The Great Experiment...

Last summer, I had an idea for a sequel to a famous horror/sci fi classic. I didn't have enough of the story in my head, only the beginning and the end (which is usual for me), but hardly anything for the middle. I needed time. But I wanted to start the story. So I compromised with The Great Experiment.

I would hand write, old school like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte, the entire novel. Not even a typewriter (I do have one, but it's electric). Just a handful of #2 pencils and a lovely notebook that was gathering dust in a closet. (We writers do that- we collect journals and notebooks and then want to use them for something 'special-' not just for writing down the grocery or To Do list, Hence, we collect A LOT.)

So I spent hours poolside, or on the patio, curled up on the couch when it rained, in car rides to family visits- writing. A few sentences here, a couple of paragraphs there, and by the end of summer, I had a novel. The slow, more deliberate method worked for this book. Well, I got the novel roughly drafted. But would it be any good?

As I transcribe it, I see repetitions that popped up, probably because I couldn't remember everything I'd put in over the course of 3 months. But I'm seeing some beautiful sections that stun me. (Did I really write that??). Oh, the plot holes. The missing information. Ugh, the contradictions.

But that's part of any novel. I liked this approach because it made me more thoughtful, more deliberate in my writing. It seems like when writing these days we pound the keys in a fury, and promise we'll fix it when we review and revise. This novel will still need heavy editing and reworking, but I see so much I love. I think I am a better writer for having taken my time.

But I won't do this for every novel- I can't. There are too many stories cluttering up my head that need to get out and into the documents file. And this would NEVER work for #NaNoWriMo. But I think I will do this occasionally, so I slow down and enjoy the process instead of stressing out about how much I've written in a day, week, month, season, year. We all need to de-stress and enjoy moments.

Enjoy the moment-

Char

Say it Again and Again...

The time is ripe for more cliches. Thanks again to James Rogers, author of The Dictionary of Cliches (Ballantine Books). The research for this book is exhaustive. Rogers lays out the meaning, etymology, and then where it was first used (it's usually in a piece of literature).

Photo courtesy of Pexels

"Grasp at straws. Act in desperation (probably from the image of a drowning person clutching at anything that floats, even something so insubstantial as straws). [also catch at straws]. Rogers traces it back to 1748 in the novel Clarissa: "A drowning man will catch at a straw...."

Bury the hatchet. Rogers claims there is a dispute between a 14th century English usage of 'hang up the hatchet' which means to stop fighting, but 'bury' the hatchet appears to derive from Native Americans whose ceremony of burying two hatchets was a more binding peace agreement than any papers presented by the government.

Bag of bones. This saying seems to come from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist as poor Oliver, practically starved, is told, "There, get down stairs, little bag o' bones."

A-OK. Americans can claim the creation of this phrase, which was first used by NASA spokesman James A. Powers in 1961 during the great space race. It meant the mission was going well and became a popular saying.

A no-win situation. In 1962, against the backdrop of the Cold War, this American saying is attributed to "war game activity... "there are plenty of 'no-win situations'" in war games and in real wars."

There are so many wonderful cliches! I encourage you to check out this book. (You might want to review your manuscript to see if you've used a few...)

Till next week!

Char

A Classic Problem...

I know kids don't like the classics- Romeo and Juliet, Silas Marner, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Crucible, etc.

Tough- they need to be taught. I'm dismayed that my son's summer reading packet required only one book and a modern one at that. I believe kids need to be exposed to many classics, so why not have 2 lists; one classic, one modern, and choose a title from both lists?

They won't like it.

Truthfully, I didn't when I was a high school freshman/sophmore/junior/senior. But I didn't like geometry either and I still had to take that. Over the years I've used literary knowledge much more than geometry...

Sometimes what we don't like is best for us. (How many kids liked asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts when they were young? Yeah, maybe 2.)

Classics and modern literature are forever linked. I've read many YA and adult books that refer to classics. If kids aren't exposed to Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, they'll have to ask someone, who is this person? why is he/she famous?  before they can understand the context in the modern novel.

I was watching Psycho with Anthony Perkins, the old black and white version (the best). My youngest sat down to watch with me and says, "That's not scary!" Because he's grown up in a time when excessive gore is readily laid out by the media for his eyes, he's not completely 'invested' in the story with his brain. Previous generations saw Pyscho and were afraid to take a shower without locking the door. We were pulled into the story because we had to imagine the knife slicing into that poor girl, the blood circling the drain confirmation of our worst fear. Our minds were much more visceral than showing tons of fake blood and bad makeup jobs.

There is value from classics- whether it's a book, a movie, a muscle car, a tuxedo, a song. Let's not throw out the old in favor of the trendy because today's trendy is tomorrow's classic.

Char

Get Thee to a Bookshelf...

I read a post on Twitter about how many books students working toward an English degree have to read. The person counted about 150, but that also included books for the other subjects. I'm not going to bore you (and myself) counting all the books I read for my English degree (nor do I want to), but instead, I'm going to list some of my faves (not all of them were required reading, some were for fun and maybe shouldn't count, but I'm putting them in anyway):

English Romantic Poetry. Ah, how can anyone not love On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats. Or The Nightingale by William Taylor Coleridge. Lord Byron's, She Walks in Beauty is swoony romantic. There are lots more, but moving on...

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. One of my all-time absolute faves. You don't have to be a Christian to understand and appreciate the messages of charity, hospitality, fairness, generosity, and compassion that are required of all of us as human beings.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is science with scare and caution in an eloquent tale. I'm a big fan of Mr. Stevenson.

Oscar Wilde's The Strange Case of Dorian Gray has been made into several movies. It's kind of like the the artist's version of Jeckyll and Hyde.

While I could never be as composed as Jane Austen (I'm a Scorpio, we tend to run emotionally amuck at times), I love her passion. And it doesn't end like a Disney-princess story, which annoys me a bit about modern books. Humans have less perfect endings, yet so many books have the opposite. I'd write a book with a realistic, bad ending, but no one--agent, editor, reader--would probably want it.

I took a class in Arthurian literature and the bible of that class was Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. I loved the female perspective which gave it a deeper feel than the traditional male-let's sword fight-woo the damsel-save the kingdom feel. It really gave me my first connection to feminism.

My list could never be complete without J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings opus. It is the almost quintessential book for me. (The only holdback is that Tolkien, a man of his times, neglects to include both strong female characters and the female perspective.)

Although it doesn't shine as much as her beloved Interview With a Vampire or The Vampire Lestat, my favorite of Anne Rice's works is Rameses The Damned, Or, The Mummy. Anne makes me feel the dry heat of the desert seeping under archaeological tents, or a body freezing with fear as Rameses stalks his enemies. Love, love, love. I keep leaving comments on Facebook (cause, we're like, 'friends') for her to do a sequel. So far, I'm being ignored.

One last one: The Secret, by Julie Garwood. Yes, it's an historical romance but it's wonderfully written and reading Garwood's novels helped me learn how to write dialogue. (Some novels fail miserably at this.)

As you can see, I'm not pinned down by any one genre. And that's great because when I leave one for a while to try something new, I come back and rediscover why I liked that first genre. It becomes fresh again. So maybe you should re-visit some of those novels you read in high school or college (or soon after) that you liked or loved. (I don't waste my time re-reading novels I hated, hoping I'll like them again. I won't.)

There's nothing like revisiting an old friend.

Char

Literally Speaking...

"L" is for literary.  The Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes for fiction literature always go to 'literary' books- and I hate to sound like a snob, but I can count on one hand how many I could read to the end.

I find them unappealing.


Call them classics, but some of the 'greatest literary works of our time" (according to the 'experts') I hate. Like:

Great Expectations
The Great Gatsby
Anything by D.H. Lawrence
Anything by William Faulkner
Most of the Nobel/Pulitzer winners in the last 10 years

I'm an English/journalism major, so how can this be??

Here are some classics that I love:

Anything by William Shakespeare
Anything by J.R.R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
A lot by Charles Dickens

My middle grade novel, Evolution Revolution, about the intellectual dawning of a squirrel who learns to use simple machines, has been rejected more times than I'll admit, and has been labeled 'too literary' for middle graders. I don't get how editors and agents can say that when there is a lot of action, science, and adventure.

Don't let the term 'literary' scare you; it's not all angst/inner thoughts/internal drama.

It's just another label, and who listens to labels anyway?

Char