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An FYI for all of you making a pilgrimage to Iowa this weekend. You might be, because Cory Doctorow is the guest of honor.

I will be reading at Icon in Cedar Rapids at 11:30 a.m. I’ll be reading the opening scenes of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 from the troll book, the scenes that introduce teenage troll heart throbs Grant and David Heierdahl, and their friend Hild. Also, I am not penitent about making fun of urban fantasy faerie books, which Hild really likes.

Catherine

More NaNoWriMo round up, with reactions to Laura Gilman.

Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times

goodconceited rounds up some posts.

The discussion continues.

Catherine

Well, we’ve been doing deconcstructionism for a while, so let’s do some constructionism.

If you’ve not been paying attention to the events surrounding Wiscon and Elizabeth Moon, this will come out of left field for you. I’ll briefly summarize. Elizabeth Moon said some anti-Islamic things which eventually helped the Wiscon con committee to decide to rescind her guest of honor status.

And I’ve already focused on that.

And then, Cathrynne Valente, who edits Apex put together a special Arab Muslim issue.

This is usually the point where I pull in some experience or commentary. But in this case, I’m going to pull in some guest commentary from Amal El-Mohtar, who speaks to this with authority and grace (and gorgeous analogy).

I am happy that this happened, and happy that it says something positive about the growth and appreciation of diversity in fantasy. For today, any way, we’ve got win.

Thanks to all of the lyrical writers, the staff, and Apex for making this happen. Go forth, read, and enjoy.

Catherine

From Salon

Better Yet, DON’T Write That Novel: Why National Novel Writing Month is a Waste of Time and Energy by Laura Miller

Not advocating this as my opinion, but an interesting read.

Catherine

ETA: Catrina Horsfield goes off on Laura Miller’s article, suggesting as Kizmet does in response to my last article that writing isn’t an elitist thing.

Man! Do I write about the kewl new Arab/Muslim issue of Apex, or NaNoWriMo, both topics which surfaced on the Internet today? I guess after the day I’ve had, I’m going for the lighter topic, but make no mistake, I will be back for the other topic as soon as I can be. It’s an AWESOME issue.

That said, as you all know, it’s time for NaNoWriMo. I’ve done this before…twice. I have friends who do it on a regular basis. I have friends who are playing with it right now.

***

Here’s a snapshot I apologize for, as it’s not very flattering. I stopped in Coffee Talk, where I get my morning grande skinny latte with sugar free flavoring. Susan, the shop proprietor, asks me if I’m doing NaNo, as she has some clientele who are writers. Before I even think, I say, rather snobbily, “No, that’s not something real writers do. I try to write some every day. I don’t need a special month to do this. ” *sniff*

WHERE THE HELL DID THAT COME FROM?

Continue reading “NaNoWriMo: Your Muse on Fire?”

This is me, posting some research for Were-humans in an interesting and obvious place. As an added bonus, not only do you get dog anatomy, but you get a little cat for free.

Anatomy of the Cat and the Dog from Washington State University Vet Med Program. Click on the organ to find out more.

Lean, spare, and quiet, George Galuschak looks like the kind of guy who writes horror, the kind of guy with a placid surface who has unsuspected dangers lurking in his imagination’s depths. “I spent most of my childhood summers in a house in the woods. The house has a history: it was a hotel, and it used to be owned by Willie Sutton, a bank robber. Sutton is the guy who, when asked why he robbed banks, said ‘because that’s where the money is.’

“I went to camp during the day, but I had tons of free time on my hands. So I read lots and lots of books. The surrounding area had lots of resorts back in the 30’s and 40’s, and it hasn’t really changed much since then, just sort of decayed, so it’s kind of like the land time forgot. It’s got a creepy vibe, and I definitely picked up on that. Plus, there’s a graveyard in the back yard!”

The atmosphere of the old hotel shaped George and his taste in the macabre. “I’m not sure if I chose horror, or horror chose me. I call myself a speculative fiction writer now, because I think the horror genre is going through some tough times. A lot of the horror I read nowadays boils down to domestic abuse, serial killers and flowery prose about flash-frozen body parts. Lots of ‘hair on the wall’, to quote Truman Capote.”

I’ve read some of George’s stories, and while gore is present, psychological horror is predominant. George’s stories play with your mind more than your eye. “I try to surprise the reader. I hate starting a story, and knowing how it will end halfway through.”

It doesn’t happen in George’s stories. Middle-Aged Weirdo in a Cadillac specializes in the unexpected, getting beyond the predictable hitchhiker picked up by a motorist vibe, and making an interesting statement about the causes of suffering in the world. One of the attractions of George’s work is that the reader doesn’t know which way it will twist.

George’s day job is a librarian. His work is separate from his writing. “I used to run my library’s book group, and they wanted recommendations, so I made a few, and then they told me not to recommend any more books because I have strange tastes. That hurt my feelings, until I realized that most people want to read Danielle Steele and James Patterson, and that’s fine. On the other hand, some of my favorite books of the past few years have been book group choices: Michael Collins’ The Resurrectionists and Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife come to mind.“

Among the writers that have influenced George are Stephen King, James Herriott, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mario Puzo, and H. P. Lovecraft. “About ten years ago I was on a UK writer’s kick. I read authors like James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Patrick McCabe, and Roddy Doyle.” Finding his time to read limited, George tries to read 25 pages a day, which he says “adds up over the long haul.”

In addition to reading widely, George has read a lot of comic books. “My all time favorite title is Jeff Smith’s Bone. Stuff I’ve read and liked nowadays: RASL, Nexus Archives, Love & Rockets, Fables, and Invincible. I have a fondness for Deadpool; if I still bought individual issues, I’d buy that one. The last Deadpool trade I read featured Hit-Monkey, a hitman who also happens to be a monkey.”

George feels that comics combine the best of two worlds, movies and books. “That’s why there are so many comic book movies around, nowadays. Comics used to be very compressed, which I like. You told a story in 21 pages, sticking to a certain structure.”

At this point, George is working on mostly short stories. “One of these days I’ll write another novel. I just signed up for NaNoWriMo, so maybe by the end of the month! Novels require a different mindset. When I try this novel, I’ll do the first draft by hand and then transcribe it to the screen. I know writers who do it this way, and it works. Unfortunately, it’s hard on the hand, but for me staring at a blank piece of paper is better than staring at a blank screen.”

One of George’s stories that is a favorite of mine is On the Making of a Dead Man’s Hand, which combines horror and humor. “Horror and humor go together; they both have to do with tension. Horror raises tension, humor defuses it. I don’t know if Dead Man’s Hand will ever find a home. The feedback I’ve gotten from places I’ve sent it out to boils down to, ‘this is funny; therefore, it ain’t horror.’”

The elements of writing craft George takes seriously. “I try to leave stuff out. Hemingway said something about writing being like an iceberg; you only see about 10%, the other 90% is beneath the surface. Hemingway isn’t one of my favorite authors, but he was right about that. I think people tend to over-explain in fiction, or try to tell their audience how to feel. Don’t tell me how I should feel. Make me feel that way! It’s a fine line, because I’ve written things where I left too much out, and people didn’t know what I was talking about. But it’s something to work towards.”

“I think workshopping is very important,” George comments. “Workshopping really helped when I was writing On the Making of a Dead Man’s Hand. I went through four drafts on that one, and the feedback I got helped make it a stronger story.”

“I actually made almost no changes at all on Middle-Aged Weirdo (most of the feedback had to do with overuse of semi-colons), and it worked out for me. But that’s an exception. I did make changes to Jimmy Nazareth, my other VP story, based on the feedback, and it helped make it a stronger story.”

In addition Middle-Aged Weirdo in Strange Horizons, linked above, George has published in a variety of venues:

Sitting in the Sunshine of the World’s Last Day in AlienSkin, a microflash story. ( AlienSkin was a great online ‘zine that featured an alien dancing to disco music on a flying saucer. They’re gone now, unfortunately, and so is the story. )

Hillbilly Frankenstein (I won third prize in The Garden State Horror Writer’s Short Story contest for a story called, but it’s not available anywhere, which is probably for the best.)

The Blue Weed, is available at 365Tomorrows.

The Big Splash is available at Strange Horizons.

Keep those vicarious World Fantasy experiences coming, people. Then, I can pretend I was there. Your anecdote can be my anecdote. In thirty years, no one’s gonna know it wasn’t me. 🙂

You guessed it. I’m getting sick. Which means I get just a little loopy. The good news is that this is the first time I’ve been ill since my illness buffet of the spring semester. That’s something like 8 months sober for me.

Today’s back of the mind pondering is a writer’s sense of authentic self. How do you know when you’ve got the work of a particular writer loaded up on your Nook/Kindle, aside from looking at the by line?

An unusual thing that begins to happen when you write a lot is that you begin to find a writer’s voice. It can be typified by the negative (could you have put any more parenthetical phrases in that sentence?) or the positive. (While the exchange between the Widow and Nick seems archaic, this is done to good comedic effect.) I’m finding that my voice intersects somewhere among formal, old-fashioned, broadly humorous, and gothic.

There are certainly things I like to write about more than other things. I don’t care for horror in real life, but I can be brutal in stories. I like to be flowery when I establish scene, but I also avoid placing the reader knee deep in adjectives as they slog through yet another ponderous description of an Australian gully (I’m talking to you, Naomi Novik!). I under-describe characters, as I don’t think that feels natural in the story telling. I hope to show you them in actions and dialogue.

I’m beginning to know myself as a writer. This is pretty spif, actually.

So. Were-humans is shaping up to be kind of romancy. There might even be sex in Were-humans. As well as brutality, yes. Can’t leave out that brutality.

For those of you who have been hanging out here for a while, and those of you at Viable Paradise, the next thing is the Klarion story that was critiqued there. I am going to be doing a lot of research, time line planning, and character sketching. My plan is to write a series of books, more or less at once. With the exception of books 3 and 4, the books stand alone generationally, so the first one to be completed is the first one to fly away to agent land. In order for the books to work as well as they need to, I have to know the WHOLE story. Then I have to choose the bits I’ll show you. By the end of this effort, I should have a definite feel of voice.

What are you working on? I know some of you just can’t say anymore. I wonder what I’ll talk about when I can’t say anymore? Well, there’s always book reviews and interviews.

Catherine

Phew. Made it. It’s November.

The weather is getting colder and I can feel the dread of winter just around the corner. Trying hard not to think about that, with the beautiful sunny day we’re having outside, and that we just bought a new snow blower. Hoping that the whole seasonal affected thing will leave me alone more than it has the last three years. Hoping for a little more free time than we had in October.

***

We had quite the squadron of Trick-or-Treaters last night. Bryon decorated the yard in a Japanese ghost theme. He used the tori he made for AnimeIowa, and put up fluorescent ghost balls strung above a grave yard. The kids loved it. It sounds like you all had a wonderful time at World Fantasy, but I missed this last year, the whole Halloween gig. I put on my fox ears and Japanese temple outfit, and handed out cowtails. It was good. It was seasonal. It was real, a chance to connect with the real world. My town, anyway. It strikes me that it’s easy to become sort of myopic, being a writer on the Internet. That’s a lot of buzz. Tiny children taking your candy is a refreshing change of pace.

All right. Trying not to let what I suspect might be flu win. Trying to get a few evaluations in the bag today.

Catherine

So, you want to be a writer, do you?

Let’s talk about the quality that all writers must have before all things. Before tenacity. Before skill. Before work ethic. Let’s talk about patience.

Where is the first place you will encounter a need for patience? With your manuscript. You will finish it, and you will want to send it away. Don’t. Put it in a drawer for a couple of months, and then work on revising it. Get some feedback on it, and then, after a few times through it, send it out. I rework mine several times, and if it’s not taken on somewhere, chances are good I will do substantial revisions on it sometime in the future. Creating a good work of art isn’t quick. I’m getting the years perspective in my mind’s eye, you betcha.

After completing the work, the next place you’ll need patience is when you submit your work. The urgency you will feel as you wait for the world to give you feedback will be in direct contrast to the size of the abyss you send your work into. Be mellow about it. Own your patience. Get on with your life. You can’t sit by the computer refreshing your inbox and hoping. If you wander the Internet landscape, you’ll hear about writers getting book deals years after they’ve submitted to slush. Or worse, rejections, years after. Give over the response to the universe, and do something else.

It can take a long time after you’ve gotten an agent to sell a book to an editor. It can take a long time to get your career balanced where you want it. It can take a long time to get an acceptance from a box store market.

If your work is accepted, you’ll need patience continually. Waiting for the edits, waiting for the publication, waiting for the proofs, waiting for the check, waiting, waiting, waiting. This is the nature of publishing. I’ve heard that the cycle of a book going from accepted manuscript to published product is about two years at a minimum after you’ve done all the writing, revising, and shopping around.

Writing taken from this perspective seems to be an occupation for the self-flagellating type A. You’d best become a type B mellow person in regard to your writing life. Given this information, I think if you’re looking for a life of recognition and fame, petty crime is better.

There’s another piece to this, and that’s what happens to the impatient. Some writers give up. I say you should, absolutely, if you can. Waiting is not satisfying.

Some writers self-publish. I say if you do, make sure you want to be a PR person, an editor, and a sales force, in addition to writing books.

Some writers publish in small press, or publish for free. I have done this, but if you do it, consider the implications for your career. Strangely enough, this doesn’t work linearly, like it does in almost every other occupation. Consider the reputation of the venue, how much you’ll be paid for your work, and the overall impact on your writing career. I’ll just assume you’re waiting for one of those.

Here I am. Waiting. Two whole weeks into submitting my most recent manuscript. Writing the next project. Walking the walk. Talking the talk. Waiting for the next opportunity to revise. Waiting for the agent, the sale, the publishing. Waiting for one short story to come out. Waiting for the edits on another. Waiting for the rejections, the partials, the fulls, the revision requests. Waiting for chance and skill to combine together into opportunity.

Not even chewing my fingernails. Nope. Because this is the writer’s life. Writing, sending, waiting, rejecting, rewriting, sending, waiting. With the occasional acceptance to keep things interesting. I’m walking tall. I’m a writer.

You? Do you have the patience and the guts to send your work out, and wait for your writing to be good enough to get you the results you’re hoping for? And then the ability to wait some more while those pieces fall into place?

I hear Solitaire passes the time when you’re tired of writing the next thing. Me? I sew, talk long walks with my husband, and pet my cats.

Catherine