Bryce Moore's Blog, page 262

Down the Well: Vodnik Chapter Twenty-Four

When I'm writing a scene for the first time, it's always interesting to me (after the fact) to see where all the bits and pieces and shreds of ideas came from. An excellent example of this can be seen in this chapter, where Tomas's descent into the well drew upon several bits of writing I'd done in the past, as well as some life experiences.



First up is Lesana's transition into a living ice sculpture. I think I've mentioned a few times in these commentaries that Vodnik is actually my second story set in Slovakia--my second starring a vodnik, actually. Back in the day, I wrote a single draft of what was going to be a co-authored book that took place half in medieval Slovakia and half in the present day. I was on the line for the medieval stuff, and I used a vodnik as one of my main villains.



(I was going to put an excerpt of the story here, but after re-reading it . . . I've decided not to. Some books are much better in memory than they are in reality. Let's leave it at that.)



Anyway--the vodnik in that book had a scene where he was walking around encased in ice. I didn't copy the description word for word, but the image--if an ice-person--stayed in my head for a long time until it found another place to appear here in this chapter.



Other elements from various places:




Tomas's headaches are a match for my own migraines (awful, debilitating affairs.)
The seamonster is actually based on my wife's dog growing up: his name was Ajax, and he was a dachshund. I like to think he got reincarnated as an enormous sea monster, which is probably many a dachshund's dream.
And come to think of it, the whole monster-as-a-big-dog-at-heart is an approach I used in my third book: Weaver of Dreams. The main character gets swallowed by an enormous invisible monstrosity that later on turns into a cocker spaniel.
Back in my sophomore year of college, I took a creative writing class and had to write a description of an inanimate object. I chose a well. The description stayed with me, and came back in bits and pieces in this chapter.
The leap-frog fountains at EPCOT have always been a favorite of mine. They were a favorite of Tomas's, too. Coincidence?!?





I guess the bottom line of this post is just an observation that no writing is wasted. No experience is wasted. You never know when you're going to turn to your past to plunder something for your present. I keep everything I've written--that's the beautiful thing about the digital age. You can have it all, and it takes up no additional space. Not that I plan on cutting and pasting things from an old draft into a current one, but rather the ideas hashed out and used in one work can be consulted for use in a later one.

Movie Review: John Carter

I had wanted to go see John Carter when it was in theaters, but I never had the chance to. I'd heard a lot about it. You probably had, too. The big Disney sci-fi flop. Huge budget, tanked at the box office. Of course, I'd also heard that it had been mis-marketed. That it wasn't nearly as bad as people said it was.



So I was skeptical and curious to see what I'd think about it.



Honestly, I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, the movie tried to bite off more than it could reasonably chew. There wasn't enough time devoted to character building, but if they'd devoted an adequate amount of time to that, then they wouldn't have had enough left over to cover the whole plot. And what a wide-ranging plot it was: man from the civil war gets transported to Mars and thrown into another war, where he discovers that the lower gravity on Mars essentially makes him a Superman for their planet.



The effects were fantastic, the acting was passable, the story was rushed in places, but suitably epic. In the end, I'd have to come down on the side of liking the movie a fair bit. Three stars, even. I think I would have liked it even more if they'd gone whole hog on the presentation. Give me three hours of this, and you might have a home run. (Then again, there's a chance that three hours of it would have left me yawning incessantly, so who knows . . .)



I do think that it was mis-marketed. The television commercials made it seem more pulp sci-fi actiony, whereas I think it was going for more of the sci-fi version of Lord of the Rings. The problem, in the end, was that it really did try to do both at the same time. Mainly LotR, but the lite-version. I don't think lite LotR really works. You need to be really committed to pull of something like that. I'm not sure who wasn't committed in this case. My gut tells me it was the producers. In any case, it's unfortunate. There's a lot to be said for this universe, and now that it has the anathema of Huge Hollywood Flop, we'll likely never get to see it.



Check this one out if you haven't already. It's worth a few hours of your life.



Or am I off base? Have you seen it already? What did you think?[image error]

Morris Award Nominations Open: Please Read!

[image error] Every year, YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) gives an award to the best YA debut novel. Called, The William C. Morris YA Debut Award, it "honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature."



Now, I'm not going to tell you who to nominate. Anyone can nominate a title. They estimate there's around 300 debut titles published each year that could qualify for the award. (Probably more, these days) This is a case where it definitely would help a book to receive multiple nominations, particularly from teens and librarians.



So . . . if you happen to know of a book that was written by a debut YA novelist--a book you found fits the award criteria, then by all means, nominate, nominate, nominate.



To help you with the nomination process, allow me to show you how such a nomination form might look.



Email address: [INSERT YOUR EMAIL HERE]

Your Name: [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]

Author Last Name: Moore

Author First Name: Bryce

Book Title: Vodnik

Publisher: Tu Books

Publication Date: March 15, 2012

ISBN-13: 9781600608520

Genre: Fiction

Has this author published a book before? No

Annotation: [INSERT DESCRIPTION OF BOOK HERE. I can't write the whole thing for you, people.]

Please explain why you thing this title is a candidate: [INSERT ALL THE REASONS WHY YOU LIKED THE BOOK HERE]

Affiliation: [CHECK OFF THE CATEGORY THAT FITS WHO YOU ARE]



Then hit SUBMIT, and you're good to go.



Might I suggest sharing this nomination process with other people? :-)



Thanks, folks. You're the best![image error]

The Requisite Post Debate Response

Sigh. Double sigh. Triple sigh.



I'm not sure I want to watch Monday's debate. They're just too aggravating. The first one was okay-ish, but they've been downhill from there. You've got essentially Oz the Great and Powerful arguing against Nelson from the Simpsons. Oz just keeps repeating, "Pay no attention to what's behind the curtain," and Nelson keeps pointing and saying "HA HA!"



And don't get me started on the pageantry surrounding these debates. The commentators discussing them ahead of time, the representatives for the candidates "spinning" things after the fact. The constant discussion about who won. I'll be dry heaving all night.



This isn't a sport. It's not about "who won." I thought both candidates looked pitiful out there last night, squabbling about rules and wordings and time limits. My movie-clip analogy this time was drawn from The Sandlot:







My time would have been better spent rewatching that movie last night rather than watching that thing that was on the television, instead.



The biggest takeaways people are having from the debate? Romney said the phrase "binders full of women." Oh snap! Obama swears he called the Benghazi attack an act of terror, but he just generally referred to "acts of terror," and there's clearly a difference there, and--



This is what we're debating? Honestly? Don't we have anything better to do with our time? Like . . . try to present what we want to do to fix the country? Neither Obama nor Romney have made an argument to me yet that convinces me either one of them has a solid, definite plan for improving things. Romney has a haze of "five points," and Obama has a "Romney is a rich jerk who will tax you more."



Every time Romney evades questions, it reveals that he hasn't given real, tangible specifics yet. Anytime Obama talks about "How in the world is Romney going to pay for it all?", I just think back on the debates four years ago, when it was Obama promising the sun and moon. Romney might as well turn to him and say, "I learned all this by watching you."







So once again: the fallout. Obama's camp is parading around proclaiming victory because the polls gave him a 7 point edge on the question of "Who won?" Again, people--this ain't sports. My beloved Yankees might have lost by a point tonight. That matters. It's baseball. Whoever wins, wins. Whoever doesn't, doesn't.



This is not baseball.



I'm too aggravated. I'm going to bed. I'll post this in the morning.[image error]

Let's Talk about Sex: Teaching Chastity at Church

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you'll recall (possibly) me mentioning a few weeks ago that I have a new job at church: teaching the 12 and 13 year-old boys. There's a prescribed lesson schedule in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), so it was up to me to teach the next lesson, which happened to be (drumroll, please):



The Sacred Power of Procreation



Yeah. There are only two boys that age in my congregation, so it was going to be me and two twelve year olds, talking about procreation. Not exactly my comfort zone, and it wasn't helped that the lesson manual I was to teach from dated back to the early 1980s. (And this lesson in particular was all based on a speech from 1974.) So I was to use material almost 40 years old to try and connect with kids of today.



This brings up so many different things I want to discuss, I don't know where to begin. First off, the easy bit: what I ended up doing, and how it went. Thankfully, the church has just released some revised lesson materials for teaching the youth--materials that are to start being used in January. I cheated somewhat, and went and found them and used some of them for the basis of the lesson. (Curious what I chose? It was this article.) In the end, I didn't get into a nitty gritty on the do's and don'ts of chastity and morality. I didn't feel like it was my place (more on that in a moment). What I did discuss was why we have rules in life.



Basically, I talked about how God gives us rules to help us be happy. Sometimes some of those rules seem like they keep us back from having fun, but there's a fundamental difference between happiness and fun. I used as an example the fact that my kids want to eat as much sugar as humanly possible, but our family has rules to keep that from happening. Those rules (theoretically) help protect our kids from having health issues later in life. Health issues which would influence their happiness.



The boys I was teaching were responsive and active in the lesson the whole time. It didn't feel uncomfortable at all, and I was very relieved it went as well as it did. I was in my comfort zone--teaching about something I had strong feelings about. I really do believe much of the happiness I have in my life can be traced back directly to the degree to which I follow what I believe are God's commandments. Yes, they seem to restrict me in some ways, but from a long term perspective, nothing the Church or my religion has asked me to do has every brought me anything but joy, so it's pretty easy for me to teach that principle.



However.



I will say that this experience has opened my eyes in some ways to things I should have seen earlier, but hadn't. My kids will continue getting older, and one day, they will be the kids getting taught these lessons. And I won't necessarily have any influence over what's being taught. That's . . . more than a little frightening. I love my religion, and I know the people in it all mean well. (Most of them, at any rate.) But we're all unpaid volunteers when it comes down to it. So someone will be teaching my son or daughter about sex, and who knows what they might try to pass off as doctrine. (Came across this blog post a month or two ago that talks about some of the misguided efforts young women in the church have encountered. I found it very interesting and thought I'd pass it along to you.)



What it boils down to is that we have untrained adults having conversations about intimate topics with teens, and I'm not entirely sure how okay with that I am. I'm not saying I'm genuinely worried about my kids. We have discussions about what they learned in church each week, and I feel confident and capable I'll be able to stay on top of whatever curve balls are thrown their way. (I hope.) But my religion is 14 million members and growing. Anytime you get that many people doing something, the pure law of averages says some bad things are going to happen, and I wonder if there's a better way of handling this particularly sensitive subject.



I know church members who are very upset with what public schools teach about sex in the classroom. (Well, the teaching is done in the classroom, not the sex. Stupid misplaced modifiers . . . ) Honestly, I'm not that riled up about sex ed. I'm sure my kids are going to hear far worse from their friends, and I'd rather I was aware of what's being taught and by whom--and at the very least, public school teachers are (supposedly) trained in what they're doing.



I don't know. I'm rambling some at this point, trying to get my thoughts in order. This post is mainly just to say that up until this experience, I'd always sort of thought what my kids found out about sex came down to what I told them, what they asked their friends, what they saw on television, and what was taught in school. Now I see what's taught in church could be problematic, too. Problematic in a different way. In a guilt-inducing, soul shattering, potentially life-altering way. I've got friends who had real struggles with this growing up in the church, and I want to spare my children that experience if I can.



Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the church should abandon teaching about chastity. I'm still all in favor of that law. But . . . it can be handled in a variety of ways. I guess that's part of life. Find out what the punches are, and then roll with them.



Hey--at least I don't have to teach about chastity again this week. This week's lesson is on Decision Making.



I think I can handle it.



And what about you, faithful readers? Has anything this post had to say sparked some sort of response from you? I'd love to carry the discussion on. Please feel free to comment. Just keep things civil . . .[image error]

Starenka: Vodnik Chapter Twenty-Three

WARNING: SPOILERS--DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED VODNIK



Starenka was another fun character to write. She first appeared back when Tomas and Katka were doing their original tour of the city. Back then, she tried to give Tomas the herbs he'd need to complete the spell the Vodnik put in his hands much later on. (Which is another argument in the "Fate" camp, if you're looking at the plot of this book from that angle. How did Starenka know Tomas would need to be having those herbs? Since we know she's not actually Starenka, but instead is Tomas's grandmother, working for Morena, then that seems to suggest that perhaps Morena knows more than she lets on to Tomas, and the Vodnik's death was fated to happen. But I digress . . .)



In case you're wondering, the dialogue back at the beginning of the book translates roughly as follows:



Starenka asks Tomas if he'd like to buy some herbs.

Tomas says no.

She then says that he'll be wanting them later, and it would be easier to just get them now.

Tomas says, "You don't want. You don't want." (his Slovak isn't very good still at this point. Poor kid.

She says some other things he doesn't understand, and that's that.



Anyway. When I was writing her, I pictured the quintessential witch from Hansel and Gretel. Except this one's good, not bad. I think witches get a really bad rap in pop culture these days. They're always bad bad bad. I liked the fact that Slovak folklore had a good witch character in it.



And then it turned out that good witch was actually Tomas's grandmother in disguise. In my defense, I didn't know that until the end when I was writing the first draft. The end scene is there, and then suddenly Starenka is revealing that she was Babka all along.



It's experiences like that that make me really love first drafts. Anything can happen still, and sometimes, anything does. Of course, there have been times when a small side character tries to make a reveal like that, and I look at it, and then firmly tell that character that, no, it can't say that. But now and then, things all just click together in the right way.



I'm a firm believer in letting my subconscious do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to first drafts. The story's there, and it's up to me to ferret it out as best as I can. Sometimes I'll hit a figurative wall, and it takes some time and thought to write around it. In some cases, that means going back a few chapters and starting over. In other cases, it means retooling a character so that a later reveal makes sense.


I remember in the first book I ever wrote and finished (INTO THE ELEVATOR), I had a main character who revealed himself to be a villain about two thirds of the way through. There were no hints of his villainous nature. No foreshadowing. One minute, he's good. The next--surprise!--he's bad.



I still would like to pull a stunt like that some day, mainly because that's often how it seems to be in real life. We'd like to think there are all these subtle signs about who's good and who's bad, but too often I've seen people I would have sworn were 100% great and loyal people just turn around and change in an instant. It's only after the fact that the signs are clear. In literature, I think we authors sometimes feel too obligated to include all those signs ahead of time, so that we can prep the reader for the reveal.



Then again, that groundwork is necessary. Starenka revealing herself to be Babka only works because I devoted time and attention to that plot line throughout the book. It solves two mysteries at the same time, and it manages to make both of them make sense. (Well, to me it does, at least.) In my first book, it was just too shocking. Readers were upset, and I ended up having to change things.



Anyway. Out of time for today. Thanks for reading!

Brief Vice Presidential Debate Thoughts

Very similar to my Presidential Debate thoughts from last week, actually. I start to wonder why I watch the debates. I posted this to Facebook and Twitter last night--and I think I've posted it on my blog before--but this really sums up how I felt about the debate.







Thank you, Monty Python. What it all seemed to boil down to was each side calling the other side out for lying or misrepresenting facts, back and forth, with lots of interruptions, widow's peaks, smiles, and general grumpiness on my part.



Once again, Republicans felt Biden was doing terribly and Ryan was doing awesome, and Democrats had the same feelings, just reversed.



This feels very High School sometimes, and so I've decided I'm changing my vote. I'm now gunning for . . . .






STEVE HOLT!

How I Treat Myself as a Boss

Bluntly put, if I were my own boss, I'd quit. Does that make sense? What I mean to say is that if my real boss treated me like I treat myself when it comes to my writing life, I don't think I'd last very long at a real job. I make myself work six days a week. No vacations. No sick days. Hardly any excuses. I had a splitting migraine and was throwing up for half of Saturday, and I still felt guilty that I hadn't gotten any writing done that day. Guilty enough that I wrote extra on Monday and Tuesday to try and stave off the feeling somewhat.



Why do I do that to myself?



Well, part of it is that I just love to write. There's certainly something to be said for being able to do what you love. And I know that if I don't force myself to write, then it likely just won't happen. I have a lot of other things to do, and so without the pressure to write, I'd just let it slack off. I mean, I like to do a lot of things I don't get to do on a regular basis. Play board games, read more, go out to the movies, fish, hike. Why don't I get to do them? I don't make time for them. I really don't want writing to be added to that list.



And so I drag myself out of bed an hour early every day and force myself to sit in front of that screen until 1,000 words are written. I take my iPad with me on vacations so that I can keep the writing going there. And that's all very good. I'm proud of how much writing I'm able to accomplish. But I can't help thinking I ought to be to the point now where I can not write *sometimes* and not feel guilty about it.



Way back when I started my daily goal, I had to write every day, or I really did stop writing. Aren't I at the point now that it's ingrained enough into me that I'll do it even if I take a sick day or a vacation now and then? And in my defense, I *have* taken a few sick days and vacations--it's just that I still felt guilty while doing so.



When I'm sick and stay home from my real job, or when I go on vacation, I'll tell you one thing: I don't feel guilty. Maybe if there's a huge deadline, and I just can't make it to work, then I'll feel bad. But if I'm not missing anything vital? I just lie in bed and let myself be miserable. Maybe I should work out some sort of a contract with myself. X number of sick days per month. X number of vacation days.



But something's telling me that's a tad overkill.



Maybe I ought to unionize . . .

In Which I Make an Important Familial Announcement

I could make this post all coy and everything, but I'm not going to. Denisa and I are pleased to let you all know we'll be having a third baby join the family in April or so. Yes, you read that right. Another baby. Going from two to three. Supposedly the biggest jump you can make, outside going from none to one. (No doubt I'll have an opinion of my own about that someday.)



We've had more than a few similar reactions to this announcement when we've told people, so let me anticipate your questions and answer them briefly:



"Was this planned?"--Yes. Very much so.
"I thought you were done having children."--Don't know where this came from. I've mainly diverted any questions about how many kids we wanted to have, since I feel like that's a really personal question and none of anyone's business but mine and Denisa's. It's generally easier to let people assume you're finished with the whole "bringing life into the world" game--that way, they stop asking you questions about it.
"Is it a boy or girl?"--Don't know yet. Too soon to tell.
"What do TRC and DC think?"--They're both in favor of it. Well, TRC was worried at first that we'd have the baby sleep in his room when it was still a baby. He didn't want the screaming. :-) But once we let him know that it would have its own room (until it sleeps more normally), life was much sunnier. DC stated she only wanted to help care for the baby if it's a girl. But then she thought about it, and conceded a boy would be okay, too.
"Ha! Now you need to get a minivan!"--Really? Because my little Civic seats five, and I'm not afraid to jam those kids in the back seat. Denisa's Buick Century seats six. (No--we're not having twins.) We have no plans to get a minivan at the time. They're bigger, more expensive, and we like the cars we have. TRC is out of his car seat, and DC is in a booster. It will be a tight fit back there, but as kids, both Denisa and I had plenty of experience being cramped in the back seat. If we had a fourth child, we'd probably have to go up a car size or two.
"Will you be having more?"--Why is it that as soon as you tell people you're having one more child, then they start wanting to know future plans? That said, I can tell you that we're pretty darned certain this is our last child. Yes, there are always "accidents," but we'll be doing our best to keep those accidents from occurring. It took quite some time to decide we wanted to go to three kids. I can't imagine we'll make the choice to go to four. Denisa and I both firmly believe our children should have as much exposure to the Slovak side of their heritage as possible. Once you've got a family of six, it becomes prohibitively expensive to toodle around Europe. A family of five is already going to make things more than a little problematic. (Which is one big reason we're going to Europe this Christmas, before the arrival of Baby 3.0.)


That about sums it up. It's exciting. We're both very happy, though it'll mean big changes for us for the next while. Denisa's teaching, baking, doing her church calling, working online. I'm writing, librarian-izing, flitting from conference to conference. We've looked at all our activities and believe they can all proceed as they have. Denisa's still planning on baking (though she'll likely take a month or two off, of course) and if she gets a chance to teach again next year, we'll work our schedules to make sure that can happen. (She's really been enjoying it.) Life's all about priorities, and you choose what you do and don't do. If this choice means we have to give up some things, so be it. But we'll tackle that problem when it arises.





One point strongly in our favor is the fact that we have two very well behaved children already. TRC and DC are both hyped for this, and they'll both be a lot of help. So while some say going from two to three kids is the biggest hurdle, I'm not really looking at it like that. We're going from four family members to five, and that should be just fine.

New Nominee for Worst Day of My Life

So. The good news is that the plumbing in my house is now redone, and my basement has been lined with plastic (more or less). It took from 8 until 2 for the basement part, and until later for the plumbing to get finished. And the plasticking was just about as bad as I thought it would be. (There were places where the clearance must have been about eighteen inches or less. I didn't measure.) I had a few mild panic attacks, and my knees are still killing me, but it all got done. On the plus side, TRC came down to help me, and he did just a fantastic job. He crawled anywhere I asked him to, regardless of how tight the space or how many cobwebs were in the way. The kid was covered in spiders by the end of the morning, but he was really proud of himself--and he had every right to be. A total trooper.



And if that's all that had happened on Saturday, it would have been actually a pretty decent day. The job--while awful--was Done.



But at 2:30, I got a migraine. The worst migraine I've ever had in my life. My migraines are full-blown affairs. Visual hallucinations, projectile vomiting, skull-drilling pain--the whole affair. This time, both my arms and my lips went completely numb (and my lips are actually still a bit numb). I usually can fall asleep, and that breaks me out of it. I couldn't fall asleep for five or six hours this time. It. Was. Awful. I thought I might be dying.



So when you pair that up with the yuck from working in the basement, you end up with a pretty crummy day. Still, there's the silver lining that TRC did such a good job, that I'm done with the job and don't have to do it again, and that I lost 4.5 pounds in one day. :-) Always try to look on the bright side, right?



For future reference, I made some poor life decisions in preparing for the day. Like worrying about the project too much in advance. And staying up until 2AM the night before watching the BYU/Utah State Game. And only eating breakfast at 7:30 and then nothing else the rest of the day. And allowing myself to panic too much during the project.



Yeah--there are things I'd do differently, that's for sure. But it's done now, and thank goodness. In two weeks, they come to insulate the basement. Hallelujah--I don't have to go down there to do it myself. Money well spent.[image error]