I was trained in school to write essays and lesson plans. I teach academic writing. I have experience writing teacher guides and process documents, and have edited a variety of written materials. Creating nonfiction and technical documents really isn't a problem for me.
I've dabbled in creative writing for most of my life. I've critiqued and edited original stories and fan fiction. But there's always been some sort of block between creative writing and me, and I couldn't put my finger on it until I started cleaning up my notes and bookmarks as I was reconsidering killing a much-loved project. And then the problem hit me.
I have never been trained in creative writing. I've never been formally trained in editing, either, beyond what was taught in my English classes in middle school and high school, but at least I've had that exposure, and it's only been reinforced in my teaching. But there hasn't been anything beyond my plodding on without reflection through my creative writing. I've had no classes. My editing is more technical than story-focused. There's been virtually no catalyst to help me grow and develop better creative writing skills.
I follow blogs on creative writing. I'm starting to read books on game writing, which often cover some degree of creative writing. And that information is just being added to a weak understanding of what makes creative writing what it is. I've honestly just been taking my reading experience and applying it to my nonfiction training.
It really does explain so much, and it gives me a direction to move in my self-directed studies. It even gives me a project to practice what I'm learning! Maybe there's some hope for me.
Aug 232010
Over the weekend, I sat down and beat the Endless Setlist on Rock Band 2. I’d been looking forward to attempting it as I saw myself getting closer to it, but it took me longer to do than I expected.
The problem was that there were several cities filled with songs I had no interest in singing in my way. So in the tradition of students everywhere, I avoided Rock Band 2 for a while so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. And then I decided to just play the Quickplay mode for a while for “practice”…on songs I liked singing that weren’t destined to be part of the Endless Setlist. Finally, I decided I just had to sit down and do it…mostly because I realized it would be nice to have the Endless Setlist completed before PAX.
The guys behind Rock Band 2 really had the right idea in designing those last cities, though. I spent a month’s worth of weekends singing almost nothing but the Challenging songs in the game, songs I was only too happy to avoid (because I don’t care for the groups involved, not because I found the songs difficult). By the time I sat down to work on the Endless Setlist Friday morning, I was so comfortable with those songs that hitting the end of the Endless Setlist was almost more relaxing than stressful.
If the game hadn’t forced me to keep practicing those songs, I wouldn’t have been ready to deal with them. And I wouldn’t have been able to complete the Endless Setlist. It’s a brilliant design, and it reinforces the importance of practicing even those things we’d rather just see disappear.
Aug 202010
One of the things I’ve had rolling around in my head since the second or third revision round of this manuscript is that maybe I’m trying to force it to be a novel. This started out as a NanNoWriMo project, so it makes sense that it should be a novel, right?
But I’ve noticed as I’m working that I’m trying to create a very visual world through my text. I became so invested in creating the backdrop this story plays out against, in creating certain characters and symbols, that I’ve tried too hard to paint these scenes. In trying to get the reader to see what I see, I’ve been overly descriptive. In very beginner-ish ways. It’s almost kind of cute when it isn’t downright annoying, provoking grumbles of, “What was I thinking? Why did I do that?”
It really seems to gather around a specific character. I didn’t realize I’d created her to be a sort of linchpin in the events of the book, but every time she shows up, I start wondering if I should be writing a script instead of a novel. I focus a lot on what she’s doing and where she’s doing it. In fact, it’s become so severe in later revision rounds that I’ve nearly started scripting her scenes in the hopes it would get it out of my system.
But it’s really not her fault, and so that wouldn’t fix much. This story spoofs treasure hunting movies, books, and games…all of which are visual in nature. So, it follows that this novel should also be visual in nature. If I’m struggling to do it in text, then my next best bet is probably to adapt it to a script…and then try to figure out how to draw everything (since we all know I’m still too new an artist to be able to do this successfully).
Maybe I’ll just try to figure out how to make the text work the way I want without being completely sophomoric about it.
Character development is a known issue of mine. With very few exceptions, the majority of my main characters are uninteresting. They lack something. Some lack a backbone, which is odd given that I’m the one writing them. An amazing number of them lack any sort of drive or goal. Others just flat out lack personality.
Alexandra Williams, the main character of my favorite NaNovel that I’ve ever worked on (the one I’m currently trying to beat into something readable), falls into that second category. Originally, these weird guys roughly her age asked her to help them find one of her contemporaries, and she was only too happy to go along for the sake of going along. She had no other reason for being interested in the case.
Actually, she kind of reminds me of a character I once played in a pick-up game, one who could have happily remained at the tavern eating her dinner because there was absolutely nothing interesting to her about the events going on.
Unlike that character, though, Alex played her role well within the plot of the story. It could have been any other archaologist in the world, but Alex really made it her own little quest. Eventually, I revised things to a point where she was suddenly a decent choice for the job because the missing archaeologist was her father’s old friend and colleague, but Alex herself had little to do with the choice. If she’d had a sibling who was also an archaeologist, that sibling would have been just as valid a choice.
Even with the family connection, Alex’s only real reason for working on this particular case is because she was asked. And she comes out of it with a broken ankle and a better understanding of an obscure culture she’d never heard of prior to the story. Alex is a strong, confident young woman who makes it clear early on that she pretty much does whatever she chooses to do, and she just goes along with first a research assistant and then some scary guys roughly her age.
And she’s the protagonist.
I think Alex illustrates a lot about where my main characters fail, and she gives me a lot to think about while I’m trying to make her into a better character and trying to research character development. I sometimes wonder if I stay with this manuscript because I can see so many opportunities to learn more about crafting a good story.
Aug 162010
Seven years ago, I was consumed by this idea of writing a spoof of treasure hunting media. I loved archaeology-themed books, movies, and games, so I had a wealth of tropes to play with. I created an archaeologist main character and her staff, created a group of villains, and started building an outline. I tried to throw in a trope or two as I went.
The outline was finally “ready” shortly before NaNoWriMo started that year, so this project became my NaNovel for that year. That year marked my first year as a Municipal Liaison, so I was writing and organizing events for a region that hadn’t had them before. It was also the year I was working as an assistant editor, and the combined stress from work and NaNoWriMo ended up making me very sick. I didn’t finish that month.
Two years later, after a few more stress- and environment-induced illnesses, a cross-country move, and a career shift, I finally sat down to finish the manuscript. It probably took me the better part of the next year to finally get to the final scene, but I got there.
I had a couple of friends read over it, and while both had kind words, neither had picked up on the fact it was a spoof. Their main complaint was that it looked like I’d ripped off all these archaeology-themed movies and games.
I kept their words in mind when I sat down to do the first round of revisions, only to find that not making the spoof clear wasn’t my biggest problem. The bad guys were barely present in the book, and the artifact everyone was searching for were even less present. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact I’d done that, and then I couldn’t figure out why no one else realized it. I rewrote the entire novel, trying to bring the bad guys in more. But another friend read over it and admitted I hadn’t brought them in well.
Frustrated at my inability to work with my villains, I labeled the project “dead” in February of this year and decided to move on to another project.
I started organizing my notes and bookmarks, trying to sift through outdated ones and tag the rest so I could actually find things. I discovered Springpad (my notetaking app) allowed you to pull notes into Notebooks that you could order and change, and started building another project in one of those Notebooks.
As I was working on one project, though, the archaeology spoof whispered in the back of my mind, “I bet if you pulled all of my notes into there and sorted everything out, you could probably fix most of my problems.” I’m weak, and easily swayed by talking manuscripts. I started building an information guide (or writer’s bible) for the manuscript and started filling it with information I’d written down but long since forgotten.
And I changed the project’s status from “dead” to “zombie”, because every time I say I’m done, it sucks me right back in. It just won’t get out of my head!
I’m currently working on a couple of projects that have encouraged me to start reading through both my physical and digital libraries, looking for information. One book in, I realized I needed to be reading not only for information, but also to determine if I even still needed the book in my collection any more. (See? The curator does live!)
In its current form, this problem stems from the fact that I’ve been teaching for seventeen years, and I have quite a few books on teaching. The first book I picked off my shelves was one I had to read for one of my teacher prep classes. Thirteen years ago, it might have been useful. Now it’s next to my bag, waiting to be offered to a fellow teacher trying to land her first classroom. Then, I started going through my digital books on teaching, and found myself wondering why I’d kept them. For the most part, they’re all things I knew before I got my teaching certificate (at which point I’d been teaching for five years). To make matters worse, I generally find anything written for current and future teaching professionals absolutely insipid. Delete.
It’s been hard to just sit down and read through all of these books, too. You hand me a book on game design, simulations, or using games to teach, and I’ll devour it. You hand me a book on animation, and I’ll devour it. You hand me a book on teaching…and the girl who supports ongoing professional development will poke at it, hide it, fail at even skimming it, and otherwise mimic her high school students faced with a class text they can’t stand. At first, I thought it might have to do with the fact I feel like I’m reading the same thing over, or I’m reading what I already know and do.
Then, I thought maybe it was a sign. I mean, I don’t subscribe to education blogs unless they have something to do with education reform or games. I don’t follow educators on Twitter unless they have something to say about educational reform or games. While I don’t mind discussing established educational theory and practice at work, it’s not something I really think about on my own. I’m sure if you looked through this blog, you’d have a hard time finding anything more on established educational theory and practice than a few posts on Constructivism, my favorite educational theory.
But one doesn’t have to be a “traditional” teacher to appreciate and apply Constructivism. And one doesn’t have to be a “traditional” teacher to discuss established educational theory and practice. (I know this because I have had a strange professional relationship with education and teaching my entire adult life.) And maybe this unconventional teacher is subconsciously realizing that she doesn’t give a fig for what’s been done. She’s looking at how to help improve the situation. That’s why she follows those who work with or discuss educational reform and games. That’s why she looks at informal learning in daily life.
It’s like this giant neon sign has turned on that says, “You’re heading in the right direction. Don’t look back.”
Aug 112010
I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life trying to either organize or catalog things. Really, I don’t think it became a real obsession for me until high school. I worked in the school’s library for two semesters. I filed cards into their proper place in the card catalog. I filed away magazines into the archives. I shelved books. During school breaks, I catalogued my parents’ movie collection, filling in gaps in the Rolodex where Mom kept an alphabetized record of the movies. I added the movie’s location in the collection and a description roughly cut out of the newspaper. I even went so far as to keep detailed, organized notes on all of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. It was fun for me.
At least, I assume it was fun for me, as I constantly reorganized my tiny movies and music collections throughout both my undergraduate work and my graduate work (which was ironically done in a museum, where I did classwork on developing databases and managing collections) for no reason other than I didn’t like the current organization scheme.
Over the weekend, I wrapped up several small projects that I’ve been working on for several months now. I finally finished adding all of the metadata and tags to my goodreads collection. I finished tagging my personal journal. I finished tagging my bookmarks, removing just over a third of them in the process. I finished tagging my Flickr account. Most inportantly, I actually tagged my Springpad account.
Can you tell I, the woman who’s grown up organizing and cataloging, got tired of not being able to find what I needed when I needed? It’s all in much better shape now, and I think I’m now ready to move on to projects that will rely on these newly-organized tools. Or maybe I just suffer from a pretty severe case of OC.
Except I don’t. Sort of. Today at work, I was asked if I thought the boxes we store archived files in needed to be alphabetized to make life easier. These are tiny boxes. We rarely need to fish out files from these boxes. If the folders were staggered to begin with, then it’s incredibly quick and easy to find the file we need. (I know. I’ve been through some of those boxes more times than I can count.) I told her it would just create busy work that none of us has time for.
Yes, I encouraged a lack of complete organization. Maybe there’s hope for me yet!
A coworker and I were talking about assessment last week, and she made an interesting point: Few teachers assign portfolios because they don’t want to take the time to look through them.
At first, I kind of laughed and agreed. I’ve done my time as a scorer for both a national test publisher and a large public high school. Everything was about how accurately you could score something within a short time span. I actually lost one of the jobs because they felt I just wasn’t fast enough.
But I’ve also done my time as a teacher, directing young students in building a portfolio that was used to both show their parents what they were working on and to help us better assess their growth. And I’ve helped students working on cumulative projects meant to demonstrate what they’ve learned, and seen the time and effort these kids put into their work in the hopes of passing. I myself have built portfolios of my work for both school and job searches. I’m trying to pull one together now.
We all know building a portfolio is a slow process. A lot of us have been there, struggling to find just the right work to highlight our strengths or what we’ve learned, and then trying to describe that work in a context that would make sense to the person judging it. A strong portfolio that shows off exactly what it needs to show is hard to come up with quickly and without a lot of deliberation and internal debate, so it makes sense that we put all of this time into building it.
Only to have it judged by a teacher who has 150 portfolios to grade in a time span of maybe two weeks. Or by the search committee or HR person who has five days to fill our dream position. The portfolio that takes one person two months to create is skimmed (if there’s that much time available) by another person in just two minutes. And a decision is made in those two minutes that affects the porfolio’s builder rather deeply.
Because portfolios are becoming more and more common in schools, we’re actually training an entire generation from an early age to expect this to be the norm. We’re telling them to spend a lot of time thinking about and reflecting on their growth and how to showcase that, but to expect it to be barely glanced it by the person they’ve handed the power of judging to. What a wonderful message to instill in children who are just learning how to function and interact with the world!
Would it really kill us the judges to slow down and consider more seriously the portfolios in front of us? Does a critical score have to come back quickly, or would it be better to have the time to form some sort of constructive feedback? Does the position have to be filled right this instant, or would it be better to take the time to make sure the right person was selected for the job? The reason I lost that job was because I scored projects the way I edit. I read over the entire project first to get a feel for it, and then went back and scored and made comments. It took me longer to get through a set of projects, but it also kept me from writing reactionary comments that made no sense or made it look like I didn’t look at the entire project.
Really, aside from the fact there’s an instant gratification mindset afoot in many industries, why does this time incongruity exist?
The other day, I talked about the debate over whether fan fiction is plagiarized or inspired. Today, I’d like to start off by talking about fan fiction as flattery. Yes, flattery. You see, there’s an old saying about imitation being a form of flattery, so it’s arguable that someone writing fan fiction is trying to pay a compliment of sorts to the original creator.
Sometimes, though, something happens to the fan fiction writer. She was perfectly happy writing stories about her favorite characters from her favorite media. She was sharing her work with her community and reading others’ work. And then it happens. This little voice (that sounds suspiciously nothing like any of the characters from the media she’s imitating) in her head says, “What if you did it this way?” Suddenly, she’s working on a fiction that is set somewhere the characters would never be, somewhere completely inside her imagination. Or maybe she’s experimenting with changing a critical aspect of one of the characters and exploring how that change affects his interactions with other characters.
She starts changing little things bit by bit, bringing out more of her own vision and relying less on someone else’s constructs. Eventually (although she doesn’t realize it at first), she’s changed so much and is relying so much on herself to create not only the plot but the characters and settings as well that she’s actually moved to creating her own original works. She’s learned how to develop and tweak characters and settings, to explore and play with ideas. In my experience, she’s also a stronger writers because she took the time to tinker with someone else’s creations, essentially deconstructing them and learning about character and setting development from the inside out.
This isn’t how it happened for me (I started out writing original fiction, and then dabbled periodically in fan fiction.), but I’ve watched students and fellow fandom participants go through it. It’s always interesting to watch because they often don’t realize what they’re doing and try to make their work continue to fit inside the fandom they’ve outgrown. It’s an apprenticeship into writing of sorts, and if they’re really thinking about it they’ll remember to credit the creator of the work that inspired their fan fiction as a source of inspiration and really flatter the creator.
If you’ve known me or read one of my blogs for any length of time, you know that I’m fascinated by fan fiction. There are many reasons for it, but one of the aspects that really fascinates me is the “Is fan fiction plagiarism?” debate.
At its core, the answer to this question is a very simple, “Yep.” The fan fiction creator has taken someone else’s characters, which they often then change into something radically different from the original character, and someone else’s world, which they either shun for a setting more like where they live or change radically to accommodate their altered versions of the original characters and woven a story around them. Some fan fiction writers will actually take an incident from the original stories and rewrite it to a different outcome and some will use it as a direct launch point for their own story. Others will create their own stories, often with an original character (Mary Sue or otherwise) or two woven in.
Wait a minute. The fan fiction writer will sometimes take the original world and altering it to fit what they know? Isn’t that inspiration, then? Wasn’t the fan fiction writer then just inspired by the original source?
And now you’ve seen where the argument begins, how it begins, and how circular it is. Just watching this argument can be fascinating enough, as people try to support why they’ve taken a side. It’s interesting to see how different people on each side regard the practice and wording of disclaimers, too.
Things only get really interesting, though, when you stop listening to the general debate and start listening to individuals within the fandom. You see, there are people within the fan fiction community who will plagiarize someone else’s fan fiction. It’s a bit meta, but there it is. Inevitably, the first person will find out, and caps-on arguments will ensue as to whether or not the second person really plagiarized or was inspired. (This is particularly entertaining when the second story has nothing more in common with the first story than a specific set of characters and a very vague plot similarity that looks like nothing more than both people responding to the same writing prompt.)
In every single case, the fan fiction writer who created the first piece screams, “Plagiarism!” while the second yells, “Inspiration!” And when someone watching the debate points out that both technically are plagiarizing the original source, both explode. For some reason, feeling plagiarized herself doesn’t give the fan fiction writer any sort of sympathy for the creator she herself plagiarized to begin with.
So, fan fiction is plagiarism. But it can also serve as the inspiration for an aspiring writer to start experimenting as part of their development.
