Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 49

So, how has grad school been going, you ask?

Okay, so you haven’t asked—well, actually, some of you have asked, and I don’t really write nearly enough on here, so I figured I might as well tell you.

1. Write. Write a lot. Rinse. Repeat.

Loyal readers of this blog know that I am not the world’s fastest writer. In fact, a three-toed sloth probably moves through the forest with greater alacrity than I move my pen across the page or my fingers across the keyboard. However, taking three workshops will change that… even if you have to stay up until 2 a.m. the night before finishing six pages of rough draft that you think are so rough they shouldn’t even see the light of day.

2. We know you just got here but what’s your thesis going to be? Let us know by next week.

When I got here, all I knew was that my thesis was going to be a novel. However, fellowship application deadlines for next year landed about a month after I arrived, so I had to figure it out—quick. Fortunately, I had an idea bouncing around my head (and a very bad first draft stuck in a drawer back home) and realized that if I cut out half of it and completely rewrote what was left, it might make a decent novel. Suddenly, I’m in love with the idea and have already started doing my reading in preparation for writing it. Which brings me to…

3. Read. Read some more. And oh by the way, read.

This is pretty much a no-brainer. However, in putting together the bibliography for my thesis, I wound up with not just a list of scholarly and scientific articles on climate change (it has a bearing on the story), but also a lot of science fiction and speculative fiction novels that I’ve either not gotten around to reading or never even heard of. (For the record: J.G. Ballard—dated and kind of a chauvinist, but his ecological themes could have been written yesterday.) And finally, after thinking “I should really read that” for I don’t know how long, I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale, which scared the hell out of me.

4. Critique, and be critiqued.

I’m taking three workshops—graphic novel, writing for children, and advanced fiction. I am working in the company of a lot of talented and creative young writers. Getting their feedback has been invaluable. Even more than that, having a cohort of this sort makes the writing process feel less solitary.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t still those moments at 2 in the morning when you’re working on a draft and wondering how you managed to bluff your way into the program and wondering what you’ll do when they figure out they made a mistake and the jig’s up.

5. Everyone feels just like that.

Most of the people I’ve met are familiar with that same suspicion that a mistake was made when they got in.

6. Opportunities. Take them.

The residence where I live, Green College, has hosted a writer in residence this semester, Shyam Selvadurai. He’s hosted a number of workshops and readings during his residence, and getting to know him has been a privilege.

Likewise, I’ve been able to take part in a reading series already, and have attended more readings in the past three months than I did in the prior year.

7. It’ll be over before you know it.

Wow. Three months. It seems like both more and less time has passed since I got here.

The Time Is Now

I keep a file on my computer full of random thoughts, snippets of imagined dialogue, and one-line descriptions. Sometimes one of these fragments runs to a full paragraph, but usually no more than that. Every once in a while, when I’m not feeling particularly inspired, I go there and skim through the fragments, seeing if something “takes” with me, and I start writing more.

I love a good writing prompt. One of the reasons I never feel at a loss for something to write about is that I like tossing in the occasional random element and seeing what happens. (It’s also why I love getting a call for submissions on a topic that seems like it should have no interest to me whatsoever—I don’t always answer them or have time, but then one will come along that makes me think, Well, why not? And I surprise myself.

I’ve been taking part in an occasional, informal writing workshop at the college where I live. It’s touched on elements of pattern and rhythm, point of view, and so on. And there’ve been one or two free-writing prompts included in each session. One of them’s turned into a short story that I’m writing for a workshop next semester.

Another thing that’s been really helpful is a weekly email that comes out from Poets & Writers (if you don’t subscribe, it’s a great magazine; I highly recommend it). Called The Time Is Now, it includes prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I copy each of the fiction prompts and save them in a file I can access anywhere (Evernote is a great tool for this). At this point, I have such a backlog of ideas I don’t worry about ever running out.

What tools have you found for inspiration that you consider useful?

How do they get away with this?

I’m just gonna put this right out there: I don’t really much care for Amazon.com.

Yes, I’ve bought things from their website—loads of things, over the years. Books, even. If I sat down and added up the amount of money I’ve spent at Amazon over the past decade or so, I’d probably have a heart attack and die, so I’m not going to do that.

And they’ve done things to piss me off in the past. Remember that whole thing about them censoring queer titles from book searches? Yeah, things like that. Lately, though, I’ve been reading about a few really jackass maneuvers the company has made that they don’t feel they need to explain or correct (although apparently a little bad publicity has caused them to restore the Norwegian woman’s Kindle account, according to BoingBoing). From a public relations standpoint, they are not doing themselves any favors. From a digital rights perspective, they look like they’re abusing their privileges at best, and thieves at worst.

I haven’t bought a book from Amazon in I don’t know how long. The censorship issue was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me as far as they’re concerned.

When you go to the bookstore and buy a book, it’s yours, that physical artifact. You can read it, lend it, write in the margins, put it under a dodgy table leg, however you like. No, you don’t own the words as if you’d written them yourself, but the bookstore isn’t going to come knocking on your door one day and try to take it back. And yet Amazon had no problem doing just that. No warning, no refund.

I can’t tell you where you should shop for e-books any more than I can tell you that I think you’re better off with paper books instead. (Besides, I have a Kobo, so it’s not like I haven’t read several e-books—usually slowly and painfully, but I’ve read them all the same. I also check out e-books from the library using OverDrive on an iPod.) I just think you’re better off if you buy them somewhere other than Amazon.

So, where do you buy your e-books? Do you worry about this sort of thing happening to your library?

“In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you…”

For the past three days, I’ve been trying to figure out why this song has been running through my head.

It first reared its head maybe a month or two ago. I chalked it up to nostalgia—although since 1982 was seventh grade in middle school for me, I have very little love left or lost for the place or the people from that time in my life. I’m not even a big Crosby, Stills, & Nash fan—admittedly, a fantastic group, but not one that captured my attention (as I recall, they were more up my friend Laura’s alley—she always had better musical tastes than mine, which leaned heavily toward bubble gum and pop).

Last night, though, I think I figured it out. It’s the beginning of the soundtrack for my next novel, the one I’m planning to write for my master’s thesis. To say anything of what it’s about would be premature, but it’s definitely not a literal interpretation of the song.

At the moment, it’s a soundtrack consisting of exactly one song, but I imagine that will change as time goes on….

You (Indiego)go, Michael Thomas Ford!

So, my friend Michael Thomas Ford, author of such books as Jane Bites Back and Z and What We Remember, among dozens of others (literally dozens—the man is prolific), has written a new novel called Lily. You won’t be able to find it in the stores, though. Michael’s going a somewhat unconventional route that’s becoming more common: funding the publication of the novel via an Indiegogo campaign. He’s got two days to go, and he only has about $150 more to raise. I think he’s going to make it, but just to make sure, bop on over and check it out, and then come back, because I’m pondering things.

Back? Right, then. I think it’s interesting that a successful writer (I hear you scoffing, Ford—zip it) is choosing to go solo to publish a book. I hesitate to use the phrase “self-publishing” because, even after the writer who made millions self-pubbing on Amazon (for the life of me, I can’t remember her name and I’m a bit too lazy to go look it up; besides, I’m trying to stay on a roll) and the dramatic increase in self-published titles over the past several years, it still carries a stigma. I don’t think that stigma is always deserved—bad books can be put out by a big publisher as easily as by the author.

Ah: Amanda Hocking. I just remembered what her name was.

Most Indiegogo or Kickstarter book campaigns that I’ve seen (and I readily admit here, I am not an expert on any of this; I’m just a guy with a keyboard and a propensity to procrastinate) have given away a copy of the book along with some collateral giveaways. What’s unique here is that this is the only way to get a copy of the first edition of Lily. Will it get a second edition via a mainstream publisher afterwards? Who knows? So that’s why this piqued my interest. Well, that and the fact that it’s a book by Ford and I like to support people I like.

I don’t have to tell you that the publishing industry is evolving. (And if I do, then where ya been, Rip Van Winkle?) As Ford says on his campaign page, “the publishing world has changed in dramatic ways over the past few years. The old model isn’t working terribly well for most of us, and I believe it’s time to explore other avenues for getting our work into the world.”

Would I ever do this? I don’t know. Right now I don’t think I have enough of a following to make a success of something like this. But I’m not saying no.

What about you? Have you self-published anything? How did it go? How many copies did you sell?

(Ooh! Someone else just funded him! Now he’s only about $100 away!)

That thing I keep forgetting to mention, i.e. the second novel

Oh, that’s right, I have a blog.

I’d hoped to get the manuscript for book #2 wrapped up before I left for graduate school, but we know what that road is paved with and where it leads. As I was getting acclimated to Vancouver and life as a graduate student, and while I was writing a thesis proposal and getting stories ready for critique (and trying to remember how to draw for my graphic novel class), I was also writing about Amazons, gods and goddesses, a vicious three-headed dog, and a sixteen-year-old high school junior who’s trying to make sense of all of it and, maybe, learn some things about trust, courage, and love while he’s at it.

Writing this book was really fun—when I was a kid, I read voraciously for escapism. At the same time I was looking for characters who were like me, even if I wasn’t sure who “me” was. (I figured maybe I’d find a character who’d help me answer that question.) Jamie’s not like me, not really, but he’s someone I would have liked to come across in the books I was reading. Maybe someone will pick up the book and feel the same way about him.

Writing this book was also a course in risk taking of a different kind for me. I suppose the last one was as well—changing from third to first person between the second and third drafts on Detours was nerve-racking at the time, but in the end it worked out for the best. In the case of the second book, I came to a point in the story where I departed from my outline significantly. If I were to think of my characters as real, living people (and while I’m not so far off the deep end that I’m talking to them, they’ve taken up a lot of space in my head for the past three years), I’d say what I did to them was downright cruel. After writing one scene, I stopped and sat and stared at the screen for a while and thought, Can I really do that?

Yeah, I really can.

A reading in Vancouver? Already?

Yes, it’s true. On Thursday, October 11 at 7 p.m. you’ll find me at the Cottage Bistro on Main Street in Vancouver, taking part in Locution. It’s a monthly reading series organized by MFA’ers Rebecca Hales and Gorrman Lee (they’re not only talented, they’re two of the best-dressed people I’ve ever met). Fellow MFA students Bill Mullan and Stephen Neufeld will be reading, along with special guest Heather Locklear. Wait, that was Melrose Place. Make that special guest Michael V. Smith.

What am I going to read? Probably something from Detours, unless I decide to inflict a bit of the work in progress on them. Either way, come listen to the other great folks and watch me try not to flap my arms around like Kermit the Frog while I’m reading!

A few observations from my first week in Vancouver

It takes a long time to get places on the bus, but you can actually get places.

Things are a little expensive. Okay, a lot expensive.

I didn’t pack nearly enough workout clothes.

I am walking so much that I think I’m already losing weight.

The people here are really, really polite. They have also been very, very kind.

Everyone ends up wanting to talk about American politics.

I am making a lot of progress on my novel revisions. (No, I am still not done.)

I am surrounded by a lot of talent.

I am also surrounded by views like this:

I am still awaiting that 3 a.m. “Oh my God what have I done?” moment. I’m sure it will come. I’ll deal with it when it does.

I am beginning to desperately miss my dogs and my man.

But if my first week is any indication, I think things will be good here.

Pocketful of Miles

Every time I ran, I thought of each of the 6 miles (plus .2 for good measure) as something I was picking up and putting away, in my pocket or on a shelf someplace. I scooped up mile 1 like a quarter I’d find on the side of the path and tucked it in the key pocket of my shorts, and I kept going, gathering up each one and saving it for later.

Pocketful of Miles | Jeffrey A Ricker | Blog Post | Red Room.

Bon appétit, Mrs. Child

When I was fifteen (or was it sixteen?), I had to bring a dish to school for my French class’s cuisine française day. I had no idea how to cook, but that didn’t stop me from making my first real dish: chocolate mousse. I used a recipe from my mom’s beat-up old copy of Julia Child’s cookbook.

Who knew the kitchen was where alchemy happened, that I could take a few simple ingredients (eggs, chocolate, sugar, a bit of coffee) and make something transcendant? After that, I started watching reruns of The French Chef and, later, Dinner at Julia’s. I didn’t make many of the other dishes, but just watching her cook and enjoy good food was an education. She taught me how to appreciate the effort that anyone puts into making food for me.

I still have that cookbook. The corners are yellow and the pages are falling out, and it just naturally flops open to page 27, mousséline au chocolat. Whenever I need to make a show-stopper, I still turn to that.

I don’t know about you, but I miss Julia. Happy 100th, Mrs. Child, wherever you are. Bon appétit.