I borrowed Lisa Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia from a library this week. I'm enjoying it. I've been writing female narrative characters more often lately, and I'm not sure why. After hearing an interview with the author on SciFiDimensions, and it sounded interesting. The ideas that women wrote about tie in nicely with modern science fiction's "slipstream" or "literary" push, that is, more towards "character-driven" instead of "gadget-driven" stories.
I'm not sure I'm capturing real people with the women I'm writing about, but I have three women who read my stuff and I trust them implicitly, I'm just not sure I can do everything they suggest with the stories.
Reading the book has inspired me to write. Reading a preview of jaylake's Green inspired a dark fantasy story that I'm tempted to write. It's great. I'm inspired to write, and I have two hours of free time to do something.
So I'm off. Wish me luck.
And in the meantime, check out Galactic Suburbia. It's a good read, sometimes dry, but it is an academic work, and it has given me a reading list with names like Judith Merrill and Shirley Jackson to explore.

PS. I work in a library, and love having access to books. I hate not being able to add my own marginalia to these books, so I consider a library book a test drive. Galactic Suburbia is now on my wish list for books. I think this book is worth owning and it deserves to be part of my permanent collection.

Tags: reading, sf, writing

I have never worked as a tour guide, and I was wondering if anyone out there knew if tour guides have an in-joke term for the tourists they put up with. I imagine there would be. After all, in technical support we had "callers" who were "idiots," "morons," "jackasses," "New Yorkers," and "ID10T Errors." Does anyone know? Can you let me in on the secret?

Naturally, this is for a story, not because I want to go to Disneyland and act like I know their secrets.

Tags: writing

One of my projects is a book on writing. This is a nice project to store cool warm-ups and techniques. I thought of this one the other day and thought I'd pass it through the great LJ brain.

Every basic acting class I've taken has started with an exercise to say something simple (usually "Ah" or "Oh") and express as many emotions as possible. The voice's tools are inflection, speed, volume, breathiness, rhythm, and a bunch of stuff I've forgotten. The goal, in a classroom setting, is to get different expressions without duplication.

Thinking along these lines, and knowing writers don't have those tools, I thought this could be an interesting way to look at craft. Writers and actors have words, but writers don't have inflection, speed, volume, or any of that. What we have are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, and other tools. A simple descriptive phrase, such as "The wind blew through the trees" can evoke any mood in the hands of a master.

The goal: Evoke mood or foreshadow an event in a paragraph. Aim for no more than 100 words of prose, maybe. The preceding paragraph is 73 words long for reference. The action of the paragraph is

The wind blew through the trees.

Any changes are acceptable as long as the action is the same. Change the verb. Change the noun. Add to the tree. Describe the reaction of the trees. Try it in present tense, past tense, future tense, I don't care. Evoke mood.

However, don't tell anyone what the mood is, but let other readers react to the written word and describe what mood they felt when reading the passage.

In a classroom setting, I wouldn't want the participants to read their stuff, because the tone of voice can give it away. The goal is to get it all on the page using specific word choices.

Anyone want to play? Please do.

Tags: craft, lesson, writing

Last night we had a lively discussion with jaylake , davidlevine, newroticgirl, camillealexa, David Goldman, and myself. The audience consisted of one co-worker, two wives of panelists, and one student, who took copious notes. I don't think she got the joke when Jay told here there would be a quiz.

the_child entertained us with a mural on the white board, part of which Jay has already shared.

Today four of us read. Amy read "What Becomes of Kings," her WotF sale, Camille read from her upcoming story "Flaming Marshmallows and other Deaths", David read "Tale of the Golden Eagle" from his forthcoming collection, and I read "The Simple Life" from the latest Aoife's Kiss.

For this, we got four staff members and three students, which peaked student participation in National Library Week.

Tags: writing

In the writing class I took last term, the first thing we did was search for optimal writing time. I tried writing at various times, and realized that I can write any time of day, in different locations, once I get into the flow.
Tonight, the flow was hard to find. As part of an experiment I'm getting daily prompts and am expected to write a minimum of 250 words. That's easy. My smallest wordcount in the first four days was 364. Once I go, I go.
The problem is getting going. I didn't start until after Stephanie left for an evening meeting, but I didn't manage to pull it off. I played video games for an hour. I hope it's my tiredness, and the video games, but I just do not want to write any more tonight. I gave my prompt 20 minutes and managed a very incomplete story.
I am so close to finishing my current WIP I can taste it. I just can't bear to look at the words.
So, I think I need some more ritual to put myself into the writing mood, and I really think after 7 is a bad time for me. My desk is also uncomfortable. I need a chair that doesn't lean back, but hey, that's just an excuse. I have a kneeling chair I could use, I just have to rearrange.
But a ritual may help. I have a small fountain near my desk that I didn't start tonight. I don't have my tea or my water, and no music. Soundtracks help me write, I think.  And looking at my desk I see it's getting bad. Two dishes, a banana peel, extra printer paper, a palm pilot, my Hipster PDA, a pencil, digital voice recorder, and several CDs litter my workspace. Too many distractions. I think I'll put a pillow in the back of my chair to help me sit up properly, and I'm already increasing the font size of my browser. In Word, I usually have my 12pt Courier enlarged 180%. I think there's an optimal angle size for a letter to be comfortably read on a screen, and most websites look way too small lately.
All I want to do is sleep, so I think I'll have a go at that.

Good night.

Tags: writing

The Mt. Hood Community College library is gearing up for National Library Week next week. All the events are in the Bob Scott Room, which is in the corner of the library. Here's a list of events:

Mon., April 14, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.  

History of the Mt. Hood Community College Library: bring your lunch and listen to presenter Patti Allen describe our library’s evolution.

Tue., April 15, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.  

Poetry Open Mic: come read your own original poetry or share your favorite poem, or just eat your lunch and listen to the poems.

Wed., April 16, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Read a Banned Book Today!: bring your lunch and listen to presenter Beth Wood discuss banned books, censorship, and your right to read.

Thurs., April 17, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Science Fiction Discussion Panel: chaired by Josh English, local authors discuss current issues in science fiction writing.

Fri., April 18, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Science Fiction Reading: bring your lunch and listen to local writers read from their science fiction and fantasy works.

Any Portland Metro spec fic folks who want to participate, feel free to drop me a line  here in comments or through an LJ message. If you just want to show up and heckle, we'd love to have you.

Tags: library, reading, writing

This is my last day at work for a week. It's really slow because only the dedicated gamers have shown up. I've been picking up my old Tunnels & Trolls books and solo adventures. I'm not sure why, other than to escape thinking about all the stories I should be writing, and I start thinking, I should just write up some adventures and try to publish them. In other words, I'm hiding in my past.
Ah, but what fun I had while it lasted. I spent some time thinking about an architecture for an XML based language and processor to handle T&T style solo plays. I've already written a die roller, and a combat management system, and even a way to describe dungeon rooms and hallways. It should be easy. I even tried creating my own Play by Mail system.
But it's not writing. It's procrastination. It's depression.
It's temptation to say "why not make up my own game?" That's a tall order, and I don't want to go there.
But I want to go there.
It's better than writing.
It's wondering what kind of life fandom really is. I've been a fangeek for many things over the years, and for the past three years I've been into my own writing, so my obsessions have sat on a back burner.
Instead of writing, I'm reading Georges Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations and wondering if I could use them with Mark Pilgrims Kant Generator Pro to create stories.
Instead of writing, I'm trying to expand jimvanpelt's 7-Sentence Story into plotting entire novels instead of using it to fix my current slush pile.
Instead of writing, I'm trying to fold something in origami that doesn't look like an amoeba.
Instead of writing, I'm trying to judge if I have time to play a trial game of StarWeb.
I need a break.

But I'm not sure from what.

Tags: procrastination, programming, t&t, writing

My quotidian news reading pointed me to some old articles that once again declared Science Fiction is dead, partially from the "age" of the fan base and the fact that Cormac McCarthy , Margaret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro have stolen science fiction and made it "respectable." I reject both arguments.  McCarthy's The Road came highly recommended, and I thought "Father and son, post apocalyptic North America. I read this already. Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go came highly recommended. It reminded me of The Clonus Horror, only trying to be clever about it and only being pretentious about it.
I suspect there's a rant about this brewing, but it's all been said before.  The only differences I see isn't that the subject matter of science fiction that gets dismissed as "Tarzan with a ray-gun childhood fantasies," but I suspect most SF authors are more science driven and didn't go through MFA programs, so they don't get the respect of MFA critics because they don't know the secret handshake.
Having barely survived a writing class, I ended up suspecting that there is some "secret MFA-driven language" to build character, describe setting, and advance plot. It's the same feeling I had as an art student. There's something in a block of paint and squiggles that my classmates saw as art, and something I saw as a serious lack of control of a paintbrush. My attempts to create this kind of free flowing chaotic mess was dismissed as the work of an uninspired amateur. I seemed too logical and materialistic for Art.
This brings me to Clarke. I liked 2001. I think The Lost Worlds of 2001 is a great book illustrating the writing process. What little else I've read of Clarke has pissed me off. Maybe I take things to seriously, but when the theme of most books is "Religion is a psychological crutch holding back the human race" I get a little miffed. Asimov wasn't a believer, but accepted that other people had belief. He never ridiculed people for it. Clarke, I felt, rubbed it in our faces. It is difficult to judge a book when the emotional reaction to that message is so strong.
So God Rest Ye, Clarke.

Tags: atwood, clarke, ishiguro, mccarthy, science fiction, writing

Woot! The Simple Life is now available at Aoife's Kiss, published by Sam's Dot Publishing. Link.  I don't recognize any of the names in this issue other than mine. It looks like I've got some reading to do!

I've also been asked to MC a reading for my creative writing class next week, and if there's time I'll finish the hour with a reading of Memory of Flesh. This is supposedly being recorded or broadcast. Details to follow.

Tags: publication, writing

I was energized to write a story for the Peterson Family Reunion, but life happened and I forgot the story. I tried to move on to other stories that have been in my slush for years, and I need to design a poster for an imaginary reading for class. I think I have a PDR meeting this week, and
camillealexa has challenged me to finish a story before she gets back from Texas. If I can get off my tukas, I can write the damn thing.
Unless I decide to write YA program to help me keep track of these projects.

Tags: writing