That's a big hairy thing, grappling with the Muse. Tough clinch, especially when you have a Vision of some sort and cruel Reality has clobbered you about either its artistic value, mundanities like "market realities", or your ability/worthiness to do that work.

I highly recommend taking a gander at The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. It is a workbook/series of exercises aimed at clearing away the underbrush that amounts to blocks to creativity. I credit my against-all-odds break-out novel sale (only the 3rd book ever bought from the slush pile in this major publisher's history)to my work with that particular tool. Transformative book.

Powerful mojo, Cameron has (she said, channeling Yoda...)

And as to the comic biz...would love to talk with you about that. I "see" my stories like a movie, unrolling before my eye (because I 'go elsewhere' to 'see' my stories, and I'm watching it unfold. Literally). Lends itself to graphic novels/comic interpretation of course because I perceive it in storyboards, essentially.

Gah.

Visual channeling. Blessing and a curse. Difficult to wrestle into narrative per se but very...vivid, as you're getting it down..


~W~

Muppet voices have redeeming social value, I think.

I have an ongoing Rabbit/Dinosaur dialog - and cartoons to match - that I finally figured out is a mutant stepchild of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Much homage to the Moose and Squirrel, but then again: Bunny and Dino Ain't Them.

They bicker more.

And then there's that underlying sexual tension, cuz Rabbits & Lizards are natural mating pairs, but that is a whole 'nother story....


Edited at 2008-07-05 09:57 am (UTC)

well, you know, maybe more like an old married couple than a frisky furry pair. Dinos are curmudgeonly and stolid, drink a lot of beer and belch in chorus, and like to ogle the girls. In contrast, Rabbits accessorize properly, and would just as soon rip out your throat as talk to you, if you cross them on a wrong day. (BMS - bunnish menstral syndrome, I think, may account for that. Tho when they're not cranky they're damn festive.) Or there is the alternate reality of harish life as presented in the alt.devilbunnies newsgroups, but since they are Fudd-centric (as in Elmer) and ignorant of the important role dinysaurs play in rabbit lifestyles, I think I must intentionally dismiss their ouvre.

Later when I get my newly reconstituted office *thoroughly* reconstituted, time permitting I will upload some bunny/dino cartoons. They are self explanatory, and when you behold their interaction, All Will Become Clear....

~W~

kinda straddling the fence twixt da hare and saur. Hence, a Drabasaur. Or, conversely, one threatened on both sides by all one surveys...

Eek.

Time to head for the goat pasture...


To be continued...


Edited at 2008-07-05 10:37 am (UTC)

thanks for the offer. alas, I don't do IMing systems at all, ever. I hardly ever do phone for that matter: I am busy maintaining Bubble Space (like Bubble-wrap), on porpoise. Ergo, minimal contact with real-time anything. But email's always good. Then I can respond at 5am when I've been up howling at the moon, instead of X o'clock when a normal person would write....

But for me that's normal, so it's all relative. (I have abby normal relatives, too, but that's another thread...)

hahahaha.

so true.
you are a creature of patience, and I'm sure all your INFJ friends adore you if you Get It, why they're not present yet still engaged.

!!!

I am - well, I wanted to say a "recovering geek" but really, I'm not recovering, uh uh, I have turned my back on that way of life forever and anon. Now I have thrown myself (la!) totally into the right-brain thingy I am called to do these days.

I am madly resisting the urge to go a-geeking, even though I have clients contacting me for various gigs - No, says I, don't do that any more uh uh, let me refer you...

Well, *mostly* I manage that. Because really, I'm on a farm in the middle of BFE and I can No Longer Geek Properly for you. Besides you don't want me breaking out into existential angst in prose in the middle of your business/marketing plan/systems analysis/BPM document, ergo:

Really. I don't do that any more.

But I feel your pain if you do. I know you are born for better things, cuz if you can do "that stuff" for get-by living, I *know* you have deeper talents than are employed in that setting.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Hush, now. It's not nice to reveal the secret location of the Bat-cave. Er, Writer's Lair.

as soon as I reach the end in there I lose interest in writing it out, because I already know what happens.

sometimes knowing how something ends is as good as having gone through the creative process to get there. I have to do mental/perspective exercises to keep the thrill of storytelling fresh and engaging to me.

I am very well read in teh sci-fi genre and look forward to figuring out if I have read you before.

Eventually I'll decloak from the anonymous zone but that won't be for quite a while yet. Meanwhile, Cyberpersonas R Us. :) (Which is eerily like my day to day persona, but I'm enjoying the anonymity for now...)

I think to stay excited about story telling there have to be three things happening.

One is, "things I don't know", so there is undiscovered territory waiting to be discovered. That's territory I can discover only as I write - no exrecise for that, just the doing of it.

A second is a dramatic payoff that is psychologically satisfying - just knowing how something ends doesn't in itself convey any oomph. To get that feeling of dramatic crisis and resolution, is where craft exercises come in: working on pacing, timing, dramatic encounters that heighten tension, etc. It is applying a critical analytical eye to scenes and how they interact to take one to the tense climax/resolution point. And if there's not enough of a rollercoaster there, figuring out why, and correcting it through writing work. I think of that work as writing exercises.

Example: "the confrontation between these 2 characters is flat and aimless, when really it needs to heighten the danger they're both in and ratchet the overall story tension up a notch. How can I rewrite this to accomplish that goal?"

The final necessary thing is having characters that I can identify with and fall in love with myself. I need to channel them, to live in their skin, to care about what happens to them next, to understand their motivations and likely actions without having to tear my hair out trying to puzzle those things out in a left-brain way. When I'm in that space with characters I am living their adventure with them, and that makes the journey through plot events very exciting. I accomplish this by doing intentional visualization, meditation, and inviting characters for conversation in what I would basically call a channeled manner.

Getting inside characters like this also sometimes throws a monkey wrench into the plot I thought I was following. It often turns out these people have their own ideas about where things should be heading. So then I also suddenly have a lot more undiscovered territory to explore than I had anticipated.

And all together that makes for exciting storytelling process.

I don't respond too well to the accountability pressure, although I *would* like to find a fellow writer I could have substantive (and frequent, as in weekly or more often) convo with regarding craft issues and things specific to the WIP. I think I do have 1 person I can do that with, and will be doing it as soon as I'm more into production mode with my writing.

> December first--that's half-crazy talk<

That made me laugh out loud.

Yeah, huh.

Thanks for the link. I know her writing, but didn't realize she kept a regular blog here. Kewlness.