Orycon 35

Okay INKers, it's Orycon time again. Orycon has a really nifty online program. Hopefully this link will take you straight to my schedule, forever. Maybe. As long as it lasts, anyway. I'm not sure if the individual program schedules stay on their respective websites forever, or if they get overwritten by the current year. I suppose I could go test it out, but ... meh. Anyway, I have a reading. A fifteen minute reading. I'm more than a little nervous about that. Put me in front of lots of people to blather about pretty much any ol' subject, I'm good. Put me in a room with 1-12 people where I read my stuff aloud? I get all shaky and shy. What's with that? It's not like my words on the page are all that different from the words I say out loud during a panel. Are they? What's the difference?

Maybe in conversation and on panels my words have no soul, no emotion, no life. Zombie words. But on the page they come alive! They have fears and courage, pleasure and pain ....

It seems kind of backwards. I mean, I've had time to revise and polish words on the page (though I'm not supposed to, ahem, do too much of that.) In theory I'm prepared, right? All I have to do is read those words. I'm much more likely to make a fool of myself saying something wrong while yammering on. And yet, I'm more nervous about the works that I picked carefully. Very weird.

Maybe it's because I wrote them without any feedback. I mean, you can get feedback after the fact, but that's not the same as talking. When you're talking, you have the opportunity, even if you can't or won't take advantage of it, to read your audience's expression and reactions and adjust accordingly. When you're writing a book or short story, you just keep marching on and hope that you aren't marching right off a cliff.

Or maybe I'm just being silly. That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I'm also Nanowrimo-ing. I've got a personal goal of 80,000 words this time. It's kinda touch-n-go as far as whether I'll make it or not. I'm on track for 50,000 so far (can't get cocky, especially this early on. Remember the time my office flooded? Yeah, me too) but behind if I want to make the eighty. And so I'll spend part of my time at Orycon adding words.

This year I'm doing something YA-ish. I'm not convinced it *is* YA. I'm not familiar enough with YA to make that call. But that's not my job. Right now my job is to write. Lots. Lots and lots.

Which I should go back to, but I think instead I'll make some tea because my butt is going numb.

See some or all of you at the con!

Decisions decisions

Great INK meeting last night.  I got some writing done, and a lot of talking done.

The talking thing is necessary, at least for me.  I'm a social critter and I'm not good at keeping news, concerns and ideas to myself.  Maybe that's part of my writer-psyche-profile.  This irrational, arrogant, persistent and psychotic need to express myself with the hope that others will actually want to hear what I have to say, even if it's pure fiction.

I'm all set for OryCon 30, or as ready as I'll ever be, except for one thing.  I haven't decided what I'm going to read for the Broad Universe reading yet.  This has not been good for my nerves.  My practice time is rapidly dissolving away.  

On my list (and I'm still expanding the list)

"Calling In"  A humor flash.  

Appeal--I'll be able to read the whole thing.  It's (hopefully) funny.  I've heard many times that humor goes over well at readings.  I'll fit in with the tone of the others who are likely also reading humor.

Doubts--It's trite and not really representative of what I usually write.  I rarely write humor.  And humor is hard, so I'm uncomfortable about reading something that I haven't practiced extensively.  

"Neighbors" A fantasy flash

Appeal--It's new and punchy and I'll be able to read the whole thing with time to spare.

Doubts--It's new and may be rougher than I realize since I haven't let it sit for long.

"The Egret Prince"  A dark, sensual fantasy

Appeal--It's moody, sexy (and I've been working on making it even sexier) and I worked on making it as lush an experience as I could.  It's a Lace and Blade swashbuckling sort of setting without the actual swashbuckling.

Doubts--I've recently disassembled this story in order to deal with a dual-plot issue.  It's literally in pieces.  Also, I'm not sure how well a small section of this would read without the context of the rest of the piece.  It's a complex, weird world with odd magic rules.  Assuming I can find a piece of it long enough to read, it still may make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

"Masks"  A political fantasy

Appeal--I've put a lot of time into this and I think it has some very strong sections.  I feel very close with the pov character and enjoy his boy-trying-to-be-a-man struggles.  I really relate to him and I think there's a natural artfulness in the world of jesters that may appeal to listeners.

Doubts--I have no friggin' idea what part to read.  There's the opening, which I think may have too much going on and too little resolution/revelation to satisfy a listener.  Yeah yeah, leave 'em wanting more, but this may leave 'em thinking 'huh?'  And there's the whole rest of the novel, where I have too many choices.  It seems like a massive undertaking just to find what I'd read out of this.

"Thistles and Barley"  A fantasy short which will appear in Beneath Ceaseless Skies online magazine

Appeal--I'll be able to provide a teaser for the magazine, and this one obviously was publishing quality because it made the cut, so I can have fewer doubts about whether it's sound of mind and body.  And the characters are fun.

Doubts--This is a very quiet story that may be underwhelming when only a portion of it is read.

"Hide and Seek" A dark fantasy

Appeal--I love the creepy horror that lies at the core of this story.  And I'll probably be able to read the whole thing.

Doubts--This one is newish and may be rougher than I realize.  And if everyone else reads humor, this is beyond a dark note.  Child abuse, death ... yeah.

"Strangers Think They Know Me" A fantasy short

Appeal--I love this story about a sorceress reaching the end of her life, trying to act as if she's as strong as ever.

Doubts--It's an unreliable pov and that doesn't come out until quite late.  Not sure I could find a section that works without the rest to build it or put it into context.

"Mayhem" A fantasy novel

Appeal--Yay first person!  Yay strong opening!  Yay strong characters!

Doubts--Boo, this is still in early draft form thanks to me switching to first person recently.  Boo, it's what I submitted for the writer's workshop and I haven't gotten feedback on it yet, except at Flogging the Quill.

"The Belief" An SF novel

Appeal--I love the characters even more than the Thistles and Barley and Mayhem combined.  There's a hard-hitting antagonism that makes for great dialogue in this novel.  There's all kinds of sections I could read that would have lots of punch.

Doubts--This novel isn't finished.  It's never been vetted by anyone.  It was written quickly, has remained in the dark, and hasn't been edited at all because I don't edit first drafts.  Ugh.

These are the top contenders.  

Autumn INK Sightings.

WooHoo! INK meeting tonight. Wide assortment of topics to be discussed.

INK at Library Saturday with NaNoWriMo brainstorming immediately afterward.

INK meets again on the 24th. Prep for NaNo plus outlining/writing time and looking ahead toward OryCon 30 and beyond are topics.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do you hear that? That silence? That would be the sound of me finally caught up with my writing tasks.

Not to say I don't have several more to work on, but the big ones, the main ones I've been fretting over for the last few weeks, are done.

Short story edit: check
Submit to INK: (late but) check
OryCon Writer's Workshop website info put together: check
Website info sent to webmaster: check

Whew.

And now on to the new goals.

Two short story edits
Two short story submissions
Some novel work

It's all good.

Narrative, Dialogue, Action and Description

One of the things that really helped me progress as a writer was the idea that much of writing is technique rather than inspiration.  Just about anyone can be inspired.  What they do with that inspiration is then a matter of technique.

One technique mentioned at OryCon was highlighting different types of prose in your work to see how much you use of one type or another.

  

Narrative is the author or pov character chit chatting, talking about what's happening.  In can be anything from internal dialogue, if the pov is close, to the hand-waving overview of events that don't need to be studied closely because they're not that important to the story.  Narrative is transitional.  It links pieces of the story together so that they make plot sense as well as emotional sense.  If we didn't have Benedicts's soliloquy in "Much Ado Without Nothing" to give us his internal thought process, what followed wouldn't make much sense.  It'd be OMG, Benedict, WTF are you doing man?!  This brings up the point that a character talking to themselves or their horse isn't real dialogue.  It's just a different style of narrative.  Sometimes dialogue as narrative works, and sometimes it's awkward and silly.

Dialogue is two or more people talking to each other.  I personally don't count the tag lines as dialogue.  Those are action, or narrative, or description.  Take for example the duel in Cyrano de Bergerac.  That's dialogue mixed with action (although his opponent barely gets a word in edgewise.  Get it? Edgewise?  Har har.)  Without dialogue, we don't get to see characters interacting directly with each other.  We just get told about how they are--argumentative, snippy, loving, chatty, etc.  They talked long into the night isn't nearly as interesting as hearing part of the conversation.

Action is characters doing stuff, in real time, right now on the page.  They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast.  Not all work has to have action in it, but you're walking a tough road without it.  Limiting or eliminating action is done more in literary work than in mainstream or genre fiction.  People who write with a distant narrative, talking about things that happened a long time ago when they were young and spry, tend to have the problem of interrupting action that is already distanced by the style choice with commentary from the 'present' pov character looking back on the situation.  If you don't have much action or very distanced action in your work, that means the dialogue, narrative and description has to really shine to keep your reader's interest.

Description is the red-headed stepchild for many authors.  Description is the establishment of setting.  Sometimes dialogue and narrative and even action can help establish setting--like in the song "Up on the Roof" where the singer is telling us about how much he loves being up on the roof.  He uses as much dialogue and narrative to paint a picture as he does visual images.  In action, if a character is climbing a ladder then we don't need description to let us know that a ladder is somewhere in the room.  Sometimes authors mistake description as 'expository lumps' and try to pare them down to nothing.  An expository lump is narrative, actually, although it can be argued that it's establishing setting and therefore description.  Pure, unadulterated description allows the readers to see, smell, feel, and hear where they are.  It's sensory and hopefully immediate, rather than being demoted to 'background.'  Too much description and you lose your reader in the field of flowers with every botanical name spelled out and the temperature of the air and the way the bison roam across the field munching so and such plants.  If you add that the bison have always done this and for centuries they have selectively cropped these plants, making them more and more scarce--you've just dropped into narrative and have left description behind.

A manuscript is not going to be balanced in these elements.  Trying to make it that way will make you crazy.  However, highlighting these elements can show you if you've been neglecting or omitting one of the four completely.  It would take an unusual short story and the very, very rare novel to short change one element and still pull off something that's enjoyable.  You can also determine if you have big chunks of one type of writing.  Sprinkling is a good technique, where you intersperse the various types of writing among each other so that you don't have big chunks.  Expository lumps aren't the only lumps to be wary of in a manuscript.  Dialogue lumps (council meetings, argh!) action lumps (on and on with the blood and guts, gack) and descriptive lumps (as previously noted) can be just as tedious as a long narrative lump.

Good luck out there and keep writing.

On Critiquing

Orycon was a great success, for me anyway. I learned a great deal on several aspects of writing, but I thought over here I'd share my notes on critique groups, as I attended two or three sessions on the subject:

On Writer's Workshops and Critique Groups (one with David Levine, Rob Vagle, John Burridge, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman; a second with Irene Radford, Bruce Taylor, Jayel Gibson, David Goldman, and Stephen Stanley; a third with Richard Lovett, David Levine, Michele Avanti, and Kami Miller):
* Critiquing and hearing critiques can triangulate how you are reading a story. Does your interpretation match the other writers? What might you be getting that they aren't and why? What are you missing that they are seeing and why? (Thank you, David)
* Critique groups are great as producing mechanisms, setting external deadlines for the writers.
* "Ditto" is a useful tool when group commenting, so that the same issue isn't brought up again and again. As in "Ditto Kami about the tension in the first scene." Free to discuss new issues and benefits instead.
* Instead on manuscript format, either for electronic submission or hard-copy submission.
* Reading aloud can be beneficial to catching errors, but beware that a good reader can bring a problematic piece to life, while a bad reader could sink a good piece. Better: have someone not the writer read the piece aloud. Gives the writer a chance to judge body language and immediate response to the piece (gasps, chuckles, boredom).
* The audition process for incoming members if useful on both sides; gives the writer and the group a chance to feel each other out.
* The Clarion style of group critiques is tried and true, with the author remaining silent while the group takes turns with their own comments, but beware that the person who begins the critique sets the tone.
* Individual critiques avoid feeding off what others are saying, but limit the brainstorming possibilities that a group can offer.
* A writer writes in a vacuum; reader response is useful to judge how the story is going.
* There is a sharp difference between the 'I didn't like it' reaction and the 'I didn't like it because . . .' response.
* Knowing the predilections of the readers is useful: do they have biases against certain stories, are they more knowledgeable in a subject than an average reader would be, or less so.
* Writing to please the critique group will grind the edges off your story. Avoid using their foreseen reactions as your internal editor.
* There is such thing as overshooting a revision based on a critique that can wreck the heart of the story. Always keep in mind why you wrote the piece to begin with.
* Always deliver an honest critique with compassion, whether to an experience writer or to a novice. Honesty counts, and so does compassion.

There are notes on other subject on my personal blog. I also have several thoughts to throw at the INK group when we next meet for the Orycon Debriefing (nice phrase, Carole). And I have a new goal for myself based on not only the above notes, but my own critiquing experiences during the con. All of it will go a long way to improving not only how I write, but I how I critique, and I'm sure you will all thank me for that.

I can't wait for the debriefing! But now, I have to get back to our regularly schedule Nano. My novel is lonely after two days of sitting forgotten in a folder. Well, not completely forgotten.

I Suck So Bad

Going through my works to find a couple of somethings to print off for the open read and critiques (ORCs) at the con has turned into a session of ego-mutilation. I can't find anything that doesn't cry out "this Writer SUCKS and here's an example of how bad!"

My excerpt for the writers workshop, which I spent weeks editing and having it critiqued and editing it again until I thought it was the best thing I've ever written . . . now sucks so bad that I'm embarrassed to sit down with a couple pros to go over it. It took all my will not to grab a red pen and start slashing the piece into something less horrid.

This mindset is a familiar one. I experience it before any reading or presentation of my work. My work inevitably plunges and I want to make several changes before it reaches the light of day.

It seems to be getting worse, however, as I grow more proficient at editing. I see my mistakes much quicker and I desperately want to fix them. But with a workshop going over the piece as is, I can't really launch into it.

The ORC is much more problematic. I could, theoretically, edit till my little heart burst, and I really want to, but I'm running very short on time. So do I put the time I have into edits that might not hold up once I get to the con, since I'll be rushing to do them? Or do I just go with what I have, try not to cringe too badly, and put my time into Nano and getting ready for the con?

It's a hard call. Right now, I'd like to skip the ORC altogether instead of going with a piece I feel is inferior to what I could actually produce. But that seems like a coward's way out.

So, back to the documents, and the head banging.

Exclusivity

I love -ivity words. They're just silly.

I have noticed with the onset of Nano (which I'm rocking, btw) that all other projects have been tossed aside to gather dust, no matter how pressing they were at the time. Notably the Inkwell Cult edit and the Fool's Errand edit.

The Inkwell Cult edit isn't worrisome. I'll be able to pick it up in December without breaking too much of my stride on it. Perhaps I'll be even more jazzed about working on coming out the writers workshop critique during Orycon (where I intend to take many notes not only of the critique, but any plot/story ideas that strike me during the critique).

A Fool's Errand, however, I'd planned to have edited and ready for the open read and critique sessions at Orycon. I don't think that's going to happen now, alas. I'll have to go with my original draft (If I can dredge it up from somewhere), clean up the existing manuscript, and cross my fingers. On one hand, this seems a little unnecessary, considering the INK group has already gone over it and I'm loaded with ideas. On the other hand, it might be useful to hear from new sources on the existing manuscript.

Obviously, I have mixed feelings about it, but A Fool's Errand is my only complete short story. My only other option is to dredge up a lesser finished piece like Iceholm or Brimstone and try to whack them more into shape before the con. Which, since I don't have time to finish the edit on A Fool's Errand, seems unlikely.

Gah. What to do?

Maybe I'll just read a chunk from The 8th Day and call it good.

Off, Off, and Away!

It felt good to get the submission sent away. It felt good to know I did a good job going over it until I was happy with both it and the synopsis. However, I'm scared as hell at having sent it without having any readers look at it before hand. It's a good exercise for me to see how on track my instincts are about my work, but it's still unsettling.

I am very curious about how it will be received by the pros. I have questions about it, which is a good thing to into a workshop with, and hopefully I'll have a completed draft at my back when I sit down with them to discuss the excerpt. That will make their comments more applicable, if the draft is finished. It's hard to say how close I am to the end of the story from what I have already written, since it took a couple of left turns during the first writing and lots of it will be scrapped. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm a third of the way finished, which means I'll be condensing the 50,000 words down to about 30,000, since I'm projecting a 100,000 word limit to the story. That's a lot of chopping, but considering I just chopped 4000 words off the excerpt I sent, I think I can do it.

Oh, and btw: Heya, Kami! I emailed you my Orycon writers workshop submission this morning. I know you are having difficulties with your email, so if you did or didn't get it, or if you just wanna say "hi!" you can leave me a comment to this post.

I'm Bad, I'm Bad, You Know It

And just a day after my rant about not having any stories finished and needing to set goals, I start a new story.

But it's not my fault! It's not!

It's the dream's fault. It was all eerie and cool, filled with characters and settings and even a plot! How could I resist! I mean, ready made story, just begging to be put on paper. Opening paragraph and everything. Narrator's voice, conflict, really awesome antagonist, I was doomed! Doomed I say!

I wrote six pages this morning and I'll probably go back for more. Heck, might even be dragging the typewriter along so I can write more on this during the camping trip. I just want to write enough to capture the creepiness of it all before the dream completely fades.

Too bad it isn't closer to Nano. This would have been my Nano story, I think. But no way I'm a waiting a month and a half to write it. I'm writing it now, hot dammit!

I haven't forgotten Inkwell Cult, though. I'll sit down and finish the first edit today and take a hard copy to do one more read through on the trip. In between writing pages on The English Boy.

All I can say is, why now? And WOO HOO!

Damned, this would have made a good writers workshop submission. Sigh. Next year.

Calling In

During OryCon 29 this year (Portland, Oregon's biggest and best annual science fiction, fantasy and horror convention (but mostly science fiction)) I've decided to do something brave and stupid. Well, maybe not so brave because I do fine in front of even relatively large audiences, thanks to belly dance. Once you've done a belly roll in front of a few hundred people wearing, well, not a lot, public speaking isn't so bad. I don't even have to picture everyone naked. And as for the stupid part, I suppose this could be considered a cheap marketing ploy.

I've grabbed a short short story, I think it's just under 500 words right now, and offered it up for public slaughter. In other words, a bunch of pros will sit in front of an audience, I'll sit to one side, and they'll proceed to shred it in front of everyone. I'm sure part of it will be a serious critique, but bear in mind too that panels are also designed to be entertaining, and many of our regular pros turn their panels into a venue to elicit laughs. So there I'll be with my hapless short short, and there they'll be, getting chuckles out of the audience at my and my manuscript's expense.

But that's okay! Because it'll all be in good fun. And it'll be educational for everyone.

Because the audience won't have had a chance to read the manuscript in advance, I'll have to read it aloud. That should be interesting, and it's the one part I'm a bit nervous about because I haven't had much practice reading manuscripts aloud. See? It's educational already. I've made it easy for myself, though, in a couple of ways. The first is obvious--I picked one of the shortest stories I've ever written. The second is a little more subtle, if you consider pouring a teaspoon of honey into a cup of tea subtle. I chose a humor piece.

Yes, I picked Calling In, which has been critiqued in group before. If nothing else, I'll get a head start on the chuckling part of the evening, and besides, I want to be entertaining too. It wouldn't be nearly as fun watching a piece of heavy drama get wrung out. Can you imagine a work about suffering and pain and sorrow and panelists trying to inspire laughs out of that? They'd feel guilty, I'm sure, and the audience would be appalled. So let's just take the guilt out of the darned program from the very start.

After the panel, I get to edit it super fast, and the next day I'll submit a submissions package to yet another panel where those who are editors or have been editors can comment on everything from my choice of envelope to whether I should have written The End on the last page. It was funny one evening, drinking wine in the Green Room with a mess of pros, when Jay Lake mentioned that if he gets a submission printed on really cheap paper it leaves him with a bad impression. Immediately three people whipped out the paper they used for submissions--we're talking seasoned pros here, not newbies--and demanded that Jay fondle their paper. If I'd had my paper with me, I'd be right there with them fluttering my paper in his face. Jay dutifully fondled and held the pages up to the dim hotel suite light and declared every single page offered to him sufficient to pass muster. It didn't have to be great paper, just not the crappy see-through stuff where you can often see the print on the page beneath it. Very white paper is preferable too, and the cheap stuff tends to have a yellowish cast to it, as the producers cut costs anywhere possible, including the bleach.

That moment was what inspired this madness, this tom-foolery, this public torment that will stretch over two hours in two days. Everyone has insecurities about their writing. People who haven't been in a writer's group wonder how a critique works and if they can handle it. Nearly everyone wonders what goes through the editor's mind when the editor opens an envelope with your humble offering in it. Now they'll know at least a bit of it, the bit that we'll all admit to in public, and I'll know first hand what the reactions are to Calling In.

And what will be going through my mind between blushes?

Free advertising! I just hope it's good advertising.