Author Mary Ann Clarke Scott

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Elevens Tag: Random Facts About Me

I was tagged in the ‘Elevens Tag’ by Emily Dring at Ficklebrain. So, it looks like I’ve got eleven questions to answer. If I have tagged you, you’re next! Look to the end of this post for my new eleven questions and get typing away…

Mary Ann Manga FaceHow to play Elevens Tag:

  1. Post these rules.
  2. Post a photo of yourself (if you want to) and/or eleven random facts about yourself.
  3. Answer the questions given to you in the tagger’s post.
  4. Create eleven new questions and tag new people to answer them.
  5. Go to their blog/twitter and let them know they have been tagged.

1) Is there anything that you like that most people don’t, or that you don’t like that most people do? Getting up in the morning and having to interact with other people. I like to start my day very slowly and quietly, puttering, drinking tea, hugging my cats, and not talking and rushing around. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like the idea of a regular office job. I’m a night owl through and through, and the world is always getting in the way.

 

MA&ZU

2) Can you name one funny thing that you believed to be true when you were younger (which isn’t true)? That it’s frivolous, irresponsible or foolish to be an artist. That art is a nice hobby, but you have to do something sensible and practical to survive. Now I know that if you are called to be an artist, in any medium, then that’s what you need to do. Follow that passion. Use your talent and vision. I regret not following my instincts when I was younger. I was always trying to be sensible, please others and make them proud. Now, I’m trying to make up for lost time. Trying to get closer to the real me.

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3) Which fictional character do you relate to the most and why? Jo March, because she knows what she wants, she is determined to get it, she just doesn’t fit in, and she is willing to give up the love of a good man and the good life he can provide her to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. And Elizabeth Bennett, because she’s idealistic and a bit naïve, an introvert, and believes in true love.

4651808861_7ae17b432c_z4) Can you name three places in the world that you would like to visit but have not yet had the opportunity to? Thailand, Greece, Eastern Europe (Prague/Warsaw/Kiev)

5) What has been your proudest achievement so far in life? Completing three novels. No, having my son. No, completing my novels. No, wait… Having my son taught me about commitment and discipline and patience and integrity, and that made it possible for me to write my novels.

my son when he was small

6) How do you think we can tell ‘good’ writing from ‘bad’ writing? Good writing doesn’t get in the way of the story, either by being too awful or too spectacular. It’s pleasurable to read beautiful writing, but I don’t like to be distracted from a well-structured, creative, deep and entertaining tale about interesting, believable characters. That’s the main thing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA7) If you could only drink one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? Probably tea. But I’d miss white wine.

Elizabeth_II_greets_NASA_GSFC_employees,_May_8,_2007_edit8) If you were the Queen of England for a day, what would you do first?  I think QEII is a pretty strong, incredible woman who has generally been a great monarch for the modern world, under trying and constantly changing circumstances. I admire her. Maybe I would try to get the Royal family to step back out of the spotlight a bit more. Let them find normal. Even though the English people seem to like what they do, and of course there’s the whole noblesse oblige thing. They do live a life of incredible privilege, but at a high price, I think. And the press won’t leave them alone, anyway.

9) What exactly is it that gets you really excited about a book, film, programme or song that you love? … a well-structured, creative, deep and entertaining tale about interesting, believable characters. The character arc.

10) What good quality do you possess that you don’t think gets enough exposure? I’m very tolerant of others’ differences. Very open-minded. But because people are often embedded in who they are and what they believe, and not afraid to express opinions, I find I often bite my tongue, not wishing to offend those with different views to my own. I always figure I’m better off listening and observing anyway, and maybe I’ll learn something that will change my mind on a topic. This has happened many times already. So I don’t hold too many strong opinions. It probably makes me appear weak-minded or dull, but there’s a lot going on upstairs. Sometimes it’s because I just don’t have a position, for spiritual/metaphysical reasons. I’m very apolitical. This makes blogging difficult for me. I can’t abide empty chatter, and I don’t like to lock in too many ideas either. I’m constantly working things out.

S-Tolerance

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

11) Why did you start blogging on WordPress? Well it was/is just a web site to begin with.  A place-holder, so that anyone looking for me (the unpublished writer) would find the right me. Then, because I understand writers can’t be eccentric hermits these days (much as I’d like that), and I need to create an author brand, a community, an island in the vast sea of the internet that can be my home. A place to figure out who I am and who I’m talking to, and what I have to offer. I’m still working on that.

There we have it! Eleven questions answered, and now eleven to ask! Even if you weren’t tagged, please feel free to play along. Here are your eleven new questions:

1)   What is your favourite happy meal?

2)   What genre of fiction do you love the most and why?

3)   What belief do you try to convey through your blog, explicitly or implicitly?

4)   What dangerous thing do you dream of doing, if only you had the courage?

5)   If you could live your life over, what one decision would you change, knowing what you know now?

6)   Do you believe there is life in other galaxies?

7)   Who is your favourite comic actor and what do you love about him/her?

8)   Which book have you re-read the most?

9)   If you could learn and master a new skill, what would it be?

10)  Which real historical character do you most admire?

11)   If you could live and work in any city in the world aside from where you are, which one would you choose?

My eleven tagged bloggers are:

1) Karalee @ http://5writers5novels5months.com

2) Christine @ http://christine-ashworth.com

3) Gretchen @ http://gretchenkwing.wordpress.com

4) Maggie @ http://maggieamada.com

5) Karen @ http://KarenMcfarland.com

6) Kim @ http://KimCleary.com

7) Lynn @ http://lynnkelleyauthor.wordpress.com

8) Jason @ http://JasonAndrewBond.com

9) Connie @ http://stilettosstoliandscribbles.wordpress.com/

10) Arthur @ http://arthurcrandon.com

11) YOU

 [Are we connected on Twitter yet? If not, why not? Let’s get sharing – find me at @Mary Ann Clarke Scott.]

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Emotion in Fiction

Well the study junkie’s been at it again. As usual I ‘ve had my head up my (*cough*) in my books, immersed in one topic or another for the past several months, undoubtedly at the expense of my writing. Well, in the short term anyway. In the long term, I hope it all adds up to something even better.

One of my recent distractions, and it’s been a MAJOR distraction, has been screenwriting and film making. But I’ll get to that in another post.

by ambernwest @ WANACOMMONS

by ambernwest @ WANACOMMONS

Most recently, I’ve thrown myself into a new topic, one which I realize is a shortcoming in my own writing – and that is emotion. I entered two of my unpubbed manuscripts into the writing contest of my local RWA chapter, The Judy, and last month discovered that I placed second for one of them. Yay! A prize! This is a rare and beautiful thing in a life so lacking in validation.

What I valued even more than the prize, however, was the detailed scoring and comments of the six judges who read my two entries. The perspectives of experienced writers, many of them published, with fresh eyes on my work, and the generosity to tell me what they think – that is priceless.

So, ironically, it was the comments on the manuscript that did not win that I focussed on first, because this is the manuscript that I earnestly pitched at the National RWA conference in Anaheim this past July. And to my surprise and delight, the one agent and four editors all asked to see it. So of course I hurried home and took a good hard look at it.

One of the things I decided to do was apply Margie Lawson’s Deep Edits technique to at least part of the manuscript to discover if there was something I had overlooked. It’s not that this story hasn’t been revised and edited a thousand times already. It’s pretty tight.

And that brings me back to emotion. What I discovered, over and above the valuable suggestions made by the contest judges, was that, according to Margie’s system what my manuscript lacked was, of all things, emotion. Well, in fact it’s not absent. It’s just not explicit enough for the particular market to which this book aspires.

My reading history is broad and deep and varied, and one of the things I sometimes have trouble doing is adjusting my writing to suit a particular market. So I might be writing a commercial women’s fiction story but use language or voice that’s more suitable to literary fiction. And I’m beginning to see that this just won’t work. I think. Or at least I have to find the balance that’s just right for my story and my “hypothetical” readers – whoever they may be.

So while I believe there’s tons of emotion in my novel, I don’t necessarily make it as obvious or visceral as I probably should to give my target readers the kind of reading experience they are looking for, and are used to. The emotion is situation and character based, and it’s often between the  lines. I know readers are clever, but I’m learning that there’s a pretty powerful effect that certain kinds of language has on the reader’s emotional engagement.  So my current learning curve is all about finding artful ways of engaging my readers in the emotional experiences of my characters.

And the material I have from Margie Lawson is invaluable in helping me to do that. Revisions are underway.

But of course when you cast the net of consciousness you catch all kinds of things. One of these, that kind of fell into my hands last week, was a book entitled The Passional Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories by psychologist and author Keith Oatley, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Someone with the same professional background and perspective as Margie Lawson.

While I agree somewhat with the Quill and Quire review of this book, and did have the same difficulty the review discusses engaging in Oatley’s short story, One Another, embedded in the academic text, I still found much of his discussion of the role of emotion in fiction in our developmental experience as fully formed human beings quite fascinating and enlightening.

In any case, it points to the fact that wherever my work fits on the commercial-literary continuum, emotion is such a central part of fiction and the reading experience that I’d better get some clarity about how this ought to be conveyed in my own writing.

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Women’s Fiction vs. Books

See how good I’m being?

I said I was going to write, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’m up to about 88,000 words on my WIP Coming About. I’m smack in the middle of writing my climactic scene, in which… no wait. I can’t tell you that. That would ruin the surprise.

At this rate, I might just complete the first draft of this manuscript by the Surrey International Writer’s Conference on October 20-23. I know, more workshops, but I never miss it, and by then it will be a well- deserved break. I registered for three Master Classes this year, and I’ll be pitching. Probably The Aviary again. Maybe I’ll even sell it this year. But I’d be happy enough to start with agent representation.

Back in May, when I pitched to a couple of editors at the Write On Conference of the RWA-Greater Vancouver Chapter, one of the two asked for a full manuscript (not sent yet) and the other talked about how difficult to define Women’s Fiction is, and how important it is for writers of women’s fiction to work with an agent, who can get to know the work and target it to the editors and publishers most likely to appreciate it.

True, true.

On the subject of women’s fiction, I want to note here how much I appreciate Amy Sue Nathan‘s regular women’s fiction writers blog, in which she interviews… wait for it: women’s fiction writers! I have discovered many terrific new books and authors here, expanding my reading list every week, and I particularly appreciate the stories of their journey to publication. Amy asks each of her guests to define women’s fiction, and although there is overlap, each one is unique in its perspective. This week’s guest, Stacey Ballis, author of Good Enough to Eat and soon to be released Off the Menu, said it thus:


“I have always found it interesting that if you are a woman who writes a book with female characters about life and love and relationships and career, it is called Women’s Fiction, and if you are a man who writes a book with female characters about life and love and relationships and career, it is called A Book.”

Hmm. Yeah. Well, nuff said.

In other news, I’m doing my happy dance because– I just got tickets to Sting’s Back to Bass tour in Vancouver December 9th. I haven’t seen him since the Police reunion tour a few years ago. Yay! I’m not really dancing. I’m not much of a dancer. Except in my head. In there, I’m definitely doing my happy dance. ; )

Back to work.

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Exploding Brain Syndrome

Well I see it’s quite a while since I added anything new to my site. I have a good excuse, honest.

I mentioned in What’s New back in April that I’d been taking a few courses. Well, I sure did. I don’t know what came over me. I seem to have discovered a multitude of wonderful resources and slipped temporarily into a kind of addiction to learning. After taking two online course from Laurie Schnebley at WriterU entitled the Hero’s Personality Ladder and Plotting Via Motivation, I judged a contest, took a WordPress class online through the RWA-PRO group, then headed off to the Banff Centre for the Arts for the weeklong Writing with Style Workshop, as mentioned earlier.

Not yet ready to lie down, I then attended the RWAGVChapter Write On Vancouver Conference and enjoyed the amazing Michael Hauge’s “Style Mastery” Workshop. Then at the end of May, the RWAGVChapter hosted an all day workshop with the intrepid Bob Meyer on the Warrior Writer. Throughout May, I was also taking Margie Lawson’s Deep Edits course online, by which time I was practically brain dead. I just couldn’t keep up with the assignments, even though the material was fascinating and I wanted to juice it for every ounce of wisdom (and trust me, Margie has plenty to offer.)

I think that’s when I turned off and tuned out completely, and after a brief reprieve, decided to go back to working on the first draft of my WIP, Coming About (see Books.) I was still trying to write 50K words between February and the RWA National Conference in NYC in late June, which, sadly, I was unable to attend.  Nevertheless, I actually did ultimately succeed in meeting the goal, and have continued onward through the summer adding to that total, so that now, I’m about 75% complete the first draft of the ms. with about 78,500 words to date.

Margie’s material is so terrific that it was hard to keep writing when I knew there was still so much to learn. But if there’s one thing I have learned, it’s that the first draft hasn’t much to do with all those terrific writing skills. Those are best applied later, during revisions. It’s a funny thing. I’ve always preferred writing the first draft, and rather dreaded the revisions. More on that later.

Thanks for this cool image from http://pretendyoudontreadme.blogspot.com/2010/08/you-think-too-much-people-complain.html

My brain is so overfilled with fantastic new knowledge that it’s difficult to recap, but I want to say at least one pithy thing about each of the courses that I’ve taken this spring. Firstly, in The Hero’s Personality Ladder, I learned that it’s critical to know your protagonist very well before you begin to write. It’s important to understand both the hero’s strengths and weaknesses, because these tell you how s/he will react to stimuli, and this clues you into what obstacles to throw in their path to best reveal their transformation. Also, these strengths and weaknesses have to be revealed early in the story.

Progressing on from there, Plotting Via Motivation delves deeper into character, and motivation, including backstory, to dig down beneath the surface. By asking Why? we can understand what really makes our characters tick, and expose their most basic needs. Sometimes these are selfish and not-so-honourable, but they are the motives and needs that make the characters both human and believable. Weaving together the personalities and motivations of the main characters reveals the warp and weft of your plot. Et Voila.

About the WordPress course, I can only say to my RWA-PRO peers, THANK YOU! For a somewhat-too-old-to-be-quite-comfortable with this technology, this course demystified and made available the tools to create a web presence which was before unavailable. It turned out to be quite simple. Which is not to say I’m ready for regular blog posts. But it’s a start.

The Writing with Style workshop at the Banff Centre was a once in a lifetime rich experience. There is simply nothing like total immersion in a full time writing environment surrounding by peers who are on the same journey. I learned valuable skills from each of the stylistas in my Novel-First Chapter workshop, and we all thrived under the expert guidance of award winning author Audrey Thomas. From these talented writers I learned something about dreams, voice, history, detail, humour, culture and discipline. Most of all I learned to believe in and never to short-change your own vision as a writer.

Michael Hauge’s workshop was an interesting take on similar material to Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey but with a focus on Michael’s massive experience with screenwriting and vetting. With this unique perspective came new terminology and some questions and answers about story structure and the relationship between the hero’s inner and outer journey that were fresh and helpful.

Bob Mayer’s workshop focussed on the Writer as a professional. The material is available in his book Warrior Writer: From Writer to Published Author and delves into the psychology of the writer’s mind to help articulate personal goals and achieve them. It’s an aspect of the writing life that’s seldom touched upon, and Bob digs deep into character to help us understand what we want and what might be holding us back. (I will I will I WILL send out those D**M queries!) Thanks so much Bob!

Back to Margie Lawson. What can I say. I’ve learned something valuable from all my teachers, but I’ve been looking for the tools that Margie teaches for years. Until now, I’ve approached revisions in an optimistic but fairly hapless way. Margie’s Deep Edits and Rhetorical Devices class gave me a system to examine my writing, and that of others, and to really understand what it’s doing and HOW. It’s rational, which I guess I like. There’s often so much going on in my head that I can’t pin it down, and end up spinning my wheels (cliche alert! ; )) and feeling helpless, so I like systems to organize my thoughts. Now I’m looking forward to finishing my first draft of Coming About and getting to work tightening up the first two books before coming back at the new one with fresh eyes and VERY sharp tools. So Exciting!

I so enjoyed Margie’s class that I also downloaded the lecture packets for her other two classes: Empowering Character Emotions and Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist. I’ve just started working through the second one (I know, I know, I’m supposed to be taking a  break from courses, but…) WOW. It’s great material. What can I say?

Back to writing. Just coming to the juicy part now. We’ll see if all this stuff really works. Cheerio.

Oh! I’m also going to test the Pomodoro method as recommended by Randy Ingermanson. Just sayin’ : )

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Guest Blog Post

Last Friday I was invited to guest post on Blame it on The Muse. Below is a copy of that post.

God Shuffled His Feet

(with a bow to the Crash Test Dummies)

Story ideas come from many places, but often they are stillborn, or lie stagnant, waiting to be infused with inspiration by you, the writer, while you wait for a visitation from your muse. I have a digital drawer full of story ideas, but what makes one of them rise up and speak to you, demanding to be your next WIP, and then come to life on the page?

For me, it turns out that music plays an important role. This began quite inadvertently when I began my first completed novel, about four and half years ago. My mother had passed away a couple of months before, and I guess I was brooding and hiding from the world. I wanted to start writing Reconcilable Differences, and I found immersing myself in music helped to sooth me and keep me focused. I was drawn to the music of one of my favourite artists, Sting, and as I listened to his songs, one album (Brand New Day) soon became the soundtrack for the book I was writing, and one particular song (Ghost Story) its theme song. As I listened, the lyrics of that song, and it’s haunting mood, came to represent my characters situation and emotions. I now have the transcript of that song as a forward for my manuscript, and hope I can include it one day when it’s published.

I listened to that music over and over and over while I wrote and revised that manuscript over two years. Just popping my ear buds in was all I needed to immerse myself in my fictional world and resume work with passion and commitment. I even listened to the same music at other reflective times, such as driving and exercising and bedtime, because we all know the writing continues even when we’re not sitting at the keyboard. To this day, my son complains if I put Sting on, poor thing.

When I began my next novel, The Aviary, I thought, hey, what worked before might work again. I need a sound track that’s appropriate and inspiring. So I actually did a little internet research, found out what was popular in England in 1997 (where the novel is set) and downloaded a whole slew of music, some of which became new favourites. One band, The Verve, I loved, and one of their songs (Lucky Man) again became a theme song. One of my main characters even evolved into a musician, who played and sang some of those same songs!

Over the years, I’ve become a more disciplined writer (I’m a plotter) and so the evolution of my story and character arcs is much more worked out before I start. I even have a scene plan that I follow pretty closely. Nonetheless, I still have to sit down and infuse life and emotion into each and every scene. I have to be in that world and in those characters heads and hearts. Music can be the muse that helps me get there. So I think even with my carefully crafted plan, I still need the muse to make it happen. My current WIP is going well enough, but I’m still searching for its perfect soundtrack. Perhaps Coldplay…?

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Canadian Fiction Writers in Banff

At the moment I’m still learning to use WordPress and create a website, but haven’t had much time to add to it lately, what with all my other commitments. What you see here is an ongoing WIP. I want to share some of the terrific tidbits of information I’ve learned as part of the research for my first two manuscripts, especially fascinating things about civilian life in London during the latter part of WWII, the V-2 and other bombs, and encryption and radiography, all of which weave together beautifully to enrich the backstory in this novel about a young Canadian woman who gets caught up in the mystery of her new employers past. Click on Books for more.

My other, and closer-to-the-heart WIP is a novel that’s about 34,000 words into 100,000 about an independent-minded dot-com millionaire whose summer plans are spoiled when he’s expected to share childcare duties with his nemesis, a shrewish career-driven architect. Both of them have a lot to learn about themselves before they are ready for each other. I’m still committed to writing no less than 50,000 words before June 28th, 2011, despite all the delicious distractions.

Last weekend, I returned from a hard-working, fun and fascinating week at The Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta for their week-long Writing With Style program. I met and worked with a terrific bunch of writers from all genres and walks of life. There were poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction groups, but I spent my week in the Novel-First Chapter workshop, led by advisor, fellow British Columbian, Audrey Thomas, author of  more than 15 novels and short story collections, and more than 20 radio plays, and multi-award winning author. She has been recognized provincially, winning the Ethel Wilson Prize three times, been nominated for the Govenor General’s Award twice, been a recipient of the Order of Canada, the Marian Engel Award and many others. Needless to say it was a great honour and thrill to work closely with Audrey over the week long course, and to benefit from her wisdom, insight and sharply honed writer’s skills. I’d like to extend thanks also to my fellow stylistas in the class, a group of wonderfully smart and talented writers who worked so hard and helped me hone my craft as well. Thanks so much to: Al, Alec, Alicia, Andres, Elaine, Kris, Sonja and Tim, and best of luck with your writing projects.

Doggy in the Window by Elaine Arsenault

Bad Latitudes by Al Pope

I seem to be addicted to taking courses lately. Starting this week, I’ll be taking an online course called Deep Edits with Margie Lawson through WriterU. I’m also looking forward to a workshop with Bob Mayer May 28th, offered by my local RWAChapter, the RWAGVC. As well, they are hosting the Write On, Vancouver Conference May 13-15, 2011, featuring 8.5 hours of workshops with Hollywood story and script consultant Michael Hauge. Exciting!