Author: Don

Philcon, Part the Third

Yes, yes, Philcon was a month ago and by this point there isn’t too much to do except give a panel report.  Call it part of my year-end catchup.

I attended a lot of the same panels as Carrie and her general views about the con in her write-up would read more or less the same as mine.  But I do have pictures.

I remember it juuuust like it was yesterday…

1
First panel I attended that Saturday was “Do You Write With a Reader in Mind?” with Larry Hodges, Linda Bushyager, Alyce Wilson, Gary Frank, Gordon Linzer, and Oz Drummond.  This was probably the only panel I attended that effectively explored its topic. 

2
After my encounters with Peter S. Beagle, I made it to part of “Evolution of the Fantasy Graphic Novel.”  I went in expecting to at least hear a proposed lineage, rather than a lengthy debate on which “fantasy graphic novel” (as differentiated from the “superhero book”) kicked the whole thing off.  Marvel Comics Group’s Conan?  Eisner’s Contract with God?  Elfquest?

I admit it, I got bored and left.  I opted for dinner, a reading by the Garden State Horror Writers (of which Carrie is a member), and a launch party, after which, Carrie and I went to…

3
“Sexy Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories” with K.T. Pinto, Genevieve Iseult Eldredge, Jennifer Williams, and a moderator who didn’t show (which seemed to be more the norm at Philcon than at other cons I’ve attended, although I admit it could’ve just been my bad luck-of-the-draw).

Carrie talked about the content in her write-up, so I’ll talk about my impressions.  First off, the panelists did as great a job as could be expected sans moderator.  I attended the panel with an agenda in mind–to maybe pick up some things that wouldn’t make my publications in Rigor Amortis and Cthulhurotica flukes. 

I couldn’t help but think that if the moderator was there, I might’ve actually learned something more than…

  • what not to call a vagina in erotica
  • men really are pigs, as evidenced by the leering motley assortment of males in the audience.  My favorite–the guy who staggered in, with no badge that I could see, holding what looked like a 3/4 empty bottle of Michelob Ultra.

I can hear you scoffing.  “Yeah, you’re soo above it, aren’t you?  Like you weren’t checking out cleavages or listening for spank material.”  Well, I’m not going to say I wasn’t… or that I was, either.  Only I know what I was checking out at the time, which is, I’ll fancy, what separated me from some of my co-attendees.  At one point, I think I did hear Beavis and Butt-head snickering somewhere behind me.

My original assessment is unfair–I did learn a few useful tidbits and there was a very useful discussion about the panelists dealt with the issue of “questionable consent.”  But I think it’s fair to say those bits were serendipitous as opposed to a moderated agenda.

4
I didn’t get a picture of the “Hard Boiled Detective Tradition in Fantasy” panel.  I didn’t take many notes and just listened to the panelists Richard Stout and Hildy Silverman.  

5
Okay, so this is where I rant a bit.  I don’t want to complain, but there were a lot of things that would make me think twice about going to another Philcon, chiefly the obvious lack of organization which is apparently legendary if you give any regard to the scuttlebutt you hear in the hallways between panels.  Moderators who, when they showed, freely admitted their utter lack of preparation.  The one I’m thinking of did not blame the fact that most panelists didn’t know until the 11th hour which panels they were on, let alone which ones they were moderating.  No, this person admitted, “I left my notes up in my room.”

And I’m sorry, but any convention that allows its Guest of Honor to go to the wrong freaking room, causing him to be fifteen minutes late to his own reading doesn’t rate very high in my book.

6
“You are. Number Six.”  “You” being all the people whose company I enjoyed: Carrie, Simon, and the members of GSHW, all of whom thrashed me at Munchkin Cthulhu after a few sips of fine absinthe…

Philcon, Part the Second

Forgive me Father, for it has been nigh on three weeks since I should’ve posted this.

So, in this part of my trip down Philcon memory lane, I’m going to focus on the things I gleaned from Peter S. Beagle’s GOH speech based on my week-old memory of the event, which is fuzzy from the constant squee of that day.

He basically went the “advice to aspiring writers” route.  I had no complaints.  And through his speech, I confirmed that he was yet another example of a writer whose work I admire who has similar views about writing as I.

The main points of his speech were, as I remember them…

1
“Nobody said anything about ‘inspiration.'”  Artists just go to work, like everyone else.  As his uncle told him, “When the muse is late, start without him.”

He also reminded us of the rule of all freelancers, “If they ask, you can write a song.”

2
“Show up for work.”  Beagle suggests building a time where no one gets to bug your and you can’t leave.  I suppose however you do that is up to you, but the takeaway is to write on a “murderously regular basis.”

3
“Enjoy the company of other writers.” Though, he notes, not while you’re writing.

4
“Live with imperfection.”  Because, basically, you’ll have no choice, no matter how good you are.  He gave us an example of an artist who feels this way, jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge. (A mutual love of jazz trumpeters can almost fool me into thinking Beagle and I are cut from the same cloth. Anyway…) Eldridge describes the trumpet as “a mean instrument” (Believe me, he’s absolutely right!), where some days you feel as though you’ve mastered the instrument inside and out.  And some days, the trumpet will say, “Hey, the hell with you, man.”

When Beagle has those times, he refers to a sign which he apparently always has above his writing desk that says, “Think, schmuck!”

5
“Pay no attention to criticism–or praise.”  ‘Nuff said, I think.  This is another oft-repeated piece of advice that’s escaped my notice until recently.

6
“Nothing you accomplish prepares you for the next one.”  Again, ’nuff said.

7
“You learn all this stuff by doing it.  And by doing it wrong.”  Say it with me: ‘Nuff said.

#

Next in the backlog/queue: a quick panel breakdown, ravings about the folks I hung out with, and rantings about the con organization.

Philcon, Part the First

It’s been a few days, so I thought I’d better get on with a Philcon write-up.  My year would’ve been complete having met one of my literary idols, Howard Waldrop, at Readercon in July.  The chance to meet a second idol in the same year, Peter S. Beagle, was just too good to pass up.  So, here’s what happened…

1

The first thing I had to do was get there.  Readercon took a lot of planning and a months-long allocation of resources.  This time I didn’t have the luxury of taking vacation days off on both side of the con, and being able to get my own hotel room to recharge my introvert points.  Let alone figure out how the hell I was going to get to Cherry Hill, NJ and back to work by Monday.

Enter one of my newest and truest friends, Cthulhurotica publisher Carrie Cuinn and her rented chariot, who was gracious enough to pick me up and take me home, all for gas money and as many meals as she would let me pay for.  Totally worth it! 

2
Saw some of the Lobbycon stuff going on Friday night, but was too tired by the time we got to the hotel to really check it out.

3
Saturday morning, after breakfast at Panera, I hit my first panel, “Do You Write with a Reader in Mind.”  Y’know, I think I’m going to post my panel round-up next time…

4
The schedule of author signings was conspicuous by its absence.  Afterward, I trolled through the dealer’s room and there he was, signing…

And after talking with him for a few minutes, I hit the jackpot: A signed copy of Magic Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, which io9 calls “a storytelling masterclass.”
5
This is the point at which I embarrass myself and admit that I’ve never read Beagle’s novel The Last Unicorn.  Had I read it, I would’ve immediately known that the scheduled reading titled simply “Schmendrick The Magician – Reading of Unpublished Stories” was, in fact, Beagle reading unpublished stories based on a character from the novel.
6
After Beagle’s reading was another panel that I ended up leaving early, so I had a couple of hours to hang out and grab a nap.  Did some hanging out, but no sleeping.  Oh well, why else does one go to cons, right?
7
Actually, next up was Beagle’s G.O.H. speech.  There’s a lot I want to say about this, so maybe this’ll be a separate post, too.
#
So, there was more but this post is getting too long.  I guess I did manage to cram a lot into a Saturday, huh?  My day didn’t end there, that’s for sure.  More tomorrow.

“And now it’s time for a breakdown.”

I’m taking a day off from the Paris Review Interviews thing to play a little bit of catch-up and braindumping.  So no, I’m not talking about a nervous breakdown (that’s coming soon enough), but a breakdown of what I’ve been up to lately.  There are a lot of folks to whom I owe emails, critiques, apologies, etc.  This is not meant to be a replacement for those.  It’s just a little something for someone asking, to quote Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On?”

Aside from the dayjob which I constantly bitch about this time of the semester, the Fall’s been awash with activity…

1
I got one story published back in October and another one due out in about a month.  Exciting!!  I subbed one recently, which I’m not too happy with, and on further readings, I’m not sure how much hope it has.  We’ll see.

2
This weekend, I’m going to Philcon, or as I call it: Operation: Meet Peter S. Beagle.  Hopefully, I’ll run into a tweep or two.  Plans have been made and phone numbers exchanged.  Still, it would help if the con posted their schedule (they hadn’t yet at the time I’m actually typing this sentence).  A Twitter search actually shows individual panelists posting their schedules.  I wonder if I could just stitch them together for a rough map of the con.  Of course, with my luck, I’ll get that done right about the time when the program schedule is posted.

3
I’ve started a new story with will have at least one of, or some combination of the following elements: Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, The Appalachian border between Ohio and W. Virginia, and 1920s historical anectodes about White supremacist groups.  No idea where it’s going.

4
I’ve almost recovered from whatever branch of the Andromeda Strain that invaded my sinuses.  It was my own fault for letting it linger for a week or so.  When I finally needed to take some days off and ended up with no writing to show for it, I knew it was time for medication.

5
I suppose having read the comics and blogs of Warren Ellis for years was bound to have some effect on my writing process.  In a recent post, he talks about what he uses to write.  I couldn’t tell you how much of my workflow I consciously stole from him.  But I thought it’d fun to compare and contrast.  My setup is in red.

Computer 1 is a Lenovo Thinkpad X61 an old Dell Inspiron 1501 running dual-boot Ubuntu 10.10/Windows XP. It’s slowly dying (Actually, my backup laptop, a Compaq Presario 2200 is the one dying and I expect it to within the next 2-3 months), and I am either a) too cheap to buy myself a new machine or b) too terrified of having to load up a whole new machine. Pick one. I’ll very probably buy a new Thinkpad in the near future. This is the main machine that never leaves the desk.

Computer 2 is an Asus Eee Acer Aspire One netbook that lives in my bag.

Other Device is an iPhone 3GS. It lives in one inside pocket of my leather coat. In the other inside pocket is an old Nokia foldaway bluetooth keyboard. On the days when I don’t want to lug the netbook to the pub or wherever, I can still write short bursts of text or longish emails just with the kit in my pockets.  I don’t have something comparable.  I’m too poor.

I use the Chrome Firefox browser on both computers, because it’s very fast and the browser syncs across both machines. That means that I always have my delicious.com and Google bookmarks regardless of the machine I’m on, which is important. Also, I always have single-button access to Google Reader (which also syncs to my iPhone via the Reeder app).

I write in OpenOffice, on both machines. It’s a bit clunky in places — adding page numbers should be a fuck of a lot easier — but it does the job just fine. I save all work in .rtf format: every word processor can read .rtf. I’ve tried other setups–this is just easiest for me.

(If I’m writing film or tv, I work in Final Draft — industry standard, inextricably linked into workflow systems at a great many production houses and studios. If you want to, for example, tell a cable network to throw away their entire workflow structure because you think open source screenwriting software is cool, be my guest, but also be prepared to be called a twat.)  I don’t do any of this, but his point about industry standards is well-taken.

I often write rough drafts in Notepad PageFour, and then copy the text over into OpenOffice, which forces me to rewrite and polish.

I occasionally use Google Documents for short stuff on the fly, but I often find the word processing to be a bit herky-jerky.

I also work extensively in notebooks. I use Moleskines and Field Notes. I write with ultra fine point Sharpies, or good propelling Mirado Black Warrior #2 pencils, or, sometimes, a Tuff-Writer pen I was given, because it’s actually a bloody nice whatever black ballpoint or colored gelpoint pen I happen to have have on hand in my go bag. Be aware that I fetishise nicely designed goods, and the same results can be achieved with a Bic and a notebook bought for fifty pence from the Post Office.

6
“There is NOOOOO… rule 6.”

Uh, I think that’s it.  What’ve you all been up to?

April in Paris, Part the Third

Number three in a series of thoughts and meditations on the words of some of my favorite writers from their interviews in The Paris Review.  Actually, this week you’ll get two for the price of one.

That’s why I like short stories. You’re always trying to keep the person interested. In fiction, you don’t need to have the facts up front, but you have to have something that will grab the reader right away. It can be your voice. Some writers feel that when they write, there are people out there who just can’t wait to hear everything they have to say. But I go in with the opposite attitude, the expectation that they’re just dying to get away from me.

The Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 176, Amy Hempel

That last bit might be true of me if I was a short-story reader instead of a wannabe short-story writer.  I fight my way through to the end of a lot of stories that I probably wouldn’t if I wasn’t trying to figure out how to write them.  I actually forced my way through an entire anthology once.  Believe me, I really was dying to get away from some of those stories.

It’d probably help me to adopt Hempel’s attitude toward my stories.  I have it when it comes to editors and slush readers–I know they only need the slightest excuse to reject me.  It’s okay, though.  I don’t hate the players.  I don’t even hate the game.  Of course, there’s the matter of what “the game” is, exactly.  This is where folks in some circles talk about “the death of the short story,” or how it’s irrelevant, or how short stories are written “not to entertain people, but rather to help improve the resumés of the people writing them.”

Let me pause to beg you folks: No “literary vs. genre” or “character- vs. plot-driven” “Great taste/less filling” debate in the comments?  Please and thank you.

Anyway, the fact is, whoever you’re writing for, you don’t have a lot of room to maneuver in a short story.  Every word you write matters, and in the best shorts, sometimes the words you leave out have an impact. This is what’s always intrigued me the most about the form.  That, and the myriad of available techniques for keeping a reader interested because the one tool you just don’t have is the room you have in longer forms, like the novel.

There’s another side to the time factor when it comes to short story writing.  I was going to use a different bit of Raymond Carver’s Paris Review interview in a future post, but he did make a comment that’s relevant here.

After years of working crap jobs and raising kids and trying to write, I realized I needed to write things I could finish and be done with in a hurry. There was no way I could undertake a novel, a two- or three-year stretch of work on a single project. I needed to write something I could get some kind of a payoff from immediately, not next year, or three years from now. Hence, poems and stories. I was beginning to see that my life was not—let’s say it was not what I wanted it to be.

I don’t have kids, but I can relate to that desperate sense of urgency.  I mean, I didn’t start this writing thing until I was thirty.  And it’s taken me seven years to reach the my current rank of “Small Potatoes” by trying to figure out this writing thing with short stories.  I’ve learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work, and it’s been important to my process to get feedback through submission and rejection–and even acceptance and subsequent editing. 

Lots of my writer-friends ask me, “When are you gonna get that novel out?”  I do have an outline or five, but the truth is, I’ll get that novel out when the idea of working 2-3 years on a single piece of work that could all end up in the toilet doesn’t scare the shit out of me.  I’ve only now gotten to the point where I can accept that notion for a 3,000-5,000 word piece that maybe took me a month or two.

I watch all of you novel-writers in my circle very carefully.  Each and every one of you, without exception, has guts that I just don’t have.  You continue to struggle with your first drafts, or your tenth drafts, or your query letters, or with getting or even keeping agents… I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it.

Still, I know it’s a YMMV kinda thing.  I’ve heard more than one novelist talk about how difficult short stories are to write.  I remember in my previous life in mental health work, I worked primarily with adolescents and knew a guy who primarily worked with homeless adults, literally, in the streets.  I’ll never forget what he said to me once.  “You’re a better man than me.  Adolescents?  No way.  I’ll take my psychotics and drug addicts any day of the week.”

We writers pick our poison, I guess, just like everyone else.  And short stories are mine.

Next time: The kinds of stories I like.

April in Paris, Part the Second

Here’s the second in a series of thoughts and meditations on the words of some of my favorite writers from their interviews in The Paris Review.

It turns out it’s not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert. I have no energy. I never have. I just have no desire to be productive. Now that I realize I don’t hate to write, that I just hate to work, it makes writing easier.

The Paris Review – A Humorist at Work, Fran Lebowitz


Unlike Fran, I desire to be productive.  Thirty or forty years from now, I’d love to have a phone-book-sized tome of The Complete Short Fiction of Don P. published, like Bradbury, or Ballard, or Card, or Ellison.  But like her, though, I am got’damn lazy.  Now, I have my own methods for tricking myself out of my own laziness.  I couldn’t possibly list them all, and different methods will work at different times.  But this post isn’t about that.  It’s about giving a name to whatever it is that blocks your writing–not the 101 reasons you might have for not getting shit done, but that single cause that’s there once you boil away your rationale.

Every writer I know or know of has reasons for not getting writing done.  Jobs, problems, spouses, children, children with special needs, parents with special needs, &c.  And yet, they publish.  But, while I firmly believe that if people who work their dayjobs while undergoing chemotherapy can still get their writing done, you can, too, this isn’t a guilt-trip post either.  I’m not going to tell you to just STFU and get it done.  Not in this post (especially since I already have in others). 

What I will encourage a writer to do is to get to the core of whatever it is that stops you and, aside from doing whatever you have to do to overcome it, to first just get off your own back about it.

See, I know exactly when I’m not writing for no other reason than “I’m just not feeling it,” which is fucking unacceptable.  Or, “I’m too tired.”  Or, “I’ve had a hard day at work and I’m just emotionally drained right now.”  Or, “I’m blocked.”  Pfft.  Bullshit.  I may or may not be treating myself fairly, but to me all those reasons have my personal laziness as their root.  And knowing that makes the next step surprisingly simple.  Because what am I going to do?  Cry about it?  To what end? 

Better to just make a choice.  To either CHOOSE to be okay and sit with the regret and irritation that comes along with not writing, or CHOOSE to use one of my aforementioned tricks to get myself back on the ball.  Because bitching about how I’m not writing gets old really, really fast.  Just ask Mrs. P.

Next time: The reason I write short stories.

April in Paris, Part the First

As promised, the first in a series of thoughts and meditations on the words of some of my favorite writers from their interviews in The Paris Review.

The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours.  I try to encourage my student friends and my writer friends to write a short story in one day so it has a skin around it, its own intensity, its own life, its own reason for being.  There’s a reason why the idea occurred to you at that hour anyway, so go with that and investigate it, get it down.  Two or three thousand words in a few hours is not that hard.  Don’t let people interfere with you.  Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done.  If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone.

 The Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 203, Ray Bradbury


It’s tempting for anyone who’s read Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, or even the rest of this Paris Review interview, to dismiss his “just do it” work ethic with, “That’s easy for him to say.”  I mean, I’ve certainly never cranked out “two or three thousand words in a few hours” without some difficulty.  And it’s been a pipe dream of mine for years to meet Bradbury’s suggested goal in Zen of one short story a week.   In fact, I’ve tried and failed at this for quite some years now.

But Bradbury’s approach doesn’t just represent a metric to me.  It’s a way of writing that has finally shown that, like everyone says, it’s about the journey.

Let me be clear: I’m not talking about “it’s the journey” in some head-in-the-clouds, stop-and-smell-the-roses, appreciate-the-here-and-now kind of way.  I’m talking about a journey that fucking makes me a better writer.  And I attribute every piece of (my pretty meager) success to that journey.

Why?  Because my personal writing journey–that attitude of “just fucking do it”–is fed by one aspect of my personality: my inherent stubbornness.  And it’s only been that stubbornness that’s been able to defeat another aspect of my personality.  the one that gets in the way of my writing: my inherent laziness.

(Edited to add) What fuels your artistic journey?

Next time: The other ways I beat my laziness.

“April in Paris”*

What you’re supposed to do is act like a fucking professional.

-Mr. White, Reservoir Dogs

You know how folks would get excited knowing that their favorite TV series were on, say, Hulu, in their entirety?  I felt exactly the same way when I read that The Paris Review has put all of their writer interviews online.  After years of passing up on purchasing the interview compilations, I gouged on them like a starving man.  I found–in a couple of cases, rediscovered–some real gems, which I’ve posted on my Tumblr.

You want to know how some real professionals get shit done?  Then you could do worse than to peer into the brains of the likes of Dorothy Parker, Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, and–for us genre folks–Ray Bradbury!

So I think over the next few days I’m going to post bits of their interviews, along with some accompanying thoughts.  Meditations, I guess you could call them. 

*Sorry, I’m still on the Count Basie Orhcestra tip from a few weeks ago.

“‘Cause whatever you do, oh, you’ve got to do your thing”

Like a lot of things in my life lately, this post is 9 days late.  Still, it’s the thought that counts, right?

This was going to be my “Why I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year” post.  But reading posts like that over the years, I’ve noticed that it seems difficult for me to write one without looking like a condescending jerk.

This isn’t where I’m going to turn up my nose at the NaNo, or go into my rationalization of why it just doesn’t fit in with my writing goals right now.  I only bring it up now because, despite my resolve to not even fool myself into thinking it was a possibility this year, I reupped my account anyway and found out that somehow, some of my peeps found and added me to their friends list. 

So, to them: You do your thing!!

Of course, the best part of reupping my account: the pep talks from famous writers in my email box.  I squeed when I saw Aimee Bender’s!