Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley in a publicity photo for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Sometimes wrapping your head around a character can be hard. One director of the Harry Potter series asked the stars to each write an essay about their characters. Emma Watson turned in a 16-page paper, like the book-crazy Hermione would have. Daniel Radcliffe managed to turn in something.
Rupert Grint, well, he said Ron Wesley wouldn’t have written anything.
(I checked the story, because editors fact-check. Mr. Gint confirmed this actually happened.)
WRITING EXERCISE: Choose a character who has been giving you problems and have them write an essay about who they think you are as a writer and why you are having a problem writing them in THEIR words. Yes, it is meta. You as the author, writing a character writing about you. How would they approach it? Keep them between 100 and 1,000 words.
Natalie gripped Kryler’s hand so tight, he felt bones move out of position. Finally, the contraction released and his wife’s quick panting filled the room. Grabbing a tissue, he moved to the head of the bed to dab her sweat-covered face. If he could take the pain from her, he would. Instead he did what every man has ever done, offer external support while covering all his internal worry.
Their daughter was coming too soon, nearly a month early after weeks of spotting. The doctors had sentenced Natalie to bed rest for most of the final trimester to reduce stress, and discovered instead her levels went through the roof.
When her job first found out she was pregnant, they pulled her off the fast track and moved her into the mommy track.
Not officially.
But the Spanish classes, they had been underwriting. Poof. So, sorry, budget cuts. Strangely no one else was removed from the tuition program. The mentoring program changed her mentor to “better suit her personality.” The vice president with whom she lunched weekly was assigned a new protégé and Natalie’s new support person was a manager in the customer service department where he worked. Wasn’t even the best customer service manager, but the one restricted to nights because there was less to screw up. The one he worked under.
His ball-busting, type-A, inferno of ambition stormed into HR and nailed the director to wall. All her privileges were restored within hours. Her vice president, reassured of her dedication, was leveraging a special project for her to head as soon as her maternity leave was over.
Bedrest had pulled her away from the moving and shaking. And she stewed. The doctors eventually relented and let her work half-days in the office, if he drove her in, and the balance of the day remoteing in. Her stress levels dropped to manageable levels.
Her breathing took on a regular pattern.
“My fireball.” She was the most beautiful, bravest, incredible person he ever known. He leaned over and kissed her, barely brushing her lips from his upside down position.
Natalie smiled weakly. “You really shouldn’t have turned in your resignation yet.”
Always figuring the best angle, the best benefit. He shook his head at his wonderful wife. “Two weeks notice. Gives you time to recover and then I will be home with the baby.”
“You sure you want to stay home? I’m sure we could get your mom to sit.”
Walking back to the side of the bed, Kryler removed the ice water glass the nurse had dropped off last time she passed through the labor room from the bed stand and placed the straw on Natalie’s lips. “I’m sure. We just about have Rodger’s Retrieval ready, and the guys already are bouncing ideas for our next game around. Can’t wait to start animating it. Trust me. Between the game and the baby, I will not be bored.” He smiled at her confidentially.
Suddenly her eyes grew round. Dropping the glass, Kryler nearly missed the surface of the stand. He pushed the glass until it was balanced.
Natalie’s hands unerringly found his as another contraction took her.
He looked at the clock as she screamed in pain. Too long. Had she been in labor too long? He had no reference.
(words 549 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 9/9/2013 for the 5/20/12 Sunday Fun (original picture of unknown copyright, so not copied here); republished in new blog format 2/25/2018)
If you were around in November, you may have noticed how my novel for NaNoWritMo went south. All October I thought and thought about Internal Lies based on a dream I had during the 2016 holiday season, carefully not writing a word down. I jumped on the computer on November first and typed up all the notes I had from the original dream – close to 1,000 words.
Then nothing on the second.
On the third my brain said “Let’s write a blog post.”
Now? Really? You haven’t wanted to work on the blog but in bits and pieces all year and you want to do one now. … Oh well, at least it is writing.
Yeah. The result? Nearly “won” NaNoWritMo by catching up on my blog – 35,568 words of blog postings. This was the most productive writing period I have ever done outside of writing Honestly. Actually more so, since Honestly is only 15K.
Anyway, I’ve long been thinking about maybe doing a collection of my flashes or putting the writing exercises together for something I can sell on Amazon. You can even see a cover above made for the Writing Exercises. The challenge is transforming the blog into a coherent how-to. Like taking a novel and changing it to a movie, the mediums of blogging and ebooks are different with different requirements.
“How to Turn Your Blog Into a Book” by Julie Petersen (2016) and updated by Derek Haines (2017) on the Just Publishing Advice website gives some excellent advice I plan to use. If you are thinking about going this route with your blog, you might want to review it as well. While focused primarily on non-fiction, the biggest take-aways are reaching new readers, monetize your work without turning your website into advertising central, and hiring professionals for the professional bits.
Look for the four book series on Writing Exercises to come out this year: Write Good a taste, Write Good, Write Gooder, and Write Goodest.
I’ve set up a lot of tents in my day. Nearly all in existence take more than one person for the poles. I’ll like to think I would have popped up quickly and helped, but in the video people had also been assigned a task and I always attempt to complete my personal tasks before helping others. I mean, they assigned me a task for a reason.
One of my science loves is sociology, how groups of people interact. Knowing about the bystander effect gives a person the ability to avoid it within themselves and work around it in other circumstances.
CPR classes teaches the participants to point to individual bystanders in an emergency and give them tasks; untrained people don’t know how they can help but when asked to do a simple task, will jump on it.
WRITING EXERCISE: Have something happen with a large group of people present, it doesn’t need to be an emergency. Choose one person from the group; how long does it take for the person to stop being a bystander and what is the tipping point?
***
Inheritance
Everyone was home for Thanksgiving. Grandma making deliciousness in the kitchen with mom, my two sisters, and a cousin who worked in a restaurant relegated to making the gravy. Dad and the rest of the gang snacked, watching the game after the quick touch football game in the backyard ended up being a leaf fight. Twenty-three people in all, fifteen staying overnight, made a very crowded house.
Perfect.
I love my family.
Even Zelda’s two rescue greyhounds which she refuses to board. To grandma pets are family too, so Oil Slick and Leaping Lance shared floor space with the crawler and the two toddlers while grandma’s Princess and Sir Claws-a-lot, Santa for short, laid across the back of the sofa to avoid the tail pullers. Frozen Kitty wasn’t a fan of large groups and hid back in the guest room with Evan, helping the boy read the most recent Lunar book.
I had stolen a chair from the two tables set up yesterday and stuck it between the sofa and recliner to watch the game. My boyfriend leaned on the back. I mean, not my boyfriend, we are roomies, not romantic. He is a friend, who is a boy, and had no one to eat thanksgiving dinner with since his family lives in Florida. When I told grandma, well, you can guess what she said. We both are on the biology track, working towards pre-med research, and the apartment is right next to the Nibset Lab. God, I don’t know how many times I repeated that explanation this weekend. It’s still better than him staying at the apartment staring at the empty walls for the four-day break. Yes, we have pictures, we just haven’t put in the nails between TA, lab work, and classes, so they lean on the walls at floor level where we plan to put them up. Maybe next year.
So Malik bent down a bit to whisper in my ear, “When dinner?” like six million dozen deviled eggs, a vegetable platter, and four types of chips weren’t on the coffee table in front of us.
“Four.”
“Okay.” He stood straight a moment and then leaned back down. “Anything I can do?” tickled my ear.
Not a fan of football I guess. Actually, I know. Basketball he could tolerate, but any other sport bored the crap out of him. For me I watch football one day a year, well, three – Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and the Superbowl – because of school. I played until high school, when the boys got too big for me to tackle. I still miss being a defensive end.
I turned my head to the side to whisper back at him, lips skimming across his shaved cheek. “Do you want to brave the kitchen?”
He snorted, pulling his head back a little to speak against my neck. “How about set the table?”
“Hm. Aunt Judith usually does that.”
“Which one is Aunt Judith?”
I really couldn’t say why we were whispering, between the game and the shenanigans the noise approached hazardous levels. But for this answer, my voice became even quieter. “She died of cancer in the spring.”
“Oh.”
Two plays and one commercial break later, the heat from Malik’s body shifted when he leaned down again. “It’s three. Shouldn’t we … I mean, the table needs setting.”
I looked around the room. I saw Dad and Uncle Derek and a couple other adults glance toward the bare tables, quickly bringing their eyes back to the game. The children tumbled and crawled over everything, unknowing and uncaring.
Aunt Judith would normally be putting the finishing touches on the center pieces just about now.
“Yeah.” I stood up and inherited an annual Thanksgiving task.
How did you first discover John Scalzi? For me, the military science-fiction story of Old Man’s War introduced me to this sarcastic, politically-opinionated, inventive author. For a friend, the entry-drug was the science-fiction satire Redshirts. Maybe you were one of the firsts, finding him through his blog “Whatever” back in 1998.
No matter where you first heard about him, you will be seeing books from him for a long time to come. He has signed a 10-year, 13-book deal with Tor.
Ten years.
Are writers allowed that type of economic security? I mean, he has plans now to help pay for his daughter’s college. That can’t be healthy – like opening the curtains in the den while the writer is typing. They aren’t allowed to see the sun or know where their next check is coming from.
But then John Scalzi always has been a maverick in the field, sneaking in fiction field through his non-fiction website. From there he released chapters online of a new novel he was writing, which got him an editor. That is when he became a staid, predictable and respectable, big-press author.
For all fifty seconds.
Convincing the big-press to try the serialization technique popular with self-published authors for one of his books destroyed any illusion of staid and predictable real quick. Another experiment meant trundling off to a small press because he wanted to prove he didn’t just write humor, happy books. Any time his readers start deciding what his style should be, he changes it up.
So now he has sold out, getting a multi-million multi-year deal.
Sold out is bad. Right?
Except he always meant this to be a career, so money is kind-of a necessary part of it. And he never has ceased his highly politicized blog, so selling-out is really hard to define when the boy ain’t exactly going to ever accept a muzzle.
The only thing a reader of science fiction should expect from Mr. Scalzi is he is going to try something new … very soon.
***
Information for this blog was drawn from several sources, more notably from an interview with Andrew Liptak: “I aspire to be a cockroach” published March 22, 2017 by The Verge.
