Writing for Beans

So I am home from the wonderous experience that is Viable Paradise.  As they say: to those that have not experienced it, no words will convey, and to those that have, no words are necessary.  For any such intense experiences, that is a true encapsulation of how we, as people, process them.  How then can I convey, dear readers, what it is like?

A good friend asked me what I thought was the best pece of advice I learned at VP.  I don't recall exactly what I responded with, but  I thought about that for some time after, as you do.  Contemplating as I washed the dishes and cleared the table from dinner, etc.  Now I think the best piece of advice will change for me over time.  What I walked away from the conference firmly in my head, has already shifted over the course of the long journey home, and the brief respite of a few days before diving headlong back into the work-a-day treadmill that is ordinary life.  I expect that to change over the weeks and months, probably years to come.   Sometimes, we're just not ready for the lesson that life and opporutunity present to us now.  But if we are careful, if we are lucky, and hoard a piece of that away, perhaps when we are ready, we will stand in the middle of a store somewhere and say: Aha!  I know what that means now.  Then go on to put that into practice.

We twenty-four students all came to the workshop at somewhat different points in our carreers.  Some younger, some older.  Some more accomplished, some with few or no successes yet under our belts.  I would be surprised if you asked all of us that same question you didn't find twenty-four different responses.  That's human nature.  What surprised me, though perhaps shouldn't have, was the hints I saw of the instructors also going through their own Aha! moments.  I guess there is truth that a part of teaching, is learning things anew.  Learning, it seems, like many other aspects of the world, is a cyclical thing.

I find it very hard to sum up a week of intinsity in any small way, but if I had to, I think I would say: be true. 

It seems, perhaps, strange to say that.  Since we, as writers of fiction, are inherently liars.  We tell made up crazy stories to entertain.  But so many of the lessons at the core, about the writing voice, about what we have to say, what we care about, what moves us, that's as close as I can get to summing it up.   It reminds me of a scene in Walk the Line. 

There's a scene when Johnny Cash is trying out for Sam Phillips.  He and his band are singing something, and it's sort of mediocre.  It's not bad, but it's not special.  Sam stops them, and is ready to dismiss them.  Johnny, incredulous, asks why.  Is it the song?  Or how I sing it.  Sam comes back with a great line, that I'm about to flub.  He tells Johnny that he's just going through the motions, one of dozens of decent sounding gospel singers, but that he doesn't believe it.  He doesn't believe how Johnny feels as he sings that song.  Then he says, "if you have one song to sing, if you lay dying in the gutter, and had time to sing one last song, what would it be?"  And of course, being a movie, Johnny comes back with Folsom Prison Blues. 

I don't know if I can answer every single time that if I only had time enough to tell one more story, the one I'm writing is it.  But I aim to work as if it were.

Novel draft complete.  Came in at 95K words (give or take).   And I didn't even blow up the universe, as tempted as I was.   It's a pretty hairy rough draft, but its done.  Off it goes on the shelf to cure.  (And just incase there's any confusion, no this is NOT my NaNo project, good lord I'm not good enough to knock out 95K in four days.)   Now to get some other projects done.  I'm going to take the night off from writing, and just allow my brain to shift gears before I start up on the next novel starting tomorrow.

In the vein of self promotion--something I'm not altogether comfortable with, but need to learn how to do a better job--my short story "Sucker Kiss"  (from the anthology Dark Territories) made Ellen Datlow's extended Honorable Mention list for The Best Horror of 2008. 

It's a pretty good thing I was sitting down, because when I saw my name on that list, I just about fell over.  I am, naturally, quite excited by this and it went up on my wall. 

Now back to writing the next story.

I'm somewhere deep in the novel, around 60K words.  Now, as I'm trying to focus, so I can turn the corner and start moving toward my ending, I am being hijacked daily with new story ideas.  Sometimes more than one a day.

Really, this is getting a bit tedious, because they aren't just ideas, but now I'm getting specific thoughts and ideas milling around my head that might actually be useful towards stories for some themed anthologies.

I was considering breaking down my writing time into discrete chunks.  One time to work on the novel and keep that moving with my self mandated daily word goals.  Then a second time to work on various other writing projects.  I've never tried it before, and not sure if it would work, or crash and burn badly.*  

Anyone else out there have a strategy for simultaneously working on multiple writing projects?  Do you think it's a good idea?  Do you think it's better to just focus everything on reaching the end of the novel, then trying to go back and work on the shorts?  Do you have other suggestions?

Rough draft complete.  I never want to see it again.

Well, until I have to sit down, figure out what needs to be done, and fix it.

Now to bed.

The beginning of October means NaNoWriMo is just around the corner.  If you try the link and it fails, that's because thousands upon thousands of folks are signing up today to join in and participate.

I wasn't planning to do NaNo again this year, but it's the tenth anniversary of the event, and I just couldn't help but feel inspired to jump in and give another go.   NaNo is what got me writing again, after a long hiatus.  The kind of hiatus that verged on the idea that I'd given up on the prospect of writing.  Not the kind of giving up where you declaratively say: I quit.  No, more the kind of giving up where you put an idea or dream up on a shelf and say to yourself, whenever you bother to think about it, "some day I'll get around to that".  As if being a success at anything in life falls easily into the category of "I'll get around to that".   I mean, could you imagine saying to yourself "I'll get around to being a brain surgeon someday."  Or, "I'll get around to being a professional baseball player someday."   Seems preposterous.   Getting to the major leagues, or in command of the operating room requires dedication.  Time.  Practice.  Effort.   So does writing.  And writing is a career you could come back to later in life.  There seems to be anecdotal evidence aplenty of people who have come to the career as a second, third, or later vocation in the course of their lives.   And I'm a strong supporter in not falling into the trap of believing that there is exactly one path to life.  In my opinion, you can go back and reinvent yourself.  But I think the insidious danger of putting such a dream up on the shelf is in making a passive decision, as opposed to an active one.  Nothing wrong with trying something, and realizing it's not for you.  But if instead, you just let one thing, then the next, then the next keep taking priority, so that you never get back to your dream, it the same result as having given up.   I've heard the urge to tell stories described as a flame that burns within.  Sometimes strongly, other times, at a calm steady pace.   I wonder if continually putting that dream on the shelf will eventually make that fire dwindle down until it sputters out altogether. 

Yuck, I hadn't meant to go off on a tangent about quitting.   This is about the rekindling of that fire.  In 2004 a friend of mine, blue_23, mentioned National Novel Writing Month to me.  It came at a time when I was puttering around with the idea of writing again.  A timely suggestion that might well have kept the flame from going out.  I dove in,   I hit the 50K finish line with only hours to spare.  I'd "won" and had a substantial body of written words to show for it.  I can't think of many things more satisfying than seeing a stack of printed pages inches thick, and knowing you've produced it.  It wasn't actually a finished novel.  It was, however, the single longest work I'd ever done to date.  Prior, the longest writing I had was a novel I started in high school, that had over a hundred pages, before I stopped working on it.   The longest complete work I'd done to that point was a story that ran about 12K, back in college.   I'd had a number of false starts with novels over the years.  Typically, I'd get a chapter or three in, and then  feel overwhelmed.  NaNo taught me to not freak out about the big picture.  It showed me to treat it more like a cross country race.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you'll get to the finish line.  And that's a great thing, crossing that finish line.  Even when you don't win the marathon, it sure feels amazing to make it that distance. Yet at the same time, while I hit the 50K mark, a substantial, and fantastic goal, I didn't have a complete story.  It wasn't really a novel, in the sense that I couldn't hand it to someone, and give them a complete experience.

The next year, I did it again.  But unhappy with the idea of another unfinished start of a novel, after November, I picked it back up a number of times, until I had a complete novel.   It took many months, many more than I expected, and I felt so tired of working on it, that I turned back to short stories.  I like short stories, and find the form interesting in its own right.  I also believe that there's a lot to be learned about writing by focusing on the shorter form, that I hope to eventually take with me into working on novels.  At least, that's the theory, we'll see where the practice takes me.   So when 2006 came around, my wife being eight months pregnant with the Little Man, and me feeling little love with the novel writing process, I skipped the year.   Instead, I kept plugging at short stories.  But I keep getting these ideas for novels too.  In the back of my head, they'd start to amass, and pound on the walls, and floors, and doors trying to get noticed.  Last year, I had one pounding so loud that I'd had to take the step of just writing that first chapter in attempt to exorcise that ghost.  It appeased it for a bit, but not long.  Which then turned into my NaNo project from last year.   Which is strange, and fun, but again nothing complete.  I knew that, was fine with it, and immediately dove back into short work.  I was happy that way.   I toyed with going unofficial this year for NaNo, not doing a real new project, but just taking up the story from last year, and seeing if I could finish it.   I've still got that as my backup plan, if all else just falls apart.  But this year, being the tenth anniversary, I wanted to jump in and do it right.  NaNo gave me writing back into my life.  I figure, in my odd notion, that it deserves its little celebration for its tenth outing.   So I'm doing a new story.

November is looking busy, even if I were not planning to write a novel.  So, unlike past years, where I started with nothing more than a hazy idea and blank page, this year, I think to make it, I'm going to have to do a bit more prep.  So, added to a busy October, I'll be coming up with details, ideas, etc, to be used in November.   I'd call it an outline, except that, well I doubt it'll be anything that formal.   We'll see how it pans out.   I've got a month to prepare.

Wow.  I been kinda busy, and haven't gotten to too many of these recently, have I?

Work has been busy the past two months, but we're just about back up to full staff, which is a tremendous relief.  Not exactly out of the woods, but definitely out of the thicket, and the trees hereabouts are starting to get spaced out a bit further, with occasional bits of actual daylight sneaking through the small interstices of the canopy.   (Wow, I can really beat on a metaphor until it bleeds.)   We're in full summer swing now, and it's been hot.  And rainy.  My son is learning words left and right.  Kind of freaky how I can come home from work, and he'll have a new word to show off.  But really, it's fantastic. 

Writing:  A story scrawled halfway, sorta-kinda.  Not exactly the worst, roughest draft of anything I've ever done.  But, you know, kinda close.  One story revised.  So many stories currently banging on the inside of my brain-pan right now, that I need to start letting them out before they do some permanent damage.  I know I need to wrap up some of these other revisions too, but I have to get a few more of the new ideas out onto paper, before they storm off in a huff.

Oh yeah, last month, my story "Sucker Kiss" came out in the GSHW Anthology:  Dark Territories.

Submissions:  One story out the door this month. 

Conventions: (New category) Went to my first SF convention in....16 years?   Readercon.  Still jazzed up from it.  Quite a good time there, and I intend to go back, as often as I can manage/afford.   Met cool people.  Had cool conversations.  Heard lots of interesting panels.  Laughed hysterically at the bad prose contest.

Editing:  No editorial duties this month.

Reading:  One book read this month.

Dust, by Elizabeth Bear: This is the first SF novel of hers that I've read.  Quite a far future SF novel, where the technology extrapolation borders on the magical.  I think when you get out that far from modern day technology, its nigh impossible to not approach that limit.  I'm not certain if I'd classify this as a Space Opera, though it contains many of the tropes: swords, armor, "princesses" knights.  Even angels, and basilisks.  Yet the author has managed to give us these tropes, much more in the fantasy vein than stock science fiction, in a way that you feel you can understand.  Over time, the generation ship, that has had some kind of catastrophe, and is now stranded in space, is no longer fully functional.  And the society, which it seems was never meant to be a full fledged permanent society, has also degraded with the environment, even as it has continued to evolve forward.  Which was something quite interesting, to see a society simultaneously falling back to older social forms, and drifting forward into new evolutions of structure, of society, of gender, even physical form.  In fact, one of the main characters is a woman who was an angel, with engineered wings.  Beyond all the trappings, the neat tech, the interesting situation, the multi-leveled intrigue between factions of both people, and beings that are beyond human, what holds the story together is the characters.  Rein and Perceval.  These are people who are each in their way broken at the start of the novel, and frankly, I'm not sure their lot improves over its length, except perhaps for finding each other.  But somehow, that struggle feels right, all the more interesting because its both personal, and by the end of the novel, a struggle for society itself.  Some bits left me a bit disappointed: I wasn't particularly fond of the unblades, and I couldn't quite understand why Perceval seemed to be the only knight errant character, and more to the point, the only such character with wings.  This seemed to get muddied further with the whole Angel/system concept, and never really came around for me.  But these were, in the end, rather minor problems in an otherwise enjoyable book.

Start with one word.

Wizard.

Tell me, what did you think of?  What could you say about the character that came into your head as soon as you read that word?  If all you know about a character stems from that word, what does your mind fall back upon?

We all have defaults, images, ideas, archetypes, that our mind bring into a story.  During a discussion with some friends, we talked about the idea of that default.  What is your default for a wizard-like character?  For many, even those who identified as non-gamers, the default for was a "D&D wizard".  This preconception would hold sway in the mind until such time as the author distinguished otherwise.  I found it interesting.   I said at the time, that the "D&D wizard" was not my default when I read.   When confronted with the obvious question: well, then what is?  I hemmed and hawed a bit, and I'm certain that I never answered the question.   At least, not really.

And it's true, my default concept of what a "wizard" is doesn't stem from D&D.  In fact, to me, magic, and wizards are things I conceive in spite of D&D, not because of it.  Of course, that then begs the question: What is it you mean by a typical D&D wizard.  Because frankly, the answer to that question is probably more important in defining why I don't consider my default archetype to be the "D&D" standard.

So what do I think of when I think of the "D&D Wizard"?    Physically weak old men. (Yes, specifically old men.)  Limited in what they can do, both in terms of choices of magic (that whole "Vancian" magic system), how often they could use it, and how magic interacts with the world.  Magic always seemed entirely external to the wizard, not supernatural, but extranatural.  There's an emphasis on memorization, and forgetting; formulas, and power or command words.  It's filled with strange limitations, like only being able to wield a dagger, or never being able to know more than a set number of spells.  An absolute path--one you chose early--and come by through long, hard hours of study.   Binary.  You're either a wizard, and can use wizardly magic, or not.  No in-between.  Magic is an accomplishment of intellect alone, an ultimate form of knowledge. 

Yes, that's a rather old school approach to the "typical" D&D wizard, and while the game may have moved beyond that prototype, that notion stuck in my head of what it means to be a "D&D wizard"  has not.

Perhaps that's not all that far off from what you think of as a wizard.  If you distill it:  Old man.  Long beard, funny hat.  Lots of knowledge that gives him access to power.  That'd fit right in with quite a lot of wizards throughout fiction, right?  You could say that Gandalf fits that mold, right?  Merlin too.   Belgarath perhaps?  Kulgan?  Allanon?  Zedd for a somewhat more modern figure?  Heck why not throw in Obi Wan Kenobi while I'm at it.

Sure, the trappings seem true to the mold of the D&D wizard.  All of them old men, with great knowledge and power.  (Heck I'm damned near positive that they all even have the beard and strange hat, if you consider a cowl/cape to fit that role.)   So yeah, there's some overlap here.  But if you take a step back, you look at every one of those characters you'll see something else.  Every one of them is a mentor figure.  Not a one of them is the main character of the stories within which they are most well known.  Now, when you take a look at how they work, yes they can do amazing things, and wield great power.  But most importantly what they all wield is knowledge.  Self knowledge.  And what they impart is not intellect; it's wisdom.  Their age is a symbol, and a signifier  that this isn't their story. Though by the time they show up, you probably knew that.  Notice that right when the going is toughest, each of these characters steps off the stage.  Their point is to enable the main characters to see how they, and the magic they will wield is a part of the world within which they live.  Whether its Arthur, whose magic is his kingship, his link with the land, or whether it's Luke learning about the Force and how it binds all things together.  It's not coincidental to link the wizard with this archetype of mentor.  Knowledge is a kind of power, no question.  But where D&D misses out, in my opinion, with their concept of the wizard,  is that they divorce knowledge from wisdom.  The wizard in their mold is about intellect, its about a knowledge to the exclusion of all else.  Whereas the kinds of knowledge as I understand a wizard, is one that encompasses everything.  Knowledge of the world.  Of the supernatural, and of ones place within that sphere.  And I never got that sense from anything that came out of D&D.

Of course we know that's not the only type of wizard you'll see in fiction.  Luke, after all is every bit a wizard as Obi Wan is.  But is Luke really the one you think of first at the mention of wizard?  I suspect not.

Do you have a different view?  Was there some other image that came to your mind when you first read the word above?  Do you think I'm pointlessly splitting hairs in my distinction?  Feel free to chime in.

May is over. I'm happy about that. Not that May is, in general a bad month, it's actually a part of the year I love: spring and fall are among my favorite seasons for the weather here in New Jersey, just so much more enjoyable than mid summer like July and August, where it can be too hot, or winter like January or February where it's just cold and miserable. But I digress. It has been great weather, and so I have gotten some outdoors time. Including all sorts of planting, and lawn moving, and gardening, and weeding, and watering, and weeding, and gardening. To some of you, that might sound like an enjoyable pastime. I could really live without it. I'm not all that good at gardening, to be honest. Further, I hate mowing lawns. I do it, because someone's got to, and my wife's grass allergies make it a bad idea to stick her behind the mulching mower while it turns blades of grass into a fine mist. To be inhaled. Then produce asthma. So I figure, I've got a dozen or so more years of lawn maintenance ahead of me before the Little Man gets to the age where I will feel safe/comfortable with him doing the work. Hopefully he'll be able to pick up some of the weeding and watering duties before that. The day job is frantic, but I've mentioned that before. I expect it to continue to be frantic for at least one more month. Two tops. If it goes longer than that...I'm not even going to contemplate it as an option.

I got to feel just a bit older this month, as my eldest Nephew had his High School graduation this past week, and we went out for a party in PA yesterday. (Some of you might recall him as the chef-in-training that you helped earn a scholarship by voting for his video) I had a good time seeing my family, though it was a long day. Looking forward to the family reunion in August back in my home town.

Writing: I've been revising stuff lately.  Not enough forward momentum for me to be thrilled, but even if I haven't had as much focused time as I want, I'm putting some time in the trenches in the scraps of moments I can find.  I've got a story that's been knocking at the inside of my frontal lobes, trying to find a way to get out of my head and onto the page. I'm rather glad that I didn't run right out and start writing it though, because on the long trip out and back from my brother's yesterday, I came up with a few ways I could turn the straightforward idea onto a different path.  I still have to make some notes, and do a little research, but I hope to get a first draft going soon.

Editing: No new tasks in this department.

Reading:  One book.  I kept pulling out other stuff to read after I finished that novel, but by the end of an evening, I'm so exhausted, that I'm feeling under motivated to read.  I think I need to change gears and do some non-fic for a stint, see how that works.

Mainspring, by Jay Lake:  The world that clockmaker's apprentice, Hethor Jacques, lives on is literally a part in the machine of the universe, as is evident by the giant brass gears upon which the world spins its way throughout the heavens.  The nature of the gears that circumscribe the globe along what we could think of as its equator, divides the planet into two distinct halves, literally, culturally, biologically, and perhaps even spiritually as well.  The story starts in the North, in a small New England town, in a setting that seems familiar enough, if some signals show it is distinct from our own history.  In this version, America is still a part of the English Empire, at least this far into Queen Victoria's reign.  Technology has advanced differently than in our own world as well: there are flying ships of the Royal Navy--zeppelin like structures that are now a hallmark of the "steam punk" movement.  The opening sets things on end for Hethor, as he is confronted with the Archangel Gabriel, who sends him on a quest to find the Key Perilous, and wind up the titular Mainspring that.  His journey starts locally, but soon spans much further.  As the journey progresses, we move further, and further from anything even remotely resembling our own world, until we reach the Wall, that portion of the Earth that connects it to the clockwork of the Heavens.  Beyond which, things look far less like our world, except perhaps in general geography.  It is populated with vastly different peoples, cultures; a place where sorcery reigns, as opposed to the technological based North.   While there were some moments where I felt the story lagged slightly, and a few story threads that seemed, in the end, to go nowhere--or at least have much less significance than I originally anticipated--overall the novel was quite an enjoyable adventure.  I look forward to the Lake's next novel The Escapement in this same setting.