Entropy Central

Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

I managed to get through Coppercon without picking up any con crud, which is a little victory.  I had intended to start writing some new short stories now that my anthology edits have been turned in to the publisher.  I didn’t get quite that far today, but I did manage to brainstorm an idea with the help of Rachel Ann Dryden.

Can’t talk about the outcome of that because it’s for the annual Codex Halloween story contest.  If I said anything, it would out who I am when the story is read.

Still, I’m kind of excited about this story.

Labor Day always reminds me of a time nearly two decades ago when I worked for a small company that manufactured ferrites–think the shield beads on your laptop’s power cord.  It was a privately-owned company and I worked there for about 9 months.

On the Tuesday after Labor Day, I went in to the office and the owner/boss asked me “where was everybody yesterday?”  I told him yesterday was Labor Day.  He replied, “I don’t remember giving everyone Labor Day off.”

What a slap in the face.  but then, this was a guy who, while sitting in a potential customer’s office in Tokyo misplaced his glasses.  “Goddam Nips stole  my glasses.” Really?  Harvard Business School must teach that in the customer relations class.

Yeah.  I couldn’t get out of that place fast enough.

//

Coppercon yesterday was fun.  I had a reading at 5:00 and read an unpublished story called Radio Waves.  Attending the reading were Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin, and Rachel Ann Dryden.   It was pretty well received.

Following the reading, I sat on a panel with Guest of Honor Stephen R Donaldson with the topic of multi-cultural writing.  The topic strayed, driven by questions from the audience, but we did cover the topic for maybe half the hour.

It was fun because Steve and I were the only two on the panel.  He writes mostly fantasy, and I write mostly SF.  He grew up in India, and through marriage, I live in two cultures all the time.  We both had some interesting things to say about the subject, and we use other cultures in different ways when we write.

One thing that surprised me–during my introduction, I said that I had around 40 published short stories.  Donaldson said that he was in awe of anyone with that many short stories because he has written maybe fifteen of them in his life.  Of course, I responded that his total word count dwarfs mine by a couple orders of magnitude.

My Coppercon schedule has changed.  Here are the updated times.

Sat 1p-230p, Court A.   LIT – What IS SF?  (moderator)
Sun 5p-530p, Breakfast Nook.    LIT – Reading
Sun 6p-7p, Court B      LIT  - Cross Cultural Writing
Mon 1p-2p, Court A.     LIT – World Building  (moderator)

While I rolled out little write-ups on the authors participating in the 2020 Visions anthology,  there were some developments in my own writing.  The biggest of them is that my story, K.622, was released in audio form as part of Michelle M Welch’s Theme and Variations (Opus 2) audio anthology.  In the recording, I read the story, and I play some excerpts of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (which not coincidentally is also K.622) on the clarinet.

Considering I hadn’t played clarinet for several years, I don’t think I did a terrible job, though I have to confess to a little “fix in the mix.”

You can find it here.

Somebody must have sold a mailing list of writers. I got an offer for Writers Digest and Poets and Writers in the same day. I haven’t heard from either one in years, haven’t subscribed for even longer.

Writers Digest I stopped buying because I got nothing out of it. It’s really meant for beginners. Poets and Writers I stopped buying because the information inside targets writers more literary than me.

Having been on the receiving end of literary snobbish sneers–genre? eew!–I find the pull quotes on the insert of the P&W mailing amusing.

My rebuttals:
Quote:
“I’m very tolerant of stillness. I’d rather not move my hands just to move them. I’ll wait for the right thing.” – novelist Jonathan Lethem.

Rebuttal:
While waiting for the muse might be the right answer for some people, in others it would mean productions stands still. Sometimes you just have to force it in order to get through a logjam.

Quote:
“If you have a story to tell, the most important thing is the story, not the form you use to shape it.” – poet Patricia Smith

Rebuttal:
Of course form matters. A story in poetry is far different from one in prose, and both are different from one on the stage or screen. In any case, if this were believed, then genre fiction would be on equal footing with literary fiction in terms of respectability and selling 5 copies of a book would not be worn as a badge of pride.

Quote: “My advice to writers would be to aggressively seek the truth–forget about your ego–and do one more draft than your agent tells you to.” – Jonathan Karp, publisher of Twelve.

I almost didn’t respond to this one. Karp and I agree on 2/3 of this quote, and looking at the website for Twelve, I kinda dig the business model. Still, I was unable to find submission guidelines nor payment policy. (Twelve publishes novels). However, I do take exception to the last phrase in the quote.

Rebuttal:
Who has the ultimate responsibility over the fiction? Whose name goes on the cover? The agent may suggest or ask, but may not tell you to do anything. The agent works for the writer.

Quote:
“Poetry is when the animal bursts forth, inflamed. It ain’t always pretty.” – poet Dean Young.

Rebuttal:
Honestly, I don’t know what that means. Literally inflamed animals bursting forth isn’t just not pretty, it’s rather disgusting. But what I suspect he means is that raw emotion on the page delivers a message to the reader, but you don’t need poetry for that. It can exist in any form. And often is pretty.

Quote:
“I think you’re an artist because you have to be an artist. I don’t think it’s ever been easy.” – literary agent George Borchardt

Rebuttal:
But why is an agent saying this? Of course it isn’t easy or everyone would do it. But it isn’t necessarily art. It’s also a science. It’s also being a smart businessman. It’s being a craftsman–and there is a difference between an artist and a craftsman. It’s all of these things and more. Every writer and every writer’s process is different. And besides, in some cases it’s not a question of must be artist, often it’s the tenacity of want to be artist.

So there is today’s tempest in a teacup. <– It ain’t art but I know what I like.

Once again, my story finished with an honorable mention. This makes 11 for me.

Last week I spoke at a teen writers conference held in the Peoria School District. They had three days of writing workshops, guest speakers, and general fun for about 50 kids from 13 to 19. I was invited to speak on wednesday afternoon.

I heard about their search for a speaker when SFWA president Russell Davis used Twitter to find a member to volunteer.

I kept the talk informal and used much of the time to field questions free-form. In yesterday’s mail I got this card:

//

In other news, I have begun reading for the 2020 Visions anthology. I have read only a few stories but one was fabulous. Details withheld until I have selected the table of contents.

The Peoria (Arizona) Unified School District is sponsoring a teen writers program June 8 to 10, 2010. This is the first year they are holding this writing workshop for teen writers, and I will be speaking at the event, representing the science fiction and fantasy genres.

From reading the web site I linked to above, I learned that the entire event was conceived by a student at Ironwood High School in Glendale. She and her mother, who is a teacher at a different high school, executed the plan to create a three day event. They advertise it as the first annual, so hopefully it will continue for many years to come.

It’s an exciting opportunity for young writers in the Phoenix area, and I’m looking forward to participating. It appears they designed the event to be student-led adult-guided, a model that works extremely well for the Boy Scouts. They plan extensive peer-led workshops and writing events, but also scheduled local writers to speak in person, and out-of-state writers via video-conferencing.

I recently received an email from a writer looking to get published. He wanted some input on what I have learned over the past few years. Here is what I told him.

1) Keep yourself busy so that you don’t “watch the clock” on the first story. You might find yourself looking at your email / snail mail all the time waiting for a response. Once you get a number of stories in the market that gets easier because there is always something coming back.

2) Compile a list of your favorite markets in the order you prefer to appear, then submit to the highest appropriate and available (meaning you have nothing there right now) market in that order. Not all markets will be appropriate for every story. For instance, the top of my list will include Analog, Asimov’s F&SF, Fantasy, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, etc. Obviously some of the markets I list take only vastly different material, so my hard SF story will automatically skip markets like Realms of Fantasy.

3) Create a spreadsheet now, while your story count is low. You’ll want one tab for where each story is, and another tab for each market. That way, you can cross-reference and make sure you don’t submit twice to the same market, or send a market two stories at the same time. You’ll probably add a “sold” page later, and perhaps a reprint-eligible page. You might even have a page for retired stories. Once you hit a certain number of stories, you won’t be able to remember where they are. much less the submission history.

4) Try to minimize the number of passes you give a story. Strive to be a first draft writer. Don’t rewrite, just go back and make corrections.

5) Don’t rush to market. Once you finish a story, sit on it while you write the next one. When the second story is done, go back and give the first story one more edit before submitting it. Then, start a third story before you go back and edit the second.

6) Back up your work. I use a flash drive for a quick and frequent backup, but I also write to disk for less frequent more reliable long-term archival. I also back up to an external hard drive from time to time. I also have a hard copy print out of every story in a file cabinet. I keep rejection letters in the same folder and sometimes I read them for amusement after a story sells.

7) Don’t give up on a story unless you have a good reason.

Let rejections bounce off you. Consider an editor’s suggestions to improve a story, but you get to make the final call. In the end, it’s your story. Letting rejections roll off like water from a duck’s back is hard at first. You want to analyze the rejection letter and ease the pain. With experience, you either want the story to sell or you just want it back so you can try another market. Personally, I find the “gentle rejection” letter to be a bit condescending. I’ll let that slide, but an unprofessional rejection will put a market onto my DO NOT SUBMIT list. Otherwise, don’t spend much time on rejection, just file it and get the story out the door again.

9) Beware of the easy sale. If you find a market that buys everything you send them and it isn’t SFWA-eligible, then start aiming higher.

10) Understand why you are writing short fiction. If that’s all you want to do, fine. If you want to write long fiction, then you should know why you are writing short fiction. Training? To get your name out there? Have an objective.

11) Don’t worry about where other people sell. You’ll sell your product to the people who want it. Don’t worry about other peoples’ success either. Everyone selling had a first sale.

12) Keep plugging away and block out any negativity. To quote Harlan Ellison, if you can be discouraged from writing, then you should be.

If it seems like I’ve been quiet on the net lately, it’s because I’ve been quite busy. After LepreCon last week, I started some classes at the unemployment office.

I went into the week with the pre-conceived idea that the classes were going to be a complete waste of time. I’ve never been big on self-assessment tests, and that’s how the week started. I’ve never been able to make any use of the results of that sort of thing. I’ve known for a long time that I’m either an INTP or an INTJ depending on which time I took the Myers-Briggs you look at. I’m pleased to say we did not take the Myers-Briggs this go around.

Still, I’ve never found those sorts of tests particularly insightful or anything more than a conversation starter in the same way you might talk about the ballgame last night.

Then Monday afternoon we had a change and the instructor started some small group exercises that were actually not too bad. Tuesday and Wednesday we had another class that dealt a lot with communication and workplace behavior. While the material wasn’t particularly enlightening, there were a lot of small group activities and the instructor was an entrepreneur who was quite good at keeping the mundane material interesting. I even got a certificate suitable for framing. It will go into a manila folder.

Today I am scheduled to take some more assessment tests. Apparently the fact I’m teaching math at the community college is not sufficient evidence that I know basic math skills, so I must be tested. Wish me luck.

The interesting thing about these classes has been not only the breadth of skills but also the depth. It really underscores the severity of this recession. Every single person in that room of thirty people had amazing experience and skills ranging from sales to engineering. This is ample evidence that when companies lay off in this recession, it’s not just pruning dead wood. These companies have been cutting off pieces that bleed, sometimes heavily.

In the classes, I discovered a woman with a a desire to write SF/Fantasy. I’m way farther down that road than she is, but I’ve been doing my best to uphold our genre’s tradition of the more established writers helping the less experienced writers. That has been a fun diversion over break and lunch.

Today is the last full day I must spend down there. I have two half-days next week. Then I go full steam trying to get back to work full time, and hopefully finish that novelette that’s been sitting idle since LepreCon started.