More than Words on a Page

My brain is having a hard time focusing right now, I can see the keys on the keyboard just fine but the letters on the screen are getting a little blurry. I have to concentrate more to have it come into focus. This is really frustrating because I have this story idea that I want to write down, but it just keeps coming out wrong somehow. The movie in my head looks great on brain film but doesn’t seem to work so well on paper. Well, I bet it works great on paper, I just don’t know how to get there and have it flow and twist into people’s brains the way a good story should.

I think part of the problem is that it is already in my head and I can see it before I write it. With most stories that I read the picture is forming as I read each word and hear the actors deliver the lines and the pauses perfectly. As it is now my story sort of sucks, but I’ve got a great plot and fabulous characters. I really need to work on figuring out how to get the pauses in the story and take out a lot of the details that I have and ad in one that are more meaningful. I haven’t been able to convey the passing of time in ways other than second by second, minute by minute.

If you have a tense, action packed scene but you want to convey the passing of 15 minutes while you wait for the heroine to show up because she was at a different location how do you do that? Or if in real life something takes a few seconds when you want it to take a few minutes how do you convey that?

When I read I often don’t pay as much attention to the writing, once I start trusting the author that is, as I should so I don’t know how to write a good story – the mechanics of it. I get too caught up in what’s going on that I don’t see the individual pieces that make up the art. A good example would be an oil painting; you can see every brush stroke that the artist put onto the canvas, but you usually don’t study it minutely the first few times you see it because you end up missing the story being drawn out. That’s how I read – it’s a movie in my brain. Sometimes I get so caught up with the movie that I forget that there’s an actual book in my hands and I don’t remember actually reading the individual words but I know every scene.

There are a lot of books you can’t really do that with simply because something in the book keeps kicking you out – bad grammar, faulty sentence structure, bad or eye-roll inducing plot turns, shocking language, etc – and those I guess I read like any other person. Then again, I don’t know how everyone else reads – do they see stories in their heads or do they see stories on paper? Or do they see nothing at all…

I want my story to be something that everyone can see in their head – something tangible something they can practically reach out and touch, a tactile experience with words.

Anya

I spent the better part of last night watching season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a friend and the more I watched the more I realized that as much as I wanted to be a "Buffy" type character I was really more of an Anya. Everyone wants to be Buffy - who wouldn't? She has gorgeous, mysterious, men all over her (Angel, Riley, Spike); has a group of good, loyal friends that would do anything for her (including going over to the dark side to bring her back from the dead), and she kicks serious butt - not to mention that she saves the world - a lot.

Anya on the other hand is an ex-demon who no one really likes, doesn't fit in, says awkward things that everyone is thinking but no one will say or talk about who just wants to be loved - but will never be as loved as the others. The preverbal ugly step child that never really blossoms into the beautiful disney princess that gets prince charming. I even have my own Xander Harris - the only difference is that I don't really want to become a vengeance demon, but even if I did (or could) it would be the same - even though Xander did her great wrong she couldn't get anyone to "I wish..."

No one really wants to be an Anya, but I guess someone has to...

Generousity and Love

So I had a thought today – well, I’ve had many thoughts today, but there are only a few that are productive and provocative enough for me to share. I’ve been thinking about what generosity really is and what love really is. These are very entangled concepts that I’m not sure I fully understand, but please bear with me as I try to pick them apart.
*Note: all the dashes, commas, and semi colons in this post are dedicated to Seth and his AMAZING book of typography. (See, only single spaces between sentences!)

Generosity:
At first I thought that looking this up in the dictionary would be helpful – it really wasn’t. Marriam-Webster defines generosity as “the trait of being willing to give your money or time” which is completely inaccurate to the nature or spirit of generosity. Surprisingly, wikipedia had the best example of what generosity should be (I’ll get to the difference between is and should be in a minute): Generosity is the habit of giving without coercion.

This is closer to what I think generosity should be, but it’s not quite there either. Marriam-Webster (MW) reduce generosity to the act of giving time or money – and not necessarily giving it freely either. MW’s definition is what generosity currently is, not what it should be. Wikipedia gets slightly closer to the mark of what generosity should be by saying that it is not coerced (manipulated, forced, teased, ripped, used as a way to get what you want by giving could also be substituted here).

Generosity is the act of giving; but more than that it is the act of giving something freely, without strings of any kind. I left “giving” open because you can be generous with more than just time and money. Love, grace, mercy, patience, etc can also be given generously. Generous is an adjective, it describes something; it also gives color and flavor to acts. For example, “she generously opened her house;” generous describes how she did something – not necessarily what she did with it. This is not a good example, but I’m not sure how exactly to work this through.

When you give generously it should be given not just freely as stated above, but should be given without expectation of a return on the investment. If it is given with expectation of being repaid then it ceases to be generous, does it not? For example if you “generously” give someone money, yet expect to be repaid or place conditions on how it is to be used then it becomes a loan or an investment. When something given turns into calculating the requital (immediate or long-term) it becomes about the person giving, not the person receiving which negates the gift altogether.

Money, time, any sort of gift given grudgingly is not generous. Rather, is it given out of guilt - knowing you should give but not wanting to, shame - being guilted by conscious or another party to do something you normally wouldn’t do, or greed - seeing the potential for repayment in power, emotion, debt or money. Just because something is given, even in large quantities does not mean that it is generous.

Now, how does love fit into this? I think that love, true love – true as in right, good, honest, heartfelt, etc – is a generous act. When you give a piece of yourself, or all of yourself in the case of marriage, to someone is it not an act of generosity? Love is given freely and wholly without reservations – otherwise it is not love. Is this true? Is that how love should be given?

If love is not love unless it is given generously where does that leave us?

Love is a gift, a generous gift – one that we could not ever earn.