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Shoes on Other Feet and So Forth

Oh, the humanity!  Poor Andy Harris.  He’s discovering two important things: that guvmint-run health care is a desirable thing, and that gaps in coverage suck (h/t):

A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan from the government takes a month to kick in.

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.

“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange.

Awww, poor baby.  Somebody call the waambulance – only he can’t afford it, cuz he ain’t got coverage.  Oh, the outrage!

Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.

Well, ain’t he special?  I’ve never yet had the joy of working at a job where I don’t have a waiting period for coverage.  Even my union-negotiated insurance didn’t kick in until I’d been employed for 60 or 90 days – I don’t remember quite which, because I was just so damned happy the company had a physician’s assistant on the premises I could make use of immediately.  Came in useful when I had that ear infection that nearly turned serious.  Without them, I’d have let it go until it became critical, because as I mentioned before, I wouldn’t have insurance for months.

All in the audience who’ve either had to endure a waiting period or no coverage at all, please raise your hands.  Yup.  It’s what I thought – there are a fuck of a lot of us.

Maybe someone who knows how to do such things should start an online petition for Andy.  Maybe he’d feel better about having a waiting period for his government-run insurance to kick in if he knew all us peons working for private companies have to wait even longer for crap insurance that costs a fortune and, before the evil Obamacare law passed, could drop us like a hot rock at the first sign of our coming down with something expensive. 

And don’t forget to remind Andy at every conceivable opportunity just how ironic it is that the man who hates guvmint-run health care so can’t bloody wait to get himself some.

Shoes on Other Feet and So Forth

Dana's Dojo: Killing Your Darlings I

Today in the Dojo:  The importance of killing off the right people at the right time in order to preserve your readers’ tension and interest.

Life’s a game I cannot win
Both good and bad must surely end….
Everyone I love is dead

        –Type O Negative, Everyone I Love Is Dead

Picture yourself as the reader: you’ve picked up a book, immersed yourself in it, gotten friendly with the main character and are looking forward with interest to his/her future career.  This is a person you could spend the rest of your life with, you think.  You’re quite willing to follow him/her/possibly it to the ends of the world and beyond.  And then the author wields the dread scissors and cuts that brilliant life short on page 32.

You’re going to throw the book across the room, aren’t you?  You’ve done it.  We’ve all done it.  And plotted the author’s grisly death in the bargain.  Other authors have killed their major characters without awakening homicidal mania in you, but this one’s an exception.  They promised you a story about Bob and then summarily executed Bob, blithely expecting you to jump into the viewpoint of the Next Best Character (or This Was Really Who it was About All Along; or This Guy’s Much Less Boring, You’ll Like Him Better) without a quibble.  Well, we quibble.  Very much so.

There’s a fine art to Killing Your Darlings.  In this article, and in the series to come (because Death is such a fruitful topic, and it’s the dying season, after all), I hope to make you certified sensei masters of the authorly art of character killing.  Let’s get started with a brief overview of the killing fields, and then we’ll get into the blood and bone of it.  Lots of blood.  Lots of bone. 

Ready?

“But Dana, I Don’t Want to Kill My Darlings!”

Of course not.  And maybe you won’t.  And maybe that’s okay, but if you’re writing a multi-layered war epic, a mystery, a commentary on the brevity of human existence, a horror novel, or anything else that puts folks in mortal peril, you’d better get your scissors out and practice snicking.  Don’t be the wimpy author who never kills off anyone who matters.  The readers will catch you out.  They’ll know you’re being a sniveling coward if only the bad, the ugly, and the extras feel the sharp edge of your scissors.  They’ll lose respect. 

And do shut up about all the authors who’ve gotten away with never killing off their main characters.  I know all about them.  That was then, this is now.  And now, readers expect someone damned important to get the snick.  Life works that way.  People we love die.  If they didn’t, Type O Negative couldn’t have provided that nifty title quote.

You can’t even get away with killing off sidekicks anymore.  Readers are wise to this tactic.  Maybe you will only kill off sidekicks, but you’re going to have to do some impressive prestidigitation and make it look like that unfortunate soul was never a sidekick at all.  At least in a case or two. 

It comes down to this, my dears, and only this: death is a huge thing, and it needs to happen to someone who matters intensely.  That way the readers know you’re serious.

“Fine.  I’ll Kill off Everybody.”

Whoa, there, Captain Morbid.  Don’t go insane with the scissors there.

The only thing worse than the novel in which no one of any importance dies is the novel in which everybody dies.  What’s your reader left with?  Angst.  Anomie.  Depression.  Despair.  And if that’s what you want to leave them with, well and good, but most of us want to have at least a glimmer of hope shining through at the end.  We’re not the artsy-fartsy types who think art is only Art if it makes statements like “It’s all so meaningless.”  We want to tell ripping good stories, not drive our readers onto Zoloft.

So wield your scissors selectively.  It means more that way.

“Then Who Should I Kill and When?”

So glad you asked.

Let us formulate a set of rules here.  And keep in mind what Captain Barbossa said to Elizabeth Swan: they’re not rules so much as what you might call guidelines.  But they’re a good set of guidelines and will function as a useful navigation device through this morass of gloom and doom.

1.  If you’re putting your characters in mortal peril, important people must die from time to time.


2.  When you kill off one of the main characters, there shall be another strong viewpoint character to pass the torch to.


3.  After such a death, things shouldn’t go on as if nothing much happened.


4.  Refrain from bringing people back from the dead.


5.  Make death matter; no killing for the sake of killing.


6.  Remember that death often happens at inconvenient times, to important people in the midst of doing important things, and leaves a lot of chaos in its wake. 

And to the above, big things, let me add some smaller but no less important things.  Such as: keep the deathbed speeches to a minimum.  Please do not torment your readers with pages of sappy words and stunning revelations while the dying person takes his/her/its time perishing. 

Let there be unfinished business.  Life and death are messy that way.

Don’t make it easy on the good guys and brutal for the bad guys.  The good can die just as hard as the bad.  The bad occasionally slip the noose and end up dying in bed at a ripe old age.  Life isn’t fair: don’t let your deaths all be.

Don’t fall into obvious patterns of black and white: the good will not always die heroic, the bad not always evil to the end, although you can get away with nice crisp blacks and whites on occasion. 

Research the ways of your characters’ dying: I do not want to have people with crushing head wounds speaking coherently while their brains drip out their ears.  I don’t want people dying cleanly and swiftly from arsenic poisoning.  Neither do any of your readers who are morbid enough to watch informative programs on such things. 

Don’t shy away from icky reality, in other words.  And if you don’t, the readers will know you’re serious about all this death stuff.  They’ll know that the stakes in your books are extremely high.

“But Dana, You Still Haven’t Answered My Question!”

In a minute, you harpy. 

Who and when are excellent questions.  Far more important than how, really: how usually takes care of itself.  After all, if you’re planning to kill your victim off in the middle of a huge medieval battle fought with swords and morningstars and spears and arrows, you’re probably not going to end up bonking him on the head with a meteor.  You’d better not, anyway.  Unless of course it’s a meteor thrown by an angry god, which could work depending on the sort of story you’re telling.

Why’s a good question, with usually a very simple answer: because.  Because if you’re on a chaotic battlefield, you’re likely to get in the way of something sharp or heavy.  If you’ve pissed off the Mafia, you’re likely to end up fitted with concrete footwear.  Stands to reason.  Because bad things happen to bad people and good people and indifferent people.  Unless your whole story is focused on answering that question, why usually doesn’t have to be given much of an answer at all.  Just… because it was liable to happen in that situation, that’s why.

Where is also liable to arise naturally.  No sweat there.  And what kind of slides in via how, so there we are: most of the five W’s and one H taken care of, leaving us with

Who?

and

When?

Told you we’d get there.

Let’s start with who.  Who you gonna kill?  Hopefully not the person presented at the beginning as the focal point of the whole story.  That’s just frankly annoying.  You’re the author, damn it: if you could see it coming, why the hell did you set this person up as the main character?  That’s what your reader’s going to be thinking.  And you’re probably going to smirk and say, “Well, I did it that way so I could trick you, and it worked!” -which is never a good answer to give to your formerly-loyal readers.

A caveat, here: if the main character dies at the very end of the story, and his/her/its death was the point, then it’s fine.  No problem.  Even I, A Very Tough Egg as a reader, will let you get away with that, and cheer you on.  Think Braveheart.  That’s a main-character-death that worked.

So, not the main character.  Not THE main character, or the person you’ve promised as the main character.  If you spend the entire first third of the book building that one person up only to go snickety-snick, you’re going to have angry readers.  You made a promise you didn’t keep.  And sure, life happens that way, but stories shouldn’t.  If you’re writing the book and it turns out that the person you’ve placed all of your focus and hope into turns out dead well before the end, make sure you go back and lay the foundations for who the real main character is.  Doesn’t have to be obvious, mind.  You can make it subtle, but at least hint to the reader that there’s someone even more important coming to take up the torch. 

I shall give you a couple of cautionary tales here.  First, Emerson, my favorite whipping boy.  You remember “Call me Ishmael.”  You remember how he suddenly decided, after many chapters of building one character, that the story wasn’t really about that guy at all and summarily washed him overboard to dispose of him and get on with the real story.  Don’t do that to your readers.  Rewrite the beginning.  Don’t be lazy. 

Then there’s The Dreaming Tree.  I think the author wanted to show things through an elf’s eyes, how short mortal spans are and all that.  She seems to be aiming for a multi-generational novel, but she has no strong central character or characters to pull it all together.  What she’s got is an elf that you never really warm to and only appears sporadically, and a bunch of folks who you latch on to saying “Ah-haThis is who it’s all about!” and then die before you’ve gotten to where you care about them.  The book quickly loses meaning.

So, who…. let it be one (or more) of the main characters, not the main character (except with rare exceptions), and let it be someone whose death matters intensely.  Let it be someone the reader would never expect, whose death is extremely inconvenient to all involved, including the author, but who is not the central focus of the tale.  Ask yourself, “Whose death is going to wreak the most havoc and make the main character’s cunning plans all go awry?” and then whip out your scissors.  Snick.

When killing villains: do not kill off the main baddie unless you’ve got someone much, much worse in reserve.  Someone who makes Baddie #1 look like a puppy-loving sop. 

Now we come to when.  And there’s really several answers to that.  Not too early is generally a good rule of thumb.  If you’re writing a genre novel, you’ll need to follow, at least somewhat, the conventions of that genre (a murder mystery, after all, needs a warm body lying about before too long).  But as far as vitally important characters go, well….  the reader won’t think they’re vitally important if you kill them off in the first few chapters.

This is what I generally advocate: kill off the important folk after you’ve established them as important, after the reader’s gotten a chance to see how important they are, and when it’s going to blow the whole thing wide open.  Choose a time when the main character is going to lose someone they can’t afford to lose just then.  Do it when the reader is lulled into thinking that the important folk are pretty much safe from your scissors.  There’s nothing like the death of a really crucial character, a viewpoint character or someone very close to a viewpoint character, coming at a time when they’ve dodged many of the bullets aimed at them, to shock the reader out of complacency and make them really pay attention. 

I’ll give you a good example: The Lions of al-Rassan.  There’s actually two crucial folk who die there.  One of them is completely unexpected, a sidekick you expect will be a sidekick forever.  That death happens during one of the most beautiful parts of the book, when all seems well and the world is everybody’s oyster.  Things go wrong in a flash, and then a person vital to one of the main characters lies dead.  It’s a huge shock, especially since, up till then (nearly two-thirds along), all the important folk have gotten off with nothing more than warnings.  And then, very close to the end, one of the viewpoint characters gets the scissors.  Completely unexpected and, looking back on it, completely inevitable.  And thus, harrowing.

Your story may support an early death or two, but don’t stop there.  Have more important folk in reserve to sacrifice.  The most important deaths, after all, generally should take place late in the game, when the tension is almost at the climax and you really want to show that nobody’s sacred here.  Kill off a fairly important person within the first half to show you mean business.  Kill off the REALLY important person towards the end to show just how bad it’s about to get and make the reader think, “Oh, shit, I don’t think X is going to survive this!”

And, whatever you do, don’t space out the deaths in predictable patterns.  The readers will pick up on that, consciously or otherwise.  If you have a habit of killing off an important person every ten chapters, they’ll start saying their goodbyes on the eighth chapter.  You don’t want that.

Thus ends the first part of our discussion.  In later episodes, we’ll go into the rules a

bit more thoroughly.  Consider this the introductory course, and hold on: there’s more Death on the way.

Dana's Dojo: Killing Your Darlings I

Tomes 2010: Mix Edition

It’s a mixed bag, baby, yeah!  I haven’t had any themes to my reading just lately, so the only thing that holds this group o’ books together is that I read them in 2010.  Isn’t that enough?

I’m saving the best for last, so stick with me.


Greek Architecture

This book has been my constant bathroom companion for months now.  I learned some new words – metope, prostyle, tholos.  I discovered that a lot of architectural details, from the way buildings were built to design and structural elements, arose from the transition from wood and mud brick to stone.  And I learned that a lot of things that wouldn’t make sense if you didn’t know how gravity works make perfect sense when you take into account the fact that very heavy things naturally want to fall down.

It was extremely detailed, more of a catalogue than a narrative, but wonderfully informative, with plenty of diagrams and illustrations to help things along.  The best part, though, was the epilogue, which became positively poetic.

All in all, not a bad bathroom read – and my architectural ignorance is slightly less than it was before.  Win!


Trees: Their Natural History

I’ve loved this book since the first sentence: “Everyone knows what a tree is: a large woody thing that provides shade.”  The rest of the book didn’t disappoint.  It’s a clear, concise, and comprehensive introduction to trees, from how they evolved to how they work in this modern world of climate change and pollution.

Peter Thomas wrote this book because he became frustrated with the fact that there wasn’t a single source for all our knowledge about trees.  A lot of myths get dispelled, and most importantly, I learned things I never knew before – like how roots seek easy paths in order to grow, and how far they actually go.  The strategies various trees have – deciduous vs. evergreen, conical vs. sprawling, tall vs. short – begin making sense once you know why natural selection molded them in certain ways.  And there were things I’d never considered before, like how something so tall manages to stay upright for decades, hundreds or even thousands of years against the simplest antagonist of all: the wind.

Once I got done with this book, I felt I’d gotten into the mind of a tree.  And it’s hard to see them in the same way ever again.  They may not be conscious in the way we understand, but they are living creatures that respond to their world.  They’re magnificent.  And I’m very glad I got to know them better.

Towers of Midnight

This is the book I abandoned all y’all to read.  Took me three nights, it did, and it was worth it.

It’s never easy for an author to take on another author’s characters and world and try to do them justice.  And you know how complicated the Wheel of Time is.  Cast of practically thousands, very detailed world, more subplots than a Borgia family reunion, and Robert Jordan’s peculiar obsession with clothing.  At times, I could clearly see Brandon struggling, especially when it came to describing clothes (I feel for him.  No man outside a tailor’s shop should have to pay that much attention to fabrics, colors and cuts).  There was also that bit where, for several chapters, I thought he’d fucked up continuity big time, only to realize the continuity was fine, but his ability to skip back and forth between different time streams in said continuity had slipped a bit.  I can’t say as I blame him.  The thing’s almost 900 pages, hideously complex, and he wrote it in a year.

Any number of minor annoyances can be forgiven here.  My hat is fully off to Brandon for tackling this at all, much less doing such a great job, not to mention ensuring Jordan’s fans get to see how the story ends.  Which it will, alas, next year.  Brandon, can’t you maybe be just a wee past deadline just this once?

I want to see how the story ends.  Then again, I don’t.  I love these characters, I love how Brandon’s managed to grow them further, and I don’t want to see it come to an end.  Then again, I do.  Argh!

Sign of a good book, that.  And this was a very good book.  Kept me up past bedtime three nights running, and the only thing that saved me was the switch from Daylight Savings Time.


Life on a Young Planet

Lockwood recommended this one, and I’m glad he did.  I love reading books that give me physical pain when I realize I’m getting close to the end.  I hated finishing this book: it’s so beautifully written, so fascinating, and so informative that I could have happily spent the rest of my life reading it.

From mere chemical traces to exquisitely preserved microfossils, from the first ambiguous hints of life to stromatolites, from extremophiles to extraterrestrials, from ancient atmospheres to oxygen revolutions, this book is a journey through life itself.  Andrew Knoll’s sense of wonder is only matched by his scientific chops.  There are few people who can write using the big technical words and yet never for an instant seem dry.  He’s one of those rare talents.  He also explains things well  without stopping the narrative cold; tough concepts hold no terrors for the layperson in this slender book.  At least, not if said layperson has read a few books on evolution and biology first – I’m not sure how a total neophyte would fare, but I suspect the sheer power of the prose would smooth over any difficulties.

I can tell you this: a lot of the things that confused me about how really ancient life is identified got cleared up in the course of reading this book, and I understand quite a bit more about how a little rock from Mars caused so much excitement with ambiguous evidence for life.

Andrew Koll, if you’re reading this: I want a revised edition expanded by a factor of at least ten.

And that’s it for now.  Not much 2010 left, but I’m sure we’ll have at least one or two more of these before the end.

Tomes 2010: Mix Edition

Poisons, Doses, and Ammunition Against Anti-Vaxers

This has been sitting in my open tabs for far too long.  Kept meaning to blog it, but what with House and the Wheel of Time and the onset of the winter writing season, I never got round to it.  It’s a wonderful post on Neurodynamics entitled Toxicology: the poison and the dose

Those of you enamored of mystery novels and/or crime shows may have heard the little phrase, “The poison is the dose.”  All too true – and now you’ll have an actual scientist’s perspective on it.  And you’ll also have a very useful question to ask:

What’s it do?
That’s the first thing I think when I hear someone say something is a toxin. There is no single “toxic” reaction out there. Every toxicologically active chemical entity out there has its own mechanism, its own target. Some are more recoverable than others, some have pretty dire consequences; some we have antidotes for, some not. Some exert an effect quickly, while others can take their time. They can target any physiological system, or multiples.  Cause death, permanent injury, reversible injury, minimal harm, or anywhere in the middle. Locally, regionally, systemically. There are many, many examples of different actions that a given compound could do. The severity of the effects is important to evaluate.

Lob that one at the next idiot who starts going on about toxins.  There are other questions answered there that are equally grenade-like and shall prove quite useful when people babble about all of those awful toxins making all of us sick although they’re only found in vanishingly small quantities, if at all, in our vaccines.

And then remind them of that old crime show/mystery novel truism: the poison is the dose.  Not just any old dose will do.

Poisons, Doses, and Ammunition Against Anti-Vaxers

Wherein You All Get to be Wise Readers

From time to time, I shall throw out a question, a comment, or a tidbit that hasn’t anything specific to do with the book I’m writing, and hope most of you participate.  This is one of those times.

Here’s the question: what annoys you the most about most heroes?

I’ll begin, by way of oiling the wheels.  I really, really despise reluctant heroes.  The ones who bitch and moan and cry “Why me?!” lose my sympathy fast.  Some moments of doubt and self-pity are to be expected.  Wallowing in it for several hundred pages, however, just makes me want to smack them.

Mind you, this isn’t an across-the-board condemnation.  I adore Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind, for instance, who is the very epitome of reluctant hero.  But he’s an admitted coward who’s never had a single ambition other than to become the most bored person in the world, and he’s funny, so I forgive him.  And I don’t mind the “Oh, fuck, here we go again” type of hero, the one who bitches and moans and complains while rolling up their sleeves to get the job done.  No, it’s the heroes in the serious stuff, who have some serious saving to do, but who spend the first two hundred or so pages running as far and fast as they can whilst whining non-stop who get right up my nose.  They’re the ones I wish the writer had strangled at conception.  I felt that way about Jordan’s Rand al’Thor, for instance, up until he finally extracted his head from his posterior.

Likewise the heroes with honor stuffed so far up their arses they can’t bend over.  Duncan McWanker of the Clan McWanker, anyone?  He rubbed me raw after a time.  Give me a Methos any day.

Your mileage may vary, which is why I throw this out there.  Have at.

And for those who’ve been considering the job, there’s still openings for Wise Readers.  Just shoot me a request at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com and you can join the exclusive band of readers who get to say they were in on it from the beginning.

Wherein You All Get to be Wise Readers

What He Said and Other Political Nonsense

Lately, our own George has been on a political roll.  It’s about enough to make me put on a cheerleading outfit and jump up and down, because I haven’t anything to add except “Yeah, baby!”

First, read a succinct and cutting history of modern American politics in “What You Can’t Say, political edition,” which should be required reading for students.  Then watch him deconstruct a scary Con flier in “Scared yet?”  I’m now wanting to send him every stupid conservative political flier I get just so I can watch him unleash his Smack-o-Matic upon it.

In other political nonsense, I want everyone to go read this Think Progress post: “While GOP Sought Exemption For Their Industry, PA Debt Collector Tricked Consumers With Phony Courtroom.”  Then give it to everyone you know who believes Cons are looking out for the little guy.  Remind them that this sort of corporate behavior is considered just business as usual to Cons.  That’s the free market, kiddies!

After that, if you need some entertainment at Cons’ expense, you can go read Steve Benen’s “Targeting Programs That Don’t Exist (But Should),” wherein we learn that the Cons’ Big Idea for cutting spending is to eliminate programs that no longer exist, while claiming they cost ten times more than they actually did. 

Great job, America.  You elected the most conspicuously unintelligent group of politicians to Congress in our country’s history.  It’s too bad we have to watch this country die from terminal stupidity whilst living in it.  Maybe it’s time for a move to a nice tropical island somewhere.  One with an army of cabana boys, bringing me drinks on an assembly-line scale, because I’ll need vats of the stuff while I watch the Cons in Congress proceed to destroy what little they left standing the last time.

What He Said and Other Political Nonsense

England's Libel Law is Liable to Bite Yer Arse

So do what Simon Singh says and sign the petition to reform it:

This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics.
The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.

You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.

The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.

If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.

We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Please sign and pass it along.

England's Libel Law is Liable to Bite Yer Arse

Laelaps on Writing

Brian Switek, whose writing I’ve been desperately in love with for several years now, has one of the wisest posts up on writing I’ve ever read.  I don’t know why you lot listen to me when you could be listening to him instead.

A taste:

Given my start on an alternate track, I don’t think about book writing in terms of rules. Instead I think of the authoring process as using a variety of techniques to weave particular elements together and overcome specific obstacles. A given technique may work well in one context but not in another, and each writer has to stock their own toolbox and figure out how to appropriately use each of those tools. There are essential elements which are key to writing a good book – compelling characters, a clear understanding of the intended audience, and a strong storyline – but it is not as if a writer can follow a foolproof, step-by-step program to bring each of these aspects of a book into play. 
[snip]
There is no simple formula which, when followed exactly, will produce a good book. From finding the time to work to deciding which parts of a story need to be cut, composing a book hinges upon the characteristics of the author writing it.  [my empasis]

That last bit needs to either be tacked to my wall or tattooed on my hand.  It’s something you rarely see these books on how to write state so starkly, but it’s absolutely true.  We need to remember it, especially when the evil Inner Editor gets to work on us and shouts we’re doing it all wrong.

Hmm.  Maybe I’ll just tattoo that bolded bit on my Inner Editor’s forehead so I can read it whenever the barstard starts shrieking…

(Side note: the next time Brian Switek publishes a book, I’m going to beg to be part of the blog tour.  That way, I get a galley copy, and do not risk enduring once again what I’m enduring now: watching people gush over how fantastic he is, desperately wanting to read his book, and seeing that due to some unexpected glitch in the publishing process I’m going to have to wait an extra month.  Grr, argh!)

Laelaps on Writing

Local Theatre Rules

You know what I did on Halloween – went to the theatre and found Jesus.

Okay, so the actor playing a god also played a drug dealer, which made it even funnier.  But the most memorable moment of his performance was when he passed through the audience handing out communion wafers and saying “Body of me,” very graciously.  That moment very nearly topped FDR rolling out onstage, and a gentleman dressed as some sort of ram-horned demigod thingy.

One should expect that kind of weirdness when seeing a musical called Reefer Madness.

I didn’t even want to go.  But my best friend abandoned me for a Samhain ritual, and I’d promised my intrepid companion I’d let him test my camera’s handheld twilight mode in such settings (performed beautifully, but to avoid any royalty difficulties with the guild, I shall refrain from posting the results).  I ended up having far more fun than expected, as I always do when seeing plays Burien Little Theatre puts on.  I should know enough to trust Eric and Maggie’s judgment by now.  They always pick shows that delight in surprising ways, and there’s always something quirky about them.

Upshot: I had a wonderful time, and I should have gone earlier so I could give my local readers the opportunity to enjoy.  I won’t be so remiss again.  In fact, I had Maggie email over some details about the next show, and if you’re in the Seattle area, you’ll definitely want to make plans to attend.  Come on.  It’s Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis.  If someone tries to drag you to some sappy Christmas special put on by the local godbotherers, tell them you’re busy and go to this one instead.

It’s got a retiring dominatrix.  What more could you ask?  But wait, there’s more!  Here’s what Maggie has to say:

*  The play is quirky, the characters outlandish, and yet it’s a redemptive show.  By the end of the show, through convoluted and unconventional means, a dysfunctional family comes back together, and the characters all find themselves and love.  It’s far from saccharin, but it really does have a holiday ending.  
* Also the “Chinese” Elvis, who’s really Vietnamese, does an amazing and hilarious Elvis impersonation.  
* And we have nationally known director John Vreeke directing the show.  Among the places he has directed:  Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC, the Kennedy Center and Seattle venues such as Book-It Repertory Theatre. 
* Plus we are doing the West Coast premiere of the show.  So far, the show has only been done on the East Coast.

And a personal message:

This really is a holiday show.  For those who are looking for entertainment beyond yet another rendition of “A Christmas Carol,” this is both unconventional and ultimately heartwarming.  It’s also funny and fantastical.  When watching rehearsals, I find myself laughing and crying, sometimes both at the same time.

If you can resist this, you’ve got no sense of adventure.  Or you’ve got kids under the age of 13, can’t find a sitter, and have decided they’re a little too young for retiring dominatrixes.

You can find dates and times here.  If any of you locals want to get a group together, let me know – we could easily make an evening of it.

So what if you’re not from round here?  Feeling left out?  You shouldn’t – nearly every city has its own local theatre, and at least a few of them are bound to have their own Maggies and Erics – dedicated people who do their utmost to find fascinating shows just for you, if only you’d get your culture-deprived arse down there.

So go.  You’ll have a wonderful time.

Local Theatre Rules