Jason Arnett's Blog, page 33

Overheard By a Friend of a Friend Who Wasn't There

House can tell you're lying. House KNOWS. House
does not care to be your friend, either.I miss a lot of what the general public sees as 'excellent' TV. I've never seen more than about five minutes of any episode of House but I love Hugh Laurie. Anyway. This is about the whispering that goes on, the gossiping about others and our fascination with inventing stories or repeating invented stories. We might even add in a dash of how those stories morph and take on lives of their own adding another degree of hurt to the subject of the rumor. Or rumors.

Do you gossip? Do you follow gossip on the internet or TV or even on old-fashioned radio? Do you?

Why?

For god's sake why?

Rumors about movies, movie stars personal lives, sports figures, politicians, etc... Jeez. I'm not sure now where to begin.

Remember the game Telephone? Where you whisper a phrase into someone's ear, they in turn whisper it to someone else, the process repeats until the last person says what she heard and it bares only a vague resemblance (if any at all) to what was originally said. That's a game that's supposed to teach the players about how to listen, not talk.

If you've ever been the subject of a rumor - and who hasn't? - or even multiple rumors you know how hurtful they can be. When people gossip about you (or anyone) it's indicative of how empty a person's life is, or how little one's time is occupied with anything of importance, or even how jealous someone might be of the subject of the rumor.

Did you ever think of that? I mean, why do people gossip in the first place? They're bored with some aspect of their lives and it's fun to tear down someone who is disliked for some theoretically obvious reason. What it indicates is a lack of security in one's own life, don't you think?

Rumors can often be started simply and unintentionally. It could be someone overhearing the end of a joke. "And so Walter ended up in jail for the weekend. Who thought he had it in him?" The two people involved in the joke (the teller and the listener) laugh but they're maybe unaware of the third person, Gladys, who's overheard the end of the joke and thinks that the two are like her, that they're gossiping.

Gladys repeats the joke as 'real' and then adds her own bits to make herself seem as though she's interesting and involved. Pretty soon it gets around the circle that Walter's killed someone and will not be returning any time soon. Does it matter what the facts were?

Rumors can also be placed. Politicians do it, celebrities do it. Well, their press agents do, anyway.

The point I'm getting at is that what other people do isn't necessarily news and can hurt. Be careful what you say in public. Be aware of who is around when you're saying something that can be misinterpreted. Be aware that you can say things for deliberate misinterpretation by the mouth of the ears embedded in the walls.

Feel free to use Gladys in your stories. She can be hella useful in advancing a plot by adding complications. Then you can show how strong your main character is by believing or disbelieving the rumors. Will your MC confront the object of the rumor? Will she confront Gladys? What happens then?

A rumor is a story, after all.

So - ever started a rumor?  Ever (either on purpose or inadvertently) spread rumors or gossip? What about being the object of a rumor? Feel free to share your experience. Names, dates and locations aren't necessarily important.

Pranks

A good prank can be appreciated by those involved and
those who hear of the exploit. Doesn't always cost a dollar,
either.As I learn more about stories, by writing and actively listening, I'm discovering things I should have been paying attention to all along. Like most of the populace, I read what I enjoyed and talked about those tales with friends. Comics, science fiction, mythology... all kinds of stories. I grew up in a family where my grandfather regaled us with a hundred stories of his childhood and his youth. I never paid attention to how he structured his stories or why they worked. Fortunately he wrote dozens of them down and I have them to study in that way.

But Gran'pa wasn't the only storyteller in my everyday life. I was surrounded by them, as are you. Everyone who has some sort of experience shares it with others. As the internet has grown more and more of us are exposed to storytellers from across the world but we've all heard stories. Some of the best comedians EVER were the best storytellers, right? Bill Cosby's early work (pre-1980 or so) is what I use as my touchstone there. (Go Carts is one of the best of the best of the best, sir!)

Gran'pa didn't always try to make us laugh but more often than not he did. My friends, (the guys I hung out with, played in bands with, made comics to share with, etc...) (I need to stop using the ellipses...) could all tell stories, too. They just didn't have as many as Gran'pa or the comedians we all loved.

And neither did I.

I would entertain friends by parroting Bill Cosby or a Monty Python sketch. I could do some voices and I had a talent for emulating a performer's timing. (Robin Williams' first record was played over and over and over when I was a teenager.) However, I didn't have the gift of timing for things I made up myself. That's taken a long time to develop.

But it started when we related tales of exploits, particularly pranks.

Now I don't condone anything that hurts anyone in any way, physically or emotionally, but a good prank is a good prank and everyone should be able to chortle about it afterwards. Like when a Snickers bar is opened and thrown into a pool. Yes, it looks like a turd and people will panic a little. Even in the days when swimming pools are closed because certain swimmers don't know how to keep themselves clean, this could still be fun. The only time I experienced it was when I was a teenager and it was funny then. (No, it wasn't me who did it.)

Another prank I'm aware of is a group of guys being bored one night (and apparently sober) and visiting one of the old neighborhoods. It was late and the block was quiet and everyone had some kind of plant on their porch. These guys thought it would be funny if they would take the planters and swap them one for the other from house to house. When they were done, they were very proud of themselves and visited the block - by driving through - every day for a week. It took that long for all the planters to find their ways home. It was the work of a couple of hours that lasted that long that caused them to tell the story over and over. (No, I won't tell you who it was or if I was involved.)

The best prank I ever played was on my brother. (He won't mind if I tell you. He's over it now, nearly 25 years later.) I had been out in the yard all day doing whatever and I was terribly sweaty. I got my shower first that night and while my brother was cleaning up I took my dirty, smelly, WET socks and stuffed them flat into the top of his pillow case. About an hour later we went to bed and because I knew him that well, he hit the pillow face first.

I had locked the door to my room and he came out screaming and pounded on the door until my parents came up to see what was wrong. I heard them laugh when he told them what I'd done. He was mad for years about that and I checked my pillowcase every night until I moved out of the house.

These stories are the ones that capture a moment in time and deserve a great deal of attention. They can almost always be turned into something later on. Once a friend and I told an elaborate story (that took nearly ten minutes to tell) that begged the listener to ask the question "what was in the bag?".

The answer was "Bullshit. The same as the rest of the story." I'm sure that a couple of folks who heard that story found someone else to pull it on. That's the mark of success isn't it?

So, what are the best pranks you've ever pulled? I don't want to know about anything that humiliated someone or hurt anyone physically. Just something funny. If it backfired, let me know that, too.

Widespread Panic

I hid under your porch because I love you.I have so many projects in so many stages that I'm not sure what I should be working on. I could panic, do a Muppet flail, and run around the house but everything would still be in the state it's in now that that just isn't helpful. After a burst of creativity in November and December (not quite replicating what I accomplished last year but still...) I took about three weeks off and didn't do much. That hasn't really helped me get anything done, either.

And new ideas are popping up.

While it's true that about 98% of the web is about writing advice, I don't feel like I've dispensed too much 'advice' here. I'm published, yes, but so far only one book is out (and you can buy it here). (End of shameless plugging and whorebaggery.) Instead, like the header says above, this is my blog about writing stories. What I go through when I'm writing. It's about sharing, I guess, information that others might find helpful or entertaining. A lot of people over the last four or five months have stopped in to see what's going on, so maybe I've finally hit my stride here.

So this post is more about procrastination than about finishing. (I just clicked away to work on a post for another site. Jesus.)

Something that bothers me is that I'm always distracted by the new shines. New stories are always more attractive than trying to go back and edit old ones that could conceivably sell. A member of my writer's group has sold a bunch of old stories by going back and systematically editing and submitting. I've got a couple dozen short stories (and some that are longer, nearly novelettes) that if I put a month's worth of effort into editing and then sending out might find homes.

But I've got two unfinished novels I'm anxious to get back to. And a third that's nearly ready to go out onto the street, too.

And new ideas are popping up.

Good lord, what am I going to do?

Buckle down, man. I'm going to have to get the old stories working the streets. I'm going to have to schedule time to submit them after they've been edited and then track my progress. I can't let Jack and Sara have all the fun. I can't let Rachel be the only one with a novel out there.

So, deep breaths. Don't worry about the projects I haven't told the public about (and there are a couple that will be on the burner for a year or more) but keep plugging away. I've got to schedule my writing time like I do in November and into December. I have to remind myself AGAIN that this is a job and I have to put my time in. Nothing happens if I don't

SQUIRREL.

Dammit.

Where to Find Me - January 2013

Despite everything being connected on the web, I don't
feel the need to connect every aspect of my social media
to everything else. Each platform has different audiences
which is why I'm all over the web in various spaces.I'm kind of all over the web in various social spaces. This is the year when it will matter, I suppose, so here we are with a list of the places you can connect with me if you choose.

Before we get to the list, a quick note about my theory of social media. It's supposed to be social. Say hello, tell me something, talk to me. That's the best way to get me to follow you back or mention you otherwise

www.jasonarnett.com - This is the blog you're reading from. Whether on a feed reader or you came here because of a tweet or something you saw on Facebook or somewhere else. This is the home base and I'm continuing to update MOST Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I recommend checking here first. If you're on a feed reader, you're missing the Tweet stream on the right.

Twitter - The social media I embraced most and where I'm sending out signals from more often than not. It always points back to the blog and often encompasses more interests than just writing. You're welcome to add me to lists and hang out. Ask me questions, whatever. I like Twitter for interacting with people I don't see all the time. If you engage with me, just even to say hello once in a while, I'll follow back. Otherwise if you're just looking for numbers don't waste anyone's time. It's "social" media, remember?

Facebook - I have a personal page that I'm going to trim down in favor of keeping people I know there and directing all others to the new professional page. If we've met in real life or corresponded in the aether somewhere, you'll be on my personal page. Otherwise, please like the professional page. I'm not sure yet how the content there will differ from my personal page but I can guarantee the blog will connect to it so you'll still get some personal stuff. Just not all of it.

I has a Tumblr but I'm not sure yet what I should do with it. I'll keep it somewhere in between the personal and professional. I promise no drunk pictures of me here. Mostly it'll be things that are engaging my interest and could possibly end up in a story or a book.

The Confabulator Cafe - I'm here every Friday expounding on the question of the week and once a month offering a flash fiction for your entertainment. You want to follow everyone who's there especially when the fictions come around. A great group of up-and-coming writers of various levels.

I'm on Google+ but I don't use it very often. Well, I don't hang out there very often, I should say. Mostly I'm busy writing.

My Amazon Author Page - where you can keep up with what's already come out. There should be a new book sooner than later and hopefully another following that before the end of the year.

Instagram - not that I take a lot of pictures and share them there, but if interesting things are happening there I'll be around.

About.me - the landing page for a basic biography of me. Includes my non-writing professional information.

LinkedIn - I have a couple of profiles there. One for being a writer, another for my day-life profession. I'm connected with folks there who I've met in real life.

Pheed - just a placeholder account. Not sure what I want to do with this yet.

I have a Formspring account, too, but it's been a while since i checked in there. I imagine since there's the Ask Me feature at Tumblr there's really no need for this. There's a WhoSay placeholder, too.  If you Google me you might stumble across a YouTube account and an ancient LiveJournal. They're essentially defunct but just in case you're looking around, yeah they are probably me.

Not For Publication

Items not for publication must be put in storage. Someday
they'll find homes but for now...This isn't the post I was writing for today.

That post has been scuttled, filed, deep-sixed, spiked, trunked. Never gonna see the light of day. Ever. Well, maybe not EVER but certainly not here. It wasn't going to work for this blog and since I don't have any other blogs where it might fit, in the trunk it goes.

Every writer has articles, stories, ideas, STUFF they're never going to turn into paying copy. It's just part of being a writer. You have to produce in order to get to the good stuff and sometimes that production, while prodigious, isn't the cream of the crop.

You'll notice I haven't told you what the original post was about. I don't think I'm going to. I wrote it because I needed to work some stuff out, get some things off my chest. The kinds of things I might say to a group of confederates over drinks at a Writers Night Out after we've all had maybe just a little too much and the conversation has wandered far afield and we've talked about everything else...

Almost told you what it was about. Oh, you're good, interwebz. You're goooood.

Anyway, it was the kind of thing that doesn't belong here. It had to be written, had to get out of my head but it's inappropriate for this audience. Yeah, the blog is my soapbox but that doesn't mean I'm just  going to spout whatever's on my mind. Well, hold on, I DO do that but I try to keep it in terms of telling a story or at least being about storytelling. The post was constructed in the same fashion as I normally work here but beyond being just too --- well, not the kind of content I normally post, it was too long. About a thousand words too long, in fact. More like fifteen hundred words too long.

So. This story is about how writers write what they need to then decide what to do with it. It's not self-censorship, don't think that. Rather it's working out the stuff that gets into our brains, under our skins, and then finds its way through our fingers onto a digital page or perhaps elsewhere. It's preservation.

Good judgment must prevail. Never, and in this case I mean never EVER, post something that could be controversial without taking some time to reconsider what you're saying. If you don't use it at least you can tell the story about not using it. Those of us that write should know how to do that.

While this isn't the post I originally wrote for today, it's actually a better post. It's not about nothing. There's plenty for you to read between the lines if you choose to. AND there's even a clue as to what I was writing about originally.

Or maybe not. Sorry to be mysterious.

On Friday we'll return to more straightforward blogging.

Mr. Know-It-All Owns Up

If you don't get this reference
Mr. Know-It-All is very disappointed.Every once in a while I'm reminded that I don't know everything.

Yes, yes, it's true and I accept it. If I knew everything I probably wouldn't be here trying to engage in a conversation with people who don't really know me.

A while back I pointed to this article as a reminder of things one should watch out for when editing a draft. Then I saw this article saying the first article is nice but writing is more than that and writers should be aware of these things, too.

Point taken.

Here's the summary for those of you who didn't click through on either article (and shame on you - you should read their stuff, I do):

Ask the big questions, show your characters' character, make the reader care, and then offer a big payoff. If you do this cleanly without annoyingly obvious grammar mistakes, you'll have a nice book in the end.

Sounds simple, dunnit?

In the grand discussion of writers' capabilities, it should be. The writer should have been taught (either formally or informally) that a clean manuscript is a must so that when one is being critiqued it can be read for structural problems. Again, that sounds easy and it should be.

But often it isn't. I think it has more to do with how people interact every day and tell stories to one another on the phone or via email than anything else. There's little respect for individuals in every day life and that's translating into some prose. There's a paradigm shift coming and it is slow moving, like beach erosion, rather than tsunami-like, washing away all the old stuff that "doesn't matter any more".

Formality is dying.

It's going away in schools and in job interviews and I see it and you see it in the deaths of little things every day. People don't use turn signals when they drive. After all, I know where I'm going why do you need to? People use the speakers on their phones to chat with their doctors in a crowded coffee shop. After all, I'm not ashamed of what's wrong with me, why should you be? The last seat on the bus is taken up by a backpack and an angry-looking person who doesn't want you to sit next to her. After all, it's her personal space, isn't it?

Why do we think that a space where the general public is allowed to occupy (like say a restaurant dining room) is the same thing as a public space? Parks are not the same as a business. Why do we behave as though we're entitled to be impolite to anyone we want?

There are levels of privacy that we are willing to give away with our rights as American citizens and it doesn't bother the vast majority. In fact, that vast majority tends to think of anyone who bristles at giving up something that "doesn't matter any more" as a trouble-maker or perhaps just an unhappy person who needs to get laid.

We tear one another down because we can, because it makes us feel better. Why don't we help each other more? Put on that turn signal. Take that conversation somewhere else. Let someone who's been on her feet all day sit down for the bus ride home. It's not that much to ask or even to give.

Both articles are helpful and insightful and neither is absolute. I link to them so that you can go read them and learn something I didn't know at some point and needed to learn again. I write this blog in the hopes that I'm reaching some form of intelligent life that wants to engage in a conversation. This isn't a marketing platform, folks. Well, it is, but that's not the point. It's as much me wanting to open a dialogue with other like-minds and maybe even some who aren't alike so that I can learn things.

It's a little more formal than me just setting up on a street corner and evangelizing away, but not by much. Here are my thoughts. What are yours?

Because I don't know it all. Not by a long shot. But I do want to learn as much as I can.

Vampires and Zombies Are Not For Me

I'm not saying that I will never write a vampire or zombie story, but they are so overdone at this point that there's no way I'll just toss one off because I feel like it.

Vampires are interminably installed in every bookstore around the world regardless of being brick and mortar or online. Two wildly popular series have sort of ruined it for anyone who was a fan of Anne Rice's vampires in the early days. Whether sparkling or trying to incorporate into society, the current batch of vampire stories have left me soured on the creatures.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was quite a different beast than these. Being European royalty and a warlord of some reputation on top of it, Dracula was a formidable foe with abilities that he used to remain hidden. He had to operate at a certain level in society but had no desire to do so. Not really. Fred Saberhagen's Dracula was lonely and honorable, a hero who defended those he loved with ferocity and fervor. The Dracula portrayed by Bela Lugosi and Gary Oldman is sexy, hypnotic, and beyond confident. When Marvel Comics produced The Tomb of Dracula in the 70s, that Dracula was evil incarnate, bad to the core.

As much as I am a fan of the original trilogy of Anne Rice's vampires, even she went to the well too often, starting with the last chapters of The Tale of the Body Thief. The part where Lestat says "The story should have ended there" is the exact point where it should have stopped. Rice's vampires are sexy and morose things. Sad creatures of power who want to remain hidden (all but Lestat) that have their own idea of society and propriety.

I'm not saying the vampires of now are different than those who came before but they're way more prevalent than ever before and - being honest - reflective of a society that's dispossessed and whiny. Yeah, they're sexy and hypnotic and all that they were previously but now they're infected with trashy habits and one wonders how they survived so long. Vampires need to have a sense of history but not like the vapidity of that mashup that was made into a film. That's a different post, though, so that will have to wait.

On to zombies. Not really a fan at all. Never really have been. I've seen the George Romero films and I have to say that slow zombies are fun. But then I can go back to Boris Karloff as The Mummy and say that slow zombies are the definitive ones. Until I read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Those zombies are terrifying. And fun. And they can talk.

I guess zombies don't really scare me because - well, I don't know. I get the appeal of The Walking Dead and I hear from friends that World War Z is very, very cool. (I couldn't read it. It didn't speak to me at all.) I'm just not enamored with them like some are.

Mike Carey's Felix Castor series really appeals to me, and Richard Kadrey's take on zombies (high plains drifters) in the Sandman Slim series speaks to me, too. But only in context of the worlds they've built, not as the center of the world. In both cases there is no one creature that dominates the story, no one menace that is as oppressive as a zombie plague.

As part of a larger story I can read or watch vampires and zombies but I don't want to write them. At least not right now, since I shouldn't ever say 'never', right? Matheson, Romero, Stoker and Rice are the touchstones for me, the genre leaders who make it hard for me to feel like I have anything to contribute.  That's really the thing I'm getting at: if I were to write a vampire or zombie story, what would be my contribution to the genre? I can't see one yet.

Although, an idea has occurred to me about a vampire story that I could write. Maybe. Someday.

In the meantime I can think about writing other supernatural/paranormal creatures. I like ghosts - a lot. I've written a story about a fallen angel, too, but that's overdone now. In both cases they were stories of redemption for creatures that needed it. Vampires that want redemption are pitiful and zombies don't have the capacity to need salvation.

I'm not writing this to be negative, I'm just saying that I'm not looking to write any of the famous monsters for the time being. I'm quite comfortable writing some Lovecraftian-styled horror and space opera science fiction. Where those two cross over might be interesting but for now I'm keeping my genres fairly well separated.