And They Will Come Home, A-Wagging Their Tails; or, Stating The Obvious

When I was a kid, my brothers and I had a record player with which we were allowed to play. It would only play 45 rpms--and it played them at about 42 1/2 rpms.

For the most part it didn't matter. We didn't have very many records we could play, anyway. Mom and Dad had more, but they were the good records, and we weren't allowed to play with them. The ones we had were mostly novelty records.

One of the records was titled, "It's In The Book," by a fellow named Johnny Standley. Side A of the record (yes, this was still when you had to turn records over to hear the other side. By hand.) was a line by line examination of "Little Bo Peep."

Thanks to the magic of the internets, you can listen to it here:

	Johnny Standley - It's In The Book .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

(You might have to enter a code to hear it.)

Feel free to stop listening when the singing starts. Unless you want to hear the B side, which is a somewhat amusing ditty called "Grandma's Lye Soap." I thought it was hysterical when I was six.

But the part I wanted to discuss today was the dissection of "Little Bo Peep."

Sometimes, when I'm writing, I get carried away with the rhythm of the words, with how they sound in my mind. I'll write long passages full of repetition and extra verbiage, when I didn't really need to. And sometimes, that's nice. It helps define my voice, and keeps what I've written from turning into a bare recitation of facts.

But sometimes, it just makes me look silly. Kind of like:

The man said she lost her sheep, turns right around and boldly states, "she doesn't know where to find them", and then has the stupid audacity to say, "Leave them alone."

Now...now, now, think for a moment, think! If the sheep were lost, and you couldn't find them, you'd have to leave them alone, wouldn't you?

So for me, at least, the challenge lies in finding just the right balance between enough description to be interesting and not so much that it bogs down the story.

It's something I'm still working on.

How do other people approach the problem?

Turns of Phrase; or, I Never Thought Of It Like That

I'm toying with the idea of having a character in one of my stories who uses all sorts of colorful comparisons as one of his quirks. I think it could be a lot of fun, especially if I can figure out a way to work in some of my favorites.

I think my absolute all-time favorite has to be one I got from my father: "Slicker than snot on a glass doorknob." When I was a kid, it never occurred to me to question how he would know about such a thing -- after all I'd been to my grandparents' house, and it did indeed have glass doorknobs. It wasn't until later that I finally figured out that it wasn't something he made up, but rather something he'd heard somewhere and just repeated. I should ask him about it sometime.

But it's a very descriptive phrase. I mostly use it to describe icy roads. And once the people to whom you've said it get over the "ewww!" factor, they know exactly what you mean.

Another phrase to which I can relate is "Like a bull in a china shop". I was a klutzy kid who grew up to be an only slightly less clumsy adult, and proximity to fragile things only makes the likelihood that I'll break something much higher. So I have a great deal of empathy for that poor bull, surrounded by breakables, ones his horns might inadvertently knock off of a shelf, or that might be pulverized by an accidental twitch of his tail. I just want to tell him to get out of there, to run while he still can.

I like describing potentially unpopular ideas as being something that will go over "like a lead balloon." I can just see that doomed balloon, smashing into the ground again and again and again regardless of how much helium you put in it. It also reminds me of one of my favorite lines from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which Adams describes the Vogon spaceships by saying that they "hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't." It's wonderfully whimsical, and perfectly conveys the image of spacecraft that stay in the air even though they look as though they should plummet straight to the ground, do not pass "Go", do not collect $200.

And finally, I do love the way of describing a person you find attractive as saying that you "wouldn't kick him/her out of bed for eating crackers." As in, "You know, Harrison {sigh} Ford isn't as young as he used to be, but I still wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers." Which sort of implies that there are people you would kick out of bed due to the presence of too many cracker crumbs -- and that there was more than a snowball's chance of finding Mr. Ford in your bed in the first place!

Of course, for the character I have in mind, it might be more fun to have him either mangle a common cliche so as to negate its meaning ("like a bull in a mattress shop"), or make up ones of his own that don't quite work ("like a giraffe on an underground train").

What are some colorful descriptions you've encountered? What twists on common ones have made you either laugh or scratch your head?

(p.s. Sorry I'm late with this week's posting. I spent all of yesterday evening in Windows Update Hell, trying to get both of my computers to successfully download and install the last round of updates from Microsoft. Still have not succeeded. I'm about ready to scream...)

Summer Writing Challenge; or, How Am I Doing So Far?

Thought I'd take a few minutes this week and let everyone know how I'm doing with my summer writing challenge.

For those who were out of the room back in May when I announced it, I'm taking part in a summer writing challenge this year. The challenge runs from June 1 - August 31. Participants are allowed to set their own goals. I selected 30,000 words as my goal, which doesn't seem like much for someone who has done NaNoWriMo (50,000 words in one month), but I added a twist: All words that count toward my goal must be in the form of shorter works of fiction. So, short stories, character sketches, even novelettes and novellas would count. Just nothing novel-length.

Earlier this week, I completed my first "short" story, which may actually be more of a novelette at 12,200 words. But still, for me to complete anything in less than 100,000 words is something of a triumph. This is in fact the second shorter work I've completed this year, the first being a short (7,000 word) piece I threw together in response to a writing prompt here back in April.

I experimented with a few things in this story. It's written in first person, but the POV shifts between two different characters. I wanted the two POV characters to have distinctive voices, and I think I've succeeded for the most part. And I wanted the story to end with a twist; I think I achieved that as well. It is a bit longer than I'd planned (I was aiming for 8.000 words, so it's only about half again too long -- like everything else I write), but I don't know how much it could be trimmed and still make sense.

I also made use of research I did on my recent field trip to Kimball, Nebraska, since I decided to set the story there. In fact, it's sorta-kinda-but-not-really the story of my trip. Or rather, it's my trip, but the way it would have been if someone else took it -- someone with ulterior motives for visiting a small Nebraska town one day in late spring. (I feel as though I should be twirling my mustache here or something...)

However, because I want to try to submit this story for publication, I'm not going to post it on one of my blogs. I may run it past my critique pals, and of course I'm always looking for more beta readers. So if anyone who isn't part of The Melt-Ink Pot or anticiworkshop wants to provide feedback on the story, drop me a comment here (or via LJ, Facebook or Twitter if that's how you came to be here), and we'll see if we can work something out.

What's next? Well, I'll tease you a little and post the first paragraph of my new WIP here:

Edna stomped into the kitchen and threw her gardening gloves onto the counter with more than her usual vehemence. "There are fairies," she announced, her nose wrinkled in disgust. "Living at the bottom of the garden."

Yeah. It's a fairy tale. Of sorts.

Finding Your Voice; or, What's That Under The Sofa Cushion?

Ah, the elusive "voice". It is the one thing we pre-published authors are often told is the most crucial aspect of our writing, but no one can tell us where to find it or how to develop it, or even how to tell when we've got it, other than to just keep writing.

This past week, I submitted a couple of chapters of my space-pirate adventure to an on-line writers group formed by some of the people who took part in the Writer's Workshop at Anticipation (a.k.a. the World Science Fiction Convention) this past summer. Discussion of the chapters got lively, but in a friendly, constructive, helpful way. I got some very good ideas out of it, and I think I can see what I need to do with the story next. (Less death and destruction, more humor. Check.)

Which is all very cool, but that's not the only thing I got out of it.

The next day, one of my commenters posted this on his blog. I'll quote part of it here, but you really should go read it all, because it's good (and also short):

"I recently gave a critique to someone about their story – which was a relatively funny piece – and then I got an email reply to my comments that was loads lighter than the story they’d written. Why was this? Because in the email they were relaxed. They were just trying to get back to me, not trying to entertain or write something important."

Wow. Obviously, he was referring to our discussion about my chapters, but it really hit home for me.

Sometimes, as writers, I think we try too hard. We read endless style guides and how-to books and author blogs, and we go to conventions where we listen to advice from authors and editors and agents and even publishers. And after we've done all of that, we're lucky if we can write our grocery lists without stopping to ponder whether the dramatic tension could be increased if we put the milk ahead of the cheese, or worrying ourselves to death trying to decide if it should be "a dozen eggs" or "12 eggs."

Yes, style and grammar and even spelling are important, but those can be tweaked later. What we need to learn to do in order to find our "voice" is to relax and just tell the story.

For me, that's part of what NaNoWriMo is all about. (Aha! You knew I'd get back to that, didn't you?) It's not about proving to myself that I can write 50,000 words in a month. I already know I can do that, since I've done it twice before. It's a chance to focus more on the story and less on the style. That doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to style at all -- I'm a bit OCD that way, if you haven't already guessed -- but if stray commas or adverbs sneak in, they can be weeded out later. I'm just having fun telling the story. And that's how to find your voice.

Oh, and for those who are paying attention, I'm currently at just a little shy of 29,000 words. In other words, just past halfway and well on my way to the 5oK goal, though maybe only about 1/5 of the way into the story. I'm still aiming at 100-120K words total, but looking back on what I've written so far, there's a lot I could take out and tighten up, so even if I end up around 140-150K, I'm probably doing all right. Heck, as long as it ends up shorter than last year's, I'll be happy.

So my challenge to my fellow writers is this: Spend some time this next week just having fun with your writing. Relax, let the words flow, and let's see what happens!

I love it when I can serve as an object lesson!

(If you want to become NaNoWriMo buddies, or even if you just want to follow my word count progress, I'm arwensouth on the NaNoWriMo Web site.)