In Which I Listen To Music

I did NaNoWriMo this year. It was the first time I've ever participated (after a few years of thinking about it and just not being in the right state of mind). I "won" and it got me refocused, back on track after quite a long time of feeling dissatisfied with my prior WIP.

It had been a long time since I sat myself down and forced myself to write every day. I used to have a desktop computer that is now, no more, and though I had a laptop, I had spent all my formative years as a writer using a desktop and the laptop just wasn't calling to me. But for NaNo I had no choice. Use the laptop, or fail miserably and face the shame that all my pre-NaNo bragging would bring down upom me.

ahh shame, humanity's strongest motivator

Shame was not an option so I set up my laptop in the living room, grabbed a notebook, pen and writing CDs and got to work.

Normally I'm a hard rock girl. I love me some System of a Down, Linkin Park, Disturbed and anything else in that category. I'll occasionally listen to rock when I'm writing, but my music of choice for typing is new age. It's nice, 50% of the time there's no singing and since I generally write fantasy, it's fitting.

So I went to my favorite CD, Fairy of the Woods. It's just piano playing these great, meditative pieces. I love it - great for writing.
But after the first week of NaNo I felt it just wasn't cutting it for me or the story. It didn't make sense, I LOVE that CD. The first song, "Sometimes", is one of my favs. But I kept thinking of another CD.

So I grabbed Tone Poems and stuck it in. Tone Poems is a hammered Dulcimer CD Twin and I bought years ago. I don't remember where, (perhaps the now defunct Media Play?) and maybe Twin will, but it's a great CD. I love the hammered dulcimer. I wish I could play one.

Anyway, it had been a long time since I had used Tone Poems while writing. And as soon as I put it in I was instantly sent back to high school when I used to listen to it while i wrote fanfiction. The feeling was so strong and so associative that I told Twin about it the next day, which got us talking about the fun fanfiction times and would lead us to reread the stories (that will be another post later this week)

So I was momentarily distracted by the (memory) of the good old fanfiction days, but the CD was successful and I got back to writing for NaNo.

I remember a few months ago I read an article (or perhaps a blog post) discussing people who use soundtracks for their stories. (I'd give credit if could remember where I read it. Perhaps Murderati?)

Now, I almost always listen to music when writing. I can write and watch TV or video games at the same time, but I'll be more prolific if I turn of the TV and listen to music. I don't really hear the music, but my head takes it in subconsciously and the music drowns out other noises.

Anyway, in this article they discussed someone who made soundtracks for his projects, pieces of music that represented the feel of the story and that he would then listen to when writing.
At one point he had to go back for some edits on a piece he had put aside and when he just wasn't felling the story, he stuck in the piece's soundtrack and it immediately brought him back to the mindset he had when he had first written the novel. Therefore he was able to finish up the edits.

I think the idea of this kind of associative writing with music is genius. Besides the fanfiction CD I also have another song (Linkin Park's Papercut) that I've completely matched with a story idea in my head. I love Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory and listen to it quite frequently and compulsively. When I wrote out this story in my head, I also happened to be listening to Papercut and the rest of Hybrid Theory (this was back in the day when I had a 3 hour commute a day and listened to a lot of CDs in my car and did a lot of story work through in my head at the same time)



I both LOVE and am creeped out by this video

Now, whenever I listen to that CD, and Papercut specifically, I immediately start to think, and get excited, for that specific story. So much so, that I've forbidden myself to listen to Hybrid Theory when I'm working on another project because it will force me to stop thinking about what I'm working on and direct all my creative energies to this story I haven't written yet.

I'm really looking forward to when I can start that project and stick in the Linkin Park to get me excited and ready to go.

I think, in the future, I will try to create a soundtrack for each piece that I listen to when working on it. That way I can hopefully build up some associative memories for it, so if I ever need to go back, or feel myself stalling out on it, I can just stick in the CD and get back in the mindset of the piece.

Have any of you created a specific soundtrack while writing a piece? Did it bring about any associative memories that assisted in your writing?

In Which I Rant A Bit, Or, The Lovely Plot Inconsistencies

First of all, you know what's awesome? Having the day off from work for MLK day. Three day weekend and four day work week can't really be beat.

So as you know I read Interworld. Which was pretty good, for a MG book.
But I was mostly done with it when I came across something that PEEVED ME OFF.
Not enough to dislike the book, though certainly this issue has made me hate other books (it must be because I love Neil so much).
What is this thing you ask?
Well I will tell you.
Inconsistencies.
I hate them.
AND because I own the book, I'm going to point them out to you.
(warning - slight spoiler alert - I will do my best to make the spoilage very limited, and nothing hugely plot related, but you have been warned)

Page 156 - In the book Joe, and the others have to memorize the coordinates to their home base. It's like a scientific formula. In the book, Joe has a slight memory lapse which is quickly rectified. On this page it is written "The formula for getting to Base Town burned clear and bright in my mind. I could get there, oh yeah."
Nothing big right?

Page 170 (yes, less than 20 pages later) - Joe thinks: "I remembered almost everything. But, rummage around in my head as much as I wanted, I couldn't find the key that would let me go back to Base Town."

W.T.F.

Did he just not say, less than 20 pages ago, that he remembered the formula but now, suddenly, he tells us he doesn't actually remember it?

And then, on top of it after a lot of action, on Page 232: he uses the formula to get them to base town.

What the hell?!

First he remembers it, then he says he actually hasn't remembered it, but then, when it's all said and done, he has remembered it and uses it.

BS. I call BS on that!


Continuing on:

Page 183: Some of the people Joe knows were captured in a trap in which he had escaped, and on this page, Joe speaks to one of the bad guys. The bad guy says "We were disappointed not to have picked you up in the snare last month, Joseph Harker."

Page 192 (I KNOW! less than 10 pages!): Joe is pondering his captured friends and thinks: "I didn't know how long it had been for them - days? weeks? months?"

Uhhhhhhh. Actually, it's only been 1 MONTH you wanker! The bad guy told you that a few seconds ago!!

I know some people can say on this last one that, well, maybe the character didn't hear the bad guy and so it's the character's fault for still not knowing how long it's been.

Well that's a big load of BS. It was careless writing that did this.

I couldn't believe that I saw such inconsistencies not once, but twice, in a book. And from Neil of all people!
Let's blame Michael Reaves for this. King of the 80's cartoon or not, I will shove him under a bus to protect Neil.

Anyway, the last time I saw 2 (yes 2!) inconsistencies in a single book I was almost apoplectic with rage.
Why is that you ask?
Well, that's due to a little phenom known as The Lovely Bones.

Now I don't own The Lovely Bones, so I can't quote exact page numbers for you, but I can very vividly remember the inconsistencies in that book. I triple checked them at the time. In Interwold, they were no big deal, just little stupid things that had no real meaning on the plot. Also it's a MG book, and kids are dumb amiright?*

But in Lovely Bones. ..

So in the book Susie is killed by her neighbor who chops her up but accidentally leaves her hat and her elbow behind, which the police find later and use to confirm that she is, indeed, dead.

Anyway, Susie wears a charm bracelet, the one THAT IS ON THE COVER OF THE BOOK, and, if I remember correctly (and I have a good memory...) Susie talks about how her favorite charm is her bicycle one (possibly because her dad gave it to her, but I could be mistaking that for another charm). Therefore, when I'm reading the book, I'm surprised when the killer takes a charm, but it's not the bicycle charm, it's the keystone charm.
(please keep in mind, I could be wrong about the specific charms; it's been awhile since I've read it. Just remember there are 2 charms, Susie's favorite, and the one the killer takes).
So because of this, I've noted, in the back of my head that the killer has taken a charm I didn't expect him to take.

Hello. I'm the charm bracelet Alice Sebold hoped you wouldn't pay too much attention to...

So the police tell her family she's been killed, and return to the family Susie's hat, which her mother had made for her and had little bells on it (also the killer had used this hat to stuff in Susie's mouth when he raped her. Not really important to my point, but you can see the hat was more than just some small, unimportant prop). I thought it was kind of weird that they returned her hat to her family, because I thought the police might need it as evidence in case they catch the bad guy. But it's like 1973 in the book so I brush it off as me watching too much CSI and Discovery Channel ID (which I watch ALL THE TIME. I should have been a suspense writer. Hell, maybe I'm the next Richard Castle and don't even know it?)

Back to the Lovely Bones. The book itself spans quite a few years and at one point, Susie's sister, who never really gives up on her, mentions how she had taken Susie's hat and hidden it in the back of her closet. I remember this specifically because I thought it was touching.

Years go by and the case gets re-opened and the Detective, who's a minor character, thinks to himself how it's lucky they still have Susie's hat in the evidence locker because he may need it again.

And right then I FREAK out because Susie's sister has the hat in the back of her closet! So I page back until I find that part, just to make sure I'm not crazy or dumb. And I'm not.

So right there, I'm irritated. This is supposed to be this fantastic book and blah blah blah and no one but me noticed this issue?

But I keep reading; I usually finish everything I start.

Which is good thing I do, because towards the end of the book Susie's killer is thinking about how he killed Susie and how he still has the charm he took from her, and it's in a shape of a bicycle.

And I SUPER FREAK out! Because I had specifically thought it was weird that he DIDN'T take the bike charm, and now suddenly he has it?

Nuh uh. No dice.

It really peeves me off in The Lovely Bones because I think the book was way too hyped for it's own good and therefore I felt a bit tricked into reading it. And now it's been made into a movie and all that, and no one but me noticed these issues. And the charm is supposed to be representative of Susie (which charm you ask? I don't even know anymore...).

I've actually gotten to the point where I wonder if I got a defective copy of the book...

If anyone has the Lovely Bones, and wants to do a little research, have at it. Or you can lend it to me and I can look.

Sigh.

So now that I'm all worked up I have to try and remember the point I was going to make (you know, besides my stone-cold dislike of The Lovely Bones).

I've heard from a few different sources that after an author becomes a big seller, someone who steadily puts out a book or two a year and has a fan base that will always buy their work, they just don't get the editing that they got in the beginning of their careers. Check out Laurel K Hamilton's latest vampire "masterpiece" if you want to know what I'm talking about. You can find some problems a few pages in. (To be fair, she's one of the sources who has said she doesn't get edited anymore. Unfortunately, she apparently needs it... That and a plot...)

But this was Alice Sebold's first book. Why didn't anyone, her agent, her copy editor, notice these problems?

I guess the point is, you can't rely on other people to make your book right. You have to make your book as best as it can possibly be. Because we can't all be Alice Sebold and write whatever we want from one scene to the next and have it fly off the shelves. We can't even be Michael Reaves, who's lucky enough to have Neil shield him (that would be awesome though, wouldn't it?).

But seriously, don't worry about Interworld. It was fun.



* Sarcasm, of course. I don't actually believe that. I think writing for kids should be held to the exact same standard as writing for adults. I think kids are actually more perceptive than adults give them credit for, and sometimes more perceptive than adults

Friday Fun Words

Yvie here again. Can you believe it's been a whole week? Me neither, ape-friends. Me neither.

I spent most of mine sleeping, barking, getting tummy rubs, eating, sassing my ape family and generally being worshipped, which is my duty in the household.

What's that you ask? Isn't my duty writing the Friday Fun Words blog entry? Well yes and no. It's A duty, in that it needs to get done, I guess. But I'm only doing this as long as it keeps me entertained. And as soon as I'm not, well I'm out of here faster than poop out of a goose. Which is delicious, you know. Goose poop I mean, not Gooses. Though I'm sure they're delicious too, but they're also big and can swim, which is something I cannot do.

no swimming = wearing a lifejacket

Here we go!

Hotallog - this one is obvious. A piece of wood destined for the fire pit.

Nonie - another obvious one. The description of a person who is a missing a joint in their leg.

Weeny - the state of having to pee - as in "I'm a bit weeny after that 32 oz of Slurm" and also, why aren't you sharing your Slurm with me?

Bercro - a chilly raven

Blamation - the amount of onomatopoeias allotted to each person (but not dogs. We have an unlimited amount. Crack! See what I just did there?)

Dring - a ring that is also a vessel for holding liquid sustenance. Not a lot, clearly. But enough for a little sip anyway.

Miss B, OUT!

Know What's Cooler Than 80's Cartoons? Nothing.

So I was reading Interworld, which is a MG book by Neil Gaiman (I lurve you Neil) and Michael Reaves.

And while we're on it, I read the author bios and after a bit of blah blah blah for Michael Reeves I got to this little part:

"His screenwriting credits include two animated Batman features, an HBO original movie, and a dark version of Captain Planet for the Turner Network."

I'm going to let you read that again. Don't worry, I'll wait.

I know, right? A dark version of Captain Planet? Why the heck haven't I ever heard about this?!

If anyone knows anything about this, I want you to speak up.

I checked him out on IMDB, and while Batman is cool, you know what's even cooler? All the Gargoyle episodes he wrote! (and it's like, all of them...). That's way cooler than "an HBO movie". Also an episode of Peter Pan and the Pirates? Top-notch. And let's not forget the He-Man, Jem (of which I hear they are making into a movie...), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Real Ghost Busters episodes he wrote. This man is like an ode to the 80s.

OK so on IMDB the only thing that really looks like it might be a dark version of Captain Planet is this Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. Here's what it says about it:

Earth, the 22nd century. The aftermath of the Metal Wars, which led to the subjugation of humanity by intelligent machines. A small unit of human soldiers, survivors of the Metal Wars, lead an underground resistance against the activities of the evil Lord Dread and his monstrous creations, Bio-Dreads, designed to hunt down human survivors and digitise them.

sounds a bit like judgement day, but it does not look like it...

Hmm. OK. Where's the Wind, Fire, Earth and Water Powers? Oh and Heart I guess. We mustn't forget Heart... (in case you can't tell I'm rolling my eyes).

What does all of this have to do with writing? Well nothing, really. I have another post about Interworld coming up. I was just distracted by this possibility of a dark version of Captain Planet. I'll have to see if I can Netflix it. Because there's only two possibilities here:

It's terrible.
It's more awesome than we can imagine...

Reading Too Fast

I got a lot of books for presents for Christmas. Which is good because that's how it should be for everyone, not just writers and readers.
Nothing is better than a stack of brand new, shiny books to read on my nightstand.

Here are the new books, however not on my nightstand

The only problem I find is that I'm a fast reader, especially when I have a pile of new books, each one as exciting to read as the next.

So then I start to panic about reading the books too fast.

If I read them too fast, a few things are bound to happen:

1. I realize the holidays are officially over and I have a few months of doldrums and cold weather to get through before the season changes and I can go outside again without the risk of death by freezing.

2. I find I don't absorb each individual book. Unless it's a spectacular stand-alone book, years later I will look back and won't remember the author or really much about the book (this negative, however, can have a positive as well - because this means if I like the book enough to keep it for rereading purposes, when I do reread it, it will surprise me all over again!)

3. I will have read all of my books and have nothing new to read.

#3 of course, is mostly ridiculous. I have many bookshelves in my house with many unread books from when I spent a few years as a bookseller. Granted, I've noticed over the last few years that the books on the shelves have transitioned from "mostly unread" to "mostly read", but there are still quite a few books I have to read. And every once in awhile I find a book on a shelf that turns into a new favorite. Like Karin Lowachee's Warchild. When I finally got around to reading that last year, I absolutely loved it and was sad to know it had been sitting on my shelves, unread, for years.

Also, I like to shop for new books, either for specifc reads I want to buy, or by just browsing. So the idea that I'll be "out" of books to read is mostly nonsense.

Anyway what I'm getting at is after the holidays, when I have a new stack of books, I try to slow down on my reading. But this also has its own flaws. I'm not a slow reader at heart (unless I'm just not enjoying the book) so going against my nature can be irritating. It also means setting a book down right when it starts to get good. Depending on the book this can lead to a general sense of anxiety.

Also, in the back of my head, I know that slowing down is the wrong thing to do because there will always be more books than I can ever possibly read, so slowing down is not the answer.

But I just can't help it, looking at all those pretty new books!
Sigh.

In Which I Dream Of Dreams

The other night I had two awesome dreams. This isn't unusual for me, I have frequent, vivid dreams and always have. They become even more frequent and vivid, and occasionally lucid the more I write. I like to think it's my muse, getting off her drunken ass to do some work for a change.

(On a complete side note, I was looking for a picture of a drunken muse on google images when I found the above picture - what's shocking about this picture is that this is Twig, a reoccurring character at our local Renfest (of which I am a season ticket holder and a wearer of wenchy fashion) - what are the chances?!)

I usually dream in full-fledged plots, but occasionally just have dreams that jump around and make no sense. I also don't have nightmares too often, and when I do they're always just dreams full of anxiety as opposed to monsters or scary things. I LIKE the monsters and scary things dreams, they're always full of action and suspense.

I also have a reoccurring character in my dreams, one that's a representative of me that can fly and do other cool stuff. She makes an appearance typically in the aforementioned plot dreams.

Anyway, as I was saying, the other night I had two great dreams. The first one had to do with a man who's son had betrayed him in some sort of mafia related way. He assassinated his son by having him shot (think Sonny Corleone from the Godfather shot...)

What I really liked about this dream was the subsequent necromancy, where some other faction raised the son from the dead. In my dream I had become the son and the necromancy involved stitching the man back together (closing up the bullet holes, so to speak) and the stitching was very painful. I could feel every little stitch. In hindsight it seemed like on of those dreams where you're half awake and your arm hurts in your dream because it's twisted under you in real life. But I couldn't figure out why all these different specific areas on my body wold be hurting while I slept (for some reason he needed stitching on the tips of his big toe - wtf?).

The second dream was much different and involved a prince meeting a foreign princess, some cute romance followed by some regicide (hmm, there was a lot of murder in my dreams that night...)

Anyway, the point I'm making with all of this is often I'll have some fantastic dream and I'll think to myself - surely this will make a GREAT story... and then I write it down and typically promptly forget about it.

In the past (high school) I used to try to write stories based off of my dreams. Of course most the stuff I wrote back then was elaborate fan-fiction - where myself and all my friends made up our own characters and stuck them into our favorite show where said characters had adventures and romances. You know, the typical Mary-Sue teen junk.

Those dream-based stories never turned out well. After years of trying I came to the conclusion that writing a story based off a dream is folly (not counting Stephanie Meyer or Aprilynne Pike (dammit)).

I think, (for me anyway) that occasionally I can base a scene in an existing story, off a dream. But a whole story? There's just not enough substance.

But! - surely if I combine TWO dreams (say, the ones I had the other night that included filicide, necromancy and regicide...) that will overcome the lack of substance and give me a base to build off of, right? Right?!

Yes! I can see it working now!
I'm off to write down my new story idea in my notebook!

That's A Bitch Move, Jo March

I was eating lunch the other day and had nothing to watch on my DVR (in case you didn't know, my job lets me work at home, which is just as awesome as you think it is and also full of more sweatpants than you'd guess). Typically I have a swath of TV shows that I tape purely for watching during my lunch break, but Castle is on hiatus as with everything else. Therefore I had to channel surf and I found Little Women. It was half an hour in but I hadn't seen it in a long time so I started watching.

Barring the fact that I forgot Christian Bale was in it

I love you even with your dickery

Along with Gabriel Burns, Susan Sarandon AND Claire Danes, I'd also forgotten how awesome it is. I taped it after my lunch break so I could finish watching it in the evening (which is why I only got 300 words written that night on my WIP. Yes, it was definitely Little Women and not Zombie shooting. Not. At. All)

On a side note Brother apparently says he's never seen Little Women before, evidenced by the fact when he came in he said "What is this crap? It looks stupid." Even though BETH HAD JUST DIED and IT WAS NOT STUPID!

On a side note off the first side note, whenever I think of Little Women I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Monica finds Stephen King's IT in her refrigerator. She discovers that Joey put it in the fridge because it had frightened him, which is apparently his usual solution for books that upset him. So Monica suggests that he reads Little Women instead. He goes through almost the whole book thinking Jo is a man and Laurie is a girl. At the end of the episode Joey is all upset that Beth died and Monica's solution is for him to put Little Women in the fridge.

Back to the first side note - I do think Brother has seen Little Women, he just probably doesn't remember.

Back to the main point of the post. I was thinking about how Jo was writing, more or less, genre fiction and Friedrich is all "oh it's good but I know you can do better" and blah blah blah and I'm all like "Maybe Jo wants to write about zombies and steampunk and maybe you should just shut your mouth Friedrich" but not really because it's Gabriel Byrne and I lurve him.

I love you D'Artagnan - I mean Gabriel.

So then Beth dies and it's sad (AND NOT STUPID) and Jo takes one night (HAH!) to write a new wonderful novel called *Gasp* Little Women (and I freak out because of the paradox of her writing the book that the movie is based on that I'm watching where she's writing a book and...well you get it. Mind Freak!)

And even with all of that other crap going through my head, the one thing I really come away thinking is that Jo is a piece of crap because apparently she can write both fiction AND non fiction.

I took a creative non fiction class in college. I was a senior and the next semester I would take my senior project class which involved Fiction writing and then a semester after that (because I needed 4.5 years to get enough credits to graduate so my last semester was filled with pure fun stuff including beginning fiction writing which I had skipped over originally when I went straight to intermediate fiction writing. Talk about an easy class. Beginning Fiction I mean) I would take an MFA fiction writing class even though I wasn't working on an MFA.

I'm totally losing myself in my own train of thoughts here. Anyway I took a single creative non fiction class. And I was HORRIBLE at it. Not only was I horrible at it, I didn't find it very fun. I didn't have anything worth writing about. And I didn't even want to write about me and my past - booooring - I wanted to write about made up crap.

The weird part is, I knew HOW to write good non fiction - I could recognize it when my classmates did it, and I could appreciate a good memoir. But for the life of me I just couldn't apply that to my own writing. I think a lot of the people in the class thought I was dumbish and couldn't believe my major emphasis was in creative writing (I know this is at least partially true because one of the girls in that class would also be in my senior project class which was fiction based and she flat out told me that my fiction was world's better than my non fiction.) My non-fiction work is the only writing that I've willfully destroyed.

I wonder if other writers have this trouble, or if it's just me? I'm not great at poetry, either, but I can pull some of it off. But not Jo March, ho no. Jo can write anything and everything and get it all published while simultaneously finding herself a man. Apparently she's like the Avatar of writers.

I would give much to be an airbender

So anyway, here's what all this rambling comes to: Little Women, I love you, but Jo March can suck it.