, my only lead--only REAL lead--a phone number. So I dialed and found this weird network like nothing I ever experienced before. And it wasn't him, but I was closer. I dialed again and again, til I had to take a break. I didn't like going out of his room, seeing his family trying to be normal while I was a stranger in their home so nothing could be normal. Mom cooked, twin boys tried to play only to freeze when they saw me. He got his parents to say yes to my coming by promising I'd stay in the kid sister's room, but I haven't done that since he disappeared and she looks at me with this longing like I'm still supposed to still stay up late braiding her hair and whispering Older Girl secrets. Kid brother's worst of all cuz he's just a couple of years younger than us, all punk rock/skater hot and getting closer to me while we looked for HIM.
I'm getting out of that house and freeing us all, but just one more round of calls. I hide out in the bathroom upstairs and dial. There's an answer, it sounds like a party, and I thinking YES! I'll be pissed when he answers, demand why he didn't just say that things were too intense...or no, I love him so much I can let him go without that scene if he just picks up the phone....But I see IT, one of the visions I'd had through all the phone calls, this a repeat of the first where he's walking along the shoulder of a dark road and van pulls up, he gets in, and vanishes...
There's a clicking sound on the phone and the party noises disappear. The phone pressed to my ear rings as though I'd just dialed a number, and I can hear the echo of a phone ringing somewhere in the house. My stomach seems to drop, an shadow of the sinking feeling felt throughout my soul. Both rings stop and I'm already moving to hang up before I hear the little sister answer the phone.
There's a knock. "Come in." I'm scrubbing at my eyes when kid brother walks in, seriously hot, but not the one. He holds up a portable phone. "Were you...calling the house phone from a house phone? How is that possible?"
.....That last bit's not true. It's already morphed in the recording. It WAS the same number, so the best I should have gotten would have voice mail, but that's not what he said. It had been something about Lucy thinking I might need something...I said, "Um? Toilet paper?" and we both looked at the roll--not full, but full enough so that if I needed more I was probably about to go through something no one wanted in their bathroom. I shared a smile with him, but it was almost like there were two of me--the one sharing a moment with him and the one still totally engrossed by the search for HIM.
The dream ended with flashes of vision and...a Damien Rice song playing on loop.
______________________________________________
The dream that I had left this page open to write about was kind of like that. In a way, it was totally different--the woman I was in then was more solidly grown, a woman of color. There had been less urgency with no missing lover. But it was the sort that, upon waking, I knew was a story, not some sort of working things out from real life. I'd gotten up from that dream and wrote about it in a hard copy note book. Then, I'd set about trying to build a plot around the character study I'd been given in my sleep.
That was about two weeks before NaNoWriMo had started. We're a week into and I'l still trying to build a plot, plodding along well behind writing schedule.
There's still lingering urgency from this morning's dream. I feel like I could figure out what was up with that phone network, and spend the day writing the book, each bit missing from the dream unraveling as I reach. Reality's throwing cold water on that fantasy. Having a lupus flare, I phoned in all of last week, so I cannot skip class today. If I did, I would probably end up spending hours just trying to make sense of the phone thing alone, hours writing the opening (if I dove right in rather than hours spent outlining), and I'd hit the middle and run out of steam.
But it's recorded (shifts in tense and any other flaws) so I can come back and revisit this if I ever need/want to and you can see how this kinda, sorta works for me. Sometimes.
I'm getting out of that house and freeing us all, but just one more round of calls. I hide out in the bathroom upstairs and dial. There's an answer, it sounds like a party, and I thinking YES! I'll be pissed when he answers, demand why he didn't just say that things were too intense...or no, I love him so much I can let him go without that scene if he just picks up the phone....But I see IT, one of the visions I'd had through all the phone calls, this a repeat of the first where he's walking along the shoulder of a dark road and van pulls up, he gets in, and vanishes...
There's a clicking sound on the phone and the party noises disappear. The phone pressed to my ear rings as though I'd just dialed a number, and I can hear the echo of a phone ringing somewhere in the house. My stomach seems to drop, an shadow of the sinking feeling felt throughout my soul. Both rings stop and I'm already moving to hang up before I hear the little sister answer the phone.
There's a knock. "Come in." I'm scrubbing at my eyes when kid brother walks in, seriously hot, but not the one. He holds up a portable phone. "Were you...calling the house phone from a house phone? How is that possible?"
.....That last bit's not true. It's already morphed in the recording. It WAS the same number, so the best I should have gotten would have voice mail, but that's not what he said. It had been something about Lucy thinking I might need something...I said, "Um? Toilet paper?" and we both looked at the roll--not full, but full enough so that if I needed more I was probably about to go through something no one wanted in their bathroom. I shared a smile with him, but it was almost like there were two of me--the one sharing a moment with him and the one still totally engrossed by the search for HIM.
The dream ended with flashes of vision and...a Damien Rice song playing on loop.
______________________________________________
The dream that I had left this page open to write about was kind of like that. In a way, it was totally different--the woman I was in then was more solidly grown, a woman of color. There had been less urgency with no missing lover. But it was the sort that, upon waking, I knew was a story, not some sort of working things out from real life. I'd gotten up from that dream and wrote about it in a hard copy note book. Then, I'd set about trying to build a plot around the character study I'd been given in my sleep.
That was about two weeks before NaNoWriMo had started. We're a week into and I'l still trying to build a plot, plodding along well behind writing schedule.
There's still lingering urgency from this morning's dream. I feel like I could figure out what was up with that phone network, and spend the day writing the book, each bit missing from the dream unraveling as I reach. Reality's throwing cold water on that fantasy. Having a lupus flare, I phoned in all of last week, so I cannot skip class today. If I did, I would probably end up spending hours just trying to make sense of the phone thing alone, hours writing the opening (if I dove right in rather than hours spent outlining), and I'd hit the middle and run out of steam.
But it's recorded (shifts in tense and any other flaws) so I can come back and revisit this if I ever need/want to and you can see how this kinda, sorta works for me. Sometimes.
Friday, October 29, 2010
What the hell am I doing?!
It's that time again...or, several times again. Halloween is just days away; beyond the anticipation of dressing the Wee One up, another Halloween means another year of staring at a computer screen at the moment--Eastern Standard Time--that October becomes November. November, of course, is National Novel Writing Month.
I do it every year, even when I shouldn't, like this year. I've done almost no writing that wasn't academic since the semester began. On the one hand, I've never "won" NaNo so what's one more time of not reaching the goal? On the other, I need the pressure I put on myself during NaNo like I need...something more creative than a hole in my head.
And thinking about it has me back in this place of, "What the hell an I doing? I'm not a novelist."
I am a writer. We've established that, right? I write great openings and decent endings, and shitty middles that never seem to get revised no matter how often I sit down to revise them. When do I say enough?
...Apparently not now. I had this great dream a few weeks ago; it was basically an introduction to a character--a woman who lets lost souls pass though her into...well, wherever they go. I dig her, dig the relationship with her sister and the potential relationship with the man I dreamt her meeting in a dark alley before a rift in the fabric of reality. All of my non-academic time has been spent between learning the Savage Mojo material for a project I've been tapped for and failing to build a story around this woman.
I create enjoyable characters. Sometimes, I string words together nicely. Whatever made me thing that would translate into being a novelist?
In a week when I've carved time out from my studies and I'm writing, I'll feel better. In a month when I've got a neat beginning, a character I enjoy with a pretty cool supporting cast, and nowhere to take them...I'll be right back here wondering what the hell I'm doing.
I do it every year, even when I shouldn't, like this year. I've done almost no writing that wasn't academic since the semester began. On the one hand, I've never "won" NaNo so what's one more time of not reaching the goal? On the other, I need the pressure I put on myself during NaNo like I need...something more creative than a hole in my head.
And thinking about it has me back in this place of, "What the hell an I doing? I'm not a novelist."
I am a writer. We've established that, right? I write great openings and decent endings, and shitty middles that never seem to get revised no matter how often I sit down to revise them. When do I say enough?
...Apparently not now. I had this great dream a few weeks ago; it was basically an introduction to a character--a woman who lets lost souls pass though her into...well, wherever they go. I dig her, dig the relationship with her sister and the potential relationship with the man I dreamt her meeting in a dark alley before a rift in the fabric of reality. All of my non-academic time has been spent between learning the Savage Mojo material for a project I've been tapped for and failing to build a story around this woman.
I create enjoyable characters. Sometimes, I string words together nicely. Whatever made me thing that would translate into being a novelist?
In a week when I've carved time out from my studies and I'm writing, I'll feel better. In a month when I've got a neat beginning, a character I enjoy with a pretty cool supporting cast, and nowhere to take them...I'll be right back here wondering what the hell I'm doing.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Rethinking self-publishing
We've covered this. Self-publishing is a good thing...for Other People. If you're like me, you've grown up wanting to see your books published by the same folks who publish your favorite authors. You may or may not get over that; for me, the dream is still being published by Tor or Ace, but the goal (sometimes my dreams and my goals don't match) is to write for a living. This meant accepting, first, that my work (when finally ready) might find a home in at a small press. Eventually, I accepted that I may become an e-book writer. Self publishing was out of the question...until now.
Some great books have been self published, but their numbers are eclipsed by the many, many crappy books self published because no agent or editor would consider them. The list of self pubbed books that made the big time--sometimes remaining self published, but often bought by a big house--is nice and long...until you realize how many hundreds of thousands are never seen outside of the author's circle of friends and family.
And then there's the industry pressure. I've heard/read "Agents and publishers won't even bother with your work if they've learned you've self-published" enough that it's not worth looking for links. Even if your self-pubbed novel gets a serious readership, you're not eligible to join many of the writing associations that you may want to. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America association doesn't come out and say NO SELF-PUBLISHING, but they give a list of what makes you eligible and Lulu isn't on it. Horror Writer's Association are longer and more involved, and at the end of the active membership regulations (as opposed to associate or affiliate), they let you know that any non-comic book self-published author need not apply. And so on.
None of that matters if you just want a story "out there." But if your goal is to quit your day job, the emergency medical fund, insider track for future publication, and other benefits are pretty damn important...
Yeah. I can go on and on about why self-pubbing is my second to last choice. The above doesn't even touch on marketing and other such issues. So why rethink self-publishing at all? My friend Julie.
I have the urge to write about how fabulous she is as a writing buddy, how smart, how dedicated to her craft...What matters more, though, is praise for her work. When I read that post, I thought, "Wow, how fabulous! Too bad it's utterly useless!"
The chances of an agent stopping by, reading that review, and asking for the manuscript seem ridiculous to me, regardless of my sucking at math. IF she were putting that book out herself while her other manuscript is in agent limbo, it would be another story. Apparently, Julie thought so, too. She revamped her long idle site (love that logo!), added the Doc stories that are getting a following of their own, and put serious research into the details of what it would take to publish Senior Year Bites herself.
Rather than thinking of all the reasons for why she shouldn't, I immediately thought of why she should. Critiquing selected chapters of Senior Year Bites, I was impressed by Julie's talent and skill, but I didn't love it the way that Rabid Reader does (if you didn't click the "praise for her work" link, go take a look).
Young Adult books start with a strike against them when it comes to me, and SYB is "light" while my tastes run toward "thick" if not "heavy". It's a totally irrational bit of personal taste that I mentioned before with published authors Anton Strout and Mark Henry. I was randomly thinking the other day how Strout's Dead To Me
has my all time favorite opening scene, though I'm not crazy about the book. Less randomly, I just reminisced about how fabulous parts of Henry's Happy Hour of the Damned
were, though I gave up on reading the whole thing early on.
These books are well loved by other people, but were I an agent deciding whether or not to rep them, Henry would have gotten an encouraging "But it's not for me" letter and Strout would have gotten a request for the full manuscript, only to have to change major elements or to move on to someone else to represent him...
Industry pros will tell you, "That's the process" and "if the story's good, it will get published." I've swallowed that whole. But I've also watched Julie revise and fine tune Arabian Dreams, send it out, and learn that there aren't a lot of agents interested in young adult equestrian fantasy books. The chapters I critiqued were great, agent response reflect that, but alas...
I thought, "Send it to publishers that don't require you to go through an agent! It would fit right in with the equestrian adult fantasy published by Luna." Except that they don't publish YA books. "Carina! They seem to be looking for everything that doesn't easily fall into other categories." Except for YA books.
Maybe the idea should be "if the story's good, readers will read it." I'm not advocating doing away with agents (do you know how to navigate international rights? me neither), but in the days of social networking, more book blogs than you can shake a magic wand at, and relatively simple (so I'm told) tech to make great-looking trailers, why can't you write a good story, edit the hell out of it, and get it out to the would-be fans without:
~~~~~Shopping it to agents and waiting months between each for a "cool, but no thanks"?
~~~~~Waiting for where you fit into the schedule IF you get an agent who finds you a publisher?
~~~~~And still having to do a lot of the marketing yourself because you've just made the bottom of the mid-list?
To Julie, I say, "Go for it!" For anyone else (maybe myself included one day), I say put in the time for researching how to do this right. If the pros outweigh the cons, rock on with your bad self!
(Link of encouragement: Konrath ebook sales top 100K)
Some great books have been self published, but their numbers are eclipsed by the many, many crappy books self published because no agent or editor would consider them. The list of self pubbed books that made the big time--sometimes remaining self published, but often bought by a big house--is nice and long...until you realize how many hundreds of thousands are never seen outside of the author's circle of friends and family.
And then there's the industry pressure. I've heard/read "Agents and publishers won't even bother with your work if they've learned you've self-published" enough that it's not worth looking for links. Even if your self-pubbed novel gets a serious readership, you're not eligible to join many of the writing associations that you may want to. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America association doesn't come out and say NO SELF-PUBLISHING, but they give a list of what makes you eligible and Lulu isn't on it. Horror Writer's Association are longer and more involved, and at the end of the active membership regulations (as opposed to associate or affiliate), they let you know that any non-comic book self-published author need not apply. And so on.
None of that matters if you just want a story "out there." But if your goal is to quit your day job, the emergency medical fund, insider track for future publication, and other benefits are pretty damn important...
Yeah. I can go on and on about why self-pubbing is my second to last choice. The above doesn't even touch on marketing and other such issues. So why rethink self-publishing at all? My friend Julie.
I have the urge to write about how fabulous she is as a writing buddy, how smart, how dedicated to her craft...What matters more, though, is praise for her work. When I read that post, I thought, "Wow, how fabulous! Too bad it's utterly useless!"
The chances of an agent stopping by, reading that review, and asking for the manuscript seem ridiculous to me, regardless of my sucking at math. IF she were putting that book out herself while her other manuscript is in agent limbo, it would be another story. Apparently, Julie thought so, too. She revamped her long idle site (love that logo!), added the Doc stories that are getting a following of their own, and put serious research into the details of what it would take to publish Senior Year Bites herself.
Rather than thinking of all the reasons for why she shouldn't, I immediately thought of why she should. Critiquing selected chapters of Senior Year Bites, I was impressed by Julie's talent and skill, but I didn't love it the way that Rabid Reader does (if you didn't click the "praise for her work" link, go take a look).
Young Adult books start with a strike against them when it comes to me, and SYB is "light" while my tastes run toward "thick" if not "heavy". It's a totally irrational bit of personal taste that I mentioned before with published authors Anton Strout and Mark Henry. I was randomly thinking the other day how Strout's Dead To Me
has my all time favorite opening scene, though I'm not crazy about the book. Less randomly, I just reminisced about how fabulous parts of Henry's Happy Hour of the Damned were, though I gave up on reading the whole thing early on.These books are well loved by other people, but were I an agent deciding whether or not to rep them, Henry would have gotten an encouraging "But it's not for me" letter and Strout would have gotten a request for the full manuscript, only to have to change major elements or to move on to someone else to represent him...
Industry pros will tell you, "That's the process" and "if the story's good, it will get published." I've swallowed that whole. But I've also watched Julie revise and fine tune Arabian Dreams, send it out, and learn that there aren't a lot of agents interested in young adult equestrian fantasy books. The chapters I critiqued were great, agent response reflect that, but alas...
I thought, "Send it to publishers that don't require you to go through an agent! It would fit right in with the equestrian adult fantasy published by Luna." Except that they don't publish YA books. "Carina! They seem to be looking for everything that doesn't easily fall into other categories." Except for YA books.
Maybe the idea should be "if the story's good, readers will read it." I'm not advocating doing away with agents (do you know how to navigate international rights? me neither), but in the days of social networking, more book blogs than you can shake a magic wand at, and relatively simple (so I'm told) tech to make great-looking trailers, why can't you write a good story, edit the hell out of it, and get it out to the would-be fans without:
~~~~~Shopping it to agents and waiting months between each for a "cool, but no thanks"?
~~~~~Waiting for where you fit into the schedule IF you get an agent who finds you a publisher?
~~~~~And still having to do a lot of the marketing yourself because you've just made the bottom of the mid-list?
To Julie, I say, "Go for it!" For anyone else (maybe myself included one day), I say put in the time for researching how to do this right. If the pros outweigh the cons, rock on with your bad self!
(Link of encouragement: Konrath ebook sales top 100K)
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Characters
My son's young personality was pretty much set before he ever met the man who would become his stepfather, so I'm constantly amazed at how alike they are. They fall into these patterns...for instance, they love to communicate while apart, which is most of the year since the boyo lives with his dad in a distant state during school. Then they spend the summer bumping heads, so much alike that living together makes them batty. Now I know what my relationship with my dad must have looked like from the outside.
I call my daughter "My Little Demon." She's a planet sized ball of willful energy squished into a skinny six-year-old package. Even when she's being good, she's pushing. She's completely her own person, yet shares a lot of traits with her brother that, I'm told often, were not inherited from her father.
My mind holds all these little facts, like any parent's, about my kids with no effort at all. I don't have to think hard to recall that, while the Wee One (my girl's other nickname) likes tomato slices and loves fried pickles, the Boo Man (a name he's outgrown, but I haven't, and that serves well enough to not spread his identity around the internet) hates tomatoes and thinks fried pickles are the grossest things he's heard of that don't come from an animal. I know their strengths and weaknesses, the music they like, the shows they are likely to watch...
It's like that with my characters, too. Or, rather, it's like that with the protagonists. I haven't written out what Quinn did for his tenth birthday, but I know him well enough to guess (can't really be wrong since I did make him up, but you know what I mean). I haven't taken the time to figure out Wade's favorite food, but just thinking the question, I know immediately that this chick is meat eater. The spicier, the better.
My antagonists, on the other hand, tend to be closed books to me.
Stories usually come to me from the character; some voice that isn't mine will seem to speak to me, or a physical/psychological quirk will stick in my head and I'll end up building a person around it. Then I'll discover what story they belong to. Unfortunately, that often leaves me with "insert bad guy here", with which I create a story that's never fully cooked.
Realizing that is a good thing in a G.I. Joe sort of "knowing is half the battle" way. But even when I was a kid, I always responded to that with, "Yeah, but it's the easy half." Figuring that out didn't mean that I could fix it. Trying to redo my villains following the hero template just made me feel bad for them; I couldn't help but want to write kinder, gentler versions....
I may have gotten the reality check that I've needed during last weekend's drunken celebrations.
Long story short, the liquor flowed and conversations turned to places they might not go while everyone is sober. I learned that my ex had told a nasty little lie about me, and to my family no less. The truth is simple yet complicated, and illustrates the character flaws of each of us. The narrative he created manages to paint him both as victim and hero, and makes me a bad, bad person.
In a life that I've gone through great pains to make drama free, he became my villain with that stupid, selfish act.
As a woman, I was furious. As a writer, something clicked.
Here's where my thinking gets convoluted, but if you've followed me this far, hold on! When I was a kid, my game of choice was D&D {Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebook Set (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Three Book Slipcased Set)
} with it's character alignments that dictated behavior. Lawful good characters were basically the white knights with good intentions. Lawful evil finds it's modern equivalent in the corrupt district attorney, following the law, but happily putting it to bad ends for a profit. And as good opposed evil, lawful personalities found their opposite in chaotic alignments. Chaotic evil characters were the baddest of the bad with no regard for anything but their own desires. Think serial killer, but not Dexter (Dexter: The First Season
) since he does have a code--a sense of being more lawful evil--to live by.
I was once invited to a different game that I, alas, never became too familiar with. But it did introduced to a different way of viewing alignments; a system not so much of good vs. evil, but varying degrees of selfishness. I hadn't thought about that for years. Decades. Til my ex's lie was exposed.
Let's use him to build a better bad guy!
He's a regular guy. He's got his good qualities and bad. Yeah, he did plenty to contribute to the break up of our marriage, but that's enough water under the bridge that, after a few days' of deliberation, I accepted his Facebook friend request. The fact that he also friended my dad and brothers is creepy, but no biggy. The lie he told makes him an asshat, but not the biggest in the world. Not much of a bad guy in real life. But fictionally, those things are just the start.
Maybe he plays the part of the old-lover-turned-good-friend so well that, when little things start to go wrong in our heroine's life, she thinks it's all a coincidence. One small, self-serving act that he got away with leads to another; he's sure that he's right all the while, never seeing the has crossed the line until the climatic end. It can be all about recovering his lost love--psychological thriller; romance if his misdeeds are the obstacle between her and her new hero. Maybe befriending her was just a means to get to a family member--mystery or mainstream. Or maybe there's a supernatural element behind his selfishness--horror, urban fantasy.
OK, so the genre stuff is, perhaps, a red herring. The nut that I needed to crack was that I start at the end, with them filling in the space of evil; knowing how they get to that point might breath new life into my antagonists.
I call my daughter "My Little Demon." She's a planet sized ball of willful energy squished into a skinny six-year-old package. Even when she's being good, she's pushing. She's completely her own person, yet shares a lot of traits with her brother that, I'm told often, were not inherited from her father.
My mind holds all these little facts, like any parent's, about my kids with no effort at all. I don't have to think hard to recall that, while the Wee One (my girl's other nickname) likes tomato slices and loves fried pickles, the Boo Man (a name he's outgrown, but I haven't, and that serves well enough to not spread his identity around the internet) hates tomatoes and thinks fried pickles are the grossest things he's heard of that don't come from an animal. I know their strengths and weaknesses, the music they like, the shows they are likely to watch...
It's like that with my characters, too. Or, rather, it's like that with the protagonists. I haven't written out what Quinn did for his tenth birthday, but I know him well enough to guess (can't really be wrong since I did make him up, but you know what I mean). I haven't taken the time to figure out Wade's favorite food, but just thinking the question, I know immediately that this chick is meat eater. The spicier, the better.
My antagonists, on the other hand, tend to be closed books to me.
Stories usually come to me from the character; some voice that isn't mine will seem to speak to me, or a physical/psychological quirk will stick in my head and I'll end up building a person around it. Then I'll discover what story they belong to. Unfortunately, that often leaves me with "insert bad guy here", with which I create a story that's never fully cooked.
Realizing that is a good thing in a G.I. Joe sort of "knowing is half the battle" way. But even when I was a kid, I always responded to that with, "Yeah, but it's the easy half." Figuring that out didn't mean that I could fix it. Trying to redo my villains following the hero template just made me feel bad for them; I couldn't help but want to write kinder, gentler versions....
I may have gotten the reality check that I've needed during last weekend's drunken celebrations.
Long story short, the liquor flowed and conversations turned to places they might not go while everyone is sober. I learned that my ex had told a nasty little lie about me, and to my family no less. The truth is simple yet complicated, and illustrates the character flaws of each of us. The narrative he created manages to paint him both as victim and hero, and makes me a bad, bad person.
In a life that I've gone through great pains to make drama free, he became my villain with that stupid, selfish act.
As a woman, I was furious. As a writer, something clicked.
Here's where my thinking gets convoluted, but if you've followed me this far, hold on! When I was a kid, my game of choice was D&D {Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebook Set (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Three Book Slipcased Set)
} with it's character alignments that dictated behavior. Lawful good characters were basically the white knights with good intentions. Lawful evil finds it's modern equivalent in the corrupt district attorney, following the law, but happily putting it to bad ends for a profit. And as good opposed evil, lawful personalities found their opposite in chaotic alignments. Chaotic evil characters were the baddest of the bad with no regard for anything but their own desires. Think serial killer, but not Dexter (Dexter: The First Season) since he does have a code--a sense of being more lawful evil--to live by.I was once invited to a different game that I, alas, never became too familiar with. But it did introduced to a different way of viewing alignments; a system not so much of good vs. evil, but varying degrees of selfishness. I hadn't thought about that for years. Decades. Til my ex's lie was exposed.
Let's use him to build a better bad guy!
He's a regular guy. He's got his good qualities and bad. Yeah, he did plenty to contribute to the break up of our marriage, but that's enough water under the bridge that, after a few days' of deliberation, I accepted his Facebook friend request. The fact that he also friended my dad and brothers is creepy, but no biggy. The lie he told makes him an asshat, but not the biggest in the world. Not much of a bad guy in real life. But fictionally, those things are just the start.
Maybe he plays the part of the old-lover-turned-good-friend so well that, when little things start to go wrong in our heroine's life, she thinks it's all a coincidence. One small, self-serving act that he got away with leads to another; he's sure that he's right all the while, never seeing the has crossed the line until the climatic end. It can be all about recovering his lost love--psychological thriller; romance if his misdeeds are the obstacle between her and her new hero. Maybe befriending her was just a means to get to a family member--mystery or mainstream. Or maybe there's a supernatural element behind his selfishness--horror, urban fantasy.
OK, so the genre stuff is, perhaps, a red herring. The nut that I needed to crack was that I start at the end, with them filling in the space of evil; knowing how they get to that point might breath new life into my antagonists.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
No matter what I do, Friday keeps coming
Soon, school will begin again. I'll need to get up around the time that's been passing as a bed time for me, and the whole cycle of not-sleep-enough, get up, get the kid ready for school, somehow manage to get myself ready for school, come home study/cook/find time to write then not-sleep-enough will begin on Monday. I will join all the others who breathe a sigh of relief on hump day and eventually get to thank God it's Friday.
But for now, whether I settle onto the blog window or not, Friday means I'm looking at my writing productivity and lack of it.
....And, like now, sometimes that means I quickly do something else until Saturday.
That's not true, really. It's not that I go into avoidance mode, it's that I get stuck in what I *have* to do--and how silly is that when I don't have to post here at all? I don't have a boss who will pay me or not depending on what I produce. Can't tell you how much I appreciate my recurring readers, but I don't think your weeks are incomplete until you check out my latest babble on reading and/or writing.
Theoretically, I could write about anything (hopefully, but hell, not necessarily within the scope of the blog). Yet, I don't. I think "I have to get this down" or "I've gotta tell them this" and "ugh, I haven't mentioned that project in a long time..."
And since I don't give a crap about any of that at the time, I go on to read someone else's blog(s) and watch a season of La Femme Nikita, or something.
My writing is like that, too. The Hidden (generally known as Quinn's story to all you lovelies who have read chapters), might end up really being my first published novel....or it'll be the one in the bottom drawer forever (it doesn't suck, but it's got a fatal flaw that I may or may not be able to fix). My need to have it ready for the world and sent out is a good one. No one ever got published by leaving a work unrevised on her hard drive. But being unable to fix that flaw and unwilling to move on means nothing gets done.
Solution? Do something.
Not just any something, since for me, that can mean playing three hours worth of Plants Vs. Zombies. But if I'd written down all the ideas that have come at any given time while I wasn't blogging, I'd have enough to post for the next two months. While I was running around like a nut before my MiL came, I (in the true spirit of procrastination--in this case doing something productive to get out of doing something else productive) started two stories, each in a (slightly) different genre.
My new trick will be to build on that. The next time I've got the kid in bed with hours to go before the spouse expects attention, and I'm NOT revising The Hidden, I'll be writing something else. Anything else, so long as it's meant to be shared..no, sold. I have a funny resistance come up when writing that, which tells me that I need to call on my inner Harlan Ellison*.
I am, have always been, a storyteller. This is a truth of my being whether I ever make a living at it or not. It's like being right handed; it just...is. That gets all mixed up when the notion of money comes into play. "You should be focusing on the work, the craft, your ability to entertain and, in the right circumstances to enlighten" meets "What? Are you doing this for the money now? If it's about money, you should just quit!"
Bullshit. Yeah, the initial work needs to be for me, for the fun of a good story and the other joys I get from writing. But if I *can* succeed at it, I *deserve* to be paid for my work, just like a builder or doctor. Too many of us artsy types let ourselves believe that our work is worth less. I'm officially taking myself out of that trap.
So...If three hours are scheduled to write fiction in hopes of a sale, then that's what's going to happen for three hours. No blogging, gaming, or whatever instead. If it's time to blog, then I'm blogging. No fixating on blogging something I don't want to be bothered with because I got it stuck in my head that I HAVE post about that. Got it? Good.
*Ellison is famous for a lot of great spec fic writing, infamous for a couple of minor scandals that I don't currently care to seek out and link to, but perhaps best well known to me (besides for Deathbird Stories
) for being out and loud about getting paid as a writer.
But for now, whether I settle onto the blog window or not, Friday means I'm looking at my writing productivity and lack of it.
....And, like now, sometimes that means I quickly do something else until Saturday.
That's not true, really. It's not that I go into avoidance mode, it's that I get stuck in what I *have* to do--and how silly is that when I don't have to post here at all? I don't have a boss who will pay me or not depending on what I produce. Can't tell you how much I appreciate my recurring readers, but I don't think your weeks are incomplete until you check out my latest babble on reading and/or writing.
Theoretically, I could write about anything (hopefully, but hell, not necessarily within the scope of the blog). Yet, I don't. I think "I have to get this down" or "I've gotta tell them this" and "ugh, I haven't mentioned that project in a long time..."
And since I don't give a crap about any of that at the time, I go on to read someone else's blog(s) and watch a season of La Femme Nikita, or something.
My writing is like that, too. The Hidden (generally known as Quinn's story to all you lovelies who have read chapters), might end up really being my first published novel....or it'll be the one in the bottom drawer forever (it doesn't suck, but it's got a fatal flaw that I may or may not be able to fix). My need to have it ready for the world and sent out is a good one. No one ever got published by leaving a work unrevised on her hard drive. But being unable to fix that flaw and unwilling to move on means nothing gets done.
Solution? Do something.
Not just any something, since for me, that can mean playing three hours worth of Plants Vs. Zombies. But if I'd written down all the ideas that have come at any given time while I wasn't blogging, I'd have enough to post for the next two months. While I was running around like a nut before my MiL came, I (in the true spirit of procrastination--in this case doing something productive to get out of doing something else productive) started two stories, each in a (slightly) different genre.
My new trick will be to build on that. The next time I've got the kid in bed with hours to go before the spouse expects attention, and I'm NOT revising The Hidden, I'll be writing something else. Anything else, so long as it's meant to be shared..no, sold. I have a funny resistance come up when writing that, which tells me that I need to call on my inner Harlan Ellison*.
I am, have always been, a storyteller. This is a truth of my being whether I ever make a living at it or not. It's like being right handed; it just...is. That gets all mixed up when the notion of money comes into play. "You should be focusing on the work, the craft, your ability to entertain and, in the right circumstances to enlighten" meets "What? Are you doing this for the money now? If it's about money, you should just quit!"
Bullshit. Yeah, the initial work needs to be for me, for the fun of a good story and the other joys I get from writing. But if I *can* succeed at it, I *deserve* to be paid for my work, just like a builder or doctor. Too many of us artsy types let ourselves believe that our work is worth less. I'm officially taking myself out of that trap.
So...If three hours are scheduled to write fiction in hopes of a sale, then that's what's going to happen for three hours. No blogging, gaming, or whatever instead. If it's time to blog, then I'm blogging. No fixating on blogging something I don't want to be bothered with because I got it stuck in my head that I HAVE post about that. Got it? Good.
*Ellison is famous for a lot of great spec fic writing, infamous for a couple of minor scandals that I don't currently care to seek out and link to, but perhaps best well known to me (besides for Deathbird Stories
) for being out and loud about getting paid as a writer.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Links! Some yah gotta get before they're gone!
"The law isn’t about justice, Malcolm. It’s about the law." ~Anita Blake
If you've been thinking about checking out Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series (Smart Pop)
, the Melissa Tatum article on Anita and the law is available for free reading just until Tuesday the 17.
Great Thea Gilmore video. Even if the music style isn't to your taste, take a few minutes to imagine along.
Are you a U.S. or Canadian citizen with a young adult novel that's done or will be between October 1st and December 31st? If it's not under consideration from other publishers or agents, you might want to send it to the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel Makes me wish I'd paid more attention to WriteOnCon.
I'd forgotten around Heinlein's business rules:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it.
5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.
I just found them again at Dean Wesley Smith's Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. There's a lot more that I'm going to check out in there before bed. Take a look!
ETA: Something weird has happened to the formatting so the links look like regular text (of course this happens in a post all about links, right?). Wave your mouse on other the whole thing, or the bits that are likely to be links.
If you've been thinking about checking out Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series (Smart Pop)
, the Melissa Tatum article on Anita and the law is available for free reading just until Tuesday the 17.Great Thea Gilmore video. Even if the music style isn't to your taste, take a few minutes to imagine along.
Are you a U.S. or Canadian citizen with a young adult novel that's done or will be between October 1st and December 31st? If it's not under consideration from other publishers or agents, you might want to send it to the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel Makes me wish I'd paid more attention to WriteOnCon.
I'd forgotten around Heinlein's business rules:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it.
5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.
I just found them again at Dean Wesley Smith's Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. There's a lot more that I'm going to check out in there before bed. Take a look!
ETA: Something weird has happened to the formatting so the links look like regular text (of course this happens in a post all about links, right?). Wave your mouse on other the whole thing, or the bits that are likely to be links.
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