"You know what 'exfoliate' means? That there's sand in the soap."
A male guest in our all female household took a shower and afterwards said:
"You know what 'exfoliate' means? That there's sand in the soap." Recently I watched Total Recall. The original one. With the Govenator. Circa 1990. And they have video phones in the movie. Which made me remember thinking, at the time, when I still had to hand write my reports for school, “That would be so cool.” Yesterday I Skyped with a friend in another state for two hours without a thought. How did video phoning sneak up on us like that? Did anyone even notice? According to Uber-facts.com, “Today's average smartphone has more computing power than the first space shuttle ever produced.” I don’t know if that’s true but it’s got to be close to true. Think about it. San Francisco has lots of street art. Some of it is commissioned and some of it is rogue. These ones I think are my favorite. I have seen these all over SF and every time I find them it just makes me smile. If anyone knows the artist tell him or her thank you for me.
You know why? Because time is arbitrary. January 1st only has meaning because we as a society have decided to attribute meaning to it. Scientifically speaking there is no more difference between December 31st and January 1st than any other change of days. Of all the cultural systems of tracking time the Gregorian/Western calendar has got to be the least practical of them. Most other cultures had the good sense to base their time trackers on celestial events. For convenience sake I will put the blame on the Roman Empire. (I’m talking to you Julius and Augustus.) The Chinese celebrate their New Year in February. The Aztec calendar starts in our March, Jewish is September, and Celtic is October. [Fireworks just went off outside my house. Yep it’s 00:00 as I write this.] My favorite is the Celtic philosophy. They start their New Year in the fall, when everything is dying and going into hibernation. Death is a necessary start for new life. Remove the old and make room for the new. My experience has been that major interior shifts happened in September. Eventually it migrated to March. Because I think the universe has a sense of irony it is currently January. Having said all of that, I do think there is great value in ritual and by ritual I mean habit. If you have already spent the last ten years attempting change in January then your brain is prepped for this. You should definitely take advantage of that. Creating new habits or stopping bad ones for most goals will be a must. My question to you is if you haven’t already made the choice to change what difference will Jan. 1 make? Unless the goal of your resolution has become obsolete you can review and try again any day of the year you need to. I believe absolutely that we should all resolve to change. But don’t let an arbitrary date stop you from making that choice. As much as I love my story and the people in it, re-writing had become a much dreaded task. My editor had made comments on a few scenes that needed to be rewritten from a deep POV. After consideration I decided I liked the omni thing I had going on. Then I had the opportunity to get my story work-shopped by some published authors (Fred Wiehe and Jay Hartlove) and they had the exact same comments about those same scenes. Hmmm… okay fine. But even as I thought about overhauling those scenes I got exhausted. 8th time’s a charm. Then came NaNoWriMo. Take a one month break to work on something totally new. I come back to these comments with weary determination to make this story the best it can be and suddenly there is a spark. A twinge of excitement. Rather than re-write the scenes, I will scrap them totally, and start fresh and new. The blank page is full of possibility and options. The chance to do something new, with old material is tantalizing. New beginnings, fresh starts. Love them. Every time I start to wonder if I am a writer to the core of my being something like this happens. The excitement that comes from something so abstract reaffirms to myself that I am true writer and not just someone who jots down neat ideas. When I find a new, undiscovered vein, even from the same old storyline, and I can’t wait for lunch break or writing group to dive into that well and see what treasure I can uncover. I honestly have no idea if these changes are things a reader will ever notice, but it’s a matter of excellence and integrity that they are made. It’s the digging that makes the story a novel and not just something I wrote. Believe it or not this is me editing. When I got my manuscript back from my editor Elisabeth, I had almost 300 comments to address and over 4,000 insertions/deletions to accept or reject. Some changes were easy, a little cut and paste and BAM, I had a new and improved scene. If only excellence came that easy. Other edits were small but had ripple effects. A rewrite on page ten resulted in a bigger change on page seventy five and even bigger changes on page two hundred. What you see here is one of those. There was a an entire middle section that needed to be overhauled and flipping back and forth on the monitor didn’t allow me to really see it. Hard copy is always best for editing. So I printed it out, cut up the scenes, looked at them one by one, and reordered them according to my changes. Once the order was set I did the switches in the computer, fixed any transitions and cross references, and saved. I was at a panel discussion about the author as publisher and the authors recommended a list of things you should get done professionally if you plan to self-publish. This list included a developmental editor, a copy editor, cover artist, cover designer, eBook architect, and typesetter. One reality I have had to come to terms with is that I am in business. I have a product that I am trying to sell, so I better make sure it’s at its best. When I read my first draft I wonder how I ever got this far. Editing. Editing again. And yet more editing is the only way to go. With three hours to spare I crossed that finished line with 50,029. My goal in doing this year's NaNo was knock out the first draft of my next novel. Of the 50,000 words written I think two thirds of it is a good chunk of new novel. I still have a lot of writing to do. The story is still settling. I had started out wanting the story to go one way but it would not come out. So I just started free writing instead. As a result I ended up with the same story from a totally different characters point of view. It's a pleasant surprise. That is one of my favorite parts about writing, the discovery. I didn't have a plan for what happened so I will be spending my time filling in the blanks and digging into the characters motivations. On many occasions I don't know why they did what they did so I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out so I can make sure there is consistency with them as well as the plot. Characters are people too. I know I am not the only writer who has imaginary people in their heads doing the unexpected. "I invent nothing, I rediscover." --Aguste Rodin. I think that is all I ever do. I feel like I, and any creative person, have access to secret worlds that no one else does. The act of creating is to give other access to these secret places hidden inside all of us. PG: Reality television has grown in popularity over the years. What are your thoughts, Morpheus? MORPHEUS: It is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. PG: I know, right? It even has it's own Emmy category now. MORPHEUS: It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you . PG: Do you think that this trend will fade out anytime soon? MORPHEUS: You are a slave to it. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. PG: Okay, sure. But some people would say that about all television, not just reality shows. MORPHEUS: It's a system. That system is our enemy. Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. People are part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. PG: I'm surprised you feel so strongly about this. MORPHEUS: Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. On October 31st, 2009 I made a split second decision to do this crazy thing called National Novel Writing Month. I did not have a story idea of any kind. I literally started with “Once upon a time” because it was suggested by their book. Every day that I sat down to write I was awed and amazed at what came out. Not because it was quality writing but because it was a world and characters I had never met before.
I spend years mulling over my characters and their realities. So when all these new people started appearing I just couldn’t believe it. The story, to my surprise, ended up being a redemption tale for one of my nastiest villains from a story I have never been able to complete. That first year taught me some important things. First- I can create, under pressure, and without a plan. Because my method for years has been to let stories simmer in the back of my mind I had no idea I could pull off spontaneous story telling. I had to trust the characters and the places I found them in and in the end it paid off. It’s a complete story and the elements of the story tie together pretty well despite the frenzied circumstances they were created under. Second- Habit goes a long way. If you don’t already have the habit of writing everyday this is a good way to get into it. I give myself permission to have one day off a week, but if your brain is accustomed to having to create something on a consistent basis it will. It may not seem like that at first, but commit yourself to writing daily for six weeks and see what happens on that 43rd day. If you can do it at the same time of day that will help too. It gets easier, I promise. And third- Get that first draft written as fast as possible. This helps keep continuity of character personality together as well as plot. For 2009 I didn’t finish the story by November 30th. I managed to return to the story in January and finish off the narrative but the characters had changed without my consent and I think it’s pretty obvious. The plot suffers over a long period of time because you forget what you’ve said. I succeeded in 2010 at writing 51,000 words of material for a future sci-fi epic but it is not a story. It is only pieces and parts of a story. Some of the material will be usable, but I’m thinking I will have to chalk up most of that material to an exploration of world and characters. Which is fine but it didn’t feel as amazing since it’s not a complete story. For 2011 I experienced some of what I had in 2009, new people and situations with no prior knowledge, but I lacked the drive to push through it. This year my goal is to knock out that first draft for my next Lysandra story. I know how I want to start and I think I know how I want it to end, but everything in between is a mystery. By November 30th I may have a workable first draft or I might just have bunch of parts. I’m really hoping for the former. If you decide to do NaNoWriMo tell your friends you are not available and clear your schedule. This will help you to avoid feeling guilty about telling them “No” and you must tell them “No” or you will pay for it later. Definitely write something every day, even if it’s only a paragraph. And go to the write-ins in your city. Sitting with a group of strangers as tired and exhilarated as you are is fun and you get to meet some really great people. |
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