Sarah Allen's Blog, page 36

D is for Death

[image error] A really interesting analysis of some classic novels turns up an interesting result. As morbid as it sounds, death is the most common theme, the subject the selected novels have in common over any other.

I think there may be something to be said for this. Part of the purpose of art is figuring out what we're doing here, what we even are, where our value lies. That means thinking about not only where we "go" after we die, but if our lives have purpose or value beyond that point and if so, how do we do the most with the life we have. All this is to say, part of the human experience is wrestling with the concept of Death.

Great books can help us do that.

This also extends beyond just physical death, I think. Think of Holden Caulfield. To a certain extent we are worried for his physical life, worried he might even kill himself at some points. But beyond that, even if his body continues to live, one could say that he's on the verge of suicide of the soul. A sort of emotional death.

In that sense, one could say that all the books we write, all the struggles our characters are facing, should be life or death. Maybe its actual, physical death, maybe its the death of a dream or a belief or an idol. Thinking of it that way may help get the tension we're looking for.

What do you think? Does this apply to your favorite book?

Sarah Allen
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C is for Collaborations

Sometimes we create things that would have been impossible on our own. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, and sometimes that's what it needs to be. But other times the best work is created by more heads than one. Here are some of my favorite examples.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: So I haven't actually read this, to be honest, but my roommate once read us like the first chapter on a road trip and it was freaking hilarious. I WILL get to it soon.

A Softer World  by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau. Sometimes its just plain weird, but when its on, its spot on. Poignant and often hilarious photo-poetry comic I keep coming back to.


Vlogbrothers . I almost don't need to say anything more about this one. John and Hank Green are just pure awesome and I've talked about them a bunch already on this blog. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Watch their videos. Subscribe to their channel. You will be blessed.

So, there are some of my favorite collaborative projects. Especially for things like videos and artsy stuff I think this is particularly awesome.

What are your favorite collaborations?

Sarah Allen
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B is for The Beatles

So once upon a time four British guys changed music forever. No one has been able to duplicate not just The Beatles' popularity, but their direct impact on music itself. Although many, many have tried. I'm not even someone who would list The Beatles in my top ten bands, and I don't really listen to them regularly, but I can listen to my definite absolute favorites (*ahem* Billy Joel *ahem*) and see--or rather hear--pretty clearly how The Beatles paved the way.

So what made them so explosive and so seminal? How did they achieve the success that they did, and get away with shifting the music industry so significantly? That's a book-length topic right there, and many have been written, but here are a few leaves from their book I think we writers might be able to usefully incorporate.

1. The Beatles were genuine: If being themselves, being genuine, meant writing a song about yellow submarines, then they did it. Gritty lyrics had been done before, but I think they took it to a new level. And of course the music itself was totally new. I think they wrote music they wanted to hear, and it connected with that generation more deeply than any other music at the time. I think writers are doing this all the time. Think Ernest Hemingway or James Joyce or Hunter S. Thompson. Basically, don't be afraid to be yourself. Your readers will appreciate it.

2. The Beatles were prolific: How many albums did they make? How many songs? I don't know exactly, but it's a lot. I think this had a big part to play in keeping them on the forefront of peoples minds. Their was always something new from them to check out. And if someone maybe didn't like one album so much, they might fall in love with another. Example from the literary world? See Stephen King.

3. The Beatles were varied: The Beatles had everything from more hard-core rock to soft ballads to just plain weird. I think it not only kept things fresh, but again, gave them the opportunity to have something for everyone. They experimented and not just with...recreational substances. Sometimes their experiments were more successful then others, but they all helped shape The Beatles as a group and allowed them to change music the way they did.

4. The Beatles were British: Yeah, there's just no hope for some of us on this one. Bad luck us.

There's some quick thoughts on why The Beatles were so explosive. And I'll leave you with my favorite of their songs, one that I do listen to quite often:

What's your favorite Beatles song?

Sarah Allen

A is for Antagonists and Anti-heroes

Welcome to day 1 of the A-Z April challenge everybody!

So my little sisters have a thing with the show Psych. It is their absolute favorite show. So much so that on weekends my mom will come home from a date with Dad and we'll be watching and she'll be like, "Ugh, guys, really, Psych again?" We were talking about the characters we love and I was talking about how much I liked Lassiter and my sister was like, "Sarah, you always like the people you shouldn't like, like Snape and Benjamin Linus and stuff."

They know me so well :)

Anyway. It's true. I know I've talked about this many many times here  on the bloggy blog (and I know I've said I've talked about this many many times) but certain characters are simply so endlessly fascinating that I will never get tired of talking about them. The heroes are attractive and smart and often funny, but there's just something...layered, I guess one could say, about the antagonists and anti-heroes. Yes Carlton Lassiter is obnoxious, domineering, tactless and self-important, but then he writes a note for his girlfriend in prison or gets re-jilted by his ex-wife and you realize what a total sweetheart he is too.

Yes Snape is a rude, conniving, greasy know-it-all, but then you read Chapter 36 and you realize how brave and desperately lonely he is too.

Yes Benjamin Linus is a manipulative, lying, creepy, merciless cuss, but then you see his daughter shot or hear him desperately claim ownership of the pretty girl or see him help Hurley or watch season six and you realize how lonely and intelligent and frightened he is too.

I think that's what it comes down to, the layers. I think its satisfying to see seriously and blatantly flawed characters struggling to understand and become the better person in there somewhere, because that is ALL of us. We're all seriously flawed, and I think frustrated by the disparity between where we are and where we know we could be.

We like watching these characters and waiting for those moments when they reveal how utterly human they are.

Maybe this is just the character trope I personally like the most, but I still think we have a lot to learn from them about flaws in our characters and how that makes them relatable.

What do you think about this type of character? Can you think of other examples?

Sarah Allen

J is or Joy

This is a re-blog of a post I did for the 2011 A-Z challenge. We'll be back with a new letter A on Monday!!

***Considering the title of this blog, I thought I'd take J day to explain what exactly I mean by "Joy". I apologize in advance for being rambly, vague or philosophical, and for the heavy use of C. S. Lewis quotes. I sort of think that this is going to be one of those things that you either totally get or don't, which probably just means you're a bit saner than I am. But here goes.

So, for as long as I remember, I've had this kind of passionate, unsatisfied craving thing inside of me that kind of felt too big for my body. The way it comes across in my personality has been called effervescent, which has subsequently become one of my favorite words. Anyway, I've needed, hated, and been confused by this feeling for as long as I've had it. I didn't know why I felt that way, or even what exactly I was feeling. Most of all, I didn't know how to explain it or if anyone else felt anything similar. Then a couple years ago I took a C. S. Lewis class (best class I ever took...at least one of them) and he hit it exactly. I mean EXACTLY. He put into words what I thought was impossible to describe, and suddenly I knew I wasn't alone or crazy.

Here come the C.S. Lewis quotes. He said, "I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described." That was my first clue that he knew what I was feeling. Then he defined it perfectly as "that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is."

So that's what I was feeling. I had a name for it now. Like Lewis said, it is never in our control, though for he and I what often brings it up are memories from the past, nature, intensely deep love for someone, and, a big one for me, art (meaning literature, music, theater, art, etc.) Now I knew why I could watch certain movies and feel like exploding, painfully but gloriously unsatisfied, like watching it again and again would not be enough...I wanted to be the producer, director, actor, every member in the audience, and the movie itself, and still that wouldn't satisfy me. That seems kind of weird to say, but its how I felt, and I felt like Lewis was corroborating me.

Where this feeling, this kind of "Joy," comes from, is where it gets spiritual for me, and you're free to disagree or form your own thoughts about it. But as for Lewis and I, when (in my header quote) he says "meant for another world," he means Heaven. He says, "Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing." He says that the things that bring us this feeling "are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." This works for me as an explanation. I like the idea that "Joy is the serious business of Heaven."

In terms of creating this in our own art, this is where we can turn to Lewis' good buddy J.R.R. Tolkien. He says "The peculiar quality of the 'joy' in successful Fantasy [any art] can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth." So basically, in his definition Joy comes from accessing or glimpsing the universal Truth or Reality of a thing. He says good art provides "a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and let's a gleam come through." I think honesty and vulnerability have a lot to do with getting to this "universal" point.

Anyway, this has already gone on WAY longer than I'm sure any of you time for, but it explains the title of this blog, the two quotes I have in the header, and basically it explains me, if thats not too presumptuous to say. In talking about this I always feel that I haven't done the subject justice in the least, that it would take volumes. I also feel slightly exposed, and kind of hope you do too. Mostly right now I hope, with Lewis' help, that I've explained everything at least somewhat understandably, and that you find help, ideas or corroboration as I did in what Lewis has to say. If I could wish you anything it would be that today, you find joy.

Sarah Allen

What Do You Look For From Online/Blog Friends?

Sometimes (often) I feel a bit guilty for being such a social media freak. I love learning and networking with such awesome people who have so much to teach me and share my interests and ambitions. However, I do occasionally feel like I'm not only pimping myself, but that I have nothing really to offer. There are so many reasons I participate in the social media sphere. To learn and network, yes, but also, eventually, to promote books.

I think social media for book promotion is okay. In a way, you are offering a bit of yourself in exchange for a bit of someones time and attention. Whether they're reading your blog posts and tweets or your actual book. I think if social media is used that way, then that's fair. Spamming and turning it all into a one-way self-serving conversation is a separate thing, an annoying not okay thing that plenty of people in the blogosphere have talked about already.

But that's not really what I'm talking about here. I guess what I'm saying is that I sometimes feel guilty for asking for your attention on this blog or Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or YouTube or Pinterest when 1) my general lack of experience and 2) my unpublishedness/not having a book available makes me feel like I have so little to offer in return.

I plan to, in the future. Obviously I hope to have an explosion of books available for everybody as quickly as I can make that happen (still querying agents), but I also want to share what I learn along the way to hopefully be a little helpful. But I'm banking on that in the future and in a way asking you to, too.

Does all this make sense? I guess my real question is what do you look for in the people you interact with on social networks? What can I offer you to make your time and attention here the most worthwhile?

Maybe its a general question, but I am very open to any answers. What would be most worth your while? Not just here, but all over the internetz. More book recommendations? Writing process tips and tricks? Contests? More funny cat videos and pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch's cheek-bones?

Sarah Allen

A-Z Challenge and Enter the Haggis

Y'all doing the A-Z Blogging challenge this year?

This will be my third time around, I think. Maybe fourth? Whoa. I've been blogging for a long time...Anyway. There are two main reasons I love the A-Z challenge. First, having the letter restriction actually makes blogging easier for me. Instead of it being this nebulous I-can-blog-about-anything thing, going with the letter for the day helps me think of ideas.

The second reason, and the most important, is the sense of community. The blogosphere has always been a lovely, intelligent, helpful, welcoming community, but particularly in the last year or so there's been this general sense that it is shrinking, that it is not what it used to be. The A-Z Challenge is a good reminder that that isn't the point. That blogging is blogging, and still a good way to meet people and learn things and be in a group with the same ambitions and interests as you.

So yeah. You've still got a week to decide and sign up.

With that, I'll leave you with my favorite song for the week. I've realized I listen to a lot of slow, melodic music, and its nice to find such awesome happy perky music. So to perk up your Monday, I give you Enter the Haggis :)

Brain Fuzz

Lizzie Bennett Diaries.

I just...I can't...

Whew. I may or may not have been watching that off and on all day. IT HAPPENED GUYS. If you don't watch this series, I know I've said his before but DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and start from the beginning.

Ok, I don't know if I can think about anything else with that gif hanging over me but just...stuff.

I am about to start a new book, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, because a friend said it was totally me. I love having friends know me that well and I love having books out there that they know I'll love. I just finished another book (The White Darkness) that another friend recommended to me that I also completely loved and am still thinking about. Yay books.

So I didn't fall asleep until after three last night because my brain just would not shut up because I have this idea for a YouTube series that I am going to call Sentence Level and I just....am excite. I know this is more of a word crowd than a YouTube crowd but it will be about awesome literature and I'll keep you posted.

Then I had this really weird dream and all I remember is that this guy built tons of things out of toothpicks and he was sort of like a real life version of Yosemite Sam except really tall and maybe looked like Benedict Cumberbatch so maybe not Yosemite Sam at all and I don't remember if he was the bad guy we were trying to catch or if I was on his team? I'm going to have major loyalty issues when the new Star Trek movie comes out.

Here is something that is both a genius marketing ploy and will keep you entertained like ALL WEEKEND. Trust me.

Still feel like I'm holding my breath. The end of the tunnel is getting closer and closer though. Its the same money angst I've had since graduating and just plain old wondering whats going to happen and it also might have something to do with that gif hanging above me.

Okay okay I'll stop.

Have a nice weekend everybody ;)

Sarah Allen

Update on Novel Two

[image error] Yep, its coming. That's the main thing.

Novel two has been delightful. Seriously. I'm at about 25%, which means I should be hitting the soggy middle any time now. But fingers crossed, because so far its been really fun.

Which is surprising, because honestly, I think this one is going to be more intense than The Keeper. This new novel is turning out to be heavier and more...psychological and even spiritual than I expected. I do have a working title for this book, but I'm so ridiculously superstitious about saying too much before the project is far enough along that I'm not going to tell you yet.

But it is coming along. I think so far this has been easier than the first novel (knock on wood fingers crossed), in large part because of some structural differences. The Keeper has a more typical structure, with a climax that most of the novel is moving towards, and then a denouement. A nice solid structure, but it does make for some days of angsting towards that dang climax you wish was HERE ALREADY.

This novel is different, at least in my head. I guess it has the same normal structure, with a climax that its building toward, but in my head it looks more like a staircase, with obvious steps before the BIG EVENT. Two, to be exact. So instead of having one big moment that I'm moving towards for a whole novel, its more like I have a first big thing, and then I move towards the second big then, and then its the big climax. Its been fun and so far easier to work that way.

My main characters name is Olivia, I will tell you that much. Maybe I have already? I don't remember. Anyway, she is fourteen. In a way it has been cathartic to work with her, because I've never felt like the teenager I was has really been done in YA literature and now is my chance to do it. Well, that's not quite accurate. She is more the teenager I am right now, than the teenager I was when I was actually a teenager. If that makes sense.

Anyway, that is how Novel Two is coming.

How about you?

Sarah Allen

How Will Losing Google Reader Affect You?

Normally I love Google. They have one of the smartest and most generous business models out there.

In other words, their decision to retire Google Reader is the first time I've been like WHY GOOGLE WHY.

People manage and follow their blogs in many different ways, this I realize. But Google Reader is how I personally do it. It makes things so much easier. I don't want to have to take the time to find another RSS reader. I've already got everything set up with GR.

What I'm anticipating this will do to my blog reading habits is to make it a lot more random. I think eventually I will find another RSS reader and get back to consistently reading blogs. But whats probably going to happen, at least at first, is that there will only be a few that I remember to check back with fairly regularly, and the rest will be random blog hopping. Maybe that will be fun for a while.

But I will miss Google Reader. (If you, too, are a major Google Reader user, you can sign this petition to keep it around that already has over 100,000 signatures)

Your turn. How do you manage your blog reading? Do you browse randomly or use an RSS feeder like Google Reader? How will losing Google Reader affect you personally?

Sarah