April 2009 Archives

Samhain just posted a call for a space opera anthology. It's like a dare: So you think you can write science fiction? Yeah, well, if you try it here, we'll tell you if it's worthwhile in just three weeks! (I know; it would just mean that particular editor didn't feel it was right for her, but no dare is phrased rationally.)

Of course an idea popped into my head, and I've calculated how many words I need to write each day to make the deadline. Thankfully my insanely busy schedule will be letting up soon. But do I really want to cast aside all my current works-in-progress to dedicate the next few months to this one new sprout? I could take my time on it and find a home for my leisurely written, tautly honed space opera elsewhere later. Writing for anthologies might be great for inspiration, but it doesn't seem sustainable for a career. (Plus, I'm still waiting to see the editorial fallout for my rush in submitting "Summer-set.")

We'll see how it goes. The siren call of one of my other works might draw me away from the shiny new story seed once it's lost some luster.

I did it! I signed the contract! Samhain will be publishing "Summer-set"! *bounce bounce bounce*

The world is full of wonderfulness and I could dance my way around its entire circumference right now.

I was a wallflower for most of college. Then came senior year and I was partying as hard as anyone on East Campus (the, ah, less quiet end). In a suspiciously similar pattern, I wrote quite a bit during the first three years, and not so much the last.

It wasn't so much the debauched revelries as lack of time — okay, fine, the revelries didn't help. But my dorm room had a window out to the street where some of my friends had to walk when they wanted to get back to their own dorms from main campus. Naturally they'd toss a rock at my window to see if I was up, and if I was (sometimes I woke because of said rock, but they were never picky), they'd stop in to chat or drag me out for beer, and the next thing I knew it was five in the morning and I needed to catch some shut-eye so I could attend a lecture in four hours. Of course there would be something happening that evening, a party or maybe dinner anywhere but in the dining halls, and maybe a date the next day, and remember that I was supposedly studying for a degree amidst all this?

I've had plans every day since Wednesday, and will continue to do so through not this coming weekend, but the next one. There was even stumbling home at five in the morning at one point. These are all things I really shouldn't be missing out on: a birthday celebration, a friend I haven't seen in over a year, an annual beer festival (okay, so maybe the days of debauchery aren't yet over), a symphony performance, a meditation retreat, and yes, a date...

Where is the writing time?

I've taken to carrying large purses with a notebook tucked inside them, and my favorite writing pen. At least that way I can dash off a sentence or even a line of dialogue if it occurs to me amidst the chaos of my schedule. But these jumbled fragments do not a story make. It's coalescing these into a rope of narrative that's the real work.

I suppose it's about priorities. At work, people will schedule blocks of time in their calendars in order to work on specific projects, so that no one can drag them into a meeting at that time. I need to schedule in writing time, and tell people that I have other plans when they want to do something with me then.

I can do it. After all, sometime in my third quarter, I learned to bury my head under my pillow and ignore the rocks plinking off my window.

I was talking to a couple of friends who knew about my writing fantasy, but not of my forays into romance. (Except for the fact that there's a romance in every fantasy story I write, of course.) They didn't realize that there were subgenres in romance, and I tried to explain the ones I knew about, only to realize as I stumbled for examples that I don't know very much.

There are foundational works in science fiction and fantasy. Take The Lord of the Rings (which I actually only read a few years ago, ironically because it sounded too cliché to me — of course it did, since it kick-started epic fantasy as we know it today). See Neuromancer for cyberpunk. Chances are that you've at least heard of these, if not read them, if you're acquainted with these genres. But with romance I'm all a-flounder. Are there authors I should know? Books I should own, before I can call myself a romance reader?

As my friends marveled when I tried to explain the breadth of romance sub-genres, essentially any genre can become conjoined with romance if you throw in some sweet lovin'. Thriller + romance = romantic suspense. Urban fantasy + romance = paranormal romance. Historical + romance = (surprise!) historical romance. And my yearnings toward romance were satisfied for the longest time by these edgewise explorations from other genres.

So I went and checked out all the Shana Abes, Connie Brockways, and paperback Loretta Chases that my local library had, because their names rang a bell as I skimmed through the fiction shelves. Alas, there is no separate romance section. But I'll work my way through the alphabet and try to rectify my lack of education. I remember feeling this way when I read my first adult mystery novel. There's a whole world out there with different rules and shiny new things, and I am determined to explore it.

Perhaps this makes me a masculine brute, but I often read romantic fantasy books wishing they were more explicit. It's not just wanting sex. I just enjoy learning details about the bed pleasures of fictional couples I like. Sometimes it's that the author did such a marvelous job in building up the tension between them, and I feel cheated in not getting to witness the culmination of all those sparks flying. In the case of Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, I remember being perplexed at random sex scenes between random characters (who weren't even emotionally attached), when a heartbreakingly beautiful couple in the book never got one (on-screen).

I don't think I'll ever be able to write erotica. I can't get that raw with my words, to the point where the reader is caught up in the physicality of it all. I'm too fond of my metaphors and I think I overemphasize the non-romatic plot. But I'm frank about my sex life in real life, because I think it's a natural intimacy to share with people you're attracted to and care about, and I like to acknowledge it among my characters who feel that way. It's not an insignificant step to take, but it's not (in my stories) earth-shattering. It may not be the best sex they've ever had, and they may not be each other's One True Loves. Just an expected development of a relationship which can manifest itself in a lovely medium of hands and mouths and, well, other parts.

Writers have to gather the most eclectic collection of facts. I've had to research the highest altitude at which one can find butterflies, which trees grow in African deserts, and what Mongolian bowstrings are made of. Thankfully, my google-fu is great. Also, requesting heavy non-fiction tomes through interlibrary loan helps counterbalance the librarians' opinion of all those paperbacks with heaving bosoms on their covers that I also ask for.

A writer once advised me to network, not among others in the publishing industry, but rather students in all disciplines: biology, geology, architecture, and so on. I once emailed an ex-boyfriend because a writer friend of a friend of mine needed to know about atmospheric physics, which he happened to be specializing in. The ex and I didn't leave on the friendliest of terms, but I understood that the need was great.

It still wounds me a little when people assume that writing fantasy means you get to make everything up. No, the world needs to stay consistent, and everything still has implications. Whatever you create, you need to follow through on. Anyone who has studied history understands that consquences cascade; you can't just insert an element in the middle of things and expect everything else to remain unaffected.

I'm a fan of Barbara Hambly because she's the fantasy author who gets this the most out of anyone I've read. Things don't get much more fantastical than in her Darwath series, when the Dark rise out of the ground to hunt humans. Yet she doesn't wave her arms and dismiss it as magic. She gives scientific reasons for what happens — no, don't yawn yet, it's all the more satisfying because it makes sense: everything adds up, and the solution is not some random artifact that just happened to be imbued with the power to fix everything. Or an extra superpower, gained just in the nick of time.

And yes: for me, trying to achieve this all starts with having horsehide bowstrings.

Sometimes you don't realize how much you know about the business of writing until you explain it to someone else. "What's a query letter?" a friend asked, and I was off and running on the perils a few paragraphs could present.

Of course, it's far more satisfying to explain such things from behind the lectern of a story acceptance!

I used to save my stories in files named i1.doc, i2.doc, and so on -- standing for "idea one," and onward.  I graduated from that filing system when I realized that it was impossible to find a particular story.  So now at least I have working titles.

Sometimes the working title fits the final story.  I thought of the title for "Mayfly Night" before the rest of the story followed.  But other times I use something as silly as "Factory," which no self-respecting romantic tale would be titled. Why waste time thinking up something fancier when the story's not yet done?

Even once I'm ready to submit a story, I try not to stress too much over the perfect title. As long as it doesn't actively turn off people or follow the format of "The [Billionaire/Italian/Rock Star]'s [adjective] [Mistress/Lover/Pookie-bear]" (not saying that the two are mutually exclusive), I'm generally happy. Chances are that there's some rare, evocative title that would make people grab the story as soon as they read it, but it's beyond my mortal contemplation.

Unfortunately, this means that some stories don't have anything to be posted under in the Fragments section of my site. I've been contemplating whether this page is worth maintaining anyway, so this may be the final nail in the coffin.

I spent Sunday night coding a script for work. Then I got to haul myself into the office early Monday morning and stare at the monitor some more. There were, of course, a flurry of "urgent" requests to deal with, up to the very minute I left (12 hours after I walked in). Then a four-mile run on the evening that, it turns out, wind advisories were issued for the area. Then I stumbled home and contemplated staring at the monitor some more, this time for my work-in-progress.

Why are my writing sesions in the late evening? I avoid writing before I leave for work, or during my lunch or typing breaks in the office, because it's too successful — I get totally engrossed into my clever new subplot, and then it turns time for me to go back to my work project. I don't want to build up any writerly resentment against my job, which I know I'm incredibly fortunate to have in this economic climate, and which is why I can afford to write. Some days, though, it's hard to remember this.

But even when a part of my brain gets burnt out by my work, it's thankfully not the part that dreams of where next shall my story go. There's still a mighty resistance against sitting in front of a computer, but hey, I just ran into a headwind. I've found myself blinking into a clock face that announces it's past the hour when bars close, because I got too caught up in a story. (Inevitably these are the nights before morning meetings.)

I love writing. As with running, it may be tough to motivate myself to actually get ready and actually head out on my way, but once I've managed that, the endorphins kick in and I remember why it's all worth it. And the gale in my face? It actually feels kind of refreshing.

I keep a box of keepsakes — cards, small impractical gifts, and such — around. I never look at it, because I don't generally have days where I suddenly feel the urge to reread, say, the six-page letter written to me when I graduated high school. But every time I move, I go through the usual triage of what must stay and what can go, and inevitably I end up sitting in sprawling mess of books and papers and clothes, totally absorbed in these years-old momentos. I certainly have no need for them, but they're lovely rediscoveries on each occasion, and utterly worth the space the box takes.

I'm digging through old story files now (buried in recursive folders of backups) and casting a critical eye over them. And some of them actually have a spark that I think is worth reigniting. Naturally, the flaws that kept me from ever trying to publish these stories are still evident — but if I can see them, that's the first step toward fixing them.

When I'm revising a story this comprehensively, I'll often print out a hard copy, prop it beside my monitor, and then start retying it entirely. It's the only sure-fire way for every single word to pass muster into the next draft. And there's a mental comfort present, too: I've finished this thing once, so I damn well can do it again. Better, this time.

Science fiction, 6500 words - http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/moon.htm

This is a love story rather than a romance. I was charmed by the first conversation that the two lovers share upon meeting:

There isn't an overwhelming sense of the characters, so this is perhaps not the best read for someone who has to feel the passion of the narrator. Henry is a poet and Nell and architect, and the story is accordingly structured, elegant, and emotive with sparing words. It rests mostly on concepts, though:

What if your soul dwells in plants and living things outdoors? What if the woman you love is the leading architect of her generation, and her calling takes her away from you? What would you write, and what would she build?