Thank You

Thanksgiving seems like a great time to thank you, the reader, for stopping by and checking out what's posted here. Bless you.

Day Two!

One thing I've now learned is what a s.l.o.w. writer that I am. We went to a writers workshop today and last night my husband sat down and cranked out about 4,000 words. I have just now managed to wobble over 3,400 on my race to 50,000. Yes, that's right, I've only now crossed the second hurdle. The one I should have been jumping on November 2nd.

Irony? He doesn't really care about being a writer. And before you ask, yes. It was a good 4,000 words.

Yea! Day One!

To get ready for NaNoWriMo I faithfully calculated how many words were necessary to write each day in order to arrive at 50,000 by the end of the month. It's about 1,700. Having finally hit that number it is, by logic, only my first day in NaNoWriMo. Its like starting on a walk and having to say, "No, really, we're going up THAT mountain?"

Oh boy...

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

Off to a blazing start with two paragraphs. About one tenth of the target words for the day. November is going to a long month. Will need to request time off from work...

Once More Into the Breach, My Friends: NaNoWriMo 2009

Not particularly well known for finishing writing projects, I have a similar track record with NaNoWriMo. I sign up, I write a few pages, I say, "eh, whatever" and never move forward.

THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT!

I proclaim to you, my friends, that this year I will write the freaking 50,000 words. I've started plotting and will do the outline soon.

Keep me honest.

Score Another One for Art

Remember when I said that although I'm a better writer than artist I've earned more money with art? Last week I volunteered to do face painting at a small (tiny) local carnival and everyone went ga-ga. There were many recommendations that I work the kids party circuit and try to get into fairs. Having checked out the competition online I would say that I'm around the middle of the pack in quality and could definitely improve with practice. The best part was that it was loads of fun. I only did cheek art and probably spent about five to ten minutes on each one. The idea that I could get paid for that entertains me.

The Reading (Writing?) Rainbow

Reading Justine Larbalestier's post Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't I have to say... wow. Really? In case you don't feel like clicking on the link, the basic point of the essay is that writers perhaps could/should include more ethnic diversity in their writing but if/when they try to do so they are likely to encounter a response from someone of that ethnic background who thinks they didn't get it right.

I'm not here to say that JL is right or wrong. My only feedback for anyone worried about this topic is - develop a more diverse group of friends and then you will accidentally write diversity. Because at heart all writers always write what they know, and trying to do something else will just make you sound forced. If you don't already have friends of color and varying sexual orientations then, seriously, get out more.

That's not to say that you can't write a character from a wildly different background than your own. But it's a good bet that if you decided to write about oh, say, a kid from northern Russia when you're from northern Virginia (USA), that you would spend a good deal of time researching that background and you would come to love that character. Love in the sense of opening your soul to blend with the information from your research and having it become part of you. Then your character will be pure and you will know it. You will know that you didn't set out to offend anyone (should they get offended), you just told the story that your young hero whispered to you.

My favorite quote from the comments is Karen David's stance that a character's race is "just a strand in their identity." That's just the thing, you see. A strand. Inherent in the design of the cloth. That's what my diverse friends are like. How about yours?

Today's Thought

My enthusiasm has been ground to a fine powder that, when mixed with my tears of despair, is used to caulk the crumbling foundation of our management structure.

Any Excuse

I was going over some of my old performance justifications (that's where I write up how I think I did for the year at work) and they demonstrate that I will use any opportunity for a creative writing exercise. This is an excerpt of what I had to say the year I took over a new team:

A metaphor I would use was that I thought I was going to sail a boat. I prepared to sail a boat - studied my sheets, knew my port from my starboard, knew my spring from my neap tides. I was all ready; even though I knew that part of the challenge was that I would be going into the situation blindfolded. Then I got there and it turned out we weren’t sailing. Blindfolded, I wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into. We were definitely still on land, I could hear a lot of animals around (and it was a little smelly), and the place where I was perched was a bit precarious. I figured out that this wasn’t a sailboat that I could captain, but where was I? Up on a cow pony and we were out herding in the rough country. Well, dang, I know how to do this (maybe not well, but I know the basics). So once I got that figured out everything started to go a lot smoother. I stopped shouting “Cast off!” at the cattle, stopped demanding that the cowboys hoist a mainsheet… basically stopped acting like an inappropriate idiot.

Capitalizing on Talents

If you were to ask me I would say that I was a better writer than artist. But it occurred to me today that of the two it has only been art where I've made real cashy money. Part of it may be that because I don't perceive myself as a real artist I am willing to use what small (really, I mean small) talent I have in whatever capacity it serves me. I've mostly done contract craft and textile work. It's not like I've made a LOT of money from art - certainly I've made much, much more selling my soul to The Man - but I've at least made some.

I find that interesting.

It's arguable that I get money from The Man for my writing (all those white papers...), but I think that we can all agree that business reports are to writing what bathroom stall doodles are to art. Can't we? I hope we can agree to that.

I have other talents. Many of them unknown to me until I accidentally tried them out. Some I make money from and others I don't.

What do you consider to be your talents? Do you use them in your work? Do you make money from them? Are you averse to making money from your greatest talents?

(Cross-posted from TTGSiMH because this is my, uh, writing blog...)

So That's What I've Been Doing Wrong

Way back when, in 2002 or so, I pulled out a lot of my writing. Scribbles and scraps, notebooks and looseleaf, printouts and typed pages. (Yes, I've written long enough to have typed pages.) I decided I was going to get SERIOUS. (Well, at least as serious as I ever planned to be. I aspire, in my own words, to be a hack.) I joined the SFF online writers group, put up a fiction website and eventually this blog. I got good feedback, participated in the process, and then I just sort of... stopped.

For me writing is the dream that won't die. My holy grail. Sometimes it seems like the harder I try to focus on it the more difficult it becomes. Then I try to ignore it and little signs and arrows pop up.

While following a backlink on my main blog for a silly post about a nerd test, I found a blog called BlogSchmog to poke around in. Lo and behold, he had recently posted on creativity. It was a summation of advice on creativity from Gaping Void that he had separated into The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. From the very first point under The Good I felt like I had pulled a big, flopping carp in my boat and I was saying, "Hey, doesn't this fish look familiar?"

3. Put the hours in.

Oh yeah. Right. I was supposed to do that.

So why didn't I?

I'm sure I have all sorts of good excuses. Gotta pay the mortgage. Gotta take care of the pets. Gotta... Gotta... Gotta... I've read from some of my favorite writers that they actually hate writing but, as the saying goes, they love having written. When they have the time they also hide behind a list of gottas to keep from having to sit down at the computer and actually PRODUCE something. (We can't all be Scott Adams and Nora Roberts who keep to their regimented schedules like they were earning merit badges.)

But excuses aren't reasons. Somehow those other writers do find a way to settle down and produce something. They find their motivation.

Sir Alexander Dane: You're just going to have to figure out what it wants. What is its motivation?
Jason Nesmith: It's a rock monster. It doesn't have motivation.
Sir Alexander Dane: See, that's your problem, Jason. You were never serious about the craft.

Of course all of this got me thinking: how can I find my motivation? I recently took the Clifton StrengthsFinder (a nice little write-up of the strengths is at the bottom of this page) which I think illuminates two points for me.

First, we can't all be Scott and Nora (they are probably blessed with a deep rut in the Focus talent) nor should we try to be. I am not blessed with Focus in my top five talents and I would be highly surprised if it made the talent list at all. I think that it is a non-talent which means when I'm pressed to use that approach it morphs into a horrible, ugly weakness. It doesn't matter how much you try to "teach" me to Focus, I just don't get it. Not over the long haul. This is particularly amusing since a good bit of my job requires giving Focus to my organization. Things go along swimmingly until I get distracted. For me Focus is not natural. It is not easy. It requires energy and drains me. Why do I do it? Because someone has to. And my second rated strength is Responsibility. I was the 12-year-old who said to her parents "Someone has to be the adult around here." My catchphrase is, "I'll take care of it."

Second, I need to focus on own my strengths. Obviously, based on the above discussion I would be a much more prolific writer if I had a contract to fulfill or depended on writing to pay the mortgage. This sort of motivation has served me well in "having a job" but certainly doesn't make for rushing off into the unknown.

No solutions, I'm just thinking for now. But I've got to find a way to put the hours in.

Use the Force...

I wish that I liked Orson Scott Card more, really I do. He's a darling of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. I've read some of his books, and even really liked a few of them. My particular favorite was Hart's Hope, and I read all of the Alvin Maker series. (Don't get too excited about the commitment because if they put stories on the back of my corn flakes I would read all of those, too.) I even have his autograph from when he came to our Virginia Festival of the Book. He was an entertaining speaker. But I've never been able to make it past a few pages of Ender's Game. There is a vague but insistent arrogance running under the voice of his work that irritates me.

On my first reading I found that voice very present in his essay "No Faith in This Force", a review of the religious implications of Lucas' films, "Revenge of the Sith" in particular.

Many had obviously memorized all the howlingly bad lines. They began laughing out loud just before the line was said, and applauded at the wretched “emotional” moments in the movie.

But then, walking out of the theater, they fiercely defended the movie against anyone who dared to speak against it. It might be badly written, but it’s their badly written movie.

Thanks, Orson. We love you, too. If we just replace 'movie' with 'book' then you have defined how I feel about all of your Ender's Game fans. There, how does that feel?

He does make some points about moral relativism, but he doesn't follow up with any clear logical or ethical arguments about it. Mostly he seems to be questioning why people (real people) call themselves Jedi. On their Census form, for instance. In conclusion he says:

So if a religion is known to be fictional, trains its exclusive practitioners to be killing machines, and doesn’t actually work in the real world, why do people call themselves Jedi?

Well, gosh. Could it be... no, let me think. Yes, it's true.....

Because we're BIG OLD GEEKS! It makes us laugh! We are entertained! In a time where there are so many disappointments with organized religion it is a way of poking fun! Are there seriously disturbed people who take it more seriously than they should? NO DOUBT! That's true about anything! There are just as many nutball Christians as there are role players or Jedis or Department Store Santas. Every group has it's nuts.

The only positive thing I have to say about Mr. Card's essay is that it is a also a bit of a poke at Scientology. "It’s one thing to put your faith in a religion founded by a real person who claimed divine revelation, but it’s something else entirely to have, as the scripture of your religion, a storyline that you know was made up by a very nonprophetic human being." Take that, Tom Cruise.

Oh, and remind me to claim divine revelation later this week. I'll pencil it in. I didn't realize that I just had to claim divine revelation to be taken seriously as a religious leader. That is different from artistic inspiration how? Wait, no, don't confuse me with the facts.

Mostly, though, I just hope that Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) writes a retort. Wise in the ways of the Force, he is.

Sidhe Walks In Beauty

The Rock Rag, November 2003
Cover Article "Here Sidhe Comes"

by Colin Graham

This interviewer had a chance to sit down with the rock band “Sidhe Walks In Beauty” before the kick-off of the North American tour for their album “Unseelie Court”. In case you’ve been living under a mushroom cap while this British sensation has taken off, Sidhe is pronounced “Shee” and is the Gaelic word for fey or fairy.

I met the three guy, one girl band at New York’s swank Casablanca Hotel. Leanan looked amazing in a little flowing blue number, while the boys Pooka, Spriggan and Boggie were all decked out in black grunge finery. The first thing I asked was, of course, “Why Sidhe?”

Spriggan replied, “Why the [expletive] do you [expletive] think, you [expletive]? We’re [expletive] fey!”

Leanan broke in with her usual charm, “And the band name is a reference to a Lord Byron poem. Since Byron is a personal friend it seemed like a nice tribute.” (When I mentioned that Byron had been dead for some time the band reassured me that he was in fact enjoying time with some friends at a fairie ring in Northern Ireland where time passes slowly and was in quite good health.)

Pooka, who had been glowering at me, spoke up. “We looked at those rock bands tearing up their hotel rooms, luring young people away from their homes to follow them, having sex with everyone within five feet of them, and we thought, what a rip-off! We’ve been acting like that for thousands of years and now some mortal brats are going to come along and make money at it? [Expletive]!”

Of course, over the years there has been the odd fairy to gain popularity in entertainment. Bryan Ferry, the son of a dryad, was a 1980s pop sensation and right now Tina Fey, a nymph, does the news on Saturday Night Live.

When I asked her about this, Leanan mused, “Tina has done a good job of toning down her natural allure. There is a real pressure as a sidhe where you wonder if you can make it without your glamour – if you can just succeed on your own hard work.”

Well, it’s certain that this great band is making it on their own hard work. Check out Sidhe Walks in Beauty coming soon to a town near you!

(c) 2003, Sue London, – November 2003 Bad Fairy Challenge for the Science Fiction Writer's Online Writer's Workshop

No One Ever Told Me...

No one ever told me that science fiction writing was easy. No one except me, of course, and I always go out of my way to prove myself wrong. Two years ago I decided that writing was my chosen profession. All I had to do, after all, was sit in a chair and write, two things I was champion at. I convinced my unwary step-sister to join me in the pursuit of the published word... and the firm squelching of our delusions. It would only take a year, I said benignly, to write our first novel. "A year?" wailed my co-writer. "But, I wanted a sports car next month!" Her enthusiasm and expectations for writing we a bit colored, shall we say.

But, undaunted determination drove us toward our goal. We would have that novel written within a year. Fighting against enormous odds - daily writer's block, our unparalleled talent at finding something better to do, our misunderstanding of literature - we strove for the one thing that really mattered: the money. No snippy artist's integrity here, we were on the scent of monetary gain.

Into the fourth rewrite of the eighth chapter we were seized with a sudden realization. We didn't know how to get "the book" published. With some joy we dashed from our typing room - what once had been known as 'the study' was now considered a chamber of horrors - and ran pell-mell to the library. We pored through books and books (and books) about writing. We begged the librarian to let us stay all night. Not to read, we said, but so that we wouldn't have to stare our typewriter in the face (or the keyboard) again. Our librarian thereafter regarded us as a sort of oddity.

Before that novel was finished, the constant strain was telling on us. We couldn't hold a level gaze against any book. We shielded our eyes from the friendly dictionary and thesaurus. We were ashamed of our ineptitude. We somewhat wished that an alien from one of our plots would come alive and kidnap us, taking us away from the Land of Constant Typing. Our perfectionism made us agonizingly rewrite the chapters "just one more time." We were exhausted, yes, but we could not stop.

I will have to say that in those two years our style has improved considerably (our typing definitely has). Our technique has soared to formerly unknown levels. Grudgingly, I admit that writing can be satisfying. The pay isn't in dollars and cents alone. One word to the amateur, though. If you are thinking of becoming a writer because it won't be a strenuous job ("hey, I think I'll write me somthing and make a few thou"), then think again. You would be better off becoming a marathon runner.

(c) Sue London, 1985

Jot Doggerel Verse With Alacrity

I've been going through my old files which are full of writing crud, including this little piece of doggerel verse. The tempo is fun, but I think the counts are off. I'm sure my brother the English Lit/Poetry guy would freak out. But I like it. Since I was probably 14 when I wrote it I feel like I can cut myself a break....

Astrology

Astrological considerations are many, I can see,
After delving into the depths of this banality.
Whether you were born in the year of the dragon or the rat,
The year of the this or the year of the that.

Where you were born and where you live now,
Your exact time of birth at your former locale.
The positions of the stars and the moon and the sun.
Was there a lunar eclipse? At what time was it done?

The transits of planets between each of your houses,
And the years that typify horses and mouses.
The sign that was at the horizon at birth,
Can somehow affect your overall girth.

And that sign that was setting can also apply,
If you can chart its location far up in the sky.
There's also the lunar affect to be counted,
And various other things as yet to be mounted.

The position of Pluto in its aspect to Saturn,
Trined with Neptune in a peculiar pattern,
Favorable with both Jupiter and Mars,
Though Venus does not quite agree with your stars.

And Mercury is having his quibbles too,
Although his degrees from your sun are really quite few.
This all has a stake in your business relations,
How you treat your best friend, and the family vacations.

And there are also career points as yet to be mentioned,
As your sign could be clumsy although well intentioned.
And you have to decide if your sun or your moon,
Or your ascending sign is your true self illumined.

As all of this has some part in the plan,
Of the stars and their pulls on the creature called man.

8/28/10: This is now an entry in the Poetic License Blog Hop.

Steps I've Taken

I'm approximately half-way through the three years Mark Twain extolls we should try writing to see if it takes (or if chopping wood is what we're meant for).

In the fall of 2003 I pulled together a lot of the writing I had and put it online. I joined the science fiction/fantasy club for a year. I had been on their email list for years and remain on it today. It was fun to review others' writing and have my own reviewed for awhile. But something inside of me insisted that it wasn't my path.

This year I've been working on a tv series with a co-writer so I signed up for IMDBPro and some other screenwriting sites such as Trigger Street. On the fiction/non-fiction side I got the 2005 Writer's Handbook to see what I might be able to place.

Script Buddy

I found a cool scriptwriter's tool called Script Buddy. The simple version is also FREE!!!! The co-writer and I are working on some script ideas and it makes it very simple to share info between us and make updates.

Read the January Romance Online Writing Workshop Editor's Choice Story!

Death Unearthed (check out the first chapter here)
Romantic Thriller, Chapter One, Draft

The Review
The Editors' Choice is chosen from recent submissions that show a
lot of potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident
Editor. One submission per month will receive a detailed review,
meant to be educational for others as well as the author.

DEATH UNEARTHED, Chapter 1, by Sue London

Smooth, polished writing and an engaging heroine pulled me right into this funny, charming first chapter. There were a great many things that I liked about this submission, most notably the strong, clearly established voice of the heroine and the many delicious little comic touches... As far as style is concerned, I really have nothing to criticize. The writing flows, smooth and professional. The dialogue is crisp and natural, and dialogue attribution is beautifully unobtrusive. The author has chosen to write this story in the first person, and I think her choice works well. A light-hearted mystery/romance with an urban, chick-lit feel to it is ideal for first person narration, and I enjoy being inside Casey's head; she's smart, funny and interesting. The author has done a large part of the work already by creating such a likeable heroine.

However, the author should push Casey harder. If there is a problem with this chapter, it is a lack of dramatic tension. Granted, the tone is light, despite the gravity of Casey's colleague's murder, but even so, the arc of the story must put Casey to the test and force her to change and grow, and the first chapter must present the tensions that must be resolved in the book, great and small. I think it falls short of this goal. The tensions resolve too quickly, too easily, and the story sags because of it.

I am curious to see where this goes. My compliments, and good luck.

--Shannon McKenna, author of STANDING IN THE SHADOWS