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Monica Valentinelli, a fellow contributor to Flames Rising, posted a contest on her blog asking people to post about their passions, and I immediately thought of the first time I'd really tried to pin mine down. When I attended the Denver Publishing Institute back in 2000, [livejournal.com profile] jeff_duntemann was one of our guest faculty members. He talked about a number of issues in publishing (things he's still discussing over at ContraPositive), but the thing I remember the most wasn't really about publishing at all. Jeff talked to us about finding your passion and living it. As a young college grad, I remember writing to him afterwards about not being able to narrow down my passion any further than stories -- I wasn't completely enamored of any one type of publishing, necessarily, and not being passionate about a very narrow field made me nervous. But the idea of being passionate about stories made sense, and it's something that remains true for me.

Fast forward eleven years later and the same thing is, roughly, true. I have my fingers dipped in various types of publishing -- and while they're not all story related, most of them are. Writing obituaries ends up being about telling the story of someone's life, capturing all the bits that will be important to readers. Writing about history for "The Town with Five Main Streets" has a whole range of types of stories -- all of them that somehow impact the current landscape of the town where I live. Writing for Dragon ties in with helping other people tell stories. Heck, even teaching Mom-Baby Fitness has an element of sharing stories and experiences with other moms.

Monica's contest runs through midnight tonight, so write about your own passions and go over to her blog and leave a comment!
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I am very, very lucky to have my mother, code-named Maesi for purposes of the blog, visiting this week, because keeping track of my freelance assignments, teaching the Mommy-Baby fitness class, and being the guest editor at Branford Patch means wearing a lot of hats. If I thought that being a freelance writer meant a lot of multitasking, I had no idea how much more multitasking was required for a web editor. The job has been fantastically fun so far: I've gotten to do an interview about an upcoming animal summer camp hosted by our local animal shelter, and Bug, Maesi, and I did a photo shoot for an upcoming fundraiser in some gorgeous gardens. (Bug will not appear in any of the photos for the site, but she did make her way into a few that we'll keep for posterity.)

The thing that requires getting used to as an editor on this scale is that I'm even more attached to the computer than normal. There's no time to keep up with my web comics (I'll check them next week -- I can't even think about reading them right now), and games are an absolute no-no. I only have a few chapters left in Mythsoc Award finalist Megan Whelan Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings, and I've made very little progress in the last few days. The freelance assignment I expected to have completely wrapped up yesterday is still almost done -- I keep getting alerts that an article has been posted and needs to be edited, or remembering that I need to tweet a new article link or post recent news on the Branford Patch facebook page.

In short, I have a new appreciation for my editor (Nicole Ball), who made sure I'd have a light content week as her sub. She makes staying on top of the news look so easy -- and I'm glad she's getting her well-deserved vacation!
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I like obituaries. This is not out of any sense of the morbid (although people have accused me of that). What I think is neat is how a person's life can be summed up in two hundred, eight hundred, or two thousand words, and you get this snap shot image of who they were. I used to clip the obituaries from the old copies of the Branford Review as part of a library archive project when I worked at the Blackstone, and I learned some interesting things about Branford's history in the process. I'd not known previously that we'd had a watch tower in town during World War II, keeping an eye on the coast, that was manned mostly by civilians. This I picked up from the obituary of one of the women who volunteered her time to help protect the coast.

I write obituaries for Newsmakers, a project for Gale Cengage (the publisher I used to work for, and for whom I edit the autobiographies project). I've covered scientists and environmentalists, humanitarians and football coaches. Usually, reading the obituaries gives me this feeling of work well done. The people selected for the project tend to be people who accomplished good things with their lives, and lived to a ripe old age.

Occasionally, however, I'm assigned celebrities who have died of drug overdoses or similar before their prime. And I'm left feeling, "What a waste!" That's the only time that the job is irksome for me -- in part due to the added fact that celebrity obituaries are always more work (because they're covered in so many sources, and thus require sorting through many more articles before I can write my own). Which makes me think that with this last batch, I should have saved the conservationist who lived to be more than a hundred for the last essay I write, rather than the actor who died before he was forty. Alas.

In other news, it has been an exceptionally good mail week for me. I got paid (always a cause for happiness), I got a book (yay for DAW and [livejournal.com profile] jimhines!), and I got a mysterious envelope from an elementary school. The class I visited last month to talk about Branford history and writing sent me thank you letters for my appearance, which gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies. It's astonishing to see what the students picked up -- and what I should perhaps have phrased better when I was speaking, as some of the things they say they learned weren't things I quite intended to teach! I imagine that teachers get used to this sensation, but watching kids learn is still a real novelty to me. From watching Bug learn to blow kisses to seeing just what third and fourth graders find important -- it's this amazing window into the way that human minds work, distilled in a different way from what I see watching teens and adults. Kids are awesome.

The first question I'm answering for that class will be going up this coming week on "The Town with Five Main Streets" -- I hope I live up to their expectations!
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As part of the autobiography project, I got to correspond with playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, who introduced me (both through his essay and through my learning about his current work) to the idea of combining writing and movement. I've mentioned before the disconnect I used to feel, or imagine, between my thinking brain and my body's impact on thought. As I'm becoming more comfortable in the realm of movement, as taught by Ann Cowlin in her Dancing Thru Pregnancy classes and teacher training, I've given a lot more thought about how body and mind interact together. Linking movement with writing is a natural step in that direction, and I'd love to have the chance to study under van Itallie as he teaches it!

The good news is that van Itallie teaches just such a course, "Writing on Your Feet," at Shantigar, a foundation and retreat that teaches how to combine aspects of meditation, theater, and healing practices, nestled in the Berkshires (north of my old college stomping grounds). The bad news is that his next course is coming up this June (the 24th through the 26th), and alas, it's not in the stars for me to attend this year. But those of you who are interested in theater and writing, who also live on the east coast, should really check out not only the "Writing on Your Feet" class but opportunities in music and acting that are taking place there over the summer.

That way I'll be able to attend vicariously through you!
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I've been edging on that 30 messages in the inbox mark for the last three days. I just jumped back up to 35, and while I may be able to narrow it down by one more tonight, I don't think I'll get any closer to success between now and tomorrow morning.

The flow of work just keeps coming to me, and I'm grateful, if busy. This doesn't mean I haven't found any ways to procrastinate just a tad. The evil Arielle Kesweder (you know, one of my beta-readers? usually saintly? yeah, now evil) introduced me to Angry Birds for Chrome. I'd thought I didn't have the technology to experience the Angry Birds for myself, and was doomed to pop culture references that went over my head, but no, she had to show me the error of my ways. Luckily, while it's clever, it's not quite as addictive as, say, Plants vs. Zombies, so I think I'm safe.

I also spent some time personalizing my new nook today -- the old one has a cracked case, and since I bought the nifty warranty, I had a shiny new nook arrive in yesterday's mail. After adding a David Weber collection to the nook, I had to recreate my shelves and get organized. (For the record: Baen Books is awesomely ahead of the curve when it comes to using e-books as promotion -- they've been including CDs of previous books in Weber's Honor Harrington series in the back of the newest hardcovers for the last several books. Baen also launched a free library of backlist titles, which is amazing, and which I've utilized previously. I don't know how this impacts their bottom line, but as readers who have purchased several of the hard-copy versions of the series, we're grateful to have the e-versions as well, as some of the mass markets have dying bindings.)

Tomorrow is check in day for Kaz's Spring into Summer 50K writing challenge, and yet again, I've nothing to report. Summer camp was so good to me last year that I really want to accomplish something with the new SIS project. But tomorrow is also the day when I'm going in to talk to local elementary school students about writing and Branford history, and that seems like the more important priority for the day.
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Richard Castle just keeps making the news. In today's TV Guide, it was announced that Marvel Entertainment is going to be "adapting" Castle's "early novels" as graphic novels -- the first, Richard Castle's Deadly Storm, features Castle's "famous hero" Derrick Storm in one of his early adventures. The world just keeps getting more meta! (Castle isn't the only one who has a graphic novel coming soon. Real-life writer [livejournal.com profile] mdhenry -- supposedly the ghost writer for his character, glamazombie Amanda Feral -- announced a while ago that Amanda will be starring in a comic book adaptation of her memoirs from Dabel Brothers. Can't wait for more news on that front!)

In news from the Abbott Office, work has been pouring in. The life of a freelancer is full of this phenomenon: in January, I had almost no work and was trying like mad to find new clients. This month, I've had work come in from old clients and some new editors who I'd been recommended to by folks I've worked with in the past. Some of the new assignments are brilliantly fun, and I'm excited about having a full plate.

I was talking to Max Gladstone about how this has impacted my fiction writing schedule (which is, as you might guess, rather nonexistent lately). [livejournal.com profile] jeff_duntemann has given these words of wisdom more than once: "That's key, kiddies: If you want to be an SF writer, don't be a writer in your day job." To say that I'm beginning to see from his point of view would be an understatement -- I've felt the danger of being a freelance writer impacting my fiction writing for some time. It's come to a head recently as other aspects of my life have also demanded more of my time. Max suggested that writing copy and writing creatively can come from different parts of the brain, and if the computer burn out is keeping me from writing (which is sometimes the case), why not try long hand? I've not yet tried it, but it instantly struck me as a brilliant idea. If there were ever a way to get my brain in a different gear, longhand would be it. So, I may be giving that a try.

I'm also getting closer and closer to my start date as a teacher for Mommy-Baby Fitness, which means prep in that area and meetings with founder Ann Cowlin, who had an interview with new instructor Lauren Hefez posted today. My favorite quote is this one, which I think applies to more than just fitness: "At Dancing Thru Pregnancy® we are fond of the notion that if you know a certain behavior is the best for a situation, it is smart to chose that behavior. If you do not, you are sabotaging yourself."

If only I applied that better to all aspects of my life!
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I just learned in the last few days about a whole literary movement I'd not previously encountered -- or, at least, don't remember having encountered it during my lit classes in high school and college. (No doubt it was covered, but as it's most often associated with poetry, it's garbled in my memory along with iambs and anapests.) The style is called, simply (as is sensible), Puritan plain style. Since this is new to me, I've looked up descriptions from some experts. Laura Kuske von Wallmenich of Alma College writes that much literature was suspect in the Puritan viewpoint. Keeping language plain and simple -- "unornamented" -- was best, and though poetry was often questioned, poetry that served as a spiritual meditation and introspection was approved of. Ann Bradstreet is one of the best-known writers of this style (I do remember having her on a syllabus at some point), but people continue to use plain style in poetry.

Something that I think is not often discussed in terms of this literary movement are the genre writers who also keep their language simple, so as not to get in the way of telling the story. There's always some debate about style vs. content -- some readers will forgive a book not having much in the way of plot or characterization so long as it's beautifully told. Others prefer to cut straight to the chase: give it to me in plain style so I can get to the meat of the thing, what happens next, and to whom it's happening. I confess to identifying with the latter oftentimes, though I do like a tale that's told with some pizazz -- so long as the language doesn't distract me from the story being told. Caitlin Kittredge's ([livejournal.com profile] blackaire) Black London books are a great example of this: the setting is really gritty, but her use of language is just beautiful. Felix Gilman's Half-Made World strikes me this way as well. But the novels that hit that balance tend to be somewhat few and far between in my own reading, and I gravitate toward the tell-it-like-it-is novels in the genre, because I want good stories.

Science fiction and fantasy, of course, are probably not what the Puritans had in mind.
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Speaking of characters I've fallen in love with lately, there's a great new web series I picked up from a friend* via facebook called The World of Holly Woodlands. Calle, the loveable star, is an out of work actress who doesn't fit the body image Hollywood promotes. But in this world, skinny isn't in: instead, actresses who are "cusha" (or about size 18) are the ideal, which leads to a very different spin on ideas about beauty and body image. There's a two-minute trailer on the site that introduces you to Calle and her blog project; the first ten episodes are also live, which means it's still a good time to catch up without all the back episodes eating your life while you watch. A very cool thing for the series and the actors is that they're finalists in the New Media Film Festival. If you check out the series and like what you see, you can vote for them over at Mingle Media.

I've never been very good at targeting in on the issues behind body image/ideal beauty and the problems these cause to self-esteem. I've tried to write characters with body image issues before and haven't mastered introducing those themes without making them feel like themes. As a reader—and a watcher, I suppose—I usually avoid stories that seem to be about the message rather than about the story. I went to a short play a few years ago that had a very powerful effect on the audience, but it didn't work for me: I felt like I'd been hit over the head with the theme enough that I couldn't care about it. I felt that I'd gotten the point—but had no story to recall as my reward. (Another play by the same playwright, presented at the same performance, didn't have this issue at all—it stemmed from the relationship between two characters, one living and one dead, and the sense of loss and, at the same time, freedom, that came from the one character letting go of the other. So clearly, it wasn't that I just didn't like the writer's style, it was very much about the content of the piece.) So, since I don't like to read "message" stories, I really want to avoid writing them, while at the same time I want to tackle issues that real people struggle with.

I suspect that part of my lack of personal understanding about the body image issue is that, before the past year or so, I felt more or less divorced from my body. My body was a tool, or the thing I lived in, but I didn't much think it related to my understanding of the world, with the exception of self-identifying as short. (Tall people do experience the world differently from us short folk, because size comes with a host of problems for each of us. I can't use our food-processor without a stool, for example, because our counters are too high. A tall friend of mine has to sleep in his bed diagonally, or his feet stick out the bottom end. This is a fundamentally different way of experiencing the world!) In the past two years, however, going through pregnancy and post-partum, I've gained a new appreciation for how much my body impacts my world-view. Maybe this comes from not being in control of what my body was doing—being pregnant was, for me, much like being displaced from my own body, as I had no idea what I could expect from myself on any given day—but I think more of it comes from the fact that I've had to pay more attention to what it has been like to live inside this body. (This is particularly true as I've gotten more involved with women's fitness issues through my training with Dancing thru Pregnancy, since I've been paying close attention to the differences between men's bodies and women's bodies, and how we experience exercise.) My thoughts aren't just out there, floating around my head, they're impacted by a host of factors that I've probably always had to deal with, but never really taken into account. Hunger, tiredness, exercise, diet, hormonal cycle—all of those things have a more noticeable impact on my mood than I'd previously recognized. I was one of those people who'd just forget to eat if she wasn't reminded (not often, but occasionally), because I was too busy thinking about a project I was working on. Now? Forget about it. I don't want to inflict myself on my family when I have the hunger crankies.

Maybe now that I've gained a better idea of living inside my body as an experience, rather than something to be dismissed, I'll be able to look at some of those issues about body image that I've wanted to tackle. In the mean time, I'm comfortable leaving that kind of writing to people like "Calle," who can say a lot by just spinning our current perceptions on their heads.

* My friend is married to the director and creator of the series.
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Since the royal wedding last week (and since finishing David Weber's By Schism Rent Asunder), I've been thinking about the phrase "falling in love." Usually we say the phrase in terms of a romantic relationship, but not always. After all, America can't fall in love with a new American Idol contestant or sports star romantically. (Individual viewers can, but America can't.) That phrase ("America fell in love") gets used frequently enough in the media -- whether it's about pop culture icons, political figures, or a social issue -- that it's come to have its own meaning.

A long while ago, I had a conversation with alpha-reader Arielle Kesweder, who has been a good pop culture reference for me for some time, about the word "heart" as a verb. I don't particularly care for it, but the evolution of language being what it is, no one bothered to ask me. She explained to me that "heart" as a verb means something different from "love" -- you don't really love someone you've never met, for example. But you can be involved with a character in a way that's very emotionally engaging, without any actual risk on your part. It's related to the "squee" factor, I think: say you meet an actor, or a writer, whose work you admire a great deal (or whose character you have a crush on). That encounter allows you proximity to the target of your admiration (and may induce a noisy "squee" when you share the story with friends, as you all shriek your delight). The intensity of the experience of your encounter with the target of your admiration deserves some sort of name -- but you can't really say you love the person you encountered. Instead, you "heart" them. Or, so I came to understand the case that she made.

I can't help but think, however, that "heart" as a verb is very similar to what America does when falling in love. And I myself often use the phrase "falling in love" to describe what happens to me with characters in books (in the most recent case, Cayleb and Sharleyan of the "Safehold" books). I'm not personally romantically involved, but I get warm fuzzies when thinking about the characters. As with a classic high school crush, I might get a big ol' grin on my face when they appear in a scene. My investment in them as characters is high -- but the only risk involved to me should something awful happen to them is a minor bit of heart-break. Because I'm an easy crier when it comes to books, if something awful transpires, I shall probably cry. And if it's appropriately dramatic, the scene may well stick with me for days on end (through what I've before referred to as a book-hangover, when a book continues to preoccupy me days after I've finished it).

That same kind of intensity of emotion, without the romantic inclination, happens with public figures we view as heroes (John F. Kennedy is someone who readily comes to mind as a person people "fell in love with" but didn't necessarily want in their beds). The intensity can happen in the opposite direction with our villains as well. In those cases, I think much of what people are involved with isn't the actual person, but rather what the person stands for in their minds. (Thus, sometimes there is rejoicing in death, not necessarily for the end of a life, but for the strength robbed from the symbol a person represents.)

But I think it can also happen with friendships, and this is where it gets hairy, because there are cultural assumptions about intense relationships -- and that these must involve romance. I remember my mother talking about how, when she was a young single woman, she argued with the older women at her church, saying that men and women could have friendships that didn't involve romance. I think we've come a long way in our cultural perceptions since the 70s as far as male-female friendships go, but that equation of intensity and romance often remains. I've been thinking about this as I'm crafting the characters for New Project; a male and female character, both heterosexual, have a very close relationship that probably leads the other characters (and likely the readers) to think they're romantically involved. But they're not, and they never have been. How can that relationship be depicted in such a way that readers will believe there's no sexual tension there, despite the intensity of emotional connection? It's something I'm puzzling out -- while also wondering how I can get people to fall in love with my characters. I'm already a little bit in love with them, of course, but I hope others will feel the same!

* Eponine to Marius, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables -- she, of course, is fooling no one, because "little bit" doesn't even begin to describe how in love with him she was. But I've always liked the quote.

Pep Squad

Apr. 20th, 2011 10:15 pm
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I've decided not to make another entry on how long it's been since I've written an entry. Things have happened, largely in regards to live, and it's been difficult to keep up with all the online things I do. As I answered when a friend of mine asked after my writing and spiritual life yesterday, I often feel the best I can do is just keep up, rather than be a master at any part of my life at the moment. (I've bookmarked a blog entry about writers, time, and kids over at Book View Cafe. I have yet to find a chance to read it.)

But back to the subject: something I've discovered about myself as a writer recently is that when I offer up a piece for critique too early, I lose motivation to work on it. My brain switches gears from writer brain to editor brain, and I start looking at all the things that need to be fixed rather than what needs to happen *next.* Both Blackstone Academy and East Wind are currently suffering from early-critique syndrome.

On the other hand, I don't like to write in a void. I like to know that someone is out there reading what I'm writing and wants to read more. It helps keep me motivated to think that people are hanging on at the end of a chapter waiting to see what happens next.

To synthesize these two things, I decided to create a group that I'm calling my Pep Squad. Their job is to be excited about what I send them (even if they're not). They're so early in the reading process that they're not even alpha-readers -- they're the pre-alpha-readers. I've got a team of four friends who are taking on this role for me, and I've just sent them some pre-writing tonight for a new project I'm tentatively calling Liminals.

I am not giving up on either Blackstone Academy or East Wind -- I'm just trying to find a way to keep myself motivated to write fiction while I'm trying to keep up with everything else that's going on. (I'm not only a columnist at Branford Patch, now, I'm also writing articles! Copyediting is back into full swing! Review gigs just keep on rolling in! So, I'm staying plenty busy with the work life, plus family life, plus karate -- test on Friday next!, plus Mommy Baby exercise and teaching, plus gaming and otherwise socializing with people I like.)

In other news, counting review books, several volumes of Schlock Mercenary, and manuscripts, I've read 49 books so far this year. I'm just slightly proud of that number, given that we're only in month four of the year.
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Well, looks like there went my resolution to blog more often! I just wanted to drop in tonight to talk about the interview I just recorded with Brian LeTendre from Secret Identity Podcast (who is also the writer for the fantastic webcomic, Mo Stache) about Into the Reach. The idea was to do sort of a director's cut on the novel and we actually chatted about the book for a whole hour. Brian had just reread the book, and to my chagrin, he remembered far more about what happens than I do! I've not reread it since 2006, the year it was published, so it was incredibly fun to get back into that story and think about those characters, who were, effectively, good friends of mine for a couple of years. During the interview two sort of unexpected things happened. One, I read some sections of the e-book while talking to Brian, just as a refresher, and thought, "Hey, this was actually pretty good!" It's always both a surprise and a pleasure when I can look back at earlier work and be pleased with how it came out. The second was that feeling of reuniting with old friends, which I really hadn't expected. I realized, I miss these guys. It'll be very nice to get my head back into the world when we eventually start in on the editorial process again for Regaining Home.

In the meantime, I'm tickled that a few more copies have sold on DriveThru since I last checked. They're not going like hotcakes, but copies are selling -- which means that somewhere out there, folks are meeting the characters for the first time. They've got lives out there beyond me, and that is also exciting.

I've been thinking about my writing process lately, and I have some overdue blog entries I meant to write earlier -- but in the meantime, you should go look at Lindsay Archer's Steampunked Mythbusters, because they'll totally make you smile.
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I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I love Castle. I think it's a fun, usually lighthearted mystery show, and (particularly early on), it said a lot about the writing process. There's often this moment where Nathan Fillion's character, the eponymous Richard Castle, is looking at the mystery they're solving and thinking that the details aren't consistent -- or, at least, that they don't make a very good story.

It reminds me a little bit of the Yann Martel quotes (he apparently uses the idea frequently) that he chooses to look at the world (at least in his novels) as though there is a God, because that makes the better story. But I digress.

One of the really fun things about Castle is the novels written by the fictional Castle that appear in our real world: Heat Wave and Naked Heat both hit the bestseller lists when they came out (around #16, I think), which means that the fictional Richard Castle is, in reality, a bestselling author. It boggles the mind. I really think there's a college paper here about postmodernism and the metatextuality of rewriting reality to reflect fiction or some such. In the mean time, I think it's just fun. (Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote also has a number of books published under her name, though I think her success was always more modest, both in the real world and in her own TV show, than Castle's.)

It also makes me think about other fictional writers I've enjoyed in books I've read and consider how much meta-text real-world writers create with fictional writers who then ended up writing, say, short stories or something. For example, celebutante and glamazombie Amanda Feral, who used a "ghost writer" ([livejournal.com profile] mdhenry) for her memoirs but writes smut on her own. There have to be other authors doing this -- I'd love to be reminded of any you can think of. :)

I started thinking about this today because someone brought Richard Castle, the character, to Barbara Vey's blog party today (it's mystery/thriller day!), and rather than assuming the character had been brought along in the prose, my initial thought was that whoever is responsible for the Castle twitter account had, in fact, donated something to the party! Alas, no "official" Castle presence, but the prizes and party are stellar nonetheless.
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There was something I was going to write about today when I first thought about blog entries this morning, but I have apparently forgotten it. It may well have been something about lack of sleep. But the day ended up going well: I finished a deadline and sent out two invoices, and billing my editors always makes my day a little brighter. (Getting positive e-mail back from my editors is actually even better, and I got a nice e-mail from one today that really made me happy.)

But the real reason I wanted to make sure I blogged today was that Barbara Vey's Beyond Her Book blog for PW is four years old! She's having an anniversary bash, and if you visited her parties last year, you know that awesome prizes -- and really funny party favors from the authors who attend -- are in store.

Today's event is an urban fantasy/paranormal/SF/horror/fantasy party at a haunted house. [livejournal.com profile] antonstrout brought some very scary Jell-O shots. I'll try to remember to link to the parties this week to help folks remember to check them out (particularly later on in the week, when I'll be bringing a prize and some cool favors to the e-book day...).
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[livejournal.com profile] sartorias wrote an entry a few weeks ago that I missed until now, mostly wondering about whether male writers and female writers create epic fantasy differently. The conversation threads are great -- much literary analysis on the meaning of epic fantasy happens in one thread, which I found quite engaging and informative, and then wrote my response based on gut instinct rather than analysis anyway.

Here's something I've been thinking about on and off since Twostripe told me I was being ridiculous by not considering Hermione Granger a "strong female" character. (Edit: He was right. Just to make that clear. I agree with him after our conversation, and realized I was falling prey to the equation I point out below.) A lot of the definition of "strong female" character that's expected right now equates to women-who-can-kick-butt-and-take-names. It is, in fact, a kind of masculine definition of strength. In what I see as the general way this plays out is the following equation:

women with swords > women with wands > women with hearths

A homemaker is not typically thought of as a strong woman. She has a traditional female role. She's not fighting against gender stereotyping, or against orcs or monsters. She's taking care of the home front.

But you know what? That hearth is important. While men and women with swords are out there saving the kingdom from external forces, the woman at the hearth is making sure they have a kingdom to come home to.

When I responded to [livejournal.com profile] sartorias's post, I was thinking about the Brian Jacques novels, and about how some of the female characters are go-getters, fighting on the front lines. (In the first novel, two of the most valuable fighters are Constance Badger and Jess Squirrel; in later stories, heroines like Mariel fight with improvised weaponry to carve out their own way home.) But there are also a lot of female -- and, actually, male! -- characters who aren't fighters. They're peace-loving creatures, many of them monks, who are healers, community builders, scholars, caretakers. They're not just strong because they give the heroes strength in the this-is-what-we-front-line-warriors-are-fighting-for way. They're strong because they persevere, because they don't lose hope, and because they are able to keep hope alive for others. It's a quiet kind of strength, but it's one that I think often gets discounted (considering I have been a guilty party on that myself).

There's a lot to be said for a Hestian grounding and for strength of hearth. Since I'm coming to appreciate that idea more as a parent, I wonder if there's an additional pertinent question to tag onto [livejournal.com profile] sartorias's gender question: do fantasy writers who are parents write differently than fantasy writers who are not?
alanajoli: (Default)
Actually, I'm not so sure about whether or not a Gingerbread TARDIS would fly. But it was a nice segue into an awesome new project that friend of the blog Thomas Scofield is involved with. It's a new Kickstarter project, The Geeky Gourmand: a cookbook that ties recipes into geek culture, having a good time with friends, and making yummy yet geeky projects. (LJ is not letting me embed the intro video, so go to the site and see how a Gingerbread TARDIS gets made!)

In other news, how did it get to be Wednesday already? What's special about today? Well, my first "The Town with Five Main Streets" column post at Patch.com is live! It's an intro post about what we expect to cover in the ongoing column. Please pop by and check it out -- leave a comment if you feel like it, and I'll say hi there as well as here!

I finished up a copyediting project earlier than expected, much to my surprise, and I'm trying to figure out what my priorities are at this point so I can get some work done before celebrating Bug's first Christmas. :) I've got a "Five Main Streets" article to write, a review that needs to get done and some others I'd really like to get off the shelf, a short story to finish, and studying to do. All I need now is to prioritize!
alanajoli: (lol deadlines)
I got next to nothing done that I'd had on my list to accomplish today.

In the plus column: Awesome substrate meeting! We talked about a new short story by Substrater Vlad -- he originally wrote it in Russian and submitted to us in English in synopsis form, which makes for a really engaging way to talk about a story! -- and discussed "Shotgun Wedding" (which I'll be making some edits to shortly, due to the good conversation) before I had to absent myself from Skype and do real-worldy things. (I missed the discussion on the first two chapters of [livejournal.com profile] lyster's new novel, which, like its predecessor, has the appearance of being absolutely fantastic.*)

Someone asked me to post about finding a writing group awhile back, and the truth is, I don't actually have really good advice. I fell into this one almost by chance -- Substrater Nat had an inkling about getting a group together when [livejournal.com profile] lyster got back from China and did most of the inviting of folks who, then, I didn't know well and had never read. I invited [livejournal.com profile] notadoor, who I'd met briefly at Simon's Rock when I'd gone back on TA prep for one of Mark Vecchio's study abroad courses, and who I'd gotten to know (and admire) via LJ. Most of us write, and are interested in, the same kind of fiction -- F/SF stuff, largely. We write in different areas of the genre, and we bring different opinions as readers to the table. And, this is kind of important -- we all seem to like each other. I don't know if that's critical for a writing group, but I've found it's really important for a gaming group, and I think the two are more similar than might seem obvious at first appearance.

But as far as writing itself goes, I wrote a few new sentences in a review that's due on Monday... Yeah, not exactly an inspiring total. On the other hand, Twostripe and I spent some time reading Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber (it's our family read aloud book right now -- we've done The Hobbit, Unseen Academicals, and, as you may recall, the last two books of "The Dark Is Rising" sequence since Bug was born. Picking grown-up books means that progress is sometimes quite slow. But we kept going ahead in Off Armageddon Reef after Bug fell asleep tonight. I'm hoping she won't notice.) Spending family time together, especially over a good book, was an excellent use of time, despite meaning that I didn't get to check anything off my to-do list.

Tomorrow is a Christmas pageant at church, which I'm excited about, and then perhaps I can be constructive in the afternoon. Here's crossing my fingers!

(Don't forget the Tarot / Greater Trumps contest! And keep getting ready for Alayna Williams on Friday!)

--

*For the record, I don't just build up the Substraters because they're my crit group. Anything that I mention thinking is awesome is because I think it is awesome. (And really, I know from awesome, so you should take my word for it.)
alanajoli: (advice)
My friend Will once game me some advice about sleep, back in high school when he was a sage senior and I just a naive sophomore. He commented that if he couldn't get to sleep at night, there was just no sense in lying awake and staring at the ceiling. If he felt awake, he'd give himself fifteen minutes, and if he didn't fall asleep (or feel he'd made any progress toward doing so), he'd get up and do something useful.

I very rarely end up going to bed and feeling too awake to doze. I'm not a good napper, but at night, I'm one of those lucky people who falls asleep fairly readily. If I find myself so awake that I'm just staring at the ceiling, I look at the clock and give myself those fifteen minutes. If I'm so awake that I remember to look again fifteen minutes later -- or I look and see that only two minutes have passed when it feels like an eternity -- I get up (as quietly as I can, so as not to disturb Twostripe or Bug) and head downstairs to the office. There's always more work to be done. But if I can't sleep, I figure, hey, I'm borrowing time that I've already allotted for something. It's time to write something I want to write.

The last time this happened, I wrote the first half of "Missing Mary," which I still haven't finished (because, sadly, I've been going to bed late enough this week that I've been sleeping quickly and soundly, right up until Bug decides she needs late night comforting or early morning food). A few days later, I thought it would happen again, but found myself out cold for an hour-long nap I hadn't scheduled into my day.

Sleep is a good thing -- the body needs to recharge, and so does the brain. But when it doesn't come, I don't chase after it. I'd rather be writing.
alanajoli: (Default)
I went to a convention one time where, when a friend sharing the room with several of us woke up, he said, "Can't brain today. I has the dumb." Apparently, he did not make up this phrase, but since he was the first place the rest of us heard it, we attributed it to him.

(Waves @militiajim.)

I had a recharge day today, reading a review book and hanging out with Bug. I have copyediting to tackle, but I spent Saturday cleaning the basement (it oh-so-desperately needed attention) and Sunday writing the first article for a new history column I'll be doing for Patch.com. (The site, Branford Patch, launches the end of the week! I believe my first article goes live on the 22nd -- the column is "The Town with Five Main Streets." You'll see it mentioned here!) I did have a nice break with my friend Leifr on Saturday night, but today I still felt the need to give myself permission to recoup.

And to continue that trend, I'm off to bed. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be good at braining.
alanajoli: (writing)
My day often goes like this:

Whew, Bug is asleep. Time to get something accomplished. Do I:

Shower? Or write?
Do my assignments that are due this week? Or write?*
Fold laundry? Or write?
Make dinner? Or write?
Blog? Or write?
Sleep? Or write?
Clean up the glass that the editorial assistants shattered all over the floor? Or write?**
Spend time with Twostripe? Or write?
Have a social life? Or write?***

It is hard to find time for writing.([livejournal.com profile] sartorias did a great blog entry over at Book View Cafe about writing with kids.) On the other hand, it is important to find time for writing.

After not writing fiction pretty much at all during my pregnancy, I've finished two short stories and am halfway through a third since Bug arrived. I wrote the first issue and treatment for the first arc of a comic.**** I've written several chapters of a co-written (with [livejournal.com profile] lyster) serial novel (which, to be fair, I think I did write chunks of while Bug was still cooking). I've plotted out a new novel. And I still don't feel like I'm finding time to write. I'm very, very lucky that Twostripe is supportive of my finding time to do fiction writing as well as the work that brings home the guaranteed check. I don't know how I'd manage otherwise!

--

* Sometimes the work is also the Work. It's lovely when that happens, but it is infrequent.
** Editorial assistant Jack missed a jump up onto our freestanding kitchen drawers yesterday and knocked down a jar of peanuts and the coffee maker, shattering both the jar and the coffee pot. I guess he wanted to provide better incentive for cleaning the kitchen floor -- or he was mad at us for always brewing decaf.
*** I admit, I still like to spend time with friends now that I'm a parent, and even prioritize it sometimes. Running role playing games certainly fits into this category, and I haven't given that up yet. Hopefully, I won't have to. :)
**** One of the instances in which the work was also the Work.
alanajoli: (serenity adventures)
This is not a post about James Frey's new publishing scheme. Plenty of writers have already covered that topic (Genreville collects three excellent responses). But a conversation about said scheme with [livejournal.com profile] lyster got me thinking about my mercenary philosophy of freelancing.

It's a very Fireflyesque rule, in general. If I take an assignment where my publisher or editor dictates what the work is, then I typically anticipate it's a Work for Hire gig. This means, effectively, "I do the job, and then I get paid." I don't own the rights to the material. My publisher can take the material and run with it, edit it in a different direction, or do whatever suits their purposes. For reference articles, this is a no brainer -- I don't need a byline for short entries about authors (though sometimes I actually do get bylines). For reviews, the same is true -- though I acknowledge that while I'm a professional reviewer (I do get paid for a chunk of the reviews I write) I also take unpaid review work. I enjoy writing about books (as you may have noticed), so I do some that's pro-bono -- or pays me in kind (even if that's just a free copy of a book I'd have otherwise spent money on). Some of my free work has led to paying gigs; some of my low-paying work has led to better paying gigs. In some Work for Hire contracts, there's a possibility of earning royalties.

If I'm writing my own stuff in a world I create, however, the situation is different. I'm happy to sell publication rights, and I've had very good luck placing some of my short stories in fair-paying markets. If I'm playing in your world (whether it's writing an adventure or writing a shared-world short story), I don't anticipate additional rights. I'll take them if they're offered, but I don't anticipate them. If I'm playing in my world, I'm a lot more proprietary.

There are writers who are in this profession just to share their vision, their story, and their characters. I think art for art's sake is a noble endeavor, and maybe the purist form of our profession. But I also think it's fair to expect to receive compensation for work. To support that as a reader, I'll buy short stories on fictionwise (for example); I try to purchase books by authors I want to write more books. I've been known to purchase print copies of books I've reviewed as ARCs or e-ARCs if they really impressed me. ([livejournal.com profile] blackaire and [livejournal.com profile] mdhenry, I'm looking at you.) I donate to web comics I appreciate -- a model I love, actually, since it's a very immediate response to my appreciation for the artist's work -- and I'll buy print books of web comics (because you never know when my internet will crash and I'll be deprived of my comics). I try to put my money where my mouth is -- because someday, when I've got the possibility of royalties accruing, I hope that my readers will do the same for me.

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Alana Joli Abbott

November 2023

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