Showing posts with label writing journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing journal. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

A corrupt-tempered mood.

I stumbled across some character-notes from this past summer. Notes about people I met through the season whom I had the foresight to describe a little, that I might use the memories later in formulating new characters....here are some of the entries:

Rather shabby, lumpy, pale clerk with limp moustaches who is kindhearted, dull, and rather hopeless. His daughter works at the coffee shop downtown, of which he's rather proud and mentions often.

Old woman who is 1/4 negro and whose husband holds a prejudice against the race. He always uses the "N" word, but "he's the first to stop on the side of the road if one is broken down." She wishes she had the funds to do a blood tests on her husband and see if he has any negro blood. Husband wears an eye-patch.

Old, blind woman whose mind is still very sharp and who calls herself the matriarch "who doesn't do anything."

(during one particularly trying afternoon this summer, I vented to myself in third-person.)

Every point was countered with a remark of a dismally cankerous nature, inconvenient to the point of frustration and boiling indignation. Anything said was bound to be parried and disagreed with and so, valuing her own composure of spirits over the beauties of conversation, she purposed to say nothing at all....

....Being in his presence felt a deal like being locked in a dryer. They tumbled about, haphazard, from one subject to another and got in royal tangles at every turn. She felt her patience, like a left sock, disappear somewhere in the cavern of his thoughts, never to be heard from again..

(my coworker was fond of singing and anecdotes...)

...Was this how it felt to be in a musical? She'd always thought it to be a pleasant idea, but now she was not so sure. One couldn't say a thing without him striking a pose, raising a finger, and relating one anecdote or another from the hoards he had collected over the years for just such an occasion. Drat brilliant people, she thought. They drowned your own thoughts in the fury of their intellect. He was a genius cast in a variety show, and she was his audience--held captive by the single fact that if she did not put up with him, she would not receive her paycheck.

Is constantly making up new and ridiculous salutes for D. Reads favorite parts of Shakespeare aloud from the computer screen. Prints the words to songs I'm singing so I won't have to hum.  :)

In more recent news, a dear woman from our church brought her grown son with her. He is mentally challenged, but the most precious fellow. He's got a memory like a steel-trap and reads the dictionary for fun. Our dog scared him, however, and put him in a sour state of mind...

His Mother: "Well aren't you in an ill humor!"
Bill: I am not in an ill-humor. I'm in a corrupt-tempered mood!"

Of course I had to write that down in my writing journal. I mean, it's brilliant. I am intent upon using it someday, though perhaps in a different context. :) People-watching and listening and observing is a huge way to grow your knack for writing characters. Keep track of these things! It's hilarious to read over later on.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

the baring of our souls

Hello everyone! I'm feeling rather wonderful this morning because I managed to have written 1229 word of Fly Away Home before 8 o'clock. And that is an accomplishment, I think, seeing as I don't prefer writing in the morning. My brain is just a tad sluggish and anything looks more alluring than trying to hash through a scene. But I did it and I love the 1950's NYC high-life, and all of that jazz. BUT--this post was about something entirely different:

I love seeing other people's writing journals. I know pretty much across the board everyone else's writing journals are far more fabulous than mine, because I haven't been using a writing journal for very long--before it was mostly odds and ends scrapped here or there or everywhere. But a journal is more portable and therefore that's what I switched over to. All that to say, I thought I'd give you a bit of a tour through my writing journal to show you this, my other half of my brain. Enjoy.

"...to further encourage the baring of our souls and the telling of our most appalling secrets."


{The frontispiece}

 
A sketch from Cottleston Pie as well as a few random, unconnected bits I like to scrawl down when they Pounce me. This is the only glimpse of my multitudinous collection of scrawlings, because if you saw them all than you'd know all the clever bits I planned to put in one or another of my books someday. And we can't have that.



My newest mantra: expanding my vocabulary so "that I might not appear as uneducated as compared to Jane Fairfax." ;)


I'm finding that Shakespeare (especially in "The Taming of the Shrew") has some spot-on quotes from Mr. Barnett and Callie's relationship.


Ideas/inspiration pages for Scuppernong Days.



 ^Something I have to remind myself of time and time again.



"Why I love writing" quotes as well as literature/author-themed clippings from magazines.

Well, there you have it. Not particularly gorgeous or stunning, but a good, all-round functional place to dump my brain, and the place where all my people-watching finds congregate. I also thought any of you that had read/seen Dicken's Little Dorrit might get a laugh over the sign I made to hang over my desk when I do the billing for Dad...


I hope all-and-sundry of you have a wonderful day. :)