Writing Moods

I commonly talk about my moods like a sine curve . . . specifically I would be the red one below:

I have my ups and downs but in general they are smoothed out and most importantly even the low points, the nadirs, do not go too far below the threshold of unhappiness and certainly never hit despair. I'm sure there are folks out there who tend to go up and down well below that threshold, thankfully, I'm the type of person who is more generally happy than sad, but still have my ups and downs.

I think my writing moods are also similar to the red curve but that threshold between writing and not writing is higher rather than lower.

The area above the blue horizontal line would represent when I'm in a writing mood. The area below is when it is harder to write. Sadly, I think for me, those times when I want to write write write are few and far between. I have to force myself to write for the most part, and in general it's not fun.

The times when I find I write the most are when I am travelling. I wonder if I've forced my writing life to conform with my working life, where I spend time in airports and on planes, or have I picked a career that helps me work out my writing life.

Regardless, the answer I think for now is that I've got to get traveling again, and soon. Thank goodness I'm flying to New Jersey next week. Should force me to write quite a bit.

Comeback to Comback

I just finished reading come back by Dick Francis. Are used to think I had read every single Dick Francis books there was, but now I see there are a few out there I'll be there forgotten or I have not read. Truthfully I think that I've just forgotten them. I believe if I did read come back I read it when I was 16. That's 25 years ago. It's not remarkable think I may have forgotten it.

What's even sadder is that it's a completely forgettable book. That being said it was incredibly inspirational. One of the things I love about reading Dick Francis book is that I feel like I can go and do it better or just as good at the very least. While reading the last couple of books by him that I read I sell myself putting the book down running upstairs to my study and starting to knock out looks of my own. I don't know what it is but I feel like I can write just as well as he can. No I consider that a good thing he inspires me to write.

It was not that good a bug but it was decent, solid, well that written and worthwhile. There were a few too many characters to keep up with. The main character was the same main character that's in everything go Dick Francis book. The ending came way too soon. The romance was too superficial. One would think I didn't enjoy it, but I enjoyed it immensely.

 Now I'm on to a commitment book. One of those books I'm going to read and commit myself to not because I want to read it because I feel like I should. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy. I am Magent you will not hear a review from me quite a while. That's a solid chunk of book.

Show Don't Tell

At the end of last week's blog post I wrote the phrase, "are we showing them love . . ." This post will be about the writing technique that so many writers know, "Show don't tell."

I am accused often of being too analytical, I dwell on things too much, I re-read, agonize and over think things, usually things that don't matter. I used to live next to a craftsman and tinkerer. He could sit at his car all day and slowly tinker on it and eventually make it perfect and a work of art. I am not that guy. I am a forward mover. I'll move on and deal with the mess after. Forward movement is my middle name, but I'll also agonize afterward over things said, done, written and seen.

Lately I wrote the phrase, "I should have told you how much you meant to me," as a part of a character I'm writing for a short story.

This is the character I've been modeling for all these weeks.

Naturally, and if you've read these posts lately, I disagree. It goes back to writing technique. Show don't tell. It's more important to show you love someone than just to tell them.

How are you showing that person that you love them. That's the counter argument that the other character answers back with. Have you gone out your way? Have you racheted me up on the ole priority list? In what ways have you shown me that you love me?

Telling isn't always enough, particularly in writing. Showing should be the standard if you want to get the point across.

How Do You Spell "Love"

Another post on characters I'm building for my next novel.

A crisis point in my marriage occurred a few months ago that has come full circle lately. I was on my way home from a business trip and gave a call to the wife to say "good morning" and "I'm about to get on a plane." Just a quick call. Sadly, I called at the wrong time and basically the wifey didn't have time to talk and blew me off and hung up on me. Fireworks. The problem was that those fireworks had to wait until after a three hour flight and a one hour drive home to be resolved. The fireworks only got worse with age.

What's the point?

A while back I heard and had the chance to use the adage, "Love is spelled, T-I-M-E." If you want someone to feel loved and needed you should give them them gift of time. Make that person higher in the priority list than other things. If you don't at the very least make time for that person, they're going to get the message that they don't matter in your life.

I think about vendors and clients at work. Clients get an immediate call back. I need them to realize they are worth my time. They are high on the priority list. Not all vendors get a call back. If I don't call a vendor back, if I don't return their email, it is a way of saying "you are so low on my priority list, I really don't care if you stay or not, and truthfully, if you don't write back it might make my life easier." How do I know this? Because as a vendor myself, I get blown off and I get the message too.

At the point of those fireworks with my wife, she was showing me that I was not as important to her as all the other hoi polloi in her life. At the time of that call she was thinking about work. That tells me that her work was more important than I was. This came up in the fireworks. I remember telling her that her company won't be there when she's 70, whereas I, her husband will be. Which should be given the gift of her time and being higher up on her priority list.

Guess what's gone from our lives now. Her job. The company is gone. It's not an "I told you so" moment, instead I see it as a lesson to both of us to not miss the forest for the trees. Know what's important in your life and understand what your action may be saying and how they are interpreted.

Should there be more important things in our lives than our primary relationships? Of course. Business calls come up. Other things happen that must be addressed. But are we showing those we care about that they are high on our priority lists? Are we showing them love through time? That's the question we should always ask ourselves.

An Old One

Time to post another short story. I started this little, now-blossoming tradition two weeks ago (see here). So here's a snippet for one I wrote in 2003 and a link if you want to read more.

Ralph's New Wife

By Dick Hannah

It’s hotter than usual in town today, and I’ve always found that people stray pretty far away from the ordinarily when it gets hot. Ordinarily I would not be sitting on a little park bench in Newton watching for a woman I don’t know. Ordinarily I would have told my ex-wife and her screwball cousin to go do their own damn spy work and leave me out of it. Ordinarily I would have worn my hat and white shirt, not my blue shirt with no hat at all, but it’s hot and things are out of the ordinary.

A small tow headed boy with shoes that look three sizes too big for him climbs up on the bench next to me. His actions are resolute and determined and once up on the bench he stares at me curiously. I try not to notice him but I can sense his stare and realize it is only a matter of time before he breaks the silence.

“Howdy mister.” Says the tinny voice belonging to the boy.

“Yep.” I say slowly not wanting to encourage him.

“Whatcha looking at?” He asks following my gaze across the street.

“That boutique.” I say nodding.

“What’s a boutique?”

“That’s a boutique.” I nod again.

“You mean the one with all the old women talking and laughing inside?”

“That’s the one.”

“My mom goes there sometimes, but she calls it a sl-on.”

For the rest of this story . . . click (here)

Perspective

Had the opportunity to think about perspective the other night.

Every year for Thanksgiving when my family gets together we draw names from a hat. The person's name that we draw is then our "person" for Christmas night. On Christmas night the entire family gets together and we present our "person" a gift using an original poem (see below), a skit or a re-mastered and re-lyricked song. I usually do the poem, although there have been cases where I chose singing.

I remember one friend of the family when they heard about this said, "Oh, that's so much fun. You are so lucky that you get to do that!"

Lucky if you like singing and dancing and skits. I do not. I do not consider myself lucky. After twenty years of doing it, I think we've seen my swan song (again, see the poem below . . . my last).

One thing I noticed this year, thanks to some perspective gleaned from someone else in my family, was that most everyone did their song, dance, or poem about their "person." One person didn't. It was a stunner to perceive, and all of a sudden it was like blinders were thrown open.

I won't bore you with any specifics, except to tell you that I find it interesting that one person can open your eyes to so much that you've been missing throughout the years. I think we naturally tend to enjoy the blinders on our eyes, it's only when they are forced off that we notice the previously rose colored world aint so rosey.

Nevertheless, my poem to my "person", my Aunt Meg, is below.

So I guess it's my turn to stand up and speak

A poem about my person to present these gifts so unique

 

These presents you can see are huge, magnificent, stupendous

And like her, these gifts although great, are not at all pretentious

 

Two packages from work, from vendors, towers that I've regifted

All the billing girls at work will be quite upset that I lifted

 

I won’t sit here and attempt be cagey about my person

We can all agree that the longer I go the more these rhymes worsen

 

So I’ll only say this woman has meant a lot to me throughout the years

Shes a mom, grandma, aunt, "Elfin Glitzer" and "Sex God and Me" pioneer

 

Yes, Aunt Meg it's time for me to give back to you

A hard thing to do because generosity you have never eschewed

 

As her nephew from her I’ve gotten a lot

Old belts left at her house, underwear and socks

 

But more than those she and and Susan both gave me their time

Movies and lunches, for an awkward teenager all that was fine

 

Parties before heading off to Europe, and for marriage she has been a part of those show casies

She was even a half financier of these boots, twenty year old Lucheses

 

And three years ago she gave me this amazing camel hair blazer

With it on I'm as dapper as a crane, you pick, either Niles or Frazer

 

There is not gift by which I can properly express

Everything you've meant to me and help me be a success

 

Aunt Meg, in terms of best aunt, the race is down to you and Aunt Sue,

I hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy new year too

Running Back to an Old Standby

I'm reading Comeback, by Dick Francis, I think "again." I feel certain as a teenager I read this one. I must have loved it. There are few Dick Francis books that I don't love (see here). After giving up on Dance with the Enemy (here) I'm looking forward to Comeback.

Even the first line has me excited:

I’m Peter Darwin. 

Everyone asks, so I may as well say at once that no, I’m not related to Charles. 

I was in fact born Peter Perry, but John Darwin, marrying my widowed mother when I was twelve, gave me, among many other things, a new life, a new name and a new identity. 

Twenty years rolled like mist over the memories of my distant childhood in Gloucestershire, and now I, Peter Darwin, was thirty-two, adopted son of a diplomat, in the diplomatic service myself. 

As my stepfather’s postings and later my own were all at the whim of the Foreign Office, I’d mostly lived those twenty years abroad in scattered three- or four-year segments, some blazing, some boring, from Caracas to Lima, from Moscow to Cairo to Madrid, housed in Foreign Office lodgings from one-bedroom concrete to gilt-decked mansions, counting nowhere home. 

Friendships were transitory. Locals, left behind. Other diplomats and their children came and went. I was rootless and nomadic, well used to it and content.

Francis, Dick - Comeback

"Twenty years rolled like mist over the memories of my distant childhood in Gloucestershire," . . . what I wouldn't give to be able to write like that.

Can't Do It

As as kid I would read each book to finish it. No matter how good or bad the book was I would read it and make myself finish it. Having grown up I've learned that life is too short for bad books, so I'm giving up on Rob Sinclair's book Dance with the Enemy.

I know that my writing isn't award winning, I know that it can be juvenile and jejune at times. I realize that I still have a lot of work to do to become a "good" writer much less a "near great" or "great" writer. Hell, most of the time I don't even consider my writing to be "mediocre," but I feel I can say confidently that my books are better than Dance with the Enemy.

The story was well staged, but the character's decisions were illogical, some of the scenes were absurd. The actions that the characters took were ridiculous and even someone with no experience would tell that they were. Worse, the writing was just bad. It wasn't the only instance, but I pitched it in when I read the following:

After a few minutes of driving, he started to calm again. The trembling in his hands stopped and the fog began to clear. Still, he was left with a sour taste in his mouth. Mackie was the person who had pulled Logan into this in the first place. Not just this case, but this entire life. If anyone was responsible for the direction Logan’s life had taken, it was Mackie. Now he was talking to Logan like he was no longer the right man for the job. And that hurt him.

It was "And that hurt him" that got to me. Telling the reader what the character is feeling. He just spent a paragraph explaining the guys feelings, why throw in that final "and that hurt him?"

Like I said, it wasn't just this, it was a multitude of things. Life is too short to waste time on books that don't call to you and make you want to read, make you want to get to the end. Reading to find fault, noticing mistakes, feeling that the motivations and actions of the characters are ridiculous takes the reader out of the story and gets you pitched. On to the next one.

You Have to Love an Author who Edits While he Mops

I read with great interest this piece (here) in the WSJ about Enrique Ferrari an Argentine novelist and janitor. Yep . . . Janitor. Combine that tidbit with the fact that he’s an award winning novelist on his sixth thriller and really the man could become his own character in a pretty interesting work.

Mr. Ferrari, a 44-year-old janitor who works nights in the Argentine capital’s metro, has spiky black hair and a Karl Marx tattoo. He didn’t go to college or study writing but his novels have won literary prizes in Europe and Cuba. His sixth book, to be published in the spring, is “If You Are Reading This,” about a man who travels back to 1940 to preemptively kill Leon Trotsky’s assassin.

I have written before about writer’s ennui and finding inspiration to keep on writing. I remember an old post I wrote on road marches (see here). In that post I tried to discuss writing in terms of a road march and the feelings that both inspire. This article about Ferrari inspires those same thoughts about road marching.

I remember many road marches when I was in the military where I felt like I couldn’t continue. What kept me going? Looking up at the front of the line to the people who were twenty meters, fifty meters, even 100 meters up ahead of me. If they could get to that point where they are walking up there, and we all started at the same place, then I can at least get to that point to. So I would make it to that point, look up, and repeat the process. A never-ending cycle that kept me in the march.

Here I am, an executive with a nice office, a home office, a nice computer or three that I can write on, all the comforts I could hope for and I’m not writing nor am I editing. Then there is Mr. Ferrari. He’s a janitor who composes and edits his work while he mops.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I did not enjoy King’s On Writing as much as much I had hoped. I remember though that King wrote about how he was constantly reading. In the doctor’s office waiting for his appointment, he would whip out his book and read. In the car he had books on tape. He was reading reading reading, in an effort to perfect his craft. If you aren’t doing that, he argued, what are you doing being a writer? I liked that.

Perhaps I should quit and become a janitor.

Task Conditions Standard

The other day (here) I wrote briefly about Task Condition and Standard. In the Rangers we would perform each mission, exercise, briefing, everything with a plan and a part of that plan was Task Condition Standards.

"We are going to run three miles, around the air field, need to be done in less than twenty minutes." Boom! That quick.

"We're going to work at this range, everyone has to shoot through the obstacle course after running a mile in full kit, and everyone has to shoot a 90% or better." Boom!

"We're jumping on this airfield, we will take it over and have our "air lando commando's" on the ground in three hours time." Boom! Task, Condition, Standard.

The other day I had to deal with someone and this came to mind. For purposes of anonymity, I'll say this was a client at work. This client and I had worked extremely successfully for many years then all of a sudden things went sour. No matter how I tried to adjust, adapt and overcome, things still continued to circle the drain. What's worse is that I felt like instead of addressing the issue, this client had a passive aggressive tendency to avoid the problem and allow the problems not just to continue but to actually become greater and deeper.

Finally I confronted the client and the long and short of it is . . . we are no longer doing business.

Now, here's the crux, one thing that she said was "I don't think you can do what I need anymore."

This hit me. The whole of that last year or more I felt like I was trying to salvage this work, I was giving task condition standards to myself and her. I was constantly adjusting and trying to get back on a solid footing. Hearing that she didn't think I could get there, it hit me that she had turned from someone I admired for her positivity to someone who was fatalistic and pessimistic. Previously she had talked about doing business for forty more years, now she was dropping our business after only a week. Still, it was that one thing that she said that hit me . . . that she had never given me her own tasks conditions and standards.

Is it my fault to a degree for not knowing? Sure. But I know that for months (and more likely years) I had told her to tell me what I could do to keep her business. I had been asking for that task condition and standards. In the absence of one I assumed that she wanted business as usual. But, like I said, I asked, alot. I believe it's on her to take the onus and be able to express just what she wants and what I can do as a vendor to help her get to that point. I was perfectly willing to do business however they wanted to get back on a solid footing.

I take task condition standards to all of my vendors. I have a vendor calling me and I can't address him at the moment. "Hey dude, we got a lot going on right now, can you call me back in six months?" Task condition and standard. "Hey, I need you to be able to do this and I need it next week." Task condition standard. It's everywhere in my life so I was surprised it had been so absent in this relationship.

Still, it's funny, I know that I should learn from this and adapt and overcome and go seek out new clients, but you never forget or give up on your most meaningful business relationships. It's hard to create that type of atmosphere, that seamless a relationship, that type of quid pro quo and perfect (well near perfect) understanding. I wish that I had asked her more pointedly for a task condition standard, and wish more that she had expressed one. I know I would have done everything in my power to make it happen.

Business is funny. Other clients are out there sure. But you learn from each interaction.

What's this have to do with writing? Character modeling! (see here). I'm creating a character who has trouble adapting to non-military life. Who wants to bet there's a ton of task condition and standard in that character.