And Give a Big Hand For . . .

Today I have another guest post, this from Anjie Harrte.  I believe you’ll find Anjie’s discussion on life to be very insightful, as well as entertaining.

So, without further ado . . . take it away, Anjie:

 

 

A life saving ambition

Anjie Harrte

When you are a mother, work full time and trying to build a career as an author you find that you talk to yourself a lot. I know most writers reading this would be shaking their heads at this point.

I don’t get a lot of time to sit quietly and ponder on that next novel, that great idea, that plot that will break or make my career. Instead I work through the kinks in a story while pushing my cart through the isle at the supermarket, while sitting on a bus from home to work or work to home, while scrubbing away at that stubborn stain on my toddler’s little dress, or while using the washroom. Life is complicated for everyone and I do not in any way mean to say that full time authors have it any easier; I just am sharing MY experience; the experience of a woman who tries to balance a 9-5 job, a family and the many voices in her head.

I wake every morning way pass the time I had planned to and I scurry about hurrying to prepare lunch and breakfast simultaneously. Buying lunch is too much of a financial hassle, and my guy refuses to do it since he just detests eating out. But, I love to cook. Cooking is never a task or never laborious for me, unless it is Saturday, the busiest day of my life. I enjoy cooking, whether it is kneading some roti, cooking some curry, or rice, or spaghetti, or choumein, or fried rice, whatever it is, I can cook it and I promise you if I can’t I am certainly willing to make a try at it. Most times when I cook the author in me narrates what I am doing, “and now she adds the sprinkle of baking powder, she is pouring the water with one hand and kneading the dough with the other, a soft consistency will give you a moist roti.” Does it make me crazy? I don’t really care either way, I love to cook and I love to narrate it in my head. Maybe someday I will make a compilation of my cooking experiments and publish a cookbook, maybe – another thing to add to my list, hmph.

My day is always pretty boring, I work in a job where I sit at a desk and run the advertising department of a television station and no, it is not as exciting as it sounds. The advertising market is slow; there are hardly any new customers willing to spend their money on television. So I am stuck with my regular clients. I prepare a sheet at the end of each day and most days that is all I do. So, instead of wasting that extra time playing games or watching movies online I use it to write, learn and grow. I write as long as the ideas flow and when I am blocked, I try to learn how to get past the block, read other writer’s blogs and get acquainted with their form of writing, their tips and advice. I also frequent facebook spending hours there and then not remembering quite what I was doing with all my time.

My day ends with me going home to some washing. I detest washing, pressing and cleaning and didn’t make sure I find a man who likes these things. However since I live in the same house with my mother, she helps with the cleaning, but the washing and pressing I cannot escape. What I do to escape the washing is; I enter in that world where I live this fantastic life, or dramatic life, or rich life, in other words my imagination works wonderfully when I am washing. I think of plots and sometimes my mind goes from the beginning to the end of a story, I see my main characters clear and see some of the major problems they would encounter.

Balancing the responsibilities of my life with my aspirations and dreams can be tedious but it makes my monotonous life bearable. I wake up, cook and head to work. I leave work at midday to do shopping for the little business I have at home which my mother runs for me. I leave work in the afternoon and head home to wash or press or just take a walk with my daughter.

Saturdays I do major shopping for my side business, wash clothes and then take a rest. Sundays I try to take over the shop so my mother can rest and then Monday comes again. For someone who has such a vivid imagination, a life like this can become stifling. So having my writing to escape into helps to keep me sane, helps to give me hope, and makes me happy.

Writing does a lot for me, I suffer from depression and when I was doing therapy I used to write a lot of poetry, very sad and dark poetry but whenever I would read it back to my therapist I always felt a little better.

I know writing saves my life and that is why I never see it as cumbersome on my life or my responsibilities. For now I see it as my escape from them, my freedom from this monotonous life and I dream of it one day being a permanent escape, of it being my profession. My dream for myself is to be able to write for a living, to return to school for a degree in English and to be a professor of English one day. Not a day goes by that I don’t see myself living this dream and so I work hard, I keep my head up and I welcome the plot bunnies with the hope that I can one day mill out a work of art that is appreciated worldwide.

How do you manage life and writing? When do you find the time to write?

* * * * * * * * * ** * *

Anjie Harrte: Romance with some Caribbean flavour

Anjie Harrte is a twenty nine year old mother of one who resides in sunny Guyana, South America. Sometime between running a small business, having a full time job and being a mother and partner she finds time to pursue her passion for creating stories. Anjie dreams up stories of contemporary fiction splashed with some romance, a little dose of murder or an ounce of suspense and sometimes when no one is looking she dashes in a little twist. When she isn’t doing any of that, she is decorating a cake, knitting a chair back or sewing her latest design. Anjie even finds time to lurk around and stalk people and pages on facebook and you too can stalk her if you like at Anjie’s Facebook Page, or you can follow her on twitter @anjieharrte or keep updated with her writing at Author Anjie Harrte, or check out one of her stories online for free at The Storytime Trysts Blog.

Please Welcome My First Guest–

For the first time ever, Ladies and Gentlemen, a guest has arrived!

I’ve followed Katherine Gilraine’s blog, Improvisations on Reality, for some time now.  She is a published writer, an extremely witty and charming person, and an all-around good person to know.  As someone who is, as I like to say, “playing the writing game,” I enjoy her insights into the writing world–and whatever else she enjoys chatting about.

So, without further ado, take it away, Katherine!

 

So a Novelist Writes a Script…

 

I know it sounds like a joke, believe you me.  *rim-shot*.  However, it’s no secret that I’m trying my hand at screenwriting, and I’m in the process of transforming my first novel into a script.

I will not lie: it’s daunting. Of all the forms of writing I tried my hand at so far – journalism, poetry, short stories, novels – screenwriting was the odd man out. I’ve never written a full-scale movie script before, and considering I’ve never taken classes for it, which I may rectify after this experience, I’m walking into the world of movie scripts blind.

But on the other hand, I like the one major effect of transforming my book into a movie script: everything is clearer than ever.

I won’t lie, the opinion of Mages has been mixed. Some people like it, and the nine 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon are testament to the fact that something went right with it. The other reviews, received in private, say that the book is hard to follow, and it’s not really clear what’s going on. The first massive benefit of the script is that whatever was less than clear with the book gets a spotlight (and some key lights) on it with the script form.

The inverse to this is that some of the scenes of the book had to get cut with the script form for the sake of the storyline, and this is something that film-to-book-adaptation fans have been grousing about for quite some time, myself among them (hey, I’ll be the first to admit it). This is the thing: no matter how clearly you picture it in your head at the time you write it, and no matter how great you think it would look on screen, when it’s in the actual script form, it takes away from the story. It’s one thing to butcher a book in the interests of time constraints, as we know, but if you see that a scene, in and of itself, isn’t doing anything to add to what you’re looking to achieve with the screenplay, it has to go. You get a two-hour cap to show your story on screen, and the acronym of K.I.S.S. applies in stereo.

Which, in turn, clarifies the flow of the original story.  Where a novel can get clunky and verbose at times, the screenplay flows along much faster.

Now, while I value learning a new art form as much as the next author, there is a major marketing slant to this. People are visual creatures by nature, and we like to see things in front of us – book, movie, what-have-you. The movie market is just as competitive as the book market, even more so than the world of traditional publishing, but it opens up the writer to a whole new audience.

This is the thing, though. Movie scripts and traditionally-published manuscripts go through quite a bit of rigmarole before they get to their final destinations. If a writer ever wants the screenplay to see the light of day, they have to keep pitching it until they’re blue in the face or until someone is actually willing to take a look at it, whichever comes first. Reminds you a bit of querying, doesn’t it? So then this idea occurred to me: considering that I’m the author of both the source material and the screenplay, why not go the self-publish route with the screenplay as well?

I’m not saying hire an indie director, take out a multimillion-dollar loan, and produce it. No bank in their sane mind would approve that sort of endeavor. I am, however, saying that a potential way to market it is to make it available as an e-book. The existence of sites like SimplyScripts.com shows me like nothing else that people love to read screenplays. So why not tap that?  TriggerStreet.com is a good hosting place for indie scripts, but what about Amazon? Why not treat the Kindle like a book and distribute it that way? Copyright is still with me. But this taps into the audience of people who like reading scripts above books.

And bam! – a whole new door opens.

For anyone who may be asking just how difficult it is to write a screenplay, I will give you this advice: read them first. SimplyScripts.com is a great site for scripts of known movies, such as Star Wars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the X-Men films. The best thing you can do before starting work on a movie script is to get acquainted with one. What is the structure of it? Do you know the abbreviations? Can you compare the script to the film to see where and how the shots are marked? That is the first step. The rest is to take the step forward.

Kat Gilraine