getting mad, then getting glad

Quick, before someone loses patience, Chelsea and I are working on revamping our writing project. Our prompt from two weeks ago got major away from both of us so we're going to ditch it and try over with a new prompt. Now, don't go flaying us alive for dropping this project saying something ignorant like "a real writer perseveres through difficult times in writing." That statement alone isn't ignorant, but applying it to this situation would be because writers do need to persevere [I cannot tell you how many times I've used that word in the last hour] through tricky parts of their writing but they also need to be able to recognize when a project needs to be put aside or just abandoned. Not all story ideas will pan out. In fact, I'd say that it's generally the opposite. So hold your horses, Sunday writing updates will be back  :)

Now, to get to the mad I was actually referring to in the title of this post. Whilst I was performing some excellent bakery with Chelsea on Thursday night [I'd like you to know that even though it took an extra 50 minutes to cook, we did eventually end up with a healthy baby lemon/blueberry loaf. it was delicious] I had the chance to talk out issues I was having with my WIP. This is one of the many reasons that talking to Chelsea is a fabulous experience: she listens and she gets it. I mean, I could gripe to a lot of people about how I've been stuck for months at the end of one particular scene with no idea where to go from there but I think Chelsea is one of the few people I know who has the insight to suggest that perhaps my lack of ideas, considering the fact that I write character driven and not plot driven stories, may be because I don't know my characters well enough. The egoist in me wanted to rant and rave. Of course I know my characters! Why would you suggest such a ridiculous thing! But this problem of being stuck has been weighing on my mind for as long as I've been stuck and nothing I'd tried was working so I was open to suggestions.

Last weekend saw Tim and I up to Logan for a friendly visit and a break from good ol' Provo. While I didn't take time to consider big important things like "should I take that internship opportunity with it being such a busy senior year coming up," I did take some time to try drawing out my main character's personalities. I found some motivational holes in my middle grade MC and then I hit gold. Or should I say a vast, pitch-black, unexplored cavern in my MC's uncle. It was an unpleasant shock to realize what my notes and introspective questions were telling me: I knew next to nothing about this character. This has been a huge breakthrough for me. My MC's uncle is a massive part of his life and the way he will develop, so finding out that I knew so little about him kind of floored me. But it's also been really freeing and exciting because I get to delve into this character, flesh him out, generally my favorite part of story construction and something I can spend hours doing.

I haven't written more past that last scene yet but I do feel like I'm getting a much better feel for his character, who he is, what he wants, what decisions he'd make. It's like making a new friend  :)

Do you write character or plot driven stories? What's holding you back from writing your story? Do you know your characters? Are you getting so wrapped up in detailing every piece of their life that you're forgetting to write the story?

maybe I could just turn all my rants into a book...?

Tim and I had a conversation about actors and screen writing yesterday which, like most conversations of these kinds, consisted of me talking and him nodding, doing his best to follow my crazy thought process, and occasionally trying to get a word in edgewise which-is-no-small-feet-let-me-tell-you.

The discussion was tipped off by remarks about the Bourne Legacy movie which neither of us have seen but have heard mixed reviews about. Somehow that branched into a discussion about Liam Neeson and all the crap he's been getting lately about being a lame actor [Nickolas Cage was also mentioned but I'm not even going to try and start that conversation]. Now, I've seen a few Liam Neeson movies, granted not all [including Taken, I know] and I've seen a good bit of what people complain about. Tim and I saw Unknown last year and we both thought it was horrific and summed up a lot of the complaints I've heard about how Liam Neeson is a joke now - he's corny and over the top, always playing these bad-a characters that are totally unbelievable and cheesy [I mean: "I remember how to kill you," really?]. I can see how these things are all true in movies he's been in recently, but I got to thinking that it's not so much Liam Neeson as the screenwriters for these films. Granted, Liam may need to do a better job choosing the projects he jumps on board with but those films never even should have gotten off the ground. Unknown, for example, was a terrible rip off of the first Bourne movie and whoever wrote the script really should have been forced to take some writing classes ["I remember how to kill you" really???].

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there is a definite difference between bad acting and bad writing [for an example of both, look to the Twilight movies]. Sometimes you have excellent writing and the actors just butcher it but other times actors are just up against a major challenge from the get-go. There's really only so much you can do when you're given a crappy script to work with. And to top it off, I'd like to remember that type casting happens in Hollywood as well as high school [maybe these movies are the only ones he's being offered? he does have to make a living]

So yes, Liam Neeson has been in some corny, sub-par movies, but that doesn't mean he's a bad actor. He was awesome in the Batman movies and from what I know of Taken [where this business seems to have stemmed from] he was a force to be reckoned with as well. Unfortunately Hollywood, as with practically all things good, has pursued that Taken persona until it's begun to kick a dead horse that's been rotten for years.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, there are a lot of different areas where creative writing is used and I think sometimes we forget that someone wrote and approved those awful lines of dialogue in that movie you watched last weekend. I've been trying to recognize more and more lately how the writing of a movie influences its success as well as how I feel about it as a whole. It's impressed upon me the importance of writing well, being honest with yourself about your work and finding people you trust to be honest with you about it because I wouldn't want to be the screenwriter for Unknown, have written the script and thought it was alright, and then find out after movie production that everyone else had thought it was a stupid idea. Don't make others take the fall for mistakes and holes that you should have edited the crap out of.

Don't get paranoid or down on yourself, just be honest. Because the great thing about writing is that even if what you come up with at first is a far cry from literature, you can change it. As Captain Planet would say, "The power is yours!"


Now, I know some of you are probably wondering what happened this weekend, where were the stories? [where were the other drugs going? anyone?] Well, I'll suffice to say that, lately, life has been doing its very best to get in the way. Between work, applying for an internship [interview on Thursday, woot!] and wanting to physically remove my abdomen, writing for last weeks prompt ended up tipping the scales. I apologize for that and anyone who was disappointed by its absence. Some rethinking may need to happen on that front as our responses have been getting more and more lengthy, mine at least heading toward short story length which I was not prepared for. Hopefully my performance this week will be more up to scratch!

In the mean time, I hope none of you are following my atrocious example and have been writing like proper little authors. Yesterday I decided to make a playlist to see if well chosen music might help spurn me on in my pathetic efforts with my WIP which is mentally persistent but lacking in actual recorded text. Maybe I should try talking out loud and recording it? I could get Dragon? What do you do to keep yourself inspired and motivated?

the thing about writing is...

...sometimes it kicks your trash [or if you're me, a lot of times]
...sometimes you really don't want to
...sometimes you don't have anything to say

That last one still freaks me out a bit. If you're a writer aren't you supposed to always have something to say? But you know, I'm coming to the conclusion that having quiet mental time, when things stop racing around your brain and just settle, is a good thing now and then. It can help you organize, reevaluate new ideas, look at current WIPs from an objective viewpoint.

And sometimes...I tell myself those things so I feel better about being lazy...

Sometimes writing just sucks and it kicks your trash.
Sometimes your husband reminds you that you are a good writer so you'll stop freaking out.
And sometimes - the best times - that writing that kicked your trash is loved by the people who read it.

I know I'd love to have that all the time, but I'll happily settle for sometimes  :)

stood up on a date? write about it

Apologies again for the late posting. This is an unfortunate trend. Chelsea and I have decided to start posting our writings on Sunday to give us more time between critiques for edits and such. Perhaps that'll be a more achievable deadline for me  :P

So! This week's writing challenge was to write about a guy who gets stood up on a date. We originally set the word limit at 300 but expanded it because we both needed more room. Guys, frankly, this one kicked my trash. For one, I'm not a guy, and for another, I've never actually been stood up on a date so I had two fairly big strikes against me to begin with and they certainly had their way with me. So to anyone who decides to read my response, I'm apologize for the weak character development, etc.

Chelsea's, however, is fantastic! Enjoy:

Running a hand through his day old hair, Dan knew he should have showered. He stared out the coffee shop's window, cars whizzing by through puddles. He waited to see Fae’s black umbrella bob up and down in front of the cafe's window.

He waited some more and drank the last of his coffee.

Dan pressed a button on his cell phone. Six minutes past twelve thirty. Where could she be? Our office is just down the block. Our lunch breaks were at the same time. We planned this. Oh, no—hold it together, man.

"Hey, Rachel?"

Rachel, the lunch shift barista, walked by and stopped at his table.

"Could I get a refill?"

“Another? If I didn’t know any better, you look a little nervous.”

Dan blushed. “Is it that easy to see?”

“Maybe a little,” She laughed, a husky kind of laugh, and took his cup back behind the counter. He watched her refill it, add some cream, and she looked at him. They kept each other’s eye contact as she returned to his table.

"Thank you."

"No prob,” she said and smiled then cleaned the front window.

He pulled back his hair and tied it in a small ponytail. He tapped his fingers on top of the wooden table. Thirty nine minutes late.

His cell phone lit up and vibrated. He grabbed it.

He read the sparse text message. Fae said the lunch date slipped her mind but they could reschedule if he wanted. Dan re-read the message three times and then put the phone down on the table. He got up from his table, put on his coat, and looked out the café window. Everything was gray.

“Dan?” Rachel asked.

He didn’t hear her.

“What’s wrong?”

She took a step forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. He blinked a couple of times and then looked at her. “You wanna get out of here?”

“I work til three.”

“Oh.”

“I’d ditch if you’d ditch.”

Dan laughed in surprise. “You know what? Yeah. Let’s ditch.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“I’ll go get my coat. I’ll be just a second.”

She went to a back room and came out with her black coat buttoned up, the hem just hitting her knees. Her work uniform gone, he took in her purple tights and yellow high heels. He tightened his ponytail and licked his lips.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I don’t think that matters,” Dan said.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Rachel marched ahead of him, opened the café door, a small bell tingled, and Dan followed. She opened her yellow umbrella and turned back to him.

The rain smelled so good.

Feel like taking the plunge and writing your own scene? Email it to me at emily.buhler.loveless@gmail.com and I'll post it here!