Tag: weekly musing

Musings

Weekly Musing: WIP Update

DH Hanni

Since last November 1st I’ve been consumed by writing the rough draft of a novel I’ve had in my head for years. More than once I’ve attempted to write it but with disastrous results. A lot of what I considered to be past failures was due to not having enough confidence in my abilities as well as being intimidated by the story itself.

Feeling slightly more comfortable in my abilities and with the idea that the rough draft is going to be a mess, I took the plunge. I knew the novel would not be done in 50,000 words nor would it be it completed in November. That was okay. At first I thought it would be done by the end of December but well, December being what it is, I missed that deadline. So then I pushed my deadline out to the end of January. But January 31st came and I was still nowhere near being done. Finally, I set an absolute deadline of February 28th. No matter where I was at I would call it good for now and set it aside to marinate.

Writing is hard work both mentally and physically. It may seem like easy work. After all it’s just pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard, but when I say it is physically demanding it’s the sore wrists and fingertips. It’s the sore back and shoulders from sitting in a chair, no matter how comfortable it is, for hours at a time. It’s the blurry vision from staring at paper or a screen.

Mentally, and yes, emotionally, writing, especially a rough draft of a novel is trying. I prepared as best I could before November but even that wasn’t good enough. What seemed to be like a simple scene, something I thought I could write in a day or two, often snowballed into several days. It felt like there was no end in sight. Emotionally it’s taxing to do justice to the characters. To try to put myself in their shoes and see life as they do is exhausting and frustrating. In a good way.

The biggest thing that slowed me down was about midway through January I had a plot epiphany. It was a biggie, too. So big that it essentially rendered worthless most of the middle section I’d already written. However, in terms of the overall story, it worked a lot better. It was great but also disheartening to think of countless hours, numerous days, and thousands of words already written as useless. It also meant there would now be hours, days, and thousands of words needed to redo the new middle section. It took me a few days to be okay with the idea that no, those weren’t wasted days and words. If I hadn’t done those I wouldn’t have been able to get to a better plot.

It was at this time, too, fatigue started becoming an issue. My mind was becoming saturated. I also began doubting if it was all worth it. I knew all the glaring errors with the story as it stood. I knew there would be a lot of additional research which will likely change the story further. With all of this floating in my head, motivation to just finish the damn thing got more difficult. To help with story fatigue I started taking some days off and tried to work on a short story. That seemed to help some but when I came back to my WIP, I simply didn’t have much left in the gas tank.

Even though February 28th came and I hadn’t completely finished the rough draft (it has a beginning, middle, and end at least), I was okay with that. At this point, it is over 155,000 words. Bloated but a fair amount of that will be excised due to it not working with the new middle. There are also a lot of redundancies due to how I approached writing it.

Now I let it sit for a few months while I work on other things before beginning the even slower revision process. I also learned that no matter how well prepared you are before tackling that rough draft the unexpected will pop up to mess with your plans. It’s not a quick or easy road in writing.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Quote the Raven Nevermore

DH Hanni

This week’s musing is not about Edgar Allen Poe or ravens. Instead I thought it might be interesting to find a random quote related to writing and use it to discuss my reactions to it.

Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies.

– Terri Guillemets

Well, yeah. That’s an accurate description of the daily struggle many writers face. When I say struggle I don’t mean it as a bad thing just that there are those days where the words come easier than others are.

When Guillemets uses the phrase “passionate lovers” I think she is referring to those glorious days when the ideas and words strike at a feverish, unrelenting pace. Those days when writing feels like the most wonderful thing in the world. When as a writer you feel like a badass and your prose is so awesome the giants of the writing world will weep from jealousy. But like passionate lovers, that zealousness can’t last forever. Those moments are far too few and sometimes after those moments of passion you realize it wasn’t as great as you thought it was.

I think that’s what the author means by brother and sister is that complimentary relationship when both brain and pen are in synch with each other. Of course this would have to be a brother and sister who get along. Or the brother and sister analogy can be accurate even if the siblings don’t get along since some days are more frustrating than others are. Or perhaps the brother and sister analogy could be a reference to the difference in right and left brain thinking. The yin and the yang if you will. Personally I think most of my writing days are like a brother and sister who get along with some give and take.

Ahh, and the last part of the quote about ink and paper can be “mortal enemies.” Oh yes that describe those days where you feel like the world’s worst writer. Like maybe the crap job you do to earn a living should be your life. Maybe you aren’t the Word God the days of passionate writing led you to believe. I hate those days. I hate it when what you have floating around in your head doesn’t make it on the page. Sometimes it’s best to just put the pen down, walk away for a bit, and do something else. Clear the cobwebs out then try again.

There are loads of quotes out there that speak to the writer. I liked this one because it was concise and incredibly accurate. Also it is quite thought provoking and I think each person who has ever written a single sentence would interpret the quote differently. Maybe a writer hasn’t experienced the fevered state of writing. Perhaps the brother/sister analogy could be interpreted in a Targaryen-Jaime and Cersei Lannister way. And maybe others don’t have to fight with the words.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Cease and Desist

DH Hanni

Last week I happily explained what my 5 favorite words in the English language are. But because with the good there has to be some bad, or at the very least, annoying, here I present my 5 least favorite words. These are words, or a phrase, I wish could be struck from the dictionaries and people’s vocabulary. Some of my choices are fairly recent words that have entered the English language while others have been firmly entrenched for a while.

Baby bump: Throughout history, uptight societies have come up with many euphemisms to describe a pregnant woman because for some reason just saying the word pregnant was repugnant. You have the phrases such as “with child “or “in the family way” or “babe in the belly” before sometime past I Love Lucy it became somewhat okay to say a woman was pregnant. History fact: It was taboo to say pregnant on TV as well as have a married couple share the same bed for a long time. Now, though, we have the grating term of “baby bump.” Thank you entertainment news shows.

What I find most annoying about this term is it is cutesy and utterly juvenile. Does anyone describe their dog or cat as having a puppy or kitten bump it they’re pregnant? No, because it sounds silly so why apply it to grown women?

Moist: This word just makes my skin crawl. Unless one is talking about cake or other baked goods, this word should never be used to describe anything else. I’m not alone in this. A few years ago on NPR’s All Things Considered, they had a fun year-end piece about peoples favorite and least favorite words. Guess which word was mentioned frequently? Yup, moist. Biggest reason given? It just sounds kinda gross.

Liberal & Conservative: I’m lumping these 2 words together because my reasons for disliking both are the same. I dislike these words because when people use them they make it sound as if one is better, or worse, than the other is.

While labels are part of human nature, they serve a purpose in helping us determine how we will approach a person or group, the biggest problem with labels is people forget to look at the individual. In the case of these two particular words is it so flummoxing that there are good conservatives as well as bad ones? Or that there are good liberals as well as bad ones? Just because an idea originated in one group or the other doesn’t mean it’s inherently evil.

Selfie: Ahh, another one of these newfangled words. Yet it really isn’t. It’s just a shortened version of self-portrait. Artists have painted and sketched self-portraits for years whether as a way of studying anatomy, to experiment with a new technique, on just because, the idea of a self-portrait is nothing new.

People taking self-portraits with a camera isn’t new either. Pretty much since the invention of the camera, people have taken pictures of themselves. This didn’t seem to be a big deal until the last few years.

The reason the word selfie gets on my nerves is because of how close it sounds to selfish. Perhaps it’s because so many of us, myself included, have taken and posted selfies, all over the place. Get over yourself; you’re not that interesting!

It also grates on me because it is misused. Selfie means one person taking a picture of them self and only them self. Start adding other people in and it’s not a selfie even if you are taking the picture while being in it.

Pussy: Avert your eyes if you don’t want to read the rest of this. I can’t stand this word. It goes beyond its substitution for vagina. I hate it being used for a cat. I think the plant pussy willow needs to be renamed to something else willow. It’s an insult to be called a pussy because apparently one is weak based on the notion of women being weaker than a man is.

It’s just a gross word with no real application other than talking about the pussy willow plant. Just saying it feels gross. I need a Purell shower now.

 

There are plenty of other words that bother me. I hate racial slurs yet realize they unfortunately help some people express themselves while demonizing others. Language is beautiful even in its ugliness because it reflects life as we humans see it. Should their usage be limited? It would be great but just because it offends me doesn’t necessarily mean it offends other people.

In light of Charlie Hebdo, and other incidents worldwide, language and free speech are under more scrutiny. Free speech is something I’ve always held dear to me not only because I’m a writer but as a lover of books and history. When societies start censoring is when we as a people begin losing our freedoms. This is something the founding fathers understood. We all have a voice and we are all entitled to use that voice whether it is to go with the status quo or against the grain.