Day 136 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next five weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

 

LET YOUR CHARACTERS TALK

(If You Shut Up And Listen They Just Might Tell You A Story)

 

One of the things that just bugs the living hell out of me is when someone goes on, and on, and on telling me what a character's attributes are. Where they're from. What they eat, drink, and smoke. What they wear. Where they buy their cologne...To the point where I am now so overloaded with detail that I've begun to wonder if there's actually any left for the story. I love a good narrative, really. But a good narrative should be sparse to the point of laconic. A truly great narrative is the type that holds back so much that you are mesmerized by the desire to know more about the character. It shows how things unfold and lets the actors tell their stories.

 

Perhaps one of the best examples of this is F. Scott Fitgerald's, THE GREAT GATSBY . (Yes, I know they just made a movie of the thing...again. I don't live under a rock.) The book is one of those great interplays of characters. You learn things about their nature. Their strengths and weaknesses and they become real and poignant. All of this through their interaction with each other. Even the narrator is carrying on an inner monologue that shows so much about him and his entanglement in the life among Long Islands moneyed elite during the Roaring Twenties without an obvious author's input.

 

Yet, there are so many things withheld. Who is Gatsby? Where does he come from? Are any of the rumors about him true? Is he a manipulator or just another passenger on a train with no engineer? These are the questions you ask over and over that are never answered fully enough to be satisfying, but the spectacle of that summer and the players on the stage with Gatsby holds you spellbound to the end.

 

Another master of dialogue, and the effect of limiting of information presented in narrative, is none other than his lordship, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creator of such memorable characters as Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. As a writer of detective fiction and crime stories, what good would it be to him to give away as much information as possible, even about a main character supposedly possessed of such shrewd insight and powers of observation as Holmes? The delight of the stories is held in the interaction between Holmes and the likes of Dr, Watson or even the evil Dr. Moriarty. It is the unraveling of plots and the discovery of clues that keeps you at their side as the tale unfurls. You listen with intent concentration to Holmes' every utterance, hoping to get to the bottom of things before he enumerates the mistakes made by his adversaries.

 

Or how about William J. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize winner, Ironweed ? If the dialect and drama of Francis Phelan's story doesn't drag you in and make you doubt your own humanity at times then I question your claim on any humanity at all.

 

So quit yammering on and on and give your characters a chance to tell their story. Is it more difficult? Yes...and no. At first it's difficult to not want to dazzle your audience with your linguistic acrobatics and descriptive abilities. After a while though, your characters become more assertive and at times will even tell the story in ways you didn't know it should be told. They will take command and you will follow along just to see them walk, talk, and live all on their own. That is when the magic happens! Just before they administer large doses of tranquilizers to you out at the home.

 

 

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.

Day 135 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

 

ALL WRITER'S SHOULD BE GARDENERS

 

Okay, show of hands. How many gardeners in the audience? How many have at least tried to grow something? How many of you feel that plants come to your place to die? Hey, it happens to the best of us.

 

What the hell am I talking about, anyway? You're a writer. You don't have time to be playing in the dirt!  Have I finally gone right off the end? No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I'm probably talking more sense than you think.

 

First of all, time away from the keyboard is essential if you want to keep from growing stale, stymied, or just plain frustrated. Knocking around the yard, or the patio, or the community plot is a great way to recharge and rewind. Not to mention creating an environment that can give back to you.

 

Second, a garden can teach you innumerable lessons about writing. It can teach you research and planning. It can show the value of thorough preparation. Gardening is nothing if not an exercise in persistence and patience. It also teaches you to take pride and be grateful for the product of your own efforts.

 

Third, it can help you develop a thicker skin when it comes to disappointment. Face it, not every seed produces a shoot. Not every shoot grows into a seedling. Not every seedling eventually bears fruit. There's an old gardeners axiom, one third for the weather, one third for the pests, and one third for the farmer. In other words, it is better to over plant then to be left short when harvest time comes.

 

It's the same thing with writing. Not every idea we write down becomes a complete thought. Not every thought becomes a theme. Not every theme becomes a chapter. Not every chapter becomes a story, and there are just as many weeds on the best-seller list as there are tomatoes! What you do learn is that it is better to sow all those ideas and see which ones actually make it to maturity. The more you cultivate, the more you'll harvest.

 

Lastly, in just a practical sense, is the matter of what you grow. Yes, you want some kind of retreat that is gentle on the mind. Why not throw in a little something that's good on the belly? While I'm waiting for that publishing contract, with an option for movie rights, I've got a nice little vegetable and herb garden going. (No, Clyde! Not that kind of herb. I don't care if this is California, they still put you in jail for cultivation with intent!)

 

My wife and I share a hobby of canning pickles, sauces, chutney's and jams. Again, while it takes you away from the keyboard, it provides a satisfaction that all too often is hard to find in between Chapters Five and Six. It has also provided wonderful gifts to people we find special and who appreciate the products of our efforts. None of it comes overnight, just like the recognition we seek as authors. But eventually we find the audience that appreciates our efforts and that can be enough.

 

 

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author. 

Day 134 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

 

WHAT'S ONE MORE CHALLENGE?

Hey, it's not like I don't have anything to do already!

 

This is what happens when you think too damn much. I've always got something stirring in the soup I call a brain and I'm always looking for someplace to serve it up. So there I was on the introductory page to my blog when I noticed a neat opportunity. One of my favorite other bloggers has posted a challenge originating from Book Country. They've started a Summer Writer's Hangout Club. The goal of this is to join and, between 5/20/13 and 9/2/13, write a novel by setting a goal of 500 words/day. If you can do this you should have at least 53,000 words, or a short novel by the end of the challenge.

 

Hey, I'm already in a 365 Days of Blogging challenge, I work a 40+ hour/week day job, I attend workshops, readings and I am constantly grinding out poetry and short fiction. So, figuring that I wasn't doing much anyway, I've decided why not? As an added incentive, I've decided to keep you, my blog readers, apprised of my progress on this. I stalled out on another project I was in the middle of, but I can't resist, or blow, a challenge. What do you say...Anyone out there want to receive short excerpts as I get on with this? Let me know and we'll make arrangements.

 

 

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.

Day 133 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

 

 

ONE MORE TIME

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."

Neil Gaiman

 

I took a look at the last couple of posts and figured there was a need to tie it together and move on. At least for this week. As I was casting about for a starting point I came across the above quote by Neil Gaiman. There it was, my entire summation in one quote.

 

All the rules I've been spewing for two days break down to the simplest of things. So many people in today's world live in fear of not being connected, of not having the latest buzz, of not being linked in to their peer or social networks. Twenty-four hours a day, they live in fear that they will miss something. Exactly what, is anybody's guess. God forbid, though,  they're not jacked into every form of sensory pablum on the planet, just so they can answer "yes" when some half-witted schmuck asks, "Have you heard?" In the meantime, they are so over-loaded with external noise, they couldn't produce an original thought with a laxative.

 

That is why shutting out the drumbeat of the world is SO IMPORTANT for a writer. It is that opportunity to be bored and allow the mind to wander and contemplate old ground and new vistas that opens the doors of the imagination. It is that uninterrupted, unfiltered, irresponsibility to the world and all its yammering crap that frees writers to do what they have set out to do...WRITE!

 

That's why you need to shut out all the external sources. You need to know that your chosen path is a selfish one and, in order to accomplish the task you've set for yourself, the world can piss off until the job's done. When you close the door to the office, or back bedroom, or basement, or wherever you've decided to set up shop, the world has no further claim on you until you've met your goal.

 

I understand the demands that the outside can make on time. If you're not one of the lucky ones who is making a living at writing then you probably have a day job. If you're in a relationship, then there's the other half of that equation. If you have children YOUR time pretty much isn't. I know, I've been down all those roads with you. But when I close the door to my office/guest room then the world can hold its collective breath until I open it again.

 

Why should I feel this sense of entitlement? Simply, I've taken on that job everybody else thinks they could do without even trying. Well, they're not trying and I, and my fellow slaves of the keyboard, are the only ones getting the damned thing done! We're grinding out the poetry, the short fiction, the essays, novellas, novels, screenplays, biographies, and daily blogs because it's just so frigging easy!

 

If you want easy, open the door and let them in...ALL OF THEM! Listen to their chatter, follow their gossip, try to sift gold from their tons of bullshit. When you're done, take a look in the bottom of the sieve. I'll bet you a dime all you'll have is fine grained fertilizer. But, as soon as the rest of them get off their collective lazy asses, I can stop doing the easiest job in the world and get some rest!

 

 

Meantime...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.  

Day 132 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

WHO ARE YOU REALLY WRITING FOR?

Why Writing In General Is A Study In Mild Schizophrenia.

We touched on this in passing yesterday. The question of knowing who you are really writing for. This is that bit of agony that isn't taught by anyone outside of that great institute of higher learning, The School of Hard Knocks. But even a cursory search will bring up reference upon reference to this question. There's Stephen King's, 'Twenty Rules For Writers." Check out numbers 8, 14 and 20. Then there's the Ten Rules for Writers, found at Rookiemag. Check out rule number 10. Or how about Kurt Vonnegut's rule number 7.

 

By now you should see the reality and pattern. The only person you should be writing for when you sit down at the keyboard is you. If you're trying to write like King, Gresham, or JK Rowling, so you can appeal to what you feel is a ready-made audience, you are going to fail. They've already done it and anything you might come up with is going to be so thin, sycophantic, and copycatting that, should it even make it into print, it will be immediately be set on by critics like wild dogs on the savanna and the stripped remains will be left to the mercies of the public spaces. Think a couple of snarky, disappointed readers can't shoot you in your other foot? Then you seriously underestimate the power of social media. They can have egotistical sports figures eating their words in 140 characters or less. So what are your chances?

 

If you are serious about being a writer, then be serious about just that. The success part is, as I've said before, incidental and only attained after the hard work. Don't worry about how some other author would develop a particular character or how they would establish mood. How would you do it? It's your story and if you start patching it together with a piece from here and a bit from there, eventually you've re-created Frankenstein, and we all know what happened to that poor bugger! Write your story in a way that you find entertaining, engaging, and emotionally authentic. That is what the reading public will see and feel when they read it. Will they see it exactly the way you do? I doubt it. But they will recognize honest work and genuine voice. Anything else will incite the mob to pitchforks and torches!

 

Let's face it, how many times have you picked up a book, only to set it aside after a chapter or two because you knew the story had been done better already? We all have. Why is that? Because the writer was aiming for the acclaim and paycheck and not for a well crafted piece of fiction with depth and personal investment. Is writing a story that truly please you the easier road?. Nope! I won't lie to you, it can be a seriously difficult stretch. It may not be very commercial, either. What it will be is the most rewarding personal experience you've ever had. Bar none. So, just for grins, screw the world and write a book just for you!

 

 

Meantime...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.

 

 

Day 131 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCMENT

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

WRITING SHOULD BE DONE IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.

This is not a punishment! (Isn't that what we all say?)

 

If this isn't a punishment, why am I proposing it? For the best of reasons. You're in front of that keyboard to accomplish a job! Yes, if you admit the truth, it isn't all the suffering and  agonizing you make it sound like to your significant other. As a matter of fact, if you're writing what YOU want to write and not what you THINK you're supposed to write, then ninety-five percent of the time it's probably a real kick. Hell, I get a boot out of composing this blog more frequently than that.

 

But, in order to really concentrate on the job at hand, you need to have an environment with as few distractions as possible. That includes that simpering, new age recording of rain forest sounds you bought for mood. There's no getting in the mood for writing! It's the Jedi thing again, as Yoda says, "TRY? NO TRY! THERE IS ONLY DO!" Mood's for later, in the restaraunt, when you're trying to make up for all those hours locked away from kith and kin.

 

Okay, so the mood sounds, music, lighting...GONE! Got a window. Isn't it convenient that you placed your desk so all you have to do is lean over a little and you can see the splendid weather, and that park across the way, and maybe your friends outside...CLOSE THE DAMNED BLINDS! NOW! No, I'm not kidding. Unless your only view is the wall across the alley, the window is off limits.

 

Next, turn off the radio and the TV. I generally see about fifteen minutes of news in the morning, while I'm eating my breakfast. That's all I need to reassure myself that we haven't blown the planet to a cinder and I might still have an audience to write for. (We'll deal with who you actually do write for in another installment.) The glass teat is deceptive. While you're busy suckling at all that mayhem and mindlessness, it's busy sucking your creativity right out through your eyes. So, as of now, banish your tellie to the realm of unwriterly juju. Hey, while you're at it...the radio gets to keep the TV company in the quiet corner. Writing is an internal exercise. It is a constant journey through your own imagination, emotions and soul. In order to do that justice it needs to be as full time as you can make it. So, remember this: Writer's don't watch TV. They read. When they're not writing or reading, they're slumped in a chair snoring. Period.

 

What's the point of all this sensory deprivation? When you shut out the rest of the world, you can stop worrying about what the hell they might think and get down to having some fun with what you're thinking. This is where you can slip away to that land where you unravel the clues to a crime, or have wild, screaming, monkey sex with the most responsive partner you can imagine, or back the car THROUGH the garage door in a moment of joyful liberation. With no distractions, no punishments, and no possibility of an audience's disapproval, you are free to explore the most outlandish premise to its fullest. Isn't this why you started down this road?

 

Okay, we've made a start. Got a phone in the writing room? Oh, no you don't! No questions, unplug the bastard and get it gone! No video games, no Parcheesi, no solitaire. No damned nothing! (Yes, I know that was a double negative. This is coming from MY writing room...So my rules! See how that works? Fun, huh?)

 

Oh, if anybody asks you what it's REALLY like to be a writer? You can still tell them about that five percent of the time when you're not having more fun than they do with their clothes off. After all, you don't want them all thinking they should be doing this, too.You absolutely do not need every wanna-be knucklehead competing for your agent's attention and dropping your name as an entry card. Let them figure it out on their own!

 

 

Meanwhile...You! Cell number 217! Live, love, write, write, write!!!!

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.

Day 130 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

ANNOUNCEMENT

That's right, singular.

 

1. I am a believer in the never ending process of learning. In that cause I would like to put out an invitation to poets living in the Ventura, California area. Wednesday nights, for the next six weeks, at 7 PM in Ventura at the Vita Art Center, 432 North Ventura Avenue, there will be an ongoing poetry workshop. This is a great opportunity to sharpen your craft and gather with other writers in the pursuit of excellence.

 

 

WHEN THEY BEGIN THE BEGUINE

More on the Art of the Edit.

I don't know if you're familiar with this number referenced in tonight's title as it was performed by Frank Sinatra, and I may be showing my age, or the fact that I am a real sucker for Cinema and novels in the 'Noir' genre, but just for the hell of it, click the link and give it a listen. Why? Because in just over three minutes Sinatra and his backup orchestra tell a romantic, compelling story. Three minutes! It seems like almost an impossible space of time to take on that large a task, but at the time Cole Porter wrote the original it would have been considered a bit long. (Most songs, to be commercially viable, were about two and a half minutes.)

 

So what is a BEGUINE and what does it have to do with fiction editing? The answer to the first part of that is found here. The answer to the second part is a bit more complex...and, really, not. Lyricists have always known something fiction writers have a hard time learning and sticking to. If you want your audience to keep their hand off the radio dial, or the mouse, or the other novel they ordered on-line as a whim, you need to hook them fast and keep the story moving.

 

In that case, one of the first things so many 'newer' (I didn't use the novice word...but only so I could have the opportunity to be a bit snarky right here.)...ahem...'newer' writers struggle with is just where does their story begin? We don't want to have the reader wondering what time period it is, or what season, or where it's taking place, and who most of the other characters are...and...and...and, ad nauseum. So much gets crammed into the first few pages or chapter that the real meat of the story, the place where the serious showing takes place is competing with a flood of telling that has already drowned the average reader's A.D.D. and condemned the work to that pile next to the bed that's got RECYCLE stamped all over it.

 

Where am I going with this? Simply put, after completing a first draft of a story, whether short fiction, novella, or novel, the real story normally starts about twenty to twenty-five percent of the way in. Uh-huh, you say, but I need all that background to set up what's coming down the pike. I reply, with something less than academic high mindedness, "BULLSHIT! " What you are doing is exhibiting your own insecurity in regards to your talent and ability. You're signaling to your readers, like an inexperienced pitcher trying to get away with throwing a badly disguised slowball, that you really couldn't think of any way of working all this foofaraw into the actual body of the story. Unfortunately, you lacked the editorial gumption (I had another word in mind, of Latin origins, but in deference to the fifty percent of the audience that doesn't have them, I opted for that flowery bit verbiage) to get out the machete and lay to.

 

Seriously, I do this with short stories. Say the thing ends up twenty pages long at the finish of the first draft. I can pretty much guarantee you that the first four or five pages were warm up and what I needed to say didn't kick into gear until page five. It's like starting a car in a very cold climate with an old battery. You grind and grind and, just as you're convinced that you'll end up calling your BFF for a ride to work, VOILA, the SOB fires and off you go!

I have edited novel-length fiction in which the first three or four chapters were the equivalent of tip-toeing around in the dark. You keep waiting for something horrendous or comedic to happen, and when it doesn't, you wonder what the point really is. Answer, like our pitcher again, that was the warm up in the bullpen before taking the mound. It didn't actually lend anything to the game, but you have to start someplace.

 

So before you head out into grand eloquent expositions on the minor character who plays no real role until chapter twelve, consider this. If he/she doesn't contribute a damned thing to the story until chapter twelve, maybe we don't need to know ANYTHING about him/her until then. You really need to know when to begin the beguine.

 

 

Meanwhile...live, love, write.

 

 

Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

 

 

Tomorrow,

 

Dane F. Baylis

Author.