Rhyme to write by

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You remember that old wedding rhyme?

Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue.

Well, apparently I'm in a poetic mood. Because I wrote 2 poems yesterday and, as I walking to school, another came to me. It's like the wedding rhyme, only it doesn't forecast a good marriage, but a good book. Here are the ingredients:

Something tiny,
Something huge,
Someone to feel,
Something to do.

Something Tiny

Your book is one of millions, but what makes a book stand out from the madding crowd? Details. A little over a year ago,(REALLY??? Have I been blogging that long?) I posted about the devil in the details. In that post, I talked about how people compared Avatar (the one with blue people, not the one with the benders of different elements) to Pocahontas and Fern Gully. They said it was the same story. But that's not true. There are people who love Avatar and aren't Pocahontas or Fern Gully fans. And vice versa.

Every story has been told before. What can you do to make your story stand out? Can you bring some innovation to the way it's told? (Whatever your feeling about Avatar, it brought advances in on-screen visuals.) Will you offer a new twist to an eternal plot? A new setting? A wildly different character?

Yesterday (or today, depending on where you are in the world) was Valentine's Day. I saw a lot of people on my facebook quarreling about it. Why should we get all up in arms, doing special things for one day, when we don't do anything else all year? It's easy to get caught up in the monumental, but don't forget, it's the little things that matter.

Something Huge

How can you need something tiny, but still need something huge?

Those little things that you tell the story with- they need to fit into a bigger framework. Because the big picture is where people connect with one another. For example, I like quirky books, and I like books that make me think (not at the expense of story), and I like books that make me warm and fuzzy. Now you may like your books dark; or with racing plots; or featuring ruthless, rugged heros. I like YA. Maybe you like sci-fi. But what brings us together is the love of books.

Let's take Twilight as an example. There are lots of little things that aren't my cup of tea in that book. Bella is a bit of a twat, to be quite blunt. And the writing itself is not the most graceful ever. But I love Twilight. And so do millions of others. Why? Prince Charming. Guy appears and whisks girl who was never going to get involved with anyone else off in a typhoon of pure love? Yup, that's as Prince Charming as it comes. We can talk about being practical women of the 21st century until the cows come home. There's still a little piece of most of us that yearns for the 'perfect' love.


A good book taps into one of these overarching ideas. Here are a few more big name examples, accompanied by the big picture idea I see in them:
Harry Potter - good vs evil
The Hunger Games - man vs the establishment
The Duff - self esteem
To Kill a Mockingbird - injustice
Th1rteen R3asons Why - death

Someone to Feel

Books and stories have moved from their earlier purpose of educating to entertaining. In order to entertain, they have to connect. They do that through the people in the story.

I'd like to point out that I said 'feel', not 'love'. Sometimes, you read a book, and you just despise someone. Draco Malfoy, for example - even moreso since the movies.

Also, these days, the people in books need to feel real. If they're not, we won't be drawn into loving or hating them, or pretending that Peeta just kissed us instead of Katniss.

Something to Do

Right-o, now we've got the little things, the big picture, and the people. But we can't just sitting around all day watching Disney movies. (Even if that would be awesome! Curled up against Wesley Rush-from The Duff- swoon!) Now we need to do something.

What we do depends on the type of book. In a murder mystery, we look for clues, and solve the case. In a thriller, or suspense, we might get stalked. Or do some stalking. (Us writer-bloggers are well practised in that art. lol.) In a romance, we'll fall head over heals in love.

At the outset it would seem impossible to mess this part up. But it's the hardest part for me. You see, it's quite possible to spend the entire time doing things, and still have nothing happen. It's like how you realise another year has come and gone and you haven't crossed anything off your list. It's not that you haven't done anything all year. You got out of bed, and showered, and ate, and went to the bathroom- at a bare minimum. But you've done nothing to advance your life.

This is true of books too. What is going on in the book, must advance towards the ultimate end. Would you read a murder-mystery where the detective spent the entire book eating, drinking and making merry and then the criminal turned himself in at the end, out of sheer boredom?

Probably not.

All together now

As I wrote this post, I purposefully avoided calling any of the parts by their technical names, but I'm sure you knew what they were.

Something tiny (hook)
Something huge (theme)
Someone to feel (characters)
Something to do (plot)

Together, I think these make up the list of things a book can do to sell itself. (There are two other major elements of a book. style/voice and setting, but I don't think they can sell a book on their own. You can't pick up on voice until you read the book, since cover copy isn't written by the book's author. And setting only sells a book when it's part of the hook, think Hogwarts.)

Did you find the rhyme useful? Do you agree/disagree? Which of these are you strong/weak on? Which of these, in the absence of recs from friends/bloggers, will make you pick up a book? And which makes you love a book?

Perfect as can be

Don't forget to send your 10 books for inclusion in the 100 Books Every Writer Should Read. (See the ridicky looking jpg over there?----->>>>)

I'd like to thank author, Debi Alper, for being A.MAY.ZING. After the earthquake/tsunami combo prevented me from heading to York fo r my conference, the awesome Debi Alper- who I wasn't even signed up to meet with, but who knew me from the Festival forum- offered to look at the work I'd sent in.

Thanks, Debi!

Anyhow, this most recent critique has got me to thinking about perfecting your writing. I'm not really talking about the individual manuscript level. I mean as an author. I've 'completed' 3 manuscripts, and while the 3rd is leaps, leagues and light years better than the 1st, many of the same flaws exist.

According to Writing Fiction for Dummies, by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, there are 5 pillars of fiction: Style (which I think is what we hear of as voice), story world, character, plot, and theme.

In my (very humble, unaccomplished)opinion, these things sell a book:
Something tiny,
Something huge,
Someone to feel,
Something to do.

In other words, hook, theme, characters, plot. The other two elements that a book needs (but that won't sell a book all on their own) are setting and voice.

So now, we've got 5 or 6 things that you need to polish. I think anyone interested in writing is probably good with 1 or 2 of these naturally. The rest we have to work on. But how do we know which is which?

A. FINDING THE FLAWS

1. Self-examination.

As writers, we're often pre-disposed to seeing our work as all unicorns and rainbows (unicorn-covered rainbows or rainbow-covered unicorns) even. On the other hand, we also swing into 'everything I touch turns to rust' territory pretty often.

BUT

Noone knows your work like you. Pick up an MS you haven't seen in at least 2 months, and re-read it. You'll immediately know which elements are hitting the mark and which make you want to drown yourself in a Strawberry Sundae.

2. Critique partners/beta readers

It's always recommended that you get other writers to look at your work. But in this case, I don't think that's absolutely neccesary. Yes, your friends won't know what to look for, and they won't want to hurt your feelings. Just ask what their favourite things were and what didn't gel so well for them.

You'll probably get answers like:
"I really like how the MC..." (character)
"I thought that it took too long for..." (plot)
"I love that it was about..." (theme)
"I felt like I was in..." (setting)

If you're fortunate enough to have writer-critiquers, then analyse their feedback and see where it fits. If all your criticisms are in the same area, then you've found your weak spot.

3. The pro's

Partial critiques

It's not that hard to have an industry professional do a partial critique of your work. There are lots of opportunities to win on agent and author blogs, you just have to keep your ears to the ground (or web). Also, if you're interested in conferences (which I think you should be- but don't listen to me, since it seems to be impossible for me to leave Japan for a conference), then look for ones which include a chance to have an author/agent/editor look at your work.

Full critiques

These are much harder to come by for free. Still, be vigilant on the web, and you may see a few ops. If you're willing to pay, there are thousands of freelance editors. Please check to make sure they are reputable, and that their credentials are relevant to you.

FIXING THE FLAWS
1. Literature

There are a million and one craft books out there for writers. It's good to get your hands on a general craft book, and probably also one for your genre. But you'll also want to read up on your weak spots. There are two wonderful-looking series on Amazon (ordered a few, but haven't read them yet): Write Great Fiction and Elements of fiction writing.

Also, blogs are not to be discounted. There are lots of authors who are amazing for offering free advice on their blogs. A few of my faves: Shannon Messenger, Angela Ackerman, Elana Johnson and Natalie Whipple.

2. Classes

If you prefer interactive learning (or live in an English-speaking country or a country where your daytime is not the middle of the night in the West) then you can take a class nearby or online. I recommend the Writer's Digest University. Classes are more expensive than literature (up to 10 times as much) but then, they're are more personalised and give you feedback.

Your call.

3. One-offs

Workshops, webinars, conferences etc. There are lots of events ranging from 1 day to 1 week, where you can focus on the elements of writing. Most conferences include a workshop on plot, one on character, one of theme, one on hook, etc. Some-times one-offs are more expensive than classes, sometimes they're less expensive. They are generally larger and less personal.

4. Write

Having identified the problem factors in your fiction, you can actually solve a lot by writing. Every element of your writing gets better with practice. In fact, you can not improve unless you write. (Please remember this and don't become one of those writers who lives on blogs and has read every craft book, but doesn't have a single complete first draft.)

Voice/style, moreso than any other element improves according to how much and how often you write. But with a little thought, and a whole lot of practice, you can improve any of the elements.

And, just in case you wondered, my strongest element- the one I am always complemented on, no matter how bad everything else sucks- is voice. Number 2 is character. Plot is a total washout, and I've never made any effort whatsoever with setting. (Sad, but true.) The next craft book I'll be reading is Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell.

Happy Fixing!

Unknown celebrities

I've got a little secret.

You know Jodi Piccoult? THE Jodi Piccoult who wrote My Sister's Keeper (now a major motion picture- can't wait for the day I can say that about my novel) and a whole long list of other works?

Well, I didn't. Know Jodi Piccoult, that is. Until I was introduced to her last year, by facebook. That's right, if it wasn't for WeRead on facebook recommending her, I would not know who she is (or Marian Keyes or Jennifer Weiner).

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Nopes.

Remember Interview with a Vampire? Of course I knew Interview with a Vampire. Even I'm not that bad. lol. And I'd heard of Anne Rice. But they had a connection? News to me!

Oh, but it gets worse. (Can it get worse, you wonder?)

You know Neil Gaiman? Yes, yes. That Neil Gaiman. I had never even heard his name til January! I didn't know he wrote Coraline til last month and I only discovered on Thursday that he wrote Stardust!

What rock have I been under? What huge literary rock?

Right now, I'd love to blame Japan. After all, you lose your Western focus out here. They don't overload you with pop culture like in the US. (With the exception of J-pop and anime.) I legitimately didn't know about Twilight because I was in Japan. I read Twilight because I was in JFK and bored. By sheer coincidence.

But Jodi Piccoult? Anne Rice? Neil Gaiman? Definitely around before 2008.

So how did I miss them? I guess it's a mixture of things. But the biggest is probably this:

I forget the names of authors I've never read, and I never noticed writers, screenwriters, directors, etc in movies. Just the actors.

That said, I notice all the actors. Case in point, last week my neighbour read somewhere that straight actors are more likely to be cast in gay roles than gays in straight. To confirm this, we tried pulling up a list of gay actors on wikipedia.

Me: Omigosh! David Odgen Stiers!
Colleagues: blank stares
Me: Cogsworth!
Colleagues: more blank stares
Me: The clock in Beauty and the Beast
Colleagues: You know the name of the clock in Beauty and the Beast?
Me: Yeah, don't you?

I know actors like the back of my hand. Off the top of my head, I can tell you who did the singing and talking voices for young and grown Simba, for example.

But yet, these acclaimed writers slipped through the cracks.

I realised something last week (as I was spluttering at myself for never realising that Neil Gaiman wrote Stardust). If I'm to call myself a writer, I have a certain responsibility- not just to know of these authors because someone I know happens to mention them, or because something they did crosses my path.

It's my responsibility to be familiar with them. To read something by each of the greats. To know how Stephen King's style is different from Toni Morrison's. (That is like the weirdest comparison ever...) To internalise them to the point that I know what I like in their writing and what I don't like. (Please lightning, don't strike me.)

And the biggest responsibility of all? To seek them out. Just because I've never crossed paths with an author's work, doesn't give me an excuse to not know them.

Reporters don't sit in the news room waiting for news to jump into their laps.
Avon ladies aren't relaxing in their living rooms, waiting for customers to knock on their doors.
Doctors aren't lounging around the hospital waiting for patients to... Wait a minute... :)

Point being, stay informed.

Could you imagine? Being interviewed by Oprah and she wants to discuss how my themes are similar to Neil Gaiman's and I'm like "Who?".

NEVER.SELL.ANOTHER.BOOK!

PS. Don't forget to check out my contest.
And stay tuned tomorrow for an interview with the author of Passing For Black, Linda Villarosa

Lost in Tokyo

Let me say first off that if getting lost were a video game, I would have the high score. Worldwide.

I got myself thoroughly lost on Sunday night. Going to the hostel that I've stayed at like 8 times. Sad.

The hostel's in Asakusa, Tokyo. Asakusa is convenient because it's at the end of two subway routes, Asakusa line and Ginza.

Train stations in Japan usually have several exits. And coming out the wrong one can severely throw you off. In Sapporo station, there's like a mile between the Northernmost and Southernmost exits. Ginza line, Asakusa Station is particularly tricky, since it's the end of the line, and you can come in on either track, and have different exits depending on which track you pull into.

So I get off the train, and there's the stairs for Exits 5 to 8 right in front of me. I'm only familiar with exits 3 and 4 on this track, but I have to go against the flow of people- not fun in Tokyo- to get to those stairs. So I just take the ones in front of me. I'll figure it out. Right?

Wrong.

I come out in another train station, which I had never noticed before. The next day, I see the building and realise that if I had come out of any of the other 3 sides, I would have seen something familiar. Of course, I came out the 4th side.

I hate looking lost. Especially in places I should know. So I just kinda picked a direction and headed in it.

Let me paint a quick picture of Asakusa for you. Asakusa is right on the Sumida River. One side of the river is Taito-ku (like a township), the other is Sumida-ku. The trains are all in Taito-ku, right on the river. My hostel is in Sumida-ku. There are like 5 bridges that you can see from the Asakusa Station (Asakusa Line). Each is a different colour. Once you find the river and can see these bridges, you know exactly where you are. And you can't lose a whole river. Right?

Wrong.

As I walk past Asakusa Shrine- which is freaking huge, and I'd never see at night, and is all pretty with lights, but too far off to take a good pic- I realise I'm going in the wrong direction. But I hate to look lost. So rather than head back to the station and coming out another side of the building, I decide to double back by tatking two lefts. One left in, I find a map. Confirming that I'm going the wrong direction.

But where I thought I was headed away from the river, I had actually been walking parallel, and now I am actually headed away, and I have no choice but to turn around. I find myself at the river. At a bridge I've never actually seen before. But I can see the two bridges I'm familiar with off in the distance. The sensible thing to do here would be to walk along the river and cross either the Azumabashi (red bridge) or the Komagatabashi (blue bridge and a straight shot to the hostel), but I continue across the blue-green bridge, Kototoibashi. I figure it's crossing the river parallel to the others, it must come out in the same place. Right?

Wrong.

When I reach the other side of the river, I'm on a flyover and I can see the road I want to be on, but I can't get there. Then I find some stairs, but they go down into this dark park. And while crime isn't a problem here, who wants to walk through a park with no lights? I'll just keep going and take the first right, it has to lead back to the road I cross on the way to the hostel. Right?

Wrong.

I've been walking for a while, thinking I should be seeing something familiar by now, when I pass a building with Higashi Komagata 1 on the side. Yay! My hostel is in Higashi (East) Komagata. You know how New York is a grid with all the streets running one way, and all the avenues running another? And if you're on 9th, you're a road away from 9th, and so you just have to figure out which way and go a road over. Tokyo's kinda like that, only in blocks. The good thing is that if you find yourself in the right district, you can only be a few blocks away. The bad thing is that since it's a square, Block 5 might be North of Block 12 and nowhere near Block 6. But I figured if I keep heading this direction, I'll get there. Right?

Wrong.

Suddenly the buildings say Honjo instead of Higashi Kamagata. I start wondering if the Honjo is the name of the yellow bridge which is one over from the blue one. But I can't turn back, because then I'd look lost. Never mind there's noone on the street to see, because it's 10 o' clock on Sunday night, and even though the next day is a bank holiday, the few people that are out and about or on the Taito side of the bridge, which is the happening side.

I'm pretty sure by now that the road I'm on has somehow circumvented my hostel, and take a right turn. It's surprisingly dark. Japan has this thing against street lights or something. Unless a road is going to have heavy traffic on it at 2 am, they don't seem to think street lights are necessary. I'm still in Honjo, but due to the Block system, I can't tell if it's worse or better. Oh, a sign for Komagatabashi (blue bridge). Thank God! I take another right. Can't go wrong with the sign. Right?

Right! And about damn time too. I'm still grumbling at myself for not going back to the station and starting over, since I don't know I'm on the right road yet. And I'm wishing I could see the "Great Flaming Turd" because that would be a great landmark, if it wasn't on the shortest building in the area. Suddenly I'm on my corner. But by now, I'm so offset, I decide to go to the hostel bar.


The "Great Flaming Turd," on top of the Kirin Beer building. It can only be seen when you're on the river, so it's pretty useless as a landmark. But it's great as a laughingstock.

Turns out pretty well. I chitchat with a bunch of workers from the hostel chain (5 properties in Tokyo) and even make a facebook friend!

And of course, as I make my way home, it occurs to me all the ways this is applicable to writing.

1. When you write your first draft (for pantsers) or your outline (for plotters) you sometimes end up a little off the beaten track. But while you're out in the boondocks, you just might discover a really cool shrine, and decide to come back and visit it.

2. As writers, sometimes it's tempting to include everything. To wander a mile to the East, without a reason to be there. But the reader is interested in getting back to the hostel. They're tired and have to be up early in the morning, and would rather see the shrine when they actually plan on seeing the shrine, rather than when they'd planned on being curled up with a Meg Cabot, nodding off.

3. Sometimes there's an easier way to do things. Do you need to have the MC enroll in a cooking class to show that he/she is a culinary connoisseur? Or could you show that in the obsessively detailed descriptions of meals or the fact that they eat at a different ethnic restaurant once a week? If you can have them come out the Azumabashi exit instead, then you'll only have to walk 10 blocks instead of 50. Your feet won't hurt and you'll be able to wake up on time the next day.

ULTIMATE MORAL: Writers should get lost. Often. You can't learn anything new in a place you know like the back of your hand. Readers are all about the destination. Don't get me wrong, they' love a pretty journey. But going from America to Canada via Mexico probably wouldn't thrill them. Unless there's a really really really good reason for hitting up Mexico first, and they'd actually planned on going there.

You Pick the Agent- A la Mary Kole

There's something aspiring authors often forget in the agent search. You're the client, and technically the agent works for you. I'm not saying that to go on some kind of a power trip. It's just that because of the huge imbalance between the number of aspiring writers and the number of literary agents and because of the fact that you have to go through an audition, the agent-author relationship often looks skewed towards the agent. At least from the outside looking in.

Any colour - so long as it's black (Henry Ford)

Skewing the author-agent relationship can result in an "any agent will do" mentality. The truth is any agent will not do. An agent who reps only crime and horror will not work for your YA romance.And being happy with any agent is how people get tricked by disreputable people posing as agents.

The Mary Kole connection

In her presentation, "Slushpile Secrets," Ms Kole touched on the process of choosing an agent. But even before I arrived, the Agent Day reminded me that it's not just "any agent". Meeting Ms Kole was an amazing experience for me, but I know I will probably never query her. Why? Because I think I may write novels for adults at some point. And Ms. Kole doesn't reps adult.

If my query list was made up of "agents of awesome" as opposed to agents who are a good fit, then it would have all the agents who have amazing blog and twitter presences: Mary Kole, Janet Reid, Nathan Bransford (even though he's no longer an agent- he's that awesome). None of these are actually a fit.

Eenie meenie

So what should you consider when thinking about who to query?

1. Look inside yourself.

What genre do you write? What tone do you write with? Who's your audience? Do you have any desire to write something different at any point? The key to making a match is knowing who you are as a writer.


2. What do you need?

Would you appreciate someone who's very editorial? Should your agent call you for a birthday? Do you prefer all online correspondance, or would you like a phone call once in a while? What help do you need, if any building your career? Big agency? New York (/London)?


3. Keep your eyes open


Think of this as a passive sort of research. It's simple. Make notes every time a potential agent crosses your path. If you're hanging out at WriteOnCon, and there's an agent on a panel that reps what you write, but you've never heard of him/her, make a note. If you read a book, and it's absolutely awesome, and you think "when my book grows up, it's going to be just like this one," make a note.

4. Research and compare

It's relatively easy -especially in the case of US agents- to find lists of exactly what agents are looking for. But huge genres are not the only things to consider. Just because an agent reps paranormal doesn't mean your paranormal is right for them. Just because your book fits with that agent, doesn't mean your styles will mesh.

You should match agents up to all the things you considered in sections 1 and 2. It's okay if an agent misses on a few - compromise is a part of life- but you may want to rethink querying someone who only lands in the same place for a single category. Finding out a lot of these things will take some effort. Connecting with agents and/or their clients on social media, attending conferences or workshops they give, using agent-finding resources on websites and in books,  reading their clients' work, etc.

It's a long process looking at all this information, so I recommend that you start before you're ready to query. Keep a book or computer file with agent names. Record if they're a "perfect match", what things don't gel with you, what agencies they work with, and anything else that jumps out at you. At this stage you really don't need to think about submission requirements unless they are going to be restrictive, like mailing a printed manuscript across the world, might be problematic.


5. We're all in this together
(Any day I get to quote HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL is a good day. Just sayin. )

At the end of the day, remember this is a partnership. You do have to "work for" your agent. You will submit things to her. He may push you so hard you think you'll break. She may give you back editorial notes with so much red ink you'll feed like you've bled all over them.

BUT

They will (or should) do it for your sake.  All those things and many more.

Pick an agent that works for you.

Character Building: Body Issues

I was sick last week, and 2 weeks before I had the government medical exam. Both of these got me to thinking about physical issues. We all have them. Here are some that you can use with your characters.

Esteem Issues

If you're writing YA like me, or Women's/Chick Lit (as I hope to some day), then body issues can be a big deal. For females, breast size and butt size are probably the biggest issues. I see breast size issues a fair deal in YA. For guys, I'm not sure what the biggest physical issue would be. I imagine that it's anything that makes a guy feel "uncool" - gangly limbs, stick-y out-y ears, etc. Remember, people can get obsessed about the weirdest things too. We all know people who freak about something we consider tiny.

Here are a few issues, you might give your characters:

Breast size - like I said, a common issue.
Butt size - especially among Blacks and Latinos, who like a big butt, and among Asians, who may like a small one.
Other sizes - noses, mouths, eyes, ears, hands, fingers, toes, etc - too big, too small, too long, my thighs are too big
Shapes - a body part that is shaped funny, like my little toenails stick straight up in the air
Unevenness - one foot/breast/ear/eye/etc is bigger/longer than the other

When you've decided on your character's insecurity, be sure to follow all the threads. For example, my thighs are to big, so I hardly wear shorts. Now, if you're writing a character who hates her thighs, you don't need to say she doesn't wear shorts, but you probably won't write a whole bunch of scenes parading her around in Daisy Dukes.

Also, be sure to sprinkle in the insecurities. You don't want your character to sound to whiny. And if you have a lot f characters with a lot of far-fetched issues, it may seem contrived.

Physical Issues

In addition to body issues, there are also issues which are purely physical. For example I have bad veins, so anything involving needles takes an inordinate amount of time, and I end up like a pin cushion.

Obviously, there are huge physical issues you can inflict upon your characters- disabilies, diseases, etc. But there are smaller problems that people face. Here are a few physical issues that your characters might have to deal with:

Bad veins
Heightened/lowered sense of sight/hearing/taste/smell/touch
Sensitivity to... -I'm sensitive to electricity. When we did the medical exam EKG, I could feel the current. I get shocked by walls and doors in winter. People can be sensitive to all sorts of things.
Migraines/headaches
Various aches and pains
Colour Blindness
Tone deafness
Proneness to colds/ gastro/ throat infections
Allergies

Some physical issues will affect a character every day - like colour blindness, others -like my bad veins- only matter in a specific set of circumstances.

The physical is a huge part of your character. Make sure that you don't overlook or underpaint it when building characters.

You'll catch no fish with just a hook

I was poking around on Goodreads the other day -are you on Goodreads? If you're not you so should be. Find me as Claire Dawn and friend me!- and I saw a review which really struck a nerve.

"It just did not live up to it's potential."

What they really mean by potential here is "hook". A hook is, simply put, anything that's going to grab your reader.

The best (or worst, depending on how you want to look at it) example of a great hook gone to waste is the movie THE LAST AIRBENDER. It's hook (as is the hook of many movies these days) is that it first had a large following in another medium- in this case a cartoon called AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, in my opinion, the best non-Japanese anime-style cartoon ever made. They started with a great plot, and a huge fanbase, and somehow managed to make a movie so bad that I found myself thinking, "Damn, this screenplay is aweful. I could do better!" DURING the movie. If you have time to think about screenplay (other than being a film student) during a movie, that is not a good thing.

Some books have hooks so individual that they sell on hook alone.

Many memoirs fall into this category. For example, if someone turned up a stack of previously unread letters by George Washington, and they were put in a book, it would be a best seller. The hook is that George Washington wrote them and it doesn't really matter if they're about his daily diet or his favourite vacation spot. The hook is that strong.

But there are also novels which work on hook alone.

- Some hooks work on originality. Twilight, when it was new, was a rare find of a teen falling in love with a vampire.
- Some hooks link a new tale to an older, more well-known one. Ella, Enchanted is a re-telling of Cinderella.
- Some hooks cater to a niche market. MG series tend to do this well: Baby Sitters' Club (for girls who babysit), Saddle Club (for kids who like horses), Royal Ballet School Diaries (for girls who do/like ballet).

But there is a danger in having a really good hook: the temptation to let the hook do all work.

I find it's most common (and even accepted) in niche movies. I love dance movies, but when I watch a dance movie, I suspend the part of me that cares about plot and character development. The same is often true of sports movies. But every once in a while, one will come along that does everything and it will be so, so good. (Watch THE BLINDSIDE if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Ways to correct this problem:

1. Ask yourself- Would anyone like this book if:

the Love Interest were a regular guy and not a werewolf-fairy-ghost-of-Henry-III?
they didn't know beforehand it was based on Star Trek?
it wasn't about (insert obscure niche here) that never gets the time of day in novels?

2. Careful scene-by-scene editing.

A hook is a very high-level, overall concept. It is featured at every level, but is usually only the star when looking at the work as a whole. Keeping your individual scenes tight means you're not depending on hook alone.

3. Plot and character development.

There are several ways to do this. You can draw out the plot arcs, write out the major plot points, summarize every chapter, etc. You just need to make sure you have a plot, and it's not mundane or predictable.

For characters, you want to make sure they are more than pieces on the chess board. If your hook is that it's a re-telling, make sure that they bring something new to the page.

4. Add something unrelated.

Holly Thompson's ORCHARDS is about a girl trying to deal with the guilt of knowing that she might have been able to stop someone from committing suicide. But that's not all that is going on. Kana, the MC, is half-Japanese, and her mother sends her to Japan to reflect after the suicide. By adding this, ORCHARDS is no longer just another book about suicide.

What other ways can you think of to ensure that you're not just dependent on hook alone?

Review, Giveaway -32

The winner of one copy of

CRACKED UP TO BE

is...

Natasha Areena!

Congrats Natasha! Email me your full name and address at muchlanguage(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll get it right to you.

FIRST THE BAD NEWS

I'm going to be discontinuing the weekly giveaways at the end of August. Honestly, it's a bit exhausting. I have to read up to 3 books each week to figure out what to giveaway. I have to write a review. Or contact an author, get a response, and write an interview. And then there's actually imputting addresses and ordering prizes. I knew it would be tiring, but I promised myself to stick with it if I had a lot of interest. But most weeks, it's 5 or less entries.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS

There's another reason why I'm discontinuing the weekly giveaways after August. I have some really, really special I'm going to do in September. One lucky, lucky person- follower or not- will have the chance to win HUGE. And YOU, my fantastic Honey-bunches, are going to get to choose who that person is. STAY TUNED! Something wicked, this way comes!

THIS WEEK

Firstly, the cover blurb is awesome. You immediately get a taste of Brooklyn Pierce. She makes bad decisions- except not really. I mean you wouldn't think having a party would end in burning down a model home, right?

Brooklyn is so convinced that everything she touches will turn to mush that she decides to put her entire life in the hands of her blog readers, and promises to follow whatever decisions they make. It actually takes quite a while to get to the whole "start a blog" bit, and normally I hate when books do that- advertise something on the back and then there's a whole chunk that doesn't do it. Except Brooklyn's story pulled me in so completely that I wasn't impatient.

Add in a stellar supporting cast- a best friend that's a bit of a twat, the requisite super sexy love interest, a new friend and a crabby old lady- and you've got yourself a winner!

Like Brooklyn, I make a lot of bad decisions. To win this week, tell me:
What's your relationship with decision-making? Do you like it? Do you make good decisions? How do you react to the bad ones?
This week is followers only.
Contest is open until Wednesday 11.59 pm EST and international as per usual.

Good luck!

Hash tag edits

Born December 12
Gustave Flaubert
Sammy Davis Sr.
Frank Sinatra
Bob Barker
Bill Nighy
Shelia E.
Maiyim Bialik!!!! (I am so freaking over this!!!)

Born December 13
Christopher Plummer
Tamora Pierce
Steve Buscemi
Jamie Foxx
Taylor Swift

Go Check out Beth Revis' Epic Contest of Epic. It's, well, epic!

I know they say you should let your MS simmer for like a month and all. I will. At some point :)

I've been poking around in the first 5 pages, since I had the Creative Exchange with SCBWI Tokyo on Saturday night. I'll let you know how that went. Probably not 'til after I'm home though.

And next are the hashtag edits.

One of the articles recommended by YA Highway on one of the Field Trip Friday's was an article about using hashtags (#) in your writing. If you're in the middle of a creative run, where the words are coming so fast that you can't think, and you come across something that stumps you, don't stop. Instead put a hashtag and note.

It helped a lot during nano. Like when I needed to know about the mating rituals of peacocks, but I was trying to knock off 1,000 words in half hour on Write or Die.

After you finish your spurt or your draft, or when you're suffering from writer's block, you can search your document for hashtags, and look up all you need then.

So, really hashtag edits don't even count as an edit. It's still technically the first draft. I'm not breaking the rules :)

I made up an edit list since nano, too.

1. Hashtag edits

2. Plot edits
My MC drives at 15, despite the fact that you can't get a permit 'til 16 in Barbados. Plot hole the size of Rhode Island- which might be an itty-bitty state, but is a freaking huge plot hole!

3. Setting edits
I am not a fan of description. It slows the plot down. But what's the point of setting your book somewhere exotic, like my home island, if you're not going to use it. So I'm dedicating a whole edit to working my setting into the action.

4. Character edits
Would MC really do this? Or that? Would LI respond like this? Or like that? Why are BFF1 and BFF2 so similar? These are problems I'll tackle on this edit.

5. Line-by-line
La recherche éternelle pour le mot juste - the eternal search for the right word. This is probably going to be the longest of my edits. And the one that will send me chasing my own tail.

And then a re-read. And the book will be ready! For something. Not sure yet what :)

And, yes, I'm aware you can tackle more than one thing in an edit pass, but I'd rather not. I'm old-fashioned like that. I use my camera for pictures, and my calculator for multiplying. My phone can do both, but not as well or as easily. When I multi-task, life stays exciting, but I'm not as good as I could be.

And my Baby deserves the best!

Oh, also I figured out a name for my WIP.

DEAL WID IT

It implies that there's an issue that needs dealing with AND
It's a common idiom, so it has a lighter, funner tone AND
By using 'wid' instead of 'with' it implies a dialect, and my book is set in Barbados.

I think it's perfect!

For now at least :)

INSANITY!!! Day 2- Issues in YA edition

When I was in secondary school, a group called MADD released a calypso called Saturday Night. MADD is known for it's comedic tunes. but this one was a lot heavier than usual. It was about a 15 year old boy and his 13 year old girlfriend. They go to a fete (party) and someone steps on his toe (or was it him stepping on someone's toe). They almost fight but a friend holds him back. The guy waits for him outside the club, and it turns into a bloodbath.

A section of the public got up in arms over the song. They ragged on the relationship between the boy and girl. And the "glorification of violence".  And some of them said that it should never be on the radio because things like that don't happen.

I wondered where those people lived. Yes, Barbados is a tropical paradise, but we have crime too. And we definitely have teens engaging in sexual relationships. I was a teen at the time. I'd seen it with my own eyes.

Here in Japan, I do a huge detailed medical every year. It's mandatory for every government employee. They test things I don't even understand in English. But they don't test for AIDS. My neighbour last year says it's because Japan likes to pretend there isn't any here. Same deal with homosexuals. Ask the average Japanese citizen, there are no Japanese gays. I know way too many gay foreigners with Japanese boyfriends to believe that.

What do these 3 things have in common? For me, they are reminders: Just because you pretend something doesn't happen, doesn't make it any less true.

Every once in a while, someone- a parent, a school board, a committee- will try to ban a YA book on the grounds of some horrible circumstance in the book. I don't like the circumstances any more than they do, but the fact is that these things happen. And people need to know that. And the people they're happening to, need support.

Today, I'll be giving away two books.

Jay Asher's Th1rteen R3asons Why- I feel like this book affected me more than any other book. Ever. It deals with the aftermath of a suicide, and highlighted one thing above all else in my mind: you never know how bad someone else is hurting.

But i Love Him by Amanda Grace (Mandy Hubbard)- What I loved about this book was the reverse chronology, aimed at stopping the reader from judging the protagonist who is abused by her boyfriend.

To win simply comment and tell me:

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE TEENS FACE TODAY?

Rules:
Open until 11.59 pm EST Tuesday
Open internationally to followers and non followers alike.

Don't forget to send your list of 10 books every writer should read to enter the Friday Grab Bag.

Why Books?

Welcome to all the new followers. I've trickled past 100 now, and while I don't put that much stock in the numbers, it's nice to know someone's listening. *waves*

There's something that's been on my mind for a while. Before banned books week even. I think it started with the Ellen Hopkins Texas mess. I'd heard of book censorship before, but it doesn't affect me like it does Americans (and to lesser extent Brits)-because where I come from that's not how we roll- so I had to be entwined in the online community for it to be more to me than a passing news article. Anyhow the thing that's been bugging me is "Why Books?"

Other media have this progressive partial censoring going on. I'm not a big fan of cussing. I'd never even said a cussword til after my teen years. One of my best friends swore- and still swears- like a pirate that disturbed a beehive, so I wasn't sheltered. Still, it didn't float my boat. I don't mind the well placed choice word or two, but there are some tv shows and movies where it seems the only adjectives they know are 4 letter ones.

But when a movie has cussing, that's no reason not to show it on tv. They just insert *BLEEP* here. And there may even be "clean" flim versions. For example, growing up, I had a fave movie that I used to watch on TNT. I watched this movie maybe 30 or 40 times on TNT over the course of several years. I do not recall a single *BLEEP*. Then I bought a copy of the DVD. And if you could find a 10 second stretch of dialogue with no cussing, you found a lot.

Same thing happens in music. Whole songs are hardly ever censored for sparse cussing. They just *BLEEP* it. In fact, some artists even produce "cusless" versions of their album for sale. You'll find the "clean" right next to the "warning: explicit lyrics" too, so it's not like you don't know. Still, that's okay somehow.

But not when it comes to books.

Noone even suggests you produce *BLEEP*ed versions.
Noone suggests you put a "Warning: explicit material" or "Graphic Violence" sticker on them.
Noone suggests that you give them a rating "PG13"

It's all or nothing.

Well, today for the first time, I've actually come up with two reasons for that.

1. BOOKS ARE OLDER
Movies have been a round a little over a hundred years. Recorded music, a little more than that. Written works have existed since almost the beginning of time.
Books originated in a time before there was a concept of moderation. It was all or nothing in everything, everywhere. The world wasn't round, so you couldn't gradually curve around it. It was flat, you'd just fall off the edge.

So books with "objectionable" content were burned in mass. Because the release of one of these books into society, would cause the downfall of everything. -Insert overly dramatic music here.-

As a linguist, I studied the burning of early English language bibles in Translation history. Bibles were written in Latin. Only the well educated spoke and read Latin. So by calling English bibles heresy and burning them, the masses still had to come to the educated for their religion.

Yeah, all the wrong reasons even back then.

Anyhow, point being- all or nothing.

2. BOOKS DON'T HAVE WIDESPREAD FINANCIAL IMPACT

Yes, yes, the publishing industry. Books cost them a lot. But who else?

What plays on radio and tv has huge implications because of ADVERTISING. I don't like to think that advertisers call all the shots, but they do a fair share. For example, on occasion, a singer will get themselves in serious trouble. And then you'll hear their radio appearances being cancelled, because the stations are afraid of losing advertisers.

The reverse is also true. If they universally censored all artists who cussed, rap and hiphop stations probably couldn't exist. (You can probably count on one hand the number of artists with a major following that have never cussed in a song- okay, maybe not that bad, or well, maybe...) And then all those advertisers would not have a way to reach that demographic. Tons of clothing stores, and hair product producers and lawyers, and doctors, would all go out of business for losing their market.

Nothing of the sort happens with a censored book. It's just an author, a publisher, an agent, and a bookstore or ten.

What about you? Why else do you think that the sort of censorship in the book world only happens here?

Out to All

I believe "out to all" might be a Bajan term, so I'll define it for you. It means "fast as possible." For example:

"Wuh of course he get in a accident, he had the car out to all."

or, in Standard English.

"I'm not surprised he had an accident, driving that fast."


As, I mentioned last week, I've decided to write a book in a week (approx.). My 4 day total is 17,000 words-ish, way below where it should be, and my brain is fried today, so I've taken it off. But whatever else happens the week (approx.) I've realised a couple of things.

1. MY NATURAL SPEED

I've mentioned time and again that I have two speeds: off and whoosh! And yet, I spend so much of my time trying to fit into a world somewhere in between there.

Nanowrimo is a 30 day challenge in November to write a 50,000 novel. Lots of writers think that's too insane a pace. Some go as far as to put it down. "What can you write in 30 days that was even worth writing?" I've done it 4 years, and "won" every time. In the in-between times, I've tried my hand at novelling pursuits. I think this is the first time I've passed 10K outside Nano.

Why should it matter? The fact that I'm able to crank out 13,000 words in a day (that only happened once) should be a good thing. Why is it that I slow myself down to a "normal pace?" It got me to thinking about life in general. I'm likely to just jump into "huge" things.

Like, India. I was listening to an online radio thingy and this one gospel song made me feel like I should be helping the human race somehow. A message box popped up: you've got mail. It was a program to go to India and build houses for Dalit people. In a split second I knew I was going. Technically I didn't have the money, and I literally ate ramen all month, but I got there, and it's a trip I will never forget. But many people would have weighed options and stuff. And some of my friends did criticise me for making a split second decision that affected my eating habits.

The song that led me to India. Give Me Your Eyes, by Brandon Heath.

But this is my natural speed. I've been apologetic for it, and I probably will be again. Right now, however, I realise that I can only be who I am. And this is who I am. This is how I operate.

I remember one episode of Alladin, the animated series, where Alladin was fleeing, and asked genie to turn into something with legs. Genie turned into a table. Alladin (exasperated) asked for "legs that move," and the table started to gallop. Alladin's assessment? "Whatever works!"

If a process, or a lifestyle works for you, it works for you. I don't believe that I get the right to critique anyone else's choices. I shouldn't worry so much about making mine conform.

2. WORK HARD, PLAY HARD

Chris Baty, the founder of Nanowrimo (man, I sound like a commercial), wrote a book called NO PLOT, NO PROBLEM. In that book, he reccommends NOT taking time off to write. When he took a sabbatical from life to have writing time, he found himself doing everything but. "Ooo, look at this thing that's been broken for like 5 years, and I haven't needed it all that time, wouldn't now be a great time to fix it?"

I've found, in the last 4 days, that the (sort-of) inverse is also true. Fitting in 5,000 words a day has somehow pushed all the other parts of my life to the extreme. (Except house-cleaning. House-cleaning for me is like that one seed in your class science project that just didn't germinate. lol) So, I write 5,000 words, and I teach all my classes, and I read blogs, and I update Facebook, and read Twitter, and watch a movie, and catch up my anime, and read novels. Seriously, I have watched a movie EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. since I started my writing project.

It's counter-intuitive, but it seems to me that the relationship between time and time usage is inversely-proportional. The more time you use, the more time you seem to have. Actually, what probably happens is this: being super-productive in one area, pushes you to be more effective in others. Even on the internet, the world's most notorious time-suck, I'm not spending my time faffing around. I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing.

I guess the lesson here is that it is hard to make time to write. But it's possible that making that time, can make you more efficient in the hours your not at the desk.

It's Monday, that's the contents of my mind.

Psyched! MBTI

This is the last instalment of Psyched! (At least for a while...) To see the earlier posts, check out:

Psyched! Sensual Perception
Psyched! Learning Style

Today we'll be doing a little overview of personality type as defined by the MBTI. For more information on MBTI, hit up the wikipedia article.

MBTI stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and it's a psychometric instrument wihch seperates people into sixteen personality types. It's the most widely used instrument for personality testing.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The research started out with Carl Jung, who determined that people perceived things in one of two ways and made decisions in one of two ways. He then added that they did these things either in an internal or external way.

A mother daughter pair, Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabelle Briggs Myers, started with Jung's research and determined 4 dichotomies. They were originally meant to help women enterign the work force for the first time to identify what sort of war-tim jobs they'd be best suited for.

THE DICHOTOMIES

E/I - Extroverted/ Introverted

The first thing to remember about the Myers-Briggs pairs is that the terms used have definitions which may not agree with their layman definitions. So just because you can be the life the of the party does not make you an extrovert, and reading a lot does not make you an introvert.

This pair has more to do with how you relate to the world and where you get energy. When an extrovert is tired, he/she needs to do something: go to a social event, a class, etc. An exhausted introvert needs to spend time in reflection: read a book, paint a picture, etc.

Extroverts act first
Introverts think first

Extroverts are energised by being with people but drained by being alone
Introverts are drained by being with people but energised by being alone

Extroverts prefer many interactions (ie many acquaintances)
Introverts prefer deep interactions (ie close to 2 or 3 bffs)

S/N - Sensing/INtuition

This has to do with how we perceive the world. Do you prefer what is or what could be? Do you look at your bank account and see $3000 or do you see a trip to Italy?

Sensers like ideas to be concrete
Intuitives like ideas to be abstract

Sensers focus on the here and now
Intuitives concentrate on what could be or what might have been

Sensers prefer to deal with lists of facts
Intuitives prefer to notice correlations

T/F - Thinking/Feeling

This is how we make decisions.

Thinkers decide with logic
Feelers decide with emotion

A thinker would buy a blue Tshirt because they have a pair of shoes it matches, and they don't have any other blue Tshirts. A feeler would buy a blue Tshirt, because they like it, even though they happen to have 12 other blue Tshirts.

J/P- Judging/Perceiving

This is about whether you lean towards your Judging (T/F)or your Perceiving (S/N) function.

Judgers prefer to have decisions made
Perceivers prefer to have outcomes open-ended

Judgers like order
Perceivers like chaos

HOW THIS AFFECTS YOU
Knowing your type can help you deal with just about everything in life. For example, I'm an ENFP. On the E/I scale, I'm near the middle. For all the other scales, I'm near the extreme. These things combine to mean that I get really enthusiastic about new ideas (and things and places, and even people), but I can't follow through. My entire life, I've been fighting to be 'normal', but since MBTI, I don't. I just accept that I'm not cut out for that life, and keep moving.

MBTI can also give you a framework for dealing with others. My 2 bff from school days to now, are both ESTJ. We only have the E in common. As you might guess, it means we have severely different views on pretty much everything (It's kind of a miracle we've never killed one another, actually!). For example, when I felt like I was meant to go volunteer in India, money was tight. My BFF, O, said forget it and do it another time. That's the T in her. The F in me was having none of that. In the end, it all worked out and I went to India. But not before we had a huge blowout. Now I've learned to appreciate how much she needs things to add up.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
There are a lot of character questionnaires out there with minuscule details. White or black? Beach or mountains? Cherries or strawberries? Frankly, I don't think a lot of that matters. I don't have a preference on two of those three. And while I prefer the beach to the mountains, I'm not sitting on a train for 3 hours to get to one. Plus, I don't know which of these my friends prefer. That does not make us any less friends.

Truth is the Pepsi/Coke question is only important if you're in a restaurant.

The dichotomies on the MBTI are much more important to knowing your characters.

If your MC is stressed, will she call up her friends and have an impromptu ice cream party? Or will she curl up with a book?
If she say a shoe heel on the ground, would she think that it's a hideous shade of green? Or would she wonder if the person had to cut a first date short when their heel came off?
Is she going to buy the black dress to have something sensible to wear to formal events? Or will she buy the pink one because she's feeling sparkles this week?
Does she prefer to have all the answers? Or will she leap before she knows where the next branch is?

I hope you enjoyed this miniseries, and maybe even learned a thing or two. Thanks for tuning in!

Bus in Reverse

Time for another edition of Monday on my Mind. This Monday?





I hate my body.

Maybe that shouldn't be surprising considering I've been overweight/obese for 90% of my life. But, no matter what sort of shape I was in, I've never hated my body. Saturday night that changed. We were watching a DVD of the anniversary event at the Reggae Bar I go to. I was "wining" on the wall, and I couldn't believe how absolutely huge I was.

Even though I've been the same size since my Australia trip of 2009 (gained 7 kilos on that trip, somehow), this feeling has come over me fairly suddenly. But I suppose it's not entirely without warning.

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?
More and more as I looked in the mirror, I wasn't liking what I was seeing. And then factor in where I live as opposed to where I used to live... As I've mentioned before, Barbados is an overwhelmingly Black country. Black people seem to carry weight better than other races. In addition to which black men generally prefer more curves than white guys, or Asian guys. So as a teen, my ample hips were a good thing, garnering me attention even from "big men." Now, living in Japan, a country where the women's shoes tend to run up to about an 8 (US) and anyone above a size 12 (US) in clothes has trouble finding clothes.

At first, it's a bit depressing, but then you get used to it. You tell yourself their make-up is different, and you could not be that small even if you te only 15 rice grains a day. Still it got to me eventually. In most Western countries, I'd be considered fat/obese, but I would not be alone, and there'd be loads of people bigger than I am. At home, there would even be some people who'd consider me attractive as is. Here in Japan, I can only recall seeing 2 people bigger than me. In all 4 years. Sometimes, I'm tempted to ask where they buy their clothes, but I feel like that would be super-inappropriate since fat stands out so much more here. (One of them is a friend though, so I'll ask eventually.)

FIXING THE PROBLEM
My problem is twofold really. Firstly, I'm fat. Secondly, I suddenly have a horrible self image.

FIGHTING THE FAT
I'm doing all the right things to change my body. I resolved to work out this year, originally to keep my bipolar in order. Since then, I've resolved to do Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred in all the 30 day months (four times a year).

Somehow, despite the fact that I'm doing all I'm supposed to be doing workout-wise, I'm not getting any results. I've managed to increase my body fat percentage. That's not going to discourage me from workouts, since weight-loss/size is not my prime goal, but still it would be nice to look like I work out, dang it!

SELF IMAGE
Can I tell you a secret? I'm not sure if I want to fix it. I feel like going through the positive self-talk to get me to a place where I love my body would actually be detrimental to my fitness goals. I mean, if I love being fat and unfit, why workout?

On the other hand, I'm a bit afraid not to fix it. I don't diet. That's partly because I'm too lazy to make the effort it requires and partly because I'm a naturally healthy eater. But another part of it is that I'm an extremist. I'm afraid I'd end up only eating once a day for 30 seconds, or something similarly stupid. Now that I hate my body, I'm tempted to workout twice a day, 7 days a week, since nothing else seems to be working. That would possibly do more harm than it's worth. But a part of me just doesn't care.

Who knows? Maybe it will fix itself. Maybe when I look in the mirror I won't see a long-haul bus in reverse. Maybe I'll just see a woman.

It's Monday. That's what's on my mind.

Sorry this isn't a real post - Tokyo

I meant to write a real post today- although I've forgotten what about- but it didn't happen for two reasons.

Firstly, I'm in Tokyo and I've travelled with my Japanese netbook. The keyboard is pain to type on, and the layout is in Japanese, which is fine until I try to press a symbol key. Please forive any strange spellings and punctuations.

Secondly, I'm on the school trip and the days are seriously long. It's almost midnight and I jst got in. (Kiddies went to sleep at 10 though.)

So, in lieu of actual post, I'm going to give you a round-up of my day.

The students split into groups today to wander around Tokyo/tour places/ do shopping. Most of the teachers had the day free. I'd have just lounged in my room- it's Tokyo, not Timbuktu. I think I've been here more than I've been to NYC- about 20 times,but who's counting?

Now all of this would have been fine, had it not been for the typhoon. Seeing as the other teachers seemed hellbent on me actually doing something, I wondered off to Shinjuku. I know that area really well, because it's where the newbies stay when they come in.

When I was leavng the hotel, I forgot to ask where the trrain station was. I hate looking lost more than I hate being lost. (Yes, I'm a man in girl's skin.) So I refused to turn back and ask where the station was. I just picked a direction and started walking. After about 10 minutes, I gave up and went into a convenience store.

Me: excuse me, where's the nearest train station.
Attendant: Next door.

Lo, and behold, there's a train sign not 50m from the convenience store exit. I swear they put it up while I was in the store!

I went into the subway. Figured out which line it was. Figured out which colour was the right line on the map. And then promptly read the wrong line. Went down to the platform. Got on a train, all the while wondering why it didn't say the station I thought it should. Got to the end of the line. Wondered where the heck I was. Only to hear'...departing for Shinjuku from track...'

Essentially, I got to Shinjuku purely by accident.

Bought a movie ticket for the only movie I hadn't already seen that I might like watching: Green Lantern. In an evil twist of fate, it was actually in English! I don't think i've ever seen a movie in English here. I watched the last two Harry Potters in Japanese. The Twilights in Japanese. Princess and the Frog in Japanese. Cars 2 in Japanese. Kung Fu Panda 2 in Japanese. And I go to a movie I'm lukewarm about and it's in English. Go frikking figure.

I had an hour and a half to kill before the movie so I nipped across the street to the bookstore. This is why I love Shinjuku. Huge cinema directly across the road from the biggest Japanese bookstore, which also boasts an English section. The only ting that would make it better is an anime parade down the road that seperates them :)

By the time the movie was over, the typhoon was starting up. I grabbed a Subway sandwich and then attempted to take the subway home. Only problem: I have no idea how I got to Shinjuku. As none of the lines looked familiar, I decided to use a different line, that would stop at a station almost as close to my hotel. But when I got there, I had no idea how to get back to the hotel.

I peeped at a map, but all Japanese maps suck, so I just kind of guesstimated. I suppose a random perk is that I found HOOTERS. I need to go there sometime, because the Japanese are notorious for NOT having hooters, so I ned to see the waitresses. :)

The typhoon was going at a good clip by now, and on the 15 minute walk to the hotel, I succeeded in semi-destroying my umbrella, and soaking myself from the waist down.

An hour later, after a near futile attempt at drying my skirt, we loaded into buses to go to dinner and the Lion King.On the way, we amused ourselves watching people get blown down the street. And we marvelled each time an umbrella met an untimely death. After a while, people stopped trying to use umbrellas. You were getting soaked anyway, and the umbrellas were just getting broken.

We passed the theater first. The theater and the restaurant hotel are literally back to back. It took us two seconds from the bus to the hotel door, but that was enough to be almost-drenched. We had dinner in a high-end restaurant. Japan has the dubious distinction of being one of few places where hamburger could be served as high-end.

Afterwards we walked around the corner to Lion King. The school nurse and I went last. One minute she's next to me, the next she's blowing towards Tokyo Bay with me and a hotel staff member chasing her down. We had to drag her back into the hotel and wait until the wind died down a little. Then I had to use my immense powers of Japanese persuasion to convince her out the door. (You'd be scared too, if you almost blew all the way to Australia.)

Lion King was awesome! It made me re-decide that I need to see something on Broadway. They had this ridiculous rule about taking pictures- I don't mean during the show, I get that- but even before the show and at intermission. Sigh.

When we came out, the typhoon was all over, and it was back to the hotel, put the kiddies to beddie-bye, and teachers' de-brief. All in, great day.

Off to rest up. Tomorrow is Tokyo Disney!

(In case you wonder about the typhoon, I don't think work is ever cancelled for them, although school might be - teachers still have to go though. I'm not sure, because that's one perk of the frozen North. In more than 3 years, we've only had one anywhere near.)

Pain in the Neck! Monday on my Mind

THE PARABLE OF THE PARTS

Once upon a time, all the body parts had an argument about which part was the most important.

"We couldn't walk without us," said the legs.
"We'd starve without me," said the stomach.
Then Bot-Bot (the butt) started, "Well, I-"
The hands interrupted, "Why you don't hush? All you do is stink up everything!"
The parts all laughed.

But Bot-Bot's feelings were hurt and he shut up and ignored the other parts.

No waste could pass, and after a while the other parts started feeling sick. The legs couldn't walk straight, and the stomach started to churn.

"Bot-bot! We're sorry!" called the hands.
"You are important!" added the heart, who was beating irregularly.

Bot-Bot was so angry, he didn't hear the other parts for quite a while. But by the time he finally calmed down and let out the waste, all the parts had realised that it didn't matter which was the most important, they all had a role to play.

Disclaimer: This is a re-telling of a tale I found in a newspaper in Barbados years ago. "Bot-Bot" is one of the many pet names we have for "butt."

So, I managed to do something to my neck between lugging around a huge backpack and working three 14-hour days.

It was bad! Any time my shoulders got out of alignment, I would experience a paralysing pain shooting from neck in every direction. It's no easy task keeping your shoulders aligned. Any time your hips or knees get too far out of alignment, the shoulders go too. I spent two days walking around, trying to move my entire body as a unit. You have no idea how hard it is to put on pants without moving your neck and shoulders. Bet you've never noticed you even use neck muscles to sneeze!

Afterwards, I got to thinking- because I was very incapable of thinking during the pain, I'm really bad with pain- that there are lots of times life is like this. I mean, you never hear anybody praying, "Thank God for the use of my neck," do you?

But there are lots of times when little things we've never thought about go wrong. And even though they're tiny enough that we've never thought about them, they make our lives miserable. What's it Joni Mitchell said? You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Let's look at it from another angle. We love to put things in hierarchies. Y is more important than X but less important than Z. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of times that hierarchies are important. If you've got a broken leg and your heart has stopped, you best believe that the doctors are going to deal with your heart first. But it's all too easy to get so caught up in hierarchy that we forget that the little things matter too.

THE WRITER'S PERSPECTIVE
We hear arguments on all sides about what we should develop more, and what we should work on first: plot, characters, language, etc. But at the end of the day, it all matters. Because you favour characters, that doesn't mean that your plot can be non-existent or that your language can be painful to read.

Whichever matters most, all of your elements have to work together. Otherwise your story will be nothing more than a pain in the neck.

And that's what's on my mind this Monday.

Over the Top Soulmates

More awards.

Thanks to Marsha for the Over the Top Award. Lil ol' me? Over the top? Never! lol!

The rules for this award. You're supposed to answer a bunch of questions with one word only. There were 35 of them originally, but I know you guys don't want ot sit through that so I'm doing a miny version with the ten most intersting questions.

1. Your favorite food? steak

2. Your dream last night? marriage

3. Your dream/goal? writer

4. Your hobby? language

5. Your fear? stagnation

6. Where do you want to be in 6 years? comfortable

7. Something that you aren’t? thin

8. Wish list item? house

9. Last time you cried? last week

10. Life? gift

I'm passing this award to E.J and the ladies on the YA Highway

Jon Paul gave me the Soulmates award. For this award, you get to invent a fact about each of the 5 bloggers you pass it on to.


Laura/Elbie once snuck up on a clown and caused him to faint. To avoid disappointing the kids at a neighbourhood party, she borrowed his nose, and played the part of clown until he came to.
Tawna was once researching whether it is possible to have sex standing on the toilet seat in a bar stall. As she and Pythagaras climbed onto the toilet, it came away from the wall, causing a massive flood. They escaped the scene through the bathroom window.
Amy Holder s the current Chocolate Diving Champion of Pennsylvania. To win this title she dove into 6 feet of chocolates to retrieve a teddy bear, with a time of 15.26 seconds.
Cynthia Reese was going to be a ghost for Halloween. Until she bumped her head while cleaning the kitchen and got a huge bump in the middle of her forehead. She put green makeup on the bump, swapped the white sheet for a black dress, and went as a witch instead.
Moon Rat once tried to break a Guinness World Record by reading a novel every day for the entire month of February. She narrowly missed out, when on the 28th, she forgot she was supposed to be reading and went out for hand-pulled noodles instead.

PS. Apologies for the lack of a Friday blog this week. Fridays are really bad days for me. This Friday was particularly intersting. It ended with a Japanese fireman trying to pick me up in a bar. LITERALLY! End result: both me and Japanese fireman sprawled on floor, as my teaching staff looks on in amusement.

PPS. This week's interviewee clue: female

Culture Clash: The Japanese Bureacracy (FoF)

I was none too thrilled by the way the big wigs handled the dissemination of information after the recent death of a colleague. They decided to just not tell us.

Why should THEY need to tell us? Well, out here, we live pretty far apart. My prefecture is huge, so it takes 4 hours by train to get to the furthest parts. And heaven forbid you live in a area not serviced by a train line. Most of us don't have another foreigner living nearby, and it's possible to go weeks and months even without seeing the others. In fact, there were some people who I only saw once all last year.

So if anything were to happen to someone, there'd be no way for anyone else to know. Except that in Japan, your office is like your family, and if anything happens that's who they contact. If you have a car accident, you have to apologise to your employer. Crazy, right?

So anyhow, they decided not to tell us.

I was at my neighbour's house. The 4 foreigners in my town (3 JETs and one wife) get together every week and have a WII night. A little after 10 pm, my neighbour, C signed on to facebook to send a message to my other neigbour who'd just left. T messages him. "Have you seen Rodger's facebook status? It says he's dead."

"What? That's gotta be some strange kind of joke." -C
"It would be an awful joke to play though. Since he's in Japan and all his friends are back in America." -me

I call B. He's a Prefectural Advisor (PA). If something happened he will know about it. But B doesn't pick up. Next idea, call M, because he lives in Hanamaki. But I don't have M's number so I call D. I don't tell D what's going on. I don't want to freak him out, especially if it is some warped joke. He gives me M's number and I call.

"Have you heard anything strange about Rodger?"
"No. Why?"
"His facebook says he's dead."

M starts a mini-freak out and decides to go over there, because he only lives 5 minutes away.

My phone rings. It's D. M called him freaked. I tell him what's on Rodger's facebook. I tell him I called B, but he didn't answer and I don't have the other two PAs' numbers. He says he has A's number and he's going to call her. He hangs up.

M calls me back. There are no lights on and no answer at Rodger's. But it is almost 11 on a weeknight. He could just be asleep. His phone beeps. He says he'll call me back.

M calls back. It's true. A confirmed it. He sounds shook up. Apparently another (young) friend of his also died recently. He also has a message to keep it under wraps til the big wigs announce it. Under wraps? It's on facebook!

I nod to my two neighbours as I talk to M. We hang up.

My phone rings. It's B.

"I just wanted to check about Rodger. I found it."

"Please don't spread it around. I wanted to tell you guys today, but-"

Yeah, I know. In Japan the company comes first. They probably had to notify all the way to the Japanese Minister of Education, before we could be told.

I tell him okay, but remind him it's on facebook.

The next day we get a message giving the details that the prefecture had.

He became ill in the middle of the night, and died early the next morning in a hospital in nearby Kitakami.

I was pretty angry at the Japanese system that day. I thought I understood the differences between cultures because of my languages. But the difference between Francophone or Hispanophone culture and Anglophone is like the hole in a toilet paper roll. And the difference between Japanese and Anglophone cultures is like the Grand Canyon!

The whole day I kept thinking how horrible it must have been for M, getting a call after 10pm to go check if his neighbour's dead. And D, who really had nothing to do with the whole thing, except I need M's number. I was glad our other neighbour had gone home and hadn't had to go through the saga with us.

By the way, I'm in the capital tonight and I ran into B, and he told me the cause of death was on his youtube page: acute pancreatitis. I felt sorry for B. In his position he deals with all these confidential things on his own. It must be very lonely being a PA. :(

And then, on top of regular confidentiality, having to deal with the Japanese madness...

Anyhow, here's the second instalment of Iwate Swan, as promised.

Should you blog for writers?

Before I get down to the meat and potatoes of this post...

CONGRATS
Huge congratulations are in order for bloggy bud, Natalie Whipple. She sold her first book! I don't usually announce sales, but I had had had to announce this one. Natalie's is either the first or second writer blog I started reading, about 2 years ago. (The other one in the top two is Marsha's.) So I'm rather attached to Natalie. (No I don't stalk her. But only since I live in the wrong hemisphere! Joking. Sorta.) Plus, she's been at this writing thing really long, and she's had some crazy ups and downs, so I can't think of another writer who deserves it more!

5 THINGS
I first saw this on Natalie's blog. I decided to do it to bring back the love for writing. I penciled it into my blog schedule - yes, I have one- and it just happens to coincide with Natalie's book deal.

Here's how it works. You give me 5 words (1 per commenter), I write a story, employing those 5 and 500 to 1000 others. When Natalie did it, the words got stranger and stranger every week. So I'm implementing 2 rules.

1. 10 letters or less.
2. 4 syllables or less.

I will not be writing stories about myxomatosis. Also if I get less than 5 words, I'll choose random some at random from the dictionary.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming, should you blog for writers?

THE REASONING
I keep hearing you shouldn't blog for writers. I imagine that the reasoning behind this claim is that you should be aiming your blog towards the audience of your book- your readers. That's a sensible assertion, especially if the main purpose of your blog is a. to connect with your readers, or b. to sell books.

For me, the problem is not as simple as it seems, especially pre-publication.

WHY WOULD THEY CARE?
There are two reasons readers come to writer blogs.
1. The name. If you're not J.K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman or Stephenie Meyer (or at least a published writer), noone cares about what you had for breakfast if they don't already care about you. (If you ARE J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman or Stephenie Meyer, thanks for passing through my blog!)

2. A non-writing platform. If you build a platform in something completely un-related, then readers will find you on that platform. If you write and sell a book, then your blog readers can become your book's readers. We see this happen all the time in non-fiction and humour. But it's also possible in other realms. Like if I had a Black Hair blog, and then wrote an urban romance, there's a large likelihood that the demographic for my blog and my book are the same (Black females), and I can convert at least some of my followers into buyers.

But if you aren't building a non-writing platform and you don't already have a name, then potential readers aren't going to just stumble in.

AVERAGE READERS AREN'T ON THE BLOGGOSPHERE
Even the most read-aholic of my non-writer friends isn't on the bloggosphere. Most people who read more than a handful of blogs every day are themselves bloggers. Reading blogs is a serious time investment. The average reader just doesn't have that time to put in.

You'll find average readers on Facebook or Twitter; the easy 5-10 second type of social media. The type that tends to give updates in 420 or 140 characters respectively.

WHAT THEY WANT
The average reader is looking for a book. As an unpublished writer, you don't have a book. And the average reader isn't going to sit around anxiously rubbing their hands together for the next two years while publishing slowly grinds its gears to make it happen.

(Book bloggers don't fall into this category. They're an seperate- and awesome- species.)

WRITERS ARE READERS
I really don't know how people started assuming that the two activities are mutally exclusive. I've been told the average number of books read per person in America in a year is 1. I'm told it's 7 in Canada. My writer friends on Goodreads have read between 30 and 98 books already this year. Not only do writers read, they read more than all but the most well-read of readers.

WRITERS CAN IDENTIFY
Even though I'm not in the same league as many of my awesome bloggy-buds who've been published or sold or are agented, a lot of what they say really strikes a cord with me. And if I fall in love with your blog, I am going to buy your book. And chances are, I will probably do a review/interview and give away a copy of your book.

I can't imagine I'm the only one who latches onto wrters in the trenches and ends up buying their books years down the road.

Also, writers are supportive in a way readers aren't. If they can, they'll buy your book. If they blog or tweet, they'll tell others. They may give your book as a Christmas present. In terms of sales, one writer-follower can be worth 3 or 4 average-reader followers.

TO WRITERS OR NOT TO WRITERS, THAT IS THE QUESTION
(I totally learned how to use that structure in Japanese yesterday *grins*)

Actually, I don't think that is the question. Yes, your blog need a focus. And you need to know who your audience is. But the most important thing on any blog (in my opinion) is not where you direct it, or what you write, but HOW.

Your blog needs to capture who you are. The essence of your voice. Things you're passionate about. A boring blog following all the rules and written specifically for writers/readers will probably have less followers/regular readers than a passionate one written for sheep farmers.

Blog for who you feel like, but most importantly, blog for you. If people enjoy it, they'll read.

Building Character in your characters

It just occurred to me that the word character has like 5 zillion meanings. Well, maybe not that many. Maybe just a million or so. We get all caught up in thinking of characters as personnages, pawns in the stories we tell, but character is first defined as:

1.
the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.

(from Dictionary.com)

Isn't that interesting?

There was a character workshop by Lauren Shannon at the Japan Writer's Conference. I quite enjoyed it. You know I love my characters. She gave some interesting exercises.

(1) Map it.

Draw a circle. Draw 6 lines coming out from that circle, like spokes. And put a circle on the end of each spoke. In the middle circle, write the character's profession. In the other circles, write stereotypical traits of that profession. Then change one (or two or three). Not a small change, make a 180.

Here's the example we did.

Female Truck Driver named Marge
Sterotypes
1. Divorced
2. Big woman
3. Baseball cap and mullet
4. laughs loud and a lot
5. sexy mudflaps
6. swears

Lauren changed the swearing to being extremely proper and anti-swearing. And made Marge into a character who passes through the truck stop the MC works at. She's always getting into fights over people cussing, and since the MC likes her (she leaves good tips), she's always a little stressed when Marge is around, because she's waiting for a fight to start.

And just like that, you've got a story!

But be warned: while you can use this idea to make sure your characters aren't stereotypical, it can make your book Quirk Central with overuse.

(2) 120 questions

Lauren writes a series of questions, a minimum of 120, and answers them for each character. Write a list straight through and then go back and think through each question.

We even had one of the guys in the workshop act as a dummy, and asked him questions about the character he'd created. There were lots of things that might never work their way into his story (where he shopped, if he had friends of his own ethicity, what he ate for breakfast), but I believed they helped make MR. Kwan real. And would help his creator tell his story.

Think about it, when you tell a real life story, there are more bits than what you include. But because you know those bits so well, you can tell the story.

If you've been around this blog awhile, you might remember me objecting to lists like these. That character motivation is a lot more important than Coke or Pepsi. And that I don't know some of my best friends' preferences for the questions the lists ask.

But I don't need to know my best friends as well as I know my characters. Noone's going to not like them because I said they like Coke today and that they liked Pepsi yesterday. And while the big picture remains the most important, it only exists by adding bits of the small picture together.

(3) spaces and places
Write a list or description of all the character's spots. What's on their walls. Is their desk tidy. Does their bedroom stink.

(4) Different ages
Write a scene, letter, etc with the character as a child, a teen, an adult, a senior citizen.

(5) Different situations
Write short scenes in random situations. It doesn't even have to be anything intersting. You could just describe a typical Dunkin' Donuts run or something.

(6) Photo collage
Post character-related pictures in a journal. They don't have to be of the character. For example, if a character likes surfing, plays the flute, and love canolis, have those pics. If you need to get in character, you can have a quick looky.

How do you build character in your characters? What makes a character feel real to you?

PS, I'm off to Sendai tomorrow. Sendai is the big city of the Northeast. It's only a prefecture away, but since the prefectures in the North are frikking huge, that's halfway to Tokyo i.e. 300 km.