Poor Dead Archie

I suspect most writers quite like the characters that live in their books and minds.  I really like Archie, unfortunately Archie is dead.  Poor dead Archie.  When Archie came to me he was already dead.  One reason I like Archie so much is that he is based on Cary Grant - and who doesn't like Cary Grant?  Archie was a petty thief and con man, hiding out from some fellows he double crossed.  Archie was handsome, well-dressed, well-spoken and a gentleman.  Archie was in love - really in love, not just pretending in order to carry out a con - and that's what got Archie killed.  Poor dead Archie.

I guess in a way it's good that Archie was already dead before I met him.  I think I might have trouble killing him.  I think of all the beloved characters in the Wizarding World that J.K Rowling killed - well, some died almost before she could stop it - it must have been devastating for her.   I know I'd be quite distraught if Archie had been killed before I could stop it.  However, Archie was already dead when I met him, so that makes it easier.  Poor dead Archie.

I hope this isn't weird.  I mean, I like Archie almost more than I like real people, is that weird?  Of course it's weird - I'm weird.  Which, in my opinion, makes me a good writer.  I have a ridiculously vivid imagination and all sorts of crazy weird things go on in there!  In any event, I look forward to putting Archie's story to paper even though I already know how it ends.  Poor dead Archie.

Cheers!

My Boring Novel

I have this story in my head that I'd like to tell.  I gave my family a bit of a brief overview of the main characters, the plot highlights and whatnot.  My daughter thinks it will be boring.  My daughter (love of my life and bane of my existence) is seventeen.  While I believe she loves me, she thinks I'm weird and boring and all that jazz.  And, really I find it hard to disagree with her.  However, I think my story is pretty interesting.  What do you think?

Main Sleuth:   She is a professor of history who consults with the police on unsolved/historical cases.  She interviews people and finds evidence in documents - letters, newspapers, diaries, etc.  My daughter thinks this is boring.  Police, private detectives and forensic anthropologists do their sleuthing in much more exciting ways.  Hunting down bad guys, getting into gun fights, handling putrifying and putrified corpses is, apparently,  far more exciting than reading old love letters, learning stories from old folks and 70 year old police files.

Main Mystery: In the spring of 1939 the body of known thief and con artist, Archibald Lockwood was found in his car in a wooded area along the riverbank just outside of Saskatoon.  The police followed a few leads to Moose Jaw and Chicago (or other cities depending on what I come up with), but couldn't make an arrest.  By the summer of 1939 the case was basically cold.  In 2005 some new evidence turns up in the attic of the house Lockwood was rooming in at the time of his death.  This leads the police and our intrepid historian/sleuth into a 66 year old story of love, passion and murder!

I'd read it - well, of course, my goal is to write the book I'd like to read.  What do you think?  Would you read it?

Cheers,
Laura

Inspiration

I love movies and television.  I blame my dad and my Nana - and her parents, too.  Dad loves TV and I watched a lot of TV as a kid - and, to be honest, I still do.  My Nana - my dad's mom - loved movies.  She was a kid in the '20s and '30s.  Her parents loved drama and costume parties.  I think she might have gone to the movies a lot.  I remember one time when she was visiting, she took me to the Broadway Theatre to see a showing of The Red Shoes.  I remember falling in love with the colour, the glamour, the dancing, the drama!  I remember visiting her and staying up late watching Elvis movies on TV.  I think I love old movies more than I love new movies.

I remember a discussion about oral tradition in a class I took.  It was a course about the co-operative movement, so I'm not certain how we got on the subject of oral tradition.  It was a history course, so the topic of oral history often came up.  In any event, someone said something about oral tradition in Western culture being dead - people didn't tell each other stories, we didn't sit around campfires so much and all our tradition came in written form.  I had to argue a bit about this point.  I believe Western culture still has something of an  'oral tradition' - in that it's more than written - in the form of cinema and radio.  Granted, radio drama is not as popular as it was 60 and 70 years ago, but we still tell each other stories over the airwaves through news, talk and songs.  Cinema engages many of our senses in telling stories.  Unless the film has subtitles, there is very little text to read while watching a movie.  I will concede that all of these things are written down - scripts with all kinds of directions.  However, I don't think that takes away from the fact that when I engage with a story on the radio, on television or in a film I am not reading that story.

The point of all this being that I am inspired in my writing by film, radio and television. What I want to evoke when I'm writing is a picture, a moving picture really.  I want the reader to see what I see and hear what I hear.  When I'm thinking of a story to write I can see the characters, their clothes, the city and everything very clearly.  I want the reader to be party to all of that.

I think I draw the line at smelling stuff, though.  I always cover my nose when the putrified dead body is discovered on CSI or Bones.  I don't even like to imagine that I can smell yucky things.

Cheers!

Side Projects (or How I Spend My Free Time) I - The Usual Suspects

Clearly, I like to write.  I started this blog so I could write about writing.  But, I can't just write all the time - though I do it for work and I do it for fun, so I write a lot!  I thought I should also write about other things I do.  Here is the list of things I do when I'm not writing:

Cook - I cook to feed people and because I have to eat to stay alive.  I'm not one of those 'foodies' who is constantly reading recipes and dreaming about what magic can be had with a handful of saffron and a kilo of kale (which, I'm sure, is nothing good).  Though I am beginning to experiment with new produce - fennel and avocado have recently reached my kitchen.  However, I enjoy cooking to feed people, especially people who appreciate the meal I've created.  I rarely make fancy things.  I stick to those 'meals in 30 minutes' things in magazines and the usual fare - spaghetti, chili, pork chops in mushroom soup gravy and a roast or chicken every now and then.

Bake - I don't bake as often as I cook, but I do like it.  It takes a bit more concentration than cooking.  And, to me baking is pretty much the same as love.  I don't know about your family but in my family love is usually expressed like this:  'I love you.  Eat some pie.'  'I love you. Have a cookie.'  'I love you.  Here's a slice of cake.' (yes, I am significantly overweight ... I'm working on that.)  Now I find that I'm often on the other end of this equation: 'I love you. I baked you a cake.'  And, as long as I don't eat the whole thing, I think that's alright.

Fart around on the computer - Every now and then I do something of value on the computer.  I might order flowers for my mother, look up new recipes, read the news, check in with friends and family, write a new blog post and stuff like that.  However, usually I'm farting around.  I am most often found  playing Farmville, Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma Blast, or looking up whatever just popped into my mind on Wikipedia (did you know that tamarinds are native to Africa?).  I suspect this takes up way more time than 1) I think it does, and 2)  it really should.

Read - I think it's impossible to be a writer without being a reader.  I suspect that if I cut out a lot of my farting-around-on-the-computer time I would find a lot more time to read.  Because I have a giant stack of unread books on my nightstand and very long wish list at amazon.ca!

Watch TV - It's almost embarrassing how much I love TV.  I blame my father.  Apparently, when I was little - not even a year old - he and I would watch reruns of 'Star Trek' early in the morning so my mom could sleep.  I recall many a happy time at my grandparents house watching cartoons or Charlie's Angels or Lawrence Welk in colour!  (We didn't have a colour television at home until 1984.)  We would actually watch TV as a family!  Well ... my dad and brother and I would watch 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and 'The Cosby Show' together. And, now I have a computer thing in my basement that is full of nothing but episodes of television shows!  An embarrassment of riches for sure!

This has been a good exercise.  I've realized that I do an awful lot of farting around and that there are other things I like to do that I ought to do more often.  Tune in next time for the next installment of 'Side Projects (or How I Spend My Free Time)'!

Cheers,
Laura

Reading is Good for Writing

Apparently, reading is good research for writing.  Who knew?  Well, a bunch of people, I guess.  Anyway, I love to read and should probably do more of it.  Reading good stuff - and bad stuff, for that matter - is inspirational for my writing.  I remember having a conversation with a friend about the Harry Potter series.  She wondered why I found it so compelling (for those of you unaware, I am a complete Harry Potter fanatic).  I went on for a while about the depth of the story - clearly, Ms. Rowling has reams of notebooks full of information and ideas about the whole wizarding world and its population.  I chatted about the timeless, human themes - good vs. evil, the heroic journey, love and romance, mythic beasts and metaphor.  The last thing I said was that I loved the series because I wanted to be able to write like J.K. Rowling.  That was the one thing that my friend didn't get - that wasn't something she thought about when she read books.  I was surprised.  I thought everyone read books because they wanted to write books.  Apparently not.

So, now that I've got a really good (well, I think it's really good) idea for a novel I'm reading for research.  Not just non-fiction and archival sources - part of the story is set in the 1930s.  I've started reading mystery novels published in the 1920s and 1930s to get a feel for the literature and language of the period.  Reading is very good for writing!

Cheers!

My Original Blog

I originally opened this blogger account to start a blog containing useful hints and tips for Unitarian Universalist Religious Educators.  I had been one for seven years, served two congregations and really loved the work.  I was thinking about ways of keeping involved and on top of the current issues, etcetera.  I opened the account, made a pretty page, wrote an introductory message and made a list of topics to blog about.  And, never did anything with it again.  I thought that was my passion.  I thought it was the one, most important thing I ought to and could do with my life.  I kept looking at the Liberal Religious Educators Association website for job postings.  I volunteer for children and youth things at my home congregation and with the national organization.  When I started the blog and the volunteering, I was doing it to keep involved when the time came for me to be a Director of Religious Education again.  I'm not saying it isn't important work anymore, just that perhaps it's not my most important work anymore

Then, I had an idea for a novel.  I'd started something last year.  I had about 20 handwritten pages introducing my intrepid sleuth.  But, a few weeks ago a real mystery came into my mind.  I'm pretty sure this big idea had to do with all the Cary Grant movies from the '30s I was watching.  No matter - it was a real idea for a murder mystery and I actually had the important parts of the story formulated in my mind before I got out of bed that morning.

Then, I started thinking about an MFA in Writing degree.  The program helps writers complete something for publication while learning more about the craft of writing.  Then, I found out that the University of Hawaii at Manoa has a big language, linguistics and literature school with a doctoral program in writing.  (I am actually interested in completing a Ph.D.  I'm also really keen on spending at least four years of my life in Hawaii!)

Then, I read a blog post about being an artist.  The fellow told me to: write what I like; use my hands; read what I like, then read what those authors liked; do good work, then put it where people can see it.  So, I started writing.  I started writing and putting it where people can see it.  Granted, I don't know that it's particularly good and I only have 8 friends and relatives following this blog.  However, I am writing and putting it where people can see it, if they want to.

The moral of the story?  What I'm really passionate about is writing.  So, I should do that.  A lot.

Cheers!

Deep Meaningful Personal

I really like reading Schmutzie's stuff at schmutzie.com.  Sometimes it's just cute pictures of her cats, or her toes, or a tree and a poem or something.  Sometimes she writes about shoes - super, awesome shoes.  But most of the time it's deep, meaningful and personal.  Like her most recent blog which is hopeful and beautiful while being tragic and sad at the same time.  I hope one day to be as brave as her.  I often feel like I'm reading her diary - which feels voyeuristic and weird.  Then, I remember she's put this out there for me to read.  Which still feels weird when I think about it really hard.

I love to write - the act of writing is satisfying to me.  Do I need others to read it to make it real?  Like that tree in the forest thing - if there are no ears to hear the sound is a sound actually made?  If there's no one else to validate the writing has the act been worthwhile?  Well, sure - I write in my journal and it's very cathartic.  But, would I feel comfortable having others read it - strangers who live a million miles away and have never met me?  Would it be easier for strangers to read it and less comfortable to have friends read it?  Or vice versa?  If I write a book that an agent actually reads it won't be my diary, but it will still be part of me.  Part of me on the page, in black and white for all to see.  That sounds a little scary.  And, yet, I really appreciate the posts that Schmutzie puts out there.  They are heart-warming and heart-breaking.  I love that connection  I make with another human being when I read her stuff.  And, I'm an extreme introvert, so I don't make connections quickly. Of course, in a way I've known her for over 20 years - but, not really.

It's amazing what you can do with a piece of paper and a pen, or a keyboard and a website!  Bare your soul and connect with others in deep, meaningful and personal ways.

Cheers!

Write What You Like

Thanks to Austin Kleon for his post about being an artist.  His third suggestion for being an artist/writer is 'Write the book you want to read', and he gave me permission to 'write what I like'.  As he says, the maxim 'write what you know', is not only cliche but boring.  I have to agree - I'm pretty sure that no one is really interested in a long, meandering story about a woman (nearly forty and lowering her cholesterol) who spends her days as an assistant to a university vice-president and her evenings and weekends as an amateur burlesque performer ... hmmm.  Seriously, my life is actually quite mundane and would not make for interesting reading.  However, what I like is mystery novels and history.  And, I can write that!

My plan is for this blog to become an exercise in 'publishing' something at least once a month - I'm trying not to be too ambitious.  I'd love to publish a post once a week, but I don't know if I have that much resolve.  My dear friend at A Blissful Life posts about once a week and I love it!  So, hopefully I can do the same.

For now this is a small blog.  My personal exercise in writing what I like and doing it often!

Cheers!