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fOIS In The City

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I have discovered amazing blogs during the last two years. I especially love the variety of group blogs, a selection of writers, each with their own unique story.

Clarrisa Southwick of Gem State Writers was kind to invite me to be their guest today.

Join me at Gem State Writers and read my guest post.

See you on my regularly scheduled day tomorrow. In the mean time … enjoy!

fOIS In The City

Today I would like to share something new, a poem I want to use at the beginning of a novella about a woman who feels trapped within herself.

Free me … 

She speaks to me in waking hours
In dreams shrouded in a veil of darkness
Trapped in my soul
She is the one who struggles to be free

The walls errected long ago
Confine her
The invisible bars
Separate her 

Break down the door
Loosen the ancient lock
Rusted with old needs
Free me and we will fly

I hear her in the caverns
Of my mind
Her mornful song beckons
Through a din of morning traffic
Long into the moon dreched nights

She is the one who was
The child of want
The woman of need
Who struggles to be free

Break down the door
Loosen the ancient lock
Rusted with old needs
Free me and we will fly

 Free me and we will fly

fOIS In The City

Cartoon found here.

Plotter vs. Panster …

I might have begun my writing career working in a semi-journalistic environment. “Semi” for a defunct woman’s weekly newspaper published in the feminist-driven seventies. I did a weekly feature for the single mother, entitled Alternatives. Of course, as you might have surmised, I was a single parent.

Fast forward to the current contentment of my retired state of mind.

I wrote my first two novels with the passion of a zealot, madly flying from page one, Chapter One to … the end. I considered this to be a mark of my writing talent.

She pulled out a plum and said what a good girl am I. No, she did not. She fell on her head and all the kings horses and all the kings men …

Then I began the painstaking task of editing, revising and rewriting, and the difficult task of finding the inherent weakness in my work. I began searching out different reading material and writing blogs.

Okay, so I will never learn to spell. But I will also never again run a muck with confusing sub plots, unnecessary tags lines, repetitive phrases (especially similar beginnings of sentences and paragraphs) and I now happily search and destroy all extraneous verbiage.

In a recent free workshop from RWA University, I was introduced to the idea of a “plot synopsis.” Mind you, I still cannot function by writing the entire plot of a novel before I begin to write. However, the idea of a plot synopsis appealed to me simply because it can also serve as your final synopsis (with later revisions) and have the bones of the dreaded query letter.

It is also an expanded version of your back-cover blurb, a thumbnail of who, what, where and why. Yes, similar to what I learned in my brief stint in journalism.

Think of this as a trip you have planned. You know where you will begin and have already decided where you want to go. You start any journey at the front door of your home. 

Like the first leg or your journey, you are still not that far from home. You are traveling down the same roads you might travel to the supermarket or shopping mall. It isn’t much farther along than meeting a friend for lunch at your favorite eatery.

Then the fun begins.

A smart traveler does not venture too far from home without knowing how to use road maps, how to follow directions and pay attention to sign posts as she speeds merrily down the highway.

A separate Word document becomes my travel planner. How many miles will I travel today, where will I stop for food or lodging, how can I avoid traffic jams or too many tolls along the way?

At the end of the day, I write down what I will do in the next day’s work, still not sure of the route I might wish to travel to my final destination.

Happily, I’ve even discovered that once on the road, I can change directions and end up in a different place entirely. I let the characters “talk” to me, I make unscheduled stops to enjoy the scenery and give the characters a chance to rest.

I continue to use that panster part of myself to do my daily writing, and I have learned that with a modified plot, I can work at my customary speed and produce work, that in the end, requires less revision, editing and rewriting. 

In short … I can be both a plotter and a panster, maintain my gaggle of characters and do cleaner, more mature work. It is the old architect’s conundrum of form and function.

When I go off the grid, I get a confused tangle of episodic and mis-matched plots that are not good story telling.

The attempt to win the argument of plotter vs. panster is futile. I have learned that semi-plotting has its place in my life because it brings me the structure I need to write the story that I can’t help but tell.

Because I think we all win, regardless of where we start, the answer for me is to pay homage to structure and form, and once I know where the hell I am going, open her up full throttle until I reach my destination.

Where in your writerly life do you find yourself when you sit to tell your stories? 

Do you think the panster can exist without the plotter?

fOIS In The City

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Don’t look for my Holiday posts in the archives. My special December offerings have been saved in a Word Document, and like my decorations … the lights have been turned off and the trimmings stored.

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I must confess I did peek at some of your excellent posts, toddled over to Facebook and scanned familiar pages, reading the many thoughtful reflections and resolutions about the New Year.

Reflections …

I had planned to use my self-imposed break to reflect in private, assess my professional career as a writer, and take a hard, honest look at how well I succeeded … to review the projects that have worked, those I still struggle with, and find a dozen rationalizations for both.

Reflection photo found here

Yet, like all the plans of mice and mad women, the time was stuffed with family responsibilities, distractions, nostalgia, fun and the first sixty pages of a new mystery.

If there is one “habit” I have developed in my short-lived career as a writer, it is that I cannot finish one book and then take weeks to edit, rewrite, and revise … to work on queries and a synopsis … to arrange for the needed time to send an MS to my main readers … or to worry and doubt each sentence, paragraph and chapter, without the need to write something new.

Even if I take an ancient plot, short story or a half-finished draft and decide to make it a new story. Even if I sit for days with two or three new characters and devise a one paragraph idea of what I’d love to do with them. Even if hell freezes and I’m caught off guard in my birthday suit … I need to write something new.

Not even two days into my “planned” reflections I became distracted, disgruntled, disenchanted and deranged.

I mean who gives a fig if I reflect on what I did or didn’t do? It’s not like I had to prepare a year-end report of profit and loss. No one was going to give me a sparkling A, a glowing report card or a gold star.

In short, I have nothing to say for myself … no deep reflections, no inspirations and no assessment of the year 2011.

Resolutions …

In the last week I have read over two dozen writer and industry posts regarding New Year resolutions. And while I applaud good intentions regarding health, wealth and how someone is going to get that damn book finished … no matter what … I must confess I myself do not follow this tradition.

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It could be that I don’t believe that January 1^st is the “new” year. I mean I was born in September, therefore, the “new” year for me might be my birthday. What better time to begin a new year than on the day you were born?

All the major changes in my adult life have come during the winter, those cold winter months when my life has taken on new directions and when the most crucial decisions I have ever made came to fruition. Therefore, would it not be better for me to celebrate Chinese New Year, which for each sign comes during the weeks from mid January through February?  

Note:  In the ancient calendars before civilization decided it could not fathom that fraction of one day … the new year was not celebrated on the same exact day and time each year.

Therefore, I refuse to make a resolution on a day I can’t possible recognize as the real “new” year.

For this new year of 2012 I will continue my personal vision quest. I cannot predict whether I will publish the work I have sent to small literary press, or those I wish to submit to traditional agents or publishers.

If you believe in such things … what was the most important resolution you made for 2012?

 fOIS In The City