Big, Fun, Scary

I love the new year.

It’s like the morning -- or a new piece of writing -- that stands ahead, wide-open and welcoming.

The possibilities are infinite.

Wanna read about some possibilities? Check out what the NaNoWriMo folks have put together at The Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge (read the overview here). Then read the list of challenges people have taken up for themselves. Guaranteed, some will resonate as ideas for your characters.

Maybe even for yourself.

888 Challenge

I’m taking the 888 Challenge: "Read 8 books each in 8 different categories in 2008."

It feels big -- 64 books! -- since I’ve read only ~45 books per year in each of the last 5 years. But my choices are well-screened: every book (except four) in the first 7 categories comes from my to-be-read shelves -- books I already own and am so excited about that I’d buy them again in a nanosecond.

And the best part? I left a whole category open for books I discover in 2008!

I’ll be posting updates ... accessible through the link on my blogroll.

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Biography/Memoir
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Girl Sleuth by Melanie Rehak
I Could Tell You Stories by Patricia Hampl
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck
Letters to a Young Doctor by Richard Selzer
The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire

I’ve Started and Want to Finish...
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
Story by Robert McKee
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

By My Favorite Writers
Airframe by Michael Crichton
Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
(tba)
(tba)

Children’s/YA
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Holes by Louis Sachar
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
(tba)
(tba)
(tba)
(tba)

Nonfiction
The Annotated Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard Cytowic
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
The Quantum Zoo by Marcus Chown
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Zen of Eating by Ronna Kabatznick
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin

Short Stories
Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber
Stories of Anton Chekhov
The Best American Short Stories 2007
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver
(tba)

On Writing
Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri
Dialogue by Gloria Kempton
Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
The Anatomy of Story by John Truby
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider

Discovered in 2008!
(all tba)

Number 1,014

At 8 a.m. one week ago, at a Marysville, Washington Starbucks, a woman paid for her drink and then extended season’s greetings to the next customer in line by paying for that drink, too.

That customer did the same, as did the next, and the next, creating a pay-it-forward chain that grew through Wednesday and Thursday and involved 1,013 customers by Friday morning.

For now, put a pin in whether you think this kind of cheer chain is spontaneous or a corporate PR tactic. Instead, imagine a writerly interview with Customer #1,014 … conjure the story that led him or her to break the Marysville chain at 6:20 last Friday morning.

Say Yes

"Scales fell from my eyes" … a couple years ago when I learned that, in good improvisation, the actors always say yes to one another. Not a literal “Yes” of dialogue, but a creative Yes -- an agreement to openness; that whatever is offered from one actor is accepted, built upon, pivoted on, by the other. Saying yes moves the improvisation forward; otherwise, it dies.

Yesterday, while marinating on Astrapo’s comment about how to construct ideas, improvisation came again to mind. But how could a solitary writer use it to develop a story?

A few hours later, a writer-friend handed me Ron Carlson Writes a Story. Discussing first sentences, Carlson writes that, disregarding (during the writing phase) whether it’s good for the reader, a first sentence is good for the writer if it creates...

What I’ll call inventory -- there’s something in it. The writer David Boswell says it perfectly: “ ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ is not a terrible sentence from a reader’s point of view, but it is a terrible sentence for the writer because there’s no help in it. ‘Lightning struck the fence post’ is much better because there’s that charred and smoking fence post which I might have to use later.” I’m constantly looking for things that are going to help me find the next sentence, survive the story.

Say Yes to your drafts. More scales!

On Storytelling

It's worth taking 5 minutes each to watch these four video snips on storytelling from Ira Glass, host and producer of public radio's (and now, premium cable TV's) This American Life:

#1 Components of story: action and reflection

#2 Finding the story ... trimming the story ... and (sigh) sometimes killing the story

#3 Pursuing through the it's-not-as-good-as-you-want-it-to-be phase

#4 Finding your voice and including others' voices

Menorot

I’ll never again read about Hanukkah and be satisfied with a generic image from the term, “menorah.”

Nope, not since Dr. Dino shared photos of the literal works of art in his [my favorite!] menorah collection.

He defines the relevant terms and orders them from general to specific: candle-holder, candelabra/menorah, hanukiah. A writer always likes specific words best. But as Dino’s photos show, even “hanukiah” is far, far, far from specific.

Fabulous!

Blogblog

From the xkcd blog: "Wikipedia’s entry on blogs, with everything that is not the word ‘blog’ (or a derivative thereof) removed."

Exaggerated, maybe, but something to think about: What do you do too-much-the-same-of in your writing?

[For a fun side trip, click on the picture to get a larger view, then let your eyes lose focus and cross -- as with those Magic Eye pictures from the '90s -- until you see the words in 3-D ... until they pop like John Nash's hallucinations in A Beautiful Mind.]

Cluster Effect

In the first-season finale of The Gilmore Girls, a thousand yellow daisies were prelude to a marriage proposal.

What purpose might a cluster of something serve ... in your story?

Mr. Nice Guy

In a writers’ workshop, each participant chose a bunch of their favorite words and wrote a different one on each of a bunch of index cards. (A solitary writer could gather words by pointing blindly in a dictionary.) Then participants exchanged cards and used their new stack of words in a story.

My word stack:
accolade
barrel
cement
exercise
flashy
foreknowledge
genre
intricate
jangle
obnoxious
please
role
silly
snow
tear
usability

My story:
Yeah, I like to please the customer, I like to get accolades from the boss. But what can I do on the jobsite when I’m halfway through pouring cement and snow starts falling -- those intricate little flakes that melt into drool all over my work? C’mon, do I have foreknowledge of the weather?

And right away, the obnoxious little lady-of-the-house comes tearing out the front door, her wrists loaded with those flashy bracelets that make her jangle like she’s wearing silverware. She barrels down the steps toward me and screams that her sidewalk’s ruined. I want to tell her it’s not even done yet! It’s gonna have perfect usability, she just needs to exercise a little patience. But she’s from that genre of female that should only come out after dark -- the kind that inspires me to forget my role as a nice guy.

I step aside and let the silly woman march right into the muck.

Three Day Dirty

Our Protagonist stands next-in-line for coffee and sees the blonde barista step back from the espresso machine. He watches her tug a scrunchie off her pony tail, run both hands across her scalp, shake out her three-day-dirty hair, then pull it into one bunch again and twist the scrunchie around it in a couple of figure-eights. In the moment it takes her to step to the bar again, he considers fleeing the line.

Too late! “Sir?” the cashier asks, and he reluctantly gives his drink order. While the cashier marks his cup, the barista impossibly steps back again and removes the scrunchie, fluffs her hair once, twice, three times, then leaves it loose. She reaches for a gallon of milk and a frothing pitcher. At the register, the cashier’s face startles when she meets our Protagonist’s eyes. He leans in. “Tell her to wash her hands!”

What happens next?

Road Trip

You're driving a rental car, a thousand miles from home, and come up behind a car like the one back home in your garage.

And not merely its model, you realize, but its identical twin.

You draw close enough to read the license plate. Your eyes widen.

What's the story?

Prompt Yourself #2

As I do periodically, I collected writing prompts yesterday by running through the TV channels and writing down the first sentence I heard on each.

I narrowed my list to the following dozen. Pick five or ten and let your subconscious connect them into a story.

How’s that harmonica solo coming?

I don’t want to say my vows with you.

I’ll forgive you if you want to use a fork.

I’m going to make the most of the daylight.

It’s all going to be done by e-mail.

Mom’s cooking sucks!

On an unrelated note, why don’t you take this pie?

One of my colleagues developed an instrument.

They laid sod over it.

We always follow state regulations.

Who cares about better blood-sugar control?

You remembered my name?

SimpliFLY?

My husband is certain: only Melvin Udall (below) and I pack like this.

So how can the TSA think a one-minute video will convert the traveling public?

No Na No

I’m not doing National Novel Writing Month this year, but when a fellow WriMo (hi Leo!) challenged me to race him to write 10,000 words over the weekend, I couldn’t resist. He’d work on his novel; I’d draft a short story I’ve been marinating.

Surely anyone who’s interested already knows about this annual novel-writing frenzy that includes 99,000+ writers in its ninth year this year. But as I wandered around the site yesterday, I peeked into its Young Writers Program (an off-shoot that supports independent writers age 12 and younger, and in-school writing programs in grades K-12) and noticed a couple things to mention here. One is the archive of writing prompts in the Writers Block (if you’re not up for fun, just the merest flip of a brain cell can turn silliness deliciously serious). Another is the downloadable Young Novelist Workbooks, which include NaNo founder Chris Baty’s not-to-be-missed Magna Carta premise -- that what you love most and hate most while reading novels are exactly what you should include and exclude, respectively (and will be easiest/hardest for you to write), in your own novels.

In the end, a weekend of high-velocity writing reminded me to turn off the editor and create ... forward, forward, forward; to "turn the camera out" occasionally (thanks Nancy Beckett!) and be amazed at the surprises a wide angle will capture; and that I need about 100 times more plot than comes easily.

The Obvious Story ...

... is that the sock slipped off a baby's foot during a neighborhood walk, and whoever found it posted it in hopes the parents would reclaim it on their next walk.

But the sock is still there two weeks later.

So what's the not-so-obvious story?

Location, Location, Location

A woman, stopped at a light on a 4-lane street, noticed the driver in the car alongside motioning for her to lower her window.

“Can you tell me where we are?” he asked.

She named the street and said they were heading northbound.

“No, no,” the other driver said. “What city and state?”

It really happened -- but what are the circumstances that would make it believable in fiction?

Reverse the genders and see what happens. Fiddle with the ages and see how your story changes.

[Inspired by a caller to the John Williams radio show.]

Mail Pouch

When I opened a letter today, the lining pulled away a bit from the envelope -- enabling something to be secreted inside between the layers.

What could be there … and what's the story?

Addams Family Exorcist

The most horrifying movie ever? The Exorcist -- scary on the surface and profoundly disturbing deeper in.

Still, I'm drawn to watch it.

No, it's too intense!

This year, I stumbled on the perfect solution: audio and video of The Exorcist via my TV's smallest picture-in-picture window ... diluted by full-screen images of an all-day Addams Family marathon.

With a nod to Joey Tribbiani, who kept his copy of The Shining in the freezer.

Two Newspapers

A Sunday paper and a daily paper, unretrieved. What's going on?

My mind's first three possibilities are obvious or cliche: 1) the paper boy delivered to the wrong address; 2) the household residents are away; 3) they're ill or dead or being held captive inside the house.

My second three: 4) a neighbor planted the papers there; 5) a tornado dropped them from a distant city; 6) squirrels dragged them into position along an earth-energy line.

What's another possibility?

Decades Ago

Okay, I’ll consider myself tagged by Dr. Dino’s meme: What were you doing 10, 20 and 30 years ago?

My old day-planners let me drill down to the actual days and their surprising details.

30 years ago, I was 20 and in my third year of pharmacy school in Michigan. I’d had exams four days that week and had worked the other three in a hospital pharmacy. Always the least boy-crazy girl in the room, I’m shocked to see notations that “Steve called” and “Jerry called” and I “sat with Al at the library” (ah, I remember them all); and that I “saw John!” at a bar (he got an exclamation point then but now I have no idea who he was). My planner: Hallmark’s “A Woman’s Year” with two-pages-per-week spreads.

20 years ago, I’d been married a day shy of 2 months and there isn’t an entry in my planner for weeks in either direction of this date. I’d moved from Michigan to Chicago, leaving my apartment, friends, some nearby family, and my job as director of a hospital pharmacy. Probably, my days were filled with sex, errands, museums, parties, and generally getting to know Chicago before I looked for work after the holidays. But it had been a lot of change that never felt adequately acknowledged, and I’m freshly stunned to see my response reflected on page after blank page. I’m desperate to peek into the next year’s calendar to be comforted that life did quickly pick up again. My planner: The New Yorker Diary with two-pages-per-week spreads.

10 years ago, I was free of an abusive boss, but also out of a job I’d loved. Considering paths for the next half of my career life, I had coffee with a hospital exec, lunch with a non-profit exec, and bought an LSAT (law school admissions test) review book. (In the end, I rejected all three.) My planner: FranklinQuest (now FranklinCovey) Seasons, Classic size, two-pages-per-day spreads. My penmanship was beautiful--the only time in my life I can claim that.

Wanna play? Consider yourself tagged!