I had to do a heinous amount of driving this weekend in my husband’s truck, and the only thing that made it somewhat pleasant was having the just-purchased A Fine Frenzy CD ride along with me. I stumbled over this CD on Amazon, looking for something else. It was in the ‘Customers who purchased this…’ display, so I listened to a few short clips. I don’t buy too many CD’s–really hardly any–but I decided this one had a special sort of sound. And now, having listened to it in its entirety a least three times, I must say, I’m completely hooked. The songs seem mysteriously unique, and I love the lyrics. And I can’t help but love the name of the band…A Fine Frenzy. It sounds British–the Brits make everything sounds good–and full of potential. Evidently the signature sound is ‘Hypnotic piano arrangements under classic American melody fused into irresistible, atmospheric songs’.
My favorite song (for now) is You Picked Me.

There was one little aspect of the presentation I mentioned in the last post that sort of put me off–I remembered it last night. Ms. Lawson tries to associate her hightlighter colors with something easy to remember: blue for dialogue (i.e. talking a blue streak). So, when it came time to talk about yellow–the color for internal thoughts, she tells us (I’m paraphrasing) ‘Yellow is the color of urine. When you highlight all those lines of internal thought, think of it as little puddles of pee.’ First of all, that’s disgusting. Second, WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH A LITTLE INTERNALIZING????? I think the publishing world has been brainwashed. Everywhere I turn I’m hearing, ‘minimize the time in your heroine’s head’, but the books I’m reading, the books I’m loving have it spades. And these (at least most of them) are well-received, very popular books, and for good reason.

A little internal thought can do magic for a book, and it certainly doesn’t have to be the death knell. People think. People in books should therefore think occasionally. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

And I really don’t care to picture my hard-won WIP with little puddles of pee all over it. But that’s just me.

Yesterday I drove across town to attend a special meeting of my local RWA chapter. Margie Lawson, a trained psychiatrist, spoke on Deep Editing: ‘new psychologically-anchored editing systems and techniques which can take your writing to a higher level’. It was a LONG day: 9-5, plus 45 minutes of drive time on either end, but I’m glad I went.

For one thing, she is a very good speaker. Both engaging and intelligent, she’s also very calming. It feel almost as if I was being talked down from a ledge–so soothing, so encouraging. If it weren’t for the crick in my neck, I could have been laid out on the couch telling her my writing woes.

Anyway…she covered 25 ‘rhetorical devices’, many of which I already knew about, despite not knowing the term ‘rhetorical devices’. I’m talking about things like alliteration, metaphors, oxymorons, similes, etc. But there were a bunch of new ones (new to me anyway) with names I’d never heard of and probably won’t remember by tomorrow: anaphora, epistrophe, polysyndeton, etc. And while this new information gave me lots of hints on how to make my writing more emotionally gripping, it also boosted my confidence just slightly, because I’d actually used almost all of these methods somewhere or other without realizing it. Of course we spent the day going over the first three chapters of our current WIP…chapters I’d thought were pretty darn good. And now they’re covered in red ink!

She also covered her EDITS System, which color-codes different types of writing: internalization, dialogue, emotion, etc. But I don’t see myself using that as much. I’m generally pretty well balanced if I remember to keep my internalization in check. But still, it was useful.

If you get a chance to take one of her online classes (she’s offering one in March) or to see her at a conference, I’d take it. She knows her stuff, she has great examples, she’s a writer herself, and she’s eager to help other writers. Now up and add ’em! 😉