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The muse

I haven’t blogged in almost two weeks. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I’ve been distracted. Mostly, I’m having such a good time with Wine Bottles and Broomsticks that every free minute is devoted to getting the next line of that story down.

I promise I’m not going to bang on about my progress and number of words written and stuff. Last night I had a thought about the muse, and I wanted to share. Anyhow, maybe this shouldn’t be important, but for me I think it is. The definition the muse is a femenine figure who inspires an artist. Now, I’m not claiming that I’m an artist, I’m more of a guy who likes to tell stories, and there’s an art in that, I suppose. Anyhow, I like to think about muse in a slighty broader sense, in the sense that I’ve got a character and that character, be it male or female, is inspired by another person. To be clear, of all of the things I need to work on as a writer, character development remains my biggest problem. I’m not talking about just the character arc, I’m talking about just defining a character, anwsering the question: Who is this guy and why do I care? 

In one project, the main character has no real definition which does awful things for a story that probably has a good central concept and it’s borderline beyond my skill to fix it. In a few other projects, really these are more sketches and concepts for the most part, but I don’t have a clear picture of characters in my head. None of this is strictly true with Wine Bottles and Broomsticks, the characters are much stronger though I will conceed I’m not doing an expert job at drawing them, but I feel like I’m doing a much better job than usual. It’s growth and I’ll take it, even if it’s pretty incremental. 

Last night as I was forcing myself to go around a tiny track, hoping the tight little corners didn’t ruin my feet, I was thinking about my characters in Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. Once again, I realized that the main character needs something more. With this in mind, I turned to the other characters in that story – where did they come from? Well, I’m using muses, a lot. With one character in particular, the muse is an actor I’ve seen in several different TV shows. I haven’t picked a specific role to base my character off of, instead, I invented the character gave him a sketch and a role in the story, then as each scene unfolds, ask myself how would this actor play this character, what sorts of things would he add here? 

I took the trick to my main character. What actor would play that role if it were on TV? It came pretty quick actually. I realized I’ve got to go back and make a few changes, but nothing huge. The rest of it is a matter of sitting back and asking: How would this actor play this scene? That said, I this is really a guide to help me get past sticky spots and smooth out dialogue, not a strict set of rules. There’s plenty I’m doing with these characters that is unique to them and the story. At some point these characters will be stong enough in my head that I’ll asking how would this character do it more than how would this actor interpret it? Anyhow, it’s working for me to get me off the ground, and it’s making the project a little more fun to work through.

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The 7-7-7 Challenge

I was nominated for this by @out_ofthe_fog on twitter. The 7-7-7 challenge is a fun little chain letter thingy encouraging writers to share a little bit of their work in progress. Once you’ve done the challenge you nominate 7 others. I chose 7 folks from twitter that I’m either stalking or find engaging in some way. I didn’t pick anyone that I’ve already bought books from and intend to buy more. I focused of folks who I’d like to see what they’re up to or how their progress is coming (provided any of them / you choose to take that challenge).
One of the motivators in finishing my work or just writing in general is getting out on social media and actually talking about writing and issues. Not only that, reading what others are up to has been helpful for me as well. That said, one of the biggest motivators / tools of encouragement is sharing my work. Even if I don’t get feedback, I still know that a couple people might take a look at what I’ve written and so I look at my own work with a much more critical eye. So, that there was a long-winded explanation as to why I decided to do the challenge.
The challenge works like this: You do this by going to page 7 of your manuscript, counting down to line 7 and then sharing the next 7 sentences in a blog post.
I’ve got two works in a state that I could give this a go. I chose a section of the first chapter of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. The whole chapter is available over on http://www.channillo.com and the second installment is coming this Friday!

“Not completely. We get her to a place we can corner her and see if we can out her. Once we’ve done that, we bring her in, and work out whether or not we can tie her to anything.”
“This doesn’t sound legal. Shouldn’t we have probable cause? What is it that this woman is suspecting of having done?”
“Being a witch is probable cause.”
“But what if that witch hasn’t done anything -not that I’m saying there are witches.”
“You can’t be a witch, unless you’re a witch.”

So, there it is. Now, I’ve stalled my run long enough. Now, for another challenge: Time to get out there and raise awareness for usher syndrome.

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Writers improvement hell: Building a duck coop

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I bet you’re asking what the hell building a duck coop has to do with writing. Nothing. But it has a lot to do with not writing. In case you’re wondering this is another one of those complainy posts about not having enough time. It’s true though, I don’t, and it doesn’t have anything to do with running every night for the own the equinox challenge this month to raise awareness for usher syndrome (sorry, I gotta plug this, people should know about it, and of course if you can contribute, that’d be great too.) Running is a small part of my day, and I’m glad to be doing it.

The bigger time-sink at the moment is correcting the horrible-awful job I did building the duck-coop the first time. It’s too small, the roof is collapsing and you can’t easily get in to clean it. It’s got to happen because I really don’t want to have another morning waking up to “all the ducks are dead, a dog got them, your son found them and is inconsolable.” That happened last year, but I didn’t have the resources to rebuild the duck house then. I do now.

I’ve got 2 real productive days for me in the week, one of which is devoted to preparing for the next week, and the other day is largely relegated to family stuff – mostly goofing off in whatever manner we’ve obligated ourselves to. So, where does writing fit in? I’m not sure right now. In that over-committed weekend I’m managing to carve out hours to build the duck-house, but not much else. I’m usually pretty good about writing it the evenings, but the last few weeks I’ve been tired and distracted – my version of writer’s block. I know that if I ever want to seem my stuff published I’m going to have to focus and actually spend the time, but it’s a fight even for someone like me who doesn’t do anything but work sometimes. For now though, I’m off to run some errands and gather supplies for this weekend’s crack at the coop. Then, of course, there’s the running.