Friday linkages

Josh Olson tells just why he won’t read your fucking script. You know, even at this point in my writing career I’ve had to adopt this philosophy as well. I have enough writing friends, and I include among those the critique group I belong to, that taking on more from people I don’t know personally is just too much. (Grokked from John Scalzi)

Jay Lake talks about his time allotments and schedules. Here’s another writer who says, “I get a lot done, and I’m a very busy boy.” How? Well TV is out. For Jay it’s way out, for me it’s mostly out. I don’t have a gaming system (although that’s changing, more on that later), I don’t do lots of social activities. Even with that I have less than two hours to write in a day (normally). It can be frustrating, especially when I realize that I need to clean the bathroom (and if it’s bad for me, I can only have sympathy for my long suffering wife) and the home projects that lag in time (still need a final sand on the hole in the wall project). It’s a matter of what your priorities are. Above all are friends and family, after that the things that bring in the cash (day and night jobs), then writing, then cleaning, watching TV, seeing a movie, etc.

Jim Hines talks about self publishing myths. My own position on self-publish has softened in the previous years, mostly due to friends like Ken McConnell and Matt Mitchell who have gone down that road. However you can read the hard work they’ve gone through on their blogs. Many of the myths Jim talks about are those used in publishing schemes (which, just like POD books, we need to delineate are different from self-publishing). The self-publishing model isn’t for me. I’ll probably use it the way Scalzi does (to get limited edition books as a way to share), but I don’t think I have it in me to go the whole way.

Closely related is Kelly McCullough’s self-promoting authors anonymous. Or, letting go and letting marketing professionals help. One of the reasons I go to conventions and read successful writers’ blogs is to learn this kind of stuff (to see what works and what doesn’t). Really, people have been down this road before. What works for them may not for you (really, who else is John Scalzi?), but it’s all grist for the mill.

Last night the missing part of chapter 22 came to me. I wrote it out long hand before going to bed and will key it in today. Maybe and extra 300 words. It might seem like I’m obsessed with wordcount (if you read my other blog), but I’m not really. It’s a hand metric to say, “I’m progressing.” If I would get my real milestones I’d be getting all spoilery with my own novel, and I might tempt the fates to make it all go wrong. And if I said, “Hey, last night as I was writing Chapter 22, I realized just why (this thing) happened in Chapter 21, which makes the world of New Frisco that much richer and enhances the depth of the characters. Also, and interesting side plot which reveals some history of the Disaster and can lead to some good situations, humor, tension, and motivation down the road.” That probably wouldn’t be helpful to you at all.

Writerly Linkee-poo

Dean Wesley Smith is dinning on the bar-b-qued remains of publishing myths. This one is about rewrite. There’s a lot in here I agree with, and a lot I disagree with. I think the point would be, “don’t be so critical of yourself.” As to his rant on critique groups, I agree. You shouldn’t write your work to appease your group, instead you should find a group that will point out things like, “So why don’t they have radar in this far future story, so they could see the rockets coming” (that’s one made on one of my stories, and the truth is I didn’t tell part of the story correctly so they misunderstood what was happening). Don’t go to the groups that say things like, “Maybe if you had this person do this instead” or “You’ll want to use this word here.” Those are death. At worst (or best) the group can say, “This would have worked better for me if…” and then you take that with a grain of salt the size of Utah. (grokked from Jay Lake)

Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s notes on Wendy Loggia’s speech “I Wanted to Love This: Seven Reasons Why Your Manuscript Gets Declined.” Good reading. This goes back to the, “Once you’ve gotten the mechanics down it still doesn’t mean you’re writing a story.” And as Stephen Kings says, “It’s all about the story.” (can’t remember how I got there, sorry who ever pointed this out)

Jim Hines spills the beans about Neil Gaiman. Which includes the excellent, “#9 Neil Gaiman is the reason nobody teaches “I before E except after C” anymore.”

Blade’s Edge

Local Boise author, and all around awesome person, Valerie Robertson’s debut novel is out today in ebook format. Blade’s Edge from Samhain Publishing is ready for purchasing. I’ve got my copy, do you have yours? Actually, I think this may be my first ebook, and romance novel. Go me.

Mad Scientist Tells Secrets of Chemistry without Math!

I’m teaching Practical Chemistry for Writers as the first Murder in the Grove online class. This is a reprise of the class I taught through RWA KOD’s COFFIN program last year (with a couple of easter eggs they didn’t get). It’s also probably the last time I’ll teach this class for the foreseeable future.

Practical Chemistry will cover:
* Poison 101 – the basics
* Poison 102 – overview of alkaloids
* Meanwhile Back at the Lab – how we handled things in my lab
* Herbal Medicine that Really Works
* Suburban Terrorism – what HSA won’t tell you
* Love Potion #1 – neurochemistry of attraction, infatuation & attachment
* Soapmaking
* Distillation (making good brandy out of bad wine)

You can find more information (or sign up for the class, hint hint) at http://www.murderinthegrove.com

Feel free to forward this information wherever you think it might be useful or welcome.

Thanks,
Val Robertson
–
Blade’s Edge – on sale Sept 8, 2009 at Samhain

“A Matter of Trust: song and dance” part 4

But it isn’t enough to write a story. There has to be a reader for that story, and it can’t be just you.

“A story is a collaboration between teller and audience, writer and reader. Fiction is not only illusion, but collusion….Without a reader there’s no story. No matter how well written, if it isn’t read it doesn’t exist as a story. The reader makes it happen just as much as the writer does.”

Writer, story, reader: it’s an abstract dance that requires all to participate. If you write a story and stuff it into a drawer when you are finished, without letting others read it, you have slapped words on a page that may or may not have recognizable form or recognizable meaning. To be valued, to be a story, to be a work of art, your baby has to be SEEN. That means letting it out of the hermetically sealed bubble at least a little bit. Being read by others is like oxygen for humans: your story needs read to live.

However, you have to write something someone will read or you haven’t done your job. This means making your story interactive. To be successful, your reader must identify with the situation, characters, and emotion in some fashion. Your reader must be able to follow the plot with all of its twists, turns, and arcs. Your reader must desire the entertainment you attempt to provide. You have to make them desire it more than dinner, and make them go after that extra cup of coffee at the breakfast table because they want those precious extra minutes in your world. You have to engage them, transfer your vision to them, and let their imagination fly. You have to make them willing to suspend their disbelief and soak in the magic you have created.

It all comes down to a matter of trust. You have to trust your gift is sufficient to tell a story, and it won’t fail you at an inopportune moment. You have to trust the story enough to even begin writing it, and then allow it to evolve beyond your initial ideas and plans to develop into that masterpiece everyone wants on their shelves. You have to trust your readers to see your vision, to interact with your story and commune with it. You have to trust your gift and the story to show the reader the looking glass, and trust the reader to want to be led to the other side.

It is hard, this trust. It is hard to overcome the fear of failure, of rejection, of harsh critiques. But the rewards of that trust—in your gift, your story, and the reader—the rewards of overcoming that fear of failure, rejection, and harsh critiques, can set you free, can make you soar.

“A Matter of Trust” in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin. Shambhala Publications, Boston, 2004. ISBN: 978-1-59030-006-0 (or 1-59030-006-8)

“A Matter of Trust: song and dance” part 3

Action, high emotion, and those scenes which are being PITAs (pains in the ass) cause me some writer’s block usually because I want them to be perfect. It is also called stage-fright and over-rehearsing, the bane of every performer. I CAN force my right brain on stage at gunpoint, under the lights, and edit the results later. This is shooting six rolls of film to find one or two gem-quality shots.

But most times, I let the right brain slip its leash by closing my eyes and writing the scene as I see it in my head, like I’m watching a movie. This isn’t a new idea, but it DOES work. Blanket the eyes of the panicked horse, and the horse will trust you to lead it from the burning barn. In other words, what you can’t see (the blank page) can no longer scare you.

With my eyes closed, my imagination and fingers have wings. I word-paint what I see in my mind’s eye: broad strokes, tiny details, and splashes of color; all emotion, and what caused the emotion; action, movement, any words that leap clear and stick in my head. I get the essentials, the bones of the scene.

I open my eyes. It might look like ten miles of mud fence, but it’s a million times easier to edit the ugliest prose I have ever written, than to agonize over a blank page full of nothing but air. And I don’t have to keep this melodramatic drivel. I hit replay and slow it down. I find more details, cut the stuff that doesn’t work, flesh out the bones, layer in what makes the scene live on paper. Right brain. Left brain. Right. Left. It’s slow, but it gets me beyond the block.

I think the worst thing an author can suffer is overweening pride and blindness to new opportunities to learn, which lead to hubris and stagnation. Throughout the essay, Ursula reminds us to keep an open mind, especially in reading others’ works, and learning about our craft. Learn, practice, and hone your craft until it gleams in starlight. There is always more to learn, but don’t let that stop you from writing. You have to practice and show off what you have learned.

“I must trust my gift, and therefore trust the story I write, know that its use, its meaning or beauty, may go far beyond anything I could have planned.”

Trust your gift, trust your story; give both freedom. Freedom to use the skills you have to tell the story, and freedom for the story to express itself through your gift, with or without prior planning. This trust, this freedom, can lead to unexpected surprises, both delightful and troubling, which weren’t in the original synopsis or outline. The delightful ones are seen as immediate improvements. The troubling ones might require more extensive readjustments because you’ve painted yourself into a corner; get paint on your shoes, or build a window. Changes, delightful or troubling, can make your story deeper, more meaningful, the tension and emotion more vibrant, turn it into a prose work of art, simply because you allowed your story room to move.

Again, it boils down to trust. Trust in you, trust in the story.

“A Matter of Trust: song and dance” part 2

But what is this about trusting the story? You’re the one writing it, for pity’s sake, how much more trust is there to give?

“…to trust the story….means being willing not to have full control over the story as you write it. First you have to learn how to write English, and learn how to tell stories in general—techniques, practice, and all that: so that you are in control. And then you have to learn how to relinquish it.”

Relinquish control? Surely she jests. Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel; it isn’t a train.

“Deliberate, conscious control, in the sense of knowing and keeping to the plan, the subject, the gait, and the direction of the work, is invaluable in the planning stage—before writing—and in the revision stage—after the first draft. During the actual composition it seems to be best if conscious intellectual control is relaxed. An insistent consciousness of the intention of the writing may interfere with the process of writing. The writer may get in the way of the story.”

We have to strike a balance between the knowing part of our brains (the left) and the actual act of creation (the right), a balance between the technician and the artist.

“Lack of control over a story, usually arising from ignorance of the craft or from self-indulgence, may lead to slackness of pace, incoherence, sloppy writing, spoiled work. Over-control, usually arising from self-consciousness or a competitive attitude, may lead to tightness, artificiality, self-conscious language, dead work.”

I am a plotter. I spend months or years on set-up work before I start chapter one. I must have a written plan in order to write smoothly and more consistently. I have to remember the only perfect plan is the one not yet implemented; the plan is nothing more than a good suggestion. In the first draft I should primarily create, not dissemble, so I must remember to shut my left brain (planning, editing, logistics) in the dressing room because the right brain needs the whole stage.

I pursue perfection; my left brain escapes the dressing room frequently. I meddle and muddle and masticate; I over-analyze, tweak, add, remove, adjust—all red-sign flags that my left brain needs to be shut in solitary confinement for disturbing the peace. Planning, editing, self-critiquing, self-doubt, procrastination, and fear are ALL left brain activity, and all can be the root of dreaded writer’s block. So, yes, the left brain derails telling the story.

“A Matter of Trust: song and dance” part 1

Ursula K. Le Guin says in her essay, “A Matter of Trust,”

“In order to write a story, you have to trust yourself, you have to trust the story, and you have to trust the reader….Before you start writing, neither the story nor the reader even exists, and the only thing you have to trust is yourself….the only way you can come to trust in yourself as a writer is to write….To read, to write, to practice your trade, to learn your job, until you know something about it, and know you know something about it.”

To write, you must read. Everything you read has value: articles, classics, research material, how-to books, the modern greats in all genres, even the worst piece of fiction a publisher ever had the disgrace to put on the shelf. Great, good, mediocre, and horrid, all that reading shows you what is good writing, what errors to avoid, and clues to how you can improve your writing through literary devices, facts, ideas, and simple common sense in grammar and spelling. Be open to those lessons. Some will sink in by osmosis. Some you’ll have to revisit constantly. The trick is to practice a lot. You’ll learn to apply these lessons, eventually, without overdoing or flubbing.

Ursula comments further that at some point, early on, you may think you are ready for agent and publisher. Don’t be hasty even if you think your first novel will be the best thing since flush toilets. Take a minute. Stand back and reevaluate with a critical eye, talk to a friend, a writing professor, a critique group, other writers. You think it’s good enough, you might even be correct, then again no one wants to believe their story desperately needs a hatchet and an early grave, do they?

However, knowing you don’t know anything can be just as bad as NOT knowing you don’t know anything.

“I know some very good writers who never finish anything, or finish it and then destroy it with over-revising to meet real or imagined criticisms, because they don’t trust themselves as writers, which means they can’t trust their writing. Confidence in yourself as a writer…you earn…by doing, you build it up slowly, by working at it.”

I trust my writing between blinding moments of self-doubt. I am my own worst critic. Then I read a published author’s work, and notice that though they were published, their writing is on par with an eighth grade education, and their editor must have been smoking crack even on the most basic of grammar points. Books like those give me hope, not only because I think that since they were published there is hope for me, but because I KNOW I can do a better job than that published author. I don’t think this is excessive pride; I think it is self-confidence in what I know I know, and in my knowing how much I don’t know still, which is just as important.

Writerly Linkee-poo

So, as someone who is writing the first novel they’ll complete (I think I can, I think I can) this article on This Is Your Job speaks well to me. (grokked form Jay Lake)

The Writer’s Digest (of which I no longer subscribe, sorry guys) with 7 Biggest Myths of Publishing. What she said (especially #7 – It’s okay to put your book on hold).

Terry Bissons 60 Rules for Short SF (and Fantasy) which is a much faster read than it sounds.

Rejection to Linkages

OSC Intergalactic Medicine show sends word they’re passing on my humorous flash fantasy “Prince Wanted.” The letter is short and sweet, but I’m not sure it’s a form (I’ll have to check older rejections from them). So, sometime this weekend it’s back to duotrope (and now that I think about it, it’s been quite a few weeks since I’ve been there).

So on that vein, some writerly links.

The blog, “Pimp My Novel” has been spilling the beans about sales. Here’s their post for Fantasy and here’s the one for SF. They also do reports on other genres (literary, childrens, etc).

The Rejectionist with book ideas they couldn’t make up, even if they wanted to. Wow. Really, if you think you’re ideas are crap, you need to check out these three.

Seanan McQuire gives us some thoughts on writing. And her discussion of “Recess” is so spot on, I was misty-eyed by the end of it. (Grokked from Catherine Schaff-Stump).

Tobias Buckell extolls the virtues of Story Tracker which somewhat does something I’ve been looking for as well. I think Duotrope will also handle this, but, frankly, I haven’t taken the time to check it out. So, another reason to get that iTouch (they’re building up).

And the Blood Red Pencil continues to dish up some good content (I’m way behind my reading there).

edited to include Kate Elliot talking of Identity and characterization over on Tor.com.