The joy of writing

I didn't go to the yoga class tonight. That's the bad news. I should've gone to yoga class because it would have been good for me with all that inner peace and whatnot. But I didn't go. However, I have a good reason, not really a good reason in the sense that it would get me out of work or jury duty or a midterm. But a good reason in the sense that it was good for me. A step forward. Or is it a step backward? Anyway. . . I was writing and I lost track of the time. I can't remember when that happened to me last. Lately, it seems as though I write with some arbitrary temporal quota. I must write for two hours today. I look at the clock. Ten minutes. Clock. Fifteen minutes. Clock. Are you shittin' me? Close enough. But today I didn't look at the clock once. I just wrote and wrote and wrote. The story is lame and cheesy and unabashedly not important, and I love writing it. It's fun. I think I may have been smiling while writing. Not pacing around scowling and talking to myself. Smiling. I like writing. Who knew?

I'm grateful for being lame and cheesy and unabashedly not important (20).

Preemptive strike

Normally, I wait until the end of the day to post. But tonight we have an epic Halo 3 gathering planned, so I figure I'll do a quick post now in case I'm not up to it later. Not long ago, I ran across Neil Gaiman's blog. I had heard of his writing, but had never read any of it before. But I enjoyed his blog, so I picked up a copy of Stardust, which was recently made into a movie.

So far I'm enjoying it. Though it seems to spit all over some of the more widespread conventions of writing. First off, I'm 42 pages into it, and I don't think I've really gotten to the plot yet. Actually, the protagonist doesn't even show up until page 31. Taking this much time to build up to the plot might not be a big deal in the daunting acreage that is Tolstoy or Proust or, you know, one of those authors that write really long books. But this book comes in at under 250 pages. Usually, when I've read nearly a sixth of the book, I expect to have gotten to the plot or at least to have some inkling as to what the plot will be. But it's still been a decent read.

Second off (hmm, second off doesn't sound right, but I started off with first off and if I use something else I'll have some parallelism issues, stupid English language), he uses a lot of adverbs. If you ever go to a gathering of writers, I would guess that probably 17 out of 18 of them would tell you that you should avoid adverbs whenever possible. This comes from the fact that Stephen King wrote a very good book, On Writing, that every up-and-coming-would-be writer has read because, after all, it is a very good book. In this book, King makes the argument that adverbs should be avoided because more often than not the image the adverb conveys is already implied in the context. Which is a good point. For instance: "He ran quickly." Is the 'quickly' necessary here? Isn't quickness something to be expected of someone running? Etc., etc., etc. . . But Stardust is full of adverbs. If you were allergic to adverbs even the tiniest bit, reading this book might put you in the hospital.

Third off, Gaiman uses ambiguous descriptions like "Her lips were red and perfectly shaped. . ." What do perfectly shaped lips look like? Are they big ol' Angelina Jolie lips or little bitty not Angelina Jolie lips? The generally accepted convention is that if you're describing something, it should actually evoke a clear image of that something.

But I'm not criticizing. I may be praising Gaiman, actually. He's a successful writer and has become one by creating his own style. I admire that. It's something that has been lacking in every gathering of writers I've ever encountered. They will read that Stephen King says to avoid adverbs, and so they avoid adverbs. This other source says not to use vague words like beautiful or ugly, and so they avoid those words. Someone declares, You must avoid passive voice, and hoards of writers do what they can to find avoidance of the use of a passive voice. But I never got the feeling that any of them really stopped to think about why or even if these things should be done. Writing is such a personal thing that I think it's silly to adopt or avoid techniques based solely on what other writers are doing. It's a good reminder for me though. I always forget that. Write for yourself first, then see what people think of it. (I kind of stole that bit from King's claim that the first draft should be written with the door closed and the following drafts should be written with the door open. Isn't it strange how something can seem both ironic and hypocritical at the same time?)

I'm grateful for a night promising sticky grenades, head shots, and exploding warthogs (20).

Professional writers?

Has anyone watched Saturday Night Live recently? It's bad. Very, very bad. I watched until partway through the Weekend Update. I had to stop watching when they brought out the kid from Good Burger. He was dressed up like an old lady and doing that bit about how women use Halloween as an excuse to dress up like whores (sexy nurse, sexy kitten, etc.). Am I the only one who has heard that bit from at least three comedians and seen it on at least five shows? I turned off the TV then.

The funniest thing about the show happened a little before the aforementioned disaster. For those of you who haven't heard, The Writers Guild of America, the union for TV and movie writers, is about to go on strike. To show its support for the union, SNL started off Weekend Update with a guy pretending to be a big TV executive. The sketch was very high school, i.e. not clever, not funny. So they had him come out and talk about how TV execs. only make like 20 million a year so they couldn't possibly afford to pay writers any more than the 200,000 average salary that they get now. He then talked about how DVDs cost sixty cents to make and then when they sell them for twenty dollars they end up losing money. Then he went on to say that if they paid the writers more, he wouldn't be able to line his pool with gold. Really witty stuff.

I was slightly offended by this bit, actually. A half-assed, most-likely oversimplified, unfunny parody during a comedy show. Up until this sketch, I had been on the side of the union. As a writer, I'm all for paying writers obscene amounts of money. But everything about this TV exec. satire had me rethinking my position. That is, until I recognized the mindboggling, perfect but undoubtedly unintentional brilliance of the sketch. Pay attention now because I think you'll like this next part. What I saw last night was not just a sketch designed to get people to support the Hollywood writers' campaign for more money. What I saw last night was a poorly written sketch designed to get people to support the Hollywood writers' campaign for more money. That's Mark Twain brilliant right there.

I've come up with a compromise: Management will agree to pay the writers more if the writers will agree to stop sucking so much (I'm looking at you, writers of almost every show I loved last season but now suffer through this season).

I'm grateful for the few remaining good shows (20).

A runner's guide to writing

I've been writing a lot of words lately. Maybe bad words. I'm not letting myself go back to agonize check over what I've written until I've finished with the project. I've started a little bit early for NaNoWriMo with the hopes that by the time November comes around I'll be in the proper mindset for such an undertaking. I've also begun working on a new novel. I'm not giving up on the one I had been working on. It's just that she and I have not been getting along so well lately, and we both need some space.

Anyway, this new novel I'm working on is taking shape a lot quicker than anything I've written recently. I've only been working on it for a few days, and it already has more pages than I sometimes write in a few weeks. I think this is in part due to the fact that I've stolen a trick I use while running - I lie to myself.

When running, it's sometimes difficult to stay motivated to keep going. Often the body reacts negatively. "Why are we doing this?" It might ask. "We should stop. We're missing the Price is Right."

I try to keep my body at bay by picking out some arbitrary benchmark. "We'll stop when we get to the next corner," or "We'll go until the end of this song," or "Let's at least keep at it until we start sweating." Then, once I've reached that benchmark and my body is woooooohoooooooing I string it along a bit more. "Well, since we've made it this far, let's see if we can make it to the school just down the street."

"Oh, all right."

I've been doing that with my writing. I sit down and think, "I'm going to write 500 words." Then, once I reach 500 words I say, "Just another hundred." And I keep justanotherhundreding my way to two or three thousand words in a sitting. Which for me is really good.

Now if only I were confident that the writing was good as well. . .

I'm grateful for creamy peanut butter (20).