Tag: Word-Whores

A Day in the Life – Rogue Oracle

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We have a new girl on the town. Rogue Oracle is no shy young debutante though. She’s sister Word-Whore Laura Bickle’s fourth book, the second in the Delphic Oracle series she writes as Alayna Williams.

She seems demure on the surface. Just a sweet, suburban fantasy, with a penchant for fresh herbs.


And lingerie.


She keeps herself spiffed up, with a pedicure for sandal season, because she also leads a secret life.


Taming wild crocodiles!


Consulting with the President and his cabinet.

And

Russian spy! You think it’s an accident this book is about Chernobyl? Oh no no no.

Don’t be taken in by appearances. Watch her.

Watch her very closely.

Extended Architects

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This is the sunset from the same night as the Wolf Moon rising photos. Really good show that night. The cast hit every note perfectly.

One of my writing friends and fellow Word-Whore, Laura Bickle, attended a panel last night. She was invited to a university, along with a “literary” writer and an art-gallery owner, to discuss Making Money from Art. Laura was described in the publicity materials as a pulp-fiction writer.

Been a while since you heard that term, too?

She says she didn’t mind, but the term is really a slam. It derives from the days when certain, more disposable stories, were printed on cheap, pulp paper. Not like the good stuff you’d want to put in a library. If you’ve ever been to a discussion like this in an academic setting, then you’ll know how the conversation went. The literary writer had one book to his name, but he’d clung to his Vision. Laura has published four urban fantasy books with Penguin in the last nine months, in two different series.

The art-gallery owner was gracious to her and even suggested a collaborative with a fantasy art show and Laura’s books. Of course, a woman like that knows something about selling art, or she wouldn’t be in business.

At any rate, afterwards, Laura and I discussed Vision. She said she’d learned something, a glimpse in the mirror we both shared. As writers, we sometimes let our Vision get in the way of delivering what the reader wants.

I ended up dragging out my new extended architect analogy.

I know: you can’t wait.

Things Writers Can Learn from Architects

1) An architect can have a Vision, but people have to be able to use the building. Don’t let your writer’s Vision be more important than engaging the reader. Without people to occupy it, a building has no purpose.

2) An architect can design anything they like, but they are bound by the laws of physics. There must be a foundation and bearing walls. They can’t just throw in a window in any old spot. Stories have traditional structures for a reason – kind of the physics of the imagination.

3) Originality is great, but if an architect puts the master bedroom next to the front entrance, no one will want the house. People expect certain things in a home, based on how people like to live. They also expect certain things from a story. You can have lovely twists and surprises, but don’t turn it so upside-down that they’re miserable being there.

4) Architects start with a dream and turn it into a solid reality. So do writers. Our readers occupy our realities. Make those worlds places they want to be.

5) Architects make a living from their work. This means putting as much fervor and art into designing a warehouse as a skyscraper. Not all jobs are big jobs. If you want to make a living at it, get good at designing warehouses, too. No newbie architect gets handed a skyscraper right off the bat. Don’t disdain the warehouse jobs.

6) Now, if an architect doesn’t care about making a living – say, if she works as a lawyer for her day job and designs buildings two hours before work every morning – then she can design all the skyscrapers she pleases, however she wishes. Whether someone invests in building them is another thing altogether.

7) If an architect sets out to design a house, they don’t add on skyscraper and warehouse elements. Writers should know what they want their story to be. It doesn’t have to be everything.

Seeing as how this is my new favorite analogy, I could go on forever. I’m also guilty of all these sins. But it helps me to think of how architects work. Yes, all houses are essentially the same. They all have the same elements, the same general lay-out, but within that pattern is an infinite array of ways that houses have unique, gracious and vibrant charm.

Sure, I fantasize about building a landmark skyscraper, one that defines the skyline of a city. Nothing wrong with a little beach cottage though. Simple. Straightforward.

So, what did I miss – any other architect analogies you all would like to add?

Wolves

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This is from our bedroom window, just a few minutes ago – at 9 in the morning.

I used to put up decorative flags. Oh, I still have them all, but since we moved to Santa Fe, I haven’t put them up. Decorative flags somehow just look wrong on an adobe-style house. But on our old house in Wyoming, I’d change the flags every two weeks or so. I don’t know that anyone cared but me. Still, it was a way to celebrate the changing of the seasons, the passing of holidays. This weekend I would have taken down the flag with the New Year’s sparkly champagne glasses and put up the silkscreen one with the wolves.

Something about early January makes me think of the scavenging wolves, their distant howls on the long, cold nights. Now there are coyotes out my window. One had a rabbit. The long-ago peasant in me wants to stoke the fire and bar the door.

It’s easy to let fears hold us back, reasonable or not. Every time we set foot outside our safe homes, we risk the wolves. Or, so our atavistic selves tell us. The adrenal system doesn’t know wolves from business meetings – it just hears that we’re stressed and fires up.

Some friends and I started up a new venture on January 1 – the Word Whores – and I put up my first post yesterday, explaining why I’d identify myself as a whore in front of all the world. It felt scary and uncertain. Was that a wolf calling in the distance? The last line was maybe too much, too over the edge. I may be bold, but rarely brash. My grandmother’s voice reminded me to be a lady. Being tacky was her greatest sin.

Worse, none of my usual writing buddies were around to consult with me. I wanted someone to tell me it wasn’t too much. I needed to get the post up.

I actually dithered and I really hate dithering.

So I hit the button. PUBLISH POST. There it went, into the immortality of nothing-ever-truly-dies-on-the-internet. Scary, but also liberating. Something like ten minutes later, one of my friends came back from making breakfast, read it and gave me the thumbs up. By then I didn’t need it. I’d made my choice. There’s always strength in a decision made, I think.

I might get criticized yet. The scavengers are always hungry. But I won’t hide in my house.

The world belongs to me, too.

Sea Change

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Our big storm finally released its grip, with roaring winds all night, leaving the sky clear and frigid this morning.

So, here we are, saying good-bye to 2010 already. Tomorrow the decorations come down. I’ll clean the house and start the year a new. Fresh slate, carrying forward the best of last year and none of the worst.

I’ll try, anyway.

I talked yesterday about the temptation to make plans for big changes in the new year. It feels like a natural demarcation between old and new. And, hell, everyone else is doing it, right?

I’m starting one new thing for the new year. Tomorrow will see the launch of a new blog I’m participating in, The Word Whores. Our credo comes from Moliere:

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

I’m delighted to be in such amazing company, with six other smart, witty, imaginative and supportive women – all of whom I count as friends, as well as sister writers. Believe me, we all want to do it for money.

But this is a small change in the pattern of my life. I’m adding one blog-post a week. Finite, simple. I cringe when I see people resolving to lose weight, exercise more, write more and fix their love life. Yes, these are all wonderful things to do, but it’s TOO MUCH. The goals are vague. What does more mean? How much weight? What does a good love life consist of?

The problem is, if the goals are vague, then they’re doomed to failure. Because you can never reach “more.” There’s always “more” out there. It’s like always jam tomorrow.

The success gurus will tell you to keep your goals specific and attainable. There are good reasons for that.

I’ve long been a fan of tesseract theory. No – you don’t have to know math for this. It’s the idea that the pattern of large things reflects the pattern of its components. Thus the shape of a mountain range echoes the shape of a piece of gravel. A grown person reflects the shape of an embryo. If I want my life to look a particular way, then I try to make each day reflect those priorities. It occurred to me a few years ago that if I wanted my life to be writer’s life, then I might need to spend more than five percent of my day writing.

(Of course, we all turn out to be champion sleepers in the end, but that’s to be expected.)

This kind of change didn’t happen between 12/31 and 1/1. The pattern of my days has morphed gradually over the years, a slow and creeping conversion. A sea change, if you will.

The term “sea change” comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (one of my favorites), from Ariel’s song to Ferdinand:

Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

For those not well-versed in translating Bard-speak, Ariel is describing Ferdinand’s father’s corpse lying on the bottom of the ocean, slowly accreting the minerals of the water, until his skeleton becomes part of the coral.

The sea changes things, takes them in and makes them its own over time.

I borrowed this rant on the phrase from The Word Detective:

Unfortunately, as “sea change” has gained more popularity lately, its meaning has often been diluted and trivialized (“Gavin believes that this update indicates a sea change for the software and web applications…,” TechRadar.com). In the ultimate insult to the Bard, “sea change” has been harnessed as bizspeak (“Business is in the midst of a sea change when it comes to staffing and retaining superior talent,” New York Times), and I’m sure that somewhere out there right now a trucking company is promising a “sea change in package delivery.” Full fathom five them all, I say.

To me, this reflects our modern philosophy of get it done yesterday. A “sea change” is no longer a long, slow conversion. It happens overnight, according to the business types. Thus we expect our lives to change as quickly.

I know this is one of my periodic rants and I won’t bring it up again for a while, but this is my plea. Yes, absolutely, make those positive changes in your life. You can do that. You can make your life what you want it to be.

But take your time. Make small changes. Take baby steps. Allow for things to happen in their own time. Cast your grains of sand into the ocean and let them become pearls.

Start small. The universe will make it big for you. That’s how it works.

Happy 2011!