Okay! Let’s have some fun with Day Four of “All I Want”!
If you could go out for a night on the town, to do anything special – say to a concert to see anyone, dead or alive (although if they’re not alive, obviously in their previous rather than their present state) – what would you do? Who would you see? What would you eat? What would the weather be like?
I would LOVE to see Freddie Mercury perform with Queen in the front row of an open air concert on a beautiful night in July. With no mosquitoes!
For Day Three of my “All I Want” series, I’d like to know in what way, if you could, you would improve one of your senses.
Sure, there are the five senses we all know, and if you’d like to pick one of those – great! I’d like to have my 20/10 eyesight back! But apart from sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, there are other senses which are less tangible. Intuition, for instance. Or perhaps a sharper sense of when your stomach is full, to make it easier not to overeat! (I’ll take that one too.)
So today I’d like you to put your thinking cap on and come up with something creative. And if not, there’s always the big five.
Whether it be for Christmas, or for whatever you do or don’t celebrate, what I’d like to know today is, if you could be blessed with the natural-born talent to do anything, what would it be?
I’ve always wished I could play the guitar, but not JUST play – anyone can learn. I’d love to be able to play with the passion of Brian May of Queen, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Eddie Van Halen; the list goes on and on. Talent beyond compare. Even to play the piano like Schroeder, in the Peanuts cartoon, would be amazing!
Now it’s your turn. If you could do anything really really well – so well that people would swoon – what would it be?
It’s a phrase we hear all the time. Songs have been sung, people pass it off as words of wisdom to the forlorn and the heartbroken. I found it in my horoscope today. The sentence before it stated that my emotions must not be ignored.
As advice, it sounds pretty. It lends to the imagination the idea that our hearts speak to us and can guide us on which way to go when we are unsure. But when we listen to our hearts, must we necessarily go in the direction we really want? Or does it mean that we should do what we know is right?
I wonder if cardiologists everywhere roll their eyes whenever they hear the phrase spoken aloud?
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…
Blog post of December 6th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
In honour of my new friend, Dylan Dailey, I am going to attempt to write a blog post every day in December. It’s not going to be easy, what with Christmas coming and having the family to take care of, but what the heck. If I can make it through NaNoWriMo, why not EvDaDaDec?
I’ve been seriously thinking about how much my own tastes influence my fiction. The other day, my characters were in a restaurant and I purposely made them order something I, personally, wouldn’t eat.
It occurred to me that maybe I’m thinking about this too much – micromanaging my story. But the fact is, they’ve gotta eat. And I find it boring and not really credible that they’d like ALL the same things I do. If for no other reason than every character in every story I ever write always eats the same group of foods, I feel like I have to change it up once in a while.
Is this something you’ve put any thought to? If you’re a vegetarian, do you ever have your characters eating a nice juicy steak?
How else do your characters not reflect your tastes? (Human characters, that is.)
Write what you know; write what you know; yes, yes, okay we get it already. But have you ever wanted to write who you know? Fictionally that is.
When I write, I write characters. Plots in my stories, are secondary. I take, for instance, a scenario, ask ‘what if?’ and off I go. Once I have a character in place, they decide what happens in the circumstance I put them in.
I know a few people very well. Family, friends – I can’t help but know them. The people I don’t know very well, I study. I watch the way their expressions change when they talk about certain topics that they love or which scare them… you get the picture, right?
But there’s that saying again. That rule. Write what you know.
Now say, for instance, I was to write about someone I adore. They probably wouldn’t mind. They’d be able to hold my bestseller up high and say, ‘This is about me!’ and they’d be proud to do it. But what if I wrote about someone who I don’t respect? Or someone whose personality is less than scrupulous? I wouldn’t use their real name, of course. And the story would not be the one they lived in real life. But they’d know. And I’d know that they knew. And then I’d have to wonder; are they planning to do something devious to smite me? After all, they aren’t the most the most pleasant person to deal with in the first place. How far will they go?
Write what you know. I know very little about ‘things,’ but I know a lot about people. About characters and what makes people tick.
Have you ever ‘written’ someone you know, fictionally? How would you feel if someone ‘wrote’ you?
I find myself saying ‘If I could only just…’ a lot.
If I could only just find more time to write…
If I could only just have more money…
If I could only just find true love…
It goes on, ad infinitum. But all these things denote that I’m not content, when for the most part, I am. I have my children here with me, we have a roof over our heads, the air inside is warmer than outside, and there is food in the fridge. And I’m keeping up with my writing quite well, although sometimes it’s a struggle to do anything else.
So what is it which makes me wish for more? Is it simply the human condition to keep striving? It’s hard, for me at least, to keep my mind from going, from wandering, and from wondering what it would be like if I had just a little more.
Now if only I could consume nothing but coffee and chocolate and wine and cheese …. then I’d be happy.
I’m an excellent person for keeping secrets. Unfortunately, I’m a horrible liar. Unless it comes to my mother, in which case I’ve been practicing since I was four and had it down to an art by the time I was a teenager, I blush, I look the other way, I avoid eye contact… I do everything in the book that will show anyone with an ounce of observational skills that I’m not telling the truth.
Is it a good idea to entrust a bad liar with a secret? If the person you’re confiding in knows your deepest darkests, and they also know, say, your spouse, do you hope that somehow they will suddenly find the ability to not blush, or simply avoid your loved ones lest they give you away?
I’m finding myself confronted with these issues, not in real life, but because of my writing. My plot is so thick with secrets at the moment, that not only am I having a hard time keeping track of who knows what, but I’m finding it difficult to not give things away to my reader.
I actually studied the body language of people who are lying, just so that I could write a more believable liar. In this, I’ve found the perfect way to tell when my kids aren’t telling the truth, and how I, myself, can become a better liar.
But back to telling secrets. Everyone has them, whether they’re big like infidelity or small like you think someone looks horrible in their favourite suit. Fibbing is a necessity when it comes to secrets. Secrets in fiction can be the backbone of a story.
Can a person who is a bad liar even have secrets? I sometimes feel as though I’m an open book, for all to see. Maybe that’s why secrets are prevalent in my fiction – practice for real life. I’m puzzling it out on paper.
Do you suffer with this dilemma, either in fiction or in real life with yourself or someone you confide in?
Tell me. Tell me your secrets. I won’t tell anyone, promise. 😉
lindaghill.com 