h/t to Freedom Memes
I had this little nugget, in draft form, on my desktop for an NPR 3-minute fiction contest, but wasn’t happy with it at the time. Rummaging through my draft posts at year end, I’m seeing just how prescient and sad it all is.
It’s hard to create a new world, complete with languages, people, and the minutiae that separates the reality that is our planet and its history. In a recent population analysis of GoT, Lyman Stone drills into deathly detail on how impossible George RR Martin’s world is. Marshall Ryan Maresca has written scads of posts on worldbuilding (here’s just one).
As a writer and a reader, there’s a lot to be said for creating the right atmosphere, especially if there’s a book or five needed to write the whole story.
More than the analysis, than the facts, has to be the telling. Readers need to feel a location that’s real. They need to know that a staircase in the house leads to a door, and that the other side of the door aligns with the layout of the house. Knobs need to work as expected. Trolls should meet the expectation of the described milieu. Physics should be consistent throughout.
My last novel finished was “post-apocalyptic.” And walking through the science, as much as it made my storytelling better, makes, I think, for a more believable story than some Luc Besson movie. (Unless you see them as pure comedy and not sci-fi…)
…And it wasn’t even as good as the herb. Couldn’t make it past… I don’t even know where it was. This was Vulcan crystal paper with pink rock candy for the eyes, and lobotomy needles for the mind. I’d resisted the chorus of boos and hisses—I mean, 5th Element director! And the main (human) characters were eye candy. Well, until they opened their mouths.
Not sure what this says about the comic’s fans, but I lost IQ points just watching a piece of it. Sad, really. Lots of interesting ways the story could go, and it oozes with species that would be need to see in a Rendezvous with (a Populated) Rama kind of way. But this? This is a pizza with six times the necessary cheese and a white bread crust.
Yes, it’s all about food. I’m roasting a duck. Pretending it’s a “Mul.”
I’m watching other writers and their blog posts. Some are regular as clockwork—it’s part of their marketing campaign, their name branding, and they’ve got more time (and definitely more discipline) to keep on that track. I’ll need to do it as well—just not yet, please.
Speaking of discipline, I’ve talked with a whole bunch of writers, but more importantly people who say they “can’t write” because they don’t have the time, or can’t concentrate… Or “the usual” to writers who talk to folks on the other side.
I can easily push through 4,500 words in a day, in one sitting, when I’ve got a clear vision for what the coming scenes will bring. (And as a pantser those are visions constantly changing as the characters and situations bend the reality I’d “decreed” for the novel.)
I’ve got little sticktoitiveness when I’m not sure where the scene or characters are going. That’s when I do things like dishes, laundry, shopping—and writing posts on my blog.
That little screen grab is how I keep myself at least heading in the right direction. When I’m writing I’ve got non-spoken music (or, at least, not music with English lyrics) playing. If I’m blasting through, it’s a thirty-minute timer, with the option to just hit the reset and do another. But if I’m flagging a bit, I hit the five or ten minute timer to check the news, facebook, or a little game.
When thirty minutes seems an eternity and my characters seem embedded in tree resin, well on their way to amber, I use the ten-minute timer. Hammering hard is easy when I know there’s a break in a reasonably small number of minutes.
I also use the ten minute timer for when I need to do some online research and want to make sure I don’t get sucked down the rabbit hole of “just another link.”
That’s how I’m at 72,295 words on Angels, my current novel, and how I wrote over 173,000 words on Last Run in six months of steady, non-stressed, work. And why my blogging has been sporadic. And I’m sticking to that story.
Every Day Fiction
I was randomly checking my Submittable site and noticed that, hey, one of my flash fiction pieces got published! Best Shot is a dystopian snapshot of future warfare in Israel. Oh, the happy places I go to when writing… Check out EDF site (click their logo on the left) and ready great short pieces every day!
On other fronts I got first feedback on a SF manuscript I’ve had kicking round in the “almost ready” state. No, it’s not. And that’s what editors are for. But it’ll be better, soon. Infection is the sequel to Induction, and there are two more books in the series.
Aside from all that I’m plowing through Angels (working title), which is part of my Upline universe. I’m shopping two short stories from that milieu right now, so let’s just say that American reproductive rights fascism might actually beat my fiction to the market.
Windsor Park Library Creative Writing Workshop is a judged competition run by Adeena Reitberger, who’s an editor of American Short Fiction, as well as an ACC English professor. We’re in month two of four twice-per-month meetings. There are some seriously talented folks there!
Many thanks to the Austin Public Library for sponsoring the workshop and providing space and time for us to meet, and to Adeena Reitburger for making it all happen.
Just a quick upload before Yom Kippur. My protagonist is an ultra-Orthodox (Misnaged) homicide detective. It’s fun to weave the Yiddishized syntax along with Yiddish into the manuscript.
I’ve ranted against Scrivener for years, but I don’t have the time to write something better. It’s mostly flaws with some good features, but not intuitive enough for me to figure everything out without asking someone or {shudder} reading the documentation. At any rate, this is my “perfect” layout for writing on a nice, wide screen.
What you’re not seeing is the second screen, where lurk my browser tabs, music, and network security tools. But they’re very much ancillary to the actual writing.
May my family and Jewish friends have an easy fast, a great breaking of fast, and a year of growth and happiness.
This is my professional blog. I had non-professional blogs once; Facebook takes care of that need now. I do a lot of tongue-biting when something happens in the world and I’ve got this (rather unbully) pulpit from which to vent. However this is a topic that should appear everywhere, in every possible setting, for discussion and calls to action. As the son of Holocaust survivors it would be morally criminal for me not to respond. This is part of my response.
Yesterday one woman was killed and many others injured in Charlottesville. (Two state troopers also died while watching the march, but that appears to have been a tragic helicopter accident.) It’s the events surrounding it that were, with the exception for Heather Heyer’s murder, equally tragic.
The Judicial Response. The First Amendment must be upheld. Except when it generates a danger to the public. US District Judge Conrad was responsible for not only allowing the Nazis to wallow in public, but do so where they did, directly contributed to their feelings of privilege in acting as they did. In this case the Nazis were abetted by an organization that was subverted to this cause: the ACLU. Sometimes one must stand up for the right thing, not the letter of the law. This was one of those times. They’re very proud of their record, however his heinous act appears nowhere in their advertising front page. Anthony Romero, their CEO, and Steven Shapiro, their Legal Director, should pay the consequence for this blind support to the idea, and not the purpose, of the First Amendment. I was a donor. As of today I am no longer contributing to their naive stand.
The Police Response. The police failed in their primary duty. They acted like the fencing in a cage match: protect the bystanders but let whatever happened at the march, stay in the march.
I’m not trying the generalize here: there are photos and stories of law enforcement personnel who did an amazing job in a terrible situation. The African-American officers who stayed on the line, who kept their cool should be models for white officers around the country. They did what many white cops couldn’t do at a simple traffic stop or “quality of life” incident.
My focus is on the city leaders, and Joint Terror Task Force (FBI + state troopers + local law enforcement) that managed the response to the planned event. It was their orders, their strategy, and their actions that allowed this to flare from a meandering of pathetics with flags into a race fiot with all the trimmings. Heads should roll at the top for this.
Religious Leaders. As much as the fascist rabble might want to glom onto it, Christianity is not about fascist, nationalist supremacy. While the idolaters in their megachurches sky grifted, many of the local religious leaders stood as a barrier between the sides. That picture on the right? Those aren’t soldiers, those are Nazis. And the moneyed religious white world was silent. (Yes, a generalization, but an accurate representation, I think.)
The political response. This is the most obvious, most damning, most egregious part of the riot, more, perhaps even, than the actions of the Nazi thugs and fascists emboldened by their snowflake white privilege. Orin Hatch, someone with whom I have little in common, came through in the style of an old-school politician, as did Senator McCain, who‘s folks wrote a short, sharp condemnation as soon as the events occurred.
Der Amerikanischenführer, the cretin with a finger on the button of nuclear immolation, blamed the “many sides” for this. See note on left from one of the organizers of the riot and murder spree. How the Republican Party, which he leads, cannot bestir itself to distance itself from this blot on American history and culture is beyond me.
My ex had to talk me out of painting “Hail to the Thief” in 2000 after the election fiasco. But for all his flaws, and the many mistakes that cost our country too much “blood and treasure,” W understood what the role of a president was supposed to be. Defend and protect The Constitution. This, this person has not an inkling of his required role.
Yesterday was a sad day for America. Yesterday we learned where our leaders stand when faced with a political base gone gangrenous. Apparently, just standing there is the response.
My heart aches for those injured and the Heyer family. My blood boils at the thought of having to deal with Nazis, a generation after my parents barely survived their encounters.
Just little bit from last week’s conference. Also submission grinder, which has some useful search tools (but definitely slanted towards SF/FF/Horror and not “straight” fiction.
I came away with a hunger to write that I haven’t felt to this degree in years–and I’ve been ramping up my writing for a few years now.
More than that, I realized, in attending the panels and the critiques, that I have a few stories, partially completed, that deserve to get finished. They’ve got good characters, stories, and lives I’d love to share with readers.
Just as soon as I get a few more submissions in…
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.
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?
Enjoy a slightly less painful time editing your next critiqued work!
