Tag: Life

Experience Vs. Experiment

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So, I’ve had a rough week at Full-Time Job and, in an attempt to make me feel better, someone told me that this present situation will make great research for character development in future stories.  My first reaction was, “Way to link something that I am not enjoying as necessary to something that I do enjoy!”  On further analysis, I’m mildly concerned about potentially losing touch with reality.

Let me explain.  I have no problems whatsoever with cannibalizing real human characteristics to bring life to characters.  After all, every fictional character’s personality is a mix of direct and indirect encounters between other people and the author and how the author processes those encounters, deriving (among other things) personality traits, lie tells, and quirks.  My concern lies with my ability to live in my head so completely that real people become nothing but research and real problems become plot points.  I don’t know any authors, but I wonder if it is possible to be so consumed that you live life as if everything is an experiment and you are the observant, detached scientist.

I suppose being aware of my hermit-esque, mad-scientist ways will allow me to monitor the progression, but in future, I’ll make attempts to immerse myself in humanity for the experience rather than the experiment.

***

On writing:

I’ve plotted out six more scenes and I really like the depth the book is taking on.  I thought, at first, it was pretty elementary, but now it is surprising even me. I look forward to finishing the rough draft.  My favorite part of my creative writing undertakings has always been revision…and I’m getting so much closer.

I hope your ventures are taking shape as well!

Good luck!

All in Good Time…

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It’s morning! The second morning, to be more specific, of Christmas break 2011!  Woot! I have washed all our laundry, cleaned the house, was cut on by a doctor, cooked a fabulous dinner (if I say so myself), and even managed to see my amazing godson and his equally amazing mom.  Husband and I gave him two books and a baby guitar that plays “Love Shack” among other songs.  I got a big kick out of that.  Then, we danced to an old Della Reese Live record. Yes, on a record player.  I have a respect for most things vintage.

This morning, I wanted to write, so I started with type-chatting to you lovely people.  Next, to the Book Cave!

I had this dream.  A strange and wonderful dream.  Bitter and sweet and romantic and sacrificial and heroic and inspiring and hopeless… Anyway, I’m going to write it after my current adventure.  I’m still crazy excited about present WIP, but you know how new ideas are.  They get the adrenaline pumping.  All in good time, my friend.  All in good time…

Healthy Level of Selfish

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Past experiences created a phobia of being considered selfish by others.  The experiences were small acts that compiled and converted into a paralyzing fear, like a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger.  I have theories of why, some ironic and some accidental, but defining those does nothing productive.

I am now out of college, married, have been six and a half years at my job, and finally have realized that it is okay to dedicate some effort to me. My husband is a great support.  I don’t think I could have begun this journey without him. And as it gets harder, I know that I’ll be looking for him on the sidelines for the extra boost I’ll need.  This thought formed through this process: People will eventually get the guts to start being what they have dreamed of being, to start trying what they have always wanted to try, BUT they will try a lot sooner and stand a lot firmer for longer if they have someone who believes in them staring them in the face.  I also think there is honor in being a starer.  I hope Husband considers me his starer, as he is mine.

I’ve learned a few lessons in my life post-college.  Some of them being:

  • My professional life is necessary to fund my personal life; it is not my personal life.  I will perform my job with dignity, competence, and civility, but I will not alter my character to “fit in” the social aspects of the workplace.  If that is the only way to have “friends” in the workplace, I will happily consider myself ostracized.
  • I am as much of an adult as the forty-something-year-old employee in the next cubicle and am not inferior because of age.  (Southern culture doesn’t really address how to transition from being the one to say “Ma’am” and “Sir” to being the one called “Ma’am” or “Sir”.  We’re on our own with this lesson.)
  • I would rather have someone else tell me “no” than to tell myself “no” by not even attempting to do the thing in question.

And my latest lesson:

  • There is a healthy level of selfish, an ideal medium between selfish and selfless.  A lean toward either side, however, can make you a doormat or a bitch.

It’s being aware of and acting on your needs, recognizing and plotting how to achieve your wants, and basically, being better to you.  How easy is it to focus on catering to others wants than to figure out yours?  Much, much easier.

I have one stipulation.  I will not veer from my moral code to accomplish my goals, which means that I will not hurt, steal from, lie to, or otherwise negatively impact others during my pursuit.  This is non-negotiable.  On the other hand, if others are offended by me while I am morally conquering the world, ehh.

Can’t please ’em all.

Praise and Improve

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Hello! I’m super tired today from reading the new Cassandra Clare book all. Night. Long. (Sixteen word book review: lovely world, great plot, identifiable characters, hopeless with a smidge of hopeful, wretchedly equal love triangle) I hope I make sense today.  Actually, that’s a hope renewed daily.

I adjunct teach English classes occasionally at a local college. For my students, one of the most dreaded parts of the class is decompression questions given after a large assignment.  They groan and put their heads in imaginary nooses and kick the stool beneath them.  But eventually, they finish the task.  The questions aren’t difficult.  For example:

  1. What was the most difficult part/aspect of this project?
  2. What are you proudest of in this essay?  Why?
  3. If you were to write this paper again, what would you do differently?
  4. Is there anything else you’d like to say about this paper?

But the more classes I teach, the more I realize that students in my small, southern town hate, I mean HATE, to check themselves.  They would rather be buried in wet cement than say, “I am proud that I was able to use the word ‘superfluous’ correctly in the third paragraph of my paper.”  That is bragging on oneself, and that is the job of other people standing next to you in a conversation.  It’s as if there is some sort of psychological dilemma when someone looks within and finds something he/she likes, let alone something he/she doesn’t like.

I get it.  I fight this curse daily.  I grew up in a Southern/Japanese hodgepodge culture.  Mix those two together and, basically, I (as an individual) don’t exist.

BUT… Then there are the students that used the assignment for its purpose:  to grow from the writing experience. Those students look at their work as if it were a stranger’s and discover legitimate strengths and weaknesses–things to praise and improve.

Honest self-evaluation can be used for more aspects of life other than writing, but for our purposes…writing it is.

Teaching self-evaluation skills is soooo much easier than practicing them.  It’s really hard to congratulate yourself because of something that came out of your head. It’s something you can take pride in as sole proprietor.  Likewise, the mistakes are yours alone.  We are humans.  We make mistakes.  Sorry if I pooped on someone’s dinner plate with that bit of information, but truth is truth.  Also, we are not perfect.  (There goes dessert.)  So, can’t we deduce that there is always room for improvement?  We, as self-evaluators, label the need and then…well, we work on that area in current and/or future projects.  Bettering our writing. Bettering ourselves.

Point:  Self-evaluations are a vehicle for being honest with yourself, a vehicle which I have found useful in my writing (and my life).  I’m learning that an objective, unbiased eye—from sentence structures to mood and beyond—produces better results for me.

Hint:  It’s more effective if I do not blow smoke up my ass (My first draft is perfect. Revisions are for amateurs.) and if I do not rip myself a new one. (I can’t send this out.  It’s 90,000 words of horse poo. The respectable authors in my genre should start an annual tar and feathering ceremony to punish other authors who try to camouflage horse poo as literature, and I should be the first on their list.)

Your peer revision partner(s), writer’s group member(s), and/or your mom will, hopefully, help you if you lean too far to one side or another on a given day.

Just something I was thinking about…