Battle of the Bands and My Novel ~ Emotion

Hello again, friends.

Before we launch Battle of the Bands (early again), I want to take a moment and share what's going on in my world.

Now, when I talk about my migraines, I know many of you think that they are WORSE than before. That isn't true. They are better than they were when I started blogging, but they are not as good as I want them to be (that would be gone). I still have days that knock me out and put me in bed (more than I'd like), but less than I had before we made the move to Florida.

The thing is that I only get so many *good* hours in a day and I have to decide how I want to use them. When I'm  using them blogging, you know it. I'm writing blogs. I'm reading blogs. I'm posting HERE'S TO YOU weekly. If you don't know what the latter is, I apologize. When I'm not using those hours blogging, it looks very much like the last two months. Again, I apologize.

The rewrite on my novel is sucking my *good* time. I wish I could say I'm making fine headway. Mostly, I'm writing. Deleting what I wrote a few days later. Reading someone else's (good) book. Writing. Deleting. Rinse. Repeat. It finally occurred to me yesterday what the problem is. Yeah, it only took a month or so. The POV of my MC has completely changed (and I'm not talking about first to third and that business). I'm talking about the thrust of the plot. The action. All of that internal dialogue has shifted, along with the events that go with it. You see, in the old story my MC was a bit like me. She more or less stumbled into things and then had to figure out how to deal with what she stumbled into... as opposed to making things happen.

If you want an example from my life, this blog serves excellently. I had no idea what I was doing when I started writing it. I stumbled around for months (mostly without clue). Eventually ran into (quite by accident) interesting bloggers and built relationships. Then I discovered via them other interesting bloggers. When I started writing, I began to discover writer blogs. They had links to other writer things... like agent blogs. You see, I backdoored my way through this entire blogging experience. My MC was backdooring her way through my novel. That is what I know how to do (too well, I think). Turns out, it really isn't that helpful to the reader. Bryan (from a A Beer For The Shower) gave me commentary that I sorely needed. He said something like, "I'm 40+ pages in and this is entertaining as all get-out, but I have no idea what it's about." And he was right. My MC didn't arrive at *the point* until Chapter 6. She was backdooring around, allowing the reader to fully glimpse the calamity that was/is her life, but there wasn't really a *point.* Turns out, that inserting the *point* sooner changes everything. I'm struggling with it. I've already scrapped stuff I really liked about the old MS to make way for the *point.* I keep trying to work around what's already there. I'm just about at the place where I think  need to start rewriting altogether. I can't make the backdoor and the *point* walk hand-in-hand.

Actually, that's good advice for life. I think if I want to get to the point of my own life, I need to stop wandering around hoping to backdoor into it. I will ponder that more later.

Tomorrow is busy for me, but it's also Battle of the Bands. So, I'm launching early.

I discovered this cover quite by accident. Do you sense a recurring theme in this post? I didn't even recognize that it was a cover until the chorus. Then I was like, "I know this song. Just not this song." So, I scrapped what I was considering for this BoTB installment in favor of this song: Emotion. The original is a Bee Gees number featuring Samantha Sang. The cover was something I'd never heard until a few days ago (although it was apparently a big hit) by Destiny's Child.

Since I think you probably know the original, let's begin with the cover. Here's Destiny's Child covering Emotion:



And here is The Bee Gees featuring Samantha Sang:



For more Battle of the Bands fun, check out the other BOTB bloggers to vote on their battles:

• Far Away Series
• Stephen T. McCarthy's Battle of the Bands Blog
• Tossing it Out
• DiscConnected 
• This Belle Rocks
• Mike's Ramblings
• Curious as a Cathy 
• Book Lover
• The Sound of One Hand Typing
• dcrelief ~ Battle of the Bands
• Alex J. Cavanaugh (sometimes)

If you are participating in Battle of the Bands, and you are not listed here, leave me a note in the comments. Thanks!

Now, is the critical moment. It is time to vote for your favorite version of this song. I even encourage you to leave me long comment explaining all the ins and outs of why you voted as you did! 

It's Not Always Clear In Here

Before I get started with my first contribution to the Insecure Writers Support Group, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh, I want to let you in on a little secret.  I have been following a wonderful writer since I started this blogging experience.  The first Wednesday of every month she would post something with the IWSG Logo.  Every month I went to her page expecting to see a sample of her WIP and every month I was disappointed.  Instead, she wrote about the process of her writing.  At the end of the post, she posted a link back to the IWSG and suggested that we see what other writers were doing.  Now, each month I thought to myself, "I don't want to read THEIR Work In Progress.  I want to read YOURS.  Every month I come to your page expecting to support you by giving you encouraging comments on your work and each month you write about your writing and then suggest I visit OTHER PEOPLE."  Mental head smack. 

It took me about a year to figure out that IWSG wasn't about supporting the writing, it was about sharing all of the stuff that goes on with the writing.  My friend wasn't doing it wrong as I had thought for so long.  Hahahaha.  As par for the course, I didn't understand the concept of the group.

I just started novel writing again.  I never finished my first one.  I didn't burn it or anything.  I am not sure that I will ever get back to it, but I decided to move on.  I vacillate between being frustrated with my writing and thrilled that I can put any sort of story together.  In my head I know that rough drafts are... rough.  The point is to get through them with the concept of the novel and then go back and polish it up.

I spend as much time thinking about this novel as I do writing it.  Some characters gel easily for me in terms of who they are, how they think, what they want.  Others are vague.  What helps you get a grasp on these sorts of characters?  More thinking time?  Or do you spend some time just writing and it comes out in a stream-of-consciousness-sort-of-flow?  This material is not necessarily writing that would be included in the novel, but gives you, as the writer, the sense of who they are.

I suppose this all comes back to being stuck and getting unstuck.  How do you unstick yourself when a character, scene, plot device, or any other aspect of your story is not moving for you?  What do you do?


Here is a link to the IWSG main page.  You can see a list of everyone who is participating in this event.  I hope that you will drop in and offer up some encouragement to some aspiring writers.  Lord knows we all need it!

BULLET FOR LIFE

image found at www.weaheartit.com

You know what I haven't done in a long time?  A bullet point post.  Those are excellent for times like now when I don't have a singular topic that I really want to blog on, but I have MANY thoughts rolling around in the noggin'.

• I am still working on the novel, for all of you have been DYING OF CURIOSITY regarding this matter.  I can't say that the progress is particularly fast, but I am still working at it.  I find it interesting how much time I spend just thinking about the characters and where the story will go.  Does anyone else who writes do this?
• On my way home tonight, I nearly had a car accident in the round about.  It is a pretty low traffic area.  There are only three lanes of traffic going into and out of the round about.  (In other words the road T's out on one end.)  If you unfamiliar with a roundabout, each car going into the roundabout has a yield sign.  Ergo, if there is another vehicle in the roundabout, you wait until they have passed before entering.  I was behind another car approaching from the bottom part of the T, if you can visualize that, and would ultimately be making a left turn.  While I was in the roundabout, a minivan, who was approaching from the right side of the T,  waited for the car in front me, and then decided to just come on out.  I kept on going, but I really thought they were going to just plunge into my side.  
• Do you think that they didn't understand Yield?  Maybe they thought it meant you take turns.  I am not sure, but it sure took my breath away. 
• Still going to my tapping therapy approximately once a week.  We are now really getting into what I would consider the really traumatic issues.  I have learned a lot.  For instance...
• Every bad thing that has happened to me relates back in some way to Boundaries.  All of my life, my Boundaries have been Terrible.  Some of the worst things that I have allowed to happen to me simply stem from a belief system of not wanting to hurt someone else's feelings... even if it has meant doing horrible damage to myself.  
• I don't know how we can teach ourselves, and our kids better younger, that we have value, but this needs to happen.  Yes, being kind to others is very important, but kindness to others at the expense of yourself isn't actually a kindness.  It's a Boundary Issue.  It's actually telling someone that you don't have any.  And people who have Reverse Boundary Issues (they don't respect other people's boundaries) will be drawn to someone with Boundary Issues like a magnet.  I know this to be true.  It is the pattern that I lived repeatedly.  
• In order to break a pattern, you have to see the pattern.  That is freeing information right there.
• In addition to my not wanting to hurt anyone else's feelings, I have a Rescuer Complex.  This is actually another Boundary Issue.  The Rules of Life indicate that you will reap what you sow.... unless someone alters the natural order of things.  That someone would be a Rescuer.  
• Rescuers disallow people with other Boundary Issues from feeling the pains of their habits.  For instance, if someone is bad with money, the only way they will get better is if they suffer from their poor budgeting.  If they have a Rescuer in their life, that person will never feel the pain of their mismanagement.  However, the Rescuer will.  There is a Law and someone will feel the pain.
• Let's just say that 20+ years of Rescuing and being in close relationships with people who have Reverse Boundary Issues have taken their toll.  
• The Rules of Life still apply and it says that everyone will always reap what they have sown.  I am reaping what I have sown.  I am reaping 20+ years of acceptance that other people's wants were more important than my needs, as well as all of that Rescuing.  For my trouble, I got a ten year migraine and a host of autoimmune issues.
• So, what I know is this: the spirit rejects these things and transforms this bad thinking into illness.
• Conversely, I must believe as the thinking improves, the manifestations in the body will follow.
• Understanding Boundary Issues has given me a whole new perspective on my life.  I can now see that things didn't "just happen" to me.  I can also own my part in the things that did happen.  Grasping that makes all the difference because getting that means not allowing those things to happen again.  
• It feels like I was asleep for all of my life and I just woke up.  I didn't know any of the Rules of Life and that was why it was so hard.  Life will never be "easy" but it can make sense.

And that is pretty much the news in the Land of Robin.  Please leave a comment and tell me what is going on in the Land of You!

Let's Talk About Hookers

Well, I was just doing some innocent blog reading when I came across Gossip Girl's most recent post. She is participating in this hop thing wherein you post hooks from the beginning chapters of one or more books you are reading/have read. I suppose the idea is to make you think about what makes a good hook for the budding writer or even a writer withering on the vine.



I learned a couple of things in trying to do this exercise. First, this is not as easy to do on your Kindle as it is with a real, live book. Second, be careful of paper cuts with a real, live book when you are flipping around like a crazy person just trying to find the next chapter. Lastly, I inwardly bemoaned the loss of so many of my real, life books. Space has become a SERIOUS ISSUE, and almost all of them have been donated to the library. Hence the luxury of spending the money on a Kindle. I love my Kindle because I can make the print as large as I like, but rebuilding my book collection would essentially take forever. Of course, I tell myself I can always check out any book I really want to read again at... the library. *sigh* And that works most days. Most importantly, after I came up with ten hooks by other authors I finally understood that they wanted ten hooks that I had written from my own writing. Ugghh. That left me with quite the conundrum. The only serious writing I have done is my book I started and put down because I just got LOST in it.

However, I knew where it was.

And I only had to find three decent hooks at the beginning of three chapters. And I had done a LOT of writing. Of course, you want excellent, outstanding, fabulous hooks. But you get what you get. And, once again, I find that one sentence often doesn't tell the tale. Sometimes you really need two to SINK IT. Better yet, that first paragraph. If it is SHORT.

So, here are my hooks from the novel I thought I might never pick up again...

"Two years," Jake said.

It was all I could do not to hold out my hand and make him pinkie promise. I smiled at the thought of Jake's reaction to that. He would think I was certifiable. I wondered if he even remembered the pinkie promise made so long ago.


The knot in my stomach had settled in at 9:00 and was becoming increasingly painful by the minute.


Jake grabbed my arm as I turned into the empty room. "Explain that. What do you mean by ALL OF IT?" he thundered. His words echoed around the room.

Yep. Those are the hooks from the long-forgotten novel. Or so it would seem. Now I am thinking about it again. Buggers. I know my brain. It will work this until I can find a way to bridge the gap from the middle to the End. Egads.

I didn't see any specific rules about how many hooks you needed for this post. It appeared to me that ten or so was sufficient. So, I set that as my goal. I picked out three books. Two I have read before. One several times. One only once because it just broke my heart. And the last I picked up at the library today. Some books are just too darn expensive for my Kindle! And I so enjoy actually turning the page. *bigger sigh*

It has occurred to me that I need a fourth book because I only have nine hooks, so I am adding one from my all-time favorite series by Janet Evanovich. Yep. Stephanie Plum. That series cracks me up. So we will start with that one.


Favorite Series Ever:
One For The Money by Janet Evanovich

There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me- not forever, but periodically.



And the one that I have read numerous times:
Running From Safety by Richard Bach

My truth has been a long time refining. I've explored and drilled for it with hope and intuition, filtered and condensed it the best I could with reflection, then run it through my engines, wary at first, to see what would happen.


It must happen to us all, I thought. We pack up what we've learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within we must dimly know that saying good-bye to safety brings the only security we'll ever know.


"Leslie, why don't I forget the whole thing? I have a lot better things to do with my life than to play with my own imagination."


Every word in my mind shattered, I was silent for an answer. He's right, I thought at last, this is his country. Those few times I reached for an old memory, here is where I came: dry, dead, lost, everything that used to be, turned to dust. After a while I had shrugged, happy childhood but a terrible memory, and learned to live without my youth, most of it. Here it lay.

I know that some of them offer more than one sentence hooks, but I think that they are short enough to qualify for a hook. So.... moving on.



Haven't read yet, but next up:
City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare Book Four in The Mortal Instruments series

"You know what's awesome?" said Eric, setting down his drumsticks. "Having a vampire in our band. This is the one thing that's really going to take us over the top."


"Your girlfriend?" Alec looked astonished. So did Maryse. Simon couldn't say he was unastonished himself. "You dated a vampire? A girl vampire?"

"It was a hundred and thirty years ago," said Magnus. "I haven't seen her since."



This is the book that broke my heart:
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

CLARE: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he is okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.


HENRY: Matt and I are playing Hide and Seek in the stacks in Special Collections. He's looking for me because we are supposed to be giving a calligraphy Show and Tell to a Newberry Trustee and her Ladies' Lettering Club. I'm hiding from him because I'm trying to get all of my clothes on my body before he finds me.


HENRY: I wake up in the middle of the night with a thousand razor-toothed insects gnawing on my legs and before I can even shake a Vicodin out of the bottle I am falling.


And there they are... 10 hooks. Some took a few sentences, rather than just one, to really make the hook great. And, of course, some are only really funny if you are familiar with the characters. Anyone who has read the Mortal Instruments series will appreciate those hooks. The rest of you probably not so much. Ah well. I like how she mixes the humor into the seriousness of her subject matter, but that is just me. Anyway, the exercise made me appreciate the art of a well written hook. If you would like to participate, go to Cassie Mae's page or Falling for Fiction and jump on the hop. Granted, you don't have much time... so hurry. Of, course there is still Hangers in a few days (whatever the heck that will be!), and I have no doubt it will be interesting.

WHY MY FANTASY LIFE SUCKS AND MY REAL LIFE ISN'T ANY BETTER

This is not a typical post. That means it has no real topic matter. However, it does mean that I actually made it out of bed, and got caught up on a lot of blog reading. I didn't comment on all of them, but I made lots of progress. Woohoo.



I am very unhappy about the virus that killed my laptop. Apparently it was big and bad and nuked everything. I always seem to get socked with the Big Bad of Whatever Comes Around. Anywhoozle. Near as I can tell, the guy who repaired my computer said that he saved everything salvageable into my c-drive, including stuff off of my favorites. Well, that was a lot of material people. The emphasis is on WAS. There is nothing that was in my favorites in my c-drive, so that leads me to believe that it was all destroyed. On top of weeks of miserable migraine, that was disheartening. I had some very cool stuff ~ as in my youtube crack cocaine footage ~ in that favorites and it is all gone now. That did nothing to ease my migraine.

Also, all of my pictures are gone. Yeah, that would be the pictures that I found as I tooled around on http://www.weheartit.com/ and thought they were cool, so I saved them. It would also be all of my crush photos of Marshall Mathers. Misery actually found one of him smiling (sort of) that I really liked and it is now in the wind. Dust. Smoke. Ash. Gone. I am totally kicking myself in the ass for not saving it into photobucket or someplace more safe than my computer. Really kicking myself hard.



Clearly, this is not the picture. See how sad Marshall looks. He shares my unhappiness over the lost photo....

Well, then there is my book. I do believe that most of it is on my flash drive. And when that got full a CD. I think I saved The End onto the CD. I just can't bring myself to look, because if it isn't there I know that I won't be able to bring myself to go back and write it again. I will trash can the whole project. Yeah, it is over 100,000 words and I will just trash can it. Because The End is like 25,000 words that I wrote a long time ago and I didn't print onto a hard copy (like the rest of the book) and I just don't have it in me to rewrite it. So, if it is truly gone. It is done. All of it. Done.



Besides, I have bigger fish to fry. Once I get this stupid migraine under control. I have to get onto a hosting site, my email out, and get my website working. I don't have time to cry about my novel. Or my pictures. Or my favorites. Or everything else that just got wiped off my computer. None of it. No time for crying.

On the positive side, I managed to read enough of your blogs to have HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY ready to go. It is only Tuesday. I am very proud of that. I have no pictures to post with this post. Yet. But, I have Thursday wrapped up with a freaking bow. It is 8:30 and I haven't eaten dinner. That isn't so great. I should probably take care of that. Pictures first. Then dinner. And tomorrow I will check on the status of The End of my book. I know that is procrastinating. I can only take so much bad news at one time. Right now I am hopeful that I saved it. I want to cling to that for one more day.



One last thing: last time I was out of the house with my friend Anthony, we went to the bookstore and I bought Marshall Mathers' autobiography. Read it in one night. Learned a lot. I am sure I will read it again. Watched 8 Mile. I was kind of disappointed. Marshall was good in it. I just didn't really like the ending. It felt authentic and all. I guess I wanted something more concrete for Rabbit at the end. It was too open. I don't know. I also have thoughts about that sex scene in the factory, but I should probably keep them to myself. Aw hell. I don't keep anything to myself. I sure hope that he lasts longer than a minute in real life or that is damn disappointing. I know that it has done horrible things to my fantasy life. I guess that is why I really didn't like 8 Mile. It has totally screwed up my fantasy life. One minute sex just doesn't do it for me. Like I said, very disappointing. On the plus side, if that was his real butt, he has the cutest bubble butt. Seriously. He totally hides it wearing those athletic pants that are three sizes too large. When a man has a fine behind, he really should make use of it. My ex had NO rear at all. He was flat back to knees. It was sad. When you have a nice round tush, work it. Although, I repeat, that one minute scene in the factory is competing hard against the cute butt. I am not sure which image is winning. Actually, I am. The one minute thing is something I would love to erase from my mind.



I never was a big watcher of The Nanny, but I do remember this one line where she said, "Just give me a minute to get that thought out of my head. (dramatic pause) Nope. I'm just gonna have to live with it." I thought that was hilarious. And I have been known to use it if the occasion warrants it in real life. And that pretty well sums up me and the factory scene. Are you bored with this yet? Me either. But, I will stop.

Okay, I am really needing to eat something. So, I am about to go on a picture hunt. Then I will spell check. Then I will post. You will know that I am not dead, but I am somewhat deranged. In other words, everything is pretty much same old, same old.


all images found at www.weheartit.com