Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011  A lot of writers create specific play lists to put them in the mood when they write.
I don’t. I may choose a particular album or artist to write by fairly regularly, but I haven’t yet taken the time to choose a defined set of music for a project. It’s partially because I’m lazy – I don’t want to weed through thousands of songs to choose a small subset. Choosing would be hard!
Mostly, it’s because I don’t want to be limited.
What I like to do is decide how I’m feeling, or what it is I want to feel, and then I search my music database for songs which might match the mood. I say “might” because no database search is without its anomalies. You never know what you might find.
And this is a good thing.
For instance, yesterday I didn’t know what I wanted to listen to while I wrote. When I looked out the window, all I could see was the snow (and more coming down). No sun. No birds. A barren landscape.
A search for “barren” in my database found zilch, so I went with the more generic, “white” for the snow.
My database found 45 songs with white in either the title, the band name, or the the musicians’, producers’ or composers’ names. Songs were offered up by both Judas Priest (White Heat, Red Hot) and David Arkenstone (Nantucket).
There were several bands on the list I hadn’t listened to in YEARS (Crack the Sky, Yes, Def Leppard…)
It sounds like an atrocious mix, but I assure you it wasn’t. I was concentrating on the writing, not the music, after all. It didn’t matter when the music changed from red-hot-metal to new age. For the most part, it didn’t break the flow of writing.
Afterward, I looked at the list more closely. Those songs that used to mean something to me that I haven’t played in years…they gave me some ideas to play with: some writing ideas.
I knew I’d stumbled on to something good.
Do you use play lists? How do you choose and narrow down the songs for a work in progress?
Friday, January 28th, 2011 Snow flurries danced in my headlights this morning on my way to work. After two days of sleet and snow (and more than a foot of the fluffy white stuff) I’m not anxious for more. But it got me to thinking about extreme weather conditions and how they can affect the characters in your book.
The “formula” for an exciting story suggests that the author torture his main character with all kinds of dilemma, and then kick him when he’s down. If it’s an action book, we put the character in a dangerous situation: chased by bad guys. If it’s a historical romance, we’ll take away the heroine’s support system.
Usually, the genre will dictate (or at least suggest) what the conflict of the story will be.
How can we make weather one of these tortuous dilemmas the protagonist must ride out?
Rarely will weather be the conflict around which the story is based, though one exception is Jack London’s famous story, To Build a Fire. Written in 1902, it tells the story of a man whose arrogance leads him to his death in the face of a blizzard.
More often, weather is is used to as a prop to propel the story:
On the way to his engagement party at his fiance’s parent’s house, a man has an accident on an icy icy highway. Broken and comatose, he spends weeks in the hospital. The story is about what happens to the man (and perhaps his fiance) after the accident.
Here’s Your Prompt: Bring weather into your story as more than an inciting incident (leading to a car accident, for example.) Instead, make the weather take the part of an antagonist: “someone” the hero or heroine is required to fight against or endure. Write a scene — or several — describing your character’s fight against the heat or pouring rain (or any other weather). Show how he or she got into the situation, and how he or she got out.
What thoughts did your character think as he or she fought the elements? How did he or she feel? (Angry, scared, sad, anxious? Perhaps your character puts the blame squarely on someone else for their predicament. ) Show all of this. Don’t forget to use the character’s senses to relate what he or she is experiencing (what they saw, smelled, touched, tasted, etc.)
Keep in mind the remainder of your story when you choose this weather situation: what drove her to be in this place at this time? How did he wind up there? Whatever you choose, it’s got to be plausible to your story set up: in a historical romance, you can’t make the heroine venture out into a deluge — in which she gets swept away by flash floods – without a really good reason. But you can send her out in a crowded shopping district on an overly hot day after the maid pulls her corset too tight and she’s already feint from skipping breakfast.
Friday, January 21st, 2011  I think I’ve mentioned before that I can get lost with a map in one hand and a GPS in the other. I absolutely despise driving somewhere new for the first time.
If it’s important that I make it there on time, I’ll often make a dry run: like in October when I had a reading at the Constellation Book Store in Reisterstown. The weekend before the reading, I drove to the bookstore to make certain I could find it when I had to.
Par for the course, I got lost, even though I had the GPS and the Yahoo Map with me in the car.
Once, when I was in college, I had to drive into Washington, DC for a late-night event. The evening ended at 11 p.m., and at 1:00 a.m. I was still driving around the city streets. I knew I was in trouble when I’d driven under the 7th street* bridge for the 3rd time. I needed gas and there was not an open station in sight.
I won’t ever forget the panicky feeling I had, driving around, alone, the seep of the cold in my little Ford Escort. Keeping silence in the car, rather than my usual blasting metal.
I thought I’d never get out of the city.
Here’s Your Prompt: Write about being lost. If you’re journaling, this could be a personal time when you were lost. If not, throw your character out into the wild.
Where is he lost? In the city or in the woods? During a gentle summer evening or a sleeting winder evening, darkness falling.
Make sure your character has no means to navigate: no compass, no GPS, no sewing needle and cork (look it up if you don’t know what I’m referring to). If you want to be really cruel, make certain your character has no sense of direction, too. Also: there’s no one around to ask directions of.
How does she feel? Is she panicked? Resigned? Pragmatic? Is her stomach upset? Is she shaking? Does she feel like she wants to throw up? How does he react? Swear? Cry? Kick something? When your character finally moves…tell us why he or she chose that direction. Did he see a light in the distance? Smoke? The sound of gunfire? Maybe they’re running away from one direction, rather than another. Why?
Make it as hard as possible for your character to find his way. And once he or she does, describe the relief, the ensuing anger, the rants, the promises (I’m never going there again!) they feel once they’re safe and sound.
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*I could be misremembering which street here. 7th? 11th? It was a long time ago. But I think you get the point.
Monday, January 17th, 2011 I have leaped joyfully into Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation & Conflict this morning. (Just one of the fabulous gifts I received for Christmas!)
On the back cover it says, “How to use these key elements to give dimension to your characters and direction to your plot.”, which, IMO, is a sentence fragment, and has no business being on the cover of a non-fiction book. However, it leads me to believe that by reading this book I will be able to work out the snags in my current work-in-progress.
Since I’m only on page 2 (of Dixon’s book), I can’t tell you how true that is. But I will write a review once I’m done.
On the fiction side, I’m reading Barbara Hambly’s Sisters of the Raven (one of the books I picked up during my Ravencon #bookfail).
So far, so good. It takes place in a world where magic was the sole enterprise of men and, suddenly, men find themselves losing their powers and women gaining them. The first two chapters have been very exciting.
So…what are you reading, anything good?
Friday, December 31st, 2010  I hurt my finger.
Baking Christmas cookies.
I kid you not.
I bake a lot of cookies, dozens of cookies, a gross of dozens of cookies each year for gifts and to put out for Christmas dinner.
I make biscotti and pizzelles using my Italian grandmother’s recipes. These recipes call for kneading the cookie dough, and in the case of the pizzelles, squeezing hard knots of the mixture between wooden-handled irons over the flame of the stove.
(These are not the sissy, liquid pour-and-bake that you buy in the store, or that many folks resort to making because they can’t find the old-fashioned irons.)
I literally wore out my hands kneading the dough. It was so bad by the end, that I couldn’t squeeze out a sponge to wash down the counter tops.
It’s getting better now that I’m wearing a splint, which I’ll likely sport for a few days more. It’s been incredibly enlightening to see how such a minor injury has affected the activities I do daily: signing my name, brushing my teeth, typing.
And strangely, this one injury has beget another: a blister has formed on the pad of my middle finger. From what? I know not. Perhaps the minor rubbing upon it as I still try to do things with this splint (like knit!).
Here’s Your Prompt: Injure your character. Make it as minor as a finger splint or as major as the loss of a limb. See how it affects the plot of your story. What things can your character still do? What things are out of the question?
(Believe it or not, I’m typing with this splint. It’s slow, and I can’t feel the keys I touch with it, but it’s working…)
Do personal research: pretend you’re injured. Put nails in your shoe to make yourself limp. Put a popsicle stick on your finger and pretend it’s broken. Try walking without using your leg. What kind of frustrations do you experience? What thoughts do you have? Attribute these to the character in your story.
If you’re journaling, instead of writing fiction: describe a time when you were injured. What happened? What did you hear? Feel? Think? Was it an accident, or did someone injure you deliberately? What did you feel afterward? What are you still feeling about the injury?
Friday, December 24th, 2010 
I think I’ve already mentioned that I have a thing for the moon.
There’s something mysterious about it that never fails to captivate me. I take time to gaze at the moon nearly every day.
The recent Solstice Eclipse, therefore, was something I was not going to miss. The Husband of Awesome™ set the 2:30 a.m. alarm and out into the cold we went.
This photo, as I’ve mentioned on Facebook, is my inexpert attempt at capturing the event.
So, in honor of the moon, here are some moon-related writing prompts….snippets of poetry and sentence starters…not the detailed suggestions I usually offer.
I’d love to read what you come up with….feel free to post in the comments or send me something via email.
Here are the Prompts:
- “It’s a marvelous night for a moondance…” (Van Morrison lyrics)
- A walk on a monlit path…
- Write about being moonstruck.
- What counsel has the hooded moon… (James Joyce)
- “Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…” (1954, written by Bart Howard)
- Write about an eclipse.
- The purity of the unclouded moon has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor… (William Butler Yeats)
- Write about a honeymoon.
- Each night, as the moon rises…
- It’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea…” (Arlen, Harburg and Rose)
- Write about the cycles of the moon.
- “Everyone’s gone to the moon…” (Johnathan King, 1969)
- Write about the Harvest moon.
- Tubas in the moonlight, playing for me all night, Tell me what I want to hear. (Bonzo Dog Band, 1968)
- And finally, here’s a short list of “moon” words to spark your writing:
honeymoon
moonbeam, moonbow, mooncalf, mooned, moonflower, moonless, moonlight, moonlike, moon maiden, moonrise, moonscape, moonseeds, moonset, moonshines, moonstone, moonwalk, moonward, moonworts, moony
Friday, December 17th, 2010  “Write what you know” is probably the most hackneyed phrase spoken in writing classes.
Some people think the statement is way off base. How can you write a futuristic science fiction tale if you’ve never flown in a rocket?
I think these people are taking the statement too literally. Or perhaps teachers aren’t explaining it well enough.
I think you can take practically anything you know, and it apply it to any genre. And, I think writing what you know is also the easiest way to make your words seem completely realistic to the reader.
I have a personal example:
I was nine when my grandfather died.
He and I were close, even in the last years of his life, when, jailed by his broken body, he sat confined in a wheel chair. The numerous surgeries that reduced him to this half-life also removed his ability to speak. He communicated with pencil and paper: jagged scribbles made by a stroke-palsied hand, punctuated with slashed underlines when he couldn’t make himself understood.
His sudden death surprised me.
I’m sure the adults saw it coming, but I hadn’t been privy to those hushed and furtive conversations about Grandpop’s condition.
It rained the day of his funeral, making the church gloomy with darkened, stained-glass windows. Cloying incense filled the church, the funeral rites seemed interminable, and the priest droned on.
I remember standing on the steps of the church afterward, waiting for the coffin to be loaded into the hearse. The moment the pall bearers pushed the coffin outside the double doors, the clouds broke and a sunbeam burst through. I had a sudden feeling that Grandpop was finally at peace.
So, what do I know? And how can I apply that to my writing?
- The antiseptic smell of a hospital, the quiet discussion of visitors, the squeak of a nurse’s shoe on tile set the scene for a horror story.
- So too does the odor I remember: the gauze-wrapped wounds, the paper tape, iodine or some other chemical…and the decay of a body still living.
- The hospital-room machinery seemed space-age through the eyes of a child. As an adult I can write about the digital displays, the symphony of beep and whine and hum of the collected devices, and the intent of the machinery in a science fiction tale. I can extrapolate what I remember into futuristic appliances — decision making robots, even — which not only perform a dedicated task but make decisions about the patient’s care.
- I’ve used portions of my grandfather’s graveside service for a funeral in one of my fantasy stories. The weather alone sets the scene: a sunny internment preceded by pouring rain and a single ray of sun.
- Finally: in any genre, I can use the emotions. To my nine-year-old self, my relationship to my grandfather was nothing out of the ordinary. I accepted his disabilities because it was, for the most part, the only way I’d known him. Though I missed him, I even accepted his death as the next stage of his life.
On the other hand, I remember my grandmother’s tremendous grief, her stoic bravery in public and her weeping in private. I remember her saying that she could not live without my grandfather, and realizing that a large part of her spirit did, in fact, die with him.
I remember witnessing the numbness of others in the family.
Any of these emotions can be attributed to the characters in my stories, either singly or as a composite.
Here’s Your Prompt: Dissect your life. Choose a memory that stands out as the most exciting, or most monumental, or even, most sorrowful. Journal your memory. What do you remember seeing or hearing? Did it take place inside or outside? What was the weather like? While you’re writing, include details and imagery from all five senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling).
When you’re finished, review what you’ve written as a basis for a story. What details can be extrapolated or built upon and used in a different scenario or setting? What were you feeling at the time that could be attributed to a character? Can you use anything in a story you’re writing now?
Friday, December 10th, 2010  I collect dolls. The more unusual, the better. I have several mundane and beautiful specimens, but the unusual ones are the ones I like the best.
Sometimes, it’s a defect that attracts me. For instance, I have a Geordie LaForge (Star Trek) action figure with two left hands. (I’m still wondering how that got off the assembly line.)
Or it’s the rarity: I have a tiny little boy doll made in 1960s Italy which is anatomically correct.
I absolutely love my Living Dead Dolls: Sinister Minster and Bad Habit. Toddler dolls, dressed as a priest and a nun, laying in a coffin. They come with their own death certificates. This I find clever, and I like clever very, very much.
Like it or not, we all collect….and our collections reflect something about us. It provides useful information to the people who know us.
For instance, I also have a collection of Matryoshka dolls, sometimes called babushkas: Russian nesting dolls. The collection started when I inherited several from a great aunt who brought them over from the Ukraine. The mass produced ones you can buy these days are horrible — so generic — but hers have genuine character. Collecting them rules my actions:
I scour estate sales and yard sales. I search for them on Ebay. I put them on my Christmas list.
Some people collect unconsciously. Others have collections thrust upon them. Some people display them prominently, some people hide their collections away like dirty little obsessions.
Here’s Your Prompt: Develop a character for a short story or novel (or use one you currently have) and give him a collection. Show us: is it something he or she decided to collect, or did he or she inherit (or simply receive) it in some fashion? How does the character house that collection? Is it displayed prominently? Is it well-kept? Perhaps items are simply acquired and tossed in a drawer.
Next, take a moment to explain how the collection defines your character. What does it tell about him or her? What does how your character’s care of the collection tell you about him?
Friday, December 3rd, 2010  This is a great photo, captured during the 11/27/2010 NHL game between the Blackhawks and the Kings. I love hockey….always a good fight.
Have you heard this really old joke?
“Last night I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out.”
It never gets old.
Let’s talk about fight scenes.
A fight scene should be exciting, fast-paced, and pack an emotional punch. You need to put the reader into the middle of the scene and enable him to feel each landed blow. You’ve got to be descriptive enough to paint the picture for the reader, but not so descriptive that you slow down the scene.
And you’ve got to accomplish this without falling into the trap of describing punch for punch, kick for kick and finger-poke for hair pull.
So how do you do it?
Keep the scene in the point of view of the main character. Describe things through his eyes. Show that your character is engaged in the fight, but is also aware of his surroundings.
What follows is an example from one of my works-in-progress.
In this scene, Karis and his priestess companions are ambushed by a group of sentient, demon-hounds called ahventhí . Out of context, the description of Karis’s two last arrows sounds clunky, but it’s important for the rest of the story to note that he has none left. Still, I think you get the idea here:
The ahventhí charged the women.
Karis jerked in their direction and launched the first of his last two arrows. It misfired, gut string scraping across his wrist. A discordant twang of the bowstring echoed in the clearing and the arrow careened sharply right into the darkness.
Karis took better aim with his last arrow. It struck the cur in the spine, and the great beast rolled to a halt, gasping and choking, paralyzed.
The remaining ahventhí, a large grey creature with white battle scars crossing its snout, leaped at Karis. Using the bow as a shield, he clouted the attacking beast and sidestepped, forcing it aside as he drew his sword.
Note the use of a brief sentence to get the scene started: “The ahventhí charged the woman.” This clipped rhythm is used elsewhere to keep the momentum: “It misfired, …”, “It struck the cur in the spine…” This continues as Karis dispatches the final beast with his sword.
Together, these brief snippets seem like the choreographed movements of a dance: They did this, the arrow did that, Karis did this…” which is exactly what we don’t want to write. But here, these clipped, mechanical statements are temporized with brief description.
Also, strong action verbs are substituted for weak ones: charged, attacked, launched, clouted, paralyzed.
What’s missing is how Karis is feeling. We can get to that as the scene is wrapped up:
He fell to his knee at the foot of the dead beast, wiped a hand across his brow and reset his headband. Lungs heaving, heart pumping, he bent and wiped his blade on the creature’s coarse fur, sheathed it, and recovered his bow.
Karis stood on shaking legs, paused a moment to catch his breath, then bolted in the direction he saw the women flee.
Even later we get to Karis’ thoughts: when he has time to recall the fight, examine what happened, figure out how he got ambushed. This could happen as he’s searching for the fleeing women, or even later in the chapter as a reflection.
Here’s Your Prompt: Your turn! Write a fight scene. It can be men fighting men, or women fighting women (or a combination there of) or, as above, man or woman against beast. Keep it simple this time and limit the players to two or three at most.
Use tight sentences, action verbs and keep the description to a minimum.
Post your scenes in the comments below. I’d love to see what you’ve written.
Photo Notes: Chicago Blackhawks defenseman John Scott, left, and Los Angeles Kings right wing Kevin Westgarth fight during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Saturday, Nov. 27, 2010, in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Saturday, November 27th, 2010  I’ve spent the last two days at Darkover in Timonium, MD and I’m having a blast. I’ve made lots of new friends and had some terrific conversations.
(It makes me realize even more that there is *never* enough time. What I wouldn’t give for a little space-time anomaly to give myself a few extra days to socialize.)
This is my first year at Darkover, and I vow I’ll be back. I wish I’d known of it sooner.
So, why do I want to talk about rejection?
Yesterday I presented my “How to Submit Short Fiction for Publication” seminar during the convention. I was prepared with handouts and book props, knowing that I wouldn’t have the projector screen and access to the internet I usually do for demos.
I talked briefly about where to find markets and encouraged folks to look at submission guidelines when sending in work, and then I asked attendees if they had questions. I wanted to make sure that I answered all the questions people had, rather than stick with my prescribed script in the short time allotted.
But that meant we didn’t cover some items from my presentation in depth…one of which is rejection.
And I believe that if you talk about submitting work for publication, you should also talk about rejection. The two go hand-in-hand.
So, for those who attended yesterday (Thank you for coming!) here’s my take on rejection…just some things to keep in mind.
If you submit work to be published, you will be rejected. The first few rejections sting, especially when an editor points out a perceived flaw in the work.
The trick is not to take it personally. There are a lot of factors that play into rejection besides the quality of the work:
- The editor was looking for something specific
- Your story didn’t meet the editor’s criteria (and keep in mind: beyond the guidelines, you didn’t even know what those criteria were!)
- The editor recently accepted a similar story for publication
- The editor had too many “same genre” stories on hand already (for example: Fantasy and Science fiction is chock full of fantasy, but not enough science fiction submissions this month–and you just sent them another fantasy)
Two more reasons not to take it personally:
- The editor’s not rejecting you – he doesn’t even know you.
- It happens to everyone…here are some famous examples of rejection:
- Carrie by Steven King: rejected 30 times
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – rejected 26 times
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig – rejected 121 times!
Sometimes there’s a silver lining to receiving a rejection: you’ll receive comments from the editor stating why he rejected the piece. Be joyful! Comments from editors are rare. The fact that an editor took the time to jot down a few sentences about your work means the writing is good. Evaluate whether the comments jive with your vision of the story. If they do, make the changes and send the story back out. If they don’t, send the story as-is to your next market of choice.
If you receive a standard, “form” rejection, send it out immediately to the next market on your list.
Keep writing. A day of writing prose is better than not writing at all. And keep submitting your work. Persistence pays off. Continuing to send a story out should eventually result in publication.
What should you do with your rejections? Some people burn them, other file them, Steven King pounded a nail into a wall and hung his rejections on it until the weight of them pulled it down.
I get more electronic rejections than paper these days, so the nail trick isn’t an option (without effort) so I log them into a spreadsheet. After the first 100 rejections, I bought my critique group a round of coffee (we meet at the local donut shop) and again for each 50 rejections thereafter. Getting a rejection still isn’t easy, or fun…but looking forward to coffee with my friends isn’t such a bad thing.
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Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn.
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