http://writeanything.wordpress.com/fiction-friday/ is a fun site for seeing what people from many genre's can do given a single theme. The participants vary greatly any given week but most of the short tales are clever and well written and it's a good site to bookmark for your weekend reading and the site has other writings and activities of interest on other days of the week. See the Fiction Friday category for my most recent postings.
Writing for Myself
I’m not sure how it came up in my thoughts, I think just as a general brainstorm for non-fiction writing which I do a little. Yet there it was, the idea of writing for one’s self. For my two blogs, I don’t intend to write for myself, though sometimes it feels like I am. I feel like I’m inside the firewall instead of out, looking through the flames and seeing only an ambiguous darkness beyond, with no comments incoming, few followers, and no way to check who else might be checking in now and again.
Still, I’m always mindful that there are at least potential readers out there in the ether (I’ve heard ether used to describe the virtual world and wonder if anyone these days knows the word had an alternate meaning, as the substance that filled what is now considered a void between earth, and the moon and stars that circled it since the time of creation.) The nervous part of me is aware of identify theft and evil people who might conceivably use the information for traditional nefarious deeds, crimes of violence and passion, as well as the theoretically crimes between (is virtual stalking a real thing? Certainly we’ve seen in the press that harassment is real, though not necessarily a crime).
Still, despite the distant concerns, I learned long ago that some part of the self must be poured into the writing for it to attain life and substance and interest to others. The question is only what form that self should take, what can be revealed safely to the world, what part is necessary to the writing. So it is with all my writing, not just what I post online. Even when I write my journals, I am aware of a potential distant, future audience, and there, especially, I must put myself into my words if i’m to bother writing.
I put a lot of myself in journals, some would say. I go through a three-section or five-section notebook every year and a half or so these days, more than in the past both because the notebooks have fewer pages than they used to (the sections used to be fifty pages, not forty and less) and because the words of a professor of one of my graduate history courses persuaded me to do a little scrapbooking along the way. I add newspaper and magazine clippings, old membership cards, menus, ticked stubs, and comics, sometimes with commentary on what about them caught my attention, sometimes just to highlight the issues of the day, like schools closing for H1Ni (formeraly Swine flu). Those especially make me aware of that future audience, intended to be the historians of generations to come.
Long ago that wasn’t so, though I considered then that my heirs might find my journals , or in the fashion of the detective shows, some detective might browse them if my death was sudden and mysterious. The history, though, dominates my vision of the more likely reality, when digital files bit the dust in the absence of the old software and machines to read them. My reading and history courses and clubs have made me aware of the place the diaries of the dead have had in our history and literature, the unknown diarist as much as the famous.
Still, while I keep that potential audience in mind, I write for myself primarily for other reasons. For one, I like to write, plain and simple, whether I’m good at it or not hardly matters. Stil, we don’t just aritrarily like a thing or not, generally, and it comes with value, whether instinct or logic prods the liking. The sense and logic part came later, though, with writing courses that included a requirement for a daily journal, both to encourage the act of writing for the hesitant and as practice, for writing needs practice both to develop and maintain, and as a source of inspiration.
Journals are how we connect the world of our senses, our experience, our thoughts, to words and writing. To me it is a valuable first step for both nonfiction and fiction writing, even if my “journal” of the hour might be whatever scrap of paper I can get under my pen, to capture the essence of a place, an observation, reminders for a memory of events and sequences, or an idea for story scene or character pulled out of the blue.
For many, perhaps most, it is the only step. They don’t see themselves as writers, have no desire to be one, no matter how good at it they might be, but they journal for themselves, and the act of writing has value in itself, no matter the content or form. the journal has countless functions for mind and spirit, now and in the future, bringing focus, capturing essence, subconsciously prioritizing. For me, perhaps prioritizing most of all, or at least that is the one i am most academically aware of. Many diaries have but a few lines for each day and the limited spaces forces us to keep to what’s important if it isn’t merely what’s habit to record. Even with my unlimited length (I’d be thrilled to write regularly enough or completely enough to fill my big notebooks faster), my time and energy aren’t endless and i often write at the end of the day. So, I’m likely to capture at least those things whose brief importance has lingered to day’s end, sometimes week’s end or longer if my writing efforts have focused on fiction, meanwhile.
Like the boss’s feedback session. Even when I know the boss appreciates me, I might come away diappointed and frustrated by a choice of words an unexpected focus that seems to miss the point fo my contributions to the office. I might write about it that day or put it off, ot wanting to dwell on something I can do nothing about and that will only drive me to distraction if I try to analyze every word and phrase.
Days or weeks later it will surface again and get its day in my journal, when I had thought I’d left it behind; telling me that the hurt or some other aspect of it (rarely the praise which always seems to come more profusely from all but the ones who can effect my career). Sometimes some new insight, a comment by others undergoing much the same process, or some other unrelated experience will trigger the thought or new understanding as well as bringing it back to the surface of my attention amidst lesser matters, then i write about it. Perhaps it will finally settle into the hisotry of the past, or it might surface again in the absence of pressing concerns and I will dwell on it again until I can determine what to do with the memory and the associated thoughts, to set aside as past or offer some suggestion for the future and change.
Sometimes I hardly know why I write on the topics that I write. Other times I journal more consciously as well, such as for trip journals or for classes. (Such structured journaling can be helpful for more reluctant writers, such as bosses wanting a way to make sense of the chaos of their days, or wanna-be writers who don’t know where to start.) I’ve at times had several journals going at once, for myself, classes, and clubs.
One "journal" was for a poetry project, a tiny little notebook wherein we were to write a single sentence or phrase to capture the essence or the most important matter of the day. That was harder than it seemed, with full days of school, life, family, interpersonal relations and observations of the world, and sometimes I would cram several things in the sentence to avoid the choice. For work I have a limit of a small page per day, in a day-at-a-time calendar, to capture important tasks, record times and dates and brief content of meetings whose substance might be needed later, and to track progress on a dozen things at once. Though brief, or because its brief, it also helps me think through my tasks and make plans, and helps keep me from letting quick but unimportant tasks preventing progress on longer, larger projects that are ultimately more important.
The nature journal was more memorable than most, a fascinating challenge in the city, but doable with concentrated effort a few minutes a day. The effort was a great source of stress relief as well as a source for much inspiration. Weather was relatively easy and sometimes filled the absence of the rest. I went outside a few minutes every day regardless of the weather, though not always with paper in hand. I stood in rain, sunshine, snow, light and dark, to capture what I could of the air and sky. When I could, I walked a few blocks to capture more. I sought fountains and bubblers in the absence of streams, walked along grassy road divides in the absence of meadows or even much lawns, studied every tree for all that it could tell me of the place and the seasons, and watching for the city wildlife--birds and squirrels, at least. I found even the city’s limited nature to be sooting to eye and soul once i looked for it, but I would have found much less if not for the requirement of the daily journal, and would likely have noticed less if I hadn’t had to focus on sufficient detail to have concrete words to write.
Even much of my story writing is really for myself. I have hopes of publication (in the pst I would have said, of course, don’t we all, but have encountered many writers who aren’t interested in the sharing of their words at all, even if they want to learn to write better for themselves. Like leaders, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that those reluctant to the stage were the better to be found) but not for all that I write. I play with my characters in the worlds of other writers, or my own real world to see how they would act, react, whether they might have ideas that I could use for myself or just for fun. I put characters in unlikely places in other worlds of my own making, wondering what it can tell me of their characters or see if it could make the story more interesting for others. They give my daydreams substance they otherwise lack, and offer inspiration when I can’t find it in my own day-to-day life.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Fiction Friday - the Costume
“So what’s this great idea of yours?” Dawn asked her husband.
“Look at the gear I found at the surplus store - they’re perfect for space suits.”
Dawn eyed Kale dubiously. His enthusiasm and imagination tended to run hand in hand, totally missing the reality around him. Still, she had come up with no costume ideas herself that didn’t require a massive sewing effort, so she followed him into the garage. Her curiosity grew as he excitedly pulled away newspaper and sheets of brown paper filler from an abused cardboard box.
White overalls came out first, or something like. There was something odd about the shape and cut but she couldn’t quite place it. “You want to go as painters?” she asked, curious if the rest of the box was paint cans and brushes and cleaning rags, which would be effective if not enough to account for his level of excitement.
“No, no, here, look what comes with,” Kale said, and pulled out a helmut and a head piece for the overalls. Dawn recognized what was odd about the overalls: they were chemical safety suits. “They’re super big, so all we have to do is where are warm clothes underneath and put a bunch of silver duct tape around the joints and over the head piece and it will look like space suits. Duct tape over the biggest plastic jugs we’ve got in the house will be air tanks, and there’s a huge panel for venting we can open up for air. Toasty warm and great costumes at the same time. What do you think?”
Dawn frowned at him, but it was already just to tease. She loved the idea, especially as it meant she didn’t have to sew a thing.
That wasn’t quite true. Afterall, the suits were meant to keep outside air from coming in and the venting was barely adequate, so she added more and sewed large white patches on the sweatshirt and jeans they would be wearing underneath wherever they might be exposed by the venting. The duct taping was tricky, and the pants too long, but she used the duct tape to bunch the legs up and it looked more like the bulky joiints on space suits in the end.
“Aliens or humans?” she asked him when she was nearly done.
“Juat tint the plastic face masks and no one will know which it is. Can't you get some sticky stuff, or spray to tint windows, like they do on the car windshield?”
“I’ll see what I can find. Maybe just tiny dots of face-safe paint to shade it, though you might be seeing spots by the end of the night.”
“This party might be pretty lame. Half my office is out sick with flu and they’ve closed another school for the a week.” Kale donned the costume, had to have her repeat her response as the suit mufled sound
“Yeah, and the way people talk, you’d think it was plague, with people dying in the streets and carts coming to pick up the bodies.”
“I think some of them think it really is plague, that the flu is just a code word for plague. Even Larry said he was keeping an eye out for the fomation of spots as well as fever, and Marinne teased him about that mulberry bush song and all. We have it so easy, They have no idea. - This costume is perfect. But say, can we eat with these on?”
She bent close. Face panel to face panel they could hear better and she offered a plastic coated kiss for the complement. “Sure, the bottom of the face mask is just velcrowed on now. I unstitched it. Come on. Want to walk?”
“Of course. I might look more like a zombie than a space man--the knees are a bit stiff, but have to show off the costome, you know.” he said with a grin.
#
They grinned at the kids who sometimes waved and grinned, sometimes fled. The trick-or-treaters were everywhere in their cute little costumes, about half lightly covered by caots and jackets or thick towel and lap blanket cloaks to keep little arms warm over puffy costumes. they laughed and chatted on the way to the party, barely noticing the reaction to their own costumes until a parent quickly pulled away their child from the path of the space suited adults. then another did the same.
He chuckled. “They been watching B-movies?”
“Maybe they had a replay of War of the Worlds and some of think maybe it was real afterall.”
“Never mind. Halloween, people should be scared. Good for the soul to get a fright and remember our mortality now and again.”
The party was at a neighbor’s several blocks away and they noted that several cars aleady overflowling the driveway. they made their way up the steps, tapped on the door. hearing music from within, they knocked a little harder, then stepped in. they were greeted by cacaphony and chaos. As he grinned and waved in greeting, she noticed that the noise was less musical, the merry expressions quickly changing to panic as the movement that might have been dancing turned to flight as their friends scattered in fear. She grabbed his waving hand.
“Whats the matter with you?.” Realizing that they couldn’t hear through the noise and the muffling masks, she reached for the bottom of the face panel but their host shouted “Don’t, don’t, you’ll kill us all!”
Annoyed, she pulled the panel wide open “What is the matter with you? Think we brought toxic air from an alien planet.”
“You have plague spots! You’re contageous!”
Confused and even more annoyed, she turned toward her husband and looked at him, and stared, and laughed. “Looks like the paint wasn’t quite dry.”
--End--
As instructed, no editing (except typos), so I think it gets weak in the middle. It would require more thought on how best to build the atmosphere. I rather think the costume idea wasn't too bad, though I'm horrible at costumes and I don’t know how easy old MOP gear is to come by... Some of the ideas for the story have obvious sources: the challenge, the flu season as well as the season for frights, the pandemic term that has become quickly overused. On my car you can see the dot pattern that they use to shade the area above the rearview mirror, but it's effective so why not... which of course lead to the idea of the bubonic plague, which shifted my original idea of the source of the fright.
“Look at the gear I found at the surplus store - they’re perfect for space suits.”
Dawn eyed Kale dubiously. His enthusiasm and imagination tended to run hand in hand, totally missing the reality around him. Still, she had come up with no costume ideas herself that didn’t require a massive sewing effort, so she followed him into the garage. Her curiosity grew as he excitedly pulled away newspaper and sheets of brown paper filler from an abused cardboard box.
White overalls came out first, or something like. There was something odd about the shape and cut but she couldn’t quite place it. “You want to go as painters?” she asked, curious if the rest of the box was paint cans and brushes and cleaning rags, which would be effective if not enough to account for his level of excitement.
“No, no, here, look what comes with,” Kale said, and pulled out a helmut and a head piece for the overalls. Dawn recognized what was odd about the overalls: they were chemical safety suits. “They’re super big, so all we have to do is where are warm clothes underneath and put a bunch of silver duct tape around the joints and over the head piece and it will look like space suits. Duct tape over the biggest plastic jugs we’ve got in the house will be air tanks, and there’s a huge panel for venting we can open up for air. Toasty warm and great costumes at the same time. What do you think?”
Dawn frowned at him, but it was already just to tease. She loved the idea, especially as it meant she didn’t have to sew a thing.
That wasn’t quite true. Afterall, the suits were meant to keep outside air from coming in and the venting was barely adequate, so she added more and sewed large white patches on the sweatshirt and jeans they would be wearing underneath wherever they might be exposed by the venting. The duct taping was tricky, and the pants too long, but she used the duct tape to bunch the legs up and it looked more like the bulky joiints on space suits in the end.
“Aliens or humans?” she asked him when she was nearly done.
“Juat tint the plastic face masks and no one will know which it is. Can't you get some sticky stuff, or spray to tint windows, like they do on the car windshield?”
“I’ll see what I can find. Maybe just tiny dots of face-safe paint to shade it, though you might be seeing spots by the end of the night.”
“This party might be pretty lame. Half my office is out sick with flu and they’ve closed another school for the a week.” Kale donned the costume, had to have her repeat her response as the suit mufled sound
“Yeah, and the way people talk, you’d think it was plague, with people dying in the streets and carts coming to pick up the bodies.”
“I think some of them think it really is plague, that the flu is just a code word for plague. Even Larry said he was keeping an eye out for the fomation of spots as well as fever, and Marinne teased him about that mulberry bush song and all. We have it so easy, They have no idea. - This costume is perfect. But say, can we eat with these on?”
She bent close. Face panel to face panel they could hear better and she offered a plastic coated kiss for the complement. “Sure, the bottom of the face mask is just velcrowed on now. I unstitched it. Come on. Want to walk?”
“Of course. I might look more like a zombie than a space man--the knees are a bit stiff, but have to show off the costome, you know.” he said with a grin.
#
They grinned at the kids who sometimes waved and grinned, sometimes fled. The trick-or-treaters were everywhere in their cute little costumes, about half lightly covered by caots and jackets or thick towel and lap blanket cloaks to keep little arms warm over puffy costumes. they laughed and chatted on the way to the party, barely noticing the reaction to their own costumes until a parent quickly pulled away their child from the path of the space suited adults. then another did the same.
He chuckled. “They been watching B-movies?”
“Maybe they had a replay of War of the Worlds and some of think maybe it was real afterall.”
“Never mind. Halloween, people should be scared. Good for the soul to get a fright and remember our mortality now and again.”
The party was at a neighbor’s several blocks away and they noted that several cars aleady overflowling the driveway. they made their way up the steps, tapped on the door. hearing music from within, they knocked a little harder, then stepped in. they were greeted by cacaphony and chaos. As he grinned and waved in greeting, she noticed that the noise was less musical, the merry expressions quickly changing to panic as the movement that might have been dancing turned to flight as their friends scattered in fear. She grabbed his waving hand.
“Whats the matter with you?.” Realizing that they couldn’t hear through the noise and the muffling masks, she reached for the bottom of the face panel but their host shouted “Don’t, don’t, you’ll kill us all!”
Annoyed, she pulled the panel wide open “What is the matter with you? Think we brought toxic air from an alien planet.”
“You have plague spots! You’re contageous!”
Confused and even more annoyed, she turned toward her husband and looked at him, and stared, and laughed. “Looks like the paint wasn’t quite dry.”
--End--
As instructed, no editing (except typos), so I think it gets weak in the middle. It would require more thought on how best to build the atmosphere. I rather think the costume idea wasn't too bad, though I'm horrible at costumes and I don’t know how easy old MOP gear is to come by... Some of the ideas for the story have obvious sources: the challenge, the flu season as well as the season for frights, the pandemic term that has become quickly overused. On my car you can see the dot pattern that they use to shade the area above the rearview mirror, but it's effective so why not... which of course lead to the idea of the bubonic plague, which shifted my original idea of the source of the fright.
Monday, October 26, 2009
A look forward
Awhile back I took a course I think of as a retirement planning course. it was that, too, but more of it was just career and financial planning, more for people new to the workforce than those about to retire. A lot of it of course was planning for the future, how to make sure you could retire and enjoy yourself instead of merely survive on the little money abailablr through unreliable retirement funds and social security.
I was struck, among other things, by the fifty year look back (including an average 10 percent annual increase in the value of stocks, which has in fact not been the case for the last ten years, so using it as a basis of planning seems unrealistic). A lot has changed in those fifty years, and averaging just doesn't say much. What, then, can we expect for the next fifty, or even the next twenty?
Yet that is exactly what we, as science fiction writers must do, and my preference is for much more than fifty (I like space fiction and we haven't made much notable progress in that direction in the last few decades, either. The next 50 slides too much into contemporary, speculative fiction, and I find that no fun at all).
Still, plenty else has changed for better and worse. Less than fifteen years ago, we didn’t have in internet or cell phones or maybe even wireless phones! We did have plans for solar power that haven’t made much progress... We've found cures or at least treatments for many diseases, but have many more that elude solution, including some that didn't seem to exist, or were at least far more rare, twenty and more years ago.
Here are a few of my guesses for the future:
Medicine: more drugs, less invasive procedures if we’re lucky, more cost without good (or apparent) cause. A short while back i might have said more active medicine, but recent trends suggest less may be better, that there will be more reliance on letting/helping the body do its own thing to take care of us, and preventing our getting diseases in the first place.
Culture:
Communication technology advances have reduced physical activity and social interaction, but movement for health in mind and body will eventually counter it, possibly through more organized activities (currently tending toward weak and lame in most cities, better in smaller cities and towns).
Online looked like a likely social route but I haven’t encountered many people who have discovered success in that direction aside from rediscovering lost contacts of the past, still requiring an initial physical meeting through traditional social contacts. In order to become more firmly established as an acceptible and effective way to make more than pen-pal like relationships, vast improvements will be needed in software that helps people sort through the morass to find not like people but compatible people, including the people we like to argue with. And it will be the older people, young now, who will cling to the computer world, if they can find a way to stay healthy and translate it to physical, human contact in the process.
Exercise programs are more likely to bring people together if they become more wide spread, maybe in the local parks so that people's need for nature and fresh air are met with light exercise and social contact.
Security: Biological coding will be seen as a necessity for identity protection, which will encourage online anonymity as an escape from the lack of privacy, the inability to go anywhere without everyone being able to see who you are with a quick check of some idnetity scanner.
Hobbies?: Many hand skills will be lost to automation and the only knowledge in some areas will be how to program the robotics, not the hand work, though a few easy ones may linger as a rest to teting-strainec fingers and computer beaten eyes. Most crafts will join arts in the art departments or die for lack of interest at craft fairs and in the home. Who uses doilies anymore? or embroidered pillow cases?
Food will remain the family activity, if only because the food industry seems incapable of providing decent, healthy prepared food in the least bit comparable to freshly steamed vegetables, oven roasted turkey, or even a decent bowl of rice. Besides, it will remain the only time the busy generations stop long enough to communicate with family.
I was struck, among other things, by the fifty year look back (including an average 10 percent annual increase in the value of stocks, which has in fact not been the case for the last ten years, so using it as a basis of planning seems unrealistic). A lot has changed in those fifty years, and averaging just doesn't say much. What, then, can we expect for the next fifty, or even the next twenty?
Yet that is exactly what we, as science fiction writers must do, and my preference is for much more than fifty (I like space fiction and we haven't made much notable progress in that direction in the last few decades, either. The next 50 slides too much into contemporary, speculative fiction, and I find that no fun at all).
Still, plenty else has changed for better and worse. Less than fifteen years ago, we didn’t have in internet or cell phones or maybe even wireless phones! We did have plans for solar power that haven’t made much progress... We've found cures or at least treatments for many diseases, but have many more that elude solution, including some that didn't seem to exist, or were at least far more rare, twenty and more years ago.
Here are a few of my guesses for the future:
Medicine: more drugs, less invasive procedures if we’re lucky, more cost without good (or apparent) cause. A short while back i might have said more active medicine, but recent trends suggest less may be better, that there will be more reliance on letting/helping the body do its own thing to take care of us, and preventing our getting diseases in the first place.
Culture:
Communication technology advances have reduced physical activity and social interaction, but movement for health in mind and body will eventually counter it, possibly through more organized activities (currently tending toward weak and lame in most cities, better in smaller cities and towns).
Online looked like a likely social route but I haven’t encountered many people who have discovered success in that direction aside from rediscovering lost contacts of the past, still requiring an initial physical meeting through traditional social contacts. In order to become more firmly established as an acceptible and effective way to make more than pen-pal like relationships, vast improvements will be needed in software that helps people sort through the morass to find not like people but compatible people, including the people we like to argue with. And it will be the older people, young now, who will cling to the computer world, if they can find a way to stay healthy and translate it to physical, human contact in the process.
Exercise programs are more likely to bring people together if they become more wide spread, maybe in the local parks so that people's need for nature and fresh air are met with light exercise and social contact.
Security: Biological coding will be seen as a necessity for identity protection, which will encourage online anonymity as an escape from the lack of privacy, the inability to go anywhere without everyone being able to see who you are with a quick check of some idnetity scanner.
Hobbies?: Many hand skills will be lost to automation and the only knowledge in some areas will be how to program the robotics, not the hand work, though a few easy ones may linger as a rest to teting-strainec fingers and computer beaten eyes. Most crafts will join arts in the art departments or die for lack of interest at craft fairs and in the home. Who uses doilies anymore? or embroidered pillow cases?
Food will remain the family activity, if only because the food industry seems incapable of providing decent, healthy prepared food in the least bit comparable to freshly steamed vegetables, oven roasted turkey, or even a decent bowl of rice. Besides, it will remain the only time the busy generations stop long enough to communicate with family.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
blog on blogging
The rest of the latest scene of Cerelian Gold has been posted, and more stuff at my other blog.
I hesitated, when I first started blogging. I tried the traditional publication channels for a long time first, but my timing has never been good, and by the time I thought my writing good enough to be worth considering publication, the publishers had been inundated by fantasy submissions and many weren't accepting even proposals, so I returned to revising and writing and getting stories from hand writing into the computer where I could finish and polish them and tried again. A couple years later, many publishers that use to take proposals were only accepting through an agent, so that changed the nature of the search. Also, I have a day job, time is limited, and when i couldn’t get an agent to even try to sell my books after several tries, I went back to typing. I've gone back and forth a few times since.
I encountered may tales of stacks of reject letters even for writers who became famous, but they never tell you how much time and effort goes into every one of those rejections, and not a little cost in postage and printing and all when it is a matter of submitting fifty pages of a novel at a crack. Time and energy is still the real killer. Most of a year just researching the first time, with one real submission (the only one that didn’t have a no-fantasy sign up, and that one might as well have--they stopped doing fantasy in favor of light science fiction, and that was when I had more time available from my day job. I have to plan and set aside that kind of time and it helps if I'm not traveling, which seems rare lately.
I heard tales of succcess through blogging, though in truth those are extremely rare. But I also heard tales of networking and workshopping on line. My efforts to get a local writing group together (or keep one together that formed after a writing class for awhile) have all fallen flat so maybe online... My research in that direction hasn't been as fruitful as I hoped. I suspect I just don't get the formats or how to schedule enough computer time into my life, but blogs offered more control of my time and input and an opportunity for discussion if I could find the right audience.
I hesitated to go the blog route, still. Afterall, copyright and prepublication publication and all are fuzzy areas, blogs and bloggers successfully getting into publication rare, and my technical successes even more rare. Even when i think I’m charging in at the leading edge, I have generally found that what I was trying was already passe’ and even old fashioned. By the time I discovered modems and networks, the internet was alive and vast and searching was all on prebuilt search engines. By the time i discovered e-mail, instant messaging was already popular (and the art of letter writing already near death.)
Still, I decided to try it. If I can’t get published, at least I can reach some of the readers that might have found my books worth reading. If I can't get an editor, at least I can get feedback and maybe find out why I can’t get anyone interested enough to read past the first fifty pages. (I know the first paragraphs are weak, but so are the first paragraphs of most of the fantasy books I love to read, and somehow they got published anyway. Most fantasy readers I know will at least read the first few pages or even some middle sections before deciding the book is a dud. My books, I’m sure, have flaws, but I thought the problems would prove to be in the plots later, or in the endings (how many endings satisfy every reader fully?) Maybe the blog readership, if I can reach them, can tell me what I’m doing wrong...
I'm not there yet even on my longer-established blog (with much on writing, some on Christian Science Fiction and YA writing, and a YA novel in work--see http://home.earthlink.net/~wyverns/ --but I have a fairly steady daily audience (even though I don't post any more there than here) and on rare occasion a comment. So I still have hopes that the experience will be valuable, and can hardly be detrimental except to cut a little more into my time.
It at least makes me take a closer/different look at my writing, and the serial posting has made me more aware of the completeness (or lack thereof) of individual scenes and their potential impact on a reader. You have to have a perfectly polished start for the agent and publisher, but for the reader, and for future hopes of publishing sequels or other books, every scene needs to be as well polished. When I finally get an agent or publisher, I want my novels to be as print-ready as I can get them. Blogging seems to be helping me with that regardless of the yet-undiscovered issues of being online, in the supposed public eye (a dozen hits, or fifty, are hardly the supposed millions, but still, it's out there for more to see later). so, for now, I continue, and hope you enjoy.
I hesitated, when I first started blogging. I tried the traditional publication channels for a long time first, but my timing has never been good, and by the time I thought my writing good enough to be worth considering publication, the publishers had been inundated by fantasy submissions and many weren't accepting even proposals, so I returned to revising and writing and getting stories from hand writing into the computer where I could finish and polish them and tried again. A couple years later, many publishers that use to take proposals were only accepting through an agent, so that changed the nature of the search. Also, I have a day job, time is limited, and when i couldn’t get an agent to even try to sell my books after several tries, I went back to typing. I've gone back and forth a few times since.
I encountered may tales of stacks of reject letters even for writers who became famous, but they never tell you how much time and effort goes into every one of those rejections, and not a little cost in postage and printing and all when it is a matter of submitting fifty pages of a novel at a crack. Time and energy is still the real killer. Most of a year just researching the first time, with one real submission (the only one that didn’t have a no-fantasy sign up, and that one might as well have--they stopped doing fantasy in favor of light science fiction, and that was when I had more time available from my day job. I have to plan and set aside that kind of time and it helps if I'm not traveling, which seems rare lately.
I heard tales of succcess through blogging, though in truth those are extremely rare. But I also heard tales of networking and workshopping on line. My efforts to get a local writing group together (or keep one together that formed after a writing class for awhile) have all fallen flat so maybe online... My research in that direction hasn't been as fruitful as I hoped. I suspect I just don't get the formats or how to schedule enough computer time into my life, but blogs offered more control of my time and input and an opportunity for discussion if I could find the right audience.
I hesitated to go the blog route, still. Afterall, copyright and prepublication publication and all are fuzzy areas, blogs and bloggers successfully getting into publication rare, and my technical successes even more rare. Even when i think I’m charging in at the leading edge, I have generally found that what I was trying was already passe’ and even old fashioned. By the time I discovered modems and networks, the internet was alive and vast and searching was all on prebuilt search engines. By the time i discovered e-mail, instant messaging was already popular (and the art of letter writing already near death.)
Still, I decided to try it. If I can’t get published, at least I can reach some of the readers that might have found my books worth reading. If I can't get an editor, at least I can get feedback and maybe find out why I can’t get anyone interested enough to read past the first fifty pages. (I know the first paragraphs are weak, but so are the first paragraphs of most of the fantasy books I love to read, and somehow they got published anyway. Most fantasy readers I know will at least read the first few pages or even some middle sections before deciding the book is a dud. My books, I’m sure, have flaws, but I thought the problems would prove to be in the plots later, or in the endings (how many endings satisfy every reader fully?) Maybe the blog readership, if I can reach them, can tell me what I’m doing wrong...
I'm not there yet even on my longer-established blog (with much on writing, some on Christian Science Fiction and YA writing, and a YA novel in work--see http://home.earthlink.net/~wyverns/ --but I have a fairly steady daily audience (even though I don't post any more there than here) and on rare occasion a comment. So I still have hopes that the experience will be valuable, and can hardly be detrimental except to cut a little more into my time.
It at least makes me take a closer/different look at my writing, and the serial posting has made me more aware of the completeness (or lack thereof) of individual scenes and their potential impact on a reader. You have to have a perfectly polished start for the agent and publisher, but for the reader, and for future hopes of publishing sequels or other books, every scene needs to be as well polished. When I finally get an agent or publisher, I want my novels to be as print-ready as I can get them. Blogging seems to be helping me with that regardless of the yet-undiscovered issues of being online, in the supposed public eye (a dozen hits, or fifty, are hardly the supposed millions, but still, it's out there for more to see later). so, for now, I continue, and hope you enjoy.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
wasted words?
A day later than I planned for today's posts, but life is the way it is. the following started as notes from a conference and obviously morphed, hopefully for the better as i thought it all through.
I dont’ know if its typical or not, but I’ve tried to put how I write into words that might be useful and interesting to others developing their writing skills, I realized in the process that I write much more than will ever make it to print, vastly more. I don’t just mean journals and practical things like how to’s and character sketches, blogs, class nots and conference notes, story notes and alien word lists. I mean even in the writing of stories I want to get published, hope to get published. I write perhaps many times more than ever makes it to even a good solid "first" draft in many cases (Cerelian Gold is still an exception and I have had to add much without deleting much to get it to its current stage). I usually write entire scenes (large portions of novels) that will never make it to print, and that’s only counting each unique scene once, rather than the several times I might have written and rewritten it (I have stacks and stacks of boxes of paper notes besides computer notes. Some of the latter disappear into the ether but i periodically save versions and if I remove more than a few words at a time, I often cut and paste into a “not used” file. I originally did it because I hated the thought I might prefer it to the new version, I might decide it was a necessary scene after all, I might... and just hated to really delete ANYTHING. Since then I’ve learned that it has other values, because the reason something didn’t work for one character might be exactly why some speach pattern, some atttitude or expression or reaction would be perfect for another character in another story, or at least the seed for a piece of a scene, even if it is wholey changed by the time it is morphed into that new novel. They are, in essence, my ideas, even if they don’t get used as originally intended, and ideas are worth capturing.
I have also written "just for fun", that is, what some might label fanfic though I never intend that it should be read by anyone else, trash fan fic, stories with some minimal basis in old tv shows or other people’s stories just to try out one of my characters in differnet scenarios and settings, to introduce them to characters I grew up with and feel like i know enough to guess how they might react to a character such as mine and build ideas for how to display my character at their best, worst, how not to display them. and of course, just for fun because I like to play and have not lost my imagination though youth is long behind me. I’m horrible at getting the tv characters “right”, but that’s okay. It’s like a first draft that never needs a second draft because the act of trying to put it into words builds images in my mind that I can then play with for hours with and without pen in hand, (like on long drives) whereas if I just daydream without writing, the image is more fleeting, less substantial, and quickly lost. (In medieval times, there were many unique and interesting ideas about where the thinking mind, the emotional heart, and the soul might reside in the human body. I'm convince that my mind, at least, is in my hand, I think best with pen in hand.)
I know that some people can hold onto day dreams better, and some of them say, even believe that they have “composed a story” that they just haven’t written down yet... They can envision it very clearly, or what seems to them in a lot of detail, and for some that might be true, that they have a very good tv show image of the story. That’s a long way from writing even a script, though, and I suspect many would find that their great novel has the substance of a one hour tv show, if they tried to put it into words. The mental image is usually very much that--images--even if they have a mental view of the dialog to accompany the pictures. I will compose as I drive, work to hold onto some scene or part of scene in all its phrases, and when I get it to paper at drive’s end, I have maybe a paragraph of real substance and some vague notes that go beyond or around it, rarely better than any other first draft, and often worse, though it might have captured a good idea or two to work with.
The act of transfering mental words and images to real words on paper or computer screen is a different act that thinking about it in more ways than I suspect even writers like myself fully comprehend. It is, in many senses, like translating - in thinking, you hae one speaker, in putting the image into initial words, the not-even-quite first draft, you have the translator listening, and then in the polishing and revising you develop the real translation into the new language. Or I might liken it to the act of picking up a paint brush. Still the art is not on the canvas when the first words are written; that's only a bit of color on the brush until all the thought and revisions shape the art in the layers of paint, shape, shade, and color. And ultimately, like the artist or the musician, I fell like all those words that never make it to print, whether play or purpose, concentrated revision or wild ideas that go nowhere, every word is the practice necessary to make the new piece, the next story work.
I dont’ know if its typical or not, but I’ve tried to put how I write into words that might be useful and interesting to others developing their writing skills, I realized in the process that I write much more than will ever make it to print, vastly more. I don’t just mean journals and practical things like how to’s and character sketches, blogs, class nots and conference notes, story notes and alien word lists. I mean even in the writing of stories I want to get published, hope to get published. I write perhaps many times more than ever makes it to even a good solid "first" draft in many cases (Cerelian Gold is still an exception and I have had to add much without deleting much to get it to its current stage). I usually write entire scenes (large portions of novels) that will never make it to print, and that’s only counting each unique scene once, rather than the several times I might have written and rewritten it (I have stacks and stacks of boxes of paper notes besides computer notes. Some of the latter disappear into the ether but i periodically save versions and if I remove more than a few words at a time, I often cut and paste into a “not used” file. I originally did it because I hated the thought I might prefer it to the new version, I might decide it was a necessary scene after all, I might... and just hated to really delete ANYTHING. Since then I’ve learned that it has other values, because the reason something didn’t work for one character might be exactly why some speach pattern, some atttitude or expression or reaction would be perfect for another character in another story, or at least the seed for a piece of a scene, even if it is wholey changed by the time it is morphed into that new novel. They are, in essence, my ideas, even if they don’t get used as originally intended, and ideas are worth capturing.
I have also written "just for fun", that is, what some might label fanfic though I never intend that it should be read by anyone else, trash fan fic, stories with some minimal basis in old tv shows or other people’s stories just to try out one of my characters in differnet scenarios and settings, to introduce them to characters I grew up with and feel like i know enough to guess how they might react to a character such as mine and build ideas for how to display my character at their best, worst, how not to display them. and of course, just for fun because I like to play and have not lost my imagination though youth is long behind me. I’m horrible at getting the tv characters “right”, but that’s okay. It’s like a first draft that never needs a second draft because the act of trying to put it into words builds images in my mind that I can then play with for hours with and without pen in hand, (like on long drives) whereas if I just daydream without writing, the image is more fleeting, less substantial, and quickly lost. (In medieval times, there were many unique and interesting ideas about where the thinking mind, the emotional heart, and the soul might reside in the human body. I'm convince that my mind, at least, is in my hand, I think best with pen in hand.)
I know that some people can hold onto day dreams better, and some of them say, even believe that they have “composed a story” that they just haven’t written down yet... They can envision it very clearly, or what seems to them in a lot of detail, and for some that might be true, that they have a very good tv show image of the story. That’s a long way from writing even a script, though, and I suspect many would find that their great novel has the substance of a one hour tv show, if they tried to put it into words. The mental image is usually very much that--images--even if they have a mental view of the dialog to accompany the pictures. I will compose as I drive, work to hold onto some scene or part of scene in all its phrases, and when I get it to paper at drive’s end, I have maybe a paragraph of real substance and some vague notes that go beyond or around it, rarely better than any other first draft, and often worse, though it might have captured a good idea or two to work with.
The act of transfering mental words and images to real words on paper or computer screen is a different act that thinking about it in more ways than I suspect even writers like myself fully comprehend. It is, in many senses, like translating - in thinking, you hae one speaker, in putting the image into initial words, the not-even-quite first draft, you have the translator listening, and then in the polishing and revising you develop the real translation into the new language. Or I might liken it to the act of picking up a paint brush. Still the art is not on the canvas when the first words are written; that's only a bit of color on the brush until all the thought and revisions shape the art in the layers of paint, shape, shade, and color. And ultimately, like the artist or the musician, I fell like all those words that never make it to print, whether play or purpose, concentrated revision or wild ideas that go nowhere, every word is the practice necessary to make the new piece, the next story work.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Fiction Friday - Green Eyes
Candice eyed the pie warily, cold with the awareness that Jerdy had not yet returned.
Candice had watched Jerdy depart unhappily, for his sake and hers but neither of them said anything. They were regularly taken from the cage floor, never for good, and the guards would ensure that both of them had a bad time, since she didn't have Jerdy's protection, or he hers.
Someone had ordered that they two of them share the cage, but it was not likely to be the guards, and the guards would not approve anything that made their prison time more bearable, especially cage time. Ruining rest, tormenting the wake time of prisoners with searches, demeaning behaviors (licking the guards' feet had been a recent favorite) and beatings. Yet Jerdy's presence had made their time more bareable even though it meant sleeping on the floor every other night (no bed had come with Jerdy's arrival and both had wondered if those arranging the sharing of the cage had intended that they should somehow find a way to mate. In the intervening weeks, they had discussed the possibility to pass the time but Candice was Earth standard and Jerdy was, to Candice's eyes, an overgrown spider with beautiful green eyes. He had occasionally rocked her to sleep after the scientists had finished some henious experiment, and she had massaged damaged limbs to sooth him to rest, always in the dark, when the guards couldn't see the comfort they offered each other, but no more was even possible.
Sometimes the pies were pleasant, intended as some sort of horrible looking thing that would be digusting to eat if it were real, but being based on alien horrors. Candice found those no more repulsive than the rest of the alien mush they served, and sometimes better. Other times, they looked delightful and proved revolting, though after the first few weeks, they were no longer toxic. The scientists had been appalled to have their test subject vomiting or doubling over in pain even before the experiments began, frustrated when she was so high on something with drug-like effects that she was unaware of anything they said or did, and had quickly enforced a more careful if no more pleasant diet. The worst ones were always after prisoners failed to return.
The last one had been the blue lady. She had finally secumbed to some experiment, or given up in despair when her beautiful songs faded, but eventually she failed to return and another pie had been served. it might have been just berries, cream boiled just enough to scum, and food die, but not a prisoner would touch the blue filling in the pastry, a perfect match to her soft skin.
She had been taken away for days at a time and so had Jerdy, so she didn't immediately worry. He would come back exhausted and battered as she had and she would comfort him when the lights went out, but the pie awaited and must be openned. That much the guards would insist on, though eating was not. She had seen them try once. Not a guard had come away clean of the foul brown goo that the prisoners had thrown happily. They were so filthy at all times, a little food on themselves was better than eating it. They guards were less than appreciative but they didn't try it again. The prisoners had little in common, no way to help each other beyond turning their backs for privacy and a hand jesture through the nearest bars, but they could throw food, or hum for the blue lady, or offer silence when Candice refused to do some humiliating thing by standing silent. A verbal refusal would bring a beating but as if she could forget words in a day, the guards assumed silent disaabedience was a failure to understand and would force the paces slowly, like giving a lesson, then eventually give up in bordom when she failed to learn. And Jerdy would sooth her tension afterwards, and or would rock her to sleep when the scientists did so much worse, stroking her and smiling with his beautiful green eyes into her face as if her mere existence cheered him.
The pie waited, and Jerdy's beautiful green eyes.
Candice had watched Jerdy depart unhappily, for his sake and hers but neither of them said anything. They were regularly taken from the cage floor, never for good, and the guards would ensure that both of them had a bad time, since she didn't have Jerdy's protection, or he hers.
Someone had ordered that they two of them share the cage, but it was not likely to be the guards, and the guards would not approve anything that made their prison time more bearable, especially cage time. Ruining rest, tormenting the wake time of prisoners with searches, demeaning behaviors (licking the guards' feet had been a recent favorite) and beatings. Yet Jerdy's presence had made their time more bareable even though it meant sleeping on the floor every other night (no bed had come with Jerdy's arrival and both had wondered if those arranging the sharing of the cage had intended that they should somehow find a way to mate. In the intervening weeks, they had discussed the possibility to pass the time but Candice was Earth standard and Jerdy was, to Candice's eyes, an overgrown spider with beautiful green eyes. He had occasionally rocked her to sleep after the scientists had finished some henious experiment, and she had massaged damaged limbs to sooth him to rest, always in the dark, when the guards couldn't see the comfort they offered each other, but no more was even possible.
Sometimes the pies were pleasant, intended as some sort of horrible looking thing that would be digusting to eat if it were real, but being based on alien horrors. Candice found those no more repulsive than the rest of the alien mush they served, and sometimes better. Other times, they looked delightful and proved revolting, though after the first few weeks, they were no longer toxic. The scientists had been appalled to have their test subject vomiting or doubling over in pain even before the experiments began, frustrated when she was so high on something with drug-like effects that she was unaware of anything they said or did, and had quickly enforced a more careful if no more pleasant diet. The worst ones were always after prisoners failed to return.
The last one had been the blue lady. She had finally secumbed to some experiment, or given up in despair when her beautiful songs faded, but eventually she failed to return and another pie had been served. it might have been just berries, cream boiled just enough to scum, and food die, but not a prisoner would touch the blue filling in the pastry, a perfect match to her soft skin.
She had been taken away for days at a time and so had Jerdy, so she didn't immediately worry. He would come back exhausted and battered as she had and she would comfort him when the lights went out, but the pie awaited and must be openned. That much the guards would insist on, though eating was not. She had seen them try once. Not a guard had come away clean of the foul brown goo that the prisoners had thrown happily. They were so filthy at all times, a little food on themselves was better than eating it. They guards were less than appreciative but they didn't try it again. The prisoners had little in common, no way to help each other beyond turning their backs for privacy and a hand jesture through the nearest bars, but they could throw food, or hum for the blue lady, or offer silence when Candice refused to do some humiliating thing by standing silent. A verbal refusal would bring a beating but as if she could forget words in a day, the guards assumed silent disaabedience was a failure to understand and would force the paces slowly, like giving a lesson, then eventually give up in bordom when she failed to learn. And Jerdy would sooth her tension afterwards, and or would rock her to sleep when the scientists did so much worse, stroking her and smiling with his beautiful green eyes into her face as if her mere existence cheered him.
The pie waited, and Jerdy's beautiful green eyes.
Sales pitches and blurbs
I'm nearly done transcribing my last set of revisions, still need one more fight scene toward end and have to cut about 25000 words, but its still close enough to start thinking about how to get it published so I've been thinking about sales pitches. Some sites have suggested that the query letter should have something of the flavor of a jacket blurb.
How about:
“She is strong like some pottery,” her interogator noted, “able to bear great weights, yet fragile if struck in the wrong direction. Her spirit, too, is strong, but thin, a veneer over the cracked surface beneath.”
Candice McGregor had spent more time off planet than any other Earther, over two years of it as the subject of alien experiments and torture by Cereli scientists until some of their own broke her free. Now her second trip, to teach alien languages and cultures at the Commonwealth university on REagell seems likely to take a similar course. Her Cerel captors seem interested in resuming where Nish left off, but this time Candice is not alone. A bunch of Commonwealth military and govies are taken with her, including her most recent alien lover, the future of govenor of REagell. With Commoner Spacers, Marines, and the govenor’s staffers at each others throat, and the Cerel fighting for control of her time, her mind, and her body, Candice is expecting to be tortured to death in a world of unfriendly aliens. Still, on Nish, Candice learned that the Cerel game of bikjni allows goals to be achieved even when the game is lost, and that it is sometimes possible to hold onto life one day, or one hour at a time, even in the midst of hell. It soon becomes a race between exhaustion, madness, and a spirit barely holding on as Candice tries to use what she has learned of her tormentors to find peace and hope, if only for one more day, for all of them.
Probably too much, though its shorter than my first draft and its not the length but the content that is the real issue, here. In the unsuccessful letters I've tried for other books, I've given the basics but I think probably more than is needed in the intial query. For final decision, yeah, they need to know more, but do they really need to know current length (it'll get edited and change anyway), how much of genre? This one is adult science fiction, space fiction (is it important to differentiate? i would have said light science fiction, as it is light on the science, but my comment on a book review I did made me wonder. is my idea of light science fiction really "hard core"? That's what someone said when I so much as suggested that, if telepathy is what makes a story science fiction, then telepathy should play a role in the story line. Hard core? The terms have new definitions and I fear using the wrong one is potentially worse than specigying at all. Do the publishers need to know up front (since it is an editable feature) that the current version has sexual content but nothing explicit, including references and ... vague descriptions of past sexual violence, adult themes but not graphic, some poor values (my main character will at least try to get in bed with several men and others encourage it). How much does the agent or publisher want to know the first time they consider whether even to read more than a couple sample pages?
One pub company said to write the letter in the style of the book, but i doubt they really mean that. The pace wouldn't work, for one thing. A decent scene is more than a page, and a scene conveys one idea, not all the ideas needed for a query letter.
How about:
“She is strong like some pottery,” her interogator noted, “able to bear great weights, yet fragile if struck in the wrong direction. Her spirit, too, is strong, but thin, a veneer over the cracked surface beneath.”
Candice McGregor had spent more time off planet than any other Earther, over two years of it as the subject of alien experiments and torture by Cereli scientists until some of their own broke her free. Now her second trip, to teach alien languages and cultures at the Commonwealth university on REagell seems likely to take a similar course. Her Cerel captors seem interested in resuming where Nish left off, but this time Candice is not alone. A bunch of Commonwealth military and govies are taken with her, including her most recent alien lover, the future of govenor of REagell. With Commoner Spacers, Marines, and the govenor’s staffers at each others throat, and the Cerel fighting for control of her time, her mind, and her body, Candice is expecting to be tortured to death in a world of unfriendly aliens. Still, on Nish, Candice learned that the Cerel game of bikjni allows goals to be achieved even when the game is lost, and that it is sometimes possible to hold onto life one day, or one hour at a time, even in the midst of hell. It soon becomes a race between exhaustion, madness, and a spirit barely holding on as Candice tries to use what she has learned of her tormentors to find peace and hope, if only for one more day, for all of them.
Probably too much, though its shorter than my first draft and its not the length but the content that is the real issue, here. In the unsuccessful letters I've tried for other books, I've given the basics but I think probably more than is needed in the intial query. For final decision, yeah, they need to know more, but do they really need to know current length (it'll get edited and change anyway), how much of genre? This one is adult science fiction, space fiction (is it important to differentiate? i would have said light science fiction, as it is light on the science, but my comment on a book review I did made me wonder. is my idea of light science fiction really "hard core"? That's what someone said when I so much as suggested that, if telepathy is what makes a story science fiction, then telepathy should play a role in the story line. Hard core? The terms have new definitions and I fear using the wrong one is potentially worse than specigying at all. Do the publishers need to know up front (since it is an editable feature) that the current version has sexual content but nothing explicit, including references and ... vague descriptions of past sexual violence, adult themes but not graphic, some poor values (my main character will at least try to get in bed with several men and others encourage it). How much does the agent or publisher want to know the first time they consider whether even to read more than a couple sample pages?
One pub company said to write the letter in the style of the book, but i doubt they really mean that. The pace wouldn't work, for one thing. A decent scene is more than a page, and a scene conveys one idea, not all the ideas needed for a query letter.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
In my limited experience with blogging, I have found that the hardest part is getting an audience, and the second hardest part is to get them to comment. Despite all the hype, an audience doesn't come instantaneously unless you already have a prebuilt online friendly audience (such as teens who txt each other constantly and can invite each other to join the online world as well as chat). It may be easier than trying to find and put together an offline writing groups to exchange ideas and feedback and socialize with, but not by a lot, at least not in the beginning, and I'm not sure in the long run, either.
As to commenting, a recent conference presentation gave me an answer to why although not a solution. It said it was easy for most people to comment on simple ideas and every day things, like how often to mow the lawn and whether home owners associations should dictate what bushes you can plant (we have actively avoided living anywhere that has an hoa because we would be spending all our planting time in meetings argueing. We prefer plants to lawns.)
It is harder, though, to get people to think and write about more complex issues--they are content to read, may even love to read it, but it is not the average reader who will even comment with a thank you for posting--and almost impossible to get people to comment on a fiction story they are enjoying because the act of writing about it takes them out of the world they are reading about, and no one wants to do that. I edit a lot and have taken many workshops and one of the reasons it is hard to give positive feedback is because it is the problems that takes us out of the fiction world and allows us to notice that the story is made of words rather than scenes and characters and enables us to write a reaction. (That makes it double important to write good, constructive, positive feedback even when we are pointing out a problem.)
So, I like to think that the lack of comments on both my blogs means that people are enjoying my stories, but I fear that in this case (in the other case I know I have readers on the days I post; I can't tell, here) that it is the lack of readers that keeps them from posting. At least here, the older scenes stay around, so a reader joining late can find out what came before.
As to commenting, a recent conference presentation gave me an answer to why although not a solution. It said it was easy for most people to comment on simple ideas and every day things, like how often to mow the lawn and whether home owners associations should dictate what bushes you can plant (we have actively avoided living anywhere that has an hoa because we would be spending all our planting time in meetings argueing. We prefer plants to lawns.)
It is harder, though, to get people to think and write about more complex issues--they are content to read, may even love to read it, but it is not the average reader who will even comment with a thank you for posting--and almost impossible to get people to comment on a fiction story they are enjoying because the act of writing about it takes them out of the world they are reading about, and no one wants to do that. I edit a lot and have taken many workshops and one of the reasons it is hard to give positive feedback is because it is the problems that takes us out of the fiction world and allows us to notice that the story is made of words rather than scenes and characters and enables us to write a reaction. (That makes it double important to write good, constructive, positive feedback even when we are pointing out a problem.)
So, I like to think that the lack of comments on both my blogs means that people are enjoying my stories, but I fear that in this case (in the other case I know I have readers on the days I post; I can't tell, here) that it is the lack of readers that keeps them from posting. At least here, the older scenes stay around, so a reader joining late can find out what came before.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Getting Started
I hesitated to start posting here. I'm still relatively new to posting blogs and wasn't sure if I would use this to replace my first one: http://home.earthlink.net/~wyverns/ or as an addendum, and have finally decided to make it an additional one for two reasons: One, it doesn't obviously add much functionality as I hoped (though that may just be my not understanding the software well enough) and because that one is definately young adult with links to many Christian Science Fiction sites, and I decided the more borderline stuff I write should go elsewhere. (For example, Cerelian Gold's main character sleeps with a man she isn't married to and violent assaults are alluded to though not described in detail.) I decided the more adult and questionably moral themes could be on their own blog.
If you are looking for more science and lighter moods, go to the blog above, where I have just started to post scenes from a young adult space fiction novel with more alien aliens and more fun themes. Watch here for scenes from Cerelian Gold. Feedback highly encouraged. I haven't gotten published yet and only part of it is that I haven't dedicated enough time and energy to finding a publisher or agent. I presume I'm doing something wrong since I keep getting rejected.
If you are looking for more science and lighter moods, go to the blog above, where I have just started to post scenes from a young adult space fiction novel with more alien aliens and more fun themes. Watch here for scenes from Cerelian Gold. Feedback highly encouraged. I haven't gotten published yet and only part of it is that I haven't dedicated enough time and energy to finding a publisher or agent. I presume I'm doing something wrong since I keep getting rejected.
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