Living the Fictional Dream

I think that the reading you do when you’re young has a bigger affect on you that any other reading you do in your life. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, but reading you do when you’re a child is really powerful. It shapes you as a future reader, and possibly as a writer, too. I know it did for me.

When I was a child, my favorite books were the old fashioned ones where kids met obstacles with cheerfulness and perserverence, and were rewarded in the end. I also loved books where family was important, and if a character was a story-teller, it was a plus.

Some of my absolute favorites from childhood were Little Women, A Little Princess, Anne of Green Gables, and The Five Little Peppers series. I read them over and over again. I adored the imaginations all these kids had. Anne Shirley, of course, had more imagination than anyone I’ve ever known, and always pulled it off with such drama and style. Jo March’s scribblings and the antics that the March girls got up to fascinated me. I wanted to write, I wanted to have my own Pickwick club, and I wanted to perform plays in my bedroom. I also wanted to be part of the incorrigible Pepper clan, who made figuring out a way to have Christmas with no money an exciting adventure. I wanted to adopt a lonely boy (like Laurie and Jappy) into my family (why were all the lonely boys filthy rich?). And I wanted to be able to tell stories like Sarah Crewe.

As an adult, I can see the didactic moments in these stories, and some of the morals of the day seem absurd now (the author of the Peppers was obsessed with the idea that it was bad for children to get upset and cry — woe behold the Pepper child who had a temper tantrum!), but as a kid, these were my imaginary friends, family, and siblings.

In the modern world, you never get to float down a river pretending to be a heroine from ancient literature, you never write on slates, and you seldom ramble through the woods. Texas isn’t much for snow, so I never went sledding or ice skating on a pond. It was a whole different world — a world where everyone always got their just desserts and virtures like patience and kindness were always rewarded.

Pie in the sky ideals, yes, but even today I think those are ideals to shoot for. If we all treated each other with that kind of respect and love, the world would be a different place. However, at this point, I don’t think I’m ever going to be adopted by a millionaire, so I’ve had to give up that dream!

When I got a little older, I discovered The Song of the Lioness quartet written by Tamora Pierce. This series probably affected my writing more than any other books I’ve ever read. The heroine, Alanna (a girl in disguise trying to earn her place as a knight), was fiesty and brave, but flawed. The supporting cast was well-drawn and fascinating. The world had its own quirks and laws, but had familiar aspects, too. If I ever succeed as a young adult author, I would love to see my books next to hers at the bookstore (though, I suppose I’d have to write under a pseudonym, wouldn’t I?).

So, what about you guys? What books did you read when you were young that really meant something to you? Did they affect your outlook on life? If you’re a writer, did they affect that aspect of your life at all?

I recieved an interesting rejection today. The editor of a fairly prestigious e-zine said, “No to this, but please keep trying us?” Short, sweet, and to the point, but also a rejection with a grain of hope. And not a dreaded form rejection, either.

After I read the note, I stared at it for a while, trying to parse the appropriate meaning from that question mark at the end of the sentence. It seems a very deliberate punctuation choice. A period would be the norm, but a question mark means something else entirely.

This particular market has rejected quite a few of my stories. Perhaps the editor meant that question mark as an acknowledgement of that, and also hopes that I will continue to submit to them despite the number of rejections? If that’s it, if the editor actually remembers who I am and that I’ve sent stuff before, maybe that means that they really like my voice, and, as yet, I just haven’t sent them a story that quite fits with the e-zine? That I’m almost there…

That would definitely be a nice thing to believe! It’s a market I would particularly like to appear in, both because it pays better than a token payement and it is a fairly well-known market, at least in e-zine circles.

I probably shouldn’t overthink it. It’s just as possible that the question mark was a typo. That thought brings to mind Eats, Shoots and Leaves and the example of the difference between “the panda eats shoots and leaves” and “the panda eats, shoots, and leaves.” Gotta watch out for those gun-toting pandas, yeah?

Either way, the rejection leaves me inspired on two counts. First, I need to keep pressing on that particular story. There must be a home for it somewhere! And, second, I need to write more of the kind of story that this particular e-zine publishes so I can try them again.

I can’t believe how fast the summer flew by. It seems like just a blink ago it was June! And now it’s September, and Writer’s Ink is getting ready to gear up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or just NaNo — writers are often called WriMos). NaNo happens in November, but it takes a while to get your idea in place, do any outlines or other prep work, etc.

We have quite a few successful NaNo veterans in my writing group, and it’s something we look forward to every year. This year, we’ve decided that October will be our NaNo planning month. We’ll devote our meeting time (aside from any crits we have) to prep work for NaNo and other planning exercises.

Last year was the first year since 2005 that I participated and didn’t win NaNo. My failure was due to the lack of an idea I was really invested in. I had an idea that I kind of liked and started with that, but I guess I wasn’t feeling it enough because it never gelled, and I abandoned it after a couple of days and a couple thousand words.

Then I tried to write the sequel to my sucessful novel from the year before. However, since I’m not done revising that first novel, the sequel stalled a bit. Also, I made a crucial plot decision in the first chapter that set the tone for the rest of the book, but about the time I hit 6K I realized that I should have done something different.

I totally wasn’t ready to chuck it all and start over again, so I threw in the towel and used NaNo to focus on all my burgeoning short story ideas instead. I didn’t write 50K, but I wrote several stories that ended up finding homes, including “Zero to Clean in
Ten Minutes or Less,” “Remember?,” and “The Widow and the Stranger.” So it was a productive November, no matter how you look at it.

Now I need to decide what I’m going to do this year. I really don’t want to branch out into another novel idea that will wind up a first draft in need of heavy revision. I’ve got several of those lying around. Novel revision is apparently my big weakness as a writer.

One thought I had is that perhaps I should take one of those novels that needs revision (the revision is pretty major — pretty much total rewrites) and work on that. There would probably be 50K of new text, and it might end up more polished than the typical NaNo novel, because it’s already been done once.

The other thought I had is to write 50K worth of short stories. Then I’d come out of November with tons of stuff to market. Or at least tons of stuff to prep for submissions, but I’m much better with following through on revision of a short piece. Maybe because it doesn’t take so long!

Well, I still have a month and a half or so to decide, which is a good thing. Of course, most of that time will be eaten up with work. The fall is my company’s busiest time!

What about you guys? Any Wrimos or potential Wrimos out there? Any tips or tricks to share?

I go back and forth on how effective writing prompts really are. Most of the time, I’m not that into them. I have enough ideas floating around in my head — I tend to feel that I don’t need anyone else’s inspiration. However, sometimes they totally work out!

I’m sure I’ve discussed my writing group’s monthly prompts contest here before. Some of the stories I’ve had published this year were the result of prompts from the contest, so that in and of itself illustrates the value of using them.

I think, possibly, the best thing about the prompts contest is that it can get me writing when I might be stuck on something else (a or story-in-progress). And like anything of the sort (prompts, the group’s story every day contest, etc.), there can be good and bad results. Some of the prompts I attempt come out extremely crappy, and others are either good or at least good enough that they can be retooled into something I can submit.

The other good thing about prompts is that they challenge creativity and allow me to stretch myself. It’s harder to write about something that I didn’t choose myself. Prompts created by someone else make me work for the story, but in a good way. I think it’s helpful to get out of one’s comfort zone (genre of choice, POV of choice, etc.) and write something else on occasion.

And, sometimes, I use the prompts provided by my group’s monthly contest to expand one of my already-created fictional worlds. I’ve written many a prompt (and short story) for the group set in the fantasy world of my first novel, and each one helps me to know that world just a little better. Whenever I get back to revising that novel, it will be the richer for that extra work.

The danger of exercises like prompts, writing a story every day, and other such things is that they can take you away from the things that you really need to focus on. It can be so seductive to focus on something other than that novel or short story I’ve been struggling with.

I don’t know that I like prompts enough that I would seek them out on my own, but as long as Writer’s Ink has the monthly contest, I will occasionally delve into that madness.

Lots of writing exercises going on in my writing group write now, and I’ve promised myself that September is the month that I’m going to make the most of them. Jens is running our prompt contest this month, and I have my eyes on the $10 prize. His prompts were quite challenging, I must say, but I have several ideas already. And I already turned in one, so go me.

We’re also doing a world-building exercise. It’s really fun! Six of us claimed land on a map that Virginia made, and now we’re coming up with the common elements of the world at large and the unique elements of our countries. Alex actually posted about this last week and included a lot of cool world-building links.

World-building can be scary some times, and yet it is also fun. The first time I built a world, it took me years to get it all fleshed out. This time, I’m starting with the world first, so hopefully the stories I eventually write set there will be well grounded in their unique fantasy world. Maybe it’s because I have experience creating a world before, but this time it seems more fun and less stressful. Maybe because I know that I can do it if I take the time. It also helps to be doing it with a group of friends.

If only I were better at making up words/names for things. That has always been a struggle for me, because I always think the made up words sound so stupid when I make them up (but I don’t think that when other people do… must be that hyper inner critic of mine!).

When I was a copy editor (before my tech writing days), my team used to say that only a fool copy edited his/her own work. Our little copy editing joke based on that saying about how a lawyer defending himself has a fool for a client. I claim no knowledge of anything related to the law, but it boggles my mind how hard it can be to see the errors in something I’ve written myself — especially right after I’ve finished writing it!

I think that the writing portion of the brain is totally separate from the part of the brain that knows grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. The creative side of the brain likes to see the piece as you meant it to be, not how it actually is (hence missing words — the kind of thing that happens when your muse talks faster than you can type!). As a whole, creativity is a different mindset from the logic of copy editing.

Now, I think I’ve discovered a new part of the writer’s brain — let’s call it the poet’s corner!

I took a poetry workshop in graduate school. The professor had his own poetry published and, for a time, was the head of the creative writing portion of the department. Most of the students in that particular class were people seeking their masters or their PHD in poetry. I and two of my classmates were prose people who’d taken the poetry workshop for the experience. Next to all the others, we were rank amateurs.

As far as classroom critiques went, that poetry workshop was the hardest of my whole graduate school career. Graduate school crits are far and away more difficult than working with my writing group today. Partly because you’re students thrown together by chance instead of friends, and partly because, since the critiques were part of our grade, a lot of students hunted for things to dislike about your work (I guess they thought it would impress the professor) and never worried about telling you if they liked anything. They also weren’t sticklers for constructive criticism, and didn’t care if they crushed your muse. But those crits gave me a thick skin when it comes to criticism and rejections, and they made me really appreciate the supportive, yet constructively critical, writing group I have today.

One of the poems I wrote in that poetry workshop was about something I’d seen in real life. I’d been driving to campus one day, when I saw, on the side of the Interstate, the burned out husk of a car that had been in an accident. But what struck me was that, in the trunk of that car was a dozen red roses. The flowers had a shocking beauty when compared with the soot-streaked metal of the car, and it made me sad to think about the person who probably died in the crash and the person who loved them enough to bring the roses.

I took the poem to class, and no one liked it. No one. The comment I will always remember was from this girl who seldom had anything good to say about anyone’s poem. She said I shouldn’t have used roses because they were too cliche. It was her only comment at all on my poem.

That moment nearly turned me off to poetry entirely! I was so angry… One of the things I like about writing is being able to use inspiration taken from the real world. Sure, not always and sometimes you change it, but other times the real world inspiration is important. And that image that I tried to recreate in that poem would have been totally different if the flowers had been violets or calla lilies or irises! The roses spoke of love, and the color red spoke of passion. It had to be red roses!

After that, I decided to tackle the poems I had to write for that class in a different way. Instead of trying to tell a story that meant something to me, I focused on the language to the exclusion of nearly everything else. I called it word-smushing — I tried to put together words and phrases that sounded cool without caring what they meant. The weird thing? My professor ate up this new style, and I ended up with an A in the course, even after such a stilted beginning.

With the opening of Every Day Poets for submissions, I decided to dust off some of my old poetry and give submitting it a try. The first poem I sent them was one that I’d written based on an actual event. I’d gone out to the country one night to watch a meteor shower, and when I got out of the car, a hamburger wrapper blew by and smeared ketchup on my leg. The poem was my imagining of how that wrapper came to be on that deserted stretch of road. But EDP rejected it. So, I pulled out a poem that I’d written in my word-smushing days , and it’s been accepted. Woo-hoo! I’m excited about it.

Let me be clear, I’m not dissing either EDP or poetry in general. Not at all. It’s been eye opening to have my poetry reacted to the same way as it was in graduate school (though, I much appreciate the EDF editors for being positive and constructive in their rejections, as opposed to the snootiness of some of my former classmates).

Now that I have more distance from that poetry workshop, the more I think maybe the reason my “real life” poetry isn’t successful is my own mindset and the writing style that mindset evokes. I’m a prose person. Poetry is hard for me, and when I’m writing poetry about something real, I think maybe I’m too literal about it. I use too many conjunctions and articles, when every word needs to have a certain kind of importance. The word-smushing somehow gave me access to the poet’s corner of my mind. Using something less personal as the subject helped me get away from telling the story and really explore the poetic nuances of language.

I’m proud of the poem that EDP accepted. I had fun writing it back then (despite my issues with that workshop class), and some of the wording and imagery I used has stuck with me, even eight years later. And the poem is actually about something — it’s just not about a real life event or image; it’s about something more ephemeral than that (the title of the poem is “Inspiration,” if that gives you an idea). I’m really excited for the poem to appear in EDP, whenever that comes to pass.

I don’t know that I will ever pursue poetry in the long-term. It’s a challenge for me to get into that mode, apparently. I wonder if there is such a term as “prose-bound”?

The thing I admire the most about poets is how they can take so few words and make a piece of writing where every single word is important and pulls its own weight. To do that and to tell a story at the same time… that’s impressive! 

I’m glad EDP has come along. This poetry submission process has helped me to re-examine some of my misconceptions from that grad school workshop, and I think I’m a better writer for it. And, who knows… maybe a few trips to the poet’s corner are in my future. We’ll see what my muse has to say!

The Every Day Fiction table of contents for September came out today, and my story, “A Castle in the Clouds,” is on it. Very exciting! Look for it there on September 14 (I’ll remind y’all here when it’s live).

You can also mark your calendars for September 26, when the story by my writing group mate Jens will be live. An adventurous good time, that one.

It looks like a great lineup for the month. There are a lot of familiar names (authors who always deliver), and some new names, as well. K.C. Ball’s “I Must to the Barber’s Chair” is out today, and you should definitely pop over and read it, because it’s great.

Can you believe today is the last day of the three day weekend already? Where did the time go? At least I can say that I made good progress on my writing goals for the weekend. I’ve revised one story, thus far, and sent it out. I sent another story that I just got the rights back to out to a podcast (**crosses fingers**). And I’ve read through/made final revisions to another story. I hope to finish that one up today sometime and sent it on its first foray out into the world (it’s over 8K, though, so it will be tougher to place).

If only I had made as much progress on my work out and house cleaning goals… Ah well… we must make sacrifices for our writing, yeah?

I want to write a sequel to “The Widow and the Stranger” (Allegory e-zine, May 2008 issue). I love Sarah Kirby, and I want to write about another of her adventures. I like that she’s reserved and old fashioned, but at the same time she’s a liberated feminist.

When my writing group did the Story Every Day contest back in June, I actually wrote a sequel to tWatS, but it was too much of a sequel. It relied heavily on background that someone would only know if they read the first one. One of Jadon’s enemies tried to steal the amulet that he made for Sarah in an attempt to find him.

Sadly, while that might be interesting if I ever wrote a novel about Sarah and her Atlantians, it wasn’t going to work for a short story. Maybe if the same e-zine published it, but you can’t count on that. And even still, in the short story game, each story really needs to stand on its own. The characters can have more adventures, but they shouldn’t have continuing adventures (unless you’re lucky enough to have the chance to publish a short story collection like Mercedes Lackey’s Tarma and Kethry stories or perhaps if you have a market that’s committed to publishing them all).

Recently, I wrote a few paragraphs of the next Sarah Kirby story. The title popped into my head fully formed, and I actually kind of like it — “The Widow and the Lord” — it stands on it’s own, and yet it still harkens back to the predecessor for those “in the know.”

Sadly, that’s as far as it’s gone. I have a good setting and a new character for Sarah to interact with (and bring her common sense business acumen to), but I have no plot! Don’t you hate that? Great concept/idea/character, and no plot. I know that romance is the wrong way to go — Sarah had enough of that last time, and she’s not a woman who opens herself up that easily. So, I need a plot with a speculative twist to involve Sarah in the life of this lord. I want her to somehow save the day this time in a decisive way. But… how? Nothing is coming to mind.

Ah well… I guess I will just have to let “The Widow and the Lord” linger for a while. Perhaps one day, out of the blue, the plot will come to me like the title did. It’s strange, though. Usually I suffer through the title creation process. I never start with a title! Weirdness!

My week has been balanced out writing-wise. I got two rejections (one from the market that had passed my story to round 2 **sighs**), but then yesterday I had a story accepted by Every Day Fiction. This will be my second with them, so I’m excited! I’ll post the link here when it comes out — I don’t know the date yet.

So, to continue on my topic from yesterday, plots or types of stories that I don’t like, I thought I would put together a few thoughts about plots that I do like. Everyone probably has these… those story premises that suck you in every time. Sometimes, I think of these as guilty pleasure stories, because I usually enjoy them even if the writing isn’t top notch.

One of these for me is the story where two people pretend to be a couple for some at least slightly nefarious purpose and then actually fall in love during the con. One example of that is the movie Drive Me Crazy, and it’s a teen movie, too, so it has that Y/A factor that I love. But this concept has been done all over the place — in books, TV shows, etc. — and I always love it! The thing is, though it’s a simple concept, there are millions of ways it can be done. Just because, boiled down, the premise is the same, each story is totally different.

Vampire and werewolf fiction is another one for me. I love the urban fantasy/supernatural feel to these creatures. I love that they are human and “other” at the same time. I like them with the traditional tropes (silver bullets, wooden stakes, no reflection), and I love it when writers give them their own twist (like the werewolves in Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld and the vampires in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight). I used to devour these any time I found them because they were rare. With the current urban fantasy explosion, there are a lot more to pick and choose from, which is great, because I can always find something new to read.

I also love it when two characters who seem to be diametrically opposed (by a point of view, by temperment, by class, by family, whatever) form a really strong relationship. Romantic relationships of this sort abound — think Veronica/Logan on Veronica Mars, the main couple in Pretty in Pink, or even Romeo and Juliet (though, I prefer the ones that end more happily!). But the relationship doesn’t always have to be a romance. A friendship that opposes these lines can be just as fascinating. In this story, it’s all about the depth of the relationship, the connections forged, the sacrifices made, and the ways the characters’ eyes are opened.

I’m also a sucker for a story about a scoundrel/rebel. A character who lives his/her life in shades of gray is inherently more interesting than a black-and-white hero. Give me the Han Solos (Star Wars), the Mals (Firefly), the Deans (Supernatural), the Sawyers (Lost), the Faiths (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the Jos (Little Women), and the Dr. Horribles (Dr. Horrible, of course) any day! I like to see the struggle between right and wrong, and when they choose the right thing over the selfish thing, the reward is so much sweeter. These characters might think they have it easy, but in reality they struggle more than any of the more black-and-white versions.

If I thought for a while, I’m sure I’d come up with more tropes/stories/plots that I have a weakness for, but that’s probably a long enough list for now. What about y’all? What concepts have you buying the book/turning on the TV without knowing anything else about the end product?

Yesterday, I stumbled across the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead on the Sci-fi channel — the movie about survivors of the zombie apocalypse hiding out in a mall. Now, I enjoy a good scary movie. Loved Scream, love Supernatural (even when those creepy ghost stories give me the willies), even have been known to enjoy a slasher flick from time to time (the Halloween and Friday the 13th variety, not the new ones, like Saw, that are all about pain and torture with no good guy to win in the end — or so I’ve heard). But after watching DotD yesterday (really only the last half… starting when the zombie baby was born), I spent half the night having insomnia and thinking about the movie and the other half of the night dreaming about my own zombie apocolpyse (the strange thing was, I dreamed the same dream twice, and the second time, I knew I’d done this before, but even still I wasn’t able to save my friends from their zombie-fied doom!).

I think it was the depressing ending that did it to me. (Spoiler alert, in case you care!) If we’d ended with our four survivors on the boat, sailing away to a deserted island and some kind of meager life, I would probably have been OK, even after my favorite guy was bitten in the last reel and had to stay behind and shoot himself. At least some of our good guys would have gotten away, won the day (sort of). But the depressing clips during the credits of the boat runing out of gas, the engine catching on fire, and them fining coming up on an island — their last chance — to then find it infested by zombies, as well. Man… suckage! So… what was even the point of the movie, you know?

The whole thing got me thinking about stories that I just don’t like. And high on that list is stories that end badly. Now, I’m not saying that I always want a happy ending or a silver lining, because that’s not true. There are stories that really need to have an unhappy ending — such an ending is true to the story. Take Memento, for example. That is a really well done movie, and one that everyone should see, but a happy ending just wasn’t in the cards from the get-go. For me, it’s the total destruction, everything’s lost including the characters you spent the last two hours growing to care about, ending that gets me. When I watch a scary movie, I want there to be a ray of hope at the end. I want the bad guy to ultimately be defeated by the last survivor or the group of survivors to get away to fight another day.

Another type of story that is hard for me is a war story — a dramatization of a real war that we fought in our histories, like Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor, to name a couple of recent ones that I actually watched. The invasion of Normandy sequence at the beginning of SPR tore me up inside when I watched it, as did the battle aftermath sequence in PH. I wasn’t a fan of the silly PH love triangle and all the rest of it, but that scene where the nurse has to sort through the bodies and mark the ones who have a chance of being helped in triage vs. the ones with no chance (condemning them to death), is so painful. The semi-blurry way it portrays the scene interspersed with images of clarity… I think that’s exactly how one would remember such a thing.

After a while, I realized that the reason I don’t like these movies is because they are too realistic. As in, humans actually did these things to each other — they killed each other at Normandy and at Pearl Harbor, and so many other times. The fact that one human can do that to another, no matter what the larger stakes are, crushes my soul a little bit. But, I do see the value of war movies, too — if we are going to be that cruel to other humans, we should remember that they are human just as we are.

And another thing that, as a consumer of stories, I can’t take sometimes is stories where people are intentionally cruel to each other emotionally. Now, this one is less of an issue than the other two, because sometimes these plot elements can be done in a way that I don’t mind as much, but, to really like the story, I have to have, again, some element of hope to counterbalance or some character that I can really root for. When all the characters are cruel to each other all of the time, there’s just not much for me to sink my teeth into. For example, the constant manipulations of Cruel Intentions/Dangerous Liasons are intriguing on one level, but also excruciatingly painful, so those movies are not on the top of my list. I had to give up watching Desperate Housewives midway into the first half of the first season because the bad stuff that they did to their families (at that point in the series anyway) so outweighed the good. My last straw was when one of the housewives took her mother-in-law, a recovering gambling addict, and intentionally left her within the grasp of a casino’s temptations for her own selfish gain.

Anyway, this entry is getting to be quite a ramblefest, so I should wind things up. I guess the whole reason for writing this today was that, after my troubled sleep last night, I was thinking about the kinds of stories that I like and the kinds that I just don’t. This kind of preference definitely affects one’s writing style, I think. You’re not going to see me writing a war story any time soon, and though sometimes my stories don’t end happily, they aren’t going to end it total destruction without some note of hope — those are things you can expect from me as a writer, because they are things that I want as a reader.

What about you guys out there? Are there any kinds of stories that just don’t work for you? Stories that you avoid from either a reading/watching or writing perspective?