The Art of Listening (Suicide)

A reader writes of Æfintýri, ch 2-12: "I always thought Tess was a great mom who’d fought through so much to raise her daughter."

Tess IS a great mom, and she DOES fight so hard to raise her daughter... and she DOES see what an amazing daughter her daughter is.

But.

This is a chapter of people not listening to each other. Tess refuses to listen to Siggi. Tess refuses to listen to Jada. She just can't hear that this monster has anything to say, nor can she hear anything about this monster.

Siggi is a murderer. Siggi ingratiated herself into their home. Siggi ruined her daughter's life.

And here Siggi is, all chummy with Jada, just like before. Just like right before all hell broke loose.

What can Siggi say to change that? She can't. What can poor, deluded ... AGAIN! ... Jada say now?

Nothing.

So Jada may as well just shut up.

Of course, Jada won't listen to her mother. She's come to terms with Siggi in her life, ... a little bit, ... made some peace with it, this uneasy truce and compromise, and here Mom is, being all uncompromising, CALLING THE COPS? and what happened?

Exactly what Siggi said what would happen.

Exactly.

But did Tess listen? No. Because she's RIGHT. So she called the cops and put them through hell, because she just. wouldn't. listen. to anything other than Mom-mode: ACTIVATE.

And Jada wouldn't listen. Not to Mom. Tess didn't call her 'stupid,' but that's all Jada could hear. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

And the stupid-demon swallowed her up, and there was nothing left of Jada, nothing left to her, except stupid.

And the knife.

Which also called her stupid.

This was such a hard chapter for me to write, so I had to remove myself from it, and it just wrote itself. It wrote itself so fast it was scary.

This chapter was all me. 100%. Because I was right there, with the knife in my hand, and me, screaming and crying, and our cat just looking at me, like it didn't know what to do.

Then.

I sighed.

I put the knife away.

And I went to bed.

Just like that.

Good things these are just stories, huh?

Readin' and Writin' (no 'rithmetic)

Do you know what a writer does?

A writer doesn't write. That's when a writer is most self-aware.

"I'm not writing."

When a writer writes, the writer actually goes away, ... the good ones, that is. The writer disappears, and what remains are the words, being written.

Then, once written, a reader reads. Do you know what a reader does? It's so simple: being a reader, because you just read, and then you disappear into the words written, and all your troubles, cares, and worries disappear for that chapter, and you're there and you're more alive than you ever were, because you're there, in that moment, experiencing this with the characters.

A writer gives every last drop of themselves to the written word, so a reader can take it, take it all, and finally be in that blissful state of coming to be alive and who they really are, for just that one magic moment.

Yeah.

That.

My Very First Story

My very first story was Bella and her friend Angela, and they were sealing wedding invitations for Angela's wedding, this, after Edward has just proposed to Bella, as well. Then Bella started crying, because she didn't know why Edward would want to marry her, so how can she keep him from running away again ('for her own good,' he said. ... Edward is an idiot)? And Angela's answer was to hug her friend as she cried.

"Bella's One Fear"

And I wrote that story, and I published it, and ... I got some good reviews on it. A one-pager.

And suddenly, I was no longer 'just a reader' ... I was a writer now, for real, too!

Wow! Just wow!

Albert Einstein said: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on it's tree-climbing ability, that's what it is to you, and that's what it becomes."

That's me.

Now you. You have stories in your heart. Take your funny, yummy, happy stories, and run with them. Lock them away in your heart, and make them yours, yours, so that nobody can take them away from you.

Then.

Take your stories, all of them, one by one, and ... play with them, have fun, have tears, have adventures!

And one day, you will begin to touch hearts, and save lives.

"How's the writing coming along?"

Okay, I'm gonna vent a little*

* big, long, and ... long

about writing.

This chapter effing sucks. I can't start it, and I can't start starting it? But you know what really sucks? Have you seen the movie 'The Shining'? You know what's the worst thing to ask a writer? 'How's the writing coming along?'

the
absolute
worst
thing
you
can
ever
ask
a
writer
is
"How's the writing coming along?"

Because there's only two(hundred and fifty-six thousand) answers.

• one: It's already published. How do you like it?
• two: It's not published, and do you wanna know why it's not published? Glad you asked, because it effing sucks and I hate myself, and want to put out my eyes and throw myself into a meat-grinder, feet first, so I'll die in the worst possible agonizing pain, and that will be a huge relief to what I'm experiencing now with you asking: "How's the writing coming along?"

Because there're only two possible answers to that question.

Dear reader, do you even put yourself in my position when you ask this? Nope, not even a little tiny bit, because if you did, you'd back the eff off and thank God that a story that's developed over two years, which means one chapter a month and you're asking for a chapter how many days after the last one was published?

Get me?

Nope.

But when you publish your first WIP and get a reader so involved in your story that you get a PM from them saying: "Hey, love your work, ... when's the next chapter coming?"

Then you'll get it.

THEN you'll be sorry. And grovel. And say to yourself: "SELF!" Because that's what you'll say to yourself when you're talking to yourself [writers do this: talk to themselves, and write about talking to themselves]. "SELF!" you'll say, "geophf was right! Why can't these readers just give me space to contemplate my navel, and to do anything but write that next chap, which I know, if I just grit my teeth and write the words, my readers will love, but will I? No! I'll say to myself: 'SELF' [so now we're two levels deep in the self-talk ... still with me?] 'I have to get this just right!' But I know what I'm really doing is just stalling, and that's just torture for a writer, and I have to get away from the keyboard, but then effing laptop does an effing OS software update for an hour when I was just settling in to write, and I get a PM from my number one fan asking for how's my writing going, when I just want to throw my laptop with my 1 hour software update out the window ... of the Empire State Building?'"

That.

So, how my writing going?

Is it published yet? No. So you know exactly how my writing's going. It's going to hell faster than Satan sprayed with Holy Water. That's how it's going.

So, are you now glad to know how my writing's going? Why the EFF do you even ask a writer how's it going? Why don't you just take a knife and stab me in the stomach? Because that'll hurt less. Okay?

"How's the writing coming along?"
"Oh, it's coming along fine. How are you?"
"So, when can we expect to read that next chap?"
"Lovely weather we're having today."

Do you even read what every single writer in the world says about writing?

"Writing is fun and easy and I like it so much."

SAID NO WRITER EVER.

Or did you expect me to say that? You asked me that question so I'd say: "Good, good, ... and you?"

"leiked the chap update son"

EFFING SPENT A MONTH'S WORTH OF WORK STAYING UP ALL NIGHT AND I CAN'T EVEN SEE, I'M SO TIRED, BUT YOU WANT THE NEXT ONE SO I CAN DIE OF EXHAUSTION?

You know what's the worst thing about writing? Beside everything? Is when you've written a good chapter. Why? Because you have to follow that up with something. How can you follow up a good chapter with a good chapter, when the first good chapter took everything out of you? Okay, so now I'm drained. I guess I can try to wring some water out of the rock, or blood from this stone, because that's about all I've got left.

But then, I have to do something, don't I, because what's worse than writing (remember the meat-grinder?) (which is better than writing?)? Not writing.

Absolute. effing. torture.

But no. Not only am I not writing, but I now get to answer "How's it coming along?" and pretend like I'm not an utter failure because I can't even write the word 'the' without hating it and hating myself.

But it's coming along great. Just ... great.

Writers hate themselves more than they hate everybody else in the world, which is a lot, because they can't write when OTHER PEOPLE want to say: "Hey, how's it going?" when it's going sucky. AND interrupt their writing, ... which they're not doing, so they just SCREAM at OTHER PEOPLE to LEAVE THEM THE EFF ALONE instead of blaming the real loser here, themselves, and actually doing what will make them happy, which is to actually write the thing.

But no.

Pray for Drought

So, this just happened: dénoument.

In the most recent chapter (chapter 14, "Forgiveness") of the Æfintýri, book II, Jada's mom has forgiven both Siggi and Jada for their various sins against her, so, we've come to completion for Jada's mom: she can now let go of a lot of her anger, and, instead of being an obstacle to both Jada and to Siggi, she can, well, she can do whatever, because this conflict is now done.

Good, right?

Not for me as the writer, because that means that everything is done and that anything can happen.

Okay, no problem: next chapter. Jada's still at the hospital and things are now "all better" for everybody. Yay! Happy-ending dénoument.

But there's a problem now: I go to start chapter 15 and ...

... and nothing. Not word one comes out onto the page. What to do? Massive panic? Yup. At the disco? Even better!

Okay, so, besides having a massive panic attack at the disco, what are some things that I do when the writers' block hits me?

1. Tell myself not to beat myself up, ... as I'm beating myself up. This is the most important rule for me. Why? Well, for sure, I'm going to go into the 'beat myself up'-phase, but – hey! – I've been here before. In fact, I spent one three-year period in writers' block. You think you have writers' block? Let me tell you about my writers' block! But beating myself up only causes the downward spiral, and the downward spiral is no fun and doesn't accomplish getting the words on to the page. Okay, so I have writers' block. Okay. So what? Who cares? Some people do ("geophf, next chapter, please,") but they'll live or they won't, just like me.
2. Don't write. Okay, every author everywhere says, "You've got writers' block? Great! Get to writing!" I say, okay, fine, be that way, and get to writing, if that works for you, but here's what worked for me: I took the rest of the day off, I went to bed, and slept on it. The next morning (this morning), I had the next chapter in my head. Other things that work for me:
• read: read some awesomely written work, and become inspired
• watch: watch a movie that you can taste how well the writing of it was, and become inspired
• walk: and smell the flowers, and become inspired
• shop, at the mall: people-watch, listen in on one conversation, and become inspired
3. Be grateful. What does "writers' block" mean ... literally!? (I win) (Confucius say: "He who says 'literally!' and in italics wins). "writers' block" means (literally!) that you're trying to write something, and you can't. Let's break that statement down:
• You're trying to write something. Okay, stop right there. How many people are trying to write something. A lot, right? How many people are writing something? A very, very few. You've got writers' block because you've written something already, and now you're stuck. Well, pilgrim: you've written something already. You've just separated yourself out to the 1% of the world that has written something. Be grateful that God gave you this gift made especially for you: you've written something.
• ... but you can't. Okay, fine. You can't write a single d-mn word. You are stuck. Be grateful. "God, I'm trying to write something, and I can't. Bless you, Lord!" God is tryna tell you sumthin', pilgrim! God is telling you this: "not now," or "overcome this," or, in my case: "I've got something so much better for you that what you want to write." Let's face it, writers' block is you could write something – anything! – that you know is going to be el crapola now, or you could just wait a minute, or day, or, in my case, three years, and write something so much better. Now, Benjamin Franklin says: "I'll take the speckled ax now" instead of the perfect ax at four times the cost, so balance what the proper waiting time is. What is the proper waiting time? Well, from my experience, waiting three years, or in the case of one PhD student, seven years, is way, ... way, way, way, WAAAAAAYYYY too long. Give yourself a day. Nothing still? Give yourself another day, but in this other day, do something different. The first day you moped? No results? So maybe try something from 2. above and see what inspiration percolates for you. And also be grateful. Thank God you have the ability to write and you have something to say that will touch hearts, then listen to see what God has to say to you to direct what you have to write.

Because you do have to write. You are a writer, and a writer writes the same as a human being breathes: to live. Writing is your life, but, more importantly: your writing gives life and hope and joy and a shared moment between you and your readers.

So, writers' block? Will it stop you, as it has stopped me? Sure. But it's there to remind you what you are: a writer, and a writer writes, and in writing, saves that one person, that one reader, who needed to read what you wrote today.

Conflict

What to do when you must write that tough scene?

Jada's mom has just come home after a long shift at INOVA to find Siggi, the mass murderer, in her house, after she told Jada never to see Siggi again, and to call the cops if she did.

Now this.

I'm not good with confrontation, but who is?

This is the writer's life. You have conflict: it must resolve or it must escalate, or everybody pretends to ignore the white elephant in the room.

But you, the writer, aren't writing the book to shy away from the hard choices. You, the writer, have to face them, then write them.

Why I Use 750words.com, and why you should, too.

Writing is hard, and lonely, and disappointing, and gut-wrenching.

#fact

This site, https://750words.com, gives me the gumption (or the 'gumbo') to write every day, with

1. badges? WE NO NEE' NO STEENKIN' BADGES!

... with 2. streaks and timing, because I like to streak every now and then ...

NO! NO! I DON'T! THAT'S MY EVEEL TWIN BROTHER, SKIPPY!

with 3. feeling and concerns break-down and composition in the writing
... cuz muh writin's all 'bout teh feelz

with 4. Mindset whilst writing and time orientation

and with 5. word clouds (which you don't get to see)

And what does this all give me? It tells me where my writing is focused, and if I like that focus, I write more to that, but if I want to change my focus, I see where I am, and, as I change my writing, I see the change tracked

Writers-Movies, Day 7: Seven Psychopaths

Day 7 of writerly movies and our lucky number slevin is Seven Psychopaths.

Seven Psychopaths is a perfect writerly movie for me. Why? Everything said in the movie is so ridiculously over the top, but then everything comes to pass exactly as was said.

Marty: "What do we do?"
Billy: "I say we take the bad guys out to the desert and have a shoot-out."
Marty: "What do we do in real life!"

And what comes to pass? A shoot-out in the dessert, but along the way, Marty has to write the screenplay for his guaranteed blockbuster, Seven Psychopaths ...

Wait a minute! Seven Psychopaths is a movie about the making of the movie, Seven Psychopaths?

Yup. Over the top? Yup. I mean, what writer has the mm-hm to write about writing about script he's writing? Besides Charlie Kaufman, that is.

And the title: 'Seven Psychopaths'? It's a paean of a psychodrama to ultraviolence, right?

Not according to Marty. "I'm tired of all these terrible movies about death and violence. I want to do something different. I want Seven Psychopaths to be a movie about peace."

Billy is not on board with all this. "Oh, instead of calling it Seven Psychopaths, why don't we call it the Seven Women who Realize They Are Empowered to be Whoever they want to be and Two of them are Lesbians and One of them's a Black Cripple in a Wheelchair? How's that grab you for a movie title, Marty?"

Seven Psychopaths is fearless in its terror confronting the world, and, at the same time, entirely self-deprecating. It's scary writing. It's scary having a girlfriend, and pretending to her, and to everybody else, that you're normal and can hold down a job and get along with people. It's scary being married to somebody of a different race, who is dying of cancer. It's scary losing your daughter to a psychopath, and wondering why God would do this to you.

Seven Psychopaths lives in the moment. Two thugs are bored, waiting to make their hit, so they start talking about Cuba. The head boss interrogates his dog-sitter for minutes until one of his sidekicks mentions he knows a guy returning dogs around town. Minutes. Marty, Billy, and Hans spend the latter half of the movie sitting around the campfire discussing ... well, life, but each of them have no idea what life is.

And the story itself, not the movie, but the story Seven Psychopaths.

Billy: "So, how does it end?"
Marty: "I don't even know how it starts!"
Billy: "Whoops."

Isn't that the writer's experience? You stare at the blank page all day, saying: "I have to write something!" immediately followed by: "But how do I even start?"

And what happens? Seven Psychopaths is not the movie Marty planned, at all. It changed, and it grew, and the characters grew, surprising Marty, and surprising themselves. One moment they were in the movie, then the next moment, they were helping to script the movie, then the next, they were bumping into each other, across scenes. Seven Psychopaths is a movie of, as Hans calls is, layers, and the distinction between the author, the movie, life, and the construction of the movie playing out begins to blur until these distinctions disappear, reappear, then, at the very end, are shattered.

You have a plot hole in your movie script? How about a psychopath give you, the author, a ring in the real world and threaten to come find you because of it, huh? How about that? Now, do you want to leave that thread dangling in your story and disappoint your readers, seeing that in doing so you're placing your life on the line?

There is one thing that Seven Psychopaths is intolerant of, and that's one-dimensional characters, but, instead of saying to you: all our characters are certified fleshed out, Seven Psychopaths, instead, introduces these characters to you as one-dimensional, plays them to their stereotype for a while, then  – WHAM! – your expectations are subverted in the most surprising, shocking, jarring ways possible. Pretty much everybody dies in this movie, but they only die because they refuse to live their lives small. The thug is not just a thug, he's a guy who grew up under both imperialist and communist Cuba, and refuses the be an idiot thug. No, he has to be an angry, bitter, refined, thoughtful thug.

That's how much attention Seven Psychopaths gives to one of the minions who has five minutes of screen time, and then he's another statistic, but – oh! – what a glorious five minutes. His five minutes on the screen were more impactful than most actors who land a contract in their own TV series! But not only do even the bit players get loving attention from the writer, but none of the characters get a free pass, from the alcoholic writer, to the psychopathic overly-friendly friend, to Quaker hell-bent on revenge, and having to live with the consequences of God allowing him his revenge. Even the psychopaths written into story are both nuanced and flawed. A pair of psychopaths go on a serial killer killing-spree, but do they go too far? A Vietnamese survivor of Da Nang takes his revenge on a bunch of vets, burning them to reflect the Agent Orange attacks in Vietnam. Or does he do this? Layered, nuanced, flawed, this is how Seven Psychopaths sees us in the world, and, folks, it's a hell of a ride.

What has Seven Psychopaths taught me?

• Not one of these characters are perfect. Everybody has flaws, and these flaws can be niggling, but they eventually, no matter how small, lead to the character's downfall. Everybody goes down, so not only are these characters not perfect, but, further, they are irredeemable, but we love them all, because of their flaws? Nah, their flaws are annoying, so not because of their flaws, but, because, despite their flaws, each character has their own dignity and nobility.
• Everything has a purpose, and everything stated comes to pass. Seven Psychopaths packs a lot in its 110 minute runtime, but everything comes to a resolution, even (humorously (black humor, yes)) the plot holes. This movie script is tight, covering a lot of territory, but not dwelling on any particular thing overlong
• You can have it all: 'Peace, and shit' as Billy calls it, and ultraviolence, as Billy wants. In fact, Seven Psychopaths is a love letter to poor, psychopathic Billy. All he wanted was a friend, and a kick-ass movie with some guns and shit in it, and Marty gave him exactly that. And peace, love, and understanding, too. They both win, then. That's what Seven Psychopaths taught me. You can write a story that everybody wants to read with guns and shit in it, if that's how you're bend, but you don't have to sell out on who you are. You can pack a lot in there, and get it all said, and make it tight and compelling and honest, too. Seven Psychopaths is awesome that way, and your story can be that way, too.

Writers-Movies, Day 5: Paterson

There is something magical about the movie Paterson

But, then again, there's something magical about every Jim Jarmusch joint.

Paterson is a poem; it's a love-poem to poetry, and it is actually a poem (several, in fact) being written on the screen as we watch the film.

If you've been to New Jersey (and I have been to New Jersey), the last thing you would think is 'poetry,' and if it were poetry you were thinking, it would be some industrial/manufacturing/dispossessed kind of poetry, no? But, surprise-surprise: William Carlos Williams lived in Paterson, NJ, and Paterson, the bus-driving poet, lives in Paterson, and, because it's a Jim Jarmusch joint, this little film works, and works beautifully.

Here, we have a poet that, unlike Miss Flora Post in Cold Comfort Farm who can sponge off of relatives (which we reviewed yesterday), Paterson is just a dude, so he has to have a job, and his job is being a bus-driver (so, Adam Driver being a bus-driver makes perfect Jarmuschian sense), and on his job, and walking his dog, and sitting at the bar, he gets to observe life, and record it in poems in his little poetry-journal.

Paterson is very much an observer, and the movie Paterson moves at this pace: it's unfettered by any need to rush into action and has an entirely unhurried air. Because of this freedom, the film gets to say a lot, just by watching the characters, and, not surprisingly, it packs in a lot more into this film than a blockbuster can afford to do.

It's funny: Avengers: Infinite Whatever, a film that cost one BILLION dollars to produce, has a plot that reduces to "must stop the bad guy" and has no character-development whatsoever. Paterson, however, looks like it was financed with a credit card, but we get to know not only Paterson, but his wife, his shift-manager, some friends at the bar, and even a bunch of punks in a five-four warning him about the dangers of dog-napping. And we get to learn about and to appreciate the city of Paterson, itself, so much so that it becomes a character in the movie. Paterson wasn't filmed in Paterson because it was just some j-random town they picked; no, Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because Paterson has a rich, living history. Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because it couldn't possibly be filmed anywhere else, and my hat's off to Jim Jarmusch in showing me a little town in New Jersey that, by the end of the film, I fell in love with and would love to visit, and walk about, and live there, and write poetry, and drive a bus, and listen to the conversations the locals have about ... well, anything.

And, I'll admit this: I wrote down every poem written by Paterson, and the little girl, in the movie Paterson.

Judge me.

Paterson informs my writing thus:

• Plot? What is plot? My stories are character-driven stories, but they are not plot-free. I develop my stories from a plot-perspective – beginning, middle, end – and I have that nailed before I write a word, but then, each chapter, as I write it, the characters surprise me with their own revelations, and sometimes (every time? I'm not sure) I have to abandon the plot, because the characters say: "No. We're doing this now." And they say this, not because The Plot Must Change. No, they say this because the plot is immaterial to where they are now in their lives. They're not going to jump off a cliff now because that's just not who they are. Paterson is not a plotless movie, but it is a movie where the plot is immaterial. The characters make their choices that they make every day, the same choices they made yesterday, and the 'plot' naturally falls out from that, because there is no 'The Plot,' there is simply people lives their lives.
• Settings. I research my settings. Why? I want to know where a turn in the road leads to a mountain view, or is the center of town ... empty? thriving? If it's New England, where's the Dunkin Donuts? If it's California, is it North or South California, on the coast or in the desert? I want a reader to be able to feel like they can walk in my book and breathe the air, and know what it feels like. Paterson brings the town of Paterson to life.
• Paterson is a movie of rabbit-holes: a series of journeys with no destinations in mind, so it may be considered in stark contrast to the Lord of the Rings, where there always is a destination ever before the Fellowship. Lord of the Rings is a very tiresome and anxious movie (the books I found to be quite a different experience). Paterson is the opposite: you flow along with the movie, and are delighted to find yourself talking to a little girl who writes her own poetry, or find yourself by a laundromat, of all places, listening in on a rapper honing his craft, or, lo! and behold! what is a tourist from Japan doing in Paterson, New Jersey, but to visit the town where William Carlos Williams lived! Paterson lets you explore and discover and be and at your own pace, because our man Paterson is in no hurry to get 'there,' wherever this 'there' happens to be. Even in Paterson, New Jersey, one can stop to smell the roses.

Paterson is a beautiful little love-poem to Paterson, New Jersey. Take some of your precious time to watch this movie; it is time taken you will treasure.

Writers-Movies, Day 4: Cold Comfort Farm

"... and introducing (???) Kate Beckinsale!"

And with that, we're off to a rollicking start to one of the smartest period-pieces, Cold Comfort Farm, mocking every young aspiring authoress who wants to be the Next Jane Austin, in the style of P.G. Woodhouse and Oscar Wilde!

Golly, the Brits do have it lucky, they get Shakespeare, then they get all these other smart, wry, funny, observant authors, too. To be sure, they have their Darwins and Dickens (meaning: boorish authors who put you to sleep faster than chloroform), but the richness and depth and breath of writing one can choose from the œuvre is both daunting and humbling.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, tackles this conundrum head-on: if everybody else has already said everything to say, and have already said it better, then ...

... well, give up?

"... the golden orb ..." Miss Post starts again, and stops again, in her writing at this point, groaning in frustration, reading what she's written.

Sounds familiar, authors?

But the thing is, she doesn't give up, she lives her life, which isn't a Romantic Novelization filled with Drama and Ponderous Poetry, but it's a bunch of farmers, bumbling though their lives. But the thing is: their lives are filled with Drama and Poetry, ... and silliness, and from abandoning what she thinks are the Rules of Writing, and living her life and observing the characters that populate her life, she comes up with a much more interesting story to write.

Miss Flora Post actually did have to give up. She had to give up her preconceived notions of "What a Writer Is" and "How a Novel Reads." When she gave these things up, she emptied her cup, so to speak (and, being a Proper British Young Lady, of course it was a tea cup), so that living life could fill it with something fresh and original and something that was entirely hers.

Cold Comfort Farm is a movie filled with expectation-subversions for this young aspiring authoress:

• What writing is
• What a novel is about
• Who people are

Because, in the end, she didn't write the characters, the characters wrote themselves, but only after she opened her eyes to them as living, breathing, three-dimensional people, and not the stereotypical Seth and Reuben she dismissed with a quick sniff.

And when she did that, she did get her Romantic Ending, being swept off her feet by the dashing-yet-unassuming Charles and whisked away in his æroplane.

Both Stella Gibbon's book and John Schlesinger's movie get the humor just right. They mock both the characters and the reader at the same time but they do so gently. Why? because the humor is cheeky, to be sure, but kind, at the same time. The characters are portrayed lovingly and with understanding, but not at all blind to their follies and foibles. In fact, the authoress is abundantly aware of their shortcomings, and her own, too, and so I got the sense that she wrote Cold Comfort Farm just so. 'This is not a Jane Austen novel,' she says, 'this is just my little roman à clef. Not serious, but silly: just like you, me, and everybody else who takes their lives so seriously are.'

Cold Comfort Farm is an easy ride and a delight to watch that, surprisingly, stays with you long after the end-credits.

What did I learn from this movie (and book, as they are nigh unto one and the same):

• Abandon what I am going to write, because that just doesn't work for me. What does work for me is wind up the characters and watch the sparks fly as the collide against each other.
• It was a dark and stormy night is the exact set-up of Cold Comfort Farm, but the book and the movie showed me that the thickened fens of setting and the broody, dark characters have a surprising depth to them, and they can be funny, and they can change, and it doesn't have to be a struggle all the time, either.
• As in Topsy-Turvey (another movie in this genre), taking a break from worrying over writing to live your life can actually inspire your writing, give you a fresh start, and be the impetus to give you the get-up-and-go to write or to rewrite that novel.

Remember, kids: 🎵 The Earth will burn and we will QUIVER! 🎵 Watch Cold Comfort Farm to spit out your tea, chorkling with mirth, when you get this reference, foreshadowed so delightfully by Flora's innocent "...but why are they called the Quivering brethren?"-query.

Writers-Movies, Day 3: Blade Runner

We continue our series of blog posts on writerly/writers/writing-movies with la crème de la crème of movies: Blade Runner. 

Blade Runner isn't only the best science fiction movie of all time, it is also the best movie of all time. There never was and there never will be a movie to top Blade Runner and ...

No, wait: there's Blade Runner 2049, a rare gem of a sequel that excelled its predecessor.

Okay? Are we on the same page here? Yes? Great.

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 are two sides of one coin that ask one question: what is it to be human? And even: what do we do to deserve our humanity? The Blade Runner movies ask us these questions. Whereas Blade Runner follows our protagonist through the movie, self-assured and comfortable in his humanity (where, in fact, he is not human, at all), Blade Runner 2049 follows our replicant protagonist through that movie, so lost and afraid, but growing into his. The irony in both these movies is that it takes the soulless replicants, striving for something they don't have, to teach us what we take for granted: our humanity.

What can be said about the Blade Runner movies that haven't been said before?

This:

The Blade Runner movies are the finest, most successful pieces of fan fiction ever to be realized.

Think about it for a moment. Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It was an entire world, with all the buildings disintegrating into 'kibbles,' people reduced to idiocy from radiation holding dead-end jobs on the pretext of keeping a society functioning: a society that had simply given up hope. So, what did people turn to? A VR religion that was a sham based upon the Sisyphean Greek myth, just so they could feel something, and a police force that had long ago (to nobody's knowledge) been taken over by the androids in their next step to take over the world. And, frankly, nobody in that story was likable, not our gum shoe, nor his wife, nor the Rachael android. They were all a selfish, indistinct, navel-gazing lot.

Ick.

So, how do you take all that in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and put it on the big screen?

You don't.

What the screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, did was to re-craft the book into the story they wanted to read or to see: Blade Runner. That is to say, they wrote the best piece of fan-fiction in existence. They took the characters in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and entirely changed the story around them, then entirely changed them, leaving their most basic motivations, to re-realize (or, in Battlestar: Galactica-parlance 'reimagine') the story to what we see on the screen today. But not only the screenwriters get credit for this, but the actor who played the relicant Roy Batty, Ruger Hauer, made his own contribution that is "perhaps the most moving death-soliloquy in cinematic history." They made a movie that had it all: life, death, love and redemption.

How can you top that?

You can't. Or so I thought. Then came Blade Runner 2049. What director Denis Villeneuve did was to replicate the movie Blade Runner, and almost exactly at that, but then turn everything on its head. Instead of the replicants not knowing they were replicants (as was the case for Deckard and Rachael), our leading leads, K and Joi, knew exactly what they were and their place in the world, but then Blade Runner 2049 changed the game when the movie introduced the game-changer, a baby.

For, unto us a child is born.

So, Blade Runner 2049, a Christmas movie?

And, like the original Blade Runner, this new movie asked the question. Now that the replicants have had a baby, what is the status of this child? And, since the replicants have had a baby, what is now their status? Furthermore, what is the weight, what is the value we, as humans, place on our children? The movie shows humanity treating both humans and replicants as material, but the replicants, when they learn that there is a child among them, they place everything on this one hope. Just as Children of Men showed us the very simple message: No children; no hope. Blade Runner 2049 gave the opposite message: One child; all hope. What is the value we place on a child, on children, on people, on the person sitting across from us. Blade Runner 2049 shows people and replicants as worthless because they are valued as such, then turns everything around and says just one child can change all that.

And, at the end of the movie, a Dad whose given up on everything, including himself, gets to meet his child he's never seen, and we get to see the light of hope, of love, reignite in the eyes of a man whose heart had gone stone-cold. Blade Runner showed Deckard as a machine, moving through the world, doing his job, just because what else was there to do? Blade Runner 2049 gave Deckard his redemption. The two movies are one movie, a complete story arc that took 40 years to tell.

What did Blade Runner teach me?

• Maybe I've internalized this lesson for so long that I needed to be reminded of this in Blade Runner, but it taught me you don't have to be a human being to be human, and, conversely, being a human being does not grant you a free-pass to your humanity. The most human characters in these movies are the replicants, struggling, striving to earn their humanity, and they do, even if they don't live to see this victory. The lost, soulless characters are the crowds and crowds of people doing their jobs, going from a to b for no reason at all.
• There is shame in being a writer of fan-fiction, and rightfully so: most fan fiction is of the Mary Sue-variety and has too many flaws for just one blog entry (and that is why I have a metric ton of blog entries addressing these errors). But what is fan fiction, at its heart? It is an homage to the source material. Good fan fiction – Blade Runner, Galaxy Quest, American Gods and (ahem) My Sister Rosalie – retell and reshape the original so that you love the original more from what you've read in the retelling. "I write fan fiction." Sure, you can be ashamed of saying that, but know this: you're in very good company.
• You have time. Both movies are 'slow' and have been criticized as being as such. But what is the payoff. You spend a lot of time with these characters, doing nothing: eating, looking at photos, walking in the rain, hanging out at a bar. Their cares become yours, and the payoff is that their lives have meaning and so do their deaths. To die here, in these movies, mean something, and, at that death, that story ends forever, and you don't get it back. These are my stories: my characters spend a lot of time with each other, talking, not understanding each other, and, finally, caring, and when a glimmer of connection appears for my characters, it means something to the readers who have invested all this time in my stories, and it means something to me. It's okay to spend the time, doing 'nothing,' in your stories when your characters matter to you, not only is it 'okay' to do this, but it's a measure of respect, and gives your characters grace that the world does not give them and does not give us.

The Blade Runner movies have shown me what humanity can be in a cold, uncaring world, and from that has shown me that writing can be something that you care about, that writing can be beautiful.

Writers-Movies, Day 2: The Man who Invented Christmas

Hello, all, day 2 of writerly-movies or writers' movies or movies that make you say 'huh!' then write.

Those kinds of movies.

Today, day 2, let's take on "The Man who Invented Christmas"

This is a movie about writing, so I loved it. It's a little frilly, sentimental, happy Christmas piece, but it does glimpse into the writer's life and experience in its ups and downs, and its authenticity? Are you looking for authenticity? Look no further

*Charles Dickens does something writerly, like isolate himself, or fly off the handle, or keep really weird hours, or stare off into space morosely.

My wife: "Uh, huh: that's what living with a writer is like."
M'gurlz: titter

What I liked about this movie is that it showed the writing process, not as we'd think it's supposed to be: plot, outlining, sitting down and writing what you planned from start to finish, but as how I've experienced it, with the long, dry, empty silences, the absolute frustration of finally starting then being interrupted just when you almost started getting going, the characters wresting the story from your grasp and reshaping it into something entirely unexpected, unwanted, and alien from what you envisioned it.

It also showed success, but not as, yay! You're published, and here's a ton of money and you lived happily ever after, but success like this.

• feeling utterly detached from the congratulations
• feeling despair that you'll never write that good again
• feeling frustrated when your readers and editors misinterpret your work, or just don't get it.

And then you're published, and you get the reviews (don't read the reviews!) and ...

... and what? Well, your life goes on, and you have bills to pay, that you can't, and you have people standing in line demanding your next work, and criticizing your last one as 'not up to par. Frankly, I expected better of him, given what's come before.'

But then you have an idea – a great idea! – but anybody can have an idea, but just try to put that down on the page and not be screaming at the page and yourself and everybody who comes within shouting range of you. The curse of the writer is that you do have an idea. Now just try to convey that to somebody – anybody – else, and not look at what you've written and scream at yourself: why! why is it not coming together! Why is this so terrible? It was a good idea when it came to me!

And then you write, and you write and you write and you write and you write and it take so agonizingly long. And nobody understands you, and why don't you do something productive with your day, spend time with the family, instead of being cooped up in your room doing nothing?

No, this is not an autobiographical blogpost, this is, honest-to-goodness, in the movie. Swearsies.

Then you've written it.

This movie did skip over the editing phase of writing, thankfully and unfortunately. Writers, unfortunately, think: "I've written it! I'm done!" when they've only just begun! The real struggle is fighting against and fighting with the editors and publishers (which they only hinted at in this movie) to get the work out there, intact, with some shred of integrity in your story remaining. Editors cut deep, sometimes they cut wrong(ly) but sometimes their cuts are good cuts. It doesn't mean that these cuts don't hurt, and some writers have to suffer rewriting their ending, or beginning, or their everything, on the advice of their editors, and, to do that? To dismember your own work because somebody else said what you just poured your heart into wasn't good enough?

The movie skipped that part, but maybe that was an editor's cut who said: "Too hard and too much. This is a Christmas movie." And, again, the editor, here, would be right.

The Man who Invented Christmas also shared the triumph we have as writers. We get to create a world. A world that never existed before until we invented it, and we get to touch lives and touch hearts and connect with people, sometimes even all over the world:

We get to read those reviews of those insightful readers that tell us things about our stories that we didn't see. We get to read those reviews of those readers who write: "You saved my life" and to know that we just did something. We just wrote that, and they can't take that away from us.

The Man who Invented Christmas ends on this high note. Charles Dickens single-handedly reshaped Christmas to what we know it to be today with A Christmas Carol. And we get to see that he saw it happen and know that what he wrote touched hearts.

This is what our writing does, it can be heartbreaking, or silly, or serious, or a flight of fancy, but it's something we wrote, ... something we wrote that touched somebody's heart like nothing else ever has nor ever will, and we did that. The Man who Invented Christmas shares this, our writers' victory.

Writers-Movies, Day 1: Unforgiven

On these five days before Christmas, let us, writers, turn our attention to happy things. What are the movies that you love and that inspire you to write? For each of these five days before Christmas, write a blog entry about a movie you find particularly ... 'something': makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you recognize yourself, makes you say: "Wow! I wish I could write like that!" makes you say: "Wow! That's a great idea!" and makes you go off and write.

These five movies (one a day): they can be about writing, or they can be particularly well-written, or they can be just so bad, but the actors inhabit the characters so well, that they transcend the original material (ahem! To Have and Have Not)

These movies can be great, and serious, and well-respected, but they don't have to be (ahem, Deadpool). What these movies are are movies that you like and have influenced your writing.

I'll go first. A writerly movie I love is in the Clint Eastwood-genre: Unforgiven.

Unforgiven is a reconstruction of a deconstructionist movie. It tears apart everything that a Western is, but then reassembles all these pieces into something new and whole and, in the end, good. What do I like about this movie?

It's brutal and it's real.

Watching Westerns (except Blazing Saddles) is painful. The acting is stilted, the dialog non-sensical, and the fight-scenes, such as they are, are totally unrealistic. Unforgiven's fight scenes don't allow this detachment from reality. In an Unforgiven fight-scene, you are put into it, yourself, and not only do you feel the blow, being punched, or whipped, or shot, but you feel these blows as you're delivering them. Throwing a punch hurts, and it's tiring! If you don't believe me, get into the ring with me for three rounds. You won't believe the feeling, just three rounds, of how exhausting that is! Unforgiven reintroduces the audience how hard life was there, and they don't tell you life is hard, they show you. Riding, drinking, shooting, fighting, everything takes a toll, and you feel it, every inch of the way through this movie.

It has no heroes.

What? No heroes? Yet another deconstruction. The sheriff isn't the bad guy (although he's shown unsympathetically), he's just the toughest guy in town who also is trying to settle down, build his house, and keep the peace in the town, that's all! The 'bad guys' are just a bunch of fools enticed by a large reward to kill two guys, who already paid their dues, who bumble into town, thinking they have a straightforward job to execute. The ... in fact, nobody is bad here. They are all doing what they can, given the circumstance they are in. That's not right! Right?

But, because there are no bad guys, you get to see the innate goodness in every character on screen. Sure, they are all have a role to play and they find themselves stuck in these roles, but we get to see, for example, hookers, just trying to save a little money and do the laundry and get some justice for one of their own, all cut up. We get to see a bunch of guys pull together and defend a couple of cowboys and see the utter futility of what they are doing, and the absolute boredom of it, too. We see an Indian wife see her man ride off, knowing she'll never see him again, and she was right. We see a young kid take out his gun and kill a man, and see he get to feel the cost of that. Which brings me to my next point.

It has no justice.

There is no justice in this movie. There is no right nor wrong, nor morality, nor anything. There is just the West, in all its natural brutality, and the men and the women living there, and their sense of justice being betrayed at every turn. The whores want justice for a little, young girl all cut up, so they start the wheels of this movie in motion, but the sheriff gave them justice already: three ponies and a whipping. The sheriff wants justice so he beats people senseless, just for riding into town. The assassins want justice, and the money, but they're on a noble quest to right a wrong, but they compound wrong with wrongs, so one of them leaves, and he's the one that's beat to death. There is no justice and no fairness here, and:

It has no happy ending.

In fact, every bit of happiness is drained from this movie. The young whore just wants to feel a little bit of love, but William Munny turns her down, politely, not because she's been cut up, but because he's faithful to his wife ... the memory of his wife. Or that's his excuse. Maybe he doesn't want to hurt this young woman, knowing he's too bad for her, or for anybody, but he only ends up desolating her heart. "Justice" is served with William cleans house, but now a bunch of men are dead, and those left in the town have to clean up, and he has to go back across the prairie and explain what he's done and why his friend is dead. The sheriff gets his justice, being killed in cold blood, but now he's waiting in Hell for William Munny, just to say: "See? I told you so!" And, in the end, we see William Munny ride, not off into the sunset

but into the pouring rain, with the poor girl looking after him, knowing his heroic heart, knowing she should be with him, but staying, why? Because she belongs here? No! Because she belongs with him, but how can she say that?

In the end Unforgiven is a 'writerly'-movie in not what it says, or what that it tells us, and especially not in satisfying our expectations and hopes, but in what it doesn't say, and in what it doesn't give us. It is a Western with no justice, no right and wrong, and no happy ending. It is a story where each of the characters is a fully-realized person, each of the characters is (deeply) flawed, and each of the characters is immediately relatable, and if not relatable, then at least understood. You know why each character is doing what they are doing, you know that each of the characters is doing the wrong thing, and you know how you can fix them. But they aren't fixed, they are all broken, and it's heartbreaking, watching them all be swept away by both the events but also by their choices. They are all caught in a trap of being themselves, they can walk out, but they don't.

Unforgiven has informed my writing in several ways:

• A character not only can be flawed, but is flawed, and unfixably so at that, and by choice, but that doesn't make them unlikeable. In fact, their flaws are what makes them them.
• A good story doesn't explain everything to you. In fact, a good story leaves out the explanation. It doesn't tell you what's going on and why: it shows you.
• There isn't a happy ending. There's people coming into conflict with each other, with themselves, and with nature, and they always lose, that's the gritty reality of it, and that's what makes a good story.

Unforgiven is directed by Clint Eastwood, himself, and written by David Peoples, the screen writer for Blade Runner.

On Writing

On Writing, or: 'On Hating Yourself'

Every chapter I've published, hundreds of them, I've hated, except one or two. And every chapter I've published, a reader has said: "this touched my heart" or had a similar reaction.

Every chapter I've hated.
Every chapter has touched somebody, somehow.

Keep writing. Be critical. Do your best... then, publish it and let your readers benefit from words that will touch them.

On Dialogue

One day, magically, your characters will stop speaking in your voice and start speaking in their own voices. And then you'll backslide, and hate yourself. Really, that's how awful it is. But just keep writing through the black times, publish, and turn the page and start the next chapter. It comes and it goes, then you get really, really good. That's the next level.

You always can do better. And that's hard to bear sometimes. But it also means that you can and will get better if you keep writing.

On Publishing, or: "On Giving Your Story Away"

Persevere, but let your readers own your work, too. Then they'll tell you how good you are, and give you hope, instead of you telling yourself that your writing is shite. It is, because it never says what you thought it could've if only you were better, but it does say something that nobody else ever read.

On Reviews

Keep writing, persevere, PUBLISH, and get good, eh, and bad feedback, then ignore all three, and press on.

Good feedback is bad because you will never be that good so it inflates your ego AND makes you scared to be creative and explore. Bad feedback is terrible, because if you take it to heart, it can kill you AND THEN you won't write anymore. eh feedback is the worst, because it makes you think readers are stupid, because they are. They don't see your characters like you do. How can they?

But there are those readers who see something in your works you don't, and see something in you that you don't, and give you a reason and a purpose to write, to write more, and to write better. But you only get those after years of PUBLISHING your chapters.

On Reading Reviews and 'Not Being Affected'

What you fret about will never go away. I've published books, short stories, poems, and every single review slays me, and every story that doesn't get reviews saddens me. What can I do? Keep writing. People's lives actually depend on something to hope for: it's a barren, desolate, hopeless world out there, and my stories say: 'I am here. I am hurting, just like you. You aren't alone.' A reader thinks and feels, so does a writer. If reviews don't affect you, then I don't think you're either, anymore. That you hurt, laugh, cry, scream, means you are alive. That you write these things down give other people hope.

Being True to Characters and Setting

Do you "use" settings like you use characters in your stories?
Or do you respect settings like you respect your characters?

Too many writers 'use' characters: "Oh, this character has to die because ..." because the plot demands it, or poor planning leads to a difficult situation, so instead of allowing the characters to deal with difficult truths, the writer writes the character out of the story ("I must move on." "I fell in love with this other person" or usually: PLOT-TWIST! LOOK THAT CHARACTER IS DEAD BECAUSE REASONS!)

Story, too often, is bad story, because I can read who lives and dies, who falls in love with whom, who gets their happy and totally undeserved ending because the author is pushing characters around like chess pieces.

I'd prefer a Helen DeWitt, where: I don't know what's happening, even as a good reader and writer, but I know I love these characters so much, my heart is breaking, and what's happening is a mom is trying to raise her son but he wants to know who his father is? And that's the whole story? The Last Samurai (novel) Yes, it is, and it is a beautiful thing.

So that's characters.

For setting. Too often I read works where the author (mis)treats setting as something characters step through, all bland, featureless and inconsistent ('not-held-together') ... exactly like horse manure, all the same, all pointless, and all of it stinks really quickly.

I argue that if more writers treated their settings like they SHOULD treat their characters, then we would actually learn something, and actually love, Wyoming, for example, or LV-426 on ζ Reticuli or Hydrobad, India (not just 'India') or, for example, Alaska is WARM! and WET! and GREEN! and BEAUTIFUL in the way a mountain LOOMS into your soul. Where is writing that respects a setting that you love it like you love the characters? (or should)

Then, of course, you get the writers who write and write and write the setting and it's just plain, bland, descriptive text that accomplishes nothing except me returning the book to the library after struggling through a few pages of onerous prose. A writer has to set the pages on fire, so that the reader burns with every sentence, and a writer has to know when to burn hard, and when to ease off.

Otherwise writing is just super-simple, as Hemmingway says: "I go to the typewriter and bleed all over it."

"Why did you write My Sister Rosalie?"

Bella, and Rosalie, are trying the best they can to be true to themselves, even though, obviously in Rosalie's case, she has no idea she's being true to what's hurting her and Bella. And also Bella has no idea she is better than she thinks she is. But that's the beauty of this story.

This is a story about hope, even when you don't see it anymore. 

So.

I ... my daughter died. Rose Marie. And it hit the family so hard, even today, more than ten years later. Little Isabel said: "I miss Rose Marie." That hurt. A lot. And I wonder. Can she hope now? Who would she have been as a person? I wonder that. Would she have been happy, or sad, or selfish, or generous? I wonder if she's happy now, and I don't know that, and I'll never know that.

And so I wrote MSR. I don't know about Rose Marie, but maybe Rosalie can find hope, and maybe she can be happy, and maybe that can help, her, a little.

FORE! Golfer-geophf on Motivation for Writing

4. What was your motivation to write your book?

My ... 'motivation'? Well, my motivation was to put the Galaxy under my Imperial Rule, and to that end I build a battle station that could obliterate an entire planet with one massively-powered laser beam, but ...

Well, these things never work out in practice, and some rebellious, misguided upstarts exploited the (inevitable) weakness using some stolen plans, so, plan B: writing.

geophf: not just another pretty-'Everybody wants to rule the world'-boy,
but the fo'-realz deal, yo!

K. That's one way of looking at my motivation. Another way ... 

You're a writer, so you know: it's impossible not to write.

But then I started getting reviews. I planned to write MSR, and that was it, no problem. Chapter 24 was written for a girl whose daughter's second birthday was the next day, and could I please write something thematically as a gift? Then I got reviews, three marriage proposals. These girls were so disappointed that I turned out to be a man. So weird: a guy writing about two girls talking and fighting and talking and fighting and then talking some more. Whoda thunk?

And then I got a review, then another, then another, that said MSR saved their lives.

And I got review after review after review saying they screamed when they saw I published a chapter, or: how could I so completely describe the depth of their despair, and that they weren't alone anymore, or: was this what love was? Yes, in all its struggle and dirtiness and sadness and relief and joy, or: how could Bella and Rosalie be so stupid? Can't they see love, right in front of them, or: "I could fall in love with your Rosalie, ... in fact, I kinda did."

What is my motivation for writing?

My writing touches people's hearts. What else do I need?

"The only end of writing is to enable the readers to better enjoy life, or better to endure it"

– Samuel Johnson

Readers and Writers

A reader PM'd me: "I've been a fan of your stories for a several years now. My Sister Rosalie is one of my most favorite fanfictions ever"
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Readers: write to the writer you love. Tell them what you like about their stories and why. You will make somebody's day ... forever.
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Writers: when you don't write, you break your readers' hearts. #writerslife
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Writers: when you do write, then, goodness, the scary moment when you publish, you make your readers fist-pump.
Writers: write
#writerslife

What Being a Writer Is

A review just left for me: "i wished you would update these chapters sooner..." #reviews #amwriting
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I admit it. I got angry at first. It's not like my life is to serve you chapters on demand, the whole season, like $NFLX. I have a job.
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But then I thought of them. Here is a person who is hanging onto my story so hard, that when I don't write (fast enough), they hurt, waiting
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This person's well-being isn't my job. Or is it? I don't know. I do know my writing means so much to so many now, I have a responsibility.
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Look at Queen @ssumflower leading the kingdom of Artemyra, so brave and true! @daekis
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MSR, Book I: 143,733 page views, 747 reviews
MSR, Book II (WIP): 2,979 page views, 27 reviews

I am grateful to have touched so many lives.
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I'll write some tonight. Maybe, for that one special person who needs it, I'll publish a chapter tonight. IDK. Writing is hard. #writerslife

Writing

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." — Thomas Mann

Truth.