Writtenwyrdd

Close your eyes for the train wreck...

"Two and a half men's "uncle Charlie" should not be replaced or even killed off like they do in daytime TV. He should be kept around as a public service announcement..." commenter on TMZ

I hate to watch celebrity melt downs.  It's far too easy to hate them or scorn them for the things they do that the 'little people' like me couldn't even dream of trying, much less get away with.  So I try to avoid even considering them and their self-involved and -created plights.  (Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Robert Downey Jr., etc.)  I do, however, like to see them fix themselves a la Drew Barrymore. 

On the home front, we are presently experiencing more snow, and it might turn to freezing rain, which everyone adores...not.  Besides that, I am back to work after two whole days off in a row during which I accomplished nothing except to snooze on the sofa with my puppies.  They are both close to 40 pounds now, I think.  It's hard to get a true reading when you are holding a rather large, squirming dog and standing on a regular household bathroom scale.  I find them to be better about not chasing the kitties, and about listening when I tell them too...but I confess to resorting to my military dog handler voice, which is rather loud.  That does get their attention, but it also scares Chance, so I try to resist.  But when it comes to mobbing and pouncing on the cats, I smack butts and holler.  It is not to be borne and they need to learn that that is the one thing with dire consequences.

I can't wait for it to warm up so I can get the yard fenced.  Then I can let them run the silliness out of their systems. 

EE on a roll.

"Killing people without payment is generally frowned upon as unprofessional,[That's why you never see the term "professional serial killer."]"  Evil Editor's blog

Evil Editor was on a roll yesterday.

And you should also see this.  (Make SURE you set down your coffee first.)

Random lines

“A zombie vampire?  Isn’t that redundant?”

“No, they’re not the same thing at all.  Dead and rotting versus dead and spoilage free.”

“You’ve been canning too much lately.”

 

It's always a good idea to have pen and paper handy.  I jotted that down yesterday during a conversation that had me snickering.  I don't know how, or if, I shall use it, but it amused me.

 

What I do is to jot the random lines into a Word file and then add a few idea notes, name it something relevant, and save it to the Ideas folder on my desktop.  I can dust my hands of it until such time as I need some inspiration.

 

How do you deal with random ideas so as not to lose them?

 

And I have to mention that I want to add another line to the above: "Just preparing for the zombie apocalypse."

 

Additionally, just a reminder about my currently running flash fiction blog contest.  Please see here for the details.

Gimme some more of that ascerbicism! (Is that even a word?)

"Along with small pox-infected blankets, Low Intensity Warfare and drinkable donuts (Damn you, Krispie Kreme), George Bush may be the worst thing the US has ever given the world. But I owe George something. When he and his fundamentalist buddies seized the White House in probably the most boring political coup in history, I wanted to know who they were. They believed in the Bible literally, that the Earth was six thousand years old and that the devil really was hiding under your bed. They were demon-obsessed primitives in twenty first century drag. They were Breton’s irrationalist Surrealists made creepy, boring and sexless." Richard Kadrey, author of Sandman Slim

Can I just roll around in that prose and plaster myself with it like a dog masking its scent?*

At the link is a fascinating article on fantasy writing from a former scoffer, writer Richard Kadrey. I like his thoughts on the genre and his meandering path to being part of the scene.

And, as a bonus, since I shared the ending of the book yesterday, here's the terrific first paragraph of Sandman Slim:

"I wake up on a pile of smouldering garbage and leaves in the old Hollylwood Forever cemetary behind the Paramount Studio lot on Melrose, though these last details don't come to me until later.  Right now all I know is that I'm back in the world and I'm on fire.  My mind hasn't quite kicked in yet, but my body knows enough to roll off the burning trash and to keep rolling until I can't feel the heat anymore."

So, what's to great about this opening?  A lot, to my way of thinking.  First, you know that this is speculative fiction of some flavor, because he's 'back in the world.'  And he wakes up on a pile of burning trash "not quite in his body" yet.  There is both a bit of humor and some appropriate foreshadowing in that choice, as our character, it turns out, is an escapee from Hell.  Hence the fire and the stench and all that make good sense both from the perspective of Hell being a very real aspect of this story, but also as a means of setting the tone, as our narrator, Stark's rather matter-of-fact observations about being on fire illustrate.  Additionally, the author is setting the stage for a non-stop running dialog in first person present tense of dark sarcasm that had me quietly giggling to myself with mad mad MAD glee as I read.  And the irony of Stark arriving back home to find himself burning on a pile of garbage is PRICEless.  An opening I, for one, couldn't say no to.

At any rate, the article was fascinating, go read it so you can make your brain hurt trying to figure out how Surrealism meshes with your take on fantasy writing.  I've been trying, not sure I can...but I think that Richard Kadrey would be fun to sit and drink a beer with! 

*Like I said in a comment on yesterday's post, "I can't believe I've missed his work before this. He's like the next Gibson and Mieville rolled into one huge glob of smart-assery. In a good way."

A nice bit of worldbuilding

"The elves are an ancient breed, far older than humanity, born of a time when the very nature of this world was different.  Our rules and restraints don't apply to them, but then they don't have our certainties, either.  Like Life and Death, Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell."  Simon Green, from "The Spy Who Haunted Me," p.257 of the mmpb

I like that.  I find it a bit annoying in that Eddie Drood, our main character, is always explaining things to the others involved in this story, but overall it's really fun and almost as excellent as the first two installments in "The Secret Histories" series.

The way he thinks about the elves is really intriguing to me.  They aren't really spelled out clearly, but the elves are nevertheless scary and the need to go to their world (which is under discussion in this scene) is made incredibly ominous, in large part because of this description.

I didn't enjoy Green's Deathstalker and thus didn't read teh followup books in the popular series, but I adore his Nightside books.  The "Secret Histories" books are set in the same world as Nightside.

Hamster wheels

"The world seems to be made up of millions of hamster wheels of all different sizes, and INTERN is deathly afraid of spending her life on the wrong one, or spending it on the little hamster wheels instead of the big ones. Then again, a hamster wheel is still a hamster wheel."  The Intern

I know that feeling.  Especially in my eary 30s, when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and life still confused the heck out of me (and before I came to terms with that confusion) I always felt that sense of 'what if I pick the wrong path?'  Now it just is what it is. 

Not sure that's a good thing, though.  A bit of the shiny and wonder has rubbed off of life once I lost the option to pick another path. 

Let's shake hands with our ideas

"My sister is currently dating a guy who met her through her “Hot or Not” profile. And I’M the asshole for thinking that’s really funny."  Commenter on random blog I found, somewhere in the comments here. (And how is that for lazy citations?)

Random blog clicking from today's time wastage.  The above cracked me up.  And I couldn't help but think it was an interesting starting point for a character. 

Do you ever do that?  See something that suggests there is a kernal there, an idea-in-the-rough, and so you consider it and see if you can make it work, make it develop into an idea or a character?  The above really suggests a lot about the personality of the speaker, and I'd have to say that it's a guy speaking, and he's got a rather self-aware sense of humor, and can laugh at himself.  I also imagine him to be 20-something and educated, rather GenX or slacker in appeal, and he probably has a skateboard in his closet somewhere.  Best of all, I find I want to know more about the guy, and I rather like him already. 

Am I reaching too far with those assumptions?  In analyzing the actual person who wrote this, definitely.  But the process of developing ideas is that you have to springboard from someplace;  so anything that arrests your attention like that should be heeded as something that might be useful or important. 

I suspect that when people claim to find ideas difficult to come up with, they are too prone to brush away stray thoughts and disregard the instincts that make me go all "Ooooh, shiny!" and start chasing butterflies.  They probably get a lot more stuff done than I do, though!

And a cool site about warfare of the future for your science fiction or post-apocalyptic writing thought processes.  I think I got this one from John Scalzi.  I am too lazy to look it up, though.  It's one of those kind of days.

Opening lines

You know how lines soemtimes pop into your head?  Here are a few that came to me lately:

• "You can't just abandon your human by the road, Zchyliplik. He can't fend for himself."
• Normally, I prefer destruction to death. But, being perverse, Fate killed me once again.
• I was late to my own funeral. Again.

There are more, but these are in my brain.  The only way to oust them is to write them down.

The easy bit

"The IDEAS are never the problem. Hell, I've got HUNDREDS of those. In fact, if you have to ask a writer that, then you are most definitely NOT wired like a writer." Erica Orloff

I'll just leave you with that thought for the day.  I also like Ms. Orloff's insights about how it's the execution.  But then, if you read this blog, you write, so you know what that's about.

Okay, people, find the time and park your butt in the chair.  Flex your fingers and get them churning out prose.

Have a lovely week. 

Interesting take on defining science fiction

"Genres are usually defined by their tropes—mysteries have murders and clues, romances have two people finding each other, etc. Science fiction doesn’t work well when you define it like that, because it’s not about robots and rocketships. Samuel Delany suggested that rather than try to define science fiction it’s more interesting to describe it, and of describing it more interesting to draw a broad circle around what everyone agrees is SF than to quibble about the edge conditions. (Though arguing over the borders of science fiction and fantasy is a neverending and fun exercise.) He then went on to say that one of the ways of approaching SF is to look at the way people read it—that those of us who read it have built up a set of skills for reading SF which let us enjoy it, where people who don’t have this approach to reading are left confused." Jo Walton

The above quote is from a recent article on Tor.com, and well worth reading in its entirety.  I particularly like the concept of an SF reading skill set.  I think that's very true.

And a nod to Kristen at Fantasy Cafe for the link.

And I also really liked this bit:
"We’ve all probably had the experience of reading a great SF novel and lending it to a friend—a literate friend who adores A.S. Byatt and E.M. Forster. Sometimes our friend will turn their nose up at the cover, and we’ll say no, really, this is good, you’ll like it. Sometimes our friend does like it, but often we’ll find our friend returning the book with a puzzled grimace, having tried to read it but “just not been able to get into it.” That friend has approached science fiction without the necessary toolkit and has bounced off. It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s not that they can’t read sentences. It’s just that part of the fun of science fiction happens in your head, and their head isn’t having fun, it’s finding it hard work to keep up."

Or this bit:
"SF is like a mystery where the world and the history of the world is what’s mysterious, and putting that all together in your mind is as interesting as the characters and the plot, if not more interesting. We talk about worldbuilding as something the writer does, but it’s also something the reader does, building the world from the clues. "

I'll stop now, but GO!  Go read this article! 

And now I'm going to order Delaney's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction, because Ms. Walton's references to the man's thoughts have me dreadfully curious.

The self-abusing writer syndrome

Sabrina at Coffee Quill kindly gave a link and a nod to my recent post on The Inner Critic As Muse.  And her interpretation of what I said there made me think about that critical inner voice from a slightly different angle, which I wanted to share here...because I think it bears examination:

But truly, the worst thing that we do to ourselves is chip away at our self-confidence. We do ALL THE WORK much of time, too. If you were in a relationship that had someone emotionally abuse you, you would feel okay to walk away (once you realized what as going on WAS abuse, which is another issue entirely.) But when we do that to ourselves, well, we never think of it as abuse, do we?

Do you do that all the time when you sit down to write?  Is that what's behind a "Why bother?" or "Ho Hum, I think I'll just take a nap?" attitude?  Check out the inner dialog, ask why you are thinking whatever line you repeatedly tell yourself.  Ask why to that first answer as well.  Keep asking why until you see that, at root, it's about a sense of unworthiness or "I'm not good enough" or whatever the heck you have for the basis of your writing-related issues. 

I bet there's some element to your issue that might be defined as abuse if one person were doing it to another...

You know it's the holidays when...

"On the other hand nothing, I am convinced of this, is funnier than a werewolf with a doily on his head."  Gail Carriger, author of Soulless, one of my favorite books from 2009.  Here, she's guest posting on the Orbit books blog about Christmas celebrations, using the voice of her character, Alexia, from Soulless.

Interesting thoughts on immortality

"Vamps were the same as everyone else.  Eternal life didn't make a person anything except old.  The real value lay in what you did with all that time.  As far as he could tell, most immortals wasted that opportunity on internal politics and fashion crimes." 

From the pov of a detective in Ravenous, The Dark Forgotten, a paranormal romance by Sharon Ashwood.

From the mouths of characters

"Terror is the instinct that tells you to run, dear God, run," she murmured.  "Run for your life.  But it just makes you into meat.  Predators take the ones who run.  Horror is the mind-thing, the worm of knowledge you can't stop turning over no matter how awful it is.  It grows in your mind and destroys you by your own intelligence." 

A line I particularly liked from Kat Richardson's "Vanished," the fourth Greywalker novel...and a pretty good definition of horror, too.

(Do you want to know a secret? It doesn't go away, that feeling of wanting to stroke your new book. I stroke mine and hold it to my heart, a bit like a baby, and smell it and breathe it in. There's one thing I don't do, though: open it. God, you never know what you might find.)  Nicola Morgan

Yep, I hear that.  I can just imagine how horrifying it would be to open the published novel and see something that you find horrifyingly [fill-in-the-blank]...yet you can do absolutely  nothing about. 

Which might make an hilarious scene in a movie about a newbie writer, come to think about it...

And a reminder to please read and vote on the entries for the Chthulu-inspired Halloween Horror Contest.  Entries here.  Voting needs to be in by end of day, Monday, November 9th.  And please feel free to repost this information and/or mention the need for voters.  There are some great entries, and your horror-loving friends will thank you!

Um, yeah, I think I know what you mean...

"Trying to think of an ending for my book that won't piss people off. Oh, what a delicate balance between HEA and WTF."  Sandra Cormier aka Chumplet 

 

If you are a geek, then you might enjoy...

"Working with Ramona is going to be like riding sidesaddle on a black mamba." Charles Stross, The Jennifer Morgue.

 

If you haven't read The Atrocity Archives, which precedes this book--pick it up. "Lovecraftian horror laced with Cold War and high-tech espionage," per Locus. Add in computer geek and nerd humor, a main character named Bob, and great writing, and you have The Atrocity Archives.

 

I'm in the midst of The Jennifer Morgue at the moment and it's just as good. 

Some news for LKH fans

"There are a lot of good profilers working on serials, but I think they miss one thing.  You can't really think like these people.  You just can't.  You can try.  You can crawl into their heads so far that you feel like you'll never be clean again, but in the end, unless you are one, you can't really understand what motivates them."  From the Chapter One excerpt of Laurel K. Hamilton's upcoming release, "Skin Trade"

Although I've had some issues with the Anita Blake series becoming a bit hack and the plots more about the erotica than the excellent dark fantasy noir stuff that drove the first eight or so books, I do love LKH's writing ability.  She can write.  And I'll keep buying everything of hers as it comes out--even in hardback, and I never buy hardbacks if I can help it.

Also, Anita Blake is being made into an IFC channel movie!  Woot! 

I sure hope IFC does the books justice.  You know who might make a good Jean Claude?  Adam Lambert!  And even better if they get Tim Curry in there doing something.  And Roger Daltry.  He's so evil!  I loved Roger Daltry as the demon priest in Witchblade.

Who do you think might be a good actor for the series?

Make me Purrrrr...

"I've heard this about voice which I loved - it's how you sound when you're talking amongst your very good friends vs. how you talk in a group of strangers.  The real you."  PJ Hoover (in post comments)

From RL LaFever's blog, a couple of excellent posts on voice. I found it by Author PJ Hoover's post on these articles. Both authors' blogs are well worth following.

RL LaFevers: http://rllafevers.blogspot.com/
PJ Hoover: http://pjhoover.blogspot.com/
http://rllafevers.blogspot.com/2009/04/going-on-voice-hunt.html
http://rllafevers.blogspot.com/2009/04/story-voice.html

 

Puntillio!

Once you make a point, move on, don't keep looking for new ways to say the same thing. Evil Editor

It's Alive! It's ALIIIVE!!

"I think what keeps the book fresh isn't the fantasy, but the fact that I was trying very hard to make it real. To make the voices real. In the end it is always the voices, for me."  Peter S. Beagle, in an interview regarding A Fine & Private Place on amazon.com

I haven't read anything by Peter S. Beagle in years.  But I think I'll have to get something of his again to read...

In the midst of a reading Frenzy

"...then gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone."  A line to describe lift off by William Gibson, Neuromancer, p 102

I've read three books these last three days, the new Ilona Andrews book, Magic Strikes, (very good, but just a tad too much explaining of previous book events and character backgrounds), the new LKH Merry Gentry book Swallowing Darkness (almost no sex--a shocker, I know--and sort of weird with that style change mid series) and Dead to Worse the 8th book in the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris. Also working on William Gibson's Neuromancer (still fresh since its debut in 1984.)  I enjoyed them all. 

I've read other books by Gibson in the 80s, but didn't keep them. Can't even recall much about them because I never reread them.  But they left this sense of how a dystopic sort of glittery high tech and lowdown, slum-ridden future world might run.  Like Bladerunner, which gave the visuals, Gibson's prose made cyberpunk a full-blown sub-genre.  A writer creating an entirely new genre is not that common.  And it gives we writers something to strive for--not precisely setting a new standard or creating a new genre, but to strive to create something uniquely our own.

What's that line about copying being the sincerest form of flattery?

Yes, two of those, please!

"I see my stories unfurl more film-like and learn about my own characters via their actions and reactions." Sex Scenes at Starbucks

Exactly like that for me. I don't try to tell them what to do; I try to clear my head and allow myself to realize what they've been trying to TELL me.

Betsy has many wonderful insights, as do her fellow editors over at the Electric Spec ezine editor's blog, here.

A truth

"The story exists, even if I haven’t written most of it down yet.  It is not cheerful.  As I have said many times and (apparently) need to keep saying:  stories have lives of their own.  You-the-writer allow this.  You are indeed extremely grateful for it:  a live story is . . . a live story.  And you mess with it at your peril:  you try and make a story something it isn’t, and it dies on you, like a rhododendron planted in chalk."  Robin McKinley, on her blog 

And that's how I feel about all the ideas I have.  All these stories are real and alive and breathing--and I just need to play archaeologist and dig them up from my subconscious.  Or mine them, like a vein of gold.

"For Books are not absolutely dead things."  John Milton

The strange honesty of writing lies

"Last night I was working on scene in my latest novel that made me feel uncomfortable–I can’t write that. Ugh. What the hell am I doing? Someone might read this! Writing certain scenes, no matter how often you remind yourself that the character isn’t you, not you-you, not really, it still feels like exposing yourself. Like admitting to something you’d rather not." and "But in writing fiction, you’ve got to tell the truth–never mind that fiction is all made up. And telling the truth takes practice." by Mapelba, Writing In The Water blog post

Brilliant  observations about writing! We write lies, yet at some level, it's about truth.  And sometimes writing is about saying things that make us uncomfortable.  Writing a character whose pov disgusts you but who is needful to a story; exposing things in a character we like which makes them flawed or abhorrent in certain ways; being unsympathetic to mistakes by exposing them clearly--especially when they are

And, yes, I do the same thing, think I can't say that!  People will read it and think that I do/did/think/want that!  I feel too exposed to write certain things, and we all have issues that strike us as too much exposure, I believe. 

And check out her art page here.  Cool stuff. 

Hooks

In order to describe what makes a great hook, let's start with what a novel really is, which is a quest. Whether it's a quest in the mind, through the jungle, through space, or through the mystical land of unpronounceable consonants (the land of unpronounceable consonants is inevitably filled with dragons and orcs), every novel is a quest that starts in one place and ends in another. And every quest needs a first step, where the character makes a decision that will change his/her life. In STORY, Robert McKee calls this the "inciting incident" -- it's the moment that propels the story forward.  Nathan Bransford

Words to remember when you're frustrated with your writing

"Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessary flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress. It may not be pretty at first. Prettiness doesn't come until later, at the polishing stage, which is outside your month. You just have to get it done by brute force if necessary.  So maybe your ongoing story isn't very original. That's okay, for this. Just get it done. Originality can be more in the eye of the reader than in any objective assessment."  Piers Anthony, from a NaNoWriMo pep talk email, 11/30/2008

I'd expound on that, but what more can I say?  It's the truth.  I usually think of it more as head banging on desk, though.

Poetic description

"The heat laid a glaze on everything.  It brought out a million smells, delicious and vile.  It caught gems and metal and sent blinding rays in all directions." Tanith Lee, The Black Unicorn

This is distillation of meaning that is both poetic and brief.  I want to be like that, too.

Influences

Thereupon the aeranth took to his wings, and flew on through the long, narrow passage, reminding Tangle very much of the way he had swum on before when he was a fish.  And the moment his white wings moved, the began to throw off a continuous shower of sparks of all colors, which lighted up the passage before them.--All at once he vanished, and Tangle heard a low, sweet sound, quite different from the rush and crackle of his wings.  Before her was an open arch, and through it came light, mixed with the sound of sea-waves."  George MacDonald's "The Golden Key", in Tales Before Tolkien, The Roots of Modern Fantasy, Douglas A. Anderson, editor

This quote is a lovely example of stylistic differences from 19th and early 20th century fantasy writing compared to currently preferred styles.  [Likewise, if you want roots of Gothic tales, check our Carmilla, the original vampire story.  I'll have to look up the book's title for you where I have that tale, it's a good representative selection of them.]

Anyhow, the point being prose and even punctuation styles have changed.  What I am presently working on is a short story in this older style of fantasy prose, a lyrical, poetic style--but with more modern sensibility.  Not enough to keep it from being trashed by about half the readers on Evil Editor's blog, but that gives one the perspective needed to know how people feel about the more high-falutin' style of fantasy.

I happen to like that poety, mythic style; many do not.  I don't always write or read it; but I do enjoy it.

What writers do you like who fall into this style?  I think Gene Wolfe and Tanith Lee are the front runners for me; and there are a number of writers who fall midway between 'modern' fantasy style (call it fantasy realism or magical realism if you like) and those who write the purplish mythic prose.  Storm Constantine, P.C. Hodgell, Jeri Smith-Ready and Michelle Sagara all seem to hit a comfortable compromise. 

I mean, grit like in the Harry Dresden novels is fine. But sometimes I like poetry.

Shame, Guilt & Human Nature

"But I really do feel guilty about it.  Especially about the binoculars.  Just not enough to stop." How to be Popular, Meg Cabot

Ever consider how it works for a character who is racked with guilt yet acts directly in opposition to that guilt?  The Will To Self-Destruct.  Alcoholics and drug addicts and emotionally wrecked people often do this. 

Or survivor's guilt, where the character is hampered in her ability to function by worrying about whether she's flawed.  Lilith Saintcrow's Jill Kismet in Night Shift has to deal with the worry she's killed her partner.  She carries on; others might crumble.

The existence of shame [a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace] has, I believe, a social function.  The village, grouping together via established social mores and behaviors, is stronger for it.  Society functions by inculcating and perpetuating behaviors that keep the unit stable.  It can and does go awry (witness the many and varied failures of governmental experiments throughout history) and groups of human beings can come up with really odd social constructs which they pass along. These can be religious ritual, cannibalism, eating of certain foods, taboo behaviors, etc.  Guilt for trangressing these social norms can be a useful plot device, a means of showing one's character's character.

If you have a conflict between society and your character, guilt or shame might be an element to examine.  It can enrich the character's mental landscape, or it can be a pivotal influence upon their decision making process. 

And as always, happy writing!

PS, that quote?  The girl is spying on her best friend, a boy who's gotten pretty hawt over the summer.  She is watching him undress and do naked pushups or something.