Go, Kami, GO!

Another great INK moment - Kami has her first, of what I'm certain will be many, SWFA-qualifying sale. Congrats Kami!!

Link: http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/beneath-ceaseless-skies-is-sfwas-newest-qualifying-short-fiction-market/

Next INK - July 17th.

Next INK meeting is coming up, July 17th to be precise, at the usual summer venue in Vancouver. Deadline for critique material is one week beforehand. That means today, up until midnight, stuff for critique will be accepted. So far (10 a.m. Friday July 10th), there is nothing on tap to critique.

Don't you just hate it when time sneaks up on you?

At the last INK meeting, writer Mark Jones pulled off what I personally felt was missing in my own writing life -- Talking with excitement on the Joys of Submitting Stories. Thank you Mark! I don't know what exactly you said but it got me up off my butt and I've submitted three stories in the past week. Still looking for a market for a fourth but I'm confident that I'll regain my, um, confidence in that regard.

INK meeting.

INK meeting tonight, the last one before RadCon5 A! Panel reviews, upcoming workshops, treasury audit, new name, info packet progress, perhaps even time for Writers Round Table. If not, Scrabble is always good for the wordiness of a writer's soul.

Storm

Hey, what did you all think of the storm that blew over us yesterday evening?  It went right over our house.  The hail tore the plants to heck and the lightning was intense.  Rory and I watched it come in under the deck gazebo and then came in when it started to get dangerously close (as in wow, that lightning hit right there close.)  A few minutes later the hail started, and we had sheets of rain, lightning blasting directly overhead and terrified dogs.  Everything smelled like we were in the midst of a logging clearcut operation.  We brought all the dogs in (after a little drama with Finn) and gave them all baths and they got to lounge about the house until about 2am.

I thought, gee, Carole must be writing on a great story idea even as we speak.

I sent off for info about the Dean Wesley Smith/Kristine Kathryn Rusch and guests seminars in Lincoln City.  I've heard nothing but great things about these seminars.  Yes, they're expensive, but not when you consider that you have a place to sleep on the coast (woot!) and instructional time with masters of the industry.  If I could scrape together the funds I'd be all over the master's course held in spring 2009, but I think that's out of my reach financially, even if it was possible for me to get in based on my writing.  I think I'm better off staying out of debt by taking the novel and the short story courses, with the accompanying less time off of work factors (assuming I'm still working retail then.)  

My writer's demon is bouncing up and down trying to get my attention and squeaking, "that's what credit cards are for, dope!  C'mon, let's go!  You've always wanted to!"  Yes, well, I've always wanted a horse, too, but you don't see one grazing out on the acreage, do you?  "But this might be just what Masks needs to become saleable!  You can pay off the credit card with your advance!"  You know, that--I don't even know where to start.  I don't think that's even worth a response.  "What?  Aw, man!  Please?"

Pardon me while I stuff him back into whatever dimension he slipped out of.  

Thanks for the heads-up from our friend, Jeff!  And you can totally snag a ride with me to the coast, assuming I can get into the class.  Just get yer kilted butt up here to the Pac NW and we'll head out toward the sunset.  Road trip!

Escape

My brain is looking for escape routes.  Yesterday I wanted to write on anything except what I was supposed to.  Last night I even came up with a new story idea.  This morning I came up with more ideas--luckily one was for Masks--but the primary idea was for a project that has been on a backburner and will probably stay there for a long time.  I can blame my heavy schedule for this bout of escapism, but that would be just an excuse.  I know how to kick this.  Write anyway.

Definitely owe INK a dollar, and considering Radcon, that'll be another dollar because I'm not going to get a sub in by next Monday either.  Might as well pay up now.  But hey, after Radcon I'll be home free for quite a while.  With two day jobs days of work a week, three max, and the fact that lately my schedule has been arranged so that the workdays are consecutive, I'll have a lot more free time to get writing projects done.  I'm really, really looking forward to that.  Radcon has become my Thunderdome, and all I want to do is get beyond it (she said, dating herself yet again.)  I'm sure once I get there, though, I'll have such a blast that I'll forget all about these silly things called deadlines and goals, at least for a while.

Openers

I've spent a huge number of hours reading openings, and critiquing some of them, at the now infamous Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge.  (The contest is closed to submissions and they're sorting through the entries now.)  I've read various rules and suggestions for how to open a novel, but I have to say at this point that reading about it and/or thinking about it is no substitute for reading about a gizillion openings and picking apart as many as you can stand to critique.  

Go forth and read the entries.  Find the flaws in the best ones.  May your eyes be opened.  And then read Shock and Awe.   Although we always hear that a novel should open with a hook, in the middle of it all, preferably with action, that doesn't mean that the action has to be physical.  Suddenly I'm okay with how Masks opens again.  Yay!

Taking Advantage

I couldn't help myself.  I had to join in Nathan Bransford's "The Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge."  I hate to take advantage such a clearly nice guy.  He even posted my submission for me because (I'm guessing) the dial-up load times were interfering with my ability to comment on that particular post.  I was able to comment on other posts so I believe I was timing out or some such.  Anyway, I looked over my stuff and decided, weirdly, to try with the opening to Mayhem, I think because it stands out most of all my openings.  This makes me want to rewrite the opening to Masks yet again.  Gawd, I just want to smash my head through the wall every time I think about changing the opening to Masks.  Anyway:

As a small child I once lost my balance and touched my hand on a red hot stove.  Before the pain stabbed into my fingers and struck my mind I remember feeling foolish and frightened.  I cried out a not-very-small-child curse and put my fingers in my mouth just as the pain hit me.  My mother hurled herself across the kitchen and pulled me up into her arms.  That scent of our tribe's plush wool, the softness of homespun cloth against my face, the red hair of a Kilhells woman and green eyes staring into mine had always brought me comfort.

I know I'm dreaming, but that same hot pain I remember feels real, and there's no comfort this time.  I'm trapped in that room again, the desert heat doubled by infernal fire in a hearth.  I'm tied with bark rope on top of a camel hair rug.  Instead of hot pokers, carving instruments are heating to white brilliance three feet from my face.  There's a helefrit straddling me.  Nearby, the blood of an infant has dried to black flakes.  I want to wake up, but just like when it was actually happening, I'm helpless.

Something wooden cracks nearby and all at once I'm awake, gasping, my heart pounding so hard it hurts.  My body tingles from the memory of my flesh burning and I'm sticky and smelly with sweat.  I'm back in the present, cradled in a hammock in the belly of a sailing ship.  Sailors stand around a barrel they've dropped.  One sailor glances my way from under the brim of his dirty white hat with an apologetic look.  The others don't meet my gaze.  I'm not sure if they know something's wrong with me, or if it's just me.  My name is famous.  I'm famous, though hardly anyone has met me.  It's always a surprise when people take my word for it that I am who I say I am.  I'm plenty tall for a woman, but I don't think I'm tall enough for a myth.  I don't wear armor, I've lost my sword, and not only did I fail to do anything to aid the war, I think I might be on my way to assassinate the only man who can save the world.

I think people believe that no one would dare claim they were me.  I don't feel up to defending my name or my honor, though, as I awkwardly climb out of the hammock and go to ease the pressure in my bladder.  I don't stagger as the massive ships rocks from one side to the other.  My sea legs come back faster each time I sail, and take longer to go away when I'm on dry land again.  For hours after a long voyage, sometimes overnight, it feels like the land rolls under me, and I often dream of storms at sea.

At the risk of repeating myself, I wanted to write about critiques in general and specifically what a wonderful group INK is and how privileged I feel to be a part of them.  

Steve is a picky reader, especially when it comes to internal consistency.  When he has trouble with the logic of a particular scene, I listen very carefully.  I don't want to become that author who writes about characters that do stupid things because it serves the plot.  I especially don't want to become that author with implausible happenings, ridiculous solutions and character motivations that make absolutely no sense.  He is also our only man.  I hope he doesn't start to suffer from estrogen poisoning at our meetings, because I really need that testosterone perspective, particularly since lately I've been writing male pov characters.

Carole is my eye-roller reader.  She doesn't technically 'do' fantasy, or to look at it another way, she prefers dark fantasy and magic realism.  She's my oh puke reader, and if I'm not making her puke there's a very good chance my writing could reach mainstream readers.  She's also a detail reader.  She's done so many jobs and been enough different places that she has tons of facts packed into her head, while having the valuable skill of being able to discriminate between what I mean versus what a reader who is unfamiliar with said item will hear.  For example, it never occurred to me that a reader would think that even the leaves on a bougainvillea vine would be red when I'm talking about papery carmine bougainvillea vines.  Not only did I assume everyone had seen them but I also looked like an idiot if someone had seen them (like CS) and thought I hadn't and had mis-described them from ignorance.  BTW, Carole, I have a baker character in the next book.  I'm looking forward to your impression of him and his workspace.

Carissa is my form and function reader.  If it has no function, she suggests eliminating it.  If the form is flawed, she catches it.  She also helps with things like details and character motivations, but where she really shines as a reader is as a surrogate editor.  She has read so much fantasy (and continues to read fantasy regularly) that she'll catch it if I'm falling into cliche'.  She also gets impatient with my writing in many of the same ways that editors get impatient with writing.  Their time is valuable.  As a rule they don't like excess wordage, extraneous scenes, scenes that go on too long, characters that have no purpose, expository lumps, etc.  No matter how carefully I disguise them (even from myself) Carissa catches them.  If a description passes muster with her, I'm confident that it'll pass muster with darned near anyone.

I had a really good critique, as always, on Masks with INK this last meeting.  I learned that I'd butchered what probably had been a perfectly fine fight scene before I 'streamlined' (read, took out too much for anyone to follow the action) it, that I'd turned my intelligent character into an unsympathetic hormonal mess, that I'd removed too much calculation in a character's reasoning and turned a dark scene into a mini-buddy movie that lacked chemistry, and many other things.  I also got some great brain-storming ideas that will have repercussions across two, maybe all three of the trilogy that Masks begins.

I sometimes worry that you think you're playing second hat to the Lucky Labs (who I'm also very, very grateful to,) so here's my note of appreciation and reassurance.  You're great readers, and you are all so definitely going to be in the acknowledgements.  Without my readers, I'd be a much less effective writer, no doubt about it.  You also have the horrible job of checking every blessed little tiny scrap of crap I write.  From my bios and cover letters to synopses and outlines, nothing goes out without an INK okay.  You also listen to my endless yammering on WIPs and bleeding characters and plotlines.  We've become more than a critique group.  We're a team, a business venture, and I'm very glad to be a part of you.  Thanks, INK!  You're the best.

Steampunk? Steampunk!

Just when I think a particular project is out there all alone, I learn from a chance email that a setting that Ris and I have been working with falls on the outer fringe of an entire subgenre.  Rather than our technology rotating around steam power and difference engines, we toy with an age on a world that is definitely not Earth that might have resulted if the many inventions that a Tesla-like person may (or may not have) created had become the general tech upon which all technology rests.  

I think it's not accidental that we end up with nods to the Island of Dr. Moreau and a world of fine dresses and fancy hats with a monarchial/noble society being pressed by new ideas about the needs and rights of the common man.  

We're not quite steampunk, but were not *not* steampunk either.

This is kewl.  Nothing new under the sun ...

Rein in the Urge to Plan

I got ahead of myself when I said I was leaning toward writing Golem God. And my muse reminded me of as much by chucking another rock of inspiration at my cranium. So I now have four, count them, FOUR story ideas for Nano. They are, in order of appearance:

Chesspiece (historic adventure)
The English Boy (historic paranormal)
Golem God (fantasy romance)
Death Follows After (historical mystery)

Yup, they all even have titles. How's that for thorough?

And they each have a synopsis. And research, but those needing it. At least enough research to hold the story together in the synopsis. Chesspiece needed the most, as it is politically involved and I had to brush up on my early 1970s history. But Death Follows After is a close second, since I can't decide if I want to set it during the Regency period (think Jane Austen) or the Victorian era (think Sherlock Holmes). I'm still waffling on that point. I have the feeling the Mr. Allen (the hero in the story, who is also an American) will be the deciding factor, since I haven't fully realized his backstory.

You know, it's rather fun having four stories to work up at once. Because then no matter which one gets Nano, I'll still have three worked up story ideas for next year, whenever I have a yen to work on a new story. It's rather nice, considering I use to struggle to develop one story.

I think all these story ideas is a sign that I've matured as a writer. I'm able to see more than just a scene or two of a tale, with a few quirky characters. Now I'm seeing beginnings, middles, hints of endings, main and secondary characters, settings, and backstory, all coming at me like a legion of toy soldiers holding out pointy little bayonets. It stings a little at first, but I immediately want to write on each of them, but I just slap a sticky plaster over the urge and jot down notes.

I suddenly went rather British sounding, didn't I?

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.

Intention

I had a breakthrough moment today. It was about intention. About purposefully declaring personal intention and identifying those gut-reflex criticisms that try to stand immediately in the way.

When asked to declare three intentions, or things that I intend to be, I came up with Writer, Home-maker, and Guide.

The Guide was a surprising one. I had expected Mother, or Wife, or even Teacher, but Guide?

Then I asked myself what my intention was in each of those. Home-maker was easy enough. I want to create a soft place for my family to fall into, a place of refuge, of peace, of contentment and happiness and joy, of togetherness. I even know how I am going to go about doing that, and I'm well on that path.

The answer to Writer was a bit surprising. I've always written for the story and not really for any real sense of intention. But I realized I want to write to give that same pleasure to others that I had always gotten from reading. I want to share stories with that same passionate sense of adventure that always captivates me. Which means, for me, letting go and letting the passion take over when I write so I capture that passion on the paper to share.

That was my first breakthrough. And it felt huge, like I'd just scaled the wall that had been slowly crumbling in front of me the past several months.

The second came with the Guide. Guide to what? I am surprised that my ideas about how to be a mother echo how to be a teacher. It is all based on experience sharing. It starts with learning from my own experiences in order to share what I've learned to allow others to have that much more of a start on their journey of their own experiences. To guide them through by what I've learned and give them the inspiration to leap forward into their own experiences.

Page counts are solid goals. Books draft completed and edits tackled are solid goals. But I've lacked intention and without that, I've lacked a true drive to meet those goals consistently and joyfully. I have intention now. I've breached the wall. I'm ready to smear my passion across the blank pages and let go.

Almost Everything I Needed to Know about Writing I Learned by Daily Writing

Writing daily has its perks. There's a feeling of continuity, and a flow that comes with daily writing that turns the creative process into a kind of perpetual motion machine. The writing goes faster when it's daily too, and the habit of daily writing shortens or eliminates a lot of the chronic "now I'm sitting down to write" problems.

Writer's block: I haven't had as much trouble with writer's block as I used to back in the day, whenever the day was--it's been a long time. Sometimes I get dragged down by a scene, or I get bored, or a storyline fizzles. When that's happened a few gizillion times it's no longer a big deal. You go back and figure out where the story became predictable, or where you lost the thread, or where the action stopped and you fix it, or you let that project rest for a while and work on another one.

Staring at the blank screen: A blank screen isn't as intimidating as it used to be. A few seconds, sometimes minutes if I'm having to dig deep, and away we go. I'll probably change the beginning after the first draft anyway. A blank screen is an opportunity to finger paint before you get down to the actual process of creating art.

What-to-do-itis: Related to writer's block. Sometimes when the story runs out of steam, people get stressed. They start taking polls from their readers (if they're serializing it or workshopping it) asking what to do next. They fret that the story is horrible anyway and not worth pursuing. They try to work out logically what would be the next plot step, or hope that their characters will bail them out. When you've done enough daily writing, you learn what works for you, and it's probably none of the above strategies which involve popular opinion or muses or characters with their own will. Me? I do the worst possible thing to the character. Sometimes it's the thing they dread the most. Sometimes it's worse than the thing they dread the most, beyond their imagination. Doing the worst thing takes guts and thinking, and sometimes a little plot reworking. Yeah, I sweat, but you know, there's this magical thing called reverting to the original document if it doesn't work out. The point being, when the story stops working, it's time for the writer to get to work and stir things up a bit.

No time to write: Uh huh. The thinking is, if I don't have three hours, or an hour or whatever time frame, it's not worth sitting down to write. I have to have X amount of time to 'get in the mood' or 'find the flow,' etc. EH! Daily writing shortens this artificial time frame until eventually you sit down at the computer to check email, glance at the clock, and think hey, I've got five minutes before I have to start getting ready for work. And then you push that five minutes to fifteen and grab a Slimfast instead of making a bologna sandwich. Works for me.

These constant interruptions!: The situation is that when you sit down to write, there are distractions. Currently I'm tired, the cat is meowing for attention, I have dishes to do, I have a fresh sunburn that makes my shoulders do the heat emanation thing and makes my shirt feel scratchy. Some days you have to get up to deal with something every thirty seconds, or you contend with loud and obnoxious music or a couple fighting next door, dogs barking, or people come in and want to ask you this or want you to find them that, and you want to nail the door shut (if you have a door) to the office and hang up a "Do Not Disturb" sign next to a biohazard placard in the hopes that you'll have two frickin' minutes to rub together. With enough daily writing, two consecutive minutes aren't necessary, although they're very much appreciated. Fifteen seconds is enough to complete a sentence and/or thought between putting out fires and stoppage of arterial bleeding. (Looks like the kitty has food, and the dishes really can wait until morning. We're good to go for some writing, with or without further interruptions.)

Can't ... find ... right ... word: I used to use the thesaurus a lot. I also used to stop writing entirely until I found a fact I needed. I kept 3x5 cards (hard to imagine that I used to be organized) of various world building and character facts so that I could, at a glance, learn what the capitol city of Arrak el Eslahm was, count to fourteen using base 12 number systems and know exactly how long it takes to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri traveling at 1.4 light speed. I kept careful timelines and took travel distances into account even on a first draft. If I had to look something up in the library, all writing would stop until I could convince my mom to take me or until I had enough cash to hop a bus there and back again. Ironic that I learned to just type XXXXXX or parenthetical comments like (and here Kami inserts a brilliant passage about Beggar Smith cleaning her black powder firearm with all kinds of juicy details supplied by Jacob) before Google and Wikipedia. Then again, relying too much on those 'fast' sources still slows down the writing process more than is strictly necessary. If researching facts, going back through your work to find the color of a character's horse or paging through a thesaurus inspires, fine. If it's an excuse to stop writing, boo! XXXXX rules!

I'm sure I learned more from daily writing, but I forgot. Oh well! Time to write some more!

63037 words

I've hit another landmark in Masks.

I'm now in totally new territory, and that feels fabulous and freeing. Well, I'm not going to deviate too terribly from the original plot, but the devil, and apparently temptation and satisfaction, are in the glorious details.

Sometimes a flash of reasoning or experience comes along, or something outside that gives a moment of inspiration. Facing the inevitability of death last night (this happens from time to time) and on this particular night, the fact that I would have to go onward alone, brought in huge waves of inspiration and insight into Mark's needs and pain. He is, more than any other character I've written, desperately alone and when he leaves his emotionally bereft shelter he is even more alone.

So when he's bonded as a jester, he's no longer alone, and that moment became huge. It also became more spiritual, thanks to some ideas that ambled into my brain at a convenient time about the spiritual world and what one possibility might be like, then tweaking that into the Masks universe.

I also managed, for once, to end the chapter on a cliffhanger. I don't have many habits from short story writing, especially since I'm not much good at short story writing, but one habit that clings is the one where you end on a resolution rather than an unresolution. Scenes don't have as much a problem as chapter endings, my chapters being roughly short story length. My mind takes me to the end of the chapter where something has resolved, and I don't continue past the point of resolution because that seems unnatural. I want to end it there and continue onward in the next chapter to the following related idea, sometimes with a transitionary idea that keeps the book unified. I think this habit may also come from essay writing (I think I may be better at essays than short stories but who can ever figure out what they're good at anyway?) where each paragraph is a complete idea that gently leads to the next idea with transitionary sentences. There is a minor resolution in each paragraph, and then the whole essay ends in a complete resolution with maybe a few unresolved questions--they'd better be unresolved for a reason and in there in the first place for a reason if you want a good essay--hanging about for intrigue.

One of my tasks when I go to polish this beastie is to check out, in a mechanical way, beginnings and endings of chapters and look at the structure and length of the chapters. I'm not really looking forward to that. The idea that I might have one less chapter end to fuss with is a relief and a pleasure, and now I can go outside and garden with a sense of a job somewhat done.