Summer Snow

The Snowflake Method
... there are a couple of things you can do to make that traumatic first draft easier.

Yeah, it's called writing it. Or if you need more of a kick in the ass to get started, National Novel Writing Month

The Snowflake Method is an outline in disguise. In a formal outline, you have main points, sub points, sub sub points and so on, numbering or lettering them in increasingly obscure ways as you prewrite the blood out of the muscles of your creativity. The Snowflake Method, however, involves not the hour or so you might take to do a formal outline, but weeks and weeks of prewriting, expanding one sentence into a paragraph, adding another sentence and then blowing it up, adding another sentence and blowing it up. Don't get me wrong. I like explosions. I like them in my stories, not before I get started.

When I saw this link posted in the Piker forums, I immediately ran away screaming as if my hair were on fire. ... Okay, so I wouldn't react that way to my hair being on fire. I ran from it screaming as if all my books were on fire. I have always hated outlines. I've learned recently that this even extends to the tried and true To Do List. A To Do List is basically an outline of chores or tasks that you wish to accomplish. An outline merely applies that idea to a specific form. Rather than cleaning leaves out of your gutter, you're writing a term paper. Or a novel. Or if you're outlineophobic like me, you're dooming all your efforts to failure. Outlines feel like chains to me. I don't know about you, but I don't feel free to move around and accomplish anything when I'm shackled.

"Silly bird!" you say. "Outlines are guidelines. You don't have to follow the structure exactly." Sez you. I have never ever written anything successfully by following even loosely a formal outline of any kind. Not even the best of my college terms papers came with an outline, and I had some damn good papers. Heaps of coffee stained pages with scribbled notes, index cards arrayed like Tarot and an instinct for where the work wanted to go is all I ever used for formal papers. Of course, I was forced to outline in high school, just to learn the formality of it. Once I knew the rules, I felt free to crack them open like Gallagher busting melons. Get yer umbrella out.

I almost never start a piece of fiction knowing more than the beginning and a possibly hazy, malleable ending. I know the characters better than I know myself. I know my settings well enough to remember that the drug store is on St. Aegis Street and not on Olympia Lane because, well, Pale right now only has one named street, and it's St. Aegis. Writing is a journey, not a destination. I can write without a net because if I fall, like a goldfish, I bounce. It's perfectly acceptable if not preferrable to write with no clear cut path. If you begin to write and find that your characters are steering you away from your outline or your snowflake, you will falter. You'll get frustrated. You'll stop writing. What's the point of planning a novel to that degree of detail if you stop working on it?

That said, I thought I would do something different this evening. Having just finished writing a story in two days (63 longhand pages) that may or may not be any good, I figured I would give my throbbing hand a rest and do some reading or maybe something else. Then I thought about the Snowflake Method. Why not take a look at the steps, grab a notebook and start snowflaking this year's NaNoWriMo idea? It couldn't hurt to try, and I've been worried about the plan. Basically, there is no plan. There are characters I know intimately. There is a point to move the action towards. Conflict, angst, blood, wings, poetry, music, sex. All the things a NaNo needs. Plot? In one sentence, a rockstar with a possessed guitar and a major crush on his best (male) friend (among other problems) seeks to end the torment of his existence through means other than death. Yipes. That's not much to go on. But when did I ever need much to go on? No net, right? *looks down* Crap what a long way to fall.

Anyway. So I set out to read about the Snowflake Method. Because I hadn't read the steps involved, just the overview Alex posted. I didn't get very far before I felt the hives fattening on my muse's sensitive skin. Oh, I tried. Believe me, I tried. I couldn't even read the whole thing without feeling some kind of strong negative reaction to each and every step I skimmed over. It's a mathmatical, dessicated approach to writing, and I felt the dust blowing hard through every word I read. Snowflake my ass. It's more like a tumbleweed, all dead and rolling along. It moves, but there's no life to it. It's blown along on the wind of whatever prose is behind it. I don't read stories just to read words, although I admit words are a major draw. I'm looking for characters, story, a pulse.

I also didn't like that all this prewriting is done across the span of weeks. Weeks! My gods, if I took that kind of time to snowflake my stories, I'd never get anything done! Actually writing a draft of the story isn't even mentioned until the end, and at that point, it's an afterthought. At that point, at least for me, it's too damn late.

I can make outlines. I can produce snowflakes. It's not that I'm incapable of doing these things to my stories. I don't think in a linear fashion. It's a nebulous thing, this creativity/inspiration/drunk Muse. Sometimes, orderly little solar systems fall into place out of the roiling gases of creation. Other times, stars implode and leave me with messy black holes. I free associate things in my head. That's how I ended up nearly spraining my hand writing the last two days. I'm lying in bed trying to sleep, thinking up little tales to tell myself, and suddenly there's a prince playing the part of Sleeping Beauty and a retired knight doing the Sherlock Holmes impression (without the drug habit, though). I woke up the next morning and wham! Story. No net. And I didn't stumble. Had I taken that precious little drop of life's blood and tried to snowflake or outline to make sure I knew whodunit before I started writing, I would have never written it.

Some people adore outlines and snowflakes and all manner of tables, graphs, charts, bars and ball-and-chains they can put on their story. Good for them! Some people need to reign in those wild horses before they can get to work. Me, I have to watch them run. That's the beauty of it. That's why I do this.

Comments?

Still can't get comments working. Hmm. My adventures in code here just enforce the fact that I like Live Journal so much better in terms of template tweaking and so forth. But I'm going to stick with this for now. Until I come up with something better or just decided that I don't want to do this any more.

A Plague of Locusts

So I don't have large bugs swarming around me. I might as well. Thoughts buzz my head like hotshot pilots, confident that my defense system is too slow or otherwise inadequate. This happens. I endure the attack and move on.

Had I scraped out more than the maybe four hours of sleep I got last night, I'd bother with details of the daredevil divebombing bastards. As it stands, I'm well past the stage of running on fumes. I'm running on whatever it is one runs on when fumes have been used up. Insomnia may be good for late nights of writing a thing I'm pretty keen on finishing and some random elevator smut. But that was only because I wasn't in the mood to complete the random bathtub smut or attempt the random cross dressing prom night smut. I'm wondering if I should consider erotica as a genre more seriously than I do. I run an odd literary gamut sometimes, that I do.

Anyway. Pieces parts.

First. I am concerned that NaNoWriMo this year will fail. Not due to story not finishing. I almost expect that. But not reaching the word count. I think it's just because I haven't got an opening scene in mind yet and am expecting a few days near the beginning of the month to get lost. But I have to remind myself what kind of writer I am. NaNoWriMo plays to my ... let's not call them strengths. Habits, rather.

Second. The fables. The scare of convincing myself to Lulu them. Yes, scare. It's a scary thing. It will make my writing available to the general public, which it already is, but this is a more tangible thing than bandwidth and pixles. But that's not what I've been pondering. I've been pondering book dedications. I've never understood them. I can understand acknowledgements, but I've never written anything for anyone. So I can't in good conscience (or conscious either as I started to type) insert a page that says To My Husband or some sentimental drivel like that. I write for myself. I know a writer is supposed to consider the audience, but for me, writing isn't about telling you the stories you think you want to hear. It's about telling you the stories that I want to tell you. So my still untitled book will be dedicated as follows: To No One in Particular, for No Real Reason. I think that if I ever sat down to write a story for someone, I would be unable to write. Maybe if I have kids and want to write something for them, it'll be different, but on this side of the coin, I'm certain that any effort to tell a story that warrents a dedication aside from the one I plan on using will be wasted effort. Also, there will be at least one fable included that I have not posted to LJ, possibly more. I'm considering a slight revision of the Wolf/Lamb smut story, and I'm really hoping there's some way to list this as mature content. So far, I've only glossed over Lulu's finer points. Formatting's gonna be a bitch. There was a tangent there, but I steered away from it.

Third. There was a third? A fourth point? What was that supposed to mean anyway? It implied that I knew the other three. Here, there, beyond. Beyond beyond?

Comments. Yes, that was it. I'm still getting used to Blogger. It's a bit more technical than LJ, and I only know scant basic HTLM which makes tweaking a bit awkward, but just like I learned the scant basic HTML from tweaking my web page, I will get this figured out. Getting comments on is one of those things. Oh, and look, there's a cute little radial button for yes or no under a line that reads allow new comments on this post. Or perhaps lack of sleep is causing hallucinations. It can do that. Like the digitized red flower that bloomed and breathed on the blackboard in German class one morning after staying up all night playing Rummy and Blackjack. So let me click yes and see what happens.

At least if I don't sleep tonight, I have plenty of half finished stuff to add to. I think that's why I've got so many things going. In case of insomnia, open this file (or notebook).

The Thing Growing in My Head and Contributions from Mr. Bump

I have something growing in my head. It's not a tumor. Although it could be. It doesn't hurt, but one day it might. It doesn't adversely affect my functioning in any way, but it could. If it gets large enough. Unlike a tumor, this thing can't be cut out of my brain tissue or irradiated into a shriveled and harmless mass. I'm not sure it will ever go away.

It's an idea. A small one. About books. Not writing one. Not publishing one. But sharing them and the joy of books and making sure that people, especially kids are literate.

Reading is important. It's possible to get through life unable to read, and while it happens less these days, it still happens. Not everyone reads well. When kids have trouble reading, they often don't get the help they need in order to improve. This can lead to a lifetime of difficulty, and it could be avoided if only more emphasis and attention were given to the issue.

Books aren't a very popular form of entertainment these days. Video games and television are easily accesible and provide instant gratification. Parents often use the television as a "babysitter." It seems to work, so why should alternatives be considered? Because books can provide more than entertainment. They can educate. They can spark the imagination. A lot of kids seem to be growing up without much imagination these days. That's sad. As adults, our imaginations are dulled and bound anyway. Why do that to a kid? It's not fair to take that gift away before it can be used.

I'm not saying that television and video games are bad. They're not. I watched TV when I was a kid. I also rode my bike without a helmet.

I don't remember what my very first book was, but I remember Mr. Bump. Mr. Bump was round and blue and had bandages wrapped around his top and his bottom. This was because he ran into everything. Mr. Bump couldn't keep a job because he always ran into stuff and messed things up. Then one day, Mr. Bump got a job in an apple orchard. He didn't have to climb a ladder to pick the fruit. He just bumped into the trees and the apples came tumbling down into his basket. Mr. Bump was my hero. Not that I was a clumsy child. Far from it. But I loved Mr. Bump.

There were other books in the library in that series. Miss Sneezy and so on. I read them, but I always went back to Mr. Bump. Maybe I liked the name or the fact that he was blue. Point is, it got me hooked on reading.

I want to give everyone a chance to find a book like Mr. Bump, but unlike a lot of other causes I believe in, I don't think just giving money is enough. I'm not into the volunteering thing. I dislike being around people. Kids make me uncomfortable. So I don't know what to do. Read a book. Tell a tale. Make the idea go away? No, I'll figure it out.

a new space

don't know why. checking things out. pp blogs have been down for a couple weeks. i want a space that isn't lj. for those more thoughtful moments.