Accountability Tuesdays – Week 20

You know what I hate? Like, really, full-on, have-to-hold-myself-back-from-flying-into-a-rage hate? People at airports hocking credit cards. It’s not just the fact that I don’t like having crap hocked at me, or that I find it incredibly annoying when I’m rushing toward my gate and someone starts shouting interest rates at me, although those things are part of it. No, what I really hate is the insufferable persistence. Even if its not me they’re talking to, I loathe hearing a credit card salesperson continue spewing their spiel when the poor patron they’re annoying has already said “no thanks” half a dozen times. I know it’s their job, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking of them as the rudest pieces of crap in existence.

That’s why, today, when I noticed one of these people being particularly persistent and annoying with everyone who walked past, I happily walked close enough to be hailed and then proceeded to pretend I was deaf. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite so amusing as the look on a rude arsehole’s face when he realizes he can’t communicate with you. Made my travel day right there. Ha!

Anyway, I suppose I’ve got some accountability stuff to get out of the way? Okay, let’s do it.

Health and Body Image Goal
Okay, it’s a new week. I tend to eat a lot of salads while I’m out West and it looks like the weather is going to be great for jogging, so we’re on the right track for the follow days. What about last week, you ask? Don ask about last week. Last week was…decadent. Or maybe slovenly is a better word. Gimmi a break, I was busy with heavy trash pickup and Spring cleaning!

Editing Goal
I haven’t figured out a better method yet, but for the time being I’ve got a few dozen more pages printed out to work on. I glanced over them on one of the planes out here, so I’ve got an idea of where I’m headed. Again, if anyone has any ideas about how I can make editing a little easier than constantly dragging piles of printouts back and forth across the country with me, please share!

1,000,000 Word Goal
It wasn’t a great week due to the aforementioned heavy trash and Spring cleaning, but I did manage to squeak out 2287 words worth of blog entries. My plan for the coming weeks is I temporarily set aside my work-in-progress (on which I’ve been having a butt-load of writer’s block) and spend a little time concentrating on something easier and more fun: my Final Fantasy III/VI novelization, which I’ve been posting bits of during Fiction Fragment Fridays. So look forward to more of that!

And now, if you don’t mind, I have one 2-hour bus ride left before I land in camp and I plan to spend it reclined and listening to some classic rock (i.e. “ZZZzzzzzz…..”)

I’ve Been Changed in the Write Way

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

101. How writing has changed your life.

When I was in the third grade, we were assigned a writing project. I can’t recall exactly what the project was, but it involved writing a short story and binding it into a little book using construction paper and string. I wrote a story called “The Mystery of the Emerald-Eyed Cat” and while I can’t recall precisely what the plot of the story was, I remember that I bound it in green construction paper and that I drew mean-looking cat eyes on the cover. I also remember that I signed my name on the front with an extra middle name that doesn’t actually exist, but hey…kids are weird.

Anyway, I remember my teacher at the time, Mr Power, telling me how good the story was and that I should write more. Looking back, he was obviously just being a sweet, encouraging teacher, but at the time I took him at his word it was pretty much then and there that I decided I wanted to be a writer.

My writing continued on throughout grade school with my best friend and I writing what we called “The Game Masters”. They were two separate series’ with the same basic plot, one written by each of us. They had the same characters, but in my series I was the main character, and in hers she was the main character. We would write our stories in those thin, crappy scribblers that little kids get for school, and whenever we each had a full chapter or so we would exchange and read each others’. It was great fun, and though I’d probably cringe terribly to read those stories now, they seemed pretty damn awesome at the time.

From there on my writing has waxed and waned due to any number of reasons, but I’ve always returned to it. I wrote nonsensical mini-stories in junior high school, fanfiction in high school, slash fanfiction in college, and eventually returned back to original fiction over the past 10 years or so. In the past couple of years I finished my first original piece, start to finish (minus the editing part), and I am currently in sight of the finish line for my second original piece.

So you see, writing has been a part of my life for a long time. As to how it has changed my life?

On the negative side, writing has definitely made my life more stressful over the past few years. It’s difficult to work a writing schedule around a full-time job and a husband and child, and even thinking about doing so makes writing feel more and more like work, which I hate. Writing is something I love to do, so I have to struggle hard not to let it become one of those things that I have to do and dread to do. I would love to be able to write for a living, but I never want writing to become a job, and sometimes when I’m trying to force myself to write a few paragraphs in camp after I’ve worked a 12-hour shift, that’s exactly what it feels like.

But on the positive side of things, writing has kept me sane all these years. No matter what else was going on in my life, I could always write. When I had a fight with a friend as a child, when I was a ridiculously awkward teenager, when I experienced heartbreak, when I had doubts about my future…whenever something frustrating was happening in my life, I still had writing. Some people escape into books written by others, but I’ve always been able to escape into stories written by myself. I can pour my feelings out into my characters when I don’t know what to do in real life. I can torture my characters to make myself feel better, or give my characters the world for the same reason. I can twist reality exactly as I see fit, which is even more satisfying than you might imagine. Writing, for me, has always been one of the most cathartic things I can do. It keeps me from punching holes in the wall and screaming until my voice gives out. It is my Valium.

So I guess, what you could say, is that writing has changed my life by helping to prevent me from becoming a violent lunatic, because I can just write violent lunacy instead! That sounds sane, right? Right?

Hook, Line, and Sinker

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

72. Developing a compelling hook

I’m quite certain that a great deal of literature has been written on this subject, but unfortunately I have not read any of it. All I can really give is my opinion, based on the fact that I’ve been an avid reader since I was about 8 years old.

To me, the trick to developing a compelling hook is to be both realistic and unrealistic at the same time. Sure that doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. First, you have to be somewhat realistic with your characters and settings, because even when your reader is looking for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, or any of the other crazy options there are, they want to feel some kind of connection to the story. If your character is a gorgeous creature who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and is absolutely perfect in every way your reader is going to have a hard time giving a rat’s behind about them. In fact, they’re more likely to hate them and not want to read about them anymore. But if you give your character some flaws that the reader can relate to (they were teased mercilessly as a child; they have an alcohol problem; they’re embarrassingly clumsy; etc etc etc) the reader is more likely to connect with them and want to follow them through the story. George R.R. Martin’s writing is a great example of this. In his A Song of Ice and Fire series you can easily find yourself rooting for multiple characters on different sides of the battles, because even the most evil characters have certain traits or beliefs that force you to relate with them. Sure, they’re still creeps, but you can’t help feeling that they could almost be your friend in a different situation, which makes you want to find out what happens to them.

Moving on, once you’ve established this sense of realism, you have to move on to being unrealistic in your story. See, the thing is that (for the most part) reality is pretty boring. The world is a pretty amazing place, yes, but the everyday world is, well…every day. People don’t read fiction because they want to read about the same things that they see every day in their own lives; they read fiction to put themselves into another world, a place that’s strange and different and lets them escape from the mundane. To continue using Martin as my example, his world first seems like a perfectly realistic medieval land, but suddenly you find out that it’s also full of magic and dark creatures. You’re relating to the characters and the world they live in, but you’re also surrounded by the odd and unusual, the kinds of things you secretly wish were real.

This doesn’t exactly help develop a “hook”, but I think that these are two important things to keep in mind when attempting to do so because any plot idea you do come up with will be a lot more enjoyable to read if these two ideas are kept in mind.

Or maybe I’m wrong. If so, feel free to debate it with me!

30 Days of Truth – Day 10

Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.

The wording of this one seems unnecessarily harsh. Even if I did have someone specific that I wish I didn’t know, I wouldn’t post about it on here for anyone to see. Sheesh.

For the sake of answering the question, I’ll just say that I wish I didn’t know anyone from the company that bought our paper mill a few years back (I won’t say the name out loud because you never know with these sorts of people, and I can’t afford to get slapped with a law suit or some nonsense). Their only contribution to the paper mill industry was to bankrupt pretty much every mill they owned, including the one I worked at. Not to mention some pretty questionable business practices (*cough*tookourmoneyandran*cough*) that make me genuinely curious how some businessmen can stand to look at themselves in the mirror every day.

30 Days of Truth – Day 1

Something you hate about yourself.

My chronic inability to finish things. This applies to everything from stories I’m writing, to things I need to do around the house, to the 1001-or-so video games I have yet to beat through to the end.

I don’t know if it’s a procrastination thing, or an attention problem thing, or if it has something to do with the fact that I always seem to get bored with something before I’m finished with it, but I never finish anything. Anything. It’s a bit ridiculous. Stories I’ve been writing for well on a decade now? Unfinished. Cleaning out my closet? Unfinished. Organizing my bookshelves? Unfinished. Video game that my husband bought me three years ago that I do, in fact, genuinely enjoy playing? Unfinished. It’s a disease. I swear, if it were possible to put off giving birth, my one-year-old would still be in the womb.