The Place For My Writers Notes

Original Posting 6 March 2012

Okay. Thanks to Howard Tayler for pointing this out, but if you take a look at this article -- or even just the headline!

Headline: Dublin cathedral pleads for return of 884-year-old heart

Link:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/06/dublin-cathedral-pleads-for-return-of-884-year-old-heart/?hpt=hp_t3

Now, take that seed. A religious community pleading for the return of an 884-year-old heart. Mix well with whatever you like, and see if you can't whip up a little secret-history urban fantasy. Toss lightly with romance, mystery, a dash of derringdo... and chill for four hours before reading?

Anyway. Have fun. What does that headline suggest to you? Where would the heart have gone? Why? And then...

Write!

Original posting 23 Feb 2011

The Japanese news has been following the earthquake and rescue efforts in Christchurch pretty closely. We've all gotten familiar with the videos of the earthquake, a map of Christchurch with red Xs where there are major building collapses, and the mud and water pictures. But one particular focus has been a six story building in Christchurch that had a school with many Japanese students -- on the fourth floor. The building collapsed completely, leaving a pile of rubble and the elevator and stairs tower. Some number of students were trapped inside. Today's news indicates something like 21 are still missing and presumed to be somewhere in that pile.

However, one of the stories that came out was that one of the students, a young woman, was somewhere in that pile, with her cell phone. Sending text messages to her father. I believe her father was still in Japan. The first short "We've had an earthquake" was followed by "I'm trapped with several others. I can't move. Breathing is hard." After a few other messages, including at least one about it being dark, spread over nine hours or something like that, the father received a message saying, "I hear rescuers."

What a short message to carry such a heavy load!

In fact, seven young students were found, one of them being this young lady who had sent messages to her father. In the dark, under the rubble.

I have to admit, one of the things I was thinking as I watched this story being explained on the television was that it might've actually been easier before we had this kind of technology. After all, letters and newspapers used to follow such incidents by a significant amount of time. You might get a letter from your daughter telling you about what had happened, but you weren't likely to get minute-by-minute reports as it happened. Even the telegraph and radio really didn't change the situation that much.

Television... well, the Vietnam War was one of the first times that the evening news really brought the war into your living room. But it was still a little bit distant, you didn't get your son sending cell phone videos of his foot being shot off or whatever.

Nowadays? Especially with modern cell phones, everyone's a reporter.

What's next? And what does it mean to us as individuals when our family and friends everywhere can tell and show us practically immediately every little nook and cranny, the good stuff and the bad stuff, as it happens.

Even messages from under the rubble.

So, there's your exercise. Imagine that scenario. Take one or more of these people: the girl with the cell phone, her father, perhaps one of the others trapped in the dark. Or what about parents or relatives of some of the other students, either the ones found with her or the ones still missing? Then tell us the story from that point of view.

Feel free to adjust genders, catastrophes, and so forth to make your story.

Just write.

Original Posting 30 November 2009

Whoops. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but the collection of well-aged Nanowrimo Notes ended with number 28. And while February occasionally has 28 days, I'm pretty sure November has at least 30. Let's see, 30 days hath September, April May and November. All the rest have 31, except February. Or something like that. Even the computer calendar indicates that there are 30 days in November. So we need at least a couple more -- although now I'm running late, so maybe we'll make do with just one more.

Actually, I was thinking about the news. Even though you probably don't want to directly drop bits and pieces into your Nanowrimo story (or any other story you may be working on), you can still use it as a provocation -- something to push you a little bit. Just take a look at some of the top stories on your favorite news website, newspaper, or even the evening news. You might want to consider using the perception of the news to help reveal a little about your characters -- which are the news stories do they notice? Why? Or you might want to use them for setting. Some news stories provide almost instant notions of time and place -- 9/11, terrorist bombings, and so forth. Hurricanes sweeping across Florida. Floods, fires, and all the rest. But you can also use smaller news stories to hint at smaller places.

Or, you might want to borrow the conflicts from the news stories. Most news has some conflicts on the face of it, and even stories such as embezzlement of funds might suggest secondary impacts -- where does your character keep their retirement funds? Does the downturn in the economy mean that your character may be concerned about their job? Or perhaps your characters don't quite have the same appreciation for national politics, and they can have arguments about that?

Whether you want to simply have radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, or other media in the background, or you want to bring some of the news up front and personal with your characters talking or fighting over it, consider using today's news (or twisted versions of pieces of the news) as parts of your writing. It's a part of our lives, and adding it into the lives of your characters will help to make their world and your characters more well-rounded. Local, national, international -- we all experience a flood of news almost everywhere we turn. Working it into your story can help to fill in the edges with recognizable color.

Write?

originally posted 4 March 2007

Aha!

Here in Japan, one of the news stations did a report this morning on a puzzling set of thefts.

Apparently in a fairly small area, someone has made off with such oddities as stainless steel trays and fittings from a cemetery, a stack of aluminum hubcaps from a tire store, more aluminum from a recycling center, stainless steel posts from a park, and more aluminum and stainless steel. They may also have been responsible for the disappearance of one large temple bell (probably bronze). Oh, and there was a 550 Kilo (that's about 1,000 pounds!) spool of cable.

What apparently is causing the police and the reporters to scratch their heads is that most of this is not worth stealing. After all, a stack of junk aluminum in a recycling place - where you have to pull down the gate and then lift it into a truck somehow - isn't exactly the most salable article. They showed the junk yard owner scratching his head and saying "I think it must be someone else in the same business, but I don't know anyone in the area who would do this?"

One theory seems to be that the stuff has been hijacked onto a ship and taken to China. The notion here is that perhaps these goods are worth more there, so stealing it here in Japan and shipping it might make sense. Of course, I think they could just buy it and ship it. I'll bet that junk yard owner would be more than happy to sell you all you want cheap.

So, here's your assignment. Let's take the list as including the temple bell, aluminum odds and ends, stainless steel, and cable. Who would steal such an eclectic set of stuff in the middle of the night? Feel free to make your own list, but here's a beginning:

1. the crashlanded alien trying to fix his/her ship
2. goblins bent on confusing the issue
3. kids - although that spool of cable would have been a bear to get out? And where would you keep the stuff?
4. The Weird Scientist, now retired, who is building a ??? in his garage
5. It's a coincidence - these are totally unrelated thefts, with the only connecting link being the imagination of the police and reporters
6. Super mechanical monster # 9, who is valiantly trying to repair the damage inflicted during his last fight?

Okay, so have fun with it. Figure out someone or something that could be making these odd thefts, then tell us their story. Pathos, a bit of melodrama, and fun!

original posting: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 21:13:18 -0400

A bit incoherent, but perhaps you'll find some echoes...

"Religious man experiences two kinds of time -- profane and sacred.  The one is an evanescent duration, the other a 'succession of eternities,' periodically recoverable during the festivals that made up the sacred calendar.  The liturgical time of the calendar flows in a closed circle; it is the cosmic time of the year, sanctified by the works of the gods."  Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, quoted in Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox

"But this moment and the meaning of this moment -- fact and interpretation -- are not separable.  Human beings inevitably are philosophical animals.  We interpret, discover, and create meaning in the act of perception.  We think with our senses, see with our hearts, and feel with our brains.  We use images, analogies, and metaphors to understand the world around us and the meaning of life as a whole.  We live within a framework that gives meaning to our experience.  The philosophical context within which we live determines the way we perceive the content of our days." Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox

I think Mircea missed something, in describing sacred time as always a circle.  For indeed, disasters and deaths and other events often seem to "kick" us into the sacred time, the unending now that focuses our lives and attentions and emotions, putting our being into the fires where they forge a new reality.

September 11, 2001.  That date will ring for all of us living now, and those images will be a part of our lives.  And for many of us that moment, that sacred time that started that day, has not ended!

How many of you, turning on the TV, or talking with a friend, suddenly have tears, or reach out and embrace?  It may be something as seemingly trivial as a burly fireman talking about finding a raggedy ann doll, and having to stop and blink away his tears, and suddenly you are crying with him, or something more profound, those moments when you learn that... well, for me, that the husband of a past co-worker was somewhere in that catastrophe.  That emotional contact seems to me to be a hallmark of these sacred times.

Or reading something that makes you reach out and hug your wife, and look at the blue sky, and vibrate with aliveness!

(Or the mundane realization that you haven't even looked at mail since that day, and the bills and junkmail continue to pile up.  Walk in the door and turn on CNN.  Watch, absorb, hold hands with my wife, talk in disjointed sequences, try to pick up the scattered threads of work.  CNN, rumors and news, what have you heard today?  That setting aside of the ordinary priorities also seems a hallmark of these sacred times, when shock and the cycle of emotional reaction take us.)

Take a few minutes.  Capture your own timeline of these days.

As some have done, write down where you were that day, how you heard the news.

Or write down one of the stories that touched you, one of the many incredible outreaches going on here and everywhere.

Think about a child, five years from now, ten years, or more, asking what it meant to live through this time.  And think of the details, the sharpness and gracenotes, that you would like to share with that child.  Do you remember seeing grey snowflakes, and then realizing that they were walls and windows, shattered, like an obscene snowdrift when viewed from above?  Or maybe listening to the blind man who walked down from the 78th floor?

Whatever, get it down now.

And bask in the time that we have.  Touched by the sacred as humanity reaches out to itself, grounded in the profane actions that initiated the Great Catastrophe (with thanks to Alison for the label).