An update for February
Posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2011Hello? Is anybody out there? Really? After this long I had sorta thought that nobody but the spammers were visiting anymore (and before I get too far off topic, let me say that the spammers have really been active. 2 days generating over 300 spam posts? Either my site has just gotten a lot more hits from regular people and the spam bots are following or somebody is sending them my way because I don’t have a bot detector set up yet). In that case, accept my apology and my most heartfelt thanks. Much like a dog grabbing a toy and shaking the stuffing out of it, Life has been grabbing me and shaking the stuffing out of me. While I can’t point at just one thing, I can say that life simply conspired to make the month of February a really busy month.
As a quick update, I’m still writing and most days I have written, even if I haven’t been making my 750 words a day (and for that matter, being able to get onto their site each day). I have found a way of guilting me into doing a bit more writing each day though… I programed my phone to remind me each day at quarter to 8 pm “Have you written your 750 Words yet today”. Its good because it gets me writing again, even if I have to admit that I’ve been tempted to write excuses and reasons why I haven’t as a response to the question.
I have been writing, both writing in my novel (which I finally have figured out what my “plot point not making sense” was. Knowing a scene is wrong, but not knowing why blocks me horribly) and in new projects that I started off with my friends. We bought copies of 2YN by Lazette Gifford and have been running ourselves through that for the last 3 weeks. 2YN stands for “Two Year Novel” and her book helps take you from base idea/cool scene to a finished novel and sending out queries in two years. I’ve been through the course before and would suggest it to anyone thinking of writing a novel. Even if you’re not a meticulous planner (I wasn’t when I started and though I’m a planner now, I’m still not very meticulous about it), I found it very useful to learn how people plan and what sort of questions to ask. Due in part to my experience in the class, I was able to make the world my characters were living in much more believable.
Anyways, I started doing this with a few friends of mine and have new novel ideas brewing up because of it. One of them is Dual Melodies and I think that I’m going to start posting up my writings on this. Between the 40k words written on it previously and another idea I had messing around in my head I suddenly realized that the story just needed some basic tweaking before I could start re-writing it again. So, I’m starting over from scratch on it… which means an all new story for you guys! The other story is a silly idea that I’ve had brewing in my head about a year now. I’m tentatively calling the project “Erotic Angel” since it’s about a winged woman who is a professional courtesan and bard. It includes a lot of sex (note the Erotic in the title”) and while I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sell this little mini novella/novel thing, it is helping me to step out of my box and understand not only the act of sex more but also the feelings, emotions and behaviors surrounding it.
Something that I had to stop doing during February was reading. Now this was painful to me, mainly because the book was not a good book. Trying to slog through it was like trying to wade through 4 feet of snow… it can be done, just not easily or happily. Now, I will admit that had I been handed this book 2 years ago, I probably would have just said it annoyed me, but not that it was actively bad. However, since I’ve started studying the art of writing, my bar for books has gone way up. Mediocre or not actively bad isn’t a good enough reason for me to read anymore. However, this book did help me to identify two main rules of writing that I now consider to be my two major sins of writing.
1. Never assume that I am familiar with your world or your characters.
What I mean by this is don’t start a book and forget to mention whether your main character is male or female. Don’t assume that because you said, “He’s a monk that was trained to kill people in war” (for instance) that your reader is going to automatically understand that later on when your monk-killer starts emo’ing out and saying people “treat him differently because of what he is” that we aren’t going to immediately think that its because he fought and killed people in the war(Yes, this is has happened before… we were told the main characters profession and emo-tendencies before we found out his race).
2. Don’t make your secondary characters stupid just to make the main character look smarter.
This should be quick because this rule is quite solid. If you want your main character to come across as smart, make him smart. Don’t make the other characters stupid. In the book I was reading, a 40 year old general sent his squad in unprepared to fight mercenaries/bandits who had holed up in a cave that they had prepared in case they needed someplace to fall back to. The war mage (normally the smartest character since that sort of magic is based off how intelligent you are) admitted to not learning battle spells on a day when he should have known he was getting into combat. But the 18 year old Monk could have told him what he needed to know.)
Anyways, I’ll stop on my rants and let you guys go. Keep an eye open, I’ll be posting up two songs I wrote during FAWM(I wasn’t really participating, but I thought I’d give song writing in general a try) and I’ll see you all next time.
Tags: 2YN, 750 Words, Blog, Dual Melodies, Dungeons & Dragons, FAWM, motivation, Music, Writing
Posted in Blogs by B.A. Matthews | Comments Off