Writing Like F. Scott Fitzgerald

I had so much fun writing like JK Rowling, JRR Tolkien and Shel Silverstein in the past month that I decided to take my Modeling Mondays show on the road! I shared the prompt idea with the entire StoryDam community on their blog today and I'm really hoping to bring some exciting burst of creativity into the lives of fellow writers online.

For this week's selection of author and three sentences to use as a model I selected a novel that has somehow slipped through my fingers all these years. I picked it up this weekend and, by the end of the first page I turned to my husband saying, "Whoa. I want to do nothing else today but read this book cover to cover!" Needless to say, life got in the way and I'm still toting the book around, but the impact of the introduction of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was not lost on me. I knew then that I wanted to take a stab at recreating the sentences that drew me in so artfully.

For your reference, here are the first three sentences of The Great Gatsby that I will be using as my model:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

 “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

 He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that.

Now, I will rewrite this introduction by changing nouns, names, adjectives, adverbs and pretty much as much as I can while maintaining the basic sentence structure. I will italicize my changes. Let's see if I can make any kind of impact with my own creation...

In my older and more detailed writings my characters gave me one warning that I’ve been running from in my work ever since.

 “Whenever you feel like killing any one,” they told me, “just remember that all the creations in this world have had all access to your psyche.”

They never revealed any more, but I've always been unusually connected to my creations, and I understand their threats mean a great deal more than that.

Alright. I'm not F. Scott Fitzgerald and I put this together through what turned out to be a Migraine Monday for me, so I'm not sure how I feel about it as a whole. I'll have to come back to it later when my head stops spinning and the mystic blue lights of pain stop flashing.

If you're ready to join the Modeling Monday party, go check out the prompt on the StoryDam website and add your link for the whole community to see!

Also, if you have any ideas for future first sentences, or authors, just let me know. I'm always on the quest for the next great model.

Writing Prompt - Modeling Shel Silverstein

For the last two weeks I did a writing prompt based on a recommendation from the book So, You Want to Be A Writer by Vicki Hambleton and Cathleen Greenwood (the review is on its way!).  The suggestion/prompt was to "Use an Author as a Model" (p.67). It's pretty simple: "Try looking at the first few paragraphs of a favorite book. Choose three sentences and copy them, substituting new names and mostly new verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Keep the basic sentence structure the same."

 So far I used J.K. Rowling (via Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) and  JRR Tolkien (via The Hobbit) as my models. This week I am going to dig back further into my experience as a reader and use Shel Silverstein as my model via one of my favorite books of all time The Giving Tree. Here are the first three sentences:

Once, there was a tree…
And she loved a little boy.
And every day the boy would come
And he would gather her leaves
And make them into crowns and play king of the forest.
He would climb up her trunk
And swing from her branches
And eat apples
And they would play hide-and-go-seek.

This is going to be something completely new and different from previous weeks, but I'm going to go for it. (Little voice in my head is screaming: WHY DID YOU PICK THIS BOOK, NICOLE?!?!). OK, here it goes. Here is my new version, with the changes in italics: 

Once, there was a sea…
And she loved the giant moon.
And every night the moon would come
And he would give her tides
And make them into waves and watch her waters rock.
He would reflect upon her surface
And light up her horizon
And sit still
And they would play until the sun came up.

I love the moon and the sea. I think I like what happened here. Shel Silverstein is awesome.

What do you think? Make up your own and add it in the comments below!

Words in the Wind

OK. I did it. 10 pages of my first novel were just handed over to three writing group peeps.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Alright. I got that out of my system.

Luckily I'm hard at work on novel number two through Fast Draft, so I can't really sit here and stare at the pages I sent away and wonder What are they thinking? How will I show my face at the next writing group meeting? or Who the hell do I think I am writing a novel???

No time for that.
I've got writing to do!

I only just cracked 160 pages in novel number two and I'm itching to get to its conclusion. I know I need a lot of help in the editing/revising world, but I'll worry about that when I reach it.

For now, I'm going to keep this short because I have 20 pages to write tonight, along with a need to see Breaking Bad which I will be reviewing for Word of the Nerd, and maybe I should get some dinner put together for me, the hubby and the dog. Just sayin' - I've noticed that all these beautiful words have failed to fill any bellies around here!

Page counts since Wednesday:

Thursday: 23 pages

Friday: 10 pages

Saturday: 3 pages

Sunday: 0 pages so far (because YOU are distracting me!!)

Here's what I've learned: 

1. The next time I plan to do a "Fast Draft" project, I will not decide 48 hours before and I will actually plan ahead in terms of doing tons of loads of laundry, cooking meals and blog ahead of time and clearing my calendar of distract-able events!
2. I don't think I have been doing FastDraft correctly. I'm not sure I've been employing my notebook correctly during my writing process and fear I am letting super awesome ideas slip by me due to this fact!

When Panic ATTACKS

When I was in college, my mother took me to the emergency room for strange chest pains and difficulty breathing. I don't remember the trip or the treatment, but what I do remember is that when I relayed the story to my friend who was studying medicine at the time, she looked at me strangely and said, "Nicole... they treated you like you were having a panic attack." It was a strange bit of information; I hadn't felt any more stressed than usual, I didn't feel panicked at all, the one thing I had been worried about was the chest pains. My friend and I chalked it up to shoddy treatment at our local hospital.

If only I had listened to my body's first screams for help.

Those symptoms didn't return, but more severe ones did. According to medical professionals, both of my chronic conditions have no known cause, but are equally aggravated by stress. In the years leading up to my diagnoses I experienced some of the most stressful times of my life. I was not surprised when I found myself admitted to the hospital in June 2009; I knew there was only so much my body could withstand.

In the years since being out of work I have attempted to do everything in my power to avoid stressors. However, in the last couple of months, that act, in and of itself has proved to be one of the greatest stressors I contend with. You see, as a living breathing human being, avoiding stress is impossible. The only course of action is to deal with it.

Now that this ostrich is slowly raising her head from the ground, I'm coming to realize that this is a skill I may have forgotten. The result: Last Thursday I experienced the beginnings of another panic attack. I told my husband what I was feeling and talked through why I thought it was happening. We took the day very slowly. We're currently living through that terrifying part of life that older couples look back on and say, "Lord only knows how we survived," while laughing with the grand kids who don't believe life will ever be so difficult for them and who swear that their grandparents are exaggerating just to ensure they appreciate all that they have.

Friday we went to the beach with the family. This was a great escape from my norm with ups and downs of its own. Up: hanging out with a two year old who just wanted to play with sand and watch some Sesame Street on my iPhone. Down: not feeling confident enough to go in the water or walk alone back to our blanket because of my lack of vision. On the weekend, I was distracted by San Diego ComicCon news, which I welcomed, watched and wrote about, using it as a fantastical get away from my norm. And then my brother, another welcomed distraction, came to stay over on Monday.

Yesterday, the panic welled again.

I'm going to get through this. I've gotten through so much worse than what I'm dealing with now. I just have to remember to be strong, but also be forgiving of myself. Feeling stress is normal, avoiding it is not... I must deal.

In the meantime, I think it probably goes without saying that this has greatly affected my writing output, even though I am involved in the fabulous Fast Draft workshop! Here's the rundown of pages written since last week's update:

Day 6 (Thurs): 0 pages

Day 7 (Fri): 0 pages

Day 8 (Sat): 6 pages

Day 9 (Sun); 0 pages

Day 10 (Mon): 0 pages

Day 11 (Tues): 0 pages

Day 12 (today, so far...): 10 pages

Any words I did spill forth in this time, fell onto the pages of the Word of the Nerd website in the form of these three articles:

Why Is The Iron Man 3 Suit So Gold? 

Whedon Talks Dr. Horrible on CW and Sequel News 

&

Review: Breaking Bad "Live Free or Die" (S. 5 Ep. 1) 

So, for my weekly check in, I didn't do so hot, but I'm not going to PANIC about it. In fact, I think I'll just follow this rule of thumb:

The Fast Draft Experience

I have just completed day five of Candice Haven's Fast Draft writing workshop. For those who are considering jumping in on this program the next time it is offered, I highly recommend it. Perhaps you don't need help in all of these things, but this is what Fast Draft has taught me so far:

• how to make time for writing every single day
• how to balance my writing life with my real life
• how to shut down my internal editor during the creative process
• how to stay positive about my writing even when things get sticky
• how to write 100 pages worth of a first draft in five days

Each day I have pulled one or two of these lessons out of my day's work. Each day I am learning something new. I have not been perfect and all of these lessons learned haven't solidified into habits yet, but I am confident with the support I am receiving in our Yahoo group, from Candy and from the #fastdraft team on twitter that after two weeks of this that is very possible.

Each day, except for today, I set a goal of writing 20 pages per day. Today I set a goal of writing 22 pages, here's how my days worked out:

Day 1: 23 pages

Day 2: 21 pages

Day 3: 21 pages

Day 4: 13 pages

Day 5: 22 pages

As you can see, I did not hit my goal yesterday. When I was so far below the mark, my husband came up with the idea of setting today's goal to 22 pages so that, by today, I would at least have an average of 20 pages per day.

So what happened yesterday? I got BLOGGED DOWN.

On Monday, I thought I was pretty awesome because I managed to reach my Fast Draft goal, write a blog post for this blog and write a pretty awesome article for Word of the Nerd. On Tuesday, I thought I had mastered life based on Monday's success, so I decided to 1. wake up late, 2. take forever writing the top 10 post for this blog, and 3. accept another mega article for Word of the Nerd (at least I told them I wouldn't finish it until today). It was all wrong. I was all wrong, and I paid for it.

I spent a whole bunch of my creative energies on my blogging this week, and I enjoyed it, but my novels suffered for it. I could have delved deeper into the story I'm building right now and I could have edited more pages of the novel I have already completed (I have done no editing on that work since the weekend!).

And, so I don't feel like it was all for naught, here are the two articles I wrote for Word of the Nerd this week:

Will Robin Feature in The Dark Knight Rises?

&

Astonishing X-Men #51 vs The Florida Family Association

My question to my fellow writer/bloggers:  

How do you balance the two joys? I have scheduled blog posts in the past when I knew I would be doing a lot of writing (ie. NaNoWriMo), however, if I commit to writing every single day that is not a realistic option. It is also unrealistic if I want to continue to write for other sites, like Word of the Nerd who have time sensitive articles that must be written. Any suggestions are welcome!

*REMINDER*

THURSDAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR THIS WEEK'S YA BOOK GIVEAWAY:

AN ADVANCED READER COPY OF THIS FALL'S

SKINNY BY DONNA COONER