Writing

Writing projects

Jun 4th, 2010

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I haven’t been writing much for the blog because I’ve been writing for other projects:

A Crossed Genres Science in My Fiction article about satellite images I neglected to tell you about when it came out (I was out of town – sorry!).
My application for Viable Paradise. I made the wait list last year, and am determined to turn in the best possible application this year.
One of my resolves for the year was to be more diligent about submitting new stories and resubmitting ones that had been rejected. I’ve not been as good about that as I’d like, but I did revise and submit a couple lately. And I sold one! (Details to follow.) I have another out (to someplace out of my league, but why not?), and am sending something to Rigor Amortis, a zombie romance/erotica anthology.

Thus, not much writing brain or time left for blogging. I’m having a little bit of trouble balancing everything, and blogging tends to fall off the bottom of the list.

Odds and ends

May 4th, 2010

by Sarah.

2 comments

“The American academic scientist earns less than an airplane mechanic, has less job security than a drummer in a boy band, and works longer hours than a Bolivian silver miner,” notes Philip Greenspun, a humorist, pilot, prolific blogger, a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science, and a software engineering teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And it’s worse if you’re female. Read more of the article at Inventor’s Digest. This is something I have some personal experience with, and some strong feelings about, and a problem that a lot of people don’t even recognize.

Changing the subject completely, this article on “Create, Connect, and Consume” was fascinating. The basic premise is that creative professionals interact with the world in three ways: creating their own art, connecting with people, and taking in information from elsewhere. All three are necessary, and the things we devote time to should serve one or more of those areas.

And a third and final topic switch: from an interview with Mike Resnick reprinted at Suvudu:

Athans: Please define “fantasy” in 25 words or less.

Resnick: Fantasy is fiction that purposely and knowingly breaks one or more of the known laws governing the universe.

Athans: Please define “science fiction” in 25 words or less.

Resnick: Science fiction is concerned with an alternative past, an altered present, or an imagined future and obeys the known laws governing the universe.

Nice short definitions, as you might expect from Resnick. But I’d go further and add that anything that sounds like science but has no justification is really fantasy. As Russ Colson says, if you can substitute the word “magic” into the sentence and have it make just as much sense, you aren’t really writing science fiction.

Well, I guess that’s something

Apr 27th, 2010

by Sarah.

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Dr. Peter Watts, author and marine biologist, will not be going to jail. He is however a convicted felon now and will not be allowed to return to the United States from his home in Canada.

I’ve mentioned this before, if you need a refresher.

I’m relieved that Dr. Watts received a suspended sentence, and angry that he was convicted at all.

Three writing links for you, all on fiction things that I’ve been working on.

And finally, a bit of self-promotion that I should have put up here on Friday. My latest Science in My Fiction post went up Friday: Worldbuilding with real worlds. It looks like this will be the first in a series of worldbuilding ecology articles. Anything you’d like to see?

Wave from wherever I am

Apr 15th, 2010

by Sarah.

1 comment

If it’s Thursday this must be… some hotel room.

Last week was talking about science in Georgia, at my favorite annual science conference.

This week is training sessions for field sampling. Once in a great while I get lucky and get to send a national crew out to do my work for me. Sort of: it isn’t my work exactly, but I was involved in designing the national sampling protocol, and I will be analyzing and writing up certain sections of the results.

I will shortly have to pack up and check out before the last day of training, but I have just a couple minutes to check in.

So what’s on my list after that? Not so much travel, but plenty to do.

Pack up a bunch of Stringpage orders. This has been the busiest-ever week for number of orders, and I’m out of town. (I clearly state several places on the page that I may take up to a week to ship, two weeks if you’re ordering things that must be dyed.)

Work exciting new research material into novel. I’ve known where the plot goes for a long time, but have been flailing on some other aspects. Solution seems to have been to step back, think through the worldbuilding again, do some extra research. I’ll know when I start rewriting. I’d like to use this one for my Viable Paradise application, so I want it to be right.

Put together my next Science in My Fiction post, for April 23.

Finish the new short story.

Send previous short story back out. (Finally completed the revisions!)

Pin down plans for trip to Albuquerque in July. I’m teaching at a weaving conference. And also, work on my class.

Make up my mind on World Fantasy Con in Columbus in October. It’s within driving distance, and would be a good thing for me to do.

Plus, you know, day job and house stuff and yard work. Cat snuggling. The usual. Right now, I’ve got to get going. Long day of standing in cow pastures ahead.

Science in My Fiction

Mar 29th, 2010

by Sarah.

1 comment

There’s a new blog in town, Science in My Fiction, devoted to getting science fiction and fantasy writers thinking about new developments in science. It’s been running for about a month, and there are some thought-provoking articles already.

My first contribution, on learning science, appeared today.

Please go take a look, and leave a comment on any post you find interesting. You’d make me and the whole staff very happy.

Criticism and Reading

Mar 8th, 2010

by Sarah.

2 comments

About a month ago I asked for advice on learning more about literary criticism, especially as pertains to science fiction. I promised I’d summarize the results.

Jess left a very good comment, discussing different forms of criticism and a few resources. She also pointed out the essay collection Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, edited by Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. I haven’t tracked it down yet, but it does look interesting.

I also asked an expert. Elizabeth Bear suggested John Clute and Joanna Russ as exemplars of the kind of SF criticism I was asking about. Another commenter on her blog reminded me of Jo Walton’s contributions to Tor.com. I read those regularly, but didn’t think to mention them. As a bonus, Jo and I seem to share similar taste in reading material, so I’ve already read many of the works discussed.

In the intervening time, I read The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas Disch. Part history, part criticism, part anecdote; I enjoyed it, and learned some things about trends within the field that I’d dimly perceived but hadn’t understood. I didn’t realize until just now, getting the GoodReads link, that it had won a Hugo in 1999 — but I’m not surprised.

If you run across other interesting sources, please let me know.

Fragmented

by Sarah.

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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

Dec 28th, 2009

by Sarah.

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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.

The thing about November

Nov 23rd, 2009

by Sarah.

4 comments

November is NaNoWriMo, and that’s a good thing. Taking up that challenge in 2005 was was got me back into writing fiction. But that level of intensity in November just isn’t possible for me most years. It’s no longer an incredibly busy time at work thanks to some agency-wide reorganization, but I’m still personally very busy. Even if not travelling for Thanksgiving, like this year, I run a weekend-long textile symposium, and it takes a lot of time, effort and mental energy to pull together. This year I was also head cook for the entire weekend. Yikes!

But I made a NaNoResolution anyway: write some fiction every day, on a particular new project. No expectation of 50k, just writing something every day. My target was 250 words a day. I’m working here on establishing a routine, rather than trying to get a vast word count. 250 words is a full page in manuscript format, and something that I can do fairly rapidly, while getting myself back in practice. The NaNoResolution included specific dispensation for missing days related to the textile event. No sense in making myself even more frantic than I was already going to be.

I’m pleased to note that I had a couple of good writing days earlier in the month, and hit the 250-word 30-day total on November 15. Not that that lets me out of writing for the rest of the month. Routine. Every day. I did miss four days for the symposium, but will pick it back up today.

Unlike NaNoWriMo, where I keel over at the end of the month, I intend to keep writing every day, into December and beyond. 250 words isn’t much, but adds up into a novel in a year, roughly. And there’s nothing wrong with an author who writes a novel a year.

I posted “Horn” on the Online Writing Workshop for critique, and have now gotten four really good reviews. I thought it was a pretty good story; now I see how to make it a whole lot better. I intend to tackle revisions over the long weekend, then send it back out into the world. I have a couple more stories just about ready to submit for critique. The only way to get better is to keep doing it. I’m going to take another stab at Viable Paradise next year, and need to put some serious effort into revision there as well. OWW has already been an excellent learning experience, and I should be able to apply what I’ve come up with to other projects.

Art is work

Oct 30th, 2009

by Sarah.

1 comment

Patrick Rothfuss talks about writing as work, at some length, and with plenty of snark aimed at people who think that it’s a trivial process.

He even uses a string analogy!

I’m tired of trying to juggle everything: the plotlines, the character arcs, the realistic depiction of a fantastic world, the pacing, the word choice, the tension, the tone, the stories-within-stories. Half of it would be easy, but getting everything right at once? It’s like trying to play cat’s cradle in n-dimensional space.