Losing my nouns

In my last post I erroneously referred to Robert McKee as Bill McKee.

It puts me in mind of Sandra Shamas, a comedian from Sudbury, Ontario. Sandra is well-known for her one-woman acts that document her life. They are, in order, My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry, My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry: The Cycle Continues, Wedding Bell Hell and Wit's End.

Wit's End marked her return to stage after her retreat to her farm (Wit's End) after her divorce. The show highlighted the rollarcoaster that is the demise of a marriage as well as her adjustment to rural life and the onset of middle age.

"I'm losing my nouns! They are being replaced by adjectives. I can describe what I mean I just can't find the right word... I want that thing. That thing, you know. It's round and red. About this big."

"A ball?"

"Yes, that's it. A ball."

Well, not only am I losing my nouns, I am replacing them willy nilly with whichever moniker darts into my brain at the moment of speaking.

Therefore, Robert to Bill is standard fare. (And Bill and Bob are so close as to be practically identical.)

My kids are becoming pretty good interpreters.

"So, I'll come by at 3:00... "

"You mean 4:00?"

"Right and we'll go see that movie... the one with that actress... you know who I mean... the British one with, oh, what's her name?"

"You mean Judi Dench? "

"No. No. No. The other one you know, she was in that other movie. The one about calendars. Oh, What was it? You know who I mean. She won that award?"

"The Oscar."

"Yes, that one."

"Helen Mirren?"

"YES!"

"The Queen?"

"YES. THAT'S IT!"

My life has become an ongoing game of 20 Questions.

It's exhausting.

Colleen

A good story well told

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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I have completed the first draft of my manuscript. This should be cause for celebration, but it is not. You see, it just isn't quite right. There is a lameness to it. A certain so what? feel that I get when I think about it.

The past few days have been spent -- when not mangling birthday cakes -- constructing plot lines for my characters, people whom I love most dearly. It is the least I can do for them -- to ensure that they arrive in a place that flows logically from whence they have been.

In a parallel universe (while I was doing something completely unrelated to writing), I stumbled upon the mention of Story written by Robert McKee. It is one of those books that days ago was unknown yet, since hearing of it from one source, have then found it referenced everywhere I looked. I have just begun to read it and have been swept up in Mr. McKee's passion for storytelling.

Robert McKee -- if like me, the name to you is unfamiliar -- is a former Fulbright scholar and has written television and feature films. He teaches Story classes around the world and is a consultant to film production companies.

In his introduction, he presents the following:

• Story is about principles, not rules.
• Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.
• Story is about archetypes, not stereotypes.
• Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts.
• Story is about the realities, not the mysteries of writing.
• Story is about mastering the art, not second-guessing the marketplace.
• Story is about respect, not disdain, for the audience.
• Story is about originality, not duplication.

I am devoting today to making some headway on the book. I suspect I'll be doing a lot of hard thinking over the coming week.

Wish me well; I'm about to have my mind stretched.

Colleen

Birthdays and making fudge

My son turns 16 today.

We celebrated the big event yesterday because he is unavailable tonight -- he'll be in a film critique workshop, one of his duties as a juror with Viewfinders, the youth version of the Atlantic Film Festival.

But back to the birthday.

He requested a simple pound cake and I decided to attempt a chocolate fudge frosting. Fudge. As in perfect boiling point, need a candy thermometer, precise timing, fudge.

I was seven the last time I attempted the candy. It's taken 40 years for me to try again.

Back then the celebration was my mother's birthday. She had been feeling rather depressed at the thought of another year passing without notice -- she being the organizer rather than the organizee of such things.

I determined to make that year different. I was going to make fudge.

Now, I'm not sure why my childish fancy opted for that over more traditional cake. Perhaps my insatiable sweet tooth was to blame. However, opt for it I did.

Some time later, after standing over a hot stove and stirring like a dervish, I was rewarded with a brown sludge coated in a thin film more reminiscent of plastic wrap than chocolate.

I don't recall if, at that point, I realized my efforts had failed. I don't remember if I had ever even seen or eaten real fudge in order to make the comparison. But what I do know is that I was determined to garnish the brown slop in the rectangular metal pan with the words: Happy Birthday, Mom and to set this off with little flowers along the edges.

By the time I was finished, the brown effluence was topped by light green puddles of icing sugar and water.

It has taken 40 years to recover.

And so, yesterday, I began the process once more forgetting that I needed a candy thermometer, that when the recipe calls for finely-shaved chocolate, it doesn't mean chocolate chips and that I still haven't the foggiest notion of how to determine the moment when the mixture "begins to lose its sheen."

According the The Joy of Cooking, fudge was created "by accident, like so many culinary successes."

I would like to point out that no accident in my kitchen has ever resulted in a culinary success although my attempts at culinary success have often ended in accidents.

As a matter of fact, six hours in my kitchen produced two overly-dry pound cakes, a rock hard chocolate confection that is, at best, something like taffy, and a pile of dirty dishes.

I'm going to buy a birthday cake today. Technically, it won't even be late.

Colleen

How's about that background?

Weather: Spring is here! Oh glory be! Spent the day driving
around the Bay of Fundy. Been there a few times... never seen high tide, so,
from my perspective, it's one huge mudflat.

Ah, the trials of writing interesting background. Actually, I love background. I love reading, love writing it. I love navel gazing and introspection. Internal angst is fascinating. But that is me.

When I read a book, I am happy to let things develop slowly. I always let an author work at her own speed. Of course, there has to be some payoff. Say lovely prose or a passage that sings to me. Even if the book is proving to be less than I had envisioned, I hang in there hoping the writer will redeem himself.

But I get that I'm not everyone and that most people like forward motion.

This penchant of mine makes it a little difficult for me to sort out my own background writing.

Here's the story...

Seven very different people face a crisis that drives them to a support group. As they work through their stuff, another crisis happens at the group which acts as a catalyst for each person in a different way.

So, as the story opens we meet the individuals on the day of their crisis. Seven very short chapters. Lots of action. Then I have written seven more short chapters giving the lead up to crisis day. And then we get to group session one....

What I'm wondering is if seven short chapters of background is going to bog down the story too much. Each chapter is about four pages long. So, in 28 pages we get a good sense of the person.

I'm personally fine with it, but understand that others may not be.

Here are two alternatives....

1. Use the background to lead up to the crisis and combine each character's first and second chapters into one. They will still be only about eight pages long. The disadvantage to this is that we lose all that nice action up front.
2. The background bits can be intermingled in with the group sessions. I think I prefer this method as it'll offer a dimension to the sessions that is lacking.

Any thoughts? Other suggestions?

How do you handle background?

C

The Other Thesaurus

To get your day going with a smile.

(Thanks to Becs for sending me this...)

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

The winners of these neologisms are:

1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your night gown.

7. Lymph ( v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Have a great day!
Colleen

Bird by Bird

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the
intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. -
Buddha

Weather forecast: A few flurries ending this morning then sunny. Wind northwest 40 km/h gusting to 60 becoming north 30 this morning then becoming light this afternoon. High minus 2. UV index 4 or moderate.

Actual weather: Gloriously sunny, high winds, cold.

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My wonderful friend from Alaska sent me a book on writing, Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. The reason I so love it -- beside the facts that 1) it's from Becs and 2) it's a gift and who could hate that? -- is that Anne seems so emotionally fragile. She's also very funny. The book is based on content from a class she teaches on writing.

Here are a few things from her book that I'd like to share with you to give you hope and make you smile -- maybe even get you thinking.

"Nor do they [my students] want to hear that it wasn't until my fourth book came out that I stopped being a starving artist. The do not want to hear that most of them probably won't get published and that even fewer will make enough to live on. But their fantasy of what it means to be published has very little to do with reality."

"... good writing is about telling the truth."

On the panic that sets in when sitting down to write: "... all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being."

"For me and most other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people."

"Just don't pretend that you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple."

"Plot grows out of character."

On dialogue: "... we have all the pleasures of voyeurism because the characters don't know we are listening."

That's as far as I've read. More tomorrow.

I wish you a day of good writing!

C

Happy First Day of Spring

Weather forecast: Snow changing to rain showers this morning. Snowfall amount 2 to 4 cm. Rainfall amount 2 to 4 mm. Fog patches early this afternoon. Wind south 30 km/h gusting to 50. High plus 5.

Actual weather: Heavy snow, gusting winds, poor visibility.

Time for the warm rhythms of the Gypsy Kings!

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As I progress down the writing path, one thing I am coming to appreciate is the lively interaction in this community. I began writing fulltime one year ago and kept my nose to the grindstone, beavering away without lifting my head up long enough to see what was happening in my new community. (My corporate work habits hadn't/haven't died yet.)

Now that I have taken time to begin looking about me, I am awed by your generosity and vibrancy. Wow!

I can spend hours reading your blogs about your experiences, about tips and techniques, about hope and encouragement. I'm starting to feel like I'm on the edge of something bigger and it's really exciting.

Thank you, everyone!

There's something about which I'd really like to talk with you about -- the struggle with self-doubt.

I sit here, at my desk -- piled with books, papers and CDs, cough drops and hand moisterizer -- gulping coffee like its the elixir of youth, and I write. Day after day this is what I do. And then I read what I've written and I rail at what I've put on the electronic page decrying it for the tripe it is.

Every once in a while, I like something I see there, but then I berate myself for having an inflated ego or not knowing my arse from my elbow.

Am I alone?

Do you struggle with this too?

If you do, or if you've arranged an intervention for someone who does, what does one do to overcome this? Or is this one of the many joys of being a writer? If it is the latter, then I am some writer, as folks in this part of the world would say. Some writer.

But balance would be nice. Don't you think? The ability for rational self-assessment.

I try to be calm. I try to meditate but can't shut my mind off. I light candles and play relaxation music until I begin to think that if I hear one more waterfall or bird chirp I'm going to go mad. Drinking at 8 a.m. is out of the question.

What do YOU do?

Colleen


BTW... I have moved all my posts from the IDEAS blog to this one I will see what I can do about moving the comments over later today. I'm sure there was some spiffy way to import the content, but I couldn't figure it out so it's been a manual process. (How do you spell tedious?)

Writer's Block

Something that I've been reading about on numerous websites is the issue of writer's block. It's a problem I've never had. (Overflow and focus would be more my issue.) I think this is because of my background in PR. (See previous post for the downfall of this training!)

(Knock on wood. (KOW) No, jump up and down on the maple floors, rub the pine shelving, shake the birch desk. Whatever preventative power wood has to mollify the fates, I am all over it.)

So, while writing to deadlines has created an editorial moron of me, it has also created someone who can write anytime and pretty much anywhere. Now, that doesn't mean that everything written is going to be pretty, but I've not had the experience of staring at a screen and not been able to get going somehow. (KOW)

An immutable deadline does that for you. That and the desire to collect a paycheque.

Usually, when a project looms a lead will come to me and the rest follows. It's tougher when a lead doesn't present itself. On those occasions, I just start typing. It primes the pump and words flow to greater or lesser volume.

What do you do to overcome writer's block?

I'd love to hear from you,
Colleen

Learning to write, uh, edit

I am beginning to understand the notion of editing.

Yes, I can see you shaking your head at me... poor pitiable boob that I am.

The reason it has taken me so long to figure out that editing is more than searching for typos is my years of writing for PR -- my once-chosen field. In public relations, everything, and I mean everything, is written to a deadline. Those deadlines are most often ridiculously tight and are continuous. An adrenaline junkie's wet dream.

My habit then, has been to write as quickly as possible, do a fly-by edit for obvious structure or other flaws, then get the piece out the door and move on to the next project.

Now, I'm not talking about the demand to work with a deadline a week or even one a day. I'm talking about multiple, sometimes shifting, deadlines daily. I'm talking about working with clients who, bless their little hearts, can change diretion and desire on whim -- and normally minutes before a product is scheduled for production or print.

And I am no stoic.

Therefore, like Pavlov's dog, I have learned that writing implies rushing, striving, getting to the goal as quickly as humanly possible. It is why my son feels impelled on occasion to wheel me away from my keyboard and push my office chair to the dinner table. It is why my partner complains that I am unavailable for weeks on end. And, it is why I haven't figured out how to edit.

Cause that takes time. Lots and lots of time. Bogland, cold molasses, and weighted feet kind of time.

Bloody hell.

Wish me luck.

(And have a Happy St. Paddy's Day!)

Colleen
(This is a re-posting from: Ideas Change the World All the Time posted on March 17, 2007.)

Slow down, take a breath

So, Mercury's out of retrograde. Thank gods! That was a crappy week.

Now, about this writing shtick... We writers are truly neurotic, aren't we? Thinned skinned, over-analyzing every rejection letter that comes our way, wishing we had thesauri in our brains.

If you're anything like me, then you just need to calm down and take the time to learn our craft. (Did I just say that? "Craft?" Yikes!) After all, I've only been doing this for a year. Or it will be a year at the end of March. I've got a lot to learn.

But as my friend, Lynn, wrote to me yesterday: "You and slow go together like oil and vinegar."

Sigh. It is true. I want everything to happen yesterday. Like I'm running out of time. I wrote my first manuscript in a couple of months after starting it long ago and then sitting on it for years, not writing anything at all. By the time I got back to it, I wasn't into it. I had moved on to a different place in my head and my life and the content no longer felt real to me. But, I also felt that I had to finish it, for the achievement of completing something. I didn't want to move on to another story leaving one unfinished. (I had already done that a couple of times.)

However, by the time manuscript (MS) #1 was completed, I hated it. Couldn't wait to write the next one. Was snarky and irritable in my desire to move on. (Just ask those who live with me!) Then I pounded out MS #2 in 16 days. I think that's got to be some kind of record. Of course, I mean draft 1. Then came the rewrite, but I still think that 60-odd thousand words in 16 days is pretty impressive. No slacker am I! But, same thing as with MS #1, I couldn't wait to finish it and move on to the next story. But the concept had been swirling around in my head for so long that I had to get it onto paper before I could move on.

Yesterday, I finished the first draft of MS #3. And ya know what? I think I like it. There are moments in the book that I'm proud of -- and that's a rarity for me.

When I say "moments in the book" I mean those phrases or passages that strikes one as being authentic. For example, I get that sometimes from Stephen King. He is critically slammed all the time, and yet, there are moments in his writing when he captures a moment (usually when he is referring to something from childhood)that I read and say: "Yes, that's it. That's exactly how that felt for me back then."

Isn't that what we, as writers, want to achieve? To strike that chord? Make that connection? Speak someone's truth?

For me, there are a few bits and pieces of that in my current oeuvre (Aside: Isn't that a piece of pompous wordsmithing?) that I'm happy with. (Ah, and now the Canadian in me niggles and prods me to say something self-denigrating like: Oh, gee, well, it's not really that great. I mean, it's just mine...) Gotta love those neuroses.

But today, writers-in-arms, today begins the edit of MS #3! Do I hear trumpets? Is the sun rising, kissing the horizon as I speak this? (Actually, since this is NS, it's raining and grey, but I'll ignore that.)

Let's take a collective breath, appreciate the time we have to write, and move forward -- slowly, smelling the roses and all that.

Colleen

The depths of blackest despair

Last night, I received my first rejection letter from an agent. Not that I haven't had e-mailed rejections based on query letters, because I have. But an honest-to-goodness rejection letter from someone who actually read my manuscript. That's a different thing altogether and so, the hurt is deeper.

The letter was actually quite lovely -- or in comparison to what I imagine some can be like. It was not an impersonal form letter. It was a letter pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the story, what I can do to sell it and wishing me luck and giving me encouragement to go on.

So, why do I feel so bad?

It's my damned insecurities telling me that I can't write, that I should give up, that I am a talentless twit! That I should to back to having a regular job and stop sucking up my retirement funds thereby risking an old age fuelled only by cat food (the cheap kind) and puddle water. Ah! I can't bear it.

But I hear chocolate beckoning so maybe the day will turn out alright after all.

C