C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 29

Noir Fest!

One of the more positive outcomes of injuring my back is the opportunity to sit still and watch old movies.

Through the month of June, TCM is serving up noir films every Friday night. If you’re a fan, then you know what a treat this is. If you’ve heard of film noir, but haven’t ever acquainted yourself with these pictures, here’s a terrific chance to dive in.

Last Friday’s programming was Dashiell Hammett night and included the first film version of THE MALTESE FALCON. I missed the initial 5-10 minutes, but the “stagey” delivery of dialogue from some of the actors makes me think it had to be very early among the talkies. I’m guessing about 1930 or 1931. The plot makes more sense in terms of the way it’s laid out, compared to the later Bogart version, but of course my heart will always belong to Bogie. TCM also showed the Humphrey Bogart/Mary Astor version later that night–too late, though, for me to stay up for it. (Drat!)

Sandwiched in between the two TMFs were other delightful films: AFTER THE THIN MAN with William Powell and Myrna Loy and my all-time favorite, THE GLASS KEY. Starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy, and William Bendix, THE GLASS KEY is violent, quick, edgy, and full of sharp dialogue. Romance criss-crosses beneath the mystery. The taut triangle among the three principal players works well, but the relationship I like better is the deep, long-standing friendship between the characters Paul and Ed. That friendship, and the temporary rift of it, fuels their motivations. Man, it’s a good movie.

The most powerful scene comes very late in the film, in a confrontation between Alan Ladd and William Bendix. Bendix plays the edge between thug and madman perfectly, and when he crosses that line he is scary. Ladd’s character–having barely survived a beating from this man–is afraid, but forcing himself to go through with the encounter. His fear–under the cool, seemingly brave façade–is what makes this scene so intense.

AFTER THE THIN MAN is the second of the famous series centered around married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles. I think it’s a bit too comedic and sparkling to really be classified as noir, but I’ll never argue with the chance to watch it. If you’re new to this series, start with the first THIN MAN film and then watch AFTER because their story chronology is tightly linked. The next-to-last, THE THIN MAN GOES HOME, is another charmer. The rest in the series are okay, but lesser efforts. Nick and Nora portray one of the best, most delightful married relationships ever presented on-screen.

The witty dialogue is amazing, especially when it centers around wordplay. My favorite moment is when Nick is pontificating about illiterate spelling, and one of the suspects snaps, “What d’ya mean, illiterate? My mother and father were married before I was born!” Nick pauses long enough for the movie audience to get the joke before he turns to Nora and asks, “Having a good time, dear?”

Priceless!

I haven’t looked at the TCM Web site yet to see what’s on this coming Friday, but I can’t wait.

MAGE FIRE

Announcing publication of the concluding volume of my young adult fantasy trilogy, THE FAELIN CHRONICLES. Published under the pseudonym C. Aubrey Hall and available only through Amazon.com, MAGE FIRE takes twin protagonists, Diello and Cynthe, on the final stage of their quest to regain the stolen sword Eirian and rescue their younger sister.

I wish I could share a photo of the cover, but the recent computer wipe/upgrade has left me without picture-processing software. Until I can locate that disk or download new software from the Internet, no pictures are possible for this post.

A couple of weeks ago, a hefty box landed on my doorstep. Inside were glossy hardcover editions, jacketed in 2013-color-of-the-year emerald green. Normally I keep my author’s copies stored in plastic tubs. (Yes, I know that’s bad for books in that it keeps them from breathing, but it protects them from dust and moisture.) However, with my father due to visit, I left them artfully piled in the foyer, so he had to practically step over them to get inside the house. The strategy worked: he noticed them!

My next project will be figuring out how to wedge this trilogy into the Bookcase of Pride that’s standing in my office. The bookcase is tall, and it’s there to contain a copy of all my books, including foreign and second editions. About three years ago, a much smaller bookcase had to be exchanged for this five-shelver. Currently the bottom two shelves hold reference books on the writing craft, but some of them will have to be bumped. It’s a pleasant challenge to have.

MAGE FIRE is traditional, old-fashioned fantasy. It pits the 13-year-old brother and sister against goblins, an ancient spirit that inhabits rock, and creatures that shape-shift between human and eagle forms. The twins are confronted with physical challenges at every turn. They must deal with forms of magic unfamiliar to them while struggling to master their own special gifts. And, of course, they’re still tiptoeing through the Byzantine labyrinth of Fae politics.

Although I always find the middle volume of a trilogy the most difficult to write, conclusions are far from easy. They require finding a balance among explaining what’s happened previously without an awkward info-dump, bringing the story to a finish, tying up loose ends, pushing the primary characters through an arc of change, and achieving victory over the villains.

I think the avalanche is my favorite action segment. The quicksand is my tribute to the Saturday-afternoon Tarzan movies I watched as a kid.

Apologies!

Hi, gang–

Although I believe a professional should always meet her deadlines, even self-imposed ones, all I can do is apologize for not posting this week.

I’m recovering from a recent injury. Meanwhile, sitting at the computer for any length of time is painful.

Sometimes, no matter how disciplined a writer we are, life just happens.

I hope to be posting again shortly.

Small Details, Big Picture

Plotting is a pain in the … neck.

Recently, a non-writing acquaintance of mine sent me what she called the “plot for a book.” What she had, in fact, was just an idea–a concept too tiny to be identified even as a premise.

Now I try to be patient when conversing with non-writers because they don’t know the arcane vocabulary of my profession. I remind myself of how I can sound like a gibbering idiot when I’m talking with my friend who restores antique lamps. His frown quickly transforms into a bewildered scowl as I fumble for terms such as socket cover, insulator, torchiere shade holder, base cap, etc. When I visit the car mechanic, I might as well be speaking Flemish. Pretty soon I’m resorting to hand gestures and grunting as I convey what type of sound the car is making and from which area of the undercarriage the green goo is oozing. As for haircuts, I don’t know a layer from a stack, and “tipping the ends” doesn’t involve paying extra dollars.

So, although most writers groan when someone starts sharing his idea for a story (and if we’re kindly folks we don’t growl, “If it’s so good why don’t you write it yourself?”), we tend to listen in hopes that we really will gleam something useful.

As I did. Whether I’ll do anything directly with this concept is unknown. It did, however, spark an idea in my imagination.

Trouble is, how do you get from the concept to the plot outline?

To everyone that blithely boasts, “It all just comes to me perfectly from start to finish,” I reply: Die now.

Can you tell that I’m in the middle of writing a plot synopsis? Can you tell that it’s a) not going smoothly or b) I’m stuck halfway through?

Why am I stuck?

Because I’m revising/modifying a synopsis that I liked, and I’m having trouble jettisoning certain sections to make way for the new direction the story will take.

Why am I doing this?

To better fit my intended market.

I’ve identified the problematic area. My agent put his finger right on the same spot and said, basically, “Fix that.”

I knew it was weak. He saw immediately that it was weak. If I want to form a decent, salable plot, this portion can’t be weak.

However, brilliance, inspiration, and crumbs from the muses have not yet struck me.

As a working professional, I know better than to wait for any muse to hand me a solution on her clammy little hand. Which means I have to draw on my experience, my story sense, my training, and my knowledge of the craft in order to fix the problem.

Drat! Why can’t it be easier than that?

(It never is.)

Presently, my artistic temperament is getting in my way by rebelling and bringing out my stubborn streak. My inner child is wailing, This looks hard and I don’t wanna work it out!

Meanwhile, instead of pulling on my professionalism and getting down to the task of figuring out villain motivation so that character actions are plausible, I’m acting like an amateur and procrastinating.

Oh, I’m sitting in my chair. I’m even opening the computer file daily and typing. I can say truthfully that I’ve worked hard and kept to my writing schedule. So why do I have a 30-page outline instead of a 10-pager? Why am I only 2/3rds through? Why wasn’t it finished at least two weeks ago?

Because instead of looking at the larger picture of the plot in its entirety, I’m focusing on small details. I’m even writing dialogue, which seldom has a place in a plot synopsis. After all, what does synopsis mean?

I’m moving at a glacial pace, grinding away at the less-important details in a colossal avoidance tactic. When you’re plotting, you need to figure out these basics:

-Protagonist

-Antagonist

-Protagonist’s goal or objective

-Why the antagonist is thwarting that goal or objective

-The most dramatic, exciting point to start the story

-A big twist or shock in the middle

-How it’s going to end

Now, until all seven of these foundation points are established, you got nothing.

Maybe you know how your story will end. Maybe you’re envisioning the start. But you don’t know what the villain’s motivation is and you have no clue what you’ll do in the middle of the story.

Result? You got nothing.

If you ignore this and start writing anyway because the first scene is just sooooo exciting, you’ll find yourself taking longer and longer to write less and less. Your story sense is putting on the brakes because a ravine lies dead ahead.

As for me? If I know all this, how come I’m making this kind of mistake?

Any number of reasons and excuses could roll out here before you. The main one is that I just finished a writing project, and I don’t want to work on another one right away. Too bad, Lazy Inner Child! Let the violins play but I have more projects to do.

What’s much more important here is the fact that pros can derail, too. Whether you’ve published nothing or 20 novels, you can’t ignore the writing principles. Rules? Yeah, you can break those, once you know what you’re doing. But ignore the principles at your own peril.

By tomorrow, I’ll buckle down and work out the knot that’s tangling my plot’s many threads. Then I can wrap up the synopsis in a couple of days and go forward to the next item on my writing checklist.

Right now, however? I can’t fix it ’cause I don’t wanna.

Writer Insurance

Because of the devastating tornado that shattered Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday, May 20, I did not complete my usual Monday post. All my communication lines crashed shortly after 3:30 p.m. when cell phone towers and phone/internet/cable went out. I’m very grateful to live 10 miles south of where the tornado hit, and even more grateful that I wasn’t driving home from Oklahoma City at the time. The tornado swept through the route I usually take whenever I want to avoid heavy interstate traffic.

As I write this now, thunder is rolling overhead. The weather report keeps telling us that this is just a rainstorm and there’s no tornado activity. The air outside is too cool. There’s none of that heavy, sticky, hot, unsettled feeling to the atmosphere, and that alone reassures me more than anything the Weather Channel might say. One of my dogs is curled by my foot. The other one comes by periodically for a comforting pat because thunder makes him anxious. Friends from out of state keep calling to see if I’m all right.

I have several friends who live in Moore. I’ve managed to reach one–a writer who wasn’t home when the storm hit and didn’t know whether his house was still standing. His family is safe. His house and pets may not be. The last thing he said before we hung up was, “At least I store everything on The Cloud.”

Where is your manuscript in times of crisis or devastation? Family comes first, of course, but beyond their safety, what about your story or your novel or your screenplay or that memoir you’re putting together? How do you protect it? How do you preserve it?

At the start of my career, I worried more about fire–perhaps because I lived in an old house with primitive wiring, a house, incidentally, that burned down a few years after I moved away. In the 20th century before the Internet had been invented and we were still dealing with paper, the manuscript was a highly tangible object that seemed to be in constant peril.

Ceiling fans might blow all the pages around the room or even out a window.

Cats might shuffle pages or trot across a computer keyboard and destroy a file containing the most critical chapter.

The dog could very well eat your best scene.

My solution at the time was to store my book manuscript in my refrigerator. Although I tried to clear paper before a parental visit, there was one occasion when my mother arrived, opened the refrigerator door, and asked, “What are all these boxes doing in here?”

Shortly thereafter, a friend who’d dealt with a kitchen fire told me that the plastic interiors of refrigerators melt and my manuscripts were not safe there. Alas, I was thinking of an earlier generation of appliances made of heavy steel and porcelain enamel.

So I stopped storing paper in the kitchen. Meanwhile, living on the prairie began to get to me. I realized my manuscripts were in more danger of being swept to Oz by tornadoes than probably any other hazard. So insurance became a matter of creating backup copies on small floppy disks and stashing them in my bank safety deposit box. After thumb drives were invented, I would put one in more than one bank on opposite ends of town–just in case. And I have continued to print out paper copies as insurance against computer crash and failure.

Presently, there are several intangible ways and means of protection: emailing the manuscripts to yourself, Cloud storage, Dropbox, etc. These serve–not as replacements to paper copies or thumb drive copies–but as additional layers of safety.

But do you use them? Maybe you use one method, but none of the others. Maybe you intend to set up that backup hard drive, but you haven’t gotten to it yet. Maybe you acknowledge that you need a battery backup, but it costs so much at Staples and wouldn’t a little surge protector work just as well?

At a writers’ conference a few years ago, I attended a talk by bestselling thriller author David Morrell. He urged his audience to save material by several methods and then NOT to keep all those backup versions together in the same room. He moved to another point, but I have always wondered what happened? The voice of experience was clearly talking that day. It was clearly too painful for elaboration.

We can lose portions of our story through our own doofus mistakes. Mother Nature doesn’t even have to help. In the first month or so that I owned a personal computer–my very first–I got overly confident and managed to lose an entire 36-page file.

Gone. Blip. Swoosh.

Gone as though it had never been. Never mind that I had spent all day–a good eight hours–writing that chapter. I had lost it in less than the blink of an eye. There were no notes. There was no printed copy. I was just then trying to save it when I made the mistake. Having worked on typewriters until then, I had never before encountered the ghastly speed with which a computer can obliterate your prose. And there was no hard drive in that machine, no Geek Squad surgeon existent to extract the file. When I finally realized it was gone and there would be no recovery, I had to go lie down. And when I managed to regroup, I called in sick to work the next day because I had to retype as much of that chapter from memory as I possibly could before too much of it faded.

Now we have undo buttons. We have ghost files on the hard drive. We have computers that save files for us while we’re typing so that we barely have to remember at all to be careful.

Yet we must be careful of what we’re creating. It’s no one’s responsibility but our own.

Despite all the modern sophistication of our electronic devices, we can still experience disaster. We can be writing on a cloudless summer day, only to be blitzed by a power spike coming through the electrical line. We can be typing during a thunderstorm–as I am doing right now–and have our open files garbled by a flash of lightning. We can have our home office, our home, our possessions, our laptops, desktop towers, printed copies, and external hard drives crushed by earthquakes or wiped away by tornadoes or hurricanes.

It’s up to us to practice manuscript safety every day. I get lax and I let my good intentions slide. It’s usually in the last month of a novel project, as I’m approaching deadline, that I start to grow extremely careful and paranoid and jumpy. I carry the thumb drive in my purse. I put a paper copy in the trunk of my car, and then I worry about my car being stolen.

When you have to rewrite a passage that seemed perfect, you never recreate it exactly as it was. It could come out better, but the question, what if it’s not the same, never quite leaves the back of your mind.

Get the backup systems. Never rely on just one. And remember to use as many protections as you can.

Because you just never know.

Mom as First Reader

What does your mom think about your writing?

Is she pleased to have an offspring that’s creative? Is she supportive of your endeavors, or indifferent to them? Is she a fan, or a critic?

Do you write because of your mother, or in spite of her?

Is she your inspiration? Do you long for her to read your stories? Or does the thought of her reading your endeavors make you squirm with anticipated embarrassment?

Are you proud to have her read your work? Are you ashamed?

We are grateful to our mothers because without them we wouldn’t exist. They carried us, birthed us, fed and diapered us, sat with us through measles and fevers–and if we are very fortunate–loved us.

Recently I coached a young man who needed help with his manuscript. Each time I offered a corrective in how he was approaching a scene or chapter, he would nod and say, “That’s pretty much what my mom said.”

Curious, I asked about her and discovered that she’s a writer and a teacher. I thought of how wonderful it must be to have such a mother–one who’s creative like you, one who shares your language and imagination.

My mother’s talents ran in other directions. She was innovative in solving problems. She was fearless, direct, and a go-getter. What must she have thought of me–the dreamer who lived in a world of pretend, who spent glorious days immersed in books instead of playing outside, who sat hunched over notebooks and later keyboards, absorbed in my imagination? My caution, my shyness, my preference for reading instead of doing must have frustrated her at times.

Yet Mom supported me. Whatever I intended to do–and I was stubborn enough to let nothing stand in the way of my goal of becoming a writer–Mom wanted me to be good at it. She read every novel I published, whether it was to her taste or not. She couldn’t articulate how she felt about the characters and story beyond comments such as, “It was pretty good,” (high praise) or “I’ve liked some of your other books better,” (Mom-speak for awful!)

She worried about me working too hard for too little pay. She was thrilled when I did book signings. She faithfully purchased my books so I would get the royalty, and she always insisted that I autograph them.

It’s not easy to write with the awareness that eventually your mother is going to be reading what you’ve come up with. There is, of course, that time when you include your first written sex scene and you think you’ll die if she asks you any questions.

Beyond that, however, lies a different type of awareness. So often, our mother is our first audience, our first reader. Even if our relationship with her is rocky and she’s no fan of fiction, we still feel her ghostly presence at our shoulder. We either shy nervously from certain dialogue or plot situations, or we mentally defy her and plow forward.

She may or may not be in your life. She may or may not read your work. But somewhere–almost always–don’t we long for her to like what we do?

From this foundation of desiring Mom’s praise and approval, we commence our training of audience awareness. We may be busy learning our writing craft and trying to round up wayward characters or control an unruly plot, but we must also learn when to think of our potential readers and when to please ourselves.

It’s not an easy balancing act, this tightrope of ours. We’re given so much advice–some of it contradictory.

Write to please yourself!

Write to please your readership!

Which one do you follow? How do you keep yourself from falling–and failing?

You are, in effect, a performer in the circus of your fictional world. All you can do is try to align what you want to do with what most readers expect.

If you’re following the path laid down by an established genre and meeting its general expectations, fine and good. For example, if you’re writing a mystery, you need a crime, a victim, a perpetrator, and a sleuth. Readers expect those elements, and within their basic parameters you can make them as clever, creepy, quirky, and unpredictable as you please.

If you’re forging a new path, however, and there isn’t an established genre in front of you, what do you do? Think of Charlaine Harris and her Sookie Stackhouse series. When her first novel appeared in publication, it was difficult to find a copy in bookstores–not because it wasn’t there but because no bookseller could figure out where to shelve it. It mixed several genres in a fresh way. Harris forged her own path. She pleased herself first, and thereby pleased the readers who discovered her.

Therein, I suppose, is the answer. We must be aware of our audience. We don’t go out of our way to disappoint or offend readers, yet we must find enough inner courage to trust our vision and follow where our story sense leads.

The Star of the Story

The question today is which works better, the ensemble cast or the hierarchical?

Like all such conundrums, the answer can be debated ad nauseum, and such debates are usually stopped only by the answer: it depends!

Ensemble characters work best in television or movies. They can work in mainstream novels if the writer is skilled and insightful. Hierarchical characters work well in any medium, any time, any place.

In the past 30-40 years, modern society has gone through a significant anthropological shift. Young people cluster together in packs of friends. They perhaps rely on these friends more than a traditional family unit with parents. In the past decade, with the rise of children’s and teen fiction as the hottest ticket in publishing, there’s a trend to distribute the story among the players.

Even middle-grade stories now feature multiple viewpoints, and this makes the reading experience more complex and nuanced.

No problem there. However, I think it’s important to realize that despite this new complexity, the balance should not be equal.

A fictional cast of characters still operates more effectively in a hierarchy of importance.

In other words, which character will be the focus of your story?

No matter whether you’re writing for adults or children and no matter how many characters are grouped around the protagonist, there should still be a starring role.

I always wince when I hear someone refer to the positive characters as “the protagonists.”

In my world of fiction, there is only one protagonist. I don’t think all the friends or companions of the protagonist should get equal billing or have equal importance. My casts of fictional characters don’t operate in a democracy. Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration of Independence are part of my national heritage, part of my everyday reality. But not in my fiction.

In classical story design–which is the template for most commercial fiction–all characters are not created equal.

One protagonist. Over all.

The friends/companions are simply that. They should fall into the category of secondary roles. They are sidekicks.

For example, if we look at J.K. Rowlings’s triad, we have Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger. They are close friends. They work as a team. They each have strengths and weaknesses. They are each, in his or her own way, heroic. Each character is important to the story. Each character has a fan base.

But Harry is the star.

No matter how much he depends on his companions and their help, readers need to have the feeling that Harry could probably succeed alone–although it would be three times more difficult.

Every story in commercial fiction needs a leader. This character gets the spotlight, the major attention. This character drives the story from start to finish. This character is not rescued. This character is the one, ultimately, that stands alone against the antagonist in the final showdown.

The real world always tries to push people into herds. Follow the group. Don’t stand out. Don’t try to make a difference. If you speak up, you’ll be fired. Don’t get involved. Don’t outshine your friends and make them feel bad.

Fiction isn’t about that mindset of mediocrity. It’s about standing tall, stepping forward, taking the risk, making the attempt, accepting the danger of sacrificing yourself to help others in trouble or to save the day.

That’s the definition of heroism. It’s what makes a protagonist larger than life.

Due to my training and personal taste, whether I read genre or mainstream, I want a star to latch onto for the duration of the story.

It’s why I haven’t read past the first volume of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series. A bazillion people love his work, and Mr. Martin is an interesting and pleasant man in person. But I still want a protagonist. He doesn’t give me one, so I read authors who do.

Again, having one character be the star isn’t the only way to write a story. It doesn’t mean you can’t have lovable and valuable and endearing sidekick characters. (Think of Bob in Jim Butcher’s THE DRESDEN FILES. Bob–the randy old spirit who lives in a skull, forever doomed by a witch’s curse.) I adore Bob. He’s outrageous and funny and wise and pathetic. Do I want to read an entire book from Bob’s perspective? No! Do I want Bob to steal the story away from Harry? No!

Why? Because Harry is the star of the series, and Harry has been designed to make me like him best.

Fictional sidekicks have been famous and much-loved down through the rich tradition of story: Dr. Watson, Mr. Spock, Batman’s Robin, Jeeves the butler, Tinker Bell, Inigo Montoya, Tonto, Kato, etc., etc., etc. They are the helpers, the innovators, the faithful friends. They can also betray the hero or fail or die.

They are useful to writers in so many ways. Yet, part of their success lies in that they are not the lead character. They have different responsibilities in carrying the story forward to its conclusion. Mess with that by making them equal in stature, equal in viewpoint, equal in the number of pages you devote to them, and the storyline becomes in danger of splitting focus.

It makes the ending almost impossible to write well because if everyone is a top star, who deals with the bad guy? Who makes the heroic sacrifice? Who finds the solution? Do we then need an ensemble cast of bad guys?

Be careful of trends. Remember that Ron and Hermione do a lot, but they are never more important to the story than Harry Potter. Rowling was wise in crafting her stories. She offers plenty of good guys to cheer for, but she never lets readers lose sight of her star.

The Brighter Side

Despite my penchant for overly dramatic wailing and teeth-gnashing when things interfere with my writing, I was raised to be an optimist.

Experience has taught me that no matter how frustrating and exasperating interruptions are, a delay in my writing time usually enables me to think of a way to make the story better.

It is possible to write a story too quickly, to push it so fast that some scenes or chapters are superficial and perhaps thoughtless.

Although I do believe in Ray Bradbury’s adage about writing hot and revising cool, I always remember that if I write too hot I will have to do a lot more cold revision.

Be careful, however. If you use delays to second-guess yourself, you can create unnecessary problems. Time, practice, and experience will help you evaluate the possibly brilliant new idea that occurs to you when you can’t write steadily every day.

Here are some ways to judge whether you’re throwing out the baby with the bath water:

1) Is the new idea a minor tweaking of the scene or the dialogue, or is it radically different, involving changing plotlines and major rewriting?

2) Is the new idea one that fits within the outline you’ve already established with thought and care?

Tweaking is fine. Major, drastic changes should wait until you have at least completed the draft and can better judge how much revision is really necessary.

Just keep going!

Pressing Forward

Despite the number of years I’ve been writing professionally, I’m still surprised by how difficult it is to do what I love. The world is filled with an amazing assortment of distractions and interruptions. They never seem to go away, much less diminish.

In the early days of my career, I assured myself that once I became a big-name writer, I would be given space to write. Gradually it dawned on me that nothing and no one would ever cooperate with that dream. Or if such an understanding person came along, he or she should be considered a pearl above price.

Dorothy Sayers, who wrote the brilliant mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey between the world wars, created any female writer’s dreamboat in Lord Peter. When I read his declaration that nothing should interfere with his novelist wife’s work, I felt I had finally found the perfect man. (What a pity he’s only a character, and probably Sayers’s dream-guy, too.)

I wonder if Thoreau could have been as insightful a writer if he hadn’t known the solitude of his pond.

A writer friend of mine has started talking about regularly renting a remote cabin for a retreat.

And I feel that I must now fight off every kind of interruption and intrusion into my inner space, my mind, my imagination, my thoughts, my very being.

If I sit down at the computer, for example, and even allow myself to peek at my emails, it can take as long as 90 minutes to sort, delete, read, and answer my inbox. If I run simple errands to the bank and post office, half my day is shot, lost in traffic.

Although I’ve been on leave from teaching the last four months, I find myself wondering how on earth I ever found time to teach, much less write. Life is like a body of water: it rushes to fill a void.

Yet we writers need the void, as our bodies need oxygen to survive. We need the chance to fill the void, to fill the inner quietness, with our imagination and stories. We cannot create our best work while multi-tasking or kicking the distractions away.

We need a chance to draw our breath, to center ourselves, to be contemplative, to listen to our inner story sense.

I recently heard from a dear friend who has written successfully for many years. This person has been squeezed of late in the generational sandwich, taking care of an elderly parent, taking care of a young grandchild. There is next-to-no time to write. Life has overtaken the gift, and whether it’s temporary or permanent, a certain measure of joy has vanished from this person’s existence.

The British would say I’m “having a bit of a moan” today.

Yes, I’m moaning. I’ll howl to the moon if I must if it helps me keep going.

Despite everything, I continue to put paragraphs and scenes together. I’m halfway through a project, and by golly I intend to finish it and meet my deadline. The rest of the world can go hang. And if I suffer from sleep deprivation, and don’t get the dishes washed, and snap off heads from time to time, let’s just call it artistic temperament and leave it alone.

We die a little if we don’t write. And so we hang onto our stories in progress, even if the manuscript pages turn brittle from neglect, the spiders spin webs over our keyboard, and we write only in some tiny corner of our mind.

Nearly every day, when I’m in the midst of a book, I give thanks for the writing wisdom of Jack Bickham. He taught me that the only way to insure I actually wrote daily was to make out my to-do list for the next day and then invert it.

After many years, I still catch myself scribbling out the list exactly as I shouldn’t. Invariably somewhere near the bottom, after the reminder to buy bananas and spinach and run to the post office, will be the notation to “write next chapter.”

Why is the most important item at the bottom of the list? Am I saving it for last because it’s the most special? How many of us actually complete each daily to-do list? (I never get through all the tasks.)

Do I think I needn’t bother to mention writing on the list because of course I’m going to write? Why bother to include it with taking out the trash?

Such simple advice: invert your to-do list.

Do I follow it?

As the deadline looms larger on my horizon, yes. I must if I’m to reach it.

So at times, the emails pile up and the blog is skipped and I growl at people and I sacrifice weekend excursions to antiques stores. And for a while, I’m happily ensconced in the land of make-believe, running with my characters, seeing them fight and lose and fight and win.

Then I am happy. My pages are written, and I am content. I become a pleasant human again, and I don’t snap.

At least, until the following day when I will be interrupted … again.

Slings, Arrows, and Catapults

To write a story is to put yourself on a trajectory. Are you going to be an arrow, arcing toward its target? Are you going to be a stone, hurled at the apex of a sling’s centrifugal curve? Are you going to be a boulder, flung forward by the leverage action of the catapult?

The arrow is aimed, efficient, swift, and effective. Depending on the type of bow used to release it, the arrow can hit its target with significant force. (The English longbow–if you recall your medieval history–was able to send arrows through steel plate armor.)

Let’s equate the arrow to the writer who doesn’t begin writing until she knows what her protagonist wants and hopes to accomplish. She knows who the antagonist is and why this individual is opposed to the protagonist. This writer works out her story along a clear, organized unfolding of plot developments. As a result, the story moves quickly and believably from start to finish.

The stone and sling is a simple, ancient weapon dating from antiquity. Its user crafted a supple, thin leather strap, cradled a pebble inside it, and whirled it in a circular motion to gain momentum before letting go of one end of the strap, thus releasing the stone inside. The skill lay in timing the moment of proper release.

A sling was supposed to be a minor weapon, useful in stunning small game such as rabbits or driving skittish predators away from a flock. It lacked range and force, although it could be deadly in very adept hands.

If we equate the slung stone to a writer who commences writing without a clear plan, then we’re likely to see a story that begins with verve and momentum but then loses force. An unplanned story is one that might arrive at a satisfactory ending. It might not. It might well go anywhere.

That’s not to say such stories are worthless. They give the writer tremendous creative freedom. They’re elastic enough to allow fresh angles. They’re not bolted down to the outline and only the outline. They can be marvelous.

They can also be a mushy mess of artistic drivel that offers breathtaking potential before it begins to sputter and putter. This kind of writer will be forced to write draft after draft after draft, throwing out copious numbers of pages before a satisfactory scene or segment is achieved, if at all.

Such a writer will work best with short fiction lengths, rather than novels.

The catapult was a machine engineered to smash gates or stone walls by hurling a boulder a very short distance. Catapults have next to no range. Their effectiveness lies in the length of the wooden throwing arm. More length equals more leverage, which equals more force and distance. Medieval armies laying siege to a castle or walled town had to build a tall, unwieldy tower on wheels, had to load a heavy, unwieldy boulder, and then had to let fly in hopes the boulder would make it across the moat and knock down the wall.

The catapult writer is someone who usually has a tremendously exciting opening. This starting scene is filled with action, verve, imagination, and spirit. It’s very exciting to write, and often exciting to read.

And then … with a thud, it’s done and the story has nowhere else to go. What’s going to happen next?

“Dunno,” the catapult writer admits. “I can’t think of what should come after this.”

The story stalls, and then–perhaps after a period of painful thought–this writer thinks of another exciting development or event that could occur.

Ergo, the next boulder is loaded. Bam! The event is depicted vividly, and then it’s over. The writer has no clue of what to write subsequently until inspiration finally strikes once more.

Bam! Another event. Bam! Another. And so on.

Trouble is, the story that results likely will be a disjointed, contrived string of character actions that are neither logical nor plausibly connected. It should be a wonderful read, but in reality it just isn’t.

What’s the lesson to be learned from these metaphors?

I know you’ve already figured it out, but I’ll state it anyway:

Be an arrow when you write.

Know where you want your characters to go. Plan ahead. Think things through logically. Take the time to solve the weak spots, problem areas, and plot holes before you stumble into them.

Arrow stories can miss. They can be deflected off their trajectory if the writer becomes distracted or loses track of the intended plan. Or simply stops believing in her story and drops control. However, arrow stories can always be salvaged.

Look over your manuscript until you find the place where you went wrong. Fix it.

Go back to the plan.

Believe in the plan.

Have faith in your idea.

Trust the story instincts that helped you create and develop the plan.

Aim your protagonist at the target, at the desired goal. And don’t look back.