Here is a baby harbor seal, once injured and nursed back to health by a Santa Barbara, California, rescue group. When able to fend for himself, he will be returned to the nearby ocean. And not a minute too soon – he is mighty bored!
Humans are as disturbing as they are inspring. In the aggregate we do so much harm to so many critters but there are always a few to step in and reverse any bad trend.
Typically, plots of my novels start with a collection of images, moments, vignettes, and other idea snapshots that feel related to me, although I do not always know why. Gradually, I discover the connections as the planning and writing evolve. During that evolution, there will always be ideas that turn out not to fit, after all, and I have to scrap those.
Similarly, my characters start as a pastiche of attitudes, actions, and problems, which may be drawn from people I know, situations I have experienced, or stuff I’ve overheard in passing. (Beware discussing your life while standing in a grocery store line. There may be an eavesdropping writer nearby.) As the book progresses, I inevitably discover that multiple characters have conflicting traits that all belong to me. Real humans tend to be more contradictory than even the most complex of characters. Perhaps on certain levels I use the characters to work through some of my contradictions.
Warning: I really geek out during this post! But I supply these details in case they help another writer who wants to leave notecards behind.
When I first started writing, each novel would have an inches-thick stack of notecards. I taped cards to a wall and removed or X’ed them as the writing advanced. The advantage of notecards, of course, is that it is so much easier to add, reorder, and scrap when a single idea exists on a single page.
Even though I was an early adopter of computers for every other stage of writing, for a long time I still needed the heft and tangibility of the note cards for planning.
I wanted to switch to digital planning long before I actually did so. I tried a number of apps and softwares designed for organizing ideas (mind maps and stickies and To Do list kinds of things). They didn’t work for me.
Then I tried presentation software, and that has allowed me to replace notecards with slides. Nowadays, I plan my novels on Keynote on my iPad… unless I need to do wholesale reorganizing. When that happens, I convert the file to Powerpoint and work on my computer, because if I need to move a lot of stuff around, I want a mouse and Microsoft’s “light table” features (where all the slides can be seen at one time) are more versatile than Keynote’s. I adore my iPad but editing on an iPad induces pain.
P.S. To plot the bigger, broader, arcs and trends of a novel, I am fond of a software called Popplet, which lets me put ideas in small color coded boxes, move them around, and connect them.
New poll, added to this blog’s home page. Look to the column at right.
How do you come up with your book titles? Asked this recently, my answer came quickly: At some point I just know what the title is. Which means I’ve been working on it subconsciously. Which makes me realize how essential my subconscious is to the writing process:
My principle motivation to write is a desire to connect with other people, but a secondary motivation is to connect with myself and see what will next emerge.
As I write this I find it difficult to say “I figured it out subconsciously” rather than “my subconscious figured it out”. It doesn’t disturb me to feel that I contain these separate entities. Should it?
At a crew meet, flocks of shore birds made a wonderful noise when they landed – like a thick layer of shells in surf. Just ignore the humans in this video…
So what do you see in this photo? Maybe a bearded guy sticking his tongue out?
Neil Young stage garb of the ’60s?
How about this one? Lunar landscape or medical close-up?
Driving home today, I passed a mass of lovely blue flowers. Wonder how long my rosemary bushes have been blooming?
I take my rosemary for granted. For many months it provides such charming flowers. It pleases bees. It never needs water, it rarely needs pruning, it always spreads to cover the gaps, it drapes down the wall in an appealing manner. Its thick growth deters weeds. I could touch it every day and every day get a fantastic burst of powerful fragrance. Instead, at best, I brush against it by accident sometimes when I take the trash out.
It’s true I will always love the sage more but that does not excuse my neglect. I must try to do better.
So. When I was young I kept changing jobs and taking time off to do one thing or the other. I’d work on a novel. I’d do some traveling. I did a lot of worthwhile things and I pretended I agreed with Cary Grant’s character in HOLIDAY, who wants to have experiences while he is young then work later, after he discovers what he is working for. (Pretended because I knew all along that what I wanted was simpler. I wanted to skip the day job thing entirely.)
I have friends and coworkers who chose less circuitous paths and a number of them have retired, or are considering it. So. I tried one of those on-line retirement calculators, and the results are in. For the next decade, I only need to save 87% of my pay and then I will have enough saved to live at 22% of my current income level. Of course if I could save 87% of my pay I probably wouldn’t need a retirement calculator.
Looking for a bright side – after living on 13% of my pay, my retirement income would really feel luxurious.
Overall, just one more indication that the kittens need to get jobs.
Required Writing 