The Seeds of Writing

I might have been predisposed to write from an early age. My mother (who is on my mind today) gave me a blank book to write a story in at the age of…seven, perhaps? Eight? She read to me, shared not only books she liked but books she thought I would like, and helped me explore my interests in whatever direction they branched. She was not a fan of science fiction and fantasy, but when I showed an interest in it, she helped me find good books–”The Dark Is Rising” series came from her, and Narnia, and Prydain–and then let me go off on my own.

I was fortunate enough to be exposed to creativity and writing at an early age, and in high school, I had a couple friends who shared at least a love of F/SF books with me. After college, I tried to recover that sense of community in writing again. It took a while, but in the late 90s I met some other writers online, including Jeff Eddy, with whom I founded Sofawolf Press. And in the mid-2000s, in the Bay Area, I met a small group of writers who have really helped me rediscover that community.

I think that writing, in a way, is my continuing quest to maintain that connection with other people, to rediscover the sense of wonder I had growing up when I read those books and shared them with friends. That I’ve been able to forge connections and close friendships via my writing is really a tribute to the foundation laid early on in my life, with the very first friend I shared stories with.

Lots of my friends have children now, and because I have a lot of awesome friends, I am seeing a lot of children having those same kinds of foundations laid. It makes me happy, and hopeful, and excited for the future.

Inspiring Words

Roger Ebert’s “I Do Not Fear Death” essay, part of his book that was also published in Salon and reposted this week following his death, contained a lot of helpful, thoughtful words, as was typical of his blog posts over the last few years. There’s a paragraph in there that I think expresses very well the ideal toward which I’ve been striving, which was passed along to me by my mother, though not as eloquently or concisely as this:

I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

I have a Shepard Fairey-style picture of Faulkner over my desk with the (paraphrased) quotation “Don’t bother being better than others. Be better than yourself.” I wanted to create one of Ebert with those words on it, and so I took to the Internet to find a suitable picture.

There’s something very interesting about those pictures of Ebert. Following the cancer which took his voice and lower jaw, his face looks very different, of course. Many people might have shied away from the camera, but he did not, so there are a number of “before” and “after” pictures that come up in a Google Image search. The “before” pictures are closer to how I remember him, and in many of these pictures (including the one that heads that Salon article), Ebert is serious, thoughtful, contemplative.

In every one of the “after” pictures I could find, his face is lit up with a bright, happy smile.

This smile, in a man who loved to talk and had had that taken from him, is the perfect image to go with the words he wrote. Even in his last column, “A Leave of Presence,” he looks forward with optimism and determination–with joy.

So I made the below image, using obamapostermaker.com. It’s from a photo that came up in a couple places online and I freely admit I have no idea who owns the copyright; I found it on frisky.com, where they had tagged it, but I found the same image elsewhere without the tag. In any case, I’m not making money off it–if you like the image, feel free to copy it.

Thanks, Mr. Ebert, for all the joy you brought to this world.

FogCon Panels!

I’m going to be up at FogCon this weekend and sitting on two panels:

“Can a Telepathic Cop catch a Teleporting Criminal? What about a Precognitive one?” Saturday at 4:30 pm.

“Favorite Non-SF/F Mystery Authors?”
Saturday at 8 pm.

They should both be fun discussions, if you’re going to be at FogCon! Come by and say hi!

The Life of Lee

Perseverance. It’s often the last ingredient in a successful career, after talent, practice, and passion. Here, Elizabeth Bear links to another post that describes that process for 2012′s Best Director Ang Lee, and adds her own insight.

Me, I’m still on that road, about ten or so years into Taking Writing Seriously. Maybe fifteen depending on how you measure it. But yeah, it’s comforting to know that the stack of rejections I’m accumulating is the norm and not the exception.

Apex Readers Poll: Last Day!

If you haven’t voted for your favorite Apex story of last year, today is the last day! You can vote for my “Erzulie Dantor,” but unless there are like eighty of you out there who are just waiting to vote, I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference. :) Still, every vote counts, and you can also vote for some of the other stories Apex has published, which are all wonderful. I’m pleased to see that right now, my favorite, “Sexagesimal,” is winning.

So go vote, for whoever! http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2013/01/2012-apex-magazine-story-of-the-year-readers-poll/

Clarion Applications are OPEN!

The Clarion Writers Workshop changed my life and my career. For six weeks I lived on the UCSD campus in La Jolla, interacting mostly with the seventeen other students there and the six wonderful professional writers who’d come in to lead our workshops (and the support staff of Clarion, who are amazing). We read about a hundred of each other’s stories in six weeks and had to come up with something smart-sounding to say about each one. We each wrote (more or less) six stories in six weeks. And we talked more about writing, about the craft of it and the ideas behind it, about the direction of science fiction and fantasy, about the current trends and the history, than probably I have at any other time in my life.

There is something magical about being immersed in a world full of people like you and yet not like you. Every one of my classmates is a talented writer who wants more than anything to tell his or her stories to the world, and yet the things we want to tell stories about are often vastly different. Some of us love literary fiction, some of us love horror, some of us love action and adventure, some fantasy, some science fiction. But those classmates are still close to me, a support network for writing that has been really amazing over the past couple years. We’re going through many of the same struggles, and sharing our disappointments is often more helpful than sharing our triumphs (though it is awesome every time I get a “New sale!” letter, and our class is generating a lot of those–go Narwolves!).

And Clarion gave me the tools and confidence to send my stories out there myself. I had a story published in Apex last year and have a few more out on the market now. I’d sent out maybe a total of three or four stories to magazines, and gotten rejected, and given up. I understand a lot better now that rejections happen to everyone, a lot, and the type of rejection can tell you a lot–there is such a thing as a good rejection.

So if writing is what you want to do with your life, apply to Clarion. Those six weeks are one of the best investments you can make.

(Cover created with the Pulp-O-Mizer.)

Self-Promotion: Walking a Line

I do read other blogs than Brooke Wonders’, honest, but every so often she will say something that I have an opinion on and I figure it’s good enough to go in a blog post. Anyway, she recently was tagged to write about The Next Big Thing (hers), which is a way to force authors to talk about what they’re working on, and she dutifully did so, remarking in that post and a later one that self-promotion makes her feel “like a dog being asked to tap-dance.”

Leaving aside how normal that image is in my world, I do think it’s a not uncommon feeling. You are entering this arena as a fan, and have gotten beyond the stage where you believe wholly and unabashedly in the brilliance of your work. You have learned enough to look at your work realistically in comparison to the work you adore, to say, “I can’t do what those people are doing,” or “I can’t do consistently what those people are doing.”

But you’ve also moved far enough along that, let’s say, you are writing stories that other people like. There are critiques, yes, and you can take those and learn from them. But other people like them, and will never get to know them if you don’t tell them.

Now, do you want to be That Guy (or That Gal), whose Twitter/FB feed looks like this: “My story is up at webstory.net!” “My story got a new review at webstory.net!” “Hey, if you haven’t read my story yet, check it out! <link>” “I am getting a new story ready, but meanwhile you can read the old one at <link>” … etc.? Answer: No, you do not. But when one of your stories goes up, or when you haven’t posted about your writing in a while, or when someone asks, you should be proud to talk about what you’re writing. People are Interested, after all! Someone asked!

For me, it often feels weird and personal, and I hate talking about stories because I don’t want to give them away, and also because the story might change, and I don’t want people coming back saying, “Hey, where’s that gay werewolf story?” and have to tell them, “Oh, it’s now a transgender shoggoth…” (“I just present as a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles!” and yes I consulted Wikipedia) But that’s also a failing on my part. I should want people to be excited about upcoming things, and one of the things I don’t do a good job of (even in my other life) is talking about the future. I have gotten better this year.

I think ultimately the lesson is this: it is not the case that when you are a fifth-level Writer looking up at the twentieth-level Writers, you are No Good. There will be a few people who find value in your work. The better you get, the more people. You do not wake up one day and suddenly have fans; you will accumulate them as you go, by writing better and better stories, by engaging with them, by telling them what you are doing. So if you have to start with your immediate family and friends and think of them when you’re writing the “this is where you can read/vote for my story” post, do that. It makes it less awkward, maybe, and eventually you’ll get enough responses from strangers that you will understand that self-promotion, in moderation, is something your readers not only tolerate and expect, but actually want.

Speaking of, you can vote for my Apex story in their best-of-2012 poll if you feel so inclined. ;) See how I hid that down at the bottom of this essay?

Organization in Reading

The wonderful Ms. Wonders and I have been having a little dialogue (dia-blog?) about organizing our thoughts as regards writing. I have to admit that my method is more madness than method, and when I see her amazingly regimented and thorough system of keeping track of everything interesting that crosses her path, I am rather envious. If I imagine myself implementing such a system, my imagination wanders to a vision of myself sitting paralyzed in a room stacked to the ceiling with notes and lists, trying frantically to create a list of all the lists. I carry a small notebook around with me, and though I often write down things in it, I rarely go back to look at it except when I am specifically looking for story notes I’ve made. My process tends to be much more organic. I trust my brain and subconscious to notice and retain important things and do the sorting for me. This process has worked pretty well, with some minor failures, but what system doesn’t have those?

That said, there are a few ideas I got from her post, and a couple things I wanted to comment on:

• Wordcount tracker. I have a couple friends who meticulously track their wordcount written. I confess that I only do this when I’m drafting a novel, and then only because it’s easy to do: all my words are in one file, and Word puts the wordcount right there at the bottom (unless you are working on a Mac and your file goes over 100,000 words; did you know that?). I know it’s useful to keep track of how much you write and when, but I spend enough time reworking and editing stories, and how do you note that down as wordcount? So I kind of go by “wrote X number of novels and stories,” unless I am doing something like the Clarion Write-A-Thon (which you should all do).
• Submission tracker. Everyone should do this, and do it better than I do, which is to throw all submission-related e-mails into a big folder and/or use Post-It Notes on cardboard.
• Pre-made bios. This is a terrific idea. As an editor, I know I’m often nagging people to get bios to put in the back of magazines. Having something pre-written (and updated regularly with most recent credits) is really helpful and ensures you don’t write something quickly in a panic that will then be sealed in a publication for all time.
• New words. This one is interesting too. I certainly love discovering new words, but as with the rest of my knowledge aggregation, this tends to happen organically. I hold with the Stephen King “toolbox” method of vocabulary, which says basically that you should only use words you are familiar with; if you stretch to use big impressive words, you’re likely to miss shades of meaning and use. King does recommend reading widely and accumulating word knowledge that way, and Brooke’s new word lists are just a formalization of that process to ensure that the new words are retained and used properly (I cannot imagine her using a word IMproperly).

The thing that I really need a good list for is my “to-do.” Right now it mostly sits in my head, which is pretty reliable but occasionally prone to failure. Post-It Notes (again) litter my desk, because even if I have a program that reminds me reliably in e-mail of what I have to do, I eventually get numb to those e-mails and stop noticing them.

For story ideas, I’m not as worried. If I have a really good idea, it eats at me until it becomes the beginning of a story and I start writing it down. If it’s worth continuing, I’ll remember it and finish it. I have lots of half-finished stories in my folder, and sometimes I go back to them, but mostly I am moving forward. Things get lost, but so far I don’t lack for stuff to write about, so it seems to be working.

And in general, my organic approach and Brooke’s meticulously documented approach are two different methods that both work for us. The key is to find the things that work for you and keep using them, but also to identify the places where your method is not working and try different solutions until something does work. If word count is important to you, track it. If you want to be a professional, track your submissions. If you find yourself lacking for books to read (I cannot imagine anyone in that situation), start keeping lists of interesting books you hear about.

Reading, Reading, Reading

I have been writing a few short stories (and will get back on the submission train this month), but for the last month, mostly what I have been doing with spare time is reading novel submissions to Sofawolf (and one to the writing group). I admit that in between I read Iain M. Banks’ “Excession,” which was quite delightful. Do you think we could get him to write a furry book? Sorry. Anyway, the novels were generally fun. All of them were interesting, and only one do I need to write up a lot of critique about. One of them you’ll see from Sofawolf later this year (it was past being a submission, technically speaking; this was an editing pass for an already-planned release): Michael Payne’s followup to “The Blood Jaguar.” It’s a lot of fun, and while it bears some stylistic similarity to the first novel, it’s also written differently. It expands on the world and the religion from “The Blood Jaguar” and introduces some new, delightful characters.

The others I can’t really talk about yet, but I think you will see at least one of them from Sofawolf in the next few years.It’s rare that I read a full  manuscript for Sofawolf. We get 20-30 submissions a year, and of those, about 75% can be rejected based on the query/synopsis/sample (here is a hint: if your query letter/synopsis contains spelling or grammar errors, you will have a hard time getting past that stage). Of the rest, probably about 80% don’t survive the reading of the first three chapters. But it is cool, when I get a submission that does grab me, to imagine it in a Sofawolf edition. So this round was pretty exciting in that I was reading at least two books I felt pretty confident we would end up publishing. In Michael Payne’s sequel, I got to imagine the art as I went through it. I am out of novel submissions for the moment–that is not a hint to send yours in, though. :) I have “A Short History of Myth” to read, courtesy of a friend, and a bunch of Hugo candidates for the nominating.
(If you are nominating for Hugo awards, btw, my story Erzulie Dantor is eligible. Just sayin’.)

Story reviewed!

As I tweeted earlier, my story “Erzulie Dantor” published in Apex  was reviewed by Lois Tilton in Locus. And it got a “Recommended” rating! That is really cool–Locus is the place many people go to figure out what’s hot, what’s cool, what they should read out of all the wonderful stuff being published out there. So it is really nice to see my story on someone’s short list. And what’s just as cool is to see my fellow Narwolf Brooke Wonders recommended as well, for her Clarkesworld story “Everything Must Go.” If you have not read it, you should go do that. It will break your heart but in such a beautiful way that you won’t care.