Excellent selection of advice for us creative types, from the too-awesome “I Should be Writing“:

http://isbw.murlafferty.com/2008/07/07/what-do-i-tell-you-whats-my-mantra/

It’s funny, perhaps this is the opposite of what I posted yesterday, but it IS ok to suck, because you have to get through the suckiness to get better.

Lots and LOTS of suckiness 

But seriously, we may be born with a certain purpose or a predilection toward a certain skill, but even the top selling artists around the world PRACTICE.  No one is born a master at their craft.

That’s all that needs to be said.  Keep writing…

As mentioned, I’m back from vacation, but just before we came home, something really horrible and potentially catastrophic happened.  All is well, but up until last night I still had post traumatic stress about it.  I was fine all day until time to drift off, at which point I played all the BAD “what if’s” over and over in my head.

On the return trip, I realized that I could use this to get a feel for the traumatic events happening to my character. While it was still fresh, I noted down all the physical feelings that happened to me.  For example, my tongue got so dry with a matter of 20 or so minutes, that it swelled up and I could barely speak.  Who knew?

Thinking back, I wish I had done the same thing as I sat in New York on 9/11/01 and watch the towers fall.  I had written down some of my feelings, but not quite enough of the physical reaction.  Same with my stroke.

Next time I’m in the hospital, somebody had me a pen!

I’ve been learning a lot since I’ve been hooked up with an accountability partner (hi Katrina!) and not only THAT, but I’ve been CREATING a lot, which is astounding to me.

Lessons I learned this last week:

1.  Outlines take many forms.  In reading some old notes, I decided to try an out outline for my novel.  I had taken a stab before a long time ago and failed miserably.  The directions in the writing class were that they were NOT to be extensive and that was my problem.  I googled about and learned about netlining or mind-mapping (Google or Wiki it for yourself).   It’s decidely NON-linear, which put my schoolish butt ill at ease, but funny thing, after just “doing it”, my split personality kicked in, and the funky ginabad part of my brain took over.  My bookworm side screwed up its face at the messiness, but I read it all through.

Then, I pulled out a sheet of paper and literally ZIPPED through my novel’s outline, which came EXACTLY to my projected 3 page, double spaced requirement on my task list.  Better than that, it helped me make some critical decisions, such as the groundwork for the civil war in my story is the coup the book begins with, rather than there is already one going on.  The king is warring with neighboring regions, while tensions are growing at home.  This way it makes more sense when he gets assassinated.  (That’s no reveal, it’s in the first page of the book.)

2. Sitting in the passenger seat on long trips with no “aids” (ipod, notebook, book) really DOES allow you to create.  I started a nice little vampire story (not something I’ll really write, just for my own pleasure…I do this from time to time), and finished a concept in my head for an awesome short story.  Kicker ending too, now I just have to write it.  Must earn some gas money and plan long trips with Chris driving

3. Writing generates writing.  I had a task list, and I was working on one task (do one assignment from old class, which was “just start writing”) and - without even realizing - finished another (start writing that short story).  Cool.  Since I finished the concept on the trip, I now have some nice beginning bones to work with, and a promising plot that I can send to contests or lit mags.  Wow.

4.  Having an accountability partner works.  Really!  See Above!!  cool beans…

So, as mentioned, I’m taking this fabulous WriterStudio.com class and we get this assignment I found very difficult.  We switched, after 5 weeks, from writing in the 1st person, where  I’m comfortable, to third person.  I had a scenario picked that the teacher thought would work well but I just didn’t FEEL it.

I was really busy last week, so the actual writing of the assignment was done in the few hours I had available on Sunday, the day the assignment was due.  However, I was so lost that I mulled over the scenario over and OVER again, and reviewed the sample piece several times.

I didn’t have time for revisions, which I should have, but I submitted it, knowing that even if the piece failed, we have a chance for do-over on the last week of the class.

It didn’t.  It was by no means my strongest assignment, there were some issues, but because I mulled over it so much, I think it had a chance on the page even without  strong revisioning.

My lesson learned this week:

See your scene, see it live.  Smell it, feel it, hear it, be there in person.

Also, this was another scene based on write what you know:  Kew Gardens, NY during the blackout of 76(77??), in a dark lobby with the super (my dad was the super of a large building that night).  The details were from my memory, but the characters were all purely invented, so that is one interpretation of write what you know.

peace out readers!

I have more work to do on my story before I start kicking it out the door, of course, but I also thought that I might START to delve into something I haven’t played with since my Greenwich Village days, 20 years ago: the short story.  Most of what I had done was flash fiction (thought it wasn’t called that yet), but I’m getting some AWESOME feedback - better than expected - from my writing class, and these 2 pages vignettes I’m writing are good fodder for a short story.  I’ve taken what I know, too, and made it unique.  One short story was originally conceived as backstory for one of my very characters, the black out of 76 (77?) in New York, and it involved building tenants and a super… my dad was a super, but nothing like the character I created.  Nor is my character anywhere there, but I got a good feel for the scene from “writing what I know”.

Ditto a first person narrative about a husband finding out his newborn baby has Down syndrome.  Not that I lived it exactly the way in the story, and an older son in the plot helped, but the woodpecker I created to distract the husband and hone his anger and disappointment on, well, THAT creature really DID exist, and I swear it pecked at my house just like in my story.

Going to smooth the piece out and grow it, and post it…or perhaps just pitch it or put it out there.  Or maybe it belongs in The Writing Show’s 1st chaper of a novel contest?  Hmmm….

Well, there is a time and a season for all things, and this is my time NOT to write. There is just too much going on, and I can’t wrap my head around creativity.

In fact, last night I was pondering my own story - which is a long journey involving health (physical and mental) and spirituality - and while I realized this was a good basis for a fictional book, my own internal dictation involved no actual PLOT. So it needs work, and maybe this is a mull-it-over scenario for now.

BUT I have been reading, a lot. Last night, I reached a point in my current novel documented atrocities and I realized that most of the novels I’ve read in the past year have included this. Perhaps it’s because I prefer historical drama, and this sort of thing makes the best historical dramas, but here’s a list of what I’ve read, with a star beside the fictional books that included genocide, torture, or such events:

The Historian*
Bee Season: A Novel
The Witch of Cologne*
The Birth of Venus: A Novel*
Water for Elephants: A Novel
A Thread of Grace*
The Bastard of Istanbul*
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Feels like I read more, wonder what I’m forgetting? I got to thinking about this a lot, since I am NOT a person who can stomach or in any way see the logic in purposefully inflicting pain on others. In fact, my tolerance for pain is so low, and my imagination is high so reading this stuff is torture for me. Now, outside of thinking myself a masochist, I wondered why it so happens that half (or more?) of my reading list looks likes this.

I do like seeing characters put into impossible odds. And to be fair, I didn’t foresee such circumstances in each book (Bastard of Istanbul, for example). But, then again, perhaps it’s just the eternal, “what would I do?” that captivates all of us as fiction readers.

See that last post?  About a story I’m writing in my head?  Well, it turns out that it had a start - and an end.  I thought that perhaps it was computer-worthy, that is, a book I’ll actually write, but I think it’s just mine.  So I can write an entire plotline in under a month.  A novel-worthy plotline, that is.  Cool.

I’ve gone back to writing fiction in my head as a form of relaxation over the last year.  I almost yearn for bed because right now it’s the only place I feel writerly.  So what did I do the night AFTER my story ended?

Came up with an awesome idea for a plotline that ties into another concept I had earlier this year.   I’m thrilled about this.  I know, too, that I have to find time to complete the novel that I’ve kind of lost interest in (too close not to), but I’m not worried about it.  I’ve also got the possibility that perhaps next year I can take some writing classes, so while time is at a premium right now, I think it’s all part of something larger leading me BACK to fiction writing as a profession.

Maybe.