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Category Archives: discovery

Gut-Wrenching Romance

23 Jan

This weekend my boss went to Laser Quest with his ten year old son. That’s a weird way to start a blog post about romance, but there it is.

(Fun fact–my first romance novel was inspired by something my boss said.)

The romance doesn’t come from my boss, or his son, or even Laser Quest, really. But those things spurred my thinking.

I’ve played laser tag exactly once in my life. It was a snowy, winter evening in Colorado, and I was a teenager.  A lovelorn teenager, as was typical for me in that time of my life. I don’t remember the game very much. It’s all a blur of shadows and neon, pretzels and Pepsi.

What I do remember is the ride home.

I sat in the back seat. The object of my (at the time) eternal love and devotion sat in the seat directly in front of me. I could see the way his neck sloped into the collar of his jacket, the fringe of blonde hair, his freckles. All of this, so close, just six inches of foam and a million miles away.

Right before I started high school my parents moved to the middle of nowhere. This meant that any kind of activity that involved driving into ‘the city’ inevitably entailed a long car ride, half an hour at least. Throw in snow, and a bunch of teenagers happy to be away from home, and the drive can easily streeeeeetch out.

At some point during this drive, and don’t ask me how because for the life of me I cannot remember, my hand wound up on his shoulder, and his hand wound up on mine.

That’s it, folks.

But for a girl full of butterflies and self-doubt like myself, that touch was a revelation. I survived on the memory of that touch for months, because after that, affection was not very forthcoming from that particular arena. It was the MO of our interactions, from where I stood. A dance that I won’t describe here, and now.

So there I was, this morning, eleven years after the fact, folding hospital gowns, thinking about how cute it was that my boss played laser tag (and schooled the younger kids, apparently) and wham, this memory hits and for a moment I am breathless. I pause. I look around, and consciously reorient myself. Because the emotions attached to that memory were life and death, end of the world stuff.

And isn’t that what being a teenager is about?

I’m revising my YA fantasy novel right now. As I recently told a friend I need more Bad Guy, more Self-Sabotage, and more Romance.

I need more of what I felt, remembering that long winter drive. I need the truth of it, injected into my character’s relationships. And maybe, I’ll let Sydney get what she wants.

At least, for a little while.

Our work needs these intense emotional experiences. Have you been working on anything lately that forces you to face these deeper, possibly buried, emotions?

Photo used under creative commons license from kreg.steppe

 
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Posted by on January 23, 2012 in discovery, writing

 

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First Publication! And Happy New Year!

31 Dec

Yeesh. It’s been nearly a month since I last posted, and I don’t even have NaNoWriMo to blame.

All that aside, I have excellent news! My short story “The Nightmare Eater” has been published and released by The Colored Lens. You can download it and read it (among several other surely excellent stories) here.

This is my first official publication! I have another story coming out early next year, but this one…dang. It’s a cool feeling. Like, very shiny and fluttery. It is the first step on my path to total world dominion! (Or a publishing deal that will keep me in fish&chips and gin for the rest of my natural life.)It’s nice to be going into 2012 with a notch in my belt. I think it bodes well for the year.

This is a big one, guys. If everything goes according to our plans, by this time next year I will be writing from a tiny apartment somewhere in Japan. Caleb will be doing what he loves, and I will have more time than ever to devote to that whole fish&chips aspiration. With the new year comes the expectation of resolutions. I’m personally not a fan of resolutions, as I see them more like ongoing actions than things to be achieved. Which is good and all, but I’m much better at getting things accomplished when I have goals. Do XYZ by 123, or x number of times per month/week/year.

(Confession: When I was younger, probably between the ages of 11 and 16, one recurring resolution that I dutifully scrawled in my diary was :Be nicer. I have since abandoned that resolution. Now, pardon me while I eat your face.)

But goals! I do well with goals. And I’ve got a few good ones lined up for the coming twelve months, a few of which I’ll share with you here.

  • Revise “The Absinthe Gang” and start querying editors.
  • Learn enough conversational Japanese to get by.
  • Use the perfumist and herbalist classes I signed up for.
  • Write a short story using some of what I learned in aforementioned classes.
  • Keep track of my reading. I’m thinking I’ll either utilize GoodReads more, or keep a spreadsheet.

There are more, because I’m nothing if not ambitious. I’m going into 2012 focused on my writing and on Japan, which is similar to where I was last year. Only now I’ve been through ClarionWest, I have my first publishing cred with another in the works, and Caleb has applied to JET (!). It’s interesting, seeing things move forward like this. For a while, aspects of my life felt stationary. Writing, for example. After letting my mad skillz lie fallow for several years, it took a while for me to get back to where I’d been, and then another long while before I was anywhere decent. I know I still have a long way to go, and that I will always find something new to learn, but it is crazy heartening to see how far I’ve come.

I’m not the only one kicking ass and taking names. Click here to check out fellow CW alum Jenni’s post on the awesomeness that is my class of ClarionWest. Mega fist bump!

How have you progressed this last year? What goals are you setting for the coming year?

Photo used under creative commons license from: graciepoo

 
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Posted by on December 31, 2011 in career, discovery, planning

 

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Foolscap 2011

16 Sep

I learned last Friday that I am going to be doing something new and exciting, a first in my writerly career. I’m going to be on a panel at Foolscap! Three panels, actually.

Foolscap is a small science fiction convention held every year in Redmond. This year’s guest of honor will be Ted Chiang, a Clarion graduate.

In brief, my schedule is:

Friday 4-5 pm Elk Room: Why So Much Fantasy and So Little SF?

Saturday 9.30-11pm Alder Room: Young Adult Protagonists: Good Role Models? Should They Be?

Sunday 2-3.30pm Canyon Room: Writer Inspiration: What Inspires You to Write?

Now, with that business out of the way, I thought I’d write a bit about conventions, and what they mean to me.

I went to my first convention when I was in my teens. My wild and crazy teens, to be more specific. I had read some Heinlien, some Gaiman, some other things. I had written stories about vampires and murderers and the like. But I would not have identified myself as a fan or writer of speculative fiction. Maybe that’s just because I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time. Either way, I went to the convention not as a fan, but as a girlfriend of a fan. And I went for reasons that had little to do with programming or the art.

My first con was MileHiCon, in Denver, Colorado. It’s a pretty big con, between 900 and 1,100 people, according to the great and powerful Wikipedia. My memory has been altered by chemical substances and many years since then, and my recollection of the con is a jumbled one. I know, for a fact, that I attended exactly zero panels. In fact, it wasn’t until much later that I realized cons HAD panels, a lapse which gets thrown in with a lot of other regrets–>teenagedom–>missed opportunities.

I went to a couple more MileHiCons, all with the same result, over the following years.

Fast forward to 2009. I’m older, more responsible, living in Seattle and ready to take my self and my writing seriously. I embrace speculative fiction, and am just starting to get my grips on what the word ‘community’ means in relation to SF/F. I am also lacking, utterly, in friends who share this love or understanding.

And I am going to NorWesCon.

This is a Big Deal for me. I’m going by myself, into a massive (estimates around 3,000 attendees) science fiction convention. Being alone in this, in and of itself, is a marker. I am grown up enough to do things I want to do without needing someone else to escort me. The other Big Thing is that I’m going to a convention, not as a hanger-on, but as someone invested in what these people and their efforts represent. I love science fiction. I love fantasy. I love horror. And I want to get as much out of the panels and discussions and general merriment as I can. This is me starting to embrace…well, me.

Because of the way I was introduced to speculative fiction, I’d always felt it had a bit of dirtiness to it. The genres reminded me of things I didn’t want to dwell on or revisit. And what a fucking shame, too, because I spent a fair amount of time wrestling with whether I should or shouldn’t love these books, people, etc., and why.

I worried about whether I liked these genres independently, or if I liked them in a twisted, nostalgic way. I worried about whether this was quality fiction, or if I’d be better off reading literary fiction, and edifying myself. I worried about what I was writing, and, in the case of horror especially, if that was a positive thing for me to spend time and energy on.

(By the way- I’m over that.)

So going to NorWesCon was as much about identifying myself as a SpecFic writer and fan as it was about going to listen to these panels. It was a good experience, too, if a bit lonely. I went to a panel about ClarionWest, which solidified my resolve to apply. I went to a panel about horror, which clued me in to some interesting movies. I saw a fashion show. Wow. But through it all I didn’t really speak to anyone. I was an Eliza cocoon. There, but apart.

I go into Foolscap with a different perspective than I have with any of the other cons I’ve attended. I’m a CW grad. I’ll be published in 2012. I’m in love with SpecFic, and I feel like I’m at least on the fringes of the community. And people are, theoretically, going to spend their time to listen to what I (among others) have to say. And that’s pretty cool.

 
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Posted by on September 16, 2011 in discovery

 

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Marking the Occasion

25 Aug

My Favorite Morning Ritual

I am a big fan of ritual. I think it’s important to make a big deal out of certain moments in our lives, like getting married or (eek!) publishing a book. They’re rites of passage, and giving those moments some time in the spotlight does two things:

  • It says that what we’ve been doing is worth celebrating.
  • It gives us an opportunity to reflect, which I think in turn provides fuel for the next awesome challenge.

(Plus, who couldn’t use an extra excuse to down tasty cocktails?)

I also like the intentionality of ritual. Catholic Mass, for example, is about putting the attendants in the frame of mind to be with God. It’s a certain kind of focus that I find missing in a lot of day-to-day life, which is not a bad thing. Just…a thing.

Ritual, for me, wraps the real up into the mysterious, and makes it more than what we can see and touch and feel. It makes these events, at the risk of sounding woo-woo, more spiritual. I think this is an aspect of my character that confuses some people.

And I also think I’m okay with that.

I’ve noticed, though, that I don’t often play off my love of ritual in my writing, at least not in any transparent way. I could argue that all of my writing is ritualistic, but I’m thinking something more defined. More like my story “A Dancer For Aonou”, which features a pagan blood ritual as a central motif. Considering that the story was my WotF honorable mention, as well as my first sale, it might behoove me to explore the ritual aspect a bit more in future writings.

Actually, I think it would be cool to see more fiction about ritual in general. What one society chooses to ritualize–and how they illustrate that–can be so illuminating! In our society we laud the birth of a child, the purchase of a new home…what about a society that marks a woman’s first kiss with ritualized scarification? Or a society that ushers children into adulthood by giving them wings?

What we as individuals, and as societies, choose to venerate says a lot about us. Think of your story, or your novel. What do the people in your world celebrate? What are their rituals?

 

picture used under creative commons license from CoffeeGeek

 
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Posted by on August 25, 2011 in discovery, writing

 

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Margo Lanagan, Pie & Exhaustion

06 Jul

Welcome to week three. This is the time when exhaustion starts to creep into the edges of things. When reading one more story feels like a nigh insurmountable hurdle. When writing another story feels like torture. (Hey–when does it not, right?)

I’ve noticed a couple of things this week. Class starts at nine AM, Monday through Friday. In the first week we were all rushing to get there at 8:59.59. Then last week we were sliding into our seats with a few seconds to spare. This morning, most of us were in the classroom five, even ten minutes before the stroke of learning. (That’s what she said.)

Another thing is that I find myself seeking solitude more often, and with greater fervency. I expect this theme to continue, to some degree or another. Today, for example, I spent most of the afternoon alone, in the basement. And, since I had such a pleasant few hours down there, I will tell you what I did.

  • Critiqued a story.
  • Stood up and stretched.
  • Critiqued another story.
  • Made myself a cup of tea and grabbed a piece of awesome yummy banana bread.
  • Watched videos of So You Think You Can Dance (Do not resist the clickage!)
  • ‘Finished’ my story for Friday

Good times were had by all. But the intense socialization that ClarionWest can cultivate does get wearing. Even sitting amongst half a dozen quiet writers in the common room, each focused on their own task, takes something out of you. And since the common room was practically deserted when I emerged for dinner, I must assume I’m not the only person here dealing with this particular stressor.

In other news: Pie!

And, furthermore: Margo Lanagan!

We got an interesting mini-lecture from Margo this morning concerning titles. Apparently, we somewhat suck at titles. Speaking for myself, I already knew that. I mean, ‘Phibs, Lies & Whiskey’ was probably my best. Title. Evar. And that was produced a while ago. Like…years, or summat.

She said that a title should sum up the essence of a story, without giving away the plot, a feat at which Debbie Does Dallas fails miserably. Some pointers she gave for choosing a title:

  • Refer to reference materials used. Her story ‘Eyelids of the Dawn’ refers to the description of the Leviathan in the ultimate reference book–the Bible.
  • Refer to the story itself. ‘A Fine Magic’ came directly from the character in said story, when describing his work.
  • Use the setting to inform the title. ’Under Hell Over Heaven’ is a story Margo wrote about, you guessed it, Heaven and Hell.
  • Use the action to inform the title. In ‘Singing My Sister Down’ the main character does exactly that. But the actions are so divorced from the world we know, and so intriguing, that even thought this sums up the story, it doesn’t give anything away.

Of course, some stories come with a title attached to them, already. Struck By Chocolate, my attempt at a romance novel, came to me title first, and then the plot rushed in to fill out the space. And I’ve picked up a couple of titles here to stories I will likely never write, but I like the sound of it. Like ‘A Bucket Full of Medical Care’. Sounds awesome, if I could figure out what the hell it means.

 
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Posted by on July 6, 2011 in Clarion West, discovery, Uncategorized, writing

 

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Day One Nuggets : Paul Park

20 Jun

As day one draws to a close, I rest and ruminate on the events behind me.

I had my one-on-one with Paul Park today (which also means I signed up to have a new short story ready by Friday, 9am) and it was really illuminating on a couple of key points. Points which I will jealously keep to myself. But! I will share a few nuggets from today’s critique/lecture period.

This week with Paul Park is different from the weeks to come. Park is not having us critique stories, as we will be doing. Instead he assigned us an exercise yesterday evening to complete by this morning. To start the meeting time we went around the room and described out strengths and weaknesses in writing. It was quite interesting, hearing where others excel and flag, and Park’s questions and observations on each.

For illumination purposes–my strengths, according to me, are characters and consistency in writing. That is to say, I write consistently, a decent word count, very nearly every day.

Weaknesses include clarity, and endings. I tend to not tell enough, when things get abstract, for the reader to really follow along. And also, I have a hard time wrapping things up in a satisfying way without getting sentimental, pat, or lazy.

After that he read a few pieces from the exercises, and we had a discussion about what worked and why, as well ash what didn’t work, why and how to fix it in regards to exploring emotions through actions.

So, on to the paraphrased nuggets!

  • The reader is doing a favor to the author (not the other way around) and should be rewarded by some kind of payoff, be it emotional, intellectual, experiential, etc.
  • If you conceive of place first (when formulating a story), the plot can end up feeling mechanical, because the author then moves us through places, as opposed to moving us through the causal sequence of events.
  • If you conceive of plot first, the characters can end up feeling mechanical, because the author chooses characters to fill predetermined rolls instead of creating round characters who make choices and mistakes of according to their personalities, traits, histories, etc. Which leads us too—
  • The more independent life you give your characters, the less likely they are to follow your plot.

All good food for thought, my friends. And now, I’m off to plug-in my head phones so’s I can ignore the drunken (again) college kids outside on my street.

(A quick note on that, actually. I was outside writing today and one of the kids had their stereo cranked, playing ‘Dirty Little Secret’. These people have no shame.)

(And a PS–The photo used in my post on Saturday was in no way, shape or form affiliated with CW or any entity connected with them. Just the first picture that popped up on Google image: sorority girls. Go figure.)

 
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Posted by on June 20, 2011 in Clarion West, creating, discovery, writing

 

Never Give Up, Never Surrender

19 Mar

About a week ago Mr. Eliza asked me how the rewrite of my novel was going. I told him I was closing in on 15k, and he smiled knowingly.

“You’ll know pretty soon, then,” he said.

“I’ll know what?”

“Whether you’re going to finish your book.”

For a second I was offended. Did he expect me to throw away all my progress? Had I given him any indication that things weren’t going well? That I was losing steam? Unhappy? I didn’t think so, but…

So I asked him what he meant, and he told me he’d noticed something about my novel writing. When I get to this point, about 15-20% of the way in, I either break through, or I give up the ghost. And it is so true.

I’ve finished three novels. I’ve started…six? Eight, maybe? And of the ones I’ve started within the last three years, most of them were abandoned right around this point. One of them I kept ramming into the ground until I had about 40k words, but I knew it was broken long before that point.

What is it about this juncture? I think this is the point in the writing where I’ve introduced myself to my characters, and my plot, and I kind of know where everything is headed. And sometimes, that direction is straight down. Maybe it’s because I have the wrong people in the wrong story, or I haven’t thought the plot through sufficiently. Sometimes…often, actually, it’s because I’m writing about something I really don’t care that much about.

That’s what happened with last year’s NaNoWriMo fiasco. I started writing a contemporary YA about a girl and a boy and a drug dealer and skateboarding and rebellion and right and wrong. I care about these things, as real, concrete things in my life. I have a lot of time and emotion invested in every item on that list. But telling a story of those concrete things in direct iteration just bored me stupid! That experience taught me one important thing: I love speculative fiction. Therefore, those 15k words were well spent, in my opinion.

Apart from the illumination Mr. Eliza’s question shed on my writing habits, his words gave me a pretty awesome case of the warm fuzzies. Yes, it means my husband is paying attention to me, which is super awesome and cuddly and loving, but is not very applicable to a blog about writing.

No, my warm fuzzies come from the knowledge that I have been writing, and trying to write, novel-length fiction long enough to develop habits. If you’d told me five years ago that I would have even one novel under my writing belt, I would have asked you if you could spare a cigarette, then called you crazy as soon as you walked away. But now…now I believe it. Everything is becoming more real, day by day. I have a long way to go before I can call myself an author, but for the time being I’m sitting pretty square in the middle of writer-land.

And the view looks fine.

 
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Posted by on March 19, 2011 in discovery, doubt, writing

 

NPI Wordcount Update

17 Mar

891 words today. It was all in a rewrite of a scene, but its okay, because now I;m much happier with the scene. Just needed to get a little throat clearing out of the way, I think. And also decide which POV to write this novel in. I started it in 1st person but I just felt like a goober writing it. I much prefer third person…which means someday I need to write a book in first person. Stretch my wings a bit.

 
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Posted by on March 17, 2010 in discovery, novel push initiative

 

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The importance of honesty

21 Feb

Yesterday, around eleven am, I submitted an 1,8oo word short story to Ergo Fiction.

It was short. It was brutal. It was dark. It was, truly, unlike anything I am working on or have worked on for many a moon. But it was also eerily similar to things I have written in the past and, especially, things I have enjoyed reading in the past.

It was a weird couple of days for me, while I was writing it. Over the past couple of years I have been moving farther and farther away from horror, and more into the sci-fi and fantasy genres. I am totally okay with that, personally. It’s hard, living in that world with those characters for anything more than a short, concentrated amount of time. I get jump. I get jittery. I get julep-ed.

Okay, maybe not julep-ed, but it does make me want to drink more.

So I focus my energy on happier things. Stories with a horror element that I wouldn’t classify as horror. Because, even in the happiest story, I gotta have me some wicked darkness. Cause that’s what I like.

Back to the short story. After having been away from the genre for a while, it was a bittersweet visit. I know I could write this stuff, and I know that it would have some serious consequences on my mental state. As I told a friend of mine, while talking about this– I know I could indulge in this kind of fiction very easily. But it would BE an indulgence, and it would be too easy to lose myself.

Now, I like myself quite a bit. And the me that wants to surround herself with all manner of beasties, I don’t like so much. It’s good, I think, to strike a balance between the light and the dark. I want my heroes to triumph, and the guys to get those hot chicks they’ve fallen in love with. I want to see things come out well in the end, even if my characters have to lose something important in the meantime.

I don’t want my villains wiping the floor with my hero’s detached scalp. End of story.

Writing this short story helped to make all of that very clear to me.It was my Snicker’s bar indulgence. Something familiar and rich but ultimately unsatisfying and a bit nauseating.

So here’s to hope, and lights at the ends of tunnels. Here’s to staying honest to yourself, enough that you can recognize your weaknesses. Here is, most importantly, to life, lived the way you want to live it.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2010 in discovery

 

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The Ghosts of Papal’s Past

10 Feb

Not sure if today’s blog title actually means what I want it to mean, but I am forsaking strictly correct grammar for the sake of mild alliteration. Bear with me. It won’t be the last time, we can bank on that.

Alliteration aside (har, har) I wanted to share my new discovery!

Yesterday, itching for some kind of physical activity other than walking between the kitchen, my couch, and the dining room, I went online and Googled nearby hiking trails. We’ve had a burst of fantabulous weather over the last month, which started failing about two days ago, and I knew that I had to grab onto the tail end if I wanted to enjoy it at all. I mean, how often do we get sunshine and 55 degrees in February?

So I found a place that sounded pretty cool- St. Edward’s State Park. It has a trail that leads down to the coast of Lake Washington, through wonderful Pacific Northwest foliage and slippery mud trails from the smatterings of rain we’ve had. And as magnificent as I think the natural outdoors are in my chosen homeland, I have to admit that it wasn’t the trees that drew me to this place. It was this:

An abandoned- yes, ABANDONED- seminary.

Holy awesomeness! (Pun sort of intended.)

I’ll let you in on a couple of not-so-secrets, dear reader.

1. I love abandoned buildings. Heck, who doesn’t, right?

2. I am head over heels for all things Catholic. Except for the whole actually being Catholic thing. I never have been, and never will be. But I find the ritualism, the orderliness, the rich symbolism and otherworldliness of my romanticized version of Catholicism to be intoxicating.

So this place, nestled among the trees, was perfect. I want to inhabit these crumbling walls.

I want to say good morning to the stoic stone statues. (Aaahh…say that three times fast.)

*Of which I can find no photos…boo…*

I want to soak up the place, let it run in my veins, and then spill it on the page, full of intrigue and demons and madness. And kissing!

But while I was there, the doors were all locked tight, and bore No Trespassing signs on their pretty, old wood. The parents milling about with kids, and plethora of dog walkers, stayed my itchy hand even further.

But my desire to walk those halls will not be defeated!

Occasionally, park rangers offer tours of the old seminary, and I shall be making prompt contact with those peoples in charge. I hope, by this time next week, to have a date set up with Ye Olde Seminary.

Any favorite abandoned haunts in your neck of the woods?

 
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Posted by on February 10, 2010 in discovery

 

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