Category Archives: Creativity

Like Pulling Teeth. Out of my Scalp. : Always with the self-editing!

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Figuring out my audience while writing a young reader’s book.

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In my previous blog post, I outlined a writing project which initially started as out as a children’s book, then became a short story for young readers.  As I’d already started the book out with simple, child-friendly language, I found that my workload had doubled up: not only did I have to finish the story, but I had to re-write what I’d already written it for my new audience as well.  This endeavor was made all the more complex by the fact that the notion of who exactly my audience consists of is a bit fuzzy to me.

As for the current state of progress on the project, well … allow me to let my inner monologue hold forth on that a bit:

AAAAHHH IT STINKS IT STINKS IT STINKS IT STINKS IT STINKS AAAAHHH!!!

Yeah, that just about sums it up – but not accurately, and not fairly either.  There was a certain confidence and ease with which I had written the initial story, two rare aspects of my writer’s mind that were very blatantly absent as I sat in the McDonald’s that night, gently coaxing my simple tale into a complex monstrosity.  How could rewriting something be so difficult?!

Upon reflection, the reason why is obvious:  The story (let’s call it Fighting Princess Story for desperate lack of a better title) was indeed simple; I’d written it not merely for children, but children for whom English was a foreign language.  What’s more was that the students I had in mind were my students, so the text, tone, concepts, and plot of the adventure were strongly informed by the familiarity I had with my small audience.

So now I’m trying to write for an unfamiliar audience, and as one of the posters on my debut article mentioned, writing for “young readers” is difficult in that such a group can mean a large number of people at different levels of maturity, even within specific age groups (8-10, 10-12, and so on).

This has resulted in a bit of a creative paradox.  On the one hand, as the upper-limit of maturity of the reader is vaguely defined, I feel a bit freer in what I can do, including lengthening the story, adding some complexity to the plot (not too much, of course), and expanding on the opening badminton game (two of the protagonists like badminton).  On the other hand, the lower limit of the potential reader’s skills is almost just as ambiguous, and as such leaves me to wonder just how advanced should the vocabulary be, how much detail is too much detail, or if the dialogue/narrative ratio equals out.  Or should it?

Now, honestly, having to deal with such questions would be no massive problem if I were to simply think them through before writing. I’m on a bit of a schedule, however, and so have to deal with these issues as I write the thing. And it was then that I discovered one of the reasons why I am so reluctant to fire up the word processor (or screenplay software) and just spit out one opus after another:  self-editing.  Not the act of going through a finished piece and looking for typos or places where improvements could be made, oh no – this type of self-editing happens just as you’re beating against the keys.

A line of snappy dialogue pops into your head, and you can’t get it down fast enough.  However, what emerges onscreen isn’t the Wilde–worthy bon mot you heard in your mind.  So, you stop – you stop the whole #*@$ train! – just to rewrite that line.  And … okay, so, this time, it’s a little closer to what you wanted, has a little bit of that spice – but then the issue of whether or not your audience will get it starts nagging at you before you’ve even looked it over good.  Will they understand the irony?  Is “predicament” a word too high over their heads?  Will they comprehend what the character said to begin with?  Was the line actually witty, or is the reality that you, the writer, cannot communicate wit, irony, or even a coherent sentence in English even if possessed by the spirit of a dead grammar book?

This, I realized, is literally quite tiring.  A wealth of creative energy is being used on these pathetic little hiccups that could probably be resolved far more casually in a second or third draft. It’s hard to see that when in the thick of it, of course, at which point the idea of doing a second draft seems ludicrously cruel since you haven’t finished the first.

But nitpicking and over-agonizing ain’t the half of it, oh no.  See, when you start dealing with one tiny conundrum after another, those conundrums seem to pile up.  Soon, the belief begins to creep in that what you’ve written is not a story so much as it a gigantic collection of inadvisable, self-important screw-ups which serves better as an example of how to fail as a writer than a piece of literary entertainment.  This kind of thinking eats into your self-esteem. You feel bad because this thing that you made in your mind is not behaving the way it should.  What kind of writer are you if you can’t control your writing?  Maybe you should have done what your mother insisted and become a neurosurgeon.  Pft.  Shyeah, right. You would’ve blown that too.

Then after slinking off your laptop and letting things sit for a while, your level-headedness kicks in (though not enough to tell you to stop being a writer) and reminds you that you haven’t cleared the middle of the story yet.  It’s too early to start cutting yourself down.  There’s plenty of time for that after the story is finished.  But no, seriously – the thing is not that bad.

I get so bogged down in silly little details and self-consciousness that I forget (neglect) to get the thing done.  I have to remember that sometimes the best thing to do is just smash through to the end of the story, let it go for a while, and then go back and revise.  Trying to be peerlessly brilliant on the first attempt is simply putting myself in a pressure cooker for no good reason.  I need to learn to relax and, if humanly possible, enjoy the writing experience.

To this end, I have made it a point not to worry so much about what I should or shouldn’t write – I’ll just write it.  The fixes will be simple and readily available after the first draft is completed; there’s no reason to worry about a poor result so early in the development stage.  You must first learn to walk before you can run headlong into a telephone pole.

Next time, character development on the fly.

Like Pulling Teeth. Out of my Scalp.

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Figuring out my audience while writing a young reader’s book.

It was earlier in the year when I had the inspiration.  My work as a kindergarten teacher in a hagwon gave me the idea for a book series featuring heroic princesses in action-packed adventures written for kids. Excited about the idea, I shared it with my students (all between the ages of 7 and 8), and banged out an excerpt of the story with drawings to give to them as birthday gifts.

At some point – I cannot recall when – it occurred to me to make the thing bigger.  To go from a six page excerpt to a completed work wasn’t good enough.  Now, the dream had expanded: I wanted to bring the plights of my heroines into the world of young readers.  The method?  Self-publishing.  The resources?  My laptop, Lulu.com, and an artist commissioned to do the illustrations.  All that left was the story!

Hm. The story.  Well, the story pretty much wrote itself – good guys (gals) vs. bad guys (a woman with a machine gun, air superiority, and an extremely anti-social attitude).  The problem was that, for some reason, I decided to write for a new audience.  So now, my quest is to write my story for a nebulous, hard-to-define, kinda cloudy group of readers somewhere between the ages of 8 and 13.

It’s not an easy task.  I’ve always found it easier to figure out my taxes than to figure out my audience.  When my focus was narrowed to kindy kids who were learning English, things were relatively simpler:  if I wanted to use a word longer than three syllables, I instead put in a substitution a smaller word or phrase that meant the same thing.  I even intended to put a glossary* in the back for certain words, with the intent of hopefully helping ESL students expand their vocabulary.

Writing for this older group of readers is a different story as itt’s a group that I’m unfamiliar with.  I was 8-to-13 years old myself once, but it was only for a couple years back in the early 80s.  At 38, I feel that I’ve moved on since, and as such I don’t quite remember how challenging reading was.  Heck, I was a good reader; it was never really a challenge for me – just boring.  I was a movie fan.  So, when it came to all the books you were supposed to read from 8-13, I never bothered.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lizard Music, Old Yeller, Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret, The Anarchists Cookbook, and so on, never had an impact on me.

That’s what this blog is about.  I’m pretty much going to have to figure out how my new audience works. How complex should the vocabulary be?  How much detail should I use when establishing background, character, settings? Should I concern myself with whether boys will like reading a book where the protagonists are all young women?

Now, I’m not going to pretend that readers are going to be clamoring for this thing-– it’s really just a personal project I’d like to see done before my students graduate in March, so I can gift it to them as a reward for putting up with me all year.  Perhaps it’ll be a little over their ability now, but it could end up being something they could use to sharpen their reading skills later.

So, for anybody out there who’s ever struggled in trying to figure out just how to write for your readers, here’s your chance to watch as I fly face-first into such and adventure.  I’ll be glad to have you along for the ride.

* glossary: a list at the back of a book, explaining or defining difficult or unusual words and expressions used in the text

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Ingested bong

  • Thought saying “Braaaaaains …”  and limping with arms outstretched in menacing manner would be a really funny way to greet a group of  jumpy zombie hunters

  • Victim blamed it all on the media; in response, the media blew up victim’s car

  • Chicken surprisingly well-versed in the use of butterfly knife

  • Pulled out nose hair (of Mr. T)

  • Idiot husband apparently thought himself some sort of freakin’ engineering genius when tinkering with gas furnace

  • Wasn’t so much the heat as it was the humidity – and the alligators

  • Rocket pack failure makes escape from sarlacc pit impossible

  • Otherwise would have had to endure another Twilight sequel

  • Doused with boiling-hot fudge, skinned alive by a barrage of peanuts, and  drowned in gallons of soft-serve ice cream during bloody coup d’état in the land of Dairy Queen

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Gruesomely fatal but very funny Stupid Human Trick
  • Suicide by Shriner
  • Towel not as bulletproof as originally thought
  •  Called before digging, but electric company rep was real practical joker
  • “What’s this button do?”
  • Cuz Joey Sherman double-dog dared you to
  • Gored by bull market
  • Should’ve moved car out of Rip Taylor’s parking space the first time he asked
  • Forgot about the whole “Don’t jump under the combine” thing
  • Crushed by flying debris as Kool-Aid Man crashed through wall
  • Bathed cat

[15th August Inspiration Board] Visually Inclined

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My writer’s brain requires a lot of different stimuli to keep on churning fast enough to function. A slowed down thought process is detrimental to my creativity. If you jumped out on the obvious limb and guessed that I probably have a hard time meditating, you were correct. Although I relish being alone, I do not handle quiet well. I need noise: a slightly too-loud television, a wide-faced Labrador crunching on a bone, a cat scratching on a door frame, low but audible music (The Clash or Patti Smith) pulsing from my laptop, discordantly lovely street noise breaking in through a few open windows, dogs racing and barking down the halls. Sirens. Car alarms. Screaming, skittering children. The sound of my bare feet beating against a table leg. A bus breaking to a stop. I could write with a baby squawking in my face. Noise. It’s beautiful. Continue reading →

Day Dreams and Night Parades: Why Writers Are Always Surrounded by Dead People

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DAY DREAMS/                                                                                                                                                   There were two trees I loved as a child. They lived less than an acre apart, but never met. This made me sad, as I was certain they would get along if the chance ever came. I tried making introductions, but whenever I broached the subject they were too busy doing secretive tree things that I did not understand.

The Front Yard Tree thrived on the imaginations of little girls. Continue reading →

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Thought “Cape does not enable wearer to fly” warning only applicable to those who didn’t BELIEVE!
  • Accidentally kept parents from meeting
  • Thought cost-prohibitive Sealy Posturpedic mattress could be easily substituted by considerably less expensive pile of burning debris
  • Completely misinterpreted dog’s orders on who to shoot
  • Beheaded by peasants
  • Forgot which order deathtraps in pyramid were placed
  • Too much fun
  • Told Bond entire plan
  • Showed Buddha flaws in his philosophy; subsequently beaten to death by livid Buddha
  • Tried to prove lions were ticklish
  • Superstitious cops used silver bullets

 

The stuff I see in my sleep

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A frequently updated blog about the movies my mind shows me while I’m trying to get some rest.

I have a friend. You don’t know her, so the proceeding may not strike you the same way as it did me.  I know this woman personally though, so even if you don’t find it amusing in the least, take my word for it: this story is hilarious.

It is very important to me to mention that this woman – for the sake of anonymity, let’s call her ‘Clothilde’ – would never do the things described below.  She’s one of the most independent, truthful, self-reliant people I know, safely employed in the field of IT and making more money than I could ever hope for.  Because of this, I found it odd when she unfortunately – bafflingly – popped into my head one night and made a terrible showing of herself.

The dream started out with me in some kind of stationery store when I get a call from Clothilde on my cell phone.  She was asking about places that she could vacation in that begin with “St” while on her honeymoon subsequent to her impending wedding, the news of which took me totally by surprise. When I asked her who her fiance was, she didn’t seem to be sure.  There were a lot of vague things about her wedding plans, since she only made them just to enjoy the vacation package that would follow suit.

Selecting her intended was an interesting story. Apparently, in a way that made zero sense to me after I woke up, she had managed to fake her death via simply lying in a coffin. No pulse-obscuring procedures, no means of hiding her body heat – she just lay in a coffin and played dead. She did this because she was going lose the lease to the coffin if she didn’t use it by a certain date.  She had overheard a lot of positive comments about how she looked during her viewing, so, after the ruse was over, she had decided to marry the guy who paid her nicest compliments. He was happy to proceed with the nuptials, presumably unfazed by the fact that she had faked her death. Some guys can be blinded by love, I guess.

So, cut to the day of the wedding.  It was being held at the house I grew up in.  One would have expected the ceremony to take place somewhere directly associated with Clothilde – such as, say, the house she grew up in – but this was a dream that seemed to insist that no practical logic interfere with its narrative whatsoever. I was hanging out in the basement (story of my life), which was oddly devoid of a lot of guests, and by some impetus, I decided to head upstairs and see how the wedding was going.  Why I was in the basement when the ceremony was happening just upstairs …

Surprisingly, I found Clothilde, alone, resplendent in her wedding dress – and in tears! The wedding had been cancelled due to a rainstorm.  That’s right:  the wedding was called due to inclement weather.  This would mean that all the guests, the caterers, the pastor administering the ceremony – all of these people decided to up and leave because of a storm. The storm that was happening outside, despite the fact that this was an indoor wedding.

She was heartbroken, sitting on a chair in my family’s kitchen (a rare reference to real life: my family’s kitchen is actually right above the basement).  Why she was heartbroken, I don’t know.  Her affection for the guy she was going to marry was rather questionable, seeing as how she couldn’t even bother to learn his name.  I guess she was really looking forward to that vacation.

It seems that her cleverly-plotted machinations would have all come together, except for one fatal flaw – she, or somebody, kept humming the chorus to the Hamster Dance.  It had occurred to me that that song samples Whistle Stop from Disney’s Robin Hood, which was sung by Roger Miller (he wrote King of the Road ).  I was under the impression that Miller was a county/Western artist (he was more of a novelty song writer), and if she didn’t stop singing the techno-based hamster song, someone would figure out her game, and her whole plan would unravel.  And I was right: her insistence on humming it (or somebody’s, I couldn’t tell who) resulted in a meteorological event so severe that even her anonymous groom left her with no future plans for a do-over.

Okay, now, it is important to me at this point that I remind you that I feel that this person, in reality, is noble, hard-working, and very intelligent. I have never been under the conviction that she has ever faked her own death, would marry simply for gain (and even then, just for a vacation that she could have gone on by herself), or would inadvisedly insist on singing a remix of a Disney tune that was sure to ruin her matrimonial proceedings.  It is so unlike her, in fact, that I had to share this dream knowing she’d get a kick out of reading about it.

If you’re reading this, Clothilde, then thank you for participating in my weird dream.  It was great working with you!

Things Your Autopsy Report Should Not Say

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And now, in the interest of public service, we present:

  • Hot air balloon full of heroine ruptured in stomach
  • Pioneered new sharkback riding school.  Well, tried to …
  • Lacking hammer, used skull instead
  • Heavily armed, highly unstable mime
  • Hit by body of Burl Ives going 200 mph
  • Didn’t believe offspring’s insistence that monsters were under the bed, swept there anyway
  • Dedicated self to opening up minds of inner-city high school youths to joys of reading via The Turner Diaries
  • Psychopathic cellmate serving eight consecutive life sentences for unspeakably sadistic killing spree couldn’t take joke
  • Picked at it
  • “Whack it on the nose” survival tactic only pertains to bears, never to out-of-control buses
  • Willie Tyler and Lester.  Google them.

The stuff I see in my sleep

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A frequently updated blog about the movies my mind shows me while I’m trying to get some rest.

My brain seemed to have some trouble making up its mind.  This was one of the jumpiest nocturnal narratives I’d experienced in quite some time.

I started off in the Recurring Hotel.  I call it that because I have stayed there before in other dreams.  It must be part of a chain – whenever I’ve dreamt of travelling, I’m always checked in at the Recurring.  The reasons for my staying there were unknown, and apparently outside of my concern, because there was something else on my mind, something far more worrisome, intimidating, and impending. I hadn’t been to work in a week, and was due to go in that Friday.  That day was dragging inexorably towards the present, and it hung over my head like an anvil suspended by fishing line.

Like the hotel, the theme of inevitable doom would pop into my dreams frequently. I know that there’s some big thing coming up.  I also know that I either cannot handle it, or that I can handle it, but I find doing it repulsive.  Opening night in front of a live audience is coming, but I realize I’m unprepared, don’t know my lines, or am sick of the theatre.  That kind of thing.

So, I had to go to work in a few days, which I was dreading.  I was working in a movie theater, and I did not want to go back.  My managers were strangely tolerant as I had played hooky for several days.  Inexplicably, not only had they not fired me, but they seemed eager for my return.

The whole dream was permeated with a sense of overwhelming tension and anxiety – I really did not want what was going to happen to happen.  What made it worse, however, were the delays.  Something would always crop up to distract me from my dread. For example, a friend of mine had approached me at the hotel.  She was grim and worried, asking me for help.  Her husband had downloaded and installed something in her computer, and now strange files were showing up on it.  I tried to explain that he was probably downloading the new files himself, but stopped short of making him seem like an unfaithful husband (the real-life counterpart to this couple couldn’t be happier with each other).

But enough of that! The scene suddenly jumped, I was off to the boonies of New Rome, located just beyond the west side of Columbus.

Hovering above the landscape, I was perusing a living model of the rural territory, dotted with a small neighborhood, some home businesses, a fast-food restaurant or two.  When I say ‘living model’, I mean that the things on the model were actually alive – except for the O-scale train set that circled a small house off to one side. My first introduction to Google Earth just an hour or so before hitting the sack can be thanked for that.

So then – jump – I was at the home I grew up in – another frequent occurrence – in the kitchen with my dad.  In reality my dad has sadly been gone for eight years now, but that wasn’t stopping him from making me some bacon.  I didn’t want bacon; I didn’t like bacon – in my dream.  I feel that it is of the utmost importance here that I stress the point that it was my dream-self that wanted no bacon; real-life, flesh-and-blood, corporeal KM Scott loves bacon, and if you were to have even the slightest desire to buy me bacon upon encountering me in person, you should feel free to indulge that desire in the most recklessly exuberant way you can manage.

So dad was making me breakfast, including bacon, and my world was blinking in and out. The schizoid editor of this nighttime head movie had apparently tired of jarring jumps between settings, and decided it would be more fun to quick-cut between the eerily mundane and the chillingly dark.  Blink and I’m in the house, only this time without my dad.  The narrative had switched to a horror film where I was being menaced by a current coworker who was actually some kind of conscious zombie.

Blink again and I’m back in the kitchen, horror movie totally gone, protesting dad cooking up the pig flesh, watching a politically-charged news show wherein they wanted to smear their philosophical enemies by showing Indiana Jones in reverse, so that Indy was chasing the boulder instead of the boulder chasing Indy even though that’s not how the film was shot and MAN THIS WAS A WEIRD ONE. 

It was around that point that I blessedly woke up.  Well, in a manner of speaking.  More like I stirred myself into a middling-space between being awake and asleep, while nailed down by the pinning sense of anxiety that had haunted me throughout the experience.  Finally my bladder conquered my dozing and I woke fully – at 5:41 AM.  In a defiant stroke against the night’s freakout, I got dressed, went downstairs, and got an early morning snack.  I kept myself moving to clear my head.  Victory.

And then I went back to bed for a quick nap before work.  Brilliant idea.  I emerged once again into the land of undefinable shadows and dread.

Only this time … I was back in school.

I didn’t wake up screaming.  I’m too strong for that.