Archive for April, 2012

How To Make Me Hate Your Story

Posted: April 30, 2012 in reading, writing
Tags: , , , ,
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Working in the lab

Yup. Positive test for bullshit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was reading a new novel the other day when my Writer Sense started tingling, and I realized that there was something wrong with the book.

This is pretty standard for a writer. We judge the crap out of others because we’re so used to judging ourselves. We can’t help it. It’s an automatic reaction, like cringing when people write affect when they mean effect.* And usually I can figure out what’s bothering me quickly. Unlikeable protagonist? Seen it. Wooden dialogue? Done that. Just plain boring? Read it so many times I’m bored of that.

But this one was tricky. I rounded up the usual suspects, but none checked out. It had a decent plot. There were varied characters. There was a nice mix of action and drama and sex and bloody violence. I couldn’t figure it why I wasn’t enjoying the book. So I kept reading, running diagnostics on that fucker like it was an ICU patient circling the drain.

I was halfway through when it finally clicked: there was no agency.** None of the characters made a real choice, good or bad. Everything was presented as inevitable. Man sleeping with a married woman? Can’t help himself. Woman cheating on the husband she loves? Not sure why, but has to do it. Attracted to a girl you’ve only seen once? Irresistible force*** drawing him in. Even the guy who murders two people doesn’t choose to do it. It just kind of…happens. In fact, there was only one real choice made in the whole story, and it happened off-screen. That was what set the events of the story in motion. After that, it was all done.

Which is boring as shit.

What’s the point of having an entire cast of characters who don’t choose? They don’t have to make the right choice, but, goddammit, they have to do something. They can’t just be puppets. But that’s what these characters were. Someone else (the author) was pulling their strings, and all they could do was helplessly dance.

So what did I do? I put that book down, and in all likelihood, I’ll never pick it back up. Because the second I figured out what was wrong, I wasn’t interested in what happened to those characters. I left some of them in terrible situations, too. Kidnapped by monsters. Chased by cops. Losing their minds.

And I don’t care. If they’re not going to try, then I don’t give a shit what happens to them. Choose right, choose wrong, but don’t sit on the sidelines. They have to act, even if it’s to do something stupid. Or I’m going to get bored and walk away.

Because I can only read so many books in a lifetime, and I’m not going to waste one of those slots on a bunch of lazy victims.

*Christ, it’s like God’s fingernails on the chalkboard of the universe. If you do this, I’m coming for you.
** No, not the CIA. Agency in this sense means the characters’ ability to act upon and influence their world.
***Not boobs. That I could at least understand.

Naked At The Podium

Posted: April 27, 2012 in writing
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Run on the Seamen's Savings' Bank during the P...

Get him! He mispronounced 'sherbet'! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You want to make three-quarters of the people in the world shit a brick? Tell them they have to speak in public.

Then sit back and watch the blood leave their face. A common fear, that. And, for a lot of people, a pretty serious one.

And don’t get me started on the usual advice. Picture everyone naked? How the hell is that supposed to help? Take a representative sample of the population, and tell me how many of them you’d want watching you in the buff as you read something at a podium. Your eyes would be magnetically drawn to their junk. It’s true and you know it. And then they reach down to scratch—

You know what, I’m going to stop this right here. Brain bleach will be available at the end of the post.

This came up in writer’s group the other night. We talked about what a common fear it was, especially as it relates to reading your own stuff, which is what we were doing.  And we talked about how necessary it is, especially for writers.

Other people might be able to avoid doing public speaking or reading. But writers…you don’t get that luxury*. And you shouldn’t. Reading aloud is great for writing. You ever get stuck on a word? I do. Lately for me it’s been ‘glanced’. Characters were always glancing at things. You never notice how much you overuse a word faster than if you read it out loud twenty fucking times in a page. Reading aloud also helps your dialogue. And all kinds of other things. But the fear is still there.

And it’s bullshit.

This is just your brain being an ass. “You can’t do this. You’ll screw it up. And then everyone will know that you’re a fake!”

Fucker. But it’s hard to ignore that voice. You figure that once you screw up, it’s over.

More bullshit.

Speaking from personal experience, I have screwed up almost every possible way there is to screw up while speaking in public, short of actually vomiting in front of people. (I’m saving that for a special occasion.) I’ve stuttered, stumbled, mispronounced, misquoted, and mis-attributed. And that’s only the start. I’ve tripped on my way to the podium. I’ve accidentally cursed while giving seminars, both as a student and as a teacher. I’ve cursed reading in church (Grandfather’s funeral. I like to think he would have been amused.). I’ve lost my place and stood there in dumbfounded silence (wedding vows, no less. And I was reading off a damn sheet!). I’ve flashed my damn underwear to an auditorium (high school play with togas. Should have seen it coming.).

Was I embarrassed? Sure.** But at no point did I die of it, and no one—absolutely no one—gave me shit about it. Yeah, I got a few cracks about the underwear thing, but that’s it. And it wasn’t the end.

And that’s the big secret. Once you do it, it’s not that bad. If you read in public enough times, the law of averages says you’ll screw up at least once. Probably more. But if you’re going to let a fear of screwing up stop you, you’ll never do anything.

Doesn’t mean you can’t prepare, of course. Try reading your stuff out loud to yourself first. Or your cat. Once you feel good about that, move on to a friend or significant other. Someone who is guaranteed not to be a dick about it. And then maybe a small group of friends, like our writer’s group. Small exposure to build resistance to the crushing Red Virus of Embarrassment. If you still feel awkward, try a group like Toastmasters. Some people I know have done their program, and they say it helped a lot. Practice is the key here. Practice, and forgiving yourself for your occasional mistakes. Because everyone screws up. I’m proof enough of that. You screw up, and then you keep going.

And if that fails, try the naked thing. At least the resulting brain aneurism will be a quick death.

*If it is a luxury. I think avoiding it just makes it worse.

**Except for the wedding (it’s my damn party, I’ll take as long as I want) and the funeral (I was more worried about spontaneously catching fire.).

Going Full Writer

Posted: April 25, 2012 in life, writing
Tags: , ,
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Bradypus variegatus Deutsch: Drei-Finger-Fault...

My life is bitter, just like this leaf. Tasty, tasty leaf. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This was waiting for me on my Twitter feed this morning:

 Established writers & artists are 18 times more likely to kill themselves than the general population. (Via @qikipedia)

Thanks for that.

Now, I have no idea how true this is. Like most everything else on the internet, you’re well advised to take it with a grain of salt. But still. There is was. Right in between some note about how Buzz Lightyear was almost called Lunar Larry and a notification of the new Chuck Wendig post. “Good morning! Time to start your writing! Would you like some cyanide with your coffee?”

It’s put an interesting note on the day.

Do you think this sort of thing happens to dentists? “Hey! Here’s some teeth and, by the way, you’re more likely to kill yourself than any other profession!” Or is it just creative types that get watched like we’re an interesting new species? Suicide Sloths*, maybe.

There’s a zoo exhibit that would never catch on.

It’s the implication of a cause and effect relationship that intrigues me. The scientist part (admittedly probably a mad scientist) wonders what kinds of experiments were done. Was there a lab that locked monkeys in a room with typewriters to see if they could both produce the collected works of Shakespeare and give in to despair over their perception of the essential meaninglessness of life? While a control group of monkeys are given tiny cubicles in which to work, and maybe some little ties, and red staplers.

My methodology may be flawed, but I’d fund that experiment.

Of course, the tweet says ‘established writers and artists’. Perhaps it’s a signing bonus. The advance check in one hand, and a razor blade in the other? “Ah, there’s the cause of death. He had a Razor Clause in his contract. Initialed it, too, the silly bastard. Rookie mistake.” I’ll look carefully for that in the next contract I see.

I realize I am not making a strong case for being sane at the moment.

Crazy rambling aside, it’s part of being creative, I think. Not the suicide rate (can I get a footnote on this? Sources, people, sources.) but the implication that you’re different. People occasionally watch you for any interesting signs of madness, like they’re waiting for you to go Full Writer and start using a bubble mower on the lawn naked at four am. Maybe it’s because writers and artists are perceived to have more freedom than other professions. “You wear odd socks to work? And no pants? And draw Hermetic symbols on your naked thighs in Sharpie to protect yourself from the vibrations of spy satellites? How creative!” Some people give the impression that they’re making notes for a future TV interview in which they can claim to have seen this coming years ago.

And, to a certain degree, people who do this sort of thing are different. We spend half our time in an imaginary world, interacting with people that don’t exist. And, if some of my past posts are anything to go on, doing horrible things to them. No one normal does that. It can make you wonder if you’re teetering on the edge of something, so close to slipping off…

Then, if you’re me, you shrug, say “Fuck it”, and get back to work. This might be madness and it might not, and I don’t really care. Because it’s entertaining.

And, when it happens, I’m sure my neighbours will be highly entertained by the lawn thing.

*Obligatory ‘slow death’ joke here.

Broadening Your Horizons (If You Know What I Mean)

Posted: April 23, 2012 in writing
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Warning, Sex in progress Do not disturb

Writers: we're natural voyeurs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A while back, I decided to try something new in my writing. Something guaranteed to push me out of the writing comfort zone and straight into Awkward Town.

That’s right: a sex scene.

God, it was hard.* Not only trying to keep the characters in character, but trying not to end up with something that sounded like: a) a Penthouse letter or b) a Harlequin romance. A scene from Preacher kept playing in my head, when an angel is discussing his love affair with a demon with the main character:

Angel: It was a tornado. A hurricane. A tsunami crashing down upon a tower of rock. Our juices fell like rain on the inferno.
Jesse: Hey!
Angel: We were not meant to even meet, let alone achieve such union. We were not created —
Jesse: Hey! How much more of this horseshit have I gotta listen to?

Don’t be that guy. No one likes that guy.

Anyway, it ended up taking me most of the day to get five hundred words I was happy with.** And I will note that a thesaurus leads you to some interesting but very strange word choices in this context. There were a lot of deletions and re-writing in that afternoon, and a lot of questions:

How much detail do I put it? Is that too much? Or is this coming off like it was written by a virginal choir girl? What adjective appropriately describes how breasts move? (Pokes own for inspiration.) Wobbled? God, that’s terrible. The hell is wrong with me?

And so on.

In the end,*** the biggest challenge was making sure the characters acted like themselves. Which means I had to consider how those characters would have sex.

That was an awkward afternoon.

But I’m glad I did it.**** It helped define some parts of their relationship for me, which made subsequent moments, sexy and otherwise, easier to write. The sex scene ended up being less about the act and more about their reactions to it. In that sense, it had to do the same job as every other scene: either advance plot or illustrate character. Thinking of it like that helped me get it right. I had to make sure it was them having sex, not some faceless interchangeable Mary Sues.

So she trips on the way to the bedroom, almost taking them both down, and then laughs about it. He can feel the scars on her back under his hands, and finds it kind of a turn on. And it’s all tangled up with who they are and what’s happening in the world around them, even if only as an escape from it. It’s part of the story then, not just a random add-on. It serves a purpose.

And, you know, it’s hot.

*Save the jokes until the end, folks, or this will take forever.
**All written with the curtains drawn, lest the neighbours become aware of what I was doing. Stupid Catholic upbringing.
***Seriously? Too easy.
****So were they.

Why First Drafts Require A Hazmat Suit

Posted: April 20, 2012 in writing
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A closeup of the fireball and mushroom cloud f...

Actual representation of the creative process. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You ever heard of the zero draft? It’s when you just write, even if you know it’s crap. You give yourself permission to write an incredibly bad draft right off the bat. No more writer’s block, because the block is mostly fear. Let go of the fear and the writing comes.

I prefer to think of mine as the Ground Zero Draft. And I recently revisited one of those, a novel I wrote last spring. When I started I just dropped a 15 kiloton Idea-Bomb on the page and let that fucker blow. Man, it was carnage. Character pieces lying on the ground or hanging in the trees. Half-collapsed plots leaning against each other like a Jenga tower halfway through the game, when a misplaced sneeze means the difference between triumph and defeat. Toothless antagonists gumming the ankles of the survivors. Words everywhere.

And maybe some zombies. Because, you know, why not.

I let that mess sit for a while, maybe wait for those antagonists to gnaw a few of the weaker pieces to death, and then I come back. Striding across the radioactive wasteland of the Idea-Bomb with a Hazmat suit and a flamethrower, I survey the wreckage to see what’s salvageable. Sometimes things survive intact, and those pieces I keep, tucking them away for the next draft. Others have mutated into something strange, but that can be useful, too. Give me a new way of looking at it that maybe I never considered before. And some are just wretched, misshapen things that have no business in that story. Oozing characters that stain everything they touch. Zombie sub-plots that won’t die. Too weak, too strong, too wrong… they don’t work.

That’s when I get the flamethrower.

And, usually, I come out of the collapsed remains of the zero draft with a pretty good idea of what the story actually is. I know what I need to do to make this next draft, the real first draft, a good one.

Time to start rebuilding. Just keep your eyes peeled for those zombie sub-plots.

The Seven Stages of Writing Projects

Posted: April 18, 2012 in writing
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Stuffed tiger wearing a sombrero

Actually, my thoughts tend to have more tigers in them. But they were edited out of this post because they're shy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stage One: The Beginning
This is awesome! This is the best idea I’ve ever had! And it’s going so well. Christ in a fucking whorehouse, I don’t think I could screw this up if I tried.

Stage Two: The Speed Bump
Oh, shit, I screwed it up. No, no, no, don’t worry. You can get back on track. You just have to…make the main character…a…zombie? No. Sociopath? No. Park ranger? Meh.
…Sociopathic zombie park ranger? Yes.

Stage Three: The Second Wind
Now that I really know what this is about, there won’t be any more problems. Hell, I can see the end from here. Now it’s just a matter of getting there. And I’ve really got a feel for Clancy, the sociopathic zombie park ranger with daddy issues.* I can do this. Just. Keep. Going.

Stage Four: The Wall
This is the worst fucking thing I’ve ever written. I don’t even want to call this mine. I’m going to leave it outside the church with a note saying, “Please take care of my hideous brain progeny and try not to scream when it slithers out of the basket and under your bed. It’s just trying to hide from my hate.” I want this story to fucking die.

Stage Five: The High
Holy shit, I’m on the downhill stretch! And everything’s coming together! Wheeeeeee! (Happy noises fade away in the distance.)

Stage Six: The Collapse
I…have no more words left. I’m done. And I have no idea if this story is great, or just another word monster that should be buried at the crossroads so it can’t find its way back to me. I don’t know if I should celebrate or kill it with fire.
…I need a drink.

Stage Seven: The Re-Visit
(Six-twelve months later) Hey, this is that story I wrote back when I thought sociopathic zombie park rangers were a good idea. Man, that was a weird stretch. I should have a look at it now, see how bad it is.
…Actually, this is better than I remember. You know, it’s not great, but it’s got good bones. It just needs some polish. And a metric assload** of rewriting, but I can do that. I’ve even still got all my original notes, because I hoard information like a post-apocalyptic squirrel who isn’t sure spring is ever going to come.
Yeah, I can totally do this. Time to throw this one back on the fire and start hammering. And this time…this time I won’t freak out about it. No more doubts and shit. Just pure, solid writing without all those ups and downs.
This time, it’ll be different.***

*Honestly compels me to point out that I’ve never written anything with a sociopathic zombie park ranger with daddy issues, especially one named Clancy. But now I feel like I should.

**Metric assload is my common measure of rewriting. It is described as the amount of rewriting I can do before starting to twitch, multiplied by 1.5. It replaced the far less standard Imperial assload some time ago.

***It won’t.

Brunch, Hockey, and Piping Hot Crazy: My Sunday

Posted: April 16, 2012 in life
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Sunday Morning

Is that BACON? You don't deserve bacon, Lazy Pants. (Photo credit: jspaw)

I’m starting to think that I’m incapable of taking time off.

As per last week’s deadline, I finished the revisions on the current Big Editing Project on Saturday, a whole day before the time I allotted ran out. Don’t get me wrong, there was more stuff I could have done, but it was getting to the point where I was changing a single word and then changing it back an hour later. That territory is called obsession, and it gets a little weird in there. I should know; I’ve been there before.

So I finished Saturday night, and decided to take Sunday off. This is unusual for me; the last time I actually decided to take a day off was when my friend got married in September. (Note: this doesn’t include times when I wanted to, but couldn’t work, such as days spent driving across the province. It’s hard to type and drive, but if there was a way…) If I wasn’t writing, I was doing research, or thinking about characters, or something.

But not Sunday. I slept in, made brunch for some friends, and then spent five hours watching playoff hockey. It was a good day.

And then, just about the time the third period was winding down, I started to get restless.

You should be working, said part of my brain. You have some more ideas. Get started on those before they get away.

I ignored it and watched a Gordie Howe hat trick develop on the TV.

This is a waste of time, said the brain. You need to CREATE ALL THE THINGS.

I further ignored it, helped by a glass of scotch.

If you don’t spend every waking second of your life writing, you’re never going to make it as a writer. You think Joe Hill* wastes time watching hockey? Nuh-uh. He probably doesn’t even sleep. Stop being so fucking lazy and get back to work.

I turned up the volume, hoping to drown it out as yet another giant fight erupted on the ice.

IF YOU DON’T GET BACK TO WORK THIS SECOND THEN I’M NEVER GOING TO THINK OF ANYTHING WORTH WRITING EVER AGAIN AND YOU’LL DIE FILLED WITH REGRET ABOUT THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON YOU TOOK OFF TO ENJOY LIFE.

I finished the game. And then watched Sportscentre.

Every now and then, I have to force myself to do this. To take a day and consciously choose not to do any writing, or anything related to writing. This includes, but is not limited to: research, character studies, editing, reading (anything I wrote, at least. Stuff other people wrote is okay.), rehearsing dialogue out loud to myself in the bathroom, imagining characters doing whatever I’m doing, and making notes to myself about new stories.

And it’s fucking hard.

But I’m always glad I do it. Partially because it reminds me that there is a hell of a lot more to my life that putting words in order.

And partially because, when that day is over and a new one begins, I am so bloody hungry to get back to writing that it reminds me why I do it to begin with. It quiets the part that sees it as a means to an end, or a long pointless slog. It prevents burnout and lights the fire again. And it reminds me why I love it.

Healthy? Probably not. But I’m okay with it.

(*Apologies to Mr. Hill. His was just the book that was on my coffee table as I sat down to write this. I have no idea if he watches hockey or not. I imagine he sleeps, though. Probably.)

Cutting to the Bone

Posted: April 13, 2012 in editing, writing
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Kill For Me

You won't feel a thing. (Photo credit: Charlie Barker*)

Dear line I just cut,

Damn, you were good. Like, really good. You made me feel brilliant. I could read you and feel that little warm cozy glow of accomplishment. Good structure, good words, good thought. You were witty and concise. That’s hard to do. Trust me, I should know.  I try to do that all the time and my record is…well, let’s say I’m still trying. But you…you shone out of that paragraph like a little beacon of cleverness.

But that’s the problem. You didn’t fit. You just sat there, making your point, even when the reasons behind the scene changed. And then…well, you weren’t so clever any more. But you were still good. Really good. Just…not for this.

I could soften the blow here, and say that it’s me and not you, but let’s not lie to each other: it’s you. The first time I wrote that scene, I had something else in mind. Now that the story’s changed, you don’t work any more.

Worse, you draw attention to yourself. You make that paragraph about me, and not the story. “Oh, look,” you seem to say, “Here is definable proof that this writer is a clever person. Isn’t she great?” And, you know, thanks for that. Really. But the reader should be concentrating on the characters, not me. I should be fucking invisible. So can you stop pulling back the damn curtain and shining a big spotlight on me?

I will say, though, that it’s not entirely your fault. I never should have let it get this far. All the way to the final draft…when really you should have been cut after the first. I knew it then. But I ignored it, hoping the problem would go away. I can work it in, I told myself. I just need to fix the scene. Or move it to another scene! Yes, that will work. I was getting desperate by then. I just liked reading you so much. You made me feel good, even if you did nothing for the story.

But this has gone on long enough. “Kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart,” says Stephen King, and that’s good advice. I’ve written and rewritten and, honestly, I’m sick of trying to find a place for you. It’s not working out. It’s time to go.

Now close your eyes. I’ll try to make it quick.

Why You Should Never Approach Writers In The Wild

Posted: April 11, 2012 in life
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हिन्दी: राष्ट्रीय राजर्ग पे जंगली जानवर चेतावन...

"And all of a sudden, there it was, right in front of me! A fucking writer! And me without my gun." (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know that moment when you’re out in public somewhere, like maybe a library or a coffee shop, and you’re pointing at your own face and muttering calculations to yourself? And someone notices and asks what you’re doing? So you say, without thinking, because you’re still caught up in Fiction World, that you’re trying to figure out the correct angle to shoot someone in the face to make sure you hit the brain stem and kill them nearly instantly. Then the Noticer just looks at you like they’re regretting ever opening their mouth, and they’re not sure whether it’s more dangerous to run or to stay where they are. And you see that look and realize that you’ve inadvertently been creepy again, and you try to explain that you’re not going to shoot anyone. But that look still doesn’t go away, and now Noticer is scanning their own table for makeshift weapons. So you gesture to a notebook/laptop/napkin covered in notes and bloodstains and say that you’re a writer and you’re just working on a scene in which a character kills someone and wants to make sure they get it right. But it’s okay, because the person who gets shot in the face totally has it coming. And the shooting victim might be a bastard, but you don’t want them to suffer, and neither does the shooter. And then you ask if Noticer would mind if you pointed your gun-fingers at their face to see if you have the angle right. And then you watch them run for the door. You know that moment?

No? Oh.

Never mind, then.

Tick Tock

Posted: April 9, 2012 in writing
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Deadlines are important. Especially for anything as innately self-driven as writing. Deadlines, even ones that you create yourself, give your project/goal concrete definitions. It makes that shit real.

Works for things other than writing, too. For example, I’m looking to improve my currently smoker-level cardio, so I’ve decided to start training for a 5 k. And I want to be able to run 5 k by the time my birthday comes around (August). It’s a very reasonable goal, one that I can accomplish well within the time limit. But having that end date in mind is important. Otherwise I’d probably sit around thinking, “Man, I’d like to improve my cardio so I don’t drop a lung the next time I’m running from zombies”. And then doing nothing about it. But a goal means a plan, and a plan drastically improves the chances of success. Especially during a zombie apocalypse.

It also keeps things from becoming obsessive. The editing project I have going right now, I’m putting a deadline on it. There comes a point where I have to say ‘good enough’ and walk away. Otherwise I’ll do nothing but polish it over and over again until it lives up to some impossible ideal Story in my head, like one of Plato’s Forms. And that’ll never happen. I’ll just go insane.

So, to avoid the coming (or possibly continuing) insanity, I’m setting a deadline: one more week. Whatever is done by then is all that’s getting done, and I’m moving on. That’s the deadline. You all heard me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see what I can cram into that week. Because, you know, I’m on a fucking deadline here.

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