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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| The first Prototypes Now if you look at the first prototypes for say the automobile or airplane, about all you can say is that they were functional. This is to say they worked. Thus I suspect that first forms of life were those one celled variations like amoebas and paramecia’s or rotifers like we studied about in biology class. Still they had utility and performed and seeing them scurry about must have given their designers and manufacturers a great deal of satisfaction. As they spread out an began to multiply imagine how he/she must have felt entering there in and going along for the ride….exploring the planet from one end to the other seeing all the features it had to offer…it must have been a rush. As these microorganisms reached the end of their service lives or met a premature end….replication had occurred and for every one that perished ten stepped up to take their places, making room for the creator’s spirit to transfer his lodgings and transfer an ever greater part of his self into these amazing new surroundings. Then after awhile some of these one celled organisms began to differentiate into multi-celled and over time began growing in complexity, evolving with ever greater efficiency as they adapted to their environment. And so the process went until today we have reached the point to where we are now. So ask yourself, if something smart enough to create the great wonder of these life forms as we know them, and to live there-in as a spirit that flows freely about….would not this something wish to have something to say about the direction in which nature was heading? Would not this sprit wish to exercise rule and influence over the life forms that host its very existence….If this sprit can do what it did, with an intelligence that transcends anything held in the parts, either individually or collectively why is it that the whole fails to communicate to the parts and chooses instead to exist as a thought process independent of his creation? The question becomes, did our creator become bored and move away one day leaving its legacy to strut and fret in some sort of a random and unguided manner, or does the presence of this sprit remain, choosing to let the life forms which surround its entity operate pretty much as they see fit. Stated another way….is our God dead, has it departed or is it simply ambivalent to what we are about….Could it be that that the answer to all three is no? I know you are all waiting with baited breath for the answer and I will continue to be your facilitator, or guide or whatever, but don’t expect too much….my processor is an abbacus in a sea of hand held calculators...no greater than yours and the only thing I bring to the table is the interest to examine these questions that most of you are too busy to consider. I wish Buford Finsterwald were here…He would surely be a great addition to the examination of these perplexing questions….His light is bright indeed, but with 8 billion lights out there maybe there are others like him that might drop by for a chat. (Reminder: If the spirit is present can and how does it communicate with the parts.) |
| Judging variant forms. In an earlier blog I wrote about wearing different hats when you write…I.e. a strategic, operational or tactical hat particularly with regard to outlines which are hugely important in developing a complex literary work. Today I want to talk about wearing different hats when reviewing. It doesn’t take much sophistication to see the difference between a novice and veteran writer. A reviewer needs to have a beginner, and advanced writer reviewing hat when doing a review on a stand alone piece. This is so self evident that I won’t even go into it. There is a social aspect of this site and people come here for encouragement and there is no sense beating a dead horse…the protocols call for being positive and the reviewer needs to make a distinction between the good the bad and the ugly and review accordingly. However this type of hat wearing isn’t what I want to talk about today. Today I want to suggest that in judging contests the reviewer consider wearing different hats. In Contests the basic criteria will always be the Wow! Factor. The judge will read the entries and mentally arrange them in a queue from best to worst. Now if a single judge is male or female there will be some bias from the beginning. It is my view that at conception we were sexless and that squiggly male sperm decided what sex we differentiated into. However there is no doubt that in that differentiation process some radically different perspectives developed between genders (I.e. the mars Venus thing) So how does a writer deal with that? One way is to pander to the gender of the judge….that is find out how girly or macho they tend to write and give them what they’re looking for. It is my suspicion that a lot of this goes on and since a writer is expected to learn to write for an audience I don’t see this as such a terrible evil. There are however those purists who choose not to go there and I think most writers fall into that category….As a consequence I think the Wow! Factor by itself is flawed because as hard as judges try to be objective they are turned on by different things. This takes us back to the same question as above….how do we deal with that…For example a male judge considering something written by a woman, who has written a kick ass piece of literature that doesn’t exactly conform to the masculine tastes of the one sitting in judgment? The answer here again is for the judge to show some flexibility and put on a male or female hat, which deep down whether we want to admit it or not is not all that hard to do. Every man has a girley streak and every woman a touch of macho. Take my word for it, get past it and put on the other gender hat…. There is another aspect of this and that is orientation….I will not go into the more proscribed variations of orientation and taste but stay focused on the three mainstream variations. Gay, Lesbian, and Hetero. I already talked about the Hetero/gender issue. Now this is another dilemma for a judge who does not share the perspective from which the writer is writing…Judges carry the same emotional baggage that everyone else does and one orientation is not going to be excited by the same approach to sensual expression as another. This is a serious matter because it limits what writers are going to submit to a contest….how may gay and lesbian vignettes do we see in a contest? Practically none and if an author submits one it will probably be the last. Again a stand alone “Wow!” criteria makes it all but certain the variant form will not receive much recognition even if it were written by Earnest Hemmingway. Again I think the Judge needs to be able to wear a wig or enter into a world we would not normally go when doing the evaluation. This might not be a particularly agreeable task but consider it a worthwhile exercise in your professional development. |
| Specifications of Life It is my suspicion that our creator was an intense and living form of energy, that sought to give expression to its being in a narrow band between too hot and too cold. That this force fabricated a containment vessel of the elements and entered therein where it continues to reside in all the forms that life has come to manifest. Call this force of creation what you want. God is a fine name….Spirit is another, eternal father/mother is good too, and it goes on and on. It is all the same presence but with different labels. Now I sometimes ask myself, “What was this force thinking as it began roughing out the specifications of a containment vessel I will start here even though there are more profound and seminal questions upstream from this point of departure. 1. It had to be able to survive in a range of temperatures, actually a rather narrow range. If the form froze solid that was not good and if it started to boil that was not so good either….So somewhere between where water freezes and boils were probably the extreme limits of the temperature range. 2. It had to be made of the elements. While we keep discovering more, this constrained the materials availiable for use. 3. It had to be able to reproduce before it reached the end of its service life and factored in had to be the lethality of the environment in which it would operate. 4. It had to have be a distributed rather than a central processor, with the ability to move about independently, unconciously perform a vast range of life functions, with a councious level of awareness for dealing with those immediate vexing problems of life that could not be preprogramed. 5. It had to be able to select reproductive partners that optimized the state of sophistication into which the form had evolved. (We are familiar with the external qualifiers but is "love" a more complex form of sensor that goes deeper?) 6. It had to be energy efficient, capable of operating for periods where fuels, liquids, and gases, were not abundant or suited for conversion to energy, coolants and respiration. Now I could go on and no doubt the reader could come up with many more specifications that our creator had to contend with but for the purposes of the discussion I’ll stop here for now and pick up on the discussion tomorrow. |
| A Fight Scene In my second edit of Don Ricardo de Castillo, which is now entitled Habit of Despair, I'm close to grafting a new beginning to the older work. What remains is Chapter 6 to provide that transitional link between old and new. It could well be that this transition takes two chapters but that remains to be seen. In this Chapter there will be a fight scene between the bandits and the Hermandad led by Benvolio…In the aftermath he will take an unexpected prisoner who is a son of the King of Portugal. He hangs the lad. This incurs the wrath of Ferdinand who stood to gain a ransom and he's not too happy. Ricardo thinks it’s a good idea if his friend drops out of sight for awhile and Benvolio is relegated to keepig an eye on his sister Maria. A bit contrived but it dovetails nicely into the story. Regarding the fight scene, I have decided to write it using the same basic philosophy for a love scene. This is well documented in earlier blogs and in my essay, Rules of Thumb…“ In essence it needs to be long enough to show what happened and not so long it distracts from the Romance. Sort of like some of the scenes that set the religious context of the novel. It needs to be somewhere between being afraid to go behind the bedroom door, (i.e. telling and not showing) and some marathon lovemaking episode I read from time to time on writing.com that are often well written but simply overwhelming….After all as much as many readers like battle scenes, this scene is not going to compare with “The Longest Day.” What I have done in this second edit is analogous to realizing that the front end on an old truck is not suitable for high speed driving and I am grafting a new one onto the frame. I’ll let you know how its coming or you can check it out first hand on my port under the file “Habit of Despair.“ |
| Three Levels of Writing To the military mind there are three level of war. These are the tactical, operational and Strategic. The classification is based upon the scope of the conflict. Local conflicts are considered tactical, regional are Operational and those involving alliances and conflicts among nations are deemed Strategic. For the strategists each requires a different thinking cap. Battles and skirmishes are left to the local commanders, Stringing battles and victories together into a regional context is a matter for Generals and Strategic planning involves governments and heads of state. Each requires a different perspective and offers its own unique set of challenges. Thus a different skill set is required of leaders at each of the levels of war. The same analogy holds true for writing a novel. If the novel is to be one of a series or a trilogy then the Author must put on his/her strategic hat and orchestrate how the different books will flow into one another in a cohesive sort of way. If it will involve a single book than the strategic vision will involve the flow of the chapters from beginning to end. The operational aspect is to orchestrate the chapters in say part…1, 2 and 3; scenes in a chapter, or in a smaller work the scenes in a given chapter. The tactical aspect is the writing of the scenes and moments contained in the chapter. As I spoke at greater length on yesterday this requires a plan and the plan consists of an outline of what will be taking place at all levels. For example one could use an outline of books, an outline of chapters and an outline scenes and moments to both provide a structure and break the story down into manageable components that can be written one at a time. Now the reason I mention all this is because the human mind is so small that it can’t process the complexity of the three levels simultaneously. The writer like a military leader must quite literally wear one hat at a time. He/She must tell themselves, “OK I am thinking Strategically, this is how the books and parts and chapter are going to sort out in a macro sense, Next this is how the chapters will integrate in an intermediate sense and finally this is how each of the chapters will be composed of micro… scenes and moments. If you do this anyone can write a novel and if you don’t you will soon discover you are wasting a lot of time and going nowhere. As you proceed in the first draft you will find you are often spending as much time on the outline, research and character development as you are on writing the story. When you start on the second edit draft the three types of outlines might again undergo a radical metamorphosis. As the work expands and starts to breath it will take all your skill just to stick the darn thing together. It is a challenge but something an author can manage….Good luck. |
| Context Many years ago I read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I liked it so much I read other works of Tolkein one of which was the Sylmarillian. I expected to see more of the Trilogy set in a broader context and sure enough I did. Three pages in the Sylmarillian, I forget how many pages it went on, but a lot, covered Hobbit and Lord of the Rings segment of his history. For some reason this stunned me…to think that this epic event was only worth three pages in the greater context. Context is important , as I’m finding out in Habit of Despair. I’m not a history nut but after doing the research on the period I was stunned to discover that a period characterized in the text books as the golden age of Spain was more like a Gothic Horror Story. What the Christians did in the name of God, defies all understanding….It was bad enough what the Nazi state did but to have a situation so frighteningly similar occurring in Spain, fermented by Christian leaders in the name of Jesus Christ is truly mind boggling. A great fan of Leon Uris and his books Exodus and Mila 18, and a combat veteran of Vietnam, I thought I knew something from a literary and personal perspective on the manifestations of Evil. WRONG! After coming to grips with what was going down in Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, both in country and the New World, took me to an all time low appreciation of what Church and State are capable of when zealous madmen in pious robes and Monarchs driven by greed, take a nation in an unbridled spiral into Hell. Until Ferdinand and Isabella allowed the Holy Office (Inquisition) to become established their reign was a model of how inspired leadership can make a difference….Then they did the unthinkable, it got out of control and left a blemish that will never be forgotten. In some regards Nazi Germany was worse with their Gas Chambers and cold immorality and sociopath logic, but in other regards the Spanish were even more frightening giving legal justification and moral sanction to their genocide. This is the context into which a story I never intended to write began to emerge. I don’t intend to let it overshadow the Romantic adventures in which the characters find themselves drawn, but as they describe what is happening around them, the reader is going to see things much more shocking than the personal behavior of the characters. What they will observe is a horrific state of affairs they will surely think is totally contrived. |
| The Old Nut Can Trick… Remember the Gag they used to sell at the novelty store…? The nut can trick…? How it would scare the heck out of an unsuspecting person? Well you don’t want to do that as an author with your reader. Outlines are the way you keep the story in the can. You might be smart as Buford Finsterwald but for anyone, regardless of how gifted, complexity willl eventually require an outline. Outlines are obviously a useful device for setting the structure of the story line and getting the scenes in each chapter into some sort of orderly flow….as the complexity of the story grows they become increasingly important to the continuity of the structure. There is however another important purpose. Once you have the chapters and scenes sorted out then you need to decide how the moments in the scene are going to go together. If how this is going to happen is not crystal clear when you begin writing a chapter it is going to be difficult to get into the writing. (Garbage in garbage out) Thus another mini outline is very useful….You break each chapter into scenes and each scene into moments. You begin by saying…OK what is going to happen in this scene….For example I am now working on Chapter 4 Revised, Habit of Despair… In this chapter there are 5 scenes. The first is where Maria and Teresa get together and Maria tries to tell her friend that Ricardo is really sorry about what happened in the garden. In the Second I have to introduce Benvolio. After all he is one of the two main characters and it is already overdue…maybe too long overdue. In the third I need for Ricardo, when he finds out Teresa is going to the Convent, to try and plead his case in person as a last resort….Here he's rebuked in front of everyone. In the forth I need to show a meeting of church leaders with Ferdinand and Isabella and give the readers a sense for what is going down on the religious front….here I want to show a crack in united front of the Monarchs that Torquemada decides to exploit. In the fifth Maria and Ricardo have dinner with the Monarchs who are aware of the argument….Here it will be shown that Teresa can’t take her vows without the Monarchs say so…and Ricardo is sent off to negotiate a treaty with the Basques. Now look at the first Scene and forget about everything else...Here Maria is determined to plead her brother's case... What does she do? Well she goes to Teresa's house and her young friend just happens to be home....there she discovers the poor girl is so dissillusioned with her boyfriend that she has decided to join the Convent....Try as she will Maria can't get Teresa to change her mind...In the process she finds out the coach to the convent leaves at 3 O'clock....Teresa tells her friend politely she is busy and to get lost....Maria tells her brother about the mission failure and that the coach to the Convent leaves at 3 O'clock...This should give you a sense for the seconds ticking away in this moment....I won't bore you with a dissection of the other four. Now this chapter has a lot working and without breaking the chapter into scenes and the scenes into moments it would be a daunting task, however; no moment in itself is all that overwhelming and taking the chapter in little bites will make it manageable. In the second edit the beginning has been radically changed and it has been a challenge to expand it without having it explode out of the can like those gag springs used to do…you remember the springs in a sleeve of cloth…stuffed into the can with the lid then secured…That an unsuspecting person would open and darn near suffer a coronary…YOU DON"T?…shucks! I must be dating myself. Anyway in my second edit, it has been challenging to get the spring sleeves (Chapters, Scene and moments) back into the can. Without an outline it would have been impossible. |
| Common Problems in Writing Erotica I have been busy on my Novella the past couple of days....I have four chapters that I really like that will replace some of the front end on Don Ricardo de Castillio. In the first is the elaboration of what happened between Ricardo and Angelina in the Garden that sent Teresa packing to the Convent....In the second it tells what happened between Angelina and her husband that opens the door on a new character Charlos. The third chapter transitions into the old story line and the forth will be inserted later on. In the process I have been reading erotica from other writers on the site and as I read their works I see the same shortcomings repeatedly. I hesitate to review erotica because I don’t want to discourage the writers. Plus they will think I 'm harping on word choice that for many writers is sacrosanct….here is what I see most. I have borrowed from my piece "Rules of Thumb for Writing Erotica which can be found in the folder, Classwork in Erotica. What I see most is a repetition of the same words, in a short space. Ideally the vocabulary of the story will use a word one time. This is because the right word creates the perfect image and once that image is passed to the reader it gets pasted to the video screen of imagination and is noted…seeing the same image repeatedly is a waste of the reader's time. The words that are the biggest offenders are pronouns like “she” and “her” and words like “feel“ and “Inside” Reading back over their work a writer needs to develop an ear for these repetitive words and make substitutions to the extent possible. It is not unusual to see “Inside” used four or five times and “She” or “Her” with the same repetition in the space of two sentences. Another deficiency is the use of modifiers for emphasis. This is where we get into too much butter and syrup on the pancakes. I am reminded of the story of the salesman who made a big sale and rather than move on continued to pitch and in the process oversold the product and excited the ire of the customer. It is important in writings erotica, just as it is in writing anything, to choose a word that says what the writer wants. Using poor word choice and trying to amp up with modifiers can get old fast to a reader. Save the modifiers for special emphasis and keep your writing crisp and full of fresh imagery. |
| Merry Christmas I keep telling those who have the time to listen that the hardest part to writing erotica is what you don’t write and not what you do. It's those chips of marble that litter the floor that are ultimately responsible for revealing the beauty of an artist's work. Now there are some who will disagree but it is my position that a vision must proceed the words and not the other way around. The greatest poem...the greatest story ever written was always there but it took an artist to see it....to rough it out and chip away the non essential layers that obscured its expression. It begins in the mind and like a seed, expands into a story line and from there into one or more scenes and these scenes have moments. Listen up now, pause for a moment Focus on that moment...stare hard at that bad boy, and envision the full scope in your imagination. Squeeze with your mind. like a virtual grape until the seeds pop out. Once you have it firmly subdued, start chipping away. Choose words that scream pregnant with meaning and chip around them leaving them boldly chiseled into the context. To the palate artist, words are the background bordered by those clear and telling strokes....not the mincings of a detail brush...rather use one of those big sables that capture the underlying vision, painting around the words of import, letting them emerge from the canvas....telling and showing their story. What you want is to coax the words, like a virgin lover from the clutter of obscurity and timid inhibition, into the full light of day. The reader(s) sees only what the writer illuminates....It's already there but it needs to be spotlighted...let the reader color in the form using the lens of imagination. Let the writer arrange the cue of characters in a way that startles the wonder into a revelation long obscured by darkness. A reader knows the rudiments of love. Give them the notion and they will fill in the details, sitting back in the comfort of a passive elaboration with the author. This is not to say you stop at the bedroom door…absolutely not…Start there....don't hesitate to boldly go inside….Don't ding the story like picking zits or layering on the make-up. Let the beauty emerge from where it lies hidden beneath the blush. Don't erase those perfect lines thinking later you can “Amp” (I hate that word!) the process by overlaying a bunch of adjectives, adverbs and dangling words and phrases. When you finish with the base cut go back and ruthlessly delete...wipe away those smudges that fail to move the imagery forward and blemish the story line. When this is done incline your ear....You can't always see the beauty....sometimes you have to listen for it. Your muse knows and in the silence of a minds eye she whispers...."Listen up, can't you hear the echo resounding back at you?" As sight and sound comingle can't you feel that elusive texture...the etch of her gorgeous form begining to rise up in awareness?" YES! YES!, the resonance test...By all means, don't forget that one...If I were Bill Gates I'd buy you all a set of earphones. Do the words flow with an almost poetic and surreal grace? Do they lilt along rising and falling with that primordial urgency that starts slowly and inexplicably begins to grow in a rising tempo and frenetic urgency? Watch as the story rears from beneath the surrounding context….like a fairy trapped beneath a dab of glue, stretching her arms and sticky fingers, as one moment leads to the next, as the word choice gives breath to obscenity, emotional outpouring , sensual expression and sublime grace....ENOUGH! Its time to consider technique. Whew! take a breath and relax...the worst if over.…. Is there a story line? Does it have a beginning middle and end?". Is there Dialog? People actually do talk to one another in bed you know. It's not all grunts, groans and slapping flesh. Is there a thought Process? Imagination plays a big role. People think thoughts if only to redeem the corporeal into an ambience that is intimately more satisfying. Can you smell, taste, hear feel and see the experience as a five dimension event….NO! a six.. Don’t forget to invite the spirit to the party, to shimmy in the joy of creation, to wallow in the primitive urgency, and revel in the glory of God’s greatest gift… Now you've heard it explained so I'll turn out the light....Merry Christmas to all......From Mamby-Pamby Land this was an unsolicited review...and to all a good night. |
| From Reality to Hope To me Romance Writing is an attempt to blend hope with reality. I'm sure that all writers look upon their lives and wonder if there might not have been something more….it’s the old question of choices made lalong the road and opportunities never visited. This can be the case with members of the opposite sex, career choices, decisions taken in haste or a window that opened for an instant and then slammed shut. As a romance writer dwelling upon the what might have been is not a luxury…it is an imperative. We must shamelessly pander to a readers vulnerability to the mystery….what would my life have been like had I taken a different course? We must catch that sigh and write it down, giving the reader an entertaining and believable vision….even if they have to live it through the eyes of another….even if it is fanciful…we all long to escape, however briefly into a land where dreams come true, good triumphs over evil and a girl and a guy walk happily into the sunset of a new tomorrow. In order to do this we must take our experiences and yoke them to the fancy of other alternatives. From experience comes awareness of where the decision points come and in our imaginations give life to a more exciting choice of outcomes that lead to a different story for the characters we write about. So on the one hand our experience grounds us in reality and makes our characters believable…This believability is important because if the reader can relate to them….to be able to vicariously enter into their lives than the only hurdle that remains is finding a story line that follows a new and exciting thread. My life has been good and I don’t dwell that much on choices I might have made, but I see many that I know and interact with that do….In a way it’s sad but it doesn’t take much to see the evidence….just go to a high school reunion if you don’t understand what I’m talking about. For me I take another approach to the “What might have Been” I sit back and take a couple of my characters and get them to talking….Off they go leading me on a chase into Mamby-Panby Land as I scrawl furiously or hammer madly on the keyboard of my lap top. (This is no lie…after a year I can hardly read the character etchings on the keys.) So if you ever get writer's block, pour yourself a beverage and think back on something you have written and summon two or more of your old characters….Ask them “What’s happening Dude?” and as they answer begin writing it all down. It will lead you to an interesting tale….I guarantee it. |
Flat Head Engine I found this flathead V-8 engine in a salvage yard. It had been used on the back of a truck at one time as an auxiliary engine. It probably ran a welder but the power take off shaft had been cut and it was impossible to tell what it originally connected to. Anyway while reading about “The Great Race” in a Hot Rod magazine I read this article by a guy that built a flat head engine as a sort of hybred between a racing engine and a stock engine to go in this car he built for The Great Race. I thought it would be pretty cool to assemble the components and build that type of engine for my 1940 Sedan I am working on out in my shop….So I ordered all the parts from Speedway Motors. Turns out it is going to be one darned expensive engine. While I was waiting for these parts to arrive I tore down the old engine. It was in rougher shape than I had hoped but it was not beyond redemption. I had it cleaned and it came out of the hot tank gleaming. Then I took it over to the machine shop in Salk City which is where it sits waiting to be bored and get everything trued up. When that is done the assembly process will start which is a real hoot! When that is done I’ll put it in the test stand and fire it up. It is hard for me to describe the thrill of hearing a rebuilt engine fire to life. When I get my 1940 ford Sedan all ready to go I intend to take some time and drive around the country….I’ll try and get my wife to come along but you never know with her….she’s a real sweetheart but likes her creature comforts. I know camping is a no go but maybe if I promise to stay in motels that will be the incentive she is looking for. In the meantime I will continue to write and hopefully finish my Novella, Habit of Despair. I like the way it is coming along and intend to keep it as my first priority until I finally get it finished. Then I will take some time to try and get it published by a traditional publisher and if that fails then have it self published. One of my goals in life is to have a book published so I can say I did it…come hook or crook I intend to see that happen. |
| Buford Finsterwald I never cease to be amazed by the diversity of people attracted to this site. I won’t go into a great deal of detail because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. I have the ability to be scathing however I have many years experience at reigning in my impulse to lash out at times. I used to even think I was smarter than the average bear until I met a guy named Buford Finsterwald. I was instructing at the Command and General Staff College around the mid 80’s in a program to teach young staff officers how to write and communicate effectively. The classes consisted of about 12 students and a faciliator….the program of instruction included quantitative skills, briefing, memo writing and a whole lot else thrown in. Anyway I had but a superficial understanding of the quant skills (i.e.Regression Analysis, PERT Charts etc) and when I sometimes got in over my head, Buford would smile and that was my cue to turn the class over to him. He would stand up and give the most clear cut and lucid explanation a person could ever imagine.….I mean it was almost like he was telepathic because when the light came on in his mind it began lighting up all the minds around him. He had been at the top of his class at West Point and along with everything else he was a superb athlete and when we played volleyball he could put the ball away from any position on the court. The guy had spent his whole life waiting for those around him to catch up and he was the most brilliant human being I ever met. There was just one slight problem….his human skills sucked. He was so good at everything that he didn’t need the assistance of anyone around him. Up to the company level he understood every job and could do them all better than anyone else but he reached a point one day where the scope of life just got too big for his considerable abilities to manage and he had no real experience dealing outside the reference of his own intellect…in other words he was unable to network effectively….He had gotten into trouble at his previous assignment and while I got him through that scrape I often wondered if there was any real hope for him. I never found out but I always wished him the best. He wrote once that he named a son after me...imagine that. The reason I bring this up is because we all reach a point where the complexity of the world becomes so great that we have to involve others. The ability to network and bring the best out of those around us becomes more important than the power of our chicken poop little bio processors. Because of this there is an often overlooked fact of life that many of those who enjoy success in our education system become flashes in the pan. Its nice to be smart I suppose, but our creator was careful not to put too much into the person of any one individual. He chose to make mankind a distributed bunch of processors rather that a single huge mainframe. Do you suppose that was a lesson learned from a huge miscalculation somewhere well beyond the distant recollection of all memory. I think the big bang was loud enough to awaken God and it should tell us the importance of investing in others rather than a single minded focus on ourselves. |
| One of my favorite contemporary romance novel writers is Janet Evanovitch. She is a stitch and writes a well integrated story. Sometimes when I get a minute I go back and reread her Stephanie Plumb series novels. Her strengths include the reality of her setting….New Jersey. There is not doubt regarding the authenticity of this setting and anyone who has been in the area will attest to its accuracy….It is an accuracy that comes from having lived there. A second strength is her character development. There are many ethnic groups in the New York City area and a reader can tell that she has spent some time listening to them talk. For example there are many displaced Palestinians and the way she describes their mannerisms and speech patterns is both accurate and humorous….If you have been there and heard them speak they ring true in the context of her story telling. A third strength is her sense of humor….she doesn’t take herself all that seriously and the reader has a sense for her warmth and a sympathy for all the things that go wrong in the lives of her characters as they tries to sort out their lives and stay focused. An aspiring writer willdo well to read Janet’s books. Taking the three points above….everybody comes from somewhere….It might seem boring to you but to people who have never been where you live have an interest in places they have never been and if your setting resonates as a real place readers will be interested and compelled to take note. Where you live has people and these people talk….Listen to people talk about their lives and pay particular attention to what makes them laugh. If you can relate laughter and humor you will attract a readers interest….What makes you laugh will make others do the same….all you have to do is write it down. When you write about the things you know, that make you laugh and cry you have a head start on turning out a good chunk of literature. While you might think your life is dull and boring, keep in mind that it has had its moments and if you write about those you are on a fast track to literary success. |
| Old Snarlieyowl Tonight I was sitting at the bar drinking Jeagermeisters when this old Kipling poem started cycling through my head. After struggling through it mentally, half a dozen times, I had it sorted out good enough and shared it like I was telling a story from memory, with those of us sitting around. This poem comes to life when it is recited in a bar and the reciter and patrons are a little wacked…..It still holds the same magic today that it did when the master wrote it somewhere in the Empire during the days of Queen Victoria. For those who have trouble understanding it…. it is the tale of a cannon pulled by a team of horses being rushed into battle. A shell falls and mortally wounds a horse named Snarlieyowl….he gets tangled in the harness and as they try and get him loose they drive over him….then another shell mortally wounds the driver’s brother and they do the same to him. If my memory is imperfect or I change some of the words in the name of political correctness I beg your indulgence….This is not a verbatim rendering but a recollection shared with others. Again the poem is one of my favorites and was written by Rudyard Kipling, who I consider the greatest poet that ever lived. Old Snarlieyowl This happened in a battle to a regiment of the corps That was first among the women and amazing first in war And what that bloomin battle was I cannot now recall But two off line he answered to the name Old Snarlieyowl Now they was movin into battle, and was needed mighty sore To give a little schooling to this native army Corps And they raced along a ridgeline and were coming down the brow When a tricky trundling round shot gave the knock to Snarlieyowl The cut him from the harness, he was nearly blowed in two But he tried to follow after like a good old horse will do And he went and fouled the limbers….and the driver’s brother squeals Pull up, Pull up for Snarlieyowl, his heads beneath the wheels Well the drive couldn’t do nothing, cause the wheels was turning ‘round And there ain’t no “Stop Conductor” when a battery’s changing ground I trained him from a colt my lads and very bad I feels But I can’t pull up for Snarlieyowl, his heads between the wheels Now these words he’d only spoken, when there came another round That hit to left the caisson and slammed into the ground And when the smoke had cleared away….now between the wheels Lay the driver’s brother with his head between his heels Then spoke the driver’s brother and his words was very plain… For God’s own sake get over me and put me out of pain Well they seen his wounds was mortal and judged that it was best So they went and drove that limber straight across his back and chest. The driver he said nothing, just gave a mournful grunt And swung those horses handsome when it came to action front …and if one wheel was slippery….you can bet your Monday head It was slipperyer for those rebels when the chain began to spread. Now the moral to this story’s very plainly to be seen You haven’t got no family when you’re serving of the Queen You haven’t got no mothers fathers, sisters wives or sons And if you want to do your duty go and shoot the bloomin guns. |
| Cranking Along As I mentioned, Phase 1 in writing the Novella, Don Ricardo de Castillo was getting my characters to talking and winding up with a story line. Phase 2 or the second edit required two things. First was writing the Outline of the story line I now knew and second integrating the research. For the research I had my two Dummie books and a pretty good period reference in Raphael Sabatini’s book Torquemada. Sabatini is also one of my favorite Romance novel writers….that he also wrote a scholarly epistyle on the Inquisition was an added benefit. As I read Torquemada I had my laptop tuned on and if I thought a passage had application in my story I wrote it on the screen like a note card in an old term paper. When I finished with the research I had about six pages of notes. Then I took the Outline I created which listed the chapters and scenes. Going reference by reference I cut and pasted these into the outline. Finally taking the outline integrated with the research, I pasted in the original scene and prepared to rewrite. I intend to so this so on through each scene in the chapter and each chapter in the Novella. Regarding the Dummie books, as I read them I extracted what I consider to be principles that I had not been aware of or applied to my first draft….I will try to integrate these into my second draft. So far it's working and it remains to be seen how it is all going to turn out. If it doesn’t fly I want it to be a consequence of my story telling and writing skills rather than a deficiency in ability to follow the mandates of the genre. |
| Summary and Chapter 1 Today I wrote the summary to the Novella….I promoted the supporting characters Maria and Benvolio to main characters and the Main Characters, Don Ricardo and Teresa to supporting characters. Then I want back and wrote a new chapter 1.…I figured it was a way to provide a lot of background and show an even darker layer to what is going on in the Order of the Holy Cross. In the first book Don Ricardo will think he has put mattes to rest only to realize in the second book that the roots go far deeper than he ever expected. For those that don’t know the story of what was happening in Spain during the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella….and the institution of the Inqusition. Let me say that it is faciniating reading. The persecution of the Jews that took place during that period was a grim proof that history does indeed repeat itself. What the Dominicans incited leading to the expulsion of the Jews and the persecution of the New Christians (Those they had reason to believe were not sincere in their new faith and those that abetted them….) Is dark reading indeed. It is a romance that takes place in an almost gothic setting…..In writing the scenes I have taken real events and written them into a new context. I am trying to not make it too dark but regardless of what I try and do it is going to be a bit shady to say the least. However most of my favorite romances have their share of darkness and it is up to the Hero and Heroine to overcome them….and live happily ever after…We’ll have to see what happens |
| Second Draft Tonight I finished an outline of my novella “Habit of Despair.” I know I should have had an outline before I even started but it’s hard to do an outline if you don’t know what the story line is. It was really convoluted the way this got written and I hesitate to even discuss it because it was done in such an illogical way. It all started two months ago with a House of Sensual Prose (HSP) final. I really liked the way it came out so I kept my characters talking and wrote down where they told me the story was heading. When the underlying story was finished, it was then that I realized the need for an outline for inputting the research…But it was more than this….My supporting characters turned into the main characters about halfway through and I had to go in and hype them up and down play my old main characters. I wanted to do this paperless and succeeded by using an old and a new laptop…The old laptop held the outline and the new one the chapters of the story. I could have done this with a desktop and a laptop or even a split screen but it sure is cleaner not to have all those notebooks and index cards lying about. Going through each chapter I pulled out the scenes into the outline. Concurrently I got a new Dummies book and Leslie Wainger pointed out a lot of things I simply hadn’t considered in doing the first cut which I can now work in to the second draft. There are so many huge changes yet to come I hesitate to even call this a second draft. |
| Leading with your Chin… Every time a writer posts something….they are publishing….albeit a very low rung on the publication ladder….still it is a rung because in doing so a writer transitions from a spectator (reader) to a player (Writer.) Instead of someone with a passive interest in literature you become someone with an active interest....someone who lays it on the line. I used to tell people in my professional life that in order to get nit-picked you have to be doing something to begin with....It is certainly possible and many make a career out of it...i.e doing nothing and thereby avoiding all criticism. SO! If you are determined to be a writer instead of just a reader then people are going to take shots at you...If they are jealous you can expect a few low blows...but keep this in mind....there is much to be learned in conflict and from our enemies we often learn the most valuable lessons. Just because you hate someone doesn't mean that everything they are saying is bogus and totally without merit....It is human nature to want to do this but if you want to gain an edge in life learn from your detractors. On the other hand, if they are well meaning, that is with no personal axe to grind...they are going to tell you something....Most of the time it will be what they think you want to hear. That has some social value and many here at writing.com are here for some encouragement....now that too has value but it doesn't do much to improve you as a writer. Most of that is going to be worthless in a practical sense....if you want good advice on how to improve as a writer buy a Dummies Book. Now this is important so listen up....we are not the greatest of judges of what we write....Others often see in what we do things that are not transparent to us. Sometimes these are good things and sometimes they are not so good things....Here at writing.com views are the acid test if what you have written has merit....If you get a lot of views then you need to go back and look at what you did well because that is what spikes views....If you write something lousey nobody is going to give it more than a brief glance before moving on....if it is "so/so" they will read it thrugh and go on to something else without so much as a second thought.....but if they really like it they will tell a friend and that is what accounts for a spike in views....Something that is good that spreads by word of mouth. Thus when you get a piece that spikes you have an important piece of feedback that tells you that you did something well.....it is ten times better that a review from a well wisher or someone in your support group telling you how great you are. |
| Dummies Books I love “Dummies” books. I have one on writing Romance Novels and one on writing Fiction novels. They are both informative and if an author will read one of these before they start pushing the pencil or stroking the keys, they will save themselves a lot of time and effort. Recently I finished my first draft of a Romance Novel and then I got my Dummies book. I'm glad I wrote it the way I did because now I have a good starting point. There is no doubt how the story line goes, however I have a problem in that I have two sets of heroes and heroines. Both sets have a legitimate claim for top billing and I haven’t figured out who the starters are going to be. Anyway I'm sure I'll figure out something….One of the things I learned is that the hero and heroine are supposed to show up in the first chapter and share the action from throughout. I didn’t know that. Duh! Makes sense….Somewhere in the course of the novel the supporting characters moved into the limelight and stole the show…..In the chronology of events they don’t really start to play until the third chapter….That means a back-story and I really hate those….I like to start with the action scene and follow a chronology to the end… I guess I am going to be stuck with some flashbacks….or maybe a sympathetic someone to talk to…. So what I intend to do is an outline to try and see the structure of the flow from beginning to end….I won’t number the chapters and scenes just move them around via cutting and pasting to see if there is any hope for this to work. Then I will have to do something about toning down the once upon a time leading characters into supporting characters. Finally I will have to tone down the erotica into low grade sensuality. If I do what Leslie Wainger is telling me I can see that not only will the result have a chance at publication but will also be a better and more coherently written Romance Novel |
| Female writers…yikes! Most female writers see their creations in exactly the same way as they do their children. If you want to make one mad, do a critique and imply that something needs improving….It’s like saying her kid needs contacts instead of those funny looking glasses... When you do, put on your Kevlar helmet and flak-jacket because you’re going to need it. I recently had a female writer (who is one of my favorites) make a glaring tactical error and request a review. I really like her style and there was this class where we had to write some serial vignettes. Her’s was a great story and I waited anxiously each week for her to post so I could read the latest installment. Anyway at the end of the class was a requirement to pull the whole thing together and I was really impressed with the job she did. So I said to myself…This is an experienced writer, who is also talented, who is so interested in improving her writing skills that she has actually asked me to do a review…so I did one and she was very gracious, acting every bit the lady that she is. Still I suspected something was amiss, like she was rummaging about in her closet for a souvenir she had stashed away....maybe a grenade her little brother sent from Iraq. It came as a reciprocal review, elegantly wrapped in a silk glove…My CRT screen is still smoking….It was a great review and I learned a lot from it and if I liked this young woman before… I 'm even more impressed now.  It was actually a review that made me step back and reassess and for an old curmudgeon set in his ways, that is saying something….However, I don’t recommend you make a deliberate attempt to solicit such a review. All you have to do is ask a female writer to reciprocate and then tell her honestly that her son has a wart on his nose….I guarantee you will get a great review…just make sure you're in the basement when the heat-round comes zinging through your lap-top. |
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