CONduit XX: Day 2

Today's conduit was pretty fantastic. We went to the following panels: Riding the Rocket(surviving career blastoff); Writing for YA Audiences; The Mike Show (a Q&A); Writing Excuses; Series vs. Standalone; and Writing the Rogue.

Everything was pretty great. I enjoyed all the panels and found some time to rub shoulders with Authors. I also spent too much money on books and got them all signed. In the process I also made a connection with Dan Wells. He's going to send me some of his current writing to help me understand a concept for something I'm writing. The only thing it costs me is to send him feedback on what he sends me (not that I feel qualified)...

I took pretty decent notes, and i think that to help me blog, I'm going to try to go over something that stood out to me every day. That'll help me solidify it at the same time it helps me be in the habit of doing better at blogging.

I got some great tips on how to tackle being stuck in my writing (don't call it writer's block... apparently that doesn't exist).

Here's the three opinions I got on the phenomenon hitherto known as 'writers block':
-Paul Genesse:You aren't prepared in one of two ways: 1.) You're not refreshed. You physically or emotionally cannot write because of whatever reason. Take some time to recharge and try again. 2.)You don't know where the story is going. Take some time to plan or plot or map or work on an outline.

-James Dashner: You aren't in the right mood. Get in the right mood. Go see a movie. Dashner says that some of his best writing happens in his car or the closest coffee shop immediately after he gets out of a movie.

-Barbara Hambly: There are two kinds of writers block (she can call it that, she's old school) Really there's either something wrong with you or something wrong with your story. 1.) Clinical Depression: you just can't get up to do your writing. Seek professional help and try again. 2.)You took a wrong turn at a crossroads in your story. Maybe you gave out too much information or approached a scene from a perspective that doesn't work very well. Go back to a point where the story was working and figure out where it stopped. Try a different route with the story and see if you can take it farther.

Another approach suggested by Barbara was to make a timeline. Figure out exactly what happened on days one two three four and five, where day three is the day you're stuck on. She had to do that a lot when writing mystery, and found that it also helped her to write when it was difficult.

That's it for conduit today.

I've got a couple other projects I'm working on. I own some web space (I'm not linking to it because there's nothing there to see) and I'm going to start trying to turn it into a toolbox of useful resources. For example, several helpful web pages got suggested to me at conduit and I'm going to put up the links there. Maybe when it starts looking like it's something worth your time I'll put up a pointer to it from here.

Also, I'm going to start a new blog, wherein I'll have little bits of dialog with my characters. It'll be great exercise for me, and hopefully entertaining for everybody else. Watch for a link to that soon.

-Jason

...so much for gradually killing Shlange... oh well. He'll live on in our hearts. At least until I kill him off by changing my profile name.

Darkness - First Installment

I've not blogged or written for my personal enjoyment for a long time. Today I started a short story - it is by no means complete, but it's there. I'd love to have some feedback. Schmetterling, if you could take your red pen to it, I'd be much obliged. - Schlange

~

Nathan walked to the fridge. He opened the door and moved down his mental list: eggs… yep, right on top - a giant clear container holding about 30; rice… rice… hm… last night's lasagna. "I could eat that I guess," he thought, "nah… I don't feel like taking the time to get it out and microwave it… Man. I'm lazy. Oh, there's the rice. Now the ham." He opened the meat drawer and found a small plastic wrapped square of a previously round cured ham. "Mom's been working on this - guess that's why she suggested I eat it." He took the ham out of the package. It was yellow and firm. "Pfft. Cheese."

As he ambled back to the fridge to renew his search, Nathan wondered, "If I'm too lazy to microwave lasagna why in the world am I making ham fried rice?" His first four reasons didn't feel very motivating: he didn't feel like eating Italian tomato sauce this early in the day; he was hungry and ham fried rice would feel good going down - not so acidic as tomato sauce; he shouldn't start the day with a granola bar; mom suggested it. He really just wanted to bag eating… didn't really want to do anything.

Sis'd come home at lunch. Mom had also suggested this for lunch. Maybe he ought to practice making it before serving it. He'd had enough stupid food mistakes over the last week that this seemed slightly more motivating despite the simplicity of the meal.

Nathan recognized through his late morning grogginess the kind of day he was having. He'd had it before. This was the kind of day where a familiar dark cloud would embrace him like a good companion should. He wouldn't feel like eating - particularly if he had to prepare the food. He wouldn't feel like cleaning up for the day. He wouldn't really feel like doing anything, actually. He'd have dark thoughts - not evil thoughts, just depressing ones.

Understanding what he was feeling Nathan worked to combat it. He'd had this kind of day frequently in the past - fortunately it was less common now. The struggle was the cloud. It constantly whispered despair to him, and obstructed the light shrouding all about him with gloom. In the past Nathan had tried to physically shake the doom mist from him. It clung effortlessly to him like a parasite on a dying host. He'd run from it. It was faster than he was. It was also faster than his car. He'd wrapped it around his fist and beat it against his father's fence. Unfortunately, this was more damaging to both the fence (which gained a fist sized hole) and the fist (which gained a fence sized array of slivers and cuts). The cloud actually gained ground at the fence rally - it dove into his newly opened blood stream like a genie entering a bottle. Then it laughed at him from his insides. It took Nathan a confrontation with his parents about the fence (and a wall) along with several weeks of secret crying to bleed it out of his system.

These lessons weren't lost on Nathan. He no longer fell into the physical foolishness. He did, however, fall into emotional foolishness. He'd been on long midnight walks to the middle of a park and tried to shout the black demon away. He'd subsequently fallen to the ground in moments of great agony as the incorporeal taskmaster shouted back. He'd retreated and escaped reality - usually through fantasy novels and video games, and also through an occasional film. He wasn't much of one for TV. His trips to fictional places were generally very long - usually never ending until the well into the early morning. He would sleep fitfully through much of the day. Often the shadow would be sitting by his side as he awoke cheerfully greeting him an oxymoronically good morning. Nathan missed a good deal of school. In part, this was due to the amount of sleep he was generally missing. The other part had a great deal to do with illness. Nathan had once been relatively healthy. The demon saw fit to change things. Whenever Nathan breathed in, it would breath out - spewing a subtle stressing poison into his lungs. It had the effect of tightening his chest and stomach. The poison fooled Nathan's heart which seemed to never quit ejecting adrenaline - keeping him awake at night (on nights when he wasn't in fantasy land) and making him miserably tired in the days. Nathan's stomach gained a talent for self destructiveness - eating it's self a little more with every problem that came his way.

“You Never Win”

(post 12)

I just had a unique opportunity. It came about because I've been up so late blogging. (I always forget what I want to blog about, and tonight I kept thinking of things, so I kept going… it's now 3:17 am and I'm exhausted – by the way, if my parents ever read this it's ok. It's a 3 day weekend and I just wired myself by programming for several hours. – These kinds of things are important to parents of college students who are suspected of staying up way later than is healthy.) Anyhow I had just finished the last post and published it to the web; I about to power down (I had an update threatening to turn off the computer in 3 minutes anyways) when my roommate started talking in his sleep. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get it down and remember it… when I ever do wake up to the noise other wake up in their sleep I can never remember what was said or done. So, here it is:

Sympathetically: "I'm sorry."

*Pause*

*Soft laugh – the type reserved for the humor of cruel irony*

*Pause*

With humor in voice: "You never win."

*Pause*

Trailing: "You never win…"

Here's the best part. I'd forgotten about that update. I never told it to wait. I was just about to post something similar to the above (what he said is accurate, what I said is different), when everything turned off without asking me to save or anything. I had to wait for the power up to retype this because I was determined to win. Today is the same day that I posted "Pain" and "Redemption?" as the result of losing everything I'd written for the last half hour; and "Pretzels" in the which I note that the program I spent 30 hours on over the last week was 2 hours too late to be on time. Everything I posted today was the epitome of " You never win."

*Much Laughter*

Word just crashed on me again (the first time I was writing "Pretzels") and then came back with a message that said something along the lines of "We've noticed that office has crashed on you frequently lately. We recommend that you run our office diagnostic tool." Fortunately, I'd just saved and Word has a good auto save…. I hadn't saved on "Pretzels" and it gave me most of it back. It crashed two times after that and I lost this post both times (I wasn't very far in either time). May I repeat: "You never win." Thanks for the hilarious timing Schmetterling. By the way, office has never crashed before on me, so I'm attributing it to the power of today.

Write Good[sic]

(Post 8)

This post is a response to another blog by Schmetterling (which I recommend to those who are interested in thinking about what makes writing powerful, and which might need to be read to fully understand this post) I'm not going to say anything really different, I just wanted to examine one of the points that stood out to me as having extrodinary value.

So that readers understand that “writing good” is not a grammatically smelly phrase, here is an important and defining segment from Schmetterling's post: “[T]hat a person may write or speak well does not necessarily mean that they write or speak good, and this is the distinction I wish to emphasize.”

Having placed that, this last part of the last paragraph of that post is what I’m basing the majority of this post on because it really struck a chord with me.

"To communicate truth with such clarity and power is a feat of Soul that I can no more than aspire to achieve, but I believe that to do so ought to be the quintessential desire of any person inclined to speak or write."

This was for me the most important thing schmetterling said. I think there is a large difference amongst the categories of writing well (using words in a way that is correct and sometimes pleasing - writing with the mind, as Schmetterling says), writing compellingly (writing in a way that makes people love what you are saying - writing with the heart), and writing powerfully (writing about the things that are a major part of you, that you can thus convey with the power of your soul). All of these things are individual characteristics of "writing good" as laid out by Schmetterling. Additionaly, I believe that these are gradiations of writing... some might take them seperately, but they really do build on each other. Writing with the heart is so much more effective if one can write with the mind - using it to find the words that say what is ment. Writing with the soul can't be accepted or even understood by anyone unless it is written with the heart.

These things are all methods to an end. I wish to aproach the same topic in the reverse. Let us now concentrate on the end. I believe that understanding and seeking the end to which one writes with mind, heart and soul is what causes the development of all three. The heart of writing that which is good is centered in the word truth.

The difference between compelling writing and "writing good" is whether or not the idea being communicated is true. In fact, writing good may not be compelling, and is thus set aside by the average reader because though one wrote good he did not make use of good writing. The result of writing good should possess three qualities that you mentioned: TRUTH conveyed with POWER, and CLARITY. If all words (written or spoken) were designed with this end in mind, then the mind, the heart, and the soul would work themselves out with help from God. Provided that those who wrote and spoke possessed truth, and wanted so much for it to be understood that they learned clarity, and loved it so much that they shared it with power, perfect communication would be the result: those that read and heard would always be compelled to believe truth and to use it. I suppose then that writing good requires an action – the seeking of truth.

What marks the difference between good writers and writers who write good? Good writers are motivated by self-centered objectives – status, pats on the back, great sales, etc. (and generally lack what Schmetterling called soul, because they cater to a soulless popular sentiment). The writers of good seek the edification of their readers. (Schmetterling pegged this one: "Without meaning, without the honest intention to uplift or improve, without Soul, a work is utterly worthless. If a person has nothing to say, they should not speak.") The writers of good want others to understand what truth is, but they know that they can’t teach others about what is without finding it for themselves.

As a general rule, truth can’t be discovered until other known truths are applied. Generally speaking, writing good is the province of good men.

There it is: Write good. Do it with mind, heart, and soul. Learn how by seeking for truth, clarity, and power; especialy truth. Love the truth. Live the truth. Write about the truths you are gathering about you, and become the epitomy of what you write.

-Schlange