Stranger than Fiction (duh na nuh nah nuh nah nuh nah)

Doesn't happen every day, but it happens enough that we should have a plan.  A plan to pick out certain qualities or make outlandish assumptions; an idea of what to look for just in case we find ourselves sitting opposite a stranger with nowhere to fix our eyes  - that is - but straight at them.

Yo, Dawg, give Grumpy his
Royale With Cheese

For me, this strange but often inevitable peculiarity happens when I am lucky to get a seat on the morning train, but only if that seat falls in the strange section of seats that face each other.  What is with that?  Am I the only one that finds these arrangements odd?  Does Southwest Airlines still have these bucket-to-bucket arrangements?  Okay, I get that these seats are pretty awesome when you are sitting opposite your g-f or b-f, but even then you have nowhere to put your feet but between the dirt-ridden bottoms of the barking dogs kicked-out towards you.  And when it is a stranger - well you hope you are wearing corduroy or denim so when your calves rub against each other, you somehow have the upper hand. 

What is Love?

We know what it is, though we may not know exactly where it starts and where, if at all, it ends. There have been countless books, movies with Matthew McConaughey, poems, and Hallmark cards that try to elicit the feeling or tell us what exactly love is. But what is it to you (using my NY accent here)? Love it or not, I’m trying to identify my thoughts on the matter, so that I can give it a fair shot in my book. How do you describe something that is so…so…I’m in trouble. It is indescribable, and that is not a good thing. Or is it? 

Is this a kissing movie?

To me, and hopefully my characters share some aspect of this thought, love pushes and pulls, it is an infinite paradox. It is universal and personal; indefinable and recognizable. It is shared and horded. It is emotional and physical, and sometimes everywhere in between. It drives us to make stupid and wonderful decisions. Love causes heartache and butterflies, it grows and fades. It’s an excuse for the irrational, a wakeup call to the calculated. 

Show and Don't Tell

Show, don't tell.  

True love is the greatest thing in the world...Except for a nice MLT. A mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. 

It's a beginning writer's mantra.  Perhaps, it is even an apt collection of words to tattoo across the top of a novice scribbler's hand.  Do not tell the reader that your character started to feel old, instead show them.  

Let's draw on personal experience, shall we?

What if?

Writers use prompts to rev up their arguably creative minds.  I am partial to “What If?” (A. Bernays and P. Painter), at least when I am in the prompting mood.  The prompts often remind me of childhood, when “what if?” curiosity occurred organically and often.  As kids, we didn’t need a book to prompt us; creativity and exploration were simply how we grew up. But in adulthood, I wonder how often do we ask what if?

What if I build
in 6x6 plots?

 

Imagine if we had a log of our childhood what ifs!  I can remember a few of mine:

What if I could laugh like Eddie Murphy? That would be rad.

What if I drink an entire pot of coffee? I can play Sim City all night.

What if I touch my thumb to the glowing cigarette lighter in my sister’s kick-ass Suzuki?  I will get burned and my family will send me to school on the short bus.

Perhaps I will put the book aside, and just force myself to ask what if more often.  What if I practice laughing like Eddie Murphy every day for a month?  

Revision is a Four-Letter Word Disguised as an Eight-Letter Word

I fear that I may have self-helped myself beyond help, if that makes any sense.  For the first time, I have reached the revision stage of writing a novel.  I have loaded up on resources so that I am educated on the art before I crawl down the red inky path.  Some of my resources have been very helpful, others are downright discouraging.  Where one author suggests that revision is like cutting my own hair (let’s call this author "Mr. Helpful"), another essentially suggests that I am an amateurish moron and should cut everything I have  written (let’s call this author "Mr. Dick").  For a short list of books that hypothetically could be the source of Richard (for long), perhaps look at the Creative Writing Toolkit.

I suppose you think
this an inefficient use of words?

I like Mr. Helpful’s analogy, and I am unashamed to adopt it.  I will clip away at my writings, making sure not to cut so much off in a given chapter so that I am forced to lop off other areas that already look fabulous (I initially wrote Fab, but edited it out).  In fact, I may even leave the ending of the book abnormally long to create a mystical mullet novel.  Feast on that Mr. Dick.  

One question for you Mr. Dick, if you are so good at revising and publishing novels, why are you writing a self-help book on the subject?  True, I did buy it, but shouldn't you be writing the next Harry Potter or Twilight series?  Tis what I thoughteded! (these are all things that prevent a story from being published – oh yea, watch this.  Bam, I’m on a blog.)