writing process

Theoretical Schoolbusses

annabowling 1 Comment

“Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.”
― Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

Sometimes, I feel like there’s a bus. A schoolbus, more specifically, one of those long yellow ones that roll from September to June, look bright against the greys of a rainy day and fit in with the explosion of red, yellow, orange and brown on bright autumn afternoons. The bus is one of those. In pretty good condition, I’ll allow, with the seats inside clean black leatherette or pebbly vynil or whatever else they might be made from these days. It’s been a while since I’ve been on an actual schoolbus. This is a theoretical schoolbus, you see, because I am going to tell you a story.

Kind of. this is one of those loopy, off-leash days, where I am going to get some kind of structure from the loopiness, and blogging and discipline and yeah yeah yeah, working on book, put the pizza outside the door and slowly back away, please and thank you. Still with me? Okay, good. So, there’s a theoretical schoolbus. It came by my dad’s house lo those many years ago, when frustrtated extroverted writer me was stuck out in the no man’s land between suburbs and rural area (seriously, the neighbor behind that house was a dairy farm, yet the town also had a private school, and I’m drifting. This is what comes from too much caffiene and not enough structure. Focus, Anna.) and it picked me up on the day when I decided that was it; I was going to write that book.

I had no idea what I was doing; I wasn’t in RWA yet, didn’t know any other writers in person, apart from a dear family friend, who was very kind with my rambles and questions. I had one writer friend with whom I bonded through snail mail, and my heart hammered against my ribs as though it was trying to bust out. Looking back, I think it probably was. So, I set up three TV trays around the living room chair that reminds me still of the captain’s chair in Star Trek: The Next Generation (chair long gone, but I remember it clearly) put a vynil record (cast recording of Camelot) on the record player, programmed (this was a fancy-for-its-time player) and dove in, armed with a fierce love of historical romance and the need to do this thing. As I said, I had no idea what I was doing. That was probably a good thing, because that let me scamper at will, off-leash, higgledy-piggledy, wherever the story took me that day.

Do I remember which of two possible books I was working on that day? Nope. They kind of blend, and I can’t say I’m not mixing some memories here, but that’s an occupational hazard for us ficiton writers, and not always a bad thing. Anyway, let’s say I wrote one book (that now lives safely in a storage unit, where it can’t hurt anybody) and after I knew that one had to be put aside, wrote …hmm…a pretty good deal of another. How many of us remember every stop our school bus made on the trip to school and back, lo these many years later? Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I rode that bus. I learned. I made mistakes, fell down, got up, dressed bruises, kept going. Knew when to walk away from a book that wasn’t going to work, figured out what I can do and what I can’t. You know, the usual. Fast forward a few years. Sold a book. Sold another. RWA. Critique partners. Groups. More writing.

Then the bus dropped me back off. Huh wuh? :blinks: :looks around in utter confusion: What the heck was I doing back in front of the metaphorical house in the middle of a metaphorical school day? Detour to full time caregiving, and then, as it usually does, another bus, bright yellow against the grey, came chugging down the road once more. Flashed lights. Stopped in front of my house, now several years and a different state away from the first one. Opened the doors. I put one foot on one step, hoisted the backpack I’d been scared to look into onto my shoulder and climbed aboard.

My magpie self is still devouring inspiration, its appetite that of a starving creature. Cover versions of songs I know, done by singers who take a completely different take on an old favorite, realistic YA novels that deal with mental illness and suicide (n.b. – I have so far started two of my published works with characters about to take their own lives; I did not plan that, nor are the two stories in any way related. Points to anybody who knows which two.) endless searching for desktop wallpapers with the right visual feel, going on movie binges where the connections between movies make no sense to anybody but me, analyzing favorite fannish OTPs (One True Pairings) to see if I can spot patterns, making lonnng lists of reading jags to go on once I’ve finished this current reading jag. That’s for a start. It does feel like I’m taking myself to school, and, like a dog following a scent trail, I don’t know exactly where this is going to end up, but I do know that it’s taking me where I want to go.

Going Off-leash

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Mostly, you probably need to go deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper. You should know everything there is to know about your characters and your settings.
–Barbara Samuel

The new tablet came home on Friday. I’d love to say that I’ve been hauling her (yes, my electronics are gendered) everywhere and been writing tons more, but there are a couple of things I have noticed before that can happen:

  1. Those keys are tiny.
  2. My fingers are gigantic
  3. I think part of the port where the cable plugs in to connect the tablet to the keyboard came out with the plug itself and I’m not sure how to get it back in there.
  4. The onscreen keyboard isn’t that bad, actually, and I am a technological wimp.

But I have been taking baby steps. First public wifi outing after church on Sunday, and things went smoother than I had expected. Still haven’t found the best place in my favorite coffee house to sit with the really short power cord, but then again, the battery is all new and powery and shouldn’t give me any problems in that regard. So far, I’ve mostly watched YouTube, checked my email and swiped my gigantic fingers around (and oddly enough, I have pretty petite hands when I’m not holding the tablet, so I am thinking this is situational) the screen, usually with some variation of “wait, what, were are we going? This thing is fast.” and/or “Where do I tap?” No doubt that I’ll figure it out through trial and error and possible desperate appeal to any tech-savvy collegians hanging out in the same coffee house, but there is a learning curve.

Learning curve as well with Her Last First Kiss. For a long time, writing had felt like trying to move a boulder up a hill by beating my head against said boulder. Now, I’m letting the characters lead, and the places they take me…where they want to go, they don’t have maps, or at least no maps I’ve ever read. It’s both exciting and scary. Imperial Russia? Colonial Canada? Madhouses? Hero who is basically the eighteenth century equivalent of a former child star unable to reconcile himself to life as an adult (and let us not forget self image issues, because that’s a biggie) and a heroine trying to treat intensely personal things like business matters because that’s easier than facing the Big Scary Feelings? I’m not sure I signed up for that.

It’s fitting that this book is being written at the same time I have this tiny pink piece of technology in my posession. They both scare me a little. Both big responsibilities but also tickets to an awful lot of fun. It’s the off-leash part of the writer park (which I imagine would be like a dog park, but for writers; the water fountain would likely dispense caffienated beverages, and there would probably be more chairs) – no more excuses. Even if I only have the touchscreen keyboard, boom, transcribing anywhere. I can have my story playlists with me without lugging the whole laptop and external keyboard with me everywhere. (Though if I end up having to plug this external keyboard into the tablet…actually, I probably wouldn’t mind that, because normal sized keyboard, so never mind. That one’s good.) Check research online in the park? No problem. Edit at the laundromat? Easy. So what’s stopping me?

One foot in front of the other, bend down, thumb the clasp on the leash and let that puppy run. Let the characters lead. I don’t know a thing? Well, look it up, Sherlock. This isn’t a history textbook. This is a romance novel. It’s a love story. It happens to take place in Georgian England. That’s their Now. That’s their Here. That’s their Normal, so it has to be normal to them, and painted so that it reads that way to the reader, but the love story is front and center, where it belongs.

It’s not a nice story, because I don’t want to write a nice story. I want my heart to break, along with my hero’s and heroine’s, because I know that it’s going to be put back together in the end. I want to take two star-crossed lovers who have given up on love and help them find their Happily Ever After, after all. Chuck off all the lies they’ve believed, for far too long, the ones that have held them back and become who they were always meant to be, as individuals and as a couple.

There are risks to take when trying something new, but once I catch the scent of a place where I can dig in deeper, I want to shove my hands elbow-deep into the soil of character and story. Why are they like that? What secrets are they hiding? How can I bribe these very private people to give up what they most want to keep hidden? Becuase it’s worth it all, I promise, promise, promise. Getting to the heart of the story, the heart of the characters, that’s where the life is, for characters and writer both. For the readers, I hope, as well, but that’s a way aways yet. For now, I’m letting this (figurative) puppy -and myself- off the leash, to run as we will.

Card Full

annabowling 2 Comments

Okay, so I may have taken a lot of pictures in recent times, especially since I committed to blogging about the writing life. Mine in particular, that is. I can’t speak with much authority about anybody else’s, and that includes close writing friends and/or critique partners, because writing is a very individual sort of a thing. This morning, my brain refused to handle English after I participated in #1lineWed on Twitter, but I still had book work to do and a blog post due,so figured I’d make it easier on myself and combine tasks so I could get several things done at once and then treat myself to some well-deserved downtime. The original plan was to have everything done by noon and then the afternoon to rest…yeah, that’s not even close to happening. We’ll work around it.

i1035 FW1.1

The original plan had been to get some much-needed peace by listening to an auidobook and laying down some paint backgrounds in my art books, photograph those and then blog about the benefits of art to the writing process (well, mine.)  This is where I haul out one of my favorite Dutch proverbs: man plans, God laughs. You can imagine where this is going.

I start out by taking pictures of the pages I’d left to dry last session. Four shots in, “card full.” Huh wuh? How did that happen? Well, yes, taking pictures would be the appropriate answer to that question, and, as it turns out, the right one. I seriously didn’t think I’d taken that many, but then again, I hadn’t cleared out the card, either, so set camera aside, lay down some new backgrounds, add some collage, let that batch dry. Take camera to computer and start looking through to see what can go.

Since this camera was inherited from Housemate’s lovely mother, I cannot in good conscience delete the pictures she took, in case they are ever needed at some point in the future. They haven’t been, so far, but one never knows. Pictures of hubby and kitty need to stay until I can transfer them to more permanent storage. I do take a lot of pictures of my workspace. Probably don’t need all of those. Also, food pictures. That only makes me hungry when it’s after breakfast and not yet lunch.

i1035 FW1.1

My art notebooks are theraputic, personal, and a good way to let the creative part of my brain have some time off-leash while not having to deal with language. The paint backgrounds are easy; squirt different colors of acrylic paint at the top of the page, slide old credit card back and forth through them, then all the way down the page. Circles are toilet paper cores dipped in paint and stamped, and the honeycomb-ish effect is same paint on bubble wrap. I’ve been doing pages of combinations of these techniques, with whatever colors strike my fancy at the time. Some, I pick because I don’t like them, but want to see how they work together. If I don’t like a page, I can add more to it until I do, tear it out, or glue it to a facing page, so I never have to see it again. Whatever seems to work at the time.

This may not seem like it has a lot to do with writing, but it does. This is all about intiution and allowing myself to make mistakes. Maybe these colors won’t blend well together. So what? It’s inexpensive paint, inexpensive books, nobody else is going to see it (well, unless I put it on the internet or something like that) and the whole process of it is fun and relaxing. Sometimes,. story issues work themselves out while I’m laying down paint and figuring out what else might go on that page.

i1035 FW1.1

For a long time, I’d look at my pitiful efforts and then the amazing work in Somerset Studio magazines and despair because I wasn’t like that. My backgrounds didn’t look like theirs, I don’t gain inspiration from the same sources as a lot of the contributors, didn’t have the fanciest tools, the word “journal” has always sounded like nails on a blackboard in my head, etc, etc.  In short, a lot like the way I used to compare myself to other writers, sometimes those who had been household names for decades, or writing in entirely different genres than my own. For some reason, getting over that hurdle was a lot easier when it came to mixed media art than it was for wriitng, but the best way I can explain it was that …it did. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I kept my head down, eyes on my own paper, and now, while I can appreciate and draw inspiration from others’ work, it doesn’t make me feel less than anymore.

Something I’m still learning, day by day when it comes to writing, but one thing does stand out. When my brain says  “card full,” that’s time to take a step back, take in, play a while, and get rid of the things I don’t need taking up creative space. Room made for me and for story. It’s win-win.

Telling the Story

annabowling 3 Comments

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
– Terry Pratchett

Well, that’s one week of Camp NaNo in my rearview mirror, and I seem to be doing all right so far. This is a bit different from past NaNo endeavors, in that I’m not focusing on writing. Also, that I’m ahead of my goal. How’d that happen? This time, I’m telling myself the story. I’d discovered, last week, while talking with a critique partner, that I’d never bothered to write down the outline for Her Last First Kiss. Huh wuh? Nothing? Not a thing? Cue frantic flipping through notebooks both dedicated (those are new, so it didn’t take long) and multipurpose ones. Check any computer files that might possibly have been misfiled under a different name. Do a computer search for hero’s and heroine’s  names. Nope, never did.

I’d classify myself as more of a puzzler than plotter or pantser, but I’m not labeling at this point. What I am doing is telling the story. The fact that I’ve been able to hold so much of it in my head, so clearly, for so long, is a good thing, but the stories we keep in our heads and nowhere else don’t get a lot of circulation. The scariest thing in the world would be to get to the end of my life and think “I could have been a successful writer.”  Scratch the could be and replace with “am.”  Successful, right now, means showing up and getting this story down. That’s all I have to do right now. Tell the story. There’s time enough after I get to the end of this draft to make things all pretty and get fancy with finishing touches. For now, the emphasis isn’t on how many words there are in the file but on getting the story told. How did we get from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After? With romance, we know the Happily Ever After Part is a gaurantee, like we know in a mystery that the detective will find out who committed the crime, but along the way? We can do anything. I think that’s pretty exciting.

In telling myself the story, I am discovering it. Though I do like to have an outline when I write the book, in the telling the story portion, surprises come up when they will, without me trying to shoehorn them in because that’s where they should fall according to beat sheet or pinch point or any other paradigm. Not saying those things aren’t useful; they are, and I love finding out how other writers work. Some of that stuff finds its way into my own process, and some remains an interesting tidbit that works better for others. Floating bits of unrelated things (this is one of the places where that puzzler thing comes in) bump into each other and bond, and, without my having put much thought into it, they make sense.

I really had no idea why my hero impulsively bought my heroine a cheaply made china dog, but then when she tells me (only writers understand fictional characters telling us what really happened) that she knew her father was leaving the family when he took his favorite hunting dog, there was that “oh” moment. So that’s what those things were all about. Okay, that gives me some structure. I know that my hero (I really should be using their  names here, but want to keep that private for a while longer) and heroine had a conversation in which she mentioned dogs, though she doesn’t have any, and that it made an impression on him, which is why he picked that china dog (very clear in my head, and it’s actually kind of ugly) because he knew it would make her happy.

This process rather fits this book, because neither my hero nor heroine have that firm a grasp on what they’re doing. The whole falling in love thing isn’t for them, both believing they’re locked out of that game. They made plans. Love wasn’t in them. Funny, but it tends to find its way in ,anyway. Which is a lot like the process of discovering a story.

Also, we have ducks:

i1035 FW1.1

So I’m Camping

annabowling 4 Comments

Put something on the page. The story will come.
–Mairi Norris

Yesterday, I remembered I’d signed up for Camp NaNo. The day before, I’d remembered I’d signed up for RWA’s The End, and had been meeting my goal there for the last two months, so this one couldn’t be any different. This means that I am doing two writing challenges at once. I’m using the same project, Her Last First Kiss, and this is very much a rough draft I’m using for both.

Initially, I wasn’t going to do either. Word count and I are not friends. Not that it doesn’t matter how long a work is, but if I focus on that aspect during a rough draft, I am not going to get anywhere. I know myself well enough by this point that how I work doesn’t allow for that. Let me tell the story first, and then we’ll work the rest out later. So, how, or more importantly, why did I find myself participating in two -no, I tell a lie (and thank you, research on the vernacular of Northern Ireland for that one,) it’s actually three, as CRRWA is tracking member word count for this year, though I haven’t reported in there yet- at the same time?

Part of it is the way real life has swept through recently, and carefully made plans get shoved to the side when there is caregiving that needs to be done right this minute. As a person whose only reason not to have started a notebook notebook (that is, a notebook devoted to keeping track of my other notebooks) being that I have not yet found the perfect notebook to used for such a purpose, I like to have things well planned out, both in life and in writing. Good plan, but it doesn’t always work that way, in either area.

Which is basically how I found myself, yesterday, moving my laptop around the coffee house table, trying to evade the sunlight streaming in (because I have not yet comprehended that my favorite seat in that section will result in me being unable to see the screen due to aforementioned sunlight, which counters the whole going there to write thing, but I am both stubborn and determined) onto my screen and figuring out where I record my progress on two out of the three. I was going to do this, and that was that. I love this book and these characters and their story more than I’ve loved any project I’ve worked on in a long time. Years, really, so this is happening, and on my terms.

I spent some time staring at the blank Scrivener screen, stymied by where a new chapter goes, and how many scenes should be in a chapter, anyway? To which my writer brain screamed a loud, insistent, STOP. No math now. None of it. Close Scrivener. Open Word. Blink at blank Word screen. Close Word. Stick in earbuds, open hero notebook and take out pen. Write bullet points. What happens next? Wite that. How did hero react to that? Write what happens next after that, all the way to the end of the scene. When that’s done, open Word again and transcribe. Kind of comfortable, that. Punch word count button and enter number in appropriate blanks, then go play Sims. That, I can do.

That would be the blue one...

That would be the blue one…

Getting distracted from what works is all too easy for some writers to do. There are a lot of shoulds floating around out there. This person’s career is taking off. That one’s tanked. That other one had a great career, it tanked, and then they came back with another name or subgenre and all of that in the time I’ve been stomping around in the woods with a bucket on my head and both feet stuck in rotten logs. But those are their journeys, and this one is mine. I’m the one who gets to say how I do it, because I’m the one who knows this story the best, and I’m the one who’s in the best place to see what actually gets the story told. If there happen to be bullet points in pretty notebooks along the way, I’m fine with that. I’d rather have fun getting the story told than bash my head bloody against a brick wall to reach a particular number.

It’s not about the numbers for me, or even about the words themselves. It’s about this hero and this heroine, two broken people who find wholeness is within their reach after all, both individually and together. I can’t think of anything more delightful to do with my time. It’s on.

Typing With Wet Claws: Crunching the Numbers Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Exhausting week this time, with Uncle sick, but he is feeling much better now. It is still cold outside, even though there are some birds outside the living room window. If I could jump (I do not, because I have special paws) I would be on the window seat all the time, because birds are very, very interesting.  The art across from Anty’s favorite seat at the coffee house has changed. It is now this:

i1035 FW1.1

This week, Anty has been writing a lot. There are the blog posts, here and elsewhere, and she is hard at work on a new book. There is a lot that goes into writing a new book, besides only telling the story. Since Anty writes historical romance, she has to make sure that she has the historical details right, but not in a boring or heavy handed way. The love story is the center and the history has to come second to that, but still provide versimillitude. That is a big human word that means it has to feel right. Anty  has to get enough of the historical flavor to make sure the story fits its time and the people don’t think, talk or behave like modern humans, but still in a way that modern humans can understand and relate to them. Anty usually does have kitties in her books, and I am her consultant. I make sure the kitties are still kitties, because we do not change that much, no matter the time period.

Humans, though, are another story. I did not mean to put that pun in there, but i will let it stay. The humans who are in Anty’s stories…how should I put this?  They have problems. Personally, I think that if they  had more kitties, they would have fewer problems, but Anty says humans without problems are not that interesting. I guess she knows best, because she has books out and I do not, but I still think there should be more kitties. I hear there may be dogs in this book. I am not sure how I feel about that.

Yesterday, Anty spent a chunk of time figuring out how old the important humans in her story were. Sometims, Anty gets anxious about certain details. If she gets it wrong, does that mean the book is doomed? Is it too much detail or maybe to little? Is this marketable? Maybe she should write something more on trend (I have to remind her that is a very silly human concern, since trends in books are really about two years old when they hit the shelves, and that is slightly less than one third of my age. I say she should write the story and she says I am right and then she goes back to making clicky sounds on the keyboard and I can take another nap, because i find that sound soothing.)

Where was I? Oh, right, human ages. That involves numbers, and Anty does not like dealing with numbers. She would rather tell stories, but because her stories are historical, that means she is going to have to deal with numbers at some point. Anty likes to have clear boundaries when she writes. That means she needs to know how old her people are, what year it is, and things like that. Vague definitions make her fidgety, and I pick up on that, so really, if she wants a happy kitty, she needs to deal with this. Yesterday, she was on the glowy box, and her friend , Vicki, helped her figure out the ages.

Anty was having problems figuring out who was how old. Vicki is good at noticing when Anty goes into a loop (that means worrying about the same thing over and over again so that no writing gets done.) She suggested Anty look up the average age for first marriage of male heirs of peers during the era in which her story takes place. (Anty had already figured out the year the story has to take place by looking at historical events that impacted her people, so she knew when to look for this.) The answer was late twenties to about thirty. The hero in this book is a second son, so these figures did not apply to him, but it did apply to a secondary character, and Anty knows that the hero is two years older than that character, who is two or three years older than the heroine, so there was a lot of math involved, and talking about that is tiring me out, so I can only imagine what it was like for her.

Anty and Vicki agreed that it all depended on how old Anty wanted the heroine to be (Anty would say it’s not how old she wanted the heroine to be, but how old she is, because that’s the way people show up in her head, and you can’t go around telling people how old they have to be, because that’s not the way that it works. Plus, I think that would be rude.) and they could figure out everybody else’s ages from there. First round of numbers Vicki came up with, Anty shot down because everybody felt too old. So, Vicki asked Anty (Vicki has known Anty and the way Anty writes for a long time, so she is smart about things like this) how old the hero feels. Anty said twenty-seven, which is what Vicki also thought, so that meant the other human male was twenty-five and the heroine twenty-two or twenty-three. This is, some might be surprised to find out, not out of the ordinary for a woman to be that age at that time and not yet married. These are things humans find out when they do research.

Anty is giving me that look again, and I want a snack, so I will wind this up for now. If you did not get to read Anty’s post last week at Buried Under Romance, about how to pay tribute to a favorite author who has gone to Rainbow Bridge, it is here. If you are new to the blog and have not read her posts on remembering BertriceHuman, they are here, here, and here.

That is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: The Book, Not the Kitty Edition.

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Hello, all. Skye here for another Feline Friday. I know my picture this week is fuzzy, but so am I. This has been a sad week, because Anty had somebody she loved go to Rainbow Bridge. That would be a human, not a kitty, the human who wrote the book for which I am named. My Anty first read that book a long, long time before I was born, but she and my Mama, who also likes that book very much, both agreed that its title fit as a name for the new family addition. The Skye O’Malley in the book was a brave, smart, beautiful female who had many adventures and triumphed over much adversity, to find true love at last. I like to think that fits, but there are some differences, too.

the book, not the kitty

the book, not the kitty

HumanSkye -I will call her that to avoid confusion, and I will still be me- lived a long, long time ago, in a place called Ireland and a lot of other places, like England and Algiers. I do not know where any of those places are. I am seven and was born in Massachusetts. I live in New York now. HumanSkye was both friends and not friends with a very powerful human named Elizabeth Tudor, who Anty tells me actually lived in the really real world. I know there is a difference between really real world people and those who live in writers’ heads like Anty’s characters do. HumanSkye was born in Bertrice Human’s head, but she was inspired by a really real world person named Grace O’Malley.

Writers, I have found, do that quite a lot. They will take something from the really real world and then make it into something else. Sometimes this is a person, like with HumanSkye, and sometimes, it is a place or part of a song or a picture. The writer takes many different things and mixes them together until they become one new thing. This is how books get made. My Anty is working on a book right now, and that  means that she is gathering lots of inspiration.

One thing she likes to do is make soundtracks for her stories. That means that she finds a lot of songs she likes, that sound like her characters or what happens to them, and she puts them in order and listens while she writes. Some writers do not like to listen to any music, or any music that has words, but Anty says the words do not bother her, and the lyrics mean something, so they are fine. I like when she plays very soft music. That makes me want to curl into a ball at her feet and take a nap. it is very relaxing when she does that.

Another thing she does is to make Pinterest boards with pictures of people and things that look like her story. I would share those with you, but she says that if she makes the board public, then she does not want to work on the story anymore, so they must stay private until the stories are done. She can put music with pictures on those boards, too, although I do not know how that works. Sometimes, she will stare at pictures and listen to the same song over and over and then she will write a lot. That is part of the writing process, too.

So is watching TV shows that she really, really likes. One of those is Sleepy Hollow. She says she now has an idea for a new colonial book, but it must wait until her current book is finished. She wrote about the season finale, which may or may not also be the series finale, here. It looks like this:

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

Anty had two other bits on Heroes and Heartbreakers this week. First, she shared her favorite read of February along with other H&H bloggers here. There are a lot of books in that post. I do not know how many of them contain any cats, though. They should put things like that on the website. More cats would read them then, I think, but nobody asked me.  There are also links to posts Anty wrote before about BertriceHuman’s books in the news roundup here. She will put links up later in another post with all posts where she mentions BertriceHuman, so they are easy to find. Maybe her best read for March will be one of BertriceHuman’s books. Or maybe the new Nick Hornby. She likes his books very much, too. She likes a lot  of books, which is probably a good thing for a writer.

One more thing before I sign off. Any has talked to SueAnn Porter and said that Bailey may be coming here for a posting playdate soon. I think that is very exciting, and also a little bit scary. If you know of any questions you would like to ask a writer’s pet, please let me or Anty know, and maybe we will use it.

Okay one more one more thing. Anty was quoted -twice-  on Peter Andrews’s blog, How to Write Fast, here. Anty first met Mr. Andrews a couple of years ago at the NECRWA conference, and they had a very interesting conversation about writing and reading. She took his workshop on how to write fast and still uses some of what she learned there in her writing now.

Anty needs the computer back, so that is all for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling,
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Color With All The Crayons

annabowling 2 Comments

OnBeyondFanfic

I’d rather pour myself into a world I love and understand
than make something up out of nothing.
–Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

This past Saturday, I took a leap. I presented a workshop on using the media we already love to create original fiction. I’ve taught this before, in a previous iteration, From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction, usually as a month-long online workshop, and the one time I presented in person to another chapter. a couple of years back, I’d tried to fit the entire course into an hour. Hint: that’s not really possible. It was fun, that first presentation, because I love, love, love speaking in front of a group, especially about a topic that means a lot to me. So much fun, in fact, that I didn’t hesitate when the opportunity came up to do it again, and as long as I was doing so, why not take it one step up and gear things toward writers who already know how to write original fiction?

Not that writers of fan fiction don’t. Far from it. As I say in that class, if you’ve watched a favorite show or movie and thought “that was great, but it would be better if…” then  yes, you can come up with original ideas. From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction is geared toward writers interested in moving from fan fiction to original work, and I love teaching it. I hope to teach it a lot more. Hearing students talk about loving their stories so much and being so determined to get them down that they would dismantle an entire desktop computer system, pack it into the back of their car and drive over a hundred miles to put the whole thing back together and spend the weekend writing with their collaborator, that’s a shot of adrenaline right there. Some of my previous students had asked if there was a second level to this course, some chance to do something with the tools they gained in our time together.

Until now, there wasn’t. It’s still under construction, but once that seed was planted, like the seed of a story, I couldn’t ignore it, and so, when the opportunity to present to my local chapter came up, I took it. What I found was a learning experience for me. Talking to a group that included Golden Heart winners and a RITA nominee, where several members have impressive backlists and the rest are on their way, has a different feel to it, and that’s exciting. When I gave exercises to do during the presentation, pens moved like lightning. I hated to make all that writing stop, but the results were worth it.

I loved that one member asked if they could combine characters from different sources, and another asked if they could use one canon and one original character. My answers were yes and yes. Another asked if these techniques could be used to reverse engineer an original character who wasn’t quite gelling. Yes, again. If a character isn’t coming together, have a look at characters who are like them and see if anything clicks. After the presentation, we had a lively and fascinating discussion on how the media we love inspires the story worlds we build for ourselves, and the exclamations of surprise when members found other members shared some of the same favorite media were a delight.

Today’s quote comes from the fabulous Rainbow Rowell, of whom I am a fangirl, after reading her novel, Fangirl, (and her upcoming novel, Carry On, is the fan fiction her heroine, Cath, wrote about the characters in the fictional Simon Snow fandom in Fangirl. How’s that for meta?) and jumped out at me from the start. Thing is, we can know our own original story worlds and characters that well. It’s not making something out of nothing, because it’s making something out of everything we’ve ever been, seen, done, heard, tasted, smelled, thought, dreamed, feared, wondered, suspected, etc, etc, etc, all blended in a way that is unique to the individual, and I find that fascinating.

The crayons in today’s picture, a rainbow in themselves, were on one of the tables when I arrived, and yes, I did have to play with them in my all purpose notebook. It’s like blood in the water to a shark or waving a red flag at a bull. I see the crayons, I color with the crayons, and I do notice if they are Crayola or not. Kind of like getting into a fandom. There’s looking at what’s already there, and then there’s taking something from it and making it mine.

Typing With Wet Claws: Overscheduled Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday.

First of all, thank you to those who  come back every week to read my blog. That is very encouraging to a kitty, and to Anty as well.

This has been a busy week for Anty, so if she has not gotten back to anybody, it is not personal. She has been on the glowy box a lot. I wanted to put a picture of Anty’s planning board up here, but she said it was not okay, because her notes were readable and she is not done with the book yet. Sorry.  Instead, I can share a picture of her box of Post-It notes that she uses for planning. The best part about her using Post-its on her planning board is that I get to play with her mistakes.

Anty and I both love to play with these...

Anty and I both love to play with these…

Anty really really likes planning and making lists, so she does not mind that much.  She asked me not to talk about the time she tried to get up from the computer and forgot she had her headphones on and it yanked her back down like a dog at the end of its leash. Whoops. Sorry. Can that be our secret?

What is not a secret is that Anty got to write about two of her favorite TV relationships (ohhh, that’s where the ships come in. I get it now. Humans are clever.)

She got to write about Sleepy Hollow here, and it looks like this:

Then she got to write about The Mindy Project here, and it looks like this:

Dandy

I think both shows need more cats. Or any cats. I would also accept birds, mice and fish. Sleepy Hollow has a horse sometimes, but that is not the same. I do not know any horses, so it kind of freaks me out. Anty would say everything freaks me out, and she is right about that. I still think there should be more cats.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Tomorrow, tomorrow…

Tomorrow, Anty goes to CR-RWA to present her workshop, On Beyond Fanfic. She is excited and nervous, especially since our printer says it is jammed, but both Anty and Mama say it is not jammed and there is not any paper in it. Anty and Mama will see if the big paper store can help them get those papers printed. I call dibs on playing with any mistakes from that. Somebody will have to tear the big papers into smaller papers, though, because I am scared of big papers. I like them bite-sized.

Speaking of bite-sized,  (Anty calls that a transition; see, I am learning) Anty only minutes ago sent in her contribution to the 31 Days & 31 Ways to Jumpstart Your Life program. Do you want to know how making something out of nothing can help to make life better? Anty, Eryka and friends can help with that, and it does not cost anything. Even I like that price (money better spent on cat food, right?) You can read more about this program and find out how you can join here. If you do, let Anty (or me) know, because she would love to see some friendly virtual faces.

only for that one counter, really

only for that one counter, really

Now, for those who asked about this sign, Anty asked the barista, a very nice human named Rachel, and Rachel said the sign only means for that one counter. It is meant to be a waiting area for humans who are ordering their food and drinks to go. If other humans park there with laptops, that takes up that space. There are lots of other comfy spaces to settle. She did not say anything about Anty sitting there with a notebook, so Anty guesses that is still okay. The sign does not say “no notebooks.” Anty would not go to a place that said “no notebooks.”  Trust me, I know  her.

That about covers it for this week. Anty still has her post for Buried Under Romance to write and some pictures to take, so I have to give the computer back. Until next week, I remain, very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Duluth, Part Three

annabowling 2 Comments

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

–Eleanor Roosevelt

Here, on this lovely not-currently-snowing day, we bring the Duluth trilogy to a close. In case you missed them, part one is here, and part two, here. These all came about in the throes of writerly angst, when getting anything, even an incoherent brain dump, on the page felt like an insurmountable task. Obviously, that wasn’t permanent, but boy, did it feel like it at the time.

Duluth, pt 3

Since a writer’s work is, literally, all in their head, (and yes, I know I’ve drifted from the original topic of this post, but I don’t care; I’ll bring it back around) the upside is that there will be far fewer needles and surgical procedures involved in the writer’s recuperation, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exhausting, aggravating and even painful. It’s neccessary, though, because writing isn’t something one can turn off. If you are, you are, and if you aren’t, you aren’t. While it is possible to be a writer who doesn’t write, as in someone who is genetically predisposed/hardwired/whatever term you’d care to use, who does not choose to exercise that ability, they aren’t the easiest people to live with and trust me, they’re not having a good time. It’s like trying not to breathe.

There’s the want. There’s the need. The how, however, that’s a different story, pun intended. Trust me, it’s easier to maintain a full creative well than to refill it. Ever try to fill an empty swimming pool using your kitchen tap? Whether it’s hooking up the garden hose so that one end is in the sink and the other in the deep end, or carrying buckets with or without the help of family members. it’s going to take a while. A long while. By that time, it’ll be too cold to swim, so what’s the point? Nope, better to call one of those trucks from the pool company and have them all dump it in at once. That, for the writer, is reading. A lot. In genre, out of genre. Books. Magazines. Backs of cereal boxes. Posters on the coffee house wall. Junk mail. Actual paper letters (really, send a writer one of these and they will love you even more.) Ebooks. Forum posts. Graphic novels. Library books. Closed captioning on movies and tv shows. Read read read read read read read until it’s not possible to hold any more.

Like with the pool illustration, if the creative well is empty, it may take a LOT of reading, a lot of taking in story in all its forms (movies, tv, plays, dance, computer games with a storyline or character development, etc.) It gushes in and in and in and in and in and in….that’s our transfusion. Next comes the physical therapy. Writing. Actual writing. I’m not going to say words on the page, because that phrase, I am pretty sure, was the piano that dropped on me, personally. Or maybe the pigeon that pooped in my eye when I looked up to see if the piano bench was going to fall, too.

At any rate, this stage of recovery means that there has to be actual writing. Meaning stuff in the writer’s head has to go someplace where it is possible, at least in theory, for somebody else to see it. Whether or not they actually do is not that important at this stage. For those who have a hypercritical gremlin in their head, jumping up and down and screaming “yes, it is!” it is okay to smack that gremlin with a copy of Outlander. If our writer had been in a physical car accident, do we expect them to crawl out of the wreckage and run a marathon? I’m thinking not.

What happens at this stage is spewing out everything that’s in the writer’s head, because even while the well is filling with good stuff, the bad stuff still has to come out. I’d say expressing pus, but that’s gross, but I also am taking advantage of this time to smack my hypercritical gremlins, so yes, it is at times like expressing pus. Bad stuff out so there’s room for the good stuff to come in.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, things will begin to balance. The writer will get back in touch with why they accepted the invitation of all these people who live inside the writer’s head. The type of story, the type of character. They will get their voice back. They will fill notebooks and flash drives and whatever other method of storing data modern technology comes up with in the time between writing this and someone else reading it. Some of it is going to be venting. Okay, a lot of it is going to be venting. it’s going to be rough and confusing and attract hypercritical gremlins like blood in the water attracts sharks. Keep going. Because at some point, the balance will be reached. (Yes, that is passive phrasing, and no, I do not care, because hypercritical gremlins get my boot in their butt at this stage of the game.)

Up and down the steps. Up and down and up and down and up and down and then one day, without thinking about it, without planning to, without advance approval of the physical therapist, the writer takes the stairs instead of the ramp back to their room (or more likely, the vending machine on the third floor because that’s the one that has pub fries and gummi bears) – well looky there, stairs. Bunches of them. Climbed up and climbed down and the world did not end. Time to go back home and get back to business. And find directions to Duluth.