Author Archives: Amy Jane

A Mental Riff

Posted on by

Leaving aside for a moment the question of these statements’ accuracy…

I wrote this mostly because I want to post something after a crazy-stressful week, and I feel both silly and serious.

~

This topic kinda did it for me.

I started a new book tonight– absolutely fascinating so far– and one statement got me following a winding track.

“Comedy comes out of anger, and interesting comes out of angry; otherwise there’s no conflict.”

–Hollywood producer Brian Grazer

Two thoughts came connected to that.

  1. So that’s why I’m not funny.  I’m not angry.
  2. This is a distinctly American observation.

One day at a library (actually, I was trying to map my climax’s time line and picked the wrong section to sit near– fat spines with enticing titles far too easy to read from 6 yards away) I picked up a book about comedy and the introduction observed that the humor of Great Britain and the United States are two entirely different animals: the British emphasis seems to be more on word-play, while American humor is distinctively violent.

Why do we laugh at slapstick, anyway?  What’s so funny about watching someone get beat up?

And that makes me wonder about an AP article I read about the difficulty of translating American comedies for the international market

The article was unfortunately poor– only one example, if I remember correctly, and it was of a comedy that was a flop even here at home, so I couldn’t understand the significance of it being a loser overseas.

{shrug}

Anyway, I’ve often wondered if there was a way to learn to be funny.  And now I’m wondering if there’s a way to learn different cultures’ funny the way you try to learn their mannerisms or gestures to match their language.

That would be so awesome– one could work at meshing the different types of comedy in the regions referenced in your story, and see how much could be amalgamated with the culture where the story is being told…

And, okay.   I’m done now.

Hope your week is more peaceful and less-hectic than mine was last week.

Examples of some Likes

Posted on by

In my Magna Cartas post I got pretty specific about what I like and don’t like in my entertainment.

I decided it would be most accurate to say entertainment, as I feel the same about these theses whether I’m reading, writing or watching it on-screen.

Some of my favorite examples.  It’s easy to see why my favorites rate that way, as they fit so many of my criteria.

  1. Physical (especially trans-species) transformation
    1. Any number of folktales.  Also,
    2. East and
    3. The Hound and the Princess
    4. A Well-Timed Enchantment
    5. The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis)
    6. The Cat who Wished to be a Man (Lloyd)
  2. Music as part of story
    1. East
    2. Dragonsong and Dragonsinger (McCaffery)– These are her only books that ended up on this side of the chart.
  3. Well behaved animals (impeccably trained or sentient)
    1. The Hound and the Princess
    2. Fire Arrow
  4. Mysteries that go deep into folklore
    1. The Perilous Gard
    2. Moorchild
  5. Making necessary elements of folk/fairy tales natural
    1. Ella Enchanted (Levine)
    2. Fairest (Levine)
    3. The Perilous Gard
    4. Shadow Spinner
  6. Genuine peril
    1. Enchantment
    2. The Sea Wolf (London)
    3. Inkheart            Continue reading »

A prayer for our leaders

Posted on by

From this story.

Father of Lights, the time is dark and our eyes are dim. Our kings, ordained for the protection of the weak, expose them to death, yet cry ‘hope.’ Our people have lost their way and are deceived.

~

Light in the Darkness, we call upon you that we may be undeceived and follow you once more. We humbly and earnestly implore you, not only that the evils in the land be turned back, but that we have the courage to stand against them.

~

Holy Spirit, hear our intercession for the repentance and conversion of those highly placed who do wrong. Renew a right spirit within them. We beg the same mercy for ourselves, who have stood by and called evil good. Assist our prayers, and enable us in all times and places to give you thanks.

~

In the Name of the Trinity, Amen.

The implication is that it is an older prayer, but no source is referenced.  Either way, I greatly appreciate here both the acknowledgment of evil and the source of hope through times of evil.

I hope no one will think that I am calling our leaders themselves evil.  I’m not yet ready to go that far.  But I cannot call the upholding and easing of abortion by any other name.  

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy

Deathbed Conversion

Posted on by

I think that accepting Christ “at the last minute” isn’t a whole lot different than going to see someone because they are close to dying.

Sure it can be a little embarrassing when you think the effort someone had to go to get your attention (Really dear, you could just have invited me.  We’d have worked something out…), but I can either ignore the issue–

Perhaps out of a mis-guided effort to show that my previous M.O. was so justifiable that there’s no reason to change, even now.

Or I can rearrange my current behavior to better use the little time that remains.

As humbling as it is, this is all that remains, and I would rather do the little I can do now than to know latter I did less than I could have.

~ ~ ~

I wrote that down before dashing off to Anchorage three weeks ago.  This morning I got the call that said my Uncle’s body had given up on this world.  I am so thankful my children and I had that last opertunity to visit with him and cement pleasent memories of him in their young minds.

Progress Report

Posted on by

Added ~ 2500 words in the last week.  It took that much to update the last of my (p)reworked scenes.

One of the noveling books I’ve read (probably more than one) emphasized that each character should be multi-purpose.  The doorman should never be just open the door.  He should also be the one who holds some essential clue.

~

I recently made a connection that catapulted a minor character of this novel into a major character in the next, swishing motivations and appearances all over the map.  So I went back (hand-slap if you have too) and brought the cleaned up portions up to date.

I must say, it was amazing how much faster the clean chapters were to update than they were to clean up in the first place.  Wow.

Anyway, the first 17 scenes are now current with my “3.4” version of the plot.  One particular advantage of flying through these scenes was feeling the overall tone of the piece and knowing (*quite* clearly) which chapters were out of sync.

Two out of 17 doesn’t seem so threatening; and noticing those two indicates that I actually have some measure of cohesion in the rest of it.  Very encouraging.

Hero as Mother?

Posted on by

What a fascinating thought!  LitLove at Tales from the Reading Room analyzed Twilight with this view I’d never seen before; basically that the ideal romantic partner is as all-powerful, all-providing, all-protective, and all-loving as a good mother is to her young child.

So naturally I had to return to my story and see if that is in my “ideal” world as well, because, however well it worked for Twilight and vampire romance it’s not something I want to promote.

Even so, my main trouble with the idea of calling these romantic notions “maternal” is finding (or defining) the line between the healthy mutual dependence and the unhealthy.  I completely reject the idea of hubris and total autonomy (it’s actually one of my novel’s themes).

~ ~ ~

A quick mental review of my story does show a bit more give-and-take than I would imagine for the maternal model:  Yes, the husband rescues the wife, but she’s already saved his life too, so I see it as a reciprocal relationship.

At one point early in the relationship he actually scolds her for depending too wholly on his (underprepared) judgment.

“Tykone didn’t want us to go,” said Kennett.“He thought the king and queen would come up with some solution for a useless crown prince.”

“He didn’t call you useless, and you said you wanted to go.”Linnea was shivering and angry, wishing the sun would hurry up and rise so she wouldn’t be so cold.They had moved away from the warmth of their fire and shelter so they wouldn’t waken Hale, but the ground of the barren clearing was completely frozen where they stood and Linnea could feel the cold seeping up through the soles of her simple boots.

“You said you would go where I go.That’s all you said.You’ve been human longer than me.You knew you’d be cold out here without the proper gear.Why didn’t you say so?”

Linnea closed her eyes, pinching out tears of cold.“It’s that— I thought you knew what you were doing?”

She looked over her shoulder and saw Kennett staring at her, open mouthed.“You can’t be serious,” he said, finally.She looked away.

Now it was Kennett’s turn to sound angry.“As soon as Tykone was gone I told you I have no idea what I’m doing.You’re the one with all the experience being human!”

In contrast it’s the fellow she’s forced to depend on while in hiding who takes the (more controlling) role that might be labeled maternal.

~ ~ ~

Speaking of relationships in general, my limited education/experience leads me to mistrust such one-sided power/surrender in a relationship.   Not because I believe men and women are the same (I believe there are distinct roles), but because I see that one-sided relationship as half a step from a controlling, then abusive, relationship.

And either could look the same from the outside.

But for all that I still see couples for whom the “total dependance” model seems to be working for.  Whether or not that stems from elements missing from her childhood could be irrelevant.  After all, “compatible neuroses” seems to be an utterly sufficient alternative to two “healthy” people when looking at the levels of peace and happiness in a marriage.

The Difference Between Blogging and Writing a Book

Posted on by

Blogging is like being the hostess or guest of honor at a party (or maybe just my kind of a party…): everyone is already connected to you somehow; you have some measure of established status, credibility and sometimes feedback.

Whatever you say (write) has the general context and cushion of relationship to get you to the next post/conversation, so flubs are less-threatening.

Writing a book, on the other hand, is like giving a speech.  In the same way that collecting three points (along with their supporting material) takes for most minds more thought than daily conversations, you think longer about the words for a book.

These words have more weight to you as a writer because they must be solid enough to stand on their own.  This work will be read by disinterested (in you the writer) people as well as those who love you and those who’d delight in ripping a gaping hole in your idea-baby.

Another 24-inch Stack from the Library

Posted on by

I considered taking a picture, or listing titles, but then I figured I’d rather be reading than promoting.   So here I am, emerging for a breath of air before I decide how (or where) to dive back in.

I’ve been revisiting my how of homeschooling (never the why or whether to) and that is what prompted my latest stack of acquisitions (never mind that more than half were actually storytelling books I want to explore and see about connecting them to my children…)

But the last day and a half I’ve been feeling a bit as I did when I was 19 and listened to Jane Eyre for the first time.  I remember thinking, I really like this story then freezing mentally and wondering, Is that okay?  Who do I ask?  Who do I go to? (Today I’s probably ask whom…)

That led to an interesting time of introspection where I realized my main survival mechanism through high school was to filter everything I was learning through outside sources, because I didn’t particularly trust my teachers.  Which meant I also didn’t trust myself.

You see, if I trusted myself I would have been running everything through my own filters.  But I had learned very well that teaching most teenagers seem to miss, and that is Your perceptions are not the final word on reality.  And I’m not knocking this, much, but it did leave me with some catching up to do.

~ ~ ~

That said, I have been taking notes as I read, and I’m finding myself falling into a student mindset that is only vaguely familiar and teasingly enticing.  I appreciate the organization of thought I’m seeing in these books, and while I’m waiting to embrace even the things I like, I have certainly gleaned a bucket of new things to think on.

Continue reading »

Novel Magna Cartas

Posted on by

This was one of my favorite concepts from the book No Plot?  No Problem!

The idea is to make two lists, one of the things you love to find in your novel reading, the other things you absolutely hate.

As I recall, he pointed out that we tend to think in terms of the yuck stuff being good for us, and when we feel that what we’re doing is not ________ enough we reach into the yuck pile and act as though that can fill in the blank for us.

How true any of that is can be saved for some indeterminate point in the future.  What I want to do is share the lists I started before I began writing my Lindorm story

Magna Carta I (The stuff I like)

  1. Physical (especially trans-species) transformation
  2. Music as part of story
  3. Well behaved animals (impeccably trained or sentient)
  4. “Convenient” sleeping and awake times from the babies/kids
  5. Mysteries that go deep into folklore
  6. Making necessary elements of folk/fairy tales natural
  7. Genuine peril
  8. Threatening villain
  9. Uncertainty of friends (sometimes)
  10. Genuine friends (other times)
  11. A thinking character watching the process of his or her thought.
  12. Mixing folk elements from various cultures and seeing it “work”
  13. Complexity (lack of obvious predictability)
  14. Surprising twists and secrets that the reader discovers with the protagonist
  15. Cleverness
  16. Characters out-thinking one another
  17. Courtesy among enemies
  18. Truth-telling as a form of riddling and testing
  19. Witty banter
  20. Good conversations
  21. The protective defender
  22. Dramatic rescues
  23. Endurance through fear
  24. “Acts of evil are shocking offenses to the way things should be.”
  25. Misunderstood identity/”fish out of water”
  26. Build on characteristics the protagonist(s) have to begin with, but doesn’t imagine any of them are already complete
  27. Overcoming an old enemy through what they’ve learned on their journey
  28. More than one character changes
  29. Acknowledge (and explore to some extent) the power of relationship
  30. Thought-provoking observations

Magna Carta II (the stuff I don’t like)

  1. Not-talking being the reason something bad happens
  2. Smart characters acting clueless
  3. Sex without significance (i.e., without the benefits or the consequences)
  4. Defiant/disobedient/“mischievous” children being portrayed as cute and entertaining (I find them irritating)
  5. *Angst*
  6. Daily details that don’t advance the story (setting is fine, day-in-the-life-of, not interested).
  7. Over-hinting
  8. Dragging the There’s-something-important-you-don’t-know wait too long
  9. *everything* stacked against the protagonist
  10. Too much time is spent on the meaningless, to no end
  11. I can tell where this is going, it will end badly (and frequently was utterly avoidable)
  12. Cruelty (a villain chooses a particular evil *because* it strikes so hard and deeply into his/her victim’s psyche) — honestly I go back and forth on this one; I see its usefulness, too.
  13. The fate/destiny/end of the characters is utterly outside of their own control–can’t be changed or improved by wise choices or good counsel
  14. Conflict simply to wrack up the tension

    15. How do your likes/dislikes line up? If you make a set of your own lists, leave a comment with a link– I’d love to read it.

What Church do You Go To?!

Posted on by

A snippet from a crazy dream this morning.  I spotted all sorts of references to my past, but will spare you all by jumping to the funny part.

Toward the end, when I’m scrambling to get on the same page (literally) as everyone else in the meeting:

I’m about to curl up under all those condemning eyes (how dare she think she’s worthy to be among us when she can’t even find the same page?!) and beg the person next to me to show me his page or help me locate mine.

He flipped over my set of pages and I recognized the words were a very accurate match, but the format was redone in “landscape” rather than portrait and written in pencil.

While I was still puzzling over this and insisting the meeting could move on, Yes I can follow along now, the leader pulled the papers out of my hand and after looking at them asked, horrified, “What church do you go to?”

And I knew with that dream certainty we all have that someone had to hand-write my packet because we couldn’t afford a printer.

The absurdity struck me even in my dream and I tried to correct him but was laughing too hard to speak.

Can you think of a worse church-volunteer position?  I honestly can’t:

Come quick Mary!  Another e-mail just came in– we need to get a hard copy to the pastor right away!

All of this is even more ridiculous considering we don’t have any kind of church office/equipment or hours anyway.