It's Saturday. It's Snowing. Bliss.

I'm in heaven. It's Saturday. It's snowing like crazy. I just finished eating a stack of one of my specialty breakfasts, home-made chocolate-chunk waffles, and sipping down a delicious latte while my partner and I talked about our happy lives. Now I'm sitting at my desk with a window to a white forest while I flush out a fun, new novel. Bliss.

Time to Write

I had an interesting exchange with a friend of mine.

She's a mother of a four-year-old, and I know what that means. Hers is more than just a "real" job; it's a lifestyle. It's a full-time physical, mental, and emotional commitment to a long, demanding, no-way-out project. I have incredible respect for a mother who stays in control of her life despite the frantic pace presented by her job, and my friend does that fairly well.

So the other day my friend made a tiny, insignificant request on my time, and I was more than happy to help her out. However, it was the way she asked that left me scratching my head. She said, "I know how busy you are, but could you possibly do [x] for me?"

Well, I'm not busy. I'm a writer. Not only that, I'm an unpublished writer. [SNIP] That leaves me with tons of time, more than almost anyone I know.

Why, then, would my friend say, "I know how busy you are...", when she knows how much time I actually have?

Because she's sweet. In truth, she has absolutely no idea what I do with my time.

I'm sure she wonders about it, though. I would. "Why can't he talk on the phone? Why does it take him so long to answer my emails? Why can't he host a party once in a while? After all, he sees me doing much more than that, and all while herding a four-year-old!"

Sorry, dear. I wish I could tell you the answer.

[SNIP]

(Edited: In fact, I tried to offer an answer here, but I failed remarkably. It seems my answer sent the opposite of its intended message, which is always an impressive accomplishment for a writer. Best I not address this topic, methinks.)

Novel Update

Enough talk about vacation. It's time to get back to work.

So I spent a few days trying to figure out how to get my mind back in the groove, which is to say, how to get my novel going again. I tried toying with my notes for a while, but the words still wouldn't come, so I finally decided to go back and read it through from the beginning. I was hooked. If this were a real book, I would have stayed up late reading it. What a relief.

Tomorrow I'm going to try something I haven't done for a while. I'm writing a dramatic scene in which two characters are at extreme odds. In fact, the first wishes to torture the second, and the second wishes to kill the first. They know this about each other, but owing to some unique circumstances, they have to pretend to be civil. So I have a unique challenge: to make the characters say and do one thing, but mean and intend something entirely different. One of my better short stories employs this technique, but not to such an extreme degree. Should be fun.

Arts Cruise News

Well, I'm back from the Arts Cruise. My partner and I had a great time.

I'm blown away by how well Quent and Linda planned the Arts portion. Grand pianos, recitals, plays, drawing demonstrations, information packets for our rooms, transportation, sound systems, and on and on.... And to think this was their first attempt at a conference! Wow! Congratulations to both of you!

As for the vacation aspect, we knew going into the trip that the cruise ship and the kind of crowd it would draw were not going to be our scene -- and we couldn't have been more right about that! -- but we also knew that almost nothing could prevent the two of us from having a great time on our own, and I'm sure we would have, except that we rarely had to be alone. So many interesting and passionate people attended that we found ourselves with another, unexpected problem: too little time to visit with everyone we wanted to meet. Even now I'm thinking of people I only just barely met and wishing that I could buy them a drink and hang out for a while. Sigh...

The presenters were all great. Given the challenges they faced -- you'd understand what I mean if you had gone -- they all did an exceptional job. Everyone kind of rolled with it, so to speak. Even in the rare cases where I didn't favor a particular musical performance or score or agree with something that was said, it was a constant pleasure to just be among so many similarly-impassioned romanticists. Speaking of that, the impromptu dancing in Nefertiti's Nipple (or whatever the place was called) was fabulous to watch! Thanks to all of you!

So much joy, so little time. :-)

Nim's Island

I just discovered the trailer for the movie based on Wendy Orr's book, Nim's Island. Haven't read the book, but the movie looks fun.

I'm adding Wendy Orr's Journal to my bookmarks, though I doubt I'll read her books. I have about a 20-year head-start on her readers.

Being Versus Telling

So I just started reading Book II of the Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials, which begins with The Golden Compass. Right away, I stumble over what is one of Pullman's biggest faults. For me personally, it's a huge problem. It's enough to make me fall completely out of his stories, especially when it happens during an important plot scene, which it does often enough in a Pullman tale. (In fact, you could say that the entire plot of the first novel was predicated on this error.)

Basically, Pullman ignores his characters. He creates characters and writes about them from a distance, as if he were merely reciting the text of some play rather than being an actual actor who dons the makeup, dress, and physical demeanor and then speaks and acts as if he were the character.

Here's an example of what I mean: The story begins with a boy searching an old abandoned house from top to bottom for some special notebook that contains a raft of mysterious letters, which, once he finds it, will reveal tons of answers to questions that have dogged the boy for many years. I mean really HUGE questions, like, "Who is/was my father? Why was he so special? What happened to him? Why are my mother and I being chased by dangerous, bad people? Who are they?" And so on. So he finds the tablet and gets away from the bad guys, then by some miracle he ends up in a mysterious paradise where he has literally tons of time to do nothing.

We all know what he will do next, right? He'll do what any other boy, man, girl, woman, or space alien would do. He'll tear open the tablet and read the contents voraciously.

Wrong. He never opens the tablet.

Yes, he's dying to find out what's inside. Yes, he has waited his whole life to find out these answers. But he DOESN'T OPEN THE TABLET! Instead, he meets a mysterious girl and they talk. Then they eat dinner. Then they make plans to go on a trip. Then he says that he really wants to know what's inside the tablet, gee whiz, but instead he'll LEAVE IT BEHIND! It's safe here, he says, so he'll just read it when he comes back. Off they go, tra-la-la!

At this point I say something like "J. F. C.!" I drop the book on the table, and I swear I won't finish it. (I probably will.)

Note to self: If a character "wants" to do something, either let him do it and then find a way to make the plot work around it, or change the precipitating events so that the character no longer has any real knowledge of or opportunity to do that thing, or change the character entirely. But never, NEVER, force a character to do something stupid and obnoxious just because it's expedient for the plot.

Cheers to Pullman of The Golden Compass Fame

My respect for Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, inched up a bit after reading an interview in which he addresses the controversy surrounding the film.

"So he won't argue back?" [the interviewer asks.] [Pullman answers,] "It's a foolish thing for the teller of a story to answer critics. If you're putting forward an argument, you can argue back and demonstrate why your argument is better than theirs. But if someone doesn't like a story you've written, what are you going to say? 'Well, you should'?"

How incredibly rare is that?! For once an author doesn't say the usual: "I apologize for any offense I might have caused. I respect everyone's point of view, and I'm not trying to say that my ideas are better than anyone elses." Blah, blah, blah.

Congratulations, Mr. Pullman, for having a spine.

On a separate but related note, I did enjoy reading The Golden Compass, more or less. I liked the swift and steady beat of the story, although I felt like it suffered from being a bit too swift in places. I'm told by a writer friend of mine that such a fast pace might be appropriate for a young audience. Could be.

Here's a funny coincidence: I walked out of the bookstore with two books in my hands, Milton's Paradise Lost and Pullman's The Golden Compass. I headed straight to a nearby coffee shop and set about trying to decide which of the two I would read first. Imagine my surprise when I read in the introduction to The Golden Compass that it happens to be Pullman's answer to Paradise Lost. Fate must have guided my hands. (Just kidding.)