New Year Revolutions

I was feeling a bit stuck in a rut -- a new year and all that, but I was still at my desk, tapping away and struggling with the same writing I was before Christmas.

I mean, apart from the pock, pock in the background of tennis balls being bashed around Melbourne Park, you'd hardly know it was the new year.

Desperate for a mark of change, I changed the background of my desktop. I know, radical, but I think it did the trick. Now I've got something new to look at every time I sit down at my computer, and have some vague sense of fresh beginning, even if I'm still struggling with the same writing I was before Christmas. I also moved my desk lamp from the left to the right side of my desk.

Never underestimate the power of change -- it's as good as a holiday!

And for a bit more inspiration for the year ahead, here's a piece in The Age last week by Catherine Deveny, a "professional pain in the arse" hero of mine.

Write by numbers?

OMG, as they say. Blog and ye shall receive.

No sooner had I made a wish list of technologies that would make me a better and speedier writer, than what should I come across in a far corner of the internet? Fiction writing software. 

Specifically--and there are many out there--one called StoryMill. It's a novel writing program for Apples that contains a word frequency tracker and a cliche finder! Clearly I am behind the eight ball on this one.


The full list of features runs as follows (from the website):

• Track, tag and filter characters, scenes, locations, and research with StoryMill's unique dynamic outline.
• Visually and interactively display your story across time with StoryMill's timeline view.
• Annotate any text in your project.
• Revise your work with innovative tools like a word frequency tracker and cliche finder.
• Set and achieve your daily writing goals with the progress meter.
• A built-in support for tracking submissions to editors and agents.
• Manage the creative writing process with Smart Views.
• Write, distraction-free, in Full Screen Mode.
• View your novel in multiple views.
• Back up any and all activity in StoryMill

StoryMill supports the following languages: English, French, German, Italian.

Sounds quite impressive, and makes writing a novel seem like just a matter of being able to interactively display your timeline while not being distracted by having only a single view of your novel in Part Screen Mode. 

In other words, it seems like a whole lot more excuses for why my novel isn't working ('But I don't have a progress meter - how can I set my daily writing goals? How am I supposed to keep track of my characters without a dynamic outline?').


So while it seemed a good idea in theory, and yes, the cliche finder might be handy and I'd love to give it a go just to see, I think I might press on with my creative writing process sans Smart Views and see where it gets me.


[Has anyone tried any of these kinds of software? Am I being unjustly dismissive?!]

The Villain of the Piece

So, I'm trying to put together the plot of my book - outline of story, characters, their motivations etc.

While I'm not anywhere near certain about all of this, the process has made me much more aware of the importance of the bad guys in a story. They are, after all, usually the cause of all the hero's problems, and create the all-important conflict.

And watching the new Sherlock Holmes movie the other day made me aware of how important villainous markers are.

The epiphany came right at the start. Holmes and the new improved, beefed-up Dr. Watson are racing against time to prevent the ritual killing of a pretty young thing by -- a man whose face is shadowed by a hood, all except his wonky front teeth. The lingering close-up on his crooked not-so-pearly whites tells all the viewer needs to know. This guy is a bad guy and he's going to cause trouble for the rest of the movie (why distinguish him by his crooked teeth if you're not going to show them again and again?).

It's not subtle, but it works, and it made me realise I need to focus a bit more on my own villain and leave the good guys be for a while. I had no clear idea of what my villain looks like, or even of his motivations beyond just being a bit of a bastard. But it's so important that he's a rounded, convincing character, and a worthy foil to my heroine. I'm also thinking a scar down his right cheek and a wall-eye. Or is that going a bit far?

Tools of the Trade for the Modern Writer.

I've just discovered the 'stickies' program on my Apple and think it's one of the most useful things I've ever come across on a computer. It's great. You just open it up and a little yellow square, of exactly the same size and appearance of a post-it note, appears on your desktop. You can then type anything you like on it - reminders, ideas, internet banking passwords - and it will stay up there until you either delete the text or 'bin' the note.

It's very useful for keeping track of writing ideas and unlike my current system, the notes can't be blown off my desk into infinity by the fan, or lost in the rest of the writing detritus that weighs down my desk.

All technology should be this good. In fact, I am so pleased that someone has made a program that meets my needs this well, that I'm now sitting back, waiting expectantly for the following innovations to appear and make writing as easy as it's surely meant to be...

Word Psychic 1.0.
A word processor with telepathic device attached, Word Psychic plucks half-formed thoughts from the user's head, before they've had the chance to ruin them by trying to put them into written words. The program then analyses the thoughts and spits them onto the page in the clearest, most moving prose available to express such thoughts. A version would be available for mobile phones and mp3 players, allowing the writer to make the most of pensive journeys on public transport and amusing work situations.

iVoice. 
Having trouble maintaining the voice of your narrator? Not sure whether your cockney washer woman would use the word 'ineffable'? The iVoice will solve all these problems and more. Simply type in a sample of your character's 'voice' into the sampleator, add any other information about your character (female, English, likes suds), and iVoice will track your writing, alerting you to any deviations from authentic voice and suggesting replacement phrases.

Cliche and Mixed Metaphor checker.
Does what it says on the tin.


Yellow Ink Purple Prose Inhibitor.
Another fairly straight-forward application, but one that comes with an adjustable index of acceptable purple prose content. Settings include 'Love-letter' (up to 90% allowable PP), 'Mills & Boon' (<60% PP) and 'Dirty Realism' (<0.01% PP).

With technology thus taking all the hard work out of being a writer, I should be able to then get down to the proper business of the occupation. This chiefly involves drinking tea, sending off absorbingly brilliant manuscripts to publishers and sipping champagne at the book launch.

Can't wait.

Read On

It's the silly season and I've not been feeling that inspired. Too busy Christmas shopping and wondering why all the dust in my house is the same colour (that is, grey). I mean, dust is not a thing in itself, is it? It's a sum of its parts, so why does it end up so uniform? (To which most sensible people would say, 'Who cares? Vacuum your floors, you slob. Problem solved.' To which I would reply, Problem not solved, merely post-phoned.)

Anyway, further to a previous post voicing doubts as to the benefits of reading lots while writing, here is a post by Nicola Morgan at Help! I Need a Publisher (very useful blog), in which she gives some quite reasonable reasons for writers reading a lot.

Just Another Day in Parodies

This is a bit lazy of me, because this was written a while ago as part of a Joseph Heller phase I was going through. But talk of imitation yesterday got me thinking of parodies, which are kind of same same but different. They're pretty hot right now (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sound familiar?) and if you've got writer's block they can be a good way of forgetting about what you're stuck on and having fun writing. (I particularly like this reworking of Jane Austen for the social networking age.)

So, apologies to Mr Heller:


Catch-33

Papa Bear, Big Mamma and Baby-face stumbled back through the woods, roaringly drunk. Baby-face peered around him.

  ‘Where’s the house?’ he asked. He was hungry. So hungry he hadn’t had a fight with Big Bad Wolf before leaving the bar, just so they could get home for that porridge.

   ‘What goddam house?’ said Papa Bear.

   ‘Our house.’

   ‘How the hell should I know?’

   ‘It’s gone!’

   ‘It’s there,’ said Big Mama, and she led them into the house.

   ‘You’re crazy,’ said Baby-face to Papa Bear. Papa Bear shrugged and lit a cigarette he’d found on the floor just when Baby-face hadn’t started a fight with Big Bad Wolf back at the bar.

   Their bowls of porridge were sitting on the table where they’d left them. Baby-face pointed at his with dismay. ‘It’s empty!’ he cried. ‘Some punk’s eaten my porridge.’

   ‘There there,’ said Big Mama, ‘have some of mine.’

Baby-face took a spoonful. ‘Ugh!’ he spat it out. ‘That’s too hot.’ He reached over for Papa Bear’s.

   ‘You won’t like it,’ Big Mama warned him. ‘It’s too salty.’ Baby-face ate some anyway then spat it out. ‘It’s too salty,’ he moaned.

   ‘Of course it is,’ said Big Mama. ‘That’s the catch.’

   ‘Catch?’ Baby-face stared at her. ‘There’s a catch?’

   ‘Catch-33,’ she replied.

   ‘Catch-33?’

   ‘Sure. You can tell me when I’m cooking it how you want your porridge, and I’ll make it. But Catch-33 says if you ask for it just right, some little punk’s going to climb in through the window and eat it all up. So if you want your porridge there when you get back you need to ask for it burnt, or salty or lumpy.’

   ‘You mean,’ Baby-face sputtered, ‘either I ask for something inedible and I get to eat it, or I ask for something edible but I can’t eat it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Big Mama beamed. ‘Exactly right.’

   Papa Bear put out his cigarette and shambled over to the table. He began to shovel spoonfuls of his porridge into his mouth, making great slurping, lip-smacking noises as he ate.

   ‘He’s crazy,’ said Baby-face.

   ‘Of course he is,’ nodded Big Mama. She began to eat her own porridge. It had been heated so much it was burned through-and-through and the smell of it turned Baby-face’s stomach.

   ‘It’s the salt that does it,’ Big Mama said cheerfully. ‘He should cut back.’

To Read or not to Read

We’re always being told to read, read, read. That good writers are great readers. But sometimes I’m not convinced that this is always useful. What if you’re trying to write a serious scene in your novel/short story/feature article but you’ve been reading Douglas Adams and your characters all become slightly weird and start pining for cups of tea? Or if you’re trying to be literary, but you’ve been reading Raymond Chandler and things turn out a bit like this interpretation of Hamlet. Or worse, if you’re trying to write crime fiction and you’ve been reading Raymond Chandler and your work turns out like Raymond Chandler's.

If you’re someone who finds it easy to imitate styles of writing, then maybe it’s better not to read anything at all while you’re trying to write your own stuff. It's difficult to not pick up another author's style, and the stronger a style, the more likely it is to stay in your head and take over your own. I admit, this is just my own experience, and other people might not have any problems of this kind at all (I'm the sort of person who unconsciously mimics other people's accents when speaking to them). Still, despite the mantra about readers and writers, maybe sometimes it's better to declutter your brain and just focus on your own style. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it don't necessarily make good writing.