Category: Name Dropping

Up a Slipstream Without a Paddle

Because I’m perpetually behind on my blog-reading, I only just found out that the proprietor of Lobster and Canary is going to attend Arisia at Cambridge, MA, the largest sf/f convention in New England.

The items on L&C’s particular schedule are of particular interest…

  • Non-Standard Fantasy
  • The Undefended Borders of SF
  • Interstitial Fiction: Dancing Between Genres
  • Inherent Darkness of Fairy Tales
  • The City as Character
  • Myth and Folklore in Fantasy

Of course, Daniel is scheduled to read as well, but I wanted to focus on the panels listed (I assume they’re panels).

(Oh, and yes, Calista — I now regret not coming and will plan to come out next year.) 🙂

Anyway, picture the sort of fiction that comes to mind when you hear those topics–love it or hate it–and you’ll have a good idea of the sort of stuff I aim to write. Aim, and still fall quite short of the mark. Still, unless the “please feel free to send us more” is part of certain markets’ form rejections, I remain hopeful. In any case, it brought to mind a conversation I had yesterday which dislodged a memory of a blog post from writer Steven Barnes…

You should read ten times as much as you intend to write. Want to write 1000 words a day? Read 10,000 words. Furthermore, this reading should be BETTER than your current ability, and BETTER than your intended goal, if possible. Want to write comic books? Read pulp fiction. Write pulp fiction? Read popular fiction. Write popular fiction, read bestsellers. Write bestsellers? Read classics.

And you want to write classics? Well…pick your grandparents very carefully.

I’ve internalized this advice to the point where it actually took me a second to remember where it came from. But it begs the question, what do I read that’s “better” than my intended goal if I want to write what I say I want to write?

Now, I’ve done or am doing most of the “required reading” — Feeling Very Strange, Interfictions and Interfictions 2, Conjunctions 39 and 52, Tin House 33, The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, (edited to add:) Trampoline, and most of the individual short story collections published by Small Beer Press, and others. But there are times when I feel like I’m being shown how to do the breaststroke before being taught how to properly do a front crawl. Don’t know where the swimming analogy came from, but it’s as good as any.

And I guess the main reason I’m thinking about all of this–assuming it’s not a symptom of the Andromeda Strain I’ve been fighting off the past few days–is that I seem to be feeling a bit of existential angst about my writing. I don’t even care about, Will this pay off in the end, or not? I care more about, Am I doing this right or just spinning my wheels? Are my goals reasonable? What am I doing as a writer?

Also, Who the hell am I as a writer, anyway?

Motion in Poetry

Last Sunday night, I attended a poetry workshop by the current Broome County (NY) Poet Laureate, Andrei Guruianu at Buffalo St. Books. He did a reading from a few of his collections, including his latest, and nothing was sacred anymore, and then guided willing attendees through an exercise.

Guruianu did a brief lecture on poetic elements, which was very useful. Up until now, I had no criteria for judging any piece of poetry other than, “I know what I like.” And Guruianu’s words about the elements of what he considers to be good poetry gave me at least one way to evaluate the poetry I read from now on. To him, the best poetry uses words to depict an environment or invoke images that are concrete, significant, meaningful, and which resist the mind’s tendency to go off on tangents and lean toward abstractions.

Afterward, I went back through the five or six books that I laughingly call my “poetry library” and I’ll be damned if I didn’t go back to the ones listed as my favorites and found just that. Not one poem about “war” or “time” or “space” or “that girl who broke my heart.” Poems on those sorts of topics, yes. But not about the abstract concepts.

And of course, I went back through what I laughingly call the “poems” I’ve written thus far. Now, I knew most of them sucked, but now I know at least one reason why! And the few (well, one… okay two or three) that “worked,” did so because they generally had more concrete elements.

So, to answer the questions that are undoubtedly on your mind…

  1. Yes–I’d like to write more poetry. Maybe see if I can salvage the stuff I’ve written so far. Maybe write something like the work I heard at the poetry panel I attended at Astronomicon 11.
  2. No–I’m not posting any of it here. Maybe at Fictionaut, but even then probably not for public consumption. Because I care for you all, far too much. Maybe once I’ve learned a few more things.

Any Given Sunday

I was drunk enough to agree, but not drunk enough to deny remembering I agree. Leave it to Mercedes to strike at exactly the right time! She wanted a throw down with the loser to re-enact one of my fantasies: to be Jesus, serenaded by Yvonne Elliman, complete with jazz hands:

But that wasn’t enough. Oh, no. The more, the merrier, we said, so we invited Harley and Jason.

Yes, we Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are going to be engaged in mortal combat, with a theme chosen by a neutral party, one Boudreau Freret.

The Theme: A sci-fi/fantasy short story describing, “The first contact of two species with a mutual attraction betwixt them.”

Story Deadline: We have until February 1, 2010 to come up with an original story based on the theme, to be simultaneously submitted to a SFWA-approved market.

The Stakes: First person to be published in the chosen market wins.

The losers will video themselves performing a song of the winner’s choice (“Everything’s Alright” in my case), complete with jazz hands!!

These are all worthy adversaries. I don’t underestimate a single one of them. I’ve read their words. We’re all at various stages of our writing careers, and yet a contest like this–well hell, a lot of publishing in general–has an “any given Sunday” feel to it. It could very well be me on video, jazz-handing along to someone else’s tune.

This is going to be a first. I’ve never written to avoid humiliation before! 🙂

###

Edited to add: Harley’s and Mercedes’ understandably skewed opinions on the matter.

Because Reading is Fundamental

An author I met at Astronomicon, Daniel Rabuzzi (The Choir Boats), has been blogging a multipart Year-in-Review of his favorite speculative and fabulistic art. His review of short fiction was of particular interest. I’m in the process of reading most of the anthologies he listed, and can personally second his opinions of two particular pieces: the short story “Rats” by Veronica Schanoes (from the Interfictions anthology) and Benjamin Rosenbaum’s collection The Ant King: and Other Stories.

My list of favorite short stories of 2009 won’t be half as comprehensive. While I’ve certainly done my share of short-story reading, it’s basically been in service of my writing education. My primary focus was dissection to figure out what made them tick. Still, certain stories and collections stuck out in my mind in 2009–though this is not a comment on the quality of everything else I read, unless where explicitly stated.

We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle. Rarely do I enjoy each and every single story in a given collection. It’s only happened three other times, with M. Rickert’s Map of Dreams, Howard Waldrop’s Howard, Who?, and Ray Vukcevich’s Meet Me in the Moon Room. I saw a lot of similarities in theme between Beagle’s collection and Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories (Daniel cites Millhauser’s story “Dangerous Laughter” as a favorite. I liked it a little less.) but Beagle’s stories resonate a little better with me.

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God by Etgar Keret. The novella “Kneller’s Happy Campers” alone (on which the film Wristcutters: A Love Story is based) is worth the price of the book. There isn’t much I could add to RJ Burgess’s review on Strange Horizons other than, “Just read it.”

Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler. I have yet to read any of Fowler’s novels, but I’ve opened their covers at bookstores and it boggles my mind that I’ve seen no reference to her short fiction. Okay, that’s a lie–I’m not all that surprised there might be those who’d rather not know the Fowler who wrote The Jane Austen Book Club, Wit’s End, and Sarah Canary is the same one whose stories still appear every so often in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

“Pride & Prometheus” by John Kessel. Why does it seem that a lot of my favorite writers do Jane Austen riffs? In any case, it was a deserving 2008 Nebula winner.

“Absalom’s Mother” by Louise Marley. This was a real diamond in the rough that I discovered in the anthology Futureshocks. Don’t even get me started on what I thought about it, but it was worth finding the single story with strong emotional resonance. Because few things resonate more than a mother’s love for her child.

Too Slow to Use “Shield.”

Everybody, thank Calista (I can hear the Bundy family going, “Thanks, Calista.”) for tagging me on her blog. I thank her, because I’ve been scrambling to figure out what my next topic is going to be.

1)What’s the last thing you wrote? What’s the first thing you wrote that you still have?
The last thing I wrote would be part of the current manuscript I’m working on. As for the first thing, it was a murder mystery/romance that I never completed. Maybe someday.

EDIT: Why didn’t anyone tell me I copied/pasted Calista’s answer verbatim?

Last thing I wrote was my attempted comeback into a certain lit humor magazine of an Irish persuasion. Submitted today. First thing I wrote that I still have is my first attempt at a “literary non-fiction” thing. I forgot WTH it was even about, and that’s probably for the best.

2) Write poetry?
Yes, but it’s not fit for human consumption.

3) Angsty poetry?
No more so than my fiction :).

4) Favorite genre of writing?
Slipstream. (Whatever that means) 🙂

5) Most annoying character you’ve ever created?
A minor character in my very first published piece of fiction. An obsequious toad who, if memory serves, got his in the end.

6) Best plot you’ve ever created?
That first story was probably my best plotted.

7) Coolest plot twist you’ve ever created?
That would be the end to this story.

8) How often do you get writer’s block?
Generally, I agree with comics writer Brian K. Vaughn, who wrote, “‘Writer’s block’ is just another word for video games. If you want to be a writer, get writing, you lazy bastards.” Except in one circumstance.

In almost every instance where I just cannot, for the life of me, get words out, it’s usually because there some unattended piece of business has latched on to what David Allen calls my “Psychic RAM.” If I can somehow process that thing, then any further “writer’s block” on my part is simply time-wasting.

9) Write fan fiction?
First and only piece when I was 12.

10) Do you type or write by hand?
Whatever gets the words out fast enough at any given moment. I have my netbook and/or legal pad and/or index cards around me at all times. All times. Weddings, funerals, whatever. All times.

11) Do you save everything you write?
Yes.

12) Do you ever go back to an idea after you’ve abandoned it?
As long as I can hone in on whatever resonated with that idea in the first place.

13) What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever written?
My one, and so far only, piece that was ever accepted by McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

14) What’s everyone else’s favorite story you’ve written?
I still get more juice out of that McSweeney’s piece than anything else, and that was almost five years ago, now.

15) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama?
I didn’t think I did, until an editor decided that one of my stories was “Fantasy/Romance.” Hey, ain’t nu’in wrong with that, I say :).

16) What’s your favorite setting for your characters?
Down the block, a few years ago, or twenty minutes into the future.

17) How many writing projects are you working on right now?
I’ve taken on some fun small side-projects this month, sort of as a break from the shell game of submitting/resubmitting my backlog of stories.

18) Have you ever won an award for your writing?
I placed in a flash fiction competition, but didn’t win.

19) What are your five favorite words?
“We would like to publish…”

20) What character have you created that is most like yourself?
Probably the guy from “Tough Love,” except he’s slightly more of a tool than I am.

21) Where do you get your ideas for your characters?
Usually, a person in my mind, a total stranger, does something stupid and then wants to tell me about it. I write it down for my amusement.

22) Do you ever write based on your dreams?
Not directly, though as I think about my dreams and put them into words in my head, occassionally I’ll come up with a phrase and say, “Ooh, I’m gonna use that.”

23) Do you favor happy endings?
My stories are like life… sometimes you get the happy ending, sometimes you don’t. And whatever happens, happens ;).

24) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?
Hukt on foniks werkt fer me!

25) Does music help you write?
Yes. And don’t ask me to describe which kinds help me when–that’s a whole separate blog.

26) Quote something you’ve written. Whatever pops in your head.
“Maybe if I stay really, really still, the clowns won’t find me when they come out of the mirror.”

I’m not usually a tagger, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play along in the comments or linkback to your own blog!

Performance Anxiety

I admit it, I don’t read enough blogs and I the ones I do read, I don’t read closely enough. I don’t read them at all if they don’t have an RSS feed that I can plug into Google Reader–even then, I skim and speed read. Most of the time, the entries I do read are ones that get my attention through the people I follow on Twitter.

Hell, I tweet so much, how often do I even write in this one? I’m making an effort, though. For awhile, I let this blog degenerate into a tweet archive. I’ve been making an effort, though. I put an end to the LoudTweeting. But I did fail at a couple of points along the way. I didn’t start my 2009 Rod Serling Conference posts and I’m still catching up on my thoughts on last month’s Astronomicon 11.

So, what reawakened the blogging desire? The feeling of “Oh shit, people are actually coming here to read this!” thanks in no small part to some of my favorite tweeps who’ve started following this thing and have actually plugged it on their blogs.

Follow–and actually read–these folks. They’re writers at every stage, writing every sort of thing, listed roughly in the order I met them (if my faulty memory serves)…

I know that I’ve missed a good number of people! Some, but not all, of these folks are Followers on that there sidebar on the right. For more, check out my twitter list of the usual suspects.

If nothing else, reading these folks will keep you occupied while I figure out what the hell else I’m going to talk about, on something resembling a regular basis.

Mad Pulp Ass-Kicking

Despite my brave words last week, I haven’t stuck with NaNoWriMo as much as I would’ve liked.

The irony of it all is that the thing driving me (or most anyone) to do NaNo is the thing keeping me from it, namely the desire to write and get my shit out there. So, when I should’ve been NaNo-ing for the past few days, I’ve been doing the following…

  • Submitted two short-stories (one of which was rejected after one frakking day, but oh well–on to the next market)
  • Prepping two more for final submission (just a few MS tweaks according to particular market specifications)
  • Going through my published and unpublished stuff as potential entries for a short-short chapbook contest…
  • …and to facilitate writing more material for the contest, I’ve reacquainted myself with the flash fiction section of the Zoetrope Virtual Studio. (Even scored myself an invite to a private office, where all the fun of Zoe really takes place!)
  • Preparing to run into some well-known authors at Astronomicon 11, if I can steel my resolve.

I’m not saying I’ve given up on NaNo entirely. What I am saying is that it’s lower on the priority list than it was. I realized that my reasons going into it this year were somewhat faulty. I wanted an excuse to generate material, even though I had a backlog of stuff and a virtual notebook full of more ideas than I could ever use. I wanted that mad NaNo rush to get it all down. But why? For it’s own sake? That’s a good enough reason for most NaNo’ers but not for me, not this year.

I’ve been following Bill Cunningham’s (d.b.a. The Mad Pulp Bastard) Pulp 2.0 blog for quite awhile, before I ever followed him on Twitter. And the other day, he gave me some advice as I twitter-pondered aloud about a story of mine which was bought and paid for, but never published…

And the Mad Pulp Bastard responded…

Now, the particular advice itself isn’t as important as the spirit of it. The spirit of it said to me, Don, just get your shit out there.

There was a point where NaNoWriMo was a particular means to a particular end for me, and it served that end very ,very well. Then. Now, I know that finer, more experienced, and more published writers are doing it right this very second, but at this stage of the game–my game–it doesn’t serve my ultimate end. Oh, I’ll dabble and throw some words into the wordcount meter, to be sure. But if I don’t hit 50k words, then meh. I’d rather put more effort into building on my 2009 publications and get a head start on 2010!

Catching Up is Hard to Do

I’ve decided that part of the problems I’ve been having with writing have to do with all the stuff swimming in my psychic RAM that needs to be dumped out. So many blogworthy things going on; so little time to blog them. So, here goes.

1
Just ‘cos there haven’t been my usual Tough Love posts doesn’t mean that I haven’t been attending the biweekly evisceration. I just haven’t had anything to be eviscerated, not by the group, anyway.

2
I’m eviscerating my current short story in-progress, formerly titled “The Six-Hundred Dollar Man.” With every section of prose I clean up, I feel like I’m butting my head trying to stick to the story I want to tell.

You may be thinking, “Maybe it’s not the story that needs to be told.” Except I know in my gut it is.

3
And aside from that, I’ve got 3 other stories that I need to finish revising and send off.

4
I entered The First Annual Brain Harvest Mega Challenge a little while back. The Second Place Winner has been posted. And I have to say, if that’s second place, I think I’m pretty sure I didn’t make First Place. 🙁

5
Last Friday & Saturday, I attended the 2009 Rod Serling Conference. I’m still processing the experience, a weekend filled with scholars, fans, and artists including Serling’s surviving fammily and the legendary George Clayton Johnson on whose every word we hung.

A modern-day John the Baptist, if I ever saw one.

I’ll blog the blow-by-blow later.

6
And now that I’ve taken time out to process my inbasket and tickler files, I can get some sleep and hit the WIP tomorrow.

Cheaper than Margaret Cho

I had my local theater cherry busted last night, with a performance at The Kitchen by poet Regie Cabico. He was, as he said to us afterward when I got his autograph, cheaper than Margaret Cho, but he’s easily worth Margaret Cho prices.

He did this bit, but there was so much more to his show…

I was the only Filipino in the audience and I’ll tell you, all of his “growing up Filipino” bits hit very close to home. He even brought out the Barrel Man!

Even the differences between Cabico’s story and mine had the ring of familiarity, which is why I laughed harder than anyone. A Kitchen staff member was sitting next to me (could’ve been the Managing Director) who said to us, “I was laughing watching you guys laugh. I have a friend who’s Filipino and [Cabico’s impression of his own mother] was his mother!”

I told him, “Hell, that was my mother.”

More importantly, Cabico’s story had the ring of universal truth about how you find your way because of, as well as in spite of, the family you had growing up.

If you ever get the chance, go see him! I will, because I need more examples of how to tap into my own “growing up Filipino” stories in a way that doesn’t look anything like the film American Adobo *shudder*.

In the Zone

Last week, I attended the 2008 Rod Serling Conference at Ithaca College, where Serling taught from 1967-1975. I scored a pass because The Wife was a judge in their scriptwriting competition. I saw a lot and learned a lot that I didn’t know. The best part was a session where the speaker presented video clips of small- and large-group lessons given by Serling himself at various workshops. Here’s one such clip, thanks to the piracy joy of YouTube.

The keynote speech at the conference was given by the past dean of the Park School of Communication who had access to unedited clips from this series, filmed on a soundstage at I.C. after a moment, so the story goes, where they finally realized the need to capture Serling’s teaching on camera. The man who was “the head of the class” in that last clip said a few words, as well.

I’ll post a few more clips later. There’s something about them, but to say they’re “inspirational” doesn’t seem quite right. There isn’t too much that any writer hasn’t heard a thousand times over (Serling himself would probably say that). But maybe it’s the sense of universality and timelessness in these forty year-old clips.

In any case, I’m still reeling.