I’VE HEARD THAT BEFORE
The other night, I read a chapter from Meleena’s Adventures – Gods Of The Blue Mountains. I received some great feedback, as usual. However, one newer member made the comment, “It sounds like Lord Of The Rings… the spiders and everything.”
My answer was, “Of course it does! Same genre, a few of the same species, but by no means is it the same story. Sorry, I’m not changing it, just because of that.” Because of time constraints, I couldn’t elaborate.
A few days later, one of my fellow bloggers did a piece on how she’s getting sick of certain plots, or plots with the same flavors. I took the opportunity to continue my elaboration which I’ve said here in these blogs piece by piece.
In every genre and sub-genre, every story, every plot has been done. Period. Over and over again. Period. A murder mystery is a murder mystery. Someone gets killed, some quirky detective finds out whodunit. Or, in a twist, the story is told through the eyes of the killer.
In a western, they head ‘em off at the pass. In a variety of ways, from the scruffy simple cowboy to the tall dark handsome easterner come out west, to the oat-opera.
In a (yuck) vampire story, it’s usually a bloody romance, though if it’s truly horror (icky bug), it can be a real splatter-fest with little romance.
I could go on and on, but the point is that every one of these genres and sub-genres have been done before. Of course, there are the (to coin a modern catchphrase) mash-ups. Steampunk is an example of combining multiple genres, multiple plotlines. Or, sci-fi/fantasy which is one reason they are often lumped together on the bookshelves.
The more you mix, the harder it is to slot it on a bookshelf (or virtual shelf now). Doesn’t matter. You can stick to conventional genres and still be unique. Why? Because it’s your voice.
Why are there thousands of mystery novels out there? Why don’t people get tired of reading them? Because different people write them! How many plots are there? On source says between three and thirty six. However, the better range would be between seven and nine which provides a much narrower focus. Those plots can be mixed and matched any way you want but they all still boil down to one plot: someone wants something and they’re either going to get it or they aren’t.
How you get from point A to point B is an individual journey based upon your unique outlook, your talent as a writer and your voice. So, no matter that someone accuses you of writing another Lord Of The Rings, or Twilight, DaVinci Code or Murder On The Orient Express, unless you copy their entire manuscript, it’s your own story.
For a long time, almost every writer I ran across was either writing a memoir or a cushy vampire story. Did I tell them to forget about it and write something else? Did I tell them the market was already saturated with vampire stories? Did I tell them unless they were a celebrity or had a really unique event in their life, their memoir probably wouldn’t sell? Sure, but did I tell them not to write it? Of course not. There is always the chance that with their voice, with their unique journey, they could rise above everyone else.
When writing in any genre, no matter how unique you think your story might be, the only way it is truly unique is that you are telling it (or gag, showing it). Sure, you want to make it as different as possible, but relax, let it flow, don’t get too hung up on being different just trying to outfox those critics that think you’re copying someone else. You are! You may not even realize it but you are, so get over it and press on. It can’t be helped.
Make sure it’s your own voice and press on. With that thought in mind, happy writing!
DON’T OVERDO PASSIVE
I just read a great book that I almost put down after the first page. Really a half page, with the chapter number in the middle, follows the pattern of many books. I’m emphasizing this to put things in perspective.
The story started so passive, I couldn’t help but count the was’s. There were two paragraphs. The first short three-sentence paragraph was clean. The second one had eight, that’s 8 was’s in it. It was downhill from there. The same pattern continued for seven pages before the book finally took off. If it wasn’t for the reputation (and subsequent movie that just came out) from this author, I wouldn’t have continued. At least it was written in third-person, past tense.
It’s a good thing I decided to keep going because it turned out to be a great read. However, I could just as easily have tossed it because of those first seven pages. Anyone heard of those first-page read contests?
This never would’ve made first pass at a writer’s group, let alone any editor worth their salt. Of course, this author has a rep and lots of power, so he could write the phone book and his editor will be saying “Yes Sir!” We, as unknowns, and low-down-the-totem-pole authors would be ostracized, criticized and sent back to writing school. To be blunt, the writing sucked, at least at first. It could’ve been so much better and I think the author did his audience a great disservice. However, what do I know? He’s got the millions and I don’t.
There’s nothing wrong with a little passivity in your writing. It’s part of our language. However, there’s a time and place for it and should be sprinkled throughout the story, not slammed into every sentence and paragraph. Active is almost always better than passive and makes your writing so much stronger. Examples:
“Jodi had been a great friend but she stabbed Mark in the back.”
You should do a word search through your manuscript and get rid of every had been in your narrative, except in dialogue, and they should be used sparingly!
“Once a great friend, Jodi stabbed Mark in the back.”
This revised sentence is much more active.
How about this old standby:
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
How would you fix that and make it more active?
“The dark and stormy night raged outside the window.”
That is one of many ways to fix the sentence.
“It should’ve been the best way to take care of what was once a grand scheme.”
Hmmm.
“The solution they came up with didn’t take care of the once grand scheme.”
You can’t get rid of every passive word. That would make your prose too flat and dry. However, you should cut them down drastically.
You can use passive words in dialogue if you don’t overdo it.
Leave a few sprinkled throughout your prose, especially a was here and there.
Words and word combinations to get rid of.
was
had
Anything connected with been
should’ve been
has been
had been
had’ve been
would’ve been
as
There are probably more I’m not thinking of right now, but those are a good start.
What you do when you find one in a sentence is rethink the sentence. Try to reword it so that the sentence says the same thing but it doesn’t have to use those words and it is active, in other words, it moves forward instead of backward (or stands still). All of these passive words move backward or nowhere. They are not active. Active words move forward, move somewhere.
I’m not immune to passive either. I read an excerpt from Meleena’s Adventures – Gods Of The Blue Mountains last night at the Henderson Writer’s Group and our el-presidente, who is also an editor, caught me on several passive sentences. Forest through the trees!
Until next time…
A BIT ABOUT COMMAS
The lowly comma is an essential part of your writing. It separates the smallest part of your sentences, designates the pauses, the clauses and the places where you might want to take a breath. Most writers either tend to use too many or too few commas in their work. Or, like me, even though I have all this editing experience, I tend to go either way. When my writer’s group critiques my pages at the meetings, they’ll find the random comma I’ve either left out or added in where it shouldn’t be.
How do you know where to place one? The good old Chicago Manual of Style has quite a few rules for special cases regarding commas, especially when other punctuation is involved. However, their basic definition boils down to my second sentence above.
The one rule the Manual cites that I disagree with is for commas in a series. See the example below:
Lexie had three forks, two spoons, one knife and a napkin.
Notice there is no comma after knife and right before the and. The Manual says there should be. A lot of writers in my group add one in there. Technically they are right, especially for going by the Manual and probably a lot of English teachers.
However, I learned from technical writing and the Air Force’s old 50-34 Pen and Quill manual. The standard is to not use a comma after the last object in the series because the and takes the place of the last comma, rendering it unnecessary. No need to clutter up the sentence with extra commas!
I’ve used that standard consistently throughout my writing. The worst thing I can do, or you for that matter, is to vary the rule throughout your writing.
I know that either method is technically correct. Many people go strictly by the Chicago Manual of Style. For almost everything else, I certainly do. However, in this case, I go the other way and choose the comma-less method.
How about general use of a comma? Examle:
Meleena turned to the voice and spotted the short lithe figure of Vaaaven an annoying but useful associate.
Where would you put a comma or commas?
The sentence doesn’t read quite right as is, does it? It would take an easy fix with a simple little squiggly mark.
Meleena turned to the voice and spotted the short lithe figure of Vaaaven, an annoying but useful associate.
Notice how the comma signifies a pause in the sentence, where you might take a breath? It also separates the clauses.
A lot of times, commas come by feel. That’s why writers tend to use either too many or too few. The final say will be with your line editor, but the more chops you gain as a writer, the better your instincts.
That’s it for this stanza.
Happy writing.
WHY DO WE WRITE? REVISITED
In an article last year titled Write Write Write, I brought up the question, Why do we write? Recently, that question came up with someone close who had a great idea for a genre fiction series. She has what she believes is a dynamite idea and wants to run with it.
After we got through the usual explanations of copywrite and why she doesn’t need to just yet, the discussion came down to why she wanted to do this in the first place.
I asked her point blank. “Why do you want to write this story? This series?”
She thought about it a minute. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Then I presented her with the big question: Motivation. “That’s all fine and dandy. However, just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean you should be writing it. Why do you want to write it? What do you expect to get out of it? Do you want to write it because it’s something inside you that needs to come out? Or, do you want to write it because you think this idea will make you a million bucks?”
That rather wordy but necessary question gave her pause. I knew it would, and that was the point. Knowing what writing is all about and having gone into this game for what I think is the right reasons, I wanted to see what she would say.
“I’m not sure.”
Bingo.
She’s already written a few pages. I reviewed them and gave her a few pointers. Time has been her biggest problem so far. Writing is a commitment and there has to be a reason to continue. She hasn’t been able to get back to this story for a while and just started thinking about it again.
I honestly don’t believe making money is a good enough reason to go on because the chances of this great idea panning out, no matter how great it might be, are slim. It can happen if you believe in yourself and keep at it, but like I can testify to, it doesn’t always happen or always happen fast. If your motivation is money, you might as well quit right now and find another hobby, because that’s all this really is to most of us, a hobby.
I asked her, “Do you enjoy writing? Do you enjoy creating the big lie? Will you enjoy tearing apart your masterpiece and redoing it from the ground up? Will you be able to accept when others with experience tell you it isn’t that good, or you are making massive mistakes? Will you still enjoy it then?
I gave her something to think about. She only nodded. I think she may come around and continue with this project. My aim isn’t to scare her away from her great idea. However, the last thing I want is to see her doing it for the wrong reasons. To be a writer, you have to love writing. I do. If I didn’t, I’d wouldn’t be here writing these weekly articles. Putting out the stories on my web page, writing the Observer’s Challenge for the LVAS, popping out a short story when I feel like it. Or, maybe coming up with a new idea for a novel but having to shelve it because I’m already in the middle of another one.
Finally, I asked her, are you ready for agents and/or publishers to tell you they think your fantastic idea is stupid? Or tell you your idea doesn’t excite them? Maybe even tell you your idea might have merit if you change it so and so? Are you ready for the humiliation of a nasty critique or rejection?
I gave her some questions to ponder. In fact, I told her not to even try to answer them yet. Stew on it for awhile. As writers, especially those of you that haven’t read my earlier articles, have you asked yourselves these questions? Why do you do this self-torture, as some like to call it? Nothing about it is self-torture to me. I even like the editing! I write first for myself, for the pleasure of creating something special. Whether it pans out and someone else likes it is secondary. If I can sell it, so much the better. When it comes to the point where I start selling lots of books, I can focus on pleasing my fan base.
I’m still waiting to hear her answer.
How about you?
WRITERS GROUPS AND CONFERENCES REVISITED
It never fails that each week when I sit down to write my article for this web site, something has inspired me. Often it’s something that’s happened at the writer’s group meeting. Sometimes it comes from a book I’m reading or it might have to do with what I’m currently working on with my writing. In this case, I was chatting with a few of the early arrivals at the writer’s group meeting and one guy mentioned how lucky he was to be a member of our group. For those of you new to this web site, I thought it was worth covering the subject of a good writers group again.
How many of you are a member of a writer’s group and feel lucky to be in such a great organization? Why? Could it be because there’s no blood on the floor when you have critiquing sessions? That’s exactly what my friend said. He went to visit his mother in an undisclosed location in Calee’fornia. While there, he heard of a local science fiction writers group and dropped in on a meeting. Let’s just say he wasn’t impressed. The environment was rather hostile, just like the writer’s group from hell that I attended when I first arrived in Las Vegas in 2002.
The purpose of a group is to help writers not discourage them!
If you leave each meeting pissed off or embarrassed, you’re in the wrong group! If the leadership of said group allows that to happen, they have no business running a writer’s group. They aren’t helping anyone. Writing is a passion, not a punishment! If you’re in a group like this, quit it immediately!
‘Nuff said.
Our big event for the year is coming up soon. The Las Vegas Writer’s Conference will be held April 18-20 at the Sam’s Town Gambling Hall and Casino. Here is the link: http://shop.lasvegaswritersconference.com/
I cannot even begin to tell you how much fun I’ve had and how much I’ve learned from each of these events. I’ve attended each one since 2005 and they’ve all been a blast.
This is your chance to talk shop with editors, authors, agents and just about anyone that has something to do with the world of publishing.
This year we have six agents, four editors, an internet marketing strategist, a ghostwriting expert, a screenwriting expert, a Hollywood producer, several publishers and several authors attending as well as an outstand keynote speaker.
If you’ve never been to one and you are a writer of any kind, it is well worth the investment to attend a conference. The anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered over the past near-decade is that we have one of the best in the nation. There are bigger and smaller conferences, cheaper and more expensive. However, ours is the most intimate with the best shot at rubbing elbows with people in-the-know. It’s the best chance to talk to other writers, authors, agents and publishers, anyone that does the same thing you do.
We keep this conference deliberately limited so that everyone has a chance to see whoever they want. Our reputation has spread and instead of having to fight crowds and pay extra for five impatient minutes with maybe one agent at the end of a long line, you get a chance to sit down and talk to them face-to-face in a civilized manner. You aren’t competing with hundreds of people. Not only that, but you get to possibly sit with them and chat during one of the meals, talk to them in the hallways, sit in on one of their classes.
If you don’t have something ready to pitch, you can pick their brain with your idea. See if it’s marketable, maybe get their ideas on how to go with it so you don’t waste time. Or, you may just want to chat them up so they remember your face down the road.
The same can be said for the publishers or the screenwriting expert or the publishers. In these three days, you have that chance to dig deep into the industry, feel out what publishing your work, whatever it may be, is all about.
The event is filled with seminars all three days. Whether you have something to pitch or not, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn. Every subject imaginable is covered in the sessions and you’re free to pick and choose them at will. They’re taught by experts in the field, many of them the agents and publishers you may eventually pitch to.
The cost of the conference is currently $475 and will be $500 at the door. Yeah, in this economy that’s a lot. However, it’s worth every dime.
Does this all sound like a sales pitch? Call it what you will, but I can tell you I have no personal investment in this. I’m a paying customer like everyone else. It’s something I believe in as a writer. I’ll be there at the front desk, as usual, helping out, but will also be attending seminars and may even pitch one of my stories if I feel like it.
The bottom line is it’s worth doing at least once.
Until next time, happy writing.
DESCRIBING LOCATIONS – HOW PERSONAL?
In a past article series, Is Your Place Setting Real?, I talked about the ins and outs of describing locations, both public and private. I got to thinking about my own city Las Vegas, a very public place and how writers like to paint it. It’s very often given a less-than-flattering description from the city of broken dreams to an artificial paradise to even worse. For someone that chose to live here, I could take offense if I were thin-skinned. As a writer, I could take the easy way out and use every one of those-tired-but-true clichés if my story used Las Vegas. There’s more to this place than that. As far as I can remember, I wrote Las Vegas Gold and described it as nothing more than a place setting, without any clichés at all.
It made me think of Los Angeles, “Ellay,” “Down Below” as it’s known to many people who have grown up in and around Southern Calee’fornia. It’s been called everything in the book (now there’s a cliché), and then some as well. Much of these descriptions are unflattering, especially by authors who have never lived there. Someone from Ellay, might in turn describe New York (or as I like to call it, New Yawk) in the same negative light.
Say your story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri (Mizurr-uh). Have you ever been there? Are you from there? If so, what were your honest impressions? Are you really going to describe the town that way? I’m not talking about as a place setting, I’m talking about the overall impressions of the city. Is it Hicksville, Cowtown, Nowhere Town? Did you hate the place? Love it? Get no impression at all because it was just a stop on the freeway passing through?
Now, say you’ve never been there. Are you going to research Kansas City and use the impressions of other people and derive your description from that?
As a writer, one thing to think about is your audience. I sometimes wonder if sticking with the clichéd descriptions is cheating them. In your haste to maybe use Kansas City (sorry I’m picking on your random city if you’re from there) because it’s a minor location in the story, you do a quick Internet search and come up with a few impressions from the web. They happen to be clichés though you haven’t delved far enough into the city’s to know that. You use them, forever contributing to those clichés. Someone from Kansas City reads your book and may either agree or see your ignorance. Will they hate you for it? Probably not, but it might forever cement that ignorance in their mind. I guess it’s no worse than getting any other real facts wrong, but it’s easy to miss such a simple thing as a generalized description of a city or town, especially one you may or may not have been to.
It’s hard for me to hold all the clichés people say about Las Vegas against authors when most of them have barely been here for a few days at best and have never ventured off the strip. Anyone might get the impression of this town by the glitz and glamour of the casinos and the legacy of the mob and even the urban sprawl that came from it all. The movies, TV and lots of authors have already cemented that into our culture. However, I live amid that urban sprawl and though this place certainly lives up to many of the clichés, there’s still a town here where real people live, just like anywhere else.
As an author, when I describe someone else’s home town, I tend to be careful with the clichés. If I use one, I like to temper it with something positive so anyone reading it will have something good to come away with. The reader may actually hate their town, but I won’t make that call.
Okay, what if it’s the character that hates the town? It’s perfectly okay to have a character hate a place, but I still will have something positive in the narration, despite what the character is saying, to counteract the character’s opinion.
In both my icky bugs, The Greenhouse and The Factory, the town settings are not always shown in a positive light. In fact, in The Greenhouse, the town, a real place setting, is practically destroyed. However, the citizens prevail and the place survives. Redemption of sorts.
There are plenty of places in America I have no desire to ever return to again. However, I have no plans to write them as the pits of Hell in my next book. People live there. It’s their home. I may use it in a negative setting but I will also temper it with something positive. They may be one of my readers someday.
Every city or town has a dark underbelly but it’s the regular people that make these locations their great place to live.
What about you? How do you handle describing locations?
SETTING STANDARDS AND CONTINUITY IN YOUR WRITING
Some may call this style, but that’s not really what I’m talking about when I say standards and consistency in writing. I’ll give an example in the form of a non-existent paragraph from my one of my Meleena’s Adventures novels.
Meleena did not like taking orders from someone else, yet when Queelan told her to sit down, she did without hesitation. Something about his manner compelled her to comply where she wouldn’t do that for anyone else.
Hmmm… now that I look at it, I may actually use it somewhere. Sorry, I digress.
How many of you see the inconsistency? If not, I’ll give you a hint. I didn’t do things the same everywhere.
For those of you that still didn’t get it, it’s the use of contractions. In the first sentence, I used did not, whereas in the last sentence, I used wouldn’t. This is called a continuity (consistency) error. It’s a simple example of what can be a complex issue. One way is to always use contractions, regardless. Another way is to not use them in the narrative and only use them in dialogue. Then there’s the possibility of not using contractions in the dialogue when the speaker is a non-native English speaker like I do with one of my characters in the Gold series. The whole point is that however you do it, keep it the same throughout the story.
Contractions are an immediate example. The same could be said for say, standards of measure. Say, your characters are European where they’d use the metric system. Don’t have them using meters through most of the story then slip in a foot or an inch somewhere. That will likely jar the reader and throw them out of the story.
In a bigger-picture issue, and to have fun with a terrible cliché, if it’s a dark and stormy night, don’t have a scene with sunshine arcing through a window!
If you spell a word a certain way, especially if it can be spelled multiple ways, or if it’s a unique name, make sure you keep it spelled the same way throughout. Don’t count on the saving it in your spell checker trick to work every time. Don’t forget that you might be working on a different machine once in a while. Or, you may decide not to save it in the spell checker, which I often don’t do with a lot of special words like names. I’m used to seeing red-lined words, especially in my fantasy stories.
If you have catch phrases your characters say, or habits they have, make sure they say or do them the same each time. Or, if they vary them, make sure to explain the variance somehow so the reader knows why they’re doing it differently. If not, that’s an unexplained continuity issue and will jerk your audience right out of the story.
Stuff to consider as you write your big lie for everyone to enjoy!
There are many more examples. Can you name some?
Until next time.
HOW DO YOU CONVEY INFORMATION IN YOUR STORY?
I’ve finally caught up to where I left off in the sequel to Meleena’s Adventures and am continuing in Gods Of The Blue Mountains. There’s a long stretch where the characters are learning about what they’re going to do, how they’re supposed to do it and their misgivings.
This is not a new discussion but maybe a new approach, or… okay, a rewording of part of a discussion I’ve had before that was quite a while ago. Rather than many of you who’d rather not go back through all my old articles, I’m going to talk about it again. What method do you use to convey information to your readers?
There are mainly two ways writers let their readers know stuff. Either through narrative or dialogue. Broadly speaking, either the narrator tells you, the reader, background information, or the characters do through their dialogue. Of course, there are endless combinations of the two.
My approach, to use the broadest terms, is a combination. However, I tend to convey as much if not more background information through dialogue as in narrative. Any guesses why?
I have an old article from early 2012 called Showing Not Telling.
Anyone remember that one?
I make it clear that showing not telling is my nemesis. Even though many writers use narrative with abandon, it can be extremely hard not to make it telling instead of showing. Even then, some of the best writers out there tell to their hearts content and get away with it because, truth be told, there’s nothing at all wrong with telling if done well. After all, who ever heard of showing a story? Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Or maybe there’s a better word to describe it that I just can’t think of right now.
I use narrative to convey information, don’t get me wrong. However, I try to balance it out with more dialogue because dialogue moves the story along. I’ve had plenty of people tell me too much dialogue makes the story weak and talky, etc. If the dialogue is well done, I find it moves the story very well. However, it has to be balanced with enough action and narrative so that something is going on to tie it all together.
I’m not talking about the dialogue that I’ve seen many, especially British authors use, which is full-page paragraphs of characters explaining something. I read lots of thrillers by Brits and that seems to be a trend with many of them. I don’t know if that’s a standard over in Jolly Olde’ Englande’ or just the batch of authors I’ve picked. I know that people in real life don’t talk that way.
My dialogue comes in short bursts. My biggest issue, which I’ve described before, is that I try not to use tags. I either use actions or imply who is speaking. This can be a real challenge if several people are in a conversation.
When it comes to the narrative, I try to keep from telling as much as I can but I find it almost impossible to convey information without a certain amount of telling so I don’t worry about it unless one of my writer’s group members or beta readers calls me on it.
How about you? How do you convey information to your reader? Do you use a similar process? Do you have the same hang-ups, the same problems I have or are yours different?
Until next time, happy writing.
APOSTROPHES FOR POSESSION AN PLURALS
Something that’s bugged me for a long time has been when to use an apostrophe to show possession and plurals for nouns. I’ve sometimes confused the usage and now realized that I got them wrong as often as not.
The subject came up working with my grandson on his English schoolwork. I thought I had the correct answer and had to do a quick Internet search. I was not quite right and the answer I got in return was confusing. Then I received a present for Christmas I’ve been wanting for several years, The Chicago Manual Of Style, by now, the 16th Edition. I’m hot stuff!
This book is mandatory for any editor and should be on your shelf as a serious writer, or at least accessible to you for those tough grammatical questions. I now have it sitting next to me as I work on the sequel to Meleena’s Adventures, now titled, Gods Of The Blue Mountains.
The fact that I rarely have to use the book is beside the point. I occasionally come to a point where I have a grammatical question. I’ve been embarrassed before. Or, I’ve come to a place where something just didn’t look right and I didn’t get that touchy-feely vibe about a sentence or syntax. Now I have that expert reference readily available.
Before I digress any further, have you ever wondered the correct way to use an apostrophe for a possessive noun? I wish I could say the following will clarify things for you. I like to take pride in being able to clarify those muddy things for people in plain English (ha ha). In this case, well…
By far the most common usage is apostrophe then s.
The other instance is when the apostrophe goes at the end of the word, in other words, s then apostrophe. This is where thing get really confusing. By far, that form is the exception and the biggest headache to figure out. I’ve read through the rules several times and still don’t have a good handle on it. What I can give to you are a few things below that may help you know when to use the apostrophe on the end, rather than when to use it in the most common way.
puppies’ because the plural of puppy is not puppy(s) (I guess?)
The apostrophe at the end is generally used for the plural possessive. I say generally because there are a myriad of exceptions. The manual suggests several examples but so as not to break copyright, I won’t list them. Instead, I’ll try to come up with my own.
The Sanchezes’ new pool,
The Harpers’ new house,
The Driscolls’ green lawn,
Your best bet is to go with singular using apostrophe and s and the plural s and apostrophe only if you have to, unless it just doesn’t look right. Then either ask someone, go on line, or wait until an editor catches it. They’ll probably have to look it up also unless it’s a very common example they deal with all the time, or they’re very good and detail oriented!
I wish I were that good!
In the end, if I don’t get a warm fuzzy off the apostrophe, I can now consult the manual. However, now that I have it and have studied the pages, I’m not much clearer than I was before I got the book! There are four main rules, three exceptions to the general rule and seven particular rules to the possessive form! Put that in your pipe and smoke it (to quote a well-worn cliché).
Isn’t English fun?
Happy writing!
A TRIBUTE TO THE SOUNDTRACK IN MY HEAD
One of my web site followers, Jordanna East @ http://jordannaeast.com/ in her article, “What Turns You On” asked her readers what kind of environment they write in. In other words, do they have the television blaring, does it have to be quiet, do they have music playing?
My answer was that I could have total chaos going on around me and it wouldn’t matter.
I write.
However, I prefer music. If I can’t play it physically, it’s the soundtrack playing in my head.
What do I listen to? This same question came up in the horror forum (okay, I won’t call it icky bug here because it’s not called that there) on the Absolute Write Water Cooler web site @ http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/ and everyone listed their favorite bands to play while writing icky bug (there now I can say it).
Music has been a huge part of my life since I first got into that Disney Music of Zorro album when I was a little kid in Lompoc, since my parents made me take piano and organ lessons, since I heard my Grandma Teel play the piano. Then there was The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Yeah, I saw them live, not to date myself! Rock and roll changed it all for me. The British invasion happened. Though I liked the first few Beatles albums, I liked The Kinks better because they had a harder edge. The Stones were better too, uglier, rougher. There was also The Hullabaloos, which almost nobody ever heard of. They not only gave me inspiration, but became personal friends later in life.
As a musician, I joined band at school. I started with the clarinet but once I saw a bassoon, that big orange bazooka looking thing was da bomb. Though I appreciated and learned classical and contemporary music, my love was still rock and roll. Outside of band class, I learned drums, bass and guitar and throughout most of my teen and adult years, played in many rock bands along with a country band, a Latino band and a few other genres.
After the British invasion, when the late 60’s and the psychedelic era came along, things changed again. My favorite band of all time, Clear Light came out around the same time as the Doors but never made more than one album. There were other odd bands I gravitated toward that few have ever heard of like Bubble Puppy, Lothar and the Hand People, The Seeds, Blues Magoos, Spirit, and Fever Tree. Then there were the San Francisco bands like Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane.
On the local, Antelope Valley front, my musical tastes became corrupted by none other than Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Though these guys were both older than me by almost a decade, several of their bandmates went to Palmdale High School or hung with the same people at our neighboring Antelope Valley High where both Frank and Don (Captain Beefheart) attended.
It was around this time that my taste for heavy music became forever corrupted. In 1967, three seemingly little guys stood in front of a wall of Marshall amplifiers and they were so loud, they turned the air into cottage cheese. This band, Blue Cheer, came out with an album called Vincebus Eruptum. There was nothing else like it. It was heavy metal before there was such a term. I’ve never been the same since.
Over the decades, my favorite bands have gone from The Frost, the original Alice Cooper Band, Grand Funk Railroad (before they sucked), Lucifer’s Friend, Uriah Heep, The Groundhogs, Sir Lord Baltimore, Three Man Army, Dust, The Rods, Picture, Deep Purple, Collosseum and so many others I can’t possibly name them all.
In the 80’s, a new type of heavy rock came along called death metal. Back then, it was pretty good, though the vocals took a bit to get used to, those “cookie monster” vocals for the most part. Bands like Celtic Frost, Bolt Thrower, Venom, Slayer, Bathory, Cannibal Corpse and so on.
As the new millennium came along, a new style of metal entered the mix called symphonic metal with bands like Nightwish and Ensiferum. Nightwish, especially, seems to nail the style very well.
I’ve only listed a fraction of the bands I listen to and as you may have noticed, I have mentioned few that any of you have likely heard on the radio. I hate to leave so many out (and I’ll guarantee you’ve NEVER heard them on the radio) but I didn’t want to leave a list and bore you all. It’s in the thousands. Every chance I get, I plug one or two or ten in my novels, except for the fantasy, of course. These bands not only provide my soundtrack, but in their own way, have spurred my creative vibe. The journeys they take me on inspire my imagination.
That’s what plays in my head when I write. It’s either on the stereo or in my head, no matter what I’m writing. Maybe because I’m a musician, music plays a much more important role in my creativity.
Thanks to Jordanna East for giving me the inspiration for this essay.
The Worlds Of Fred Rayworth 