I’ve got a tattoo consultation on Thursday, which of course made me Google myself silly looking at other people’s work.
Everyone’s favourite clown! Yay!
Click the picture above to see some incredible horror-themed pieces. (And no, Mom, I’m not getting anything you’d be afraid to look at.)
This novel is still coming along nicely. It’s exciting, because normally by now I’ve fallen out of love with a story I hate the story’s guts, and I’m angry at each individual letter on the screen for conspiring against me to form words that suck.
Anyway.
I’m still so new to this whole actually-completing-work phase of my fledgling career that it’s hard to know how to pace myself. As we’ve seen in—ahem—other areas of my life, I tend to run myself ragged, trying to do more, and eventually I burn myself out.
So I’m trying to develop a writing plan, as in x number of hours per day or x number of words. To pace myself and actually know when to knock it off, already. But there’s some small part of me that thinks if I don’t WRITE THIS WHOLE THING RIGHT NOW OMG it will stop being exciting, and I’ll dump it like I did its predecessors. I keep getting little mental flashes of really neat scenes, and I feel like I need to capture everything now, for fear it won’t be as good later.
So my question is this: how do you strike a balance?
Every writer’s heard it a hundred times: Show, don’t tell.
Showing in writing is always emphasized. It’s more interesting for the reader to take a clue (Steve’s heart raced) and figure out what it means (Steve was scared) instead of being told. Sure, it may mean you and I reach slightly different conclusions, and we probably form different mental images. That’s part of why we read. By not supplying all the details, the writer leaves the reader to imagine the story and characters exactly how they want.
What “Sinister” shows us is the need for balance between showing and telling.
The movie begins by cutting back and forth between a voodoo practitioner and his intended target. The suspense of the scenes and the contrast between light and dark, noise and silence, is actually really well executed. We’re drawn into the movie from the start. I wish we knew more about why the guy’s making a voodoo doll of the girl, but it feels like we’ll find out in time.
The problem is that suddenly we’re following an older woman in her car. She’s talking on her cell phone to her boss (?), then gets stuck in a car wash, then goes home to find her brother visiting. I’m not saying the writers should have held our hands, but this is an instance where I think they could have used a little more tell.
How are these women connected? Are they connected? As a viewer, it’s easy to fall out of the suspense because we have no way of knowing how and if these stories intertwine. I’d be more worried for the woman if I knew the bad guy was killing off a family, and she’s next. Or if I knew that the woman is the bad guy’s mother, and he’s got it out for the women in his life. At least give me a hint. As it is, I’m left hanging, given too little information, and it’s hard to hold interest.
This movie is also a good example of something that bothers me in writing. So far all the characters have been “singular” in the sense that most scenes occur with only one person. [this does change later; I was blogging as I watched. Still relevant.] It would seem logical, then, that there would be an absence of dialogue, but in reality the scenes become tedious. If I were reading this story as a novel instead of watching it as a movie, it would go something like this:
(the female character with no name) makes tea. She hears a bell. She goes to look. Finds the bell. Picks it up. Closes the door behind her. Door opens again. She closes it. She reads in bed. She goes to sleep. She hears a noise.
Tiresome, right? It wouldn’t serve to have her wandering the house talking to herself, but we also don’t hear her thoughts. Without any real input from the character about what she’s thinking, we can’t ever learn about her. And if we don’t know anything about her, we don’t care about her. It’s important to give the reader clues (again) that help to establish who this woman is. To a point, telling can be used to give us a little background so we’re not forced to supply everything.
Lessons from Sinister: try to walk the line between being patronizing and being frustratingly vague. Suggest that all will become clear as the story progresses, then plot the story to tie up loose ends.
I spent today writing.
(And slacking. But trust me, a lot of writing happened.)
I’m out of words. My brain is mush.
And it appears that certain members of my staff feel woefully neglected.
This is Zoey. If I could only teach her to make coffee, life would be grand.
Since I mentioned starting to write a novel, I’ve had mixed response from people I know. Most have been supportive, as I knew they would.
A few, though, have been a little skeptical. No one’s said it, of course. But there’s a certain look in the eye, a certain…pause…before saying anything, that gives it away.
I can see why.
Writing a novel seems to be one of those things that people say they’d like to do someday. I’d say a majority of people feel, at one time or another, that they could write a book. Most people say it, but most never do it.
Which brings me to the skeptics in my life. Because I’ve announced my intentions of “one day” making a living at writing, I can see how that might be mistaken for the same wistfulness that plagues so many wannabe novelists. Most people who have “one day”s sit back and wait for it to happen. “One day” I’ll run in that marathon. “One day” I’ll ask that guy out. They don’t make any concrete move toward their goals.
I say “one day” because there are so many variables. I can’t make someone like my work. I can’t make them buy it. And if no one buys it, it will never pay the bills. That’s life. I say “one day” because there’s no way for me to set an exact timeline for when I’ll be able to make writing my only job.
All I can do is fulfill my side of the contract. I can only control my output. I have to write, every day, no matter what, if there’s any hope of making it. I have to get better with every story, because it’s my job not to disappoint the reader. I have to bust my ass to make this novel the best I can. And the novel after that. And the one after that. Then I have to get my stuff out there, get people to see it, and hope like hell they like it.
Whether or not my “one day” ever comes rests squarely on my shoulders, and if I don’t work for it it never will.
(This post was inspired by someone who demanded I recruit followers for their writing instead of doing any work themselves. It doesn’t work like that. Sorry, Bro.)
What’s this?
It’s the first time I’ve seen one of my stories in print, that’s what. I think I may have frightened the nice Purolator lady with my screeching. Just a little.
Daily Frights 2012 from Pill Hill Press.
I’ve been melancholy lately. Things have been weighing really heavily.
But right now, they don’t matter.
Because guess where I am.
I’M IN A FORT.
My husband made me a fort.
Then he made me weird little shadow puppets. (This one’s a jackal.)
I feel like a little kid again, and it’s the best. Ever.
Couldn’t sleep last night. That won’t surprise many of you; I have sleeping…issues. Mostly I can’t get settled, can’t shut my brain off. The longer I lie there, not sleeping, the more resentful I become. It starts off a horrible cycle where I’m angry because I can’t sleep, and I can’t sleep because I’m so angry. I finally drifted off around 4:30. I had to be up at 5:30 for DayJob.
Why am I telling you this?
BECAUSE…as I stared off into the darkness, my mind wandered and BAM! fell right into an idea. An idea for a novel. Pieces fell together and suddenly I had a loose outline, a title, hell, even a cover all planned out.
I rolled over and told myself I’d revisit it today, to see if any of my half-asleep ramblings actually made sense. I even (and this is a cardinal sin: writers, look away) decided not to get up and write any of it down. I figured I might forget it, sure, but it was late and I was busy in the throes of a bitchy little funk.
Luckily, it stayed with me. And the more I think about it, the more I like it.
I’ve never had a story come together so easily before. I have whole little mind-movies climbing over each other to be written. And they make sense and they work.
This is easily the most excited I’ve been about a story, and I owe it all to that sleep-sucking rat-bastard. Silver linings, I guess.
I find so much inspiration in art. In filmmaking, in special effects, in design. In the artists themselves, in people who are RIGHT NOW making and writing and drawing and painting. Isn’t that exciting? I see so many successes and so much potential in my artistic peers that I can’t help wanting to join them in making something fantastic.
I didn’t go to an art school (though I wanted to), and I don’t have a ton of artsy friends (though those that I do know are remarkable). I have next to zero visual-art ability. But it tickles my creativity to peek into the lives of artists who are as we speak creating amazing and wonderful things.
So, check out A Studio Visit with Allison Sommers at hifructose.com. Her art is impressively detailed and instantly recognizable. I want to live in her studio.
I also love Nikki Burch’s illustrations and cartoons; she’s been a favourite of mine for quite a while. Her stuff is dark, but silly and fun at the same time. She uses teeny tiny little pen and brush strokes that make me glad I don’t have to print out my stories by hand.
And although I only get some of the references, I’m 200 pages in on Art Student Owl and it’s made me smile and laugh more times than I can count. Underneath the smart-assed jokes, though, it’s genuinely nice to think of all these artists out there giving up so much to maybe, someday, get somewhere doing what they love. I admire that, because I’m working toward a future where I can put my writing first.
(I just realized it is in fact Monday and this should have been a Movie Monday post. I’m sure the world at large will cope.)
sniderwriter 