Category Archives: Musings

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You Can’t Choose

Here’s an impossible choice for the unpublished fiction writer–as impossible as choosing between your children (or your animals if you have no children). Pick one:

Option 1: A phone call from your dream agent, where she/he gushes about your book like a crazed fangirl/boy then immediately offers a twenty book deal. Followed by another phone call to say your book just sold to the biggest publisher. Followed by another phone call: movie deal.

Option 2: Your main characters show up at your door in the flesh, demanding to know how you know so much about them and their world. Think Sam and Dean Winchester showing up at Carver Edlund’s door if you’re a Supernatural fan.

Don’t bother trying to choose. I’ve already told you it’s impossible.

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Crashdown

I sat next to my loaded backpack on the top of a picnic table with my feet resting on the seat, in a garden courtyard surrounded by historic buildings that crowded the grandfather oak tree with branches covering the sky on my first day of college. I had found a sanctuary. A reprieve in which to breathe. Something from high in the tree came crashing through those layers of branches and slammed against the mossy roots. A squirrel. It seized, shuddered, and stilled. I had never felt so grown-up, and so alone.

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Haunted by The Noose

Not long ago, I kept waking up in the morning with “The Noose” by A Perfect Circle in my head. Here, check it out:

Although I haven’t heard it in years, this song would play in my head all day until I finally gave in and listened to it. It’s a great song. I wasn’t sure why it suddenly became so ubiquitous (that’s for you, Debra), but I didn’t really question it.

A day or so later, I saw what it was doing. It was thawing out huge pieces of the beginning of my next book that must have been cryogenically frozen in my brain. The plot has always been there, but the tone and certain details weren’t. And now they are. It’s like someone just turned the lights on the stage. And I’m not ready to write that book yet, so it’s a bit distracting.

I jotted some notes, and the song left.

Why does this happen? Why this song? Why this scene from the book I haven’t started yet? Sometimes music is connected to my writing in such a weird way–certain songs create the atmosphere in which the story can live. Like the background music to a movie, or the blend of water and oxygen in a fish tank. I have the actors and their lines, I have the fish and the plastic scuba diver. This song comes from nowhere, sets itself up in my brain, and now I have an aquarium for my fish.*

How does music affect your writing?

*In metaphor only. Fish belong in the sea. :)

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Can a Writer Ever Relax?

Can a writer sleep without dreaming dialogue of a current work in progress?

Can a writer enjoy a sunset without thinking of different ways to describe it in words?

Can a writer listen to a song without imagining which scene of the work in progress it would best fit into?

Can a writer concentrate on a day job without thinking when can I go home and write when can I go home and write when can I go home and write?

Can a writer go anywhere without a laptop, smartphone, or notebook and pen?

Can a writer read a published novel written by another writer without noticing every unnecessary adverb, every extraneous dialogue tag, every POV slip, every echoed word, and every cliché?

Can a writer watch a movie without judging which actor would best play the hero?

Can a writer ever stop writing?

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.”
–Lord Byron

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They Make Us Look Alien

This remote wildlife camera footage from Canada’s Banff National Park is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while.

The humans who pass by are such a shocking contrast to everything else, with their helmets, bikes, gear, and skis. We like to think we own the planet, that our big brains allow us to conquer the elements, but when I see something like this, all I see is our fragility.

Has our advancement made us fragile? Or have we always been?

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What Do You Daydream About at Work?

What do you daydream about at work?

First, answer the question in the comments. When you’re done, read what prompted this (below). Sometimes my random time-wasting WordPress comment clicking really pays off and I find a really great post.

There’s a quotation that says character is how you behave when people aren’t watching you. I’d like to add a corollary to that that says passion is what you think about when you are at work.

For most people, it’s not work, regardless of how passionate they declare themselves to be.

-thefoolfoldshisarms

Now email all the people in your life and ask them. Don’t tell them the reason for your question. Just ask. What do you daydream about at work?