Phoenix Living

This was The Kid’s first convention, and he enjoyed himself quite a bit, mostly hanging out in the gaming room with his Dad.  I got to attend three panels and took some notes, which I’ll share here.  It was nice getting out to a convention again, I’m looking forward to being on more panels in future conventions, though being a guest as I was at this one (last minute attendance decision) is also fun. I had some great conversations with Irish Eyes and my own beloved Nathan that helped me pinpoint where some of my current struggle with the setting in the novel has been, which will be its own post perhaps later.

I missed one of the panels I’d really wanted to attend, about the future of NASA and private spaceflight, so if anyone has notes from that panel please share!

When a Story Becomes a Series

This was one of the panels Steve was on, the full author list being: Steven Brust, Amanda Downum, Carol Berg, Julie Kenner, and Stina Leight.  I was hoping for much more out of this panel that I received, I’ll admit.  I asked a couple of questions pertinent to my current projects and got what I felt were incredibly generic and basic writer-101 advice in return, though I’m fairly sure they weren’t writer-101 questions.  I also didn’t like that the moderator wasn’t paying attention to certain panelists overriding less vocal panelists; in particular I don’t think we heard from Ms. Downum nearly as much as I’d have liked.  I wasn’t sorry I attended the panel, but I also don’t think I came away from it with any new insights into my work, like I did at some of the other panels.

However, I did still take several notes from the panel:

They started out with an interesting bit of definition; “episodic series”, where multiple nearly-stand-alone stories are connected by a larger world or setting or characters, and a “series arc”, one larger story arc told in multiple story-sized pieces.  The next half hour was mostly 101 advice that works for any story, such as looking for a point of conflict to find where the story begins, or start the story when something changes for your characters,, and Steve’s standard “start with a cool opening sentence and write from there.”

In the second half they finally got back to more series-specific talk.  There was panel agreement that a book in a larger series should still stand alone enough to tell a story and leave the reader with some feeling of satisfaction (though connecting threads to other stories are fine).  Steve advised that a writer not hold anything back for another book; even if you are writing a series, use up all your good ideas in the first book.  Don’t worry about it, you’ll have more ideas later, and you don’t want to half-ass the project in front of you.  Accept that not every reader will get everything you write or like everything you write; don’t let that change what you write.  One suggestion for the really important story points was don’t tell the reader directly at all, just give them clues and let them figure it out.  More panel consensus that hand-holding the reader through recapitulating every detail of previous stories with each sequel was one of the faster ways to alienate your fans.

They wrapped up with talking a bit about getting stuck on longer projects like series.  They advised to “retain your passion” for your story to avoid falling into formulaic prose, though when asked they couldn’t easily advise the audience on how you would actually retain it or revive faltering passion.  They recommended to write stories you want to read, since likely at least some other readers will share your tastes.  One panelist said that any time she got stuck she found that she wasn’t writing the correct action or piece of the story, and she stops and goes back to looking closely at her characters to figure out a different path.  She found that usually the flaw was in the realm of too much exposition and not enough action.

LBGT issues in speculative fiction

This was definitely my favorite panel at the convention, so much so that I didn’t take very many notes, the conversation and questions were so engaging.  I got to meet a fellow Unspeakable Horror:From the Shadows of the Closet anthology author, Lee Thomas, who is fabulous as a panelist.  The other authors on the panel were Nancy Jane Moore, Rose Dimond, and Katherine Beutner.

One panelist advised to read YA (young adult) spec fic to see some of the up-and-coming treatment of gays in genre fiction; even though there  isn’t explicit sex in YA, she felt that they were still doing a good job addressing some of the social issues.  Lee Thomas mentioned that he’d like to see more stories that were well done that were in some way specifically about the gay characters, rather than more stories that happen to have gay characters in them.

They recommended the book Writing the Other, for anyone who wanted insight into writing outside your own cultural experiences.  Several publishers that do well with queer themes were mentioned, including Lethe Press, Bold Stroke, and Dark Scribe Press.  They also mentioned several authors that the panelists felt were doingtgood work with queer themes in spec fic, including Emma Donahue, Rob Dunbar, Steve Berman, Paul Bens’ Kelland, Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, and Kat Valente’s Palimpsest.

The City as Character

This was the final panel I attended at the con, which was reasonably good.  The largest irritation here was again with the moderation, though this time the moderator apparently forgot that the audience was present and that all those arms in the air weren’t actually stretching.  The panelists here were Martha Wells, Patricia Sarath, Amanda Downum, Gordon Andrews, Ilona Andrews, and Stina Leight.

A common problem with a story city is that it often feels like an incomplete stage set, or like the false-front towns of old-western movie sets; if you move away from the story action your setting goes blank.  You want to go for a world that feels like it is rich and complex and vibrant and still exists whether the reader is present or not.

One person recommended to start with thing that exist, then alter pieces toward the fantastic based on what the needs of your particular story are.  A city with a sense of history and secrets helps.  Different ages within a city are also important; very few cities have all their parts built in a similar time frame, yet many writers make this mistake with fictional cities.

Several recommended that you travel enough to get an understanging of how different cities have different personalities or flavors or impersonalness qualities.  And don’t forget that a city ultimately depends on the people living in it to shape that particular personality flavor.  The setting reflects the characters who reflect aspects of the setting in turn, each altering the other.

Figure out which are the defining moments that shaped your city, and how those caused ripples of effects through the city’s timeline.  The environment and climate that the city is in are also quite important for city characterization.  Was the city a planned settlement?  If so, it will likely look much more homogenized with grid-like roads, as opposed to a city that “just grew” over time and changed that way.

Cities are often thought of as working in isolation in stories, but even in the ancient world that wasn’t so; they had interconnected trade routes, a network of exchanged goods that were vital to a city’s survival.  The city reflects its history, it is effective the warehouse of collective experiences over time of the inhabitants of the city.

Expectations can work against you perceptually.  The example given was Harlem, which is assumed to be a poor and “scary” neighborhood, but also contains some of the most beautiful architecture in America.  Quirky or inconsistent elements of characterization such as this will help give the feel of a personality to a story city.

Much good information on this panel, hope you find it helpful for me to share it!

You know the feeling you get when you’ve walked into a room, and when you enter it you know exactly what your errand is, and the next moment you find yourself standing aimlessly in the middle, mind blank, with not the first clue as to why you entered in the first place?

Now imagine being stuck there — perhaps for days, perhaps weeks; in that state there’s no measurement of time, no significant changes to show the imprint of time’s passing.

I came back to initial awareness with the feeling that a long time had passed. The scenery around me kept melting and shifting. At first it was too confusing to make sense of, but after staring at it, I realized that it looked more like those time-lapse nature films of roses blooming or a rabbit corpse decaying, sped up to near-incomprehension. Images of places and people burst into being, moved and changed with lightning speed, then broke off or faded away to be replaced by the next series.

Some time after that, I noticed that I wasn’t actually a part of the chaotic landscape, that I stood on unchanging ground and felt independent of my surroundings. I thought that I might want to further examine my immediate area. I wondered why it had taken so long for me to think that, then was distracted by something at my feet.

A single feather lay there, glittering in the reflected light of the moving backdrop. A moment’s reflection reminded me that feathers didn’t usually sparkle, so I bent down and picked it up by the rachis. This proved to be a good decision, as the shaft was a piece of thin, slightly flexible polished steel, smooth itself but ending in a wickedly sharp calamus. The quill wasn’t the only deadly feature of the feather; the rami overlapped in such a way that the ends of the barbs fit together into an edge that could easily slice into flesh. I ran my fingers carefully down the calamus and found my fingertips covered in the crumbly red dust that covered its tip. A sniff gave me the faded tang of dried blood, and I felt calmer.

I think I held the feather for some time before more thoughts arrived. They formed the shape of figuring out this place felt not only weird but dangerous, and leaving might be wise. When I turned around, it looked as if a white hallway with fluorescent lights stretched back into hazy dimness behind me. All around, chaos still spun pretty pictures into horrors at high speed, so I stepped into the hall.

I passed by a room with white-coated people lounging around a table and smoking, a vending machine in one corner with motor cycling erratically which provided an odd harmony to the workplace griping. …the children were talking again today about the boy who found his way out of here…of course I punished them…can’t have those notions getting into these poor unfortunate heads… I felt strange urges tickling at the edges of my mind and hurried further down the hall. I seemed to be garbed in a white coat of my own, and there were now doors lining either side, each with a thick pane of glass set at eye level and a large locked handle.

I decided to ignore the doors and walk until I found something that looked like an exit, but that idea didn’t seem to be in control of my body. I found myself moving toward the nearest viewing window.

That was the first time since regaining consciousness that I realized I was furious.

With the 21st century magic of Wikipedia and Google, today I’ve researched toxic waste, Superfund sites, and the Valley of the Drums.

Tomorrow, it’ll be South America, faith healing, more child trafficking atrocities, and the Amazon Basin.  (different story than today’s)  All from the comfort of my home!

I like living in the future!

Several more pages this weekend, within 1-2 writing sessions of finishing this draft.  Then the rules are:

I must write on the new short story daily.  If I have written words on that, then I am allowed to divert to other writing projects (novel, next Byer story) for the rest of that day’s writing sessions.  We’ll see how that works, modifications to the plan will be made as needed.

Part of successful writing is figuring our your own particular writer’s quirks, and then either finding a way to use them to advantage or to work around them when they become blocky.  For me, for whatever reason, one of my quirks is getting past page 10 of a story or chapter.  Obviously, this problem doesn’t arise when I’m writing flash fiction or chapters shorter than 10 pages.  However, for those stories and chapters that fit the parameters, I’ve found that if I stop anywhere ON page 10, I have a huge problem getting the story momentum rolling again.  In learning workarounds for it, I’ve discovered that I can either write through to page 11, even at the very top, and break the psychological barrier against further words.  If I don’t have enough energy for that, then stopping at the bottom of page 9 will produce a similar effect, as long as the next time I sit down to write I get just over a page’s worth of words or more.

I am obviously getting healthier; this has been a rough week physically in many ways (including a mammogram), yet I’ve managed to take care of self and family decently well and also fit in several pages of writing.  I’ve missed one self-imposed deadline but am finishing the story anyway (having successfully passed the 10-page-hump this morning, whee!)

I am ditching all but one of the other self-imposed anthology goals in order to focus on a story that’s been building for most of a year, that I am hoping to submit to the second volume of the anthology I was published in previously.  The deadline is looming soon and I think this story is finally ready to be written.  It is nowhere near as easy a story to write as my recent ones have been, thus the long slow build pre-writing.  I really hope it turns out as nicely on the page as it is in my head, even getting close to that goal will make for a very good story indeed.  If I need breaks from that story while writing it I have the novel and a back-up anthology goal that I can try for in-between writing the big-scary short story.

What are some of your writer or artist quirks, the roadbumps and loopdeeloops that your brain throws in front of the creative process?  What ways have you found to work around or otherwise use these hiccups to your advantage?

Here’s one reader’s take on living the non-A/C way on her own journal.  The lovely Andrea O’Sullivan of Natural Obsessions Fiber is participating in a marathon blogging effort to raise funds for a charity that benefits the children of families affected by cancer.  Go read along, leave comments, and help out with a few dollars to bring happiness to others!

For those passing around the latest version of the “my biology made me sleep around” argument (an article that several friends have linked to this week), might I suggest reading the book The Prehistory of Sex, by Timothy L. Taylor.  While we are indeed biological creatures, our brains and social dynamic patterns have been superseding and overriding our biological “imperatives” for hundreds of thousands of years.  Plus, if other people read this book, I might finally get to have some rousing discussions and debate about it.  I read it during my first week post-surgery, which definitely gave an interesting mental flavor to the reading experience.

Random awesome author link:  If you don’t read Marissa Lingen’s work, you should at least be following her blog. She is consistently witty, engaging, dryly humorous, and insightful.  She’s also a personal friend and an amazing person, but for today I advertise the spiffiness of her writing voice.  Go read, join her throngs of adoring fans (ok, help create the throngs of adoring fans)…

I am recovering from all the recent travel though still more tired than I’d like.  We got the packet for The Kid’s school in the mail today, I’m excited and looking forward to all the supplies shopping!  It looks like a good balance of school and off time throughout the year.

I’ve finished two flash fiction pieces in the last two weeks, and this week I am working on another Byer Family story.  Today I wrote 4 1/2 pages on it and once again find Squirrel Byer to be one of the easiest narrative voices I’ve yet had the pleasure to write.  Plus this one is a nearly all-children cast of characters, which should excite my few but loyal fans who know my work.

So yeah, writing is slowly coming back online regularly rather than sporadically after the madness of the last couple of months of health recovery and travel and court stuff.  It’d be cool if I could get back on a daily writing schedule even before school starts.  If not, I suspect I’ll have much more time most days then.  Full-time child-care is demanding and exhausting!  But he’s a great kid, bright and inquisitive and thirsty to learn all about the world and the interesting things and people in it.  He also has interesting enough ideas that I can tell he’ll be good for my work overall, even if there’s been a few hiccups in my wordflow as we adjust to the new household member.

Interesting dialogue on several writer blogs lately about the difficulty of giving mid-career writing advice.  While I haven’t quite reached mid-career, I’ve certainly moved far beyond what a “new writer’s” group or website can provide me. The consensus so far seems to be that while new writers have to all tackle the same lessons — though the order can vary — mid-career writers have specialized along their path enough that any useful advice has to be tailored to each individual situation.

One of the biggest writing hurdles I’ve been tackling lately isn’t something I’ve seen talked about much on new writer sites, but I do think is a bit more widely-spread than just my experiences:  that is, a “block” on writing that isn’t a lack or stifling of ideas or words, but simply a lack of available energy.

Most health-normative people don’t push themselves enough to their limits that they have to learn how to carefully ration daily energy, especially in American culture.  Most, in fact, don’t use all the available energy they have in potential each day.  Over time, poor health, dietary, and exercise practices will cause that available energy to drop much closer to the low daily expended amount, but that’s a training of your body just as exercise and wellness training is.

Quite a lot of the artists I’ve met regularly push themselves to (or over) their known limits, either physically, mentally, or a combination of those and more.  Whether they have chronic health issues or are engaged in more voluntary boundary-testing, I know very few artists who have managed both an internally self-challenging and whole-health-positive worldview.

I’m trying.

I was even before cancer, but much more so after. I am blessed in that my ideas never lack; I am a fount of ever-burbling ideas, many of them good ones.  I have hardly ever encountered a “writer’s block” as I traditionally understand the term, where I couldn’t find where my words had gone or was worried about where my next good idea was coming from.

But oh my, do I know chapter, verse, and line notes about how a lack of available physical energy affects one’s ability to generate creative work.

In fact, I’ve thought so much and so long on various aspects of it that I’m not quite sure where to start writing about that topic.  So I thought I’d try asking you Fearless Readers: what interests you about this topic?  Is there something you’d like to know more specifically about my encounters with creative energy drain?  Perhap a question or three will get my thoughts moving more linearly on the subject — or at least more coherently.

Now back to the word mines (in this case literally a coal mine)!

Not much writing at all the past three weeks as we adjust to a new family member (which is going splendidly by the way, about as well as could possibly be expected given circumstances), but have either 3 or 4 short stories burbling in the backbrain waiting for keyboard time.  Have caught up on some research reading, at least.  Quite enjoying being a full-time mom, I’m as good at it as you might have guessed, for those who know me.  The next few weeks’ project is to figure out how to more successfully integrate full-time mom-ness with full-time writerlyness.  Since they both use a large amount of daily energy, I’d love to hear from those of you who have successfully juggled this if you have nuggets of wisdom to pass along.  I’m trying to integrate all this as non-neurotically as possible, so I still have to sleep, eat, participate in various relationships, and otherwise take care of me as needed.

Some writing research is…easier than other writing research, that’s for sure.  500 serial killer articles in a month didn’t mess with my emotional equilibrium as much as the three articles read today on India’s human/child trafficking problem did.

I am especially thankful for my middle-class Western-world privilege today.

And even if health and custodial issues prevented us from making 4th Street (woes! sounds like we missed a good one, glad the rest of you there had fun), I did make my goal (plus one!) of finishing a short story by 4th street.  So yay writing-me!

I’m back on the internet after a hectic couple of weeks involving, among other craziness, an emergency cross-country trek and the addition of a new (12-year-old) family member to the Dream Cafe!  Details will likely be a bit slow on that front until the court stuff is finalized, so as to not jinx anything in the works, but the three adults in the home are happy as can be to have our family unit together at last, as it should be.  The Kid is fitting in even faster than we’d suspected he would, with some healthy testing of boundaries and otherwise good behavior and lots of shared fun times.

In writing news, I managed to squeak in just under another story anthology deadline, I really hope I get into this one.  The narrative voice is so easy to write I could get a book’s worth of stories out of her no problem, assuming I can sell a short story or two.  My writing routine will likely be disrupted for most of the rest of this week with various appointments and such things, but am hoping to find more writing time in-between full-time childcare (and continuing cancer recovery, and all the other fun Life events that continue to crop up regularly).

Your writing lesson for the day:  Always google the editor(s) of any market to which you’re submitting.

I just received a personalized rejection note where the personal message seemed to be about a quite different story than I sent in.  This possibly makes more sense when you realize that in my haste to get the story off before deadline, I did NOT look up the editor as I almost always do, and thereby made one of the most elementary mistakes in the book: an incorrect gender honorific.

Not a good idea to offend an editor when trying to convince them your story’s worth buying.  Now to be fair, since I was busting butt post-cancer to catch up on my overdue (self-imposed) deadlines, the draft I sent this editor was not my cleanest draft ever, and I won’t be making that mistake again either.  (This time around, it was mostly a psychological victory to send it in — not to mention the anthology theme is quite along similar lines to my current novel-in-progress so it would have been cool to get a short story from the novel’s world into the anthology.)

No worries, it’s a solid story despite one editor’s opinion and I’ll clean up the draft and send it out again elsewhere, heck, sell several short stories from that world even!  And then sell the novel, which will get more attention for any anthologies I’ve sold Immortality House short stories to at that point, as well as help get attention for the novel.  That’s the plan, anyway, we’ll see how well it works.