8.11.14 – On Frustrations, and Refilling the Well

By JT Ellison

My journal entry yesterday begins with this rather alarming phrase: “Sometimes, you just have to blow up a book.”

I’m nearly to the end of the book — that is, the word count says I’m nearly to my end goal. I personally am nowhere near the end, and need to get there, STAT.

I’ve been writing a book that I started in late April that’s plot line began to play out on the nightly news three weeks ago, and it has gotten so topical I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. This is the writer’s worst fear — that something they come up with will happen, and then it seems the book was written as a response to the news, rather than being a precursor. It happens more often than you’d think, which is why our government has a few authors in from time to time to brainstorm “worst case scenarios.” Our creativity has prevented many terrible issues, I’m sure.

But there are times when the story just ain’t gonna fly. Saturday, tired of struggling with this, I decided I needed to make some rather large changes. I stayed up very late writing down “fixes,” ten of them in all, then Sunday morning, went back to Page 1 and started over.

Page 1 rewrites are terror inducing, but sometimes necessary. I’ve only done it twice before, and never this far into the writing, but both books ended up much stronger for the last-minute alterations. And I‘m feeling better about the story. Ninety percent of what’s there stays, it’s just being reworked to be simpler, less topical, and more personal to Sam.

I’ve already rewritten the first 20 chapters, and am hoping to have a draft done by next week.

In the meantime, in the moments I’m not writing, I am desperately trying to refill the well. Which means watching movies, which led me to Armageddon last night. There is a scene in particular that blows me away every time, and after I watched it, covered in goosebumps, I starting thinking about my top movie scenes ever. So here’s the list:

Armageddon:
The twin shuttle launches, both snaking into the twilight sky

Gladiator:
Maximus in the Coliseum. He jumps on a horse and is thrown a sword, which he catches and twirls into a lethal grip.

G.I. Jane:
Jordan [bleeding]: “Master Chief?”
Master Chief: “Lieutenant, seek life elsewhere.”
Jordan [screams, to the delight of her team] “Suck my dick.”

Star Trek (2009):
When Sulu brings the Enterprise up out of the cloud vapor to save the day. And the score… perfection.

Star Wars:
The immediate opening, the crash of the music as the words begin scrolling backward into the universe.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part Two):
The Courtyard Battle Scene. The score makes this incredible moment truly magnificent.

French Kiss:
At the very end, just before the credits, when Kevin Kline kisses Meg Ryan on the hillside above their vineyard, picking her up in a passionate embrace neither of them could have imagined when they first met. *sighs*

Do you have a favorite movie moment?

Via: JT Ellison

    

Boehner: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THOSE WINGNUTS BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

By JD Rhoades
The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Will the Republicans in the House actually impeach President Obama? I don’t know, but the recent furor over the question has provided us with the hilarious spectacle of one-half of the party trying desperately to keep people from noticing what the other half is doing.
Some Republicans, of course, have been muttering the “I” word since Mr. Obama’s election. The carping got louder when they found, to their shock, that they couldn’t beat him in 2012. Recently, the issue burst back onto the national conversation as the Queen of Wingnuttia herself, failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, wrote an inflammatory op-ed for the current flagship for right-wing lunacy, the website Breitbart.com.
“It’s time to impeach,” the Quitta From Wasilla said flatly. “Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘No mas.’”
Well, I guess comparing not getting your political way to being an abused spouse is more classy than their usual complaint of being just like chattel slaves or Holocaust victims, but not by much.
Conservative pundit Smilin’ Bill Kristol, usually a Palin cheerleader, was unequivocal in his rejection of the whole idea of impeachment. He directly responded to Palin’s call on ABC’s “This Week” by flatly declaring, “No responsible elected official has called for impeachment.”
That one had to sting, because Kristol has always pushed Palin’s seriousness as a political voice. Of course, this means that impeachment is inevitable, because, as we all know, Bill Kristol is always, always wrong.
Orange John Boehner was even firmer in his denial, claiming that the “whole talk about impeachment” was a “scam” started by Democratic fundraisers to try to drum up contributions for the upcoming election. It’s all “coming from the president’s own staff and Democrats on Capitol Hill.”
This should come as a surprise to:
— Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who told Breitbart News Saturday, “From my standpoint, if the president [enacts more executive actions], we need to bring impeachment hearings immediately before the House of Representatives. That’s my position, and that’s my prediction.”
— Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who told a radio interviewer: “Not a day goes by when people don’t talk to us about impeachment. I don’t know what rises to that level yet, but I know that there’s a mounting frustration that a lot of people are getting to, and I think Congress is going to start looking at it very seriously.”
— Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), who, according to another story on Breitbart.com, “told colleagues that the House should pass legislation with new steps to secure the border, and tell Obama if he didn’t implement it, they would impeach him.”
— Rep. Marilinda Garcia (R-N.H.), who said she’d vote for impeachment because, according to her, the president “has many, many impeachable offenses, it seems to me, in terms of his disregard for our Constitution alone.”
And of course, no parade of wingnuts would be complete without its grand marshal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Bedlam), who stopped short of calling for immediate impeachment, then immediately claimed it’s “what the people want.”
“There isn’t a weekend that hasn’t gone by,” she said, “that someone says to me, ‘Michele, what in the world are you all waiting for in Congress? Why aren’t you impeaching the president?”
While it is highly likely that the “someone” she refers to is one of the voices buzzing in her head, she and her pals in the Teahadist Caucus seem awfully fixated on something that their alleged leader says is a Democratic idea.
Did all of these people (and a half-dozen other House Republicans who have either outright called for impeachment or who can’t stop talking about unspecified “impeachable offenses”) join the White House staff or cross the aisle to the Dem side when we weren’t looking?
John Boehner knows the lessons of history. He knows that the doomed impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton caused Clinton’s popularity ratings to skyrocket. He also knows that while impeachment is a big seller among Republicans, less than a third of the general electorate favors it, and 63 percent of independents flat out oppose it.
So, in a weak imitation of the Great and Powerful Oz, Orange John is bellowing for us to “pay no attention to those Republicans behind the curtain!” while pushing his own substitute: a lawsuit against President Obama’s delay in enacting a law the House has tried to repeal so many times I’ve lost count.

Sadly, Boehner is neither great nor powerful. His caucus is out of control and pushing not solutions to problems, but bogus lawsuits and political grandstanding. That’s what the Democrats are raising money to fight. They’re right to do so.

Via: J.D. Rhoades

    

First draft, first 25,000 words

By PD Martin

I last blogged about writing my new novel in April. That blogged focused on some of the preparation work – plot development and character exercises.

I’ve spent the last four months refining a first draft of the first 60 pages for my agent to submit to publishers. It’s been a long and arduous process, but it also proves something I always tell my students…good writing is about editing, editing and re-editing. This is the twelfth book I’ve written (that figure includes early ones that didn’t get published) and the process is still hard and time-consuming. And, of course, incredibly fun and engaging.

So, what sorts of edits have I been up to:

  1. Character, character, character. It can be a hard thing to edit for, but it’s important to get it right.
  2. Internal monologue. I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to internal monologue (cut, cut, cut) but with this new genre there is space for a little more of the main characters’ thoughts. Problem was I took this ‘freedom’ and went too far. So I’ve been editing those internal monologues down.
  3. Beats. I’m a beat fanatic, but I often have to change my beats. During the first draft I often put place-marker beats in and during editing I work on improving them. Beats and character development go hand-in-hand, so I often use my beats to SHOW character traits.
  4. Tension. I’ve also been upping the ante when it comes to tension, and while I wanted my first pages to show my characters happy (before the bad xxx goes down), my agent still wanted conflict.

And that’s about it for this draft. The four elements above make up part of my Writing Rules to Live By, yet they’re still things I often have to edit for, things that tend to creep into my first draft.

So the motto is: edit, edit, edit!

Via: P.D. Martin

    

First draft, first 25,000 words

By PD Martin

I last blogged about writing my new novel in April. That blogged focused on some of the preparation work – plot development and character exercises.

I’ve spent the last four months refining a first draft of the first 60 pages for my agent to submit to publishers. It’s been a long and arduous process, but it also proves something I always tell my students…good writing is about editing, editing and re-editing. This is the twelfth book I’ve written (that figure includes early ones that didn’t get published) and the process is still hard and time-consuming. And, of course, incredibly fun and engaging.

So, what sorts of edits have I been up to:

  1. Character, character, character. It can be a hard thing to edit for, but it’s important to get it right.
  2. Internal monologue. I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to internal monologue (cut, cut, cut) but with this new genre there is space for a little more of the main characters’ thoughts. Problem was I took this ‘freedom’ and went too far. So I’ve been editing those internal monologues down.
  3. Beats. I’m a beat fanatic, but I often have to change my beats. During the first draft I often put place-marker beats in and during editing I work on improving them. Beats and character development go hand-in-hand, so I often use my beats to SHOW character traits.
  4. Tension. I’ve also been upping the ante when it comes to tension, and while I wanted my first pages to show my characters happy (before the bad xxx goes down), my agent still wanted conflict.

And that’s about it for this draft. The four elements above make up part of my Writing Rules to Live By, yet they’re still things I often have to edit for, things that tend to creep into my first draft.

So the motto is: edit, edit, edit!

Via: P.D. Martin

    

7 Minutes With… Meg Gardiner

By JT Ellison

I have the distinct honor of having one of the coolest chicks in crime fiction on the blog today. Meg Gardiner has written twelve exceptional crime novels, and her latest, PHANTOM INSTINCT, simply blew me away The opening scene literally left me with my mouth hanging open, and the premise (against the backdrop of Fregoli Syndrome) is awesome. Her writing is sharp and intense and wildly descriptive, elements that are hard to find in a single title. Plus, she’s smart, funny, gorgeous, and great company on panels, and now has Nashville ties, so we get to catch up. If you’re not reading her, you need to rectify that immediately.

I give you the divine Meg Gardiner!

______________

Set your music to shuffle and hit play. What’s the first song that comes up?

“The Heart of the Matter,” Don Henley. Oh, man, is this a great song to come up. It’s world-wise, heartbroken, and hopeful. “Baby, I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter… and I think it’s about forgiveness… forgiveness…” When I was writing the ending of China Lake, I would put this on repeat, unleash an emotional typhoon, and let it all pour onto the page.

Now that we’ve set the mood, what are you working on today?

I’m trying to come up with a nickname for a villain. Something sharp, memorable, and portentous. So, probably not Fluffy the Slayer.

What’s your latest book about?

Phantom Instinct is about two survivors of a catastrophic shootout who work together to stop a killer. They have to, because nobody else believes he exists.

Harper Flynn is tending bar at an L.A. club when gunman invade and open fire, killing her boyfriend. Aiden Garrison is the L.A. Sheriff’s Dept. detective on the scene. He takes down two shooters before being severely injured. A third shooter escapes in the chaos—but only Harper and Aiden see him. The problem? Harper is an ex-thief, and the cops don’t trust her word. Worse, Aiden has suffered a traumatic brain injury that leaves him with Fregoli syndrome. This is a kind of face blindness that can cause him to think the person he’s looking at is actually somebody else in disguise. He can think his worst enemy is coming at him, camouflaged as a friend, family, or bystander. He can’t trust his own eyes.

But the killer is back, and stalking survivors. The more Harper and Aiden learn about the shootout, the more dangerous things get. The more they’re drawn to each other. And the more each of them fears that the other might betray them. They have to choose whether to trust their hearts and their instincts. Because the killer is closing in, and wants to put Harper and Aiden—and those they love—in the line of fire.

Where do you write, and what tools do you use?

In an office looking out at live oaks and a southwestern sky. I use my MacBook Pro, with MS Word for Mac. And when I need to flesh out and connect fragmentary ideas, I write by hand on white typing paper. Using a Rollerball Fine Point pen, of which I have many. Many, many. My precious.

What was your favorite book as a child?

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle.

What’s your favorite bit of writing advice?

Figure out what the chase is, and cut to it. This will help you (a) eliminate flab in your work, (b) yank backstory and infodumps from the start of your story, (c) speed up the pace, and, most important, (d) discover WHERE YOUR STORY STARTS. It should start in the middle of the action, and as close to the ending as possible.

What do you do if the words aren’t flowing?

Read, hike, swim, eat, nap… let me rephrase that: meditate. Shutting out all distractions and closing your eyes in a quiet room allows submerged ideas to swim into focus.

And finally, vitally: sit my butt down at the keyboard and write anyway.

What would you like to be remembered for?

Being a good mom, a good wife, a good friend, and writing stories that stay with readers. Also: being the first person to walk on Mars. Might have to wait for my next life for that one.

______________

Meg Gardiner is the author of twelve acclaimed thrillers. Her award-winning novels have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than 20 languages. They’ve been called “nailbiting and moving… intelligent escapism at its best” (Guardian), “simply a fantastic story, told at breakneck speed” (Associated Press), “as fast-paced and nailbiting as a season of 24” (Florida Times-Union), and “riveting… a book you just can’t put down” (Chicago Sun-Times).

The Evan Delaney novels feature a journalist from Santa Barbara, California. Stephen King calls them “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.” China Lake, the first novel in the series, won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

The Jo Beckett series features a San Francisco forensic psychiatrist. The Dirty Secrets Club was chosen one of Amazon’s Top Ten thrillers of 2008, and won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Procedural Novel of the year. The Nightmare Thief, featuring both Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney, won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense audiobook of the year. The Shadow Tracer was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013.

Meg’s new stand alone thriller, Phantom Instinct, has been named one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “Best Books of Summer.”

Meg was born in Oklahoma City and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School. Before writing novels, she practiced law Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. She and her husband have three kids. She lives in Austin, Texas.

About Phantom Instinct (out now):

In Edgar Award–winning author Meg Gardiner’s new stand-alone thriller, an injured cop and an ex-thief hunt down a killer nobody else believes exists.

When shots ring out in a crowded L.A. club, bartender Harper Flynn watches helplessly as her boyfriend, Drew, is gunned down in the cross fire. Then somebody throws a Molotov cocktail, and the club is quickly engulfed in flames. L.A. Sheriff Deputy Aiden Garrison sees a gunman in a hoodie and gas mask taking aim at Harper, but before he can help her a wall collapses, bringing the building down and badly injuring him.

A year later, Harper is trying to rebuild her life. She has quit her job and gone back to college. Meanwhile, the investigation into the shoot-out has been closed. The two gunmen were killed when the building collapsed.

Certain that a third gunman escaped and is targeting the survivors, Harper enlists the help of Aiden Garrison, the only person willing to listen. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered has cut his career short and left him with Fregoli syndrome, a rare type of face blindness that causes the delusion that random people are actually a single person changing disguises.

As Harper and Aiden delve into the case, Harper realizes that her presence during the attack was no coincidence—and that her only ally is unstable, mistrustful of her, and seeing the same enemy everywhere he looks.

Via: JT Ellison

    

8.5.14 – On Showing Up

By JT Ellison

I read a great article this morning by Leo Babuta called “Making Yourself Work.” It’s an excellent piece, and I highly recommend reading it. For the crib notes, Leo makes a point I’m sure you’ve heard before: Showing up is the most important part of getting your work done.

But we’re creatives, you say. We work for ourselves, at our own pace. We have freedom! We decide whether to open our manuscript or go have lunch with friends. Our boss isn’t going to chuck us out the door for not showing up. We’re just creating stories for our readers, or music for an unseen audience, or paintings for future clients. We don’t have to punch a clock. That’s why we got into this racket.

We have such a delicate faith in ourselves. If we build it, you will come. So there’s no need to really push ourselves. We’ll get it done. Someday.

Right?

Wrong. Like in any other profession, if creatives don’t show up for work, we do get fired. And being fired by your Muse is a pretty shitty thing to have happen.

This is why I preach discipline. Creativity is a muscle that gets stronger and more defined the more you work it. You have to touch the manuscript (painting, song, lyric, blog, etc.) you’re working on every day. I think this is the most important part of being a creative.

If you can’t write new words, you need to edit. If you can’t edit, start at the beginning, and read. Renumber your chapters. Change the font. Count the words. Eventually, things will click, and the words will pour onto the page.

But if you write one day, then walk away, the muscles atrophy. And it gets harder and harder to call the Muse down on your terms. When you start working to hers? You’re screwed, because she can be very flirty.

At least, mine can. I too need this reminder. The new Sam book is starting to shape up, and I have been working hard on it. I’m in the last big stretch, the last 25K, and I hit a stumbling block today.

I started a scene at 11:30. At 12:30, I broke for lunch, having only written 100 words. At 1:30, I had 200, and was lost. I didn’t know why in the hell the scene was here. But something told me it was important. I’ve been doing this long enough to trust my Muse when she starts something.

All afternoon, it went like this. Me staring at the page. Not knowing what I was doing. I went back a few chapters, editing forward. Still nothing. Had a chat with my agent. Still nothing. Decided to call it a day with 300 words, very disappointed. And as I was closing the manuscript, boom. It hit me. I looked back over those meager 300 words, and saw where my subconscious was going. It is a HUGE golden thread that allows me to answer an entire subplot’s critical question, and might just be the last puzzle piece I’ve been looking for.

If I hadn’t read Leo’s blog this morning, I might have given up earlier this afternoon, when I wasn’t feeling it. But I kept after it, and something magical happened. I finished with only 1000 words, but what would have happened if I’d given up?

Showing up is 9/10th of the battle. I love proving it to myself. Prove it to yourself, too.

Write hard, my friends.

While I was struggling this morning, I added a new page to my website with some live interviews and podcast links. Check it out!

Via: JT Ellison

    

Truth or Parody?

By JD Rhoades
The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Lord, it’s hot out there. It’s hot enough to make a bishop cuss. Birds are pulling worms out of the ground using potholders. I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

So, since it’s too hot to go outside, let’s stay inside and play a game. How about one of my favorite games: “Truth or Parody”? I’ll tell you an occurrence and you tell me if it actually happened, or if it’s satire.
Ready? Here we go:
1. A Republican congressman from Florida created a series of awkward moments during a congressional hearing when he warmly welcomed a pair of witnesses with brown skin and East Asian names by talking about how he wanted closer relations with their country and how fond he was of “Bollywood” movies (a genre of musical cinema made in India). Unfortunately, the witnesses were both Americans who are senior officials in the U.S. government.
2. Ex-Alaska Gov. and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin recently unveiled an online subscription video service where her fans can pay $9.95 a month to watch messages from Palin and hear her commentaries on a variety of issues. Unfortunately, the launch of the service was spoiled by a glitch in which all of the videos quit halfway through playback.
3. Outgoing Minnesota Rep. and potential presidential candidate Michele Bachmann recently proposed solving the problem of unaccompanied immigrant children by creating labor camps, or as she called them, “Americanization facilities.” She said, “We’d get private-sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end.”
4. An Arizona state legislator spoke out against national Common Core standards by claiming he’d heard they used “fuzzy math” that “substitutes letters for numbers at some points” — a description of algebra.
And now, the answers:
1. True. Last Thursday, freshman Rep. Curt Clawson, despite having a list of witnesses to a congressional hearing before him, mistook Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal and Assistant Secretary of Commerce Arun Kumar as representatives of the Indian government.
According to an article in Foreign Policy Magazine, “Although both Biswal and Kumar were introduced as U.S. officials by the chairman of the Asia and Pacific subcommittee, Clawson repeatedly asked them questions about ‘your country’ and ‘your government,’ in reference to the state of India.”
Clawson (the tea party candidate, naturally) later used a basketball metaphor, describing the incident as “throwing an air ball” on his part. I’d say it’s more like he came on the court and tackled one of his assistant coaches after unsuccessfully trying to throw him out at third.
2. Half true. Sarah Palin’s new Internet subscription website is designed, in her words, to “go beyond the sound bites and cut through the media’s politically correct filter.” And, one suspects, avoid those pesky confrontations with reality that even the formerly fawning Fox News has been forcing on her.
But the part about the videos cutting off halfway through was my little joke. Given half-term governor Palin’s track record in regard to sticking with things, however, I wouldn’t spring for the long-term subscription.
3. Parody. One that caught quite a few people, because when it comes to Congresswoman Crazy Eyes, no pronouncement seems too bizarre. This is, after all, the woman who recently said that the unaccompanied children flooding the U.S. Southern border came from “Yemen, Iran, Iraq and other terrorist nations,” and that they might be carrying “Ebola and other diseases like that,” even though there is not a shred of evidence for either claim.
4. True. State Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, told a Senate education committee that he was suspicious of Common Core standards because they’d been “hijacked by Washington.” Asked by another legislator if he’d actually seen the standards, Melvin said he’d been “exposed to them” and that there was “fuzzy math that substitutes letters for numbers.” For God’s sake, let’s not expose the poor man to calculus. Those Greek letters will blow his little mind.
A maxim developed on the Internet, known as Poe’s Law, states that “without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism” (definition via Wikipedia).
Or, as I put it, “The hard part about satire is staying ahead of reality.” This difficulty is particularly pronounced when you’re dealing with the party of proud ignorance, manic xenophobia, and general craziness.

Enjoy your August!

Via: J.D. Rhoades