One of the best things about writings – the tangible things, I’ll say, otherwise I’ll be making all kinds of obnoxious inserts like this! – is starting over. Taking everything you know, all the things that didn’t make it on the page and going back to the beginning. Or the fact that the beginning can change, if you like!
I’m starting to wonder if anything feels as good as revising. It’s a love so much more mature than the first time you write something down. (I should probably stop universalizing since I have no idea whether it’s true for anyone else, no?)
And it’s a small thing I’m considering maybe working on right now. A short story from at least two and a half years ago, if not longer. The heart of which I still need to tell. It’s what I used to write and so it’s exciting to go back to it – if alarming how many of its one-time companion pieces I no longer “need”… and so they’ll be put away for good. But this one, yes. It still matters.
I’d say it’s a wonderful phenomena, the privilege to start over, knowing what you know now. Only that would be dishonest – in real life, I’d never want to start again. Even though I could have done much better, there are too many minutes, too many hours, too much space in between that I’m not passionate enough to live again. So it’s only in my work that the concept is so refreshing. In real life, you do better by proceeding forward, knowing what you know now. It’s better that way. The story is doing the same, come to think of it. You’re starting over but you’re doing more than just reliving it again.
So, the other part of that lovely award granted by the Pen Punks was a set of questions.
1.What is your biggest personal achievement?
My family. My hubby, little boy, me family. <3
2. Do you have a goal for this year? If so, what is it?
Who…has no goals… just out of curiosity. Lol – yes, I have a goal. I want to hold on to what I’ve realized through my recent re-vision (yep, Imma be obnoxious and keep saying it thusly – HAH, see that, Jen?!). I want to be ever more courageous in my work. Actually, in all aspects of life, though it’ll look different depending on the area.
3. If you could pick any imaginary world (from novels/movies) to live in, which would it be and why?
Weeell. I’d love to see if I have what it takes for Battle School… otherwise, I’m a loyalist. We’ve talked about this before. I am bound to my world, my people, etc. I always root for the human, haha. So while I looove so many imaginary worlds (esp sci-fi), I don’t care to be in them. I like reality. (Is this a huge disappointment coming from a writer?)
4. If you could spend a day with any celebrity, whom would you choose and why?
Well, I’d love to spend a day with: Toni Morrison (obvious reasons – I already know I love to hear her talk thanks to multiple episodes of Charlie Rose); Bill Cosby; Charles Stanley. These are people I want to hear speak, up close, before their time is done.
5.What’s the last book you read that surprised you?
Speaker for the Dead – and YES, I’M STILL ON PAUSE BECAUSE IT’S SO OVERWHELMINGLY GOOD. And yes, every page, it seems, is a surprise. Just. The crafting. The clarity. The worlds. Gah.
I’d say Invisible Man surprised me, as well, in a different and yet similar way. I cried. I don’t know that I’ve literally, physically cried before while reading a book. I can be moved and carried aWAY by literature without physical tears falling – but they did. It was brilliant. Brilliant.
6.What’s your favorite game show to watch, and would you actually want to be a contestant on it?
I guess Wheel of Fortune? I really can’t be sure, I just know I loved playing that on the computer back in the time of floppy disks.
7.If you could pick any novel besides your own to be made into a movie, which would it? Why?
Well, Ender’s Game is coming out soon. ICANTEVEN.
8.What is your favorite YouTube Video?
That. Is a weird question, hahaha. If we’re talking representative videos (like music videos, whether homemade or professional) than it depends on what mood/season/stage of the writing process I’m in. I’m loving Hammock right now, if I haven’t been clear enough – and there are full albums on YouTube.
If it’s just ridiculous clips. Too many. #TooMany
9. What is a book you hate but wish you liked?
I’m sorry, I cannot. I can talk about films, shows, music by name when I hate it but I can’t with books. Except that one time, but it so doesn’t fit this question. I like it just as much as I wanted to.
10.Who is one of your favorite philosophers?
Way too loaded of a question. With far too many qualifiers. I will choose Herbert Marcuse and spare you all the diatribe of why and why not.
11. Where do you do your best thinking about deep questions?
On my bed, when I’m comfy with ice water and my laptop. Or near water – whether it’s in the bath tub, at an overlook point somewhere on West Cliff Drive, at Sentinel Point… it sort of centers on water.
This does not capture it at all. And, if you promise not to prosecute, I’ll admit that I actually did my best thinking past that bench, down a short drop to the actual cliff where you couldn’t hear much more than the waves.
The most obvious way (to me – and feel free to chime in, friends, with things you’ve been dying to say but haven’t) is that I am loyal beyond reason. No, I’m not talking about toward people although, yes, even there I’ve experienced how that can be unhealthy but let’s stop being serious and let me ramble. I’m loyal in the way that one cannot not buy Crest and also doesn’t know why and I don’t have to set here and answer your questions. (Sorry. I watched Ali yesterday. Which won’t stop being on my top 3 favorite movies ever for always amen.)
I’ll just…put this here for ya.
So Crest. Loyalty. It’s like I think this is some intrinsic aspect of my personality. As if if people thought I used Colgate (which is a stupid and LUDICROUS, obviously) they would somehow misunderstand me in a very meaningful way and I would be misrepresenting myself and the whole system would fall apart.
And so, I find myself having to – or attempting to, at least – give long-winded, unwarranted and uninteresting disclosures (which totally works on Twitter, by the by) when discussing my writing soundtrack. Because there was a time that it was 100% Hans Zimmer/James Horner/Thomas Newman – and if James Newton Howard, Antonio Pinto and Dario Marionelli make their way into heavy rotation, I’m not hurting anyone.
But then Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack sort of overwhelmed the writing of Cait, or maybe the revising, I can’t remember… and Florence & the Machine actually seemed to be singing about Avrilis, which was fine because I was reading, not writing. And when I was actually writing new words on new pages, I was still for the most part going back to my mainstays. Imogen and Elsie, they were conceived legitimately. (Was that a weird way to phrase that??)
And then I don’t know what happened. I re-envisioned one of them. And I can’t even really remember how I came upon it but I made a playlist of Tycho, Hammock and God Is An Astronaut. O_O And that’s all I’ve used. And I love it. And am also ashamed. … WHO is ashamed of things like this?! Seriously. What is going ON. When I talk about what I’m writing to, I feel the need to give back-story-info-dump on my progression and how maybe this shouldn’t so much be considered a progression (which the other party never said it was in the first place because they truly don’t give a good doggone beyond initial interest in seeing what other people listen to while working) because I still very much consider Zimmer/Et Al to be my writing companions even though, no, at the moment, I’m not listening to them but I’m sure I will – and, believe me, I understand such info dumps to be an occupational hazard. Yet I am helpless. Rendered ridiculous by a strong sense of loyalty to SOUND, when it comes down to it.
An open a new excel doc because you’ve had an epiphany day. A waves of dopamine, twirling in wheat fields (in my mind) day.
This means the false start of the recent idea falls away, along with the “maybe I should print out those short forms and revise until something better happens” thoughts that immediately cause the inner pout fest. Because much like the boxer must shed roll after roll of sweaty, useless, disgusting flab – nope, sorry… that was Mr. Burns. >.>
But seriously. Today.
Stars included. It reminded me of “finding” Keepsake. ::takes a moment to drape herself romantically upon a chaise:: Whimsy.
And I realized: for me, ideas are not nearly inspiration enough. The gem – for me – is “finding” a concept. An idea defined by a specific scenario that inherently describes setting and character and conflict, all at once. It’s the difference between seeing a thread and seeing an entire tapestry in one shot. It’s. The best feeling on earth. (Okay, I don’t know because I can’t actually rank them side by side whether completing the execution compares… but there’s SOMETHING about the moment of conception.)
We have too much history. We know each other too well, or at least – I know you too well. There’s too much baggage to really see you in a new way, and that’s sorta what I’d have to be able to do for this to work.
It’s like. I feel like *I’ve* grown and… you’ve kinda. Festered. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Maybe if I could afford to run away with you, try again in a new place, with nothing to distract me. You know. From all the baggage that is you.
I’m not even saying it can’t work. I’m saying, I don’t want to? That. (I don’t want to.) I want excitement and possibilities and newness. I want a blank page.
I’m sorry, you beautiful, hideous work-in-progress with far too many thousands of words to be enticing. And you, my silly White Whale who’s been “done” three times and now I can think of another way to write you. I’m most sorry to you, string of vignettes that will one day be beautiful and animated…if only I had any graphic ability, maybe we could be happy together, today. For now, leave me alone. Seriously, get out. It’s not me. It’s you.
The problem is we let it into our homes. “The call’s coming from inside the house.” Seriously, could that be why comments on almost every internet article are so heinous? So offensive? Why twitter can go from hilarious to soul-crushing in one simple string of 140 characters? Because if I overheard almost outlandishly racist comments in the public ladies bathroom, I’d forget about it for like six hours and then right before bed suddenly remember and tell Josh about it and then forget again.
I may well become the recluse I always intended to be. Well. I mean, I may – with the help of sweet Jesus – actually disallow myself to log onto the internet in the comfort of my own home. Eventually. Because, seriously, it’s my home. And there’s a bunch of crazy strangers popping up all the time. Strangers I had no intention of engaging or hearing or anything. And then I’m upset and it lingers because home is where you go to find refuge but it *happened* here! Does that make sense? (Of course it does.)
And then also: I am nursing a three day old Antonio Pinto addiction. Have you ever watched a movie based on hearing the score? Then you and I can’t be friends. (I assumed you said no, which is crazy because who *hasn’t* done that!?) And also, I’m sort of lying because I’ve been addicted to Antonio Pinto’s “Requiem” piece in Collateral since I saw the film in the theatre. But I was looking him up the other day and came across a number of songs from Lord of War and then this happened:
Le Pass. Out. I was rereading – in prep for possible revision – one of my manuscripts and Lord have mercy. I seriously bought a defibrillator for all the times my heart stopped. O_O (I hate talking about writing and music sometimes because then I’m like, what if this isn’t the end all be all to the person reading this and a piece of me dies.)
I couldn’t blog about The Civil Wars when I was over the moon because you only get that feeling once. I can remember several instances of “I want to die with this song”, when I could listen to it a dozen times and feel the tingles shooting up through my chest every time. If I’m lucky, there’s a part of a song that can do that forever (e.g. the climax of the prelude to Bach’s cello suite no.1) – but more likely, you have to love hard because the locking-myself-in-a-room-with-you stage can’t last forever. Sigh. Lament.
But something is still gorgeous about them. It’s almost heart-stopping the way they look at each other while they sing. Even with the sound off – which I take to mean, even if they didn’t sing like the single soul of an ANGEL – I almost cry when I watch this.
It also didn’t help the way they sang “home” while performing in my redwoods. ::waves to college years::
Yeah. My husband and I watched about five videos in a row. It was a cuddle fest and I’m not sorry.
I waited to blog about this not just because sometimes I have to enjoy something rather than write about it (I know, it’s a scary concept for me) – but also because I didn’t want to bombard you with a jillion videos. (Seriously, who knew their Michael Jackson covers would be so freakin’awesome!?) But I can’t not post this next one. And you can beg and then I’ll post seventeen more videos later. >.>
::Rushing before we fade to black:: Oh! And also -
Guess what *I* feel like doing today? (Turning up the mattress heater…aaaand DONE.) Anyway, so there’s a part of the writing process that I’m not sure gets discussed as much as it should. Which is to say, equal to the degree of its importance. It doesn’t have a particular place in the process, though, which may be why it goes undiscussed. It’s sort of like mentioning oxygen when asked about your environment. (Right? Maybe not.)
Anyway, I meant to just mention it quickly and move on to doing it but then I was sort of sucked into making visual aids. (It’s been awhile since I had an excuse a reason to make one!) The first one, I think, may be what a non-writer imagines the process to be.
Which I think would be a pretty knowledgeable assumption, for many reasons. The problem of course is that it seems pretty straightforward and streamlined. Which maybe it is. For somebody. Whom I don’t know. I almost wonder how well I could possibly enjoy a story written in this sort of Henry Ford fashion. Hmm.
Here’s something a bit closer to reality (for me):
Okay.
See, this all came about because I wanted to talk about one of those little purple circles. Thinking about writing! This is where I am today, right this minute. (I could complicate it more by talking about how I’m actually doing it for two different projects, but whatevs.) Now what thinking about writing isn’t: outlining, drafting, planning, et cetera. So what is it? It’s…literally thinking. About writing. It usually happens once I’ve started writing because it’s not part of the planning process, it’s part of what becomes necessary once something sort of organically develops in the story. Or once I come to a conclusion about what elements need to be introduced/addressed. Again, this isn’t part of the working out the plot points for the first time thing. Sometimes this is more motif/theme … marination. I know something needs to be demonstrated and I’m letting that sink aaaaalll the way in until it’s completely integrated into the next step of the story. So that my brain can sort of do it without having to think about it. Sort of like meditating on the scope of the project so that the many scenes that trickle out will steadily approach the desired destination, no matter how they do so. (Is this making sense?)
This is when I’m looking at pictures, creating images, musing to music, or you know. Sitting in the dark. Holding a pen. And then somebody comes and starts talking and I go, “Do you not see me working?!”
So as you may have guessed – or you know, been told up there – I’m thinking about writing right now. Yes for the wip that I haven’t really spoken about. I did show you that image that one time!
‘Member! My sister Jen is the main character…for the purpose of this image. Because I had a lovely picture of her in a cloche hat. So I’d written an unofficial query synopsis for the purpose of [read about that here] and the other day I wrote my first – which means possibly useless – logline. And here it is.
In an alternate 1920s, Elsie – aka Dolores Extract No. 1 – struggles to define her identity beyond being a Mem, a clone born of a memory.
It’s a little tumbly (that makes sense in my head). And I’m also trying to decide whether it’s an appropriate indicator of how the story reads. Which is a whole ‘nother discussion. (Actually, we’ve talked about that before, too.) Basically, this is much more likely to happen because the category/style is literary but the concept is speculative. And after writing loglines for YA novels that were much more plot-driven (*refusing to go down the rabbit-hole*), I’m concerned that this one is too similar and is therefore misleading.
I know, I know – I don’t do writing advice. So this isn’t advice, it’s a suggestion. (See how I can split hairs? It’s a minor passion of mine.)
In two scenarios (I can think of off the top of my head), it’s really useful/fun/interesting/workcrastination to write a (as in, not THE) query synopsis for your novel. I say “a” because I’m not actually telling you to stop what you’re doing and work on perfecting something that arguably uses a different hemisphere of your brain. But when (a) you’re writing from the hip but want a clean first draft or when (b) you’ve written a first draft or are far enough along to realize your story began in the wrong place – writing the blurb can rid the clutter of minutia from your mind and let you see the straight line as far as where your story *must* go. Maintaining logic flow sometimes requires taking the straight shot, as opposed to the scenic route.
This is also particularly eye-opening if you’re not sure precisely what genre you’re writing. Seeing where the story *must* go can be the difference between … well, any two genres. You might find that it’s a character story, as opposed to one driven by plot.
I realize I’m making it seem simpler than it might be by saying “where the story *must* go”, but I can only speak from experience (which is why writing advice isn’t altogether useful, at least not broadly). When I think about situation/prompt a, my muse responds with an obligatory b. No matter whether I’ve tried steering it another direction or not, I think you can hear when the characters aren’t responding. (Yes, I’m kinda dryheaving over that phrase – or rather what it *sounds* like I’m saying. But once again. I’m not pretending to have aural hallucinations. I mean that I can identify that this is not how this character would reply.)
And who wants more visual inspiration from/for my current wip?! You do?! Well then!
(See my model?! She’s Jen-the-twin!! Go congratulate her on giving birth to my newest nephew-son!!)
And, finally, if you can tell me where I got the title, you win!
Note: Winning is a state of being and so does not entail the receiving of anything exterior or temporal. I respect you far too much for that.
I know what you’re doing, by the way. This game you’re playing where you pretend I haven’t been ridiculously lazy about blogging – not the content, mind you, because let’s be real, candy woulda been involved one way or the other – and pretending to be entertained so I feel like a giant loser and have to commit to doing actual work here? You win this round.
First things first: My seven year old – who just turned seven, don’tcha know – is making up the guest list for his next birthday party. (Apparently, taking a trip every summer to celebrate the month of Morrow is lost on him and he’s wondering why he can’t have a crappy, four hour party like all the other cool kids.) Needless to say, he’s listed about a dozen people thus far – people I’m sure would love to celebrate him, btw – and nobody’s under the age of 21. Yet. Thankfully, there’s about four kids I know he likes.
Not good enough.
I wanna point out that today’s Labor Day (even in Montreal) and I’m blogging. Please double the amount of points I already deserve for awesomeness.
When there is an issue with my laptop that affects the way in which I interact with it, I realize how attached we are. The laptop and I. My son decided to bring his foot down on the left side of my computer and the audio promptly stopped working. I had to replace some drivers (some of which had no effect), it doesn’t hibernate like it’s supposed to, and until I disabled some start-up applications, it wouldn’t even let me move the mouse once the OS was open. So. Basically, I’m now able to do everything but listen to music and watch my stories – which is like having a child break your television, since I watch my shows online. And also, did I mention I can’t listen to music? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned how much music means to me. And also, that I listen to music when I write. And prepare to write. And develop a storyline prior to writing it.
(My son has offered – since music is so important to me – to make up songs. O_O)
EDIT: Sorry, I failed to mention that my USBs no longer work, either. And that I feel like an amputee.
Geeking out. Remapping the story grid for the next book, based on the recent revision of the previous. So good. Hearts. #AmWriting#Soon *** 5 hours ago
Because I had a lovely picture of her in a cloche hat. So I’d written an unofficial query synopsis for the purpose of [
