Committing Murder

Literary murder, that is.

After coming to a screeching halt on "Future Tense," I realized that one of my secondary characters and his whole plot thread is the 'one of these things is not like the other' problem.

It doesn't belong in *this* story. Travis Young is a wonderful character, but he doesn't serve enough of a purpose in Matt's character arc to warrant keeping him. Yeah, the karate class scenes are solid and show a facet of Matt's devotion/commitment, but I show that in other ways.

I think part of me always knew that I'd be yanking this thread from the story. I was concerned enough about the cliche potential of the karate teacher, that I deliberately make him *not* oriental. But that wasn't enough. Having the martial arts teacher be the 'wise council' is still too much of a cliche. Matt has too many adults who care about him in this story.

Sorry, Matt, but your journey needs to be more complicated, more difficult. Having the dojo as a place of sanctuary makes it too easy.

So slash and burn time. And sadly, the word count moves in the wrong direction. But a story isn't word counts. Getting this right now means a stronger and better story later.

Off to commit (literary) murder. . .

The opposite of NaNo

November is "National Novel Writing Month," NaNoWriMo, for short. A crazy time in which writers work to get 50,000 words written in 30 days. Many of my writing friends participate and they feel it helps to silence their internal editors an allows them to get words on the page.

I have never participated in NaNoWriMo. It just doesn't mesh with my own writing practice, but after cranking out 1K a day for the month of October, I'm at a big fat zero word count for November.

I actually figured I'd hit a wall--one of the reasons I pushed ahead all October to get as much written on "Future Tense" as I could. So am I panicking? No.

I am taking this time to plot more of the story, to consolidate what I already have, and to let the well refill. I suspect there are more words lurking just around the corner.

"Planet Earth turns slowly"

I love this song by Owl City.  I don't quite know why, but from the first time my teenage son had me listen, I was hooked.  This morning, it came on the radio and he and I were singing it together.  I had one of those 'priceless' moments:  How often do you get to enter your 16 year old's world?

While there is no doubt in our household who the parents are, and we often exercise the power of 'no', my husband and I also work hard to stay connected with our kids. 

One of the ways we connect is through music.  We've introduced both kids to music 'the old dudes' listened to in college (REM, The Who, Peter Gabriel, The Talking Heads, etc), and in turn both boys introduce us to music they love.

Some of it, I enjoy, some I don't, but I love the fact that we all enjoy the exchange.

I'd like to make myself believe
That planet earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
Because my dreams are bursting at the seams

--From Owl City's "Firefly"

Go listen to the song--it's catchy--you might even find yourself humming it at unexpected times. Even if you're an old fogey like me.

Happy Halloween, the 2009 Edition

This year, between the wreck of my house after the flood and the real life horror show of reconstruction and contractors, I really didn't have a lot of reserve left to plan Halloween. Add to that a husband with a crazy bad few weeks at work, and it almost left Halloween 2009 in the lurch.

Lucky for me, my son wanted to go as a dalek, and working on his costume got me in the 'spirit' of things.

There are LEDs on the helmet and yes, that's a whisk in one hand, a plunger in another.

He recorded the nasal twang of 'ex-ter-min-ate' on his ipod and he was good to go.

This is what the house looks like before Halloween:

And this is what it looks like after the transformation.

We had a graveyard with open graves that was supposed to be a lot eerier than it was, but the fog machines weren't effective--the huge amount of wind we had just blew the fog to shreds.

Luckily we had enough chocolate to stave off a mad zombie invasion. 

If you look carefully, you can see the shadow of my hell hound in the front door, guarding the portal. . . entrance to the house.

Perhaps next year, we will be able to rise to our usual standards, and my partner in crime won't be called into work on Halloween eve.

"Future Tense" at 27K

11 chapters completed. We're past the beginning and fully engaged in the middle, wherein everything Matt tries to 'fix' his problems only serve to make things worse.

All the characters who will inhabit this novel are introduced, their story arcs intersecting with Matt's as he moves through the novel. I have a good vision for how the story ends, as well as the specific way points/events that have to happen on the way there.

Given my progress on this so far, it is fully possible that I could have a completed first draft of the story by years end.

I've written nearly 30K in 30 days. I'm aiming for anywhere between 60 and 80K for the finished story, post editing. I tend to write lean, and have to add in later drafts, so I'm on target.

It feels good, especially when I remember that at the end of September, I was flailing around for a story to write. And this one emerged from a single word, written on a legal pad by my bed. A single word that teased my brain just before I fell asleep one day.

That word was "run-away."

The rest of the story spun around that.

So far, it's been a great ride.

Tomorrow, be on the lookout for Halloween pictures.

Card of the Day: The Magician--Opportunity and Optimism

Pulling a card from the tarot deck and musing on it has been my morning meditation for the past week or so. It is my opportunity to sit quietly and prepare of my day.

Writers (and artists of all stripes) need to exercise their subconscious. It's the place where deep connections are made between the ordinary and the numinous. It's where all art emerges from.

I look at the tarot as a way to connect with my subconscious, to open a channel, not with the spirit world, but with my internal world.

Some artists do this with meditation, some with exercise, some have tried using drugs and alcohol. Clearly, some methods are more successful and sustainable than others. 'Nuff said.

Today I pulled "The Magician." It is a card of power and potential. It shows a magician surrounded by symbols that occur throughout the tarot deck: swords, cups, pentacles, and wands. In addition, the symbol for eternity, the sideways figure of eight hovers over his head. According to my deck interpretation, The Magician signifies new directions, imagination, optimism, and new chances of success.

Given my husband's distress over his work situation and my own limbo waiting on word from publishers over "The House of Many Doors" which is on submission, I'll take that.

Card of the Day: Three of Swords

One of the characters in "Future Tense" informed me that she reads tarot cards. And suddenly, that became central to the plot and to Matt's character arc.

I know next to nothing about tarot and I knew that tarot readings would be crucial to plot, so I put out a call and several very generous writer souls answered it. (Thank you "A" and "B"!)

In order to write about readings, I needed to really learn the cards, so I bought a deck and went off to the library for several books on tarot interpretation.

One of the things all the books recommend is to draw a card of the day to learn about the deck and its meanings. The deck I bought is slightly different than the traditional deck, and some of the cards have different interpretations. I have been using the daily cards as a meditation of sorts, letting my subconscious make connections between the art, the traditional meaning, and current life events.

Today's card is the Three of Swords. In a traditional deck, it is a photo of a heart, pierced by three swords. Meaning: heartbreak, pain, despair. The deck I have shows something slightly different: a woman collecting firewood in a winter landscape, three swords piercing the barren ground. According to the artist, this represents obstacles, opposition, separation, and estrangement.

Now, I don't believe in a fixed fate, nor do I believe that cards can show me the direct future, but it is interesting that I drew this particular card today. My husband is struggling with frustration at work, which came to a head last night. Since he has been at the same facility for nearly 18 years, in large part defines himself by what he does there, and is extremely emotionally committed to his patients and his work, this conflict and difficulty fills him with despair.

I like the interpretation at the Intuitive tarot site:

"On a more general level the Three of Swords represents storms that must be weathered if one is to grow beyond the illusions being held onto. The three always brings anguish at its darkest level but it also brings a truth that needed to be learned."

If nothing else, I see the tarot as a wealth of symbols and archetypes, that mingled with the imagination of the writer can lead to useful narratives. Narratives that illuminate one's internal and external landscapes.

The Center Cannot Hold

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
---from "The Second Coming", by William Butler Yeats

This is one of those poems that I read over and over, finding something important and relevant each time.

This morning, while listening to the news on NPR with my daily coffee, it came to mind again. I don't know if it's an artifact of the instant news cycle, but it feels as if terrible things are accelerating in the world. "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;"

I know, by the very fact that Yeats wrote these words in 1919, that evil, strife, and peril are not a modern invention. Life has always been an inherently dangerous proposition. Perhaps we have just pretended this is not so, used technology and prosperity to maintain the illusion that we are not vulnerable.

The truth is, we are vulnerable. Our lives are terribly fragile. Perhaps instead of hiding from that painful revelation, we need to embrace it. Take it in, make it part of ourselves.

Then we can truly understand how precious and rare each day of our lives is.

Maybe then we would make different choices. Value different things. Stop wounding and killing one another for stubborn ideology and misguided fear.

We are all of us in Yeats' desert, "vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle". We are all looking for comfort in the dark.

Getting ready for Halloween

I've slogged through the doldrums and am starting to get into the Halloween spirit. (pun intended!)

I spent much of the day yesterday making my 13 yo son a dalek costume. For those of you who aren't familiar with the world of Dr. Who, it is a long running British sci fi serial about an immortal Time Lord who travels through time and space in a TARDIS, his time machine that is stuck looking like a British police call box.

I am a Dr. Who fan from my childhood, in the Tom Baker era. (The Doctor has been played by 11 different actors over the years.) I've utterly ruined my own children's chance for sanity by exposing them to Dr. Who and Monty Python from an early age. :)

My son is trick or treating with two friends, also in Dr. Who costume, one as the Doctor, one as his nemesis, the Master.

Gives me hope for the future.

:)

How generous people are

Writing is often a solitary and lonely endeavor. Unlike music, which is commonly (though not always) a collaborative process, writing tends to be one writer, typing away at a word processor.

The internet, that whipping boy of modern civilization, is a terrific boon to the writer. Research is only ever a click away, and there are numerous internet based writing organizations and communities that help with the isolation.

I am a member of two of those: one for poetry and one for fiction.

This is the tale of making connections through those communities, as well as ones in real life, and what happens when you have questions that a quick net search won't answer.

As part of "Future Tense," I needed information on foster care. My main character is a teenage foster kid. What I know about the foster system is distorted through the lens of television police procedural and crime scene shows. I knew I needed some better source material to plase my character's actions and reactions in context. It also was critical to have the character's foster parents feel real and three dimensional. So I asked questions, both in my online communities and through real-life connections.

My online writer friends gave me links and information that helped me tremendously. But I needed more.

It just so happens, that I am the human half of a certified dog therapy team through a local therapy dog organization. Tigger and I have often done visits to an afterschool program organized for children who live in homeless shelters and transitional housing. I figured that the organization might know of a social worker who would be willing to let me pick his or her brain about the foster system.

One email, and voila. I have an appointment to have coffee with a lovely woman who was interested in the novel and wanted to help me get the details right.

The other issue that came up in working on the novel was reading tarot cards. I honestly didn't know at the start of this at the beginning of the month, that not only would I have a tarot card reading character, but that she would be critical to the plot!

I know almost nothing about tarot cards, other than what I have seen in other books and tv shows. So off I went to my writing networks, and lo and behold, not one, but two tarot card readers who have both been immensely helpful and generous with their time.

I can only hope to repay their generosity, both in kind and in paying it forward to a writer approaching me with questions.

To my angel helpers--thank you!