Set A Summer Study Plan for your Cat

Summer is a great time for your cat to study for the ACT/SATs.  They now have a great deal of time on their hands that they would spend lazing in a sun beam, letting all the study skills and math concepts they may have learned during the school year atrophy.  Keep your cat's mind sharp and help them prepare for this important test by encouraging them to make a study schedule.

Here's some tips!

1. Have your cat take a practice test.  Take a photo of them sleeping on the practice test.  Post it to Instagram. 

2. Be sure to work on timing.  Does your cat stare at one problem for hours without marking an answer?  Have them practice skipping problems that are difficult so they can come back to them later if they have time.

3. Your cat may be apathetic to studying.  Remind them that this is important and talk about you mutual goals.  You know best how firm to be while convincing your cat to study.

Best of luck!

First Draft Time

I started the first draft of my latest project on Monday. 

Right now it's kind of a mess because I had a false start (and actually, this makes false start #5 or so because this project is a rewrite of something I abandoned.)  The false start I wrote Monday is just chilling behind the one I thought up last night, waiting to make its way into the narrative eventually and looking all sloppy and misplaced.

It's like the ice scraper in the back seat of my car.  What's it doing there?  Nothing.  Taking up space.  When I give people rides, they have to nudge it to one side with their shoe.  I guess I could take in inside and store it in a closet until winter.  I guess I could throw it out and get a new one when I need it, because--let's face it--this guy's seen better days.  But then again, I could also leave it right where it is and have it ready when there's a freak snowfall next week.


The other thing that's disconcerting me is that I'm not moving as fast as I usually do.

I think there's two reasons for this.  First, I'm much busier this week than I have been when I've written first drafts in the past.  I have an article due Friday, my students are getting ready for finals and I'm meeting multiple times a week with some of them, and then a bunch of people told me that I need to watch Supernatural.  Next week, things should open up and I can sit in this coffee shop until they kick me out. 

The other part of it is that I've been in edit mode for so long, that it's taking me longer than I expected to get back into gear for filling a blank page.

So!  This week, I'm setting myself the assignment of 500 words a day.  Next week, I will go up to 1,000 words a day.  Then the week after, I'm kicking it up to NaNo levels of 1,666 words a day.  And, hey!  What a coincidence!  Camp NaNo starts next week. You can follow me/be friends with me here.

Edit: I was wrong, Camp NaNo starts in July.  Oh well.

Backstory is like an onion: you can peel it one layer at a time

I'm currently reading The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin.  It's the second book in a wonderful fantasy trilogy, and there are many great things to say about it, but I'll focus on one.

It has a remarkable narrative structure, where it's as though the main character is telling me a story, and through this, she's able to give seamless flashbacks and exposition.  She can go on tangents to explain back story, to explain why this event is culturally significant, to explain why it's personally important to the main character.  I have no problem with flashbacks, but having the subheading of <ten years earlier> always strikes me as less than ideal.  Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do for expediency's sake or because you're investing your efforts elsewhere, but the way she's worked around it here is impressive and worth a look.

The thing that's really neat about it is that she manages to do this while still maintaining suspense.  Things are kept from the reader.  The narrator touches on issues, then turns away from them.  Now, this usually irritates me to no end.  If I don't know something only because the book refuses to tell me, that's irritating.  But here, I'm never irritated, which is impressive given that at one point in the first book of the series, the narrator started half a sentence of a flashback, then changed her mind.  "My mother - No. Not yet."

And I was completely okay with it.

How?   What does Jemisin do to make this work so well?  I have theories.

• Flashbacks and explanations are kept short.  They're reminiscent of fleeting memories.  They are always related to the moment, rather than for something that will turn up at a later time (or not solely for that), so it feels natural for them to be discussed.
• Similar to this, flashbacks and legends are used regularly throughout the book, so this is a device we grow accustomed to.
• It's written in the first person, so we get to know the narrator, not necessarily to trust them, but to trust their story telling.  Part of this is that the narrator is a full, flushed out character.  She has flaws and strength and moods and reasonable reactions.  There's a sense of authenticity to her.  I trust that she's not actively keeping things from me out of spite or just to be obtuse, because I know the character wouldn't do that to me.  So this narrative device is completely bound up in characterization, the very foundation of the book.
• Closely related to that, the reader gets to know the character the way they get to know a person in real life: slowly, pieces at a time.  The main character opens up little by little, revealing more and more.  So, just as a person you just met wouldn't tell you the graphic details of their father's death, the narrator doesn't mention it in the first pages of the book.  Through this, the reader grows more and more invested in the character.
• Closely related to that, in a way, the reader doesn't want to push at issues that are too personal.  When information is withheld from me, I can detect that it's painful for the narrator to talk about it.  This is because her reactions, the way she talks about (or talks around) painful things is the way I or people I know talk about painful things.  When she glosses over things or changes the subject, I respect that.

Summer Plans

The school year is ending, which means it's time to set some summer goals.

Little ones

• learn semaphore to impress my friends at parties
• get caught up on comics 
• juggling.  With five balls could be cool.  With things that are on fire could also be cool.
• re-learn a bunch of knots
• haunt the Harold Washington library.  With a sheet over my head.  Walking through the aisles, saying "OoooooOOOOOoooooOOOooo!"  
• Also get a library card.

Big ones

• practice dramatic reading
• learn CSS, because right now when people ask me questions, I make things up.

Huge ones (that won't happen)

• ride a camel
• fire a rocket launcher
• fight an octopus

Mix Tape it up

One of the things I like to do to get myself motivated for a new project and get those creative juices flowing is to make a project mix tape.  This is what I did over the weekend for my new novel.  It's great because I can put it on repeat in the car and then drive around just thinking about it, and when a song comes on the radio that's also on the playlist, it triggers thoughts of my novel.  But that probably won't happen so much on this one. 

What I'm looking for in suitable songs: emotions (which vary wildly among characters and from the beginning of the story to the end of the story, so I'm not sure you can pick up on what I'm going for from the outside), themes (this project has the working title of "Necromancer Story" so there's a lot of songs about death and loss, yet not every song about death and loss is acceptable), setting (this one is pretty easy, but Spoon did convince me to take it in a different direction and make it less rural.  "Carolyn," the dancy beat said, "you don't know all that much about that area, and Google maps isn't going to help you, and no one will go with you on that field trip.  Just move it in and write what you know." Thanks, Spoon!)

But I'm interested if anyone could pick up more from these.What can you guess about this story?

Songs below the cut!  Enjoy!

I do math, You do math, We do math

I've noticed something while working on my ACT prep book.  I keep changing who is doing the action.

Excerpt 1:

"We change 22% to a decimal (0.22).  Then we multiply:
0.22 x 40=$8.80
This is the amount by which he increased the rate. We need to add this to the original rate of $40.
40+8.80=48.80"

Excerpt 2:

"I'm going to pick a value for x that satisfies x>1.  So I pick x=2.  Then I plug x=2 into all the answer choices."

Excerpt 3:

"Don't let the ♦ upset you.  You don't need to have seen it before, because they tell you everything you need to know about it."

Most of them are "we" because that's just the way I talk when I'm guiding kids through problems during tutoring.  "We're doing this together!  Hurray!  I'm helping you, but you're doing it!  You're doing it!  Let's tell your mom!"

I like this informal tone in the write up, because it feels softer than the usual dictated actions.  For instance, consider the difference

First, we need to factor (x²+5x-6) to get (x-6)(x+1)

vs

 Factor.  x²+5x-6=(x-6)(x+1)

The last one, to me screams, "This is how you do this.  It is the only way.  Why didn't you know this already?  Well, now you do.  Don't ever get it wrong again."  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and getting over-dramatic.

But the more interesting thing here is when I talk about doing the action, when I talk about the student doing the action alone, and when I talk about us doing it together.  When I first noticed this I brushed it off as me just not being consistent because I was working on it in chunks over several days.  It will be easy to fix when I type it all up, so for now I'm not going to think about it. 

But then I started noticing that I change who is doing the problem depending on the problem itself.  So up there in Excerpt 2, I do the problem myself because I know very few kids who think of doing the problem this way.  (Or if they do, they get the right answer and then I don't go over it with them, so I'm working with a skewed sample.)  I'm going to work through it for them, show them what I did, and let them piece together how to emulate me.  We're not really doing it together.

Then up in Excerpt 3, "you" are confused and afraid of the diamond symbol.  I'm not.  This is a problem "you" have.

Obviously, I'm going to change all of these to something consistent because (1) consistency is key and (2) I'm starting to think some of them sound derogatory.  But it was interesting to notice it.  Something to think about not only as I proceed with this project, but also as I talk to my students.

Then You Must Write It

I like the outlook based on the Toni Morrison quote, "If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it."  Generally, I take this to mean that you should be proactive about writing.  Instead of complaining that something doesn't exist, you should make it happen.  I also take it to mean that you should write for yourself.  That way at least one person likes it.

I've taken this a bit farther lately.  "Why isn't there a good resource for ACT practice all in one place? I would really like that."  I have to search for practice ACTs that I haven't already given my students.  I have to hunt for worksheets for the Pythagorean Theorem and trig and probability and on and on.  I have to make up worksheets about perimeter.  It's not that hard, but it takes time, and I grab the same worksheets off the internet over and over, and while my student works through the problems I realize that there are things I wish they covered or things it does cover that are a little odd.  Not only do I wish I have a file folder full of these worksheets I could pull out, I know that it's hard for students studying on their own to find these when they don't really know what they're looking for.

"Wouldn't it be great if..."

So I'm writing an ACT study guide.  It will include:

1. Practice tests.  I have 5 of them that I think I can share legally.
2. Worked out answers for all the problems on these practice tests.  This is what I'm working on at the moment.
3. Brief explanations of each concept covered on the test.  With notes in the answers (See page 15 for the Pythagorean Theorem.)  So right now I'm making notes about which topics I need to cover
4. Practice problems.  So many practice problems.  Then in the future, I can just print off that page and hand it to a kid.  

This is going to be a huge project, but I'm enjoying it.  It's very little pressure at this point, because I don't have to finish, and when I'm done I can just throw the pdf up on the internet. Also, it isn't really taking away from my work on fiction.  Right now, I'm even using it as a warm up.

Let's see how this turns out.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tonimorris161280.html#mRvhxFoyb0oHsShF.99

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tonimorris161280.html#mRvhxFoyb0oHsShF.99

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tonimorris161280.html#mRvhxFoyb0oHsShF.99

Lapses in Memory

I recently finished the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin, which is a recently written story about an elderly Sherlock Holmes, who has retired to Sussex and is losing his mental acuity. 

I found the premise of "how does someone so sharp, someone who prides himself on his recollection and attention to detail, deal with the slow degradation of the mind due to age?"  It's a question that strikes a chord with me, blow to great proportions by the fact that it's Sherlock Holmes, and we all know that he used to function on extreme levels.

There are two really cool narrative devises that I'm taking away from this novel.

1.  Moments of confusion or gaps in memory are shuffled in with sharp details and clever deductive reasoning.  They make the lapses more surprising by how quickly they pop up, and by their very existence.  It also matches what I've experienced watching my older relatives: dementia doesn't affect memory homogeneously, but rather in little fuzzy patches, leaving other memories completely in tact.
2. The novel doesn't show the moment that is then later forgotten, it only shows when Holmes is reminded of something as if he ought to have remembered it.  So for example, early in the novel, Holmes asks where the housekeeper's son is, and his housekeeper gives him a look and says the boy has been waiting for him in the bee yard for the last hour, just as Holmes told him to.  With this device, we know only as much as Holmes does (which is weird for a Sherlock Holmes book, but interesting here) and they come as a surprise not only to the character, but to the reader.

I have a half written story on my hard drive, where the main character forgets where he put he thing the bad guys want, because he doesn't know it's valuable and he doesn't really care about it. So when the bad guys show up, and use their magic mind reading powers to go through his memories, they can't find where it is.  I think both these techniques could be used here.  Probably not with the same emotional kick as it's not a focal point of my story, but it could still be implemented.

What about y'all?  Any other examples of this in other novels or movies?

Plot Exercises

I've found that when plotting, I'm good at set up and a couple dramatic moments, but the rest of it is a challenge and could be stronger.  In the interest of self-improvement, this week I worked on writing very short stories that have a full arc and an end. 

To do this, I wrote synopses for episodes of Adventure Time.  Why?  Why not!  Actually, no, I have reasons.

• Using a show that already exists, I don't have to devote any energy to character building or world building.  I can use what's already there.  This is purely a plot exercise.
• Adventure Time episodes are about 11 minutes long.  They are short short short and my synopses can be short short short.
• The show keeps the plot moving continuously, with very few moments of pure introspection.  They do happen, but they're brief or encased within a larger plot element.  I do introspection a lot and forcing myself not to do it to stay with the style of the show keeps me better on track.

Since they're so bare bones, they are missing snappy dialogue, little ukulele songs, fart jokes, and visual puns involving unexploded nuclear weapons.  It's a shame, but I don't have time to write scripts or story boards.

Observation #1: there's a lot of deus ex machina in here.  I think that's because it's pretty common in the show.  I will have to pick a show where it is less common to find out.

Observation #2: These get longer as they go along.  I'm not sure more happens, but the description gets longer.

Synopses below the cut.

Emotional Reactions to Critique

Laurel Snyder once wrote a really interesting blog post for the Office of Letters and Light in the "Now What Months" after National Novel Writing Month.  When to Listen to Your Readers and When to Ignore Them.  The main take away from this is that the thing to look for when receiving critique is a moment when you respond emotionally to what your editor tells you.

Example 1:

Critique: This line is awkward.

Me:  Ah.  Yep.  It happens.

Then I fix it and and all is well.

This edit was helpful, because having awkward lines is not something I want in a final draft.  However, it's not going to spur a round of soul searching and attempts at self-improvement.

Example 2:

Critique: This character is really dull.  I don't care about them at all.

Me (externally): Oh.

Me (internally): How dare you!  That's my baby you're talking about!  My baby is a Jungian representation of an aspect of myself!  You think I'm dull?  You don't care about me?  You just don't get it, you unsophisticated, shallow mean-face! 

Whoa there, Sparky.

That kind of outrage has to come from somewhere, and, although it's hard to hear or accept or realize, the lady doth protest too much.

World Building in Details

I watched the Pacific Rim director's commentary this weekend.  It's one of the better commentaries out there, because Guillermo del Toro has a lot to say about everything without getting off on tangents or leaving long pauses.  He shares a lot of secrets and I found them all pretty interesting.

The thing I found most interesting was when he talked about world building.

“We designed everything in this movie.  We designed the patches in the shirts and the uniforms, we designed the banners, the badges.  We designed the robots to the minimal detail, so if you zoom into the controls you would see electrical discharge warnings, you would see ladders, you would see places where you would connect, and to engineer the amount of detail is staggering.  We spent about a year texturing this world, and the accumulation of that mosaic of detail, design-wise, gives you the sense of a real world.  People think that a ‘world creation’ movie is the ‘big gestures,’ but it isn’t, it’s this small detail.”

World building is in the details.  It makes the world feel lived in.  It hints there there's history.  It makes it more immersive.

My favorite example of this is the first launch sequence in Alaska at the beginning of the movie.  There is so much detail on all the machinery and the fork lifts and people's uniforms.  Everything must do something and everything is worn like it's been used for a while.

Look at all that

But then it's not just that it's there.  It's also that everyone is interacting with the word.  People are pushing buttons and screwing things into place.  They do it with efficiency, like they've done it before.  We don't need to be told what everything does.

I've been thinking about this since Fellowship of the Ring.  Where all the armor is worn and used and covered in iconography that I don't understand, but I'm sure whoever's wearing it is.  And everyone is that detailed, and when extras have personality, it makes the world seem expansive, like there's more to the world than what we're shown.

I've been trying to bring this into my writing as a way to expand the world (without making it the longest novel ever), make it immersive and organic, and to possibly avoid exposition dumps (but I'm not sure how well that's working.  I'll need to work on it more.)

Do you know of other examples of world building through details?

Tell Good Stories

I recently read Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.  This is a short book of tips and advice for how to share your work while it's in production, get and keep people interested, and make a brand for yourself.  It's tips for showing people behind the scenes peeks, and for interacting with fans of your work and work you enjoy.

I was excited about this one because Kleon's previous book, Steal Like an Artist, was sincerely motivating.  It validated things I was already thinking about by putting the concepts into words much more elegantly than I ever could.  I'm also a big advocate for on-line social media, supporting dialogs about creativity, and the modernist view of "the hand of the artist."

Steal Like an Artist resonated with me more.  But, as Kleon says, your millage may vary and you need to take what you can from a work and leave the rest.

The early tips include sharing something small every day.  This is something with which I've been struggling lately.  I don't want to show an early draft of something I hope to later publish.  I also think that creating something solely for daily sharing purposes will take too much time away from my major projects, and showing warm-up pieces with consistently low quality isn't something people want to see real often.  So I was getting anxious about this book, and this advice is probably why I didn't finish it in a single sitting.

But the turning point came with two bits of advice that I found enlightening and profound, and which got me excited about sharing.

1. Share your tastes and influences.  It doesn't have to be work that you show every day, but it can also be things that you're thinking about or things that are affecting your work.  It can be what I'm reading, and what I thought about it, and what I learned, and how that will influence my work.  It can be fangirl screaming over whatever I think is cool.  Whew.  Because I consume a lot of media, and I've been trying to convince my mother for years that I'm analyzing and critiquing and learning from all the television that I watch.  And I can talk about this stuff all day.

2. Tell good stories.  Kleon presents the idea that each time you share, it should be a story.  There should be something there that can influence others, something that people can take and remix and incorporate into their own work.  There should be something there for them to care about.  Basically, each share should be a story.  With arcs, or rising and falling action, or character development.  Short stories, but stories nonetheless.  And he addressed that real life is different from fiction, which I appreciated.  That is to say, if you start a blog documenting your life, you might not end up with a complete, satisfying story.  Characters fall out of your life without tying up loose ends.  Things don't always get resolved.  Life isn't a one act play.  But snip-its of your life are. So the stories you tell about your life have to be short and sharable.

Has anyone else read this?  What did you think?  Anyone have to restrain themselves from posting photos of late art on twitter, because that's not a story?