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14 November 2011

A Weekend with Your Novel - A Review

Not that anyone had been clamoring for new blog posts from me, but I feel as if I should note why I haven’t posted anything in months. I wish I could say I’d been writing furiously instead of blogging. Or had been traveling somewhere exotic or simply hiking the Appalachian Trail. But no. The computer crashed in early June and my relationship required a reboot in late June and it was that easy to fall out of the habit of writing and spend time doing fun summery things. As a means by which I could put myself in the path of a writing habit again, I signed up for A Weekend with your Novel one of the offerings from the UW-Madison’s continuing Studies program. It gave me a deadline by which to have the first fifty pages polished (just in case someone asked to see them right then!) and got me thinking about writing again.

Saturday came and I headed downtown early, with the first, informal, session beginning just after 8:00AM. Billed as a “weekend” with the novel, I only spent the one day on campus. Friday and Sunday had opportunities for participating in critique groups, but I opted out of that. My novel – in whole or in part – had been critiqued by my writing group (twice), in a WisCon workshop, various other friends, and my sweetie who, most recently, acted as copy editor. Right now, I didn’t need more people telling me what to change. I had to learn, for myself, what needs changing.

My primary purpose in attending was to focus on the business side. Alas, that didn’t happen. The first workshop was the only one that fit that description: "The Concept and the Query Letter." The aims of the class were good, and I’ve been impressed with Laurel Yourke before, but on Saturday she didn’t have her best stuff. A large part of it was the large class of neophytes who ate up nearly a third of the 90 minute workshop just asking questions about genre (seriously, people. If you go into a Barnes & Nobles Bookseller, where on the floor would you expect to find your book? Got it? Until the marketing department tells you otherwise, that is your genre). Too many students wanted the “right” answers and Laurel worked hard to give them those answers, seriously hampered by the fact that such answers don’t exist. Laurel warned people off from the Internet as a source of query letter examples without mentioning such invaluable sites like Query Shark.

Laurel did give good advice – and a great handout – on the features of a query letter and what must be in there (name, title of the manuscript, word count) vs what may go in if there’s something to say (what kind of platform do you have?). But the serious work of taking a 100k story and condensing it into a “hook” and two sentence “logline” was given short shrift. I’m not entirely sure what I will need to feel comfortable getting that work done for my own novel, but what I got in that class didn’t give it to me.

The next workshop I didn’t get much out of either. That I lay to me choosing the wrong workshop to go to more than its content. "Trouble & Twists: Making Nice Characters Just Naughty Enough" was not the right workshop for me. I have long had the problem where I don’t want bad things to happen to my characters. I have also had characters that were too perfect, Mary Sues and Marty Stues that could do everything they set their minds to. After listening to the workshop I realized I did not have that problem with this novel. Nor are they too “nice” or in need of some sort of naughtiness. Not that the information that characters need to be more rounded, more alloyed with both good and bad ports is bad information. It just wasn’t the most immediately helpful to me because I feel as if I’m doing much of that. Perhaps that’s what I got out of the workshop, the confirmation that I’m on the right track with these characters after all.

In the afternoon I attended two workshops given by Christopher Mohar. Now those workshops were useful! My novel is somewhere between too long and way too long (I keep hearing different measures for “too long.” If it was anything other than fantasy, it would definitely be way too long. With it being a Fantasy novel, it is probably just too long). Chris’s “Middles: Tone the Spare Tire” has helped me immensely. Or at least, it will when I have a chance to put it all into practice. He gave a tone of very practical information on how to judge if a scene contributed to the story, how to make sure the tension stayed at the pace it needs to be at given where it falls in the story, and more. Because of that workshop and his “Endings” workshop, I spent much of the day Sunday combing through the manuscript for where I can start toning and shaping. I’m confident that I’ll lose some “word pounds” before I’m all done and have a much better novel to show for it.

Until it is on the shelf at the book store, it isn't finished. At some point, I may be done with it, but until then, I'm going to continue striving to make this the best novel I can.

26 July 2011

Take a Hike

The action in my novel takes place in two quite different settings. One is pre-industrial agrarian and the other is managed wilderness, and these two distinct areas are separated by a mountain range that runs down the country like a spine. That had been the idea from early on, from when I read Guns, Germs, and Steel and 1491 as source material. So while the setting may have been planned, the elements within the setting had another source to them:

The need to get the hell out of my house and go for a hike.

Butt-in-chair-time is the basis for good writing. For bad writing as well. Okay, all writing starts by someone placing themselves before a keyboard or a microphone or placing pen in hand. Eventually, though, the body can only take so much. Fingers get tired, butt goes numb, the eyes start to water and the head to ache. And that’s when the writing is going well! If the plot is struggling or I have no idea how my heroine is going to get out of the latest mess I’ve thrown her into, then I need to change my environment.

I’ve long enjoyed hiking. When I was in High School I went on several backpacking trips to Colorado and Montana. The seclusion, the physical effort, and the natural beauty of those moutain trips lodged inside of me, waiting for my adult self to get back to nature. There was a lot of time between then and now spent in urban, suburban, and even exurban landscapes, but (despite a knee that one doctor told me reminded him of “crab meat”) I eventually made it back out to many of the State Parks in my area. I've hiked the Ice Age State Trail on many segments, Devil's Lake and Parfrey's Glen are among my favorite hikes, and others close by.

John Muir once wrote: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” For me, going on a hike when the story struggled was the clearest way into the Universe that I had created. Losing my sense of self as I hike the forest and bluffs provides me with an opportunity to engage with my story in a new way. Every time that I’d been stuck and then gone on a hike, I’d found my way back into the story and could again move it forward. I have a smartphone and I’d stop, take it out, and leave a voice note for myself or call my home phone and leave a voicemail with what I thought might be the next step. Most often I used that, although sometimes there would be three or four voice notes as I revised, expanded, or altered those ideas.

Creating fiction is a mental act (heh, yeah, I went there). The brain is the most engaged and the fingers simply provide the means by which those thoughts get rendered into something external to the self and my own imaginings. But I’ve found that physical activity is imperative if I’m to be successful at my writing. I’ve focused in this post on how hiking provides a direct benefit to my writing, but physical activity is good in and of itself. If I’m in decent enough shape, it will allow me to ignore my tired fingers and my numbing butt. I can slog through that many more words before the eyes get too tired or the headache too distracting. When I don’t need the space to resolve plotting or other issues, then I’ll take up another activity, like a long bike ride or a walk through the neighborhood. Neither of those work as well as hiking the forest for solving problems, but the activity is good for its own sake.

All photos copyright David O. Engelstad
If you write and you find that pacing the halls or staring at the monitor or that damn blank page isn’t getting it done, then might I suggest you find some physical activity that you can do, that calls for the body to move but the brain to be needed only in case of emergency, and let the activity clear the way into the Universe of your own creation.

04 July 2011

Follow the Source(s)

I've read most of what Jacqueline Carrey has written, so I read with interest Scalzi's blog post on Carrey's Big Idea. One of the books she used to help her plan her new novel was Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and this same booked sparked a major element of my own fictional world. As her next book deals with encountering an alternate-history pre-Columbian Americas, I wondered if she used 1491 by Charles C. Mann. Then I started thinking of the other books that have influenced my fictional world and began thinking about all of the texts that have influenced the writing of my novel.

My initial attempts at beginning this story had two elements that have continued through the story: a group of actors dragged into the political conflicts of their day despite themselves, and a woman masquerading as a man playing woman's roles on stage. I had the image, but not the conflict, not the why. I kept reading. Once I read Guns,Germs, and Steel I radically changed my initial concept of the world. That book provided the economic element that gave me the cultural conflict. In the novel as it stands now, I have two cultures that share a common heritage, but one group has left the dominant agricultural culture for the life of the “Uplands” – a heavily forested ridge that runs down the center of the peninsula that forms the country – for a life of hunting and gathering. The conflicts that Jared set out between the two, particularly in his excerpt called “Agriculture: the World's Greatest Mistake,” got me thinking about how best to have a viable hunter culture exist alongside an agricultural culture, and what kind of conflicts and misunderstandings might arise.

In order to give myself a better understanding of just what a hunter/gatherer culture might look like, I turned to 1491. Or more to the point, stumbled onto it and then let out a great big A ha! That book set me straight on a number of fallacies that I'd learned during my grade school history classes about the “Indians” and what the American continents had been like before Columbus. I discovered that radically changing the landscape to make it easier to survive isn't something that's limited to agricultural societies. His descriptions of how the New England area and even the vast Amazonian expanse may have looked like in the 15th century gave me a framework for how my hunter culture would look. I loved the sophistication that such “primitive” people brought to the shaping of their environments to suit themselves. The book Biomimicryy: Innovation Inspired by Nature gave me a modern approach to doing what these ancient peoples did without science as we know it, and together they gave me ideas such as the Provider Meadows, regular burning to keep undergrowth clear in “undeveloped” lands, and making sure that certain areas would have the foods that most attracted preferred prey animals so that the hunters might not have to range so far so often in search of game. It also reinforced my concerns about our modern “monoculture” of farming which is a central aspect of the book.

I also wanted to have, as a primary cultural difference, that my Uplands culture would be matriarchal in some manner while the Lowlands culture would be embarking on a much more patriarchal path. I am, unfortunately, rather familiar with patriarchy but I wanted to have a solid idea of what a female-led or dominated culture might look like. I had begun with an unoriginal sort of Gaia idea, but I'm happy to say that it evolved. One of my favorite sources of research material has been The Teaching Company's "Great Courses" series.

Frankly, it's hard to say which of the many lectures I've listened to haven't been “research” because I listen to subjects I'm interested in and I write what I'm interested in, so there's lots of overlap. But in doing all I could to make sure that the cultures of my world were plausible, I mined the cultures of our world quite a bit. Two standout: Peoples and Cultures of the World presented by Professor Edward F. Fischer provided me many examples of how cultures have worked across time and within them I found examples of matrilineal if not matriarchal cultures, and I incorporated that information where it made sense. The other lecture is The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition presented by Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, which describes the upheaval in Medieval Europe around turn of the 10th century, and the influence of the millennial movements, including the witch-hunting frenzy, as well as the role that orthodoxy plays in major religions.

Religion plays a huge role in this story, for it is a conflict between the followers of the God An and those who follow the Goddess Na as much as anything. The first half of The Evolution of God by Robert Wright assisted in my understanding of the genesis and role of religion in societies and how religions always support the dominant culture and protect it from change. Another lecture series, Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication presented by Professor Bart D. Ehrman I had gotten years ago as a gift for my folks and so I can't say that I used it specifically as research for this story, still, the ideas of textuality vs oral tradition in the transmission of religion became important, as did the conflict between the concept of inspired “word of god” and the human agency that writes, reads, and utilizes those words.

Fiction works also inspired me, particularly in the concept of my Players. In My Father had a Daughter: Judith Shakespeare's Tale by Grace Tiffany  I got to read about how it would be for a woman to be an actor when women were denied that opportunity. Of course, Shakespeare in Love did that as well, but something about this novel really got me thinking about how I might use a similar situation. One series that got me thinking about the role that Players might play in my world was the A Play of... series by Margaret Frazier. And while I don't want to mislead anyone about the highbrow nature of my novel, the works of Shakespeare influenced me greatly. I have no hope to write blank verse as well as The Bard and the dramatic worlds he created I can't even hope to aspire to. But his language has always inspired me and he created many situations in which women are forced to enter the “male sphere” and they do it by changing clothes and manners. “I can use that,” I thought, which pretty much sums up all of the ideas garnered from the books mentioned above and many more besides.

Even though I'm the one writing the novel, I still find it fascinating how so many disparate elements can be combined, through me, into something new. My writing is nothing like Carrey's and yet we both employed the same book to help us create our worlds. More than once, I've gotten into arguments over such things as "authorial intent" and I realize that all we as authors have is what makes it onto the page. That's the craft part of writing. The fun part is going through all of these works and finding those bits that strike a spark. Whatever my intent is in writing, in reading I'm on a never-ending search for those things that make me think: "I can use that!"

21 June 2011

Book Review: The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

One of the books recommended at the Return of the Rape Panel was Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword. Since I'd also been to the Living the Long Tail panel, it became the first book I've read using a Kindle app on my Android phone. The following  is both a review of reading on a phone and a review of the novel.

One of the things I mentioned as a benefit of using Kindle was that, pretty much as soon as someone mentioned a book at one of the panels, I could access Amazon and get a sample of that book sent to my Kindle app. That makes it really easy to keep track of recommendations and then to read enough of those books to see if there's more I'd like. Buying the book is very simple from the app as well.

Another benefit that I hadn't realized at first was that all instances of Kindle used by me are linked. I have a Kindle app on my home PC, my work PC, and my phone (no Kindle device yet, but I've been strongly leaning in that direction. At least until my home PC became a boat anchor and there may be a new computer purchase in my future). I usually have my phone with me throughout the day and more than once I found I wasn't able to make it home for lunch. That meant eating out and I had reading material with me. A really nice feature was that Kindle kept track of where I'd been reading across all of the devices. If I read for a bit on my home PC and then went out to lunch, the phone app would ask if I wanted to go to the furthest point read. It remembered where I was on that device and where I was over all. Nice feature.

For the most part, I enjoyed reading on the Kindle app. One of the things that has me more interested in Kindle than the other book readers is that Kindle allows me to make annotations, bookmarks, and highlights. Except you can only create bookmarks with the phone app and that's not as nice. It makes the app good for novel reading, but not great for research. Good limitation to know.

I've read the two other books that Ellen Kushner has set in this universe (Swordspoint and The Fall of the Kings) and enjoyed them both, but it had been several years since I'd read the last one. That meant I felt a bit lost trying to remember if I'd met certain characters before and what they'd been doing when last we spent time together. That was probably a mistake on my part. Ellen (I can use her first name that because I've met her a couple of times at WisCon. Spent time in her “living room” at the 'con several years ago. She wouldn't remember me at all, but I'd like to pretend we'd be on a first name basis) set this story several years forward from the last one in the series and so the main characters in those tales were secondary to this one.

The story is really good. Let's get that out of the way up front. I think it may be my favorite of the series but I should re-read the first two before I make that definitive. This review is going to focus on two elements of the story that are either intriguing or challenging. The first is the reason the book had been recommended to me originally. A major element of the plot is the rape of one of the secondary characters. Unlike rape as it's depicted in shows like Law and Order SVU or the majority of novels, this rape was typical. What's that? You don't know what I mean? Rape as it's often depicted in TV shows and books is most often perpetrated by strangers with violence. Afterward, the person raped is usually totally destroyed by the experience or has put it all behind hir by the fourth act or a dozen chapters later. More to the point, rape is something that happens to move a plot forward and then ignored when the plot no longer requires hir suffering.

The rape in this story is actually typical: the person was someone she knew, it happened more by the way of coercion (social more than physical) than knife point. She then told her family about the rape, but they were more interested in preserving the family name and status than in helping out their daughter. I admit: at first I was put off by the fact that the last half of the novel became about the rape. Despite picking up the book because of how it handled rape, I found the story to be distressing to me because of how much time was spent on the aftermath. Of course, before long I realized that was the point. The violence perpetrated against the character, particularly in the society as Ellen set it up, needed to reverberate across all the other characters and plot points in the novel. Just as promised at the WisCon panel, the issue of rape became central to the character and the story and it has handled appropriately.

The other element of this story that I wanted to touch on is an issue of craft. Ellen used a first person point of view for the main character and third person for multiple other characters. I've tried to use that approach in a short story because of the potential for storytelling. The short story didn't work that well, but that was more because of me than the technique. I liked how the approach helps center the story in the first person character. All the benefits of first person POV can then be used to get us really close to the main character. We're in her head and experience the world as she does. But the limitation of first person POV – that we will only know what the main character knows – can be sidestepped by having the third person used for the rest of the storytelling. Ellen uses a close third person: each scene is told pretty tightly from one POV during the scene/chapter. But she uses a range of those additional voices, whatever is needed to tell the story. Instead of being a “lazy” way of using the first person POV, Ellen uses those additional voices to add tension to the story of the main character. It brings us closer to her even as it expands the canvas of the story. Not every novelist could carry that off, but Ellen does it very well.

To sum up, the novel is very well told with a wide range of enjoyable characters. The situations presented take this novel off the “casual, summer fluff” list, but that's ok. I'm guessing that reading it on a Kindle app didn't take from my enjoyment at all. But if I see Ellen at WisCon again, it's going to make it damned difficult getting her to sign the e-copy during the Sign Out.

14 June 2011

Writing in a Time of Technology

I use a lot of tech when I write. Everything from a fountain pen on notepaper, to a notebook computer, to a desktop computer with dual monitors. Which tool(s) I use depend on where I am in the process and what I'm trying to accomplish. Using a pen or a laptop at a coffee shop is pretty self-explanatory, so I want to spend some time talking about the tools I use at home, especially during the rewrite process, which is where I'm at presently.

To create my world, I used a program called Fractal Terrains. I went through several attempts before the software gave me a world map that had on it a continent that came close enough to my idea of what I wanted for my story. The program even put in rivers and lakes. I found that working with the elements that I didn't specifically plan or design put some constraints on me that improved the writing. On my own I might have forgotten things like putting rivers in inconvenient places. It's been awhile since I used it, so I may not do an in-depth review of this program. I then used a companion program called Campaign Cartographer to make a map out of the part of the world I'm using. At some future date I may put in roads, villages, place names, etc. When I'm writing at my desk, I'll open this program to check distances between points and remind me of where those inconvenient rivers might be.

If you're reading this online then you're familiar with web browsers and some day I may review the different sites I use for reference. When I'm writing new material, the web browser is closed and when I'm rewriting or editing it's open. Closed when I'm creating because it's easier to do research (or “research”) instead of actually writing. Open when I'm rewriting or editing because it's then that I'll need to check facts or be sure of word meanings.

Shot of OneNote showing some of the sections I use.
The map was imported from Campaign Cartographer.
The best program that Microsoft didn't steal swindle buy from some-one else, is called OneNote. I use OneNote 2010 to keep track of all of my research. If I figure out how, I'll even post an empty novel writing notebook I prepared for use in OneNote. It contains the same sections I created for tracking research for my current novel: World Building (physical elements like maps and climate), Culture (religion, language, dress, history), Characters, Writing (outlines, reminders, things to do), and Business (agents, markets, tracking). I added a section for Rewrite to track the extensive differences between Draft 1 and Draft 2. For research – or more importantly, for remembering what I've researched and what I plan to do with what I've researched – OneNote is indispensable. If it's on the web, Internet Explorer has a Send to OneNote feature that captures the page and provides a link to it in the note. If you have a tablet with pen input, you can add hand written notes.

My novel has two first person narratives running in parallel and the story moves over several weeks. My nation's history goes back more than a thousand years and I have seven primary characters and several more secondary characters. Each of them have birthdays, events in their lives, places to be and times to be there. It may be that some people can keep track of all of that in their heads, but I can't. I use Microsoft Excel with several workbooks open: a country timeline, a story timeline, a character timeline, and a history of the rulers of my country. I don't actually track word count or rising and falling action as I've seen some do. I tried and found that it had limited utility for me, but that could always change.


Desktop version of Pandora


Pandora or iTunes. I need music while I write. I discovered Pandora a year or so ago and really love the way I can create different music streams depending on my mood. Instrumentals for writing. I need to have the only words around be the ones I'm putting on paper. Songs distract me too much.

When I'm not using pen and paper, I use WordPerfect for my writing. I know. The world uses Microsoft Word. Even Mac users are being sucked into using that inferior product. I'll do an extensive review with compare and contrast between Word and WordPerfect, including their underlying word processing metaphor in a later blog post. Suffice it to say, for long form documents like a novel with multiple chapters, WordPerfect is far easier to use and less prone to corrupting files.

To sum up, when I'm writing I'll have the following programs open. The closer to the top of the list, the more likely it is that the program will be running it comes time to write:
  • WordPerfect
  • Pandora or iTunes
  • OneNote
  • Excel
  • Campaign Cartographer
  • FireFox
Let me get back to that fountain pen. Despite all of the tech – because? – the fountain pen plays a very important role for me. The story always ends up in electronic format, but sometimes I can't create on the computer. The typing, the compilation of words on screen sometimes becomes an impediment to the writing instead of an aid to it. If I'm creating poetry or lyrics I can't do it on screen. If I'm working on a difficult section where I know there are going to be a lot of starts and stops, then I'll go back to paper and ink for the creation. It's easier for me to draw a line through a written section and start anew than it is for me to select and delete. Not sure why. Delete it and it's gone and there might be something in that false start that helps point me to the true start. On paper I can cross it out but the words are still there to be mined for the next attempt. When I edit, at some point, I have to go through it pen to paper at some point. I can do some work on the screen, but the close work is always with a pen on paper. Not even an "ink-enabled" tablet changed that.

Besides, if I'm feeling uncertain, an afternoon spent pen in hand resulting in ink-stained fingers is a great way to connect with the process of writing.

07 June 2011

Practical Tips for Writers

Stef sent me this link, knowing that I'm in the last stages of the intermediate phase of my novel (no, that really doesn't make sense to me either). It's an interesting read. Despite the fact it's mostly nonfiction writers giving advice to another nonfiction writer, much of it will be useful no matter what's being written.

I love the fact that the advice is often contradictory. Read everything. Read nothing but what will help your book. Write everyday. Don't write everyday, sometimes you need a break.

This just confirms something I've actually already learned: There is no One True Way. I've heard that advice at WisCon panels and seen it played out in posts like the one linked above. What works for one author won't work for the next. What works for one book might not work for the next! There are too many variables in play, not the least of which is the author.

I don't write everyday. I'm at work most days of the week and often have other obligations in the evenings. But most weekends I'll spend my mornings writing and my afternoons researching or editing what I wrote the day before. Many times I'll forge ahead and get a number of pages written, and then spend a few precious after work hours going over them, getting them beaten into true before the next weekend and the next writing sessions.

If I'd been asked to write the three things I've learned, they would go something like this:
  1. There is no One True Way to write a book. Allow the current project to find its own level. But once that happens, exploit that knowledge for all its worth. With the next project you may have to search for a new approach.
    1. Cherish whatever approach you've found, because if life gets in the way and disrupts the approach, the routine you've established, it can be a lovely slice of hell trying to re-establish or find that new approach for the current project
  2. It's easier to read than to write. It's easier to plan or worldbuild than to write. It's easier to surf the internet than to write. Hell, it's easier to do damn near anything other than writing. But reading a novel written by someone else is nowhere near as fulfilling as writing your own. At some point, you'll have to stop researching (or “researching”), stop planning, stop surfing, put the butt in chair, and put those sentences down.
  3. Don't track the hours you spend creating the novel. Really. Just don't. It leads to foolish things like figuring out you hourly earnings, and then where will you be?
In a different post I'll discuss the tech I use in my writing, but I found the references to Scrivener and other tech tools interesting. Another case of “what works for one...”

06 June 2011

What does "done" look like?

I finished the rewrite of my novel in time for WisCon 35. Go me! Except, there’s a scene missing, I need a stronger opening, and the novel is at least 25,000 words too long. Two members of my writing group still haven’t given me comments for the first 80 pages and I just handed it to one other person to read the entire novel and offer suggestions. But I’m done. Finished. On to the agent search!

Except that I’m not. Not finished. Not done. Not ready to hand out the first fifty pages to anyone. I’m not ready to send anything out until I finish going through the latest comments from my writing group on those first fifty and making the changes that I feel need to be made.

My novel is also too long. Pretty much every thing I’ve read and everyone who I’ve talked to tells me that it’s too long. The most generous estimate is that I have to cut 25,000 words to be ready to seek an agent. Others tell me 50,000. Still others tell me that it takes as long to tell a story as it takes, and if an agent sees promise in the first fifty, then she’ll help with identifying where the chaff is that needs cutting. I want to believe that last one, so it’s probably not true.

So I’m done, except that I’m not, and won’t be for a couple of months yet. I’ll work on the opening scenes this weekend. I’ll go over the latest suggestions from the writing group next week and tackle those edits next weekend. After that I’ll hit that one scene (I’ve been putting it off this long, what’s another couple weeks?).

Writing continues on the project that’s done and I’m no longer sure I’ll recognize actually being done when it gets here. I know this isn’t it, but what about after I revamp the opening and complete that one scene? If it’s still clocking in at around 150,000 words, will I consider it done and send it out? Will I struggle for those last 25,000 and then call it done (I cut the original project in half and the rewrite still got me to this length. Will I ever be able to cut that much?)? Even if it finds an agent at 150,000, there will be more changes then and more again should I be lucky enough to get the book sold.

Maybe “done” isn’t the right word. Maybe “ready” is the word I’m looking for. Not completed, because it seems to me that novel writing is a process, with lots of options and opportunities and choices to make along the way. But maybe I need to shoot for “ready” and see where that takes me.

It’s not ready yet. I’ve completed a rewrite and now I’m working on some additional changes. Then I think it’ll be ready for the next step in the process. I’ll have to be happy with “ready” because no story of mine is ever done.

03 June 2011

What about e-readers? What about my bookshelves!

One thing the Long Tail panel got me thinking about was the electronic distribution of writing. Kindle, Nook, iPad, and other e-readers are increasing in popularity. While there's a lot of contention over the numbers of e-books sold (are the increasing numbers representing dollar sales or units sold, for example) there is little contention that more and more people are consuming more and more written works electronically.

I discovered that my Android phone has a Kindle reader app already installed on it. I decided to try it out and discovered a great use for it at a 'con. Many of the panels I went to offered suggestions for books to read. I fired up the phone's browser and went to Amazon. Nearly without fail, Amazon offered a Kindle version of the books I looked for. Not only that, Amazon offers sample chapters. Downloading a sample chapter not only provides me with a reminder of the books discussed, but then I can read the samples to see if I want to read the whole book.

What remains to be seen is, what will the Kindle (or a device like it … I'm still not sure if Kindle is the format I want) mean for my bookshelves? What kind of reading do I want to be in paper and what kind can be in a more ephemeral format?

My initial thought is that the casual reading would be a good thing for an e-reader. I love medieval murder mysteries, but I never read them more than once. If I move, those are the kinds of books that get purged. So perhaps the casual books are the ones that can be electronic.

On the other hand, e-books can have a search function. Kindle seems to offer bookmarking and annotations (The android version doesn't and I haven't used the Kindle itself. Those features don't seem to be available in any version of the other main readers). That would be really handy. I do a lot of writing in coffee shops and having all, or at least a large percentage, of my research books available without having to lug them all around would be a marvelous tool.

Considering something like the Kindle can hold thousands of books, it may be a both/and situation. I may be in the market for a Kindle or other e-reader. I may have a use for it. It may be that the bigger question is, do I still have a use for my bookshelves?

02 June 2011

Living the Long Tail: WisCon 35 panels

The first panel I went to at WisCon 35 was called Living the Long Tail and it continued my tradition of attending panels that aren't what I think they are. I had anticipated that the panel would be discussing the book The Long Tail  which discusses developing and keeping a core audience. To some extent, we did talk about that, but it was really in the context of self-publishing and a web-based business model.

I really hadn't been thinking in terms of self-publishing to this point. I've been steeped in the traditional publishing model my entire life. I like my physical books. My over-stuffed bookshelves have long been a source of pride and every move that required a paring away of my collection was faced with reluctance and angst.

The panel included a woman who had never published via the “New York” houses, those who had at one time but are now going it on their own, and one who is following both avenues. Their goal is to make money from their writing and they feel that maximizing the opportunities by pursuing new models makes the most sense.

A discussion of self-publishing seems to draw out the extremes in people. A couple of the people on the panel made it sound as if going the self-publishing route was the only way to go. No one needs NY! They don't pay enough and they want to just screw the writer! After the panel I had a conversation that took place on the other end of the spectrum, describing those who pursue self-publishing as having drunk the Kool-aid, that it's fit only for those who can't make it in NY because NY is the only path to real success.

John Scalzi had a different take on this argument. In short (although you really should read the whole thing: his is very funny and this is not) there are functions in addition to writing that have to be done to take a story and make it into something people will pay money for. If the writer is doing all of these things, then when is there time to write?

The panel made me rethink some of my own prejudices regarding self-publishing. I agree with Scalzi that the publishing industry provides services to the author. These functions have to happen, at least to some extent. If those functions – editing, designing, packaging, marketing, publicizing, selling – are done by the writer, then the writer doesn't have as much time to write. If they're done poorly, then the final product (and that's what we writers are doing, we're creating a product) will seem unprofessional and of low value. The NY houses provide those services and the hope is that they will do them well, resulting in a professional product, something of higher value and worth. That means sales.

The competition to place a piece of writing with the NY houses is damn stiff. I've had little luck in placing short fiction to this point and it remains to be seen if I can place my long fiction with any more success. One of the panelists described her work as targeting a very small niche market. The NY houses spend a lot of money printing and distributing writing. They're not going to do that if they don't think there's a market for the work. Self-publishing provides an outlet for writing that simply won't sell to the NY houses because they can't make enough money off it. Those small, niche, markets are no-doubt under-served and are willing to pay for writing directed at them. Provided that the writer accomplishes all of the functions from writing to editing to selling in such a way that the final product is something that customers in even under-served markets are willing to pay for.

Even the best writers don't sell everything they write. Some pieces may be too experimental or not quite successful in their attempts or too specific in their subjects. No matter the author, any one piece of writing may simply not “meet our current needs” of the house they are with. Other than amusing the author's friends and families, what happens to those pieces? Might there be life for them online?

As I thought about it over the weekend, I realized that I don't see the situation as self-publishing VS the NY Publishing Industry. It doesn't have to be an either/or for anyone who is lucky enough to find a NY publisher. I've heard more and more that some of the functions listed above, particularly the marketing end, is being off-loaded back onto the author. The avenues described by the various panelists seemed to me to speak as much to publicity and marketing as they do for sales.

This blog is a result of the Long Tail panel. It may be that, at some point, I may post one or more of my stories that haven't sold. If the novel finds an agent (and the agent finds me a publisher), I may put some of my character or world-building information up to add to the experience of reading the novel. If people start reading this blog, there are opportunities to get readers to subscribe to it via the Kindle. If I generate interest and an audience, a newsletter is another option. Starting off, this gives me another way of generating an audience, connecting with readers, getting the word out. Should I get established, having an online presence may provide a second life for backlist. If I don't find an agent, if I don't get sales through traditional channels, then I may still be able to build some sort of income selling my writing online.

It's all about connecting with an audience and utilizing every method out there to find and build a readership. Readership means sales, either in support of traditionally published works or directly to an audience. Either way, online and electronic formats offer me more options. I don't see the need to limit myself to one or the other.

01 June 2011

Writing Trauma and Rape: WisCon 35 Panels

I started going to WisCon some 18 years ago, primarily looking for advice as an aspiring writer. The writing workshops there have been great for me to work on the craft and meet some fascinating, kind, and very helpful people. Sometimes the critiques have been good, sometimes devastating (those aren’t mutually exclusive categories), and while sometimes I’ve thought the comments may have missed the mark, the process has always led to an improvement in how I practice the craft of writing.

The novel I’m working on contains scenes of physical violence, including sexual violence, and I wanted to be sure I got those scenes “right,” that I dealt with both issues realistically and appropriately. Too often simply considered “action” scenes, I knew that getting characters knocked about comes at a cost, and one that I needed to take into account in my plotting. Two panels at WisCon 35 jumped out at me as “must attend” panels: One Thousand Ways to Die and Return of the Rape Panel.  On the first panel were medical professionals and writers (and writers who were medical professionals) on the second panel were rape counselors and writers (we did not learn if anyone had been sexually assaulted because really, not germane or our business. The panel members took great care in laying ground rules to keep the discussion respectful of anyone’s experiences). Both panels ended up with similar discussions and conclusions, which isn’t surprising since rape is physical assault/trauma, and trauma often has emotional and psychological ramifications no matter what the source of the trauma.

What I learned is that most writers don’t handle trauma and/or rape very well. Movies and trauma-of-the-week police procedurals are particularly bad and this callous approach to assault has wider ramifications for how we, as a culture, respond to and treat survivors of rape and physical trauma. We think that people who get shot, beat up, knocked out, and raped (both violently and insidiously), should be back up kicking ass and taking names before the end of the hour, or at least by the next episode or chapter. In the case of rape, there does seem to be a second option to totally fine almost immediately, and that’s broken irrevocably.

Great options, there. Not fitting with any real-world humans that I know.

Speaking of which, the moderator for the One Thousand Ways to Die panel did posit three different possibilities for speculative fiction, and these three approaches would inform how the character heals. I leave it to the reader to decide how much these three realities might affect the sexual assault survivor.
  1. Real world with real humans. Our world as we know it to be populated by us and people just like us. AKA reality.
  2. Real world with aliens or altered humans. Paranormal stories or urban fantasies. Buffy and the vamps she fights don’t hurt or heal in the same way we normal humans do. Wolverine, Spock, or The Doctor each have their own rules for what hurts them, to what extent, and how long it takes to heal.
  3. Fantasy worlds with fantasy characters. Thomas Covenant may heal through Earth Magic, Paksenarrion may have Gird reach down and remove all traces of her otherwise-mortal wounds, and other worlds will have still other rules.
In my opinion, the success of worlds two and three is going to rely heavily on the author being consistent in how the rules work in that world and in how they differ from what we know. We concentrated on the first category and strove to make sure we knew what actually happens in a trauma.

The most telling instance for me came when the panel talked about someone being knocked out. The doctor on the panel said: “If you’re knocked out for an hour, you’re out for a week.” For one thing, consciousness is not like a light switch, it isn't a binary system. There are degrees of consciousness and even if you posit some sort of drug, anything that gets you that deep is also going to come with a chance that your hero will forget to breathe. Coming to won't be a picnic either: dizziness, blurred vision, memory loss, and worse will all happen to your hero for a long time after being knocked unconscious. No one in our world or one like it is going to come to in the villain's lair after being knocked out by the goons, spring up, and fight the army of bad guys. Doesn’t happen, doesn’t work like that. Healing takes time. Blasts that send people flying through the air mean that the explosion is close enough to cook one side of a person (as well as embedding glass and other debris in the skin). Healing takes time.

And healing may never get the injured person back to 100%. Two things: the physical trauma may very well destroy tissue and the healing process may develop scar tissue. That hand may never be the same, there may always be a ringing in the ears or a susceptibility to headaches, the burns may never fade. For writers this means, be careful in how you beat up your characters because if you want to get it right, those traumas will always be with your character from then on out.

Second thing is the mental trauma. Both sets of panelists were quick to point out the reality of PTSD for survivors of trauma, including sexual assault. That’s a lot for a person to experience and those experiences may take a long time to heal and, just like with the physical injuries that may have happened at the same time, may never fully bring the person back to the way they were before the experience. There is a “new normal” that has to be accounted for.

This is not to say that someone is irrevocably broken by an experience such as sexual assault, certainly not as portrayed in most of the popular media. Rape is too often used too casually as a plot device intended to portray vulnerability or the callousness of humankind. There are lasting effects to rape, and those effects will vary in intensity and duration from person to person, as in any healing process.

As writers, we need to beware of the extremes and avoid all good or all bad. Very little writing can be successful with undifferentiated minions in the black hat roles or Mary Sues in all the hero roles. In the same way, violence against characters that result in severe trauma, both mental and physical, are neither going to disappear without a trace or always and forever “destroy” someone or their ability to function. (If the writer decides to portray trauma so severe that it ends in death, then that's a different story, isn't it?)

The good writer is going to give nuance to their characters faced with trauma so that even the most severely assaulted survivors will have individual responses to their traumas. If the writer wants to get it “right” then it’s best to avoid the simplistic, and dare I say lazy, approach to writing about trauma, including sexual traumas. If the plot point becomes physical or mental injuries to your characters, then it’s going to mean that there are repercussions that will go on for the rest of the story, the chapter, the novel, even the series. It’s more realistic.

I’m trying to do that in my novel, and I’ll wait to see if I’ve done it “right” or not. I’ve struggled with the need to keep the story going and deal with the physical changes I’ve made to my character. Even more, I'm paying attention so that the changes to my characters stemming from their physical and/or sexual traumas don't come up only when required by the plot, but truly integrate the change into the characters’ responses: that leg always hurts now when she reaches for the peanut butter on the top shelf, or he moves the peanut butter because of the pain or she now flinches anytime she pass that one place where she went that one time. It made writing my novel a bit more challenging, but I’m pleased with the result. I think the story is better because of it.

Update: Amanda has a post on how people have different reactions to harassment. It's good to remember that there is no one, true, way a person is going to react to trauma of any degree.

31 May 2011

The WisCon Weekend

WisCon 35 wrapped up last weekend and the highlight of the weekend was that I made my self-imposed deadline. More or less. Two years ago, I set WisCon as the deadline for finishing the rewrite of my novel. I made that deadline (luckily, I hadn't specified which WisCon) even though I bought a house and moved in between. The rewrite was extensive and based on feedback from my writer's group and other readers. The story is sharper, more focused even as I managed to expand it in a way that makes it seem (to me, at least) a more fulfilling story.

Having finished the rewrite, it's time to begin the agent search. In other words, the business side of writing. I haven't had that much success with that side of things to date. I've had one short story sold to one webzine in the last couple of years, and that's it. To be fair, for most of the last 4 years I've been focused on the novel, but having finished that major creative project, now I have to focus on the business, the selling side that goes with the creation if I want to do anything more than enjoy the process of writing in and of itself.

Pursuant to the advice I learned at some of the panels at WisCon last weekend, I've started this blog and I've begun to examine markets, agents, and strategies for the business, both for the novel just finished and the short stories now and to come. I'm not the first to go through this process (at least one other member of my writing group has searched for [and found] an agent) but this is my journey. Now I have something to talk about.