Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Writer’s Life
Personal growth
Shaving* naked in front of the mirror last night, looking at the new roundishness of my abdomen — a pregnant muchness that wasn’t there three months ago, back before my gym closed — I thought of personal growth, the kind of growth that derives its substance from too many bags of microwave popcorn and too many Christmas cookies and too many pieces of Belgian chocolate (oh thank you very much, my beloved patients, but don’t you realize that if you kill me, I won’t be here to take care of you?)
Turning this way and that, trying to find some angle where I didn’t look like Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, only, you know, hairy, suppressing the urge to take a scalpel to my flesh because what the hell good is it being a surgeon anyway if I can’t even fix blubber belly, I reflected (in the mirror, get it?) that this was why I loved writing.
Think about it. Friends drift away, love affairs fly apart, bodies go to hell, and yet our writing chugs on, barring hard drive crashes, fire, floods, and fiction-hating dogs, of course. Every bit of writing we do improves us as writers. Well, that one month foray into screenwriting put me into an extended writer’s block, but I still learned from that, didn’t I? (Yeah. You learned not to fuck with me, sailor. — Doug’s muse.) And I may have spent my first two years and 100K words of ‘serious’ writing on a project that went nowhere fast, but if I hadn’t done that, could I have written a 300K word novel that actually went somewhere? I don’t think so.
What’s my problem with scale, anyway? I’ve sold flash fiction and stories in the 4K to 6K range, and I’ve written a humongous novel, but I can’t manage to turn out a modest 90K novel. But I digress.
Writing is the one compartment of my life where I feel like things are getting better**. I may be getting poorer thanks to this money pit of a house, and I may be getting older and fatter and balder, but at least with writing, if I put out the effort, I have something to show for it: not just the words on the page, but also an internal maturation which makes it possible to do that much more the next time my fingers hit the keyboard.
So I’m shaving, looking at that 4-month-preggers so-not-a-six-pack of mine, and I’m thinking, Maybe there is something growing in there. Maybe I could take that 2001-2002 project of mine, Karakoram, and turn it into something 90K-ish, tight, interesting, funny, poignant — in short, everything I wanted it to be when I first got started. Maybe I can do that now.
Yeah.
D.
*My face. Detail added for Maureen’s benefit.
**Before you ask: no, there’s nothing wrong with my marriage. Knockingonwood knockingonwood knockingonwood.
Best of the Best-ofs
Once again, Steve Gilliard says it better than I ever could.
Over at HuffPo, Seth Greenland gives us Dubya’s top 10 New Year’s Resolutions.
I’ve learned to make resolutions which are within the realm of possibility. Thus:
1. Lose five pounds.
2. Sign up at another gym (my favorite one closed) and, um, like, actually use the place.
3. Lose my temper with my son 25% less.
4. Finish editing TBC and send out queries.
5. Write my congressmen (yeah, they’re all guys) every time I think my head might explode.
And because I really really hate living in a warehouse . . .
6. Get flooring and countertops!
We’ll revisit this next year.
To all of my readers: you’re my friends. Well, not that nasty-assed guy who kept posting crap when I wrote about the neo-Nazi blonde singing duo, but the rest of you, yeah. I wish all the best for you and your families.
Happy New Year!
D.
Synopsisysessss . . .
Most of you know about this already, but just in case you haven’t heard, Miss Snark is doing her synopsis crap-o-meter extravaganza this week. Check it out.
Wish I could have participated, but life here has not been very orderly.
D.
Serenity and the Dungeons & Dragons guide to character development
We watched Serenity last night. As usual, Jake walked in well after the movie had started and wanted to know what was happening. I found myself falling back on Dungeons & Dragons alignment terminology to explain the characters and their actions:
“That’s the captain of the Serenity and his crew. They’re all unlawful neutrals. That guy there? He’s an assassin for the Empire, or whatever they’re called. He’s lawful evil. If this movie runs true to form, before the movie is over the unlawful neutrals will be forced by circumstances to become unlawful goods . . .”
Or that’s what I would have said, if it weren’t for Jake saying, “Huh? What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Which is a shame, really, because the Dungeons & Dragons alignment scheme provides a fast and accurate means of typing a character. Moreover, for writers, it’s a convenient way to get a quick understanding of a newly created character.
For those of you not wise in the ways of D&D, here’s how it works. Alignment involves two variables, each of which have three possible values. A character can be lawful (law-abiding), neutral (self-serving), or chaotic (or ‘unlawful,’ actively seeking to overturn the social order). A character can also be good, neutral, or evil. By combining these parameters, you have nine possible character types.
Quick quiz: Han Solo is . . . ?
Getting old and paunchy, yes, but he’s also unlawful neutral at the beginning of Star Wars. Just like the crew of the Serenity, Han is forced by circumstances and a freeze-drier to become unlawful good.
Luke Skywalker is . . . ?
Unlawful good, but he’s really weak on the “unlawful” part. In a marginally not-bad Empire, you just know the little priss would be lawful good. The only reason Luke is unlawful is the fact that the law — the Empire — is so damned eeevil.
Back to character creation. This website provides a 36-question quiz to help you determine your character’s alignment. I took it with one of my main characters in mind, and came up with “Neutral,” which is just about how I think of him. Tui cares more about an abstract (the Truth, capital T and all) than his own family. He’s not evil, but neither is he good.
I haven’t tried taking the quiz with my rogue, Boron, in mind, but he’d better turn out unlawful neutral, or I don’t know my Boron.
Why is this a worthwhile exercise? Because two of the things that make a novel fun are characters who change, and characters in conflict. If you want your characters to change, you need to make sure the change isn’t too drastic.
When I analyze my NiP, most of the changes are plausibly close. Like Han Solo, Boron must become unlawful good. Tui stays doggedly neutral, but it takes him a mammoth effort to do so.
Tui’s wife Sul is my biggest problem child. In the rough draft, she was lawful evil all the way. When I wrote the novel, though, I became more and more fond of her. My villain became a tragic heroine. I asked her to change from lawful evil to unlawful good.
Well, as Maureen and my wife will tell you (Jona has been more forgiving), this proved to be too great a leap. I had major motivation problems. Sul’s transformation feels artificial, forced.
I was asking too much of her.
Now that I’m editing, I’m toning the evil way down, mostly by making Sul’s initial alliance with evil seem far more innocent and plausible. The reader should think, “Yes, in those circumstances, I might make a deal with the devil, too,” particularly since the “devil” seems eminently reasonable (although scary, just the same). Sul is, after all, a powerful female willing to fight beak-and-talon for her family’s best interest. Sul wouldn’t go to a male authority figure with her problems; no, she’d go to the most politically powerful female in the land.
Thus, instead of “lawful evil becomes unlawful good,” Sul’s transformation will be “lawful good to unlawful good” — which is a much more believable change.
How about conflict? As Star Wars and Serenity demonstrate, Lawful Evil vs. Unlawful Good is an entertaining pair-off. I think audiences today like a little ambiguity in their heroes and villains, and that’s what LE vs. UG provides. If you want Unlawful Evil vs. Lawful Good, you’ll have to mine the videostore shelves for some old Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne movies. (And not all of Wayne’s characters were Lawful Good — not by a long shot.)
As for Serenity, I guessed right. The captain has a change of heart, becomes Unlawful Good, and defeats the Lawful Evil forces of the star system. There, I ruined it for you. The movie had one other surprise — Hello Kitty videos are evil — but you knew that already.
D.
Tagline: The hardest trick is making them stay
. . . in the theater.
Guess that movie.
Give up? Here’s a clue. Picture John Cusack looking tired, depressed, and constipated. Need help?
Editing update and a question
This morning, I shuffled chapters and came up with a 20-chapter first-book-of-the-trilogy consisting of 104K words. A bit big for a first book, but it’s not a deal-breaker (like, um, a 304K-word novel).
Only one problem: the first book will end with one hell of a cliffhanger.
I don’t think this is a problem, but remember, I have NOVICE tattooed on my forehead. I can’t imagine a publisher buying the first book without buying the second and third, too. They’re similar in style, humor, and quality. If anything, the second two books will be better than the first.
So, here’s my thinking: if they buy the first, they’ll buy all three, and they’ll follow up on the first book’s publication with publication of the second and third in the coming year. Readers will know this, and they’ll forgive me for the cliffhanger.
Won’t they?
D.
Kudos and Kvetches: The 40-Year Old Virgin
The premise: unbelievable?
Not at all. We encounter many 40-year-old virgins in medicine. Oddly enough, all of them are doctors. Never forget that medical school selects for social misfits, and that no sane person voluntarily becomes a doctor. Given that, is it any wonder that many doctors are 40-year-old (and older) virgins?
Who is that lovely blonde, and what is the chance she might come visit your blog?
Glad you asked. That is the gorgeous and talented Elizabeth Banks, whom you may remember from Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Sea Biscuit. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, she plays cleanliness-obsessed secondary love interest Beth. As for whether she might visit my blog, I see this as slightly more likely than me winning the Super Lotto.
I buy tickets twice a week.
Do you know how I know you’re gay?
No. How?
One photo:
‘Nuff said. Anyway, what did you like about the movie?
Well, Paul Rudd (pictured above) (the good-looking one, not the doofus with his shirt off) rocked. I thought that whole “Do you know how I know you’re gay?” banter penetrated some of our darkest male fears, opening a dialog on the existential desperation of self-absorbed heterosexual angst.
Just kidding. That stuff was funny as hell, though.
You know what else I liked? The fact that this gal,
actress Catherine Keener, Steve Carell’s main love interest, was born in 1960. (Catherine, you’re welcome here any time, too.) Honestly, aren’t you at least a little squicked out when Jack Nicholson (born 4/22/37) nuzzles up to Helen Hunt (born 6/15/63)?
Back to Ms. Keener. I love the fact that Judd Apatow cast an age-appropriate woman in this role. He even made her character a grandma. This is not a screenplay which shies away from the fact that the protagonists are middle-aged. In other words, this is a movie for us forty-somethings. Yay!
Aside from that, I really, really liked Ms. Keener’s performance. I understood Andy’s instant attraction to her. I even understood why he would prefer Catherine Keener to Elizabeth Banks. And, by the way, there’s more chemistry between Keener and Carell than in any movie romance I’ve seen for a long time.
So what are you kvetching about?
One thing, and one thing only. Same thing I touched on in my last Smart Bitches Day column. If you feel genre-bound to include a boy-loses-girl plot twist, please make it believable, okay? In Grosse Point Blank, the monkey wrench flows naturally from the plot. There’s a tiny bit of coincidence involved (Debi shows up at just the wrong time), but that’s forgivable, in my opinion.
In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the argument which temporarily divides our protagonists seems forced. I felt like I was watching the writer jam a square peg into a round hole. If that wasn’t bad enough, Apatow felt compelled to put some weird-ass chase scene in there, with Andy chasing after Trish on his bicycle. Ugh!
Other than that, this movie gets an unqualified thumbs-up from both of my hands. I’ll have my eye out for other Apatow projects. (Just checked IMDB: Judd Apatow co-executive produced one of my all time favorite sit coms, The Larry Sanders Show. Show of hands: who remembers David Duchovny’s repeated appearances on that show? I do, I do!)
D.
P.S.: Michelle has blogged about The 40-Year-Old Virgin, too. Let’s have a 40-Year-Old Virgin party, everyone!
To my reader in Massachusetts, who found me
by searching Yahoo for
ball squeezing sex play
You know, if you want that sort of thing, you need only ask.
But not right now. No one’s balls are getting squeezed, not even my own. My back aches, I haven’t even begun to think about what I’m going to make for dinner tonight, and I’m tired, even though all I’ve done is
- one load of laundry
- washed last night’s dishes
- cleaned the litter box — AGAIN (what is it about cats? Don’t they ever stop?)
- threw out several million bags of trash
- unpacked one of the remaining moving boxes so that Jake could play Impossible Creatures
I’ve caught up on all of your blogs, commented on many of them, and haven’t even cracked open my manuscript. Here I thought I’d be editing like crazy in my time off.
Here’s a question:
Have any of you NaNoWriMo-ers hit perma-snag with your manuscript? I can’t find the motivation to reread it, let alone finish it. I’d like to think this is because I’m so disciplined, I’d rather edit Brakan Correspondent, but see two paragraphs ago.
One last thought before I brave the supermarket. Go over to Atrios and take the “Does President Bush deserve to be impeached” MSNBC opinion poll. 89% say yes! Too bad the poll is unscientific.
D.
What this boy wants from a romance novel
For a change, I thought I’d post something for Smart Bitches Day which really concerns romance as a genre. To wit: how can you romance writers get more guys to read your stuff?
I’m not a typical guy, so please imagine that my every comment is prefaced with, “For what it’s worth . . . ” I despise team sports, I dislike gory violence in movies (unless it’s so far over the top that it’s unmistakably fake), and I have no desire to hang out with other guys. I don’t drink beer, get drunk, or smoke cigars. I really do like long walks on the beach, but that’s because I love finding bits of washed-up skeletons and gooey dead things.
So. For what it’s worth:
If I’m going to read a romance, I want it to be about romance. If I want a crime novel, I’ll read a crime novel. If I want something historically accurate, I’ll read Jane Austen. Give me a contemporary woman I can root for and I’m yours. Stephen, you’re excepted from this because your book has a monster and that’s cool. And Lilith, don’t get mad at me. Nothing wrong with paranormals, but I’d rather be reading the written equivalent of Sex and the City.
Next: the protagonists had better be likable, smart, and funny as hell. They should be people I would want to hang out with. Their witty dialog should be a joy to behold, and the world should sparkle because they’re alive. Think Martin Blank and Debi Newberry in Grosse Point Blank, or Nina and Jamie in Truly Madly Deeply.
Note that humor serves two roles: it is entertaining all by itself (and if you’re not trying to entertain, what the hell are you trying to do?) and it makes us care for the characters. They’ve made us laugh, and so they become our friends. We want to see good things happen to them.
If you’re going to play the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl game, the ‘loses’ part had better not involve some stupid misunderstanding. Smart people don’t have stupid misunderstandings. Never never never. Maybe they do in real life, but I don’t want to read about a stupid misunderstanding, okay?
Paragraph number eight, and I haven’t said a single thing about sex. Why? Because it isn’t necessary. Think about it. Grosse Point Blank? Airplane on the bed, sexual tension, no actual sex. Truly Madly Deeply? Rickman’s dead, for heaven’s sake. Ew.
Sex and the City had no graphic sex, yet it titillated our prurient cravings and topped out our outrageous-o-meters. How? With language. If those writers can do it, you can do it, too.
It’s not that I have anything against graphic sex; it’s just that so few people do it well. Also, as any student of Cheers will tell you, sex dissipates all tension between your male and female protags. True, Sex and the City is a good counter-example. Their writers created tension in the issue of relationship survival. (Do any of you remember McCall’s magazine’s regular column, Can This Marriage Be Saved?) If you’re going to remove the sexual tension element, you had better replace it with something else.
If you’re going to include graphic sex, please, please don’t get goofy about it. Sex is not an expression of love. Sex is an expression of lust. Some time ago, I wrote a post about what guys think about during sex. Damn it, I can’t find it now, but here’s the bottom line: what we think about isn’t interesting. Lots of “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi,” if you must know. So, hot tip: keep it in the gal’s POV. Women may have the same problem as men, but I don’t know that, so you can write whatever you like from the gal’s POV and I won’t know if you’re bullshitting me.
My wife might, but that’s off topic.
One last point: the HEA (happily ever after — just wanted to let you know I’m not completely ignorant)? I’m not that hooked on it, or at least, I’d like to see a few liberties taken. Maybe they end up happily ever after with other people. Maybe they drift apart and realize they’re not right for one another. Maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but it seems to me that some degree of unpredictability in the ending is a good thing.
There. I’ve done it. A genuine Smart Bitches post, and no spiders.
D.
Ooh, I love this bit.
Here’s where I’m at in the editing of The Brakan Correspondent. For those of you who haven’t heard me talking about this, the Huurans are wingless birds with arms and hands. That’s all the set-up you need.
The alarm was especially loud for those unfortunate enough to be stationed ten feet from the speakers.
“You wanna check that out?†said the cock named Govil.
“Nuh-uh. You?†said his partner, the one they called Bard.
“One of us oughta. You see anything on the monitors?â€
Bard shook his head and passed Govil a small spiral notepad.
“This one’s a keeper,†said Bard. “I feel it in my blood.â€
Govil read the wide, childish scrawl: Spring is the croolest month. Sigh!
“Croolest, eh?†said Govil. “I like that. You gonna put some torture in it?â€
Bard snagged the notepad and gave Govil an injured look. “It ain’t about torture. It’s about the essential emptiness of the Huuran spirit.â€
Govil clucked and studied the monitors. Boring, every single one. And still that damned alarm kept screaming like an eastside hen in heat.
“It’s a shame,†he said, flicking the switch that killed the alarm. “I would read a poem about torture. Anyway, how come you only write first lines? That’s all I ever see outa you.â€
“It’s cuz that first line’s so important. A poem from the heart, first line to last, it has to go on and on like it can’t go no other way.â€
“A sense of inevitability?†said Govil.
“Whatever.â€
Something flickered on the monitor for loading dock B.
“You see that?†said Govil.
“What?â€
“Ah, fluff it. We can both check it out.â€
D.