outside the lines

Caution: things get weird. If you've ever loved lobbing stones into a calm pond to see where the ripples go, you'll love this exercise. I call it 'backtracking' or playing the 'what if' game.
During the last political season when I was getting fairly bummed out about US politics, global politics, local politics and everything in between; I started pondering what the political map would look like if things had happened differently in world history and how that might impact the world today. It's a nice place to visit, but you could write a book there.
Take for instance ancient Egypt, and let's start some reprogramming of history's timeline. The starting point is Cleopatra. What if Egypt had not been taken over by the Ptolemy dynasty? If Cleopatra had managed to retain her throne without the asp at her breast, would Egypt not have been a continuing regional power? Assume the answer is yes.
If the Egyptian dynastic line had been intact, perhaps the library at Alexandria would not have fallen so tragically. We'll never know what amazing tomes were in there, and I think that's just sad. But look at it this way, if the library at Alexandria were intact, the Dark Ages would not have happened! Okay, they may have been dim… But, there would have remained a stable, fairly sane source of information that had been catalogued for thousands (?) of years as a counter to the insanity of the Church in that period. There would have been no reason for Europe's lapse into leaderless chaos – in fact Egypt may have arisen as a leader on an international scale.
If the Dark Ages had only been Dim, would the Black Death have only been a shade of grey? We don't know what we've lost, what knowledge or medicine there may have been that could have identified the plague and stopped it in Italy before it consumed all of Europe.
If the plague had not happened, what would be the impact on modern medicine today? Would we have been as insistent on cracking open the mysteries of polio and small pox? Maybe so. Maybe not if the old ways were actually reliable. Would we be in the same position medically speaking?
Also consider that Egypt's religion may have played a part against the spread of Islam. Would Islam have spread so rampantly across North Africa if there were a solid stand against it by an army at the Nile River? I don't think so – but then again we're guessing here.
So think about the globe today with Egypt staunchly opposed to Islam, but with its own powerful religious adherents, as a strong counter to Europe. Both world wars of the 20th century would have been vastly different. Egypt would not have been compelled to fight Israel. Egypt would be a strong ally or adversary either for or against the West. They could even have a place on the Security Council at the United Nations.
Yes, it's a lot of guessing. But there's a story in there, just because Cleopatra decided to take an asp instead of taking a stand.
What's the moral of this blog post? Think outside the box. There is no box! There may be areas in your own world-building where small changes could reap big rewards for plot development. Don't be afraid to go against your own grain. And who said contemporary urban fiction had to agree with the encyclopedia and the newspaper headlines?
What's YOUR what if?

Twitter. It's not your big, old blog….

Everybody seems to be talking about Twitter, and a lot of people don't seem to know much about it yet. As a public service, I've been lurking around Twitter and here are my observations so far. 

What is Twitter?
Twitter is micro-blogging. Each entry (called a 'tweet') is limited to 140 characters, including any URL you want to post to.  This is great for personal updates, which is what Twitter was originally designed for.  It is being used for far more than this though.

The next phase of life in Twitter is attracting followers.  This can be a little tricky when there are thousands of 'tweets' in any minute of the day, so you can't really just let nature take its course.

There are applications that help you find followers, but the simplest to use initially is Twitter's search engine – search.twitter.com.  Search for key words – like your home town (yeah, like Indianapolis!) or hobbies, interests, sports teams, or whatever comes to mind from your life.  Click on the results to open the profile, and there will be a 'Follow' button.  The 'Follow' button will make sure that every time that person tweets it will show up on your home page.

After a few followers, it starts getting easier to get lost in the tweets. This is where some of the applications come in that are both free to download and easy to use.  You wanted a way to organize the chaos, right?  Both of these applications let you tweet from them, reply, direct message and filter the incoming tweets.

Tweetdeck (tweetdeck.com)
Columns for the win! There is a column for all of the tweets from people you are following, one for replies to your tweets, one for direct messages, and a couple for searches you can do from Tweetdeck.  I use Tweetdeck to get an overall view of the carnage in front of me before I wade in with my mouse and get up to speed on what people have been tweeting while I was away.  The columns are filterable, sortable, and you can shift them either left or right.

Twhirl (twirl.org)
Now, if you could take Tweetdeck and have one column with any of those columns available in that column any time you need it, this is what Twhirl does. It also comes with a variety of skin options so it can blend into your desktop instead of occupying the entire desktop like Tweetdeck. I switch to Twhirl when I'm doing other stuff.

A word of caution – don't run both applications at the same time, particularly if you are an active tweeter. Twitter will only allow a certain amount of activity from one person before you will be put in sort of an Internet time-out. If you have both applications running (and the web site open as well) you will end up waiting five minutes to see new tweets or tweet your next post.

Twitter jargon?
Any new technology is incomplete unless there are some incomprehensible terms being thrown around – just so the new people can be immediately pointed at and giggled over. It's the same for Twitter.

Your user name in Twitter will be preceded by an "@" symbol. When you reply to somebody, the tweet starts with @somebody, and Twitter knows who to address it to.

Direct messages start with the letter "D". These are messages that go directly to an individual and are not broadcast to the entire planet. Thankfully. The down side is that both the sender and the recipient have to be following each other, or the message won't go.

When you forward a tweet to your friends, it is called a 'retweet'. The Twitter applications I have reviewed have a button for that somewhere – try hovering over the profile picture. 

The method used to group things together is with hashtags. When you're reading a tweet and you see a word that looks like #writers, search for that term (with the hash tag) and the results will be the conversations that included that term. This is how conversations happen between a thousand good friends at the same time. An example yesterday was #queryfail, where writers and authors and editors and agents all submitted horror stories (brief ones) about poor query letters they had received or written. It was a riot!  There are many hashtags – use the link above to get the full list.

So what is Twitter good for?
I've seen Twitter used for all kinds of things.  A majority of the use is casual updates between friends. "I'm @ the theater now and tix are sold out!"

I've seen tweets that are more like:
* "the plumber is here now and OMG the water!"
* "U git Ur butt home NOW"
* "Delayed at O'Hare. Be there 5:45-ish"
* "Conf room 207B U blockhead"
* "This song is stuck in my head (with URL)"

And then there might be bloggers pointing to URLs about blogging, tweeting the URL for the Twitterverse. Is that how you got to this page? Then it works, right?

If you have photos to share, Twitter has a Twitpic feature (twitter.com/twitpic) that allows uploaded photos to be shared immediately. When you're tweeting about the tickets being sold out you could take a picture of the movie marquis and also ask your friends which other movie you should watch. But this has already come into play as news events happen the pictures are posted and tweeted and the world can see what's going on.

While I've been working on this blog entry, I received a tweet from the editor of the Indianapolis Star News, pointing to a link about bacon written by Jolene Ketzenberger. Bacon from Indiana-raised hogs. Gourmet bacon that is so tempting I'm going to find the market the next time I'm on that side of town. See? It works.

Therefore, the marketing entrepreneurs are grabbing Twitter by the horns and shaking it for all it is worth. In what seems to be some sort of race to the most followers, these are the Twitter users who follow almost everybody hoping that they in turn are followed. Then when they tweet something about, "Hey, look at my blog!" they cross their fingers and hope the world storms a path to their web site. 

There are, of course, applications to help people follow everybody else. I won't be downloading and evaluating those applications though – you're on your own. Oh yes, followers count! There are web sites dedicated to counting tweets and followers and ranking Twitter users, and I really don't pay any attention to those, and you don't have to either.

Media types are using Twitter to update the world on conditions in the green room prior to the show, their interview assignments, or a quick note about what time they will be on.  Some TV show producers are tweeting their guest list in advance of the program.

Do you have to follow everybody who follows you? Of course not. If I have nothing in common with what is in their profile and their last 10 tweets are nothing of interest, I'm not likely to follow them.

I would rather have 1,000 followers who are genuinely interested in what I'm trying to say than 100,000 followers are are going to get lost in the blizzard of tweets and really couldn't care less about me other than their follower count.

Twitter is also getting recognized as a competitor to Google. If you think about it, all of the daily trends on topics are captured, with links to blogs and articles and photos. There are millions of viewers and users and the data-mining possibilities are really stag
gering. Could you do an analysis of what Twitter users thought of politics in say October 2008? You betcha. And could that be compared to the election results? Why not?

In the event you're a curious person and you want to know who I am following, I'll tell you. Wil Wheaton. Not because he was a kid in a movie or he was in Star Trek on television, but because he has become a successful author on his own merit. I find myself roughly mirroring some elements of his life as I continue to write my manuscript and start thinking about getting a publisher (or self publishing) and all that is involved getting a book to market. 

I am finding marketing help, publishing wisdom, and editorial guidance. You can't beat the price for this kind of collaboration! I'm following writer groups, author circles, stuff on audio books, self publishing and all kinds of related topics.

I follow some other Star Trek celebrities just because I can. Did you know LeVar Burton is quitting smoking? Did you know Brent Spiner drives a Prius?  Not that you needed to know either of those things.

I also follow some news feeds. The local TV stations are tweeting news headlines, and the Indianapolis Star tweets links to stories of interest. I follow some network news celebrities just for the giggles.

I get tweets from The Onion, because I need to laugh. I get tweets from Paula Poundstone (she's still funny).

I get tweets from friends I've never met in person, but have been corresponding with via the Internet for years.

Then there are those who are gaming the system, and that's just sad.

How do YOU use Twitter?

There are sentences that move like race cars, and sentences that move like molasses. If you want your sentences to move more quickly and convey more information to the reader, prune the excess words out.  Unless you're a Russian novelist from two hundred years ago, less is more these days, right?  So, let's take three words for example today and see what makes them not tick so well.

Really?
Really? No, not really. I mean really get rid of Really.  Let's start with an example sentence.

The tea in the kettle was really hot.

Really.  It is used as a cheap reinforcement here of the temperature of the kettle. Instead of telling us something of interest about the temperature of the kettle, the author lays back and tells us it was really hot. I think the author is better off not even including the sentence, perhaps.

Alternate examples:
The tea in the kettle sent steamy wisps toward the ceiling, the bubbles rattling in its bottom.
The tea in the kettle was boiling, plaintively wailing through the whistle in the spout.

Don't make a simple statement! Show the reader how hot it is.

Very.
The tea in the kettle was very hot.
Really? Was it very hot? How much hot is that? Much the same argument for really can be used for very. Neither word is descriptive by itself, and is a crutch for a potentially more descriptive passage.

That.
I find few occasions where a sentence is helped by the word that.  Sometimes you need it to reference something clearly already indicated, but many times it can be omitted with a reworking of the sentence.

This is the swing set that the children were injured on. 

This rusty swing set is where the children injured themselves.
This swing set injured my children when they were playing on it.
I built this swing set twenty years ago, but the neighbor's children injured themselves on the rusty legs and cross beams.

So, my conclusion for today is that it is really an interesting challenge to do a search and replace and find all of these very unnecessary words. And how is that done? I often have a list of words in a simple text file on my computer desktop. When I'm done I use the Find feature in my word processor to identify the main culprits, and I weed them out like crabgrass in the lawn.

Hrmm. Did they catch what I did there? We'll see.

I've been exploring the video presentations on ted.com, and ran across this presentation from Amy Tan on creativity, where it comes from for her, and where it hides and can be found.
I found it helpful, and I hope you do as well.

there is also this presentation from Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creative genius – whatever that is.

There is a tremendous difference between having a character walk through a set of plot elements, and letting that same character crash cleanly through them because he/she is properly motivated.

I was reading a younger writer's efforts last year, and this extreme example has stayed with me: The main hero was standing in the middle of the room, discussing something urgent with three other people. He turned to rip a closet door open, dragging somebody out of the closet with a casual one-handed grab. He then presented his trophy in a grand (TaDaaaah!) sort of a moment.

Well, okay. Why did he rip the door open though? There was no foreshadowing. Did he hear something? Was there some clue I missed three chapters back? Is it explained in a sequel?  Does he just hate closet doors? Is it one of those nauseating Star Trek time warp thingies? Whut?

Pulling people out of a closet for no apparent reason is on the micro side of the story. The macro parallel is more often just as incoherent, obtuse, or just plain ill advised plot line. If a character is not clearly motivated to do something, then the reader may slowly lose interest. It may make perfect sense to you as the writer, but you must convey what is going on in the inner spaces of the character's mind or show us how he made those choices.

If a character is written so that we understand his/her motivation, the plot is much easier to navigate. When the character meets those decision points the choices are clearer.  My view is that the plot is passive – the result of whatever motivated the character to make a choice.  The plot is not instructions like in a Broadway play that requires the character to be in Vienna by Thursday.  The motivation for getting to Vienna by Thursday may be that if he doesn't go, then his girlfriend is killed. Or he loses the business deal. Or he has to face Darth Vader's evil twin Zippy with just a plastic light saber and harsh language.

So how do we motivate a character? Turn the question around – what motivates YOU?

Greed, lust, love and vengeance seem to have pretty high marks for repeatability. I'll be circling back to this topic when I'm in 'motivation mode' and you will see my views on how to get your characters really moving – organically.  If it makes no sense for your character to do what he/she is doing from an objective standpoint, then you are forcing plot, not letting the character decide what needs to be done.

No, these are not the final words on the subject, but hopefully enough words to get some dialog going!

Here are the initial guidelines for how my coaching service (Literary Nudger?) is going to work.

I am not monetizing this effort. I am not selling a service, nor am I pitching a "How to" book (nor do I plan to write one).  Im just trying to pay it forward a little.

I am not trying to steal any body's ideas. I have enough of my own, thanks.  I know how hard writers work on their craft, and if you're here looking for help you're already cranky and frustrated, so I won't add to that.

I am not an agent. I am not a publisher. I can't buy your work. What I'm offering is a virtual look over your shoulder to give you a nudge if you need one.

I'll be blogging about creativity, writing, plot ideas, character motives, setting… all that good stuff. I can't give you a plot – you'll need to come up with that on your own.

I'm still pondering what I need for posted submission guidelines, if any. For now, if you need help, send an email to tjpontz at gmail with your question.  I did not say to send your query. I did not say to attach or paste your manuscript.  I may not really need your manuscript, and I leave help with queries up to the query experts.

I can't guarantee I will fix what ails your manuscript, only that I'll try.

What are my chops as a writer?  My first writing gig was in the broadcast market writing ads and program content. Lately I've been in the business communications field.  My current project is biographical, with some fiction ideas in orbit waiting for a landing pad.

Keep your pencils sharp!
TJ

Today must be Writer's Block day.  I found a few blog entries in common today, and it sent me thinking about whatever my experiences have been with 'writer's block'.
Every time I hit the wall, it is because I have either disengaged myself
from my story, focused too tightly on useless details, I'm looking too far
down the story line, or I've lost sight of the character motivations.

Disengaged
On disengaged days, I do not mean that I have dumped a girlfriend. I mean that I am too distracted by the call of life's necessities. I'm worried about money, marketing, or whatever else is in my inbox.  To get re-engaged I unplug, retreat, and put myself directly into the story almost as another character re-observing the scene. I find the thread of what brought my characters here and follow it again.

Details
The first draft of a story is not where you need to agonize over the color of a character's socks, or whether they are left or right-handed. If it is important to the story, it can always be decided later and woven back into the themes.  If it is NOT important to the story, don't spend time on it in the first place. It is more vital that you can tell the main story from beginning to end in the first telling. If you need more nooks and crannies, those can be added later. Stay on track and leave those interesting details for a later revision.

Farsighted
If you are concerned about how to get from the scene you're writing to a future scene, it can really start to mess with your circuitry. If I have no idea how to get from point M to point W in my plot, then I didn't really do a good job of planning the plot, did I?  There are at least two roads to travel here – either sit down and replot where you're going, or jump to the future scene and get it out of your sysem. You can always mash out the differences in the details later. Nobody said you had to write your chapters in order now, did they?

Motivations
I've read stories from younger writers where the characters seem to drift through the action, as if part of a movie rather than from a felt need to do something.  I call these character actions 'zombie tricks'.  If your character is riffling through drawers, loading a weapon, or jumping into a vehicle and a reader can't know 'why' from the text, then she's just a zombie going through the motions of whatever the plot calls for. This is another case where the author needs to re-engage with the story.

Or that's my two bits.  What does writers block mean to you? How do you get stuck? What is your road out?

"Leave the why for psychologists. It's enough to know you want to write. Write.

"I write because I am crazy, schizophrenic, and I know it and accept it and I have to do something with it other than go to the loony bin.

"I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am trying to stand up in my life. I write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or think a thing and then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing I know. I am trying to come alive, to find the distances in my own recesses and bring them forward and give them color and form."

 - Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

"A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them. That is, he does not draw on a reservoir; instead, he engages in an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories, poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies, religions…"

 - William Stafford

I write because I can't not write. I am as compelled to put words to paper as salmon are to spawning upstream. I write not because I try to put the djinn back in the bottle, but because I must let him out. The ID must be unleashed and allowed to roam free, else the EGO will bind him forever in some forgotten corner, ignored and undone.

 - TJPontz

Now then. Why do YOU write? Hmmm?

Every writer who has ever lived has, at some point, stared blankly at the paper / parchment / monitor and wondered, "Now what?"

Writer's Block isn't a curse, it's an opportunity.

Today's writing exercise is simply a series of timed exercises.  (These are all ten minute segments)

How to begin? Start with the words, "I remember" and let it roll from there. It doesn't matter if it was five minutes ago, five years ago, or five lifetimes ago. Dump some stuff out in whatever non-grammatical, nonsensical form it arrives. This is NOT an exercise about editing. This is NOT an exercise in writing 'good stuff'. This is an exercise in getting the blockage out of your head so you can reconnect with your inner self.

So, "I remember" and what comes after for 10 minutes. Use a timer, wait for a commercial break on the TV or radio, or whatever means you need of timing yourself. Just KEEP WRITING. It might be your father's neckties, your sibling's constant (whatever it was), or breaking your arm last week in a car accident. Go with whatever flow is there. You DO remember something, don't you?

Now then, take a break and walk around the table. Change the flavor of your chewing gum. Maybe toss out that bit of newspaper lying on the edge of the table.

Ready to continue? Start with "I don't remember", and continue writing for 10 minutes. The same rules apply. What did you eat on that trip to Vegas? Where were you when you got mooned by those kids? Well, you have forgotten a few things by now, haven't you? Who was your third grade math teacher? Hrm?? Did you turn out the lights before you left the house? What does your dog look like in the night?

This stresses the brain in both positive and negative ways, and gets things rolling.

Take another break. No, seriously. Take a break because we're about to change channels again.

Start again with, "I'm thinking of…" and go for 10 minutes.  Well, you were thinking of something, even if it was pretty absurd.  Pixies in your computer? How your spouse would look with blue hair?

Take a break and start over again with, "I'm not thinking of…"

You get the idea.  To continue the rest of the exercise, do the following pairs of thoughts with breaks in between:

I know / I don't know
I am / I am not
I want / I don't want
I feel / I don't feel
The first time I / The last time I

Now looking over what you've scribbled, since you've made it this far, might there be some nugget that you can write about now?

While this is an exercise for creative writers, these kinds of exercises can help writers of any level or background. Or at least that's my 2 bits for today.

I have not been writing as much this week. In fact I had not been writing much at all this year – I have been in a sort of funk that has been tricky to shake off.

So I took myself out for a coffee and a self-counseling session with all of my bits of scribbled notes, chapters from books, and odd thoughts. I cornered a table in Panera and started spreading everything out.
Yes. Paper. I'm a doodler. I find it difficult to doodle in OpenOffice or Word. And, I think mechanical pencils are among the finest inventions ever. You don't need electricity, gravity, batteries, WiFi, hard drives, or storage chips. I still have paper thoughts I scribbled down in college, nearly 100 years ago now (by some folks' reckoning) and I never lost all of that stuff to a hard drive failure. Not like many things I lost this year due to two hard drives crashing – but that's another story.

Why Panera? Well, they have good coffee and service, even though it's a bit pricey. Their lunch menu is completely yummy and nutritious. I've tried writing at Denny's and they look at me funny. I also don't like getting syrup on stuff. I've tried Starbuck's and honestly can't see paying that much more for coffee. And I don't go into Dunkin' Donuts because I would never be able to leave. Maybe if they tore a wall out and brought in a tow truck for the ambulance, but otherwise… not so much.
Here's the damages: $2.99 + tax, and

• one domain to research and purchase to market myself professionally for employment
• one domain to research and purchase to market myself on the creative side
• one nonfiction manuscript to complete – book length
• two novels to finish
• an idea for a third novel
• Ooops, make that four novels
• … that will be, uh, five pages to go under the creative website
• two or more blogs to try to keep going
• one blog/forum website to create for a writing community

At least partridges and pear trees are scarce!
Well, no wonder I've been going in circles!
Then I decided that it would be more meaningful and symbolic if I did the same thing to my office that I had done to my brain. So much of yesterday was going through everything that had stacked up, dusted over, or been tossed in a box. I have a large trash bag of crap, will process at least one more full today, and perhaps a box or two of stuff to get tossed.
But that's not all of the good stuff. I can still build two more PC computers out of spare parts, but that's only because I only have two cases. I'll be tossing VGA video cards and dial-up modems, but otherwise I have a hard time throwing functional technical stuff away. I'll see how it goes
So I may not be coming up for air much before the end of the weekend. See ya round the 'net! It seems I have plenty to do…