Category: Uncategorized

1) I can write really small when I need to.

2) A picture really is worth 1,000 words. Most of my mini-stories are meaningless without the postcard image that inspired them. This is fun, leaning on those images and letting them fill in the gaps between the lines.

3) Sometimes fewer words are better. At first I tried to cram a whole story into these little spaces (hence the tiny writing), but as I go on I see that sometimes the suggestion of a story is far more interesting. One of my favorites is only 43 words. Again, I’m not sure this works without the images to do the heavy lifting. Maybe in some cases?

4) I’m not really sure at what point something becomes a story. Am I deluding myself that these qualify? Probably.

Anyway, more to come. I am home now and recovering from a month of travel. Next on the priority list is revising the novel. But I promise to keep postcarding, too. This silly idea, born of the Clarion West Write-a-thon and sleep deprivation, has the feel of a lasting obsession.

I haven’t always loved postcards. In fact I’ve downright hated them, for reasons that I now see are unfair. So, I’ve written a conciliatory postcard . . . to Postcards.

And now I’ve got the Beatles’ song, “Dear Prudence,” in my head. And the Internet here is so slow that I fear uploading any more photos will take approximately the time it took some glacier to form this fjord we’re in. So look for more postcards soon!

And remember, if you want to look for them in the meatspace mail, sponsor me in the Clarion West Write-a-thon.

As part of the beautiful blending of travel and Clarion West Write-a-thon, my 100-word postcard story project continues. I must be quick, as internet access is fleeting here in the scary world of my imagination. Remember, it’s not too late to get one of these one-of-a-kind storylets. Just sponsor me in the Write-a-thon for $20 or more!

Ah, the postcard. “We saw this. It was nice. Wish you were here.” Boring, right?

Because 1) I am on holiday in Europe, and 2) it is Clarion West Write-a-thon, and 3) I’m feeling guilty about not being able to focus on my more lengthy commitments, for the next three weeks I’ll be composing a series of micro-stories in postcard form.

Here are the first two (apologies to Gordon and sis-in-law if you see yours here before you get them (which seems pretty likely)):

Want one? Sponsor me in the Write-a-thon! For a mere twenty dollars I’ll send you a story of about 100 words, on a genuine European postcard (probably to be posted from Seattle).

I am notoriously late to most conversations, living as I do under a rock. So it was only a few days ago that I saw The Avengers (and that was because I had to catch up by renting Thor and The Incredible Hulk, and I needed to do that because I have never been a comics reader–yes, my geek credentials are quite thin, actually).

But since I have finally seen it, I can finally comment on the apparently controversial line about Loki being adopted. In case you missed the controversy, start here.

Obviously, they’re brothers.

Before I saw the film I was aware of the line, which was summed up to me as, “They use adoption as an explanation for Loki killing a bunch of people.” Perhaps awkwardly, my first response to that was, “You mean I get to kill people because I’m adopted? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Of course, the summary I heard was a little flawed. The lines go:

Thor: He is of Asgard and he is my brother!
Black Widow: He killed 80 people in 2 days.
Thor [deadpan]: He’s adopted.

When this happened in the theatre, I laughed as loud as anyone. Because it’s funny, and because it’s familiar. For adopted children, that distance is always there between us and our families. I don’t read Thor’s line as indicating that Loki killed people because he’s adopted. I read it as a funny, instinctual distancing by Thor, who’s not always the sharpest or wittiest or most thoughtful, when confronted with his brother’s horrible deeds.

But it is a real thing. I used it all the way through my adopted childhood. If one of my (adoptive) parents asked me why I was so _________ [insert negative thing], I would say, “environment.” If they asked about something positive, my answer was, “genetics.” Har-har. Nobody’s feelings are hurt.

I know that feelings can easily be hurt in these situations. This has also happened to me, when a relative lets something slip indicating that he or she thinks of me as something less than family. What’s relevant to me in the Avengers dialogue is Thor’s initial defense of Loki. They’re family.

If they weren’t, Thor wouldn’t feel the need for distance. After all, our family are the ones who annoy us the most.

On that note, off I go with the family. To Norway, of all places! I guess Loki is my brother.

I booted another story out the door today, into the cold world of submissions. *sniff* They grow up so . . . slowly, actually.

Sure, some stories arrive like Athena, fully formed and holding a sword (at least in my imagination). These little blessings toddle precociously out of the nest, and sometimes even find new homes. But some live long spinster lives, waiting for a market matchup that seems never to come. Some live in their parents’ basements well past middle age.

This latest one is one of the latter. It was born in my MFA program, under literary conditions. But it never quite fit in. It had a speculative element (or did it?) that turned out to be nothing, a big giant squid on the mantelpiece. So after a few sorties to literary markets I shelved “Day 40” (as it was then called).

Post-Clarion West, I dug the poor thing out and tried to reinvent it as a genre story. I gave it a dark new ending. I made the SF element real, but it still didn’t start until halfway through the story, and my first readers said it felt like a literary story with an SF element grafted onto it. Which, of course, it was. Back on the shelf it went (now with the title “Hearts, Minds, and Plastic Bristles”).

Then just this month, in a desperate attempt to avoid editing my novel, I tortured this story one more time. I cut it to the bone and gave it yet another new ending, one that feels right. In critique group, of course, all the struggle was laid bare–the uneasy history of this transmogrified work is still there, and it still rankles a bit. But not so much that it isn’t time to let it fly again. Time will tell if this Frankenstein-esque revision will be a victory, or if villagers will hunt it down with pitchforks and flaming torches.

Oh, and my readers all hated the story’s title. I’m not going to say what it’s called now; I’m just keeping fingers crossed that it doesn’t come home this time. Not chased by an angry mob, and not to do its laundry.

Summer is coming, and that means Clarion West Write-a-thon. I will, once again, be writing for dollars. Or maybe editing for dollars. Frankly, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, but I still want people to donate money to support Clarion West. Even though the write-a-thon doesn’t officially begin until June 17th, you can already donate! If you end up being my highest donor, you can force me to write about your pet ‘possum, hippogriff, or sentient tomato (or something you decide).

If, like me, you have more time than money, but you still want to support Clarion West, you can sign up to be a write-a-thoner. If we get 200 people participating, something awesome happens. I think it involves money.

So yeah, I’ll probably be electronically panhandling a bit more as summer approaches and the write-a-thon gets underway. You’ve been warned. Boring status updates and exciting(?) excerpts will also probably follow.

<Announcer Voice> But wait, there’s more!

This summer my Norwegian family is having a reunion, which means that for three weeks I’ll be in Iceland and Norway. Whee! This introduces a measure of uncertainty to the summer. It means that: 1) you may have to read accounts of my travel and look at photos of fjords; 2) I may not be able to post at all, as Internet availability comes and goes; 3) the midnight sun might drive me over the edge; 4) my write-a-thon output might be lower than anticipated; and 5) my next story might be about Vikings.

This is where I’ll be. (photo: Hurtigruten)

Once again, the Internet’s lamentation over a celebrity death has me feeling like I might really be an alien. Actually, it happened twice in the last week, but this post is not about that musician guy from that band. You know the one.

It’s Maurice Sendak, beloved children’s author and illustrator who I can’t ever remember reading. Oh sure, I’m aware of Where the Wild Things Are; I was actually raised on this planet. But I don’t remember reading it as a child. This isn’t the first time this has happened. In fact, it’s rare that I share any childhood literary experiences with the majority of Americans.

Sometimes, like now, this makes me feel out of place. But it also makes me wonder. I know that I was read to as a small child, and I developed early on into a voracious reader and re-reader, albeit primarily of garbage. But I have no idea what those first books were that must have hooked me. I can’t remember reading Dr. Seuss (not as a kid, anyway). I remember Shel Silverstein’s kids’ poetry, but mostly from being a bit older, or from being scarred by certain poems about eating whales. I’m really glad that these folks had such an impact on everyone else’s lives. But where was I?

I do remember reading the Bearenstain Bears, but all that remains of those memories is the vague sense that I was having moral lessens crammed into my young skull. The same goes, actually, for the one individual kids’ book I can remember, “Could Be Worse!” by James Stevenson. I liked that one a lot, even though it was clearly just telling me not to whine and complain.

I must confess: the first books I clearly remember reading are The Baby Sitters Club novels. I read and re-read them for so long that my mother asked my second-grade teacher what she should do about it. My teacher wisely responded that there was no problem–I was, after all, reading thousands of pages of words, even if they were literary junk food. After that I moved on to Christopher Pike’s YA horror novels, some of which I still consider good books. Those were a bridge to Anne Rice’s vampires, which somehow led me to science fiction writers like Michael Crichton and David Brin.

Which, perhaps, is why I suspect myself of being an alien. In the context of my favorite fiction, it makes perfect sense. And you know what? It could be worse.

What books do you remember–or not remember–from childhood? Tell me about them in comments, and teach me to be human.

Subtitle: Don’t make me get my flying monkeys

Rejection is a part of the life of a writer. A big part. I’ve heard that this gets better as one improves as a writer. This makes sense, right? The better the writing, the more likely it is to be accepted. Win.

But there’s a horrible place in between the hell nos of beginning writing and the hell yeses of awesome writing, and I’m stuck in it. This is an especially frustrating place to inhabit, because what it means is that response times go way up–behind the scenes there is an editor who just can’t make up his or her mind about my story. So it sits and sits. And I stew and stew, and notice that my story has been out longer than average for the market. And then the rejection comes. Blast!

Lazy damn monkeys

For example, I sent a story to a notoriously slow but awesome market who shall remain nameless sixteen months ago. Even for this molasses-like market this is a long time. Are my hopes up? You bet. Will I be disappointed? Probably.

For another example, last week I sent a story to an anthology with a close date at the end of June. I knew that that likely meant not hearing anything until August when all decisions would be sent. And then, to my surprise, the editor emailed me almost right away to say that he’d enjoyed the story, but no promises. That was sweet and all (who doesn’t like to hear their work was enjoyed?) but hopes? up? Ugh.

I heard back on one of my overdue pieces last night. A crisp form letter. Not even the encouraging version hoping to read more of my work. Oh well, I tell myself. The person associated with the magazine (who shall of course remain nameless) recently wrote repugnant things about a political matter, allowing me to not be sad about not appearing in the magazine. Or so I tell myself.

Yet another market owing me a response is frightening me today, because its website seems to be malfunctioning. I hope it hasn’t gone to the magazine rack in the sky, and that’s why I haven’t heard back.

All of which is to say that today it’s hard for me to be a writer. But I combatted the long-wait blues by making six more submissions. Fly, my pretties!

Only small readers.

Here are a couple of books I read recently (both from Night Shade Books):

The first is Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht. It’s the story of Liam, a young Catholic who finds himself in the middle of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Only he’s also half-fairy, and a shapeshifter. Oh, and that world is at war too, with demons. I picked this book up because the crankiest reader I know raved about it, and he was right. The novel is nothing like what I might have expected, eyes rolling, from a book about the fey. It’s gritty and violent and pulls no punches. If Tinkerbell were to show up in this world, someone would be sure to beat her to death. Maybe a Catholic priest.

The second one is Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh. It’s a story about a group of people trying to survive a slow, frighteningly plausible apocalypse. Jasper is one of the unfortunate people–like me–who followed their hearts in college. He finds himself among the 40% of people who are unemployed, homeless and wandering with a a”tribe” of similarly unlucky folk. We get to watch the world fall down around these people. Sometimes things get better–Jasper gets a job! And an apartment! And sometimes a girlfriend!–but overall things go steadily down the tubes. Throughout it all, Jasper looks for love. This focus in unusual in an apocalyptic work, but that’s part of what makes this book different: the tribe doesn’t know what we know–that the world they knew isn’t coming back–and they struggle to remain themselves without knowing what the rules of their world are. The Soft Apocalypse has ways of changing a person, sometimes through violence, sometimes through viruses, and these characters care about keeping their humanity. This is one of the most real feeling books about the end of the world that I’ve read (and yeah, that’s not a small sample). The characters could easily be us.

The outstanding thing about my reading Soft Apocalypse isn’t that I loved it (although I did). The awesome thing is that I read the book on the recommendation insistence of Jeremy Lassen, publisher of Night Shade Books, having just met him, because he knew I’d love it. It’s obvious that he knows and loves his books the way parents are supposed to love their children.

And in the conversation I stuck my foot in my mouth, saying, “That’s why I love small presses.”

Lassen set me straight right away. Night Shade Books isn’t a small press; it’s an independent publisher. But I think my comment still stands. I love publishing that cares. Regardless of size.

The life of an “emerging” writer (imagine a sleepy bear coming out of a cave, skinny from hibernation and hungry and cranky–or a butterfly, whatever) is a cycle of 1) write something, 2) send it to a market, 3) get rejected, and 4) repeat steps 2-3 until either it gets accepted or you get so sick of it that you stop trying.

See? This bear is so desperate it’s eating grass.

This is the pattern I’m used to, and though it has (many!) downsides, there is one upside: if you’re like me and you don’t know much about markets or editors’ preferences in the first place, you’re free to pretty much write whatever you’re compelled to write, and worry about finding it a happy home later.

There’s another pattern, which until lately was purely theoretical to me. In this version, 1) an editor approaches the writer and asks for a story, 2) the writer writes the story, and 3) if it’s acceptable, the editor buys it. The thing I’m procrastinating on right now is writing one of these stories.

This is awesome for a number of reasons. For one, even though the editor is a friend and I can’t totally shake the feeling that this gig is charity, it does make me feel less like something that’s emerging, all covered in cocoon juice or dried leaves, and more like a “real” writer. Also, it’s refreshing not to worry about placing a story. In theory, this should be freeing up my mind to write it.

But my mind is a frustrating thing, and apparently not well-suited to looking on the bright side. Now that I have a specific audience to write for–a specific editor, and one whose tastes I’m fairly familiar with–my mind gets to obsess about what that editor will think. Every writer has an inner editor who lives in our heads, right? And in order to get any real work done we have to get that jerk to shut up. Well, now my inner editor has a friend. And getting them both to shut up is a challenge.

Inner Editor does not approve this post.

Subtitle: How a Seattle Spring is like Duotrope

This blue sky? It’s a lie.

This morning when I looked outside it was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. Trees everywhere are making mad love everywhere, blooming extravagantly in white and pink. Green things are poking through the earth and looking at each other like expectant groundhogs. It’s spring!

By noon dark grey clouds filled the sky. It rained a few drops. The thin coat I’d worn to the coffee shop was insufficient to keep the wintry wind from chilling me.

This is spring in Seattle. You know it’s spring because the calendar and the Internet say so. In theory, it’s just over two months to summer. But you know in your heart that the calendar lies. Summer isn’t just around the corner; it won’t show up until at least July. Hell, it might not come at all.

Okay, so here’s my analogy. Warm weather is like publishing a story. And knowing it’s supposed to be spring is like watching Duotrope.com. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a wonderful resource for writers, a wonderfully up-to-date database of markets complete with submission guidelines, response times, and lists of recent responses. If you’re a writer and you haven’t been there yet, go now!

But as fantastic as Duotrope is, it’s also horrible. You can go in there (as I did today) and obsess over late responses. You can look at recent responses and theorize that you’ll get a rejection soon, or worse, you can theorize that since your response is taking longer than average, surely an acceptance is just around the corner.

I did this today, and literally as I was looking at a late market and mentally spending my semi-pro payment, the rejection arrived in my inbox. Like clouds and cold rain.

After all these years believing that I am a person despite sensibly keeping my gonads on the inside, the sexism is getting to me.

There are the obvious laws: various attempts to figuratively and literally get inside women’s reproductive systems, Wisconsin’s regressive non-equal pay shocker, and other legislation that baffles the mind. There’s the mud-slinging and conversation that goes along with these things: Limbaugh and other horrible trolls, that cracked.com article about misogyny, Amanda Marcotte’s lovely response. In the SF genre, there’s this thought-provoking take on the Christopher Priest rant. And many, many more.

I can almost handle most of these things, filing them under “discourse about important topics.” In fact, many of the responses do an amazing job of delineating oft-invisible things. But lately I feel like that kid in The Sixth Sense. Except instead of seeing dead people I see sexism. All the time. Some of them don’t even know they’re sexist.

“So, I should judge her by her attractiveness?”

But really, a lot of them do.

Like the beer commercial that just came on, which ended by saying: “Why are we focusing so much on our brewmaster’s hands? Because she’s not an attractive woman.” Facepalm. I can almost see the makers of this commercial thinking they were subverting expectations by having the brewer be a woman. Maybe they were so shocked by their own daring that they retreated into the comfortable zone of judging women by their appearance.

Or the diet soda commercial, rife with stereotypes about “male” movies, that says explicitly that the product is not for women. I mean, really?

Now that I’m seeing sexism, I see it everywhere. It’s on my bookshelf, both in the authors I’ve read and, as it turns out, in the covers. It’s in superhero poses, and embedded in our language. It’s in my friends’ casual comments–without intent, I’d like to believe. It’s in the television.

Finally, a realistic portrayal of male sexuality.

Mad Men is back on the air, and I like the show as much as the next person, which is to say rather a lot. The fascination we collectively seem to have with bygone years has puzzled me since I started raiding my mom’s vinyl collection in high school. But now it’s downright upsetting me. I don’t think I need to explain that the show is rife with casual sexism. It’s so overt that it’s easy to look at it from our evolved modern perspective and dismiss it, congratulating ourselves on having come so far. Or it was easy, until we started RUNNING backwards. Until I’m living in a world in which senators say things like, “money is more important for men,” or compare women to livestock.

And this is the part of the blog post in which I try to clumsily bring it back to fiction. Because TV shows like Mad Men are fiction, are entertainment, are escape. For these things to be popular, they must be giving people something that they crave.

“Tee-hee! I’m just an object.”

Retro clothing? Sure.
Unlimited boozing and smoking and extramarital sex? Why not?
Sexism? Please, please no.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t just help the ghosts avenge their deaths (or whatever) and make them go away. Help me, Bruce Willis! . . . Wait, that didn’t sound very empowering, did it?

Seeing humanity’s worst on teh interwebs is nothing new.

So I guess I wasn’t surprised by the small but heinous outcry against Rue’s casting in the movie version of The Hunger Games. If you’re unaware, start with this Jezebel article.

This has got me thinking (harder than usual) about character descriptions and reader expectations. In a workshop in graduate school Mary Anne Mohanraj once called me out on something called the “default white.” See, I had written a story in which none of the characters’ ethnicities or skin colors were mentioned except for one person of color. I hadn’t even realized I’d done it.

And just in case you were wondering, I am white. (I’m not sure if there’s a default for authors with other skin colors).

And yeah, I do–and especially did, as a younger writer–tend to write characters who are like me. Apparently I did not feel the need to define these characters as white, whereas if a character was unwhite I did. Shame on me. Seriously.

But here’s the thing. One of the pleasures of reading is imagining one’s self in the story. We find characters that we like and that we identify with, and we root for those people. One of the wonderful and frustrating things about writing is that no matter what we write, readers are going to bring their own interpretations to it. This means that if writers want readers to imagine a character a certain way, they have to be very very clear about it.

Suzanne Collins was clear about many of her characters. Rue, for example. For a partial list, see this other Jezebel article. As you can see, some of them are unclear. But on the whole the movie’s actors are much paler than the book characters. And that’s . . . whatever. I don’t want to guess at the filmmakers’ motives.

In fact, I don’t want to guess at anyone’s motives. I am taking this kerfuffle as a cue to look at my own writing and work on clarity of description of all the things that are important. I am looking to my own habits as a reader, and reminding myself to always read closely.

Is race one of those important things? That is a much bigger question than I can handle.

But to white Hunger Games viewers who are upset by seeing dark-skinned characters: STFU. Guess what? Human skin comes in lots of shades, and kids who don’t look like you should get to see themselves reflected on screen too.

I promise not to be a pain on this subject, but today the kindle version of Attic Toys, with my creepy teddy bear story in it, is FREE on Amazon. That’s right, zero dollars and zero cents. If you won’t buy it for that price, you’re sillier than a chicken in a chicken suit.

And that’s sillier than this.

I’m also pleased as punch to be mentioned in two of the three reviews on Amazon. I’m someone’s favourite! With a “U”!

Also free today are these other titles from Evil Jester Press: Evil Jester Digest Volume One, The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse, and HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror. I know nothing about these other books. Let me know if they’re awesome.

Actually, it did start with the bomb.

Novel #1 (the homeless wonder) left my brain as a literary work, in which characters are guided by their prophetic dreams, sometimes to do things like build nuclear bombs out of smoke detectors and car parts and commit a little terrorism. Perhaps oddly, none of this struck me as fantastic or science-fictional. I do believe that dreams can show us things, and I do believe in the ingenuity of properly motivated and educated people. But the novel was widely seen as SF by literary folks (perhaps explaining its unsold status, but that is another story). This irked me, because I didn’t want my book shelved alongside sword-toting elves.

Sometime lately I realized that although I was once a literary snob, sneering over my spectacles into the genre ghetto, concerned with “respectability,” now I tend toward snobbery of another flavor. Or at least I have been seeing the (permeable, imprecise) distinction between literary and genre more clearly, and I have been seeing it in a way that makes me proud to live, for the most part, on the SF side of the wall.

Because I just read it, Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake will be unfairly singled out in this post as an example of what I mean. It is certainly not the only book to suffer from an uncomfortable blend of genre and literary sensibilities, nor is it even a bad book. I kind of recommend it. Read it if (as I was) you’re traveling standby and end up waiting in an airport for six hours. But the book left me with an odd taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t sadness or lemon cake.

The book focuses on Rose, who as a child develops the ability to taste the emotions of food preparers, starting with her mother’s sadness. The SF element is presented matter-of-factly. It is a Real Thing, and the solidness of that aspect plants a foot in the fantasy realm.

And yet. The book’s real focus is Rose’s unbelievably distant family: her adulterous mother, withdrawn father, and even more withdrawn–to the point of barely speaking to Rose–brother. Rose’s emotional balance as she grows up is far more important than her superpower. (Which, incidentally, is almost totally negative for her. Why, I wonder, did she so rarely taste happiness?) And so the other foot stands in a literary place.

Two things make this work feel literary rather than genre. One <SPOILER> is the way Rose’s brother turning into a chair is handled. Even though it is a Real Thing, to me it feels like a metaphor. He was reclusive; he retreated; he disappeared into the furniture. </SPOILER>

The other is the scope of the story, the stakes. Reading through the book I kept collecting clues that ratcheted up my expectations. For example, Rose’s father avoids hospitals. Even when his kids are born, even when they’re sick. His avoidance is so huge that it ratcheted up the stakes and my expectations. I just knew that something AWESOME was coming. But it didn’t come. All I got was a sense of his character.

I realize that this sounds pretty negative toward literary fiction, so let me add that, of course, there are a great many masterpieces of literary literature, in which Things Happen and stakes-raising promises are fulfilled and the reader is left satisfied. But in literary fiction I think the other kind of story is more allowed. Things don’t have to happen. Characters don’t even have to change. And I feel like stories that straddle the border often retreat into that literary area where resolution is not required, rather than do the hard work of living up to the expectations they create and firing the guns they set on mantelpieces.

Which is disappointing. And so I will stay awhile in the genre ghetto, where the parties are louder, and the stories are bigger than the magic fish that got away, and the squids on the mantelpieces always squirt their ink by tale’s end.

I’d like to think that my writing does these things. I’d like to think that’s why my literary readers decided my novel was SF: that they were blown away by Things happening and promises fulfilled. If that puts my work on a genre shelf, then there it will sit.

Hopefully without any dragons on the cover.

My story, “Down in the Woods Today,” is in this collection:

I’m an “and many more!” Just like the Professor & Mary Ann.

You can buy it for kindle today, for the low low price of only $2.99. If you get the sample first, or “look inside” the text, you’ll get tantalizingly close to the end of my story, hopefully to the point that you won’t be able to resist buying the book just to find out how it ends. Or something like that.

If you don’t have a kindle (or kindle app), you can’t buy the book yet, but I’m told there will be a paper version too. I don’t know when or where, but I’ll let you know.

In high school, there were two girls who I called friends for a time. Until one day I pulled up with my lunch tray and they said, “We don’t really want you to sit with us anymore.”

It was pretty much like that.

Why am I telling you this? Aside from the fact that apparently I enjoy sharing my embarrassing pain, I’ve been thinking about character, about bitterness and villainy. Because it hurt me when they said that, and I’ve clutched that pain to my chest for these years, crushed it into angry diamonds. How could they do such a thing? I asked myself.

And just the other day my paradigm shifted. The thing about people–and characters–is that no one is the villain of her own story.

Maybe those girls weren’t trying to be mean. Maybe I was really annoying. Maybe I was obtuse, ignorant to the many gentle signals they tried to give me, pushing me away. Maybe my clumsy, desperate attempts to be loved made me repulsive. Should they have been forced to suffer through my presence every day for the rest of high school? Of course not. It seems to me now that they were only being honest with me, respectfully direct.

And yeah, my mind is blown. But this is exactly the kind of character insight that makes for well-rounded characters, flawed “heroes” and sympathetic “villains.”

Speaking of cool kids (which we weren’t, really–the girls I aspired to be friends with weren’t cheerleaders or even star theatre nerds; they were quirky potheads, themselves pretty far down the social pyramid). But speaking of cool kids, I am a lucky writer-girl now. I’ve sidled up to a new lunchroom table, and no one has yet asked me to leave. We have a blog, over at horrificmiscueseattle.wordpress.com, and from time to time I will be posting content there, if my talented new friends will keep tolerating me.

This x-mas, an iPad came into our home. It was invited, like any good vampire, and now I fear it’s too late.

It turns out there are these things called e-books, which are like books except that they don’t actually exist in meatspace. And I’ve started to read them. It makes me feel kind of dirty, offending my finely hewn luddite sensibilities. It also makes me feel disembodied.

One of these things is not like the others.

I have the sense that we, humans, are practicing for our extinction. Bear with me. The other night I was reading a collection of short stories and I became irritated by not knowing how close to the end of the story I was, and how long the one after that was. Were this a real book, I thought, I could just flip through the damn pages.

And then I realized I was an idiot, and by tapping in the middle of the screen the little numbers and dots would show up at the bottom and it would tell me how many pages remained. Duh. And it occurred to me that I didn’t know how to read an e-book, not really. I’m not used to the feel of a hard electronic device in my hands. I’m not used to carefully avoiding touching the “pages” of the “book” in my hand. I can’t seem to figure out a comfortable way to “turn” said pages. I miss the tactile sense of progress as real slices of tree flip from right to left; numbers at the bottom of a screen are no substitute.

We are told that the content is the same and that’s all that matters. I almost believe it. Maybe I’m even trying to believe it. But an e-book isn’t a real thing. I can’t touch it or put it on a shelf (not a real shelf, anyway). Even though there’s still a physicality to e-reading–you still have to hold the stupid thing–it feels like practice for not having a body. When content is all that matters, we won’t need the containers. Whether we’re cyborgs or pure energy transhuman consciousness, our silly, needful, individual human bodies will be as obsolete as liner notes and book jackets. *sniff*

Yep, I’m overthinking. Like software-in-training.

This book brought to  you by guilt.

My long-time writing mentor Tim Powers is the first to admit that he’s no role model. And yet, whenever I’m looking for inspiration I find him there with his quirky and often contradictory take on the writing life.

What I am saying is that guilt is an inherent part of being a writer. Powers says this too: when you’re a writer you’ll do anything to avoid actually sitting down to write; but you’re also sort of honor-bound to feel bad about it when you succeed in avoiding the work.

1074 pages? There’s not enough guilt in the world.

This is where I find myself now. Having drafted the novel, I know, deep down in that place of Truth, that I’m not ready to start revising it yet. It needs to sit, to steep, for the memory of the words I’ve written to drain away from my fingertips and my neurons. This too is part of the accepted rules. But the guilt is strong. Get back to work, it says.

I’ve written a short story, and I should write some more of them. If I were a “real” author I could do that, switching between projects like a channel-surfer with a cramping finger. But it’s hard: the brain-space of the novel bleeds into any new work, suggesting ideas for revision and getting in the way of alternate narratives.

What is the answer? I wish I knew. I’d write a story about it.

Hard to believe it’s halfway through December already. Happy Holidays, y’all! November was a wordy, wordy month, as I raged against the arbitrary and unyielding demands of NaNoWriMo. I won! Weird, huh?

But “winning” came at a price, a slump that I’ve been trying these two weeks to recover from. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days was a major challenge and accomplishment for me, and it felt great for about a day or two. After that I started to feel twitchy; it was hard to realize that I didn’t have to spend all day struggling with words, and I wasn’t sure what I should be doing with my time.

Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t keep writing for words. Because of NaNoWriMo’s frenzied pace I’d already written a lot of things that probably have to get cut in revision. When word count is the ultimate goal, writing can suffer. In my case, I’d only outlined half (maybe less) of the novel before the month began. When I should have taken the time to do more outlining, I felt like I would get behind. So instead I rushed ahead blindly, down what may have been a dead end. I’m trying not to think about that now (just finish!).

Then came the saddest realization of all: the novel, the thing I’d been killing myself all month to make, was only about halfway done being drafted. Yes, I’d written 50K words, but the novel needed that much again in order to be done, and I knew it would take me much longer to write the second half–by definition it would, since the first half was the fastest writing I’ve ever done in my life. I felt like I’d just run a marathon and still had 26 miles to go. After all that work, looking at the long road ahead made me want to lie down and sleep.

In other words, I am a dope who apparently needs external motivation in order to work productively. So here goes: now that I’ve finished a rough outline, I’m going to commit myself to writing 1,000 words per day until the novel is drafted.

Starting tomorrow.

Today is day 11 of NaNoWriMo (as well as the eleveniest day of our lives!) and all those upright ones have got me thinking about productivity. Actually, productivity has got me thinking about productivity. You see, after getting a little bit behind in the first week, I am now on track to actually “win” NaNoWriMo.

Take that, naysayers! By which, of course, I mean myself. I was my own biggest doubter, and now I am surprised.

Here’s what happened: on NaNoWriMo’s site there is a graph showing my progress compared to the goal. When my word count dropped below the line, it made me sad. Now that it’s above the line, it makes me happy. Which is to say that I have learned a really elementary lesson about getting shit done: setting goals is an excellent way of achieving them.

Sounds pretty basic, right? I should have known it before. I have even engaged in write-as-much-as-I-can events before (Write-a-Thon, I’m looking at you), which should have given me this insight. But it didn’t. It took looking at the very specific, very challenging (for me) goals on a silly little graph to kick me in the butt to actually DO IT.

So I kind of feel like a moron. But also proud.

And while I’m sharing my moronitude, here’s another trick I learned to boost my productivity: writing in bed. It’s a little silly, but for me it’s brilliant. It combines laziness with accomplishment, rewarding my work with the awesome benefit of getting to put off the day a little longer. As long as I keep writing (and don’t have to pee) I get to stay in my warm, comfy bed. I am writing on average 500 words a day this way, words that I suspect would otherwise be lost in the urgent needs of morning.

Also, my cat gets to help

Here I go!

In the past, I have avoided National Novel Writing Month (in which one tries to write 50K of a novel in thirty days) with the unimpeachable excuse that I had classes to teach and couldn’t possibly have the time. This year I have no such excuse, and therefore I have guilted myself into signing up.

And yet. It’s hard for me to believe that I will write fifty thousand words this month. It’s not because I don’t want to, but because (unfortunately) I was gifted with the ability to do math. If you followed my write-a-thon progress this summer, you know how proud I was of my output over the first five weeks. It was more than I’d ever written before. It was a little over 25K. In other words, it was half as many words as I will try to write this month, in four days more than I will have. Furthermore, on zero of those days did I manage to write 1666 words, the daily number required in order to meet NaNoWriMo’s goal.

But on the other hand . . . something about the unhelpfulness of negativity. So I will try this challenge, and I will try to stop telling myself that I will probably fail at it.

This is me daring you to come. You know you want to.

I’m starting to get excited about World Fantasy Convention next week. This is my first major Con, my first time staying at the convention hotel, and another big first:

I will be doing a reading!

If you’re going to WFC, please come by Pacific 6/7 on 8:00 pm Thursday to hear yours truly read something. And after that, follow me to BarCon.

In related news, I’m taking requests/suggestions/votes on what to read. Have you read anything of mine that you think would be fun to hear? Would you like to hear something new? Something with carnivorous teddy bears? Or water-breathing girls? Zombies?

Feel free to comment even if you won’t be there. Feel free to tell your WFC-attending friends. Feel free to share a drink with me in person or in spirit.

Other friends in crime (by which I mean SF writing) who will be doing readings:
Nalo Hopkinson, 12:30 pm Friday, Pacific 4/5
Cat Rambo, 1:00 pm Friday, Pacific 6/7
Siobhan Carroll (AKA Von Carr), 11:00 am, Saturday, Pacific 6/7
Liz Argall, 3:00 pm, Pacific 6/7

Timing is everything. Urgent non-writing commitments refuse to go away, and are in fact reaching their most critical time this week.

So in the second half of week five I wrote another 1800 words, for a weekly total of 3800. It’s the lowest one so far, but it has yet to be outdone by week six, which so far totals zero words. In my semi-defense, though, this year’s week five would still rank as last year’s second-highest week. Take that, last year’s me!

I did also reach two pretty cool milestones–at the same time!

It’s official: by anyone’s count it’s long enough to be a novel. Is it good enough? Not yet. But that’s a problem for Future Emily.

Two years ago I packed up my laptop and my trusty stuffed shark and drove up to Seattle for SF summer camp, otherwise known as Clarion West. The experience definitely ranks among the best times of my life, and I can honestly say that it was more helpful to me as a writer than my MFA (sorry, formal education!). In a nutshell, Clarion West puts eighteen emerging/aspiring SF writers in a sorority house for six weeks, gives them one well-known writer or editor to learn from each week, and asks them to write a story per week, which will be workshopped by the entire group. It is an intense and wonderful thing.

Nom nom laptop

Here comes the sales pitch.

In order to do the great work that they do, they need money. One of the ways they raise money is through the write-a-thon, which I am participating in again this year. Basically, from June 19 to July 29 I’m going to write fiction, as much of it as I can. I’ll be posting updates and excerpts on this blog (you’ve been warned). Then, you sponsor me for any amount you like–even $1 a week.

In other words, the write-a-thon, like my life and the lives of underwear gnomes, follows this pattern:
step 1: write (or steal all the underwear)
step 2: ???
step 3: profit
The only difference is that for the CW write-a-thon it actually works!

You can sponsor me here.
Or, if you’re a writer, go here to sign up to participate. You don’t have to be a CW veteran to do the write-a-thon, and it’s useful for actually getting writing done.

End of sales pitch.

I have been musing lately about the phrase “released a statement.” This is something said of famous (or infamous) people, as in: “Harold Camping released a statement on May 22 saying, ‘Whoops. My bad.'” (disclaimer: this quote is fake).

Artists, of course, try to make statements. For them (us?) it is an act of creation, something active and intentional. This is not the way of celebrity statements. In order to be heard they need only be “released,” like a cat bolting through an open door. The statements long to get out, and once they do, they are heard. No agent, seemingly, is responsible for them.

As a writer, I “release” statements all the time. I shove them, kick them, hurl them with force and aim into the world, but they rarely get very far. They take a few steps outside, lick themselves, and turn around to scratch at the door.

Sometimes it feels like we’re all shouting to be heard over the whispers of a few. Oh well. I suppose I’ll plug my ears and keep yelling.  One day, like teased and ridiculed zoo tigers, the statements will escape.

My story, “Apology for Fish-Dude,” is live today at Ideomancer!

This is–to date–my favorite of my stories. A product of sleep-deprivation and Clarion West (two things that go hand in hand), it features flying tigers, talking fish, and meat trees. As fellow Clarionite Lucas Johnson said, “the steaks are high.”

Illustration by Lucas Johnson