My wife's been out of town most of this past month (helping her mother recover from cataract surgery), so I've been leaning on books (and friends!) more to keep me sane company.

As ever, I've listed the books in reverse order, with the one I read most recently listed first.

The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan

Not what I expected at all. I'd hoped for a thorough, wide-ranging, history of Central Asia. What I got instead was a history of Europe, told from the perspective of how events in Central and East Asia impacted Europeans.

So...not the kind of thing you can really use as research material for a novel set in the Central Asian steppes, as I'd wanted 😬

But once I got over my expectations, I settled in for what turned out to be a very enjoyable, very readable history. It's lopsided, in that he spends only about 1/3 of the book on the vast majority of human history (everything before 1800, that is), and spends a lot of time in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Even so, it's a good corrective to our usual look at the past six hundred years. Especially when it comes to the "rise" of Europe, Frankopan deftly illustrates how the real story was the theft of vast sums from the Americas and Africa to Europe, which was then funneled to Asia to obtain spices, silk, paper, etc etc. The "normal" situation for the world is for money to flow East, and the development of China and the various former Soviet Republics in Central Asia is less a revolution than a return to history's status quo.

Oh, one last thing: This book does a much better job of laying out the perfidy and fickleness of the United States in its dealings with the rest of the world than the next book in my list. Leave the history to the historians, I suppose?

American Rule, by Jared Yates Sexton

I wanted to like this one. I really did. I wholeheartedly support Sexton's goal here, which is to pierce the myths that we're frequently taught as American "history."

The trouble is -- and the reason I couldn't actually finish the book -- in order for that kind of argument to be effective, you really have to get your own history right. And Sexton, um, doesn't.

Here's a sample paragraph (from page 10):

...England's monarchy had long been held as unquestionable. This perception of the divine right of kings was forged in the centuries following the fall of Rome as civilization in Western Europe languished in apocalyptic ruin and struggled through the so-called Dark Ages. In this time, the one uniting tether of humanity was religion...

There's...so much...wrong with that paragraph.

The absolute monarchy he's talking about was something invented in the early modern period, not the Middle Ages ("Dark Ages", as any historian worth their salt will tell you, is an offensively wrong term for the period). And the doctrine of absolute monarchy had nothing to do with the fall of Rome (itself a disputed event), and everything to do with the centralizing projects European monarchs embarked on after centuries of conquest and consolidation.

Far from civilization "languishing" in Western Europe for hundreds of years, the Middle Ages saw rapid urbanization, expansion of trade, and the foundation of Europe's first universities.

And religion being the one unifier? As opposed to any, oh, government? That's...fuck, that's just laughable

These are not small mistakes. They're massive mis-representations of the period and the trends within it. And Sexton makes mistakes like this on every page (nearly every paragraph)!

I couldn't take it. So I noped out.

The Eyes of the Dragon, by Stephen King

My second of two (see below) King books this month that don't read like King books. This is told like a fairy tale, with the same sort of remove and third-person omniscience you'd have in a fairy tale. It's the same voice King sometimes used in the latter part of the Dark Tower series.

And as far as I know, this is King's one and only full-blown medieval fantasy book: kings and wizards, magic and dragons. I picked it up because of the connections to his other books -- the king's name is Roland, you see, and the (evil) wizard's name is Flagg -- not expecting too much.

I should have known better. Even in this mode, King is a master storyteller, weaving a tale of family and betrayal and escape that captivated me all the way to the end.

The Running Man, by Stephen King

Ok, technically this is a Richard Bachman book, since that's the name King released it under originally. But they made a friggin' Swarzenegger movie out of it, so I've got to include it in my reading list, right?

Interestingly enough, I can see why King published this one under a pen name. Because it doesn't read like a King book at all. There's no slow build up of tension, no deep dive into the lives of multiple characters before everything goes to hell. It just dives right into the plot, explaining just the bare minimum about the world needed to keep up with what's going on.

And this thing moves. Each chapter is incredibly short, maybe 3 pages maximum. It's the "potato chip" technique (keep chapters so small that folks think "I can do one more"), and it works here; I read the entire thing in a single day.

On the downside, it's incredibly violent, and racist, and sexist, all at once. Granted, the world he's portraying is very much that, all the way through, but it's bigoted in a very...old-fashioned way, from the slurs they use, especially. Like 1960s racism ramped up to 11 and then set in the future.

Here's the kicker, though: King absolutely nailed how misinformation, spread through the media, can keep the people at the bottom of the economy apart, keep them hating each other, when they should be attacking the wealthy. And he portrays our current "meritocratic" caste system perfectly, illustrating how inequality can get so locked in that the only way out for some people is to offer to die on national television. That's the horrific part of the book, for me, the part the lingered after closing the book.

The White Album, Joan Didion

Didion's essays covering the Seventies (and part of the later Sixties). I could definitely feel a cynicism creeping in, something present in the first book of hers i read and becoming stronger with each essay here.

But she continues to draw moments in time in vivid colors, and is brutally frank about her experiences with mental health issues during this period. Just...compellingly readable, all the way through.

I'd like to say I wish I could write like her, but then I'm not sure how I would even begin to learn or adopt her techniques. Intimidatingly good.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion

Wasn't sure what to expect with this one. The title is...a bit pretentious, at least to my ears.

But the essays are as unpretentious as they come. Didion, for the most part, refuses to generalize or judge, choosing instead to capture the moment, or series of moments, that she experienced with and around certain people, at certain times.

The result is a bit like a time capsule of the Sixties, or at least, the parts of the Sixties that she experienced in California.

Her writing is a bit hypnotic, in that way. In how she brings you into a moment, even if that moment itself is a composite of other moments, showing you what it felt like, if not what actually occurred. Makes her essays a bit addictive, tbh, each one a hit of experience from another place and time.

The one downside? Because she's writing so close to her own experience, her version of the Sixties is very...white. And middle class. To the point where, when she talks about the farming communities she grew up in, she doesn't talk about the actual workers on those farms, who were organizing throughout the Sixties to advocate for better working conditions for the majority-immigrant workforce. Nor does she mention the Civil Rights movements, or the Black Panthers, or...I could go on and on. Suffice to say that her viewpoint is very well detailed, but is very much myopic.

Writing this past week has been...well, difficult is too small a word for it. When my motivation for even getting out of bed has been snuffed out, it's impossible to convince myself that the words I'm setting down are worth anything.

And yet they must be written. Because who knows how long this funk will last, and in the meantime the novel needs to be completed. Need to get this draft done, this junk draft, so that I'll have something to edit later. Not that I'm looking forward to later, exactly, but I know it's coming.

Thank goodness I stopped being an inspiration writer -- that is, someone who writes only when inspired to -- a good while ago. Because at the moment, inspiration isn't just hard to summon for me, it's completely gone. I'm writing like someone re-learning how to walk: laying down one word at a time, till a sentence is formed, and then moving on to the next. Word by word, line by line. Till my daily word count is reached, and I close the laptop.

I'm not blocked. I'm not afraid of the scene I'm working on. I'm just depressed.

I'm trying different things to lighten my mood, of course. I started walking in the mornings again, and I can now vouch for the runner's high as a way to trick my body's chemistry into lifting the sadness for a bit. It's doesn't last, but for a little while I feel...not normal, but I stop feeling like crying all the time.

Crying is a constant danger at the moment. Anytime I'm left with my thoughts for too long, I start to tear up. Which makes writing dangerous, in a way; I've got to think to put these words together, but every time I start to imagine the scene before me, my thoughts will veer into taking an inventory of all the reasons I'm worthless and unneeded, and I break down again. I know it's my brain inventing reasons for my sadness, but still. It's surprisingly good at it!

And trying to do the opposite -- take inventory of all the things I have to be happy about -- doesn't help, either, because it just gives me a list of reasons I'm an ungrateful wretch for daring to be sad.

There's no winning here. There's just endurance, and a hope that it will pass. I've had dark moods before -- never this bad, but still -- and they've all come and gone like clouds in a thunderstorm. This one will, too, given time. I hope.

Ok, I didn't get this posted in time for the end of March, but better late then never, eh?

Continuing the theme of posting short reviews of the things I read each month, here's what I've consumed since last time, again in reverse order (so, the most recent book first):

Seven-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M Valente

The first book is also one I couldn't finish. I love the premise of this book: a Western retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. And Valente is one of my favorite authors! Should have been right up my alley.

But the whole thing is written in dialect, which is annoying for me at the best of times. And when it's an author from the Northeast trying (emphasis on the trying) to write an entire novella in a Southwestern accent, this Texan just can't take it.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

This one I enjoyed! Very well-crafted fantasy. Hard to say anything without spoiling the plot, but basically it weaves in themes from Frankenstein, the Wizard of Oz, multiverses, and time travel (of a sort...you'll see) to construct something wholly original. I'll be studying this one for pointers on style and craft.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

I didn't think it was possible to make a compelling single-monster horror. But Jones has done it, and done it with characters and traditions (Blackfeet and Crow) you don't normally find in American literature. This one was so good I read it all in one gulp, in a single day.

Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz

Another one I wanted to like, but couldn't get through. It's supposed to be a survey of four historical cities that, for various reasons, were abandoned, even after long periods of growth and popularity. It promised some insights into the debates we're starting to have about the sustainability of modern cities, and whether climate change will mean their inevitable decline.

Instead, I kept running into mischaracterizations and outright mistakes. One glaring error is in the location of Pompeii, which the author has right in the text but wrong on the maps. One mischaracterization is the author projecting the myth of the noble savage onto the population of an ancient city, even after they relay an exchange with an expert that lays bare the flaws of their assumption!

I can't read nonfiction that I can't trust, so I put this one down.

Writing in the Dark by Tim Waggoner

Wrote about this one last week. Recommended for anyone that's even thinking of writing horror.

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

King mentions in the intro to this one that he wrote this book partially because he wanted to see if it was possible to wed a literary story about a small Maine town with a Dracula-inspired vampire tale. That duality runs throughout the book, with passages that wouldn't be out of place in the New Yorker followed by harrowing chapters filled with dread. So in reading it, I felt like I was watching the evolution of King the writer in real time, with his literary aspirations slowly giving way to his mastery of horror techniques.

Oh, and the story absolutely still works, even after all this time!

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Holy shit, this one. Another book that hooked me from the first page, and held me until I'd swallowed it all in a single day. An absolutely brilliant -- and ambiguous -- take on Lovecraftian horror. I immediately went and ordered more LaValle after finishing it.

Genghis Kahn by Paul Ratchnevsky

Another book I picked up after it was referenced on acoup.blog. Not as readable as The Mongol Art of War, but covers similar ground. Interesting for insights into how Genghis built up his empire, via political manuevering as shrewd policy as much as through battle.

Novel's at 38,160 words. The snippets I'm working on are starting to spill over into the next chapter; I'm already scoping out the reactions of the characters to the events of the section I'm working on.

Meanwhile, this section is winding down. And I'm getting the feeling that much of it -- most of it, even -- might be cut in the next draft. I mean, do I really need to describe how a character makes their camp dinner in such detail? And yet, if I don't do it, I won't know that they keep flour in this jar over there, and that they constantly gather firewood as they travel, so they have a stock of it ready to go when needed. Details like that would be completely lost, if I didn't make a hash out of describing every little action right now. So I keep doing it, knowing that what I'm writing now will likely be cut, but that doesn't mean it won't be used.

I'm also...well, I'm debating whether to let one of my characters give A Speech at the end of this chapter. They have the words for it -- I've already written the points they want to hammer home -- they have the audience, they have the space and the time. But does the book have the tone for it?

I usually shy away from having characters make big speeches, or monologues. Blame part of it on a Gen-X thing: I treat displays of sincere emotion with suspicion. Blame another part on my preacher of a father, whose pompous, hypocritical sermons turned me off to religion altogether.

So I'm always pushing my characters to speak more naturally, to take any Great Wisdom they want to lay down and either show it through their actions or weave it into their dialog some other way.

But this time...this time I might let them just say what they want to say. Certainly the situation calls for it: a young girl is about to be pushed into an apprenticeship that will change her life, take her away from the family and the place she's always known and send her criss-crossing the world with her mentor. And all because of a decision she made to pursue vengeance for her father's death, that led to a near-deadly encounter with a dragon, and now this. Such sweeping changes, they call for a little more weight to the dialog, yes?

Oof, I'm uncertain. I'll write the speech, I think, and see how it plays. I can always change it later, right?

Apex Magazine is back!

Apex went on what looked like permanent hiatus while editor-in-chief Jason Sizemore dealt with multiple surgeries for serious health issues (see his editorial in this month's magazine). But he's thankfully recovered, and after a successful Kickstarter, he's re-assembled the Apex editing team, and resurrected the magazine!

Issue 121, then, is their first new issue in almost two years. It's a double issue, as all of them will be from now on, released every two months. You can grab your own copy here

So let's dive in! (no spoilers, I promise).

Root Rot, by Fargo Tbakh

Jesus, this story.

Reading it is disorienting at first. There's a good reason for that, for why the narrator's voice seems jumbled and confused. But as I read, more and more pieces fell into place, until the very last scene broke my heart.

I wish I could write something this powerful. This moving. An inspiration, and a bar to shoot for.

Your Own Undoing, by P H Lee

Second person, represent!

I usually hate stories told in the second person. All those "You"s feel like commands, and I instinctually kick back against those, and out of the story.

Not so in this case. Lee's story wove a meta fairy tale around me, a story that was itself an illustration of the conflict at its heart.

If it sounds too clever for its own good, don't be put off. It's not. It's a fantastic story, first and foremost. It's only afterward, when thinking about it, that its clever structure reveals its shape. Just amazing.

Love, That Hungry Thing, by Cassandra Khaw

This one....this one did feel too clever for its own good, for me.

Not in structure, but in the way it leans so far into the modern (well, post-2004) tendency to leave readers out on a limb. Being confused can work -- see the first story, above -- for a while, but I (being very careful here, as I know not everyone shares my tastes) tend to get very frustrated if there's no payoff at the end.

And there's no payoff in this story, for me. In fact, there's very little action at all, or even dialog.

A lot of beautiful description, though. Evocative words and phrases that promise glittering insight into this future, but then never cohere into a stable image. Nothing falls into place. It's an exquisitely described place, though.

Mr Death, by Alix E Harrow

My favorite of the bunch.

I don't want to say too much, lest I give anything away. Let me just say that this is what I wish the movie Soul had been. Read it. You won't regret it.

The Niddah, by Elana Gomel

A short story about a global pandemic. Yes, really.

Grey Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts, by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Had an allergic reaction to this one. Something about another story that drops the reader into a confused space, with no explanation, and calls its main environment "The City."

All I Want for Christmas, by Charles Payseur

Short, powerful flash piece. Made me shudder.

It feels good to have a competent President again. A President with some dignity, who doesn't spend his time tweeting out misinformation. Whose Press Secretary thanked reporters after her first press briefing, who doesn't see journalists as the enemy. A President who made news this week because of the raft of actions he took to kick off a national response to the coronavirus pandemic, not the lies he told.

The day after the inauguration, I sat down to write after a long day at work, and when I looked up I'd written twice my daily word count, smooth as butter.

I could get used to this. I want to get used to this. Not in the sense of taking it for granted, but in the sense of it happening, over and over and over again.

There's much to be done, politically. Too many Americans are locked up in prisons. Too many Americans fear the loss of their job so much they're willing to endure urinating into bottles and absurdly low wages, while their bosses complain about not knowing how to spend all the money they're making.

But it'll be easier, collectively, to tackle such things, if we don't all have to worry about the President, too, coming after us. If we have the headspace to write, and call, and paint, and march, and sing, and petition, without wondering, every day, which shoe the executive is going to drop on us that day. What painstaking progress the administration rolled back with callous ease this morning.

It'll be good to feel like we have an ally in the White House. Not perfect, by any means. But not actively trying to set us back.

Novel's at 24,580 words. More by the end of the day, since I haven't yet done my daily words. Back to the rhythm of 2,000 words per week.

I'm at the point where I'm stitching together the pieces I've written for the current sequence, before pressing on. I'm having to shift some paragraphs around, moving them either earlier in the chapter or later, so I can keep them without interrupting the flow of things.

I can already see parts I'm going to have to revise. Conversations that don't go anywhere (currently), descriptions of daily life that will need to be rewritten according to the research I'm doing.

I'm...uncertain, whether to fix those, or just press on. The advice I've gotten from the Writer's Coffeehouse says to move on, to just make a note of it, so it'll be easy to come back to, but to keep forward momentum going. Finish the draft, then go back and patch things up.

And it's good advice! Only...if I already know how things need to change, shouldn't I change them? Or worse, if I know things need to change, but I'm not sure exactly how, isn't it better to find out the more stable form for them now, so I can keep writing the book with that in mind?

I suppose the advice is meant to keep me from getting bogged down in revisions, instead of finishing out the draft. And I definitely do not want to do that. And it'll probably be easier to make the changes I need once the book's done, and I can see the whole story, rather than now, when I'm still mapping it out.

So I suppose I will press on. Still going to make notes about revisions to the scenes, though, so I don't forget them when it's time to edit.

But to have something to edit, I've got to finish this draft.
Onward!

Oof, 2021 started out well, didn't it?

I mean even with the spike in Covid-19 patients, and the continued lies spread by the President and his allies about the election, I had a feeling on New Year's Day that we'd escaped the awfulness of 2020. That we'd turned a corner, the case numbers would be coming down soon, President Biden would be in office in just a few weeks, and we could start the work of rebuilding everything the Republican Party has destroyed over the last four years.

Even the Georgia elections (!) gave me hope. My fellow citizens in GA turned out in such numbers that they put the two Dems over the top, putting an end to the use of the Senate as just a roadblock to legislation. Exciting times!

And then came the coup.

I know, I know. Attempted coup. Or riot. Maybe insurrection, if you're a journalist and you're feeling spicy.

And suddenly all of the mental habits I'd tried to shed from 2020 were back. Reflexively checking the news every five minutes. Doomscrolling on Twitter. Cognitive dissonance from looking out my window, seeing a bright January day in SoCal, and then hearing reports of shots fired in the Capitol building.

Texting friends living in DC, to see if they're okay during the madness.

I called my brand-new freshman-clean House Rep yesterday, not just to urge her to impeach Trump, but also to check in and see if they were safe.

What a country.

Difficult to think in such times. Difficult to write.

But so far, I've managed to do it. Each day, closed out Twitter, stared at the screen, reading over the previous days' work until I sink back into the story.

And it is sinking. It is an escape, for me. A needed one, in this case.

So I've pushed the novel up to 21,348 words. I'm almost done with the scenes I've been working on, patch-work-style. I move up and down the page, writing sections as they come to me, completely out of order. I leave visual gaps in-between them, extra newlines, to show that these are fragments. Then go back in and fill the gaps later, stitching together all the pieces until they read like a continuous whole.

It's not how I've written other novels. Not even how I usually write stories, either. But it's the only thing that's working for me, right now. So I'm using it.

Hope wherever you are, that you're safe, that you can still put yourself in the headspace to write, even if it's just a few words.

Hang in there.

We made it to a new year!

In the past, I've taken that for granted. One year rolled into the next, I got older, and the world kept turning.

Not this year. This year, reaching January feels like an escape, like ducking under a closing door just before it seals itself shut.

So a sincere Happy New Year to us all!

Novel's at 19,864 words. I'm still butt in chair every morning, forcing myself to stay there until I hit my word count goal. Some mornings it's easier, some it's harder, but...I'm always making progress.

I'm actually starting to run out of runway on the research I've already done about the setting. Which means I'm having to make more things up out of thin air, and thus getting more things wrong. I've already had to revise a few scenes based on new reading I've done. That'll happen more and more, I expect, until I can catch up.

I know that ultimately, I'll need to do some heavy editing of this draft, once it's complete. Not just to fix some inconsistencies, but also to ensure the things that are consistent are historically accurate. Or at least, as accurate as a non-specialist like me can get them in a fictional tale.

But since I know I'll need to do it, it doesn't scare me to get things wrong now. What's important now, I think, is to get the emotional beats of the story right. If I can nail down the characters, and how they react to the things that happen to them, I can fix the details later. Even if those details mean I need changes to the events of the plot, that's fine. So long as the emotional arc of things is right.

That's my theory, at least.

I want to thank those of those you who've been reading me regularly through this hell year. You give me hope that someday, these novels I grind away at will see the light of publication.

And for my fellow writers, I offer a hope and a blessing: May your writing be a joy and comfort to you. May your inner editor take a vacation when you're drafting. And may all your tales be true.

Onward to 2021!

Happy Holidays!

I'm finally back in my office. All the house work we've had done for the last three months -- while we lived, worked, ate, and slept sealed-off in the guest room -- is over. Taking down the barrier between the guest room and the rest of the house was like opening a huge present; we were grinning like kids the whole time.

And the work all looks fantastic, and a little unreal. Like we've stumbled into someone else's house. But no, it's ours! And we can once again use it all.

So I'm back to watching the sun come up over the mountains just east of the city, hammering out words before the work of the day begins.

Speaking of which, the novel's up to 18,000 words. So I'm putting out about 2,000 words a week, which is not bad, but does mean this draft won't be done until looks away, does mental math sometime in June (?!).

Which is...fine, I suppose. That's still a novel draft in less than a year. But if I only work on one project at a time, that means it'll be six months before I get back to editing my last novel. I've gotten some excellent feedback from my beta readers, and I'd like to incorporate it all before sending it out to agents.

Maybe I can keep working on the new draft during the week, and edit the other novel on the weekends? That's technically not taking the weekend off, but it is taking a break from the current draft. And editing's the kind of work that's hard for me to track, in the sense of how many words I've covered. These editing passes I'll need to jump around in the narrative, adding a bit of dialog here, changing a description there. It's not linear work.

What about you? Do you work only one project at a time, even if that delays things? Or do you find a way to juggle multiple pieces at once?

Anyway, as we wind down 2020, I hope you and yours are coming through the pandemic safe. I hope the vaccine gets rolled out to where-ever you are soon, and that enough folks get it for the danger to pass.

Good riddance to 2020. I'll see you all in 2021!

Novel's at around 16,400 words. I haven't done today's writing session, though, so I should finish out the week closer to 17K.

The deal is working, so far. Holding myself hostage, unable to go for my morning job or take a shower or have breakfast or anything until my writing's done for the day, has been rather effective.

And I'm looking forward to the weekend again, when I can daydream and doodle and research and not have to worry about hitting a word count. That recharge time is proving important, for my mental health and for my writing.

Funny, I think I started this year by throwing away word count goals and the idea of penalizing myself for not meeting them. Here I am at the end of the year, once again setting daily word count goals and forcing myself to meet them. It seems not only do different techniques work for different people, different things can work for the same person at different times.

What about you? What previous writing habit have you brought back this year, if any? Or maybe there's an old trick you've dropped?

Novel crossed 15,000 words today!

My pace has slowed since NaNoWriMo, but I'm still managing about 2,000 words a week, which is pretty good for me. Puts me on track to finish this draft sometime early next year.

I've changed up my writing routine a bit, both to give myself more time to write, and to have a chance to recharge.

So I've made a deal with myself: I have to write in the morning, first thing, as soon as I get up. No news, no twitter, no email. Just writing, until the day's words (at least 250) are done. I can take however long I want to set those 250 words down, but I can't do anything else until I do.

Most days, I end up going beyond those 250. Once the pump is primed, the words keep flowing.

In exchange for this early-morning discipline, I only have to write on week days. Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday are days off, now, just like they would be (I hope) if I were a full-time writer. If I did write full-time, I'd still need vacations. Still need days off. But I'd have no one to tell me when to take them, and I'd probably feel guilty if I did.

So I've made this deal. Treat writing like job, get it done first thing in the morning, and in return, I can take the weekends off.

Sunday was the first day I've deliberately taken off (from writing) in...months. I still did some research for the current book, digging up images and articles on Swedish manors built or renovated in the 18th century. I sketched some notes for future scenes. But I didn't write anything, didn't have to produce any words.

It was...incredibly relaxing. It was glorious.

And I came into Monday's writing session recharged. Ready and eager to go.

This is the first full week I've been working under this self-made bargain. I'm looking forward to the weekend, having met my word count goal every day this week, first thing upon waking.

What about you? Do you ever take days off from writing? Do you feel guilty when you do, and if so, how do you handle it?

So I didn't win NaNoWriMo this year. It wasn't even close.

But I'm not quitting on the novel. I've come too far not to see it through.

And NaNoWriMo has got me flexing my writing muscles again. After today's writing session, I'll have churned out almost 2,000 words in a single week. That's not novel in a month pace, sure, but it's a novel-in-a-few-months-pace, which is better than I've been able to achieve since the pandemic began.

Even so, I still feel pressed for writing time. I want to brainstorm for a bit, every day, before working on a scene. Or after finishing a scene, reflect on what might be missing from it, what I'll need to add the next day. And that's hard to do, when I've only got thirty minutes or so free to spend on the novel.

It's good that I've got some vacation coming up at the end of the month, then. That'll certainly give me more time in which to work.

But I want -- I need -- to carve out more time during a regular work day. Which might mean dropping some of my other hobbies (I've been brushing up my French, and learning Swedish) in order to make that time. Or maybe I'll get up even earlier, so I can make that time at the start of the day.

Not sure what's best. Gotta figure something out, though.

What about you? What do you do, when you feel like you're not getting enough writing time?

Did I say I could write at least half a day this week, free from distraction?

turns to self from last week: Oh my sweet summer child.

I've been able to put in a full day of writing just once. Once

Every other day, I've had my water shut off and construction going on in both the room right next to my temporary office (I'm currently working in the dining room) and above it. They're grinding, sawing, singing, at random intervals, throughout the day.

It's...impossible to concentrate.

Still, I've managed to squeeze some words out. Crossed the 11,000 word mark on the novel yesterday, which felt good.

But I'm nowhere near close to hitting 50K by the end of the month. According to NaNoWriMo, at my current pace, I'll be lucky to finish by end of February 2021 (!).

So while I'm bummed about not "winning" NaNoWriMo this year, I'm still glad I did it, for two reasons.

First, because I was doing it, I was able to convince a friend to take the plunge, and try his hand at his first novel. And he's won! He's well past 50K at this point, and is on track to wrap up the first draft of his first novel. I'm jealous of his word-count, true, but I'm also overjoyed that he got it done. Can't wait to read it, when (if) he's ready for beta readers.

Second, because the time pressure for word count did push me to stop using outlining as an excuse, and just start writing. I was terrified of getting lost, of not being able to write it if I didn't know where I was going.

I forgot that I've written all of my other novels without an outline. All of them. Short stories, as well.

I'm not a full-on pantser, but I do discover things while I'm writing that I don't seem to think of when simply outlining. I need a plan to get started -- characters, situation, possible ending -- but once I'm in it, the plan gets altered so much that a detailed outline would be pretty much trashed by the time I'm 5,000 words in.

Outlining, for me, comes later. Once the first draft is done, and I've mapped out all the place I want to go, all the things about the world I want to see. Then I can pull together a detailed outline, find the weaknesses in the story, and use an updated outline to produce the second draft.

So I've learned a bit about my own process. It takes longer, this way, I feel, but at least it happens. Better to charge ahead and produce a draft that can be edited, then to spin my wheels creating an outline that's going to get thrown out once ink hits the page.

And what about you? If you did NaNoWriMo this year, what did it teach you about your own writing process? Do you write better in the morning or evening? Do you need to outline it, or do you need to wing it? Can you write through distractions, or do you need a calm place in which to work?

Slow but steady.

I'm at a little more than 7,000 words on the new novel so far this month. Behind where I need to be to finish NaNoWriMo, but further than I was a few weeks ago. That's got to count for something, right?

Writing during the week has been difficult. Work has been...stressful, and I've needed to come in early and stay late, just to keep up. That's obviously cut into my writing time, but it's also drained my batteries before I even have a chance to sit down at the keyboard for the day's words.

As a result, while on the weekend I built up to around a thousand words a day, during the week I've fallen back to a few hundred. Sometimes. If I'm lucky.

There's light at the end of this tunnel, though. I've got a week of vacation coming up. A full week, when I can write at least half the day, before house and family obligations pull me away.

It might not be enough time, even then, for me to catch up to where I need to be to reach 50K by November 30th.

But I'm going to try for it, nevertheless.

Hope your own writing is going well, and if you're trying NaNoWriMo, that you're slaying each day's word count, day by day.

Onward!

Work on the novel has been slow but steady this week.

I’m not getting down more than a few hundred words a day. But I am getting them down.

The slow pace feels like a lack of time, for me. As in, I don’t seem to have enough time to gather together my thoughts about where the story should go, and then set them down. Like I have just enough time to do one, but not the other.

And for NaNoWriMo, I need to do both.

Hoping to be able to make up some lost time this weekend. Wish me luck!

I thought writing during a pandemic was hard.

Turns out, writing during a tight election where one of the candidates has spent the last several months shouting "Fraud!" at the top of his lungs whenever someone mentions mail-in voting (while casting his own votes via mail) is even harder.

So I did start working on a new novel this week, for NaNoWriMo. And I have worked on it each day.

But I've made very little progress. Only 1,424 words to date.

I'm trying not to stress about it. I have enough to worry about already, from work happening on the house to day-job deadlines looming next week to the pandemic getting worse in my city to trying to help my wife convince her mother that no, in fact, Biden will not come personally to her house to confiscate the guns she doesn't have and disband the police department.

It's a lot.

But I want to tell this story. I've been thinking over these characters for a few months now, and I want to see where they go. I want to show you their world.

I just have to build it first.

What about you? If you're doing NaNoWriMo, how is it going?

I need to get back to working on the novel.

I've let it sit these past few weeks, untouched, while I finished getting one short story into shape and started plotting a new one.

But if I'm going to meet my personal deadline of having the novel ready to submit to agents by December 1st, I'm going to need to edit this second draft.

To be honest, I'm intimidated. I've never edited anything this long before.

How do I even do it? Read it all through, and then go back and edit passages? That sounds...like it'll take forever.

Or do I work chapter by chapter, editing each one until it's done, and then moving on? That sounds like an easy way to lose sight of inconsistencies (or to having to go back and edit previous chapters anyway, as inconsistencies show up).

I think what I'm going to do is a series of editing passes. Pick one thing to look for -- like the consistency of a single character's dialog -- and edit all instances of that. Then pick something else -- the descriptions of a ship, say -- and edit all of those.

I'm hoping this will give me a structure in which to do multiple reads over the book, without getting lost in the weeds of any individual chapter. And it should broaden my perspective so I can stitch the book together, so to speak, with these edits. Make it more coherent, more whole.

But what do I do with the short story I've been outlining? I don't want to lose momentum on that. And I worry that the novel, once I start editing it, will take up all the room in my brain for narrative.

I want to work on both. Use the story as a break from the novel, and use the novel as a break from the story. They're different enough -- one's near-future sci-fi, the other is early modern period fantasy -- that I should be able to keep them separate in my head. And editing is different enough from drafting that I'll be exercising different writing muscles with each.

What about you? What do you do, when you've got a longer piece to edit and a shorter one to draft? Do you alternate working days? Finish the shorter piece before editing the longer? How do you handle two stories that both need your attention?

I feel like I'm telling this story to myself, over and over again, with each outline. New details get filled in, new connections appear, with each telling.

And each day I get up and tell it to myself another time, adding more pieces.

I so much want to just write, just set the words down on the page and let them fall where they may.

But then I'll be plotting out the second third of the story, and I'll have an idea that ripples all the way back to the beginning. And it makes me glad I haven't started writing anything more than snippets of dialog just yet. Because all of those snippets will likely need to change.

This story...It's more complicated than other short stories I've written. Less straightforward.

It's a five-part structure. One part setup, followed by three parts flashbacks (taking place over years and across continents), followed by a climax. And it all needs to hang together like a coherent whole, present flowing to flashbacks and then returning to the present.

I'm not sure I can pull it off, to be honest. I'll have to do a good bit of research for each flashback, just to ground them in reality. Then there's the problem of each flashback needing to be its own story, complete with character arc, while feeding into the larger narrative.

It's like writing four stories at once, really, with them nested inside each other.

Will it all make sense, in the end? Will the flashbacks prove to be too long, and need culling? Will my framing device be so transparent that it's boring? Will the conclusion be a big enough payoff?

Who knows?

All I can do is tell myself the story, piece by piece, over and over again, until I can see it all clearly.

I've never written a short-story this way before.

I'm coming at it more like a novel. I'm outlining, then researching things like character names and historical towns to model the setting off of, then revising the outline, rinse, repeat.

So I've written very little of it, so far. And what I have written -- snippets of dialog and description -- might get thrown out later, as the outline changes.

I'm not sure it's better, this way. I feel frustrated at times, like I want to just write the thing and get it over with.

But I know -- well, I feel -- that that will result in a story that's not as good as it could have been. Like eating grapes before they've ripened on the vine.

And I do keep coming up with more connections between the various pieces of the story, more ways to tie it all together. Each one is an improvement. Each one makes the story stronger.

Perhaps that's how I'll know when to stop outlining, and start writing? When I literally can't think of any way to make the story itself better?

How about you? How do you know when it's time to write a story, and when it needs to sit in your mind a little while longer?

Started drafting a new short story this week.

I'm taking a different approach, this time. For short stories, I usually just sit down and write it out, all in one go. At least for the first draft.

For this story, I'm doing a mix of outlining and writing. I jot down lines of dialog as they come to me, or -- in one case -- the whole opening scene came in flash, so I typed it up.

But the majority of the story is still vague to me, so I'm trying to fill it in via brainstorming and daydreaming. Sketching a map of where it’s taking place, thinking through why the town it’s set in exists, what it’s known for. Drafting histories for the main characters.

It’s fun, so it’s also hard to convince myself that it’s work. Necessary work, at that.

Because my guilty writer conscience wants to see words on the page. No matter that I’m not ready, the ideas only half-formed. For it, it’s sentences or nothing.

So I’m pushing back by reading a book specifically about short story techniques, using the authority of another writer to argue (with my guilt) that it’s okay to pause and think. That progress can mean no words save a character bio. That every story needs a good foundation, and that’s what I’m trying to build.

It’s working, so far. My guilt does listen, just not always to me.

What about you? How do you balance the need to feel productive with the background work that every story requires?

Fantastically well-done. Weaves together magic, fairies, Great War trauma, romance, sisterly rivalry, and the treatment of special-needs children into one cracking good story.

So very happy to discover there are sequels.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Dribble out your backstory. At the start, offer just enough to explain the choices that brought the character to that point. Introduce the rest later, as needed for the story.
• You can get away with a romance between two characters that have little in common if you make their raw attraction clear and compelling.
• Sometimes the greatest climaxes (or turns in the story) happen when the protagonist realizes something about themselves that they didn't know before.

Working through the last chapter that needs to be trimmed down. So far, I’ve cut about 12,000 words off the novel, close to my target of 14,000 (10% of the original length).

So this weekend I’ll be able to start fixing the multitude of other errors I’ve found in the cutting.

Thankfully my previous fixes – the patching over of the plot hole, making certain things explicit earlier in the book – have held up on this second read-through. In fact, I think trimming off the fat of the book has made the fixes better, bringing the stitched parts of the narrative closer together, in a way, so they reinforce each other.

Strange to think that deleting words not only improves the pacing, but makes the other parts stronger.

Non-anglophone authors you should know

• dr schaff-stump: japan and russia
• kastersmidt: born in texas, living in brazil
• dr lyau: specialty is french sci-fi
• takacs: hungarian, lots of hungarian sf has not been translated yet
• schwartzmann: reads russian, ukrainian and polish; has done translation work
• schwartzmann: russian writers: bulgakhov (magical realism, 1920s and 1930s)
• takacs: strugatsky brothers; stanislaw lem, especially the cyberiad; rana ras;
• lyau: france produced second-most varied scifi tradition; planet of the apes; their golden age was the thirty years following jules verne's heyday; maurice renard; french new wave post-1968; robita; de nizorres
• kastersmidt: hector hermann oesterheld (argentinian, was killed by junta for publishing comic)
• schaff-stump: has handout with japanese names; since japanese novels are often turned into manga and anime, can often find those in translation even if the book hasn't been
• schwartzmann: for chinese scifi, start with three-body problem, first volume had to adhere to communist standards, second was a little looser, third volume he completely jumps out of the box; tor is releasing "invisible planets" collection of chinese short stories translated by ken liu
• takacs: yerg dragoman (the white king; bone fire); adam bodor (the sinister district)
• fantastic planet: was based on french novel called "humans by the dozen"
• lyau: start with the pulp novels to brush up on your french
• kastersmidt: if you haven't read borges, do so; camilla fernandes (brazilian); also check out the apex book of world science fiction, runs to four volumes, collects stories from new authors from around the world
• schaff-stump: hex (from dutch author) was rewritten for us edition, not available in strict translation
• tiptree award is going out of its way to bring non-english scifi to anglophone attention (check past award winners)
• takasc: african sf: afro-sf anthology series; african speculative fiction society website will soon go live
• first emeriati science fiction publishing house is opening its doors
• omenana: african sf in english (online)
• german scifi: andres eschbach, the carpet makers (?)
• ukrainian literature: vita nostra, available in english, by sergey and marina ____, basically the magicians

Promoting Yourself as an Introvert

• tamara jones: writing since seven yrs old
• doesn't leave the house much
• lives in small town iowa
• has four novels, first won compton cook award
• had to suddenly start speaking to a lot of strangers and big crowds
• hard to relax
• introverts are like onions, have awesome core, but many many layers of protection on top of it that prevent people from getting to know your core
• on panels, need to let hair down, but you can hide behind the table for safety
• editor liked just first 66 pages of first book she bought, had to rewrite everything else, which completely changed her plans for the second book; so: don't write the next books in a series until you sell and finish the first one
• some people don't want to let you talk on a panel, but don't get aggressive, that doesn't come off well
• readings are the worst
• but: get your ass out of the chair, gives you better diction, more control; move around, even though there's no where to hide; it's performance art: talk about self, talk about book, read short pages (two pages), then talk about it, then two more pages, then talk about it (make it different works or passages for variety)
• find whatever it is that gives you feeling of safety (small sweater, lucky socks, etc) and wear that to the reading to help you feel safe and able to be yourself
• has had three stalkers already, so no one knows where she lives (deliberately)
• tries to avoid the parties; but when you're starting out you have to go because editors and agents will be there; grab a drink, wander around and listen, take a drink if you get nervous
• what do you do when drained? Find a capsule of solitude somewhere: a quiet corner, maybe even the restroom stall, close your eyes and be alone for 15 min
• editors love to talk about their work; her typical question is "what's the best thing about your job?"
• need one sentence description of each of your books
• also need one sentence description of yourself "i slaughter people on paper for money"
• thinks introverts should not moderate, have to insert self and take control, which introverts are not good at
• don't overprepare for panels; whatever you prep for will probably be thrown out the window as soon as the panel starts
• at end of the day, selling self, if you do that people will want to buy your books

Flash Fiction: Short but not easy

• betsy dornbusch: writes mostly epic fantasy, used to buy flash
• anna yeatts: flash fiction online owner/publisher, also writes flash
• caroline m yoachim: just launched collection with fairwood press
• flash: definition varies greatly; over 1,500 wordsis definitely not flash; something you could read in five minutes
• yeatts: want a full complete story in a coffee break; still want a complete story arc, pared down to the essence
• vonallmen: looking for the pop of "oh, wow" in just a five minute read
• wowell: couldn't write GoT in flash
• yoachim: now i want to write that
• wowell: customer service call for death ray works really well in flash format; sci-fi comments thread works really well as flash
• dornbusch: don't do vignettes about the sun, they don't get bought
• yoachim: great focusing on small piece; focused emotion, etc; great for putting hints of the larger world in the story, rest up to reader's imagination
• favorite stories?
  • yeatts: grobnak ama
  • running of the robots
  • first story from daily science fiction: story with three substories, and the meta-story, all in 1,000 words
  • strain of sentient corn writing to monsanto
  • if you were a dinosaur, my love
  • six names for the end
• what skills are important?
  • dornbusch: editing; revision; the shorter the length, the more powerful
  • dornbusch: likes humor in flash, but not the punchline
  • wowell: need to recognize how many plots and subplots you can fit into each story length
  • vonallmen: ability to focus on tone
• send mothership zeta your cat stories (joke)
• yoachim: so much needs to happen in the first paragraph: need to tell reader what they're in for, little about their world, the action, tone, everything
• dornbusch: try telling story where reader knows the secret, usually it's better than hiding the secret from the reader
• wowell: if you like twists, do it at the beginning, not the end; starting with the twist will get me reading
• yoachim: remember can play with your title, do a lot of setup there
• current markets?
  • flash fiction online; daily science fiction
  • unsung stories (uk)
  • fantasy and science fiction takes some flash
  • mothership zeta
  • vestal review
• lots of calls for flash, but don't give it for free
• yoachim: targets markets that specialize in flash fiction
• uncanny magazine does flash
• fireside fiction does flash and shorts
• nature runs flash fiction
• flash one of the few markets where second person won't overstay its welcome

The Art of Worldbuilding

• amanda downum: necromancer chronicles
• luc peterson: runs civic innovation office
• peter tieryas: fiction where japanese won world war ii?
• downum: need fresh ideas, sense of wonder, in showing this new world
• bear: burroughs first to do world-building in science fiction
• downum: likes to start with character and scene, let world unfold from there; likes characters to pick up and interact with objects in the world, rather than just moving on a sound stage
• patel: starts with what a society values most, and what they fear most; what do they invest in, what do they build walls and defenses against
• bear: receives a vision; might take years to stitch visions together into a story
• what do you need to know? How many doctorates?
  • bear: english major, don't know anything
  • downum: ditto
  • patel: need to know what touches your characters; need to have lots of prior work done to know what this is before writing
• downum: has someone ask her questions, to reveal those things she hasn't thought of, those pieces she hasn't built out herself; really good if someone that doesn't read genre, they come at it from a completely different angle
• tieryas: even things (research) that don't show up in the book can be valuable
• bear: history of asia a target-rich environment for mining world-building ideas
• how do you put limits on the research?
  • downum: hard, but do a little at first to get started; when come across detail to fix later, mark in brackets and keep going; do more research afterward to fill in details, etc
  • patel: timebox your research time so you push yourself back into writing; can be iterative, don't have to answer all questions at beginning, questions that come up during writing can give you chance to do focused dive into research again
• patel: shorter work is, less research you'll have to do, but you may have to do very detailed research into a single focused topic
• downum: likes first person for short form, but at novel length it's like being stuck in an elevator for a very long time, so prefers third person multiple perspective
• patel: look for opportunities for drama and conflict in all worldbuilding; how would your characters tell their history? How would their enemies tell it?

How to Handle Rejection

• gail carringer
• wallace: stopped counting at 1,000
• worst rejections: ones that are really really close to acceptance
• wallace: never count on money until the check clears
• carringer: rejection is evidence that you're trying, that you're sending stuff out
• best rejection?
  • carringer: rejection was so nice, went back with later work, has been her agent for ten years
• carringer: don't fall in love too much with a particular book, be willing go move on and write more and try something else
• reader reviews are not for you, they're for other readers
• carringer: would tell younger self to try different genres and styles earlier
• carringer: never ever ever respond to a rejection
• wallace: btw, anything you post online, anywhere, is a response, and is a bad idea
• carringer: some agents/editors will be full up with authors in your genre, and so will reject you because they don't want to take on any more
• remember that they're rejecting the product, not you

Enjoying urban fantasy

• diana rowland: white trash zombie
• melissa f olson: tor.com novellas
• what do you like about uf?
  • city as character
  • looking at things just a little differently
  • what if your gross terrible neighbor was a real monster?
  • a way to crack open the puzzle of the weird world we're in and understand it better
  • it's a way to be sneaky: can talk about deep things in a fun way, with people that don't notice
  • perception: history has been edited down from multiple conflicting perspectives; urban fantasy lets you deal with these different perspectives for more immediate events
  • no real bad guy: bad guy is someone pursuing their goals in a fanatical sense, still think they're the good guys
  • people are always writing urban fantasy from their primary experience; in feudal days it was fears from lord of the manor, today it's shopping malls and steelworks (instead of fairy rings)
  • changeling stories are ufo kidnapping stories, just told in a different time
  • uf is the intersection of contemporary fiction and fantasy fiction
  • danger: to cover over real experience with a fantasy gloss; example: the magical homeless people of the 80s)
  • can use unreliable narrators to try to avoid the problems with covering over messy experience
• why first person?
  • immediacy
  • tight perspective
  • noir influence: almost all first person, huge influence on urban fantasy and its style
• adrian mcinty: leicht's favorite irish noir writer
• rowland: j d robb's books

Finance for writers

• put 40% away for federal govt, 10% for state, pay quarterly income taxes estimate, will usually get something back at the end of the year
• most first books don't make back their $5,000 advance
• don't quit your day job, even after signing tge first contract
• some contracts don't last past 2 or 3 books
• not a steady income
• be careful with your money; lots of authors aren't good with their money
• get good agent: writers tend to not read contracts, approach it very emotionally; good agent will catch things and get you the best deal possible
• okay to lose money on your craft at first, but have a budget and be aware of it
• spend money on your craft (take classes, do workshops) and your network (attending cons, etc)
• but: if you're at cons, write down what you want to accomplish before you go
• if you self-publish, spend money on quality: an editor and a cover designer; everything else you can half-ass, but not those
• keep all receipts for your craft in a shoebox, use them (plus your spreadsheet) to fill out your schedule c for your taxes
• if you don't make a profit every seven years, the irs considers it a hobby, not a business
• average income for writers is $5,000
• don't quit your day job until you have 2 years' worth of living expenses saved up
• rule one: write, finish, send it out
• one benefit of incorporating is the ability to defer income from one year to the next (should you score the $70,000 advance)
• 78% success rate for publishing projects on kickstarter if they get 25 backers; difference between people that are prepared and know what they're doing and those who don't
• bud: turns profit every 5 years; how? Doesn't report all his expenses that year
• lots of ways to use kickstarter: events, book tours, playgrounds inspired by literature, self-pubbing books, magazines; can get really creative
• margot: think of marketing as sharing these stories you're passionate about with others and inviting them in, not "selling yourself"

Idiot's Guide to Publishing

• all scifi community on genie network at the time
• doctorow hadn't written a novel yet, so got karl involved
• patrick: liked it because it was very practical
• rejectomancy: shouldn't read too much into rejections; form rejection could be from someone that loved it but didn't have time, personal could be from someone that doesn't like the story but likes you personally
• schroeder: never sold any short stories to the magazines, has only ever sold stories to anthologies
• at the time, discussion over ebooks concerned fact that they never go out of print, so publishers argue that they don't have to revert the rights to the author
• would not try to write today, because has no idea how to get into the field now

Nifty Narrative Tricks

• bear: what character is like matters less than how you handle the character
• kowal: people want the familiar in the strange; familiar makes you feel smart, the strange is compelling; when have character engaged in activity or emotion that readers find familiar, then when i engage them in something weird they already have a hook
• kelly: characterize people by what they own. before walking them on stage, go into their room, or their car: what's there? is it messy? neat? what's hanging on the walls? bonus: gives you things to use later in the plot
• walton: writers get some things for free, and some things they have to learn; easy to teach the things you learned, but almost impossible to teach the things you got for free; she got interesting characters for free, so...story is contract with reader, try to get what story is right up front so reader doesn't feel betrayed
• bear: beginning writers make mistake of writing passive characters
• bear: give the character something to love; instantly makes them more engaging
• gould: best way to intro tech is to show it when it breaks down; very engaging to intro character when frustrated
• kowal: frustration will show what character wants, what they love, and give you a measure of their competence
• kowal: figure out what character wants, and smartest way for them to get it, and then you block off that way (and keep blocking off ways)
• walton: __ starts with character really having to go to the bathroom while giving speech on history; is pure exposition but you don't care because you sympathize with having to use the restroom
• walton: farmer in the sky (heinlein) has similar trick, with tons of worldbuilding done in describing a father and son making dinner
• term: incluing
• kelly: how can you tell beginning from middle from end? beginning -> middle: character goes through one way door, and can't get back to the start; middle -> end: character goes through another one-way door, and story has to end one way or another
• kowal: stakes are something particular to the character; we're all going to die, so death is not great stakes; "you're going to lose your right foot" is more personal
• kowal: focus indicates thought; what you're looking at is what you're thinking about; rhythm and breath: same action at different speed gives you different emotion; how long you linger on something shows how important it is to the character
• walton: pacing very different between genres; same story told at different pacing can change the genre of the book
• kelly: look at the story; if you see a section of solid text or solid dialog, that's probably a pacing problem
• common mistakes?
  • bear: starting with bloodbath, before you care about the characters
  • kelly: end of story is not the climax, you need a moment for the character to come to grips with what the climax means for them
  • gould: leave some things for the reader to figure out from context
  • kowal: starting with way too much backstory; solve by getting deeper into point of view
  • walton: too fuzzy, character not in focus; can fix by switching to first person, forces you to focus on personal experience
• walton: often rushes endings, has to go back in and fix pacing after draft finished
• kowal: best trick: dumping exposition into a sex scene
• kelly: world-building will happen almost without trying; less you can do of it, the better

Evolution of Epic Fantasy

• tessa grafton: the united states of asgard
• sarah beth durst: queen of blood
• epic fantasy: need close in shots, and medium shots, and landscape shots, all mixed in
• leicht: research into irish time of troubles taught her everything involved in world-building: how economics is tied to politics is tied to religion is tied to class is tied to language
• kate elliott: crown of stars
• leicht: viking skeletons found in bogs: no one checked if they were male or female; many of them (warriors) are female
• elliott: archeologists finding statues mostly female, labeled one male statue as priest-king and all female as just "fertility", then were mystified as to why they kept finding female statues

Biggest three flaws in the novel are fixed!

Or, at least, I think they are? Hard to tell without getting another round of beta reader feedback.

In any case, I’ve made edits to fix the largest plot holes. 

Moving on to problems with world-building. Those range from big things like: does the background for the two main characters make sense? Is it treated consistently? Does the behavior of the villain at the start of the book hold with what we learn about them by the end? To smaller pieces, like making sure the monetary system used holds up and the curses the characters utter fit the world.

It’s a little more scattershot than the first editing pass. Almost wish I’d made notes as I wrote the first draft, breadcrumbs for me to follow back so I’d know exactly which sections of the text would need to be checked later. Maybe something to try with my next novel?

The major flaw in the novel is almost fixed. I’ve been editing around it, working my way from the scenes where the initial cracks in the story start showing through, down to where the plot hole opens up a mile wide.

I’ve started building a bridge across that chasm, a way to connect what happens on both sides so that it’s no longer an abrupt fall.

Today I made it up to the turning point itself, the central event at the heart of the flaw. I’ve finished editing that scene, and will continue on past it, smoothing things over until I feel the problem is fixed.

Once that’s done, it’ll be on to the next issue, and the next. Those are much smaller, so I’m hoping their edits go faster.

Onward!

Masterful.

Jemisin’s mentioned in several interviews that this was a hard book for her to write, one that she almost deleted and quit on several times. Given the difficulty of what she’s achieved – weaving second-person narration together with multiple storylines that take place entirely in flashback – I can understand. I’m glad she persevered, though, because this is a wonderful book.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Using second person can be useful for handling certain situations: when a character has amnesia, for example, or when they're shifting from one identity to another. Saying 'you' eliminated the need to juggle multiple names, or even care about them.
• Sadly, prejudice and cruelty in characters can make them seem more, not less, human.
• When introducing new terms -- as one often does in sci-fi or fantasy -- it helps to have different characters use them, each in their own way. The repetition with slight variation colors in the definition for readers.

With the first draft of the children’s book done, I can at last turn to editing my first novel, the one I started as part of NaNoWriMo 2014.

The problem, of course, is that I have no idea how to edit a novel.

A short story, sure. A blog post, definitely. Those are small things, though, easy to hold in my head and thus easy to find contradictions in, easy to re-read and catch typos, easy to control.

I read in The Kick-Ass Writer that you shouldn’t go into editing without a plan, and that you should make several passes: a pass for grammar, a pass for plot, a pass for descriptions.

So I made one plan, and threw it away, because it was too detailed and intimidating.

I made a second plan, and then threw it away, because it was too vague.

I made a third plan, and then decided I needed to stop being afraid of diving in and fixing things. So I re-read all the alpha-reader feedback I had, picked the most glaring flaw they all mentioned, and decided to start there.

Granted, it’s two-thirds of the way through the book. But it’s something that worried me when I wrote it, and if they also had issues with it, it’s something I should take care of.

Once that’s fixed, I’ll move onto the next biggest issue, and then the next, and the next. Along the way, I’ll tweak wording here and there, fix typos, etc, so that hopefully I’ll have caught them all before I do my “official” re-read for those kinds of mistakes.

Practically perfect. Preserves a fairy-tale feel while subverting fairy tale tropes; I can easily see why it was nominated for a Hugo this year.

Three things I learned about writing:

• First person with naive narrator learning about the world still a great way to introduce that world to the reader
• Can show evil influence on thoughts by transitioning those thoughts from normal to wicked slowly, taking the reader along with you
• Short descriptions can (and should) be opinionated descriptions

Absolutely fantastic from start to finish. Nominated it for a Hugo as soon as I read the last page.

Three things it taught me about writing:

• Keeping chapters short not only gives you an excuse to read "just one more," it also lets you do abrupt transitions between place and mood.
• Characters grumbling to each other (or in their heads) can give you a very compact and fun way to explain aspects of the world that are unfamiliar to the reader.
• By shifting the metaphors used to describe a scene, you can sustain a difference of mood between locations. For instance, in a place of death and white, describing a series of building supports as "arched ribs" echoes the feeling you want to convey.

Reads like a nineteenth-century fairy tale. Manages to weave these mythical characters into a bigger story about the immigrant experience in 19th century New York. Wonderfully well-done.

Taught me a few new things about writing:

• You can use multiple perspectives to build tension into the narrative, by giving the reader access to thoughts and feelings that impact the main characters later on.
• It's okay to give opinionated descriptions. In fact, letting your character's perspective color the way they describe the world around them is a great way to make both feel more real.
• Even an absurd premise, if taken seriously enough, can become drama.

Fantastic. Not the drawing-room novel I feared it would be, nor the swashbuckling “strong woman” archetype book it could have been. Instead, it’s a wonderful travelogue for a nineteenth century populated by fantastical creatures.

This was a quick read, but I still managed to learn some things about writing:

• It's possible to convey a lot about the historical treatment of women without depicting brutality (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones). It's enough to hear the narrator rail against the constraints she's placed under, or feel her frustration at having to pretend to not be an intelligent, scientifically curious person.
• You can invoke a time period's writing without indulging in that period's techniques. The book is written with a modern style -- short sentences built into short paragraphs that live in short chapters -- but still feels like it came out of an alternate Victorian period.
• A memoir can lose tension because we know the narrator makes it through. One way to push tension back into the story is to take advantage of the fact that the narrator knows more than the reader, and have them drop in sentences that foreshadow future tragedy or triumph.

An amazing achievement. Moore’s novel deals head-on with the tragedy and emotional wreckage of losing someone you love, but doesn’t pull its comedic punches either. You end up with a book that’s perfectly willing to poke fun of the lead character one minute, then show the empathy resulting from his experience of tragedy the next.

Oh, and did I mention Moore does it while keeping the writing so smooth its frictionless, juggling multiple points of view, and occasionally just stopping the action to give background on the psychology of the main character?

Forget amazing. It’s intimidating.

Three things I gleaned from this one:

• You can get away with dropping a lot of background info on the reader if it's: a) humorous and entertaining, b) about one of the main characters, c) dropped in after the reader's already emotionally invested in that character
• Placing a tragedy at the heart of a comedy gives it an emotional weight that strengthens both
• You can setup multiple POV later in a novel by swapping out from the main character for short bursts in the beginning, then gradually lengthening the time away from the main POV character as you go. By the time you get to the longer passages later in the book, your readers won't have any problems switching and keeping track of them all.

Medieval-level fantasy with goblins and elves, airships and intrigue, and race relations and gender politics and multiple sexual orientations. In a word, awesome.

Vivid and rich and alive in unexpected ways. The plot is rather basic — outsider unexpectedly inherits the throne, has to learn to rule people that look down on him — but the characters are so interesting, so well fleshed-out, that it held me all the way through. I might just read it again.

The big writing lesson for me from this book is exactly that: well-written characters that you want to spend time with will compensate for a lot of other shortcomings. For The Goblin Emperor, those shortcomings would normally compel me to stop reading.

I gave up trying to pronounce many of the fantasy words and names it introduces. The glossary of terms, which I found while desperately searching for some sort of help in keeping terms and titles and characters straight, proved to be worthless. Many of its definitions are either self-referential or refer to other terms which are. There’s also no map, so I had no idea of the relative size or placement of any of the cities and nations mentioned in the book. As some of the intrigue involves trade relations among neighboring realms, this was frustrating.

But I ultimately didn’t care. I cared about the main character from the first chapter, and cared about the others almost as quickly. I skipped over names, I couldn’t keep any of the titles straight, I had no idea where anything was, and I didn’t care. The main challenges of the book were people, and I wanted the main character to succeed with all of them. Everything else faded away.

Genre fiction has always been aimed at the Outsider, at the person with enough distance from the dominant culture to think critically about it.

It’s just that our definition of Outsider has expanded.

When I was a kid, I felt like an Outsider because I was clumsy and nerdy and socially awkward. The school’s hierarchy enforced that status: football players were in, science geeks were out. Genre fiction was pitched directly at me, giving me an escape from social rejection and poverty and feeding into the sense of wonder I held about the world around me.

I never thought about the fact that, as a white male, the ladder I felt myself to be on the low rungs of was already placed far over the heads of other groups.

As an adult, I no longer feel like an Outsider. Though I undoubtedly am an Outsider when in certain company — I’m an atheist, which puts me out from most of the American populace, and a programmer, which makes my work boring to most people — I don’t feel like one day in and day out.

I’ve come to realize that there are other people who feel much more like Outsiders than I ever did, and that while my Outsider-status has diminished with adulthood, theirs has likely only been enhanced, as their life experiences diverge from what’s considered acceptable in wider society.

These people — women*, people of color, the LBGT community — deserve genre fiction that speaks to them, that talks about their experiences as Outsiders (and Insiders**), that addresses their issues and their needs. I’m glad to see my favorite section of the bookstore embracing them, proud to see us growing up as a subculture.

I still enjoy this fiction, even though I’m straight, and white, and male. Because I remember being the kid that didn’t fit in, that no one wanted to play with, that adults felt uncomfortable around and kids didn’t want to talk to. Sci-fi and fantasy was there for me, and it can and should be there for others, as long as there are outsiders that need it.

The Imagination is a big place. there’s room for all of us.

* Which, holy shit, that half of the population should be sidelined in pop culture for so long is mind-boggling ** Everyone that belongs to a subculture outside the norm is automatically an Insider for that subculture

The novel’s grown to 118,051 words.

Where last week felt like plummeting down the tracks in a mining cart, this week has felt like the slow climb upwards that follows. I keep thinking of new projects I could be working on instead of this one, shiny objects to distract me from finishing.

Just these past few days I’ve thought of two new novels to write and an iOS game to build. I’ve even caught myself starting to write dialogue in the voice of the narrator from a third novel (also as yet unwritten) while daydreaming.

I have to keep forcing my attention back to the novel I’ve got, the novel that every day gets longer and every day I feel like I have less grasp of.

Telling myself its okay for the first draft to suck is dangerous now, because my other projects come rushing in, tempting me with their promise of perfection. I know none of them will be perfect in the end, but I want it, I want to write something brilliant and moving that people will remember when I’m gone. I feel like I can see the flaws in my current work all too clearly, and I these distractions are my unconscious way of doubting that it’s worth finishing.

www.youtube.com/watch

That’s how I feel, like I’ve turned a corner in one of those old mining carts and found the tracks plunge down into the darkness. At the bottom, the climax is there, waiting for me. I couldn’t stop it happening now even if I tried.

So I’m holding on as best I can, gripping the sides of the cart as we hurtle down together, my characters and I. I only hope I can type fast enough to capture everything before we hit the bottom, and it’s all over.

107,187 words in.

I’ve heard other writers talk about how issues they didn’t know they had can show up in their writing, unbidden, like notes from an intimate therapy session suddenly posted on a public bulletin board. But I didn’t think that was happening to me until this morning, when I realized that my treatment of two of the male characters in the novel I’m working on echoes a pattern of behavior from my youth, which itself stems from how my father treated me when I was little.

It shocked me, to think that something I wrote pointed so directly to emotions and expectations that I didn’t know I had. I felt – I feel – very vulnerable now, as if when I finish the novel and hand it over to its first readers, they’ll be able to decode everything about my personality, know all the parts of my self I try to keep hidden in everyday life.

I don’t think I can stop feeling vulnerable, but I tell myself that being vulnerable is part of the writing, that putting these parts of myself down on the page is what makes the characters come alive, that any book that didn’t have more of me in it than I’m comfortable with probably isn’t worth writing. I could be lying to myself, but I hope it’s true.

How can we tell genre fiction from literary fiction? It’s not enough to add some spaceships and call it science fiction. Nor does putting it in a medieval setting automatically make it fantasy.

I think one part of the difference is that genre fiction seems mainly concerned with jobs, and exciting things happening while people are working those jobs: noble, soldier, scientist, private eye.

Literary fiction is less concerned with jobs, and more concerned with life outside of work: families, holidays, dating. Work is implicitly boring, an obstacle to be overcome.

It’s two polar views of the human condition. In one, work is a calling, and the moral questions revolve around what kind of people get called and how they respond to their calling. In the other, work is background. It’s something that may create conflict, but it’s not usually central to the story.

In other words, fiction written in genre circumstances that doesn’t revolve around work as a calling feels literary, even if it’s set in a far-off alien landscape.

Hence Ian McEwan’s novel Solar, which could have been written as genre fiction, following the career of a scientist toward a breakthrough in cheap solar power, but instead is written in a literary style, more concerned with his life outside of his work and what that says about him.

There’s also Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth, which is sold as literary fiction but to me reads like genre: the central plot-line is the construction of the cathedral, and those called to build it. Characters move in and out of the narrative according to their impact on the cathedral’s construction, and there’s a lot of science-fiction-style description of building techniques.

An amazingly good book on writing, being a writer, and what it means to write fantasy in general (and children’s fantasy, in particular). Her voice is so strong, it sounds like she’s sitting next to you on the train, telling you these stories about her life and her writing process to while away the time.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Care about all your characters, even the very minor ones with hardly any speaking role at all
• It's ok to start the journey without knowing where you're going, so long as you see it through
• Don't let yourself be boxed in by others expectations. Write the best story you can, while you can, that you yourself enjoy.

I’ve wanted to finish a second novel for a few years now, and never found the time to do it.

This year, I’m forcing myself to find the time by doing NaNoWriMo. I’m going to start something new, and push every day until I reach the 50K word mark (or beyond).

The novel itself is going to be my take on a sword-and-sorcery fantasy, with a working title of The Hungry Cold.

Here’s the synopsis:

When a sudden blizzard closes the mountain road out of Skallfast, Siobhan and Alastair settle in for days of boredom. But the storm brought something else with it: something that starts killing the townsfolk, one by one, leaving nothing but their bones behind. Can they discover what’s behind the killings, and how to stop it, before the hungry cold claims them as well?

Wish me luck!

Inspired by one of Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenges, I’m posting three flash fiction stories today, each three sentences long, and each in a different genre.

Horror

Fantasy

Science-Fiction