Recalibrating the Googlamabob

Kind of a quickie, off-topic post, but I think action is required here.

I finally got linked to by another site (Yay!), which turned out to be a site dedicated to crawling other sites and indexing them, somewhat like Google does (meh), and it indexed me based on a search for hysterical pregnancies (uh...).

All of which led to me being, briefly, the fifth top Google result for the search string "'deceive him' preg". Crap!

Obviously, I'm going to be able to get around this in the long run by regularly generating content that's interesting enough for other people to link to. But if, short term, anyone has suggestions for how to get Google to put me in a, shall we say "saner" search category, I'd appreciate the help.

And hey, at least I know people read the Glee post.

Thanks,

--Dave

Trapped in the Snow

12:57pm... have been up for about an hour and a half. Went outside twenty minutes ago to shovel the walk, knowing it was a futile effort, but compelled by HOA rules to clear the walkway in case some old woman manages to dig through twenty feet of snow only to break her ankle on MY part of the sidewalk.

Total madness, and I gave it up as a bad job in five minutes. Now watching Lina, a one-foot Corgi, try to hop through a foot-and-a-half of snow and watching the E! channel: hopelessly insane people babbling like rhesus monkeys on crystal meth.

What to do with this day? I am singularly unprepared to be trapped in my house for 48 hours, despite running around in a terminal frenzy yesterday attempting to prepare for the inevitable. That was a bad episode - fighting against every stinking man and woman in the city limits trying to gather supplies and complete whatever errands they had left that couldn't be done with two feet of snow on the ground.

I snapped, coming out of the Giant parking lot and seeing a traffic jam that looked to be about twelve miles long, knowing that I had just thirty minutes to reach home, unload the groceries, and then go out again to get dinner for the evening... and realizing at that moment that I had forgotten the booze.

No more chances for liquor, now. We are well and truly shut in. The dog is already driving me mad - wanting to play in the snow, then wanting to come inside, over and over ad nauseum and whining whenever she doesn't get her way. Tim Curry is on the television now, just a sweet little transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, a terrible distraction.

Can I use this time properly? Can I produce? The dog seems dead set against it. And I just know that when I finally get my head straight and get on a really good writing jag, the damned HOA will pound on my door with big sticks and demand that I shovel the walk.

We don't hold with reason here, they'll tell me. Do as we say, or get out of our neighborhood. We don't want your kind here.

--Dave

Author's Log

Completed an eight-and-a-half page synopsis, which is currently on an editor's desk awaiting review. There is no guarantee that the editor isn't on holiday right now, but if he is I wish him well. Why not? I'm in no rush, and everyone needs a good break now and then.

Currently working on an essay about "my success story", for a contest advertised on Writer's Market. The trick will be to avoid going on an ego trip, get down everything that actually happened leading up to now, and making it sound interesting. If I can do all that, then I will undoubtedly lose to some deserving single mother of three who is working on the next Harry Potter.

Current Reading

Just finished rereading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson, and I'm just now moving on to Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's outlook on politics is always enjoyable when things get bad in D.C., although it's becoming more and more depressing to reflect on just how little has changed in the District in the last 27 years.

Deadlines

I'm going to tell you guys a secret. Come a little closer, okay? I don't want this getting around.

A little closer. Okay.

I love deadlines.

Love love love deadlines. There's nothing else that motivates me like knowing without a shadow of a doubt that something is due on This Day, and if it's not done on This Day then it might as well never be done At All.

I thrive on watching the clock stretch to midnight. I eat hand cramps for breakfast. A hard drive crash just cost me a week's worth of writing? Sir, I accept your challenge.

What I am not so good at are self-imposed deadlines. These are deadlines of a different color. They're a bit... weedy, shall we say. Soft touches, the lot of them. "Yes, I know I said Thursday, but just think of how much better you could do if you took that weekend coming up..."

Self-imposed deadlines = slippage. Or at least they did.

I've got a synopsis due in "a few weeks," editor's words. That's just asking for slippage. I'm not going to stand for it. I don't want to be Johnny Procrastinator. Certainly not where the editors can see.

So: December 11th, one month exactly since the word came down. Written on my calendar in black Sharpie, as close to set in stone as I can get. I will have a complete, fully-featured synopsis ready to go on that date or die trying.

You are all my witnesses, and I fully expect public scorn if I fail. Tar and feathers are to your left.

--Dave

Author's Log

Some character sketches, a dozen sticky notes with plot points written down on them, and some tentative steps towards filling out the parts of the synopsis that lie between The Beginning and The End.

Current Reading

Finished reading Overclocked by Cory Doctorow, excepting the last story in the collection, mainly due to maxing out my renewals at the library. Recommended for people who like their sci-fi to make a strong point about our modern world.

I have started on Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, but set the book down at the end of chapter seven. The premise (steampunk and zombies and airships!) hits all my glee buttons, but if the plot doesn't grab me by the throat in the next few chapters I might give up on this one.

NaNoWriMo - Complete!!

Well, as of this past Sunday, November 22nd, I have completed my NaNoWriMo novel. With over 50,000 words and a complete narrative arc (which, admittedly, could stand to be filled in more), I wrote a novel in less than a month.

Again.

Some lessons I've learned:

I am not a "make it up as you go along" writer. I like working from sort of outline: in this case, a set of chapter headings that told me what each chapter should be about. Even vague guidelines were better than trying to write blind, and I think this novel turned out better than my last effort. For whatever I work on next, I intend to take copious notes before I jump into the full narrative. (Which leads to the problem of never actually starting anything, of course. Selah.)

I need a thesaurus. Granted, NaNoWriMo is not about trying for brilliant prose, it's about flinging 50,000+ instances of poo at paper and seeing what sticks. But I overused certain descriptive phrases way too often for my tastes.

I need to watch out for adjectives. Actually I used these little monsters as word count boosters, so I'd say at least a third were deliberate and would die in the initial rewrite. But they were painful to write in the first place, and I'll be cutting back in the future.

I can write like a bastard when I need to. Here, go look. I had one day (off) when I wrote damn near 10,000 words, and ten days where I broke 2,000 words. I can't match Stephen King, but I can keep up with him for a bit before the psychotic episode hits.

I don't actually need to write like a bastard. Just before starting NaNoWriMo, I read a book, How To Write & Sell Your First Novel by Oscar Collier and Frances Spatz Leighton, which recommended a daily output of three double-spaced manuscript pages. This was a revelation when compared to Stephen King's recommendation, which is ten double-spaced pages (five if you're just starting out), or the NaNoWriMo recommended minimum, which is about 1,667 words a day. So what if you can't match the pace of a Maine prodigy or a bunch of over-caffeinated noveling fiends? If you wrote three double-spaced pages, you did okay. It's truly a marvelous philosophy, and I encourage it wholeheartedly for anyone who gets brain strain after reading On Writing.

--Dave

Author's Log

In addition to the final stages of the novel, I drafted six two-page character sketches for an upcoming project. I learned the technique from First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner. The title is a blatant lie, but as a prewriting guide this book seems to be aces so far.

Current Reading

Just finished Summer Knight, the fourth book in the Dresden Files. Another excellent read. I'm now working on Cory Doctorow's short story collection, Overclocked.

What I Learned About Writing From Watching Glee!

Glee! is a sitcom on the Fox network that revolves around the members of a high school glee club. It is a pretty good dramedy, and I'm going to be going into some major spoilers for it here, so if you think you might be interested I'd recommend browsing to Hulu and watching at least the first two episodes before reading any further.

You back yet? Good.

Television abounds with lessons to teach the writer, both good and bad. Today I'll be talking about what a writer can learn from watching Glee!. To keep the post short, I'll be focusing on three of the show's antagonists and their relationships to the protagonists.

The Characters

Terri Schuester is the wife of Will Schuester, the show's protagonist. Terri is introduced in the first episode as an antagonist. She and Will are fairly obviously not right for each other, something which both characters are becoming aware of. Terri is terrified that Will is going to leave her, to the extent that she suffers a hysterical (false) pregnancy. Once she learns that she is not pregnant, she fears that Will will leave her as soon as he finds out, and determines to deceive him and find a substitute baby to save their marriage.

Quinn Fabray is the leader of the school's cheerleaders. She is introduced as an antagonist to Rachel Berry, a lesser protagonist who has a crush on Finn Hudson, Quinn's boyfriend. She is later revealed to be pregnant by another student, Puck, but convinces Finn that he is the father even though they have never had sex.

Sue Sylvester is the coach of the cheerleading squad and another antagonist for Will. She is determined to squash Will's glee club, in the interests of keeping the lion's share of the school's budget coming to her cheerleaders.

Lessons Learned

Give your antagonists believable motivations - No bad guy should ever be evil just for the sake of being evil, unless you're writing a philosophical story. Your antagonists should have reasons for doing what they do that are just as strong as your protagonists.

• Terri lies to Will about her pregnancy because she is terrified of losing him. All of her actions are motivated by her desire to save their marriage.


• Quinn lies to Finn about him fathering her child, and does her best to hide it, because she is terrified of losing the approval of her peers and parents. Her actions are motivated by her desire to keep her social status.


• Sue sets out to destroy the glee club because she wants to maintain the primacy of her cheerleading squad. She is motivated by her desire to succeed.

Make your antagonists sympathetic - Being able to sympathize with a bad guy lends the character extra depth. You might not want them to win (should not, in fact, want them to win, unless your protagonist is the bad guy), but being able to relate to the reasons they do the things they do adds another layer to their conflict with the protagonist.

• Terri is presented as amoral and manipulative, someone we hope that Will will ultimately leave. However, she clearly loves her husband in her own way, and her attempts to deceive him are her way of hanging on to her love. The viewer can sympathize with her, even while they hope she doesn't succeed.


• Quinn is presented in a similar fashion to Terri, but her motivations are different. She deceives Finn not out of love (she constantly attacks him), but because she believes he will be a better boyfriend and father than Puck. She acts out of self-interest alone, and the viewer finds it harder to sympathize with her. This makes Quinn a more two-dimensional character than Terri: easier to dislike, but ultimately less interesting.


• Sue is presented as an eccentric, hyper-competitive woman. She will take any action to ensure that her cheerleaders succeed, even if she has to crush other people to do so. But when not engaged in competition, she can be generous to her peers, and is capable of showing kindness even to her enemies under the right circumstances. She does not appear capable of true malice, and the viewer can relate to her as a fair competitor.

Don't force your characters to act like morons - This doesn't mean your characters can't actually be morons. It means that you should never have a character act stupidly or out of character in order to stick to your desired plot.

• Terri convinces Will that she is pregnant by wearing a fake baby bump. The viewer is asked to believe that Will has not seen his wife naked in months, has not touched her belly under her shirt, and that he can't tell the difference between padding and a human stomach. It's conceivable, but difficult to believe.


• Quinn convinces Finn that he got her pregnant by ejaculating in a hot tub. While Finn is not portrayed as intelligent, a simple Google search would be enough to prove that this is a lie. The deception irritates the viewer because it is artificially prolonged.


• In contrast, Sue constantly takes actions that should be unbelievable. However, all of her actions are in keeping with her character. The viewer accepts her eccentric actions because they are consistent with what they know about her.

Conclusion

There are other lessons one can learn from watching Glee!, and other characters that could be examined. These are simply the ones that stuck with me in the early part of the show. Feel free to comment if you disagree with anything, or think there's something else about the show that an author could take to heart.

Author's Log

Running well ahead of par in NaNoWriMo, with 40,000 words so far. I'm hoping to reach 50,000 by the end of the weekend. To my fellow month-long novelists, I wish the best of luck (and I hope you'll reciprocate!).

Current Reading

I've finished book three of the Dresden Files, and have started on book four, Summer Knight. This series really does just get better as it goes.