Stephen King's top 20 rules for writing

   

     On Dec. 1st I was feeling pretty depressed because I didn't complete the NaNoWriMo challenge.  I wrote an angry post, but then changed it after I read Stephen King's advice.  I now know I need to stay truer to me.  Thank you Mr. King.

1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that arenot the story.”

2. Don’t use passive voice. “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.”

3. Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.”

4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.”

5. But don’t obsess over perfect grammar. “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.”

6. The magic is in you. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.”

7. Read, read, read. ”If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

8. Don’t worry about making other people happy. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

9. Turn off the TV. “TV—while working out or anywhere else—really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs.”

10. You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”

11. There are two secrets to success. “I stayed physical healthy, and I stayed married.”

12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”

13. Eliminate distraction. “There’s should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.”

14. Stick to your own style. “One cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what that writer is doing may seem.”

15. Dig. “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”

16. Take a break. “You’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.”

17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. “(kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)”

18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story. “Remember that word back. That’s where the research belongs: as far in the background and the back story as you can get it.”

19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing. “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”

20. Writing is about getting happy. “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”

NaNoWriMo bust

     NaNoWriMo was a bust.  

     I wanted to do this with all my heart, but in the end I just didn't have the support I needed to complete the challenge.  It's like a marathon.  You can train.  You can prepare.  You can show up to run, but if when you get to the race, and while you're running, people distract you, ask you to stop, and tell you it's not that important, you'll never finish the race.  

     It started out bad for me.  The first weekend I was supposed to start writing, I was asked to stop and do menial work around the house.  I had talked about this competition from the moment I heard about it.  I let everyone know how much it meant to me.  I warned them that my time was going to be consumed for the month of November, and asked them to allow me some space so that I could write.  The exact opposite happened.  Every time I sat down to write, something "more important" came up, and I was asked to stop what I was doing to attend to it.

     At first, I pushed through to spite everyone.  I thought to myself, "I don't need any help or support.  I'm going to finish this for me, to prove I can do it."  I got about half-way through and finally got discouraged enough to give up.  I know I should have rallied if it really meant enough to me, but I just felt like it didn't matter, anymore.  

     Today, I read Stephen King's top 20 rules for writing.  I'll post them tomorrow for Thursday Truths.  Anyway, I realized that I failed because I failed.  Nobody else made me fail.  The tough circumstances I faced while attempting this challenge didn't defeat me.  I defeated me.  Writing is supposed to be my passion.  I love doing it.  It calms me.  I stressed so much over the rules of the competition that I let it distract me from why I write.

     From now on, I'm not writing outside my genre.  I tried a Historical Fiction for NaNoWriMo.  It was a mistake.  I don't even like to read Historical Fiction.  It was interesting studying the history, but it was to constrictive for my writing style.  I like to create fantastical worlds.  I like to alter reality.  The premise for my NaNo project was a satirical parallel of our current president's life and all of the conspiracy theories surrounding his background and agenda.  I changed the politics so that my character actually had an agenda, and the subtitle of the book was going to be "a democrat's satire, a republican's nightmare".  I didn't really want to take sides, just point out the extremists on each side.  The more I got into the project, though, the more I lost interest in it.  I need to stay true to myself.

     I may be able to write Sci-fi because it's my second favorite genre, but Fantasy is my all-time favorite; even the old-school cheesy stuff.  I love the creativity that goes in to creating those worlds beyond our own.  It may make me a "dork" or "nerd", but it's who I am, and I'm going to try to stay truer to that part of me from here on out.  

Shattered

     Shattered is a Psychological Thriller by Shelby K. Morrison. 

     If I can say one thing; if Mrs. Morrison never makes it as an author, she could make a fortune writing hooks for other authors.  This book grabs you right from the start, and you flip through the pages as fast as you can to see what the heck is going on!  The first several chapters are a "hook", and I have to say that Mrs. Morrison really knows how to get a reader to turn the page.

     Alex, the protagonist, kills a man.  It's not as bad as you think.  She stops a robbery, and in the process stabs the robber to death.  She is let off because it was self-defense, but a gnawing feeling that she should be punished for ending someone's life won't leave her alone.  Brooding, she sees her reflection in a mirror in her apartment, and in disgust, she throws a chair at the mirror.  With the breaking of the glass her world is "shattered". 

     Suddenly, Alex doesn't exist.  She's on a island, in some sort of government-owned facility.  She has no clue as to how she got there, or at what point her life was somehow altered.  She escapes the facility and tries to recover her life.  The only problem is, the life she knew doesn't exist!  Either she's crazy, or there is a government conspiracy.  She gets help from a group who believe the latter.

     An extremely convoluted plot begins to unfold.  Someone has gone to great lengths to cover up Alex's existence.  As she, Ian, and William, her conspiracy theorist friends and saviors, track down the clues, they are ever-pursued by men in black SUV's.  The action keeps you on the edge of your seat through the whole novel.  Alex is never left alone for very long, and her pursuers are always nipping at her heels.  What's worse, it seems her father is tied up in the whole mess, and she has to find a way to save him, too.  However, he might not need "saving."  There are others close to her, that she finds she needs to save instead.

     I pride myself on being able to guess the twist endings in books and movies, but I have to admit that I didn't see this one coming.  It ended so differently than what I thought.  I was impressed. 

     In all, I rather enjoyed this novel.  Mrs. Morrison really has a way of keeping you interested.  If I were to be picky, I would say that the italicized thoughts were fairly distracting.  I never quite understood why editors and publishers disliked omniscient voice in writing until now.  It is very hard to pull off.  On the one hand, Mrs. Morrison was able to quickly give the audience an insight into the characters reactions without interrupting the fast pace of the novel, but on the other hand the characters all seemed to have the same personality when their "thoughts" were expressed.  I don't know how she could have done it better, except to sit down and write different speech patterns and expressions for the different characters so that they would each be unique.  

     Alex was also a little inconsistent, but that may have been done on purpose considering what the government had done to her.  She switches from kickboxing macho woman, to scared timid girl, to chummy spy trying to charm information out of people.  Towards the end of the book, you learn that she has lost the ability to feel certain emotions (I hate to say even that much because I don't want to give away any spoilers), so she could be inconsistent in her behavior because of that, but I tend to think that her character development just needed a little more tweaking to make her more of a real person to the reader.

     The only other criticism I could give is the narration could be a little more proper.  It's okay for a character to say "till" or "cause", but I believe the narrator should say the whole words to add a level of sophistication to the story.  

     In all I would give the novel 

Mud

     Mud is one of the few Indie films with a rating.  It's PG-13.

     I usually really like Mathew McConaughey, but I felt that the plot in this movie was way to dull for even him to liven it up.  The movie started slow, the middle was slow, the climax fell flat, and the ending was disappointing.

     Two poor Mississippi boys, Ellis and Neckbone, find a boat and steal an engine to drive it out to a deserted island.  The action seems like real life.  As a kid I remember doing a lot of dumb things which I thought were amazing because I was just discovering the world around me.  So in that regard, I think that Jeff Nichols, the director, did a good job.  There was nothing magical, nothing unlikely or out of the norm in the film.  Just a couple of kids having what any young boy would consider an adventure. 

     There is some conflict because the two boys come from pretty sad backgrounds.  Ellis has parents who are always fighting, and will likely separate, and Neckbone lives with his brain-dead uncle who spends his time diving for oysters.  Neither of the boys really have a parental figure looking out for them, so the catalyst for them wanting to leave their lives and explore the world is relevant.  

     They get a boat and head out to the deserted island to explore.  They find another boat lodged high up in a tree, a subject which baffles the boys, but drives them to explore.  They decide to make the boat their new "fort".  Upon returning to the island, they find that it is already inhabited by a man called simply Mud.  The boys are instantly fascinated with him, and he feeds their curiosity with wild stories.  There are also myths about him floating around town.

     The boys feed Mud, and make repeated trips to the island.  As it turns out, Mud is wanted by the law.  He came back to their little town to retrieve his old girlfriend who got him in trouble with the law to begin with.  The magic around the mysterious Mud is peeled away, and he is revealed a lovesick, desperate man who would do anything for his love.  

     The boys are eventually followed and a stand-off between Mud and a begrudged bounty hunter who isn't on the up-and-up ensues.  The climax is fairly disappointing, however.

     I think Mud had some potential, but the realism of the situation, and cheesy acting from the two boys, made the film boring.  It's hard to criticize it though because the set-up and lack of actual action is due to the fact that the story is closer to real life than a film.

     The film was boring, but I would still have to give it 3 stars because Mr. Nichols didn't romanticize a true adolescent story of adventure.