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National Trail Mix Day 2024
For the most part, I do not like to go outside. Being that it’s National Trail Mix Day, I might think seriously about taking a walk around Tuscarora. Might…
🥜 Mix 🍫 A 🌰 Little 🥨 Foolishness 🥜
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment. ~Horace
A walk would do me good, but I’ve got work to catch up on and a Holiday Season Serial Romance to get seriously started on.
In the case of the work, catching up is a perpetual state. The more I do, the more gets piled on. Yay for job security, but boo for stress-induced insomnia.
In the case of the writing, I’ve got certain key cast members identified and a vague notion of what’s going to happen.
The good thing about that is that I’m about a month ahead of schedule this time. Given how much work-work I have to do, I’m going to need the early start.
Apart from that, I’m just glad to see the end of 🌞 Social Summer 🔥. Won’t be much longer before 🌞 Actual Summer 🔥 is over, too.
What I have always liked about the –ber months is that all the really cool stuff happens in 🍂Autumn🍂 and ❄️ Winter ❄️.
The seasonal TV specials with Charlie Brown and Pooh Bear. The Halloween monster movies. The holidays involving dinners, baked goods and presents.
Freeing up from the heat and the cooler clothes. Cozy days and cuddly nights. The damned bugs go back to sleep until next year. Everything is just better.
If I could actually catch up on my work and have more time and mental bandwidth for writing, it would be better still.
🌰 Best 🍫 Trail 🥨 Mix 🥜
How To: Make the Best Trail Mix You Have Ever Had
I’m not a stickler for trail mix. It’s all good. Nuts, dried fruit, chunks of chocolate or M&Ms. Some people add pretzel bits or cracker-type objects. It’s all good.
Unfortunately, it’s so handy you can eat through a few zillion calories without even thinking about it. It’s all well and good to have some handy when you’re walking around a forest trail.
Less good if you’re sitting around stress eating while you work your never-ending desk job. So, tasty, yes. Good for someone stuck behind a desk from dawn to dusk, not so much.
If you’re less sedentary than me, I hope the video recipe above is inspirational. I have to avoid trail mix except in tiny, infrequent portions.
🥜 Expect 🍫 The 🌰 Unexpected 🥨
If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail. ~Heraclitus
That’s the nature of inspiration. You will it into existence by expectation and summon it by despairing of its failure to arrive on demand.
This is what I refer to as the Shower Epiphany. It’s a well-known phenomenon.
You wrack your brain over something, but nothing comes until you are some place where you cannot possibly act on it when it comes. This is often in the shower or possibly when you’re driving somewhere that you cannot pull over and write it down.
Fortunately, that is no longer much of a problem for me. Working from home, as I do, saves me the anguish of having a Highway Traffic Epiphany.
What I have learned is how to get the Shower Epiphany effect without having to rinse any suds from my eyes.
The trick is to do all the prerequisite brain wracking until you’re convinced no answer will arise and move on to some other task.
Something as simple as starting a completely different piece of work, refilling my coffee or taking a bio break (🚽) is just enough of a distraction for the inspiration to jump to front of mind.
Well, that’s fine for discerning the solution to random programming matters or other cognitive challenges.
As far as the writing goes, I need to dive a bit deeper.
The way I relay stories depends on me getting into flow state. I need to literally see the movie in my mind and record the highlights.
Plotters, so-called, will lay out a complex diagram of what happens to whom, when and how. That’s great for project plans, but I don’t see how you can write a story that way.
I actually experience mine as if I was a fly on the wall, jumping from scene to scene. I hear them speaking. I see them reacting.
I’m trying to get better at descriptions, but there are several opinions on that.
Some people will tell you that there’s no way you can paint the picture you have in your mind. Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t try.
And yet, there are a lot of readers who will complain that you’re not painting enough of the picture for their liking.
So, where’s the happy medium? Who knows?
I think you should probably only describe things needing description. We know what cars and cabs and trains look like, generally.
If I say a character is in their bedroom, an office, a DMV lobby, a diner or something commonplace, most people know what that is.
If I say a character is in the sepulchre of the God-Emperor of Thagrizoun, it stands to reason that I’d better fill in some blanks for my readers.
It could be that my descriptions are still fairly shallow because my Holiday Season Serial Romances take place in familiar and mundane locations.
Sure, everyone’s house is different. Unless there is some specific feature that needs explanation, a house is a house. Maybe one has a fireplace and another doesn’t.
Ultimately, providing detailed description means that what you’re describing somehow matters specifically. If I say Christmas tree, I can leave it to my reader to summon an image.
Even if I do need to describe something specifically, there are generally words already devised to help with that.
If I said someone is having soup for lunch, you’d probably guess they ladled it from a pot on the stovetop or maybe microwaved it right in the bowl.
On the other hand, if I say it was brought to the table in a tureen, that paints an entirely different picture. Now it’s a formal luncheon with a hoity-toity tureen of soup to be ladled at the table, perhaps by staff.
How much is enough? Again, it depends on how important the specificity plays into the story.
It’s one thing to say a guy has a sword. You’ll probably picture a generic European arming sword or possibly a rapier.
If you say the guy is a Lanister, suddenly you’re picturing a red scabbard with gold fittings. The pommel of his sword is probably a gold lion’s head with ruby eyes. He’s probably got red and gold livery and brassy blond hair.
In the Song of Ice and Fire, Martin has depicted a world in which the great houses have their sigils, their colors, their words. In the North, it’s all wolf motifs and white and grey. Everyone has their own style and look so the reader can differentiate the major players in this epic political fantasy.
My stories aren’t that sprawling and probably won’t be, but you’re probably going to need some decent descriptions to help understand the settings, cultures and creatures of the Tales Of Olde Auringia or the futuristic aspects of Far-Flung Reaches.
For now, The Sentinels is simply pretend NYC with some superheroes doing cop stuff. Once the story progresses a bit and the Chaosians break through, things will need some description.
For now, I’m focusing on The Lights of Pine Hollow and the descriptions just don’t matter that much. A house is a house. A car is a car. A Zavijava is a Starbucks-like franchise cafe. There’s really not much more to say on stuff when those words should be spent on the actions, words and thoughts of the characters.
That’s all for today and that’s all for August 2024. I hope you enjoyed your 🌞 Summer 🔥. I’m genuinely glad it’s mostly over and we can get on with Pumpkin 🎃 Spice 🥤 Latte season…