Long-overdue update

There’s no doubt about it, the writing plans for 2010 have turned out to be – in a word – rubbish.

Strangely, I feel quite okay about that… even some relief at the pressure being lifted off my shoulders. The elbow injury dug in its metaphorical heels, resisting all conservative forms of treatment which left surgery as the only option. I’m still doing the best I can with voice recognition software, but it has to be said it’s just not the same. In fact, I was in the middle of commenting on a techie blog about the problems with it, when it crashed. (Um… perhaps it IS smarter than I gave it credit for?)

The good news is that I have officially given myself the rest of the year off. That is to say, no editing or revising of any of the various longer works-in-progress which clutter up my desktop; no submitting of any kind (unless they really, really beg…); and no writing (except for  handwritten poetry, if I really feel the need).

Although this initially felt like giving up, failure, reason to doubt the point of existence, I am at last emerging into a new relationship with the not-writing. It’s a holiday; a break; a trial separation to see if we are truly suited to each other. I hope for a reconciliation, but I do not hang my sense of self-worth on it.  And yes, we are allowed to see others during this time. I shall dig out sketching pad and pencils, and writing can do its own thing too.

In a couple of weeks, I will toddle along to Aussiecon 4 and meet up with the fabulous Orbiteers, the wonderful Kim Falconer and numerous other writers and editors whom it is my privilege to know as online friends. I plan to have the most fun ever, and the fact that I am not currently writing is not going to interfere with my partying plans.

Who knows, I might even get inspired to break my own rule and start on a new story.

;-)

Week One, Creativity Workshop

Yes, I’m a bit late reporting in but the good news is I’m on track with my goals! Here is how Week One went:

Monday – brainstormed some lists of rhyming words which elicited the concept of sensuality – hush, lush, rush; kiss, bliss; skin, within, begin

Tuesday – looked at the list of rhyming words and felt helpless to do anything with them. Procrastinated.

Wednesday – carefully avoided looking at the list of rhyming words. Procrastinated.

Thursday – carefully avoided thinking about the Workshop. Bought bottle of Southern Comfort.

Friday – examined my list of goals. Wondered why on earth I thought I could write an erotic villanelle. Gave up.

Saturday – gritted my teeth and looked at the list of rhyming words again. Subconscious mind kindly provided the all-important final rhyming couplet. Inserted the final line into each of the first tercets. Realised that left me ten lines to write, with very strict meter and rhyme patterns. Drank some Southern Comfort.

Sunday – felt the irresistible call and realised I could not leave the villanelle incomplete. Wore out several pencil leads writing and fine tuning the remaining lines.

Monday – was amazed to find a not-bad poem about first encounters and surrender emerging from the final polishing process.

What I’ve learned from this is that while I think I’m procrastinating, my subconscious mind is actually doing a fantastic job of pulling ideas and concepts together. I need to forgive myself more, and allow the creative process to be one of ease and flow rather than struggle and resistance. Commitment is good; discipline, not so much in my world right now.

Week Two will be all about commitment, and finding the joy in productivity and being organised. Thank you, Merrilee!

Creativity Workshop Goals

At last! Here I am, reporting in as promised — late and a little frazzled, but here nonetheless.

I’ve acquired (actually, found in my stationary stash) a pretty notebook and streamlined my hard drive to help the voice recognition software work a little better.

I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking point and made a list of my interests, weaknesses and goals.

And I’ve even (gasp) made a vague gesture in the direction of setting out tasks. For me, this is progress indeed!

Interests (i.e. things I want to improve, develop or explore)

  • commitment
  • variety
  • show, not tell
  • erotica
  • crime/puzzle-solving
  • romance
  • poetry forms
  • song lyrics
  • using dictation to create first drafts

Weaknesses

  • tendency towards melodrama
  • need to avoid being derivative
  • need to allow breathing space — pace is good, but rushing is bad

Goals

  • develop the ability to allow the words to flow, and bypass the inner editor, while using voice recognition software
  • explore writing good erotica
  • explore poetry/song
  • produce something every week

And to that end … some tasks.

Block one — erotic poetry

  1. Villanelle
  2. Sonnet
  3. Set of four tanka poems
    1. him and her
    2. her and him
    3. him and him
    4. her and her
  4. Free verse

Block two — short romance with subtext, themed “odd couples”

  1. interracial romance during 1960s set in Australia, subtext Indigenous land rights
  2. significant age difference, subtext solving a crime/puzzle
  3. cultural differences, subtext travel/belonging to place (I’m thinking of the hidden cultural differences which occur between peoples who don’t think there is one — e.g. Australian/American) — will also include humour
  4. human/alien/paranormal, subtext “fish out of water”

Block three — short paranormal erotic romance

This block may change, but I imagine it building from what will emerge out of the first two blocks; I’m also keen to explore the concept of creating the physical world through conscious thought.

  1. Main character develops the capacity to control gender at will
  2. Main character develops the capacity to clone self, and retain sensory connection to those clones
  3. (REALLY dubious about this one, it will change) vampires …
  4. Cross species relationship (human/alien again, but perhaps taken further)

That’s where I’m up to, such as it is. Wish me luck …

Guest blog – Kait Nolan

Welcome to Kait Nolan, author of the recently-published and excellent novella Forsaken by Shadow. FSB blends adventure, mystery, romance and some fine mixed martial arts (MMA), in a modern urban setting which extends into an unsuspected paranormal world.  I thoroughly enjoyed this romp of a story and can’t wait for more set in the same world.

Forsaken by Shadow, Kait NolanBanished from their world with his memory wiped, Cade Shepherd doesn’t remember his life as Gage Dempsey, nor the woman he nearly died for. But when Embry Hollister’s father is kidnapped by military scientists, the only one she can turn to is the love from her past. Will Gage remember the Shadow Walker skills he learned from her father? If they survive, will Embry be able to walk away again?

Kait and I met on Twitter, and I’m delighted to be able to interview her here as part of her blog tour throughout May.

One aspect of your work reminded me of Charles de Lint, a favourite author – and that’s the evocative descriptions of the modern “real” world. What can you tell us about your research – or is your evocative creation of place simply excellent writer’s imagination?

I actually didn’t do much in the way of research for this particular book. I watched a lot of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights to get a good feel for how Cade/Gage would move and figure out how he fights, but other than that, the rest was just a product of my imagination.

I loved the world you’ve created! So far, it seems we’ve only seen a glimpse of a much larger and more complex paranormal culture. How far does it extend? Do you know everything there is to know about it yet?

A glimpse is EXACTLY what this book is supposed to be.  I imagined it as a good way to give readers a taste of the much broader world I’m creating.  A short prequel to pull them in to a much bigger metaplot that stretches over several books.  Initially it was intended as a single prequel, but it turns out there are two novella prequels before the novel length stuff starts.  I’m working on the second one now.  As for how far it extends, I’m not entirely sure how to answer that.  It’s a big world, as big as our own, intermingled with it.  I certainly don’t know everything yet.  New stuff keeps coming up as I think “Oh maybe this happens…” and have to find a way to fit it into the mythology I’ve created.

Can you tell us about your next expedition into this world you’ve built?

The sequel to Forsaken By Shadow is another novella called Revelation. I’m still in the very early stages of this story but it deals with the fae (one of many paranormal races in my world).  It picks up where FBS leaves off, following Orrin Gydric (whom you see in FBS in the final big fight) back home to Alinar, the capital city of the fae.  Once home he gets embroiled in a plot trying to stop a group of Unseelie spies from overthrowing the Seelie Queen, all while trying to keep the love of his life safe from the bad guys.  Except Dahlia isn’t making it easy on him because as an archivist and historian for their people, she has actually uncovered the very information that the Unseelie spies don’t want to get out and therefore painted a great big target on herself as she tries to disseminate the information to the Council of Races so that they’ll be prepared for action.

I know you have a “day job”. To what extent does the day job inform your creative writing, if at all?

Apart from the fact that my background is in clinical psychology (which is often useful for delving into characters and their motivations), the evil day job generally is more of a hindrance than a help to my writing.

Your descriptions of combat also read as very realistic to me (though I’m not an expert). Take us through how you create a typical fight scene.

I have a small background in taekwando and aikido and my husband is an eighth degree blackbelt in kempo karate.  I’d love to be able to say we choreograph stuff, but mostly I’ve just watched a million martial arts movies and lots of MMA fights. I know a lot about the mechanics of how these things should work (even if I can’t necessarily execute them myself!).  If I get stuck somewhere, hubby is usually able to give me a good way to get out or a better way to do it. And as to how I create them, there really is no typical fight scene.  Each one involves different players who will have a different way of fighting.  That’s part of character development for me, actually, learning how they would fight.

Thanks, Kait!

Forsaken by Shadow is highly entertaining and well written. Check out the first three chapters here, for free – though I do recommend you purchase a copy, to get Kait a few spondulicks! It’s available as follows:

Available on Scribd
Available on Smashwords
Available on Amazon

CW – belated thoughts on goals

‘kay, so here’s the short version:

It’s now Friday night my time, and I have yet to finalise my WRITING goals but I’m applying to our lovely leader for a short extension on my homework, since I spent the last couple of days thinking I was going to have to pull out! I’m behind on the icebreaking but I’ll try and get round everyone even if it takes me a couple of weeks.

I’ve an injury which makes keyboarding AND handwriting both painful at the moment. I am determined I will yet again defy the odds, and plans are in place to gain recovery. Best of all, I’m getting close to being wildly optimistic again (yay!!).

Meanwhile, I’ve decided the overarching goal from this workshop will be training my brain to use voice recognition software to create fiction, something I’ve not yet tackled. I use it very well for dictating emails and letters, and for inputting creative writing which I’ve already handwritten. But that leap into simply speaking fiction into a microphone? That’s new.

It’s late Friday my time, so I’ll be back tomorrow with my writing goals. They’re still bubbling to the surface but I can kinda make them out through the mud. Wonder what they’ll look like?

A villanelle in earnest contemplation of…

Don’t tell my poetry mentor, but until a couple of weeks ago I’d never heard of the villanelle, a highly structured nineteenth-century poetic form.

But it looked like so much fun, I wanted to have a go. And naturally, since it’s obscure and formal and old-fashioned, I wanted to do something pop kulcha and contrary. This piece of silliness is for the other handful of people on the planet who appreciate both archaic poetic forms and the original Star Wars trilogy.

A villanelle in earnest contemplation of Hollywood

I think the Phantom Menace truly stinks,
and yet it is beloved of teenage boys,
especially the alien, Jar Jar Binks.

The narrative is weak and full of chinks
replaced by flash and bang and engine noise
I think the Phantom Menace truly stinks.

George Lucas wrote the screenplay in two blinks
and focussed on the cheesy plastic toys,
especially the alien, Jar Jar Binks.

The early saga had such good instincts;
this tale of young Darth Vader just annoys!
I think the Phantom Menace truly stinks.

As budgets swell and artists’ vision shrinks,
I cringe at faded film directors’ ploys –
especially the alien, Jar Jar Binks.

So I ignore the studios’ high jinks,
transcend the dross that Hollywood deploys.
I think the Phantom Menace truly stinks
(especially the alien, Jar Jar Binks).

Disclaimer: this represents my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree; swearing or abuse will be ignored.

Creativity Workshop Goals

As we countdown to the launch of Merrilee’s Creativity Workshop, there is one overarching goal for me – to close the emotional gap between my current life (day job, household responsibilities, blah blah) and the Writer’s Life. It’s not a huge rift, but any gap is a barrier to having what I want. I want to feel sufficient to my writing self.

The specifics include:

Finding my perfect daily writing practice

I know my personal writing habit must be flexible to suit my hummingbird nature – a regular time slot or regular word count won’t cut it. I’m not sure yet what it looks like, so finding out is an important goal. Possibly THE most important…

Creating an opus

Alright, yes – “opus” is a bit pretentious, you got me. But I do want to end up with a collection of stories good enough for me to sell. Pure and simple.

Experiment with genre

I feel like I’ve been immersed in the novel form for way too long, anb my recent brush with poetry reminded me how much fun the short form can be. Best of all, I can try on a genre without a long-term commitment, flirt outside my normal comfort zones. I haven’t quite pinned down where I want to play, but romance, crime and erotica seem to be knocking at the door – possibly in a strange kind of menage. I might even try fiction without an ounce of fantasy or science-fiction, though that would be a substantial stretch!

Experiment with form

… which is simply the other side of the experimental coin. So many forms to choose from…

These key goals may change as the workshop progresses, but it seems like a damn fine place to start.

Oh, and there is a further, hidden goal. To get into a better blogging habit. Nothing like a bit of multi-tasking to keep me happy!  :-)

What Have I Done???

I’ve signed up for a magical Creativity Workshop courtesy of Merrilee Faber, that’s what I’ve done.

This is incredibly exciting because in the last few weeks I’ve discovered some stuff:

* my novel goes MUCH much better when I have other short projects to bounce around in (I have a low boredom threshold…)

* I LOVE writing poetry (who knew??)

* I’m ready to chow down on submitting (and since the novel’s not quite cooked, a few short stories will fill the gap nicely)

And finally…. it’s OKAY TO WRITE SHORT. This post being a classic example…  :-)

Is poetry a detour?

For someone who is working on three different novels, and hasn’t touched short forms for a while (unless copy for the day job newsletter counts), poetry does seem like a major detour.

Nevertheless, when a friend suggested I participate in the Ballarat Writers Centre poetry mentoring program, I thought I had nothing to lose. After all, it’s been years since I tried a poem – and that was a children’s learning rhyme created for the fictitious future world of Kindred Spirit – so while I wasn’t likely to get in, at least it would take my head out of the novel for a bit.

So I wrote a poem. And somehow, despite what I thought were long odds, I got in. Suddenly, I’m an emerging poet and will be performing my work this coming Sunday at a recital featuring six poets and a classical music group. Gulp. This is serious!

Our mentor, Ross Donlon, has made some very insightful and helpful comments about the first poem, and encouraged me to write some more, which I’ve done.

And to my utter amazement, I’m hooked.

Poetry can be short, so it’s fast. Well, faster than a novel. And if you pick a specific form (haiku, tanka, sonnet) it’s fun – like solving a puzzle, in a good way. That same part of my brain which enjoys cryptic crosswords is now playing in the word-pit, sifting through combinations to find the perfect phrase that says what I want to say, while matching correct meter, rhyme, etc.

I blame my friend. I’ve told her, she’s my corner dealer, the guy who gets you so hooked on the hard stuff your entire life falls apart. But to be honest, I think this new avenue is going to keep me together. It’s like lifting my head above the water to take in great gulps of oxygen. If you’re having one of those days where your novel feels like it’s trying to drown you, I highly recommend a breath of poetry. And no, it’s not a detour. It’s a restful picnic along the writing highway. Beautiful!

Oh, and for those in Ballarat who’d like to come along – the recital is Sunday 18th April, 3 pm, at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. Entry is a gold coin donation (for non-Aussie readers, that’s not as scary as it sounds – only $1 or $2!)

And the first poem, entitled Lizard and Me, will be posted here after the recital for those who are interested.

Guest Blog – Graham Storrs

Welcome to Graham Storrs, author of the recently-published and excellent e-novel “TimeSplash”, which – in my humble opinion – should be mandatory for all readers of good science-fiction. Graham and I met in 2008, and I’m delighted to have him gracing the pages of this blog!

Time SplashRetreats and Advances

My life has been a strange dance with Writing. Sometimes it leads. Sometimes I do. Sometimes we waltz together gracefully. Sometimes we stumble and trip. Yet, somehow, we lever lose our hold on one another, and the smile on my partner’s face never loses that suggestive hint, that almost lascivious promise that, when the dance is over, we will leave together.

I have written since I was a small boy and, before that, I used to tell endless stories to my little sister, and before that, my mother used to tell me stories, sitting on the edge of my bed, light coming in from the landing, magic swirling in my head, my head a stage as big as the world. When I was sixteen I knew I wanted to be a writer. But sixteen is a bad time to discover such a thing, pressed on all sides by serious adults wanting you to make terrible decisions that will shape your life. Perhaps, if it hadn’t been that the only adult who said I should follow my heart was a crazy uncle, who shortly afterwards found himself in a mental hospital after exposing himself in the high street, I might have taken a different path. As it was, I followed a career in science and software engineering.

And danced in secret.

The stories piled up – on paper, in those days – handwritten or typed, on a toy typewriter that once belonged to my sister and needed a very precise rhythm to avoid jamming all the keys together. And the stories disappeared. I moved about a lot and was careless. Once I threw away boxes full of manuscripts as a gesture of love. Wasted, of course. Hundreds of stories. Whole novels. Yet it didn’t matter so much. It was the dance that mattered and a dance is only for the moment.

In another world, I was being published all the time. I wrote about psychology for children on my toy typewriter and sent the manuscript to Macmillan. They made it into a book, with an orange cover and a picture of a field mouse on the front. I did other children’s science books. I wrote something funny about science and New Scientist published it. I published dozens of scientific papers, and over a hundred technical articles about artificial intelligence and robotics and programming, about communications and psychology and human-computer interaction.

So I thought I might try to publish my novels too, because that’s what was really important. I sent them to publishers who mostly ignored me. A very few said, “We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Find yourself an agent.” So I sent them to agents. They ignored me too – although not so much as the publishers did, maybe one in six agents replied to me. They said, “We’re not taking on new clients. Try sending your work directly to publishers.” I was doing it all wrong, I now know – the rules are very strict – but no-one mentioned that. I kept doing it all wrong for quite a while. If the Internet had existed then, I imagine I’d have been the butt of many a snarky joke among insiders who couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so stupid as to not know what agents and editors wanted.

There was a period of ten years after this that I didn’t try to publish at all, just wrote my books, paragraph by paragraph, in lunch breaks and the other small eddies of my other life. Then I started trying again. With the same result. Until something quite extraordinary happened. I heard, through a peculiar route, of an opportunity to bypass the usual submission process. It was a competition to win a place on a manuscript development retreat – which would not have appealed to me except that there was the promise of a Big Six publisher on hand for several days to talk about the manuscript. It so happened, I’d just written what I thought was my best novel ever – a book called Time and Tyde, so I sent it off and won the place, and had my life transformed.

At the retreat were other writers in the same position as me (including my host, Janette Dalgleish) and for a few days we were all immersed in the publishing industry. There was the Big Six publisher, one of her editors, one of her authors, her author’s agent, the CEO of the local writer’s centre, and a local independent bookseller. A full spectrum of professionals from across the industry. They gave presentations, they chatted, they ate with us and drank with us, they critiqued our work and – most importantly for me – critiqued our approach to publication. All the writers there had a wonderful time – we bonded, and we still keep in touch two years later. And somewhere in all this, something went click! in my brain.

One month after the retreat, I had my first ever fiction acceptance – for a short story I wrote when I got home. In the next year or so, I sold eight more stories, and then my first novel. It wasn’t Time & Tyde. The Big Six lady didn’t want that after all. It was TimeSplash, the book I wrote immediately after the retreat.

It’s easy to become jaded with the idea of publication. The constant grind of rejection is hard to bear, the research and the work needed to make a successful submission is galling when you have little enough time for writing. I think all of us at the retreat were feeling it in different ways, and I think we all came away reinvigorated to some extent. Within a year of the event, another of the attendees had signed a deal for his manuscript (which is now in print, a great read, and available from Amazon) and quite recently yet another was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award.

My life is still a strange dance with Writing. We still stumble, but I’ve learned a few more of the steps. I devote more of my time to the dance these days and I think it shows. My partner and I have an audience now, which is strange. It adds a new and surprisingly intense emotional colouring to the moves we make. When people applaud, I could cry. I still get that come-on look, that promise of consummation, and it still keeps me dancing, dancing…

****

Before I go, I’d just like to say a big thank you to Janette for her kindness in hosting this stop on my blog tour. Janette is one of those people whom aspiring writers should follow (here and on Twitter) for her powerfully positive attitude and cheerful outlook. One day soon, I hope to be able to return the favour when she has her own book to promote.

The TimeSplash Blog Tour

Graham Storrs is the author of TimeSplash, a fast-paced time travel thriller. This post is part of the TimeSplash blog tour running from 16th February to the 5th May. To find out more about the book, characters, Graham, publication and inside information about writing the story, go to the TimeSplash website and check out the blog tour schedule page at “TimeSplash – The Blog Tour 2010″