Dealing with the sudden

Confession: I broke my chair at work today. Ouch. Again.

Reading:

• "L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story," by Lauren Groff
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Hitches a Ride" - 1,820 words (Estimated completion 18%)
• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 100%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"
  
• "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%

Still no word from the Tea lady, unless she called while I was unconscious.

That's a lie, actually. I was never unconscious today. I did have a bit of a spill, though, which got me to thinking about writing. I had gotten up to get something off the printer, came back to my desk, and flopped down in my trusty swivel chair when suddenly...

Right there. See what I did? It's that adverb "suddenly." There's a lot in that little word.

What does it mean? Sudden is the opposite of gradual, so we can think of "suddenly" to mean "involving and abrupt change of state." In my case, the change was from a seated position to sprawled on the floor with a sore head.

What happened in between those two states? Well, as I sat, the chair began to tilt to the left. Metals which had been stressed to the breaking point suddenly snapped, and there was no longer anything keeping the chair, and myself, in a vertical position. Like a hinge, the seat tipped down, bringing me with it, until my skull smacked heartily into the edge of my desk. Meanwhile, I grabbed at anything I could find, the papers I was carrying still clutched in my hands.

Suddenly. You see, when a person (or character) is living a "normal" life, there are certain expectations. Failing to sit correctly is probably not one of them. It takes a certain period of time to process unexpected stimuli, and I only managed to achieve that once I had made it to the floor.

Suddenly. I was the center of attention. I didn't quite know how to react other than to get to my feet and reassure everyone that I was all right. Honestly, I didn't know that for sure myself yet. My head was hurting, but it was distant. The detail I remember the most was the papers I had been carrying, which were tremendously wrinkled from where I grabbed at the desk through them. I remember thinking that perhaps I could photocopy them, and then the copies wouldn't be wrinkled.

In other words, confusion. Suddenly, I was in a different place than I expected to be. It makes me think of video games. (No, I'm not still confused, just follow me.) If you're on one screen, there are a limited number of other places you can go. The computer can preload those screens and have them ready for you, so whichever you pick, the computer can take you there right away.

Suddenly. I had done the equivalent of a warp zone and zapped myself into unknown territory, and the machinery of my brain had to rush to catch up.

Thankfully I was not badly hurt, just a little shaken, and a bit of ice quickly put me to rights. I also got a new chair. Plus, our human resources department probably loves me now for not suing them. So all's well that ends well.

What I've taken from this experience is a way to write those "suddenly" moments. Let the reader think he or she knows what is about to happen, and then take them in an unexpected direction. Are they confused? Good! They should be, and so should your POV character. Give the reader details that maintain interest, of course, but the resolution of that confusion will provide the energy of the scene. Let small, insignificant details stand out, which may provide clues about what's going on, and may not. If you can disorient your reader without getting them lost, you will have succeeded.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1.20?
• Rejected: 2
• Pending: 1.80?

Metaphors for writing

Confession: It's not that I refuse to get out of my comfort zone. It's that there are only a few ways that I'm comfortable leaving my comfort zone. In other words, my comfort zone has a comfort zone. It's all recursive.

Reading:

• "L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story," by Lauren Groff
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 85%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"
• "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%

I made a bit of progress on Ferian today. I only updated by 5% because I'm only about that much closer to the ending, but I did quite a bit more in the way I restructured the part I had already done.

It's like differential equations in mathematics. Wait, come back! No formulas, I promise. Differential equations are used to model relationships, like that between the populations of predators and their prey. (Classic DE problem, that.)

If there are a lot of predators and few prey, the predators starve and die out. That means fewer of the prey are eaten, so their population increases. Then you've got lots of prey and few predators. So the predators feast, and the population of the prey decreases. It's a vicious cycle. Literally.

How this system behaves, though, depends on what are called the initial conditions. You might hit a perfect balance between predators and prey, and there will be no change at all. You might set conditions that set up a cycle like the one I just mentioned. Or there might be so few prey and so many predators that the predators kill them off completely, and the whole population goes to nothing. It all depends on the initial conditions.

When I'm outlining a story, that's the point where I'm making things up as I go along. I usually know the ending I want to achieve, and I kind of know where I'm starting from, but the path is hidden from me, and I can only find it a little bit at a time.

Sometimes, I realize that path is heading in the wrong direction. But everything that has happened before it has followed logically, and to force the path to take a different direction would actually make the story feel contrived. So I have to go back and change things so that the direction I want is the one that follows naturally all along.

And that's what I've done with Ferian today. My initial conditions weren't quite right. I've adjusted them, and now I think I'm heading in the right direction. I won't be sure until I get where I'm going and take a look around.

Who would have realized that mathematics would be such a good metaphor for writing? Well, any mathematician who is also a writer, probably. And that got me thinking about other metaphors for writing.

Would a metaphor about metaphors be a metametaphor?

Here's one I came up with earlier this week. Good prose is like a liquid. It flows, and it can't really be compressed any more than it already is. There's surface tension, and hidden currents beneath the surface. (I couldn't figure out how to work Brownian motion into this, but if you have an idea, let me know.)

Bad prose is a gas. It needs to be compressed before it can become a liquid, like good prose. Bad prose can expand to fill any size container, but without having any more mass that in started with.

What happens if you take good prose and compress it even further? Then it turns into poetry. Poetry is a solid, you see. You really have to dig into it to be able to understand it. Poetry sits around in tiny little chunks not doing much. You kind of have to defrost it and turn it into prose in your head to get any meaning out of it.

I know, feel free to disagree, but this is my metaphor. If you don't like it, then consider--you're learning more about how I feel about prose and poetry than you are about prose and poetry themselves.

Of course, there are other states of matter. Like plasma, a superheated gas. What kind of literature is that?

That's erotica, of course. It's bad prose, but it's really, really hot.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3

Early on

Confession: I'm not sure which is scarier, the prospect that no one is reading this blog... or the idea that they are.

Reading:

• "Riding the Doghouse" by Randy DeVita
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold"
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status (in chronological order of completion of first draft)

• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Submitted to The American Drivel Review, July 30th, 2008
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Cora and the Sea" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to Tea: A Magazine, July 29th, 2008
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Hattie Donnelly's Favorite Doll" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to 24 Hour Short Story Contest, July 27th, 2008

I know a few days ago I mentioned that I had started a wiki. As of this moment there's not too much there, although I think as time goes on it will become more and more detailed. Essentially, I want to get more of what's in my head, especially regarding character backgrounds, in writing.

Part of what I started working on is a page that I've quite creatively called List of early writings. The dividing line is pretty clear in my mind--it includes everything I wrote that I am now tremendously embarrassed at the prospect of letting anyone else read. Hell, half of it I can't read without blushing.

But you know, I wrote quite a lot. This list isn't even complete, it's just the stuff I happened to have in a big green notebook. I wrote nearly a dozen short stories before the age of thirteen, and at least six worth mentioning in high school. In 8th grade, I nearly completed a novel... length-wise, it would have been a young adult novel, but since I was a young adult, it qualifies. Then in high school, I actually did write a novel, although if you're expecting any coherence, you're out of luck. Still, I estimate it at anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words, which is not too shabby.

I'm ashamed to read these stories now, but at the same time, I'm so very proud of them. I can see the great, glaring errors in them, and I hate that. But if I hadn't written them, I wouldn't have learned not to do that shit.

And you know, some of them really aren't that bad. There are even a couple that I might consider posting at some point, if only as an exercise in critique. Others are so bad that I might have to post them as my daily confession as an exercise in humility.

Maybe that's the best thing they can do for me. Success is a distant gleam in the tunnel, and it might be the proverbial train. But if I ever need it, these stories are a reminder that I am more than capable of sucking and sucking hard.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3

Dated

Confession: Somedays, it's a chore. Today, it's a chore.

Reading:

• "Pa's Darling" by Louis Auchincloss

Writing:

• Untitled Dark Fantasy Project

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - Next chapter, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," followed by "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• July 26th 24-hour Short Story
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status

• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted

What does it mean for writing to sound "dated"? Here's an example.

The typical Cockney is often a brash little fellow.... Although the whine may be lacking in some dialect interpretations, there is always a slovenliness to the pronunciation.... Unlike his Russian cousin, Ivan, the Cockney Alf Higgins is nearly always optimistic.... On the whole, the Cockney is a truculent bloke who knows that what he knows is right and who says what he thinks is right.... When the Cockney is good, he is a funny little fellow; when he is bad, he is a rat.

This passage is from a dialect book written in 1943. My edition was printed in 1981, and I'm writing this in 2008. I think it's pretty clear that you would never read most of that in a dialect book written today. Not just because of political correctness, either.

Look at the language. Twice the phrase "little fellow" is used. This book was written by an American for a US audience; nowadays, we would consider the term antiquated, or at least British. Note the disregard for other cultures, with loaded words like "slovenliness" and "truculent," and the nickname of "Ivan" for anyone of Russian origin. And the condescension in the phrase "when the Cockney is good, he is a funny little fellow," as if that's the best such a person could ever aspire to be.

Of course, how do you avoid sounding dated? Most of these opinions were simply widely held stereotypes that were never even considered at the time, and it's impossible to notice every prejudice you have. If you were aware of them, they wouldn't be prejudices, would they?

Another element is the way language changes. A grammatical construction can have a perceived tone, but that's only because that association was made after the fact. "Funny little fellow" sounds arrogant because it has been used over the years by arrogant people. All it really means is "funny man," with a diminutive that is used in many languages to indicate intimacy, approval, fondness, or any number of other senses.

In other words, I'm saying that it's impossible to keep your language from sounding dated. I guess all you can do is to say what you mean to say, and be aware that no one will ever understand your meaning perfectly... those people not yet born least of all. Plus, if someone is reading what you wrote sixty-five years from now, you must have done something right.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 2
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 0

The Forest or the Trees?

Confession: I just popped the =+ key off my keyboard accidentally. And this is my work computer. It took five frantic minutes to put it back on.

Reading:

• The Snapper, by Roddy Doyle

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I realized something about my writing style today. I write deductively; that is, I start with the general and move to the specific. I can't visualize doing it any other way, although I've been told, and by people I trust, that it is possible to do it the other way around.

You see, I have to have the big picture before I can even start. That means, for me at least, an outline. For that, I write about one line per scene, with additional notes on important details or plot points that have to be unveiled. Once the outline is done, I read through it, just like a movie director would flip through storyboards to see how the movie will come together. Tweak where necessary and voilà! The first part is done.

What's left is the writing, and that's fun too. I have the bones, but I'm adding the muscles and tendons and little wiggly bits. Once a scene is finished, I check it against the outline to see if I covered what I need to cover, and if not, I go back and adjust. Sounds pretty easy, right? Except sometimes the story takes on a life of its own.

If you've never experienced it, it won't make any sense. I'll try to explain. When you speak, do you have conscious control over every word that comes out of your mouth? Probably not. You've got the thoughts in your head and they come out your mouth, and they get converted into language somewhere in between where we really don't even think about it. The next time you get stopped dead in your tracks because you can't think of a word, you'll know what I mean. It's like a train getting derailed.

Composing, at least for me, is similar. I think less about individual words and more about the flow of the description, or making sure that the words of dialogue that emerge are in the appropriate character's voice. The characters don't know the plot or where it's going, though, and that can cause problems. Suddenly I look up, and their motivations or actions have led them down a different road than I intended, subtly at first, but finally to an extent that my outline is no longer valid.

There are three options for me, here. One is to work the digression into the story. I don't usually have a lot of success with these kinds of detours, though, and it's usually better to go with option two, which is to prune. You figure out where the story diverged and you revise from there.

But sometimes even that doesn't serve. The characters struggle to break free from the bounds you give them, and you have to follow the new path. This is where I freeze. I find that I have to go back, reconceive the story from the beginning, and revise everything to match the new direction before I can proceed. It's what held me up in writing "Illuminated," as well as Floorcraft and ever other novel I've ever attempted.

In fact, "Illuminated" is the first story that has ever survived derailment. I should figure out what I did, and do it again.

The First Fifteen Minutes

Confession: The name of the blog was going to be "Ten Minutes," but all the relevant domains were taken.

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I unplugged my television today. I debated about whether or not to start the post that way, but I decided that trite, overused, clichéd declarations of the resolution to write (goddammit!) get that way for a reason. And besides, Stephen King told me to, and you don't want to fuck with him.

When enough people tell you something is good, you start to listen. (This is a lie, because I still don't watch American Idol.) And just before my birthday, someone once again recommended that I read Stephen King's On Writing. I mention my birthday because I got a Borders gift card from my parents as a present, which provide the means for my purchase. (And, to be fair, because I just turned thirty, a fact of which I am perversely proud.)

One hundred years ago, people kept diaries, which they didn't want anyone to read. Now they keep blogs, which they want everyone to read. Our culture is a funny thing.

It took a few weeks to get through the autobiographical bits at the beginning to the meat of the book, big chunks of wisdom masquerading as common sense. I was interested to see how much parts of it described me, and how much didn't. I've always been a voracious reader, and I love getting caught up in the joy of creation. I've also felt the cooling of emotion when I've gotten bogged down in a story. But lately I've been held back by my own habits, which most consist of television viewing, dinner, and sleep.

I chose to give up, for a week, the easiest of those three. (Why not more than a week? Because the season finale of LOST is next Thursday, and I'm not made of fucking granite!) Instead, I'm going to fall in love with reading and writing all over again. That's my fifteen minutes a day. (Spelled 5i5teen out of necessity.)

I'm going to lay down the ground rules, so I'll know what to break later:

• No finished product. This is a place to work on composition, not a showcase for shiny new stories.
  
• No revision. Once it's posted, it's posted. End of story. (Huh, interesting choice of words.) Not even for spelling. Shine it up on your own time.
  
• No lies. No lying to myself, or my currently non-existent readership.
• No copy and paste. I've got to write it here, in the wysiwyg window, or at the very least in an email window. No fair copying a swath of story and claiming it's new.
• No slacking. This is for every day. Every single goddamn day. What, you can't get to a keyboard to say you're sick? Pussy. Just not feeling it? Lazy fuck. In a Tibetan monastery? Bring your cell phone and text that bitch.
• No restrictions. Not on language, or topic, or anything.

(Better switch on the "adult" filter, so I can say "fuck" without hurting the minds of schoolchildren, who are more accustomed to hearing the word than seeing it in print.)

So that's the plan. Enjoy the peek inside my head.