Category Archives: Writing

Relativity is Relative

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So I’m writing a story that takes place in the Tincaniverse, a neighborhood of the Science Fiction world that suspends a couple of physical laws because they are inconvenient, while still maintaing a general feeling that science is real. Anyone who writes a story with faster-than-light travel or spaceships with gravity holding people to the decks is playing in this same universe. Everyone knows time travel is sci-fi hooey, but time travel and faster-than-light travel are pretty much the same thing as far as physics is concerned. This is the inconvenient bit that writers and readers would prefer to ignore.

Time travel stories are really tough to do, because the writer is obliged to create an elaborate set of rules to prevent paradoxes. Many writers go for the branching-universe model for time travel, that posits that when you change an event in the past you spawn a branch universe that reflects the change, while there’s still another copy of the universe crashing along as if nothing ever happened. Which means the catastrophe the protagonist went back in time to prevent still happens, just not on his new time line. He’s just blown off his friends to horrible suffering while he goes and has fun with copies of them. Selfish bastard.

Still, time travel makes a good story once in a while. (See “William Ashbless” and “Red Dorakeen”)

Anyway, here I am in the Tincaniverse, thinking about the most poetic way to wrap up a story, and suddenly selective relativity is attractive. Distance and time being synonymous really works in this case. The question is, am I brazen enough to go for it?

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Rejected At Last!

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I sent a story off to Wierd Tales, a venerable monthly magazine that publishes stories that fit under the broad category ‘horror’. It is the magazine that H.P. Lovecraft published most of his stories in, back in the 1930’s. When I sent off the story I thought publication in that magazine would count as a pro sale for the Science Fiction Writers of America, a group I would like to qualify for someday. Turns out it wouldn’t have counted.

On top of that, after I submitted I had a lot of thoughts about how to make the story better. The thing was, as long as there was a possibility that they would publish the story in its current state, it was a bit of a waste to go editing it.

Time passed. A lot of time. I began to assume that I had been rejected but had somehow missed the notification. Then I heard that the two magazines that publisher puts out (the other one named for Lovecraft) were consolidating into one. One less market for genre writers. Now that their reorganization and shrinkification is complete, I got the rejection I’d been waiting for. Hours later, I have a better story.

On the subject of shrinking markets, one and a half true pro publications have also bit the dust. One is gone completely, the other is going from twelve to six issues annually. That’s the publication that has been kind to me in the past. Tough times. I have a better story, and now I need to find the right place to send it.

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Say What Now?

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In an episode of Allison I used the word “rusticizing”, meaning the process of making something rustic. There’s an artifice to the process that appeals. Tonight I ran the spelling checker on Allison and naturally that word was flagged. No biggie, I made it up.

One of the suggested alternatives: rrsticizing.

Umm… wha—?

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Postafrostalyptic

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The state of the Universe after Hell freezes over. Things that had a snowball’s chance in hell are now near-certainties. Vows made (It will be a cold day in hell when…) are coming due. Infinite possibility, huge responsibility. It’s the postafrostalyptic world.

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Insignificant Word Trivia

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Can anyone think of a word other than hitchhike (and derivatives) that has a double-h?

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NaNoWriMo 2008: Victory!

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This morning That Girl and I, though nine time zones apart, both hit the “submit” button at the NaNoWriMo Web site at the same time, and so officially became winners together. Woo hoo!

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Dream Writing

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I slept poorly last night, and elected to keep trying to get a few quality z’s long after the sun was up. I was not entirely successful, but I did spend time drifting through a half-sleeping state. There are dreams of a sort to be found at this level of consciousness, different (I think) from deep-sleep dreams, more tied to possibility and the world we know, stories we whisper to ourselves while we snooze.

This morning more than once I awoke from these mental muddled ramblings feeling annoyed. There had been a continuity problem with the dream, and I had wanted to go back and re-dream the previous part to fix it. I wanted to edit the first draft of my dream. Naturally I couldn’t do that, and the frustration brought me back to full wakefulness. I know that with a little work it could have been a much more compelling dream.

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The World’s Worst Writing

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I’m not a big fan of television serials, as a general rule. There was a period of several years in which I never watched a single minute of sitcom. Not counting animated shows, anyway. Over the last few years the cartoons have been able to go where no live show dares. Which isn’t saying much.

As I write this I’m sitting in Pizzeria Roma, an old haunt of mine (the black hole by the oven is still working). They have a plasma TV now, showing network programming without sound. A crime drama just concluded, and it confirmed what I have come to suspect for a long time: There’s a lot of crap coming out of Los Angeles and New York, but the worst television in the world is made in Germany.

Maybe I should qualify the title a bit. This is about the world’s worst writing that people actually get paid for (regularly!). There’s plenty of truly awful writing published on the Web and in vanity press.

The Czechs have Ulice (rhymes with “street”), and old-school low-budget urban soap opera, and they have “Kriminalka: Anděl” (rhymes with “CSI: Prague neighborhood” – Anděl means angel which adds a nice nuance to the title). I am told that this show is actually pretty good if you’re into the whole CSI thing. It might just be national pride, but the locals tell me that the show makes up for a smaller budget with writing and acting. I know the one time I watched it without sound, I found it far less silly than the American franchise that inspired it.

Then there are the German shows. After a while they’re easy to spot. And when it comes to bad, they have taken sucking to a whole new level that American television can only dream of. I know that’s hard to believe, given the state of American TV, but the writing in the German shows is so bad it is a shining beacon of suck even with the sound turned off. (Worth noting here is that I’ve never seen a Chinese television serial. They might be worse.)

The other night I was laughing out loud at the action in a German detective drama featuring a dog. (There is another that features a helicopter, and so forth. In every case the show is constructed so we can say “yay dog!” or “yay helicopter!”) One of the many Toma

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NaNoWriMo Update

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Halfway through the month of November, it’s time to take a look at what my fumbling fingers have managed to wreak so far. There’s been some good, there’s been some bad, and there’s been a lot of ugly.

I’ve made it through Part One of the story, “The Gathering of the Good Guys”, and I’m embarking on part two, “The Big Trip.” At this pace I’ll esaily eclipse the required word count, but the story is a long way from done.

I’ve got all the characters in (except the carp), but a lot less silliness than I was shooting for. I know what I would do to go back and put the silliness in – Trabant the Immutable can certainly be a lot dottier, John the Smith can be more of an ass, and in general the people who are not immediately involved in the conversation can add a lot of silliness.

The story has developed into a romance, actually; I decided it would be stupid to drag out the tension between Bixby and Lada when it’s totally and completely obvious they will end up together. So what the hell, I decided not to create some sort of artificial “I hate you so much I love you” stupidity. They like each other. A lot. There are other people who might make that more complicated, but they won’t stop liking each other. I respect you, the reader, too much for that other nonsense.

So I have a Sexy Elf maiden wearing a hot little number that, when we visit Elfaville, turns out to be what the men wear. The males are not terribly masculine; when Chavdar the horny hafling first sees the elf men, his comments prompt Lada to say, “Chavdar, there are two things you should know. One, elves have very good hearing. Two, those are males.”

Chavdar himself is quite a bit of work, skilled with cutlery, seemingly amoral, but sometimes surprises everyone — himself included. We had a nice trip through the Valley of the Great Kings who Mysteriously Disappeared, where some of the statuary looked remarkably like John the Smith. While there, I threw in a random artifact (“plot token,” in the parlance of the trade) that I have no idea what I’ll do with. Maybe nothing. Ha!

Princess Skoda is a lot more than the annoying brat I had planned initially, she’s definitely got conniving on her resumé as well; her agenda may include a few bullet points she has chosen not to share with the rest of the group. One thing for sure, when things go badly, she wants Bixby at her side, and she’s willing to do what it takes to make sure that happens.

After the traditional Bestowal of Gifts By The Powers That Be (In this case Bixby’s new Mother-in-Law, so there’s infant’s clothing and an amulet with warnings about contacting a doctor after four hours — she is more than a little anxious to be a grandmother), the team is heading off for the DwarfHole. I have enough misadventures planned for that place that I will likely forego the required Bad Guy Obstacles to get them there more quickly. Luckily in this sort of story the Brushes With Death along the way rarely mean anything in terms of the plot.

Here’s one longer passage that pretty much tells the entire story (in chapter two), then a couple of other lines I enjoy. I thought I would find more lines to include, but they way the funny bits build doesn’t leave many lines that stand alone.

  • “There is another wizard, a twisted and evil man. No one knows his name, he goes simply by ‘The Master’. He lives far from here, to the west, beyond the great river of Zug, past the Bumpy Hills of Kromdor and the Grassy Plain of Plax, beyond even the Treacherous Mountains of Hagarslax, across (or around) the great inland sea of Hydrox, and then through the vast Squishy Swamp, with its leeches the size of alligators, and alligators the size of leeches. Over the last years he has had his twisted, evil minions scouring the Earth in search of the Important Thing. He must not succeed.”
    “The what?”
    “The Important Thing.”
    “What is it?”
    “Um…” Trabant the Immutable shifted in his seat. “No one is certain.”
  • “It is bad luck, they say, for the husband to lie with his wife for the first time before he cleans all the mud off her.” (I just realized I forgot to mention that Bixby missed a spot!)
  • “So… why aren’t we going the other way?” asked Bixby. (Certain death in the form of Dark Riders awaits them across the river they are about to ford.)
  • “Listen everyone. This is a dangerous place. Don’t ever, for any reason, leave the path.” (I don’t thik I have to tell you what happens.)

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Missed it by That Much

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I’ve been working on a really cool (in my opinion) story, and for once I knew exactly where I was going to submit it. City Slab is a very pretty quarterly that shows up in major bookstores, and they specialize in urban horror, where the city is almost a character in the story. My story, “Haunted City,” fits that bill nicely. While the pace may be a little slow for some editors, I’m quite pleased with the result.

Last week I was at City Slab’s Web site, and I got all the required information and even wrote my cover letter. There were still a couple of things I wanted to check for the story, however, so I did not submit. Good thing.

Today I went back to the Web site to double-check the address, and this is what I found: http://www.cityslab.com

Bummer. If they’d only held on long enough to publish my story, I’m sure their financial woes would be over. Instead, there is one fewer magazine paying real dollars for quality fiction, and therefore another twent-four good stories will go unbought each year. The best stories (or the ones by recognizeable names) will find a home somewhere else, but life on the bubble just got a little more precarious.

The venerable Weird Tales now has my manuscript. I hope they like it. They published Lovecraft, so a slow pace shouldn’t bother them.

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First Person

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I was reading a short story the other day, and for the first two pages I was entirely frustrated. I was trying to form a picture of the scene, and while I had a couple of descriptive comments about the narraror, I was missing a really, really important fact. I didn’t know the narrator’s gender. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, but this time it did. Of course, to cause that confusion one must write in the first person.

I habitually start new stories in the first person. Many of the stories I submit are still in that voice. I have yet to sell a story for actual cash money that is told in the first person (not that I’ve sold much in third person, either). I don’t think this is a matter of editorial bias, and I’m skeptical about many of the reasons editors and other writers cite. For me, it boils down to this. I can write “I” and save myself a whole lot of work on characterization. I know who I am. The problem is that you don’t. That’s surprisingly easy to overlook. While I think I’m getting intimate, the reader is saying, “who the hell is this?”

Most of the time first person is just the author being lazy.

Not always, I must hasten to add. The Monster Within cannot be told except in first person. In this case, however, the narrower perspective is all about establishing character. It’s about learning who Hunter is as Hunter does.

Tonight I’m working on a story I’m supposed to be holding until I get my almost-done work sent out. It’s in the first person. The first paragraph makes sense in first person, and as planned the end will justify first person as well. But the story is expanding, and the benefits of first person are getting lost in the story. That’s the trap, I think. As storytellers, we want to speak directly to the audience at the start of the story, to set the stage, and again at the end, a debriefing of sorts. For the rest of it, the reader can benefit from descriptions of our main character from outside. By getting away from the narrator’s perspective we can see the narrator much more clearly.

So, here’s my humble advice for writers everywhere, should you choose to accept it. Always use third person unless: 1) It is fundamentally necessary to the story that it be told in the form of a journal. 99% of all stories told this way don’t have to be, so if you think this applies to you, you’re probably wrong. 2) The narrator MUST speak directly to the audience. See Princess Bride. 3) The narrator is a liar, or at least you want the audience to consider that possibility. This can include self-deception. See Catcher in the Rye. 4) Your name is Emma Bull, and your novel is called Bone Dance.

First person does not make the story more intimate, but it definitely narrows the perspective. Use with caution.

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My NaNoWriMo Bibliography

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This year I will be participating in my eighth National Novel Writing Month, which is something not many people can say. My first year, 2001, was the first year the event started to gain traction; about 1100 people participated, if memory serves. So now I’ve written seven piles of words, and I’m getting a little vague on what they all were. Indulge me, then, as I climb into the way-back machine and try to excavate my NaNoWriMo career. This is mostly for my benefit; I’ve been trying to reconstruct my history for a while now. Hopefully I’ll get it right.

2001: Rio Blanco – a spy vs. spy story set in Central America. When I bogged down I wrote sex. I’ve never read the result, but I think it had a few good moments, and the narrator had a strong voice. It was the voice that convinced me that maybe I could write something good. On December 2th I started my first serious attempt at a novel.

2002: The Test – This was the year of 30 days, 30 bars, 1 Novel. I have some documentary remains of that time, but my plan to keep a running log of my adventures was overwhelmed by the task itself. The novel I’d been working on for eleven months, While God Sleeps, has been languishing ever since. I plan to pick up The Test when I put The Monster Within to bed for the last time. There’s some really good stuff in here (if I do say so myself), and Jane might be my best character ever. She is managing to survive in a very ugly industrial-revolution world. Some scenes are so gut-wrenching I’m surprised I wrote them.

2003: The Monster Within – Holy cow, has it been that long? I hated to set The Test aside, but I recognized that this story was structurally a lot stronger and would be easier to get into a publishable state.

2004: Worst Enemy – A techno-thriller that has some problems with the techno. There’s a lot of chase and a clever idea – the guy on the run can never get ahead because the people he is running from have an AI that is based on the guy’s personality. He is his own worst enemy. To escape he must do something that is completely against his nature – forgive. (Alternate title is Unforgivable.) This one might turn out to be better as a screenplay. As it stands, two good characters stand out in a field of poor storytelling. This story has a lot of my road trip in it. It was an excerpt from this that first attracted That Girl’s attention.

2005: The Stan Man Plan – Previously excerpted in these pages. I reread it a few months ago and chuckled the whole way through. It’s a long, long way from publishable, but it was funny and even had a heart.

2006: Untitled – A very heavy subject and extremely high literary ambitions (along with real-time publication) doomed this project from the start. I might try it again someday, but the constraints of NaNoWriMo, which seemed perfect for the idea on paper, turned out to not work at all. I got the word count, but the result was a total mess.

2007: Math House – intended to be a near-future social satire and adventure story, it quickly bogged down and I turned to the story of one of the secondary characters, which turned out to be a whole lot of fun. Beth’s story had a Tim Robbinis sort of feel to it, and might be worth revisiting some day. One thing about NaNoWriMo, it’s taught me a couple of times the sort of story I should not be writing. It’s a good lesson to only lose a month to learn.

2008: I am almost giddy with anticipation for The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy. Since my last post about it, I have added a carp.

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NaNoWriMo’s Coming!

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Those of you who have been around for a while have seen mention of NaNoWriMo before; it’s something I spend every November doing. Here’s the deal: during the thirty days of November a whole bunch of folks set aside the useful and productive activities they would otherwise be doing and instead they crank out a novel. This is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I will be participating for my eighth consecutive year, and this year my story will be particularly silly. More on that in a bit.

NaNoWriMo is a pretty popular pursuit these days, with tens of thousands of participants and a host of other lurkers and hangers-on. Best-selling authors write pep talks for the struggling masses, and the message forums are choked with celebration and cries of agony.

Today I logged in at the NaNoWriMo web site for the first time this year, checked for a couple of the names I’ve seen over the years, and generally got my bearings. There was a time in years past that I spent a lot of time on the message boards but not so much anymore. It’s just… too big. Lots of people trying to find new ways to say, “boy aren’t we all so crazy!” The answer is no, you’re not crazy. NaNoWriMo is not crazy, insane, or even particularly difficult. Almost anyone in the US could easily write 50,000 words in a month if they stopped watching TV. No other sacrifice need be made. (Oddly, most of the people I hang out with are exceptions to this rule.)

So it’s not crazy, not insane, not masochistic, nor any other adjective that implies that accomplishing this goal is particularly punishing. In fact, it’s pretty damn fun. No, the people who perform this feat deserve your undying admiration for another reason. Or maybe three.

  1. They are being creative. Rather than switch their brains off when they get home from school or work, they are switching them on. This can be habit-forming.
  2. They are committing to something outside their usual routine. Consistency is the key to success and it takes a special kind of commitment to do something outside your comfort zone. This can be habit-forming.
  3. They are making something. It may suck, but the balance of human endeavor will be tipped just a little more towards “worthwhile”. They are producing rather than consuming. What have you added to humanity’s list of accomplishments lately?

It is even less of an accomplishment when I succeed at NaNoWriMo – I sit down to write every day as it is. Those habits I mention in the list above have served me well for eight years now.

So all of that has nothing to do with what I intended to tell you guys today, but one thing you learn during NaNoWriMo that has served me well ever since is that one should never (well, almost never) stop yourself from writing. You can always delete it later. The title of this blog gives me the right – no, the responsibility – to just ramble on. Anyway, on with the actual point of all this.

On the site I updated my personal information (though I left my age at zero – that appealed to me somehow). There is one section of the profile that is about what you’re writing. Right now I’m leaning toward The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy, inspired by a blog episode I posted some time ago. I won’t use any of that in the NaNoWriMo effort – that would be cheating, and I need to start differently anyway (and the blog episode really isn’t very good). However, the idea is there.

Of course I’m not allowed to start on the endeavor until November 1st, but there was a section to enter a brief synopsis of the story. Here’s what I wrote:

Bixby is a simple farm boy, but he’s good with an ax and doesn’t ask too many questions. His brawny physique strikes fear in the hearts of Evil-Doers and Nasty People, and a pitter-pat in the bosoms of Fair Ladies (and unfair ones, as well). He adopts Kitty, a black cat who turns out to be an evil sorceress in disguise. She hates the name, but she does like curling up in Bixby’s lap.

Princess Skoda is a strong-willed young lady who is accustomed to getting what she wants. Though she may seem like scantily-clad fluff, she is in fact a scantily-clad expert on the history and lore of the Important Thing. Her pouting skills will get the group out of many a close scrape – if they don’t kill her first.

Chavdar makes up for his diminutive stature with his big mouth. A veteran of many improbable campaigns, Chavdar knows what he wants out of life, but Skoda won’t let him have it. He won’t even consider asking Lada.

Lada the Huntress is an elf maiden whose skill with a bow is unmatched. She’s not too bad with knife, sword, club, machete, brass knuckles or small bits of string, either. Like all elves she is terribly shy, and would rather kill people than try to talk to them. She’s especially dangerous when it’s that time of the century, if you know what I mean.

Trabant the Immutable is a powerful wizard who can warp the very fabric of space and time, and make the universe do his bidding. This leaves very few brain cells for everyday life, however. It may be that he’s fought one Balrog too many…

No one is quite sure why John the Smith is in the party, but it’s bound to be a big surprise when his true identity is revealed at some critical juncture.

Finally, there is Evil Guy. He’s trying to take over the world. Or destroy it. Or something. If he gets his hands on the Important Thing, there will be no stopping him.

Mysterious Forces and Evil Forebodings abound, Great Danger lurks, and the Evil Guy wants the Important Thing. Will this misfit band of adventurers be able to set aside their old rivalries and perform this Quest?

Probably.

I added to the synopsis after I first pasted it in here. But just look at that! How can one possibly not be excited about writing TQITDEG? So I was pretty darn ready for November to start. But then, then, came the part of the Novel Info section that got me even more excited than ever, a part which I have no skill to execute. This year there’s a place to upload cover art! Holy carp on a cracker that would be cool – I mean, what better than a racy fantasy adventure parody for a great cover? A big strapping guy, some kind of little funny-looking sidekick, a scantily-clad princess, a scantily-clad evil temptress, a scantily-clad elf hottie, a dark wizard, and any variety of odd, deformed creatures. In the background a castle or a spaceship or whatever’s handy.

So here’s my challenge to you, dear readers, and your chance to challenge me. If you draw me a cover that even remotely resembles TQITDEG as synopsized (go to my profile page for the latest), I will include all your cover elements in the story, no matter how outlandish they are.

Bonus points if you can identify the theme for many of the names above without using Google. I think John the Smith’s name might really be Zaz. Kitty’s real name could be Dacia.

Thanks!

At Last

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One of the good feelings you get as a writer is when you’ve been beating youself against an idea that you know is good but you just can’t get a working story out of it, and then suddenly you find the magic. You’ve all been there, perhaps not as a writer but the principle applies all over. Yesterday was one of those days. Today was the follow-through.

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Curse of the High Bar

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Thought I’d do a little stream-of-consciousness detective writing this afternoon. It’s been a while, and I miss Charlie and the rest of the cast of Feeding the Eels. Of course, I have no memory of where things left off, so I went back and read the last three episodes. And there’s a bit of a problem.

See, there are parts of those episodes that are actually pretty darn good. Considering the rules I’ve set for myself as far as just spewing out the story, this next episode is sure to be a letdown. That’s the way it goes, I guess. By the time you read this we will all know how well I did. Hopefully this little sorry-in-advance will allow me to kick back and produce some raw spewage.

Thanks!