August 2009 Archives

I was looking over a friend's application essay for med school. He'd reused some elements from his college essay, which I also helped him on. And as I read it over, I distinctly recalled approving certain sentences which now made me frown.

This makes me happy. It certainly wasn't a terrible essay — it got him into an Ivy League — and the fact that I can look at it critically now and see so clearly how to make it better means I've become a better editor, even of words and phrases I had suggested myself.

I had to reread my novella in order to come up with a summary for the cover artist, and noted some spots which needed polishing. Granted, I finished in a rush in order to make a deadline, but I like to think that if I had noticed it before submission, I would have done something about it. Even in the span of a few months, I'm able to aim a keener editor's eye on my writing.

I only wish the same were true for biological vision. Off to get the contact solution.

I was embarrassed to have set a story in a setting I'd never researched, so I hied myself to the public library. I ended up in the children's section, self-conscious indeed as squealing kids and their suspicious mothers made their way past the aisle where I was camping out. Clearly, I did not belong — I was either too tall or too young.

But I forgot about that as I began pulling books from the shelves. The equivalent shelf in the adult nonfiction section had been sparsely populated, and the few books present far too specific to meet my needs. But the kids' books were surveys of the material, and written simply without the need for some grand thesis. I once got annoyed at an acclaimed documentary, because the content of the narration was simple and already known to me. But there are always going to be people who are starting from square one, and that's me with this subject, so simple is good. Once I've gotten a decent overview, then I'll start abusing the ILL system to get some more in-depth material. I miss borrowing privileges at my local academic library...

Of course, in order to make these books last as long as possible while in the hands of young 'uns likely to tear them apart and chew on them, they tend to be hardcover, even if they're slender. And of course they've got to be oversized to fit in more illustrations — or maybe just more than a sentence per page. So grabbing just a decent sampling of that Dewey section meant staggering home and nursing sore triceps. (Honestly, I don't think I was ever so fit as when I worked full-time in a library.) Worse, it means no reading these in bed, when I like to lie on my back and hold up the books to read.

I suppose they won't take much time to read through, though.

I think the biggest adjustment I've had to make in writing romance is building in that first moment of physical desire. My romantic fantasy stories have generally set characters together without even a preliminary kiss. The relationship happened because it fit the story, not the other way around.

One guy I dated confessed that he asked me out because he caught sight of me brushing my hair. Something about seeing me in that pose that struck him. (He phrased it in a very gentlemanly manner, but I gather he found it erotic.)

I got involved with another guy after I'd had one too many Long Islands (okay, so just one of those may be one too much), tried to dance, and stumbled. An acquaintance caught me, my hands slid down his chest, and ever after I saw him as someone who was actively attractive to me, even when I was sober. Suddenly I was aware of him physically, although I'd seen him plenty of times before without any reaction. (It was a nice chest.)

These are the sorts of moments I need to try to bring into my romances. They do come out of the blue, but at the same time, they can't be completely jarring. In other words, the reader has to expect it, but not the character.

If I go too long without running, I start feeling restless. Work has been insane enough to keep me from either trail or gym as of late, and it's getting to me.

Worse, though, has been the lack of time for writing.

Someone once gave the advice to aspiring writers: If you don't have to write, then don't, and spare yourself the agony. I once went for a few of years without really writing, so perhaps I belong in that category. But I came back to it when life hit a really rough patch.

The writing itch really hits me when I'm stressed, and I think that says something. It's not that I find writing relaxing — far rom it — but that even the agonies of writing are preferable to any other kind of misery. I don't think I ever would have stopped writing if I hadn't known that I could come back to it anytime.

I'm hoping for a breather this weekend, and a couple thousand words.

I just bought a ticket for a trip back to Korea this fall. I feel guilty for not leveraging more of the culture there in my writing; usually it's the food that sneaks in, the snacks sold from stalls on the street. After all, buying a bag of silkworm pupae is going to feel more natural in a fantasy story than doing the same with a hot dog. —No? Okay, perhaps not boiled bugs, but I have occasionally given my characters chopsticks instead of having them pull out ye olde trusty dagger to start carving a haunch of boar.

One of my WIPs deals with a nomadic tribe in the desert. I've read as much as I could get my hands on about the Bedouins and the Tuareg, but there's never going to be an aspect of their cultures that I can simply reach out for and sprinkle into the story for a little more flavoring. There's always going to be painstaking research and fact-double-checking behind anything I write for this.

I think this may be part of what they mean when they say, Write what you know. Even the faithful steed of standard fantasies is often mishandled.

There are times I think I'm doomed as a romance writer, because the love stories that hit me the hardest tend to be ones that don't end happily. I just reread "Sorrel's Heart" by Susan Palwick, and I doubt many people would classify it as romance. But it was as a love story that it struck me.

In a world where people are divided into normals and freaks with twisted bodies, two freaks meet: Sorrel, a girl with a heart that's attached on the outside of her body, and Quartz, a man who enjoys inflicting pain. Sorrel's condition is literal and figurative; she feels emotions more intensely, because her heart is so exposed.

They begin as practical companions and end up as lovers. There's no elegant courtship, but I never doubted the intensity of their bond. And the story is about how Sorrel's presence in Quartz's life changes him — one of the ultimate ambitions of women in relationships, it seems.

Not an appropriate read for a morose day, but striking and beautiful, despite — because of — the twisted characters.

I think I've finally gotten used to romance terminology. I kept gritting my teeth whenever I heard references to the hero and heroine, and the mandatory HEA dismayed me. And I know these can be problems for other genres, but I've never encountered so many TSTL characters or as much discussion about head-hopping as I have in romance circles — I suspect because both the hero and the heroine's perspectives are important throughout the romance.

It reminds me of when I joined the corporate world and had issues with people talking about how much bandwidth they had to work on projects, or suggesting during a face-to-face meeting that we take a topic offline. I resisted for a while, but the point of language is communication, so if the other people will understand what I mean, why not use the word? I'm not going to say, "the female love interest of the main protagonist, who gets the POV in some chapters."

I'm writing up some technical documentation for work, and it's draining the fiction writing drive right out of me. No doubt this is also due to the fact that I brought my work home with me and have been laboring away on it past 10 pm, with an early morning meeting tomorrow.

In the meditation class I took, the instructor taught us a technique that, when some people tried it, caused them to fall asleep. These people admitted to being short on sleep, and being so relaxed for the first time that day allowed them start napping. The instructor noted that in such a case, it's more important to address your sleep deprivation than to worry about perfecting a meditation technique.

I know that if I truly loved writing, blah blah, I would make time for it every day, yeah, yeah. But there's still life to deal with, and poor health from lack of sleep or exercise isn't going to make me a better writer.

Good night.

Just printed out "The Factory of Hearts and Other Moving Parts: A Graveside Romance" in submission format. I adore the speed and convenience of electronic submissions, but this is the way I did things when I first started submitting stories, and it's somehow nostalgic to be using Courier and to be prepping an SASE.

Fingers crossed, as this is a stretch market. But I know to which two markets to send it next if this one doesn't pan out; it's nice to know exactly where to ricochet it next if it should come back, so that I won't have time to dwell on rejection.

Aileen Harkwood keeps a finger on the pulse of the romance ebook world at Kindling Romance — do follow her blog, as she highlights new releases, industry trends, contests, submission calls, and basically all your electronic romance needs. She was kind enough to interview me about my experiences on the road to becoming a published author.

And my feet are all the more firmly set on that road since I signed a contract with Drollerie Press to publish "Sea Gifts"! Romantic fantasy novelettes have few potential markets, but I'm delighted at having found a home for this one at Drollerie. The first paragraph, for a taste:

The sea brought gifts to the isle-witch: coral necklaces, shell flutes, glass roses. Once it brought the bones of some great beast that she fit into a skeleton of sleek body and reptilian head, while a pod of curious dolphins visiting her cove looked on. They left the day Rhis finished, as though to spread the news.

NFL pre-season's starting.

Which means that the NFL season is coming up.

Also around the corner? The utter languishment of my writing career. (In the distance, a bell tolls...)

Okay, so I exaggerate. But there were, in the past, entire weekends where I camped out at the local sports bar. The bar owner learned my favorite teams and started advising me on where to sit as soon as I walked in the door.

Now imagine me in a bar, pint glass in one hand and pen in the other, one eye on the television and the other on my notebook... Yeah, I can't, either.

Yeah, we're going to have to work out some priorities in the coming months.

I finished a short story today, after panicking about having nothing out on submission. It's a bit quirky (there's a factory and a cemetery and a witch), and doesn't have the happily-ever-after ending that most romance readers demand, so I'm going to take my time contemplating where this one should go.

There are some people who feel that authors who straddle genres should utilize multiple names. I could see how someone expecting a sensual romance from me wouldn't enjoy this story, or at least suffer disappointment. But on the other hand, if the reader likes my writing style independent of genre, or if this is a reader of both genres, I would definitely want to let her know about this one. I figure I can put sufficient warning on my site, and it's unlikely that exclusive romance readers are going to unwittingly stumble across the magazines I'm considering — a benefit of short story markets as opposed to books, I suppose.

I've concluded that I won't be able to make the deadline for the space opera anthology. My plot was arcing away from the blasters-blazing type of action, anyway, and into...I'm not quite sure. So that one will get some rest, and it's actually with vast relief that I'm turning to the story that leapt into my head when I read the call for an angels and demons anthology.

I do come up with ideas without anthology prompts, not that you would be able to tell.

The space opera one made me think, Hey, that sounds like fun, and I somehow forced my brain onto that track. I've always wanted to write science fiction because I read a fair amount of it, and it seemed like this was as good an opportunity as ever. But it was dogged persistence that got me through as far as I did on that one. The story kept getting wound up tighter and tighter until I had no room to go anywhere without breaking laws of science.

In contrast, when I saw the angels and demons anthology announcement, it didn't even register at first. It just seemed so out of my range, the way a cowboy anthology would be. But I stumbled across some art that happened to depict an angel, and suddenly I was flipping over to my word processor and typing up a storm. And I kept typing, except when I remembered that there was this space opera thing that I should be chugging away at.

There are other projects on the burner, of course. If I completely abandoned my current works-in-progress every time a shiny new idea popped up, I'd never finish anything. But the one where the words are flowing downhill from brain to fingers — the one drawing me to my desk day after day, racking up the word count, making fall a little more in love with the characters as I create and discover more about them — right now, that's the angels and demons one.

I am firmly going to ignore any other calls for submissions until the rush of this one is over, hopefully leaving behind a complete novella.

I just spent way too much time on a bunch of open critique threads at a romance writing forum. I did have to fulfill a quota, because I submitted some excerpts to be critted, but I didn't have to do it all tonight...

It was fascinating, though, being able to read such varied excerpts and trying to figure out why people chose those particular scenes. A few I would have happily continued reading, but they were posted anonymously, so no way to trace a particularly intriguing snippet to a writer's other works. (There will be a great reveal in a couple of weeks.)

And what was just as interesting, at least to me, was seeing people's critting styles. They had an even broader range than the excerpts. I can't help wondering what correlation, if any, there is between the way someone crits and the way she writes.

It'll be neat to see if a dialogue emerges on some of these. I think on mine I'm going to throw out a thank-you and then flee cackling with my comments clutched tightly. Reader input! Yes!

Once in a while I flirt with the notion of joining a critique group, but then evenings like this remind me that there simply isn't enough time. I'm a nit-picker, and I get wordy when I try to expound upon my comments. This would be why I didn't write anything today. Whoops. But chalk up a thousand or so non-fiction words...

I'm afraid as I got more tired, I became less careful about delicate phrasing (I try to use a lot of "I think..."s and "...for me"s to emphasize that I'm offering just one reader's opinion), so it was probably well past time to stop. For today.