The Funny Thing About Being Funny

After all the praise I gave the place, Barns and Noble goes and interrupts my Mojo.  What did they do?  They took away all my outlets!  Screwed nice little safety plates over the lot of them.  So now I’ve been forced to either buy a second battery for my laptop (which my fiancé is skeptical will ever get charged), or find a new place to get in the groove. 

I’ve spent some time at the library, but it’s just not the same…

Yesterday I found my groove in a remarkable place: my house.  Wow, yes, I wrote from home.

4,000 words, to be not-exactly exact (plus a couple dozen or so).  That’s an eye-popping amount for me.

However, it may or may not have been truly productive, as I was taking a foray into comedic sci-fi.  It’s my second attempt.  The first humorous short story I wrote ended up failing miserably because, frankly, it was far too serious to be funny.  This one I’m trying to keep light and ridiculous.  We’ll see how it’s received.

I think comedy is extremely challenging.  So much of it is flow and timing, which is hard to get right in prose.  In a regular story, it usually isn’t such a big deal if the reader doesn’t read a line (or group of lines) exactly as you intended it to be read.  They may naturally pause in a different place, or think the emphasis lies on a different word.  What sounds one way to you may sound totally different to them, but it doesn’t create real problems.  In comedy it does.  What’s funny to the author may be stupid to the reader, and not just because of the content, but because of how it flows.

I’m trying to get this first draft edited so that my first readers can have a shot at it tonight.  Because I feel like I’m on shaky ground with this genre I seem to be able to separate myself from it more easily.  Because I’m not as confident with it, I’m more willing to chop and splice things to get them right.  If the readers tell me something’s not funny, out it’ll go!  I’m not going to coddle the pages and say, “no, not my precious words!” like I sometimes do…  Actually, I’m pretty good at acknowledging when a reader is right about something, but I usually put up a big fight before conceding.  Not this time.  If it’s bad, it’s bad, no argument from me.

Of course, there’s plenty in it I’ll be sad to see go if they don’t find it funny.  The bigger jokes I’ll probably try and rewrite to get the timing down.

Of course, there’s always the possibility of squid-in-the-mouth.  I think most newbie attempts at comedy fall into this category.  They venture beyond strange into un-laughably grotesque and un-relatable.    

I think there’s a pretty big consumer market for comedy out there, but so few people to fill it because it really is difficult.  That’s why it’s sad that professionals always apologize when they give awards to works of comedy, as though by virtue of what it is it should be unworthy of high-praise.  Hey, I think if it was something everybody could do there would be a lot more of it out there.  Those who can pull it off deserve to be acknowledged.

So, anyway, that’s my newest writing exercise.  Have you ventured into any new territory lately?

~Marina

Writers of the Future Q2 Results!

Nope, didn’t win.  Yeah, bummer, but I’m not super disappointed, to tell you the truth.  Well, I’m disappointed, but I don’t feel bad about it. 

From the beginning of my wait I refused to let myself fantasize about winning.  That kept me pretty positive.  When I got the call from Joni telling me I hadn’t won, I focused on the good things she had to tell me.  Two of the judges really liked it and had good things to say to her about it.  Awesome.  The contest would also like to hold onto it for possible inclusion in the anthology, which is definitely a plus. 

So, I’m not upset.  Actually, my fiancé was way more upset by the news than I was.  I had to remind him that KD Wentworth said it was the toughest quarter to date, and I was a contributor to that. 

You know how people at award shows always say, “It was an honor just to be nominated,” after they lose and they’ve got this tone in their voice that says, “Screw this award”? 

Well, it is an honor just to be nominated, and I really mean it.  There’s no way that I could have expected to come that close to winning in the short amount of time I’d been writing with a career in mind.

I realized about two weeks ago that my Q2 finalist was only the second short story I’d ever written for myself (not for school).  I thought some more and realized it was only the 7^th I’d written in my entire life, dating way back to that first one in 4^th grade. 

It was my first attempt at writing a short story after I’d made the commitment to a writing career (My Q1 entry was something I’d written four years previous).  Since I’d spent the first 6 months of this new career trying to spew out a novel, the short story attempt ended in a novelette, but still. 

I’d never tackled a story that spanned millennia before.  And I’d never written a story with 7 distinct POVs before.  And I’d never attempted to write anything in the realm of hard science before.

So, my Q2 entry was largely experimental.  I finished it feeling it had been an exploratory piece.  I felt it was a good story, but not something I’d built on a tried and tested foundation.

It was the most agreeable thing I’ve ever written.  It’s 13,000 words and I wrote it in three consecutive days.  Sure, for some people that’s no big deal, but up ‘til that point I’d been lucky to get in 1,000 words a day.

Having it picked by KD was a proud moment for me, a real accomplishment in itself.  Even if I didn’t win, someone liked it.  A professional in the field liked it, and that means the world to me.

And now I’ve been told that two other judges liked it.  So I’ve got three stamps of approval.  It means I started off down the trail in the right direction.  If I keep putting one foot in front of the other I’ll reach the goal someday.

In summary, I didn’t win, but I’m still on top of the world :)

Congrats to the winners!  Especially regular WotF forum frequenter, Patty Jansen, who won first place :)

~Marina

That Magic Ten Percent

Or five percent, or twelve, or whatever arbitrary percentage you’d like. 

What magic percentage am I talking about?  It’s that thing, you know, “It.”

There’s a hot-button word that, in the writing community, gets a similar hair-raising, fervent reaction that the word “luck” does. 

Talent.

Mention it and someone automatically has an opinion--not usually about the context it was used in, but about the existence or non existence of this thing we mean when we say “talent.”

Usually when talent is mentioned two major factions (on message boards, blogs, etc.) arise:  There are those that believe you don’t get anywhere unless you’ve got this undefined thing called talent, and those who believe talent is a mental roadblock to success and nothing more.

I’ve seen professional writers say, “No one ever told me I was good at this when I was young, and look at me today, I’m making my living at it, therefore talent doesn’t exist.”

I’ve also seen professionals say, “You’ve either got it or you don’t.”

And, of course, newbies just pick whichever opinion appeals to them and then parrot it back to the masses.

I simultaneously agree and disagree with both camps.

When talking about talent, no one ever tries to define what they’re arguing about.  Talent seems to be an untouchable, mystical concept.  Some attempt to give it a fuzzy outline by calling it the ever more ambiguous “it-factor” and the like, but no real meat is ever put on this skeletal definition.  This is a problem.

Then they apply the concept to the mechanical act of writing; the physical placing of words on a page.  This is also a problem.

I believe talent has about as much to do with the physical act of writing as it has to do with a baby walking or a bird flying: none. 

Anyone willing to learn can be taught to communicate, and to do it well.  Some have to work harder at it than others, but that has more to do with aptitude than talent--no, the two aren’t synonyms in my book.  Your level of aptitude can change over time.  Your level of talent cannot.

So, how do I define talent?

Well, first, let’s get out of our Writer Heads.  Things always get clouded when you’re too close to the subject. 

Let’s pretend we’re all taking art 101, Basic Sketching Techniques.  Sure, some students show more initial aptitude than others, but the professor can show each of us over time how to see the lighting in a scene separate from the objects, and how to create texture, and how to compose a balanced picture.

Sketch artists are taught to see the world around them and use technique to reproduce it.  Just like a writer is taught how to put words to paper in a compelling order that makes a complete story.

Our art professor can teach us how to see the world in front of us.  What s/he can’t teach us is how to see the worlds that aren’t in front of us.

No one can teach you imagination.  And that’s where talent comes into play.

Yes, it can be honed and exercised, but it’s not a technique someone can give you.  They can teach you rhythm, effective ways to use different POVs, plotting, thematic enhancement, punctuation, why not to use “ly” words every chance you get…

But they can’t teach creativity.  Either you have a uniquely creative mind, or you don’t.

That being said, the most imaginative people are not automatically moved to the head of the to-be-published line.

Why?

Because hard work and practice matter!

I don’t care if you’ve got the most creative mind on the planet, if you don’t apply yourself and learn the nuts-and-bolts of properly communicating your ideas, you’re not going to make it anywhere.

And that’s why even people without super-duper-spanking-awesome imaginations have a real shot at seeing their writing dreams come true too.  It’s all in the execution.

Talent is like the frosting on the cake: It’s a sweet thing to have, but without a solid foundation, its just fluff.  In the end, readers need meat and potatoes to sustain themselves--great writing, great mechanics, great composition.

Talent certainly doesn’t make you “the chosen one,” but if you’ve got a strong work ethic and a great imagination, you might just have the edge it takes to rise above the rest.

So, it’s not really magic, and it’s not really a percent.  It’s more like a piece of a probability equation.  Are you more likely to get published if you’re “talented?”  Well, that depends on if you have the real “it-factor.”  And I think you know what that is.

~Marina

P.S. Totally my opinion, you're welcome to state yours too!

Number of rejections, goal of 100: 6