NaNoWriMo Progress - Day 2

...DAY 2 Stats...

Hard Copy Chapters Hand-Edited = 12/41
Rewritten Chapters = 4.5/41
Queries Sent = 0/10

NaNoWriMo Progress

Well, so I am modifying this wonderful month for my own selfish needs. What else is new in the scope of human beings?

Anyhow, instead of writing a new novel in 30 day, I am going to finish revising one of my manuscripts and send it out in at least 10 queries.

For added pinash I will be moving across three states, taking courses, setting up a house, and mommying.

Excitement!

...DAY 1 Stats...
Hard Copy Chapters Hand-Edited = 9/41
Rewritten Chapters = 4.5/41
Queries Sent = 0/10

Wordsmithing Under Burgess

No one my age really knows much about Gelett Burgess. I admit I knew little until I started poking around for unique words in the English language and it just so happens that Burgess knew quite a bit.

We can thank him for blurb, for example. A good word, I must say.

Anyhow, I am reading a reprint of his 1914 Burgess Unabridged: A Classic Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed and I am loving every word. So now, I am going to share some.

Are you excited?

I am.

Today's word is...

Agowilt

Ag'o-wilt, n. 1. Sickening terror, sudden, unnecessary fear. 2. The passage of the heart past the epiglottis, going up. 3. Emotional insanity.
Ag'o-wilt, v. To almost-faint.

And my favorite part of his brilliant, witty examples for this word...

"It may be but a single extra step which isn't there and the agowilt playfully paralyzes your heart. So a sudden jerk of the elevator, the startling stopping of the train, the automobile skidding, the roller-coaster looping the loop -- bring agowilts."

Consider this word, though never mainstreamed into Modern English, in my vocabulary.

Tally: Webster 0, Burgess 1

Source: Burgess, Gelett. Burgess Unabridged: A Classic Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed. New York: Walker & Company, 1914. Print

Literary Devices & Vacations

I am almost done with my relaxation vacation and will be back to regular postings.

But, on a side note, as a writer I am always looking for good mentors in published writers - right?

Right.

And I have a fascination with literary devices (tools that help make your story unique, convey your story, and snare readers) and I must say one of my personal favorite kinds of literary devices is lyrical verse.

I must also say, that if you are going "Me too!" "Okay." or "WTF?" I suggest reading who I consider to be a master at the lyrical verse literary device: Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern series. Her work is not only original, inspiring, fantastic, and won numerous awards and has millions of fans since its creation over 30 years ago (that's right people, 1970s) she also has perfected the art of the lyrical verse as a literary device.

Don't believe me?

Go pick up any ONE of her 30+ Pern books and tell me otherwise.

I will post more on literary devices later, but I just had to get this off my chest. Anne McCaffrey = literary genius.

Poetry Exposed

I am going through some old poems I wrote a while back and found this one that I was amazed with when some followers on Deviant Art's site featured it. Woot! Too bad it can't go in the query letter though...

The Bee

I saw a bee
Once
Sitting still
So perfectly still
For once

It was caught in
Webs
Thrashing about
So helplessly struggling
Against threads

It hurt to see
It
Dying there
Giving up flying
Through air

It stopped fighting it
Accepting
His death
Becoming spider food
Before sunset

So this silly girl
Tried
Freeing it
Only to realize
She’d actually
Helped
Quicken to kill it



The Plaque - this is a poem I wrote when a writing professor asked me to summarize one of my novel ideas into a poem.

In this spot in 1944
(The faded plaque says)
Nothing historic happened here.

In this spot in 1944
(As the metal letters tell)
No boy
Met a girl
Nothing transpired
For nothing historic
Not even love
Or running
Fleeing
Escaping
Saving
Her
Happened here.

In this spot in 1944
(Despite greening copper words)
No soldier
Gave his life
Nothing occurred
For nothing historic
Not even hate
Or fighting
Dying
Bleeding
Killing
Life
Happened here.


For more of my deviant art portfolio go here: www.deviantart.com/la-beck

Writer's Frustration

So I am now convinced that there is a) writer's block and b) writer's frustration - both of which can be avoided or "cured" with different exercises and thinking happy thoughts, but right now, I would like to roll around in my frustration because I have to write a poem and I have no idea what to write about.

Usually, when I make the endeavor to write poetry it is forced or for pure fun of playing with rhythm and word choice. I love poetry but always find I have more to say, voice-wise, than poems allow: I avoid them. But I do need to write one for a class and I'm sort of drawing a big fat ? on my screen with my finger.

My daughter is helping, laughing all the way.

Perhaps I must resort to my favorite writing stimuli - deviant art - but perhaps I will continue my happy romp in Writer's Frustration a bit longer... it does allow one to eat and sit and read for a few minutes at least.

It's A Blog World After All

Wow. I just realized I follow near 50 blogs...and I actually do read them all. Insanity and yet so enlightening and helpful!

I seriously recommend to any of my English major friends or friends who like to write stories in their spare time that they look at just a few of the blogs I have on my roll. They're mostly awesome and some are all together incredible.

Hooray for blogging!

Researching Literary Agents

Good lord, I thought my 25 page thesis was a jaunt in the world of searching, researching, and searching again.

After all the advice I have read about finding the right fit of an agent, I am unbelievably grateful that at least 3/5 of those advisers warned me that it would be beyond daunting. But hopefully, in the end, it will be well worth it.

Best find on writing I have done this month - Writer's Digest's Novel & Short Story Writer's Market.

I had been putting it off as an odd reward for finishing my first 80,000 word manuscript draft (well in all seriousness it's the third but I reworked the POV/narrator so much I can't honestly count it as such). So I eagerly stomped into my local bookstore with my toddler in tow and picked it up.

For $27 bucks, it's my best reward yet. I haven't been able to put it down and I am amazed at all of its information. I know for a fact of a few writer friends that are more than welcome to borrow it - in fact, I will probably make them read it by tying them to a chair and gagging them until they've reaped every bit of information from it.

A sort of system I devised, involved ranking literary agents (I am going the agent route) by what I was looking for and I was sort of impressed with my results.

I made a list of everything I wanted in an agent - I wanted them to take new writers, preferably be a member of an association, be American (since I am cheap with postage), accept genres I have or want to write in, allow simultaneous queries (the process is long enough), and have experience (helpful but ultimately not as highly ranked as some of my other requirements). Then I became OCD and composed a grade for each possible agent that fit at least THREE requirements (30% score).

I am happy to say that with a grade of C+ (65%) or better compatibility with myself there were 17 agencies. So now, much to the angst of my sore rear, I am sitting pouring through those 17 agencies' websites looking at if they will really fit me and what their process is.

It's a good thing I love writing and an even better thing I am a writer for the characters I've found roaming my head than for fame - because dear lord they were right when they said writing the words was one-third of the work.

Now, does anyone know of a good butt massaging pad and a quick pick-me-up drink that is relatively inexpensive and fast to make? I have 12 agencies down, 5 more to go ... and I've lost all feeling in my right...well...you know.

Oh Lordy....

In the words of the epicly funny and somewhat predictable "Evolution" movie - great googamooga.

It's been a while, which I feel horribly guilty and proud for - a weird paradox indeed. What - pray tell - have I been preoccupied with?

My darling kiddo, finishing my second draft of an 80,000 word manuscript (I'll take a bow later), and researching literary agents amongst shoving some class work in there now and then. Oh, and I have been falling asleep to Jane Austen movies again but I must say, I could be watching far worse sappy romances with amazing heroines and heroes.

I shall try to update this soon, I am finishing a few short scenes in the draft before I shelf it for two weeks and start work on another. That, and I have a vacation coming up which will be a fun escapade I am sure... or I hope... well, we'll see.

Until then, anon dear blog, and adieu.

The Bees Will Eventually Sting the Birds...

Oh the gratuitous sex scene. How you run rampant and free through novels, movies, television series and even ad campaigns. Yes, you are almost as free and wild as Angelinos after an NBA Championship win. You know what I mean. That classic scene.

The man and woman* have just fight and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman just cried and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman just met and fell in love instantly and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman have been apart for an indeterminate amount of time and can barely remember each other and somehow they end up in bed.

Or the man and woman meet in a bar and somehow they end up in bed.

I can go on, but I am sure you get the point.

The mere name "gratuitous sex scene" implies that it is not for the satisfaction of those people involved and actually having the sex, though in most shows they do appear to be having quite a good time, but rather it is for the satisfaction of the reader or audience. We want sex. Or something like it.

As a writer I sat watching a gratuituous sex scene and banged my head on my desk at the layers of Gouda and Cheese-wiz abound. The whisking off of clothes in inhuman effort. (Honestly, not even Superman can do it that slickly in real life). The corny shots and pecks and kisses. And then the unmentionables.

I should make a checklist. Let me see...

___ Man + Women*

___ Candles (mood lighting)

___ Clean surface, usually a bed

___ Clean room, sheets, etc. (because gratuitous sex scenes never have an unmade bed of flannel mismatched sheets and a pile of dirty laundry on the floor).

___ Pecks

___ Unmentionables

___ Grotesque noises that, in the words of Robin Williams, remind some people of Goofy.

And yet, for me the gratuitous sex scene has become entirely un-gratuitous. How I long for a romp, or deluge of sexual desires instead of the neat formula that most books and shows and movies now employ. Is sexual imagination and writing really that dead? Has it really hit its mid-life crisis?

Oh, how I long for a damn grapefruit!**

Or at least something more true to life and original. I mean come on! No one can pull off that move and no one's bedroom is that clean. Unless you're Martha Stewart and I don't even want to let my mind wander down that path at the moment... or ever. And sometimes, sex isn't that gratuitous or freaking amazing every gosh darn time. Sometimes its just, well, sex.

In a world where we, in the literary world at least, praise originality and shun formulaic endeavors I cannot find many books, shows, or movies without some model of the gratuitous sex scene.

Will the absurdity ever end?

An even better question, will we the reader/audience ever want it to end?

--------------

*For simplicity and my sanity I am only mentioning couples as being male + female; however, please apply this to all male + male, girl + girl, and any combination therein couples.

**Attribution is correctly given to Eddie Izzard but I am sure the squirrel he stole it from would like some attribution as well, so here's to the furry fruit-loving rodent.