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.

Delivering the Promise of the Premise

I've been in love with the written word as long as I can remember. In fact, my grandmother had me writing and illustrating stories since before I could even pen the words myself. I grew up with a voracious reading appetite—something that is essential to become an adept wordsmith. When you hear people talk about books, they usually say they liked it, or they didn't like it. As a writer, I make it a point to spend time thinking about what it is that either attracts or distracts me from a story.

So, I recently started reading a self-published book by a journalist/college professor. Man, this thing has prose that jumps off the page. Great characters, and a compelling plot-line. I was absolutely hooked...

Then I saw it, looming on the distant shore.

 A fin.

You know what I'm talking about, a story that was about to jump the proverbial shark. Maybe it was when a beer-drinking Jesus showed up saying things like, "Bztt," while poking himself in the forehead, and suggesting that extramarital sex was fine with him. I wanted to yell at the book, "Don't do it! Get out of the water, NOW!"

Instead, the story bore down on it like the Titanic heading for an iceberg, and the collision ripped the entire plot apart.

One thing writers are admonished to avoid is called, "Deus ex machina," or "God in the machine," which is a plot where something or someone shows up at the end and magically solves all the problems for the characters. In this case—well, Jesus showed up, and the plot fizzled.

My disappointment mounted with each turn of the page. I understand the message is that Jesus can fix anything, and that ultimately, he's in charge, but I had the same problem with the popular, "Left Behind," series. Loved the characters, loved the unique way the authors gave a relatable face to the book of Revelation, right up to the point that Jesus showed up and marched around the sky singing and chanting in everyone's head at the same time. It was a letdown, when the story I'd signed on for was that of a small band of people I was emotionally invested in. The addition of the divine minimized those characters I cared about to the point of making them inconsequential. I simply quit caring what happened to the characters, and when a reader stops caring, that's the kiss of death for a story.

The ending of this book now seemed rushed. Solutions to the apocalypse kept popping into existence with little setup, since now that Jesus in on the scene, we're good to go. I want characters locked in a life-or-death struggle until the bitter end—do or die, sink or swim. I want to raise my fist in triumph when they win, or grieve when they fail.

So, that's my lesson to myself today. Delivering on the promise is as important as the flow of the prose. Life—and writing—is the journey, more than the destination.

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