Taming the Inner Self

There's something they never tell you about writers. Never ever ever, not until you finally experience it. You see, there's this little demon that lives inside all of us, and this little demon wants nothing more than to see you fail. That little demon is the fear of success demon or, rather, the fear of change demon.

Now, you might say, “Why would I be afraid of success? I want to be the next Stephenie Meyer!” It's very true that you might well want that for yourself. However, there's something else to it—we don't want things to be upset. We're used to our lives pretty much the way they are, and that's sort of what we want to maintain—familiarity. Sure, if someone could ensure us the same level of success as Meyer, I think most of us would take it. But the problem is that there is no guarantee in this business, so we fear and despair, and every rejection, nasty beta, or hard edit we have just compacts that fear into a little ball of rocky terror in our souls.

But I'd like to share a quote with you:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
~Nelson Mandela

And it's true. We worry so much about our inadequacies, but that's just a front for the real terror—that we are too much for ourselves to handle, that we cannot be controlled, even by our own will. You know what—lose control. That power is the gift given to us to help guide us through life and help us through the rough patches. As a writer, it's your greatest tool, because it lets you do the seemingly impossible—finish on time, edit this, submit that, write this character, format this book, rise to the top, movie deal, merchandising, franchising, buying Skywalker Ranch right from under George Lucas' well-paid ass. With this power unleashed, we can truly start taking charge.

So don't try and tame the demon inside of you—let it frolic and bask in the glorious release of power.

Feeling a little wild,
Voss

Opera's Lessons

Yes, opera. Better than anything, opera pulls us in. Sure, part of it is the song and dance—it's exciting and musical—but part of it is the fantastical feeling. I've espoused about opera at least once before on here, but this is different. I'm talking about the specific style and grandeur of opera and, above all, that boils down to a single factor. In opera, they don't care.

They don't care what someone else thinks about what they're doing. Look at 'Carmina Burana.' One of the most famous operas in the world (and it is an opera—I refuse to dispute that fact) has an entire movement about a goose being boiled (or it might be a duck) from the goose's (duck's?) perspective. Or look at, say, 'The Barber of Seville', my personal favorite opera. The scene right before the intermission is about how they all have headaches and are going crazy—for fifteen solid minutes.

Opera has this stigma, you see, and I don't get it. Someone apparently decided, long before I was born, that opera is boring, but I have to assume that, whoever that was, never even saw one. Opera is far from boring. It's the single most exciting art form out there. Sex, murder, betrayal, fantasy, magic, crossdressing—it's like every season of 'Passions' thrown into three hours, with a musical score.

What does it have to do with writing? It shows a good, gung-ho philosophy that's sorely lacking in literature, outside maybe bizarro fiction and books about opera. We all have this useless, mostly self-imposed set of rules that tells us what we can and cannot do in our writing. Of course, when you lay it out like that, it becomes petty obvious that it's bullshit. If it's our writing, then we can do whatever we like. Sure, there are some things you have to be careful of if you want into a specific market but, for once, we're not focusing on the commercial aspect, here. This is about writing your book or your story, exactly the way it should be. Believe it or not, chances are you're not going to offend people if you write it the way you know you should. Okay, you won't offend any more people than you would normally.

So take a hint from Wagner, Rossini, Ravel, and Orff—stop giving a shit. People are going to think what they're going to think no matter what. You're not going to make everyone happy—so why impose needless restrictions on yourself? Sounds silly, right?

Voss

Genuine Emotion

Your readers will be able to tell if your characters are giving off real feelings, or just going through the motions. If you can't make the audience believe that Jimmy is heartbroken over the death of his parakeet, you need to rework that section. You need to not only have already given them reason to feel bad for Jimmy, as well as the parakeet, but you then have to be unafraid to really rip Jimmy apart when it happens and show his true colors, because when you're really and truly heartbroken or enraged about something, there's no hiding anything—no way in Hell.

How does it work, though? Think back through your life—we've all felt strong emotions. It's kind of the writer's bread and butter—if you haven't had some kind of meltdown at some point in your past, you're kind of just a fledgling writer. I am joking of course...a little. It's much easier to write if you've already been cut and sliced to bits and had your emotions laid out on the table at least once, multiple times being preferable. It really sucks, but that's the way these things work.

So you take that real emotion you've felt—not seen but actually felt—and you dive into it. You hurt yourself again or, if it's intense joy, you bring that feeling over yourself all over again. As soon as you start feeling with your character, that's when the reader will start feeling for your character.

If you've done this, you'll probably see a flaw right about now—how the hell are you supposed to write in this state? You can't even see, for Christ's sake! You have to either dial it back enough that you can type, but still keep the memory of that emotion fresh in your brain, or you have to hand-write/touch type your scene while your in the midst of that pain. It's the most effective way to make it all properly poignant.

Of course, you should also avoid saying the actual emotion in the scene. Jimmy's sad—don't tell us, because then we know what's coming. You have to show us without using sad, upset, depressed, or any other words like that. Talk about the cold in his limbs, the parakeet's silence, the churning of his lunch, the hot tears shredding down his face—but never say that Jimmy was sad unless you're writing a children's book...and I'd avoid it then, too, if at all possible.

But, more important than any of this (hopefully practical) advice is this: read it. If you feel the right way, you're at least headed in the right direction and, while you're not as impartial as the average reader, that outpouring of emotion from you will get you somewhere. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Now emote, my lovelies!
Voss

Electronic Blowout

There are times when I swear by my laptop, desktop, and word processing programs to get my writing done. In fact, I used to entirely insist on using electronics to write, but then my laptop crashed. At home, I could still write on my desktop (Since it was NaNoWriMo, I needed that speed quite desperately, too.) but I was pen and paper when I left the house. I have to tell you, it's different. For so long, that's why I so preferred to write on my electronics—typing, I could get my ideas out almost as fast as they came to me.

However, that forced stint back to handwritten fiction kind of opened my eyes again, and hearing a fellow writer praise hand-writing really got me back to thinking on the differences.

Any more, if I feel like my prose is a bit lackluster, kind of just going through the motions to get from A to B, I unplug, go grab pen an paper, and throw my scene together. Why? Because, on paper, words are much more permanent, at least to our minds. You have to put more time into each word, which means more thought, which means that you're forced to sort of slow down and smell the literary roses. It makes prose more vibrant, more intelligent, and simply feel different.

Plus it's much more portable. Sure, you can take a laptop around anywhere, but they run low on power, take time to get going, and draw a whole lot of attention, whereas a notepad and a pen only need to be changed when you run out of ink and/or paper, only needs to be opened to work, and can be done subtly enough that you don't have hundreds of eyes staring at you in the supermarket.

Plus, look at pen and paper—it has an excellent track record, don't you think? Everything written by William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edgar Allen Poe was pen (or quill) and paper. I'd like to think they're all pretty well known, fairly successful authors. Following in the footsteps of such greats can also make you feel kind of like you're on the right track, as though it's a parallel to fame, like following the Lewis and Clark trail.

Of course, if I'm going for that writerly feel, there's one thing above either the computer or the pen and paper option: the typewriter. That, of course, is another story to be told another time.

Pioneer writing, anyone?
Voss