Speaking to the Hand

All Hands to the Ready?

For some reason I've been a bit obsessed with hands of late. 

Could it be the upcoming publication of my Puppetry book?

Could it be the recent Puppet Manipulation Workshop we did at the Orem Library?

Could it be a comment I heard by way of A E Cannon about focusing on your character's hands? (#3 on her list of Three Writing or Illustrating Hints)

All of the above?

...no snide comments on me having too much to handle please!

;)

In any case, I found myself in the local Arctic Circle parking lot with my 10 year old, snapping a quick picture of my hand, well, more precisely, The Hand.

The Hand comes with a horrendous Russian accent, knobbly eyes and loads of attitude . . . read more about The Hand at Familius.com read more about The Hand at Familius.com / by clicking here.

4:00 a.m. Reconciliation

Writer's Guilt and the Beginnings of a New Hope

It seems to me that being a writer involves a lot of apologies.

~Saying sorry for being so deep in a manuscript that you've forgotten the time.

~Being so overwhelmed with ideas that every other important item in your life sits at the wayside waving as you obliviously pass it by... sorry, the check was not in the mail before, but now it is!


~Not getting as much done as you had hoped to get done. I said I'd have that done... today?


~Asking a friend to read a half-baked text to see if you are totally off your rocker, or if there is a nugget of an idea worth pursuing buried deep within a flood of words.

...and a big one for me:

~ Not doing everything I learned I need to do in order to be what I've been told it takes to be counted as a "truly dedicated and productive writer", ie: waking up at 4:00 a.m. every morning to get my writing done. (and possibly for my terrible punctuation and ill-phrased run-on sentences)

I apologize to myself, saying I know I should get up, I have no other time, I am terribly busy and if I truly want to consider myself a real writer, I need to get up in these wee hours and get the writing freaking done . . . but then I don't. Get up. I apologize and promise to do it  . . . soon. Not.

Another hobby of mine is to read books and articles on how the brain works. How we reason. What makes us creative. Why does story have such a powerful hold on our souls. Why am I so, so aarrrrgghhh . . . so frustratingly me.

Guilt and Information -- an interesting combination, particularly when marinated with an unhealthy dose of procrastination, set to forget in simmering pot, ideas tucked away, forgotten on the back burner, playing hide and seek in the intermittent percolations of  primordial soup-for-brains of one hyper busy and terribly remorseful wannabe writer. Aha, light-bulb.

Creativity and Sleep.

All those articles I've been reading . . .

(I should link you to the articles, but if you just Google REM Sleep and Creativity, you'll get some good articles on your own.)

In any case, here is the scoop:

The first 4 or so hours of dreamtime result in fairly literal rehashing of the things that have been on your brain already. This is what I have come to refer to as the nightmare time. When all those stomach churning, vomit inducing doubts of the 2:00 a.m. variety come a knocking. This is when all my failures, forgotten and have-to-get-done tomorrow things rear their ugly heads.

The second 4 hours or so, now these hours are a creationist's golden hours. This is when your frontal cortex loosens it's hold on your reality and your brain starts to free-wheel it, making unlikely, bizarre, and unusual connections. This is why my characters are so amazingly annoying and vocal at an almost set-your-watch-by-me-4:00 a.m.-timing. This is when Oliver started to float (hmm, some deep analysis could be done on this one, later, now is not the time). This is when I solved my current 30 Days 30 Stories-and-I-can't-think-of-anything-but puppets-but-I-need-something-fresh-to-write dilemma.

This is why I now refuse to ever feel guilty about not waking myself up at 4:00 a.m. to write. Talk about killing the flow! To get up right when my brain is ramping itself up as it launches itself into imaginative heights? I don't think so.You have to get that last 4 hours of REM sleep to be at your artistic and innovative best. If you wake up, get up, and don't get that sleep, well, it's curtain time on the creativity. Kaput. Done. Dead.

What does it all mean?

In the end . . .

~I do promise to keep scribbling my 4:00 a.m. notes, in the dark, sometimes by the light of the cell phone charging on the nightstand, in a barely legible scrawl, those nuggets of dialogue, those unexpected turns to a phrase that has plagued me for days, to those wondrous enlightening nuggets of treasured wordplay.

~I do promise to really work at getting those full 8 hours of sleep that my body and my mind need.

~I do promise to not feel guilty anymore about not being a 4:00 a.m. writer.

~I now give permission to myself to be a 4:00 a.m. note scribbling dreamer instead.

On the horizon . . .

Great things are on the horizon!

There is nothing greater than getting that contract, and, I am finding, it is also very time consuming and at times scary and overwhelming.

While we are still hammering out the details I'll wait on the big announcement, suffice it to say that I am tremendously excited, I am inspired beyond belief and am dying to tell the world!

Soon.

Something about dogs . . .

For good or bad, I am somehow fixated on dogs.

I love adding dogs into my mix. Bad dogs, good dogs, genetically altered dogs, talking dogs, any kind of dog. Possibly even dog-like people. Not in looks, just characteristics.

This last week at Throwing Up Words I did what I call 'another dog piece'. This time I had to have some levity, after the heavy handed drama from last week's story I needed the change of pace.

Maybe its all due to the amazing dog I had as a pre-teen, Blue. I loved Blue. No one could lay a hand in anger on any of us kids if Blue was around. Protector and companion. Too much a protector, he had to be put down after tearing a visitor's pants.

Then there was the rabid dog that came onto our property one hot summer. All of us kids outside, playing, and here comes this listing, growling, mange-ridden dog. Sal's story is very close what my experience was - except that I did not have to grab that dog to stop it from attacking any of my siblings.  I watched as the sheriff was called to dispatch the beleaguered beast. Despite the danger it was a tremendously sad experience.

I once brought home a big lab that I'd watched for days. Laying on the side of the road, almost the same color as the fall grass. Always in the same spot. every day, on my way to school, just laying there. We were 'field' people (we lived miles outside of the city) and I knew she was not from any nearby homes. Haggard, skeletal, abandoned and not well enough to stand on her own, it got to the point where I could take it no more. Despite knowing exactly what my parents would say. I put her in the car and brought her home. The next day she had ten puppies. Ten.

Even today, I have this wonderfully devoted pug. He waits for me to come home, greets me with exuberant kisses, whimpers and tellings of how very excited he is to see that I did come home at long last. Then he's off like a shot, grabbing up his lion (or more recently he will sometimes substitutes his ball on a rope), trotting it over to me and just . . . wait . . . panting, expectant, waiting for that first move that says "I'm gonna get you" and we romp around the house. We play tag, we play fetch and then finally, he lets me know it's time to go to bed.You would think there was no person he would rather be with. Analytically I know he loves all of us, but emotionally it's hard to believe that I'm not the only one he loves.

They are a part of my life, and if I can't imagine a life without one of my beloved pets, neither can I imagine the life of one of my characters without their own dog.

Yes. Dogs. I have a thing for dogs. For good or bad.

Palimpsest and other Hidden Things

It sounds worse than it is, I promise.

Palimpsest (derived from the Latin palimpsēstus,--which sounds even worse*--a term we get from Ancient Greece, is the basic idea of scraping and using again)  was first introduced to me in a lecture from the beautiful and talented Martine Leavitt, author of Keturah and Lord Death.

I have toyed with this idea for years now and it fascinates me. It is kin to what Heather Forest, author of Wonder Tales, lectured on many years ago as part of a Timpanogos Storytelling Festival event, on getting to the bones of a story. Wherein you take one story, folktale, opera, etc. and either re-write it back up from the basics, or hang your own story on it's frame. In the Heather Forest model, the end work was a re-telling, in your own way, of a traditional tale. In the Martine Leavittt version, it's taking a tale like The Magic Flute and masterfully weaving it into your own unrelated story. Heather's retelling of Aesop's Contest Between the Sun and the Wind and Martine's Tom Finder are the resulting works demonstrating these principles.

 In my own way I have been practicing these ideas. My YA novel is firmly based on the tale of King Midas. Although, I have no over-reaching 'Gods' that reverse the curse and save the King and his daughter. Too much a literal deus ex machina for my tastes.

More recently, in the Throwing Up Words Project Writeway contest I challenged myself to throw in my own hidden set of words, a bit like what Martine did in naming her characters in Tom Finder. I did not go so far as to hang my story on any story bones, after all, I only had the 400 words in which to do my piece.

It came about innocently enough, I just happened to notice that I was using some weaving terms. Fabric came to mind. Looms and Tension. It being a historical piece (and I must say I am NOT big into historical voice, I probably failed miserably in that aspect) I immediately thought that inserting weaving and looms and fabric terms would be an interesting challenge. The key part being that I had to make these words feel natural and not like they were shoved in there. Not unlike the 200 word entries we did a few weeks ago where we were given a list of words to use.

I did not stop there.

Being that I am also fresh out of the latest Cracking the Story Code workshop, I added another challenge. Not only did I want to make my piece more than a slice of historical life, but a 400 word story in and of itself. And, more closely, a certain TYPE of story. In particular a story that mirrors the dynamic found on Snow White.

Let me explain:
In Snow White, ask yourself- who is the System (who is setting the rules?)
   the Queen
Ask- who is the Primary Actor in this world? (who is coloring the story)
    It isn't Snow White, think of the dark and dangerous forest... you got it
    the Queen again
Now ask- who is creating the noise and chaos?
   bingo- the Queen strikes again!

Look at that dynamic: She controls the world. She colors the world. She actually comes down and performs the acts of chaos herself. How can Snow break out of this dynamic? Simple answer. She cannot. She is too innocent and too naive. The only way Snow can be saved is if some other force (or person) comes in and intervenes! The dwarfs find her twice and bring her back. But it takes the Prince in the end to pull Snow beyond the machinations and out from under the Queen's power.

(Off-shoot here: Think of the coloring in Star Wars - On Luke's home planet, he is PA - he and his world reflect each other, but, when he goes into space, we get a very different color dynamic. Whose world are we in now? Who is the PA in this movement? No wonder we went back and got Episodes 1-3 and the story of Anakin. And even more interesting, note the color changes in those episodes, more than a hint at what forces were taking over our Primary Actor)

Now, apply this to a 400 word historical piece. Oh, the challenge!!!!!!!! I love love love it!
In the end, I don't know that I managed to color the piece strong enough to firmly embody the System and the Primary Actor as the dog. I tried. The rabid dog does control Sal's world in the piece. And I tried to have the unseasonal hot day reflect the feverish heat of the sickened animal. It's up to greater minds than mine (or uncluttered, fresh-to-the-piece analysts) to determine if I succeeded. But it certainly made for an entertaining exercise in writing!

(Link to the Project Writeway link, to read the week 4 submissions)

* Been reading Superfreakonomics by Levitt again (...Political Prostitutes etc.) - that's my feeble attempt at explaining where my brain is making connections... Palimpsestus...haha, not a word that sounds nice in casual conversation DESPITE it's real meaning.

List of Conferences in the Central Utah Valley

Let me clarify - conferences that I have been to, or know well





League of Utah Writers / Monthly meetings at Provo Library
http://www.luwriters.org/
http://www.uvwriters.com/  Utah Valley Chapter






 Timpanogos Storytelling Midwinter Event / February
http://timpfest.org/midwinter-event


 
  
Life the Universe and Everything (LTUE) / February ($30-$45)
http://ltue.org/LTUE_2012.html


 
Writing for Charity / March ($45)
http://writingforcharity.blogspot.com/




Orem Writes / Events all month - March (free)
http://oremwrites.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/hello-world/
 

LDStorymakers / May
http://ldstorymakers.com/




Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR) / June
http://www.wifyr.com/


 

iWrite / online and an upcoming July workshop
http://iwritenetworkning.ning.com/


BYU Books for Young Readers, Symposium on Children's Literature / July
http://ce.byu.edu/cw/bfyr/




 
Timpanogos Storytelling Intensive Workshops
http://timpfest.org/
(watch for these week long retreats 1-3 times a year)

114 Titles

I've said it before, I'll say it again, Katherine Farmer is brilliant.

The Cracking the Story Code Intensive Workshop was superb, and despite my almost 2 years of studying, I still found that there was plenty to learn in those all-to-brief six hours.

One very particular part of the Farmer Method of Script and Text Analysis is that you need to have a well-developed cultural background. There are movies, plays, stories and books that you cannot hold a meaningful discussion on Story Code without knowing the stories first.
With that in mind, I am posting a  list of titles that are required reading and/or watching.
All 114 titles are mentioned in the materials from Thursday.

Cracking the Story Code Cultural Literacy List
Notes on the Katherine Farmer Workshop

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Almost Maine (play)

Amelia Bedelia

Amos Fortune Free Man

And Now, Miguel

Arkansas Bear

Arsenic and Old Lace

Avatar

Babe the Gallant Pig (book & movie)

Bandits

Banner in the Sky

Bedtime for Frances

Berries Goodman

Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Big Bad Bruce

Big Fish

Bridge to Terabithia

Brokeback Mountain

Burt Dow

Carrie's War

Cars,

Cat in the Hat

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlotte's Webb

Clementine

Click, Clack Moo!

Country Wife

Curious George

Dark Knight

Death of a Salesman

Deep-Water Man

Doll's house by Ibsen

Doubt

Dr. Desoto

Dumb Waiter

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Ever After

Frog and Toad Are Friends

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs.Basil E Frankeweiler

Gladiator

Go Ask Alice

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Golliwhoppers!

Groundhog's Day

Hamlet

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

How to Eat Fried Worms

Humpty Dumpty

Hunger Games

Iliad

Importance of being Earnest

Iron Man

Kung Fu Panda

Les Miserables

Lightning Thief

Little Bear

Little Miss Sunshine

Lord of the Rings

Matrix

Memento

Miss Hickory

Mr. President Goes to School

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

My Side of the Mountain

O'Pioneers!

Ocean's Eleven

Oedipus Rex

Pinocchio

Pippi Longstocking

Pride and Prejudice

Pulp Fiction

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Ramona the Brave

Ramona the Pest

Robin Hood

Rosie's Walk

Secret of the Andes

Secret Window

Shawshank Redemption

Sick Day for Amos McGee

Slave Dancer

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Something Queer at the Library

Star Wars

Superfudge

Tale of Peter Rabbit

Tangled

Tartuffe

Taste of Blackberries

The Adventures of Obadiah

The Cay

The Cow that Fell in the Canal

The Hobbit

The Incredible Journey

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Office

The Whale Rider

There's a Nightmare in my Closet

Toothpaste Millionaire

Top Gun

Tops and Bottoms

Toy Story 1 & 3

Urinetown

Usual Suspects

Waiting for Godot

Watermelon Kisses

When You Reach Me

Where the Lillie's Bloom

Where the Wild Things Are

Wilde's Salome

Did I mention having a strong and well-developed cultural backgound?
Are you an avid movie-goer? A voracious reader?
If so, you will find that you already know most of these and will have no trouble brushing up on the details of each story.

p.s. I've not added links to the OPL catalog yet, I will add authors, format (movie, book, play, etc.) and check spelling as I add the links.