Remember silver trees and Jetson cartoons?

They were so modern.

Now?--not so much.

I love old science fiction. While the stories are set in the future, they are written with the sensibilities of the writer's time. Golly Gee.

It's like straddling two time lines. How cool is that?

The Pink Tree
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Not every tree is green,
some are pink with a
mermaid!!
Not every book is great literature, some are for the beach. There's a place for both on my book shelve.
All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour and the books of all Time.
John Ruskin

Butterfly Christmas Tree

Butterflies capture our imagination because of their fleeting beauty, easy grace and easy freedom. Good writing should release us from the reality that grounds our lives.

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds.

Alfred Kazin

Lime tree with purple ornaments.

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Sometimes simple is best as in this tree. The same is true for writers. Consider these editing reminders. Long, convoluted sentences lose the readers (and the writer). The 'said' conversation tag does the job without startling the reader. Don't string prepositional phrases, they bore the reader. Cut out unnecessary words -- lazy adverbs, empty adjectives and overused favorites.

Editing cuts away fuzzy writing laying bare the story.

Four trees of red.

These trees are red--red poinsettia, green with red berry lights and red wooden toys, red and white tinsel with red lights and decorated with cookie and sweets ornaments, red tinsel with red lights decorated with walnut shell babies and candy ornaments. The color and the theme of childish delights tie the decorated trees together and yet each tree is unique.

A writer uses what experiences he or she has. It's the translating, though that makes the difference.

John Irving

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It's that time again:

Christmas trees all over my house!
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This tree is decorated with my favorite things--books. No surprise there. I read, write, collect and even craft with books--notice the paper chain and book ornaments.

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A writer is, after all, only half of his book the other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

P. L. Travers

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There is time to write and to live your life. Don't ignore your writing or use it as an excuse to hide from your life. Emotions, experiences, friends, family...they all give your writing depth--as long as you do write!

About Character:
Give him a compulsion and turn him loose!
Ray Bradbury

Why Write?

Our reasons for writing are the same reasons we have reading. Through writing we live other lives and explore places we can't go. We go alone, the journey is personal. If we do it right we discover something about ourselves. If we're lucky, our writings will find readers who appreciate the journey we have laid out for them.

By the way my Christmas trees are going up!

The television made a great backdrop for my flowers.

Watching television can also improve your writing. Try these exercises while viewing a favorite show.

1.Whose story is being told? Does it stay with one point of view?

2.Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue--can you tell which character is speaking or do they sound alike?

3.Can you identify the arc of the story--the conflict, the complication, the solve--and when it happens? Long running shows fall into a set patterns. Genre fiction, such as mysteries and romance, also have predicable formulas.

4.Lastly, why do you watch your favorite show? Probably for the same reason someone would read your novel--interesting characters that you care about.

Doorways into the past

Recently I read a book published in 1909. David P. Abbot's straightforward language was modern. His "Behind the Scenes with the Mediums" exposed tricks I had seen on television shows about psychic swindles. Except for a few word choices, the book could have been published anytime in the last thirty years. Yet the book I had in my hands had thick, stiff, cream-colored pages held together with strong threads, a constant reminder that these words came from the past. Near the end of his book David lamented about not finding an authentic medium. But at seventy-five he said that he would soon know what laid beyond death. Now Mr. Abbott, long dead, has spoken to me through his book in a way I doubt reading a modern reprint or by electronic means would have been possible.

Help! I'm stuck in the middle of my novel and I'm drowning.

You start a novel with an idea and leap into the first scene, knowing that the beginning can be scrutinized, revised, or even changed later. You race to the imagined ending, the reason for your book, only to find it far away. Treading water isn't enough, you'll bore your reader. To keep a reader's interest, every scene needs to add depth to the characters as well as twist and carry the plot. The middle contains the adventures that take the reader from beginning to end. the story is the journey.

So here's to middles, make them strong, make them worthwhile, and never forget how important they are.

Recipe for a Novel:

A story idea (plot)

A theme or two

A variety of characters.

Place story in a setting and stir in the characters. Allow characters to develop. Fold in themes.

Write and rewrite until novel is fully baked.

Frost with good grammar and spelling.

Serve to readers and hope they eat it up!

Okay, where's that manuscript?

Even birds seem to be nagging me.

To create means to reach for the moon. No story, no painting, sculpture or any handmade item can attain the perfection that its maker initially glimpses. With time, we learn and practice our craft, hoping to bring a concept seen in a fleeting moment into better focus--hoping to share our vision.

Themes

............

I painted this when I was seventeen. It's been at my mother's for years and recently in my attic. While searching for a picture frame, I found the painting and when I turned it around, I was staring at the central motif, a Tree of Life, of my finished manuscript.

Writers have personal themes that they continue to return in their writing. Most write stories, finding the themes only after their books is nearly written. Without realizing it, writers explore themes important to their own search for meaning.

Themes are a writer's searches for meaning in his life.

Readers connect with interesting characters, not stereotypes. So what is the difference? Think of flat characters as first impressions that went no further. Interesting characters have desires, faults, and quirks. Like your friends they're not always easy to understand. They may contradict themselves and change their minds, but they remain who they are.

Writing means spending time getting to know your characters. It goes beyond character charts and outlines. No computer or pen is necessary. You need to listen for their voices, ask them questions, and have them play scenes out in your head. Oddly, characters can only tell you what they know. Once I had to ask a secondary character what secret was being kept from the main character. Another time a character had to undergo some therapy before I could understood why she did what she did.

And in answer to your unasked question--Yes, writers are little crazy.

Writing needs courage. Despite the best outline (which mine are not) a story unfolds as it must. The author has to trust his characters and experience each scene as it comes while looking down from his outline and planned outcomes. Often it means plodding along, worrying, stalling for days, when all you want is to rush to the ending. But the insights that come from this process will make the book a worthwhile read.

Connecting Scenes

These scenes connect action A with B. If the character is physically going to another place, a break can serve the purpose, and the action begins anew with scene B. Overuse of this technique yields an effect similar to watching Sesame Street. Enter the chase scene, exciting for the reader-but an exacting task for the writer. But since we aim to please.... Other connecting scenes involve motivating people. Since people thinking can be as fascinating as ink drying, conversation is often employed--it reads faster. But unless the writer uses humor, exposes more about the characters, and keeps the dialogue on topic, these scenes read like bad amateur theater. Essentially every scene , even a connecting scene has to be enjoyable to read and is therefore as important as that final scene you are driving the book towards. A good novel isn't just a great opening idea rushing to fulfillment, it's all those scenes in between.

You see a photograph of a flower and understand the play of shadow and light. No one tells you the sun was shining or the day was warm. A novel should expand beyond the words on the page in an exchange between the writer and the reader.

Flowers from Longwood Garden's Orchid show

Writing: I just read Robert J. Sawyers' "Flashforward." I have been watching the television show inspired by the book. And they do mean inspired. The book and the show are about an event that causes everyone to blackout and flash on what they are doing in the future. One character doesn't have a vision because he had been murdered. A single character makes the transition from the book to the small screen. Other than that the stories are different. The series follows FBI agents trying to figure out why people flashed ahead six months. Sawyers' book is from the scientists' point of view. They caused the flashforward and people see more than twenty years in the future.

Lesson for writers: When an author sells his book to another media, his story is no longer his.
Lesson for readers: Read the book! The book will add depth to your enjoyment of the story you saw on the screen.

Another View

A writer needs to know if his words are portraying the meaning he is trying to convey. That's why it is necessary to have readers who can tell you what they need in the book, including good grammar. But a writer should also critique other writers' work. It's amazing how easy it is to spot your writing difficulties in another person's work. Think of it as another way to view your work.

Odds and Ends

The computer isn't always our friend.

I lost my book in a file that didn't allow me to email it or copy it. Not sure what to do, I did as I have seen the computer literate do --I tried everything until I found something that worked.

Lesson: Don't be afraid of your computer.

Question: Why do some agents who represent science fiction ask you to mail your query rather send than sent your query via email?

Science Fiction:

I wanted to learn about science fiction and lucked into a copy of David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels; An English-language Selection 1949-1984." Nearly three years in (I have read other books besides science fiction) I'm down to the last fifteen. I realize the shortcomings of this list and am taking suggestions as to what contemporary books to read. But I can say I have read your favorite golden oldie SF.

There is a subdivision in science fiction for utopia and dsytopia books. It seems to have been easier for writers in the past to imagine utopias. Dystopias have become much more common, perhaps they fit our sense of the world better

...Recently I read Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backwards 2000-1887, published in 1888. Then I read Mack Reynold"s "Looking Backward, From the Year 2000" published in 1973. A month ago I had read Ursula Le Guin's "Dispossesed." The last two books came from Pringle's list.

...In Bellamy's popular book (people loved it way back when), the hypnotized hero, Julian West, is awaken over hundred years later to a nationalist (socialist) utopia where everyone works according to their ability in the corporate army and all their needs are met. His hero happily falls in love with the descendant of his fiancee. The mechanized and steam-powered world Bellamy imagined speaks more to steam punk than to prophecy.

...Reynold's hero, cured of heart disease after thirty years in the cryogenic chamber, is a stranger in a highly advanced world that is run by computers. Energy is limitless (how good is that!). But people speak a universal language he doesn't know. They even use the metric system! Education, not work, occupies these people. In case the reader doesn't notice the similarity to Bellamy's title, Reynolds used the same names for his characters. Only in this case Julian West does not live happily ever after.

...Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" also depicts a egalitarian utopia set in the far future with aliens, who are very much like us. Anarres was settled as a result of a labor revolt. There everyone works and has equal housing, food, (what little there is on this improvised world). Problems still creep in: conformity replaces creativity, people playing favorites, some taking more than their share. Shevek, a math genius and our hero, travels to the home world, Urras to share his mathematical discovery and learn from other scientists. Urras is a corrupt capitalistic society of excesses that somehow encourages discovery and invention. Shevek discovers he belongs to neither world.

...Science fiction writers often build new worlds, whether in the future or on other planets, but to imagine a plausible utopia has to be daunting. Man's own psychology gets in the way. And oh, yeah, there's that limitless energy problem to crack.

What is this? -- This is what remains of a concrete ship run aground at Sunset Beach, NJ.

writing: A writer observes and sees what others glimpse. He strips bare an idea to the emotions behind it. Sometimes, if he's lucky, there's monsters to expose.

The rough draft of a novel is always ugly.

Pigs on the Beach

There seems to be a story here.

Writing: A scene and a story is build in layers. There is what is seen and heard (think play), the second is what the characters feel and experience emotionally. And third, never to be forgotten is the plot (where the scene is going.)

Writing projects need preparation. An Idea, Research, an Outline, an operational Computer, a Place to write, Time ...

I've cleaned my writing office today. I'm running out of excuses. Time to get going.

Dreams of lofty goals send us on our journey. We follow these dreams of fame and fortune, long after we stop believing in them. In time, we realize the journey is the goal and dream the means.

On writing: Writing your best is the goal and the journey.

The space to dream comes from inside.

Dreams feed writers.

When writers sleep, their minds continue to work. Sometimes the ideas are shrouded in symbols and must be deciphered. Other times a story is given as a gift. Before becoming fully awake try to grasp your dreams and sift them for gold.

The picture was taken from the plane.

Yes, I've been away from my computer a lot lately. I wish I could say it was warm and sunny while I was in Florida, still it's good to get away.

Writing: Sometimes getting away gives you a different perspective on your life. In writing, perspective --point of view character and the framework (the genre)-- drives the story. When the writing doesn't flow, you're telling the story from the wrong perspective. Because my book was not moving, I tried the story from another character's vantage point. I may have found a new protagonist. I'll let you know how it goes.

Things not to say to a writer:

1. What have you published?

2. Have I seen any of your work? (this is the same question as the first.)

3. Why do you write? You should do (something else), you do that so well.

4. I called you because I know you were home and don't work.

5. Have you got an agent? Publisher?

6. When will your book be published?

7. Haven't you finished writing your book yet?

Writers write because they have to. Publishing is the business of agents and editors. Writers write, publishers print books. Please let us enjoy our obsession. We know the odds of getting published.

My finished manuscript is in the hands of a friend I refer to as the Queen of Red Ink. Since she takes her duty seriously, stray commas will be dashed, new ones placed, word choices questioned and over used words banished. My beautiful novel will be bloodied.

Writing: I have several readers for my manuscripts. The first tell me if what they read is a novel or a near miss. The next get fussier. The last is the Queen of Red Ink. I take 95% of my readers' comments--I want people to understand and enjoy my book. I take 85% of the Queen's comments, claiming writing style differences.

Writers have to take criticism if they want their books read and if they want to write their best.

A storm, a friend's story, any unexpected event can trigger a glimpse into something more.

Word dust drifted streets of broken music car horns and air hammers--The Word broken pounded twisted exploded in smoke--
--William S. Burroughs "Nova Express"

writers

It's been snowing for days. I miss my Christmas trees.

Writers: They view the world from the inside out. While they move through the same world as everyone else, they are living an alternate internal life; experiencing the stories they imagine. Since they return to each scene over and over, writing and re-writing, is it a wonder that this life is so vivid for them?

"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe." Ray Bradbury

Somehow this quote makes doing the impossible like writing (and publishing) a novel seem like a possibility.

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it" Hannah Arendt

Four of my trees, all different colors, bagged and ready for the attic. I'll have to decorate them again next year once again.

Writing: Every novel is built sentence by sentence.

My query letter is too short, my synopsis is too long, and my newest novel is stalled. I fear my brain is either empty or too full.

Winter days seems so cold and drab after the Christmas decorations are stowed away.

Writing: First drafts make me wonder why I think I can write a novel. Just because I've done it before doesn't make the journey easier. Less than thirty pages in and I'm mired in drifts of words and images. If it weren't for the energy and encouragement I get from talking with friends and other writers, I couldn't continue this trip. Thanks again and again.

An autobiography is self-indulgent. Daphne du Maurier

Writing: Writers don't need to pen memoirs, their past and views are in their writing. No one needs to know the specifics of a writer's life--memories can fuzz those--it's honesty that readers deserve.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. Walter Wellesey "Red" Smith

It takes time to grow a story.

Writing: It would be easy if a book could be written on a schedule of so many pages of day. But each story needs time to grow-- for the characters to become real, for the setting to gel, for plots to evolve-- for a novel to be born.

Writing the first draft of a book is like looking at the wrong side of your side mirror and expecting to know where you're going.

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Why
should
writers
read?

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1. To learn pacing
2. To appreciate good writing and improve their own writing
3. To keep up with book trends
4. To better understand their genre.
5. Research
6. Because they love books
Six should be the most obvious. It's the most important since the other five follow it.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. Tom Clancy

Writing: Science fiction often requires the imagining of a world, whether alien or futuristic. But then again every novel inhabits a world imagined by its author. What is reality? Perhaps a figment of our imagination.

Okay, I still have to do my research and build my book's world.