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A post both late and short

4/12/2011

My apologies once again. Work has been crazy today and for the next week, I don't doubt.

I am planning a review of Larry Brook's book "Story Engineering". It will take a bit of time, though. My thoughts are mixed on the book and though I can't wait to vent about it, I need to be fair and sift the good from the bad.

Last night was spent on taxes and revising a story short story prepatory to sending it out. So I'm counting that against my 30 in 30 goal.

Accountability satisfied, I return to the grindstone. May it make me powerful as Conan.

I have to say it's a wonderful, odd thing that my chief joy after spending hours at work in front of a computer is to get home and spend two hours in front of my computer again. Once is work, the other is a pleasure, even when it's hard.

I love writing.

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Submitted my first short story to Analog

4/11/2011

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I submitted my first short story since about 1993 on Friday. I sent it off to Analog first, we’ll see what they think of it. This is one of the stories that came out of the “30 in 30” challenge I’m working on.

Speaking of, I’m up to 9 stories so far this month, 10 once I get done tonight. Some of them are very not publishable (mostly due to subject matter…what can I say, sometimes inspiration gets kinky) but in the main, I’ve been impressed.

Writing short stories is not like writing novels. Several times I ached to expand the story out (and I may still do that) but I tried to stay within the 2k-5k range. Most periodicals are looking for stories in that range. You have to/get to pay a lot more attention to your sentences and paragraphs, though I’m not sure if I’m writing any better despite that focus. But, on with the theory, all of your words need to do double or triple duty. You have to do more with less.

One thing I’ve notices in this past week or so is that the more I use my imagination, the more imagination I seem to have. I ran out of story ideas (sort of) after a couple of days but every time I’ve sat down to write, the well has been full. I get ideas walking, showering or sitting on the bus. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more I work it. Now we just have to see if I can sustain this for the whole month.

Wish me luck, on the Analog submission and on making it through this month.

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Review: How to Write a Sentence and How to Write One.

4/8/2011

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This book was another recommended by someone in my critique group. I’m glad I read it and I’ll probably go over it again to see if I can glean more insight from it. (It’s not a terribly long read) On the whole, however, I think it’s more in the ‘food for thought’ category rather than something immediately useful in my writing.

Stanley Fish is certainly an enthusiastic champion of the written word, that comes across clearly. What is less clear is application. Perhaps the fault is my own. I just don’t see the point of doing writing exercises working on structure alone without the intent of using that hard work. I’d much rather try to implement his advice in the course of one of revision drafts. Then my writing is doing double duty and not being tossed away. (yes, yes, I know; no writing is ever wasted so long as we learn something from it.) I only have so many hours in a day to write and I’d rather direct that time towards something publishable.

The author provides a horde of bellowing examples that come at you in a rush. The examples are my favorite parts of the book. I love great writing and Stanley Fish provides examples, some from surprising sources, of great writing.

The author is also a maniac for structure, so much so that the purpose of that structure gets lost a little and I feel like I’m back in grade school, diagramming sentences. I know that’s not the author’s intent but that is how part of the book feels. In addition, there is a feeling, partly due to weight of the examples chosen that complex sentences are worthy of more attention and praise. That’s not the kind of examples I need. I need to learn how to write cleanly, even tersely. My love for compound sentences is a sick, forbidden love and rightly so.

In the end, little from this book seemed to stick with me. It did heighten my attention to my sentence construction, which is all too the good. It didn’t inspire me, though, as great books on writing have. No sparks flew up from the page to land in my mind. I didn’t feel like rushing out and writing. Again, this may be a flaw in the student rather than the teacher. But I feel that the information in this book is too occult. Too hidden. Give credit where it is due, Stanley Fish cares about this subject. I just didn’t, not enough. My way of learning may be more from osmosis. So my advice is to keep reading great writers, especially contemporary writers. Let the beauty and power of their words work their way into your subconscious. Imitate them, even. Learn your own way. Then maybe come back to this book and see if it has anything to teach you.

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Lessons from a 19 page non-story

4/7/2011

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I didn’t have a story idea for last night, so I just sat down and started writing. It was a heck of a lot of fun and at the end of my two hours or so I had about 19 MS Word pages (forgot to do a word count, sorry). I also don’t think I had a story.

What I had were a series of vignettes, scenes with the same main character, some decent character development and a small character arc. But the theme, what was at stake, what changed…they were all small and subtle. I know, I shouldn’t start rejecting my own stuff…that’s what editors are for. I’ll clean it up and send it out. You never know. But I realized a few things:

1.       Start with the question, ‘what’s your story about’. If I start, snowflake style, with a one-sentence description of the story, I’m more likely to get something complete at the end.

2.       Just because a bunch of stuff happened, doesn’t mean you have a story. Yes, I had a beginning, middle and end. Yes, I had character development, decision and consequences. I even flatter myself to think I had good characters. But I didn’t have the right conflicts, and I didn’t have them obvious enough. There wasn’t a theme either, though I’m not convinced every story needs to set out with a theme.

3.       Writing is fun. The first few minutes as I was struggling with what to write about were hard but after I started, the hours flew by. I had a great time.

4.       Nothing is ever wasted. As long as you learn from what you did and improve from it, no writing is wasted. Even if you didn’t write a story.

Tonight is IM gaming night, so I’ll be telling stories when I get home as well. I just won’t be trying to sell that story the week after. Besides, Friday is coming and I’ll have a heck of a good idea by then

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30 in 30 update and review: Wild Ink

4/6/2011

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My apologies for missing yesterday’s update. Work happens.

I’ve been trucking along with the 30 in 30 challenge. I missed two days early in the month but I’ve gotten a story done every day since. With a little luck, I should be able to catch up this weekend.

I don’t know if they’re great stories but I think a couple of them have the nugget of something cool and marketable. I just need to polish them a little. My plan is to pick a story that I finished during the week, polish it and then send it off to an online or print magazine. I may as well give someone who might pay me for a story the opportunity to reject them.

(My #2 story I’ll submit to my writing group for advice on what can be improved. )

I also got some reading done during my commute. One was recommended by my writing group, Wild Ink.

Oy.

I wish I’d scoured the local libraries before parting with hard-earned cash for it.

Wild Ink is subtitled: ‘How to Write Fiction for Young Adults’. It isn’t. It is, barely, a discussion of how the publishing process works along with some frequently-repeated advice better suited to a blog post than the $12 + shipping and handling I ponied up the dough for. Nearly a quarter of the book, perhaps more, is just printed answers to emailed questions the author sent out to every YA author they knew. The author’s input for each of these sections? A paragraph. If it was a printed, in depth conversation with just one or two high-profile writers, that would have been an improvement. I feel cheated.

Here, let me save you twelve bucks and give you the distilled wisdom within: Write from your heart, not with an eye towards what’s popular. Don’t write down to your readers. Read what’s popular in YA right now. Keep your length close to 80k words but write the story at the length it needs to be. Be aware that adult themes, sex and violence will appall some gatekeepers (librarians and parents) but may thrill others.

That’s what’s at the core of the book. Notice, that I didn’t really tell you how to write YA fiction. Neither did Victoria Hanley. It’s obvious she can, she’s a published author. I would have preferred it if she simply had told the reader how she wrote her novels, in detail, the process she uses and what she learned. That at least would have authenticity behind it. As it is, most of what we have in this book is second hand advice. In fact, some sections Victoria Hanley didn’t even try to answer the questions she raises. Yep, for some areas she simply says, “I’m not very good at this, go find a book that talks more about this topic.” In words of the Great Teacher, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

This books makes a decent introduction to writing for utterly new authors. The details on the publishing process are interesting, though nothing I didn’t already know from going to conventions and talking to editors or sitting on their panels. If someone is just getting started in their career, you could do worse than handing them this book. You can also do better.

Not recommended for experienced writers looking for in-depth discussions on writing for the YA audience.

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30 in 30

4/4/2011

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Dan Wells has a challenge this month: 30 short stories in 30 days. I decided to jump on that bandwagon and see if I can do that and manage my Angel Odyssey revision for my hard deadline of April 30th, ‘out the door’.

I don’t normally write short stories and I haven’t for years. It’s odd in a way, when I first started writing, back in the early 90’s, short stories were all I wrote. I was pretty good at them, too. My first and most glowing rejection letter was from Warren Lapine from Absolute Magnitude over a short story I submitted. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is that I lost both the story and that rejection letter. I assume I threw it out in one of my depressed, bitter moments but who knows.

Anyway, writing short stories is a very, VERY different skill set than writing novels. Short stories are hard. Every word counts. Every sentence needs to contribute to the plot. In a way, this will be good exercise for my next novel (now projected to begin May 1st). I’m trying to write a more compact, faster-paced novel this time. But the skills with one don’t necessarily transfer over into the other. Oh grammar and spelling, characterization and so forth do, the craft for novels isn’t that different from short stories; it’s not like writing in Chinese. But novel writers tend to sprawl, include characters, sub-plots and even descriptions that are totally valid in a novel but clog up a short story.

Likewise, short story writers burn out all the time trying to write a novel-length work. My guess as to the reason? They are too focused on sentence construction and word choice. That kind of close attention to detail is draining. Over the course of a twenty page story, it’s possible, even important. Trying to keep that kind of focus over the course of a 450 page novel will fry your brain.

Dan Wells described Brannon Sanderson*as being more of a storyteller. Brandon is very productive and sprays out pages and pages of plot. Dan is more meticulous, picking his words and designing his sentences ‘just so’. I, for better or for worse, am a storyteller. That’s all I want to do, which makes revisions such a painful hell for me.

That was a big tangent from what I was aiming for, a simple update on my ’30 in 30’ project. Yesterday I wrote a 6k short story and it just burned out of me. It’s probably not publishable but MAN, it felt good. To write something, to finish it, to feel that flow. It’s better than…food.

I still owe three stories but we’ll see what I can get done tonight. And we’ll see if I still remember how to tell a story in less than 5k words. I can’t wait.

* (both of whom rock, check them out at www.fearfulsymmetry.com and www.brandonsanderson.com)

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Dan Wells day

4/1/2011

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Today is Dan Well’s day here at the blog. Mostly because I’m going to his book signing tonight and because I spent last night writing critiques instead of fiddling more with Angel Odyssey. (And, yeah, I decided to not go after the March 31st novel completing deadline. Some wise folks suggested I wait until after Norwescon and the writer’s workshop there, since I’m workshopping chapter 1.)

Anyway, on with Dan Well’s day! Dan is a horror (and soon, fantasy) author best known for his book I am not a Serial Killer. I recommend the book and may get around to writing a review of it here later on. Dan is also 1/3rd of the awesomeness that is “Writing Excuses” (http://www.writingexcuses.com/) Writing excuses is an excellent podcast, some of the episodes are particularly useful to new writers and writers looking to break into the publishing world. I met Dan briefly at World Fantasy Convention. I would have loved to talk longer with him but he was playing a zombie board game and I didn’t want to kibbitz. (And I’m shy but...Rabble anyway)

Dan did something interesting and difficult in I am not a Serial Killer. He created a pair of sympathetic character that we normally wouldn’t want to sympathize with: One is a sociopath and the other is a murderer (and then some). In fact, the murderer might be even more sympathetic than the main character, John Wayne Cleaver. The book crossed over into YA, partially due to the age of the protagonist and did well. The second book, Mister Monster. Raises the stakes of creepiness (and as a cat owner let me say: shame on you) and is also well worth reading.

Tonight is the signing for the third and final book in the series, I Don’t Want to Kill You. After the signing, a bunch of us are planning on getting some dinner with him. He’s a good guy, I’m looking forward to hanging out with him and maybe picking his brain a little. Hopefully I don’t come off as creepy as John Wayne Cleaver.

Check out Dan at http://www.fearfulsymmetry.net/ and buy his books!

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A post both late and short

Submitted my first short story to Analog

Review: How to Write a Sentence and How to Write One.

Lessons from a 19 page non-story

30 in 30 update and review: Wild Ink

30 in 30

Dan Wells day

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