Vice Party - The Good, the Bad and the Nearly Useless

I don't get to indulge many vices, more's the pity. When it comes to the buffet of vices, I still sit at the kiddy table. Alcohol, which I used to enjoy (Lemon Drop anyone?) now equals migraine. Chocolate, too. The list of fun things that end badly for me is long and sad. Since I can't consume vices, I spew them instead. And still, they turn in service to writing.

1. Swearing is my vocation. It's a calling, a sacred duty to which I am devoted. Since the public rooms of the bordello strive to appear slightly family friendly, I curb my colorful language. Meet me in a public situation one or two times and you'll have no idea of the vast, simmering cesspool of language underlying my polite facade. Hang around long enough to lull me into a sense of safety, though, and that pool will bubble over. Most of my friends still look surprised when a word or phrase slips out. Many of them giggle, too. Does it help me while I'm writing? Probably. If only to give me the ammunition to complain in grotesque detail about how a story is or isn't coming together.

2. Analyzing. I have a degree in overthinking. It is a hindrance part of the time. The other part of the time, I'm making it work for me. Everything I watch, read or experience gets vivisected - how did the story go together? Did the conflict work? If no, why not? If yes, why? What would make a poor plot work? How could things have been changed. This is all part and parcel of peering beneath the hood to learn how something runs (or doesn't) so I can build my own.

3. Companion to that: I talk too much. No one wants to watch The Walking Dead with me anymore. I usually see within the first several minutes of an episode how it will end, and often, within the first episode or two, I can tell how a season will end. These are the wages of analyzing stories as a mode of living. Sure, sure, I learned long ago to not volunteer the spoilers. I may be slow, but I can be taught. Still, my TWD friends and family keep casting sidelong glances my way during a show. Finally someone will ask if I have it figured out. There's a second of silence when I shrug and nod. One of them will grin and say, "What's your theory?" I blab. Everyone laughs and blows me off. Until the end of the episode/season. How does this help my writing? It's concrete evidence that I've managed to learn valuable lessons about conflict and story arc - not just as an intellectual exercise. They're internalized. Keith likes to talk through movies and TV shows we've watched. Mostly, I think, he likes getting to geek out about a show with me. But tonight, while reading on his Kindle, he turned to me and said, "You know I can't read some of these books now without remembering what you've said about stories. About how there has to be both internal and external conflict that comes from who the characters are before a story really starts to resonate. You turned me into a tea snob over the years and now you're turning me into a story snob. A few scantily clad women and a couple of explosions used to be enough." High praise. I'm going to let this help me stop worrying about whether or not I'm doing it right. I'm just going to write and trust that conflict and plot will take care of itself.

4. The occasional bag of sour cream and onion potato chips because some times, you just need to grind the bones of your demons between your teeth. They taste salty. Like my writer tears. Or the blood of the innocents sacrificed to the gods of word count.

Late Update from Con

 

It's a madhouse - Charlton Heston - Planet of the Apes

 

 

Funny thing about nerd mecca. The wifi and cell networks are seriously overloaded. You can send a text just fine. Getting a text is another matter. We've seen delays of up to a half hour in delivery. Not useful for 'Meet me by the Cthulhu Film Fest booth' messages. Getting solid wifi that isn't slower than Seattle drivers on the first sunny day in spring is also challenging. However. Here I am. Late and with nothing at all to offer on our topic this week, because I have exactly zero audiobooks.

 

Sole actor close encounter so far: Alan Tudyk. Don't look him up. Watch this clip for the project he and Nathan Fillion are doing. This was one of those 'out of context' close encounters. I was at lunch, sitting at a table right on the aisle. This means that my brain, slowed by the prospect of noms, failed to connect all the dots quickly enough. No photo. I was too slow on the draw. Also, the dude had suitcase and garment bag in tow. He was desperately trying to get to his hotel room. With a train of die-hard fan boys already on his butt.  His "Not now guys." was far kinder than a couple of hours on an airplane should have allowed. But there you go.

 

And now. The photos. And then I'm outta here. Have a great weekend!

 

Zombies in the elevators. The Marriott missed an opportunity. A few of my fellow con-goers and I agreed that they should have canned the usual insipid elevator music in favor of The Walking Dead theme.

This is a mockup of a quarantined LA - promoting the new Fear the Walking Dead series.

A World of Warcraft orc set up to promote the Warcraft movie

I met one of my personal heroes. The Tick. Any superhero who gets to say "Put the moon back, demon waif!" deserves my adoration. Bonus points if you can sing the theme song.

The Walking Dead booth inside the exhibition hall. Those are zombies. Get too close to the black barrier (lower left of photo) and you took your life into your hands.



Disease or Not Disease: That Is the Question

My disease post has to be prefaced by a confession. I am not one of The Walking Dead faithful. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the show. But I only started watching this season, which is mighty late in the game. Sure. I read the first few graphic novels, but I didn't stick with them. They just weren't my cup of arsenic-laced cocoa at the time.

That said, I am a titch literal minded. Especially when it comes to something like the end of the world. I want to know how that came down. And now that this season's episodes are over I can ask the questions that no one else of my acquaintance seems to be able to answer.

What the hell? No. Seriously. I get that Rick and the other survivors don't know what happened. Whether the whole zombie thing was the result of disease or something else -let me say 'magic' in the absence of any other nonmedical mechanism. They have some indication from earlier episodes that everyone's infected with whatever this disease is. It doesn't matter how or when you die - in that world, if you die, you will turn into one of the undead until someone destroys your brain.

Did I mention we have Walking Dead viewing and potluck parties? Tasty.

Is the zombie plague in this show supposed to have been a disease or not? Based on some of the evidence - the way the disaster started and, subsequently spread, it seems like disease. Yet...I'm skeptical.

Clearly the zombie thing isn't transmitted person to person like strep throat. Transmission rates would be too slow to account for the outbreak described in the books and on the show. Viral transmission would make more sense. The disease could be airborne and could infect multiple people at any one go - when someone coughed or sneezed. If there's an incubation period, the infected, but not yet symptomatic, could travel anywhere in the world only to infect more people when symptoms did manifest. We've seen this actually happen with SARS and other illnesses.

The only problem is that in the course of human history, it's been proven following epidemic after epidemic, that if you infect a large enough segment of the species with a single disease, a certain percentage of that population will emerge as immune. Some will get sick and recover with no adverse effect. Some will never fall ill at all. It's as if their bodies are armored against that particular bug. (Which isn't to say that the next thing to come along won't kill them, but that's a different post.)

Still, there's no evidence of this on The Walking Dead. Not to mention that viruses aren't known for animating corpses. There *are* instances of zombie-like afflictions in the insect world - a fungus that takes over a certain species of ant. A wasp that uses venom to take over the nervous system of a certain species of beetle. In neither case is the victim actually dead - their living bodies are shanghaied. Obviously, this is not what's happening on The Walking Dead - not given the rotting, flesh falling away animated corpses we see on the show.

So work with me here. I want to be educated. What the hell happened and is still happening in the world of The Walking Dead??

Burying the Past

Happy Valentines Day, those of you who observe. I hope there's at least a little bit of chocolate in it for you.

Burying the Past

Recently, possibly during the Walking Dead midseason premiere, I got to wondering whether zombies aren't a sort of extended metaphor for all the things in our lives that ought to be dead and past, yet steadfastly refuse to remain buried.

 

We bury our emotions. Our memories. Traumas. Sometimes we're good at it. We toddle along looking for all the world like perfectly normal human beings. For a little while.

 

But you know, when you put something in the ground without killing it properly first, it usually refuses to stay buried. That stuff claws its way from the dank soil and shuffles out of the dark. Bloody, putrid and terrifying. 

 

Depending on what it was you tried to bury in the depths of your psyche that newly risen THING will try to devour you. Who wouldn't want to resolve that situation in a morally unambiguous way? A few rounds of ammo taking out a line of zombies seems so much -- cleaner -- than years of therapy.

 

All of this is germane this week, because I get to show you the cover to my new Urban Fantasy novel, NIGHTMARE INK. (Due out April 15 from Intermix)

 

The heroine of the book, Isa, is an expert at burying her past. She thinks. And she has a lot of past to bury.

 

With the needle of a tattoo gun, Isa Romanchzyk has the power to create and destroy. In her shop Nightmare Ink, Isa helps those in need by binding the powers embedded in their Live Ink—the magical tattoos that can enhance the life of the wearer, or end it.  But binding tattoos has earned Isa the contempt of her fellow artists—including her former lover Daniel.

When a friend comes to the shop with a tattoo on the verge of killing him, Isa can’t turn him away. For the first time in years, she works Live Ink into someone’s skin—something she swore she’d never do again. But breaking her vow soon becomes the least of her problems.

Isa is horrified to discover her friend’s body in the shop, but the real nightmare begins when she’s abducted and inked against her will.  Now, as she seeks retribution from the man who betrayed her, Isa must figure out how to bind her Living Tattoo before it consumes her completely...

Writing Slump Busting

For me, a writing slump boils down to one thing: Not being able to hear the small voices from within that usually tell me where and how I want to go. If I want to break a slump, I have to do something I call 'clearing the channel'. New Age-y and vaguely lavender magic-ish? It may be. Here. I'll crack the
lid on my toolbox. Take a look. See if you can use anything.

REST: This writing gig is tough stuff. Appreciate that the single organ in your body that requires the greatest sum of energy from your store is the brain. Out in the world, there are some recently publicized studies showing that your brain is a bit like your muscle tissue - as you use it in particularly challenging ways, tissues break down - micro-tears it's called in muscle tissue. Dunno what it's called in the brain, but the whole notion of tears in brain tissue gives me the creeps. Regardless, when you rest, repair instantly begins. Some of the studies hypothesis that this tear down and repair cycle are the basis for brain plasticity - but hey, take this block of salt to use for evaluating that claim. Rest means sleep. It also means filling up on the things that tweak your imagination. Marathons of Mythbusters? Go for it. Propping your eyelids open with toothpicks and shoving three and half seasons of The Walking Dead into your skull via your retinas? More power to you. But rest.

EXERCISE: Yeah, I know what I just said about rest, but trust me on this. Gentle to moderate physical activity, preferably outside, in nature (no, you may NOT take your MP3 player or any other distraction device - for the first three days. After that, you decide.) balances out the energy draw of the brain - something most writers are take for granted. Giving your muscles a bit of a chance to burn some fuel boosts your immune system, positively alters brain chemistry (check the NIMH for more info on that - and also for info on the effects of depressive disorders on your ability to live, much less create), and as exercise becomes a habit, it gives you more strength and energy to burn. The point of being outside in nature is to get some solar radiation seared into your gray matter. Even on the cloudiest of days, being outside supplies far more light to your brain than can be produced by indoor lighting. Okay. You caught me. It also alters your brainwave patterns - so does meditation - but there's not room for all that here.

SEEK SILENCE: Most of us have too many inputs clogging our outputs. Count the number of things going on around you. All the time. How many TVs are on? They don't have to be audible *if* you can see the TV(s) from even peripheral vision - human eyes are designed to detect the lion hunting us through the tall grass - we're programmed to see and be drawn to glance at motion with no ability to distinguish between a hungry cheetah and a commercial for Viagra. How many radios can you hear going at one time? (Not saying that you shouldn't pipe tunes directly into your brain via your MP3 player of your choice. There's a time and place for that - it's a useful tool - but when you're in a slump, there may be therapeutic benefit to taking a break.) How many conversations are grabbing hold of your attention? How loud is the traffic? You can't control all the inputs - most aircraft aren't keen on altering their flight patterns for my convenience, dammit. But you can snatch a few hours of solitude and self-imposed silence by sending the rest of the family to a burger and a movie. Turn off everything that makes a sound (that isn't necessary to keep someone/something, including you, alive...) Do *anything* you want except turning on something that makes a sound. Resist reading. You want to wallow in the silence, not anesthetize away your few precious hours of quiet. Draw. Paint. Tidy your office. Sort through all those things in your office that you always meant to DO something with. Or just sit and listen to all the things you haven't been able to hear because of the usual noise of our lives. Don't put any pressure on yourself to do anything with your observations. (Though you can journal if you are so moved - see below) This is more rest. Rest of a different kind.

EMPTY: Journal. Check Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for details on this. She talks about morning pages and lays out some ground rules. It's a useful starting place. That mostly don't work for me. Read her rules, try them out, and then adapt them to fit what you'll actually do. For me, morning pages? Never gonna happen. Not while I hope to remain married. And alive. The rules I keep: the journal must be handwritten. Cameron's book will give you the why for that. This is a brain dump. This is not story telling. It's not writing exercises. It's whining, petty, childish crap that's clogging your synapses and your emotional plumbing. The only way to clear the blockage is to drain it every single day until my slump is over (write at the time of your choosing - I like evenings - get ready for sleep, get in bed, sit there and scribble madly - no thinking, just stream of consciousness). On rare occasions, I get to take mini, solo vacations. I wander off to a midweek deal in a hotel where I answer to no one and accept no responsibility beyond keeping life and soul generally together. Oh. And paying my bills. Not being arrested has its benefits. When I take one of those trips, I'll write morning and evening pages just to clear out my muddled head faster. (If you have the bandwidth for a mini-three day retreat by yourself, seek silence the entire three days. Yes, of course you'll speak to other human beings, otherwise, you might starve if you can't order breakfast. You're looking to reduce all unnecessary external stimuli. You'll break the slump much faster.)

Side note: Should I die in some freak accident before I have a chance to  burn my journals? I'm counting on you to set them alight. Do not read. Burn. No one should be subjected to my handwriting or my angsty-angst.

IMMERSION: Here's the one rule to rule all my rules. Every night, after journal pages, before sleep, I look over my story notes for my WIP. Some people look over an outline. Some, character sketches. Some prefer to read the last scene or two they wrote before they sank into a slump. Me, I keep a story notebook filled with character notes, story notes, plot points, snippets of conversation from the story - flashes of how I want a scene to look - it's all there. Here's what it looks like. In no way should you take this silly looking, fun-loving notebook cover to mean that I've given up death, destruction, and mayhem. I haven't. This little book is my connection with my story and my characters. It's piece meal and unorganized and chaotic and out of order. And it works to keep me immersed in the people and world of my WIP. This step is the one that will tell me when I've succeeded in breaking a slump. If I stay immersed by reviewing my material each night, rest, exercise, and clear my head with silence and journaling, my brain will spontaneously begin offering up new scenes and new ideas.

Slump over.