Affecting Change - How Can We Help Others Achieve Basic Needs?

 I've been working on my newest story - for the Monday prompt. It flowed easily, and I'm in final edits before I post. Some prompts are easy, others are more difficult, but what I find really fun is writing to a prompt again. That's an exercise in thoughts and direction that I haven't had for quite a while, and it's wonderful to be back in that challenge mode. 

It's fun to write to prompts. It's a challenge that pushes 
my boundaries and makes me think outside the box. I have 
the next prompt ready to post, just need a bit more 
editing. Sometimes they're easy, sometimes not, but 
it's the fun of it that makes it worthwhile. 

We all give ourselves small challenges each day. It could be something as easy (or, in some cases, as difficult) - as getting out of bed in the morning. Having something nutritious for breakfast. Thinking about the day's schedule. But for some people, those three relatively easy things are great challenges. 

Shoveling the driveway is NOT one of my favorite 
tasks, although it's good physical exercise. I'll be 
running into time deadlines once we get our first 
snowfall. We're possibly getting that next week. 

On a snowy day when I need to get to the pool, the last thing I want is to drag myself out of bed. Those are the days when you'll get minimal "I'm here, I'm, alive, I'm heading out to shovel snow" blogs because the time needed to shovel cuts into the less than one hour I have to write and post my blog on swimming days, and I'm NOT cutting down on my daily meditation. 

I usually have fruit for breakfast. An hour later or so, I 
might have a couple of slices of grain-free bread. I 
always try to have fruit on an empty stomach and wait 
for at least 30-60 minutes before eating anything else. 
It helps digest the fruit, and is better nutritionally than 
adding the fruit on top of something else, like a cereal. 

Having something nutritious for breakfast can vary. I'm fortunate - I have excellent grocery stores nearby, and I have enough money to be able to purchase whatever I feel necessary for my food. I know that's not the case for everyone. I know that finding food, for many around the world, is a non-ending quest that often leads to hunger at night. Famine and starvation is too prevalent in our world, and really, with the resources and vast fields of food that are grown in the USA, Canada, Russia and other nations, there's no excuse. In my nation alone, we probably throw away enough food to feed the hungry of a small nation daily. It's to our shame that we're not helping as much as we probably could. 

This is the most recent World Hunger Map I could find. 
It's from 2020. That there is hunger anywhere in the world 
with the resources we have to share with others, is tragic. 
We shouldn't be seeing any color other than turquoise 
throughout the world. As usual, Africa is the worst, but 
India and Southeast Asia have their share too. 

As for the day's schedule - for too many in this world, that schedule consists of survive. Just the one word - survive. In nations split apart by war or internal upheaval, in lands where each day is another long journey for a handful of food, and in places where going anywhere is unsafe, survival can be questionable and, in some cases, almost impossible. 

If you've got enough to put food on your table 
regularly, heat your home, and you don't have to 
take your life into your hands when you leave 
your home or neighborhood, than reach out your 
hands and help others. Someone, maybe only a short 
distance from you, could use a helping hand. 

If you live in any place where the three stages of awakening, getting out of bed, and reviewing the day's schedule is possible and you won't take your life into your hands to obtain any of these three things, you're fortunate. You're very lucky. Now ... how can you pass your good fortune on to those who can't do these three things. Think about it - small things are perfectly acceptable, change happens with small steps. Affect change, in your own way, in your own time. Leave the world a better place tonight than it was this morning when you awakened. Namaste, I'll be back tomorrow. 

Plot? Character? What Drives You To Read?

It was such fun hearing from so many of my readers about their favorite books and/or authors. Since the time I learned to read, I've had my nose stuck in a book. My teachers despaired about my paying attention in class because I was reading. It usually took two or three prompts at the beginning of each school day for me to put away my current book and pay attention to what I was supposed to learn that day. 

I always have a book at hand. Now that I read on my phone, it's even
easier to carry a book around with me at all times. Books are my
go-to entertainment and escape. 

There are many aspects to a book. There is the basic story-line - the plot. Plots are what will cause a person to pick up a book or to leave it on the shelf (at least, unless you automatically read anything written by a particular author, in which case plot is irrelevant). Plot often will fall into headings of genre/type. Those basic headings can be subdivided even farther. Grabbing onto the largest and most popular genre - Romance Literature (RL) - there's a lot of it out there. But not all RL is the same by any stretch. 

• CLASSIC MAJOR GENRES OF LITERATURE
• Asemic writing
• Comedy
• Drama
• Horror fiction
• Literary realism
• Romance
• Satire
• Tragedy
• Tragicomedy
• Fantasy
• Mythology, and
• Adventure

The main heading might be RL, but under that are subheadings of type. Here's where you find your science fiction, Western, hurt/rescue, mystery, and comedy subcategories, as well as many more. This is where you'll find your plot hiding. It's plot that sells books. If I'm not happy reading stories set in the Regency Period of English history, I doubt I'd pick one out of a reading pile to spend a few hours with. But if I love murder mysteries, I might be tempted to indulge. I'd be on the fence for a Regency Period murder mystery. Here it would depend on the plot summary. 

Plot and character work together, but for me, if there isn't
character, the plot really doesn't matter. 

Once that book is opened and you start reading, however, the book can go one of two ways - plot driven or character driven. My personal preference is for character driven books. I want to know about the characters, the situation in which they find themselves, and how they manage to resolve the plot twists by the end of the book. Of course I'll read JD Robb's latest mystery book, but it's the characters of Eve Dallas and her husband Roarke that make the books interesting to me. Their interpersonal dynamics while resolving each mystery just work for me (and quite obviously also work well for thousands of other readers). 

A great plot with stagnant characters will eventually cause me to close a book unfinished and to never pick it up again. For my e-books, I make mistakes here and there. I buy a book based on its' review (I subscribe to several review services in the genres I enjoy), but every so often I find out I've made an error. I keep a list  of every e-book I have to read in any given year, and I assign a rating of one to five stars to each as I finish the book. I do have a few one-stars in there, but the five-stars tend to predominate. I work my way down my list, knowing I always have another great book waiting for me to read it. That's wonderful! 

I always have my nose in a book, to the
despair of friends and family. My ideal
day is one where I just read for the
entire day, maybe with some cookies and
a glass of milk in mid-afternoon. Heaven! 

Are you plot or character driven? Can a bad plot cause you to put a book away? Or is it a shallow treatment of characters that should be richer and rounder that will cause you to stop reading a book. Share your views with me. 

Tonight is Project Runway All-Stars so tomorrow's post will be the synopsis of the show without spoilers, followed by Saturday's "reveal" post. The week is winding down. Enjoy your day! 

The Hero Archetype or Rush Jobs On My Plate

Rush jobs usually are the ones that are slapped together, often poorly thought out, and many times they are the ones you always want a do-over for. I'm hoping that the current SWG Writing Challenge doesn't turn into one of those, even though I only have 2-1/2 weeks in which to write it.

The concept is fascinating. Dawn and the SWG gang are taking the concept of the archetypal Hero and pulling the character (any character of the writer's choice within SWG parameters) into a series of prompts - each one of which must lead into the next. The author can choose either three, five or seven prompts to spur their story forward. Because of my limited time frame, I decided to go with three, but normally I would have probably chosen five.

The Hero's Journey is the foundation of most legendary
tales and can be morphed in so many ways that it can
easily become the foundation for the protagonist in most
books and stories written. Although SWG is based in
Tolkien, the Hero exists in literature across the spectrum. 

The Hero character is one that has featured in literature for as long as tales have been told around the nighttime fires. S/He's the one identified in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With 1000 Faces", a transformative book analyzing world mythology first published in 1949. Campbell's theory, repeated over and over again in other expostulation about writing styles, is the following:

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." 

Think about that for a moment. Bringing it into Tolkien, Frodo and the others in the Nine Walkers did exactly this - but the true heroes of the tale are the combined talents of Frodo and Sam. Each of them would not have succeeded without the other - either as a driving force or a cheerleader. Frodo is the one who carried the ring, and it's basically his tale, but without his companion, the Quest would have failed and Middle Earth would have fallen into Darkness and terror. In succeeding in his quest to destroy the ring, Frodo gave everything - so much so that eventually he had to leave the land he loved to save his own life.

I now have my prompts for this newest writing challenge, they were emailed to me last night. I have a little over 14 days in which to write this before I leave for my annual Bead & Button conference, workshops and get-togethers. It's time for me to put on my power thinking hat!

It was pouring down rain in buckets for most of the night. It's a
bit calmer now, but it will still be a wet day. I'm debating the
virtues of an umbrella vs my rain slicker. 

Have a wonderful Wednesday. I think today will be rain, rain and ... yes ... yet again more rain. I may have to drag out my wonderful Paddington Bear yellow hooded slicker. I look ridiculous in it, but it's waterproof and that may be the key today.

Childhood Loves - Cartoons

While driving through rush hour traffic to get to the eye doctor yesterday, I saw something that lifted my heart. Since traffic was going nowhere fast, I was able to take a phone photo of this: The Mystery Machine. It was perfectly painted and decorated all around, but I was only able to get this shot of the rear of the van. I kept expecting to see Scooby Doo sitting in the front seat, or several of the other characters, but there was only a single driver. He continued going south as I exited.

I never expected to come up next to the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine
heading down Interstate 35W towards my eye doctor appointment.
What a pleasant surprise! 

Seeing such an iconic image of a cartoon I had loved when I was younger got me to thinking. What cartoon characters have you loved while growing up or are you watching with your children/grandchildren now? There's certainly a long history of cartoons and I grew up watching the entire spectrum.

Mighty Mouse and Merrie Melodies were what I grew up
with when I was a small child. 

I always had a thing for flying, but Superman wasn't a TV cartoon when I was growing up. Mighty Mouse, however, was my hero. I would pin a towel to my shoulder and jump down from the bed, climbing back up to do it again and again, and singing "Here I come to save the day...". I'm quite sure I drove my mother completely crazy.

Underdog was quiet, unassuming, and ignored, but he always
saved the day. My hero! 

Although I wasn't wearing the towel any more, I fell in love with Underdog. The Superman take-off hit all of my buttons - a flying superhero, a victim in distress, and a secret hero in disguise. It was about as perfect as I could ever imagine. I was watching early Superman on TV by then, but Underdog was my hero.

What a cast in Rocky and Bullwinkle. You had Snidley Whiplash, Dudley
Doright and Horse, and of course, Boris and Natasha. Fabulous cartoon
characters that actually sometimes made kids think! The horror of it all - LOL. 

Of course, I can't forget the third flying hero of the bunch - Rocky the Flying Squirrel. The zany bunch of Rocky, Bullwinkle and their friends (and enemies) entertained me for hours on end. I actually think I own the entire set on DVD and still pull episodes out every now and again to watch.

Warner Brothers had a gold mine when they had Bugs Bunny and friends. Here
is a small assortment, and I'll bet most of you, no matter where you live, know
at least one of these characters. 

But the giant in the room when I grew a bit older was Bugs Bunny and his friends. I learned opera with Bug's rendition of "The Barber of Seville". I pulled statements into my lexicon like "I'm hunting a wabbit," without even thinking. The Warner Brothers stable of characters was rich, varied, and beloved. I have these on DVD also, because they're absolutely classic.

"Tttttttttthat's all folks!"

What were your beloved cartoon characters? I could go on forever, but I have to get to the gym, and I'm sure your comments will allow me to remember others from my own past. Please dive into your childhood memories and share. Happy Thursday. Oh - and no surgery necessary on my eye! Happy, happy me!

Drowning in Words and Finding Characters

I'm editing my June of Doom and Gloom story like a madwoman (I hear that clock ticking... tick ... tick ... my time is running out). I'm pushing that ahead of other stories/assignments because June is quickly ending, but I still have other stories waiting for me in the wings with equally important deadlines, so I must continue writing when I can. Of course I must also read because reading is as essential as breathing is to me.

I was born with a book in my hands and I'm a voracious reader. Having
e-readers and apps in my life has allowed me to continue my life-long love
of books without needing shelf space and with the ability to change the
font size or color as needed to make it easier on my aging eyes. 

I think I was born with a book in my hands and nothing has changed that. I read constantly - usually on my NookColor or my Nook app on my phone. When I can't write, I usually can at least have one or the other screen next to me while I count, pack, or label at the shop. I put my reading aside when I'm working with customers, of course, because it's only polite and makes sense. But at all other times, my nose is in an e-book.

Looking for a good book and an easy read with interesting
photographs? Try "Miss Peregrine's Home for
Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs. 

Yesterday I finished "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" and immediately purchased the second book in the series, "Hollow City". I really enjoyed "Miss Peregrine's Home" and recommend it to those looking for a good YA novel with intriguing pictures throughout. Yes, there are some plot holes, and there are some plot and timeline questions that I was left with, but despite those minor questions it was thoroughly readable, the characters were interesting, and the premise was of great interest to me.

What story would you invent for this group of children? Are they
in a play? Did they just gather to go to a Renaissance Festival? Are
they returning from a time traveling adventure? 

What I really enjoyed was the author's interview at the end of the book. He explained how he is one of a group of collectors who peruse, purchase and collect old photographs. He said that he started collecting unusual old photos, many of children, and when he was unable to discover information about the people depicted, he began inventing histories for them. Many of these photographs and their imagined characters made it into the pages of "Miss Peregrine's Home".

What's the story of this girl with a mirror? What is she
holding in her other hand? Why is she barefoot? Why, in an
age when photos were expensive and time-consuming, is
she pictured in a sleep dress? 

Isn't that what we, as authors, do? We see a situation - people conversing at a street corner, a person in a dark alley, a soccer mom at the game, or the dog running across the street - and we ask questions. When we see these places, events or people, we begin to invent stories for them. "Why is she attending the soccer game today instead of being home with her visiting cousin?" "What is he doing back in the dark alley? Is he even still alive?" "Where did the dog come from and to where is he going in such a hurry?" The questions we ask about our everyday lives illuminate our stories, our characters, and the lives we put onto electronic screens and paper.

In "Miss Peregrine's Home" there is a character, Fiona, who
can make plants grow at a startling rate of speed. Do you
think this may have been an early photo of Fiona? Or, do
you have an interpretation of your own? 

So today, as you go through your daily errands, look around you. Check out your surroundings. Is your next character lurking around the upcoming corner? Happy Friday, everyone! Have a wonderful day!

Plots Are Like Ocean Waves

As I write my last blog post for more than a week, I was indecisive about my subject matter. I thought about discussing vacations, travel or road music, and at the end of all of those thought tendrils, I came to a conclusion - plots are like ocean waves, one crashes against the beach and the next one is already poised to repeat the process.

Ocean waves are restless and never-ending. They come in a
variety of shapes and sizes, but the ocean is always in movement. 

OK - where are ocean waves coming into a drive across one state with no ocean in sight or even within 1000 miles of me? I have no idea, but I like the simile. Just think about plot for a small moment of your morning. You have a character or a couple as the centerpiece - the Main Dude. This Main Dude (or Dudette if you prefer) will have a starting point and an ending goal and in the process of the Main Dude working toward the ending, he'll get buffeted by many waves.

Waves (and plots) can crash against cliffs in a spectacular fashion. 

Those waves will be small stumbling blocks, or massive cliff-climbing crashes of water and foam. Somehow your character must persevere in his walk toward the conclusion, pushing through the saltwater and finally reaching a safe haven.

Huegette Clark is a prime example of a person who had everything but
enjoyed none of it. Heir to the Clark copper fortune, she was a deeply
disturbed young girl who grew up secluded from others and died
in a small room with no true friends and houses across the country
that she never visited. Interested in her story? Read "Empty Mansions" to find out more. 

Isn't life rather like that too? There is no such thing as a free ride, there are always bumps in the road. You would think that if you had everything - no fears about housing, food, money, safety or acceptance, you'd be super happy and live life to the fullest. Yet, time after time it seems that those who have everything are really those who have nothing.

Huegette Clark was raised in a huge mansion on Fifth Avenue in
New York City. It was filled with treasures including original paintings
by Rembrandt and more than one Stradivarius violin.
Here's a short article from the NY Times on Huegette Clark. 

So as I leave for a week sharing the wonders of beads and the company of good friends, I'll consider myself lucky. I've worked hard, but I've had a pretty fabulous life so far. There are bumps in my road that I've gone through, and others that are still to come, but we pull through them, and all in all, I'm very lucky.

One of the classes I'm taking will teach this lovely beaded starfish. I'm just
taking it to play and have fun - isn't fun an important thing in life? 

I hope all of you have a fabulous week. I'll be checking into my LJ and email accounts regularly, but I doubt I'll post again until I return from Bead & Button Show. Happy Saturday!

Into the Deep Freeze - Writing Living Characters

It's cold. Actually, that small four-letter word hardly describes how really miserable it is out there, but it's all we have. The temp right now is -22 F (-30 C) with a wind-chill reading of -48 F (-44.4 C). I'm wearing a turtleneck and a pullover sweater along with a cardigan and that's my indoor dress. *sigh* I'm trying to figure out whether I want to have my standard oatmeal and coffee for breakfast or treat myself to something more substantial - egg whites, chicken sausages and fresh fruit. Either way, I'll have to emerge from my cocoon in about an hour and creep into the cold darkness.

Some information for those of us always looking to learn new things...

In a way, that's rather similar to how a story can start. The author looks at the future (my breakfast choices) as an empty palette or blank screen which will be filled by plot, characters, events and dialog. Through the act of writing and composition, new world will be made. I love the act of writing, although I also find it one of the most frustrating arts I've attempted to master in my life. I've been practicing the art of writing throughout my lifetime, but there is always so much to learn.

Wouldn't this have been a fun thing to attend? The fact that it
took place in Tuscany is just one more wonderful reason to have attended. 

A good author can grab you right away. Within a few pages, or even just a few paragraphs, you should be hooked and the thought of putting the book down should be remote or impossible. When the plot grabs you and the characters put their teeth into you and won't let you go, that's a novel that's worth reading. That's a novel that I want to be writing.

Everyone writes differently and everyone's plots take different
twists and turns. Why are some characters flat and others deep
and multi-faceted? It's hard to discern until you read one of the
former and realize you would rather read the latter. 

I've been worrying about character voice and how to make my characters live, and I think that's something that every author fights with. I've worked through my college creative writing courses and struggled with this, and I'm currently listening to a recommended podcast where the issue is one of many that are addressed. But the key, after trying to learn this and that, is to be able to get the learning out of my head and into my characters.

I love these hands filled with words, descriptions, and ideas. 

So, as I try to bring my characters out of the deep freeze of shallow personalities and little aspiration, into the warmth of love, life and a happily ever after (when possible), I hope all of you bundle up if you're also in the freeze zone today. We'll all get through it - it's going to be a couple of days of total ick before the temps warm back to a normal winter. But until then, embrace the down! Goose feathers are your friend!

Character Voice - A Small Discussion

"It's alive!"

"I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

"I am glad to be here with you, at the end of everything."

A sentence can be recognized as a character for many reasons, but most of all because of patterns of speech and cadence of words. The difference between Doctor Frankenstein in the first quote, Scarlett O'Hara in the second and Frodo in the third are not just that they are at the culmination of their tasks, their moments of triumph in essence, but that their words are formed in the way that their character would expect to speak.

Sir Winston Churchill had a distinctive speaking style
and word usage pattern. Would his manner of speech
correlate well with any characters you are writing?

Think about character voice. If Arwen was asking a gardener for advice on growing roses, would she ask in the same voice and words as Galadriel? How would Sam's Rosie approach the subject? And how would Gilraen phrase it? Would Eowyn even be interested in roses instead of horses? Each woman would ask for the advice in a different manner, probably using different words, yet the goal of their words would be the same.

So how can you develop character voice for your own characters? I think it is one of the most difficult things I've dealt with in the times I've been writing. I find it much easier with my original fiction because then I am developing the characters from the ground up, When I write fan fiction, I find it much harder. It is difficult to make Aragorn sound like the somewhat pompous and overly wordy person he often is in Lord of the Rings, but easy for me to characterize the servants and general populace he is addressing. I guess I can put myself into the shoes of the common man a bit easier than wearing the velvets of the newly-crowned King.

Jobs in a medieval castle were pretty standard -
soldier, general workman, hunter/tracker and
house staff like baker or cook. 

I'm writing a small story now that is causing me problems with character voice. I know the story line, I know who the characters are and the timeline, I know what I want to say - even to the point of drawing out the major plot element yesterday afternoon. I just can't get the voices right. And because I can't do that, I can't finish the story. I'll sit down with it again, I still have some time, but I want to do this little tale and it's fighting me every step of the way. *sigh*

Even opera singers warm up before going on stage to perform. Maybe I'll
just consider my efforts to this point as being my warm-up before I actually
wrote the story. 

On a different note, I will again be wearing my Denver Broncos jacket today. Denver is one of only two undefeated teams remaining in the National Football League. Unfortunately, the other undefeated team is the Kansas City Chiefs, their arch-rivals from their own division.

Denver will meet head-to-head with Kansas City twice this year, on November 17th and December 1st. I hope I'll be able to watch the games, but whether they win or lose, nothing will change the fact that I'm a Denver Broncos fangirl.

Happy Monday to all!