Writing Villains

I had a thought while watching Scooby Doo cartoons the other day. The good ones, from the 70s, "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"... and that's kind of important to my thought.

The bad guy in this particular episode (Decoy for a Dognapper) was especially shady, and I mean that literally. He was a silhouette, appearing for brief instances and wreaking havoc in his trench coat and hat, leaving all his evilness to the imagination.



This made me think. As a kid, the villains in my books and movies/shows were simple. Shadowy figure, no personality, no identity. All we needed to know was that he was the Big Bad. But as I got older, the bad guys began to become blurry. A trend I've noticed recently is that the bad guys are all semi-good guys. Even if they don't really have any redeeming qualities, we learn their backstory and discover why they are evil. We become sympathetic to them and see them as real people with problems.

This was probably innovative at some point, and I see how it makes sense in some stories. But whatever happened to a shadowy, secretive, silhouetted bad guy we could trust to be evil?

After watching this episode, I thought long and hard about some of my villains. None of them are hard and fast bad guys, and I think the line between good and bad is too blurry in some of my work. I think many stories could do well to return to an idea of letting their bad guy wear a trenchcoat and hat and staying in the darkness. It may be trite, but it sure makes them scarier.

The Road to NaNoWriMo 2010

I've been working on my NaNoWriMo09 novel a bit. Really wish I had it done by now, but 2010 has really kicked me in the ass for a while. I think things are back on track now, but my writing has been severely lacking.

Good thing NaNoWriMo10 is right around the corner! Only 3 months away. Which seems like a long time, til I remember that I really want to finish Providence before starting a new NaNo novel (though I say this every year and never get the old novel finished before starting a new one). And I need to start thinking of a story for my '10 novel! I also want to make a cover for both. Err, rather, have my wonderful graphic designy husband make a cover for both :)

I think I'll post a bit from Prov soon. An excerpt, if you will. And set some goals for my last 30,000 or so words I want to write on it by Halloween. That's only a little over 333 words per day for the next almost-90 days. I'm sure I can pull that off! I mean, in the last two years I've successfully written over 50,000 words on a new novel in 30 days. Of course, neither of them have endings...

Enough procrastinating. I'm going to write. At least 400 words, before dinner. Yippee!

Back to the Writing

This blog began in August 2008 as a forum to rant, vent, discuss, and share writing-related thoughts. I blogged about my first NaNoWriMo in November 2008 (which is still not finished, sadly) and inspiration I received from authors like Stephen King and Donald Maass. I shared excerpts from a few of my main WIPs, and I vented when I got stuck writing.

But, writing kind of got lost from my life for a while, and it got lost almost entirely from my blog before that. So far, 2010 has been a pretty crappy year. I actually was thinking of creating a mid-year blog at the end of June to show just how bad of a year it's been for me. However, I recently did some intensive writing, and things are starting to look up.

Case in point: My most recent short story was selected to appear in an anthology of short stories at the end of the summer! More info on that later. But, it's pretty awesome news! Which means, I need to get back to the main purpose of this blog -- writing. Maybe I'll get around to creating a second blog; one for life, one for writing. But for now, this will be mostly devoted to writing. Again.

For now, I think I'll try my hand at June NaNo and see what I can crank out this month while I'm still unemployed (on that front, I have a much-anticipated interview on Friday with the company I really want to work for, so more on that next week!). It's summer summer summertime! And I'm spending everyday at the pool -- granted, it's a 22" deep inflatable one in my backyard, but the kids like it so I'm happy -- and doing yardwork. And writing. Maybe taking a few months off has been good for me, because I'm feeling pretty good about the words lately.

Stay tuned. I have a feeling I'll have more writing news in the future :)

Writing Again

This will be short, otherwise it'll turn into a procrastination tool.

I graduated on Sunday, Mother's Day. It was a great weekend, though my new shoes blistered my feet and my new dress was hidden beneath my rental gown. I didn't even cry.

I've rested the past few days. Did a little reorganizing, washed some laundry, caught up on sleep and television. The feeling is strange, really -- I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, because I have no homework and no job. But after a little while, I get restless. What if I get a job tomorrow? And I go to work 40 hours a week without getting the chance to rearrange my office or color-code my closet? (Save your snickers for later, color coordination is very efficient.) But then after I start working on these things, I figure they're not that important. After all, there's always tomorrow.

So, today, despite the nagging anxiety that tells me I should be cleaning something, I wrote. It's not a lot, not yet. 305 words of action and description. But I haven't written since Daddy's funeral four months ago.

It feels kind of good now, but the first few words were painful. Physically. The anxiety that crept up was overwhelming. The blank page in front of me wasn't full of endless possibilities, but rather the absence of working out my creative side for so long. Like getting back to running after an injury, I had to stretch, and it hurt at first. But I've pushed through for 305 words and it feels a little better. This is just the first few steps, though. In between reorganizing the garage (which really does need to be done) and vacuuming the whole house, I think I can manage to run a few sprints, metaphorically.

Hopefully I can keep the energy up to finish the race, because I need that satisfied feeling to keep the anxiety at bay. I love writing, and I missed it. I hope I don't have to again.

Counting Down...

... to what, exactly?

To walking across a stage in a big black robe, and turning a collection of strings on top a piece of cardboard on my head. Knowing the whole while I still don't have a job because I'm too qualified for the entry-level positions and not qualified enough for the mid-level.

BUT, I'm still excited about it!!! Graduation is 43 days from today. I just have to get through five classes with passing grades (and hopefully better than merely passing!) and then I can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Graduation is near, signaling a chapter in my life complete.

***

I miss my daddy. A lot. I can't believe he won't be standing with me 43 days from now, telling me how proud he is. I know he is proud of me, but it's just not the same.

***

I've gotten my creative juices flowing once again. Yesterday, I dug out all my painting supplies, which haven't been used in, oh, almost 8 years!! I made a not-so-good painting that started out abstract and ended up looking like an 8-year-old drawing a sunset. But, now that I've written that, I realize that it kind of WAS like an 8-year-old's painting, since I haven't painted in 8 years!



Anyhow, so I painted this and while I know it's not great, it made me happy. It gave me the inspiration to play with colors on the three new webpages I'm making, and I'm itching to not only paint more -- really paint this time -- but also to write!

I'm making a list of things to do tonight, since I have yet another night to myself thanks to 4 12-hour shifts my hubby is working this week (in a row!). So far it includes: dinner, paint, write, watch Buffy, do at least 2 pages of writing on each of my Capstone projects, and read half a chapter of Anatomy. I should probably do the ugly stuff first, and save the creative stuff as a reward, huh?

... 43 days. That's it. After that, I can take the "ugly stuff" off my list!

Off-Task

Do you ever write something you've already done on a list just so you can cross it off? I just did that, and it felt pretty good. I looked at my academic planner for the week and realized I wasn't very accomplished so far this week because I hadn't crossed anything off... then I realized I had barely written much down to begin with. So I started writing in things I had already done, just to cross them off. Now I feel much more accomplished for this week ☺

In other news, the next 51 days will be pretty busy for me. NaNo starts on Nov. 1, and I haven't done a lick of pre-planning for it. This will be my 2nd year attempting (I finished last year a hair above 50K words) but my first year doing it while being in school full-time. Should be fun. And, to add to that, I don't even know what I'll write. I was sick for 3 weeks in September so I got behind on everything -- schoolwork, writing, housework, Christmas stockings... everything. So, I think I'm gonna wing it for NaNo! Also, I'm headed to Florida on October 22!!! Going to check out the UF campus and linguistics program and try to make a decision about my future after graduation -- which is exactly 7 months away. That's still a ways off, but much closer than I've ever been (obviously)!! We'll be in Florida (hubby and I, that is) over our anniversary too, but will most likely spend that day on a long-ass plane trip and in and out of airports (8 hours for a 1.5 hour flight... not much faster than driving, it seems). Add a couple of final projects, including a website for IPW (Insanity Pro Wrestling, my husband's wrestling company), and extra IPW shows that I must attend due to an arrangement with said hubby.... oh, and holiday dinners! I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the fam... well anyhow, the next 51 days are going to be super busy.

But for now, I'm just trying to get through my list and cross everything out. And maybe get some extra done. Oh, and head to Kokomo to visit my grandpa, who had a stroke on Sunday. :( Busy, busy!!

Funerals Suck

They do. It's a tried and true fact. Unless you're the Grim Reaper or something -- or Jason Priestley's character on Tru Calling... which was not unlike the Grim Reaper.

Anyhow.

What sucks worse than a funeral?

Writing about one.

There's an inherent tension, saddness, and ache that comes with funerals, and as an author, it's my job to get those all in the scene without crushing the readers' spirit so much s/he puts the book down. And you'd think, after attending countless funerals -- 3 grandparents, half a dozen great-aunts, three classmates, a handful of friends' parents and relatives, and my husband's uncle (which was less than a week ago, so I really should have it fresh in my mind) -- I would be able to get all these raw emotions on paper.

Riiiight. Because all those funeraly emotions come creeping in when you try to write a funeral scene, and while you'd think this is a good thing, it's not. Because they kind of block you from properly expressing any emotion.

So, funerals suck.

Writing about them sucks.

And they're both a part of life. Well, the real ones are a part of real life, and the fictional ones are a part of my novel. So, I'm going to have to figure out how to use my RL experience to create an authentic funeral scene for my readers.

Remind me again why I chose this hobby??

On Writing

I'm reading Stephen King's writing guide, appropriately titled, On Writing. I am also reading Elizabeth Lyon's revision guide, also appropriately titled, Manuscript Makeover. They are both very interesting, and very, very different.

I thought I'd give out some details of what I've found interesting from King's book, since I've shared a little of Lyon's already. But not too much, because what fun would that be? If you like what I post, you can go buy the book yourself ☺

On Writing

The first piece of advice marked with a green and brown sticky-note in my copy is:

"When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not in the story." (page 57)

This may sound simple enough, but sometimes I think we writers forget this. We get so caught up in the grammar (How many adverbs do I have on this page? Should I use "said" or an alternative? How many times in this chapter did I use the word "she"?) and the worry that someone (anyone, just one person, who happens to live under a rock across the world) won't like this particular word/line/phrase, that we lose sight of our mission. Our mission is to write, to tell a story the best we can, and hope, nay, pray, that someone (anyone, just one person, who may or may not happen to live under a rock across the world) gets it. That's it. That's all we have to do. Simple, right?

The second piece I noted from this book is on page 134. Yes, there is plenty of wisdom between pages 57 and 134, but I'm sharing the ones I felt important enough to mark with the green-and-brown striped sticky-note. It really falls into what I was just saying, so apparently there is a theme here:

"The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell them a story... to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that h/she is reading a story at all. ... Writing is seduction.* Good talk is part of seduction..."

*Did you like that? Writing is "seduction." How 'bout them apples? I feel pretty damn good already. So if I ever become a professional writer, can I say that my job is "professional seductress?"... does that sound too... street-corner-worthy?

Ya know what, that's all I'm going to share today. I think I've found a theme and I like it. To go along with these professional words of wisdom, I'd like to share one more thing. I read a forum post on CC (www.critiquecircle.com) that has stayed with me for a few days. This forum was about Dean Koontz, but I found something that really interested me along these same lines. I have no idea how to make a pretty little link to the forum, but it doesn't matter much anyhow because only members of CC can read it. But, if you are already a member, or are thinking of becoming one (CC is the best writers' group on the Internet, I swear it. If you're not a member, you should be one. It's free. Go sign up. I'll wait.), just plug in some strategic search words and you can find the original post. Here's what I liked:

CC'ers are forever wailing the bad writing of successful authors. And I don't think it is that only once you've sold tons of books you can do that, because if you go back to the first book of these authors, they are just as bad, usually worse. I've read tons of Koontz, and his strength is definitely not his prose.
What I really think is going on is that the 'rules', the 'writing no-nos', aren't nearly as important as we think they are, at least not to the reader. In fact, I think we are handicapping ourselves beyond our ability to be productive and successful. It is as if we are in a race, but have decided that the only way to go about it is with a backpack full of bricks across our shoulders and three china teacups balanced on our heads.
And there go Koontz, King, Rowling, et al, running blithely along miles ahead of us.
Meanwhile, we keep checking with each other to see how well packed our bricks are.

That just amazed me. How true is that, fellow writers? Instead of doing our business -- our telling... our seducing -- we worry WAY too much about the technicalities of the craft. (PS, that's what CC is for, to help with those technicalities once you've told your story. So, here's another chance to go sign up. No, I don't get squat for plugging the website, but I like it, and you will too.)

That's about all I have for now. I am revising my 2nd draft of IE currently. I'm taking a break from Illusive Truths (tentative title, I just don't know how I feel about it yet), my SuNoWriMos project (bust! I only wrote 20K when my goal was 60K in two months...) to do some heavy rewriting. More on that later. I have to get back to work.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program...

Thoughts on Writing

Not much exciting has happened in my world, hence the lack of communication. But I'm on spring break now, so I thought I'd share a couple of things.

I got to meet my favorite author, Jodi Picoult, on Friday. The place was packed -- I heard someone say over 300 people had turned up, possibly closer to 400 -- so there wasn't much personal time with her. But I got my book signed and a picture (which is on someone else's camera so I don't have it yet :( ) and had a great time on a mini-road trip with my niece, Katie. I was exhausted by the time I got home at 1am, but it was fun.

Jodi said some things about writing that I really wish I could remember... but I do know that she said that writing is like making a quilt. You don't sit down and try to make the whole quilt in a day. You work on one square until it's finished, then move on to the next. I thought that was a good analogy, and so true.

Some other words of wisdom I've come across (in the writing world) come from J.R. Ward (whose new book comes out in April! Yay!!). In the Insider's Guide to the Black Dagger Brotherhood, which is the name of her paranormal romance series, she has a chapter on advice for writers. Here are her main points, lifted directly from page 205:

I. P & R -- PERSIST AND REINVENT
II. WRITE OUT LOUD
III. OWN YOUR OWN WORK
IV. PLOTLINES ARE LIKE SHARKS
V. SWEAT EQUITY IS THE BEST INVESTMENT
VI. CONFLICT IS KING
VII. CREDIBLE SURPRISE IS QUEEN
VIII. LISTEN TO YOUR RICE KRISPIES

Not sure what all that means? I'm sure you'll figure it out, like I am. ☺

That's it for now. I just remembered a scene I had forgotten last night, so I'm going to go write it down before I lose it again. Then some spring cleaning, yippee!!

My First Blog/August Goals

That's right, ladies and gents...

I'm a blog virgin.

What can I say? It's just never felt... right ☺

But, it's the first day of August (where has the time gone?) and I'm pleasantly surprised with my writing accomplishments for July. Plus, my senior year (FINALLY!) at IUPUI starts in 20 days. So, I figured I might as well join my fellow writers, students, and everyone else out there who blogs... What the heck, right?!

For my First Blog, I figured I'd lay my goals for August out on the table for all to see. Feel free to kick my butt to keep me in line with them, too!


Writing Goals:

• Write at least 15K on Isaac's Eyes (see WIPs for more info).
• Write at least 2 completely new short stories this month.
• Get off my bum and revise/edit my current completed shorts and search for somewhere to market them!

Other Goals:

• I don't think I can get too far behind in my classes since they don't start til the 20th -- but even so, I would like to start strong.
• Make it to the gym. That's it. I won't quantify it, because I never go as often as I'd like.

That's it! In a nutshell, there's my August. Work, school, and writing. I can't believe it's fall already and I'm not looking forward to Indiana autumn weather -- hot, humid, and all around gross. Yuck. But, what can I do besides keep working hard and waiting til the day I can apply to the University of Florida for graduate school?

It's time for the 5pm commute home. Peace out ☻