Bonus Post: I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Because people like this guy live on it, too.

You know, we writers are often lauded as intellectuals. Actual writers know that such is far from the truth, as most of us are simple dreamers and lowly scribes. A solid grasp on ways to accurately and efficiently use the English language are not always testimonies to how much a person generally knows about reality.

Hell, there are people out there with Ph.Ds who have no clue what the real world is like. This, friends, is why the human race is doomed.

You all know that I don't support SOPA or PIPA already. I've done a rant on it before, and I intend to do many more before the shitstorm has passed. Because of SOPA and everyone who is backing it, I'm seriously considering following in the footsteps of Cory Doctorow and releasing all of my books under a Creative Commons licence. I normally keep swearing to a minimum so that I'll appear to know more than 100 words, but I absolutely hate how everyone claiming ownership to art has taken all of the passion out of creation. e.e. cummings truly did see a clear picture of society and its future when he claimed in his poem Now Does Our World Descend that "create" had become "contrive".

I wonder if he suspected just how true his statement of how freedom was what made a slave would become in the following century. Everyone wants nothing more than to be worshiped by "the little people" for their amazing talent. I have no more talent than a monkey, and I'm not afraid to admit it to anyone. I'm a firm believer in the creative belief of the artist as a vessel. While most people like to think of themselves as  great geniuses of their time, I know that I just put my pen down on the page and write what comes out. I don't sit in front of a fireplace with patches on my elbows and a pipe hanging out of my mouth muttering, "Yes. Indeed." every time a good idea occurs to me. The best writers are nothing more than idiot savants to something greater and larger than themselves.

Maybe Lord Xenu. No one really knows for sure.

That being said, I don't want to rock back and forth with copies of my stories hissing, "No, they're mine and you can't have them!" to everyone who tries to get close to me. I hate to break it to anyone who has ever worshiped their own work, but that story stopped being yours the moment someone else read it. Without readers, writers are nothing more than glorified bums.

I've mentioned before how much I loved the manga Hanako and the Terror of Allegory just because the protagonists kicked the writer's ass at the end for getting too greedy with her stories, which belonged to the readers.

In light of SOPA, I want to go ahead and tell everyone reading my blog and future stories that my most urgent wish is for you to make them your own. I was appalled to find out that people have actually been sued over fanfiction, because in my opinion it is the sincerest form a flattery a writer can receive. Stop being an money grubbing asshat and be proud that you've created something so great that it lives outside of itself. Can you imagine what our language would have been like today if something like SOPA existed in the fifteenth century and Shakespeare had everyone who used one of his invented phrases put in jail?

Everyone who has ever lived owes me three times the national debt. 

Please take this blog post to heart. I know this sounds cheesy, but I need all of you so much. A writer who wants to hurt his readers for keeping his stories in their hearts and lending his books to their friends is no writer at all. He's just a tiny version of those big record companies who don't give a crap about how many tears you've cried while listening to that one song that the artist only got half of a cent for. I felt sick when I found out that book lending actually does piss off quite a few writers.

Like Whitman, I'm a noiseless, patient spider casting out my web and hoping that it catches on to one of your hearts. Just one. That's all I need. I've listened to readers talking about how much their favorite writers have changed their lives and dreamed of the day when someone, just one person, would give me that same look and tell me how the stories that I've written have helped them to escape.

Homework Only Exists in an Alternate Reality

I have a 250 page notebook that I'm using to write my novel and right now I'm just about to the dead center. That's like, what, around 125 pages?

Meh. Not too shabby for about a month's work. Once again I find myself struggling with finding the time to write, as well as the fact that, well, I should be using every shred of free and quiet time for schoolwork.

Yeah, it probably didn't take you too long to figure out that I'm not doing that. I just scratched out an outline to e-mail to my teacher (late) in about ten minutes, and now I'm trying to convince myself that I don't have an abstract due in History when I know I probably do.

As long as I keep saying it in my head it's bound to come true, right?

Meh. Maybe I'd better check, even though I know that checking will reveal that I do indeed have homework that I won't have ready to submit by midnight. 

I was diagnosed with OCD a little while back, and today I started taking Zoloft because apparently it will reduce the amount of troubling thoughts and repetitive tasks that I have on a daily basis. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't worried that it will affect my writing. What if all I suddenly want to do is write romance novels about glittering boys and rainbows set in a world where nothing ever goes wrong?

God knows we've got too many of those writers out there who don't want a single bad thing to happen to their characters. I swear, the moment I notice myself taking three pages to describe the dress a female protagonist is wearing and how she has her hair done I'm going to watch every horror film I've ever heard of and wage serious war on my serotonin pump. The last time I described clothes in my writing I said nothing more than, "it was white." I'd like to keep it that way.

It's amazingly hard to write when your slightly defective brain only has a specific set of conditions under which it doesn't go bonkers. Or, you know, when you have to wash your hands every time you rub your nose or close all the windows and doors and cover your vents. 

Halloween 'Be Approachin'

Image via Wikipedia Today I finally began regularly working on my novel every day, bringing my goal of at least 1,000 words each day back into the forefront. I've been thinking about doing something weird with the story: cutting out an entire character.

Well, not entirely cutting out said character, but rather cutting them out for the majority of the plot of the first book in my series. I had originally planned to have my main character and this other character, who is her foil in every sense of the term, undertaking the journey of the first novel together. Now that I look at the purpose of the story a lot closer, I think it just might be more useful to have her make that journey solo.

Plus, if I did that, I could cut out the scenes where my main character and this character become better acquainted.

Or, you know, I could just shove them together as still 'sort of enemies' and see what happens from there. That adds drama, for sure.

Part of being a writer is struggling with decisions just like this one. You have several different ways that you want the story to go, but  you just can't let go of any of them to use just one of them. It is in situations like this that I propose a compromise of some sort, or a merging of the plots together so the good parts of all of them sort of happen. Usually, when you do that, one of them shines as the strongest and best one to take center stage, anyway. There's just something about seeing all the story directions in action that helps you figure out which one really was the "one."

Now that the first and most rambly part of the post is over, I'd like to bring to your attention this author and his books.

They are for children, and yet they are amazing. Any true horror fan would love his work; trust me, I'm a horror nut, and after reading the first one after dark, I wasn't able to get to sleep until I forced myself there.

Because, you know what? It always seems like my bedroom door does that violent shaking thing where it sounds like someone is trying to get in RIGHT when I've scared myself silly with ghost stories all day.

After the first anthology of scary stories, O. Penn-Coughin's stories only get better and scarier. Not to mention, of course, that if you read it on kindle you can only view one page at a time, making those scary illustrations seem to actually jump out at you at the end of every story. Trust me, they're a lot of fun.

I've only just started with Kissed By a Clown, and so far I wouldn't recommend that those of you out there with elementary school aged children let them get their hands on it.

But you and your older children?

Go nuts. Knock yourselves out. It seriously rocks so far. 

Freewriting Prompt: Prompt Writing, Sans Prompt

I haven't done a writing prompt on my blog in a really long time, and I thought I would try one out again. I wanted to make use of Freeblogging, which keeps track of time for you, but I couldn't think of a good fiction prompt that I could honestly keep up for any length of time without stopping for a good while. The result was me doing a promptless stream-of-conciseness writing exercise, just like the first one I ever did.  This is by no means a work of fiction, essay, or anything serious at all. Just me rambling and trying to find whatever stories and blog posts might be lying beneath the mess of seemingly meaningless text.


It's a great thing to do, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else making an ass out of themselves by sticking it up somewhere for everyone to see like I did. 

I decided that, for my first writing prompt in a long while, I would do a completely promptless stream of conciousness exercise. That's right. I don't have a single thing that I'm supposed to be writing about. I'm just letting it all come right out of my head as I type, which is something that you should probably be a little bit worried about. No going abck and erasing the embarassing or horrifying stuff. Nope. Not at all. Here it goes.

I'm watching Family Guy right now. They're making fun of the moon landing or something like that. I don't know becuase I'm only half-way paying attention. I think I heared something about surly blondes. Don't really know how that fits in there, but it's there. Kinda silly if you ask me. Guess it would have made sense in context, but I don't have the context because I wasn't paying attention. Just gonna have to let that one slide, I guess.

HA! Stewie just stole Brian's Peanut Butter Jelly Time thing. HA. That was something that Brian did, not Stewie.

I have no idea what to say now. Oh my God. It's like my mind just went totally blank. Usually when this happens while I'm writing my book, I just put on a song that reminds me of the stuff that's happening in my story and think about it until I finally have stuff to put on the page again. I can't really do that now, seeing as I'm just doing freewriting.

My cousin just came to the door. I bet he thinks I'm pretty weird, sitting here writing on the computer and yet talking to him at the same time like I'm not really thinking about what it is that I'm typing. Oh boy. My family thinks I'm pretty damn weird anyway, though, so I guess it's not a big difference.

Geez, let's talk about how awkwardly that was worded for a moment. Gaw. I can't believe I let that sentence at the end of that paragraph right up there leak out of my head. I'm entirely sorry. Good God.

You know, the first stream of onciousness prompt I ever did required me to not puncuate or capitliaze a single thing. I could n'efve evend end the sentence. And now this thing is freezing up, and I can't see where I'm typing. I bet the typos are absolutely endless. I am sorry. So, so, so sorry.

I want a banana.

Well, looky there. I didn't type for quite some time because my computer froze, and it's still letting me continue writing. I wish I would have known that, otherwise I qwould have actually planned somethign to write here. Instead I think I'm just going to sing a song in my head, but not write the lyrics down. That's difficult. Oh wow, is it ever and called it macaroni....DAMNIT!

Well. There you go.

It's Okay to Write on Break. Pick Up That Pen.

Image via WikipediaEveryone who gives writing advice in this crazy little world seems to have one piece of advice in common: Do it at the same time of day every day, and don't try to squeeze it in whenever you can find time in between the rest of the things populating your schedule.

A gigantic part of me wonders whether or not they live in the real world. Sure, published authors who already have money coming in from their books tend to have large chunks of time to set aside for writing, but what about the rest of us? What about the college student who's working part time at McDonald's and doing homework for their eight classes when they aren't at work? Is it impossible for them to write their novel if they have to do it during oh, say, eight ten minute sessions that they can manage to come up with if they move a thing or two around in their schedule?

There's the classic, "Your novel should be so important that you'll stay up late and lose sleep over it." argument, but what if you have children or a type of day job where you can't afford to lose that sleep? Or worse yet, what if you've already got items populating your schedule that you're losing sleep over?

I really don't have any advice on this other than that you should try to do it anyway, just as I am. Surely all of these writers were completely broke and constantly doing things to make ends meet before their 'big debut novel' that suddenly made them 'so rich' that they could afford to do nothing but write whenever they wanted.

 I don't see why it's not completely possible for you to write a novel using what little time you can find when you can find it. There are going to be days when you'll literally have all day to write, and you can use those to the fullest extent. This is also why it's good to have a word goal instead of a time goal, which I fully advocate one hundred percent. It's easy to waste time, but words are nothing but pure progress.

Also, remember that no time is ever wasted, even if someone accuses you of wasting your time or theirs. Everything is a learning experience. Love it and benefit from it.

Related articles

• Writing Schedules (kristinastanley.net)

Think of it as going on your own personal MapQuest.

It doesn't have to look like this ^^^

Today's post is about one of my favorite parts of the novel writing process: story world mapping.

If there's one thing that most writers of genres outside of fantasy tend to ignore, it's the importance of drawing up a map of your story world. Sure, it's important to form an image of the layout of your world if you literally have an entirely different world, but it's just as useful to draw a little map of all of the normal, everyday settings that show up in your novel.

You know, like a character's bedroom, or the diner where most of the scenes take place...you get the picture. Mapping can actually be a valuable part of your brainstorming process, even if you're a non-otherworldly writer. Just try it out and see whether or not it influences how you picture the scenes in your head and how vividly you write them.

Now, I'm not saying that you have to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. My mountains are, to this day, nothing but triangles, and my trees look like chicken feet. I'm a writer, definitely not an artist. It doesn't matter if your people are stick figures, or if your dragons look like squiggly lines with crudely drawn feet. It's still a perfectly respectable story world outline either way, and you should be pretty damn proud of it if you ask me.

When I was little I did nothing but draw maps of the places I wanted to write about sometime in the future, sometimes having them set up so that to see the whole thing you had to piece several notebook pages together. My mother thought I was insane, especially because I wrote in mostly first person back then. I actually believe that her reaction to finding my writing notebooks is just the reason I have such an aversion to first person writing: she accused me of being schizophrenic and threatened to commit me.

I would suggest carrying your writing notebooks around like they're a treasure box full of gems that everyone would rip away from  you and steal forever if you were to let a single person catch a glimpse of what's inside. Nobody likes to know you're writing something unless you've been published. Once you have, everyone wants to know, and I hear it gets pretty freaking annoying.

Try drawing a map your main character's bedroom. If nothing else, it'll at least be fun. Then, feel free to go map-crazy, even if they're all just simple aerial views.

Thank You!

Invitation

by Shel Silverstien

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some fla-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
come in!

That poem is one of my absolute favorites, and the one that really made me decide I wanted to be a writer. Yes, I have been dreaming of this since kindergarten. I may have made up a bunch of fake jobs because I was afraid of telling anyone that I really wanted to write, but this has always been it. For some reason that I'll never understand, a parent would rather hear that their daughter dreamed of stripping for a living than becoming a writer. This is a fact. Test it out. I'm posting this today because I believe I am finally - yes, finally! - able to begin drafting my novel. I'm going to go about this fast, which is how I  work best, and then work out every single one of the kinks in the rewrite. By then I'll need some beta readers, but I've seriously got to stop putting the cart before the horse. My goal is 500-1,000 words a day, and so far I think I've clocked in at 406. It's still not enough for me, but I have to be realistic. There's no way anyone can sit down and have half of it done one night and the other half the next, which would fly just fine with me. Plus, it's a good thing to isolate yourself and  your story. No worrying about not getting it done or how your mother probably cries herself to sleep at night because  you're not going to medical school right now, no sir. Sit that story right down in a chair across from you and say, "Okay, shoot. I'm listening." Then write down what is says with your little pen, there. God, I'm crazy. I'd like to conclude this post by thanking each and every one of my readers from the bottom of my heart. This blog wouldn't amount to a pile of dog crap if it weren't for you, and I say that as elegantly as possible. So many writers get caught up in their work and their own words that they forget what they would be if it weren't for the people reading---which is nothing. To this day I am a blogger only because you are reading this post, and I want to thank you so much. Not a lot of blogs manage to make it even this far, and it's all because of you that mine has. So what do you say? Help the blog go a little further? I'm in if you are! :D

Handwriting Novels - Is It "Okay" to Still Do It?

Image by Bright Meadow via Flickr

Of course it is, but not everyone rolls that way. I can almost hear the massive sigh of relief, as I'm sure most of you who work much better with writing on a computer are tired of longhand writers telling you that you're doing it wrong simply because it isn't their way. I've said it once and I'll say it again: Everyone has a different way. Anyone who thinks that there is only one way to write can kindly STFU.

Not to say that there aren't people out there who will throw a tantrum over how they think a computer is the only way to write, too, as if Nathaniel Hawthorne just sat down at his desk and fired up his good 'ol HP Pavilion to write The Scarlet Letter. Like I said in my Unlucky Things about the Internet post, there are insane fanatics and haters for nearly everything. I also remember saying that there really aren't any formulas for writing a good story. It's okay if you haven't let that sink in yet, because I'm certain I'll say it again many, many times.

I'm posting about this because the other day I had a shocking and slightly frustrating revelation: my work comes out much better when it's all handwritten than when I type it up on the computer. The only problem is that it's incredibly slow, and my thoughts move incredibly fast. In hindsight, this just may be why my work hadn't read very well when word processed, but hindsight is, after all, 20/20. I'm happy that I can stop worrying about my terrible, terrible prose now and start to focus on actually getting the story onto the page.

I implore everyone out there who hasn't already to try out both. Heck, I'd suggest even taking a whack at using a typewriter if you can get your hands on one. Write the same scene using a different method every time, and then read back over them to see which one just...you know, sounds and feels better.

The worst that could happen is your finding out that a much slower method, like handwriting, is your best bet.

But what if you discover just that? Perish the thought! Right?

Well, not exactly. It happens more often than you think. You'd be surprised how many writers out there nowadays still actually handwrite the first drafts of their novels, even in an age when computers are, let's face it, much faster (but not necessarily more creative). So what if you discover that this tried and true method is best for you? How do you cope with the hand cramps? The agonizingly slow speed at which the page is filling up?

Well, that's all up to you.

I've thought all of this through since I decided to handwrite my first draft. Today I went out between classes and picked up an enormous notebook, the largest one that I could find at Wal Mart. Yes, Wal Mart. No, it isn't one of these, but I'm perfectly happy with my spiral bound ghetto setup. Besides, the one I bought has eight more pages, so there.

Sometimes going out and buying something new is just what I need to motivate me to do something. I'm just impractical like that, and if you are too, go for it.

I know the thought of writing an entire draft in longhand sounds agonizing, but it really isn't as bad as it seems. I've tried handwriting for the past few days, and actually come to hate typing it up on the computer. Seriously, this blog post has been killing me. I suggest getting a pen that glides very well over the paper and only keep it neat enough for you to read, that way you can get it down as fast as a first draft is normally written. It's just the first draft, after all. Who else but you needs to see it until it's the second draft, anyway? Once you've transferred it to the computer, fixing the little mistakes you see here and there, it may as well be considered ready for a beta reader or two.

And as for the hand cramps that you're bound to get, believe it or not, water may be just what you need. Staying hydrated is given as a fix for nearly everything, though, so I also advocate taking breaks to stretch. Your fingers. I guess...flex them or something.

I know my chances of findindg another teen writer who uses pen and paper are slim to nil, but I've always been forced to deal with my abnormalities in strides. Why should this specific abnormality be any different?

Frost: Revisted

 Image via Wikipedia

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near.

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and down flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

If you're like me, you've read The Road Less Traveled at least a hundred times a year between first grade and graduation, and are so sick of being introducted to it as if you've never read it before that you didn't want to hear the name, 'Robert Frost' again. After I read some of his other poems, I was disappointed in myself for not having read more of Frost. I was just so incredibly sick of that one poem by graduation, because everyone in grade school seems convinced that Robert Frost never wrote a single thing before or after The Road Less Traveled. 

Of course, I'm not saying that The Road Less Traveled isn't a wonderful poem---it is, and it's a sad thing that it's been picked apart so much in a school setting that most people don't even batt an eyelash when reading it nowadays. Archibald MacLeish would swoon. But I would like to give Frost a sort of revival in the eyes of young readers.

Some amazing Robert Frost poems that aren't The Road Less Traveled.

Acquainted With the Night

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Design

And here's a link to pretty much everything.

I still have to say that my favorite of his poems is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I can't really put my finger on why. 

It's not like the old days when you could afford to be a recluse.

I'm going to level with you here. I have both ADD and Noise Anxiety, which makes writing anything at all extremely hard if I'm not in just the right environment. Any little noise from the outside world--someone coughing, shuffling around, the TV in the next room at a distance, voices chattering--can totally set me off and wipe my mind completely clean. I'm serious. It's like every little noise is a moist towelette, and my novel is a mustard stain. But not a bad one. One that I want to keep. For some reason. Sorry, I'm not in my 'environment' right now.

I'm also bothered by motions as well, which is why I absolutely have to be alone when I'm writing anything. That, or near a person who's extremely talented at sitting perfectly still. A Buddhist monk mid meditation, if you will. People stomping through the house even tends to keep me from working. The second anything comes into my mind that isn't one hundred percent related to the task at hand, it might as well be gone for good. Imagine how much I hated using Microsoft Word when that stupid little paperclip was still there. People who didn't even have any problems with concentrating hated it.

I'm beginning to think that writers just don't have these problems. That, or that they all live alone. Every single writer who ever talks about their process seems to be living completely by themselves in a little cabin on another planet. I'm waiting to see if there are any real people out there who have to lay their heads down on their desks until their mother stops screaming about who won on America's Got Talent.

If any of you happen to be reading this post, I have a bit of a solution. By 'bit of a solution', I mean that it sometimes helps me, but not always. Listening to music, for example, can't do a thing to stop my brain from emptying itself out ever time the entire house vibrates from someone stomping through it. For all of your auditory and visual distractions, however, I believe I have found what may be a step toward a solution.

Music.
I've actually offended quite a few other writers by saying that I listen to music while I write. You just...just can't do that! Oh my God! How do you concentrate?

Well, how do you concentrate with a screaming baby in the background?

Forget I said that. Before you get lost in the world of your headphones, you should probably make sure that Little Timmy hasn't stuck his finger in a light socket.

But I digress...sometimes it's your choice of music that works best. I have an entire writing playlist composed (see what I did there?) of nothing but songs that make me zone out, i.e., I hear the music but am not really paying attention to it. If it's a song I really like or one that's too catchy, I'll find myself focusing on the words or tune and zoning out from the writing. The real goal here is to make sure that you sort of zone out of the music and let it play in the background of your mind, letting the words that you're writing come to the forefront. Slower songs usually work best, as well as songs you could imagine playing while you talk with a friend. Anything that can drown out noise, but at he same time take a backseat to your thoughts. For some reason songs with lower pitches work best for me than higher ones. It's also a good idea to throw in a few songs that remind you of your story in case you're running out of things to say and need to mull over the idea that you first had when you started to write. I also like to make my "Story Soundtrack" into a playlist for when I go on walks by myself. It's pretty much the only way I can brainstorm.

Distraction Free Writing
Hear me out on this. I thought it was only for programmers at first. Not to mention, of course, that it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing. That is, of course, the goal. Felt sort of 'derp' after that one.

DFW programs provide a very basic interface for writing. I didn't think I needed one until I tried one out. I was amazed at how things as minuscule as the task bar and the temptation to check Facebook were hindering me.

Creawriter is one of my favorites. You can choose whatever background image you want, and the ambient sound is a great addition. For some people (myself included), the noise and image gets to be too much sometimes. In that case I would recommend  Dark Room or Writemonkey.

Novel Ramblings

They say the number one rule for writing your first novel is not to tell anyone you're writing it and keep it your little secret.

Whelp, blew that one already.

I'm dying to put up some stuff from my story, but at the moment it's nothing but poorly punctuated pre-writing before I begin the first draft. I literally have around 30,000 words of nothing but free writing trying to form my story world and develop the characters. If this thing were a novella it would be long enough for publication already. I'm obsessed. Good thing I didn't sign up for this to be normal.

Anyone ever seen a first draft? Most of them look like they were written by a kinder-gardener.

If they're mine, they're cringe-worthy. I've heard and found it true that you're supposed to just write and iron it all out in the rewrite, which means that going back over it to stomp out typos may be counterproductive. Second guessing yourself is for technical writers. Let your story be alive. I don't want anybody to think that I'm just blowing smoke here, so I'm going to try and get at least something up soon.

I'm beginning to worry that an anthropomorphic dragon wizard might be too crazy of a character for comfort, even though I believe the fantasy genre is in dire need of some spicing up. Translation: there are so many Lord of the Rings clones floating around out there that the literary world just may drown in them.

I also know that a main character who goes insane by the end of the story isn't a new idea, either, but the one thing that sort of makes mine different could be just causes it to be a controversial story. My intent was to follow a child's descent into madness. While I have plenty of other crazy people in my story, I wanted Muriel's transformation into one of these crazy people to be particularly unsettling. People just cringe at the thought of anything unsettling involving children, even though thirteen isn't exactly a childish age. The problem, I guess you could say, is that most people assume it's a much more childish age than it really is. At thirteen you know a lot more than people give you credit for.

I'm also trying to make it look like her 'descent' into adulthood accompanied her descent into madness to the point that some people might take it to mean that I believe it's wrong to grow up.

Nah, not wrong...just impractical :P

Never Get too Attached to the Magic Man

Image via Wikipedia

 While my sporadicly available internet connection insists upon making maintaining a blog extremely difficult, I have found myself able to actually make a post.

I don't know how long this is going to last, so I'll try to make it quick. Today's post, or at least the first half of it, is about one of my uncountable favorite poems. It is by the sometimes adorable (but always only in my opinion) James Henry Leigh Hunt.

Jenny Kissed Me

by James Henry Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping up from the chair she sat in.

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say I'm growing old, but add--

Jenny kissed me!

This poem in itself is adorable. It was a welcome change after pouring myself over The Wasteland.

And just to make sure that some random poem I enjoy that no one else might isn't the only thing on the blog today, I would like to bring to your attention my latest revelation---the wizard always dies.

I'm writing a fantasy, and it's so tempting to kill the wizard just because it's been imprinted into my brain that he always dies. Think about every single fantasy novel you've ever read that had a wise old wizard in it.

Did he die?

Thought so.

I'm trying to be original here, but it just feels like a fantasy series isn't complete without a dead wizard main character. I suppose it happens so often because it adds to the story's dilemma. Not only did the plot thicken, but now the younger, inexperienced, and often magically challenged other main characters are left all alone to deal with it. Now they're forced to grow up and learn to do things for themselves. The agony!

It does add drama, but I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're basically reading the same story with different authors and characters. I don't want to subject anyone to that just as much as I want to provide a valuable story that people will enjoy.

But if I do kill the wizard, I don't think I can resist the temptation to make his last words, “There is another Skywalker.”

George Lucas would take everything I own and more, however, so I more than likely won't. Also, I've noticed that the past two blog post pictures were of the same thing.

So I put up a puppy.

Fiction Writing Books: The Only One You'll Ever Need

Image by The Shane H via Flickr

Anyone who's read some of the writing help books out there on the market knows that they're a slew of problems with nearly each and every one of them. It's actually quite a bit harder to find one that helps you than it is to find one that discourages you from writing ever again. Seriously, sometimes I think that the writers of the aforementioned books write them just to discourage new writers and eliminate the competition.

The two biggest problems with writing help books:

--The writer almost always pushes his process on you, telling you that the reason why you've failed is because you weren't doing it his way. Oh, please. A writer's process is like a fingerprint. A true writing HELP book (the key word being help) will aid you in figuring out what your own writing process is and using it to the best of your abilities.

--Work is being pushed and creativity is being ignored. I wouldn't be lying if I said that I had read books that actually discouraged you from being creative. One book even went as far to as say that it really was all work and no play. Well, all work and no play makes a novel dull as hell. I would know. I got as far as my outline before I read over it and had to admit that it was directing the writing of one of the most boring books in history. I shudder to think of what it would have been like had I actually written the thing.

You can only imagine how discouraging it was for me to fail this hard while reading a book that tried as hard as it could to convince the reader that if he or she couldn't make their novel come out in ninety days with the instruction they were given, they were just a terrible writer and not cut out for the buisness. It was literally impossible NOT to fail, however, when I remember how I felt about my writing during those few weeks.

The writer of the book seemed to think that you should hate writing and dread the time you set aside for it as if it were the worst part of the entire day. If you enjoyed it, well, you just weren't pushing yourself hard enough. Sometimes professionals get so caught up in making their job look hard and important that they actually end up stripping all the passion out of it.

So what is an aspiring writer who's having trouble mastering the novel to do?

Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to say that I've actually come across a book that's helped me tremendously. I've taken classes on creative writing and can honestly say that they weren't as good as Alan Watt's The 90 Day Novel: Unlocking the Story Within.

That's exactly what I did. I followed the advice within the pages, and I can't even explain how it worked, but it did. I seriously didn't know that all of that plot was sitting inside of me waiting to explode onto the page. The story is almost one hundred percent different than it was when I went through it the first time I had novel writing doubts, and it's almost that much more interesting. It's not just a story---it's a good one. When I read his book, I get the impression that he actually gives a crap, rare as that is in today's world of self help books.

So if you've been trying to write a novel for the longest time (in my case, bordering on four to five years) and just can't get it to work no matter how hard you try, I highly recommend this book. Translation: GET IT. GET IT. GET IT.

I'm beginning to see what my writing process is now, and it's working so much better than trying to roll with everyone else's.

This book is a must for aspiring writers. The reviews are not lying. It really is that helpful, and I will swear on a stack of whatever religious documents you wish that I am not being paid a cent to say any of this stuff.

Prompts, Straight out of My Head

Image by J. Paxon Reyes via FlickrI have antibiotics in my system, and I believe I just might be back.

Or, well, hopefully. Today I went to a College Composition class where I was told that I would have to think completely mechanically for the next fifteen weeks. I could have died that very second. Good Lord, how am I going to manage writing something technical that isn't about wizards and space aliens?

It sort of reminded me, however, about one of my bigger problems lately. My writing is, well, too mechanical. It sounds like Ben Stein is the narrator (no disrespect intended to Mr. Stein, of course). So, I took a little break from my novel and decided to brush up on some stream of consciousness exercises. These are always fun. I always produce the most interesting little things when I work this way. It isn't at all filtered through my stupid left brain. I'm just writing, and that's the best thing any writer can do.

That being said, I thought it would be great to post up some good stream of consciousness prompts just for the fun of it. If anyone decides to tackles these and comes up with something they think particularly hilarious (or frightening), feel free to put it in the comments. The best possible thing that could come from this is you getting a whole new story idea. These really are just the best around for generating ideas.

• The thing you want to do most of all before you die
• Write about the one thing that scares you the most and why it scares you.
• What is your passion and what about it makes you passionate?
• The thing you feel society has most screwed up on
• OR the thing you feel society is doing best of all
• What you feel is the biggest injustice today
• An event or period of history that makes your skin crawl
• The most admirable thing about the person you think of as your hero

Remember to give yourself a good set time (the usual one is about five minutes) and not stop until the time limit is up. If you're writing, don't let that pen or pencil leave the page until the whole five minutes are up. If you're typing, you're fingers shouldn't leave the keyboard. Just go and let it come straight from your heart and as you yourself would say it. Don't think it. Just feel it. Above all, don't judge it.

Shoutout to Allen Ginsburg

Image via WikipediaJoseph Roux once said that, "Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes."

Allen Ginsburg showed us all that poetry is sometimes better when it strips down naked and says, "Hey! This ain't pretty, but it's how it is."

And you know what? Sometimes a thing is beautiful in its own way just for being what it is. 

Even Steve Buscemi, as much as I hate to say it.

My favorite Ginsburg poems:

Wild Orphan

A Supermarket in California

Song

An Eastern Ballad

Refrain

At Least 42 is an Even Number

Image by phatcontroller via FlickrHow many scenes does the average novel have? Mine, after I made a little timeline, appears to have forty two with about three scenes per chapter. I wanted to make my usual tediously detailed outline for it by the end of today, but I don't think that's going to happen. I worked on it for a few hours yesterday and only outlined eight scenes.

Yes, eight. Out of forty two. Looks like I've got to either give myself an extra day or down a gallon of coffee and work from now until Kingdom Come. I'm starting with the former, but like always will most likely switch my plans to the latter. Either way, it's work getting done, right?

I know I can't be the only one who sits there staring mindlessly at my blinking cursor unless I have a perfectly prepared outline of the scene. Seriously. I even need to divide the scene into a beginning, middle, and end. After that I divide the different parts of the scene into their own beginnings, middles, and ends. Sometimes I even go further than that, but I won't delve too deeply into my insanity. It makes people  nervous.

I'll have to note that the excerpts I posted were done without any sort of scene outline at all (let alone the hyper detailed one that I prefer), which is why they tended to suck. I honestly don't see how some authors can spin a tale out of an outline that's basically just a bulleted list of the scenes. Everyone has a different process, though. Most indie authors, what with their freethinking ways and such, scorn the outline entirely.

Me, I need it to survive. I didn't even realize it until my current novel. All of my previous works were attempted with absolutely no outline at all, and they never made it past a few horribly written chapters with no concept of any sort of narrative arc. One common mistake of novelists is, after all, that they're writing a novel from beginning to end and literally making it up as they go. Makes foreshadowing a bit hard when you're literally writing the thing as a reader.

Looking back over my old writing makes me nervous. I shudder at how terrible it is, and back then I thought it was so good! That in turn makes me worry that what I'm writing now isn't good even though it at least feels decent. Isn't it frightening to work so hard on something that you might scorn later when you've gotten more experience?

Anyone else afraid of this? Or are you perfectly comfortable with laughing at your old work (whether it's in writing, art, performing, or sports) and beaming at how much you've grown? I wish I were. I'm going to try, anyway. I'm definitely going to do the whole, "wait a few weeks and then proofread again" once this baby is through, though.

I would like to close by leaving all you other indie authors out there with a link to one of my favorite blogs, Publetariat. I always get a kick out of the title, and it's an amazing source of valuable information for independent authors.

Related articles

• How Many Scenes Does Your Novel Need? (advancedfictionwriting.com)

Hindrance, Thy Name is Procrastination.

Image by Nemo's great uncle via FlickrWhat should I be doing?

Working on the long, hyper detailed version of my outline.

What am I actually doing?

Typing a blog post, eating fried rice, and mindlessly browsing the Kindle Store. Am I proud of myself? No, but I'm definitely not ashamed, even though I should be.

Yep. Should be.

I want to read Lolita, but I'm afraid it will be one of those classic books that turns out to be amazing and incredibly boring at the same time. That was how the 1962 film struck me, anyway: I just couldn't stop watching because I was so interested, but I'll be skinned and left out in the sun to dry if it didn't drag on forever! I know that you can't judge a book by it's movie, so I think I might just give it a shot.

I downloaded a sample on my Kindle to see how I liked it. I was immediately stricken with the desire to both slap Humbert Humbert in the face and crane my neck and stare at him as if he were the eighth wonder of the world. I've been told that this feeling will persist for most of the novel.

 This is very different from how the movie made me feel about him...mostly, I would assume, because they changed quite a bit about Lolita to redeem the tale a bit.

It's almost like looking at a train wreck. You just can't stop, and a tiny, sordid part of you actually wants to see more.

Excerpt the Second

Image via WikipediaI'm fairly certain that I've at least got an actual scene from my novel going on here. The goal was to focus on character motivation...I was going to write about how Muriel wants to be a daredevil and find adventure but can't have it because she's stuck in the city. You can all see just how well that went. I gave the nutjob just what she wanted...or, well, what she thinks she wants for now.
 Somehow I never end up developing the parts of my characters that I sat down to develop.

I do believe I have a new development for my Muriel, however: She's crazy as a loon.

(Psst...I hope there aren't as many typing and spelling mistakes in this excerpt as there were in the first!)



------

The snow was falling in sheets. As she leaned out the window, feeling the tiny, icy pinpricks land on her skin, Muriel tried to make out the building across the alleyway beneath her bedroom. It was all in vain; there was simply too much snow.

She leaned back into the room and shut the window. Chilled water dripped down her face as the flakes that had lighted on her head began to melt in the warmed air. Snow, and lots of it. Just what she had been hoping and praying for. December and January had almost passed completely without so much as a flake.

Behind her the television was chattering away, and she crossed the room to her dresser so that she could turn it off. The entire house was finally asleep. Now it could be quiet.

While she was still at the front of her room she flipped off the light switch, leaving the room in complete darkness, and felt her way to her bed. Muriel didn't want the slightest bit of glare on the window. She was hoping that the man would come and stand on the sidewalk that night like he had every night for the past two weeks, the one that she could see if she looked as far to the left as she could while staring out at the city beyond. Of course, the snow that night would make it harder to see him, but Muriel had the feeling she would. It was almost as if the world around him wanted him to be seen.

The snow was so thick that night, however, that she couldn't even see the fire escape directly outside. There was only a thick, animated whiteness, squirming and moving as if it were alive as each snowflake rocketed toward the ground. Muriel tried to zero in on a single flake and follow its journey to the ground, but it had left her field of vision before she could really even focus on it at all.

All seemed still in the frozen world outside save those madly swirling snowflakes.

Muriel snapped awake before she had even realized that she had fallen asleep. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she was covered in cold sweat. Something had frightened her, of that she was convinced. But what?

She rested her forehead on the glass. A chill shook her as the heat of her body met the frigid windowpane. How long had she been asleep? It couldn't have been very long, for the snow had not slowed one bit...unless it was going to snow buckets all night.

That was when Muriel saw it. Or him, rather.

He was in the alleyway this time. Not very far into it, as he still would have been quite visible from the street were the weather not so bad. He was only a relatively small black form, shaped very much like a man and nearly invisible behind the wall of falling snow. But it was him, there was no question.

Muriel slid her window open and climbed out onto the fire escape wearing nothing but her pink flannel nightgown.

The cold snow quickly penetrated her slippers, but she didn't care. Holding onto the rail to keep her balance, Muriel climbed down the metal stairs, taking note of how many level areas she came to. There were three floors between her bedroom and the alley below. Before long she came to the ladder and nearly slid down it rather than climbed.

Her foot finally struck pavement when she realized that what she was doing was absolutely insane. She was a thirteen year old Jewish girl standing in the middle of a snow filled alleyway in Brooklyn at who knew what hour of the night to meet some stranger that she had seen from her window. It was completely mad.

Mad and wonderful.

Muriel grinned and set off in the direction of the anthropomorphic black figure.

The closer she got, the more of him she could see. It was as if they two of them were concealed in a bubble; the blizzard was raging all around it but not inside of it. It could have simply been that she was so focused on him that the snow didn't matter anymore, but Muriel always liked to imagine that something simply wonderful was happening, even when nothing out of the ordinary was going on at all.

When she was only a few feet away from him he turned, and she saw that he was wearing a bowler hat pulled down over his face that was as black as the suit he wore. It looked as if not a single snowflake had landed on either one. They were still both just as black as black could be.

He reached out his hand, palm up, and beckoned to her.

Behind her was her apartment, and inside were her mother and father. Muriel loved them more than anything else in the world and couldn't stand the thought of leaving them alone. She also knew that it was incredibly wrong to go with a stranger, because when one did such a thing one had no idea where one would end up.

And that was what had her pinned. She didn't know why, but Muriel knew that this individual wasn't your garden variety stranger. He had somewhere that he would like to take her, and if she didn't go with him, she would never find out where that place was.

Crazy, irrational, and sometimes unbelievable Muriel took his hand and followed after him when she felt him pulling on her. He threw the jacket of his suit over her shoulders and led her on toward where she knew the street was, but where she saw nothing but that moving whiteness.

Before long the white was still and hazy, and she realized that there was no more snowfall. There was only seemingly endless white fog, and various details and outlines coming gradually into focus.

Though she was dazed and dizzy, Muriel actually managed a laugh. She had come into the alleyway just to talk to this gentleman, and so far she hadn't said a single word. 

Is the future now? God, I hope not.

Image by Witer via FlickrI finally began Fahrenheit 451 the other day. I'm only on part 2 right now, but I can already tell that everyone who told me that the book was a must-read was completely right.

They were also right about how, though the story is set in a dystopian future, it reflects our own society today so much that it's almost frightening. I can say that it's much more frightening than not because I'm certain it reflects our society more now than it did when it was first written in the 1950s.




Books are illegal, television shows and games have been dumbed down to the point that they're nothing but series of bright colors, sports are all anyone cares about because they don't require much philosophy, and all of the liberal arts schools are closed because people stopped going to them. All of the jobs involve technical and computer skills, and sitting around on the porch talking is seen as useless and dangerous because, golly gee, if people start thinking then they just might get ideas! Different ideas! Then there will be war over those ideas, and it won't even be the "fun kind" of war.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm scared that this is where we're going to end up fairly soon, especially since I spent eight hours in a lecture hall the day before listening to a lady tell me that it didn't matter whether or not you were doing what you loved if there wasn't a job market for it. You know what? I don't care if I'm going to be poor because being a writer isn't corporate enough for the future. I'll open up a can of beans and eat it like it's a turkey dinner because I'll be doing what I love.

And besides, people with no house don't have to pay the bills. So nyah.

In short, read this book and let it scare you. You'll thank yourself for picking it up, and don't ever let someone tell you that you shouldn't follow your dreams just because they're becoming obsolete. Don't let the man keep you down, and don't get stuck in the three piece cage if you want to work with whales and wear a scuba suit.

Three guesses as to what this post is going to be about.

ThImage by brody4 via FlickrI'm sincerely sorry that I can't shut up about this novel. It's just really coming together, and quite frankly, I'm overjoyed. Nothing has ever come together like this for me. Usually it starts as an idea and stays as an idea because I'm more than afraid to plan it out and actually DO it. Fear of screwing up? Oh yes. I should think so.

This time, however, I told myself that such a thing simply would not fly. I buckled down and actually started outlining the thing, and didn't make myself too scared to plan out the story from start all the way to finish.

The only problem is that now I'm terrified of actually writing it.

On a related matter, I decided to bump the age of my main character from fourteen down to thirteen. While she's supposed to seem young and naive for her age, I was writing my scenes and realized that she just might be a bit too young and naive to be fourteen.

Is she too immature to be thirteen?

Incredibly. But not so much that it makes it look like I such at characterization. I've just got to say that I'm glad I made the change before I actually started on the manuscript. Does anyone out there know how annoying it is to go back and change things about a character (such as name or age) and then go change all of the references made TO that thing you changed? And all of the plot points it influenced?

Ugh. That's another reason to make sure you've got it straight before you start writing. Believe me, the more sure you are about exactly what is going to happen and when, the easier the actual writing will be.