Sheepish Writer

    When I say I'm majoring in English, 90% of people ask me, "Oh, so you want to teach?" And I always feel sheepish when I tell people, "No, I want to be a writer."

     Maybe I feel sheepish because I write more about writing than anything. Or maybe because I halfway don't believe my ultimate dream will ever come true, because it would be too good to be true. Living above my bakery-bookstore in a quiet English town or a noisy American city, scribbling poems in a dog-eared notebook at a coffeeshop, recording music in a studio, owning a tabby cat, being indebted to my editor, posting audio chapters of Wynna on my website, and sending friends and acquaintances autographed copies of my book would be too good to be true.

      Maybe this isn't a feeling of sheepishness but of selfishness.

     How do I spread hope with poems about my emotions and stir hearts with stories about dragons and princesses? And do hope and heart-stirring mean as much to me as all the rest?

In a Chocolate Shop in Switzerland

          Daydreaming doesn't have to take place during the day. It can just as well happen at night. And although dreaming requires that you be asleep, you have to be awake to daydream. The funny things we talk about in linguistics.         

The cold spell broke and Pudding enjoyed snack-time outside!

             Yesterday the lazy writer was daydreaming (instead of reading the paragraph on the page in her textbook about international marketing) about owning a chocolate shop in the shadow of the Alps, in Switzerland. In her daydream, a group of cyclist friends met in the chocolate shop after a race. One of them was gray-haired and rather old, but several of them were young. The lazy writer wondered to herself (with her eyes intently staring at the same paragraph) whether Manny the mammoth on Ice Age speaks the truth and, "Guys don't talk to guys about guy problems. They just... punch each other on the shoulder." The lazy writer watched the young men at the chocolate shop to see what they would do. They began...to talk. About guy problems. The lazy writer jumped up from her chair and plugged in her computer, resolved to record her daydream instead of (a) waiting for a better idea or (b)  waiting until she finished her homework. In other words, she decided not to be lazy and just to write.

Day 12: A Late Start

     Look! I'm actually writing! What with the conference and not being able to decide whether or not to really do NaNo this year, I got a late start, but started I have!

     I spent the first 8 days character-sketching and outlining. Inventing the major plot points was the hardest part, and now that it's over…I still have the whole mountain to climb! I'm a slow writer, and 50,000 words is a lot.

    But, I am glad I'm at the point of writing. I'm glad I decided to try this. And now that I've begun, I hope the rest will come easier.

     The novel I'm writing is about Wynna, the dragon-rider. As part of my pre-writing I studied the driving factor of fantasy novels: conflict. This is something I'm bad at writing. I tend to take recycle the same conflicts (war brewing, the people unhappy with the monarch because of heavy taxing), or I just keep my characters happy and far from discomfort.
     This blog post: Conflict in Fantasy, was really helpful in establishing that conflict is necessary and in showing what it is, the different types it can be broken down into, and how they all work.

   Even if you're not writing fantasy, check it out! And let me end with an inspiring quote for this frigid Wednesday:

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

--Robert F. Kennedy

Learning to Pretend

   

     The Patrol Tower

     Readers are supposed to suspend disbelief. They're supposed to pretend that the people and occurrences on the page are real. If they don't there's no point in reading.

      After all, I highly doubt J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit expecting people would clutch their bellies laughing, "Ha! Bilbo didn't talk to Smaug. Dragons don't talk. Even if they did, Biblo and Smaug don't even exist! They're just ink on a page!"

     It's pretty easy to pretend when you're reading someone else's writing. But sometimes I have trouble with my own. I'm the one writing them, and I'm the one who sees all the tangled fancies on the inside of my brain before they spill out onto the page.

     Two things I've found out that help me. The first is making bits of my story into drawings or models. My characters and settings feel more real when I can see them. The second thing that helps is detail, knowing everything about the world of my story, and knowing all about even secondary and tertiary characters.

❀ ❀ ❀

What helps you pretend?

     

A Brown and Orange Week

    My one-month Huluplus subscription was an accident, but at least The Adventures of Tartu was good. I've totally neglected my Dundalk research, but I did peruse all the opening pages of the Chronicles of Narnia to study style. I got next to nothing written on Wynna, but I did draw a satisfactory picture of her mother and uncle. I messed up on the sleeves to the Red Cross nurse dress, but the apron is turning out nice!

     As you can see it's been a sort of brown and orange week. Here are three things I learned from it.

1. True tests of how nice one is and how good one's temper is come at home.

2. I am a night writer. (I'm useless in the afternoon, and I can't get up early enough to write mornings.)

3. I seriously have to shut myself away from people to write.

How has your week been, and has it taught you anything?

Jack of All Trades, Master of One

     I'm a kind of a Jack of all Trades, Master of One. I play piano, I sing, I draw, I sew, I cook, I shoot, I play tennis. I speak one language fluently and three not so well. I've dreamed of acting, of teaching, of being a federal agent. And yet, the only thing I'm good enough at to make a career out of is writing.
     But sometimes I wonder, do I really want to be an author? Because that means writing, and a lot of times I want to do anything but write. Often I just can't seem to get a single sentence onto the page, much less  beautiful prose. It's like trying to squeeze a pea-sized drop out of an empty sample tube of moisturizer.

    Last year in August I wrote a post about a quote by Gloria Steinem. "I do not like to write; I like to have written." I ran across a nearly identical quote in The Write Practice, and it's by Dorothy Parker (20th century American writer). "I hate writing; I love having written." It's comforting to know I'm not alone and that feeling love and hate for writing doesn't mean I shouldn't become an author. Especially because I have no idea what I could do besides write...

     Here is the post where I found the quote: What is the Most Satisfying Part of Writing?

Do you ever hate what you love to do?

The Delights of Downton

    Here's something for you to mull over. What do Downton Abbey, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and high school bands have in common? I'll give you a minute.

     When I was small, I wished and wished that I could be a maidservant and wear a cap, a collared dress and a white, frilly apron. I wanted to walk around with good posture and curtsy to the ladies and gentlemen. I wanted to serve tea and carry trays of delicacies.
    Watching Downton Abbey is reviving my dream! If you've never seen it, it's a period drama that begins in 1912. It's about the intertwined yet separate lives of the Grantham family and their servants. There are some bits I would leave out (and some casting changes I would make), but all in all, Downton is my dream show. I understand why everyone loves it! Besides the alluring historical setting and everything that comes with good writing (conflict, suspense, secrets, irony, etc.), there's a special key aspect about Downton that makes it so lovable.
     Was that minute long enough?
     I've thought about it, and I think the answer has a lot to do with Downton's success. The show, the movies, the books, and the organizations all have in common a large but selective group of friends. Or in other words, a "fellowship" or a "family," the kind of thing to which we all want to belong. Downton hits that spot by following not only one or two but 16 close-knit primary characters. They all interact with each other according to their personalities, like a family. Not only that, an array of viewers can relate to their favorite or second-favorite be it self-sacrificing Bates, gullible Daisy, spirited Lady Sibyl, or down-to-earth Matthew Crawley.

In your mulling, what did you come up with as a common factor? What else do you think contributes to Downton's appeal?