Just a Quickie

A friend just showed me this list and i wanted to keep track of it.  i should make a writing pinterest board.  but i'm off to do some house hunting so i can't drown in that pool of inactivity right now.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Source:
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-stor.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+(Boing+Boing)

There's also another site she showed me... i'm gonna have to refind that one too cuz as i remember i have a blog post to write about it...

A Photo Poem

I bought this wonderful skinny Spam notebook some time ago and it has remained empty.  a feat of nature...

Just the other day i took it to work, to finally fill it with the minisule ideas and fragmentary conversations that occur to me throughout the day.

Catagorized, organized, color coded.

 



 

It is no secret that i am a lover of all things post-it

 

 

And  based on the contents of my work purse, a true hater of trees...

 

 

A notebook for the Books I've Read

 

 And the Lists I Make

 

 

And the The Book of Abigale

 

 

Stored carefully within my favorite bag, from my favorite move

 



... and this is the rest of the crap i keep in there.

The End



I'm Desperate, You See

I look at my binder of madness... the plastic one with pink and purple and blue plaid and a pink post it on the front that says "You Are Here" and i see somethign that is ready to be done, to be completed, finished, birthed.

Not quite like a baby, who's all put together in the right sort of order when they do that birth thing, but like a lego set; the pieces are there and you've lost the instruction, but you still have the picture.  There are hunks still attached from the last time you built it and all you have to do is get the rest of the pieces sorted and plugged back in order.

The prequel, the Guide, teh first of the epic and the one i worry most about.  It wants to be completed.  i must only sit down and do it.

I designed a writing station.  i will have my dad build it and in that space i will be focused.

But first we must buy a house.  still months down the road, perhaps more.  and then after that is a transition from jobs to job.  working at home.  one job.

Two jobs.  becasue i want to work enough to devote one day's "Work Hours" to writing.  to transcription of no one's words but my own.

and then my own schedule too.  these days i find myself yearning to work and work into the night as the hours between now and the burbling of my cell phone's alarm shrinks from seven to six to five...i would work and work and that alarm doesn't have to come...

Of course, i wonder when i will fit sleep in, working in the night like i want, but that doesn't seem to bother me.  and when i think of yeasr, so many years in the future, when both Gator and Mystery Future Baby are both in schoola nd my day can be used for workin and writnig and napping and preparing for everyone to come home.

I do'nt want to get there too fast, to waste those years, but i want to define my own life, once and for all, not let it be defined by the job i hate, i loathe, i detest i... i... i... don't even know.

Because the things i really want to do are being burned out by the raging angry-fire of the way i feel about my jbob.  i am running ragged and to wait several years to continue this journey that only began with writing but must follow the life span of revising, editing, FINISHING... publishing, if even only for me.

I'm desperate, you see.

It Needs More Sci-Fi

that's all.

Shadow Letters

I finally got Shade and Shadow and Letters printed out and i took it to work and i went through the whole thing and did some work to it.

It's funny.  I have Shade already started to be Smashed... i thought it was ready to go, but even now,  having read through it eleventy-seven times and doing how many revisions, i'm still making more.  Of course, now with the second one there are things that need to be tweaked  just-so so they match up with the later story.

And Letters... i've read through it on the computer a thousand times and thought it was nice and done, and i wouldn't have to do much to it.  boy was i wrong.  Not only edits and elaborations and pretification but one of the letters themselves.  Completely wrong.  assigning an attribute to the wrong sister.  read it a thousand times, never noticed it before.

Sometimes i'm such a dunce.

So now i suppose i should go get some coffee this coming sunday and apply revisions to at least one of them. 

It feels good to half-cross out one of those things on my to-do list for 2013