Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 27

Anti-NaNoWriMo, a Wrap-up Assessment

This year, I did an anti-NaNoWriMo. Basically, I would resist the siren call of NaNoWriMo, evade the writing community pressure to participate, and concentrate on everything but writing.

Now that November is officially over-and-out, I thought I would recap how that went.

Week One

Week one, I was filled with the itch to jump in. Just ignore what I said and get writing. I wanted to participate, to be part of the updates, to be chasing the writing goals with everything, despite how I knew it wouldn’t work in my life right now.

I watched social media updates on my feed and felt sad that I couldn’t be part of it.

Week Two

Week two, I was hunkering down in everything else I had to do. I was reading like it was air, just drinking in books to get me through. My brain flicked to creative mode and started to harvest ideas from the unique perspectives I was feeding it.

Week two, my brain was doing what I wanted it to do during this break. And it felt really really good.

Week Three

Week three started with my wife going in labour. Suddenly, there was nothing else on my mind, at all. Considering the early labour phase lasted 74 hours and showed no signs of speeding up, all I had capacity for was information regarding keeping my wife alive.

At times, I wanted to do other things, because even my wife encouraged me to just take my mind off of what was going on, but I had no spare mental capacity.

November 18th, our daughter Ryan was born. That, too, was a blur of staying alive, staying fed and caffeinated, and wrangling all the questions we had for all the information we needed to keep this little human alive.

Week Four

Week four started with being at home. The first few days were a blur of set alarms for feedings, multiple loads of laundry, panic shopping needs, and wrangling family. Then it was an unending parade of appointments and check-ups.

Now, it seems to have calmed down into a rhythm my wife and I can manage. And it’s still a blur of feedings, diapers, last-minute shopping, cleaning, meals from the freezer… You get the idea.

I did, at the very end of the month, submit a poem for publication consideration. Poems are not my strong suit but I wanted to give it a whirl.

Now, into December, I am slowly moving to stand on my feet and take a creative step again. I knew at the beginning of the month that I could not have managed NaNoWriMo (and, if I had tried to, I believe my wife would have threatened to kill me). Looking back, I for sure couldn’t have. But that doesn’t stop the ache of being unable to share the striving experience with my community of writers.

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Exposition Through Dialogue; or, My Characters Talk Too Much

I explore characters, settings, and plots through dialogue. Pure exposition bores me – gives me nothing dynamic to play with – so I use conversations.

Dialogue seems like an easy way around the show-don’t-tell rule. My early stories used that trick frequently, which resulted in characters stating widely known facts or breaking character to give an explanation.

A lot comes out in revision. I’ve said this over and over because it’s true.

In an odd twist, I’m suddenly working on a short story. There’s an anthology I want to submit to with a looming deadline, so I have to bust ass on this.

I’ve had the concept for ages – one of those I immediately shelved because I didn’t have the skill to do it justice. The times I’ve picked it up, I’ve written convoluted explanations, but never had a plot to shape them.

Last week, I realized the concept fit the anthology, but knew I couldn’t repeat past attempts that went nowhere. So I stuck my character in a car and added a person who turned out to be her sister, once I got them talking.

And the pieces began to fall into place.

If I can pull it off, it will be a pretty amazing story. So long as my characters stop hijacking things by talking.

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18 Days without My Laptop: What I Learned

This was supposed to be my National Novel Writing Month victory post. Instead, as I watch friends share their victories on Facebook and Instagram (I’ve avoided Twitter) with only a small bite of jealousy, I’ve instead typed up a bit of a tirade mixed with some life lessons. The title of my post can’t be properly understood unless I tell you the saga of why I did not have my laptop for 18 days and the disappointing results that came out of those nearly three weeks.

Warning, when I say saga, I mean saga.

On the evening of Thursday October 27th, I sat in my living room after eating dinner and checked my email, as I do every evening while watching TV, when suddenly my computer started acting up. I performed a few things that normally fix it and then decided on a restart since it was being a jerk. Unfortunately, it decided it was not going to come back on.

Tired, frustrated, and needing to get my evening routine in gear so I could go to bed in order to be functional at work the next day, I pulled the battery and left it overnight.

Fast forward to Friday, about 6 p.m., after over an hour of fighting with the machine, when I knew my case was hopeless. Yes, there were tears, a lot of swearing and looks to my ceiling asking, “Why now?” as NaNo loomed.

I checked out a few flyers and websites for something in my price range, then decided it could wait till Saturday because I was fed up. I unearthed my dad’s tablet and used it to check my email, which I hate leaving and dislike checking on my phone.

We’ll fast forward to Saturday, after my workout and online hunting, where I decided to rush to my nearest Staples before they closed at 6 (it’s a small city). I arrived at 5, and after 45 minutes of being ignored and then “helped” by a salesperson who could not answer any of my questions, I bought the machine I had decided on beforehand and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t regret my decision.

I paid for setup and data migration since I did not have a backup of my machine –please let this be a lesson to you that backing up is so important, I don’t want you to have to go through the extra stress I did. I brought my new computer home Thursday November 3rd (after receiving a call Tuesday to let me know I could come pick it up, only to be called back Wednesday and told that the migration was “taking longer than expected” so it would not be ready until the next day. Don’t worry, I raised heck.)

I arrived home pretty late on Thursday so I only had a bit of time to check my email and scope out my documents. After work on Friday I had my book club meeting, which went quite late since we were having a good time and had lots to catch up on. I did manage to do a couple of things on the machine and then set it to update and restart. It completely shut down when I left the room, but I thought perhaps I’d hit the shutdown and update button (which I never do) given I was so bloody tired.

I had a work event in Red Deer Saturday evening so I didn’t get on my computer until midnight. “On” not being quite the right word since I only managed to bring up the blue screen of death for over an hour.

The next day, after confirming my suspicions that something really wrong had happened to the operating system, I hopped in my jeep and took the machine back to Staples. Yeah, the new guy was beyond repair. They’d never seen a crash like the one that happened to my bum machine. Figures.

I’ll spare you the details of my fourth and fifth trips to Staples since I had to take the box and everything back and be there for the exchange, then go pick up my second new machine. Finally, I brought a functional laptop back home on Monday November 14th.

This was my very first experience purchasing a computer on my own and going by myself. Previously I’ve asked for them for Christmas or gone with my dad. This was a horrible experience. At least I let the store know that, and now I’m pretty sure I’m a pariah there, but what can you do?

As this saga continued, all I could think was, “Why couldn’t this happen in October or December?” The event happening in either month wouldn’t have lessened the overall stress, but at least my NaNo plans wouldn’t have been annihilated!

And yes, they were annihilated. That last weekend in October I realized that the story I planned to work on had more holes than an afghan. I panicked for a while, then decided I’d wrap up my WIP as planned and then start on a romantic suspense I’d been sitting on.

As this computer saga dawned I told myself not to worry, a couple days late wouldn’t hurt me too bad because I had planned for catch-up days. When the new machine went AWOL, I planned to use my mom’s computer; one day in her office with a million interruptions and none of my writing necessities within easy reach, I knew I had to face the ugly truth: National Novel Writing Month 2016 likely wasn’t happening for me.

I did bring my computer home 2 days earlier than expected, but by Monday evening I had zero motivation.

Perhaps I could have caught up during my week of vacation, perhaps not. I’m disappointed that I didn’t try, but I was exhausted. I realized during my week off that I was in desperate need of rest and space. My batteries required serious recharging.

As I type up this post, it’s the last weekend in November, the weekend I had planned to validate my win on the NaNo website. I’m disappointed and a little saddened; I had so much riding on this November psychologically, but I’m also relieved.

I’m relieved that I got a break from everything. I’m relieved that I got some rest. I’m relieved that I’ve learned I need a much better action plan in the future should this ever happen again. And I’m relieved that I started my romantic thriller because I couldn’t quell the itch to write –it’s been a long time since that itch has been strong enough to keep me awake and sitting at my computer.

I did not learn or accomplish what I set out to do this November, but I did not walk away empty handed. I find some solace in that. And this has spurred me to do better in 2017 over all 12 months; I’m glad I haven’t lost that motivation.

How did your November go?

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Newborn Inkette

I am presently writing this post the morning it is due to go up. Soundtrack? A hiccupping newborn and an endless loop of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

November 18th, my daughter Ryan was born. Since then, things have been…hectic.

Babies certainly keep to their own schedule–a non-existent one. Right when I think I will have a few moments, those moments are consumed by trying to keep up with mundane things, like feeding myself. I don’t think I have ever seen my blood sugar dip so low so many times as I have caring for a newborn and my recovering wife. Laundry baskets overflow rapidly, pets still need care, and showers become desperate things to feel human again (although I did have one shower already where I forgot to wash my hair–whaaaat?!).

That being said, there are a number of things I have learned over the course of labour, delivery, and newborn care that parallel writing. Over the next few weeks, I will be exploring those here on Anxiety Ink. You know, when I get a free moment to type.

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Story Structure Connections

We mention story structure every once in a while, but we don’t delve that deeply into the topic.

I think most writers interpret the mechanics differently, yet somehow we end up at the same place. Some writers want nothing to do with structure because they write wholly organically. (I need more, well, structure.) Some writers swear by the three-act structure or the hero cycle – neither of which work with my brain or writing style.

The seven-point structure finally made sense to me: hook (at or near the beginning, hooks the reader in), first plot point (around the one-quarter mark, kicks off the central plot), first pinch point (uh-oh, trouble!), midpoint (obvious placement, something happens or a reveal changes the game for your characters), second pinch-point (all hope seems lost), second plot point (around three-quarters of the way through, some plot piece that will let the characters resolve the plot), and the resolution.

Not the greatest breakdown, but that’s the gist of it. The story beats offer infinite variation in how you use them, so they’re not as rigid as they may seem. This structure allowed me to figure out how to plot my stories. Rather than pantsing everything and ending up with an unusable mess.

Story structure is all about connections – how the pieces of the story connect to and interact with each other.

I came across a writer’s blog post once, years ago. I wish I could find it again. She laid out a genius structure, but one that completely overwhelmed me with my ability at the time.

She drew out her story structure as a grid – one with only a couple more beats than my familiar seven points. The grid visual was nothing new, but the connections made it genius. I most often see plot progression drawn in a line. Not straight, necessarily, but linear. In this structure, every beat connected to those before and ahead, as well as those above and below. It allows for more effective foreshadowing and more satisfying resolutions.

I would share the post itself with you, but sadly I have yet to find it again, despite my best attempts at Google-fu. I’m fairly sure I found it around 2010, maybe earlier, which hasn’t helped.

If you know the post I mean, or if you ever run across it, be sure to let me know!

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Muses

A couple of months ago Melissa wrote a post on muses and asked us whether we knew our muse. At the time I drew a huge blank. Now, I realize I have two that I use frequently and I can’t believe it took me this long to identify them.

Vegetation is one of my main muses, usually trees. I grew up surrounded by gardeners. I grew up helping my mom garden. We made frequent trips down the block to Edward’s Garden Centre in Bowness before it moved locations and my family left the city behind. I also grew up walking river paths and mountain paths beneath the canopies of firs and pines and willows. I’ve always been surrounded by the poplars that love the Alberta prairies.

My house is so full of houseplants it could easily be a jungle from the right vantage point. New guests always remark on the dieffenbachias and split leafs crammed in corners here and there throughout the main floor, the cereus plants and orchids that take up all available shelf space, and all the rest we somehow find space for.

Trees feature heavily in my stories, as do other plants and flowers. The first thing I research about a story setting is the type of trees that grow there. It’s the oddest thing, but a place is not a place for me until I know what the greenery looks like.

Vegetation grounds me, no matter where I am.

Riffing off Melissa’s post, I can’t personally recall a lot of folklore about trees. The burning bush from the bible comes to mind (though I don’t know that story at all so please forgive me if I’m way off). Baba Yaga deep in the woods could count. Any story set in woods, like a lot of Grimm stories, immediately catch my attention. Hmm, this is something I’m going to have to look into.

A second muse for me would be rivers. While Melissa is happy with any body of water, I feel much more connected to rivers than anything else. I love the ocean, don’t get me wrong. I adore the serenity of lakes. But there’s something about rivers that has always called to me.

Between the ages of 5 and 10, I spent every summer swimming in the Bow River and nearly every winter skating on the Bowness Park lagoon. I’ve hiked along the Bow and Elbow and spent ages at Edworthy Park feeding the ducks and geese and watching the muskrats skim the still waters. I have a healthy respect for the creatures that dwell within the rivers and the currents that can make them dangerous.

Up until I was 15 I always lived close to the river and new all of the local paths within walking distance of my house. I miss the river. I miss the sound off in the distance. The smell. I miss knowing it’s a walk away. Heck, I even miss the uncertainty of living so close to a flood zone.

While rivers don’t feature quite as heavily in my stories as trees do, if there’s a body of water mentioned 9 times out of 10 it’s a river. Surrounded by trees because I just can’t help myself.

Again, I don’t know a lot of river folklore. I know a fair amount about the river Styx in a few Greek myths. Yet another thing I can research!

I’ve surprised myself with this post. I didn’t realize the types of entities I rely on heavily in my writing or the types of things I need around me to relax. I haven’t been able to finagle a retreat in a place surrounded by trees or rivers but I think I need to. I know I always feel much more invigorated after a hike in the woods.

Thanks for the challenge Melissa!

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Our Favorite Kate Larking Posts

Since Kate is unable to post today (for most excellent reasons), we’re each sharing a favorite post of hers!

Melissa’s Favorite Kate Larking Post

Kate is beautifully honest, which is one of the things I love about her. So often, I find she puts ideas I can’t successfully articulate into simple, succinct encapsulations.

I chose an early post: Why Anxiety Ink Means a lot to Me from September 25, 2013. She turns that honesty onto herself and shares a few quotes that have helped her through tough times. Her hope and strength leaves me in awe, and it’s advice I especially need in my life right now.

Elisa’s Favourite Kate Larking Post

Picking one post from Kate’s archive was extremely difficult. As Melissa said above, Kate is honest about all aspects of writing and all of the life minutiae that affect writers trying desperately to write. Amongst other things.

She’s so open about so many aspects of the craft and I’ve learned so much from her –like the ins and outs of being an indie, anthology creation, and comic creation to mention a few– that I was at a bit of a loss as to where to start hunting down a favourite post.

I’m glad Melissa went old as that will complement the fact that I went new. I chose Kate’s Parkinson’s Law for Writers post from August of this year because I recall having a visceral reaction to it when I first read it. Even rereading it now I am like, “Yes! This is my issue!”

“Without a deadline your creative project will be endless.”

As Melissa said (really I’m just a parrot sitting in front of my computer), this was a statement I needed in my life right now –and Kate is very good at delivering what you need to hear when you need to hear it. I’ve struggled with my creative endeavors this year and I’m ending 2016 extremely frustrated. Making note of this law and planning with it in mind is going to help me come the New Year.

We hope you enjoy these two posts from Kate’s plethora of useful topics!

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Thankful: A Time For Gratitude

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the States. I don’t normally go in for this sort of thing, but I have a lot to feel thankful for. With all the shit going on in the world – in my country – I need to focus on the good. Otherwise, all the not-good wins.

And I am nothing, if not stubborn.

So today, I am thankful for…

My husband. He balances me. He makes me a happier, healthier, better person.
My family and friends who love and support me, even if we haven’t spoken for a while.
Theatre. For showing me who I am by offering other ways of being. Being a stage manager for the first time brought out all the best parts of me. That is who I want to be, in as much of my life as possible.
Stories. Beautiful, ugly, wonderful, terrible stories.
Writing, which gives me voice and the power to shape reality.

And the food – that’s pretty great, too.

Some of these things have a bit of cross-over, but I feel a need to call out each of them. To attempt a complete list would take far too long (no one has time for that), so today you get the things I am exceptionally, passionately grateful for at the moment.

Please, share some good in the comments!

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A Return to Character Likeability

Way back in June I wrote a post about character likeability. Then, my main point was that I don’t need to like a character, but I need to be compelled by them. The post as a whole makes sense and has some excellent points. Yet now as I sit here wanting to return to the topic after reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, I realize that I never pinpointed what I like, or what a likeability factor is.[image error]

I’ve learned, after reading a book where I initially felt intense dislike for the main character, that likeability is an abstract, that there is something every reader identifies with in terms of a character’s makeup. There are things I personally need in a protagonist to get me rooting for them that perhaps don’t even blip on other readers radars.

I read this article about Mary Higgins Clark being the anti-Gone Girl (for those who are unaware Gone Girl is another title by Gillian Flynn) a year before I wrote my post. The exposé on Clark illustrates all the aspects of her main characters that make them the antitheses of Flynn’s protagonists.

For the record, I grew up reading Mary Higgins Clark. She was my introduction to mystery. Where Are The Children?, Daddy’s Girl, Loves Music, Loves to Dance, and A Stranger Is Watching are still some of my favourite books. While her main characters could be described as formulaic, as a fan I would argue that they are very distinct. They’re all middle aged women, some mothers, some not, who have survived great tragedy while still managing to keep their chins, spirits, and courage up. However, each is a whole separate person. I can organize them individually in my mind when I line them up. What links them all is that they are all brave, kind women who get the job done without losing those aspects of their characters no matter what evil they face.

Then we have Libby Day, the only character I know written by Gillian Flynn. Libby survived a nightmare of a tragedy when she was seven years old. We come into her life at 32. She’s never held down a job, she has no friends, there are days she doesn’t leave her bed to even feed her cat, and her banker is calling her incessantly because the charity fund she’s been living off the later part of the past 25 years is dry. No one should have to live through what Libby did, but she survived. Damn if she’s going to make the most of it.

At first I found her lack of motivation unpalatable. I also dislike liars, cheats, violent people who suffer mood swings, and wallowers. Libby is all of those things and then some. I refused to give her any sympathy because she’s just a nasty person. Granted I understood why, but that wasn’t enough to make me like her.

Yet as I got further into the story, and Libby started to look at her past and realize the pieces didn’t fit together as she once believed, I grew a grudging respect for her. She realized she wanted answers and it was time to get up and get them. This helped me get through the dark story of her early life.

I also have to admit that I think I refused to like Libby because I am a lot like Libby. Dark Places hit a bit too close to home in some respects and I didn’t like a lot of the reminders. If we were to cut straight down the middle and ask if I’m a Camp Clark type or a Camp Flynn type, I’d have to trudge over to the Flynn side and I’m not happy about that. But what can you do?

Like Clark’s characters, Libby is a strong survivor. Unlike Clark’s characters, she refuses to see the best of her situation. She’s mad. She’s mad that she survived her family being slaughtered. She’s mad at the entire story of her existence. Her response is a breath of fresh air for a pessimist (cough realist cough) like me. I suppose I can say I’m not programmed to like people like her. There’s an idealist part of me who likes to see characters get up when they get knocked down. Libby got knocked down hard, and she eventually got up when she was able, which is all any of us can really do.

While I agree with the writer of the article that Clark’s writing will always be timeless, I think there’s more to be said for Flynn’s. I think as people we aspire to respond to life’s challenges like Clark’s protagonists when really we tend to be the exact opposite.

Getting back to my main point though, here’s what I personally need in a protagonist in order to be able to read their story to the end: courage, a desire for truth and/or knowledge, and a willingness to get things done.

These might seem like minor qualities, or even broad entities, but I didn’t like Libby until she was able to look at her dark places and refused to look away until she found the truth. It was hard for her, but she did it anyway.

I can forgive a lot of the other bits of character as long as I get at least those three things. I know a lot of readers wouldn’t be able to continue with Libby because she really is that nasty. All things considered, I’m willing to give her, and other unlikeable females similar to her, the benefit of the doubt. However, I’m a rare breed when it comes to readers; I make it a point to finish books I start. Other readers will not.

What do you need in a character? Are there negatives that you can’t overlook no matter what? Which ones make you close the book for good?

 

*Please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and decide to purchase an item I’ve mentioned I will receive a small commission by the seller at no extra cost to you. All funds are put back into Anxiety Ink. Thank you in advance for your support.

**Featured image: Fightgirls by MGEARTWORKS via Flickr

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Retexturing Stories: Refilling the well (that’s already full)

I was going to name this post just “Refilling the Well.” But the well isn’t dry and I certainly don’t need more ideas on top of the three hundred I already have. So, instead, I titled it retexturing stories.

I have been reading this month. That was my goal and I have made good on it. Almost every day, I read. It’s a huge change from going months without glancing at a book page. You can see my progress over on my Goodreads profile.

Nonfiction, fiction, poetry. I’m reading all of it. I’m reading entire books, select pages, and snippets. And I’m not judging myself if I don’t want to keep reading a book. I love to consume books whole–I really do. But after the US election, the realistic fiction I was reading became…no longer an escape. It morphed into an amplifier of real worry and anxiety. So I’ve been escaping.

Speculative fiction has given me a lot to consider. I revel in the detail on the page. I look at what is working and what doesn’t quite read smoothly for me. I’m taking those lessons and applying it to my stories, my writing, my details. I’m figuring out how to bring my story to lush life without stalling my fast-paced, economic style of storytelling.

The main list I’m picking reads from is the Sirens Conference Reading Challenge for 2017. There is a chance I could finish the challenge this next year (still unsure if I can attend 2017 Sirens), but I’m just loving going after the selections so far. I’m not x-ing off a whole category at once. I’m hopping all over the list given what I already have physical copies of.

Here’s hoping I can complete the challenge–and glean skill for my own storytelling in the process.

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