Uncle

Growing up as kids I was known as the "stubborn one". That's the label you earn when you don't go along with the crowd or refuse to follow the path of least resistance. To illustrate just how uncompromising I could be, I once had an argument with my mother (which is constantly brought back up at family gatherings) over an exchange of money. She owed me $10 for my allowance...and I owed her $5 dollars for something she had purchased for me. She tried to just give me the net difference...$5...but I insisted that she give me the whole $10 and I would in turn pay her the money I owed her. Of course I knew that if I took the $5 I would end up with what I was owed, but it was the principle that mattered to me.  We argued for over an hour, until she finally relented.

On the playground I was the kid who wouldn't cry "uncle" with my arm twisted behind my back during ritualistic torture games us kids would somehow think amusing. Over time we stopped playing -- not because we grew bored -- but because everyone already knew who would win.

I told you...stubborn.

Today, I'm crying uncle.

NO -- I am not giving up my pursuit of publication. That is not what this is. What I am doing is recognizing that my current situation with my "real job" has made it impossible for me to temporarily keep doing certain things. Things like blogging, social media, participation in my critique group, and the hardest of all -- WRiTE CLUB.

The company I work for is installing a new ERP/EDI system this spring (one that I have been slaving over and continuously traveling for going on three + years), smack dab in the middle of when WRiTE CLUB would be going on. Through the end of May I'm anticipating long nights and single-day weekends, and I just won't have the bandwidth to give my beloved contest. So much of my writing-related activities, which includes WRiTE CLUB, will be on hiatus. I won't even be able to attend the DFW Conference this year. The only thing I will continue to do is send out query letters for my latest book. As slow as this industry moves, even if I land an agent it'll be after May before anything gets traction anyway.

This is not an easy decision for me - because I absolutely hate relinquishing the momentum my writing...and contest...has built, but it is the right decision.

Unless something dramatic happens in the interim, you won't here from me again until this summer.

Keep the fires burning for me!

Nuance

There are writers whose style is all about being in-your-face, bluntness, shock-and-awe, heavy on the action and sparse in the food-for-thought category. I’ve read them, I like them, I admire what they can do.

Then there are other writers who are more about subtle influences. Deft touch. Shifting pieces around on a chess board without explaining the motivation behind each move. A bit more cerebral if you may. I’ve read them, I like them, I admire what they can do.

I consider myself, as a writer, more in the second category. I love nuance. Setting a course by suggestion rather than pointing. For me, what isn’t said is almost as telling as what is.

But writing isn’t a black or white endeavor. Left or right. We can be ambidextrous. We can stomp on the accelerator to create as much chaos as possible, and still utilize understated symbolism to drive home a key plot point. Meaning is defined by much more than scale, and a light hand can sometimes resonate with a reader more readily than a banshee with a bullhorn.

At some point along the way we’ve all heard the phrase “trust your reader”. In a way it goes against common convention. Your readers are not equally intelligent, or insightful, or interpretive, so how can you shape your prose to universally reach as many as possible and therefore create that trust? The simple answer is you can’t.

All you can do is go broad and hope your nuance doesn’t get lost in the translation. 

That's my two-cents for the week. For those of you who celebrate it... 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Deja Vu Blogfest Entry - Cognitive Estrangement

Welcome to those of you who are dropping by because of the Deja Vu Blogfest! This weekend I'm reposting a blog I ran in September that didn't receive many comments - which surprised me because I find it a fascinating subject. Let's see how it does this second time around.

It was entitled Cognitive Estrangement.

This mouthful is used to explain what happens when someone experiences a scene or idea that is different from his/her own reality, but similar enough that they can see it being plausible.

In other words…the suspension of disbelief.  

Now that is a phrase everyone recognizes. It explains a person’s willingness to interrupt his/her critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of pure enjoyment. The term was coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative. The concept often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres. But in reality any genre could have issues with this because a characters motivations and actions often come under fire as being unrealistic, especially when his/her/it arc resembles the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

What’s so interesting about this topic is the literature implies the burden is on the reader, rather than the writer, to achieve it.

Really?

I guess subjectivity does include how willing (or unwilling) we are to accept something we might normally reject. That a love for a character or characters could override the concern for a faulty plot-line. There have been a couple of very popular YA series published over the past decade that I have read the first novel to, but chosen not to continue on with the rest of the series. Why? Not because they were terrible reads, they weren’t. No, I was unable to suspend my disbelief regarding the basic premise of the story. (No – I’m not talking about Harry Potter)

But still, the author bears some responsibility, right?  We shouldn’t take the castle on a chessboard and move it diagonally, because that’s against the rules and therefore unbelievable. Or is it? We all flirt with that line in some way or another, which is funny because everybody has a different idea of where that line should be.

What are your thoughts? How much does your work depend upon cognitive estrangement? What books have you read that went to far in that regard?

Deja Vu Blogfest - 2016

Since 2011 I’ve used a rather unique Blogfest to catch up with my blog reading after being distracted for various reasons (e.g. WRiTE CLUB, A-Z Challenge, NaNo, etc). I’m a hardy believer that if something works…stick with it…so here we go again.

One of my pet peeves about the way our blogosphere operates is you can miss some really awesome posts if you’re away for a while. It’s typical to miss hundreds of quality posts (depending on how many blogs you follow) while off doing other things. It’s really hard to rebound when things get like that, so what most people do is simply pick up with the latest post of the regular blogs they follow.  You know what that means?  You missed that post about the signing of an agent!  A book contract finalized…missed!  A cry for help...missed!  A pregnancy or birth announcement…missed!  Some other special event in a bloggers life…passed by!  I just shake my head when I think of all of the special posts I’ve missed this year.  And then there are the informative posts about the topics I’m dying to know more about, yep I probably missed some of those as well.

It’s for this reason that I came up with the Déjà vu Blogfest, and it’s become an annual event.  So I’d like to announce this years…. 

 

How this blogfest works is so simple I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to do it. Sign-up to participate with Mr. Linky below, then sometime during the weekend of December 16^th thru 18^th re-post your favorite blog offering from earlier in this year, or one that you believe failed to receive the exposure it deserved. On that weekend what everyone will be reading is the best of the best (as determined by you) from this year.  The blogosphere will be chock full 2016 writing brilliance!  Encouragement, enlightenment, knowledge, bared souls, stimulation, hilarity, insecurities, success stories!  All on display…the very same day.  And it couldn't be any easier to take part...no writing necessary! :)

Please sign-up and then shout out to all of your blogging friends and encourage them to sign up as well.  Take the badge above and plaster it everywhere, blogging graffiti gone wild. Tweet about it (#deja2016vu) and post the picture on Instagram. Sign up below and start looking through those old posts!