Where Does The Time Go?

I had hoped to be at least halfway through revising one of my novels this month. I haven't started yet. Where did that month go?

Well, let's see.

Forty hours of every week go to work. Can't really do much about that right now. Must eat, pay mortgage and buy writing supplies so must work.

Some goes to housework and yard work. Although, I certainly don't spend a lot of time on either. Don't want to end up on one of those hoarder shows. Don't want to get run out of the neighborhood. So must do housework and yard work.

Some goes to dance class and working out. Dance class seems to help keep me sane (right up there with writing) and is great exercise. Working out good for mind, body and spirit. Must do these things.

Some--way too little, actually--is spent with friends. Extremely good for mind and spirit. Will not give this up.

But a disproportionate amount of time goes to--wait for it--television and Facebook. Summer used to be the wasteland time of TV. Nothing but reruns and game shows. Easily ignored. But now? I have more shows scheduled for the DVR than ever. Burn Notice, True Blood, In Plain Sight, Leverage are all great storytelling. And they're well acted. More are due to start. Facebook is a way to stay in touch with friends. But there's a lot of useless distraction as well. Games are a biggie. But the "updates" from artists and organizations that you "like" can overwhelm, too. And there are friends who seem to want me to know way more about their day than I need to. The bigger problem is that many of these superposter friends are entertaining about it.

In any case, I won't be on Facebook much this summer. If we're neighbors or friends in games, don't expect me to send you any gifts. I won't be poking you back. It's not that I don't want to be friends. Please email or call me and we can get together. But I'm not going to check in to see what anyone had for breakfast. Even if it sounds fabulous and you've included the recipe which I would love to try.

The DVR will serve its purpose and record the shows I just can't bear to miss so I can watch them at a time I wouldn't be writing anyway. Or as a treat for making a particular goal.

I'll keep you posted on how it works out. But probably not as a FB status update.

Do It Now!

You've probably read elsewhere that instead of being nervous about dancing on stage, I had a blast. Loved being onstage, backstage, the whole experience of being in the theater. The thing is, I've dreamed about performing in some capacity since I was three years old and saw my first Shirley Temple movie. Subsequent movies, television variety shows and live theater only enforced those dreams. But, with the exception of my high school senior class play, I never did anything about it.

Why?

Well, there was school to finish, money to earn, weight to lose--you name it. Writing, which often took a back seat if not the trunk, also nudged any kind of performance out of the way.

Shame that. Here was something I thought I might enjoy that I didn't pursue. At all. For decades.

So what have you always wanted to try? That secret wish you never told anyone about? Maybe you never even fully admitted it to yourself.

Whatever it is, do it. Do it now. Don't wait. Why would you postpone what might be a great joy in your life?

Don't wait.

Not until the kids get older.
Not until things "settle down" in your life.
Not until you lose that 10 pounds.
Not until you have more money.
Not because you think you might embarrass yourself.
Not for anything.

Do it now.

You don't have to take a $200.00 art class if you want to paint. Pick up some supplies at Michael's or Hobby Lobby or even Walmart and get a book or a video.

You don't have to buy a $500.00 laptop if you want to write. A 10 cent notebook and a pen do just fine.

You can get used shoes if you want to learn to dance.

Same with learning an instrument. Check for used items online or at your local music shop.

There are free or cheap classes online for almost anything you want to learn. There may be a Parks & Rec program or community outreach classes from a local college.

But don't wait. Do it now.

Loving/Hating CWC

The group gave me their feedback on MMG last night.

The comments were fabulous. Really good suggestions all the way around. I was told to leave several scenes as is--which is always nice to hear. Love that.

There is quite a bit that needs work. Maybe not a lot of work, but work nonetheless. One of the suggestions--that I agree with, btw--is that the main narrative needs to change from 1st to 3rd person. And other sections that are in 3rd person need to switch to 1st. Again, I agree. But hate that. Lots of work to get it right.

I don't want to wait a long time to start this next revision. And the gang agreed. "Jump in" seemed to be the consensus. Love that.

But that means I'll have to shelve what I'd planned to do next. Only mildly dislike that, truth be told.

AND they gave me a pass on having to submit anything new this month, which I was supposed to do. See item above about shelving the planned next project. Love, love, love that.

So that's 5 loves to 1.25 hates.

Guess it's still love.

Choreographer or Dancer?

We are now a little less than three weeks away from my dance recital. Our group is now going to be in four different numbers: 1) Billion Dollar Baby (jazz), 2) Happy Feet (tap--not penguins), 3) Hold Your Dream (singing! as a gospel choir) and 4) Sing Sing Sing (jazz for a small part of the finale). That's a lot of time on stage.

A group of us are getting together as often as possible outside of class to go over the routines. "How many times do we do the Suzy Qs?" "Should the arms be up or down on that move?" OF course, the more times we do it, the better. As Reggie says, "Repetition is my friend." I'm feeling pretty good about understanding the routines. I know what step follows what and how they fit in with the music. Once we get started, I'm pretty okay at getting through to the end. So far so good.

However, I'm not happy with my execution of the individual steps. My feet feel sloppy. Part of that is being on heels, especially with the tap numbers. Most of the dancing should be on the balls of the feet, but my heels are dragging. It muffles the sounds so that you don't have that nice crisp tap sound.

On my own, I'm getting back to basics. Flaps, shuffles, time steps, paradiddles. That's what I really need to work on.

It's funny, because I feel that it's just the opposite with writing. I feel okay about the basics. It's how it all fits together. What follows what and how does that build on what comes before? Part of the issue is that the writer is both the dancer and the choreographer. I don't just have to learn the routine, I have create it.

So, where do you feel most confident? Choreography (plotting, putting it all together) or Dancing (characterization, dialog, action, grammar)? Or are you Bob Fosse, Merce Cunningham, or Suzanne--our teacher? Are you confident with all of it?

Good Enough?

Saturday I spent a good part of the day organizing the basement. I found a lot of old writing. Some were from critique groups past that somehow never found their way back home. Some were submissions to Apollo's Lyre or the PPW NewsMag. Those hit the new, heavy-duty shredder. Many were short stories or early versions of MMG.

It was amazing how many different iterations it's been through. There's the yellow one, the blue one, the pink one, the gray one and now the green one. That's a lot of writing and rewriting. And a lot of trees sacrificed.

My protagonist is nineteen-year-old Kitty Stuart. She wants her mother to haunt her, but in Kitty's attempt to piss her mother off enough to do it, Kitty falls in love with a twice-divorced, alcoholic twelve years her senior. That's what will end up haunting her, or worse.

In the earliest version, I started the book when Kitty's mother was ten years old. Okay a bit of a running start. Second version was going to be alternating chapters of Kitty and her mother as a girl to compare/contrast their lives. Again, way too early. The third one starts with Kitty as a senior in high school to show her life before and then after her mother's death.

The fourth one starts at the mother's funeral, and while it can be argued that that is where the story starts, it was confusing to throw the reader into a huge extended family scene. They don't know this girl yet so there's no connection to what she's feeling. This one was read by a few people and I consistently got that comment.

So, now we're on number five. We start with Kitty "running away" with her beau. I'll find out in two weeks if it's the right place.

It was good to note that each version improved on the one before it. There are a lot of years of writing represented there. One would hope that reading and attending workshops and conferences and getting feedback would help. And I do believe it has.

Now I'm trying to not anticipate what the CWC+ will say about this latest incarnation. But of course I am. Throw it under the bed? Major changes or just minor ones? How many more times through? And the biggest one of all, which they can't answer: Do I have it in me to do another major rewrite of this one?

And the big existential writing question: When is it good enough?

I don't expect anyone to answer those here. That's what the group is for. Except maybe that very last one. When do you know it's good enough?

Feminine Ink Revisited, This Time With A Guy

It's been years since I was involved with Feminine Ink. I don't even know if they're still going. I started the group so I like to think that somewhere in a coffee shop in Colorado Springs, Mickey and company are going strong.

The Fem Ink (as it became known) rules were as follows:
1) I did all the prompts. Yes, I can be a control freak, but with good reason in the case of a couple regulars.
2) We wrote for about 7 minutes without stopping. If you didn't know what to write next, you wrote "I don't know what to write," or "la la la," or "Deb's a big old jerk for picking this stupid prompt." It helped thicken my skin.
3) Then everyone read what they'd written.
4) No critiquing or really commenting on the writing was allowed. This was to protect feelings and to avoid discouraging those who were just starting their writer's journey.
5) And the last rule of Fem Ink Club was no talking about Fem Ink Club. That way no one would feel they couldn't write what they wanted.

At our CWC meeting on April 26, we did something similar. I had submitted the first 300 pages of MMG at the end of March and the rest of it at the April meeting. This meant we had nothing to critique since I didn't want a partial critique--I know, picky picky picky. This experiment differed from Fem Ink in that:

1) Everyone brought in 2 prompts (although we only used 1 each)
2) Feedback on the writing was encouraged

It was fabulous. The write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants muscles were stiff. It felt good to exercise them a bit. With 4 of the 5 prompts being complete surprises, I didn't have to worry about subconsciously pre-writing anything. The feedback we got, although all positive, was very helpful. We know each other so well that what was left unsaid was just as useful as what was voiced.

Jenny threw in a twist, as she is wont to do, and said we should all expand on one of our responses and submit it this month. Which to do? Should I use one of the ones with a strong restriction? One allowed no visual descriptions and another was written without adjectives or adverbs. Or take one that will allow me to go off in any direction?

I'll read through them later and decide. Whatever I pick, I know I'm going to learn something and have fun doing it. What more can you ask for?

Blind Rewrites

Jenny and Ali talk about a method of rewriting short stories called "The Blind Rewrite." I don't know that it warrants capitalization and quotation marks, but that's the way they always say it. What you do, as I understand it, is rewrite without looking at the first draft. Hence, blind. The theory behind that is that you will remember what it important and forget what isn't. Not sure that I completely agree, but it's a method.

However, how does one manage that with a novel? Yeah, I didn't even want to think about going there. But I came up with something that worked.

Step 1) Print out a clean copy of manuscript.
Step 2) Read and mark up.
Step 3) Add in any pertinent comments from critique group.
Step 4) Using the now not-so-clean copy, retype the whole thing.

Oooh, you say, no wonder it took you so frikkin' long to get that rewrite done. Well, yeah. But I think it was worth it. We'll find out at the end of the month if the CWC agrees.

There were areas in the original where I'd started telling instead of showing. There were missing scenes needed for tying others together, for clarifying certain things, for heightening tension. I had dreaded having to write those new scenes, but by retyping the whole thing, those scenes just kind of organically appeared.

Another benefit was noticing a lot of continuity issues and many other missing scenes. I was also more aware of repetitions--words, phrases, ideas, actions. I know I didn't catch or fix all of them--that's what critique groups are for--but I caught a lot more than I did in the read-through.

One of my fears going into the rewrite was that I wouldn't have enough when I finished. I started with just shy of 200 pages, maybe 50,000 words. Way too short for a mainstream novel. What if there wasn't enough 'there' there for a full novel? Well, not to worry. The finished product was 603 pages and a little over 104,000 words. Which gives me a nice buffer for the things CWC will cut.

Cutting and pasting would not have solved nearly so many of the problems. Especially not the problems I didn't realize I had. This may be a time-consuming method, but it's one I'm going to keep using. At least for the 1st rewrite after receiving feedback from the gang.

There will be other things to fix, but I hope that this version is in good enough shape that those won't be major.

Fingers crossed.