ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop Boot Camp Week 5: Give it a Rest!

Noon: Rest from Work by Vincent van Gogh

Three weeks to go before the June 11 deadline to submit work and sign up for the AmradilloCon Writing Workshop. There is still time to go through the entire boot camp program from the first post and create a short story or novel chapter in order to participate. Consider blocking off a few chunks in your schedule if you can, take a vacation day from work, or bargain with your family for some “away” time and create your own mini writer’s retreat.

If you’ve been following along with the program so far you’ll have a rough draft in hand that has the essential elements of characterization, plot, and worldbuilding in place. Now it’s time to give it a rest. I firmly believe revising my own work effectively depends on my ability to see it with new eyes. One of the best ways to do this is to put it aside for a while. If no deadlines are involved, I find a week or two to be ideal, but even putting something down for 24 hours can be immensely helpful.

In this post, I’m going to talk about both resting and your next revision. Because, as I mentioned before, there’s no rule against submitting your work early!

For me looking away from my current writing project is just as important as the time I spend focused on it. If, like me, you have a few pieces in various stages of completion resting one piece means that you can turn your attention to a different one for a while. If you don’t have anything else on deck, then spend a day or two with your reading. If you’re working on a short story, pull up some short stories online (see the fiction links in my sidebar for a start). If you’re working on a novel chapter, read the first chapters of the novels in your bookcase or at your local library or go to Amazon and preview a bunch of first chapters.

Resting, in this case is, more like what happens when bread dough “rests.” After activating the yeast and kneading the dough a baker covers it and lets it rest. But a lot is happening under that kitchen towel. While the baker is attending to other things, the yeast ferments, the dough expands and the final loaf’s signature flavor and texture are formed. When the baker returns to the dough, it is something different. For writing the transformation takes place in your head. Your subconscious is always percolating themes and ideas and this process doesn’t stop during revision. Time away from your piece can give you space to solidify what is important about this story and what elements might need to be enhanced or minimized in order to refine it.

After you’ve given your piece a rest, read through it again. If you feel that everything is roughly in place then it’s time to start refining your piece with a more granular revision. (If, on your read through you find a logic problem or plot hole, go ahead and excise or plaster in some words or a scene before you go on to the next step – all of these revision stages can be repeated as needed.) If you’re ready to refine what you have, here are some things to focus on:

Transitions

These are the breaks between scenes, changes in location, point of view, or gaps in time in the story. An extra space, a short line of asterisks, or a transitional sentence can mark these changes. Generally, I find that too many transitional separators are often a sign that the story (especially one limited to 5,000 words) is perhaps trying to paint on too large of a canvas. If you have a lot of disjointed scenes, consider scaling your story down, e.g. by narrowing the amount of time it covers or number of characters. When I write a first draft, I can be pretty lazy about writing transitions between scenes, this draft is where I write those sentences that link adjacent scenes together. If you are looking to write a story that is more conceptual or is set in a vast time scale you can use alternative forms. For example, when I wanted to write about all of the different ways we think about time, I did it as a list story.

Paragraphs

Once you’re happy with the way your story flows from one scene to another, turn your attention to your paragraphs. A good paragraph, like a good story, will have a beginning, middle, and end. It should progress to a tiny resolution of it’s own. At times, for impact, you might want to have a one sentence or one word paragraph.

Dialogue

Is tricky, because in fiction dialogue is not the same as natural speech, which is often rambling and circular. Dialogue has to accomplish something while looking like it isn’t, to be intentional without appearing intentional. Dialogue often moves the plot, but it really shines by revealing character. Employing dialect can work, but it is often more effective to think in terms of individual habits of speech. Actors often do this when creating character, think of how Lumbergh in Office Space almost always starts off with a long, irritating “Yeah.” Try to give your main characters unique speech patterns and check that all the dialogue is accomplishing something, either moving the plot forward or revealing character (preferably a little of both).

As you’re refining your piece the ultimate goal is to focus it both structurally and for emotional impact. You’ll be surprised how much you can dial up the conflict and drama of by making small adjustments at this point.

Next week we’ll talk about the final polish, and working at the sentence level for clarity and grace. There’ll be a bit about dun DUN dun! Grammar.

If you have any questions, put them in the comments and I’ll address those too!

NOTICE: Diverse writers welcomed here!

Diversity is vital to speculative fiction. A genre centered on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from writers, readers and thinkers of all kinds.

This year the Armadillocon Writing Workshop has sponsored seats for writers of color! Visit the workshop page for more information and to fill out the sponsorship request form!

ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop Boot Camp Week 4: What have you got?

We’re About a month out from the June 11 deadline to turn in your work and sign up for the Armadillocon Writing Workshop (of course you can turn in your piece early – hahaha! No, seriously, the door’s open). If you’ve been following this boot camp program you should have a messy zero draft in hand. (If you just found this, it’s not too late to catch up. Scroll back to boot camps one and two for gathering and developing ideas, and week three for writing your zero draft.)

NOTICE: Diverse writers welcomed here!

Diversity is vital to speculative fiction. A genre centered on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from writers, readers and thinkers of all kinds.

This year the Armadillocon Writing Workshop has sponsored seats for writers of color! Visit the workshop page for more information and to fill out the sponsorship request form!

This week it’s time to set aside your writer’s hat and start revising. But when it comes to revising you’ll need more than one hat. I’ll call this first hat the big picture hat. This is where you need to assess just what exactly you’ve got.

Sometimes our stories are buried beneath our conscious thought. If you wrote your first draft free and fast, new story elements or characters may have emerged or changed direction on you. Instead of forcing things back into your original plan, this is an opportunity to see what this draft has to say to you.

This is big picture editing. Start by simply reading through the mess and listen for the piece’s beating heart. What are the things your characters believe in? Fight for? What is won or lost? Try not to be distracted by scene details or sloppy sentences. Resist the urge to do any housekeeping at this point. Try to get a bead on the essence of the story, the thing that will guide your revisions.

Now that you’ve read your draft for you, it’s time to pick up your pen (or put your document into revision mode) and read through it with your readers in mind. Is your story coherent or are there places where you might lose your reader logically or emotionally? This first revision is where it’s easiest to make big structural changes. Move the furniture around, write new material, change a character’s motivation, age, gender if you need to, try different dialogue.

Oscar Wilde's handwritten manuscript 

page of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mostly, I’m drawing with my red pen here, circling text to be moved, crossing out chunks, writing brief notes for new scenes or dialogue. Here are some things to think about:

Plot:

Is there a beginning, middle and end to the story? Does the protagonist change in some way? Do they succeed or fail at something? Do they have a goal or desire? Did the characters get side tracked? If so and if the story lost its focus you can either redirect the characters to your original idea or explore the alternate story that the sidetrack suggests. It can be helpful to write a brief reverse outline here. Make a list of each thing that happens to see if you have cause-and-effect chain of events running through your story.

Pacing:

May be wonky at this point. Frankly, pacing can be tricky in shorter forms. Five thousand words can go by in a flash, so check for long stretches of description or rambling characterizations. Try to keep things concise and make sure events are progressing in a way that increases the tension (i.e. keep tightening the thumb screws on the protagonist).

Clarity:

Are there logic holes or missing steps in the chain of events that will confuse the reader? Are there places where you can adjust the description or characterization that will make the ending resonate more powerfully? In theater, early rehearsals are devoted to blocking out the actors’ stage movements. Think in terms of blocking. Make sure it’s clear to your reader where your character is in the room/woods/spaceship/etc., and in relation to other characters.

With scribbled up draft in hand or on screen, you are ready for your first big rewrite. You’re not shooting for perfection here, just improvement. Try to improve the overall shape of the story, dial up the conflict if you need to, refine the characters and their desires. You can rinse and repeat this process throughout the week. Hell, if the zero draft isn’t cooperating, you have time to start over from scratch. Maybe there’s some moment within your first try at a story that branches off, intrigues you, go ahead and see where that one leads you. Your goal is to come out of the week with something rough but cohesive, something with all the moving parts in the right places.

All of this advice holds for an older piece that you want to refurbish. Except that what you have may be more polished, and it might be harder for you to scrap big sections, rearrange or take the story in a new direction. If so, this is the week you kill your darlings. No matter how beautiful your sentences, how shapely your paragraphs, if the story isn’t working it’s going to have to change and probably change into something very different than your original idea. Sometimes I feel better if I keep the stuff I amputate in a folder with the idea of using these scraps in something new someday.

Next week will be a rest/catch up week. I will also talk about revising for style and grace (that other editor’s hat) for writers who may want to fast track and get their story in early.

Review of december magazine

Summer is winding down and my work on the novel is ramping up.

Not much to blog about this week. Instead you can click on over to the Review Review to read my review of december magazine. Another strong literary journal that covers a broad range of poetry, essay and fiction.

Read Beata Beatrix at Bourbon Penn

Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A picture really is worth a thousand words, or in this case, a little over four thousand.

My story Beata Beatrix is up at Bourbon Penn (Issue 8). I am especially excited to be a part of this publication, because Bourbon Penn is one of those magazines that occupies the space between genre and literary that I so love! You can read the stories free online, buy a copy for your Kindle, or go whole hog and get a truly lovely print edition for your bookshelf.

When I started this story I was thinking not so much about unrequited love as the nature of crushes. Even in the throes of a relatively benign obsession, I am fascinated by the way our desires create a doppelgänger of the object of our interest.

I don't know how I got onto the Pre-Raphaelites other than the fact that I remembered Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting from my days as an art major. The woman in the painting, Elizabeth Siddal, was a popular model among the Pre-Raphaelite painters. And I think it's fair to say, she became an obsession of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who painted her, fell in love with her, married her, and continued to paint her over and over after she died of an overdose of laudanum. 

The painting references another obsessive infatuation, the original Dante and his Beatrice whom he practically deified in The Divine Comedy. In real life, Dante knew Beatrice only passingly, she married another man and died at 24. Dante stands in the background of Rossetti's painting opposite an angel holding a flaming heart. Of the Angel, Dante writes:

"He seemed like one who is full of joy, and had my heart within his hand."

When we desire someone we cannot have (for whatever reason) or ever truly know (i.e. everyone), our idea of them will always miss the mark. If we are unwilling or unable to reach outside ourselves and truly try to know another, we render the very object of our desire into an unwitting stand-in for our own warped idea of who they might be.

Anywho, I hope you enjoy the story. Here's a poem by Christina Rossetti (DGR's sister) about the woman in the picture:

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel -- every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Dante and Beatrice by Henry Holiday, 1884

Write-a-Thon Storytime

The Clarion write-a-thon is over. I enjoyed the challenge and made some real progress toward my personal goals. As part of my write-a-thon commitment I promised to write a story for anyone who donated on my page. I was inspired to do this by the brilliant Robert Shearman and his One Hundred Stories project (never mind that he's on break, there are plenty of stories to read). It's a little intimidating to follow in his footsteps, but I promised to feature any donors by name in a hand crafted, artisinal story of my own concoction. One Karen G. Anderson donated on my page, so here you go!

The Other Karen Anderson *

By Rebecca Schwarz

Karen marched up the driveway, her dead phone slick in her hand, convinced despite all evidence, that it might light up with an incoming call or allow her, even now, to call a tow truck. They’d given up the landline last year. Thank God the car quit only a couple miles out on the frontage road that bordered their neighborhood. She walked through the foyer to the kitchen. Everything looked just as she’d left it this morning, tidier even, but what she really noticed was the cool puff air conditioning.

Lucky for her, the car had rolled to a stop in front of a gaggle of college kids (the girls in crocheted tank tops the boys in tee-shirts that referenced completely unfamiliar bands or memes or something). They pushed the old Oldsmobile off the road and into the empty yard of an abandoned house that she’d driven by every day for years without ever noticing. Their good deed done, the kids moved off before she realized that her phone had died.

She turned back to the house. A tiny sign hung on the porch. Apparently, this had been the law office of Dickerson and Poole, LLC. The door once painted an optimistic blue, was now grimed to a cloudy twilight shade. Sunlight shone through the lone window, its small panes dull with accreted dust and exhaust. For a moment, she thought she saw motion inside and considered knocking on the door, imagining a desiccated little lawyer inside, hoping for a client. Would he even have a phone? How had she never seen this house? The motion was probably a curtain shifting, or the effect of the shadows cast from the cars roaring by on the highway behind her. She started home on foot across the uneven pavement of the neighborhood streets. Everything looked different in the bright afternoon heat. The satin lining under her seersucker suit clung to her arms.

She stopped and looked back. She hadn’t locked it. She slipped her hand into her pocket and closed her fingers around the key ring. Well, if she’d been smart, she would have left the keys in it. Then maybe someone would steal it and she’d be free of the thing at least for a while. The car was old, but of course Mike had kept it in tip-top shape. She used to tease him, calling him Mr. Parker, because he was like the Old Man in The Christmas Story. Ralphie was really talking about Mike when he said: “Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man.” In every other way he was a regular husband. She believed everyone should be allowed their obsessions, but enough was enough. He knew she wanted to drive something different; a nice, modern compact. She sure as hell was going to bring it up again tonight.

The kitchen was the coolest room at this time of day. She couldn’t recall everyone’s schedule, and checked her phone reflexively, even though she knew it was Wednesday. Her face glared up at her from the black screen, dripping sweat and pissed. She peeled her jacket off, threw it over the back of a kitchen chair and went to the bathroom to splash some water over her face. Someone moved around the kitchen. She toweled off and took a deep breath. She felt better, a little cooler and she was home. They’d get the car towed and she’d pour herself a glass of wine.

Mike gave a little start when she stepped out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. He stood there on the other side of the island holding the meat tenderizer, and stared at her for a moment before putting it down on the counter behind him. Finally, he said, “Hello?”

“Hello yourself.” If he was planning to make dinner that only meant that he hadn’t been out to see that one of his precious Oldsmobiles wasn’t in the stable. “The car quit. My phone, too, though I know I charged it last night.”

“Oh, I see.” He sounded relieved. She’d expected something closer to panic. “You want to call a tow truck from our phone?” He pointed to a phone mounted on the wall next to the fridge.

Karen stared at the thing. It was the same shade of green as the leaves on the wallpaper that she’d picked out three years ago when they’d redone the kitchen. She’d never seen this phone before in her life. Their old phone had been some ubiquitous cordless from BestBuy. Mike backed away so that she could step around the counter to make her call. But she couldn’t move. She had to concentrate to breathe.

“We don’t have a phone.” Her voice disappeared into a whisper. She cleared her throat.

“Why don’t you sit down for a bit?” he said. “It’s awfully hot out there.”

“Mike.”

He took a glass down from the cupboard. A glass from the set she’d bought at Ikea. And turned back to her. “Who’s Mike?”

Karen slid onto one of the chairs and took up her phone again in her now shaking hands. This man, who was not Mike, filled the glass with ice and then water and slid it across the counter to her. She drank it down.

“I’m sorry – ” She looked at him.

“Phil,” the man provided.

“ – Phil, it’s just. This house looks a lot like my house. I guess I got confused.”

“Like I said, it’s hot out there.”

“I know.” Karen couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice. Sweat trickled down her back soaking her blouse. She stood and snatched her jacket off the chair, dropping her dead phone into the pocket. “Thank you for the water. I think I’m fine now.” This was her house, but somehow not her world. Had the abandoned law office really been there all these years? It looked like something from some creepy fairytale. She should get back to the Oldsmobile.

“Are you sure? I can call a tow for you.” Phil picked the receiver off the cradle and held it up, its faint dial tone reaching across the space between them.

“No, I’ll be okay.” She turned and strode to the door that led to the garage. The handle wobbled in her grip. Fixing that doorknob was an item on Mike’s honey-do list. Apparently neither Mike nor Phil had gotten around to it.

She opened the door and froze. There in her spot (she always parked on the right), was a silver Mazda Miata. All these years, she’d imagined driving something sporty but sensible, never imagining something like this. Behind her, Phil put the phone back in its cradle. That green phone was some other Karen Anderson’s phone. This was some other Karen Anderson’s garage. She tore her eyes from the car and looked back at Phil standing awkwardly in the kitchen.

“You’re right. It would be lovely if you could you call a tow for me?”

“Of course.” Phil picked up the phone again with relief.

“I’m going to wait with my car. It’s just off the frontage road a couple miles south of here.”

Phil pulled the phone book out of the drawer where, in her world, she kept all the take out menus. He opened it and glanced up at her. She mouthed, “Thank you,” then stepped into the garage, closing the door behind her.

She pulled the Mazda’s keys off the key board, took the old Oldsmobile’s keys out of her pocket and replaced them on the hook. Quietly, she opened the driver door and slid in. The seat fit her body like a glove. She started the car, threw it in reverse, backed out, and headed for the highway. She hoped the other Karen Anderson would like her new Oldsmobile, it really was in mint condition.

* In Karen's bio on her write-a-thon page she claims she is "The other Karen Anderson." I used that as a jumping off point for the story.