Thursday, January 1, 2015

Merry New Year, and I will NOT publish!

Merry New Year, Everyone!

That's correct. I wished you a Merry new year, because I'm so tired of wishing you a happy one. Happy is too general and soooo subjective: happy is what exactly? Blah. Boring! Merry is significantly more significant, more colorful, more joyous...more 'action'! Right? Because 'merry' conjures the same scene in everyone's mind: handsome men of the Renaissance times wearing tights and dancing with phine, puffy, powdered-up ladies to the lute and bladder pipe around a festive table of turkey, ham, and wine. Oh! Apples and arsenic-laced pears, too (in those days, someone was also trying to kill someone, you know).

So, Merry New Year to all Forgers & Forger Followers. Let's DANCE!

But before I join you all, I'll share one of my New Year's Resolutions (we must have more than one, in case we need one to fall back on when the first one fails. Lots of 'ones' in that sentence). I hope/plan to have my World War Two story nearing the end of its publishing journey. NOTICE: I did not commit to having the darn thing PUBLISHED. That would be insane! I'm a writer, after all, so such things rarely happen. Publishing? R-r-r-ight.

Publishing is too real. Publishing is letting go, dropping from the cliff, breathing erratically...and hoping to hit the ground running (or land in a body of water, with no sharks. Lake Michigan!) Publishing is leaving Toyland and never returning again, making true what Doris Day sung and becoming a business man with a business model.

Ain't gonna happen in 2015. Well, not with my WW2 affair. So, to stay true to my profession, I will only hope to have that particularly complex and layered story nearing its publishing journey. What does that mean? Before 2016, I declare

1. All of my chapters will have been reviewed yet another round.
2. All of my chapters will have been reworked...yet another round.
3. All of my chapters will have been finalized, where no further rounds must follow.
4. An illustrator will be busy illustrating the cover and selected chapters. And he or she will be well-rounded.

Oh, dear. I put my resolution into words, did I? And I gulp published those words, too? Damn it.

Two quotes (for only three exist on the subject of writing) that will guide me through those final workshopin' rounds:

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."
Oscar Wilde

In other words, I plan to remain humble. And so will my characters. In fact, I purposely created my protagonist to be naive and always in a stage of oft' arrested learning. He's not even an expert in his own philosophy of life or art. And as for me, I will research to the nth degree up to the last period, yet I'll accept the fact that I cannot be right on everything. I'm falling! I see sky above me, and nothing below!! Also,

"Never mistake motion for action."
Ernest Hemingway

He's right. Grand thoughts, passionate kisses, and searing glances are basic motions. How a character responds to or is affected by grand, passionate, and searing is what makes them actionable.

Speaking of action, let's get back to our merriment. Oh, Mike! You look spectacularly fit in those green tights of yours. Care to drop that turkey leg and dance with the lovely lily white Lady McGrail and me? She smells like 300 day old coffee grinds, but then again, we all do! Keith? If you will, please rev up ye bladder pipe and give 'er a blow! Yes, I sound like a pirate all of a sudden!




2 comments:

  1. I think, mayhaps, you have it wrong, good sir. 'Twould be me at the pipes and the irascible Keith who would take to the floor and dance the conservative jig "The Artful Dodge".

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  2. I'd like to see that jig! Sigh... If only camera phones could be invented now, I'd post Keith's jig up on the electronic cat skin parchment!

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