S.M. Pace's Blog, page 16

A Writing Exercise

Because while doing Nano, I will often be inspired to write just about anything that has nothing to do with my work-in-draft, I present to you, a slice of life:

Secrets are like cicadas.  They want light and fresh air.  No matter how deep you bury them, eventually, they dig their way out. 

I had a normal family.  My mothers were good, hardworking people and loved me and my brother.  They probably spoiled us a little, but they raised us to be good people too.     

I knew I was different before I understand words like deviant.  And sinful.  And damned.

I first realized it at my best friend’s birthday party.  I saw his older sister, and I stared at her.  She smiled, and a dimple appeared beside her mouth.  She was so pretty.  I wanted to hear her voice.  To know what her hair smelled like.  I wanted to kiss her.  Not like a friend, but the way mommies or daddies kiss each other 

I knew that was wrong.  Boys and girls aren’t supposed to kiss that way.  My stomach twisted into knots, and my throat went tight.  Everyone would know.  I was certain everyone would see it in my face.  That I was different, and weird.  They would hate me.  They would tell me to go away. 

 I threw up my pizza and popcorn.  Tears poured down my face. 

Mommy scooped me up in her arms.  I clung to her, sobbing, and begged her not to get rid of me.  I don’t think she understood a word I said.  She felt my forehead, and sang lullabies to me.  She gathered up our stuff and carried me out of the party.  At home, she tucked me in bed, took my temperature and called the doctor.

She didn’t know.  No one knew.  I could keep the feelings a secret.  Bury them deep down inside me.  No one would ever guess. 

And maybe, I could be normal. 

Maybe. 

I’m not sure who this character is yet, but I know he’s important.  Hopefully, I’ll soon find out why.

Cheers

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 Flash Fiction Wednesday: And They Lived  I'm Back and Why I Don't Write Horror  Flash Fiction Wednesday - Daughter  New Website, New Blog, Same MeCopyright ©  [A Writing Exercise], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Nanowrimo and Writing Inspiration

It’s Nano time.  If you are at all familiar with Nano, you understand why my usual Thursday post is on Friday.  If you aren’t, well check it out and jump on board.  It’s never too late to sign up.  Well, unless it’s December 1st.  But you can always join next year, or join one of, I believe, two Nano boot camps held at other times of the year, one being in May.

Story ideas can come from the craziest things.  Songs, commercials, a walk along a nature trail, a conversation with a friend.

For me, inspiration tends to either come from songs, (All the Right Moves by OneRepublic inspired the beginnings of Shadow of the Wolf) in which case, the actual song has a rather tenuous relationship with what I write.  It tends to be more about the cadence and melody giving me a certain feeling.

Or, it comes from worldbuilding.  Seriously.  A well crafted commercial, details in a novel that jump out at me.  Today, it was an amazing short film.  I’ve linked to it at the bottom of this post and I definitely recommend it.

I started to cry while watching it, but the writing wheels in my brain also started turning.  The makers of this short film had created a very concrete world, a world that felt real.  I wanted to explore a world like that, to see what sort of characters might live in it, and what might happen to them.

That idea will have to sit on the back burner until after Nano, but that’s all right.  Ideas often get better when left to simmer.

What inspires you?  What drives you to new levels of creativity?

Cheers,

What if Gay Was Straight and Straight Was Gay.  

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 Indie Life - The Dos of Self-publishing  Write With Me - June 25  What's Up Wednesday and Flash Fiction  How Fanfic Started It All  A Writing ExerciseCopyright ©  [Nanowrimo and Writing Inspiration ], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Why Do We Love Zombies?

Well, maybe love is too strong a word.  But people certainly have a fascination with zombies, and I’ve always been interested in why.  There are numerous theories going around, the most recent one I heard being that zombies allow for a slow build up of horror more than any other monster.  They’re the monsters in the background that you can get used to and almost forget about.  Watch any later season episode of Walking Dead and you might see a couple of zombies stumbling around in the background during an important conversation between the characters.

But I think the draw of zombies is deeper than that.

Zombies were originally quite different.  Their origin comes from certain ancient African mythology, where a zombie was a corpse raised from the dead to serve its master.  As such, they didn’t just stumble around moaning for brains.  They did whatever their master ordered them to do, and they were much harder to kill.

Funny how I can easily link zombies to vampires because vampire mythology has made similar leaps from its origins.  At one point, vampires were essentially modern day zombies, rotten corpses shambling around, feasting on the living.  Before the novel Dracula, no one would have described a vampire as someone handsome and cultured.

Yet here we are, with brain eating zombies and attractive vampires.  And where is the true horror in a vampire story?  Nowadays, if a vampire story can be considered horror at all, that darkness comes from once human characters lamenting what they, or their loved ones, have become.  The craving for blood drives them to murder.  And seeing someone you loved turned into a blood sucking monster is no better than seeing them dead.

Or is it.

At least they’re still around.  You can talk to them, share old stories.  Hug them.  These days, a vampire can even become a respectable member of society, and, depending on their world’s rules, return to at least a semblance of their old life.

Not so with zombies.

Almost every zombie story takes advantage of that horrific moment when a character is faced with a zombified loved one.  It could be a parent, or a child.  A lover or a close friend.

Imagine yourself in that position.  That person that you loved so much is shuffling toward you, eyes sunken and utterly indifferent to who you are.  But you still see the person you loved.  How hard must it be to pull that trigger and destroy them for good?  How hard must it be to run away and abandon them?

In a vampire story, at least you could talk to them, remind them of who they were.  You could tell them you love them, and they would at least understand.

To me, that’s the true horror of the zombie story.  Looking someone you love right in the eye, and realizing its you or them.

Happy Halloween!

 

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 Write With Me - May 22  What's Up Wednesday - Celebrate Words  A Writing Exercise  Indie Life - The Dos of Self-publishing  New Website, New Blog, Same MeCopyright ©  [Why Do We Love Zombies?], All Right Reserved. 2014.

How Fanfic Started It All

I’ve never understood the vehement dislike some people exhibit toward fanfiction.  Speaking as a writer, I’d be thrilled to discover fanfiction of my work, and marvel that I managed to get that popular.  And I’m sure that sounds naive and foolish to the many (like 1 or 2 maybe) veteran, published writers reading this.

On the one hand, I understand the fear; losing control of my characters, my worlds.  Possibly ending up in court over copyright breaches if things get out of hand.  That terrifies me.

But on the other hand, I guess I can’t have an issue with fanfiction because that’s how I started out.

I was around ten or eleven, and my favorite books were the Fudge books by Judy Blume.  I wrote a messy little story about the characters, even adding pictures I cut out of my highlights magazines.  I pasted it all into a little handmade book, stapled the pages together and glowed with pride over my creation.

I wanted to tell stories, and at first it was easier to use characters that already had names and problems.  Those baby steps did me a world of good.  For another ten years or so, I played around with several different fandoms, branching out now and then to create some original work.  At first, those original characters lived in my fanfic, then they found their own worlds and stories.

Digging deeper into those new worlds, I found places my muse wanted to play in.  Something it could build on without any worry about the foundation already laid.  Here was untouched land, ready for seeding, excavating, for doing whatever I wanted with it.

At first, it scared me.  I hated my characters, and I worried my settings were trite or just plain stupid.  I went back to fanfic several times, to hear positive feedback and get the boost of confidence I needed.

Eventually, I was ready to share my original work, tentatively at first.  I grew bolder with those first glowing critiques (friends and family, of course).  I shied a little when the first negative feedback hit me, but I soon realized it didn’t hurt that much.  And it helped.  My writing improved and I learned by leaps and bounds what worked and what didn’t.  I came to love revising my stories, because I could take pleasure in making them better.

Suddenly, I realized, I was a writer.  Even more surprisingly, I had been for a long time; since I was ten years old, telling the stories I wanted to tell.  With pre-made characters at first, then my own.  I look fondly back on it, and I still have that first ratty little book.  And I still have all my fanfics, tucked away in a file on my desktop.

They were my start, and I love them for that.

If you write fanfic, know first and foremost, that I support you, for whatever that’s worth.  Now, if you’re hoping or even already starting to make the leap into original fiction, I know someone who’s willing to help.  A writer colleague of mine named Jessica Steiner is working on a course to help fanfiction authors make the shift to original fiction, and right now she needs help figuring out what to put in the course.

Follow this link:  Fanfiction to Original Fiction Survey and answer ten simple questions.  The survey closes on Sunday, October 20th, so make sure you get in there in time.  Then keep an eye on Jessica’s blog so you know what to do to get the course when she releases it.

Word by word, we create our worlds.

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Comments:  2 comments on this itemYou might be interested in this:  
 What's Up Wednesday and Flash Fiction  IWSG - Writing and Real Life  The Rules of Religion  Write With Me - June 25  Why Do We Love Zombies?Copyright ©  [How Fanfic Started It All], All Right Reserved. 2014.

I’m Back and Why I Don’t Write Horror

Yes, after a month getting things reorganized, revamping my website and finally finishing the first revision of Wings of the Butterfly, I have returned.

Since it is almost October I figured I would make my posts this month Halloween related.  In case you couldn’t tell by the title, the first one is pretty straightforward.

I have a caveat with my fiction.  It has to have a happy ending.  Now don’t get me wrong; this does not mean happy like a Care Bears Special.  I will put my characters through the ringer, and terrible and irreversible things will happen to them and to the world they know and love.  But my stories, bar none, will always end on a hopeful note.  Something will have been achieved.  Something will have changed for the good.  The characters left at the end will still be able to stand and say “Yeah, it was a hard fight, but we’re glad we survived it.”

So I shy away from writing horror because I feel in order for a story to qualify as horror, the ending has to be a hard downer.  Most horror stories I’ve read end with the character either dead or utterly screwed.  I hate that.  It leaves me feeling sick to my stomach, and I walk away from the story feeling worse for having read it.

Now I don’t want this to become a semantics argument, so I’ll acknowledge that there are some horrific stories that according to my description, do end happily. I personally consider those to be dark fantasy, magical realism or realism, depending on what happens in the story.  I understand that others consider those horror fiction.

I will never write the other kind of horror fiction, because it isn’t in me.  I need to write an ending with some hope to it, otherwise, the story, to me, either has no meaning, or argues for a meaning that I can’t abide.  That life sucks, and you can only be thankful that utterly horrific things aren’t happening to you right now.

I want my fiction to mean hope, and love.  I will put my characters through the ringer, and they may not all survive, but those that do will be happy they survived.

Next post, the age old, or maybe not so old question: why are zombies so popular?

Cheers until next time

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 A Writing Exercise  IWSG - Writing and Real Life  Write With Me - June 25  Indie Life and Self-Publishing: Wouldn't you Rather be Writing?Copyright ©  [I'm Back and Why I Don't Write Horror], All Right Reserved. 2014.

A Short Break

Due to many factors, including a very recent death in my family, I’ve decided to take a short break from blogging, to center myself.  I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my blather, and I hope you will still be here when I get back.

Thanks all, and see you in October.

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 New Website, New Blog, Same Me  I'm Back and Why I Don't Write Horror  Nanowrimo and Writing Inspiration  Write With Me - June 25  How Fanfic Started It AllCopyright ©  [A Short Break], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Indie Life and Self-Publishing: Wouldn’t you Rather be Writing?

What’s Up Wednesday!

 

Indie Life

A couple weeks ago, I came across an interesting post on The Passive Voice.  (Granted, most of the posts PG links to are interesting)  Writer Unboxed posted an article by Meg Clayton on the five reasons why traditional publishing is the better idea.

I’ll wait for the hackles to settle.

I read the article, and it was well written and respectful of indie publishers, which is always a plus.  I disagreed with all her points for various reasons, but number five was the one that struck me.  In her exact words: Writing Time Is the Best Time.

I hear this argument a lot from people who want to be traditionally published.  “I just want to right, not spend time promoting, or editing and formatting, or designing cover art.  Thing is, hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but going traditional will leave you with about the same amount of writing time.

This goes beyond the common argument that big publishers now (yeah, like for the last fifteen years) expect their authors to promote their own work.  Being traditionally published means getting the attention of an agent or editor who will make that publishing deal happen.  And all the effort of getting their attention is time away from writing.

I spent about a year trying to get traditionally published.  I researched agents and editors, workshopped query letters, synopses, and hooks, and sent out email after email.  (I refused to waste money, paper and ink on agents or publishers who had yet to join the 21st century and accept email submissions.)

All of that was time I could have spent writing.  Maybe it gets easier once you get accepted by a publisher.  But then self-publishing gets easier once you make enough money to afford to hire out things like cover art and formatting.  Neither one is better or worse, just different.  And carving out time to write will always be a chore, until you’re lucky enough to be able to quit your day job.

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Comments:  2 comments on this itemYou might be interested in this:  
 A Writing Exercise  Nanowrimo and Writing Inspiration  Why Do We Love Zombies?  I'm Back and Why I Don't Write Horror  Write With Me - June 25Copyright ©  [Indie Life and Self-Publishing: Wouldn't you Rather be Writing?], All Right Reserved. 2014.