Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 156

Interview in Portuguese

Waldir Ramos Neto, a Brazilian fan, translated part of an interview with me on his blog, Flor de Kireseth. 
 

Em visita ao Flor de Kireseth, Deborah
elogiou a qualidade visual do site (já que não fala portugues) e me deu
diversas dicas de sites, blogs e grupos de discussão onde posso pegar
mais informações sobre MZB, Darkover e Deborah J. Ross.





Hoje ela me enviou uma entrevista que concedeu a um site italiano sobre Darkover. Traduzi os trechos que achei mais pertinentes.
 


.....
 
It is a strange and wonderful experience to read one's words in a different language. (And to see the covers with different artwork and oh yes, I see what that title was originally.)

How I Find New Authors to Love

E. Duranty by Degas

Once upon a time, I gobbled up every new book of fantasy and science fiction that I could find. I'd trek to my local independent specialty book store or my local branch library and devour each month's arrivals. Now getting to the closest (general) bookstore requires a trek, our local library branch is in danger of closing (or maybe not, it keeps changing), not to mention losing its human librarians, and the number of new books has multiplied beyond any hope of keeping up with everything that's being published. I don't recognize many of the authors, at least not under those by-lines.

One way through the deluge is to connect with authors online. (Shameless Promotion Hint: Book View Café is a wonderful way to get acquainted. A whole community of fabulous writers with a wide range of styles and genres is right here -- we will now pause while you read a short story from a writer new to you. Okay, aren't you glad you did?)

Conventions also work well for me as a way to sort through the enormous number of new titles. I'll hear someone talk on a panel or read aloud from their work and be impressed with what a strange and thoughtful mind they have. Sometimes, I'll meet them afterwards and be curious about their stories. Sometimes when I hear a writer in person, I'll pick up a book whose title or cover would not otherwise appeal to me or I'll be willing to read something outside my usual "taste zone." Since I believe in supporting other writers, especially newer ones, I usually buy (at least) one "unknown" book from the dealers room. This has the additional benefit of helping out my friendly convention dealers, who get even friendlier and more diligent in carrying my own books. The next step is a request for an autograph, which is a pleasure for everyone involved. So many times, the few moments it takes can give a writer, even an established writer, a lift. "Wow! Deborah J. Ross bought my book -- and asked me to sign it!"


A delightful outcome from these meetings has been personal as well as professional friendships. That happens when we love each other's work and enjoy each other on a personal level.

A third method is personal recommendations and reviews, although with discernment. I may like and respect another reader/author but have different tastes in reading. (I have a good friend who gives me anti-recommendations: anything she loves, I am sure to hate, although I don't always like what she detests.) Reasons for liking or disliking books are particularly valuable. For instance, a reviewer or friend may say, "I couldn't stand Book because Topic or Theme turns me off" but I happen to adore stories with Topic or Theme, so a negative review can actually make me more likely to go out and read the book.

Sometimes the experiment is successful and I go out and buy everything else I can find by that author. Other times, the library book sale is the recipient of these autographed copies. That's the breaks. I don't always enjoy the work of people I admire and like (and sometimes I like work by people I can't stand), so I try to look at the process as an interesting experiment. A book can be well done, but is just not my cup of tea. If I don't care for it, someone else may love it.

Now comes the delicate issue of reciprocity, because I extend this support not only as an avid reader, but as a fellow writer. The first sale is without expectations, but after that, I pay attention. Unless I'm utterly captivated by the author's work (in which case I devolve to the status of a fan), I notice whether the support is mutual. Alas for human nature, I'm more likely to continue to buy your books if you also read mine or at least let me know you are interested in my own career. I don't demand that the other writer adore my work, only that they extend the courtesy of giving it a try as I have done for them. If that sounds self-serving, it is. Relationships between peers (we are each readers but we are both writers as well) require mutual support. If we are honest, we can separate out personal taste and be of genuine help to one another.

What do you think? How do you find new authors to love?

The Lady (Actual and Honorary) Writers' Lunch

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Writing is a lonely business. Well, maybe if you write screenplays as part of a committee, it isn't, but for most of us, the process involves endless hours with just us and the words on the page. No wonder we end up talking to our characters and listening when they talk back. There's a listing for that in the DSM-IV.



One of my secret weapons against the perils of isolation is the writer's lunch. When I lived in Los Angeles, I joined my first critique group, an eclectic mix of sf/f writers, mystery writers, and mainstream "literary" writers, with a core of Clarion and UCLA Advanced Writing class graduates. One of the other sf/f writers and I started going to lunch once a month or so. The group meetings were tightly focused on critiquing manuscripts and there wasn't much time for schmoozing about general writing issues, nor was the group atmosphere hospitable to sf/f shop talk. I quickly learned the value of having a writing buddy, someone to cheer me on, help me choose markets, analyze the personalities of editors, commiserate with about rejections (and try to interpret those letters), and more.




Kay Kenyon put it like this:




Don't make the mistake of thinking that to be a writer you mostly
have to hunker down and write. You do, of course, have to write. But you
also have to survive the slings and arrows of a very tough business.
For this, there is nothing like a friend.


If possible, a very close friend. A best pal can anchor you in the writing life, providing:


Advice and problem-solving.
A friendly ear when one hits bottom.
Someone who'll applaud you without (too much) envy when a success comes.
A  companion for conferences and signings.
A mirror to your own writing life, to give perspective.
Source of laughs, gossip, and wisdom.
Dependable guerrilla marketing and cross-promotions with you.

My first writing buddy and I eventually went our separate ways, but by then I'd found other like-minded writers. A few of these were writers I admired tremendously and were much further along in their careers than I was. From them, I learned new ways of looking at the business, and also that I'd been judging my own progress too harshly. I learned that even successful authors have crises of confidence, think their work is dreadful but know how to revise like maniacs, get rejected, get dropped by agents or publishers -- and pick themselves up, switch genres, change names. So when some of those things happened to me, I knew I wasn't the only one and I knew it was possible to recover, reinvent myself, and go on.



After I moved to the redwoods, I did a lot less of this sort of networking. For one thing, there were far fewer writers in this rural area, although for a time I did attend a very small beginner's group, mostly to hear people talk about writing. I did a certain amount of schmoozing online, as time permitted, because I was now working full time as a single mom. Also, I was beginning the Darkover collaborations, and for various reasons it wasn't appropriate to workshop them. I missed that face-to-face camaraderie.



When attending Baycon, I hooked up with a new writer friend. I loved what she had to say and we instantly hit it off. Both of us had the same sense of give-and-take, of listening and advising, of asking questions and sharing experience. . Before long, we'd figured out a half-way point from our homes and set up a lunch date. So was born The Lady Writers' Lunch.



The name, Lady Writer's Lunch, is a play on the Lady Writer's Commune. Once when I was feeling discouraged and terrified of my financial future, a dear friend said, "If worst comes to worst, we can pool our Social Security checks, rent an old house in the country, and set up a little old lady writers' commune." I laughed so hard, I cried, and the image of writers supporting one another has stayed with me.



My new writing buddy and I wrestled through story planning, plot and character problems, getting
an agent, pulling a project from a publisher, balancing writing in more
than one genre, how to write with kids at home, how to write through
tragedy, how to use social media or keep it from eating our lives. (We've found that IM can serve well for moment of support or just a "Hey, I've finished a scene!" "Hooray!") From time to time, we'd include others, but the two of us remain the core of the lunch group. Right now we've got a male writer, too. The joke is that we've made him an Honorary Lady, and we're feeling our way through a new dynamic.



One of the gifts of such a group is not the support I receive from it, but the honor and joy of watching someone else come into her own as an artist, to celebrate her achievements. It's the opposite of Schaudenfreude -- it's taking immense pleasure and pride in the success of someone you have come to care about.



The illustration is by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, 1909, and is licensed under Creative Commons.

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Gender, Sex, Identity and A Bunch of Other Fascinating Issues

Last year, I attended a workshop at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center on "Gender, the Search for Self and the Search for Acceptance," facilitated by Chloe Schwenke, an ethicist who is herself a transgendered woman. (There's an interview with her here.) Although much of the workshop centered on personal issues of gender and identity, it struck me that as writers, we can discover much depth and richness by asking the same questions.

For the workshop, we defined sex as the classification of people as male or female. Intersex individuals, that is, people possessing the external characteristics of both, are usually "assigned" to one sex or the other. Gender, on the other hand, is a personal sense of being a man or a woman (or both, or neither). Each of these is distinct from sexual orientation, which has to do with an enduring physical, romantic, and emotional attraction to another person. Gender has been described as "who you want to go to bed as, not who you want to go to bed with."

In science fiction and fantasy, we have been playing around with such notions as more than two sexes/genders, none, fluid sexes/genders, and a diversity of gender role expressions. Every so often, a story that takes a new or not-new-but-splashy look at the field garners a lot of buzz, particularly in the queer and queer-friendly community. Yet much genre writing continues to perpetuate the world view of two oppositional and fixed genders, each with equally unyielding behavioral expectations. For many writers and readers, a character or society that goes too far outside the familiar becomes so uncomfortable as to fracture sympathetic identification. It strikes me, however, that even within the limitations of conventional portrayals of sex and gender, we can reach for greater depth. We can go beyond the Caveman Model of Gender Roles, the Separatist All-Men or All-Women Worlds, the Rambo-in-Drag/Supersensitive Male dichotomies and other variations already done to death.


To give you an idea what I'm talking about, here are some questions from the workshop. I've rephrased them to apply to characters, rather than personally.

How does your character know "what" that person is? What feelings, sensibilities, and other forms of awareness (other than simple body awareness) most make that person feel male, female, or somewhere in between?

Can you describe your character in non-gendered terms?

Does gender influence the spirituality of your character? How?

Has your character experienced a dissonance between what is expected and what was felt internally? How does the character deal with this tension? How does the character's sense of integrity and honesty affect the response?

How does this character (and the surrounding culture) consider the issues of equality and fairness between the masculine, feminine and androgynous?

How does the character's experience of gender affect the perception of the Divine, either within or outside the cultural norm?

 











A slightly different version of this blog originally appeared in Book View Cafe blog September 2011.

YA to look out for

First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci

I've long thought that one reason we love stories about aliens (or sentient nonhuman creatures) is that at one time or another, we've all felt like aliens ourselves. I know I have, and I'll bet that just about everyone who's survived adolescence has, too. (The "just about" is a hedge in case there are, somewhere in the world, people who just sailed through; I'm willing to allow for the possibility, even if I don't know any of them.)

Cecil Castellucci takes that experience and whirls it around in a blender with the mythos of alien abduction and a protagonist who's not only smart but has to face a whole lot more than many of us. Mal's the kid with the greasy hair, slumped in the last row of seats in class, the kid you're afraid to talk to. He's got secrets, too. Years ago, he disappeared, but whether those missing three days were a "breakdown" or an alien abduction, even Mal isn't sure. His alcoholic mom lives right on the edge.

How far away from here is far enough? Mal asks. How far away would I be willing to go?
Light-years.


Do you remember feeling like that? Doesn't everyone?

Castellucci's characters are uncompromising and her prose cuts right to the core. Not just for teens, First Day on Earth is both gritty and lyrical, subtle and over-the-top. It shows with poignant eloquence how the symbols and tropes of speculative fiction can convey our deepest human experiences.

Juliette Wade on Characters as Flawed Detectives

Juliette Wade is definitely a writer to look out for. Her short fiction (look for it in Analog) is beautifully crafted, thoughtful science fiction. She uses her background in linguistics to create alien races and worlds that are among the best. (What can you say about a race of space-faring otters -- that works?)

So I paid particular attention to her blog post on It's good to be wrong - Or, why my characters use the scientific method. She says:

I especially enjoy it when I've got two or three different points of view, and each of them is wrong about something, and nobody really has it right. It creates such great opportunities for conflict and learning and personal growth, and often makes the story that much more worth reading.
The more complex the real solution is, the more valuable it is for you to break it down into smaller steps. I write pretty complicated puzzles, and I really need to make sure I'm keeping people with me. I need to make sure I'm showing exactly the thought process that leads the characters to the conclusions they draw. That's why this is so valuable for me. That's also why I get so gleeful when I discover a moment where the characters think they have it all put together. Readers will know we're close to the end, and when the characters go, "Aha!" the readers will likely go "Aha!" as well. But there's still something left to learn.
The thing that strikes me is how respectful this is of the intelligence of the reader. Whether a story is specifically a puzzle (mystery, etc.) or not, reading a story -- entering a world which you know nothing about -- is like a mystery. The writer hopefully gives you all the information you need to imagine the world, the characters, the situation... One way is to hand it to you on a plate, omniscently. First of all, that's condescending. And boring. And what do you do when you think differently from that know-it-all narrator? Grinding of teeth, gnashing of jaws, soaring irritation, books thrown across the room...

As writers, we learn to take our readers by the hand, introduce story elements sequentially, and leave room for the readers to interpret, anticipate, guess rightly or wrongly. In other words, to participate in the story. We do this through our point of view characters, and that's why Juliette's approach -- letting her characters be fallible but intelligent -- works so well.

A Mini-Interview, thanks to Jay Lake

From Jay Lake:

1) What creative project are you working on right now?

I'm noodling around with a YA science fiction series, the first book of which is called Sabertooth Dawn. The short version is: When a space ship of orphaned kids is marooned on a world of prehistoric animals and even more ancient alien ruins, the fate of the colony depends on teens Danica, Eli, and Anjali, Eli's foster kid sister. But in order to work together, each must overcome their own fears and deeply-buried secrets.
I'm also starting to think about the next Darkover book, in which the Terran Federation returns to Darkover. I have a nebulous idea about a clash between machine-created psi and Darkover's natural laran psi. I keep throwing things into that "back burner" pot until they start to ferment. Or turn into bouillabaisse. Or something.
I'm also co-editing (with Irene Radford) an anthology of re-telling of fairy tales for Book View Cafe. It'll be out next March and oh, my, are there some seriously wild and twisted stories! And some wonderfully touching ones, too. And... and... you'll just have to wait!
2) If you're stalled, why?

Stalled? Sorry, don't know that word. Frustrated, discouraged, unable to understand why this dratted story isn't working, sure. I put in my fair share on all these. But there's always something to lift my spirits. That's the joy of working on more than one project at a time. I try to pay attention to what I daydream about because that's where the creative juices are flowing.
3) How do you motivate yourself?

By working on stuff that's way too much fun. That's the snappy answer. Sometimes I've made a commitment, I have a contract or a deadline and I just have to buckle down and work. Fortunately, I'm pretty disciplined about doing that on a regular basis. I don't like to work under crisis-level pressure, so I use that antipathy to make sure I get some progress every day. Usually that's 5 or 6 days a week, sometimes 7 but rarely less. I learned how to do this when I was working full time as a single mom. I'd get up in the morning, do my 10 minutes of exercise, and throw together lunches and breakfast in enough time to sit down at the computer for another 10 minutes. (Since I don't wear makeup except on special occasions, that gave me 10 minutes right there!) All I have to do, I'd tell myself, is look at the last paragraph I wrote. Okay, now add one sentence. Okay, now add one paragraph. Sometimes, depending on the length of the paragraphs, I'd get in two. Repeat after dinner. Weekends meant longer sessions -- 5 to 10 pages. For me, the key was "All I have to do is..." and then something so easy, I could slip into doing it without a huge amount of internal resistance.
4) What would you tell the world if you could, today?

Be kind. To yourself, to others. Find out what you love to do, what fills you with wonder and joy.
Jay added, Especially clever and/or interesting answers may be promoted to blog posts of their own hereabouts. So I put up my own. They're pretty good questions.

Death Penalty Statement - October 13, 2011

A number of people have asked about the statement I made in opposition to the death penalty, before the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission. Much of it was taken from "September Grieving," which appeared both in my LiveJournal and on the Book View Cafe blog. Because the different social media sites reach different audiences, I'm posting this statement here, behind the cut.
Twenty-five years ago, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a teenaged neighbor on drugs. It was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but it was only part of a larger tragedy, for his own family had suffered the murder of his older brother some years before. My mother was 70 years old and had been his friend since the time he was a small child.

I am opposed to capital punishment, and I'd like to tell you why. I want to emphasize that I do not speak for anyone else. We all have different experiences, different histories, different resources. If there is one thing I'd like you to take away from this hearing, it is that not all the families of murder victims want the people who did it to be executed.

One thing I have learned over the years is that grief isn't fungible; you can't compare or exchange one person's experience with another's or say, This one's pain is two-thirds the value of that one's. Grief is grief; loss is loss. There's no benefit to anyone in comparisons.

None of us can truly understand what another's loss is like, especially when it is as devastating and life-altering as the violent death of someone we love. But we can say, "Even though I don't know what you're going through, my heart goes out to you." Even though the families of murder victims may disagree on issues such as the death penalty, we should be allies, for surely there is enough compassion, enough tears, enough rage, enough mending of hearts, to go around.

We share the craving for justice, the moments of overwhelming fury, the struggle against a world that seems capricious in its viciousness. We share the desperation to hold someone accountable, to assign blame, to punish that person to the utmost in the hope that somehow it will make us stop hurting. That desire to lash out and make the perpetrator suffer is a universal human impulse. It is something that many of us experience and then pass through on our way back to wholeness. Anger and adrenalin, with their energizing power, help us to get through the early stages of grief. However, both are anesthetizing, numbing to both emotion and spirit. I believe that if we remain there, frozen, we cannot wrestle with the deeper issues of healing from trauma.

Of course, justice is necessary. Criminal acts call for appropriate consequences. I would never say that it's okay for my mother's killer to walk the streets or that he should not be prosecuted according to law. Setting aside the many, troubling problems with the application of capital punishment, however, my concern is with whether an execution helps or hinders the recovery of the survivors.

My own experience is that revenge does not. Year after year, decade after deacade of appeals and delays take their toll on the survivors, keeping them engaged with the murderer instead of going on with their lives. For me, focusing on wishing death to the one who killed my mother might well have kept me locked -- incarcerated -- in a permanent state of bitterness and hatred.

I ask myself, What do I need in my life? What do I want? One of my inspirations was a woman of astonishing kindness and grace, whose daughter and son-in-law were murdered by a serial killer and whose bodies she discovered. She told me that she faced a choice of whether or not to let herself be driven crazy with pain by what she experienced. I think we all have that choice -- to succumb to the darkness of our anguish and righteous fury, or to walk through it and to move beyond it.

My own experience of healing is that I get my own life back when I focus on re-engaging with the positive things that are meaningful to me, on fully experiencing my feelings, on understanding what I have lost and what can never be replaced, but what can be restored. The more I stop looking to an external event -- the execution of the murderer -- to somehow make me feel better or to "achieve closure," and instead focus on taking care of myself -- my health, my heart, my family, my spirit -- the better I fare.

So I've been talking about my own healing journey and what I've learned. I've been meeting with other family members of murder victims and with people who've been sentenced to death and then exonerated, and also with family members of those who've been executed. I've been looking for ways to build bridges, to nourish reconciliation, to create understanding. I make an ongoing conscious decision to not harbor hatred in my heart, but to fill it instead with the things I do want in my life.

Compassion. Gratitude. Joy. Wonder. Peace.

I can think of no more fitting memorial for my mother or more enduring gift to my children.

Focus

I love the way ideas and circumstances collide to create today's writing theme. In this case, it's (a) chatting with a friend who's been asked by her editor to revise a story to suit the needs of a different genre; (b) reading Larry Brooks (http://storyfix.com/) on how to structure your NaNoMoWrite (writing a novel in a month); and ( c) doing my own revision of a novel I'd drafted 15 years ago (needless to say, I am more skillful now than I was then and this rough draft exhibits many of the weaknesses of its time.)

I suggested to my friend that she might approach the rewrite as an exercise in structure. That is, to look at how successful stories in the target genre work, to think analytically about what elements are important (these aren't the same for all genres or types of stories). Then I got some feedback on the plot outline for my own novel and realized the underlying nonspecificity of  my characters' goals (aka chocolate pudding underfoot), definitely one of the aforementioned weaknesses -- I used to get so enamored of a world, I'd forget about "storyness." Then, although pep talks about writing tend to drive me more than a little bats, I read over today's StoryFix blog.  

Bingo! This is how to do it. 
Wrong.


Some writers like a lot of structure. They make outlines, diagrams, write out "beats" and plot points on 3 x 5 cards. I know one writer who writes out scenes on those cards. They have the "elevator pitch" down pat before they begin Chapter One. Then there are writers who, as I sometimes put it, "take a flying leap off the edge of reality" with no thought as to where it will take them. Often, they're highly intuitive artists; their creative subconscious minds know exactly what they're doing, and the challenge is to get their analytical and critical minds out of the way so the story can flow.

I began writing like that. What was to plan? You got an idea, you sat down and began the story... and sometimes wrote yourself into corners, sometimes got muddled and bollixed and mired in the middle. And sometimes the end didn't fit, but all of this was okay because you fixed it in revision. I learned to revise. Extensively. Repeatedly. And Very Well.

With time, I started seeing those pitfalls/minetraps/swamplands in advance, and I found ways to sketch out my way through them. I started thinking more about the whole story before I began writing it. I still don't like to over-plan. For me, a good deal of the fun of writing is exploring as I go along. I think it doesn't matter whether you outline in excruciating detail or discover the shape of the story after you've got a draft on paper. What matters is that at some point, intuitively or editorially, the necessary elements are all in place.

Which brings me to the idea of focus. Stories work because they have a central driving force (a motor, if you will). It can be a series of events, one catapulting the reader into the next. It can be the obsession of the protagonist. It can be a mystery, a puzzle, a scheme. Whatever. It's the organizing principle. One of the weaknesses of the seat-of-the-pants style of rough drafting, at least as practiced by me, is that I'm like a jackdaw in a costume jewelry store. Oooh, a shiny! Another shiny! No, I like this other shiny better! At some point, I need to pick or discern The Shiny Of All Shinies for this particular story.

That's where all those analytical pre-planning techniques can be helpful. I may not want to do all that stuff before I write the first sentence, but I can make use of them in other ways. They make wonderful diagnostic tools. "Why is this story not working?" (or, as in the current instance, this plot outline?) So I take out the doctor bag (I go read what Brooks has to say about how to plan out a novel you're going to be able to write in a month, for instance), I shuffle through its contents, I try out different techniques -- applying them in retrospect instead of in advance. And inevitably, I get exactly the insight I need to understand where the weakness is and how to take a new look at what I've got and how I can turn that into a strength.

I find it quite liberating that the words I've put down are not immutable. It was much harder to revise stuff when it was written in cuneiform on clay tablets that then were baked, or engraved in granite. Or even typed out, which is how I started. A story is a living, organic thing. You can give it a hard skeleton (internal or external) as it grows; you can let it germinate within a pre-created armature; you can allow it to toughen and solidify when it's at the appropriate maturation phase. There's no single way that's right for every writer and every story. What matters is that the final version, the one on the editor's desk, is crisp and vibrant.

Focused.

First Impressions of New Orleans

Over on Book View Cafe's blog, I burble about exploring the French Quarter of New Orleans for the first time. Instead of taking a guided tour, I found some wonderful books on what I was interested in -- history, architecture, stories of people and places -- and designed my own.






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