Frustrations

I think it's the law of how things work.

Yes, I'm back. I really really hate the fact that I haven't been doing the warm-up writing I'm used to doing now that I don't feel like I have to, or now that I don't have a chart to fill out.

The book is finished in the most raw form it will ever be in, at least in regards to its current incarnation. (And yes, I think I will put some excerpts from the original creation up again. That was fun. Humiliating, but fun.)

I've taken the time to make some pre-named Notepad files to get what I have now in a typed form. Once I finish the last couple pages of the chapter I'm typing now (currently titled "Alien Planets"), I'll have six of those Notepad files left.

The fact that I'm so close is thrilling. It's yet another peak I've reached.

The higher peak is definitely going to be the editing, and formatting, and cover design, and all the other parts of a book that everyone takes for granted, but which are important and which give a book the real feel it needs.

The fact that I can do nothing but read business articles, completely uninterrupted, for something like two hours, while an attempt to type longer than a paragraph is met by constant interruptions, is immensely frustrating.

But there's only six pieces to go.

And since we're talking about things that make books into books, I will add that I agree very much with Stephanie Meyer on one thing regarding music that she put in her acknowledgments (and pay no attention to the nerd behind the green curtain that reads stuff like that)...

Muse is awesome.

If I Could Do That Every Day

So last night, between the last posting and the time I went to bed, I got out my pen and notebook and went to work. Though I had to make myself stop since it was getting quite late, I made myself stop at a good pause point, with an idea of what's coming next. That's the best part.

The hardest part, honestly, is staying in my main character's head. I don't go into any other characters' heads; they are revealed through dialog and action. It's a good thing the book's a raw draft. That means I can fix it later. I'm up to the challenge.

Tonight I hope to sit down a little earlier with my notebook, especially now that I have an idea of what's happening next. I mean, I know how the book will end, but the details are super important, especially what comes next. It's finally exciting. There's a home stretch, and even if the raw draft isn't quite finished by the end of this 30 day thing, then a good huge important part of it will be. And that is truly exciting.

Blog Promos (i.e. Lazy Day)

It's Friday where I live, and time to do a little promotions of the blogs I love to read.

The Clumsy Juggler
This one's actually written by a friend of mine from college. She's currently in grad school for Master's in English, and was very recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She writes about it on the site, and it is entertaining, thought-provoking, and educational all at the same time. It's also made me very thankful for my own health.

Children of the Nineties
For a child of the 90s such as myself, this blog just oozes nostalgia. Right now the updates are sporadic, and the last one was in May of this year, but check it out anyway. The archives are amazing.

Fourth Grade Nothing
Much like Children of the Nineties, this blog is a trip back into the childhood of a whole generation, the kids and teens of the 1980s. I'm currently obsessed with that decade, so I really love this blog.

Weirdly Awesome NC
Though I'm quite prone to scaring myself with ghost stories, I do very much enjoy weird tales and local legends, as well as alternate theories for historical events (Ancient Aliens, anyone?) This site has both, focused mainly in North Carolina, but also branches out into the "weirder" corners of the Earth. The author's ideas are pretty interesting as to why certain things occur, so be sure you don't miss the theme running through every post.

The Laconic Inkdrop
Another blog by a friend, this is focused mainly on the issues that us recentish college grads are having with employment, paying back loans, and basically facing a world that will soon belong to us. Her other blog is Ever Just Curious, which has a more literary focus.

Rediscovering His Grace
What can I say, I'm one amongst all my blogger friends. It's hard to keep one's faith these days, but sometimes things that happened in the past made it harder. I find this a refreshing glance at a faith that is too often riddled with trite sayings instead of the blunt truth.


That's it for the promos this week. I hope you find all these sites as enjoyable as I do.

Rare Sunday Post!

So yeah, it's Sunday. I don't often have time on the weekends to post, usually because I end up chillin' in our living room, looking in the general direction of the television and snarking about whatever the heck I feel like. But I feel a little inspired. I think.

And really, I'm thinking it to myself "Okay, Amanda, it's Sunday. You're not working today. You've got a novel to finish, maybe some other posts to do ahead of time because of your weird work schedule and superhero-compromised attention span. How about some productive stuff, okay?"

And I'm all "NO I MUST BE AWESOME TODAY."

Really, I don't know where it comes from. My body works backwards or something. Friday night, I got 8 hours of sleep. I usually average about 6-7, and function. Heck, I functioned through most of college on 5 hours of sleep a night. But 8 hours should make me feel like...okay, I'm out of analogies since I don't know many un-stupid female Marvel characters and most DC characters bother me. Bottom line is, I should feel ready to run a freaking marathon, but all I felt Saturday was sorta tired. Like "oh, that 8 hours...that was nice. Let's do that again." If I get a normal amount of sleep, I have this weird hangoverish feeling (and I don't drink, so...yeah) and I just end up sleeping more. So basically I've wired my body to actually run better on less sleep.

Case in point. I had to open last weekend. I work at a museum, and my only full days are Fridays and every other Saturday. I have to leave my house about 8:20 to get downtown. I usually get up at 7:15 to give myself enough time. So last Thursday night, I was winding down, about to prepare for bed, when my brother, innocently enough, said "Let's watch Ironman 2."

I had not seen this movie yet, and I wanted to, but I had to get up early. So my brain took half a second to be all "Eh, I better no-YES WE WILL WATCH IRONMAN 2."

I rolled into bed at 2 AM and got up at 7 ish.

Now most people would feel sorta gross and just not good after 5 hours of sleep. Me? All I could think of was seeing how high in the air I would be if I stood on the lobby desk at work to clean off the mysterious smudge 12 feet up. Actually, the smudge was a bonus, I just wanted to feel really tall. Then the thought entered my brain that "I wonder what would happen if I jumped off the counter onto the floor." This continued for quite some time.*

Last night, I got to bed sometime after three and got up at like 9:35 to get ready for church. I don't want a nap. I want to be awesome. I should be writing away, but I am far too ADD to not want to be doing something like knitting upside down above lava. And this is how I normally am, mentally anyway, because most nights I go on Cracked.com and get into the "open seven tabs at once" trap.

When I'm in a really really really really really really really good mood, and I'm feeling all "OMG I WOULD BE AMAZING CREW MEMBER ON A SPACE FREIGHTER" then I don't get much done. Seriously, when I'm feeling that awesome, I have weird daydreams. The apocalypse version of me is an engineer that fixes stuff UPSIDE DOWN and saves the day.

And then I usually end up tripping up the stairs.




*Pesky customers never let me get time to do it. Dang.

We're Doin' It Right (or just...you know...funner.)

My senior year of college was one where many a great thing was accomplished, such as my car actually making it to Greenville, South Carolina. And speaking of college.

Bob Jones University is a very interesting school. It's a fundamentalist (for all purposes very conservatively dressed Baptist) university with lots of rules and regulations and the occasional interesting happening, like Artist Series (which isn't the name anymore but whatever. Look it up.) During Artist Series, if the university doesn't put on an opera or a play (I saw a lot of Shakespeare...), they invite performers from outside the university to come and put on a show.
Since this post is partly about my senior year, I'll narrow in and focus on the two outside performers that I happened to see those two semesters: the Dallas Brass and the King's Singers.

I'm not crazy about brass music or choral music, at least not initially. I am not one to just sit and listen to classical music or barbershop quartets. That said, I was most unenthusiastic about seeing these dudes from Dallas who I thought had picked the most uncool instrument group (myself being a violinist). I looked forward to an evening of sheer boredom. But you know what? They came and they put on a show. They weren't just performers; they were showmen. They had fun and played some good stuff. Ever heard of Gabriel's Oboe? Look it up. It's from a movie called The Mission (which I have not seen) and shoot, I'm gonna use it in place of Wagner's Wedding March thing at my wedding. They played that. They brought brass music to life in a way that no one in or outside of Bob Jones University (brass heavy as they are) ever did. I laughed, I enjoyed music and the show that went along with it.

It being Bob Jones University, a true show just isn't enough. It has to be exotic. Which I think might be the reason for everyone at the school getting all excited and junk about The King's Singers, a group of men who, well, sing and were apparently god-like simply because they were British. So I was all "Eh, they might not be so bad, I'll give 'em a chance. Probably will be cool." After all, I am fairly certain that some of my fellow students would have gladly sold their first-born child for lunch and a private performance with these guys. They must be good, right?

Eh.

Yeah, they were good. Heck, they were very good. They had a high level of skill and didn't slip once on the notes or the timing or the pitch...Yeah, that's how exciting it was. They stood on stage and sang American folk songs and old spirituals and one thing I actually liked that was about South Africa and Dutch people. Or something. They stood. And sang.

That's about it.

All this to back up my oh so humble opinion...

Here we go, it'll blow yalls minds...

America is not Britain.

BaGOOSH. Am I right?

This is not an anti-Britain rant. Heck, I love Britain. My favorite show right now is Doctor Who* and could you even imagine an American version of Harry Potter?

Harry Potter and the Jersey Devil?

Naw, I'm good with Britain. I think our version of Top Gear is way better. I've been disagreed with, of course. But the British Top Gear? Yeah, old dudes driving. American? They drive and break stuff. Aw yeah.**

Somehow, somewhere, sometime, there was a mass movement of denying who you are and of graciously (ahem) informing others of how wrong they were. Possibly that's why we have hipsters. Liking tea doesn't make you globally minded or more polite or more intelligent. Please understand me, I like tea. It's great. It's delicious. What I don't like are the pretentious little tea shops here in the States that pretend they can steep low-quality paper-bagged tea better than I can.*** Maybe, instead of bragging of our love of tea and all the bands "no one's ever heard of" (even though they probably have), we could just chill. Like tea and like coffee. But just stop pretending.

Maybe we could finally realize that we gained independence from Britain years ago, like it that way ('cause they probably do too), and realize the potential of learning from something instead of trying to be it.

'Cause writers, if you try to be Jane Austen or Charles Dickens and try to squeeze their genius into your stuff and create a disastrous mash-up of the two with a 21st century half-reasoned message about "society and stuff" that cannot and will never belong in that world, your readers will spot it a mile away. But you go ahead and do what you want and write what you want. So guess what? You're not them, so prepare for your baby to be slid back on the shelf and given a remainder mark sometime in the very near future.

More on that tomorrow.

*Did not River Song's identity raise more questions than it answered? And how 'bout that beginning for a season? American conspiracy theory folklore as a plot? Brilliant. Really. Great stuff. I did not see that coming. The Silence are pretty much They, Them, and the Men in Black. Love it.

**Don't even play; you know it's fun.

***It's true. The lowest quality leaves end up in bags. It is easier, and I found that Lipton Spiced Chai was really good to my sore throat yesterday. It's also great iced.

The Viewpoint

When I took the picture of this tucked away little piece of Americana pie, I think my brain exploded with the sheer potential. Seriously, I can only think of one other thing to do with this image, and that's classified information.

But here's a little exercise for you. Make a short story or a scene about the Viewpoint restaurant. Even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with your book, write a short piece with a few people.

In reality, the Viewpoint is located up near Fontana Lake and Fontana Dam in Western North Carolina. It's old. It's a little forgotten. Sometime recently, it was still open, because the colors are still incredibly bright. But at some point, a small piece of the world changed and travelers began to turn the other cheek as they passed, hurrying on up the road to a landmark or an attraction or something else much more important, somewhere generic enough to make it on Facebook. The real, raw, forgotten beauty in the world takes its time, always waiting for you to come back to it, infinitely patient until wind and rain and time gently pulls it back into the earth, leaving only an imprint behind to make you wonder what could possibly make you feel so at home when you've never been there before.

When you write a novel, one of the best things to do is latch on to that feeling, however you can. Novels are our own little universes. When you feel at home with your novel, that's when you're on to something. It won't be perfect in the first go, but that's okay. It's still coming from you, and no one else. Without that, it's really completely nothing.

Ah, Self-Righteousness, the Spice of Life

This blog's mostly about fiction and various forms of it, such as writing. Y'all knew that already, so I'll move on.

Writers always get stuck with a version of typecasting. We're always the quiet ones who don't want others to read our stuff and fiercely guard it with our lives and hide journals under stuff. Sometimes, we're also in pain and we write to make life better or something, usually with the use of beautiful and tortured (i.e. horrible) poetry. And ultimately, we write for the sake of writing. It is an art form, and to make our art into anything but would be selling out.

Right.

Maybe I'm especially unique, but I'd personally like to write a bestseller and make money from either book sales or subsidiary stuff, such as books and related merchandising. Does this make me a sellout? Not really. As a skill, writing is very marketable. Your options range from writing website copy to penning the next Harry Potter, and it is hard work. As a writer, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that your unedited work is just gold in ink form, but that's the farthest thing from being true.

My degree comes from a very conservative university. I minored in creative writing, and I took some great classes that didn't only focus on the skill of writing, but also on the marketability of a finished product. In fact, not one but two professors pushed a focus on making your work publishable. If you want to use your gifts, you shouldn't limit yourself to writing stories and poems for friends or your own personal pleasure, and you really shouldn't scoff at those who are published, because they've been willing to do the work that you will need to do to get published.

I think one of my favorite reactions is the "I've seen and write better than that" that tends to come up. A good example that I once read on the internet was the laughable statement that Twilight is unoriginal because...wait for it...Buffy did it better the first time. Reasons being? Buffy had a vamp boyfriend too. This is true, but that doesn't grant Joss Whedon's hit series any more originality than Twilight. In all honesty, Buffy kinda sucked. (Whedon hit the mark better with Firefly, a great show that regretfully lasted only one season.) The title character's ability to sort of use something that resembled a sappy stage version of fake martial arts was, I think, the reason so many were fans of the show, or something like that. (Granted, this was the 90s, the era of empowered women in leather bikinis, and fanboys went nuts for stuff like that. Throw in the romance with a tortured vamp-guy, and you have a hit series.)

All this to say, don't get too much on your high horse. Take criticism. I once knew someone who had a near breakdown at her on-campus job because some guys in her creative writing class had given an honest critique on her story's characters. It deeply bothered this person that someone had noticed that her characters went through very unsubtle, sudden changes. Look at examples around you, and please stop comparing apples to oranges. For example, comparing the Chronicles of Narnia to the Harry Potter series is probably something you should avoid, just because the styles are very different. True, they're both fantasy, and neither are allegorical. They do have a couple of things in common. For example, England. And words.

One more thing: give yourself credit. You may be a fan of Harry Potter, a loyal Narnian, a Twi-hard, or a respectable citizen of Hobbiton, but you are not any of those authors. You don't have to be them in order to write good books of your own. I'm reading through the Harry Potter series right now and it was tempting for a bit to knock a few years of the ages of my main characters and give them adventures at the age of 13 or 15. I admire Rowling's work and I think she's a good writer. She's certainly a strong writer, and that could easily become a problem for myself if I let her series overcome my work. I can't let that happen. All I can do is work out discrepancies and issues in my book and let it be what it already is. What sets me apart from the writers of any books I own? They're already published. Instead of concentrating on my intellect, I'm going to sit down, shut up, and work, because they're all way ahead of me already.

Why Should I?

After all, we've got enough stuff to entertain ourselves.  Homer, Poe, Austen, Twain/Clemens, Tolkien, Lewis, King, Meyer, Rowling, Stoker, Shelley, Stevenson, Paolini, Verne...seriously, let me take a moment and just ask y'all to give a hand to all these entertainers of the page.  Seriously, guys.  You're all great.

All right, back to what I was saying.  Why should I want to even try writing a book when there's a lot out there to read?  I mean, there's tons I could entertain myself with, lots of stories and epics and tales that I have spent hours with.  Really, why bother?  I mean, come on, we've got Harry Potter to entertain us, or Percy Jackson and his buddies (I've actually never read it...).  I ask again, why bother with my stories?  Been there, done that?  Really?

No, not really.

I realized when I was younger, when my stories were first taking shape, that it didn't seem as if my part of the world had its own little epic.  Central Europe, or Scandinavia, or Britain tend to get their fair share of the settings available for the type of fiction.  And yeah, they're beautiful, Britain especially.  But, after 24 years of being here, I'm in love with the East Coast of the United States, the Southern portion especially.  (When I was quite young, my concept of the country consisted of North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and Michigan and Iowa somewhere up in the great beyond of the North.)  Where I live, we don't have bayous; we have marshes that turn into sounds and then become the Atlantic.  There's just something rough and lovely and old about where I live.  Go west, and you'll venture into the Blue Ridge and Great Smokey Mountains, a place that always feels slightly haunted by the spirits of the Cherokee that once wandered there so long ago, some of whom remain to this day, living in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

North Carolina is a different sort of place to live, and I've always known this.  That same beautiful rawness that I've seen my whole life is the thing that inspires me, literally.  At one time, I was going to set my books in West Virginia, but I've only been there once, for my senior trip.  (Snowshoe Mountain is a gorgeous place to ski, by the way.)  What a mistake that would have been.  West Virginia is a beautiful place, and I know some cool people from there, but there's nothing in the world quite like hearing someone speak and knowing within the first three words they say that they probably have the same area code as you do.

Okay, so back to why bother.  I bother because I think it's only fair that we get our own chance, we here on the East coast.  I think it's because we have marshes.  You know those old marsh lights?  I think some have called them will 'o the wisp...those little lights that lead people deep into the marsh...those are stories my friend, just waiting to happen.  I'll follow one, all right.  Oh, but I promise...good stories always lead you back out to where you wanted to go in the first place.

But they rarely leave you the same.

Characters: Putting Yourself in Your Work (Part One of a Series)

Let me start by confessing that when I write a story, I tend to make cameos within the narrative.  I don't always function as the main character, but I am there, keeping an eye on the inhabitants of my mini universes.  I could be anyone from the work-stressed sister on the other end of the phone to the blue-haired (yep, my a hair's been that color more than once) background character who's actions are a catalyst of sorts, but it's a habit now for me to be there in some capacity.  I believe that there is nothing wrong with that in the least bit.  In one of my current projects, my main character basically is me, tweaked of course, and with several differences, but she is me, exploring a world I made up.  I'll restate that there's nothing wrong with this.

Until.

Oh yes, until.  This word just makes me giddy with anticipation, because it means I'm about to fully analyze and critique something.  (Favorite hobby, seriously.)  Okay, I'm back now.

It's fine to stick yourself in your story.  If you want your main character to be a variant of you, that's fine, but watch out for Mary Sues and Gary Stus.  They tend to be rampant in fanfiction, but I have also caught them lurking in books that I've purchased.  (Yes, there are different degrees of Sue and Stu, and the pair is quite sneaky.  They're like glamor ninjas.)  The most blatant type of Mary Sue tends to occur when the author inserts herself as the powerful and extremely beautiful main character.  Gary over here shows up in the same way.  Usually, they're pretty average height (a 21st century type of average, regardless of the era they live in) and either have something inexplicable about them (abilities or appearance), and they never live an average life.  If they are not a princess/prince, then they are a beggar who is really a princess/prince and life is hard.  Abuse is common for Mary and Gary.  Sobsob, crycry.  Writers, avoid this at all costs.

When you decide to make your main character a version of you, do so in personality.  If he or she looks like you, fine.  Having a picture of a character in your head for reference is a great idea.  It helps you visualize actions that they or other characters make, see someone's face as they speak, and understand how the character would move if they walk, run, swing a sword, or drive a car.  But a mistake that some writers make is going out of their way to describe the character, pointing out Mary or Gary's eye color or hair sheen or unblemished skin constantly.  Usually, when you flip to the author's picture, you'll find that they are the spitting image of their perfect main character.  (Feather, which I reviewed earlier, has the dubious honor of being exactly like this.  I do not exaggerate when I say that Estella describes herself every few pages.  It gets old reading about someone being perfect in looks.)  I know that as far as the Twilight Saga goes, many people either love it to obsession or hate it with a passion, but the lack of self-description was actually something that impressed me.  There's a little bit of description, but it's in context as to where the character lives at the beginning of the story.  Actually, you never get a clear grasp on what Bella looks like until the fourth book, when one of the Cullen sisters remarks on the color of Bella's eyes when she was human.  Nicely done.  Yeah, she looks like the author, but does not ever come across as "I'm perfect in every external way."  Also, if you have an evil character, please refrain from making them look like the slightly petty, mean, and popular girl in your school.  Female villains tend to be slightly perfect as well, and that's just as annoying.

Give your character flaws.  And I don't mean "they're a worrier" or "they get stressed easily."  I mean give them real flaws.  They're scared, or they have acne.  (Glasses, by the way, are hardly a cosmetic problem.  Yeah, I wear contacts now, but mostly out of convenience.  For me, they're easier to maintain.  If they were harder to own, I'd totally have glasses.)  Maybe they're mean sometimes, even to their best friend, or *gasp* they can't use a sword with any competence whatsoever.  You have to be careful, though, of making your main character unlikeable.  Let them have flaws, but normal, human, every day flaws.  Characters who are unpopular in school because "popular kids are mean" are not realistic.  (I went to private school for 13 years.  I wasn't exactly Homecoming Queen, but I wasn't ridiculed for stupid stuff like having curly hair or wearing knee socks with my skirts.  Actually, high school was rather nice.)  That's one of the things I liked in the Harry Potter series.  Harry can be an awkward guy, but he has friends.  Yeah, he has enemies, and he's not super popular at Hogwarts, but he has a good circle of people who like him, and with whom he hangs out.  Most of the ones who don't like him feel that way because they are actual foes with an agenda.  (Poor Snape and his unrequited love for Lily, though.)  Without the list of mortal enemies, it's a convincing story of adolescence.  Okay, J.K. Rowling hardly put herself into that story, but you see the point.  Don't make your story into a pity party about your life if your life is pretty average and pretty good.  (Okay, the Dursleys were mean, but jealousy fueled it, and the 90s were a grungier time anyway.)

You don't always have to be the main character.  Remember, there is an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.  Let yourself be an observer, or a background character.  You could be the main character's best friend, helping them decide stuff.  But most writers will choose to make the main character another version of themselves, and that's fine as long as the character is convincingly imperfect, just like you.  It can be hard to build a character that everyone can relate to, but if you're willing to actually work on a character instead of taking the lazy route and making them perfect/powerful/the Chosen One, you and your readers will be rewarded.