I miss doing Algebra.
No, really, I do.
I miss solving page-long quadratic equations. I miss the neat rows of equal signs running down the page until there was only an "X = " left of the equation. I miss knowing that there's only one way to correctly solve the problem and that I am capable of finding that solution.
After earning 84 credits towards my bachelor's degree in a little less than a year, I'm really starting to miss the finality of algebra. There aren't a myriad of perspectives to understand and/or decide between like there is whenever history or politics are concerned. You don't have to worry about identifying the ideologies, philosophies, or worldviews of different people, or trying to figure out how those ideas shaped their lives. All you have to do is solve for X.
Don't misunderstand me - I love history. I love studying historical figures and happenings. There's so much to learn from and discover about those who have lived before us. I've taken courses in Humanities, Western Civilization, U.S.History, The Soviet Union, Literature and all of them are fascinating. All of them are also almost never-ending subjects of study. One could literally spend a lifetime researching just one aspect or time period of any of the above topics.
That kind of in-depth, immersion research is part of why I write historical fiction (or, at least, that's what I'm starting with). I can combine my writing with further study and give my readers a time and/or place they haven't seen/been before. I can pick any culture from any time, study it, and then bring the past into the light of the present.
But knowing how much I don't know, knowing how much I could still study the things I've already covered in a general sense, is an exhausting idea. I think that's why I've had this hankering for Algebra. It's a finite subject. You learn it and then you're done. Sure, there's other math forms to go onto if you like (I'm still bummed that I graduated before I got to take Trigonometry) but Algebra is complete. You can put it on the shelf and know that you know all there is to know about Algebra.
I like that sense of finality, of completion.
I like being able to solve for X.
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
4.28.2011
4.08.2011
Five Things on a Friday
I found these guys from Christine (I guess that's why they call all this blogging and twittering and anything-elsering social networking, with the key word being "network") and thought I'd join the fun, especially since they captured a writer's life quite well. Check it out.
And now for the actual content of this post...
1: That there is far more to being a writer than writing. Yes, the actual writing is the primary and most important part of being a writer. You can't be a writer without, well, writing. But, after you've written your manuscript, there's so much to do that has nothing to do with characters or plot line or setting or prose but has everything to do with becoming a writer (in the published-author sense of the word). There's market research and query letters and platform building and networking; there's submissions and rejections and more submissions and more rejections. And then, after all of that, guess what? You get to wait ;) And wait, and wait, and wait, and really start to loathe the phrase "Patience is a virtue."
2: That writing a synopsis would become the bane of my writerly existence. No, really. I can write a three hundred word pitch just fine. I can handle a brief summary for query letters. I can even manage a single-sentence description. But a two to five page synopsis? That is beyond me for some reason. Oh, I can plunk out two to five pages of something that looks like a summary of my novel, but it is absolutely not pleasant to read.
3: That my fondness of sticky notes would grow exponentially. I buy them in bulk. And for birthday gifts? I ask for the fancy designer kind (I don't use those, except for very special occasions. I still have a pad of a purple paisley design from two years ago in my drawer). During the multiple revisions of my novel, the stack of paper that was my manuscript turned into a sticky-note hedgehog. My idea-file? Full of sticky notes covered in tiny, cramped writing. To-do lists? On sticky notes - because when I'm finished with a task, I can crumple up the cheerfully colored square of paper and throw it out (which is much more satisfying than simply crossing something off a list).
4: That sometimes it's best to just walk away. This is especially true during the revision phase of writing. You get too close, too tied into your story and characters that the problems are either invisible or seemingly insurmountable. Put it away and don't look at it for a few weeks (maybe even a few months). When you come back, things are so much better. So much better.
5: That revising takes up a lot of floor space. Well, it did for me. Between my second and third drafts, I did a major overhaul of most of the storyline. This meant that something needed to be changed in every single chapter. I prefer to do my revising by hand as opposed to on my computer, so I printed the whole thing off, clipped the chapters together, and made a circle of them. I sat in the middle with my scissors and tape and went to work. No one was allowed to walk through my room for days.
So there it is. The five things I wish I had known beforehand :)
And now for the actual content of this post...
1: That there is far more to being a writer than writing. Yes, the actual writing is the primary and most important part of being a writer. You can't be a writer without, well, writing. But, after you've written your manuscript, there's so much to do that has nothing to do with characters or plot line or setting or prose but has everything to do with becoming a writer (in the published-author sense of the word). There's market research and query letters and platform building and networking; there's submissions and rejections and more submissions and more rejections. And then, after all of that, guess what? You get to wait ;) And wait, and wait, and wait, and really start to loathe the phrase "Patience is a virtue."
2: That writing a synopsis would become the bane of my writerly existence. No, really. I can write a three hundred word pitch just fine. I can handle a brief summary for query letters. I can even manage a single-sentence description. But a two to five page synopsis? That is beyond me for some reason. Oh, I can plunk out two to five pages of something that looks like a summary of my novel, but it is absolutely not pleasant to read.
3: That my fondness of sticky notes would grow exponentially. I buy them in bulk. And for birthday gifts? I ask for the fancy designer kind (I don't use those, except for very special occasions. I still have a pad of a purple paisley design from two years ago in my drawer). During the multiple revisions of my novel, the stack of paper that was my manuscript turned into a sticky-note hedgehog. My idea-file? Full of sticky notes covered in tiny, cramped writing. To-do lists? On sticky notes - because when I'm finished with a task, I can crumple up the cheerfully colored square of paper and throw it out (which is much more satisfying than simply crossing something off a list).
4: That sometimes it's best to just walk away. This is especially true during the revision phase of writing. You get too close, too tied into your story and characters that the problems are either invisible or seemingly insurmountable. Put it away and don't look at it for a few weeks (maybe even a few months). When you come back, things are so much better. So much better.
5: That revising takes up a lot of floor space. Well, it did for me. Between my second and third drafts, I did a major overhaul of most of the storyline. This meant that something needed to be changed in every single chapter. I prefer to do my revising by hand as opposed to on my computer, so I printed the whole thing off, clipped the chapters together, and made a circle of them. I sat in the middle with my scissors and tape and went to work. No one was allowed to walk through my room for days.
So there it is. The five things I wish I had known beforehand :)
3.19.2011
Words that Dance
Yes, dance.
And sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - words that live.
Those kinds of words are the reason I love to read and why books are such marvelous companions. They are so much more than organized sequences of lines and dots filling up the numbered pages with figments of the author's imagination. They're...well, they can be so many things: exciting, full of adventure and fascination; wonderful, opening your eyes to new people and places and things; challenging, presenting a different vantage point and thereby making your scrutinize your own; delightful, filled with that which is good and lovely and inspiring.
They can also be boring. Depressing. Horrible, to the point where you want to throw the book across the room, or rip out the ending and paste your own in.
It takes several things working in combination to make any book, great or awful. There's the basic grammar and language component. Then there's style. And any number of other things I won't bother to enumerate. But the heart of the book is the story. The heart of the story is its characters. And the heart of characters is that they live.
Yes, I know, they're imaginary. In a very real sense, though, characters are alive. Or, at least they should be. Need to be, really. We identify with characters because some part of them translates into our world as real. The more of them that translates, the more we love them, the more we learn from them, the more we tell all our friends to go buy this book because it's just that good.
That realness has to exist in the characters before it can translate off the page. And for that realness to exist, the characters have to be alive within their own story. (This is why people think writers are crazy)
That's what I mean by words that dance. At some point along the storytelling timeline, something inexplicable happens. The words stop being mere words. The become people. Places. A whole new world (or our own world at a different time). A world full of people who dance, and sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - people who live.
The trouble, for a writer (as a reader, you just get to enjoy it), is that once your characters are alive, you can't exactly control them. And that can be slightly problematic. They hate the wrong person, or love the wrong one. They rebel when you try to fit them into the story arc you had so carefully constructed. Or they up and die on you (and that's really, really annoying when you like said character). Oh, and if your story world is alive, guess what? Random characters appear and throw all sorts of wrenches into "your" story. Ask me how I know.
But when words come alive, they dance right through all the pages, through THE END, and into our hearts and minds.
I think that's worth a few complications.
And sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - words that live.
Those kinds of words are the reason I love to read and why books are such marvelous companions. They are so much more than organized sequences of lines and dots filling up the numbered pages with figments of the author's imagination. They're...well, they can be so many things: exciting, full of adventure and fascination; wonderful, opening your eyes to new people and places and things; challenging, presenting a different vantage point and thereby making your scrutinize your own; delightful, filled with that which is good and lovely and inspiring.
They can also be boring. Depressing. Horrible, to the point where you want to throw the book across the room, or rip out the ending and paste your own in.
It takes several things working in combination to make any book, great or awful. There's the basic grammar and language component. Then there's style. And any number of other things I won't bother to enumerate. But the heart of the book is the story. The heart of the story is its characters. And the heart of characters is that they live.
Yes, I know, they're imaginary. In a very real sense, though, characters are alive. Or, at least they should be. Need to be, really. We identify with characters because some part of them translates into our world as real. The more of them that translates, the more we love them, the more we learn from them, the more we tell all our friends to go buy this book because it's just that good.
That realness has to exist in the characters before it can translate off the page. And for that realness to exist, the characters have to be alive within their own story. (This is why people think writers are crazy)
That's what I mean by words that dance. At some point along the storytelling timeline, something inexplicable happens. The words stop being mere words. The become people. Places. A whole new world (or our own world at a different time). A world full of people who dance, and sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - people who live.
The trouble, for a writer (as a reader, you just get to enjoy it), is that once your characters are alive, you can't exactly control them. And that can be slightly problematic. They hate the wrong person, or love the wrong one. They rebel when you try to fit them into the story arc you had so carefully constructed. Or they up and die on you (and that's really, really annoying when you like said character). Oh, and if your story world is alive, guess what? Random characters appear and throw all sorts of wrenches into "your" story. Ask me how I know.
But when words come alive, they dance right through all the pages, through THE END, and into our hearts and minds.
I think that's worth a few complications.
3.16.2011
On Voice
I've discovered something: blogging isn't a nightmare. Or a chore. It's actually very natural and easy.
That probably sounds like a laughable discovery, I know. But I have put off entering the blog sphere (even though everything and everyone in the publishing/writing industry says that it's essential for writers - published or not - to have a web presence and, preferably, a sizable following) for so long because I thought that blogging would be as hard for me as journaling.
I am horrific at journaling. I like the look of journals. I like the idea of journaling. But I find myself utterly incapable of keeping a journal. I thought blogging would essentially be a online journal and so I avoided it, avoided it, and avoided it some more. It turns out, though, that (for me at least) blogging is nothing like journaling. I've been thinking about why that is, and I think I figured it out. Well, I have a working theory at any rate.
It has to do with the concept of voice.
Every single one of my journaling endeavors ended with me ripping out the pages, crumpling them into messy little balls, and throwing them in the trash. I couldn't stand to read what I had written because it sounded so fake. I wasn't on the pages. Some high-toned and fancy-to-do version of me was. But when I clicked the publish button of my first blog post, I was completely comfortable with what I had written. It sounded like me. My voice was right. (Don't ask me why I can get my voice through on a blog and not in a journal because I have absolutely no idea)
The more I think about voice, the more I start to understand what my instructor was talking about when she critiqued the early versions of my manuscript: that my characters were two-dimensional. At the time, the comment was hardly helpful. Not because she was wrong (she was right), but because I didn't know what she meant or how to fix it. Now I do.
The key to living, breathing characters is that they have their own voice. I know I probably sound like a crazy person, talking about imaginary people having unique voices, but it's true. The primary difference between the first two drafts of my manuscript and the final one is that I knew how my characters would say the things they say. I knew their voices. That's when they came alive. I was revising a scene, read a line of dialogue, and thought, "He would never say it like that."
That's when I knew I had a story. The plot line hadn't changed. The setting was exactly the same. The conflicts and resolutions were as they always had been. But now I was working with characters that were alive instead of cardboard cutouts. Once I knew their voices, everything else fell into place and the story improved tremendously.
The only trouble with voice is that its not something you can create. Not really. And I know that sounds ridiculous. I mean, I'm the author, I should be able to make my characters be and do and say anything I want. Here's a secret: it doesn't work that way. To a degree, yes, it does. But if my characters are so static that they don't give me problems, I have a bigger problem - I don't have a story. I just have a bunch of words strung together on a piece of paper. And those kind of words aren't worth much at all.
That probably sounds like a laughable discovery, I know. But I have put off entering the blog sphere (even though everything and everyone in the publishing/writing industry says that it's essential for writers - published or not - to have a web presence and, preferably, a sizable following) for so long because I thought that blogging would be as hard for me as journaling.
I am horrific at journaling. I like the look of journals. I like the idea of journaling. But I find myself utterly incapable of keeping a journal. I thought blogging would essentially be a online journal and so I avoided it, avoided it, and avoided it some more. It turns out, though, that (for me at least) blogging is nothing like journaling. I've been thinking about why that is, and I think I figured it out. Well, I have a working theory at any rate.
It has to do with the concept of voice.
Every single one of my journaling endeavors ended with me ripping out the pages, crumpling them into messy little balls, and throwing them in the trash. I couldn't stand to read what I had written because it sounded so fake. I wasn't on the pages. Some high-toned and fancy-to-do version of me was. But when I clicked the publish button of my first blog post, I was completely comfortable with what I had written. It sounded like me. My voice was right. (Don't ask me why I can get my voice through on a blog and not in a journal because I have absolutely no idea)
The more I think about voice, the more I start to understand what my instructor was talking about when she critiqued the early versions of my manuscript: that my characters were two-dimensional. At the time, the comment was hardly helpful. Not because she was wrong (she was right), but because I didn't know what she meant or how to fix it. Now I do.
The key to living, breathing characters is that they have their own voice. I know I probably sound like a crazy person, talking about imaginary people having unique voices, but it's true. The primary difference between the first two drafts of my manuscript and the final one is that I knew how my characters would say the things they say. I knew their voices. That's when they came alive. I was revising a scene, read a line of dialogue, and thought, "He would never say it like that."
That's when I knew I had a story. The plot line hadn't changed. The setting was exactly the same. The conflicts and resolutions were as they always had been. But now I was working with characters that were alive instead of cardboard cutouts. Once I knew their voices, everything else fell into place and the story improved tremendously.
The only trouble with voice is that its not something you can create. Not really. And I know that sounds ridiculous. I mean, I'm the author, I should be able to make my characters be and do and say anything I want. Here's a secret: it doesn't work that way. To a degree, yes, it does. But if my characters are so static that they don't give me problems, I have a bigger problem - I don't have a story. I just have a bunch of words strung together on a piece of paper. And those kind of words aren't worth much at all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)