A recent posting by SQT, subsequent comments by Stewart about the market saturation of zombies, and a coincidental link from my friend “X” all led me to believe this was exactly what this blog needs right now.
Don’t tell me you’re not doing the claw thing at your desk; I know you are.
There’s been a lot of buzz on the blogs I frequent about writers helping — or, more specifically, not helping — one another. I’ve harbored the same concern for quite a while, and I’ve done my fair share of complaining. After deep consideration and a brief consult with the genius of Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh) and his insight into the “Confusionist, Desiccated Scholar,” I’ve decided to stop worrying about those who wish to horde information as if it were the rightful property of only a select few and move on. In short, I’m shutting up and putting up.
Below is a list of sites I encountered during my research into occult and magical studies for this novel. There used to be more, but a good number of the links have drifted into oblivion since I began this collection over three years ago. Others were lost with a hard drive crash last summer.
I hope one or more of them will help one or more of you find that extra something to curl the toes of your readers. To those of you who don’t write fantasy, horror or any other genre in the paranormal/toe-curling family, I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you, other than a list of fascinating reads that just might make you want to come over to the dark side.
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University of Virginia’s Religious Movement Project — Covers topics on religions across the United States, with an interesting section on cults.
About.com’s Book of Shadows — Although About is a pretty common site, I’ve included this direct link to basic principles of Wicca that’s broken down into smaller sections on things like altar appearance and symbols.
National Occult Research Association — Dark Magic, paganism… Something for everyone.
Archives of Western Esoterica — The mother of all occult sites! All the archaic magical knowledge you can handle. Make sure you check out the Key of Solomon and the Lemegeton (the Lesser Key).
The Catholic Encyclopedia on Demonology — About demons, by the Catholic Church
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance — Contains a good overview of many different beliefs, including Wicca and Vodun.
Waning Moon — Information on the Dark Pagan path. The bulk of the information on this site seems to be missing right now, but the link page gives a good selection of links to other sites (a few of which I’ve mentioned here).
Hermetic Fellowship’s Virtual Library — More esoteric documents.
The Alchemy Website — All things alchemical.
Monstrous.com — You guessed it, all things monster. I’m a fan of the demon section.
Sacred Texts Online — Bring your wading boots and lots of patience; it’s a huge site with a sea of religious info.
God Checker — Not sure if you’re dealing with Ninhursag or Inanna? Check!
The Serene Dragon — All things dragon.
Death and Dementia — I’ve only been to the paranormal anomalies section, so I can’t account for what you might find elsewhere on this site.
Ex Oblivion — The site’s owner has a collection of personal essays on a host of dark beliefs/practices.
Traditional Religion in Africa: The Voudon Phenomenon in Benin — Article by Barthelemy Zinzindhohoue.
DMOZ Open Directory Project — This link connects to their religion and spirituality directory.
Their Vodun
section is quite large.
Maryland Paranormal Research Society — Mostly pertains to Maryland stuff, but still an interesting site.
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Maybe next week we’ll talk books.
I thought I was done writing Not chapters. But, during my editing today, I decided she needed one last hurrah. I haven’t really talked about her, or any of my characters, really (aside from Resonance’s/Spider’s blog on MySpace). She’s a prisoner of a dark magickian named Arhreton who has used her since infancy to complete monthly rituals that will bring him the power of the legendary warrior, the Middu. He tortures and torments her not only for his magickal gain, but also because the Middu is everything, and she is — Not.
Not can’t speak, has no capacity for real human interaction and is a victim in every sense of the word. Her only saving grace is the ability to bi-locate — to transport her consciousness to another body in ancient Sumer, where Eight gods once ruled over humans. The interactions between the warring deities are viewed through her skewed perspective.
Despite the disturbing research I had to do on feral children (the photo above is of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron), and the horrific conditions of her upbringing, she surprised me by being a fun character to write. With my other characters — even Resonance (sorry, Res) — I’m easily distracted. I get irritated because the words don’t readily flow like they do with her. I wander to the refrigerator, which is perilously close to my desk. I wander back and peck out a few more words. But with Not, I get lost. She’s tragic, funny, and sometimes fairly evil. Her thought processes waver between insightful and hopelessly jumbled. I always have to be on my toes when she’s around, because she’ll take me off on some wayward journey and once it starts, all I can do is go along, just to see where she leads me.
Not was never intended to be a point-of-view character. I thought I had enough going on with three POV’s. Then I realized if I wanted to explain the gods’ back-story without the main characters having to read about them from dusty texts, I’d have to have someone experiencing their past along with them. So Not became a major player and the story of the gods was sprinkled throughout the book with more lively (if somewhat muddled) interpretation of events provided by her.
The majority of the book had been written when I made this executive decision. I worried that it was the wrong choice, that I’d be spoiling an otherwise good book. Luckily for me it turned out not (small pun intended) to be the case. I feel she’s given this story a depth it previously lacked, and I hope that readers can, if not actually like her, find her interesting. If it isn’t too pretentious to say — I do.
What makes a good ending? What makes a great ending? What is that one thing that takes a breathless reader through those last twenty pages before he puts the book down with a sigh, feeling like the journey was well worth it? What are the keys to forging a solid, leave-em-happy ending? Or, more specifically, what are the issues that make the actuality of that ending a pipe dream? I think I’ve come up with a few:
1) Predictability. No one wants to finish a book when its apparent by mid-point exactly where events are leading.
2) Impossibility. There can’t be some Deus ex Machina ending where the hero not only produces a hat out of thin air, but also waves it with a flourish and yanks out one, two, three little bunnies. The feeling of betrayal or of being had is not a good one with which to leave the readers.
3) Unsatisfactory. Here’s where the waters gray. Some may say a book is unsatisfactory unless everyone lives happily ever after. I think a book is unsatisfactory if everyone lives. Stephen King obviously thinks a story is unsatisfactory unless there’s nary a person left standing (or, if there is, that person is covered in blood, missing a limb or two, and is mentally scarred forevermore). In this arena, research has to be a key element — truly knowing one’s audience and understanding what they feel to be a fitting conclusion.
4) The bane of my new writing existence (and probably the most culpable of the offenders out there) — Flatness. There’s nothing really wrong with an ending of this type; it builds to a climax, resolves the conflict and then ties up all the loose ends. It’s technically on the mark, but somehow doesn’t deliver the grand finale readers crave. There’s no gritting of teeth or twitching of anxious fingers as eyes sweep the last few paragraphs of the page in the hurry to get to the next. There’s no racing of minds to figure out just how all will be resolved. The book simply ends. What remains is a feeling of lacking, that we’ve been cheated of that ending — The ending.
Unfortunately, I could probably list more books that fall under the one of the above categories than those that don’t. Which brings me to the five hundred dollar question, Alex — What makes me any different? Is it the fact that I’ve already mapped the pitfalls? Or that I’m overly conscious of the issues that could send me into a downward spiral of blandness? I’m not so sure. Despite my awareness, I could very well find myself in the exact same position. In fact, I have. The whole reason for rewriting the final chapters of Resonance is because the first ending just… Ended. Even with my plot twist, there was little need to break out the pins and needles.
I’d like to hear from you seasoned writers out there; you who have tread the uncomfortable path of “wrapping up.” How have you managed your endings? And, did they ever shine as brightly as your mind pictured them? And, for the newbies like me, how are you managing? Is the resolution as torturous for you as it has become for me? Let me know. I’m curious to find out.
I know I said I’d never have recycled content, but the talented (and rightfully defiant of the the dodgy and mercurial rules passed down from the Writing Powers That Be) Kate has requested I transfer this post from my blog on MySpace to here. Never one to turn down an appeal — especially one that makes me feel all kinds of special — here it is.
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Are You a Real Writer?
No, this isn’t some Internet quiz that will tell you if you’re on the right track or not. Sorry to disappoint, but odds are, if you need a quiz to tell you, then you’re probably not.
I read a few books on the craft of writing when I first started this project. In many ways, they proved invaluable. Nonetheless, I’ve started to shy away from them. Each time I get into one, I find myself in a spiral of intimidation. “What’s your theme? What are recurring images in your work?” The list of questions goes on and on, until I feel like a kindergartener with a Crayola-scrawled piece of paper in an interrogation room. The light on me keeps getting brighter, the interviewer more antagonistic, and I shrink down in my chair, holding up my little paper like a shield and say, “But — see what I did? Pretty.”
The investigator lets me go and I scurry away, self-doubt dogging my heels as if it were my shadow: What if I don’t have a theme? Am I filling 200,000 words worth of pages with absolutely nothing? Do I even know anything close to what the hell I’m doing? It may be what all new writers go through, I don’t know. All I’m certain of is the plague of uncertainty that is left in the wake.
I just picked up another one of those books, one recommended to me a while back but had been banished to the dustiest corner of my shelf for the reasons stated above. While revising, I decided I indeed needed some guidance and set about reading through this one, hoping for some sort of validation or direction. Instead, I got the doubt-monster for company.
On Saturday night I went out with a group of friends. We were in one of the Ocean City local restaurant/bars — one of the few that doesn’t shut down when tourist season ends. The conversations went all over the place, but, finally, the subject turned to my writing. Now, I don’t usually talk about the novel. First off, I just don’t see any natural way to insert the topics I cover in any standard conversation (“Hey, did you guys know that in dark magic poison can be made extra potent by straining it through the hair of a redhead?”). Secondly, I get nervous they’ll all catch on to the fact I have no idea what I’m talking about. So, I end up replying to their queries in a vague manner, like, “Oh, it’s going okay.”
For whatever reason (maybe the thick, brain-clouding haze of cigarette smoke, or the trauma from a three hundred pound man toppling off his barstool and nearly taking me out with him), I felt compelled to corner one of my poor friends, subsequently launching into a hour-long tirade about the story and it’s plot twists and turns. During that time I realized two things: 1) My friend is an extremely patient person, and 2) I DO have a handle on this novel.
I started talking about Resonance and her plethora of issues and I realized — hey, I actually go somewhere with this thing. I went on and on about acceptance, the development of humanity in the absence of all that can be defined as human, and the struggle for a sense of self. I talked for so long my lips started to stick to my gums and my voice became hoarse. To my friend’s credit, her eyes never once glazed nor did she check her watch. She actually seemed — interested.
I guess this self-acceptance (that which I write so prolifically about in fictional terms) comes for me in stages. Despite my lack of formal training and despite my seeming inability to play “name that theme” in the early stages of my work, I am a real writer. I’ve got the tools, and I’ve just shown myself I can use them. It’s a nice feeling — like a paternal pat on the head from The Beyond, a reassurance I’m in the right place at the right time, and definitely doing an okay job.
I just finished a round of folding laundry — part of the benefits of being three-quarters writer and one-quarter house-spouse. The place we’re renting has little storage space, so our dishtowels go into this narrow cabinet that hangs on the wall. It used to hold wall maps on rollers, one on top of the other. Its current purpose is much less glamorous.
In order to make the most of the space — and to serve my obsessive tendencies — I fold the towels in half and then roll them up. This task always leads me to think of books set in the civil war where the women on both sides of the fight would have gatherings for the purpose of rolling bandages.
I always wondered just where those bandages came from. I know that later in the war, when the numbers of wounded were astronomical, the women had to make their own out of household linens. But, what about those first batches? Wasn’t there a company to make bandages? If so, why couldn’t they roll them?
That train of thought led me, of course, to Scarlett O’hara and her tendency to help The Cause only to suit her own needs and then — oddly enough — to the eighties movie, Irreconcilable Differences starring Ryan O’Neal, Drew Barrymore and Shelly –bear with me as I mentally go through the list; Winters? Duvall? — Long (I had to go look it up). Ryan O’Neil is a struggling director, his wife a former collaborator turned dejected housewife. They have a cute kid — Drew. Ryan gets eventual fame and leaves his wife in the dust. The divorce ensues and then (largely due to the vast majority of his blood not being in the correct organ) his career tanks. Meanwhile, the kid’s being ignored and finally decides to divorce her parents — hence the title.
There’s this one part of the movie where the husband (this is right before the tanking) decides to direct a musical version of Gone With the Wind, starring his flavor-of-the-week girlfriend (Sharon Stone). They’re shooting this scene with dead soldiers strewn throughout Atlanta’s streets and the Scarlett character, tortured by the sight before her, flings off her big straw hat and starts to belt out, “This — civil war — aint gonna get — me down!”
After that, poor Ryan’s career is rightly shot and he moves into a crappy apartment that’s quickly littered with empty pizza boxes and takeout Chinese cartons. His former wife, however, pulls herself out of her post-divorce rut and writes a book. It launches her to mega-stardom. Soon, she has posters of her book covers all over the walls and telephone calls from agents announcing her number one spot on the bestseller list.
So, that’s what my brain was doing while I was folding towels. I’m always fascinated by its ability to jump from subject to subject in such a short space of time. In three minutes I took a circutous route from the drudgery of housework to the subject of writing. But, that shouldn’t be a surprise. It always somehow comes back to writing for me.
I really wish I could find a clip of Sharon Stone doing that song. It’s brilliant in its gracelessness.
It’s been a strange day. Excited about my fresh start, I ran to my computer, plopped down in my new chair and opened a blank document. The cursor blinked happily before me. I put my fingers on the keyboard and stared. And stared. And stared some more. Three weeks, and I was lost. These people — the ones I’d created, the ones I’d lived and breathed for almost two years — were nearly strangers to me. After a brief moment of surprise at the realization, I went back several chapters and began getting to know them all over again. Fifty or so pages later, I finally had enough confidence to move forward.
Like a dinner conversation with someone I went to high school with and then hadn’t seen for ten years — it was awkward. My voices were off. I’d forgotten Res’ penchant for making snide asides. I’d lost track of Quinn’s eagerness to prove himself, the cockiness that belies his uncertainty of his place in the world. I’d gotten out of the stunted rhythm of Not’s voice that stems from her confined knowledge of the outside world. I’d lost touch. But, just like that dinner conversation, little reminders of the old relationships began to creep back in. One-by-one, the light bulbs went off and I remembered all those things I’d worried I’d forgotten.
This sounds a little dramatic (come on, I’m a writer. Dramatic is what I do). I realize it wasn’t like I was gone for ten years and they were happily living their virtual lives without me. I wasn’t Sidney Bristow waking up to find two years had passed (yes, I used an Alias reference). It was only three weeks and my characters were sitting there patiently, waiting. Even so, there was a real sense of disconnect, as if I’d somehow lost control of all I’d created.
Thankfully, that experience was short-lived. After some reminiscing, the uncomfortable silence was filled and new text began to flow. My reunion with my characters was a success. And, you know what? Unlike most of the people I went to high school with, I actually missed them.
Hell and Wheels 