Memories...

I didn’t realize how much my son had grown up until we got our little girl.  Now I remember what it was like with him at that age.  And I remember I didn’t like it.  Two is so much better than 18 months.  As he grew, the frustrating things just melted away.  We forgot they were ever there and only remembered the good parts. 

I wonder if it’s like that with novels.  This is not my first novel, but it’s my First Novel.  The first one I’ve worked this hard on, the first one I’m going to try to publish.  I wonder if, when I write my next one, I’ll look back and say “yea, it was like that with the other one, I’d forgotten how hard this part of the writing process is”.  Do we forget the frustrating parts and only remember the good times?  I hope so. 

I just need to make sure there are good times to remember.  

What do you remember?

Betas

I'm busy beta reading so don't have much of a post.  If you're inclined leave a comment about beta reading.  Is there a particular way you like to make comments?  Do you read it more than once?  Love your beta readers?  Hate them?  What do you think about it in general? 

Prisms

Have you ever been afraid to write a character because you think everyone will assume you’re writing you?  Or maybe you think people will see a strong resemblance to Uncle Fred? 

My friend Beth had this to say over at Compuserve

Our characters are not us, nor are they reflections of us. They're more like refractions:  ideas that pass through the prism of our experiences, our values, and our perspective on life, and come out differently colored on the other side.

First, lovely imagery.  Second, it’s very true.  Each of my characters is me and each of my characters is not me.  And it's not just characters.  As authors we are prisms for ideas, plots, emotions.  This is why we can tell the same story over and over yet each new author tells it in a new way. 

Practice Makes Perfect

Learning to write isn’t always easy.  You can read good books and study how they use the language.  Read blogs about writing techniques.  But really the only way to learn how to apply that is to write a lot then turn it over to people to tear apart.  It can be heart wrenching, depressing, discouraging and brilliantly enlightening. 

In addition to having my work critiqued I have two ways of “practicing writing” These are things that aren’t filled with the same anxiety as my wip.  Things I write just to learn a technique and never go further than that so there’s no pressure.  One is five minute fiction.  It happens every Tuesday and helps me loosen up and think things through.  Quickly.  The other is the exercise folder at Compuserve.  There they give a prompt or assignment once a month on a skill or technique.  Everyone posts their attempts and we suggest and give advice to each other.   I’ve never done it and not learned something.

How do you practice writing?

Fool Me Once

In the United states authors have traditionally relied on agents to help them get published.  Though, I know this is changing.  Less and less authors are using agents as epublishing becomes so popular.  I don’t know specifics about how it is done in other countries. I know some countries rely on agents and in others literary agents are almost unheard of. 

Kristin at Pub Rants has a post that links to an article about the sudden upswing in scam agents in India. To quote Kristin   Great. One of the things I'd prefer not to be an American export….    We have a lot of information available to us here about how to avoid scams and bad business practices.  In India there isn’t as much information because this is something new they are dealing with.  If the amount of information is any indication of trouble then we have trouble with a capital T. 

I don’t know why there are so many scams around.  So many phishing emails, letters from royalty in Nigeria, you get the picture. This is something we have dealt with in our adoptions too.  It’s so hard to believe but there are people who will contact adoptive couples pretending to be pregnant, string them along for several months slowly bleeding them of money, then disappear into the night.  (this has not happened to us personally)

I think that scams like this and in the publishing world are worse because they play on people’s dreams and hopes.  I also think that’s why they work.  We’re blinded by our hope and we want it so bad we’re willing to take the risk that it’s a scam.  I don’t know many people who get scammed twice though.  The consequences have a way of waking you up.  I think it’s so sad for people to take advantage of others.  Yet, I think it’s amazing that we live in a world where it’s possible that our dreams will come true, where we have choices and options. 

Just make sure you study your choices before making a decision. 

Sweet Dreams

I've been thinking about dreams lately.  I know sometimes authors get inspiration from dreams.  I never have personally, my dreams are too disoriented.  Anything I wrote from them would end up in the Literature of the Absurd category.  Something along the lines of Daniil Kharms "Old Woman".  

Aaaaanyway, I was thinking more about dreams in books.  You see I'm thinking of putting one in my book.  I've read a lot of books with dream sequences.  The more I thought of it the more books I remembered having them.  Some were very good, some seemed more for dramatic effect and didn't seem to advance the plot at all, and thus were mildly irritating. 

Dreams are on the "not to do list"  for how to start a novel but I was wondering what people think of them as part of the story.  Safely tucked away in the middle. 

Do you like dreams in books?  Or do you think they're overused?

Contradictions

Sometimes I think I’m setting myself up for future hardship.  No, not in my writing.  We have a new toy truck at our house which, of course, means it has the undivided attention of both children.  We were taking turns with the truck, making sure each child had an equal opportunity to play with it. It worked really well. The screaming was decreased by half at least.  At one point, in the back of my head I heard a child’s voice say “But that’s not fair!”  And a future me saying “who said life is fair”  “You did, when you taught us to take turns”.  Now I’m not going to stop teaching my children to be nice, share and take turns, but am I giving them unrealistic expectations of life?  The only thing I can think of is that I’m trying to give them the skill set they need at this age.  In the future I’ll give them the skills they need at that point, including telling them that life isn’t fair and sometimes they just don’t get a turn. 

Then, as always, I started thinking about my characters.  We’re always told to put them up a tree and throw rocks at them.  We set them up for big disasters, usually while making them think they’re going to be ok.  Often we don’t feel bad about it.  We laugh maniacally and post on our blogs with glee what we do to them.  Often the idea is that the more unfairly our MC is treated the better the book.  Sometimes doing these things to our characters does hurt, just as if we were watching a child struggle, but we let them continue because we know they’ll be stronger in the end.  Maybe that’s why I’m trying to teach my children to share and take turns.  Because it well make them better people in the long run, even though they may have to learn to look at the world differently later.

I don’t really know where I was going with this, if anywhere.  Just some random thoughts.