Experimental Ending

Part of my plan for getting back on track is going back to basics: (re)reading articles on writing. There’s more than a plethora out there to keep any wanna-be writer occupied indefinitely, so I narrowed my search down to endings in particular, since that’s where I’m at. Then I let the words stew in my head for a bit.

I’m not sure what came first, the idea to jump straight into the climax or the song I heard that inspired me. Either way it put me in a mood to take a deep breath and plunge back into WIP. I kept things simple, direct. If I saw an image in my head I wrote it down. It turned into a mix of telling and showing but the point was just to get things down on paper. It’s only a first draft. The first image spawned a couple of alternative causes and consequences. I wrote each of these down as quickly as I could before the ideas and words spawned too much more and overwhelmed me. Some ideas I dismissed almost as soon as I’d written them.

It felt a lot like building a web. Laying down the foundation of the ending in small strings that each connect to other strings. The fun part will be to see what catches.

This might seem like common sense to some people, but I often over complicate things and can’t see my way forward. I’m a linear thinker, but when there are too many stones missing to the final destination it might be best to start at the end and work my way back.

Slow Progress

I managed about 300 words on WIP last night.  I was convincing the 4yo to take small steps to help Cait, the first being to wake up and wander the house when the rest of his family is asleep. I need him to go outside. Cait needs him to cooperate. But he’s thirsty, it’s cold out and he’s afraid of the dark.

Small steps.

I’m not even entirely sure where he needs to go, or where he’ll end up. But it was progress.

Why the Break

Good news: my husband finally has a shot at getting a decent job.

Bad news: training doesn’t start until March 1st and he won’t see a paycheck until 3 weeks after that.

Good news: I know how James will cross back to his world.

Bad news: I can’t settle on an ending. Ends that are tied need to be cut loose, and vice verse, but each change in thread weaves a different fabric – if you know what I mean.

I’ve also been sick with a bad cold since early last week and my weekends have been taken up with babysitting other people’s children. So all of this has resulted in yet another stall – on all projects. Slowly, though, I have worked on a plan to get better organized and get things back on track (writing and otherwise). I’m making lists of projects that I need and want to work on, then break those down into action plans. I’m setting daily, weekly and monthly goals to take steps in each plan. I’m also not holding too firm the daily goals because I know I need breathing room for unexpected things and there is only so much time between EDJ and sleep. Yesterday I got 90% of what I wanted done, and I’m happy with that.

I am also painfully aware that my organization patterns come and go in waves like my writing. When I stay on track, things get done and life seems to flow smoothly. But either I get lazy and fall off the treadmill or life throws me a curve and things snowball out of control. This is me picking myself up out of the snow bank, dusting off and trying again.

I’m sticking with things that are in my control: finances, health, housework, and writing.

Finances: I need to get an idea of what exactly my debt is, and how long it will take to pay it off. I’ve been putting this off mainly because with DH out of work, it’s just been too stressful to even think about all the bills with cringing and shuddering. Now that there is hope, and a concrete date, I feel comfortable or at least ready to approach this.

Health: in terms of proper diet and ttc issues.

Housework: getting a handle on regular routines to keep the dishes and laundry from piling up, and because I firmly believe that your living space reflects your state of mind.

Writing: finishing WIP. (With everything else on my plate I’m letting SNSS stay loose and if words come they come but there’s still a ton of research and plotting to do.)

My goals are simple (common sense stuff) and the steps are small. Overall, I’m hoping that by March 1st I will have things back on track and a new routine that I can keep up with.

Endings

I have found that there are three different ways to reach the final act (in linear/plotter writing): following the guide you already mapped out at the beginning and have remained faithfully true to the images in your mind; realizing once you get there that all the fun twists and turns you took in the middle have thrown you off course and you need a new ending (or realizing that what you did have was a fuzzy one-line sentence that no longer fits); and not getting to the end at all because you’ve given up and dropped the story.

I think the last speaks for itself. It is no ending at all. And I’ve had FAR too many of those.

Of the other two – either it fits or it doesn’t – I’ve written both.

Having the ending already in mind when you start out is usually a good, stapple part of pre-plotting. It’s the X on the treasure map that will get you to where you want to go. It’s what you have been writing towards since the beginning. Ideally, you have a clear image in your head of all the nice explosions and who kills or is killed, etc. It will all come flying out of your fingers while your heart races and your breathing quickens… like magic. Voilà, the end!

Only it doesn’t always work out that way does it? I’ve only managed that euphoric rush once and have not since been able to duplicate it. And it’s certainly not how WIP is working out.

I’m in the second camp, where the vague fuzzy thing I thought would work as an ending is now clearly not defined enough, doesn’t fit the theme or solve the conflicts I’ve set up, and most daunting of all, it has made me realize that I’m not entirely sure what the theme is anymore! This is when I roll my head back and yell HELP!!! Where did it all go wrong?

Well, for starters, it’s not wrong. I learned new things about my characters and introduced new conflicts that I hadn’t anticipated. Changes I made in the beginning and the middle have dictated that my ending MUST change. It’s almost like revision, only I prefer to use that term strictly for once the first draft is completely finished. So I’m going to call this “re-plotting the ending” to keep the inner editor at bay a little longer.

I don’t know how well this will work for others but this is my process:

1. WITHOUT looking back and re-reading (because for me that triggers revision), I’m going to take a moment to write down some key changes that have happened to my main characters. For example, Cait’s motivation has changed. In the beginning she was concerned about keeping her promise to her fiancé’s ashes, she wanted to travel. Those ashes have been left behind, Cait is on a new world, and her motivation right now is to save her body and stay alive. Death >> Life
2. Identify key scenes to keep. I know I want to follow with the execution scene and one way or another there will be a riot (though not in a way that anyone expects). I’m dropping another dream sequence (Cait doesn’t have time to dally along in her thoughts and break my pacing) but I am thinking of adding one where Roe (possessed by Cait) will confront his older brother.
3. Identify any major holes that NEED to be tied up in the end. I’ve left James abandoned on Earth with no way back and all the politicians/militia are corrupt and there is no suitable candidate to claim control after the chaos.
4. Pray to the muses for divine inspiration and salvation, clean the apartment, cook, play with the cat, go for a walk, get a good night’s rest and finally, sit down to business. I want to look for connections, try to identify my theme (again) and weave the rest like a web around it.

The reason I’m using theme to tie everything together is because that is what makes a story into something that matters. Think about it, in books and movies it’s the theme that links the beginning and the end, the theme gives you the satisfaction of calling it a story about true love, or growing-up, or the dangers of technology on humanity.

When I first started plotting WIP, I had an arching belief that love is a cyclical event that can reoccur after great loss. Cait lost fiancé, finds James, they get split up again, find each other again. That still (might) happen but it’s not my theme. That’s a romantic subtheme or overlay. The real theme will show itself in the climax. It’s the reason why James and Levi went to Earth in the first place and it’s the reason Cait is trapped on Other.

With the theme in mind, I use the climax to demonstrate my side of the argument. I.e. if the theme is about man-made vs. natural technology/magic then I would resolve the final conflict with a clear victory for one side or the other. This is where the MC makes their defining choice and adjusts to the consequences and fallout.

Last, I replot however many scenes I need to get each character to the climax in as difficult and desperate shape as possible. For me the challenge is to physically get them there (James is a mystery to me). But knowing the thematic point I want to make should help me fill in the holes.

No matter how much the story might have changed in getting there, endings must have a point.

From Frying pan to Fire – Sadistic Writing

The scene I wrote Monday is probably the most sadistic fun I’ve ever had with a main character!

Cait is bound from her magic and her body, waiting to be publicly executed (which her captors hope will force a mass riot). She finds herself waiting, for what she’s not sure. She only knows that at some point her captor will be back – they will at least keep her alive before she is to be martyred. A small voice, distant but familiar in her consciousness, tells her to wait. Opportunity comes at a cost… the captor’s 4-year-old son, Roe.

The scene is laced with humor. Cait tries to placate to the child by making him think she is the voice of God in his head, at the same time struggling to share his tubby little fingers and reject his urges to stuff toys in his snotty nose. The kid is troublesome but cooperative, for now. I was debating putting up excerpts but I’m so happy with the way it came out I’m reluctant to publish it on the web in case there are copyright issues when I try to get it published.

Now Cait has to figure out a way to use the 4yo to rescue her body, and keep Roe’s mom (one of her captors) from noticing the changes in her son. Ah, gotta love putting on the pressure! I have to admit that I don’t know where this is going, but I’m certainly further along than I was. And it feels like the right direction.

I think I much prefer this kind of sadistic humor to sadistic horror. I’m not much of a Stephen King fan, though I once came up with a truly twisted villain – a pedophile who enjoyed the pain of ripping off his own fingernails. Just the thought of it makes my spine chill. It stems from a piano teacher (a woman) who always seemed to have at least one broken nail at my lessons, I have never been able to shake the feeling of seeing that disgusting black scab on her skin. (Again, *shudder*)

I don’t know where Roe came from – an amalgamation of little boys I know probably. He just sort of poked his head through a creaking door, wiped his nose with his sleeve and was. I’m not really a sadistic person. About furthest from! But it’s an example of they ways my subconscious picks up on people I’ve seen and known, twists them in odd ways and spits them out through my muse.

I think the important part of all this is keeping the story fun (to write and read) requires a constant upping the ante of conflict. The MC can never suffer enough, until they reach the climax when they just can’t take it anymore and fight for change. As the wolf-clan say: the harder the hunger, the deeper the bit.

In any case, I have to work on creating new plot points to the climax now. And there is still the matter of bringing James back to Other World…

3-Fold

I’m running on next to no sleep today. For whatever reason, my brain simply would not shut down. I don’t get those nights too often but they always seem to happen on a Sunday when I have to get up for work the next morning. *sigh*

At any rate, I did have a couple of dreams which were kind of telling about my subconscious. The first, being something to do with me creating large mechanical spider-like creatures which both scared and sparked my curiosity. I knew exactly what I was doing when I did it: I was creating monsters. (I also know that this stems from reading The Name of the Wind)

The second dream involved my running up a narrow staircase to a small bookshop – and I mean closet size small. Right away I was faced with a stack of shelves of books. I wanted fantasy. All they had were children’s books – mostly the same title with different covers (though in some cases missing words but still recognizable), and Jewish books on self-reflection (the kind my mother is always trying to get me to read). I remember specifically The Hungry Thing and Where the Wild Things Are, both staples of my childhood.

If I understand anything from those two dreams it’s that 1) I feel that I am creating monsters which have no purpose other than creation, that my stories aren’t what I want them to be and 2) that I’m missing a lot of the pieces that make up the basic (child) elements of a foundation for WIP and on the other hand, SNSS is helping me heal the wounds of loss of my grandmother and figuring out what that means to me. What I saw was a reflection of the problems of my writer’s block.

Interestingly, these dreams were only the 3rd of a “3″ themed weekend.

I started Friday night writing a couple of words that came to my head, not really thinking too hard and bam! Typed 3337 words for SNSS that went long into Saturday morning. Slept a bit, cleaned a bit. Then on Sunday morning to afternoon another writing frenzy came over me, and I started and finished my own version of Peter Pan spread over a 13 handwritten pages! (I told you it was a ‘3′ weekend!)

Sunday night, feeling content with my progress so far and wanting to continue this sweep with WIP, I started thinking about things while I lay in bed (probably why my brain wouldn’t shut off). Two problems: what is the history behind the wolf theme of Other’s culture (or more broadly, what is their culture?) and how does Cait escape being trapped outside of her body? My process was thinking of the past and present and how they affected each other. Whatever formed the culture of wolves was also where their magic started, a magic that would give Cait a way out. The solution stems from a line that Levi told Cait a long time ago: “you split the atom, we split a force of God.” If Cait’s powers were the same double-able as a full God, then they must have shared the same manner of capture, binding and temporal displacement. My muse then showed me a glimpse of the ancient tale, of splitting a God (or Goddess) and how the wolf-clan took power. I won’t reveal more than that, but “displacement theory” is pretty telling.

That precious idea has my muse dancing and fingers itching! It helps me three-fold, in plot, character, and culture. The new information works with the ending I want and the changes I’ve planned for the beginning. It gives Levi, my antagonist, a much better purpose than simply a crazy man leading a rebellion, and ups the rivalry between Cait and James’ sister. It also explains the history of the Other people’s past and (anti)religion.

I don’t know why it took 3 weeks and a sleepless night to find this piece of the puzzle. This weekend was pretty full of unexpected creativity. With that wonderful bit of news, I am hoping to sneak some time this morning and during my lunch to write the crucial scene where Cait’s disembodied floating conscience is about to discover the secret of Other World’s magic.

Get-up-and-Go has Gone-up-and-Went

Things have sort of come to a standstill for me.

Somewhere between justifying excuses for myself and trying to survive the drama and stress, I can’t seem to slip back into the daily writing habit. I can barely even manage to get into opening my notebook at all! My list of chores and projects is never-ending, and I’m not getting anywhere near enough sleep to be consciously creative. The closest I come is daydreaming about scenes and characters that disappear when I realize I’m even doing it. Nothing materializes.

There’s such an overload of advice out there: step away, get some sleep, drag yourself to the table and park butt in chair, start a new project, jump scenes, … And in the meanwhile I dwell on the holes in my other world and culture. I know the ending can still work, but it would be predictable and dull. I have an alternative in mind, but that means major changes to the rest of the story as well.

It’s not just about the writing though. Lately everything I should/want to do keeps getting put on hold. It’s the same pattern. I look at it, a small flickering glance. There’s a small turn and twist in the pit of my stomach, a sigh in my throat. And then I walk away from the dishes, the cat liter, the notebook and head for the couch to crash. I meander away a couple of hours on mindless tv and read a chapter or two of someone else’s book – which brings a return of guilt and shame on myself knowing that someone else out there has finished a draft, revised it and gotten it published.

What I need, besides a restful night’s sleep, is motivation and follow-through. So I’m going to do a little soul-searching and site-skimming for inspiration that will hopefully jump-start my muse and revitalize body and mind.

Drama Queen

As if there wasn’t enough drama and stress in my life… my little sister wound up in the hospital last night.

She was at a movie theatre with her boyfriend (who is an awesome guy) and they were just about to go in to see Avatar when sis was complaining that she didn’t feel well. Her stomach hurt . BF could see her skin was pale and sickly. Then suddenly she just stands there staring straight ahead, but not seeing. BF is frantic trying to get her to respond but she can’t speak, can’t hear, can’t see, can’t feel. It’s like she isn’t there. Yet her eyes are wide open. Just staring at nothing. Her head tilts to the side for a moment, and then sort of snaps back and she’s staring up with the same blank expression. Her right hand reaches up slowly, weakly. She remembers reaching, vaguely, but everything is numb. Then her legs buckle and she falls to the floor.

Luckily BF used to work in the theatre and is able to keep his wits about him though he’s panicking inside. He signals someone to get the manager and they called 911.

When paramedics arrive they find her heartbeat is irregular and they are worried. Something is seriously wrong. Sis wakes up in the ambulance, unable to recall what has happened. She calls my parents to meet her at the hospital. Dad answers the phone. Mom was sleeping but as soon as she hears him say “hospital? What hospital?” she bolts up.

She thought it was me. Of course with the amount of luck I’ve been having that doesn’t surprise me.

My parents rush over and get there the same time as ambulance but aren’t allowed to see sis until she’s in a room. They call me to let me to let me know what’s happened. At that point we don’t know if “room” means admitting or just exam, nor do we know if she is conscious. They put her through a series of tests: MRI, CAT scan, x-rays - but they can’t find anything to explain it.

At first I was told she just passed out. Then the dr.s think it was a seizure (since her eyes were open), but it could have also been a stroke! The scary thing is they don’t know! They don’t know what it was or if it will happen again – it could have just been completely random.

Without anything conclusive, and since she has recovered and shows no other signs of distress, they send her home. She’s going to see a neurologist next week and will have to undergo more tests later for comparison. I’m just thankful that she’s alive and that BF was quick to get help and stayed with her this whole time.
 
Needless to say, I hardly got any sleep last night staying up waiting for phone calls from my mom. And I’m still pretty stressed about it. It sucks too because I have to sit the twins this weekend so I won’t even get to see her until her birthday, Monday. She’ll be turning 21.

Digging into My Past

So my goal with WIP was a failure… I can’t say it was a surprise because I knew it had been coming like a slow cancerous death. The project is in hiatus, though not quite on the back burner just yet. For some reason my mind still wont let go of the story and every night for the past 2 weeks Cait and James are always the last things on my mind before I fall sleep. There’s a problem, okay several major problems, but I’m not able to see my way around them just yet. I think the worst of it is I’ve gotten lost between the grounding of reality and the burden of it. And what I mean by that is, Cait’s background is founded on real emotions and reactions that anyone could have, but she’s now in a different world and her reality and reactions don’t mesh well with actions that are taking place. It feels fake.

In the meanwhile, the muse has been stirring the pot of other ideas. One of which is SNSS.

I spent a fair amount of time over the holidays to do some research into my family history. It turns out that my mom has kept a lot of documents from my grandparents – immigration papers, passports, etc. There was even a newspaper article of a reunion between two great uncles (mom’s dad’s brothers) – unfortunately my grandfather died just before the reunion, but he had written a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau for help to make it happen. There were lots of tears and giggles as I talked with my mother about her ancestors. (Apparently my maternal ancestry goes back to Spain, and before that Israel.)

When I grew up I was constantly reminded of how small my immediate family was, how much I had lost because of WWII and the Holocaust. I feel worse for my mother because she truly had no one besides her parents (and her dad died before she was married), her sister, 1 aunt and 3 distant cousins in a different city. That’s it.

Today, there are my parents, my 2 sisters – one of which is married and has a 1 year old – my dad’s side with aunt and cousins, 2nd cousins, my spouse… and I can now add all of his extended family (dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation cousins, etc).

So finding out that I have (mom’s dad’s side) a great uncle in Russia, who has a daughter, who has a daughter + mom’s mom’s aunt, her 1 (of 3) sons and his children with grandchildren, … it brings a warm fuzzy feeling that I can’t begin to explain. This is my family’s retaliation against the Holocaust and Hitler: we survive and we reproduce (to put is bluntly).

What struck me though, is that my husband knows next to nothing about his own family. That’s sad.

It’s not good to live in or dwell on the past but it’s important to know history (especially your history). It’s also important to ask questions, hear the stories, and tell them, because once the storytellers are gone, they’re gone.

And this is why I haven’t written anything yet…

And if you’re in the same distraction zone as me, here’s the link to some more wonderful animations of Simon’s Cat.