Sarah E. Morin's Blog, page 16

Writer’s Resolutions: The 6-Word Diet Plan

I usually forego New Year’s resolutions, but in 2015, I’ve decided to go on a writer’s diet. That doesn’t mean cutting calories, but words. I have always struggled to contain my verbosity on paper.  In the last month, I have cut 11,000 words of prose and 100 lines of poetry out of various projects, and golly, my writing is looking svelte.

I want to take a before and after photo of my short stories. The second would be like this:

Image courtesy of marin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Except instead of a guy I’d have a piece of paper wearing oversized pants, to show off all that word loss.

 

All good diet plans need exercise. So here’s my monthly routine of word-loss exercise:

Write a haiku, cinquain, couplet, or limerick.

 

To celebrate the New Year, I’ll write a 6-word poem, in the style of my favorite poet, Ogden Nash.

 

Write flash fiction.

In December, I submitted 2 flash fiction pieces to a magazine. I aimed for 1000 words. I hit over 1,400 and then had to weed.  It took me 3 hours to write each piece and over twice that to edit.

It was strenuous, but I did it mainly to condition myself for editing Waking Beauty. I figured, if I can cut 1/3 of the words out of a short piece, I can cut another 5,000 words out of a 160,000+ word epic fantasy. It really helped that my excellent publisher, Steve, targeted specific areas that seemed bloated. Like target dieting.

Is it weird that I sang DaVinci’s Notebook’s song, “Liposuction,” as I edited?

In 2015, I will write flash fiction with the following word limits:

 

January – 1000 word limit

February – 900

March – 800

April – 700

May – 600

June – 500

July – 400

August – 300

Sept—200

Oct-100 (now we’re getting down to the microfiction level)

Nov-50

Dec-10

 

To celebrate the New Year one year from now, I’ll write a 6-word story, in the style of Hemingway.

Anyway else have writing goals this year?

Book Review: Promised

Caraugh M. O’Brien

Taken as a whole, I’m not sure what genre to assign to O’Brien’s series. Our main characters escape from one dystopian society to another, and then try to fix all the problems by joining the two together. Whether or not it works I will not spoil. But there are enough elements in the series a whole to make me want to push it out of pure dystopia and somewhere else on the vehn diagram that is speculative fiction.

If there is a uniting theme across all 3 books, I would say it’s birth control.  By this I don’t mean to limit it to the standard usage of the term, but any means by which a society tries to shape itself through controlling the process of reproduction. How do we get the babies we want, with the right genes, birth parents, adoptive parents, birthdate, and gender?

While I don’t always agree with our main character’s answers to these questions, Gaia is at least willing to consider (at least nominally) the other side. For example, in Promised we hear from a runaway surrogate mom and from a wealthy adoptive grandparent. Both sides tell their story, and the reader empathizes with the desire on both sides to raise this baby.

And while the ethics of reproduction is an issue explored in countless spec fic stories, from Brave New World to Star Trek, this is the only series I’ve read that explores such it so thoroughly. In one trilogy we consider abortion, adoption, human trafficking, surrogate mothers, inbreeding, incest, infertility, gender identity, nature verses nurture, hormonal treatments, the rights of parents in child welfare, child abuse, forced organ donation, and I’m sure I missed something. And all through the eyes of a main character who is a midwife.

O’Brien is especially interested in exploring how birth relates to either hope or despair.

And if Gaia’s choices sometimes make me cringe, I admire the author for her bravery in tackling the issues. These books are ambitious in scope. (Too ambitious?)

My biggest complaint about Promised is that is does not bring us strong enough resolutions, either with some of the social issues or the relationship issues. I don’t mind loose ends. But this is like O’Brien was in such a hurry to finish the book she forgot to tie her shoes before heading out the door.

No, that’s too strong. Perhaps I simply reject the plausibility of O’Brien’s solutions. They seem too easy. Or the solutions are transparently temporary. If I knew there were a 4th book coming, I wouldn’t mind a few unexplained or tenuous plot resolutions. But as the cover of Promised reads, “The Third Book In The Promised Trilogy,” I think I’m out of luck.

Early in the book, we flesh out the romance between Leon and Gaia. It’s great wish fulfillment for fans who shipped Gaia and Leon in book 2, Prized. And author O’Brien delves into the psychological aspects of intimacy. Why does Gaia refuse to marry the man she loves? Does she, in fact, refuse to marry him because she loves him, and fears the cost of losing him? What does it mean to embrace someone’s flaws, and let them into the dark corners of yourself?

This romantic bit is lost the further we go into the book. When our favorite couple is supposed to be learning to rely fully on each other, instead we have:

 

Leon: I’m going into Enclave with you.

Gaia: Nope, I’m going alone.

 

Gaia: I’ll never go into Enclave alone again.

Leon: This time I’m sneaking there without you.

 

Gaia: Ok, now I’ll sneak into Enclave without anybody.

 

And so on and so forth.

The author also dares to say Gaia needs Leon to do her dirty work. Well, if that doesn’t kill a reader’s vision of a noble romance… It’s an honest but uncomfortable question about authority (Gaia is now the leader of the immigrants from Sylum). Uncomfortable enough that when Leon’s life is put on the line, I wasn’t sure whether to cheer for his demise or survival.

I won’t tell you how it ends. But in one sense, Leon and Gaia are opposing but linked aspects: Leon is the soldier who believes in necessary death. Gaia believes in life first. She’s the midwife who throws up even after shooting an arrow in self-defense. Perhaps you can’t have one mentality without the other. Or perhaps we need to kill off one to let the other thrive.

It’s an interesting question, which the author proposes but never fully answers.  Guess that part is up to us.

I give Promised 2.5 out of 5 stars, and the series as a whole 3.75.

Carnival World

I’ve been collaborating with local artists, mostly from Nickel Plate Arts, to do ekphrastic pieces.

Ekphrastic: a poem inspired by a work of art

Our group also does it backwards, where the painter is inspired by a poem. I’m happy to show off a painting the talented Alys Caviness-Gober made for my poem, Carnival World. Her painting is currently on display at Earth Far in Noblesville, IN. The poem won 1st place in a state poetry contest sponsored by the Indiana State Federation of Poetry Clubs. It’s so fun collaborating with other artistic people!  Like a shot of caffeine.

 

CARNIVAL WORLD

When the carnival left

the fairgrounds bore

the alien imprint

of crop circles in the grass.

The merry-go-round

left the round ghost

of the landing site

of a flying saucer.

Where are the inhabitants

of this fleeting world

that still smells of deep-fried adrenaline?

Where the monuments they erected

of metal bars and canvas?

What means their last message:

the trampled echo of calliope music?

They flew away

through colorful stars

Ferris wheel galaxies

and left behind the litter of

a space, a time.

Book Review: Prized

Caraugh M. O’Brien

The first half of Prized slowly strips away a lot of what we liked about Gaia Stone, fugitive teenage midwife. She escaped the dystopian Enclave with her baby sister, but at the cost of the guy she sorta-not-quite-sure-she-loves, Leon. After weeks in the wilderness, she’s scooped up by another dystopian society, Sylum, where males outnumber females 9 to 1. In quick succession she loses custody of her sister, traps herself in a medical prison, gets herself put on house arrest and then acquiesces, and alienates our main love interest.

Does her submission mark a broken character, or a maturing one?

What the reader finds hardest to forgive is her treatment of Leon. He’s followed her into the wilderness, and now he’s in prison for no justifiable reason. It’s the reverse of the situation we had in book one, where Gaia was in prison and Leon belonged to the ruling class. Yet Gaia does nothing to help Leon. She is too wrapped up in trying to make a political statement.

Which makes the bitter diatribe Leon delivers at the midpoint of the book both painful to the reader, and strangely vindicating. Could Gaia have done more to try to free Leon? And what would have been the cost?

So we all know about love triangles. O’Brien one-ups this concept and writes what she dubs a “love square.” (There’s an interview in the back of the book.) I found the love square both a drawback and a logical consequence of living in a society where females have all the power. It makes for lots of good old romantic angst, but at what cost? The main cost is the reader gets frustrated with Gaia for stringing these guys along. She doesn’t mean to, and she’s only a confused 16yo, but she does.

An equal cost is that there isn’t room to full develop all the characters. I really wish we knew more about Chardo Will, one of my favorite guys in this book.

On the plus side, there are some truly romantic moments in the book. Romantic not just for physical reasons, but because two characters accept both the strengths and weaknesses of the other. Reconciliation is perhaps the most poignant part of this complex story.

Besides trying to sort out romantic entanglements, Gaia faces yet more reproductive  and social quandaries, as she did in book 1.

What right does the state have to regulate birth, marriage, and even PDA?

We even tackle abortion. While I may not agree with the author’s leanings on the issue, she does allow at least a token voice to each side.

What is causing the gender imbalance in Sylum?

Is there any way to escape Sylum when anyone who tries gets sick and dies? (Sylum is like the Bates Motel.)

And most interesting of all to me, what does a society ruled by a minority of women look like? What does reverse discrimination look like, and how can we fix it?  Once Gaia finally gets off her abortion soapbox and focuses on civil rights again, she regains her footing.  We see the character we grew to admire in book 1.

The most complex character in the book is the Matrarc. She is our antagonist, and yet every move she makes is understandable. She becomes a stand-on for a compassionate but stern mother figure.  Our main character must question her authority, and finally come into her own.

One of the biggest plot points in book 1, Gaia’s disfiguring facial mark, is dropped almost entirely from the plot in book 2. Is this plausible? I think so. First, Sylum is a society where females are so rare, Gaia could have a 2nd head and still be considered a candidate for the cover of Vogue. And second, it shows Gaia has grown up some. In the beginning of book 1, she defined herself by two things – her career as a midwife and her birthmark. Now she and those around her start to see her for who she is inside. To emphasize this point, the Matrarc (leader) of Sylum is blind.

If we are to look at the trilogy at one large coming-of-age story, Prized is a complex and interesting middle passage.  Our heroine loses herself, but then she starts to find herself again.  And isn’t that what coming-of-age stories are all about?

I give this book 3.75 out of 5 stars.