Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 101

A TO Z _ There can be only ONE

" Don’t ever imitate anybody.  All style is, is the awkwardness of a writer  in stating a fact.  If you have a way of your own,  you are fortunate,  but if you try to write 
like somebody else,  you’ll have the awkwardness  of the other writer  as well as your own."  - Ernest Hemingway

Ghost of Hemingway here again.
If you want to succeed as a writer, you must be original.
You can only be a second-rate copy, 
but you can develop into a first-rate you 
if you persist in crafting your own style.
But you must persist. 

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man.
True nobility lies in being superior 
to your former self.
Be succinct. 

 Big emotions are not created by big words.
Write the very best you can at the moment.  
If you do not, you will destroy what talent you have.

If you find yourself dissatisfied with what you have written, fix it if you can.
But train yourself not to worry.  Worry never fixed anything.
Still reading?  
Start writing!

Just because you know my NAME _ A TO Z

"If I'm gonna tell a real story, I'm gonna start with my name."  - Kendrick Lamar
"Call me Ishmael."  - Herman Melville 
"It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to."  - W.C. Fields
How important do you think characters names are in your writing?
Think "Wesley" versus "Eric."  
What images come to your mind about the personalities of those two men?
Take Darth Vader.
Darth as in dark.  Vader as in the variation of the German "Vater" (father.)  
Dark Father.
How do you choose the names of your characters in your novels?

A TO Z _ Bathing in MYSTERY and WEP post

 
"We are bathing in mystery and confusion  on many subjects,  and I think that  will always be our destiny.  The universe will always  be much richer  than our ability to understand it.”  - Carl Sagan
Ghost of Carl Sagan here
We are an infinitesimal part of the universe becoming aware of itself.
The "me" that you and I are took 13.7 billion years to develop ... 
as science now believes.
Yet, science, like time and space, is fluid ... 
so who knows what science will believe next decade or next century?
We are an indication of what hydrogen atoms can do, of how to co-exist with the unknown.
The quest for answers of how to do so birthed folklore, myth, and superstition.
We seem to be always on the verge of finding answers to how we came  to be.
But like the horizon, 
those answers always tease us by being just out of reach eternally.
But that quest has taken us so far and will take us farther if only we find the courage to continue.

That first photo of the earth taken from the moon ...
firstly, it gave us the sense that we are afloat in the vast sea of space
and second, the realization that the future of this tiny world depends solely upon us.

We must cut off the moorings to common sense to get farther.
We navigate the world by our common-sense perception, 
but that perception has blinded us to reality again and again. 
We have mistaken our sensorial intuitions for facts of the universe.
 For millennia, we held wrong beliefs about Earth’s shape, motion, and position, 
because it feels flat and static beneath our feet, and central to the order of the cosmos. 
We have mistrusted processes and phenomena 
beyond the boundaries of what we can touch and feel with our limited senses.
From the development of life, 
which unfolds on scales of time too vast to be visible within a human lifetime, 
to quantum mechanics, 
which operates on subatomic scales imperceptible and almost inconceivable to the human observer.

 We have to be very careful not to impose our hopes and desires on the cosmos,
 but instead, in the scientific tradition and with the most open mind possible,
 see what the cosmos is saying to us.
And that means trusting our curiosity to ask WHAT IF? 
as often as possible and being brave enough to follow where that question leads. 

A TO Z _ Getting LOST

Ghost of Gertrude Stein here
I was a den mother of sorts to the most famous of the lost generation writers,
who excelled in their prose and failed in life.
Perhaps it was because they stumbled so badly in the war 

or in their struggle to get published that they grew too focused on their steps.
Everybody knows if you are too careful.
 You are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.


One must dare to be happy, 
knowing that we are always the same age on the inside but must learn to be wiser than that.
 After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes
is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. 
That is why writers have to have two countries, 
the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. 
The second one is romantic, is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.
Your truth will come to you if you but let it come.

 If the communication is perfect, 
the words have life, 

and that is all there is to good writing, 
putting down on the paper words 

which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

And while you pursue your dream, 

learn from my Lost Generation 

and do not let it become the nightmare of those closest to you.

A TO Z _ KNIFE or scapel?

"The difference between the almost right word 
and the right word  is really a large matter—'
tis the difference between  the lightning-bug and the lightning."  - Mark Twain



Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. 
But we authors are trapped into using mere words.
 Words realize nothing, verify nothing to you, 
unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe.

It is always the way; 
words will answer as long as it is only a person's neighbor who is in trouble, 
but when that person gets into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.
 The right word may be effective, 

but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
So children, remember that when you write dialogue. 
And do bring a bit of wit and humor to the proceedings.
Wit and Humor
--if any difference it is in duration--
lightning and electric light. 
Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage--
the other fools along and enjoys the elaboration.
I hope you've enjoyed my words and that they were more scalpels than knives!

A TO Z _ JENUINE

 
GENUINE
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.  To be natural is to be obvious,  and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”  - Oscar Wilde
Ghost of Mark Twain here
Old Oscar was just as off the mark with that quote as is my spelling of genuine.
Now, I may use a unique spelling of a word sometimes 
but only to make a point as with "Jenuine."

In fact, I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs.
I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. 
I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.

I made the above postcard to ridicule humanity, but darn it all
if politicians, past and present, took me seriously.
Like the teddy bear who heralds this post obviously imagining himself 
Diogenes of Sinope, the Greek Cynic philosopher 
best known for holding a lantern  to the faces of the citizens of Athens, 
claiming he was searching for an honest man.

Each reader searches the book before him to see if it is "true" enough to life 
to allow him or her to walk its pages believing the adventure presented to him.
Each person's speech springs from where and who he has been.
So for mercy's sake do not have all your characters speak the same!
Let your rug-rats talk like children not like you.
But be cautious with your truth.

An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. 

Neither should ever be uttered. 
The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise,
 should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.

 But don't let me worry you overmuch.
Language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle,
 and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts -- 
by help of the reader's imagination, 
 which is always ready to take a hand and work for nothing, 
and do the bulk of it at that.
 

A TO Z _ INTEGRITY is not a conditional word

INTEGRITY

"To write all you have to do is follow your own instinct or judgement ...

disregard what is said ...

convey the absolute  bottom quality of each person, situation, and thing. 

Isn't writing simple?"
 - Maxwell Perkins in a letter to Hemingway.


A soft voice spoke above me as I typed on my laptop in the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.

"The utterly real thing in writing is the only thing that counts."

I looked up and stiffened.  The ghost of Maxwell Perkins.

He was unknown to the public 

even while he mentored Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Wolfe into literary legend.

He staked his career on them, 

defying what the establishment felt was the only way to publishing success.

Why?
He once wrote Thomas Wolfe: 
"There could be nothing so important as a book can be."

He had made his publisher, Scribners, 

lend Fitzgerald many thousands of dollars and rescued him from his breakdown

He agreed to publish Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, sight unseen

and then had to fight to keep his own job.

 when the manuscript arrived with off-color language.

How many modern editors would do those things?


 "Might I sit down?" he asked.

"Of course. But why me?"

"You do not give up in your dreams."

"That's important?"

He spoke carefully, with that hollow timbre of the hard of hearing, 

as if he were surprised at the sound of his own voice.  

"If you want to be a writer it is."

Perkins smiled sadly.  

"At Clemens' insistence, I have read your The Not-So-Innocents Abroad."

He cocked his head.  

"It possesses what I call the 'real thing'  ... 

though now I fear what I find excellent would not be considered so today." 

Perkins patted the back of my hand.

"I stopped to merely encourage you not to stop if you will forgive my play on words.

Do not heed the low sales or low recognition."

Perkins glanced at Hemingway booming off to the distance on our right, 

his blue pastel eyes seeing scenes of the past denied me.

"Real self-esteem is not derived from the great things you have done,

the awards you have won, or the mark you made."

Perkins turned his eyes back to me.  

"It comes from an appreciation of yourself for what and who you are."

He rose and walked into the shadows of the haunted jazz club.  

"A sense of self is much better than pride and will carry you farther."

As the swirling mists swallowed him, his words came faintly to me.

"It is called integrity, your inner image of yourself.  Integrity is not the search for rewards.

Maybe all you will get is the biggest kick in the pants the world can provide. 

But you will have earned them by being true to yourself."

Though I could no longer see Perkins, I thought Wolfe had it right when he described his eyes:

"They were full of a strange misty light, a kind of far weather of the sea in them,

 eyes of a New England sailor long months outbound for China on a clipper ship, 

with something drowned, sea-sunken in them.”

A TO Z _ HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT ...

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up,   all our hardnesses yield,  all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place." - Mark Twain


Ghost of Mark Twain back again ...
If there is one thing folks would all agree on
is that I was expert enough on the subject of humor to make my bread and butter and whiskey on it.

Humor is certainly needed in these dark days.
For humor to stand out there must be contrast. 
Set a diamond upon a pall of black
if you'd have it glisten, don't you know.

So-called Hollywood pundits swear that for a movie to become what they call a "blockbuster,"
it has to be so loved that it is viewed multiple times.

The same is true for a novel.  You want yours to be a bestseller?
There must be something to it that calls for a reader to re-read it
and to beg her friends to read it for the first time ...
so she can discuss it with them.
A shared pleasure is multiplied more than a solitary one


Can't write humor you say?
Then, child, it is time for you to grow outside what moderns call your comfort zone.

Writing humorous scenes teaches important writing skills like pacing and word choice.
Humor keeps your story from becoming monotonous, don't you know?

As I was bottom-dealing, ah, winning at poker with Josh Whedon,
he told me a piece of advice he gives would-be writers: 
"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."

Humor Does “Double Duty,”:
 Foreshadowing, Revealing Character, Conveying Attitude, Addressing Theme
 and, if nothing else, making you smile as you write!


A TO Z _ There is no WE in greed

  GENEROSITY
 You are about to be honored.  
I, the ghost of Napoleon,
am here to dissuade you 
of a dangerous illusion.


Though I know that scoundrel, Clemens, cheated me in that poker game, 

still I will honor my word, and write to you 

of how to succeed in the war in which you have chosen to engage.

Some of you still cling to the dream of obtaining an agent for your work.

I caution you:
they are not interested in you because of their generosity ...

but for what you can do for THEM.


And they know you will be able to do little for them until you garner an AUDIENCE.

Do not think of a group when you think AUDIENCE ...

Think individual.

No group reads a book.  A solitary person does.


What do individuals want?
Spare me your platitudes.

An individual wants the universal desires:

Power and Sex.
It is a fact of life ...

most find themselves lacking the power to accomplish what they would.

They read to vicariously live a life of powerlessness growing powerful.



I saw some of you wince at my use of "Sex."
Romance is merely the acceptable way of saying "sex."

I see all of you punching into your devices of communication 

while growing ever more distant from one another

as technology widens the chasm between hearts.


Technology has become your all too real GAME OF THRONES


Winter has come.
The winter of loneliness, each of you cut off from the hearts of the other.




Write so as to make the powerless feel in touch with power
and the lonely in touch with the hope of connecting with another ...
And you will garner an audience and the attention of agents.

Now, I am off to have a reckoning  with that card-cheat, Clemens!

A TO Z? F is for ...

"I don't want just words.   If that is all you have for me,  you'd better go."   - F. Scott Fitzgerald
FUN
Ghost of Fitzgerald here.  
Call me Scott.  
Hemingway does ... among other things that Clemens and Wilde give him hell for.

 Odd.
That's what the profession of writing is ... odd.

You strive to entertain your reader, to make him have fun.

Yet, that is the one thing you must seldom do while in the course of writing: 

 Have fun.

Zelda and I burned ourselves up in our pursuit of fun.  

After all, parties kept us from the looming empty page demanding to be filled with absorbing prose.


Too much frivolous diversion tricks you 

into thinking your surface detail actually constitutes good prose.

I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher 

than most are prepared to pay at present. 

You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, 

not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. 

This is especially true when you begin to write, 

when you have not yet developed the tricks of creating interesting people on paper.


Good writing comes from desperate and radical expedients 

like tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That is the price of admission.

Do not be morose over this.
“For what it’s worth... it’s never too late,  or in my case too early,  to be whoever you want to be. 
There’s no time limit.  Start whenever you want.  You can change  or stay the same. 
There are no rules to this thing. 
We can make the best or the worst of it. 
I hope you make the best of it. 
I hope you see things that startle you. 
I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. 
I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. 
I hope you live a life you’re proud of,
 and if you’re not, 
I hope you have the courage to start over again.”   - your friend, Scott