Month: April 2011

I’m currently being enculturated in Minneapolis at the White Privilege Conference, and haven’t had much time to do anything until on the Internet until today. Right now, I’m watching this pretty nifty indigenous Aztec dance on stage.

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I met Tony Hughes, who is an author with a cooler than average blog. What I really like about Tony’s writing desk is that it’s a great mix of poetry, old author literary practice, and visits to famous author’s homes. In short, it’s classy, and he lets authors and poets stop in.

And so I did stop in. Here’s my guest post.

Thanks, Tony, for the opportunity to post, and your great blog.

Catherine

Haven’t done one of these for a while, and this morning, it seems to be a good way to get the creative juices flowing. Here’s what’s in the shop, what’s making the rounds, and what’s in the wings.

Coming Out

O-Taga-San: The line edits have come and gone. We’ll see if further changes are needed, but I think we’re good to go. I’ll let you know when Drollerie gets that up.

Retired

Having received another positive rejection for Empress Dark, I’ve retired it for a while. Everyone laughs at it, and no one really wants it. Humor. Don’t you believe them. Until you’re a name, they really don’t want it. George, back me up on this one.

Circulating

The Winter the Troll Danced with Old Nick: Still with 4 agents, and there are still 2 to send it to when those are updated. Some interest in partials, but no takers. Back into the revision garage at some point in the future. Not too terribly disappointed. This is the way of it.

The Make-Over: A new market surfaced, so off it went. I’m not optimistic, because it’s, you know, funny, but it’s out there.

Mark Twain’s Daughter: Confirmed with Tor.com that they still have it on its one year Tor-aversary, and that it’s still under consideration. Which is a good thing. So we wait and hope.

Emperor Cat: In 2008, Yellow Cat and the Man appeared in a benefit for a local animal shelter. These folks asked me to submit again for their new charitable effort, so I am sending them Emperor Cat. Should have this shipped out by Monday, and we’ll see if they use it.

Working On

The Substance of Shadows: Substantial revision. This will take a while. I’ll be looking for readers, with luck, by the end of the summer.

The entire Klarion series has been outlined, with the exception of the last book. I’ve been updating the overall scheme as things shift when we write.

There’s a short story that’s a Lois Lane confessional kind of thing that has been springing to the forefront when I’m unguarded. I’ll probably take a session and hammer it out. The bad news? It’s funny. The good news? It’s ironic, so maybe that will help.

And…I’d better get to actually molding some words. Writing time at the conference looks potentially sketchy.

Catherine

Writer Brent Bowen is another podcaster in the VP XIII group, working with the fine folks at Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. We finally caught up with Brent to ask him a few questions between gigs in his very busy schedule.

Tamago: How did you get started writing?

Brent: Growing up, I read a lot of comic books and adventure novels. And I’ve been writing pretty seriously since middle school, but almost exclusively some form of journalism. It wasn’t until shortly after college that I gave serious thought to writing fiction. And then, it took me reading “The Golden Compass” to commit. I just thought: “There needs to be more fiction like this in the world.”

Tamago: Do you have a genre? What kinds of stories do you prefer to write?

Brent: I’ll write anything genre, but don’t gravitate to hard SF naturally, which is a bit strange because I’m a bit of a gadget-hound and had an aptitude for science in school.

Tamago: What projects are you working on now?

Brent: Currently, I’m finishing up another round of edits on a short story – I’ve got to get it down from novella territory — where I mash up quasi-obscure religious werewolf lore, seventeenth century European slave trade and the origins to some Dutch holiday traditions.

I’m also working on my first magical realism piece. It’s set in a wine shop where the protagonist’s mother has just passed away and left her the shop in the will. She has no idea what she is doing, but gets some unexpected help in building loyal clientele.

Finally, I just finished a rough draft that’s a big risk for me. The story kicks off with an absurd The Android’s Dream-type beginning that I try to make plausible. I’ll need a few crits under my belt before I could even begin to share particulars.

Tamago: I know you have a busy life: father, full-time worker, coach, and writer. What advice can you give to writers trying to find time to write while wearing many hats?

Brent: First, if you want to write, find solitude. I read a great blog post about the needs of creative types and it identified solitude as the no. 1 need.
Second, if you have commitments to other people in your life, such as your children or a significant other, find common ground. What I mean by that is that when my wife and I talk about my needs as a writer, I make compromises and I try to relate to things in a way that align with her values. There is no right or wrong, just your own hue.

Continue reading “VP Profile #12: Brent Bowen”

When last we left this topic, I had laid down some idealistic clap trap about the standards for education and young people, calling out the wizened people of my generation and older as unnecessarily hard on today’s kids and their academic achievements. However, that post didn’t address the question of grammar and conventions in the case of Jacqueline Howett’s book. The book was full of convoluted sentences and questionable grammar, the blame for which was firmly laid at the lack of standards in today’s classroom.

To discuss this topic thoroughly, I have to wear three hats: that of ESL class coordinator, that of technical writer, and that of classic English teacher.

Continue reading “Gate Keeping in the Academic World Part 2”

I’d planned to write about grammar this afternoon, but my head hurts, and so I really don’t want to write about grammar. I will finish the academic commentary soon, prolly early next week.

One post that has almost slipped through the cracks is my commentary on the classic planner/pantser debate. I am discovering that I am…neither! And neither are you, I’d warrant. When people talk about this, what I believe they are talking about is their initial discovery writing. My initial discovery writing is generally writing something. Sometimes it’s crap, sometimes it’s usable. Ah hah! You say with smug superiority. That makes you a pantser.

No. It makes me someone who uses that method to discover my writing sometimes. I’ll write so far that way, then make a tentative outline, explore those ideas until I deviate, write some more usable and/or crappy writing, and then…look it over and outline it some more. We do a variant on this until we end up with our first crappy draft, written with both pantser and plotter strategies.

I don’t think this approach is that unusual. I think that what’s going on is pre-writing. Sometimes it’s more structural, and other times it’s more free. I think it’s sort of silly to classify writing process merely by the discovery of your material. Because it’s the revision that gets to the root of your book.

Once I have that initial morass of crap (and some usable stuff on the page), I switch over to a more critical mode. Since I’ve become a Maassketeer, I realize that what I used to call deep writing is that examination of the tension in the book, and what I can do to ramp up the drama and suspense. It’s at this point that I think most writers become plotters and planners. Yes, interesting discoveries, unbidden from the subconscious can come at any time in the process, but eventually I have to wrangle that novel into a structure, an organized group of tension-building scenes.

I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of the question of how a novel is created is often kept in the shallows of our creative processes. I think that we look at how we produce that first wonderful, endorphine-filled draft that is the fun part of writing. The deeply satisfying work of revising calls for writers to use their other skills, and I suppose that we all have tools in our tool kit to go the distance and finish the book.

Focus not on how the information gets on the page. Focus on what you do with it to improve it once it’s there. I guess.

Still putting on my pants, one leg at a time.

Catherine

After my micro-explosion about weight last week, coupled with Buddha-like reflections the next day, I’ve decided to kick back and enjoy the ride. I’ve received a few emails about what that means. Am I becoming a member, say, of the Fat Acceptance Movement?

In spite of the occasional radical nature of certain elements of this blog, the answer is no. I simply don’t have the energy to become radical about everything. Talking to you about progressive politics, child abuse, the importance of education and unionism, along with writing, seem to be about as far as I can stretch my strong feelings for now.

But, and this is the important thing, I want to feel good, and I want to feel good about myself. Don’t we all? This can be very hard for women. It seems society is geared to try to keep us from doing this in loads of media-related ways which educate the public. The same machine which, say, helped re-elect one of the worst governors in Iowa history is telling me how to feel about my body. Ironic, isn’t it, that I even take that seriously, given that I know how flawed the media can be.

Last week I had reached an emotional crossroads. I discovered something that wasn’t going to change (much) based on how much I wanted to work on it. Hard work is how I get through most trials. I was frustrated. The only thing I could do was embrace the cliche about acceptance and serenity. (Change what you can, accept what you can’t, have the wisdom to know the difference.)

Some of you know how much I care about clothes, costume, and fashion. Strangely, if you meet me in real life, you can see how dowdy I can be. That’s not as contradictory as you might think. You see, I’ve always been interested in historical clothing and theatrical clothing. I am a master costumer, and I used to design my own patterns when I was a young child. Life could have taken a different turn for me and I could have devoted my life to clothing design, but instead I chose writing.

However, one of the reasons it took me so long to get serious about writing is my constant detour into design. (For the interested, this link shows the fruits of about 25 years of costuming, give or take.) I like sewing. I enjoy making unusual clothes and wearing them.

In real life, I wouldn’t want to wear something this outrageous, but I would like to look very different than I do. Given the poor self-esteem I grew up with, coupled with this strange idea that buying clothes and spending money on appearance is a superfluous use of money, I do not dress as I wish. I have gotten better. I have highly experimental hair. I get my nails done now. I have bionic lashes. I enjoy spending money on my appearance and have become less guilt ridden about it.

Well. that’s about to change. I am going to begin a make-over. I’ll be dressing myself as I’ve always wanted to. There will be a real historic vibe to what I do. I’m going to pay attention to clothes that flatter the figure I’m going to have and fit my image of who I want to become. Likewise, I’ll be learning a lot about creating the effects with make up and hair I want to as well. From time to time, I’ll be sharing that interest here.

You see, I’m 45. Another message the media sends is that this is not an age to feel good about yourself. I commit the crime of feeling good about myself. I like who I am and what I do. I like my life. I don’t think appearance is more important than all the rest, but I’ve decided to embrace my inner wishes about my appearance at last. Deep down, I’ve been waiting to have the perfect figure, which I knew I could get through hard work.

Screw that. It’s time for some confidence.

Just thought you’d like to know.

Catherine

This week I’m blessed with two VP Profiles in my inbox. Lisa Morton writes with a quirky SF/folklore sensibility, and she answers interview questions with a quirky, off-beat sense of humor.

***

Tamago: Where do you get your ideas for your stories?

Lisa: I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say Hoboken, right? They don’t really come from any one place. Sometimes I start out wanting to write a story with a certain “feel”, and work from there; other times there’s a character or a situation that just won’t get out of my head. One thing that holds true no matter where the idea comes from, though – working on one idea inevitably means that six shiny new ones will pop up, clamoring to be written.

Tamago: When and how did you decide you wanted to write?

Lisa: Oh jeez, about as soon as I knew how. I’ve been incapable of keeping my nose out of books since I learned how to read, and as far back as I can remember I knew that I wanted to be one of the people telling the stories. I started my first novel when I was nine or ten (It was about a carpenter who gets sucked into a fairy world. I abandoned it when my mother claimed to see Christ symbolism in it.), and started submitting stories (really, really terrible stories, I want to emphasize) to magazines when I was twelve. It’s a shame that I didn’t save those rejection slips; they were devastating back then, but these days I’d frame them as a badge of honor.

Tamago: Since your writing seems to cross genres, how would you describe your work to other people?

Lisa: Future fantasy? Fairytales with rocketships? I can never seem to settle on writing science fiction or fantasy by themselves – it’s always post-apocalyptic futures with magic and elves with neural implants with me.

Tamago: Do you have a dream project that you would like to work on?

Lisa: I have this novel that’s been in my head for a while now. It’s a Gothic set in a creaky old generation ship. There’s a deposed captain, an insane AI, and ghosts, among other things. I’m a little afraid of actually writing it, though, so it keeps getting set aside for other projects.

Continue reading “VP Profile #11: Lisa Nohealani Morton”

Disclaimer: This isn’t meant to be egotistical.

I decided to dedicate myself to writing seriously in 2007 when I had some unsolicited attention in my work based on the strength of a reading. (This would later result in, among other things, my book deal with Cats Curious.) I figured if more people than my mom thought I was a good writer, I should be getting serious about my efforts. AND I had nibbles. I’m that person an agent asks to send a few chapters, and then decides, you know, it was good writing, but it’s not for me. Yup. Me and 200,000,000 other writers. I had some idea that my writing was good, and it wasn’t just me and my immediate circle who thought so.

Hence, frustration. If I *was* a good writer, why wasn’t the whole publication thing going down?

Viable Paradise provided me with my first clue. Everyone there was a pretty darned good writer. We were, we were told, the top percent of the slush pile. It dawned on me that becoming a writer was a lot like going to Iowa State.

When I was a kid, I grew up in teeny Murray Iowa. There were 700 people there. When college recruiters asked if I was in the top 5 percent of my class, I joked that I was the top 5 percent of my class.

Getting to Iowa State, a campus where there were 26,000 students? Was I intimidated? No. It was wonderful! I met so many creative, intellectual, fantastic people, many of whom could be reading this journal right now, one of whom I had to take home with me and marry. I thrived and blossomed at Iowa State with people who were like me, and yeah, I’d do that again.

So…suddenly I began to conceive of writing as a communal activity. I had already been hanging out on the Internet and discovering that published writers were generous with their time and advice. I was also meeting people who were doing what I was: good writers producing work trying to get published. Writing became not this thing I did competitively with others, but gradually it become an activity I shared with others who were doing it for a variety of reasons as well.

I like being part of a group of writers. We support each others success, critique, encourage, and succor. It’s a lot less lonely. I also understand that this isn’t a zero sum game. This is more about people who have the same goal working in the same direction. I also understand that since there’s a lot of good writers, you have to do something much better than you would do as a good writer to stand out. It’s like hanging out with your college buddies all over again. I will be gratified when we are all doing what we enjoy at the level we want to get to, or at least if we’re working toward that.

Next: Perfect Practice Makes Perfect, or treating your writer education like college, in spite of writer ego.

Jim Hines is holding his annual fund raiser for rape crisis centers. You want to get in on the action.

Support rape crisis centers and enter to win an advance copy of The Snow Queen’s Shadow, by Jim C. Hines.

This week I am blessed with two Viable Paradise interviews in my mail box. The first of these is with Steve Buchheit, a writer with a social conscious as well as an excellent sense of noir. Welcome, Steve!

***

Tamago: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

Steve: My standard answer is that I got serious about writing a decade ago, but that’s not the whole story. Progressing forward I also am looking back over my life to see the influences and strains of story that I’m putting into my work. My earliest memory of writing is buying a Kodak Brownie at the Gibbsboro School white elephant sale for a dollar. My parents were still together so we had money to buy rolls of film and I started telling stories through the camera. I wrote poetry through high school, but mostly to impress girls. In college I had the option of skipping English classes. Instead I minored in Creative Writing with my writing focus in poetry, but the literature side had a distinct genre bent (my senior paper was on the concepts of God through the writings of Arthur C. Clarke). While I was traveling for Ernst & Young, I tried writing a pastiche of Steven Brust which utterly failed because I didn’t have the fire in me. Then about a decade ago I started writing an homage to Glenn Cook and that book kicked my tuchus. That was my come to Jesus moment. I still want to go back and finish that book, but I don’t know that I’m completely ready for it.

I took some continuing ed classes at that point and was blessed to have two highly influential instructors. I realized at that time that I had no clue how to tell a story. So I downshifted into short stories to strengthen my skills (note to new writers, short stories and novels have very little in common, but knowing how to tell a story transcends both).

So, while I now realize I’ve been writing and telling stories all my life, it’s really only been a decade since I’ve been serious about it.

Tamago: Do you feel you have a genre as a writer?

Steve: I don’t think I have one standard genre. When I started writing short fiction, I wrote SF, because that’s what I read a lot of in the short form. When I started experimenting with fantasy I found my writer’s voice became stronger. And when I hit into dark fantasy I could feel the energy flowing into the keyboard. I keep trying experiments into other genres, but it all seems to flow back into fantasy of some sort. The first story I had accepted by a paying market (signed the contract, still haven’t been printed, it’s a long story) started out as an attempt at literary fiction, but somehow in the middle turned into the Cthulhu horror. I jettisoned the majority of the literary work and focused in on the horror. And that’s what sold. I’m sure there’s a positive feedback lesson in there somewhere.

Continue reading “VP Profile #10: Steve Buchheit”