Through a complicated set of circumstances (that mostly was me going "Hey,") I've been invited to participate in the "My Writing Process" Blog Tour & Baton Passing. Thanks to Carol Strickland for passing the baton off to me!
The rules are complex, delving into the depths of the human psyche wherein one may find monsters worthy of emerging from the mind of Lovecraft and where hellscapes do battle with rainbow unicorn lands for dominance within one's soul. It is a trip from which one may never return, with danger, drama, and-
Oh, wait, wrong blog tour. I'm just supposed to answer some questions about writing.
1) What am I currently working on?
Right now, I have three primary projects. The first one is the YA Atlantis story I talked about in this post so long ago. The world still needs some building, but it's fairly well-developed. What's not entirely developed is the story and the main character. I tried to start without them and got stuck on chapter 2.
The second project is a pirate-themed trilogy. The first book is the only novel I've managed to finish, but that was a few years ago. I looked at it again recently and realize I have a lot to fix: Long, dull "telling" paragraphs, adverbs and "very"s aplenty, far too much pirate slang (so many red squiggly lines...), and a dreaded "unconscious for far longer than is healthy due to head injury" scene. Whoops. I also realize that I may be missing an entire scene at the end. It ends of a bit of a cliffhanger, and after talking with some friends about it at a write-in, I think I have an idea of where it really should end.
And the third project is honestly the one with the largest scale and smallest potential market: a superhero series. Spanning three generations of various heroes, called Aces, from the 1980s to 2030, it's less a series and more a universe. Plots for each story follow anyone from the greatest heroes of the day to the small-time criminal and can be flash fiction to full novel. It varies from one story to another, and they all build upon each other between stories and generations. The world the Aces live in changes between each generation as forces for good and evil rise and fall. I've started with some of the short stories while I plot out the larger ones, and so far, I'm loving working inside this universe, especially with the little guys.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Mostly, because it's mine and no one else can write the stories in my head. I'm not trying to push any envelopes or break any molds. I just want to tell good stories of adventure and discovery, easy reads for the people who want to escape the real world for a little while.
While the overall concepts may not be mold-breakers, I try to make the individual stories have unique elements, though. Some of the stories for the Aces series focus on non-super characters in a super world (like the costume designer, the bank robber, or the henchman) or supers who choose not to use their powers (like the unstoppable Ace who's much happier doing tax audits than saving the world). The hero from the Atlantis story has asthma and a heart condition, making him be a hero while keeping an eye on his health and a very dangerous weakness. The pirate trilogy takes place in a world where metal is rare, requiring some major changes to the weaponry you'd normally find in the setting. Little things like that that come down to the individual story.
3) Why do I write what I do?
I write adventure fiction because I've always dreamed of having my own adventure. I've spent a lifetime daydreaming about climbing mountains, of finding lost treasure or forgotten bones, of myth and magic being real. My muse gives me story ideas that fit these molds to keep me sane and safe at home. I write speculative fiction adventures so I can live vicariously through my characters.
4) How does your writing process work?
My regular readers will know that I'm still figuring this out, really. I've tried pantsing, just slamming words down on the paper and going where they take me. It rarely worked out, although I did manage to put "The end" on one full-length novel. Kinda. It's more "to be continued." Now I'm trying outlining, and it's not exactly doing it for me either, although it's gotten me through two short stories. As it is, I'm just trying to make a schedule that won't burn me out and a balance of writing and plotting that will lead to more completed stories.
And that's it. That's what I'm up to and how the magic happens at the Maxwell house (Not to be confused with the coffee brand. There is no coffee at my house. If you come expecting any, you will be sorely disappointed.) Now I'm passing the baton on to a few good friends who'll continue the tour in a week! Enjoy!
Melanie Williams is an aspiring speculative fiction author. She delights
in writing stories where the character are often both People of Color
and LBGT+. A geek to her core, she can be found at her blog, Eclectic Little Dork.
My #1 writing buddy, victim of my plotholes, and the one to blame for many of my ideas, I'm making Agent Double Oh Zero resurrect her blog for this. She is a writer of science fiction and fantasy, metalhead, Whovian, and general geekian who can be found blogging at God of Ephemera.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
I am the Zombies
Follow me, if you will, through a little experiment.
First, take a towel. The cleanest, whitest one you have. Then go outside and find the muddiest patch you can. Use the towel to wipe it up. Stray cat leave a hairball on your doorstep? Use the towel. Neighbor forgot the doggie bag in your yard? Towel. Clean up the entirety of the outdoors with that towel. Now look at your handiwork. Not the clean yard, the towel.
That towel represents how I felt last week, which is why there hasn't been a post until now.
There are stories everywhere you look. Every experience is research. As a writer, it's part of my job to pay extra attention to these experiences. And from my experience, I can now write a story about the ER of a hospital in Myrtle Beach. For the record, I do not live in Myrtle Beach.
On top of terrible sickness, I also realized I'd drained myself writing. Both my muse and myself needed a break. Luckily, I'd decided on that BEFORE my functional level was closer to zombie-buried-in-a-steel-coffin-before-the-apocalypse than human (and let me tell you, that's one grumpy zombie,) so I was able to avoid arguing with myself over getting my daily allotment done. I've allowed myself a break to heal physically and mentally, and that included the blog too. Over the past two weeks, I have recovered both and put the zombie away.
So maybe that whole "write every day" thing isn't for me. I can manage it during NaNos, but at the cost of my sanity for a month. Evidently, this is the way I am whether the word count is 1,667 or 250. So now I get to figure out a new schedule, a new plan to keep me working without slacking off. Find out a little bit more about me as a writer. You'd think after so many years, I'd know myself inside and out, and yet I still feel like such a beginner at times. As long as I keep at it, though, I'll keep learning. Eventually I'll know what I'd doing. For now, I just have to "do."
First, take a towel. The cleanest, whitest one you have. Then go outside and find the muddiest patch you can. Use the towel to wipe it up. Stray cat leave a hairball on your doorstep? Use the towel. Neighbor forgot the doggie bag in your yard? Towel. Clean up the entirety of the outdoors with that towel. Now look at your handiwork. Not the clean yard, the towel.
That towel represents how I felt last week, which is why there hasn't been a post until now.
There are stories everywhere you look. Every experience is research. As a writer, it's part of my job to pay extra attention to these experiences. And from my experience, I can now write a story about the ER of a hospital in Myrtle Beach. For the record, I do not live in Myrtle Beach.
On top of terrible sickness, I also realized I'd drained myself writing. Both my muse and myself needed a break. Luckily, I'd decided on that BEFORE my functional level was closer to zombie-buried-in-a-steel-coffin-before-the-apocalypse than human (and let me tell you, that's one grumpy zombie,) so I was able to avoid arguing with myself over getting my daily allotment done. I've allowed myself a break to heal physically and mentally, and that included the blog too. Over the past two weeks, I have recovered both and put the zombie away.
So maybe that whole "write every day" thing isn't for me. I can manage it during NaNos, but at the cost of my sanity for a month. Evidently, this is the way I am whether the word count is 1,667 or 250. So now I get to figure out a new schedule, a new plan to keep me working without slacking off. Find out a little bit more about me as a writer. You'd think after so many years, I'd know myself inside and out, and yet I still feel like such a beginner at times. As long as I keep at it, though, I'll keep learning. Eventually I'll know what I'd doing. For now, I just have to "do."
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Book Recommendation: Uglies
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| Cover image from Wikipedia |
She wasn't wrong. It's got dystopia with a dark truth and a mystery of the old world. It's got a strong heroine who's manipulated by the system and fights it. And the basis for the dystopia is just fascinating: What if the world's obsession with beauty went too far?
From Amazon: "Scott Westerfeld ... projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shay’s cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty."
It's a three book series with a follow-up fourth book, and something more coming in September apparently. As soon as I finished the first one, I had to go buy the second and third. I'm halfway done with the third and love it just as much as the first. It just keeps digging deeper into how messed up the world is, how far the bad guys will go to keep their perfect world. The technology is creative yet believable for the time (hoverboards that work on magnetism, recyclable clothing), the touches of our world long left behind haunting (cars with corpses locked inside running through crumbling city ruins.) The language is just different enough to be understandable, but obvious that time has changed the slang. Westerfield has built his dystopia beautifully. If you want to fill the void left behind by Hunger Games withdrawl, pick up Uglies.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
And the Verdict is...
Rejection. Form rejection. As much as the little voices wanted to, tried to convince me otherwise, I'm glad I listened to the sensible voice in my head that said it was to be expected well before it came. I would have been setting myself up for crushing disappointment had I gone in expecting an acceptance. My first story, first submission, bought with no problems? Unlikely. I've been knocked down, but instead of sitting there crying about being on the ground, I choose to get back up, dust myself off, and say, "All right, let's try this again." I'll build up my callouses, collect the scars. I'm proud to have my first one.
I'm not going back in as blindly as before, though. Late last week, someone on AW mentioned a site called The Grinder, where submissions are followed and days out tracked. And I'll be damned if the ones for Asimov's weren't right on the nose. The last few responses were rejections at 52, 53, 54 days. I was at day 49 and the status had just changed to "Under Review" on the website. Yesterday, at 53 days waiting, my rejection came in, exactly as expected. So now I have a resource to track wait times, try to submit to the places that are responding faster. At the very least, I won't have to live in my email anymore. It's cold in there.
I'm not going back in as blindly as before, though. Late last week, someone on AW mentioned a site called The Grinder, where submissions are followed and days out tracked. And I'll be damned if the ones for Asimov's weren't right on the nose. The last few responses were rejections at 52, 53, 54 days. I was at day 49 and the status had just changed to "Under Review" on the website. Yesterday, at 53 days waiting, my rejection came in, exactly as expected. So now I have a resource to track wait times, try to submit to the places that are responding faster. At the very least, I won't have to live in my email anymore. It's cold in there.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
On Coincidences
"The universe is rarely so lazy." That's what Sherlock Holmes says about coincidences, at least in the BBC show "Sherlock". Not sure if it's a classic Sherlock quote or not, but it gives you something to think about. But sometimes, there are things that you just can't explain, strange coincidences that defy reason because they don't involve anyone else but you and your mind.
When writers talk about characters and books, we can get whimsical.
"A writer is someone who has taught their mind to misbehave." - Oscar Wilde
"When you start writing, the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words themselves." - Alice Hoffman
"Writers aren't exactly people. They're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
We end up talking like the worlds in our minds, our characters, our settings are real and we're just telling stories someone else is telling us from some other plane of existance. When we get stuck, it's our characters not doing what we want them to do. And then there's the idea of a muse, some non-physical entity that's the source of our inspiration, someone who can leave us at the drop of a hat if we're not paying them enough attention or listening to them. It's all silly, isn't it? When it all comes down to it, it's just us, sitting there in front of a computer or a notebook or typewriter.
Isn't it?
The universe is rarely so lazy. So why did I, alone, make a modern immortal based on Morgan le Fay and set her birthdate 12 years before the first mention of her name in fiction (1150AD)? I don't know the King Arthur legends, the era they spawned from, and yet I decided my Morgan was 874 years old, pinning her date of birth right on the metaphorical donkey's bum. I didn't realize the coincidence until after the charcter was set in stone.
Why did I, alone, name my hero and my villain for my Atlantis story the exact same names as Abraham's sons from the Bible? I like biblical references in my writing, but I will not claim to know the Bible beyond the basic stories. And yet, I named my main character Isaac after Newton and Asimov, and my villain Ishmael, for the hero of Moby Dick, completely unaware that these were the same names as the sons of the first patriarch of the Old Testament.
The universe is rarely so lazy, so how can you explain coincidences like these? Is there something in the idea that characters and muses are different people from us, with different knowledge than us, using us as a conduit to tell stories? No, that's crazy. The universe is rarely so lazy, but "rarely" and "never" are hardly the same. Still, funny little thought, isn't it?
Have you ever encountered strange coincidences in your reading or writing?
When writers talk about characters and books, we can get whimsical.
"A writer is someone who has taught their mind to misbehave." - Oscar Wilde
"When you start writing, the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words themselves." - Alice Hoffman
"Writers aren't exactly people. They're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
We end up talking like the worlds in our minds, our characters, our settings are real and we're just telling stories someone else is telling us from some other plane of existance. When we get stuck, it's our characters not doing what we want them to do. And then there's the idea of a muse, some non-physical entity that's the source of our inspiration, someone who can leave us at the drop of a hat if we're not paying them enough attention or listening to them. It's all silly, isn't it? When it all comes down to it, it's just us, sitting there in front of a computer or a notebook or typewriter.
Isn't it?
The universe is rarely so lazy. So why did I, alone, make a modern immortal based on Morgan le Fay and set her birthdate 12 years before the first mention of her name in fiction (1150AD)? I don't know the King Arthur legends, the era they spawned from, and yet I decided my Morgan was 874 years old, pinning her date of birth right on the metaphorical donkey's bum. I didn't realize the coincidence until after the charcter was set in stone.
Why did I, alone, name my hero and my villain for my Atlantis story the exact same names as Abraham's sons from the Bible? I like biblical references in my writing, but I will not claim to know the Bible beyond the basic stories. And yet, I named my main character Isaac after Newton and Asimov, and my villain Ishmael, for the hero of Moby Dick, completely unaware that these were the same names as the sons of the first patriarch of the Old Testament.
The universe is rarely so lazy, so how can you explain coincidences like these? Is there something in the idea that characters and muses are different people from us, with different knowledge than us, using us as a conduit to tell stories? No, that's crazy. The universe is rarely so lazy, but "rarely" and "never" are hardly the same. Still, funny little thought, isn't it?
Have you ever encountered strange coincidences in your reading or writing?
Friday, April 25, 2014
What To Do With 28?
My birthday was yesterday, and, like Stephen King used to lie to interviewers about doing, I gave myself the day off from writing. Not that I couldn't have written. I only went to dinner with Mr. Maxwell, but I chose to spend the evening buried in my new Marvel 1602 graphic novel (Marvel comics, written by Neil Gaiman, set in 1602AD. Yes, it's as wonderful as it sounds.) I've several other new books waiting for my attention as well as my own writing. So, the question of the day is: I'm 28 now. What am I going to do with it? What do I want my life to be like when I turn 29?
This year, I want to read even more.
This year, I want to write even more.
This year, I want to be able to slip a magazine into shipping envelopes with my mom and dad's addresses or compose an email with a link and, in either, a note that says "Look Mom, Dad, I'm published." An aspiration I never had before.
If I work hard, read hard, and edit harder, maybe, just maybe, by the time I'm 29, I can have an agent. That one's a longshot, though.
But then, that's all just words and desires. So what WILL I do? I really don't know. Do my best, I guess. I've been writing every day for the past 40-something days, 250 words per day (yesterday not included). In a few days, maybe on day 50, I'll bump that up to 500 per day. 15,000 a month until I bump the wordcount again. I should be able to finish a novel or a few short stories on that pace.
Six weeks, still no word from Asimov's. I'm practically living in my email now, just waiting to see "1 New Message," no matter what it says.
This year, I want to read even more.
This year, I want to write even more.
This year, I want to be able to slip a magazine into shipping envelopes with my mom and dad's addresses or compose an email with a link and, in either, a note that says "Look Mom, Dad, I'm published." An aspiration I never had before.
If I work hard, read hard, and edit harder, maybe, just maybe, by the time I'm 29, I can have an agent. That one's a longshot, though.
But then, that's all just words and desires. So what WILL I do? I really don't know. Do my best, I guess. I've been writing every day for the past 40-something days, 250 words per day (yesterday not included). In a few days, maybe on day 50, I'll bump that up to 500 per day. 15,000 a month until I bump the wordcount again. I should be able to finish a novel or a few short stories on that pace.
Six weeks, still no word from Asimov's. I'm practically living in my email now, just waiting to see "1 New Message," no matter what it says.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl.
All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl. All sub and no 'R' makes Maxwell a dull girl.
All right, that's enough copy/pasting. Man, we have things so much easier than the days of typewriters.
They don't tell you the wait gets easier. Maybe it's worse when the wait is longer? I don't know, but I suppose I'll find out one day. For now, still waiting, but that anxiety, that "must check every hour every day" what-if monster seems to have gotten bored and wandered off. There's nothing to do for it but wait. It'll come when it comes. If that's tomorrow, exactly 5 weeks after I sent it in, then hoorah. If it's longer, then the editor is busy, or she had a bigger slush pile than usual, or maybe, just maybe, my story's under consideration. Who knows? Not me, and oddly, that's okay now.
Still, maybe I should go check my email. Just in case.
All right, that's enough copy/pasting. Man, we have things so much easier than the days of typewriters.
They don't tell you the wait gets easier. Maybe it's worse when the wait is longer? I don't know, but I suppose I'll find out one day. For now, still waiting, but that anxiety, that "must check every hour every day" what-if monster seems to have gotten bored and wandered off. There's nothing to do for it but wait. It'll come when it comes. If that's tomorrow, exactly 5 weeks after I sent it in, then hoorah. If it's longer, then the editor is busy, or she had a bigger slush pile than usual, or maybe, just maybe, my story's under consideration. Who knows? Not me, and oddly, that's okay now.
Still, maybe I should go check my email. Just in case.
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