Kami's State of the Writing

Lately I've been having trouble with ideas.  Oh, I have lots of ideas.  I even have some frozen embryonic stories that I can take out and ... okay, ew factor just set in.

But lately I've been dissatisfied with my ideas in general.  I don't want just any story idea.  I want one with that special something, you know?  It doesn't have to be unique, or pretty, or smart.  It does have to resonate.  I have to feel it in my guts, get that special tingly thrill, and when I work on it, have unnoticed hours go by before I look up from the page.  

Long walks and hot baths are in order.  In the meantime, I've got my novels.  I can live there happily for a very long time.  Still, it would be nice to have a short story come grab me by the throat before Tuesday's write-in with my writing pals.  I'll be looking at contests, prompts and anthologies in an attempt to spark something in time for that.  If none of that does the trick, I'll just have to work with what I've got.  

I want to produce, which means that I must produce.  Letting vague feelings of dissatisfaction get in the way of writing might lead to a habit of waiting until I 'feel right' to write, which might eventually grow into full-blown short story block.  I love writing shorts, and I don't want to go a really long time without writing one.  It's incredibly satisfying to write something and have it done in a month (sometimes even in a day!) and a great way to break a pattern of rhythm in a rut that can sometimes form when I'm working on novels, or worse, a single novel, every day all day.  As fun as it is to be immersed in a novel, there's a constant danger of complacency.  When I'm complacent, I'm more forgiving and apt to overlook things.  It's much more fun to work on a short story for a while and come back to the novel than to do the only other thing I've found to break the highway hypnosis, and that's to work from the back of the book forward.  I can do it, but I'm not real fond of it.

So that's where I'm at with writing these days.  That and trying to ditch this cold.  Oh, and I have a couple of short stories that are 'overdue.'  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Go J.D. Salinger!

Snagged from Gurnery Journey, a blog focused on art written by the wonderful creator of Dinotopia.

Want to write a derivative work?  Seriously, think twice.  Do your own stuff.  Someone writing under the pseudonym J.D. California wrote a sequel to "Catcher in the Rye," perhaps not knowing that J.D. Salinger not only is alive and kicking, but litigious.  So now there's a lawsuit.  Even if J.D. Salinger wasn't so inclined, really, do you want to hazard the chance of something like this happening to you?

I wonder if pseudo-California has ever heard of the term fanfic.

Maybe you're lucky enough that you feel your heart and soul is inspired by a work that happens to be in the public domain.  Good.  And yet, wouldn't it be better to rename the characters, twist the setting in a direction that resonates with your plot (or do some research and deepen the setting in a way the original author didn't explore) and let the characters grow with the challenges you place before them ... in short, writing an original work inspired by the book?  You'll have something that's completely your own, and by the time you finish revising and restructuring and hammering out the details of your world, I doubt anyone will recognize what you've done.  Plus, people may notice the tone or themes or characterization and nicely note that the work "is reminiscent of the works of J.D. Salinger, but with a present-day edge informed by the politics of 21st century Sweden."

I wish Mr. Salinger well.  

Now I'm curious to see how the whole Potato Day (Stephanie Meyer fanfic Fail that I won't link to so that it reduces traffic) thing is doing.  Hmm ... looks like she altered her page to be in Español.  Does she think this will save her?  I thought she would fade away after being met with lawyerly threats, but it seems she persists.  I think she wants to get sued for $100,000 and spend time in jail.  Weee!  She's got to be one of those people who believe that if nothing bad has happened yet, it won't.  Wow.  The fail, it burns!

Book in a Week?

Who needs a kick start to get themselves writing again?

I was reading about writing a book in a week on Broad Universe and something clicked.  No, absolutely I'm not going to write a book in a week.  I've got too many books I've written in a month that need my tender loving editing care to write yet another, especially since I'll probably do Nanowrimo again.  But when I got to the part about heroines of straw I thought aha!  That's something valuable to observe.  The author focused on lack of preparation leading to her failures but I thought her mention of her characterization was a bigger clue to her underlying issues.  Or not.  She was writing about her process, not mine.  

I wondered, can you prepare a character?  Technically, I guess.  You can decide their hair color and eye color, if they were molested as a child and how that makes them act out, if they drive a Cadillac or take the bus, and so on.  You can even 'motivate' them.  "My character wants, more than anything in the world, to travel to outer space."  Is that going to be your climax, then?  She finally gets to go to outer space?  Or is that just the beginning?  With the first choice, you've got a whole lot of empty to get her there.  With the second, you've got the deadly 'now what?'

So I thought about characters and what happens when I've got a good one.  And I realized that my favorite characters are strangers that I connect with and learn about as they grow in the story.  They're people when, as our eyes meet for the first time, I get this tingle.  I want to get to know them.  Maybe it's a shallow impression.  Man, is he hunky, and yet he's so shy!  Or maybe it's that moment of we're all in deep doo doo and she looks like she knows what she's doing.  I may be wrong, but my instincts say she's going to get me out of this mess alive where no one else can.  

Hopefully you're getting that idea.  I think this is yet another situation where 'write what you know' gets a lot of writers, including myself, into a little trouble.  I can think of a novel in particular where I put so many of my own insecurities and philosophies and everything else into the character that she didn't have much going for her.  Well, she had about as much going for her as I do.  I can be pretty entertaining and I have a lot of friends, but for a character to carry a novel I think she needs to be surprising, uncomfortable, edgy--something (even if it's just one thing but hopefully several things) that's not me.  I don't want her to be predictable and always react the same way I'd react if I were in the same situation.  

I'm not saying characters have to be larger than life--not at all.  But think about the first time you met your best friend, the love of your life, the teacher that changed your life, someone who impressed you even when you didn't know that much about them.  I propose that a character needs to pop for you the same as real people pop out of society's swarm and instantly become individuals.  Great actors can make even the most mundane secondary character interesting.  You want to get to know them, even if they're bad guys (or maybe especially, if you think that way.)  

The strongest short story I've recently written had this fun voice.  I didn't know much about that character's history, but I immediately wanted to get to know her.  She was a pistol.  I think I'm going to try to write something like that again, about someone I'd want to really get to know.  I think she's going to make a fabulous first impression on me.  I'll combine it with the garden challenge, I think.  Doesn't really matter, as long as I get to write about her.  I can't wait!

Dreams, Dreams, Dreams

I haven't been writing much lately (more about that in my blog), and so I seem to have caught Kami's condition of Much Dreaming When Not Writing. I have some very interesting ones in the past two weeks. Like the one where I went to Melissa Etheridge on advice about toddler beds. Or when Dad came to see me and give me a rather cryptic warning about watching out for my little brother (and yeah, Dad, you do look good). Or when I found my former manager from the university bookstore marching with my old high school band during a parade as assistant band director (I have no explanation for that one).

They have been fun (if odd) dreams. But my favorites have been the two that have given my story ideas. Two short stories, one less complex than the other and more fully formed, but still. I'm dreaming in short stories now. I guess some of Carole is rubbing off on my too. I never saw myself as a short story writer, but I'm glad I've given myself room to become one.

Escape

My brain is looking for escape routes.  Yesterday I wanted to write on anything except what I was supposed to.  Last night I even came up with a new story idea.  This morning I came up with more ideas--luckily one was for Masks--but the primary idea was for a project that has been on a backburner and will probably stay there for a long time.  I can blame my heavy schedule for this bout of escapism, but that would be just an excuse.  I know how to kick this.  Write anyway.

Definitely owe INK a dollar, and considering Radcon, that'll be another dollar because I'm not going to get a sub in by next Monday either.  Might as well pay up now.  But hey, after Radcon I'll be home free for quite a while.  With two day jobs days of work a week, three max, and the fact that lately my schedule has been arranged so that the workdays are consecutive, I'll have a lot more free time to get writing projects done.  I'm really, really looking forward to that.  Radcon has become my Thunderdome, and all I want to do is get beyond it (she said, dating herself yet again.)  I'm sure once I get there, though, I'll have such a blast that I'll forget all about these silly things called deadlines and goals, at least for a while.

Rein in the Urge to Plan

I got ahead of myself when I said I was leaning toward writing Golem God. And my muse reminded me of as much by chucking another rock of inspiration at my cranium. So I now have four, count them, FOUR story ideas for Nano. They are, in order of appearance:

Chesspiece (historic adventure)
The English Boy (historic paranormal)
Golem God (fantasy romance)
Death Follows After (historical mystery)

Yup, they all even have titles. How's that for thorough?

And they each have a synopsis. And research, but those needing it. At least enough research to hold the story together in the synopsis. Chesspiece needed the most, as it is politically involved and I had to brush up on my early 1970s history. But Death Follows After is a close second, since I can't decide if I want to set it during the Regency period (think Jane Austen) or the Victorian era (think Sherlock Holmes). I'm still waffling on that point. I have the feeling the Mr. Allen (the hero in the story, who is also an American) will be the deciding factor, since I haven't fully realized his backstory.

You know, it's rather fun having four stories to work up at once. Because then no matter which one gets Nano, I'll still have three worked up story ideas for next year, whenever I have a yen to work on a new story. It's rather nice, considering I use to struggle to develop one story.

I think all these story ideas is a sign that I've matured as a writer. I'm able to see more than just a scene or two of a tale, with a few quirky characters. Now I'm seeing beginnings, middles, hints of endings, main and secondary characters, settings, and backstory, all coming at me like a legion of toy soldiers holding out pointy little bayonets. It stings a little at first, but I immediately want to write on each of them, but I just slap a sticky plaster over the urge and jot down notes.

I suddenly went rather British sounding, didn't I?

Nano Plotting

I'm not plotting, exactly. I'm picking up ideas to throw into my nano novel.

I think I'm leaning toward writing my newest story idea, Golem God. It's a fairly straight forward fantasy-romance plot, with two competing old gods, a hapless mortal woman, and a golem man created to protect her. I'm keeping the plot fairly wide open to possibilities.

I've found a couple of ideas to throw into the story. One I found in an online news article. Nuns took over a convent when the Vatican tried to replace their vision-seeing Mother Superior. There was also a Franciscan friar involved. I'm sure that's going to end up in the story in one form or another.

The other is having one of the sirens from mythology turn up singing karaoke. That's just makes me laugh.

I started a notebook to jot down anything else to comes up. As I said, I'm keeping an open mind, so if anything interesting comes your way, add a comment. Especially if it is religiously or mythologically inspired.

I should add that witch into the story who was the lead character in a really bad short story I never finished that involved a golem. Which is where I got the golem idea from. Heh. She was a fun character.

Sslllooowwww

Goodness, the nano site is slow! I can hardly do anything on there. I got a nanomail and it took ten minutes to read and respond to it. Brings back memories. And sympathy for Kami's ongoing connection plight.

So, Kami, have you tried to sign up for this year's Nano? Still going to, right?

I had yet another story idea last night. That makes four new ideas, three of which are nano prospects. Once more, I'm just synopsising what I have on the idea. I'll pick the one I'm going to write on November 1st.

Meanwhile, it's all Inkwell Cult, all day. Okay, not all day, but I've spent all morning working on it. I'm excited for the story and I like where it's going. Thanks loads to the group for helping give me more focus on the opening two chapters.

I Have Nothing to Say

But I wanted to post something. Unfortunately, my head is rather empty today. As far as writing goes, I've been laboring over the Inkwell Cult excerpt making revisions. I did have a rather ingenuous idea this morning of my villain making Maud use the inkwell to write a letter to Travis, which would potentially alienate him from her, given what the inkwell curse. That could be much fun.

I'm still undecided about which story I'll write for Nano. Oh, I know, I'll share the first couple paragraphs of the really bad synopsi I've written for each potential nano novel. Because I love to share!

Chesspiece:
When Clair Demont agreed to attend the rally for the women's shelter, she was expecting to carry a sign and walk in a circle in front of the county courthouse. She did not expect to be set upon by police. And, yes, her reaction was probably a bad one. Running from the police is never a wise choice. But the shouting and bullhorns, sirens and screaming, and then the protesters taking up rocks and homemade weapons against the police had terrified her. She had to get away from what was fast becoming a tragic news event.

But she didn't expect to be corner be a giant of a man who would have looked more comfortable in a pro wrestling arena than on a side street. And he moved so fast, like a bull charging. Her panic got the better of her as she tried to push him out of her way. But the connection from that touch, the vibrate aliveness the infused her with an arousal as dangerous as the man himself, froze her in place. And then, rage twisting his features, he hit her.

The trip to the hospital was a blur that cleared fast when she saw him standing outside the curtain of her ER room. Either her fear or his anger pulled him out of sight, and the lack was a sudden emptiness. And then confusion piles on top of fear when she isn't released with a ticket or a hand-slap, but remanded into police custody and taken out of town to the new prison. . . .

The English Boy:
Maddy Fitzlaird is happy in her service as scullery maid in the Lord Warrington's household. The Lord and Lady aren't the most devoted of masters, or parents, for that matter, to their young son, but the work is steady and her position solid. Until the Lord and Lady decide to take a sudden trip overseas, without their own personal servants. And with their son, who've they've never taken with them anywhere. Maddy is as uncertain as the other servants, but when she is chosen to journey with the Lord and Lady to serve in their servant's stead, her uncertainty takes a decidedly different turn.

For while she is excited at the opportunity to see a new land and possibly raise a little higher in the servant ranks, the whole journey feels wrong in a way she can't explain. When she is given more and more duties to tend the boy, she grows more attached to the clever child, wondering why his parents don't see what she sees in the child.


Their destination is a blip of a country in the shadows of craggy, stern mountains. The Lord and Lady are welcomed like long lost relatives and the boy swept away and out of Maddy's care. No longer with a charge, Maddy is sent among the household servants, who she finds to be welcoming, but odd, refusing to speak of certain matters and warning her of rules that, in an English household, would just be ludicrous. Certain rooms, which marked by a special dial on the door, are not to be entered. Certain foods that are never allowed. Places not to go after between dusk and dawn. Clothing she cannot wear and scents she should avoid. . . .

I did warn you that they weren't very well written. There is just enough of the plot and details in each synopsis to remind me of the major plot points, but to give me enough room to maneuver anything new into the story. I like both ideas, actually. Chesspiece takes a political/action/paranormal twist and The English Boy has a horror element I've never written before--and it is decidedly neither a vampire or werewolf story, though it could be either by the sounds of the synopsis.

Then there is always Bishop Takes Queen, though I haven't worked up the synopsis to it yet, or one of the other stories I've just barely started and could toss the opening and rework it for Nano. That gives me several choices. Too many choices, probably. I'll have to work up the remaining synopsi and then, I don't know, pin them to a wall and throw a dart? Toss the titles into a hat and draw? Put them up as a poll on the regional Nano forum? It would be fun coming up with a one-sentence description for each story.

I have a very strange idea of fun, don't I?

Okay, back to Inkwell Cult.

Double-Takes

So I've been rethinking Nanowrimo this year. I was going to not participate, but lately I've been having more than normal attacks of story ideas. Two of those ideas have manifested in full blown synopsi. And one of those feels just complete enough to make a 50,000 word story.

So I'm waffling. I admit it.

I blame the last four years. Especially that last three of those, when I dove into Nano by September and never looked back. It *feels* like story writing time, because November is close.

What to do. What to do? I might put off making any decision until the end of October. Who knows? Or I might just take the dive October 1st, sign up, and commit.

At least I have a week to give it some thought.

Slugging the Rewrite.

I worked on a new short story today; the rewriting part of work so you'll have to excuse my big, fat UGH! How is it a story can start off so full of bitter promise and end up wandering the mucky shores of confusion? I have no idea where the story was headed now or what I was trying to say, other than by rereading the original MS that I wisely printed out (twice!) before mangling the electronic version, but that's part of the point of the rewrite...right? To cull the pointless words taking up space and clarify what's left into poetic prose?

Maybe something like that. Anyway, it's a gardening tale about lonliness and slugs. Not sure how those two come together (especially now!) but I know there's a story in there somewhere.

Eyeing The End

Hit 81 pages on my script today. That's 17010 words (give or take) in word count speech. Only 3000 words left to go. And in two days. Heck, I've come up from behind from much farther during NaNo, so I'm not sweating the next two days at all.

It helps that I had a rather chatty character show up in the last scene. I never thought the Queen of England would be so chatty, but she was. She really wants to stage the show. And she was so much fun to write, I was tempted to let her. But I got through the scene and even stayed on subject and ended up two more pages along than I planned. Always a bonus. I'm trying to figure out a way to have the Queen make another appearance before the end.

I'm very close to the end now, too. I'm debating about having one more pass at an attempt on my heroine's life (which would be giggles of fun). Just one more, so my dashing first mate can save her. Or rather come in to find her saving herself and clean up the mess. Hee.

And then I get to blow up many ships. Fun.

I'm still enjoying this whole scripting process. And I'm already considering ideas for the rewrite. Yup, I'm going to take a week off from the script and then turn around and start on it again. But this time I won't have to nail myself in front of the typewriter with only the script. I can pick up Mummy Case again and Warrior Storm and another idea I've been toying with (because I'll have one story off the rough draft list, so it's time to add a new one, right?). It's actually an older idea that I've had a couple of failed attempts at, but I've had some new inspirations.

The one thing Script Frenzy has absolutely proven for me is that I like my pace of three to five pages a day and the freedom to work on whatever story is on hand that strikes my fancy for that day. I keep proving to myself that I can knuckle under and work on just the one story but it isn't my favorite way to write. So . . . I've decided I won't be participating in NaNo this year. Four years is good for me (hey, that's like going through High School, right? I'm graduating). But I'll be free to serve as cheering section and sounding board for any INKers who will be doing it again!

And I'll be encouraging you to give Script Frenzy a try next year!

Stories within Stories.

On the whole, I’d have to say I’m not a big fan of stories embedded inside of stories. I haven’t seen very many of them done very well, not that I’m an expert or have read everything on the planet that might contain one or two examples. I’ve often found it ‘cheapens’ the reading experience for a reader as though the author didn’t have anything to say really during that particular scene but needed something to take up space. If so, I can do that and maybe I should try my hand at it sometime.

This goes for those embedded stories that actually have something to do with the original story surrounding it too. Surely, one or two exists somewhere; I’m currently reading an anthology of horror and fantasy that contains one or two of these kinds of works and they’ve won awards (none from me in case you might wonder), but maybe that’s why writers do just that–to fill space with stuff that can’t really be presented any other way without boring the reader to tears or making a reader wonder, “How the heck did the character know all that?”

(BTW, that last part was a fine example of a run-on sentence, don't you think?)

Concentration

The trouble with obsessions (read more about this on my personal blog--link to the left) is that they don't let you alone long enough to concentration on the things that need doing.

I've been fighting starting a new story for a few days now, and when I finally broke down and tapped out 400 words on it, I learn that the newest incarnation of the month-long writing challenge begins in less than a month. I've been planning to participate in Script Frenzy (again, see link to the left) since I heard about it last November. Now it is almost upon us and I had nearly forgotten about it!

But not to fear, I remembered just in time to see the site go live. I'm all signed up, profile updated and everything (Poetmage is my screenname there, for any who are interested), and, what is even better, I have this nifty story idea demanding an outlet! Woo hoo! No new novel for me (because, quite frankly, I've started a new one each month since starting my daily writing goal, and if I keep that up, I'll be juggling around fifteen stories by the end of the year--and that would just be silly).

I'm very pleased to have a story idea just demanding to be told, because the last time I contemplated Script Frenzy, I had no usable ideas at all, just a few vague notions that would shrivel up in the light of day. No longer! I have a solid, feasible idea that I get to develop over the next few weeks in anticipation of writing it as a script in June.

The problem is that I have to wait until June to start writing it, because that is when Script Frenzy officially begins. Month-long writing challenge, lasting through June, with 20,000 words the target goal.

Almost a whole month I have to wait, while this idea gnaws at me from all angles. I'm hoping just working on the development will give me some relief and let my concentrate on The Mummy Case, which is now over 15,000 words.

Not today, I think. My head is stuck in script-land, no matter what sort of fight I put up. I think its the newness, having just found the site live today and signed up and all. I'm excited and eager, but maybe tomorrow I'll have some perspective and can work in my daily writing without being quite as distracted. Today, I'm just going to give in and ride the wave of anticipation. I don't want to the anticipation to go away, not completely, but I'm going to need a little breathing room if anything else is going to get done. And I mean ANYTHING else. The sinks are full of dishes, I can't remember if I ate lunch, Kate did only because she stood next to my desk chair and kept repeating "Something to eat, Mommy, something to eat." The floors are sprouting kittens worth of cat hair and I think I may have forgotten to put on deodorant.

So tomorrow I'll concentrate on things like writing on The Mummy Case and putting on deodorant and feeding Kate before she has to hit me over the head with her empty sippy cup. Today I'm riding the wave. And tossing food to Kate as I go.

Finishing a Month

There is something very satisfying about finishing out a monthly word count goal. I've felt it enough with NaNo to recognize that gleeful buzzing inside me for what it is. I thought that I wouldn't feel it so strongly with a word count goal just barely a third of NaNo's hefty goal, but when I finished out March after a 3,000 word push on the last day, I was insanely pleased. Now I've finished out April and I'm just as pleased, only this time I saw it coming over a week ago.

This morning, thanks to my HUGE writing day in the middle of the month and the fact that I kept up with my writing since then, I only needed 18 words to finish out the month. No pressure at all to sit down to peck them out and end up writing over 300 instead. It was such a pleasant change to that desperate final push that I'm more accustom to facing that I simply must do it again. I can handle leisurely completely a deadline rather than making a mad rush of it.

But the only reason I was able to do that this month was because of that unheard of 8,000 word day. I'm wondering if I can make those come more frequently than, say, once in a lifetime. And without starting a whole new story to do so.

Though I do have this one idea about an alien crash landing in lovely young woman's garden . . .

Mayonnaise Man.

My assignment: Write a chapter that captures the atmosphere of a car show. Sights, sounds, flavor, or ‘flava’ if you will.

End result: Yet another chapter with one of the main characters, the antagonist, showing more personality yet digging himself deeper. And it's not good stuff he's digging into.

I like this character but not enough to give him the starring role in every chapter. The problem is my protagonist is so much the nice guy he wouldn’t utter a peep if a semi truck was parked on his foot.

Questions: How do you make a protagonist interesting when everyone loves evil characters? How do you ‘un-mayonnaise’ a nice guy protagonist?

Back in the Saddle Again. Or is it the Driver's Seat?

Finally back working on the car novel. First six chapters are formatted, corrected, and through their third edit and revision. I really, really like parts of it, not so enamoured with others but at least those parts are small and far between. I know that if this one sells, I’ll have to read it several more times, looking for errors. Everyone says they come to hate reading their own work at that point, but I don’t think I’ll ever tire of reading the whole thing. I guess I just like cars too much and all that world contains.

Yesterday I listed my work done to date over at my official author blog, carole-cole.com, (shameless plug) and completely forgot a fourth short story that I began last week before our pet world turned upside down. That one can sit on a back burner for a while as my subconscious works on some details. Another horror tale. *Sigh* Yeah, I like those.

Goal for this evening: Think good lost dog thoughts.

Working Title: The Cat Story

First chapter at http://www.carole-cole.com

Password: letmeread