What's Your Instrument?

As long as I can remember, I dreamed of taking the arts world by storm. I envisioned myself an artist, a prima ballerina, a concert pianist, actress... usually all before noon. My childhood was spent searching for the perfect instrument. Gymnastics, clarinet, clay, painting,  theatre... You name it, I did it. My mother sang in a band, so music was never an optional program. I was on the forced-entry list every time she needed a performance partner. Never minded a bit, I might add. Although my voice never matched her range, we both agreed I could throw in a whole lot more rasp. Yes, I gloated over this, and took every opportunity to belt out a Janis Joplin tune to prove it.

I took a lot of lessons. Spent hours practicing. But never quite found my instrument. The pictures in my head never rendered quite the way I wanted on a canvas. There is a lot you can do with technique and practice, but at some point, the definition of a true artist is the ability to transcend the medium, and I just didn’t have it.

Same thing with music. I am in awe of those people who can coax a tear from a guitar. I took lessons in my teens and twenties. Practiced until my fingers bled and then some. My teacher, a wonderful life-long friend, Renee Rowell, finally shoved me out the door. “I have taught you everything I know.”

Technique does not equate art. It elevates everything to make it possible, but doesn’t create masterpieces.

Spent a long bleak spell where nothing in life seemed to go right. Made every mistake possible, and lived to tell the tale. Ended up with four amazingly wonderful children, and that makes every moment of it worthwhile. So, I wouldn't change a thing, even if I could. But, my lofty dreams were buried under the distant sands.

Then something incredible happened. I got bored.

It was on a vacation with no cell phone reception, and since it was one of those “Get away at the cabin in the woods with your in-laws, and nothing at all to do,” things, with far too much emphasis on the nothing to do. (Those of you familiar with my cell phone addiction are laughing, so stop it.) In any event, I did have a laptop, although interwebz was iffy at best. And... a word processor. Once upon a time, I enjoyed writing stories. It might kill some time. Or at least keep me from killing anyone.

I wrote the majority of a first draft of a complete novel in ten days. No plot, completely by the seat of my pants, just writing the ideas as they came to me. It’s still sitting there on my production list, because I clearly didn’t have the technique to really create anything more than a passable first attempt. But, I finished the damn thing. And three days after writing THE END, I signed up for, and completed my first NaNoWriMo challenge. That’s where you write a 50,000 word novel in the space of thirty days. Now I had two complete manuscripts. Well, huh. Now what?

Bingo! Talk to some writers. Learn how to turn those rough lumps of clay into something. I sought out writing groups, and soaked up a lot of information. Listened. Read. Wrote. Revised. Submitted. Won. Published. Produced. This did not happen overnight, it took a lot of time and effort. There is no substitute for actually doing the work. Practice until your fingers bleed, and then some.

My health did some wonky things in the past six months, and due to treatment, the limited filter I have between what I think and what I share seems to have gone away. And, that might be the best thing in the world. I say this, because after some rather unflinching posts to social media, I've gotten a flood of messages and emails from people who tell me my words moved them to tears. I will forever be in awe of those who can bring me to tears with the power of their movement in a dance, or a song, or a perfect photograph. Until this moment, it hadn't hit me. Never in a million years would I have guessed that in my quest to find an instrument, what I would end up with was my mind.

Love you all!

Just a couple of the dances that have inspired me to tears recently. I still wish I could do this.

That Poem

I am not a poet.  This is important to know up front.  But, I have the utmost respect for those dedicated to the art form of weaving magical images with minimal words.  Today, the subject of the word "that" came up, and I cringed.  That is one of those overused kudzu words I hunt and destroy when I am editing.

Double-thats make me nearly convulse.

But, in the spirit of fun, I made it a point to come up with ways to use not only double-thats, triple-thats, and even a quadruple-that in phrases that actually make sense... and to make it more challenging, turn it into a poem.

It's November, so I am participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  There are likely more uses of the word that in my draft than I want to think about... and I won't even look for them until December.  So, in the mean time, enjoy a plethora of the word THAT!

What is it that that that conveys,
That little word that causes editors such dismay,
That that that makes them gnash their teeth,
That that that emphasizes writing that is weak,
That that that needs to go away,
Highlight that that, hit delete and pray,
That that that that disappears,
Will save that editor grief, and that many tears.

It's Almost HERE... and I'm reading to get ready!

It's almost November... and that means NaNoWriMo time.  National Novel Writing Month, and adventure in living where the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  It's intense.  Plus, I am a Walmart manager.  Nothing much happens during November at Walmart, right? 

Stop laughing. 

I mean it. 

Writers read.  When I'm writing screenplays, I read movie scripts.  So, having just finished two scripts, I've read a lot of them, but not much prose.  To get back into the novel-writing mode, I decided to read the second book in The Passage series.  A nice little (698 page) tome set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by the living dead...something of a cross between vampires and zombies... created by the US Army as an experimental weapon.  Funny how that never turns out the way they hope.

In any event, I do love some things that Justin Cronin does in his writing.  Take for example the following passage. 

More bodies lay near the hotel entrance. Not bodies, strictly speaking--more a zone of human body parts. A woman police officer eviscerated as she'd stepped from her cruiser. She rested with her back propped against the fender, her pistol still clutched in her hand, her chest opened like the flaps of a trench coat. A man in a shiny purple track suit, wearing enough gold around his neck to fill a pirate chest had been hurled upward, his torso lodging like a kite in the limbs of a maple tree; His bottom half had come to rest on the hood of a jewel-black Mercedes. The man's legs were crossed at the lower ankles as if the lower half of his body hadn't heard it was missing the rest. ---Justin Cronin, The Twelve. 

Great stuff. 

Vivid. 

He brings these bit players onto the stage, and fully develops them in a few choice descriptions, then slides over them onto the next.  Yet, the image is left seared in the reader's memory.  An art, really.  A writer who pays attention to every character, without boring us with long, useless, backstory. 

That's why I read a LOT.  I find techniques I admire--and I emulate them!  I also look at the things that pull me out of a story.  Cronin has writing that makes me cringe, too.  He uses way too many passives, and cliché-ridden similes, like, "His brain felt as jumpy as corn in a hot pan."  Cringe-worthy.  You learn from other writers' bad habits too.   

I'm off to prep for NaNo.  Hope you'll join me.  www.nanowrimo.org. 

The Twelve

Star Wars, you Rule-Breaker!

Last night I watched arguably one of the most famous movies ever to prepare for a plotting talk I'm going to be doing in October for Pagan Musings podcast.  "Star Wars, Episode IV, A New Hope."  (Not that we knew it was episode IV in 1977, it was just "Star Wars")  I chose this movie because it is so universally recognized, and it also fits the basic plot paradigm I want to cover.  Or so I thought.  But, as I analyze my notes, what I find is how many of the current screenplay conventions George Lucas broke in this script. 

Yes, Star Wars absolutely fits the paradigm I'm going to use in the podcast.  So, if you want to know how, you'll have to tune in to find out.  October 22nd, 7-9pm CST, on  www.blogtalkradio.com/Pagan-Musings or on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pagan-musings-blog-talk-radio/id343159333.

I want to talk about a couple of the "screenwriting rules" George Lucas chose to ignore when he crafted "Star Wars."

Rule:  Never open with an information dump, or in other words, disguise your exposition. 

Hello, that iconic scroll at the beginning?  You know how it goes, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."  Not to mention, why a long time ago?  Doesn't that mean the people I'm supposed to cheer on and care about are DEAD???!!!???  And why far, far away?  These are some scary bad guys.  Shouldn't this story be happening RIGHT NOW, and so close these bad guys are just one hyper-jump to light speed away from Earth, where they can wreak some real damage?  But the crawl at the beginning of each movie--information dump! 

Rule:  The story question must be posed in the first ten minutes of the film.  This sets up who is the "Good Guy" and who is the "Bad Guy", and ultimately, the question of who will win. 

Oh, man do we get a great glimpse of the bad guys.  When the huge Imperial ship chased down Princess Leia's ship in the opening sequence, the sound in the theatre rumbled.  It was massive, powerful--unstoppable.  Then Vader enters.  The breathing alone, coupled with the black mask and cape... then the guy kills someone with ONE HAND.  Hello, I don't think anyone--or anything can take him out.  And that's before he chokes someone out with his MIND.  But, where is our "Good Guy?"  Is it the lady with the cinnamon-rolls on the sides of her head?  How about the weird little robot that doesn't even talk, only beeps??  Uptight gold robot?  I don't know.  Ten minutes pass, and Luke Skywalker hasn't even hit the screen yet.  But, when Luke finally hits the screen, we know immediately that this immature, whiny kid is going to either have to defeat Vader, or die trying.  We just don't see how it is ever going to be possible. 

I could cover a lot of territory in how the script fits or doesn't fit standard conventions, but this would be a book, not a blog entry, so I'll end with one final "rule" Lucas breaks in "Star Wars."

Rule:  The Good Guy (Luke)  needs to control his own destiny, and defeat the Bad Guy (Vader) on his own merits.  (No one can rush in and save him at the last second.) 

Yes, Luke controls the Force, he flies into insurmountable odds and aims at the target.  But hold on a moment.  Vader is about to blast him out of the sky.  He's right on his tail, we're waiting for Luke to make a move against him... and no.  Han Solo to the rescue, and it is HAN who blasts Vader into the nether-regions of space.  Now, we know that there are a five more episodes to this story.  George Lucas knew he had way more story than he could fit into one movie.  But, he had to fight to greenlight "Star Wars," and the studio had no intentions of promising him anything until the first movie delivered.  Heck with a  working title like, "Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars." it's no wonder the studio balked (Okay, so that's Rule #4, you need a short, amazing, and compelling title, but since the film came out as "Star Wars," I'm not going to harp on it.)  My point is, in 1977, Lucas had no idea if he would ever see the completion of his vision, and his hero just let the sidekick clobber the bad guy.  Typically a fail as far as scripts go. 

"Star Wars," was one of those films that made an indelible mark on my psyche.  I lost count of how many times I saw it during the summer of 1977.  Why?  The characters, the story, the ground-breaking uniqueness of the film itself--I still love every frame of it.  When I look at the overall arc of the six films, I am so impressed at the craftsmanship--and Lucas's ability to successfully bend the screenwriting rules to give us a story that spanned a nearly three-decade time frame, from May, 1977-August 2008. Heck, I struggle to maintain continuity for a two-hour (120 page) script.  I bow before the Force. 

Have I captured your interest?  Don't forget, October 22nd, Pagan Musings Podcast.  It will be archived on the Blogtalk radio site, and on iTunes if you miss it.  Just in time to get your opus plotted for National Novel Writing Month 2011.  November 1-30.  I'll be leading the charge, and updating every week on how the Lincoln Region is doing on Pagan Musings.  Come be part of the magic!  www.nanowrimo.org!