Carrots – The art of rewarding good work
So it’s Saturday, and I have a lovely long weekend. And I’m still procrastinating, although I think I’m getting closer to doing what I need to do.
Just read a post on Word Wenches about Risk and Reward. And I suddenly remembered this nifty little notepad I bought from Kikki K in late June this year. Read more
A quick word about death
I just spent the last week with the family, dealing with the aftermath of the accident that took my beloved cousin away from us all. Obviously, I didn’t get a scrap of writing done except for the eulogy, and even then it had to be compiled within an hour because all of us were just running ragged, between the paperwork and visits to the hospital to visit my ailing aunt and younger cousin.
Literature in a hurry. I don’t think I’d ever be a great poet. Trying to condense the worth and wonder of a person’s life – even if cut short – was one of the hardest pieces of works I ever had to commit to. Writing it was easy; releasing it as the final edition “for publication”, so to speak, was rather nerve-wrecking. Thankfully, I get to give 2 eulogies – one for the memorial in Australia that has just passed, and the other back in our country of origin.
It’s been such an emotion-suck the whole week, not only because the bawling was firmly squelched in light of pragmatism and the desperate desire not to make this about myself, but the bloody myriad of personalities involved. Funerals, or the lead up to them, are just bursting with writing material. Off the cuff, I can think of at least three caricatures I’ve had to deal with through the week.
- The Best Friend
Everyone’s now best friends with the deceased. Even people my cousins and I hardly heard of – and I’ve heard of or met all of her close friends in the 30 years I’ve known her. I am seriously starting to lose count of the number of people who have Facebooked/blogged/emailed/twittered about how devastated they are because of how she/he and the deceased “were so close”. Every time I hear some melodramatic wrist-to-forehead wail about how they were best friends, I feel like saying,” Yeah yeah… you and seven others. Take a number and line up.” - The Auntie
She’s the one who knows best and has a 101 opinions – all unsolicited – about how the accident and death could have been avoided if only everyone had listened to her advice. She’s also the one who takes it upon herself to decide who should be in charge of all arrangements, who’s part of the inner circle that makes the decisions, and who’s extraneous and ought to stop helping out.It’s one thing if The Auntie were actually an aunt. It’s quite something else when The Auntie isn’t even related by blood to the deceased. And it really takes the cake when she takes it upon herself to mobilise her sisters in Auntiedom in her absense, so now you have a stereo version of what the hell it is you could have done better and how you need to be a support to the family of the deceased. (The fact that you might be one such member of the family in need of support and comfort doesn’t quite dawn on them, for some reason.) Which makes you really want to take a huge spade, creep up behind all three of them, and…
- The Best Friend of the Hour
Unlike The Best Friend and The Auntie, The Best Friend of the Hour actually was close to the deceased during the last years of her life, and is therefore welcomed into the family as one of their own – if only to cling to the last tenuous link between them and the deceased. This is, admittedly, the least annoying caricature because you know their grief is genuine and their help is sincere.Unfortunately, if you’re prone to jealousy flaring in times of heartache, you spend a lot of time alternating between loving their company and irrationally dying to yell at them for “taking your place” in the deceased’s life. It gets worse when they actually get the same privileges as you do when it comes to mourning the deceased, and actually succeed in taking over the detail of the funeral arrangements. And suddenly, you wonder if your help is even needed. You know you’re being a petty, self-absorbed cow and you know this hardly should be about you. But a part of you is seething because the Big Shiny Object syndrome is alive and well, and you’re suddenly yesterday’s news.
I’ve really struggled with my inner demons this week – most of all jealousy. And because I cannot stand to ever be seen as either The Best Friend or The Auntie, I sat on these awful, ugly feelings and smiled and smiled like a phlegmatic old maid who just took her happy pills. But they were always there and today, when I couldn’t get to see the body because the hospital/morgue/funeral parlour screwed up, I lost it and cried mightily. And I cried even more because The Best Friends of the Hour could get to see her even before I could. And it was a family privilege I couldn’t bear to bestow, even if it wasn’t mine to give.
Because I was there first. Because I’d always been there. Because she was her absolute self with me – we fought hard, we loved harder. And it’s something I don’t feel I should have to explain to anyone else who knows us, firstly because it all sounds so corny, and secondly because those who really knew us, knew.
I guess the comfort I truly need now is the full recognition of my pain because of my proximity to the deceased. But that’s the trouble with death and funerals, isn’t it. It’s never really for the dead. It’s really all about the ones who are left behind.
What makes a rake a rake? (A hoe?)
Trying to give my rake more of a backstory, even if I won’t be covering his past in detail.
Came across “The Character Therapist” blog that helped give some ideas. Specifically,
With true womanizers (who try to get women in bed), as well as your tamer Christian fiction counterpart, low self-esteem is an important part of why they do what they do. There is a certain amount of attention and power and control that being a womanizer brings a man, and these emotions would come into play regardless of what happens after the dates are over.
To really make your hero believable, my advice is to work in some backstory about him being a late bloomer (not nearly as attractive as he’s portrayed now) and really give him solid motivations for being with these women so it doesn’t read contrived. Just answer the question: What needs of his are being met? And then, by the end of the book (or by the end of my therapy sessions with someone like this), I would hope he’s meeting those needs in a healthier way to give him a nice, round character arc.
Also, this sounds like someone’s personal experience:
Mother’s who are emotionally weak, distant or unavailable raise sons like this. Mothers who destroy and banish the boy’s father from their lives create this dynamic, along with borderline personality disordered women who go through men like underwear, and have no concern for how their men regard or treat their sons. IF the men that come in and out of their lives devalue or abuse these boys at all, and are left to do it with no protection or defense from mom, leave these boys to grow up hating and resenting women, so their nasty. unacceptable behaviors are taken out on the women in their lives, receiving what they feel their mothers deserve.
And then there’s WiseGeek, who says
A habitual womanizer may have serious issues with women in general, which can be the hidden motivation behind the seduction and ultimate rejection process. A womanizer is often a male chauvinist who views women as inferiors or manipulators who somehow deserve to be played by an aggressive male. A womanizer may be so concerned about rejection that he makes sure he remains in complete control of every relationship he enters, no matter how superficial or fleeting. Some relationship experts suggest that a habitual womanizer may be reenacting a painful break-up experience every time he picks up a new “conquest.”
I have no idea what sob back story to attach to my rake, but I do like the idea of giving him a mother who is superficial, gorgeous and manipulative. She could be a real nasty piece of work. Yet another juicy character I can really sink my teeth into. Hmmm….
When too much writing is not enough
I chanced upon Sarah Dessen’s blog today, and completely resonated with her post about social media burn out. Which is ironic, considering that I just started this blog. But not so ironic when you realise I have about 5 blogs, 2 Twitter accounts, a LinkedIn profile, Facebook, and a host of others I’d started and then left behind because they became so 2005.
And a day job. A bloody difficult day job.
Read Outspoken Media’s blog today about how blogging in particular is supposed to have leveled the publishing playing – when in actuality,
it just highlighted a large segment of the population that shouldn’t have been publishing in the first place. Because they couldn’t write. Or because they had nothing interesting to say.
Sadly, there are some days where I cannot write. And there are more days when I have absolutely nothing interesting to say that hasn’t already been covered by someone else more eloquent, and with infinitely more time. I don’t know who these online content generators are, but the ones who blog once a day? Who tweet every hour? Are either completely wired on coffee, or perhaps do social media-related things for a living. Because most times, I’m not even in the head space to blog about something. Let alone in front of a computer or handheld gadget with internet access sans corporate firewall.
So no, I haven’t figured it all out yet, Sarah. There’s a part of me that suspects I’m trying too hard to fit in with what society is now saying about thought leadership. As though thought leadership comes up with brilliance every three hours and tweets/blogs/posts/FBs with alarming alacrity and presence of mind. For now, I’m going to focus on why I want to blog about writing in the first place – and that’s mostly to feel like I’m going through this journey with other people who understand.
Even if Google hasn’t indexed this site yet. has only just started to index my site. In >72 hours! w00t!
Getting into the writing zone
As with any work – even something as fun as writing – getting into the groove can take time and discipline.I’m just going to cover a couple of ways I try and get into my zone.
1. The work space is everything
Like Homer Simpson and the butt-groove on his couch, having a workspace I can leave “messy” helps me sink into the zone whenever I get behind the laptop. Disturb the space, change the environment, and it’ll take that much longer to adjust to that familiar posture of tap-tapping away.
2. Get the procrastination out of the system
Half the reason I started this blog was to give me an outlet to write about something related to the project, so I could slip into writer’s mode and channel my energy into the actual book by the time I was done with the post. It enabled me to procrastinate healthily, if you will.
3. Give yourself 10 minutes
Also attended one of those I-am-woman-hear-me-roar seminars for corporate women, and learnt that it takes 10 minutes of sticking to a particular task to overcome inertia. 10 minutes. That’s it. Once you’ve started on a job for 10 minutes, you’re well on your way to completing it because it gets easier and the mind has begun to focus. And 10 minutes sounds like a reasonable bargain with the brain – especially for jobs that are quite icky.
So that’s my 2-cents’ worth. Now I have to move on to point 3 for one of my subplots, so I’d better get a move on because I’m buzzed…
