What's New - Week of April 10, 2011

Sunday night and it’s blogging time. The content of this one is a bit different than originally planned.

Activities

More editing of Lens Flare this week, where I spent most of my writing time this week. As I go through, I’m using Scrivener’s highlighting tools to call out weak plot points and other concerns so as not to interrupt the flow of the editing process. With me, just like with writing, I get into a rhythm with editing and don’t like to pause to research or puzzle over a flaw in the storyline ... rather, I’d much prefer calling it out in with a quick highlight and note about what’s bugging about that particular area and continue on. Anyway, I’m pleased that I’m still enjoying the story and the moment I’m accumulating here will get me past the place I stopped at without holding me back.

I mentioned last time that occasionally, a story just starts forming in my head and I have to take a time out to write up what’s distracting me to get it out of the way. It could be as simple as a single line of dialog or an observation. This week, quite out of the blue, the beginnings of a short story crept out from my subconscious and as I wrote it down, I was surprised to see how fully-formed it was words just tumbled out of my brain. Here it is, in its entirety:

I first met Henry Dimple in the fall of 1921, a man of difficult temperament and an apparent lack of cultural breeding of any sort. One afternoon, I wandered into Morey's Deli over on East 53rd and seated myself at the rear table, my back facing the rest of the patrons. I only desired one thing that afternoon and that was a private place where I could collect my thoughts and have a bite to eat. As luck would have it, the bistro wasn't particular crowded and within a few moments of my arrival, a red-headed waitress, two pencils stuck in her beehive hairdo, hurried over and in an exasperated voice, asked me what I wanted to eat.

"Just a bowl of chicken noodle soup, my dear," I replied pleasantly enough.

She scribbled my order down on her pad and walked apace behind the counter to add my request to the queue. I watched her for a moment or two more, then turned my attention to the daily newspaper someone kindly left behind.

Less than a minute later, as I browsed the business section of the paper, a gentleman sitting behind me leaned over to me and grunted, "Hey, are you done with that yet?" and pointed at the newspaper in my hands.

I chose to ignore him and kept reading, hoping my frank rudeness would send him away. Instead, he stared, his beady brown eyes boring holes into the back of my head and no doubt at the same headlines I was reading. To say the matter was unsettling would be underestimating my pique.

"May I help you?" I said, turning sharply and glaring with what I hoped would be sufficient menace.

If the cad felt any remorse about barging in on a stranger's personal space, he didn't give any evidence of it. Instead, he reached out and touched the corner of the paper and waited for me to react. I didn't disappoint him.

"See here," I exclaimed, withdrawing the newspaper from his grasp. "Would you be mind enough to leave me to my affairs? How would you like it if I just reached over and touched your coffee cup over there?"

I pointed at the cup for effect, then turned around to begin reading again. The waitress stopped at my table to leave a glass of water, then scurried off to wait on some new arrivals. I took a moment to get a good look at my tormentor under the guise of watching the waitress. Just as I expected, he fit the image of a common criminal: sunken eyes, weak chin, nervous twitch in the corner of his mouth.

"Are you done with that paper yet?" he asked again, a rising urgency in his voice. Persistence walked closely with this man.

I have no clue where this came from, mind you. The name “Henry Dimple” - say what now??? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I mean, this isn’t my style of writing by any stretch, but I’m just happy to be the conduit in this case. I haven’t been reading any older short fiction as of late, so i’m wondering what the source was. Another thing I’m wondering is where will this story go from here. Right now, It’s best to leave this one to simmer for a while (perhaps indefinitely).

Besides these beginnings of a story, two other ideas, both taken from news, popped in my head. Both of them have potential as great screenplays - one is a sci-fi morality play and the other is a tale of justice long denied. I don’t want to go into more detail than this, but the lesson here is ideas can come from anywhere, so it pays to keep your eyes and ears open. In cases like this, I don’t do anything more than snapshot the related web page and write up a 1-3 sentence paragraph so I remember what this was about later.

Another Work-in-Progress

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago a short story that I wrote and needs editing called “Breathe.” I wrote this several months ago over a couple month period. It’s a retrospective by one man on his life as a teenager and how a single mistake had such far-reaching consequences and affected him so profoundly that he really never was able to recover. The theme here is universal: a single decision can have an unexpected (and undesired) impact.

The story begins like this:

At sixteen, I could swim like an Olympian. This didn't happen as a result of some cosmic accident of genetic predisposition or preternatural talent passed on to me by ancient aquatic ancestors. My grandparents beached themselves on New York's gentle shores under the watchful gaze of Lady Liberty and her offer of welcome that so many immigrants took quite literally. While the roads weren't paved with the promised gold of prosperity, their new lives turned out better than they expected their future would if they stayed in those Mediterranean fishing villages. From my grandparents’ time to my own, the inevitable march of familial sprawl swept us onto the jungle green grass of the suburbs and all that particular nirvana offered.

I may want to hold off publishing this on my blog, but instead submit this as a content entry sometime in the future.

The Trick of Aphorisms for Writers

Or if you prefer, shorthand guidance for beginning writers and how it’s somewhat misleading.

You’ve heard it all before:

• Show, don’t tell
• Never use adverbs
• Limit adjectives
• Never start a story with dialog
• Never use variances on the infinitive “to be”
• Use a more common word rather than a more “fancy” one when you can
• Don’t end a sentence with a preposition
• Etc.

With such strict “rules” (as they seem to be), it’s a wonder that anyone writes at all. Think about it: we have all these lovely words in English at our disposal and we’re told not to use about half of them!

Okay, perhaps it’s not so bad. The aforementioned writer friend (the crap-cutter from the previous post) seemed to be a slave to these aphorisms, God love him, so when he pulled out his red pen to edit a peer’s work, he’d slash and burn following the above guidance, often turning the piece into a sea of blood. When I would ask him what the story was about he had edited so liberally, he couldn’t answer: simply put, he was so intent on finding fault based on the above rules that he failed to read the story!

It’s easy to fall into the trap of no longer remembering how to read for content once you’ve written (and critiqued) a lot of work. The other other trap is to treat the above guidelines as hard and fast rules. I used to have a T-shirt that read: “Rule #1: there are no rules.” Perhaps that’s a bit too nihilistic. How about “There are exceptions to every rule” or “Rules are meant to be broken?”

So when do you break the rules then? It’s probably wise to read many works by your favorite authors - preferably those who’ve been published in the last 10 years or so - to see what the trends are in popular fiction (presuming you’re writing fiction ... if not, then you have a whole bunch of other rules I can’t help you with ... see what I did there with the preposition?). If you see the so-called rules being broken by these authors, then it’s safe to say you can do under similar circumstances in moderation and judiciously. After all, writing is all about communicating without boring your reader to death and if writing is stilt, yet conforming with all the rules, then you’ve failed, plain and simple.

More importantly: don’t forget how to ENJOY reading.

Next Time

Here are a few topics for next post (repeated from last time):

• Continuing discussion on my works-in-progress
• Where do ideas come from
• Contests

Until then, have a great week!

Michael