I am on track, 2,018: two-thousand-eighteen-words for today.
Today is ‘B’ day. Backstory.
Pretty obvious right? The backstory is all the things that happened before your main story. That Backstory will explain why your character hates spinach or is afraid of the dark or hates worms.
Do you need any of this? I do.
The great thing about NaNoWriMois that you can get out all that backstory. It will help you to work out your characters.
Working on yourbackstory you can mind-map your character’s family tree.
No info-dumping!
Pexels.com
Use what is relevant to the story!
It helps so you can see why your character behaves the way he/she/it does.
You can even see the connections your character has to their parents, or aunts and uncles.
Photo by Nicholas Santasier from Pixels
Example: If I need to see ‘why’ my character needs to carry a toad in his pocket. Maybe to remember the pond he fished in as a kid, and it was there that the bully named -Toad Killer- killed his pet toad.
I will write that story- that backstory for myself. Then, I will know why that character protects every toad he sees or why he hates ‘Toad Killer’. I won’t have to tell the reader the whole story, maybe just a mention of that backstory. Or it can be a complete story that starts with that backstory.
We see the backstory in every book.
Within J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books we find out his parents were killed and by who. (Whom?) Through the series, we learn more backstory; dished out in spoonful’s that keep us reading.
pixabay.com
Don’t overthink- just write.
Thiswas my take on ‘B’backstory. Great back to writing!
You know the National Novel Writing Month. It’s that one month when I give myself, my muse permission to write. I will write a total of One-thousand-seven-hundred-twenty-five words per day. I realize that my count is off, slightly. I don’t count the last day, that 30th day. That last day, I am busy with my happy-dance, and feeling a little sad.
Did I just say, sad…? By the end of the month, it’s like an old friend is heading home.
A bit sad.
A bit happy.
A lot tired.
And, relieved I survived.
I have written 50,000 words in November for a number of years. The words that poured out were less than great. But, they did tell a story, maybe more my story than the characters that ran across the page. A horrible mishmash of ideas, clues, pinch points, three-act –blocks, worlds, characters running around in their underwear, like untrained puppies. My muse would act like a spoiled child, that was trying to drive off the babysitter. A lot of screaming and crying, sitting on the floor curled in a ball, not listening at all.
Each November I set up a plan, then I wrote. My eyes blurred. I heard nothing that was said around me; instead, I crawled away from my words to cook meals.
I followed the rules and drank plenty of water. I even allowed myself time to stare out the window as if I was a cat hypnotized by an invisible spider on the wall. I would tell myself that I was exercising my eyesight by focusing close up and far away. I would ‘will’ myself to ignore those dust bunnies. You’ve seen them, they ride in on a breeze and disappeared under a desk or chair. The sneakier ones hide under the couch. I will veg out wondering -why-the phone won’t stop ringing or why it doesn’t ring. Or thinking- I should clean out the kitchen cabinets or arrange by size, date, and name every piece of paper in the house. I will have an uncontrollable need to dust. I will hear that dust calling to me by name.
I continuedto write. I will continue to write. I won’t ask for permission, not from myself or anyone.
No doubting
Never asking permission.
I saw Eddie Colla’s Ambition street art, his picture of a woman with a bandanna covering her nose and mouth, in one hand she holds a can of spray paint. AMAZING! Captioned:
“If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission”
https://eddiecolla.wordpress.com/tag/ambition/
I am going to add my own spin on his phrase.
If you want to write a novel, stop asking yourself for permission If you want to write a novel, stop doubting yourself If you want to write a novel, tell your muse you are listening
If you want to write a novel, write your novel.
Here is an A for the first day of #NaNoWriMo2018
A for Antagonist the main character or thing or situation that comes in conflict with your main character; AKA the bad guy
Example: Sauron in The Lord of the Rings by, J.R.R. Tolkien
How about overarching antagonists like Anakin aka Darth Vader, arches over the story, linking the beginning of the story to the end.
It has come to my attention, I haven’t written about Writer’s Village University(WVU) since I mentioned it in 2016- Wheeeuw! Where has the time gone?
I used www.toondoo.com to make this
RJ Hembree (Bob) Created WVU in 1995.
I have been part of Writer’s Village University for a few years.
What WVU has done for me? One day in October of 2015, I was a passenger in a car that was rear-ended while we were sitting at a red light. I was talking to the driver, turned to my left when the force of the impact lifted me and threw me towards the windshield. My seatbelt engaged and slammed me back into my seat. My left side hit the seat first. I was able to hobble away -due to pure luck. My doctor told me, that if I had hit straight back, I would have died instantly; instead, I damaged the left side of my cerebellum and my optic nerve. One- of many -very scary issues was that I couldn’t read and understand anything. I would try and read and reread a sentence and I couldn’t understand a word. It took me months of piecing together one word at a time. I used a piece of paper to block all words except for the one I needed to read.
created at toondoo.com
How does this wiggle into WVU?
Those classes, at WVU, helped me to keep trying. Keep reading. Keep learning, even if it was only one word. I am stubborn. I had paid for a WVU membership and I planned on getting my money’s worth. So I pushed blindly forward.
I found a wonderful group of writer’s who share, learn, and have fun with an exchange of views in classes, and on the forums.
If a book is needed for class, there will be a link where you can buy it, usually at Amazon. I have saved a lot of money by finding the reading material either from eBay, at my library or on Hoopla digital.
If you sign up for a class then find you can’t finish the class, you can drop it and try again the next time it comes around. Usually, the next date will be posted under the class information. Labeled: Event repeats.
Sure, you can read and do the lessons by yourself. But, when you interact with classmates through comments and questions you will learn ‘how to see’ and ‘fix’ your own writing.
The length of each class is shown on the class sign up page. The course page will have information and each lesson listed.
By joining an open class, ( one posted on the calendar) you will receive a lot more information than is listed on the course page. You will be able to ask questions of the Mentor or the Facilitator
A moderator adds welcome posts and extra information. Answers questions, post assignments, and track’s attendance.
A facilitator is more visible steers communication, welcome and introduction posts, posts assignments, texts, and feedback instructions. And is the go to person for reporting problems, while taking the class.
I would recommend, that once you completed a class that you enter it into the MFA program.
Credits are counted by weeks. A two-week class is 2 credits, four weeks is 4 credits.
Once you have gone through the core classes and submitted into each workshop. You will be eligible for an MFA certificate.
Please, make sure to keep a copy of your finished and entered classes. I keep a hard copy in a folder. (No I don’t but I am printing that out as I am typing this (um, not really but I will)- Major problem-My printer is out of ink.) {{GRIN}}
On WVU you will meet wonderful writers of all ages, in all stages of learning.
Writer’s Village University Publishes an E-zine called the Village Square.Submissions are restricted to members of Writer’s Village University in the MFA program. Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Photography; Writer’s Village University (WVU) also, has a photography group.
Here is my prose poem, from the July 2018 issue. I tend to take from my life. Can you guess what was going on when I wrote this?
Dump The Core!
By Gerardine Baugh
It is just after ten at night. Michael changes the channel so Captain Janeway shows up in black and red; she is leaning over Ensign Wildman and strokes Naomi’s chubby baby cheeks. Can all that new baby smell come through the screen? The Captain wants to add the baby’s name to the blanket she had knitted. Michael imagines her with balls of yarn rolling across her ready room, knit-one-pearl-two, she shouts out, warp core breach, which brought Michael to his feet, and sends him rushing to the toilet. “Dump the core!” He yells as the door slowly closes behind him. Explosions pour from the television rousing his cat. The cat stands up slowly stretching, paying homage to the assault on his nap with a sun salutation; then leaps off its pillow, and with padded paws hurries across the floor to the bathroom door, pushing it open with its head. The thud could be heard over the rising volume. Just as the phase discriminator of the sensor array brings tears to the cat’s eye’s it runs back to the living room. Where it steps on the remote changing Michael’s world into the horror of home shopping. He shuffles out of the bathroom, his pants dusting the floor. He grabs the remote and helps Voyager realign in the correct space as a grappler draws him back to his warp core breach.
LOL!
There is so much more at WVUthen I can list here. Come in for coffee and stay awhile. You won’t be disappointed.
I moved out of Chicago (in the middle 1990s) and relocated to the far northwestern part of Illinois, I noticed that the Milkweeds I had grown in my Chicago backyard -to attract butterflies -were nowhere to be seen in my new home, and that any butterflies I found around my new home were weak and dying.
Odd, right! Especially since I was out of the city and surrounded by farms and open prairies. Miles of Illinois countryside. I had assumed the butterflies would be abundant. I was wrong.
Humans have always ignored the tiny life forms that buzz and flutter around; we were lead to believe they were unnecessary and an inconvenience. We are slowly understanding how wrong we were and that we need to protect nature if the human race is to survive.
Before I moved permanently out of Chicago, I had gathered Milkweed seed pods from my Chicago garden and planted them into my new garden.
As my property grew upward and blocked some of my Milkweeds from the farm fields pesticide, my Milkweeds proliferate, and they attracted Monarchs.
In 2015, The Washington Post had an article, “As pesticides wipe out Monarch butterflies in the U.S., illegal logging is doing the same in Mexico.”
Monarchs are the world’s ‘miners canaries’ are we listening? Large companies profit from the production and sales of poisons. Those companies are feeding on our fears of bugs or insects known as Entomophobia or Acarophobia.
We have groups like the Monarch Way Station NetWork.
http://www.monarchwaystationnetwork.res.ku.edu
The Monarch Conservation Database of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service~ “We have developed a database to capture information about recently (i.e. since 2014) completed, ongoing and planned conservation efforts for the monarch butterfly….This includes improving and creating habitat by enhancing milkweed and blooming nectar plant resources.”
This is a wonderful site to find out how to help the Monarchs in your own backyard.
“Monarch populations have already lost an estimated 165 million acres of breeding habitat across the United States to herbicide spraying and development. Yet when the Environmental Protection Agency approved new dicamba products in 2016, it did not even analyze risks to monarchs” ~kansascity.com
And then there is Monsanto. Heavy sigh… the company that profits from the sales of their pesticides. Monsanto is also in control of our food supply.
All of the Monarch pictures are my own. All photo’s and the video were created in my yard. A big ‘Thank You’ to the Monarchs. If you would like to have your own butterfly garden check out ‘Pollinator Habitat’ at the Monarch Waystation Network
What are your thoughts on the plight of the Monarch? What are your thoughts on Monsanto?
**Attention** A 7-day Free Trial of the MasterClass subscription offering, the All-Access Pass! For the next seven days. (June 15 thru June 21) Here is the LINK
Masterclass.com Daniel Negreanu Teaches Poker
This is an amazing Father’s Day Gift. My dad loved to play poker. Does yours?
Unless you are living in a cave… on Mars, you must have heard about Roseanne’s tweet.
Ms. Barr wrote if the “ brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Isaw it and had two reactions. First I was confused and thought, ‘who is this ‘vj’?
Well, after doing a Google search I found that is Valerie Jarrett. She was a senior adviser to Barack Obama throughout his presidency. She was born in Iran where her father, a doctor, was part of a program that sent American physicians to developing countries. And her ethnicity is mixed black and white.
I dug deeper and saw that Valerie’s great-grandfather, Robert Robinson Taylor, he was born, June 8, 1868. He was the first African-American to graduate from MIT(1888-1892) Her great-great-grandfather, Henry, was the son of a white slave owner and a Black mother.
Valerie Jarrett did her undergraduate work at Stanford and received her law degree from the University of Michigan. She married in 1983 and divorced in 1988.Shehas one child.She worked in two private law firms.She eventually specialized in Commercial real estate.She worked for the city of Chicago’s Law Department under Mayer Harold Washington and a series of positions under Mayor Richard M.Daley.Valerie Jarrett met Barack Obama in 1991 through Michelle who was applying for a position in the Chicago Mayors office. And, Valerie was the CEO of the Habitat Co.
I could go on and on, but this is an amazing resume.
Let’s get back to Roseanne’s tweet: the ‘muslim brotherhood’ is a documentary, filmed in Egypt examining the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after 2011’s uprisings.
This movie, the second referenced in the tweet, I didn’t have to search out,‘planet of the apes’ the 1968 version with CharltonHeston and Roddy Mcdowall.
Or maybe you prefer the novel, Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. Here is a sentence from the synopsis on Amazon: “On this world, humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters.”
The intelligent species were evolved from apes. They were scientist and thinkers. The gorillas were the law keepers. They were a very intelligent, decent species.Well, the Gorillas were controlling asses.
Hmmm. Dare I say, just like some bosses?
And lastly, “…had a baby=vj.”
Okay, Istill didn’t get the reference. Roseanne hadn’t added a picture to her tweet. So it was all up to the reader’s imagination. I searched out Valerie’s pictures online andwondered what pictureRoseanne had been looking at, Valerie is very pretty.
I have taken some horrible selfies where I resembled a cast member on the walking dead. But…I couldn’t find a picture of Valerie that resembled that tweet. Roseanna didn’t add a picture to her tweet, and reading this tweet we can see why. Roseanne tried to explain her reasoning for the tweet- with this tweet.
I was drinking my morning coffee and my local news station put up a picture. That did it…. and I nearly choked on my coffee.
Really!Yes, really. Oh, waitI am supposed to lie.I didn’t find that picture; my local news station did. Wait, how doI know it was local? –Because Ionly have antenna TV.-
Some history on Roseanne, “ I did have a few nervous breakdowns and was hospitalized several times. It was very difficult,” this was said in January 2018 on Page Six.
“Roseanne, who first told the world that she has multiple personality disorder in 1994, says it’s not easy dealing with switching between “Somebody” and “Nobody.” ~ by By ABC NEWS July 12, 2001~abcnews.go.com
Even with Mental health issues, Roseanne continues trying to make us laugh. And we do.
According to Variety: “Roseanne” averaged a 3.9 rating in adults 18-49 and 15.2 million viewers. The first two episodes of “Roseanne,” airing back-to-back last week, stunned industry analysts when they averaged a 5.2 and 18.4 million viewers between them.” That’s a lot of guffaws.
So when Roseanne’s tweet went out and people ‘complained’ on Twitter.Roseanne took it down and apologized, more than once.
And then she begged ABC/Disney to forgive her. She even explained her thought process was mixed with Ambien, movie references and she thought she was white.
Some people got it.
Of, course the makers of Ambien had to chime in and cover their pharmaceutical butts, and adding their own slice of hate.
Gotta love the way Sanofi US shows concern for the people who take their drugs. I hope Roseanne sends them an email and they add this side effect.
The list of side effects for Ambien is staggering. Let me grab one:
quick to react or overreact emotionally
Now, we know why kids mental health issues are ignored in schools. Not my problem- our drugs don’t cause that- we don’t know what you’re talking about- didn’t hear about it- not my department- not a known side effect- let me take a message- Zero tolerance no gray area-they should have known better- I don’t want to discuss it-
The Twitter community can be downright threatening.
Guess, we now know how Disney feels about people with mental health issue;they don’t helpthem or back them up, theyfirethem.
Hmmm, or maybe its just woman with mental health issues they don’t like because I found an article titled:
Back to my views on Rosanne’s tweet. I was insulted by the powers that be- not Roseanne.
They tossed Roseanne Barr to the dogs.She is a comedian who keeps trying to make us laugh, while she cries inside.
Shame on you Disney, shame on all the haters. Next time try and read the text and figure out what it means before youtake a word like ‘ape’ and think you ‘getit’ you didn’t, shame on you for hatingjust for the sake of hating.
I agree she should never have said it. But, the fast and swift ax that fell is ridiculous. People shake their heads and insult the person and make fun of the illness while not even understanding it or ever having known the effects of mental illness or what can happen while taking Ambien.
It is like telling a person who is in pain or who has cancer that their illness doesn’t matter or it isn’t real. That they -the person in pain- needs to take responsibility for the inconvenience that they are causing everyone. Some illness don’t have borders. Just because you aren’t hurting like Roseanne doesn’t mean her pain is any less. One day you may be in her shoes.
Go ahead tell me why I am wrong. Just stick to the subject matter. I hope I gave you enough to work with.
I normally take the first few sentences that, David Mamet says at the start of his video lessons. Today, I just listened and used one from the center of the video and one at the end. I laughed at each one.
masterclass.com
David loves structure. I have a thing for disorganization. I wondered how I could come together with Davids teachings. I can. He tells us to see the structure at the start, watch it move through the middle the end, Act 1 -Act 2- Act 3. Watch for change. See the weight of the knife. How does it change?
“Structure is very important, I mean I think a lot about structure. And I think about our greatest western philosopher. I think a lot of you guys have already beat me to the punch, when I say of course it was, Daffy Duck. Because Daffy Duck asks the essential question of philosophy which is “Say what’s going on here, anyways”
Masterclass.com
“People said, Michelangelo’s statue of David, Right, pretty cute. And they say, my God how did you do that? He said, I just looked at this block of marble and I cut away everything that wasn’t David. And so, I grew up like everyone else thinking my God how brilliant. Until I realized, that what he was really saying, was buzz off.”
I am an anomaly. A person of color, that grew up in a neighborhood of even more color. Fact: life’s color doesn’t reflect from your skin. When I was a kid I had no idea I was one color or another until I was called out and told that my skin color was wrong, different, strangely overrated. Easily trapped like those Chicago rats, a Norway rat from Asia a migrant, a refugee deformed by poisons consumed. Rats chew through wood, glass, metal with teeth that continued to grow never really wearing down. Keeping them chewing, to live. To be poisoned to live to keep searching. To hunt, to quest, to explore to find a way out of the dark, avoiding death, the color of one rat no different than the other in the dark. Obscured in fur-covered skin. My hair won’t cover my skin color. I am human. I can see the rat. It pushes up from the hole under the house along the back wall near the alley close to food. Closer to the poison and no closer to getting what they need. Never seeing the color of its skin. Humans perceive one top layer. Ignoring the other six layers of protection.
Enishi Russian Blue Loves to have his nails trimmed
Color Cats Claws
by Gerardine Baugh
Trimming cats claws. Eighteen toes, five toes in front. Four toes in back. A polydactyl cat has more toes. Hemmingway’s cats have six-toes and still live in Key West. Their owner died in Ketchum, Idaho. Nails fly as they are clipped. Some cats enjoy getting their nails trimmed. Other cats complain muttering growls. Nails grown beyond their blood supply are shed like a coat of long hair, shorthaired, others hairless –cats. They comb their hair with their claws. They groom, climb, protect and hunt with their claws. Old fashion wives, jealous wives, with their tail’s tales, worried their cat will steal their breath, needed their claws removed. Misinformation places a claw as a weapon, not seen as a cat’s finger, fingers with nails that need to be trimmed, or polished. I wonder what color my cat will like, pink or blue, possibly clear.
I made it through January 2018; now, my goals for February.
What I found, by doing a monthly goal, and not just a full year of resolutions is that instead of losing momentum by mid-January, I became eager to get to the end of the month. –With a sprinkling of stress.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/alcohol-background-bar-beer-452744/
I found, that instead of taking all day to run through a Blog posting-which I did that first week– by the second week I was able to post-to-get-done without overthinking. Blah-blah-blah! Still came out but, it still became a post. If I had passed over a day because I didn’t feel like it, or I couldn’t think of anything to write I would have regretted –just not trying.
I had wanted to start this month by writing an opinion piece on the Woman’s March. It didn’t pan out. I have sent out emails and never got a response. Now I am waiting for a Facebook message, while I do some more research.
My march
Last month I posted on books I was reading, or sites I visited. I will add updates to those this month.
I want to get back to doing a nature walk post. This month’s goal is to write without stress.
“So, What’s my objective? Aristotle says that is the only thing that matters. What is the objective of the hero, to get from point A to point B; the scenes are the incidents and each indents builds up into a three-act structure. Okay, so the first Act structure is where my ideas run out Act 1. The second Act I don’t remember that- I am to drain the swamp when I am up to my toosh in alligators. ……”
…act I act 2 act 3 Its all about a knife,….same knife but the knife has a different weight in each act…
I watched this lesson three times. I am enjoying David Mamet’s enthusiasm as he teaches about plotting.
Today is the last day in January. I posted something each day so my GOAL has been completed…Hmmm, on to February, 2018 and a new twenty-eight-day GOAL.
Gotta love the way Sanofi US shows concern for the people who take their drugs. I hope Roseanne sends them an email and they add this side effect.
