Why WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

Why the title

WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

All writers I believe write in the crosshairs.

If you have beta readers and have submitted to agents/editors, you know the feeling of being in the crosshairs of their evaluations.

Ouch. But no pain, no gain.

But I am thinking of the imagry of the hunter.

He fixes his aim at his target, looking through his scope.

The image is hardly crisp at the beginning. He must adjust the lens to achieve crisp clarity and the best chance of hitting his target.

Writers are like that hunter.

At first the image of our tale is blurry. We tighten the focus with revealing dialogue, vibrant characters, engaging crises, and creative descriptions. Pacing and plot tighten the image even more. Sometimes we get it with dead-on clarity. Most times we don't.

No one but Shakespeare is perfect. If you don't believe me, ask Harold Bloom or any university English professor.

It is a tricky endeavor writing in the crosshairs.

How do we focus quicksilver humans into concrete mental images?

Take flames. They look like objects but are really processes.

Humans are like that as well. No human actually is complete. He or she is in the process of becoming.

But becoming what? We answer that question with our choices.

But there is more to my title than that.

We all write the movie of our lives in the crosshairs.

That endeavor is more tricky. We don't get the luxury of time to reflect, muse, or ponder at leisure. Life is a harsh mistress.

As we struggle, she flashes us that "beauty-queen" smile : all sharp teeth and no heart. And in her games of chance, the House ultimately wins.

Like Indiana Jones we must make it up as we go along.

We plan and prepare. Life gleefully throws her monkey wrench into our preparations. We must write our lives in the crosshairs of illness, accidents, dysfunctional humans, and our own inner demons.

We are all in Life's crosshairs, and none of us know when she will pull the trigger. We just know that she will.

This is what my blog is all about :

how to maintain a measure of grace and peace in the crosshairs of Life. I haven't figured it out yet. Let me know what helps with you.

I am currently listening to "Mourning Tree" by Leaves' End.

The romance of my haunted, undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, and his immortal love, Meilori Shinseen, has echoes to it of the tragic love of Arwen and Aragorn.

Here is a music video I think you may like :
***

CAN LOVE KILL?

Can love kill?

Yes ...

if you happen to love a ghoul who hungers for your flesh only slightly less than she does your heart.

Yet to the street orphan, Victor Standish, who has repeatedly risked his life for food and shelter,

to chance death for the love he has never had

(even if for only one magical French Quarter night)

is worth dying in the morning.

And we, who throw our lives away for much less, can we fault him?

Buy THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH and WRITE A REVIEW

http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1

(where 100% of the profits go to the SALVATION ARMY)

and get FIVE entries to my contest where you could win

1.) A KINDLE FIRE

2.) AUTOGRAPHS OF

JK ROWLING, STEPHEN KING, CHARLES SCHULZ (2 of these being offered) ANGELINA JOLIE

3.) AUTOGRAPHED MOVIE POSTERS OF

AVATAR, BATMAN BEGINS, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE COLOR PURPLE, FROM DUSK TO DAWN,

HARRY POTTER & THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, THE ROCK (and many others.)
***

JOHN LOCKE … fake or sincere?

I walked up to Captain Sam’s table where Alice, my ghoul friend, was lost in a book.

I asked, “What’re you reading?”

Alice looked up absently, “This system by John Locke to sell millions of Kindle books. I want to discern if there is any merit to it so as to help Roland.”

{http://www.amazon.com/How-Sold-Million-eBooks-Months/dp/1935670913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309895373&sr=1-1 }

Her British accent sent tingles through me, but I was Victor Standish, and I don’t let girls know they’re getting to me. But her Mona Lisa smile said I was only fooling myself.

And talking about fooling, I said, “Oh, I read that last night for the same reason. Boy, Old John must have pretty broad shoulders.”

Alice frowned, “Why do you say that?”

“From the way the guy kept patting himself on the back all the time. ‘I have made 3 separate fortunes. My posts are timeless, forever relevant. I write 7,000 words a day when I write a novel. I have the system guaranteed to make you a success. My snake oil will make you live forever.”

Alice frowned like an angry librarian. “He wrote no such thing.”

“Yeah, but he probably will next week.”

Alice sighed as if at a dim-wit (and no snide comments from you guys out there!)

She sighed, “I have read where this Amanda Hocking, herself a Kindle wonder, said that it is more likely a Kindle author will only sell less than a 100 copies of their eBooks – not anywhere close to a 100,000.”

I sat down beside Alice. “Yeah, but she’s not hawking a “How To” book for $10 a pop either. I mean, look – he’s made $20 just from the two of us.”

Alice puckered her pretty lips. “But he’s sold so many books.”

“Yeah, but have you looked at the covers? Sex sells. Even if they’re only sexy legs.”

Alice glared at me. “And just how do you know what the covers look like, Mr. Standish?”

“Hey, he’s got them plastered at the top of his blog.{http://donovancreed.com/}

That guy sure knows how to manipulate :

soft-soaping poor people on Twitter to be his shills;

writing only what he thinks will sell, not what’s in his heart;

singing the praises of sport and sick Hollywood greats, then twittering those legends’ fans with a link to his blog.”

Alice looked troubled. “You are not a mind-reader, Victor. Mr. Locke may be sincere.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I’ve lived on the streets all my life and had to fend off panhandlers that whole time. When a deal sounds too good to be true, it ain’t.”

“Isn’t,” chuckled Captain Sam as he sat down beside me.

“I’ve read his book for the same reason you two did. So that makes $30 he’s made just from this table. Still, he did have a sound idea or three. Maybe lightning just struck as it sometimes does. Or his system does works. Time reveals the truth eventually.”

Alice cocked her head, blonde waves becoming a waterfall. “But what of all the people who will follow Mr. Locke’s system in the mean time?”

Captain Sam smiled sad. “Sometimes faith will heal you even if the pill you swallow is sugar.”
***

THE WORLD IS ROUND ...

And the place which may seem like the end
may also be the beginning.
***

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

The odds are against us. Worse. Look at the headlines of suicide bombers, drive-by shootings, and rape.

We are against us.

There is no director to yell "Cut!" No stunt double to take our place. And no new movie to star in when death swallows our person.

We must be our own hero. Wear our own spandex.

And, if Kate Beckinsale of UNDERWORLD is to be believed, spandex pinches. And so it should.

Pinches remind us that pain befalls us all, to be kinder to someone whose pinched face shows us that the spandex of his/her life is less than comfortable.

The picture of this post comes from Cassandra.

She is a hero, a woman who could have surrendered to bitterness and defeat. But instead she has chosen to choose life, healing others, and going forward.

Though she would deny the heroism of her new life, I consider her a hero. Her trauma is hers to tell. I am just tipping my hat to her heroism.

And in a fashion, all we authors struggling to be published have to be our own heroes.

The odds are against us in this harsh market.

It seems that the motto of agents we approach is : "If I don't want your autograph, I don't want your manuscript."

Even if we self-publish, how do we get our novels to the eye of the average reader? No easy answers there.

But giving up can become an addiction, a way of life. Never surrender. Never yield to despair.

Stumble, yes. Fall, of course. But gather your strength, your wits and get up. You can do it. Others have before you.

Fling the blood and sweat from your eyes and smile wide. You can use those acid feelings searing your will and heart in your writing, becoming a deeper, more perceptive writer.

And more importantly :

if you refuse to give in to bitter hopelessness, you will become a deeper, more compassionate human being.

When you succeed, and you will succeed, you'll be able to thrust out a helping hand and word to someone, down and hurting, who needs a boost back onto the path.

You'll remember how galling the conceited bragging sounded from those who had let their success go to their heads.

If we do make it, the very least we can do is offer hope to those still in the grim trenches.

You'll be able to give them a pat on the back to lend strength to their steps. The pats lower leave to the agents and publishers.
***
And my favorite scene of all the STAR WARS films highlights my thinking {sorry about the foreign subtitles} :

GOOD GUYS ARE BAD NEWS ... for your novel

{ I had to start my post with a photo of a bad girl to counterbalance the good guy subject matter.

Ah, not buying that? Didn't think so. It was worth a try.}


"Good guys are boring?," I said earlier tonight.

Nickie, my co-worker, nodded sagely. "Yep. Boooooring."

We'd been talking my disenchantment with Sookie in the TRUE BLOOD novels.

Bill, her first lover, had suffered near death twice for her, but she is attracked to sociopath vampire, Eric.

"Vampire Bill is boring while Eric is just bad and sexy."

"Uh, he tore apart a guy who was just trying to escape being chained in a cellar. And then, he got upset when the man's blood ruined his hair's highlighting."

Nickie giggled, "That was so cute."

"What if the guy had been your kid brother? Still cute?"

"Oh that guy was a jerk. He had it coming."

"And the two little children Eric looked down as munchies toward the end of season two? Did they have it coming?"

"Oh, you're as boring as vampire Bill." And Nickie hurried off to read the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel.


Our conversation got me thinking on how difficult it is to write a non-boring hero or heroine.

But being good boring? Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, once wrote : "Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for."

I don't know about you, but that's pretty much how it's been for me.


So Niki and actors who moan that good guys are boring don't really mean boring in the obvious sense.

As writers we have to look at heroes through the reader's eyes. And what do they want of their heroes?

To live vicariously through them.

And who wants to suffer through routine living second-hand? We get enough of that up close and personal. Our failure with heroes is that we make them routine.


What do the readers want from the hero of the novel they're reading?


To live dangerously and to have fun through them by :

Dialogue :

How often have you been stung in a situation, only to come up with the perfect comeback HOURS after the fact?

Think CON-AIR when

Cameron Poe says to agent Larkin : "Sorry boss, but there's only two men I trust. One of them's me. The other's not you."

Or with Robert B. Parker when Spenser says :

"...You have any suggestions, make them. I'm in charge but humble. No need to salute when you see me."
Fraser said, "Mind if we snicker every once in a while behind your back?"
"Hell, no," I said. "Everyone else does."
— Robert B. Parker (The Widening Gyre)

Or when Spenser walks into a TV station's boardroom to see three lawyers sitting on a couch beside one another.

"Which one of you speaks no evil?," I asked. (A Savage Place)


{Side-bar} :

University professor turned writer, Robert B. Parker, had thought-provoking things to say about writers, literature, and life :


“It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.”


"Being a professor and working are not the same thing. The academic community is composed largely of nitwits. If I may generalize. People who don't know very much about what matters very much, who view life through literature rather than the other way around.”


“The advantage of writing a series is that it probably replicates, for lack of a better word, real life more than most fiction because most people have a history and know people and come and go and you have a chance to play with the characters and not just the protagonist.

It gives you the opportunity to develop--lapsing back into academe for a moment--a whole fictive world. Gee, I love saying that now, just keeping my hand in. Fictive world!.”

"I sit down every day and write five pages on my computer. At some point I found that not outlining worked better than outlining. The outline had become something of a limitation more than it was a support.

When I did the Raymond Chandler book, Poodle Springs, which was in the late eighties, I was trying to do it as Chandler did it, and since Chandler didn't outline then I thought I won't outline.

If you read Chandler closely you can see that he didn't outline. What the hell happened to that chauffeur? I would recommend to the beginning writer that they should outline because they probably don't have enough self-confidence yet.

But I've been writing now since 1971 and I know that I can think it up. I know it will come."

"It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect, but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the amount of reading and learning that I acquired along the way."



But I digress ...

What, besides saying snappy dialogue, do readers want to do through their heroes?

To do the extraordinary.

Even if it is in ordinary circumstances. Spit in the eye of the bully. Tweak the nose of a snobbish boss.

Take this scenario :

A tired stone mason sits at a bar run by one of his few friends. Another man sits down beside him. He never looks at our hero, but he pushes a thick manila envelope over to him.

He whispers, "Ten thousand now. Ten thousand after she's dead."

He gets up and slowly walks away. Our hero hurriedly opens the envelope. Sure enough there is the money. And a blown-up photo of a woman from her driver's license.

Our hero gets up to follow the man to see if he can get the license plate number of his car to give to the police. The man is already outside -- getting into a police car.

What does our hero do? What would you do? And so starts the Dean Koontz novel, THE GOOD GUY. (Hey, I couldn't resist.)

There is a hero inside all of us ...

if we only know where to look. There is a magentism to your hero of your novel ... if you know where to look.

And where is that?

In your heart, my friend. In your heart.
*******************************************

***

WOW_WHEN YOU HIT A STONE WALL_Insecure Writer's Support Post

It happens to us all.

We're writing along in our C.A.R. (conflict, action, resolution) when WAM!

We run into a brick wall. Our muse deserts us. And we find ourselves mired in the middle of a chapter with no ideas as to how to get out.

Now, most of us will think a colorful metaphor or two at this time.

I want you to instead think _WOW!

W ..... Want

O ..... Obstacle

W ..... Way

WANT :

I. First WANT

No, not your want. Not even the want of your main character. The WANT of your reader ... which is ...

A POWERFUL EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE.

A.) Emotion is the life's blood of all fiction : romance, thriller, mystery, horror, and science fiction.

B.) But it doesn't come from reading about the other guy having a terrible, challenging time. No, it doesn't.

C.) It comes from the reader BECOMING THAT CHARACTER to ...

find love, face that horrendous terror, fight that unbeatable foe, solve that baffling mystery ... to win.

D.) The reader becomes your main character when ...

1.) You lure them into the mind and heart of your MC.

2.) By speaking of the common angst we all have :
loneliness, alienation, yearning for love, desire for esteem in the eyes of significant others.

3.) Make them laugh, even if there are tears. The reader will return to your books again and again if you can do that.

4.) What is the worst prison punishment short of execution?
Solitary confinement.
We all need to connect. Bereft of that link to another human soul we wither inside.

5.) Your main character must seem real to the reader, must reflect some spark or lack within the reader herself.

Her wounds must bleed real blood. Their pain must echo throughout the remaining pages. Her triumph over them will be all the more uplifting to the reader.

II. Second Want :

A.) The WANT of your MC.

B.) If you're mired down in a chapter, see if you can find the WANT of the MC or her adversary in it.

C.) If you can't or if it is not immediate and primal ... there's your problem.

OBSTACLE :

I. Obstacle is related to WANT

A.) How do you make someone want something?
Say they can't have it.
See a "Don't Touch. Wet Paint" sign, and what do you do?
You touch the blasted wall, don't you? Sure you do.

B.) Your OBSTACLE is directly tied in to your MC's WANT. If you've done your craft right __ the WANT's basic nature carries within it, its own obstacle.

C.) And that nature is CHANGE
Getting the WANT will change your MC's life drastically.
Not getting it will change it for the worse.

II.) Look at your trouble chapter :
If the OBSTACLE is not primal, immediately threatening, and nearly overwhelming ... there's your problem.

A.) Most readers would love to change their lives ...

B.) to add more excitement
to add a sensual, seductive love interest to their days
to finally achieve control and mastery over their jobs or problems.

WAY :

A.) This is not just another way to say action ...
though it always involves action.

B.) WAY springs from the manner your MC goes about tackling the OBSTACLE.
It must ring true to your MC's basic nature :

1.) Each person has their own style that manifests itself in how she sees and solves her OBSTACLE.

2.) In A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Sydney Carton loves another man's wife. He sacrifices himself to save him so that the woman he loves is not shattered.

3.) In real life, 28 year old D.H. Lawrence loves 32 year old Frieda Weekley, unhappy wife and mother of three children. He runs off to Europe with her, making violent love, writing poems that shake up the literary world,

There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!

and, alas, sees her "share her abundance with acquaintances" along their European trek.

4.) Both WAYS sprang from the basic nature of the man involved. Both were true. Both WAYS stir strong emotion when you read them, don't they?

C.) WAY must spring from the three act nature of any novel :

Act I.
The stage is set, the conflict painted, and the characters have fun.

Act II.
The rug is pulled out from under the MC, the adversary draws blood, all seems lost.

Act III.
The stakes are raised, the MC rises from the ashes, a last ditch duel to the finish comes to a resounding climax, where the adversary is defeated but with great cost.

1.) If you are mired in a chapter, check to see where you are in your novel, the beginning, the middle, or towards the end.

2.) If you cannot see the fun in the beginning, then THERE'S your problem.

If it's in the middle, and the rug's not being pulled out in some devastating way, BINGO.

And if your MC and adversary are blowing kisses at each towards the end, you have found the bedrock of your problem -- and you're one sick puppy.

*) Happy Christmas Season, Everyone!
I hope this post helped you in some small way to make it out of the next pothole you fall into. Roland
***
Christmas makes me think of New Year's Eve for some reason :