IWSG: Ballroom Dance Lessons and Writing

During the month of April (and all the A to Z crazy) I joined a dance studio that teaches ballroom dancing. You might be scratching your head trying to figure out how that relates to writing, insecure or otherwise. Let me tell you...

I learned fairly quickly that I have a good sense of rhythm and I follow the lead fairly well. Since I can't afford daily, or even weekly, private lessons that means I have one private lesson for one hour a month. And the rest of the time I participate in Group Classes. They might be teaching dances in which I have a keen interest... and they might not. Thus far, the classes I have attended focused mostly on waltz and east coast swing. I really like both, though they are vastly different from one another. Last night I went to my first Mambo class. It reminds me very much of salsa. The instructor said it was like salsa with cha cha in some way (expression, movement, Manzi can you help with this ???) Since I don't know much about cha cha the explanation was lost on me.

I had my Private Lesson last week.... Oy. We focused on waltz and determining how well I retained what I learned in Group Class. I learned that following isn't as easy as I thought. An underarm turn can go several different ways and I have to know where by monitoring his shoulder tension. Say what??? Yep. I should be able to determine by his shoulder if I am to come all the way around or he will meet me halfway. But wait... it gets worse. Based upon where his hands are at the halfway meet indicates what he has planned next. Once again, this can go two different ways. I can't tell you how many times I thought we were going to meet halfway, but he wanted me to come all the way around and I finished at the halfway meet point. Meanwhile, he was standing to my right (where I should have been). Or I thought I was going all the way around and I crashed into him at the halfway point.

What does this have to do with my writing insecurity?

I was spotty with editing/revising on my WiP in April. Honestly, I wasn't able to juggle the A to Zing with my book (and now dance class) very well. But, when I did sit down and work on it... it felt a whole lot like that waltz session.  Turns out that feeling the pace of the plot is similar to that shoulder tension. It is subtle, but it determines everything. Sometimes I follow it well and the pacing is great. Other times, not so much and it reads like a crash or the reader feels lost in the middle of the dance.

The same goes for my characters. I really like some of the choices that I made. That is when the dance feels really good. You are on the beat. There is a perfect amount of flex in your knees. You move up on your toes and down again and the whole thing is just So.Damn.Graceful. you want to cry with the loveliness of it. Yeah, that is how a waltz should make you feel. It is big and sweeping and elegant and glorious. And then there are those character choices that feel clunky. Out of time. You step with your right foot when you should have used the left.

There is good news and bad news with dancing. The good news is that you only get better with practice. The bad news is that you only get better with practice. Yeah, it was the same news.. That is it. There is no magic wand that turns you into a wonderful dancer. Dang!!!! The same truth applies to writing. You only get better with practice. I have noticed that as I move further into my novel the writing is improving. I red penned like crazy in the first seven chapters. Some pages were so marked that very little survived the "hack." With each chapter, there is less Red Pen.

Aha, there is hope! I have been writing much longer than I have been dancing. And reading longer than that. I might actually become proficient at the writing thing before I die of old age. Not so sure about the dancing... but I am going to stick with it. Practice makes perfect!

This is part of the IWSG, the brainchild of Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh. If you would like to join in the first Wednesday of every month and share your writing insecurities click HERE. The purpose of this group is to offer encouragement. If you don't want to share, but do want to support struggling writers... bless you.

People are fascinating.

Today marks the two year anniversary of the Insecure WritersSupport Group.  This date also delivers my second posting.  Wow.  (Two "seconds" happening at the same time.  It is serendipity.)  This group is the brain child of Alex J.Cavanaugh and I am thrilled to have finally joined.  If this is something you would like to be a part of, this group posts the first Wednesday of every month.  You can join the Linky List by clicking on the first link. 

Last month I asked what you do when you get stuck.  I want to take a moment and thank everyone who responded to that post.  You have brilliant ideas!

A few weeks ago we needed to have our roof repaired.  After the problem was assessed and fixed, the owner/roofer of this small business enterprise sat down at our dining room table for a chat before delivering the bill.  (The bill was pleasantly low, but this isn't really about that.)   This fellow was quite a talker and spent nearly an hour regaling us with stories about himself.  Several things about this were fascinating, aside from the crazy doings in his story.  This guy was a Character.  My mom got tired of him about 45 minutes in, if not sooner,  but I sat through the whole thing.  Why? 

People are fascinating. 

Even though I found aspects of his personality annoying, those intrigued me.  He was mostly likable, but he had some very strange notions about the way the world works.  Even before I started writing again, I would have sat through the whole thing simply because I find people to be extremely entertaining.  Now that I am writing again, they are not only interesting as all get-out, but I find myself considering how I can use some of the more bizarre character traits in my WIP.  Do I intend to fully insert this guy as I met him?  No.  Do I intend to use his story?  Absolutely no.  But, is the essence of the person, and some of his decidedly odd habits, translatable to my writing?  YES.

Do you ever people watch?  Use some personality quirks of people you interact with for your writing?  If so, I would like to hear about it.  If not, why not?

AND FOR MY NEXT BOOK...

The more work I've done on my book, the more thinking I've done about the very real characters in my actual life. My next thought was: what if in my next book I take all of my larger than life family members and friends and make them into characters in a book? Woah. They wouldn't necessarily interact in the same way with the people that they do now... just take their essence and use it as a basis for a character.


Since you don't know the main players here, this isn't scrambling your brains. My grandpa on my mother's side was a big man who liked to boss people around and really wasn't all that likable. However, he really did love his family. He just had no clue about how to show it. He was a complex person. And there wasn't a surgery that he didn't love or a pill he didn't think he needed to take. His philosophy was: the more, the better. My grandma, his sweet wife, was the nicest person in the world and received most of the bossing. She was also very smart and witty and it's a real shame that her husband never knew it. However, the rest of the world recognized what a wonderful person she was. Her fatal flaw was her inability to leave the person determined to crush her spirit. Like I said, it was a complex dynamic. My other grandma would have crushed him like a bug. She didn't take crap from anybody and she had five divorces to prove it. She also worked lots of jobs, including tending bar, and liked to ride horses. She says that the only man she ever loved was my father's dad, but they got divorced when one or both of them cheated on the other. Yeah. It's complicated.

Moving down the family tree, my Aunt She was a lot like my grandma, the bug crusher. Stands to reason because it was her mother. She was divorced I don't know how many times, worked in the coal mines,had black hair, and an olive complexion. She reminded me a little bit of Cher, except her hair wasn't as long, and she wasn't as skinny. She'd tell stories about working in the coal mines and kicking butt. Aunt She was larger than life. She walked into a room and you felt all of the oxygen disappear. My mom's sister was a lot like my Aunt She, but less kick butt, and more funny. When we went to her house to visit, it was all hilarious stories of the wild and crazy things that she did as a teenager. Things like running through the house because she'd turned the hose on the boy who lived behind them, and he chased after her, and she couldn't stop and ran right through the front door screen. Stuff like that. She had some impulse control issues as a teenager. Again, another great book character!

My mother's brother is mellow. I don't know what I would do with that. But his wife is a totally different story. It is the women in our family who keep things interesting. The men just try to keep up. Well, there are some exceptions... but I haven't gotten there yet. My aunt has been a firecracker since birth, although I wasn't around then. But I grew up on tales like this one: she bought a case of Pepsi (when it was in bottles) and someone had put a cigarette butt in the full bottle and capped it. She called Pepsi and pitched a fit. She had free Pepsi for a year. She has had free products of all kinds of things for a year because if it isn't right, she calls and she lets them know. There are no free passes at her house!

I guess I have to include my dad on this family tree. He is a man of few interests. However, whatever these interests are, they are solid. And he is absorbed. He is knowledgeable on his subject matter. Every now and then he may discover something new, but he pretty much sticks with the same things, learning all he can. He is not high drama. So, all of these personalities are not easy for him to take. These are all high maintenance people. I guess that just makes it more interesting (in terms of my book) probably not so much for dad:-(.

My mom is tougher to pigeonhole. She is pretty level. She's not high drama. She's smart. She's funny. Most of the time she would be one of the people who looks normal next to these wacky other characters, but then she has her moments, so...

Moving down the tree again (we're now into siblings and cousins)... On my dad's side, are my Aunt She's kids. Lynne has also made a pretty normal life for herself. She has some unusual talents and gifts and she is a bit arty, but I think that is cool. My cousin Mike never was normal and never will be. He didn't stand a chance. He got the wacko gene all the down the line and then on his daddy's side, too. But, he is a laugh riot. There is no one funnier, no one more loyal, and no one I'd rather spend a night in jail with if that was how that it all went down. In fact, he'd make an excellent main character. He's been there, done that, and seen everything TWICE. And he does excellent impersonations.


The screwy gene seems to have dried up on my mother's side of the family. I think I'm the only still running with it like Don Quixote tilting at the windmill. Everyone has jobs, kids, and normal lives. What is that all about? Not one of them in the bunch makes for a good book character. Well, I do have a cousin who does float from job to job, but she stays employed. I think that says more about the economy than her, so I don't think that counts.

Now, shake the box and mix these people up. Far out. Especially if I throw in some wacky friends.

Gee this was fun. I hope that I didn't offend my entire family and get uninvited from all holiday functions for the rest of the year. Easter is just around the corner. I maybe should have waited a couple of weeks before publishing this blog. The next big holiday is 4Th of July and we don't do much for that anyway.... Then, it's Thanksgiving. Surely, they won't still be mad in November...