megwrites

As expected, the going is still slow on the novel and progress has slowed to a crawl, because I'm just not concentrating that much on it. But it's my vacation and it's nearly Thanksgiving, and I don't feel guilty.

But I did do some thinking about my project and about writing in general on the way back from Massachusetts today. And one of the things I thought about was how writers are so constantly hammered with the old adage, "Show, don't tell". It's practically hammered into our heads by advice givers and fellow workshoppers from the moment we decide we have the temerity to both write and share that writing with others.

And a lot of things have bothered me about that little piece of wisdom, especially since writers are, ideally, storytellers.

Then it hit me that it's not so much that you should always show and never tell, but that there's a ratio of showing to telling in every story that either does or doesn't make the story work.

I think if you show and never tell, you end up with a really tedious story that describes in nauseating detail every little thing a character does. It's like trying to view a picture on a computer going pixel by pixel It doesn't work. You end up with what the people over at Flogging the Quill like to call "overwriting".

However, if you do nothing but tell, and never show, you end up with an overglorified outline.

So you need a balance. Some things merit showing, just as somethings in a movie warrant the camera zooming in. Some things, however, barely deserve mentioning. Opening doors, crossing the street, brushing teeth, getting dressed - you're better off just telling me that they happened and moving along to the interesting things like dragons and aliens and the plot.

The ratio, however, and what kind of telling and showing are sort of what learning to write is about. I don't know what they should be, but I know that different stories need different ratios. Some stories are all in the details, even the minor ones. Some stories are about broad strokes.

I hope I'm getting the right mix of showing and telling in what I'm doing now, and I definitely hope that readers (if any ever see this particular project) agree. But I suppose that's the point. To learn to get an intuitive sense of the balance of show and tell and make it work together, like rhythm and melody in a song.

Okay, enough of the metaphors. I got tacos waiting on me and a chapter to finish up. Library books have to be stolen and people have to be beat up and marriages have to be imperiled!

I had a moment today when I was writing where I felt slightly frightened of what I was typing, not because it was a scary scene, but because I realized I was hashing out a fundamental life issue that's been a problem for me for a while and is a problem still.

I try not to work my issues out on paper, because I'm not sure anyone else would find them interesting. But just this once, I think it helped me to understand the story better and give the readers something I think they might feel a lot of sympathy for.

I also wanted to ask a question of my fellow writers, and that is this: Do you ever get so deeply tuned into a character when you're writing that when you step away from writing, you feel like you still have that character, the setting, the situations sort of overlaying all your thoughts.

For instance, when I went to bed last night after writing, I was getting into bed and for some reason I was imagining one of my characters and what they'd be like when they went to bed, and what they would do, and imagining for a few seconds that I was in their place.

It was a bit of an unsettling moment, because I'm quite cautious about my mental health and always a little afraid that I might one day come completely unhinged, so I try to check myself if I feel I'm going to a Crazy Place.

But I also told myself that maybe other writers do this, that perhaps it's not a sign that I'm beginning to break with reality or dissociate from my own identity (I shudder at the thought) - but that maybe it's just part of really getting down and dirty with your work, maybe some of the dirt stays under your nails and between your toes.

So, tell me, oh f-list that knows all, am I crazy or just a writer? And no, in this once instance, they are not interchangeable, though one can be forgiven for thinking so because creativity and madness are like identical twins that you have to get to know before you can tell them apart.




The Devil's Workshop

43,402 / 50,000 (86.8%)

Woot! I'm past the 30k mark, which means I'm past the halfway part. I still have a way to go before I'm where I want to do.

But I have learned an important lesson. When in need of words to fill a big hole between plot points, gay sex is always a viable option. In my defense, my characters are married, so it's totally cool. And yes, as far as I'm concerned, same-sex marriage is already a reality. It just doesn't come with tax breaks and property rights yet.

And for the record? Saying that tax breaks and insurance sharing is what validates a marriage and "sanctifies" it is like saying that you can't have a cheeseburger without ketchup and pickles. It's nice to have them, but as long you've got meat, cheese, and buns (don't forget the buns!), it's a goddamn burger and any snotty burger purists can just get a side order of STFU & GTFO with that.

But enough of my political views.


The Devil's Workshop

34,010 / 50,000 (68.0%)

Oh, I'm exhausted. I'd like to get to sleep at a reasonable time sometime this week!

I finally broke the 20k mark! I thought I'd never get there. I'm nearly over the hump, wheee!


The Devil's Workshop

21,032 / 50,000 (42.1%)

I'm still catching up because I absolutely failed on the 4th and 5th and have had to make up the missing words since then. I'm not where I'd like to be, either by words or in the story. But I guess that gives me something to do next week.

Today's pithy writing lesson is that when in doubt, look around to see if anyone else is doing anything interesting.

Also, thank god for Wikipedia. I know it's not an accurate source of information, but when you just need to know what year the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks or how many species of dragonflies there are, it's good to have something handy that takes about two seconds to search and read.

Dear Nanowrimo Site Folks,

You know how people donate money to you every year so you can keep things going and do cool stuff? Well, maybe (and this is just a suggestion) if you know that you're going to get a huge spike in traffic in the early days of November, maybe you could invest in servers and bandwidth to handle it. Just sayin'. The point of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in 30 days amongst a community of others doing the same. So I kinda feel that the money you receive should go towards funding that first and foremost. And whatever other projects you have should get funding after you're sure that the site works.

And if you can't for whatever reason handle that and you know your servers have been crapping out, maybe you could post something besides, "Teehee, isn't it so funny how our servers have been timing out on you constantly for the last three days? We knew that was going to happen, but oh well, good luck getting through!"

Still, I love you guys and I love the site. I just wish that it would actually work. I'm tired of it taking me three tries just to see my buddies and how they're doing.

Loving You Still,
Me



The Devil's Workshop

10,047 / 50,000 (20.1%)

Being stuck between several ideas, I outlined the heck out of them last night and then went to bed, hoping that either my subconscious would have the right answer come to me in a dream or that I would wake up miraculously know which idea to choose.

Yeah, don't ever rely on your subconscious to be useful or timely in giving you information. My subconscious is pretty much the bastard lovechild of Cookie Monster and Animal. It wants nothing but sweets and goes around wrecking up the place while growling incoherently.

This morning I got up, a bit bleary and with a bit of a sugar-hangover and decided to screw it all. Screw the idea being good or publishable or even not trite. Everyone's ideas are trite if you boil them down to basic elements and strip away all the context and execution.

And if everything is equal, I'm gonna start working on the idea that I know the first line for. That's something, right?

So. Chapter one, page one, line one.