Category: Essay

Genre Reading and Writing. Arithmetic Free.

Essay / Writing
Book Love

When it came time to choose a genre to write in I chose fantasy. As a longtime reader of Fantasy, Scifi, and everything in between, it seemed a natural fit. I was a latecomer to women’s literature and romance. It didn’t hold me the way fantasy did, although I like some romance in my fantasy, and not just Mage/queen/plucky necromancer meets heroic other, falls in love, and produce intrepid little sorcerers. 

I love the big, sprawling messiness of a good fantasy story. The world so different from ours, yet populated by the same type of people with the same problems. How to escape evil, which magical academy to attend, how to pacify rampaging dragons, and oh yes, love among the smoking ruins of a just razed village. 

Not a big fan of dystopian fiction, I must admit. It’s depressing to think of all the ways civilization could go wrong. The survivors – because it’s always lucky by birth survivors – trudging through a ravaged landscape, rummaging through hollowed-out Wal-marts for food and bullets. Fighting off others of their kind to rise to the top of their pathetic food chain. No groups ever join together to try to make their lot in life better, to try and jump-start an improved civilization unlike the one that got them into this mess in the first place. Are we that narrow-minded a species?

Don’t answer that.

I do have a space opera novel I worked on and it’s sitting in limbo. It falls prey to the things I hate about dystopian novels, hence my reluctance to go on with it. Time to strip it down for parts. Apparently, though, doom, doom, doom makes for good reading. I do like exploring other worlds and cultures in sci-fi also. Big problem there is the vastness of space and zooming around in it. I get hung up on the technical (im)possibilities because I know just enough science to be skeptical, but not enough to make everything plausible. Which is probably why I chose space opera rather than hard science sci-fi. Much easier to hand-wave the science like a Jedi excusing droids than get lost in the physics. Even though I do love me some physics. 

Romance novels both fascinate and repel me. There’s something to be said for the formulaic model and a HEA (Happily Ever After) at the end. Maybe it’s the optimist in me, wanting the world to turn out for the better. The cynic whispers in the back of my mind, you think real life is like this? Ha! Have I got news for you. Romance dies under the weight of children, laundry, and whose turn it is to mow the backyard. 

Which leaves women’s fiction, formerly called ‘chick lit’. About women, mostly written by women. A lot of it is depressing as hell, chronicling modern-day problems in a long, and death marchy manner. Dead/missing children, cancer, parents with dementia. Why do I subject myself to that? Because it’s real. I guess I can’t live on fantasy alone, and sometimes need to come down from my dragon-patrolled castle and deal with life before I scurry back to my fairy fortified citadel.

All of these genres figure into my fantasy writing, however. I like building worlds, I like creating creatures, but I also like my characters to want love along with their magical abilities. Perhaps love helps or hinders their abilities. Or captures the unicorn. Or saves a kingdom. Or destroys it utterly. The people in fantasyland have the same problems you and I have; we just can’t use magic or a sharp sword to solve them. Although it would be oh so satisfying to turn your boss into a spotted hog-sloth. 

My heroines and heroes are your everyday folk who just happen to be caught up in something bigger than they are. Reluctantly shoved into saving the world, they rise to the occasion or give it their best shot while dodging death. This is what I want out of the real world. Since we, as a society, currently can’t have nice things, I want to write stories about a world where it can happen. And once my letter from Hogwarts gets here, watch out. I’m going to change the world.

Philosophy Class Refresher Course

Essay
Image by Pixabay

What is it in human makeup that makes us go looking for the answer we want? When did confirmation bias become the norm, rather than something to guard against? Despite my best intentions, I find myself reading Amazon reviews and if I’m iffy on a purchase I read the 3-star reviews and talk myself into not buying the book or dog toy or widget. Is it a symptom of not wanting to spend the money? Or something more insidious?

I really don’t want to turn in my philosophy degree over this so my promise to myself is that I will try to be less judgmental. I will try not to pre-interpret or favor the information that I want to see. I don’t expect this to be easy. As we grow older bias seems to calcify. You know the answer to calcification, clean liberally with vinegar. I can be both liberal, and vinegary. Accepting and rejecting. I just need to temper things with a spoonful of sugary substance. Like tolerance for other viewpoints.

Back in the Stone Age when I was a philosophy major, I thrived on different ideas and contrasting viewpoints. I devoured books on subjects I knew nothing about. My philosophy professor would whap me on the head with a rolled up thesis if he knew I wasn’t giving things a fair chance to state their case.

I’ve given up on reading the news for the most part. It is so polarized; it’s easy to fall into old patterns of reading only journalists whose viewpoints I agree with. I think it has to do with our society’s sports complex. We must be winners or associate with winners at all times, or there is doubt about our alpha status. (Man/Womanhood?) My side always has winning arguments. Or so it seems.

What do you do when faced with confirmation bias? I’m open to alternatives or ideas. My natural tendency is to burrow into my introvert cave and not come out to play but the way things are going these days, it seems cowardly not to have an opinion, express it, and back it up with facts. Even in the face of hostility. Can I do it?

Can you?

Digging Weeds from the Story Garden

Essay / Writing
Window in wall

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where my story is?

There I was, skipping merrily down the path, sun shining, the birds maniacally tweeting, and my brand new sneakers soft and bouncy. The path ended abruptly. I smacked face first into a brick wall, bending my nose 20 degrees out of joint. Where did this brick wall come from, you ask? Why, I put it there myself. 2/3rds of the way through the Newest Fantasy Novel, my little happy boat ‘o progress sank like a concrete mafia block with my characters tied to the sides.

I was stuck.

And not even at a hard part. I was stuck on something that I had written in the rough draft that sounded fine at the time, but now needed tweaking. My tweaker wasn’t working. I made four attempts at cleaning/scrubbing/spackling over the problem area. Nothing took. Me being me, I went back to the beginning of the novel and read it all again, 35 chapters. Along the way I went Oh. Hmm. I didn’t realize I did that. Wow, so that’s where that section derails.

I found my lost thread hidden several chapters back from the problem. I gave it a yank and it flopped out of the novel to hit me in the face like a wet fish. Here, dummy, this is where you need to be to get unstuck up the creek. I had been trying to write past the end point of the issue. Right there, in my problem paragraph, was the end of the chapter. I was just too caught up in making it conflict-y, lean and spare that I failed to take the idea to its logical conclusion. So I went back to the inciting thread, expanded that part a bit more, so that what comes later makes more sense. I expanded problem paragraph past its anorexic roots, and it worked. The paragraph was happy, I was happy. All is right in my imaginary world. Onward!

Moral of my story, it works for novels, and for poems. Lately I’ve been editing my poems with a chainsaw, when maybe some pruning shears would have been better. Seed, water, let it grow, then prune. Or if necessary, add fertilizer and let it expand. Within reason, because man, if you add too much, or the wrong kind, that stuff can stink. Don’t let your writing stink. Be a good gardener. Oh, and planting a flower or two along the way for later enjoyment never hurts.

How is YOUR spring writing going?

On Berating My Obstinacy and Resolving to Try Something Different

Essay / Writing
Mule

I reread my last blog post and thought, man, what mule-headed stubbornness. Is that really me? Turns out it is. So my goal the past few weeks was to do some research into what I disdain in writing advice, and find a way to give it a try. I researched some authors I like, that offer classes and books on the very things I don’t like to do. I read through every page of their website, read their philosophies, and picked one I thought I would be able to work with.

Cautiously optimistic, I bought a writing e-book by the author and dug in. Right in the first chapter I ran up against my prejudice. It had exercises. Exercises that were intended to make me do things. I think exercises are useless, I should be using my limited writing time to work on my novel. Write, write, write, right?

Turns out there is a reason for these exercises. To make my pea brain stretch, and think beyond my novel to the future. Where I want to be instead of where I am, and drill down to what my novel is about. When did I get so prejudiced against homework? I was a book and art nerd in high school, doing my homework and even extras for the sheer joy of learning. When did I lose that?

Turns out it wasn’t lost, just buried deep beneath a layer of inexperience and attitude. In trying so hard to convince myself I could do this, I convinced myself I knew HOW to do this. One of these things is not like the other.

So I cautiously printed out the exercise pages from the pdf, and began to read the damn directions. I did the exercises. In order. (A first.) I actually got excited to write a scene to the specified criteria. (Of course I had to stop in the middle to research exactly what shade of brown I needed to describe. For the record, it was Raw Umber.) I was pretty happy with the scene I wrote. So happy I’m thinking it needs to go in the novel and I know just where to put it.

You’ll be pleased to know, I’m 2/3 less stubborn about writing advice than when I started. There’s some things I still have a difficult time believing is going to help. But I won’t discard the advice, until I give it a try or two. What works might not be readily apparent at first impatient glance. If it still doesn’t work for me, why then I’ll fold the exercise into an origami mule, and place it by my computer as a reminder.

Sometimes you just have to slap your own hand, loosen the reins, and gallop wildly forward, careening over half-baked, rainbow hued obstacles until you crash through the brick wall.

Or is that just me?

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