Brain Drizzling

I for one am all about creative debate. It gets juices flowing and encourages the creative revisions. Like Sherlock Holmes, he needs a Watson to make comments, in order to have the "aaa-HA!" moment that helps him solve the case.

So who do you pick to be your watson? there are a few watson's you should avoid:

1.) The Yes-man: this person loves your stuff no matter what, everything you write is a work of literature and destined for greatness. While sharing your manuscript with this Watson is a great confidence booster, their feedback does little to improve your story.  Think about having them read your completed manuscript first  (if the person is dying to read it).  You want a person who loves your work, or your concept, your direction but is still able to critique it.

2.) The Grumpy Gus: Unlike the Yes-Man, the Grumpy Gus is either jealous of your work, or is incredibly hard to please, or is looking to put your stuff down. They criticize everything sometimes even making their critique personal about YOUR inefficiencies and YOUR short comings to the point where you feel miserable and like your story is dirt and a waste of your time. You never want someone who calls your work names, or stupid, or pointless, or who uses negative terms to describe your characters (unless they deserve them). A good Watson will criticize the weaknesses in your story but who will also provide some positive feedback, or at the very least respect you as a person and as a writer by not making their criticisms a personal attack on you.

3.) The Rock: Getting this Watson to open up is like pulling teeth, they read it, it's OKAY but getting them to communicate the finer points of their criticism is next to impossible. They don't want to engage in a debate, may take your banter back and forth personally as if you're arguing with them. (Note: don't argue with your Watsons, use a point, counter-point approach, don't get defensive about your work, seek to explain not to defend the reasons why you wrote whatever they have a problem with, but be respectful and non-antagonistic with them you WANT people to LIKE you enough to read your stuff).

4.) Mr./Miss Indifferent (aka The Flake)- this person will initially seem really excited about your work, they may at first sound like a Yes-Man but once you finally get them your work they'll sit on it forever, and any attempts to talk about it will gain an indifferent "yea sure I'll get to it" but very little progress. Once they FINALLY get to your work they're just like "well it's FINE...there are some issues blah blah blah" but nothing they say is constructive. Or maybe it sounds like they haven't even read your work and are just making stuff up! Save yourself the aggravation and avoid someone who seems bored with your writing, or who takes forever to get back to you about it. Don't depend on their opinion, seek out other people to bounce your ideas off of. This one's a dead end.


Like I mentioned earlier Sherlocks, respect your Watson's. Make sure that you thank them, make sure you tell them how much you appreciate their feedback. Remember however that their opinion is just that don't allow it to completely dominate your work. It is YOUR book after all, YOU'RE the author.  Respect yourself too, if you feel strongly about something in your work that you feel shouldn't be changed DON'T change it just because they say so. If it's really a bother to them and you don't want to change it then let it sit there a while continue on with your wiritng and come back to it. Maybe when you go back to it you'll see what they're saying about it. And if not then maybe they will see where you were going with it and change their minds completely. Above all always find someone who treats you with respect, you're a writer, you're an artist, don't let people treat you or your work like dirt. You work awfully hard on your stuff, don't be discouraged even when you're criticized, take it in stride and be happy, it's a sign that you can continue to progress!!

Have fun! I myself am Watson searching right now!!

Today is a Monday-Tuesday

Meaning I am a day behind in everything! However, everyone at work was strangely AHEAD a day...I had at least four patients coming in for their appointments tomorrow and were surprised to learn that it was, in fact, only Tuesday.

It made me think about time pacing in my manuscript. As a writer, I'm constantly trying to figure out how quickly (or slowly) I need certain things to progress. That also goes hand in hand with complexity. If things are too complex and you rush through them the reader may miss some important stuff. Too simple and too slow you may bore them to death.

I'm in the process of outlining my manuscript and deciding which parts go where. I definitely want my beginning to move along at a fairly brisk pace. I also want my readers to connect and care about my characters, but not get bogged down in filler and frills b/c the meat of the story is pretty rich and I want them to focus more on how everything gets started.

My ending already I know will be very quick and then abruptly end (if the sequel lurking in the back of my mind eventually  manifests some real possibilities plotwise. Otherwise I'll just stick to a slower ending so the reader can savor it.).

SO much to think about lately. Working on adjusting my outline as I type. Mind's always working haha.

In other news it is ridiculously hot outside so if any of this appear redundant I apologize, I feel like you could fry two eggs on my face...*slumps over with fan*.

Writing With a Quill Is Hard

The purpose of this post is two-fold. Firstly, I celebrated my December graduation from college yesterday with many friends and family and got a number of lovely gifts. Even though I've already got one degree I'm not satisfied with that so I'm also getting a second (I'm in nursing school)...and probably a third (once I'm out of nursing school).  So you can definitely say that I am academically inclined. But first and foremost I am a writer and have always been a writer so my love for the written word outpaces my love for sutures and bandages (even though I love all that stuff too).  But I digress, when I got to my boyfriend's present and opened it, it was a journal with an owl (my favorite bird), a green quill pen, and a bottle of ink. I LOVED them. But he pulled me aside a little later on and whispered "I know you're working really hard on your nursing degree and I'm so proud of all your accomplishments but don't ever stop writing, that's really what my gift was all about.You're so amazing with words."...and that's why I will marry that man. In short, I've gotten a greater boost of confidence to continue to hone my literary craft and a new quill to practice my calligraphy haha...which is proving to not be one of my strong points (my messy handwriting is the stuff of legend).

Secondly, I was on my way somewhere (the destination is irrelevant) a few days ago when a thought occurred to me.  I'm at a stage in my manuscript where I'm thinking about the end. I've kind of gotten hung up on the middle bits and I'm trying desperately to do a Charlie Chaplin (or a Tarantino) and figure out the end and then work backwards to the bit where I'm stuck. This is a new thing for me since I find it kind of difficult to think that way but I have such a problem with middles. Generally I know how I want the story to begin; I have great endings but the middles are just....black holes that seem impossible to fill appropriately. It's probably a mental imagery issue. I'm trying to correct it but it just seems so expansive. Middles are hard. There's just so much you can put in there, you could have spaceships land in the middle of your medieval fantasy and kidnap the main character for probing if you wanted, it may turn the story to absolute crap but it's possible! And what's maddening is that I have a few clips in my mind for middles that work really well as episodes, but they are far apart in the story's chronology so linking them together is still more of that damnable middle witchcraft that seems to swell my story. No one wants a middle that's filled with flash-points every few chapters followed by some sluggish filler. NO! You (and your readers) want a middle that'll grab them by their hair and keep their noses pushed as far into the book binding as they can possibly be. That's what's throwing me off, I guess. The broadness of the middle is a huge chasm with the beginning on one side and the end on the other.

Think about it. Beginnings need to be told properly, you need to hook your reader, introduce themes, characters, the world dynamic and a bunch of other things, but since you're the writer you already (if' you've done the proper legwork before hand) have some idea of these things already. Endings...well you END the story. It has to be a good ending and tie up all the loose ends (or introduce a plot further if you're going to leave your readers frothing for your sequel). But there's a point at which the end is...well the END it stops. Even the beginning has a point where it ENDS and that dreaded infinite middle area just lurks there.

Ambitious But Rubbish

Why do rough drafts make me cringe so so much? Even as I'm writing my brain is going "Oh, God you didn't just write that...or that...what's wrong with you???"  But I mostly just need to get it all out on paper and in front of my eyes no matter how offensive it is to my inner critic. Once I've properly gagged my critic with a cookie, or wine, or whatever the restraint of choice happens to be I can generally just focus on getting words and concepts out. 

I'm also noticing that physically writing out the draft on a notebook or a legal pad with a pen really helps me feel accomplished and I get a ton more writing done that way than if I simply try to type it up on the computer first shot. Maybe it's something about my messy handwriting and the unfinished quality that it has on the paper that makes me more okay with the fact that very often it's absolute crap (even if the crap is productive and leads to something more...acceptable). The computer tends to give me that "I'm finished and polished" feel of a third or final draft. Hmmmm.

 The discovery of personal style and preferences for a writer is a lot like a superhero becoming acclimated to the after effects of their gamma ray exposure, or crazy science experiment that made them into the unique freak they are. I fought against my desire to write rough drafts in notebooks for YEARS but deep down the writer in me just kept gravitating  towards those stupid loose leaf notebooks and before I knew I was surrounded by hundreds  of half used ones. Now that I'm older and...less resistant to what comes naturally to me, I've begun to embrace it more and as a result have had greater success. 

Speaking of freaks, I am totally smitten (or should I say "Sherlocked") with the new BBC series Sherlock. Season Two just came out and it is a-mazing. Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Mark Gatiss, all other writers and creative persons involved...I salute you.

Unlocked

So this isn't the first time I've attempted this. In fact, it's the fourth. I've learned that if you keep turning around and trying to do something, by this point you're either a sucker for wasting your time, or you've got this niggling feeling that it'll go somewhere if you just stick to it long enough.

Welcome to Pribbles and Prabbles Mach 4! It's been a while since I've been brave enough to explore my own imagination. I'm a writer, a reader and a dream addict.  So much of what you'll read is my own personal struggles putting together my first full length manuscript. I've had some small stuff published but until now I've been honing this draft since high school and I'm gonna finish this thing if it kills me.

These characters just keep asking to be written and honestly they're pushy and I'm too tired to fight against them anymore so they'll run all over the page and have their pitfalls and injuries and journeys. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels sometimes like we fight against what's in our hearts. I was made to write and I spend so much of my time doing other things. But no longer, I will get my manuscript finished by next year. And you will see me fight with it, every step of the way.

*cracks knuckles* Let's do this!