Writing Exercise

I typed out the first few pages of a favourite read and I learned a lot about how the author used a ‘throw away’ character to lay her backstory, introduce us to the main character as well as to set her scene. By the end of the first five pages, the reader actually had a pretty good feel for the character, without even realising it. (Which is particularly tricky, seeing as it is a sequel and you don’t want to bore or insult continuing readers.) As well, she lays down short, abrupt sentences that don’t trip the grammar meter in Word. Tricky.

It was cool to job shadow a pro. If you could call it that.

Now how to apply this to my own writing…

Suburban Mom? Me?

Now that I have a large tub of margarine and the equivalent of my mother’s body weight in kitty litter, our household is back on track. (And in case you are curious, I came in $16 under yesterday’s Costco guesstimate.)

Somehow I became a suburban mom. My rise was slow, like that of a winter sunrise in the Canadian North. How I got here, I am not even really sure. Nobody who knows me truly believes that I am a suburban mom. They don’t buy it. If they read my blog, they would realize that I am secretly leading a double life. (But they don’t even know that I have my own URL.) Maybe it is because I don’t drive a mini-van. Or have highlights. Maybe that is why they don’t believe that I am a Suburban mom. Or maybe, because this town is too small to have suburbs. Maybe.

I didn’t even really realize that I was a suburban mom until last night. I was lying there thinking about how busy today was going to be. First I had to take my daughter to <gulp> her French class (she is four) and then home for lunch after picking up cat food at the vets and more milk at the grocery store. After lunch, off to playschool to play lifeguard at their beach party. Parent helper, French class…oh yeah, those were signs alright.

(Although, I do have to mention that the French classes are because my daughter is obsessed with French. I will often find her watching ‘Lunar Jim’ en francais in the mornings on one of the 5 1/2 channels we get. So, French class has not stemmed from my need for her to be cultured or to give her an edge in playschool, is it simply a free class that she is super-duper excited about. There, I feel better now.)

On an unrelated note, my daughter has managed to whittle away at my husband’s ownership of his cat. He has had the cat in question since she was a small kitten–ten years ago. They had an official handing over ceremony last weekend while I was still sleeping. I’m okay with it.

Okay, well, except for the part where the cat now goes into my daughter’s room every night (yes, literally every night since the handing over ceremony) and meows at my daughter until she wakes up. This is a totally new habit. I suppose the cat is saying, “Hey, do you know what you are in for? Do you know how demanding having your own cat can be? Do you know how much love I need? And god dammit, I don’t want to belong to a kid younger than I am. Your allowance will not cover my needs. Besides it just isn’t fair. I am a PRINCESS. You may have the crown, shoes and dresses little girl, but I am the original.”

And then my daughter picks up her cat and tosses her out of her room. Then I wake up and tell them to knock it off. The complaints are voiced in the morning. Seriously, it is like I have two children now instead of one.

Don’t Forget to Blink

My gosh. I feel like I haven’t blinked in a week. Seriously.

Is that weird? Oh, what am I talking about, of course that is weird.

What I am trying to say, is that I feel like I have done nothing but stare at my computer screen and furiously absorb everything I have been coming across lately. Either that, or I have my head in a book, furiously absorbing everything there too. Sometimes, I forget to blink.

I have actually, consciously, told myself to blink. Sometimes when I finally pull myself back into the real world, I look around, blink a few times and go ‘woah’. If I don’t blink, will I have a seizure like they warn you about on video game packages?

Anyway, I am going to the used bookstore. Wish me luck. Luck not spending every dime I don’t have. Then off to Costco where I will spend at least two hundred dollars and get nothing. Well, margarine and kitty litter and other terribly exciting things in large tubs which I will have to haul one at a time into my house as Costco won’t give me a box, they’ll just toss all my bulk crap into my cart and say, “Cheerio, sucker!” Thanks for all the money.

There is no pleasure in shopping at Costco. For $200, you don’t get much of anything exciting. Whereas, you go to the bookstore…lots and lots of exciting stuff. Even at the grocery store, you are going home with at least one thing that makes your pulse perk up when you blow a couple hundred dollars. But at Costco? All you get is a ding in your car from some yahoo’s overloaded shopping cart.

Point of View: An Oh, Sh*t Moment

I have a confession to make: I like to write in the first person point of view.

So, now that I have been stoned to death…

All I have read lately in that it is WRONG, Wrong, WRONG to write in this POV.

Crap. Maybe it is all the years of journal writing (as in diaries) that makes this form feel the most comfortable and natural to me.

So what is a chick lit writing girl to do? Do I cave? Is it really that bad? Am I really screwing up? Is it okay? What do I do?

Do I REALLY have to go through FOUR frickin’ manuscripts and change the point of view? I don’t even know how to do that. I looked through some of my most loved books–the ones where I really got into the heroine and *gasp* they are NOT in the first person POV. How the heck did they do that? It felt like I was in their head!

But if it means sitting on this getting-to-be-threadbare couch day in and day out and in the end selling a manuscript, I am in. I’ll do it. I’ll lick the broken glass.

But this is really going to hurt, isn’t it?

The First Five Pages: Showing Versus Telling

Although I have heard this one before, it is one that needs repeating in my ear fairly often. In fact, it is something that came out of the first chapter that I had critiqued by another writer. I was trying to get on to the good stuff by breezing over and telling instead of showing.

That gets tricky. You have to totally be mindful of your characters and their motivations all the time and what you are trying to show in every interaction and scene. I’m not that thoughtful when I write. I’m not even sure who my characters are when I first start out. I just blab on and see where it takes me and the characters. This, it appears, leads to a fair amount of editing.

This chapter made me think of a real life example from many, many moons ago. We were on our way to Mexico and we left in the middle of a snow storm. We got as far as Montana when we came up against a barricaded road. The guy at the roadblock told my dad that the road was closed and that we couldn’t get through. From where we were, the road looked fine. The interaction between the road guy and my dad went something like this:

“Sorry, this road is closed. You’ll have to turn around.”
“Is there any other route from X to Y?”
“Nope. You have to turn around.”
“Are you sure the road is closed”
“I’m sure. It’s closed.”
“How closed? It looks good. I’m sure I could get through.”
“Nobody is getting through.”
“I’m from Canada and I’m driving a truck.”
“Look, the drifts are over 20 feet high and even our snowplows aren’t getting through.”
“Oh, where can we stay around here?”

So basically, the guy went from simply telling my dad the road was closed to showing him. Not literally showing him, but giving him concrete visuals. Still telling my dad, but showing him at the same time.

The First Five Pages: Melodramatic Dialogue

It turns out that I can’t stay away from my manuscript. I did rewrite the opening scene. We’ll see tomorrow which version I like better. The totally rewritten one or the multi-edited version. My bets are on the new one. As for my characters, we had a chat and they are now in therapy.

For my writing exercises of the today…well, melodrama was interesting. I like the idea of conveying drama with silence. I actually had used silence to convey the drama of the ending of my book and it pissed of a friend that read the ms. She was like, ‘what, that’s it? I want more. Is there a sequel? Go write it. You can’t leave it like that!’ Evidently, she wanted the ending spelled out for her. Oh well. Maybe I was being a little cruel. We’ll see. As I am learning, this stupid ms will never be complete. Even though it has been for a year. And of course, now I have a new idea that is itching to be written, but I don’t feel like I can just drop all the learning and whatnot that I am doing here and go off for a month or two to write it down. I’ve got to see this through. Besides, I think the new idea needs some percolating or else I’ll end up in revision hell for decades. The revisions aren’t hell, just the never-ending part.

Overwhelmed

I feel like I am on the cusp of irreversibly destroying the opening scene on my ‘best’ ms. I had another writer critique it and she made some very good points. I had chopped about half of the scene previously which has left a lot of unanswered questions. I could go in yet again and tinker, but I am starting to worry that it will be the one too many edits that breaks the scenes back. But it needs it. So, do I rewrite it?

I think I’ll sit on it for a few days. Maybe my brain needs a vacation from writing. But then what? Just sit around all day and not think about it all and not write? It is probably what my brain needs seeing as how I have learned an incredible amount in the past two weeks.

To add to my agony, I put two of the main characters into a room and let them go. Turns out they pretty much hate each other, even though they have been best friends for decades. Great. Just great.

That Was Strange

One of the (many) unexpected things about being a parent is this: the strangeness of when your child starts having separate experiences of which you are unconnected as well as when they begin to meet people that you have not.

The separation begins.

Currently listening to Garbage (band), Temptation Waits (song). “I am a wolf, but I like to wear sheep’s clothing. I am a bonfire. I am a vampire. I’m waiting for my moment.” This album always reminds me of the video game ‘Crash Bandicoot’. I used to listen to this album while playing it. Just like the U2 album that reminds me of playing Nintendo’s snowboarding game. What memories link themselves to is interesting.