I did a couple of updates on IOTW today. One is a reprint book review, following up with the Spells and Sleepingbags review I did earlier in the week; while the other is a link and comments on How Not to get an Agent.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I updated IOTW today with a review on Sarah Mlynowski's (relatively) new book Spells and Sleepingbags. Go and read... taking a different approach to the review this time.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I went and did it again... I updated IOTW with a new book review. Read T.A. Pratt's latest, Poison Sleep, and ... well, go and look.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I updated IOTW this morning with a continuation of last weeks theme. Will need to go over and make sure both link to each other.
Go. Read. Enjoy.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I updated IOTW today with post on the process of putting together the idea... this is probably the first of a couple few posts.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I updated IOTW again. Saturday's seem to be the main day for that, though as my life has become more hectic I've found some time to incorporate writing about writing into what I am doing. This one is on concept.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
--This should be at IOTW and I will probably write something (or copy this) over there as well--
This comes in response to a question in the comments by a man named John Hattaway (and, no Rebecca, this is not me playing at multiple personalities) who wanted to know what I meant (over at IOTW) when I used the word exposition in description of something Neil Gaiman wrote.
What is exposition?
Exposition is what is used, most frequently, when it comes to technical manuals or non-fiction. Essentially, it is the process of telling something rather than showing it to the audience. When you show something, there is a different feel to the way it is written and, ultimately, how it is to be received by the audience. For technical manuals and non-fiction, the reading audience expects to be given a lot of information and not have an exploration of material shared over the course of the work. As a result, the technical manual will tell you a lot of things. How to do this, why that works, and more.
However, when you move from non-fiction into fiction, one of the rules of writing is show don't tell. Tell is when an author drops out of a direct interaction with the POV character (often the protagonist) and just tells the audience what is happening or what took place. Because exposition (tell) is necessary for all stories and all forms of storytelling, the level of exposition in a book (story, television show, movie, and more) is weighed against the narration of the story - or how the story is being shared with the reader (or the share).
Essentially:
Cassandra stood at the edge of the Great Mississippi River and looked across it to the other side. She knew, without making any kind of a move toward the river, that she would never be able to cross over. Something in the back of her head told her, that she'd tried before, once or a thousand times didn't matter. No matter how much she wanted to cross the river she couldn't and in this incarnation she wasn't about the waste the effort.
What I did there was tell the audience a lot of information.
In Stardust there are points where Gaiman tells the audience that his protagonist and the star visited towns, had adventures, and ended up where they needed to be. At no point do you actually visit those towns, share in those adventures, and see actually how they got to be where they were meant to be.
So, consider:
"What are we waiting for?" Thomas asked.Cassandra turned and looked at her familiar, her friend, and her horse. "We're not waiting. I am watching," Cassandra said. She brushed the two Navy Colt .45's on her waste.
"What are you watching?" Thomas asked. He bent his head to the ground and at some grass, sniffing at the ground and nickering at the same time.
"Nothing," she said, turning away from the river and approaching Thomas. She patted his flanks and grabbed at one of his hocks to check the hoof for rocks and to make sure the steel shoe was still in place. Thomas continued to eat.
"Why do we keep coming back here?"
"Because," Cassandra said, running her hand over Thomas's flank and grabbing another of his hocks.
The difference between the first and second blockquote element of the blog is essentially I am telling you information and I am allowing you to share in the relationship between Cassandra and Thomas. You are a part of the scene and, because I have chosen who the POV character is and who you, as the audience, have to trust as the narrator. However, as the writer, I also have to make sure you, as the audience, receive information that is necessary and pertinent to the flow of the story.
A professor of mine called the show aspect of story telling, "What does the little bird see?" What that means is that the POV character has to be able to see what you as the writer are sharing with the audience and as a result discover what is happening in the world around that character with him or her or it. This is a good rule of thumb for show.
However, when it comes to tell, or exposition, you are literally sharing something with the audience that the audience needs to know in order to be a part of the story. As a result, books (all story telling medium) has to balance the amount of show with tell and some books will go so far as to give percentages that should be followed. Author Robert Parker actually uses very little tell and a lot of show in his novels. Neil Gaiman uses a bit more tell in his stories as he moves the audience along with them to get them through time or to another point in the story. I noticed that Tim Pratt (writing as T.A. Pratt these days) uses a smaller percentage of tell than Gaiman does.
You can go through a lot of books and pretty accurately judge when an author drops out of show-mode and into tell-mode. When that happens the writing may remain engaging, but as an audience you feel yourself removed, a little, from the narration of the story and pulled along until the next section - one of the reasons why fiction is more show and less tell.
Hope that helps.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Erin got into the Legacy the other day and almost immediately said, "You are NOT that guy!"
I said, "What guy?"
She said, "The kind of guy that listens to NPR."
I said, "Yes I am."
She said, "I've never heard you listen to NPR before."
I said, "That's because I haven't with you in the car."
"Exactly," she said, "you're not that guy."
I said, "I am. The other car didn't have an antenna. This one does. I am and have been that guy."
--
Also, IOTW was updated this morning.
NOTE: These are pre-scheduled updates.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
One of the things I really enjoy are old pulp stories. The pulps, for those that don't know, were old books and magazines that were printed on really cheap paper and then sold at a very low cost. The low overhead and use of (not necessarily) unpopular authors led to a confluence of many different books and magazines and writers that were allowed to grow within their fields. Some of the authors I've enjoyed over the years, most notably Robert Heinlein, started out writing pulps.
Heck, the pulps also allowed various American impressionist artists to get their start painting and drawing. One of my favorite artists, Scott (name may be wrong, will update later) - who eventually painted the mural in the Washington D.C. LDS temple, started out working in pulps as did many other artists. Much of the inspiration for comic books, movie posters, and illustrations in magazines comes from the years of producing fast work on short deadlines.
This, by the by, is how you become an efficient worker. Someone who goes to school with nor more intent than to write or paint and then graduates and finds the ability to actually make some kind of a living writing and painting never learns the efficiency of work. In many cases these same individuals also worry and scour over every single word and syllable like there is a single correct way of writing or saying something.
What makes the pulps truly a wonderful thing is that the authors rarely worried about what was real or what was possible and focused more on what made the story, regardless of how far fetched, move forward. In some instances, this turns sour and you leave the old stories feeling... gross. In other cases, it works extremely well and you leave the stories feeling like possibility has been reached - somehow.
Star Trek and Star Wars are both children, or grandchildren, of the pulps. In movie parlance this is called Serials. The serial was a movie that would show a new episode every week. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and other movies are inspired by the serials of yesteryear. I was thinking, earlier, that westerns, with cookie cutter sets, must've been very cheap to film since there was little in the way of special effects. Even Woody in Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and Buzz Lightyear are both products inspired from pulps and serials.
The outcome, and one of the avenues of writing I think we miss now, is that authors back when were able to burrow through the early stages of writing simply by producing stories that were not at a quality publishing houses expect today, and could get published. In some cases, some of these authors were rather proliferate, publishing frequently and under many different names, and could make a living. Today, writing requires corporate sponsorship (e.g. a job) or a very real effort at finding write-for-hire positions with the hope that people will pay you for what you want to write... eventually.
When I surf through the blogosphere, specifically to various authors sites, I find it interesting that many of the people I enjoy reading make their primary income working as writers - often - but writing content or technical material; they get paid to blog or do other things, often leaving them with less time to write than might be expected.
I remember reading Robert Jordan's comments when he decided to delve into full-time writing. The impetus was after a surgery while he was healing. The outcome was that he made nothing the first year, something like 20,000$ the second year, and doubled it every year thereafter (until the time I read it, at least... I don't know what his income was like before he died).
As I follow different people in their writing careers it is interesting to me to watch as they start to make more and more money writing fiction and then talk about the frustration of deciding whether to take a fiction writing assignment (pays less) or a non-fiction writing assignment (pays more) as their finances are at a point where writing fiction (novels) does not pay all of the bills. You can see these people dealing with the frustration and in many cases, because of various internal quirks, deciding that they will merely hold off on the whole fiction-only decision because, right now, they can't trust that they will make it.
I am not in this category.
Yes, I am taking some freelance jobs. My intent (along with Teach for America) is to build some reputation as a freelance writer. My intent, along with freelancing, is to continue my education and get a Master's and then a PhD. My intent is to teach college (eventually) probably in writing.
There is something that I keep thinking about. That is that people don't improve at things they don't practice. To become better at writing, regardless of ability, one has to write every day of one's life. The outcome is that if you write every day, regardless of the other two criteria, you will become better at writing. That is a positive thing.
As I consider the future and the fact that as an English major I will probably be teaching English, the outcome is that I want to see that theory come to pass. I want to see whole groups of kids (and lots of other people, honestly) improve at something that I enjoy doing. Sure, there is stress in the notion that maybe I am not that good a write; but with that stress is the reminder that many people have commented on my ability to write and I am employed, in many instances, to write professionally. I can't be that bad.
Sure, my attempts at fiction (that have gone to publishers) have failed... somewhat. But one of my dreams is to be published (fiction) and though that dream is (sometimes) tempered by the reality of wife and (impending) child, I still get to try and follow that dream.
Once upon a time there were the pulps. And with the pulps a person like me could've created an alter ego and written crap and had it published. Today the markets (last search on writersmarket.com) in the fields I want to write in are about 7 to 10 with the majority of those not really in business anymore or very highly selective.
Yes, I need to take a leap into the deep end and see if I can swim; and no, I don't know what the outcomes are going to be. But I sure love the pulps, the ideas of worlds that don't need a million answers for every little detail, and the ability to create effective aspects of those worlds.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
There is very little in scripted television that is new these days. If you don’t follow the news (and even if you do) you may not be aware that the WGA is on strike. WGA stands for Writers Guild of America. To be more specific the WGA-w and the WGA-e are on strike. The “e” and “w” stand for East and West.
Why is this important?
It’s not, really. Other than all movies and television in the United States are written by WGA members. If you write for a scripted television show (think sitcom or drama, think actors) than by default you become a member of the WGA. You don’t have a choice. Moreover, if you decide to go into acting you become a member of the SAG, directing makes you a member of the DGA, and etc. There are a lot of acronyms.
All of these acronyms amount to a hill of beans when considering where your entertainment comes from. Basically, Hollywood and all of television are being chained down by the WGA. The reason for this:
The WGA wants control over all writers to include reality TV writers and animation writers.
This is not something that the AMPTP wants to give them. Yeah, sure, it’s about workers and who they don’t report to. Yes, you heard me correctly. This is about writers and who they do not report to.
Basically, what the writer’s (tens of thousands of them) voted for was to get better arrangements when it comes to new media. New Media is being described as advances in DVD technology, internet, and other distribution mediums.
What I believe the majority of writers are not fighting for is bringing under the WGA umbrella reality TV or animation. You see, this is a petty fight. What has happened over the past few years is that the current president of the WGA has been aggressively trying to get these writers under the WGA umbrella. He staged a walkout for some of these writers on one show only to lose membership, rather than to gain it. Those writers were fired and nothing was gained as a result.
Instead of trying to sell these writers on the benefits of joining a union, which, during any strike, seem fewer and fewer, all the WGA has done is prove that production and craft are less important than standing for something that doesn’t matter. When you hold in your hands tens of thousands of lives, even more on production crews, add in the actors: extra’s, featured extras, supporting actors, and lead actors you start to affect a lot of people.
There are more people in Hollywood, or deal with television and movies, than just the WGA. When this organization threatened to strike, and it was more than a threat because they are currently striking, they affected all of Hollywood.
What is not interesting or nice, to me, is to watch the SAG support the WGA. Granted, the SAG wants the WGA to be successful in some areas. I don’t have to stand on a picket line or speak to actors to know that new media is an important and hot topic for most people in Hollywood. This is how people can retire from writing, acting, directing, producing, whatever and continue to live off of the work they did while they acted, produced, wrote, whatever’d. The issue that the SAG and the DGA and other guilds are fighting for, and ultimately being forced to either side with the AMPTP or the WGA about is new media.
No one outside of the WGA cares one wit about reality writers or animation writers. That is greed. And it is specifically greed brought on by the leadership of the WGA-w.
However, consider that the WGA is correct in the assertion that all writers, regardless of medium, belong under the umbrella of the WGA. What does that mean?
The WGA (as a union organization) is in place to guarantee working conditions and minimum standards for writers. What this means is that if you work for a television program you can expect to receive, for one script, approximately $30,000*. You can expect that you will only be asked to work on two (2) scripts per year. And you will expect that any shows based off of your work will be credited to you and you will receive residual payments for that show being rebroadcast.
In essence, what the WGA does is guarantee that people who fall under the WGA umbrella are guaranteed certain rights according to their contract.
What the negotiations are currently trying to do is to increase the writer’s minimums. Why this is important to the rest of Hollywood and why high profile stars are coming out of the woodwork to support this (mostly because it’s a cause, stars like causes, and they can afford not to work) is because the SAG negotiations take place this summer, the DGA negotiations are going to start this month, and other guilds (unions) negotiations with the AMPTP will take place this year.
The first guild (union) to come up with an agreement with the AMPTP will set the standard for all other unions. What the other unions want is for the new media to give them as much of a percentage as possible.
However, what the WGA is doing is trying to leverage the desire for better minimum basics with new media against the desire to bring on these other writers.
In this case, this tactic will backfire on the WGA. Especially as the DGA goes into talks with the AMPTP. The DGA and AMPTP don’t have the same moores (sic) as the WGA. They are not trying to negotiate for other writers. The DGA and AMPTP don’t care about the other writers (note: there is a lot of cross membership between all of these guilds).
To make matters worse, four of the major studios have cancelled contracts with writers for new material. What this means is not only are the shows that are currently on the air (and suffering from lack of production material) not showing new shows, but for the foreseeable future (into the 2008-2009 season) there are no new shows that are going to be produced. By no new shows, this also extends to pilots and other shows that are vying for a spot on one of the networks come next fall.
None of this means a whole lot to most people. It does mean that we don’t have new shows and we will have to suffer in the realm of repeats and (*shudder*) reality television. Eventually, there come a point where the WGA’s requests will hit a tipping point and the members, themselves, will begin to reject what the leadership is doing. Scab writers will start to appear in droves and the WGA leadership will be forced to sign a lesser contract with the AMPTP (because only a handful of studios that, essentially, don’t matter have current contracts with the WGA) and the writer’s who hoped for better will get worse than they would’ve had the WGA leadership come to the tables honestly instead of trying to advance their own causes.
What is interesting to me is that we are watching an organization move backward instead of forward, and if the strike lasts long enough, the federal government will become involved and a federal judge will mediate the strike and may not be favorable toward the WGA. What is really interesting is that some OpEd pieces predict that this could be a tipping point where the WGA actually dies or disapears as an outdated organization that is no longer pertinent in Hollywood.
Viva la revolucion. Viva la WGA.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
*This is a guesstimate at what a writer makes as an example of what you can expect the average working television writer to be making.
In Order to Write (IOTW) was updated with Alicia Grey updates as well as a new article, blog entry. Go and check it out.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Alicia Grey has become a large chunk of my life.
Over the past weekend, after taking a couple day break, and realizing that the conceits I was using for the school she was attending didn’t work, I hit the bricks again today (or the keys on a keyboard… you know, whatever) and started writing again. Part of the reason for this is because I have a stated goal of completing a first draft of the story by December 31, 2007. I think it is a reasonable goal, but one that I could totally ignore without the proper motivation.
Enter Erin.
We are married. Sure. But I also like to think that we are a partnership in a lot of areas. There are some things she does way better than me, and things I do fairly well, and often better than her… though, that is debatable. However, in the area of writing fiction I think our goal is for me to succeed at the whole writing thing. Writing fiction.
As a result of this, Alicia Grey has become the number one priority in my personal life. For example, today, I woke up at about the time Erin got to work and made my way to my computer. It (the computer) came out of my bag and was placed on my desk (which has become HIGHLY useful these days) and went through the process of preparing the write. This process is, mainly, going through various websites, looking at news sites, reading blogs, catching up on my daily online comic strips, etc.
I also opened a couple of chat clients and then took a shower.
After the shower I sat down and opened up about five different Word documents. One is the secretly working title and all its supporting files: characters, places, ideas, outline (this is a working document, well, most of these are actually working documents, they change as I go through them each day). And then I started re-reading what I’d written on the book so far.
There were some necessary, essential, changes that needed to occur to the story. Specifically, Alicia has been in public schools until moving to her new location. For reasons I am NOT going to go into, she is now in a private school. Part of the logic behind this was that I needed to give her a lot of latitude to do a lot of things that public schools with all of their regimentation does not allow.
I hate re-reading until I am done. Granted, I will do it. I will work through things. I will add here, touch-up there, massage in this area and that… but, for the most part… not my thing, really. However, because I didn’t feel like it was possible to move forward keeping my protagonist in a public school, and because I had some conceits that needed her to have access to different things that, quite frankly, public schools don’t allow, and because, honestly, it was easier to build additional conceits into the story with more latitude on how students go to class, study, have free time, etc., it was more a matter of needing things to fit together that weren’t, which is why I didn’t write on the story for a few days, until I’d discovered some elements that all had to be true and then I could move forward.
Today, I introduced a potential villain. Well, not really a villain. It is villain in the sense that a mouse is a villain in a house. Sure, you don’t want them there, but, really… what can the mouse do? If it were a rat, then it would be scare; but a mouse? Come on. Mouse…. That’s dead animal walking right there.
Anyway, I moved forward today and got cold around 4:00 p.m. when it was time to wrap up what I was working on and get ready for my paying gig… a.k.a. work.
Of course, by that point in the day I was looking for some example movie and television scripts I’d written for some classes so I could add them as demonstrations in a PowerPoint presentation I am doing tomorrow on a specific theory on writing. I couldn’t find them and then did once I got to work and started writing a script just so I had something in place.
The significance, though, of the number that is the title of this webpage is that Erin asked me how many words I would have written this week. I told her 30,000. It is doable. Not comfortably doable, but doable. It would get me pretty stinking close to the goal, though not quite to halfway. Anyway, I sat on that for a couple of days and then today, as I worked through the issues of the story, realized that, especially this week, I don’t have time for 30,000 words. On top of which, Erin did some looking into the gimmicks that are going on this month across the interwebby and realized that the main novel writing one encouraged about 1000 words a day. Lets do some math, shall we? 1000 x 30 = 30,000. Hrm. The word count I was willing to do in five days is the total word count people are encouraged to do in one month. Interesting.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done it before, but something was pointed out to me that I said, I was also familiar, VERY familiar with the story I was telling and as a result didn’t have to outline and plot and research (well, there was some researching and I did have to make some calls to people I didn’t, necessarily, want to speak to) and could just write. This, by the by, is cheap writing and is a part of the theory I am presenting on tomorrow. On Friday, in another class, I am presenting on one of my websites and the fact that, between now and when it is due, I am going to redo the site.
That should prove to be interesting as I am still trying to get my DreamWeaver to speak to my installations of software. Truth told, I may have to spoof the site and create webpages that look like what the site is meant to look like and then go back to the drawing board after the class is over. However, I am enjoying, quite a lot, the class and what I am learning. Just, also, proving to be a bit of a pill when it comes to completed projects through various programs.
However, after realizing my workload, this week, and the things that need to be accomplished between now and whenever, I have discovered, further, that I would be better served with a more realistic word count. Something, broken down per day, that is less than what Ian Fleming did with his Bond books (1000 words in the morning, another 1000 in the evening) but still aggressive enough to get to the goal line in December,
The revised goal: 5000 words in addition to what I started out at this morning. I told Erin to plan for a total of 16,000 words this week which leaves, for those not counting, an additional 74,000 words to my projected goal. And yes, I am intending to hit approximately 90,000 words on this book. I will cut back from there, but at this point, 90,000 is my current goal.
This is adjustable as I get into the nit and grit of the writing. However, the current goal is for the 90,000.
What all of this means is, like so many other things, I am going to move the play-by-play over to In Order to Write. I am thinking I will add a counter to help people see the progress on the first draft. Moreover, writing related things are now getting a new home over there. I did a book review on Tim Pratt’s latest novel. You can see it on that webpage. Pretty much, craft is being moved to a new location.
I think I will still mention what I am doing and some of the frustrations, but for the real information and the frontline info, you will have to frequent In Order to Write.
However, with all that said, I am excited to be moving forward and look forward to seeing where all of this goes and the evolution of my various sites.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Last week I wrote about what it means to blog. I’ve actually received some good feedback from that. Though, I think the entry is not totally complete. In that spirit, I add to the dialogue...
Specifically, when going about the internet and reading people’s blogs, there is often a sub-text to the variety of blogs that exist in the greater interwebbythingamajig. These blogs actually interconnect. Not literally, not directly; not in the sense that you can look to the left of my blog and see links to other websites, but rather, in the sense that there is a level of communication that exists between various authors of blogs.
That may not be clear.
Let’s look at books. You may not see it, but there is a dialogue that goes on between authors. This dialogue is what gives people the various genres in publishing. You get general fiction because a lot of people are writing in a very general way… these are, frequently, the books that do not have specific genre defining characteristics.
So, fantasy as a genre. This starts, really, with J.R.R. Tolkein and his Lord of the Rings series of books (to include The Hobbit). This is, effectively, the first fantasy novel, though there are others that also qualify in this genre from the same era; and caused people to look at the genre and write about it.
Writing a fantasy novel, in effect, is a response to Tolkein and other writers who have pioneered the field.
Science Fiction is also relatively new. Fantasy is an offshoot from Science Fiction and, in most bookstores, is filed among the science fiction.
Now, extend this to specific elements. Someone writes a story that touches upon using the American Old West as a setting for effective sword and sorcery rather than medieval Europe. Someone else reads this story and realizes the literary impact of the subject matter, and decides to write a novel along the same lines. One author writes in response to another author.
One more example:
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian writer. He wrote We. The book We inspired a lot of authors in the west to respond to the idea of Communism and its advancement through literary methods. These authors include George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm), Ayn Rand (Anthem), and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). In each instance, the author in question is writing a response to Zamiatan. They each had their own take on the same subject matter: Communism and Socialism is bad.
Blogs are a similar form of dialogue. Often, this dialogue is a lot closer to home and more direct, but the dialogue exists and is extant.
One of those means of conversation is in the distribution of memes through bloggers. A meme is a series of questions that cover information that is not publicly known about an individual. When tagged with a meme, the outcome is that you are meant to tell the world who tagged you, fill out the meme and post it, and then tag other bloggers with that same meme.
The outcome is a focused conversation on specific subject material.
However, in the blogging world, when you read someone else’s blog and find something they are writing about, you, as blogger, can respond to what another blogger wrote. One dialogue that has been going on, lately, is the secret homosexual characters in novels. This was spawned by J.K. Rowling announce on her U.S. book tour that Dumbledore was homosexual. Fans, of other authors, have asked whether or not they have characters that are homosexual but not in a way that is applicable directly to the plot or story.
The answer to this question, by at least one author, has generated a response in the news as well as among other bloggers.
Does it matter? Not really, personally, I don’t know that I would have read the Harry Potter series of books had I known about Dumbledore early on, personally, I wouldn’t have read the series of books and would have lost out on a well written, very creative, story. Dumbledore, in hindsight, doesn’t change the nature of the story nor does it cause me to rethink the series; his personal choices do not effect the super-story that is taking place with Harry at its center. Harry’s choices matter to me, not the supporting characters. Dumbledore, though prominent, was a supporting character.
That last paragraph was an addition to the dialogue that has been going on.
Lets say, however, that someone who has a website decides to talk about … oh … I don’t know… let’s say, relationships. For whatever reason, the five types of romantic communication strikes a chord with me. Without asking permission, I choose to offer my own take suggesting that a person read C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves and Eric Fromm’s book The Art of Loving as either supporting or dissenting to the original blog topic.
My writing does two things.
This is what dialogue is. When you speak to someone else, you expect them to respond. When a person does not respond, they either tacitly agree with you, or they disagree with you and choose not to respond, which then makes the first option true. A response, though, allows for ideas to be shared in such a way that other people can clarify what I am saying, append what I am saying, or contradict what I am saying.
One of the points to blogging is, specifically, to create conversations about different things. Writing is one of the topics I choose to discuss (In Order to Write); I also, when it is applicable, choose to discuss what I’ve written (Alicia Grey, Cassandra West, Clockwork Princess, and others); I also have other discussion sites going.
The blog, then, is a place where you can discuss something that you feel passionately about and want to share with other people. It is appropriate, when reading someone else's blog, to write a post on your own site in response to theirs, and even more appropriate when you link back to that site for emphasis or as a means of pointing people to where you got your idea. This is why I often link to the articles I am reading that launch me into an essay on politics or other things.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
So, went to bed last night and fell asleep. Which, for those that profess to know me, is not odd. I can, and do, fall asleep almost anywhere if I need to. Sleeping in my bed, in my house, with my wife, in our room makes the whole sleeping thing that much easier to accomplish.
And then, about two hours later I was awake. There were issues I was mentally dealing with that I didn’t know I was mentally dealing with, and I went to the bathroom, which is a perfectly logical thing to do, and spent some time on the porcelain throne that I learned, a few days ago, takes several days to make, the final process of which is about 24 hours in an oven that causes the glaze and paint to adhere, permanently, to the ceramic.
As a result of that newfound understand of the complexities of toilets, I was sitting on one at 2 a.m. wondering why I was wide awake AND why I was not tired… or, at least, didn’t exactly feel tired.
Eventually I went back to bed not seeing an significance to sitting on a toilet that took days to make and 24 hours in a kiln before it was cooled and shipped… or that I carried a load of toilets in a 53 foot trailer from San Antonio, TX to Los Angeles, CA with a flat tire on my trailer which was, I know now, very illegal and very dangerous and could’ve ended in catastrophe. I also learned, on that trip, that when you hit the Ports of Entry to California, the people in the booths don’t want to hear as many variations on toilet (royal throne, porcelain throne, WC, water closet, etc.) as you can come up with when they ask what you are carrying in your trailer.
None of that had anything to do with what was happening with me last night.
I went back to bed. Erin asked, “Are you okay?”
I said, “Yes.”
She rolled over and went back to sleep.
I continued to lay there. Staring at what I could imagine was the ceiling and trying to go back to sleep. At some point I started thinking about the various writing projects that I have going on and what I need to do to advance in some of my goals (a first draft of Alicia Grey by the end of December… you know, earn the Macbook) and realized that I had an entirely different opening set of scenes for Alicia Grey than I’d written back in the summer – and, I resisted getting up and writing them.
After all, Erin stayed up late the other night to study, I went to bed, it was not fun or nice; and though I realize that, to be healthy, we have to learn to sleep when we need to sleep and that sometimes being married and working and living lives and going to school, etc., means that we will, occasionally, have different sleeping patterns.
My desire, when it comes to writing, is to write during daylight hours. I want to be in the mode of writing when the sun is up and when other people are at work so that when other people are no longer at work I have the same latitude to play as they do, but, at 2:40 a.m. all I could think about was how Alicia Grey woke up the first day she was staring school at a) her first high school; and b) a new school in a new town.
The draft over the summer was similar. The chapters were similar; but, as I lay there resisting the urge to get up and spend who knew how long re-writing everything I’d written before I got married. As I lay there with some very clear imagery in my head and this voice telling me what was happening to this teenage girl, I realized that I’ve not, effectively, done anything with Alicia Grey since our wedding because, honestly, I didn’t know what to do.
The summer draft had a prologue that I might go back over, but, at the same time, outside of some interesting (maybe) background information about a character who I thought would make his entrance almost immediately and is now waiting in the wings for his call to come, that got set aside late last night as I finally succumbed to the need to be awake, in front of my computer, and with lights on and a word processor humming (metaphorically) in front of me.
I am not obsessed with humming electric typewriters; I just come across as though I might like them.
(note: my typewriter, which is currently in Colorado at my parents ranch, is completely manual and I would love to get something like it, but smaller, to play with.)
(note2: I prefer the hum of a laser printer sitting on a desk rather than the hum of an electric typewriter. That is just an aside.)
(note3: As I was writing one of these notes I discovered that Microsoft Word will create a smilie if given half a chance and the right key strokes. That was a weird discovery.)
Anyway, aside from all my asides, I sat down in the front room, pulled out the trusty, rusty Macbook, opened a new instance of Microsoft Word, and placed, at the top of the page, the series, working title, and chapter and proposed (working) title of the first chapter. I then adjusted line spacing. Made some other minor changes, grabbed my jump drive, plugged it in, saved the file, and began typing away.
There were no thoughts of time or sleep or anything else. I was a writing fool. I started off with the titles and moved right into the description of what I could clearly see happening in my mind. I grabbed a notebook Erin had sitting on the sofa and tore out a blank piece of paper. I grabbed her pen (which was sitting there since I didn’t want to go find mine) and sketched a quit diagram of the house. Rooms, bathrooms, closets, living room, kitchen, and garage. I continued to write.
Then I had her out of the house and the flow kept going.
She was on a bike riding to school.
She was at school. I had to draw the school. Granted, I drew a replica of the school I knew best, but I drew the school; made some mental changes, I kept writing. I added the second character (first she interacts with) into the mix. I realized a subplot I was working through, the other day, in my head, might still work and be just the right mix for that character. It was nice. The writing flowed, flows.
And then, a couple or three hours later and about 5000 words, I discovered that two of the characters were cousins. At this point I started to peter. My body began to ache. There was some soreness behind my eyes, which is never pleasant, and I was finding myself staring at a screen and realizing I could keep going, but really, that whole tired thing was catching up with me (finally) and I wanted to go back to bed.
The problem with bed, the last couple of nights, has been that I have been sleeping on my arms in a really weird way, moreover, my joints, all of them, seem to be aching in a way that is not comfortable; so, sleep… not exactly the most comfortable endeavor to find myself in. More, Erin told me today that I’ve been trying to sleep with a hand touching her, which, in her estimation, is a partial cause for the way I’ve been sleeping. Regardless, at 5-something in the morning (actually, it was 5:36 a.m. if you want me to be VERY specific) I was back in the room, Erin woke up long enough for me to say, “I had to rewrite the first part of Alicia Grey.”
She said, “You had to rewrite the first part of Alicia Grey.”
I said, “Yes,” and that ended the conversation.
I added another 1200-ish words this afternoon and plan to do a little more writing this evening in between tickets and phone calls and helping other co-workers with issues they are having.
Yes, in case you missed the diatribe, I’ve restarted my novel and taken it, in less than 24 hours, over halfway to where it was sitting before I stopped working on it the other day.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Blog: simply, a web log, or an online journal or diary.
A personal blog is a unique thing. The blog should be unique to you, your personality, your interests, the things you want (and maybe feel) shared with the world. This does not mean things that are very private; it does mean the things you are passionate about.
I have a variety of blogs all with different purposes.
For example, there is In Order to Write. This blog is my take on various things I am specifically thinking about when it comes to writing and my various writing projects. I created In Order to Write as a means of fostering the communication of writing to a wider audience – one of the three things I feel are necessary to improve as a writer.
I also run StandingWater Creations (or sw-c.com) as a means of allowing family and friends, who are interested, an avenue into my life. This was a result of a move I made to the east coast (New Hampshire) and the sudden realization that I might not be able to make it on my own, have a cellphone, and be able to keep in better contact. StandingWater Creations was repurposed from a freelance technical and professional writing business to host my thoughts and is hosted through Jack’s server. Even though the origins of the site were to make money, the outcome, and the purpose of the site is as a grounds for my thoughts, the things that are happening to me, a gateway to other websites, etc. that specifically allows me to keep in touch with family and friends. The website holds no other purpose (and it is an important one) than that.
Recently, I started another blog (no link provided … yet) with the express purpose of seeking freelance or contract opportunities to assist others in setting up, maintaining, creating content for, and troubleshooting a specific piece of web software that I’ve bothered to learn, rather well, as well as code and database hacks. The outcome are, specifically, articles that are designed to 1) educate, 2) inform, 3) assist, and 4) attract business. Websites have to have some kind of value added to them - regardless of if they are personal or professional.
All of this means is that I have created a series of sites (to include project specific websites) that are to be used for individual specific purposes. When I sit down to write for In Order to Write, I am not thinking about StandingWater Creations or other websites. I am, first, thinking about writing, my creative writing, fiction, and how I am approaching material both theoretically and practically; and second, what would best help me, in its current form, build the content of the website so that it promotes the three part agenda I have set forth.
When I sit down (pretty much five times a week) to write entries for StandingWater Creations, my personal blog, I am not always thinking about writing; but rather, I am considering what is happening in my life, what I want people to know is going on, some level of communication or dialogue, and finally, how best to express what I think I should be writing in an interesting and personal manner. This consists of books, movies, television shows, personal events, politics, religion, thoughts, actions, marriage, my life, my wife, and the sundry things happening to (and around) me.
Most especially, though, the blog is a way for me to express how I feel about things that happen. Take a political figure. Sure, I can just speak my mind if someone brings up that person and asks my opinion. The problem with that approach is it opens a conversation; and honestly, I don’t care, most of the time, to get into a discussion (read argument) about someone. Most often, when starting a political conversation, the person starting it is following an agenda and I have learned that just stating my beliefs or understanding of an issue or politician is a trap for them to try and refute or counter my points. As a result, sometimes I want to share, and I am willing to listen, but I am not willing to really discuss what is going on.
That is a part of my personality.
When it comes to movies, you know, I watch a lot of movies. This does not mean that I am interested, or feel it necessary, to review every movie that I watch. I think, frankly, that is a rather poor use of my time. With that said, I do think that some movies are popular enough, or I am (or was) excited enough by them to tell the world what I thought. Across the Universe was one of those movies. I liked it. I thought other people might like it. Erin’s mother, Lisa, wanted to know what I thought, and I was planning to write something about it, anyway. The outcome, like many other movies, is that I wrote a review of the movie.
At the same time you get the review, you get what I thought.
Even a review of movies attaches itself to a theme. The theme is storytelling. I like to tell stories. I like to have people tell me stories. The better the story, the more enchanted I am by it and the more I want to talk about it. Stories are told through movies, books, television, the internet, people’s lives, orally, traditionally, and by the choices we each make in our lives. This is important to me. I like story. I like story so much that, when I deal with it and I find something that moves me, I need to share it. Sharing is necessary for me. That is one reason I blog. It is an imperative. That is why I started, as an aside, In Order to Write.
Sometimes, something changes in my life. Two summers ago, I decided to try acting. I wrote a lot about the acting experience. You haven’t read about that (with the exception of Erin and me going up the canyon to be featured extras in a movie we can no longer find information about) because I am no longer (or not at this time) experimenting with that. My life, right now, consists of work, writing, school, work, writing, and… oh, I am forgetting something… yeah, school. Throw in Erin (wife) and the time we spend together and you pretty much get what I am doing. When that changes, I guarantee you I will be writing about it.
What all of this equates to is that you have to like and enjoy and have a passion about what you are writing. When writing a technical document, knowledge (and ability to write) are two factors in the subject material, but actually being interested helps the process. When writing a paper for school, actually being interested in the take on the assigned subject helps write about the subject. This is why people who make academia their life have a very specific focus. For some, it is James Joyce and food. For others it is Emily Post and solitude. For others it might be the statistical anomaly of animals in the Saharan tundra.
The point is not what but rather your take.
If you are writing about movies, what is it about the movies that interests you?If you are writing about politics, what is it about politics that interests you?
If you are writing about family, what is it about your family, or family, that interests you?
Waiting for something to come along to spark your interest in creating a blog entry or in writing (in general) is less important than simply getting out there and writing about what you have going on around you, about what you know.
Sure, sure, this is generic, grade school advice about writing. I’ve just spent a lot of words telling you to write what you know and to pursue topics that mean something to you; but, really, that is the secret to successful, consistent, persistent, blog entries – and it’s the secret to writing in general. Write what you know and the rest will take care of itself.
If you are interested in writing a blog and don’t know what to pull from, honestly, the first hundred entries may feel like pulling teeth; but as you write you build the ability to write; and as you receive feedback, either orally or through e-mail and comments, you actually build the confidence to write. There is no other way to go about it. You have to do it in order to succeed at blogging. Any gimmick or shortcut is ultimately going to lead to a website that goes static, stale, and eventually dies because you’ve done nothing with it.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I have some goals. I am going to share some of them.
The reason for this is because I feel like I need to make some things very public in order to move on with what I am working on in other areas of my life.
Goals:
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Once upon a time, fairy tales were a very different beast than they are now. Before the Brothers Grimm got their hands on them, before Disney decided to further tame them down, fairy tales had a folk beginning.
What a folk beginning means is that the stories, themselves, were told, over and over
again, by campfires, around hearths, in backrooms… what this amounts to is a way for adults to entertain adults.
And then the Grimm's got their hands on it. And Folklorists started editing what people were telling them. And the world was moving in the direction of stories for children (with a moral purpose) which allowed many other stories to be repurposed to become a moral tale for young children and Little Red Ridinghood goes from being a bawdy tale about a randy girl to a semi-moral tale about a young girl who is told to go straight to grandma's house and doesn't only to be eaten by a wolf and then saved (cut out of the wolfs stomach) by a benevolent woodsman.
I guess it gets to be very interesting, to me, that we look at fairy tales as ways of teaching children how to behave, and to offer the hope of dreams to those that need to have something to dream about. It is not a coincidence that Disney creates an entire line associated with their princess stories. These give little girls the idea that they can be princesses; but, think about it, if the stories originated in backrooms, around campfires, and as entertainment for adults, why are we recreating these stories for little children?
Does it matter?
There is not a lot of effort that has to go into finding examples of the stories that are
repurposed back into the adult environ. Magnates of adult entertainment discover that taking a child's tale and applying the same storytelling techniques, they can have a very real story with real impact in a very immoral way.
However, it is the immorality of the storytelling that is at imperative here. If a fairy tale takes its origins from something that is meant to entertain and arouse; and yet, outside of the original folk tellings of these tales, you get a relativistic moral story that is meant for digestion by children.
The dichotomy of moral and immoral actually proves to be very interesting. Especially
when you consider that some authors, today, share rather adult themes in stories and
books designed for rather young audiences. One, Neil Gaiman, has stated that he believes that you get out of a story what you bring into the story. If, as a young reader, you do not bring adult sensibilities to something that is determined adult in content, will not take away adult themes, but rather will take away a feeling of introduction to a realm they know nothing (more) about than when they started.
In other words, you only take away what you bring to a subject. I tend to agree with this. Especially as you consider the notion that love stories and stories dealing with sexual relations and feelings take on much greater meaning when considered against a marriage relationship (which also denotes a sexual relationship). Because of my religious and personal beliefs, the sexual relationship was not possible (for me) before marriage.
The point though, is that fairy tales were the humor and the bawd that are used, today, in humor, jokes, that touch upon the sexually explicit. Think about Red Ridinghood and her use (originally) of her sexuality to trick the wolf into letting her go. A more passive, and demure Ridinghood makes for a more appropriate moral story than one who is aware of and uses the adult themes the original stories were known for.
Story is important. The plot, point to point elements, of a story is equally important. You can take the same points, a girl is given advice, she leaves with the apparent intent of following that advice, then is tempted to go against the advice (in modern renditions of Ridinghood, go straight to grandma's house), after which tragedy strikes, and that same individual must use her intelligence and ingenuity to escape from the clutches of the trap that temptation drew her into – and, barring intelligence and ingenuity, the intervention of providence and a benevolent hand.
Sure, what I just wrote shouldn't strike anyone as anything more than an outline to a
story. But, in the right hands, that story could be moral or immoral. It is my theory that a moral person will write, inherently, a more story; and an immoral person will write, inherently, an immoral story. Regardless, though, a wide berth of stories can be told from this same basic plot structure that, ultimately, can produce a story appropriate for children with a moral outcome and meaning or an immoral outcome and a tantalizing meaning.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I woke up, more or less, with Erin this morning. She was getting ready for work and I was lying there on top of the covers since the heater was on and we get smoked out most mornings. I lay there trying to decide if I was really waking up and whether or not I wanted to be doing things with my day. One thing I always try to get to is writing, when I don’t have a host of errands to run and other things making calls on my time; and, I can thankfully say that I did get to some writing.
However, before the writing, which took most of the day to get to, my mind was cranking over and over again on a new thing that I am working on, in part, to augment the rest of my life.
When Erin and were married, one of the gifts we received, was a registered LLC (limited liability company). The idea of having the LLC was nice, but we didn’t really know what to do with it. There are some factors, such as where I work and what we plan on doing with our lives, that stopped us from using this generous gift.
Regardless, for some weeks now I’ve been considering registering the domain name associated with the name of the LLC; but registering the name doesn’t immediately mean there is anything to do with the name or the site. I installed a WordPress blog in there because, quite frankly, I like WordPress and find it to be a pretty dynamic piece of software.
Which returns us back to my morning: as I woke to a flood of information that, quite honestly, I cannot even begin to tell where it comes from.
However, it has led to a large portion of the day being spent in outlining a model I would like to follow that will allow me to use my interest in, and understanding of, WordPress to potentially generate some money.
While this was going on I decided to go through the movies from Blockbuster Online that we had sitting around, two of which were specifically movies I wanted to see, one of which was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and decided to watch it. The movie wasn’t great, but I didn’t mind it either. It is, essentially, a farscial romp through the universe as you follow Arthur Dent as he deals with the destruction of his house (first) and the destruction of the earth (second) while, personally, mourning the loss of his girlfriend Trillian. He, pretty much, is having one nearly completely totally bad day. And to think, when he woke up in the morning, he thought he was one of the smartest creatures on earth only to learn that dolphins and mice were, by far, much smarter.
Anywho, as soon as I’d updated the blog, once, got a good idea of where I wanted the new website (and potential freelance jobs) to go and how we (by this Erin and I – partnership, baby) would handle our own terms of service, as well as a list of topics to write as article, well… you know, I had WordPress’s comments and the creative writing professor’s comments on the Cassandra West story to consider and read through (the latter again) to discover that Erin wrote a lot more (overall) while the professor and she actually agreed on just about every single major point. The one that, I think, was most interesting was where I changed the nature of speaking for a character with the intent of going back, eventually, and changing it throughout the story only to have the professor tell me he didn’t like the sequence, and Erin tell me that she only started liking it when the way that character spoke changed to how I want him to sound.
She also wants me to describe him.
Sometimes, I don’t get this whole, describe your characters thing. I mean, I can see what the character looks like, how they move, what they talk like… sometimes, as in this characters case, I have to play around with it for a bit to get to where they are communicating properly, but, I’ve got that. I just don’t get, sometimes, why, in the middle of some very nice writing, I have to actually think about what the protagonist or POV character is seeing when they see the character I am meant to describe.
Of course, on a side note, and not too much side at that, I did have to speak to Erin about how women describe women because, as a man, that was how I was describing them. Which, in turn, comes off way to … erm … manly. Yeah. Manly. That word works.
Anyway, did a bout of writing, the other day, where I delved into the beautiful world of introducing a character by walking them through some scenes (and, yes, I am still talking Cassandra West here) where you introduce where a character comes from and how he/she/it/him/her/they/them/there end up wherever they end up. Which proved to be interesting. In one iteration of this story I had her an orphan. In this, and the first, iteration she is the daughter of a wealthy man. This one has her as a (potentially) abused daughter… abused is a bad word… hrm… let’s say overly protected. Her father went through a lot to get her.
Point being, in all of this, I am progressing, slowly, and Alicia Grey really is not going to be shared with anyone until I have my draft done.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I turned in a draft (not the first, not the best) of the first Cassandra West story and got some comments back. The outcome isn’t that I sat down with the multiple drafts of the story and started reworking forward from the beginning. I want elements from all three drafts into what I am currently working on. On top of that, I went and picked up Erin’s map and my 1800’s USA map. It is amazing to see how much land we acquired from Mexico.
What all of this means is:
a) I did get back into the mode of writing but;
b) I didn’t get to any of the things that needed to be done by me today.
Erin put the new toilet seat on the toilet. That was kind of cool. I was meant to do it last Saturday and last Sunday and Tuesday and… well, if I was around I was supposed to do it. I didn’t. She did.
In fact, I didn’t get out of bed until my mother called for help with her computer and printer. Then I realized the time. Jumped out of bed and started working my way around the apartment as I attempted to assist my mom in fixing her computer/printer.
I got on the computer.
Erin called and told me she was coming by.
I asked how soon.
She gave me an estimate.
I got in the shower and shaved.
She showed up.
We kissed, she got some tickets and left.
I went and got the maps, came home, then dug out my balance ball so I could sit on it while working on writing and continued to write.
Not too exciting an update.
But, I am advancing forward. March of the penguins, or this writer, and all that.
More tomorrow.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
What does that mean?
Well, quickly, it means that I ascribe to the tenets the church puts forward. I believe the Book of Mormon is revelation from God. And I believe we are led by a Prophet who receives revelation from God.
But, being a member of this faith, and when I live in Utah, does this mean that being LDS answers who I am. Does my faith define who I am and what I do?
There are reasons I bring this up is not that I don’t think these are important questions; but rather, do these questions have a need to find answers when I sit down and write one of many different things: fiction, personal essays, poetry, television, movies.
Those are examples, but I think the examples are pertinent to the questions I am asking. If I, as a member of the LDS church, decide to write fiction within that environment, is it necessary to explore what it means to be LDS. Let me give an example:
Dean Hughes is an LDS author. He is also a professor on campus. He wrote a series of books, that I have read, titled The Children of the Promise where we follow a family who sends their sons and daughters off to serve, in various capacities, during World War II. Throughout the series, Hughes writes his characters dealing with a) their religion, and b) the consequences of the world at war and the choices made before the World War II. All of this deals with each individuals faith in God and willingness to be faithful in the LDS church.
I understand the desire to find meaning in things. There is meaning in the trials and joys we have in life, in general. There is meaning in getting married. There is meaning in having families. There is meaning in finding religion, or losing it. There is meaning in so many things that, if we are set upon doing it, we can get lost in looking for what that meaning is.
What all of this comes down to, for me, is that we, as members of the LDS church, spend way too much time talking about what it means to be members of the LDS church. We are concerned with defining a culture and then, once defined, exploiting that culture for entertainment purposes. One of the problems with LDS cinema is not that we are producing movies, but that we are producing movies that go over the same definition of who we are again and again and again. The exceptions, mostly the ones by Richard Dutcher don’t really choose to explore something else, or delve in to realms where being LDS is a part of the character rather than a reason for what is happening.
I realize that suggesting we change the way we approach our cultural entertainment, and the answers to prevailing questions: like: Who am I? or What am I? For many people, this is a part of the fiction we create, this is how we explore the cultural phenomenon that is Mormonism or being members of the LDS faith. And yet, I think that by creating this question, and it is artificial, we eliminate many opportunities that we have to explore other themes that might come up.
What is it like to be white in South Africa?
What is it like to be sober and clean in East L.A?
What is it like to find a new life and new opportunities?
Granted, this is not even close to what can be accomplished in writing or in entertainment within our culture. And yes, I believe that being LDS is being a part of a culture, living in Utah around other members of the church is being a part of a much larger culture. Yet, we don’t have to explore that culture to tell good stories. We can explore other cultures, other genres, and then allow our culture to show up as we write; to allow us to explore themes like racism or ageism or cultural shock or growth or failure in so many different ways.
We, as members of the church, as creative members of the church, have the opportunity to allow morality to be the guide in creating fiction and we don’t do that. We are stuck with what it means to be LDS that we forget that there is no single, uniform, universal answer to that question. What it means to me is not the same thing as other people. I approach my religion and my faith very differently. Even though I approach is differently, though, I find that I discover similar outcomes as the people around me.
Writing about what makes me different doesn’t make me a better writer; rather, it has me explore the same question everyone else (seems to be) is writing, and that is what I would love to see the culture and the environment and the community move away from.
You can’t answer the question; you won’t come up with a satisfactory answer; explore a different topic – but write in a way that moral fiction is produced that may use members of the church.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
For those that keep track, or care, I've been updating In Order to Write. Today's update is on What Ifs???.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West