ArmadilloCon ’39 Critiques

shlomi on August 2, 2017

There are five writers per group at the ArmadilloCon writer’s workshop. Four manuscripts to critique. Along with life, job, and one’s own writing. Most folks do the 5k max, but I’ve got one (shown) that clocks in at around 3k.

There are some folks that can do a critique and still get their 2k/day words in. I… am not one of them.

In SlugTribe it’s a 5k word limit, but only about 20-30 minutes to read it. In reading feedback from them it’s clear that the edits go away towards the end (see previous post). But for the workshop, it’s every page. Well, almost every page. I say almost because between pointing out the passive voice a dozen times previously, and a typed analysis as well, sometimes the need to torture deceased equines is obviated by the need to get another story done!

The image at the top of this post is an example of a short story mid-critique. In addition to my (possibly unreadable) edits, in the background you can see a written critique that gets above the fray.

I hope I get as good as I’m giving, but, for me at least, the critiquing is at least as educational as a good first draft.

Critiquing and Paper Cuts

shlomi on July 25, 2017

I’m lucky to live in a city where there are overlapping supporting circles of writers in every possible genre. I’m involved in a few writing groups, including an invite-only one, the venerable and awesome Slug Tribe (that just got a great write-up in the Austin Chronicle), as well as occasionally hitting a Meet-Up group every now and again. Plus the Writers’ League of Texas is based here, with its annual Editors and Agents conference and the cozier, and perhaps more “incestuous” ArmadilloCon (and I mean that in the least creepiest way!). And the Austin NaNoWriMo group, a once and future way to spend November.

Three of the above perform critiques on pieces. The most paper-prolific by far—and I say this with two bandaged fingers—is Slug Tribe. Probably best to bring at least fifteen copies of a piece. With a 5,000 upper limit, that’s approximately twenty sides of writing (more if there’s a lot of dialog). On average sixty percent of Sluggers write comments on the pieces, which I dutifully reel back and bring to my editing operating theater. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 300-400 pages single-sided. Which I try never to do, what with the lack of available earthworms at my place.

So here’s the evening’s tidbit: collate them by page, putting them in reverse page order (so you’re working from the back of the piece forwards). Take the “global” written comments (thank you, thank you all for the thought put into them!) and put them at the back of the pack. Why?

  1. People tend to comment less towards the end of the piece. On-the-spot editing is tiring, and once a reader has made their point, why flog the expired equine?
  2. Going backwards makes it harder to skip something because the mind forms the logical construct of the paragraph, and not the backwards verbs of the placement.
  3. Those pesky page numbers mean very little when going through the tenth set of edits. What was on page one, with an easily spotted paragraph shape is no longer there. That means wasting brain and time trying to find something that there. Going backwards en masse means never having to figure out where you were before you carved up two paragraphs and inserted four clauses.
  4. It’s hard to know who commented on a page, until you get the the end (first pages). This means addressing each suggested edit on its own merit, and not on the merit of the author making the comment. Just because they’re a great writer doesn’t mean their edits have a greater weight than a sharp-eyed newcomer.

Enjoy a slightly less painful time editing your next critiqued work!

On Research, and the Need for Brain Bleach

shlomi on July 18, 2017

I’m careful, when doing story research, not to trip up and set DHS, the USSS, or EIEIO on my tail. I recently moved to a private VPN connection because my damn Internet provider isn’t paying me enough to get access to my search history (neither is Google, but I’ve got other ways around that).

I also try not to click on sites that get me, um… to places I hadn’t intended on visiting. So I was surprised, when working on a bit of research on rosaries for a short story (novella? novel?) in my Upline universe. I was trying to see if there were any specific numbers of beads in a rosary. Interesting stuff, for an atheist Jew. What I didn’t expect is exhibit(ionist) A, to the left. Seriously, this site was selling rosaries. Lots of detail about the beads, and prayers, and everything. And then I kept looking (masochism knows no bounds) and found the incredibly apt ad for a rosary belt!

There’s oh so much I don’t understand about the Mysteries of some religions…

On Short Stories and Novellas

shlomi on July 7, 2017

One of the agents with whom I spoke at the recent Writers’ League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference expressed interest in a set of short stories if I could also stick a novella in there. At least, that’s what I thought he said, but it was loud… Anyway, I’m already shopping “Upline,” a story set in a universe where life begins at conception and the government’s now having to handle the inevitable consequences, intended and otherwise, of that constitutional amendment. I’m shopping but also having workshopped at the next ArmadilloCon.

I started out with a novel that fell apart, then parts reconstituted into another novel which was (rightly) heavily snorted at by folks at the Slugtribe writing group here in Austin. Then the short story pulled a Hera.

Sunday, fresh off the conference and a great chat with an agent about a couple of other book projects, I finished off another story in that universe: “Transfer Point.”

Tuesday, while topping out Last Run, the novella plot dropped. all at once. It’s an embarrassment of riches, it is. Focus, with agents looking for specific material, is more important than ever, and I won’t deny feeling nervous of not keeping it all together. Creativity wars with editorial control meets marketing and… oh… a day jobbe!

I read several author blogs, and there’s a lot of “pro” discussions (some of it pretty damn awesome, like Marshall Ryan Maresca’s site. But I haven’t seen many “struggling” sites. Hopefully I’m not TMIing out of any future seat at the “real authors” table.

“Last Run” Topped Out

shlomi on July 5, 2017

By Leif Ørnelund – Oslo Museum: image no. OB.Ø59/2680 (Byhistorisk samling), via oslobilder.no., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23247983

When a building’s top floor is in place, especially for tall buiildings, they’re “topped out.” Usually a tree, sometimes a flag.

Authors should have something analogous for a novel. Even if we’re not trying to appease the tree gods.

Sunday I pitched two projects to an agent at the Writers League of Texas Agents & Editors conference. A win for me, at my first pitching, would be “sure, I’d like to see the first ten pages and a query letter via email.” The agent with whom I chatted wanted to hear about two of my projects: my current novel, Last Run, a post-apocalyptic tale, and my Induction series, a “hot” SF set of novels. She wanted the first three chapters and a synopsis of the first, and then maybe the second. Yoiks.

Yesterday I “topped out” the novel, tearing up at the last scene. Last Run currently stands at around 173k words, and the sweet spot for novels in that category is closer to 85k words.

So… behold the mighty editor’s pen, out and primed in red.

 

Happy Fourth!

shlomi on July 4, 2017

I grew up suspicious of a country where they lived stealth lives. My dad never wore a kippah (head covering) at work. A fedora on the way in and on the way home worked, but blatant Jewish exhibitionism was something he shied from at Luxor International, which he inherited from his father. A city where “our folks” were kept out of Fieldston area in the Bronx. Where accusations of god-killing were part of hanging in Riverdale, by almost every measure a “safe” place for Jews, if not any tinted minority.
I moved to Israel, to be with “my people,” where I was told I wasn’t, because I wasn’t born there and therefore couldn’t have an opinion. Of being a “Saboni” (soft, like soap). With all that. I never intended to leave Israel.
And then I did, moved to a strange, arid version of America I’d never experienced, but which resembled, in flora and fauna, the Galilee of my past life. I held my mental nose for years.
And then, over the years, I saw the promise of America, buried under layers of vapid manners and marketing. It’s taken close to a quarter century, but I’d begun to embrace the promise of this country, especially as Israel has slid down the slippery slope of ideological and religious fanaticism.
Promises in danger of breaking. A future squandered. A militant, anti-intellectual theocracy is in the offing, a front shill for the cold calculation of Mammon worshipers who cynically used religion and the fear of the Other in a way scarily reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
But it’s not. We still have the rule of law. As a favorite writer of mine said in a book about dangerous foes, “if they could all get pointed in the same direction for more than five minutes, they’d be dangerous.” We have jurisdictions from cities to counties to states to the federal governments.. And courts. And press.
We have attacks on the independence of all of these, along with a worship of the military that’s gone well beyond appreciating their service, while not providing its veterans with anything close to the care accolades might lead one to expect.
We have the power of the ballot box and, frankly, the demographics are on our side. The old white folks, the scared, disempowered-while-simultaneously-privileged young whites. The hate groups. They’ve lost, which accounts for their panic, and this election.
It’s not too late to fight for our country. And I’m sticking it out, because, crappy democracy that it might be, it’s the best one around. Still. Happy Fourth!

 

Words, Books, Memory

shlomi on May 31, 2017

As a Jewish atheist I enjoy the rituals of my people. While I don’t enjoy laying t’fillin (putting on phylacteries)—although I remember how—I’ve always had a visceral sense memory when seeing or touching the prayer book my dad used.
I have the second one he had in my lifetime. The first, a Shiloh edition daily prayer book, was made of relatively normal linen paper, had almost disintegrated by the time I was ten. It wasn’t really unusual: kiddush with my dad entailed dribbling at least a little wine on the pages, and havdalah, when separating from the Sabbath, adds wax to yet more wine.

My current one, with whatever chromo paper was extant in the 1970s or 1980s, doesn’t shy from absorbing the waxy fats of the Havdalah candle, nor the dribbles of wines wending from horrific Manischewitz to actual red, dry wines.

Seeing, feeling… even smelling these remnants of my former life, my belief life, trigger more than just memory. They bring to the fore, for me, the belief that we can strive to be better than the species. That we can transform the anger, hate, trivial, niggling, negative feelings into something… more. Something that elevates us, as humans, as homo sapiens sapiens, from the troglodyte slaves of hateful religious dogma to individuals of thought, laughter, and action bringing up the level of humanity, instead of sinking what we find to some lowest common religious denominator ensuring that all lose to guilt, anger, and anguish.

Instead of experiencing the transubstantiation of plebeian thought to anger and tempora mores, let’s see if we can’t bring to the fore those flutterings of love from that which brought us happiness, and joy.

Because the alternative is the cataloging of sin, transgression, and propinquity instead of the formless, incalculable, effervescent moment of thought, pulled from the past to the present.

Thanks to Choir! Choir! Choir! for the acoustic background to this piece. Ground Control: we’re still here (although they didn’t do that, they did this).

 

Bravery

shlomi on May 28, 2017

I have a character in the short story ShutEye who gives her life for a love she knows she can never have, because it’s the right thing for the greater good. There’s a character in Best Shot (being shopped) who will do anything to get the right photo.

These characters are trivial, flickering shadows in comparison with the real ones. On this Memorial Day weekend there are the obvious ones who fought and died, some knowing their actions would certainly kill them, to save others. The young and the idealistic are great for cannon fodder (said the cynical ex-soldier) because we believed in the true rightness of our cause. The brave are a category apart from that: they are willing to sacrifice themselves to save or help others. For examples, look no further than the American Congressional Medal of Honor stories. Every war has their heroes, from Afghanistan & Iraq to the Vietnam War, back through the Korean conflict and of course World Wars One and Two. And every country has its fallen who died bravely for their military cause.

Yes, one can argue whether the war was justified, or served its purpose in the most horrible of methods. But this is about personal bravery, not the religion- and drug-fuels acts of cowards and terror-mongers. The same Medal of Honor rolls tell the stories of bravery during what they call the “Indian Wars,” which today the world (excepting the current US administration) would call “genocide.” These men were, however, brave in their actions, if not the moral righteousness that history best describes.

Bravery is without border, without nationhood. It’s a person deciding to do the right thing as they see it.

This weekend we have two more recently fallen, and another seriously wounded, protecting their country from enemies domestic. Without uniforms, without preparation, without patriotic pep talks or camaraderie. Bravery comes from within, and the ‘spur of the moment’ comes in part from purity of thought. Neither were there under orders, of with a unit. Their bravery was as true and real as any from the Congressional rolls of recent decades.

Friday night a domestic terrorist apparently tried to attack two women in hijabs on a commuter train in Portland.

If Congress can honor a Arnold Palmer, a golfer, with the Congressional Gold Medal, it certainly, at a very minimum, honor these three men for their service to this country, fighting against terror.

 

When Story Meets Truth

shlomi on May 20, 2017

I have a short story, Best Shot, which I’m currently shopping for publication. It started as a snippet: I photographer killed

Picture of photographer's video camera on his chest, shot by a sniper.

From the Daily Mail

while reporting from a combat area. But the incident with the Iraqi videographer this week was very spookily like the story. At least, in real life, no harm was done.

Nazi Anything

shlomi on April 24, 2017

Sometimes writing takes a back seat, as it should, to reality.

We spend a lot of time, in this Trumpian, Facebookish era, endlessly macerating previous texts, quotes, and media. It’s easier, it’s true, to quote others than to write one’s own clever words. Of course, some folks’ clever words will stand for ages:

People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. (Alan Moore, from “V for Vendetta”

Writing is hard. Quoting is easier.

Memes are easier remembered than created. And easier appropriated than created. And memes, by the nature of their being, are slippery viruses that get to all kinds of places you might not consider.

This is difficult. It’s difficult because I’m a child of Holocaust survivors. My mom from Auschwitz, my dad from a nameless slate of forced labor camps. My aunt, one of Mengele’s survivors, was the only close relative to make it through those years. My grandfather, who survived by the grace of a Polish, Catholic farm family by being hid in their attic (his Polish neighbors burnt down his farm after my grandfather testified at their denazification trials).

I’ve faced Nazis (and forebore from killing them, what with this being a democracy and all.) America, after keeping Jews in the line of fire and bringing Nazis back to America after the war to aid in their rocket research, has been fairly good to my people. It gave my parents a home, and a home and opportunity to many of my kind, including the mafioso, the Nobel Prize winners, and the awesome, awesome, everyday people.

Mr. Seinfeld brought humor to American television, in a vapid, aimless way. While I ever found his show funny, he is a pretty good standup comic, and I wish him no ill.

The “Soup Nazi,” however, was definitely not a bright spot in his writing resume for that show. His parents were foreign-American: his dad fought in World War II, and his mom was Syrian-Jewish-American. And he spent time in the early 90s in Israel on a kibbutz. He had to know about the sensitive, “it’s still too soon” aspect of calling people Nazis under any reasonable circumstances.

But his dad was a US soldier. And US soldiers had no problem talking about krauts, spicks, japs, chinks, and gooks. It’s the nature of soldiers and their governments to demote their enemy to non-humans. I know: I’ve been a soldier.

So, the “Soup Nazi” was written, first to paper, then to episodic television, and eventually, became a meme. It was funny, ugly, and therefore quickly absorbed into what passes for the American etymological memory.

We were having a good meeting, this manager and I. He is a sweet, kind, honest, funny, straightforward married dad of a young child. He chuckles, a grownup version of a giggle, and he reminds me of myself, in the 1990s, at an IBM subsidiary, trying to empower and feel for my employees. My contractors. My peers. The world around me.

“I want you to be the documentation Nazi, if you—” he said, as we discussed process in his nascent group.

“Don’t ever say that again,” I said. “My parents were in the Holocaust. My father was in labor camps. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.”

I’m very bad at reading faces, and expressions. I think he was shocked and taken aback (who wouldn’t) at my statement. I _do_ know that, from the tone of his voice, he was surprised at my reaction. And genuinely, honestly, deeply, sorry.

So was I. In some way, I was surprised I didn’t lose it. He said this on the Holocaust Memorial Day. He said this hours after I’d listed, carefully, clinically, the names and dates of all my my immediate family who died in the Holocaust. And how they were people, not numbers. Not even the number carved into my mother’s skin, until, after the war, she seared it from her flesh. 72197.

I can’t help me; I’m the creation distillation, and essence of what my parents, their actions, their family, my actions, and my family, have created. And I can’t help him, not that he needs it, a happy, funny, forward-looking person who wants the best for those around him.

But I can cry, without stop, at the surprising pain of this jab, silly, memetic and trivial though it may be.

And, after breathing, a viewing of “V for Vendetta,” and a possibly unhealthy dollop of wine, I realize that the Nazis really are dead. They’re not making soup, or making fun of it. They’re not standing in front of gun show, advertising their fear. They’re not doing anything. Their power is a function of their reach. And their reach, delusions of the fascist right aside, is the length of their small arms and even tinier hands.