I just wandered around Blogspot and landed at this blog, Missed Connections, with wonderful e-versions of posters. Each one told a story, and I thought what a great set of visual prompts. One had a woman in a tribal print dress on a street corner. The caption stated that the woman and another person, strangers to each other, started talking about the weather, awkwardly. That moment could easily become the beginning of a story, poem, or prose essay. So if you are stumped for something to write about, go to this blog and look at the pictures. One, if not all, will get your creative juices going. Of course, you are likely to look at all of them just for the joy of it.
Writing
Precision in language
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| writing in circles |
I am recursive in my process as a writer. I often go several days between opportunities to write on my current project (short story anthology), so I always begin my writing session by reading from the last start to where I left off. I edit, refine and basically work at being precise in my word choice, punctuation and description, etc, while at the same time getting back into the voice, style and movement of the piece I am working on. So my work tends to go through multiple editing, repeatedly before I put it through a start to finish edit once the first draft is done. I cannot imagine writing along, never looking back, until I reach the end. I am in a constant circling back process.
This makes the current story I am working on a new experience, not because I am not writing in my recursive manner, but because the writing style itself is different. I usually rely heavily on dialogue, but this piece is dependent on place, mood and the internal lives of the characters. There is dialogue in it, but I spend so much more time on the “where” and “within” than my book-length works. Changing my writing to meet the needs of this story, when I have written in another style habitually, calls for a more intensive recursive approach. I am on constant alert to remain in this other form that is so much more dependent on description, precise description.
Excerpt from book In Times Passed:
Brent turned around and said, “Hey, Ismar, you awake?” Jove’s computer had been removed from the brackets which held her upright against the wall of Jove’s old apartment and was presently leaning at a precarious angle in a distant corner of the room.
“I’d answer you with a dignified silence, but you’d just think someone had accidentally turned me off and start saying unkind things about me.”
“Naw.” Brent laughingly denied. “It’s only fun when you can hear them. I just wanted you to know it’ll be at least a day before we can get you securely mounted in the lab. Can you tell if you’re safe where you are or should we make some adjustments. Wouldn’t want you falling on your pretty face in the middle of the night.”
“You just wouldn’t want your sleep disturbed,” she shot back at him. “Perhaps some temporary mounts could be fastened here. That way you don’t have to feel rushed to get my place ready for me. I know how careless you can be when you’re in a hurry.”
Jove interrupted, “Qui and I will be setting up your framework. It wouldn’t matter if you weren’t my pride and joy: Qui’s just naturally careful. We’ll get you bracketed in for the night before we get started on anything else.”
Brent winked at Jove knowing Ismar’s sensors would pick it up. “What for? If she falls now, it won’t bother us: we’re already up.”
Excerpt from short story tentatively titled “Scrapper”:
The boy lay on his mentor’s bunk and kicked one foot rhythmically against the shallow storage cabinet mounted on the driver’s side wall. Sometimes the urge to kick out his frustration would send his foot with a great wallop into the image-shellacked wall next to it. Pictures of the man’s family, whom he had long ago lost touch with, covered the space, and Moekaff had long since lost interest in the faces. He kicked out again at them and heard a louder thump then he had created yet. It gave him satisfaction, and he drew back his leg again readying it for a solid thrust into the transport’s wall. But the thump that resounded was oddly out of sync and out of place with his effort.
Moekaff sat up, tense and straining to listen. A second thump resounded and the boy struggled between the seats in a rush to climb into the front of the cab. Kneeling on the driver’s side seat, he shoved his cheek up against the window and attempted to look out. Without result, he turned to the viewing system Uzzon had relied on for so long until Moe had provided him with another set of eyes and senses to jockey the rig against loading docks. He flipped the switches, setting the view for the largest single image available then watched as the system ran through the available scenes. He stopped it at the view showing the driver’s side door, but there was nothing.
The thump was repeated, and the boy thought it was less intense than before. He resumed views until it returned to the driver side again. This time he manually shifted the focus inward toward the transport until he could see the side of the rig from cab end to the curved nose of the front end, just the edge of the undercarriage showing. The angle of view was as sharp as he could make it, and still he saw nothing. Uzzon would have told him to keep inside the rig, but he could not convince himself that delaying was the thing to do. He finished preparing for going out into the still dazzling light of the desert route. Dressed for the heat and exposure, he paused to glance at the view still stalled on the driver side image. A sand-dusted and sun-sleeved arm rose up from below to strike a gloved fist against the rig side just behind the door. It dropped weakly out of sight. In that brief moment, he recognized Uzzon’s gear and took in as well the sure sign of bubbled flesh where the sleeve and glove should have overlapped.
Two entirely different styles, but both very much mine. So circling back on my topic: if I can only find time to work on my anthology.
It’s not the words, but the interplay of them
I have read A Tale of Two Cities numerous times and have made notations up and down the margins north, south, east and west. The reading of it always mesmerizes me with the detail and development of character, setting and connection, of what has gone and what is to come.
“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image. “Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been? Change places with him and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.”
Oh, poor Carton, who loves Lucie but not himself enough to push aside his determined fate.
Or Monsieur the Marquis as he travels home from Paris, just late from his most recent evil:
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| The Monsieur the Marquis in red |
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling (sic) carriage when it gained the hill-top, (sic) that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”
Blood not just on his hands but all over him, “steeped in crimson” and “will die out.” And so his bloodline nearly does; he certainly does and almost “directly.”
I love to get lost in Dicken’s flow of words, so deeply knitted together as though the whole cloth of the story was life as he moves characters in and out of the spotlight until the reader is entirely uncertain who should be followed, main character and supporting shifting places constantly, just as life works, each of us moving in and out of the limelight with the people we most care about.
Something new on my blog
Well, not really on the blog. I added another page, Creative Ventings, to my blog site, a fiction corner of sorts. I thought I would include some samples of my writing, but I didn’t want to include anything that I am working on now as such things are in flux until I finalize them. So instead, I have some mini writings that are inspired by pictures I have taken. They might become something more, though not right away as I have enough projects to keep me busy for some time.
On this new page, I will add more scribblings from time to time as I remove those that have been setting a bit. It is an evolving process much like this endeavor to write and publish my own books. I am flapping as fast as I can. So wander around, let me know what you like, what you feel needs improvement or give me ideas for my next creative venting.
Books that connect us to life
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| Tennyson and my mother |
While I was on Goodreads last week, a thread title intrigued me: Stories about books. I had to check it out and I am glad I did. It was about how books become a part of our lives, imbedded in them and forever part of memories we take along with us through our lives. I posted a quick story about a book and how it connected me to my mother. Mike asked me if I would be willing to add my story to his website Stories About Books. I checked out the site and decided I would very much like to do that. Go post your story about a book that has become a part of your life. Click on the link below to read my story.
Perfect match: Smashwords.com
I graduated from a small college and now teach at a small school and live in an even smaller town. I married my high school sweetheart and have one child with him. I like the simple life and feeling comfortable with whom I am dealing with.
I graduated with high honors from that college, teach at a school where I am considered one of their finest teachers, and I know nearly all the parents of the children I teach. I have been married to my husband for more than 30 years and would change very little of it (a miscarriage and a bout with Lyme disease, I could have lived without), and my daughter is a beautiful, kind, intelligent and creative young lady. Even my dogs are smaller than their breed is expected to be. (Their parents were huge, but somehow it didn’t translate.) But they have so much heart and loyalty, that they’re bigger in what counts than any dog on the block.
That is why I chose to publish my ebook (and future books) with Smashwords. I knew I was coming in on the ground floor of greatness. It keeps growing, and I know I am going to grow with it. Sure I probably gave up the power of the big boys by not going with Kindle at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but Smashwords felt right to me. I wanted small, where I feel good about the people I am depending on. I wanted to gain expertise as I went along, and I wanted to see the bones behind the operation. That’s what I get with Smashwords.
I checked out Kindle and Barnes & Noble, but I found contract obligations where I wanted author-centered philosophy. Limitation where I wanted possibility, and a tight grip where I wanted ease of use and access. Certainly paper publishers have that greater experience which should not be scoffed at; it’s what made them great. Those large distributors did not get this big by ignoring change; they
will catch up, regroup and adapt to the power authors now can have. But at Smashwords, Mark Coker is already looking at publishing and distribution with a fresh view. Smashwords was developed to build the relationship between author and distributor with the future of electronic publishing in mind rather than the process that was successful in the past. I am at the start of my writing career, whatever depth of success I am likely to earn, and I think I am going to feel a whole lot better rising with the tide with Smashwords, learning how to swim in this publishing and distribution ocean with them.
I have bought numerous paper books from Bantam, Dell, Tor, Ace, Daw, Del-Rey, etc., etc., and I would have loved to be published by them. I now own a Sony reader and read, almost exclusively, ebooks. So here I am in the age of the e-book with the opportunity to publish my writing. I can do that with Smashwords.
See Mark Coker’s “Smashwords Year in Review 2011” blog post for all the other reasons why I think Smashwords is right for me.