I've always wondered how other people write. What goes on inside their brains before words leak out of their fingertips. Because I've often thought that I approach writing weirdly, and I have a strange, masochistic desire to remove all doubt so I can be more justified in beating myself up over being peculiar and eccentric. This preface out of the way, I thought I'd share a few quick insights into my writing process.
Firstly, I sit staring at the screen. I spend a lot of time doing this, actually.
Then my brain starts making weird combinations of words and phrases whilst I shoot them down one by one, for any odd reason, like targets in a silly carnival game. (Sometimes the same sentence might beg to be given a second chance, and occasionally, one might escape without me knowing.) Then I happen upon a sentence that may or may not work, and I start to type it. Once I see it in print, I know straightaway whether or not it's working for me, and I generally end up deleting it and starting over.
Rinse and repeat, until I don't hate the sentence and I can stand to let it continue existing. Occasionally, the realization that what I've written is abysmal will come after I've strung several such sentences together, at which time I go back and delete them all and start over.
Then, once I've written something that fulfills the requirements of being a substantial block of text, I read back over it with a fairly ruthless eye and weed out the words, phrases, and sentences that don't work for me. If I hate everything, which has happened, I start over. (I start over a lot.)
When I have something that constitutes a "finished" piece before me, which means it's run the entire gauntlet of abuse to which my editing habits can subject it, I often go back and edit it again. I've been known to delete "finished" pieces because they weren't working for me. And start over. (You totally saw that last part coming, didn't you?) No piece of mine is safe. Ever.
It bears mentioning that all of the above steps hinge, somewhat, on several factors. The first factor is how exhausted I am. If I get really tired, I begin to cease caring which words and sentences escape my brain. Sometimes I become really, really formal and fancy and lofty and begin utilizing grandiloquent verbiage. Other times I struggle a single sentence put to together a in way meaningful. It's always a surprise, really. A veritable piñata of possibilities.
The second factor is how much time I have to complete whatever it is I'm writing. You give me a minute to write something, you are going to get something that looks like it was written in, well, a minute. Which, in my case, means it will be coherent and error-free, but unimaginative and quite possibly trite. Like this blog post, for example, which was written in one sitting and was not edited at all. Because I'm feeling particularly exhausted and lazy today, and don't care to waste unnecessary time writing blog posts.
The third factor is whether or not I'm being distracted. If there are people in the room distracting me, or people chatting with me, or the Internet grabs me and forces me to distract myself with distractable thingamabobs, then my writing turns out as you might expect. Distracted. Distracted writing, like distracted driving, often results in something of a wreck.
The fourth factor is whether or not whatever I'm writing is something about which I'm reasonably knowledgeable, or something that is meaningful to me. In either case, the end product generally turns out much better if I am invested, to some extent. If I don't know or care anything about what I'm writing, then why the dickens am I writing about it?! (Good question, Loki. Good question.)
And that, noble readers (you must also be long-suffering readers, if you've made it far enough to be reading this shameless attempt at flattery), is the long and short of my writing process. I hope you've found it, if nothing else, amusing enough that you'll not yell abuses at your computer screen and then demand I somehow become a magical being who can reverse time and return the roughly three minutes you wasted reading this.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Nicknames
Nicknames. I didn't get my first one until high school, a fact I find rather tragic. Then again, considering the way my siblings think, perhaps I should be thanking my lucky stars. It helps that my name isn't one that's readily convertible into a shortened version of said name.
My first nickname doubled as a pen name. My high school best friend and I often wrote stories together, most of which (at least initially) we rather didn't care to ascribe our real names to. Therefore, after a brief dalliance with a name generator, I came up with the somewhat ostentatious-sounding name, "Alassë Elensar," which the site assured me was my name in elvish. I was skeptical of this from the first, but too lazy to do any real digging. "Alassë" served its purpose for awhile, and featured, unfortunately, in an abysmal self-insertion fan-fiction entitled, succinctly, "College Students Can Be Heroes." (Forgive me if I cringe a little. Some rather painful memories are rolled up in that lengthy saga of two teenage girls who get sucked into Middle-earth and proceed to "fix" everything. Kind of like every other Lord of the Rings-corrupting Sue out there, actually.)
My friend and I (she had another equally ostentatious-sounding elven name) decided we needed a secondary pen name for stories that we thought were stupid, but we still wanted to post just to get a rise out of people. Yeah, back then, we didn't know that was basically the definition of trolling. I selected "Saraman," and she went by "James Norrington." Throughout high school, she and I would head to the church basement after school on Wednesdays, where we'd spend three or four hours scheming about stories, re-enacting scenes from our favorite movies, drawing, and generally having a blast. At one point, we discovered a fanfiction site that hosted strictly Lord of the Rings slash. Graphic Lord of the Rings slash. Horrified, we decided we'd write a parody story and post it on their site, just to show them how ridiculous their pairings were. Wonderfully logical, we were. We settled on the worst pairing of all, Saruman and Wormtongue (WormUman?), and wrote an abysmal slash story based on the pairing, signing it "Saraman and James Norrington." This ill-conceived piece was typed up on the pastor's computer in the church basement. I kid you not.
Eventually, my nickname went through another cycle. I dub it, fondly, the "Troy Era." My friend and I became obsessed with the 2005 movie, Troy, starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom. I'm not entirely certain why, in retrospect. There wasn't all that much to like. We hated Pitt's and Bloom's characters, and the only character we liked (Hector) died. Nonetheless, after our little world had revolved around the Troy planet for some months, we decided we would be known, from then on, as "Achilles" and "Hector." I had to be Achilles. This was around the time my friend and I made our Junior year film project: a reenactment of the climactic duel between Hector and Achilles. That was a rather amusing experience, filmed in the seasonally flooded Alvord Desert. I recall that, as we walked out to the sandy plain standing in for the Aegean coastline, we passed several people bathing, nude, in the hotsprings. Bearded and in full armor, we attracted some amount of attention, though, in retrospect, I find it rather ironic that we were self-conscious.
Sometime following this era, my friend and I decided we needed Narnian nicknames, as well. My entire (very small) circle of friends had a part in this. I was "Froggy" (what one of the giants called Puddleglum in The Silver Chair) because I tended to be a wet blanket and a pessimist, my best friend was "Rilian" because she liked the color green so much, and my other friend was "Sulky" (what Pug the Pirate called Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) because she liked to sulk a lot. Dreadfully fitting, I'm afraid. These persisted for a while. There was generally quite a bit of overlap between sets of nicknames.
When I began studying the elvish language, I decided it would be fun to find out the real translation of my name, which turned out to be "Aranel Carnilino," as my actual name, Sarah Martin, means, literally, "Warrior Princess." That name has stuck with me. I consider it my current pen name, and I've been using it for more years than I'd like to admit.
Toward my latter years in high school - and I'm not sure I recall the exact events that led up to this - my friends and I adopted new Lord of the Rings-based nicknames. I was Elrond and my best friend and another good friend were Elladan and Elrohir, respectively. They enjoyed plaguing me quite a bit, since that's in the Twins' job description, and more than a few times after I'd gone off to college, I would receive interesting photographic evidence of their latest mischievous escapades. These generally included signs slandering their ever-loving father. At one point, they altered the main high school signboard to read "Elrond doesn't wash his socks" and sent me a picture. That was rather entertaining. We also sent in-character emails to each other.
Just recently, a really good friend of mine with whom I write and roleplay on a regular basis suggested we come up with new nicknames for each other. The selection process was thorough and rigorous, though we drew our candidates strictly from mythology. I ended up "Loki," and my friend "Juno." I've always appreciated the character of Loki in the recent films Thor and The Avengers, so imagining myself as the tall, svelte, pale, dark-haired villain with a penchant for throwing a monkey wrench in his older brother's plans quite appealed to me. Though I still answer to Elrond, Loki has definitely cast his charms over my personal nomenclature.
And that is the inspiring tale of how I amassed such an impressive collection of nicknames. More than many people would acquire in a lifetime, and none of which are cutesy corruptions of my actual name. Thank goodness.
My first nickname doubled as a pen name. My high school best friend and I often wrote stories together, most of which (at least initially) we rather didn't care to ascribe our real names to. Therefore, after a brief dalliance with a name generator, I came up with the somewhat ostentatious-sounding name, "Alassë Elensar," which the site assured me was my name in elvish. I was skeptical of this from the first, but too lazy to do any real digging. "Alassë" served its purpose for awhile, and featured, unfortunately, in an abysmal self-insertion fan-fiction entitled, succinctly, "College Students Can Be Heroes." (Forgive me if I cringe a little. Some rather painful memories are rolled up in that lengthy saga of two teenage girls who get sucked into Middle-earth and proceed to "fix" everything. Kind of like every other Lord of the Rings-corrupting Sue out there, actually.)
My friend and I (she had another equally ostentatious-sounding elven name) decided we needed a secondary pen name for stories that we thought were stupid, but we still wanted to post just to get a rise out of people. Yeah, back then, we didn't know that was basically the definition of trolling. I selected "Saraman," and she went by "James Norrington." Throughout high school, she and I would head to the church basement after school on Wednesdays, where we'd spend three or four hours scheming about stories, re-enacting scenes from our favorite movies, drawing, and generally having a blast. At one point, we discovered a fanfiction site that hosted strictly Lord of the Rings slash. Graphic Lord of the Rings slash. Horrified, we decided we'd write a parody story and post it on their site, just to show them how ridiculous their pairings were. Wonderfully logical, we were. We settled on the worst pairing of all, Saruman and Wormtongue (WormUman?), and wrote an abysmal slash story based on the pairing, signing it "Saraman and James Norrington." This ill-conceived piece was typed up on the pastor's computer in the church basement. I kid you not.
Eventually, my nickname went through another cycle. I dub it, fondly, the "Troy Era." My friend and I became obsessed with the 2005 movie, Troy, starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom. I'm not entirely certain why, in retrospect. There wasn't all that much to like. We hated Pitt's and Bloom's characters, and the only character we liked (Hector) died. Nonetheless, after our little world had revolved around the Troy planet for some months, we decided we would be known, from then on, as "Achilles" and "Hector." I had to be Achilles. This was around the time my friend and I made our Junior year film project: a reenactment of the climactic duel between Hector and Achilles. That was a rather amusing experience, filmed in the seasonally flooded Alvord Desert. I recall that, as we walked out to the sandy plain standing in for the Aegean coastline, we passed several people bathing, nude, in the hotsprings. Bearded and in full armor, we attracted some amount of attention, though, in retrospect, I find it rather ironic that we were self-conscious.
Sometime following this era, my friend and I decided we needed Narnian nicknames, as well. My entire (very small) circle of friends had a part in this. I was "Froggy" (what one of the giants called Puddleglum in The Silver Chair) because I tended to be a wet blanket and a pessimist, my best friend was "Rilian" because she liked the color green so much, and my other friend was "Sulky" (what Pug the Pirate called Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) because she liked to sulk a lot. Dreadfully fitting, I'm afraid. These persisted for a while. There was generally quite a bit of overlap between sets of nicknames.
When I began studying the elvish language, I decided it would be fun to find out the real translation of my name, which turned out to be "Aranel Carnilino," as my actual name, Sarah Martin, means, literally, "Warrior Princess." That name has stuck with me. I consider it my current pen name, and I've been using it for more years than I'd like to admit.
Toward my latter years in high school - and I'm not sure I recall the exact events that led up to this - my friends and I adopted new Lord of the Rings-based nicknames. I was Elrond and my best friend and another good friend were Elladan and Elrohir, respectively. They enjoyed plaguing me quite a bit, since that's in the Twins' job description, and more than a few times after I'd gone off to college, I would receive interesting photographic evidence of their latest mischievous escapades. These generally included signs slandering their ever-loving father. At one point, they altered the main high school signboard to read "Elrond doesn't wash his socks" and sent me a picture. That was rather entertaining. We also sent in-character emails to each other.
Just recently, a really good friend of mine with whom I write and roleplay on a regular basis suggested we come up with new nicknames for each other. The selection process was thorough and rigorous, though we drew our candidates strictly from mythology. I ended up "Loki," and my friend "Juno." I've always appreciated the character of Loki in the recent films Thor and The Avengers, so imagining myself as the tall, svelte, pale, dark-haired villain with a penchant for throwing a monkey wrench in his older brother's plans quite appealed to me. Though I still answer to Elrond, Loki has definitely cast his charms over my personal nomenclature.
And that is the inspiring tale of how I amassed such an impressive collection of nicknames. More than many people would acquire in a lifetime, and none of which are cutesy corruptions of my actual name. Thank goodness.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
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