Kathy’s Rules for Writing, #17: On Angry Emails

/0 Comments/in , /by

Angry Face

Step 1

If you are angry, frustrated, or upset, write a nasty email. Let all your angst come out. Cry a little on the keyboard in frustration. Go beat up a pillow but don’t actually break things. Save your draft in which you tell everyone exactly what you think.

Step 1b (provided by my friend Jessica Brown):

Do not, under any circumstances, write in the recipient’s address on the angry email, lest the “send” button be accidentally pushed.

Step 2

Wait at least 30 minutes.

Step 3

Delete your email draft. Write a new email in which you considerately, objectively raise issues and an awareness of a problem. Reread to make sure no anger or frustration leaked through. Ask yourself: does this get out my anger, or will it help accomplish my real objectives? If it will help accomplish your real objectives, click send.

Not that I’ve been writing any angry emails lately…

 

Image Credit: Jared Wong with Creative Commons license

An Open Letter to the NSA regarding PRISM, from a Writer

/0 Comments/in /by

HAL 9000

Dear NSA,

News reports say that you are only investigating foreigners with your PRISM program. Yet if that was the truth, you would be losing an amazing surveillance opportunity. I’m sure that in the coming weeks or years, the way in which you are using PRISM to track Americans will become clear. Chances are that Snowden will leak another terribly designed PowerPoint to one of his favorite newspapers.

Before that happens, I’d like to come clean. I’m sure you’re concerned about my 2013/3/19 Google and YouTube searches on electrical explosions and arc flashes. It is true that I watched dozens of videos of electrical explosions, some of them several times. If you follow my Pinterest account (are you one of my 390 followers?) you know that I even pinned some of these incriminating videos. Let me assure you, I have a particularly reasonable, non-harmful to National Security, even justifiable explanation for my behavior.

I am a writer.

I write personal essays and fictional short stories, and I am currently revising my second novel, a steampunk revolving around the heist of a dozen electrical eels. I once wrote a memoir and I even recently took a stab at writing a short play.

In my quest for writing inspiration and in order to provide accurate details to the reader, I use Google and other PRISM partners to search for things that may be on your “red flag” list. In recent years, I’ve researched unaccompanied minors flying on planes, urban occupations in pre-industrial England, wrist slashing, Victorian spies, how to use a knife in a fight, the difference between the Viennese Waltz and the normal waltz, and electrical explosions. All of these searches were strictly for writing purposes, with no intention of applying my newly learned knowledge to real life.

Trust me, I could not do the Viennese Waltz to save my life.

I know your response. You say, why did you spend hours watching videos of electrical explosions, if they only are mentioned in one sentence of your novel? My answer is that I wanted to make sure I got the imagery just right, and that as everyone knows, too much description slows the forward motion of the plot. (If you need me to add a second sentence of description, I will—though any more than that and you’ll have to discuss it with my future editor.)

Another item on my record that you may be particularly concerned about is my recent search on death by electrocution. I would like to assure you that the character who dies by electrocution was a bad guy, on the run from the law. So it’s a good thing he died that way.

From looking in the background of my Skype video calls, which we all know you’ve recorded, you’ve seen that I own a strange collection of books. In an attempt towards complete transparency, I should let you know that I may happen to own The Communist Manifesto. It was required reading in my 11th grade history class, the teacher gave us each a copy, and I never got rid of it. But I’m a fervent capitalist, if not a very successful one (I’m sure you know all about that failed Etsy shop I started back in 2009). Even though I own a red book, you don’t need to worry about me. As everyone who has seen Indiana Jones knows, Communists and Nazis make the best bad guys. If I ever write a Communist character, he will be a villain and I will give him an evil looking mustache.

I like the government. I don’t want any trouble. I just want to write stories and entertain people. I don’t even have plans to write a young adult dystopian novel that rather directly criticizes the government (though you can see some of my favorite dystopian novels on my Goodreads account). Even if my stories sometimes have nuanced characters and ambiguous endings, I’d like you to know that I really am on your side. After all, an entertained public is a more compliant one.

You may be worried—how do you know that I’m actually a writer, since I don’t yet have any published novels? Don’t worry: I’m working on that. And if waiting on agents and editors starts to bother you, let me know and I’ll self-publish on Amazon.

Feel free to use my steadily growing file of Google searches and Facebook statuses as you will. My only request is that if I ever become a famous author, please don’t publish any of my unfinished manuscripts. Because of your backup servers, I will never truly be able to delete them, and I would hate to have an unfinished sentence, story, or idea scrutinized and analyzed by high school English classes (though if you personally want to analyze my unfinished thoughts, I publicly give you permission do so).

With my deepest regards,

Katherine Cowley (A Writer)

Writing Inspirations: “In Which Eve Names Everything Else”

/0 Comments/in , /by

My mini-play/story, “In Which Eve Names Everything Else,” recently won 2nd place in the 2013 Mormon Lit Blitz contest. (If you’re interested, you can also read the discussion of my play.)

The stories that I write are often inspired by a strange combination of things that I’ve been interacting with. Sometimes I have no idea what those inspirations are; other times it’s quite clear. For this story, I can trace four direct influences:

1. A Barenaked Ladies song

barenaked ladies

The day before writing the story I was listening to “A Word for That” on Toddler Radio. Here’s the opening lyrics of the song:

There’s a word for that
But I don’t seem to know it
Sometimes I grow a mustache
Just so I don’t have to show it

The word for that
That someone somewhere chose
For that little dented skin
Between my upper lip and nose

There’s a word for that
What does it start with, the word for that?
I’d sound so smart if I only knew
The word for that, perhaps you do

The word you’re looking for is philtrum

If you’ve short story, it’s pretty clear how the song impacted my ideas.

2. The History of Science

Francis BaconOver the past few years I’ve been reading lots of articles or books on the history of science. And in one of those texts (or perhaps several of them) it mentioned that alchemists used new words to obscure things, make them more mystical and less understandable, but in the “new science” of the Enlightenment, people like Bacon used new words to make things clearer.

For several months I had been thinking about how you need a word for something if it becomes an object of study in and of itself.

3. A Book on Writing Scenes

Crafting ScenesJust a few days before writing the play, I finished reading an excellent book, The Novelist’s Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes. I honestly had never thought about the scene as a unit before reading this book, and thinking about what a scene has to do really influenced the style in which I wrote the mini-scenes in my play (one of which is only two lines long, yet I feel is a complete scene).

4. A college class from my undergrad years

Paradise Painting by Lucas CranachBack in 2007 I took a Humanities capstone course, “The Eden Theme in Western Culture.” We read all sorts of Adam and Eve stories, and looked at how the Eden them influenced exploration, gardening, religion, and even film. This ideas sunk into me, and have forever changed the way I see Adam and Eve.

After my story was published, a reader pointed out that Mark Twain also wrote a humorous story about Adam and Eve naming things. I’d never heard of it before writing my play, but having read it, I can say there are some similarities, though Twain’s is much longer and much less reverent. (Twain actually wrote a whole set of Adam and Eve works. The one I just read is called “Extracts from Adam’s Diary.” I still need to read “Eve’s Diary,” which looks like it has amazing illustrations.)

On Writing the Play

I have never written the play before. I composed the first half, basically word for word, while I was in the shower. It was a long shower. I came out and transcribed it in between feeding kids, and wrote the rest that day.

A trusted reader gave me back a short set of revision notes. I submitted it to the 2013 Mormon Lit Blitz contest. It was chosen as one of 11 finalists from about 200 entries. The contest editors gave me a few minor revision notes. I revised. And then it was published.

It was one of those unusual circumstances where I felt like the story was largely given to me, where not very much changed from the first draft to the final version. You can call it a muse if you want, though I don’t believe in Greek goddesses. I’ll call it a blessing.

 

Image Credits:
 

Point of View and Imaginative Empathy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Last Friday I went to a writing workshop by award winning author Susan Palwick, whose new book Mending the Moon was just released.

Mending the Moon

Susan Palwick gave a workshop on point of view. We commonly think about point of view as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd–who is telling the story? A great analogy for this is camera angle, which was a major focus of a great book on point of view, Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint.

After Palwick’s workshop I realized that while that approach is useful, it’s just one small way that authors can use point of view in writing. For example, Palwick talked about “cultural point of view,” the way in which one’s culture, family, and group identifications are going to impact how he/she perceives a certain situation.

Point of view, suddenly, becomes not just a choice on whether we want to be in a character’s head or not. Choosing a point of view, choosing what our characters and our readers see and experience, is suddenly a social responsibility.

During the workshop, Palwick stated that “the job of fiction is to create imaginative empathy.” As a reader, when I engage with a point of view, I have a possibility of recognizing their joys and sorrows, then understanding them, and finally, through living with them, empathizing them. The imagination becomes a powerful tool then in creating or tearing down prejudices, displaying and perhaps advocating different lifestyles, and allowing us to reconsider our own places in the world.

Art Museums for 2 Year Olds

/0 Comments/in , /by

A couple weeks ago I took my 2-year-old to the Phoenix Art Museum–and she loved it. Her favorite exhibit was filled with modern art and was titled, “Order, Chaos, and the Space Between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection.”

Sticks at a museum

This was one of the pieces. She got super excited and exclaimed, “Sticks! Touch it?” I said no, she couldn’t touch it, but she enjoyed looking at it from all sides.

In the background you can see one of the other pieces–thousands upon thousands of black butterfly sculptures. They were attached all through the front entrance areas of the museum. It was quite a sight.

Butterflies Butterflies

It’s easy to fall into the trap, when looking at contemporary art, of trying to force meaning. For example, there were four glass boxes, each a different color, so I could read into that feelings of containment over the course of seasons or something along those lines. Here’s what my daughter read into them: “Look! Blue! Look! Yellow! Look! Red!” She experienced pure joy just at the coolness of the boxes and their colors.

My daughter’s approach framed my entire visit. Instead of finding deeper meaning, I just enjoyed the objects and colors as objects and colors, and in doing so, I left the museum with a different, better, fuller perspective. Ordinary things became extraordinary when enlarged (the sticks), filmed (there were three films of tops playing simultaneously), or put into a different context.

My daughter’s favorite part of the exhibit was this piece:

Candy at the museum

You probably can’t tell, but that’s a pile of candy. A very large pile of candy. (My daughter called it chocolate, but to her all candy is chocolate.) There was someone standing nearby, inviting you to take one. We were there in the afternoon, so the piece didn’t look quite as rectangular, and there were open holes on the floor. Candy can be art, and art certainly is sweet. And now my two year old keeps saying, “Go to museum! Get chocolate!”