That's Not Funny

I sat down to brainstorm a post for this month, and my brain failed to storm.  It drizzled out some of the least entertaining ideas I’ve ever had.  Here are a few of the topics I’m not going to use to try to make readers laugh.

1) A poem about my notebook.  Bad poetry can be mildly amusing in a groaning, if-you-like-puns sort of way.  The words mildly, groaning and puns should have stopped me.  I kept trying to imagine a poem that didn’t reveal what it was about until the end.  All the words used to describe a notebook (cover, pages, lines) are pretty obvious.  I thought about turning it into a metaphorical container for a story.  No one has ever laughed while picturing a box.  Also, I still don’t like poetry.

2) Digging up a tree stump.  I had an idea to compare and contrast writing a book with a project in my backyard.  Both are things I’ve been tempted to give up.  One requires mental stamina while the other is physical.  One brings me joy when I finally finish.  One frustrates me by refusing to budge no matter how many times I hit it with a shovel.  It had a snake by it one day and a gross spider another day and a cable tangled in the roots every day that I don’t think will electrocute me and won’t scurry away when I scream at it.  No one is allowed to find humor in any of that.

3) IRS form 2210.  I know someone somewhere just cringed reading that.  Look it up.  It’s possible to summon a sadistic laugh by picturing that really annoying guy you know trying to fill it out.  But that’s an ugly laugh.  I’m not encouraging it.  And no one is allowed to laugh at why I’m currently very familiar with that form.  Or how many times I started over. 

4) Advice for writers.  I’ve given tongue-in-cheek advice for fun.  I thought about offering a few tips that have actually helped me.  I couldn’t figure out how to do that in a light-hearted, non-big-headed way.  Also, I am not qualified to give advice because I considered trying to entertain people with a tax form.

5) A list.  I thought I could simply make a list of funny things.  What funny things?  Exactly.  That’s why I’m not doing this one either.

6) The bad stuff that wasn’t published.  I have a collection of projects that never saw the light of day, mostly abandoned faster than that tree stump I still intend to outwit.  I think I could find a few interesting paragraphs to share if I spent several hours reading through old papers.  I might spend as many hours sneezing at the dust I kicked up doing that.  Also, I don’t want to do that.

7) It did occur to me that I could write about how I never know what to write about.  That at least would be novel since I haven’t mentioned it before.  Maybe I’ll do that next month.

Three Missions

The official release of Evelyn’s Granddaughter is set for April 11!  I’d be more excited if I wasn’t trying to slip in a very minor change before the buzzer.

There was already one last-minute change.  It had to do with those problematic names again.  Someone from the first Love in Andauk series has a baby in this new book.  I couldn’t decide what to name him.  He got at least three different names in early drafts of the book.  Somehow, he still had two of those names in a copy several of my proofreaders read.  I was disappointed when I discovered the mistake, mostly because it makes me worry there are others.  I’d really like to release a book with no mistakes.

I was paying particularly close attention to the names when I reread the book for what I thought was the last time.  I have a basic outline for the rest of the series.  I’ve written some of the first draft of book 2.  I used a guy from book 3 in one scene and realized that he might be the only one missing from book 1.  There are (or will be) four books that need eight main characters.  Seven of those got at least a very brief mention in the first book.  It bugs me that I left someone out.  I need to find a way to add that name, and I only have a few days for this mission.

And here’s a mission for readers, if anyone would like to accept it.  Try to guess which of the minor characters will be promoted to main characters in the future books.  Maybe even how they will be paired.  I’ll give you some hints.  Remember how I struggle to name characters.  Remember that sometimes I deliberately avoid naming characters who don’t need names.  If you come to a place where you think, why did the author take the trouble to give a name to this random guy about whom we know nothing else?  That might be a sign he’s going to show up again later.

What’s the third mission?  I need to write a blog post before March is over.  That’s going to be a hard one.  I hope I can manage it.

The Velvet Starfish

Once upon a time, there was a velvet starfish. This is a true story. How can it be a true story about something that doesn’t exist? Don’t worry, it’s not the main character.

A writer was trying to design a cover for one of her books. She gathered some items relevant to the story… a paper house, a pair of shiny black turtles, a strip of lace and some flowers. She arranged those things in a myriad of ways on several different backgrounds, taking pictures of everything. Then she took those pictures to her computer to see what she could learn.

She learned that it takes some people more than forty years to consistently take pictures that are not blurry. She learned that the lace was too narrow to frame the title of the book. She learned that the turtles no longer looked like turtles when flattened to two dimensions. They looked like black blobs. She also learned that the burgundy velvet made the nicest background, great color and texture.

The writer took many more pictures – with her new knowledge and without the turtles – on the best background. She tried to create a cover from one of those pictures. One attempt was unbalanced. She saved that and started over. One attempt was washed out. She saved that and started over. One attempt appeared to have a house floating on top of a flower and was just super weird. She saved that and started over.

Whenever it became clear that a cover was going bad, she saved it before she started over because this wasn’t her first cover. She had learned through years of experience that some good might be mixed in with the bad. She might eventually look back at previous attempts and realize that the effect on cover11 worked better with the higher contrast image on cover23.

Enlarging the lace had solved one problem. But the writer had been so focused on getting the title right that she hadn’t paid enough attention to the picture. Once her attention shifted, she noticed that there were some odd wrinkles in the velvet. The wrinkles met in the middle to form a shape that bore an uncanny resemblance to a velvet starfish. The writer did not want to explain to anyone why there was a velvet starfish on her cover. She saved that one and started over.

The writer gathered her supplies again. She paused to knock her head against the wall a few times, then snapped another big batch of pictures. She tested the new pictures behind the prepared title layer. None of the new pictures came close to working. Somehow, the flowers were sideways in several, carpet was sticking out in a few, at least one was blurry, and the writer could only conclude that she hadn’t actually been <i>trying</i> to take good pictures. Rather than another round of photography, she started sifting through the images from the beginning.

Those black blobs that were supposed to be turtles were still black blobs. A few images might work if they could be magically zoomed out. The house floating on a flower was so weird it could almost pass for intentionally unconventional. Except almost. Finally, she did find one image with decent composition. Composition was even a good, arty word. The writer believed she was onto something. She pasted on the title layer, added a cool effect. Yes. It was beginning to look like a real cover possibility. And then she saw it. The velvet starfish was back. In her desperation, the writer had let that annoying velvet starfish creep back onto the cover. Argh. She saved that and started over.