[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

[Caelum]

Hey. You. This is for us. That means it's for you too. And you. Oh, yeah. And especially you.

[Ball]

I <3 you Cael seeing as I saw that one before.


Super Great Faces. =D

[Caelum]

Cleared space. There has been a lot going on in my life this year. It started out terribly, with illness, emergency surgeries, diagnosis, treatments, recovery, et cetera. I am well now, but I am changed. As commonly happens, my situation and its far reaching consequences put a strain on my family both emotionally and financially. By the time I was back on my feet physically, I was up to my ass in emotional alligators and spent a great deal of necessary time handling the fall out. As I was dealing not just with my own stress and emotions, but that of certain loved ones that did not always fit kindly together, that was back and forth, stall and start sort of road. Finances are never fun to deal with when you aren’t wealthy, so that it always an uphill battle. It’s a process. Everything, I’ve learned, is a process. I feel like I’ve finally got my writing feet back under me again. This is a good thing, too, because I just agreed to take on three new projects and just last week completed detailing the 2014 goals to be achieved by, well, year end or very shortly thereafter. (The BackUp Emergency Plan Goal is my birthday, January 27th.) I have largely stopped feeling like I’m a year behind in everything. All of my deadlines went to hell with my health last January and I haven’t felt at pace with them since. I am starting to now. So what? So I cleared out all of the overgrown flower beds this weekend around a vid-chat conference and a long distance project brunch and I feel freer. Fall’s just starting here. This morning was the first morning in months that things actually felt cool and not just hot. This weekend I’m going to a memorial service in Atlanta and the sorrow of that isn’t getting me down as I’d feared. I’m not crying every few days any more and it’s been so long since I’ve had to take crazy amounts of medication that I’ve stopped automatically reaching for the medicine bag first thing.. My schedule is full and I feel good about all of it. The point of all this is really just to say that they were right. You were right. Things do get better. Life improves. In fact, life insists. It sometimes feels tragic and diminishing when the world keeps rushing past you when you’ve suffered a loss or are recovering from a trauma. Only it isn’t tragic, and I find it now to be reassuring. Life insists. Life will keep on. And eventually you’re going to catch your breath, and catch up.

[Caelum]

Dead. Deadeadead. Dirtbag Zeus. Excerpt: ZEUS: wanna hook up IO: aren’t you married? ZEUS: my wifes cool we have an open thing IO: wow i guess ok then [the sky darkens] ZEUS: oh shit oh fuck IO: what is it ZEUS: my wife is coming IO: i thought you said your wife was cool with– ZEUS: shut up i have to think [ZEUS turns IO into a cow and casually leans against her] ZEUS [whispering]: i am so sorry i will change you back as soon as she leaves HERA: what are you doing down here ZEUS: I BOUGHT YOU THIS COW ISN’T THIS COW GREAT IT’S A PRESENT FOR YOU YOU CAN KEEP IT FOREVER AND EVEN KILL AND EAT IT IF YOU WANT [whispering] i am so sorry

[Caelum]

Quick Realization on Fall in Riverfall. Caelum has dropped his walls. Reservations are out the window and caution is largely to the wind. He’s going from desire to decision to action in seconds on things both small and large. It’s making for some really interesting writing and opening the door to a ton of opportunities.

[Caelum]

A note about books. Unsurprisingly, I like books. I pretty much like all things books. I am not a genre junkie or a literary snob. I enjoy stories and love words far too much to limit myself in that way. Of course, there are books I dislike and stories I adore, authors I think are genius and genres I’ll take with me when flying but won’t read before bedtime. That’s pretty normal, I think. I cherish classics, obsess over fantasy, eat up thrillers, pour through smut, loiter in non-fiction, make pew-pew noises while reading sci-fi, and generally find something to love in all books everywhere. YA is compelling. Teen is unexpectedly dense. Children’s books are like bright autumn skies. I’m not a mother, but my cousin to whom I am very close is having her first baby next month and this weekend I’m traveling to attend her baby shower. She requested that in lieu of a card, we bring a baby book and we can write a little message in it and sign it if we like. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, I married a man with a sense of humor as occasionally awkward and irreverent as my own. He was on the right side of town and offered to swing by the book store and pick out a baby book for me. Usually this is something I prefer to do myself and well in advance, but life has been super busy lately and, quite frankly, for my own reasons I was not overly interested in spending a lot of time thinking about this baby shower. So I told Dan to go ahead, find something, and left it at that. He came back with one of my favorite books. A genius book. A book that I’m having to remind myself that I am totally adult enough to give to my cousin in front of both our mothers and not flinch. It’s Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. Pretty famous right now, and worth the humor for anyone to read, parent or no. I think in a few years my cousin’s kid will thoroughly appreciate the thought.

[Ball]

LOL That book title is amazing

[Caelum]

Keep on keepin’ on. Life is exciting of late. I was in a Mizahar writing rut for the majority of October, but in all honesty I was also super busy. Summer finally bit it down South and I was able to fling open my windows and turn off the AC without worrying about melting. This cut my power bill in half, which was a good thing because I had a car repair happen too. I was broken down on the side of I-95, lying on the hood of my SUV, and basically reconsidering every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life while waiting for the zombies to just come out of the fucking woods already. My phone chirped to alert me of an incoming email. I had a new gig! It had been a dry few months and my bank account was suffering. Talk about timing. I’m pretty sure I’d still be there, staring at the sky and wishing my life could magically fix itself if I hadn’t received some sort of good news. The remainder of the month was largely consumed with working on the gig, working on the other work, and preparing for the annual party my parents throw on Feast of All Saints. While it’s my parents party and not mine, we live on the same island and just as many of my friends come to their party as do theirs. This means I’m somewhat responsible for helping pull it off. In addition to the usual crowd, my brother let me know that he planned on bringing his new girlfriend to the party. This was a big deal because he recently got out of a very long term relationship and had been catting around all summer until he met this girl. All of a sudden, he started smiling and using very serious words whenever she came up. It was adorable, and terrifying. Turns out, the girlfriend is basically the best friend of my highschool bestie. This is unsurprising considering that it’s a small town and my brother and I are Irish twins and run in the same circles. This is a very long way of getting to the fun part – the party. More exactly, the fourth quarter of the party where my cousin’s water breaks in front of about sixty people and all hell breaks loose. So now I have a new baby cousin (8 lbs, 3oz) who is adorable and also a head cold. Go figure. Tonight I have an editorial meeting via vid chat and next week I have an incredibly important doctor’s appointment that I will tell you all about… afterwards. For now, I’m back into Miz and Caelum and all of the madness he has going.

[Caelum]

How To Story Below are the basic components of five separate but similar conversations I’ve had with friends and clients this month. Kate, I’m writing a book/play/screenplay/faction! Awesome! Good for you. This is the first/second/fifth time I’ve NaNo’d/wrote a book/lost my mind, but I can’t anymore. I don’t know what happened. Everything stopped/collapsed/started sucking. What do I do? Okay, let’s start from the beginning. What’s the story? Well… (Insert: long explanation of the setting or the magic system or who the protagonist or the villain is and even whose work inspired it or what cute thing their dog did that morning.) Sounds cool, but that’s not a story. I want to know your story. Um... (Insert: But I just told you! Or, Here, I’ll go over it again. Or even crazed laughter.) (Insert: Blank look.) Lesson: You can’t expect your audience to follow your story if you can’t even tell me what it is. Story is: Goal + Conflict = Plot Protagonist > Inciting Incident > Rising Conflict > Climax > Fall > Resolution Main Character > Want > Conflict > Action 1 > Action 2 > Climax > Result These are standard plot equations and three and five act lay outs. These are the bare bones, the building materials, the seeds and the soil. This is what people are talking about when they say structure and talk about narrative structure or dramatic structure and the internalization of it. Internalizing structure is a thing people talk about because it’s basically the only way anyone ever understands it. I can explain and outline plot structures and give a gazillion examples. I have before and I’m willing to do it again if necessary. But ultimately it won’t matter until you internalize the concept of it. Until it clicks. Until your brain goes “ah-fucking-ha!” and suddenly every book you’ve ever read and every movie you’ve ever seen, good, bad, and ugly, makes sense. Suddenly, you understand why it was good, or bad, or just plain ugly. Prime example: Cinderella. The movie would have a damnably hard time succeeding in modern screenwriting because the protagonist has no agency. Everything happens to her. The Little Mermaid? Fantastic. You know what she wants from the get go: legs. And, equally as important, she goes for it. “Sign away my voice? Hell yes. That’s how badly I want legs and this boy.” And it’s brilliant. This concludes my dispatch from story hell.

[Caelum]

Here's one more than worthwhile. It breaks the three act down with directional details.