Perseverance

I hate running.  And I love it.

The hardest part of running is that moment when I'm standing in my kitchen after a long day of work, staring at my running shoes and thinking that I deserve a day off and a nice cookie.

Then I put on my sneakers and go.  The first mile is easy.  With my music in my ears, I settle into a nice rhythm.  Around 2 miles, my knees feel a little sore and I start wondering what the hell I'm doing.  Why did I decide to run again?  It's too hot, I'm too thirsty, I could be watching Modern Family and eating Chinese food.  I'd do anything to be able to stop running.  It's stupid and I'm stupid and I hate it.

Then I hit mile 3 and that sense of accomplishment sweeps over me.  I'm almost home.  I can do it. Maybe I've tripped and skinned my knee, maybe I took a wrong turn and had to backtrack a little, maybe chest hurts and my shins are throbbing.  It doesn't matter because I know I can do it.

When I finally get home, sometimes after 3.5 miles, sometimes after 5, and I'm stretching my sore, tired muscles, I realize how glad I am that I finished. At that moment, running and I are in love.  I forget how much I hated it only a couple of miles ago.

Until the next day.

Writing is a lot like running.  Only hard work and perseverance will get you home.

Blog Chain - Money Shot

It seems we've gone from favorite literary couples to what literary couples do in the dark.  This blog chain is Kat's and she wants to know:

How do you feel about love scenes? As a reader, are you put off by the gratuitous? As a writer, do you shy away from spelling out the down-and-dirty? Or do you write until your computer lights a cigarette?


Kat, Kat, Kat.  Sigh.  You've managed to tap into my single greatest writing fear.  So how do I feel about love scenes?  I don't like them.  As a reader, I'm not into them.  I'm not a prude, I simply find them mostly unnecessary.  Unless they show us something vital to the characters, then I think they're gratuitous.  But the truth, and I believe this, is that anything you can reveal during a sex scene, you can reveal somewhere else.

The other reason I'm not for them is because sex is inherently funny.  If you objectively look at the mechanics of it all, sex is a cosmic joke. So from a writing perspective, I think that most sex scenes either turn out laughably flowery, overly mechanical, or vulgar and porny.  If my characters talk about sex, I usually approach it with humor.  Sex is a difficult thing to take seriously.  Especially for guys.  They seriously want it, but can barely buy condoms without breaking into a giggle fit.

In my current book, I have to deal with two characters who do have sex.  They're a couple, in love, but decide to have sex.  It's an important step in their relationship.  However, I feel no need to let readers peek under the covers.  The scene cuts before clothes come off and returns to those characters in the aftermath.

I think it's especially important in YA that love/sex scenes, if they are shown, NOT be gratuitous or titillating.  Teens have sex and no amount of denying it will make it otherwise.  But I feel no need to glorify it.

And that's it for me!  Take a jaunt over to Laura's blog to see how steamy her books get, and then tomorrow find out what Sarah has to say!

Feeling Nostalgic

This weekend I rewatched STAND BY ME.  It was one of my favorite movies as a kid.  My best friend at the time, Chase, and I were maybe 9.  We watched it over and over again.  My favorite scene was always the scene where Wil Wheaton's character tells the story of Lardass and the puke-o-rama.  It was one of the earliest times I can remember thinking I wanted to be a writer.

Recently, I've been watching a lot of my old childhood faves.  Spaceballs, Running Man, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  I've been disappointed with how poorly most have held up.  STII is still the best of all the Star Trek films, but the overacting and bad costuming are groan-worthy now.  I was surprised by how well Stand By Me held up over the years.  In fact, I think if the film had been made today, it would have looked very similar.

The best books are the same way.  They're timeless.  They're not flash-in-the-pan with the coolest slang or loads of pop culture references.  They're the kind of books that kids in twenty years will pick up and read it in awe, unable to believe that it's twenty years old.

That's it, I suppose.  There's a lesson to be learned from Stand By Me.  Maybe it's never make fun of someone because they might puke all over you.  Maybe it's something else.

Something To Say

Writing isn't about messages. People who sit down at their computers or typewriters or notebooks to force feed a message to their readers are doing it wrong.  Books can have messages. They can be about important things.  But the message isn't the IT.  The plot, the characters, the story of it all, that's the IT, the thing about which you could be concerned.

But you should still have something to say.  Don't worry if it's worth saying; it'll be worth it to someone, somewhere.  You should have a point of view that's unique to you.

Hannah Moskowitz is a good example of someone with something to say.  So far I've only read BREAK, but based on what I've read about her forthcoming books INVINCIBLE SUMMER and ZOMBIE TAG, along with BREAK, it's pretty clear to me that Hannah has something to say about the nature of brotherhood.  About the interactions between members of a family.  About how your family can ruin you but how you'll try to support them anyway.  Her characters in BREAK were so frustrating because I could see that their fierce love and loyalty for one another was killing them.  I've heard that in INVINCIBLE SUMMER, the brotherly relationship goes beyond co-dependent, beyond affection to something more.  I can't wait to read it because Hannah has something interesting to say about brothers and family and how fucked up they all can be.

But I guarantee that she didn't sit down to cram that down your throat.  She wrote a good book and her point of view simply bled through.

I have something to say about how regular people relate to a screwed up world.  I don't care about extraordinary people.  They're boring to me.  I think ordinary people, quiet overlooked people are the real heroes.  But I don't set out to make you see that.  When I sit down to write, I want to tell you a story about a kid who's got one day to live, about a group of friends partying in parallel worlds, about a guy playing hide & seek from Death in the hospital where his parents died.

So make sure you have something to say, just don't worry so much about saying it.  Write a great story and the rest will follow.

I'm No Mozart

Go read THIS article.

If it's too long, then the gist of it is that this guy created a computer program that can create music by assimilating other music and rearranging it.  That's a gross oversimplification.  You should really read the article.

It made me think though.  Are all my books just gutters in which the flotsam and jetsam of my daily life collect and organize into a semi-choerent form?  The names I use for characters, the songs they like, they way the dress.  Are they all just bits and pieces of my life?

Better yet, are my books living dreams? If dreams are my subconscious' way of making sense of the world, are my books just dreams that I have while awake?  We call it inspiration but maybe writers just process the world in ways that seem alien to other people.

Or maybe I'm just a computer program running on a server somewhere and this dream of existence is just a glitch in the system.  A hiccup as I sort through data.

Kill Bill and Other Stuff

The time change really messed with my head today.  I'm pretty sure there's a reality in which I'm still in bed sleeping with the covers over my face.  Of course, there's also probably a reality where I'm bathing in noodles, so whatever.

I'm feeling down on the whole Internet thing.  The introvert in me needs a break but the Internet feels inescapable.  A vacation would suffice but that's probably a long way off.  In the meantime, I might just shut off Facebook and Twitter for a while.

Three observations:

1.  I was hanging with the bf last night playing Wii.  One of the things I love about him is that he is infinitely patient, rarely lets anything bother him, and has this "go with the flow" mentality that makes being with him so easy.  And then we played video games and it brought out this competitive streak that was really quite jarring.  Not bad, just different.  And it made me realize that when creating characters, little surprises like that can help make a character more real.  One situation can turn a perfectly wonderful person into a basket case.

2.  I was watching Kill Bill and I got to the scene in the trailer home where Beatrix is fighting Elle.  It's my favorite fight scene of the entire duology because of how limited it is.  They had a wide open desert outside the door that they could have fought in, but Tarantino decided instead to use the limitations of the trailer--the narrow halls and cramped, confined spaces--to elevate the duel.  Instead of a hinderance, he used it to his advantage.  Impose limitations on your story and see how creative it makes you.

3.  The title, KILL BILL.  I have to come up with a title for my next book and watching Kill Bill made me realize just how perfect the title is.  The movie itself is so layered.  There are subplots and stories within stories.  It's such a brilliant bit of writing.  Yet, the title tells you everything you need to know about the movie going into it.  It's about killing Bill.  And at the end of the day, everything that happens ties directly or indirectly to that singular event.  I think the best titles are like that.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is another of my favorite titles.

Blog Chain - A Lot to Learn

Back on the blog chain!  This weeks topic is brought to us by the lovely Sarah, who wants to know:

What has been the most unexpected part of your writing journey up to this point? What has happened that you could never have predicted? Has it been a help or a hindrance?

There have been a lot of surprises on the road to publication, but the most unexpected thing is how much more I have to learn.

The naive Shaun, went into this publication thing with a solid book thinking that once published, he could quit his job, sip coffee, write all day, and people would publish everything he wrote.

Life love smacking me in the face with reality.  The truth is that I have a long way to go, a lot to learn.  Being published isn't the golden ticket that I (and a lot of other people) thought it would be.  Look at it like this:  Those million words you write as you're learning your craft are like college.  Your query letter is your resume.  Getting an agent and getting published is like landing your dream job.  But once you land your dream job, you don't get to put your feet up and relax.  You have to work hard every day.  You have to prove to you bosses that you deserve your job, that you're the best person for it, or they'll can you and give it to someone else.  There's always more to do, more to learn.  

Writing, as in life, is a process, not an endgame.  I think that was the most unexpected thing I've learned.

So head on over to Laura's blog to see what she wrote yesterday, and since I'm the end of the chain, if you haven't read the rest, just keep going backwards from there.

Distractions

Word counts.  Turn them off.  I used to use the live word counter in MS Word.  But I found myself constantly looking at it.  Gauging my worth as a writer by it.  Usually I do an end of the day check to see how many words I've written and I've put myself on a strict schedule.  Sometimes you need to do that, like when you have a deadline looming.

But sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is blinding and you just need to focus on putting one foot in front of the other so that you don't trip and fall.

And by you, I mean me.

Seeing the forest for the trees is great and all but sometimes the trees are pretty too.

I need a nap.

Writing is Hard

Sometimes writing is hard.  Not just the coming up with stories or working through a difficult scene.  I mean that sometimes you aren't in the mood.  Sometimes life intrudes.  Sometimes your alarm goes off and you feel like getting up and sitting in front of the computer is the worst fraking thing you're going to have to do all fraking day. It's not; that would be too optimistic.

Job problems, money problems, significant other problems, friend problems, house problems.  You're going to have them all.  And they're all going to suck the life out of you.

But the writing will always be there.  Waiting.

If you sit around praying for the day when your dog won't be barking outside the door and the lawn people won't be mowing right outside your window and people won't be calling you to fix their computers and you won't be exhausted, then you will be sitting around for a long, long time.

Write through the good times, embrace the bad times, and keep on trucking.

Or give it up and take up knitting.  Of course, if you could do that, you already would have.  Welcome home, word junkie.  Get to work.

Like an Onion

I've been doing a lot of revisions this year.  When I write a first draft, I usually have only a vague idea of what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and what it's going to end up being.  There's always the possibility that I'm going to get to the end of a first draft and realize that I don't even like the story much at all.  That's why first drafts are exciting.  They're trips into the unknown.  Anything can happen.  The possibilities are endless.

Second drafts are where I begin to think about structure.  I wonder if I'm using the right POV, if I've got too many characters or too few, if I'm suffering from that dreaded middle drag (I usually am).  This last weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about subplots.

Does a story need a subplot?  No.  Not necessarily.  I'm sure there are books out there with no subplots.  But a good subplot or two will enrich your world. Especially if it ties well into the main plot arc. ***Deathday Spoiler Alert***

One of my favorite subplots in Deathday was Shane's coming out.  Some people saw it coming from a mile away, others were clueless until he spilled it. In another story, this subplot could have been a throwaway.  Characters coming out just aren't the shocker they used to be.  But I didn't do it for the shock value.  I did it to tie back into the concept of living before dying.  Of seizing the day rather than seizing the deathday.  Shane comes to realize throughout the day that until he tells Ollie his secret, he's not really living. That one day he might end up a kid with a letter and only one day to fulfill all his dreams.  So Shane tells Ollie and (I like to imagine) goes off to have this really awesome life.  And for Ollie, it shows him just how much he's touched the people in his life and how much his last day has meant to everyone, and not just him.  Shane's personal journey impacts Ollie's physical and emotional journey.

Layers.  Like an onion.

To be honest, it's not a particularly subtle subplot. A good subplot is like a soup.  You add your ingredients and let it simmer for days.  You let the flavors develop and the deepen and intermingle.  JELLICOE ROAD is maybe one of the best examples of subplot I've ever read.  By the time you get to the end and see how all the strands come together, your mind is already blown.  

But my point is that subplots aren't just random plots thrown in.  They need to be developed along side the main plot, they need to connect to the main plot, and they need to be real and flow organically from the story.

It's Alive!

I love to learn.  I was a good student in college but I attended in fits and starts because while I love learning, I hated being taught.  But that's a topic for another blog.  If I had my way, I'd audit college classes for the rest of my life and learn anything and everything I could.  I'd be that old dude in the back of the class always interrupting the lecture to ask questions.

I've been reading Donald Maass' WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL because I've heard from a lot of friends that it is a good book.  I credit Stephen King's ON WRITING for giving the me the necessary push that ended up landing me my first book deal, so I thought Maass' book might help me continue to grow.  As a writer, we should constantly seek growth.

Most of the stuff in there feels like stuff I already know.  But that doesn't mean it's not useful.  For example, I'm working on a new draft of a book that I really love.  It's about a young man who lives in a hospital. I don't want to give anything away but in writing this draft, I've taken a lot of care with refining the characters from my first draft and making the plot more streamlined.  All the things that I should be doing in a second draft.  I've had a lot of time to think about it as it's been over six months since I wrote the first draft, and I really felt like I was nailing every chapter, ever scene.

Except...I started reading Maass' book and I had a very sudden realization between the chapters on setting and character that I'd been ignoring the biggest character of all.  The hospital.  The concept of the story is simple: Andrew Brawley lives in a hospital, hiding from Death, who was late to get him the first time around. He comes out of hiding to befriend a boy who was set on fire by bullies and will risk anything to keep Death from getting the new boy too.  I spent countless hours crafting the cast of characters that inhabited the hospital but forgot that the hospital itself was the most important character of all.  It lives, it breathes, it has moods.

And this wasn't a new revelation for me, merely something I'd forgotten, that I'd overlooked in my desire to make everything else right.  Even if I get nothing else from Maass' book (which I'm sure won't be the case), it opened my eyes to something I'd forgotten.  Places are characters too.  Don't forget about them.

And don't stop learning.