Better Than Dead

1. All writing lists are highly subjective. Including this one.

They tell you more about what the writer of the list has found useful than about what will be effective in your own process. This is true even of professionals with a long track record. There are exceptions to this as in all things, and humor is always an exception, but many top ten lists are about speaking forcefully and eschewing all counter-argument. The absolute and incontrovertible fact is, there is no right way to do the process of writing, there is only what is effective for the individual; i.e., that which helps you put words on paper/screen on a regular and ongoing basis.

2. Many people can teach you to be a better writer.

Proper use of grammar, the basics of classic story structure, putting of sentences together in a fashion which is less clunky can even be taught by some top ten lists. Some, in fact, are brilliant. However, only you can hone your craft, and no one can teach you how to find your own individual style. Once you have received the basics from others, you’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting yourself, and that means writing and purging and purging and writing and writing and purging…

3. Top ten lists are a quick and easy way to fill up a blog post or otherwise make a deadline.

Sometimes they mean no more than that.

4. Even people with little to no publishing record, or a sketchy one at best, feel no compunction about taking off into the countryside with top ten lists.

The Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know, The Top Ten Writing Myths, The Top Ten Things I’ve Learned About Top Ten Writing Advice Lists. I rest my case.

5. Many outliners—those who outline all stories before writing them—will tell you it’s the only way to be an effective and successful writer.

Pantsers—those who make their stories up as they go—will point to a long list of successful writers who are pantsers. Some outliners will say those successful writers who call themselves pantsers are lying. Believe whichever side pleases you. It doesn’t matter as long as your method helps you put words on paper/screen on a regular and ongoing basis.

6. Pantsers will sometimes tell you that the only way to be a true artiste is to be an organic writer; i.e., make your stories up as you go along.

Outliners will point to a long list of successful writers who are outliners. Don’t believe either side. Or, rather, believe both. Artistry is in the eye of the beholder, and more importantly, in the heart of the writer.

7. Writing a top ten list is a great way of procrastinating in other areas.

It’s about this point in every list that the compilers begin to realize that coming up with one of these things is not quite as easy as they thought. They begin padding the content and reaching hard for bullet points. Sometimes they list the entries in opposite order, with the top and strongest reason being last, in hopes of hiding the padding from the reader.

8. Some list makers like to speak in self-congratulatory absolutes.

But no one, no one does absolutism better than me. Never forget that. And never begin sentences with But or And.

9. Top ten lists like to bandy the word “pro” around quite a bit.

The implication being that if you can’t see the absolute wisdom being promulgated by the list it’s because you’re a rank amateur.

10. As a writing instructor of mine once said, “Avoid clichés like the plague.”

Top ten lists are a blogging and workshop cliché. They’ve been so overused that each new one adds to the overall ineffectiveness of the whole species. The best of them don’t try to overreach and may actually do some good. The worst spread more confusion in new writers as they are often contradictory and dismissive of Anything Not Me. You know that grain of salt people are always talking about? Take it whenever you see a top ten list on the horizon.

If I was giving serious advice here, I’d say something like, “Make a sincere and concerted effort to learn the basics of story structure and grammar, get yourself some good critiquing partners or join a writers group, listen to and selectively take the advice they give you, and keep writing. That’s the only list you really need to know.”

Of course, that’s a self-serving and absolutist statement, too, so…

In the evenings, I pause in my chores to take the cat on a supervised trip into the back yard. She’s proven time and again she can’t be trusted not to jump over the wall and go walkabouts—which, we suspect, is how she got lost from her previous owners. She does so love the back yard. She’s quite insistent on going out there, fussing and whining until I relent.

I always relent, because my dirty little secret is that I go out there as much for myself as her. Min makes a great excuse. I love to to feel the wind in my face, listen to the birds, watch the gloaming slowly overtake the leaves of trees and plants, golden and syrup-rich. It’s serene, one of the few things in my life right now that fills me up rather than takes away.

So as I sat in my serene place last night, I thought—mostly in a peaceful way—about letting go of so many layers of things. Letting go of fears, letting go of needless guilt and worry, of giving it up to the inexorable ebb and flow of the universe. Not give up on life, you understand. Still in there, still fighting the good fight, just reconciling myself to the fact that the universe will always have its way in the end, no matter what I or anyone else does. What I needed, what I need, is to give up the illusion of control, to make peace with that.

We’re none of us helpless flotsam in the grand old river of the universe. I truly believe things travel along with us, keeping us in the free-flowing stream as long as possible, as much as possible. Little markers of hope and fellow-feeling, sometimes larger things that buffer and stand guard. At times, the smallest things can bring the largest upwelling of hope, allowing us to float free. I don’t know what these things are, where they come from, wouldn’t care to define them in narrow human terms, but they are there as long as we allow them to be. We can’t be protected forever. Nothing can be. Sometimes we’re going to smash into rocks, sometimes we’re going to dip below the surface. Sometimes, when the time has come, we’re going to drown. It’s the nature of the journey. It’s easy to be philosophical about all this when I’m in my serene place. Difficult when I’m having trouble treading water.

From the perspective of my usual chair last night I tried to think of some better way of treading water. I wondered if, along with the illusion of control, I also had an illusion of receiving help along the way. I looked at a patch of ground near the bird bath where a few days ago I’d moved a brick that had been overgrown with moss. I saw a little face, tilted to the side, peering back at me from the fringe of the moss, just before the precipice where the brick had nestled. One little arm was raised as if she swam hard against the pushing tide of moss. I was far enough away to wonder if she might be an optical illusion, a trompe l’oeil composed of bits of leaf matter, blossoms, and hope.

I got up and drew close. There was a face, and a tiny arm, a small ceramic figurine lodged into the ground. When I pulled her out I saw she was a little fairy maiden, sitting on a leaf, resting one elbow on a thimble while the other, the one she’d been swimming with, rested on air where she’d broken off something. She had quite an Alice in Wonderland quality to her face, but I don’t recall ever owning a piece of garden ceramic with such a whimsical girl. I’d swear she hadn’t been there when I moved the brick. My hand was right there two days ago, but I didn’t remember seeing her. Clearly, she’d nestled amongst the moss a while because she was partly embedded in the soil, leaving a hollow when I pulled her free. The moss had surrounded her as it had the brick. Perhaps I’d been too distracted at the time and hadn’t noticed her, or…

I looked up at the faces hanging on the garden wall. Flora and Ivy smiled serenely back at me. Green Man looked grumpy, as always, but I wouldn’t absolutely swear there wasn’t a twinkle in his eyes. Probably the gloaming. Magic things always happen in the heavy, rich light of twilight.

Random quote of the day:

 

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”

—Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

 

“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”

—George Edward Woodberry, Wendell Phillips: The Faith of an American

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.”

—Quentin Crisp, Time Magazine, February 2, 1981

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

 

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

—Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Inspired by matociquala and stillsostrange, here’s the first line meme.

The idea here is that we post the first lines of unfinished stories, on the theory that we might then be inspired to finish a few…

This is something of a Hall of Shame for me as I’ve been working on some of these a good long while, but there isn’t world enough and time these days. These are just the stories that I still consider “active,” in that the interest is still strong to finish them or return to them, and that my imagination, at least, is still working on them. Please note: these are all first draft stage.

ETA: Oops! I forgot this one, maybe because it’s so active in my mind these days that I just assumed it’s next in the queue. (But we’ll see when I get there.)

Carmina (in the same world as Blood Geek):
Carmina woke to the sound of a sword pulled from a scabbard. No, not that. Not this time. Only the wind blowing the loose tent flap up and along the long metal spike which should be staking it to the ground.

“The Bone Handler”:
Sea Eyes liked to take one last, long look at the shining bright ocean before turning away and descending into the earth.

“A Farewell to Dreams” (a brand new one):
Everyone knew, including Shennah, that a dream dreamed too long became a brittle thing, broken by even a passing breeze.

“Green Horse Bone” (unfinished a long time but still alive):
The long bone peeked out from a clump of ferns at the base of a pine as I hiked up Waterman Mountain in Angeles Crest.

“The Heart of the Western Tide” (this one calls strongly) (may be a stealth novel):
It was whispered in the bazaars of places more fortunate than Cromartine that long ago some importunate Cromartinian had angered the tide running along the shore of that sometimes cursed land.

“In the Black” (a spooky sequel to my novel Venus in Transit):
The absence of all light stepped through the door wearing the shape of a man.

“Jim Doesn’t Bring Me Flowers”:
My shadow moved along the wall although I stood still.

Beneath a Hollow Moon (book 3 in the Dos Lunas novel trilogy of which I have completed book two, Venus in Transit):
The body was heavier than they thought it would be.

Blood Boogie (sequel to Blood Geek):
It was their last night on the Mazatlan before heading north again, their very last night of lying on the beach under the stars and making love.

Sympathetic Magic (the novel version of my novella Sealed With a Curse:
As long as Molly kept to the open countryside modern day intrusions wouldn’t interrupt her walk through the past.

The Numberless Stars (book one of the Dos Lunas novel trilogy):
A blue-nosed garden gnome sits on the shoulder of JK, my grandson—one of those real ugly gnomes with a face like a baked apple left in the oven too long.

The Confessions of Thomasina (did for fun, posted a few chapters on the blog, always thought about getting back to it):
I believe that one should not set out to do a great deal of writing unless one has something to say.

Random quote of the day:

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

—Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Natural disasters are a good career move for a man in my line of work.”

—Chris Rose, newspaper columnist, 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina

(Mr. Rose speaks from deep heartbreak and survivor shock here. This book is a harrowing look at the first four months after Katrina. Composed of the columns he wrote for the Times-Picayune after he returned to the city days after the disaster struck, it’s moving, despairing, cynical, with sparks of humor. It details the flailing attempts of the city to cope and struggle back on its feet, and the frightful impact on the poor people often forgotten in the aftermath of the storm.  It’s an amazing piece of journalism, an amazing testament.)

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Critics will call your first poetry collection a “stirring work of utmost courage and beauty,” which just goes to show how much mileage that man from Nantucket has.