Tag Archives: writing

Predictable

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When I was in my teens, Agathe Christie’s Curtain, Poirot’s final case, was published. A friend read it before I did, and told me there was no way I’d figure out the ending. We had had discussions before about mysteries. I had been a big mystery fan as long as I could remember—not surprising, since my mother had read Heinlein and Christie novels aloud to me as a baby and toddler.

We ended up in a bet about whether I would figure it out. He bought a second copy of the paperback and rigged it up with a seal covering the last fifty or so pages. I would read it to that point, stop, and then not read further until I had told him my guess.

I did it. He was carefully examining his seal when I told him who the killers were and what had happened. He stared at me, open mouthed. “You swore you wouldn’t read another copy or ask anyone how it ended!”

I insisted that I had done neither, and asked him if I was correct.

He threw the book at me and stomped out.

I tore the seal off and finished the book. I had gotten it right, not quite down to every detail, but I had definitely solved it.

For at least a year afterward he would occasionally accuse me of cheating. Other times he would bring it up, say he believed me that I hadn’t cheated, but still couldn’t understand how I did it. He would tease me that I should become a cop instead of pursuing my writing dreams.

I want to be clear here that I did not cheat. I didn’t peek. I didn’t overhear anyone talking about it. I didn’t find another copy. I didn’t ask anyone about it in any way.

But, it could be argued that I had a some possibly unfair advantages:

1. I literally had been listening to and reading mystery stories for longer than I could remember.

2. I had been intentionally studying the art of crafting mystery stories: reading countless articles in magazines like The Writer and Writer’s Digest, getting books on writing fiction in general and mystery in particular through interlibrary loan, writing mystery stories of my own. I was exceptionally well-versed in the tricks of the trade.

3. I was familiar with Christie’s writing in particular.

Those probably weren’t unfair, really, however:

4. I knew that Agathe Christie had written this book 30 years earlier intending it to be the fitting end to Poirot and Hastings’s careers. She’d originally stuck it in a vault to be published after her death. She agreed to the publication in ’75 because she knew she was dying and would never write again. That narrowed the possibilities of how the story would end.

5. I knew that the ending was something which this friend, who was no dummy, had thought was completely unforeseeable. Again, that made it easier to pick from the possibilities that occured to me as I contemplated the clues. Another way to look at it: that prompted me to at least contemplate possibilities which might otherwise seem too outlandish to consider.

This friend once asked me how could I enjoy mysteries at all if I often figured them out before the end. He is hardly the only person to ask that.

For me, part of the fun of a good mystery is finding the puzzle pieces in the storyline and admiring how well they are constructed, or how good a job the author does of putting them in plain sight while not making them obvious.

Sometimes I am completely blindsided, and if that happens without the author cheating, that is just as much fun as figuring it out before the reveal.

Bad mysteries aren’t bad simply because they are predictable. They’re bad when they are too predictable. When the author (or author and director, in the case of a movie or show) clumsily gives things away or relies on cliches, there is no delight in the reveal. If the author cheats by simply withholding information, or otherwise pulling something bizarre and shocking out of nowhere, that also spoils the fun.

And, as in all stories, if the author makes us care about the characters, even if the puzzle isn’t terribly difficult, we can still enjoy the battle of wits between the detective and the same puzzle.

Esteemages, Self or Otherwise, part #314

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I was having a wide-ranging talk with a friend last night, and I found myself quoting another friend. “There’s a part of me that lives in constant fear that other people are going to figure out that I’m just faking it. That I’m not really all grown up, et cetera.”

And he said he is continually amazed (and somewhat heartened) at how many people he thinks of as pretty accomplished confess to that feeling. “It’s sort of comforting to know I’m not the only one.”

The thing is, there’s another part of me, possibly a bigger part, that is probably the world’s most arrogant man imaginable. That part of me is absolutely convinced that there is not a single problem in the world—heck, in the universe!—that I can’t fix, if I just have the time. That part of me knows it can figure out anything, just given some time to study the situation.

And somewhere in between is a practical part of me that knows some problems are intractable. But it can only reign in the arrogant one with the argument that we have to pick our battles. We don’t have time to solve everything, and besides, we should have some fun every now and then.

I don’t completely understand how the arrogant guy and the “I don’t know what I’m doing!” guy live in the same head, but I’ve had to come to accept it.

This morning I had the following epiphany: I know that there are things I’m really good it. Even “I don’t know what I’m doing!” me knows that we are freaky good at diagnosing certain kinds of computer problems and finding work-arounds. I know it. I’m constantly doing it at work. I receive frequent compliments and expressions of gratitude from other people for helping them with these things.

But, there’s that niggling suspicion that the reason so few other people are good at it is not because it is the result of a particular talent, but more because it isn’t really that important. Everyone else secretly knows that there will always be one idiot savant who actually can fix these weird issues (or at least show you how to recover your work and make the application produce what you need). It’s not worth their time to learn how to think like this and do those things, see?

Objectively, I know that isn’t true, but this comes from that irrational part of the brain. There is always going to be that doubt that these things I’m good at aren’t anywhere near as difficult or important as they seem to me.

There’s also the fact that I don’t want to turn into the arrogant jerk all the time. There are plenty of them out there, already. So the practical me understands the value of that self-doubt. Self-esteem unchecked is bad for myself, people around me, and the world at-large. Unchecked self-doubt is pretty destructive, too. There needs to be a balance.

Acknowledge your own talents. When you do something, do it with confidence, but never forget that you can make mistakes. And when those mistakes happen, don’t despair, don’t deny, don’t ignore. Fix them.

Re-writing

writing,

One of the projects I’ve been spinning my wheels on for a few months is a novel, tentatively entitled The Trickster Entanglement. I’ve completed 7 of a planned 20 chapters, have much of chapter 8 drafted, and numerous scenes meant for later at least partially finished. (And I’ve had a rough draft of the climactic battle in chapters 18 & 19 done for a looooooooong time)

However, Entanglement is a sequel. The first novel in this planned series, The Trickster Apocalypse, has been in rewrite for a while. I had a short list of things I knew I still needed to fix, and then I need to go through the whole thing once more to track remaining loose ends.

So, I spent most of the weekend doing that. And then, in the middle of the day Sunday, I suddenly knew what the missing part of chapter 8 of the second book needed to be. A scene I hadn’t previously thought of that 1) moves one subplot forward, 2) ties said subplot quite firmly to the main plot and two other subplots, 3) points the way to chapter 10.

I think this trick has worked. Now I need to find one for each of the other stalled projects…

Not writer’s block

writing

I’ve been stuck on several stories for a few months. I write some lines of dialogue in one, but it just doesn’t gel into a scene. So I try another set of characters, and suddenly I have a complete scene… Except it isn’t part of this story, or not obviously so, so I stick it in the fragments file and move on.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So now I’m at the stage where I’m reading all those disconnected scenes and asking myself if this is a completely different story that wants telling. So far, I don’t quite see it.

I’ve been increasingly tempted to significantly rewrite the incomplete tales in question. My usual rule is that I can’t rewrite a scene until I’ve written a new one. Otherwise I fall into a never ending loop of rewriting the existing bit, instead of finishing it.

Time to pull out a new trick…

Semi autobiographical

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I once read a book review that began, “If I have to read one more semi-autobiographical novel about a gay boy coming of age in the rural south, I’m going to scream.”

I know the feeling.

And I say this as a someone who was a gay boy growing up in a rural setting. It was the Rocky Mountain states, rather than the south, but it was also in the Southern Baptist Church. Plus, the tiny town where I was born (and later returned to attend middle school) was—due to economic and historical circumstances too complex to go into at this juncture—inhabited almost entirely by people who were either from the south, or their parents were. Which makes me sympathetic to the phenomenon, but not blindly so. Continue reading Semi autobiographical →

Avengers Assemble!

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Friday night my husband and I saw The Avengers. It was awesome. It was fun. It was entertaining. It had great dialogue. Every character had great moments. There were plenty of nods to the comic book history of the characters as well as the recent movie incarnations.

And Chris Evans looks awesome in sweat pants. Just sayin’.

(and for those of you who don’t drool over men, there was plenty for you, too. And not just Scarlet Johansen’s Black Widow– Cobie Smulders was a**-kicking in both the action and beauty departments)

Continue reading Avengers Assemble! →

Writing and drawing

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I spent most of my second day at NorWesCon in my hotel room, writing. Sky was also here doing some drawing, and even did a livestream of some vectoring of one of his sketches.

How I wound up spending the day in the room instead out out in the con begins with parts of the first evening I didn’t cover.

I bought a few things in the dealer’s den. Then several of us snagged a booth in the bar. Sky had just texted that he was leaving Bellingham and would not be stopping for dinner, so I only ordered an appetizer and beer while we sat, chatted, and waited for Sky. After he arrived we had dinner, and then retired to the room where we played at least four games of Give Me the Brain. One went exceptionally long. Juli won twice, Mark and I each won once, and Keith never one. Juli only did the “I win! I win!” dance after her second win, however.

Every body headed back to their own rooms. Sky, Michael, and I chatted for a while. Then they both crashed. I did not feel the least bit sleepy. I had composed yesterday’s blog post, then I tried to write. I couldn’t compose a decent sentence in any of the stories I tried. I would write a sentence, hate it, delete it. Or I would write a few words into a sentence, and already see that it would just end in tears, so I deleted what I had and started over. I tried reading for a bit since, as mentioned already, I was not in the slightest bit sleepy. But I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than a few paragraphs.

Finally, at 3:30, I shut down the computer, put the remaining light out, and crawled into bed. I lay there, in the dark, still not sleepy. After an eternity, I rolled over to check to clock. 3:32. I grumbled silently to myself, and rolled back over, trying some meditating. After another very long time, I checked the clock again. 3:35.

The last time I remember checking the clock was at 4:31, so I think I finally drifted off to sleep then. I woke up briefly sometime later to see Sky quietly getting dressed. I think I talked to him. But it is possible I just dreamed it. A bit after that I woke up again and went to the bathroom, then collapsed back into bed.

At about a quarter after nine, Julie called to see if we were up and interested in breakfast. Michael and Sky were both up doing things on their computers. I thought it might be a good idea to get moving. I think I even got up and talked about it with Sky and Michael. The phone rang again, at nearly 10 (oops), and it was Keith and Juli (not Julie, but Juli, they are different people), who were thinking about breakfast.

Eventually we got out of the room and headed down to the little breakfast restaurant. Everyone else we knew was not there, so we got a table. We hadn’t yet ordered when Darrell showed up and asked to join us. Had a nice breakfast. Then, since Michael hadn’t been in the dealer’s room, we went with him and wandered around there. While Michael checked out the art show, Sky and I chatted with Jeri Lynn and Jeff. Soon we were joined by Keith and Juli and Mark and Darrell. We had a large crowd there for a bit. Julie joined us briefly, then some people went to get food, others to panels, and we retired to the room.

The novel that I have finished, but is now in revision, had a plot problem. There are these two supporting character, both monks, who die during the course of the story. One originally died in a scene that I had removed after the first draft (because the scene was redundant both in terms of the action, and what happened with the emotional arcs of the characters involved). But because I had removed the scene, that meant that one monk had simply vanished from the story sometime between chapter 5 and 8 without any explanation. The other problem was that somehow the monk who had been elderly and thoughtful changed into the middle-aged bombastic one.

So I went through finding all references to all of the characters until I found the scene in chapter five where I seemed to have switched their names. I went through all the subsequent scenes fixing the names until I reached chapter eight. I rewrote the ambush in that chapter so that both monks appear and both die in that scene. So that’s one problem fixed. I also fixed a couple other bits so there is a better foundation laid for some things that happen later.

Having gotten all that sorted, I got back to work on the novel currently in progress. I have been stuck trying to get Chapter 8 going for a while, now. Today I finally got a scene written, and have a much better idea of the the shape of this chapter and the next. It is quite a bit clearer what needs to happen next and how all the arcs are moving toward the narrative climax. So that’s good.

Michael had gone out wandering for a bit, then decided to lay down for a nap. That sounded really good, so I did, too. Sky apparently couldn’t resist the idea, because just after I dozed off when my phone started chiming as people texted me, me was out cold in his bed, too.

Folks were trying to coordinate dinner. I didn’t feel up to playing relay, so I shared a bunch of contacts with Julie and went back to sleep until Keith called to see if we wanted to join them for dinner at a big table they had snagged.

We wound up with 12 people at a long table. Things got a bit chaotic. Some food for another table was delivered to ours, the upshot of which was that a couple people in our group wound up with two dinners. And my order was messed up, so I didn’t get my dinner until after everyone else had eaten. Kehf and Auntie joined us as some of us were having dessert (most people don’t think buffalo wings are dessert, but it’s one of my convention traditions).

Some of us retreated back to our room, theoretically to play some games, but some people had sewing, other people had other projects, and we just wound up doing a lot of chatting. Oh, and a few pony episodes were played for those what were interested.

This is not the first convention I’ve gone to where I spent much of it in my room instead of going to events. Some years all I want to do is see as much as I can. Other times I prefer to dip my toes in the convention only a little bit here and there, while doing other things. It’s one reason staffing a club table ofter works for me, since I can do all the people watching and have random conversations during much of the day, while either writing in-between that, or scanning the schedule to find interesting panels and events to go to.

I’m happy with the writing progress I made today. While it might be argued that I could have just stayed home to do this, there is something about getting out into busy places with odd juxtapositions of genres and themes and notions and people that can clear logjams in the mind.

And I think I know what happens next, so I should go write it.

Brunching

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As Michael pointed out when we were walking home from this morning’s brunch, this week has been full of a lot of going out with friends.

I met Katrina a few years ago when we were both on staff for Conifur. Since she was living in Oregon, we only got to see her when she came up for a staff meeting, or at the con itself. Though several times she also came up to attend Writers’ Night.

She moved much further away for a while, so many of us were very sad. But now she’s nearby, again, and she brought her guy, Terry, up to Seattle to see the sights, hang out, and so on. We met them, the Oxfords, and the Jared, at one of our favorite local eateries, Palermo. Where we had a fabulous brunch and a long visit.

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It was a weirdly productive weekend, by which I mean that it was productive, but not necessarily on the projects I had hoped to make progress. I certainly did not expect to come out of the work party with plots for two more stories about a character that was originally Mark & Kristin’s one-off! I was only going to write one, count it, one sequel to Chuck’s unexpected tale answering the question “what ever happened to…” but then, before I finished that one, an entire plot for an amusing Christmas Ghost story starring the character popped in my head, insisting on being written right now…

(Some plots do that. They’re not so much like a beautiful Greek muse inspiring you to artistic greatness as they are an extremely manic man leaning over you going “Write about me! Write about me! Write about me now or I will bloody well go away and you’ll go out of your mind trying to remember what I was!!!” So I wrote that story, and I guess there was something to it because it’s up for an award, now.)

Anyway, I had tried to circle back to the original idea for the one, count it, one, story I had intended to write about this character, and I had made some progress. I wasn’t trying really hard because there are other tales that I would rather be finishing. But then, at the meeting, while we were talking about other plotlines entirely, Chuck reeled off an alternative situation, and the next thing I knew, we were all talking about what sorts of things would happen to this character in this situation. And then Keith suggested a title. And suddenly, I knew what the plot really was for this new story (which takes place after the one, count it, one, story that I meant to write) and I knew I better write all of it down before I forgot it.

Then, we all walked up to Golden City for dinner, and while discussing something else entirely (again), someone said another title for yet another story for this character.

And as soon as they said it, I had a plot. And even better, it’s one that crosses over with another character, one I created and love writing stories for but haven’t had a new plot for in a while.

So I have gone from planning to write the one story about the character, to having written one different story about him, and I have three more in some sort of progress.

I’m not crazy. Just very slightly mad.

Meanwhile, I often put together playlists for either particular stories I’m working on, or for characters I write a lot. And I had mentioned this awhile back to Jared. Specifically that I was trying to put together a playlist for a character that he created, but that I have two stories in progress for. Which made him put together a playlist that he sent me (which prompted me to send him mine). I teased him that I thought his was way too emo, and asked how anyone could write while listening to all that downer music. He became resolved to create a different playlist, one that I could not describe in such derogatory terms.

He sent it earlier this week, and I’ve been listening to it. One of the songs he put on the list was “Original Sin” recorded by Taylor Dane for the Shadow motion picture soundtrack. And while I was humming along, I realized that I hadn’t heard the song in a very long time. I was surprised to discover that the soundtrack does not seem to be in my iTunes library. But I was quite certain that I had it, and that I had included at least this one song from it in some other playlists.

It took me about a minute to find the compact disc of the album hiding in the dusty shelves (I don’t touch the discs anymore, because I thought I’d put them all into my iTunes library). This makes me realize I need to go through those shelves and figure out which other music hasn’t been digitized.

It also makes me want to make a smart playlist that pulls out things that haven’t been listened to in a long, long time.

But I’ll do that later. Maybe tomorrow night after work.

I have too many hobbies

blogging,

Several friends have recently commented that they have too many hobbies, or that they don’t need another project, and I have nodded sagely. I, too, suffer from a surfeit of things I’ve been meaning to finish.

I have been especially bad at finishing writing projects. Other than a burst of productivity in November, my fiction writing has plodded along at a leaden pace for more than a year. My essay writing has been even more anemic. My personal blogging (other than Twitter, which isn’t really blogging) has dropped off precipitously.

When I was blogging regularly, I was also finishing more stories and essays. And I recently realized that in one sense this has always been true.

Before blogging, I was not the sort of person who kept a journal. But I wrote journal-like things. I had some friends with whom I regularly corresponded. We would write very long letters, discussing and discoursing on mutual writing and fan projects, updating each other on what was happening in our lives, and gossiping a bit. I was writing four or five such letters a week. As well as contributing regularly to a couple of writer/publisher-oriented APAs.

Before that, I had gigs on various student and semi-pro newspapers where I regularly had to produce op ed pieces and columns where there was an externally-imposed deadline. I ended up writing lots of not-quite-stream-of-conciousness stuff that never made it into those columns, and wasn’t part of any story or assignment. Thinking back, those things often took the form of a “letter to no one in particular, but someone who might know me” very much like a typical personal blog.

I think all of that extraneous writing, the correspondence, and the blogging performs a vital service in my head. It gets little things I’m thinking, worrying, wondering, grumping about out of my head. Because once it is written down, I don’t have to think about it until someone responds. With all the mental clutter gone, I could then focus on sorting out plot problems, writing new scenes, cleaning up dialog, and so on.

That’s my theory, anyway.

My other theory is that I am not using my existing Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, or Google+ blogs as much because each of them has become weighted down with various forms of disappointment and expectation.

So, I’m going to see if having another place—a new place, without the history and other issues inherent to those other blogs—to do that personal kind of long-form blogging that I miss, whether I actually use it. And more importantly, does it do that vital de-cluttering.

Wish me luck!