Skip to main content

Half-full, half-empty, or the whole glass?


Artist: Isabel Quintanilla
Glass pictures via Pinterest

     My dad and I were talking about artistic people.  You know, the ones who take their time to sketch a glass and the result looks exactly like the glass.  These are people who can see the whole glass -- seeing things that other people never notice -- and it makes them amazing artists.


Artist: Linda Huber
Glass pictures via Pinterest

     I know some writers who take time to see the whole glass.  They sit down with their characters, having conversations with them for hours on end, until they feel they know their characters as real people.  And they do this because they are artists and they want to see each character completely.


Artist: Nono Garcia
glass pictures via Pinterest

     But what happens when a glass has nothing to stand on?  It will fall and shatter...Unless it stays safely in the artist's imagination.  Knowing your characters is not enough, by itself, to get a book written and published.  The rest of the story must be created.  The author has to be persistent to write it down, even if it doesn't come out perfectly the first time.  She must tackle the edits and do everything she can to polish her book for the public.  And then she must pursue publishing, being willing to face those hurdles as they come.

     What does this mean for the artist who is slowly memorizing every fracture of light in a glass?  It means one of three things: Either...

a. She will spend the rest of her life happily admiring glasses.  

b. She will realize that the extensive glass study is not getting her where she wants to go, and she will change tactics.

c. She will find a way to apply her in-depth study to every area of creation -- characters, plot, setting, etc. -- and she will create the greatest masterpiece in the world...but it will take her many decades.  And that's okay because her desire was to write one book and to write it to the very best of her ability.

      And who's to say, except perhaps the artist herself, which of the three she will be?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning.  I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that.  And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send."  Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story.  And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it.  I wrote them.  And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....

The Countdown: Eight Days

Eight days.  Do you know what that means?  Barely over a week.  Tomorrow will be one week from the announcement date. Are you excited? I am. So, today, I want to talk to those who wrote something for the contest, whether or not you entered it in the end. What made you start writing your story?  What was the first inkling of an idea that tickled your brain?  What was it that you liked about your premise?  As you wrote, did you have a favorite character or a favorite scene?  And are you glad you wrote it down?  Do you feel like you learned and grew in your ability as a writer as you tried out things for this contest? And, if your story isn't included in this year's Rooglewood anthology (either because you didn't submit it or because it didn't fit with the other four stories selected), what will you do with it?  Will you market it elsewhere?  Or will you lock it away in a drawer?

Rooglewood Countdown: 12 days

     For the next 12 1/2 days, as we do our final countdown until March 31st, I'm going to do 4 posts asking about something you would like to see in the Snow White collection.      There are so many ways all of us, writers and readers alike, can win in this contest.  Maybe a familiar name makes it into the final five -- hurray!  Maybe a story in your favorite genre ended up in the collection this year -- woohoo!  Maybe you finally get to read a winning story about an evil king and his Snow White son -- how awesome!      So, in celebration of all the many things we can root for, I want to know some of the things that you think would be cool to find in this year's set of winners.      Without further ado, here is my question for the day: What is a point of view you would like to see in this collection?  Would you like a story written from the prince's perspective?  A story from Snow White's p...