First person: Today, I start writing my second novel.
Third person: This is the first day of NaNoWriMo and Debbi bends her head to the task of writing her second novel.
... If only she could figure out what Person she should be writing it in.
My first novel, Cassidy, was written in First Person. I am very comfortable writing in First Person because I enjoy the unique perspective one person's mind applies to the world and those around him or her. There may be three sides to every story but I think the First Person's version is by far the most compelling.
That said, not all stories thrive within the confines of a single, flawed, human head. Sometimes, the world and what is happening in it is much bigger than one simple human's take on it and deserves a broader perspective - a god-like one, if you will. The Third Person.
So this is where I (Debbi) am stuck now. Which is more important in this new novel: the human or the world? What will I lose if I choose the challenge of Third Person? Or should I take a glass-half-full approach and ask myself what new challenges will I face and have to overcome if I accept the opportunity to grapple with something new.
Very interesting breakdown on the whys and wherefores of First Person vs. Third Person. Doesn't answer my question but gives me even more to ponder while I procrastinate those first, magical words that I hope will carry me enthusiastically to the end of a great, new story.
Stop! It's NaNo Time!
Showing posts with label Cassidy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cassidy. Show all posts
01 November, 2011
19 June, 2011
Past Perfect Progressive
Past perfect progressive tense describes a past, ongoing action that was completed before some other past action. This tense is formed by using had been and the present perfect of the verb (the verb form ending in -ing).from http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html#past%20perfect%20progressive
Does that make any sense to you? Do you remember learning about that verb tense in school? I sure don't and, as an English major in college, I've had four more years of English classes than most. Regardless, Cassidy is chock full of Had Beens and one of the chores I've set myself in this third draft editing is eliminating at least 70% of them!
I am by no means alone in this: my friend Peter is running into the same issue, as are countless other authors - no doubt. It's funny, I don't find myself talking in the past perfect progressive (hardly perfect, by the way) in daily conversation but writing seems so much more formal a conversation and therefore, apparently, in need of tenses that are not commonly taught in most English classes. My goal in this third draft will be to give Cassidy a more daily conversational tone and less of a formal, elevated (snobby writer) tone.
This draft is going slowly for now as I split my free time in helping my husband with his business accounting but as soon as I can get that to a weekly maintenance stage, I intend to tackle this imperfect, non-progressive language issue along with all the other notes I have amassed (thank you, Mel!) and hope to have a completed draft within a month. And with my hubby strongly considering a solo jaunt* to Phish's Superball IX festival in NY for the weekend of July 4th, my chances increase considerably!
*I have to keep myself excited over the possibilities of completing the third draft in those days home alone to avoid the tears that come from having to miss a guaranteed good time with friends that long weekend. Blame moronic American work standards for that piece of silliness and I will take it as motivation to remove myself from that silliness as soon as humanly possible!
11 June, 2011
Restart
New Design, New Purpose.
This started out as a writer's blog and went off into Me-Land. Not that there's anything wrong with Me-Land, if you like endless plains and long stretches of prairies bounded on either side by hundred-year old oak trees. It's a nice place to visit.
Let's get back to the original purpose of this blog.
I wrote a book. I.actually.wrote.a.book. Yes, the same one the previous entries ended on. I completed the task and not only soared past the requisite 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo, I also finished the book. It contains a beginning, a middle and an end.
I set down the book, after November, for five months. Thought about other things, caught up on reality TV. I let myself forget the story.
Then in March, I picked the book back up and read through my November words. Not surprisingly, it bordered on atrocious. What can I say, I wrote it in 30 days.
So, after a prolonged read-through with extensive note-taking, I set about fixing it. I am still in that phase.
I have a finished second draft, using Microsoft Word's mark-up features, and still a long, long way to go. In this case, I have much more to add than subtract - at 60K some-odd words and a lot of missing information, I am slowly but surely slogging my way to the end goal.
End goal: publication. How to get to that goal: hunkering down.
Name of the book: Cassidy
This started out as a writer's blog and went off into Me-Land. Not that there's anything wrong with Me-Land, if you like endless plains and long stretches of prairies bounded on either side by hundred-year old oak trees. It's a nice place to visit.
Let's get back to the original purpose of this blog.
I wrote a book. I.actually.wrote.a.book. Yes, the same one the previous entries ended on. I completed the task and not only soared past the requisite 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo, I also finished the book. It contains a beginning, a middle and an end.
I set down the book, after November, for five months. Thought about other things, caught up on reality TV. I let myself forget the story.
Then in March, I picked the book back up and read through my November words. Not surprisingly, it bordered on atrocious. What can I say, I wrote it in 30 days.
So, after a prolonged read-through with extensive note-taking, I set about fixing it. I am still in that phase.
I have a finished second draft, using Microsoft Word's mark-up features, and still a long, long way to go. In this case, I have much more to add than subtract - at 60K some-odd words and a lot of missing information, I am slowly but surely slogging my way to the end goal.
End goal: publication. How to get to that goal: hunkering down.
Name of the book: Cassidy
26 February, 2009
Me Music Part I
I don't know if this is something unique to me and my overwhelming narcissism or if most people think about themselves this much, but I have a tendency to adopt songs that speak to me, that mean Me to me. They are my identity songs.
Throughout high school and into college, my identity pretty much escaped me. I adopted songs but they merely defined the amorphous shadow that teenagers still in flux tend to be. From Bruce Springsteen to The Beatles to Depeche Mode, I found plenty of songs I identified with, but no songs that necessarily identified me.
Once my identity really started to solidify and I looked more and more like the person I have eventually become, a completely different kind of music than I had previously enjoyed stepped forward and actually has taken quite a predominant role in molding my adulthood. Thus, no surprise, many of the songs of this genre have become the music I want to walk down the street to.
If I had to choose one definitive action that turned my ears to this other sound, I would have to choose my ill-fated membership to Columbia Records. Don't laugh, this is real, and you know you had the same ill-fated membership!
After college, I moved back to San Francisco and in with my Mom. Most of my college friends had moved on to Chicago but I wanted to finally live in San Francisco as a sentient being, having been whisked away to Tulsa, OK in the middle of the night when I was a mere four months old. Okay, maybe whisked is a little dramatic and perhaps it was in broad daylight, but the fact of the matter is, my whole childhood in Tulsa was spent yearning to be in San Francisco. And after college, I had my chance and I took it.
I quickly became seduced by repeated tear-outs in magazines and newspapers offering 13 CDs for a penny. A Penny! Good lord, do you KNOW how valuable an offer that is?! I was on my own (separated from my peers) and bereft of their combined music collections and had spent my teenage years becoming dulled to my Mom's music collection. God damn, I needed fresh blood! So I sent in the card with 13 CDs checked off and anxiously awaited the new infusion of tunes.
When choosing my 13 CDs, I ran out of must-haves around #10 and began just picking things that seemed like they might have promise. Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead was one such choice. I hadn't been a Grateful Dead fan at all; I strongly dislike the song Truckin' which of course is one of the few Dead songs that made it to radio. I was generally meh about Touch of Grey when I saw the video on MTV. I had nothing really pulling me toward the Dead other than a need to fill out my 13 CDs for a penny, so I checked it off.
Most of the CDs I received in that shipment are gone now: given away or traded for better ones. Deadicated, The Smiths' Greatest Hits and the Indigo Girls' self-titled album are the only three that remain. Oddly enough, The Dead and The Girls are two that were throw-away choices for me - I really wanted The Smiths' album because it reminded me of high school.
Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Deadicated CD and gained a healthy new respect for the band. The one song that stood out to me, the one I fell in love with before ever even hearing The Dead sing it, is Cassidy. The poetry in Cassidy simply knocks me over.
I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream
Oh, child of countless trees
Oh, child of boundless seas
What you are and what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to be
Born to me, Cassidy
Lost now on a country mile in his Cadillac
I can tell by the way you smile he is rolling back
Come wash the night time clean
Come grow the scorched ground green
Blow the horn and tap the tambourine
Close the gap on the dark years in between
You and me, Cassidy
Quick beats of an icy heart
Catch-cold draws a coffin cart
There he goes and now here she starts
Hear her cry
Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly
Faring you well now
Let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing can tell now
Let your words be yours, I'm done with mine
Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly
The song is about Neal Cassady who was on his way out of this world ("There he goes...") and Cassidy Law, the newborn daughter of one of the Merry Pranksters, on her way in ("...and now here she starts") and is absolutely brilliant poetry that just makes my head and heart soar like the seabirds.
The irony is, of course, that this throw-away CD choice put a musical fork in the road that I have followed wholeheartedly ever since. Two months after I moved to Chicago, after two years in San Francisco (I whisked myself away, this time), I went to my first Dead concert: 7/9/1995. When tickets went on sale, I hadn't yet found a job and the money I'd moved out there with was dwindling away much faster than I had expected, so of course I made the extremely logical decision to buy a ticket and join my friend who had jobs. I'm nothing if not logical.
After the amazing concert, I experienced a flood of understanding that in this universe music would be enormously significant to me and that this band was The One and I should endeavor to see them as much as humanly and financially possible. Unfortunately, my first Dead show was the last Dead show with Jerry. I had a job by this point, less than a month later, and I remember leaving for the day and walking home crying to So Many Roads playing on repeat.
I have only heard Cassidy live one time, despite the number of Dead and Dead side project shows I've seen. For our wedding party, my husband asked the two guitarists/singers entertaining everyone if they would learn to play Cassidy for me. They played a wonderful rendition that brought happy tears to my eyes and loved the song so much, they continued to play it for themselves at future shows.
(to be continued ...)
Throughout high school and into college, my identity pretty much escaped me. I adopted songs but they merely defined the amorphous shadow that teenagers still in flux tend to be. From Bruce Springsteen to The Beatles to Depeche Mode, I found plenty of songs I identified with, but no songs that necessarily identified me.
Once my identity really started to solidify and I looked more and more like the person I have eventually become, a completely different kind of music than I had previously enjoyed stepped forward and actually has taken quite a predominant role in molding my adulthood. Thus, no surprise, many of the songs of this genre have become the music I want to walk down the street to.
If I had to choose one definitive action that turned my ears to this other sound, I would have to choose my ill-fated membership to Columbia Records. Don't laugh, this is real, and you know you had the same ill-fated membership!
After college, I moved back to San Francisco and in with my Mom. Most of my college friends had moved on to Chicago but I wanted to finally live in San Francisco as a sentient being, having been whisked away to Tulsa, OK in the middle of the night when I was a mere four months old. Okay, maybe whisked is a little dramatic and perhaps it was in broad daylight, but the fact of the matter is, my whole childhood in Tulsa was spent yearning to be in San Francisco. And after college, I had my chance and I took it.
I quickly became seduced by repeated tear-outs in magazines and newspapers offering 13 CDs for a penny. A Penny! Good lord, do you KNOW how valuable an offer that is?! I was on my own (separated from my peers) and bereft of their combined music collections and had spent my teenage years becoming dulled to my Mom's music collection. God damn, I needed fresh blood! So I sent in the card with 13 CDs checked off and anxiously awaited the new infusion of tunes.
When choosing my 13 CDs, I ran out of must-haves around #10 and began just picking things that seemed like they might have promise. Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead was one such choice. I hadn't been a Grateful Dead fan at all; I strongly dislike the song Truckin' which of course is one of the few Dead songs that made it to radio. I was generally meh about Touch of Grey when I saw the video on MTV. I had nothing really pulling me toward the Dead other than a need to fill out my 13 CDs for a penny, so I checked it off.
Most of the CDs I received in that shipment are gone now: given away or traded for better ones. Deadicated, The Smiths' Greatest Hits and the Indigo Girls' self-titled album are the only three that remain. Oddly enough, The Dead and The Girls are two that were throw-away choices for me - I really wanted The Smiths' album because it reminded me of high school.
Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Deadicated CD and gained a healthy new respect for the band. The one song that stood out to me, the one I fell in love with before ever even hearing The Dead sing it, is Cassidy. The poetry in Cassidy simply knocks me over.
___________________________________________________
I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream
Oh, child of countless trees
Oh, child of boundless seas
What you are and what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to be
Born to me, Cassidy
Lost now on a country mile in his Cadillac
I can tell by the way you smile he is rolling back
Come wash the night time clean
Come grow the scorched ground green
Blow the horn and tap the tambourine
Close the gap on the dark years in between
You and me, Cassidy
Quick beats of an icy heart
Catch-cold draws a coffin cart
There he goes and now here she starts
Hear her cry
Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly
Faring you well now
Let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing can tell now
Let your words be yours, I'm done with mine
Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly
___________________________________________________
The song is about Neal Cassady who was on his way out of this world ("There he goes...") and Cassidy Law, the newborn daughter of one of the Merry Pranksters, on her way in ("...and now here she starts") and is absolutely brilliant poetry that just makes my head and heart soar like the seabirds.
The irony is, of course, that this throw-away CD choice put a musical fork in the road that I have followed wholeheartedly ever since. Two months after I moved to Chicago, after two years in San Francisco (I whisked myself away, this time), I went to my first Dead concert: 7/9/1995. When tickets went on sale, I hadn't yet found a job and the money I'd moved out there with was dwindling away much faster than I had expected, so of course I made the extremely logical decision to buy a ticket and join my friend who had jobs. I'm nothing if not logical.
After the amazing concert, I experienced a flood of understanding that in this universe music would be enormously significant to me and that this band was The One and I should endeavor to see them as much as humanly and financially possible. Unfortunately, my first Dead show was the last Dead show with Jerry. I had a job by this point, less than a month later, and I remember leaving for the day and walking home crying to So Many Roads playing on repeat.
I have only heard Cassidy live one time, despite the number of Dead and Dead side project shows I've seen. For our wedding party, my husband asked the two guitarists/singers entertaining everyone if they would learn to play Cassidy for me. They played a wonderful rendition that brought happy tears to my eyes and loved the song so much, they continued to play it for themselves at future shows.
(to be continued ...)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)