2006 January » Deborah Kalin

biobleh

Jan 302006

Back when I wrote my very first synopsis, I hated it. Loathed it. Squirmed on the chair and cleaned my desk and kicked my feet so the pain would distract me. You get the picture, I'm sure.

Now I've discovered a task I dislike even more, if that's possible. Writing your own bio. Honestly, coming up with a paragraph about me? Makes me think I'd prefer to sit down and write a synopsis. For a million-word novel. That has no plotline. And has already been finished, so I feel compelled to stay "true" to the novel.

Can you contract these things out?

In less egotistical news, much as I love WinZip, that nag screen is driving me to utter distraction. Anyone know of any good freeware zip programs?

rufus

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Jan 282006

Musicians whose work I can't get enough of lately: Rufus Wainwright. Rilo Kiley. Iron & Wine. Sufjan Stevens (with some exceptions; I'm not particularly fond of the discordant stuff). Toad the Wet Sprocket. James Blunt. Vienna Teng. Sarah McLachlan. The Decemberists. Did I mention Rufus Wainwright? Somehow I have nearly 6 hours of Rufus songs alone. And any version of The Postal Service's Such Great Heights.

I feel a (new) novel brewing. This is not the time for a new novel.

scribbling in the margins

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Jan 262006

I wrote five stories at Clarion. I swore to myself that, given the writing hiatus Clarion so often induces, I would use the time productively by revising my Clarion stories and submitting them. Since then I have revised and submitted… one. Yes, I am terrible.

I've had mitigating circumstances, of course. I've been writing other things and, well, 2005 was a horrible year. The best thing about it is that it's over. Amen and hallelujah.

So I've put a progress meter in the sidebar, to jog me into revising my stories every time I update. Let's see if it works, eh?

Last night I started revising my week six story, and 'commenting' my week two story. (I think these two are my favourite. If only I could think of titles.) Commenting is where I comb through the handwritten notes my classmates gave me, and transfer them all onto the one master document. It's a long, slow process, but I find it reinforces everything that needs fixing, makes me evaluate what I do and don't have any ideas as to how to fix, and even throws up a few ego-boos as to what worked really well.

I'm on the second page of the first commented manuscript (told you it was slow). And my classmate has been so sweet and mild with pointing out my mistakes, but all the while I'm thinking, in mortification, and this was only my second story. What about the three that followed? Did I commit the exact same mistakes, because I didn't have time to read the handwritten comments of the last story before starting to write the next story, and because the critter didn't have time to raise the issue in the verbal review? How mortifying. How frustrating it must have been for my poor classmates.

it's not (always) about you.

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Jan 242006

Tansy Rayner Roberts has a post up about awards and award pimping. Hallelujah.

In a tangentially-related post, James Lincoln Warren (it's all about the triple names today, obviously) has a post up about the shadier side of blogging.

Both of which posts touch on reasons I sometimes don't like the blogosphere. Luckily enough, if someone or their blog gives me the irrits, I don't have to continue read. It's a wonderful thing.

for the love

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Jan 212006

Maura talks about writing for the love of it, and working with the creative urge instead of against it. (It will pay on this one to read the previous posts leading up to this one: an insight into motivation, and a credo. Listed in reverse order.)

Maura's Splinister (and her Babblogue for non-writing stuffs) are two blogs I read regularly. Synchronicity or not, Maura often has a fresh angle whenever I'm in a funk or feeling a little jaded and slogtastic with my writing.

rhythm and flow

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Jan 212006

This morning, I cannot type rhythm without double-checking the spelling of the word. (By double-checking I mean pausing and looking at it, not actually going to the dictionary. Going to the dictionary is triple-checking.) Rhythm shares this distinction with, off the top of my head, the name W. Somerset Maugham. I can never type Maugham without double, and sometimes even triple-checking.

And of actual note, inspired by Lydia Joyce's post, Alison Kent shares some insight on rhythm and flow, and finishing on a beat.

let go

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Jan 182006

Holly Black talks about pushing her work to the wow level:

But what I find that I need more and more–and need to learn how to do–is a critique that pushes fiction to that next level, that wow level. Like Cecil's admonishment to "look for your inner rage and inner perv," critiquing a competant story is all about seeing its cracktastic potential and about having standards that are higher than good. And it's about finding the great parts of a story and pushing the rest of the it toward those parts.

Marjorie M. Liu agrees, but responds about overworking:

At some point, though, you just need to let go. Accept the fact that maybe, at this point in your writing life, you've hit the edge of what you're capable of – but that by the next book, or the book after that, you'll have hit another level. Growing, growing, gone.

And there's another bad thing about not letting go: the danger of becoming an overly fixated perfectionist who rewrites everything until the story loses whatever essential spark it had in the first place. Might be great writing, but it will have lost all soul. I put "overthinking" into the same category.

Let go, let go, let go. That's the advice I must constantly give myself.

Which is very timely advice. There's a type of story known as the workshop story: it's been critiqued (or self-edited) so much and so continuously that all the shiny has been written out. Shiny, you see, is dangerous: shiny involves taking risks, and pushing yourself. And if you fail at it, or even just fall a little short, a critique will pick up on it. Or else the story has been written for a workshop, sans all shiny even before it's been critted because if there's nothing risky or dangerous in it then the story has a chance at being good. Right? Well, maybe on a technical level, sure. But then the story is safe, and safe stories never excite a range of responses, never excite passion or thoughtfulness. Safe stories are pale on the page.

45 sleeps till christmas

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Jan 172006

kittens

Aren't they gorgeous little critters? They're six weeks old Burmese kjittens — of course they're gorgeous! The three very pale ones are chocolates, so they'll grow up to look reasonably like my mother's cat. The three darker ones at the back are browns, so they'll darken to a look more like their father, below.

sire

The original plan was to buy one for my grandmother, who is bereft of cat company. The breeders suggested one of the browns for her, but she had her heart set on a chocolate. So we're buying her the darker of the chocolate kittens (the one halfway out of the box).

But when we visit the breeder, we'll be picking up two kittens. That's right — two! As soon as I saw the photo of the little brown kitten, I had no hope of resisting.

max

A Christmas kitten! A little belated, yes, but I'm getting a Christmas kitten. (Christmas because I got moulah for Christmas. It was supposed to pay for flights and accommodation on my next trip. But now it will pay for the kjitten.) I cannot wait. I expect I shall gibber and wax lyrical for a long time about the cuteness of my kitten; fair warning. I have already named him Max (I once had a horse called George. Clearly creatures with old English names are drawn to me.), and, yes, I am counting the sleeps until I get to pick him up for my very own.

nothing to see here. move along.

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Jan 162006

Meh.

More fully, I'm back at the gym, three times a week; this is my second full week back. I rather expected to be back in the groove by now, but no such luck. This is what comes of taking a break from exercise, you see, you remember just how nice it can be to be slothful. Slothful is good. Slothful does not turn my face the colour of a brand new fire engine.

I have also had the car repaired (again). After a year of the battery going flat and me arguing with mechanics that yes, the battery is stuffed now but that's just a symptom caused by some mysterious other malfunction, please look for that, won't you?, I have discovered:

the alternator is not stuffed. it is charging fine.
likewise, the starter motor is not stuffed. it sometimes doesn't actually, you know, start the car but that's because the battery isn't delivering the requisite 12 volts
the light in the driver's door keyhole and ignition port are, thanks to a single hour's labour by the auto-electrician, no longer staying on when they should be turning off, and therefore are no longer flattening the battery insidiously while the car is off
and the problem that was flattening the battery after all these problems were dealt with/eliminated? Was a dodgy battery terminal. Cost of repair a measly $40. I am now seriously fond of the mechanics who found this rather than looking for enormous problems and being stumped when they couldn't find them, like previous mechanics.

Blogs added to my blogroll in the past couple of days: Alison Kent, Paul Guyot, James Lincoln Warren

link salad

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Jan 152006

Scott Westerfeld passes on some of Raymond Chandler's advice
Alison Kent quotes John D. McDonald on writing, and being a writer:

I am often given the big smiling handshake at parties (which I avoid attending whenever possible) by someone who then, with an air of gleeful conspiracy, will say, ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to write.’ I used to try to be polite.

These days I reply with the same jubilant excitement: ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon.’

They look puzzled. It doesn’t matter. There are a lot of puzzled people wandering around lately.
Alison Kent (again) links to a bunch of people, including Lee Goldberg and Paul Guyot, talking about working at writing
James Lincoln Warren on choices in storytelling making all the difference: (link via Paul Guyot)

There is a big difference between the things that neophytes discuss and the things that old hands discuss. When I was in the Navy, when young officers discussed seamanship, they did it in terms of shiphandling and conning orders. The senior guys always talked about weather. Implicit in their choice was the assumption that an intimate knowledge of shiphandling and conning was a given.

Likewise, I find that experienced writers talk about technical things. I've never had another writer ask me where I got my ideas. The other writer wants to know how I thought of structuring a scene in a particular way, or what techniques are appropriate for a short piece but not for a novel, or whether using multiple POVs will make a story more interesting or not. In many ways, they are more interested in the choices we all make in telling the story than the story itself. They care less about what we write than how we write it.

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