Unforeseen Cirucmstances

Today’s post has been indefinitely delayed because I found this in my house this morning!

That's a 10in diameter glass bowl btw.

I must make sure this isn’t a sign of the impending apocalypse and is just a hazard of living where I do. Needless to say this has derailed my plans for the day.

Brownie points to anyone who can id this…thing. (PS, I had to call the county extension office for help with that.)

Until next week!

Lucky Seven Meme

I knew it was inevitable, and sure enough, I was tagged by Lori M. Lee and Laura Lee Nutt to participate in the Lucky Seven Meme.

The Lucky 7 Meme Rules
• Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
• Go to line 7
• Copy down the next 7 lines--sentences or paragraphs--and post them as they're written. No cheating.

So here we are without further ado, seven lines from the first draft of my ya scifi adventure. Emphasis on first draft.

I hear rustling, then Dad’s muffled voice. “Not yet.” It’s like Christmas morning when he goes downstairs first to see if Santa’s come. But I’m pretty sure there are no presents up there. There’s more rustling and a few grunts before Dad’s masked face appears over the hatch. “All clear.”

I’m a bit wobbly when I reach the top – it’s the first time I’ve exerted myself in weeks, and my heavy new clothes aren’t helping.

I swear it makes more sense in context... Everyone probably says that :)

If you wanna play, consider yourself tagged.

Happy weekend!

Story Stew

There’s no such thing as writer’s block.
Write a little bit each day.
Butt in chair.

I’m sure we’ve all heard variations on these themes regurgitated online and in craft books and by cranky creative writing professors.

Writers write, right?

Yes, but sometimes such a pace is unsustainable. You don’t want to get so burned out you never want to pick up a pen again. You also don’t want to keep writing just for the sake of writing if there’s something fundamentally wrong with your story. Sometimes you just need to stop and have a think.

This doesn’t mean you have writer’s block or that you aren’t being productive, even if you’re not committing words to a page. Thinking through your story is always time well spent.

The prewriting stage of a project is the most familiar, most obvious, time you spend thinking about a story. Also before launching into a major revision. In both cases it makes sense to give yourself a few days, weeks, even months, depending on story scope, to think over what you want to accomplish, and how that tracks through the narrative.

Recently, particularly for my short stories, I will get a story idea, but wait until the point where I cannot stand not writing the story any longer. I stew and stew and stew, let my story ideas come to a simmer, then a roiling boil, and then and only then do I start to write. I’ve found this leads to more complete first drafts and a better sense of my characters and the overall story arc. High five.

There are also less obvious times when it makes sense to hit the brakes and think on what comes next. For me, I usually pause in my drafting when I approach a major tentpole scene. I also slow down my pace the closer I get to the end of my story. In both cases, I’m usually juggling a lot of characters and plot elements, and it can take time to work my way through these scenes even with an outline. A slow and steady pace, particularly with lots of time built in to stew about the possibilities, usually helps it all come together.

I’ve taken to addressing problem scenes this way too. I’ll take a break, stew a few days, and then come back re-energized to get the story back on track.

How do you stew?

Obligatory Arrested Development Reference (Source)

Artist Dates and Creative Breaks

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to join two of my writer friends and road trip to a nearby town, all for a poetry reading that might or might not be awesome.

For all intents and purposes, it was what Julia Cameron calls an Artist Date:

a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play. Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration.

Although I didn’t do this artist date solo, the conversations the three of us had over lunch and in the car about craft, our writing, as well as more mundane things were in some ways more valuable. You see, I spend most of my days solo already, writing, reading etc. So some times I need to be around other people, artist date or not.

The day was sunny and gorgeous, so we walked around, letting the weather hinting of Springtime and the new locale inspire us after a delicious meal. And the poetry reading? Well, it kinda sucked. But the point was to change things up a bit, expose ourselves to something new, something different, regardless of the outcome. You can’t write unless you keep yourself open to experiences of all kinds.

For me, the day was about changing up my writing routine. I also realized just how nice it can be to spend time with my writing friends outside of critique group, which doesn’t always allow for deeper socialization when everyone has at least five manuscript pages to get through.

And I already have plans for more artist dates – solo this time – while my husband is traveling for two weeks near the end of this month. Trips to museums, and exhibits, and science talks (I am such a dork), and new restaurants in parts of town I haven’t explored yet. I will treat myself well, and hopefully my writing will benefit from it.

How to make artist dates work for you?

The good news, for me at least, is that I live in a sizable city that supports a lot of different events. There’s also an alt weekly, in print and online, that does a good job of highlighting events that occur throughout the area. I’ve made a habit of checking it every week to keep my eye out for new things, new experiences, that I’m interested in or would enrich my life.

Other resources, depending where you live, could be your public library, chamber of commerce, or even local university. Universities often have a wide range of events, performances, and talks to keep the students entertained, but that doesn’t mean folks from the greater community can’t get involved.

Online message boards and forums dedicated to your community could also be a good resource and put you in touch with people with similar interests.

And never be afraid to take a road trip to somewhere new. You never know what you’ll discover.

Happy writing!

Transitioning into a Second Draft

I discovered the short story I had a sneaking suspicion was actually a novel last fall is, in fact, a novel. And I’m 90% done drafting it. I have the last section roughly outlined, and should finish up the first draft by the end of the month if not sooner.

And it needs to get done by then. So I can revise it, and expand it, and send it to my CPs, all in time before Taos Toolbox come June when I plan on sharing the novel with the other participants. It’s overwhelming when I look at all those goals smooshed into a single sentence, but the terror is keeping me going, keeping me productive, as I pound out ~2k a day to get there.

But even though the first draft isn’t completed yet, I’m already thinking about what I’ll need to do to prepare for the second pass. I don’t have the time to set the story aside for a couple of months – even though I am planning on a break here and there for writing short stories.

So I need to be focused and smart in terms of how I proceed.

Research 

I’ve been doing a lot of research on an as-needed basis as I’ve been drafting, but there’s still a lot more to be done to really make the story come alive. Aspects of the world I’ve created need to be fleshed out and tied more firmly to plot elements. Parts of the story take place where I live currently, so field trips to area attractions and museums and the like are good too for getting at those concrete sensory details to anchor the story action and make it as authentic as possible. Geography, language, history, science, politics…I’m drawing on it all and want it represented as accurately as I’m capable of doing in this second draft.

Description

This is one of those things I have to consciously incorporate when I write. I usually get so caught up in action and dialogue that description usually falls by the wayside. So in my second draft, I know I’ll need to really pay attention for opportunities to describe my world and my characters. I’ll be drawing on my research for one, but now that I’ll have a completed draft, it’ll be easier for me to go back and accurately depict my characters as well. Usually, I don’t really have a good sense of my characters until I finish the first draft, where I can then chart their character arc over the whole story. So on this second pass, I’ll be taking a hard look at how I describe and characterize the story players throughout the book.

Stakes

Partly because of the way I’ve chosen to structure this book (for now) and partly because I’ve been so focused on getting to the end of the first draft, stakes aren’t as fully explored as they’ll need to be if I want to attempt to publish this story. In my second draft, I’ll be taking a hard look at each chapter, each section of the story, to determine ways to consistently raise the stakes and ratchet up the tension as the story progresses. It’s close now, but it needs to be even more pronounced to achieve that page-turning quality in what’s turned out to be a more character-driven sci-fi adventure (I know, I’m still wondering how that happened too).

Plot Expansion

Because I’ve been flying through my initial draft (for me at least), there are some huge gaps where I’ve left out entire scenes or have only provided the barest skeleton of story action. All of those areas will need to be fleshed out and expanded. There’s a good chance what I discover in writing these new scenes will need to be incorporated elsewhere in the story as well so everything fits together naturally – I don’t want things shoehorned or appended onto the story at this stage. Things should hang together at this point. And if they don’t, I know I have more work to do.

Sentences

This probably goes without saying, but when I’m drafting I don’t always have my most beautiful prose flowing. I’m trying to get from point A to point Z as fast as possible, and if the right word or phrase isn’t readily available, I skip it and move on. On the second pass, I need to root out every instance of lazy writing, cut clichés and awkward phrasing, and instead create laser-sharp prose chock full of precise details. Intentional writing, made a heck of a lot easier once I have my first draft done and understand the shape of the story.

Keep your fingers crossed for me as I finish up my first draft and decide what to do with it.

What do you look for improving on a second pass? How do you prepare to revise a first draft?

Trunking Stories

It’s official. I’ve decided to trunk one of the first science fiction short stories I’ve written.

This isn’t a story I never finished or abandoned halfway through. This is a story I completed, workshopped, submitted, revised some more, and collected a handful of rejections on. I haven’t exhausted all markets for it, but it’s time to set it aside.

This was a tough decision for me. I’m not one to give up easily. I do think any idea can be salvaged. But that still doesn’t mean something is publishable, or a least publishable in the way I want it to be. Or that the time spent fixing the story isn’t better spent on writing new ones.

My story had an off-putting epistolary structure, a future world never explained only inferred, a main character who had no real character arc. Feedback from readers and editors ranged from “It started too slow” to “It ended too soon.” “It was too experimental” or “too predictable” and so on. Suggestions for improvement were wide-ranging as well, and at least one revision pass I did made the story even worse.

But even when confronted with this evidence, I still spent time tinkering and trying to place the story. Why? Well, maybe it’s because I’m stubborn. Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many times how subjective this business is and maybe, just maybe, the next market will be it. Or maybe it’s because I’m nostalgic, because it was my first and I’m inordinately proud of my effort despite knowing that it isn’t what it needs to be.

If there’s anything that first story has taught me, a neat concept is nothing without proper execution and characters the reader cares about. You need to have the whole package. If you don’t, it’s time to go back to the drawing board or set the story aside.

Having writing a half-dozen stories since then and started a handful more, I can see the improvements in mechanics, storytelling, character development – nearly all aspects needed for a successful short story – that I’ve made in my craft. It’s time to move on.

As Orson Scott Card says in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy:

[Y]ou should send out, today, the best work you are capable of doing today. Of course you’ll do better a year from now. But a year from now you should be writing the story that you care about and believe in at that time – not reworking this year’s story. […] Because the more you fiddle with your story, rewriting this paragraph or that one, the more likely you are to make it worse. There are things you instinctively do when the story is in its first rush out of your head that are truer and better than anything you’ll come up with as you second-guess, revise, intellectualize. (2001 edition, page 105).

Learning to let go is HARD. As writers we store up everything we experience -- emotions, factoids, ideas – and then slowly mete them out as we write. But to purposefully abandon something? It can go against our very nature. The trick is knowing when to set a story aside, and for how long.

In When Do You Trunk a Story? SF author Juliette Wade explores different reasons for trunking a story: no market for it, it isn’t good enough, it isn’t your first priority, and so on. In When do you walk away? And how do you know when to come back?, Wade talks about what happens when a trunked story calls out for your attention despite the passage of time.

I do think time and experience can do wonders, not only in improving your craft, but honing your ability to see how stories work. Or what Martina from Adventures in Children’s Publishing calls identifying “What Isn’t On the Page”:

I wonder if that's the difference between rewriting that first manuscript twenty times and writing ten new manuscripts? We can stare at the page and edit it until every word is different, but that doesn't necessarily show us what we're missing. […] If we're hitting a wall with a particular story, it may not be because of what's on the page. It may be what isn't there. We may not be able to see that without a long cooling off period. […] Sometimes, it's time to move on, to let ourselves discover a new world populated with compelling characters and untapped possibilities. Maybe we need to consider that a gift we can give ourselves--the gift of moving forward. But before we give up, we owe it to ourselves to sit back, look at the page, and consider what isn't there.

And I suspect, if you can't answer that question, it's time to move on.

Happy writing!

Interview with the Editors of Crossed Genres Publications

Today, I am pleased to bring you an interview with Kay T. Holt and Bart R. Leib, co-publishers and founders of Crossed Genres Publications. Kay and Bart are also founders and contributing writers to the excellent and informative Science in My Fiction blog.

After they accepted my story “The Tradeoff” for the Fat Girl in a Strange Land anthology, I thought this interview would be a good opportunity to learn how the anthology came about, what the editorial life entails, and what’s next for Crossed Genres Publications.

So let’s get started.

What was the inspiration behind the Fat Girl in a Strange Land anthology?

Crossed Genres has always been a publisher that supports underrepresented groups. Fat women have always been hidden in literature and film, or represented as examples of what not to be. We wanted to show some of the ways in which fat women are ostracized, and shoehorned into stereotypes, and display some of the mental and emotional consequences of those stereotypes. We also wanted to prove that fat women can be proud of who they are, and are deserving of their own stories.

“Fat”, “girl”, “strange”, and “land”… Why this combination of words? Why now?

The title as a whole is a play on Heinlein's famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land. A few years ago Kay started a series of short stories which were collectively titled Fat Girl in a Strange Land. When the time came to title the anthology we appropriated the title. "Fat" is a term almost always used as an insult, so we're using it to shift the power it has into the hands of those it would insult; similarly, "girl" is a condescending term for a woman. And the "strange land" in this context is more literal, since all the stories involve the main characters traveling to places they've never been (sometimes metaphorically).

I know when I first came across the call for this anthology and then tried to come up with overweight female protagonists in the speculative realm, I drew a blank. And I wanted to change that. Fellow antho author Sabrina Vourvoulias has an excellent post on this invisibility in Unabashed Fat on her blog. What do you hope this anthology achieves for the genre? For readers?

When was the last time you saw a woman on the cover of a spec fic book who wasn't either 1) skinny, or 2) cartoonishly fat to the point of absurdity? Women main characters are rare enough, let alone overweight ones. If a young girl who is overweight can't find a single story of futuristic fiction with an overweight woman, is she to assume that people like her don't exist in the future? How would that girl react? We want fat girls – and women – to read Fat Girl in a Strange Land and see themselves reflected in the struggles of the characters.

Now, in addition to working together on Crossed Genres Publications, you are married in real life. How does your real life partnership inform your literary one? Are there editorial duties that one of you is naturally more comfortable handling than the other? How do you decide who does what?

We don't always co-edit every book we publish; for example, Kay edited our two novel publications, RJ Astruc's A Festival of Skeletons and Kelly Jennings' Broken Slate, while Bart edited our new anthology Subversion: Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm. When we co-edit we split the actual editing evenly.

The rest of the publishing responsibilities – art editing, book production, publicity, etc. – gets split up, often according to our strengths. Kay is a talented artist with art history experience, so she does most of the art editing work; Bart handles most of the distribution and publicity. It can vary somewhat by project, or depending on who has more time available. ;)

What is your best advice for writers out there given your editorial experience?

1. Follow the guidelines. You would not believe how many people get rejections because they didn't. Read them, put your submission together, then before you hit Send, read them again. Don't give the editors reasons to reject you before they've even looked at your story.

2. Put together a good query letter. Study the subject, look at examples, even take a class just for querying. Yes, your writing should speak for itself, but if an editor sees a sloppy email, why should they assume your writing is handled with any greater care? A query is the first thing an editor sees – make sure it isn't the last.

3. Accept your rejections. Everyone gets rejected – everyone. Heinlein was rejected for 2 solid years before he got his first acceptance. Dr. Seuss was on the verge of burning his only copy of his first book, And To Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street, after getting rejected 27 times. A rejection does not mean your writing is bad. There are lots of reasons to be rejected, and the only thing you can do is revisit the story, make some changes, and send it right back out again.

4. Don't be afraid to be different! During those 27 rejections Dr. Seuss received (mentioned above), one letter claimed "This is too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling." Seuss has gone on to sell millions of books in dozens of countries, winning Academy Awards, Emmys, the Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody award along the way. Regardless of what some people think, readers really do want to read new and unique stories.

You recently discontinued Crossed Genres Magazine to focus your efforts on speculative fiction anthologies like Fat Girl in a Strange Land and novels, including INK by Sabrina Vourvoulias out later this year. How is this change helping Crossed Genres Publications move forward?

The primary change is really financial. We're taking the funds we were putting into the magazine and redirecting it to novels and anthologies, allowing us to pay a little better, and focus our resources on fewer annual projects.

The other real benefit is escaping the grind of publishing something new every month. We're very proud that we've never missed a publication date in 3 years of the zine, but it's definitely worn on us. The last CG Magazine publication (Quarterly 4) was released on January 1, and we're really looking forward to narrowing our focus to 4-5 publications per year. By comparison, Fat Girl in a Strange Land will be our 9th publication in the past 14 months.

What’s on the horizon for Crossed Genres Publications? Any plans for additional anthologies right now?

At the moment our publication schedule is set through the end of 2012. In February there's Fat Girl in a Strange Land. In July we'll be releasing a collection of short stories by author Daniel José Older, who we've published a couple short stories from already. And in September we'll be publishing INK, a novel by PA author Sabrina Vourvoulias. It's possible we may add another title we have in mind for the end of 2012 (November or December), but at the moment it's more likely that that project will be published in early 2013.

We're still accepting novel submissions! And don't be surprised to see another submission call for a new anthology in the near future!

EDIT: That new anthology submission call is for Menial: Skilled Labor in SF due by May 31st, so put your thinking caps on!

Thanks again to Kay and Bart for participating in this interview!

Follow them on Twitter for new developments in science, social justice, and of course information about Crossed Genres Publications. Or get to know them through their personal websites:

Kay T. Holt is @sandykidd on twitter and blogs at http://subvertthespace.com/kayholt/

Bart R. Leib is @metafrantic on twitter and blogs at http://subvertthespace.com/bartleib/

Crossed Genres Publications (http://crossedgenres.com/) and @crossedgenres on twitter

Science in My Fiction blog (http://scienceinmyfiction.com/) and @SciInMyFi on twitter

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Fat Girl in a Strange Land is now available in print from Amazon and Createspace, as well as ebook formats.

Book Description:

“For every supermodel, there are thousands of women who have heard “Why don’t you just eat less?” far too often. Except as comic relief or the unattractive single BFF, those women’s stories are never told. Crossed Genres Publications presents Fat Girl in a Strange Land, an anthology of fourteen stories of fat women protagonists traveling distant and undiscovered realms.

From Guatemala, where a woman dreams of becoming La Gorda, the first female luchador, before discovering a greater calling in “La Gorda and the City of Silver”; to the big city in the US, where superhero Flux refuses to don spandex in order to join her new team in “Nemesis”; to the remote planet Sidquiel in “Survivor”, where student Wen survives a crash landing, only to face death from the rising sun. Fat Girl in a Strange Land takes its characters – and its readers – places they’ve never been.”

Order today!