Wait! I have a BLOG?!?!

Okay folks – it has been quite a while since I added anything here. I’d like to say that I had a darn good reason for such a long time between posts, like putting on spandex and a mask and swinging through the city beating up bad guys.

But, ultimately, that’d be a lie….

When all is said and done, Life has been busy. That’s all. Nothing else.

I’ve been working on my urban fantasy novel, but that’s been a little hit’n'miss lately. I’ve started actively pursuing some copy writing gigs as well, but that is quite time-consuming, just marketing yourself to prospective clients!

I hit the wall a couple of months back with my novel. Not that I was burned out or had writer’s block. It was just that I knew what I wanted to say, but couldn’t write the scene to do it without the whole sequence reading like it was very forced. Over the last 10 or so days, I’ve been gifted with a little inspiration (Thank you to my muse!) and have re-written part of the scene and added to it as well. The scene itself is crucial as a turning point for my character, so I need to make sure that I cover some important changes in how he thinks and acts.

So, I promise that I’ll try to do better in updating my little blog here, now that my head is on straight again.

Barring that, I’ll see you in a couple of months.

What? A blog??

Another Random Image

It’s been a few months since I’ve done so, but the time has come for me to post another completely random image that may spur a little inspiration in some and a little enjoyment in others. Remember, the purpose of the exercise is simply to whet the creative appetite with something totally surprising, and then see what happens.

So, the word that I searched for this time around was ‘snowman’. And the picture below was one of the more interesting ones that was served up to me.

A Great Story

Of course, I, like many others, have seen the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And I loved it!

But this blog is not a blog about movie reviews, especially of this movie, considering that it is going to be seen by millions of fans the world over.

No, what I’d like to do with this entry is talk about something Harry Potter related – A GREAT STORY.

Let’s begin at the beginning, with ‘The Wizard of OZ’.

Huh?

Wait for it, wait for it….

‘The Wizard of OZ’ is a great story that contains important story-telling elements:

1. A displaced hero discovers that they are the possessor of some magical power that they don’t really understand – yet (Dorothy’s house lands on the wicked witch)
2. This hero, when at home in their world, does not live with their parents – they’ve passed away much earlier in the story (Living with Auntie Em)
3. The displaced hero, when transported to their new, fantasical world, goes on a quest (Follow the Yellow Brick Road)
4. While on that quest, they are accompanied by some helpers who initially don’t mesh together well (Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion)

Mix together these elements, and voila! a masterpiece of a story is created.

Now, let’s take these elements and drop them into….Star Wars, A New Hope.

Huh?

Wait for it….

Breaking it down piece by piece:

1. A displaced hero discovers that they are the possessor of some magical power that they don’t really understand – yet (Luke’s discovery of The Force)
2. This hero, when at home in their world, does not live with their parents – they’ve passed away much earlier in the story (Living with Aunt & Uncle)
3. The displaced hero, when transported to their new, fantasical world, goes on a quest (Escape from the Death Star so that R2-D2′s plans can be analyzed)
4. While on that quest, they are accompanied by some helpers who initially don’t mesh together well (Han, Leia and Chewbacca)

Similarities? Definitely!

Last step here – same elements, this time mixed into The Sorcerer’s Stone.

Once again:

1. A displaced hero discovers that they are the possessor of some magical power that they don’t really understand – yet (Harry’s discovery that he’s a wizard)
2. This hero, when at home in their world, does not live with their parents – they’ve passed away much earlier in the story (Living with the Dursleys)
3. The displaced hero, when transported to their new, fantasical world, goes on a quest (Survive at Hogwarts despite attacks by Voldemort)
4. While on that quest, they are accompanied by some helpers who initially don’t mesh together well (Ron, Hermione and Hagrid)

So, what does this all mean? Well, before all the writers reading this start hitting the DELETE buttons for their current works so that they can fashion their own versions of these elements, keep in mind that this is just one example of how elements like these can come together.

The important piece to take away is that these elements, though the individual stories are similar, come together to create a vastly different canvas. The Wizard of OZ is a self-contained story, though there have been other books written with the same characters. A New Hope turned out to be the first movie of the first trilogy, but number four in the overall series of stories. And Harry Potter, as well all know, went on to survive six years at Hogwarts and one year as a fugitive from Voldemort to emerge triumphant and a wiser man for it.

How many elements does your current WIP have?

You Might Be A Redneck Jedi….

I’m sure that it’s crossed your Inboxes as well at one time or another, but I thought that I would post it one more time for a little laughter late on a Saturday evening….

You Might Be A Redneck Jedi IF…

• You ever uttered the phrase, “May the force be with y’all.”
• Your Jedi robe is camouflage.
• You have ever used the force in conjunction with fishing/bowling.
• You have ever used your light saber to open a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill.
• At least one wing of your X-wing is primer colored.
• You have bantha horns on the front of your landspeeder.
• You describe the taste of an Ewok as “jus’ like chicken.”
• You have ever had a X-wing up on blocks in your yard.
• The worst part of spending time on planet Dagobah is “them dadgum skeeters.”
• Wookies are offended by your B.O.
• You have ever used the force to get yourself another beer so you wouldn’t have to wait for a commercial.
• Your father has ever said to you, “Shoot, son, come on over to the Dark Side…it’ll be a hoot!”
• You have ever had your R-2 unit use its self-defense electro-shock thingy to get the barbecue grill to light.
• You have a confederate flag painted on your flight helmet.
• You ever fantasized about Princess Leia wearing Daisy Duke shorts.
• You have the doors of your X-wing welded shut and you have to get in through the window.
• You kinda think that Jabba the Hutt had a pretty good handle on how to treat his women.
• You have ever accidentally referred to Darth Vader’s evil empire “them damn Yankees.”
• You have a cousin who bears a strong resemblance to Chewbacca.
• In your opinion, that Cee-Threepio fellow “just ain’t right.”
• You suggested that they outfit the Millennium Falcon with a Lazy-Boy recliner.
• The REAL reason you got into a fight in the cantina was because you ordered Bud Light…and they didn’t have it.
• You knew Princess Leia was your sister all along

Write What You Know

Two days ago, I tried to leave for work, but ran into an obstacle. My car wouldn’t start.

So, with deadlines approaching and me needing to get to the office, I did the next best thing: I drove my motorcycle to work. Now, just to flesh out the image a little, here are some bullet points:

• I live in New England. Therefore autumn is well underway.
• Tuesday morning, it was sunny and 42 degrees.
• Motorcycles are more ‘open’ than cars.
• 42 degrees is cold on the bike in November.
• Did I mention that 42 degrees is not warm at all?

Needless to say, it was not a fun ride to or from the office that day. But, it got me thinking while I was riding home. (I was actually trying to keep my brain from freezing, but I digress….)

A consistent piece of advice that writers receive is ‘Write What You Know’. For most of us, however, the purposes of our writing is to explore worlds and situations that we DON’T know about. Are we doomed to be constantly jammed between the rock of ‘Write What You Know’ and the hard place of ‘Creative License’?

I think the answer lies somewhere in the details that writers use when describing what their characters are feeling or how the situation might look to their reader. Those details that might be so clear to us help to add color to a piece of writing when sandwiched next to something absolutely fantastical. It lends credibility to your story if the reader can relate to your character’s experience in the ‘real world’ in spite of what is happening in their ‘unreal world’.

For example, in my next story, I might need to have a segment where one of my supporting characters has to ride his motorcycle in order to meet the hero for some purpose in New England in autumn. The background to why or what’s happening might not be important to the story; the important piece that I might be trying to emphasize is that my supporting character is twenty minutes late and misses witnessing my hero as he starts the flux-capacitor and creates a black hole to another dimension. But if I can colorize that twenty minute window with details of his ride, such as the fact that unless he’s wearing a scarf, his Adam’s apple is going to nearly freeze solid, or the fact that his ankles will be super cold but his legs will be toasty warm from hugging the gas tank and catching the heat vented from the radiator – then, I’ve just added elements of real world believability into a sequence that is about to become unreal. And that, for the reader, creates an anchor that they can hold on to while the writer then pushes them down the rabbit hole.

Write What You Know….

All the rest is just fiction.

Getting Lost….

So, a funny thing happened on my road to publication.

I got lost.

Not hopelessly lost. Just lost….

“Where did you get lost?” you ask.

That’s the funny thing about it. I got lost –  inside my own story.

Follow along for a sentence or two and I’ll illuminate my predicament. Before beginning to write my current work-in-progress, I spent about six months planning the story out. Characters, character names, settings, events, chronology, story arch, theme, plot, situation, complication – the whole nine yards. Sometime after the plan was complete, and revised, and completed again, I started to write – not a fantastic amount; 500 words a night was my goal. Sometimes I met it; sometimes I didn’t.

Side note: when I became a member of the Write-Brained Network (see link on my page), my creativity and output went through the roof! They are a great supportive group of people. You should join!!

That’s when it happened. I was on a roll and writing five or six nights per week when I suddenly looked down at my story and couldn’t remember when I gave a certain item to a certain character. Thinking that I was just a little distracted, I went back to my plan and realized that this particular event was not in there. SO, I went to the story itself to find the answer. And along the way to finding it, I came across two other events that I forgot the details of.

Freaking out slightly, okay –  maybe more than slightly, I talked to a number of other writers who assured me that this was normal. And they gave me a lot of good advice on how to keep things straight while the work is pouring out of you.

But, that started me thinking a little – why was this so difficult and confusing? I mean, I had a plan, right? I had the skeleton that I could refer to. Why wasn’t the answer in there?

The answer to why wasn’t the answer in there is that a novel or story or poem isn’t a static object. It’s dynamic and alive and constantly changing. It’s fueled and built and partially destroyed again only to be rebuilt by the Creative Process that’s in every writer. After so much time spent living with your story, it takes on a life of itself in a Frankenstein~esque manner.

For one scene that’s planned, three characters are supposed to waltz into the room. Suddenly, as you’re writing the scene, two characters waltz as you had envisioned, while the third character decides that she’s going to tango. For another scene that was supposed to take place in an apartment, you end up in a hospital and add a character that was never even thought of during the planning stages. And then, four scenes later, that character is back again! And you find that you like him or her and want to write more about them!

It’s a little like trying to build a house where the plan was never finalized and gremlins are constantly changing the frame and stealing your 2×4′s – sometimes the change is good, other times it’s bad.

The important thing to note is that your plan not be a rigid, unchanging framework that’s resistant to change. It should bend and move and re-shape itself to the story’s needs. Notice I said ‘the story’s needs’ and not ‘the author’s needs’. Your work will tell you what it needs to have; a good author needs to be able to listen and make it happen believably.

So, getting lost inside your own story might happen more often than not. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just make sure that you have all of your major topography and reference points mapped out ahead of time, because the minor ones might change along the way.

Proofing & Copyediting

Through the Writer’s Digest Community (see my links on the sidebar), I have had opportunities to meet and work with some great people over the last few weeks. One of these people is freelance proofreader and copyeditor – Joanna Jacobs. She reviewed the first three chapters of my work-in-progress and the feedback that she gave me was positive, accurate and worthwhile.

In her own words she “…is a freelance proofreader and copyeditor based in New York City, serving clients around the country. She has experience working with journalistic editing as well as various genres of manuscript. Joanna is deadline and detail-oriented with a strong work ethic that ensures clarity and accuracy in her clients’ work. For proofreading or copyediting inquiries, please email Joanna.n.jacobs@gmail.com.”

I would definitely recommend her services and look forward to working with Joanna again when my novel is complete!

Cinderella Story

Although this blog is an exercise in putting myself out in the open where my writing is concerned, I do feel the need to reveal a little about my personal life on certain random occasions.

THIS is just one such occasion. I was supposed to participate in a charity golf tournament tomorrow, but it has been cancelled due to severe inclement weather hitting much of the American Northeast in the next twenty-four hours.

The tournament did get me thinking, however, about one of the greatest (and funniest) movies ever made. And when I do participate, I really hope that I don’t come across like this guy….

Random Image

Every once in a while, I plug a random word or phrase into ‘Google’ to see what sort of return that I might get. Nothing research oriented, or even related to my writing in any way. But one of the most important things that I’ve read and understand about being a writer is that when we’re not actively writing or editing or even thinking about writing, we need to be able to draw on ideas in our heads. This ‘Fishing for Randomness’ exercise always surprises me with what is returned and always infuses some idea/image/thought in my head that I usually am able to draw on at some point.

For this blog entry, I thought I would share the process with everyone. If I have any followers out there, let me know if this works for you too,  and I’ll continue to post when I do it.

So, the word that I searched for this time was “apocalypse”. One of the images that I was returned was the one below. What kind of great short story or character or thought comes to mind when you see it?

Inspiration

Several years ago, I came across a little hardcover book that has paid for itself many times over. It is named ‘The Pocket Muse – ideas and inspirations for writing’ by Monica Wood and it does just what it promises to do: provide ideas and inspirations for writing. It isn’t any more than about 100 pages or so, but each page is a new idea, a new thought, a new point-of-view, a new look at the same old tired subject matter.

The interesting thing about this book is that it isn’t just a bunch of story-starters or ‘what-if’ scenarios. One page has a picture of a gorgeous skyline, slightly out of focus, with a hand-written caption. Another page has printed dead center in the middle of the page “What if two of your characters were being followed?”

It has suggestions for combating writer’s block, small instructionals about complications vs situations and so many other tools, there is no way to do it justice in this small space. I have referred to it numerous times and each time, I come away with new inspiration.

If you’re a writer, you could do much worse than give this small book a place on your bookshelf.