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!

Writer Want Ads.

Okay, here's something for your brain. Using this Want-Ad post create your own writer want ad. How would it read? What would you look for in a market, an agent, editor, or publisher? How about what you'd want in your own platform and your readers? Will you open your soul to your desires? Will you surprise us with something no one but you knew wanted out of your writing career? Will you be truthful? Or will you hold something back for reasons only you and your potential agent/editor/publisher/reader would understand?

So many directions this could go...

When Opportunity Knocks, Answer the Door

For those of you with novel or short story openings that you're pretty settled on, there's a fine opportunity on Flogging the Quill right now.  He's whittled his openings down to a spare few and is requesting more submissions.  In a writing world where there are long queues and daunting slush piles, this is a great time to hop in before everyone else notices there's a call.

Even if you don't submit an opening remember to check in and please comment on those openings.  Writers need all the reader feedback they can get.  Besides, as always, by dissecting and commenting on someone else's opening, the flaws in your own become more clear.  Yay learning, yay comments, yay to everyone growing and improving!

Daily Writing Course available, free!

Ever have trouble with plots and subplots? Characterization keeping you up at night? Having issues with suspense and tension?

You can read a ton of books, take writing courses, get critiques like you always have, or you can spend a couple of hours a day for a few days or even a week watching the work of writers who have mastered all these skills.  Infamous for their ability to suck in a new viewer, sneered upon even more than romance writers, you gotta hand it to them.  Soap opera script writers know what they're doing.

Their plots and subplots are written very well and are extremely well-balanced.  They have to be.  Remember, they have to keep an audience interested enough that they'll wait through some of the most obnoxious commercials aired on tv, second only to late night infomercials, to continue watching.  During the dread commercial break a viewer can easily switch to a different soap or plug in a non-commercial-laden DVD. 

 

Their characterization is strong.  The viewers may know who the bad guys are, but not all the characters do know who the bad guys are and that makes for a lot of fun.  (Take a lesson from that right there.)  They write bitches like no one else and put honey in their mouths when those bitches are a wooing.  If you have trouble writing good guys that aren't boring, look no farther.  Each character has a distinct voice, goals, agenda--they're well-rounded and unique.

Suspense and tension?  They've taken it to extremes that have become laughable in the tv screenwriting industry, turning the cliff-hanger into a cliche' and drama into new heights (or lows, if you prefer) of melodrama.  What's beautiful about it as far as learning how to do it from a writing perspective is that the snippets of plot are broken down into very short frames and you can examine the tension arch in bold relief.  

The writing has to be good or there would be no audience.  In matter of fact they have a huge audience, one any writer would envy.  They have to be able to pull in a new viewer in just a few seconds in the middle of the story, with no recap because they never know when a new viewer will come in.  That alone I find fascinating, that the writing can bring in a viewer into the story even though that viewer has no idea (initially) what's going on.

I bet you think I'm joking but I'm not.  Give it a try.  Just remember, they are addicting.  Whole magazines and forums are devoted to them.  There was even a paranormal one I came very close to becoming addicted to when I last had the flu.  It's worth the risk for a quick, dirty and efficient lesson in effective writing techniques.  

The Letter as a Young Man

I did the 15 minute INK exercise.  It's long (370 words) so I hesitated posting it, but hey, just because I wasn't at the meeting doesn't mean I'm exempt from reveal my unedited warty nakedness.

Aspiring History Challenges Protagonist

or

The Letter as a Young Man

by

Kamila Zeman Miller

 

She held the letter tight, crumpling the heavy paper, afraid to destroy it, afraid to keep it.  Her slippered feet pressed deep into riverbank mud.  Icy water and colder air chilled her.

Get rid of it.

Keep it.  You have to give it to someone important.  They have to know.

She thought she’d be worried about the future, but mostly she worried about history, how the letter would be remembered if it survived the night.  Would it even matter a hundred years from now? 

The letter wanted to live.  It seemed to be a handsome officer in a black uniform rather than parchment, and she didn’t want that young man to die.  He looked noble and honorable but his heart beat with a dark rhythm, necessity’s music.  Rather than fear what he might do, she felt drawn to that practicality and how it mingled with good intentions.  The letter’s soul aspired to create, to become, as so many beautiful souls had always wanted to be. 

Let him live.

Why did she have to hold a pivotal point in history’s making?  And why couldn’t it be on a warm summer night with all kinds of time to muse? 

She could freeze to death without ever knowing which was the right way to go. 

Just fling it into the river.  Maybe someone will find it.  Then it won’t be up to me.

She started to fling it, but she couldn’t force herself to let go.  His spirit called to her.  Hold me.  Send me to my future, to glory.

Glory.  The war had glory enough.

She flung it.  It spun on the water’s surface, lit by moonlight. 

Oh God.

She plunged after it into the river.  The shock of cold shrunk her breath into tight gasps as she struggled to swim with her nightgown flowing awkwardly around her body.

She grabbed the letter, plunging it under the surface while paddling toward shore again and again.  When she reached shore, shivering, she opened the heavy folds.  The ink was running, fading.  She’d lost him, not to choice, but indecisiveness.

Writing Exercises

We had a fun INK meeting last night, even with Kami's absence. Since she had submitted one of the two pieces up for critique, we finished faster than usual and decided to introduce a new aspect to our meetings. Writing exercises.

We each picked a word out of a book to create and unwieldy sentence, and used it as a prompt. We wrote for fifteen minutes and then read them aloud. They were all interesting, and Steve's and Carole's had us laughing. I decided to post mine here.

Keeping in mind, however, that this is a writing exercise, completed in 15 minutes with no editing or research. Typing it up, I found several places that I wanted to fix, but I restrained myself.

Writing Exercise
15 Minutes
Prompt: Protagonist challenges aspiring history

"You dated this wrong." Dr. Beals tossed the manuscript on the desk in front of her. "Or did you forget the Visigoths?"

Audrey pulled the manuscript closer. She hadn't forgotten the Visigoths. No one studying under Dr. Beals could forget the Visigoths.

"My findings suggest that Carthage wasn't involved--"

"Nonsense." Dr. Beals sat with finality and crossed his arms. The light from his reading lamp glistened on the stiff strands of his overly gelled hair and on the frames of the half-moon reading glasses that he looked over sternly. "The Visigoth threat was all encompassing. Revise it and return it by eleven tomorrow."

Audrey took her battered manuscript and left the office. A cluster of freshman from Dr. Beals Western Civ class glanced nervously at her as she left the history department office.

Visigoths. She hated Visigoths. She couldn't write about anything in early Roman civilization without Beals foisting his damned Visigoths at her.

"Hey, Aud!" Trent hurried to catch her. Audrey tucked her paper under her arm.

"So, what'd he say?"

"What do you think he said?"

Trent was all grins, hopping on the balls of his feet. "He said yes? I can't believe it!"

Audrey wanted to kick herself. Trent didn't give a damn about Beals and his Visigoths. And now he'd think she didn't give a damn about his extended research trip, which he'd invited her to join. If she could get out of Dr. Beals Thursday night lecture.

She'd completely forgotten to ask.

Damned Visigoths.

"Well, believe it," she said lamely. She'd call Dr. Beals when she reached her room. No, he'd be raking freshman over the Visigoth coals. She'd ask him tomorrow when she turned in her paper.

Which would take all night to revise.

Trent gave her a peck on the cheek. "Awesome. I'll get packing. Pick you up at one tomorrow?"

"Sure."

Another peck on the cheek and Trent bounded away. Audrey slouched back to her room and tossed the paper onto her desk before sinking into her bed.

She had to go to the library. See if she could find references to Carthage and Visigoths.

Why? She'd done the research. It was good work. Her best work.

Did she want a passing grade or not?

Did she want her integrity or not?

Audrey laid back and stared at the ceiling.

Damned Visigoths.

Openers

I've spent a huge number of hours reading openings, and critiquing some of them, at the now infamous Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge.  (The contest is closed to submissions and they're sorting through the entries now.)  I've read various rules and suggestions for how to open a novel, but I have to say at this point that reading about it and/or thinking about it is no substitute for reading about a gizillion openings and picking apart as many as you can stand to critique.  

Go forth and read the entries.  Find the flaws in the best ones.  May your eyes be opened.  And then read Shock and Awe.   Although we always hear that a novel should open with a hook, in the middle of it all, preferably with action, that doesn't mean that the action has to be physical.  Suddenly I'm okay with how Masks opens again.  Yay!

Exercise: Cover Quotes and Blurbs.

In my quest to learn everything I can about the authoring business (in between reading, writing, plotting and losing electronic devices), I've been seeing a lot lately on cover quotes, also called blurbs.

Apparently, when you've got a book coming out and you mention to your agent you like such and such author, a good agent just might contact the agent of that author and ask if they can send a copy of your book to them and get a cover quote for the next printing. If the author likes your book, they might authorize the use of a cover quote to help sell your book.

Ingenius! Especially if the author actually reads your book.

"Doesn't suck," would be a great Stephen King quote I'd like to see. I think he might actually do this some day.

"This book could stand on a shelf next to any classic," is another good one. Technically, if the spine of the book isn't mush, I guess it probably could stand next to anything -- a work by Shakespear or a bowl of tapioca equally well.

One I'd like to see is "Bigger than the Potter series!" Then discover what the publisher left out was "[This author's ego is] Bigger than the Potter series!"

And how about one of your own pseudonyms blurbing about your own book. "C.S. Cole's 'Enthusiast' is like The Fast and The Furious on speed," Carole Cole, a reader in Vancouver Wa.

What cover quotes would you like to see for some of your own works? What quotes would you rather NOT see?