Cage Dunn's Blog, page 74

I have to think about that some more …

The voluminous echo of emptiness where a character should be … does that mean I need to put a character in there? Or should it be the other character who fills in the need for reaction here? What is the goal for this moment? Why?

As you may be able to determine, it’s deep into editing time, and the questions I write down are only half of what I ask as I go through for the third time (first, a general idea of flow and meaning and structure; second, a determined look at what happens, why, is it important; third, the action-reaction sequences – who should be there to do that thing, and where does it take the story now?

And – to top it all off when I was in super-editor-mode – I got hit in the [right] eye by a wasp! And have an eye-patch. Ever tried to do things with vision in one eye only (and the other is a wee bit on the short-sighted (okay, a lot) and the glasses don’t fit comfortably over the patch?)? Ever tried to stand straight when the world is only visible at a strange angle (and fuzzy)?

Two days – maybe three! That’s a lot of work down the drain. No amount of rescheduling can deal with it.

What to do with the character? Why am I distracted? What character? Where? What page was I on?

Do you think it might be time to close the workspace, shut it down, go into a dark place, turn off, block out, lie down – sleep, perchance to … No, dreams would only drag me back to work, because that’s when the sharpest ideas come to the front of the mind, isn’t it?

That moment between seeing the light, and closing down – the clarity of that thought, that direction, that moment – and you gotta get up to deal with it, ‘cos you know what happens if you don’t, right?

Yep. Memory fails. At least until the next time you do it, and then you slap yourself across the forehead (knock the eye-patch off), swear (wake up the other half), leap out of bed and mutter all the way to the work-space, and Write It Down.

Sometimes, the editing is the hardest part of the work. Sometimes, I’m sure there’s some form of worldly thing that puts its foot down and says ‘go home, go to bed, take some time out’ – but you know what?

I don’t have time. Life is short (that’s a dangerous thing to say, by the way). There are stories to be told, and … (whoops, lost the patch again)… is it time for a cuppa?

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tags: This post is part of SoCS – SoCS #SoCS Stream of Consciousness Saturday

 

Who knows the rules to the Game?

If it were up to me, the rules would be so simple that even a three-year-old would understand. If it were up to me, the rules would be expanded on by one line a year throughout your life. If it were up to me, by the time you reach 21, you get to make your own rules.

That means (if you wanted to) you could disobey all the things you learned so well, to break away from the norm to experience the ‘other’ and to look beyond the clarity of the lines that contained your body and soul.

First though, you have to know the rules. What happens if there are no rules? How can you know if you’re a rebel or a browner (yes, you know what that means)? How can you know you’ve gone beyond the lines if the lines aren’t even there?

I like rules for the ones who need care. That’s the kids, the ones who start out little, grow up fast, and know everything by the time they’re 15. Of course they do, but only if they’ve learned what the rules are and how to get around them to get what they want.

How can they know what they want, or what rules to bend, break or manipulate if they don’t exist? How can that mind, so young and visionary, get the exercise it needs if it never has the boundaries that make the seeking of ‘beyond’ so intriguing?

My shortest post ever ‘cos I’m in developmental editing stage of two novels and don’t know when I’ll surface again (but not drowning, not sinking … maybe).

 

 

Setting up for Failure

That’s what she said! If you make goals that are too hard to achieve, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Crap. Let me say that again. Crap.

Goals that are easily achievable and don’t stretch the boundaries, that don’t make you push yourself to do better, go harder, farther, faster, more – aren’t worth calling goals. That is a schedule.

Yes, a schedule should be a little more realistic. Not too much more, though. I mean, where’s the fun in leaping over tall buildings that don’t even stretch the calf muscle. What’s the point of looking at the stars but only marking up the first few inches of the slope? What’s the point?

A goal has an end point: a dream made real. It makes the dream achievable by marking out the pathway – the stairs that lead up. Dreams are not easy. They don’t just come to you because you want it, or you’d like to do it, or everyone says you’ve got the talent to get there. It takes more. Much more.

It takes setting that bar high enough that each time you go out there, you have to fight to get over it, and you really feel it when you do.

The other side of the bar is an achievement and a boost to get you to the next one.

But if you get a day, or even two days, where the bar comes crashing down – what do you do then?

Put it back up there, in the same place, and try again.

Don’t (this is experience here) try to add the failure to the height of the bar next time. Now that truly is setting yourself up to fail.

Each day is a new day, and each new day is a new goal. That goal should be achievable, but tough. You should know, without doubt, that you put everything you had into achieving that thing, and that it was worth it, and you’re worth the end result.

It’s about our dreams. You can dream and dream and dream, but if you don’t set that bar and at least try to leap over at every opportunity, then it will remain a dream.

When you get the chance to turn your dream into a reality, when you become the best you possible, guess how that makes you feel?

Can you feel it? The potential to indulge in that moment of exultation because you did it, and you did it in the face of people who say what she said to me.

“Make the target easier, so you can succeed. Don’t set yourself up for failure.”

[read a swear word here] that! If I don’t put in the effort to make each and every step tougher than everyone else’s, then I’m going to end up sitting on that bottom step (with the rest of the crowd) and saying (often as I’m hearing them laugh at me), “but I tried, isn’t that good enough?”

You know the answer to that – I know the answer to that. If the goal isn’t achievable, how can you find a way to make it achievable? If the goal is achievable, is it hard enough for you to know and feel the achievement was worth it?

If the goal isn’t achievable, then it’s a dream; so how can you find a way to make it achievable? Break the dream down into goals that lead to the end result. If the goal is achievable, is it hard enough for you to know and feel the achievement was worth it? If it changes direction when you get part-way along the path, do you struggle through, or take stock and re-think? Does it matter how you do it, as long as you know when to push and when to sidestep, when to plough on and when to move aside? When you know what is best for you to achieve your goal?

Is the dream the same dream at the end as it was in the beginning? Things change, you know, as we travel our paths.

And then, as is usually the case, does the achievement of the dream outline the next path in your life? A stronger and better you who can now see the light through the dark forest.

A garbled post, put out in a moment of angst (that’s annoyance, mainly at people who try to stop you in your tracks), and it’s in place of my usual Sunday post (that’s tomorrow, Australian time) because I’ve got a schedule to keep, and wayward co-contributors to pull back into line after being battered by ‘them’ – the ones who caused this rant.

Ciao!

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The Highest High of All

The moment someone says ‘Hey, that’s great!’ or ‘This is something special.’ or ‘You’ve got what it takes.’ Any form of praise for the work you’ve created, the thing you’ve worked on for so long, bled over and into, researched and rewritten until it’s not half bad – that thing. Your/my creative product.

It elevates the soul, gives a high nothing else can match. No drug can boost you like that, no alcohol or chocolate or caffeine or narcotic – it’s a self-induced drug created by a few simple words – and if they’re aimed at me for my product, I’m the happiest person in the world.

Okay, it only lasts a minute, but – and here’s the catch – there’s another one coming! Well, there is, isn’t there? You know you have to get that feeling back, re-experience that high because once the first one has levelled off, it’s never quite as good after that, even when a different person says something about the same product.

It’s only ever the first time, the first person, and only if you have a high level of respect for that person. It’s the thing that makes it all worthwhile.

As little kids, we worked hard to get that moment from our parents, from our family, from our friends – and then we grew up.

It’s like kids who once did the walk-n-talk in their sleep, the ones who did the flying dreams and could recall vivid nightscapes in the morning when they retold of their life beyond the one outside the window.

We lose it, slowly, but we never stop craving the high that comes from the moment when a special person says it to us and means it from the bottom of their heart.

Yes, we also learned the hard lesson of falseness. When people say something just so they can get the interaction over with and move on to someone, something, somewhere more interesting. It’s cruel.

Why? Why be false like that? What does it get you? The dishonesty in the world is so big now; we hear the false drama of a documentary and roll our eyes. We recognise it in our pollies (and others), and yet, when we look to sell our product, instead of looking for a genuine person who will say the honest words, we turn to the marketing and advertising guru/platform. We do the thing we hate the most. We put on the false persona hat. And we pretend to be …

We create the antithesis to the drug we crave.

I say, be honest in your interactions with the world, and see what you get back. Let go of the anger and righteousness and need, and simply be. That’s not saying be in-the-face rude with comments – consider how you would want to hear those words, and how it would affect you.

I met a person who told me a cruel truth once (in honest and straightforward words, with no anger), and she said it in such a way that I had to listen while she explained what her words meant. I took it to heart, of course I did, because she was honest and cared enough to show me through the whole discourse to where I was aiming, and why I was off-course, and what I could do to change things.

If she hadn’t done that, I would’ve given up, long ago.

Why? Because if I continued the way I was going, I would get exactly what I had and no more. Because I would’ve bored myself silly with trying to understand what went wrong, rather than trying to find a new direction or even being able to look up at the road-signs. I would’ve been blind to the need to continue the search.

—————–

Well, that’s the writing exercise finished – now I get back to the real job – storytelling (my drug of choice).

Agoness – Scene 1

Scene 1

“Father Holy he is,” the junior soldier spluttered as Landis, the RSM, stood stiffly at attention before the troops on parade. He’d need to wait until the young man finished before he could admonish, or punish, the presentation of the words.

After a few more splutters, Landis sucked in a breath and lifted his left hand.

“Soldier,” he began. “Do you have a message for me?”

“Yes, Sergeant Master.”

“Well?” Landis rolled his eyes. It was getting harder to get them to this stage with the bare skills required, let alone the skills to be able to communicate well. He’d need to abduct more teachers.

“Father Holy, it is,” the junior began again. “He requested you to visit. Out there.”

Landis’s stomach lurched as he watched the young man’s face go white.

“In the garden.” The last word was so quiet, Landis almost didn’t hear it. The young man shrank in on himself, hunched his shoulders and lowered his chin.

“In the Garden of Joy?” Landis asked in a voice loud enough to carry to the two thousand other attentive ears of the young solders.

“Yes, Sergeant Master. The Garden of Joy. Out there.” The clatter of teeth made each word starkly separate.

“Did he happen to mention the purpose of the meeting?” Landis knew the answer, but he had to make sure all the soldiers understood what was required of them. This junior would be a lesson for all the ranks here today, as they waited for Landis to dismiss them to their tasks and training. Until they joined the ranks of regular soldiers of the Ranios. A lesson that had not been necessary for decades, maybe longer.

“No, Sir, Sergeant Master, Sir. He didn’t.”

“Do you think I might have needed that information, soldier?” Landis turned on his heel, snapped a salute to his NIC and dismissed himself from the rank and file without waiting for an answer.

He marched to the main building that housed his office – with the only windows that looked out over the main quadrangle – and strode up the steps.

Behind him, the sounds of double-time march-out indicated the normal routine for his soldiers.

That message, though, meant it would not be, could not be, a normal routine for him. It was the code-key to read the words within the only locked cabinet in his office. He yelled for Divia, his aide, and sent him to fetch the key from the Commandant.

The scroll shook as he dug it out from behind the manuals and maps. The book of Martial Lores. He had to lean on each corner to hold it down – carefully, so fragile – so he could read the list of requirements necessary to undertake before entering the holy place.

Reasoner of Soul Magic, he read. This scroll outlined the purpose of his position. The real purpose. The continuation of the role of RSM.

When he finished reading, Landis signed his name and year in the column marked for the purpose. When was the last entry? The ink was faded on the year, but he recognised the name. Iridis, a courageous RSM, a man who’d undertaken many land and sea battles without loss. His deeds were well recorded in the study hall library.

Landis counted back to the year of Iridis; seventy generations, one hundred and forty years since a person signed his name in this book, since the Soldiers of the Faith had been called upon for this duty.

It took a few minutes to robe himself appropriately. Landis removed all colours, then donned the raw ecru wrap-around cloth, removed his boots, gloves, and all forms of protection and weapons.

It would take two hours of his already busy day, and those two hours would be spent trekking over loose and dangerous salt-encrusted dried-up lake surfaces that made noises like the devil wanted to get out from underneath. He put on knitted leggings and sandals. No duty was worth damage to his feet. A soldier lived or died by his feet.

Landis took off his robe and re-tied it in the loosest possible fashion, and left the belt and buckle over the back of his chair.

The Garden of Joy did not allow any visitor to pass beyond the stone arch with metal items or weapons of any nature.

Not alive, anyway.

Copyright Cisi De & Cage Dunn 2017

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A Rhyme?

What? I don’t have time for that! What do you think I do all day? Think of words that have flavours that complement by rhyme? That sound the same?

Oh, of course I do, but not for rhyme. Each word I use, I check to see if it has been used before, close to this one, too close for comfort. And if it’s not quite the right word, I go off and find a word that means more closely what I want it to mean.

I play with words all day – all bloody day – and sometimes, they give me words that don’t quite fit the right way.

I supposed that’s why people play with rhyme. To find a way to fit the story to what they want it to mean, but to also play enough that other people (the magic Reader) will enjoy the lyrical aspect, as well as the depth, of the telling.

Rhyme. I don’t look for it, but I do look for and respond to ‘presence’ – a word in a sentence must say something, be something, more than the words themselves. They must dance a hidden tune, sing an unheard song – they must be more than what they appear to be on the surface.

The surface is the mask, and the real story, the subtext, lies under the visible words. It is there, a different world, that needs very specific words within the sentence, laid out in a pattern that can be recognised and cause a reaction – inner and outer – in the one who reads it.

Can that be possible? All the words I’ve ever read mean more than what they say?

Of course. That’s the way it is.

Do people always say exactly what they mean?

If you said ‘yes’ I think you need to go back and truly listen, without adding your own interpretation to the words. Listen and hear only what is said, take no notice of how your mind spins some form of meaning to the things that aren’t there.

It worked, didn’t it? You found the gaps where you put meaning into their conversation. You filled them in with your own subtext.

What if you were wrong?

And therein lies the rub. We know that sometimes we miss the message and we have to ask: “What?” Other times, we go on, blindly it seems, sure in our understanding – until they come back to us and say “Didn’t you hear what I said?” There’s usually a growly sort of “For crying out loud,” that follows that sort of statement.

So, do your words (story and ITRW) say all that you mean, or do you, too, play the game of subtext?

Update of current works:

Equine – in second-form-editing (developmental) – needs a bit more time;

Ghost – in first-form-editing (structural) – with the third eye person;

Agoness – in progress – first Act complete.

Were there any others? Karel? Got something, mate? Come back to us …

When is the Right Time to …

let go of it all? When can I say goodbye to all the bits and pieces that belonged to her? When can I move beyond the little capsule where I keep her memories and moments?

I try to dignify my responses – lack of them, really – by giving excuses for grief. It doesn’t work. I can’t let go, not yet. Maybe not ever.

No one should lose a child. No one should be told ‘it’s time to let go’ when it comes to the loss of a child. No one should tell me what to do to ‘move on’ or ‘get over it’.

I can’t. I won’t. I feel that loss every day. I feel it more than life. There are moments in the days and nights of my existence where I can see or feel nothing more than her tiny little spark of a moment. That’s it. There is no more to my presence than the feeling of her life that wasn’t.

I don’t even know if she took a breath.

I don’t know what she looked like.

How long has it been? you ask. More than 2 decades, nearly 3 in fact. The grief is all I have of her, so I hold it, ever so gently, in my life.

That sadness holds onto me whenever things go north (don’t forget, I’m Australian, so things don’t go south for us, they go north) and I don’t want to get out of my little egg-shell.

I had one of those days yesterday when I heard a woman saying something about how she’d shipped off her two kids to the ‘system’ and how it was ‘good riddance’ – but I saw behind the facade of brashness. To the fear she’d never see them again, never hear their voices, never get to know the real person.

Why were they taken from her?

Worse than what happened to me and my child when they took her tiny body away without me seeing her; when they deposited her with the medical waste and told me to get on with my life.

These kids were taken because the mother was of a racial type the authorities consider to be ill-equipped to care for their own children. It still happens. Even now.

People from a government agency go out to ‘inspect’ the families, and if they deem the child is at risk – zoom – ‘take ’em away’ to a ‘proper’ home.

It still goes on.

The appropriate things to consider doing if the specific race of people is considered something other than capable, it to enable them to become capable – don’t you think?

I do.

And I do because I know what it is to lose your child. Your only chance  …

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And yes, I do know there are kids who should be removed from a parenting situation because they are at risk, serious risk – and there aren’t enough caseworkers to deal with all of them, but where on the scale of risk does the word Race or Ethnicity come into it?

A Touchy-Feely Thing

Two things – reach for the stars and dig deep and what you get from that gives you the sense of a person. Create a character with an emotional honesty, a sense of distinctiveness, make them normal (or normalised), sure, but every single person in the world has issues. Deep, dark, icky secrets. And some that show plain as day on their faces. Reality in a character is the ‘between’ spaces, the places where the ‘real’ meets the ‘mask’ (and we all think no one notices).

The connection between character and reader needs to be a connection so deep it becomes a visceral, emotional, and physical connection. The reader feels it, smells it, fears it – just as the character does. That’s a good connection to create.

A reader needs to understand this character, needs to feel that ‘this is me’ or ‘I’ve been there’ or ‘that’s just how it is’ – when you get that, you win.

Then we dress them: up, down, frilly, fancy, in pants, in dresses, in tanks and tees. What does this character wear? Why? What are the underlying character needs that make them do this particular style of dress?

As the writer, you need to know why they choose the way they dress. And it is never ‘that’s what everyone wears’ because a character isn’t everyone. The character you create in your story is a siren, or she should be, to the reader. Her song must be irresistible, alluring, something the reader can’t drag herself away from.

That’s visceral. That’s character.

And that’s the warm-up writing exercise for today; it incorporates two separate links:

 #SoCS

and the Daily Post.

 

 

How to End the Thing …

It’s a difficult time. We (two teams of two writer-peeps) are finalising stories, but one of them is being difficult – we don’t know how to give the final picture.

One option is to have the main character (MC) drive past the same place she drove into town, see the gate that closes the place off now, and a sign that says (among other things): Danger: Toxic Seep – Do Not Enter!

But it’s the arid zone. There are no places in the story where there are sludges and seeps, there are no bits where stuff oozes from the ground!

It’s a no go. But we can’t find a way to end it if we don’t do something like that.

Let me give you some background (not the whole story!).

MC has run away from her fate and her last remaining family (Grandmother). She’s bought a house, sight unseen, in a remote country town. This might be a chance for peace, but no – it’s where she meets the mortal enemy. Again.

You see, you can’t outrun yourself; fate always finds you because it’s in you. After much suffering and learning and fighting back, MC shows how she’s learned her lessons well enough to be able to take on the nemesis – but it might just cost her own life. Well, that’s just the way it goes when you have a story like this (the genre would probably be classified as urban fantasy, but if you consider it’s really rural or outback, maybe I should call it ‘outback fantasy’) – in the end is the choice to ‘do or die’.

And, of course, I can’t tell you the actual ending, but the denouement, the final wrapping up moment – what can we do with that?

I want to have the sign, but with different connotations; just something that says ‘Don’t Go There’. My colleague wants more, bigger, mucho impact.

The question for both of us is this: What is Best for the Story?

How will the denouement affect the reader? Which take on the final drive-by will leave the most lingering impression? What will the emotional impact be? Is that what we want the reader to experience?

The questions are simple, really, but the answers are being difficult.

What do we do?

Well, I suggested we do an interview of the characters to see how they would like to ‘see’ the end of their story.

My counterpart said we should do two endings, and get some beta readers to give us their take on what it meant to them at that point.

The problem is we can’t agree on which two endings, because now that we have those two, there are several more that just might be better than those two, and if we give only two choices to the beta readers, shouldn’t they be the best two choices?

The discussion rages on …

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Alone Again … Naturally

Day after day, week after week, month after month … This is where I sit, where I work, where I place all my values and dreams and … write. It would be a solitary business, but the people I create and speak to each day are much better than the real thing.

Really.

I tell stories. Usually in long form, a novel or epic. Sometimes, little ideas pop up and I play with them for a bit, work on the structure of it before it gets put to bed in the Wheel of Fortune. These are my friends, the people in the middle of a story who want me to speak for them. I am their orator.

My legs don’t work so well, and walking or running or swimming or sailing are things I can only dream about. But my characters can do those things for me. I can experience their lives for a short time each day. I can live their lives with them.

Rain pours over the window in sheets so heavy it’s impossible to see the garden edge less than a metre away, but as I enter into the world of story, I am back where I want to be – somewhere warm and dry, where the eagles soar and insects scritch their sounds into the stillness of the air.

I don’t hear the voices of other people, but I can have long and meaningful conversations with my peeps on the page. Their conversations are more real than the meaningless drivel spoken at me by the softer, more carbon-based entities.

Is it abandonment that has led me here, to this lonely tower in a castle of my own making? Am I rejecting the world before it rejects me – again?

Is it fear of total abandonment that led me into the pages of story?

No. The stories were always there, the characters were always there. I was one child in a family of eight. But in the midst of the chaos, I was alone. Except in my mind.

I didn’t see a book until we left the country and moved to a town. The school had a library. It became my safe place. I couldn’t take books home, though, because someone would chuck them out, call the books names. Maybe she knew the influence they had on me; maybe not.

On opening a page, I recognised the story-mind. I was home, at peace. A mindful creature who wasn’t alone in the crowd anymore. Free to be me.

Copyright Cage Dunn 2017

and now I can get back to the serious work of story-telling …