Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Research in progress to finish Michael’s fourth “Columba” story
I’ve been quiet this week, folks, partly because earlier this week was the sixth-year observance of my late husband Michael’s death. I don’t enjoy this — who does? — but I feel it’s important to do my best to remember his life, and what he meant to me (I do this every day, but try especially hard during this particular week), and re-dedicate myself toward this difficult, often frustrating and sometimes rewarding business of writing.
Michael left behind a fourth “Columba” story that is, at best, 1/3 finished. I know the title, which I will not share right now, and I know the circumstances Columba and her husband, the Duc d’Sanchestre, were in after they attempted to cross to his demesne but ended up somewhere else instead.
Complicating matters, I don’t have any notes for this story or universe — none whatsoever, unlike the “Maverick” universe (where there’s two completed stories there I’ve finished, and two novels I’m working on), which has plenty — all I have is the title, my knowledge of Michael’s writing style, and the completed 1/3 (or maybe 1/4) I have of the story to work with.
What I’ve done is figure out the setting — Michael has set this well, but I need to know how I can continue to describe it as it doesn’t come naturally to me — figure out some of what’s about to happen next, and because I know these characters very well (even though I’ve never written them before, I’ve read these stories over and over as they are outstanding), I believe I’ll be able to start writing the fourth story (or at least my continuation of it) very soon.
Very few authors have attempted what I’m doing — what I’ve already done to a degree with Michael’s “Joey Maverick” stuff — most especially in the realm of trying to finish in the same style as the original author . A husband-wife pair (or spousal unit pair, if you prefer), where only one is left to finish the work of the deceased, is even more rare — I know of Ariel Durant, the much younger wife of Will Durant, completing her husband’s work, and of a few SF authors (Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore, perhaps Janet Asimov to a degree) working in their late husband’s universes by permission or actually finishing stories in their late husband’s style.
At any rate, it can be done, but it’s difficult and often frustrating — this is not the writing that comes easily to me, and it tends to block out everything else I want to do until I’ve gotten enough of it out that I can get back to my work — and that’s the main reason my blog is languishing at present.
Aside from that, I continue to submit stories, write more stories, and edit various things — so I’m doing whatever I can to keep my dreams alive.
I can only believe that Michael would very much approve.
—–
Note: Please, please go to eQuill Publishing and look for my late husband’s “Columba” stories — it’s not too late for his work to gain a following.
Here’s the link:
http://www.equillpublishing.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=13
State of the Elfyverse, and other writing stuff.
OK, now for a quick update as to the state of the Elfyverse, AKA, “What else has Barb been doing along with readying her and Michael’s reprints — and Michael’s three great, but previously unpublished, ‘Columba’ stories — for publication at eQuill?”
Three more chapters were revised and posted to my writer’s group for AN ELFY ABROAD, the direct sequel to ELFY, in the past month. I now have completed between 85 and 90% of this novel — but as it’s well over 250,000 words as it is, I know I will have to cut back somehow and/or split it into two books. (It’s even longer than ELFY!)
Two more chapters were revised and posted to my writer’s group for KEISHA’S VOW, with two more chapters currently in progress but with nagging problems I haven’t yet solved. (And as I tend to get blocked if I don’t solve ’em, I usually have to struggle for a while before I can go on. I don’t know why this is, but I know it is my process, for better or worse.) KEISHA’S VOW now stands about 50% complete with about 60,000 words written of a projected 110K novel. (KEISHA’S is an ELFY prequel set in 1954 with many of the same characters from ELFY — just younger, or at least more alive, versions.)
As for CHANGING FACES, my non-Elfyverse novel that’s been in progress since 2002, it remains stalled out. (Sorry.) At 95K of a projected 110K novel for the fourth month in a row.)
Six stories and six poems are at various markets, while “Trouble with Elfs,” a reprinted version of the story published in 2007 at the Written Word online magazine (a tighter, better formatted version) is now available at eQuill Publishing. Here is the link to my author page there:
http://www.equillpublishing.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=12
At any rate, you all know I’ve blogged, submitted to publishers, submitted to magazines, submitted to agents, and then done the same again several times (rinse and repeat). I am a serious writer, at least with regards to getting my work in print; I am also serious about getting Michael’s work in print (see my parallel post about Michael’s “Columba” stories, which I blogged about just before this here at the Elfyverse blog site).
Thank you for following along with my journey; it is not yet over, and is not yet complete, for which I give whatever thanks I may.
******
Note: I have not put “Bright as Diamonds” up as a reprint yet, though I believe I have the rights to it after all this time (five years since publication). I probably won’t, either, unless for some reason enough of my short fiction sells that I want or need to put out a short fiction collection — and that’s looking optimistically way down the road.
Michael’s never-before-published “Columba” stories up at eQuill
This was a long time in coming, folks.
I’ve done my best to keep my beloved husband’s work alive since his untimely death in 2004. It has been a struggle, but I’ve managed to sell a few things now and again — my story “Trouble with Elfs” sold in ’07 (Michael added 10% to it, so it’s credited as a collaboration), “A Dark and Stormy Night” sold in ’05 (this was his story, which I’d added 10% to round it out a little), — after our first sale to the BEDLAM’S EDGE anthology in ’04 (“Bright as Diamonds, released in ’05).
But all this time, I knew Michael had three completed fairy-tale fantasy stories set in an alternate United States of America — technically, in the demense of Illinowa, where Princess-Coronet Columba had a great deal of distress trying to separate herself from all the drama of being royal. Columba, you see, wanted her own, independent life — she was a musician, and a mage, and a very strong woman, stuck in a life that wasn’t right for her.
Then she rescues a cat . . . and things dramatically change. The cat isn’t a familiar, quite — you’d have to read the stories at eQuill to understand what’s going on fully — rather, he’s the gateway to an unexpected romance between two lonely, complementary souls who are equal, but not the same.
Michael wrote these stories for me — the first, “Columba and the Cat,” was written in early 2002 after we became engaged to be married. The second, “Columba and the Committee,” was written to celebrate our marriage in June of 2002. Finally, “Columba and the Crossing” was written for our anniversary — our second, as it had been in progress for well over a year due to the vagaries of life (a move across country, some ill health for the pair of us, and trying to find work in a new, strange place). A fourth, “Columba and the Cromlech,” was in progress at the time of Michael’s passing in September of 2004.
I wrote the blurbs, checked over the Columba stories, and am pleased to offer them now for the very first time to the public. I also am pleased to announce that the fourth “Columba” story will be completed, by me, as soon as possible.
Don’t be put off by eQuill being an Australian e-book publisher, folks — they have a monetary conversion thing through PayPal that allows any currency to be used as far as I am aware. (I checked this before I placed any of my or Michael’s stories there.)
Please check out Michael’s author’s page at eQuill and the stories available for sale now:
http://www.equillpublishing.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=13
And if you wish to see my page at eQuill (so far only one of our stories is listed with me; the others are listed with Michael), it is available here:
http://www.equillpublishing.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=12
Thanks, and as Michael always said, “Good reading!”
What is the Story? Examples of Narrative Flow from “Maury” and Others
The main question, whether it’s on the “Maury” show or whether it’s life itself, is: what is the story? And how does it match up against the narrative we tell ourselves?
I watch “Maury,” as I’ve said on my “About” page and elsewhere, partly because it’s cathartic — but mostly because it’s a real, live case study of people who believe something which may or may not be true; this belief is what’s driving their own, personal narrative. On “Maury,” it’s often fidelity — or the lack of it — that’s the belief, or perhaps paternity (or the lack of it) — whereas in real life, many people tend to believe whatever is on the surface of things, and don’t dig for deeper meaning. (Or as Rosemary Edghill once told me, “Life just is. Art has to convince.”)
On “Maury” recently, one of the stories that struck me was of a woman in her mid-40s, a professional, sober woman who happened to have a sex addiction. She was married to a minister, who was also a professional, sober and intelligent man — and rather than becoming indignant, or upset, or unhappy, or enraged (all typical and completely understandable reactions to hearing a secret of this nature in a public forum like the “Maury” show), he said that when he married her, he knew she had problems. And that he’d be unChristian to abandon her to something she hadn’t chosen or wished for — truly an astonishing event for “Maury,” as it was mature, reasoned and accepting (without being judgmental).
Yet if I had tried to come up with a narrative flow, being a regular watcher of “Maury,” I’d have expected these other reactions — because at least 90% of the time, that’s how people behave.
In our writing, we’re trying to tell a story that’s driven by conflict — sometimes external, sometimes internal, often both — and we must make things consistent, understandable, and give strong reasons why we do things (yet not make them so strong that it appears we’re leading the readers by the hand). This can be a challenge.
Right now, in my novel-in-progress KEISHA’S VOW, I’m wrestling with character reactions. How much is too much? And how accepting can someone be, even when truly in love, when a big part of their significant other’s identity has been hidden away?
At any rate, conflict is what tends to drive novels, except in the case of novels that are all about the hero’s journey and are more about the hero’s mood rather than what he or she is doing at any given time. These novels are all internally-driven conflict, and thus are much more difficult to write because keeping the reader engaged and focused in an internal struggle is far more challenging than keeping him amused while fighting various space battles for dinner, washing up with saving a planet or two for a light aperitif, then seeing said commander called back to be knighted and recognized for his/her conspicuous heroism for dessert.
At any rate, there are expected tropes in narrative storytelling, whether it’s on “Maury” or in a book. In science fiction, there are conventions we need to follow, or obviously break, in order to tell stories that resonate with readers — and if we do break with conventions, usually it’s best to do so in a showy manner that leaves little doubt as to why you’re doing things this way. (I’m reading a book now by Charles Yu called HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, and there’s no doubt Yu knows exactly what he’s doing as he breaks with convention, discusses philosophy, and engages the reader in what on the surface might appear to be a fluffy journey of how the protagonist finds himself and his father, but is actually the most profound journey there is — how to find meaning when the universe makes no sense whatsoever.)
Granted, the stories that are remembered often do break with convention — remember my “Maury” anecdote, above? — precisely because of how they broke with convention.
In our own lives, the “narrative flow” breaks here and there due to marriage, divorce, death, raising children, etc. And what seems a seamless narrative from the outside, to someone who doesn’t know you well, is proven to have fits, starts and jumps — something Sharon Lee and Steve Miller exploited to the fullest in their recent, and excellent, novel, SALTATION. (Not to mention their recent, and excellent, novel MOUSE AND DRAGON, a sequel to their scintillating SCOUT’S PROGRESS. Or really any of their other books or stories — Lee and Miller have narrative flow down to an art form, and I highly recommend all their work.) Here, the conventions of science fiction are adhered to, yet this frees the authors to explore the dynamic tension of inner conflict amidst outer conflict, along with dealing with various problems due to societal expectations and cultural clashes. (If someone is looking to write romance, much less believable romance, but doesn’t know the first thing about how to do it in a science-fictional setting, reading Lee and Miller’s work would be an excellent place to start.)
So, what is your story? And what examples of narrative flow do you look for, when you pick something to read, write, or emulate in your own writing?
Reprinted stories soon to go up at eQuill Publishing.
Finally, some good news to report — I have agreed in principle to place Michael’s Joey Maverick SF/adventure story “A Dark and Stormy Night,” my Elfyverse story “Trouble with Elfs,” and a poem, “A Love Eternal,” with eQuill Publishing. They are a new e-press located in Australia, and I know about them mostly due to my friend Piotr S. Mierzejewski, who has placed a number of stories there already.
At any rate, “A Dark and Stormy Night” is a novella — 14,000 words — and my contribution to it is about 1400 words to even it out a tad and up the romance a mite. “Trouble with Elfs” is 8,000 words — a long short story, if that’s not an oxymoron — and is an urban fantasy set in the same universe, with many of the same characters, as ELFY. The Maverick novella is the very start of Michael’s book MAVERICK, LIEUTENANT, currently being revised by me in order to add action. And for the record, the Maverick story carries the byline “by Michael B. Caffrey, with Barb Caffrey,” while the Elfyverse story carries the byline “by Barb Caffrey, with Michael B. Caffrey,” though I wrote well over 85% of that story. (I simply believe that without Michael’s 15%, the story wouldn’t be worth reading, which is my prerogative.)
As for my poem “A Love Eternal,” it is the best way I’ve come up with yet to describe how Michael’s loss has affected me — and how to describe how I felt while Michael was alive.
All three reprinted stories/poems accepted for publication originally appeared at the Written Word — “A Dark and Stormy Night” appeared in ’05 and is not archived online, while “Trouble with Elfs” appeared in ’07 and the poem “A Love Eternal” appeared in ’06.
I may have further good news in the reprint quarter to note soon — but for now, please check out eQuill Publishing here:
http://www.equillpublishing.com
Also, please know that while publishing remains a very difficult occupation to break into, there are good moments from time to time. This is one of those moments, and I’m pleased that my persistence has paid off in order for these stories to appear in the way I’d always hoped.
Michael did not live long enough to see our first story, “Bright as Diamonds,” published, though he did know it had been sold. (We cashed the check and enjoyed the proceeds immensely, going to a Japanese restaurant and seeing the “floor show.”) He was looking forward to seeing the BEDLAM’S EDGE anthology in print at the time of his passing, but did not get that wish. And Michael obviously did not get the chance to see any of his own work published, either — me getting Michael’s “Maverick” novella published in ’05, after adding the 1400 words to make it a legal collaboration and thus, much easier to sell, was an act of love, faith and persistence.
Michael believed very strongly in my ability to write. Without his faith in me, without his help (as he’d already completed a novel before I started on ELFY), I would not be the same writer. And I’d be no kind of editor, as Michael had major skills there that he did his level best to pass on.
I continue onward as best I am able though sometimes it seems like an inordinately difficult task. Still, I was not raised to give up, and my wonderful, amazing husband believed I could do anything I set my mind to do.
My mind is set on publishing, in case you hadn’t figured it out already, and I will continue onward toward this goal.
—
Btw, the title of “Trouble with Elfs” is not a misprint. (You need to read the story to find out why.)
The Role of the Professional Critic: Don Rosenberg v. the Cleveland Orchestra and Plain Dealer.
The saga of Donald Rosenberg, erstwhile classical music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has brought to my attention how difficult the role of the professional critic may be — and how quickly even a highly-regarded critic like Rosenberg can fall if not backed by his employers.
Oh, you don’t know Mr. Rosenberg’s work? Well, many don’t, but for thirty years he wrote about the Cleveland Orchestra (formerly known as the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra), and he’s written a book about the orchestra called The Cleveland Orchestra Story: Second to None, which came out in 2000 and is available at Amazon.com at this link:
The upshot of Mr. Rosenberg’s story was that he was demoted by his employer, the Plain Dealer, because the Cleveland Orchestra was upset over comments Rosenberg had made about the Orchestra’s conductor, Franz Welser-Most. Rosenberg sued, claiming among other things that his freedom of speech was infringed upon, that the Plain Dealer had practiced age discrimination against him, and that Welser-Most had abused his position as conductor in order to get what Welser-Most viewed as a “hostile” critic removed from his post. More about this suit is available here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/11/cleveland-plain-dealer-su_n_150404.html
Recently, Mr. Rosenberg lost his lawsuit, which is why this subject came to my attention in the first place. (For the record, I think it’s wrong for a critic to lose his job merely because a conductor does not like him or what he writes. If Leonard Bernstein had been that way, half the reviewers in New York would’ve lost their jobs in the ’50s and ’60s.) A good blog that’s followed the whole situation from the beginning is called Sounds & Fury; a good place to start is the following post, a “final comment” on Mr. Rosenberg’s unfortunate situation:
But all of this has made me think — what is the role of the professional critic, especially if someone does not like what he or she is writing? Because if you ask someone, “What is a critic?,” you’re going to get a really odd look, followed by, “Someone who criticizes!” or maybe, “Someone who gets paid to criticize for a living.”
Now, I know from reviewing books for Amazon.com and elsewhere, not everyone’s going to agree with me regarding a review. Sometimes, the disagreement is over something profound, but most of the time it’s over something that’s seemingly trivial — such as, whether a book is suitable for someone who’s seven, or eight; whether a love story in the background is detrimental (even if there’s no actual sex going on) — and the fact that I see this as trivial while someone else sees this as profound is part of the human condition.
However, when a professional critic is effectively muzzled by an orchestra, or worse, by the conductor of the orchestra, that is not helpful to the entire profession of critics. As Michael Phillips wrote in his 8/12/2010 column at the Chicago Tribune, available here: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/talking_pictures/2010/08/critic-donald-rosenberg.html
There is so much fear and self-censorship in the critics’ ranks in America today. There are so few full-time salaries. You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer’s devotion to “objectivity,” which isn’t what this endeavor is about at all. It’s about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.
(I added the bold in last paragraph, just in case you missed it.)
Phillips goes on to say that:
Approached the wrong way criticism is an inherently arrogant and narcissistic pursuit, yet what I’m left with, increasingly, is how humbling it is. It’s hard to get a review right for yourself, let alone for anyone reading it later. It’s even harder to be an artist worth writing and reading about, because so much conspires against even an inspired artist’s bravest efforts.
I agree with this; I agonize over the book reviews I write, and the music reviews, and when I used to write movie reviews for the Daily Nebraskan (and elsewhere), I used to worry myself to pieces over those, too. Because if you’re a good critic, or you’re at least trying to become one, you do worry about whether or not you’ve explained what it is you’re criticizing well enough so your critique of it all will make any sense to the reader who’s not as able to make an informed, rational decision as you (not having seen and heard what you have as “the critic”).
Finally, Phillips says this:
. . . no critic has a ‘right’ to a compensated opinion. We serve at the pleasure of our employers. And yet we’re only worth reading when we push our luck and ourselves, and remember that without a sense of freedom, coupled with a sense that we cannot squander it, we’re just filler.
(Once again, the emphasis here was mine.)
Many points to ponder for both the writer and critic alike, but what I think most troubles me about all of this is how the Cleveland Plain Dealer attempted to frame the narrative. Their version of events is strikingly different than Mr. Rosenberg’s, yet as a highly trained classical musician, I am much more sympathetic to Mr. Rosenberg’s version of events (where Rosenberg quoted, verbatim, some unflattering statements from Welser-Most about music lovers in the US of A, etc.). The fact of the matter is, many European conductors are dismissive of posts in the United States of America and they’d rather be working in their home countries, where they feel their art is more respected. Most conductors from Austria (where Welser-Most is from), France, Germany, Italy, etc., view the US of A as being uncultured, uncivilized, and far less interested in classical music than their homelands. And many of these guys have put down Americans in general for years — this is no secret, and while it should be shameful for these European conductors, it isn’t.
For Welser-Most to get upset because Rosenberg dared to call Welser-Most to account for some of his comments about Cleveland’s “blue-haired ladies” and about how Welser-Most apparently didn’t think much of Cleveland, seems mighty thin-skinned to me. In addition, any criticism of a conductor — especially when it’s backed up by many other critics the world over (Welser-Most has a reputation that basically equates to, “If W-M loves the piece, he does a good job; if not, well, whatever”) — should be allowed and understood. (Free speech, remember?)
The fact that Welser-Most, the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, managed to force Rosenberg from his position at the Plain Dealer, shows a great deal more about Welser-Most than Welser-Most probably wishes were the case. Further, that the Cleveland Orchestra’s board of directors are able to say with supposedly clean hands (and without any air of hypocrisy about them) that they did nothing wrong, that they did not force Rosenberg out — well, it smells. To high heaven.
I view what happened the same way Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Martin Bernheimer does, available at this link from the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ad3fb6c6-a668-11df-8767-00144feabdc0.html
Pointing out that Rosenberg is a horn player and holds three music degrees, Bernheimer put it plainly in the opening of his column:
Donald Rosenberg lost. So did Cleveland. And so did journalism in general and the precarious practice of music criticism in particular.
Absolutely right, Mr. Bernheimer. And what a shame, and a loss, that Rosenberg lost his lawsuit; what a horrible commentary on our life and times.
Words, Meanings, and Change
Every writer knows that the meaning of words changes over time. Sometimes it’ll be a really small shift, while other times, the word “bad” might mean good but retain its original meaning for most practical purposes.
But how are you supposed to be accurate while writing fantasy or science fiction, as for the most part fantasy tends to deal with times gone by or “the present, but with magic” or additional characters such as vampires, werewolves, or Elves, while science fiction is futuristic and up-to-the-minute?
Mostly, I try to stick with one approach whenever I’m dealing with a story — I tend to write in contemporary vocabulary unless the fantasy world I’m dealing with is obviously based on our past (but with magic, or a different religion, or whatever), in which case, my characters will speak in longer sentences and with more formality. This is because in some ways, contemporary American English is used by most in our culture and society in a casual fashion — not just our slang terms, but our idiomatic turns of speech are far more casual than, say, the Victorian English used by our predecessors. Or the English used in Regency-era England.
In ELFY, as well as in AN ELFY ABROAD and to an extent in KEISHA’S VOW, Michael and I came up with a language, Bilre, for the Elfys. (Bilre is also the term they use to describe themselves “when they’re at home,” or among their own people. There’s precedence enough for this in our own history that it shouldn’t draw any comment.) We came up with rules for how it works, with various terms and even a few regional variant slang terms (as in our own world, where some words are used more frequently in the Midwest than on the West Coast, for example); there is an Elfy Lexicon. All of this was done for the sake of consistency, and while Michael was by far better at this than I, I learned enough from him that I’ve been able to make up a few terms on my own since his untimely passing.
As for science fiction, noted writer Connie Willis came up with two words for her near-future “Doomsday Book” — they were “apocalyptic” for something great, fantastic, and awesome, and “necrotic” for something awful, bad and disgusting. They were used by one of her pre-teen characters — pre-teens in books are generally the ones who use the most slang terms, though not always — and helped add to the illusion that we readers were in a slightly different place. In a much tougher and far more comprehensive vein, eluki bes shahar came up with a whole new language, idioms and all, for her “Hellflower” trilogy; other authors have done similar things with regards to adding a few additional words (Marge Piercy comes to mind in Woman on the Edge of Time in her far-future sections) or a whole, new, comprehensively thought out language — from J.R.R. Tolkien to the more contemporary Robert Jordan (Jordan in particular had to come up with a number of languages, not an easy feat).
At any rate, in science fiction, the main thing is to be consistent and to stay consistent in your usage — readers will pick up on the idioms used if given time, and if it helps the reader to open a dictionary and look up a word while reading, say, a Gene Wolfe story, all the better.
Some examples of contemporary words in transition are “vacay,” which is a shortened form of the word “vacation” — I’ve seen this show up in a few articles lately and it reads oddly but sounds OK in actual speech — and “efforting,” as in, “I’m efforting Chris Capuano” — this particular turn of phrase annoys me, and takes some explanation if you’ve never heard it before. Basically, instead of “I’m trying to get Chris Capuano on the phone” or “I’m making the effort to speak with Chris Capuano,” our local sportscaster Bill Michaels may say the shorthand “I’m efforting Chris Capuano” and hopes we’ll understand him.
Granted, Michaels wasn’t the first person to say this in the sports world — I’ve also heard sportscasters Dan Patrick and Jim Rome say the same thing, probably several months to perhaps a full year before Michaels. But this is how a changed meaning to a word gets into the language — slowly, bit by bit, until it’s accepted. Until it’s understood, graceless though it may be.
My brother, who is a teaching assistant, said recently that a word that annoys him is “flustrated,” which is a combination of “flustered” and “frustrated.” He says he hears this all the time in Indiana, where he lives and works — so the rest of us may as well be warned, as this appears to be another word creeping into the language — something like “ginormous,” I suppose (a contraction of “gigantic” and “enormous,” though those two words mean exactly the same thing, while “flustered” and “frustrated” are not the same — just similar).
Other words I’ve noticed that have contracted are baseball terms. For example, when I was a teenager in the 80s, it was common for a broadcaster to use the term “fouled out,” as in a baseball player hit a foul ball for an out. But now, that’s been contracted into one word — “foulout” — though broadcasters in general do not use this. (Instead, you see this on scoreboards or perhaps on TV.) This is similar to the other contracted words “strikeout” instead of “struck out,” a two word, more active phrase (note that a pitcher getting a strikeout was already in the language; this particular contraction adds an additional meaning rather than a brand new word to our vocabulary); “popup,’ which may be seen also as “pop-up,” instead of “popped up” or “popped it up,” which is hitting the ball high and straight into the air rather than for any sort of distance, so an infielder might catch it; “popout,” which is the same thing as a “popup;” “lineout,” instead of “lined out” or “hit the ball hard, but right at someone for an out.”
At any rate, language changes over time, as these few examples show — we as writers need to be observant as new words enter the language, even if we think they’re silly or stupid or unnecessary (as, quite frankly, I find the word “efforting” to be).
What are some of the “new” words you can’t stand? Or those you really like?
Bad Commercials: How to Damage the Narrative.
We all see commercials on television every day. Someone thinks up these commercials, writes scripts for the commercials, casts actors in the commercials and shoots the commercials. Which means someone is trying to frame the narrative in a constructive, preferably positive, way.
But what happens when you get a bad commercial, one that not only fails to frame the narrative in the expected way, but actually brings up a terrible reaction?
I’m not the only writer who’s thought of this issue; there are blogs and blogs of information about bad commercials out there. Here are just two:
http://www.screenjunkies.com/tvnews/12-more-insanely-bad-tv-commercials
http://www.uglydoggy.com/2009/01/bad-commercials-from-big-brands.html
There’s even a Web site posting that claims even bad commercials, those which you can only describe as “cringe-worthy,” are good for you:
http://culturepopped.blogspot.com/2009/03/bad-commercials-are-good-for-you.html
My contention is far more humble. I have watched much live television lately (Milwaukee Brewers baseball games, mostly) and cannot fast-forward through commercials, so have been forced to deal with three horrible commercials. I am uncertain how to put up video links, so I will describe the commercials instead — if I later get video links, I will be happy to update this post.
The first, and worst, commercial I’ve seen during the Brewers telecasts is one for Motorola Droid phones. There’s this thirtyish nebbish, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, rather frazzled man who’s still at work but is about to take a break. He looks at his Droid phone, which has Blockbuster pre-loaded as an application (or “app”), and suddenly he can see his three-inch cell phone clear as day due to eyes that look to be straight out of the original “Terminator” movie.
Now, why doesn’t this commercial work? (In a writerly sense, why does this narrative fail?) Simple. First, the guy is at work. Yes, people check their cell phones at work, but very, very few are going to be watching movies at work — and if they do, they most likely would be doing it as a work exercise so could use a better computer.
For the record, I also thought the guy was too intense, too focused and too driven to watch a movie at work; when his eyes bug out and turn into reddish-black orbs that expand outward, I felt disgusted and almost lost my lunch. The visual image that Motorola was trying to convey was that their little three-inch phone is more than powerful enough to play a movie — but what I got instead was a picture of an insecure, unsettled man who’s about to throw his job away because the telephone has messed with his brain.
Big thumbs-down to that.
My second least-favorite commercial during Brewers games is one for Miller Lite Beer. (There are several for Miller Lite I don’t care for, but this is the worst of the lot.) A couple is sitting in the park; the guy (he’s African-American, as is his girlfriend) is extolling the virtues of his beer. (Very common in beer commercials.) Then, when his girlfriend asks why her boyfriend loves her (as he’s been saying why he loves his beer for most of the minute commercial,) he can’t come up with anything. As time starts to run out with the commercial, he tells her that he likes her hair (though he says “I like what you’re doing with this,” twirling a piece of her hair in the process), he loves “all her teeth,” and asks in desperation why she loves him.
Of course, she says, “You’re my soulmate.” (Odd soulmate to have, IMO, but I’ll go along with it for the case of argument.)
What is his reply? “Ditto.”
The narrative intended to be framed here is simple: if you drink Miller Lite, you’ll love your beer so much it’ll crowd everything else out of your head. But what I got instead is, if you drink Miller Lite, you’ll turn into an insensitive, inarticulate jerk.
So these folks get a big thumbs-down as well.
The third is less offensive, but just as annoying. It’s for a local car dealership, Porcaro Ford in Racine, WI. These commercials (there are a series of them) always start out with someone using the “Dragnet” theme — “dum-de-dum-dum,” then one of the guys starts talking about what a crime it was that a lady customer had gone somewhere else. But now that the woman has come in to see them (it’s all rendered in cartoon format, too, which I find cheesy rather than amusing), she has her pick of cars and Porcaro will give her top dollar on her trade whatever she picks.
The narrative here is that Porcaro is honest — they won’t “rob” you (their whole thing about how they’re “working robbery out of the Racine division” tips you off to that aspect), they won’t cheat you, they’ll give you “top dollar” — but also that they’re so relentless that they won’t leave you alone.
Now, why would I get that out of a simple 30 second spot or at most one minute spot? Simple. This commercial is played over and over again, as are the other two I mentioned during Brewers telecasts. And because they’re played multiple times per game, and there are 162 games in a season — well, let’s just say these commercials go from mild dislike to active hatred to visceral disgust in a matter of days. And the longer I see them, the less likely I am to get a Miller Lite beer, purchase a Droid phone from Motorola (much though I know Motorola needs to stay open and employs many people in Northern Illinois), or most especially go to Porcaro Ford.
These commercials, as marketing, are probably reaching someone. I can’t imagine who really likes these commercials, though I can see a guy being mildly amused by the Miller Lite commercial and perhaps if you’ve only seen the Porcaro Ford commercial once, it might not annoy you. (I can’t figure out for who, or what the purpose was, or even why that Droid commercial was aired once, much less multiple times. Sorry.)
But as an exercise in framing the narrative, they have failed.
What are the worst commercials you’ve seen? And do you think most commercials actually hit the target, miss the target, or are somewhere in between? (In other words, do most commercials actually frame the right narrative?)
A Flurry of Ideas
Sometimes, writing is tougher than it appears.
The last few days, I had a flurry of ideas that I felt may make up some good blogs. The first was about the difficulty of writing while overtired, the second was about the craft of writing reviews, and the third was a specific look at writing humor — it may look easy in retrospect, but it’s not.
However, when I tried to nail any of them down, I was left with the equivalent of a mouthful of feathers instead of a whole, live chicken to work with — or, if you’d rather another analogy, instead of finding the grand prize, it was as if I’d found the booby prize instead. Writing is like this, because sometimes you just have to struggle with the words until they come out.
This made me wonder if I was the only writer alive who had this problem for a bit (I know; ’twas a midnight thought) before I realized that every writer must have this difficulty time and again. So how are we supposed to deal with it?
Getting to the three subjects I considered: in order to write humor, we writers often exploit tired, hackneyed, clichéd subjects. Getting someone to laugh about seemingly nonsensical things helps get whatever truth remains in these older, seemingly-worn ideas and bring it into sharper relief.
But it’s not easy to write humor, no matter how easily the joke or phrase or pun may fall off the page. I know when I work out a good passage in “An Elfy Abroad” (sequel to “Elfy,” and as such another comic urban fantasy), I usually have to first figure out what’s going on, then write it down as best I have it, then re-work it as many times as need be in order to get both the jokes and the story right.
This may seem odd, but writing reviews often requires the same exact mind-set; it sometimes takes me several attempts to write a review. Because I have to really consider what I’m going to say, oft-times I find that I have a slightly different written opinion than I do verbally. I think this is because when I write, I think critically; when I am merely talking, sometimes what I say just comes out — and that’s not workable in any sort of credible review. Once again, while writing a review may seem easy (everyone hates a critic), it isn’t, and most reviewers try very hard to give the best sense of a book, movie, piece of music or performance they possibly can.
Finally, writing while tired is something I try to avoid at all costs. My definition of “tired” is “been up longer than eighteen hours” or “have had less than four hours sleep three nights running” — and the reason I avoid writing fiction, reviews or blogs during these times is because my words often come out not just wrong, but catastrophically wrong.
But when I can’t avoid it — the idea I have is too strong to ignore, or I have a new short story idea that must be written down or lost — I try to be as positive about myself and my writing as possible, while remembering to look over whatever I’ve written the next day (or maybe two) in order to get a better handle on it. This way I’ve satisfied the need to write without completely driving myself crazy; I am a perfectionist and as such, writing while overtired is an extremely difficult and frustrating task.
All three of these subjects have in common one thing — the need to persist. If I keep trying to get my humor right, the passage will come to me; if I keep trying to get the review right, I’ll be able to convey what I thought about the book as best I can. And if I am able to bull through my body’s attempt to shut down my creative impulses (while doing my best to get as much rest as I’m able, of course, in the process), I’m going to eventually be able to work out the idea, passage, or story to my personal satisfaction.
The moral of this whole somewhat accidental blog about “the flurry of ideas” is simple: don’t give up. Because the simple fact you have a flurry of ideas means you need to write about them, you need to comment upon them, and you need to realize that sometimes, writing takes as long as it takes.
Quick Note about MuseItUp Publishing
Some days, the best thing any writer can do is get up, peruse the writing boards, and congratulate people. Because when we do — as I did today at Forward Motion, the writer’s group I’ve belonged to for seven years — we often find links to new publishing houses we’ve somehow missed hearing about in the past.
Such is the case with MuseItUp Publishing, which is maybe a year old (if that much), but already has a good reputation in the SF, fantasy and romance communities due to the strength of its publisher, Lea Schizas, affectionately called a “force of nature” by her writers.
At any rate, after reading about them, I queried MuseItUp regarding ELFY because ELFY has paranormal elements; can’t guarantee they’ll want to see it, but trying is the first step toward getting an acceptance.
Note that I normally do not discuss which agents or publishers I’ve tried here at my blog, but in this case I thought I would as I know many writers with works in the science fiction/romance, fantasy/romance and flat-out romance categories. Not to mention straight-up SF, straight-up fantasy, etc.
This seems to be a reliable place with a solid reputation; they’re young, but growing, and they have the word of giving good quality feedback, which is why I have made an exception here.
Check them out at http://museituppublishing.com/musepub/
Barb Caffrey's Blog 