Elizabeth Guizzetti's Blog, page 19

It’s not really the last day of summer, but here is my autumn schedule!

It’s Labor Day Weekend here in the US. While I realize the Autumn Equinox is not until September 21st, Labor Day has a finality that means the end of summer to me.

In my neck of the woods, blackberries are ripe and lush on the bush. Kids are getting ready to go back to school–or at least it looks like they are from my Facebook Feed. This weekend marks our last summer hike. Summer hikes are different than Fall Hikes.  While in the summer, I still always carry the ten essentials, I wear Tevas and shorts half the time. Once the rains start, it’ll be boots and pants all the way. I’ll start carrying my rain gear.

Of course this time of year, I also get more serious about writing and ready for my fall season of appearances.

For me, one of the biggest chores is rewriting my bio–which is for me one of the most difficult things about being an author. I received help from my author group this year –especially Zachary Bonelli  who looked it over one last time.  It also means I’m practicing pitches and rehearse for readings. I also need to inventory books to make sure I have enough and ordering a few things. And I admit, I’ve been slacking with checking with the local comic book shops over the summer. I know people probably think it’s funny, but one of the things I do is pack up boxes for each show and then have the one box for all the shows now. Then set up my show checklist (since each appearance can be different or at least focused on a different book) I’m also doing the last minute confirmations for each event.

I hope if you are in the local area, you might check one of these out.

King County Libraries Graphic Novel/Comics Workshops

October 27: Drawing Monsters! Mercer Island Library 2-4pm for KIDS! Please register at Mercer Island Library

November 5: Sequential Storytelling Issaquah Library 3 -5 pm for Teens!

November 23: How to create a Graphic Novel Workshop Kent Library 2-4pm for Teens!

ALSO This year I am doing a 10 week class for The Family Learning Program Writing and Artwork of the Graphic Novel for teens ages 11-16  (NOTE: There is a waitlist for this program.)

Conventions & Other  Appearances

Geek Girl Con

(I’m reading from Other Systems…and I plan to do a teaser of The Martlet)

October 19th & 20th

Seattle, WA

Hero’s Resource Fall Festival

I’ll be teaching a drawing monster’s class (Zombies, anyone?) and my table will be in the Lynden Pioneer Museum. This will be the Debut of the long awaited Out For Souls&Cookies #4: The Christmas Special! Ever wondered what a demon really wants for Christmas?

Come by for a chance to win a sketch of everyone’s favorite demon possessed stuffed squirrel, Lord Fluffcakes!

October 26th

Lynden

Jet City Comic Book Show

In Artist’s Alley under ZB Publications!

What? You couldn’t come up to Lynden for the debut? No worries I’m raffling off another sketch this one of Rosamudian and Tychobraticus!

November 2

Tacoma Convention and Trade Center

NW BookFest

A reading from Other Systems and more!

November 3

Northwest University, south of downtown Kirkland

Write what you know? Nah, be a master thief!

Every author has heard the words “Write what you know.” Honestly I think that’s terrible advice. While having personal information and experience can give the writing an interesting flavor,  if I wrote only what “I know” all my books would be about dogs, baking cookies, and hiking. That would make for some pretty boring books. So forget that!

Okay I admit writing about demon dogs is cool. After all look at Out for Souls & Cookies…

So my advice is twofold.

First, write what excites you enough to research the information that you need. It is going to be plenty an average person doesn’t know. My research list for The Light Side of the Moon included:

Lunar surface
Where a Lunar Colony might be located upon the moon
Recycling methods
American and European cities which Ellie stops along her way to the space elevator
Commercial Trucking including driving laws and restrictions
Smoking pot
British Slang
French Slang
Dissecting a pig’s heart
Medical School
First grade education
And many many other topics…

Second, steal from your friends!

Don’t worry, I’m not talking plagiarism. I am talking about listening and observing people so you can write interesting and realistic characters. Some people interview to help create characters. I tend to take attributes from people I see on the bus or in a coffee shop and especially from my author friends. Mainly because they tend to be smart and articulate.

My friends are not the characters–the characters are themselves. This is simply a way to help develop the character.

I ordered Zachary Bonelli to hold me. He did my bidding. I ordered him to rub my belly. He did my bidding. I ordered Andrea McQuate to give me a bite of pretzel. She did my bidding. However, this mythical “Evan Witt”  does not exist for he has neither rubbed my belly or given me food. Perhaps I will allow his existence some day. All hail the Mighty Rosie Beast!

Zachary Bonelli the author of Voyage Embarkation is an idealist just like my character Ian Whitlatch, so I mimicked some of Zach’s mannerisms, especially when Ian gets passionate about the injustice women suffer in the prison. The clenching fist, the softer voice when he gets serious. I have seen Zach’s kindness first hand–in fact he cradled Rosie in his hands to make her more comfortable on a car ride for at least an hour–so I can assume he would be kind to children such as Ian in this scene:

(Andre is 5. There has been a riot on the station. He and the other kids have taken shelter in the infirmary.)

…“Tristan and Ellie saved us,” Andre whimpered. Then he slipped away from Lisette and climbed onto Ian’s lap. Ian reached out for a tissue off the counter and wiped away the boy’s snotty tears and told him to blow his nose.  Andre did so. Ian clenched the tissue in his fist and leaned back in his chair wrapping his arms around him trying to make him comfortable… 

My friend Andrea McQuate is a neuro-scienist. When I wrote Ian’s opening scenes, she was the one who told me to make Ian be more in love with his science experiment. Also her stories of gradschool and time in the lab speaks of passion for one’s work. So from Andrea, I stole Ian’s love of science.

…what truly excited Ian was observing deep within the four chambers of the heart. While he had to outpace the rotting flesh, he lingered over the spiraling perfection of muscle. With his left hand, he trailed the coronary artery as he drew it with his right. His fingers felt for the thickness of the ventricles. He located the curved part of the aorta behind the pulmonary arteries to the lungs. 

Put the two together and I have a character like Ian Whitlatch.

I even do it for villains. In The Martlet, one of my favorite characters is Kian, but for a long time he was missing something until a few weeks ago when I met author Evan Witt who came to my reading. Afterwards we went out to dinner with artist & author AoKA (another extremely interesting person I’d love to base a character off of someday. )

Evan has wonderful hand gestures and plays with his pen when he speaks or when he is listening. Kian needed more details to show his nature and that seemed appropriate.  Now one thing they have in common is  when Evan smiles, his eyes crinkle. That was actually what drew me into watching him more intently.  That’s when I began noticing his pen acrobatics.

He doesn’t look like Kian– obviously he’s not a Fairsinge with tri-pointed ears nor does he have strawberry blonde hair or blue eyes. I certainly hope he doesn’t have “scars that run deep” or thinks he will find the secret to immortality by turning people into revenants, but that’s hardly the point.

My friends are not the characters–the characters are themselves. Ian has attributes outside both Zach and Andrea.  I began writing Kian a year ago and met Evan only a month ago. This is simply a way to help develop the character more deeply. While all the authors I mentioned in this blog know because I told them I was writing the blog post, most people won’t notice because I am picking and choosing specific gestures or intrinsic qualities that I do not possess.

So go be a master thief!

Review of the Caseworker’s Memoirs by Dan Thompson

So the next book on my summer reading list is: The Caseworker’s Memoirs

The Caseworker’s Memoirs is a fascinating novella which reads as seven short stories about phobias tied together by a retired counsellor, Malcolm, grieving the loss of his beloved wife, Mary.

It’s written in a bit of an experimental style and though it starts a little slow with Malcolm’s idealized descriptions of Mary, it is a very quick read and I quickly became engrossed with the seven people’s fear which consumed their lives. At least for a few if the characters, Grace, Mark & Neil, I wanted to know even more, what happened next! (which even thought I can’t know, this is a good sign)

Dan Thompson has a eloquent style of character description that I found interesting–especially because those suffering the phobias were of different classes and I felt all the character’s were written well.

Write Drunk, Edit Sober. Good advice if not taken literally.

Dennis asked me if I wanted some tequila. We were joking around and he mentioned writing a blog post about “Writing like Hemingway.”

I said no, but umm, well here I am writing about the aftermath.

“Write Drunk, Edit Sober” is a quote that is generally attributed to Hemingway, but there is actually no credible source that he actually said it. However even Hemingway can’t remember everything he actually wrote and said.  In the Paris Review The Art of Fiction No. 21 conducted by George Plimpton

Plimpton: You once wrote in the Transatlantic Review that the only reason for writing journalism was to be well paid. You said: “And when you destroy the valuable things you have by writing about them, you want to get big money for it.” Do you think of writing as a type of self-destruction?

HEMINGWAY: I do not remember ever writing that. But it sounds silly and violent enough for me to have said it to avoid having to bite on the nail and make a sensible statement…”

So whether he said it or not, let’s breakdown “Write Drunk, Edit Sober”

Earnest Hemingway was a notorious drinker. A quick search on the internet will show hundreds of photos with him with a drink in his hand. He also was a womanizer, it’s possible that he hit his wives.  In fact, some would say his over the top lifestyle is practically a parody of what it is to be a sporting man’s man author.  I am not defending any bit of his lifestyle. This is post is simply about writing while drunk.

While certainly, Hemingway was a hard drinker, there is evidence to suggest that most of the time while he was writing he was sober.

In the same interview with Plimpton, Hemingway said “When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.”

So in my opinion, it doesn’t really sound like he is drinking when he is actually writing. It sounds like he is drinking when he is NOT writing. He’s getting through the rest of the day. Here is another of Hemingway’s stories about writing and drinking:

Hemingway: “The stories you mention I wrote in one day in Madrid on May 16 when it snowed out the San Isidro bullfights. First I wrote “The Killers,” which I’d tried to write before and failed. Then after lunch I got in bed to keep warm and wrote “Today Is Friday.” I had so much juice I thought maybe I was going crazy and I had about six other stories to write. So I got dressed and walked to Fornos, the old bullfighters’ café, and drank coffee and then came back and wrote “Ten Indians.” This made me very sad and I drank some brandy and went to sleep. I’d forgotten to eat and one of the waiters brought me up some bacalao and a small steak and fried potatoes and a bottle of Valdepeñas.

The woman who ran the pension was always worried that I did not eat enough and she had sent the waiter. I remember sitting up in bed and eating, and drinking the Valdepeñas. The waiter said he would bring up another bottle. He said the Señora wanted to know if I was going to write all night. I said no, I thought I would lay off for a while. Why don’t you try to write just one more, the waiter asked. I’m only supposed to write one, I said. Nonsense, he said. You could write six. I’ll try tomorrow, I said. Try it tonight, he said. What do you think the old woman sent the food up for?

I’m tired, I told him. Nonsense, he said (the word was not nonsense). You tired after three miserable little stories. Translate me one.

Leave me alone, I said. How am I going to write it if you don’t leave me alone? So I sat up in bed and drank the Valdepeñas and thought what a hell of a writer I was if the first story was as good as I’d hoped.”

Notice here too, he is not saying he is writing and drinking. He drank brandy and went to sleep. Later he is drinking and thinking.

Now this is what really happens if I am drinking. Before people get the wrong idea (And for my mom since she is likely going to read this) I am going to explain something. I sip my shots, not toss them back. Normally when I drink, I enjoy mixed drinks better than straight shots. I am only a social drinker.

Cut up some limes, break open the salt and Dennis pours us a shot.

1st shot: I feel fuzzy though Dennis doesn’t believe I feel fuzzy a little warm–but then the guy has a hundred pounds on me. We begin watch the goofy movie Eurotrip, 2004 . Our neighbors comes over.

2nd shot. I feel a little unsteady on my feet. Dennis tells me to touch my nose with my eyes closed which I can do, HOWEVER I have to THINK to make brownies, but I know my neighbor doesn’t like walnuts, so I ask everyone how they feel about pecans. Then I made said brownies with pecans.  They turned out fine, because I was THINKING really hard about a recipe I have memorized.

At this point I feel I have been up for nine days. My eyelids are getting heavy, but I set the timer. Now the brownie timer is the shot timer. So now we had over a 1/2 hour between the second and third shot.

Third shot and brownies!

Our neighbor and Dennis talk about this new food called a cronut. My neighbor and I tried to figure out how to deconstruct a cronut so we could make them someday. They are in new York and though they will no doubt move across the country, we thought about what it might be like.

Dennis is wondering why we get fixated on thing, until our neighbor called it “hacking the cronut.”

Everyone starts talking about dinner. Honestly I’m too sleepy to sit through a meal. They call up to get a cab, then go get Mexican Food. I stay home. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I meant to see what happened if I tried to write. Then Dennis is calling me, telling me he is coming home. He brought me Carne Asada Tacos. I eat.

Now that I am awake again, the depressive effects of alcohol means I cannot feel my heart. Or my brain. Or where ever the stories and the characters and their voices come from. I become logical and colder.  I have to try to keep myself from panicking. My synapses are firing, I know it’s there, but there is no connection. I began thinking I might never be able to create again.  I feel dead inside. I feel alone. Logically I know I have a husband who loves me–and who don’t forget–just brought me tacos as proof of his devotion and also now is being very sweet to me since he knows I don’t feel quite right.

Dennis suggests I go to bed. I take the dogs outside and come inside and try to sleep. It does not come quickly. It does come once Dennis comes to bed. He mentions some movies we might watch today. I eventually fall asleep until 6:30 when Tycho wakes me up so I will take him outside. This morning, I don’t have a headache and my heart is speaking to me again.

This is what I learned:  Drinking does not make you more imaginative or creative, it turns off the “juice.” As Hemingway called it. This is why so many artists of all types drink and do drugs. Not to be more creative, but to turn it off! 

This is why I believe “Write Drunk, Edit Sober” is not meant to be taken literally at all. It means write without inhibition. Make it fun. Make it a carnival.

If  you want to emulate about Earnest Hemingway then write with confidence. Use strong words and write as concisely as possible. Finally here is the last thing to remember about being an author, even about a great Nobel Prize winning author such as Hemingway: “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit, I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” (Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934.)

The Light Side of the Moon has taken the first tiny step towards publication…

The first step in publication of this novel is to send it to 48Fourteen the publisher of Other Systems. I know it got there, because the editor has sent me a confirmation letter. We will see what happens–honestly there are thoughts swirling through my mind.

1) Is is too harsh on organized religion both current as well as one from the future? Is it too harsh on the prison system?

2) There is a love story. Is it trite? This is my first romantic subplot in a written novel.

3) Finally, and this is the question I always ask: Will I make you care about these fictional people? Can I make you believe they and the setting in which they live are real?

Here’s a bit of non-spoiler pre-edited TRIVIA:

Currently there are four quotes from Albert Einstein in the book. Ian’s dad (Royce Whitlatch) refer’s to him as “an ancient philosopher and one of the early modern physicists.”

Author Dan Thompson helped me with the British English slang and impolite conversation–this is set in the Other System’s Universe after all.  Now I can I swear with the best of them in two types of English.

There is also some swearing in French.

As I did create the artwork for the cover and Illustrations for  Other Systems, I will be doing the same for The Light Side of the Moon. In fact, I was going to start on that in the near future so keep your eyes peeled for some reveals!

Fly away The Light Side of the Moon.

Let’s see what happens.

 

Yesterday a man was shot over $2.50 USD and I was annoyed about traffic.

Dennis was running late yesterday, so I drove him to work. We got stuck in traffic on Pine Street. It’s often a bit crowded around 9:30, but it was solid traffic. We saw a valet parking attendant actually stood in traffic so a driver could pull out of his lot.

I was slightly irritated.  I think Dennis was too when he said,  ”I’m just going to walk the rest of the way.”

I said okay and he hopped out of the car. I turned up 6th avenue then onto Pike so I could get out of downtown the quickest way possible. By the time I got home, Dennis discovered what happened and I got a text.

A bus driver was shot.

Here is the basics of what happened from the Seattle Times

“Three people used a rear door to board the bus, including a man in a hooded, dark-colored sweatshirt.

The driver asked the three to pay their fares, and two complied. But the man in the sweatshirt paced back and forth inside the bus, then physically attacked the 64-year-old driver.”

the rest of the article is here. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021599613_busshootingxml.html

A single zone bus fare at Peak Hours is: $2.50.

Thankfully driver is okay, he is at the hospital. Other people had injuries due to the escape and subsequent chasing down of the man who was shot by the police and died at the hospital. We will never know why the assailant went ballistic. From the article, he suffered from mental health issues.

I know this was an isolated incident. I know that Dennis would not have been on that bus because it was the 27 southbound (Dennis might have been on the 27 northbound which makes it feel somewhat close to home.)

We live in a city with over a million people. It is amazing that Seattle is as safe as it is.  More importantly when life’s little irritations get me angry, I hope I’ll remember that I don’t know what happened three blocks away.  My tiny inconvenience is not comparable to what happened.

My thoughts go out to anyone who was injured, the police officers and to the driver of the bus and the driver’s family.

Author Reading at the Kent Library

Hey local fans,

Join me as I read from my novel, Other Systems, at the Kent Public Library.

Verdict Book Reviews hailed Other Systems as, “An imaginative and bold Sci-Fi adventure which, at its core, is a powerfully humane tale of identity and friendship.”

Discussion about writing science fiction and possible difficulties of space travel and planetary colonization will follow.

Kent Library

212 2nd Avenue N., Kent, 98032

253-859-3330

Saturday, August 10, 2013

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM in the Large Meeting Room

Author’s Life: Week 10

Here’s me and the dogs at Blanca Lake.  I don’t know if you can tell, but I already went wading so my pants are dripping water down the stone. Photo taken by Rebecca Brown (my hiking partner)

Just a short blog post this week. So  a couple weeks ago, I told the world or at least the people who read the blog about my exercise program in order to enjoy hiking again. Well it’s week 10.  My big hiking goal of the summer was to make it to Blanca Lake. Today Rebecca, Rosie and Tycho and I made it!

An Author’s Life: Critiques

If your dream is to be an author, taking critiques like an adult is a skill you must learn. It doesn’t matter if you are sixteen or sixty, hearing your work needs even more work is hard. Sometimes you might work on a beautiful descriptive phrase, but it needs to be cut because it doesn’t add to the work.

You will discover this only by having beta readers, still it is hard to sit through people cutting apart your work.

Unrelated dragon image that I did at the drink&draw. Cute isn’t it?

Here are my four guidelines:

1) Be professional.

2) Ask questions, but don’t defend the work.

3) Listen.

4) Don’t take it personally.

In my experience, taking it personally is the one I see the most–especially with new authors.   In fact this last one is so common, I find it hard to give critiques to new writers. If someone has done a few rewrites, I don’t worry about it, but when they are a new writer and trying to get started I don’t want to say anything to discourage them. We are not attacking you. We are actually trying to make the writing better. We took the time to read your work and make comments.

If you only want accolades do not ask a author to beta read.

An Author’s Life: Don’t bug me, I’m Beta Reading!

This week and the previous was spent beta reading. I read a manuscript for a friend which blew me a way. I read a part of a serialized manuscript for another friend which is I liked very much, but left me questioning something–this is not a bad thing btw!   (During this time, to break up my focus, I also read Stephen King’s Joyland but I doubt he cares about my opinion.)

Rosie says, “Constructive Criticism is priceless, but being a jerk is never acceptable. If you are a jerk, I will eat you, because jerk is a flavor I particularly love!”

I joined a writer’s group two years ago. I remember it was two years ago because it was right as I was querying Other Systems and I signed my contract for publication right near my birthday in 2011. Now just for a definition: Beta-reading is NOT editing. Though sometimes I point out grammar things that annoy me, mostly a beta-reader is looking for plot holes, pacing issues, out of character actions, or other things I find confusing.

When I first started beta-reading, I read small pieces of a manuscript because that is how the group is set up. Mostly a single chapter. However a single chapter doesn’t give me the overall view in regards to the whole of the story. Also once the author changed something after the critique I got very confused when I read the next chapter.

What I learned for me is short pieces work well for character development or getting facts straight. I admit the last time I brought a chapter to my author’s group, I was asking specifically if a chapter in The Light Side of the Moon which deals with drug use.  All I wanted to know was does this person’s experiences seemed correct.  I have never done drugs so I had no experience, but I guessed at least a few people in the group had, and I was correct. Though marijuana is legal where I live, it’s stinky so I have no interest in smoking it.

Now that I have written a few books, I particularly like reading full manuscripts, because I can identify anything that annoys me as a reader: plot holes, pacing, the amount of sex, swearing, translation issues. Even if the book is written for the target market for the novel.

When I met with the first friend so I might give her my critique –yes I am not saying anything about it purposely because I don’t have permission–we talked about how one of the best things about beta reading is sometimes you learn from a mistake that you see the other authors make. Also there is nothing like seeing the development of a manuscript from the moment I read to it being released. I read a few chapters a few years ago, now I read the whole thing and I am really excited.

Same thing with the one I finished the second one this morning. One will be later this year and I think the next one is next year. It’s fun to read the final version.

So writers while reading is important to an author so is beta reading. If you are a writer, chances are you have writer friends.  Go forth and beta read. Any time that you are giving your friends comes right back two fold.  1) these are the folks that critique my own work and (2) you learn things from critiquing.

Next week: I will write about how to accept a critique of one’s writing.