Go to a Place...

From the Louvre at sunset.

Today I was reading a very interesting book on plot and structure (in the bathroom). In this book, it said a lot of things that I think most writers accept as the basic rules of writing. But it also had some great ideas for ways to come up with plot. There was one suggestion (there were twenty or something), that read "go to a place and drink it in."
I, however, misread it as "go to a place and drink in it."
That makes much more sense to me that some quixotic nonsense like "drink it in". What does that even mean? Anyway, I think my accidental misreading was really my subconscious trying to give me some more digestible advice. I take it to mean something like, "go somewhere -- anywhere -- and just hang out. Grab a drink. Get into trouble. Do something real there, instead of site-seeing." That's the kind of thing people want to read about. And I think that's the kind of thing people want to write as well. 

Don't keep life at arm's length. Hold history in your hands. Sucker punch convention. Get drunk. Get lost.
Truth will find you.

Fat Latte Good It'll Do Me

I order there every morning.

I don't know how people write in coffee shops. In Gainesville, at least, I seem to know at least one person every time I go. This knowing people thing is not conducive to my writing, as I spend a large portion of the time I had allocated to pound pen to paper chatting with acquaintances about whatever they're writing.
So, I've given up on writing in coffee shops.

But, since I'm talking about them, it seems like people spend a lot of time in coffee shops not drinking coffee. I've seen customers buy a water and sit around for six hours on their laptop or talking to friends. Buy a coffee, damn it! You're the reason Starbucks is taking over, freeloaders! Locally owned coffee shops can't afford to put you up for a six hour pretension spree if you're not going to fork over ten bucks for a coffee and some refills. Maybe a muffin.

Anyway, JKR makes it look easy, but not everyone can write their books in coffee shops. Full disclosure: I write a lot in the bathroom. The master bathroom in my house is a joke, tiny and bland with room enough for a sink, a toilet, and a standing room-only-shower, but if I shut the door no one bothers me. I don't blame them, you know?

It's hard to talk about the restroom without that edge of stigma associated with it, but I wonder if there's anywhere on the planet more secluded than your own bathroom. Sometimes I go sit in the shower -- not while it's on, obviously -- and write for pages and pages. Does anyone else feel more productive in the lavatory?

How to Say 'Said'

Inspiration would be playing the part of the snitch here.

So, I made this spreadsheet of 'How to Say Said' a while back. I had writer's block somethin' fierce, and I decided to blame it on my pitiful vocabulary. I thought, "If I knew more words, then I would be able to write!"
This turned out to be quite untrue, but the spreadsheet is still pretty useful. If you have any suggestions for other ways to say said, I would be happy to add them.

Also, no, I did not just place the Harry Potter toy on top of some books for that picture. It lives there. Permanently.

On Distractions

This is my cat, Marv.

 

Marv is arguably the worst cat of all time. He yowls at all hours of the day and night, licks himself loudly and continuously, claws the furniture, and jumps up onto my lap at inopportune times. You may be chuckling to yourself, thinking that these are all distinctly cat-like traits and possibly countering that he seems like the best cat of all time. 

Lies.

Marv is the color of a moist dust bunny and has the coordination of a falling branch. He tends to throw up at the exact moment I'm heading out the door, and he has a propensity to pull out large tufts of his own fur and spit them unceremoniously onto our freshly-vacuumed blue carpet. 

Why don't I get rid of this cat? Because I love him, of course.  He was the worst present I ever got, and God love my fiance for surprising me with him. Michael truly had the best of intentions. I had been practically stamping my foot for a cat since we moved into our new house.

I think that Marv is a spectacular of example of the types of distractions writers dread. If the distraction, which I will call Marv from now on, is more than just laziness or an addiction to Facebook, I mean. 

After a while, external interruptions (Marvs) to the creative process start to drive me crazy. Just when I get a brain wave and my fingers finally begin to tap-dance over the keyboard with furious momentum, just when I hinge on crafting what is, without doubt, the greatest sentence of my literary life -- YOOooOOooOOWL! 

And it's gone, ladies and gentlemen. The taut thread snaps and that delicate whisper of the muse is struck dumb. The overwhelming feeling of loss can send me into a brief bout of bloodlust. It's not pretty.

How do you get away from Marvs? 

Blank Spines

It rather unnerves me that all of the books in the background of my blog are blank. They are simply stripes of color and nothing else.
A book without words on the cover is like a head with no face. They look bizarrely bald now, don't they? It makes me want to have a funeral for all those titles and author names and critic's blurbs and haphazard back-cover summaries. Poor book spines, we hardly knew ye. And how could we? You're nothing but bands of color. Like being best friends with somebody's hair. Or their manicure or lipstick color.
I wonder if they're blank on the inside.

Initial Thoughts

I am not a writer. I am not a poet or anything either. So, for now, I'll be a blogger.

The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing encourages its readers to create a blog. I bought this book, among others, as is my custom, in order to enhance my understanding of this business of writing books. Buying books on my obsession du jour has been a long-time habit of mine. Whenever I decide I'm going to learn about something or do something, I buy a few books on it. This happened to me when I undertook to understand the nature of symbolism. Suddenly, a dozen symbol dictionaries appeared in the clutter of my bookshelves, and my passion of symbolism took a back seat to my passion for buy reference books on symbolism. I booked tickets to Paris, and my fingers itched to buy travel books. I co-founded an acting troupe, and tons of tomes on Shakespeare found their way into my home.

Obsession begets obsession.

So, now I am writing a blog because my book on novel-writing told me to. It's good advice. And I'm not doing much with the time I set aside to write at the moment, because I am giving myself some breathing room from the freshly finished outline of my novel (another helpful suggestion from the novel-writing book). Apparently, this will give me some perspective on the plot and character decisions my past self thought were good, and not only allow me to see that everything I'd written thus far was utter nonsense but also give me the wisdom to improve the drivel I had thought was the trappings of a worthy piece of fiction not two days ago. Sounds good.

I am, as I have said, not a writer. But, I am writing a book. A series actually. It's been coming on slowly, and now it refuses to leave me alone. This is my retaliation. I will vent my frustrations here, and maybe that'll teach my book a lesson about bullying. I hope so.