writing

November 11, 2012

What I Want in a Character

Sometimes I read non-fiction but it never grabs me. It’s novels that grab and shake and catapult and expand me. I read novels to get immersed in the lives of people I can care about. I don’t have to like them. I hope they will be complicated, not trivial or easy to understand; nothing better than a character who baffles me – so long as I perceive that the author isn’t B.S.ing me, that the mysteries and the discrepancies are resolvable, and that once I spend more time with the character, I will start to understand.

Authors don’t fully understand the characters they “create”, even when they think they do.  There’s a part of me that has the chutzpah to think that I design my characters. There’s another, dazzled part of me that senses them flying in through a door I’ve managed to open, just a crack.

The best characters are like great song lyrics. A few twists of phrase and they change me, profoundly and forever.

November 11, 2012

I Confess to: Author Ageism

Browsing unknown books, I’m less likely to choose a novel written by someone young. That has always been true, even back when I was a youngster myself. Certainly, good writing is good writing and age has little to do with plot, or pacing, or style. But when it comes to characterization, experience matters. A writer needs to have been around life’s block a few times in order to write people and their relationships.  I seek novels that teach me something about humans – including me.  Now that’s not to say that better understanding is a given with age. Cluelessness can be the most persistent of traits.

November 10, 2012

Melodious Peach

Some of the most creative writing I’ve encountered appears in the names of paint colors. There is no Light Gray. Instead there is Pompeii Ruins or Evaporated.

Dark Red? Don’t be pedestrian. Instead expect Romantic Attachment or Can Can. Madder of Fact Red. Go a bit lighter and you come to River Rouge.

I might have called these Gray Blue:  Babbling Creek or Wind Blown or the (brilliant!)  Atmospheric Pressure.

I’ve got rooms done in Melodious Peach. Turns out that is recommended for pairing with Treaded Grapes or Composed Bloom.

What color would you expect Earthly Pleasure to be? How about Philosophically Speaking?

Paint color names can be evocative, stimulatiing, witty, sly. Perhaps their only limitation is that they stick to the light side of the emotional palette. I guess that makes sense. Hard to imagine someone wanting a room painted in Spiteful Orange or Narcissist’s Pearl.

November 8, 2012

Reasons to Write

Why do writers write? Answers to this questions fascinate me and of course they are as varied as their writers. I write to connect – I want people to read my work and I want them to react to it. Emotionally. Intellectually. Fortunately and unfortunately I have never been driven by the desire to make a lot of money from my writing. Fortunately, because a focus on commercial can distort decisions. Unfortunately, because probably one has to focus on making money in order to make money.

November 4, 2012

Fear of Blogging

I’ve always been afraid to blog. It’s the novels that I need to write. Blogging takes time — but there is never enough time to do anything, so I guess I could figure that part out. Still, if I have limited quantities of writing energy then blogging will keep some book from getting written – won’t it? Is this anticipatory hysteria or am I commencing on a blog doomed to dwindle? I’m interested in hearing your experience.