The Joshua Bell Experiment – Don’t be a Statistic

I have to preface this blog post with a few things. First, it’s going to be long. Second, the article I’m referencing is old (by nearly six years). And third, just by reading said article, I cried big sloppy tears I usually reserve for the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas special and that moment in Deathly Hallows when Fred dies. So, yeah. You know this is going to be something special.

I came across this article a week or so ago. It was posted in April of 2007, written by Gene Weingarten and contributed to by Emily Shroder, Rachel Manteuffel, John W. Poole and Magazine Editor Tom Shroder of the Washington Post. But this is the first that I’m hearing of it. I’m shame-faced to say that. I wish I’d had it in my life a lot sooner than now.

In a nutshell, it’s a story about Joshua Bell, the world-famous violinist, who dressed in jeans and a baseball cap to go play in a metro station in Washington D.C. It was an experiment hosted by the Washington Post. Would people recognize the talent? Would they recognize that they, quite literally, had a front row seat to one of the best classical musicians on the planet?

Please go read the article. It is very, VERY long, but it is so worth your time. Underlying it all, it’s about taking the time to appreciate beauty in a world that moves so fast that we aren’t even aware of what is around us anymore. If you can’t take the time to read this beautiful and emotional and spot-on-correct article, then I’m sorry to say that you fall right into the same category as all those people who passed by Bell without a second glance. Don’t be a statistic.

So go read it now and come back so we can cry and hug and ramble on about it together, ‘kay?

I just read it a second time and – ugh – tears. Again.

Where to start? There are so many brilliant pieces in this article. Moving and emotional and funny and infuriating. I think, however, the best place to start would be with the man himself, Joshua Bell.

Interview magazine once said his playing “does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live.”

Shouldn’t all art do that? I’m not opposed to the frivolous entertainment that we’re subjected to on a daily basis. I like to read fun, meaningless stories. I like to watch TV shows that make me laugh rather than think. I’m constantly pummeled by information that, frankly, is completely and utterly pointless.

And that’s fine.

But I wish it wasn’t all like that. I feel like art – true art – is a dying breed. Whatever happened to reading something or watching something that meant something to you? That taught you lessons and made you want to be a better person? That’s why a silly little show about a vampire slayer named Buffy is so insanely popular after all this time. That’s why 1984 hasn’t lost its brilliance even though the story is outdated and outlandish. Those things are entertaining and funny and witty. But they’re also thought-provoking and memorable and make us want to be better human beings.

Shouldn’t everything we consume strive to do the same?

“I’m not comfortable if you call this genius.” “Genius” is an overused word, he said: It can be applied to some of the composers whose work he plays, but not to him. His skills are largely interpretive, he said, and to imply otherwise would be unseemly and inaccurate.

It was an interesting request, and under the circumstances, one that will be honored. The word will not again appear in this article.

Continuing on with Joshua Bell, I just wanted to point out this section because, well, we need more people like him in the world. Talk about humble. Can you imagine literally being one of the greatest classical musicians on the EARTH, and saying, ‘Please don’t call me a genius. I don’t deserve it.’

We can pretend that we would have the same response, but 99.9% of us would be in denial. How could you not get a big head when you become that famous based on a talent that is obviously not common or simple?

There are people who become famous because they have money and a pretty face. The talentless oftentimes are more arrogant than those who are actually deserving of the spotlight, the people we wouldn’t blame if they admitted that they were the best of the best.

And, yet, those people are never the ones to do that. Strange, isn’t it?

At the top of the escalators are a shoeshine stand and a busy kiosk that sells newspapers, lottery tickets and a wallfull of magazines with titles such as Mammazons and Girls of Barely Legal. The skin mags move, but it’s that lottery ticket dispenser that stays the busiest, with customers queuing up for Daily 6 lotto and Powerball and the ultimate suckers’ bait, those pamphlets that sell random number combinations purporting to be “hot.” They sell briskly. There’s also a quick-check machine to slide in your lotto ticket, post-drawing, to see if you’ve won. Beneath it is a forlorn pile of crumpled slips.

This is less of a comment on the situation itself and more of a, ‘hey, let’s just pause here for a second and marvel at the beauty of this paragraph.’ It’s a good lesson in how to write description succinctly. Not too many details, yet the words jump off the page and form images of those things in your mind. We get a sense of the atmosphere – of the attitude of the people – from the description of the setting.

If Bell’s encomium to “Chaconne” seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

So, that’s the piece Bell started with.

This just speaks volumes about Bell, doesn’t it? A song like that – something so powerful and passionate and obviously extremely intricate and difficult – is performed as the opening piece. The talent must just seep from his pours at night. I wonder if he’d be willing to bottle it up and sell it to the rest of us? I’ll take six gallons, thank you very much.

Bell was, by the way, merely 39 when this article was written. It is, I would think, a young age for a musician as talented as he is, one that has gone so far in such a short amount of time. I do believe that people are pre-disposed with talent. I’ve been rubbish at math my entire life, yet writing has always come easily to me. There’s a reason for that. There’s a reason why a child picks up a guitar rather than a soccer ball. We gravitate toward the things that interest us, the things that we are good at.

But that’s not what makes someone talented and famous and a master of their craft. Sure, it helps. But Bell says it best when he talked about the fact that he executes his pieces not focusing on the actual playing of the instrument, but on the emotion he is evoking and the story he is telling. The pieces are performed by memory – muscle memory. And how do you get that? Practice.

Talent makes us good. Hard work and practice make us great.

Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

 
This is one of the truest statements in this article. It seems like we’re all ghosts these days. Those commuters – heads bowed, no eye contact, rushing off to work, on their phones, listening to their iPods – they don’t exist. Or maybe they do exist, but they’re not present. They’re not corporeal.

We have a tendency to work as hard as we can now so we can relax later. But do we ever relax? The age of retirement keeps going up, and I know plenty of people who can’t retire until well after that point passes them by. From a young age – maybe about 16, when we determine we want our own job so we can spend our own money on whatever we want – it is ingrained into our minds to work hard. Hard work means more money. More money means more happiness.

Right?

Maybe. Maybe not. The saying ‘work hard, play harder,’ has a negative connotation associated with it, but I’ve got half a mind to think that’s one of the most brilliant philosophies I’ve ever heard. I don’t discount working hard – I said just a few paragraphs ago that it’s the only way we’re going to become masters of our crafts – but I also think too many people don’t understand that working hard for the majority of their lives isn’t going to bring them happiness.

I’m in a unique position to say that I enjoy my jobs – all of them. I love selling on eBay, and I actually look forward to going into work each day. Hypable is my dream job, and I have fun writing articles and recording podcasts and editing posts. My freelance copyediting stint is growing organically, and it makes me excited. I love it. I love all of it.

Does that mean I don’t work too hard? No. I absolutely think I push myself too hard at times. But there’s a huge difference between working hard at something you loathe with every cell in your body and working hard at something that you enjoy because of the thrill you get when you’re doing it.

Work hard to become great at what you love to do. But don’t be a ghost.

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

We’ll go with Kant, because he’s obviously right, and because he brings us pretty directly to Joshua Bell, sitting there in a hotel restaurant, picking at his breakfast, wryly trying to figure out what the hell had just happened back there at the Metro.

“At the beginning,” Bell says, “I was just concentrating on playing the music. I wasn’t really watching what was happening around me . . .”

Playing the violin looks all-consuming, mentally and physically, but Bell says that for him the mechanics of it are partly second nature, cemented by practice and muscle memory: It’s like a juggler, he says, who can keep those balls in play while interacting with a crowd. What he’s mostly thinking about as he plays, Bell says, is capturing emotion as a narrative: “When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.”

With “Chaconne,” the opening is filled with a building sense of awe. That kept him busy for a while. Eventually, though, he began to steal a sidelong glance.

“It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . .”

The word doesn’t come easily.

“. . . ignoring me.”

Bell is laughing. It’s at himself.

“At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

This passage, coupled with this one…

“It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies,” he says. “I was stressing a little.”

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

“When you play for ticket-holders,” Bell explains, “you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence . . .”

He was, in short, art without a frame. Which, it turns out, may have a lot to do with what happened — or, more precisely, what didn’t happen — on January 12.

…is astounding isn’t it? Exceptional. A man who had played all across the world in front of some of the most important and influential people of our time was stressed out playing a little gig in a metro station in downtown D.C.

Instead of taking this for what it is – the obvious portrayal of an artist who reflects all artists’ insecurities about whether or not they’re good enough even AFTER they’ve been validated a hundred times over – I’d just like to say that we have hope. Hope that if – no, when – we do make it, we will be set. Sure, there’s a lot more pressure. And yes, there are expectations that you will want to live up to. And of course there will be people who will always be disappointed. But – and this is the clincher – it gets easier with time.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But look at Bell. He’s talented, and he put in his hard work. He’s on top of the world right now. He’s played in front of the crowned heads of Europe. He’s certified. People go in expecting greatness and, in turn, they see greatness. It’s only when you take that sort of thing out of context that people see average because they expect average.

So, yes. There’s hope for us. When you write your stories and put them out to the world and honestly and truthfully feel that they are great, people will pick up on that. And when more and more people find your works to be great, the trend will continue. When you become great, you will continue to be great. It’s hard to see that sort of thing happening when you’re so far away from it now. It’s difficult to realize that once you dig your claws in, they’re going to be there forever. As long as you keep producing and keep being you, you will keep being great.

Unless you take yourself out of context. But only a masochist would do that. And, apparently, Joshua Bell. Or Stephen King a la the Richard Bachman pen name. Obviously there are some people in this world that just like to hold a flame to their hand to see what will happen.

MARK LEITHAUSER HAS HELD IN HIS HANDS MORE GREAT WORKS OF ART THAN ANY KING OR POPE OR MEDICI EVER DID. A senior curator at the National Gallery, he oversees the framing of the paintings. Leithauser thinks he has some idea of what happened at that Metro station.

“Let’s say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It’s a $5 million painting. And it’s one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: ‘Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.’”

Leithauser’s point is that we shouldn’t be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.

Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one’s ability to appreciate beauty is related to one’s ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.

“Optimal,” Guyer said, “doesn’t mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don’t fit right.”

So, if Kant had been at the Metro watching as Joshua Bell play to a thousand unimpressed passersby?

“He would have inferred about them,” Guyer said, “absolutely nothing.”

So, does this mean that there’s hope for us, the human race? When I first read this article, I was outraged, and possibly feeling a little guilty. I was outraged because here was this divine person playing this incredible music amongst the ‘little people.’ This was a once in a lifetime chance to literally stand inches from an exceptional violinist. And people were ignoring him. Some people were even annoyed. Annoyed! It’s unbelievable.

And, yes, I felt guilty because I know that I don’t always take the time to look around me and observe the beauty of the world. Beauty doesn’t have to come in the form of Joshua Bell playing “Ave Maria” in a metro station in D.C. Beauty can be how the snow is lying on the tree branches in my back yard right now. I hate to say it, but I don’t always see that. Sometimes I’m too busy.

But, according to Guyer and Kant, it might not be our fault. In order to appreciate beauty, we must have optimal conditions. So, cool. We don’t have to feel too guilty for putting our nose to the grindstone and ignoring the brilliance around us.

But – and this is a big, giant but – I do think it’s up to us to make conditions optimal once in a while. What is life without beauty? Empty. You might as well be a ghost. At least you’d have an excuse. It’s important to work hard to become great at what we love to do, but it’s also important to notice that there is beauty in this world. Without noticing that, how can we hope to replicate it in our stories? Writers are in the unique position of being able to take literally anything – books, movies, TV shows, the flower out back, the dead squirrel on the side of the road, the cows in the pasture, the car accident on the highway – and replicate it. We view it, we internalize it, and we spew it forth colored with our own interpretations and call it something new.

It’s so important to make those conditions optimal once in a while. Allow yourself to see the beauty. If you can’t see the point in doing so simply to make yourself a better human being – and I feel sorry for you if you can’t – then at least do it in order to make your writing stronger. Because it will. And you owe it to yourself to experience those things.

THERE ARE SIX MOMENTS IN THE VIDEO THAT BELL FINDS PARTICULARLY PAINFUL TO RELIVE: “The awkward times,” he calls them. It’s what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn’t noticed him playing don’t notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord — the embarrassed musician’s equivalent of, “Er, okay, moving right along . . .” — and begins the next piece.

The parallels between these moments for Bell and similar moments for authors should be glaringly obvious. It’s that moment when we finally press the publish button on our story. It goes out into cyberspace and we wait for the crowds to flock and herald us as a genius of our time.

Only, they don’t.

Ouch. It is painful, and it can be intimidating and disheartening and frustrating. But look at Bell. He went through the same thing and he IS validated as an artist. He can charge pretty much whatever he wants for a concert and people will pay it because he’s that good.

Yet when that same person plays in front of unsuspecting strangers, they don’t flock to him and herald him as a genius of his time. As stated before, Bell was a painting without a frame. Newly published authors are quite similar – their frame is still being built. It still needs to be pieced together and varnished and placed around them like a laurel wreath on top of their head.

You’ll get there. Just be patient and never, ever give up.

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

It’s so accurate, isn’t it? I know so many people who don’t read. Why? Because they hated reading in school. Poetry and classics were shoved down their throats. They were forced to dissect each sentence. It was torture. No wonder they were turned off by it.

Faults in our school systems aside, life finds other ways to cheat us. Why read the book when you can watch the movie? Why go to a museum and appreciate three hundred year old art when you can just pull up icanhas.cheeseburger.com? Why watch opera when you can turn on American Idol and laugh at the people who clearly don’t have a talented bone in their body?

But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Nothing more needs to be said than, ‘I told you so.’ We’re doing it to ourselves. We’re doing it to our children.

For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? We have something like the internet at our fingertips. It grows exponentially every day. Nothing is deleted from it, not truly, and millions of people add to its files with each passing second. Yet, we’re so limited. We stick those headphones in our ears and we walk by the likes of Joshua Bell. Oh, maybe not in the literal sense – unless, of course, you were one of those people in the metro station that day – but in a metaphorical sense. We limit ourselves because it’s comfortable. We don’t expand because staying the same is safer. We don’t seek beauty because we don’t have time.

“YES, I SAW THE VIOLINIST,” Jackie Hessian says, “but nothing about him struck me as much of anything.”

You couldn’t tell that by watching her. Hessian was one of those people who gave Bell a long, hard look before walking on. It turns out that she wasn’t noticing the music at all.

“I really didn’t hear that much,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out what he was doing there, how does this work for him, can he make much money, would it be better to start with some money in the case, or for it to be empty, so people feel sorry for you? I was analyzing it financially.”

And even when we make time, we can’t stop working. We can’t stop analyzing. We can’t stop dissecting the beauty until it’s unrecognizable as the thing it was before. No longer is it Joshua Bell’s masterful rendition of timeless classical music. Now it’s money. It’s a means of living. It’s a list of pros and cons.

So, even when we slow down to appreciate the beauty, we can’t see it for what it really is. And that’s the biggest shame of all.

We’re busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.

Not much has changed. Pop in a DVD of “Koyaanisqatsi,” the wordless, darkly brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life. Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere. Now look at the video from L’Enfant Plaza, in fast-forward. The Philip Glass soundtrack fits it perfectly.

“Koyaanisqatsi” is a Hopi word. It means “life out of balance.”

And this is the point. I’m sorry it took 4,000+ words to get here, but I hope you’ve stuck with me so far. I hope you haven’t become a statistic.

Work is good. We need to work. Unfortunately, we can’t run around open fields with daisies in our hair praising the sunshine and looking for four leaf clovers all day long. For better or for worse, life just doesn’t happen that way.

And, hey. That’s fine. Jobs are vital. We’re a consumerist society, and jobs are how we survive the world. Jobs can be fun and beneficial and make us grow as people. We should work, or else we tend to start looking like our couch, all stationary and poofy and lumpy in odd places, and that is a very bad thing.

But please, I’m begging you. Stop. Look around. Appreciate the beauty. Don’t dissect it. Don’t analyze it. Hell, don’t even try to understand it. Just soak it all in. Let it speak to you in words that your mind doesn’t understand but your heart does. It’ll teach you things you didn’t even know you still needed to learn.

In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.

Beauty is irrelevant to people. Or so this experiment seems to be telling us. What do YOU think? I didn’t write this blog post – this essay – to spew forth my ideas into the void, not even hearing an echo in return. I want to have a discussion. I want to know what you think. I want to know if you agree or disagree with this article and with what I’ve said here in this post.

Do you stop to appreciate music? Art? Beauty? Do you try to tear it apart and see what makes it tick, or do you just immerse yourself in it and enjoy it for exactly what it is? Do you think the results of this experiment are skewed because of the conditions? Do you think most people are like this?

Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L’Enfant Plaza as the best classical musician in America.

I am a proud pantser

For those of you who are not immersed in the writing world – or even for those of you who are, but have no idea what I’m talking about here – let me just start off by saying this isn’t exactly what it sounds like, IYKWIM.

There are two generally accepted types of writers: plotters and pantsers.

Plotters love organization. They live for outlines. They like to beat their WIP into submission before they even get started on it. This often means they spend hours, days, maybe even WEEKS thinking through their story and working out the kinks. Once that’s all done, they just have to sit down and bang out the words, already knowing where they’re going and how it’s all going to end.

Pantsers are the opposite. They fly by the seat of their pants (hence the name). Organization? Bah! Outlines? Yeah, right! A plan of action? A series of established events? Actually knowing the ending? Where’s the fun in that? These guys literally sit down and start writing. Usually they have a vague idea of where it’s going to end up, but they let their muse lead them down a winding path full of false starts, tangential plots, and random side characters.

Both have their pros and cons. Plotters tend to have a more focused and polished story by the time they’re finished, but that much organization can also cramp creativity. Pantsers get to explore more of their story in a way that’s less formatted (which means more creativity), but unless they’re Freaking Amazing, it requires a lot of editing on the back end.

From the title, I’m sure you’ve realized which category I fall into.

I’ve been sitting on this topic for a while because I wanted to explain why I’m a pantser and why it works for me. I’ve been hemming and hawing and putting it off (much like procrastinators and pantsers tend to do). But I came across a blog post by L.G. Kelso titled “Accept your writing style,” and it sort of kicked me into gear and helped me to figure out a bit more about myself and the way in which I write. Go check it out. It’s a great read.

But, basically, she recommends everyone accept their writing style for what it is. One strategy isn’t better than the other. It’s like doing the breast stroke or the back stroke when all you want to do is get to the other end of the pool. Will they both get you there? Yeah. Is one harder than the other? It depends on who you ask.

Besides, you’ll find that a lot of people aren’t strictly one or the other. Those that draw up outlines tend to deviate from them here and there. Those that throw caution to the wind and just dive head first often know which major events they want to occur before going in. If they’re like me, they may write a one page summary of the book just to make sure they don’t forget where they want to end up.

With that being said, I’m a proud pantser.

Why? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I don’t know where this stems from or when I decided this is how I would write books. It’s just always been that way. And that’s cool with me. I do some organizing. Mostly after the fact, when I begin my editing process. But mostly I just sit down and write.

In L1, I began the story with a clear image in my head: a girl lying on the floor, just regaining consciousness, looking up at four people standing over her. She didn’t know who she was or where she came from. That’s still my opening scene, and the story just evolved from there.

I actually wrote L1 in about two months. The story just spoke to me. I followed it wherever it led me, and it came out so strong. That’s not to say that it didn’t and still doesn’t have problems, but allowing myself to just write and not worry about all the technicalities really let the story breathe. It definitely took me in a direction much different than I thought it would. I love being surprised by my own plot twists!

But there were downfalls to writing it like that too. It was actually quite a solid story – and I chalk that up to it being so vivid in my mind – but I’m finding that I don’t actually like the main conflict of the story. I don’t like some of the fundamental parts of the book. That’s a big OH NO! that I’m dealing with right now, and I think it comes down to the fact that I pantsed my way through it. (Ooh, look! A new verb!) I was more concerned about getting from that opening scene to the ending scene, than actually fleshing out a story with that little thing we like to call structure. Is that a bad thing? Yeah, ‘course it is. Can’t have a novel without structure. But is it fixable? Definitely. (But it doesn’t mean I have to LIKE fixing it! *grumble grumble*)

I’m in a similar situation with W1 right now. I knew the beginning and I knew the end. Vividly. The scenes were practically written inside my head already. I even know how I want W2 to begin. But how do I connect point A and point B? If you’re a pantser, you just start writing and see where it takes you. W1 is much, much messier than L1 was. I’m already dreading the editing process. It needs a major overhaul. I need, like, a hack saw and a hazmat suit. But the cool thing is that I know what I like and what I don’t like because I’ve already written it. Words on a page are better than a blank page any day.

What am I trying to say here? Basically, I’m trying to say that I agree with L.G. Kelso up there. Figure out your writing style and accept it. Do what works for you, no matter what other people say. One style is not better than the other.

But also know when you need to adapt. I think I’m reaching that point now. I love writing when even I’m surprised at where the story is going. It makes your character’s reactions more realistic and really brings them to life. But, man, that editing process will kick you while you’re down. It’s hard, and it often results in multiple drafts. That’s not very efficient.

So I guess this is me raising a plotter flag alongside my pantser flag. I need to find a happy medium. I need to learn to outline so I don’t have as many plot holes when I go to edit. (Especially since the W series is a time-travel story, and OH MY GOD IT’S SO HARD TO KEEP THINGS STRAIGHT.) I’m not giving up my pantser flag, because I’m proud of it and it’s sparkly and green. But I am going to learn to adjust to both methods and make them both work for me.

Are you a pantser or a plotter? Why? Have you ever tried writing using the other method? Did it work?

My Top 5 Favorite Free iPhone Apps (For #Writers)

I swear this is not an advertisement! I’m just an advocate.

When I finally got an iPhone last year, I did it because 1) I needed a new phone, and 2) I knew it would help me stay on top of things like my e-mail and various social media notifications. Plus, I’d be able to surf the internet. Because, you know, I don’t do that enough as it is already.

What I didn’t realize was that it completely revolutionized – and I use that term very specifically – the way that I manage everything I do. It really was like a revolution. Suddenly I had a one man army at my fingertips, allowing me to keep tabs on everything I do. And I do a lot. I became more efficient and was able to interact on social media a lot easier. This was important to me because it’s not just fun, but also good when you want to build a readership and make connections with other writers.

There are cons, of course. Anyone with a Smartphone will tell you that they can become addictive. I check mine constantly, though I try not to do it when I’m around other people. The internet can suck a lot of our time and energy without us even realizing it. And it can cause tension on relationships. I try not to let that happen.

As with everything, there needs to be balance. And one of the best things about the iPhone is that it actually gives me more time to do other things – namely writing, but also spending time with my family and friends. Instead of having 50 e-mails waiting for me at the end of the day, I can keep an eye on them as they come in and read or delete them sooner. I can respond to tweets instantly, or check Facebook when something comes up with Hypable.

It’s hard to pick just five, but I’ve narrowed down my favorite apps and why I like them so much. These are the ones I use most often, and the best part about them is they’re FREE! We all like free.

ONE. Notes

The notes app is just a simple little application designed to look like a yellow legal pad. You just open it up and start typing. You can use it for reminders, to keep your grocery list, or to write down ideas as they come to you.

I tend to use this for the last option. I have background information on my characters written out, lists of blog ideas, outlines for stories, and so much more. The best part is that it’s so portable. You don’t need to drag a laptop around with you just in case an idea strikes. And those ideas never strike at opportune moments, do they? Who doesn’t carry their phone on them at all times these days, especially given the fact that most bloggers/writers are so dependent to the internet.

TWO. WordPress

The WordPress app is one of my favorites (don’t tell the others). Instead of sitting down each night and replying to a dozen comments on a blog post, I can just respond to each person as they come in. And it’s so easy to keep track of it, as they end up in a queue in the comments section of the app.

For the longest time, I was only half using this application. I never used the reader portion – which is where new posts from the blogs you follow end up. Until recently, I would just go to my email and open up each one to read them, sometimes having to click through to the actual site. It wasn’t a pain in the slightest, until I realized there was a much, much simpler way to go about it.

When my inbox backed up to about 150 e-mails – most of them being blog posts – and I was drowning trying to keep up, I finally had the brilliant idea to check out the reader in the app. I flew through those blog posts like you wouldn’t believe. I could now do it anywhere – not just when I had my laptop on me. Of course, I could have done it from my e-mail on my phone before, but I’d have to log in each time to leave a comment and that was just such a pain.

Keeping up with blog posts now is a breeze. I hardly have any lying in wait in my e-mail because I can get to them whenever I have a few minutes. And the best part is that the app always has you logged in. You don’t need to constantly input your information, which can be frustrating on such a small screen when your fingers never quite hit the keys you intended.

The only problem I find with this part of the app is that I have to click into the blog post from the reader, then click into the person’s site, and click into post again in order to leave a comment and be able to mark it to notify me of any further replies. (I do this as an easier way to see when an author replies to me, but there’s also some hidden gems when other people leave comments. Plus, I’m a sucker for notifications/e-mails. Sue me.) But it’s a problem I’m willing to work with if it means I won’t be staring at an inbox of 150 blog posts any time soon. Hallelujah.

THREE. Twitter/Facebook/E-mail

Okay, I know I’m cheating here by giving more than one app, but these sort of go hand in hand for me. They’re ways I keep in touch with people – Twitter for writers (mostly), Facebook to keep an eye on our Hypable group, and e-mail for, well, e-mails. As with the WordPress app, these other apps keep you constantly signed in, which is one of the perks for me. (And I realize this makes me sound like someone who is too impatient to even sign in each time I want to go on these things. You may or may not be right…)

Twitter makes for great distraction. I keep to my lists, which I’ve broken down into categories for why I’ve followed certain people. I’ve followed a lot of people on Twitter, and so it can be a little overwhelming at times. Having it broken down like this is much easier to handle (though sometimes I still avoid certain lists because – WOW – so many things to read). Twitter is, unfortunately, inundated by an incredible amount of people all sharing links. I see this a lot with many of the writers I follow. Twitter is a great place to share information like this, but it’s hard to get through a list when there’s hardly any “real people talk” and it’s mostly just links. But it is what it is, and I still enjoy it. It’s a place where I can share my thoughts and be more of myself than I can be on Facebook (sad isn’t it?). The only thing I wish would change is the ability to add people to lists directly from the application, rather than having to jump on my computer to do it.

The facebook app is a great tool, and I mostly use it to keep an eye on the Hypable group (where we share ideas and make sure all the news is being covered) and my writer page. I hardly do any “real” Facebook-ing, but I don’t mind. I generally keep my thoughts to Twitter. The one problem I’ve noticed with this app is that I don’t always get notified when there’s new activity. But so far it hasn’t been much of a problem, and I just make it a point to check in on everything once in a while.

FOUR. Goodreads

The Goodreads app has so much potential, I’m sure, but I don’t really use it to its fullest extent. I’m not super active on Goodreads anyway, so I’m not bothered. It makes it much easier for me to update which page I’m on in my book – something that has no real use (because I don’t my friends on there really care I just read 15 pages), but makes me happy anyway. I also use it to quickly add books to my TBR pile or to add to my already-read list. It’s nice for when I’m suddenly struck with a memory of having read a certain book, or see a book in a store that I’d like to eventually read. I can just whip my phone out and input the title. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

FIVE. Pocket Frogs

Yep, this is a tried and true app, and one that I am so glad I found. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, it’s pretty simple. You have a bunch of frogs that you breed and can either keep or sell. The game is super simple, but incredibly addicting. It’s fun to see what combinations you can come up with and to try to obtain all of the awards.

Smartphones can be distracting, and this is one instance where I can get sucked into a game like this (or Fruit Ninja, which I recently discovered and have a fondness for). When your main goal is to write and not be distracted while typing away on your computer (which sometimes feels like an impossible feat), having games on your phone isn’t always the smartest decision. But, I’ve also found it to be a nice break. A game like Fruit Ninja doesn’t take long (if you’re not too great at it like I am, that is), and it’s a good way to reward yourself once you’ve accomplished something on your to-do list. For someone who tends to reward herself with food (bad, bad habit), this is a much healthier alternative.

Do you have a Smartphone? Do you use any of the apps above? Which are your favorites? Got any good ones that aren’t on my list?

Why you have to kill your darlings, with that one guy from that one movie

Here’s the next post in this series where I discuss TV shows and movies and the knowledge that we can gain from watching them. We can apply that knowledge to our writing. As always, I never pretend to be an expert. I just like exploring my own thoughts on the matter as I write these blog posts! I welcome all comments and would love to hear what you think about this topic.

Make sure you check out my previous post, titled, “How to write a dynamic character arc, with Caroline Forbes.”

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for both The Avengers and the Firefly follow-up movie Serenity.

As writers, we often fall in love with our own characters. It’s not hard to do. After all, you spend so many hours with them, and you know each and every one of their secrets. You know exactly the type of person they are underneath the face they present to the world. That type of raw honesty and understanding is hard to resist.

So, when the time comes to kill one of your characters, it can be one of the hardest decisions you make. Sometimes they feel like your children, or your lovers, or your best friends. And you’re the one that has to drive a stake through their heart.

It’s not easy.

But it’s necessary.

The best example I can think of is in The Avengers when Phil Coulson dies. Up until this point, each of the superheroes was only looking out for themselves. They weren’t trying to work as a team. They didn’t see the bigger picture. They just wanted to prove they were the better man.

And then Phil died.

Phil was just about the one thing they all had in common. He held a place in each of their hearts, no matter how small that place that was. He had a relationship with each one and each of the heroes liked him. It wasn’t like Fury, who was obviously connected to each one as well, but was also the boss and, in some scenes, the antagonist. It was different with Coulson.

So why did Joss Whedon kill off Coulson? Because he had to. It was the spark that ignited the fire underneath the Avengers’ butts. It got them angry. It made them determined. They’d win the war for Coulson, because he died believing in what they were a part of.

Coulson’s death was the catalyst. It’s actually what moved the movie forward and into that final act. Not all deaths are like that, but it’s important to note that even though Coulson was important and loved (especially by fans), he had to die. It had to happen.

Other examples come to mind, like Wash from Serenity. His death didn’t work in quite the same way as Coulson’s did, but it was still important and still noteworthy. Sometimes death occurs because that’s the next logical step. Sometimes it occurs because other characters need to know what it feels like to lose someone they are close to. Characters are only interesting when they change, and sometimes they can only change when something drastic happens.

So, kill your darlings. Take those beloved characters, chew them up, and spit them out. It’s sad and horrible and will leave a bad taste in your mouth, but it’s so important to do it. It’ll effect your reader, and that’s a good thing. The more emotions they feel, the more invested and attached they are to your book.

These are just two tiny, tiny examples in a world of beloved characters that had to bite the bullet. Just in Harry Potter alone I can name ten people off the top of my head who also fall into this category. In fact, the death  of loved ones was the driving force behind all seven books. It’s horrible what Harry went through in his life, but (from a writing standpoint) it was so, so necessary.

And on that note, I’ll also say that if you do kill off a character, stick with it. You can bring some characters back to the dead, surely, but it depends on the circumstances. Most of the time, dead is dead and it’s better that way. You’ll lose the impact of death in your stories if you backtrack too many times. I love a good death (which sounds weird, but is true). I love to cry and be angry and hate the writer(s) for taking a little piece of my soul. But it’s cathartic and sometimes feels that way actually makes you feel better.

What is the most heart wrenching character death you’ve ever experienced in someone else’s work? Have you ever had to kill off a character you loved?

The Anatomy of Fan-Fiction (And How it Can Help Us Write Better)

I recently admitted to some of my online friends that my exposure to fan-fiction was fairly limited. Once they learned that I hadn’t read some of the “classics,” and after some stunned silence and a lot of “omg omg omg,” they gently nudged me down the right path, with the promise to take me under their wings.

The first one they had me read was called The Shoebox Project. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a novel-length Harry Potter fic about the Marauders – James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter. The fic basically shows us what kind of relationship those four friends had with each other, how they got mixed up in the Order of the Phoenix, and what happened that made Peter betray his best friends to the Dark Lord.

If you’re interested, you can go to this website and read the fic for yourself. It’s extremely well written, and the characters pop out of the page at you, fully-formed and in color. It’s also an easy read, but be warned that, although it falls in line with Rowling’s books, you may be surprised by what happens in the story. Many fans consider this to be something of the official un-official backstory to the Marauders.

All that aside, it really got me thinking. Why does fan-fiction work so well? Why do people spend hundreds of hours writing it? Why do hundreds of thousands of people read it? Why is fan-fiction becoming more and more popular amongst those who enjoy reading books and watching television/movies?

And, most importantly, what can we learn from it as writers?

ONE. Fan-fiction isn’t afraid to break the rules

One of the drawbacks to immersing yourself in fan-fiction is that it’s not always well-written. That’s certainly a problem, but I’ve found plenty of fan-fiction that was poorly written that I couldn’t put down. And I’ve read plenty of published works without a single typo that put me to sleep each time I cracked them open.

The thing with fic is this: it isn’t afraid to break the rules. It doesn’t have to worry about critique partners and editors and agents and publishing houses. The authors of the fic aren’t always aware of the rules, of when to use a semi-colon or even what “syntax” means. And they don’t care. And sometimes this works really well.

The best example I can give is the dialogue in Shoebox. An editor probably would’ve thrown the entire MS in the trash if he took a single look at it. But it works so well for the story. So well. There are whole paragraphs full of run-on or half-formed sentences. And the entire book is written like that. But it’s used to convey the nervousness and doubt and excitement of the characters. And it’s so realistic. Most of the time if you read dialogue out from a book, it’s a little too perfect. It doesn’t sound natural. And although this dialogue is chopped up and crazy, it sounds exactly how a 17 year old boy would talk. It’s perfect.

TWO. Fan-fiction doesn’t do anything more than simply write a good story.

The previous point logically leads into this second one. The writers aren’t worried about making everything perfect. They’re not worried about pitches and query letters and trying to land an agent. They just want to write a good story.

There’s a lot of freedom in fan-fiction. Sometimes that’s a bad thing. Sometimes people get carried away. But sometimes, when the planets align and the wind blows in just the right direction, sometimes this is a very, very good thing.

When you’re not worrying about anything other than the story, your story comes alive. It’s not weighed down with doubt. There’s no worry about it needing to impress someone. Whenever we write and edit knowing that we’re eventually going to pitch this story to an agent, there’s that nagging feeling of did I do everything in my power to make this as perfect as possible? And sometimes that’s what makes it so imperfect. Readers can often tell when the writer places every word carefully, rather than just letting the story develop on its own.

I liken it to those Hollywood stars with the perfect hair, the perfect clothes, the perfect makeup, the perfect smile. It’s nice, they’re pretty to look at it, and you do kind of envy it. But it’s not natural. You know they’re putting on a show, and at the end of the day you’d much rather surround yourself with real people.

THREE. Fan-fiction gives us what we want.

The people who frequently write fan-fiction know what the readers want, because it’s what they want. They’re readers first and writers second. And I think a lot of the times we forget that we should be that way too. It’s as they always say, don’t write for the market. And that’s solid advice. You want to write for yourself and your readers, not your agent and not your publishing house. After all, they’re not the ones who, ultimately, will be putting the cash in your bank.

The other thing that I particularly like about fan-fiction is that anything goes. Sometimes that rule can get a little out of hand, but if handled properly, it can really be a beautiful thing. For example, in Shoebox we see the development of a pretty surprising romantic relationship. And yet, the authors do such a good job of giving you that slow burn that by the time it comes around, you’re half dead from wanting it so badly.

There are a lot of slash fics out there to back up this point. It’s strange, but there’s something wonderful about seeing two characters that you would never, ever imagine together put into a story where they fall in love (or just simply get together). People love to read and write about these pairings (ie. Harry/Draco from Harry Potter, Quinn/Rachel from Glee, Stiles/Derek from Teen Wolf) because people like stories where the characters defy all odds to be together.

I think we forget about that sometimes. There are so many unwritten rules when it comes to writing that when we finally do pick up something that shatters all logic and gives us something new (something we didn’t even know we wanted), it’s refreshing. More often than not, that’s going to come out of fan-fic, because these writers aren’t afraid to be a little daring. They don’t have higher-ups to answer to.

FOUR. Fan-fiction does characterization right.

Fan-fics are in the lucky position of already having established characters to write about. They know their personalities, their quirks, their habits, their secrets. This makes writing their scenes so much easier.

But I’ve often noticed that the authors add their own spins to the characters, their own little quirks and habits and personality tics. This does a great job of making the characters a little more vibrant, a little more memorable.

We could all learn to do something like that. To reference Shoebox again: We already know these characters. Maybe not as well as we know Harry, Hermione, and Ron, but we do know the Marauders fairly well. From scenes with pensieve and from conversations with people that knew them, we’re aware of their personalities.

But Shoebox develops that further. It’s like the universe just exploded and expanded outward and pelted you with star light and cosmic dust. You can see these characters. You can feel them. They’re so unbelievably real. We know why Sirius is antsy and energetic and angry all the time. We see Remus’ love of books and his quietness and the way he deals with his condition. We feel the love between James and Lily, and we feel the sadness and loneliness of Peter.

The base was already in place thanks to Rowling’s books, but the authors of the fic added layer upon layer upon layer to make the characters even more naturalistic, even more relatable. The base was enough, it was adequate and it worked, but fan-fiction writers love to be in the moment. They love to immerse themselves (they’re generally some of the biggest fans to begin with, so this should make sense) and love to know what the character is thinking and feeling. That attention to detail is something that I don’t always see in published works. And it’s something we should all strive to accomplish.

So, after all that, what’s the bottom line?

It’s this: that although fan-fiction isn’t the cream of the crop when it comes to writing, it can often teach us things that we’ve forgotten: to listen to those basic instincts that some writers have naturally, that some develop, and that many forget.

Fan-fiction is there to entertain, to tell a story, to make you laugh and cry and get angry. So many times we are caught up in making sure our sentences have the right amount of commas, that we haven’t repeated that verb too many times, that we don’t have superfluous words. When, in the end, we should really just worry about writing the damn story already.

But I want to know what YOU think. Is fan-fiction something to be ignored, something that can’t be considered real writing? Or do you think that we can learn some lessons from it? Are you like me and sometimes forget that writing is more about telling a good story than about whether or not you used that semi-colon correctly?

Works in Progress Blog Hop – ‘Lifetimes’

Belle was kind enough to tag me in this awesome blog hop that’s been going around recently. It’s for our WIPs and basically we answer some questions about our current MS and pass the torch on to five more people. Sounds fun!

What is the working title of your next book?

Lifetimes.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I think I was in a half dreaming state when I saw this vision in my head: four people standing over  a fifth person, who was lying on the ground. Three boys and one girl (aged in their early 20s) were looking down on a girl, someone who didn’t know where she was or even who she was. I wanted to know her story so badly, and to figure out who the other people were as well.

What genre does your book fall under?

Urban Fantasy.

Pale skin, dark hair, mischievous smile. A little bit of ‘dangerous’ written on the surface, but a good person underneath. That’s Chris.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

This is so hard!!! No fair. If I had to pick, I’d choose Nicholas Hoult to play Chris. He’s about as close looks wise and I may have recently totally fallen in love with him.

I’m also kind of in love with Milla Jovovich. She’s awesome with fight sequences, and I think she’s great at finding both vulnerability and strength in the same character (which Hannah has  boatloads of each).

This is how I imagine Hannah when she’s actually happy. She doesn’t have much time to feel that way in the first book, unfortunately.

There are some other main characters, but it’s so hard to really know who would be an honest-to-goodness good fit. I don’t envy casting directors!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A girl wakes up with no recollection of her past, thrown into a world of humans and half-breeds, and must find out who wants her dead and why.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I think I’m going to query it once it’s finished and see what happens. I’ll test the waters – if I feel like it could go somewhere, I’ll keep trying. If not, I’ll self-publish. I’m not adverse to either way.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Two months, which is extremely fast for me. The story just sort of popped into my head fully formed and spewed out through my fingers in record time. It needs work because it all happened so fast, but I definitely like what I’ve got here.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I would say that The Mortal Instruments was a big inspiration, but my story, while sharing some similar facts, goes in a totally different direction and is not really comparable at all. I set out to write something that fixed what I saw was wrong with that book and so many others like it. I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I sure had fun trying.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

That half-dream vision. Books like The Mortal Instruments and Wicked Lovely, and similar Urban Fantasies.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

With this book in particular I tried so hard to avoid those things that drive me nuts about other YA novels. My biggest thing was to stay away from love triangles. They’ve been done over and over again and I’m tired of them. I like to stick with strong female characters and an interesting plot line that (hopefully) takes you around a few twists and turns you weren’t expecting. There’s romance, mystery, invented creatures, and some great one-liners. It’s a quick, fun read that I hope you guys will get a chance to see soon.

***

I’ve seen this blog hop making its rounds recently and I don’t want to tag anyone that’s already been tagged or chose not to participate when they were tagged the first time. Please take this as an open invitation: if you haven’t been tagged yet, go for it! And link back in the comments – I want to read about your books too!
Also, thanks again to Belle for tagging me. That was a lot of fun!

Artists through the ages: Artemisia Gentileschi

The life of an artist and the works they produce can teach us so much about writing. And it doesn’t have to be boring! Check out the latest post in this series: “Artists through the ages: Botticelli.”

It was only a matter of time before I got to Artemisia Gentileschi. She’s one of my all-time favorite artists, and definitely my favorite female artist. If you guys don’t remember it, I raved about her over on Jessica’s blog a while back.

Artemisia lived from the late 1500s to the mid-1600s. She was a talented Italian painter who was lucky enough to get noticed in a time that was dominated by male artists. She was an exceptional talent and her resistance of the idea that women did not have the intelligence to be an artist paved the way to recognition and admiration, both during her time and after. Her story is a sad one, having been raped when she was 18. But instead of hiding away, she took part in a trial to put the man behind bars (though this was eventually unsuccessful) and used her experiences to influence her paintings, which were quite violent and expressive.

Interesting facts:

1. She was tortured with thumbscrews while on trial for her rape.
2. She received commissions from both the Medici family and Charles I.
3. She was the first woman accepted into the Academy of the Arts and Drawing.
4. Her actions and life are often praised by contemporary feminists.
5. She frequently worked with her father, and they shared a competitive but close bond.

Artemisia is best known for Judith Slaying Holofernes. Another great one is Susanna and the Elders, and I quite like Minerva too.

There’s just one quote from her that I decided to use today because I think it is profound and appropriate and there’s no reason to bother with any others when this is perfect all by itself.

“As long as I live, I will have control over my being.”

Now, obviously the feminists in the crowd go crazy over this one. It has its implications, which I think are fitting. I think its face-value is important to note, but I also think that there’s so much more to this too.

It’s not just about the physical being, the body. It’s also about her spiritual being: her life, her imagination, her art. And if we take this idea and apply it to our lives, we can also insert the word writing in there.

As long as you are alive and capable, you have control over your writing. Your writing is just that: your. writing. No one can tell you what to write about if you don’t let them. And, better yet, no one can hold you back but yourself.

Think of Artemisia and everything that she went through. She was a young girl in Italy in the 17^th century. She was raped. Then she was put on a public trial and tortured. She “won” the case, but the man never served time. She was an artist that most didn’t take seriously at first, if ever. She had to fight for every inch of her dream and she never stopped fighting.

If she could do all that, what’s holding us back, if only ourselves?

How to write a dynamic character arc, with Caroline Forbes

Here’s the next post in this series where I discuss TV shows and movies and the knowledge that we can gain from watching them. We can apply that knowledge to our writing. As always, I never pretend to be an expert. I just like exploring my own thoughts on the matter as I write these blog posts! I welcome all comments and would love to hear what you think about this topic.

Make sure you check out my previous post, titled, “How to be neurotic, with Schmidt.”

Just about any writer can create a character that everyone will love. Like Ron from Harry Potter or Lucy from Narnia. They’re fun and likeable and endearing. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But one of the greatest talents an author can have is to create a character that you dislike, and then slowly make you fall in love with them. I think The Vampire Diaries does this in a great way. Damon, especially, but even Rebekah and Klaus fall into this category.

But today we’re going to talk about Caroline.

When we meet her in season 1, she doesn’t seem to have a lot of (any?) redeeming qualities. She’s selfish, insensitive, insecure, bratty, and shallow. Although she’s best friends with Elena, she feels she has to compete with her for everything – Bonnie’s friendship, boys, and cheerleading, just to name a few.

As the season progresses, Caroline begins a relationship with Elena’s ex-boyfriend Matt. She starts to change as a result of this, but the old Caroline rears its ugly head more often than not. In the second season, Caroline is turned into a vampire. At first, she struggles with it, like all new vampires do. Her personality is heightened. Where she would have been quietly envious before, now she is furiously jealous. Her possessiveness and insecurities are even more pronounced.

But she starts to get a handle on it. She learns how to be a vampire and, oddly enough, how to really be herself. She becomes aware of her flaws and actively works to change her less than favorable habits. She becomes more confident in herself, and the rest of her personality (the good parts) shines through. She’s a strong and fiercely loyal friend. She’s one of the kindest and most trustworthy people on the show.

Caroline’s arc was well-played. It took the better part of two seasons for her to grow into herself, but it really paid off. She’s an integral part of the group now and does everything in her power to always do the right thing. She’s my favorite female character on the show.

So, how do we do this in our own writing? The first thing is to set up an unlikeable character. Pick some traits and apply them to this person, keeping in mind they need reasons to act this way. In season 1, Caroline felt she was second best to Elena at everything, and that’s why she felt inferior and did her best to have everything that Elena did.

Then something needs to change this person. They need a reason to grow and come into their positive qualities. For Caroline, it was becoming a vampire. She realized that the world was a much bigger place and that there were larger problems to deal with than who she went to the decade dance with. Though, granted, this was still a big deal to her! You can’t change their personalities completely – Caroline still has her flaws and there’s still a shadow of her former self in there, but you need to make us believe that the character has changed.

This change has to happen over time. Caroline struggled with her heightened emotions and personality for some time before she was able to get a grip on her cravings and outbursts. And when she changed, it was a marked difference from how she used to be. Even though there needs to be a touch of that “other” person still in the character, we need to trust that they are a different person now.

What do you think of Caroline? Did you enjoy seeing her change over the last couple of seasons? Is there another character you can think of who had a similar storyline? The first one that came to my mind was Cordelia from Buffy.

Artists through the ages: Botticelli

The life of an artist and the works they produce can teach us so much about writing. And it doesn’t have to be boring! Check out the latest post in this series: “Artists through the ages: Leonardo da Vinci.”

Botticelli is another favorite artist of mine. He doesn’t get quite as much attention and Michelangelo and da Vinci, but he deserves to be recognized for his talents. He was also born in the mid 1400s and lived until the very early 1500s. Whereas both Michelangelo and da Vinci were a part of the High Renaissance, Botticelli was their predecessor and is considered to be a part of the Early Renaissance, although they did co-exist for a short time.

Interesting Facts:

1. He was initially trained as a goldsmith.
2. He was a part of the committee that decided where Michelangelo’s David should be placed.
3. He also contributed some frescoes to the Sistine Chapel.
4. He was never married, and actually had a strong aversion to the idea of marriage.

If you know any painting by Botticelli, it’s The Birth of Venus. He’s also famous for La Primavera and Venus and Mars.

I’m going to do something a little different with this blog post – and it’s not only because I couldn’t find any quotes from Botticelli (okay, it IS because I couldn’t find any quotes).

I’ve always been in love with La Primavera. If you look closely, the painting is chock full of tiny details that give you an overall impression of the painting even if you don’t pick up on them individually. For example, the oranges symbolize the Medici family, which were huge supporters of the creation of art during this period. The myrtle is symbolic for Venus, as that’s what she was wrapped in after she was born and came to shore on her conch shell.

These are just a few of the things you can pick out in the painting to help you interpret it. And in this same way, a book should be written. A good book should be a lot like a good painting, and vice versa, because the tiny details should also give you an overall impression of the novel, even if you don’t pick up on them individually.

For example, the color in a painting is very important. Is it realistic or surreal? Is it bright or dark? This sets the tone for the painting and puts us in a certain mood. The coloring can tell us that the painting is supposed to be exciting and happy, or it can tell us that it’s supposed to be tragic and powerful.

Along the same lines, your words in your story are like the colors in a painting. They set the tone of your story, depending on which ones you choose. Whether you color your book with bright, happy colors or with dark, terrifying colors is up to you – as long as you keep the words and the tone of your story consistent.

Art is laden with symbolism, but that’s the nature of the beast. This is especially true in older paintings, and particularly in Christian-based artwork. Art back then was used to convey a message to the illiterate masses, so symbols were necessary in order to get the point across.

To a lesser extent, it’s important to have symbols in your story as well. You don’t have to go so far as to make the whole story an allegory, like The Chronicles of Narnia, but even if people don’t pick up on the exact meaning and purpose of the symbols, they’ll still get a broad idea of what they’re doing in the story. When I first saw The Sixth Sense, a lot of the symbolism was lost on me, even though – subconsciously – certain things still influenced my viewing of the film. When I went back and re-watched it, I picked up on a lot more. Nothing changed, other than the fact that I became more aware. A painting, a movie, and a novel can all work in similar ways.

In La Primavera, the figures are realistic. This is no Picasso. The women are curvy and have soft, angelic faces. The man on the left is muscled and stoic. In short, they’re portrayals of both men and women that are appropriate to how someone like Botticelli would have view these people.

The characters in a book should work in a similar fashion. Whether you choose to have this naturalistic, idealistic portrayal of your characters is up to you. You can even go the Picasso route and have a character that’s out of sorts, as long the character is relatable. That’s always the most important thing. As long as we can still pick out the eyes, the nose, and the face in a Picasso painting, we can believe that this disfigured and strange being is in fact still human.

Something that you get automatically with a painting – or any other piece of art for that matter – is that the story is shown. There’s no telling in art. The piece should always speak for itself and show you the story that is trying to be told. Books struggle with this a lot more, and that’s why I believe it’s important for writers to study art. Look at all we can learn! Look at how, in La Primavera, the man on the left is stirring the storm clouds. We can infer that this is the god Mercury without having the artist paint his name on his chest. Even the simple fact that the women are dressed in white and Zephyrus is a dark, ominous blue tells us how we’re supposed to feel about the two different figures.

Writing should always work in the same way. We’re badgered into believing that we must always show and never tell, and I’ll never purport that to be untrue. But it can be hard! Sometimes you’re telling and you’re not even aware of it. Sometimes you think you’re showing (in the best way possible, get your minds out of the gutters!) and you’re really just telling your audience everything. Artists like Botticelli didn’t have the luxury (or the need, really) to explain their paintings. They let the artwork speak for itself, and we should always strive for our books to do the same.

Artists through the ages: Leonardo da Vinci

The life of an artist and the works they produce can teach us so much about writing. And it doesn’t have to be boring! Check out the latest post in this series: “Artists through the ages: Michelangelo.”

The only logical follow up to Michelangelo would be da Vinci, don’t you think? He was also born in the mid 1400s and died in the early 1500s. He was a true Renaissance man – a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, inventor, and engineer among other things.

Interesting facts:

1. He is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time.
2. He may be the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
3. He was born out of wedlock.
4. He was a procrastinator (something we all can relate to!).
5. He had drawn up things like a helicopter, a tank, and a calculator well before the time when these things were invented.
6. Michelangelo and Leonardo were active artists at the same time and generally in the same place (Florence being one of the hotspots). They were notorious enemies.

Some of his most famous works include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man. Again, this is an extremely short list, as da Vinci’s accomplishments are wide spread and much too lengthy to note in a single blog post.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes from anybody, and for good reason. All of the people we look up to as exceptional human beings – the artists, the movie stars, the athletes, and the great figures of history – those things didn’t just happen to them. They didn’t wake up one day and become president or the greatest cyclist the world has ever seen. They worked hard and chased their dreams.

As writers, we can’t expect stories or inspiration to just come to us. We have to chase down our muse and work toward that final goal of getting published. No matter how good of a writer you are, that’s not just going to happen. You have to make it happen.

“Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”

Every time I hear something about how writing is not a good career path, or how it’s such a hard business to get into, it makes me want to work that much harder. Obstacles stand in our way so that when we overcome them, we know that we truly deserve to be where we are. You can take a car to the finish line of the race, but it won’t be nearly as rewarding as if you ran the whole way yourself.

“Time stays long enough for those who use it.”

Just think about how much da Vinci accomplished in his lifetime. All of those paintings, those notes, those inventions. He worked with a 24 hour day, just like we do. And he had time for everything. Of course, the world back then is quite a bit different than it is today…

But that’s still no excuse. You have 24 hours to work with. There are obviously things that must get done – eating and sleeping and spending time with family, but the point is that there is still room to write. It’s up to YOU how you use those remaining hours. If you put it to good use, then there will be more than enough time in a single day to accomplish all that you want to get done.

 “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

I love this quote because it is so true. Do you think that when da Vinci put the final stroke on the Mona Lisa, he said, “Well, that’s perfect! There’s absolutely not one thing I would change about this.”

Yeah, not a chance.

I’m sure he hated some of his paintings and drawings. He was probably just as insecure as we are about our writing. But he didn’t let that stop him, and we shouldn’t either. A book will never be done. A sentence can always be tweaked, a paragraph can always be fixed, and a character can always be fleshed out just a little bit more.

But that kind of attitude comes from a person who will never get a book published. At some point you just have to say, “enough is enough.” This is as good as it’s going to get. It’s not perfect, but perfect just doesn’t exist (especially in our line of business). You have to lay down your pen and move on to the next thing in life, otherwise you’ll never move forward at all.

“A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

This goes very well with the previous quote. It’s obvious that da Vinci doesn’t mean “perfect” in the literal sense of the word, for the very reason stated above. However, when you’ve chiseled at the novel for months, tweaking and tucking and nipping at every detail you can, you have to finally put it down and call it “perfect.”

Details can always be added. They may or may not be necessary. But when you finally have the right amount of everything – setting, description, characterization, etc. – and there is nothing left to take away that will not absolutely destroy the story, you know that your work is done. Most books, I believe, suffer from too much rather than not enough.

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”

This idea floats around heavily amongst writers. “Take a day or two off and then go back to your story, things will just fall into place!” And it’s so true, isn’t it? Sometimes your brain just needs a break, and the only way it can truly get it is if it can completely forget about the project for a while. Even da Vinci, master of everything, knew how important it was to stop for a little R&R.

“I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”

This quote makes me so sad. Da Vinci was one of the greatest men to have ever lived. We’re lucky to have known of him, even if it is only through the scribblings in his notebook and the accounts of those who were blessed to have lived when he did. Yet here he is, thinking that he did not do his best, and that he could always have done better.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. You will never believe your work is important enough. Or good enough. You’ll never think that you tried your hardest or did your best. You’ll probably never feel as though you’ve reached that nirvana of perfection where absolutely every minute detail is flawlessly placed.

But that doesn’t mean that you haven’t done all of those things.

And even if you haven’t, that doesn’t mean that your work isn’t important, period. Or good, period. You did try your hardest and did do you best, even if you didn’t feel like it. Nobody reaches perfection, not even the gods and goddesses of the writing universe like JKR and Stephen King. Not even every minute detail in their works is perfect.

So give yourself a break. Lay off. Do what you do best: write. Da Vinci didn’t think he was all that great either, and look at the mark he left on history.

You can do that too, in time, if you let yourself.