Saturday, February 26, 2011

72 Hours Plus 4

It's pointless to want something as luxurious as time. I  sneak in the writing. I think my manuscript could be fixed in a long weekend. Three days and four hours? My husband says I can estimate the time it takes to build his drawings with scary accuracy.

However, my 76 hours would mean no showering, very little sleep, shots of espresso, creaky joints and sporadic fits of shouting. I won't get the chance. I have to operate in sprints. Fifteen mintues here; a half hour there. I've filled a couple of spiral notebooks; they are more mobile, less conspicuous than a battery-hungry laptop.

When I open the screen, the groans within the household are nearly as deflating as knowing I'll never get that 76 hours.

If I write twice a day for 15 minutes each session, my revisions will be done: July 30. Insert fit of shouting.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Love in Context

Emily Dickinson wrote a line about leaving your heart ajar for ecstasy. Pretty sure she wasn't talking simply about you-know-what.

I heard the full quote today and connected it to some issues rolling around in my head about writing romance. Characters in fiction need to live and breathe and feel and think vividly, and love plays a big factor. Love of self and of life and of the tangible, and in romance, the intangible.

A reader of mine asked me a difficult question about my female protagonist. Why did she fall in love with the male protagonist? Hard question when the attractive qualities and reasons seem obvious to me. I've had to sit quiet with that question for a while and ask myself the same. Why do we fall in love? What are the reasons a person tumbles into the emotion and attachment? Save me the science. I want the ethereal.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Writing Is As Difficult As ...

In a writing workshop yesterday, we did a free write to the prompt: Writing is as difficult as ... 

The purpose was to reveal our natural diction. In seven minutes, my words, according to L. McKenna Donovan, revealed:

I write about relationships.
I write in the abstract.
My themes are absolute.
I write like a person in her 20s with experience beyond that age. (Translate: I cuss. Probably lean toward sarcasm.)

Now, to be a better writer, the idea is to *not* write characters using your natural diction because they aren't you. Okay, fair enough. I'll work on it.

BTW, if you want to know what I wrote, I might consider emailing that directly, if you ask nicely. I'm not posting it here.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Flash vs. Free

Flash fiction: write for a specific time/word count.

Free write: just write and don't look back.

Either way, it's open-road writing. Thinking lately of some lyrics where the words match so closely to one another, they demand active listening:

Walking down from home to unknown.
Working down my own to unformed.
Walk in, drowned for more to unfold.
Waking in down, holding my own.

Fun. Something there.

Monday, February 7, 2011

God is in The Writing

End of last post: If I believed in God.

Rephrase: Where is God?

Mary Oliver, poet, wrote: "Tell me, what will you do with your wide and precious life?"

Is there God? More specifically, where do you find God, or its lowercase version? In this, the writing, there is some God-bound reality. Do I believe in God? Not in a physical diety, soluble or insoluble being. So where is it/he/she/them? In the writing?

It is the search. The conscious wandering. I write to know. Write to understand. To dream, to please. And to connect with something other than myself.