Resolve

Due to a strategically timed vacation I started my New Year a little late. I'm normally not the type of guy to make resolutions but this year I made one: I resolved to stop doing the dishes.

If you happen to drop by don't get all judgy when you're meal is served on a paper plate with the finest plasticware for utensils and yes, I did just fill a sippy cup of wine 'specially for you.

So the dishes...

Agatha Christie said, "The best time to plan a book is when you're doing the dishes." Heck, she'd know, I mean she only wrote 80 some-odd novels.

The problem for the rest of us mere mortals is all that planning goes to waste if you never actually sit down and write!

After setting aside my last work (tentatively titled The Myth of Parking Enforcement but Paola made such a weird face when I said that it may have to change :-/), I started immediately, feverishly, churning out prose on my new piece. It was still Christmas break so I had a lot of time to get things done. Funny how that works when the job doesn't get in the way.

Work started again though and I found myself slipping back into the old habit of paying lip service to ideas rather than formulating them into the written word on the page.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE WRITING. Rough math suggests I probably crank out about 500 words a day of non prose from social networking, job reports, carefully worded emails and the like but getting into the groove after a long day of doing boiler guy stuff ain't easy.

Usually I'd come home, do the dishes, catch up on all my internet stuff and then write. By this point in my life that means I'm making prose at about 6:15pm. Paola gets home a little bit after that and of course I want to spend some time with her so you can see the dilemma.

I decided that, in the near term at least, the most important thing is to write and so that is how it came to be. I walk in the door, make a cup of tea, go upstairs and hunt and peck my way to victory... or stalemate. In some sports you get a point for a tie, you know, sorry dirty plates.

It was timely that I heard the profile of Isabel Allende on the Writer's Almanac shortly after I made my choice. She starts a novel every January 8th by locking herself in a room for 10-12 hours a day. She doesn't use an outline, she doesn't talk to anybody about what she's writing. and she doesn't look back at what she's written until she's completed a whole first draft.

I've never read her work, if you have please recommend something. If I had the luxury of time I'd be all over that approach.

Something she says to her Creative Writing class, not mentioned in the article, is to write a page every day for a year and by the end of year you will have a book. Blew my mind to hear that. It's something I never thought about too. Anyone that dares to take themselves seriously as a writer should be able to put together 250 cohesive words a day without a strenuous effort.

And if you can't, well you need to at least get to there. Take it from good old unpublished me.

If I can do it so can you. 6800 words and counting...

How Not to Critique

One of my favorite scenes in Whit Stillman's marvelous moviefilm Metroplitan begins with the protagonist, a Mr. Tom Townshend, launching into a full on assault of the works of the celebrated author, one Jane Austen. You may have heard of this woman, on account of her novels being Emma Thompsoned or Gwyneth Paltrowed to death. Not that I'm complaining.

Because my memory is old and full of holes I can't remember the specific thrust but what the Internet helps me remember is this exchange at the end of the conversation:

Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?

Tom Townshend: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

I just wanted to pat old Tom on his cute little head and give him a lollipop the first time I heard that.

I am never opposed to criticism when it's valid, meaning not used as a forum to launch a personal attack. I don't believe that criticism should be unemotional and analytical either. I would expect that every good critic is incorporating their life experience, their taste into what makes something work for them which is really all a critic can express albeit, against what one would hope is a solid cultural framework for context purposes.

Criticism is one of the tools that historians, curators and the like use years from now to reflect upon our culture and decide what kind of idiots we were.

Howevah (as Stephen A. Smith would say.) You can't review something by proxy. Past experience may shape a future opinion but you can't say for certain your opinion of something until you experience it yourself.

Have you ever had two friends that you thought would be perfect a love match for each other, and surprise they didn't like each other for the same reasons you thought they would? Has your BFFFFFF in the whole world showed you something that they were absolutely sure that you'd love and you found yourself less than enthused when you got to experience it for yourself?

Have you ever gone to see a band with someone and they fell in love with the opening act even though you (yourself) were in love with the headliner?

Have you ever gone to a film that you were absolutely certain you would love/hate and come out with the exact opposite reaction?

If you answered no to all of those, Congratulations, you're a robot and your secret decoder ring is in the mail.

Think about it like this. Would you rather have someone form their opinion of YOU based on what one of their friends says about you or would you rather let yourself and your own actions speak for themselves?

Now apply that to art, music, movies, food and the like and tell me how you really feel, robot.

I will have more on this later, I hope.

Lazy Reading

I hate when someone takes my or another writer's fiction at face value and reaches the conclusion:

HE IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT.

Who are we to decide anyone is like anything?

It is safe to say if someone is writing about it then yes, they've probably thought about it and I think that's about all you could ever discern without additional information from the writer.

Which may or may not even be true, if you really want to know.

The Hunt and Peck Diaries (Continued)

We're doing a little dance now. 36,064 words only one instance of the word 'hurried'. That is certainly worth celebrating.

'Point' and 'pointed' however will need to be phased out in revisions. Guess I'm fond of characters that hand-talk.

On to other things.

A couple of Fridays ago, talking to my homie on IM about the new Quentin Tarantino movie... actually it wasn't a real conversation. It had some elements of conversation; more than one person involved, dialogue, etc. but mostly I berated him about getting to see Inglorious Basterds first.

SO THERE.

Have you seen it? Don't tell me you're one of those people that hates Tarantino because of something he said or did one time or his excessive use of violence and the N-word, THE EAR SCENE, etc.

You might want to stop reading here.

I was probably an average Tarantino fan until Kill Bill Vol 1. One of my all time favorite scenes in a moviefilm involves Beatrix Kiddo (funny that Tarantino triggers the spell check and Beatrix Kiddo doesn't lolz) dispatching 88 crazed NINJAS with a samurai sword, even plucking the eye from that one idiot stupid enough not to wear goggles that day. Not to mention all the other elements of uber stylized coolness in that film.

Also, when it comes to suspense, especially of the Hitchcock kind, he's on a whole nother level with that. I squealed and grabbed Paola's arm during the diner scene in Death Proof. The camera does a slow pan and low and behold, Stuntman Mike is sitting at the bar, enjoying a coffee apparently listening in on the ladies' conversation. The camera finally pans back around and he's gone making you wonder if he was even there in the first place. Foreshadow much?

QT happened to be on Tavis Smiley doing the standard movie promotion tour. Didn't get a chance to see the whole thing but I caught this little snippet in which he talks about the art of storytelling.

Hold that thought for a second.

In constructing my epic novel in lyrical prose, Man Loses Hat, Man Finds Hat, I've discovered that I'm the type of writer that really likes to wander in the woods. Writing fiction, some say is an exercise in problem solving. The writer asks a question that they don't know the answer to and creates the prose to discern a solution.

I create situations for my characters sometimes that completely stymie me and spend days agonizing over how to resolve them while moving the plot forward. I have a general idea of where I'm going. Now that all the major players are in action it's just a matter of moving the pieces around until I reach the desired outcome.

Easy like Sunday morning?

Having a general idea is nothing compared to taking that same idea and stretching it out over the span of 80,000ish words. Which is where the clip comes in. As I muddle along through this thing, allegiances and motivations change, certain characters become superfluous and the plot becomes more convoluted. I know when I'm finished there will be a lot of stuff stricken from the original draft and scenes will be ordered in a manner more conducive to plot development.

QT talks about coming into the theater in the middle and sticking around after the movie to watch the beginning until the rest of the movie makes sense. This is what writing the novel feel like to me.

The beginning isn't really the beginning. All the important back story that makes the characters who they are constitutes the beginning and we're not going to dwell on that. We're going to dwell on the story which is what's happening NOW and in order to do that I've realized that writing everything in a chronological order is to my detriment.

It is small epiphany but one that I think will really help me down the road. Write the scenes worry about the chronology and plausibility later. This I can handle.

By the way. I did outline this thing, heavily and it's not even close to what I'm ending up with. Think I'll send a copy of it to the brave souls who volunteer to beta read for me. Just for giggles.

Death by a Thousand Epiphanies (on Macguffins)

While watching the dreadful movie Push with Paola this weekend I asked her, about midway through, "Do we really need to know what's in The Case?"

She said, "For the purposes of this movie, yes."

Which in my mind is an instant fail.

The existence of The Case should be enough. If you have to stop and explain to people what is going on and why something is important then it means the supporting elements surrounding the central theme aren't doing enough on their own to convey this message.

As a viewer/reader, I only need to know The Case is important, the protagonist and/or antagonist desire it enough that they're willing to make each others lives hell in order to get it. Or some variant of such. Pick your trope.

Getting inside the case presents the problem of building up to a gigantic anti-climatic moment. Once the stakes are raised too high, opening The Case may at best please some of the audience but you ain't gonna get them all, especially me. If a tangible, physical value is attached to the items within then the questions start: "You're kidding me! I don't know if I would've done all of that for that."

The Case represents our deepest hopes and dreams, a solution to the meaningless drudgery of our everyday situation, an escape from the normal, a new beginning. The Case, in order for it to be important to everyone needs to be all things to all people. The Case is only a means to an end, not the end itself. It is how we get the ball rolling, how we nudge the protagonist forward to make sacrifices and to change. Make your story good enough and nobody will care what's inside that case.

More on Epiphanies later.