Pet Peeves

Everyone has pet peeves, those little things that make them want to scream, grind their teeth, and get out the throwing knives.  I don't think I'm unusual in this respect, only perhaps in the individual peeves themselves.  Some are writing related.  Some are not, but this is officially a hodge-podge blog, so you get them all.


1.  "So, which character are you?"  This question pertaining to a memoir is one thing, but if you're writing fiction this is one of the most annoying questions you can be asked.  For me, there is a little bit of me in every single character that I write, but every character is also a mix of many different traits, characteristics, and physical attributes, some from people of my acquaintance, some from strangers, others purely imaginary.  The process is much like cooking. You keep throwing in different things and sampling until it tastes right.  You use imagination and personal experience in about equal measure, and the insight that comes from personal experience is generally used in reference to something completely alien to the experience that produced it in you.  We've all experienced the gag reflex.  Just because your trigger is blood sausage doesn't mean your character can't experience it in relation to asparagus.  Otherwise, we would all write memoirs.  The idea that one character is "you" and the rest are "other people" is very limiting, not to mention unimaginative.  I have quite a bit in common with Anna, but there are ways in which we are entirely dissimilar, and it is the same in varying degrees with my other characters.


2. "Hubby" and related terms of endearment.  The sound of this word makes me bristle, much like Ferdy when he is startled.  I can feel the quills rise.  Luckily, my husband shares this particular peeve.  We are not terms of endearment people.  As anyone who has read last year's Valentine's Day post may recall, I also have a special aversion to being called anything food-related (cupcake, muffin, sugar, etc.) because I am not edible, except to cannibals, and even to them I'm sure I wouldn't taste like any of those things.  Maybe chicken.


3.  Misplaced apostrophes.  They are everywhere.  It's an epidemic, but the worst was in an article I read recently about "the problems with indie authors".  They listed all the usual issues, all the things that nearly kept me from going indie, such as poor editing, lack of gatekeepers, etc...  They are all viable arguments.  I've seen some dreadful indie books.  I've also seen some exceptionally good ones.  So what nettled me about the article was not their reasoning, though they had a clear bias, but the fact that they misplaced an apostrophe in the article.  There they were, going on righteously about poor editing and lack of gatekeepers...and then they referred to self-published authors as "the last of the starving artist's."  Groan!  An article which has clearly been professionally edited, particularly an article criticizing anyone for a lack of editorial diligence, should not provide a loophole in its own theory.


4.  Jumpsuits and rompers.  Why are they coming back in?  They don't look attractive on anyone.  I am particularly amused by the clothing catalogues which attempt to portray tight at the ankle, baggy in the butt jumpsuits as "sexy".  My dad's grease-stained coveralls would be sexier on a woman than that.


And while we're on the clothing topic:


5.  Some people's hangups about male ballet dancers' costumes.  They wear tights because they need full range of motion so they can do amazing things like, oh, splits in the air!  It's not their fault that that's where some people's eyes go.  The thing I find especially odd is that many of the same people who have issues with male ballet dancers will watch wrestling without complaint.  Wrestlers wear spandex onesies and roll about on the ground groping each other.  I have no problem with wrestlers, I am merely pointing out the contradiction.  In my mind the ability to carry a woman over your head on one hand and make it look effortless wins out as a display of strength.


There are more, certainly, but I can't gripe all day and I think I'm done now.  No offense intended to anyone.

A Mishmash of News

I am just home from spending the weekend in Portland.  The daffodils were blooming, and the flowering trees.  Two days of gloriously sunny spring weather, and two days of rainy spring weather.  Balance.  Balance is good.  Yesterday, my first day home, we had a blizzard.


I left my characters in a rather uncomfortable position when I went to Portland, and now I have to jerk myself back out of vacation mode and write them out of it.  I know where I need them to go, but I got out of the right mindset and must work my way back into it with the aid of coffee and solitude.  The poor things need to be rescued.


I made the move recently and joined KDP Select, so Ashford is available now for Amazon Prime members through the Kindle Lending Library, and I will have periodic free promotion days, of which today is the first.  So far today I've given away over five hundred copies for the promotion and Ashford is #7 in free historical fiction.  I'm just pleased that it's getting out to so many people.


We're starting rehearsals next week for our June show, and I've been commissioned to create several costumes for it.  I also have to finish choreographing my solo.  It's the first dance I've choreographed for a show, so I'm rather excited and nervous about that.  Of course, Ann is helping me polish it up.  I wouldn't dream of just throwing it on stage without the sort of polishing only Ann can give.  We'll see how that goes.


I'm planning a summer book promotion to coincide with my ten-year celebration of being cancer-free.  The plan is to donate all proceeds from Kindle sales for a certain time range to the Union for International Cancer Control, http://www.uicc.org/ and then finish it off with a head-shaving party.  I'll post updates on here and on Facebook once I know more details, and I may be asking for help spreading the word, if anyone's interested.


And now...back to the novel!

Observations

A few brief observations:


A man sporting a comb-over should never attempt to drive a convertible with the top down.


Hugh Laurie can sing the blues!  And play some killer piano!


I am finding the adolescence of my characters as frustrating as my own. Luckily it's a fairly brief faze in the novel.


Fresh figs are wonderful!


Why does everyone assume that Jack and Jill were children?  The rhyme doesn't specify.  Maybe they were old and decrepit and that's why they fell down the hill.


That's all.  Cheers!

Life as a Novel

I like to think of life as a novel.  You write it, in a way, as you would a novel.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It's full of wacky characters, some of whom are so unique that if you wrote them into actual fiction no one would find them believable.  You choose whether to be the protagonist of your own life, or to stand by as a supplementary character while somebody else commands the stage and directs the course of the story.  You can be the hero or the villain, or merely a sidekick or flunky.  You may create an outline, but more often than not, the plot changes as the characters grow and change.  (At least, this regularly happens to me.  I do know some people who keep strictly to their outlines, but my characters nearly always change their minds about what they want to do at the last moment without consulting me.  And they are generally right.)


As in a novel, there are things that might happen, things that perhaps should have happened, things that you regret, but the trick is to make what does happen the best, the most satisfying it can be, even if, or especially if, it pulls at the heartstrings a little.


Most importantly, I think, you choose how the novel is written.  The same basic plot can be interpreted in so many different way.  It is because of the genius of Charles Dickens that the end of A Tale of Two Cities is a triumphant one.  Had he written it differently but kept the basic story the same, Sidney's death could have been a pointless thing, one more pointless tragedy in a particularly messy time in human history.  As it is, it is one of the most triumphant moments in literature, which actually makes it more heartbreaking.


Just a thought.

So, I recently unearthed a partially completed manuscript, abandoned a number of years ago.  It was the last manuscript I wrote by hand, which would explain why it survived the tragic deaths of two laptops which perished during that time, taking other half-baked ideas with them.  (I really must learn from my mistakes and save back-up copies.)


I know enough now to realize that the story would never survive the publishing world of today.  The protagonist is entirely too contented, the setting too picturesque, and I have a feeling that ragged-yet-cheerful gypsies with hurdy-gurdys and hearts of gold are on their way out as popular characters.  It makes absolutely no sense to finish it, and no doubt that's why I abandoned it at the time... but there's something in it, a freshness and innocence, that I can't help wanting to recapture, and I think the characters are impatient with me for not finishing their stories.  I may have to complete it anyway, if only for its own sake.  And you never know... 


I did recently stumble across a novel at the dollar store, which manages to smash together about five genres somehow, as well as ripping off the plots of at least three popular novels at once, with healthy doses of time-travel, sex, kilts, and rock 'n' roll, not to mention poor writing.  Yes, I might be a little bitter, but somebody published it!  Yes, it was at the dollar store, but first somebody had to read it and think, "This is good stuff.  Let's print it!"


So perhaps it means there is hope for me after all.  Or it means I shall have to resort to writing bodice-rippers to pay the bills.  Or I shall keep my dignity and work at Flowery Trail until I die.