Guns and Knives and Bad Guys, Oh My!

I wrote a chapter that needed our group to fend off bad guys in order to facilitate a rescue. I thought it would need lots of blood and violence in order to create tension and urgency. I failed miserably. I am not a guns and knives person and neither are my characters. I took myself, and them, completely out of our comfort zone. It wasn't me and it wasn't them and that was obvious.

Our shtick is funny, a bit bumbling, but not ridiculous. That was what I was afraid of, I didn't want my characters to be ridiculous, cartoonish,or I Love Lucy'ish. I didn't want it to be predictable. I wanted the reader to feel like one of the good guys may not make it out alive.

I got tons of great feedback from my writer's group. It never ceases to amaze me how much talent there is in those groups. They take great interest in helping me to be better, to make my book better. Everyone shows up with the intention of getting help, and giving help, in equal measure. I take their advice quite seriously. They agreed, to the last person, that I did not stay true to my characters nor did I make the struggle believable.

To make it all work then, I've decided to create new bad guys. My characters could not overcome the previous bad guys without getting themselves killed, so I'm giving them more manageable bad guys. Is that cheating? Perhaps, but then, I'm guessing that other authors create their bad guys to suit their protagonists too. After all, how brave James Bond is, is in direct proportion to how crazed the megalomaniacs he faces are. Without Lex Luthor, Superman would be merely, Kindofcoolman. Pit those villains against Nancy Drew, however, and she would not have lived long enough to need a bra.

I'll be spending a few hours visualizing bad guys that are not very good at their job.
Should they be too old? Too fat? Too stupid? Too unmotivated? All, or none, of the above? This is going to be much more fun.

The mechanics of creativity

I haven't written on here in donkey's years because I'm pretty sure no one reads them, but since I need to say this somewhere, I'm saying it here.

I broke my left hand a couple of weeks ago and have to type with my eyes on the keyboard, pecking away with two fingers. I cannot write my book this way.

The part of my brain that is looking for the keys is like a Suma wrestler, sitting on the part of my brain that wants me to be clever and witty. Poor little creative quadrant is squished against my skull, kicking its legs and gasping for breath, while giant, hunt and peck quadrant, is grunting and sweating his way across the keyboard, his indecently covered backside flatulating on my prose.

Remember, those of you who were alive when Kennedy was shot, taking typing class in high school? We learned to put our fingers on ASDF and JKL;, and, with eyes on our books, type out now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party? Little did I know then that those lessons would ingrain themselves into my involuntary brain and become as natural as finding my mouth with a french fry.

I played the flute in Junior High and High School but it would take a great deal of effort for me to name the notes on a scale, concentrating on, All Good Boys Deserve Fudge, and quarter note, half note, etc. However, if I pick up a flute, I can look at a sheet of music, and my fingers, and tongue, will produce Greensleves with uncanny precision.

I've started writing now with pen and paper, and am able to produce some pretty good stuff, if only I could read it back to myself the next day. Apparently, my fingers are playing a game of, Nice to have you back. What do you think of your fancy schmantz typing now, miss, I'm too good for pens?

Four more weeks of that and I shall have to go back to typing about the quick brown fox and lazy dog, eyes forward on the screen, waiting for the bell to ring.

Drag Show

Last night I went to a drag show, in my imagination. It was much better than the ones I had actually gone to because it was all my doing. I got to design the theater and adjoining bar. I poured the drinks and played the music. The costumes and makeup were all my doing. The performers were as carefully chosen as their performances. All the guests were invited by me and their behavior strictly scripted. That is not to say there were no surprises however. As I wrote, my characters stepped out of the roles initially created for them and began to have fun on their own. When I was done writing the scene, and read over what was there, I found some of it not worth saving, but much of it better than what I had first envisioned. Some of the things that came out of their mouths were shocking and needed to be censored, but some of them were hilarious and I found myself laughing out loud. My headliner even changed from being Caucasian to African American. Neat trick huh? A character from an earlier chapter came in to join in the fun and to add some twists to the plot. My heroine showed an interesting new facet to her personality and changed her clothes on the spot. Oh subconscious, you are truly wonderful and frightening and I wonder what I would do with all these thoughts if I weren't writing them in a novel.

Muse

I haven't been blogging lately because I wasn't sure anyone was reading them, but I had something so remarkable happen that I just had to tell someone, or not.

I have read recently that Agatha Christie didn't always know who the murderer was until the end of the story. She wrote on several different notebooks that also included recipes and her children's handwriting exercises.

Did you know that Stephen King also makes it up as he goes along? He begins with a "what if?" and goes from there allowing the "muse" to write the story with him. This makes me feel better about my less than prepared writing habits. (Note I didn't say riding habit which is something else altogether).

Recently it came to me out of, if not the blue then perhaps the inner part of my brain that creates independently of my conciseness; to add an entirely new parallel plot. I was simply typing the newest chapter, clear on what I was going to write about and how it would unfold, when I kind of veered off into a place I didn't plan to go at all. I didn't purposely sit and think, maybe this or that should happen, it felt more like I was writing about something that had actually occurred. I was taking dictation from my muse. Glory Hallelujah! I have a muse!

It's getting very exciting now knowing that I have a muse as a writing companion. He or she is very clever and our book is beginning to surprise and delight me.

It is a quote that is trotted out much too often but it feels right here. "I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of." Ok, so not that one, but I do think that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Meet Up

I belong to the Nashville Writers Meet Up Group. There are Meetup groups for everything all over the country. There is a photography Meetup and singles Meetups and Meetups for people who like sushi. The writers Meetups are free, (I think they all are) and meet at the Borders downtown. I'm fortunate in that the Nashville Writer's Meetup is one of the largest writer's Meetups in the country. Under the Nashville Writer's Meetup is a novelist group, a fiction and a non fiction group, mystery writers group, a science fiction writers group, memoirs, screenplay, and of course songwriters group, a grammar one a "craft of writing", and more.

Everyone is encouraged to bring something they are working on. Copies are handed out to all at the group You read yours aloud with all following along and then everyone provides feedback. I find their critiques worth more to me than gold. I take my copies home, where everyone has added notes and make modifications to my draft. I've been busy since my Saturday afternoon group making some positive changes to my work. It's a great way to preview for laughs too. If any of my humor lines fall flat at least I don't get heckled.

funny paper

My book is a mystery with humor, but what if I'm not feeling humorous?

I'm certain stand up comics don't feel funny every day, nor does Conan or Jay or David but they go out there and do it. How?

What if you're feeling blue? How do you make other people laugh?
I bought a funny book. That made me depressed because she was funnier than me.

I watched a funny show on TV but as soon as it was over, so were the laughs. I need to install a laugh track on my computer.

I wrote all day anyway.

What I noticed was, the more I wrote, the more I liked it.
I cheered myself up.

So is that what comics do? Even though I imagine most of them to be morose or troubled most of the time, the mere act of acting funny makes them BE funny. At least I'm guessing so. I don't know any comics personally.

So here's a joke for you, (is anyone even reading this? I can't think about that, I"ll depress myself.) in time for St Patrick's Day

Mick and Paddy are reading head stones at a nearby cemetery. Mick say "Crikey! There's a bloke here who was 152!"
Paddy says "What's his name ?"
Mick replies "Miles, from London!"

thanks for noticin' me

This is going much too slow. I'm getting bogged down in character research. My problem is that I want all my characters to be "stand alone" people. I want my readers, (please God, let there be readers), to have a vested interest in each one of them.
I have a character who is a reformed "Type A" guy. He has a heart attack and becomes aware of life in a way that he never noticed before He studies Eastern Religions and adopts a Taoist type philosophy of life. What do you know? More research. By the way, the Te of Piglet is very good and an excellent source of Tao. I'm becoming smarter by the day and my book is falling further and further behind. At this rate, my great grandchildren will have to finish it for me. I have no intention of writing the great American novel, far from it, I just want my characters to be interesting.
The answer may lie in me creating characters who have traits and idiosyncrasies that I know more about.
How about one who is a novelist that writes at glacial speeds?