S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 147

Writing Attire

One of the reasons I love Judy Reeves's A Writer's Book of Days so much are the odd bits of trivia she's collected about writers. For example, in the September section of the revised edition she has an entire page detailing the quirks of famous scribes that includes Alice Hoffman's habit of repainting her office a different color every time she starts a new book (a shade that resonates with the story's theme, naturally) and Charles Dickens' habit of walking twenty to thirty miles a day (his shoe bill must have been hefty.)

What writers wear often makes interesting trivia, too. Some of you might know that Edgar Allan Poe only wore black, while Emily Dickinson dressed solely in white (Mark Twain liked wearing white, and you might have noticed Ray Bradbury attired in the same in the video I posted on in early October.) During my rookie year a couple of female pros I met advised me to get into full professional dress (suit, stockings, pumps, makeup, the works) before starting write, as this was supposed to give me a going-to-work attitude. I did try a modified version of this; while I was writing StarDoc I'd always put on a pair of my old hospital scrubs, and they did give me a bit more of a medical mindset.

According to Judy there are writers who liked to work in their underwear (John Cheever) or naked (Forrest McDonald), but I think the majority of us prefer to wear something. Because I start my work day around 5 am these days I actually write most of the time in my version of PJs -- an oversize T-shirt, shorts or (if it's chilly) leggings. Most of my wardrobe is solid-color because I find patterns a visual distraction, but as long as it's not too loud I generally don't care what color I wear.

What we have to wear (or absolutely can't wear) in order to write depends on our individual quirks. One of mine is writing barefoot; for some reason I can't so I always wear socks when I'm working. I can be superstitious about colors, though; I have one old green shirt I'll wear when I feel I need some luck -- usually during deadline week -- but I never wear the color yellow only because I dislike it so much (nothing in my wardrobe is yellow, in fact.)

I think physical comfort can be an important part of the process, too. Heavy fabric like denim makes me feel hot or weighed down when I sit for long periods of time so I never wear jeans when I write. I'll wear long-sleeved shirts when I write during the winter months but I always roll up the sleeves for more freedom of movement; I never wear rings, bracelets, watches or any jewelry because the weight and feel annoys me. I put my hair in a clip or wear it in a ponytail to keep it out of my face when I write. When I was younger and my hair a lot longer I'd stuff it up under a baseball cap before I sat down at the computer.

I know there are ladies out there who won't be seen without makeup, but since writing is a solitary art it's probably safe to go barefaced (lock the office door if you have to.) The only cosmetic I wear when I'm writing is Cherry Chapstick or some sort of flavored lip balm; this because I have an unconscious habit of biting my lower and upper lip while I'm writing, and the taste reminds me to knock it off (that one took me years of sore lips to figure out.)

Your writing attire is a matter of personal preference; if you want to suit up before hitting the keyboard because it makes you feel more professional, do it. If you don't need to dress the part, I recommend wear something comfortable that doesn't bind you anywhere. If you're feeling blue, try putting on an outfit that has happy associations, or that makes you feel good about yourself. Or if you really want to write in your shorts or your birthday suit, go for it -- all that really matters about writing attire is that it doesn't keep you from writing.

Do you have any particular quirks you indulge in when you dress to do your job? Let us know in comments.

Postcard Stories

I love finding old postcards at flea markets and junk shops. Usually they're stacked upright in a shoe box for easy browsing, and I always hunt through them for what interests me: images of natural wonders, historic monuments, works of art and architecture from around the world and that sort of thing.

Most of the antique postcards I find are blank (originally purchased as souvenirs, I guess) so any I come across with stamps and writing are extra special. This past weekend I scored three (two that were definitely over a hundred years old) that had intriguing little notes on them.

The first showed a photo of the Ancien Hotel de Valois in Caen, was mailed from France to the U.S., was written by a Ms. or Mr. Litch, and detailed a lovely walk in the country:

Dear Aunt Kate, Mother and I have been taking a day's vacation from sightseeing to wander about the country roads and fields. We wandered along a beautiful curving road with steep grass-covered banks and either side where scarlet poppies wove among the grasses beside our own thistles and Queen Anne's lace and soft purple blossoms that take the place of asters. Now and then we clambered to the top of the bank to look over the fields, whose absolutely smooth slopes roll over to the horion, only broken by box hedges and slender tufted trees. Affectionately, F.H.L, Caen, August 5th, 1911 (I'm assuming since Aunt Kate's last name was Litch that the writer shared it. I'm betting F.H.L. was a woman, too.)

Another French traveler wrote from Paris to her grandmother in Massachusetts, and if I'm interpreting her handwriting correctly, teased the old lady about wearing a cap like the female French peasants. She also described in color the black-and-white image on her postcard:

Dear Grandmama, How now you like to be (?) grandmother and wear a cap tied under your pug? Those are bright copper pots shining in the sun, and those faces are brown as the thatch of the cottage roofs, and all seasoned with smiles and wrinkles. (?) on our way to have to sail home tomorrow. As ever, Elvira, August 21, 1911

This postcard sent from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to a minister in Florida has a blurred postmark that shows only the month and date, but it was mailed with a 2-cent stamp, which means it could have been written any time from November 2, 1917, to June 30, 1919, when the rate for postcards and postal cards was 2 cents. The writer talked mostly about school, but she mentioned a worrisome family concern toward the end of her note:

Thanks for your card. Sorry you didn't get to Chautauqua. We had a wonderful year. I got home Aug. 21 and started school Aug. 25. I've had a full year by spending 8 weeks at Chautauqua. My fall schedule is full, too. District Teachers meetings a V.E.A. Convention. Mother and Dad want me to take them to Southwest Va to Abingdon. Dad is getting too shaky to drive very far -- says he can't see. Helen, September 14

Aside from being wonderful fragments of personal history, old written postcards can be great story starters. While Aunt Kate's sister and niece were wandering in the French countryside, what else did they see besides flowers? Did they make their boat back to the states? Which ship did they sail on from France to the U.S.? Who might they have met on board?

As for the teasing Elvira, she sounds like quite a character -- funny and appreciative of beauty. Who else did she meet in Normandy? Is it possible that she encountered F.H.L. and her mom during her travels (they might have missed their ship on August 6th, after all, and if they had I bet Elvira would offer to share her cabin with them. She seems like that kind of generous gal.)

Helen's card has some mystery to it as well; Chautauqua (which I think might be this place), the V.E.A. convention, and why did she visit Shenandoah in September, when she was already in school (or working as a teacher, as VEA in Virginia is a teacher's organization.) She just got home Aug. 21; did she live near the park? She was obviously devoted to her parents; worried about Dad being shaky and having vision problems. What happened when Helen took the parents to Abingdon (a very historic place, btw)?

Do some online research to answer your own questions (I found all the links for this post in about two minutes) or correlate something you know happened about the location with the details you cull from your postcards. You can look at the history that happened in your postcard writer's era as well to get a feel for what their world was like, too.

1911 was an interesting year; back in the States William Howard Taft was serving as President (probably our fattest), Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to the Senate, Italy declared war on Turkey, the French and German squabbled over Morocco, Marie Curie won the Nobel prize, and the Philadelphia Athletics beat the New York Giants four games to two to win the World Series. Everyone was reading The Broad Highway by Jeffrey Farnol and listening to the last of the red-hot mamas, Sophie Tucker, sing Some of These Days; Orville Wright set a record in October for sustaining flight in a glider for nearly ten minutes -- a record that wouldn't be broken for another ten years. There were ominous days ahead, too: in three years Archduke Ferdinand would be assassinated and touch off WWI, and four years after that a global influenza epidemic would kill an estimated forty million people.

For stories I'd write about two of my postcards I'd probably run with the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in August 1911 -- that was discovered one day after Elvira mailed her postcard to her grandmama from Paris -- and I bet she'd get sucked into the hoopla over the crime. Maybe she'd get mixed up with a dark and dangerous art thief accused of stealing the infamous Mona, who first uses her to establish an alibi . . . and then falls in love with her. In September 1911 the French battleship Liberté exploding in Toulon harbor, killing hundreds -- perhaps something the Litch ladies saw if they'd decided to prolong their holiday and travel south. Moved by the suffering of so many, F.H.L. might defy her mama and slip out of their hotel at night to work as a volunteer nurse at a makeshift hospital in the harbor. That's where she and her new friend (a handsome French surgeon, naturally) would discover the real cause of the terrible accident, which would force them to risk their lives to prevent another, more horrible tragedy. Something to do with Morocco . . .

In addition to serving as great stock for your story idea file old postcards make great writer-pal gifts, too (fill up a recipe card box with them.) Sometimes antique dealers want a couple of bucks for the older specimens, but at the flea market I paid only twenty-cents each for mine. You can also find lots of them pretty cheap from some ephemera dealers on Etsy.com -- just be sure and look for cards that were used.

Plot as You Go List

As a writer I plan out almost every detail of a story in advance; it's part of my natural process to thoroughly map out everything writing-wise so that I know where I'm going. What I most like about pre-planning a story is that it gives me the mental room to handle the few things I don't think through in advance, like dialogue, or what I should do at times when things don't go according to plan on the page.

I have tried pantsing as a writer -- once -- and while I did write and finish a fairly decent short story that way, I had to fight anxiety entire time. Knowing what the story will be before I write a single word of it doesn't diminish or ruining the writing experience for me; it makes me more relaxed and focused.

This year with my 1000 cards project I've been coloring outside the lines by courting creative spontaneity. A few months into the project I stopped trying to plan so much and instead allowed my materials inspire me as I work (which usually involves heaping a bunch of stuff on my work table, sorting through them and letting the idea gradually come together as I paint, sew, ink or whatever.) As a pantser artist I can't claim 100% success, but as I've progressed I started getting more of a feel for spontaneous design. Every mistake and failure teaches me something. What does work also helps, because once I'm finished I can analyze what went right and apply that to the next effort.

I've always imagined that pantser writers do in their heads as they write what I do in advance of writing with my outlines and novel notebooks, but the art project has taught me differently. Pantsers probably have a lot of loose, nebulous story ideas that they keep in a pile on their mental work table in no particular order or arrangement. When they're ready to write, they select from that pile whatever appeals to or inspires them to continue the story. The plotting then has to happen spontaneously, as the actual writing is hitting the page. It does create a kind of magical quality when it works, but it must be frustrating as hell when it doesn't.

A lot of what I'm going to post in the next couple of weeks before NaNoWriMo will be for the plotters and advance planners; that's the method I know best and it does work for me. But I think I can help the pantsers a little this year, too. I'm going to try, anyway.

One thing I've been doing with the art project is keeping a running list/index of what types of cards I've been making. I wanted to make a variety of cards while not depending too heavily on any one technique. The same can be done with a story if you keep a running list of scenes or chapters you've already written to help you decide where you want to take the plot from there.  This should also not ruin the creative experience for you because the list only details what you've already written, not what you're going to write.

For this plot as you go list you want to cover just the basics: one line with the most important events, where they take place, and from whose POV you've written, like so:

11/1 -- Scene One, Half-Angel Marcia accidentally acquires a mystic diamond, goes to Halloween party. Locations: Marcia's home, Halloween party. POV: Marcia

11/2 -- Scene Two, Half-Demon John meets Marcia at Halloween party; they have passionate encounter while locked in closet. Location: Halloween party. POV: John

11/3 -- Scene Three, Demon thief tries unsuccessfully to steal diamond, John protects Marcia, Marcia's house explodes. Locations: Halloween party, John's car, Marcia's house. POV: Marcia

11/4 -- Scene Four: John places Marcia in protective custody, they discover their parents are immortal enemies, demon thief casts spell over police department.  Locations:  John's car, safe house, police station. POV: John/Demon Thief.

You can also tag certain scenes with keyword markers (I usually put them in brackets) so you can track the story details you've already addressed:

11/2 -- Scene Two, Half-Demon John meets Marcia at Halloween party; they have passionate encounter while locked in closet. Location: Halloween party. POV: John. [ first love scene .]

11/4 -- Scene Four: John places Marcia in protective custody, they discover their parents are immortal enemies, demon thief casts spell over police department. Locations:  John's car, safe house, police station. POV: John/Demon Thief.  [First appearance of demon thief.]

If you keep this list updated, and glance at it before you start your new writing session, you can use it like a cheat sheet to tell you where you left off with the action, whose POV you wrote from last, where you are in reference to your settings, etc.  That could help you eliminate a lot of back-tracking and avoid the temptation of re-reading and fiddling and possibly becoming trapped in a rewriting loop.

One final plus to keeping a plot as you go list -- when you're finished your story you'll have all the details of the story in order as they occur.  This can be very helpful, not only to review for editing purposes, but also for reference when putting together a novel synopsis for submission.

Related Links:

PBW's Ten Point Plot Template  -- my one-page minimalist plotting worksheet.

Planning, Scheming, and Plotting by Stephannie Beman -- Stephannie talks about her method of sketching out a nice, brief checklist to loosely organize her stories in advance of the writing.

Moody Writing's Plotting in Your Pants -- Mooderino explains how thinking out a scene first can help with pantsing your way through t

Photo credit: David Hugheshe writing.

Thunderbirds Ten

To be honest, I don't have a post ready for today because on Sunday I unplugged to spend time with my guy and our kid, which led to a spontaneous road trip, which resulted in us ending up in exactly the right spot at the precise time to see the USAF Thunderbirds perform.

Even better, I got some awesome pics:

Tell Me What to Write Results

Thanks to everyone for joining in and casting your votes for what I'll be writing for NaNoWriMo 2012.  I've made the final count, and the results of the Tell Me What to Write Ten poll are as follows:
A - 5
B - 4
C - 1
D - 1
E - 10
F - 7
G - 13
H - 8
I - 4
J - 2

The idea that got the most votes was G, so I will be writing a Sci-fantasy in a near-future world overtaken and transformed by the vengeful spirits of ancient gods and monsters.  The working title for that one is Taken by Night.

Once November 1st arrives I'll begin writing the story and posting it online in two versions (first draft and edited draft) to show the actual daily process.  Once this goes live I'll have a permanent link on the sidebar to the stories blog so interested readers can follow along. 

For those of you who would like to see how I go about preparing to write a novel, during the next couple of weeks I'll be posting copies of all my advance work on my Google Docs account, which will include a formal synopsis, chapter outlines, everything I put in my novel notebook and so forth.  I'll also have links on the sidebar to those.

NaNo This & That

Today is the last day to vote for what I write for NaNoWriMo; see the list of choices and post your preference in comments here.

The official NaNoWriMo site has a bunch of free and discounted offers of writer stuff for participants and winners this year; I'm planning to check out all of the freebies and report back on how they work for me.

If you're looking for a free wordcount widget for your LJ or blog you might check out the freebies over at Writertopia (and I'll be hunting more as I put together my own list of NaNo freebies.)

Finally, to do my part to help out, my OOP writing how-to, Way of the Cheetah, is now available online in .pdf format here for anyone to read, download, print out etc. for free until December 1st, when it goes back into the vault for another year.

Deus Ex Machina

Jack Churchill builds a custom motorcycle, talks about what he does and why, and in the process defines just about everything I believe in as a creative person (some music and a little strong language in this one, folks):


Deus Ex Machina from Seth C Brown on Vimeo.

NaNoWriMo 2012: Choosing Your Story

Preparing for National Novel Writing Month begins with a decision on what sort of story you'd like to write in November. Many of you have already made this decision, but for those of you who are still mulling it over, it's better to pick now than panic on November 1st.

You can go with the first idea you think up that captures your imagination, or select something you've been saving for just such an opportunity.  Neither way is wrong; go with what speaks to you as a writer.  But if you have a lot of ideas and no clear choice, you need to sort them out in a logical fashion until you figure out which one makes the best choice for your November novel.

 One way of choosing what you're going to write is like I did on Monday -- make a list of ideas that appeal to you the most. You can note them by genre, character, premise, time period or even a working title; use the words that best define the idea in your mind. If you keep a story idea file, raid it for the best of what you've collected to make up your list. You can use as many or as few ideas as you want, but I'd give yourself at least five options so you have a group to work with for comparison purposes.

Once your list is complete, take a day or two to think about all the ideas you've noted. This gives you a chance to obsess about them -- something most writers love to do -- and also allows the ideas to percolate a bit. During this time you may discover your thoughts will keep returning to one or two of the ideas on your list; these are probably the most attractive to you. They not necessarily the best choice for NaNoWriMo, however, so don't make a decision yet. You may also want to run your ideas past a writer friend or critique partner to get some feedback on which seems most viable.

Once you've thought through your ideas, take your list and read it again. Compare the ideas to each other and focus on the ones that don't especially stand out or seem a little lackluster. Start the process of elimination by crossing off the idea with the least amount of appeal to you (this does not mean it's a bad idea or that you should trash it.  It's a story that for whatever reason you're not ready to tell.)

Repeat this process a couple more times.  For NaNoWriMo you want to write a story that is exciting to you, that (obviously) does not require months of research in advance, and that you can easily envision from start to finish (if you're a pantser, you're looking for an idea that has enough appeal to keep you working at it for thirty days. Since I don't know how you do that, you'll have to be the judge.) As you think about these things, cross off the ideas that don't fit the bill as well as the others. Keep at it, comparing what remains to each other until you whittle the list down to the final two best possibilities.

At this point I usually invite the universe to collaborate with me and flip a coin to make the final choice between the two.  You can try this, or you can run the ideas by that writer friend or critique partner and ask their opinion on which is the best, or you can simply choose the one you find most attractive.  Before you leap into fleshing out the story you've selected, take the others you've eliminated and put them in your story idea file (and if you don't have that, start one.) These other ideas might work better for you sometime in the future, and they're excellent backup in the event the choice you've made doesn't work out from the start.

You can make this story decision at any point before November 1st, but my advice is to nail it down by October 15th. That will give you couple of weeks to obsess a little more, let it percolate again and begin whatever preparations you like to do before starting to write.

Do you have a tried-and-true method of sorting through your story ideas to select the one you want to write? Let us know in comments.

Copy No-Nos

Ten Things I Hate About Cover Copy

(dedicated to Raine, who instigated inspired it)

"[Author] is at the top of his/her game."

So everything published after this will be [author] headed for rock bottom?

"Best book I've read in ages."

Are you an immortal who squanders the centuries reading nothing but crap, or is the author merely your BFF roommate at all the cons?

"Do yourself a favor and buy this novel!"

You mean this lukewarm ho-hum read that wasted three hours of my life because after plowing through the first lame chapter I decided to finish the damn thing instead of what I really should have done -- throw it in the Friends of the Library donation box -- to justify the $8.99 I squandered on it?  I'm sorry, how is any of that doing myself a favor?

"He can't stop thinking about her."

Three words: Monday. Night. Football.

"Her two best friends help her . . . "

If there's more than one helpful female secondary character in the story who is not trying to surreptitiously seduce the male protagonist, back stab the female protagonist, or otherwise serve as a quasi-antagonist, then what we have is a girl posse, which also means there will be more romance between the gals than anyone else in the book.  Pass.

". . . mind-blowing, intensely erotic . . ."

Okay, they're going to be doing it every five pages. P.S., if I want my mind blown, I'll put down the book and go find my guy.

"She has never known such pleasure . . ."

I know what this means! She lost her virginity during an unfortunate fumbling and wholly unsatisfying experience during her college years, or she was briefly married to an older guy with an unspecified health problem that prevented him from consummating their love. Or she simply has terrible taste in men (in which case, how does she end up with unknown pleasure dude?)

"The book EVERYONE is talking about . . ."

Unfortunately for your author I've already heard what EVERYONE is saying about it.

"They enter into a marriage of convenience . . ."

Which oddly enough never proves to be convenient for anyone in the story. Maybe we should start calling it what it really is: a marriage to provide conflict for the characters.

"When the passionate night she can never forget results in disaster . . . "

. . . that (logically) should be an STD, but somehow instead always turns out to be a) outraged parents forcing Mr. Unforgettable to marry Ms. Despoiled (of course the best man to espouse their daughter is the jerk who discarded her like a used tissue after one honk); b) a secret love affair eventually exposed and regarded as even more tawdry than one passionate night (instantly forgiven, naturally, once wedding bells have officially chimed); or c) I really have to stop at b because I'm enjoying this too much and that's when I get really vicious.  Anyway, what said unforgettable night o' passion never seems to result in is a realistic, believable adult relationship.  That is, evidently, asking too much; so is expecting me to buy it.   

Imagined Made Real

Part of the fun of world-building is reimagining all the stuff that goes into making a world: people, terrain, societies, architecture, language, foods, transportation, religion etc. While I always enjoy inventing a world from the ground up, it's creating little details that are the most fun for me, i.e. How do they say Hello? What do they eat for breakfast? Where do they sleep? What sort of games do they play?

Even the smallest detail can be an opportunity to get creative. For example, while working on the universe for my newest series, I had to come up with an alternative to the key ring that was gender-specific (in other words, men and women both carry keys, but they use different things to do so.) I actually researched the way people have carried keys throughout history before I made up key-carriers for my universe: my guys use a type of fob, while my ladies keep them on a keylace -- a length of lace worn around the wrist like a bracelet.

As details go this one is quite small, mentioned maybe three times in the entire novel, but it's one of those things I think is cool. Naturally when I found the idea-ology word keys, I realized I could actually make my keylaces. Which led to a day of playing with all sorts of trims and ways to wear them, and then that morphed into a series of keylace BookLoops:



I'll probably keep fussing with and refining these until I have the perfect assemblage because it's not quite there yet, but I still like how the first batch turned out. They have that shabby, cherished quality that I envisioned. They also have a practical use as bookmarks, and will work nicely as unique promo items to hand out when the book is released.

It's not always possible to turn something you've imagined into reality (unless, say, you have a few spare millions and your town doesn't mind you building that five-story two hundred ton time travel device in your backyard.) Focusing on the little details can put making real the imagined within your reach. It doesn't have to be an object; you might recreate the outfit one of your characters is wearing, or actually write a letter or song or poem for one that your character has written in the story (I filled a journal with love poems written in my imagination by Jayr from Evermore.) Draw on your creative strengths, too; if you've conjured up a new sort of critter, draw a sketch of it, sew a stuffie version of it, or sculpt it in paperclay. The point is to bring something from the page into your reality.

Have any of you ever created something you've only imagined? Tell us about it in comments.