Blog

So. My local SF organization, Mindbridge, has started a Mindbridge reads project. For every 25 books a Mindbridge person reads, we will put his/her name in a drawing, and at the end of the year, we draw for some gift certificates. Cool.

Of course, this makes me think about reading. And it occurs to me that I am a hard reader to please. Sometimes I feel like my drummer is moving me to march to syncopation.

Frankly put, I don’t often find what others find delightful to be the best fit for me. I talked about this a little at Taos. Recently I was in a contest, and the story that won didn’t fill me with delight. It wasn’t in my top 3, even, when I voted. This is not to say that it shouldn’t have won. It just informs me yet again that my taste is likely not to be the taste of the average spec fic reader.

And this comes back to haunt me as many of my favorite shows last briefly, or many of my favorite comics are cancelled.

I tend to like works that focus more on character than gimmick, and aren’t afraid to dig around in that. I also don’t mind the things I read to begin a little slow, because if there’s a good pay off, I can handle it. I do like works that fall in the spaces, like historical fantasy, but not always, because I despise steampunk, which often skims the surface with stereotypes and smacks of colonialism and cliche. I like stories that don’t follow the predictable choices.

This is not to say that everything I read is “good” or “literary” Come on, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Mike Mignola (rich in folklore though. You gotta give him that!). Like so many of you, I know what I like when I see it. I used to suggest that high fantasy was not my thing, and then I read some Lynch. Or SF wasn’t my thing. And then I read Beggars in Spain. I am wiser and more open now. I read widely.

I dunno. Sometimes I worry that my tastes are so hard to please as a reader than maybe I can’t produce writing that others want to read, especially in the face of my choices sometimes being the opposite of other choices. By having read so much classical style stuff, I like a marriage of modern and classic. I just wonder if there are others who do. That’s a naive question. Of course people like that stuff, but one always doubts when one finds oneself yet again in the minority when it comes to making a call about writing.

Then again, Naomi Novik, Susanna Clark, and Mary Robinette Kowal. Stephanie Burgis and Carolyn Stevermer. There are a niche of writers that hit me write, maybe not all the time, but often. There are people out there writing what I want to read. And other people like these writers. It’s not that I can’t find things to read. I’m not sure, though, that I can legitimately think of myself as an SF lover, or a fantasy lover, as so much of what I try to read makes me go meh.

I wonder if it’s that way for everyone? And I wonder if everyone feels like me as a reader.

Right now, what am I reading? A book of Egyptian history, so I can understand how religions interacted in that country after the Romans, and Shogun. I suspect to be a happy reader for a while.

Anyway, what do you find? Are your tastes more eclectic, or do you talk to your reading friends and find that you agree about what you’re reading?

As you know, if you have osteoarthritis, one of the big favors you can do for your body is to get the pressure off your joints. For every one pound of weight you remove, you remove four pounds of pressure. Shortly before my arthritis diagnosis, I had decided that I was going to be very live and let live about my weight. After my diagnosis, I decided that if there were ways to hurt less, I was going to take them on.

So, where are we at, then, with weight loss? The lowest amount I managed to reach just before the holidays was 211.6, which was 11.4 pounds lighter than this time last year. Then, the holidays. For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t as diligent about diet or exercise, so I am now at 215.8, an obvious gain of around 4.2 pounds. On December 31st, I was at 214.3. That means overall last year, I netted a loss of 8.7 pounds.

***

Change takes a lot of time and effort.

Continue reading “Living with Osteoarthritis: Making Those Weight Loss Goals?”

Ah. There you are.

I made it through this year’s holiday season not doing the whole dysfunctional thing. Not one day did I have the my family isn’t a Hallmark family blues. Largely, it was because I was employing that zen trick called working on a project, but it was also because I didn’t attend any big gatherings by which I needed (felt like I needed) to measure myself. We call this progress. Also, you might remember that I was GRATEFUL because a health scare turned out to be…nothing. I take from this that the isolated Christmas isn’t too shabby for my psychological well-being.

So, the small bit of blues I’m feeling now? I’ve just finished a book. That always happens. I’ve just gone back to work and am rattling around mostly empty hallways while my fellow faculty enjoy another two and a half weeks vacation. I used to bitterly resent that, but now they give me money to ease the pain, and it does. 😛 Still, there’s that tiny funk that makes me want to eat some bread and go to bed.

***

Which means it’s time for me to think a little more upbeat about what I have coming up this month. This weekend, which is only one day away, is another weekend to just hang and write. It is my hope to get the novella in shape for some betas, and then next week, it’s the new project all the way, from now until completion. So, yeah.

I plan to be gone for the three weekends following: friends in Minneapolis, a madrigal dinner in Ames, and a trip to Vegas for a women’s writing retreat. We will be spaing and writing, and NOT critiquing, which I think sounds okay.

So there are some good things coming. And some good writing and research coming up.

***

It looks like it could be a really interesting year. This year, I will go to the following conventions: Wiscon, Convergence, and Icon. These are the big three I usually frequent.

I will also be attending a writers retreat in Las Vegas and another retreat in Colorado. Of course, I will be inviting all of you to Paradise Icon in November, which I will be putting together.

And there’s the big trip, the service learning trip to Viet Nam for two weeks in June.

Bryon and I are also eying Disney for next Thanksgiving.

***

I plan to continue my movement toward expertise hours. That’s my way of measuring writing success. So far, I am on target. At the end of 2 years, I have completed 1228 hours. My original goals was to have completed the remaining 6000 hours in time to retire, and when I started in 2010, I imagined that to be 10 years. I don’t know if I’ll make the retirement goal or not, but I should make the expertise goal. I am actually 28 hours ahead, because I need 600 hours a year to make that goal.

And I have merely had one short story published this year: Mark Twain’s Daughter from Paper Golem. Lots of work behind the scenes.

Osteoarthritis and make-over stuff get their own posts, eventually.

***

So, to the blues, I say why? Look at what you got going on? Why would you find time to be down? You’ll be going cool places and meeting interesting people, with lots of time for that work/life balance. Be grateful for what you got. Keep writing.

Of course, I could just be getting moody/broody for the next book. I have been known to be a bit of a method actor. Then again, I hope not. Or it could be a LONG year.

And…we’re back.

I’ll be plugging away here at Kirkwood until school begins again on the 22nd, and consequently a little more active in my journal life. Today I’m getting teachers and so on organized for the next semester.

***

I’m working on a couple more interviews, so hopefully I’ll have those up for you soon. And expect a lot of research to pop up here, as we are beginning a new project, and I need to find out about, in no particularly order:

Solomon
Egyptian history, specifically what happens when Islam comes into the country
Egyptian gods
Venice in the 1840s
The Borgias

I think that’ll do for starters.

If you know of any good sources in any of those areas, I’d be happy to hear from you. I’ll do my own research, but you know, if something springs to your mind as definitive, tell me about it.

One of my favorite writers, Christopher Barzak, was kind enough to let me interview him about his process. If you haven’t read Christopher’s work, please do. His work is like lace, or snow.

***

Tamago: Do you have a regular drafting process, or does your drafting process vary from book to book. Can you describe it to us generally, or at least for one project?

Chris: I don’t think I have a regular drafting process. It’s been different for each book, though I do have a somewhat regular drafting process for short stories, I think. I generally start a story after I’ve been hooked by a voice or an image or a scene that I can hear or see (or both) in my imagination. I can’t say what sparks these voices or visions, to be honest. Sometimes it’s mysterious to me. Other times, though, I get hooked on an idea that I think of in response to something else. Like, for instance, a recent novelette that I wrote was a retelling of H.G. Wells’ short novel, The Invisible Man. I read the novel as a young person, and last summer I decided to reread it.

I was struck by how much Wells pokes fun at the rural villagers who make up a large part of the cast, in the village of Iping, where the Invisible Man seeks refuge in the Coach and Horses Inn for four months as he attempts to create a serum that will reverse his invisibility. Wells really caricatures rather than characterizes the villagers, and he especially pokes fun at a maid who works in the Coach and Horses, Millie. The side characters struck me as an adult reader. I didn’t find myself laughing as much as I did as a teen when I read the book. Making fun of them or treating them as objects of comedy because of their rural/village background felt needless and cheap. So I got the idea that I wanted to give Millie, the put-upon maid, a chance to tell the story from her point of view.

To do that, I reread the original novel three more times, took notes about specific scenes I wanted to revisit in my story, and also add notes for several scenes that I would be inserting into the story, scenes that didn’t occur in the original book. Then I started researching the time period and the setting, which was turn of the century West Sussex, England. I went so far as to seek out a book of slang from that region of England at the turn of the century, and to study the phrasing that locals would have used in a variety of exchanges and conversations, to get a sense of how they spoke. As I studied that book, I started to hear a voice of a young woman. It was after I felt like I’d absorbed enough local color and lingo that I felt confident in my ability to mediate the voice of the narrator. Then I was off. I had a general arc for the story because it’s a retelling, and I knew what I wanted to add to the original that would change how the original is read. Once I had the voice, I was able to go forward with the telling. I wrote a draft, then revised for language and nuance, and showed it to some trusted readers for feedback. Did some more slight revisions, then submitted it to the editor Jonathan Strahan for his online magazine, Eclipse. He took it. This year it was published and also selected for Gardner Dozois’ Year Best Science Fiction.

Continue reading “The Writing Process and Christopher Barzak”

Happy New Year, one and all.

As of this very minute, Abigail Rath has begun her sojourn into the publishing world. After six drafts, lots of beta reading, and one Taos Toolbox later, she’s as ready as she’ll ever be.

I’d like to thank all of you who helped out, whether it was with encouragement, support, insights, or editing.

It feels great to have something in circulation again.

***

What next? Well, right now this girl has to go make a winter dinner (mixed berry crumble, lemony chicken over noodles, cucumber and dill salad), and then she’s taking the rest of the evening off. Tomorrow I have a few home improvement items to see to before I go back to work, but I will begin a final revision on The Were-Humans before I ask for some readers for that. It’s *much* shorter, being a novella, and all. I’ll be sending out an email, but if you know you’d like to look at it, well, hey, just let me know.

I am very hot to get started on as yet unnamed Klarion Book One. But let me get this other thing finished first, and then we can enjoy that new book smell.

I wish you a wonderful, safe, and healthy 2013.

You will not see me back here until Abigail Rath has integrated the best of the beta reader suggestions and is in the hands of my top 5 agents.

Just an FYI.

So, have a happy new year, and save me some virtual champagne for celebrating, because when I come back, I will want to whoop some.

If the world is going to end, apparently it is going to end with a writing rejection. I received the penultimate rejection for O-Taga-San today. I will send it to Scape when they reopen for submissions in February, when it will receive its final rejection and I will retire it.

A little context: O-Taga-San was accepted twice, and languished for a year each time before I pulled it. It had a near miss at one magazine, but that’s about all the love it’s gotten. I’ve just about hit all the markets I planned to with it.

I am pleased with the story. I like it a lot. It’s just not hitting other people’s cylinders. So it goes. The reason I give it so much attention is that it is the ONLY piece I have circulating at the moment. In order to complete novels with my small amounts of writing time, I need to write novels when I have time. Short stories take away from that time.

***

Soon, I will be sending a novel out. This week and next I’ll be working hard at boiling down a lot of editing commentary and sharpening the middle grade novel I’ve been working on. I am pleased with the story. I believe that this time, I’ve done my best, and I’ve mastered at every turn the temptation to send it out before it was ready. I believe I learned a lot at Taos about how to make a novel move.

Will an agent pick me up? I don’t know. Will someone buy it to publish it? I don’t know. I have confidence in the work. Rejection is something I live with. This will be what it will be.

And then I have been asked for a novella. I have some rethinking to do there, since it’s in a much earlier draft stage. I don’t know if it will be picked up or not. But I won’t send it until I have the same confidence in the work.

I can’t do much about rejection. Writers should be willing to change their work, sure, but the intrinsic value of knowing that you’ve done a good job might be all you get for a long period of time. That doesn’t seem to be a bad note to have the world end on.

First, a little more about the gun control thing.

From Steve Buchheit: Warren Ellis talks about “The Acceptable Cost of the Right to Bear Arms.” Yup, that Warren Ellis.

From Jay Lake: The NRA promises “meaningful contributions” to avert another Newtown. I appreciate your classy silence at this time, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

From Nnedi Okorafor: Ms. Magazine’s Why Won’t We Talk About Violence and Masculinity in America?

***

Snow is upon us tonight. I suspect our drive home will be interesting, as I plan to leave the office about 4 o’clock. In preparation, I have already filled up our car and purchased cat food. Our cupboards are well-stocked, so if we were at home the next through Friday, we would be well-prepared. It’ll just be a matter of reaching our destination safely.

The boss has given me permission to work from home, and it sounds like I should take it. Current weather reports from the National Weather Service suggest we will have 8-12 inches. This looks like a job for the snow blower! Our snow event begins at 6 pm today and ends at 6 pm tomorrow. The big problem will be the wind, as it always is in the case of blizzards.

***

Well, I *hope* today was my last doctor’s appointment, but since I will need to have another blood test to make sure that my liver is handling the ringworm meds, maybe not. That’ll be in two weeks. Not knowing that the new med had the same effect as the old med, I did have a sugar cookie martini this weekend. The doctor assured me one drink should be fine. Good. It was a damned fine drink. It had little sprinkles around the rim.

Sekhmet has her own ringworm now, no doubt from me. I am treating her with Lotrimin per the vet’s advice, and I am becoming public enemy number one. Ha! She hasn’t seen anything yet. Tonight I get to put it on her belly because she’s developed a patch there.

***

I do not expect to be around much after tomorrow. I have some revising to do, and it is my goal to make that my full time work over Christmas break. The feedback is that the book is mostly sound, although my betas did raise some interesting questions I need to see to. So, that’s mostly what I’ll be up to.

***

Stay warm. Stay safe. Enjoy the season. Back soon (ish).

This weekend we are off to the MiLs and some gatherings with friends for our usual round of Christmas antics. These are fine Christmas gatherings that I will enjoy.

Last year I posted (Not) Home for the Holidays, which I think is some helpful advice for those of you who have to deal with those dysfunctional families over break. As always, I wish you the best. Dysfunction can be no fun. Remember, number one is protecting yourself.

God bless us all, everyone.