Right v. Writer

I've been thinking about some of these issues off and on a lot lately over the last few years.  And this post is bound to be a bit rambling, but I'll try to be interesting and make some degree of sense.  Also, I'm going to talk about some mildly racy-ish stuff here, so fair waring.

A little background.  I am, for the first time ever, working on two writing projects both of which have adult main characters and are intended for an adult audience.  One story is sort of a magically informed cross between Sherlock and Jane Austen, with a little action movie thrown in for good measure.  This book doesn't pose much in the way of Mormon-writer dilemmas for me because, well, it has Victorian-esque moral values and, since it's fantasy, I can make up whatever rules I want.

The other project is a different matter - and honestly it will probably never get published - so it probably won't ever matter to anyone but me.  The important thing for this post however, is that it's a modern day story about two adults who are friends and creative partners whose relationship later develops into a more romantic one.    And unlike me these two adults aren't Mormon, and one of them is definitely not particularly religious in any way.   I've already drawn a firm line in the sand when it comes to sex scenes; I won't write them, and I'm standing on my head to keep them out of the story, but so far it's working (though largely the reason why I can't see it getting published).  For some reason, this dilemma, which I know should be the bigger one, isn't one that's bothering me.

Believe it or not, the bigger issue for me in writing this story is profanity.    I take a lot of pride, justified or not, in writing dialogue that actually sounds like people talking to each other.  And, I can't even really start to write a character until I can (in a non-mentally disturbed way) hear them talking in my head. The problem in the scene I'm writing tonight is that when one of my characters talks in my head, shocking as it is, the guy swears in casual conversation....not a lot...and not in any horrifying way... but that's just who he is.

I've gotten around this in other stories by making up profanity that isn't profanity (again, yay fantasy!) or in tense situations just using the phrase "He swore."  Which has tended to work well 99% of the time.  But that won't work in the scene I'm writing tonight.

Some people I know would say I shouldn't even be writing a character or situation like this.  I get that - after all, I choose the ideas and the characters I write about, so I could in fact just kick Alex (my character) and his story to the curb and tell a different story....maybe one with some nice pioneers or a ward bake-off or something (okay, snarky moment over).  But I don't want to...and what's more important I don't want to be the kind of writer who can only write about people who are just like myself.  

So what do I do?

Well, for now, I took my version of the moral high ground and re-wrote the dialogue with a PG-rated swear word in it's place.  I know, I know it's the right thing to do...the problem is, it's not the writer thing to do.  And that scene is going to bug me every time.  And it's probably going to happen again.

Sigh.



 

Geek Heaven

Today Tracy and I went to Salt Lake Comic Con. (By the way no matter what I do Blogger messes with the pictures and text so this post is a little messy)  It was a lot of standing in lines and crazy sensory overload and paying $20 for cold pizza and soda, but it was also amazing.  I've been in love with TV and movies and geek stuff for most of my life, so the kid in me was pretty darn gleeful about all of this.

Some of our highlights:

One of the few things on Tracy's Comic Con To-Do list was his picture with Han Solo in Carbonite - it's one of the first things we did .... he was a little cold though :-)










When I first heard about Stephen Amell the lead actor in Arrow coming to Comic Con I said "It would be so awesome if he did a panel...but that would probably never happen"  ....  well, sometimes you get what you wish for...

The next panel we went to was Shannon Hale and Brandon Mull, a lot of fun, and much lower key.  Nice to be in the same room with one of your favorite actors and one of your favorite authors in the same day.







One thing that was also a lot of fun is that there was a ton of awesome geek stuff there to buy, but we kept it down to a fairly respectable minimum.- Here's our small haul: a Comic Con Pin with a flying superhero, a button with the Arrow's catchphrase and a Doctor Who keychain.  The whole batch cost us less than lunch :-)   We also, at the last minute found some vinyl window stickers so our new car named "Clark" will have a Superman sticker in the back window.


























The other great fun in the vendor row was visiting Chris and Stacia at their HobbyTown USA booth.  It was a busy spot, but I did manage to get Tracy and Chris in the same photo.

And the last stop for our night (apologies for the repeat for those of you on Facebook) was a  picture with Stephen Amell.   The one funny random moment was that while we were standing in line for this photo, Tracy suddenly turned me the other direction as a someone brushed past me.  I turned and had to suppress a squeak when I realized it was actor Manu Bennett (another actor from Arrow that I'm fond of) 

This photo op was super fast, but Stephen Amell seemed really nice and I met some really fun people while we were waiting in line.   This picture also shows off Tracy's "Have you tried turning it off and on again t-shirt" which got tons of comments from people.

I'm not sure I'd go to ComicCon again necessarily, it was a long, crazy day, but I'm so glad I got a chance to do it and that I got to do it with my amazing husband! 

Rookie Mistakes

The other day I was wading through a few fanfiction stories posted online and I was reminded yet again of the fact that there are some hallmarks of rookie writers.  It made me wish that all of them, and anyone who is brave enough to take a creative writing class, could be given a little list of what NOT to do.  I'm not talking about the basics of grammar and punctuation that you learn in English 101 - because even I suck at those a lot of the time. No, in my mind these are the basic don'ts of modern fiction writing.

Here's my list:

- Don't include multiple points of view in the same scene - and especially in the same paragraph.  (This is my single biggest pet peeve.)  

- Don't go more than two paragraphs without dialogue or action.   (I think advanced writers can break this rule easily with no problems, but with beginners it's almost always a bad idea.)

- Don't  use more than two adjectives in a row unless you're doing it as a deliberate, conscious, thoughtful, careful, choice.

- When someone new speaks, or comes into the scene, start a new paragraph

- Don't put in a line of dialogue unless you've actually said it out loud to make sure it sounds like something your character might say in real life.

-Speaking of dialogue - don't use any dialogue tag except for "said," "asked," or "replied."  (Unless someone is actually getting violently attacked or something, then I guess you could use "shouted,"  maybe.)  In fact, don't use a dialogue tag at all if you can tell who is speaking without it.


Though having written this, it makes me wonder what kind of list a more advanced writer might give me.  I'm sure I'm still making rookie mistakes.

Writing Group

Today I spent over two hours at my friend Pam's house with our little writing group.  Granted a large part of that was spent talking about non-writing things like the fact that Pam and I are both giddy about the fact that we're probably going to Salt Lake City's Comic Con  and the strangeness of the fact that Die Hard is a Christmas movie...but we also solved  a major writing problem I was having this week. 

It was awesome - I had felt totally stuck earlier in the day and thought "Well, I'll run this by Pam and Jenny and see if they can help."  In about five minutes we had it figured out to the point that I'm once again excited to work on it.

Some people say that writers shouldn't talk about their writing...and I get that.  I wouldn't want to sit down and spin out the entire plot to someone,  I can imagine that might suck some life out of it.  However,  talking about writing, especially with my writing buddies, has never been anything but encouraging and inspiring for me.   And today was no exception.

Funny Realization Moment of the Day

My friend Pam made me a gorgeous inspiration book/book art creation for my birthday, full of an amazing array of quotes and photos about books and writing.  And - because it's my book - a random picture of Superman.  Then this morning I had the thought "Well, Superman can be in there, he is a writer after all."   Yes, Superman's day job is writing for the Daily Planet.  That made me laugh - I'd never entirely put together the fact that maybe that's one reason the man is my favorite superhero - he's also a writer :-)

Writing Buddies and Storytelling (and a little TV ....again)

Today I met with my writing buddies, Pam, who's been my critique partner for awhile, and Jenny, who's a new writing friend. (Yes, Tracy has joked that maybe I'm collecting writing buddies named Jennie/Jenny the way I used to collect best friends named Becky).  They are always great, but today they were particularly helpful with the novel I'm working on.   Pam helped me walk through a scene I was really struggling with (seriously, I think I've spent two hours just staring at my computer screen this week trying to write it) and Jenny is giving me great feedback on my second draft.   It's incredibly helpful to know what doesn't work, and sometimes even more importantly what does.  I also feel like I help them as well, which is great feeling.

It's interesting because earlier today one of my TAs/grad school buddies was asking me about how to improve at writing and also how I managed to do anything other than schoolwork while I was getting my PhD.  I think having a critique partner was a huge part of that.  It gave me permission to work on my writing amidst all that grad school craziness because I had someone to be accountable to on the writing side of things.   I realized how lucky I was to have that - so thanks Pam!
 
I also realized again how much storytelling and words inform my whole personality.  Even my love of history grew out of a love of historical fiction, and even now I see the best history as telling stories that connect people with the past.   I write stories, I watch stories, I read stories, and chances are at any given time when I don't have something else I have to think about I am thinking about a story - or writing one in my head.  I sometimes (major geek public confession here) tell myself stories as I drive by myself as a way of keeping entertained.

I wouldn't know how to function in a world without narrative, both fiction and non-fiction, and it once again makes me grateful for libraries, shelves full of books, and friends, family and a husband who put up with a woman who has lots of imaginary friends running around in her head.


So if you want to be proud of me for writing a blog post about something other than a television show just stop now.

Speaking of emotional reactions to stories.....

I've gotten a whole bunch of people watching Arrow, and last week's episode sucked on so many levels (bad morals, bad storytelling, jerky characters) it made me angry in a very real way.   I was talking with one of my Arrow watching buddies today and we've agreed to give it a couple more episodes to get back on target (silly pun intended) or we're both bailing.  So I just feel the need to issue a pseudo-public apology to all the others I've roped in. 

More TV Ramblings

Can I just say I am love, love, loving the relationship on Castle right now?  It's so awesome to see a television show actually let the couple be together in a quite happy and stable adult relationship.  Yes, yes, I wished they'd just hurry up and get married already (though they are working on it, yippee!!) but really its so nice to see a show demonstrate that love triangles and manufactured drama aren't the only way to go with things.

This adoration may be more than a little enhanced because I find myself comparing Castle to the uneven, angst fest that is  Arrow.   And, ironically, why I find myself writing fanfiction for Arrow and not Castle.  I don't have to write fanfiction for Castle and Beckett because their relationship onscreen is satisfying to my clear storytelling, romance oriented brain.  

 Oh, and if I'm not blogging about my real life,  it's because the new schedule still has me a little overwhelmed and things are just getting more complicated - and who wants to listen to me whine about problems that aren't actually problems like having too many jobs, right? 

So television ramblings will have to do.  

Surprise in Fiction

So it's National Novel Writing Month, and I thought about giving it go on a new project but instead decided to stick with working on my current project, with a goal of having a complete revised draft by the end of the year.  This work mostly involves writing "glue" scenes, that get things from point A to point B, and working on bolstering the plot and characters.

This got me thinking about my favorite plots and characters, and something that I've realized in the last few months about storytelling - it's terrific when you you're reading/watching a story and the characters do something surprising.  It's extremely annoying when your reading/watching something and the characters do something randomly out of character for the sake of surprise.  So what's the difference?   My two easiest examples of this come from tv show Castle.

The example of something delightfully surprising was in a early episode of Castle, when the two main characters Kate Beckett and Rick Castle end up on separate blind dates in the same restaurant.   You expect the average TV formula that they will get jealous of each others dates and end up sabotaging their own dates.  Instead, the writers did something kinda brilliant.  Instead of caring about each others dates, they both become obsessed with talking about the case they're on, and as they are talking to their dates come to the same conclusion about who the potential killer is.   They then abandon their dates to go and solve the mystery together.  The scene hits all the same emotional notes of the expected scene, and yet manages to reinforce the partnership and the crime drama aspect of the show.

My example of annoying out-of-character surprise also comes from Castle.  In the end of the last season, Kate Beckett got an offer a job in Washington, D.C.  and she took it.  Sounds like a reasonable plot complication right?  Uh-uh.  The show has made an absolute point of the fact that Kate Beckett is ultra-committed to her job as a homicide detective, even at the expense of other career ambitions, making the D.C. job feel like a convenient manufactured drama.   Could there have been a way for this same plot point to be in character?  Oh, I'm sure.  Give Kate a couple really sucky cases, where she feels like she doesn't have enough power to get justice and such a change is at least explainable.

So why am I talking about this?  (Other than the fact that I like talking about Castle.)  Of course, when I'm writing my book I want there to be surprises and things that come unexpectedly to the reader.  I hope my novels aren't predictable, but I do think I could use some work on the whole surprising thing.  It's hard, at least for me, to figure out how to do this.   I've really tried, in my own work to look for those little moments where something amazing happens that even I didn't quite plan for.  As far as I know, I've only pulled it off only once in the current novel.   But I'm hoping I that as I revise this draft I can come up with more ways to build pleasant surprises into my story.

Handwriting

I recently read a magazine article extolling the virtues of writing by hand.  Apparently, it does all of this good stuff for our brain that typing doesn't. It helps with memory, curing depression, and a whole number of things including creativity.  I definitely write more creatively when I write by hand. 

The other night I sat down to write for "a few minutes" and quite a while later found that I'd written over 1600 words, and they were good words.  It also helped that I put my headphones on and listened to music that matched the mood of what I was writing.   Still, I think the process of writing by hand definitely does something for my creative brain that mere typing doesn't tap in to.  

From a creative writing standpoint it also has two other real advantages.  First, when I type the handwritten material into the computer I'm able to give the words a quick edit with out getting bogged down in major revisions.  Also, typing is a great task to keep me connected with my novel on days when my brain is to tired to work on new material.

Some Good Stuff

Some good stuff from the last few weeks -

- My cute husband is definitely my hero!  When I went to go to a job interview yesterday I discovered my keys were locked in the car and Tracy rushed home to help me.  He also helped me with a big Young Women activity on Wednesday night (which my Mom also helped me figure out.)

-  I've had a chance to spend some time with both old and new friends lately.  For example, a couple of weeks ago Evevanne came down and we got to hang out for a Saturday, it was so much fun.  She got me the cutest flip-flops I've seen in in a long time - and I really needed flip-flops.  Michaele's in town so I have someone to commiserate with about the ups and downs of history.  Pam is one of the world's best writing buddies. And last month Becky Criddle and I got confused about the date we were having lunch - the great part - even though it wasn't the day we had e-mailed about, we both planned for the same wrong day.  It was funny and awesome!

- I'm reading books and writing again.  This is a good sign, when I'm at my most stressed I stop doing these things, so it's good to be back at it.  Though I've got a long way to go I'm just past the 150 page mark on the current novel I'm working on.

Yes, there are still some challenges going on in my life, and in my head, but it's great to look back and see the good things that happen.

Relatively Good News

Just found out that the Graduate School is nominating my dissertation for the Council of Graduate Schools Distinguished Dissertation Award.  Apparently they can pick one dissertation to nominate in the field of Humanities and Fine Arts and I'm fortunate enough that they've chosen mine.  Though I don't expect to win by any means the winner is announced in December and gets a $2000 award and  a trip to California in December (good timing!). 

Apparently the thesis editor who helped me get the manuscript ready for submission liked it and told the Dean of the Graduate School about it, which is how I ended up being nominated.  It's great that someone who doesn't really know me liked it well enough to suggest it for something like this.  Yay!

Hobby Mania

I have too many hobbies.

Seriously -  here's a list of things I do, or am learning how to do, or feel like I should be learning how to do (at least the ones I can think of at the moment):

-Writing Fiction (though this should be a profession, but it's a hobby until someone pays me for it)
-Writing Poetry
-Reading Books
-Papercrafts (Cards, scrapbooking, etc.)
-Crafts (anything not falling into the above category, including jewelry making, decoupage, home decor DIY....I'm beginning to think this list would be freakishly long if it weren't for the word "crafts")
-Learning to play the Piano
-Crochet
-Gardening
-Cooking
-Baking
-Camping
-Postcard Collecting
-Watching TV
-Going to the Movies 

This list does not count the things -  like learning to play the guitar -  that I started enough to actually buy books for, but never did anything with.  (Though this is part of why Tracy talked to me after coming home teaching and asked me out on a date so I'm pretty happy about that one) It also doesn't count things - like playing volleyball - that my younger self was good at, but I can no longer really do.

Apparently I like projects and goals and learning new things.  However, I sometimes think that save item #1, my sheer number of hobbies keeps me from being particularly good at any of them.  Yet they also keep me doing things that are happy and productive.  (Even those last two have helped me make friends.)   I sometimes just wish I had a little better focus, and a few more hours in the day.

Plot in Need of Thickener

So I'm working on a novel I started in mid-February, a new novel that has now reached over 80 pages.  I'm trying to write it as fast as humanly possible, resisting the urge to revise and just plowing through.    The trick with this is that one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is that I struggle with action/adventure/mystery style plots.  Now if I were a romance novelist or a literary fiction writer this probably wouldn't be quite so much of a problem, but the stories I like best have action and intrigue and well...story, and I want my novels to have the same thing.   Therefore I tend to spend a lot of time staring at blank notebook pages and scribbling ideas until something makes some sort of sense.   If the writing fairies could grant me a gift (besides making a living as a writer) I would ask for a natural talent for plot.

Forty-four Pages

It's been 13 days since I made my 1,000 word a day goal and I'm startled, honestly, by how effective that goal is.  Today I was really tired when I sat down to work, and at first I worried that this was the day that I wouldn't make it.   Still, I did manage to think of a scene I need to write for the novel that is a follow-up to Rell, and once I got started it was a bit easier than I expected.  Overall, the goal has led to forty-four pages of writing in less than two weeks.  Which is pretty exciting, considering that when the month started I was staring down the biggest case of writer's block I'd had in recent memory.  

I think there are a couple reasons for why this works:

First, 1000 words is a significant number of words, enough to feel like an accomplishment and yet not so large that it's impossible.

Second, I've done my very best to treat it almost like it's work hours that I need to put in.  Not a hobby, or something that would be nice to get to, but something that I truly must do every day.

Now, here's hoping I can keep it up. 

1000 Word Goal Update

So first four days of the 1,000 word goal were amazing.  I worked on the two projects I was ideally supposed to work on and managed to write 18 pages.  Today though, it was pretty painful, I spent a lot of time staring at the computer and being extraordinarily frustrated and the last 300 words were mostly a bit of goofing off - an image I had in my head about two very brilliant but very different people meeting across a library study table.  Basically a random scene I have no current use for.  Still, I managed it.  There's hope for me yet.

New Writing Goal

Here's the thing...I have time right now to be writing.  I have dozens of ideas and projects that need my creative writing energy and yet I've had a hard time getting myself to do it.  So new goal - 1,000 words a day, 6 days a week.  I just need to sit in my chair and turn on my computer and type, even if it's crap.    Wish me luck.

Love Letters to Places

So this probably should be on my long neglected book blog, but I didn't want to deal with the difficulty of kick starting it yet again so I'm going to post this here.

Right now I've got this massive urge to work, not on the novels I'm supposed to be working on, but on an idea for a novel that takes place on a semi-mysterious island in the Puget Sound.  This isn't really a surprise, in fact it's a habit of mine.

I've realized that all of my novel settings are in essence love letters to places that mean something to me.  Even Rell which is set in a fantasy world is inspired by the high desert, river-centric landscape of southern Idaho.  One particular scene, even though it was a combination of places, was so specifically detailed that my cousin Jennie upon reading it said she felt like she recognized it as a place she had been. 

And it's not an accident that Capstone is set in the Washington D.C. area.  One of the most fun experiences I've had as a writer was planning an action sequence in the Metro station in Alexandria that I used everyday while researching at the National Archives a few years ago. 

One of the great, and yet I think sometimes lousy rules of writing is "Write what you know."  And I can't remember who exactly it was that wisely changed this rule to "Write what you love."  Not only does writing about these places make it easier to get the details right and also invest my stories with things that reflect my specific personality as a writer, but I also think it's a way for me to stay connected to these places even when I'm at my boring old desk reduced to looking at (literally at the moment) pictures of sunrise on Whidbey Island or a sketch of two people strolling hand in hand in front of the U.S. Capitol.

I also have this possibly crazy notion that anything I can do to up my emotional investment in the story I'm telling will eventually translate to those people who read my stories.

Favorites A to X - Part Two "B"

B
Movies
Beauty and the Beast - I've written before about how much I like these characters so I'll just add that this is my favorite animated film of all time.

Better Off Dead - okay, so honestly this movie is stupid, really it is.  It's essentially about a guy who is really into skiing and keeps having delusions and trying to kill himself because his milktoast girlfriend dumped him.  However, it is also hilarious and extremely quotable. ("Gee, I'm really sorry your mom blew up, Ricky")  I read somewhere that John Cusack kind of hates this movie, which made me sad.

Bourne Identity- One of the best action movies there is.  Whenever I need inspiration for action sequences in my writing, this is the movie I turn to, it's my favorite car chase ever. 

Books
Beauty (Robin McKinley) - there are a lot of good retellings of Beauty and the Beast, but this is my favorite.  I think McKinley stays true to the original tale, while giving it a fresh and lovely spin of its own.

Bitterblue (Kristin Cashore) - oh, just realized I was wrong when I said The Avengers was the newest entry on the list, as I just finished this book last weekend.  Kristin Cashore has written three books, they are all on this list, and I think Bitterblue is the best of the three.  Also, since they are traditional fantasy and on the bestseller list it gives me hope that someday my books might have a chance.

The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley)- For a recent Relief Society activity we were asked to bring a favorite book to share.  I took this one.  The first time I ever thought "I want to write a book like this" I was reading The Blue Sword. 

Book of a 1000 Days (Shannon Hale) - I like that Shannon Hale took the inspiration for this fantasy world from Asia rather that Europe as is usually the case, it's a sweet, interesting story that I highly recommend.

Tiny Writing Bright Spot and My Unintentional Pen Name

Shocker...I'm posting twice in one day.

The digital short story collection I'm in was the #15 bestseller for Amazon Kindle Short Stories today (they did a big publicity push).  Now I know this has almost nothing to do with me considering all of the big names attached to it, but it's still fun to know people are actually reading something I wrote. 

Oh, and if you look it up on the Amazon page my name is listed as Jenel Copeabout.  Somehow the "about" from my word count formatting got pushed over onto my last name in some versions of the table of contents.  I did try to get it fixed, and luckily it's right in the book itself, but just for the record, I'm not planning on having it as my pseudonym - though it does make Tracy laugh.

Gruff Variations

Hey, if anyone is interested in buying the collection The Gruff Variations which features my short story and work by a bunch of amazing published writers you can buy it on Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/The-Gruff-Variations-Anthology-ebook

This format takes requires the Amazon Kindle App  which you can download for free and use on your computer.

You can also get it in a bunch of other formats (including a regular PDF which can be printed) at Smashwords.com, that link is:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/142643

It's 7.99 and all of the money goes to two charities that are involved in getting books into the hands of kids who otherwise wouldn't have them.   Ok, pitch over.