Writing advice is like underwear--certain styles work for certain people, but it's really there for support. Man. I feel like that should be a meme, like with flowers or something. Y'know, an inspirational Instagram photo. Hold on a sec. Yeah, that's more like it. Source. Just like you probably shouldn't try on every type of underwear simultaneously, not all writing advice is useful at the same time. And some doesn't work at all for the individual. One piece of writing advice that always requires a little bit of tailoring would be the "Write what you know" advice. Taken too literally, it makes it seem as though the only thing people should write is a journal--after all, what one knows is what one has done. I think there's some value to that. Some people lead interesting lives. I'm not one of those people, so I prefer my fictional stories to be a little bit more than recitation of my minutia. One thing that I believe about writing fiction is that the stories are wrapped up in the characters who are a part of it, and that character fits better in one skin over another. For example, I'm working on a "horror" novel (I don't read a lot of the genre, but that's never stopped me from going in and trying to figure it out) in which one of the characters I was writing ended up a redhead on the page. The thing is, she isn't a redhead. Just...nope. I can't seem to get my imagination to fit in with her being one, so she's now a blonde--what she was supposed to be early on in the creative experience, but I ignored. That's a superficial example, but it applies to other characters, too. I once thought of a character in a new story I was writing, but there was something wrong with him. Then I realized that it was because he was supposed to be a she. Not only that, but she needed to be a woman of color. Why? Well, it ended up being a way for me to empathize with a minority. That choice led to different narrative decisions that would have to be made with a Black woman as the protagonist, decisions that are informed by her past, gender, and race. I don't think I write one gender better than any others, but I do know that I've trained myself to consider a minority and female as the new default. My feminism dictates this, but I find it refreshing. So much of the media that I consume is already white cis-het, so this behavior helps me to broaden my horizons, as it were. Additionally, I find that there's a beautiful texture and nuance that having someone from a different philosophy or life experience on the page makes my stories richer. What about the axiom, though? Well, I can't confess to having experienced the difficulties--or joys--of being a person of color, to say nothing of being a Black woman, but I can, fortunately, read. That means I can see what WoC have to say about their experience and I can attempt to understand it through the stories I choose to write. Does this mean that I'm talking from PoC and WoC voices, using my white privilege to capitalize on a fad of diversity? First of all, that's a very pointed question with a lot of assumptions, but the basic answer to this is no, of course not, and yes, of course I am. I don't think diversity is a "fad" or anything but a deliberate choice to expand the exposure of other human beings. Incorporating other ideas, lifestyles, and histories generates a fabric and richness of human experience, and the concept of acknowledging other people--even of different races, backgrounds, and orientations--as somehow being a fad is insulting. So, no I'm not capitalizing on a fad because it isn't one. And, setting aside that, as an unpublished author, I'm not capitalizing on anything, I think that I absolutely am in a privileged position. I'm not writing about the Black experience; I'm writing about my White experience thinking about the Black experience. This is probably why I put so much effort into fantasy and science fiction in which the characters don't look like me: There, everyone's experience is filtered in a different way than our own experiences here. But, yes, there's definitely a danger of coming across as trying to be multicultural or progressive and, by virtue of the fact that I as a white, cis-het male have a systemic bonus for anything I try to do, I am, in a very real way, encroaching on space that works better for the voices out there that are speaking about experiences that I can't even imagine. I've thought about this a lot, actually, because there's a worry there. At this point, it's academic: I'm not published and, so far as I can see, there aren't any really significant chances of that changing anytime soon. But I rely on this simple fact: No matter who it is, there is no one on the planet who knows my characters the way I do. No one. They can't, because they've spent way more time in my head than in anyone else's. So when I write about them, I'm following that advice: I'm writing what I know.
0 Comments
When younger, I read a lot of different genres of fiction. I stayed up late reading Goosebumps, like most kids of the nineties, but I also read Young Adult "classics" like Island of the Blue Dolphin, The Cay, and It's Like This, Cat. I would try some of the bigger stories, but even Alice in Wonderland was too strangely written for me to really engage with it. I read a lot of Redwall books as I edged out of elementary school, and Anne McCaffery's world was large in my imagination by the end of sixth grade. Mr. Soto, my sixth grade teacher, read to us the first book of the Prydain Chronicles, which I instantly snatched up and read on my own. (That reminds me: I want to reread those books.) I read novelizations of video games (Castlevania ftw) and movies (Hook).
By the time I hit middle school, I was sometimes buying books of movies I couldn't see because they were rated-R, gaming the system as only a ninth-grader could. I picked up some Robotech to go along with the role playing game I dabbled in with my neighbor friend, as well as a steady diet of Spider-Man novels and comic books. Once I hit the midpoint of high school, I discovered Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, and I became hooked on epic fantasy. While I still like Goodkind's world and writing (particularly the first couple of books, before Richard became Superman-but-with-headaches), I'm not as large a fan of his world, having become fatigued of his objectivism and the lack of permanent stakes--in much the same way that Superman isn't usually a compelling character, because there's nothing he can't fix. Still, Richard Rahl and his wife, Kahlan were the inspirations for my earliest forays into fantasy writing of my own. Since then, I've read A Song of Ice and Fire, the Kingkiller Chronicles, and the best offerings of Brandon Sanderson. Thanks to being an English major, however, my shelves aren't exclusively burdened with science-fiction and fantasy (more the latter than the former, but there's always a steady interest in stories in the stars). I have some classics, as well as some that are Good Books (I'm thinking mostly of The Remains of the Day and Life of Pi and The Ladies' Auxiliary), though I don't think I'll be likely to reread any of them. After getting my teaching job, I found a great deal of pleasure in expanding my understanding of philosophy through the Pop Culture and Philosophy books, my personal favorites being Batman and Philosophy, Watchmen and Philosophy, and Jurassic Park and Philosophy. These are a sweet/sour mix of a read--the pop culture that I love as the sweet, the sour being the sometimes-a-stretch philosophy applied to it--that have helped me understand philosophy (and pop culture) better. Whilst in college, I read a lot of mind-bending and -numbing texts, so I have those still, plus others that are as dense as a neutron star. My personal favorite is Gamer Theory, which is a slim volume that puts an intense analysis of what video games look like deconstructed. It was the inspiration for a lot of the early video game essays on this blog. As my teaching skills increased and I shuddered at the paucity of knowledge that I have, I tried to staunch that intellectual wound by acquiring more history books, which though they occupy a small section of my Fortress of Solitude, they nathless are an important addition. Shakespeare and his spiritual son, Milton, eat up nearly an entire bookshelf on their own, with copies of the plays/poems and books relating to their time period as flourishes and embellishments. These I reference sporadically, though many of them I've read through in their entirety, including The Milton Encyclopedia, which, though it took me two years, I did completely read. On this shelf are the true classics, The Iliad, The Aeneid, Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy. Though I have a great many books--and have read, I like to think, the majority of them--this is the section that I feel is the Most Important, even if it isn't the one that inspired me to become an aspiring writer. What I have very little of, however, is horror. A handful of zombie stories (Resident Evil novelizations, huzzah), a couple of Lovecraft books, and that's about it. So it's weird that, despite the width which I've read (comparatively small, I know, but it's the best I can do), I am currently sketching outlines and characters for a horror novel, lightly based/inspired by Beowulf. See, each novel that I set out to write is selected for two reasons: One, I'm passionate and excited about it, and two, it's different than anything I've done before. For example, I wanted to write a novel that was a science-fiction/thriller designed as a modern retelling of Dante's Inferno. I wrote that for NaNoWriMo a couple years back. Once, I wanted to write a sprawling epic with a magic system based upon everyone's least favorite unit in English class: Poetry. It took the better part of four years, but I did that. I created a world with a unique (I think) magic system, then wrote a spiritual sequel on a completely different part of that world, forcing myself to think of the magic in a different way. In each case, I wanted to try something new. But why am I thinking of writing a horror novel? That I can't say, save that horror is on my mind a little/lot lately. I'm also poking steadily at the realistic novel that's been floating around for the better part of a year. I'm nine chapters in, which puts the word total at something approaching 20,000 words--which is a pretty big commitment to a story that has no outline, no plot, no clear vision or picture. So I'm doing what I try to make my students do in class, and something that can be satisfying and enjoyable and painful and even a little bit dangerous: I'm stretching. This essay was originally published here. Today is about my editing process. There are things that I still do in order to revise my books.
That's it. I've now spent almost an hour writing about a process that I should be doing instead of writing about it. See how good I am at not editing? *Sigh. * Revisions make me sad. Note: This was originally published as part of a longer post on 24 September 2016. Apparently, one of the aphorisms of real estate is "Location, location, location." It's said as a truism, so I'm guessing it has all sorts of exceptions that those in the business could point out to me, but as I'm willing to recite it at face value, we'll go with the basic idea--except for writing.
One of the things that makes for a larger, more lasting impression in some fiction iswhere it takes place.* Here's a quick and dirty list, right off the top of my head: Spider-Man doesn't work in the rural south (he needs skyscrapers); Aquaman free of the ocean loses some of his prestige; Luke Skywalker sans the Death Star isn't much of a Luke; The Lord of the Rings in a place other than Middle Earth fails on a lot of levels; the gladiatorial fighting of Panem makes less sense in almost any other setting. But there's something to be said for writing where the location is so fully realized and integral to the story that it feels like it's a character. Two titles: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Harry Potter series. Two locations: The river and Hogwarts. Huck Finn without the river isn't the character we know and love. The growth that Huck has throughout the story comes because of the river, which acts as a mentor, a revelator, a guide, and a vehicle. The river acts as forward momentum for the plot and the characters floating down it. This is not accidental: Mark Twain's intimate knowledge of the river infuses his writing, giving the river a sense of personality. It isn't anthropomorphized (like in a lot of Ray Bradbury's works), but instead transcends the need for a thing to look like a human in order for us to care about it. This same feeling is amplified in Rowling's Hogwarts. Especially for those who are rereading the series, it takes far too long for Harry to arrive at Hogwarts in The Philosopher's Stone. And though there are exciting things to look at and pieces of the Muggle world to consider in every volume, The Goblet of Fire can drag because our return to Hogwarts is delayed through all the plot setup. And don't get me started on Deathly Hallows. Hogwarts is the thing that every person who enjoys the series wishes were real. Harry is fine, if a little vacuous; Hermione is wonderful and spunky; Ron is Ron; and everyone has their special favorites (I have a soft spot for Snape, which I should write about some other time). But it's hard to find anyone who isn't enamored of the creaky old castle in Scotland. That kind of texture and tangibility, that specific location, is--so far as I can see--the biggest reason that people return to the books again and again. The Boy Who Lived is fine, but it's Hogwarts that matters so deeply. When it comes to my own writing, the closest I've arrived to that is creating a place called Pandra, which is a strange dream world where a human girl gets lost while trying to get home. It's a fun(-ish) place, but it's lacking some of the heart and warmth of the castle. Without treading in the same footsteps as Rowling, it is hard to generate the same feeling in my own writing. Nevertheless, the location is important to many stories, and I should spend as much time on my locales as I do the rest of my stories. ---- * I say some because there are many examples that counter my point. Much of Shakespeare, for example, relies more on characters than locales, though The Tempest shows that isn't always the case. Note: This was originally published on 16 September 2016. There are lots of reasons that I don't "like" to write. Well, that's not perfectly accurate. I like to write. I know some authors hate writing but love having written. They enjoy the idea of the completed project. While I enjoy that, too, I don't dislike writing. When I get my fingers on the keyboard and my thoughts are firing correctly, it's euphoric. During my writing retreats, I will get into a groove that is only interrupted by the need to change CDs (since I write at a cabin with no WiFi, I can't stream music uninterrupted). Hours will flit by, the sunlight slowly sliding across the windows, as I type on, oblivious to the external world, lost in the story I'm telling.
That's amazing stuff right there. But those are rare moments. I normally get a handful of minutes--at most, an hour--with which I could, were I to so choose, write. The call of other books, sleep (I'm always so tired), playing with my boys, watching a show, or playing a video game can be overpowering. If I only have limited time, getting involved in writing something--novel, blog, or even poetry--can feel incomplete. I don't like being cramped, and I always have more I want to say than I have time or energy to put into it. This means that the exercise of daily blog writing that I've been doing the last little while is an attempt to break out of the non-writing funk I've been in for far too long. There are other things that make writing hard for me. I have a lot of things that I'd like to write. Lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of possibilities. But I don't want to betoo split when it comes to my focus. If I'm writing a novel, I want to focus exclusively on that--so much so that it can be difficult to edit, another part of my writing that I struggle with. I don't want to "stretch my writing muscles" anywhere but on the current project. That monomania can work well on writing retreats, but is catastrophic during my day-to-day (that is, the vast majority of my life). And I wonder how healthy it is for me to pursue writing at all. I have delusions of grandeur to combat, of course--everyone does, I think, to some level or another--and a realistic expectation that I, in all likelihood, will not make money as an author. So why do I do it? Self-doubt and frustration also defuse the impulse to write, making it feel like a futility. Interestingly, my job as an English teacher, complete with the obligatory Creative Writing class, helps to create the desire to write more. I would feel hypocritical if I don't try to improve as a writer while at the same time encouraging my students to do the same. This is definitely a positive part of my life, but I can't help but worry that I'm like a cigarette addict who hangs around the smoking sections of airports to get a guilty whiff because I'm not strong enough to make a clean break. I find reasons not to write--and what better indication that something is hard than the relying on excuses to avoid it? Even my computer can so "sabotage" my efforts (as if a pen and paper couldn't serve me) that I sometimes don't write because I get frustrated with the technology. As I pursue this craft, I do so hoping that I'll be able to improve it to the point that people will pay to read my stories. I often daydream what it would be like if everyday, essentially, were a writing retreat. Get the boys off to school, sequester myself in my office until lunch, work until the boys got home, and call it a day. How much could I write? (Probably close to 10,000 words a day, unless I miss my guess--that is a huge output, meaning I could have substantial quantities of books written in, say, a month.) How much could I edit? (Difficult to say; my editing process is ill-defined, but I do about 10 pages an hour...a glacial pace compared to the progress I feel I make when I'm in the drafting process.) But could I do it? Could I say, "I'm writing a book in January, one in April, and one in October, with editing, touring, and conventions during the remainder of the time," and be happy? Could I find satisfaction in that life? I don't think so. I believe that I would need to get out of my head and my space more often than that, which means that I would need to keep a teaching job. So if I taught only two hours a day, got home in time for lunch, and wrote for three or four hours until it was time to get the boys, I would be throwing down about 4,500 words a day. Add a solid day of writing on Saturday and I'm looking at about 20,000 words a week. I would need a couple of months of that schedule to start and end a book (which I try to hit between 110k and 140k, now that my magnum opus was so big and unwieldy I set off a little Twitter storm of irritation among the agents I followed), which means that, with other responsibilities and the realities of life, I could maybe manage two books a year. Interspersing the editing that I would need to do, the cons, revisions, tours (lol), and what have you, it's hard to see all of that effort turning into something comparable to my steady, modest paycheck as a fulltime teacher. Writing, then, is hard because it can feel the most important thing I do, and simultaneously the most pointless. It's hard in the way all dreams are hard: It is quintessentially human, yet ethereal. It's a contradiction. Note: This was originally posted on 1 September 2016. This post is an excerpt from a longer piece of my story journal, written for an unpublished book called Writ in Blood. It documents how I use the free writing software called yWriter. This excerpt and the full post was originally published on 21 December 2011.
The program has myriad features, a great many of which I ignore, but what I refer to the most frequently is the running word count. As I mentioned above, the word counts of the individual days of writing are pretty important to me. Since pages can vary not only on formatting but on what's actually written (thick pages of exposition or internal narration--also action sequences--tend to be really dense, while I have some pages that are dialogue exchanges, a practice that greatly increases the page count without really increasing the word count noticeably), I've come to really value how many words I've produced in the story. The yWriter 5 program automatically tracks my additions--and subtractions--to the overall story, giving me an at-a-glance reference to grand total, daily work, and individual chapters. Four of the chapters' word count, the total, and added today This is pretty nice, but, if you'll notice the small "Ch" boxes and the chapters next to it, you'll see that every chapter is itself broken into its total words. This is what I was talking about earlier--the program lets me look at each chapter holistically. Then, inside of a broader window, there are the actual contents of each chapter, broken into portable scenes. For ease of use, I place poems and faux sage sayings from Meleah in a small section called a bumper. Beneath the bumper comes the 'main chapter', which is followed by a flashback, an interlude, or nothing at all, depending on the length of the 'main chapter'. Occasionally (read: once so far), I will do a bumper followed by a flashback. This is the organizational screen. Note that the 'Viewpoint' column has the 'bumper' and 'Nic' categories; this lets me know easily who's in the chapter. This becomes more useful during interludes. The poem itself is arbitrarily numbered (sequentially based upon when I composed them) while the 'Scene' column can have more specific descriptions of the chapter if I bother to compose one. I did at the beginning, but as I've moved on, I've just relied on the description box (in the picture above this one) as letting me know what happens in each chapter. The flashback (indicated with the creative title "FB"--which always makes me think 'Facebook') is likewise numbered based upon chronology within the story: This is the eleventh flashback of Nic's in the book. This is the one where he talks to Phrastus about forgiveness. Also there are Project Notes, Characters, Locations, and Items tabs. These are beautifully useful tabs, with an automatic addition capacity included. That means that, after I invent a character in my story, I add the new character's name into the Characters tab. From then on, the program automatically tracks whenever the character shows up. It then automatically creates a catalogue that is easily compiled, printed, or searched. Finding a character in my book--or seeing how many times a character/item/location is used--is a breeze. My process is pretty simple: I draft the story sequentially (now that I've written Chapter 61, I'll work on 62 next), then I draft a flashback or interlude depending on how the chapter ends. This is done inside of OpenOffice's Writer program, which I prefer over Microsoft Word. Part of the reason for that is because there's an easy to access and, in my case, already well filled in autocorrect feature. Names of all of my main characters, all of the locations, and many of the important words that I use frequently will auto-populate, letting me fill in long names (like Nicomachus) with the stroke of a key. This speeds up my writing (which, unassisted, tops out at about 90 words per minute), and lets me focus more on the story and less on the mechanics. The chapter is automatically saved (via a custom preference) as an .rtf, the type of file that yWriter 5 recognizes. I drop each segment into an appropriate folder--chapters, flashbacks, poems, bumpers--and then import it into the newest chapter inside of yWriter. Sometimes I've only written a flashback, so I don't include it into the project until it fits in--hence the reason that the day that I got so many words 'written' counted as my overall production. I do this because, so far as I know, nothing I write out of sequence is actually going to make it into the book. So, rather than counting words that I might or might not keep, I save out-of-sequence components of the story in the (sometimes vain) hope that I'll utilize them later. Once the scene (main chapter, flashback, or interlude) is imported into yWriter, I'm free to move it around in whatever chapter I decide. The real glory of this is, though the original drafts are numbered on my hard drive (well, my Dropboxaccount...if you don't have Dropbox, repent and change your ways), I'm able to renumber (which I've done a couple of times so far) chapters, reorder scenes, or generally manipulate the flow of the story without having to go through and manually change all the chapter numbers. It's so glorious I can't express it. Double plus good? The original documents that I drafted remain untouched, so any changes that I do for edits--currently, minute things like typos or one or two small phrases--remain inside yWriter. After I've finished my story, I will be able to export the entire book to my word processor, format it, and save it as a full-fledged first draft. Any and all changes that I choose to do will happen inside of yWriter, which, after I've read the first draft, will house the new edits. Because of the fact that all my original chapters are preserved, if I make a major change that I want to revert, it's easy to go back to what I wrote previously and insert it where it was omitted or changed. The program does much, much more, but if you've read this far (and why would you have done that?), you're either intrigued or bored. If you're the former, go visit the linked website above, download it, and love it as you ought to. If you're bored, then, again, why have you read this far? I have nothing to add. This is a glimpse into my writing journal, done for the book Writ in Blood. The book is not published, but seeing how others go about the writing process can inform your own work. This was originally published on 5 November 2011.
Goal Making So, I did really, really well today. I had about 10,000 words left in my 'goal' for this year (I want 200,000 words in the book by 31 Dec) when I sat down. Now, I'm looking at about 2,800 to get that. I wrote over 7,000 words in the book today, which is an unbelievable amount of productivity. Not only that, but the stuff that I put in felt like I'll keep it, for the most part. Obviously, there will be some things that will have to be changed (I'm not looking forward to the editing of this behemoth, I'll be honest), but, for the most part, what happens in this chapter has to stay. It's really powerful (I think), and I really like it. Before I hit the topic, I just want to document what I did today: I put in a flashback of Calistar (who, despite the fact he isn't the 'main character' in my mind, has the most flashbacks of all the protagonists, clocking in at 15 as of right now, and needing at least two more before his back story is fully fleshed out) as well as an interlude with Arik, a character I cooked up a while ago because I needed a way of showing other people in the world who weren't as important to follow, but still had essential parts to add to the plot. The flashback, I think, really advances the story and sets up a lot of the irony that I'm hoping will come about by the end, though Arik's contribution felt a little superfluous. Part of his addition was for word count reasons; part of it was to foreshadow a little, too, about the villain of the story and maybe try to cast a bit of light on him. The big thing, however, was an extremely large chapter with Nicomachus, finishing with over 4,500 words in it (about 10 pages on a word processor). This is significant, because it means that I don't have to write a flashback for this particular chapter (55). I don't mind adding flashbacks, but sometimes I stick those (or interludes) in just to beef up the chapter as a whole. It's padding, but only a little. I'm always proud of myself when I can get a 'full' chapter without having to rely on the flashbacks. Anyway, the reason I'm titling this log 'Goal Making' is because I have found myself willing to submit and focus harder because of these arbitrary goals. Back on the mission, I was always irritated by the goal-centric themes that revolved around other people (number of investigators at church, number of baptisms, contacts, first discussions, and so on). I couldn't control them, I couldn't control...well, much at all, now that I think about it. So I thought goal-making was a bit of a con. But now I'm in (almost) full control of not only my goals but also how I go about doing them. I have slammed down over 45,000 words since the end of July, which is no small feat for a very, very part-time writer. My goal is going to be attained a full month before I originally had hoped. All of this is remarkable for me, as it makes me feel as though the progress that I'm showing is trackable. I don't know if this makes sense to others, but just the fact that I can show how much I've done--that it's quantifiable in some way--really makes a difference to me. It's not just me slaving away on the keyboard for some story that few will read, doing it for my own enjoyment. It's trying to shape that so that I can practice, I guess, for a full-time writing gig, if it ever were to come my way. I guess that's what the point of talking about goals is; if I can use those to create the necessary structure I need in order to succeed at writing, then I've put in place a useful pillar of being a professional. Showing that I can reach these deadlines and goals that I've chosen--and, therefore, have no real power over me except that it's a preference I've opted to obey--proves that I can operate with something looming over me. If this were a deadline for a rough draft, I'd be well on my way. Perhaps I'm being too optimistic, reading too deeply into the (still unobtained) success of the goal. But, if nothing else, it is a much more tangible result of all my hard work. And that, in and of itself, is pretty rewarding. This is a glimpse into my writing journal, done for the book Writ in Blood. The book is not published, but seeing how others go about the writing process can inform your own work. This was originally published on 15 October 2011.
Two days ago was my 7th year anniversary, so, in honor of my spectacular wife, I wanted to record another piece of the history of Writ in Blood that points to how instrumental she is in my writing. How I Write See, writing when one has a full time job is something that I have never been able to do. I give a great deal of effort to wherever it is that I'm employed, and I really put a lot of my energy into the daily grind. I don't think that's unique in any way. I'm just pointing out that I rarely have the capacity or stamina to keep working beyond the typical hours of the work day. So I need copious amounts (between 4 and 5 hours) of free time on Saturdays to get my writing done. Because I'm putting so much effort into wordsmithing, I can't really be distracted. Having two little boys of four and one and a half makes it, essentially, impossible to be around them and not get distracted. Jeremy will climb onto my lap and shove his adorable little face in front of mine, then insist on kisses until he gets as many as he wants. Peter will pester me with requests for glowing rectangles (watching TV, video games, playing with the iPad) until I either acquiesce or get frustrated. Writing with the boys around/conscious is asking for something that cannot nor ever can be. Enter my lovely wife. Gayle takes the boys out (usually with her mother) to do the weekly shopping. She hauls them around from place to place as she does all of the requisite errand-running that's necessary to keep a household afloat. Straightforward analysis makes it pretty obvious that I'm not really pulling my weight when it comes to the house. I'm aware of that and, when I'm rich and famous off of my writing, it'll make it all okay, right? Machiavelli would think so... Anyway, because Gayle so selflessly works with the kids, I'm able to selfishly work with my words, weaving stories that are mostly just my imagination run wild. (Seriously, have you ever thought about how weird it is that we pay people who are just writing down what the voices in their heads are saying? Yeah, it's pretty cool.) Much of the millions of words that I've drafted over the years (assuming that number is right) have come about because of this 'teamwork'--and by that I mean I get to do what I want to do and she has to do what has to be done. It didn't take long before I discovered that, even with Gayle's sacrifice to help me with time so that I can write, I can't always have a productive day. While that's a given of any job, it really worries me, because I feel so guilty when I can't get things right. I've had more than one day where, despite all of my hard work, I can't actually use what I've written. Sometimes I end up watching a show on Netflix or playing video games, hoping to get over the funk. It usually doesn't help. Lately, however, I've come across a new idea. It came from my time in my World War II class that I started this last May. I would come to UVU at 8:45 am and be there until 11:30 (or something like that). Being fully awake from the class (no sarcasm; that was one of the best classes that I've ever attended), I would go to the Burger King by University Mall and get the cheapest food I could for some consistent energy.* Then I'd return to the UVU library, take my favorite seat on the 4th floor, look out at the lake, the mountains, and the snake-like I-15 that plied its way through the foliage in front of me, and write. Using the WiFi, I would stream music to Grooveshark or Spotify and work my way through that day's story. Using this method proved extremely useful for a couple of reasons. One was that I get anti-food when hunger interrupts my writing. I have so little time in which to do it, the last thing that I want to do is stop writing long enough to eat. That's lame. Starvation is also lame, so I often will scarf down something that gives my stomach something to work on while I work on the book. Still, it's a distraction and I don't like it. The trip to Burger King worked really well to stave off that problem. The second reason was that it put me in a very quiet place and let me work there. With a beautiful view in front of me (much prettier than the furnace closet, which is what's in front of my arm chair) and a peaceful atmosphere, I don't think I've had a bad writing day when I'm at UVU. Because of that, I am (as I'm writing this) now in the UVU library and I have just finished over 4,000 words for one of my chapters, finishing it from top to bottom. I have been here for just over 4 hours, which fits into the typical paradigm I have of about 1,000 words an hour. While I skipped Burger King today (had a big breakfast--made by Gayle--instead), I'm feeling much more pleased with the work that I've done than I normally am. Despite the cost of driving the X number of miles from AF to UVU, I'm thinking that, unless there's weather problems, I'm going to do this from now on. I've tried other libraries (American Fork and Orem), but none has had the right touch. UVU continues to be the right choice for me and my career, it seems. Road Trip to Cedar The other way that Gayle has helped me (at least, the other way that I wanted to talk about today) came in the form of being an awesome sounding board for me and my ideas. Every summer, we take a trip down to Cedar City for the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I, of course, love the Festival more than is strictly acceptable in our culture, but one thing that is less delightful is the trip down. It's 220 miles from Super 8 Cedar to my townhome, but knowing that doesn't shorten the time on the road. Last year, in an effort to more pleasantly pass the time, I explained to Gayle my then-current conundrum with the story. I mentioned that poetry (or, as I creatively call it, Poetry) as a magic system was all well and good, but I didn't feel as though there was any sort of payment for the Poets who use it. I explained about the different countries, and how the Writ was stolen and thereby all of the Poetry of the country was slowly fading, but, at the same time, I didn't see what the big deal was about the magic system. See, I'm in the Card school of thought that there must be a price paid for magic to work. In Harry Potter, it's the education you have to go through, as well as being cut off from Muggle society. In The Sword of Truth series, it's physical pain as well as learning how to use it. The payment types vary, but the end result is that you can't just have a magical system where things work magically and isn't that grand! It doesn't have the right weight to it, the right reality (as strange as that sounds), and, since this book was to be one that I put a lot of work into the characters, I had to have them feel as though their world was real and had a realistic weight. Gayle knows all of this, of course. She knows all of my philosophies on writing--which is a wonder that we have anything to talk about most of the time. When I started to describe my problem, she helped me to brainstorm different ways of how the magic could work. We talked the entire ride, and, at the end of the two hours, I had a new couple of rules about how the Poetry would work. Everyone can speak poems, of course, but a Poet is one who is trained on not only the Form (the elevated language, the prosody, the scansion, the meter, etc.) but also on a closing couplet. This additional piece (which I haven't written yet) activates a poem, moving it from just some random words into a Poem that has a specific Effect. The Effect is the magic--if one writes a Poem that imbues, say, a piece of metal with light, upon writing the closing couplet on the metal, it will illuminate. It uses the power of the Writ to become something that it couldn't have been otherwise. This comes at a real price: scars and pain. A Poet's body is physically scarred when s/he writes Poetry. The scars take specific shapes and can appear anywhere on the body. Additionally, there is a real pain--much as though one were branded--that the Poet suffers. The more complex the Poem (and the larger the Effect) the more pain the Poet feels. Additional rules cropped up through the conversation, but what I really want to document is how instrumental Gayle was (and is) in the way that I write. No one else cares enough about me to listen that closely to what's bothering me in my writing; no one else has the time with me to really let me explore all of the random ideas that crop up as a conversation is cooking. Without Gayle, I really wouldn't be able to write as well (assuming I do; I think I do) or as thoroughly as I can now. Despite the fact that I feel like I'm a deadbeat husband, I am really grateful for Gayle and her willingness to put up with me--and, more than that, inspire me to write better than I could in any other way. Thanks, Gayle. I love you. *I did some calculations on the Burger King website. My little order--less than $5--gave me over 800 calories. |
Archives
September 2017
Categories |