The Blank Slate and Character Development

When I was in college, attending classes about literature and reading Pride and Prejudice because someone told me to (ah the life of an English major!), one of my professors introduced me to Locke's idea of tabula rasa.

On a side note, this professor was passionate about his job - and arrogant. He was a fairly attractive man in his early 40's - one of those men who are called distinguished and who all melt in my mind into one Ken-doll-esque image.

So picture a brown-haired, slightly older, professionally dressed Ken doll, talking to a room of 150 students about how he was leaving the University of Arizona for a school on the east coast because the U of A didn't appreciate or value his intellect enough.

He was more or less an ass.

But he did teach me about tabula rasa, a concept that I still find fascinating. Locke's idea was that we are born a blank slate; all of our ideas, prejudices, inclinations, etc... are formed from our experiences. In other words, we are not born predisposed toward anything; we are only a sum of our experiences.

It's a great big checkmark in favor of nurture on the nature vs. nurture debate.

Lately I've been reflecting on tabula rasa and how much our experiences shape our perception of everything.

Someone recently described the brain to me this way: "Our brains our constantly playing a game of Memory."

You know the game:

So when something happens, my brain grabs that giant cardboard card with the image on it and runs through my brain's filing cabinets, excitedly commenting that "I know I've seen this before - ah ha! Here it is."

The card my brain finds is from a past experience; possibly a past experience from a week ago, but probably a past experience from a year ago; a decade ago; two decades ago.

This would be fine if my brain were only coming up with matching images that were 100% relevant to the moment. But often they aren't.

Here is an example: If you were in a car accident -- a really severe one, where your car was totaled and you had to go to the ER in an ambulance -- as soon as you tried to get behind the wheel of a car again, you would probably freak out. Your brain would go into panic mode and match the image of this perfectly new steering wheel with the old one that got smashed and alarms would go off in your brain and body and you would probably suddenly feel unsafe.

Because your brain was just matching the current image with an old image. Even though the experience was different.

I'm sure God made us this way for a reason, however I wish I could just get a clean slate again, because so often I'm wrong and my perception isn't reality. I have to retrain my brain to check my perception not just internally, but externally.

It's like my brain has been infiltrated by a double agent who whispers lies and half-truths: "Avoid that person, they don't like you; don't do this, you aren't any good at that, remember?; don't say anything, you know what happens when you talk."

These are perhaps (perhaps) extreme examples, but it's true. In trying to protect me and work for me, my brain has (in some ways) become my enemy. I have to root out the double agent, pull the creepy flesh mask off my brain Mission-Impossible-style and reveal the mole for who she is - a deceiver.

That is the best I can do. Reveal the lies my brain keeps telling me. The only time we ever have a clean slate is the moment we are born. After that, the indelible impressions begin.

The cool, less depressing, view of tabula rosa is when it comes to crafting characters. When I write characters, I tend to write them like they are newborn baby puppets who will do and say whatever I want them to because they're mine (mwahahahaha). But that makes for very flat characters.

Instead, I want to think of characters as being born with a blank slate and ask myself: What impressions were made on them as babies? As children? As young adults (when every little thing is of the utmost importance - I don't jest, it truly is)? Then suddenly, they act and react not because I need them to, but because their slates are talking.

To these characters, the way they react is instinctual and real; it is true to them, however untrue (or crazy or weird or demented) it is to other characters.

And suddenly my flat characters are as round as balloons.

***********

What trick do you use to make realistic, round characters?

The Alot -- A Beast of Mythic Fame

No Blogspot, this is not a typo. I know a lot is not one word... I distinctly remember banging my head against the table while grading 7th, 9th, and 10th grade papers. "Why is it so difficult?" I would groan, circling yet another miserable alot in yet another miserable essay.

Enter Hyperbole and a Half. This blog traipsed into my life with a solution that was so entertaining,  true, and obvious that I wondered where it had been all my life.

The beautiful and brilliant and talented and GENIUS blogger (no, I don't know this person. No, she did not pay me to write this. Yes, she is that awesome) over at Hyperbole and a Half introduced me to the ALOT. Here is a picture she drew of the Alot:

This image was drawn by Allie Brosh. Click here to visit her blog.

I taught my kids about the Alot monster and they stopped using alot and started using a lot overnight. Every once in a while one or two kids would revert back, but I like to think it was on purpose now and not because they didn't know any better.

I hope I've intrigued you. If so, click here to read about this wondrous creature and put some socks on because you're about to laugh them off. And I don't want to know what would happen if you started laughing your socks off and DIDN'T HAVE ANY SOCKS ON!

Also a word to the lazy reader, who just can't seem to drag that little mouse arrow over to the link and click on it...because then you'd have to wait for a page to load and you don't have the time, and who knows what it might do to your internet tabs (I know; I've been there - will it open a new tab or navigate away from this page? What if it isn't funny? Why didn't this person just paste the whole story here so I don't have to click on links all the time?). But I must insist. You must go learn about the ways of the Alot. You will thank me in the comments if you do.

Also please share with all your teacher friends. It will save their forehead from a perpetual bruise.

Sharing is risky

I recently read a nonfiction book of the stunt genre variety (where an author tries something out, usually for a specific period of time, and then writes about the experience).

I did not like the book.

I felt bad, because the reason I did not like the book was because I didn’t like the author. I felt terribly guilty about this, for some reason. Here I was, reading the inner musings and confessions of another human being and it made me not like her as a person. That’s a low blow.

I couldn’t even write a review on Goodreads, explaining why I gave it one star, because my reason would have been: I don’t like the author as a person. I imagined what I would feel like if I was an author and I sat down and read a Goodreads review where someone judged not my book, but me as a person. So I kept my thoughts to myself and didn’t write the review.

A few weeks later a good friend of mine gave me her manuscript to read. I was incredibly honored. As I finished the last page and was putting it carefully back into its box, I thought about how difficult it must be as a writer to go from writing as a private activity to a public activity. The best writing is deeply personal in some way, even if it’s fiction, even if the story is about a pink rhinoceros who wants to become the world’s greatest trumpet player, buried deep under all those layers of story is the mind who created it and underneath that are all those experiences that shaped that mind.

On his blog, Storyline, Donald Miller discusses how writers should be vulnerable in their writing. He says, “Even if you’re writing fiction, you should feel like you’re telling secrets. And they should be deep, dark secrets you’d only tell your most trusted friend. Remember, when we write we are becoming the temporal companion of the reader, and if we want them to trust us, we have to give up our secrets.”

Even if we don’t take Donald Miller’s advice and we aren’t trying to be vulnerable in our writing, some vulnerability is inevitable. We may reveal ourselves in the smallest phrase, a minor character, an inconsequential plot point. And we lay bare for every reader a part of ourselves.

This would be fine if every reader was your best friend and loved you unconditionally. But that’s not the reality that any published writer faces. They spend months, years, pouring themselves into their work, which is then shared with masses of strangers who take it, judge it, assess it casually, and make a detached decision about it.

I personally have always been of the “keep it secret, keep it safe,” variety when it comes to writing (I say, on my very public blog). To be honest I’m a little overwhelmed now that I know a few people are actually reading my blog. Before, I had a blog, but no one read it, so it felt very safe. It was just an online notebook. I felt like I was sharing, but I wasn’t actually risking anything. So this blog is an unusual experiment (not of the stunt genre variety) for me as I learn what it is like to have someone other than a professor read something that I’ve written.

I don’t think that everyone must share their writing or that only good writers should share their writing; I believe it’s a personal choice and there are a lot of things to take into account when you decide if you will write only for yourself, for your family and friends, or if you will share it with the world.

That said, I also think there is something decidedly scary about taking action of any kind. When we are passive, it is much easier. We can blame bad things that happen on other people, the universe, God. When we take action, we are taking responsibility for our lives. We are taking great risk. What if we regret X? We won’t be able to take X back. What if we were happier before X? Then we will wish we hadn’t done X and it will be all our fault.

For me, sharing my writing is taking a great big risk; maybe no one will like it, or I will discover that I am a terrible writer, or my pride will get wounded, I’ll offend someone with my ideas, or worse yet people will actually learn what my ideas are and I won’t be able to hide anymore.

These are all great reasons to delete my blog and go back to typing up very long and secret Word documents that no one will ever see.

But great events might transpire because I shared my writing. Or small events that are wonderful, events I would otherwise have missed.

So I’m taking the risk because by not sharing, while I am not rocking the boat, I am not even on the boat. I’m safe on the good ol’ boring metaphorical shore, waving while others embark on adventures. By sharing my writing, I’m cutting loose the rather cliche anchor and I’m off on an adventure (the size of which is still yet to be determined, but it’s an adventure nonetheless), leaving the harbor, and traveling through uncharted waters.

I will let you know in a few months if it was worth it. I suspect it will be. Meanwhile, I will be kind when I read and will do my best to refrain from writing that review on Goodreads...

What writing risks have you taken? I'd love to hear about them! Share in the comments below.

A new take on the to-do list

I am a list person. I love lists, even when they stress me out slightly because I keep adding to them so they are never really done. Still, there is nothing more satisfying than crossing something off that list.

Or is there?

There just might be. This post from Lifehacker, suggests turning your to-do list into a story, complete with tragic metaphors, if you like, and your grocery list.

Check it out, and then stay tuned for updates. I just might try this and if I do, I will share my story (my to-do story?) with you. Share yours in the comments below.

Why NaNoWriMo?

It’s 7:30 pm and I just put the baby to bed. A quiet peace descends almost instantly over the apartment as I quickly pick up all her toys and start doing the dishes. I still need to make and eat dinner and somehow I just can’t put my feet up until the apartment is clean. And I have to write about 2000 words tonight before I can relax. I groan inwardly. Why had I made this ridiculous commitment?

Every November, thousands of people across the world participate in NaNoWriMo. It’s National Novel Writing Month, and these crazy individuals decide to commit to writing a novel in 30 days. 30 days, 50,000 words.

When I first heard of NaNoWriMo I was ecstatic. “Sign me up!” I crowed and spent 7 feverish days thinking how wonderful this was and how surprisingly easy it was.

Then I hit a wall and couldn’t make it much further. It began to seem silly to sacrifice my sleep (sleep is very important to me) and time spent relaxing while I slaved away at a self-inflicted assignment. It felt like school again. Isn’t creativity supposed to make you happy? Maybe I just don’t like writing as much as I thought I did. I gave up at about 15,000 words.

I tried again the next year. I made it to 22,000. Once again, my heart just wasn’t in it. Plus I had a job – I was a first year English teacher, so the only writing I was doing was lesson plans and corrections on papers.

The next year I didn’t even sign up. What was the point? It would just stress me out unnecessarily and make me feel guilty – which is so weird, because why would you feel guilty for not writing a novel in a month?

This year however, I was determined. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it; I could make the commitment and follow through. Also, I wasn’t working because I was taking a year off to spend time with my beautiful brand new daughter. What excuse could I possibly make?

Turns out a lot. While staying at home with my daughter has been a delight, it’s also surprisingly exhausting. Often, I would try writing during her naps so that once she went to bed for the night I could relax. Suddenly I was shirking all sorts of responsibilities so that I could cram in an hour or two of writing every day. Because I tried to write in the mornings, I was going grocery shopping, running errands, and taking walks later and later or sometimes not at all. Then there were those days when it just didn’t happen and there I was, with my eyes wanting to close, or my mind just wanting to turn off with a book or a TV show instead of plunking out some truly terrible prose that I knew was no good – all for what? So I could say, “Hey everyone, I wrote 50,000 words of crap! I will never ever show this to anybody, and I didn’t even manage to finish my story, so I didn’t even technically write a novel in a month. But I got a cool certificate and this little bar on the NaNoWriMo website turned purple when it used to be blue!”

Yeah, that was pretty much the reason.

The day I finished NaNoWriMo I was elated. I made it to 50,000 words and my husband, daughter and I went out for eggnog lattes. I felt successful, I felt proud that I had seen it through to the end, but most of all I really felt relieved that my time would be my own again, that I could invite my sister over to hang out at the end of the day instead of sitting by myself grumpily writing – or worse, ignoring what she was saying and wishing she would leave soon because I still had to write my 1,667 words before bed.

But two days later, I found myself itching to write. It was December 3^rd, and I hadn’t written in 2, going on 3, days. I wanted to pull out the computer and delve into sentence formulation again. I missed it.

There are many people who have a lot to say about how NaNoWriMo isn’t worth it. It leaves you with a crappy novel, it makes writing stressful rather than fun, makes creativity a to-do item instead of a delight, it’s a rather futile activity. Surely, it is all these things for some people.

BUT.

But they say it takes 30 days to make something a habit, and I’m pretty sure writing on a regular basis is a habit for me now.

And I’ve read over and over again that writers don’t always like writing. They need (as in a deep down, soul-wrenching need) to write though, and so they do it anyway. That’s a lot like NaNoWriMo.

And if we aren’t doing anything creative because we keep putting it off, maybe we need to add it to our to do list – so we actually will do it.

My husband and I often talk about how strange it is that human beings know something is good for them, know that once they get started on it, they will enjoy themselves and feel good because of it, yet we refuse to do this thing. The best example of this in my life is exercise. I hate exercising. More than the average person. I will come up with almost any reason NOT to exercise. Which is strange, because when I work out, I feel great. I’ve trained for and run a half marathon before – it felt wonderful and I felt healthy and had a good body image for the first time in my whole life. But as soon as the half-marathon was over, I stopped. Then I did kickboxing for awhile. I hated going, but loved it once I got there. I would drive home from work and try to think of excuses that could get me out of going to kickboxing class. My husband pretty much made me go, and I always thanked him afterwards (though I cursed him inwardly while I was driving there) because I felt so good, and I’d really enjoyed it.

NaNoWriMo is like that for people who tell themselves, and sometimes others, that they want to write, they’d love to write a novel someday, they wish they could get paid to write for a living, they wish they had time to write. NaNoWriMo can be the fuel that changes these people – myself included – from “someday” people into “now” people. Even if that means making yourself write an abysmal novel when you’d rather be sleeping.

A few excellent Goodreads quotes from people who know what they are talking about should sum this up nicely:

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”
- Julie Cameron

“Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.” - A. Lee Martinez

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.” - Robert Haas

Time to stop being a waiter. See you next November.

P.S. If you do undertake the challenge next year, I’d love to be your writing buddy. My i.d. on the NaNoWriMo website is ashill. Hope to hear from you!

TEDtalk: "Why a good book is like a secret door" by author Mac Barnett

The last few minutes of this talk inevitably put a smile on my face every time I listen to it. Watch it. Share it. Make your day better. I promise you won't regret it.

Why bother writing?

When I was little I spent an inordinate amount of time writing truly terrible fiction. I read frequently, but apparently much of what I read didn’t impact or improve my writing until I was much, much older. Meanwhile, ten-year-old me would craft story after story about heroines who were all named Laura or Elizabeth and all had extremely limited vocabulary, but somehow still managed to win the boy and defeat the evil headmistress at the orphanage.

Later, I reread my stories and realized that I was a terrible writer. I decided to spare the world any more attempts at authorial fame and stopped my creative writing efforts.

The older I got, the more the idea of writing a novel seemed absurd. I was far too practical for that. The odds of getting published were slim to none. The odds that I had talent even slimmer and I didn’t like the idea of doing of something that I was bad at. Sadly, this attitude has stopped me from doing many things in my life, from taking many risks that could have potentially been rewarded, and from learning things that would have helped me grow as a person.

I am not sure at what pivotal moment I started writing fiction again. I think one of my friends started talking about her own creative writing pursuits and in a nostalgic fit I broke out the laptop and tapped out some fairly decent – or at least not completely abysmal – prose. Then NaNoWriMo happened. I heard about NaNoWriMo from this same friend and was instantly intrigued – write a novel in a month? What’s more, write a novel in my FAVORITE month (November)? Why not! I made it to 22,000 words that month on a goal of 50,000. It was much harder than I’d anticipated. But the damage had been done and I was officially writing again. Not only that, I had two (TWO!) different story ideas bouncing around.

This was momentarily delightful, but soon writing began to seem like a waste of time – what purpose did it serve, after all? I certainly wasn’t going to be able to make a career out of it. The more research I did, the more evident it became that unless I was fast friends with someone in New York who happened to be an agent, it was unlikely that I would ever get published. So why rack up outrageous word counts on sub-par novels only to have them sit in a file on my computer?

My enthusiasm waned.

I trudged through a few different novel ideas, always running out of steam quickly once I reread my prose (once I was over 30,000 into a novel when I realized it was utter garbage and stopped the draft).

And therein lies my dilemma. I cannot separate the creative act of writing from my skill. I have the mistaken notion that art must well-done to be worth doing – a theory that complete ignores the artistic and creative process. A theory that ignores the pleasure derived from creating something out of your own head, with your own hands. A theory that claims that art is only worthwhile if it makes it out into the light to be appreciated (or despised) by others.

Recently however, I believe I discovered a cure to this debilitating viewpoint.  I read Chris Baty’s No Plot, No Problem, a manual on inspiration, the writing process, and quarantining your inner editor. Baty assures his readers that the joy of writing novels is found in using your imagination to tell stories, no matter how terrible, and just because you can. In short, writing is about the joy it brings you, not about any hoped for material gain or fame – and therefore, it doesn’t matter how good your novel is, it only matters that you wrote it.

And so, dear readers, I will henceforth no longer regard my writing as just verbal spewing on a page, but MY verbal spewing on a page, the spewing of which I very much enjoyed. I will find joy and entertainment in writing my novel instead of pride, which is far too fickle, and I will view novel writing as a new kind of literary therapy, as rewarding and entertaining as reading a book.

If you are lucky, perhaps I will treat you to a sample of my latest caper…it is about a young, dynamite blonde named Beth who works as an editor for Webster’s dictionary and therefore has an absurdly large vocabulary, but alas! her evil boss has it out for her and never lets her leave, which is why she has no love life -- until she decides to overthrow her boss and start her own dictionary!

Happy noveling to you all.

Appreciating Voice: The lost art of subtlety

I think I might be living my life backwards. When I was younger, I read the classics: Dickens, Lewis, Tolkien, Collins, Austen. When I went to college I read Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, and Shakespeare. I didn’t start reading Harry Potter until I was around 20 and in the last few years I started reading Young Adult books. So I’m definitely regressing.

There is nothing exactly wrong with Young Adult (YA) literature, except that, not surprisingly, I am discovering that I’m too old for it. In this statement I exclude the Harry Potter series because that is one of the most well-crafted beautiful stories of our time. But the rest of the books that cater to the dystopian/fantasy craze that is sweeping the nation are disappointingly lacking. Just the other day I picked up a book that a friend had recommended and I couldn’t even get through the first chapter. It wasn’t that I could tell this was the same story I’d read in every other YA book – as discussed in an earlier blog post, no one really writes new stories – it was something else. There was something missing that wasn’t missing from Rowling’s books. 

So naturally I went back and began rereading the series. While reading, I came across a section that lifted the veil ever so slightly and it was as though I could see Rowling at her desk writing, and chuckling as she did so at the witty words she was penning. (I know she probably uses a computer, but when I picture authors, they are always handwriting the story, usually with a quill and dressed like they are from the 19^th century for some reason.) This happened often when I was reading Dickens as a child. I’m pretty sure the image below was burned into my brain long before I ever actually saw it:

Credit: Google Images

You see, what these YA popular fiction books are missing is voice. Not just those delightful moments where the author can get away with commenting almost directly to the reader, but in general. I know that voice varies depending on point-of-view and a number of other things, and I’m not trying to argue that every author should insert their authorial presence all over the book. I am arguing that stories need a voice (narrative, authorial, anything) like my dog needs food in the morning: without it they are dead.

Since I’ve been reading these rather dull tales crafted for today’s youth, I have realized that there is nothing like the voice of Dickens filling the space after the cruel and unjust act of a character with a rant against the social evils of his day. It is like the chorus of a song, heightening the tension and unifying the reader, the writer, and the characters.

And there is nothing quite like Rowling’s quiet voice asserting that “it is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow time down, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up” (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 317).

So this is what was missing and I think I know why. 

I had one of the best classes of students last year that I think I am ever likely to have; often, while trudging through Julius Caesar, my students would be sitting with brows furrowed, trying to decipher the language (they were honors students, so I’m not making this up, they really were trying). Shakespeare is a very funny man, so sometimes I would read a line and pause, waiting for them to chuckle. Silence. “It’s a joke guys. It’s ok, you can laugh.” They would look up confused. I’d explain it to them. A rather lame attempt at a laugh would circulate briefly and we’d continue. I don’t blame them in the slightest for not understanding Shakespeare, but I do blame them for missing the humor in easier pieces. I blame them for missing the subtle humor often layered in the tone of a sentence. Because there is a grave result from the fact that much of the younger generations don’t read: they’ve lost the art of subtlety. They are used to everything being violently overt, thanks to sitcoms, televisions, and movies. And with that loss of the understanding of subtlety goes the voice of authors everywhere as they write novels that cater to the youth of today.

I don’t believe that every author should always launch into rants about the state of the world or constantly lift the veil to wink at their reader. But I do think that every author needs a well developed voice that is grounded in the subtleties of tone, that supports their narrative, and, quite frankly, makes their book worth reading. 

Then again, maybe we just need to add laugh tracks to books.