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| Joseph Heller's outline for Catch 22 |
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Laying it out
I write by the seat of my pants. I've tried doing outlines, but I've never gotten the hang of it, probably because I don't know what comes next. How can I write an outline if I can't see beyond a few key scenes? Here are people that see the whole picture and can rearrange it like a puzzle. Check out these examples of outlining mastery from several noted authors.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Dreams and Nightmares
My dream is to self-publish and become a smashing success that is picked up by a big publishing company (no e-rights!) and optioned for a movie. Just like Colleen Hoover.
My nightmare is to self-publish, be completely ignored, and then go on to write about that in the hopes that I will no longer be ignored. Just like this guy.
My nightmare is to self-publish, be completely ignored, and then go on to write about that in the hopes that I will no longer be ignored. Just like this guy.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
A Missed Call Is No Longer Possible
I marvel every time I use my smartphone. I can make phone calls, take pictures, talk to anyone in the world face to face or via any number of social media apps, find any piece of information I need, play games, read books, shop, read mail.
I CAN RUN THE ENTIRE WORLD FROM A DEVICE SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT IN MY POCKET.
It's magical when you stop to think about it. Five years ago we couldn't do this.
Five years ago we could still use a missed phone call as a plot device. Or a message on an answering machine, with it's blinking light, waiting to be heard. Or a letter gone astray. Or Humphrey Bogart waiting in the rain for Ingrid Bergman. Today she would have texted him to tell him it was over and there would be no rain streaked goodbye note that reached him just as the train was puffing out of the station, out of Paris, and out of her life.
We can reach and be reached at any hour. We can know anything at any time. It is impossible--or at least very difficult and with many lame excuses involved--not to be reachable. I suppose someone can forget their smartphone at home, but SERIOUSLY, who does that? It's like my handheld brain at this point. You wouldn't leave home without your brain, would you?
All of this is to say that writing stories set in the contemporary world is quite difficult. Stories require a little bit of mystery or unknowing. A missed connection here or there.
For example, "Twilight" came out at the right time because it made more sense back then (yes, 2005 is back then. makes you want to cry, doesn't it?) because not every teenager was expected to carry a mobile phone. So there was mystery and wondering where he was, what he was, and if she would see him again. If Twilight were published today it would consist entirely of Bella and Edward texting, snapchatting, facebooking and whatever else teens do when they're flirting. And the girls of Forks High School probably would have created a Tumblr page devoted to Edward, filled with pictures of him snapped on their phones. The Cullens would have been all over the internet and their cover blown pretty quickly. After all, fifty years later those photos will still be as fresh as the day they were taken. There will be no restarting life in a new town.
Which is perhaps why so many stories these days take place in the Eighties. Have you noticed? The Eighties were the last era before computers and cell phones were ubiquitous. The last time when you could curl the telephone cord around your finger while gossiping or had to run home before you missed a crucial call. In fact, the Eighties were probably the last time a public phone booth would have made sense in a story (though this fact did make an excellent plot device of its own in Phone Booth, but that's been done now and can never be done again.).
What I'm struggling with is how to leave in the mystery, the missed connections, unknowingness of things when everything can be known.
Any tips?
I CAN RUN THE ENTIRE WORLD FROM A DEVICE SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT IN MY POCKET.
It's magical when you stop to think about it. Five years ago we couldn't do this.
Five years ago we could still use a missed phone call as a plot device. Or a message on an answering machine, with it's blinking light, waiting to be heard. Or a letter gone astray. Or Humphrey Bogart waiting in the rain for Ingrid Bergman. Today she would have texted him to tell him it was over and there would be no rain streaked goodbye note that reached him just as the train was puffing out of the station, out of Paris, and out of her life.
We can reach and be reached at any hour. We can know anything at any time. It is impossible--or at least very difficult and with many lame excuses involved--not to be reachable. I suppose someone can forget their smartphone at home, but SERIOUSLY, who does that? It's like my handheld brain at this point. You wouldn't leave home without your brain, would you?
All of this is to say that writing stories set in the contemporary world is quite difficult. Stories require a little bit of mystery or unknowing. A missed connection here or there.
For example, "Twilight" came out at the right time because it made more sense back then (yes, 2005 is back then. makes you want to cry, doesn't it?) because not every teenager was expected to carry a mobile phone. So there was mystery and wondering where he was, what he was, and if she would see him again. If Twilight were published today it would consist entirely of Bella and Edward texting, snapchatting, facebooking and whatever else teens do when they're flirting. And the girls of Forks High School probably would have created a Tumblr page devoted to Edward, filled with pictures of him snapped on their phones. The Cullens would have been all over the internet and their cover blown pretty quickly. After all, fifty years later those photos will still be as fresh as the day they were taken. There will be no restarting life in a new town.
Which is perhaps why so many stories these days take place in the Eighties. Have you noticed? The Eighties were the last era before computers and cell phones were ubiquitous. The last time when you could curl the telephone cord around your finger while gossiping or had to run home before you missed a crucial call. In fact, the Eighties were probably the last time a public phone booth would have made sense in a story (though this fact did make an excellent plot device of its own in Phone Booth, but that's been done now and can never be done again.).
What I'm struggling with is how to leave in the mystery, the missed connections, unknowingness of things when everything can be known.
Any tips?
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Help!
I can't figure out how to add links to blogs on the right. I don't even know how I did it the first time.
The Omega Approach to the Good Life
I have let the blog lag and it's not due to busyness or intense focus on writing. Instead, I find that as soon as I arrive home from work each day, every single thing I had on my mental to-do list immediately flies up the chimney and evaporates into the clouds. Even posting a link on the blog feels like too much work. I watch in awe those people who work, truck their kids to multiple activities, actually play with those kids, help with homework, make dinner, clean the house and still have energy for hobbies and socializing.
Perhaps one of the reasons I feel so tired after work is because it is emotionally draining. I am in the unique position of working with youngish adults who will make far more than my yearly salary in their very first year of working life, and it will only go up from there. They have never felt a moment of insecurity in their lives. They go straight from the loving arms of their middle-to-upper-middle-class families, to college, to graduate school, to high paying jobs. Their families are always in the background to give them emotional and financial support. They've always been comfortable. They've never had to stand on their own two feet and stare into the abyss and walk that fine line each day along the edge of it, hoping not to fall in. No, they are 100% secure.
...Which is why it infuriates me and breaks my heart each day to listen to these "Omegas" (Children of Men reference. Read the book and don't watch the moronic movie), talk about how evil wealthy people are and how their wealth needs to be taken from them. I will never earn as much as these youngsters, but they are the ones who envy the wealthy (only they don't call it envy, they call it redistribution for the common good, but whose good?).
I don't envy the wealthy because I aspire to be wealthy and successful.
Don't these spoiled children realize that when they seek to punish the rich, they are cutting off the dream of escape for the rest of us? Why should I work hard or try to develop my talents if the end result will be punishment if I succeed? What these children don't realize now--because they are still only earning student wages--is that this knife they are holding to my throat--can one day be turned on them.
Only it won't.
They will be so successful that no amount of taxation will affect them and they will continue to vote as they do. Or the taxation and regulations will affect them, but they won't connect the dots to see that they are suffering by their own hands. Instead they will double down on their ideology and continue to blame the rich for not voluntarily relinquishing every penny they've ever made, as if the combined treasure of a small percentage of the population were really enough to make even a symbolic dent in the debt when the real problem is the way we spend money.
Sarah Hoyt wrote a fantastic post on the problem of envy that touches upon what I've been experiencing with the Omegas: that while they don't see anything wrong with themselves making lots of money (because they are the good people, you know), they don't think anyone else is entitled to striving for the same thing:
Ok, so why did I bring up all this heavy economic stuff on my fluffy writing blog? 1) Because I want to be a successful and wealthy writer one day (heck, I'll settle for "comfortable" at this point), and 2) Because the same type of envy exists among writers as well.
Look, I'm acquainted with a writer who is currently blazing her way to success 95% because she's a fabulous writer, but also because she's a gorgeous blonde who still has a chistled chin and clavicles even after having two children (yeah, life's unfair, but that's what this blog post is about: not envying the inequality of outcomes). Her looks allow her to write things that lesser mortals just can't get away with. I'm THRILLED to see her succeed and don't wish her to be less talented or less pretty simply because the combination of the two is helping her along. It's inspiring to know that she made it. Is making it. Full stop.
And there are other writers out there who also seem to have an easier time, but you know what, I'm happy for them too. I don't need to punish them in order for me to succeed. I want them to succeed and I want to succeed. I don't need to redistribute their success into a literal version of Harrison Bergeron, which is what people today are attempting.
Trust me, there's enough success out there for us all, but guaranteeing the attainment is impossible. Ditch the envy. Strive for success.
Perhaps one of the reasons I feel so tired after work is because it is emotionally draining. I am in the unique position of working with youngish adults who will make far more than my yearly salary in their very first year of working life, and it will only go up from there. They have never felt a moment of insecurity in their lives. They go straight from the loving arms of their middle-to-upper-middle-class families, to college, to graduate school, to high paying jobs. Their families are always in the background to give them emotional and financial support. They've always been comfortable. They've never had to stand on their own two feet and stare into the abyss and walk that fine line each day along the edge of it, hoping not to fall in. No, they are 100% secure.
...Which is why it infuriates me and breaks my heart each day to listen to these "Omegas" (Children of Men reference. Read the book and don't watch the moronic movie), talk about how evil wealthy people are and how their wealth needs to be taken from them. I will never earn as much as these youngsters, but they are the ones who envy the wealthy (only they don't call it envy, they call it redistribution for the common good, but whose good?).
I don't envy the wealthy because I aspire to be wealthy and successful.
Don't these spoiled children realize that when they seek to punish the rich, they are cutting off the dream of escape for the rest of us? Why should I work hard or try to develop my talents if the end result will be punishment if I succeed? What these children don't realize now--because they are still only earning student wages--is that this knife they are holding to my throat--can one day be turned on them.
Only it won't.
They will be so successful that no amount of taxation will affect them and they will continue to vote as they do. Or the taxation and regulations will affect them, but they won't connect the dots to see that they are suffering by their own hands. Instead they will double down on their ideology and continue to blame the rich for not voluntarily relinquishing every penny they've ever made, as if the combined treasure of a small percentage of the population were really enough to make even a symbolic dent in the debt when the real problem is the way we spend money.
Sarah Hoyt wrote a fantastic post on the problem of envy that touches upon what I've been experiencing with the Omegas: that while they don't see anything wrong with themselves making lots of money (because they are the good people, you know), they don't think anyone else is entitled to striving for the same thing:
I don’t want to bring people down to my level, though I often want to get up to theirs, and sometimes – mostly on my friends’ behalf – I get a little annoyed when people who have a lot with a lot of help think I’m a lower life form because I’m stuck where I am (or my friends are where they are).
But we’ve got – partly because of the idea of Marxist economics, I THINK, in which everything is zero sum and if you have something it means I can’t have it; but also because of this odd idea that seems to affect mostly boomers (no idea why) that anyone who succeeds is crooked and must be brought low – to a place in society where we glorify envy.
People are considered worthy, not because of how hard they’re working or because they’re decent people and good friends, but because they’re “disadvantaged.” I.e. they’re in a bad position, and this alone entitles them to bring others down to elevate themselves. And people who are successful – at least in all books and movies – are considered somehow crooked and evil because they’re successful.
I don’t understand this. I don’t think that a society as a society can survive this sort of upside down idea.Yeah, the romanticization of the poor by people who will never be poor makes me want to gag.
Ok, so why did I bring up all this heavy economic stuff on my fluffy writing blog? 1) Because I want to be a successful and wealthy writer one day (heck, I'll settle for "comfortable" at this point), and 2) Because the same type of envy exists among writers as well.
Look, I'm acquainted with a writer who is currently blazing her way to success 95% because she's a fabulous writer, but also because she's a gorgeous blonde who still has a chistled chin and clavicles even after having two children (yeah, life's unfair, but that's what this blog post is about: not envying the inequality of outcomes). Her looks allow her to write things that lesser mortals just can't get away with. I'm THRILLED to see her succeed and don't wish her to be less talented or less pretty simply because the combination of the two is helping her along. It's inspiring to know that she made it. Is making it. Full stop.
And there are other writers out there who also seem to have an easier time, but you know what, I'm happy for them too. I don't need to punish them in order for me to succeed. I want them to succeed and I want to succeed. I don't need to redistribute their success into a literal version of Harrison Bergeron, which is what people today are attempting.
Trust me, there's enough success out there for us all, but guaranteeing the attainment is impossible. Ditch the envy. Strive for success.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
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