Nano Update Cynthia 5:01 PM

This is just a quick update to let you know where I am with NaNoWriMo. I'm 14,000+ words in so far and still moving along at a pace of about 2,000 words a day. If you want to creep on me, there is a NaNo counter on my blog now so you can see my progress as I update it.

I have enjoyed watching my protagonist grow as the story progresses. He's a confused, somewhat angry and sullen teenage boy. Writing the world through his eyes is a lot of fun. He's awkward and anti-social. And I like him.

To those of you who are also NaNoWriMoing, I wish you the best of luck!

Blog off!

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Character sketch - the hero Cynthia 10:59 AM

Sam and Dean Winchester

If I write a blog post about heroines, I am morally obligated to follow up with a post about heroes. And there are some good ones out there. 

What makes a good hero? He must be strong, but able to put his arms down (sorry Governator!). He must be complicated—maybe even a little tortured, but not unreachable. He must have good intentions that sometimes go awry. He must spend forever trying to make up for his mistakes and misdeeds. It doesn't hurt if he has awesome fighting skills and wit. Added bonuses: a cool car, stylish clothes and possibly a sidekick or two (see previous post on sidekicks).

Angel

When I was in college, I wrote an essay comparing heroes and heroines from literature. I specifically remember comparing Hercules and The Duchess of Malfi. It's a strange comparison, especially since the duchess never slew a lion or hydra or stole various livestock or fruit to appease the angry gods, so I won't get into it here. Suffice it to say, that mythological heroes were forced to perform daunting tasks. Epically daunting. I mean, I'm pretty brave, but someone asks me to bring them a three-headed hellhound and I'm out.

It wasn't just Hercules, who was forced to perform terrifying tasks. Theseus, Odysseus, Perseus, Jason and Orpheus all performed their tasks with bravado and style. Because these guys were so cool, contemporary heroes sometimes follow suit--performing seemingly impossible tasks to pay penance for some misdeed, for vengeance purposes or as a rescue. Action movies are fraught with stories about a thug, playboy or goof-off who has to rise above his ego to save the world, the town, the girl or some cute kid.

Maximus Decimus Meridius

Something you should know about me—
when it comes to movies, I’m a total dude. I like action, car chases and well-choreographed fight scenes. But intelligence and wit are super sexy. So is social consciousness. If a hero can pull all of these off simultaneously, well he has my heart. Also, I don't like being treated like I'm helpless. With that formula, I suppose the perfect way to meet a hero like that would go something like this:

(Scene: streetside cafe—lunchtime)

"Hello," he croons, setting down his copy of Plato's Republic. "I couldn't help but notice this guy seems to be bothering you."

Beowulf

"I can handle it," you hiss. "Move along."

"You appear to be favoring your arm when you're punching this guy. Can I help?"

"It's just because I sprained my shoulder being awesome last week. And this beefy bully  is harassing my grandma." 

Your hero takes a step back. "Would you hold this?" he asks, handing you his puppy, who nuzzles up under your chin in a totally non-annoying snuggle. 

Robert McCall

"I don't need help," you mutter, but your arm is throbbing. You could use a rest.

You lean against his Aston Martin while he wails on the bully with what appears to be a mixture between jujitsu, street fighting and yoga. 
When the bully is dispatched, your hero pulls out a chair for your grandma (if a chair isn't available, he'll fashion one out of what's left of the bully) and hands you a single rose that somehow wafted onto the sidewalk while he was fighting.

"Let me pay for your lunch," you say, exchanging the puppy for the rose. "It's the least I can do."

Mahatma Ghandi

"Absolutely not," he whispers, looking through you for a moment, his eyes unfocused. "It's true a significant amount of my income goes to charities for starving children, literacy and support groups for women, LGBT and other minorities, but I invest wisely and started saving while I was young, so I'm independently wealthy. (Translates to: I have a lot of money, but I am not completely spoiled, plus I'm really responsible.)

"Oh thank you," you say. "By the way, that's a really cool shirt." 

"I apologize," he says, blushing. "But I seem to have gotten some bully blood on your grandma. Shall we take her home and then grab a drink?"

"That sounds wonderful," you say.

"I hope it's not too early for a nice white wine," he whispers.

Ralph Hinkley

"I'll just have a beer," you whisper back.

He smiles.

That being said, some of my favorite heroes are:

• Angel from Angel (TV)—because he can mope and fight and looks equally sexy doing both
• Sherlock Holmes from The Complete Sherlock Holmes—because he is so damn smart
• Mahatma Ghandi from real freaking life—because he was from real freaking life
• Ralph Hinkley from The Greatest American Hero (TV)—because he had no clue what he was doing, but he kept doing it
• Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings—because he was full of undying loyalty and determination
• Superman from movies, TV and comic books—because he doesn’t even belong here, but he keeps saving us anyway
• Robert McCall from The Equalizer (TV)—supercool retired British spy who spends his time trying to help set the world right
• Sir Gawain from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—you're going to have to read it
• Moses from The Ten Commandments—because he...you know...freed a whole bunch of people AND got the girl
• Jarod from The Pretender (TV)—smart, cute and witty
• Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird—because of this link
• The Terminator from The Terminator—too beefy to put his arms down, but he's a soulless robot with a soul, so points there
• Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural (TV)—let’s see, cute, funny, tough and they’ve literally been to hell and back
• Maximus Decimus Meridius from The Gladiator—indomnitable spirit against insurmountable odds
• Odysseus from The Odyssey—because he not only fought evil with brawn, but brains as well—also has been to hell and back
• Beowulf from Beowulf—fights Grendel, Grendel's mama, various sea creatures and a dragon. Dude.
• James Bond from the movies and books (but mostly Sean Connery and Daniel Craig)--because—accent and abs, respectively.

Blog off.

Also, watch this for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgAgybqOpg

Character sketch - insanity Cynthia 12:49 PM

When I write, I try to give my characters realistic motivations. People aren't evil just to be evil--not your mother-in-law or your crazy ex, despite what you think. They usually have a reason for their behavior and feel justified on some level. I've written a couple of crazy characters and had to try to get inside their heads, so I started to wonder what could drive me to insanity. What would really make me act crazy? And then I thought back to those moments in my life when I had acted crazy. There are a few....

Being a die-hard list-maker, I've compiled a list of things that could or have made me crazy in order of severity and potential bodily harm to myself or others:

1. Someone threatening, annoying or in some way endangering my children
2. Lack of sleep
3. Irrational behavior from other people
4. Inexplicably losing something forever
5. Too much vodka

Threatening my children: I could kill for this. And I don't mean I get annoyed and I'm all "I could totally kill them." I mean I could see myself assessing a serious threat to my child and then making it go away through legal or illegal means if necessary. I'm normally a calm person. Some might say pleasant even, but there was that incident on the playground once upon a time where a grown woman was humiliating my 5-year-old and I verbally shredded her. It was a verbal shredding only, but it left mental scars and an almost palpable feeling of foreboding that lingered around the tunnel slide for months like a wandering spirit. It was with massive restraint that I kept myself from shoving her face into the dirt and kneeling on the back of her head until she vomited mud. Flash forward 12 years to when I rabid, minced and repeated with a vice principal, who called me back and offered an apology ten minutes later. I think he was sniffling. Crazy moments brought to you by Cynthia.

Lack of sleep: We all get crazy when we don't sleep. I go through bouts of insomnia, but refuse to take sleep aids because the idea of pharmaceutically incapacitating myself on purpose unsettles me. Instead, I stumble through my days half awake and babble incoherently at my coworkers, sometimes answering their questions ten minutes after they ask them. I see awkward and strange things in my peripheral vision and feel a one-sided kinship with Lewis Carroll, who must have written Alice's Adventures in Wonderland based on images from his sleep-deprived peripheral vision. Or drugs. Or a combination. I also remember a social worker telling me not to judge people who have random acts of terrible parenting, because extreme circumstances drive us to extremes and lack of sleep is a doozy.

Irrational behavior: The complete lack of common courtesy freaks me out. When a neighbor's random house guest parked their car in my driveway, I almost flipped my lid because WHO DOES THAT?! Also when the same neighbor's giant half-lame lab pooped on my lawn for the 57th time while the neighbor was watching, I may have picked up said poop, put it in a paper bag and deposited it on her porch. She was all, "Why would you put poop on my doorstep?" And I was all, "It's your poop. It was giving it back to you. You're welcome. At least I was nice enough to bag it!" I admit it was crazy, but that's the point, and I felt terrible about it afterwards. But it wasn't the inconvenience of not being able to park in my own driveway or picking a giant, steaming poop off my lawn that set me off, it was the fact that it never should have happened.

Losing something: Obviously, losing people is hard. And I've lost a lot, which is why one of my favorite poems is Elizabeth Bishop's One Art. I've had to say goodbye to family members and good friends in a scale of degrees ranging from semi-permanent to ultra-permanent. But I'm also talking about the phenomenon of sitting down with something on your lap and it suddenly quantum tunnels to nowhere forever. Like scissors. Or car keys. Or your phone that you were just talking on. Or those times you spend an hour looking for something that was right there a second ago. That doesn't necessarily make me act crazy so much a feel like I've already lost my mind.


Too much vodka: I mean...come one. Vodka, coffee, Red Bull, Twizzlers--water even (or dilutional hyponatremia) can be fatal. Too much of anything can make you nutty, right? You don't need the details. Just use your imagination for that one.

To read about more things that can make you crazy, see this page and be astounded.

Blog off.

“Dreams, they are who I am when I’m too tired to be me.” ― Jarod Kintz Cynthia 1:02 PM

Lately I've been having what you might call "weird-ass" dreams, partly due to an unfortunate fever I've been running, and partly due to the fact that I have an over-active imagination that spills over into the nighttime. Fortunately, I've been told that this is how bestsellers and religions begin. Since I'm in no mood to write scripture, I figured I'd scribble my dreams into stories, which I reserve the right to later turn into a religion if I so choose. One has resulted in a 300-page novel and the other is currently spinning into a short story.

There are five steps to the writing process as follows:
1. Think
2. Write
3. Make it better
4. Make it correct
5. Share the product

I've got number one down because I do my best thinking when I'm unconscious. If only I could submit in my sleep, I'd have it made. Number two is easy for me, but I get stuck on numbers three and four because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I tend to edit forever. In layers. I'll do an overall copy edit to catch typos and late-night or boozy meanderings, then I'll isolate and refine the protagonist's dialogue and then each major character. I'll do an edit for technical accuracy (with the help of subject matter experts, the Internet and books), one for geographical accuracy (usually with the help of Google maps in lieu of actual travel) and then whatever other aspects are present in the story--medical research, historical research, etc.

I won't even say it's the submission process I hate, because that's over-said and sounds defeatist and whiny.But it's where I get stymied. So I suppose I'm implying it.

"I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work." -Tanith Lee

Blog off.

Perspiration Cynthia 11:32 PM

Writing is easy. Great writing is hard--especially since great writing has so many layers.You want to write a novel? Just write it. Write?

First you have to know how to tell a good story. I know a lot of people who are terrible writers with great stories. Readers want to be engaged. They want to feel what the characters are feeling. They want to be transported to a different place. It doesn't have to be another planet (it should rarely be another planet) but it should be convincing. This is also very subjective. My great story may not be your great story.

Second, you have to read extensively--especially in the genre you want to represent. I can't stress this enough. Read, write, read, read, write.

Third, you have to understand that less is more. It's not necessary to fill your sentences with as many unique  and obscure adjectives as you can you can find in your thesaurus. Everyone's veins don't need to be cabling fiercely out of their necks. No one needs to traverse any distances. That type of writing doesn't feel honest. I wrote a novel two years ago and recently cut out 10,000 unnecessary words because when all was said and done, they weren't telling the story, they were untelling it.

Which brings me to the fourth item--show don't tell. Writers know what this means. It's our mantra. Essentially it means instead of writing "He stood dejectedly in the doorway, sad to see her go," write something like "He stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. His shoulders dropped as she walked away." Also, don't ever write "dejectedly" into anything.

Fifth, the devil is in the details. They really bring a story to life. Add colors, smells, sounds and textures to your story

Sixth, find some beta readers--at least a dozen. It's really hard to be objective about your own writing. Writers tend to see their work in black or white. It's either the most amazing thing ever written or it's the worst crap they've ever read--depending on the day. Let other people read your work and listen to what they have to say about it. If you get defensive, you won't get usable feedback and your story will suffer.

Seventh, find an editor who isn't you. See above. You can't be objective about your own writing. I'm a tech writer in a critique group with another tech writer a multi-book published author and a freelance writer. After we all edited my novel, my friend who works in the financial services industry found a dozen typos we'd all missed.

By this time you will have cried and sweated over your story. You will have fallen in love with your characters. You'll hate them. You'll have a crush on them. You'll never want to hear their names again. You'll have dreams and nightmares about your story. You may even forget they're fictional sometimes.

This is why writers drink.

Research Assistants and Other Things I Don't Have Cynthia 10:14 AM

I just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The last 130 pages were the smoothest read, I think. It's the kind of book you have to power through, but when you're done you feel smarter, although you're not sure why.

Seriously, though. It was a cool story--one of those "why didn't I think of that" books. But reading the acknowledgements made me sad, simply because Gaiman thanks the woman who lent her homes in Florida and Ireland to him so he could write. Then he thanks the doctor who helped him with the medical aspects of his story, the person who flew him around Wisconsin, his research assistant and many more. But I stopped at research assistant because therein lies my problem, I think. My acknowledgements for "A Scribble in the Margins" would look more like this:

"I'd like to offer a special thank you to WebMD for all the great medical advice regarding TBI and spinal injuries. I couldn't have done it without you. I'd also like to thank Google Maps for the help with all that nasty geographical stuff (I should have paid better attention in high school), especially the street view feature--super cool for fine-tuning details and randomly wasting time. Thanks to the random intern at the U of U who showed me around because the physics professors wouldn't respond to my emails. I'd like the thank Texas Hold 'Em poker for giving my mind a break from editing, and also for allowing me to amass $9.5 million in fake money that I can never spend on coats or shoes. Finally, an extra special thank-you, of course (I wouldn't forget you), to Wikipedia for all the random nonsense I looked up in you. Without all of you, this book would never have been possible."

NaNorific Cynthia 11:13 PM

Well folks. I did it. I NaNoWriMo-ed my butt off and finished the rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Just over 50,000 words ready to be rearranged, deleted and rewritten over the next few months. This makes novel number four, all at varying stages along the continuum of completion.

I feel like celebrating, but I'm tired, my neck hurts and my hands cramped up as I was power-typing my last 2,000 words. My forearms feel like I've been doing pull-ups all night. And here I've been wasting time at the gym. All I need is a late-night word count panic to whip me into shape.

That being said, I want to thank those of you who helped me through this month--who encouraged me to keep writing, or even thought to ask how it was going. And now, I'm going to watch some episodes of The Big Bang Theory as my reward.

That is all.

NaNoWriMo Cynthia 12:11 PM

I haven't blogged much recently, because I've been working on some big projects, but I thought I'd take a minute to update my many followers.

I am 18,000 words in to NaNoWriMo, which is pretty much on target for the national goal of 50,000 by the end of the month. My son and were discussing our different writing styles this weekend and we discovered some things about ourselves. He's a detail guy. He loves to name things, and is always asking me about plot devices and archetypes. I like to plan my characters well and outline vaguely, if at all. I never know how my story is going to end when I start writing it, which makes it a more exciting and emotional journey for me. It's worked well for me so far. Maybe I'll mix it up some time in the (not near) future, but so far I haven't felt the need to.

That's all for now. And a P.S. for Jesse: I ate Greek yogurt for breakfast today--strawberry banana flavored. And I drank my coffee with pumpkin-flavored creamer. I know I'm mixing spring flavors with fall flavors, but I can't help myself.

On finding directions: Cynthia vs. Jason Sherman Cynthia 12:32 PM

This is a little light reading for my followers and other random readers of my blog. It's from a column that was published originally in April 2008 called "The Battle of the Sexists." Keep in mind, it was written before smart phones with built-in GPS became a thing. It was also written in fun and is not intended as an angry rant on either side. While your comments are appreciated as always, please be nice.

Cynthia:

I get lost a lot. It’s frustrating and embarrassing.

I didn’t get the internal compass that tells me which way is north. I thought I just had a horrible sense of direction. I didn’t realize I was missing vital parts. It turns out there’s a reason.

Some people have natural iron deposits or something in their noses that helps them know instinctively where north is. Now that I know this, I want iron deposit implant surgery—it’s not cosmetic, it’s a necessary procedure. (Will my insurance pay for it?)

Well, according to theregister.co.uk, CALTECH scientists found that human noses have magnetite, the same thing that bats, homing pigeons, migratory dolphins and honeybees have, that helps them find their way through the earth’s magnetic field. It’s a tiny, shiny crystal of magnetite in the ethmoid bone, located between your eyes, just behind the nose.

I am apparently magnetiteless.

Because of this, I hate driving in new places—I take my directions in the flavor of right or left. North and south mean nothing to me unless I can see our familiar Utah mountains. I MapQuest everything, but still frequently find myself driving off into oblivion.

It goes like this:

“Hi, I think I’m lost.” I say into my cell phone after I’m already 10 minutes late.

“Where are you?”

“I...uh...just passed Snickerdoodle Street.”

“Snickerdoodle and what?”

“Snickerdoodle and 4th.”

“Snickerdoodle and...what? 4th North? You’re in the entirely wrong city! How did you get there?”

Substitute different street names and that describes any of a number of my ventures into the wilds of America’s streets and freeways.

My brother has the same problem I do. Apparently the lack of magnetite in the nose is hereditary. But he found a smart solution to his problem.

Global. Positioning. System.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. See, you plug it into your car, input the address, and it tells you where to go. Literally. A magical voice tells you when to turn and which way. It even says things like “left” and “right”. If you overshoot your mark, it corrects for you and recalculates your path. I feel now like I can conquer the world via freeway. Then I found out that it cost money, and gave up on my dream. I went back to MapQuest and somehow made it from Ogden to St. George, to Las Vegas, around Las Vegas, and home again. I found out along the way you can send the MapQuest directions to your cell phone—a happy compromise.

So, no. I don’t have any sense of direction whatsoever, but it’s not because I’m a woman, it’s because I’m a Loveland. It’s my father’s fault.

Jason:

For Spring Break my pal and I sojourned to the slightly smelly ultra-consumerist neon Mecca of Las Vegas. Not to have my trip ruined by failing to find the place (which would actually be an accomplishment unto itself, considering the city is like a radioactive blemish on the face of the planet), I nimbly jumped to a computer and, in turn, the Internet to procure directions on how to reach the 500-mile distant societal scab.

And instead of a complex list of twists and turns, instructing me to merge onto I-9whatnot, which gradually becomes State Road 274563, taking the right-hand turn onto Jeb Podunkers dirt road after 72.695 miles to cut over to west-bound I-9whathaveyou, a mere eight-step list appeared nearly instantaneously, and four of them were telling me how to get out of my own neighborhood. Step numbers one through seven combined for a grand-total distance of three miles, and number seven was comical in its simplicity: Turn left to merge onto I-15 S/I-84 E toward Salt Lake; Continue to follow I-15 S; Passing through Arizona, Entering Nevada—460 mi.

These days, you have to be really trying hard to get lost. In an age where helpful technology (as opposed to unhelpful technology—Microsoft, I’ll have a chat with you later) flows like running water, no excuses exist for even the lowliest non-tech-savvy 20th-century Earthican to get lost (and mom, I’m talking to you here: The Internet isn’t broken; there’s a binder laying across the keyboard).

In fact, we did get lost when we got to Vegas. Here’s the situation: Two Vegas-newbs show up at two a.m. in a city neither of them has ever been in, the person were supposed to be staying with has turned off his phone, and we have no idea where he lives. However, unlike your abacus-using auntie, we didn’t simply find the cheapest motel and bed down for the night (we’re two dudes—that would be just weird anyway: Me and Chris spent a night in a cheap motel in Vegas. Kinda a party-stopper, that).

Being the MacGyver-loving future-nerds we are, we simply whipped out his laptop and cruised the dark Vegas residential roads, searching for... are you ready for it? ... An unsecured Wi-Fi connection. Yep, there’s actually a reason to password protect it! Anyhoo, after finding one and searching through several phone-book Web sites to no avail, and even signing up for one of those background-check services, we finally found the guy’s address by phoning back to Utah and waking somebody up (although we did find out an extraordinary amount of other information about him, such as his income and previous residences).


A quick Googlemaps search (note: Google is awesome: Street View anyone?) later, and we had pinpoint directions to the exact geographic coordinate from where we were. Actually, it was like a well-calibrated missile, (as opposed to that out-dated term, a well-oiled machine) ... (And if you couldn’t tell by now, I really like parentheses.) ... (And who cares? Threes no rule against excessive parentheses use!) ... (And for those who don’t like it, archaic grammar usage is simply another thing that changing to become more efficient, just like the advent of highly-effective technology. (Take that Ms. Biddix!))