Everything is copy

Globe-trotting is definitely not conducive to fiction writing. I need a certain level of boredom to get lost in my own imagination, and India is definitely not boring. But oh, the material ...

I have always been leery of using actual human beings as inspiration for fictional characters. No matter how sympathetic the portrayal, it still feels like exploitation. Otherwise, the neighbor who recently told me and my late-returning roommates to go on and have a good rest so she could beat us in the morning would definitely have a place in my next project.

The city of Delhi itself has a beautifully post-apocalyptic feel sometimes. (This, coming from me, is a compliment, and I hope will be taken as such). The gorgeous crumbling architecture, the ever-hungry pariah kites wheeling overhead, the very modern police officers guarding ancient ruins—all this contributes to an atmosphere that cries out for some epic plot to hurtle through its streets.

One element that definitely belongs in a film, rather than a novel, is the beautifully enunciated station announcements on the metro. If the authorities were not (with reason) so paranoid about attacks on public transportation, I would try to capture the perfect Anglo-Indian elocution of the two announcers on my voice recorder. But the recorder would have to be held right against a speaker to get decent sound quality, and I am too much of a coward to do anything so peculiar in public, for fear of being hauled away for questioning.

Here endeth my observations for the week. I'm still debating whether or not to attempt National Novel Writing Month this year. It would be very hard to do, combined with the commitments I've made to do some volunteer work in November. But I hate to put it off a whole year.

I might just cheat: Instead of starting a new project, do a rewrite of that awful novel I abandoned four months ago. (Was it four months? Who knows.) I'm not sure I'll even have time for that. But perhaps it's worth a shot.

Channelling the Duke

I was indulging in a two-minute hate directed at the utterly humiliating number of Discworld novels I have consumed over the past several months, weeks, days, sometimes hours. I have no income, therefore I have no entertainment budget, but thanks to my Connection (the Kindle I received as a very ill-considered Christmas gift), those $8 e-books just keep appearing in my hand.

I was in the middle of the above-mentioned self-flagellation (how many G's in flagellation? I think just one.) when I started to read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and it hit me: I am not alone. Wasting one's time, money, talent and physical and mental well-being on brain-rotting substances is traditional in my chosen profession.

It's practically required.

I wouldn't be much of a writer without an addiction, would I?

Sennyways, good old Hunter turned his addictions into literary greatness. Or at least literary coolness. Which would be just fine. As established in previous posts, I've given up on greatness.

What, then, does this mean for Terry Pratchett and me? It means I must somehow make sitting around reading lightweight fantasy comedies a key ingredient in my Art. To follow in The Duke's footsteps, it is first necessary to splash all one's flaws down on the page.

Or at least successfully pretend to. It's probably safe to assume that if Hunter had opened up completely, his self-destruction would begin to be too depressing to sell. So what we're after here is not so much a confessional as a con.

A substance-abuse based con, turning bathos into style, contemptibility into cool, mediocrity into the superfly stylings of a brand-new literioso hep to the real score.

Yeah, that wasn't it.

How about this?

I was sprawled in my grandmother's plush rocking chair, lost in trying to plot out my fourth un-optionable and un-finishable screenplay, indulging in a two-minute hate for my [I AM TOO TIRED TO THINK OF A CLEVER WORD FOR MY SHORTCOMINGS. ADD SOMETHING LATER. SHOULD INVOLVE IMPOTENCE.]

I had had more than enough time and money to finish all four, courtesy of Visa and Mastercard, but the funds had already been spent on Discworld paperbacks and new shoes. (The shoes were on sale.)*

The sun blazed in through the chintzy curtains, highlighting the tired leaves of two once-proud orchids. I hadn't misted them in days.

Suddenly, a flock of overweight comically pontificating wizards flew across the pages of my unassuming shoot-'em-up space opera, dexterously illustrating the most incisive, acid-tongued conventional wisdom to ever come from a couple of knock-knock jokes and an old-fashioned dirty limerick remixed with a dragon and an ironically self-aware technology reference.

I screamed like a girl.

The cat looked up from the sunny bit of the carpet in front of the orchids. “What the hell?” her bloodshot eyes seemed to ask.

“Oh nothing,” I said, trying the shake the trite social commentary out of my head and off my defunct Dell Inspiron.

She hadn't seen the wizards, but she would.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling over to catch the fading rays. “Anyway, you are a girl.”

Moving on, I would have to illustrate the tragic waste of my innate genius through the corrupting influence of fantasy adventure novels, sci-fi TV series, an astounding number of sitcom reruns, and even (shudder) used Star Wars Extended Universe paperbacks; to show, not to tell (never, never to tell!), that the true culprit is not the drugs, my laziness, or inability to finish anything, but The System.

Do you have any idea how easy it is to buy a book on an e-reader? Do you? Easier than buying crack, that's for sure. To download The Hogfather, you push just one button. Just one. Just like the rats in the cocaine experiments.

Why didn't they have the rats have to go out and find a dealer, anyway? That would have been much more realistic.

And don't say I had to take the first step, I had to go out and buy a Kindle. Don't just act like you know my story, just like that. It was a Christmas gift.

Yeah. You should be sorry.

Not bad, huh?

*In true “gonzo” style, I'm calling my drug of choice “paperbacks,” because “e-books” falls flat—in this way I force the greater meta-truth into the reader's soul by glossing over the actual “true” truth. Also, because needless footwear has become the culturally acceptable shorthand for how women waste money, I say “shoes” instead of “a weird no-button blazer I didn't need, and a pair of navy sateen American Eagle shorts with a bow.” Hunter would be so proud.

Wild adventure, and other distractions

I have news.

No, I didn't get a book deal.

Or a movie deal.

Or acquire my first blog follower. Stop trying to make me feel like a huge loser.

I am, however, spending the next four months in India, which is pretty cool, even though most of my not-in-space-or-with-dragons story ideas take place in Africa. I'll go to Africa some other time.

In between shots, and travel plans, and being told I have to go somewhere else to get the next shot (who knows where), and packing, and wishing my visa would arrive already, I keep wondering about how this will fit in with writing.

I suspect the answer is that it won't.

Oh, I'll keep a journal, of course, since apparently one is required. (Reminds me, I was working on a post about journaling. Must finish that.) But I have a very strong feeling that I will not keep up with my commitment to spend some time working on either my novel or a screenplay each day (all depends on which project I've most recently decided is a completely hopeless case).

I'm a little depressed about this prospect, since I spent so many years putting off my writing career and only recently sat down and made myself get started.

I particularly wanted to participate in National Novel Writing Month this November, and I really, really doubt that's going to happen.

Still, it's all material, right?

Meanwhile, other people out there are writing, and you should get to know them. In particular, the Princess Scribe, whose review of Cowboys and Aliens is hilarious.

Writing helps for hacks

When I first decided to give up on writing something I could be proud of and focus on writing something I could complete (and possibly get paid for), I wanted to keep my plots as formulaic as possible. But, when I sat down at my computer, I found that I could not remember a single plot formula. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard these alleged formulas spelled out, except for the ones that start “boy meets girl.” As a hopeless unromantic, that didn't seem to help.

I took to googling “plot formulas,” “formula fiction,” etc. to get inspired. Would you believe that search came up with nothing?

Finally, thanks to the good folks at i09, I have a nice, simple list to get started on: http://io9.com/5817287/ten-tired-movie-plots-that-need-to-show-the-villains-perspective

I realize that this particular inspiration is not their intention. But it's working out great for me.

Recommending the Low Life

I have tried and tried to get my friends to read Jeremy Clarke's weekly columns in The Spectator (the British mag—The American Spectator, a completely different publication, is much more political, or maybe both are equally political only I'm too unfamiliar with UK politics to see it). For the most part, I have failed. I'm not sure why—maybe none of my friends has a sense of humor.

But you—you—you have a sense of humor. So you should definitely read this. You might think it's pointless. But does it really need a point? You might think that it comes with too little background information, that you don't know who this Clarke person is, why he's in Switzerland, why he cares if anyone knows Taki, and, most importantly, who the heck is Trev? But these are small matters. Trev is just this guy with a surreal problem. And Jeremy Clarke is nothing if not the best at painting a picture of surreal problems.

(I can actually explain who Trev is if anyone cares to ask. He was introduced into the Low Life several years ago, when Jeremy was infatuated with Sharon. But really, if you give him a chance, it's a great read without knowing all about Sharon.)

Who are we, really? And can I be someone else?

Reading Anne Lower's guest post at Save the Cat reminded me that, as a writer, I'm still not sure what my “voice” sounds like. I did submit a random essay about birds to iwl.me this one time, and was told that I Write Like … drum roll … Neil Gaiman! But I'm not entirely sure that's true.

Although it's very exciting all the same. I write like Neil Gaiman and have way more time to post on my blog than he does. Tell your friends.

But really, I just haven't produced enough finished work to have a true sense of what makes my writing mine. If I could steal any one author's voice, it would without a doubt be Raymond Chandler's. One of my favorite books—possibly my all-time favorite—is Farewell, My Lovely. That thing is practically all voice, which might be off-putting to some. He devotes so much effort to establishing the atmosphere that it's easy to lose track of the plot, and the characters, and whose murder are we investigating again? Wait, that was a murder? I thought he just, ummmm—the only violent death I can remember was the nightclub owner who was in the wrong place at the wrong time...

So that would be my preferred voice. Neil Gaiman comes a close second. And in third—hmmm, I'll have to think about that one.

While my current (and previous) project is a fantasy, ideally I would like my writing to make reality feel fantastic, the way Farewell does. Chandler makes the real Southern California as mysterious and dramatic as, say, the Bladerunner Southern California. Of course, from a 21st-century perspective, one could just dismiss that as the effect of the passage of time. But I'm pretty sure that actual life in 1930s LA did not feel nearly as much like a dystopian scifi movie as one might hope.

Anyone out there have an idea of how to find one's voice?

Plot Device

Pretty cool short by Red Giant:


Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.