I’m furiously working on Algae to try to get it into some semblance of shape for my deadline on Monday. I know I’ve probably said this before, but this is the longest and biggest 10K to 12K story I’ve ever written. Good gawd, the details! I guess that’s the danger of writing about something that actually exists and your readers might know about it—you have to get it right. Or else people might, y’know, laugh at you and think you’re dumb. I just keep wondering, though—how right do I need to get it? I mean, sometimes I feel like I might actually need to learn how to fix diesel engines, just in order to get this stoopid story *not* to completely make no sense. And then it’s like, omg no, I don’t have time to go to school for two years or however long it would take! *flails around in a panic* …Seriously, this is what this story has been doing to my brain. But I know, I know—you just need to show the “edges of ideas”. (Can’t remember who coined that phrase right now…)
Well, but I like the details, though. Like, I had been trying to figure out how much my characters’ field service truck should weigh (so that I can make it fall through the ice). I was sifting through all these web sites, and they would give weights like 6,000 lbs and it just didn’t make sense, until I realized that was merely the weight of the service body that’s attached on top of the truck. So then finally today I found the most wonderful page on mechanics’ trucks, where the author went into great detail about how much they weigh when loaded, and *why*. You get a truck, you put a crane on top, then add all the 9 zillion tools and gear you need to fix heavy equipment like mining machines, and that makes it *way heavier than I had thought*. Because if you try to lift something really heavy, like for example an engine that weighs a couple thousand pounds, with a crane attached to a little light truck, well, the truck tips over. I never thought of it before. But it makes sense, right?
Then I started working on the very first scene and I realized that I’ve given them 3 hours of sunlight that day, ’cause it’s late fall/early winter—but *what time* does the sun come up? Surely it’s not up yet when my main character walks out his front door early that morning. And what time does it set? I decided to use a town near the Arctic Circle in NWT as a model, and found out that on a certain day in late November, the sun would come up noonish and set around 3pm. And this just caused me to squee. Because the timing just worked right for a dramatic moment in the story when my characters need to see the last light of sunset.
For my third lightbulb moment—I had been imagining my mysterious algal bloom coming up from below the ice and melting through to the surface. And it had been bugging me, because I needed this melting to happen rather quickly and create a huge hole in the ice and render my ice road temporarily unusable—and surely this algae doesn’t get so hot that it could melt through a large area of a couple feet’s thickness of ice in a matter of hours when it’s thirty degrees below zero outside? Then I remembered a part on the Ice Road Truckers show where they talk about pressure ridges of ice over a lake being thrust up by rapid changes in temperature, and I realized that I don’t necessarily need to melt through all the ice, I just need it to break. And if I have the heat causing a rapid temperature change, then my ice can actually rupture in a violent event that wouldn’t take much time at all. Yay!
Well, now that I’ve gotten some of these details hashed out, I’ve moved on to the whipping-into-shape phase. My strategy is to (1) make a brief outline of what happens in the story, as it is now, (2) read through the draft and mark it up, (3) make another brief outline of the story as I would like it to be, and then (4) edit the story according to the outline. This workflow seems to work well for me. Anyone else do this, or have their own method to share?
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
The post–scarcity singularity is the new, hot, meme in science fiction. Writers such as Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Ken MacLeod are credited with writing good, economics–based, science fiction based on a post–scarcity model. Can we really get there from here? Do these works and others deal with racism, sexism, and classism by conveniently defining them out of existence?
- Ian K. Hagemann, Richard F. Dutcher, Beth A. Plutchak, Benjamin Rosenbaum
Well, I knew a singularity was a black hole, but hadn't known that the term is also applied to other things. For this panel, a singularity was defined as "the event after which everything is different." So, there can be many kinds of singularities, depending on what you're talking about. For example, the industrial revolution could be considered a singularity. In science fiction they often talk about "The" singularity as being the point where computers' intelligence surpasses humans'. "Post-scarcity" refers to the idea that everybody would be rich, or at least not poor and having their needs met, as opposed to most of human history, where life for most has consisted of endless poverty and drudgery. I'm sorry if this is a bad explanation. While these terms were new to me, there was definitely an assumption that we all already knew what they were. It was a pretty intellectual discussion, and I wasn't comfortable raising my hand and revealing myself as a total dumb-dumb ;)
A major point that the panelists returned to over and over, was that the premise that economics is a moral system, and that left to itself, it will make things better for all of us, is flawed. This was refered to as the "Hegelian error". Also discussed was the idea that "homo economicus" does not really exist--in other words, that people do not really make economic decisions rationally--and that the idea of "holding everything else constant while only changing one variable" in economics is a myth, and doesn't account for randomness in the system.
Apparently the writers named above (Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Stross - Glasshouse, MacLeod - various titles), in creating their post-scarcity utopias, have committed this error of thinking that current economics would lead inexorably to such utopias, and so have actually ended up perpetuating existing privileges and biases. I can't say, as I haven't read the books in question, and we didn't get much in the way of specific examples. If I got anything out of this panel, it's that my interest has been stimulated to read some of these books.
As the publishing industry goes through massive changes, will publishing become more like music and video? Will distribution of writing happen more and more on the net? If so, what kinds of writer–friendly structures can we begin to build which provide writers with audiences and potential income? And what can we do to make sure that the writing that is published is vetted and of high quality? What options exist now for writers and readers? What are good strategies as writers to publish work on the internet?
- Michelle Murrain, Liz L. Gorinsky, Susan Marie Groppi, Mikki Kendall
This was an early session, so not that many people showed up, but it was a great & stimulating discussion. Sometimes you get more audience participation with smaller groups.
The rise of electronic-only publishers was discussed, as well as the increasing trend of traditional publishers to also publish ebooks. Among the publishers that do both, there's a question of how to price the ebook version in relation to the "tree book" version. Among ebook-only publishers, some of them are doing their pricing according to the length of the book or story. Textbook publishers have been moving towards ebooks as well, although their pricing structure is not really friendly. For example, a textbook could be $120, and then the ebook version is $50-ish for a year's worth of access online.
Somebody from the audience suggested that people are not reading as much, from this followed a discussion of whether it's really that "people don't read anymore", or whether they are simply splitting their attention over many more different avenues of content (internet & e-readers as well as traditional print books). Also discussed were e-reader devices such as Kindle and Sony. The distribution network of the Kindle was lauded, while the proprietary format was mentioned as a cause for concern.
The discussion turned to the subject of DRM. The panel was in agreement that DRM doesn't work, and serves to annoy and frustrate the legitimate customer. However, there was also a mention of some kind of "DRM lite" which would only put some kind of identification on the file, to be used as a method to track how pirated copies spread.
Cory Doctorow's name came up repeatedly. Possibly he's the one who first stated that "most authors' problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity". He gives away e-versions of all his books for free, and says that this has increased his print sales by letting readers do his marketing for him. He asks readers who want to send him $ personally, to instead put their $ towards purchasing a copy of his book for a library. (I bought a book of his essays at the Dealers Room later).
Another topic discussed was the proliferation of e-publishers. The barrier to starting an e-publishing venture is small, but sustaining it for more than 6 months or a year is difficult. Writers should be careful where they choose to submit, and try to go with e-publishers who have been around for a while. The issue of quality was raised, and a panelist said that there are many e-publishers that are encouraging writers to publish before their writing is of publishable quality.
There was a discussion of alternative methods of getting paid that writers and artists have come up with. For example: Maggie Hogarth publishes a new chapter on her site every time she reaches a donation goal from her readers. A web comic author, upon receiving angry emails from fans wanting more comics, challenged his readers to pay him. To his surprise, they did. Also mentioned were cooperative sites created by groups of writers, such as bookviewcafe.com.
The idea of "what constitutes publication?" was discussed. The perception that being published on the web isn't "real publishing" is outdated, but there are still many people who feel that way. Putting up excerpts on the web does not always decrease your chances of being published. (example: John Scalzi put the entire book "Old Man's War" on his web site, then later received an offer from Tor. Not a typical experience, however.) Different publishers would undoubtedly have different ideas of how much of the story it would be OK to post, or if it would be OK at all.
Where the heck are they? Many bisexual fans still feel pretty invisible in the genre after decades of queer activism. With a few notable exceptions like Torchwood, Elizabeth Bear's Col. Valens in Scardown/Hammered/Worldwired, Laurell K. Hamilton's vampires and Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, positive portrayals of bi and pansexual characters in SF/F seem to be rather scarce. What is being overlooked? more
This one was a lot of fun. Plenty of witty people on the panel and in the audience. The first issue discussed was the stereotypical, often negative portrayal of bisexuals in science fiction and fantasy.
- portrayed as "homewreckers" or "fence sitters"
- seen as unpredictable
- often used as a catalyst to "throw a wrench in things"
- bisexuality used as a marker of promiscuity and/or decadence
Also discussed was the difference between people's activities, and their orientation (or how they identify themselves). Many people who engage in bisexual behavior do not consider themselves "bisexual". There's also the myth of the "50-50 bisexual", that the person has to be equally attracted to one side or the other.
Another issue raised was how TV, movies, books etc. won't commit to the idea of bisexuality. Examples: Willow in Buffy was involved with a man before deciding she prefers women, why does that automatically = lesbian and not bi? Buffy (in the comic book) gets busy with a girl, but they take pains to make sure we know she is straight, not bi. Also a bit of discussion about actors/actresses who do same-sex scenes in movies, but repudiate it off-screen.
We discussed how in fictional portrayals, bisexuality is almost always "revealed" when the person has a same-sex encounter, but how for many people who previously identified as gay, they had the opposite experience. But this is rarely portrayed. (an exception is the movie "Chasing Amy")
The idea came up of bisexuality as "being attracted to the person, not the gender", and being more about love than sexual attraction. On the other hand, maybe it's not about "transcending gender" at all. Maybe it *is* about sex too.
A very interesting comment that I had not thought about before: Bisexuality is often seen as a female experience. There are very few portrayals of male bisexuals. Why? One idea has to do with the power of gender relationships. Female bisexuality is seen as "hot", while male bisexuality is seen as somehow diminishing the male's power? (Somebody suggested that the main reason it's considered OK for Jack in Torchwood to be bisexual is because he's the leader.) Also discussed was how it seems easier for comedies to portray bisexuals, perhaps because it can be laughed off or seen as a "phase".
Book recommendations:
- Iain Banks - The Player of Games and other Culture books
- Ursula Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
- Adam Troy-Castro - Andrea Cort series
- Charles Stross - Glasshouse
- Jacqueline Carey - Santa Olivia
- somebody mentioned Fay Smallwood (?), not sure if this is author's name or book title
- Tanya Huff - Blood series
- Octavia Butler - Fledgling
- Elizabeth Lynn - The Sardonyx Net
- Joan Slonczewski - A Door into Ocean
- Alexandra Erin - Tales of Mu (serial web novel)
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My thoughts regarding the last paragraph above: This relates to the story I'm working on right now, which has male bisexual characters. I actually hadn't really thought too much about it, but after going to this panel I was like, "Hmm, I guess they are bi's." Although I doubt they would call themselves that, or any other label. In the story, I was also thinking about using the idea of same-sex relationships being "just a phase" or an immature thing that people are thought to "outgrow".
You invent a time machine, go back into the past, and kill your grandfather. Then where did you come from? SF authors have come up with a variety of ingenious responses to the so–called "grandfather paradox." Interestingly, theoretical physicists have, too. We'll look at a bunch of them.
The panel discussed the various ideas about what happens if a time paradox is created. Does history "take care of itself" and become internally self-consistent? (In other words, if you went back in time and changed things, it was because you were supposed to do it, and you can't screw things up. See Futurama episode where Fry turns out to have been his own grandfather). Are time and historical events too complicated for everything to be altered just by one single change? (Like, if you went back and killed Hitler, wouldn't somebody else just take his place?) If time travel is possible, what would it look like? Wormholes? Black holes? (More mentions of bad Star Trek physics heheh. One of the panelists is an actual physicist. He explained that "traveling by black hole" would stretch your body out really long because of gravity anomalies, and eventually your body would be destroyed, so you might come out of the other end, but not in your present form but only as atoms. The "blueprint" to put you back together on the other side can't be sent through, because it too would be destroyed.) Somebody also quoted Heinlein as saying "any time travel device is also a faster-than-light drive."
Some books were discussed, including:
- Orson Scott Card - The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (v. good discussion of the grandfather paradox)
- Michio Kaku - Physics of the Impossible
- Kip Thorne - Black Holes and Time Warps
- David Gerrold - The Man Who Folded Himself
- Robert Heinlein - All You Zombies (short story)
- James Tiptree - Backwards Turned Backwards (short story)
- H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
- movies Timecrimes, Memento, TV show Primeval
How do SF writers keep up with the latest in science and technology? Do they keep up? Does it matter?
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alphaviolet and I went to this one after lunch. I didn't take a lot of notes but it was really interesting. The panelists discussed a wide range of issues in science and SF writing, including the speed of scientific advances, trying to predict what the future will look like, and the need to go back and revise predictions of the future that turned out to be not-so-accurate. (For example, global warming has turned out to be progressing faster than we thought back in, say, 1985). They also discussed ways for writers to keep abreast of the changes in science and technology, and possibilities for getting scientists and writers together (because scientists often complain that writers get it wrong, and writers often don't have scientists around to go ask). Also they discussed the problem that occurs as science becomes more and more specialized, scientists are isolated not just from non-scientists, but from other scientists in different fields, as their own fields of study become increasingly narrow. The discussion also touched on the bad physics of the latest Star Trek movie, the likelihood of finding life on other planets, what kinds of planets are out there, and something called the Malmquist Bias (more noticeable things, i.e. brighter stars, appear to be more common, but it's just because they're more noticeable that we think that). Book recommendation: Adam Weiner - Hollywood Science
The adventure story archetype lies at the heart of both science fiction and fantasy, and is the oldest and arguably most profound literary form in human history. How come contemporary society has ghettoized this art form? Even in science fiction, many authors have shied away from adventure in their desire to be taken seriously. more
This panel was a little disorganized, the panel leader for some reason didn't make it so the remaining panelists seemed like they were winging it. I don't think we even got a really concrete definition of what is meant by "the adventure story archetype". The closest we got to this was the idea that "external conflict is what drives most adventure fiction, as opposed to internal conflict." They did discuss various aspects of writing craft and how they relate specifically to writing adventure. The point was made that the first person POV may often be too limiting for some stories and that an overarching third person POV works better. The villain's POV was also discussed, especially how it's often neglected (especially in a lot of current paranormal fiction).
Examples of "literary" adventure stories were brought up (the Odyssey, Beowulf, Moby Dick, LOTR, etc.) Then somebody brought up G.R.R. Martin, wondering if in 100 years he'll be considered "literary" (as opposed to "genre fiction").
Some audience questions: How does one deal with resolution in a series of books? Some major plot in each book must be resolved by the end, even if other main plots continue into the next book in the series. Or, you could have each book be a complete standalone plot with a resolution at the end, but echoes of previous events could show up later books. (example Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series). Is the threat of physical violence always an element of adventure stories? It need not be. Many adventures deal with survival (against the elements, etc.)
Somebody from the audience talked about the importance of having the resolution come from the actions of the heroes, *not* from luck or from some deus ex machina.
Some useful books for writers were mentioned:
- Lawrence Block - Spider Spin Me A Web, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit
- Stephen King - On Writing
- Bruce Holland Rogers - Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer
- Algis Budrys - Writing to the Point
- Donald Maass - Writing the Breakout Novel
- Bernays & Painter - What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers
SF writers are supposed to be good at building compelling and believable worlds. So why is it so hard to build a world featuring working class characters in working class settings, especially given that a lot of SF writers come from that kind of background? more
The 5 panelists first talked about what constitutes "working class". Among the definitions:
- People who don't own the means of production
- Someone who can get fired by a boss
- Someone who has a background of limited resources & opportunities
- Someone whose economic well-being is at the mercy of somebody else
We discussed why in science fiction do you not find more main characters who are workers? (Soldiers are an exception of working class characters who show up often in science fiction.) The example was given of an occupation such as construction work being repetitive and not involving creative problem solving, therefore not being seen as exciting. It's also not individualistic, i.e. you need a team of people to get things done. Books and movies often treat the working class as something to be escaped from. Another reason is escapism--both the author's and the readers. Somebody also mentioned "narrative convenience", where if you are telling a story about a class struggle, you need to use an ensemble cast, & it's not as easy as focusing on a single heroic individual.
We also discussed worldbuilding, particularly that of mechanized utopias where robots do everything and the garbage is taken away automatically. Who builds the robots? Who maintains the sewage disposal system on the space station? Who built the Death Star? There seem to be two separate but related issues (1) much worldbuilding does not include a working class, and (2) the main characters aren't often from the working class. Related issues: working class characters are portrayed as dumb, dishonest, or used only for comic relief. Or they have no story of their own, but are only there to illustrate someone else's story.
So, why is this important? The panelists gave a lot of reasons:
- It's important to include working class characters in science fiction, for the same reason that it's important to include female characters and people of color.
- Science fiction should be true to some kind of reality
- It's important to create fiction where readers can relate and "see themselves"
- To give inspiration and examples to one's readers
- To humanize people (for example, the lady who cleans the toilets, whom we don't look at or acknowledge)
- To make the world of your story into a more rational, scientifically and economically feasible world
Some examples of authors who have "gotten things right"
- Ann Harris
- Melissa Scott - Dreaming Metal
- Rebecca Ore - Becoming Alien, Gaia's Toys
- a few C.J. Cherryh stories
- Nina Kiriki Hoffman
- William Gibson - Virtual Light
- Ian McDonald - River of Gods, Brasyl
- Eric Flint - 1632
- Allen Steele
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Conclusion: I really wanted to go to this panel because it relates very much to the story I'm working on right now. I don't have an "agenda", I just wanted to write about regular Joe type people that I could relate to--I didn't know that it was an "issue" people were discussing in SF. Anyway, I found this one very worthwhile and interesting and it left me with lots of ideas (like for example, do my mine workers have a union?) Oh yeah and when one of the panelists said something about how "there's no reason working people can't create art", I had to restrain myself from a big *squee*. 'Cause y'know, that's pretty much what my whole story is about :)
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Cultural Appropriation 101 Workshop
Do you feel that you've been burned by the cultural appropriation debates? Have you been told that your goodwill and effort aren't enough? This workshop will be a safe space for you to review the basic concepts around race, colonial history, and cultural appropriation...more
The leaders talked about terms and concepts related to the issues of race and cultural appropriation, and had us do a few writing exercises.
Cultural appropriation can be defined as taking elements of a culture not one's own, and using them out of the context in which they normally appear. Usually cultural appropriation is seen as negative. (I personally don't think cultural appropriation is always bad. Cultures borrow from each other and create new things. The problem is where one appropriates a culture not one's own, and does not give credit, or misrepresents it, etc.)
One example given was how in Firefly, the trappings of Asian culture appear everywhere--Chinese characters, physical surroundings, furnishings, clothing, people tossing around phrases in Mandarin. Not to pick on Firefly or anything 'cause I love the show. But it did always bug me that everybody's speaking Chinese but where are the Asian main characters?
Another concept we discussed was "identity tourism". This is the phenomenon where people swap gender and race when taking on online personas. Often, this ends up replicating stereotypes that exist offline (most notably the sweet, meek Asian female).
Writing exercise #1: We had to describe ourselves in terms of the usual categories that society uses to define us (culture, race, gender, age, ability, sexual orientation). But, we were to change 1 thing, and write about how that would affect us. So I changed my age, I made myself 75 years old. I wrote about how if I'd been born 35 years earlier than I was, it would have changed the person I became in all sorts of ways. Education, career, marriage, children, just to give a few examples.
Another concept is "the unmarked state". This means the default that everybody assumes the main character of a story to be, until told otherwise. The unmarked state is usually white, male, able-bodied, and so forth. So then when one happens to be reading a story and it turns out the main character deviates from this, it's a surprise. "Oh, he's black" or "Oh, she's in a wheelchair", etc.
We discussed the "trope" of "the magical Negro"--usually a wise, mysterious, older black man who appears in the story with the main purpose of guiding a not-old, not-black, usually male protagonist. This guy shows up in a lot of movies. Another "trope" is the isolated minority character, i.e. everybody in the book is white but there's one black guy, one Latina, one Asian guy.
Writing exercise #2: We received two pictures of people. We had to write a list of how they were alike, and how they were different. I got a picture of a young blonde white woman employee at a Walmart, and a picture of a young dark-skinned man with most of his face covered except eyes, and holding a weapon. How were they alike: both young, able-bodied and apparently healthy, both appeared to be smiling and/or proud, both were wearing clothes that identify their occupation. How were they different: gender, culture, skin color, apparent socioeconomic class, surroundings, occupation. I guess the "alike" list was supposed to be harder.
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Conclusion: This was well worth attending, even though some of this stuff is hard to think about and makes me squirm. The leaders conducted the class in a gentle and respectful manner so that people like me didn't fear getting yelled at ;)
Here’s more about the topics I researched while writing my short story “Algae”.
This is Blood Falls, a formation of rust-colored ice that is emerging from the end of a glacier in Antartica. The microbes that give the ice its red color have traveled four kilometers to reach the glacier’s terminus, and they are part of an ancient ecosystem that has been trapped under the glacier for more than a million years. The red comes from iron, an end product of the microbes’ metabolism. They reproduce slowly–it’s estimated that a bacteria would divide once every 300 days.
In my story, there are algae that live in the very cold lakes of the planet Diamanta, and bloom only once every one hundred years. When they bloom, they exert a great deal of energy, resulting in enough heat to melt ice. My version is a good deal more fanciful than the Blood Falls bacteria, but there are some similarities–they have a slow metabolism, they live under the ice for long periods of time and then they finally burst forth in a way that can’t be ignored. I use these organisms as a metaphor for love. (Oh, go ahead and laugh if you want!)
Artic and Antarctic ice fish can survive in temperatures that are below the freezing point of pure water, which would freeze the blood of any regular fish. Their secret is that at some point, their ancestors lost the ability to produce hemoglobin. These fish have clear blood, without the large red blood cells which would, in other creatures, bunch up and become viscous in very cold temperatures. The ice fish still use oxygen, but it apparently is carried directly in their blood, or what’s left of it.
Ice fish don’t have any significant part to play in my story–I just thought they were cool!
Last but not least, I’m mean and love to make my characters suffer, and in this story I gave one of them terribly painful back problems for which he eventually underwent spinal fusion, a surgical procedure where two vertebrae are combined into one. Surgeons take a bone graft from elsewhere in the body, and use metal screws to hold the vertebrae together, and eventually the bone graft grows and “fuses” the vertebrae together. This too, I use as a metaphor for love. Now I’m sure you think I’m crazy, if you didn’t already.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
I’ve been taking a break from editing The Outerlands to work on another short story. This one takes place on a fictional planet called Diamanta, where it’s always frigidly cold. I imagine it being kind of like “planet Alaska” or “planet far-north Canada”. One of the main industries there is mining–specifically, iron mining. They mine the ore, process it, and then use a cannon-like device to shoot it up to a space station, where it’s turned into steel.
In this story, my main character is a diesel mechanic (and an aspiring artist) who after being dumped by his ex-wife and having a falling-out with his best friend/coworker, has decided to pick up and move to the space station where his ex-wife now lives. He has set aside a few vacation days to finish one last art project—a huge metal sculpture—but he’s unexpectedly called back to work for a repair job at one of the mines. As he and his former buddy drive to the mine, across the surface of a frozen lake, the ice begins to inexplicably and rapidly melt.
I ended up having to do a lot of research for this story. In fact, I’ve never had to do this much research for a story before! I thought it would be fun to show some of the things I’ve been reading and learning about.
Here’s the Ekati Diamond mine near Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It’s located in an area of permafrost and is only accessible by air, or via an ice road during the extremely cold winter months (as depicted in the TV show Ice Road Truckers). The mines in my story operate under similar harsh cold weather conditions. Work goes on round-the-clock in temperatures as low as -60°F (-51°C).
A truck and excavator at a coal mine. Lately I’ve spent way too much time looking at pictures of mining equipment and heavy machinery. Whenever I pass a construction site, I’ll be looking over there going, “Ooh! What machines do they have?” I also get all excited about things like the most powerful diesel engine in the world and autonomous trucks that drive themselves.
An ice road over a frozen lake in the Northwest Territories. Pic from here. Ice roads are used in situations where building a real road would be too expensive or unfeasible, in very remote locations and/or in the presence of boggy land. The Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road that provides access to many mines in NWT is 353 miles (568 km) long and the speed limit is 25 km/h (16 mph). The road in my story isn’t quite that long—it’s about 200 miles.
A cutaway view of the Stanford Torus, a type of space station. Pic from here. Other designs for space stations include sphere and cylinder shapes. Theoretically, many types of manufacturing could be done better in space, because of the ready availability of vaccuum, which is essential for many industrial processes but takes effort to create on a planet’s surface. For my story, I imagined that they would be able to produce higher quality steel there than on the surface of Diamanta—steel that would eventually be used to build things like spaceships.
I’ve got more research topics in store for later. Stay tuned for ancient glacier bacteria, ice fish, and (eek!) spinal fusion.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
Well, after taking a big brain-detour by spending several days thinking and writing about a project I’m even not currently working on, I’ve managed to get my head back into my current project, The Outerlands.
So far, I’ve been rewriting for approximately two months, and have produced almost 13,000 words. That’s a little more than 200 words per day. I’m slow. Meanwhile it feels like everyone else is churning out novel-length drafts left and right, and getting published here, there, and everywhere, all at warp speed. I keep having to remind myself that (a) it’s not a race, (b) my perception of what “everyone else” is accomplishing might not be that accurate, and (c) whether it is or not, I want to finish this project, and the only way I can do so is at my own pace, i.e. slower than molasses in January on Pluto (and using mostly the “stolen” moments at work when I’m not updating software and carting computers to and fro.)
I’m pretty good at sustained, long-term efforts. But a little kick in the “writing ass” never hurts. When I went to read my Livejournal friends-list today, it just so happens that the first thing I saw was a link to this article, which I’ll quote from:
…you cannot afford to abandon ANY project. You must finish what you start, no matter how you feel about it. If that project never goes anywhere, that’s tough, I feel your pain. But it happens to all of us. You do not know if you are going to be able to pull it off or not. The only way you will ever be able to pull it off is to get in the unwavering, completely non-negotiable habit of JUST DOING IT.
Your only hope is to keep going. Sit your ass down in the chair and keep cranking out your non-negotiable minimum number of daily pages, or words, in order, until you get to the end.
This is the way writing gets done.
I know what I want to have happen in the story. I know how to put one word in front of another. So all I have to do is keep opening the document and adding words onto the end of it, day after day, and eventually, it will get done. Seems so simple when you think about it that way, eh?
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
(continued from Part 1)
Well, how hard could it be? That was when I started getting really into my character’s head. Imagining: what if *I* had to avoid booze? I started thinking about booze all the time. First of all, there was booze in my house. If I happened to be sitting in my living room enjoying a beer after work, I would find myself thinking: what if this innocent-looking glass bottle was all it would take to send me back down that rabbit hole to hell? Every time I went outside, I would count the reminders that were all around me—all the bars and pubs and liquor stores and ads on billboards and even the empty bottles and cans discarded on the street. If my friends wanted to go somewhere, out to eat or out to a bar to see a band play, I would think: are other people going to be drinking? Will I be tempted to drink too? Maybe I should just not even go out… and so on and so forth, until I started to get an inkling that “hard” didn’t even begin to cover it.
I thought about how my character wouldn’t be doing this in a vaccuum. He’d be in some kind of rehabilitation program, and have counseling, and then there would be his family, who would want him to get better. I started thinking about his family, particularly his Dad. Dad had wanted him to go into business, wear a suit, make lots of money. My Inner Donald Maass elbowed me. “Go back further,” he said.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
I wanted to take a break from blogging about The Outerlands to blog about some other writing process type stuff, specifically a light bulb moment I had back in December. I had just finished writing a novella-length piece of total tripe about two main characters flying around in a spaceship, and they had a kind of warped friendship that was mainly based on snark. There was this secondary character who popped up, tried and failed to undermine the main characters’ friendship, then started demanding a story of his own. I tried to ignore him but he wouldn’t shut up. So I took the path of least resistance: “Fine, he can have his own story. I’ll write it, it’ll be short, and then this pesky plot bunny will be out of my head.”
Here’s what I knew about this character:
- He was an adult that still had some growing up to do—spoiled, irresponsible, and liked to party too much.
- His father was some kind of uber-CEO who had more money than God.
- Instead of following in Dad’s footsteps, he became a mechanic who fixed spaceships. This was a big disappointment to Dad.
- In fact, it was one of many disappointments. In Dad’s eyes, he had never amounted to anything. But the thing was, it was sort of true. His entire life consisted of one screwup after another—getting busted for drunk driving, getting fired from jobs, etc.
- But no matter how badly he screwed up, Dad always bailed him out. Therefore he never really had to face the consequences of his actions.
I imagined that this would be a “comeuppance” story. He’d go too far, he’d really, really screw something up—and for the first time in his life, his father would refuse to pick up the pieces. And he’d have to deal with it. And he’d learn something. And grow up just a bit.
It was when I started thinking about #1, that I heard this voice (it was my Inner Donald Maass!***) say, “Partying problem, huh? And this is why he keeps screwing his life up?”
Me: Um, I guess so?
Inner Donald Maass: So how big of a party-er is this guy?
Me: Jeez, I don’t know. Spring Break, Fort Lauderdale type of thing?
Inner Donald Maass: I have a better idea. Make it worse.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
If you follow Ray Rhamey’s blog Flogging the Quill, then you know the premise: Send in the first page of your novel, and Rhamey will read, analyze, and tell you if he found it compelling enough to make him turn to the second page (and why or why not). The key word here is “compelling”. Editors and agents are busy people, and it’s your first page that determines whether they read any further. The idea is to hook them right from the get-go, and that’s what the FTQ blog is all about. The experience of having my first page “flogged”, and watching others get whipped as well, was a real eye-opener for me, and FTQ continues to be one of my must-read blogs.
Now Rhamey has a new book coming out: Flogging the Quill: Crafting a Novel that Sells. With the goal of bringing a novel manuscript up to publishable quality, Flogging the Quill is a Swiss army knife fixit tool for a myriad of beginner-novelist problems, as well as a valuable resource for experienced writers and editors.
This book is filled to the brim with advice and coaching from an author with years of experience in advertising, screenwriting, novel writing and editing. From the press release:
The first section, covering the craft of storytelling, includes lessons on creating tension, creating the character “care factor,” what drives a plot, the six vital story ingredients, and tools for spotting shortcomings in a narrative.
In Description, writers learn how experiential description can characterize, plus how to handle the tricky character-description hurdle, staging, and overwriting.
The Dialogue section helps writers avoid leaden overuse of dialogue tags, enliven a dialogue scene with action beats, and deliver the sound of dialogue.
The vital “when to tell, how to show” lesson in the Technique section has been praised by literary agents and college teachers. The section also coaches on point of view, including the problems “head-hopping” can cause with readers.
With the Words section, Rhamey reveals unique insights to the good and bad of using adverbs in a fiction narrative, and guides writers in weeding out weak, wasted, and wrong words.
Computer tips that make writing more productive are included, plus a “workout” section where writers apply lessons learned to real efforts by beginning novelists.
New York Times bestseller Tess Gerritsen says, “…it’s a must-have for any novelist.” Literary agent Dan Conaway of Writers House says, “…Ray Rhamey’s book provides the sort of practical, sensible advice that really can help you become a better writer.”
Pre-order Flogging the Quill from Amazon
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
Hey everybody, my friend Ripley Patton’s short story “The Derby” has been nominated for a Sir Julius Vogel Award. In the story, the annual salmon fishing derby in Alaska takes a very unexpected turn. “The Derby” totally rocks, and you can read it online for free here, at the Wily Writers site.
The Sir Julius Vogel Award is the premiere science fiction/fantasy/horror award in New Zealand (where Ripley makes her home). It’s a fan nominated and voted award, so if you read “The Derby” and like it, please add your voice to the nominations (via the handy-dandy form). There are only 8 days left for the nominations process, so get your votes in!
Who was Sir Julius Vogel, you ask? He was Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1889. His book Anno Domini 2000 — A Woman’s Destiny was the first full-length science fiction novel by a New Zealander, and portrayed a utopia of the future in which women were equal and held positions of authority. New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote — in 1893. How cool is that?
Don’t forget to check out the rest of the stories on Wily Writers — a brand new speculative fiction web site that’s chock-full of great stuff from an international group of writers.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
I’ve made it to Chapter 3 in my rewrite of The Outerlands. The core of the story is the same–that is, most of the same events are occurring, in the same order. The way they’re told, on the other hand, is really drastically different. I’m using almost all new words. There’s very little from the previous version that can be reused. This is making it feel almost like a whole new story.
I’m working really hard on the following: (1) moving things forward faster; (2) eliminating any scenes in which no more new ground is broken; (3) eliminating excess wordage. Every word costs a dollar!
To explain (1) a little bit more: in the previous version of OL I had a tendency to have one thing happen in the first scene, then the ensuing event happen in the next scene, and so forth. Very slow and drawn out, and more like “real life”. This story, however, is not real life. I don’t need things to happen in “real time”. I don’t need to have the character reaching for the doorknob, turning it, opening the door, walking through the doorway, turning left into the hallway, and so forth. All I need is for her to materialize in the kitchen.
For now, I’m concentrating on the evolution of the relationships of my main character, Mercy, with the two most important secondary characters–her brother Keenan and her friend Violet (who becomes her lover). Along with the Mercy/Keenan relationship comes the evolution of Mercy’s world view. She starts off with an attitude of resignation towards the repressive society in which she lives, but ends up daring to dream of a better place. Along with the Mercy/Violet relationship comes the evolution of Mercy’s sense of self, especially her sexual identity. She goes from not knowing who she is and merely accepting the role she is given, to realizing she doesn’t fit in but trying to deny it, to finally accepting herself.
There are additional elements in the story that don’t fall strictly under either of these two relationships, but I feel like I need to write all the foundation scenes first.
If only I could have just gotten all this stuff figured out in advance, heh. Going back and fixing this existing story is proving to be a lot harder than writing a new story from scratch. What I’m doing now is almost like writing a brand-new story, except not.
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
(continued from Part 1)
I revised The Outerlands again. This time, I went through every chapter, every scene, every sentence, picking everything apart, editing and polishing word by word. I’d never scrutinized my writing so closely before. By this time I had lost count of how many revisions the book had been through, so I referred to what I was doing as the “final polish”. Then I went to the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. There, I once again had the opportunity to pitch to an agent, and this got me a request for the first three chapters of my book. Hours later, my critique group buddies and I went to one of the scheduled workshops, where we had our minds blown by Donald Maass. “Tension on every page” was only the beginning. There was tension, and there was microtension, ratcheting up the conflict line by line. Polishing one’s prose was one thing — changing the fundamental character and power of each sentence was quite another. Equally mind-blowing was the workshop by his wife, Lisa Rector-Maass, which focused on questioning your story and your characters in startling and challenging ways, with the goal of taking the story to a new level.
I came to a realization: all my polishing of sentences was like vaccuuming the carpet and washing the sheets, when what I really needed to do was get rid of that old ratty carpet and that saggy mattress — no, I needed to start ripping out walls and pulling up floorboards. I never sent my three chapters to the agent I met at SIWC. Instead I bought the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook — we all did — and started flogging the hell out of The Outerlands again.
I made significant progress on the Breakout Novel workbook, but I didn’t finish it, because I was interrupted by a large, time-consuming, work-related project which took months to complete. During that time, I did very little writing. When I resurfaced, I had another realization: “Dude, novel-writing takes a lot of time and work, and there’s no guarantee of any reward at the end. I’d better write some short stories too, instead of just continuing to put all my eggs in the novel basket.”
I put the The Outerlands away, and didn’t touch it for an entire year. Instead, I worked on “He Learned How” — flogging it, polishing it, and eventually successfully submitting it. I also wrote a novella (”Betty at the Edge”) and a longish short story (”Star”) set in a completely new and fresh universe with brand new characters, and fell in love with those for a while. I felt like writing was becoming, well, not exactly easier — but that my writing chops were becoming more equal to the tasks I set myself. I felt a growing ability to form my stories into desired shapes, to see and create patterns and themes, to push characters hard and make them suffer and change, to look inside myself and see the fear and force myself to “go there”.
The next time I looked at The Outerlands, it was like looking at it with a whole new pair of eyes. I did need to rip out those walls and pull up those floorboards, but it wasn’t just that. There were words, phrases, sentences, events and ideas in there that dated back to the story’s first iteration. Somehow, despite repeated revisions, some of those relict features had continued to be exempt, regardless of whether or not they were pulling their weight. The entire house was a disorganized patchwork of cobbled-together elements — old crap from the past, middle-aged crap from two years ago, and newish, somewhat-better-but-still-not-great stuff pasted bandaid-like on top of it to try to hold it together.
The important thing was, it couldn’t be fixed in situ. It had to be destroyed and rebuilt. The other important thing was that the foundation was still sound. There was a female protagonist who was more or less a version of me that had grown up in a repressive near-future, and her brother who was smart but self-destructively crazy. They weren’t like everybody else in the conformist society they lived in, and they knew it, and so they decided to run away. That was still the story I had to tell, and I still felt the compulsion to tell it. That made it worth destroying and rebuilding. And that’s what I’m doing.
So do I believe that I now know everything, and I’ve reached the peak of my writing powers? Of course not. Sure, I know more than I used to. I know just enough to realize that I still have plenty to learn. This learning process is like a logarithmic curve — it leaps up and covers a ton of ground very quickly and then starts getting steeper and steeper, approaching the Y-axis but never, ever reaching it. I don’t know precisely where I’d place myself on that curve, but at least I know that I won’t be languishing at point zero, in dead end spiral notebook land, ever again. The Outerlands is my first novel, and I’ll never again have to go through that first novel learning curve.
So anyway, enough blathering. Time to go nuke and pave. Progress reports forthcoming!
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
Did I say I was revising The Outerlands? What I should have said was: I’m rewriting the entire thing from scratch.
The first couple of times I tried to write this story, I didn’t get very far. Sure, I knew what the story was about. There was a female protagonist who was more or less a version of me that had grown up in a repressive near-future, and her brother who was smart but self-destructively crazy. They weren’t like everybody else in the conformist society they lived in, and they knew it, and so they decided to run away. I would open up a spiral notebook and start writing, but eventually I would always come up against the dead end of “what happens next?” I literally didn’t understand that in order to keep telling a story, you have to have some idea where it’s going next. I also didn’t understand that if you don’t know where the story is going next, then you have to figure this out, and that sometimes it’s hard work. I understood perfectly well how to write down all the things that naturally and easily came to me. But the hard work was the stumbling block. I didn’t know yet that if you learn the mental processes required to do the hard work, you can then push through the wall and continue telling the next part of the story. So I ended up with quite a few dead end spiral notebooks.
The next step in my learning process came one day when I was standing in line at the grocery store and the cashier had a Nanowrimo t-shirt on. I asked, and got an answer: National Novel Writing Month. I went home and looked on the web site and discovered a whole new world, and I wanted to try it. I did not finish 50,000 words that November, but I wrote about 35,000 words — which was more than I’d ever written. It felt like a lot. But it wasn’t a book. It wasn’t anywhere near to being a book. And it wasn’t finished.
But it wasn’t a dead end spiral notebook either. Sometime during that November, or maybe it was in the months afterwards, I’d begun to learn just what it really took to keep pushing against “what happens next.” I kept writing, kept reaching walls and pushing through them to get to what happened next, and eventually I wrote the ending. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but writing the ending made me different. I was now somebody who understood what it took to get to the end. It was an accomplishment.
Meanwhile, I had discovered Livejournal, and made some online friends who were also interested in writing, and joined a group where we all posted responses to weekly writing prompts. Some of us discovered a particular affinity for each other, and eventually we formed a small writers’ group and began to read and critique each other’s work. The Outerlands was the first piece that went up for critique. Not all of the feedback was positive, but it was all constructive — it was a very supportive group of people. Having other people read my writing was another step on the learning curve, and so was reading and critiquing other people’s work. I started to appreciate that it wasn’t just about writing down the facts of the story — telling the reader that A happened first, then Joe did B, then Mary did C. It wasn’t just characters and a plot. There were all these other considerations: setting, structure, dialogue, action, style, point of view. I remember the first time I tried to figure out what some of those terms even meant. It began to sink in for me that it wasn’t just what you wrote, it was how you wrote it, that made all the difference.
Things started to snowball. I discovered that there were books for writers who wanted improve their writing. The first one I read was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Then one of my critique partners turned us all on to Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. The phrase “conflict on every page” became part of my vocabulary. I went to a writing conference where we had an opportunity to pitch our book to a real live editor or agent, and that began another process of demystification for me. I learned about hooks and query letters and the importance of first pages. I discovered Miss Snark and Flogging the Quill and Evil Editor. I began to think, “Hey, what if I actually seriously tried to get something published?”
Of course, having all this new knowledge didn’t mean I had acquired the writing chops to match. Like Elizabeth Lyon said in this interview, there’s “know of” and then there’s “know how”. Not only did I not “know how”, I also didn’t know I didn’t know how. I revised The Outerlands and sent it off to, oh, only the biggest and award-winningest SF publishing house ever. I really thought that it was my best work, the very pinnacle of what I was capable of. At the time, perhaps it was. After months of waiting (during which I kept working on other stories and learning more about writing and publishing), I received a very nice form letter rejection. At that point, I read through the manuscript again and realized that it was crap. How did I ever think that this was as good as I could do?
continued in Part 2
Mirrored from Kam Oi Lee.
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