Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 259
February 8, 2011
Venturing Outside
I now understand all the people who've "complained" to me about losing sleep because they started reading one of my books before they went to bed and ended up staying up all night reading. I've been reading one of my own books while I've been too zonked with the cold to focus on anything else (and while I'm too zonked to try to mentally edit or revise it), and last night I caught myself playing the "just one more chapter" game. I finally convinced myself to turn out the light and go to sleep by reminding myself that I wrote the book, so I knew how it ended (though I didn't remember exactly what happened next) and I could put it down and go to sleep.
I've also realized that in spite of my claims of being spontaneous, I really am a creature of habit. I seem to have lost the stopwatch I use to time my writing sessions and keep myself honest about really working instead of saying I'm working during a block of time while I'm really getting sidetracked during a tea break. It's got to be somewhere in the house, but I was pretty migratory last week, so there's no telling where it is now. I spent way too much time yesterday searching for it because I couldn't seem to get to work without it. I ended up downloading a stopwatch app to my phone. That might actually be a good thing because it means I'll have my phone with me when I'm working instead of it hiding at the bottom of my purse. The trick will be whether I hear it ring. I finally settled on the main theme from Star Wars as my ringtone because I can hear it and I still seem to have a Pavlovian response to that music so if I hear it, it gets my attention. However, I like using John Williams scores as background music for writing, which means there's a chance that my phone will ring while I'm listening to Star Wars music -- like the way I always seemed to be walking by a bank of pay phones when my phone rang while I was using an old-fashioned telephone ring sound as my ringtone, so I always assumed it was the pay phones and not my phone ringing.
After our brief reprieve, the cold weather and ice will return tomorrow, so I have to venture out this afternoon to run errands that may become impossible later in the week. Between the ice and the cold (the illness kind), my winter hibernation tendencies are being rather catered to. I wasn't so bad this winter until recently, since I had enough stuff going on that required leaving the house that I didn't get a chance to fall into that mode. But if I go a long time without leaving the house, that makes it harder to leave the house, and for more than a week, either the weather's been too bad to go out or I haven't felt like it. I can manage a quick library/bank/post office/Target run, but I don't think I'm up to ballet tonight. I'd manage about two plies before having to take a break, and that's if I could even get that far without having to run for a tissue. Then tomorrow it's very likely that choir will be cancelled again due to weather. I had planned to get my new computer last week while I was between projects, but the weather got in the way of that, and the combination of illness and weather make it unlikely this week because I'd like to be able to think. I probably ought to do some research to decide what I might really need instead of just going with my instincts to take the cheapest possible option.
For now, though, I need to get out the crowbar and pry myself out of the house so I can restock on tissue supplies.
I've also realized that in spite of my claims of being spontaneous, I really am a creature of habit. I seem to have lost the stopwatch I use to time my writing sessions and keep myself honest about really working instead of saying I'm working during a block of time while I'm really getting sidetracked during a tea break. It's got to be somewhere in the house, but I was pretty migratory last week, so there's no telling where it is now. I spent way too much time yesterday searching for it because I couldn't seem to get to work without it. I ended up downloading a stopwatch app to my phone. That might actually be a good thing because it means I'll have my phone with me when I'm working instead of it hiding at the bottom of my purse. The trick will be whether I hear it ring. I finally settled on the main theme from Star Wars as my ringtone because I can hear it and I still seem to have a Pavlovian response to that music so if I hear it, it gets my attention. However, I like using John Williams scores as background music for writing, which means there's a chance that my phone will ring while I'm listening to Star Wars music -- like the way I always seemed to be walking by a bank of pay phones when my phone rang while I was using an old-fashioned telephone ring sound as my ringtone, so I always assumed it was the pay phones and not my phone ringing.
After our brief reprieve, the cold weather and ice will return tomorrow, so I have to venture out this afternoon to run errands that may become impossible later in the week. Between the ice and the cold (the illness kind), my winter hibernation tendencies are being rather catered to. I wasn't so bad this winter until recently, since I had enough stuff going on that required leaving the house that I didn't get a chance to fall into that mode. But if I go a long time without leaving the house, that makes it harder to leave the house, and for more than a week, either the weather's been too bad to go out or I haven't felt like it. I can manage a quick library/bank/post office/Target run, but I don't think I'm up to ballet tonight. I'd manage about two plies before having to take a break, and that's if I could even get that far without having to run for a tissue. Then tomorrow it's very likely that choir will be cancelled again due to weather. I had planned to get my new computer last week while I was between projects, but the weather got in the way of that, and the combination of illness and weather make it unlikely this week because I'd like to be able to think. I probably ought to do some research to decide what I might really need instead of just going with my instincts to take the cheapest possible option.
For now, though, I need to get out the crowbar and pry myself out of the house so I can restock on tissue supplies.
February 7, 2011
Thawing
I just thought the cold had hit with a vengeance on Friday, but that was just a little coughing compared to what hit later that day and intensified all weekend. We're talking full-on NyQuil commercial misery. By Sunday morning, if the "bring out your dead" cart had come by my house, I'd have been tempted to run outside and throw myself on it -- if I could have made myself get off the sofa. It should have made me feel better that the weather took a turn for the moderately warm and sunny, but there's just something wrong about a nice, sunny day when you're sick. The rest of the world should be suffering with me, darn it! I did briefly emerge from the cave Saturday afternoon to take out my trash, and I must have looked awful because I ran into a neighbor, and she not only kept her distance from me, but she came back later and scraped the remaining ice off my front porch, probably so I wouldn't slip and kill myself on my way out to the bring out your dead cart and clutter up the neighborhood.
I'm on the mend now and feeling much better. I'd thought about doing some errands today while the roads are dry and non-icy and before the next winter storm hits Wednesday, but I'm still not 100 percent, so I think I'll take it easy one more day and then take care of everything tomorrow.
I had planned a grand marathon of all the paranormal romantic comedy movies I own, but I reached a point where I didn't even feel like watching movies. USA obliged me on Saturday with an NCIS marathon, which makes for good sick day viewing when you can't focus on anything. I did feel extra empathy in the episode where Tony gets the plague. While he's hacking and coughing on the screen, I'm hacking and coughing on my sofa and saying, "Oh honey, you and me both." I thought that the book of short stories I got at the library would be good for a short attention span, but you have to actually focus on short stories. You can't zone out for two pages and still know what's going on. I ended up reading one of my own books because I could zone out for pages and still know what was going on, and I figured that might be the one way I could read one of my books and not keep trying to mentally edit it. It was almost like reading something someone else wrote.
I hear there was a big football game on Sunday. I was marathoning Downton Abbey on PBS, doing a cultural U-turn from watching Beverly Hills Cop 2 on one of the HBO channels in the early afternoon. I love Judge Reinhold's character in that one, where he's this mild-mannered guy who turns out to have developed something of an inner Rambo. "You can never have too much firepower" never fails to crack me up. I pretty much watch the entire movie just for that moment.
I'm trying to get back to a normal work schedule, and fortunately most of the work I need to do today involves reading, so I can huddle under a blanket and read and call it work. I love my job. Also, I'm supposed to do an Enchanted, Inc. question this week, and I don't recall having one on tap to answer. If you've got a question about the series, let me know. If you've asked one I haven't answered, ask again because my brain is Swiss cheese at the moment.
I'm on the mend now and feeling much better. I'd thought about doing some errands today while the roads are dry and non-icy and before the next winter storm hits Wednesday, but I'm still not 100 percent, so I think I'll take it easy one more day and then take care of everything tomorrow.
I had planned a grand marathon of all the paranormal romantic comedy movies I own, but I reached a point where I didn't even feel like watching movies. USA obliged me on Saturday with an NCIS marathon, which makes for good sick day viewing when you can't focus on anything. I did feel extra empathy in the episode where Tony gets the plague. While he's hacking and coughing on the screen, I'm hacking and coughing on my sofa and saying, "Oh honey, you and me both." I thought that the book of short stories I got at the library would be good for a short attention span, but you have to actually focus on short stories. You can't zone out for two pages and still know what's going on. I ended up reading one of my own books because I could zone out for pages and still know what was going on, and I figured that might be the one way I could read one of my books and not keep trying to mentally edit it. It was almost like reading something someone else wrote.
I hear there was a big football game on Sunday. I was marathoning Downton Abbey on PBS, doing a cultural U-turn from watching Beverly Hills Cop 2 on one of the HBO channels in the early afternoon. I love Judge Reinhold's character in that one, where he's this mild-mannered guy who turns out to have developed something of an inner Rambo. "You can never have too much firepower" never fails to crack me up. I pretty much watch the entire movie just for that moment.
I'm trying to get back to a normal work schedule, and fortunately most of the work I need to do today involves reading, so I can huddle under a blanket and read and call it work. I love my job. Also, I'm supposed to do an Enchanted, Inc. question this week, and I don't recall having one on tap to answer. If you've got a question about the series, let me know. If you've asked one I haven't answered, ask again because my brain is Swiss cheese at the moment.
February 4, 2011
A Snow Day Movie
So, we already had a couple of inches of solid ice on the ground that hasn't gone away because temperatures have stayed in the 20s or lower all week. Last night, we were supposed to get one to three inches of snow on top of that. Well, this is what "one to three inches" looked like on my patio this morning:
And it snowed for about an hour more after I took that picture. I'd already figured that it would be worse than they forecast, since the snow was supposed to start around 3 a.m., and I got up at 3:45 when I was coughing and needed some water. I looked out the window, and there was already at least three inches on the ground, and it was snowing pretty heavily. It was very pretty at night and totally undisturbed. But I'm kind of ready for it all to go away. We might get above freezing tomorrow, but not by much, and it will take a while for all this to melt. Meanwhile, that lurking cold hit with a vengeance during the night, so this will be a guilt-free sofa day. A cold plus snow=book/movie and tea day. If not for the cold, I'd be tempted to take a walk because I do like walking in the snow, and it really is beautiful. I'm also getting a little stir-crazy. As much of a homebody as I am, I do usually leave the house at least a few times a week.
The fun thing is that this has been Super Bowl week, and the weather has really hampered all the activities. I had sort of considered maybe heading to downtown Fort Worth to see at least some of the goings on with ESPN broadcasting from there all week, but between the cold and the weather, that's not going to happen. Also, to quote Spike, I'm paralyzed by not caring very much. I'm probably not going to watch the game because the local PBS station is counterprogramming with a Downton Abbey marathon of the whole series. Plus, again, see above about not caring. I am sort of pulling for Green Bay, as I figure that since the team is staying in my town that makes them the hometown team, and I was a Cowboys fan in the late 70s, so I have residual Steelers hate (even though the team I cheered for was the "Steelers" and I have a very cute little black-and-gold cheerleader uniform).
Yesterday afternoon on one of the HBO channels, I caught a movie called Alex and Emma. I vaguely remember when this came out, and I'm not sure why I never saw it, since it's a Rob Reiner movie, but I didn't, so I thought I'd watch it. A nice little romantic comedy was a good way to pass a cold afternoon.
First, a quick summary: Alex (Luke Wilson) is a novelist who had some success with his first book but is now totally blocked on his second, and that's bad because he needs the rest of his advance to pay his gambling debts, but he can't get that money until he turns in the manuscript. If he doesn't get the book done and get the money in 30 days, the Cuban mafia will kill him. In desperation, he hires Emma (Kate Hudson), a court reporter/stenographer, to take dictation as he talks the book. But Emma is pretty outspoken, so she provides a constant critique as he writes. In a story within the story, we see the novel play out, and we can see that art is imitating life as the events in Alex's life influence his novel. But then we also see the book change as the relationship between Alex and Emma develops.
If I completely turned off the author part of my brain that understands the way the publishing world works, I rather enjoyed this movie. Probably not enough to want a keeper DVD, but it was one of the better romantic comedies I've seen in a while. I liked the characters and I liked the way their relationship developed. Although the "author" part of me had to be shut off, I did feel like they got a lot of the writing process right. I'm not sure I could dictate a novel to a stenographer -- it wouldn't come out in the same words I'd use to type it -- but the way the novel took shape was very familiar. What I found really fun was that the central conflict between the two characters boiled down into "pantser" vs. "plotter." Alex was very much a "pantser" writer, the kind who flies off into the mist with no idea what the book is going to be about or how it will end, letting the characters lead him along. Although she wasn't a writer, Emma had very much a "plotter" outlook. Before she bought a book, she read the ending, and if she liked the ending, she'd know that she wanted to read the book. She was frustrated with the way he was setting everything up without having any idea how it would work out and was sure he couldn't finish the book on time without having a plan.
The movie did contain one of my romantic comedy pet peeves -- the first kiss leading directly to sex -- but there was no frantic chase across town and nobody went to the airport so that the other person had to buy a last-minute ticket to get past security. There wasn't even any public humiliation. In the "novel" part of the story, there was what may be the funniest movie sex scene ever -- a depiction of what one of those ten-page sex scenes in a romance novel would look like if it were filmed (though mostly in either silhouette or extreme close-up), complete with superimposed clock to show that it was going on for hours.
But I did have to turn off my author brain because it seems like Hollywood has absolutely no idea how book publishing works. I'm sure almost all the published authors who saw this laughed themselves silly at the idea of taking a manuscript to your publisher's home at night, the publisher reading it right away and then immediately writing a check. Mind you, that was the publisher, not the editor. I suppose this could have been a small press instead of a publishing conglomerate -- and probably was, since the movie was set in Boston and the publisher was in Boston -- so maybe the publisher's star author would get that kind of attention. But with a press small enough that the publisher himself would have the author over to his house, cash flow isn't quite liquid enough for them to write six-figure checks on the spot. The contract states how soon after delivery and acceptance of the manuscript they have to pay the "on delivery" portion of the advance, and they usually hold onto that money as long as they can. I would have said that the advance seemed awfully big for a book that didn't sound all that good, but then I remembered some of the bestselling books and how awful they've been. In general, though, screenwriters seem to think of Writers Guild rates in thinking about how much money novelists make. This was a $200,000 advance, which is really, really unusual, unless the first book had been a mega bestseller, and it's more likely that the second book would have been part of a two-book deal, with the advance negotiated before they knew the first book would be a bestseller.
Then there was the usual movie/TV trope about novels, where the entire novel and all the characters in it were directly based on the author's real life. It makes you wonder if all the screenwriters are out there writing about their own lives or if that's just what they think novelists do. In this case, I suppose it had to be that way so we could have the actors from the real world part of the movie also portraying the characters in the novel world and so the novel could be used to give Alex's backstory and show how he was changing in the way he saw Emma (her character in the novel kept changing as he got to know her). It also seems like the novels in movies and TV shows are really, really bad. The plots all sound so trite, and if you did actually transcribe the novel Alex was talking, it would read like something a fifth grader wrote. Maybe they should hire an actual novelist to write the portions of novels used in screenplays.
Dear Hollywood Screenwriters,
Most of us make it all up. Really. Trust us on this. We may occasionally be inspired by real events or real people, but most of us don't directly write exactly about our own lives.
Love, Novelists
P.S. Most of us don't make as much money as you do, either.
And it snowed for about an hour more after I took that picture. I'd already figured that it would be worse than they forecast, since the snow was supposed to start around 3 a.m., and I got up at 3:45 when I was coughing and needed some water. I looked out the window, and there was already at least three inches on the ground, and it was snowing pretty heavily. It was very pretty at night and totally undisturbed. But I'm kind of ready for it all to go away. We might get above freezing tomorrow, but not by much, and it will take a while for all this to melt. Meanwhile, that lurking cold hit with a vengeance during the night, so this will be a guilt-free sofa day. A cold plus snow=book/movie and tea day. If not for the cold, I'd be tempted to take a walk because I do like walking in the snow, and it really is beautiful. I'm also getting a little stir-crazy. As much of a homebody as I am, I do usually leave the house at least a few times a week.
The fun thing is that this has been Super Bowl week, and the weather has really hampered all the activities. I had sort of considered maybe heading to downtown Fort Worth to see at least some of the goings on with ESPN broadcasting from there all week, but between the cold and the weather, that's not going to happen. Also, to quote Spike, I'm paralyzed by not caring very much. I'm probably not going to watch the game because the local PBS station is counterprogramming with a Downton Abbey marathon of the whole series. Plus, again, see above about not caring. I am sort of pulling for Green Bay, as I figure that since the team is staying in my town that makes them the hometown team, and I was a Cowboys fan in the late 70s, so I have residual Steelers hate (even though the team I cheered for was the "Steelers" and I have a very cute little black-and-gold cheerleader uniform).
Yesterday afternoon on one of the HBO channels, I caught a movie called Alex and Emma. I vaguely remember when this came out, and I'm not sure why I never saw it, since it's a Rob Reiner movie, but I didn't, so I thought I'd watch it. A nice little romantic comedy was a good way to pass a cold afternoon.
First, a quick summary: Alex (Luke Wilson) is a novelist who had some success with his first book but is now totally blocked on his second, and that's bad because he needs the rest of his advance to pay his gambling debts, but he can't get that money until he turns in the manuscript. If he doesn't get the book done and get the money in 30 days, the Cuban mafia will kill him. In desperation, he hires Emma (Kate Hudson), a court reporter/stenographer, to take dictation as he talks the book. But Emma is pretty outspoken, so she provides a constant critique as he writes. In a story within the story, we see the novel play out, and we can see that art is imitating life as the events in Alex's life influence his novel. But then we also see the book change as the relationship between Alex and Emma develops.
If I completely turned off the author part of my brain that understands the way the publishing world works, I rather enjoyed this movie. Probably not enough to want a keeper DVD, but it was one of the better romantic comedies I've seen in a while. I liked the characters and I liked the way their relationship developed. Although the "author" part of me had to be shut off, I did feel like they got a lot of the writing process right. I'm not sure I could dictate a novel to a stenographer -- it wouldn't come out in the same words I'd use to type it -- but the way the novel took shape was very familiar. What I found really fun was that the central conflict between the two characters boiled down into "pantser" vs. "plotter." Alex was very much a "pantser" writer, the kind who flies off into the mist with no idea what the book is going to be about or how it will end, letting the characters lead him along. Although she wasn't a writer, Emma had very much a "plotter" outlook. Before she bought a book, she read the ending, and if she liked the ending, she'd know that she wanted to read the book. She was frustrated with the way he was setting everything up without having any idea how it would work out and was sure he couldn't finish the book on time without having a plan.
The movie did contain one of my romantic comedy pet peeves -- the first kiss leading directly to sex -- but there was no frantic chase across town and nobody went to the airport so that the other person had to buy a last-minute ticket to get past security. There wasn't even any public humiliation. In the "novel" part of the story, there was what may be the funniest movie sex scene ever -- a depiction of what one of those ten-page sex scenes in a romance novel would look like if it were filmed (though mostly in either silhouette or extreme close-up), complete with superimposed clock to show that it was going on for hours.
But I did have to turn off my author brain because it seems like Hollywood has absolutely no idea how book publishing works. I'm sure almost all the published authors who saw this laughed themselves silly at the idea of taking a manuscript to your publisher's home at night, the publisher reading it right away and then immediately writing a check. Mind you, that was the publisher, not the editor. I suppose this could have been a small press instead of a publishing conglomerate -- and probably was, since the movie was set in Boston and the publisher was in Boston -- so maybe the publisher's star author would get that kind of attention. But with a press small enough that the publisher himself would have the author over to his house, cash flow isn't quite liquid enough for them to write six-figure checks on the spot. The contract states how soon after delivery and acceptance of the manuscript they have to pay the "on delivery" portion of the advance, and they usually hold onto that money as long as they can. I would have said that the advance seemed awfully big for a book that didn't sound all that good, but then I remembered some of the bestselling books and how awful they've been. In general, though, screenwriters seem to think of Writers Guild rates in thinking about how much money novelists make. This was a $200,000 advance, which is really, really unusual, unless the first book had been a mega bestseller, and it's more likely that the second book would have been part of a two-book deal, with the advance negotiated before they knew the first book would be a bestseller.
Then there was the usual movie/TV trope about novels, where the entire novel and all the characters in it were directly based on the author's real life. It makes you wonder if all the screenwriters are out there writing about their own lives or if that's just what they think novelists do. In this case, I suppose it had to be that way so we could have the actors from the real world part of the movie also portraying the characters in the novel world and so the novel could be used to give Alex's backstory and show how he was changing in the way he saw Emma (her character in the novel kept changing as he got to know her). It also seems like the novels in movies and TV shows are really, really bad. The plots all sound so trite, and if you did actually transcribe the novel Alex was talking, it would read like something a fifth grader wrote. Maybe they should hire an actual novelist to write the portions of novels used in screenplays.
Dear Hollywood Screenwriters,
Most of us make it all up. Really. Trust us on this. We may occasionally be inspired by real events or real people, but most of us don't directly write exactly about our own lives.
Love, Novelists
P.S. Most of us don't make as much money as you do, either.
February 3, 2011
Day ? of Ice
It's day whatever of the Ice Storm That Will Not Go Away. No new accumulation since Tuesday (though we're supposed to get snow tomorrow), but it's been so bitterly cold that what is there isn't leaving. My front porch looks like it's covered in fluffy drifts of snow, but when I picked up my newspaper this morning, I bent down to touch the "snow" and found that it's actually a couple of inches worth of solid ice, and it's that way all the way down the sidewalk. We might get above freezing on Saturday, but I suspect it will take a while for all this to melt. No power failures last night or this morning, so at least that's improved. I've got a split pea and ham soup in the Crock Pot for dinner tonight. I figure that the power going out for fifteen minutes wouldn't have a huge impact on something cooking all day on Low.
It is nice that the being iced in coincides with a between-books break and a nasty chest cold, so I can have a guilt-free wallow. I'm trying to turn this into a mood-setting "retreat" to prepare for the next book. Yesterday, though, I decided to heed the urgings to reduce power consumption, so I kept the TV off and just read. I don't do that as often as I'd like or as often as I probably should. Other than when I'm reading in bed just before going to sleep, I seldom just sit down and read, without doing anything else at the same time. It was nice to spend hours on end curled up with a book.
In a mad burst of nostalgia, I took an old favorite from my high school years off the shelf to re-read. I guess the circumstances were similar to the first time I read it, and that was what triggered it. Back when I was in high school, I got really sick (turned out to be a tracheal infection -- not fun), and after going to the doctor and finding out I'd be out of school for a while, my mom and I stopped by the used bookstore near the hospital district. That was really the only decent bookstore in town. We just had a tiny B. Dalton in the mall that mostly had romance novels, the latest bestsellers, children's books and cookbooks. Their science fiction/fantasy bookshelf was smaller than the one I currently have dedicated to that genre at home. But this used bookstore had a great selection (with so few new books coming into the area, I'm not sure where they got their supply of used books). I had just read The Sword of Shannara from the library and was excited to see that there was a sequel at the store. But, alas, the only copy they had was a fancy trade paperback with illustrations, and it was more money than I had to spend. The lady who ran the store took pity on me, since I was so obviously ill, declared that the book was damaged, and cut the price. It was actually fairly damaged -- it had some water stains and the cover was pretty battered -- but I don't think that was the reason she dropped the price. To show how much book prices have gone up, the cover price on that book was $7.99, and I was balking at paying $4 for a book, but at that time you could get a new mass-market paperback for $2.25, so $4 for a used book did seem very high. Anyway, it was winter and gray and nasty, but I was able to lose myself in another world for quite some time.
I was almost afraid to re-read it, for fear that much of what I liked about it had to do with those circumstances, but I did still like a lot of it. I liked the main characters and the quest part of the plot. I'll admit to skipping the Epic Fantasy part of the story with the huge battle scenes. It was easy to skip those scenes, since Terry Brooks so kindly provided a recap at the end of each section. There would be about five to ten pages of "Thrust, parry, spin" and demons attacking, with a paragraph at the end in which the viewpoint character surveys the scene of the battle and thinks about how X, Y and Z had fallen in battle and A, B, and C were wounded and being treated, but they had held the line for now -- and yet the enemy was regrouping. Which was all we really needed to know about the battle, anyway, unless you like dwelling on the detail of every single sword thrust. But I really did like the more intimate side of the story, in which our two unlikely heroes set out against all odds on their desperate quest. Those were nice characters, and I liked the way their relationship developed along the way.
There was just one thing that started driving me insane the more I read, and I suspect it was a combination of Brooks' relative lack of writing experience at the time that book was written and the fantasy conventions of the time, in which a pseudo-archaic tone was the norm. He had this strange aversion to pronouns, and instead of using pronouns, he used descriptors of the characters. In places where "he," "she" or "they" would be expected, he would use things like "the Valeman and the Elven girl." Think about how many times in a paragraph the words "he," "she" or "they" would pop up, and you can imagine how cumbersome it got with those descriptors instead. This was in sections where there were generally only two characters, a guy and a girl, so he could have gone for pages and pages using only "he" and "she" without any confusion at all. You could have cut 50 pages from the book just by substituting "they" for each time he used "the Valeman and the Elven girl." Even worse, these scenes were from the point of view of one of those characters, so did they really think of themselves that way?
I do see this occasionally pop up in unpublished attempts at fantasy when I'm critiquing or judging, and it's a good reason why you read recent books to get a sense for what can fly in the market instead of bestsellers from thirty years ago. I burned out on epic fantasy in the mid-90s, so I haven't read any Brooks since then to know if he's still doing it. I think that style is used in Beowolf, so it does have that epic fantasy feel to it, but these days unless you're really, really careful, it reads as kind of amateurish (maybe because of so many people whose idea of fantasy was heavily influenced by Terry Brooks). Find one good way to refer to your characters that makes sense for how the viewpoint character would think about them (usually their names unless it's a person the viewpoint character would think of by title), and then stick to that plus pronouns, except for in specific circumstances. Pronouns are your friend. They're kind of invisible words, like "said," that we don't really notice in repetition. You can say "he" or "she" a dozen times in a paragraph and no one will notice. Use a description several times in one paragraph and it makes readers like me itch for a red pencil. It's even worse when you mix up descriptions to avoid repeating (which Brooks didn't do -- at least he was consistent), like referring to the same character various times as "the young man," "the trainee warrior," "the youth," etc. Then it's hard for readers to tell if you're talking about the same person or multiple characters.
Now I almost want to find some current epic fantasy to see if this style is still the norm or if I'm totally off-base. I just don't really have the patience for "epic" these days. For today's reading, I think I may be leaning more toward something chick-litty.
It is nice that the being iced in coincides with a between-books break and a nasty chest cold, so I can have a guilt-free wallow. I'm trying to turn this into a mood-setting "retreat" to prepare for the next book. Yesterday, though, I decided to heed the urgings to reduce power consumption, so I kept the TV off and just read. I don't do that as often as I'd like or as often as I probably should. Other than when I'm reading in bed just before going to sleep, I seldom just sit down and read, without doing anything else at the same time. It was nice to spend hours on end curled up with a book.
In a mad burst of nostalgia, I took an old favorite from my high school years off the shelf to re-read. I guess the circumstances were similar to the first time I read it, and that was what triggered it. Back when I was in high school, I got really sick (turned out to be a tracheal infection -- not fun), and after going to the doctor and finding out I'd be out of school for a while, my mom and I stopped by the used bookstore near the hospital district. That was really the only decent bookstore in town. We just had a tiny B. Dalton in the mall that mostly had romance novels, the latest bestsellers, children's books and cookbooks. Their science fiction/fantasy bookshelf was smaller than the one I currently have dedicated to that genre at home. But this used bookstore had a great selection (with so few new books coming into the area, I'm not sure where they got their supply of used books). I had just read The Sword of Shannara from the library and was excited to see that there was a sequel at the store. But, alas, the only copy they had was a fancy trade paperback with illustrations, and it was more money than I had to spend. The lady who ran the store took pity on me, since I was so obviously ill, declared that the book was damaged, and cut the price. It was actually fairly damaged -- it had some water stains and the cover was pretty battered -- but I don't think that was the reason she dropped the price. To show how much book prices have gone up, the cover price on that book was $7.99, and I was balking at paying $4 for a book, but at that time you could get a new mass-market paperback for $2.25, so $4 for a used book did seem very high. Anyway, it was winter and gray and nasty, but I was able to lose myself in another world for quite some time.
I was almost afraid to re-read it, for fear that much of what I liked about it had to do with those circumstances, but I did still like a lot of it. I liked the main characters and the quest part of the plot. I'll admit to skipping the Epic Fantasy part of the story with the huge battle scenes. It was easy to skip those scenes, since Terry Brooks so kindly provided a recap at the end of each section. There would be about five to ten pages of "Thrust, parry, spin" and demons attacking, with a paragraph at the end in which the viewpoint character surveys the scene of the battle and thinks about how X, Y and Z had fallen in battle and A, B, and C were wounded and being treated, but they had held the line for now -- and yet the enemy was regrouping. Which was all we really needed to know about the battle, anyway, unless you like dwelling on the detail of every single sword thrust. But I really did like the more intimate side of the story, in which our two unlikely heroes set out against all odds on their desperate quest. Those were nice characters, and I liked the way their relationship developed along the way.
There was just one thing that started driving me insane the more I read, and I suspect it was a combination of Brooks' relative lack of writing experience at the time that book was written and the fantasy conventions of the time, in which a pseudo-archaic tone was the norm. He had this strange aversion to pronouns, and instead of using pronouns, he used descriptors of the characters. In places where "he," "she" or "they" would be expected, he would use things like "the Valeman and the Elven girl." Think about how many times in a paragraph the words "he," "she" or "they" would pop up, and you can imagine how cumbersome it got with those descriptors instead. This was in sections where there were generally only two characters, a guy and a girl, so he could have gone for pages and pages using only "he" and "she" without any confusion at all. You could have cut 50 pages from the book just by substituting "they" for each time he used "the Valeman and the Elven girl." Even worse, these scenes were from the point of view of one of those characters, so did they really think of themselves that way?
I do see this occasionally pop up in unpublished attempts at fantasy when I'm critiquing or judging, and it's a good reason why you read recent books to get a sense for what can fly in the market instead of bestsellers from thirty years ago. I burned out on epic fantasy in the mid-90s, so I haven't read any Brooks since then to know if he's still doing it. I think that style is used in Beowolf, so it does have that epic fantasy feel to it, but these days unless you're really, really careful, it reads as kind of amateurish (maybe because of so many people whose idea of fantasy was heavily influenced by Terry Brooks). Find one good way to refer to your characters that makes sense for how the viewpoint character would think about them (usually their names unless it's a person the viewpoint character would think of by title), and then stick to that plus pronouns, except for in specific circumstances. Pronouns are your friend. They're kind of invisible words, like "said," that we don't really notice in repetition. You can say "he" or "she" a dozen times in a paragraph and no one will notice. Use a description several times in one paragraph and it makes readers like me itch for a red pencil. It's even worse when you mix up descriptions to avoid repeating (which Brooks didn't do -- at least he was consistent), like referring to the same character various times as "the young man," "the trainee warrior," "the youth," etc. Then it's hard for readers to tell if you're talking about the same person or multiple characters.
Now I almost want to find some current epic fantasy to see if this style is still the norm or if I'm totally off-base. I just don't really have the patience for "epic" these days. For today's reading, I think I may be leaning more toward something chick-litty.
February 2, 2011
The Hero's Journey: Return with the Elixir
We've got the coldest temperatures in more than twenty years, and because our houses and heating systems aren't designed for this sort of weather, that means the power grid is overloaded, and we're getting rolling blackouts. I lost power at least once during the night and then for about twenty minutes this morning while I was having breakfast and then again while writing this post. It looks like we won't have choir tonight, since the church web site said all activities today were canceled. There was a crock pot soup I wanted to try making if I'm not going to be out this evening, but crock pot cooking isn't a great idea if you're going to be randomly losing power. I'm trying to hurry and finish up the stuff that must be done on the computer, and then I may make this a reading day so I won't have to worry about power going in and out on the TV. Come to think of it, I may unplug everything so I don't have to worry about power surges when the power comes back on after a blackout. This will be a good day to use the fireplace and spend the afternoon by the fire with a book.
We've reached the last stage of the hero's journey. He's gone on his quest, survived an ordeal and has gone through a death and resurrection. Now he gets to go home again in the Return with the Elixir stage. The archetypal myth is a quest story, where the hero has to get something and then bring it home to heal the land, and this is the part where he returns with the thing he got and puts it to use. This is the Grail being brought back to heal the Fisher King, and through him, the land. It's sort of a reminder of why the hero went through all this in the first place, as he sees the people he cares about being safe, free or healthy. The Lord of the Rings is an inverted quest, since the object of the quest is to get rid of something rather than to find it, and in this part of the story, our heroes return home without the deadly ring to a Shire that no longer lives in the shadow of evil.
This is also where we really see the hero as a new man. Seeing him back in the Ordinary World setting gives us an opportunity to notice how much he's changed during his journey. He may take a leadership role when before he lurked on the edges, or a loner may become part of the community. Or, he may just have a different attitude. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas from Oz, she has a new appreciation for her family and friends there since she's learned that there's no place like home.
There are a lot of things that can represent the "elixir." A big one is love. Weddings, engagements and the first "I love you" often come at this point, with the hero having earned them through his actions or being able to give and receive love after he's been changed. Another is a change in the world brought about by the hero's actions, whether it's a literal healing like in the myths or something like the overthrow of a tyrant. The elixir may involve the hero taking on a new role, fulfilling his destiny. In a more tragic story, the other characters or even the audience may be the ones to receive the elixir the hero doesn't live to see, as we can learn from his sad example.
In fantasy stories, the character may return to the "real" world from the magical world. Most of the Harry Potter books start with Harry in the ordinary world of his relatives' home, then he travels to the magical setting of Hogwarts, and then at the end he returns to the ordinary world, carrying with him whatever happened to him while he was at school (most of the movies cut out the return sequences). Or in the Narnia books, which are about crossing over into a magical world, the story ends when the children come back to England.
But not every story involves a literal return to the beginning. The hero may never go on a literal journey. It may be an emotional journey. In that case, the Return may be a metaphorical one, revisiting an event, person or situation from the beginning, and we see how the hero handles it in a different way, showing us that the story has come full circle. The movie version of About a Boy starts with Hugh Grant having a solitary Christmas and claiming to enjoy it, and it ends with him surrounded by friends in a big Christmas celebration. During the Ordinary World segment of While You Were Sleeping, we see Sandra Bullock in her booth, unable to bring herself to speak to the handsome man who flings his token at her through the slot without even noticing she exists. At the end, she's back in her booth, and the man she loves drops an engagement ring through the slot.
Sometimes, the hero goes on to face a new Ordinary World, a new normal, after going through his ordeal. He doesn't go back home, but rather moves forward. This is what we see in the original Star Wars. Luke doesn't go back home after destroying the Death Star. It's implied by the medal ceremony at the end that he's now a part of the Rebel Alliance and will now be working with them to fight the Empire. In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Tristan becomes the king of Stormhold and stays there instead of going back to his village. What was the special world of the story has become his new ordinary world.
This part of the story has to do a lot of things -- and do them pretty quickly. It needs to tie up most of the loose ends of the plot and subplots (except for those being left open for sequels). It needs to give us a hint of where the main characters will be after the story. It needs to definitively answer the story question posed at the beginning, and it needs to give the story a definitive end. This is also the last big emotional surge for the reader. For this reason, you don't want to drag this part out too long. You'll have had a high point at the climax, the resurrection moment, and it's sort of downhill from there, other than a nice burst of satisfaction that comes with the real conclusion -- that thing that makes you close the book with a satisfied sigh. If you drag out the ending too long or have too many "endings" as you wrap up each individual plot thread, the reader doesn't know when to have that last big sigh and may not be as satisfied with the end. If the reader has sighed too early and the book keeps going, she'll just get bored and irritated. If she's held back, waiting for the big one, it may lose the impact when it does come. At the same time, you don't want an ending that's so abrupt that it gives you whiplash. Readers generally like a little wrapping up.
More literary stories may not provide closure at all, instead leaving things more ambiguous so that the reader gets to decide what really happened to the characters after the story. On the other extreme, romance novels may not only have the Return with the Elixir segment where the hero and heroine finally commit to each other, but they'll also have an epilogue showing the characters months or even years later as a happy couple, often with their children.
Next: Putting it all together and using this structure.
We've reached the last stage of the hero's journey. He's gone on his quest, survived an ordeal and has gone through a death and resurrection. Now he gets to go home again in the Return with the Elixir stage. The archetypal myth is a quest story, where the hero has to get something and then bring it home to heal the land, and this is the part where he returns with the thing he got and puts it to use. This is the Grail being brought back to heal the Fisher King, and through him, the land. It's sort of a reminder of why the hero went through all this in the first place, as he sees the people he cares about being safe, free or healthy. The Lord of the Rings is an inverted quest, since the object of the quest is to get rid of something rather than to find it, and in this part of the story, our heroes return home without the deadly ring to a Shire that no longer lives in the shadow of evil.
This is also where we really see the hero as a new man. Seeing him back in the Ordinary World setting gives us an opportunity to notice how much he's changed during his journey. He may take a leadership role when before he lurked on the edges, or a loner may become part of the community. Or, he may just have a different attitude. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas from Oz, she has a new appreciation for her family and friends there since she's learned that there's no place like home.
There are a lot of things that can represent the "elixir." A big one is love. Weddings, engagements and the first "I love you" often come at this point, with the hero having earned them through his actions or being able to give and receive love after he's been changed. Another is a change in the world brought about by the hero's actions, whether it's a literal healing like in the myths or something like the overthrow of a tyrant. The elixir may involve the hero taking on a new role, fulfilling his destiny. In a more tragic story, the other characters or even the audience may be the ones to receive the elixir the hero doesn't live to see, as we can learn from his sad example.
In fantasy stories, the character may return to the "real" world from the magical world. Most of the Harry Potter books start with Harry in the ordinary world of his relatives' home, then he travels to the magical setting of Hogwarts, and then at the end he returns to the ordinary world, carrying with him whatever happened to him while he was at school (most of the movies cut out the return sequences). Or in the Narnia books, which are about crossing over into a magical world, the story ends when the children come back to England.
But not every story involves a literal return to the beginning. The hero may never go on a literal journey. It may be an emotional journey. In that case, the Return may be a metaphorical one, revisiting an event, person or situation from the beginning, and we see how the hero handles it in a different way, showing us that the story has come full circle. The movie version of About a Boy starts with Hugh Grant having a solitary Christmas and claiming to enjoy it, and it ends with him surrounded by friends in a big Christmas celebration. During the Ordinary World segment of While You Were Sleeping, we see Sandra Bullock in her booth, unable to bring herself to speak to the handsome man who flings his token at her through the slot without even noticing she exists. At the end, she's back in her booth, and the man she loves drops an engagement ring through the slot.
Sometimes, the hero goes on to face a new Ordinary World, a new normal, after going through his ordeal. He doesn't go back home, but rather moves forward. This is what we see in the original Star Wars. Luke doesn't go back home after destroying the Death Star. It's implied by the medal ceremony at the end that he's now a part of the Rebel Alliance and will now be working with them to fight the Empire. In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Tristan becomes the king of Stormhold and stays there instead of going back to his village. What was the special world of the story has become his new ordinary world.
This part of the story has to do a lot of things -- and do them pretty quickly. It needs to tie up most of the loose ends of the plot and subplots (except for those being left open for sequels). It needs to give us a hint of where the main characters will be after the story. It needs to definitively answer the story question posed at the beginning, and it needs to give the story a definitive end. This is also the last big emotional surge for the reader. For this reason, you don't want to drag this part out too long. You'll have had a high point at the climax, the resurrection moment, and it's sort of downhill from there, other than a nice burst of satisfaction that comes with the real conclusion -- that thing that makes you close the book with a satisfied sigh. If you drag out the ending too long or have too many "endings" as you wrap up each individual plot thread, the reader doesn't know when to have that last big sigh and may not be as satisfied with the end. If the reader has sighed too early and the book keeps going, she'll just get bored and irritated. If she's held back, waiting for the big one, it may lose the impact when it does come. At the same time, you don't want an ending that's so abrupt that it gives you whiplash. Readers generally like a little wrapping up.
More literary stories may not provide closure at all, instead leaving things more ambiguous so that the reader gets to decide what really happened to the characters after the story. On the other extreme, romance novels may not only have the Return with the Elixir segment where the hero and heroine finally commit to each other, but they'll also have an epilogue showing the characters months or even years later as a happy couple, often with their children.
Next: Putting it all together and using this structure.
February 1, 2011
Snow Day!
Texas is so incredibly hospitable that we managed to welcome the folks from Green Bay and Pittsburgh who are in town for the Super Bowl with "just like home" weather. Isn't it nice of us to schedule an ice storm for our guests? This is one of those days when I'm very glad I don't have to fake illness (which I wouldn't have had to do, since I am actually mildly sick) to avoid driving to work on bad roads. And, for a change, I'm actually between projects on a snow day, so I'm taking a snow day. I may do a little work-related stuff (like this), but it looks like a good day to watch that Masterpiece Theatre literary costume drama DVD I picked up at the library yesterday. This morning, I've been watching people attempting to drive on the iced-over road my office window overlooks. There's one particularly nasty spot that seems to take everyone by surprise.
The real fun of the morning was that I literally couldn't open my front door. My front door faces north, and the freezing rain, sleet and snow all blew up against it, so it was frozen shut when I tried to get the newspaper this morning. I had to get out my hair dryer and an extension cord and blow around the edges enough so I could get the door open and get the newspaper. On the up side, the snow drift against the door does seem to be keeping the wind out, and the wind really is howling. I would even say it is wuthering. I really like that word. It's so perfectly descriptive.
Yesterday's chick flick marathon ended up amounting to watching most of Valentine's Day on HBO when I was too lazy to get off the sofa and the Nyquil was kicking in. It seems like they were trying to do the Love Actually thing but with a different holiday. The problem is that Valentine's Day is such an artificial holiday, and that made the whole thing seem a bit shallow and fake. You know how when movies, TV shows and commercials spoof or satirize romantic movies they show those kinds of scenes that we all recognize from that sort of thing (I'm thinking particularly of the movie scenes in the series Extras)? Well, this movie is made entirely of those cliche romantic comedy scenes, with a few Hallmark commercials mixed in. Since it's a mix of at least ten different plot lines, they don't bother with any of the in-between scenes. It's just the Standard Rom-Com Moments Highlight Reel.
Plus:
Dear Hollywood Executives,
Please stop trying to sell me Ashton Kutcher as the perfect best friend type of guy I should be falling in love with. Maybe I'm just old (though I'm younger than his wife), but I'm not buying it. At all. The stoner slacker a woman clings to out of poor self-esteem, maybe. The hot but dim athlete who can't spell monogamy, so he certainly doesn't practice it, yeah. But the super-sweet, almost gender-neutral nice guy best friend, it's just not working for me -- and I tend to like that kind of guy in movies.
Love, Me
It may just be that I overdosed on Downton Abbey on PBS and am now seriously craving the sumptuous costume dramas.
Oh, some more snow flurries just started (at least, I think it's falling and not just snow that's already fallen being blown around by all the wuthering winds), so yeah, I think it's an afternoon for the electric blanket on the sofa, some tea and scones (or I could even get really crazy and make crumpets) and some costumey goodness.
The real fun of the morning was that I literally couldn't open my front door. My front door faces north, and the freezing rain, sleet and snow all blew up against it, so it was frozen shut when I tried to get the newspaper this morning. I had to get out my hair dryer and an extension cord and blow around the edges enough so I could get the door open and get the newspaper. On the up side, the snow drift against the door does seem to be keeping the wind out, and the wind really is howling. I would even say it is wuthering. I really like that word. It's so perfectly descriptive.
Yesterday's chick flick marathon ended up amounting to watching most of Valentine's Day on HBO when I was too lazy to get off the sofa and the Nyquil was kicking in. It seems like they were trying to do the Love Actually thing but with a different holiday. The problem is that Valentine's Day is such an artificial holiday, and that made the whole thing seem a bit shallow and fake. You know how when movies, TV shows and commercials spoof or satirize romantic movies they show those kinds of scenes that we all recognize from that sort of thing (I'm thinking particularly of the movie scenes in the series Extras)? Well, this movie is made entirely of those cliche romantic comedy scenes, with a few Hallmark commercials mixed in. Since it's a mix of at least ten different plot lines, they don't bother with any of the in-between scenes. It's just the Standard Rom-Com Moments Highlight Reel.
Plus:
Dear Hollywood Executives,
Please stop trying to sell me Ashton Kutcher as the perfect best friend type of guy I should be falling in love with. Maybe I'm just old (though I'm younger than his wife), but I'm not buying it. At all. The stoner slacker a woman clings to out of poor self-esteem, maybe. The hot but dim athlete who can't spell monogamy, so he certainly doesn't practice it, yeah. But the super-sweet, almost gender-neutral nice guy best friend, it's just not working for me -- and I tend to like that kind of guy in movies.
Love, Me
It may just be that I overdosed on Downton Abbey on PBS and am now seriously craving the sumptuous costume dramas.
Oh, some more snow flurries just started (at least, I think it's falling and not just snow that's already fallen being blown around by all the wuthering winds), so yeah, I think it's an afternoon for the electric blanket on the sofa, some tea and scones (or I could even get really crazy and make crumpets) and some costumey goodness.
January 31, 2011
Stocking Up for the Storm
They're forecasting a big cold snap and winter storm for tomorrow, so this morning I had to go out and stock up, just in case. Because I have my priorities in order, that means I went to the library, since I'd finished all my books. But I seem to be in a weird reading mood, so that nothing on the shelves really caught my eye. I already had everything I wanted to read. I ended up with only one book and one DVD, but with a reading list of books I own. This afternoon I'll do the grocery shopping part of winter stocking up. I'm almost out of cocoa, and that's crucial if there's going to be ice or snow. I also think I have the first ticklings of a lurking cold, and if I stock up on good cold remedy stuff, that will probably hold it off. Without plenty of chicken soup, I'm bound to get sicker.
In other news, I finished my first draft Saturday night. Yay! I already know I'll need to rewrite the last chapter because I got excited and started just spewing out words. It's like when I read a book I'm really into. I always have to go back and re-read the last chapter or so right after finishing it because I was so eager to get to the end that I just skimmed over stuff. I figure it's a good sign if my heart starts racing when I get to the exciting part in a book as I write it. I'm going to give myself a bit of a break this week to shift mental gears and move on to the next project. I'm thinking chick flick marathon this afternoon. I don't think I have the brain power for anything else.
Meanwhile, today is the ninth anniversary of the day I got laid off from my last job. That means tomorrow it will have been nine years since I've worked for anyone but myself. I wasn't exactly sad to be laid off. I was expecting it, and I was kind of planning to quit anyway, so the layoff meant I got severance pay and the sympathy of all the clients who then hired me as a freelancer. Still, the way they did it and the circumstances leading up to it weren't ideal and I did have some anger about that. After doing all the paperwork and leaving the office for the last time, I indulged in a Harry Potter reading spree. I certainly hoped at the time that I could make flying solo work, but I don't think I realized then that I really could do without a regular job. I have to say, the job I have now has been the only one to really make me happy.
In other news, I finished my first draft Saturday night. Yay! I already know I'll need to rewrite the last chapter because I got excited and started just spewing out words. It's like when I read a book I'm really into. I always have to go back and re-read the last chapter or so right after finishing it because I was so eager to get to the end that I just skimmed over stuff. I figure it's a good sign if my heart starts racing when I get to the exciting part in a book as I write it. I'm going to give myself a bit of a break this week to shift mental gears and move on to the next project. I'm thinking chick flick marathon this afternoon. I don't think I have the brain power for anything else.
Meanwhile, today is the ninth anniversary of the day I got laid off from my last job. That means tomorrow it will have been nine years since I've worked for anyone but myself. I wasn't exactly sad to be laid off. I was expecting it, and I was kind of planning to quit anyway, so the layoff meant I got severance pay and the sympathy of all the clients who then hired me as a freelancer. Still, the way they did it and the circumstances leading up to it weren't ideal and I did have some anger about that. After doing all the paperwork and leaving the office for the last time, I indulged in a Harry Potter reading spree. I certainly hoped at the time that I could make flying solo work, but I don't think I realized then that I really could do without a regular job. I have to say, the job I have now has been the only one to really make me happy.
January 28, 2011
Almost Done!
I only have about fifty more pages to go! Well, fifty more pages to my target page count. It's possible that I'll have more story than that because some unexpected things happened along the way and I still have two major events to go. This kind of book can be a bit longer, but on the other hand, publishers like shorter books these days because of production and shipping costs. I'll probably just do a ruthless edit and make it really, really tight if I do end up going longer than planned. There's one scene I wrote last night that possibly borders on fanfic shippyness, though I think I could justify its inclusion. It kept eating into my brain, so I had to write it. When I revise the book, I'll decide how important it really is and if it really belongs there.
It seems like the TV networks are assisting me in giving me extra writing time tonight, which I'll need as I have to sing for a funeral this afternoon. No condolences necessary. I never met this person. I just sing and have a flexible schedule, so when they need an ensemble for a funeral service, it's something I can do. Anyway, from what I'm hearing, they won't be showing a new episode of Supernatural tonight, though the Yahoo TV listings still have it. I haven't checked the TimeWarner digital cable guide, but it usually doesn't acknowledge evening programming until around five. I could have sworn I saw a listing for a new Phineas and Ferb tonight earlier in the week, but now it's not showing up in the listings. So, yeah, I'll be writing like a maniac. There may even be gleeful cackling when I'm working on the good parts.
And now, since I've let the morning get away from me, I need to go take a shower and get dressed to go learn the funeral music.
It seems like the TV networks are assisting me in giving me extra writing time tonight, which I'll need as I have to sing for a funeral this afternoon. No condolences necessary. I never met this person. I just sing and have a flexible schedule, so when they need an ensemble for a funeral service, it's something I can do. Anyway, from what I'm hearing, they won't be showing a new episode of Supernatural tonight, though the Yahoo TV listings still have it. I haven't checked the TimeWarner digital cable guide, but it usually doesn't acknowledge evening programming until around five. I could have sworn I saw a listing for a new Phineas and Ferb tonight earlier in the week, but now it's not showing up in the listings. So, yeah, I'll be writing like a maniac. There may even be gleeful cackling when I'm working on the good parts.
And now, since I've let the morning get away from me, I need to go take a shower and get dressed to go learn the funeral music.
January 27, 2011
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam
I have about 75 more pages to write in the current monstrosity, so I'm hoping to really bust myself and finish it this weekend. I didn't add new pages yesterday in part because it was a busy day and in part because there was something in the last bit I wrote that I was unhappy with, and I took some time to untangle the problem, which may require some backtracking, but I think I like the solution. We'll see when I actually write it. I now think I know just about everything else that will happen in this book and how it will happen, so theoretically it should be easy from here. "Easy" in a relative sense because it's never truly easy.
In other news, I've learned that I'm getting a larger-than-expected royalty check. It's not as huge as the one I got from Japan in December, but it's a couple hundred more dollars than I anticipated. When I finish this book, I will not only finally get around to buying that new computer I need, but I may finally get a Blu-Ray player, using the "bonus" amount in the royalty check for something fun. I figure that's the wave of the future and if I'm ever going to upgrade I should probably do so before I buy more non-Blu-Ray DVDs, and I do have an HDTV, so I might as well get HD for something. I'll have to figure out exactly what functionality I want, as I'd like to be prepared for what I might want in the near future. For instance, you can get them with wireless networking built in for Internet streaming. I don't currently get Netflix and I don't currently have WiFi at home, but it is something I might consider for the future, and maybe the wireless streaming would allow me to use the computer as a media server for any programming obtained over the Internet (hulu, network web sites, etc.). I'll have to do some research and talk to my techie friends. This isn't a rush, just something I'll start thinking about, probably after I finish the next book. It falls after the new computer (but I guess if I'm going to use the computer for video stuff, it may factor into which computer I get) and after the new dishwasher on the priority list.
I don't know if it's just me, but the spammers have really hit full-force this week, and it's an odd kind of spamming. I haven't had a lot of spam comments on my blog, but this week my Blogger site has gone nuts with it. In the past, the few spam comments I've received have been really obvious, where the comment was pure spam. Then it started being the weird, vague comments that went something like, "This is a very interesting topic, and you've covered it well. I like what you said," but then that would be followed by a string of links to online pharmacies, places to buy counterfeit designer clothes or sites where you could meet hot women. This week's spam comments, though, were pretty specific, actually commenting on the subject matter of the blog posts. Why were they spam? Well, the user name was "Generic (drug name)" and the link in the user name led to an online pharmacy (no, I didn't click on it, but it showed up when I hovered over it). And the posts being commented on were years old.
I did pause for thought before deleting all these comments. Is posting something relevant but with a commercial link in the user name that different from what I do when I post comments on other blogs and use my name and link to my web site? I don't comment unless it's something I would have said even if no one knew I was an author (unless it's specifically about writing or publishing, of course), but I do hope that if people are interested in what I have to say, they'll follow the link and maybe try my books. But I decided that there was a difference -- I'm using my real name, not a business name. I'm generally commenting on topics that are at least marginally related, like books, science fiction and fantasy or writing. And since I'm pretty certain there's no legal generic version of the drug being advertised, these links are a scam that I don't want to expose my readers to.
I've heard that most of those "make money at home on the Internet" ads are about this kind of thing, paying people to go around the Internet and post spam comments, and the spammers are using real people to get past the various technologies designed to weed out automated spammers. Maybe whatever person who'd fallen for this work-at-home scheme really was reading my blog and commenting appropriately. But in last night's wave of spam posts coming from that name, we were back to the generic "this is an interesting post and I like what you've said" comments, so either there's more than one person posting under the name or the person got bored with reading posts and making relevant comments and just went to pasting in the generic comments.
In general, I go with the "my blog, my rules" philosophy, so comments are allowed at my pleasure. I generally don't censor, but if there's the slightest whiff of spam, it's toast. If you can prove that your given name is "Generic" and your last name is the name of a popular drug marketed to men, then I may let it slide, but your user name shouldn't link to an online pharmacy.
In other news, I've learned that I'm getting a larger-than-expected royalty check. It's not as huge as the one I got from Japan in December, but it's a couple hundred more dollars than I anticipated. When I finish this book, I will not only finally get around to buying that new computer I need, but I may finally get a Blu-Ray player, using the "bonus" amount in the royalty check for something fun. I figure that's the wave of the future and if I'm ever going to upgrade I should probably do so before I buy more non-Blu-Ray DVDs, and I do have an HDTV, so I might as well get HD for something. I'll have to figure out exactly what functionality I want, as I'd like to be prepared for what I might want in the near future. For instance, you can get them with wireless networking built in for Internet streaming. I don't currently get Netflix and I don't currently have WiFi at home, but it is something I might consider for the future, and maybe the wireless streaming would allow me to use the computer as a media server for any programming obtained over the Internet (hulu, network web sites, etc.). I'll have to do some research and talk to my techie friends. This isn't a rush, just something I'll start thinking about, probably after I finish the next book. It falls after the new computer (but I guess if I'm going to use the computer for video stuff, it may factor into which computer I get) and after the new dishwasher on the priority list.
I don't know if it's just me, but the spammers have really hit full-force this week, and it's an odd kind of spamming. I haven't had a lot of spam comments on my blog, but this week my Blogger site has gone nuts with it. In the past, the few spam comments I've received have been really obvious, where the comment was pure spam. Then it started being the weird, vague comments that went something like, "This is a very interesting topic, and you've covered it well. I like what you said," but then that would be followed by a string of links to online pharmacies, places to buy counterfeit designer clothes or sites where you could meet hot women. This week's spam comments, though, were pretty specific, actually commenting on the subject matter of the blog posts. Why were they spam? Well, the user name was "Generic (drug name)" and the link in the user name led to an online pharmacy (no, I didn't click on it, but it showed up when I hovered over it). And the posts being commented on were years old.
I did pause for thought before deleting all these comments. Is posting something relevant but with a commercial link in the user name that different from what I do when I post comments on other blogs and use my name and link to my web site? I don't comment unless it's something I would have said even if no one knew I was an author (unless it's specifically about writing or publishing, of course), but I do hope that if people are interested in what I have to say, they'll follow the link and maybe try my books. But I decided that there was a difference -- I'm using my real name, not a business name. I'm generally commenting on topics that are at least marginally related, like books, science fiction and fantasy or writing. And since I'm pretty certain there's no legal generic version of the drug being advertised, these links are a scam that I don't want to expose my readers to.
I've heard that most of those "make money at home on the Internet" ads are about this kind of thing, paying people to go around the Internet and post spam comments, and the spammers are using real people to get past the various technologies designed to weed out automated spammers. Maybe whatever person who'd fallen for this work-at-home scheme really was reading my blog and commenting appropriately. But in last night's wave of spam posts coming from that name, we were back to the generic "this is an interesting post and I like what you've said" comments, so either there's more than one person posting under the name or the person got bored with reading posts and making relevant comments and just went to pasting in the generic comments.
In general, I go with the "my blog, my rules" philosophy, so comments are allowed at my pleasure. I generally don't censor, but if there's the slightest whiff of spam, it's toast. If you can prove that your given name is "Generic" and your last name is the name of a popular drug marketed to men, then I may let it slide, but your user name shouldn't link to an online pharmacy.
January 26, 2011
Naming People
I've got another Enchanted, Inc. reader question, this time about the character names in the series. I generally put a lot of thought into naming characters, and most of the time, the names have some kind of significance or meaning. I have a book of baby names that's supposedly a book of American names, but it seems to have a lot of British names, including those of Celtic origin. Plus, it includes names that were surnames that have become first names, and it has lists of most common names from various years.
I think Katie was the first character to get a name. I wanted a "girl next door" kind of name, and initially I wanted a name that was a more formal kind of name that had a girl-next-door kind of nickname. One of my best friends in elementary school was named Kathleen and went by Katie, and I'd always liked that, so I went with that. The idea was that this character would be trying to "upgrade" herself from "Katie" to "Kathleen" in New York, but once I started writing, that never really caught on. She was just a Katie and wasn't the kind of person to try to ditch a nickname. A chandler is a candle maker, and since Katie's strength seems to be shining light on things or making things more clear, I thought that would be a meaningful last name for her.
When I decided that the actual Merlin would be the boss, I guess I was influenced by the Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy in which Merlin was Welsh and decided to make the basis of the magical culture be Welsh. And so, my main magical character was named Owen, which is the Anglicized version of the Welsh name Owain, who is a major figure in the Mabinogion. The name means "well born." I didn't know much about him at the time other than that he was the good-looking co-worker at the magical corporation. Actually, at the time I didn't even know he would end up being the main magical character. For a last name, a palmer is a pilgrim or seeker, and although I didn't know the character yet, I liked the idea of what that implied, someone who's well born, but still a seeker. I think it fits well with his intellectual curiosity, although Palmer isn't his birth name. It's an adopted name. He was adopted as a baby, and then when non-magical parents were freaked out by a kid with magical powers (though they didn't realize that's what it was), the magical world ended up finding him and getting him into a magical home. He was never re-adopted, since it was all a legal gray area, so his adopted name remains his legal name. His real last name remains a mystery. Though, when I named him, I didn't know all this stuff about him.
Phelan Idris is another name of Celtic origin, to go with that theme for MSI people. "Phelan" is an Irish name that means "wolf." "Idris" is a combination of Welsh words for "lord" and "ardent" or "impulsive." I thought that was appropriate for a character who was a rogue wizard. I don't think I had him fully characterized as being kind of ADD yet, but the "impulsive" thing seemed to fit.
A lot of the other characters just seemed to be "born" with their names. I didn't go through any processes to name them. I suspect that the name of Sam for the gargoyle had something to do with a toy my brother had as a small child, a stuffed lion named Sam. I wanted a really down-to-earth name for this otherworldly character, and that just seemed to fit. Rod also came with a name, first and last, and I have no idea where that came from. When I was first working on the first book, I wasn't sure if I was writing a chick lit book with magic in it or a fantasy novel with a chick lit setting, and Gemma was a name that seemed to pop up a lot in British chick lit books, so it seemed suited for the more glamorous one of Katie's roommates.
When I'm searching for names, I may flip through the name book, making lists of names, their origins and meanings, until I find something that seems right. Sometimes, the meaning may not apply and I'm just going for something that fits the character's personality or that just fits in general. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" things.
A few other names and the reasons behind them:
Katie's father is named Frank because that was my grandfather's name. He was a farmer, and before that he was a blacksmith and farrier (someone who makes and puts on horseshoes) for the US Cavalry during WWI. He was already pretty old when I was born (remember, WWI veteran), but I still have memories of him carrying me on his shoulders. My primary impression of him was of solidity. That was what I wanted for Katie's father, that he would be something very real in a world that wasn't entirely real, and Katie's oldest brother is the same way. They're the only really normal people in the family.
I thought "Dean" sounded like a slick sort of name that fit Katie's middle brother, and "Teddy" is a nice-guy kind of name for the brother who's most like Katie and who is kind of a kindred spirit for Owen.
For the fairy characters, I was looking for vaguely fairy-ish names, and Trixie and Ariel seemed to work, but since Ari is a bad-girl kind of fairy, she goes with a less twee nickname.
I can't currently find the notebook that has all my scribbles from coming up with these characters (I think it's in one of the boxes in my office), so there may be more origin stories that aren't coming to mind. These are the ones that have stuck with me, though.
I do need to come up with some other resources, especially for last names, since relying on first names that used to be last names means I mostly end up with British-type last names and almost no ethnic names, unless a character is specifically ethnic, and that's ironic given that I've got an ethnic last name, myself. With these books, some of that does come down to the fact that the magical community I'm dealing with originates in the British Isles and is pretty insular. We're not going to have a lot of Norwegians running around in MSI. But I do need to broaden when it comes to the non-magical characters.
I think Katie was the first character to get a name. I wanted a "girl next door" kind of name, and initially I wanted a name that was a more formal kind of name that had a girl-next-door kind of nickname. One of my best friends in elementary school was named Kathleen and went by Katie, and I'd always liked that, so I went with that. The idea was that this character would be trying to "upgrade" herself from "Katie" to "Kathleen" in New York, but once I started writing, that never really caught on. She was just a Katie and wasn't the kind of person to try to ditch a nickname. A chandler is a candle maker, and since Katie's strength seems to be shining light on things or making things more clear, I thought that would be a meaningful last name for her.
When I decided that the actual Merlin would be the boss, I guess I was influenced by the Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy in which Merlin was Welsh and decided to make the basis of the magical culture be Welsh. And so, my main magical character was named Owen, which is the Anglicized version of the Welsh name Owain, who is a major figure in the Mabinogion. The name means "well born." I didn't know much about him at the time other than that he was the good-looking co-worker at the magical corporation. Actually, at the time I didn't even know he would end up being the main magical character. For a last name, a palmer is a pilgrim or seeker, and although I didn't know the character yet, I liked the idea of what that implied, someone who's well born, but still a seeker. I think it fits well with his intellectual curiosity, although Palmer isn't his birth name. It's an adopted name. He was adopted as a baby, and then when non-magical parents were freaked out by a kid with magical powers (though they didn't realize that's what it was), the magical world ended up finding him and getting him into a magical home. He was never re-adopted, since it was all a legal gray area, so his adopted name remains his legal name. His real last name remains a mystery. Though, when I named him, I didn't know all this stuff about him.
Phelan Idris is another name of Celtic origin, to go with that theme for MSI people. "Phelan" is an Irish name that means "wolf." "Idris" is a combination of Welsh words for "lord" and "ardent" or "impulsive." I thought that was appropriate for a character who was a rogue wizard. I don't think I had him fully characterized as being kind of ADD yet, but the "impulsive" thing seemed to fit.
A lot of the other characters just seemed to be "born" with their names. I didn't go through any processes to name them. I suspect that the name of Sam for the gargoyle had something to do with a toy my brother had as a small child, a stuffed lion named Sam. I wanted a really down-to-earth name for this otherworldly character, and that just seemed to fit. Rod also came with a name, first and last, and I have no idea where that came from. When I was first working on the first book, I wasn't sure if I was writing a chick lit book with magic in it or a fantasy novel with a chick lit setting, and Gemma was a name that seemed to pop up a lot in British chick lit books, so it seemed suited for the more glamorous one of Katie's roommates.
When I'm searching for names, I may flip through the name book, making lists of names, their origins and meanings, until I find something that seems right. Sometimes, the meaning may not apply and I'm just going for something that fits the character's personality or that just fits in general. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" things.
A few other names and the reasons behind them:
Katie's father is named Frank because that was my grandfather's name. He was a farmer, and before that he was a blacksmith and farrier (someone who makes and puts on horseshoes) for the US Cavalry during WWI. He was already pretty old when I was born (remember, WWI veteran), but I still have memories of him carrying me on his shoulders. My primary impression of him was of solidity. That was what I wanted for Katie's father, that he would be something very real in a world that wasn't entirely real, and Katie's oldest brother is the same way. They're the only really normal people in the family.
I thought "Dean" sounded like a slick sort of name that fit Katie's middle brother, and "Teddy" is a nice-guy kind of name for the brother who's most like Katie and who is kind of a kindred spirit for Owen.
For the fairy characters, I was looking for vaguely fairy-ish names, and Trixie and Ariel seemed to work, but since Ari is a bad-girl kind of fairy, she goes with a less twee nickname.
I can't currently find the notebook that has all my scribbles from coming up with these characters (I think it's in one of the boxes in my office), so there may be more origin stories that aren't coming to mind. These are the ones that have stuck with me, though.
I do need to come up with some other resources, especially for last names, since relying on first names that used to be last names means I mostly end up with British-type last names and almost no ethnic names, unless a character is specifically ethnic, and that's ironic given that I've got an ethnic last name, myself. With these books, some of that does come down to the fact that the magical community I'm dealing with originates in the British Isles and is pretty insular. We're not going to have a lot of Norwegians running around in MSI. But I do need to broaden when it comes to the non-magical characters.
