Category: Reblogging Project

Dear Feline Collective Re: Autumn

It has come to managment’s attention that the days are growing shorter and colder. The precipitating factor for this phenomena has to do with the Earth’s axial tilt and the changing angle of our position on the planet relative to the incoming light and heat of the sun. This is not, repeat not a plot on the part of the two-legged members of the household intended to end in the feline collective becoming a small herd of fuzzy ice blocks.

Further, though there are rumors going about that this facility’s h-vac system may soon be switched over to an artificial heating-centered approach, we must emphasize that’s all it is, rumors. The heating will not be turned on until after all air-conditioning units have been removed and placed in winter storage.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the drop in facility temperatures are not to be considered sufficient justification for open warfare over possession of lapspace in regards to the writer-in-residence. Yes, management knows that it is cold. Yes, management understands that the lapspace has both built in heating (see attached document on human body temperature) and auxiliary artificial heating (see attached specs for laptop processor temperature) but there are other seats in the house and the writer-in-residence has not been granted a cold-kitty workload reduction exemption—quite the contrary.

In closing, please consider the use of insulative materials such as blankets or duvets as a first resort. Also note that the sheepskin lined catbeds were provided with the heating needs of the feline collective specifically in mind. Don’t make us break out the electric blanket.

Thank you,
The Management

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 9 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

On Being A Reader

My friend Jen asked a question in a thread on my friend Nancy Pickard’s blog about what all of us wanted from a book in terms of being readers:

…forget about genre, plot and characters, as a reader, what are your favorite elements of craft to encounter in novels?

She then went on to stipulate that the writer is doing all the basics (plot, character, etc) right and narrowed the focus to other stuff. I find it a fascinating question. Perhaps what lifts a competent book to the level of a fantastic book? Or maybe, what delights you as a reader beyond just finding something you can like?

It’s very difficult for me to answer. How do I come up with criteria that encompass the best of Terry Pratchett, Robin McKinley, Tim Powers, Martha Wells, Tony Hillerman, Lois Bujold, six or seven literary authors whose names I can never remember, etc?

Well, one thing that springs immediately to mind is depth of world. Every one of these people is writing stories in a place that feels real to me, one where there is a sense that the set extends beyond the scenes we’re seeing and into the distance where other stories are playing of which we know absolutely nothing.

Another is clarity. The writers I like best don’t leave me wondering what really happened in a scene. Nor do they leave me saying things like, wow, what poetic prose! Here’s a music analogy. I may occasionally pick out a note as very funny, or beautifully written, or particularly sharp, but mostly I don’t hear the notes, I hear the song. The prose serves the story. It doesn’t dominate it.

Illumination. This one is harder to lay out. What I’m talking about are moments that light up the inner workings of the characters in a way that makes me believe in them as people. They can be funny moments, a la Pratchett, or poignant moments of the Robin McKinley sort, or simple nothing-but-the-facts moments of the sort that Hillerman is so good at. They can even mix and match as Wells so often does. The main thing is the a-ha moment were I can really understand and empathize with the character.

Speaking of which, likeability is very important for me. I know it’s not everybody’s bag, but if I don’t like the characters I’m spending time with, I stop spending time with them. Life is way too short for me to want to stand around and watch people self-destruct, even if they do it in really fascinating ways. I saw enough of that shit when I was in theater. Sure, Jane Doe is possessed of a fascinating set of neuroses and makes for great soap opera. Sure, I’ve done six shows with her before and I’d really like to see her finally get her comeuppance. Sure, she’s about to go head first into the chum grinder that is the director running out of patience. No, I’m not going to have anything to do with it. I’m going to go have dinner with the three other people in the cast who also have better things to do. If I’m not rooting for you I’m gone.

Finally, it has to matter. The characters have to be striving for something that I can agree is important. It can be big and important; the fate of the world. It can be small and important, getting onto the path back from personal hell. Whatever the scale, it has to be an important goal. Also, they have to achieve something important. It may not be what they set out to do, people may die in the attempt, it may not be what you would call a traditionally happy ending, but if I don’t feel that all the stress and pain the characters have gone through has been genuinely worthwhile, I will put the book down and never come back to the writer.

So, I realized, looking at this again, that I need to make a distinction between obtrusive beautiful writing and beautiful writing that serves the story. Wyrdsmith’s own Bill Henry does the latter better than any other writer I know. When I read something of Bill’s it’s so clean and clear and bright that the occasional clunky sentence is really surprising.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog July 21 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Back To School…I Mean Work

Today is the first day of classes at the University where my wife teaches. And that means that I have structure in my life again, which means much more writing happening. Don’t get me wrong, I love having her home for the summer and living on an academic schedule. There’s something truly joyous about four months of down time every year and the the only thing in the world I love as much as writing is Laura. But school starting means that I go back to a full time writing schedule, and the only thing I love as much as Laura is writing. So, without further ado, and all appropriate apologies to old Will:

Once more unto the book, dear friends, once more;
Now mark the page up with our English words.
In lulls there’s nothing becomes a writer
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the novel call blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d ink;
Then lend the pen a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the word o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth bad metaphor
O’erhang and shadow its intended thought,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful word.
Now set the start and stretch the keyboard wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every writer
To their full plot. On, on, noblest novelist.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of literature!
Fathers that, like so many Asimovs,
Have in these parts from morn till even writ
Then sheathed their pens for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your keyboards; now attest
That those whom you took as models did beget you.
Be example now to those of grosser blood,
And teach them how to write. And you, good yeoman,
Whose pens were dipped in ink, show us here
The mettle of your writing; let us swear
That you are worth your paper; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not vital story in your heart.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for story, pen, and written word!’

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 03 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Sci-Fi! Say It Loud, Say It Proud

What is it with grousing about the term Sci-Fi?* This morning Jay Lake links to Andrew Wheeler doing a fabulous snarky take-down of the latest SF Signal Mind Meld which is all about changing one aspect of the science fiction publishing world. I haven’t read the whole piece, but in it someone once again wants to get rid of the term Sci-Fi. This is a pet peeve of mine–the stressing out about Sci-Fi, not the term itself.

For some rather large subset of the folks inside the science fiction and fantasy genre world the term is considered pure poison and terribly derogatory. In the rest of the world it’s at worst a neutral catchy phrase to talk about the genre and more often a term of admiration, as in “I’m a Sci-Fi fan.”

Frankly, I like the term. It’s short. It’s catchy. It’s immediately understandable, unlike SF where everyone outside the genre assumes you’re talking about San Francisco, or SFF or F&SF where no one outside the genre knows what you’re talking about. It has no major constituency for it being derogatory outside the field—I live in academia and when Lit-Fic folks and anti Sci-Fi academics talk about our field they don’t say Sci-Fi, they drawl “Oh, you write…sciiieence fiiction, how…interesting,” or “oh, a genre writer.” Sci-Fi doesn’t clunk like “speculative fiction” or even “spec fic.”

Even if I didn’t like it, I’d still use it. It’s effective communication just like “Big Bang,” another term that was originally intentionally dismissive. Even more than that though, by owning the term and making it a badge of pride, it robs it of what little power it might have left to hurt.

In short: Sci-Fi! Say it loud and say it proud:

Sci-Fi. I’m a Sci-Fi fan. Some of what I write is Sci-Fi.** I love Sci-Fi.***

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*Usually pronounced with a rhyming “I” sound when I encounter it, as in C-Sci or Comp-Sci.

**The majority of course is fantasy, which has even bigger terminology problems.

***And, no I’m not a late joiner of the genre. I’ve been active at conventions for 30+ years—I started when I was 15. I’m also a third generation fan–my mother and grandmother were part of the letter-writing campaign to save the original Star Trek and the letter they got back from the show’s creators along with a black and white publicity photo are treasured possessions in my family.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 21 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Writing Priorities Vs. Reading Priorities

I want to talk a little bit about priorities in writing and reading here because I don’t think they’re necessarily the same thing. This was triggered by a writing question I received recently.

Here a ranking of story element importance suggested by the questioner:

1. Story/Plot followed closely by
2. Character
3. World
4. Dialogue — although I’m not sure this can be separated from character.
5. Author’s general wit–Good examples: Pratchet, Zelazney
6. General writing prose
7. Description

This was cool for me for two reasons.

1) I always like to see how other people look at story.

2) It gives me a chance to unpack the idea that writer priorities and reader priorities are not necessarily the same thing. In fact writer priorities and writer priorities are not always the same thing, not even in the head of just one writer. Taking these seven elements as my base set, (I could and probably would add others on my own) I actually have three* different ranking priorities** depending on how I look at them: personal reader preference, personal writer enthusiasms, professional writer necessities.

As a reader it goes like this for me:

1. Story/Plot
2. Character
3. World
4. Prose
5. Wit
6. Dialogue
7. Description

As a writer jazzed about writing a story:

1. World
2. Story/Plot
3. Character
4. Wit (in this case, smart, not funny)
5. Prose
6. Dialogue
7. Description

As a professional writer aware of audience needs:

1. Prose
2a. Story/Plot
2b. Character
3. World
4. Description
5. Dialogue
6. Wit (in this case, smart, not funny)

I think the reader set is fairly self-explanatory, that’s what I notice and what I enjoy as someone reading for pleasure.

The second set is also pretty obvious. These are things that excite me in terms of composing and writing a work.

The last one looks a little bit different.

It starts with prose. That’s because if you don’t put the thing together in a readable manner the rest of that stuff just doesn’t matter because no one’s ever going to see it. Now, what exactly constitutes a readable manner is open to a lot of debate. For me it means first and foremost clarity. The reader has to be able to understand everything I want them to understand. Second, the mode of the prose has to suit the mood of the story. Perky text message speech is probably not going to go well with a Gothic horror piece unless it’s used very very carefully and deliberately. I personally also prefer invisible prose, where the reader is hardly aware that they are reading rather than experiencing the story, but I’ve seen beautiful, obtrusive, poetic prose work as well.

Second I’ve put plot/story, though I could make a persuasive case that character should go first, which is why I changed the numbering scheme. You really need them both. Stories with one but not the other are going to lose a big portion of readers. You can pull off something that’s great for a subset of readers with one being outstanding and the other craptacular, but if you don’t have both, you’re in serious trouble.

I put world third though it’s both my favorite element to write and a really critical component, especially in SFF. Yes there are readers who put setting first in terms of what draws them into a story. And yes, setting can be the difference between a good book and a great one, but it’s really not as important to the average reader as the other two. That’s because it’s more fungible. There are a lot of stories that can be told equally well in New York, Feudal Japan, or Middle Earth. SFF is rife with stories that could only work in the magnificent settings created specifically for them, and it’s only behind the other two by a hair, but I do think it has to come in third.

I’m not going to get into 4, 5, and 6 here because I’ve already run long.

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*It’s actually four since I have a professional reader’s set too, but that’s a whole post in itself and begins with coherence, which isn’t even on this list, so I’m going to leave it out here

**They’re also shifting priorities over time and depending what I’m working on

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 20 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Boot Camp For Writers

I recently received a question asking how one could learn to write at a professional level given limited time but intense focus and dedication. I don’t know that it’s possible to come up with some sort of prescriptive route for that would even be likely to be 20 percent successful. If it was, someone would already have done it, but it gave me an excuse to think about how I would construct a boot camp for writers and that seemed a worthwhile challenge. As part of the question, the interested party wanted to know how I’d learned the craft (inasmuch as I’ve learned it) and I’ll throw that in at the bottom of the boot camp post. This is entirely speculation, as it’s not really how I got to where I am, but I think it might be useful speculation.
I personally think there’s no better way to really learn the craft than to write. I think that short stories can really do an enormous amount of work in teaching the writer who is willing to apply themselves—work that would take much longer with novels.

Boot Camp For Writers:

Day 1, brainstorm 10 story ideas. Write a 5 sentence description of each idea.

Day 2, write a 200 word description of 10 of those ideas (or even just 5-depends on how fast you write). Really think about the plot for each. Don’t worry about character or setting or making enormous amounts of sense, just focus on creating a solid plotline. What’s the situation? What’s the problem? How does the protagonist attempt to solve the problem? It’s a short story, so they can either succeed or fail. How are they transformed in the course of the story? What are the stakes?

Day 3, take the description that most appeals. Write the story. Again, just focus on plot. Do all the other things, but don’t worry about them. You’re trying to nail down plot here. Take another day to finish the story if you have to, but no more than that.

Day 4, repeat days 1 and 2.

Day 5, repeat day 3.

Day 6, brainstorm 10 ideas (you can steal from the 18 ideas you’ve already come up with but not written). Write a 200 word description of each idea focusing on character (you can steal from the previous 18 for events but that’s not what’s important here). What’s important is who are these people. Why are they doing what they’re doing? How are they transformed? Remember that every single character is the hero of their own story. Really drill down on motivation and personality.

Day 7, write the story that most appeals to you from the character oriented descriptions. Don’t worry about anything but making the characters breathe and do things that make internal sense.

Day 8, repeat day 6.

Day 9, repeat day 7.

Day 10, brainstorm ten story ideas (again, you can steal from the leftovers). Write a 200 word description of each story focussing on setting and world. Make it as much a real place as possible. Really think through the consequences of the central magical or technological situations.

Day 11, write the most appealing story of that set. Focus on the world, on getting the details in that make it a habitable logical place. Try to show the reader the sweat on the characters’ faces. Make sure you really describe things and take the reader to the world. Do all the other stuff, but don’t let it worry you if someone does something inconsistent or some plot twist makes no real sense.

Day 12, brainstorm ten story ideas. Write a five sentence description of each. Take the five that most appeal to you and write a 300 word summary of each one. Make sure that you have a real plot with a problem and cost. Make sure you have real characters with transformations and logical motives. Make sure that the place the story is set is logical and three dimensional.

Day 13, take the second best idea. Write a story.

Day 14, take the best idea. Write a story.

Day 15, go back through and read everything you’ve written over the previous two weeks.

Days 16-29 do whatever the heck you want, but make sure to think about writing and the stories at least a bit each day. Now would be a good time to work on that novel you’ve been dreaming about. Or to simply go lay on the beach.

Day 30, go back and reread it all again. Send the five best stories off to a critical reader or readers.

Days 31-59, wait, do whatever you want, but spend a little time each day thinking about writing and the stories. Go back to the novel.

Day 60, read the critiques.

Days 61-65, revise the short stories. Give each one a day and make the changes that you think will help the story work.

Day 66, send them all out.

Day 67, get to work on the next project. Focus on the novel. Write five short stories in five weeks. Anything. Keep writing. Don’t think about the submissions.

End Boot Camp

For comparison, how I learned (in brief): Read a lot of f&sf. Wrote one short story, started submitting it. Wrote three novels in quick succession (all fairly derivative). Ditto on submissions. Started a writers group by buttonholing fellow writers I knew socially. wrote about twenty short stories and ran them through critique. Sold WebMage the short. Started writing the novel. Sold some more shorts. Wrote four more novels. Ran them all through various writers groups. Sold WebMage the novel and a sequel. Wrote more novels. Sold more novels. Spent a lot of time thinking about story as the process went along and talking about it with other writers.

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(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 18 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Retro Friday Cat Blogging–Interloper Edition

One of Laura’s departmental colleagues found a kitten on her porch. Because we’ve got cats and she’s got a dog and three four young children she brought the kitty over here and we took care of her for a couple of days. We also took her picture. So, without further ado, THE INTERLOPER:*

These two are a pretty good look at her coloring, sort of tabby with calico highlights, she’s a lovely cat

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And friendly

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Very friendly

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*At least that’s how the feline horde felt about her

 

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 29 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Retro Friday Cat Blogging

 

Leith, nap cats edition

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Ashbless, nap cats edition

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Isabelle, you woke me up to take a picture?

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Jordan, who can nap with that damn chipmunk in the morning glories?

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Nutmeg, Dude, does that camera taste as good as it looks?

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(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 8 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)