Of Plot, Nouns and Verbs…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Articles and Essays, Musings
According to plot guru, Martha Alderson, plot can be viewed as either a noun or verb. She states: “Plot as noun encompasses every element of a story. Plot as verb allows conscious development of those elements.”
I invite you to visit her blog, and to follow her on Twitter. Her daily Tweets are gems of gold.
Tags: author, beginning, Blockbuster plots, end, guru, Martha Alderson, middle, nouns, novel, plot, scenes, structure, The Writing Salon, Tweets, Twitter, verbs, writer
…the writing life… | “Bollywood, The Hijinks of Thrillers, and Definition…”
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ...the writing life..., Musings
I am always amazed how much screen time Bollywood movies donate to establishing and clarifying family relations of the film’s protagonist compared to the nil to absent mention of family connections in American movies.
The protagonist of an American made movie can be undergoing the direst and most despairing of circumstances and the screenplay makes no mention of mother, father, sister, or brother. Often very little time or explanation is given to the ex-spouse or ex-significant other, unless she or he is central to the plot.
Where Bollywood movies perhaps overdramatize the gifts and goodness of family, American theater emphasizes the need to break away and discover who one truly is.
Tags: ambition, america, American cinema, Antonya Nelson, Bollywood, children, dreams, family, fantasy, hope, human relationships, individual, life, marriage, meaning, movies, plot, protagonist, purpose, spouse, story, thriller, wishes
Contract Negotiations, Cyril Connolly, and Vivekananda…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ...the writing life..., Musings
What caught my attention in a recent article on author Janet Evanovich, more specifically her asking price for the rights to publish her next 4 novels–$50 million from St. Martin’s Press–were the complaints and criticism concerning the quality of Evanovich’s recent novels launched by many who described themselves as loyal fans.
In toto, most stated that recent installments of her Stephanie Plum Series , the latest installment being, Sizzling Sixteen, had grown flat with the protagonist, Stephanie Plum, growing stagnant and not evolving.
Some even stated that it was clear to them she had been writing with her focus on fulfilling her contract obligation rather than providing fans with an engaging and entertaining story.
This all brings me to the point of where does one, more specifically the writer/author, draw the line between meeting the demands of their contract and providing readers with what they have come to expect and you, as well as they know you can achieve?
Tags: Ballantine Bantam Dell, contract, Cyril Connolly, Janet Evanovich, negotiations, protagonist, publishing, Random House, Sizzling Sixteen, St. Martins Press, Stephanie Plum, Stephanie Plum Series, Swami Vivekananda
Change, Challenge and Seasons of Growth…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
I’ve been gone most of the summer, first to Brussels, then to Maui where vacation each year.
As the opening of the new school year approaches I am amazed at how it seems that just yesterday I was bidding a enjoyable and safe travels to fellow parents and their daughters and sons who attend the same school as my children.
Now nearly 2 and half months later I have received the first in a line of requests from the service that provides lunches at the school our youngest child attends the choices of entrées our child desires.
Tags: Brussels, challenge, change, child, children, conflict, daily round, desires, emotions, evolution, growth, human development, journey, life, Maui, meaning, narrative, pattern, plot, pre-teen, protagonist, purpose, season, stories, structure, symbol, talisman, transformation, travel, vacation, writing
The Hare and The Tortoise," Internet Technology, and Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
The economy is languishing.
Concern and doubt fill our emotions if not swarm around us.
For writers this can be either a perilous time or one for heightened creativity.
Those of us who write for money and recognition are asking many questions.
Will I get that agent?
And if so, how?
Will the publishers like my work?
Those whose hopes for the future rest on crafting a book that will make giant sales wonder about the state of publishing.
Where is it going?
And then there are the daily concerns of paying the bills, never mind if one has chosen the road to self-publication as the way to make our work public. To be sure, this route comes with costs also.
But what about just writing?
Tags: eyes on the prize, Internet technology, The House, The Tortoise and The Hare
Early Drafts, The Journeyman and Our Need for Praise…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
The decision to write is a brave choice we make each time we bring pen to paper or place our fingers upon the computer keys and type.
To be sure, very few do it. And of those, even less follow their hearts’ desires with an understanding and commitment to see to the end what we have started.
It is one thing to write; yet another to go back over and over working to reshape and polish the initial words we have written. Writing our thoughts, bringing the ideas of our imagination into sentences if but one half the challenge.
Tags: anxiety, approval, early drafts, efficient, engaging, entertaining, journeyman, joy, master, need, praise, stories, writing
Hesitancy, Drawing at The Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, and Honoring the Imagination of Our Hearts…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
Today, and with my youngest child, I visited The Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, otherwise known as The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels in Belgium.
Immediately upon entering the lower lobby she spied a life drawing class offered free to anyone who wanted to participate.
A model stood posed on a stage in front of the class of around 10.
Tags: Belgium, child, drawing, The Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels
Uncertainty, Destination, and the Need to Know…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
We are ruled by uncertainty. The need to know shapes our motives, what we ask for, desire, fear and seek to claim.
And so it is in writing that we encounter a somewhat safe haven.
The writer has a general idea of the destination of her or his story if not, how it shall end.
But this is an illusion too.
Tags: doubt, futility, illusion, imagination, journey, map, novel, story, terrain, transformation, uncertainty, writing
Writer’s Block, Travel and Encountering Ourselves…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
It’s really hard to write. I’m traveling with my youngest.
I hated leaving home. And yet I felt stuck.
Stuck.
Not a good place to be as a writer.
And yet it happens.
I don’t experience writer’s block, as much as encountering periods wherein it is just hard to write. I lack the stamina to even get started.
I feel not excitement.
Ideas for a new story, ever how short, evade me.
Perhaps this is writer’s block.
Tags: comfort zone, compulsion, constancy, encountering ourselves, history, honest, painful, personality, stamina, travel, writer, writer's block
Magic, Mosaics, and the Alchemical Process of Becoming…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
“Like turning base metal into gold, that’s what revision is to me.”
Susan Gabriel, psychotherapist, and author of Seeking Sara Summers
During my recent interview with Susan Gabriel she honestly stated that when first beginning to write she hated the process of revision.
On thanking her for being so truthful, I said that I had felt the same way.
We both then agreed that now upon reaching the stage of having written the rough/1st drafts of novels we love the stage of revising.
It was at this point that Susan wisely coined the phrase that she experienced the process of revision as one of “…turning base metal into gold.”
Tags: alchemy, Arabic, base metal, craft, fiction, gold, gratitude, healing practitioner, Interview, magic, montages, mosaic, mystical, novel, psychotherapy, revising, revision, rough draft, Seeking Sara Summers, story, Susan Gabriel, Thanksgiving, writing
Introspection, Thought and Nascent Creations…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
Recently I’ve been helping my high school teenager with the story they are writing. Now that school has ended and summer vacation has begun they are spending more time writing on their work.
It is wonderful to watch them pour their energy in passion into the project.
Doing so revives wistful memories of when I began writing nearly two decades ago.
Recalling my first attempts at writing a novel, brings to mind not simply the excitement and angst at setting out accomplish such a great feat.
I doubt we would have succeeded had most of us who have accomplished this goal understood the full nature of our undertaking and what it would and has required.
And so it has been with care and caution in choosing my words and responses that have and sought to nurture my child’s passion when they have sought my guidance and consultat
Tags: art, author, caution, child, Clive Matson, comments, counsel, creative writing teacher, critique, discovery, discussion, envy, gift, goal, growth, journey, Let the Crazy Child Write, MFA in Creative Writing, nascent work, passion, plot, poet, publication, teenager, thought, wisdom, writing, writing groups
Art, The Muse and Beholding The Other…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
The Muse then is that most terrified of all the virgins. She starts if she hears a sound, pales if you ask her questions, spins and vanishes if you disturb her dress. We might start off by paraphrasing Oscar Wilde’s poem, substituting the world “Art” for “Love.”
Art will fly if held too lightly.
Art will die if held too tightly.
Lightly, tightly, how do I know?
Whether I holding or letting Art go?”
–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity
Beckoning and befriending The Muse takes work and energy. The focus required to summon The Muse asks that we turn inward. Looking at one’s own self consolidates awareness of our motives, those conscious and unconscious, what drives us to move through and impress ourselves upon the world in a unique manner that distinguishes us and expresses our personality.
The impetus to create involves two simultaneous processes, one of bringing the formless into form, making something out of the rawness of nothing. And then there is transformation under which each artist goes when carving and crafting our creating.
The Muse oversees and directs these two aspects of making while being remade, molding while being reshaped.
Tags: altar, archetypal landscape, art, body, bread, clay, collective, create, dogma, ego, ego ideal, goals, heart, inspiration, love, mind's eye, muse, Oscar Wilde, sacrifice, self, Shadow, soul, spirit, surrender, the other, transubstantiation, unconscious, water, wine, yearn
The Muse, Mystery and Grace…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.
We are speaking, of course, of The Muse.”
–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity
Many people imagine the life of a writer as one of awakening each morning to a flowing stream of words that pour onto our writing tablet or through our fingers and onto the computer string, our greatest challenge being that of writing or moving our fingers quick enough on the computer keys to catch the words.
There are times like that. But more often than not, we struggle to find those words that ideally give readers a smooth ride into the escape of our stories and novels.
A more honest way of describing what we do is to say that the smoother our sentences flow and the more intense a readers entrancement into at story, the more the writer toiled at kneading and carving that ease of journey presented in the magic carpet of our words.
But what of The Muse?
Tags: art, artistry, creativity, edit, Essays on Creativity, grace, inspiration, literary, media, muse, mystery, narrative, novel, poem, Ray Bradbury, reader, refinement, skill, story, The Beloved, unconscious, victim, words, writer, writing
Adobe’s Design CS4, Intoxication and Zen in the Art of Writing…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you…writing allows just the right recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed.”
–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
On reading this last night I considered how long it’s taking me to get my novel together, The House, that is. In actuality, the novel is written, and edited. I’m presently working on the layout of the text. I’m a do-it-your-selfer. After purchasing an edition of Adobe’s Design CS4 I feel obligated to at least make an attempt at transferring my novel that I am self-publishing from MS Word to book format.
Tags: Adobe Design CS4, books, frustration, imagination, Intoxication, life, novel, Ray Bradbury, reality, The House, truth, writing, Zen and the Art of Writing
…the writing life…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ...the writing life..., Musings
Check out my new post @ …the writing life…
Adobe’s Design CS4, Intoxication and Zen and the Art of Writing…
Tags: Adobe Design CS4, Intoxication, Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing
Forgiveness, Anxieties, and the Definition of “Enough”…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
–Anne Lamott
I recently saw and interview with Anne Lamott wherein she shared her myriad idiosyncracies, neuroses and anxieties.
While she shared many things throughout her hour-long conversation with her host, Dean Nelson, the thread that stuck with me at the end was her ruthless honesty.
At times I wished she would just stop, but had she done so I would have been hurt.
Tags: Anne Lamott, anxiety, definition, enough, forgivness
Deadlines, Hands-On Parenting and Peace of Mind…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
The last few weeks have been amazingly busy, torridly scattered.
With the academic year winding down for all three of our children I have had to put my writing on hold and do a lot of hands-on parenting.
I often wonder what writers/authors working on deadlines with publishing contracts, which appear forever to be tightening, do when the needs of their children, that seem perpetual, demand the writer’s attention.
I would hate to feel torn.
Tags: deadline, Hands-on Parenting, Peace of Mind
The Writer as Shaman, Ruth Schwartz, and Dank Smelly Snippets…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
I spoke with a soul doctor today. No, not a priest or minister, although they attend the soul too, but rather a psychotherapist who specifically works with authors and poets.
This psychotherapist is also a writer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a B. A. in Women’s Studies.
Yet what actually drew me to Ruth L. Schwartz her advertisement on Facebook that stated, The Writer as Shaman.
Cell Phone Glitches, “On Writing” and Gratitude…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
Yesterday I hosted author, Myne Whitman, on Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters. The original date for our interview was Saturday, May 15, 2010 @ 12 pm PT.
Twelve, noon on Saturdays is the usual time of the broadcast, but on Saturday we have some technical problems. Myne’s cell phone kept going out.
By the time she was able to connect I had logged off. I felt horrible.
I was also worried if she all right. Rarely do I have technical problems that prevent the entire broadcast.
Luckily, I’ve never had any author to blow off an interview. Anytime there’s an interruption something is seriously wrong beyond the guest’s control.
And that is what happened to Myne.
Tags: A Heart to Mend, author, Book Talk, broadcast, cell phone, Creativity & Family Matters, family, gratitude, husbands, Interview, love, marriage, Myne Whitman, novel, On Writing, romantic, significant others, spouse, Stephen King, wives, writing
Manuscripts, Editing, and the Chaos of Writing…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Musings
Last week was an absolute blur. It was crazy. My middle child, a junior in high school, was approaching taking her SAT for the first time.
Two semester term papers, each between 12 and 15 pages lay in wait to be edited. As a writer I had to assist in my child in this process. Whatever are mothers for?
I have no idea how parents who hate writing or have no interest in doing it manage to help their children with writing projects.
Tags: 5th grader, chaos, editing, editor, eldest child, graduate student, internship, manuscript, middle child, science project, The House, writing
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