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Friday, January 15th, 2010
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11:13 pm
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| Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
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9:51 am
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rachel_swirsky says I should post this.
We have been sort of half-chatting about farce. Farces seem very formulaic--they are formulaic, but even so, they're not easy to construct.
And I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse--Wodehouse is worth reading, probably everyone reading this already knows that. If you don't, go hit Gutenberg and read, oh, Right Ho, Jeeves. For a start.
So, the discussion plus reading led to this para, which, I'm told, should be posted here on my LJ.
you know that stereotyped plot outline, the one everyone gives to new writers, "MC has problem, attempts to make it better but instead makes it worse" thing? That is not, in fact, a good outline for most stories. IMO. But it is, in fact, the outline of your average PG wodehouse farce. Just saying. It does not go very far to establishing the formula, you could use it without producing a farce, but I suspect it's a big part of it. I note that Wodehouse is very fond of turnarounds--the thing that Bertie (or even Jeeves for that matter) is sure will work will in fact produce the absolute opposite effect and make things worse, or will have no effect on the actual problem he's trying to solve but produce additional problems. This even works on a character level--Wilmot Lord Pershore, the innocent from the country who turns into an utter party animal in New York, what's her name's brother Edwin, who in the TV episodes is a brat but in the stories is a complete do-gooder literally a boy scout, whose good deeds always end in disaster. The of course iconic bertie with an oxford education being quite stupid and his supposedly lower class servant jeeves being extraordinarly well-read and intelligent) And it works on a sentence level--douglas adams imitates this when he writes sentences like "it hung in the air exactly the way a brick doesn't." And Bertie's voice in particular is a mix of high-flown diction with more common usage, often saying things in a long, elaborately formal or allusive way and then capping it with something like, "In short, he bunked it."
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| Thursday, January 7th, 2010
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10:55 am - Sold a story, sold a story, sold a stooooory just now...
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Yesterday afternoon my notifier popped up in the corner of my desktop to tell me I'd gotten an email from Electric Velocipede. "Ah, that'll be my rejection," I said to myself.
Wrong!
The editor of Electric Velocipede would like to accept my story "Night's Slow Poison." I'm extremely pleased.
My Clarion West peeps might remember it as my Week 3 story, "Spacecrawl." My non-Clarion West peeps won't remember--because they weren't there--that during Week 1, two classmates turned in stories titled "Crawlspace." This was a complete coincidence, but very amusing. Another classmate joked that we should all turn in stories called "Spacecrawl." Two of us did--S. Hutson Blount's sold some time ago to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, under a slightly altered title. And now mine finally has a home--a lovely one. It's a story that, for various reasons, I'm irrationally extra-fond of, and I've been really hoping to place it somewhere cool. And now I have!
current mood:  pleased
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| Monday, December 21st, 2009
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7:54 am - Mithras is the reason for the season!
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Happy Solstice!
In past years we've had steak, and bloody bulls to drink, and pulled out the origami tauroctony. This year we're going low-key. I spent the week subbing at the middle school cafeteria and don't feel like elaborate preparations. Besides, in all the office-building and packing and unpacking office things, I can only find the snake and the scorpion.
Today is also the sixth day of Squidmas, when Cthulhu leaves gifts for the Leckie children each night in the tentacles of the Christmas Squid.
I wish everyone a lovely Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, or whatever other holiday you may celebrate.
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| Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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12:32 pm
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Wow, so, um. A lot of people have suddenly appeared on my f-list! Hello! I’m happy to see all of you.
I have, as it happens, lots of thoughts about writing, but I usually assume that no one is particularly interested in them, or that they're not sufficiently interesting or original to post about. Maybe that isn't the case.
Or maybe it is--who knows? But now that I've hit my regular blogs and cleared slush and have no real excuse not to work on my current project, nattering about writing instead seems so very, very tempting...
( Read more... )
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| Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
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10:18 am
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So, yesterday I said that if you want to “work your way up” as a writer, the thing to do was aim high and “write better.”
shweta_narayan pointed out--correctly--that I’d oversimplified the issue of “writing better.” There’s a whole long and complicated history behind what anyone says when they say a story is “good.” It’s easy to get trapped into seeing only the conclusion that we’ve come to, and not exactly how we reached it.
The topic interests me very much, what is it we mean, when we say, “that’s a good story.” What is at work when I look at a story I don’t like but I can see it’s good? (Does that happen very often? How does that work?) Most importantly, how do I make my own work “good” in a way that will make an editor sit up and pay attention?
( Oooh, this got long, didn't it. )
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| Monday, December 7th, 2009
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10:43 am
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So, the scuffle-du-jour is Scalzi's scolding of Black Matrix Press for offering writers one fifth of a cent per word--while launching four magazines at the same time, magazines that cost ten dollars an issue.
Part of the conversation is about whether or not it's worth it for a writer to submit to markets that pay less than SFWA pro rates--that would be five cents a word.
Now, if you want my personal advice, you want to consider two--maybe three--things when deciding whether to submit somewhere. You, as a writer, want money, yes, of course, and you also want eyeballs. You want people to read your work. Usually--not always, but usually--the money is a good indicator of the actual number of readers a particular venue has. There are a few zines where this doesn't match up, where token payments go along with "lots of people read this" and/or the "maybe" third--"this zine has a good critical reputation." Token payment doesn't necessarily mean nobody reads it or it's not worth being published there. Knowing which places those are--well, that requires paying attention to the field, doesn't it? Gotta do your homework.
Which leads me to the thing I actually want to talk about today. Everytime this sort of conversation comes up, someone--often several someones!--argue that newbie writers have to sub to low-paying, tiny markets because that's how you get credits to put in your cover letter, and that's what makes an editor actually pay attention to your story.
No. NO! This is wrong. This is so wrong, I'm not sure the English language is able to express just how wrong it is.
Look, I read slush. Here's the bottom line: The thing that makes an editor pay attention to your story is a kick-ass story. Period. The End. It doesn't matter if you have good credits, or any credits at all.
Now, it's true if you have good credits you can sometimes jump the slushreader. It's true that if you have good credits, an editor will start reading with the expectation that what she's about to read is not, in fact, going to be the sort of headdesky slush that gives the slushpile its name and reputation--a reputation, I might add, that is thoroughly deserved.
But its also true--I am telling you this on my honor, I swear this is absolute truth--that if the slush reader rejected you, jumping the slush reader would not have helped you. I swear it. If JJA rejects you, over at F&SF, I swear to you on my sainted grandmother's grave, Gordon would have done the same if he'd seen your story.
And it is absolutely true that if your story totally rocks, if it's compelling, the editor will sit up and take notice. She will pay attention. Whether you have credits or not. No, really. The editor does not actually care about your credits. She cares about the story.
Now, as I said, "good" credits will lead an editor to expect, before she ever starts reading, that your story is at least going to be readable. This will give you a little leeway--maybe a bit more patience with a slow or otherwise dubious start.
But just any old random credits? Will not help you. In fact--and I hesitate to say this, but I'm going to be very honest here--there are credits that can have the opposite effect.
No, I'm not going to tell you what they are. Some of them are just personal to me, zines that might pay decently or have a good reputation, but I have rarely been bowled over by what I've read there. Others...well. When I read a cover letter that tells me the author was published in "Fairly Reputable Journal of Stories Ann Doesn't Like" and/or "Tiny Zine That Pays Nothing and Ann Doesn't Really Like Anything They've Published" I find myself not quite so enthusiastic about reading the sub. And when a cover letter claims credits from ten to twenty small zines and maybe I've heard of one of them*...I am not particularly impressed.
Those credits will not get you a better shot with the editor. They just won't.
Now, I read every story anyway. Because that's what the job is all about. And I pass up the stuff that needs to be passed up, no matter what. Credits are irrelevant.
There is no point in submitting to a tiny market for no pay just to get a credit you can put in a cover letter. That credit is useless to you. If you are being relentlessly rejected by well-regarded publications, it's not because you have "no credits," it's because you need to step up your game. Seriously.
There's a slim chance that you're consistently being bounced by the slushreader because you are a genius who is ahead of your time, or because the sort of thing you do just isn't in style even though your work is utterly brilliant.
There's also a slim chance that you could jump out of an airplane with no parachute and survive.
Where's the smart money?
Aim high. Those 4-the-luv markets aren't your first stepping stone on the way to the pros. If the pros are what you're aiming for then for pete's sake, aim for the pros.
That said. When you run out of high-pay, high-reputation places to send your story, by all means, move down the line. Myself, I'd rather get ten dollars for a story than nothing at all. Though of course I'd rather get ten dollars from somewhere that I know people read, and I personally don't submit to places that as far as I can tell don't have readers to speak of. Your personal cutoff may be different, and that's fine. I'm not here to tell you who to submit to, and who not to submit to.
I'm just telling you, if you're submitting somewhere only because you think it's necessary to have some credit, any credit! on a cover letter, that any credit at all that you can scrape up will make an editor pay more attention to your story, you're absolutely dead wrong. The credits that will give you a (slight) edge are precisely those professional markets you're trying (and failing) to impress. And no credit in the world will make up for writing that isn't up to standard.
Don't worry about credits. Just write better.
*I troll ralan and duotrope just like every other writer. I pay attention to the conversations going on in the community. I know what stories, and what publications, people are talking about, and hence reading. If I haven't heard of it, chances are not many people are reading it. This is not an infallible rule--but it's held up well over time.
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| Saturday, December 5th, 2009
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9:28 am - Years Best!
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| Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
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3:07 pm - Arkfall!
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| Monday, November 30th, 2009
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6:59 pm - Obligatory Nebula Post Part III
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Thanks to the generosity of editor Mike Allen, if you're an active member of SFWA, you can read Clockwork Phoenix 2 for free. Head on over to the message boards at sfwa.org and check it out.
There's also lots of other amazing and wonderful fiction available there for members to read. Which is what I'm going to do right now.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
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7:25 am - Obligatory Nebula Post Part II
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This is where I tell you what I'm nominating. I don't actually have the full list just yet, and will post when I do, but.
Everyone should read Carolyn Ives Gilman's "Arkfall," which is awesome and was published in the September 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Or, if you have trouble finding that, it also appeared in Years Best SF 14. I stink at summing things up, but it's adventury and wonderful, and you should read it.
I'll post the rest of my list when I have it, I am still pondering and reading.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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4:47 pm - Obligatory Nebula Post
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I have no expectations of being nominated for a Nebula, honestly, and didn't plan to post. But I've found that I'm glad to read other writers lists of what's eligible for Nebula nomination--it's hard for me to remember what I read this year--year and a half?--let alone what I've read and liked that's eligible, and at this point I can recc things, so it's really helpful for me to have the lists people are making. And also it lets me check out cool stories I haven't seen yet.
So. Things I've written that appear to be eligible for nomination:
"Marsh Gods", at Strange Horizons (July 7, 2008)
"The Nalendar" in ASIM #36 (August, 2008) This is available as a podcast as well.
"The Endangered Camp" in Clockwork Phoenix 2
If you haven't checked any of those out, by all means do.
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| Friday, November 6th, 2009
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1:55 pm - Oh, Long Awaited
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So, back a while ago I sold a story to Realms of Fantasy. And then, before my story could be published, Realms folded.
I bided my time. I knew that either I'd be notified that my story was released or else the reversion clause would kick in. It was only a matter of which came first. I'd already been paid, which was a plus, but really what I had wanted was that publication! Ah, well, that's life.
Then, much to my delighted surprise, Realms was resurrected! So my time-biding became much more satisfying.
And now the end of my wait is in sight!
My story "The Unknown God" will be in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, available in fine bookstores starting, Mr. Cohen says, sometime in December.
current mood: pleased
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| Thursday, November 5th, 2009
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11:03 am
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Well, I wrote a while, and now my brain is crying, “Break time!” So the next logical thing to do is mop the kitchen floor and scrub the toilet.
Uh huh.
So, instead, I’m going to peeve mildly. This is not inspired by any one particular event, it’s a piling up thing. Because I hear it all the time. In the cafeteria kitchen a co-worker will start singing, and someone else will pretend distress at the horrible sound. Or someone will start singing along with the radio and then stop, and say something like, “Oh, how terrible I sound, I can't sing at all.” Or it comes time to sing something, like Happy Birthday or a holiday song, and people feel the need to apologize for their horrible singing voices.
Maybe it’s a product of my own musical interests--I don’t think it is, I think my interests are more a product of my already existing experiences and attitudes--but this just bugs me. It’s pleasant to hear someone sing happily while they work. It’s a very natural thing to do, and it makes me smile. Even back in college, when Jerry the Dishwasher had a tendency to get a single line stuck in his head and would sing it over and over as he swept the kitchen. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh.” Brief pause. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso..." Or the radio ad jingles. "For a hole in your roof or a whole new roof...for a hole in your roof or a..." Not a great intellect, Jerry, and not a great singer. But it was hard to be too critical. You knew when he was singing that he was in a sunny mood, and it's easier to have a good day when the people around you are in a good mood themselves.
And all those people who say, "Oh, I can't sing"? Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are just flat out wrong. Sure, most people won't be onstage singing opera any time soon, but nearly everyone I've heard sing can at least carry a tune. Most of us aren't virtuosic chefs, and yet, when it comes time to make dinner, we don't say "Oh, I can't cook" and avoid cooking, or apologize for burdening the world with food. No, we fix our supper and by and large enjoy it. It ain't cordon bleu, but it tastes pleasant and it's filling and nutritious and no one is hung up about it. The rare person who feels compelled to apologize for the imperfections of a perfectly good meal to the folks sitting around the table are generally regarded as insecure or perhaps eccentric perfectionists. I know one person who does this, and I've never heard anyone chime in with a "You're right, this is horrible, for pete's sake stop cooking!"
But I routinely hear that sort of comment about singing.
Now, there are times when singing is inappropriate. Not all workplaces are like industrial kitchens, and some folks work jobs that require a sort of concentration and quiet that lots of spontaneous song would disrupt--but even then, I'd bet that it's more a matter of staying away from the top-of-the-lungs, we-can-hear-you-two-offices-away range. I'm not advocating loud public singing in every single setting no matter what. But singing is, I wholeheartedly believe, good for you. Please, when someone near you begins to sing (assuming it's not an inappropriate occasion for it), don't give them the reflexive "Aargh, stop!" When you sing, don't apologize! Don't tell the world that your voice is horrible, because it almost certainly isn't. Sing! The world can always use more singing.
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| Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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10:42 am - Things that made me smile today
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009
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4:01 pm
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| Monday, August 31st, 2009
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3:33 pm - Change of Topc
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So I've been going to the library every day, because there's some semi-construction stuff going on at home. Every day I walk past a shelf full of art history books, and say to myself sternly, "You're here to write, not read."
Today I decided I needed to read. Biology. Got off the elevator, walked past the art history books, saw the book that had been whispering to me each day as I passed it. The Art of the Hittites.
I'm only human!
I spent four hours reading about the Hittites. You know the Hittites! Ramses II fought a big battle with them, the Battle of Kadesh. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and commemorated the event in a bucketload of sculpture in his Ramasseum. Except, what he really did was snatch defeat from the jaws of an utter freaking rout--you can't tell from the carvings in the Ramasseum, but the Hittites won that battle. For a long time people assumed Ramses' spin was historical fact, until they found the Hittite copy of the ensuing treaty.
I knew about that before I started reading. But I did learn all kinds of interesting new things. I am not (mostly) going to write about them just now. Instead, I'm going to mention some weird stuff about this book.
It doesn't have a copyright or publication date on it that I can find, but an old slip in the front for stamping due dates has a single date stamped on it. The year is 1969. It says it was translated, though not when, and for various reasons, I presume it was translated from German, though I could easily be wrong about that. There was a lot of really cool information, interspersed with very weird assumptions. Hittite written in heiroglyphs (it was also sometimes written in a cuneiform script) must have been popular with illiterate Hittites, because it was pictures! (It sounds slightly less boneheaded in the original, but that's the implication, no matter how you slice it.) After the battle of Kadesh, Ramases married the daughter of the Hittite king and made her his principal wife (inspired of course by her beauty and the goodness of his heart, not because he had to or anything!) and Egyptian sources talk about how beautiful she was, and so maybe she was blond! The Hittites had a lot of contacts with the East but they were really Westerners, because duh, they were Indo-Europeans, and they weren't all savage and decadent like those freaking Assyrians! (Me: Book, you don't really mean that, do you? Book: Here, let me say the same thing again in the next paragraph, in slightly different words!)
And this, which was a combination of cool and odd. Hattusili (I did not note down his number, there were several Hittite kings of that name, but wikipedia tells me he was Hattusili I) had appointed his nephew Labarna his heir, but changed his mind and made his grandson Mursili the crown prince.
As he [Hattusili] is trying to justify himself before the Assembly of Nobles he describes the conditions in his family in great detail. From these frank and unrestrained words...
Frank and unrestrained? Hello? No king worth the name ever spoke frankly and unrestrainedly to the Assembly of Nobles, most especially not while he was trying to justify himself. Most especially not while trying to justify disinheriting the heir the same Assembly had likely approved of earlier. Each bit of speech might be strictly true, the quotes might be verbatim, but frank and unrestrained? I don't think so.
And I'd lay money the quotes are verbatim, they have that ring of truth to them. Here's the text as I found it in Art of the Hittites.
The young Labarna I had proclaimed to you, saying, "He shall sit upon the throne." I, the king, called him by son, embraced him, exalted him, and cared for him continually. But he showed himself a youth not fit to be seen; he shed no tears, he showed no pity, he was cold and heartless. I, the king, summoned him to my couch and said, "Well. No one will in future bring up the child of his sister as his foster son." The word of the king he has not laid to heart, but the word of his mother, the serpent, he has laid to heart....Enough! He is my son no more! Then his mother bellowed like an ox. "They have torn asunder the womb in my living body! They have ruined him and you will kill him!" But have I, the king, done him any evil? ... Behold, I have given my son Labarna a house! I have given him arable land in plenty, sheep in plenty I have given him. Let him now eat and drink. So long as he is good he may come up to the city but if he come forward as a troublemaker then he shall not come up but shall remain in his house.
Frank and unrestrained? That speech is carefully planned, even when he's accurately quoting. That serpent, his sister? She's playing the distressed mother card, oh yes, and Hattusili knows it. Which is why he doesn't just report what she says (and I bet she did say what he says she says, likely lots of other people heard it and it has, as I said, a ring of reality to it), he makes sure to mention she bellowed like an ox rather, than, say, something a trifle more flattering or sympathetic. Hattusili is playing the betrayed uncle and wringing every bit out of it he can--he and his sister are two peas in a pod, they are. "Mean to him? I've given him lots of presents! Of course, if he starts trouble I might be forced to exile him or something....I'm just a good-hearted old man! Wouldn't hurt a fly!" Uh huh.
"Frank and unrestrained" my Aunt Fanny.
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| Friday, August 28th, 2009
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8:41 pm
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Go read this: The Joy of English Grammar
Speaking of joy. Not!
So, this project I'm working on came to a point where I said to myself, "Self," I said, "at this point, this project would be greatly facilitated if you had a better grounding in, among other things, human physiology." And I agreed, and responded, "Good point, self, and you know what? The library has probably got some books you can read to bone up on the subject." So I hit my library's website and requested a few things, including Physiology Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide by Dr. Dale Layman.
I'm in an odd place with biology. I grew up in a household where glycogen synthesis was a routine topic of dinner conversation. To this day, when someone cuts into a steak and says, "Look at all that blood!" I have to exert effort to avoid saying, "That's not blood, it's myoglobin." I have an odd store of bits and pieces of knowledge. But I have forgotten just as much basic high school biology as the next person. And besides, it's not glycogen synthesis I need to read about.
So I got my email today that the books had reached my branch, and I went to pick them up. Got home, made a cup of tea, sat down on the couch, and opened Physiology Demystified. Here's how it starts:
Hello there! Who am I? Why, I am your host. They call me Professor Joe, the Talking Skeleton! I have been selected as your guide for this book, PHYSIOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED. I am here to give you a basic, "bare bones" introduction to what happens in The Place Below Your Skin!
Right. I close the book, look at the call number. No J in front, so it's not a juvenile. I look at the back copy. It insists that this book will be a fun and painless way to learn about physiology. I note to myself that those first few sentences were neither fun nor painless. Of course, I don't find studying such things painful or dull, frankly, but I know a lot of people do find science of various sorts intimidating, and take no offense at attempts to persuade them otherwise.
I made another attempt to co-exist with Professor Joe, but found it too painful to get past that first paragraph. I started opening the book randomly to see if maybe it was worth skipping ahead, or forging through and offering the pain up for the souls in Purgatory.
"So, what's the big deal about maintaining homeostasis of blood calcium ion concentration, Professor Joe?", the untutored mind may be prodded to ask.
That punctuation is not a typo, btw. Or, you know, not my typo.
A stimulus (STIM-you-lus) is literally "prod" or "goad." (Picture a long stick that pokes or prods the body.) In general, a stimulus is a detectable change in the body's internal or external environment. "What detects this change?" the curious reader may well ask. The answer is: a sensory receptor (ree-SEP-ter).
The only reason he doesn't give you pronunciation for internal or external is, he provided that helpful information ten pages back. I am not joking. I wish I were. Paging through, I do see that there's a lot of information there, including two whole chapters that address the particular issues I'm interested in. But I just can't read this book. I'd rather bang my head against a wall for a day or two.
Time to try the next book.
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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6:42 am - In Which I Am Interviewed
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| Friday, June 19th, 2009
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3:28 pm
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Been a while since I posted!
Wiscon was fabulous, even more fabulous than usual and therefore insanely exhausting. Met zillions of people I wanted to meet, and met zillions of people I hadn't known I wanted to meet until I met them, talked to zillions of people I had met before but wanted to see again. Bought the rest of the Marq'ssan Cycle from Aqueduct, along with a stack of other books. Sang Sacred Harp and had free, second-hand clothes thrust upon me. Did panels. Ate at the fabulous Tibetan place twice. Rode the magical gold elevator to that sacred precinct that is the Governor's Club. Finally kept a two year old promise to take Paidhi Girl to the noodle place. Walked down to the lake so my traveling companions could watch boats and throw stones in the water. Talked to more people. Sunday after supper I went up to my room intending to rest a few moments and essentially collapsed until Monday morning. Drove home. Got up and went to work the next day. Boy was I glad when the school year was done.
In other news, Clockwork Phoenix 2 will be officially out July 1. But Amazon and Barnes and Noble say they have it in stock. Publishers Weekly gave Clockwork Phoenix 2 a starred review recently. One of those "16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales" is my story "The Endangered Camp."
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