Creative Calisthenics

My strengths:
--dialogue
--action
--ambiguously moral characters
--HUGE plots/premises

My weaknesses:
--interior monologue
--recognizable heroes/villains
--description.

I have the feeling my weaknesses stem from three causes:

1. natural tendencies/taste (hey, I was the archetypal Buffy-verse fan-girl for god's sake--no surprise my stories are packed with talking, fighting, and ammorality).

2. script-writing. In college, most of my focus was theatrical writing, and it (especially television) speaks to me in a way prose doesn't.

3. agent blogs and "how to" writing guides. Reading them has made me so fearful of boring the reader or padding a story or babbling that I've become much MUCH too harsh with my editing. This isn't a new revelation; I gave up reading "how to" books six months or so ago, and agent blogs since mid-summer.

Agents seemed, to me, to give off the impression that they're judges, arbiters of taste, and that my job is to please them. Which requires following the rules and keeping them entertained and blah blah blah. Now, I don't mean that agents feel this way, but rather: in my insecure, people-pleasing, out-of-touch way, I gave up my own agency (!)--my artistic identity and destiny--and tried to pass the responsability of my work to agents by listening to them to my work's detriment. I got scared of making my own rules and going my own way, and tried to use theirs, go theirs. I put them on a pedestal, and ruined my last novel.

Which I'm still coming to terms with. I've spent God knows how long on the edits, and it turns out my rough draft may be better.

So, in my quest to turn that into a good novel instead of a wordy script, I've decided to write in an entirely different way for my NaNo project.

The premise for my NaNo work is something I've wanted to "find time" for since early summer, and I love working on it.

And:
Unlike my previous manuscript, this one is in first person, and only has one main character.
It has clear villains, though they aren't black-hearted black hats (of course)
There is as much description and internal monologue as I can stuff in.

I've already learned that I have much more latent/instinctive knowledge about plot structure than I'd realized, that internal monologue and scene description aren't as frightening or foreign as I'd thought, and that "prep" becomes busy work relatively early in the writing process.

Of course, it's only the middle of week one, and I'm only about 10,000 words in...but so far I've been very pleasantly surprised with what "playing to my weaknesses" really means. Whether or not this manuscript ever comes of anything, it's doing wonders for my confidence and my sense of self as a writer.

Ode to the Unthinkable

OH MY GOD I JUST SENT A QUERY LETTER WITH THE WRONG NAME WRITTEN IN!

Yes, I'd researched the agent. I'd personalized the query. BUT, I only personalized the, yanno, personalized bits. So I change the letter for each agent, but the bulk nevertheless stays the same... thus, copy and paste and THEN personalize.

But this time, though I changed the body of the letter I didn't change the name. OH MY FREAKING GOD.

So *this* is how unprofessionalism starts. With a gritted jaw and shaky, undernourished hands.

Shaking in My Freaking Boots

I'm sending out my first queries today.

Why am I terrified?

Nerves of Aluminum Foil

Problem:

I'm in a rut.

Solution:

Throw myself out there, and see if anybody can help me get to the next level.  "Anybody" meaning: grad schools, (television) studio fellowships, (book) agents.

So Far:

I turned in my NBC fellowship application on Tuesday, and my ABC/Disney (the biggie-- this is the fellowship that pays, and it's a year long, instead of ten weeks) application yesterday.

My goal was to stick to a deadline and complete/polish my first professional style television script (including brads and card stock and 50 pages of other people's characters talking and acting in ways that makes sense for them AND are interesting to me).  

I'm very proud of myself for doing it, and celebrated last night.  In some ways sending in an application may seem like a small victory, but I think making a goal and achieving it is DEFINITELY worth celebrating :D

My reasons for making this particular goal were:

1.  "Going to Pages"- induced paralysis had set in.  The professional stakes seemed high, and every perfectionist button in my brain was pushed.  But if I didn't apply, I'd have no shot of getting in, and no experience writing television scripts.  So, I decided my goal was: get it done!

I'd been freezing up on my personal statements/autobiography, too, trying to think of this or that *perfect* angle.  But then I realized-- this is art, and an artist's greatest tool is her humanity.  I decided to just be myself-- totally and absolutely myself-- in the essays.

There are a lot of things wrong with me: I'm raw, and young, and still working on the "professional" thing.  BUT, there are a lot of things *right* with me, too: I'm raw, and young, and  happy to experiment, work hard, and learn.  I decided to put myself-- warts AND halo-- out there, and let the fellowship committees decide if I'm right for them.  

2.  Which they would do anyway.  Because: I can't control getting in, and obsessing over things one can't control is the path to brittleness and breakdown.  So, I decided that once the packet left my hands, it was no longer my problem.  If good things come of it being out in the world, all the better-- but in this case, the *journey* was the important part. 

Sure, I can't stop re-thinking everything.  Why are my statements of interest and autobiography so chatty?  Did I explain X plot development enough?  Even though Disney claims they want serialized shows to be current as of July 1, which for me meant up to the season 3 finale..... what if I should have included a "Previously on..." (like Warner Brothers wants)?  

The thing is-- my goal is complete!  The stakes and my control over the outcome are both at zero by now.  I'm going to put the script away for a week, and go back to it in time to send it off for Warner Brothers, hopefully even stronger.  But I'm not going to get down on myself, I'm not going to worry, I'm going to push every negative thought out of my brain, because

I ACCOMPLISHED MY GOAL!!!!! :D  

Which just makes me more confident I can accomplish the next one, too. 

Next Step:

This month, I'm going to send query letters out to agents.  Yes, maybe not a single agent will want to represent me.  Yes, maybe I'll lose the chance to publish this book, despite loving it/slaving away at it.  BUT, once again-- if I don't query agents, I have no chance of publishing.  And if not query now, when?  I'm still polishing, but the re-writing is done, and the story/characters have been set in stone for a while.  

My goals this month are: query 50 agents/get an agent (whichever comes first :D), start another novel I have a fantastic idea for, apply to the Warner Brothers fellowship, and study for the GRE.  

All those goals are within *my* power, and all of those goals will help me feel that even if I'm not climbing out of my rut completely, I'll at least be digging footholds in the walls.  

Fast Pitch

The Bethesda Literary Festival was this week, and I competed in "Bethesda Idol," a kind of American Idol for writing samples. It was a disaster.

Writing samples consisted of:
1. Cover page with word count, genre, title, and a 1-3 sentence "log line"
2. Query letter
3. Manuscript's first three pages

Three agents were the "judges"-- but did they read the manuscript pages? No. Did they read the query letters? No. Did they even *look* at the samples? No.

A reader stood at a lecturn and read off each cover page. Sometimes, the reader wouldn't even get through the genre before the agents said, "next!" About fifty people entered-- the agents said they'd read seven of the samples past the cover page.

So of course, there were forty-five pissed people in that room-- though not for long. People were streaming out as the agents passed or panned based on reasoning like: the logline mentions Africa-- I love Africa! Yes!

One of the agents called people out as they left, begging them to stay. But honestly, why would they?

Even going through the cover pages took about an hour... during which the audience slowly dwindled and after which all but a quarter of the audience left. Then, the reader read a couple manuscript pages out loud and the audience voted on their favorite.

Everyone seemed disgruntled. The log-lines were all *remarkably* similar. Fully half were about vaguely dissatisfied married women during their mid-life crisis. If anything was the *least* bit unique, the audience responded-- with nervous laughter, gasping, whatever-- and the agents read that as derision and would through the sample in the "no" pile.

The manuscript pages were *remarkably* mediocre, and all had obvious flaws in their craftsmanship (ie, the story would open with a dialogue, but between every line the author would interject a paragraph of discription, so the conversation was impossible to follow). I guess it's to be expected that the writing samples were random and ordinary since they were picked so randomly-- without even the query letters giving a glimpse of the author's writing.

I was shocked, and left with a bad taste-- something the rest of the audience seemed to share. Jeez, even the agents looked bewildered and unhappy when it ended.

The way the agents approached their "judging" was disheartening, but I did learn some things: I'd discribed my story as a "medical thriller" but hearing peoples' responses, I think it's actually "action/adventure." My query letter/log-line language was dramatic and vivid-- but it came off as overblown to the agents. Ok, maybe I should try and turn it down... ironically, the writing in my manuscript is spare, so crisper writing in the query is a better match.

But I learned some things that were more disheartening: everytime I show up someplace, I think my stuff is going to be like everyone else's, that we're all responding to the same things, that our stuff will be comparable. But every freaking time, my stuff is *COMPLETELY* different from everyone else's.

Different as in: no one else even had an action story. No one else had any obvious fighting in their story at all! No one else had anything to do with infection. No one even had anything zombie-esque, which I'd worried was too *trendy*. The basic building blocks of my story weren't echoed in *anybody* else's, let alone the specifics.

I know who I am: in grade school, we watched this movie about an Indian (India- Indian) American girl celebrating Thanksgiving with her class. For homework, all the kids have to make little Pilgram and Indian dolls. But before she can finish hers, the little Indian girl falls asleep and lets her mother finish hers for her. When she gets to school, she sees all the other kids with their Native American and Pilgram assignments, and she pulls out hers-- which is dressed in a sari. I'm always that f*cking girl with the sari-dressed doll.

Which my friends assure me just means I'm creative. Great. So creative, I've creative-d myself out of the f*cking market. Not that anything has changed: what can I do? I have the taste and sensibility I've got, and my stories reflect that. But, I'll have to be very careful in the agents I chose to query. AND, I've officially lost my delusion that the writing is what counts-- that good writing will get you read.

Oh well. But i have decided to change a couple things in light of my new pessimism.

1. I've got to do some short pieces and get some readership, aka validation. One of my friends is helping with this, by publishing my essays on his (awesome) magazine/blog/website.

2. I've got to press further on my manuscript. I've been working on the same (begining) portion for *much* too long, and been much too complacent about how I structure it. I've been breaking "rules" in the order I present characters (less important characters are introduced early, much more important characters introduced late), etc. It's a tougher, rougher world than I thought, and I'm going to follow the rules that might serve the story.

3. I've *GOT* to buckle down with my television spec, which I've been avoiding like a fish avoiding prarie. The problem is: every time I watch the show, I'm so impressed by the writing I get psyched out! But I'm halfway through this spec, and I'm going to muscle through to the end. THEN, I'm going to write a whole new spec for the same show. That's what I did for my manuscripts, and the second (I think) is awesome-- especially compared to the first.

4. MAKE WRITING FUN AGAIN. It's supposed to be freeing, a pleasure, and since I've started editing, I've lost the joy.
(RELAX
-- Frankie)

So, for my self-esteem and maybe for yours:

ANYBODY ELSE WRITING ANYTHING THAT'S TOTALLY OUT THERE?