Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Turn on the tap first November 10, 2012

Filed under: OUTLANDERishness,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:25 am
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If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

– Louis L’Amour

Isn’t this a remarkably logical analogy?  Pondering, ruminating, meditating, and considering are all very good, but until the thoughts are forced up the pipe and onto the page, we have nothing.

When I wrote Grace Awakening Dreams and Power, it took just under six months to go from nothing to over 150,000 words.  That’s about 25,000 words a month, half the pace of NaNoWriMo.  No wonder I’m feeling pressured.  I do my writing for the day, and hit ‘word count.’  It is generally about 850 words.  Inwardly I groan, because I need to double that count.  Sometimes I just go right back and pound out the next scene, but most of the time I need a break.

I would like to keep up the ‘assigned’ pace, but if I don’t, I just have to continue with my comfortable pace and I will get there eventually.  The important thing, as L’Amour says, is just to sit down and write.  As Diana Gabaldon reminds me, it’s important to write every day to keep up the inertia.

Write on NaNobots!  We shall get there eventually if we don’t give up!

NaNoWriMo Day 10:   1101       (Total for November so far: 13,900)

 

what’s lingering from #SIWC2012 November 7, 2012

Filed under: OUTLANDERishness,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:38 am
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As I pound away on my NaNoWriMo piece, I keep hearing a voice in my head.  Not surprisingly, it’s Diana Gabaldon’s <g> but it’s not the advice I thought I was taking from my blue pencil or all the workshops I attended at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference.

At my blue pencil, Diana and I discussed historical language, dialogue, and whatnot, and while that was important,  what I keep hearing in my head is her laughing voice summarizing,  “You need to have something happen …   And it needs to be something fairly interesting.”

I mean, that’s not news.  That’s so obvious that it’s painful.  She was specifically saying that if the section of my historical novel that she read was going to end up as the beginning, then something intense had to happen.  However, the line is turning into a mantra when ever I sit down to write.  I suspect that is what makes Diana’s books so  engaging.  On EVERY page, something happens.  It’s good advice.  Don’t explain.  Make things happen.

As I write, I can clearly hear Diana’s voice, chuckling with me, just as my time with her was running out, and I think that basic though this comment might be, it might be the most important thing I took away from SIWC this year.

Something has to happen.

I intend to ponder it a lot.  We are authors.  We make things happen.  All these NaNoWriMo words are created from nothing.  We’re making things happen.  When I’m typing away I need to keep making things happen.

In my life, I need to make things happen.

NaNoWriMo count day 7: 1651  (Total 10,664)

 

So, whatcha writin’ in that NaNoWriMo thing, anyway? November 6, 2012

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 6:22 am
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Thought you might like to see what’s coming along.  Ben is now at University of Calgary with his friends Paul and Ryan.  (Craigie Hall is the music building). Grace is living in the Shuswap with her Auntie Bright.  If you’re new to the story, you should know that Grace and Ben are connected telepathically.  Ben is the earthly realm form of the demi-god Orpheus.  He’s narrating.

—————————————————————–

I was walking down a corridor in Craigie Hall when a stab of pain crashed into my head.  I staggered into the wall, and grabbed for support.

A girl rushed over to me, “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, gasping, and she guided me to a bench.  I dropped my head between my knees.  “I’ll be okay.  It’s fine.”  The pain wasn’t mine, it was reverberating from Grace.  She didn’t know yet how to completely control her side of our connection.  Her calls to me were generally hesitant and gentle.  I had to be fully open to catch her tentative yearnings in my direction.  This time, her anguish exploded with her full power.  Without any guards up against it, she had blown me over with the image that was filling her head: a girl with brightly coloured hair, twisted into dreadlocks in the hallway of her school.

“Grace!”  I shouted back into her mind.

“Everything is okay, Ben,” she thought in reply.

“Who was that?” or what was that?  It was something from the Other Realm, that was clear enough, but what was it doing in Grace’s new school?  Had they followed her and sent something evil to attack her there?  It was supposed to be safe there!

“I don’t know.  What are you worried about, Ben?”

“Nothing,” I spit out. I needed help.  Grace needed help.  Right now.  I’ll talk to you later.”

I pushed into the men’s washroom.  Thankfully it was empty.  I spun into the Other Realm igniting the room with light as I vanished.  In the flashing glow, I didn’t notice that someone had pushed through the door.

“Mars!” I shouted into the Other Realm.  “Where are you!” 

Alexandros sauntered out from the foggy gloom.  “He’s busy.”

“What do you mean busy?  He’s needed.  Something is wrong in the Shuswap.  Grace is in trouble.”

Xandros nodded, pursing his lips.  “Ah yes.  We figured that would happen.”

“What do you mean?” I snarled at him, nostrils flaring.  “You knew?”

“Calm down.  This is exactly why you make such a terrible guardian.  You lose all sense when there’s danger.   You have to be cool and cautious when there’s trouble.  You can’t go all wild and hysterical.”  He shook his head at me.

“Well, I’m not a guardian anymore, am I?  Mars is.  And he’s missing!”

Xandros punched me, hard in the bicep. 

I raised my fist to return a shot, but his guard was up, and he caught it easily in his fist.  “You’re such an idiot,” he said, holding my fist tightly in his.  “Where do you think Mars is?”

“What?”  I loosened the tension in my arm, and he let my fist go.  “Is he at Grace’s school?”

Xandros rolled his eyes.  “He’s doing his job, O.  Now it’s time for you to leave Grace in our hands.  You go back to Earth and do your job.  Go back to your nest of musicians and make pretty melodies.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“He’s guarding her?”

He nodded.  “She’s in good hands.”

“Better than mine, you mean?”

He smirked.  “You said it, I didn’t.  Go on.  It’s under control.”

I studied his face.  He was an irritating, obnoxious ass, but he was reliable in a fight.  Between Mars and Alexandros, Grace was in better hands than she’d been when I was her guardian.  It just wasn’t easy to trust the girl I loved out of my sight, though.  Not when either of them would happily take her from me for themselves.

I nodded.  “All right then.  Thank you.”

I spun back into the washroom, narrowly missing landing with my foot in an unflushed toilet.  As I  stepped off the rim a voice greeted me.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell that’s about?”

I snapped my head to the speaker and sighed, “Hi, Paul.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “Hello.  Don’t change the subject.”

“Is there a subject?”

“Well, apparently my best friend can vanish in flashes of light and reappear in toilets like some kind of janitorial Superman.  I’d say that’s a pretty interesting subject.”

I swallowed.  “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…” I intoned in a hypnotic voice, “You didn’t see anything…”

“Bullshit,” he said conversationally.

“Paul.”

“We’ve been friends for what?  Four years?  We’ve been there for each other.  You help me out.  I help you out.  Never once did you ever mention that you had magical powers.”

“You believe in magical powers?  I could have sworn you were more sensible than that.  Do you believe in fairies, too?”

“Nope.  But I saw you come into this room.  When I opened the door, I saw that weird light.  You were glowing and then it…swallowed you.  You were no longer in the room.  I looked.  I even lifted up the lid on the damned toilet tank, Ben!  You were not here.  Then there’s another flash, and there you are, pulling your foot out of a toilet bowl like you were visiting the Ministry of Magic or something .  I know what I saw, bro.”  He crossed his arms across his chest and watched me.   His face showed confusion, irritation, and just a little bit of fear.  “You weren’t at the Ministry of Magic, were you?”

I sighed.  “I can’t explain, Paul.”

“Is it something to do with Grace?”

Wasn’t everything to do with Grace?  I took a deep breath.  “You have to trust me, Paul.  I can’t tell you anything about this.  It’s not safe for you to know anything.”

“So Ryan was right?  We are in danger around you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  “I don’t know what the hell is going on here.  It makes no sense.  No one should be after me.  They’re still after Grace, that’s for certain.  You should be safe with me, but you might not be if you know everything.  Like who I am.”

He studied me, reading my eyes to see if I was lying to him.  “Who you are or what you are?”

I raised my hands is silent appeal.

Finally, he nodded, and unfolded his arms.  “We’re late for [ subject ] class.  Come on.”  He pushed open the door.

“Thanks.”

He nodded.  “We’ve been friends for four years, after all.  That’s got to be worth something.”

I smiled.  “It is.  I’ve never lied to you Paul.  I’m not starting now.”

“Good.”

——————————————————-

NaNoWriMo total for day 6: 589  words (November total: 9013)

 

The truth about history November 5, 2012

Filed under: OUTLANDERishness,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:03 am
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“A story can be new and yet tell about olden times.  The past comes into existence with the story…  Beginning at the moment when you gave it its name…it has existed forever.”

Michael Ende.  The Neverending Story (Large print edition, p. 305).

I’ve been reading The Neverending Story for the last few days.  I came across this quote today, and it struck me as being rather profound within the context of the historical fiction workshops I attended at SIWC.

The history described may be factual, but its interpretation is imagined.  Scenarios are created.  Some may have happened ‘sort of’ like the author imagined, or maybe not. However, once the reader has that account in his head, it becomes the story of the history.  It becomes the reader’s experience and it colours his/her understanding of history.

I was on London’s Tower Hill last spring, and saw a plaque commemorating the deaths of Balmerino and Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat.  They were real people who were beheaded for their involvement with Charles Stewart.  They died in 1746 and 1747, but I grieved them as if I’d known them when I saw that plaque.  I touched it and felt a pang of loss, because I’d met them in the pages of Diana Gabaldon’s books.  She’d made them real.

Were the real men anything like she portrayed them?  I don’t know.   She called forth a story, and it existed from olden times.

It’s rather daunting for anyone contemplating writing historical fiction.  We may be re-creating history.  What a trust!

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NaNoWriMo report for Day 5: 1698 words   (Total: 8424)

 

Why do NaNoWriMo? November 4, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:03 am
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From Kevin Wilson, the author of The Family Fang and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth:

You are embarking upon a month-long incantation that might, possibly, produce magic.

And that is what everyone wants, something magical and transformative. Everyone wants to write a novel that succeeds in all the ways we want a story to succeed. And I doubt there is any pep talk that could enumerate the great things that can come from this endeavor in a way that equals what you’ve already considered. So, instead, I offer something that might be less pleasing now, but hopefully gains power in the immediate aftermath of this month. Regardless of the words that fill those pages, whatever story you choose to tell, the great discovery of this month will be the stack of pages that bears the words that did not exist a mere month before. You will possess the evidence of time spent at your computer, unspooling the narrative in your head. You will have hard evidence, and this will always grant you conviction.

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NaNoWriMo word count day 4: 2481    (Total 6836)

 

literary strip tease? November 1, 2012

Filed under: Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:51 pm
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 “…what is it about literary endeavour that strips a man of all dignity?

Ian Weir in Daniel O’Thunder  (p. 73)

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NaNoWriMo update: 1670 down, 48,330 words to go

 

NaNoWriMo begins… October 31, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 8:00 pm
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November is National Novel Writing Month.  Participants in NaNoWriMo are challenged to write 50,000 words  of a novel throughout the month and keep track of their output on a central site.  1667 words per day.

The NaNo team sends you a calendar and encouraging emails.  If you have friends doing it, you can watch each others’ stats, in order to nag or cheer each other.  You can find other writers in your area by writing in a central location.  They suggest libraries or independent book stores.  I have decided our local McDonalds offers the best hours and space, but I haven’t managed to ask them if they’d like to officially participate! (This would involve putting up a WRITER AT WORK sign and leaving us alone).

If you work full time and have several activities that fill your free time, getting 1667 words per day offers some serious challenges.  But you want to WIN, so you make the effort!

Winning at NaNoWriMo means you reached that magic number.  You succeeded in pounding out 50,000 words.  You get to feel the thrill of accomplishment that comes from a sustained, anguished effort to force your muse to be at the top of her game every day, inspiring you to a hitherto unimagined production of words…

I will be hosting NaNoWriMo in my class room throughout November.  During lunch hours students will be welcome to come and write along with me.  Of course, 30 mins of time is not likely to equal 1667 words, but it should be quite possible to regularly reach 1000 words .  33 words a minute seems far more plausible that 56 words a minute for some reason.  Maybe because while I can type at 60 words a minute, doing it for 30 minutes suggests a need for support staff and a lot of caffeine.  But it’s possible.

What might NOT be possible while doing NaNoWriMo is creating brilliant blog posts every day.

I may post samples of what I’m writing, or forward the odd bit of brilliance that comes my way.

I may go through my files of quotes I’ve found in my reading, and share them.

I might find time to go through my SIWC2012 notes, tidy the phrases into sentences and get one posted now and then.

Or I might not.

Be patient with me, dear reader.  I am diving off the deep end, and I may not come up for air until hubby’s big birthday on the 30th.

 

learning, looking back, and moving on October 29, 2012

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:42 am
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My father asked me tonight if I’d learned anything at ‘that conference’ I went to, and whether I would change anything from my last books as a result.

No.

So it’s perfect, as it is?

Yes, Dad.  It’s as perfect as I could make it.   I went to the conference for the NEXT book.  All the workshops I picked were about the next project.

A little while later he tried again, trying to convince me that I didn’t understand his initial question.  Wouldn’t I change things, if I was starting over now?

No.  The book is what it needed to be.

He sighed, sure that I wasn’t getting his point.

I know he didn’t get mine.

Every day you’d write a different book.  Every day your words are new.

You can’t look back.  The last project is finished.

There is no point writing if you’re not trying to write the best book you can, at the time.

There’s not point thinking about what you should/could/would do once it’s out, though.  Once it’s in the publisher’s hands, it’s no longer yours to fret over. It’s gone.  It has its own life.  It makes its own connections with readers.

Luckily, Grace is doing just fine.  I don’t have to worry about ways I may have failed her.  I poured the best I had into her world.  It’s done.  She’s being well received.  Is she perfect?  Well, probably not.  But she’s as perfect as I could make her at the time, which means, Yes. She is.

It’s like raising children.  You do the best you can, and then you send them out into the world.  If your personal imperfections cause trouble for your kids as adults, there’s no point beating yourself up about it, or even contemplating what you could have done differently.  You did the best you could at the time, and now you have to look toward the future and doing even better.

Behind us lies the way of madness.  There can be no room for regret, only moving forward, to become the best we can be for the next project.  We learn to improve for the future, not to improve the past.

Past perfect 🙂

 

filial effort October 24, 2012

Filed under: anecdotes,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:50 am
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I recently met a mother and a son who are both writers.  She has years of experience and several books out in various genres.  He studied writing at university, and has a few novels out.   At one event, I asked him how having a successful author already in the household influenced his own ambitions.  He looked a little irritated at my question, and assured me that his work had nothing to do with anyone else but himself.

I felt a bit sorry for him when he said that, because I recognized a common theme of kids struggling to establish identity and break away from their parents’ influence or expectation by adamantly denying its existence.  It is never going to be a simple thing to follow a parent into the same profession or calling.  Comparisons are inevitable.  It seems to me that recognizing and acknowledging the role his mom played in his success would be a natural sign of maturity as a man and a writer.  He could accept the leg up, and then ride the horse with grace, demonstrating his ability and rights to be there.

I watched interactions over the weekend, to see how he handled himself and whether he demonstrated the independence that he vehemently declared.

He didn’t.

Despite his respectable literary credentials, he is obviously uncomfortable presenting workshops.  He seems like a shy kid forced to present to crowds of people older than him, and that’s not an easy situation.  He mentioned earlier that he had been worried about this particular workshop.  I had wondered if he had the skill and maturity to pull it together or at least fake it successfully.  People are paying money to hear him and learn techniques.  He owed it to the attendees to be prepared with practical information.

I wondered if his mom would attend his workshop.  I confess, I hoped for his sake that she did not.

She did.

He opened with apologies and suggested people go to other workshops because his wasn’t going to be very good.  He admitted to not being ready.  He pulled out his notes, spoke nervously for a few minutes, and then he was stuck.  He had not prepared adequately.  He had some notes, but only about 20 minutes worth.  It’s quite possible to make 20 minutes worth of notes fill an hour, but it takes skill that he didn’t have.  He apologized some more, desperately asking for questions.

His mom watched him fall apart.  She tried to help.  She asked him questions that he should have been able to answer and that would have filled five or ten minutes if he’d picked up on her hints.

He didn’t.

He grumbled at her in typical kid fashion.  The audience laughed, recognizing a familiar family dynamic.

He provided a weak answer, one that was almost contrary to fact.  She couldn’t let that lie.  She had to add, “Don’t you think that…” and then she provided a fascinating and informative few minutes.  He was irritated that his mother was speaking in his workshop and grumbled at her some more. “You are a bad audience member!”

To be fair, for the period of time when he was presenting the information that he had in his notes, he was amusing and informative.  While he was floundering, the audience was forgiving and pleasant with him.   He obviously knows his material, he just didn’t have enough material, or hadn’t figured out how to properly expand it enough or analyze it enough to fill his allotted time.  He looked a lot like he was roasting on a spit.

What I found most interesting, however, was that by-play between mother and son.  It was a clear example of rejecting opportunity.  Being truly independent means you are not afraid to take advantage of the tools at your disposal, even if you hate that your greatest asset is your mom.

I felt sorry for him.  He seemed like a mortified introvert, forced to do something that was painful for him; however, an appearance of confidence and capability is important when people are spending money to learn from you.  You have to make your audience feel like it’s received value.

Sometimes apologies happen at the start of a presentation, then the nerves pass and the presenter gives value.   That didn’t happen in this instance.  I felt sorry for him, and I thought I knew how his mother was feeling: knowing that she could have have helped.  He was determined to fall by himself, and he did.  Such moments are painful for mothers!

I hope he is able to come to terms with his advantages and his skills, while developing the ability to schmooze with the public in order to promote his work independently.

A very tired mother (me)  at the end of SIWC and a confident, capable son who came to visit before she went home.

I got thinking about those mother son relationships.

My own son lives 6 hours away, and we don’t get to see him as often as we’d like.  He is much younger than the young man who was presenting workshops, but he is much older in many ways.  As a teen he went through the stage of believing that being independent meant he had to live far away and refuse help from his parents. He did not achieve many of the goals we had set for him, but he forged his own path.  As a result, he has been completely financially and emotionally independent for several years.  He markets his skills.   He knows how to behave with clients.  He is aware of his appearance and the need to present a professional image, albeit a youthfully hip one. He exudes confident capability, as he schmoozes and charms like a pro, despite his youth.  It takes effort to look as relaxed and stylish as he does.  It takes experience and practice to be confident in himself when teaching skills to others, often older than he is.  I like hearing  that my son acquits himself admirably in those situations.

I kind of wish he’d been presenting workshops.  I think if he’d stepped to the podium, the audience would have been enchanted, entertained, and informed by a confident, thoroughly prepared young man.  No one would have been embarrassed.

But I’m his mother.   I might be biased.

 

magicians’ secrets October 23, 2012

Filed under: OUTLANDERishness,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:29 am
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I was driving home last night, listening to my audio book  (A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon), and as the story went along I was thinking, “Oh.  There she goes again, neatly fitting in a piece of back story.  That was subtly done!”  The thought must have happened at least a dozen times.

I’m on my 9th re-read (print and audio) of this particular book within this calendar year.  I’ve seen all these lines before.  I knew what she was doing the previous 8 reads, but now, having come out of a workshop  where she discussed this technique and the careful process of fitting in these references to events from earlier books, and having her comments in my blue pencil session fresh in my mind, I can hear her voice echoing along with narrator Davina Porter’s.

It’s like the end of Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

It makes it harder to read books merely for enjoyment, when you very consciously catch sight of the technique.  I suspect it also makes one pickier as a reader, since you have less tolerance for poorly executed technique.

Hopefully, it makes you a better writer, though.  You grow in knowledge.  Not just intuitive awareness, but conscious knowledge of an executed skill that must be mastered to be an effective writer.