Happy Valentine's Day!

I remember Valentine's Day in grade school.  You could go to a drug store or a five and dime and buy a box full of one-side die-cut valentines.  Some of them were pretty cute:

I remember we'd count how many we got (of course, nice people gave everyone a valentine, even if they thought the recipient was an idiot.  I remember once, very daring, I gave my teacher a card with a rooster that said 'Don't be a Dumb Cluck - Be my Valentine!'  There was no fallout from that.








One year the boys gave out insulting valentines.  Or I thought so at the time.  Now I feel honored to have received one, since only the prettiest girls (those reported as such) got one. 


I love your smile
I love your gait
I love your style -
It's you I hate!!!


I wish I'd kept mine.


Well, time passes and people move on or they leave our lives one way or another.  There are several people I wish I'd given valentines to, or told them one way or another how much they'd meant to me. 


Maybe we lack the courage of one little boy in the summer of 1976.  I was working at a summer camp as one of the counselors.  I also did a stint in the office there.  I was a junior at the University, and I liked the children.


On the last day of one of the camp periods (they ran two weeks) one fellow came in to see me.  I'd seen him here and there.  He was about seven years old, sturdy-built with spiky light hair and a smiling face.


He came into the camp office and went up to me. 
"I"m leaving now," he said.  "I...I just wanted to..."  he stopped and took a long breath.  "I just wanted to tell you that I really like you, and I'll miss you!"  And he left.


Hm.  I bet he grew up to be quite a wonderful fellow.  He was most of the way there that summer, if he could express himself so well to me.  I wish him well.


And to the rest of you, here's my valentine.  I hope you enjoy it.  The fellow in the center rejoices in the very apt name 'Angel':

Scrivener - A Love Letter

I love Scrivener.  I don't think I'm the only person to say this, and I suspect my statement is by no means the most immoderate statement of love they've received.

So, what is 'Scrivener', exactly?  It is, in my opinion, the most useful creative writing system to come along since word processing began.  It enables a novelist, like me, to write a book in my usual willy-nilly fashion with an outline.  Chapters are conceived of and composed, not always in sequence, and they are inserted in the point of the manuscript where they most likely appear.

My stories tend to come in fits and starts.  I have an idea, I toy with it, have an overarching notion of what is happening and why - not set in stone, though.  I write scenes and insert them in my manuscript (which is generally a Word document).  After a while I have a long line of text and it gets unwieldy, at which point I split it into two separate documents under a file name ('Mourningtide', for example).

Here's a page from a manuscript I'm working on.  This is now in Scrivener, but here's the Word draft:

This blip has the potential for three chapters in it. The first being Khay setting things up for the jubilee. Two more chapters might involve Hori's battles. They'd have to be split up, inserted. Cut and paste work. 

Scrivener lets me do that, sort of.

Here's a chapter in my manuscript for MOURNINGTIDE:

The center section has the chapter itself.  And you can see from the list on the left (of chapters) that this is fairly early in the story. 

That column (on the left) has all the chapters of the novel in the order in which I have put them.  Here it is, in part (I have a lot of chapters):

I've given the chapters informal names to help me to know what they are.  In the finished manuscript they will be numbered with, maybe, a notation as to where they are (the action in the story takes place in three locations).  Or not.

If I decide that I want a chapter to come before one above it, I click on the chapter's name and drag it up in the list.

As the manuscript grows in size, the list itself can become cumbersome.  If I am working on a chapter that takes place near the end of the story and I want to double-check something that occurs near the beginning, it can get to be troublesome to scroll all the way up and locate the chapter.


Scrivener has taken care of that matter by inventing something called the 'corkboard':

...And here it is.  Each square (they look to me like index cards) is a chapter.  You can label the chapters as final drafts, needing work, whatever. 

One last feature that I find particularly useful is the split screen.  Recently, I was working on a chapter that referred directly back to something that happened near the beginning of the story.  I didn't want to open two pages and go back and forth.  Scrivener allows you to split the screen:

You can check back and forth between the scenes to make sure your facts are straight.  (I had some dates wrong in one of my chapters; this feature helped me to adjust things.)

...and when you're ready to produce a full-fledged manuscript, there's a command that puts things together in order, formatted, as a .doc.   

This is the 'Compile' command.  When you use it, it will show you a list of the pages you have.  You select the ones you want to put together, and whether you want 'hard page' breaks.

You then can choose from a drop-down box the way you wish to save the manuscript.  I save mine as .doc, which, being such, MSWord can work with.  

         They have places for research, for images, for character notes (and some nice templates that help organize your thoughts).  And the program is $40 US.

What's the downside?  Well, you don't get a CD.  It's download only.  I've downloaded the program to two computers (my laptop was stolen).  Scrivener folks were charming about restoring my program.  I suspect I could upload it to every computer in my house. 

Support is charming and the product is very, very good.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

If you're interested, the company is Literature and Latte.  Scrivener is available for Mac and for Windows.

And If I'm ever anywhere near them, geographically, I'll drop in with hot chocolate for all.  And maybe some Bakewell tarts...

Tea...

Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time
the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company. ~Author Unknown

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be

much diminished by a nice cup of tea. 
~Bernard-Paul Heroux

The last time I traveled to London, I arrived before my hotel room was ready.  It had been a long flight, I hadn't slept, I was frazzled and dead tired.  I was told to return after 1:30, at which time my room would be awaiting me. 

I did, and it wasn't.

I burst into tears.

At this point three people converged on me, one of them patting my hand, the other guiding me to a nice, bright table in the dining room screened from the noise and commotion, another bringing me 'A nice cup of tea, dear...'  They scattered, then, returning after I'd drunk the tea and eaten the biscuits and dried my tears.  My room was ready...

Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary
meal in that, being offered to persons that have already
dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst,
and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

~Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

I enjoyed tea in the British Isles.  When I traveled through Ireland (bed and breakfast; rental car, lots of photos...) my midday meal was tea.< 

I fell in love with Bakewell tarts, and the strong, milk-laced tea.< 









                                                                          


 Sandwiches, too...

                                                                         
And scones...

Currently, I'm home with a virus that feels like the flu.

I have my laptop on my lap (where else?) I've eaten a light lunch and I'm contemplating putting the teakettle on to brew what will be my sixth cup today. I should be working on my current story-in-the-works (see my post entitled Mourningtide), but right now the thought of tea is holding my attention.>

It sounds like a good idea. There's something about a cup of tea that seems to steady and comfort (not to mention the tannin that is good against a sore throat). Definitely comfort drink...And I still haven't put the kettle on.  Excuse me, one and all.  I'll write something literary and well-thought-out tomorrow.  Tea time!>



NaNoWriMo - Roller Coaster

I was reading some emails and came across one from Flylady (an excellent, motivating group for those who need to organize and get their houses in order). She was talking about something called NaNoWriMo, a group endeavor (I can't call it a competition, exactly, because you're competing with yourself) that takes place in November. From November 1 through November 30 the participants buckle down and write a 50,000 word novel.

After looking into it further, I signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month just for fun.  The premise was interesting:  the novel didn't have to be finished or polished, it just had to be fiction and have at least 50,000 words.  (50,000 words equals about 150 pages in a standard, smaller paperback.)

Considering the length of fiction that I've written (admittedly not within thirty days) I thought it would be easy.

Rules were simple: you could not start writing your novel until November 1.  You could:

jot down character information

jot down plot thoughts

do research and make notes

do a lot of thinking

The actual composition started only on November 1.

I'd had an idea for a story arising out of my Egyptian cycle.  It involved an uprising in Nubia and the way several people handled the matter.  I had an array of interesting characters:

Maya, a master artist

His young apprentice

Merneptah, an Egyptian prince, in Nubia under training by the Crown Prince

some other folks, bad and good

I had my research set out, character notes, lots of thinking...  But I didn't write it.  It didn't seem right.

I did no writing on November 1, or not much.  I was visiting family, and the great snow catastrophe of 2011 slammed my area.  No power for a week, Not a lot of writing done.   The folks at the Office of Letters and Light (which holds NaNoWriMo) have a handy little calendar that shows a writer's output during that month: 

The red spaces show no writing.  Orange is very low.  Green is cooking right along.  Yellow is so-so.

I scrapped the Nubian story and went with one that popped, like Athena, fully armed into my head.  It has the working title of Mourningtide.  It flowed nicely, though I really had to push to get any momentum after the disruption of the blizzard and the forest of broken trees.

But - I finished!  

It's a wonderful thing to work under pressure and discover that if you don't have the opportunity to laze around and write a bit here and a bit there you can nevertheless produce the bones of a very good story within thirty days.

But Mourningtide is another post...

Bread and Butter...

There's an artist whose work I like.  I contacted her to see about possibly commissioning a work, and an interesting discussion ensued.  Thanks to some things that were happening, she had trouble understanding my explicit statement that I didn't want a copy of anything by anyone.  She stated that she did not do such things; when she finally got the message she said that she didn't do commissions, but would offer a 'first refusal' to me.  I would see a work and have 24 hours to decide if I wanted it.

That seemed fair enough.  I replied that I would certainly be agreeable to that.

She forgot the arrangement (there was a lot going on) and when I approached her again to ask about a work that she had put up for sale she was nonplussed.  We got into a discussion of her work.  She supports herself with her art (she does other things on the side).   There are things that really move her, that she strives to capture, to achieve.  And there are pieces - well executed, to be sure - that put money in her pocket.  Nothing exciting.

I mentioned one piece that was available, and she said, "Well...  you know...  I hate to say it, but that is a bread and butter piece."

The inflection was interesting, almost as though there was no merit at all to it.  As though it were something cranked out to satisfy people.

I said something suitable, and we ended the conversation with the remark from me that I would be in touch.

Then I went and looked at the bread and butter painting again.

Hm.  Nice balance, a good play of color, capturing the idea of 'negative space' through the trees, on the water...  I have a pretty good eye for quality, and this had it - in my eyes.

I started mulling over the notion of 'bread and butter' work, and the notion that people who like something that is not exactly a magnum opus are somehow stupid or tiresome. 

No one likes the paparazzi (not that they chase after me), and clamorous people who say that everything you do is fabulous, even when you know jolly well that it isn't up to your own standards can be pretty annoying.  But still...  There's a kernel of liking, of acceptance, even of love in such attitudes.  So why are they so often considered a pain in the neck?

I was at a cat show once, chatting with a woman who bred Burmese.  A man came by, smiled at her cats, complimented her on their beauty, and then said that he had a Burmese at home.  A Champagne Burmese.  The woman said, "Champagnes are just poor quality sables." and turned away. 

I was too stunned at this ferocious rudeness to do what I should have, which was to run after him, tell him that his champagne was gorgeous, and introduce him to people with Burmese like him.  What had he done to merit contempt?  He admired her work.  Rather like admiring the artist's 'bread and butter' work.  The stuff that supports her.

Next time someone admires my bread and butter work, I'm going to do what I always do: smile and thank him.  It isn't hard to do.  And who knows?  Maybe he'll want to buy some more bread and butter...

Anachronisms...

A writer of historical fiction/mystery (like me) runs into the problem of Anachronism on a regular basis, whether in trying to avoid it or in accidentally inserting it into a work.

Webster defines Anachronism as:

1: an error in chronology; especially: a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other

2: a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place; especially: one from a former age that is incongruous in the present

3: the state or condition of being chronologically out of place

A reader posted a review of my book The City of Refuge on a message board devoted to reading. This person is very widely read, eloquent, knowledgeable, with a fine understanding of writing, both style and content, and an excellent critical eye. The review was invaluable to me, and I re-read the story with an eye to improving it.

 One of his comments, though, was this:

There are some anachronisms that could also be jarring, the worst was a character saying 'It boggles the mind.' - which made me laugh, but could annoy those who are purists. There are others, but I find if I am enjoying the rest of the book, I can accept them.

Here is the scene. The story is set in ancient Egypt, approximately 1309 BC. The speakers are a general ('Seti') and the commander of a provincial army ('Khonsu').

     After the man had left, Khonsu turned to Seti. "Lord Achtoy," he said. "Nothing less than a hero of Egypt and a Commander of Five Thousand, sent to carry a message all the way north from Thebes to a wrecked city in order to tell us to leave His Grace alone."

     "The mind boggles," Seti agreed. "Well, now we know what His Grace had waiting for us."

That made me blink. That was an anachronism? In what way?

The verb 'to boggle' dates from around 1590, per Webster.

Definition of BOGGLE

Intransitive verb

1: to start with fright or amazement : be overwhelmed

2: to hesitate because of doubt, fear, or scruples

transitive verb

2: to overwhelm with wonder or bewilderment

Origin of BOGGLE

First Known Use: 1598

So the verb 'to boggle' seemed anachronistic to the reader. That's fair enough, though the term, actually, is not a modern one and not tied to any sort of technology that would tend to disqualify its use in a novel set in the distant past.


My thoughts turned to the various things that I consider 'anachronisms', per the definition. Let's look at them in the context of that bit of conversation:

Here's one type:
You can have anachronistic speech: 

'Loud and clear', a radio term, is a different matter. Wireless telegraphy was proven to be possible in the late 1800's; Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio in the early 1900's. The expression was used extensively by the military during World War II to acknowledge radio messages. An ancient Egyptian would not have used such an expression, though he might have said "He couldn't have made his message any clearer if he had shouted it."
We tend to assume that what is normal for us was normal throughout time. Hollywood tends to make this mistake. We have Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) shouting "Saddle my swiftest camel!" in Land of the Pharaohs (screenplay by William Faulkner, whose grounding in early history was sketchy, but who wrote a heck of a good story)


Some people perceive anachronisms in things that are in their proper time and place. One friend, reading one of my manuscripts, told me quite seriously that "They didn't have beer in ancient Egypt!"   Well, there's some doubt as to whether the Sumerians or the Egyptians invented beer (my money is on the Sumerians), but they sure had it. Someone writing in the time of classical Greece likened the quality of Egyptian beer to the best wines.


What is the point of this discussion? I have two of them.


First, and most importantly, research is crucial if you are writing of a specific time and place. Secondly - and this is often unrecognized - the reader is the ultimate judge of fitness (for himself).


My reviewer, to whom I am very grateful for a well thought out and meaty critique that will be very useful when I do revisions, felt that a specific expression was out of place. I did not agree, but I adjusted it after thinking it over.   Writers tend to live within their own minds, and it's easy to forget the audience.


That is a big mistake.

     After the man had left, Khonsu turned to Seti. "Lord Achtoy," he said. "Nothing less than a hero of Egypt and a Commander of Five Thousand, sent to carry a message all the way north from Thebes to a wrecked city in order to tell us to leave His Grace alone."

     "The mind boggles," Seti agreed, reaching into the breast of his tunic, extracting his cigarette pack, and shaking one loose.  He tapped the cigarette against his palm to settle the tobacco,  Setting the filter end in his mouth, he struck a match against his sandal, lit the cigarette, and took a long drag. "Well," he said through the smoke that curled from one corner of his mouth, "now we know what His Grace had waiting for us."

The anachronisms here are the cigarette and the match. Every culture in history has habits like smoking, whether it is chewing betel nut or spruce gum. But tobacco is a new world plant, and the earliest depiction we have of its use is Mayan, after dynastic Egypt.

      After the man had left, Khonsu turned to Seti. "Lord Achtoy," he said. "Nothing less than a hero of Egypt and a Commander of Five Thousand, sent to carry a message all the way north from Thebes to a wrecked city in order to tell us to leave His Grace alone." He sat back and shook his head. "Well," he said, "His Grace got his message across loud and clear!"

     "Good grief!" Seti agreed.

In this case 'good grief' might be allowed. It seems to be a 'softened' exclamation: 'good grief' instead of 'good God'. Since it was made popular in Charles Schultz' Peanuts comic strip, I'd tend to stay away from it, myself.

Incidentally, here is the changed passage:

After the man had left, Khonsu turned to Seti. "Lord Achtoy.  Nothing less than a hero of Egypt and a Commander of Five Thousand, sent to carry a message all the way north from Thebes to a wrecked city in order to tell us to leave His Grace alone."

"Incredible," Seti agreed. "Well, now we know what His Grace had waiting for us."

Camels were a late arrival in Egypt. So were chariots (at least as to the reign of Cheops). Also (staying with Land of the Pharaohs for a moment), the short wrap skirt, head cloth and light scarf of Thai raw silk woven in a sort of plaid worn  by Jack Hawkins as Cheops, along with gold lame' sandals are out of their proper time, as well, no matter how sweet he may have looked in them.

The same person informed me, quite seriously, that "they didn't have bricks back then, either."  (This was one of my fantasy novels, set in no time in particular.) I only smiled.

The Author's Pet

I read a book a while back that had me puzzled.  It was well crafted, colorful, moved at a good pace, but there was something skewed...  I put my finger on it when I reread the description of the hero.  He was just fabulous.  His name consisted of four luscious, historical names strung together.  He was a duke, the king's best friend.  But the thing that brought everything into focus was his physical description, right down to his blond sideburns, in lingering detail.  Gosh, he was handsome, with that bloom of golden hairs that bordered those sideburns. 

Yep,  I thought.  An author's pet.

You run into them fairly often in detective series.  The characters who set foot in a messy situation and you just know that things will be straightened out at once.  They're always fabulously handsome or beautiful, unbelievably accomplished.

A recent series of mysteries had as its main sleuth a woman who was, among other things, an Olympic Equestrian, a (top winning) competitive ballroom dancer in addition to being young, beautiful, and a top-ranking forensic anthropologist.  I wasn't sure when she slept.  Another story featured a female sleuth, fresh out of college, who happened to be visiting the UK when a bad situation came up.  She was summoned to Scotland Yard and had an interview with one of the top-ranking people there.

"I want you to assist us with this," he says to her.  "We need your trained mind."

Trained mind?  I thought.  In a kid that age?  Well, to be fair, it was the writer's first book, and from what I could see he/she was trading on the fact that his/her mother was a best-selling author.  And the writer had quite an author's pet.

Writers do have them.  I have a character who could be one.  I love writing about him.  He's a lot of fun, lends a lot of color to his stories (I'm working on a sequel).  He's my own invention - except for his name, which is historical.  Who is he?  An Egyptian crown prince.  Named for the eldest son of Ramesses II, but I went off on a tangent with his story.

I don't think he is quite the 'ta-DA!' sort.  I worked very hard to keep him from being one.  He has his own reality.

I think what lies at the heart of 'Authors' Pets' is the author imposing his or her own desires on the character without taking into account the personality of the character as developed through the author's writing.  The moment you put words on paper they become real.  If you have something happen in your story, it is fact.  So, if in the course of a story you have a character that behaves in a certain way and has (at least in your mind) certain characteristics, then everything he does must be in conformity with his reality as you have given it.

My Crown Prince character (his name is 'Hori') started out as a villain of sorts.  About twenty years ago I started writing various vignettes based on books I was working on at the time.  This was before I had a computer and electronic storage ability.  These vignettes (I called them 'fragments' or 'blips') occurred to me and I typed them out.  I had several stories based on the character of Khaemwaset, the fourth son of Ramesses and, at one point, his crown prince.  We know a fair amount about him.  In the course of weaving stories around him, I jotted an account of a jubilee festival that he hosted for his father when he was High Priest at Memphis.

His older brother, the Crown Prince, makes an appearance and says something nasty. 

The jottings sit in a three-ring binder, but Pharaoh's Son owes some of its substance to them.  In that novel a colossal statue falls in the middle of a festival throng, causing havoc.  Khaemwaset (from now on 'Khay') looks into matters; it happened in his own backyard, since he is the Vizier, or Prime Minister, of Northern Egypt, and the High Priest of the temple where it occurred.  He asks for assistance from Pharaoh, who sends his Crown Prince, (from now on 'Hori') to oversee things with his brother.

Hori was not a happy fellow.  He was arrogant, had a sharp tongue, and did not suffer fools gladly.  He strode into the story...

When you write about someone, you work both forward (in time) and backward (in history).  Going forward the character might do something...but that may have arisen out of something that happened before.  So it was with Hori.  His history developed - a soldier who is happiest overseeing the military concerns of the realm, called back to court against his wishes and angry and unhappy.  So why did Khay ask for him?  Hm...  Because they had renewed their friendship and Khay knew that Hori was unhappy.

The story moved from there.  A character that was supposed to be, if not a villain, certainly an unpleasant sort of person with humorous involvement, became one of the two heroes of the story.  I guess I let him grow up.

I've read books where the characters appear to have been stamped out and maneuvered like puppets.  I've read scenes that, given the characters' personalities and histories as developed in the course of the story, should never have happened.  Well...

Georgette Heyer, in Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle, expresses things nicely:

These naïve words struck Phoebe dumb for several moments. It had not previously occurred to her that Ianthe might identify herself with The Lost Heir's golden-haired sister. Having very little interest in mere heroes and heroines she had done no more than depict two staggeringly beautiful puppets, endow them with every known virtue, and cast them into a series of hair-raising adventures from which, she privately considered, it was extremely improbable they would ever have extricated themselves.

It's all part of letting go, letting the thing you love - in this case the story and the character - be true to itself.