Myth, the Universe, and Everything

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, 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!

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 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!

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.

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 (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.

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.

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.

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. 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...).

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!

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.

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.(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 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.