notes to myself
Keeping a plot in order is no easy task. Not for me anyway. So I need to make notes to remind myself of things–like, how long should it take Paul to decide to ask Valerie to marry him? Gotta have something go wrong, of course–what could it be? Someone from somebody’s past is the most obvious. But who? Neither of them have jobs that would take them away, but she does make a lot more money than he does, which might cause conflict.
Perhaps a crazy family member? An argument about…a drunken fling? hmmm. Too much melodrama? Not enough drama? The problem with writing Paul is that he isn’t a gush or share his life kind of person, so how much could he possibly blog about? He gets chatty once in a while, but it’s hard to judge when.
I think Mercie will have a string of bad dates. That would definitely be fun to write. Linnie and Tim are doomed, of course, but they’re too young to settle down anyway. Maybe there should be a new employee to change the mix?
Well, Mercie is also doing art every day. eeek.
I’m either inspired or obsessed. Ha. Those qualities probably need each other.
real time panic
This is obvious, but it only recently struck me how challenging it will be for me to keep up lakebelle.blogspot.com simply because it happens in real time. That’s REAL TIME. What on earth will I do when blog meets novel? How will there be plot? I must be out of my head. For the next month I will be keeping up the blog, rewriting my novel, and participating in art-a-day. Oh, and doing jury duty, preparing for fall classes, playing with my child, and finding time for my husband. No wonder I almost never call my friends.
Born That Way
I recently read an interview with a published author who said that a person is either born with talent or they’re not–that you can’t teach good writing. I practically decided never to read anything by this person ever again. Who do you know who sits there are says, “Oh, I’m a writer because I was born with talent!” Who does that? Most writers I know wonder or worry if they have even the slightest crumb of talent. Who’s to say? And talent isn’t where it’s at anyway. Drive is what you need. Read The Midnight Disease by Alice Flaherty if you want to know why a person (you?) writes. Maybe some of us are born with chemical imbalances or flawed brains or whatever, but talent? Who the hell knows? I’d stop writing right now if I thought I had to have talent to do it. I couldn’t see talent in myself if it leapt out of body and hit me over the head with a bright red flag. But drive? Oh, I got that in spades.
Born with it indeed. I was born with blue eyes, but if I never open them, who will care?
Playing God and Goddess
I’m not sure if there is a difference between playing god or playing goddess, but it feels like there should be one…
Anyway, writing may be a near perfect pursuit for the control freak. I’m trying to decide on a particular character’s fate (I’m not a big believer in fate in real life, but that’s the game in the fictional world) and the choices make me way too gleeful. Should the woman from his past return before or after the wedding? Hmmm… Is this woman an ex-wife or an ex-girlfriend? What does he want when he sees her again? What does he get? Like I said, way too much fun.
Of course, there are limits. His character is set, so he’s not going to kill anybody or steal. He’s not going to blissfully walk out on anyone or be mean-spirited because these things are not in his character. So, my role of higher power does remain restricted by the rules I’ve put in place. But nonetheless, a decision made long ago–he has a saving people thing–still gives way to plenty of paths and twists.
Then again, half the time it feels as if I have no control over the story at all-that it comes from a mysterious place that refuses to be mapped.
Which is it? Is the writer the puppeteer or the strings? I don’t know, but it’s the character who’s on the stage and who matters. Now if only I can decide his next stage directions! Broken heart or happily ever after?
Talking Back
One way or another a good story punches the gut, grabs the heart, or rattles the brain. And the stories I love give me courage as well. Oh, for those great moments when I read a scene and think–wow, this writer doesn’t care what her friends think, what his family worries about, what the critics approve of; this writer had an idea and charged ahead without fear. Brilliant!
This reminds me of when I was a kid and some troublemaker in class would talk back to the teacher. I thought the kid was foolish and rude and not someone I’d hang out with, but I was also jealous. Hey, she yelled at a grown up! I so wanted to know where that courage came from. Sometimes even now I think true brave writing is talking back to the grown ups and saying you can’t tell me what to do or what to think. It isn’t easy and it still makes my stomach twist most days. My fingers hover over the keyboard and that little schoolgirl voice echoes in my head–whatever will my friends think? Gosh, aren’t I a nice person, a good kid?
Um, no. Plenty of times I’m not. But I’m getting braver all the time.
Spoilers
People who set out to ruin a story for someone else are right up there with people who like to ruin Christmas for children. How malicious is it–you’re enjoying something I don’t approve of so zap! take that enthusiastic person! ha-ha, you’re upset and I feel so much better.
Rumor has it that a restaurant here in town plans to put a Harry Potter spoiler on their marquee this Saturday. Apparently they did the same for book six. Now, it hardly matters if they like the series. I don’t care if they like it. I just fail to grasp the outlook on life these people have to purposely ruin innocent fun for others.
When I was in Eastern Europe in the 90s, I met some local people who were really into the American television series Dallas. As luck would have, the big story in town was “who shot JR.” Now, I might have thought the show was silly and out-of-date and I might have laughed at JR speaking a slavic language, but I had enough good grace not to blurt out the shooter’s name and ruin the surprise.
What is it about a story that makes people say,”No, don’t ruin it for me!” I mean, if you haven’t seen or read these stories, you wouldn’t want me to say without any warning, “Hey, the singer in The Crying Game is…and the little girl in Pan’s Labyrinth gets…and the father in The Golden Compass does…”
Too many people confuse being clever with being mean-spirited.
And (sorry, but the proverbial bee is zipping from my bonnet to my shoes right now–egad! I might be enthusiastic!) apparently in the world today enthusiasm in anyone over the age of five must be stopped. I see this with my students (none of whom are American by the way). Some of them act like they would rather be dragged over a field of fire ants that express any enthusiasm or passion for anything. Honestly I can’t tell if they are afraid to or if they just don’t have any interests to get worked up over. Granted, such passion can go too far–people with religious fervor really ought to leave the rest of us alone–but there has to that happy medium. Wait. Can passion have a happy medium? Can it be in the middle? I don’t know and this rant is getting beyond me.
I can only hope that as a writer I can one day create a character that people care about half as much as they care about Harry Potter. Imagine–people waiting in lines and wringing their hands over someone who doesn’t exist! I think that’s great.
Novel Out of Control
So, storytelling. You do your best to seduce the reader, make her want to turn the page to see what will be revealed, compell him to stay up late to be with you…whatever the genre if you can capture your reader’s heart, hats off and trumpets sound and confetti fly for you. At this point I think my novel has some great moments, but it is out of control. I’ve got the ending, but getting there is a bit like having a map to the London Underground but actually being on the Budapest subway. I may or may not be happy with what I see when I emerge, but it probably won’t be what I expected. It seems I should have more control than that. Ha!
Writing Lake Belle
Writing a fictional blog (lakebelle.blogspot.com) is fun and not fun, weird and not weird, all those writerly things. To write the blog it is difficult to get into character. I do it for the novel, but the book has dialogue and exposition. In scenes I can step back, describe the scene, set the pace, work towards the climax, heighten the tension. A blog is just a character’s chatter withno real story arc. Where is it going? The blog turns drama into gossip–so maybe that’s what all stories are anyway. Elaborate forms of gossip.
When I first thought of creating the blog I thought I’d sit a craft entries and have some kind of plot in my head. But then when the time came to write my first post ever, I winged it. That’s the way I’ve done it since. Once in a while I get some idea during the day that I know I want a certain character to write about, but most of the time I have no clue until I hit the ‘new post’ button.
Then I go to the novel, in which Linnie and Tim are minor characters and the novel takes place in the past before the blog, and it’s just, well, a weird feeling. It also means certain things about the characters are locked into place because I’ve blogged about them. Lucky for Linnie and Tim, they’re guarunteed to get out of the novel alive.
And I know more about them than they’d ever post about themselves and it’s difficult to know what it is that comes across to a reader who doesn’t know their background. In a novel there are loads of tricks to spill the past on someone and to reveal motivations and real desires, but in a blog…well, I don’t know.
At the very least it’s a good writing exercise. I think.
Love Story
No complaining today about the writing life–just the love instead. The sharing of a great story (not writing my own, which are not great, but i mean reading or seeing someone else’s) is a wonderful and amazing thing. I love that feeling that a page or a screen can send straight to the heart or the stomach or the brain or wherever it is that this feeling gets stirred. I love those moments in a book or in a film that make me go back to read it or watch it again and again. It can be in any story–serious or light. Butterflies in the stomach. Having a crush. The feeling of when I was a kid and would roller skate as fast as could and grab the pole in the center of our carport and let the momentum carry me around and around. The feeling of a good story is like that. But how does one capture it and put it on the page? Or does it wander in of its own accord?
I don’t know. I’m sleep deprived and it probably shows…but maybe I’ll figure it all out tomorrow. Ha! And hurray for a good story.
Writing Dreams
My current novel-in-progress, my son’s current fav film Finding Nemo, and a recent seen flick Stranger than Fiction, have combined forces to infiltrate my dreams. As a character in the dream I put on my best dress and heels and go out to drown in the downtown of a huge metropolitan area. As the writer I knew I was going to drown along with most of the population. My character-self kept trying to cheat and escape. My writer-self kept making me put the high heels back on and walk out into the street.
The scene in Nemo where Marlin is in the whale reminds me of the dream, but I’m not sure which self won. Although I am certain that running is very hard in evening dress.
