Random Recommendation: M.E. Anders

Today, I recommend M.E. Anders' Blog.  She loves the thriller genre and is currently writing a psychological thriller.

Her site is quite diverse and includes articles ranging in topics from fitness to psychology and religion.  She is an aspiring novelist and is generously sharing her journey writing her first novel.  She has an interesting approach to plotting you may find useful.

One of the more entertaining features of her blog is a weekly guest interview.  (Here comes the shameless plug:) 

This week I have the honor of appearing on her blog for an interview.  Please check it out:   M.E. Anders.

You can access my regularly scheduled blog post once you've been thoroughly entertained by Mindi's site:  Can You Bribe Your Inner Critic?

Thanks for visiting!

Can You Bribe Your Inner Critic?

Lately I've had a hard time getting started with new stories.  That darn inner critic!  Just when I start to feel confident, he sneaks up to remind me that I'm only as good as my last accomplishment.  How am I supposed to top that one?

I live for new challenges, but if I don't gag this judgmental intruder I'm going to end up with an overworked pile of old manuscripts.  Always critiquing and never creating.  I will knead this gently rising dough of prose until it becomes tough and rubbery.  And nobody wants to serve that with dinner!

Why is he here?

My inner critic is a Bloodhound that sniffs out self-doubt.  I ponder something new, and he can sense it.  Anything new brings on the uncertainty.  And he's right there!  I meander into new territory and I feel like a fugitive panicked by the barking at my heels.

Can we avoid him?

What if we always stayed inside of our comfort zones?  We wouldn't have to worry about failing.  But how dull would life be?  Inside my comfort zone there is a pile of finished manuscripts and a drawer full of conquered puzzles.  I can edit and reedit my same stories over and over again.  (Boring!)  And I can solve and resolve the same puzzles over and over again.  (Yawn!)

But I love new things.

On one hand, I can scour the Internet and buy a new puzzle whenever I feel the urge.  I still have doubts about whether I should do it; but this inner critic is the smaller, feebler younger brother.  He's the accountant in the family.

Maybe I won't be good enough and get stumped with this new puzzle.  I might be out some money, but I'll still be a puzzler.  It won't stop me from trying a different one, (or prying it apart with a screwdriver).

On the other hand, I can't simply buy a new story.  I must create it.  And my inner critic is the louder, stronger, and more convincing older brother.  He doesn't merely judge one particular work in progress.  No.  He doubts all of my abilities as a writer.  "You'll never be able to do anything with this crap," he'll say.

What if I could bribe my inner critic?

Could I pay him off?  Would he leave me alone, just for a little while?  I'm going to try it.  I'm going to turn my old swear jar into a bribery jar.  The FCC is pretty lax with profanity these days, so it couldn't hurt.  If my inner critic says something to keep me from writing, money goes into the bribery jar.

He needs to be silenced until I have something new to work with.  If it doesn't live up to my expectations, so what?  You can't learn to swim if the pool is empty.

Will I love the new story?  Probably not, but that's okay.  Even Shakespeare had first drafts.  But then again, I'll have a jar full of money and my inner critic will be itching to get to work editing.

So bribery might be worthwhile.  When your piece is written, you can use that money to treat yourself to a nice, fresh pot of coffee and get to work editing with the best person for the job:  your inner critic.

What do you think?  Can you bribe your inner critic?

Do You Flip For POV?

Something occurred to me the other day while I was solving my Rubik's Cube.  I solve it upside down.  I solve from the bottom up.  White side first, yellow side last.

I learned this trick to avoid reorienting the cube.  Who wants to keep changing your point of view just to keep track of your progress?

Rules constrain the behavior of the cube so I know certain things will happen to edge and corner "cubies" even if I don't see them directly.  (By the way, a "cubie" is a nickname for the individual pieces on the cube.)  In my case, if a cubie has a white sticker on it, then I know it belongs on the bottom (hidden) layer.  If it has a yellow sticker, then it's going somewhere on the top (visible) layer.  I don't have to constantly peek at the bottom of the cube, I can use other visible cues to ensure it gets where it belongs.

Then it hit me! This is Point of View, or POV in literary circles.  This is the perspective the story is told to the reader.  How is the narration revealed?  First person, third person, etc.

When you write a story, it is important to maintain a consistent POV.  By consistent, you don't switch perspectives mid-chapter, mid-scene, or mid-paragraph without giving the reader an obvious cue.  (Of course you can have multiple POVs in the story, and it's a challenge to pull off successfully.  Maybe I'll cover that another time.)  The most common convention is for a story to be told from a single POV, or perspective.

Too many POV shifts can be jarring to the reader.  Imagine how frustrated you would be if someone constantly reoriented the top color on your Rubik's Cube after every turn you make to solve it.

It's easy to catch POV mistakes by finding "she" rather than "I" in the wrong places.  But also keep in mind that the POV you choose may restrict what can be revealed to the reader through that particular lens.  The tricky POV mistakes are the ones where the POV character acts based on something they couldn't possibly know or see.  It may be as simple as a character not being present to "see" something happen but the action is described anyway.

But also consider the POV character's realm of knowledge.  Would a janitor know the answers to combinatorial problems that even advanced mathematics students at MIT could not solve?  Not likely.  Unless of course that janitor was a genius in the story, as in the movie Good Will Hunting.

What POV do you like?  Does it depend on the story?

What Would You Save From a Burning Building? (Part 1)

I don't do well with hypothetical questions.

Force me to save my favorite anything from a burning building and I'll be reduced to a charred pile of indecisiveness.  I simply can't choose.  I love variety too much.

This might explain why I have a puzzle 'shrine' in my office.  Some days I feel like doing the Rubik's Cube, other times it might be the Rubik's Revenge, still others, the Mirror Cube.

So don't ask me which stories I would save from a burning building.  I won't post a static and boring list of my 'favorites' here.  Nope.  My tastes evolve like an ever-changing mosaic.

Therefore in this series of posts I will share a cross-section of stories and authors I adore, but no favorites.  I love my children equally, but in different ways.

Bag of Bones by Stephen King
There's nothing like the original master.  Besides Stephen King, I don't read much from the horror genre, but it's hard to cram his work into any one genre.  His uniquely insane voice opened my eyes to the power of great storytelling.  He has taken on Fantasy with The Dark Tower (series) and The Eyes of the Dragon.  The Tommyknockers showed us his take on Sci-Fi.  Of course, any aspiring writer will cite his Nonfiction On Writing as a masterpiece.

I always coveted his short stories.  Ever since reading Stephen King in high school, I have marveled at this literary master's range.  I absolutely adored the story "Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption".  But of his work, I think Bag of Bones, originally published in 1998 by Scribner, is what really reinvigorated me back to writing.

Bag of Bones is beefy compared to most novels I read.  It's over 700 pages long, still, it didn't feel overwhelming.  It is the story of a widowed writer with writer's block.  It wouldn't be King if there weren't elements of the supernatural.  It's a ghost story.  But that is not why I loved the book so much.

I wanted to spend time with the characters.  The story is emotionally charged and very moving.  Anyone interested in how the "Master of Horror" does "heartwarming" (or heartbreaking) literature should read Bag of Bones.

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
Survivor is a truly unique story.  It is my favorite by this author of Fight Club.  The narrator of the story is the last remaining survivor of a suicide cult.  He hijacks an airplane and recounts his life story to the black box recorder in the cockpit.

The novel begins at Chapter 47 and counts down toward the final Chapter 1.  How the story is told is not the only gimmick.  Palahniuk's humor and satire keep the reader engaged.  There are many twists and turns and surprises in the story.  It had been optioned in 1999 by a large movie studio, but the project was dropped after the September 11th attacks.

One side note, the title of the novel certainly should not be confused with the television series of the same name that premiered in the US in 2000.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Life of Pi was first published in 2001 by Knopof Canada.  There are many layers to this story.  It has it all...literally.  Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.  Read this and you will not have to suspend disbelief because the narrative effortlessly blurs the line between fiction and memoir.

How can a story about a boy stuck on a lifeboat with deadly zoo animals be so believable?  Because it was masterfully written.

What are some noteworthy authors or stories you treasure?

It's the Journey, Not the Destination

Ever take a road trip?  Was it memorable?  I bet I can guess why.  You anticipated your arrival.  You shared a camaraderie with your friends or family.  You felt like a pioneer.

Once you got there, you realized the Grand Canyon was just a giant hole in the ground.  But those hours crammed in the back of the station wagon with your siblings remain carved into your memory on a geological timescale.  It's because of the journey, not the destination.

Whenever someone asks me how fast I can solve the Rubik's Cube, I think of those road trips.  It was never meant to be a race.  A road trip is meant to meander.  Besides, I never set out to solve the cube in record times.  It was more important that I learned how to solve the cube, not simply memorize hundreds of algorithms and finger tricks.  (By the way, an algorithm in cube-speak is a predetermined pattern of turns that has a desired effect on a group of little cubies.)  No, my ultimate journey was to be able to solve the Rubik's Cube with my eyes closed.  Would I learn how the Rubik's Cube works at a deeper level?  Would I learn more about myself during this journey?

When I write, it's easy to think the goal is just completing the story.  That's not enough.  It's the journey, not the destination.  Sure, I want to create a finished story.  But, I want my readers to remember, and maybe even discuss, the importance of my story in their lives.  (That's my dream anyway.)

I recently read the novel, Some of Your Blood, by Theodore Sturgeon.  It is a deconstructed vampire story.  Okay, that isn't quite accurate enough.  Some of Your Blood is a deconstructed story.  It is non-traditional in every way.  Yet it is fascinating to read because it is more than the story itself, but how the story is told.  Once you finish it, you'll want to read it again.  Think: the movie The Sixth Sense (but this novel was published about forty years earlier).  Another thing about the story that will get you wanting to go back for more is the "unreliable narrator" aspects of the novel.  It reminded me of Kevin Spacey's character in the movie The Usual Suspects.

If you can create a journey for your readers, then you can tap into something deeper and your story will have a lasting effect on them.  It's not just the story, but it's how you tell it.

Lost in (Cyber) Space

Do you have a backup plan?

Normally I do, however, this weekend I was unprepared for the Blogger outage.  If you didn't hear the news:  what should have been routine maintenance for Google's Blogger service ended up locking out users and removing users' data for more than 36 hours.  Google had worked over the weekend to restore lost comments and posts by rolling back data in their environment.  My post however, which was scheduled for today, was one of the casualties of their catastrophic human error.

Unfortunately for me, my post has forever been lost in cyberspace.  Perhaps I will rewrite it.  Perhaps I will restore it to its full glory.  Just not tonight.  I'm too distraught at the thought of having to re-invent, re-edit, and re-post something that may never live up to the original.  I suppose that's why we wear oven mitts: so we never burn our hands again.  I will be sure to be more diligent in the future backing up my data.

I love the fact that Blogger is free, but the real lesson here is you get what you pay for.

When I first learned of the Megaminx puzzle, I knew I had to get one.  But they were pretty expensive (and I wasn't sure I would be able to solve one anyway.)  Why invest in a quality Megaminx?  I thought I would try to solve it once and then be done with it.  So I sent for a cheap one from China.

This is a cheap Megaminx

I began to solve it, then it fell apart and exploded in hands.

This is a Megaminx Explosion

I was embarrassed.  I wasn't embarrassed because I couldn't solve the puzzle.  I was embarrassed for being cheap and not expecting the puzzle to explode in my hands.

It's the same with writing.  I don't get embarrassed with typos or grammatical errors...ever writer makes those.  But I am embarrassed that my original writing was lost, never to be restored.  I did not have a backup plan.  I can only hope that when I do rewrite my post it will be better than the original.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

Random Recommendation: 10 Difficult to Write Pieces

Whenever I face a daunting challenge, (how about that crazy cube at left?) I remind myself that the world is full of amazing people who make the impossible seem like child's play.  This post is dedicated to all those super humans.

I read this great article that shows us just how amazing people can be when put in extraordinary circumstances...or who simply wanted to challenge themselves – beyond what us mere mortals would consider difficult.  If you think solving the Rubik's Cube blindfolded is impressive, wait until you read this post.

The article ranks ten works of literature based on how difficult they were to write.  From a novel written without the letter, e, to a successful novelist who was still years away from puberty when she wrote her first novel, to a memoirist who emerged from a coma to dictate an entire book exclusively with his one eye, this blog post is nothing if not inspirational.

Reading the list also will give you some perspective when you're searching for an excuse not to write.  Enjoy it here:

10 Works of Literature That Were Really Hard to Write

Let the hero worship commence.  I bow down to all you amazing people out there who keep me humble.

Happy Writing!