Dream until your dream comes true

Today I was let go from my temp job. They have very high standards for accuracy and the short story is, I understand why they let me go, though I do not understand why they waited until I’d left the office to call me and tell me. Being outdoors, I didn’t hear my phone ring inside my purse, and consequently didn’t know about it until about an hour and a half later.

I don’t have another job ready and have no clue if any temp agency will have something for me while I’m once again combing online job ads.

But don’t feel too sorry for me. The Universe has prodded me again. See, my rock novel follows me around like a shy puppy. It pops out unexpectedly from around corners, waves, grins a silly ear-to-ear grin, then disappears. I used to think this was the Universe reminding me that if I was going to write a novel, It had already given me the plot idea and now it was up to me to actually write it.

I think it’s stronger than that, in fact. I think the Universe is reminding me that writing is my singular purpose in life. Every time I hear about musicians who “made it”, I hear echoes of my own life. I fell in love with writing at a pretty young age, I didn’t miss doing other things if I could read and/or write, I got so obsessed with words that one year in high school, I spent my free periods reading the unabridged dictionary. No, really--*reading* it.

I don’t have the tenacity (or talent!) to do anything musically, though that’s a love that comes in a close second to writing. I have this funky twosome going on. Writing . . . that’s what makes me tick, that’s what fills my soul and pours out, just like musicians who never gave up because their music is what they need to live.

Kind of too bad I’m not independently wealthy, so I could devote more time to the dream. Still, it’s the only thing that feels *real* to me. I’m going to take Santana’s advice: don’t listen to the loud voices in your head that say you aren’t good enough, listen to the quiet one that says “this is what you are, go out there and do it.”

Gonna do that, peeps. Am gonna write every day, am gonna slay this bad boy of a novel! I may not make it to superstar status, but the important thing is to write it and set it free in the world. Hope to have you along, I’ve been very much enjoying getting to know some of you :-D

Wisdom from The Lovin Spoonful

Read AJ Hartley's post at Magical Words. He's described the exact problem I'm having: too much Stuff happening in the latter part of the WIP. I love what the characters have gotten into, but it seems like a too sudden a change of pace from the rest of the book. New characters pop up, the antagonist pulls his worst stunt, one of Neal's biggest lingering questions since the beginning gets resolved, characters hop on planes to go back and forth between the West and East Coasts, people get shot at--all in the space of a few weeks!

AJ's solution was to force a stop to the action by making the characters (temporarily) unable to move forward. Everybody gets a breather, readers included. Characters think their way back into the action, which I often like better than the brute force approach.

I'd also like to point out that I only realized I had a problem because I looked at my outline. I saw that I was roughly 2/3 of the way through the outline currently, but still had a bunch of very active scenes laid out. Toss stuff out the window, make it two books, condense the way some stuff is told without actually tossing out plot points?? *sigh*

If any of this sounds familiar, stay tuned because once I figure out how to resolve it, I'll let you know. If you've had a similar problem and fixed it, do share so the rest of us maybe won't get quite as bloodied :)

This brings us to that icon of 60s breezy pop music, The Lovin' Spoonful: Did you ever have to make up your mind? It's not often easy and not often kind. And because it's such a huge issue for me and my characters, I've run out of things to say about it!!! (for now)

Love the scene? Great! Toss it.

A writer’s voice I’ve never heard haunts me. As I work through revisions of my WIP, the voice repeats a sentence whenever I start thinking, ‘This scene doesn’t fit with the revision, but it came out so well, isn’t there a way to keep it?’ The voice answers with: Not every idea, not even every good one, has to be included.

I wrote a scene in draft 2 where Neal receives a box of things that belonged to his kids and his women, after he’s left the gang. He realizes MF has murdered not just the women but the kids as well. I like how emotional Neal gets; for once, he doesn’t care that somebody sees his true self and his vulnerability. He shows the items to Sandy one at a time and talks about each person he’s lost. It is, rather sadly, a good scene.

However. Things didn’t stop there.

When doing draft 3, I realized the tension would be heightened if I either showed the murders with Neal unable to stop them, or showed him finding the bodies right after the murders. I chose one of those options and, to help pull readers in, I did most of those scenes in Sandy’s POV. Through Sandy, readers get to experience Neal’s loss first-hand, making it more powerful.

I read over draft 2 again. Ohh, I moaned, but look at this part, it’s touching how Neal describes his little kids; how it’s clear that he realizes how much he loves them only after they’re gone. Not every idea, not even every good one, has to be included.

One of the problems with those scenes in draft 2 is that it could be argued I did a fair amount of *telling*. In draft 3 there’s more *showing*, which is more appropriate for something so emotional.

That’s just one example. Bob Kernen’s sentence has been a hot knife through the butter of my writing so, so often. It still hurts to lose scenes that I like (or love), but as I like to say, if I wanted to do something easy, I’d have taken up flower arranging. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten to the point of realizing how to improve something if I hadn’t practiced on scenes that got tossed. By writing everything as if it was the turning point of the story, I practice making scenes the best they can be.

I think this is similar to something I've read about some drummers' approach to songs. When deciding what to play for any given song (especially ones recorded by other people) they don't *overplay*. They do what's best for the song. A few rock drummers I've read about have said they've discovered how powerful well-placed silence can be.

I keep the parts I decide not to include in the actual story. Occasionally, phrases get resurrected in other scenes; sometimes dialogue gets used by another character; I may just keep it to re-read when I’m too tired to write but want to stay connected to the characters.

Not every idea, not even every good one, has to be included. To further illustrate the idea, I’ll end the post here, even though I could say more about it. Go on back to your own story and write!

"writing what you know" the painless way

We’ve all heard the admonishment “write what you know”. That’s how the best stuff gets written, even in fiction, right? Never mind that inexperienced writers of sci fi and fantasy don’t get much help with applying that decree. My novel is about a guy who starts out in a street gang in Los Angeles then becomes involved with a rock band. I didn’t know facts about those things; I wasn’t even sure I knew much about guys, though that can be a problem no matter how much experience is involved.

I was a little worried about it, but the story was intended to focus on character interaction. The music part was supposed to be in the background. Ha!

A curious thing happened, gradually. I did believe that the better you know your characters, the better your story will be. When you know what really makes them tick, they come alive not just for you but for readers. Writing a convincing gangbanger meant trying to find out what that life was like—in reality, not assumptions.

No, I didn’t prowl the streets. I read. Mind you, I needed info about the lifestyle in a very particular place and time, and I discovered that in fact, not everything is on the internet. A freaking lot of stuff is, but not everything. And people can be willing to tell you that what you’ve written is “off” but not offer to help with facts. So that part is the weaker area of my research. But I haven’t given up.

Sandy is a musician in a major rock band. Okay, specifics on how high-profile, high-income folks live is also a bit of a weak spot, but I was able to find info on the music business. Music has always been the soundtrack to my life and what keeps my heart beating. So I’ve paid attention over the years to interviews. Back when roadies still set up the stage when the audience took their seats, I’d always bring binoculars and study what was happening onstage. During a show, I’d watch performers when the spotlight moved *off* them.

Everyplace I thought I might read, hear or see something interesting, I paid attention, and often picked up a tidbit or two.

Then I realized that I couldn’t keep *everything* about the music business in the background. Neal roadies for Sylvyr Star and that couldn’t be glossed over. People have written books for public consumption about how to be a roadie! I couldn’t function without the internet. Found a documentary that follows Rush’s road crew on tour.

And that’s how writing what I love turned into writing what I know. Find the thing that you can honestly say is your reason for living, and no matter what you have to do to turn it into a book, it won’t be work. Love your subject and you’ll love research. I can prove it J

Some help from "The Farmer's Daughter"

Hot damn. I downloaded Fleetwood Mac’s 1980 “Live” album; I bought the LP when it first came out so I knew what it's like. But I haven’t heard any of the tracks in several years and I’d forgotten what a tight, top-notch, truly professional band those guys were. Because this is my blog, I’m going to rave about it. --A little, and then I’ll connect it to writing. Really!

You’d think a live “Rhiannon” when Stevie Nicks’ vocal prowess was at its peak would be the point at which I lost awareness of the room and whatever I was doing. No, it was the two-and-a-half-minute rendition of “The Farmer’s Daughter”. It’s a simple, rhythm-laden version with vocal harmonies so flawless and sweet that I’m quite sure my eyes glazed over. I’ve always thought that song was something special, but since delving much more deeply into music when I got serious about writing my novel, I’ve become more acoustically sensitive, or something. I hear instruments I never knew were there, I feel things in songs that my ears don’t pick up (which I understand is what a lot of music producers intended), and generally enjoy what I listen to a whole lot more.

(And I know that plenty of people already appreciate music this way. I don’t mean to imply that I’ve acquired some special power, here.)

Find that song online, put on a kick-ass headset, and just listen. Guitar and bass whup up and down like rubber bands the size of the Earth. There’s a shaker hissing in there and Mick manages to thump the drums gently. I think it’s Lindsey, Stevie, and Christine singing. No one voice stands out. They blend so very perfectly it sounds like totally different people (at least to me). I put this on repeat and trance out. The overall tone is soft and breezy with a bit of wickedness from the rhythm section. It beats in my ears and my gut like my own heart.

Now, this sort of examination helps in my WIP, because I’m writing about musicians. There are times when the storytelling segues into “music telling”. I’d love to have readers click a button in the e-reader version of my book and hear the music as they read about it, but that probably ain’t gonna happen. Therefore, I have to write as clearly as I can especially about those parts so readers can hear something in their heads.

You can benefit from that sort of observing. Pay attention to how different people speak; you’ll hear different accents and cadences. This is endlessly helpful for tips on how to make your characters sound different from each other. Think about how you’d write out slangy speech, for example, and how much or little to change it so readers consider it unique but not annoying. Think about tone and timbre of voice.

An easier one is to study how people dress. Practice describing them. What is it about one person that draws your eye but not somebody else? Does one person seem to stand taller, move more confidently, project an air of meaning business? How detailed can you get describing that person? How much can you then cut out but still get across a basic of sense of the person?

Sharpen your ability to see unexpected connections between things. Study everything, no matter how small. The process as I describe it does rely on eyesight, but I am confident that sight-impaired people are just as capable of “looking at” things in unique ways. As a writer, you have a superpower—a potent imagination that can turn you into a fly on any wall.

I’ve never been backstage at a rock show. I’ve done some research, but it’s not easy for me to find out the sort of details that would make it sound like I hang around backstage all the time. So, I have to work harder. As I do research reading, I picture things in as much detail as I can. I grab everything I read and drop it into my muse’s Magickal Crockpot. It simmers together continuously underneath my conscious mind. When I sit down to write, stuff pops out of that Crockpot.

Music has a way of freeing our emotions and our minds. The next time you find you’re really stuck on a scene or on characterization, get out your i-pod or other portable music, queue up your favorites, and go people-watch. Become a sponge. Be alert to the interesting, the thought-provoking, the different, the beautiful. Feel impressions sink down into you. Eat, nap, repeat. You’ll know when your cauldron of impressions has a batch of “alphabet soup” ready to go!