Did I ever tell you about my friend Jackson? We met about a year or so ago. I was in a really grumpy mood and sometimes when I’m grumpy it is a really good time to pull out my drawing book and art materials to draw. Drawing is funny that way. One minute your, happy, or grumpy or just neutral, but when you start to draw you forget all about those things, and you only notice how your pen or crayon feels moving on the paper. It’s a very good feeling. This time a little boy — smaller than you, showed up on my paper. He was outside and he was look through a window into a room with at a toy train in it. I could tell he really wanted to play with that train and I felt kind of sad for him. But he wasn’t sad. He told me that sometimes you just get left out of things, and that’s okay. He told me his name was Jackson and that he liked to think. “Sometimes,” he said, “other people don’t understand quiet people who like to think.” I told him that I knew all about that and then we just smiled at each other and we knew we were friends.

I guess you could say Jackson was an imaginary friend, and isn’t that just the best thing about imagination? You can make any friends you want.

XOXO

Grandma

Opera Diva

David Corbett over at Murderati has got me thinking about voice in fiction writing. Below I’ve got 5 story openings. I haven’t put down the authors because it is interesting to read them without having the author’s prestige, or lack thereof tied to the quotes. Even in these few opening lines, each voice is quite distinct. Who do you read because their voice is just so compelling?

1.In his seventeenth year of life, Jai gained an empire and lost everything he valued.

Stately buildings faced a plaza tiled in white and grey stone. clouds hung low in the sky, their drizzle saturating the air. Evening had come, a time when the heat of the sixty-two-hour day on the world Delos called enough to make the temperature tolerable for its human colonists

2. The world is full of broken people. splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can’t mend fractured hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

Currently, sunshine was Micky Bellsong’s medication of choice, and southern California in late August was an apothecary with a deep supply of this prescription.

3. The ministry of State Security had been positively shocked when they found that a Nazi agent, more heroic than prudent, had almost reached N. Rogov.

Rogov was worth more to the Soviet armed forces than any two air armies, more than three motorized divisions. His brain was a weapon, a weapon fo the Soviet power.

4. Clayton Sparrow lay in bed, head propped on a hand. His gaze traveled the length of Anna Wassar’s back, muscled like a swimmers, it flowed to a deep curve just before it melded into the opulent rise of her buttocks. With his forefinger he traced the line of his gaze.

“So you see how important it is to go. There is so much to be learned.”

“Hmmm,” murmured Clay. He hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, and now was no time to ask and risk putting her off.

5. This is Lexie Madison’s story, not mine. I’d love to tell you one without getting into the other, but it doesn’t work that way. I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them anytime I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond control.

Not this kind of Tic

This is what wikipedia has to say about tics: A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups. I don’t have tics. No, that constant winking of my left eye is not a tic. It’s what happens when I have to watch other people’s tics. My dear husband has two. Maybe I could tolerate one, but folks, two? When your sitting beside him trying to carry on a nice little conversation about how you feel about his underwear appearing on the landing because he didn’t put it in the laundry and the dog carried it up, he jiggles his knee. The more you try to impress him with the importance of laundry baskets, the more his knee bounces, until finally I can’t stand it and darned if I don’t come too with my hands around his throat having nearly trottled him to death. His second tic is foot twisting. Picture this, it’s bed time. I fought against a TV in the bedroom but I lost. So dear husband watches Corner Gas and I read a mind enlightening epic on my Kindle. Out of the corner of my eye I see husband’s foot rotating, rotating, rotating, rotating. I’m amazed he hasn’t screwed that foot right off his leg. It enrages me. War and Peace has no chance against the rage I feel watching that foot go round and round for what feels like hours.

But Dear Husband is not the only one with tics. Today I took my lovely youngest sister out to shop in the big city. It’s a longish drive from her small town to my city and the whole way down, she ran her fingers through her hair, held her fingers up to the light, then picked out any hair caught in her hand  and flicked them on the floor. “Darlin,” I said, you are going to be bald before I get you home to night.”

“You tease box,” she said grinning and kept right on flicking hair onto the floor of my car.

Arrrgh!!

How do you handle other people’s tics?

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/go-hard-or-go-home-blogging-branding/

Okay, I’m one of those shrinking violet types, the kind that find it hard to speak up and be heard above the hub-bub. Omigod, to put my name on a blog? Yikes! But I’m taking Kristen’s message to heart. I’ve changed the name of my blog from Tagonist, pros and ans to Eve Kotyk, Crazy Woman and Terrific Writer. What? I didn’t? Well in my dreams I did. Actually I’ve just named it Eve Kotyk’s Blog. It’s a beginning.

By the way, Kristen Lamb has written a book entitled We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. You can buy it at Amazon or from Who Dares Wins Publishing.  https://whodareswinspublishing.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=86 . I’ve read the sample first chapters and I’m ready to buy. At $4.99 for the ebook I have nothing to lose but my shrinking violet status.

It didn’t work out that way. I did work on Time Shift — I’m calling it that for now. It used to be Anna’s Story, but that won’t do. Time Shift isn’t right either, but it necessary to start thinking of a proper title.

The words crept along trying for tension, but mostly lying on the page like cranky babies. Still in the end the scene drew to a close and I had managed to spread eleven hundred words on the page. I’m now at 80,000 words in this novel and I figure I have another 40,000 left to go.

I broke for a lunch of fruit that had past its best-by date and determined to tackle The Spell thereafter. My plan was nicely interrupted by a visit from my sister. Over many cups of Earl Grey green we laid out exactly what was wrong with our lives, and were, I expect, both grateful in the end that we didn’t have the others problems.

Refreshed after sharing our burdens, but water-logged and heavy with cake we said our good-byes. Of course, by then it was much, much to late to tackle something as thorny as the revision of The Spell.

I’ll leave you with this from Creedence Clearwater Revival.