So, this is entirely @mbennardo's fault. LET IT BE KNOWN.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, January 11, 2013
Thursday, January 03, 2013
2012 Stories
We're now into 2013 which means it's time to start thinking about awards for stuff from 2012! Woo!
I have three short stories that are eligible:
The Jade Tiger - Penumbra, March 2012
Comes the Huntsman - Strange Horizons, July 2, 2012
Entangled - Specutopia, July 13, 2012
Regarding Entangled, I'll be posting it on this blog in February since Specutopia seems to have gone defunct.
Please think of me kindly!
(Completely coincidentally, nominations are now open for the Hugo Awards, she types while ducking her head with shame.)
I have three short stories that are eligible:
The Jade Tiger - Penumbra, March 2012
Comes the Huntsman - Strange Horizons, July 2, 2012
Entangled - Specutopia, July 13, 2012
Regarding Entangled, I'll be posting it on this blog in February since Specutopia seems to have gone defunct.
Please think of me kindly!
(Completely coincidentally, nominations are now open for the Hugo Awards, she types while ducking her head with shame.)
Monday, December 31, 2012
2012: Writing Year in Review
Written This Year
Novels: Zero, I'm sorry to say. I did a lot of editing on Fire in the Belly and Throne of Nightmares but grad school really prevented me from making much progress. I think I might have added another 10k words to King's Hand.
Shorter Stuff: Relatively more success on this front, perhaps because shorter stories are ideal for picking up and putting back down while dealing with horrible grad student things.
Flash: 5 (spoiler: I still suck at flash)
Short Stories: 12 (six of which I wrote during the Clarion Write-a thon, one I wrote today!)
Novellettes/Novellas: 2 (just finished the rough of The Ugly Tin Orrery!)
Consigned to the trunk of awfulness, never to return: None yet this year, but there are two that I'm giving the stink-eye that might be vanishing once I have the brain power to look over them better and do more editing.
Best/favorite story of the year: Comes the Huntsman, no question. It was an intense story to write, and I'm still very proud of it. It was also published by Strange Horizons, which has been a personal dream of mine!
Considering last year I wrote well over 200K words, by any measure my productivity has been much, much lower this year. To the point that I started getting a bit weird about it back in October because I hadn't gotten to just write fiction in what felt like so long.
On the other hand I've written two drafts of a Masters Thesis, so I think that should count for something.
Publishing
Queries sent: 102
Rejections received: 72
Most rejections received: For just this year, A Crack in the Mirror is leading with 10. For all time (discounting Throne of Nightmares) Entangled had 18 when it was accepted for publication by Specutopia.
This was an amazing year for me for publishing. I had four sales, two of which were pro-level, and signed the contracts for five novellettes/novellas, only one of which I had already written. The two pro sales this year kicked me over to three total, which means I get classified as a professional writer. That was incredibly exciting as well, and Comes the Huntsman was the story that did that for me.
Published this year:
Slated for 2013:
Novels: Zero, I'm sorry to say. I did a lot of editing on Fire in the Belly and Throne of Nightmares but grad school really prevented me from making much progress. I think I might have added another 10k words to King's Hand.
Shorter Stuff: Relatively more success on this front, perhaps because shorter stories are ideal for picking up and putting back down while dealing with horrible grad student things.
Flash: 5 (spoiler: I still suck at flash)
Short Stories: 12 (six of which I wrote during the Clarion Write-a thon, one I wrote today!)
Novellettes/Novellas: 2 (just finished the rough of The Ugly Tin Orrery!)
Consigned to the trunk of awfulness, never to return: None yet this year, but there are two that I'm giving the stink-eye that might be vanishing once I have the brain power to look over them better and do more editing.
Best/favorite story of the year: Comes the Huntsman, no question. It was an intense story to write, and I'm still very proud of it. It was also published by Strange Horizons, which has been a personal dream of mine!
Considering last year I wrote well over 200K words, by any measure my productivity has been much, much lower this year. To the point that I started getting a bit weird about it back in October because I hadn't gotten to just write fiction in what felt like so long.
On the other hand I've written two drafts of a Masters Thesis, so I think that should count for something.
Publishing
Queries sent: 102
Rejections received: 72
Most rejections received: For just this year, A Crack in the Mirror is leading with 10. For all time (discounting Throne of Nightmares) Entangled had 18 when it was accepted for publication by Specutopia.
This was an amazing year for me for publishing. I had four sales, two of which were pro-level, and signed the contracts for five novellettes/novellas, only one of which I had already written. The two pro sales this year kicked me over to three total, which means I get classified as a professional writer. That was incredibly exciting as well, and Comes the Huntsman was the story that did that for me.
Published this year:
- Entangled in Specutopia (which seems to have vanished, I'm sorry to say)
- Comes the Huntsman in Strange Horizons
- The Jade Tiger in Penumbra
Slated for 2013:
- Hyperion from Scape
- A return of The Jade Tiger in the Best of Penumbra Anthology
- Murder on the Titania from Musa Publishing
- The Ugly Tin Orrery from Musa Publishing
- The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog from Musa Publishing
- Blood in Peyote Creek from Musa Publishing
- Do Shut Up, Mr. Simms from Musa Publishing
Stories put online this year:
Unless Specutopia reappears, once I've run out the six month exclusive period in the contract, I think I'll probably put Entangled online here to be read for free in February. It's a story that I really like and I don't want it to just vanish.
Also, I'm hoping to get back to my little fanfic habit once the thesis is done and I have spare time again. I'll be working a real, 40 hours per week job for the first time in five years, but I'm pretty sure I'll still have more spare time then than I do now.
Goals for 2013:
- Finish King's Hand
- Finally get representation nailed down for at least one of my novels
- Work with Kat on our joint project and get it done!
- Write another birthday story in February for Mr. T.H.; an important goal for me because the one last year turned out so stunningly well I'm terrified another attempt won't produce anything at all good.
- Keep the novellettes rolling in on time to Musa and be faithful to my contracts there.
- Finish editing the stories I wrote for this year's Clarion Write-a-thon
- Participate in the Write-a-thon again
- Be generally more productive than I was this year, since I'll no longer have a thesis hanging from my neck like a stone.
- Flash fiction - how the fuck does it work?
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The Last Lighthouse
Well, I wanted to write something for the lovely @lindsqualls since it sounds like she's had a rough few weeks. And I wanted to write something that didn't involve sentences in passive voice about paleosols, so there you go. I have such awful thesis brain right now I'm not going to claim it's any good. But it felt nice to write.
Love!
Love!
Monday, September 10, 2012
[Worldcon] Military SF - Reality vs. Writing
Friday (August 31) at 1500: Military SF - Reality vs. Writing
Panelists listed in program: Mike Shepherd Moscoe, John G. Hemry/Jack Campbell, Elizabeth Moon, Jim Fiscus; in Atlanta at Dragon*Con: Kacey Ezell, Louis Hibben, Mark Malcolm, Michael Z. Williamson
"In war everything is simple, and everything simple is hard."
Most of the time everything works out too easily, equipment never breaks down, etc. There should be a lot of difficulties that much be conquered.
Hazing - the Mickey Mouse and the shit you have to put up with.
EM: battle scenes need plot relevance and shape. Real battles often do not have the kind of shape that a story requires. The stories of real battles often are not of the right kind of shape and have to be retransmitted
A lot of civilians don't believe what happens in the military. - e.g. GI Jane the military liked the training sequences, civilians thought they looked ridiculously brutal.
Esprit de corps comes from the Mickey Mouse shit. In short fiction you don't have the word space to build the spirit up. In longer works you can have the Mickey Mouse shit and actually build the reader into the cohesive unit, which means the reader feels part of it when you refer to it later.
"Things are funny to us aren't necessarily funny to anyone else." - e.g. "I need fifty yards of flight line."
Military people know that stupid orders get given all the time (e.g. clean the deck with a rag) where civilians won't believe it.
EM: There is stupid stuff… and there is also stupid stuff coming from editors. e.g. instead of "manning" the weapons on a spaceship, you should "staff" them. /facepalm There is a different between staffing and manning.
EM: Conversely some veterans are so enthralled with their experience that they tend to miss out on the issues inherent to fiction.
EM: Wants to hear about specific things that just make a vet's toes curl up.
EM: We think of discipline in the school sense but it's not. It's not punishment. It's not discipline for someone to be disrespecting the person they're giving orders to.
You can't really put the boring mandatory trainings and stuff in works (even longer works) because they are boring and you'll lose the reader. (and in short works there isn't room)
You have to make a choice between details and action/adventure. EM gets a little too tangled in the details because she'd rather read the story than get distracted by math. This is more a writer question than a military experience question.
The relationship between officers and enlisted has changed over time - historical fiction means you need to research. In history it wasn't the same as it is now. You need to put thought to why people were loyal as well. (Merc vs. personal loyalty, etc.) Also need to keep in mind the differences between the types of different units. e.g. it will be different between electricians and infantry. The electricians for example might be older and have spent more time in civilian life before enlisting. Everyone interacts with their superiors differently.
In the Army, under fire the instinct is to shelter in the vehicles. In the Air Force, the engineer gets the hell away from anything that could be a target.
"Marines return fire."
EM: If you shoot at us, we will shoot back.
For historical battles, you can't really recreate historical battles with different technology. You can't recreate Agincourt with machine guns and tanks. Be very careful about trying to borrow. Space battles in particular can't be recreations of terrestrial battles because there are three dimensions of complete movement instead of two.
(Now the people at DragonCon have been shut down)
If you want to change the commands (historically) you have to change the commander. Commanders have a command style.
EM: every war changes the ethics of war. Everyone goes in to the war thinking they won't do X and then have to violate that thing to save themselves/their platoon. If enough people do X, that will change the moors. The problem is the people in charge haven't been in the pit. They don't know about fighting and are unrealistic.
The ethics of warfare are constantly changing. WWII we indiscriminately bombed cities… we don't do that any more.
EM: There are things I was taught in the 60s/70s that were thrown completely out the window in Iraq. It made people very angry, and they complained, wrote letters in protest, and it made no difference. When you have people who think war is profitable and a good idea, and who will never fight it and their kids will never fight it, it's out of control. Armies get out of control too. The worst things that happen are religious wars because every action is justified at that point. Any society saying god is on their side is bad. War is never good. War is hell. Fighting when you don't have to fight is really stupid.
The entire last paragraph is in bold for a reason. I wish, oh how I wish, that my little fingers could have typed fast enough to get down what Elizabeth Moon said verbatim. Or even more, I wish that you all could have been there to hear it, because it was a thing of beauty. I could feel her frustration and anger in those words.
I checked youtube, but if someone recorded the panel, they haven't put anything up yet. I live in hope.
Mike Shepherd Moscoe is listed in the program book as being the moderator for the panel.(Edit) He was there, but because he had been running late, Elizabeth Moon took over moderating the panel. And I will say, she was one of the best moderators I saw all weekend as well. The panel was fun, interesting, and she managed twice the normal number of panelists with efficiency.
Honestly, I have nothing else to add about this panel. It was fascinating and a good reminder of why, if you want to write military SF/F and have had no military experience yourself, it's a good idea to do some research and talk to people who have actually done active duty.
Panelists listed in program: Mike Shepherd Moscoe, John G. Hemry/Jack Campbell, Elizabeth Moon, Jim Fiscus; in Atlanta at Dragon*Con: Kacey Ezell, Louis Hibben, Mark Malcolm, Michael Z. Williamson
Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.This panel took place half in Chicago and half in Atlanta. Yay videoconferencing. Weird echo, though.
"In war everything is simple, and everything simple is hard."
Most of the time everything works out too easily, equipment never breaks down, etc. There should be a lot of difficulties that much be conquered.
Hazing - the Mickey Mouse and the shit you have to put up with.
EM: battle scenes need plot relevance and shape. Real battles often do not have the kind of shape that a story requires. The stories of real battles often are not of the right kind of shape and have to be retransmitted
A lot of civilians don't believe what happens in the military. - e.g. GI Jane the military liked the training sequences, civilians thought they looked ridiculously brutal.
Esprit de corps comes from the Mickey Mouse shit. In short fiction you don't have the word space to build the spirit up. In longer works you can have the Mickey Mouse shit and actually build the reader into the cohesive unit, which means the reader feels part of it when you refer to it later.
"Things are funny to us aren't necessarily funny to anyone else." - e.g. "I need fifty yards of flight line."
Military people know that stupid orders get given all the time (e.g. clean the deck with a rag) where civilians won't believe it.
EM: There is stupid stuff… and there is also stupid stuff coming from editors. e.g. instead of "manning" the weapons on a spaceship, you should "staff" them. /facepalm There is a different between staffing and manning.
EM: Conversely some veterans are so enthralled with their experience that they tend to miss out on the issues inherent to fiction.
EM: Wants to hear about specific things that just make a vet's toes curl up.
- One I see repeatedly is the general that loves war and wants to fight! Someone like that wouldn't last that long for a multitude of reasons. They're answerable to the people both above (money holders) and below them. Someone would kill them eventually!
- Writers cross-pollinating service terms. In the Navy you stand on a deck. If you're anyone else, it's the floor.
- "Tell the different services to secure a building…" the Navy would turn out the lights and lock the doors, the Army would occupy the building so no one else can get in, "the Air Force will get a six year lease with an option to buy," "Marines will blow it up and call in from the smoking crater, 'sir the building has been secured!'" The word means wildly different things across services!
- Misrepresentations of the relationships between the officers and the enlisted. Officers often portrayed as autocratic jackasses and the enlisted don't do anything about it and feel like they can't. Now it varies, but from her personal experience the enlisted guys kept her alive and she appreciated that. The relationship can't really be that adversarial.
- Discipline is what keeps people alive. It's a survival tool. It doesn't need to be dumbed down or dull. It's not a weapon for officers to wield against the enlisted.
EM: We think of discipline in the school sense but it's not. It's not punishment. It's not discipline for someone to be disrespecting the person they're giving orders to.
- In Star Trek the officers know everything and the specialists always turn to the captains and they figure out how to fix it. The officer is usually the generalist and the enlisted are the specialists who know their subject much better than you do. That messes up the entire relationship.
You can't really put the boring mandatory trainings and stuff in works (even longer works) because they are boring and you'll lose the reader. (and in short works there isn't room)
You have to make a choice between details and action/adventure. EM gets a little too tangled in the details because she'd rather read the story than get distracted by math. This is more a writer question than a military experience question.
The relationship between officers and enlisted has changed over time - historical fiction means you need to research. In history it wasn't the same as it is now. You need to put thought to why people were loyal as well. (Merc vs. personal loyalty, etc.) Also need to keep in mind the differences between the types of different units. e.g. it will be different between electricians and infantry. The electricians for example might be older and have spent more time in civilian life before enlisting. Everyone interacts with their superiors differently.
In the Army, under fire the instinct is to shelter in the vehicles. In the Air Force, the engineer gets the hell away from anything that could be a target.
"Marines return fire."
EM: If you shoot at us, we will shoot back.
For historical battles, you can't really recreate historical battles with different technology. You can't recreate Agincourt with machine guns and tanks. Be very careful about trying to borrow. Space battles in particular can't be recreations of terrestrial battles because there are three dimensions of complete movement instead of two.
(Now the people at DragonCon have been shut down)
If you want to change the commands (historically) you have to change the commander. Commanders have a command style.
EM: every war changes the ethics of war. Everyone goes in to the war thinking they won't do X and then have to violate that thing to save themselves/their platoon. If enough people do X, that will change the moors. The problem is the people in charge haven't been in the pit. They don't know about fighting and are unrealistic.
The ethics of warfare are constantly changing. WWII we indiscriminately bombed cities… we don't do that any more.
EM: There are things I was taught in the 60s/70s that were thrown completely out the window in Iraq. It made people very angry, and they complained, wrote letters in protest, and it made no difference. When you have people who think war is profitable and a good idea, and who will never fight it and their kids will never fight it, it's out of control. Armies get out of control too. The worst things that happen are religious wars because every action is justified at that point. Any society saying god is on their side is bad. War is never good. War is hell. Fighting when you don't have to fight is really stupid.
#
The entire last paragraph is in bold for a reason. I wish, oh how I wish, that my little fingers could have typed fast enough to get down what Elizabeth Moon said verbatim. Or even more, I wish that you all could have been there to hear it, because it was a thing of beauty. I could feel her frustration and anger in those words.
I checked youtube, but if someone recorded the panel, they haven't put anything up yet. I live in hope.
Mike Shepherd Moscoe is listed in the program book as being the moderator for the panel.(Edit) He was there, but because he had been running late, Elizabeth Moon took over moderating the panel. And I will say, she was one of the best moderators I saw all weekend as well. The panel was fun, interesting, and she managed twice the normal number of panelists with efficiency.
Honestly, I have nothing else to add about this panel. It was fascinating and a good reminder of why, if you want to write military SF/F and have had no military experience yourself, it's a good idea to do some research and talk to people who have actually done active duty.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
[Worldcon] The Steampunk Genre
Friday (August 31) at 1330: The Steampunk Genre
Panelists listed in program: Sarah Hans, Jay Lake, Michael Coorlim, Chambers, Paul Genesse
Steampunk is much more participatory; Costuming, film, music, not just literature. Much more participatory in that way than scifi/fantasy. At steampunk cons, most people are in costume. (WAY MORE than at Worldcon or anime cons.)
Recommended reading:
"May I point out that the power to weight ratio for steam engines means… that all steampunk is fantasy."
Dieselpunk is an offshoot of steampunk; it picks up where steampunk ends. WWI/WWII era.
Steampunk are fundamentally adventure stories.
ANACHRONISM is ESSENTIAL to steampunk.
"This is the last era where a true polymath could really exist and know everything about everything."
"The last time a super villain could build his own base without minions."
From audience - technology is positive, look at the decoration of it, they are putting their souls into it.
Panel - about reclaiming ability to interact and fix with machines. That's part of the romance. Today when technology goes haywire we can't really do anything. In steampunk, it can be fixed.
Sarah Hans - likes using magic in steampunk as the analog for the conservative/traditional values. Magic butting heads with technology because they're seeing it as threatening those values.
If you want to write steampunk, number one rule is HAVE FUN.
Consider that from the alternate history standpoint. It's not just white people in the world!
Silver Goggles - multicultural trying to break out of the western world box. (Rajpunk!)
"Steampunk is people doing to the Victorian era what the Victorian era first did to them."
This should not be about nostalgia or romance for the past. The uncomfortable social issues (misogyny, colonialism, racism, etc) need to be met head on if you're dealing with that historical context.
LGBTQ are not real well-represented in Steampunk either. This will hopefully be in the next wave.
Oh, the question of if you need to be descended from the colonized in order to write about the oppression within colonialism.
"Why not?" "Otherwise we'd all be writing about nothing but boring white guys."
No matter what you write, you're going to offend someone, but you need to be respectful about it.
Also it's alternate history, so how much does this actually matter?
"You cannot get permission to write. You have an obligation as a writer to treat your subject with serious respect… no one is the guardian of any group or ethnicity or gender or historical period…" "That's called being sensible. That's not called don't write."
I actually went to this panel because I wanted to hear about Steampunk from people who are much more in to it than I am. I'd like to go to a convention, for example, but I admit I'm pretty embarrassed by my complete lack of costuming. (Well, and I lack time which is far more important. I can get over feeling like the ugly duckling.) But often Steampunk is presented as just being about setting, the bells and whistles, cogs and steam, and I knew it had to be more than that. I just couldn't articulate what since I'm just dipping my toe in at this point.
What struck me the most was the point about technology, about problem solving. The reason I wrote my story for Penumbra was because I like writing stories about adventures, and Steampunk always seemed like a perfect genre for it. And not just that, but one where it's all about technology being used smartly and problem solving. Steampunk has always felt very optimistic to me in that way, and that's something I've been thirsting for in a time where you can't throw a rock without hitting a dystopia.
I think I already knew this - that's sure the way I wrote The Jade Tiger. It feels good to have people far more expert than me laying that out, however. Hopefully I can take all the interesting ideas from this panel and write even better when I launch into my novellas!
Panelists listed in program: Sarah Hans, Jay Lake, Michael Coorlim, Chambers, Paul Genesse
Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.Steampunk is unlike cyberpunk in that cyberpunk is primarily dystopian.
Steampunk is much more participatory; Costuming, film, music, not just literature. Much more participatory in that way than scifi/fantasy. At steampunk cons, most people are in costume. (WAY MORE than at Worldcon or anime cons.)
Recommended reading:
- Log of the Flying Fish on Project Gutenberg - "steampunk" written during the Victorian era as scifi.
- The Steampunk Bible - Jeff VanderMeer
- Steampunk - Jeff and Ann VanderMeer (the essay at the end is a must-read)
- Steampunk II - Jeff and Ann VanderMeer
"May I point out that the power to weight ratio for steam engines means… that all steampunk is fantasy."
Dieselpunk is an offshoot of steampunk; it picks up where steampunk ends. WWI/WWII era.
Steampunk are fundamentally adventure stories.
ANACHRONISM is ESSENTIAL to steampunk.
"This is the last era where a true polymath could really exist and know everything about everything."
"The last time a super villain could build his own base without minions."
From audience - technology is positive, look at the decoration of it, they are putting their souls into it.
Panel - about reclaiming ability to interact and fix with machines. That's part of the romance. Today when technology goes haywire we can't really do anything. In steampunk, it can be fixed.
Sarah Hans - likes using magic in steampunk as the analog for the conservative/traditional values. Magic butting heads with technology because they're seeing it as threatening those values.
If you want to write steampunk, number one rule is HAVE FUN.
- Start in the steampunk universe and write from there. Do not write a story and spray cogs on it.
- Research, particularly if you're going to use real historical figures!
- Invent only what you need to! This includes within the setting.
- Don't over explain your technology. You need to know how it works, but don't go into too much details because the asshole scientists will eat your lunch.
- DO NOT INFODUMP.
- "Steampunk is generally a gonzo genre. Go gonzo."
Consider that from the alternate history standpoint. It's not just white people in the world!
Silver Goggles - multicultural trying to break out of the western world box. (Rajpunk!)
"Steampunk is people doing to the Victorian era what the Victorian era first did to them."
This should not be about nostalgia or romance for the past. The uncomfortable social issues (misogyny, colonialism, racism, etc) need to be met head on if you're dealing with that historical context.
LGBTQ are not real well-represented in Steampunk either. This will hopefully be in the next wave.
Oh, the question of if you need to be descended from the colonized in order to write about the oppression within colonialism.
"Why not?" "Otherwise we'd all be writing about nothing but boring white guys."
No matter what you write, you're going to offend someone, but you need to be respectful about it.
Also it's alternate history, so how much does this actually matter?
"You cannot get permission to write. You have an obligation as a writer to treat your subject with serious respect… no one is the guardian of any group or ethnicity or gender or historical period…" "That's called being sensible. That's not called don't write."
#
I actually went to this panel because I wanted to hear about Steampunk from people who are much more in to it than I am. I'd like to go to a convention, for example, but I admit I'm pretty embarrassed by my complete lack of costuming. (Well, and I lack time which is far more important. I can get over feeling like the ugly duckling.) But often Steampunk is presented as just being about setting, the bells and whistles, cogs and steam, and I knew it had to be more than that. I just couldn't articulate what since I'm just dipping my toe in at this point.
What struck me the most was the point about technology, about problem solving. The reason I wrote my story for Penumbra was because I like writing stories about adventures, and Steampunk always seemed like a perfect genre for it. And not just that, but one where it's all about technology being used smartly and problem solving. Steampunk has always felt very optimistic to me in that way, and that's something I've been thirsting for in a time where you can't throw a rock without hitting a dystopia.
I think I already knew this - that's sure the way I wrote The Jade Tiger. It feels good to have people far more expert than me laying that out, however. Hopefully I can take all the interesting ideas from this panel and write even better when I launch into my novellas!
Saturday, September 08, 2012
[Worldcon] Violence in Fantasy
Friday (August 31) at 1030: Violence in Fantasy
Panelists listed in program: Scott Lynch, D. H. Aire, James Enge, Doug Hulick
Scott Lynch: You can't just set Doug Hulick on fire.
Me (from the crowd): Maybe you can't.
Crowd: applause
The panel mostly focused on how much violence is too much, when is it gratuitous. The conclusion seemed to be that it's not gratuitous if it's necessary to the story, but you shouldn't just be using it as a way to get yourself out of a corner you've written yourself into.
Also, violence acts as a symbol of agency for readers, so they can feel they can palpably affect events for the better within the world.
The question is when does emphasizing violence as agency become pathological? No good answers for that. People need to be able to know the difference between wish fulfillment violence and it being appropriate in the real life.
So should the bad guys be humanized or no? Split view there. Orcs should be gross and evil. (But this is something I never really liked because reality is not that black and white.)
Also, what about gross out? Well, horror is best, terror is next best, and if you can't get either gross-out will work. (Stephen King paraphrase) Sometimes you just want to do that to your readers.
Panelists listed in program: Scott Lynch, D. H. Aire, James Enge, Doug Hulick
Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.
Scott Lynch: You can't just set Doug Hulick on fire.
Me (from the crowd): Maybe you can't.
Crowd: applause
The panel mostly focused on how much violence is too much, when is it gratuitous. The conclusion seemed to be that it's not gratuitous if it's necessary to the story, but you shouldn't just be using it as a way to get yourself out of a corner you've written yourself into.
Also, violence acts as a symbol of agency for readers, so they can feel they can palpably affect events for the better within the world.
The question is when does emphasizing violence as agency become pathological? No good answers for that. People need to be able to know the difference between wish fulfillment violence and it being appropriate in the real life.
So should the bad guys be humanized or no? Split view there. Orcs should be gross and evil. (But this is something I never really liked because reality is not that black and white.)
Also, what about gross out? Well, horror is best, terror is next best, and if you can't get either gross-out will work. (Stephen King paraphrase) Sometimes you just want to do that to your readers.
#
I don't have a whole lot to say about this panel - it was mostly just very entertaining, and I got to heckle Scott Lynch from the crowd like an asshole. I regret nothing.
I do think the idea that violence is a symbol of agency is an interesting one. Sf/f tends to have a lot of stories in it that do involve violence, particularly ones with quest plotlines. If nothing else, that means reading them takes us to a very different place beyond just the setting. Most of us will never participate in violence like that in our lives, and it is a very palpable symbol of acting directly upon the world and whatever problem is at hand. (Hell, if we ever come up against violence in our lives, there's a good chance it will be as a victim of that violence.)
I'm not a fan of sf/f where things are extremely black and white. I like to see characters struggling with difficult decisions. And violence plays into that because it becomes a difficult, painful thing when the struggle isn't black and white. That's something I've really enjoyed about the Vorkosigan books so far, for example.
Chandler's Law got mentioned - "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." There was some lively discussion around this, because it's something that could really go well or poorly. Sometimes the man with the gun can open up all sorts of new plot possibilities - who is the man? Why is he coming after the characters? But there's a major chance it'll just scream hey I totally wrote myself into a corner.
I've never had to resort to Chandler's Law, myself. I'm really hoping that I never do.
One thing I wondered (and maybe they covered this but I missed it) how much sf/f is actually being viewed as too violent. I can see this being an issue in video games and movies, since of course there's a visual representation of that violence - and yeah, a lot of them just have action scenes for the sake of blowing shit up. But perhaps I've been lucky in my choice of books; I've yet to encounter one where I felt it was really overly violent or gory. (I've only encountered one book in my life that I found truly over the top, and that was American Psycho; that book actually made me physically ill. I also generally don't read horror.) If nothing else, trying to have violence in the written word the way it exists in a movie would be... difficult to accomplish. And probably incredibly boring to read.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
[Worldcon] Writing Gender Roles in Science Fiction
Friday (August 31) at 0900: Writing Gender Roles in Science Fiction
Panelists listed in program: Joan D. Vinge, Julia Rios, Catherine Lundoff, Victor Raymond, Anne Lyle (Note: Joan D. Vinge was definitely not in attendance.)
Writing characters of different genders; do you consciously decide to present them in ways you consider "good"?
Catherine Lundhoff: In sf/f there are very few female werewolves. There are very few middle-aged men already as protagonists, there are even fewer middle-aged women as protagonists. They tend to just be the evil queen.
Anne Lyle: I just write people and see how they turn out.
Mary Robinette Kowal - "Jane Austen with magic." First book very traditional, second book (Glamour and Glass) has main character after she's married, in Belgium at the point Napoleon comes out of exile. Goes into a war situation as a married woman who has strict social moors and must break out of it for reasons of plot.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Cordelia, working within the restrictive society to try to open minds while playing by their rules. The Vorkosigan saga "A Civil Campaign" is a comedy of manners set in scifi.
Audience question: Recommend stories that have alien cultures with something beyond the gender binary (e.g. 3 genders, etc)?
Source Decay in Strange Horizons
I asked for examples of transmen in sf/f since there had been several named for transwomen:
I thought this was a solid panel with good discussion, though I missed a significant portion of it. I actually ended up buying a copy of Catherine Lundoff's Silver Moon in part because of this panel. There really aren't older female protagonists very often, and I'm charmed by the idea of one being a werewolf.
The reason I asked the question about characters who are transmen is I've noticed generally that transwomen seem to be a bit more visible in pop culture and sf/f. Sometimes it's very negative (eg: news stories about a transwoman being attacked are far more common than those about transmen) and on the more positive side I've seen more transwomen activists than transmen. When there are trans characters in the genres I read (and this happens rarely as it is) they're almost always transwomen.
I wonder if this is partially because transwomen are to a certain extent more transgressive than transmen. From the viewpoint of a society where being white and male is still the "norm" it must seem more transgressive for a man to "wish to be" a woman than for a women to "wish to be" a man, because it's a movement counter to the center of power.
Transmen also seem to have better luck "flying under the radar" than transwomen. (Transmen - nature's ninja?) I wonder if this is connected to the way, say, drag queens tend to be far more culturally visible than drag kings. There's the titillation factor, of course. But there's also the fact that if you see someone your brain identifies as female, if they're dressed in male clothes it doesn't tend to really register in the same way someone who may be male in female clothes does. Women regularly wear men's clothes, or clothes that are styled after those men wear.
Of course, this is on my mind because I've got a short story in which the main character is a transman. (And the plot for a novel as well, yikes.) Here's hoping I can find a magazine that'll want it at some point...
Anyway, I'm hoping we generally see more diversity in characters in the future, and not just in regards to gender. The fact that people are having conversations about this is definitely a step in the right direction. And of course, with more e-publishing and small presses springing up like wildflowers, I'm hoping to see more diversity as well.
ETA: Catherine Lundoff has a more complete reading list from the panel at her livejournal.
Panelists listed in program: Joan D. Vinge, Julia Rios, Catherine Lundoff, Victor Raymond, Anne Lyle (Note: Joan D. Vinge was definitely not in attendance.)
Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.Works in which characters that are outside gender norms but not as a reaction to an oppressive government (incomplete list):
- Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories - Sandra McDonald
- Bone Dance - Emma Bull
- The Tawny Man trilogy and The Farseer trilogy - Robin Hobb. (Everyone tends to refer to the Fool as male but it clearly is not quite in the binary.)
- The Einstein Intersection - Samuel R. Delaney
- The Female Man - Joanna Russ
- Fly Into Fire - Susan J. Bigelow (Transwoman protagonist)
- Dragonsbane and Sisters of the Raven - Barbara Hambley
Writing characters of different genders; do you consciously decide to present them in ways you consider "good"?
Catherine Lundhoff: In sf/f there are very few female werewolves. There are very few middle-aged men already as protagonists, there are even fewer middle-aged women as protagonists. They tend to just be the evil queen.
Anne Lyle: I just write people and see how they turn out.
Mary Robinette Kowal - "Jane Austen with magic." First book very traditional, second book (Glamour and Glass) has main character after she's married, in Belgium at the point Napoleon comes out of exile. Goes into a war situation as a married woman who has strict social moors and must break out of it for reasons of plot.
Lois McMaster Bujold - Cordelia, working within the restrictive society to try to open minds while playing by their rules. The Vorkosigan saga "A Civil Campaign" is a comedy of manners set in scifi.
Audience question: Recommend stories that have alien cultures with something beyond the gender binary (e.g. 3 genders, etc)?
Source Decay in Strange Horizons
I asked for examples of transmen in sf/f since there had been several named for transwomen:
- The Courier's New Bicycle - Kim Westwood
- A Civil Campaign - Lois McMaster Bujold
- Steel Beach - John Varley
- Recognizing Gabe - Alberto Yáñez (Strange Horizons)
- Supervillainz - Alicia Goranson [ETA: Catherine Lundoff tweeted this one to me today]
#
The reason I asked the question about characters who are transmen is I've noticed generally that transwomen seem to be a bit more visible in pop culture and sf/f. Sometimes it's very negative (eg: news stories about a transwoman being attacked are far more common than those about transmen) and on the more positive side I've seen more transwomen activists than transmen. When there are trans characters in the genres I read (and this happens rarely as it is) they're almost always transwomen.
I wonder if this is partially because transwomen are to a certain extent more transgressive than transmen. From the viewpoint of a society where being white and male is still the "norm" it must seem more transgressive for a man to "wish to be" a woman than for a women to "wish to be" a man, because it's a movement counter to the center of power.
Transmen also seem to have better luck "flying under the radar" than transwomen. (Transmen - nature's ninja?) I wonder if this is connected to the way, say, drag queens tend to be far more culturally visible than drag kings. There's the titillation factor, of course. But there's also the fact that if you see someone your brain identifies as female, if they're dressed in male clothes it doesn't tend to really register in the same way someone who may be male in female clothes does. Women regularly wear men's clothes, or clothes that are styled after those men wear.
Of course, this is on my mind because I've got a short story in which the main character is a transman. (And the plot for a novel as well, yikes.) Here's hoping I can find a magazine that'll want it at some point...
Anyway, I'm hoping we generally see more diversity in characters in the future, and not just in regards to gender. The fact that people are having conversations about this is definitely a step in the right direction. And of course, with more e-publishing and small presses springing up like wildflowers, I'm hoping to see more diversity as well.
ETA: Catherine Lundoff has a more complete reading list from the panel at her livejournal.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Forthcoming Steampunk (and a bit free to read)
A couple of months ago, I signed a contract with Musa Publishing for my novella Murder on the Titania, which will be coming out in early 2013. It's a story that involves the same characters and world as The Jade Tiger, my short story that appeared in Penumbra vol 1 issue 6.
I'm excited (and slightly terrified - this is the first time in my life I've signed a contract for a story I haven't yet written, let alone four of them!) to tell you that there are going to be even more stories about Captain Ramos and Mr. Simms!
Also coming in 2013 will be:
The Ugly Tin Orrery
The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz (and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog)
Blood in Peyote Creek
Do Shut Up, Mr. Simms
I shall give you more details as they come.
If you're curious about Captain Ramos and Mr. Simms, there's also a story that's free to read! Last year I wrote this adventure for the Machine of Death 2 anthology. My story didn't make the cut, unfortunately, but I'd rather it be available for the reading than languishing on my hard drive.
Story is below the jump. Enjoy!
I'm excited (and slightly terrified - this is the first time in my life I've signed a contract for a story I haven't yet written, let alone four of them!) to tell you that there are going to be even more stories about Captain Ramos and Mr. Simms!
Also coming in 2013 will be:
The Ugly Tin Orrery
The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz (and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog)
Blood in Peyote Creek
Do Shut Up, Mr. Simms
I shall give you more details as they come.
If you're curious about Captain Ramos and Mr. Simms, there's also a story that's free to read! Last year I wrote this adventure for the Machine of Death 2 anthology. My story didn't make the cut, unfortunately, but I'd rather it be available for the reading than languishing on my hard drive.
Story is below the jump. Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
On rejection
Well, it sucks. Any questions?
To be more specific, I'm talking about the kind of rejection that is yours for the collecting if you do anything creative. My main experience is with writing, but I've gotten a solid impression from my friends who do other artistic things that if you want to create, and sell what you create, you have to be prepared to down a healthy bowl full of "no" salad every day.
I'm mostly thinking about this today because I sweated blood for six hours editing a story, which was subsequently rejected in less than twelve hours.
Ouch.
These are the times I go out for a margarita. Or in the case of tonight, thanks to a mysterious stomach bug that's decided to make my life difficult, I stare glumly into my package of animal crackers.
The constant rejection never feels good. It's not supposed to. You're sending your story out there because (I should hope) you believe in it and think it deserves to be received by the cheering masses. Having an editor tell you no can sometimes feel very painful because it feels personal. That story's a little bit of you.
It's really not personal. I don't think I could ever handle being an editor; they have the toughest job in the world. While I'm sure the slush pile is pretty hefty in stories that don't meet standards, it sounds like they still get more good pieces than they could ever hope to publish. I'd drive myself to a nervous breakdown trying to make those decisions.
So it hurts. You have to just dust yourself off, eat your animal crackers, and keep going. And if you still believe in your story, you have to keep fighting for it.
Don't let fear of rejection stop you from trying. You will eventually build up your rejection callouses, even if you still see those e-mails pile up and think Oof, I need that beer now. I've filled an entire bulldog clip with rejections and I'm well over halfway into my second. The sting never quite goes away, but you get stronger for it.
Rejections are like sweat. That's what effort looks like, baby. It means I'm trying. I'm working hard. I've developed a weird, potentially unhealthy relationship with my rejection notices, where if I haven't gotten one for a while I start feeling somehow less real, like I need the validation that I still exist as a writer. It keeps me playing story pingpong, sending them out as soon as they come back.
Because ultimately, even the biggest no sundae in the world still has a cherry on top.
To be more specific, I'm talking about the kind of rejection that is yours for the collecting if you do anything creative. My main experience is with writing, but I've gotten a solid impression from my friends who do other artistic things that if you want to create, and sell what you create, you have to be prepared to down a healthy bowl full of "no" salad every day.
I'm mostly thinking about this today because I sweated blood for six hours editing a story, which was subsequently rejected in less than twelve hours.
Ouch.
These are the times I go out for a margarita. Or in the case of tonight, thanks to a mysterious stomach bug that's decided to make my life difficult, I stare glumly into my package of animal crackers.
The constant rejection never feels good. It's not supposed to. You're sending your story out there because (I should hope) you believe in it and think it deserves to be received by the cheering masses. Having an editor tell you no can sometimes feel very painful because it feels personal. That story's a little bit of you.
It's really not personal. I don't think I could ever handle being an editor; they have the toughest job in the world. While I'm sure the slush pile is pretty hefty in stories that don't meet standards, it sounds like they still get more good pieces than they could ever hope to publish. I'd drive myself to a nervous breakdown trying to make those decisions.
So it hurts. You have to just dust yourself off, eat your animal crackers, and keep going. And if you still believe in your story, you have to keep fighting for it.
Don't let fear of rejection stop you from trying. You will eventually build up your rejection callouses, even if you still see those e-mails pile up and think Oof, I need that beer now. I've filled an entire bulldog clip with rejections and I'm well over halfway into my second. The sting never quite goes away, but you get stronger for it.
Rejections are like sweat. That's what effort looks like, baby. It means I'm trying. I'm working hard. I've developed a weird, potentially unhealthy relationship with my rejection notices, where if I haven't gotten one for a while I start feeling somehow less real, like I need the validation that I still exist as a writer. It keeps me playing story pingpong, sending them out as soon as they come back.
Because ultimately, even the biggest no sundae in the world still has a cherry on top.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Twitter is not a chore.
If you haven't read Justine Larbalestier's blog post about social media self-promotion for writers, you should. Obviously, as a writer who has actually published novels and made money, she has much more cogent and useful things to say about the issue than I do.
But I would like to add my two cents as someone who is attempting to do writerly things, and more importantly, someone who uses Twitter.
At one point, I saw a submissions call and checked it out. The publisher that issued the call had a note on it that basically said if you did not have X number of followers on Twitter and X number of followers on Facebook, you were obviously not serious about this writing thing and they wanted nothing to do with you. I found that incredibly offensive for a multitude of reasons.
Obviously, I know that being serious about being a writer isn't just about writing, as much as I wish it was. I'm not that naive. But this emphasis on social media, this requirement that you have to, by hook or by crook, have a minimum number of followers just pisses me off.
I use Twitter for fun.
I know some people acquire followers on Twitter by following people and hoping they get a follow back. That's never been my style, mostly because I read my Twitter feed in its totality. I may have to start messing with lists sometime soon anyway for time management, but I still am not going to follow someone unless I am actually interested in what they have to say.
Let me lay this out as a generic Twitter user: people who do nothing but relentlessly self-promote are goddamn boring. The authors that I follow (Justine Larbelestier, John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Neil Gaiman, etc) are on my list because they're interesting, not because I want to be updated daily on what they're selling. I like the heads up on new things coming, but they have a hell of a lot more to say than just "buy my book."
I have unfollowed people before because they rarely Tweeted anything that wasn't about their products. I've also unfollowed people because they were boring. What this tells me, as someone who now might want to approach this from the other side, is that maybe being on Twitter just so you can tell everyone to buy your shit is not going to work that well.
I don't like That Guy, you know, the one that only wants to talk to you so he can try to sell you something and tell you how awesome he is. I'd hazard that no one does. I refuse to be That Guy. You can't make me.
But I would like to add my two cents as someone who is attempting to do writerly things, and more importantly, someone who uses Twitter.
At one point, I saw a submissions call and checked it out. The publisher that issued the call had a note on it that basically said if you did not have X number of followers on Twitter and X number of followers on Facebook, you were obviously not serious about this writing thing and they wanted nothing to do with you. I found that incredibly offensive for a multitude of reasons.
Obviously, I know that being serious about being a writer isn't just about writing, as much as I wish it was. I'm not that naive. But this emphasis on social media, this requirement that you have to, by hook or by crook, have a minimum number of followers just pisses me off.
I use Twitter for fun.
I know some people acquire followers on Twitter by following people and hoping they get a follow back. That's never been my style, mostly because I read my Twitter feed in its totality. I may have to start messing with lists sometime soon anyway for time management, but I still am not going to follow someone unless I am actually interested in what they have to say.
Let me lay this out as a generic Twitter user: people who do nothing but relentlessly self-promote are goddamn boring. The authors that I follow (Justine Larbelestier, John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Neil Gaiman, etc) are on my list because they're interesting, not because I want to be updated daily on what they're selling. I like the heads up on new things coming, but they have a hell of a lot more to say than just "buy my book."
I have unfollowed people before because they rarely Tweeted anything that wasn't about their products. I've also unfollowed people because they were boring. What this tells me, as someone who now might want to approach this from the other side, is that maybe being on Twitter just so you can tell everyone to buy your shit is not going to work that well.
I don't like That Guy, you know, the one that only wants to talk to you so he can try to sell you something and tell you how awesome he is. I'd hazard that no one does. I refuse to be That Guy. You can't make me.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
And there is a winner!
That's right, the Clarion write-a-thon ended last week and I got all six of my short stories written. I also said that I would pick someone at random from my supporters to have naming rights to a character in one of my upcoming steampunk stories.
Thanks to Random.org for providing the RNG, we have a winner: Ivona Elenton!
I'll poke you at some point Ivona so we can chat about the dubious prize you've received. Thank you to everyone who supported me in the Clarion write-a-thon!
Thanks to Random.org for providing the RNG, we have a winner: Ivona Elenton!
I'll poke you at some point Ivona so we can chat about the dubious prize you've received. Thank you to everyone who supported me in the Clarion write-a-thon!
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
You know what else is part of the beautiful spectrum of human experience?
Not having kids.
Articles like this one seem designed to piss me off and make me pound out ranty things on my keyboard.
I arrived at the essay by way of one of Amanda Marcotte's tweets. She made the very excellent point that you don't see concern trolling of this sort going on about Gore Vidal or any other male author that dies. I would hope that children are a similarly transformational experience for the men who are invested in them, and that does seem to be the case from my own personal observations. A little unfair to the men, hey?
Really, it's unfair to everyone. From start to finish, once I got past the sound of blood rushing in my ears, the essay reads like a personal justification. Sure, Mrs. Craig has less time to write, but she's traded it for a deeper understanding of human nature and therefore that choice is superior! Or something! Everyone should do it! Have babies, it makes you more awesome and a better writer!
I am not here to make fun of the choice to have children. It's obviously been very meaningful for Mrs. Craig, as it is for many people who go that route in their lives. But I am going to challenge this implication of inherent superiority. Having children is one branch in the path a human life can take, a major direction. It leads to one set of unique experiences and feelings.
Not having children is just as major of a path, and diverges from itself even when you consider the question of if it was by choice or not. That leads to a whole different sort of life, a different array of feelings and experiences.
Neither is superior.
The whole point of art, whether it's painting or writing or interpretive dance or covering yourself with pudding and being an installment piece on the sidewalk for an afternoon is that you are trying to communicate and imagine through the lens of human experience. Frankly, if we all had the same experiences, I think it'd be pretty goddamn dull. It's about getting out there and living your life to the fullest extent you can and then sharing what you've learned and felt and loved and lost and hated with everyone else.
Because none of us are immortal. We can't feel every feeling and experience everything that there is in this constantly expanding world of ours. It's not possible. That's why there's art, because it's one way to share, to help people taste a life they will never otherwise know.
For some of us, living life to the fullest is having children and watching them grow, feeling all that love and pain. For some of us, it's using the extra time and money to ride a bike along the Great Wall of China and dance until three in the morning and kiss a stranger and then have the worst hangover ever. What matters is that we're living and creating. Unless the person you're squaring off with does nothing but pick their belly button and watch Real Housewives, your life path isn't inherently superior. It's just different.
And different is good, right? Because I don't want to live your life, as fulfilling as you find it. I want to live mine.
Articles like this one seem designed to piss me off and make me pound out ranty things on my keyboard.
Yet putting yourself last is one of the best things that can happen to a writer. I make no moral claims for motherhood — which can bring out the worst in a person, in the form of vicarious rivalry, bitchiness, envy and even mental illness — but going through the ring of fire does change you and bring about a deeper understanding of human nature.Well, Mrs. Craig, I'd argue it hasn't given you a deeper understanding of the human nature of people who aren't particularly interested in having kids.
I arrived at the essay by way of one of Amanda Marcotte's tweets. She made the very excellent point that you don't see concern trolling of this sort going on about Gore Vidal or any other male author that dies. I would hope that children are a similarly transformational experience for the men who are invested in them, and that does seem to be the case from my own personal observations. A little unfair to the men, hey?
Really, it's unfair to everyone. From start to finish, once I got past the sound of blood rushing in my ears, the essay reads like a personal justification. Sure, Mrs. Craig has less time to write, but she's traded it for a deeper understanding of human nature and therefore that choice is superior! Or something! Everyone should do it! Have babies, it makes you more awesome and a better writer!
I am not here to make fun of the choice to have children. It's obviously been very meaningful for Mrs. Craig, as it is for many people who go that route in their lives. But I am going to challenge this implication of inherent superiority. Having children is one branch in the path a human life can take, a major direction. It leads to one set of unique experiences and feelings.
Not having children is just as major of a path, and diverges from itself even when you consider the question of if it was by choice or not. That leads to a whole different sort of life, a different array of feelings and experiences.
Neither is superior.
The whole point of art, whether it's painting or writing or interpretive dance or covering yourself with pudding and being an installment piece on the sidewalk for an afternoon is that you are trying to communicate and imagine through the lens of human experience. Frankly, if we all had the same experiences, I think it'd be pretty goddamn dull. It's about getting out there and living your life to the fullest extent you can and then sharing what you've learned and felt and loved and lost and hated with everyone else.
Because none of us are immortal. We can't feel every feeling and experience everything that there is in this constantly expanding world of ours. It's not possible. That's why there's art, because it's one way to share, to help people taste a life they will never otherwise know.
For some of us, living life to the fullest is having children and watching them grow, feeling all that love and pain. For some of us, it's using the extra time and money to ride a bike along the Great Wall of China and dance until three in the morning and kiss a stranger and then have the worst hangover ever. What matters is that we're living and creating. Unless the person you're squaring off with does nothing but pick their belly button and watch Real Housewives, your life path isn't inherently superior. It's just different.
And different is good, right? Because I don't want to live your life, as fulfilling as you find it. I want to live mine.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAL
With 19 hours to spare, I finished the last of my six short stories for the Clarion Write-a-thon. Woof, what a slog.
I had eight donors total. Thank you, all you lovely people! I'll be drawing a name out of a hat (or, more likely, using an RNG) to pick who will be the lucky winner of naming a character in one of my steampunk stories. Expect that in a day or two. I just don't even have the brainpower necessary to write names on bits of paper right now, I swear.
If you'd like to read an excerpt from this last story, you can check the blog for my write-a-thon team.
This has definitely been a learning experience for me.
Total, I wrote around 35,000 words over six weeks. Last year, I wrote 99,000 words over those same six weeks. And let me tell you, for all that's over twice as much, those 99K words were a hell of a lot easier.
I have a rough time with short stories. I did a lot of staring at blank pages and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. It's way harder than just having a big plot and writing until it's done. Of course, one of the mistakes I made this time around is that I didn't have six stories planned out. I didn't even have base ideas for them. Of the stories, two were planned in advance. Generating the other four ideas quickly and under pressure was a lot rougher than I expected it to be.
My brain is toast. I'm definitely short-storied out for a while, at least for new writing. Two of the stories I think I can submit for open calls that are due on August 31, so I'll be doing some editing between now and then. The rest can percolate a while longer.
I still have plenty of work that needs doing. I owe my patient editor the first round from Murder on the Titania. I want to get this damn novel draft finished some time soon. I need to start outlining the next Captain Ramos story, since the first draft of that will be due by the end of the year and once I get back to school my writing time is going to be very limited.
I also came up with an idea that I've fallen in love with, just randomly as I was leaving work today. I'm letting it percolate, and we'll see if I'm still in love with it when I can start working on something new that's long. Because this feels big. But the working title for this project is The Bridge Over the Graveyard of Whales. I know, I know, my title fail. Right now my excuse is that my brain is just juiced. I'll come up with a different excuse tomorrow.
I had eight donors total. Thank you, all you lovely people! I'll be drawing a name out of a hat (or, more likely, using an RNG) to pick who will be the lucky winner of naming a character in one of my steampunk stories. Expect that in a day or two. I just don't even have the brainpower necessary to write names on bits of paper right now, I swear.
If you'd like to read an excerpt from this last story, you can check the blog for my write-a-thon team.
This has definitely been a learning experience for me.
Total, I wrote around 35,000 words over six weeks. Last year, I wrote 99,000 words over those same six weeks. And let me tell you, for all that's over twice as much, those 99K words were a hell of a lot easier.
I have a rough time with short stories. I did a lot of staring at blank pages and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. It's way harder than just having a big plot and writing until it's done. Of course, one of the mistakes I made this time around is that I didn't have six stories planned out. I didn't even have base ideas for them. Of the stories, two were planned in advance. Generating the other four ideas quickly and under pressure was a lot rougher than I expected it to be.
My brain is toast. I'm definitely short-storied out for a while, at least for new writing. Two of the stories I think I can submit for open calls that are due on August 31, so I'll be doing some editing between now and then. The rest can percolate a while longer.
I still have plenty of work that needs doing. I owe my patient editor the first round from Murder on the Titania. I want to get this damn novel draft finished some time soon. I need to start outlining the next Captain Ramos story, since the first draft of that will be due by the end of the year and once I get back to school my writing time is going to be very limited.
I also came up with an idea that I've fallen in love with, just randomly as I was leaving work today. I'm letting it percolate, and we'll see if I'm still in love with it when I can start working on something new that's long. Because this feels big. But the working title for this project is The Bridge Over the Graveyard of Whales. I know, I know, my title fail. Right now my excuse is that my brain is just juiced. I'll come up with a different excuse tomorrow.
Monday, July 30, 2012
I write a horrible story (also known as: trunk stories, what are those?)
It happens sometimes. It kind of has to, if you think about it. Not everything you write is going to be wonderful. In fact, particularly when you're starting out, more of it will suck than will not suck.
The difference for me is that normally, when I hit a story that I just start hating, I stop writing it. Then delete what little I have written, often while doing my best Bela Lugosi laugh. Unfortunately, since right now I'm the Clarion Write-a-thon's bitch and I'm on a strict timetable, that wasn't really an option. So even though I'd decided that this story and I weren't going to be friends by about word 1500, I kept plugging away at it because I was past the point of no return. I needed to finish this thing or risk missing my goals.
Writing something awful that you hate is a uniquely bad experience, I think. I discovered all new levels of procrastination, trying to avoid engaging with this story. I eventually had to unplug my router so that I'd have to focus on the task of just ripping the bandaid off and getting it done.
This all, of course, segues nicely into the question what the heck a trunk story is. Since this thing I just finished is, without a doubt, a trunk story.
I was very confused by the term when I first started submitting stories to magazines. There are quite a few that say something to the effect of, "And don't send us your trunk stories" actually in their guidelines. I figured that if I didn't know what a trunk story actually was, I probably shouldn't worry about it.
Well, yes and no.
My little writerlings, the definition isn't really a set one, so here's how I think of it. Trunk stories are stories you know aren't good. Stories that don't quite work and you can't seem to fix. Stories you no longer believe in. Stories that taught you something valuable about the writing process but have no outer redeeming value. Stories that are effectively a waste of an editor's time.
I know this is a weird place for us as writers. We are always and forever our own worst, nastiest critics. But at the same time, you still need to believe in the stories you're trying to sell. You need to believe that they are the best you have to offer, and they are worth fighting for and taking rejection after rejection over. If you find yourself thinking, "Well this story is crap but maybe publication X will still give me a penny per word for it," stop. It's a trunk story.
There's no shame in having trunk stories. I have a sub-folder in my writing file literally titled, "The Trunk of Awfulness." That's where all my bad stories go. It's also the place for stories that I think are all right, but not something I believe in enough to keep throwing them at editors.
I think part of the process of writing and writing a lot is learning to recognize earlier when one of your stories is just not going to work. It sucks a bit when you've invested a lot of time in something and then realize that it's terrible.
But also think of it this way - every story you write teaches you something. And if you're writing terrible stories, it also means that you're going to write good ones too. I suggest that, like your rejections, you consider your trunk stories a point of pride. It means you're working damn hard.
The difference for me is that normally, when I hit a story that I just start hating, I stop writing it. Then delete what little I have written, often while doing my best Bela Lugosi laugh. Unfortunately, since right now I'm the Clarion Write-a-thon's bitch and I'm on a strict timetable, that wasn't really an option. So even though I'd decided that this story and I weren't going to be friends by about word 1500, I kept plugging away at it because I was past the point of no return. I needed to finish this thing or risk missing my goals.
Writing something awful that you hate is a uniquely bad experience, I think. I discovered all new levels of procrastination, trying to avoid engaging with this story. I eventually had to unplug my router so that I'd have to focus on the task of just ripping the bandaid off and getting it done.
This all, of course, segues nicely into the question what the heck a trunk story is. Since this thing I just finished is, without a doubt, a trunk story.
I was very confused by the term when I first started submitting stories to magazines. There are quite a few that say something to the effect of, "And don't send us your trunk stories" actually in their guidelines. I figured that if I didn't know what a trunk story actually was, I probably shouldn't worry about it.
Well, yes and no.
My little writerlings, the definition isn't really a set one, so here's how I think of it. Trunk stories are stories you know aren't good. Stories that don't quite work and you can't seem to fix. Stories you no longer believe in. Stories that taught you something valuable about the writing process but have no outer redeeming value. Stories that are effectively a waste of an editor's time.
I know this is a weird place for us as writers. We are always and forever our own worst, nastiest critics. But at the same time, you still need to believe in the stories you're trying to sell. You need to believe that they are the best you have to offer, and they are worth fighting for and taking rejection after rejection over. If you find yourself thinking, "Well this story is crap but maybe publication X will still give me a penny per word for it," stop. It's a trunk story.
There's no shame in having trunk stories. I have a sub-folder in my writing file literally titled, "The Trunk of Awfulness." That's where all my bad stories go. It's also the place for stories that I think are all right, but not something I believe in enough to keep throwing them at editors.
I think part of the process of writing and writing a lot is learning to recognize earlier when one of your stories is just not going to work. It sucks a bit when you've invested a lot of time in something and then realize that it's terrible.
But also think of it this way - every story you write teaches you something. And if you're writing terrible stories, it also means that you're going to write good ones too. I suggest that, like your rejections, you consider your trunk stories a point of pride. It means you're working damn hard.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Submitting short stories (part 2/2)
Continuing on from yesterday, let's talk more on with the nuts and bolts of submitting short stories to magazines/anthologies.
The Cover Letter
I feel like that heading should come with a dramatic flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. This is the number one thing that scared the hell out of me when I was starting out. It's the first thing people see before they ever get to your story.
Trust me, it's not worth the angst. This is a cover letter. It's not a query letter, like you'd use to try to convince an agent that your novel is amazing and they should totally invest the time reading it. With cover letters, you want it simple, short, and to the point.
First, remember how yesterday I told you to read the submission guidelines? Start there. If there's something in particular the editors want in the cover letter they will tell you. (eg: a short biography, etc.) Otherwise, this is all you need: the title of your story, its length, your relevant publication credits, and courtesy. I'm not going to claim I'm an expert at cover letters, but I'm guessing I've managed to do something right since I've sold some stories. Here's an example of a cover letter from me:
Don't tell the editor at length that you're a new writer and have no publishing credits. If you don't have any listed, it's obvious enough and you shouldn't belabor the point. It's okay to be new, everyone was at one point. Don't describe your story or even highlight the genre of it in the cover letter unless the submission guidelines tell you otherwise. Most editors/slushpile readers like to go in to a story without preconceptions. Help them out with that. Don't apologize to the editor about the quality of the story, point out that you have no self-confidence, or defensively state that your friends totally liked the story.
I mention all of the above sins, mind you, because at some point I've committed them myself and had some kind editor (BLESS THEM) ask very sweetly if I would please knock it the heck off. I made the mistakes so you don't have to!
Wait.
After the angst of the cover letter and the terrifying, stomach-churning moment where you send the e-mail or click the submit button, this is the worst part. You have to wait for what is often a long (3-6 months or more!) time and can really just look forward to a rejection e-mail, likely a form letter, at the end of it. It sucks.
Don't query about your story unless you've waited long enough. Period. The submission guidelines (remember those?) will normally tell you at what point you ought to query to make sure your submission didn't get lost. If not stated, you should wait at least 90 days.
So you know what you do, while you're waiting? Write more stories. Edit them. Submit them.
I describe it as playing story ping-pong, where every time one is rejected I bounce it back out to another potential market. (Sometimes with a little additional polishing if someone has been kind enough to send a note along with the rejections.) Right now, I have thirteen stories out and waiting for rejection or the much, much more rare acceptance. And I'm writing more.
Because we're writers. It's what we do, right?
Upon rejection:
I have a lot more to say about getting rejected, stuff that deserves its own blog post, but really quick: DO NOT ARGUE WITH AN EDITOR. EVER. EVER. EVEREVEREVER.
You might think your art is the best thing ever. No one is required to agree. And the last thing you want is to gain a reputation as someone who is combative, nasty, or just plain crazy. You want more chances to catch the attention of these editors, since maybe they'll like another story of yours. You don't want a permanent place on someone's spam filter.
Also, if someone sends you a nice note along with a rejection - and it does happen! - take it as the enormous complement it is. Most editors are incredibly busy, and even a sentence or two, particularly if it's advice about your story, is a real gift. That said? Don't send them a note back. They're busy. Their inboxes are full. Don't clutter them up.
Finally, unless the submission guidelines (those things again!) say re-submissions are okay, they're not. It doesn't matter how much you've edited and re-grooved a story, you get one chance per market and you're done. The only exception to this rule (other than the submission guidelines) is if the editor e-mails you specifically to ask you to re-sub the story once you've done some editing.
Writers of the Future
If you're a new writer in scifi/fantasy, always have a story entered in the current quarter of WotF. There are four quarters a year so four stories you can enter to a massive contest with a huge potential prize and no entry fee. I don't enter other contests on principle because I'm not willing to put out the entry fee; it's a good way to lose money. But WotF is a zero-risk game; you have nothing to lose (except 3-6 months of your story waiting for judging, which is really no worse than submitting to, say, Intergalactic Medicine Show) and potentially a lot to gain in terms of monetary prize and fame.
Winning WotF is a major feather for the cap of any non-professional or semi-professional writer. The contest is also limited to non-pro and semi-pro writers, which means you are competing with people like yourself. You don't have to worry about 900 pound gorillas of writerly prowess like Neil Gaiman accidentally stepping on you. (Or tiny mice like me, for that matter.)
So do it. Do it every quarter until you've sold three stories at pro-rate and can no longer enter.
Questions? This obviously doesn't cover everything.
The Cover Letter
I feel like that heading should come with a dramatic flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. This is the number one thing that scared the hell out of me when I was starting out. It's the first thing people see before they ever get to your story.
Trust me, it's not worth the angst. This is a cover letter. It's not a query letter, like you'd use to try to convince an agent that your novel is amazing and they should totally invest the time reading it. With cover letters, you want it simple, short, and to the point.
First, remember how yesterday I told you to read the submission guidelines? Start there. If there's something in particular the editors want in the cover letter they will tell you. (eg: a short biography, etc.) Otherwise, this is all you need: the title of your story, its length, your relevant publication credits, and courtesy. I'm not going to claim I'm an expert at cover letters, but I'm guessing I've managed to do something right since I've sold some stories. Here's an example of a cover letter from me:
Thank you for considering my story, "Most awesomely Mind-Blowing Story Ever." It's about XXXX words long. I'm an associate member of the SFWA and part of the Northern Colorado Writers Workshop. I've published:
"Entangled" in Specutopia issue #1 (July 2012)
"Comes the Huntsman" in Strange Horizons (July 2, 2012)
"The Jade Tiger" in Penumbra (March 2012)
"Transportation" in Anotherealm (September 2011)
"The Falling Star" in Aurora Wolf's New Fairy Tales Anthology
"The Book of Autumn" in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #49
Thank you and I hope that you enjoy reading my story!Exciting, I know. But the point is, your story is supposed to be exciting and interesting. Your cover letter is supposed to convey the absolute minimum of necessary information so that you're not wasting the time of someone who you'd much rather have reading your story.
Don't tell the editor at length that you're a new writer and have no publishing credits. If you don't have any listed, it's obvious enough and you shouldn't belabor the point. It's okay to be new, everyone was at one point. Don't describe your story or even highlight the genre of it in the cover letter unless the submission guidelines tell you otherwise. Most editors/slushpile readers like to go in to a story without preconceptions. Help them out with that. Don't apologize to the editor about the quality of the story, point out that you have no self-confidence, or defensively state that your friends totally liked the story.
I mention all of the above sins, mind you, because at some point I've committed them myself and had some kind editor (BLESS THEM) ask very sweetly if I would please knock it the heck off. I made the mistakes so you don't have to!
Wait.
After the angst of the cover letter and the terrifying, stomach-churning moment where you send the e-mail or click the submit button, this is the worst part. You have to wait for what is often a long (3-6 months or more!) time and can really just look forward to a rejection e-mail, likely a form letter, at the end of it. It sucks.
Don't query about your story unless you've waited long enough. Period. The submission guidelines (remember those?) will normally tell you at what point you ought to query to make sure your submission didn't get lost. If not stated, you should wait at least 90 days.
So you know what you do, while you're waiting? Write more stories. Edit them. Submit them.
I describe it as playing story ping-pong, where every time one is rejected I bounce it back out to another potential market. (Sometimes with a little additional polishing if someone has been kind enough to send a note along with the rejections.) Right now, I have thirteen stories out and waiting for rejection or the much, much more rare acceptance. And I'm writing more.
Because we're writers. It's what we do, right?
Upon rejection:
I have a lot more to say about getting rejected, stuff that deserves its own blog post, but really quick: DO NOT ARGUE WITH AN EDITOR. EVER. EVER. EVEREVEREVER.
You might think your art is the best thing ever. No one is required to agree. And the last thing you want is to gain a reputation as someone who is combative, nasty, or just plain crazy. You want more chances to catch the attention of these editors, since maybe they'll like another story of yours. You don't want a permanent place on someone's spam filter.
Also, if someone sends you a nice note along with a rejection - and it does happen! - take it as the enormous complement it is. Most editors are incredibly busy, and even a sentence or two, particularly if it's advice about your story, is a real gift. That said? Don't send them a note back. They're busy. Their inboxes are full. Don't clutter them up.
Finally, unless the submission guidelines (those things again!) say re-submissions are okay, they're not. It doesn't matter how much you've edited and re-grooved a story, you get one chance per market and you're done. The only exception to this rule (other than the submission guidelines) is if the editor e-mails you specifically to ask you to re-sub the story once you've done some editing.
Writers of the Future
If you're a new writer in scifi/fantasy, always have a story entered in the current quarter of WotF. There are four quarters a year so four stories you can enter to a massive contest with a huge potential prize and no entry fee. I don't enter other contests on principle because I'm not willing to put out the entry fee; it's a good way to lose money. But WotF is a zero-risk game; you have nothing to lose (except 3-6 months of your story waiting for judging, which is really no worse than submitting to, say, Intergalactic Medicine Show) and potentially a lot to gain in terms of monetary prize and fame.
Winning WotF is a major feather for the cap of any non-professional or semi-professional writer. The contest is also limited to non-pro and semi-pro writers, which means you are competing with people like yourself. You don't have to worry about 900 pound gorillas of writerly prowess like Neil Gaiman accidentally stepping on you. (Or tiny mice like me, for that matter.)
So do it. Do it every quarter until you've sold three stories at pro-rate and can no longer enter.
Questions? This obviously doesn't cover everything.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Submitting short stories (part 1/2)
A friend of mine asked me for advice when it comes to submitting short stories for publication. Which actually surprised me a little at first, but hey. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm dropping things off my cover letter publication list to keep it down to six items, so I guess I must be doing something right on occasion.
This is not meant to be exhaustive (please ask questions if there's something I haven't covered) and neither is this meant to be a guide about writing. Here, we're starting with the assumption that you have a short story that you've polished to a golden shine, which you believe in enough to fight for it and put up with rejections.
Nuts and bolts all the way, baby.
So let's imagine: you have your golden, shiny story. You want to knock the socks off of an editor with the emotional power of your art, and as a result be showered with dirty handfuls (hah!) of cash. Where do you start?
Pick a market.
I use Ralan.com and Duotrope for the most part to locate markets, though I have other ways now. These sites are good places to start, however. Duotrope is lovely because it's searchable, and has parameters like payscale, genre, sub-genre (though this is of limited use at times), and story length. Ralan is for scifi/fantasy/horror in particular. I like it for its list of open anthologies.
So what is your story? Scifi? Fantasy? Horror? Dark fantasy? You need to have this figured out before you can even really start picking and choosing; sending a magazine a story in a genre they aren't interested in will get you a guaranteed rejection. Once you've decided that you're, say, scifi, you can do a search in Duotrope for markets that publish that genre, and additionally tell it what length and payscale you're looking for. (I don't normally bother with subgenre, myself.) Hopefully you already read some of the publications on the list that comes up, so you have an idea of what kind of stories they publish. Otherwise, when you think you might want to try a market, read at least a few of their stories first. This helps you get an idea of the general type of stories the editor likes, though that certainly doesn't mean they want carbon copies of their current offerings.
The other thing you should think about is payscale. I advocate the principle of go big or go home. Start with the pro-paying markets and then work your way down to semi-pro, token, and free. If you aren't confident that your story is worth $.05 per word, you'd better keep working on it until it is. It's hard to get into even free markets. You need to have your best work, work you are willing to set in front of any editor without shame.
Read the submission guidelines.
Read the submission guidelines.
The submission guidelines? Read them.
No, really. Read the submission guidelines.
The guidelines will tell you everything you need to know about submitting to the market. If they want your manuscript formatted a particular way, do it. No matter how magically delicious your story is, if you don't bother to format it properly, it'll get tossed because you couldn't be bothered to read the guidelines. (Hint: most places use a variation of William Shunn's excellent format, so I recommend starting out having your manuscript formatted like this. The only major difference I've seen is that italics are normally okay to be left as italics instead of underlined.)
The guidelines also tell you what the editors want, story wise. They tell you what the word count limits are. They tell you how to send the MS (file attachment? plaint text in email? electronic submission form?). The guidelines are the source of all manner of useful information. Read them. Love them. Read them again. Live by them.
Do not submit your story to more than one place at a time.
This technically fits under "read the submission guidelines" but I feel it's important enough to need its own section. Unless a market specifically says "simultaneous submissions okay," do not do it. Period. And if one market is okay with simultaneous submissions, the other markets you send your story to had better be as well.
I know it's frustrating. A lot of markets can take 3-6 months to get back to you, or more. The waiting sucks. But too bad. You have to wait for one market to pass one your story before you send it to another. It's the height of rudeness to withdraw stories once submitted because you've gotten them picked up elsewhere, and don't think editors don't talk to each other, or don't have memories when someone annoys them. I'm not guaranteeing this would be a permanent black mark in your record, so to speak, but it's just really not worth risking it. Be polite.
Okay, this is running kind of long, so I will continue on tomorrow.
This is not meant to be exhaustive (please ask questions if there's something I haven't covered) and neither is this meant to be a guide about writing. Here, we're starting with the assumption that you have a short story that you've polished to a golden shine, which you believe in enough to fight for it and put up with rejections.
Nuts and bolts all the way, baby.
So let's imagine: you have your golden, shiny story. You want to knock the socks off of an editor with the emotional power of your art, and as a result be showered with dirty handfuls (hah!) of cash. Where do you start?
Pick a market.
I use Ralan.com and Duotrope for the most part to locate markets, though I have other ways now. These sites are good places to start, however. Duotrope is lovely because it's searchable, and has parameters like payscale, genre, sub-genre (though this is of limited use at times), and story length. Ralan is for scifi/fantasy/horror in particular. I like it for its list of open anthologies.
So what is your story? Scifi? Fantasy? Horror? Dark fantasy? You need to have this figured out before you can even really start picking and choosing; sending a magazine a story in a genre they aren't interested in will get you a guaranteed rejection. Once you've decided that you're, say, scifi, you can do a search in Duotrope for markets that publish that genre, and additionally tell it what length and payscale you're looking for. (I don't normally bother with subgenre, myself.) Hopefully you already read some of the publications on the list that comes up, so you have an idea of what kind of stories they publish. Otherwise, when you think you might want to try a market, read at least a few of their stories first. This helps you get an idea of the general type of stories the editor likes, though that certainly doesn't mean they want carbon copies of their current offerings.
The other thing you should think about is payscale. I advocate the principle of go big or go home. Start with the pro-paying markets and then work your way down to semi-pro, token, and free. If you aren't confident that your story is worth $.05 per word, you'd better keep working on it until it is. It's hard to get into even free markets. You need to have your best work, work you are willing to set in front of any editor without shame.
Read the submission guidelines.
Read the submission guidelines.
The submission guidelines? Read them.
No, really. Read the submission guidelines.
The guidelines will tell you everything you need to know about submitting to the market. If they want your manuscript formatted a particular way, do it. No matter how magically delicious your story is, if you don't bother to format it properly, it'll get tossed because you couldn't be bothered to read the guidelines. (Hint: most places use a variation of William Shunn's excellent format, so I recommend starting out having your manuscript formatted like this. The only major difference I've seen is that italics are normally okay to be left as italics instead of underlined.)
The guidelines also tell you what the editors want, story wise. They tell you what the word count limits are. They tell you how to send the MS (file attachment? plaint text in email? electronic submission form?). The guidelines are the source of all manner of useful information. Read them. Love them. Read them again. Live by them.
Do not submit your story to more than one place at a time.
This technically fits under "read the submission guidelines" but I feel it's important enough to need its own section. Unless a market specifically says "simultaneous submissions okay," do not do it. Period. And if one market is okay with simultaneous submissions, the other markets you send your story to had better be as well.
I know it's frustrating. A lot of markets can take 3-6 months to get back to you, or more. The waiting sucks. But too bad. You have to wait for one market to pass one your story before you send it to another. It's the height of rudeness to withdraw stories once submitted because you've gotten them picked up elsewhere, and don't think editors don't talk to each other, or don't have memories when someone annoys them. I'm not guaranteeing this would be a permanent black mark in your record, so to speak, but it's just really not worth risking it. Be polite.
Okay, this is running kind of long, so I will continue on tomorrow.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Read me in Specutopia issue one!
The first ever issue of Specutopia is now online! Please go check it out and pick up a copy. I've got a story in there of course - Entangled. Unfortunately, it's not one of the stories that will be available as a free read online, but I assure you the magazine is well worth the cost. And not just because I'm in it! I got a copy as part of my author payment and I really enjoyed reading the other stories.
I wrote Entangled about two years ago for the short story competition for Aussiecon. The story was much shorter and less complete then, but still made it to semifinals, of which I'm very proud. It also got an honorable mention for 2011 Quarter 2 of Writers of the Future.
It's taken a bit of traveling, but I'm really glad this story finally has a home, and a good (shiny and new!) one at that.
Also in writing news, I just finished the rough draft of my third short story for the Clarion Write-a-thon. This one is a hot mess of a story right now since I didn't have a clear plan starting out, but I think I'll be able to edit it into something I can be proud of once the write-a-thon is over. If you want a peek at the excerpt (and the awful title) you can see it at the blog for my team.
This puts me at halfway to my writing goal, and right on time, too! I'm also just two sponsors short of my ten sponsor goal, so please consider throwing a little bit of money in the ring! Remember, you have the chance of winning naming rights to a character in one of my awesome steam punk short stories that will later be published by Musa.
I wrote Entangled about two years ago for the short story competition for Aussiecon. The story was much shorter and less complete then, but still made it to semifinals, of which I'm very proud. It also got an honorable mention for 2011 Quarter 2 of Writers of the Future.
It's taken a bit of traveling, but I'm really glad this story finally has a home, and a good (shiny and new!) one at that.
Also in writing news, I just finished the rough draft of my third short story for the Clarion Write-a-thon. This one is a hot mess of a story right now since I didn't have a clear plan starting out, but I think I'll be able to edit it into something I can be proud of once the write-a-thon is over. If you want a peek at the excerpt (and the awful title) you can see it at the blog for my team.
This puts me at halfway to my writing goal, and right on time, too! I'm also just two sponsors short of my ten sponsor goal, so please consider throwing a little bit of money in the ring! Remember, you have the chance of winning naming rights to a character in one of my awesome steam punk short stories that will later be published by Musa.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Donation made!
As I said before, I wrote Comes the Huntsman as a gift, and as such didn't feel quite comfortable keeping the payment for it. I e-mailed Mr. Hiddleston's publicist and asked if there was a charity I ought to send it to. He told me that Mr. Hiddleston supports UNICEF, which helps children all across the world.
So:
I had a horrible day today. This makes it just a bit better.
So:
=
I had a horrible day today. This makes it just a bit better.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
I want YOU to be the underwire in my authorbra.
Well, it sounded funny at one in the morning. What could possibly go wrong?
But seriously, I would love your support. I'm now 1/3 of the way through my self-imposed Clarion write-a-thon torture and chugging right along. I've finally set myself a donor goal, and it's not for some amount of money - I just want ten (or more) supporters. I don't care if the pledge is a nickel a story. I want - nay, NEED - to be well supported! Cross my heart!
Like a... well, you get it.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (she says in a sad parody of deep announcer voice guy.)
Ever wanted to take part in a steampunk adventure which may or may not include zombies? I mean, who doesn't? And who wouldn't want to do that while simultaneously supporting an amazing scifi/fantasy writing workshop?
I'll be writing at least four more stories about Captain Ramos and her pirate crew in 2013. If you donate to the write-a-thon cause, no matter the amount, I'll throw your name in my awesome kangaroo leather hat. At the end of the write-a-thon, I'll draw a name from the hat, and if you're the winner, you'll get naming rights (within reason[1]) to a character in one of these steampunk pirate adventures. Want to be a pirate? A drooling corpse? One of the lawmen hot on the trail of the notorious Captain Ramos? We'll get it figured out.
Sound awesome? Want your name in the hat? (Of course you do.) Head over to my write-a-thon page and pledge your support!
Also, if you're curious about my progress thus far, here are my two reports from the team blog:
Report one: Eyes Burning With Smoke
Report two: Significant Figures
1 - No, I am not going to name one of the characters IP Freely, or Mike Rotch, or name a zombie after your least favorite politician no matter how much I agree with you about them being a giant turd bag. Of course, I know everyone who reads this is way too mature for those kinds of shenanigans, but I figured I ought to throw that out there just in case someone has had one too many espresso shots today.
But seriously, I would love your support. I'm now 1/3 of the way through my self-imposed Clarion write-a-thon torture and chugging right along. I've finally set myself a donor goal, and it's not for some amount of money - I just want ten (or more) supporters. I don't care if the pledge is a nickel a story. I want - nay, NEED - to be well supported! Cross my heart!
Like a... well, you get it.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (she says in a sad parody of deep announcer voice guy.)
Ever wanted to take part in a steampunk adventure which may or may not include zombies? I mean, who doesn't? And who wouldn't want to do that while simultaneously supporting an amazing scifi/fantasy writing workshop?
I'll be writing at least four more stories about Captain Ramos and her pirate crew in 2013. If you donate to the write-a-thon cause, no matter the amount, I'll throw your name in my awesome kangaroo leather hat. At the end of the write-a-thon, I'll draw a name from the hat, and if you're the winner, you'll get naming rights (within reason[1]) to a character in one of these steampunk pirate adventures. Want to be a pirate? A drooling corpse? One of the lawmen hot on the trail of the notorious Captain Ramos? We'll get it figured out.
Sound awesome? Want your name in the hat? (Of course you do.) Head over to my write-a-thon page and pledge your support!
Also, if you're curious about my progress thus far, here are my two reports from the team blog:
Report one: Eyes Burning With Smoke
Report two: Significant Figures
1 - No, I am not going to name one of the characters IP Freely, or Mike Rotch, or name a zombie after your least favorite politician no matter how much I agree with you about them being a giant turd bag. Of course, I know everyone who reads this is way too mature for those kinds of shenanigans, but I figured I ought to throw that out there just in case someone has had one too many espresso shots today.
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