Archive for the ‘in general’ Category
What Motivates You? (Hint: Your Characters Will Show It…)
Folks, I’ve thought long and hard about this topic (the topic being motivation, as the title says), as I think what motivates you as a writer is likely to be what motivates your characters, too.
Now, you might be shaking your head here. Your characters probably range from awful people to good ones; from those who keep fighting to stay afloat, and those who sink like a stone; from those who do, to those who wait. They would seemingly all have different motivations driving them, right?
And all of it — all — comes from you.
Your motivations are important. They infuse everything you write and everything you do. Whether you believe in miracles, believe in hard work, or a combination of the two, much less your not-so-good characters believing in expediency and “going along to get along,” why you do things can’t help but shine through.
This is why people talk about “what is your brand.” I wish we’d come up with a better way to put that, as I don’t like codifying people in the same way as we codify objects. However, as this is the term we’ve got, I’m going to run with it.
My “brand,” so to speak, is this: Out of desperation and tragedy comes hope, safety, and romance. A better life awaits my characters, if they can just get through the morass they’re in right now.
Now, that’s not exactly a great “tag-line,” another concept I’m not entirely keen on. How can you sum up yourself and your writing with one, simple sentence? If you could do that, why would you write at all? You’d have your one sentence, and you’d be done.
Yet I’ve been compelled to write all sorts of things. Books. Stories. Novellas. Blog posts. Opinion pieces. Sports articles. Poems.
What’s the one, common denominator in all of those disparate things? Me.
So, what you bring to the table — or the internet cafe, or the workroom, or whatever — is absolutely crucial. Everything you are, everything you have done, everything you have observed, gets into your writing, much less the entirety of yourself.
That’s just a fact. But what you do with that fact is up to you.
What do you think about motivation? What drives you and/or your characters? Tell me about it in the comments!
Star Trek: Picard Ends in Two Days…and Other Stuff
Folks, over the past few months, I’ve been flummoxed by something that’s happened here at my blog. Namely, my posts about the TV show Drop Dead Diva have had hundreds of page views, despite being several years old — and despite Drop Dead Diva going off the air in 2014.
Look. I’m glad folks are finding any of my writing. Truly, I am. But these are folks who, in general, come to read those two posts, and then take off again.
I hope that something else here at my blog interests my long-time readers. I do try to talk about a wide variety of things, from TV/film, to sports, to politics (though I’ve been doing less of that lately, as there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to say except to double-down on previous stances), to current events (I’m so sickened by all of the shootings, and have no more words to say than that).
So, today I thought I’d talk about other TV shows that I’ve enjoyed besides Drop Dead Diva (which I loved, and still miss to this day). Ready?
I’m a huge Star Trek fan. Always have been. (It’s one reason why I found it too difficult to write about the pioneering Nichelle Nichols’ death. I also found it exceptionally difficult, in a different way, to write about Rene Auberjonois’s death.) A good friend recommended Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is a prequel to the original Star Trek series starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and the rest. It is excellent, and I can’t wait for season two to start this summer.
In fact, I loved that show so much, I went back to look at the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, which shows the previously unknown foster sister of Spock, Michael Burnham, as she rises in the ranks after a huge personal tragedy, because I wanted to know more about Anson Mount’s portrayal of Christopher Pike, plus see more of Ethan Peck’s version of Spock. I was pleasantly surprised with season two of Discovery, though I didn’t like season one all that much except for Michelle Yeoh’s performance as Mirror Universe Emperor Philippa Georgiou. (Goodness, she’s amazing. Best actress alive, anywhere. hands-down. There’s nothing she can’t do, and she somehow nails the essence of every character she plays within seconds. I am riveted by her.)
Paramount Plus has all sorts of stuff to watch, but so far I’ve been concentrating on the Star Trek shows. The original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager…and the show that ends tomorrow, Star Trek: Picard. (You may be asking, “What about Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Lower Decks?” I like both, but I kind of think I’m not the target audience for the first, while wanting the second to move faster…don’t ask me why, because that show moves with a rapidity as it stands.)
I’m someone who adored season two of Picard. I thought it was amazing. The depth of Patrick Stewart’s acting was truly stellar. I loved Allison Pill as Agnes Jurati (and eventually the Jurati/Borg hybrid). I enjoyed all of the characters so much, and did I point out yet that Michelle Hurd’s Raffi and Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine were phenomenal? (Please, Paramount, give those two their own series!)
But season three is even better. Picard is now much frailer; he’s retired completely, and at the beginning of the show, he’s preparing to leave Earth and move to another planet with his love, Laris. However, the universe needs him again, and off he goes…(I hope we see Laris again, as I loved Orla Brady. I keep saying that, too, but all of these characters are so good, and the acting so stellar, it’s hard not to gush about them all.)
I’ve been waiting for a few weeks now for the end of Star Trek: Picard. I hope to see Allison Pill again (surely the Paramount execs won’t be so rude as to refuse us to see her one, last time?), as there’s a huge evil Borg plot going on (and as the Borg of season two, once Agnes Jurati got a hold of them, had become much kinder/gentler, it would seem that as the crew of the Enterprise-D needs allies, Allison Pill’s “Borgrati” would show up as part of the cavalry. Hey, everyone needs allies! Really, they do. No one can do it alone, either, no matter how phenomenal you may be — that has to be the message, if you need one, of Star Trek: Picard, at least with regards to seasons two and three.)
Anyway, that’s what I felt like writing today, hoping that someone out there who’s a new reader will actually, you know, stick around a bit and figure out I write other things, too. (If you are exceptionally diligent, new readers, you can go to the About Barb page and find links to my three novels. That’s the best way to support me, you know; read my books! End shameless plug.)
You Must First Try Before You Can Do
I know Yoda said, long ago, that “there is no try,” but I disagree.
When you’re learning something new, you can’t help but try to figure out exactly how this new thing will work. For example, if you’re learning a new fingering for the clarinet (the altissimo register, or highest notes, can require some unusual fingerings), you try the new fingering out. You see if it works by itself, then you add in other notes around it to see if it works in context with the music. Then, finally, you try that fingering after playing in a lower octave (composers often write urgent things in piercing registers, or at least we can; lower registers are more about steadiness, sometimes, or at least about a rich sonority as the notes are easier to play), and make sure it works no matter what register you’d been playing in beforehand.
So, when you’re learning something new, you try it out.
Here’s another example. When you go buy a new car, you try it out. You see if it seems like something that will work well for you; you see if it’s comfortable, easy to manage, has enough room to carry your groceries or other important items on occasion, and you envision yourself in the car even as you’re taking it for a test-drive. All of the various amenities it has, or doesn’t have, don’t matter as much as what I’ve just mentioned. What does matter is how the car feels as you test-drive it — in other words, how it feels as you try the car, and put it through its paces.
Even in our personal lives, there is an example.
When I was younger, before I married for the first time, I had no idea of what I was getting into. Yes, I’d taken or at least sat in on a “Marriage and Family” course, I’d tutored some kids in high school who took similar classes also, and I thought I had a good grasp of what marriage entails.
I was wrong.
Why was I wrong? Well, I was envisioning only myself, plus the perfect husband for me, who would do everything right, all the time, without prompting, without me ever saying anything to him because he’d know everything before I mentioned it.
(Do you know how unreasonable and unrealistic this is? I didn’t, not at age twenty or thereabouts.)
See, I expected that anyone I was attracted to would be the same as myself, at least in one way. That way was regarding making the commitment to be with each other every single day. That meant that every day was a new one, where we built on what we already had while adding even more to the edifice…I know discussing a marriage like you’re building a house is an inexact metaphor, to say the least, but it’s the best I can come up with even with my additional experiences.
How did I get those additional experiences? I tried various things. I learned different, disparate things about myself along the way. And by the time I met my late husband Michael, I knew exactly what I wanted out of myself and exactly what I wanted and needed from him. I knew he could provide it, too, because he not only said the right words. He backed them up with the right actions.
(Perhaps that’s not a surprise, as Michael was a Zen Buddhist. They believe in Right Action as one of their tenets, I seem to recall. But I digress.)
I could do, by that time. But the reason I could do was because I’d tried and failed so many other times.
Here’s a final example. Musicians are told to practice often, including major and minor scales, scales in thirds (these are small jumps, for the nonmusicians in the audience; for the musicians, think C-E D-F E-G, etc.), sometimes even scales in sixths, to make playing any sort of music far easier from the technical standpoint. If we get the technique down, we can concentrate instead on other things, such as breath control (for wind musicians, this is essential!), blending with the others in the group, intonation (you don’t want to be sharp when everyone else is flat, or vice-versa, though it’s easier for people to hear “sharp” rather than “flat” for some reason), and actually making music rather than just playing a bunch of shiny little notes.
(I have nothing against shiny little notes. I use quite a lot of them as a composer. Moving on…)
What I’m saying is this: Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid of trying multiple times before you can do something, much less do that same something well.
Persist. Keep trying. Keep motivating yourself as best you can, because it’s not likely anyone else is going to do so…and start believing that the best, in some ways, might just be yet to be.
Only then can you proceed from mostly trying, to mostly doing.
Goodbye, Faithful Old Car
This past week at Chez Caffrey was a difficult one, but not for a usual reason.
My old car, a 2010 Hyundai Accent — what I once called “non-working” rather than admit it was broken — was going downhill fast. Then, on a very foggy night, I drove over a curb and the exhaust system gave out. I was confused, as the muffler didn’t drag on the ground or fall off; still, it was very foggy, so I checked on the way back home to see if there were any parts of the muffler on the ground.
There weren’t.
If this had been the only repair I’d had to deal with this past fall/winter, it would be one thing. But it wasn’t. I’d had to repair several other things, including my power steering at one point.
I think I managed about two weeks’ worth of good steering before the exhaust system went out. This, after knowing the suspension needed serious work, after I’d had two tires go flat and replaced them this past October…the car had become a money pit.
I felt it was worth asking the mechanics what was wrong with the exhaust. I had hopes it wouldn’t be a tremendously expensive repair.
Wrong answer.
It would’ve been $1400 to fix, minimum. The muffler didn’t fall off because it was scored down the middle — meaning it had somehow cracked there — and all of the pipes going to it were ruined.
The Accent wasn’t even worth $1400 by this time. So, it was time to get a different car.
I felt bad about it, because I had my Accent for a bit over eleven years. I was used to my car. I didn’t care if people thought my car was ugly or too big of a mess (it wasn’t ugly, but I used to call it “the world’s messiest car”), because it was my car. It had been more faithful to me than many things, to be honest, and it was nice to have one thing I could depend on most of the time.
And it really was “most of the time,” ’cause some of the Accent’s quirks in its age were that the defroster wouldn’t always work, or the heater either (the rear-window defrost always worked, I’ll give it that), not to mention bad shocks, bad struts, and more. Yet I still loved my car. I knew what it could do, I knew exactly how much room I had to park, I knew exactly how it maneuvered in stop-and-go traffic, and I felt comfortable.
My father and I went out and found a new-used car. (New to me but used, I mean.) This car is a 2018 Hyundai Tucson. (You may be asking me why I didn’t go with a similar type of car to the Accent. This was the smallest car on the lot, and it was called a “compact SUV,” of all things.) I switched over the insurance, cleaned out my old car, and told it that I appreciated its many years of good service.
Now, you might be asking why I did this. I know a car’s not an animate thing. But whoever and whatever watched over me while I drove that car made sure I was safe. I wanted to thank whoever or whatever that was, so I just thanked the car in lieu of God/dess or angels or my late husband’s spirit or whatever.
Also, I did this because my car was going straight to the junkyard. There wasn’t enough left of it to salvage, really. So I was the last person to probably ever drive that car, unless for some reason a mechanic out there wants a fixer-upper that still has decent tires and good brakes.
In the long run, I’m going to be much better off with the new car. It’s fun to drive, it’s easier to see things (though I am not looking forward to parallel parking) because it’s a bit higher off the road, and the suspension is excellent (among many other things). The main drawback is that it doesn’t have a CD player, but that’s not standard in cars anymore. (I guess there’s a way you can hook one up, and I may look into that. While I do have a smartphone now, it’s not on any given plan, and only works on my home’s Wi-Fi, so it probably won’t work for MP3 files. Then again, I’m new to both smartphones and this car, so perhaps it will work. We’ll see.)
Because the car is larger than any car I’ve driven regularly in over twenty years, I’ve got to remember how big the car is and give more than enough room until I get used to driving it.
Even knowing all that, I’ll admit to you folks right now that I am still going to miss my old car. It was faithful. It reminded me some of my previous car, a Geo Prizm, which was the last car Michael ever drove, because it drove in almost the same way and reacted almost identically in traffic.
Even when you know it’s time to change cars, it can be bittersweet. That’s where I’m at, anyway…even as I enjoy the new car, I can’t help but miss my old car.
So, goodbye, faithful old Hyundai Accent. Hello, new-to-me Hyundai Tucson.
All that’s left to say is…drive on?
Opposites Attract: The Jerry Falwell and Larry Flint Friendship
Folks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about friendship. Must we always be just like our friends? (You know I’m going to say no.) Can’t we appreciate different things in different people? (I would assuredly hope so.) And have other people managed to find common ground despite their differences?
Too many people get caught up in their “tribes” of folks who say they believe every single thing down to the last jot and tittle as themselves. They don’t challenge themselves, or their assumptions; they aren’t strong enough, perhaps, or maybe they just see no need.
Yet Larry Flynt — the famous owner of Hustler magazine (a men’s magazine that, shall we say, specialized in raunchiness rather than photographic artistry) — and Jerry Falwell, the famous Protestant minister, ended up friends after fighting like cats and dogs for years due to their obvious differences. (To say that Falwell did not approve of pornography, much less graphic porn like Hustler, is a severe understatement.)
How did they become friends?
Well, there’s a story behind that, and it goes like this: After Jerry Falwell lost a big lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court, he went to Flynt and said, “I believe God wants us to be friends. Goodness knows we’ve tried everything else.” (This is my best paraphrase from several things I’ve read over the years.)
Flynt had some God-fearing friends, such as Ruth Carter Stapleton (former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s sister), and had converted, at least for a short time, to Christianity in the 1970s. (I think he made it about a year before he again proclaimed he was an atheist.) He respected them despite their differences. But no one, not him and probably not Falwell, would’ve believed that these two wildly disparate personalities would become friends.
Why? Well, to put it mildly, most people do not become friends after they lose such a high-profile lawsuit. (Or any lawsuit.)
Yet Falwell extended Christian charity to Flynt, and Flynt responded. Flynt once said (again, from my best paraphrase), “We had almost nothing in common, yet he was a great friend.”
These two were unafraid to discuss their differences, too. They knew in many ways they were diametrically opposed. Yet…they also had some things in common, such as beliefs in integrity and fair dealing. They also believed people should honestly confront themselves, plus both believed in the rights of people with disabilities to fair treatment and understanding. They also were both, adamantly, against the death penalty, and Flynt backed it up when the gunman who paralyzed him was on death row as Flynt asked for the death penalty not to be applied.
In writing circles, we have a few other “opposite attracts” friendships, including the professional collaboration and long friendship between David Weber and the late Eric Flint. I know from my own knowledge of reading various posts by both men at Baen’s Bar (find it by going to baen.com and look for the link) that both men were intelligent, spirited, and tough but fair when discussing their various differences. (The respect between the two men was never in doubt.) What they had in common was personal integrity, honesty, commitment, a strong work ethic, and a willingness to work together to write excellent fiction.
My late husband Michael was a major admirer of David Weber, years ago. He had all the Honor Harrington books, plus the Bahzell books, and several other ones. (I can’t remember all the names now, but I’d probably recognize the various covers.) Michael, like myself, believed in traditional small-l liberal values and tended to vote for centrist candidates. (This was quite right-wing for San Francisco, he proudly used to say. I think Michael loved being contrary. But I digress.)
See, it is possible to respect and admire someone no matter what providing people are of good will and no malice. Flint and Weber worked together, were great friends, and appreciated each other. And the oddest couple of all, Flynt and Falwell, certainly became great friends and appreciated each other.
Knowing of these friendships makes me believe that people in general can, still, become friends with folks who seemingly have nothing in common.
So, when you abhor the state of the world — and truly, there are very difficult things going on all over the place, including a ton of stupidity — remember this:
It is possible to be friends with someone of a different political party. It is possible to become friends with someone of a different gender or sexual expression. It is possible to become friends with someone who worships differently than yourself…and it definitely is possible to be friends even if all of these things are present, providing we are people of goodwill and do as much listening as we do talking.
(That’s hard for me, but I’m working on it.)
Anyway, what “opposites attract” friendship have you wondered about? Tell me about it in the comments!
A Sunday Roundup: Cain DFA’d, Car Oddities, and Some Writing Achieved
Folks, I thought long and hard as to whether I wanted to write one bigger blog, or three short blogs. As I’m pressed for time, I decided to go with the longer blog…so, here we go.
The Milwaukee Brewers, my favorite baseball team, designated CF Lorenzo Cain for assignment yesterday (or DFA’d for short). Cain was an outstanding offensive and defensive player before Covid-19 hit; he sat out 2020 (the truncated first Covid year), came back last year and dealt with injuries but still showed flashes of his old form, and then this year he never quite got on track.
Personally, I blame the owners’ lockout for that. Any athlete has his routine to go through, and Spring Training is as much about routine as anything. When Spring Training got disrupted by the owners’ lockout, that meant spring games were not played; at-bats were not taken; players were not able to do anywhere near what they’d usually do for several weeks until the owners and players finally came to an agreement, and the owners’ lockout ended.
Why does that matter? Well, an older athlete — and Cain is now thirty-six, ancient for a baseball player — needs more time to get in the groove. (Maybe some don’t when it comes to defensive play, but most do when it comes to hitting, pitching, and fielding.) It seemed to me that Cain was doing as well as anyone in Spring Training pre-lockout…but after, he wasn’t quite right.
Cain was hitting only .179 when the Brewers designated him for assignment. Considering his lifetime batting average is .283, that’s a significant drop-off.
Cain’s defense was still sharp, for the most part. He was still an exceptionally fast runner, as outfielders tend to be (they need to, in order to cover so much ground). He was taking extra batting practice, and doing everything he could to get his hitting in gear…but it just didn’t work.
Both Cain and the Brewers were classy about this. Cain said it was “a mutual decision” according to what I heard on TV and via radio. The Brewers waited until Cain had ten full years of major-league service time (that day being yesterday) to designate Cain for assignment, making sure that Cain was fully-vested with regards to MLB’s pensions for retired players down the line.
As WTMJ-AM announcer Brian Dee said on the “Brewers Extra Innings” program after the Brewers game yesterday, “The Brewers did Cain a solid.” I agree.
I will miss Lorenzo Cain. His energy was infectious. He had a huge smile, and obviously loved to play (even in the last few weeks, where it seemed like he couldn’t buy a hit). He was smart, savvy, and did everything right, even when he wasn’t hitting. (He said he wished things were going better, making no excuses for himself.)
I think it’s likely Cain will retire. But if he does continue to play, I hope he’ll find his hitting stroke again and enjoy baseball as much as he ever has.
Anyway, now we’re on to the “car oddities” part of the blog. And it really is an odd story…so, here I go with that.
I was parked in one of the lots at the apartment complex where my Mom lives. That lot is dark after 8:30 p.m. in the summer (and no better in the winter, either; in fact, in the winter it is hard to see probably after 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.), which matters. And when I parked, I was the only person in the lot with a 2010 Hyundai Accent Blue. (Yes, this matters, too.)
When I walked out to leave, there was an identical car parked next to me. I only realized it once I got in the wrong car, realizing that I didn’t have an air freshener (this car did), that the car was far too neat to be mine, and the seat was also in the wrong position.
So, I got out of the car, and automatically locked the driver’s door and the passenger side door behind me (as I always do), after I got my hand-cart out of the back seat.
Anyway, I then realized I did not have my purse. I had left it in the wrong car!
Fortunately, the passenger side doors were open (as the driver’s side ones had been, too). I reached in, got my purse, and got the Hell out of there.
However…I left my cane in that car, and I didn’t realize it until I was all the way home.
My brother is visiting right now and saw my agitation over it all. (I hate being stupid, and I really felt stupid with this.) He drove me back to the lot, exclaimed about how dark that lot is, and said anyone could’ve made that mistake with two cars, identical makes and models, in almost no lighting. And yes, he opened up the passenger side door (which fortunately I hadn’t locked), and indeed, my cane was in that wrong car.
I don’t know what the owner of that car is going to think when they go back out to their car, mind you. (I have no idea who this is. Until now, I had no idea that anyone in the complex or among the people who regularly visit had a car identical to mine.) The seat is in the wrong position for them, as I pushed it all the way back. The driver’s side doors are locked, while the other two are not, and they’d left them all unlocked.
I considered leaving a note, but I had no idea what to say.
My brother said that I should leave well enough alone. If I figure out who that person is, I’ll apologize; otherwise, he said I should leave it be as it was an honest mistake.
He drove me back home, where my father wasn’t too happy over the whole affair. (Dad has never seen that lot at night. Jim tried to tell him, but Dad still didn’t understand how this could happen. At all.)
Now that I know there is another car with the same paint job (light blue), the same make and model, the same wheels, all that, I will look at the license plate before I get into the car. (Other distinguishing features of my car were unable to be seen in that light.)
As it was, my brother had to park the car in such a way — half in and half out of the spot — and shine his headlights on the wrong car (as I had driven my own car back and left it at home) before he could see well enough to figure out if the cane was in the car. (His phone has a flashlight. My phone with a flashlight was back at home, of course. But even his flashlight app couldn’t tell him whether the cane was in there or out, and he didn’t want to open the car door unless he was sure the cane was in there.)
I don’t know if anyone else has ever had this happen before — two cars, both identical in dim light, same make, same model, same paint job, and all — but it is truly strange. (Thus, “car oddities.”)
Finally, after I’d gotten back home again, and talked this out with a few friends who live overseas in different time zones (as my good friends who live here were all asleep, as they should’ve been), I managed to write one thousand words into a new Elfyverse short story. I’d wanted to write all week long, and the time got away from me…but I figured that as I was back, and was too scattered to edit, I should do something creative in the hopes that it would help me calm myself a little.
It worked.
At any rate, I will try to schedule time to write over the next few days and see how it goes.
What’s going on with you? Anything new this Sunday? How is your writing going, for the writers out there? Let me know in the comments…especially about the car oddity.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 