Joshua Cox-Steib's Blog, page 5

A white man's plea to white America

Stop the Racist Violence:

 

From fear and hate are actions fueled

That snuff out lives in biased justice's guise

Acts of murder poorly wrapped and denied

 With a transparent cloak of arrogance and lies

 

A cold war in our streets, but only on one side

For the one has guns, badges, and permission

While the other holds rallies for those that died

As undeserving victims of unlawful perdition

 

Our country is flooded

With grieving and seething

And fearful reactions to rightful outrage exposed

This problem won't die with the people we're killing

 

But grow like fire from the kindle of their deaths

immediate change is in desperate demand

For many can see what a steady course bequeaths

A heightening cycle of fright and death set to expand

 

Our specie's future is determined today

Where a system of racism fractures society

During times that call for unity without delay

Nothing is more dangerous than human bonds held proprietary

 

So come together

Speak out and hold hands

Take a leap for something better

Until this violence no longer stands

 

Some might think to contrive

Love and acceptance as cliché

But this is a privilege of those who don't fear for their lives

Each and every day

Post-Publication Mind Mush

Every time I publish something beyond the length of flash fiction (usually mid-length novelettes) I find myself hyped up on the excitement of completion, and having to channel that energy into productive promotions. Easier said than done; people just don't want to be bombarded by essay length posts that have more to do with sharing your own excitement than with carefully crafted promotional material. That's all well, and good—curbing that energy makes it more likely that I'll get a full night's sleep. The hard part, for me, is the sudden opening that happens once that energy, and the promotional window both dwindle.

     I have about fourteen WIP stories (ranging from just started, to about halfway done) to pick through, and finish, but deciding which one to tackle next can be remarkably difficult, and I inevitably have to make up that burst of energy that publication time takes out of me. My brain starts telling me that I haven't written in forever, and staunchly ignores the fact that I've been doing nothing else. It feels like a new conundrum each and every time. I'm learning though. I'm learning that when we set the bar so high, there are always going to be times when our mind and bodies say STOP, and force us to take a break. And let's face it, we are human. Our minds are housed by incredible vehicles of physiology, and those vehicles require both fuel and maintenance if they are to continue functioning.

     I published my most recent story three days ago, promoted it all weekend, had my mother's birthday, father's day, and a very good friend's birthday to celebrate. It was a busy weekend. And this is me taking a break. I've spent the day perusing my WIP stories, glancing through papers and notes scattered around my office, and generally been letting my mind take its own time to figure out what it wants to accomplish next. There will always be more projects than time, and it's important to find that balance between what we need to do, and what we want to do. If we're both lucky, and worked pretty hard at it, then there is going to be a decent amount of overlap between the two. Without that overlap the whole process becomes so much more difficult. So, this is me taking a break, organizing my mind, and looking for that overlap. 

Reader, Writer: Where's The Line?

I recently found myself pondering my personal delineation between writer, and reader. I was re-reading one of Jim Butcher's books in 'The Dresden Files', and admiring his ability to provide strong descriptive narrative without detracting from the story's pace - no mean feat. I caught myself analyzing a couple of paragraphs, trying to identify the elements of narrative that were so effective for me, as a reader. The tricky thing is that I, as a writer, was thinking about how I, as a reader, felt about different narrative techniques. It was when I noticed this appearance of duality that I got to wondering about that question of delineation.

      For me it's a lot like a vin diagram: much of my reader, and writer, identities overlap. This seems intuitive, and likely to be to true for many. Some interesting things emerged from this observation of selves. One such being that there is a fairly large bundle of styles, genres, and techniques that I enjoy writing, but very rarely am interested in reading. That bundle is represented by scattered files of unfinished stories, poems, and genre impaired narratives - various experiments that all require more experiments before they can be completed. In short, it's a lack of exposure making me unfamiliar with that kind of literature, and it results in far more time spent figuring out the basics. The reasonable thing would be to start reading more from these unfamiliar realms, and thus increase my familiarity with them. This hasn't happened, so far.

      The biggest overlap between my interests as a reader, and as a writer, is within the field of snarky, adventurous fantasy. Admittedly, the stuff I write tends to be quite a bit more ridiculous than much of what I read. I've always had a flare for the extreme, and a rather outrageous sense of humor. This all shows most clearly in 'The Inn of Adventures' stories that I'm writing (the second one will be out sometime next week). Imagine a traditional fantasy adventure, throw in a blend of Monty Python and The Three Stooges, spice heavily with snark, weave in some espoused pseudo-logic, and you'll get a sense of what it's like.

      It's not uncommon to read of an author proclaiming the start to their writing interests being founded in a desire to read things that simply weren't out there, yet - stories of their own imagining that they couldn't experience as a reader without first crafting as a writer. I find that this often applies to specific stories for me, more than to my initial interest in the craft (which I don't remember, but I've been shown a number of one page stories that I apparently wrote for class in elementary school, including a very strange cheeseburger recipe).

      Some of my stories evolve from simple dialogue experiments gone complex, others are scenic narratives that accidentally capture a battle. The Inn of Adventurers started out as a quick exercise in creating synergistic characters. There is often an element of wanting to read an idea I've had, and in order to do that I have to find a way to write it first. In the process I get to see where the idea goes, and am, in essence, reading the story as I write it. In so doing the reader and the writer function as one, and the associated behaviors do the same.  

Why I like writing

   I recently found myself trying to formalize just what it is about writing that I find so irresistible. Turns out there's a lot. My catchphrase that I walked away with was "a joyful dance of clever manipulation in the pursuit of exploration and adventure."

   Now, as to what I mean by that. First and foremost, I am going on a journey when I write fiction. Exploring and creating merge into a strange and globular entity when you're steering the story. This seems to be an inherent component of crafting fiction: in that all fiction is about a reality that is different from ours in one or more specific ways - those differences form the foundational truths of any fiction story, and each writer's reasoning expands it from those; so that you end up with a logical structure based on those initial fabrications, and selectively combined with elements of non-fictional reality.

   Another element is that of dialogue - our literary simulation of the most social of social interactions. There is something that just sends me cackling about writing a particularly convoluted, and yet technically coherent bit of dialogue. The character "Tarly" in my story "The Inn of Adventurers" represents this well, when he debates the meaning of a "warning" with another character. Dialogue also serves as a contrast to the narrative - providing opportunity to highlight or obfuscate content and tone. If some loud noise is stated in the narrative, but only one character acknowledges it while another tells the first that there was no noise - and all of this is shown to the reader in dialogue (except the initial statement of noise within the narrative), then a situation is created where you have a primed event. It's an event the reader knows about, but they don't know if it's actually happened (or will happen) - having active evidence both for and against it. This can be used in much subtler and more powerful manners than I've shown, but I felt the need to include at least a basic example.

   Perhaps my favorite thing to do in writing is to explore the plausible absurd, or sustainable outrageousness. Finding ways to use oppositional concepts to strengthen each other by intentional focus and transition. One of the most prevalent patterns that I've uncovered for this is by embedding the absurd within the mundane - from there you trivialize the narrative of the absurd, while sensationalizing the narrative of the mundane. This can create a scenario where you have a talking mongoose for a waiter, but what the reader wants to know more about is that "shadowy doorway lurking along the back wall - obscured by hanging beads, and plastered with brightly colored stickers." There is clearly a lot more that goes into using this trick, but that seems a reasonably adequate and quick explanation.

   All of these things (and much more that I'll have to post about later) are what contribute to writing being (for me) a joyful dance of clever manipulation in the pursuit of exploration and adventure.

Why I like writing

I recently found myself trying to formalize just what it is about writing that I find so irresistible. Turns out there's a lot. My catchphrase that I walked away with was "a joyful dance of clever manipulation in the pursuit of exploration and adventure."

Now, as to what I mean by that. First and foremost, I am going on a journey when I write fiction. Exploring and creating merge into a strange and globular entity when you're steering the story. This seems to be an inherent component of crafting fiction: in that all fiction is about a reality that is different from ours in one or more specific ways - those differences form the foundational truths of any fiction story, and each writer's reasoning expands it from those; so that you end up with a logical structure based on those initial fabrications, and selectively combined with elements of non-fictional reality.

Another element is that of dialogue - our literary simulation of the most social of social interactions. There is something that just sends me cackling about writing a particularly convoluted, and yet technically coherent bit of dialogue. The character "Tarly" in my story "The Inn of Adventurers" represents this well, when he debates the meaning of a "warning" with another character. Dialogue also serves as a contrast to the narrative - providing opportunity to highlight or obfuscate content and tone. If some loud noise is stated in the narrative, but only one character acknowledges it while another tells the first that there was no noise - and all of this is shown to the reader in dialogue (except the initial statement of noise within the narrative), then a situation is created where you have a primed event. It's an event the reader knows about, but they don't know if it's actually happened (or will happen) - having active evidence both for and against it. This can be used in much subtler and more powerful manners than I've shown, but I felt the need to include at least a basic example.

Perhaps my favorite thing to do in writing is to explore the plausible absurd, or sustainable outrageousness. Finding ways to use oppositional concepts to strengthen each other by intentional focus and transition. One of the most prevalent patterns that I've uncovered for this is by embedding the absurd within the mundane - from there you trivialize the narrative of the absurd, while sensationalizing the narrative of the mundane. This can create a scenario where you have a talking mongoose for a waiter, but what the reader wants to know more about is that "shadowy doorway lurking along the back wall - obscured by hanging beads, and plastered with brightly colored stickers." There is clearly a lot more that goes into using this trick, but that seems a reasonably adequate and quick explanation.

All of these things (and much more that I'll have to post about later) are what contribute to writing being (for me) a joyful dance of clever manipulation in the pursuit of exploration and adventure.

Inn of Adventurers V.2, an excerpt

   The party followed the stalwart dwarf down the tunnel, Tarly’s spell globe lighting their way. Moss grew on the moist walls, and the deep smell of earth was all around them. Randell led with an air of unwavering confidence. He might have been magically transported into an unfamiliar spider-infested cave, and promptly poisoned. But he was still in a cave, and caves were his territory. They were his birthright as a dwarf. Much like ale.

   As they approached a split in the tunnel Randell slowed the group to a halt, giving both options lengthy consideration. Kneeling, he wiped a finger along the floor of dirty rock, and plopped it into his mouth - tasting the nature of the cave.

   Standing swiftly, the dwarf began backpedaling. It quickly turned into a full on retreat.

   “Run! There're too many!”

   Tarly and drudge exchanged a confused glance. A moment later though, they could hear it; an oncoming storm of chittering and rustling. They turned to run as countless spiders swarmed into sight, blocking out both forks of the tunnel. The two longer limbed adventures caught up with Randell, and had to shorten their stride not to leave the dwarf behind.

excerpt from the sequel to "the Inn of Adventurers"

The party followed the stalwart dwarf down the tunnel, Tarly’s spell globe lighting their way. Moss grew on the moist walls, and the deep smell of earth was all around them. Randell led with an air of unwavering confidence. He might have been magically transported into an unfamiliar spider-infested cave, and promptly poisoned. But he was still in a cave, and caves were his territory. They were his birthright as a dwarf. Much like ale.

As they approached a split in the tunnel Randell slowed the group to a halt, giving both options lengthy consideration. Kneeling, he wiped a finger along the floor of dirty rock, and plopped it into his mouth - tasting the nature of the cave.

Standing swiftly, the dwarf began backpedaling. It quickly turned into a full on retreat.

“Run! There're too many!”

Tarly and drudge exchanged a confused glance. A moment later though, they could hear it; an oncoming storm of chittering and rustling. They turned to run as countless spiders swarmed into sight, blocking out both forks of the tunnel. The two longer limbed adventures caught up with Randell, and had to shorten their stride not to leave the dwarf behind.