The one that was supposed to be about writing...

Today I was going to do another post about writing. You know, that thing I do when I'm supposed to be doing other stuff? The thing that (I hope) will let me retire in a few years and just DO IT?

But here's the thing - writing is also reading. Reading your own work, reading other people's work; published, not published, fiction, non-fiction, editorials and tweets. You can't write without something to write about. Maybe something you saw or heard or read yourself. Because there are no original thoughts.

Think about it - what's the last original thought you had? I'm willing to bet that, given time and resources and the willingness to really look inside at the source of that thought, you would found it came from somewhere else. Some external trigger.

Sure, you put an original spin on it; you personalized it and colored Barney orange instead of purple, but in reality, all you're changing are the details.

People have been arguing this for years, but when you look into it, it's depressingly real. A good discussion on the subject, and a list of the seven original plots, can be found at Poe's Deadly Daughters, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll list them here:

1. [wo]man vs nature
2. [wo]man vs man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs God/religion

There is also some argument that this list should be expanded to include an additional seven, as follows, but I see these more as adaptations of the same, original seven:

1. Overcoming the monster
2. Rags to riches
3. The quest
4. Voyage and return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

I know what you're saying: wait a minute, I thought you weren't going to write about writing? I thought you were going to write about reading? (say that three times fast, in your head, with a double scotch in your gut. THAT will get you going!)

Ahem - back to the subject at hand: the reason this came up was because I had finished reading two books that I thought were remarkably similar to my first book, only the details were different. Then I got to thinking how those books (and mine) were similar to a play I watched. A play by that good time bard, Will S. 

So, when I'm reading (which I do voraciously), am I just absorbing another telling of an existing plot? Is it reinforcing that plot line in my head? Maybe - it's certainly a possibility, but if that were the case, why would my story be any different than any other story? Why would I read multiple books in the same genre? 

Because of the DETAILS - those sneaky little things like setting, period and character that really make the book, or anything else, worth reading. If I don't create a unique character with quirks and traits and GROWTH (you have to admit, Justine; that was well played!), then there's nothing new to read. It's my manipulation of those elements that make MY story better or different or funnier or more poignant than somebody else's story. 

So, what are you doing to turn your "recycled" plot into something fresh and new? I'd love to hear about it!

Nellie...

The other day, while not looking and certainly off guard; I was given the "Whore Award" from Kelly at Dysfunctionally Functional. 

Here's the catch, this writing prompt came with it:

So, here goes nothin'!

I slumped over in the seat, too drunk with excitement to worry about what she was doing and too sober to want her to stop. I didn't have much experience at this sort of thing. Alright, I had zero experience. It didn't matter. She had enough for both of us. 

Her hands felt like small, white claws, clutching and grabbing, milking from one end to the other before sliding to the bottom and starting over. I gasped in pain and she asked me if I wanted her to stop.

"No," I moaned, then closed my eyes and let gravity push me back down. I felt heavy and weightless at the same time, earthbound and soaring free without a lick of concern where I would fall. 

An eerie green light flickered behind my closed eye lids, pulsing in a pattern that near drove me insane as it tattooed it's way into my head. It was brighter than all hell, slowly fading as she released me and allowed my circulation to return to normal. 

Slowing, screeching to a stop, the bands holding me in place were lifted and Kelly, sitting next to me the whole time, asked if I wanted to do it again.

"Hell yeah!" I yelled, as we climbed out of the carriage and ran back in line - ready to ride "Nellie" one more time. 

Crap. I mean...crap.

Well, I know - I'm supposed to be writing about something this morning. I thought I had a topic lined up last night, but the Valkyrie (aka: my muse) got pissed and chased it away. 

So: Crap. What to write about. 

Here I sit, broken hearted.
Tried to write, couldn't get started.

Hah! Not what you expected, was it? Yeah - I try stupid stuff sometimes to get things flowing. Actually, my entire second manuscript started by thinking (and echoing in words) that annoying habit of hitting the same key on a piano over and over, with a half-second pause in between. 

Yeah - I started it like this:

One... Two... One... Two... 

And before I knew it, I was off to the races. It always intrigues me, the things that get our writing glands juiced up and ready for keyboard kombat... I frequently ask other writers how they came up with an idea, what made them start, how did they get the first few sentences on paper. We all have different methods and means, but in the end, it comes down to just sitting your ass in a chair and WRITING. 


If I were going to be completely honest (which I am, to a fault and without much tact), the actual verbal vomit part comes easy. Once I get going, once I pick up the trail my muse has left me, I can ramble on for hundreds, thousands of words. Part of it may be for total shit, part of it may only make sense to a crack smoking toad, but part of it will always be worth keeping. It's the space between the words that matters - the thoughts and images and questions drawn out by whatever I spewed like...  Well, the only 'spew' analogies I can think of are too gross and disgusting for this early on a Saturday morning. 

Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't. The point is, it gets me writing SOMETHING. Which beats staring at a blank screen.

Why yes, this is a little gratuitous Depp action.
What the fuck is wrong with that?

So, something I write may start like this:

"When Donny left, it was pretty much expected that Andie would fall apart. Really, really fall apart. They’d been together since college. Almost four years. They were talking about getting married. At least, she was talking about it. He would just listen, nodding his head while studiously not commenting. So when he left, when he packed his things while she was at work and moved out without even leaving a note; she went a little nuts."

And before long (but with several edits) becomes this:

"It’s the little things in life that make the biggest difference. Being five-minutes late for the job interview. Missing the other guy’s car by two inches. A quarter teaspoon too much salt in the soup. Big things are easier to detect, easier to plan for. Easier to accept. 

It’s the overwhelming force of the larger events that makes them more recognizable. You know something big is going to or has happened, so you allow yourself the time and the space to cope with them. But the little things? No freakin’ way. They just pile up, like grains of rice or flakes of snow, until the whole thing breaks lose and tears up your life as it plummets down the slope. 

So, when Donny left, it was pretty much expected that Andie would fall apart. Really, really fall apart. They’d been together since college. Almost four years. They were talking about getting married. At least, she was talking about it. He would just listen, nodding his head while studiously not commenting. So when he left, when he packed his things while she was at work and moved out without even leaving a note; she went a little nuts.  

She pulled the few things he left into a pile in the back yard, added all the pictures and mementos of their time together, dumped the oil from one of the Tiki torches on top and threw the match. She danced the shandy around the blaze, tipping back the bottle of Fireball until she was good and drunk, then passed out on the grass as the embers blew softly all around her. 

Yeah. She was pissed."

See how that works? You start with the tiniest, most obscure thread. You embellish, adding, subtracting, playing around with placement, tense, voice and other 'craft' tools and before you know it, you have a whole new story in the works! And as eager as I am to watch Johnny Depp, or Christian Bale or drink Scotch and dream about Johnny Depp or Christian Bale; I'm a writer. I gots to write. I get real bitchy when I don't. And my muse get's all pouty. Trust me - that's not a pretty sight!

Oh, and by the way, on my search for the perfect gifs for this post, I was horribly maimed and assaulted by A FULL PAGE OF TAYLOR FUCKING SWIFT gifs! GUH - my eyes! My eyes! They're burning!!!!

(See OMG, I Fucking Love This! for interpretation if needed, with kudos to Kelly and Valerie)

Now, for some fave tunes before I rush back into reality. Happy Saturday!

The Muse slept in...

Yup. She's running late. She's doing it on purpose, you know? She's mad at me. Having her little temper tantrum, dropping vowels and double dipping into the punctuation bin.

I don't know why she's acting like this. Is it my fault I have two books in revision? Is it my fault I went away for the weekend with The Man Behind The Curtain and left her at home? Is it my fault she got into the printer toner, sucked up all the good ink and was left with the hangover from hell?

I mean, come on, she's all pouty and sick and she missed the trash can and now I'm stuck cleaning up her mess? Where's the loyalty and respect in that? She acts like I can throw down a new storyline every time she wants to get some action.

She's all ...

It doesn't work like that. She may be all hot and lathered, but I need a little more foreplay - a touch of romance even. I can't just jump on the keyboard and start pounding away at her any, uh. Where was I?

Oh, yeah - the keyboard. Typing away at her ideas whenever she feels like dropping them off. It's like a teenager returning with loads of dirty laundry at the end of the college term.

IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM.

And she's such a bitch about it too. She gets all up in my temporal lobes, filling my nights with weird dreams, then she busts down the door to the occipitals and mashes in a bunch of equally weird visions and hallucinations.

Helloooo? Try driving much while images flash by like a slide show on crack?

I would tie her up and lock her in the closet but she'd like that. Bondage: it's her thing.

So, instead I try and dash a few notes down here and there. Story ideas, character sketches, scenes from bars and diners and beds that... Well - I'm just glad no one else has access to my computer.

It could be worse. I could have my CP's muse. She's been sending her images of Zombie sex and a fat China man who can't - uh - perform.

You, know, in comparison, my muse isn't too bad after all. Maybe I'll take her out for a short story this weekend, just so she feels appreciated.

Research

Have you had to do research for something you're writing? I mean, aside from school or some sort of work related task? How did you go about it? Where did you draw your information? How did you cite it? Did you create a bibliography, using parenthetical notation or some other methodology? Did you even credit to your sources?

I have an ongoing research project for a trilogy I'm working on. I've used Wikipedia, but mainly as a source for articles, journals and books to reference. I've used Google-Maps to print large scale and detailed closeups of the area where a significant portion of the story occurs. I've also downloaded hundreds of pictures of the terrain, flora, fauna and architecture so I can accurately describe the region.

I used the local library to find countless reference books and more journal articles, copying, transcribing and committing to memory the parts I needed. And I have sorely abused my husbands trust in our financial management by ordering book after book after book from Amazon.

And here's what I learned: research can do funny things to the book you think you're writing. I started off with a very clear vision in my head, but the more I researched and made notes, the more the story grew and expanded. The more I thought I cleared plot lines, the more I realized I had to go back and perform MORE research.

Things like not being able to accurately depict how a soldier would act in a specific situation when it's abundantly clear how much society has changed in the past hundred years. It's impossible for someone from our generation to really understand the psyche of a soldier from World War I or even World War II. We are a different country, a different people, a different world.

I didn't realize this until I read the following:

"The hard truth was that human beings had never been slaughtered in such numbers or so rapidly as in this hideous war. Nor with less to show for it. The machine gun, automatic rifles, massed artillery, poison gas, flamethrowers, the airplane, and the tank made a mockery of old-style textbook stratagems and old-style battlefield heroics." 

(McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).

The reading of this one paragraph changed my outlook on the entire book and sent me digging for my reference material. Because I got IT.  That mysterious IT that makes us want to write something meaningful, something prosaic and greater than ourselves. The IT that makes us want to dig deeper, work harder, longer, more fervently than we have before. IT. The argument. The SOURCE of our inspiration.

I finally realized, research has a means beyond our immediate goals. It transcends the basic need to flush out dialogue, scenery, time, place, etc. It becomes more than the background - it becomes the heart, soul and body of many of our stories. Not all, certainly. Not every story. But for me, it became so much more than my original concept. So much more than I had dreamed of. It became it's own story, and I'm simply the device transcribing it for the masses.

Research. It does some interesting things to your head - and your plot line!

Have a great weekend!

"I Sing the Body Electric..."

Walt Whitman wrote these words in 1867. He added them to his Magnum Opus; Leaves of Grass, which was first published in 1855.

Funny thing about old Walt - he kept tinkering with those poems until his death in 1892.

Walt knew a thing or two about writing. And about using your Imagination. Think about it: when he wrote those words, electricity was a rarity - a wondrous new phenomenon barely tamed or employed.

Yet Whitman caught on to the wonder of it, the beauty of lightening across a summer sky and the great possibility of taming something so wild. And others caught on to Whitman.

I often wonder where he first found his Inspiration for this and so many other magnificent phrases he strung together. He used words like we use table salt - to add flavor and depth few of us can hope to achieve.

Yet, for all that, he was fired from his job, his writing deemed "obscene" and banned by many of the major retailers of his day.

But he kept writing. He kept revising. He kept editing. And he kept true to his vision.

"I sing the body electric..."

Thrilling, strumming, alive and fiery, the poem gives homage to the liveliness and grace of the human body. Men, women, old, young, at war and at peace, in repose and working. Can you read it and not get caught up in the rhythm? Can you read it and not SEE the words come to life? Can you read it and not want to write like that? I can't. Not a bit.

Especially this part: "Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count." Ah! It makes me want to dance and sway and move to the rhythm of the wind! How can you not FEEL these words? How can you not be inspired to at least TRY and write something comparable? 

I give you, then, the beginning and a link to the full version of "I Sing the Body Electric"

1

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

2

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle,

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,

The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down after work,

The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting;

Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,

Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.