FOMO = the FEAR OF MISSING OUT

 

I missed the heyday of an ice-cream chain that became famous for having twenty-eight flavors. By the time I came to the US, it had only a few years to exist before yielding to ice-cream parlors that offered fewer flavors, and frankly were wise to do so.

 

The experience of marching into a Howard Johnson’s was exhilarating. Twenty-eight flavors! Even if you would dismiss ten of the flavors as less appealing, you still had eighteen to choose from.

 

There was Banana, Black Raspberry, Burgundy Cherry, Butter Pecan, Buttercrunch, Butterscotch, Caramel Fudge, Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Coconut, Coffee, Frozen Pudding, Fruit Salad, Fudge Ripple, Lemon Stick, Macaroon, Maple Walnut, Mocha Chip, Orange-Pineapple, Peach, Peanut Brittle, Pecan Brittle, Peppermint Stick, Pineapple, Pistachio, Strawberry, Strawberry Ripple and Vanilla. Which would you order?

 

For one who came from then-modest Israel, this was like going to an amusement park with so many rides that you would be paralyzed not knowing which way to turn.

 

The thing is, invariably after making the choice and sitting down, one fills with regrets about the flavors not chosen. Especially for a kid who doesn’t get to decide when a re-do (that would be another trip to the ice-cream parlor) will be, if it ever will be.

 

Don’t laugh, but this is a real thing.

 

Here’s what is empowering about storytelling: you can always revise, re-tell, change the trajectory, and (at least until the final version is fixed in print) feel the power of never having to worry about the road not taken.

But once published, you must let go. FOMO is not good for writing or life.

 

Good ice-cream is even better than it was in the Howard Johnson days. Premium parlors have switched to offering fewer flavors (some rotating, some fixed) and better quality.

 

Life isn’t as good as it used to be, and never was.

THE THREE QUESTIONS, or MAKE IT FOUR

 

As I’m about to embark on the sixth draft of my current work-in-progress, (=WIP) I’m mulling over this post that highlights three questions one should ask about the story while drafting:

Is there a character arc?

Does the plot hold casual progression?

Are characters’ motivations convincing?

 

While this is important to do when evaluating a novel and also when giving feedback to others, it is just as valid for a picture book text if the picture book isn’t a concept text  (i.e. lists of shapes, or ABC and such)—Any story of any length will be compelling if a writer can strongly sign on as having checked these three marks.

But I’d add a fourth, which is a duh sort of pillar:

Is it entertaining? It’s best to enlist another’s eyes for this, but even the writer can tell if they themselves are yawning. If you are snoozing at your own writing, others would have been snoring by that point.

Great storytelling is both an innate talent and also a craft mastered with care.

MAY 16th IN HISTORY

 

Many events happened on May 16^th. Some tragic, (the quelling of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943) and some that revolutionized our world, (Theodore Maiman made the first laser operate at the Hughes Research Laboratory in California, by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated surfaces, 1960) and so many more.

 

But my focus landed today on another event that happened May 16^th. The first Academy Awards were presented. (1929)

 

Why would my mind focus on such a nothing thing? You’d be just to wonder about my brain’s degree of feebleness. Could the current Hollywood writers' strike be ringing my bell? Not really, though there's a tenuous connection. Hear me out.

 

The OSCARS, as we have come to call these yearly bashes, are a strange thing when you bother to think and really contemplate them. Displays of vanity and self-congratulations of an industry most of us consume but are not part of. They are also too long and much of these evenings are clunkily not entertaining. And yet---

And yet, many millions the world over watch them live.

 

What started as a fifteen-minute presentation and dinner at a Los Angeles hotel (the Hollywood Roosevelt) with nicely dressed people, has grown into a global event that testifies to one thing: The American cultural power grip. It’s monumental, actually.

Love it or not, it is what it is. We didn’t need to wear T-shirts that screamed “America First.” The Oscars said it for us.

 

It’s also significant that they are losing their audience in recent years. Maybe this is another testament that our cultural dominance is waning.

 

History is like that. Mileposts to mark rises, falls, and the long road keeps on keeping on.

ABOUT CLIFFHANGERS

 

A dear writing friend, herself a writer who is also a super Beta reader for me, put this to me some months ago:

“Maybe you should write a blog post about the pros and cons of cliff hanger chapter endings.”

 

 My response:

 

That’s a *good idea*, thank you.

Books must now compete with other attention-grabbing media, and the young reader has some degree of ADD by the time they are reading because of the oh-so many changes in ways one occupies oneself from toddlerhood on. This is one of the reasons cliff-hangers became the norm and not the exception.

It’s also a reason why so-called episodic stories, like the Anne with an E books, likely can’t be acquired today. My kids always liked these, such as ALL-OFF-A-KIND-FAMILY volumes in which every chapter is a contained story, while there is an over-arching progression in the characters as well. If you aren’t familiar with them, you’d love them.

 

Cliffhangers are an extension of the need to grab the readers by the collar. The same reason first sentences/paragraphs must make a heart race. It’s a new modality that really doesn’t have to be, except that if you want your stories to be acquired, this practice of never letting the reader’s attention waver increases the odds to traditional publishing.

 

I’ve always loved Anne Shirly. New readers love her also. Would publishers give the likes of such stories a renewed chance to reach the coming generations?

DRAFTING DRAFTS

 

I was mulling over the strange creatures called Second Drafts.

(Full disclosure, my WIP is now on its fifth draft, which is not nearly as interesting)

 

So, if first drafts are the first-time words typed onto a document (or penned on a page) and subsequent drafts are re-visioning aspects of the story to a neater, shinier polish, what in the plumb-cake is worth noting about draft number two?

 

To me, it turns out to be the very first time I meet the story, as in, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Story.”

 

Yeah, I wrote it. But while first drafting I was not fully conscious, and I was not “other.” I lived it, suffered it, rejoiced with it, and finally collapsed on my bed to rest when the whole adventure ended, hopefully in a fine resolution.

 

I try to neither look nor think of the story for a month after first drafting. I am catching my breath the way one does after a race, waiting for the steady pace of ordinary breathing and life to return. Only after that happens, will I embark on the next stage, where I meet the story.

 

It’s an interesting experience. In the best case, I have to force myself to stop after a daily portion of polish/add/strike out, usually not exceeding two thousand words or so. When the story (which I had written, so you’d think I should know how it goes) is riveting, it means that it’s working.

When it isn’t, I mull over why. Both happen even in the same manuscript.

 

It’s a heady thing to be surprised by one’s own creative choices. Think of it as a rare opportunity to make one’s own acquaintance. Friends who are not writers have described something like it when remembering something they had done or said which they long forgot. A friend to whom I quoted a letter she had sent long ago put it this way: “Did I say this? That was very insightful of me.”

 

Yes, second drafts are interesting. It’s worth first drafting just to have the second draft experience.