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Coffee & Conversation: Are you a planner (plotter) or spontaneous (pantser)?

25 Monday May 2020

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I am, like most folks, some combination of the two.

Interestingly enough, for a good long time I was completely a pantser in my writing (no outline, just sit down and start writing with an idea (or an inkling of an idea)) while in my life I was a planner. The sort who memorized school schedules and maps and directions because otherwise my brain would freeze up on the spot.

This opposite behavior made some sense though, given in writing, it doesn’t matter how many times you get a sentence wrong, you can always go back and change it until it’s perfect. Could craft witty character interactions with hours or even days in between their responses to one another. You’re like a god or goddess meddling in people’s affairs. Powerful!

In real life there are no do-overs. It’s one and done. You say words backwards, you can’t suddenly unfuck them. You head for ten minutes in the wrong direction, you’re going to inevitably be late for everything, and if you sit in the wrong class or pull up to the wrong building you’ll get the immense pleasure of feeling like a moron when someone points out that you don’t belong.

Spontaneous behavior in life is freeing though. It breathes a sort of carefree happiness into your actions and there’s a lot to be said for its ability to alter your mental state. In a positive direction.

And outlining before you write can unfuck problems long before you fucked them up in the first place. (I guess that’s the purpose of planning, isn’t it?)

Which is all a convoluted way of saying that while I’m still a planner, I’m learning to be more spontaneous (though I do have to recuperate after each time), and while I’m still a pantser, outlines before you start are actually quite handy (even if I throw half of it out partway though).

~Emmi

 

Coffee & Conversation: What do you think should be censored?

18 Monday May 2020

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Personally, I’m in the camp that any and all adult fiction or non-fiction should not be censored at all for the adult population.

But you’re probably aware I purposefully said the word “adult.”

I think most people (or at least I hope most people) would agree that children’s fiction should not have high (or perhaps any) levels of gratuitous violence, sexual activity, swearing, hate, etc. And that’s simple enough to say when the child in question is reading board books, picture books, chapter books, etc.

But things begin to get slightly dicey when we reach middle grade, where certain levels of violence or difficult situations may, in fact, be favorable to show coming-of-age story lines or excite children who want to read about dragon-riding or dinosaurs or space battles where the heroes come out on top.

Then there’s YA, strictly in a camp all its own. And that camp is a complete and utter mess, if you ask me (which you weren’t, but I’m answering anyway).

YA, despite its moniker of young adult, is generally considered aimed at children between the ages of 12/13-18. Which, again, if you ask me, is a pretty huge disparity. Children at age 12 might not even have begun puberty, where at 18, you’re not only considered an adult in most countries, but you’ve probably been faced with many adult decisions concerning your own health, sexual activity, future, life choices, relationships, etc. One would hope that at 18 you’d have enough past experiences, enough common sense, enough knowledge to think analytically. Sure, you’ll still make mistakes, but we all do at any age.

However, I have a distinct problem with YA authors aiming their books solely at that higher range audience and forgetting that children as young as 12-13 will also be picking up and reading their work. No, I’m not going to say that all violence and sexual situations should be removed. However, I do adamantly believe authors of YA have just as much responsibility as any other children’s fiction author.

LET’S TAKE AN EXAMPLE: Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: How do you handle two-faced people?

11 Monday May 2020

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Not in your real life; I’d think that’s a loaded question with too many answers to count. But in writing, things are a tiny bit simpler. Tiny bit.

There are two main different situations where you might find yourself writing a two-faced person.

THROUGH POINT-OF-VIEW CHARACTER

This situation can be as complicated or as easy depending upon how self-aware the character happens to be.

An incredibly self-aware character, one who knows and accepts their two-facedness, can easily show their true colors through their interactions with other characters and through their own internal thoughts. Their internal thoughts will align completely with their actions, giving the reader a double whammy of explanation. This is where you can write simple, uncomplicated statements, such as “He/I lied” or “He/I didn’t care who he/I hurt” inter-spaced with other, longer internal motivation that will bolster the character’s actions and give the reader a complete sense of what kind of character they’re dealing with.

This is, by far, the easiest two-faced character to create. However, if the character is completely morally ambiguous, you’ll have a much more difficult time convincing the reader to have empathy for him. To improve empathy, you’ll have to show his likableness by 1) having him engage in ‘nice’ or ‘kind’ behavior, 2) by showing other people enjoying his presence or comparing him favorably, or 3) by giving him a clearly defined motivation that readers can identify with.

A character lacking in self-awareness (a type of unreliable narrator), will cause slightly more difficulty given their actions and their thoughts will not align. This is the character who thinks of himself as correct, moral, or a victim in situations rather than a perpetrator. A character who does not take responsibility for the negative outcomes of his actions because he believes in his own false narrative. In this situation, you can’t write “He lied” ever because as far as the character is concerned, he isn’t lying. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What is something you continually procrastinate on?

04 Monday May 2020

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Okay, I thought this a suitable question.

When it comes to writing, the writing part is actually the easiest. It’s just you and the blank page. No one watches. No one sees the mess-ups. No one sees the tangential paragraphs where you go on for two, three, four hundred words about how you have no idea what the next plot point is or repeatedly asking yourself why this character is even in this story. It’s a private affair. Where doubts intermix with excitement.

On the other hand…

Edits require you to dull the creative part of your brain. Force it into a little box with air holes that it might leak out, but only at appropriate times.

Formatting requires you to completely lock the creative side of you away. Forget it exists. Staunch it until it’s just a murmur begging to be let free.

Social Media requires you to plant your feet firmly in the here and the now, in a place where the date matters and the story is just a story and never an overactive part of your mind where you just want to linger forever.

Synopsis writing requires you to take your entire story, every living, breathing part of it, and turn it into something bland, dry, and dull that fits on two pages.

These are the things I procrastinate on the most. They are antithetical to everything writers tend to love. The clean-up at the end of the party.

Oh, we know we shouldn‘t procrastinate on them. The longer they sit needing to be done, the larger they loom. The more stories you complete in the meantime, the more end work accumulates. Yet, they sit out there still, demanding to be done by you and only you because someone else might do it all very wrong and you know it.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What are your most used phrases?

13 Monday Apr 2020

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Oh, the dreaded repetition, always showing up, rearing its head as part of an unconscious bias as your fingers type across the page. Characters raising their brows or cocking their heads and everly speaking in dry manners. Characters turn and turn again, they sneak quick glances or stare unashamedly and hold each other’s gazes as if in a staring contest.

A lot of these phrases are used by millions of authors and I’m sure non-English speaking writers have their own bevy of phrases that crop in every tale known to man.

Some authors have their own specific words they seem to have fallen in love with. For instance, I once read a series where every male character would stalk across the room and pop their jaw (ouch?). Read another where every person was described as ingenious. Great word, ingenious, but its likely not every character meets its requirements.

Sometimes, a group of writers all joined by a social circle will use certain words or phrases in their books (the schlep phenomenon comes to mind).

As for me? I have my own specific quirks, notwithstanding the above mentioned plethora of head-cocking and dry-speaking. But here’s the rub…it’s incredibly hard to pinpoint your own overused phrases. There might very well be a million of them, yet unless the phrases are long enough and specific enough, it won’t stick out in my mind.

Here’s a paraphrase of one I’ve used a few times: “They do X, Y, Z, but he didn’t even know who ‘they’ were.” I’ve stumbled across myself using that one in both novels and short stories many times. Sometimes I catch it and edit the comments into something different. Sometimes I don’t catch it at all.

Another I use is a nostalgic beginning. I lean into a certain way of starting some stories: “Once he’d been…” or “There’d been a time…” or “Before he’d never…” and “Now he wasn’t so sure…” These types of phrasing all lend themselves to evoking a sense of loss or a sense of time passing, essentially that nostalgia I mentioned. It’s a hard habit to break because oftentimes I really like the feeling it calls and I’m not so sure what other powerful emotion I could replace it with.

I’m sure there’s many other examples. And I’m just as sure if you’re a reader you’ve caught plenty of these kinds of phrases from your favorite authors, just as I have. Habits are hard things to break though, especially when it all reads perfectly fine to you.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What was your biggest “Ah-ha!” moment?

06 Monday Apr 2020

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I’m going to think about this question as pertaining to my writing journey because I think we all have plenty of Ah-ha! moments in our lives that it would be difficult to talk about just one in particular as being the biggest.

When I first sat down to get serious about my writing, I made all the mistakes every newbie makes: no understanding of point-of-view, lack of consistency in tense, white-walling, stilted dialogue, as-you-know situations, purposeless prose, rambling scenes, tangents galore, zero conflict/tension, inability to differentiate character voices, etc., etc.,

Some of these mistakes are naturally solved merely by the writing of the stories. For instance, you cringe when you read your dialogue out loud, you can’t imagine the world when reading back the scene, your head-hopping becomes confusing even to yourself. However, one problem in particular kept eluding me because I couldn’t understand it: Hooking.

A hook, like in fishing, is that barbed piece that claws into the reader and doesn’t let go. It makes sure the reader turns the page, scrolls down, doesn’t get distracted. And for a long time I thought ‘hook’ was synonymous with ‘interesting.’

You might be thinking, “but shouldn’t a hook be interesting? Wouldn’t I want the story I’m about to read be interesting? Why wouldn’t I keep reading if the story isn’t interesting?” And those are all the questions that I harbored that made me continue to not comprehend hooking for an obscene amount of time. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What scared you as a child?

30 Monday Mar 2020

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I had two fears as a child, that spawned into three, that eventually morphed into four during high school and then decreased to three again as an adult.

The first fear is spiders. (I’ve just given you power over me, please use it wisely, I beg of you.) This is one of the most popular fears in existence (as if we’re scrambling for it), so I’m sure this one comes as no surprise.

I have no fear over other insects, nor do I have problems with daddy-long-legs or anything crab-related. It’s just spiders. They freaking fly, guys, fly and float and…I need to stop.

The second fear came during my first few years of elementary school: the fear of dark bathrooms. This does not include bathrooms in general. This does not include the dark in general. This doesn’t refer to bathrooms with the lights out and sun shining in through the windows. It’s strictly: dark bathrooms.

Why? you ask. Because Bloody Mary. Kids at school would not stop talking about it, would tell stories about summoning her at night, and gave me nightmares that still sit in my subconscious even after all this time. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Do you watch any sports, and if so do you have any special game day rituals?

23 Monday Mar 2020

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There are a great many people who won’t agree with me on this one, but honestly, I don’t see how it’s any different. My “sport” is Survivor. It’s a game. People are eliminated. There are competitions between players. You can have your fantasy teams. And at the end of the season a winner takes all.

No one who watches sports actively do anything other than eat snacks and drink beer on game days, so it’s not as if the “sport” part of the equation means anything to those of us who aren’t participating. And if we are counting the amount of work contestants/players go through, they certainly go through a large amount of body-wreckage like your average sports player, including contracting infectious diseases that often-times wreck havoc on their bodies for years and years to come.

As for the game day rituals, yes! I’ve managed to coerce my family into liking Survivor (mhahaha) and we play a season-long game based on our guesses as to who is going home.

After episode one, we all choose one person as our winner pick who, if we managed to get it right, will be worth a massive amount of points.

Before every episode after the first, we each write down the boot order, from who we think is least likely to go home to who we think is most likely to go home. These are listed by order number. Then, at the end of the episode we circle the eliminated player on each person’s list and whatever placement that player was at is how many points we each get. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: How has the coronavirus affected you?

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

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Literally everywhere I look, this is the only topic of conversation. I’d originally been going to answer a completely different question this week, but I decided to sideline that one until next week because of the last few days.

On Thursday last, I received an automated call from the county that all schools would be closed Mar 16 for at least two weeks (which is why this is coming out today and not yesterday–kids say hi though). In the 24-48 hours after, multiple messages went out postponing, then cancelling an all-day kid’s sporting event that had been scheduled this weekend, possibly cancelling the entire season, library closure noted (so much for working by myself), dentist closed up (was supposed to go in today and was hoping to get my popping jaw looked at), and restaurants have been effectively boarded up until further notice (this one doesn’t truly affect me, but I’m feeling for all of the owners who were struggling to stay afloat month after month).

Toilet paper is completely gone at the stores, as is bread and milk, paper towels, disinfectant, etc. The pandemic has people walking around wearing masks and gloves (that they take off to operate touch-screens and then put back on–I guess to cultivate the bacteria) and the grand total of cases of corona for an hour’s drive all around me is…nil.

Which means this is probably only the beginning of the hysteria.

The news is one-dimensional. My twitter feeds are jacked too, which I expected because twitter is a toxic hell-plane, but I’d have thought that people might occasionally have something to say that doesn’t include the words “corona” or “pandemic” or “toilet paper.” Memes are out of control. Everyone is referring to “quarantine reading” as if it’s somehow different than regular reading.

And here I am being hypocritical and talking about it too.

Honestly, the hysteria is the worst. I’m glad that steps are being taken; not so glad that people are suddenly becoming the worst germaphobes on the planet. I’ve seen people crap on others because they’re not “obeying the six-foot social distancing radius.” I’ve seen so many freaking rules on how to wash one’s hands that I’m starting to feel as if I’m in preschool again. I’ve seen nasty comment after nasty comment always about how others are being irresponsible (but never, ever the person being nasty).

I’ve had both my kids come home from school last week and talk about how they were bullied (they didn’t use this word, but that’s exactly what it was), because they had the gall to cough, or sneeze, or, in the case of one of them, throw up because he choked on a hard candy and his body needed to expel it. The fact that this hysteria had spread to our children to the point where my kids were upset that people were mocking them for “having corona” is despicable.

Is this a sickness that can kill the way the yearly flus can? Yes. Should we be careful? Yes. Should we fall into this mass hysteria because we love jumping on ridiculous band-wagons and lose what brain cells we possessed? No. Please, no.

The next few weeks are going to be tough whether you get the virus or not because the world is losing its freaking mind.

So, what I have to say to you is, good luck out there!

Figure out what you have to do to meet your responsibilities, to care for the people you need to care for, to get your work done, to feed your family, to protect yourself. And do it knowing that fear is the mind-killer. Don’t succumb. You are better than that.

Be kind, be brave, be awesome!

All my love,
~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Do you hoard anything and, if so, what is it?

09 Monday Mar 2020

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Notebooks! All the notebooks!

This is assuming you don’t mean books. Assuming that hoarding books is as natural as breathing for anyone who reads (and who actually has space) and that using books would be a cop out for that reason.

So my answer is notebooks. I have far, far too many. There are some people who only buy a notebook when they need one. Others who might grab a couple and keep them on hand. I have probably close to 200. And that’s just a guess because I’m not counting.

To be fair, not all of them are large. Some are super tiny, like index card size, and some are even smaller, talking you could string them on your keychain if you wanted, or stuff them in your pocket. I have one shelf that is two layered deep in unwritten-in notebooks because it’s shorter/smaller notebooks in the back and an extra layer of those super tiny ones in the front.

I’ve got spiral-bound ones, glued ones, some with locks, some with leather ties, some with recycled paper, some with glitter. I’ve even got one with a furry cover. Some were super cheap. A few not so much. Many were presents. It’s a go-to gift for me for a lot of people because they know that notebooks are always appreciated no matter what size/shape/style, especially so if they’re pretty.

Whenever I get knee-deep in a new novel idea or start a new challenge or just need to hit the refresh button on my mind, I’ll go sift through my notebooks to find one that fits the idea I have just right.

The one for my Houndmaster books is a floppy green that used to have a tie but it broke because I used it so much.

The one I’ve set aside for my shaman stories if I ever get to them is a pale blue folded cover with wood rods keeping it shut.

The one for Canvas Blues is a spiral-bound plain tan one that had hard covers so I could write short ‘yesteryear’ pieces whenever I was out and about.

The one for my poems was a gift. Feels like leather, but is probably fake, has a cute lock-clasp and a stone embedded on the front cover.

The one I used (but haven’t touched in years) for my DaSunder Chronicles is a smaller gold mottled, hard-covered notebook that reminded me of the desert.

It’s an obsession. But I guess it’s better than say, food wrappers or nail clipping or anything equally gross.

~Emmi