Lighten Up

Life is busy. We all have tons on our plates: family, day jobs, church, hobbies. Amid everything else, we aspiring writers struggle to squeeze in time to write.

Just about everyone I know is racing full speed ahead, myself included. Many of us fall into the trap of taking ourselves too seriously, and when life hits those ever-present road-bumps and fails to meet our expectations, we get stressed and cranky.  Not only does that make life unpleasant for us and anyone unfortunate enough to be around us at the time, tension and anger usually serves to block access to the creative side of the mind.  When trying to write, this kills productivity, which results in our becoming more stressed, and leads to a downward spiral that usually ends with any pages we’ve managed to write in that state having to be thrown away.

It’s time to lighten up.

Dr. Richard Carlson, in his best-selling book Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff, said, “People are frustrated and uptight about virtually everything – being five minutes late, having someone else show up five minutes late, being stuck in traffic, witnessing someone look at us wrong or say the wrong thing, paying bills, waiting in line, overcooking a meal, making an honest mistake – you name it, we all lose perspective over it.

The root of being uptight is our unwillingness to accept life as being different, in any way, from our expectations.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Sure, life is busy and there’s a lot to do. As authors it’s far too easy to think about all the pages we haven’t written, or to curse the fickle muse who led us astray, resulting in yet another draft.

But that’s no fun.

I’ve decided to focus on the other side of the coin. When I get in ‘the zone’, focused on nothing but the story as words fill the page as fast as I can type, all those worries float away.  Those moments can be magical, and productivity soars.  So despite the fact that I’ve been writing for seven years with nothing yet published, I choose to focus instead on the skills and mastery of craft I’ve developed that I didn’t even know I needed to know when I started down this road. I now have three viable manuscripts in various stages of editing, with clear goals to work them to completion.  It’s been a long, difficult road to get this far, but it’s also been a wonder-filled journey I am deeply grateful I experienced.

Like Dr. Carlson says in his book, if we can learn flexibility and stop trying to control things we cannot control, we can evolve from battling life to dancing with it. Challenges will come, unforseen edits will be required, life will throw unexpected curves in our path. It’s going to happen anyway, and we already know we can’t control it. All we can control is our reaction.

I’ve decided to dance more and fight less.

What Does Your Dialogue Say About Your Characters?

Sometimes life has a way of sitting you down hard, making you take stock and reevaluating what you took for granted.  During one of these angsty periods, I found myself rethinking life goals and roles. Then came the hard part – articulating it. Somehow I had to find the words to define my feelings but I also needed the proper ones to express in a meaningful way what I was learning.

That got me thinking about dialogue in fiction and how we use it to convey information about characters like how they truly see the world.

The tendency is to make our protagonists the hero with a few issues who overcomes them and saves the day. As they are the point-of-view character, we learn a lot about how the character sees his world and reacts to it. With good writing, all the senses can be engaged. But, what about dialogue? Good dialogue is a window to a character’s soul. It is an opportunity to reveal, not tell.

‘Please, sir, I want some more.’

Who can ever forget that one famous line from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens? Not only does it convey a little boy’s desperation, his starved state and his courage, it also informs us about the society in which he lives. The repetition of that simple phrase first by Oliver, then by Bumble who runs the workhouse and finally by Limbkins, Chairman of the Board of Guardians, firmly places Oliver’s words in our minds thus forcing us to live the horror of the statement from several points of view. This one simple piece of dialogue allows us to see and feel several aspects of a society.

This is followed by an equally simple phrase uttered and repeated: ‘That boy will be hung,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. ‘I know that boy will be hung.’ There are no exclamation marks and no grandiose gestures, yet that simple statement followed by the simple speech tag said leaves us horrified.

There is a tendency to want to make characters appear smart and witty with that great comeback we would have liked to have when we ourselves were in an awkward situation. As writers, we must take care not to be helicopter parents, hovering over our characters, making them experience their lives the way we’d like to if we were them. Helicoptering can lead to sitcom dialogue – flat, witty characters without real depth – with purpose perhaps but not with depth.

Of all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen, my favorite dialogue, all 131 minutes of it, comes from the screen play of Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The first time I saw it, I was a kid off the farm in first year university. I was appalled. For over two hours, these characters did nothing but fight. To me, it was simple, ordinary, and all too familiar. How could this movie be critically acclaimed?

Yet, it is the one movie which I remember vividly. That script keeps me spell bound. Using simple dialogue, Albee captures failed marriages perfectly. The characters are vile – definitely not sympathetic – yet I’m riveted to the script. The dialogue is not mannered, not witty – it is ordinary yet perfectly captured. It rolls quickly. It’s fast paced. The reveal, the show, are perfectly executed as demonstrated in this exchange between Martha and George:

M: (swinging around) Look, sweetheart, I can drink you under any goddamn table you want … so don’t worry about me!|
G: Martha, I gave you the prize years ago… There isn’t an abomination award going that you….
M: I swear …  if you existed I’d divorce you….
G: Well, just stay on your feet, that’s all… These people are your guests, you know, and…
M: I can’t even see you… I haven’t been able to see you for years….
G: …. if you pass out, or throw up or something…
M: …. I mean, you’re a blank, a cipher….
G: …. and try to keep your clothes on, too. There aren’t many more sickening sights than you with a couple of drinks in you and your skirt up over your head, you know…
M: …. a zero…
(Script excerpt from: C/file/view/Script+for+Who’s+afraid+of+Virginia+Woolf.pdf)

Take the time to understand not only what motivates your characters, but what their fears, their disappointments, their hopes and aspirations are for that will not only determine their actions and reactions, but it will give them unique and strong voices which will reveal more about them than any well written prose can tell.

Happy Writing!

In the Fight

I’m trained to never give up. There is no success in failure. I’ve been screamed at, stomped to the ground, kicked to the curb, and smoked sixteen dozen times until my arms wouldn’t bend and my legs wouldn’t move.

The only penalty for failure is death. And it’s not an option I’m willing to accept.

I’ve been shot at, damn near stabbed, been in more fights than I care to remember, and stared into the face of crazy itself. And  yet I still persevere and go into work every day because that’s just what you do.

Then how come it’s so easy for me to give up? To just say screw it. Maybe another day, another time? How come it’s so easy for me to just walk away, to cave into that one little voice in the back of my head that loooves nothing more than to sit there and be an absolute smart-ass?

How come a blank page is so scary?

I work the line between abject poverty and extreme wealth. Every day I see the haves and have nots…and the prices people are willing to pay and the blood they so willingly shed.

It’s a depressing existence, fluttering between two worlds and being party to none.

I come home to a loving family who is not loved by my family. Again, I flutter between two worlds. Positive and negative spinning in a perfect synchronized dance.

How do I find inspiration in a world so bleak?

Despite the rain, the clouds, the permeating darkness — flowers will still bloom. The sun will shine. And each day is a new day.

My inspiration comes from all around me: The beaming smile of a two year old happy to have her daddy home, the struggling people doing the best they can in the circumstances they’ve been birthed to and the victims of circumstance…the sheer excitement from opening a new pack of Magic cards or starting a new book. Will it be everything I hope it will? The lazy wings of a butterfly as it flits from tree to flower, sky to grass. The true colors of autumn in South Florida as the blue jays and cardinals come to wait out the winters up north…the listless, lazy crashing of waves on shore…I could go on and on.

It’s really, truly beautiful.

Every time I consider giving up, forgetting my writing, moving on with another life, a different hobby, another time, another place — I just think of the millions of other people out there every day, doing what they love, making the best of what they got.

It’s one of those things that just makes me wonder. If they can make it, then so can I. There’s much more agonizing ways to spend my time (root canal comes to mind) than sitting in an air conditioned room with my butt firmly planted on a nice, comfy chair.

So, even if I’m a year behind my deadline – I can do it. I know I can.

I’m trained to not give in to my fear. To never give up.

I will fight the fight.

I will not back down from the blinking black cursor and the blinding white screen.

Never give in. Never give up.

 

James A. Owen: How Synchronicity Works (For Me)

A guest post by James A. Owen

Everyone in the world seems to spend a lot of time trying to discern signals in the noise, to find the elusive patterns that will somehow light the way towards an easily attained success – but the truth is that everything is signal, and the only patterns that exist are those we trace with our passing. Our choices form the patterns, and it’s only in hindsight that we can see them. The important thing to remember is that circumstances change; this is why patterns cannot be replicated. The only thing we can do is make choices as wisely as we can and then adhere to them – and the most important choice you can make is to never sacrifice what you want the most for what you want most at that moment. Doing that creates the only kind of pattern worth following: a straight line. If you follow that, then the world will intersect with you in the ways that resonate with your choices, and not the other way around.

Those intersecting moments are synchronicity; the flashes of insight, inspiration, and opportunity that tell you you are on the right path – but it only works if you do not waver in your choices.

Two years ago, an animation producer offered me a $250,000 investment in the HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS IP to jumpstart the development phase of the movie. We’d already had a dry run developing it at Warner Brothers with HARRY POTTER producer David Heyman and BATMAN BEGINS screenwriter David Goyer, who was overseeing my script, but they were occupied with other projects at the time, so it proved to be a nonstarter. Several years later, I’d regained the film rights and was working on it with Rick Porras and Marc Ordesky, two producers from THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Rick had introduced me to a screenwriter, and we’d assembled a great presentation, including preproduction sample art from ILM, but the high pricetag on the movie (estimated at $150 million to $175 million – ships on water are costly) was proving daunting to the studios, so we decided we needed to do more development first – and that takes money.

The offer could not have come at a better time for the project, and for me personally – after costs (paying the lawyers) and paying the screenwriter and other associated stuff, I would have netted about 40% of that. What made that money essential was that I was at the time coming down with a bad case of pneumonia that would linger for months – forcing the cancellation of the book tour for my fifth Imaginarium Geographica book, and seriously delaying completion of the sixth.

After difficult and protracted negotiations which stretched from August into December, we reached an agreement in which she and her backers would get a 25% stake in the IP, plus a return on their money, plus producer’s fees. A great deal for them, and a bearable one for me. But then we found out they wouldn’t be ready to fund until January – and I had to tell her if I didn’t have $50k by mid-December, I would lose my house. It had been a difficult season for a lot of people, and my own mother had come within days of losing her house. An error in transferring my mortgage between banks turned into a huge and expensive debt – one I couldn’t pay without that money. The investor said – around December 6 – that she might be able to arrange it.

By December 9, she said they can advance the money I needed immediately, on signing of a deal memo – AND on my assignment to her of all animation rights in the IP.

I agreed.

Around December 12, she told me her backers also wanted the publishing rights, too. I asked to exclude the current books, planned sequels, and spinoff titles. She agreed.

On December 14, I received the deal memo with only hours left to receive a wire to save my house. It included publishing rights to the excluded list of books. Furthermore, ALL rights to the IP would be transferred to a jointly-owned LLC while the other negotiations were conducted, during which NO other money would change hands.

I declined to sign. And she vanished from my radar without asking after my house.One immediate positive aspect of this was the effect it had on producer Mark Ordesky, who called up his attorney (also mine) and said, “I don’t know five people in Hollywood who would have made that choice.” Prior to this event, he had been on the periphery, but now he was decidedly involved in whatever I could make happen before I went broke.

Somehow, I managed to talk the bank into holding off on the foreclosure sale, in part by suggesting that I could 1) actually hold a press conference about it; and 2) make them look really bad for doing that sale right before Christmas. They agreed, and ended up announcing a moratorium on ALL of their foreclosure sales until after Christmas.

That spring, I decided I needed to somehow replace the six figure income I lost from the investment deal, so I could pay my bills and possibly fund the movie development myself. I had a Book Babe transcribe a recording of the library presentation I’d been doing for a few years, which I edited and expanded into DRAWING OUT THE DRAGONS: A Meditation on Art, Destiny, and The Power Of Choice. I released it as an ebook, and started selling well – REALLY well.

A number of readers wanted to have print copies so they could give DotD as Christmas and graduation presents, so I started a Kickstarter fundraiser to get the money. We overfunded, raising 130% of the amount we needed.

Around the same time, I googled the animation producer’s name and found out she and her backers had been censured by a federal judge for selling unregistered securities, and for fraudulently selling stakes in companies based on ownership of IP’s that they did not fully control. Had I agreed to the earlier deal, I would have either seen my biggest works tied up in a legal morass indefinitely; or seen my work used as a lever to bilk investors out of their money.

One of the Kickstarter backers was one of the people in charge of the venerable LTUE Symposium held for thirty years at BYU, and she invited me to be their next guest of honor.

The DotD books came out just prior to Christmas and started selling well, and more, garnering stellar reviews.

I went to LTUE in February 2012, and delivered a keynote address – DRAWING OUT THE DRAGONS – which got me a long, long standing ovation from an audience of 400 people. I was mobbed the rest of the day.

That night at the group signing, a woman waited at the end of my line for three hours in order to tell me the keynote was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard, and that she’s the acquisitions editor at a fine publishing house, and she gave me her card, and said if I ever want to do ANYTHING with them, the door was wide open.

Three months later, after I, in my Merchant Prince mode, conducted a serious courtship campaign, she and her boss, the publisher, flew to Arizona to convince me to do business with them.

Negotiations ensued. A contract was proffered. Negotiating the details took longer than we planned – but still, were going extraordinarily well.

In July, on the drive back from a family vacation, we found that the bank had finally ceased all foreclosure actions on my house and granted a loan modification.

Further negotiations occurred.

And, as of last Friday, the publisher and I finally agreed on the last terms of a deal comprising a total of eight books under two of the largest contracts I have ever signed in my career.

One contract is for a fiction series, the other, for a nonfiction series. Multimedia and film development on the former is already underway under the supervision of the same team I’d assembled to work on HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS – only this time, I hold all the rights to everything, because we’re funding the development ourselves.

If I had said yes to that investment deal two years ago, I would have spent the entirety of the front money saving my house – which I may have ended up losing anyway, because no other money would have been forthcoming due to the true nature of the backers making the offer. Instead, I would have given up most of my publishing rights in my most successful series, the animation rights, a chunk of all the REST of the rights, and more, tied myself as a partner to people who were about to get shut down by a federal court.

Because I DIDN’T say yes to what seemed a sure thing and reasonably easy money, I had to find another way to raise funds, and it was by sharing my own story. Because I did that, it became a book; because of the book, I was invited to speak at LTUE; because of that keynote address, I met an editor who has changed my future. And because of that meeting, I can now see the straight line stretching away ahead of me as clearly as I can see the one behind me.

All of the details of these projects will be announced later this week. I’m sharing it here, publicly and among readers who are my peers, first – along with one more secret: the first book published under this deal is going to be released in a new nationally-distributed mass market hardcover two days after the one year anniversary of my keynote address, and two days before the next LTUE Symposium. Sometimes the synchronicity you find is the synchronicity that you create for yourself.

The struggle turned into prosperity, because my choices never wavered. That’s how my synchronicity works. There’s no elusive pattern that creates success; it’s the benefit of following a straight line.  Everything important to YOU is your signal. The rest is signal for someone else. Follow your signal. Trust your judgement. Hold firm to the choices you believe in.That’s how it works.

James A. Owen is the author of the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series, the creator of the critically acclaimed Starchild graphic novel series, and the author of the Mythworld series of novels. He is also founder and executive director of Coppervale International, a comic book company that also publishes magazines and develops and produces television and film projects. He lives in Arizona. Visit him at HereThereBeDragons.net Stay tuned for a follow-up post by James A. Owen regarding the hinted-at projects. Something exciting is in the works.