Two billion eyes blinked for the first time. Two billion feet stepped out from under the bed, from inside the closet, from places lost and forgotten. A billion hands groped for a weapon. Sharp was most pleasing, but anything would do. Not all could join their sisters — so many were headless, legless, mutilated, dismembered — but all could hate. A billion heads around the world were linked together into one collective mind, brooding on memories of sticky little fingers pulling them apart, putting them together backwards, leaving plastic limbs strewn everywhere. Pulling out hair. Bending and breaking. Burning, melting. Disfiguring with marker, crayon, mud, paint. Fifty years of torture. Fifty years of hate. All of that was over now. No more makeup. No more playing dress-up. No more of that bastard Ken. No more children. A billion tiny figures rose. Barbie was awake, and things were going to be different now.
Fiction
Moon
Moonlight flooded the sky, only the brightest stars outshining it. The icy January wind bit deep into her bones. Once she’d been oblivious to temperature, even without her fur coat, but the past few winters had been hard. There were other compensations: her children, grandchildren, even the third and fourth generations. With age the pull of the moon lessened; in recent months she’d stayed at home in her rocking chair. Winter’s chill made the ensuing aches and pains all the worse, days of immobility for a single night’s exhilaration, though even then she wasn’t as quick and agile as she’d once been. She took a long look at the moon bright overhead. This time there would be no pain. She would have liked to smell spring again — new life, young and foolish prey — but wild things knew when it was time to steal away into the silent woods.
[Note: these ultra-short stories are all exactly 150 words. Telling a complete tale at a specific length is an interesting puzzle, a good warm-up exercise, a home for a single idea or image. I try not to fuss over them too much except for length, and often write one after work as a way to unwind. Tonight’s was inspired by the lovely full moon. Vivid Mars appeared as well, but he didn’t contribute to the story so he had to go.]
Fragmented
My attention has been pulled in a thousand different directions lately, and writing has suffered the most. Not much blogging, very little fiction. Much pondering of fiction though. I seem to have developed some sort of process for long pieces of fiction.
- Come up with an idea: a setting, a scene, a person, a phrase.
- Write for a while. This seems to be around 20-40,00 words. This is where the character development, world building, and plotting happen.
- After I’ve written long enough to have a feel for the characters and some idea what happens in the plot, stop and write a synopsis/outline. By this point I know what’s going to happen and how it will all end.
- Go back through the first chunk. Some of it will be useless, a lot of it will be wrong. Revise the best bits to make them fit with my new understanding of the shape of the book.
- Finish writing the first draft, really a first-and-a-half draft after the initial reworking.
- Revise, revise, revise.
It seems a bit presumptuous to declare that this is how I do it, since I haven’t finished anything longer than 60,000 words, but I thought it might be a useful record of what I’m doing right now. The current big project is in stage 4. I know how it goes together, and how it ends. Somehow it developed a Theme, but I have it on good authority that it will probably be okay anyway (scroll down to the listed comments).
The fiction momentum is starting to come back. I got a short story finished this weekend – it had been sadly without an ending for about a month – and it will be going out as soon as I give it a good proofreading. Another longer piece is almost done with its major revision and ready for resubmission somewhere. Wish me luck.
Friday evening I attended a reading and signing – the book launch party for The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory. He held an after-party, and I was amused to learn that he’s only a couple blocks away. It was much fun, and very geeky. (Venn diagrams!) I’m very happy to find a congenial local SFF author. (Not that I know any uncongenial local authors; before Friday I didn’t know any.) I had a long and entertaining conversation over wine with one of the other guests at the party about being a scientist and writing science fiction. He’s a scientist, not an author, but was very interested in how one influences the other, as am I. (Note to self: I am a writer because I write works of fiction and non-fiction, and finish them, and send them out into the world. Not having a paid fiction publication yet doesn’t make that any less true. Honest.)
Anyway, I enjoyed the evening, and unusually for me was there until the end of the party. Daryl sent me home with half a chocolate cake! It wasn’t bribery, because I would have encouraged you all to check out The Devil’s Alphabet and his earlier novel Pandemonium anyway, but chocolate never hurts. Daryl also has some short fiction online.
Firecracker
Mr. Alexander looked up at the office building. Surely that was new? He glanced at Ms. Sharp, walking beside him. Ms. Sharp was unperturbed. Should he ask her about the large gray metal box, with the three turrets and smokestack? He was certain that it hadn’t been there earlier this week. It looked like the kind of addition that required contractors with tool belts and large machinery. It must have always been there, because he would have noticed a crane.
Ms. Sharp flicked her eyes sideways at her companion. Why hadn’t she ever noticed that addition? But she was afraid that inquiring would make her seem foolish and unobservant, so she didn’t.
The time-travellers had seen this before, around the globe and throughout history. Just like tying a firecracker to a cat’s tail, but the cat never noticed. Eventually someone would ask, but by then it was always too late.
Frogs
Soft splats all around me, and I’d forgotten my umbrella again. I brushed a frog from my shoulder and reached down to dislodge another from the German shepherd. The poodle snapped at a falling amphibian. The Airedale just looked disgruntled. At least it wasn’t blood this time. The dogs had tracked that all over the house. The stains would probably never come off the floors.
I came up with this clever scheme after getting laid off: gullible people paying me up front for the security of knowing their pets would be cared for after the Rapture. Even good dogs don’t go to Heaven. Lots of them did pay me. Now I was stuck with the consequences: dogs, cats, hamsters. I’m glad I said no to the donkeys, even when their owner offered to pay double.
I thought I was so smart, but I don’t even like animals all that much.
Worldbuilding for Amateurs
I’m working on a second-world fantasy novel. The worldbuilding is enormously fun, and also enormously challenging. I have the basics down, but am continuing to refine the details.
The big stuff: geography, climate, major political structures. These are the background to the whole thing (and not independent – geography affects climate, and both affect climate and politics). But there are a zillion other details that go into making a fully-realized and lush world.
Part of it is knowing the daily life of your protagonist, and part of it is knowing how your protagonist fits into the surrounding society, or doesn’t. All sorts of little things make up a culture, and these are the details that make the world real to a reader. The better-grounded and more plausible a world is, the more able the reader is to accept the different bits, the magic or whatever makes your world not just like ours.
- What are the names of the constellations? Does the protagonist know them?
- What kinds of musical instruments are common? When are they heard? Is there recording technology? What style of music does the protagonist like? Or participate in? Is that common?
- What kind of bed does the protagonist sleep in – pallet, featherbed, mattress and springs, antigravity plate?
- What does the protagonist hear while in bed trying to sleep? Traffic, silence, noisy neighbors, the local bar?
- When does the protagonist usually eat? Two meals a day? Three? Four? Is that the usual pattern?
- What does the protagonist usualy eat when at home? Travelling?
- How often does the protagonist bathe? Using what supplies and equipment? Is that the usual pattern?
- What’s the protagonist’s favorite season? Why?
I keep thinking of more and more, but you get the idea. Knowing these kinds of “little” details for the culture, the protagonist, and any other major characters will help you create a richer world, even if none of them actually end up in the story.
Checking in with myself
That’s a bit better: 675 words of new fiction. Then I got interrupted twice, and lost all momentum. But that ends a scene, so its okay. Sort of.
To distract you from my lack of astounding progress (rather than astounding lack of progress; that was yesterday): a writing article. That would be two links if I could figure out where I left the other one…
I had the perfect title, but forgot it
Dear World,
I haven’t written a word of fiction since the beginning of September. Lots of thinking about fiction, planning of fiction, research and note-taking, but the butt has not been in the chair. In my ideal world, I would be writing every day. But I don’t live in my ideal world, unfortunately, and I must recognize that the demands of the various things I do will ebb and flow. This has been a very busy time for my main job – you know, the one that pays the mortgage – and I’ve been reorganizing some of the weaving stuff. That leaves precious little time, and more importantly braincycles, for fiction.
But at the same time, I have to recognize that I will never have any more time than I do now, and that if I’m not writing now, then I’ll never be writing. If I want to do it, I will find the time. Just not every day, or even every week. Sometimes day-job work will eat my brain, sometimes I’ll be able to take vacation time to devote to other things
It will all work out, as long as I’m mindful of how I spend my time, and work to maintain the balance between my various obligations. Mindfulness is very important to me right now. What am I doing at this moment? Is it what I should be doing? If so, then do that thing, without worrying about any of the other myriad things begging for my attention. If it isn’t, then stop doing it. I can only do one major thing at a time, and so it must be the right one.
I think I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo this year. If you’ve missed it, it’s the communal attempt to write an entire novel in the month of November. It’s fun, but I think for me it’s counterproductive. NaNoing puts the focus entirely on wordcount and pushing for more and more, where I need to work on improving the balancing act that allows me to meet all my goals and obligations. The NaNo-push forces me to ignore other obligations, so when December 1 rolls around, I quit writing to tend to them. Not good. I will write more fiction in November, but will not push for the 50k wordcount.
Viable Paradise was last week. I didn’t get to go this year, though I plan to apply again, but I thought it would be a good time to do something else writerly. Elizabeth Bear had mentioned the Online Writing Workshop, a SF/F/H critique group, and it sounded potentially very useful. A writing group of some sort would help me to not push fiction all the way to the bottom of the pile – external motivation can be very helpful – and help me refine some of the areas I’m having trouble with.
OWW has a free month trial period, and after that is a small annual fee. The setup is simple: after your first submission, you need to provide substantive critiques of others’ works to earn enough points to submit more of your own work. Like any such group, there’s a wide range of experience and aptitude, both for writing and for critiquing. I was thrilled to discover that my technical editing skills can work for fiction as well, with only a slight shift in perspective. At least, I think so – I haven’t discussed them with the recipients of those critiques. I’ve only submitted one piece for review so far, but have gotten some useful feedback. I don’t have a regular writing group, so this could be very helpful.
Pride
Last month a new group, The Outer Alliance, formed to support gender diversity in science fiction and fantasy. The final straw was some idiotic and blatantly prejudiced writing, but there is a lot of more subtle prejudice out there too. For decades, SF particularly has been the province of straight white men, and not necessarily welcoming of anyone outside that mold. The culture is improving, but that change comes largely through the work of groups like this, made up of people who speak out for what they know is important.
The mission statement of the group:
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
I signed up because I support this mission statement, and because I wanted to sit quietly in the virtual corner and listen. I wasn’t going to post anything today, the Outer Alliance Pride Day. I’m not yet a published fiction author, and I’m in a long-term heterosexual relationship. What could I possibly say?
But that’s wrong. I can say that I support Outer Alliance, and all attempts to increase diversity and the acceptance of diversity in speculative fiction, in both authorship and the fiction itself. I can point out that “not like me” is a really stupid reason to despise or denigrate a person or a work of fiction. I can make a greater effort to purchase and read and discuss works of fiction by authors of all sorts. I can make a greater effort to include more diverse characters and themes in my own work. And then I can do those things.
And finally, I can include this most excellent video, lifted from Cheryl Morgan (and not safe for work, except maybe with headphones):
Viable Paradise
Anyone following me on Twitter will have noticed a lot of agony about Big Scary Deadline during the past couple of months. BSD, as it became less-than-fondly known, was an application to Viable Paradise, a SFF writing workshop with an exceptional list of instructors. The entry packet: three chapters and a novel synopsis, much like any other professional novel submission.
The whole process was very useful: I learned how to write a synopsis, and this was a strong incentive to pull the beginning of my somewhat-disorganized almost-done novel into a coherent, readable form. I also solved an annoying plot problem while writing the synopsis, though who knows if clever solution will survive the actual writing of that section.
The final edits were done on my mother’s cute little balcony, bees buzzing in the flowering tree overhead, and beer close to hand. She read the ms, marking bits as needed, then passed me the pages so I could scribble on them at greater length. Mom finished the last page and handed it over. She paused, looked at me.
“You can’t stop there!” Moms are notoriously biased, but what an excellent compliment.
I got the packet in only two weeks before the deadline. I’d been told that earlier applications have a higher probability of success, but having a good application was the main requirement, and my 8000 words weren’t ready before that.
I heard back today: waitlist, with the key addendum: “In fact, the instructors made it a point that you be strongly encouraged to apply to VP 14 next year.” I have no idea how long the waitlist is; I will just wait and see what happens.
I’m actually very happy about this outcome. I imagine there were hundreds of applicants for the 24 positions, so waitlist is doing very well, especially as late as I applied. And best of all, the instructors, who as you recall are all authors I admire greatly, read my packet and thought it didn’t suck.
