So many things

Hi Again!

The irregular posts are returned!

I am actually looking at three short stories that I'm trying to build into a book. I have four books I'm in progress, the hardest with over 500 hand drawn illustrations. And I'm still a little confused why I choose to tackle these artistic challenges.

So I'm about 15 images into 500 illustrations. This may take longer than I anticipated.

I'll be back to blog soon. Lots of work needs to be done.

When you think you are out of ideas, you aren't

One of the things I do from time to time is force myself to write about human experiences. It's a great excercise when you aren't that occupied and it helps me focus on one or two take aways as a writer. So the theme I had been working on was love and telling someone you loved them for the first time. It's especially meaningful to me that I have told people, especially people whom I am not romantically interested in that I love them and what it means for them to hear it from me.

So in that vein, I was gawking over a little voice telling me "I've always loved you." And I couldn't let that voice go. I could hear how much this character wanted to voice that to the person who needed to hear that the most.

I give you a second draft of the work for your amusement.

—----—---------————

He was hunched over on the polished wooden bench, a tiny silhouette that moved only because his legs were still too short to reach the floor. Gone were the echoes of "it's not fair!"

I walked up and knelt in front of him, I heard my knees crack. "Time to go buddy." I said softly.

As I straighten up, dusting my dry hands on my blue jeans, he grabbed a strap of the bright orange backpack and slipped off the bench, forcing himself to march down the polished hallway and after me out the double glass doors into the sunlight. 

I took his hand, all the while realizing he may just be too old to have his hand held while we crossed the street, but he was still just eight and while I may have been short, he still didn't make it past my elbow.

The car was unlocked and he climbed in the backseat. I took the driver's seat and put on my seatbelt. I looked back at him to check to see if his belt was on. He gasped and pushed his belt to click. The scratch down his face was a little startling, but he had been expertly patched up by the school nurse.

The car roared and then the blinker tisked as we pulled into traffic, heading out of town. Prisoners in the car together, the radio too low to hear over the air conditioner blowing hoping that the air in the car would soon be livable.

I heard the slow drum of my favorite song. Except there was a little person in the back seat. I changed stations. The last time I belted out my favorite tune with him in the back seat, I was given a scathing critical review and it distorted my love of that song forever. I couldn't lose anymore songs to sing on the road. He slumped in the backseat, buckled his eyes locked on the yellows and greens outside blurring agains the black asphalt.

The exit was coming to change directions from north south to east west, I got in the correct lane. 

"Why did you come get me?" A truck passed us on the right as we chugged up the bridge over the rushing spring full river below.

"I went to get you because your parents asked me to."

"Oh."

I saw a burger place I thought he might eat at. I pulled off and drove to the drive through. "What do you get when you come here?" I asked as we waited our turn for the drive through.

"Burger. No cheese. Ketchup."

"Ketchup? I thought it was mustard!" 

He made a face. "No more mustard."

I ordered the burger for him, a few extra burgers for home, a few shakes, hoping to convince him to maybe lick some ice cream, and a couple of fries because I actually like the salt. The first window comes up and I pay. 

"Would your son like a sticker sheet?" The cashier asked. 

"Would you like a sticker sheet?" I ask him, cringing, hoping he wouldn't correct the poor high school kid that I wasn't his mother.

"No. Kids who get into fights don't deserve sticker sheets." And he began to wail. I take a heavy sigh and the kid at the window nearly shoved the stickers in my hand with my change. I hand back a tissue while I waited for the food.

The food is warm and I turn down the blasting air, hoping to preserve the heat in the fries. My hand sneaks into the bag and I take a golden crisp slightly dripping with hot oil and salt and offer it behind me as I navigate the last turn and head back on the street to his neighborhood.

"Take it Bryce." I urge. My fingers feel a little warm as the oils oozed over my fingers.

He stares at my hand as if it were the poison bottle. His eyes puffy and red.

"Little Dude, seriously, the only reason why people pick up food for other people is called the "fry tax" you get to eat a hot French fry on the way home."

Bryce took the fry and he put it on his quivering lip.

"That kid doesn't love me." He finally said.

My hands gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. "No buddy, he doesn't. And he doesn't have to. No one really has to love anyone."

"Do you love me?"

"Always have." I said. My knuckles were white and the car was a hair into ten miles over the speed limit. I stopped at the light before turning onto the freeway. The car protested the speed demands and then clicked over into the next gear.

"When did you know you loved me?" 

I wanted to slam my head on the steering wheel. My grip was beginning to hurt. I dropped my hands low on the wheel as I hit the correct speed and settled back for the twenty minute drive, checking a mirror before I merged left around a semi truck. "Um... Honestly not the first time I met you. It was a more recent love."

"Oh."

I looked up in the rear view mirror, even though I knew he wouldn't make eye contact with me. It was one of several things we shared. "You know, buddy, I really didn't know you until you started going to school. I've always known about you. I thought about you when we didn't live as close. Your mom has those cards I sent you."

"She does?"

"Of course she does... Somewhere...." I hoped.

Another left after the school, and then the crazy round about and I'm in front of his house. We stop and I wrangled the food and my backpack on one shoulder and he climbs out of the car and up the steps of his house in a neighborhood with photocopied manicured lawns. He presses the door bell, waiting for his parents to open the door.

"Hey Bryce, I want you to know I loved you. I loved you before I knew what loving you meant. But understanding that I loved you, that didn't happen, like I said, until recently. And I know you might not get it, but that's how I can tell you how I care."

"Do you think the kid at school feels the same way you do?"

"Probably not. But he is a kid at school. You're eight. Stuff like that generally doesn't matter to the other kids."

"Will you always love me?"

"Yeah I will."

"Will they ever learn to love me?"

"Let's aim for like. When they get to know you some will love you."

"Do mom and dad like you?"

"I hope so. I just got them dinner..."

The door opened and Bryce scampered into the house. I brought in the food and took my share and headed out.

As I stepped off the last stair, I was constructed by a pair of little arms. "I love you Auntie. I loved you before I knew how to love."

"Yeah," I said a little embarrassed. "I guess that makes me one lucky person."

"Sure does"

"Go on go have dinner with your parents."

Pulling things together

I must be insane.

So one of the books I was working on took a detour. Justice Scalia dying just messed up the ability to publish a book. Not only that but then the Senate decided to "be lazy" and ignore the President. Then there is this election year. Why does it matter? No the book was about the history of political leadership in the United States. It is pretty much impossible to write about this situation when history is unfolding in your lap.

So this means I need to focus on other projects and get them ready for release. Except I wasn't prepared for any other releases. 

I'm also trying to study for a major exam in the middle of my publishing season. Tell me I'm not crazy.

So I'm looking at 8 books for the company. I think I could possibly be ready to release maybe one. Two only if the studying goes better than planned.

The conference went really well. I have to get over life and figure out how things work.

In other news, an old story line no have been writing on finally has some answers about a character that I didn't know to be true. In efforts to find other reasons for vulnerability of a female character, I was looking at the "over use" of victimization. Quotes are mine, but I was realizing in my own work that victimization as written, especially in fiction pays too little respect to the victim. That the occurrences are dramatic points and not central plot points. So I had to express vulnerability in other ways. Tonight, while I struggled with the character's reluctance to be with another character, which is the whole point of this particular story, I hadn't looked at the reason she hadn't been with anyone else. Certainly, religious convictions could have played a part. But that didn't speak to the character, that didn't give her strength in her inner light.

I figured it out. Finally. But now I need to deal with the fact that she is just all about this guy. And I'm not sure how to feel about it yet. Characters are just staring at me like I'm not intelligent enough to figure out the mechanics of all of this.

Until next time, at least I remembered I could blog off my phone...

Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2015

So this year, I returned to the short story. I have found that I'm actually a lot better at short stories than trying to directly apply myself into a huge novel. There is something mentally relieving when I can switch gears if I am not feeling the characters I'm working on at the time.

One of the struggles I really could not compromise on was the fact that I was working on some ideas  in my stories and I had no purpose for the characters. I just had these one or two phrases to write the story and it made being a "pantser" (writing by the seat of my pants), a lot less appealing for the first year. I can be flexible with my writing and accept if there should not be something I should push with my writing, but without traditional literary themes (exploration of 'riches', emotional contrasts, political statements, emotional growth) I found my first draft stifling. My characters turned wooden and were hardly moving. I was really disappointed in that fact. Previously, most of my characters were characters to be proud of. And this year, while I had interesting stories, I did not have interesting characters.

In the case where I had an interesting character, I felt shackled by an uprising in the writing community to avoid some types of story lines because they are all too easy to use as "ways to make the story work." And while normally, I ignore that advice, I thought I should try for once just to see if I could look at the tasks faced by my characters and come up with less common tasks for my characters to overcome and that are just as emotionally shackling as some more traumatic human experiences. And they are hard to fathom. Most of these struggles are deeply pained sorts of losses and with out exploration, they continue to eat away at the character, stripping them to their basic level and no one really knows how to rebuild from the emotional destruction better than the character.

So for next year, I'm going to do more than just "try to write more". I want to commit back to writing more like once a week for a full hour. I want to make sure I address more basic literary themes, based on leaving them in the dust this year, I realized if I had addressed them, my stories would have been stronger. And finally, I want to remember that the characters come first in fictional writing. It is not just their world I am building, I am building them.

NaNo2015 Update from 8 days in

There were plans. As a 60/40 pantser: there were plans. I swear there were. Especially around blogging this year.

And then POOF. Time. Life. Demands beyond belief.

When I tell you that my health is taking a dive here, you might want to believe it. The phone call to my personal physician is also on "the list" for December.

But I'm on schedule to finish 60,000 words 11/30. I'm working on 2 short stories at the same time, which is useful when I'm struggling with one scene, I can pop over to the other story and write in information I feel necessary so I can think about something else for a little while.

But I forage on. One day, I'd like to be someone who tries to get 50,000 in over 2 days or something. As it is, I'm about 2000 words in a dedicated hour. Something that I thought would be easier.

I love NaNoWriMo, if nothing else, to remind me to focus, and drown out all the issues that plague me and worry me because my writing is really soothing in the end. That's why I started blogging. That's why I started writing through NaNoWriMo.

I love to write. I will continue to do so.

NaNoWriMo Count Down

I'm not that crazy. I mean I do know there are 34 days until I can rev up my writing engine and get out all the work necessary.

I have five story ideas that are ready to go for this year's NaNo. I'm really looking forward to being able to get those ideas out and the characters to become more than just a few spare ideas.

Most of all, this year, I would like to break 60,000 words. I know I squeaked by in 55,000 last year, but I would really like to put in that effort, and breaking a personal record makes me wonder if it is at all possible.

I think I'm set. I just have to register and go. But first: birthday party palooza. I have no less than 3 babies in the next few weeks who turn 1. I haven't decided what to do for them all yet, but it's on the list to focus on.

Things that make me want to quit

I've been really working on focusing on one part of a project at a time. It helps prevent the waterfall of emotion that comes with looking at the list of books I want to release over the next five years.

Today, for example, I finished the first draft of a new Stick Figure book. I don't have illustrations yet. I just put text together. I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle quotations because of the way this particular story is set up. But the whole story is laid out finally, in a feasible framework.

Over the next year, I hope to start drawing the characters I expect will be in the story and then illustrating the story as I go through.

I sat back, I enjoyed finishing that draft. I put it away. I'm not interested in dealing with that text until next summer. It can sit on back up until then.

Then I moved onto scanning all the illustrations I created. Unlike other times I've illustrated books, especially books I'm publishing, I didn't need that list. Well guess what, I needed that list.

Illustration problems: you go out of your way and create what you think should at least be 55 original drawings for your written work (which is still in the research phase, but the Illustrations are very important to the final product which in early test phases are probably going to be spread out over two books. You spend an hour scanning these original pieces of art to add into your text after digitally adding color. You count your scanned works in the folder. There are 52. 5 of which you can verify immediately as to what they are illustrations of. The remainder will have to individually be checked off a list you thought you didn't need to create. After this series is released: I need to take some serious time off illustration because this drives me nuts.

 I suppose I could always apply and try to get this manuscript taken and published "for real" but I would still have the issues of incomplete data and the fact that everything is just too dense in the real world for the subject matter I create.

Meanwhile, I'm carefully cropping and preparing the illustrations I do have, trying not to go figure out which drawings I'm missing. Who am I kidding? I will be doing that tomorrow.