Summer Break

We've broken through to triple-digit weather this week, so I'm going to call it: summer is officially here. The girls don't have camp this week, so I'll be back to regular blogging next week. I've been finding time to continue revising my latest story according to my Clarion West write-a-thon goals, but there isn't time for much else. And by "much else" I mean sitting in front of a computer screen.

Clarion West Write-a-thon!

I sure wish a little bird had told me such a thing as the Clarion West Workshop existed when I was devoutly pursuing my English major in college. Now that I've returned to writing and embraced genre I would love to go, but I don't think the hubs, the girls, the dog, the chickens or the guppies would put up with me disappearing for six weeks to bask in writerly whatnot.

No matter, because they each year they host a Write-a-thon for the duration of the workshop. This year I'm going to participate and you can too!

There's a lot to like about this Write-a-thon:

It's longer than National Novel Writing Month, six weeks instead of four, and it's in the summer so it doesn't intersect with any major holidays (Thanksgiving, I'm looking at you).

Participants are tasked with setting their own goals. I wanted to challenge myself by just notching things up one tick. As I've blogged about before. I'm all about setting goals I can accomplish. Here's what I wrote:

I'm looking to step up my productivity by writing more consistently. I am committing to writing 1,000 words a day -everyday- throughout the write-a-thon. Also, since I consider revising writing, it counts - but in the case of revising I would like to revise 2,000 words or 8 pages/day. So, one or the other or some combination of the two every day. I hope over the course of the write-a-thon to finish the two novelettes I have in progress and write at least two new stories.

It's not just a Write-a-thon, it's a Write-a-long. The other participants include many published and established authors! Check out their pages here, and sign up for a chance to rub virtual shoulders with some great writers.

It's for a good cause: nurturing of great new genre writers, so that we'll have more fantastic literature to read in the not-so-distant future! For the fundraising side of it, if you donate on my Clarion West Write-a-thon page, I will write a flash fiction story with your name (or a name of your choosing) as the title character.

So, what are you waiting for? Check out their Write-a-thon page and get yourself signed up for the fun!

You can check out my author page here.

Go There

Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt, circa 1871

“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!”

~Gore Vidal

I would add, and make it real – the world of the story – in this way, you can circle back to the idea of “writing what you know.”

Let me put it another way. I have a two-word motto taped to my laptop:

Go there.

I love to travel, but at this stage of my life, I don’t get to do it as much as I like and creating stories is a way to visit undiscovered territories without leaving my home, abandoning my children, or losing my job.

Go there.

You can’t tell a story from the outside in. You have to travel to it and tell it from the inside. It is amazing what you can build inside your head, lands infinitely vast or tiny as a snuffbox. It’s a magic bounded only by your imagination and daring. 

When we speak of some aspect of storytelling as magical, it gives the impression of being bestowed. Presto! Upon the writer, who sits and scribbles in an inspired frenzy. Nope. Going there is a skill that must be honed and nurtured through the disciplined practice of writing. Writing every day.

Go there.

Get inside your characters' heads. Inhabit their bodies; break into a sweat when they’re in a tight spot, heave a sigh when they escape, shed a tear. Get to know your characters by seeing the world of the story through their eyes.

Go there.

Here’s more magic. Every one of us is a vast, undiscovered country. We never truly know our loved ones, our parents and children; they constantly delight and surprise us, disappoint us or break our hearts. They are driven by motivations so personal and complex that we can only comprehend them dimly as if through a clouded lens. 

Even my own views and opinions of the world are constantly evolving. There are the things that I will always believe, the compass that I steer by. But the things that were important to me when I was in my teens, my 20s, my 30s, they are different than the things I value and enjoy now. Still, I have the memory of my earlier selves to tap into when I create a new character. 

Go there.

I’ve gotten to the point in my abilities where I can tell when I’m coming at a story from the outside. Often it’s because my progress begins to stutter. Walking becomes difficult, the way unclear. Instead of experiencing the story, I begin to feel like a puppet master moving characters around a lifeless set. All is not lost, I just have to do a little journal work to get inside the character’s head so that together we can climb inside the story. I’ve found that getting inside the story can happen in the first draft, but it can also happen in revision. I don’t think it matters when, but at some point, for a story to come alive, I have to climb inside. 

That’s all I’ve got for today. I’m off to another undiscovered country. I’ll see you on the other side.

Read The Horses at Every Day Fiction

My story, The Horses, has already come up in the Every Day Fiction rotation. It was posted on Sunday the 2nd of June. You can read it here. You can even rate it and/or leave a comment.

This story was generated by a prompt from Cat Rambo. I met her Armadillo Con  where she was my pro at last year's writer's workshop. Since The Horses is (I hope) a story of revelation, I don't want to say what the prompt was. I will say that I have taken both individual instruction and an online class from Cat and they were both worth every penny. Cat is easygoing and insightful, able to both inspire and give direction. Check out her class schedule here.

Every Day Fiction is also a great market. They are not the speediest to reply but worth the wait. I've had pieces rejected there too, and what I like about how they do things is that, whether rejected or accepted, the story is read by a group of editors, each of whom write a few comments These are all collected into a nice little critique. So, if you don't have a lot of other avenues to get critiques for your work, this is an excellent market. Check out their guidelines here.

Today is the last day of school, so everything changes regarding when and where I can write. I'll be talking about how I fit writing into my life over the summer in another post.

Rule #4

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." ~ Wayne Gretzky
"Why are you making me hold this envelope?" ~ my daughter

Remember Heinlein's rule number four?

"You must put the work on the market."

I've been trying to keep it simple: Keep working, keep trying to get better, and keep sending stories out there. And now, all of a sudden, I have a spate of forthcoming stories! This is no overnight success story. I got serious about writing again in 2011 and have been writing and revising and sending stories out ever since. What has kept me going for nearly three years has been the process of constantly creating new work. Of course, acceptances and publications are the goal. I can't wait to see these stories out in the world and to hear what people think of them - hot, cold, and lukewarm. But, I also feel that getting published is the frosting on the cake. The cake is the work. The work is the constant and truly it's own reward.

The Horses will be appearing in Every Day Fiction in June. I like this webzine at least as much as Daily Science Fiction. Every Day Fiction is less genre bound, so there is always a good variety of stories, and they're always under a thousand words.

Futile the Winds will be appearing in Interzone - tentatively slated for their July issue (247)! This, for all intents and purposes, is my first professional sale. It will be the first time my work will be in a non-on-demand print publication, available on newsstands and in bookstores! And what a gorgeous publication it is, as you can see by the cover of the current issue. I cannot wait to see the artwork for my story.

Cattle Futures is slated to appear in Stupefying Stories special Wild Weird West Anthology, tentatively scheduled for release in July.

Beata Beatrix will be appearing in Bourbon Penn (another gorgeous zine), hopefully in their next issue.

I'll post with links as the individual stories become available. Until then, back to work restocking the inventory! I'll leave you with the thought that's been going through my head this week:

Fairytale Reading

School is wrapping up around here (2nd and 6th grade), and now that what I thought was going to be a standard revision has turned into a major overhaul, I'm quite swamped. I've got three stories in my revision queue and precious little time to work on them, so I'm resorting to a listicle this week.

I love myths and fairy tales. I love them for embracing the fantastic, for the talking animals and the magical transformations, for the sense that the mundane world is just a thin veil and terrible monsters or good fairy godmothers could upend everything in an instant. A lot of what I am writing right now is in the fairy tale idiom, probably because I love reading them and reading about them. Here's a short and idiosyncratic list of the best of what I've read, with a couple items that I'm currently reading.

Source Material:

Illustration for The Juniper Tree by Maurice Sendak

The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm. I have a complete collection of Grimm fairy tales, but this little book is my favorite. There are a couple familiar stories, but most of them are lesser known. They are all illustrated by Maurice Sendak, who truly understands the glorious weirdness and edgy violence that are a part of the fairy tale tradition (before Disney got ahold of them).

While the Grimm brothers attempted to collect fairy tales, writing them down close to their original oral form, Hans Christian Anderson was more interested in using them as source material to write tales that were more literary and personal. My own story, The Gyre, was inspired by the difference between Disney's version of The Little Mermaid and HCA's tragic original. I have the Fairy Tales (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) and it's a good translation, but you can pick up a copy of his fairy tales at any second hand store.
Everybody knows about the Andersen and Grimm, but there's a world of folk and fairy tales out there. There's so much and they go so deep that it's hard to know where to start! Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World is a good survey. From there you can jump any number of directions. Try Japanese Tales (Pantheon fairy tale & folklore library) or the Fairy Tales of the Russians and Other Slavs. As for the New World, I've had a copy of American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) since college (more about the trickster tale in the next section). I recently read Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. This is another interesting survey that collects myths and folktales from Native American cultures as well as material imported from around the world by immigrants and African Americans. It progresses through history and includes a chapter near the end called The Rock Hero - "Jesus and Elvis."

I don't just like to read fairy tales, I like to read about them.

Scholarship:

I'll read anything my Marina Warner, but a good place to start is, Six Myths of Our Time: Little Angels, Little Monsters, Beautiful Beasts, and More. It's short and more approachable than From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, which is a glorious brick of scholarship with an emphasis on the place of women in folk and fairy tales, both as characters and as the tellers. I recommend both. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde. This book is not just about the trickster character in myth and folklore, it also explores the idea that the rule-breaking imp in all of us is an important creative force. His previous book, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, might be even better, but it's off topic. This month I'm reading Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales by Jack Zipes and enjoying it very much. After reading the penultimate essay: On the Use and Abuse of Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: Bruno Bettelheim's Moralistic Magic Wand, you might want to follow up by reading Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, which even though it is scholarship with an agenda by a Freudian child psychologist, it's considered a classic in the field and still worth the read. 

Reynard the Fox

Story Fail, Critique Win! Or, My Story Will Rise Again!

Red Bleed by Jon Coffelt

Another post about failing and just how awesome it can be!

I brought the first half of my novelette, Izzy Crow, to my local critique group on Tuesday night where it pretty much totally fell down. While everyone agreed that the writing was fine on the micro level (I like to think that I’ve achieved some competency in that area), the most consistent reaction overall was confusion. I want to elicit many emotions in a reader, but confusion is definitely not one of them.

While writing, I had hoped that I was pulling things off brilliantly. Yet I’m not surprised by my writing fail. Whenever I’m drafting I’m working hard to create the best story I ever have (my goal with each new project). I believe that you have to go into the first draft with a little hubris. A hubris born from an original idea so awesome that it inspired me to undertake the whole mad project in the first place. Hubris is also fuel for the engine that powers me through the thousands of words it takes to get the mangled corpse of the brilliant idea down on the page.

Another other thing that informs my first drafts is a piece of advice that I remember from last year’s Armadillocon. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who said it. It was during the opening session, when all the authors, editors, and various experts were arrayed across half the room, firing all their words of advice at us acolytes like so much buckshot. The advice was:

Don’t be afraid to fail.

A lot of things have to happen if you want to continue to get better. You have to show up and do the work and you have to learn the craft, but you can’t just keep coloring inside the lines. Failing is all about putting yourself out there. Trying something crazy, untenable, something nobody’s ever tried before, because if you always stay safe inside your zone of competency, you’ll never really breakthrough. I believe that to create something great, something transcendent, you have to keep making that leap. Or as Robert Browning put it:

"Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?"

And that leap guarantees failure. That’s why failure is my friend. I really believe that you can’t find out what doesn’t work – until it doesn’t work. You can’t skip failing, just like you couldn’t skip falling down when you were learning to walk.

As for as the critique: I don’t bring a piece of writing to the group until I feel like it’s at a point were people can at least see what I’m trying to achieve. But by the middle draft, it’s been just me and the story for so long and I’m so deep into it that I can’t judge it any more. I really can’t tell if it’s great or terrible. And honestly, I’m usually a little bored with it too. Hearing everyone discuss what they saw – and didn’t see – in the story, can both reset my compass, and get me fired up about it all over again.

The group was able to tell me where they were confused and why, and what they were (and mostly weren’t) getting out of it emotionally. This is invaluable. They tossed around a lot of ideas that really got my brain cooking. Instead of coming home depressed that this piece of writing wasn’t working, I was excited and stayed up way too late restructuring, reoutlining, and sketching in the scenes that will make this into a different, but definitely better, story.