Christmas...yay

It finally started snowing for real.  I know that sounds odd because we have, of course, had snow already in Utah.  But the last couple weeks have been nothing but the rain. 

Driving home from work last night was…fun.  The roads were covered in ice.  My car had bald tires.  Could I have replaced them during the summer in anticipation of the coming winter, well yes.  But I chose to go to Japan instead.  Wouldn’t you?   In fact, I could probably replace them now,  but I want a piano.  .  I know, priorities, priorities.  But I’ve wanted a piano again for so long that it no longer feels like a want.  It feels like a need.  And with my brother moving out and freeing up my spare room, I’ll have somewhere to move my drafting table so it’s not in the living room and I can put my new, shiny piano there.  So let the snow fall, the tires can wait.  I’m a careful driver and I tend to only be driving in the middle of the night when the roads are relatively clear (look at me living on the edge!).  

For book stuff, well editing is a slow process.  I had my friend Rhett (a fellow lover of fantasy) read through part 1 and he found some massive errors that I missed.  You know how when you stare at something too long it starts to disappear?  Yeah, that must be what happened cause I got it back and was like, “wow…how did I miss that?”  I’ve been pushing myself to write so much that it’s disappearing.  So I need to put it aside for a few days and read a book.  Or finish reading a book.  I’m still reading Princep’s Fury by Jim Butcher (my all time favorite author).  The book actually came out a few years ago but with moving, dating, getting dumped, moving again, car problems, work, homework and my own book writing, it kinda fell by the wayside (sad).  But last night after I got home from work I watched the Miracle Worker (great movie), and read a few of Jim’s chapters, next thing I knew it was almost 5am (oops!  Damnit Jim!)

Now I’m half asleep/awake, having my morning tea and getting ready for work (except for this little break to post an overdue blog).

So for a little catching up, Christmas was kind of like a Monday (I actually like Mondays).  I went up to my sisters place and spent it with her family in Heber.  They have a momma mountain lion with some cubs in their back yard so my nieces can’t go out and play in the snow.  We don’t want to risk one of them becoming a snack.  Especially when my brother in law would make such a great meal (well fed, marinated and smoked as he is).  Here kitty, kitty…

I got home Christmas evening and spend the remainder of the day alone.  It was nice and quiet.  Just me and the kitties.

The next day I spent some good time with my parents.  I showed my dad how to use itunes and we sort of lost him for the rest of the evening (holy technology batman!).

I got to see the new Tron, Legacy movie (AWESOME! AWESOME! AWESOME!) in 3D.  I’m going to have to go see it again.  It was just incredible.  And Daft Punk did a wonderful job on the soundtrack.  If you are a fan of the old Tron, you will LOVE this movie.  In fact, even if you’ve never even heard of Tron in your life, you’ll still love it.  I would have to put it up there with How to Train your Dragon as the best movies of 2010 (Yes, I’ve seen Inception.  It was enjoyable, but predictable.  The problem with being a writer is when you’re reading something or watching something you think of what you would do to make it better or how you might twist the plot, then it happens and you realize that many writers think the same so you can pretty much predict the outcome of most movies or novels.  Not to say I didn’t like the movie.  It was good). 

Well, back to the getting ready for work.  I’ll write again next year J 

Music or Silence?

Music…

            It’s such a large part of our lives.  We are so constantly surrounded by music that silence often makes us uncomfortable.  It seems that many people play music, not to listen to, but just to hear.  Because music, sound, noise, voices…they make us comfortable.  It’s in movies and TV shows, blaring out car windows (I’ve made a game of singing to other people’s music while on the road), it plays in stores and even when you’re out, just walking down the sidewalk, you will hear music. 

            Music is a wonderful muse for a writer, but so is silence.  Writers have to put themselves in uncomfortable situations if for no other reason than to feel uncomfortable.  To experience it.  You cannot write that a character simply walks into a room and hears music (unless the music is the whole point of walking into the room).  Rooms have noise.  Life has noise and if you’re always drowning it out with music, you won’t hear it and therefore cannot describe it.

            Sometimes it’s those little noises in the distance that we don’t really pay attention to that make a scene feel real.  Like now, sitting in my apartment, I can hear the freeway outside my window and from this distance it sounds like a long, heavy sigh.  I can hear the wind as it whispers past my window, the jingle of my cats collars as they play in the living room and the constant, loud purr of my fridge (the fan has a problem but I’m used to it and it doesn’t bother me.  I think it adds character to my place…).  I can hear kids playing in the snow outside and even the soft tick, tick, tick of the clock in my bathroom.

            All these sounds are what make my place feel like my place.  These sounds are a part of home.  Without them, I would have that feeling of wrongness.  Like something is out of place but I can’t tell what.  Like the fridge, I usually don’t even notice that it’s purring until the fan stops and it’s suddenly quiet and I’m left in the silence of it’s wake (It’s loud enough to have a wake, believe me). 

            Since the speakers in my car shorted out a few years ago, I’ve been face with silence while driving and it’s made me appreciate the noise of the world around me that much more.  I sit in silence and contemplate.  Come up with “room tone” for whatever scene I’m going to write.  It’s the same with film.  Sure, they’re going to use music, but they will always get about 30 seconds to a minute of room tone too, just for sound.  Without it, the show or movie would seem…well, weird. 

            I’m not saying to not listen to music.  By all means, listen away.  I have very specific soundtracks set aside that I listen to for certain situations within my stories and I’ve found the instrumental music works the best.  Songs with words are about something already.  But instrumental pieces can be about whatever you want to be about. 

            For instance, the soundtrack for ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.  If I were to describe that soundtrack, I would say it sounds like heartbreak and the strings and piano move you through every level of sorrow from denial to acceptance.  I’ve listened to this for scenes where characters die and for regular heart smashing alike.

 

            How to Train Your Dragon by John Powell is all joy and adventure.  Listening to this soundtrack makes you feel like you’re flying. 

            Gladiator by Hans Zimmer and Transformers part 1 are great battle soundtracks.

            And of course anything by Nobuo Uematsu, the genius behind all of the Final Fantasy soundtracks.  They are all of the above and his Piano Collections have pulled me through many a rough spot both personally and literary.

            There is a big difference between listening and hearing.  I tell this to my students at work all the time.  In order to truly understand something, you need to listen, with full attention.  You’ll notice little things about people that you didn’t not previously realize, you’ll hear sounds that you never before perceived.

            You’ll see that even when the music if off, the world around you still makes it.   

Zombies and String...

            I spent Sunday rearranging my room.  I moved everything from one wall to the other…which is a big feat for me.  As a Taurus, I will usually put something in one spot (where ever I feel that it should go, and it never moves).  I’m not particularly fond of change.  I know, it’s necessary, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

            So why did I rearrange my room?  A few months ago I was on the phone with my sister and I guess she’d been reading some kind Fung Shui book.  She told  me that she realized that my whole apartment was perfect Fung Shui and was surprised that I’d never read a book on it.  Like I said, I put things where they make me feel comfortable, and I leave them there. 

            The exception to this, was my bedroom.  Everything was correct except for the east and west walls.  I guess my west wall should be the career wall and the east one should be the hobby wall.  I had it the other way around.  I figured giving it a try couldn’t hurt.  Hey, I’m an artist and we’ll try all kinds of weird things to improve our skills and crafts. 

            Anyhow, weather or not it works is yet to be determined, but hey, my room does look a lot nicer now that you can’t see the huge mess of papers and doodles that makes up my novel from the living room.  I like it. 

            It took me all day Saturday and well into Sunday to complete this project of moving stuff.  I have a lot of stuff.  I like stuff (Taurus).  When I was done I went for a walk in the snow and ended up at the craft store (dangerous place for me).  I mostly just needed to get out but I practically live in the middle of an outdoor shopping center. 

            When I got back home, Dexter was just starting on Showtime and Walking Dead would be following that so I settled down to get in some good TV watching time (If you’re thinking, “Bad Leah!  You should have been writing in this free time!”  All I must say to that is…I do what I want!). 

            I’m not one to sit still easily so when I watch TV I also must be doing something with my hands or I have difficulty paying attention.  So I knit (don’t judge me, its fun).  I knitted all the way through Dexter and The Walking Dead on AMC.   The weird thing though, is that when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that I was being chased by zombies and I kept getting tangled in yarn.  Then there was this little, bald dog/cat monster with tentacles that kept running around me in circles like an excited puppy, which confused the zombies for a little while.

            I’m thinking I probably should not combine knitting and zombies for a while.  Because as funny as that dreams sounds, zombie dreams are actually scary.  

            Well, since my last post I’ve written 9 new pages in my novel.  They’re not in any particular order.  Mostly random scenes.  They usually fall into place later on.  I don’t actually write in a linier fashion.  I write all these separate pieces and after a while they just fall into place.  You know, a conversation here, a fight scene there.  The only thing that bugs me is when I get a scene stuck in my head that can’t happen in my first book.  But it won’t stop replaying itself until I write it down.  So I give in, hoping it will make way for something I can work with on the book I’m writing right now but my brain decides to throw a story idea for a completely different book at me.

            Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not actually complaining.  I’m always happy to receive new story ideas.  I write them down and save them for later.  I guess I just want to finish the book I started.

            It’s 11:33 AM.  Last night I dreamed that I was way up in the mountains, in a giant garden full of hot peppers in every shape, size and color.  I ended up there cause I was trying to get away from assassins (I’m not sure why they wanted me dead…).

The lady who owned the place was a beautiful, full figured woman that gave me a bazooka and a jar of salsa, said something in Spanish and disappeared.  I woke up thinking of breakfast burritos and salsa so I’m going to go make breakfast. 

Experiance and Research

When I was a little girl, mom used to say that I lived in another universe.  She would say that I needed to ground myself and come back to reality now and then.  I finally told her one day, some years ago, that she couldn’t have been more wrong.

I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who’s more grounded than a writer.  Because if you can’t live in the world and feel it, then how can you write about it?

The two most important things for me, as a writer, have been experience and research.

For instance, you can’t write what it feels like to love someone, unless you really have loved someone.  Like wise, you can’t write what it feels like to have your heart broken unless yours has been shattered.  Sometimes, it needs to be ripped apart over and over again so you can really feel every little part of heartaches sorrow. When it comes to writing, you can’t make anyone feel something that you, yourself, have never felt. 

I can tell when I’m reading a book, which experiences the writer has and has not had.  If you’ve never lost a loved one, you have no idea what it feels like, and if you try to write it anyways, it will feel hollow and unbelievable.  People act certain ways when dealing with grief because it’s both physical and emotional.  If your character is not exhibiting these common traits, then the reader won’t feel it.  And as sadistic as this might sound, it’s a really, really good feeling to sit and watch someone read your story and see their expressions change from smiles to tears.

My mother didn’t realize that, when I was little, and I’d be sitting out on the deck for hours doing, well…nothing, that I was actually absorbing.  I was feeling the breeze on my skin and describing it to myself. I was feeling the rough planks of the wood deck beneath my fingers, hearing the sound of the trees, birds, traffic, air planes, neighbors, lawn mowers…this could go on and on but I’m sure you get it. 

Did you know that air actually has a texture and a taste?  That books have a very specific smell?  That taste is actually about 80(ish)% smell so when you smell something, you’re also tasting it too (think if that next time you walk into an extra stinky bathroom).  Rock smell different from bricks.  Kittens smell different from cats.  Every human being smells different.  No two smell alike unless they’ve been living together for a very long time and even then there are differences.  

My point is, if you don’t live now you can’t write about it.  So you have to make an effort to pay attention to everything that’s going on, right now.  Even when it seems like nothing is happening at all. 

Instead of wishing for better times when times are bad, wallow in the bad.  Feel every second of it.  Not only will it help you to write about it, but when things eventually get better (which they always do), they seriously feel that much better. 

Don’t be afraid to go out and experience life and take chances because every experience is another tool in your tool belt.  Try running through the snow barefoot so you can feel how much is sucks, then write about it.  Describe it.  You might be surprised what comes out (you might even find yourself doing it again).

But enough about experience.  On to the research.  Unless you don’t mind sounding like an idiot, DO YOUR RESEARCH!!  If you’re character is carrying a gun, research guns, in fact, go shoot one and take it apart (educational fun weeee!).  Know your trees and plants and animals.  If you’re character is a farmer and you live in a city, go help out on a farm somewhere for a couple hours.  If your character is a pilot…well that one could be difficult.  But there are some very helpful video games.  If your character is a police officer, walk into the police office and ask if you can ride along with someone for a night (they usually don’t mind and actually appreciate the company.  Especially if you’re a cute girl). 

Use the internet, use the library, use people!  I know that last one usually has a negative connotation, but you might be surprised at how cooperative folks can be when you start out with, “Hi, I’m a writer and I’m researching_______.  So I need to talk to an expert.  Can I pick your brain for a couple minutes?”  Not only did you just compliment someone and make them feel important, you’ve probably made a new friend and now have a new wealth of information at your disposal. 

Remember those two things.  Experience and Research.  People might think you’re crazy (those of you who may think I’m nuts, now know why) but you’ll have an insight that most people don’t ever even consider.  You’ll stop looking at things as just things and start seeing them for the shapes, colors, textures and smells that they are.  Even people are just big, moving colorful shapes that smell funny and make sounds, but watching and feeling them is what makes them human to you personally.  If you want to step away from the human race, just separate those two things (if you’re writing about aliens or serial killers), just make sure you put them back together again. 

Well, I hope this helps.  Experience and Research!!!!!!!!  Now go lick a brick and describe what it tastes like (it’s very interesting). 

Racing the Sun down Parleys

     I had a pretty good Thanksgiving.  I drove for an hour to get to my sisters place up in Heber where we cooked a whole bunch of delicious goodness, then pigged out.
     She and I yammered at each other while her husband watched football and my nieces played. 
     My 6 year old niece drew a picture of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon for me andit’s already on the fridge with all the other drawings she’s given to me.  Huh…my sister decorated my kitchen in roosters (I don't think it was on purpose.  It started out as a joke when my best friend Diane who lives in Japan decided to mail live baby chickens to me once.  Ever since, my sister has bought me kitchen items with roosters on them...my mother often has some rather crass jokes to crack about that).  Anyways, so my sister decorated my kitchen and her daughter decorated my fridge.  It's fitting.

     The one thing I didn't get for Thanksgiving that I was hoping for was the can of cranberries that slurps out of the can and slaps onto a plate, holding the shape of the can and wiggling like jello.  Not only am I horribly amused by it, I also think it’s tasty…and fun to poke at.

     So I left around 4:30 and raced the sun down Parleys listening to the Gladiator soundtrack (I really shouldn't listen to that soundtrack while I'm driving.  I always end up flying near light speed, grinning like a psychopath on a rollercoaster of doom.).  The sun won.  I got back home in the dark and started to write, after making a cup of Vanilla Rooibos tea and throwing in the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Soundtrack.  Which I've been listening to on repeat (hey, I like Nicholas Hooper). 

     I wrote six pages today (WAY better than yesterday!), and not only did I get an idea to make the story better for Part II of the novel, but I also realized a huge, important piece that I forgot to put in Part I (dur!). 

     Well, it's 1:30 am and though I really should go to sleep, I would rather watch TV for a bit so I'm off.  But before I go, I have to say THANK YOU to my friend Barbara for being the very first follower of my blog.  I was so excited when I saw that I had a follower that I did a little dance.  Then I squeaked when I saw it was you.  I miss you and look forward to seeing you (hopefully soon).  And to my friend Lisa who just joined as well.  Your support means so much to me and it's also incentive to write more and write better.

     So Thank you, my friends.  I hope everyone had a good and safe Thanksgiving and that no one got food poisoning.

Yum...Potatoes!

It seems to be Thanksgiving.  This whole year really snuck up on me. 

So here I am, sitting on my couch at 2 AM, Thanksgiving morning.  Eating a Cup-o-noodles and watching a Kiefer Sutherland movie on mute.  I think it’s called Mirrors.  It’s interesting, how much you can understand on body language alone. 

Do I often watch movies on Mute?  Yeah, I guess I do.  When I want to write, but I don’t want to be alone it helps to look up from my screen or paper to see a familiar face.  And I do like Kiefer’s face.  It’s…comfortable.  Like hot chocolate. 

I only wrote 4 pages in my novel tonight.  The beginning of part II.  It’s a start, albeit a slow one.  I didn’t get to do much writing at work because the day before a holiday is usually exceptionally hellish and there just wasn’t any time between one problem and the next. 

4 pages.  It feel like such a small amount.  It probably would have been more if I’d hand written it first. For some reason it just flows better that way.  Always has.  Sometimes I even use a quill and ink because it simply feels good to write that way.  And I like the smell of the ink.  Though I must admit, it can be difficult to use a feathered quill when you have kitties. 

Ugh…4 pages.  The material is good.  I think.  Sometimes I wish I could just plug something into my brain and download the universes that are swirling around in there.  But I guess if it were that easy, I wouldn’t love to write so much.  What’s life without a challenge? 

Blizards are Great for Creativity

            I had a flat tire yesterday, which turned out to work in my favor.  When you've had as many flat tires as I have, they stop bothering you and actually become kinda funny.  So last week, the tire went flat.  I limped over to the gas station and pumped more air into it thinking it was nothing more than a bead leak.  Well it wasn't.  I went out to my car yesterday to go to work and it was flat.  Luckily I was leaving early and called one of my coworkers just in time to catch him and hitch a ride (Rhett, you're a life saver!). 
   

Well, today I tried to change the tire before work but it wouldn't come off (my rims have a nasty habit of rusting onto the axel.  But hey, I didn't lovingly name my car POS for nothing!).  Then my little brother came home early (he lives with me and works at a school).  I asked him if he could get a hold of our other brother to bring down the sledge hammer then I started to get ready for work.  Well the little brother can be a doll sometimes and he went out there and found a way to get it off without a hammer.  Sadly, all I have to replace it with is a doughnut.  A well used doughnut (I love that doughnut!). 

He suggested that I still hitch a ride with my coworker because there's a huge blizzard rolling into town and the school he works at was shut down for the day.  Then I found out that not only were schools locking down, but so where many hospitals, churches and businesses.  This is supposed to be the worst storm that Utah has seen in over 10 years (If you've ever been to Utah and experienced its drivers, you would understand how odd it is to shut anything down because of weather.  We'll go racing on bald tires in two feet of snow just for fun.  And nothing is more exciting than getting up to at least 50 in the snow and giving the wheel a good, hard yank to get the car into one of those uncontrollable spins.  All you can do is sit back and wait for the ride to be over...yeah, I've done some really stupid crap...fun though). 

Anyways, so Rhett picks me up for work again and we get all our students in the building and set up to go (we work for a company that specializes in outsourced telemarketing business).  We barely are ready to start the day and we find out that the site is going to be shut down on account of the coming storm.  Which is a huge surprise to folks who've worked there as long as I have.  In 12 years, they've NEVER shut down the site due to weather.  Utahan’s are crazy enough to drive in anything, so why shut it down?

    

It was really exciting to get off work early.  I was almost bouncing in my seat all the way home, though the snow had already started to fall and we got about  6 inches in only 30 minutes (our snow here is really heavy and has a tendency to weigh down tree limbs, which then break power lines.  As you can hopefully guess, that's dangerous). 

    

I got home at about 8pm and started writing (which is actually the point of this whole story, by the way). 

    

I'm excited to say that since I got to come home and spend 4 hours writing and drinking hot chocolate (and a flute of White Merlot) that I've finished Part I of my story with 21 chapters, 52,900 words and 97 single spaced pages!!!!

    

Yay me!  Crowd goes wild!  Clapping, cheering, pats on the back and drinks all around!

     ...Okay, so maybe my cats are excited.  And NOT because I just drugged them with catnip.
    

I'm going to go watch TV for a bit and knit something. 

    
(thank you blizzard

So where do the ideas come from?

     I get the question a lot.  I'll tell someone one of my ideas or the basic plot of one of my stories and it's usually the same expression.
     "How do you come up with this stuff?"  They ask with eyebrows drawn together and head shaking. 
     Well, usually it's a dream.  I'm sure a lot of writers say that.  I believe that's the major difference between artists and the rest of the world.  An artist never stops dreaming.  Like Edgar Allen Poe said:  Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night. 
     But to be honest though, I do have another outlet for ideas.  I'm a gamer.  A sit-at-the-table-with-a-character-sheet-and-bag-of-dice type of gamer.  This gives me characters to work with, which helps me build backgrounds and family trees, which leads to where they live and what they do.  Next thing I know, I've created a person that could be just as real and you or me. 

     The book I'm writing right now started out that way.  It was just a character.  I was playing a Warmage in a D&D 3.5 campaign.  She was militant and cold and would kill anyone her queen commanded her to, without question.  It was one of my favorite games. 
     Sometime after the campaign ended that I had horrible insomnia one night.  I laid awake for hours feeling like there was something in my head that needed out but all I had was a face in my mind. 
     When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of a bright eyed, bushy tailed young girl with a ready smile and a love of exploring.  A girl who's curiosity often got her in trouble, but also took her on adventures.
     I woke up late in the morning the next day to the irritating sound of a lawn mower just outside my bedroom window.  I flopped out of bed and growled at anyone who looked in my general direction until I found the coffee pot and made the coffee happen.  Then I started to write.
     I took that character back to the early days, before she became militant, cold and deadly.  I asked her what had happened to her and it’s like she started to tell me her story. 
     I wrote the first four chapters that day and fell asleep around the same time as the night before, but this time it wasn't insomnia.  My hand just refused to put down the pen.
     That went on for about a month until I realized that I had better come up with an end of the story or I would just keep writing and writing and there would be no real direction.  So I wrote the end.
     Then I floundered around for EVER trying to fill in the space between.  What was I doing wrong?  Ignoring my own learning style and personality type. 
     I'm a very tactile person.  I will walk out of a store and never go back in simply because I accidentally touched something made of corduroy (ugh!  My skin crawls just thinking of it!).  Likewise, I can sit and rub my hands over bricks and textured walls and silk....things, for hours.  I'm also very sensitive to sounds and smells.  Certain types of music, though I enjoy listening to them, chop holes in my brain and make creative thinking impossible.  Certain smells will have my skin crawling in seconds.  Others will massage my brain to happy putty.
     Then there's people.  I work with people and am constantly surrounded by many, many people while on the job.  By the time I'm off work, I want nothing to do with people.  But I find that I'm more creative when I'm around people, and trying to ignore them, then when I'm alone and trying to be creative. 
     So what did I do?  I got a huge piece of paper and tacked to my wall (I got this idea from my favorite writer, Jim Butcher).  On that paper, I drew a time line.  For each chapter I finish, I write a brief description on a post-it and slap it up there.  I also have character descriptions and drawings as well as little maps that I've doodled up and scene ideas. 
     It's the first thing I look at when I wake up and it's the last thing I see when I go to bed and seeing this physical manifestation of my story and my characters puts my brain on the creative track for the rest of the day.  This way, while I'm at work, I can write.  Since I work with people, I get to assign them to projects or activities when the lessons deem it nessessary and during that time, I write.  You wouldn't believe how many pages a day I can pound out on the job, and still work at the same time.  Maybe it's because I'm dreaming of being somewhere else....

     Well, I wrote 11 pages tonight and most of those were while I was at work.  I'm 19 chapters in and the gab between the beginning and the end is getting smaller and smaller.

Here we go....

So I'm new to this blogging thing.  I thought it might help me out with my writing a little.  I guess I'm a starving artist.  Without the starving part.  I keep a full time job to make sure that there is no starving. 

Well, I'm a writer.  I've written many short stories and poems and have never published them.  That's what I'm working towards at this time.  I have a novel that I've been working on for the last year and a half and I'm almost done.  It's just that I've been saying that I'm almost done for almost a year now.  You know how things get in the way and slow you down; relationships, work and the strange need to some kind of social life (stupid social life need), friends, family and the worst of all, WRITERS BLOCK!!! 

From the moment I learned how to write as a little whelp, it's all I've wanted to do.  I feel lucky in that way.  I've always known exactly what I'm going to be when I grow up and have have spent years learning how hard it is to become a published writer.  Which only makes me want it even more. 

So what do I like to write?  Fantasy and science fiction.  Mostly fantasy.  The Novel I've been pounding out over the last year is a high fantasy, sorcerers vs wizards type.  It's fun and exciting to write.  I've even drawn certain characters and places.  On that note, my mother (who's a VERY good artist) is coming over tonight to show me how to draw foliage (I am also an artist, just not as good as mom).  These aspen leaves are getting the better of me... 

Knock, knock.  Speak of the devil!