The Brain Squatter

Tags

concentration, Creativity, depression, Distractions, imagination, stress, tired, Writer's Block

Photo by Ryan Melaugh

There’s a squatter in my brain. He takes up space. His chain-smoking permeates and pollutes every surface. The ashes and butts get haphazardly scattered across my volatile imagination. I spend my energy frantically tidying up after him, left with no creative juice when I’m done. Then he breaks in and tracks muck everywhere, and I’m back where I started.

This is the first bit of writing I’ve attempted since the Traumatic Event, T.E. for short. It wasn’t something life threatening or the death of a loved one. Those would surely be worse, but the T.E. was still devastating enough to steal my appetite, my sleep, my desire to create imaginary worlds with stories to share.

My imagination, always too large and vivid to be suppressed, shriveled away to hide. It bolted the door on the bunker. Now it trembles in the corner, maintaining radio silence. It’s shell shocked and deafened, even to its own voice. My concentration deserted it, and neither one has dared to resurface. They could care less that they’re needed.

I’ve chosen to distract myself with things that often fuel them: books, movies, quiet drives, conversation with friends. I exhausted myself with exercise. I visited family in the peaceful upstate New York summer and stuffed myself with comfort foods. The final dose may have been Mom’s strawberry-rhubarb pie, exactly what I needed. Now time must pass to see if a full recovery is possible.

There’s a periodic clicking, like Morse Code, from the bunker’s depths. My novel beckons to me. I left off partially through my second edit, only a couple of months from the point where I would release it for criticism from beta readers. (Three months have passed since then.) Complications in other writing projects beg for resolution. Slowly they intrude and exert power over the distracting din in my mind. They are the distant construction tools the squatter increasingly fears, and they are coming, if the contractors’ extended lunch break ever ends.

If you noticed my absence, I apologize for the abrupt cessation of my semi-regular posts. I can’t promise the frequency will increase, but I hope you’ll dig through the archives and find a laugh or the results of my writing exercises. I’m proud of a few of them. There will be new entries, but I can’t say when they will appear. Perhaps you’d like to subscribe, if you haven’t already, so anything new will be emailed to you.

I thank you for your patience. Once my mind decides to fully cooperate, I’ll be working it overtime. It owes me for its lengthy vacation.

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Nidor- A Writing Prompt

Tags

anticipation, burgers, childhood, cookouts, Monday Blogs, nidor, outdoor cooking, writing exercise, writing prompt, writing prompts

For Christmas, I received a book of “questions for creative exploration”. They are writing prompts, not all questions, and I decided that I would include my responses to them in my blog. They’re meant as daily exercises, but I just picked one I liked and got to work. Because I’m a rebel, baby! I also slightly deviated from the instructions because the book’s not the boss of me. The exercise for this day was…

Write a vignette infused with nidor, the particular scent of cooking meat or burning fat.

The idea might have come from my mother or hers, since we lived next door to my grandparents at the time. I can’t remember my age, but I couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. My sister was seven or eight, a pig-tailed bundle of mixed joy and mischief. Wherever the idea originated, it sounded like fun, maybe the best idea ever (for a bored, pre-internet, ten year old kid, anyway). As the older kid, I was in charge, and I took responsibility as seriously as my Cub Scout oath.

We received empty cans, the family-sized variety that held a week’s worth of applesauce or baked beans. My mom cut little windows on the bottoms of the open ends, where we could feed fuel into the upside-down can. The tops got punctured around their circumferences to let the fat drain and fuel the flames. That was where the meat would cook, as if on tiny griddles.

We turned the cans upside-down in the gravel driveway and set out to find small twigs for our fires. Wood was plentiful where we lived, plenty waiting in the yard normally splintered by the lawnmower. While we gathered, Mom prepared burger patties.

The kindling got stuffed through the window of each can. Mom provided the matches and let us start out fires with bits of wadded newspaper. The flames warmed us in the shade of the maples, summer’s heat seldom oppressive there in upstate New York. My stomach growled in anticipation of lunch.

The can fires consumed the twigs almost as quickly as we could feed them, until Mom pronounced them hot enough to serve as stoves. She fetched the patties and plopped them onto the cans. The roar of sizzling meat startled us, and in moments the heavenly scent of the cooking beef wafted up to taunt us. Fat gathered and congealed along the sides of the patties. Little flames shot up from the grease vents, at which Mom would caution us and snuff them with her spatula. Any moment, the piping-hot burgers would be ready to eat. Or so I thought.

Mom flipped the burgers that still wept blood and grease, fearful they would burn. My hunger built until its ache swelled beyond my belly and threated to eat me. The scent of hot grease engulfed me, teased my nostrils with its promises. Still the burgers sizzled but defied my impatience. They took nearly an hour to finish cooking. To two hungry kids, that felt like forever. Not only were we waiting for them to finish, but one of the neighborhood dogs sat nearby. We’d dubbed him Picnic Puppy after he’d snatched a sandwich out of my sister’s hand a couple of years before. None of us wanted to take our eyes off him while the burgers remained targets.

I don’t know if it was the best burger I’ve ever eaten, but it was surely the most highly anticipated. I devoured it in record time and could have eaten another if there had been room on top of the can. The experiment had been fun, but I remind myself of that day whenever I have to wait more than a few minutes for fast food.

 

 

Boots- A Writing Prompt

Tags

1980's, 1990's, fashion, favorite clothing, grunge, leather boots, Monday Blogs, mullet, nostalgia, writing exercise, writing prompt

For Christmas, I received a book of “questions for creative exploration”. They are writing prompts, not all questions, and I decided that I would include my responses to them in my blog. They’re meant as daily exercises, but I just picked one I liked and got to work. Because I’m a rebel, baby! I also slightly deviated from the instructions because the book’s not the boss of me. The exercise for this day was…

Consider your favorite outfit or article of clothing. Describe it in detail here.

These days, I don’t have a favorite article of clothing. Now that I’m technically a grown-up, I mostly dress for work. I don’t enjoy the shirts and slacks that only remind me of my adult responsibilities. In my off time, I wear what’s comfortable. Usually that’s a worn pair of blue jeans and geeky t-shirt ensemble. I’ve never had a sense of style, but I remember when I thought I did.

My college years were the early 1990s, when grunge crowd surfed its way over the remains of hair metal, and flannel replaced leather. I still clung to my rock-n-roll mullet for a while, even though everybody thought they were duty-bound to convince me to cut it. I wasn’t about to sell out. I met a girl who thought my hair was cool and wore her own tributes to Guns-n-Roses and the rest. For my birthday, she bought me the baddest leather boots ever. They were patterned in faux snakeskin. The silvery caps over the toes protected them from dings during the breaking-in period, when I still felt like they were clown-shoe sized. The heels catapulted me to an almost dizzying 5-foot-six. Flared tops allowed me to tuck my ripped jeans inside. By far, the best feature was the removable leather strap, complete with silvery buckle, that circled each boot like a gunfighter’s belt. ROCK-N-ROLL!

Several years (and girlfriends) later, the boots collected dust in the back of my closet. I’d replaced them with a pair of hiking boots. My jeans were still ripped, but I wore a knotted flannel shirt around my waist, courtesy of my grandfather’s closet. Nobody needed to know that part. My roommates and I hosted a party with the theme: ’80s. My girlfriend talked me into letting her make me up like a glam-rocker, and the boots completed the ensemble. They received enough compliments to outweigh the derision from several years before. My mullet was gone. What was left got spiked and shellacked to lethal sharpness before eye makeup and other assorted powders were applied. When I was at last allowed to view the results in a mirror, I missed my mullet. Even though the costume wowed people, I couldn’t wait to smear cold cream over the gunk and scrape it off my face.

I considered wearing the boots from time to time but never had the nerve. Some kind of nostalgia, even over that short period of time, kept me from getting rid of them. I would look back the days before I sold out and wonder how I could have liked that music and admired those gravity-defying hairdos on MTV. I think my younger sister eventually appropriated the boots, and I never saw them again. She probably wore them far better than I ever did.

Someday my son might own those boots, or more likely some other clothing accessory that he finds awesome. I’ll try to remember how cool those boots made me feel before I tell him he looks silly. If he ever wears anything I think is ridiculous, I’ll bite my tongue and look forward to whatever fashion takes its place. Wouldn’t it be funny if those boots came back into style? For the sake of humanity, I hope they never do. If they ever were.

Do you have a favorite article of clothing or outfit you used to love from earlier in life? Drop me a comment and let me know. Extra points if you look back at it and cringe like I do about my old boots.

The Roof Mystery Writing Prompt

Tags

fear of heights, roof finds, strange finds, writing exercise, writing prompt, writing prompts

For Christmas, I received a book of “questions for creative exploration”. They are writing prompts, not all questions, and I decided that I would include my responses to them in my blog. They’re meant as daily exercises, but I just picked one I liked and got to work. Because I’m a rebel, baby! I also slightly deviated from the instructions because the book’s not the boss of me. The exercise for this day was…

There’s something strange on top of your roof right now. What is it?

I like the ladder I bought, but I hate using it. The ladder telescopes to adjust its length and hinges at the middle, where it can be locked open or into a stepladder position. My fear of heights, more a fear of falling, can be experienced on any ladder, stool, or flight of stairs. It’s more about potential energy and precarious position. I feel somehow safer in planes and on rollercoasters.

The fear makes cleaning the gutters an ordeal, even though I live in a ranch home. I triple-check the ladder’s position to make certain it’s level and on firm footing. Whenever possible, both of my hands grip the rungs or side rails. If I use it near a door that might collide with it, everyone in the house is loudly and sternly educated concerning the dangerous mission I’m about to undertake.

For all of this fear, I occasionally venture onto the roof itself. There has to be a significant accumulation of pine straw (pine needles, for you Yankees), or the drier vent has to be virtually plugged with lint. Of course, my wife holds the base of the ladder as I make my transition from ladder to shingles. There is repeated back-and-forth.

Me: Are you holding it?

Her: That’s what she said.

Me: Seriously! Please, for the love of God, hold the ladder.

Her: I’ve got it! Relax.

But there was one time, clinging for my very life at the top of the ladder, that I momentarily forgot to be scared. Something was up there on the roof, something that should not have been there at all, let alone be perfectly intact like the day it was made. It defied reason. It could only be real if I held it in my hand.

I wiggled to test the ladder, and when I was satisfied that it wouldn’t slide away from the roof, I climbed up. The object was lodged in some pine straw where two roof sections met. I needed to gather up the pine straw anyway, before it all washed into the gutters during the next inevitable thunderstorm. I flattened myself against the shingles and eased my way toward it.

It was whole, fluffy, and golden like it fell straight out of a TV commercial. The biscuit, probably of the fast food breakfast variety, was completely unmarred: no bite marks, no evidence it had even been pecked by a lucky crow. If I hadn’t found it on my roof, I probably would’ve slathered some honey on that sucker and wolfed it down with my coffee.

The laughter started slowly but eventually caused me tears and aching ribs. Until my feet slid out from under me. Thankfully I didn’t slide far before I found my footing at the expense of the biscuit, half crushed beneath me. I threw it over the side along with the pine straw, but I set it aside for the birds after I climbed down to bag the pine straw.

The only explanation I could imagine was that someone had thrown it up there. Maybe a kid walking to the bus stop didn’t want it. Maybe a bully stole it and flung his victim’s breakfast out of reach. Surely a bird would’ve taken a few experimental pecks before it decided it would rather have an English muffin. I would never know for sure, but I was glad to stand firmly on the ground again.

Have you ever found anything strange on your roof? Drop me a comment and let me know!

The Smirk – A Writing Prompt

Tags

free fiction, free short story, Writing, writing exercise, writing prompts

For Christmas, I received a book of “questions for creative exploration”. They are writing prompts, not all questions, and I decided that I would include my responses to them in my blog. They’re meant as daily exercises, but I just picked one I liked and got to work. Because I’m a rebel, baby! I also slightly deviated from the instructions because the book’s not the boss of me. The exercise for this day was…

At a raucous house party, one woman stands alone near an open window with a smirk on her face. What’s her story?

The thumping bass rattled my teeth and vibrated my ribs. I stared at the purple beverage in my red plastic cup to see if it rippled, as if in response to T-rex footsteps. Lights strung along the walls pulsed to the beat. In synch to the tapping of my foot, a beautiful girl appeared and disappeared.

Hers was a high-maintenance beauty, pristine after hours of preparation. She could only have been more stunning if she smiled. Instead she smirked toward the DJ’s raised platform. When the light flashed again, she stared off toward a knot of the fraternity brothers who hosted the party. Next her eyes fell on me, so I smiled and tentatively raised my cup in her direction. If she returned the gesture, it was hidden in the next instant of darkness.

In a few days, all the exams, parties, and chances for college fun would be over. It emboldened me, that prospect for at least abbreviated humiliation. I sheltered my beverage against my chest and dodged oblivious dancers. Someone spilled beer on my sneaker, so it squished through my sock with every other step. For a moment, the girl was lost, and my pulse raced in terrified regret. I’d gotten turned around in the semi-dark, and when I got my bearings she still smirked past me toward the hosts.

“Hey,” I half-yelled when I got close enough.

Her eyes widened in surprise, but a smile followed. Her lips formed something I decided was acknowledgement. She pointed at her ear and shook her head. I slid closer.

“Hi. I think you’re in my history class,” I said through her long blond hair, where her ear hid.

“Professor Stuart’s?” she shouted. Then, before I could reply, “Yeah. I’ve seen you looking at me.”

A lump caught in my throat. “Oh. Busted.” I smiled, and she pulled her hair behind her ears. “My name’s Dave.”

“Candace. Nice to meet you, Dave.”

“Do you know the guys throwing the party?” One of the hosts had lived down the hall from me during my freshman year and had invited me. I figured that might score some points.

“Uh huh. I was friends with just about all of them.”

“Was?”

“Do you know Chad?”

“Not really,” I said.

“I used to date him.”

“Oh. Still friends with him though, since you’re here.”

“No. They’re all pretty much jerks. But I wanted to be here for this last party, you know?”

“Sure. To say goodbye?” I guessed.

She put her arms around my neck, and her warm breath tickled my ear. “To watch it happen.”

She raised her chin and pulled my lips down to hers. My pulse raced at odds with the lights until she pulled away. When I opened my eyes, her tongue rested between her lips.

“Where did you get that?” Her eyes darted to my cup.

“There was some left over after they made their signature cocktail. Sully let me have what was left. Why?”

“Only the brothers get that. Usually everybody else just gets beer at these things.” She removed my hand from the small of her back. “I’m sorry, Dave. I didn’t mean for…uh, oh.”

I followed her gaze back over my shoulder. The group of partying brothers held their hands to their stomachs. A couple raced toward the back, where the bathroom lines stretched toward the DJ platform. They pushed and shoved their ways to the doors and hammered the wood while they doubled over. The crowd parted, hands waving in front of disgusted faces.

When the pain clenched my gut, the girl was gone. At the moment, she was the furthest thing from my mind. Weeks later, I was actually able to laugh about it, but I never saw Candace again.

 

The Cup – a Writing Exercise

Tags

Monday Blogs, writer's life, Writing, writing exercise

For Christmas, I received a book of “questions for creative exploration”. They are writing prompts, not all questions, and I decided that I would include my responses to them in my blog. They are meant as daily exercises, but I just picked one I liked and got to work. Because I’m a rebel, baby! I also slightly deviated from the instructions because the book’s not the boss of me. The exercise for this day was…

Think of a person and describe his or her personality through writing about a cup they often drink from (real or imagined).

Mr. Avon taught shop classes. To us students, he was Shop. I remember seeing him in the hall outside the teachers’ lounge, even before I took one of his classes. A steaming mug dwarfed his hand, as he stood talking to Mrs. Reid, the music teacher. No smile interrupted his wild beard, but the corners of his eyes crinkled in response to whatever made her laugh. At the bell, he spun on his heel and marched down the hall without spilling a drop.

A year later, I attended my first class in Mr. Avon’s domain. He leaned back against his fortress of a desk and explicitly described the severing of a student’s thumb due to negligence at a band saw. His voice was as monotone as the sand-brown mug at the corner of his desk, the same one I saw him holding outside the teachers’ lounge.

The handle was repaired, I deduced from the thin white lines circling it in two places. It surprised me, those lines, since the mug looked sturdy enough to be a geographic landmark, chiseled out of stone by wind-blown grit and glacial advance. It sat in the desk’s corner, placed so that its edge barely touched those of the desk’s front and right side.

I stared at the mug’s surface. At first glance, it shone with a clear finish; however, underneath there was a sandpaper texture of darker specs over a lighter background. Maybe I had it backwards. I wasn’t sure. The center slightly bowed out, as if the contents exerted enormous pressure, enough to stress the stone. A nearly indistinguishable band of slightly darker brown rode this bulge’s middle, circle around circle.

Mr. Avon cleared his throat and poured coffee into a split in his beard, where his mouth likely hid. The mug returned to its precise resting place, and when he turned his attention back to us, he appeared to notice my eyes fastened to the container. He said nothing about it, though I whipped my eyes forward to the wall of tools hanging behind his desk.

The handle pulled my gaze back to the mug. I hadn’t noticed before, but it looked like half of a heart, the valentine kind. Could the other half be on the inside of the cup? It seemed unlikely, and the realization made my breath catch in my throat, an emptiness swell in my chest when I thought of the missing half. What had broken them apart? Would they ever reunite? I was so certain it began as a whole. Who wants half a heart?

Later, in my art class, I abandoned my clay project to start something new. The walls were thin, a bit misshapen. Surely it lacked symmetry. I didn’t care much if it was perfect, or even if it would leak. I obsessed on the handle, both halves of the heart: one to be grabbed and the other, on the inside of the mug, to make it whole.

That’s a Wrap, 2016!

Tags

2017, Blogging, Inspiration, Nerd Bacon, New Year, Nonlocal Science Fiction, Resolutions, Video Games, Writing

 

What a year! Take that however you’d like. There were ups, and certainly downs, and that’s how this crazy thing we call life goes. I like to keep looking and moving forward. I try to learn from, but not dwell on, the past. Some days are definitely more successful than others, in those respects, but trying is the important part. That’s how habits, happiness, and opportunities are made.

There certainly were an alarming number of heart-wrenching celebrity deaths in 2016, especially in the last month. Many of these people will always be inextricably linked to some of my favorite memories. Prince? He will forever be one of the greatest musicians I will know in my lifetime. Carrie Fisher’s role of Princess Leia taught me at an early age that women deserve important roles in my writing. She was so much more than that brief part of her life, and seeing her in The Force Awakens rekindled that original Star Wars magic in me. It wasn’t completely snuffed out by Jar-Jar, I guess.

On a more personal note, I lost my grandfather this year. He nearly reached centenarian status, and I sincerely believed that he would. His vitality, keen mind, and sense of humor made him seem immortal for so many of his retirement years. If growing older could be that way for most people, they probably wouldn’t dread it as much. I hope that I’m playing softball when I’m in my 80s and golf in my 90s like he did. If I’m still as energetic as he was when I hit 90, I’ll start playing golf just because I can. When I think of the Greatest Generation, men and women whose strength we owe so much, I picture him on a tractor, or fixing a furnace, or surrounded by three younger generations of relatives at our family reunions.

2016 was also the year of many unfulfilled writing goals. My writing output dwindled, my blog stagnated, and there were times I struggled to scratch out a few lines in my notebook. I submitted a few stories to publications, but only one was accepted. It is still unpublished at the time I write this. All others were rejected, with the exception of one, a decision that I still await. Most of the stories I wrote didn’t seem to fit the publications I found, either for length or some nebulous reason undisclosed by the reviewers. I’ll keep writing, and at some point I’m sure the right story will find the right market.

I finished the sequel to a short story that was published in Nonlocal Science Fiction #3, but I’m hanging onto it. There are three written so far that feature the same character. I have one, maybe two, more left to write in the series. My intention is to publish them all as a collection, once I finish them. There’s still plenty to outline, write, and edit before I’ll be ready to leap into the self-publishing arena.

I finished the first draft of my first novel, tentatively titled To Die One Death, and I’m close to halfway through the editing process. I had hoped to be done by the start of 2017, but I’m slowly starting to accept that it will be done when it’s as polished as I can make it. My word count, even before editing, fell short of what I anticipated. After editing, I hope to eliminate around 10 percent. At least, that’s what Stephen King recommends in his suggestions for writers. That gives me some room to add some more details about the world’s societies and environs that I might have rushed past when trying to complete the first draft. I want to make the novel as awesome as I can, and the editing process is where that happens, even if it will mean further delays. I plan to confront the demons of traditional publishing when it’s ready. I will hopefully find some willing beta readers in the next few months, then more editing, then professional editing, and then the submission process.

Because I like to bite off more than I can chew, I applied and was accepted to write video game reviews for Nerd Bacon. I’ve loved video games since my Atari 2600, so writing about them is a great excuse to keep playing them. I also hope to gain more exposure, expand my online presence, and eventually earn a larger audience for my fiction. Who knows? Maybe it will lead to some unexpected opportunities. Nerd Bacon is full of excellent articles and enthusiastic game discussion. I hope you will check it out, if that interests you. My first review, for the zombie survival game 7 Days to Die, has just recently been uploaded, under the moniker Aaroneous.

2016 was a year of emotional turmoil, but I like to think that I contributed a small amount to make it better and spread some positive vibes. If I were pressed into making resolutions, they would be to dream bigger and work harder to bring about those dreams in the new year. I look forward to continued writing progress, and I wish all of you a successful and satisfying 2017, no matter where your muse may call you.

Better Lies (Writing Tips)

Tags

Editing, Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Process, Writing Tips

Photo by Tristan Schmurr

Writing fiction is a process of making stuff up, telling tales, fabricating reality, lying. An exceptional story will string me along like a gifted grifter. I’ll buy into its characters, conversations, plot hooks, and setting. I’ll pay to hear it, even though I know it’s not true, because it’s not true. What lies do I anxiously await time to experience? More importantly, what separates the great lies from the meh? As I pull out the dwindling supply of hair from my head, sore from bashing it against my desk, otherwise knows as “editing a novel”, I crave advice to make my manuscript better. I comb the internet and get sucked into Twitter and Facebook conversations about the dos and don’ts, rules, appropriately breaking the rules, artistic license, grammar police, etc. Ever present is the caveat that the writer should trust his/her gut about the changes he/she makes to his/her manuscript. There’s no way I will offer any definitive writing tips here, BUT I will pass along some that I’ve read about and make sense to me. First, my caveat, hereby relinquishing me of any responsibility that said shared tips might ruffle feathers, stir dander, or otherwise frustrate. I’ve found them to be helpful. There have been enough that I no longer remember where I read most of them, but I will give credit where I recall the sources.

Most recently, I signed up for Rayne Hall’s “Writer’s Craft” newsletter. The bonus for registering was a workbook for growing my author voice. It contained a practical guide to implementing a bevvy of tips for more dynamic writing. The workbook exercises customize to any type of writing that I am interested in successfully pursuing. Sounds too good to be true? The concept was simpler than I imagined. Putting it into practice was as challenging as I thought any realistic guide to improvement should be. Identify the type of voice you want to write in, based primarily on your genre, and figure out what adjectives describe that voice. Find and use verbs in your manuscript that lend credence to those adjectives. Eliminate verbs that don’t (and there’s a handy list of weak verbs that most new writers, including moi, abuse). I look forward to future newsletters and tips. Rayne Hall has also written whole books about writing, and I intend to check them out. Good stuff! Follow her on Twitter: @RayneHall

One of my favorite authors, Joe Abercrombie, thanked his mum (they’re British) for giving him some important writing advice. She said that he should be honest. It may be the vital ingredient that keeps me reading, and re-reading, his novels. While it sounds simple to emulate, it can be extremely difficult. Each character should act honestly, not that all the characters are truthful. How boring that would be! They should behave in accordance to their motives, personalities, fears, and experiences. Sounds like a lot of work? You betcha. But it’s what makes his fiction such a pleasure to read. His characters feel alive. They don’t seem created to fulfill a specific purpose or take on stereotypical roles in the narrative. They are messy, faulted, wounded, and often pathetic specimens, and those that don’t have those qualities are usually just exceptionally good at hiding them. As I edit my novel, I’m challenged to honestly portray my characters as people first, characters second. This, I think, is the key to luring in readers who normally wouldn’t want to read genre fiction. If I can make them believe my made-up characters mimic real people (see “lying” above), how much easier will it be to convince readers to follow those people through their journey? It’s also vitally important that I be honest with myself when editing and making difficult decisions about what furthers the story and what is unnecessary.

I talk to myself like the crazy guy on the bus. That’s one of the things I do when I’m writing and editing dialogue, and it’s also the reason most of my time spent on these activities is in the privacy of my home or my car. This exercise has been recommended to me nearly universally in every tip I’ve read on the subject. Why? Because anyone who speaks English will detect the lies I’m selling if the speakers of those fictional conversations sound like 1980s TV robots. Each character needs to speak consistently, and there should be a unique sound to each voice. It’s a great way for readers to be able to tell the characters apart in conversations without using dialogue tags. Speech can tell readers things about characters without taking up time to describe them in more traditional ways, more boring ways. There’s a fine line between perfect and overdoing it, though. When I speak characters’ lines out loud, I can hear how they sound and if their voices have changed from one conversation to another. I learn more about the characters, too, like what body language they might use along with their lines of dialogue.

Share your writing with others. It’s an important step for those who want to be read by an audience. Doesn’t that seem obvious? For many writers, this is completed with a great degree of trepidation. Rejections can be harsh, and there will be rejections on submissions. I’ve experienced a ton of them, and each of them sucks. Writing groups can be relatively safe spaces to get honest and helpful feedback. After all, they are filled with other people who want the same thing and appreciate opinions that are given respectfully. I’ll plug 10 Minute Novelists, a group I joined some time ago on Facebook. Now with thousands of members, they promote members’ blogs, give advice, offer consolation during the painful process of editing, and encourage members to help each other out. I’ve received encouragement, blog followers, and beta readers through membership in this group. Most importantly, I’ve learned that writing doesn’t have to be a solitary pursuit like it was before the Internet, or “when dinosaurs roamed the earth” as my son likes to say.

Writing tips are everywhere, and I could spend lots of time reading them instead of writing, but it is necessary research. Anybody who becomes good at something will tell you that you have to keep striving to improve. If I read advice that seems like a step in the wrong direction for my writing, I disregard it. I intend to share the nuggets of genius as I learn them. I’d appreciate it if you will too, because I can use them. Feel free to drop me a comment with the best writing advice you’ve received. Sharing can make us all better writers.

My First Snowflake

Tags

Outlining, Snowflake Method, Writing, Writing Process

 

Years ago, I began a fantasy novel. It had all the requisite fantasy stuff: heroes, fair maidens, evil sorcery, and swordplay. I began writing it from the protagonist’s first-person point of view. I set a dark tone and laid plans for the protagonist’s revenge against his enemies. I added some horror because I like horror. There is so much horror under the surface of fantasy novels I enjoy most. It just seemed like a good fit. Then the project fizzled out. I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know why my interest flagged. It became another unfinished novel to add to my small collection, and I didn’t miss working on it.

Then something happened. I finished the first draft of my first novel. Let me tell you, it felt like I’d successfully scaled Everest. Only without oxygen tanks, avalanches, frostbite, starvation, or exhaustion. Man, that was a bad comparison, but the feeling was great. I’d done something I doubted I could do, something I had failed to accomplish after many attempts. The best part was that it made me see that I could do again because I had done it once. I had learned a few things, and I was determined to succeed again. I was determined to finish my second novel more quickly, with less editing, because I would try to organize it better from the start. I wouldn’t get sidetracked, I wouldn’t doubt my character’s voices, I wouldn’t second-guess my decisions in the middle of the first draft. How? Not with just a simple outline. I stumbled across something I wish I had found years ago, something other authors have been using for a long time. It’s called the Snowflake Method, and you can read the details here.

I’ve returned to the unfinished fantasy novel. Why not? I’ve thought about it often. The characters, especially the villains, have grown in my mind, and I already have a general idea how the plot will unfold. If the Snowflake Method will work for me at all, it will work for this novel. I don’t need to start over from scratch. I’ve already written the first three chapters. My problem was charting the plot beyond that point. It seemed overwhelming to think about where those characters would go, how their motivations would clash, and which of them might not survive. The Snowflake Method could help me organize it, help me define the characters in such a way that there would be no doubting the decisions they would make. I could write a character-driven, dark fantasy novel in the models of those I love. Maybe that’s why I never finished it: it seemed like I was going about it wrong. If so, I’m glad I stopped where I did. It will be easier to fix.

What I like about the Snowflake Method so far is that I started with the simplest of ideas and progressively expanded them. The creator, Randy Ingermanson, points out that this lends well to pitching the novel to publishers and agents. That’s something I dreaded, and now I feel emboldened to talk about the novel with anyone, even though it’s not finished. I’ve really barely even started, and that’s the beauty. By the time I get done with the preparatory work of defining characters and slowly expanding the plot details, I will have largely written the novel’s basic form. As with any fantasy novel, there will be world-building work and rules governing magic that I have to solidify, but I already have most of that in my head from years ago, years I spent thinking about it but not writing it.

After my first novel’s first draft took me roughly two years to write, I knew that I needed something to help me accelerate future projects. I’m optimistic that the Snowflake Method will be just what I needed. It’s hard enough to find time for writing on top of a full-time job and family responsibilities. It feels so much better to know that I will be spending my writing time more efficiently. And if it cuts down on editing time because my first draft will be written better, that’s icing on the cake. After all, the writing is the easy part. Editing is work.

If you’ve thought about writing a novel, I encourage you to take a look at the Snowflake Method. Once it helps you eliminate some of the most daunting tasks, gives you a place to start and a path that makes sense, you may find yourself on your way to finishing your first novel, too. And writing it much more quickly than I did.

Reading, Watching, Playing, Writing

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Black Ops 3, Books, Luke Cage, Netflix, Reviews, Role-playing Games, The Fireman, Video Games, Writing

Every once in a while, I like to talk about some of the media I’ve been consuming and enjoying. Now is one of those whiles.

I finished Joe Hill’s The Fireman not long ago, and I have to say it was H-O-T. OK, that was bad. But the novel was great. After reading another of his novels, Horns, I found The Fireman to be much more accessible to a wider audience. I loved Horns, but I could understand if it were a bit weird for a lot of people. I was really surprised that it was made into a movie. The Fireman, on the other hand, begs to be shown on the big screen. IMDB says a movie adaptation is currently in development, so we all have that to anxiously anticipate. I found it to be a wildly fun suspense story written with Hill’s exceptional characters and injected with just the right amount of humor. It does describe what could be the end of humanity, so laughs were welcome. I won’t spoil it. You should read it immediately.

I finished my Luke Cage binge on Netflix much more quickly than I thought I would. I should have known, from his brief appearances in Jessica Jones, that I would find his own series fantastic. Mike Colter couldn’t have played Power Man better, though I confess to little knowledge of the character from the comics. (I read the only available issue in my orthodontist’s office a dozen times when I was a kid, but my interest at that age was generally monopolized by Iron Fist.) Outstanding performances from Alfre Woodard and Simone Missick made for extremely compelling television. With 13 episodes to pepper with details of origin story and character development, there was a lot to love.

Black Ops 3 surprised me with its excellent game play and gritty realism. I don’t typically like FPS games, but my son loves those he’s been able to try, like Garden Warfare and Destiny. He’s at an age where most FPS games are inappropriate for him due to language and violence. That’s what sold me on Black Ops 3. As a parent, I could opt to blur out mature images and gore, as well as censor objectionable language, in effect keeping a mature-rated game at a PG-13 level. We got all the excellence of a challenging campaign plus additional zombie levels that he loves, and I was able to stick to my parental obligation to limit his exposure to inappropriate content. We can play together in a cooperative, split-screen mode, which makes it even more enjoyable. If you have a kid too old for kids games and too young for more adult games, Black Ops 3 fills the gap much like Destiny and much more enjoyably than I found Star Wars Battlefront.

How do I have time to write when I’ve been reading, watching, and playing all this stuff? I don’t sleep (enough)! Actually I do far less of the others, so I can make time to write. In the past couple of months, I finished the first draft of my very first novel. I wrote nearly all of it in longhand during lunch breaks, so my first round of editing is also my time spent typing it. I also wrote the chronologically second, long short-story featuring my character, Os. The first of these appears in Nonlocal Science Fiction Issue 3. I just recently finished typing that up and look forward to editing it more in the coming months. Already ideas are percolating for the next story in the series, and let me tell you, Os is in for some trouble (again). Finally, I’ve written several new short stories that I’m currently shopping around. No takers, so far, but I’m optimistic after positive reviews from some beta readers. And I’m not about to stop there. Currently I’m writing a fantasy short inspired by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay sessions with my friends. I’m also in the extreme beginning stage of planning my next novel, using the Snowflake method to hopefully finish it much more quickly than my first.

Have you read, watched, or played any of the above? I’d love to hear your thoughts about those and any other recommendations you have, so please leave me a comment!