Writing
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What If . . .
I own a book called What If? by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. One of the very first exercises in that book is to write at least one first sentence every day. With no requirement that it go further than just that: a first sentence to a story.
I’m not sure I even finished the book. I started doing that simple exercise, and it led me to several short stories (including the first one I ever finished back in 1992) and to my current novel series in progress. I did it for years, penning as few as one and as many as twenty or thirty first sentences every single day. Some of them were ridiculous; some were sublime. Some were speculative; some were mundane. Some were funny; some tragic. But the thing they all had in common was that they got my mental juices flowing. I’d think of a first sentence, and with it would come a sense of character, place, time, mood, theme, scene . . . pretty much everything but a plot.
It’s also how I discovered that I tend to randomly use the name Victor a lot. Usually in a negative manner. But I digress.
I no longer do this exercise, although I think perhaps I should start doing it again. Just to get my author juices flowing again. You see, I’m kind of blocked, right now. I have a ton of ideas, but when it comes time to put them down on paper/electrons . . . I instantly hate every syllable.
He was a dark and stormy knight.“Feh! That sucks.”
As London burned, Victor looked down upon it with“No! That’s even worse!”
Blood, red and sticky and still warm, dripped from my fingers into the still-open mouth of the corpse at my feet.“No, no, no, no, NO!” <insert anachronistic image of ripping paper from a typewriter, complete with appropriate sound effects, wadding up the page, and throwing it at a trashcan overflowing with other crumpled sheets of paper, all with one sentence typed across the top>
I’m supposed to be working on my goal of writing short stories and sending them off to publishers. And I would be if I could stand a single syllable of anything I’ve written. I reached a point at which I simply could no longer look at my existing stories (editing stories I’ve already written is not my favorite thing about writing). My brain demanded that I work on what it really wanted to work on: my novel.
“Fine,” I told it. “You want it, you got it. Novel it is.”
There was a faint, gurgling squee from inside my skull. I would have been worried except that I’m used to things like that.
I churned out about 3000 words. A bit under two chapters of Death Scene, book 1 of the MCU Case Files, an urban fantasy series set in modern-day Atlanta, but with magic.
And I edited it and got it almost like I wanted it. And I triumphantly submitted it to my writing group. But with reservations. I wanted to change . . . something. But I couldn’t figure out what. Something was just not right. But what? Maybe they could help.
What I heard back definitely told me what it was. I think ‘uninteresting’ would be the polite term to use. I think the exact phrase one person used was ‘sterile and boring.’ Others used words like ‘slow,’ ‘no action,’ ‘stereotypical,’ ‘teaser-y/prologue-y,’ ‘not enough drama,’ and ‘no conflict.’
To be fair, they also said it was not info-dumpy (but was bordering on it), flowed well, drew them in, and was well-written, but as an opening chapter, it wasn’t enough. They wanted more from an introduction to a new world in which magic, the FBI, the police, and a body frozen in time during the act of being burned at the stake are all introduced.
And as each person said nearly the same thing, I nodded, because it confirmed what I’d been afraid of. And hey, it’s a chapter one. I should just move on and write chapter two, armed with the knowledge of the consensus opinion.
But that’s not what I did. What I did was start playing “What if?”
What if I increase the amount of magic the magical characters use? I mean, it’s frickin’ Urban Fantasy, right? Let’s get some magic in there from the get-go.
What if I start the chapter later? Closer to the action of examining the crime scene? Or, possibly better yet, what if I drop back a bit and start with the hapless individual who discovers the body looking for a place to get high and frisky with his girlfriend?
What if there’s conflict between the FBI and the Atlanta PD? Not stereotypical “turf wars,” but something different.
What if . . . ?
What if . . . ?
So, um . . . how do I turn it off? I’d like to write chapter 2, now, but instead I’m redesigning how vampires work and planning how I can introduce the bad guy from book 3. Yes, book 3. And ideas for the plot of book 2 are cropping up, as well.
So I guess ‘What If?’ can be a writer’s best friend or his worst enemy. At the same time. Which is a bit disconcerting.
Ooh! What if dragons . . .
Disclaimer: I am the exact opposite of upset with my writers group who gave me these critiques. I am, in fact, delighted. They were, as always, honest, thorough, and got right at the core of what was wrong with the chapter. To get angry at that would be hypocritical, since that’s the entire point of a critique group. I quoted some of their comments not because I was upset at them or was dwelling on them, but because they were particularly apt. I was so close to the story that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.I just wanted to say that because some of them will probably see this post, and I wanted to nip any angst on their parts in the bud. :)
This post was inspired by the GBE2 Blog On Week 108 prompt, “What If?”
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I Should Be Stopped
I’m trying to design some business cards for WorldCon later this year. I’ve got it down to a couple of designs, the only difference being how the picture of me is oriented with relation to the text, which consists of my email, Twitter, Facebook, and website addresses (that would be here).
Both of them have a picture of me (different pictures), and underneath the image it has my name in full, and underneath that, my Twitter bio, which is this.
Creator and Destroyer of Worlds
But a couple of days ago in a chat with a friend of mine, I said the following.
I invent imaginary people and make them have conversations in my head. I also write.
I don’t know why, but I find this quite funny. My friend, it must be noted, neither laughed nor even reacted, but that is probably because she expects these kind of statements out of me, and believes that any reaction — positive or negative — could be taken as encouragement.
Is it just me, or is that better than Creator and Destroyer of Worlds? It’s a big longer, but . . . maybe I could make it work. I don’t know.
What do you think?
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Musings
Golden Eye I’ve been a bad blogger. Because I’ve been working on stuff, but haven’t taken the time to mention anything.
And what’s more, I’m still not, because this post isn’t about that. It’s about what is believed to be the oldest artificial eye, discovered in 2006 in Shahr-e Sukhteh in what is now eastern Iran. So far east, it’s almost in Afghanistan.
What struck me and made me want to post this was this description from the Wikipedia article on the find.
[The artificial eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE
Now, picture that coming at you. A woman a head taller – or more — than most other women of the region. And maybe, given the time period, taller than most of the men, as well.
Staring at you out of one eye socket is a golden eye that catches the sun and glints, seemingly with its own light. as though she has captured and tamed the sun-god.
Now imagine her angry. With a sword.
That’s the image that is stuck in my head, at any rate. I have to see if I can possibly use that in a story.
And it’s totally not Xena, although I may – just may – be picturing Lucy Lawless. ;)
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Lucky Seven Challenge
A month or so ago, Terra LeMay tagged me in the Lucky 7 Challenge.
The rules are:
Go to page 7 or 77 of your latest work. Read down to the seventh line and then post online the next seven lines or sentences. Then head off and tag seven more writers.So, the following are the seven lines following the seventh line on the seventh page of my WIP “Miles Maltese and the Case of the Playboy Prince,” a novelette-cum-short story I’m currently working on:
Snow White had been Charming’s first bride, but according to the Gazette, it hadn’t lasted long. The lady had never married again. Not that she let it ruin her life. Everyone knew who Snow White was. The White entertainment empire was one of the biggest businesses in Fairy. Maybe the biggest. In addition to the White Castle restaurant chain, she was the CEO and owner of MMN, the Magic Mirror Network, the only twenty-four hour entertainment network in Fairy.Tagging: I tag: Talya Tate, Sherry Ramsey, Nancy S. M. Waldman, Chuck Heintzelman, Jeff Baker, Matthew Quinn, and C. D. Covington. If you don’t want to play, or if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to play again, feel free to ignore. If you haven’t been tagged and do want to play, feel free to comment, point to your blog, and join in.
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Check-in, Re: Goals
As you may be able to tell from the graphic I’ve chosen for this post, my first submission of “Legal Aliens” has been rejected. No problem. It will be sent back out — better than it was, because it’s been edited — to another market. Probably tomorrow.
I have met all of my goals for the Codex Weekend Warrior contest. I’ve submitted three new 750-word flash stories. The contest is still on, and I don’t want to blow my Nom de Guerre by revealing the names or even exactly how I’ve done, but I will say this: I’m scoring consistently as far as my rating out of ten. All three are within .4 of each other. Voting’s not complete for round three, so that could easily change before round three is done by 9 pm tomorrow.
I did not meet my second submission deadline. The story simply wasn’t ready (see below), and rather than send out something that I know will be rejected, I’d rather send out my best effort. It will be ready for sending out by Monday, so I’ll just have to hustle to get the one after that ready in only one week.
My second story is one I’ve been working on for a long time. It’s a humorous fairy tale noir story I’m tentatively calling “The Case of the Playboy Prince.” I wrote myself into a corner sometime back before Viable Paradise and it simply had no ending. It languished in Scrivener waiting for inspiration. Which finally hit one morning about a week ago in the shower. I hacked out about 3000 words, wrote 2400 new ones, and it stands at 11,300+ words. Which is maybe a bit long for the market, but . . . there’s a scene at the front I can cut, distribute some of the exposition to later scenes, and maybe get it down below 10,000 words. We’ll see.
I’ve begun to work on revamping an older novella (“The Surrogate”) that I didn’t know how to end (do you sense a pattern?) as a candidate for my Q1 Writers of the Future submission. It can be as many as 17,000 words. Of course, I have selected to revamp a story that came out to 23,000+ words the first time through, so I foresee more gutting in my future. :)
Anyway, there is progress. I’m gonna hang on to that image up there, just in case. And I’m going to optimistically look for one that says “Accepted” on it.
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Legal Aliens and [REDACTED]
I’m happy to report that the first two short-term milestone goals I set for myself are now met. I completed a 750-word story based on two of the prompts given for Codex‘s Weekend Warrior flash contest, and submitted it well in advance of the deadline (which is 3 AM, my time). My immediate goal is not to edit it anymore. It’s done. Alas, I cannot tell you the title or anything about it because they’re submitted anonymously.
I also spent several hours relentlessly cutting down my Viable Paradise The Horror That Is Thursday™ story, “Legal Aliens,” and submitted it to a paying market. I should hear back within a month.
I have an entry in my “Subs” spreadsheet! <beams at entry>
Meanwhile, I now need to read between forty and fifty 750-word stories on Codex and rank them (1-10). I have until Friday night at 9 pm. And edit my next short story for submission by Monday, January 21st. I haven’t decided if the next one will be “D Is for Dragon” or one of the other NaNoWriMo 2011 stories, yet.
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Writing Goals for 2013
I am resistant to making resolutions for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that they are so often too difficult to keep.
"Well, make better resolutions!" is the answer. To which I reply, "Still easy to ignore."
What’s needed is not a resolution, but a goal. But not something nebulous. A SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound).
Now, I’ve tried this before. And failed.
"But, this year will be different!" is my utterly predictable reply. And I even believe it as I’m typing this. This year is different. Really.
Last year, 2012 (for those of you not keeping up) was a good one for me, writing-wise. I applied for Viable Paradise and actually got in against my expectations. And I met so many wonderful writers, there, and learned so many things.
As part of the "graduation ceremony," we (the VPXVIers) took a solemn oath: "I, state your name, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will write, that I will finish what I have written, that I will send it out — to paying markets only — until Hell won’t have it! And I will tell everyone that VP is the best workshop evah!"
This was a binding oath. Uncle Jim had us hold our hands up and everything, so I’m fairly sure that it’s binding in all fifty states and potentially Guam. Dire consequences await if I don’t keep the oath.
Dire.
My point is this: I have only submitted once. Ever. To a non-eligible market. And got a very encouraging personal rejection. (A case could be made that submitting to Viable Paradise and being accepted counts as an acceptance, but I had to pay them, so I don’t count it.)
This year, dammit, that changes. I have a bunch of short stories finished or partially written that just need editing / finishing or slight rewrites. I know what one of my main problems is because I’ve heard the same critique over and over: "This needs more conflict." I mean, you don’t have to hit me over the head with a brick but about four or five times before I finally get the point.
I have ideas for several more stories floating around in my head. The existing ones are languishing on my hard drive right now in various states of unreadiness. I have one almost ready to go (my eye problems earlier in the week have kept me from finishing it), and since it is the story that came out of The Horror That Is Thursday™, it seems fitting that it should be the first(ish) story out the door for me.
I have given this a lot of thought.
My immediate goal (Goal the First) is this: Submit Legal Aliens to paying markets starting no later than Monday, January 7th, 2013. Keep submitting it until it either sells or Hell Won’t Have It.
Goal the Second: Meanwhile, edit/write more and submit those to paying markets. I’m going to submit one every two weeks on a Monday at first, and let’s see how that works out. I might do better. I won’t type the alternative so as not to give it power. :) This means that I have to submit different stories on January 21st, February 4th, February 18th, March 4th, March 18th, April 1st, April 15th, April 29th, May 13th, May 27th, June 10th, June 24th, July 8th, July 22nd, and August 5th. I’m going to stop, there, because I’m getting tired of doing calendar math and because I may find that I do more than that and that I have to revise my goal. Note also that this goal is about new stories. Any that are rejected during the interim can be submitted immediately to the next available market without regards to it being Monday or whatever.
Why this specific goal? Because I know I can write a short story in less than two weeks. Heck, I can write one in five hours. With motivation.
My long-term goal for 2013 is this: Make every effort to sell a story – any story – by at least two weeks before WorldCon 2013 in San Antonio, Texas. Why? Because if I sell a story to a qualifying paying market, I’m eligible to join SFWA (The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) as an Associate Member. Why? Because as an associate member of SFWA, I will be (Note positive verb choice!) eligible to get into the SFWA parties at WorldCon. Why two weeks before? Because it takes them a while to process new applications, and I want to give them plenty of time to add me to the rolls before I go to Texas. :)
Oh, did I mention? I’m going to WorldCon 2013 in San Antonio, Texas, over Labor Day weekend. Sent in my check on the 29th.
Another short-term goal (Goal the Third) is to read more short fiction. I write short fiction, but I seldom read much of it because I’m usually either on Facebook, YouTube, reading a novel, or whatever. I think it helps to see successful, published stories because I often think, "I could write a better story than that."
Well, do it. Then submit it.
Another short-term goal is to participate in Codex more. This is a hangout for writers who have attained a certain level, such as selling stories or successfully completing certain workshops. I got in because of Viable Paradise. The first five Fridays of the new year (starting tonight, January 4th, 2013), Codex is doing the Weekend Warrior contest. Four prompts will be posted. We’ll have 55 hours to write a story of 750 words or less, inspired by one of the four prompts. It doesn’t even have to be speculative. But they probably all will be. And because Names like Ken Liu and Samantha Henderson and Vylar Kaftan (to name three of many) often participate in these, all submissions are anonymous: all the entries are attributed to pseudonyms. I could tell you mine, but then I’d have to kill you.
Another goal is to blog about my successes and failures here. I used to blog a lot. I mean a lot. But I kind of quit doing that when Facebook got shiny. I want to get back into that. So . . . we’ll see. Facebook is still terribly shiny. :)
I have entered all these short-term goals into my Google Calendar with reminders. It will hound me. I have announced publicly what I intend to do, so you folks will be witness to my shame if I don’t do them.
There’s also a novel lurking in there, somewhere. But I’m not ready to state any goals associated with it, just yet. I have to let it percolate a bit. So I’m going to get started on these goals and think about the novel.
Yay! Onward! 2013 awaits.
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The Next Big Thing: Death Scene
Hi, everyone. It’s been a few days since I posted. Well, OK, it’s been since November 30th. Since I completed NaNoWriMo. A lot of Real Life™ has happened and I’ve not had the time to write, much less update a blog. But that’s winding down for the most part, now, and I’m going to try to maintain some semblance of a regular schedule (said the serial procrastinator).
But in the meantime, I was tagged! A friend of mine from Viable Paradise, Camille Griep, tagged me to participate in “The Next Big Thing,” a blog-tagging activity especially for writers. There are ten questions about our current work in progress (i.e., the “next big thing”) which we are to answer, and then tag other writer bloggers to do the same.
And now, for the self-interview.
What is the working title of your book?
The book’s working title is Death Scene, but I’m thinking Scene of the Crime or Crime Scene might also work. It is the first book in a series I’m calling “The PCIU Case Files.” PCIU stands for “Paranormal Crimes Investigation Unit.” I have the plots of the first and third books basically done, the second one in the works, and there’s a three-book arc that ties those together. I also have ideas for books four and five.
The reason the first and third books are plotted (and partially written) is that book three used to be book one, and book one used to be book two. Which means book two was originally book three, so it’s the one I hadn’t worked on at all. You’re welcome to diagram that if you like, but you may need four dimensions.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The opening scene, wherein a boy scout troop leader happens across the scene of a crime while hiking with his scouts to where they’re going to camp for the weekend, popped into my head fully formed. The scene he finds is a young woman burning at the stake. But it’s frozen in stasis, flames and all.
What genre does your book fall under?
Urban fantasy. It’s set in present-day Atlanta, but magic works.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I don’t ever think in terms of movies when it comes to the characters, at least as far as who in the real world would play them in a movie (with two caveats I’ll mention below). But when I gave it serious consideration, I realized I only have vague notions of what two of my characters look like. So I went through literally hundreds of actors in IMDB (by birth year) and by Googling. I don’t picture my characters as ‘beautiful people,’ and actors with recognizable names are sort of ‘beautiful people’ by definition, so this was hard. (Also, seriously, have you ever tried to get a list of ‘normal-looking actors in their 30s’ or 20s? Try it. You get nothing but ‘hottest’ lists.) But I’ve picked out some names that come reasonably close to the general look I have in mind (disregard acting ability; I don’t even know some of these people’s work). I also realized that I haven’t actually decided on the race of one of my characters. I’ve used Caucasian actors below, but I may make him African American.
Special Agent Nick Damon: Ben Affleck. Mark Wahlberg. Desmond Harrington. Along those lines, but not “pretty.”Special Agent Javier Ellis: Josué Gutierrez or Shalim Ortiz (I’ve actually been picturing a younger Jimmy Smits, which is one caveat I mentioned above).
Detective Charlotte “Chuck” Norris: Eliza Dushku, Alyson Hannigan, Laura Prepon, or Felicia Day (I have always pictured Chuck in my head as a petite strawberry blonde with an attitude, but when I thought about it . . .)
Detective Derek Meads: Hunter Parrish comes closest, although Shia LeBeouf would work, I guess. Derek is the most recent addition to my cast so he’s a bit . . . amorphous. He could even turn out to be African-American.
Manny Gutierrez: And here we run into a problem. Manny is nearly 7 feet tall, rail thin, and has a dyed, spiked mohawk. Good luck finding that. If Aarón Díaz were seven or eight inches taller, he’d be about right. But much too pretty.
TV reporter Monique Johnson: Since she actually is a TV personality, she is allowed to be “beautiful.” (I’ve been picturing her as a younger Alfre Woodard, which is the other caveat I mentioned above.) So: Yaya DaCosta or Annjee Diggs.
Now, as I said before, I never think of these things, but having now Googled many image searches looking for actors and actresses of approximately the right ethnicity, age, hair color, and height . . . I may have a better idea in my head what these people look like. So, yay for being tagged!
Disclaimer: I loves me some Eliza Dushku, Alyson Hannigan, and Felicia Day (Buffy for the win!). Adore. And Laura Prepon got in there because of one particularly bad-ass image of her I ran across that said “Chuck Norris” to me. Eliza would make her hair red(dish) for this role, I’m sure of it.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
FBI mages cooperate with the Atlanta Police in a race against the clock to solve a series of seemingly unrelated, escalating, horrific murders committed using magic.The X-Files meets Criminal Minds is one of my “pitches,” but I’m not sure it’s accurate. I had a completely accurate one one day and didn’t write it down. It is gone forever.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
In a perfect universe, I’ll send in my query letter and Big Publishing will throw bags of money at me. Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski will get into a fist-fight over which one of them gets to direct the movie made from my book. But if that doesn’t end up happening, I’m not entirely averse to the idea of self-publishing. :) But I’m gonna try traditional before that.
The Viable Paradise oath involved submitting until Hell wouldn’t have it.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It was a NaNoWriMo novel to begin with, so it took 30 days. But it had no subplots, very little in the way of character development, and no arc.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Since I identified the genre as Urban Fantasy, I’ve been eagerly reading other UF books, hoping not to see anything too close to what I’ve developed. So far, so good. Kat Richardson, Katharine Kerr, Jim Butcher, and Ilona Andrews come closest in “feel” to what I’m aiming for, but all of them are so different.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
This book was originally the second book in the series. I was working on the first one (now the third one) when NaNoWriMo came up and I needed something else to write. So I thought, “Why not work on book 2?” As I said above, the opening scene popped into my head, and the rest flowed from that. I figured out who my “bad guy” was about the same time my characters did.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
As I said, I’ve purposefully gone out of the way to keep it different than what else is out there. There are several other UF series set in Atlanta where magic works, and mine is nothing like any of them.
Magic is not a crutch. It doesn’t automatically solve all problems; all too often, it causes as many as it helps solve. What matters is good detective work, team work, and the proper application of magic when needed. The characters are more important than their magic.
My magic system is not overpowered and there is a price to using it. So if any of that appeals . . .
And to pay the meme forward, I tag:
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NaNoWriMo 2012, Day 30
NaNoWriMo 2012 I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)
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NaNoWriMo 2012, Day 28
Lucy Disdains the Need to Write for NaNoWriMo I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)
