I love the outcome to this fight.
When I was little, my big idol was Schwarzenegger, that was when I actually thought I could grow to be that size. I think that once I realized that I wouldn't grow past a certain point and forever be a scrawny guy, my idol turned to be Bruce Lee. :o)
So 'Spark' is finally done. It needs some polishing, but the story is finally there. The emotions, while still raw, have been captured. In yet another break in the lucky streak that is my writing right now, I happened upon a bit of French that's perfect for the story.
From the beginning I've had Silas, the Pro, singing a French nursery rhyme throughout. Trouble was, there wasn't really any deeper meaning to the rhyme other than it being French. Last night, in researching other rhymes I came across this, “Dors, mon enfant.” If you'd like to read it along with the piano accompaniment, play the youtube video.
“Dors, mon enfant.”
Dors entre mes bras,
Enfant plein de charmes!
Tu ne connais pas
Les soucis, les larmes;
Tu ris en dormant,
À ton doux sourire,
Mon coeur se déchire;
Dors, ô mon enfant!
Dors sur les genoux
De ta pauvre mère,
Car le sort jaloux
T'a ravi ton père;
Je veille en tremblant
Sur ta faible enfance,
Dors, mon espérance,
Dors, ô mon enfant!
Dors et ne crains rien,
Car si tu sommeilles,
Ton ange gardien,
Ta mère, te veille,
Le repos descend
Sur ton front candide,
Dors sous mon égide,
Dors, ô mon enfant!
The English translation had each section slipping into place in the story seemlesly.
Sleep, my child.
Sleep in my arms,
my adorable child!
you know yet
neither sorrow nor tears;
You smile in your sleep,
Your sweet smile
Tears at my heart;
Sleep, oh my child!
Sleep on the knees
Of your poor mother,
Because envious Destiny
Has robbed you of your father;
Trembling I watch over you
Over your tender life,
Sleep, you my hope,
Sleep, oh my child!
Sleep without a fear,
For in your slumber,
Your guardian angel,
Your mother, keeps guard,
You fall asleep while
No sorrow creases your brow,
Sleep, while I take you under my wing,
Sleep, oh my child!
I'd love to hear this sung. So if anyone happens upon a video or mp3 where it's sung in French, please point me to it and you will have my sincerest gratitude.
Now then, the only questions that remain are: is providing the French in the short story a little much even if it they do come spread out through the 10k, and should the English translation follow at the end or should it be one of those leg work things that authors leave for readers that really care?
Some strong language in this song, but I think it reflects the thoughts of every Facebooker ever from the beginning of Facebooking time.
So today's little funny comes from over the pond. It sort of goes with what I wrote up for tomorrow, so I thought I'd share it in spite of the strong language. Yes, there is strong language, he's actually going to say what we tend to think on a daily basis.
Did you get that kiddies? If not: WARNING. . . STRONG LANGUAGE (this message may be inappropriate for ill mannered children or old fuddy duddies)
In honor of my sister's wedding this past weekend and my officiating of the ceremony.
With dipping readership numbers over the past few weeks, I'm considering making some changes to the blog, so stay tuned for that.
Until tomorrow, I bid you a happy Monday.
The writers for the Heroes television series have had long enough to straighten up their act after the union strike. Last season was lack luster, and if the premiere I watched this week tells us anything, season four is going to be comical. Never mind the opening with the casket where my first thought was, “This guy is totally going to be an earth mover and he's going to cover the casket with his power.” (Actually, he's probably an empath or whatever the Sith lord called Peter, because after all, he's playing the role of father Patrelli in this rehash of every other season so far.)
My biggest problem with Heroes has always been character motivation. There is none. People just do things for the sake of moving the ill conceived plot along. This premiere was proof enough of that.
Claire moves into college and a dorm room with a power hungry, straight A student (save for that B+ in Poly Sci or whatever it was) who knows just where she's going in life, has it mapped out, and happens to be gorgeous as well (because aren't they all, did you see the hotties at the other lunch table?). And like all roommates do upon first meeting someone new, she berates Claire about her life plan and teddy bears no more than two minutes into their stay together. In fact, those few moments that they spent together were more than enough for her to then fill in Claire's father about how good of a student Claire could be if she just applied herself. People do that sort of stuff all the time in real life. Don't they?
If Annie, the roommate isn't unbelievable enough, Claire's fatal flaw, tell the truth even if it kills you and the ones you love, is almost as unbelievable as Noah's fatal flaw of lie about everything even if it costs you your family, but even more unbelievable than both of those is the reset button hit during every season with these two. It always goes back to “Oh I love my father with puppy dog eyes, I heart him, I really really do” after every season in which Noah turns out to be a scum bag and Claire proves how much of an idiot she can be.
And what's the most inconspicuous thing a super powered idiot can do? Apparently jump out of their own dorm room window, because no one would notice on a college campus. Everyone knows that college students go to bed early, save for the stalker/murderer/super powered Gretchen. (Yes, I'm calling Gretchen out as the invisible woman, “So I heard that you didn't see a suicide note.” Uh huh, riiiiight. In another show that would be a slight of hand, in Heroes it's the writers thinking they're witty.)
Then we jump to Hiro and Ando who have decided to go public and advertise their services as heroes. Really? Richest guy in all of Japan, he's saved the world more than once, watched his mother and father die, and he's still pretending to be a twelve year old trapped in a man's body? Really? Oh, but it's because he's dying. I gotcha. I mean what better time to act like a child than in your last days.
Oh, and let us not forget Peter. If you don't remember, Peter's fatal flaw is that he is fatally optimistic. Why be subtle about saving people's lives after you've been hunted to near extinction for an entire season? Just jump around New York like Spiderman, (or PETER Parker) and rip the doors off of wrecked cars in front of onlookers. I'm sure no one will notice. And if they do, hey, they'll appreciate that you're helping someone and applaud like they should. Besides, if saving lives is your new form of crack, who really gives a damn.
Even when a Heroes character starts to make sense, like with Tracy Strouse and her quest for vengeance, the writers do their damndest to frack it all to hell and back. Sure, sure, Tracy has always been cold and calculating, so much so that she became the ice queen, but why not turn her into the ray of sunshine in Noah's life because she saw a dirtbag that absolutely no one cared for, die. That's perfectly believable to me. I'm always meeting people who are willing to drown to death four men in a row and then suddenly turn into Rainbow Fracking Brite.
To sum up the rest of my feelings, I hope Sylar kills that pantywaist Parkman (no relation to Peter PARKer) and takes over his body. And then I hope he finds Suresh before he can make an appearance in this season and kills him too. Then he needs to make his way to Nathan and kill him before he has another bizarre coming to Jesus moment that totally changes the fate of the world. After all of those messes are cleaned up, we wait and watch Hiro die so we don't have anymore time slippage idiocy.
Unfortunately, where Heroes lacks in developing characters who portray believable motivations, they excel at killing off those characters who do have believable motivation. Case in point: Speedster girl who thought Parkman was an idiot for falling in love with her based on a dream. That's believable, and of course, that's why she had to die.
Images: NBC/ Chris Haston
It's Monday, and it's not funny. No completed Spark. Not happy about that. No time to write.
"I don't tell my parents, and I don't tell my friends, I'll just grab some rubber tubing and pull on my depends, and then I drive. It's time for a road trip."
Write what you know. Right? And what could you possibly know better, than yourself? Probably a lot of things. You see, I don’t think we really know ourselves as well as we think. We have issues and hang-ups that we haven’t even begun to discover yet. They are what holds us back, ties us down, and clouds our minds. And I don’t think anyone lets those things carry on knowingly. But here’s the thing, even when we don’t think we’re writing about ourselves, we are. And when we do so unknowingly, the writing gets harder. Sure, your character is more interesting because they’re actually dealing with real issues, but you have to be willing to deal with those issues yourself before you can get your character to.
Case in point: Spark, the infamous never finished but always mentioned short story. I finally realized why I’m having such a hard time moving forward with it and putting it to bed. I don’t have the issues that I had when I started it. Sounds pompous, right? Hear me out.
Spark came to me one night as I crept into bed after a long day’s work. I snuggled up to my wife, placed my hand on her belly and tried to feel my son dreaming away inside her. Like most writers, I had a dream of my own. That dream led to Spark, where a young man, too afraid of the commitment, challenges, and responsibilities of having a child causes the death of his unborn daughter. The story is his quest for retribution.
Here I am over a year and a half later working on a revision to the ending and I can’t think like that frightened father-to-be anymore. Not only am I Dad, I’m Stay-At-Home-Dad. I spend more time with my son than most moms get these days, let alone dads. And you can call me conceited on this one if you want, but I’m a damn good dad. At this very moment I’m watching a baby monitor while my boy sleeps and though he’s three rooms away, were he to pop up and make a move for the edge of the bed, I’d be there before he could fall. (LOL, he must have heard me thinking because he just woke up. Don’t worry, he’s fine, just needed to know I was nearby and went back to sleep.)
I’ll eventually be able to put myself into that frame of mind and playact what it was like, but I fear that it won’t be as powerful. But that's what's holding me back, fearing that I won't speak truth to the character any longer.
And what about the other instance, the one where you don’t even realize you’re writing about yourself? You know your character’s problems, what holds them back, what they have to deal with, but you can’t write it. It could be that one of the reasons you can’t deal with your character’s issues is because yours and theirs are one in the same.
Have you considered that? Have you looked at your character’s flaws and considered that they might be your own? Are you ready to deal with those flaws in your own life so that you can write your story? Maybe that’s not you, but it is definitely something to consider.
Behaviour & Communication:
How To Be The Best Dad In The Galaxy
One last thing. A little patting myself on the back. This marks my 100th post and come Friday this will be my 15th straight week without missing a post. So yay me. I shall celebrate by poring cement, preparing dinner, washing clothes, washing dishes, and writing another blog post. :)
So I had something else in mind for today, but honestly, I'm exhausted. A late night storming session yesterday with a writer friend to get her book going, my wife's open house tonight that brought me and the little guy out to her school with dinner (and that means entertaining him by chasing him around on the grass for hours), the Novel Crit group started yesterday, I'm helping my wife photograph a wedding on Saturday, my sister's wedding is in less than two weeks out in Colorado and I am performing the ceremony (have NOT practiced), the house is in no way ready for the rains and the cold, a friend is coming to stay the night, the dog kennel needs to be finished or a separate dog house built for the third dog, the garage is decades from completion, money is tight, queries to write, stories to finish, the blog, the house, don't get me started on the house –And that's what today's post is about. You're not alone. It seems like everyone is going through all kinds of stress right now. Another writer I know just got back from a relaxing two week vacation only to find that her daughter is going in for surgery and another relative had a stroke. She's missing her favorite annual event. And to top it all off, she's got the flu so she can't visit any of her loved ones.
It's everyone right now. You. Me. Everyone.
Forget the Collective Unconscious, this is like Collective Angst.
I mean, what the hell? Is there like some evil gremlin out on the wing of flight 607 nonstop to Happyland and we're all on it or what? (Wanna see something creepy? I picked 607 off the top of my head, wrote that sentence about Happyland and thought, “I wonder if I'm using a flight number from a recent crash and that's why it's stuck in my head. That would be wrong.” So I googled it. No way I could have known ahead of time what I ended up finding. No known cause. Just creepy. Really creepy.)
Really, that's it. No long winded post today. Not because I don't think you deserve the best I can give you, but because I think that everyone is running a mile a minute right now and we all just need to slow down, collect ourselves, take in a deep breathe, and relax. Maybe think back to better times, when life was slower. For me, that's the beginning of the 80's when I was two and you can't possibly have fewer cares.
And you know what always makes me feel a little better when I'm stressed . . . THE MUPPETS!
Just something about it. My folks used to record episodes on a cassette deck so that we could listen to them way back before there were VCR's. Or maybe there were VCR's and we just couldn't afford one. Remember those? Back before they had clear plastic for cassettes? I can still hear that Muppets Star Wars episode they did.
So remember, when life tortures you with gargling Gershwins be ready with a good song and dance number. “You are my lucky star. I saw you from afar.”
In honor of a recent crit session in which I was totally playing the part of Ben Stiller. Oh, and we had a chicken vanish recently so this ones for you nameless chicky, your eggs will be missed.
Coming this week:
No, I Will Not Read Your F@#&!^* First Chapter
And other STUFF!
(Don't worry, it's not nearly as bad as it sounds)
My brain is still drained from last week. I can't even think of a title for this post. But don't you worry, dear reader, the reason my brain is so drained is because I was playing Guild Wars until three in the morning last night . . . uh, no. Wait, that's not what I meant to say.
What I meant to say was that I worked double time last week and came up with several ideas for posts while I was working on last week's critique series. That afforded me enough extra time to try Guild Wars again after having not played for the past two years. All that talk of guilds for the Critique Guild got me thinking of that game and I could not resist its siren's song.
Also, Guild Wars 2 is coming out soon!!! You know what that means, don't you? It means that I'll be able to get some of the older games for cheap. :) I never buy a game when it first comes out. First of all my computer is way too slow to enjoy all of their pretty graphics, and 50 bucks!? Come on, seriously now. I can wait a year and get it for thirty. Besides, I don't even play in guilds. I have a strange disillusionment with regards to making virtual avatar friends. Now then, if the redhead from "The Guild" wanted me to be in her guild . . . we might have to talk.
Coming this week . . . STUFF!!!
I'm busily bludgeoning my chapter one from ten years past in an attempt to get it ready to post on Wednesday as part one of the critique series. It's actually kind of scary. Present tense, a 4000 word first chapter, and oh the telling. At one point I even described the pro via the pov of a poster on the ceiling. Sigh.
So here's how I was thinking it would go since this will be my first series.
Tuesday: A techy article explaining the word processor features used in critiquing.
Wednesday: Some tips on Critiquing along with something to put you to sleep by in the form of the old chapter.
Thursday: Thoughts on the crit partner, both good and bad.
Friday: Critique groups both big and small.
And one last note. I've been making my way through the archives and cutting down on the tags so that things are easier to find so expect to see that tag list to the right slowly shrink.
Now then, on to the funny.
Because I was chastised for not connecting last weeks funny to writing, this weeks funny reminds us that we shouldn't be worried about being original because it's all been done before. And since there won't be a rant this Friday, this should take care of it.
"No, that is the opposite of what is good." I've wanted to post this for so long but have been afraid to. Finally, my wife asked, "When are you going to post the 'I'm going to make it so dry' video?" So here we go. And thanks again for all of the comments and visits last week. It's so nice to see discussions start up and varying viewpoints come out.
Warning: While this video is by no means graphic, the subject matter might be considered offensive to some. If you find yourself easily put off by sexual topics, you might want to skip this. However, if you're up for a good laugh this will do it.
Today I would like to totally contradict myself. You see, I love playing devil's advocate. I like arguing a point from as many angles as I can. It helps us to open our minds, to see where others are coming from. Without that ability we cannot know empathy. Without empathy mankind is no better than the basest of animals. Although, sometimes I think that even the basest of animals is better than some of mankind. I also believe that it is impossible to be a good writer without empathy. How can we build rich characters whose actions are believable and heart felt, even if said character is our villain, unless we can honestly see things from their side? And so, with regards to yesterday's post, I was wrong. Be satisfied.
I Can't Get No
Sometimes we also have to be satisfied in order to find success. It's a balancing act really. Yin and Yang. Go too far in either direction and you find yourself with an empty life. I think we do this a lot when we date.
For years I had this idealized expectation of the perfect woman (I would like to take this moment to say that I ended up marrying her and that anything said from this point on is mere conjecture and hypothesizing and definitely not admissible in a court of law or the even less forgiving court of feminine analysis. . . love you, dear.) If any one of my preferred traits turned out to be missing in a prospective girlfriend I used it as a reason to start over or to avoid starting in the first place. More often than not it was the latter of the two.
Part of the cause of this was the common male attribute of fearing commitment, but we all fear commitment for different reasons. It was not until an ex of mine, who was getting onto the path of understanding herself better, snapped at me on our way back from my first and last joint visit with her counselor. “You know, maybe you should think about seeing a counselor too.”
Gasp. “What? I don't need to see a counselor.” I think I had been pointing out things that I felt were a part of what she was dealing with. That of course gets translated into “this is what's wrong with you.” Never a good idea. Women want to be heard, acknowledged, not analyzed.
“You have a pretty big fear of commitment,” she said. “Where do you think that comes from?”
“I know where it comes from. My parent's divorce.”
“And you think you're just going to fix it on your own?”
Damn her and her logic. We men have a different way of handling analysis, we button up and close ourselves off. At that point in time I brushed it off, but soon thereafter I started thinking about it. How was I ever to be happy if I wasn't willing to work on the things in my life that prevented me from finding happiness?
That's when I started searching for answers. I found a book called, Adult Children of Divorce, by Zimmerman and Thayer, a book that I suggest anyone dealing with divorce to read, both parents and children. It's very enlightening and a quick read.
I eventually postulated that I was using my great expectations as a way of preventing commitment. Not fitting my mold or finding impossible situations was my way of making sure that I didn't commit and therefore open myself up to abandonment later on.
Can we see how closely that relates to our own dissatisfaction with what we write? You've all heard me talk about Spark over and over again. I continuously revise it, making change after change. I just sent it to a friend as an example of my writing and told her not to worry about critiquing it because I wasn't going to be making anymore changes after I finished the ending. I need to be satisfied with it at some point, if I'm not it will never be submitted. There will always be something that I can do to make it tighter, more exciting, flow just a little better. Maybe there's a better hook for the beginning or an amazing twist for the ending that I missed.
And maybe, if I just sent it in, they would appreciate it for what it is and publish it. This weekend I am going to sit down and finish Spark. I'm going to be satisfied with whatever it ends up being on Sunday night, and then I'm going to start submitting.
I'll go through the process of dating. I'll court for a while and if I'm rejected too often I'll stop thinking that it's something wrong with them but rather with me or my approach. That's when I'll pick Spark back up and revise it again. Of course I might have moved on by that point in time, and that will be just fine.
That's the beauty of being on the path of self-improvement, there's always something better yet to come. Your best piece of writing won't be written today, only your best so far. So be satisfied with what you have, send it off, and start something new. If the courting process doesn't work out for that piece, when you come back to it you'll be a far better and wiser writer.
Here's wishing you a weekend filled with free flowing words. See you on Monday. I've got a good one in store for our funny and can't wait to share it with you.
With this edition of the Monday Funny, I wanted to send out some thank you’s and let you guys know about a few changes. First of all, thanks to everyone for reading the blog and sharing it with your friends. It really means a lot to me. Along with my own personal triumph of going three weeks straight with a post appearing every day, I’d like to announce another little milestone, the third straight week of increased readership.
Seems that when I put forth the effort you guys and gals reward me. I’m not talking about huge leaps, maybe three or four people a week, but still, it means a lot to me. I was especially impressed with last week’s numbers because the week before had the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ trailer that brought a load of people to the blog just to see that. These folks likely were not interested in the craft of writing and just wanted to see the trailer. And that’s fine. What I didn’t expect was for the following week’s numbers to edge just above the Wonderland week, but they did, and that got me really pumped.
I’m going to be going through old posts and adjusting the tags, and coming out with clearly defined categories for the posts so that past content is easier to find. I’ll also be working on some more layout issues with the blog, putting my friends’ blogs link section back up (it got lost when I changed templates) and putting up a new section for links to stories that friends have written, so be looking for those (just so long as I can figure out the coding, keep your fingers crossed on that one).
Once again, thank you all so very much. I don’t make any kind of money from this. I’m paid solely in knowing that my words help others. So if you read anything that makes you smile, helps you, or gets you to think of something in a different way, you can say thanks by passing the word along, subscribing, and/or clicking one of those sociable buttons below each of the posts (digg, stumble, del.icio.us, and the like, seriously, do you know how long it took me to figure out how to add them to this theme? we're talking hours and hours).
Thanks again. You are awesome and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Now let’s share a laugh.
I am soooo going to catch flack for this vid, but I don't care.
Another blog inspired by the Yahoo Fantasy group. One of the writers there made the point of how unhappy they’ve been with the BBC version of Robin Hood. Seems the Sheriff kills off Robin’s friends left and right while Robin, who at least tries to stop him, never makes the attempt to kill him. Worse yet, a few episodes into the series Robin Hood breaks into the Sheriff’s chambers, puts a sword to the man’s throat and tells him that if harm comes to any of Robin’s people he’ll kill the Sheriff. Apparently that sunk into neither of their heads.
Constraints of the medium have been mentioned as well as labeling this problem as a huge plot hole unfilled by the writers, but I see it as another problem, and one that relates to writing. It appears to me that the writers have a promise set up in their heads that they have not fully explained or made clear to the viewer (or in the case of our writing, the reader). That promise is that Robin cannot take another life.
There is even a point in the series when the Sheriff flat out states, “We both know you’re not the killing kind.”
The question is, why? Why can’t Robin take another life? Is it his fatal flaw? Does he have a Christian view of redemption so great that he believes that even the murderous Sheriff can come back from the depths to which he has sunk? Did Robin take a life in his past that so affected him (is that the right use of affect) that he can’t bear doing it again? Did he go all Shaolin monk on us?
The problem is not so much that the character has this problem it’s that the writers aren’t making it clear to the viewer why he has this problem. It’s something that we have to keep in mind with our own writing. Fatal flaws are great for creating tension in a story, especially when that flaw is in direct opposition to the conflict resolution.
One of two things is going to have to happen, either Robin finds a way to resolve the conflict without taking the obvious route, which is kill the Sherriff, or he comes to terms with the issue that is holding him back and he finally runs the bloke through.
It’s something that we should keep in mind when crafting our stories, that notion of the character having a hand in his own troubles. If you think about it, we do that in our own lives do we not? Sure, we might blame the whole of the outside world for where we are in life, but in the end what it comes down to is our own actions, our own fatal flaws.
I for one am terrible about taking risks and committing to things. I tend to make half hearted attempts and then blame the failed outcome on some external force. In reality I’m setting myself up for failure so that I don’t have to perform. Or maybe it’s something else. But it is definitely something that I do and I’m aware of that. This blog, in a way, is my attempt at working through those issues.
So, fatal flaws end up being important on two levels. They are important on a story level and they are important on a personal level. Understanding one lends itself to the other. So what’s your fatal flaw?
And on a side note, a little self congratulatory moment: This post marks the third week in a row where I’ve gotten a post up each day of the work week. I thought that it was only two weeks, but upon checking into it, I’ve found that I was wrong, it’s three! Yay me!
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and that your words flow like warm honey fresh from the honey comb.
Two weeks ago I issued the challenge of living a quiet life. I talked about the importance of ridding distraction from our lives so that our imaginations have room to grow. Today I’m going to talk about the opposite. Well, sorta.
All creative individuals find that their work day is filled with several trips to the well, the well of creativity that is. We lower our pails down into its dark depths, never seeing the bottom. We did not build the well, it was there when we came. Some days it seems like barely any rope at all gets taken up before the pail touches down. Other days we fear actually having enough rope to get the pail down far enough.
Much of the time the creativity and imagination finds its own way into the well. It leaks in through the sidewalls during spring, flows over the edges when fall showers come. But there are times when we take and take from the well far faster than it can replenish itself naturally. In those cases we have to help it along.
This notion of refilling the well came from a podcast that I used to listen to many years ago. They suggested having a day each week where you do not allow yourself to create. You take a mental vacation from all creativity on that day. The idea being that you can’t continuously take from the well and think that you won’t one day run dry. Or, worse yet, not have anything when you actually need it.
On refill days you don’t simply lie around on the sofa and not do anything. You also don’t use those days to do yard work. Remember, we’re ‘refilling’ the well. That is a task in and of itself.
So how do we refill the well: by seeking out creativity and imagination. We head to the movies, read a book, find a museum, enjoy a concert or symphony. We seek out other works of art that have sprung from the depths of others’ wells and simply enjoy them.
Last night, I had the opportunity to head to the well, the question was, which way would I carry the full pail? My step mum had taken our son for a couple of hours so that my wife and I could enjoy a meal without having to worry about feeding and entertaining our little one. After dinner we both headed in our separate directions, she to her computer and me to mine. “Oh the writing I can get done,” I thought. But then I thought about the available moment, got up, and headed to the living room.
Netflix delivered “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to our box several weeks ago, and while they don’t mind when you get it back to them, I like to be relatively prompt (get more for your money that way). I informed my wife that we would be watching it, and so we did.
While I thought that the early Benjamin acted older than he was, I none-the-less enjoyed it. I enjoyed it with tears. Especially after our little baby came back home midway through the movie and we had him sprawled out on the couch with us watching Benjamin enjoy his daughters first birthday only to miss out on the rest of her life and then turn into a little one himself, curl up into Daisy’s lap as a little babe and close his eyes forever. You can’t have a baby sitting in your lap and see something like that without tearing up, let alone consider the notion of not being allowed to grow old with the one you love.
After the movie was over, my wife got ready for bed and I sat with our son, rocking him in my arms, not wanting to put him down for fear that when I looked back again I would see a grown man in his stead. He’s never looked quite so big as he did last night in the soft glow of the closing credits, the movie score playing until the menu on the DVD came up and cycled through over and over.
I thought about a lot of things during that time, of the past year, of how fast it has gone by. I thought it funny, all those people to warn you, “Enjoy it, it goes by so fast.” I wondered if there are parents that actually need to hear that because I’ve been painfully aware of it every step of the way. Maybe it’s that creative emotionality so tightly woven into my soul that makes me appreciate such things.
When I finally conceded and took him to bed, I laid next to my wife and though about the past, present and future. I thought about how filled up with love and emotion I now was. What a great movie to have brought to the surface all of those thoughts and imagined experiences. And although I started out not expecting the movie to fill my creative well, I found that it was flowing over.
That led to this final thought: We have many wells in our lives, not just creative ones. As artists and especially as writers, we need to visit all of those wells and care for each of them in turn. While I might write in the fantasy vein, as a writer I weave tales about life, not fantasy. Fantasy is merely the setting, the rules through which lives are allowed to be played out. If I confine my refilling to solely the genre in which I write, I will find that my stories come across hollow because my well of love and loss is empty.
There is a side benefit from refilling your well, especially if you tend to all of them: Not only will your wells remain full, so will your life.
Go fill your wells my friends.
And enjoy a little baby holding music . . .
I’ve heard tell of writers who use Google Earth to explore other cities so that they can stage their stories there. They can find a dark alley off of a specific road and people it with their imagination. This far off place cannot be brought to life by the internet, it can’t communicate the sights, sounds, and smells of the area, but it can give you a general idea for blocking. That’s when you delve into your own memories of a trip to the city and pull out details that can be mixed into this foreign setting to make it real. I for one use my short time living in San Francisco in a lot of stories.
In Spark, I have a character who is a hooligan of sorts living here in the states. Now, I don’t know much about hooligans and other than watching “The Green Street Hooligans” a few times and having a fondness for films from the UK, I am not qualified to write a hooligan character. However, I did not let that stop me. Victor came to life in my head and needed to be written. He was the right man for the part.
While doing revisions I found myself questioning whether or not specific parts of his dialogue were correct. It all sounded relatively authentic to me and even passed as such with my review partners, but I needed more assurance. That’s where the net came in.
I put out a call to writing acquaintances on a forum, briefly noting the character of Victor and how I needed someone from that area of the world to look over his dialogue. As luck would have it, someone wrote back, mentioning that they were from “darkest Watford.” A quick search on Google Maps and voila, I’d found the person I was looking for. Victor’s hails from London, just a short hop skip and a jump away from Watford. The two cities seem to blur together on a satellite view of the area.
After sending her my story she got back to me with wonderful news and some corrections. The wonderful news: that I’d pretty much nailed the dialogue. She highlighted changes that need to be made, words that are technically correct and sound authentic to a foreigner’s ear but grate when heard by a local. Her fresh set of eyes even picked up things that were getting skipped over in edits because both I and my two current readers are now a little too close to the story.
The entire experience has left be very satisfied and hopeful for the future of the story. It also has proven to me how important it is to have friends, or at the very least, acquaintances in all walks of life and from all across the world.
On a side note: I once had a professor who said this idea was key to world peace. She believed that every summer children should do an exchange program to a different part of the world. That way, when they heard something on the news about deaths in Sri Lanka or natural disasters in China, they wouldn’t think about numbers and abstracts, but about the friends they made there and if they were alright.
So that’s today’s thought. Do you have a story that you’re working on that has a key part of that story being a person, place, or thing that you are not a specialist in? If so, is there someone you know that is? Find these people and seek out their help. They might reveal things to you about your story that you would have never considered otherwise. And who knows, it might even lead to world peace.
Just a reminder to be more constructive with your feedback. And don't we all sometimes feel like our rhymes are bottomless . . . . . . . . .
Apparently Disney is pulling this video down left and right. Youtube, MTV, and just about everyone else has been asked to take it down. Why? Seems they weren't supposed to let it out until AFTER ComicCon. Silly boys. MSN still has it up, but I'm guessing they'll have to take it down soon as well. Buuuuuuut, a Russian version of YouTube has it. And we all know that the Russians really don't give a rat's ass about what Disney think. So while the MSN link will likely die sometime tonight, I'm guessing that the link below will be a viable option until Disney re-releases the trailer.
Enjoy.
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