composeconceivecreate

How do you see yourself?

My opinions used to be so simple.  Men with hot bodies. Yes, please. Washboard stomaches, yum. Then I had to get do some research and ruin it all for myself…

I watched a show the other day on how hard Will Smith and that Green Lantern guy work on their bodies and now I’m all conflicted. (Personal growth sucks.)

Will Smith apparently worked out 5 hours A DAY, to get his body looking like, well like something I’d like to do inappropriate things to. A DAY people. And then when he was done, they put makeup and lighting on him to make his body look even better to me…one of the drooling masses that given the opportunity, might just risk her marriage for the chance to spray fake whip (I don’t like the real stuff) onto the mountains and valley of his abs to go skiing. (He’s on my list. Don’t judge.)

After hearing how fanatical these men had to be to get their body in shape for a role I started thinking about my body, and my body image.

In my late thirties I’m finally, finally reaching a point where I might accept myself as I am, bumps and lumps and all. Sure I want to keep getting better to be healthy so I can do everything I want to do, but I’m getting closer to not hating me. It’s taken me nearly 40 years.

I don’t usually like to play the blame game, but I’m sure that how women were portrayed to me as a young child, shaped my opinion of me. I want the impossible body, even though I know it would take 8 or more hours a day of training, and faithful dedication to get there. Eight hours, and dedication I don’t have or wont give.

Every year, a new generation of girls is born into a world that is conditioning them to expect the unattainable in themselves. Sure, it’s getting better. Dove runs “real beauty” campaigns, and Betabrand recently hired real phd women to model their clothes rather than airbrushed models, but we’ve got a long way to go.

So, we’ve made progress, but now it seems that any pride we can hold about “getting there” for women and girls is being eroded by the newly unrealistic expectations girls will have for their men, and what’s worse, what we’re doing to men and boys.

We’ve raised generations of women to hate their bodies, and now, rather than fixing it, we’re just sharing the wealth and telling the men and boys “look at those abs, that’s what real women want”.

Well I’m here to say, yes, we want those things. But what we want more, is a man who can love himself enough, just the way he is, to love us back, just the way we are. (I got luck on that one.)

Damn it, I hate new information that makes me have to be a better person. Why couldn’t my moment of catharsis have waited until after the 300 sequel was released. Damn it.

Writing Exercise:

I’ve been working on edits for Riveted.  The majority of my edits have been re-writing sentences to reduce my use of “I statements”. (Riveted is written in the first person, and I rely too heavily on having my character tell things using “I saw” or “I said”.)  Super hard work, but it’s making the book better, so…

At first I thought the edits would be as simple as removing the “I’s”. In some cases that’s true, but in others I realized that I was using the “I’s” to hide a weakness in the paragraph, so rather than quick edits I’m doing re-writes of sentences and I love how its improving my work one sentence at a time.

Pick up a piece of your writing and choose a sentence at random, the try to re-write the sentence three different ways without changing the meaning.  If the sentence was descriptive, could the same description come out as dialogue?  (Not necessarily someone describing things, but perhaps illustrating the description with how a person reacts?)  If the sentence was dialogue, could it be action? Could you use a different sentence construction?

Happy writing.

I see through your clever disguise.

Ever have one of those conversations when you suddenly realize your morality is 90 degrees to the other person in the conversation? Then you have to wonder if:

• You’ve passed the “just kidding” point. (Usually.)
• There’s any way of getting out of the conversation without the other person figuring it all out and spending the next few months avoiding you. (Usually not.)
• You’re going to have to try to justify your opinion on raticide. (Totally a word.)

Colleague: “I think we have mice in our attic.”
Me: “Warfarin and a sling shot.”
Colleague: “What?”
Me: <Making little slingshot gestures.> “Into the attic.”
Colleague: “What if it’s not mice?”
Me: <Totally not reading the horror on her face.> “It works on rats too.”
Colleague: “It could be squirrels.”
Me: <Realizing, too late, that I’ve met my moral opposite.> The slingshot spreads it out…aren’t slingshots great?
Colleague: <stunned silence>
Me: <Making little slingshot gestures.>

BTW, if I’ve ever had this conversation with you…rodents have to be a certain level of “not a rat” before I feel even remotely bad about Warfarin being the solution to them being in my attic.

Mice = Small Rats
Rats = Rats
Squirrels = Rats with Fuzzy Tails (I see through your clever disguise.)

On another note, after much procrastination and self doubt, I’ve decided what to do to increase the action early on in my novel.

I was having trouble deciding how to move all of my plot related action up early enough in the story to satisfy requests to speed up the action at the beginning. So, I started thinking about other books I love and asking myself what the “action” was early in those stories.

What I realized was that most of the early action isn’t specifically big-P plot related, and it doesn’t have to be huge. The early conflicts set up our knowledge that the character is in a precarious position so that when the big plot points hit we are already worried about the character.

I don’t know why that was such a revelation to me. Now that I’ve thought about it, it seems like an obvious point.  But then again, I didn’t know Rice Krispies were made of actual rice so…

Writing Exercise:

Conflict is all around us (or at least all around me).  Every few days I find myself facing the type of low level stress-events that make my heart race for a few minutes until my logical brain takes over to say “I can deal with that”.

• The boss that’s yelling about a project you’re involved in…will he know the mistake wasn’t yours?
• The call from the bank telling you that you may have been a victim of skimming…are there any false transactions?
• Squealing tires behind you…are you about to be hit?

Each of these stressful events on their own are nothing.  A thousand of them building up together could make me snap (last week was a close one).  But in a small cluster, these events can tell us something about our environment, and we can use them to tell the readers about our character’s environment, and increase tension.  (How could I just be learning this now?)

Think through your last week.  How many times did you growl in frustration, startle at a loud noise or feel sick before stepping into a meeting or picking up the phone?  Make a list of your little heart racing moments then ask yourself why you reacted the way you did.  What do those events and your reactions tell you about your life?  Free write and see where your explanations take you.

Happy writing.

Everything smells like oniony-Spaghetti-Os.

Let me re-phrase that. I think everything smells like oniony-Spaghetti-Os, so I spent the week cleaning, and sniffing, asking Andre if he smelled that…and it was me.  (Or at least it wasn’t anything else.)

No amount of cleaning, showers of sniffing got rid of the scent (which no one else can smell).  So I’ve come to the conclusion that the smell is either a symptom of some sort of medical emergency (like smelling burnt toast can be a sign of stroke)…

Or, my body has developed the ability to produce oniony-Spaghetti-O smell as a pheromone lure to attract Spaghetti-Os. (A skill of questionable value.)

Valuable Attraction Pheromones

• Chocolate
• Money
• Unicorn
• (There’s probably more)

But Spaghetti-O attractor?  Questionable evolutionary step, body.

NB. To anyone who knows the “Why does my car smell story”.  Yes, I’m sure there are no Spaghetti-Os, hidden anywhere in my home. I haven’t bought Spaghetti-Os in years. (Plus, I’ve looked everywhere.)

NB2. I’m writing tonight.  Not much, but it’s progress.  Yay!

Writing Exercise:

Ever since my Biology-12 class I’ve been interested (some might say obsessed) with the idea that science could force evolution. It’s probably a good thing that I couldn’t hack the Calculus requirement for the Biology degree I started, because I’m fairly sure that if I’d kept at it, I’d have been in the news by now…and not in the “good” cure-for-a-horrible-disease way.  But more like in the cautionary tale, Patient-Zero kind of way.

My favourite idea was that since Mitochondria (the energy part of cells) have their own DNA, independent of the regular cellular DNA, that I could meddle with that DNA “safely” and give cells all sorts of cool new abilities…like inserting photosynthesis capabilities into mammals. (Ok humans, I totally wanted to be green and eat by sitting in the sun).

My new favourite idea (and again, super good thing I’m bad at math) is finding a way (I’m thinking gene splicing with various plants) to up our pheromone game.

I mean how great would it be to be able to walk into a meeting and just turn on the “my ideas are great, you want to trust me” scent, or walk into your Mother’s house smelling like “don’t ask, I want to just pretend we’re getting along”.  Oooh, or even better a smell that would allow you to send a silent signal to a team member when they’re pissing off the boss. I’d call that one, “just stop talking.” (Loads of cross-marketing opportunities on that one.  Work, school, court cases…)

If you could have designer pheromones, what would they be?  How would you use them?  Happy writing.

I received a rejection letter this week.  It was full of powerful feedback that’s sure to make me a better writer. It even left the door open for me to re-submit which is great.  But it also sucked.  Why is it that things that are good for you often suck rocks?

Running

Awesome: Runners high is totally a thing if you push through…and making your chest hurt a little every day is better than it hurting a lot later.

Awful: Because, pain.  Plus every minute I’m running is a minute I’m not watching House of Cards or re-runs of True Blood. (Oh Alexander Skarsgard, where have you been my whole life?)

Constructive criticism

Awesome:  If you listen to the criticism it makes you better (in my case at writing).   The words of wisdom build you up, brick by brick, sandwiching your need for improvement between compliments until you’re a better you thanks to the hard work of your critic. Super.

(Wouldn’t it be great if actual criticism worked like constructive?  “Hey I noticed you put on a few pounds so I went on a run for you. By the way, I love your hair.”)

Awful:  No matter how valuable I find constructive feedback. No matter how kindly the feedback is given, it ends up feeding my insecurity demon. The one that whispers “you suck” and “if you could do it better, you would have”.  Then I spend the next few hours (or days) beating him into submission before I can take the advice of the critics and get around to being better.

Today, to defeat that demon I’m going to focus on the awesome and send out a big thank you to everyone whose been generous enough to give me feedback. You’re amazing.  And…feel like dropping and giving me 20?  My delts could really use the work. (You never know.)

Writing Exercise:

Knowing how much it helps when people sandwich a suggestion or criticism in compliments, I often find myself following that pattern. But what if someone took that a step further and felt the need to sandwich every statement with a compliment.  Want to order food?  Better find something nice to say about the lady’s hair net. Need a fill at the service station? Better find a way to appreciate the smell of gasoline or the glow of overhead halogen lighting.

Would people take it well, or misunderstand?  How soon before the complimentary person would be forced to abandon their coffee shop because the barista thinks she’s being stalked?  Happy writing.