10-minute writing prompts, part i

I am fortunate to have close friends who are also cousins. This means that at big family gatherings, I always have someone to hang out with (though my whole family is awesome. Trust me.). It's an extra bit of good fortune that some of them are also writers. This wonderful combination brought me and my cousins Jessie and Kara to 3 a.m. on Saturday night, when we decided to write stuff. Weird writing prompts was the game; I was introduced to storybase.net, which I highly recommend for this sort of thing. On the site, you pick two archetypical characters and either a mood or action, which gives you a list of scenarios. The first one we picked was "Trickster desperately wants Warrior to confess." After 10 minutes, this is what I had:

Tamin was playing with his favorite illusion -- shiny, incandescent bubbles. Insubstantial, but he was skilled enough to make it appear as if he was juggling items with actual weight. Tarwar didn't pay much attention. Unless Tamin showed his hand, Tarwar wasn't in the mood to play his games.

Tamin sidled closer, light-filled bubbles shimmering. Little flashes of glare kept twitching across Tarwar's newspaper. It was becoming too distracting. Tarwar raised his eyes.

Almost nonchalantly, Tamin caused his light-bubbles to vanish. "I talked to Ilrien today," he said.

Tarwar didn't answer.

A bubble bounced off the wall behind Tarwar's head and into the trickster's hand, where he tossed it to the ground. He bounced it, up and down, eyes on Tarwar's face. "I asked about the race," he said. "You said you were going to meet her."

"I said that," said Tarwar, noncommittally. He folded the newspaper, and it became a dagger in his hands. The blade, text from yesterday's headlines still visible, flashed with the incessant bouncing of Tamin's bubble.

"She didn't seem to recall having that conversation with you," said Tamin, leaning forward. The bubble of light in Tamin's hand disappeared as he pressed his palms onto the desk between them.

One thing I find interesting about this one is how it seems like I've jumped into a novel. There's some weird sort of a magic where you can apparently fold paper into real weapons, and these characters definitely have a history you don't see.

It's also interesting to note that I don't know that history. I don't know who Ilrien is or what sort of race would be happening in this magical universe. It was just the excuse I came up with to fit the situation. I'm a discovery writer. I make stuff up as I go. Maybe if we had gone a little longer, I would have had to come up with an explanation. Jessie, an outline writer, and I laughed at our different methods.

We did three writing prompts total. The other two will be posted soon. We didn't read them to each other, but it was neat to talk about what scenes we had come up with and how they were different.

If you think it's weird, I do too. Have some grace -- we only had ten minutes.

Stuck

I don't like the term writer's block. It's not just that it sounds like a nasty thing for us writers, which it is. Mostly it's frustrating because I feel like writer's block is my fault. Am I too uncreative, too moody, too caught up in "the muse" that I can't write whenever I want to? Not usually. Occasionally, however, I simply get stuck because of story reasons.

One thing that can really drag a novel down -- or help it fly -- is the pacing. This causes that, a plot point moves us forward, there's some reaction after this scene to absorb previous action, ebb and flow, purposeful movement. Some writers are masters at this, whether by instinct or training. I like to think it's something I'm tuned to -- I love to pay attention to pacing in novels -- but I definitely don't have the mastery I need to execute it properly.

Is the voice in my head that's telling me there's something wrong with this chapter responding to my sense for pacing? Or is it some other problem with the story entirely? Is it just the voice of self-consciousness and self-criticism that opposes anyone who takes on a creative project? Or am I not being dedicated enough?

Right now, I'm looking at some of the bigger, structural elements of the story. I'm finding that the minor characters I put in have to be there, but need to serve a greater purpose by the end. I have a plot point with tension that needs to emerge in a less contrived way. I need to make the causes leading up to it make better sense, and I have to make an escape seem surprising, yet inevitable.

Oh, chapter five, you needy document.

And chapter five comes pretty early. It's like a foundation for the story -- if I screw up the early parts, the later parts aren't going to have anything sound to stand on.

So I take a break to complain, define my problems for the Internet to see, and move on. What am I doing here? I've got revising to do.

A November Without NaNoWriMo

Even a few weeks ago, I was still deciding whether to take part in National Novel Writing Month. Though I knew I would be insanely busy and had another novel to work on, NaNo still hovered hopefully on the horizon, tempting me with thrilling possibilities. Eventually, sense blocked it out. In light of my need to concentrate on my current novel, I decided to let NaNoWriMo go.

I've participated in NaNoWriMo for four years. The last three, I've won. I also did Camp NaNoWriMo this summer, bringing my completed novel drafts up to 4 (the last two were the same novel, Void.) A lot of my writing energy gets saved up for November, so I can launch myself onto one story and concentrate all my abilities on it. This may not be the best way, but it's the way I usually do it. Spending November doing anything but madly writing around everything else sounds strange to me. That's one attitude that came to mind when my cousin told me last year that she wasn't doing it.

 "NaNo had just become part of the year. In November I'd write a novel. That was a five year streak!" she said.

To which I replied, "I will NaNo until I die from it!"

Right now, I'm not interested in killing myself trying to write a new novel and fix an old one at the same time. Still, I'll miss the breakneck pace, the creativity, the obsessive word count updates. I'll miss knowing that thousands of writers all around the world are striving for the same goal as me.

So, no 50,000-word goal. But I can still give myself writing goals for November. 50,000 words in a month comes out to 1,667 words a day. That's usually about 3 single-spaced pages for me (doesn't sound so scary now, huh?). I can try to revise 3 pages a day. This is a useful, practical goal. Some days I may be able to do a lot more than that, and others it'll be hard to measure due to plot threads that need major doctoring. Some days I may actually end up writing a lot. In any case, this draft should be alpha reader-ready by the end of November.

Those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year, good for you. Go crazy. Sometimes it's the best thing that can happen to you or your novel -- it was for me.

Deadlines are Magic

A month and a half after I finished writing it, I've finally completed a readthrough of my current manuscript for Void. At first, I wanted to take a break and step back from it, which is good for writing. It gives you perspective so you can come back to the story with sharper eyes. Still... I should have finished this a while ago. I have self-imposed deadlines, after all.

Deadlines... about those. The big, scary, far-off one is February 15th, my 20th birthday. That is the day I will send a completed manuscript to a publisher. (I'm hoping Tor, but I need to do some research first.) However, to get to that point, I'll need to set myself some smaller, but still challenging ones. Good thing deadlines are magic.

I think I can give myself until the beginning of December to work over what I have and get my story ready for alpha readers. At the very latest, I could let it slip till Christmas break. This is when I'll beg writing and story-savvy friends to tear apart all my words and tell me what's wrong with them, and pray they won't tear out my heart in the process. I may actually have to limit myself on the number of people I have read it, though, just to make sure the input is focused and I can handle all of it. If you're reading this and are interested, please let me know.

In the meantime, I will be rewriting. Considering the quality of the draft I just read, the time frame I have to work with is mildly terrifying. This is what you get for procrastinating, I suppose. And considering that this is my first time taking a novel to this level in the editing process (my first time finishing a novel-length second draft), there might be better ways to go about it. Like, doing better research before starting. Right now, I have to come up with a semi-plausible-sounding way to modify a dying nuclear generator so as to set off an EMP, as well as consider its ramifications. I have to make the mechanics of character development, dramatic reveals, and the operations of a secret underground society go smoothly and believably. And I have to fix big glaring mistakes (oh, yeah, I forgot that character existed...) and find all the tiny, sneaky ones.

I will be spending the month of January at home, possibly working, but it will also be my time to work on the issues my early readers find and polish all the words. NaNoWriMo has proved to me that I can spend an entire month focused on a story; this January, I'll see if I can finish one instead of start it.

Then I'll have two weeks in February to make sure I'm happy with everything before this challenge I gave myself over half a year ago is over. (Yeah, over half a year. Again, procrastination.)

Am I scared? Yes. Can I do it? I'm certain. Tight deadlines can be awful, but they're also the reason I've managed to write first drafts for three different 50,000-word novels in the first place while having rehearsal every night (November tends to be a heavy month for theater), as well as a 60,000-word second draft. These next four months might be terrible (especially if I decide to be insane and do NaNoWriMo again), but I can do it.

Why? Because I love this story. It's the reason I wrote it in the first place.

Heaven help me. Bye for now -- I've got work to do.

Tech is a dirty word

I've been busy enough lately that one of the things I've not been working on is my novel, Void. I think I'm starting to suffer separation anxiety. I hope to give it a larger portion of my attention soon, but in all my busyness elsewhere (theater, notably), my mind has still been wandering back to it.

In the story, technology for the common people has been suppressed to the point that engines and electronics have legendary status. So, when trying to come up with a mild "curse" word that would be consistent with this world, I decided that "tech" was the word to use. I first considered it because I thought it was funny -- haha, tech sounds like heck. "To tech with that!" "The tech do you think you're doing?" Eventually, this evolved into the adjective "tecking."

After awhile, it stopped being what was basically a funny placeholder for until I thought of a better word. I started to realize how it fit in the consciousness of the people of Void's world. It's a part of the culture I've created, and it's become a symbol and watchword for other points in the story.

However, the thought process that brought me there is kind of weird for me. I don't cuss in real life. Really. Not at all, unless "darn!" and the occasional "crap!" count. I grew up in a house where nobody cursed (at least not in my hearing) and I didn't start absorbing foul language until middle school. By then, other forms of expression were habit enough that I could block it out. During high school and working in various places, I was shocked by just how much profanity was tossed around. The f-word? It's ridiculous! It doesn't even make sense, and I've listened to people who use it three or four times a sentence.

So why use even fake curse words in stories?

Firstly, my characters aren't me. They don't come from the same background. They come from difficult lives where they've absorbed a lot of stress, pain, and in all likelihood, cursing. It can be a descriptor for the people, a normalizer, and another way to flesh out the story. (Brandon Sanderson's "Stormfather!" and "storm you!" in Way of Kings is a good example of this.) Also, I think there are times in stories when its absence can be conspicuous. Simply mentioning that a character cursed without saying the actual word can be awkward when done too often.

Lately, though, I'm wondering if the use of "tech!" was subconscious for me. "Tech" in the theater world is short for "technical" -- the rehearsals that happen just before a performance, in which everything goes wrong. Actually, it's when all the technical aspects have to come together. Lighting and sound cues, makeup, props, set, everything has to be finished. To the cast and crew, tech week is about as fun as hours of intense boredom mixed with little sleep, random bursts of intense physical activity, and frustration when, as said before, all the things go wrong.

Last week was tech week for Taylor theater's production of Waiting for Godot. The frustration that comes with tech was very much on my mind. Still, it was a good week for me. I got through lots of work and obstacles and survived intact. Now I'm looking forward to going through some of the same processes in Void.

So, fantasy writers -- leery of stooping to profanity? Trying to come up with suitable modes of expression to portray intense anger or frustration? Be classy; make something up! The right word might already be swimming around in your head.

Redeeming Love and the Book of Hosea

Last weekend, I devoured Francine Rivers's Redeeming Love. I rarely love Christian fiction, and I don't typically read romance, but after hearing how wonderful it was and finding it almost magically on my roommate's desk, I had to pick it up. I read until four in the morning and then I started again at 10 a.m. the next day until I was finished.

Coincidentally, a few days afterward, we started studying Hosea in my Hebrew prophets class. We're not all the way through, but only the first three chapters deal with the events Redeeming Love is largely based on -- Hosea, at God's command, taking the prostitute Gomer for a wife. The rest of Hosea goes back into the prophet-speak that until recently I had a hard time concentrating on.

I haven't read anything else by Francine Rivers, and I won't say that it's the best writing I've ever read. But something about Redeeming Love is deeply touching and personal. Mirrored in the complexities of Angel and Michael's relationship are a thousand circumstances and feelings that I've struggled with in my relationship with God.

The story is beautiful. However, it doesn't correspond perfectly with the events in Hosea.

Maybe that wasn't what Rivers was going for. That's fine. I'd just always heard it was "based on the book of Hosea" and so assumed certain things about it. In Redeeming Love, the relationship between Israel and God is reflected in a very personal way, but the story in the Bible is just a little different.

While reading the book of Hosea, I was always confused by how God commands Hosea to take Gomer back after she's run away: "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery..." (NKJV) It never seemed to me that the wording suggested God was actually talking about Gomer. A woman? Is that specific enough? It turns out that it's not specific in the Hebrew, either.  It doesn't actually say that Gomer runs away back to prostitution, either. People kind of infer the story from the way God and Hosea address Israel in the rest of the book. I have to wait til we're done studying Hosea to draw any more conclusions.

But what's the point? I don't know enough to be able to say what really happened to Hosea. He took the prostitute Gomer for a wife, and then again redeemed an adulteress with love. But I still think Rivers is dead on in her interpretation of the main point of the book: God wants to win back those unfaithful to Him with His love.

It's easy to take a mistaken stance in Christianity and focus on your behavior, the effectiveness of the church, even something so big as missions and make that the focal point, but really, it comes down to being loved by God. Until you understand that, you can't really love Him back.  None of your good deeds can save you. You can't hide your sin. Your American Protestant work ethic does not help you. It's love God, or nothing. Anything else is prostitution of the heart.

I recommend the book to high schoolers and up. It's not graphic, but it does mention out of necessity some... well... the main character is a prostitute, after all. It's more important to realize what the story represents and how it reflects on us. It's about God's redeeming love for us. Nothing else.

Articulating Feelings

This post was originally written as a reflection for my writing class. So far, we've talked about writing, how great it is, and how it affects us. Yes, this is a class. Cool, right?

Some of our discussions about literature and writing so far have reminded me of conversations I’ve had with my boyfriend. I am an emotional person who often relies on feelings to figure things out, whereas he is a very logically-thinking person with little emotional fluctuation. Consequently, sharing our viewpoints is fascinating. I’m also the more creative one, so I’ll go off talking about some project or story or idea, and he’ll ask questions that make me probe deeper into how I think about the story or about music, art, or literature in general.

One thing I mentioned to him about class was my professor's observation that The Lord of the Rings is possibly one of the most powerful stories ever written. Both my boyfriend and I love LotR. Both of us would agree with that statement. But, to understand what I think (and add to his ever-growing mental database of how other minds work) he started asking me questions that forced me to articulate things that usually exist as untapped feeling in my head. 

I love reading, writing, and stories very much. But my feelings about them are wrapped up in things I truly believe. Reading makes us better people. Reading expands our mental experience and our empathy. Stories give us hope and show us how faith and living interact. Even stories that aren’t “Christian.” Even stories that are dark. Some stories may not be particularly edifying, but I would argue that most of them are, at least in some way. Literature would mean nothing if it didn’t in some way echo truth.

Sometimes it takes me a while to argue these things properly, but I think the evidence is all around us. I know I definitely wouldn’t be the person I am today without books. They’ve been such a big influence on how I grew up and how I think even now that I have no idea what kind of person I would be if I didn’t love reading. And – this is a feeling I don’t think I’ll bother articulating – I have to believe I’m a better person than I would have been otherwise.

The reflections that give rise to this kind of thought are one of the reasons I love discussing literature. I wish more people would talk about these things. I wish more people could see what stories do for us. Until then, I will continue the conversations. I hope whoever reads this will, too.