My homework for the editing class is not going well.  I got up to about chapter 8 by last night. I was supposed to get the novel read and commented on in two days.  Yeah...

Maybe back in the old days when I didn't have a full-time job, MAYBE that could have happened.  But I work in Seattle, I have a commute and I have a writer's group that I need to submit my critiques for.  I also am supposed to write a short story and submit one this week.  Needless to say, I have NOT written a story so far this week. So far, this experiement isn't working.

So what am I going to do? Well, I'll do the class materials as best I can. I'll try to fit in my read-through and editing around other things. But those other things: The Wordslingers critiques, the write 1, submit 1, job, family...those all come first.  I'm not going to drop the class, heavens no, but I'm not going to go nuts trying to keep with homework assignments that seem to think I'm a full-time student.

Today and tomorrow I have homework, for the first time in decades.  I am supposed to read through my novel and mark things that need fixing and things that I like.  

That sound you just heard is hysterical laughter.

It's not the length that's the problem, I can read a 50k novel in two days, done it before.  It's the idea that I can mark things that need fixing and things that I like in a two day period.  Sorry...hang on.

Man, that hysterical laughter is hard on the gut.

Anyway, I'll give it a shot. I'm taking the class, paying for it, trying to learn.  But I have misgivings.  See, when I start reading my own work and try fixing it, things bog down, my brain overheats and I usually get disgusted and have to walk away.  (thought I do tend to get wrapped up in Smooth Running, which causes it's own editing problems)  Every writer thinks their work stinks, the ones who don't...they mostly tend to be writers that everyone else thinks their writing stinks.

Maybe there's some mental trick, where I can convince myself that what I'm reading was written by someone else. I hope so, because I don't see any other way this is going to get done.  

Not to mention work, coding study (I have an interview at Amazon coming up and I need to brush up on my C#), critiques to write, IM gaming on Thursday.  

This is going to be a tough week.

Time for more accountability posts.  I decided to do the 'write 1, sub 1' challenge...though in true slacker fashion, I haven't signed up on the web site. Ah well, it's more important to do it than to sign up on some site, right?  So...did I?  Well, yes and no.

To my surprise, I didn't get a short story finished this week but I did submit one for publication. (as a side note, boy, it's hard to find pro fantasy short story markets)  I sent off 'A Reaping' to Spinetingler.  We'll see what happens.

So what went wrong?  Writing is usually the easy part. Heck, I banged out 28 short stories in 30 days last year.  What happened this week?  Well, two culprits: Star Wars The Old Republic and a general malaise.  Basically, I didn't manage distractions and when I did have my hinder in the Throne of Writing(tm), I didn't always write.  Sometimes I edited. Sometimes I did other writing work, but I didn't stay focused on my short story and push on through. Not to say the short story I was working on was perfect. I think that's why I paused at about 3~4k words.  The story I'm writing might be too big for a short story.  But I'll see what I can do tonight.

We are moving locations for the Cloud City Wordslingers for a couple months, to accomotate the editing class.  Three of my fellow Wordslingers are attending with me: Andrew Williams, Folly Blaine and Mila.  I'd like to get more of us attending classes together, we'll see how schedules and money work out for people. I'd like to start setting up some kind of scholarship fund for classes to help out Wordslingers.  Money's tight as it, is though. We'll see what happens in the next couple months.

I also had my first Editing class at the North Annex of Bellevue College. Nice place, not hard to find.  The class was good, too but its going to be a bigger time commitment than expected.  The good part of this is I expect to have The Mageborn Mechanic in pretty good shape for submission by the end of this, the bad part is trying to find time for my other writing and editing. Ah well, it's a challenge and it's good to stretch myself. Pressure seems to make me more productive.

That's bad news for my Star Wars toons.

In one of those odd juxtapositions of the internet, one blog I follow was writing about how to craft a truly evil overlord* who kills to create his vision of Utopia and the other was writing about how much he wanted to read about how a charcter rose to slaughter for his vision of utopia**. Sam Sykes, the hardest-working fantasy prodigy out there, was blogging in response to another author*** who was decrying moral relativism in fiction.  Far as I can tell, Sam was standing up for moral relativism****.  If he is, I think he's wrong and I'll try to explain why.

Sam was taking issue with Bryan's comment on how he thought fantasy writers should do 'better' than to write nihilistic, morally ambigious fiction.  Sam didn't think it was possible to say what 'better' is, in other words, that there was no basic morality that was not open to interpretation and debate.  I think there are, though. I think there are basic virtues that don't change and that a big part of fiction is exploring them, bouncing off them, subverting them, maybe. 

But there are there, the baseline of what is considered 'good'.  There has to be, otherwise we are adrift, as writers and possibly as people. But let's focus on just the writing. Let's start with the big one, killing.  Violence and the threat of violence is a big part of drama, fiction and fantasy especially.  Those swords characters wear aren't just for show, they are tools for killing.  A big part of any good story should be exploring questions like, when is it ok to kill? When is it right? When is it just?  We have to know that so we can say when killing someone is unjust.  Killing to defend yourself and your family is the morally right thing to do.  How about killing for an ideal?  Does the ideal matter?  What about killing to bring about Utopia?  What if the ideal is just 'I am awesome and everyone should listen to me'?  Now we're getting into the Evil Overlord territory but you can find historical paralells to that mindset, you can even find contemporary ones.

Ok, let's go small. Lying.  Telling the truth is a virture, an impartial one. Why?  Because of trust. If you can't trust anyone to do what they say, you can't trust them at all. Society doesn't work.  It's rare, but there are small, disfunctional ethic groups that don't have truth telling as a virtue.  They are unable to organize and unable to get along with their neighbors because they lie.  But lying is something everyone does, of course, a lie can be virtuous, as anyone who hid Jew during the 1930's and 40's can prove.  But that basic morality is there.

So, storytelling.  If we tell a story about someone who lies at random, who kills for a bad motivation, it doesn't resonate.  Readers may just say, "I didn't like this" or "It didn't work for me" but what they're saying is that they don't identify with the character.  Stories like this might get published, they might even be celebrated.  There is shock value in 'bad' characters, an attraction to the dark there.  But they won't persist, I feel.  

Tolkien's work endures because it touches on eternal verities, the struggle between good and evil, not just in cultures, but in the hearts of every person.  Choosing to do what is right, what is selfless, even and especially when it's hard is what makes a hero.  Who's going to remember R. Scott Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" series ten years from now? Fifty years from now?  The jury is still out on George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series. It is as good as fantasy writing gets but I know a lot of readers who have given up or have at least stopped caring about the series.  Why? Because virtue is not rewarded.  The good suffer, evil florishes and the heroes keep getting killed, maimed and tortured.

Now, all that said, it doesn't mean you need to turn out cookie-cutter stories.  It doesn't mean that your value system in your book needs to be Judiasm or Christianity or Islam, word for word.  If you want it to be, and you're up front about it, fine.  If you want to do something else, fine. Write the stories you want to read. But don't forget that there are things that are baseline values for a reason.  There are storytelling conventions and they've become conventions for a reason. And a writer ignores that at their peril.


*http://accordingtohoyt.com/2012/01/05/being-the-evil-overlord/
**http://samsykes.com/2012/01/girls-gone-moral/
***  Bryan Thomas Schmidt http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2012/01/the-problem-with-moral-abiguity-in-fiction/
****(correct me if I'm wrong, Sam, but I read your post over a few times and that seems to be what you're saying)

I had a good writing night last night.  Thanks to the frelling bus, I got home late but I didn't waste too much time on video games. (It helps not logging on to SWTOR)  Once I started writing, things went pretty well. One scene didn't play out the way I had intended but I may go back and tweak it, some. 

I don't know how long this story is going to be. I had the beginning and the ending planned out, which is a good thing, but the concept is enough to make a decent novel or novella.  Hopefully I can keep to a few key scenes and hustle things along.  It's more of an idea story, which is good for sci-fi.  We'll see how things turn out, I'm guessing this will land at around 6k words but we'll see.

It's IM gaming night tonight. Hopefully my heart will be in it, I'm still a little achy from Shadow's death.  Maybe some kittens would help. Still weighing the pros and cons of new pets so soon after the loss of one I had for so long.  More cons than pros but folks say it's the best way to get over the loss of a pet.

Saturday is the first day of a novel editing class I'm taking. If there's one area I need some tutelage in, it's editing, so I have high hopes.  One good sign, the textbook the teacher is using is Donald Maas' Writing the Breakout Novel', which I have and highly respect.  I'll keep you posted on anything I learn.

I got another nice rejection letter, this time from Janet Hutchings over at Ellery Queen.  It was a short little 1500 word murder mystery. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. It's too long for flash fictions (and no, it won't squash. I tried, got about 200 words out and that was it) and it's too short for some of the other markets. It doesn't have any supernatural elements and I'm loathe to inject any.  Maybe I will see if it can grow, the ending was rather abrupt and sad.  A few more twists and complications and I might be able to find a home for it.

In a way, getting close to a sale is almost as satisfying. Oh it doesn't pad the checkbook and it doesn't count as an all-important pro sale.  But someone read it, thought about it, weighted it.  That means something.  Good things, I hope.  The rejection letters that come quickly and which don't reference the work at all, those are the ones I suspect didn't hook the editor or slush reader.  But then, folks like different things. I've had one story rejected without comment by one market and got a personalized rejection from another. I don't know if that means anything about the story about the the editors that read it.

Still, this was just the encouragement I needed.  I'm trying to crack the opening of Smooth Running (I'm convinced the first chapter isn't 'hooky' enough) and it's been hard going.  I'm trying a re-write, taking the original scene side by side with the new crack at it.  It's frustrating because I feel the novel works, it just needs a better ending and a stronger beginning.  Ah well, the writer's life.

I'm going to try the "Write 1, Submit 1" challenge this year. One of my fellow Wordslingers* is doing it. The point is to write and submit a short story each week.  I know I CAN do that, last year's "30 short stories in 30 days" challenge taught me that.  It's just a question of comitting to it and not letting myself get distracted.  So, tonight, I will sit my hinder in the Throne of Writing(tm) and let one of the stories bubbling inside my head get out and onto the page. Then, I'll see if I can find a home for the story that just got rejected. I'm close on this one, so close...

This is something I was not looking forward to writing but until I get it out, it'll bottle up whatever's behind it.

My cat Shadow died early on January 1st.  My wife found her dead and stiff in front of the fireplace. She'd been alive a little after midnight but she hadn't lasted until the dawn.  It was horrible watching her slowly die over the course of a few days.  She wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink.  She was so weak.  She could hardly walk, towards the end, she couldn't lie on her belly and instead rolled onto her side and lay like that for hours. She was fourteen.

There were a few things to be grateful for, I guess.  She didn't seem to be in any pain, so far as I could tell. She'd just...given up.  She purred when petted, right up until the end.  The cat that never seemed to care about any of us seemed glad to see us, at the end.  She even jumped up on the bed, a few days before she died.  That was something she rarely did.  She only allowed herself to be petted on her terms.  She loved feet, for some reason, and would rub up against my toes for hours.  Then she'd bolt if you sat forward to stroke her.  She lasted long enough for my friend Seann to come and say goodbye.  We bought her together, back when we were roommates. She always liked Seann a bit more than she did me.  

I buried her in the garden, with a pick and shovel.  It was a lot more work than I expected.  I'm glad. It shouldn't be easy putting someone to rest.  It should be dirty, hard work. Your back should ache. You should get blisters.  The hole is never as big or a deep as you think it should be. But in the end, you stop and put her in the ground. I said 'bye Shadow' and filled in the hole.

My father buried the first cat we had, a Siamese cat named Spunky that I loved dearly.  It must have been a lot for work for him, too.  I never appreciated that gesture he made for us kids but now that I've performed the rite, I do.

Her death did not come as a surprise. She'd be declining for a while.  But I have a hole in my life in the shape of a small cat. And I don't know how to fill it.  Time will take care of that, I'm sure.  For now, I'll read and then write, I have so much to do.  I'll talk more about my writing plans for the new year. But not now. Not today or yesterday.  Tomorrow will come and it won't have a Shadow in it. But it will come, nonetheless.