Location, location, location…
There are two other computer programs apart from yWriter that I adore, and I am about to make them all converge with the former, for the sole purpose of making this book pweetty.
I used to spend Too Much Time on The Sims, because it was essentially an electronic dollhouse, and I’m a bit girly like that. (Admit it, boy gamers secretly marrying off your Sims after they have multiple Woo-Hoos in the outdoor jacuzzi. You like playing with electronic dollhouses. It’s not just about drowning them for fun by removing the ladder in the pool. I’m on to you.)
I also spend a lot of time in my day job with Microsoft Visio. Which includes many lovely stencils for the planning of office spaces and the like. Also a kind of electronic dollhouse fetish coming into play here, you follow me?
Enter yWriter’s ability to include profiles of locations you refer to in your book. Suddenly, I can get real micro-managery and start putting together line drawings of sets for my characters. And when I’m through with that, I can load Sims and choose wall paper and furniture.
I’m only half kidding, by the way. If I’m going to describe how characters are sitting relative to each other in the office, I’m going to have to draw the office. I’m visual. I work that way. It sounds like a cheap excuse to bash away at playing House again virtually, but because I’m not going to get past this block until I get this out of my system – and because it’s so much fun (for me), guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow night.
All this, thought up while in the shower this morning. Told you inspiration strikes there.
Channelling all that pent up ngngng…
I did not have a good day at work.
Actually, most of the day went swimmingly, except for that bit where I got b*tch-slapped by email. Sticks and stones yada yada, but that doesn’t mean words don’t draw blood. It came partially out of the blue (I had an inkling on Friday that the emailer was a tad psychotic), but I didn’t expect a verbal nutty this morning - complete wth threats. Hello!
The rush. The surge of emotion. I’m trying to put together a paper trail to defend myself, but I cannot type. The blood pours into my face and the fingers are shaking. I try writing instead and I cannot steady the hand; the chicken scratch on the page only serves as a further reminder that I am upset, and somewhere, a dialogue of self-doubt and outrage is churning. I am trembling. I am livid. I am mortified. The mind is racing around like a lemming on speed locked in a cage, and cerebrally I’m talking myself through how I’m feeling and how I need to be a bigger person. I remember to breathe in and out. My face, I am sure, has gone bright red and I seldom to never blush.
Somehow, I didn’t get angry like I thought I would. Which made me paranoid that I’m guilty after all. Which made me anxious about the threats and getting jack-all for support. Which turned into a panic. Which turned into embarrassment. Which turned into defensiveness and the sudden urge to want to run out and bitch to everyone in the world about what a jerk that idiot was and who the hell is he anyway, making threats like that? What is he, twelve??? How DARE he! Ooh, found the anger.
I am still upset, which is partly why I’m writing this down because it’s therapy and because I didn’t quite bitch as much as I would have liked today (I told 5 people – 3 only out of necessity for political reasons, 1 because he’s my husband, 1 for actual catharsis). I’m old enough now to know that some folks are just bitter and unhappy all on their own, and it sometimes has very little to do with me. Yes, the world doesn’t revolve around me, etc etc. And because my imagination is fired up and I’m hungering for material, I want to feed all this emotion back into the book because it’s potent stuff. But I’m still feeling a little too raw, so I’m penning this down as a stub for myself to revisit later.
At the risk of sounding like a tortured thespian wannabe… sometimes, emotions just drain you. Maybe I’ll wake up earlier tomorrow to whip up a character profile, but for now I think I’ll just cuddle in bed and call it a day.
Permission to write, please
I don’t know about you, but I struggle with the notion of writing during my non corporate-work time. And the primary reason I’m not getting down with the writing each week isn’t the dearth of inspiration (we covered why that’s immaterial), nor is it even laziness.
It’s simply the fact that I have issues giving myself the permission to pursue this.
Because this is So Much Fun. It feels like an indulgence. To most of us perhaps, it’s a hobby – not a job – and therefore feels like it should be relegated to the bottom of the pile after we’ve done the ironing and made love to the husband and solved world hunger.
Doesn’t help that it comes as a paradox; the moment we class writing as a second job, we suck the fun right out of it. And we want the fun. This is our mental health management programme. It’s no coincidence that I get nuts and creative right when I am about to embark on work that’s either really going to hurt the brain or bruise the body. It’s the right brain, screaming for an outlet to counteract the activities of the left.
Is my theory anyway. I didn’t write a PhD on this, so don’t quote me.
So we get guilty. We get guilty about the “responsible” stuff we should be doing when we’re writing, and we get guilty about our dismal word count when we’ve decided to vacuum the house. And when we’re doing neither (like, say, blogging instead of cleaning OR getting to our word count), we desperately want to split ourselves in eight and do EVERYTHING in a desperate panic to be productive.
Well guess what. If we are going to take writing seriously, then we need to slap a project management schedule on it and treat it like work. Fun work. But something that needs to take priority.
And yes. We are entitled to treat our writing seriously, even if the cynical voice in our heads is snorting in derision. sssnnnnnyyyxxxx
So I’ve done this for myself. In a bid to build new good habits, I got myself some pretty stationery and started writing down my personal habit-changing goals. In fact, they’re plastered on my fridge right now. One of them is that I’ll work on the book twice a week. I’ve offset the time taken by drastically cutting back my television watching and letting go of the housework a little (dirt builds immunity), AND I’ve attached a reward for myself if I meet my target each week.
Feels like double-dipping, doesn’t it. FIGHT THE URGE! You are entitled to reward yourself for working two jobs!
My reward? I get to rent or buy a new rom-com online and brand it as “research”. And I’ll iron the backlog of clothes while I’m watching, which therefore gives me another reward for clearing the backlog…
You get the idea.
Give yourself the permission to write. Make it important to YOU. Find time efficiencies through other activities. Incentivise, incentivise, incentivise.
Now go forth and feel good about your super-fun second job.
Enid Blyton version 2.0: what this means for writers
My first reaction, when I heard all about the great Famous Five rewrite to “unBrit” them (almost), involved much spluttering of the “kids nowadays bah humbug” variety.
Seriously. As someone on radio this morning, representing some children’s literature council whose name escapes me, said, “It’s like changing Shakespeare.”
And indeed. It seems the publishers have quite missed the point.
I mean, I grew up on Enid Blyton. My first book was “The Naughtiest Girl in School”, starring the very blonde and blue-eyed Elizabeth Allen who wanted to be released from the hell of boarding school during half term by Behaving Very Badly. I was six. The fact that I can still rattle off the plot summary some decades later (ahem) without resorting to a Google search, is saying something.
The fact that I’m Chinese in race and was born and bred in an Asian country until adulthood, is saying something even more.
Who CARES if I – Chinese by birth and breeding, with sooty jet-black hair and almond eyes – couldn’t understand what “being sent to Coventry” meant, or what a Blighter really was. The fact remains that I was transported to another world so wholly unconnected to me otherwise. Isn’t that the point of reading? So you can escape someplace? In fact, I’m still learning about unfamiliar territory. I came to Australia having to learn that a tanty was a tantrum, and that if you’re prone to sulking, you’re a sooky-la-la…
Which is, in fact, who the publishers are afraid of.
Seriously, if we are going to coddle children so that they can find Enid Blyton palatable, what chance in the world do we have of making Shakespeare fun? Or C.S. Lewis understandable? You think the Famous Five was tough? Do you know how twisted-weird Alice in Wonderland was? And let’s not forget that the Narnia chronicles were written as an elegant allegory for Christ and the new kingdom. But they were filled with stiff upper lip children prone to saying “Oh Golly” rather than “Oh no”.
And then there’s us, the aspiring lot. What does that say about the legacy that we want to leave behind? Are we to be edited and pruned one day (on the off-chance that we get famous and sell 500 million copies worldwide) because our choice of words don’t extend beyond certain cultural boundaries, or times and spaces? Who’s to say that this won’t be a barrier now with publishing houses? “Sorry – can’t put this in the book. Can you please do a find-replace every time the word “swotter” pops up, because no one says it anymore…”
There are extensions to this theme, of course. Should we erase the mention of Golliwogs, because they are now culturally-sensitive icons? Won’t we be at risk of offending an entire generation of African Americans? How about words like “queer” and “gay” that have now completely changed their meanings? Are we to completely whitewash our children’s books to attend to social mores, only to have to whitewash them again when the books of this generation no longer have relevance with the readers of tomorrow?
HAVING SAID THAT, there might be a refutation to this rant. The Bible, translated into goodness knows how many languages around the world, one day got completely Americanised with the release of The Message. And don’t even get me started on lolcat. (“Cheezburgrz 4 teh kittehs dat sez shhhhh!, Ceiling Cat is liek “u mai kittehs.”) And let’s not forget that most Christians regard scripture as sacred text. The difference? Achieving accessibilityand understanding were key. The words therein, the concepts and precepts are meant to be timeless and ageless and perpetual and relevant.
I’m not sure Enid Blyton quite falls in that category. I think Enid Blyton’s books are classics. They capture the essence of a time and place.
But I think I understand the publishers’ desire to reach out to children who cannot or will not understand her books. Even if I don’t completely agree with them.
