While watching Project Runway, I was yelling at one of the designers about her supposed design philosophy. Suddenly, I realized that I have a teaching philosophy but no writing philosophy. My teaching philosophy is: "We communicate through personal experiences that contain universal truths." But what is my writing philosophy? I don't know. I'm going to think hard about it, though.
Meanwhile, I'm reading Ulysses by James Joyce. It will take all week, I think.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
The Debate about Art
One man's trash is another man's treasure. All agreed that's an old expression? Any naysayers? Good. Now here's a question: what if it's another man's treasure but his use for it has been fulfilled. What if another man picks up said treasure and incorporates it into his own treasure?
One of my ideas for The Orchard Boy Series is to have one storyline in each novella revolving around a character who is continued from the end of another story. A famous story (or, usually, a not-so-famous story; let's say a published story instead). I just have reservations about this. Here are my reasons:
1. Is it considered plagiarism? It's not taking someone's words and making them my own, and it's not really taking someone's idea and making it my own, but it is taking someone's character and essentially making it my own. I know a lot of people have done this - most recently I can recall March by Geraldine Brooks, which takes up the story of what Mr. March from Little Women was doing during his youth and while he was away from his family. This book won the Pulitzer Prize.
2. A lot of people have been doing this lately, so will it be like jumping on a bandwagon? The idea came to me when I was thinking about an old short story I read long ago, and how the ending to that story was ambivalent, and imagining that ending and what happened to the characters, and then re-imagining that ending to have gone in a more fantastic direction.
3. The idea will also play off of another of my favorite series - The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King. In the first book, The Gunslinger, one of the characters dies (again) and says, as he dies, "There are other worlds than these." In a sense, he is saying he will live on in another world, in another fantasy. He can be brought back. Is it okay to play off of this idea? Maybe King would love that - the continuation of his idea. That he inspired someone's creativity.
I think it's hard to answer all of these questions, and at the same time, I think all of these questions have already been answered. Countless characters show up in other people's novels, and sometimes it turns out beautifully. I suppose it's true that there are about nineteen archetypes for a story and we just retell them, over and over, so it can't really matter anymore. There are only six real emotions (love, hate, fear, joy, grief, and surprise). It's how we decide to utilize those emotions, how we tell those stories, how we grow those characters that make them unique though they are really ubiquitous.
One of my ideas for The Orchard Boy Series is to have one storyline in each novella revolving around a character who is continued from the end of another story. A famous story (or, usually, a not-so-famous story; let's say a published story instead). I just have reservations about this. Here are my reasons:
1. Is it considered plagiarism? It's not taking someone's words and making them my own, and it's not really taking someone's idea and making it my own, but it is taking someone's character and essentially making it my own. I know a lot of people have done this - most recently I can recall March by Geraldine Brooks, which takes up the story of what Mr. March from Little Women was doing during his youth and while he was away from his family. This book won the Pulitzer Prize.
2. A lot of people have been doing this lately, so will it be like jumping on a bandwagon? The idea came to me when I was thinking about an old short story I read long ago, and how the ending to that story was ambivalent, and imagining that ending and what happened to the characters, and then re-imagining that ending to have gone in a more fantastic direction.
3. The idea will also play off of another of my favorite series - The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King. In the first book, The Gunslinger, one of the characters dies (again) and says, as he dies, "There are other worlds than these." In a sense, he is saying he will live on in another world, in another fantasy. He can be brought back. Is it okay to play off of this idea? Maybe King would love that - the continuation of his idea. That he inspired someone's creativity.
I think it's hard to answer all of these questions, and at the same time, I think all of these questions have already been answered. Countless characters show up in other people's novels, and sometimes it turns out beautifully. I suppose it's true that there are about nineteen archetypes for a story and we just retell them, over and over, so it can't really matter anymore. There are only six real emotions (love, hate, fear, joy, grief, and surprise). It's how we decide to utilize those emotions, how we tell those stories, how we grow those characters that make them unique though they are really ubiquitous.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Welcome to TJC's House of Discipline
Which is way less kinky than it sounds. Basically, I'm lazy and need constant reminders of what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. It's not that I don't enjoy reading and writing - I do, I really, really like them. It's that I'm perpetually afraid of beginning something because I'm equally perpetually afraid of being criticized. Cowardly...lion. I need courage...huzzah.
My plan long ago was to read one book per week this year to accustom myself to a routine, then to introduce, each year, another book each week, then another, until I was reading during every free minute. It worked okay, I kept it up fairly well. I also wanted to document all of the books I read and that didn't work so well. My hope is to be caught being naughty when I don't report the new book or document it as having been read in the handy gadget at the bottom of the screen.
Meanwhile, I have a friggin' Master's degree in writing. And I...work at a clothing store. I'm a winner. I've been kicking around two ideas for stories for a long time - one serious novel (semi-autobiographical) and one novella series, with the possibility to truly be endless. Ya see, I have one true character who runs through my head but I've worried that I can't write every story about said character in fear of being called unimaginative, unrealistic, and unimportant. But then I realized that I shouldn't care. I realized that I...am going to write a soap opera. I'm going to
WRITE a SOAP OPERA. One little sleepy village is going to go through every major catastrophic event possible (from kidnapping to exorcism - I'm looking at YOU Days of Our Lives) and each character is going to survive fifty or so life-and-death situations. And it will be entertaining and fun, and suspenseful and gripping, magical and real.
Oh, yeah, and fantastic shit will happen right alongside realistic shit. Time periods will overlap and a world will be created. Deal.
I'll periodically post on how I liked each book and how I'm feeling about the written stories. I will not divulge details of the The Serious Novel. It has a name, but I will also squirrel even that away for now. It will be titled just as you have seen it: The Serious Novel.
I'm going to rotate every three weeks between The Serious Novel, The Orchard Boy Series, and writing a short story (a girl's gotta get her foot in the door). I will also rotate between library books and books read on the FACTICK (fucking-awesome-creation-that-is-called-Kindle). I'll also read other things as well, as sometimes a book doesn't take more than a day or two to read, but for now I'm interested in reaching these goals. Just know I'm not buggering off after I complete said goals.
Thanks for reading and or following. I think this routine will work for me, and I'm also confident that this time, I mean it.
P.S. How hard is it to grab five random books? The other day my sister was headed to the library and I told her to grab me five random books, and she said, "I don't know what you like." I said, "No, no, just go up to the shelf, close your eyes and pick five random books." She returns with these books and says, "It was really hard to find five random books. I kept having to put them back because they didn't look like what you read." Le sigh. Le piu.
My plan long ago was to read one book per week this year to accustom myself to a routine, then to introduce, each year, another book each week, then another, until I was reading during every free minute. It worked okay, I kept it up fairly well. I also wanted to document all of the books I read and that didn't work so well. My hope is to be caught being naughty when I don't report the new book or document it as having been read in the handy gadget at the bottom of the screen.
Meanwhile, I have a friggin' Master's degree in writing. And I...work at a clothing store. I'm a winner. I've been kicking around two ideas for stories for a long time - one serious novel (semi-autobiographical) and one novella series, with the possibility to truly be endless. Ya see, I have one true character who runs through my head but I've worried that I can't write every story about said character in fear of being called unimaginative, unrealistic, and unimportant. But then I realized that I shouldn't care. I realized that I...am going to write a soap opera. I'm going to
WRITE a SOAP OPERA. One little sleepy village is going to go through every major catastrophic event possible (from kidnapping to exorcism - I'm looking at YOU Days of Our Lives) and each character is going to survive fifty or so life-and-death situations. And it will be entertaining and fun, and suspenseful and gripping, magical and real.
Oh, yeah, and fantastic shit will happen right alongside realistic shit. Time periods will overlap and a world will be created. Deal.
I'll periodically post on how I liked each book and how I'm feeling about the written stories. I will not divulge details of the The Serious Novel. It has a name, but I will also squirrel even that away for now. It will be titled just as you have seen it: The Serious Novel.
I'm going to rotate every three weeks between The Serious Novel, The Orchard Boy Series, and writing a short story (a girl's gotta get her foot in the door). I will also rotate between library books and books read on the FACTICK (fucking-awesome-creation-that-is-called-Kindle). I'll also read other things as well, as sometimes a book doesn't take more than a day or two to read, but for now I'm interested in reaching these goals. Just know I'm not buggering off after I complete said goals.
Thanks for reading and or following. I think this routine will work for me, and I'm also confident that this time, I mean it.
P.S. How hard is it to grab five random books? The other day my sister was headed to the library and I told her to grab me five random books, and she said, "I don't know what you like." I said, "No, no, just go up to the shelf, close your eyes and pick five random books." She returns with these books and says, "It was really hard to find five random books. I kept having to put them back because they didn't look like what you read." Le sigh. Le piu.
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