tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63609345560423983592024-03-19T03:18:11.717-04:00Welwyn's WorldWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-12660833939796227452011-02-25T23:11:00.000-05:002011-02-25T23:11:05.020-05:00And yet againHi, everyone,<br />
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I just checked the blog for the first time since you all were so kind, leaving me your messages. I want to thank you so much for that.<br />
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It is really nice to know you are all out there, doing what you do, and yet willing to take time to send me good wishes.<br />
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I have been in a lot of pain in the last while. Usually, I can get out of it by reading something wonderful. There's a book I've owned for at least thirty years and never actually read, but I have now. It's called "The Owl Service" by Alan Garner, and it's about the power of the past and the power of personal choice in the present. Welsh valley like a mythological power vacuum, characters really in need of saving, and incredible suspense. I think you might like it.<br />
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This is a picture I thought I'd share with you, from our wedding in Victoria several years ago. Greg wrote a song about it later -- it's quite hilarious. Victoria, for those who don't know, is usually the balmiest part of Canada in winter. Greg and I flew in to Victoria in a blizzard, couldn't even rent a car with tires that had any treads, and the roads were so bad we got stuck in our bed and breakfast watching endless reruns of CSI Miami instead of spending time with our daughters. Ah, romance. But as you can see, it all worked out in the end...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-naVjAct-wtE/TWh7sWBA63I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/PM01b8UqMgY/s1600/Our+vows.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" l6="true" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-naVjAct-wtE/TWh7sWBA63I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/PM01b8UqMgY/s320/Our+vows.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br />
Meanwhile, hope you're all well and happy, and that you are all doing the kind of writing and illustrating you like the best.Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com144tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-7125794130479523652011-01-07T22:31:00.000-05:002011-01-07T22:31:00.554-05:00Back. Sort of.I'm so sore. I've got a multiple factorial stenosis of the lumbar spine. And I've just moved. Boxing Day lasted from end of November and is still going on. Literally. I live with boxes, and pain. I'll be popping in now and then, or maybe oozing in, depending on state of back. Missed you Ls&Gs.<br />
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Hope you all had a great holiday even if I couldn't!Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com95tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-38748420287923515322010-11-21T15:51:00.001-05:002010-11-21T16:09:52.592-05:00What IS this Blog? What ISN'T it?You know, I had no idea until the latest responses to Atom's comments and mine to him/her, that so many people were confused about what this blog is all about. Deb, for instance, says:<br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">"Another way to get more feedback on posts is to have something in your post that can be commented on or discussed immediately. Some bloggers routinely add a question for discussion at the end of their post to get comments flowing.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Often your tips include assignments that take some time to complete, so people don't have a lot they can say immediately."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">And Quenby says, </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I have to say I'm a little confused. I wasn't aware that the Minority Report posts were part of the project we signed up for. I wrote a long analysis for Jessica when she posted her work, and then I thought the project was on hold until you, Welwyn, got better. That makes me feel like I've epic failed. To be honest, I love Minority Report. 'Tis one of my favourite science fiction movies, but anything written by Philip K. Dick tends to be. Not to mention, I absolutely love analyzing popular culture, but couldn't find the time to devote to saying anything worthwhile. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">Is it just me or do you see that we have major UNCLARITY here? </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">Okay, straight for the clear! Here's what this blog is about:</span></span></span><br />
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<div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(a) it's about <u>writing in general</u>, and what <i>I think </i><u>you might want to know about it</u></div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><u><br />
</u></div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>(b) it's about writing in general, and what you tell me you want to know about it.</i></div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><u><br />
</u></div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(c) it's about a Workshop, which is about <u>your </u>own specific writing and art, though mostly about your <u>writing</u>. You write, we all read, your colleagues comment to me, I comment to you. This worked very well, at least with Jessica's posted chapter. The only thing that didn't happen was a public exchange of questions from Jessica and a public response from me, and (now that I know what you would and would not do to another writer), from anyone else who wanted to join in. (I've run live fiction workshops where talented writers slice and dice each other to bloody shreds all over their manuscripts, and I end up being more of a lion tamer than workshop leader. In writing <i>only to me</i> their responses to Jessica's work, I got a <i>composite of opinion</i> that connected strongly with what I believed Jessica would like to know about her work. She knew it <i></i>had been a painless way to get ten opinions. I was really pleased with the level of writing and thinking I saw in the participants' private thoughts written to me, and their overall kindness. Ideally, the next time at Question Period answers <i>would include your colleagues' individual comments where they were pertinent to Jessica's questions</i>, or you could have just answered her questions at the time, participating fully in the give and take of the workshop. But we didn't get that far. However, after I had to put the Workshop on temporary hold, I did exchange emails with Jessica myself, so she did get a chance to put forward questions and her own opinions.</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(d) The Workshop was only ever supposed to be a <i>small </i> <i>part </i>of the blog. I had been working on the blog for more than a month before I even thought of the Workshop. Even after we started, I made it clear that each new post would go up at the beginning of the month (except for Jessica, who volunteered). Deb had volunteered to be next, but it hasn't happened yet, because of that fateful doctor's appointment.</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(e) The original plan was that it would be a full month between each of your posts. Why? Because I do have a life now and then; <i>and </i>because the Workshop is highly labour intensive for me (BTW, I'm going to be using Canadian spellings from now on, e.g. labour instead of labor); but mostly because there are only ten people in the Workshop, and my stats tell me there are still people visiting at least twice each from all over the world. Nothing like Rettakat's amazing following, but still enough that I felt I should be doing something for them, <u><i>and for you too</i>,</u> because let's face it, once you've sent me your email on Jessica's work, you basically would have had nothing to do until the next month. I figured if you wanted to be in a workshop to improve your writing, you were serious writers, and that meant you would appreciate some tips on writing, and some suggestions about things to do. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(f) So that's how it started. While working on Jessica's Chapter, I would post something for you every few days. Nothing I posted was ever called an assignment, or golly, I surely hope it wasn't. I always meant to give it to you as something useful, if you wanted to do it. The title of each blog usually contained the word "Tip". In Great Britain a tip is a garbage dump; I hope my tips aren't that! I give you what works for me, and you can do it or you can not do it. It's all fine. You won't learn as much if you don't do anything between workshop posts, but if you already think you know enough to finish your novel, that should be okay. A tip is just a pointer to a way to do a thing, if you happen to want to. I picked topics out of the air, more or less, for reasons we've already discussed. I thought that that too was going to have to stop after that stunning (literally) doctor's visit. But then I felt I was letting you down, and that this blog which had begun so slowly and built up so nicely would be back down to zero when I was finally well enough to come back to it again. I also missed you. And I can't see the neurosurgeon for about ten months. And that's why I'm posting fairly regularly again, and will, for a while. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Questions from people like Karen were a godsend, but on the whole there weren't enough to use as a blog base. And so I used some of my tried and true tips. One was a set of exercises that would help you find your own style, your "voice" as a writer, by rewriting other peoples' work. I suggested that you do it, but it wasn't an assignment. It was really hard and frankly I expected most of the visitors to the blog wouldn't do it. Those who did, wow,and I mean that, it's a real wow, and I'm amazed and proud of you. I maybe didn't provide very many obvious things that could be commented on immediately. I did wonder why no one ever asked: "Why do you want us to do this weird thing?"<br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">So then I asked you to watch Minority Report. It's a flawed movie, and I suggested you remind me to discuss what they might have done in the movie to prevent the flaw. That was badly put. What I <i>should </i>have said was, "If you'd been the director, how would <i>you</i> have prevented this flaw of having a major character introduced so late in the movie?" </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">That would have helped provide some give and take. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I do really cringe at the word "assignment", in the context of this blog. I would so much rather see the word "suggestion". But since you didn't know that's how I saw it, and it was so precise a series of activities, I can certainly see why you'd think of it as an assignment. But Quenby, you haven't epic failed, or even failed at all. You signed up for the workshop. Only that was a commitment. The rest, for a grad student with deadlines and so so much to do, (and for all of you, who are just as busy) are just things to do if you have the time and want to become a better writer. They are just tips. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I thought you'd enjoy watching the Minority Report movie. I think I told you to watch it twice. I didn't tell you why. (You could have asked, right? I can't bite you through the ethernet. *grin* Ask. Please ask. Otherwise, I don't know if you want to do it, or need to have a reason to watch it twice. I'm wordy enough. I don't want to give you reasons for things if you don't need them.) </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I knew what question I was going to ask about it, and I knew how hard it was to find the answer in that movie. Once you get that answer, you know how to create something like it in every novel (and possibly short story) you write. Once you know that, you can just figure out your whole novel. Really. You can. And so if I actually did order you to watch it twice in a row, well, I did it for a good reason. <br />
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I appreciated the responses I got to the question. I really did. There could have been more of them, but I figured the reason there weren't was because people hadn't actually watched the movie twice in a row, which was their right. Who has four hours to sit through the same movie twice? Who wants to? You already know the ending, right?</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>This is where we are now in the blog.</i> I got sidetracked by Atom's question, but it was a useful question because it made me remember why I was in this blog, and what I wanted from it that wasn't yet here. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Here's what I wanted from it that isn't yet here. An example. Minority Report. You say, "Hey Welwyn, why should I sit down and watch a movie twice in a row?" I would answer, "Because I want you to find the one moment in the whole movie where things are the scariest/worst/seem the most impossible to solve for both main characters." Then you'd say, "The two main characters? Do you mean the girl in the pool, the one who didn't see a man about to murder his wife?" (That would have been a hard question for me to answer.) I'd likely have said something like this. "She's important, in the way that she represents the PROBLEM that underlies this whole movie, but she's not the second major character." "Why not?" you'd say. And on it would go. And so we both would learn.</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I agree my form of leaving people things to think about isn't exactly like other bloggers' final questions. My hope is that you will look deeply and feel free to ask why. I do give you plenty of things to think about, but they are hidden in the "tip" instead of being stated clearly. I tell you there are two main characters of the movie, and the questions are hidden. Who are they? Why are they the major characters? I believe someone actually did ask something like that, though right now my brain is going to mush. I think I answered that I meant the husband and the wife, because their separation from really the beginning of the movie is the flaw. I think I was glad that I didn't have to explain why the girl in the pool wasn't. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The thing is, I'm really not into giving out questions for people to think about. If they don't think about them, they may not be ready for that kind of detail just yet. There are plenty of things for you to ask me about, and it'd be great if you did. People are sometimes uncertain about how much they're "allowed" to contradict or challenge or even just ask, in any given situation. So here is my rule:</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div style="background-color: yellow; color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CONTRADICT ME, CHALLENGE ME, AND ASK ME ANY QUESTION THAT SEEMS TO YOU NOT TO MAKE SENSE, AT ANY TIME. And I'm allowed to offer you advice that might seem stupid, because writers have to learn to think very deeply about <i>everything</i>, including why they are being asked to do seemingly stupid things.</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It is the only way we can turn this blog into a diablog. </div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div style="color: #351c75; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Now I just want to end this on a little statement from Quenby, which is about why she, a student and not intending to be a writer, comes to the blog:<br />
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I find these discussions fascinating because reading and analysis are my bread and butter. How writers do what they do is so, well, freakin' awesome, and I love just reading through the posts to see how everyone comes to understand their talents, their strengths and weaknesses, and their capacity to grow. </div><br />
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Let's do it together, okay? Let's find our capacity to grow!<br />
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Clarity (I hope) From Welwyn-on-booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com85tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-22015988773399442982010-11-20T20:48:00.000-05:002010-11-20T20:48:38.035-05:00Wise Words to All of UsAt <a class="comment-data-link" href="http://blog.booksbywelwyn.ca/2010/11/pondering-what-atom-asked.html#c5946579063340266883" title="comment permalink"> 20 November, 2010 </a>, <span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/10034267067410245582" rel="nofollow">Rettakat</a> said...<br />
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At first I was stumped, not understanding. But after reading the exchange here in comments, I think I can see better what you are saying, Welwyn.<br />
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To be honest, I'm still hoping more of the people that signed up for the project would feel like jumping in, and joining the "conversations." Maybe they didn't know that's just what one is supposed to do??! You are right... the joy of this kind of thing IS the give and take, not just the "take".<br />
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I write a blog on a totally different topic. There are 195 people who signed up to "follow". But only a very small handful actually participate by way of comments. I love that exchange, and have made quite a few friends. And I have come to learn that it is the norm to have lots of quiet readers, and a few that not only take away, but give back by commenting. We are all soooo busy, so I appreciate those few!<br />
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People who don't write a blog have no idea how much work it is. And when you are dealing with a physical challenge, like you are, that makes it even MORE of a challenge. I don't think people realize that the best way to show their appreciation is to join the conversation. They don't mean to be ungrateful... they just don't always know. I know before I started my blog, I didn't get it, either.<br />
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Sounds like this question from Atom has opened up a whole can of worms.. and that might be a GOOD thing. Because it will help clarify what you had in mind, and help us understand better and maybe others will feel encouraged to jump in, too.<br />
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Loretta<br />
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THANK YOU, LORETTA. Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com141tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-66631528955340659212010-11-20T20:42:00.000-05:002010-11-20T20:42:25.592-05:00My answer : What do I get out of it?Atom asked me: "What are <u>you </u>getting out of writing this blog"?<br />
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Yesterday, I came to an interesting point in my thinking. I realized that I wanted the non-participating people in this blog to value what I was doing. But they were, weren't they, by coming at all. It may not even be their fault if they are incapable of involving themselves in other ways. Some came from foreign countries. Possibly they were shy about expressing themselves in English. A lot of people can read English but not so many can write it idiomatically, the way we were doing. If it wasn't that, it could just be self-consciousness. It could be people didn't know I would value their input. When I was young, I didn't have many friends, and when a girl said that she was inviting all the girls in our grade five class to her birthday party, I had to ask her if she really meant me. That confession is one I have never told anyone until today. I didn't have the self-esteem to think I would be wanted at that party. Other people could have those same kind of self-esteem issues. If one of you is reading this, please know that I'm inviting you to this party, and I will like you and enjoy your presence, and that a comment once in a while is all the "presents" I hope for from you.<br />
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A cynic could say, I suppose, that those who feel they can't contribute to <b>our </b>blog in other ways could maybe buy my books. Atom, you've ordered three. That was really nice of you. It's a great gift, it shows you value what I have done, and it completely makes me aware that you, sitting there quietly without commenting, have understood how hard it was that I worked, and wanted to thank me by buying my books. I appreciate that very much. I give all the money the books make to my web-master. It's his payment. But I got the present of your appreciation, which is very much appreciated by me in return. <br />
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And the truth is, that I don't really care about what I make as a writer. I used to make a lot, but it was awfully hard work, and I could have made much, much more every year by teaching math for a living. I wrote books because I loved writing. <br />
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So here I am, back where Atom started. Why do I write this blog? What do I get out of it? <br />
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What I get out of this blog is the kindness of strangers who care about what happens to me when I'm sick.<br />
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What I get out of this blog is the sense that a few people who were complete strangers are becoming friends.<br />
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What I get out of this blog is the awareness that I'm really and truly doing my best to help other people do something they want to do. That is important, to know you've done and are doing your best.<br />
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And since my last post, I got some wonderful responses from Deb and Karen and finally Loretta. Deb and Karen were stunned, I think, and responded as if I had meant them, which I never did, though of course I was advising them on writing issues, and they couldn't see how they could advise me on such issues. Once I understood that I hadn't clarified that that was not what I wanted in this blog at all, I answered them. I always knew that there would be a "teaching element" in this blog. I spent a quarter century as a professional writer and you,mostly, haven't. So how could I start this blog as a writer who wanted to give back, and not expect to teach?<br />
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In any case, I never meant them. The reason I never was unhappy with them (the EXACT opposite was true) was because they commented. They asked questions. They made it so easy for me. I particularly like it when someone doesn't quite understand something I've said and writes to me about it. I immediately have a topic to use in the blog the next day. I won't embarrass the one who told me how seriously she took this blog, in that she was going back over all the posts and trying to figure out everything from the beginning, but it was wonderful to me to hear that. For me, that should have been my immediate answer to Atom. Giving and receiving were always in balance with the people who commented. The "giving" from the people making comments on my blog comes from the serious attention to my words (imperfect as they are), that made them want to make comments. I think Atom phrased his or her question a bit harshly, making me feel almost as if I had to defend myself for writing the blog in the first place. "What do YOU get out of it?" Atom, I'm sure you didn't mean that, but that's how it comes across. It's one of the reasons this kind of communication is so hard. People can't hear the laughter or the gentleness or the kindness in the words. The words have to do it all, and even professional writers fail time and time again at making their own personal words do that.<br />
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I would like to post the responses I received from Deb, Karen, and my responses back to them, but that would take up a lot of space. You should read them, if you are interested, because it shows how badly I expressed myself, and how easy it is to take offense when it isn't meant or aimed at you. I <b><i>will</i></b> post the response I got from Rettakat because she waited, so wise to wait, and she read the whole exchange, and then she came up with a comment that says exactly what it was that I wanted from this blog that I had to look at in the light of Atom's comment. Loretta put it in the context of her own experience and made it a perfect clarification of why I wasn't perfectly able to say that I was getting all I wanted out of this blog. So please read the next blog. It's all my blog friend Loretta's words -- and I say again, Loretta, that you could really be a writer professionally, as <i>well </i>as an artist, if you chose. Picture books? There are so few people who can both write them and illustrate them. You might be one.Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com59tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-54876710001289793932010-11-20T13:19:00.006-05:002010-11-20T13:33:21.426-05:00Pondering What Atom AskedAtom asked me in my last post what I get out of writing this blog.<br />
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First, Atom, I would like to thank you for the gift of a question that hasn't got anything to do with how to write. You are the first person, I believe, in this blog, ever to <u>ask m</u>e anything that wasn't related to something I'd already said in the blog somewhere. I don't blame the core group who appear pretty much every day. Loretta gave me a banner, and she and a couple of others have honestly tried to do what I ask, in this role that has <u>somehow descended on me</u>, of becoming a teacher. <b>But you have maybe noted in my sidebar that appears beside every post </b>that I didn't want to become a teacher again, and that in this blog I hoped to be part of a conversation about writing (all the people who visit my blog providing me things to answer, and vice versa). I've done the vice versa but it has become a big job for me, since there was nothing for me to say in answer to anything. I probably should have quit trying, and just let the blog die, while I waited for a "melody for me to riff on". I didn't do that. There were a few people who commented, and for their sakes I tried to give all I could about being a writer, whether it was what they wanted to know or not. I became a teacher, exactly what I didn't want to be.<br />
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You mentioned a motto someone said, an important philosophical teaching of the East that I believe in. "Giving and Receiving must be in balance."<br />
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Here, with a few exceptions, it's "I give, they take."<br />
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I think I'll post something every day until I feel I know the answer to your question fully. <b> What am I getting out of this blog? </b>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-64042216732196111092010-11-20T11:48:00.000-05:002010-11-20T11:48:16.986-05:00Atom and this blog<i>At <a class="comment-data-link" href="http://blog.booksbywelwyn.ca/2010/11/in-spirit-of-season.html#c4409320491673910123" title="comment permalink"> 20 November, 2010 </a>, <span class="comment-icon anon-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Anonymous" src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/anon16-rounded.gif" style="display: inline;" /></span> <span class="anon-comment-author">Atom</span> said... </i> <br />
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<i>Hi Welwyn, In "the spirit of the season" I am taking you up on your offer and have contacted you through your website order page. </i><br />
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<i>But i'm curious.You seem to be giving a lot to this blog in terms of your advice which must take a lot of your time to compose, and now discounts on your books. I heard of a guru who said that, "giving and receiving must be in balance". What are you getting out of all this giving?</i><br />
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Thank you for wanting to buy some of my books, Atom. I'll be sure to let my webmaster know that you're buying "In the spirit of the season." That way you won't get charged full price.Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-46661101772234704232010-11-15T18:53:00.001-05:002010-11-15T19:04:04.752-05:00In the Spirit of the Season<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TOF8yL9Y9-I/AAAAAAAAAE8/VImMwuJji3M/s1600/Welwyn+on+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" px="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TOF8yL9Y9-I/AAAAAAAAAE8/VImMwuJji3M/s1600/Welwyn+on+beach.jpg" /></a></div>I'm giving a donkey to a needy family somewhere in the world, this holiday season. Isn't that just the <em>neatest </em>idea? My husband's giving medicine and a rooster and two hens. You too can decide, in the spirit of the season, to spend $50 or more to help communities and families in poverty. Just go to <a href="http://www.worldvision.ca/gifts">www.worldvision.ca/gifts</a>. World Vision is a trustworthy Christian organization who gives where help is needed, whether people are Christian or not. I like them for that.<br />
My husband and I chose to do this instead of spending a lot on each other. But maybe you want to help make a difference in peoples' lives, without spending that kind of money?<br />
<br />
Let me tell you something important. A quarter of a century after I first was published, I still get letters from people who have rediscovered my books in libraries, and who want me to know how much that particular book mattered to them when they first read it all those years ago. One girl, who was really, really scared to go into high school, made herself remember how brave Morgan had been in <em>The Third Magic, </em>and she wanted me to know how it got her through her own ordeal. A girl who was half native and blond and blue-eyed wasn't suffering bullying from other kids, but still she read <em>False Face</em> and thanked me, because, she said, "Nobody ever writes books about me." Someone else said basically the same thing about Ben in <em>Out of the Dark.</em> "I was that boy, carving, instead of crying,"<em> </em>he told me.<em> </em>Another said, "I was the 3rd witch in the Scottish play in [....] Theatre. Loved the way you portrayed them in <em>Come Like Shadows. </em>I'm going to write to my whole cast to buy the book. They'll remember your story forever." And one young adult wrote to me, "I loved the mother whale in <em>Whalesinger</em>. You didn't anthropomorphize, but she was still real to me. I'd been thinking about doing graduate work in physiology, but now I've decided to go into marine biology. The world needs people like that, and like you." <br />
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I wish I could show you all the letters I've had. If, for a few dollars you can change peoples' lives for the better by buying them a book that they will react to so positively that they remember it so many years later, that is perhaps <em>almost</em> as good a gift of a donkey, to people in our privileged Western World.<br />
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I've tried not to push my books at you in this blog, but if you think one or more of them could open the eyes of someone you know to a new and exciting viewpoint, then perhaps one of my books would make a good gift, in the spirit of the season.<br />
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<em><u>And so, I've decided from November 15 until December 1, 2010 to offer my books <span style="color: black;">at special prices</span> (see below for shipping). You must send me an email to </u></em><a href="mailto:wwiltonkatz@gmail.com"><em>wwiltonkatz@gmail.com</em></a><em><u> and say what books and autographs you want and where you want them shipped (and how). We will pack and ship within three days. You will receive an online invoice from me with a copy of the exact shipping bill to prove that we paid that to ship as you requested. We accept Paypal paid to <a href="mailto:wwiltonkatz@gmail.com">wwiltonkatz@gmail.com</a> For those of you who haven't got Paypal, please email us so that we can agree on suitable alternatives.</u></em><br />
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A detailed description of all the books (with reviews) are described on <a href="http://www.booksbywelwyn.ca/.You">http://www.booksbywelwyn.ca/<span style="color: black;">.You</span></a> could get them at Amazon.com, too, but not at these <span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><em>special prices, </em>n</span></span><span style="color: black;">or with an autograph</span>! <br />
<span style="color: red;"><em><u>Special prices ending midnight Dec 1, 2010 follow:</u></em></span><br />
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<span style="color: red;"><em><u>(NO tax; we will pay it where applicable) </u></em></span><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">The Prophecy of Tau Ridoo (only in paper, illustrated long novel): $7.00 ages 7-11</span></em><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><em>Time Ghost (only in hardcover): $15.00 ages 8 - 12 <span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>(CLA Honour Book , Children's Science Fiction Prize, USA, SC Book Award)</strong></span></em></span><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Beowulf (hardcover short novel, period style illustrations): $11.00 all ages (reading aloud to ages 4-5) <strong>(s</strong></span><span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>hort-listed Governor-General's Award, CLA award, Red Cedar Award)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Sun God, Moon Witch (only in paper): $7.00 ages 11-14 </span><span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>(short-listed, CLA Book of the Year)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Witchery Hill (only in paper): $7.00 ages 11-14 </span><span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>(short-listed, CLA Book of the Year, ALA Booklist)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">False Face (only in paper): $7.00 ages 11-14 </span><span style="color: #274e13;">(<strong>winner, International Fiction Contest, Ebel Prize, short-listed Governor-General's Award, CLA Book of the Year, Trillium Award, ALA Best Book)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Out of the Dark (only in paper): $7.00 (ages 11-14) </span><span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>(winner, Ruth Schwartz Award, short-listed Governor-General's Award, ALA Best Book)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">The Third Magic (only in paper) $8.00 (*fantasy and science fiction readers of any age) <strong>(<span style="color: #274e13;">winner of the CLA Young Adult Award, winner of the Governor-General's Award, ALA Book of the Year</span>)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Whalesinger (only in paper) $8.00 ages 12 and up: *mature readers, </span><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="background-color: white;">(<strong>nominated for Governor-General's Award, winner of the CLA Young Adult award, ALA Booklist, NYPL award)</strong></span></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;">Come Like Shadows (only in hardcover): $14.00 (*mature readers)</span><span style="color: #274e13;"> <strong>(Winner Vicky Metcalf Award, CLA Young Adult Award, NYPL Award, ALA Booklist)</strong></span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #351c75;"><u>Handling:</u> We do not charge for handling.</span></em><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><em><u>Shipping:</u> </em></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><em>(a) Within Canada. You will pay the exact cost of the type of service you request: priority, Xpress Post, expedited parcel, regular parcel. Tracking numbers will be provided to all shipments at no additional charge. Most services are delivered reliably within 1-7 days except if by surface. </em></span><br />
<em><span style="color: #351c75;">(b) To the USA: You will pay the exact cost of the shipping method you request. Choices are limited at this point by the USA government's limits on the kinds of parcels acceptable for cross-border delivery. We do not advise surface for holiday delivery because surface can take more than six weeks, but if you have the time and are okay with that, it may be your best option. Price for a three book envelope depends on distance but for air mail usually delivered between 5 and 8 business days our last delivery (to Los Angeles) cost $14.95. Unfortunately, tracking numbers between Canada and the USA add $10.00 to the cost. Yes, I know, it's shocking. </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #351c75;">(c) International delivery envelopes cost around $25.00 and will likely hold up to three books, or four to five paperbacks. These envelopes are guaranteed to get there within a short period of time depending on where you live. Air mail at exact cost is also available. </span></em><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: black;">I do hope you won't mind me offering you my books. Thank you so much.</span></span><br />
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Welwyn-on-booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-4162319144878482882010-11-15T14:50:00.001-05:002010-11-15T15:04:26.016-05:00Tip 7: Remember the title of Tip 6? Let's see how Minority Report relates.(Tip 6: How to discover the whole of your story?)<br />
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Loretta, your idea about the absolute worst moment in <em>Minority Report</em> was very, very close to being the answer. You found the worst moment for him, because <u>of all the characters in the whole movie<em>, only he has any real idea of what is involved in halo-ing</em></u>. Good for you!!! <br />
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Loretta zeroed in on a moment that was <u>worst for him</u> and very hard on the wife. Ideally, in most two-hero stories, the worst moment <em>would</em> be the same for both characters. Loretta felt that instinctively. <strong>(Are you sure you don't want to write books on the side, Loretta?)</strong> I think the moment she picked (had the wife been a minor character) would have been the right one. Unfortunately, though, the flaw in the movie is that the wife is a major character (because she is needed for the resolution) and yet she doesn't appear as a hero until late in the story. <u>*Remind me to post, at another time, how the movie makers might have prevented this flaw without changing the movie very much at all.</u><br />
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It's natural to look for the worst moment for the husband because we spend a lot more time with him than with the wife. (She still loves him, I think, and I think it's pretty clear why she had to leave him. These things were done well, and the earlier holo pictures showed how important the wife is. But other than a few very minor scenes, we don't get to have the two of them together very often.) <br />
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Loretta's instinctive reaction is RIGHT that the absolute worst moment for the two-hero story should happen at the same time to both of them. Given that, she chose a moment that is the worst for him and quite bad for her. But since this movie is flawed (as I think I said a million times too many), we have to look a little deeper. The worst thing that can happen for him has happened. The consequences of that worst thing continue for him. Now, what is the worst thing that can happen to the wife???<br />
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I'm pushing so hard for exactly this worst moment in <em>Minority Report</em> because once you find it you will understand exactly what I mean by structuring a whole story around a worst moment for your hero (heroes), <em>as I will - later - in carrying on with the solution to Tip 6</em>. <br />
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<u></u>And so, I am saying that even in a flawed movie like <em>Minority Report</em>, we can still find one moment where things are as bad for the wife as they can possibly be, while they continue to be as bad for the husband as they can possibly be: this is the place in the movie I want you to find, okay?<br />
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Basically, you are looking for the CRISIS of the movie (writers often use that word Crisis when talking about plotting their novel. Movie, novel. It's just the same. Crisis = worst possible moment for the heroes).<br />
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It'll be worth it to you, a thousand times more than you can imagine, if you can figure this place out. Watch it over and over from the point where he's halo'd. Eventually, you'll see it. Try to come up with it on your own, okay? That is, don't be too influenced by what your colleagues on this blog suggest.<br />
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I didn't mean to post for so long today. But we've got to keep in touch, and though the workshop really is temporarily in abeyance, we can still do things like this, as long as I'm not feeling too rotten.<br />
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P.S. Please tell your friends. Tell your movie-loving non-writing friends. Tell them to join us. We're working so hard, and it's so much FUN, and they'll learn so much, invite them from me to be part of our group.<br />
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Gotta go take my morphine and lie down, now.<br />
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Hugs,<br />
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Welwyn-on-booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-35558405684223619882010-11-14T18:32:00.000-05:002010-11-14T18:32:39.138-05:00Minority Report: Worst Moment CommentsI really liked your comments, which came from deep inside, where you put aside your own personalities and "became" the main characters. This is what we always want readers to do with our books, right?<br />
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But just for a moment, stop being in the movie emotionally, and redefine "worst moment for the characters" intellectually as: the moment where it seems as if there is no way, absolutely no way, out. This must be true for both the main characters.<br />
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Hard one, eh?<br />
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(eh? is a Canadianism).<br />
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So, think hard. Where exactly do you realize that the two main characters are totally scrooped. (seemingly).<br />
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Good luck.<br />
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Back to bed.<br />
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Keep at it, guys, you're doing great work. <br />
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Hugs from WelwynWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-82399796162193376832010-11-13T23:31:00.000-05:002010-11-13T23:31:25.373-05:00Free books are a great giftJessica is giving away two different authors work on the link <a href="http://markofthestars.com/wp/great-gift-ideas/ggi1/">http://markofthestars.com/wp/great-gift-ideas/ggi1/</a> and I think you should all just sign up. It's not hard to do, and Jessica is doing all the real work. Let's thank her by supporting her.<br />
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Meanwhile, thanks to all of you who've kept in touch. I'm still feeling absolutely cruddy, too much pain to bear sometimes, and all I know so far is that I have stenosis in two areas of my spine which I think means my spinal cord is actually being pinched inward in those areas. It's excruciating some days. I will have to wait months and months to see a neurosurgeon. <br />
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I miss you folks. You are an amazing group, you know? I hope you'll keep watching and I sure hope I'll be able to get back to daily communications with you sometime in the New Year.<br />
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Hugs from<br />
welwyn-on-booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-14993863587842520742010-11-04T23:25:00.000-04:002010-11-04T23:25:24.502-04:00When you've watched the movie Minority Report twice...... ask yourself when the absolutely worst moment comes for good people in this story. (There's a big flaw in this movie, in that the wife of Tom Cruise doesn't get introduced early enough. But once she is, you do see that she is a major character.)<br />
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This is like a book with two main characters, where ideally the action bounces back and forth between them both. That doesn't happen in this movie until very late. So, you see the flaw.<br />
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Any time a director or writer introduces an important character late, it's a flaw. Still, I like to use this movie not just to criticize it for this flaw.<br />
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Given this flaw, and given that in effect you have one major character at the beginning of the book doing all the major stuff, and then, towards two-thirds of the way through, you have another one taking over, the only way around the flaw is to consider them as part of one team, poorly delineated, but one team that you care about.<br />
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So that's the next part of your homework. Find out when the worst moment happens for the main character team.<br />
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I have to go to bed now. Good luck all of you. And keep on writing! Love you all.<br />
<br />
WelwynWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-57012437171240882222010-11-04T23:16:00.000-04:002010-11-04T23:16:10.591-04:00The Difference between Active and Passive DescriptionHi, out there, if there's anyone there,<br />
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I got an email from Karen asking the difference between active and passive description. Here's what I replied.<br />
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What you are doing is absolutely right. Frankly, your own sentence is much better than the other writer's. What you're doiong, by rewriting someone else's work the way you think it would work better, is looking for is your own voice. I think you're finding it. <br />
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You say you feel as if it ought to be written in the third person (basically, you say that, by your own changes.) I would say that's a good choice for most writers, especially for the first twenty years or so. (*grin*). <br />
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<em>Active description is using description within an action scene</em>. So, for instance, if you want to get information across about the kind of place where the character's being beaten up, you'd focus on what in the environment the character is looking at, trying to keep a part of his or her mind away from what's happening to him/her. Maybe the narrator would have his hands tied to his feet backwards, and scrabbling not to fall over, he'd feel a nail that is very loose in a stack of lumber behind him. This kind of thing tells the reader a lot about the kind of place the story is set in, without needing more than, say, one sentence to start with of description before being captured. That's active description. <em>Passive description is paragraphs and paragraphs of adjectives telling, not showing, the reader what the place is like</em>. <br />
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If you can imagine putting yourself into the position and mind of the hero, you can simply ask yourself what he or she would notice and why, and if it can be useful during action. If not, you still need something about where this scene is occurring,and so maybe you can use dialog (e.g. "I'm not going in there," she told him sharply. "If the floor is as rotten as the roof, we'll end up in the cellar." Something like that. Also, setting isn't just where a scene is happening, it's also the kind of people, and what they do, in a place. If the character notices that everyone is avoiding her, she will put her own spin on it, and depending on how you've made the reader feel about her, the readers will think of this place as being full of mean snobs, etc. Think the Stepford Wives, and how the new wife feels about them. All of this is active description. <em>It's letting us see</em>, instead of telling us too much and too often (which is passive description). Seeing, feeling, thinking, talking, trying to use one's environment to act, all of these things are part of active description. The author <strong>telling us</strong> too much, well, it can be done well (think Charles Dickens), but really, I think it's best to <strong>keep telling to a minimum</strong> (while still remembering that the reader must have a sense of place) and <strong>use showing instead</strong>, if you can. You can't, always. When there is no other way to describe a place except to describe it, keep it down to a sentence that really works. Maybe focus on just one thing in the room that really tells us about the woman sitting in her rocker and being totally silent. You can describe a whole room just be describing a focal point in it. That kind of description, while passive, is still good, because it doesn't overload the reader. It's important, when you're writing a story to "leave out the parts that people skip, while reading it." I think it was Hemingway who said that. <br />
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I'll post this on my blog so that if anyone is still checking they can learn from your question here. <br />
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Keep working. It sounds like all the right things are happening for you.<br />
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WelwynWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-80634866040514027042010-10-30T00:24:00.000-04:002010-10-30T00:24:48.192-04:00Some sacrificesWe all have to make sacrifices sometimes. Today is one for me, and maybe for you too, at least for a little while.<br />
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In Toronto today, while visiting my wonderful family physician who never spends less than an hour and a half on my visits to her, to say nothing of all the work she's done in between, I've learned that I'm not well enough to <u> be able to write in my blog for a couple of months</u>. This makes me unhappy, because I have been quite loving the connections I've been making with you all. On the other hand, I have to take as much time as I can to rest before the specialists decide what to do with me, and I can only hope that what I've given you so far will be enough for you to carry on for a couple of months until (say, January, or whenever the specialists let me come back to my work here on this blog.) I hope you will forgive me for abandoning you for a while. But you know, I think you will find that you have really got a lot to do on your own, just to get caught up with all the tips and ideas we've been talking about for the last few months.<br />
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I don't want to lose you as friends and colleagues. That's the truth. But I have a feeling you are such devoted writers that you'll keep an eye on my blog site, here, and will knowwhen I've come back, and then will come back, yourselves.<br />
<br />
Deb will be the first person whose story will be discussed in our next WORKSHOP MEETING on this blog, <em>after</em> I give Jessica some pointers, and leave her to try a few things, and then ask me anything she wants to in January, or whenever I can come back. <br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>Jessica, I would ordinarily write a great deal more than I'm going to today. But I know that you will pick out what you need from the advice I offer here. Also, don't forget that you still have all of the others here to communicate with. Please do feel free to make comments to one another through my blog. If you do that, and help each other, you will take my place until I can come back. I'm sure you won't have that many questions to ask me, because from what I've seen from all of your comments, you're all very astute readers and will be extremely good at communicating along the lines that we've been trying to focus on in this blog from the beginning. So, here are just a few comments for you for NOW, Jessica. I would really like you to take them into your mind and heart and do what you can to help the reader relax into your book, just a little more.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>I would ordinarily spend the next couple of days writing up what to say to you, but instead, to you (speaking both for myself and for <em>all</em> the others in the workshop who have read and responded to me with their feelings about your work), I will simply say that you are a smooth, clean, articulate writer with a good mystery and lots of hooks to keep us interested. The only problem that I (and your fellow writers) see in your Chapter One <em>(which I can now tell the others was one you had written early on and then discarded as "unnecessary backstory"</em>) is that while your dialog is extremely natural and relaxed, especially the joking around between the characters, there is something tight and almost uncomfortable about your narration. My sense is that you need to be more "loose" in the telling of this story. Let go, a little. Be more leisurely. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>The whole of your quite short Chapter One is incredibly complex: you have a character who doesn't know she is half-alien, she is pregnant, she has a broken bone, and she's getting married, as well as having a subtle attraction to another man, all of which we either must deduce from your dialog (which lets us in on more than most writers can manage) or be told by your narration. This is a lot of information for your reader to take in (and yes, I do know that the half-alien part isn't all that clear until your - now - Chapter Two). It <em>isn't too much</em> information. Don't worry at all about that. It just needs to be spread out a little. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>The main thing that will help you is to use space breaks to divide basic sections of your novel into parts where you want the reader to learn something. 1. The gunshot. 2. The pregnancy. 3. The webbed toes. 4. Where is this place called London, hey? (grin.)</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>I live in London, ONTARIO, so I'm probably the only one besides Jessica who knows this setting very well, but one of your fellow writers would like to know a little more. I think she is right. Take a leaf from Kathy Reichs's later books (not her early ones) and see how she describes her own job and location in Montreal and the islands. It's important to the reader to understant in Reichs's books the jurisdictional separation between police on the island and police in the rest of Quebec. For you, it will be just as important to clarify which jurisdiction your main characters belong to in the police, and use a little description to make her particular job clear. Also, the setting. Setting is best handled by having something exciting or unusual or interesting happening in the location that you want us to know.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>As for as the other difficulties with things happening just a little too quickly, I would offer you a suggestion to think about. If you start the novel with a really loving and kind of hot sex scene between your two soon-to-be-married characters, a leisurely, gentle and loving discovery of each other's bodies.... Don't do more than you feel comfortable with, but remember that all your readers have likely had sex of some sort, and won't be embarrassed if YOU AREN'T. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>If you do take my advice, I would wind within the opening sex scene both dialog and actions that show us more about your characters, rather than telling us about them or summarizing who they are and telling us what they are thinking. Let us feel them. Let us BE at least one of them. People do talk during sex, not necessarily seriously, and not too philosophically or politically, but if you use dialog very carefully in that first sexual encounter between them, you will be able to introduce everything through her feelings, emotions, sudden memories of Burly, etc.,... And then, while things are going perfectly, you should SHOW us the moment where they discover their common physical abnormality. It should really be quite a shock to them, when they discover that seen from underneath, each of them have webbing between their toes. You can choose which one of them would try to make light of it. Maybe one of them will say that thing about "it's not all that unusual, you know" (which will send some of your readers straight for the internet to check, sorry but it will), and then maybe you can have the other one decide NOT to run to the internet to check. Up until now this has been a thing that they both have rather taken for granted. But would their parents? Would their pediatricians, when they were newborns? The first thing new parents and grandparents do is count the fingers and toes... So figure out in your mind how this thing has been dealt with by your heroes' families, while they were growing up... Your heroes must have been able to see it in their own families somewhere to accept it so casually. The older ones would have talked to them about it, and maybe given them hints on how to handle it (no sandals, right? what kid wants to be different from his friends?) . Decide how they chose to deal with their "deformities" when they were young, and who they let in to the "secret" or if they just treated it as casually as they do in chapter one... because to discover someone not in their own family but with the same kind of feet must depend on how they chose to deal with it in themselves.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>The love triangle you present virtually at the altar is something we all are concerned a bit about (not a lot, just a bit.) We all want to know why she is marrying one man while having feelings for the other. This is something that your heroine would need to really ask herself deeply, perhaps after the first sexual meeting of the two (happening in the first chapter), especially if you allow some time to happen between that encounter and the next Chapter, which might be a few ordinary work weeks later. Let us watch her at work, let us see her ordinary reactions to her fiance and to Burly, let us think with her, now here, now there, struggling to find out her own feelings. And then let her find out she's pregnant, and let us live with her feelings as she tells him and is practically pushed into marriage? or wants to get married because something in her tells her it will be vital for her to do this? or whatever... Doing this: showing to your readers this big decision to be made with pressures of all sorts both from within her and from various other people, will help your readers understand that she doesn't make this decision to marry lightly, and that perhaps she's even chosen not to quite acknowledge her feelings for Burly, for the sake of her unborn child. I think this will ease the slight discomfort people have mentioned to me about her feelings for two men on her wedding day. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>I have to say that I disagree with your writing <em>circle's</em> desire to see this exact Chapter One come back, if I understand correctly that that is what happened. I liked your Chapter Two better than Chapter One as an initial chapter (sorry to those of you who didn't get to see it; it was more or less a brain bomb that came to me late this week that this Chapter One wasn't maybe the Chapter One Jessica had intended.). Nevertheless, even in your Chapter Two I feel a tension in your narration. <em>You do need all the information in this chapter</em>, of course, and as one of your colleagues in <em>our </em>workshop said, it's natural to want to <em>quickly</em> get across information that is needed if the rest of the book is going to work. But to do it as quickly as you do risks confusion in the reader, and perhaps even having the reader pull back from your major character. Readers want to BE the main character, and will be that character if you let them in. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>As I say, I'd start with sex. It's a definite page turner for most people, and you need some kind of physical discovery of the shared foot "deformity" SHOWN to the reader, instead of described after the fact. Sex is one good way of doing it. Don't be shy about the sex. Whatever lengths to which you decide to go, it must feel perfectly natural, interesting and right. You must not feel embarrassed writing it. If you do, you will end up embarrassing the reader. Don't let it be JUST sex either. Let it be something lovely that is interrupted somehow by the discovery of the same "deformity" in each of the two partners. If you do this really smoothly, calmly, leisurely and without shame or fear, this can be a Chapter where love is the focus only to be turned on its head by the strangeness of the two of them sharing a kind of webbing between their toes. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>And it should always be repeated, in your own mind, over and over as you write: SHOW, don't TELL, and especially don't TELL AFTER THE FACT.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><strong>I know this isn't enough, Jessica, but it is enough for you to be getting on with. When I come back, and I promise that I will, I will answer on the blog (for everyone to read) anyone's questions about what Jessica's done in the next couple of months to loosen this taut first chapter and to get information across in an easeful manner, where it belongs.</strong></span><br />
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I'm hoping to make that happen by January. But as you are all aware we can't always make things happen just because we want to. But if you keep talking to one another on this blog, I will be able to know what you've been up to while I've been resting, and you'll know at once when I come back.<br />
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Please make good use of this change in the way things have been for the last couple of months. You have time now to ponder what you have learned, to choose what you want to use from what you've learned, and to actually use it in your own "to be published" works of heart.<br />
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Now: just to make this kind of sad little post what it ought to be, here is one more sentence from Terry Pratchett:<br />
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<em><span style="color: #274e13;"><strong>The camel was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-Dimensional Physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity, and, for some reason, broccoli.</strong></span></em><br />
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Hugs to you all.<br />
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Welwyn - on - booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-53378786670937473432010-10-29T22:30:00.000-04:002010-10-29T22:30:39.878-04:00SynchronicityYesterday, after posting to Sir Terry Pratchett, I made sure to write an email to his agent, to ask permission for the quote that I used quite wrongly before aasking for permission. To my astonishment, I came home from a long day visiting the doctors inToronto today to find an email waiting for me. Here is what it said:<br />
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"Dear Welwyn<br />
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Without knowing of your email to me (which had been sidelined into my spam file) I'd emailed to your booksby address<br />
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"I much enjoyed your blog. As Terry's UK agent, I have no objection whatever to your quoting this, and if Random House in the UK or HarperCollins in the US get in touch - unlikely, I think - tell them I've written to you and they should contact me."<br />
Colin Smythe<br />
<a href="http://www.colinsmythe.co.uk/terrypages/tpindex.htm">http://www.colinsmythe.co.uk/terrypages/tpindex.htm</a><br />
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Thanks very much for your email. I am so glad that Terry's books have been so helpful to you - how could one not be? - and I am sure that you will again write books, not just blogs, for the sheer pleasure it brings you. Terry is fortunate in that the posterior cortical atrophy variant has little effect on the cognitive part of the brain, only on the motor, and while he cannot now physically write, he can dictate to his computer, and that is his joy. He's said that as long as he can do that, he is content, but if the time comes that he can no longer write, no longer create, then that will be the time to say goodbye. Fortunately the progress of the disease is very slow, and his symptoms are not very noticeable. He has found ways of working round most of them. After all, Nation was completed, and Unseen Academicals, I Shall Wear Midnight, and now his novel on Vimes's holiday at the Ramkin country estate have all been written since his diagnosis, and he's enjoying his collaboration with Stephen Baxter, so I think there are quite a few years' creation still in the pipeline.<br />
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Very best wishes<br />
<br />
Colin"<br />
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And so, you see, there are two lessons to be learned here:<br />
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(a) that life for a writer like Sir Terry Pratchett is worth living only if he can still create. For him, creation is joy, is probably life itself, in its own internal way.<br />
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(b) that you cannot quote from an author without it being noticed by someone with authority over the author's words. Isn't it amazing, that while my email sat in Sir Terry's agent's Spam box, he had already found this quote and given permission for it? Isn't that just AMAZING?<br />
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Life is full of synchronicities. Never, ever take them for granted. They're always meant.<br />
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Hope all is well with you all.<br />
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Welwyn on booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-88088337179639341842010-10-28T19:37:00.002-04:002010-10-28T21:28:51.867-04:00To Sir Terry Pratchett, and to Laughter and Joy!!!Today I had a piece of horrible news. I learned that the writer I see as epitomizing everything I've been trying to say to you in this blog, Sir Terry Pratchett, has been diagnosed with early onset Altzheimer's. It is apprently not new news, it was announced about three years ago, but it was new to me. <br />
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I want you to understand what Terry Pratchett has been to me. I was already a published writer when I first discovered him, but I didn't understand how to write, really. I was getting published and paid and earning a living and all of that was very nice, but until I first read Terry Pratchett, I didn't know how much was wrong with my writing. I did not write with joy, you see. I did at the beginning, in the five years or so before my first novel was published: five years where I sat at a desk every single day and had a blast (as MPax would say) writing novels that I kind of hoped would be published -- but that in a fundamental way I knew wouldn't be lessened if they weren't. <em>I loved the writing</em>. <em>I loved the five-year journey</em>. I loved its freedom. In those five years I wrote six books that would never be published. A seventh made it. <br />
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In a way, I changed head-space when I got that first book published. Somehow, the publishing, the earning of money, the talks to students, the whole "lifestyle", made me forget the primary importance of the <em>joy</em> of writing my books. <br />
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Time went by. I used to read to Meredith every night, or she to me, and I can remember exactly how it was, the day I bought Sir Terry's book "Men at Arms", our first Pratchett. She and I were crossing Richmond Street, kind of the main drag in London Ontario, at Queens, (you know where this is, don't you, Jessica?) and I said to Meredith, "I just bought a book by a guy named Terry Pratchett," and (because I had read the first chapter to myself), I added, "we're going to just love it."<br />
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We did. Since that time, I bought all of his books, some of them in duplicate, for fear of losing the original. Those books mattered that much to me. They still do. I don't think there is a writer alive who can make me <strong><em>howl with laughter page after page and then, suddenly, fall into the well of sadness at the bottom of life, the place that can kill us, really, if we don't encounter it bracketed by laughter and joy</em></strong>. I've tried in this blog to encourage you to write for the joy of it. And so today I would like to devote this blog to Sir Terry Pratchett, and in particular, to his philosophy of writing. <br />
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Terry Pratchett has said it many times. What he says is that <em><u>writing is the most fun thing a person can do by him/herself.</u></em><br />
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How can I make you see how this man <em>shows</em> this philosophy <em>without</em> being untrue to the sadness that exists in this world? Today, I thought I'd just go straight to the joy, the playfulness, in one of his lesser known books, a quotation from page 187 of a book called <em>Pyramids</em>.<br />
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I want to do it <em>today</em>, as a tribute, even though I haven't yet got permission, because only today I found out that Sir Terry Pratchett is still writing great books that make you laugh, but he is fighting the loss of his mental ability to play with concepts and maybe there won't be too many more of these great books. His courage and smile won't go away, however. I want you to know him, just a little, through the quotation I'm going to share with you without permission, and then, I want you to read every single one of his books, because if you do that, while you're struggling with "hard stuff", you will understand what I mean about writing with joy. His books will also.make you laugh if you happen to need it before you get where you want to be, in your own writing.<br />
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The following small bit of text is like a footnote, separated off from the main novel by an asterisk, having nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but thrown in just because Pratchett was having fun with an idea, and probably laughing out loud as he wrote it:.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">* ...the fastest animal on the Disc is the extremely neurotic Ambiguous Puzuma, which moves so fast that it can actually achieve near-lightspeed in the Disc's magical field. This means that if you can see a puzuma, it isn't there. Most male puzumas die young of acute ankle failure caused by running very fast after females which aren't there, and, of course, achieving suicidal mass in accordance with relativistic theory." [Einstein says that in order to travel at <em>nearly </em>the speed of light, your mass would increase hugely, and even though mass is not really weight, hey, go with the joke, and imagine this puzuma's ankles breaking while trying to support its huge weight as he runs at almost the speed of light to catch the female who isn't there. - WWK]. "The rest of them die of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, since it is impossible for them to know who they are and where they are <em>at the same time</em>, and the see-sawing loss of concentration this engenders means that the puzuma only achieves a sense of identity when it is at rest -- usually about fifty feet into the rubble of what remains of the mountain it just ran into at near light-speed. The puzuma is rumoured to be about the size of a leopard with a rather unique black and white check coat, although those specimens discovered by the Disc's sages and philosophers have inclined them to declare that in its natural state the puzuma is flat, very thin, and dead."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> -- permission for this quotation is needed. I quoted it first and am now seeking permission because I think Air Terry <em>would want to see his words in context in this blog</em> before granting permission. <u>However, this is not something we should do</u>. Rightly, I should ask first and use later. I apologize in advance if this quote will have to be removed, or if Sir Terry or his agent or his publisher is upset by my using it beforehand. </span> <br />
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Writing your novel with a spirit of light-heartedness and fun is what has made Pratchett one of the most widely-read novelists in the world. You don't <em>have</em> to put funny things into your book to let your own light-heartedness and joy in writing come across to the reader. You simply have to try very hard to write the very best book you can, <em>while at the same time</em> having more fun than you've ever had (alone) in your life.<br />
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I was lucky enough to be reading my <em>Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable</em> (an incredible source of the "itch" that you can turn into an idea for a book) one day and to discover by sheer chance (????) a single entry that is supposedly true and funny but only a sentence long. In reading this, I immediately recognized that this had to have been an "itch" that Pratchett had also discovered and scratched away at until he had the entire idea for a book of his that I love very much. The entry in Brewer is not, of course, the "idea" that created the book, but it's the <em>source</em> of the idea. Ideas happen when you scratch away at something that itches inside your mind. You're so taken up by the itch, and the need to think about it, and to ask all kinds of "what if..." questions about it, that eventually you find that you have an idea for a book. <br />
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I was delighted to find the entry in Brewer years after I <em>first </em>read the book that I am positive the Brewer entry helped Terry Pratchett write. It made me see that <em>my</em> hero, Pratchett, does just what<em> I</em> do. He finds something strange, or weird, or cool, <em>somewhere</em> (I do that too: I use Brewer and newspapers and the little human interest stories that are fillers in some magazines, as well as things that come to me in my own life) until just such an itch catches my mind's interest, and then I scratch at it until I have the idea for the book (well, I guess it isn't the whole book, but rather, some major part of it, e.g. the plot problem, the solution of the plot problem, the main characters' innermost problems and how they interact with the basic plot problem, or why the heroes <u>can't</u> solve the plot problem at the beginning of the book but <u>have </u>to solve it). <br />
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To know that (even though I will never be able to write books that are as good as Pratchett's) I do <em>basically </em>what he does, wow, that just "made my day"!<br />
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And so I dedicate today's blog, and all of your writing in the workshop portion of this blog, to Sir Terry Pratchett, and I pray that the cure that I hear is just around the corner will reach him before, like the puzuma, he runs into that corner at near light-speed.<br />
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To Sir Terry! To Laughter and Joy! To a Cure for Altzheimer's!!!Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-2636275257885245432010-10-26T21:00:00.000-04:002010-10-26T21:00:49.510-04:00The House: an Update!So tomorrow night we sign papers that should give us the mortgage money we need.<br />
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Today we had the building inspector in and he said that it was a good house, solidly built, only needed a bit of tweaking. Only one minor worry, which he said we should deal with. They had insulated the house with the blue foamy thing that dries to something kind of like armour. Mostly that's the best kind, but apparently there is one kind that looks the same as all the others but has urea formaldehyde in it. This is something that our insurance company could refuse us insurance on, if we don't validate it. I'm just thanking God that I told the realtor we needed till NEXT Tuesday to get everything sorted, while encouraging him to tell the vendors that we really do want to buy the house.<br />
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So, we've drawn up a floor plan and we can get most of our furniture in, the good stuff, anyway. The rest, well, you have to know when to let go. We have three lockers here full of stuff that needs to be stored dry (i.e. books, mostly; photos, that kind of thing).<br />
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If all goes well with the foam insulation we are going to get the insurance sorted, get our lawyer, and buy this fantastic little bungalow only four houses down from the best little village inside a city you can imagine.<br />
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<u>I'm so excited.</u>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-19701610511645412582010-10-26T20:54:00.000-04:002010-10-26T20:54:18.537-04:00Tip 6: How Do You Discover the Whole of Your Story?Here's some <em><u>real homework</u></em> for you. Fortunately, it's fun all the way, and you won't even think about writing while you do it. <br />
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Please go out and rent or buy a DVD copy (I own a copy and use it regularly in workshops) of the movie Minority Report. It's quite old, a science fiction movie but also a mystery. You won't be sorry to own it, once we go through it together after you watch it. (If you don't own a DVD player you can buy it in VHS, but it's easier for us all to refer to the same place in the movie given chapters.)<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><strong><em>Please watch it twice</em></strong>, and then right away let me know you've watched it?</span> Even if you've already watched it before, please watch it again, very carefully. <strong><span style="background-color: yellow;"><em><u>When everyone who usually checks in tells me they've read it, I'll lead you through this Tip</u></em>: on how to discover the whole of your story.</span></strong> I have never found anything that works better for me in helping others to understand the process. <br />
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Not everyone will discover the whole of their stories this way, but you know what? -- it ALWAYS works for me. <br />
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Hope to hear from you soon...<br />
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Welwyn-on-booksWelwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com137tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-66434388362775933652010-10-25T18:06:00.001-04:002010-10-25T18:13:21.217-04:00Tip #5 on Becoming Traditionally published<span id="goog_1082549323"></span><span id="goog_1082549324"></span><br />
I have been trying so hard to post a picture here. Loretta Stephenson did it as a beautiful title bar for this blog, and I really want to put it in, even if just as a picture in each post. Unfortunately, it won't post. It also seems I'm no longer able to post any pictures of mine at all. Something has gone really wrong here. But I did want you to know what a lovely thing she did. Loretta, maybe if you gave me a link to your picture on your website or your blog, I could put it in a link under my title (which you can't see, but it's there) and then people could at least click on it to see what a lovely piece of work it is, and know what a <u>kind heart</u> it came from. <br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">Before I go on with Tip #5, I do hope you all understand that this "homework" type stuff really is only something that will help you become better writers in your own work. It is your own original work</span>, not the stuff I'm suggesting you do as Tips to becoming traditionally published, <span style="background-color: yellow;">that you will be submitting for the Workshop, as Jessica has done with the first chapter of her novel, and that I'll be discussing either as a podcast or as a written commentary, depending on what this blog will let me do, on Monday, November 1.</span> Remember, you are all in the workshop, so I would really appreciate you sending me your comments soon on Jessica's Chapter One if you haven't already (she doesn't name it that, but it is the first chapter of a novel). <span style="background-color: yellow;">Also, do we have a volunteer to submit something for us to comment on for December 1? </span><br />
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1. Remember that you are not <em>really</em> writing (even your own special novel or short story) to become traditionally published. Remember that the <em>cake is having fun writing</em>, and the <em>frosting is who publishes you</em>. These days life is not so easy for traditional publishers. I have been hearing some frightening statistics. Perhaps within ten years there will be only electronic publishing. So more than ever, it's important to write your best, from your heart, to please your heart. What you do with your work of heart after that will be more a political decision than anything else. <br />
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2. Given that, I know that you still want to be traditionally published, and that it is unfair for you to be writing in a world where that is getting harder. <strong>I also know that you all have what it used to take: focus, true desire (as opposed to the wrong kind of desire, which is ego-based), ability, and the willingness to work however much you need, to hone your craft.</strong><br />
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3. So let's pretend (???) you actually still have that notebook I suggested you start several weeks ago, you know, the one with the stories listed in it, the stories from a current magazine or a book of short stories published in the last three years in the genre you want to join. (If you've tossed it in disgust into a garbage can, that's okay, sad, but okay. It doesn't have to stop you from this exercise).<br />
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<em><u>This exercise is quite difficult, and therefore hugely fun to do.</u></em> If you still have your notebook , go and have a look at all the stories that you've rewritten in your own style. That was fun, I'm sure it was. Now go back to the magazine or book that you started from, and <em>pick two of the stories</em>, ones that are quite different in style. I'm talking about the <em>original versions</em> here. <br />
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<strong>Say you choose as Story A the original one called "Buying Plums", and as Story B the original one called "Facts of Life". Here is the exercise. WRITE: "Buying Plums" -- the<u> same story</u>, the <u>same characters</u>, the <u>same theme</u>, and likely <u>the same resolution</u> -- <span style="color: #0c343d;">only write it as if the author of "Facts of Life" had written it.</span> Then, if you are up to the challenge, do it the other way around. If you can't do more than a page of it, don't think less of yourself. Every little bit you do, you will learn more, and someday you'll be able to do the whole thing. Just do what you can.</strong><br />
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(But somehow I can hear the groans from here...) <br />
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4. If you tossed out your notebook, go get another magazine, and pick two stories whose styles are very different, and do the same thing as above. <br />
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5. This is hard to do, but it isn't work. Why? Because you don't have to do it. You only will do it if you want to, if you believe you'll learn some really good tricks of the trade by doing it. Work is stuff you have to do. <br />
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If you think this exercise is going to be more work than fun, don't do it at all. <span style="background-color: yellow;">The reason why it is fun is that you're<u> being you (Person 1)</u> being <u>someone else</u> (Person 2) writing something else by a different writer (Person 3) in the style of Person 2. It's really quite funny, when you think about it like this.</span><br />
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Remember you have help:<br />
(a) prayer, if you believe in it, to help you to remember that this is funny.<br />
(b) wine or beer, if you use it -- avoid the hard stuff<br />
(c) laughter, always. If you can't find laughter at yourself or at one of the authors or at both of them, then go online and ask your friends to send you some of those joke sheets that are always being emailed around. <br />
(d) phone a good friend or your spouse. Tell them you're too good a writer to have to do this and invite them to go to a movie with you. Just one night, though... <br />
(e) get someone to rub your shoulders, loosen your tense muscles, massage your scalp.<br />
(f) have a spa day with a bunch of friends at one of their houses. Men, you too. Mud packs on the face will make you laugh and the mud will crack and you'll all laugh at each other. It's important to laugh.<br />
(g) exercise very hard for five minutes exactly. Whatever kind of exercise that will make you feel proud of yourself for doing. <br />
(h) Remember that Person B and Person C, who have worked so hard on the thing you're rewriting, would <u>hate</u> what you're doing, and <u>be grateful that they will never see what you're doing</u>. That will also make you laugh.<br />
(i) Remember that this exercise is not meant to be <em>necessary </em>to you as a writer. Think of it as a game. It's a game of strategy, where you learn a whole lot of other people's stylistic techniques without having to pay a penny to get them to teach it to you. <br />
(j) Yell "I hate you Welwyn" (don't pronounce the second w, it's kind of like saying Wellen) whenever you feel like it.<br />
(k) Hug your kids, or your partner, and tell them what you're trying to do in a way that'll make them laugh. Or send it in an email to someone else, and make them laugh. <br />
(j) Remember all the things you have to be grateful for, one of which is that you'll never feel obliged to do this again. Only, you're not obliged, remember? You can do it, or you can say No. Be grateful for that.<br />
Good luck, as always, and<u> keep on adding to the list of things that help when you are finding some writing task difficult</u>. You'll learn your own tricks. Post them below!Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-63337047705160133942010-10-24T18:49:00.000-04:002010-10-24T18:49:19.924-04:00We are maybe but almost certainly oh I hope so buying a house!I live in a place in London, Ontario we call the Old South. Originally, it went as far south as maybe six streets south of the Thames River, where two branches meet. The best street in the olden days was just full of mansions, and it was called Grand Ave. A long time ago, when I was teaching math at South Secondary School (in the Old South) I lived in an apartment on Grand Ave. It was a bit down at the heel, but the trees were huge and beautiful, and the street wide, full of character. Well, then I married and moved to various apartments in different parts of the city, and finally my husband and I bought a house on Windsor Ave (in the Old South) where my daughter Meredith was brought into the world. Times changed... lives changed... I had to leave. Many year later, I left London altogether, and moved to Kitchener for four or five years, and then Toronto for four or five years, and finally to a small house in a small village in the Laurentians of Quebec. I have rarely been so out of my element as I was there. We moved back to Ontario and, somehow, to London. Greg had never lived in London, and he thought the idea of us having an "Old South" was funny. So we took one day, and looked at two apartment buildings in the Old South, and Greg fell in love with one of the apartments. I'm writing this in that apartment building. But next week, ooooohhhhh, I'm so excited, next week if we get the financing and if the house passes a building inspection, we are moving into our very own bungalow in the Old South. <br />
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Picture mint juleps (ips?) and two nice rockers on a front porch that spreads all the way across the front of the house, with leaded glass windows, a nice big tree (maple, I think -- the leaves have all dropped here now) and a big stone house with a centre hall plan and -- are you ready -- brick on brick on brick!!! It is so old, it has been renovated twice, once towards the back yard, and once into the front yard. Each time, it got bigger and it had a new layer of bricks added. It has fluted columns of stone holding up the roof over the verandah, and a HUGE kitchen which I love, and a HUGE living room that isn't all long and skinny, like the one we have here, and a formal dining room, and four bedrooms, and two bathrooms, exactly twice what we have here in both. So, keep your fingers cross for us, will you? Send wishes for good our way. I should know by Wednesday, I hope, but we have till the following Tuesday if something takes longer than we expected. I love this house. <br />
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And the best thing is, the front verandah is right across the street from the door that I used to take my little girl to Montessori classes every day until the end of Grade Three. I think there will be a few tears in those julips if I do get to drink them there. I miss my Meredith so much. She's so far away. (Victoria).<br />
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Hugs to you all!<br />
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Welwyn-on-houses!!!Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-47203819104294420432010-10-20T17:12:00.000-04:002010-10-20T17:12:11.619-04:00Some nice numbersI'm happy to tell you that since I started this blog there have been no bounces. That means, I'm told, that no one came just once. It's impossible to know how many people came since many have come several times, but in the last two months alone we have 2923 visitors from (in descending order of numbers of visitors)<br />
Canada <br />
USA<br />
South Korea<br />
Russia<br />
Sri Lanka<br />
Australia<br />
United Kingdom<br />
Netherlands<br />
United Arab Emirates<br />
Romania<br />
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I would like to thank you all for coming, and quietly observing or joining in, whichever makes you more comfortable. I hope you will keep returning. Do encourage your writerly or artist friends to visit. Thanks so much, all of you, for making this blog a success!Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-56990593663572483652010-10-20T16:25:00.002-04:002010-10-20T16:50:10.991-04:00InspirationThe word really means "breathing in". We all do this all this time. Sometimes, though, we take huge breaths in. It's a gasp of astonishment, really. We don't do it because we are breathless, but because we are "blown away". When you can't write but want to, and you've got your attitude on and it still doesn't work, try going onto NASA's website, or National Geographic's or really any site that shows you photographs of things that already fascinate you. Bet you'll find some "inspiration" there.<br />
I love caves and stones and geology and astronomy and a lot of other astounding things. So, here are a few pictures (or kind of picture) that give me inspiration.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL88P-CfaRI/AAAAAAAAAEk/BjFSbq-ubGA/s1600/cave-basalt-formation_w725_h483gaea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL88P-CfaRI/AAAAAAAAAEk/BjFSbq-ubGA/s400/cave-basalt-formation_w725_h483gaea.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cave SW Australia copyright free</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lechuguilla_Cave_Pearlsian_Gulf.jpg" onclick="OmnitureClick('Topic | Entry | ImageClick');" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="Click to see an enlarged picture" src="http://images.encyclopedia.com/utility/image.aspx?id=2793796&imagetype=Hero" title="Click to see an enlarged picture" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">stalactites (hanging) stalagmites (growing up) and pool in a cave </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9AXRkwPVI/AAAAAAAAAEs/iZkfpbai2QE/s1600/cave-underground-limestone-formations_w725_h544+orange+light+crop+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9AXRkwPVI/AAAAAAAAAEs/iZkfpbai2QE/s400/cave-underground-limestone-formations_w725_h544+orange+light+crop+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">limestone cave, SW Australia<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9PrSEiLnI/AAAAAAAAAE4/MTqCRhkeeLk/s1600/amazing+space+nebula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9PrSEiLnI/AAAAAAAAAE4/MTqCRhkeeLk/s640/amazing+space+nebula.jpg" width="379" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">amazing space nebula (NASA)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9ECZMQaLI/AAAAAAAAAEw/D1yrVp6PeTI/s1600/North+Star+Companion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL9ECZMQaLI/AAAAAAAAAEw/D1yrVp6PeTI/s320/North+Star+Companion.jpg" width="254" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our North Star has a companion!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NASA photo of a massive star cluster</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=9422&picture=crystals&large=1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Crystals" class="okraj" height="214" src="http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/nahled/crystals-2961285770979xlqM.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">quartz crystal points in natural form</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Grand Canyon National Park" class="imagecache imagecache-parkphoto_header" height="131" src="http://www.ohranger.com/sites/ohranger.com/files/imagecache/parkphoto_header/parkphotos/GRCA_GrandCanyonHDR.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Grand Canyon National Park" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Grand Canyon</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL8-ew75PDI/AAAAAAAAAEo/d87J605Zxs4/s1600/lichen-on-granite_w725_h544.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lmRogwq50Qo/TL8-ew75PDI/AAAAAAAAAEo/d87J605Zxs4/s400/lichen-on-granite_w725_h544.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Lichen on a rock</div><br />
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</div>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-12585695501101573792010-10-19T21:53:00.001-04:002010-10-19T21:55:30.421-04:00The Serving of Story Part 3: Too Much Authority Too Soon<dt class="comment-data" id="c3850646706777385202"><strong><span style="color: #783f04;">On September 20, I wrote a one-sentence comment on my blog:</span></strong></dt><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #783f04;">"When you write, <em>you don't write primarily from the mind</em>, you write out of the love you feel for the people in your story, which means <em>everything</em> you write is meant to <em>serve these people </em>and does not exist to fulfil some intellectual goal of your own, such as getting published."</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: black;">Today, I have the second of two important comments from readers that I really want to answer in detail, and so I'm doing it here, where I have a lot more room than in the comments section. </span></strong><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="c3850646706777385202"></a><br />
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At <a class="comment-data-link" href="http://blog.booksbywelwyn.ca/2010/09/serving-characters.html#c3850646706777385202" title="comment permalink"><span style="color: #225588;">15 October, 2010 </span></a>, <span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05269325885416869763" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: #225588;">Stephen Dunscombe</span></a> said... <br />
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<dd class="comment-body"><strong>It's been a long, long time since I've felt any love for any of the people in my story, and I only really realised this recently. I still get ideas for *stories* - ideas that grab hold and won't let go, scenes and images that move me, that I want to make happen *somewhere* - but nobody in them has any life to them, and so the writing almost immediately becomes a slog.</strong><br />
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<strong>I've recently gotten back into fanfic after many years of avoiding it, and I'm finding that helps - it's full of people I already know and love, and so I can go back to who they are again and again.</strong></dd><br />
<div class="comment-body">______________</div><div class="comment-body"><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Fiction is a weirdsome beast. It is both more and less true than reality. The more true part comes from your</span> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">own understanding that your characters are never going to be coming to knock on your door to ask you to go out to the movies with them. That one fact, the awareness deep inside you that fictional characters are never going to live unless you make them live for the reader, forces you to write fiction that other people will want to read. Fiction also is more true than fact because you, the author, knows what really happened, and why it happened, and why all the people in the story do what they do, and why somebody didn't go to his/her friend's house that night. </span><br />
<div class="comment-body"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The other part, where fiction is less true than reality, means that fiction is more contained than fact. When you write fact you're always wondering what part to put in and what part to leave out. It all happened, right? But when you write fiction, you serve the story by including within it only those things that matter to the outcome of the story and the understanding of all the characters. Your character doesn't have to actually tie his shoelaces. He can just slam out the door. He doesn't have to slam the green wooden door with the brass-dragon-head knob. Do you see what I mean? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">There's the kind of Authority, in Story, that serves your story perfectly, allowing you to know 100% of why and how everything in the story happens. Opposing that, is the desperation of not knowing how much to put in to start with, and how much to just fly with. Most people don't do enough work period. But I am fairly certain, given your clue about loving the fan-fiction as opposed to your own creative fiction, that the opposite is your problem. You do too much work in your own creative fiction before you let yourself fly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Listen to what MPax had to say about being 100% in Authority over her story:</span><br />
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<div><span style="background-color: yellow;">"I've started the spit & polish on my second novel this weekend. So, I've been putting myself in my main character's shoes. Been writing up character goals, motivation & conflict charts. I don't do that until after the first draft as I plot best when writing. It works best with the characters telling me who they are instead of the other way around. Then I write up sheet to focus and do the spit & polish."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: yellow;"> -MPax, private communication </span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">In other words, MPax just doesn't try to know 100% of what she knows she's going to have to know, in order for the story to make perfect sense in the world she has let form itself along the way. She just does her "reality check" at the end. I've never done that myself, but I can imagine it being "a blast", as she described one of her novels to me. That's what writing should be. A "BLAST"!!! And even more fun because until it gets published, it's all yours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Going back to fan-fiction, Stephen, and finding it helps you to love your writing again, just has to explain why your "original" fiction might turn to slog for you - as opposed to the love and fun and excitement you have writing fan-fics (which are stories written in worlds and with characters other writers have created, the original story not being fan-fic, but something that allows the original writer to tell one story in one part of his/her world, and to have 100% understanding of why and how everything happened in that story, while still leaving, beyond those boundaries, a richness and edginess that provoke other writers to want to see more and more and more stories in that world, and so to write them themselves.) Boundaries in fan-fiction, being more or less pre-determined, allow you to relax, settle into a world you already know really well, with some characters you know very well indeed, and either use just them or introduce some new ones, and then create a new story beyond the boundary of the original story. Because you're relaxed and haven't had to work yourself to death to know everything about everything in this world with people you haven't had to slog over to make real and believable, then you can catch something amazingly like lightning, and write yourself a story and have fun again.</span></div><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">What I believe about you, Stephen, without really any evidence except intuition, is that you are the kind of person who fears to hurt your amazing idea in your own creative fiction by not knowing enough about your world and its people before you start writing. How much is too much? How much is enough?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Imagine eating an endless medieval banquet, each course having stuff you like, each course giving you some satisfaction, but as you get fuller, and fuller, and heavier and heavier, you find yourself just... well, tired. And the courses just don't stop. You want them to bring a dessert made of air, but always one heavy course leads to another. Instead of courses of food, imagine creating an island, and peopling it, and then you wonder if it's volcanic, and if so what kind of pressures created the island just here, so you look across the world at some undersea crevice, and you say, okay, this is getting plugged up and it causes pressure under my island. Satisfied, you want to go on, but that crevice, why is it getting plugged up? Being a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and curious individual, you <u>have</u> to know. And so, one thing leads to the next, and it's just like that banquet, Stephen. Your world has too much STUFF in it for your story to need, in order to work. You overdose on heavy main courses of research, and by the time you get to your wonderful idea as the "dessert" part of your story, <u>it's only the beginning</u>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Not fun any more? Well, I guess not!!! Not easy to love a brilliant idea that is only the beginning after all the work you've already done. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><u>Don't take this to mean that you should not <strong>do</strong> the <strong>kind</strong> of work that you do, in writing <strong>your own creative fiction</strong>.</u> <strong><em>Just don't try to do it all at first</em></strong>, because you'll end up doing more than you'll ever need in your story. Your idea strikes. You do not put it on the shelf. You start writing with it. It will be only a scene, the first scene where this idea is going to have an effect on characters that are only just vaguely formed in your mind. As you write it, you'll find out what you need to know that you don't know yet. When that happens, when there is one thing that simply must be known, then you figure out that one thing. Eventually, bit by bit, as you are writing, problems will arise you'll solve them where they happen, and then you'll keep on writing, until a character refuses to do what you'd do, and you don't understand why until you sit down with your notebook and just let the ideas flow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I call it having my character in for coffee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">When the need to know something comes up, that's when you do the work. It's never a slog then. It's always only <strong>one</strong> bit of information, and you know <strong>why</strong> you need to know it, and you don't have to take a year to figure it out. By the time you're done, you'll know everything you need to know about your world, your characters, and your idea. Maybe there's other stuff you <em>could</em> know about it, but as long as what you have done is solid and strong and a place for lightning to hit the stars, it doesn't matter. Let other fan-fiction writers add to your world, and enjoy it that <em>they can</em>. That <em>you've left them space to do it</em>. They can't change <u>your</u> story because it's 100% solid with your Authority. But they can love your world, and your characters, and play with them the way, right now, you're playing in other peoples' worlds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Now won't THAT be amazing? Knowing <em>you've</em> created a world and characters 100% complete <u>within the boundaries you've set for those characters to solve their particular plot problem</u>, while still leaving enough edges and depths to make other people want to work with them?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Think of your solitary creative fiction like that. Think that you are creating the source of a million and one fan-fics. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">And every now and then, it doesn't hurt to take a holiday from writing your own stories, anyway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span></div><div class="comment-body"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
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</div>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-42929936066100581962010-10-19T20:10:00.000-04:002010-10-19T20:10:08.592-04:00An excellent method to characterizeMPax has permitted me to use this quote:<br />
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<div><span style="background-color: yellow;">"I've started the spit & polish on my second novel this weekend. So, I've been putting myself in my main character's shoes. Been writing up character goals, motivation & conflict charts. I don't do that until after the first draft as I plot best when writing. It works best with the characters telling me who they are instead of the other way around. Then I write up sheet to focus and do the spit & polish."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: yellow;"> -MPax, private communication </span></div><div></div><div><br />
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This may help you all to understand my comment to her earlier. She has Authority, but she doesn't know it until the story is over. See?<br />
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</div>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6360934556042398359.post-49405838343898496492010-10-18T17:18:00.001-04:002010-10-18T17:52:45.128-04:00The Serving of your Story Part 2: AuthorityAt the end of September - was it only a bit more than two weeks ago? - I posted this to my blog:<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #783f04;">When you write, <em>you don't write primarily from the mind</em>, you write out of the love you feel for the people in your story, which means <em>everything</em> you write is meant to <em>serve these people </em>and does not exist to fulfil some intellectual goal of your own, such as getting published.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: black;">There were quite a few comments, and I thought a couple of them needed more space than the ridiculously few characters allowed in a comment. Here's the first one.</span></strong><br />
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<dt class="comment-data" id="c8082370410459969745"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/" name="c8082370410459969745"></a>At <a class="comment-data-link" href="http://blog.booksbywelwyn.ca/2010/09/serving-characters.html#c8082370410459969745" title="comment permalink"><span style="color: #225588;">04 October, 2010 </span></a>, <span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/03823012462702486533" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: #225588;">Quenby</span></a> said... </dt><br />
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In the past, when I was writing creatively and not academically, I would always base my characters on my family members. I would take small problems or troubling characteristics/situations they had and turn them into a character-defining dimension. <br />
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Because <span style="background-color: yellow;">I used real people to base my fiction on</span>, I felt so very close to my creations because, while they are severely flawed or fragmented(both my characters and the members of my immediate and extended family)I love them all dearly. I may sometimes be conflicted in my feelings, but there is always love. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Investing so much emotion into characters can be exhausting because it forces you to face the aspects of the real people your characters are based on, and it's not always pretty.</span> Through this type of writing, I've found myself able to forgive my characters, <u>who may emphasize a certain flaw more than the real person, and in this way, it can be so very cathartic when you look at the real life inspiration and see their smaller flaw in comparison.</u> <br />
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I don't know if this makes much sense, but what I'm trying to articulate is that <span style="background-color: yellow;">creative writing can be so very personal, so essential, and so entirely necessary that when you choose to put your work out there for publication only to have it shot down, it can be devastating.</span> I haven't attempted publishing any of my creative writing, but I can surmise that if anyone were to reject my characters or their stories, it would seem like a slight against those dear to me. <span style="background-color: yellow;">I want people to be able to forgive my characters the way I have</span>.</dd><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Your comments about loving the characters in your stories are different from what I meant when I talked about loving and serving the characters and the story. I'm really glad you brought these points up, however, because you write so cleanly and without confusion that I understand what you are saying and I'm sure other people will understand it too. By asking it so clearly, I can, I hope, answer you in such a way that other people will gain their own answers too. I hope, too, that I will be able to provide you (and the rest of the people reading this) with some things to think about, and at least a hint at some of the answers you need.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">WHY NOT USE PEOPLE YOU KNOW IN YOUR STORIES? WHY NOT JUST GIVE THEM NEW NAMES AND USE THEM? EVERYONE HAS TROUBLE WITH THEIR FAMILIES. WHY NOT WRITE FROM THE FIRST PERSON AND JUST CHANGE THE NAME OTHER PEOPLE CALL YOU BY IN THE STORY? WHY<u> NOT</u> WRITE A STORY ABOUT THE FAMILY AND THE TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD WITH THEM -- AND KILL FOUR BIRDS WITH ONE STONE? (four birds: tell you later.) These are questions that have come up so many, many times in writing workshops that you needn't feel you've asked something that other people instinctively know. Virtually no writer I know has ever expressed to me the answers to the above questions, though all the writers I know and respect do NOT use people they know as characters, and do NOT use their own problems, and do NOT write as if they are the main character. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">One problem is that you <em><u>know</u></em> your own family. You learn even more about your own family as you write about them. It makes you uncomfortable, exhausted even. You add more of the character flaws to the people you love because that is what the story is about, and you get even more exhausted. Eventually, through writing creatively about them, you come to some kind of resolution that allows you, Quenby, to understand and forgive your own flesh and blood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">But what has this to do with other peoples' flesh and blood? This is what has you in a turmoil, Quenby. Unless you have the freedom to create, to change characters in a major way from the way you believe 100% that they are in your own real life, it is very difficult to make those characters connect to other peoples' flesh and blood. I know you won't quite believe that. You'll say, "But I have a friend whose parents did that to her." And I'll say truthfully, "That's sad. Was it exactly that, what they did to your friend? And do you know why they did it? Was it for the very same reason as your parents did what they did to you?" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Now in saying this, I'm not really writing about your parents, Quenby. I don't even know your parents. I don't know your friend, or your friend's parents. I don't know what the problem is that your "parents" did to "you" and that you are "writing out". My connections to everything here are only as true as you can make them be for me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">"Well I'll just write more about them, and then you'll know,"</span> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">you might say.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">"Maybe I don't really believe that you are remembering with 100% truth everything you've already written," one of your readers might say, who will perhaps have just seen or will have seen early on through the "fictional" first person narrator to know it's really you, the author. You would have entered your own story somehow, and the reader would have seen it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">How? I believe it has to do with AUTHORITY.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">An author has authority because s/he knows 100% of what happened in the story and why. S/he has notes. S/he has what s/he has already written. S/he has friends to tell him or her, after reading something, "Hey man, why didn't your main character just go live with his best friend?" To an author, that would be an option, one that would be carefully considered, and even (okay, I'm not as crazy as this sounds :}) would kind of been talked over with the character, to see if it's something the character would choose to do under these circumstances. But a writer who is writing a story based on coloured fact, would simply say, "He didn't, that's all."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Authority. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">And now we are into the first place where fact is different from fiction. Your life seen through your eyes, is very different than your life seen through your family's eyes. Truth is somewhere in there. Some things are true, some are only true in your eyes, some are never true. I know this. I have a daughter. She remembers some things one way. I remember those episodes quite differently. The truth is in there somewhere, but it's not for sure 100% accurate in my mind and it's not for sure 100% accurate in my daughter's mind. Neither of us are liars. Nor are you, Quenby. All this problem with truth happens because <u>no one really knows the <em><strong>whole </strong></em>truth of a real life story</u> the way a writer of fiction knows the whole truth of a fictional story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Memory colours events. We just had a guest for the weekend. This is a fact. A story came up about a thing that happened 25 years ago. The two guys were going to do a musical gig on radio. One of them remembers (or so I was re-told this morning) that he had to keep using the bathroom. The other of them remembers that neither of them ever even left the car because a panic attack was going on. Today, having heard the story, last night, I remember<u>ed</u> our guest saying he'd gotten locked in the bathroom. I<u> also</u> remember the panic attack story. There's truth in what I remember. But what part of my memory is the exact truth? Can I even be 100% sure that the one that remembers the panic attack in the parked car remembers it 100% accurately?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">You are right to say you can't easily "expose" your stories to a critic's gaze. You didn't say this, but I know that part of the reason you are uncomfortable and exhausted at the thought is that you are stifled by the <em>reality</em> that your parents/siblings/cousins/etc. will read your story no matter how you try to hide its publication from them, and know what you think of them, or thought of them, before you wrote your way to understanding and forgiving them. You know very well they don't see themselves the way you do. That they never thought of themselves the way you did. Worse, in making them a bit "worse" or "different" for the sake of the conflict you're writing this story around, they will see the exaggeration and nothing else you could ever say will bring them back to you with love. They don't care if you forgive them in the end of the story, because they don't realize what on earth made you think they needed forgiveness in the first place. Therefore, what is true for you isn't true for them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Kill four birds with one stone: your family's sense of itself, yourself in relationship to them in your mind once you've "written it out" and seen how much less bad they are than you had thought, yourself in relationship to them once <em>they</em> read the story, and -- the story itself. You'll kill <u>it</u> for sure, because you won't have served all the characters in it with the kind of love that lets them be what they are. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> A fiction writer would let them be what they are, even mean. By letting them be that way, the fiction writer (a very good one, anyway) would come to understand why they are that way. Remember Margaret Laurence's novel <em>The Stone Angel? </em>Remember that dreadful female main character? Did you love her at the end? I did. I cried for her. But a writer can't make that happen for a reader unless s/he has the freedom to allow the characters to slowly explain, through the things they do, 100% of why they are the way they are. In the end, then, the author will know 100% about everyone and everything in the story. It won't be a question of what's right and what's wrong, or who remembers what. In writing about your family, Quenby, you would always be constrained by the fact that they can't be evil, they can't even do real evil, because you love them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Write with authority. Write fiction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><u>Make it up, and make it seem real. </u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Keep on writing your excellent slice-of-life from your point-of-view diaristic but resolved stories, if you want to. And then hide them until everyone who could ever be hurt by them is dead. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">But don't limit yourself like this, Quenby. Hang loose, free yourself from reality, and then sit down at the computer and INVENT. </span>Welwyn-on-bookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045795235815992667noreply@blogger.com14