March 1st, 2010

(More) On Advice

Advice–I love it! Anything anyone I respect wants to (gently) suggest I do or try, I’m open to hearing. I might not do it–I suppose statistically speaking, I do very little of what people suggest I do–but hell, it’s education just to know that this person thinks something is a good idea. Tells me something about his or her worldview, and that there might be others like it, if nothing else. But I do owe a lot–everything from my ability to use a hair-dryer properly to lots of brilliant edits on my stories–to someone else telling me what I was doing wrong and how to do it better.

February 25th, 2010

Workshop #1: Ideas

So I’m back to teaching with the very wonderful SWAT program this week, and those who were around for last year’s term will know that I am a bundle of nerves and excitement, and massive lesson-planning.

I thought I would put my lesson notes on Rose-coloured this year, in the hope that we could live that bloggy interdependent dream–maybe you guys would find some of my ideas interesting, and at the same, you might have more/different ones that could help me. Or maybe you will find this boring–either way, let me know!*

I should note here that I massively over-prepare, just in case the class is incredibly surely and won’t talk and I have to resort to lecturing. This has never happened, and I vastly prefer to run a class by discussion, with a few longer bits of explanation from me. In a typical class, I use about a quarter of what I prepared, sprinkled throughtout the hour. It’s a little random, but it works out. Anyway, onwards, any of this material below will come after introductions, a discussion about what they might like to write about, and how to figure that out.

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Writers constantly get asked in interviews “where do you get your ideas?” It’s not a very original question, but I am always interested in the answer–it’s rarely straightforward. Sometimes it is–an event in one’s own life or in history that seems like it could be molded into a story, a bad book or movie that the author read that made them think “I could do the same thing but better!”

Sometimes it’s a character you’ve created, and think about, and imagine out his or her life, and then you find an incident in the imaginary life you’ve created that might work as a story. Sometimes you want to capture a feeling you’ve had, a person you knew, a neighbourhood you’ve lived in. Sometimes you want to write a story as a caricature or spoof, as revenge (that often works very poorly), as a love note. Sometimes your idea for a story is to try to write the thing a given audience wants to read: your teacher (this also doesn’t work well, mainly), a publication, someone you want to date.

Sometimes you have no idea where the idea comes from, you just start writing because you’re bored, or lonely, or your teacher told you to, and something comes from nothing and you realize you are writing a story. Sometimes by the time you have a story, you have no idea where the idea came from. The piece I’m currently working on is structured around a set of reworked advertising slogans, but it’s certainly not about them. It’s set where it is because I had wanted to return to a place I’d created in another story, and make better use of it, but the story’s not really about the setting. Now that I’m in the thick of it, I have no idea what led me to these people doing this stuff…though I’m (mainly) glad I got here. It was a long slog to figure out what the story was even about–I didn’t really know before I started writing where I was going to end up.

My point? Is that ideas are what you make of them. I think the only thing an idea needs to be to make it a good one is that it’s something a writer likes enough to start writing and keep writing. The rest will work itself out on the page (well, *the writer* will work it out, but it’ll feel natural).

There are so many good things about being a writer that I don’t like to dwell on the negative, but it does drive me crazy when I meet someone at a party and they say, “It’s great that we ran into each other because I have the best idea for a story/novel/series of 14 interconnected novels.” They have inevitably never written anything before, but after explaining the book to me at length (it’s always at length) they say, “It’s practically written! I have it all worked out inside my head; I just have to get it down.”

January 23rd, 2010

Bits

I have no major theme or connective tissue for today, just a little things I’ve been thinking of and would like to share with you. Please do not attempt to take them as a whole; they certainly do not come to more than the sum of their parts. I’ll try to visually separate everything on the page for you.

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I like rules. Maybe more than a so-called creative person should or is expected to, I enjoy being told what to do. I gleefully tell potential employers that I take direction well, and I really mean it. My friend P calls this my desire to “outsource my thinking,” and she’s spot-on–I appreciate it when someone will bother to form a plan or opinion where I have none–saves me the trouble, and provides the illusion of an ordered universe. Obvious, this won’t work well with things that matter a lot to me (ie., my writing, my clothes, what I’m going to eat), but I am really appreciative of advice (or imperitives) on such low-stakes issues as where to put the butter dish, when to send thank-you notes, and where I may wear my hat.

Yep, I’m an etiquette junky. When I was a tiny, I somehow picked up the Emily Post Book of Etiquette a great aunt had given my mother for high-school graduation (in a much much different edition than pictured here). And I’ve been a lifelong devote to her newspaper columns, and now the family (there’s dozens of’em) have a website. Lately, when I’ve been feeling blue or harried or as if the world just weren’t up to the white glove test, I’ve been turning to the Post family’s Etiquette Daily blog, and it’s been making me feel better. I thought I’d share my story, and the link, in case it might make you feel better, too.

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Kerry Clare wrote this amazing post I think you should read, called Escape the Ego. Don’t be alarmed by the fact that it seems to be about a book called Eat Pray Love–I’m not sure what that is either, but I’m wary enough of the title that I’m not going to Google you a link (sorry!). Anyway, the post isn’t really about that book–it’s about why we read, and write, and what happens when we do. And it contains this beautiful paragraph:

“…I read, I think, to break it down and enable me to see the world in miniature, as manageable. Which, however conversely, is to be able to look at the big picture and regard it all at once, perhaps for the very first time. Fiction is a study in the hypothetical, a test-run for the actual. An experiment. What if the world was this? And we can watch the wheels turn and this bit of sample life run its course to discover. And I don’t mean that literature is smaller than life, no. Literature is life, but it’s just life you can hold in your hand, stick in your backpack, and I’m reassured by that, because the world is messy and sprawling, but if you take it down to the level of story, I am capable of some kind of grasp. Of beginning to understand what this world is, how to be in it.”

To which I say, yes. Also, wow.

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Paul Quarrington has died, another hard blow in a rough week for CanLit. I hadn’t, in truth, read much of Quarrington’s work, but I was a big fan of his live performances–a great reader, a great speaker, a surprising good singer (I saw his band, The Pork Belly Futures play in Winnipeg because I was all alone and it was either that or stare at my hotel-room wall–and they were brilliant!!) He had a wonderful big warm presence, and an off-the-cuff joy in performing. I actually went to so many Quarrington events, and just ran into him randomly at so many litsy things, that he started smiling and saying hi to me, even though he had no idea who I was. I was in the process of working up the nerve to introduce myself, and now I am not going to get to do it. Which is sad. But I will be reading the books.

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And so ends another miscellaneous week. Hope this finds you well!
RR

January 22nd, 2010

An end to villainy

This is not a new year’s resolution, because I was working on it in 2009 too, but something I’ve committed to in my fiction is to try never to write villains. Why? Because villains aren’t people. Well, no character in fiction is an actual person, much as I like to relate to them. Better explanation: villains are not characters that act like real people–they exist purely to thwart other characters, for reasons of plot, not emotion, context, or necessity. When they are done kicking the babies, chopping down the old-growth forest and eating the last cookie, they go into the cupboard and shut themselves down until the author needs them to go cause more havoc. That’s a reference to Vicki, the human-like robot on Small Wonder). When the family wasn’t interacting with her, she was in a cupboard, switched off, mindless and inert. Like Vicki, villains have little motivation or inner life; they aren’t really characters, because they exist only to act out the designs or wishes of others. When Vicki is not being seen by others, her own consciousness stops–she has no opinions of herself until she is flicked back to life for a new interaction.

Which is, of course, fine in certain sorts of writing–often in genre stuff, children’s stuff–who wants to know what the black-hatted cowboy or Gargamel should be so industriously evil?

But that’s not the sort of stories I’m interested in writing–I really am trying to mimic how real people actually are (sometimes I have less interest in real settings or plot elements–witness stories about urban flying lessons and cheerleaders from other planets). And I guess this is a personal assumption, but I don’t think people, even assholes, generally perceive themselves to be assholes. I mean, some people just *are* but I don’t think *they* think they are. Like the lady who shoves me out of the way to be first in line at the newly opened cashier at Metro–an unqualified loser move, but I very much doubt that her interior monologue says, “Ok, time for an unqualified loser move!” She thinks about her kids waiting at home for her, or maybe I cut her off somewhere else in the store and she’s getting revenge, or maybe she’s so absorbed in her thoughts of her next manicure that she doesn’t even see me.

I don’t actually care–I’m just annoyed for a moment and then I get distracted by a recipe magazine in the checkout stand and that’s the end of it. And I don’t have to care, being just a human, but as a writer I think I would–have to give any character occupying my stage a reasonable point of view, because nobody actually hops out of bed in the morning thinking, “Bwa, I’m a bitch.” Everyone thinks they’ve got their reasons. I think many of them are *wrong* in their reasons, but they still have them.

Anyhow, that’s how I see the world, so it bugs me when I read about characters that don’t seem to have a real moral compass. I don’t at all mind characters that are immoral or amoral (lots of people are) but I need a writer to either show me how that works internally, or at least strongly imply that there is a way it works. Maybe it’s been too many novels about vengeful ex-wives cutting the power supply and crazy employers extending work hours, but these villainous type characters often seem like a shortcut to manufacturing tension in a plot where none really exists.

I’ve definitely wrestled with this in my own work–sometimes I don’t know why a minor character did some jerky thing and I don’t really care, and then I realize that the whole section reads really false–manufactured plot. So I go back and think through the backstory and often have to change things, because no one except the truly deranged would spend that amount of time and energy trying to mess with someone for no apparent gain. So I write it differently–sometimes I take the villain out of the story, sometimes they get a little nicer, sometimes they remain total jerks but they get some logical motivations for their jerkiness. Once I wound up flipping the whole story to write it from the “mean” person’s POV. Some of these villains are pretty interesting, when you get to know them.

RR

January 13th, 2010

Vocabulary Rant: Winter Edition

Remember last week when I was miserable? I read a lot, and every time I came across some vocabulary error I went on a (silent) rant about whatever it was being basic knowledge and who were these writers who didn’t even know the definition of “savory”??

Of course, that’s nonsense–vocabulary’s hard, because once you think you know a word, why on earth would you look it up to confirm the definition? If the word is esoteric, you might not even use it in conversation often enough for someone who knows better to hear it and correct you. You are stuck with this erroneous impression for life, perhaps…

I’ve carried mistakes around unvoiced for years, only to be blown away when, for example, my TA couldn’t understand what I meant when I said “re-TOR-ick” and another student had to step in and say, “I think she means rhetoric,” as if I were an over-precocious child or perhaps a trained monkey. Er, ahem, that was a bad day.

Anyway, this is a (modestly) good day, and I am ready to assert some things about some words in the hopes that it’ll help someone and, if I get anything wrong, some kind commenter will step in quickly to set me straight and save me from years of further errors. You’d do that for me, wouldn’t you?

I’m going to skip over where I found these errors, as the works in questions were actually pretty good and I don’t wish to embarrass anyone (as that oblivious TA did to me!!)

You can’t call sweets “savory,” because they are sweet. Foods that are savory have a predominant flavour of herbs, spices, salt, or some combination thereof. They are what one eats for appetizers or the interesting part of main courses (the potatoes/bread/pasta are the bland part). When someone is having a potluck and realizes that all the guests are bringing cakes and cookies and they say, “We have too many sweets and not enough…not-sweets,” what they mean is savory. In this context, sweet and savory are opposites–fruits, candies, cakes’n’pies, etc. are never savory–the issue I came across was a fruit being described that way, which sounds horrid (imagine a salty spicy strawberry!) I think the confusion arises from the verb “to savor” , one definition of which is to enjoy a flavour. That flavour can be anything, sweet or savory, so you see how people could think anything worth savoring could be described as savory but, sadly, it’s not.

I’m using American spellings here, because those are the dictionary references I could find online. In Canada, it should really be “savoury” and “to savour”.

Bemusement means confusion, not amusement…or am I confused? I was taught ages ago that bemusement is a kind of gentle confusion, often with some ironic tolerance built in–you can be bemused by your toddler’s insistence on putting toys in the fridge, but you can’t be bemused in the chaos after a car accident (well, I can’t). But then while I was fishing for online definitions for this post, I came across this one, which seems to imply that bemuse *can* be a 50-cent synonym for “amuse,” as I often hear it used. Is this a commonly accepted definition–anyone know?

That which you choose, that or which, makes a difference. This one breaks my heart, because it is such a useful nuance of language and I’m pretty sure it’s going to die out. I recently lost an argument with a teenaged friend about why *not* spell “all right” as “alright”–my argument, because we already have a perfectly good way of spelling it and the new way does not add any new angle to the word, nor even save all that much energy not typing the second L and the space. His argument was, well, people often do, and are perfectly well understood. Then the example of “hoodie” for “hooded sweatshirt” came up, and that’s an evolution I rather like, as the slang word for a sloppy article of clothing seems so appropriate, plus the word reflects how people actually talk, and does save a lot of typing time.

So, fine, I accept “hoodie” as an addition to the language, and “alright” as at least not much of a subtraction, but losing the that/which distinction leaves us poorer, I think. And I do think it’s going, despite many people’s adherence, because fellow *editors* ask me about this one, and though they listen and even write it down when I explain, they always end by saying, “Thanks. I never remember that one,” as if it were impossible to learn and not much of a loss, anyway. But here it is, one more time, with feeling:

Use that with no comma to introduce a restrictive clause–thus, to limit the statement to being about some part of a larger group. For example, to say, “Lorna thought about the sex she had with Steve that was great,” is to say, she thought about *some* of the sex she had with Steve, the times that were great, but not the other, less stellar, times.

On the other hand, use which with a comma to introduce a non-restrictive clause–that is, a clause that adds extra information about *all* of the topic at hand, and doesn’t separate out a subsection as different. Thus, to say, “Lorna thought about the sex she had with Steve, which was great,” says to us that Lorna is thinking about all the times she and Steve had gotten together, and by the way, it was always great.

You see there’s a big difference here, right? Both for Lorna (and Steve!) and for the reader. If you run into this baffling construction–“Lorna thought about the sex with Steve which was great”–who the hell knows how good their sex lives are?

Sometimes I get the impression that people think grammar rules are just snobbery, like rules about what fork to use for the shrimp–a way for people who know to feel that they are better than those that don’t know. And frankly, on really tough days, sometimes the grammar that I do know (which is certainly not all of it) is all I have to cling to. In truth, when it comes to Latinate rules like not ending a sentence with a preposition, it really is just rules for the sake of rules, but when it comes to Lorna and Steve, I think sentence construction does matter and is worth thinking about!

I would love to know, oh Rose-coloured readers, does anyone observe the that/which distinction anymore? Don’t be afraid–it’s 21 C in my apartment today, so I can take the bad news if it happens that you don’t!

Thanks for reading–it felt really good to get all that off my chest!
RR

January 5th, 2010

New month’s resolution

So I couldn’t come up with any new year’s resolutions. That makes me sad, because I love new year’s resolutions. Hooray for opportunities to improve–I have lots of ways I need to improve! In past years, I have made 10 little resolutions to work on throughout the year, with a midyear review on my birthday (in case I decide some resolutions are stupid and decide to junk them).

But this year I can’t think of anything I want to work on all year. In truth, that’s often what’s wrong with me–some resolutions get “resolved” early in the year because they are specific (ie., last year I resolved to learn one word in Japanese a week until I went there, and I did, and then I went there, and that was that) and others drag on because they are too open-ended (become braver was the other resolution–wtf was I thinking?? how?? and how will I know if I have??)

Even if they are good specific-but-long-term plans, by the time I get to the end of the year both my world and myself are usually completely different and I no longer want to do the thing I resolved to do. I think a large part of my problem with life, actually, is that I don’t realize that everything changes all the time.

So this year I have resolved to resolve a new thing for each month. If it works, great, that can be part of my lifestyle, and I’ll resolve something new for the next month. If it sucks, oh well, I’ll junk it and have something new for the next month. I guess I could also renew a resolution for a second month if need be, but Penelope Trunk says it only takes three weeks to make a new habit, and I’m giving myself an extra week for cushion.

My January resolution is to start writing in the mornings, at least a little bit. Tonnes of writers swear by this habit, but I’ve always been a little brain-dead in the morning. I’m totally a morning person, I’m happy to get up and do things and even chat with you (very few people want to chat with me early in the morning, it turns out), but I don’t feel I come up with great insight before 9am very often.

So what I usually do with my early mornings is go to the gym, but this winter I have been feeling that if I have to leave the house at 5:45 and walk in slush and cold and blackness to the gym every morning, I might die. Serious, this is a creaky old person sensation, and it’s not good.

Thus I’ve been going to the gym in the evenings, which cuts into my writing time, so the logical thing would be…there you go. I tried it this morning–it was a little disorganized and not my best work by far but it’s a try. Three weeks less a day to go!

Happy new year!
RR

Hearts and stars to 2009

Ok, I’m lagging behind but I am still thinking about 2009 and trying to think of an appropriate tribute. Just to be clear, this was a year I liked *very* much, but I don’t think all the highlights are blog-appropriate (every cookie I ate and person I hugged and time a civil servant was extra nice to me could get dull, not to mention unwieldy). So I’m concentrating on bookish highlights–they are, after all, often the most interesting parts of my day.

Books read: 69 (ha!)

Books written: 1/2 of one (hiatus’d); 1/2 of another (promising!)

Regrets regarding the first of those: none that I wrote it, none that I stopped (right now, at least; I’m a little moody on this subject)

Best reading experience: Tongue by Kyung-Ran Jo over the course of two days in July, while lying in the grass in various public parks in Toronto. This was very much not the best book I read in 2009–in fact I have a lot of problems with it that I’m dying to discuss (any takers?) But it certainly is suspenseful and I was very eager to find out what happened, and I had nothing to do but keep reading in the glorious sunshine, interrupted only by bathroom breaks, eating on patios and conversations with my equally bookish companion. There aren’t many better weekends, I’d say.

Best CanLit in-joke that I actually got: In the novella “Gator Wrestling” in Leon Rooke’s The Last Shot. This is a stellar piece, even if you never get the joke–it’s just the sprinkles on already overwhelmingly delicious frosted cake. Conversely, there are likely many jokes I didn’t get in books I’ve read this year–but how good were those books to start with?

December 30th, 2009

En vacances

I thought that I might not have the time or internet connection to blog during vacation, but here I am with both of those. What I lack is anything to blog in regard to. It is funny to get through a day without writing or editing or talking to people about writing, or even eavesdropping on people on the bus (somehow, I consider that part of my work). As it turns out, this vacation thing is very pleasant. There is currently a blizzard going on where I am (Charlottetown, if you are curious), which limits activities to reading, eating, talking, and playing cards. Also, napping, which is not really an activity but does fill gaps in the day quite nicely.

Lulled on sleep and sugar, I am unable to come up with much that’s interesting to say. I have learned that PEIslanders are very friendly and call Gin Rummy “Queens” but it’s still fun, that I probably have some kind of chronic sinus issue that I need a professional to look into and if possible destroy, that I like lobster as much as I suspected I would, and that the innovators issue of the New Yorker is pretty good but they still shouldn’t have done away with the winter fiction issue.

I swear to you, that’s all I’ve got. I…uh…I’m gonna go work on a story now. And then maybe commute to nowhere, just feel a bit more like myself. Either that or take a nice midmorning nap.

RR

December 16th, 2009

Kill your darlings

This scene has no real point, except that I like it. So it’s getting cut (mainly) from the story, just as soon as I can stomach it. Thank goodness for blogs–you guys take care of my darlings for me.

December 12th, 2009

A passion for narrative can make you a jerk

Well, me, anyway.

I saw an ad for Kraft Dinner Szechuan a few months back and, as appalling is that sounded, I wanted to try it so as to verify the appallingness for myself.

Then I forgot all about it–it’s not like I’m going to spend money on this stuff or anything–and then today I saw they were giving away free samples of KDS at Metro. Yes! The girl at the little sample-table was talking to someone else when I approached. I waited patiently, but when she turned to me she looked aghast.

“May I try some too, please?”

She tried to thrust the whole container at me, realized her error, forked a tiny bit into a bowl, could not free the fork from the noodles because her hands were shaking violently, and finally handed it over, eyes wide and wet.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, you’re very welcome,” she said, only a slight quaver.

I went off with my sample, but she called me back to offer, and explain, a coupon booklet. Except she couldn’t turn the pages easily, her hands were shaking so badly. When I thanked her, again she seemed incredibly touched.

I’ve been thinking about her ever since, wondering what tragedy or incident prompted all this, and how she would do for the rest of the day and after. Bad news? A near-miss car accident? An irate or violent sampler? Surely, it would have to be something big; the story wouldn’t be as good if she were simply wildly nervous about giving out samples at Metro.

Clearly, I’m an asshole, because I was sort of hoping for the worst-case scenarios in the name of a good story!! Why wasn’t I hoping from the beginning that she was just a very edgy kid, and she’d grow into her role and in time get a better one? I’m hoping that *now*, but I had to roll through all these other fun catastrophes first. I suck. And, come to think of it, why *wouldn’t* the coming-into-her-own of a Metro sample-distributor be a good story? A story is only as weak as its writer.

And the KDS is more abominable than you could ever imagine–you have to try this!!

RR