Life is just a classroom, always in session

Writing is cool for sooo many reasons.  One reason is I'm always learning stuff, whether I'm aware of it at the time or not.  I've realized that I, probably like a lot of avid readers, absorb tangent info while doing research.  These things pop out unexpectedly in my WIP, or a new understanding shines out while watching the evening news.  I can honestly say that I'm aware of so much more about life than I was a year and a half ago.

For example, I've realized some "heavy" things.
a)  People who serve you in restaurants, keep department store shelves stocked, check you out at the grocery store, empty your trash bin at the office, drive city busses: these people have names, families, lives. They’d like to be recognized as human beings.  They are not our slaves, they are the same as you and me.

b)  One of the frustrations of writing is hearing your characters’ voices in your head, and being limited to the page to convey them. In a movie, everybody would hear Neal’s slight accent, how he slurs some of his syllables together, and how fast he usually talks. Instead, I have to write out those missing syllables so readers can understand. Readers therefore are missing something. Grr.

c)  So much is filtered through Neal’s eyes. I feel, at times, like there’s a telepathic connection that’s permanently switched on. News stories in particular piss him off because the media so often talks about bad stuff people do to each other. That immigration controversy in Arizona? oooo, I won’t get started on that. I have to sometimes actively remind myself that his opinions are not always mine. It can feel like I have two personalities!

And some fun stuff:
a)  There are layers and layers of instruments and vocals in recorded music. Until I did serious reading about how music is recorded, I didn’t think a whole lot about why I liked some songs. Now I hear bass like never before, tambourines and triangles, tiny cymbal shimmers, rhythm guitars running under the melody, soft piano notes tinkling like falling icicles. I find myself pressing the headphones closer. It’s a far richer world than I realized.  Adding an effect because the listener feels it more than hears it?  Didn't make sense to me before, but now I get it.  Music is glorious.  Those who make it are gods.

b)  Some stuff I used to enjoy just for the activity itself now has a strong layer of learning. Watching TV dramas: that plot twist didn’t make sense, but why not, exactly? If I wrote this episode as a novel, would I have to change this part and why? How do I get across visual cues in writing? …etc. Thing is, I love learning and I can relate so much to writing and/or music that I don’t mind losing some of the “purely for fun” aspect.

c)  Having begun to re-familiarize myself with Spanish, I had a moment of amusement in the grocery store. I noticed that the Mexican beer Corona has a 6-pack of smaller bottles, which they labeled Coronita: “little Corona” is one translation. I “felt” that translation without having to think about it, the way you just understand a different word form in your native language. Granted, that’s hardly anything to brag about, but I got a kick out of the seamless understanding. [and never mind about the beer part ;-)]

It's true that you learn more if you're having fun.  Liking what you're "studying" goes a long way toward true understanding of it.  If only I had liked math, who knows, maybe I could've been great at it!

Character interviews available

Check out my revamped character information, on the "my Work In Progress" page.

I now have excerpts from interviews with Neal and all four band members.  Because Neal changes drastically over the course of the novel, I've included an update with him right after the initial interview.

The characters are always available to answer questions; just add them in a comment and I'll be sure your questions get answered.  In Neal's case, be sure to specify if you're addressing him in 1989 or 1992, because you'll probably get very different answers from each year.  :)

welcome!

Shout out to Ryan!  I'm glad to have you along.  And, I'm interested to see on your blog that under "your best friend is" you list The Lord of the Rings.  I've read some LOTR bashes in recent months and it's awesome to know you're a fan :)

Out, out, damn sentence!

Writing. Some of us do it because we have to (I’m not the only writer to be marched to the computer by a character holding a gun to my head); some do it because it’s a fun, creative diversion; some do it because it pays the bills. We all get stuck on sentences and paragraphs. I’ve learned a few things from fighting with ideas and words.

a) Pay attention to your inner editor. I believe most, if not all, writers have one. It often starts out as a quiet voice but mine got louder the more I critiqued (or “critted”) other people’s chapters while continuing to work on my own story.

If something sounds awkward to your inner editor -- it just won’t behave by pouring itself nicely into a coherent sentence or two, or it hits some bumps as the words roll along -- there’s probably something wrong with it. Go back to it and think about it. Twist things around, look for something that flows with the rest of the paragraph. For myself, sometimes I decide that the reason I can’t seem to fix it is because it doesn’t have to be there anyway. A day or two later, I go back and read the same chapter, and I realize the rhythm is better without the troublesome phrase and I haven’t lost any important information.

Very often, the same phrases I have doubts about but leave in are the ones that my crit buddies on Critique Circle say need tweaking. They’re nice about it, but what they mean is, “Nooo, that’s like fingernails on a blackboard.” That reinforces my editing instincts. I had no idea when I started posting chapters to be critted that the process would become so central to my writing.

b) If you have a thought (sentence, phrase) that sounds great but doesn’t seem to click with the rest of the paragraph, maybe it doesn’t belong either. The parts of my WIP that other people say worked great are the ones I didn’t have to struggle to put together. I know how you feel.  The words fit together like puzzle pieces and say something in a clever way, but: they don’t belong. In this instance, writing is not like gardening where you can uproot something and find another corner where it works better. I look at it this way. Every time I have to make a writing decision that I know is good for the story but is painful, it toughens my skin. I’m gonna need that the more I ask people to comment on my writing.

It’s an interesting dynamic going on in my head. I have a Movie Director who controls what I see as I write. I’ve had to admit that the Director doesn’t always know what he’s doing. It was the painful admission of a writer beginning to show her work to others. My Inner Editor, I think, argues with the Script Writer. Combine that with characters changing the plot midstream and you have an answer to why writers often seem confused and some are going bald.

A Miscellany

I've added a new poem/song, "Season of Fire", to the poems/songs page.  Neal wrote it and tells me he's not 100% satisfied with it, but said it's okay for me to use it here  ;-)  My Muse wants to work it into the novel but unless there's a really good reason to include it, it may just stay here on the blog.  Neal also tells me he wants to go back to writing more often in Spanish, poems included.  My Muse, however, doesn't know Spanish so I can feel mistranslations coming!

I'm a bit late with this, but I have to shout out Congrats to the Buffalo Sabres for winning hardware at the recent NHL awards in Las Vegas.  Goalie god Ryan Miller won the Vezina for the league's top goaltender, and was tapped for the NHL Foundation Award for his work in the community.  (Remember, he was also instrumental in the U.S. Olympic hockey team's win of the silver medal.)  He's raised more than $500,000 for his charity the Steadfast Foundation, which emphasizes helping cancer patients, especially childhood forms.  Thanks to the NHL for donating $25,000 to the Steadfast Foundation.

Defenseman Tyler Myers took home the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year.  He won in a landslide, with 400 more points than the runner-up.  Tyler led all rookies with 37 goal assists.  He's got a solid, excitable fan group in the Buffalo area.

Other trophies and awards were given out of course, but these are the most meaningful to me.  As Ryan noted, Buffalo hockey fans are rabid, and when we're happy, we scream!  Best wishes for the coming season to Ryan and Tyler, standouts on a pretty cool team.  :-D

By the way, Buffalo did feel Ontario's earthquake last week.  It was first estimated at a 5.5 but later downgraded to a 5.0.  I, alas, did not feel a thing.  My sister and I were grocery shopping at the time and may have been driving when the waves actually passed through.  I feel so cheated!  ;-)  I have felt a couple tiny quakes before, but sheesh.  I live on the edge of one of the Great Lakes and I've never seen a waterspout either.  The stuff I miss . . . well Murphy may be listening so I'll shut up about that.

A last note of sympathy and love to the thousands affected by the oil spill.  I have a small sense of how you're hurting and my heart bleeds for you.  I'm so sorry that money became more important than your livelihoods.  And to the people of Haiti, still in pieces after the monster quake and living in terror of the current hurricane season, how I wish I could scoop you all up and put you gently into real homes in a good community.  May the Universe soon ease the suffering of all these people, and animals who have no way to speak for themselves.

New pages

I've added a new page for poems, or as I sometimes think of them, failed songs.  ;)  I like to keep my Muse fresh by daring her to do poetry in and around working on my novel-in-progress (Street Glass).  Poems and songs usually need to get ideas across with a minimum number of words, and learning how to compress my meaning is useful for fiction writing.  And, it's just fun.  My poetry would probably make English lit majors cringe, as much for format as anything else.  I've never "studied poetry" so don't expect anything formal.

The first entry, "Three Words", doesn't have an especially positive mood but I like certain aspects of it.  I'll include new entries intermittently.  Some of them may wind up in Street Glass, probably in altered forms, but mainly the entries are just exercises.  I'm debating the wisdom of posting a poem here that I intend to include in my novel.  We'll see.

And because I've finally realized that people may visit my blog who are not members of Critique Circle, I'm going to include a page explaining Street Glass: what the basic premise is, who the major characters are, stuff like that.  If I could draw, I'd include drawings of the players too.  Like many writers I suspect, I can see some of my characters crystal-clear in my head.  I wish I knew a police artist, I bet they could help me with pictures of these people.

My part-time Census job is finally over!  Woo-hoo!  More time to write!!

The mystery of creating

So I’ve written that scene where Neal gets the bad news about the kids and women. It needs tinkering but of course it’s only a first draft. Writing is funny, has anybody noticed that?

As I wrote, Neal made an offhand comment -- that maybe Sandy would write a song about the tragedy and thereby keep alive the memory of the murdered people -- that my Muse threw into her Magickal Crockpot. It simmered for two or three weeks, then boiled over one night as I was trying to stay asleep. Funny how the Crockpot tends to boil over nights when I have an early shift at work the next day. These two lines floated to the top and would not go away. I saw that dawn was seeping across the sky. Two more lines floated up. They seemed to click right together with the first two, rhyming and fitting with a rhythm. As most writers know, once that happens, you are doomed. You can’t ignore the Muse’s clicking, even if you want to. (Although, really, what writer wants to?)

Worse, I began to hear the lines sung. I heard a chorus; it was just a couple short lines with the first one repeated at the end. The weird thing is that it was Sandy’s voice. There is no way I could confuse it with anybody else’s voice, no real performer. As I wrote the words, the voice got stronger. I didn’t get a whole song, just a couple verses and that chorus, but it sounded like somebody was singing in my ear. It was the most obvious thing in the world to hear that tune with those words. Of course it flowed this way, that was its natural pattern.

This happened once before, in grade school. And, now that I think about it, that was also one of Sandy’s songs. That one I got in one piece, verses, chorus, complete melody, voice in my head. I wrote the lyrics down but time was cruel and saw to it that I lost the paper. I still remember the chorus though. Because I never learned anything about songwriting (like how to write music) I can’t write the melody for either of these songs. That’s my greatest frustration. I suppose I could make a simple vocal recording of the more recent song, “Flood of Tears”, but I’ve never had voice training either and I’m sure that not even my car likes to hear me sing.

Oh and the singing is accompanied by solo piano too. The tune wanders a bit between verses but not too far, like somebody improvising and not straying much from the basic melody. It’s all in my head. I can only get the words out on paper but of course the melody is perhaps more than half of what makes a song. Ah, to be a full-fledged songwriter, capable of getting all the details out there.

I tell myself that despite my shortcoming with songwriting, I still am blessed by my Muse. Not everybody has a Muse or is able to translate what that Muse is trying to say. It’s a wonderful thing to see people who don’t exist, hear conversations that never happened, see how made-up events fit together like a picture made of falling dominoes, get a sense of what makes people tick as you explore the interactions of people you can never physically touch. I used to write sci fi/fantasy and even aliens will help you understand humans. I wonder if a lot of psychologists write fiction.

Here’s to my Muse, whose name, by the way, is Sarah. Don’t let her commonplace name fool you. After all no one can write off a Muse.