New Ideas from Interesting Places

Refreshed and invigorated from Desert Nights Rising Stars writing conference this past weekend, I've added to my writer's tool box. I look forward to exercising the tools and applying them.

My debt of gratitude to the organizers from Arizona State (including author Jewell Parker Rhodes and Karen Sideris) and instructors, including YA authors Bill Konigsberg and Tom Leveen. Colors Michael Schiffer and Jay Boyer who was a Carnegie Foundation Arizona Professor of the year brought new insight into screenwriting structure and dialog. Like many writer's conference, the screenwriting sessions opened new ideas on constructing and composing dialog. Barbara Peters shared book marketing advice. it was a delight to meet Allison Moore from Little Brown again. There was a crime fic/mystery panel with author's Deborah Ledford, Dana Stabenow, and T Jefferson Parker--again different points of view to open my creative mind. And they were just part of a wonderful weekend.

My sci/fi friends will be unhappy that I didn't have time for the workshops involving Alan Dean Foster, Michael A Stackpole, or Gary Cook. Alan did read one night. And I had no time for literary fiction and poetry sessions that in the past have proven invaluable. There simply wasn't time.

If you decide to attend a writer's conference, remember that networking and learning is only a small part of what takes place. Although, I took copious notes that I meticulously e-file for future use, it's the opening of the writer's ear, mind, and eye that proves most valuable. Often my note taking slipped away as I organized a new thought shared and how it would mesh in my current work.

That new view points stays with you for a long time after you've packed up and head home. I desperately try to keep that new view point fresh and present for several months until the next conference.

I'll post later on how Michael's insights shifted and confirmed some deep structural decisions I've made in my 2nd Kami Files manuscript. as I sat and watched the interestingly different film 3 Days to Kill. The scenes with the overlapping dialog and film like the learning to ride the bicycle one is exactly what I'm trying to create with the plot threads in my manuscript. The threads cross several decades and I've been afraid that it wouldn't work due to lack of talent and tools on my part. Just seeing those film scenes with my new point of view gives me hope that confirms the end result can be powerful. I may still not manage it, but I'm going to get damn close to getting it right.

Inspiring the Writer's Mind

After a submersion writer’s conference weekend (in this case Desert Nights Rising Stars at ASU), I never know what bit of information will become part of my internal life. In this case, it was Daniel Bosch’s short lyric poetry book entitled Octaves bound in three sections that are separated by three spines. Remember those thin magic wooden pieces tied with ribbons that you flip one end and the entire thing reverses itself? This doesn’t reverse itself with clever ribbons, but reading it is accomplished in a variety of ways reminiscent of it.

Out of these lovely to touch and interesting to turn pages, several poems teased and pulled my muse out of hiding. One line haunts me. It is now four days later and this line never leaves my thoughts.

The past is present now. And now. And now.

That pinpoint of time he isolates like a stop motion photo from the stream of life. I love the ticking of the life clock with ‘…now. And now. And now.’ We are reminded that we are always on the precipice of the present and of the past. Both reside within us in the space of a second, the beating of a butterfly’s wings, or the blink of an eye. In the last line, I've not remembered exactly, he reverses it.

The present is past and is now. And now.

What draws my muse, however, is the continuance of the assumed:

And the future is the present now. And now. And now.

There is comfort in that present moment filled with breathless anticipation and also sweet memory of what has passed. My basic premise in life has been: “The future enters into us long before it arrives.” What comes to us on the rebus strip of life has been a part of us unrealized until the present reveals the past and the future connections. This says it in a far more memorable and haunting way.

Thank you, Daniel Bosch, for inspiring my muse.

I fear that I’ve not gotten his words perfectly. I left the work in my Arizona writing studio, never imagining that I would live with this particular line etched in my mind. I will correct when I’m back in there.