Wynderlon.com is the personal website of Himani, an aspiring author. Here, she chronicles the daily struggles of trying to get a word count down on paper (or computer screen), the foibles and challenges of life, and the usual random insanity.
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My muse may be PMSy |
I am not happy with my Muse right now. She refuses to cooperate and thus I have been staring at “Morgan” on-and-off the past few days and getting…pretty bad prose. After knocking my head against my desk for a while, getting some OJ, having a lemon cookie, realizing the lemon cookies taste awful (that’s what I get for going with price and not quality), knocking into the Stealthy Attack Desk of Doom and remembering that I still need to install the lock I bought for it, looking at the bathroom and wondering if I should clean it, deciding against cleaning for today…
…after all of that, I finally succumbed, went meekly back to my chair, and opened up “Tayce.”
Happy now, Muse? 
On the plus side, I pounded out some wordage — about 2,000 words. It’s interesting how I’ve redone the beginning of the story — well, truthfully, a lot of my ideas of changed. This is what happens when you’re forced to take a 7 month hiatus on a story (and since my ideas tend to change a lot if given the time and inclination, it’s also the reason why I’m loathe to work on anything besides “Morgan”). The first chapter of “Tayce” used to begin with a visit to the graveyard and a pushy ex-boyfriend. It now begins with Tayce walking back home from the grocery store late at night with a bear claw, 409 cleaner, and a tin of ground coffee. She ends up getting stabbed twice by a deranged man known only as the “bus stop stabber.”
Now, you may be scoffing…but that’s from real life. Well, maybe not the grocery trip, but the bus stop stabber is quite real and, as far as I know, still at large. Anyway, it worked for my purposes, so into the story he went. 
Every author has probably heard, sometime, that good stories are “made up of characters, not plot.” In fact, when I was getting a degree in Creative Writing, this was the whole argument the teachers had as to why genre sucked while lit. fiction was the bee’s knees: genre apparently only survived on plot, foregoing characters.
From the opinion of someone who has read plenty of lit. fic. and has found 60% of it pretentious and boring because it ignores plot development to the point that it just seems like a bunch of characters doing random things that are “intense” and “dramatic,” I always disagreed with the whole “plot last, characters first” way of thinking. I think plot and characterization need to be mixed together in equal parts to make the perfect story. A good plot allows for the characters to do something and gives meaning to the changes the characters go through during the story. However, if you don’t have good characters, you don’t care about the plot.
I have trouble with making a good plot. I have good ideas, but I find that I usually have a saggy middle (and no one likes a saggy middle 
) in my stories. I also find that characterization is difficult for me; I don’t know where to add the interactivity between characters that really makes them pop out of the page. The silver lining is that this can all be fixed with revision.
Does anyone else have similar problems with plot and characterization? What techniques do you use?
…that should be a rule of life. Last night, I dreamed that I was writing. It was so life-like, I remember the sound of the tapping keyboard. When I woke up and checked the file for the story, I was really confused for a moment because I remembered typing stuff. I had to mull it over for a moment before it dawned on me that the characters I was typing about hadn’t actually been done in the story yet, they were just stuff in my head. So, it had to be a dream.
When I told John the dream, he said, “That’s kind of sad.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. When you start dreaming about your mundane, real life, you know you need a vacation…or something.”
In other news, I’ve DVRed a few episodes of this new show called The Unusuals. It’s a crime-drama on ABC. It seems the thing for TV shows nowadays is to have weird, quirky characters. Bones, Chuck, Dexter, etc. It’s a nice change, but I gotta wonder how long it’ll last before it gets old and I’m saying, “Oh look, another weird character because of XYZ who’s saying strange things”? As it was, a few times someone would say something in The Unusuals, I would think, Does every character have some form of Tourette’s? No one in real life would actually say these things out loud.
But, The Unusuals has some really nice dialog between characters. For a crime-drama, it doesn’t spend much time or attention on the actual crimes, and they are usually mundane things with weird twists (like a woman who wants to steal everything for her wedding). I like the characters. I mean, a detective with a brain tumor who refuses treatment and as a result has nothing to fear — yet has survived three near-death experiences (much to his confusion). His partner is a man whose father and grandfather have died when they were 42, and he’s in his 42nd year and afraid he’ll die too.
Anyway, I dunno if it’ll last longer than a season. I think I’d like it to. It also got me thinking about dialog. What makes good dialog? I think it’s not just that the characters have something interesting to say; there’s a kind of rhythm of good dialog, a back-and-forth that seems to bounce off the characters’ tongues. Lately, a lot of my dialog has been sounded flat to my own ears. I don’t know how to make it better though and most my efforts lately have been icky. Writing really good dialog is a talent.
I also just realized that that was a really long segue to talk about dialog. Oh well.
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I hate trouble scenes - where’s my candy bar?
Himani — April 13, 2009 at 10:40 pm {No Comments}
Category: Journal, Writing
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For the last few days, I’ve been banging my head on a scene. I just need to figure out how to begin a conversation without it sounding weird and awkward (although, at this point, I’m considering just letting it be weird and awkward. Conversations can start out weird and awkward, right?). The annoying thing is if I can just make this conversation work right, I get my candy bar scene (it means the scenes you really want to write. The saying “candy bar scene” is from Holly Lisle).
John and I went to see Aliens vs Monsters on Sunday. It was “meh.” It had a few cute moments, but when all’s said and done, it wasn’t anything special. I’m guessing that people want to do what Pixar are doing with their films, but they aren’t quite getting it. And I don’t know why something like Monsters Inc. is better than Aliens vs Monsters. Although it might be because Billy Crystal is funny. Anyway, it was cute but definitely “worth renting” cute and not “worth $7 matinee price” cute.
Note: Considering I went to the Tucson Festival of Books somewhere around March 16th, this is a very late post. My bad. 
I was able to go to the Tucson Festival of Books both days and it was an awesome experience. It was the first Festival of Books and I hope Tucson does it again and again for years to come, because I’ve always thought that there should be more festivals in Tucson.
Unfortunately, a lot of the workshops I wanted to go to were scheduled at the same time, so I had to pick and choose quite a bit. My itinerary was full for both days — in fact, the experience reminded me a lot of being back at University. I would rush to campus, pray I found parking (although this time it was free ), rush onto the Mall, and then run between buildings for different workshops. When I had half an hour free, I’d devour lunch. Am I crazy because I felt some nostalgia for the University days as I was running around like a chicken without a head? 
I brought along book plates because I didn’t want to lug all my books (plus the books are still in piles waiting to be sorted onto a bookshelf 
) around for the whole day. I got signatures from Emma Bull and Charles de Lint! It’s always fun to see Emma Bull, she has a great personality. Charles de Lint was a special treat, as I’m a fan of his Newford series. I love how Charles de Lint takes urban fantasy and makes it lyrical, and of course, Newford is really original and unique. Great world building.
One thing I didn’t like were some of the people that asked authors questions. I went to a workshop for mystery writing. One of the authors mentioned they didn’t like the ending to a John Grisham novel and that’s what prompted him to write his own mystery/thriller. I can relate to that — the reason I started “Tayce” was because I was sick and tired of reading horrible urban fantasy with vampires, werewolves, and fairies. But, his one little comment spurred three people to start ragging on John Grisham — one person went as far as to ask “Why do you think John Grisham is so popular yet his books are so bad?” I could see the authors in the panel were extremely uncomfortable; they didn’t want to rag on John Grisham. They didn’t care — Jim Nisbet finally stopped the questions by saying, “I don’t really care.” — I had to agree. I didn’t care, either.
The same happened to Charles de Lint. The first question someone asked him was basically an insult about his own books. I forget exactly what it was, but I turned to Dave and said, “Is it just me or was that really mean?” And he nodded and said, “Yeah. It was mean.” I wanted to say, “WTF, people? If you don’t like the person’s books, then don’t go to their panels! Save the hour! But don’t take valuable time from people who actually came here because they’re meeting an author they admire!” Hell, there was an author there who writes books I seriously have issues with. I don’t like her stories (they’re historical romances) because of one specific scene. Sure, I’d like to ask the author, “I understand the value of historical accuracy, however I can’t help noticing that in your first book in the series, you devoted more word length to the scene where the heroine is being beaten by her ‘true love’ than you did for the first time they made love or were married. I also felt it was strange that a woman who is from the relative future — at least when women had the right to vote and could divorce a spouse that hit them — wasn’t more outraged by a husband that punishes his wife by using a belt. What was your reasoning?” But, I didn’t. I just didn’t go to her panel — and I don’t read her books anymore. Mostly because I can’t root for a hero that would do that. Historical accuracy or not.
ANYwho, I suppose this harks back to what one author said at a panel I went to entitled “10 Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author” — you’ll always get those inane people who want to just ruin everything.
But besides that, and the fact that eating lunch out for two days cost me more than the bookplates I bought to be signed by authors and the Tucson Festival of Books keychain…it was all good. I enjoyed myself a lot and I hope they keep this thing going. Considering the University of Arizona has such a prestigious MFA program in Creative Writing (or it did when I was doing university research some six years ago; funding cuts may have made it slip a bit, I haven’t checked), there needs to be more literature venues in Tucson!
I was thinking that last night as I finished some character sketches. There’s a lot of characters named Jack in the world: the archetypes from English lore, jack-in-the-boxes, Jack the Ripper, Jack Frost, Jack Daniels, Jack of all trades, Jack Bower, Jack playing cards…
…well, there’s a lot of Jacks out there, and it seems a popular name to denote something wild or mysterious or take-no-bullshit. And it also was my automatic [filler] name for a character in “Morgan.” I was typing up some character sheets and although Jack won’t be introduced until the next book, Morgan recounts how she meets him the first time — which, like a lot of Morgan’s introductions, was at gun point.
Anyway, I paused and thought about it. Jack — who really is a man of many trades, and mysterious, and likes death and fighting and violence, and who Morgan admits beat her ass in a fight, fair and square, and probably is one of the few people she can name who have the training to kill her — is a character I’ve had in my head since 2006. I always knew he would be there; he’s the guy Morgan measures herself against both with envy (because he’s better at fighting than her) and with relief (because she knows she’s not as heartless as him). But, I just don’t want him to be pegged as a “Jack type.” The take-no-bullshit, mysterious Jack.
However, Jack the name has a sound to it. Short, blunt…I remember reading once that hero names lean towards being short with heavy consonant sounds. Kirk, Spock. Luke [Skywalker]. Neo. John [McClane]. Rambo. Rocky. Puck. Jim [Hawkins]. I could go on. Even I unconsciously follow that. The main male characters in this story have the names Quinn and Jones. In the next book, there’s a man named Gio. It’s an interesting thing, the sounds of names and the connotations it brings up.
Which is why naming a character like “Jack” is difficult and frustrating. I don’t know what else to call him but I’m not quite happy with “Jack.” Bah…am I over analyzing this much? Yeah, maybe it’s time for bed.
Whew! I just spent a good portion of today automating as much of my backing up as I could. I had a scare this weekend where I thought I had named over “Morgan” with something else. If I had, I realized my back-ups would be two weeks old. At that moment, I knew I would have to do something better than my system of, “When was the last time I remembered to back up? Darn, I better do it now.”
I created 3 batch files and 1 autorun. The autorun was for my flash drive. Now, whenever I plug my flash drive in, the first thing that pops up is the option to back up my work - or I can access the autorun from the files. A double-click and I have a ZIP of my entire flash drive on my C:\ drive, in a pre-determined location aptly named “Backups” and the filename will be dated for easy reference. A second batch file does the same thing except it’s scheduled to run monthly and ZIPs my music and media folders (which doesn’t tend to change more than once a month). A third batch file is scheduled to run bi-weekly and copies all contents of my backup folder to my external hard drive for even more added security. It then cleans up all the old backup files on my C:\ drive so I don’t have any backups older than 15 days, while the backups on the external hard drive are cleaned up every 2 months.
Everything is nicely automated using batch files and scheduled tasks. So, hopefully, there’s minimal effort on my part. I think I can remember to double click and click on “OK” a few times.
Yes, it’s been a while since I posted. I have a good excuse! Okay…not really…I don’t. Damn, where did this month go? I wish I’d been able to get more writing done, but I have been struggling with a few non-writing stuff — mostly apartment-related, but a few health-related. Anyway, here’s a re-cap:
- The apartment boiler went kaput for 4 horrific days. Nothing like not having hot water to make you realize how much you love living in the 21st century. And I like my showers hot.
- Had to spray the apartment, twice, for bugs. After 5.5 years of living in Tucson, the cockroaches have finally found me (I actually think one of my neighbors is a slob, since I’ve been the same level of messiness as always — or even cleaner than usual, if my last few posts are any indication). John is now so freaked out about bugs he refuses to use the bathroom they’ve been spotted in. Not that they’re swarming or anything. We’ve seen a grand total of 5-7 over a month and a half period. In 10 days, though, we should be cockroach free.
- I went to visit my parents for a weekend and spent a whole morning and a big portion of an afternoon at the glorious and wonderful Civic Center Library. God, I love that library. Why is it so awesome? Oh, I know why. Because it’s huge and quiet with many plug outlets for laptops, great book selection, and open until 9pm most days. I miss Civic Center.
- I made hummus. Yes, I’m proud of myself since usually I just break down and buy a small container of ready-made hummus for $6 at Trader Joe’s or Sunflower’s. But, this time I said to myself, “Come on, hummus is super easy.” I’d been craving it for days, so I made a simple version — not much extra, like red peppers or anything — and ate it with whole wheat pita bread and salad. Oh man, it was good. I think I may have the same thing today, or maybe I’ll make hummus and sprout sandwiches. (If anyone’s interested, my recipe is after the “More” cut)
Yeah, not all that important. Kind of sad, really, that those are the big occurrences over the past week. Oh well. I have more to report on the writing. I’ve been outlining all of Morgan because I totally forgot stuff that had already happened. This teaches me to try and write a huge-ass novel without any sort of outlining. And through the outlining process, I realized that Morgan jumps around quite a bit from place-to-place for no reason, I have about 5 pages of non-stop “As You Know Jim…” info-dumping I really need to work on, and because I forgot (and didn’t outline), the exposition about Morgan’s past is said twice — and gets a much more dramatic response the second time! Oy!
At least I know there will be a lot of cutting and rewriting, which will probably bring the behemoth word count down to a much more manageable number of about 100k. And, I know this is totally against what I promised myself, but I’m beginning that right now. The last scene of the book is very complicated and since I’m changing four core scenes already written, I figured I’d finish that so that if the rewriting changes the last scene, I hopefully would have saved myself some time. When John heard, he groaned and said, “You need to get this finished first.” Yeah, I know, I know. *sigh*
(more…)
The information I got about the soot/burn marks are from a CSI episode. Who knew I’d find it useful?
The snippet from “Morgan” is under the cut.
(more…)
Right now, my stomach is so not happy with me, and I don’t really know why. All I know is it’s keeping me up when what I’d like to do is be in my comfortable bed, surrounded by my Egyptian cotton sheets I got for 20 bucks at the 4th Avenue Street Fair, maybe reading a little bit of Storm Born — you know, just to see if Dorian’s going to get any action or not, ’cause I totally think he should — and I can’t. I could blame the ham sandwich I made earlier, or maybe it was the cupcake John handed me, courtesy of a work colleague’s birthday. Whatever the reason, it’s damn annoying.
I am about (if all goes according to plan) 35,000 words away from the end of “Morgan,” which is totally doable; I mean, that isn’t even a NANOWRIMO novel. So, what does my muse do? Bombard me with images and words for “Tayce.” I swear, my muse is a cruel, cruel mistress and takes pleasure in bitch-slapping me down. I gritted my teeth and fought against the ideas for a whole week and then finally said, “Fine! If I write the first two chapters, will you be quiet about ‘Tayce,’ you vindictive she-devil?” My muse agreed, so that’s what I’ve been working on for the last two days. I only have ideas for the first two chapters of “Tayce” anyhow, and then I can totally go back to “Morgan.” I’m re-doing a major chunk of beginning, which will ultimately re-do some major plot points, for those of you who have critiqued half of it (sorry guys). Now it involves less Dorian, more Russian mobsters, and a cursed man named Leopold.
I’ve also been reading a lot of authors’ blogs and interviews lately. Probably some escapism on my part since the job market is bleak, with tumbleweeds moseying through it. Last night I dreamed I could only find one job and decided to take it. The job was having a woman throw (cooked) hot dogs at me for 8 hours a day. I’m serious, that was my dream. No, my dreams aren’t normal. I take it as both a blessing and a curse.
Anyway, I have learned two important things from all this blog and interview reading:
- Nora Roberts has my dream life. Her husband owns a bookshop and she writes full-time. When I was younger, I used to dream of owning a bookshop, but I thought considering all the hobbies I like to do and that I want to write full-time, having a bookshop would make my schedule very difficult. However, I never thought of the significant other angle. I informed John his new aim in life is to open a bookshop. He gave me a very bland look and said, “I’ll get right on that.”
- Holly Lisle has a really good site about how to become a full-time writer with everything from how to get published to writing tips, techniques, etc. She claims she has “over 100,000 words” worth of articles on writing.
Alrighty, I think I’m going to take some Pepto and try that whole bed-reading-sleep thing again.
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