Category Archives: April 2011

April 27, 2011 · 6:00 AM

The Importance of Flaws

My children will never have chicken pox scars. I must be out of it because my daughter was a toddler before it dawned on me that she would never go through the rite of passage that was chicken pox when I was a child. Vaccinations had made that an old-fashioned problem like polio. I grew up with a prominent chicken pox scar on the tip of my nose that traveled up my nose as I grew and somehow found a spot next to another scar on my forehead as an adult. They don’t really bother me and I have plenty of better things to be self-conscious about. It got me thinking about flaws in general, and how important they are for real (and fictional) people.

Though they won’t have chicken pox scars my kids already have some character-building scars. They are minor, but my daughter has a light scar between her eyes and my son has consistently banged-up knees. I don’t see a problem with these kind of minor imperfections and I think it is part of your personal history, kind of like a roadmap of life. It’s something I have to remember about writing fictional characters. Although they may do incredibly good or bad things, it is often the little quirks that make people endearing and give them personality. An example is Sherlock Holmes playing the violin while thinking. The amateur detective was a drug-addicted genius, but the violin playing showed him to also be vulnerable and capable of producing art, not just science.

That kind of character trait needs to be born organically, though. I can’t just make a list of awesome weird traits and randomly assign them to my principal players. I need to think of how people come about the odd hings they do.

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April 26, 2011 · 3:58 PM

Is Work Getting in the Way of Your Life?

I have this pesky thing I do during the week that really messes up the rest of my week. I try not to complain about it because I know there are a lot of people who are looking for work, but sometimes my job feels like it is in my way! Other times it can be very rewarding, but this week it was definitely in my way. I had to go away overnight for business my first day back on the writing wagon. Normally that is no big deal and staying over saves me a lot of driving time, but this time it was just annoying and I lost focus because of it.

I will now digress a moment to complain heartily about the poor food at the new Marriott “bistro”. Courtyard Marriott is apparently trying a new thing where they have a restaurant in the lobby. It is only open for breakfast and dinner and it has a small Starbucks menu as well. The place is decorated in that faux trendy style that I see in a lot of hotels. They are trying to be cool, but somehow it looks cheap. Anyway, I did not fancy sitting by myself in the trendy lobby of the Camarillo Marriott so I ordered my food “to go” back to my room. I ordered a tuna sandwich and a cup of broccoli soup with a bottle of water. Not only did that cost my $22 with tip, but it took almost a half hour to prepare (I was the only customer) and was virtually tasteless. I should have walked across the street and bought a burrito.

This ruined my motivation for the evening and I watched trash TV, which I am good about avoiding at home, but there’s something about free HBO that makes you want to watch. I case you were wondering, Sex and the City 2 WAS WORSE than everyone said. So, we will try again tomorrow and keep trying every day to finish this story. And I will do my best to stop wasting time.

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April 25, 2011 · 6:00 AM

Holiday Hangover

And yet another holiday has come and gone. It’s time to eat right again and also get back on the wagon with my hour a day. And because I missed my personal deadline I need to set up another goal.

I will have a draft of this new story finished before the end of the kids’ school year, which is June 7. That would be ideal because when schedules change I always have a hard time staying on track.

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April 24, 2011 · 6:00 AM

I am Sick of Easter Eggs

I am so sick of Easter eggs. I have the same reaction to Halloween candy in October. This will make me sound old, but when I was a kid we had one small egg hunt at home and it was with REAL dyed eggs and it was no big deal. The Easter bunny brought a small basket and everyone dressed up for church.

This year there was a HUGE egg hunt at the gym where my daughter had her birthday party, we had to furnish filled plastic eggs for preschool and school parties and there will be another big egg hunt at church. On top of that I’ve been avoiding taking the kids to the grocery store because of the huge displays that have bee out since the day after Valentine’s (don’t get me started on that holiday). And what is the point of it all? I don’t agree with the school that insists on calling Easter eggs spring spheres, but I think we’re kind of missing the point. Anyone who does a Google search can look up the symbolism of eggs, which is fairly obvious without the internet. Eggs are a symbol of rebirth, and Christians translate that to Christ’s resurrection. So why all the candy? No matter how fun it is to hunt for thousands of eggs my children do not need that much candy! And I certainly do not need it floating around the house. At the moment my kitchen table looks like the Easter bunny’s workshop with all the extra plastic eggs. And all this during Lent!

Is the answer to forfeit all these fun and games? I’ll tell you I’m close to that. Should I keep the kids home from school on party days because it dilutes how special the actual holiday is? That seems kind of cruel since I’m not opposed to Easter eggs, just the quantity and frequency of them. Do I refuse to help with the event at church? That’s counterproductive because I feel the actual day is when we should be celebrating, not the 2 weeks before. How do I show my kids how much more special things are when you have them in moderation?

I think what we’ll do is tomorrow night collect all the detritus, empty the eggs, and set them aside for next year. Give a quick and definite end to the holiday (which is what we do with all the candy on Halloween as well). And I need to plan my attack for next year. Maybe I will win the lottery by then and we can take a vacation to Siberia during Lent.

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April 23, 2011 · 9:25 AM

The Holiday Quandary

As Easter nears I’m stuck in the same place I find myself with every holiday. Things get busy, whether it be at the kids’ school or at home, and a day I would normally spend catching up on housework or working on my writing is now filled with activities. This is a good problem to have because it means I am not a hermit sitting in my shack, but it always gives me a feeling that I am skipping something or letting something slide.

When I’m already having a hard time fitting everything in my life, is it okay to skip on holidays? Stephen King reportedly writes everyday, even holidays. Is that part of his success? On the other hand I look at people in my job who never take vacations and continue to wear themselves down without becoming more successful. I think taking time off is good for you. At the same time, one hour is not very long and it is probably easier to fit it in a day when I am not working. I’m going to try to keep to my writing hour tonight and on Easter because that is 2 hours closer to my goals.

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April 22, 2011 · 6:00 AM

Celebrate Earth Day in Style

A lot of “green” tips seem to be ways to cut back and reduce not only our carbon footprint, but our lifestyles too. That got me wondering if there are ways to live it up while being environmentally conscious, or are the two ideas mutually exclusive? I came up with a few ways to celebrate Earth Day in style:

  • Buy new technology! Yahoo recently published an article stating that the increased use of the iPad was actually good for the environment. Because iPads are generally not kept plugged in all day (like a traditional computer) energy consumption can be reduced.
  • Use an awesome, fancy water bottle. Remember all that water your doctor told you to drink? Well, go for it, but don’t use a new plastic water bottle each time. Treat yourself to a cool new sustainable water bottle. Some of them are kind of pricey, but hey, refilling it is cheaper than buying new bottles every day.
  • Take a vacation. Not only is today Earth Day, it is National Park week and admission to all (at least Californian) National Parks is free through the weekend. National Parks like Yosemite not only have camping areas, but four-star hotels.
  • Enjoy a night on the town. A lot of people are watching Netflix at home rather than going to the movies. Today Disney’s latest Earth Day movie, African Cats, hits theaters. Splurge and go to an IMAX theater.
  • Take a mental health day and spend the day writing! Think of all that paper writers of previous generations used while writing their drafts. Not only can you work seriously on your hobby, but it is a completely paperless sport.

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April 21, 2011 · 6:00 AM

Let Your Subconscious Work for You

I firmly believe the subconscious does work for you while you are doing other things. We’ve all had ideas come to us seemingly out of the blue. I’m having those kinds of thoughts all day long, often fully formed extensions of the story I’m working on. Now that I have been consciously writing every day (or trying to) I’ve written more back story in my head than ever before, and I know it is because I am working more consistently than ever before.

Is our subconscious like our metabolism? When it gets exercise does it work better while in rest? Or maybe it kicks into gear when there is something left unresolved in our conscious mind. Either way, the secret to getting work done by your subconscious is consistently working on it consciously!

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April 20, 2011 · 6:00 AM

Does Your Point of View Matter?

Of course point of view matters. I think in many cases it is the most important tool a writer has because it has the potential to completely change a story. Consider a book like The Great Gatsby. Not only is it told in first person (limited, as the English majors say), but from Nick Carraway’s point of view. He is a relatively neutral character and crosses both social circles – Gatsby’s and Daisy’s – so you get to see everything and everyone, but you also have to infer a lot about what happens behind closed doors. Imagine the same story told from either Gatsby or Daisy. It would be completely different and you would miss a lot of the nuance.

Maybe because I put so much weight on point of view as a technique, it scares me as a writer. First person narratives, especially, are scary to me. The whole story needs to be in the voice of that character!

At present I’m working on a young adult story, and some conventional wisdom for that genre is to use first person limited because it helps younger readers relate to the character and be drawn more quickly into the story. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. As a reader, first person stories feel more intimate to me, maybe because it’s like you’re reading a letter or invading someone’s private thoughts. In some of the young adult books I’ve read I think it is too intimate and you know way too much about that person. I don’t know about you, but there’s a lot of things I don’t know about myself and I would not be the most reliable source in a story of my life. Read Presumed Innocent (I said read it, not watch the movie) for a fantastic example of an unreliable narrator.

The story I abandoned was also told from the first person perspective of a major character and I had a very hard time with it. I’m now thinking that was because I did not have a clear enough understanding of that character’s “voice” and individual personality. I base that on how fast and clearly the current story is progressing. It is the first thing I’ve written where I feel there is a definitive “voice” that I can identify. Yet some part of my brian is apparently still working on the abandoned story because it keeps returning in my thoughts. Maybe it is the restless part of me that always wants to be doing something else, moving onward and upward when the work gets tough. Or maybe that’s how our brains (or at least mine) work and I need to allow my subconscious to do some heavy lifting.

Image: Escaping Criticism, 1874, by Pere Borrell del Caso (public domain)

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April 19, 2011 · 6:00 AM

How to Make Yourself Do Anything

It’s time to talk about motivation. Basically, I respond to both positive and negative motivation. Depending on the situation one works better than the other. For instance, I manage to get to work on time every day for the positive reason that I get paid to work and the negative reason that I don’t want to get in trouble. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but those are the core reasons.

When it comes to personal issues it is a different matter. Here’s some of the motivation techniques I’ve used to encourage myself to write over the years:

  • Follow contest deadlines. This gives me a set deadline to work toward and, in theory, something concrete.
  • Pay myself. I set up a payment plan where I gave myself a cash reward every 1,000 words with the total going toward tuition at a writing conference I wanted to attend. This worked great until I outsmarted myself and wrote words just to get the reward.
  • Same as above, except with time instead of number of words
  • Be accountable to another person, an informal “editor”. This worked too except it is an incredible drain on the other person and I can’t expect even the best of friends to do that long term.

All of these things work for a time, and then I run out of steam. So how do you make yourself do something consistently and over a long period of time? As an adult I make myself do things every day. I obviously have the ability, so why is it so hard to make myself do some of the things that are very important to me?

Time is part of the issue. I think that is a legitimate excuse in many cases. While I’m trying to write an hour every day, I’ve decided it would be far better to squeeze in what I can – even 15 minutes – than not to write at all. But I really feel I have that hour a day, somewhere within my day, to write.

How can I motivate myself? By remembering why I want to do this. I don’t want to be that person I hear in the lunchroom who talks about all the things they want to do, but never does them. I want to know I tried my best, and if nothing comes of it at least I did that much. I want to learn and grow and that only comes from doing – not from thinking about it. I can do this!

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April 18, 2011 · 6:00 AM

Discussing Plot

I was describing my new story to a good friend last night. I am not good at condensing things down to a short statement, and this friend wanted to know the backstory and other things that if she were reading would not be apparent until later in the story. Now I have two questions about having this kind of conversation.

  1. Does discussing plot with someone who will have questions/comments (but who hasn’t read the story) influence my future decisions too much?
  2. Am I ruining a potential reader?

Or is it all part of keeping me motivated and focused? People are bound to ask about it, especially when writing this blog. I’m beginning to think I should come up with my “elevator pitch” or short statement to tell people and be done with it.

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