Art is in the details

What memory has in common with art is the knack for selection, the taste for detail. Complimentary though this observation may seem to art (that of prose in particular), to memory it should appear insulting. The insult, however, is well deserved. Memory contains precisely details, not the whole picture; highlights, if you will, not the entire show. The conviction that we are somehow remembering the whole thing in a blanket fashion, the very conviction that allows the species to go on with its life, is groundless. More than anything, memory resembles a library in alphabetical disorder, and with no collected works by anyone.

- Joseph Brodsky

I have a particular fondness for this quote, not just for how true it seems to be, but for the library imagery it ends with, as libraries are a personal fetish of mine. But it's the correlation between memory and art, between what a person will remember and what a person could create, that prompts me to blog today.

When I was working on my film studies in college, one of the things we were taught was to pick out what was important and throw away the rest. Because people fill in the blanks whether they think they do or not. They don't need to be told every little minutiae, not just because it's boring as hell but because they already know it. Our job as creators is to give them the details they don't already have.

What those details are...well, that's up to you and the story. Choose what's most important, what's most vivid, what's going to service the work as best as possible, and run with it. Sometimes, it's only a sentence or two, sprinkled amongst dialogue. (That's why dialogue tags are so often redundant. In a two-person scene, it's usually pretty easy to tell who's talking.) Others, it might be a couple paragraphs of setting description.

Either way, what you don't provide, the reader will create for himself. Because at the end of the story, he's probably not going to remember that the couch in the living room was purple. He'll remember the highlights, the emotional highs and lows, the specific scenes that rang truest for him, and the rest of it will be gone, either until he reads the story again (if you're so lucky) or until his memory replaces them with his own.

Memorable characters

There's a new book out on the market, a biography about classic film actress Hedy Lamarr. One of the sex symbols of her time, the new look at her life talks about more than her acting career. It discusses her passion for inventing, and goes into detail how this beauty was smart, too.

Who would've thought it? I certainly didn't. I've always dismissed Lamarr as a second-rate actress who skated by on her looks, and while that might be true, it's not the whole story. In fact, she's an excellent model for any of us writers, not just that beautiful women can be smart, too, but by showing that there's always more to a person that meets the eye.

It's easy to give a character a lot of positive attributes. We want our readers to like them, to be able to relate to them. But giving them diversity without sacrificing the core of who they are? Giving them weaknesses so they can make mistakes? That's harder. A lot harder. Some writers miss the mark, but then again, there are readers out there who like the perfect people, too. There's something for everybody.

But most of us want some realism in what we read. We want characters we can believe in, even if they happen to be vampires or live on a different planet where everybody has mental telepathy. It's the need for emotional truth as well a desire for someone who isn't always what they seem to be. We go through our lives in a constant learning state. The people we know the best can still find ways to surprise us years after we think we know everything about them. It keeps us engaged and interested when people show new depths, and the same holds true for fictional characters.

So the next time you sit down to sketch out a protagonist, think about not just what makes them strong, but what makes them weak. What makes them human. The most exciting plot in the world doesn't mean a damn if the reader doesn't care about the people involved in it. And it's our job to make sure that happens.

Black Friday

I used to be an avid Black Friday shopper. I was never so insane to be out the door at 4am, but I still went out at 8 or 9 and shopped for most of the day. It was all about the deal and saving money at a time of year when we typically spend far more than usual.

When stores started going online, that all changed. I've been an avid online shopper for over a decade, and now that stores are finally seeing the benefits in providing the same kind of sales to virtual customers, I don't go out anymore. Instead, I go to all my favorite stores' websites and shop that way. The benefits are tremendous:

1. No searching for a parking spot.
2. No dealing with insane customers.
3. No rooting through racks trying to find that one great deal.
4. I don't even have to put on shoes, lol.

Amazon's sale started yesterday. I know a lot of authors have problems with Amazon, but honestly, I love them. I can get great deals, we get free shipping for our annual prime membership, and I can find items I might not be able to get locally. I still shop brick-and-mortar stores as much as I can, especially Barnes & Noble, but at this time of year, it seems insane not to take advantage of saving a few dollars where I can.

Other stores have started their sales early. Last Saturday, Old Navy did a store promotion where adult outerwear was 75% off for a few hours. I ended up getting two wool coats for $35 total, and my daughter got her new coat for $15. Seriously, how can I say no to those kind of sales?

Do you do Black Friday shopping? Where do you like to go?

Nanowrimo

Today marks Nanowrimo for a lot of my friends, a month-long event to try and write 50k. I wish them all the best, but I'll be honest, I don't participate. For a few reasons.

First of all, November is the second worst month of the year to try and get stuff done in this country. There's Thankgiving to worry about, plus the upcoming Christmas holidays, with a whole host of educational/school-related events that can affect you whether you're a student or a parent. My time comes at a premium from now until mid-February (my kids both have birthdays in that time period on top of the holiday stuff), and I have to be very strict in how I portion it out.

Which leads me to two. A 50k goal is fantastic, mostly because it really pushes people to stop dawdling and just write. But honestly? I already treat my writing like it's my full-time career. I have word counts I do everything I can to meet every week. So I already put out that much every month, not just one month a year. Now, some of that never sees the light of day, while some is purely for my own entertainment, but there's enough that I don't ever feel like I'm slacking.

Nano is great for the push and support it provides writers, though. For everyone out there giving it a go this year, I wish you all the best!

Just because Borders is gone...

While I'm a staunch supporter of ebooks, I'll admit that I do everything I can to help keep our local Barnes & Noble afloat. The fact of the matter is, I don't want to see bookstores die. It's not because of the print format. In this day and age, devoting our dwindling resources exclusively to this medium is wasteful and unreasonable.

No, it's because I think of bookstores as refuges. Places to escape. It's not just about buying books. It's about having a safe haven for readers to congregate, more so than what a library might provide. Economics have hit them hard, too.

When I walk into B&N, a sense of freedom washes over me. I know I'm pretty much surrounded by people who want to be there as much as I do. People who understand the value of books enough to buy them for their own. It doesn't matter that we might have different interests. When I take my husband with me, he invariably goes off to business and computers, while I head straight to romance and sci-fi. But that love of the written word bonds us together, just like sports or other hobbies might bond other couples.

I'm teaching my kids to see bookstores as something to be excited about. We go at least twice a month and stay for a couple hours. They get to browse, sit and read, maybe play (since my son is young enough still to do so), and we always take the time to sit and have a coffee/milk/pastry in the cafe. Buying them books is the one thing I never deny them.

They go to the library, too, but that hasn't diminished our trips to the store. If anything, it's made them better, because it's turning them into more discerning purchasers. Plus, the library has introduced both of them to series that we then went out and bought because they were keepers.

I sincerely hope they never lose the thrill of what it feels like to go to the bookstore. But the only way to make sure that happens is by supporting our local store as much as we can. The big box stores can't win. We can't let them.

Prop 8 videos to be public

Yesterday, U.S. district chief judge James Ware rules that videos taken during the Prop 8 trial could be made public, though he did put a time stamp on it of September 30 to allow appeals to be made. While I'm glad that the truth is one step closer to coming out to the general public, I have to admit I'm disillusioned with how this entire debacle has come about in the first place.

I was one of the voters who stayed up until the wee hours of the morning tracking results when Prop 8 was first on the ballot. As a general rule, I don't get involved in politics, and I definitely don't bother debating or discussing most issues as most of the time, it's a complete waste of time. However, the blatant misinformation that Prop 8 supporters kept throwing around infuriated me. I had to listen to radio spots that outright lied about what the proposition was set to do, and I drove home more than once through supporters standing on street corners, proclaiming how without the proposition, schools would be forced to teach about homosexuality.

A load of rubbish, of course. Just like so many of the other ridiculous claims supporters made about why the gay marriage laws had to be removed from California legislation.

Supporters don't want the tapes publicized. They don't want people to see their own expert witness testify that gay marriage does nothing to infringe upon straight marriage. They don't want anybody to know just how weak their claims actually were, that their assertions were based on fear and religion rather than logic or facts. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that any appeal made fails, because this entire farce has gone on too long.

Partnerships are based on love, not gender. Relationships that withstand the test of time deserve to be recognized. Nobody has the right to tell two people who are ready to commit their lives to each other that it's wrong or that they don't deserve to have the same legal rights as another couple that happens to fit an outdated, narrow-minded definition of what a marriage should be.

With so much awfulness in the world already, why would anyone want to make it even more miserable by hurting people who only want to have their love be recognized as valid and lawful?

Do you want to live forever?

An article appeared in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, discussing the possibilities of extending human life expectancy. While the discussion is hardly a new topic, the growing population certainly makes it an interesting one. There are social and economic realities we live in that weren't applicable a hundred years ago. Our world is a shrinking one. Is it really worth it to continue this type of research?

I write about paranormal creatures with extended lives all the time, but the reality is a much different story. We have problems with overcrowdedness and lack of resources already. Can you imagine the strain the world would take if the population didn't have a natural break to it? Of course, if extending lives meant those people would then be able to produce more that would be of benefit to the world at large, I wouldn't hesitate in the slightest. But how likely is that to happen? I just don't know. I'd like to believe in altruism, but the cynic in me calls that part foolish.

And what about relationships? Divorce is a defining reality for a lot of people. Would we be forced to reimagine our concept of marriage? If someone spends over a hundred years as an adult, is it realistic to think they'd do so with a single person?

The romantic in me would like to say yes, but I know that it wouldn't necessarily work out that way. Relationships take work, especially over longer periods of time.

What are your thoughts?

Storylines revisited

Yesterday, a story from NPR showed up in my Google Reader about a Shakespeare production that has been re-invented to reflect modern issues, and it got me thinking about various plays and movies I've seen that have played with traditional set-ups like this. One of the earliest examples I can remember was a production of Taming of the Shrew that I saw in junior high. It was done at the state college in town, and the director chose to reimagine it in a wild west setting. I was enthralled. To this day, it remains one of my favorite theater experiences ever, and considering I was a theater major for a good chunk of college and still go whenever I can, that says a lot.

Movies do this all the time. Remember Clueless? Jane Austen's Emma moved to the LA high school world. And we constantly see an influx of books that try the same thing. It's magical when it works well, but while I'm in awe of writers who can pull it off, I also find myself more critical of the end result. Stories like that have to compete with more well-known versions, as well as reader expectations. Some readers are purists and don't like having things tampered with. Others prefer to be surprised. I tend to fall in the latter camp, but I do wonder how big that camp really is. In so many ways, genre fiction is highly predictable, and the author who breaks ranks to switch things up often becomes the target of debate.

Round hole/square peg analogies abound because sometimes the reinventions just don't work. But when they do...it's amazing. Memories can be created that will last for years. I'm sure the director of that Taming production never thought an audience member would be reminiscing about it fondly decades later. I'd like to hope it would please him or her to no end to realize it.

UK unrest

Rather than talk on and on about some inane topic today, I just want to extend my sincerest hopes and prayers to everybody in the UK in the face of the events of the last few days. The UK is very much my second home, and to say I've been left feeling sick by everything that's happening over there right now is an understatement.

I can only hope it ends soon. We have so much badness in the world already. Do we really need more?

Back to school

Today, my kids go back to school. I know, it seems early. When we first moved here two years ago, I was taken mildly aback at the short, six-week summer break, too. That lasted only a few minutes, however, before gratitude sank in. Because that meant our new school district followed a British style of scheduling, meaning a shorter summer break, and breaks in the fall and spring.

Color me ecstatic. I've never really understood why the American school system clings to an antiquated schedule that is redundant in today's lifestyle. A hundred years ago, sure, kids needed to be out for longer in order to help with harvests. But we're not a mostly agricultural society anymore, and those needs for putting kids to work to ensure their family's survival are long gone.

The advantages to such a system are through the roof. First of all, it's great for the kids. A shorter summer means less time to lose the rhythm of their education. Moving up a grade isn't seen as quite the ritual as it used to be, as it is a continuation onto the next phase of their learning.

Parents benefit, too. I'm lucky in that I get to be at home for my kids, but there a ton of families out there that rely on both parents going off to work, or the sole provider in single-parent households, who then have to figure out childcare. Costs for daily childcare are astronomical these days. Wouldn't it be great if they only had to worry about who's going to watch the kids for six weeks instead of ten or twelve?

Another advantage comes with the fall and spring breaks. We get two weeks apiece for those, which makes it a lot easier to schedule family vacations. There's more flexibility, and often, if we want to go somewhere, we're off-season so it's cheaper, too. Now granted, if you don't go away, this means you have to figure out childcare again, but two weeks is a lot easier to arrange than longer time periods. I know plenty of people who ship the kids off to grandparents for breaks.

My sister thinks it's a little insane, that kids should have the summer off. But in all fairness, my kids don't actually have fewer days off than anybody else. They're just spread out more. To me, that's just a much smarter way of doing it.