Who's story is this again?

Two posts in one day is unheard of for me but this, this I had to share.

So quick back story: I've been working on a Beauty and the Beast story, trying to get a handle on the characters and work out some problems with the plot so I can start writing it for Camp NaNoWriMo's April session.

It hasn't been going well. I thought I had calmed down about it after my last post but then I just got worked up again wondering if I was ready to write it and if I had enough exuberance to deal with all the themes properly. My MCs (main characters)  were flabby at best but some of the SCs (secondary characters) fascinated me.

Everyone knows how Beauty and the Beast ends so you wouldn't think I'd have a problem there but I did. I had this SC who I really liked, she had a complex journey of her own and I really felt the need to wrap up her story nicely, only I couldn't. There was no way I could fit a happy ending into the story I the idea of leaving her hanging didn't sound good at all.

You Can't Plan Joy

I've been panicking;  mildly yes, but still panicking  I have been struggling to pin down certain aspects of the story I'm supposed to start in April for Camp NaNoWriMo. I have several characters I like and something of the plot but so much is still a jumbled mess.

The story is about love and motives and all sorts of difficult themes that I'm not sure I can handle. I've begun wondering what experience I have that qualifies me to write this. Should I even try? Is there another story, one which I don't care about as much, one that I wouldn't ruin?

My first time in NaNo I didn't have time to worry before hand, I found out about it and signed up the same day. I picked the only story that was even near being ready to write and ran with it. But still, I thought to day, I must have worried about it, I know I did. So I went back to my journal entries for that month and I have never been so thankful I to have kept a journal.  I know I worried at some point but that's not what I found as I flipped though the first few weeks of November. I'll give you a few excerpts to show you what I mean:

Lines of Imagery

All of these things I found siting, half accidental, on the same surface. So as a little exercise I thought I would catch them so to speak and share: 

A ring of skeleton keys and a red leather wallet embellished with gold, a string of pearls cast over both.

A stack of three baskets, woven of grass, each a little bigger then a sparrows nest.

A type writer with a blank page, bold against the black metal, both covered in dust. 

A letter opener shaped like a dagger  with a point like a December wind.  

A wooden heart pendent, its cord tangled with the chain of a Fatima medal.  

A twenty dollar bill, neatly folded in quarters, beside a Dixie cup.  

Five candles of various heights held in mismatched holders of brass and dull silver. 

Questions for you:

What does each line make you think of? 

What about all together or a few at a time? 

What small things around you can you capture in one or two lines? 

And just for fun; Can anyone guess where they all are?  

(Come on, any thoughts at all?)

Awfully Hard Work Doing Nothing

I've been procrastinating again so in interest of keeping my deadline I decided to recycle a relevant post from my first blog; From Yesterday's Tomorrow. In a way it grandfathered my earlier post on procrastination, though I had forgotten it at the time.

"Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic." — Bill Watterson

"It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon" — Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." — Rita Mae Brown

"Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after." — Raoul Wallenberg (Letters and Dispatches 1924-1944)

"As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly."— Paul Rudnick

All quotes courtesy of goodreads.

Writing Actively

Write: actively, brokenly, crookedly, doggedly, effectively, fantastically, gamely, hauntingly, ignorantly, Jovially, kinetically, laughingly, movingly, nervously, openly, pointedly, quickly, ravishingly, superbly, thrillingly, universally, vicariously, wonderingly, xerically, yearningly, zestfully...

And have fun with yourself 

Ten writerish things a procrastinating writer might do:

1. Make a list of things to write about

2. Read advise from other writers

3. Reorganize their book shelf, desk, or filing cabinet

4. Read a book, watch a movie, or start a marathon of their favorite TV show, and call it ‘gathering ideas’

5. Look for writer related pictures or quotes on Pinterest, Google, or in some other store for such things

6. Practice their signature for book signings and decide if they want a pen name

7. Shop for more office supplies and make a wish list for when they publish their book

8. Talk to their characters and do pretend interviews for their future fans, all out loud.  

9. Make a new slip cover for their notebook and wish they could afford a leather one

10. Draw flowers and tornados in their notebook’s margins while waiting for inspiration to strike

These ten things are not necessarily bad, in fact they can be very good things to do sometimes. BUT they will not help if you don’t remember a writer’s number one rule:

1. You can’t be a writer unless you write. 

Write to Be a Writer

You can’t be a writer if you don’t write. So if that’s not something that you do every day you need to start. Get a note book, keep it with you, use it for any little snippet or idea that comes into your head. Open a word document, start typing. Get a stack of files and save everything you write, everything you’ve ever written.

In January of 2012 I set myself to write every day. I made a rough chart and promised myself thirty days of writing. I made that goal and have only missed a couple of days since then. When I started I was using a standard notebook, now I have a small one for my purse and a six by eight that I take almost everywhere, at the very least it’s in the car. I remember going into a panic one day when I forgot my purse, solely because it left me without paper and pen. Not all my entrees are long, some are just a few words strung together or even just pared up. Sometimes I write fiction, sometimes I make notes about my day, and often I don’t make any sense.

My notebook is a way for me to keep myself writing even when I’m discouraged or to busy to do much. I may not be going very far now, but at least I know I’m moving forward as a writer every day. You see I believe that every word we write makes it easier to write. We learn to think in words, to grab hold of little things and save them for later.

Just try writing a line or more a day. It takes less than a minute and if you don’t like it no one has to see it but you. Just write something, anything. 

Wish to be Weaving

  

   Sometimes all I want to do is write something, I want to dive in and have the words fall from my finger times like rain running off the eves. I want to wash the world away until nothing is left save my pen and I. I want to be swept away to some far off place and make it near enough to touch. I want to feel the rush of adrenaline when the hero, with myself beside him, fights to life and love. I want to feel the butterflies when she dances the last dance with him. Taste the blood in my mouth at a back handed blow. Smell the pine and cinnamon and the wood smoke from the castle Yule log… I don’t want to sit and academically think of what could happen, I want to be there I want to write it and feel it and see it clear as a sky in midsummer. How do I make it through brain storming and research when all I long for is that rush of discovery and creation? I tire too quickly of spinning and the sorting of many colored threads, I want to weave the stories at once, though I expect they would be poor at best if I were to do so, that is if they were ever finished at all.   

Why I Started this Blog

I am just starting out with writing, I’ve thought about it and sort of played with it but it never went anywhere. So here I am, trying again, and it's such a long road when you're sitting at your computer all alone.

Yesterday I had a bad day. Nothing was going anywhere. I’d written some stuff but it wasn’t real writing, it wasn't a scene or a plot. It was just nonsense, fragments and snapshots that are supposed to be helpful in making your writing better but don't look like much by themselves. I was depressed and frustrated. So I went looking for help. I searched the web trying to find someone who felt like me. No luck. There just wasn’t anyone else out there who was saying anything like what I was feeling. So here it is; a blog that will, hopefully, be admitting the simple fact that I’m a beginner and I’m scared.

My story ideas either have no plot or have no character. I have fragments and ideas and years worth of note books without any clear outlines or drafts. That’s right not a single completed story to my name. So I keep thinking what’s the point? If I can’t even come up with a beginning, middle, and an end then how can I even think of calling myself a writer? Oh but I want it. I need it. The words scribbled across the page or tapped out double time on the key board, a disconnected conversation growing until you can almost see the story behind it, a single line standing out on the page, the absolutely silly delight in something that wasn’t there five minutes ago; oh how I love it! If there is a job I could do for the rest of my life this is it.

 I know that the number one cause of writer’s block is fear. And I freely admit that I’m scared. They say that courage is fear that’s said its prayers. So here I am, saying a prayer and; jumping off the plane without my back up shoot, diving in the deep end, and going to a party without a banana. God Bless

Rita