Author: Don

“Chain, chain, chaaaaaain…”

I didn’t get much done last weekend.  It was pointed out to me that I do tend to overdo it a bit during the week, and that maybe it’s worth taking a night off during the week.  I’m starting to agree–better to lose an evening or two rather than two whole fucking weekend days!  And I gotta tell you, as evidenced by the fact that I’m not going to be able to check off yesterday and probably not tomorrow, this week isn’t looking so good, either.

Although I’m willing to cut myself a break tomorrow.  Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings are coming to town!

Reading is Fundamental

For starters, I finally got around to those last two stories in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22:

“Portfolio” by Mark Rigney. In the continuum of “when I was a boy…” stories from Steven Millhauser and Peter S. Beagle’s “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” this one was (thankfully) closer to Beagle. Rigney’s & Beagle’s stories both involved painting. Hmm. 5 out of 5.

“Dearest Cecily” by Kristine Dikeman. The narrative got me over my initial “Oh god, not another story told in letters!” reaction PDQ! 4 out of 5.

Next up was something that caught my eye in my RSS feed. “Taking Flight” by Ben Tanzer at Metazen. I’ve introduced you to Ben before. I dug Ben’s narrative of what future generations from the late 21st century onward will eventually call “the same old story.” 4 out of 5.

The rest are from Karen Joy Fowler’s collection What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.

“Booth’s Ghost.” John Wilkes is in it, but he’s not the main character. Brilliant. 5 out of 5.

“Last Worders.” Nice story with great setting description. The end was a little telegraphed for me, though–maybe not the detail, but the fact of it. 4 out of 5.

“The Dark.” Great story but with too many narrative threads that left me unsure which character or situation to really invest in. 4 out of 5.

“Always.” This one was more my speed–a character I could sympathize with in a situation, while weird, I could still understand. 5 out of 5.

Write Hard

I won this, and now I’m about to pay it forward.


The rules say (and we all know how good I am about rules, right)…

When you win:

1. Post the picture above to your blog. You can link here if you want. It doesn’t have to become part of the permanent clutter of your sidebar. Goodness no.

2. List at least three writers who you feel live up to the “write hard” spirit. Think: writers who work at their craft, writers who never give up despite the odds, writers who constantly turn out quality work. Writers you admire. Optional: explain why you think they are awesome.

3. Include these rules or a link to them.

4. Notify said writers of their victory. Ask them to pass on the torch.

5. Continue being awesome.

Hey, I’ll do one better.  I can give you four. 

Mercedes M. Yardley.  You know how I idolize all those big-name writers whose writing wisdom revolves around, “There are no excuses, the muse is a myth, there is no writer’s block.  Just sit down, STFU, and write!”  But the thing is, when I fail at getting writing done–and I often do–there’s a subconscious comfort in knowing that I’m not my heroes.  No, I’m not Ray Bradbury, so of course I couldn’t just churn out a story this week, I subconsciously think.  It’s all good.

Then, I look at Mercedes.

Seriously, just read her blog.  With everything she has going on, no one would ever blame her for missing a writing day.  Except she almost never does.  Or when she does, then she’s slushing or doing other writerly things–or, she’s doing wifey/motherly things.  What she doesn’t do is give herself the excuse to whine about how there’s no time.   No playing the world’s smallest violin for her!

If she has no excuses, I sure as hell have no excuses, not by a damn sight. 

This is what Mr. Pink thinks of your writing excuses–and mine.

Calista Taylor.  I joke about my ADD-like inability to focus on writing anything longer than a 5,000-word short story.  As most of you know, the thought of writing something novel length has always scared the piss out of me.  Dedicating yourself to a project that big is one thing.  But knowing that even if you succeed in cranking it out, it could all still go down the drain if you can’t find an agent…?  Or, even after you find an agent if no one buys it…?  Or, even after someone buys it, it gets gutted or even axed for no good reason…?  All that time and thousands of words… *shudder*

Yet, you know who’s been sticking it through all of those stages, and more than once?  Cali.  And that’s why I know she’s within a hair’s breadth of it.  She’s given me a front row seat as to exactly what the ups and downs of novel publication looks like, and you better believe I’m taking careful notes.

There’s a two-way tie between Regan Leigh and Layna Pimentel.  These two write as hard as anybody, but how they have time for that and still keeping up with their network of friends and contacts, to say nothing about the stuff going on in their lives, I have no idea.  It’s all I can do to keep from turning anti-social to the point of misanthropy (Some might tell you I’ve failed miserably).  The thought of hosting something like Query Chat?  Damn, Regan.  Beyond me, I tell you.  And if anyone I’m following on Twitter is a real social butterfly–and I don’t mean just perpetually pinging them on #followfriday or #writerwednesday, but actually interacting with folks–it’s Layna. 

Now, I don’t want to obligate anybody.  Merc, Cali, Regan, and Layna have better things to do than pass this thing forward.  I didn’t, but I love ’em all and I would’ve done it anyway.

“I can STILL hear you saying you would NEVER break the chain”

As I said last time, I’ve had my head up a project, so this is a day late.  I think I’ve made up for being sick a couple of weeks ago.  Just gotta keep the chain going, right?  Or at least try to, what with the beginning of the semester at the dayjob.

I’ve promised that I’d actually go into what it takes for me to put an X through a day.  Well, here it is…

Everyone knows how much I love A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, so much so that I’ve resolved to buy one a year for as long as Small Beer Press continues to sell them.

But I have a confession to make. After a strong start last year, I didn’t even open up my 2010 planner after October, when life just got too damn busy.  My writing suffered.  Oh, not just I stopped using the planner.  Other things just got in the way, despite my best efforts to keep on track.

This year is going to be different.  Not because I made a New Year’s resolution, but because I’d given a lot of thought to revamping my writing workflow in general.

The one thing I probably love more than my writing planner is Getting Things Done.  I owe whatever minuscule amount of success I have to that system.  But I was sort of defeating myself.  I like to compartmentalize, you see.  There are ultimately two areas of my life: “writing” and “everything else.”  But my planning and execution of my tasks didn’t reflect that.  I kept my “writing” list of next actions together with my lists of “everything else” in a planner that I try not to consult when I’m writing. 

I love my “everything else”
planner, though.

My solution: I saw that even when I consulted my 2010 Working Writer’s Daily Planner daily (mostly to check out prompts and note upcoming deadlines), I wasted a lot of the calendar’s space. This was, after all, why I switched from medium-sized planners to something pocket-sized (i.e. a weekly pocket-sized Moleskine, around which I’ve wrapped a leather 3×5 index card case).

It finally hit me that I have all this space in my writing planner and not a lot of date- and time-specific things (‘cos I don’t log every submission deadline of every market under the sun), so why not use that planner, in large part, to keep a running next-actions list?

You know, for as long as I’ve been writing, I’ve struggled with a metric to track my progress.  Word count works, but only when you’re drafting.  What word count do you track when you’re editing?  Time?  I can waste an hour doing nothing, as a famous writer (Hemingway?) suggested, but stare at the blank wall until you start typing–which doesn’t always work for me.

Enter minimal GTD.  I define the two or three goals per week, and the two or three steps I can take every day to move any or all of my given writing projects forward–and then do them–then I can focus on, as Seinfeld suggests, not breaking the chain. 

Every writing session now, it sits open to the current week.  There are pages at the beginning of each month with enough space to list some projects I might want to consider for the month in question, as well as ticklers for things coming up in the next month.  And I can tell myself that “all I need to do are these two or three things.” Actually doing them, however, is a different issue.  For now though, it’s enough for me to know by my chain of Xes that I am.

Reading is Fundamental

I’ve had my head up my seekrit nonfiction work-in-progress this week, so most of my reading has been devoted to that.  But, I’ve resolved to make room for the fiction.  I tried to make time for the rest of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22, but I ended up two stories shy. 

“Vinegar and Brown Paper” by Becca De La Rosa.  I thought this piece was going to be completely predictable, if quirky, until about halfway through.  I love it whenever a story takes me by surprise.  4 out of 5.

“Self Story” by Carol Emshwiller.  You know why they say writers should never write stories about being a writer?  It’s because you won’t write one as good as this. 5 out of 5.

“Snowdrops” by Alex Dally MacFarlane.  Very nice wintry fairy tale.  5 out of 5.

“The Honeymoon Suite” by Jodi Lynn Villers. Great flash fiction piece!  5 out of 5.

“To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ” by Miriam Allred.  A touch too experimental for me.  3 out of 5.

I’m sure I’ll finish the ‘zine this week.  After that, I dunno… maybe some of Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and a bit of Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See.

“Maltz! Jol yIchu’!”

I spent an evening with a Klingon (not Maltz) and a Sagan!  Actor/writer J.G. Hertzler (aka Klingon General Martok on ST:DS9, and Ithaca resident apparently) and author Nick Sagan (The Idlewild trilogy) spoke at a local Science Cabaret presentation.


It’s a sad picture, I know.  I didn’t have the best vantage point, which was my own fault.  Speaking briefly with Hertzler afterward, he was surprised with the standing-room-only turnout.  I wasn’t.

The main focus was on Star Trek and its reach.  I wasn’t disappointed by any means, but somehow I expected something a touch more than a panel I could find at almost any convention I’ve attended.  Still, Sagan (whom I’ve seen speak before) and Hertzler were very engaging and open.  I got to talk bat’leths with Hertzler afterward, and told him a little bit about the Ithaca thing of people randomly knitting in audiences.

I even managed to sneak in a question during the Q&A!  I mentioned the huge spate of sci-fi TV shows since Trek, none of which had an influence that even came close.  I wondered, both of them being well-versed in sci-fi literature and television, if they had an inkling what a future sci-fi show would have to do to attain that.

They didn’t know.  To be fair, it’s a difficult question; not like I had anything close to an answer.  But as a friend pointed out, “You stumped a Sagan!”

“That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang”

Well, thanks to my sick days, the writing chain was broken.  As you can see from last week’s progress, I’m a couple of days behind.  I’m off to a good start this week, though.  I’ve made some major breakthroughs with my seekrit nonfiction project–in fact, that’s going to be my main focus this week, and next week as well, more than likely.  I don’t want to let the progress I’ve made with my fiction slide, but one deadline is a month before the other.

I have to say that I’m only recently getting over how ticked I am at missing two days of progress, sickness aside.  But all I can do is keep calm and carry on, right?

Reading is Fundamental

Unless otherwise indicated, the fiction I read this week came from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22.

“Love Might Be Too Strong a Word” by Charlie Anders.  This is the best alien interspecies love-story I’ve ever read. Ever. EVER. 5 out of 5.

“Going to France” by Maureen F. McHugh. Great story but I’ll be honest–I didn’t quite get the end. 4 out of 5.

“Getting Closer” by Steven Millhauser. (THE NEW YORKER, January 3, 2011). Sorry, but there’s no way I’ll ever buy that any nine year-old is as contemplative as the one in the story.  2.5 out of 5.

“American Dreamers” by Caleb Wilson.  Very intricate character studies.  Just not enough for me narratively.  3 out of 5.

“Mike’s Place” by David J. Schwartz.  Nice, tight story.  Has a similar atmosphere to one of my favorites, Keret’s “Kneller’s Happy Campers.”  4 out of 5.

“The Camera & the Octopus” by Jeremie McKnight.  A wonderful grown-up bedtime story.  4 out of 5.

“Escape” by Cara Spindler. I was turned off by the structure of the piece initially, but I was glad I stuck with it.  4 out of 5.

“Away” by William Alexander. Very nice story about an almost-stranger in an almost-strange land.  5 out of 5.

“I can STILL hear you saying you would NEVER break the chain”

I’m taking productivity advice from Jerry Seinfeld that came to me via Lifehacker, with a few changes.  What he does in order to write every day is to take a monthly wall calendar and mark a big red X on every day he writes. 

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

I’m doing the same thing, except I’ll be using the calendar at the front of my Working Writer’s Daily Planner from Small Beer Press (which can currently be had for $7.95).  I’ve decided to use my planner as a log, listing 3-4 tasks minimum for each day (which could be anything: a minimum word count, so many pages of MS edits, a particular research goal, submitting a story, whatever) and then marking off the day Seinfeld-style if and when I complete them.. 

And I think I’m going to keep posting this, every Monday, for the rest of the year.  Here’s how I did last week.  Tune in next Monday, and we’ll see if I did any better.

Reading Is Fundamental

One disadvantage of my newfound love of reading on my Nook is that I’m unable to accurately reflect my reading progress on goodreads, which does so by page numbers of print editions. No such tracking exists as of now for ebook editions, so I’m going old school and talk about the short stories I read this past week here on the blog.

The fiction I read this week came from one of the back issues of various ‘zines I purchased over the holiday, in this case, from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 19.

“Tubs” by Ray Vukcevich.  From Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 19.  Vukcevich is a favorite of mine.  Any ‘zine with stories by him and Carol Emshwiller make it a must-have.  If you want a clinic on worldbuilding a quirky world, this story is it.  5 out of 5.

“Grebe’s Gift” by Daniel Rabuzzi.  It might be a little unfair to read and rate any story having read anything by Vuk, a writer I admire for his usual brevity.  Rabuzzi’s story is very rich and textured, if a touch slow for me.  4 out of 5.

“Dropkick” by Dennis Nau.  It took me awhile to warm up to this story.  For a moment I thought it, too, was running a bit long for my taste.  But the payoff was well worth it.  I really loved the characters in this one.  An enthusiastic 5 out of 5.

“You Were Neither Hot Nor Cold, But Lukewarm, and So I Spit You Out” by Cara Spindler & David Erik Nelson.  This one was a re-read from about three or so years ago when I’d read The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.  I’d almost forgotten what it was about until a certain secondary character was introduced.  And then I remembered not feeling ready to be able to grok this story when I first read it.  But I was now, and I loved it.  5 out of 5.

“The Bride” by Kara Kellar Bell.  This story seemed well-written but a bit predictable.  Maybe because I’d read a story recently with a similar theme, but I’m not so sure about that.  3.5 out of 5.

“Lady Perdita Espadrille Tells the Story” by Andrew Fort.  I’ve never been a huge fan of the story-within-a-story, but I did enjoy both stories very much.  I like to think it brought me close to world from which I was far, far removed in the ’80s.  4 out of 5.

“The Slime: A Love Story” by Anna Tambour.  My previous exposure to Tambour’s writing was her story in the Interfictions anthology, “The Shoe is SHOES’ Window.”  And while I recognize a similar quirkiness in “The Slime,” I didn’t seem to enjoy it as much.  3 out of 5.

“Such a Woman, Or, Sixties Rant” by Carol Emshwiller.  But for the length, I thought this was more prose poem than fiction.  And I really like prose poems.  4 out of 5.