RealityBypass

A lot of writers talk about their muses, which tend to take many shapes and forms.  I’ve described mine before, but I’ve found as I pondered on it further that I lied.  My muse is a doppleganger, a shifter of forms, faces and voice depending on what I’m writing.  She, or he, is reflective of the character that I’m writing about at the moment, showing me scenes and murmuring suggestions in my metaphysical ears.

All this weekend my muse was firmly…on strike…dangit.

I did all the usual things to try to shake my muse up and get back to work.  I changed venues, I changed mediums, I even freaking changed stories.  All to no avail.  The creative doors were shut tight and all I could do was force myself through about six painful paragraphs and eat a brownie.

After much internal discussion I think the muse and I have reached an agreement for today.  I hear her whispering at me again. 

I don’t know what her, or my, weekend malfunction was, but I’m glad it’s easing, maybe feeding myself chocolate helped.

What about you, gentle reader?  How do you kick your muse in the pants and get her going again?

~J

Most of us spend our time trying to avoid red lights. What is it about that bright red lamp that makes us get more impatient, more frustrated and start glancing at our watches and wondering if it’s taking too long? Maybe the light is broken? I’ve had this experience fairly often, but some of that comes from the fact that more often than not I’m running ten minutes late. I could give you a variety of excuses for why I’m running late, but usually it’s simply that I found something to play with, and lost track of time. Or… I just found the thing to play with more interesting, so I keep too /close/ track of time. You know the thought… oh, well… I’ve got 10 more minutes, really. It’s only a 30 minute drive. Hmmm, 5 more minutes reading won’t really be that big a deal. Technically it’s a 24 minute drive…  Oh. Well, it’s really not that big a deal if I’m five minutes late. I can read one more chapter!

Hah, you know the commentary. Or maybe you don’t! but as usual, I digress. I’m generally a polite person, except when books are involved. I’ve snuck a book in my purse to movie theatres, parties, dinners out, family holiday events, pool parties, amusement parks… etc. I can recall my Aunt telling me irritatedly, “Why did you bring a book to our lunch date!” And I responded, “Because it’s too good to put down, I figured I had some time while waiting for a table! (and in the bathroom at the restaurant! I snuck away to “powder my nose” and hid on one of those fancy couches women’s restrooms inevitably have. Who would have thought wearing make-up for the first time this last year had such a delightfully nerdy use!)

But I’m sure you’re still wondering about the red-lights comment? Yes… I take my books in the car sometimes when I’m forced to leave my house in the midst of literary ecstasy. This is the one and only time I choose the route with the most headlights, set the book on the dash and try to read when paused at lights. Is it effective? Alas, no. Is it wise? Nope. But I do generally get about a chapter read before I’m reluctantly forced onto the freeway where reading can no longer happen. I’m not /that/ crazy. I only read at red lights! Promise. The second of the Mistborn series is what held my attention this weekend. I finished five minutes ago, and not a minute too soon! I have to go to a party and I doubt they’d appreciate my reading while there. Of course, being fellow libro-philes and nerds, they’d probably understand.

~ Kristen

      I thought I’d put one of my favorite scenes from Whispers up for some commentary. This is a flashback of one of the main characters, from Chapter 18. I do wonder, by the way, what are your feelings on flashbacks as readers? What works and doesn’t work for you? I personally love flashbacks. I like seeing how characters were before they are embroiled in the present struggles. Many times in a novel you find yourself ‘in medias res’ and wondering “How did he get this way?” Do you like flashbacks, or just prefer for the character to tell his story in his own voice? I’ve always been a fan of the ’story within a story’ style of writing.

~ Kristen
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Remington flew through Kielder forest, wings carrying him quickly. The sun had just set and his flesh burned, but he had to risk leaving before full dark. Twilight was uncomfortable, but he could handle it, unlike the older Nightstalkers who would burst into flames from even a hint of sun. His anticipation grew and he swooped around a tree. He was glad he had flown, the mode of travel allowing him to avoid the werewolf packs and druidic gangs that drove invaders out of the forest that covered 600 square miles of Northumberland County. The area had always been sparsely populated, but the werewolf activity had driven the English south. After too many unexplained disappearances, the military had cordoned off much of the forest, which suited everyone.
     As dark fell a howl rose, soon echoed by the cries of an entire pack. They were far to the north and Remington was certain they wouldn’t harass a lone bat. He estimated another half hour to reach the wall which had been swallowed by the forest in a spurt of growth that had boggled scientists. Of course, science wasn’t willing to accept witch and wolf spellwork.
     He lighted on a branch; deciding which was the best route when he scented blood. It wasn’t human or animal, too rich with power and Remington’s Beast stirred. Deciding he could afford a break, Remington followed his nose. As it strengthened, he realized it was werewolf blood. Making certain to keep high amongst the branches, he swooped to a perch on a druidic ruin. Below him, a wolf bled and whimpered. Remington watched as he tried to shift back to human form, but as his body warped he yelped and fell against the ground, exhausted. Remington noticed that the werewolf’s forepaws were a pulverized bloody mass, bone sticking through the fur and bent in odd directions.
     Where was the creature’s pack? The free packs were notoriously clannish, never separating for fear that they’d be bound into vampire servitude. He scented the air, but was unable to smell anything beyond the wolf. He couldn’t hear much, his hearing woefully inadequate for a vampire. The wolf whimpered and lay down, panting raggedly. In an instant, Remington made a decision and swooped to the ground. His Beast was too weak to have ever dominated a full strength werewolf, bound one to service, but here was an opportunity to gain a servant and help a creature in need.
Vertigo struck as his form grew from bat to man, and the werewolf let out a low rumbling growl and tried to back away. It managed only a few feet before it once again collapsed, panting.
     Removing his cloak, Remington approached the injured lycanthrope and laid the fabric across the animal’s body. “I’m not certain what happened to you, lad, but you seem to require assistance.” In the distance, the howls came again and Remington was surprised when the wolf trembled and covered his face. Gathering the creature in his arms, Rem started back to the small B and B he had chosen for accommodations.
     The werewolf whimpered on occasion, but otherwise remained meek and limp. The Ancient scrolls could wait, one more day after a century wouldn’t hurt. Truth be told, Remington had more chance of locating them and disabling the wards with a werewolf’s magical assistance. If the Roman Codex Magica Vampiris even existed… Remington had been researching for 100 years, desperate to find a way to increase his vampiric power. Earl Bedford, Michael Brian Davenport had not raised his son to be a slave, magically weak and destined to serve other.

 

I realized late last night that I forgot to post for yesterday…argh…  So this morning I was trolling for ideas and ran right into one over on Editoral Ass run by the fantastic Moonrat.

The idea here is to look at the top 100 books listed by the National Endowment for the Arts and mark how many you’ve read.  The average adult has read about 6 in this list… 

I had to read more than six of these for AP English, but it’s fun to go through the list.  Here’s the list, and my bolded count.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read most of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I’m at 45 of the hundred with maybe another 10 in the list that I’d like to read and at least a half dozen that I have read that I’d like those hours back!

So how about the rest of you?  Are we average with our 6 of 100 or do we rock the reading world?

~J

     I’ve been looking at various personality traits lately, and realized one that’s very important to me. That would be openmindedness. I’ve always been an adventurous person, and I love to learn new skills, new activities and try new things. I was watching Travel Channel the other day and realized, much to my shock, there’s very little I wouldn’t eat. Provided it’s not moving… and I do draw the line at squiggly insect-like eggs. Now if it was chopped up, and fried? I certainly am game! I will admit I haven’t yet gotten the guts to try crawfish, they look too much like spiders. I get gooseflesh just thinking of touching it! But I digress….

    Being open to new experiences of all sorts is vital as a writer. You should, of course, have a care for your own safety and health absolutely, but you never know just what will give you great inspiration or what you’ll need next time you’re writing. From relationships, to white water rafting, to eating eel sushi, the only experience that’s worthless is the one you haven’t tried. Doing your research as an author is good, but having personal experience with something brings an authenticity to your work beyond research. (Not to mention it’s a lot more fun!). So next time you’re hesitant about trying that jet ski, that strange unpronounceable Indian dish, or learning to sword fight… remember, what’s the worst thing that could happen? (Oh PS: This includes watching movies that aren’t ‘your type’, reading books that aren’t your ’style’, and watching television shows you’d probably never pick up on your own!)

       Some last advice to leave you with. Most people say they’ll “try anything once” when they’re the adventurous sorts. I have a friend who says, “I’ll try anything twice.” I think she’s right. The first time I ate sushi, I HATED it! Now I’m an addict. Sometimes our preconceived notions get in the way of truly enjoying something.

So… remember Jaime Heller’s words… “Try anything twice.”

~ Kristen
    
 

I own a Calvin and Hobbes book titled There’s Treasure Everywhere.  I love this book, not just for the comics the title comic detailing the finding of a bunch of trash that Calvin makes into an anthropological find, but also for what the title implies.  Treasure is where you look for it, all around us. 

Often in writing the question of where ideas come from is asked.  I’ve rarely seen an author with a specific list of idea generators.  Instead most authors carry a mental notepad and take note of everything around them and how it can be used in what they’re currently writing or will write.   I’m fairly sure this tendency frightens friends and family, but it’s that ability to draw from the every day which makes the best novels feel so real.  Characters breathe because they remind us of ourselves, even if they’re from the future, or the past, or another planet.  Even when they are monsters, we search for the human and recognize echoes of the familiar.

People watching is a fine art, and a fun past time.  Watch, note, remember, write…inspiration everywhere.

~J

     Today I feel whimsical. So I thought we could have some fun! I’m going to put a random story start in the blog today, and I challenge anyone reading to add the next leg of the story in comments. Write as much or as little as you like. I got the idea from a website I stumbled upon called One Million Monkeys Typing. No rules on how many times you respond, just have fun.

    So without further adieu, inspired by Jean ValJean and Les Miserables playing on my stereo… (The song Look Down, by the chain gang if you were wondering.)

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The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.  It’s a story about true love, adventure, action, kissing, swordfighting…and some of the best quotes I know.  Today one quote sticks in my head.  It’s the scene when Inigo is waiting for Wesley to climb the cliffs of insanity and running out of patience.  The exchange goes something like this:

Inigo Montoya: But, I promise I will not kill you until you reach the top.
Man in Black: That’s VERY comforting, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait.
Inigo Montoya: I hate waiting 

I think many times in an author’s career you feel like Inigo, heavens I often feel like Wesley trying to scale insane cliffs but that’s besides the point.  Inigo has trained and studied and made himself into a swords man, and now he’s waiting to put his skill to work.  Authors spend years reading, writing, studying and putting their hard work into the hands of others and then waiting.  Not to say there isnt’ plenty to be done during the waiting, but there is a certain psychological pressure to being told to wait when you’re hoping for news, of the good or bad variety.

Sometimes I feel like Ed Gruberman from the Boot to the Head skit who is told he must learn patience.  Ed’s response, “Yeah, yeah, patience.  How long will that take?”

So today I have materials sent off into the ether and I’m waiting.  Hopefully I can learn patience and accomplish a lot during the wait time.  Patience…  how long will that take…?

Well it’s going to happen for all of us. We’re going to get frustrated with the writing process, fellow writers, the agent and publisher search and everything else. Reading other writer’s blogs is a good thing, but at the same time it’s pretty easy to get very down on your work. You start reading how few new authors are published, how your particular genre is ‘out’ these days, and that form letter in the mail becomes a sibilant voice whispering how you’re never going to be any good. And then there’s all the different opinions on simultaneous submissions, agent vs publisher, and the thousands of websites to troll through with 80% not accepting ‘unsolicited work’. Even agents say ‘no unsolicited work’, which leaves me wondering, “So… you have to have an agent to get an agent? What the heck!”

So how do we deal with frustration?

1) Make a check list! Put a list of things you need to get accomplished.
2) One thing at a time: Pick an agent and send it off, without agonizing over the choice between them.
3) Spend a set ammount of time each day on the writing tasks, and don’t go over. Give yourself an hour for researching publishers, an hour for researching agents and then a couple hours for writing and then… GO DO SOMETHING ELSE. (Times optional)
4) Call someone you trust that’s willing to listen to you and give you honest opinions on your feelings.

As much as I’d like to have full time writing be my only job, it’s not that way just yet.  This has a lot of pros and cons, since the office grind and my charming co-workers drive me a little crazy, but also provide a lot of writing fodder and motivation to keep at it, which is a side comment and really doesn’t have much to do with the subject of this post.  Hah.

The subject has more to do with the lanyard I wear for this job.  I work in IT and all of our rooms are locked down so that only folks with the right key card can get it.  The key card connects to a lanyard worn around the neck, so it’s pretty literally the electric collar and leash of the office.  Most of us, myself included, have been wearing the lanyard and card combination for so long we don’t notice it.  It’s such a part of my normal dress that I’ll wander around a store or out to eat without bothering to take it off.  This often leads to hilarity as people recognize a tag, any tag, as the sign of someone that works at an establishment.  Even though the lanyard states the company name on it, I’ll still get people stopping me in a department store to ask if I know where a certain size of shoe is or asking for a list of the specials of the day.  Just the fact I’m wearing a tag resonates with the idea that I must work there or somehow have the answers that someone wants.  I admit playing along sometimes and answering the questions if I happen to know.  It seems mean to send them away even if it reinforces the chance that it will happen again.

So all of this has been mulling in my brain as I’ve been working on character sketches over the weekend.  What things do we automatically associate with a job or a knowledge source and how is that different when dealing with various genres?  I have some of my answers…but I’m going to leave the question open because it bears thinking about.  Maybe my vampire hunters need badges…ones with bright yellow smiley faces that say “Have a Nice Day…”  Yeah…they’d go for that…  Not.

~J