S.A. Bolich's Blog, page 3
September 15, 2011
5-Star Reviews for Firedancer
"Reading on my commute, I nearly missed my stop. ...Marvelous fantasy adventure, outside the usual boxes."
"The story kept pulling me back to pick it [up] and read more, even when I had other things to do."
"Firedancer almost caused me a sleepless night. I just had to go on reading about what happens to Jetta and the friends she finds..."
The reviews of Firedancer are starting to come in, and thus far I am blushing. I try to reserve 5 stars for really exceptional books, and I hope these readers do too, because easy praise is worth so much less than that well earned. Thus far all the reviews have been 4 or 5 stars, and I am personally thrilled that people find it such a page-turner.
The most gratifying thing for any author is to know that others like your work. It is difficult to throw a book out to the wide world, after all the effort, joy, sweat and time that went into its creation. It is a part of you, an expression of talent and passion and creativity unique to your experiences and worldview and vision. That passion and vision will not always resonate with people; if you are lucky, it will please more than it will offend.
Reviews are a necessary part of book promotion. You send the book to reviewers and hope they will a) find time to actually read it and b) like it enough to give it a good review. The beauty (and drawback) of Amazon and other places like Goodreads and Library Thing is that the reviews come from readers. They are unfiltered expressions of reader likes and dislikes, hopefully tendered without bias or agenda.
That last is not always the case; every author has horror stories of trolls who take violent exception to something about their work and persist in rating it as low as they can, as often as they can, and dragging the book and the author through the mud. This is a sad type of personality and one can only hope the rest of the audience recognizes them for what they are. Then there are the "paid" reviewers who receive all manner of cool stuff from publishers and authors, including free books, in hopes that they will turn in a positive review. This corrupts the system, because most people are basically honest and feel obligated for the gifts. Ergo, the plethora of highly-ranked books that maybe weren't so good.
It is hard to know whether a book is really as good or bad as touted until you read it for yourself, but it is good to know that Firedancer has not yet caused anyone to sit down and write a flaming review trashing it. My heartfelt thanks to those readers who have liked it enough to take time out of their day and share their reaction for others.
I hope you will check out Firedancer at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Smashwords, and let me know what you think. And thank you!
5-Star Reviews for Firedancer
"Reading on my commute, I nearly missed my stop. ...Marvelous fantasy adventure, outside the usual boxes."
"The story kept pulling me back to pick it [up] and read more, even when I had other things to do."
"Firedancer almost caused me a sleepless night. I just had to go on reading about what happens to Jetta and the friends she finds..."
The reviews of Firedancer are starting to come in, and thus far I am blushing. I try to reserve 5 stars for really exceptional books, and I hope these reader...
September 10, 2011
Show vs. Tell: Tips for Telling the Difference
This is an ancient subject with regard to "good" writing. Opinions will always differ as to what constitutes good writing, with some readers wanting the stripped-down starkness of pure story speeding along to a conclusion, and others wanting rich scenery along the way. Show vs. Tell remains a bottomless pit of mystery to most, if not all, beginning writers. Critiques scream at them for passive writing and boring descriptions without ever really "showing" them how to get out of that trap.
So, Sue's tip for the day:
This is a Tell:
How much nicer is that than stating baldly, "The fat woman sat down"?
As I was zooming along today drafting on Windrider, this nearly made it onto the page:
Here is what this initial thought changed to pretty much as soon as I became aware it had hit the page:
Writers who claim they cannot stretch a story to the minimum 80,000 words of a novel either truly don't have enough plot...or aren't taking advantage of the beauty of the language to evoke clear pictures of the characters and their surroundings, or to draw an emotional response from the reader. If your writing is stuffed with passives and seems a bit utilitarian, you could be doing more Telling than Showing.
More on this subject in future blog posts, with more examples of how to cure it.
'Til then...
So, Sue's tip for the day:
This is a Tell:
She sat down.This is a Show:
She settled herself onto the faded brocade of a chair that looked entirely too fragile to take her weight, her frayed skirts settling around her with soft sighs of relief.They both get the job done. The reader knows a woman sat down. But the first example unfairly relies upon the reader's imagination to conjure up a generic image of a female person sitting in a chair. What the chair looks like, we have no idea. What the woman looks like, we have no idea. The second example tells you the chair is an upholstered thing past its better days, and the woman is heavy enough to threaten the integrity of the poor chair.
How much nicer is that than stating baldly, "The fat woman sat down"?
As I was zooming along today drafting on Windrider, this nearly made it onto the page:
Ayesh was silent a moment.Oh, ick. Not only a Tell, but passive to boot! (Passive writing most often involves the use of any form of the verb "to be". Shoot all instances of "was," "were," or "is" on sight whenever possible.)
Here is what this initial thought changed to pretty much as soon as I became aware it had hit the page:
Ayesh sat very still for a moment with silence gathering around him like thickening fog.This is a bit prettier, yes? A bit more lyrical, evoking a mood as well as telling us that this character is having a moment of introspection.
Writers who claim they cannot stretch a story to the minimum 80,000 words of a novel either truly don't have enough plot...or aren't taking advantage of the beauty of the language to evoke clear pictures of the characters and their surroundings, or to draw an emotional response from the reader. If your writing is stuffed with passives and seems a bit utilitarian, you could be doing more Telling than Showing.
More on this subject in future blog posts, with more examples of how to cure it.
'Til then...
September 8, 2011
The Writer's Nightmare
So here we are , Week 1 post-release of Firedancer. I am faithfully refraining from checking its stats every hour (though I must say they were quite fine for awhile, at least) because rankings on Amazon will drive you crazy if you let them. But the promotion work continues, which is, for every writer I know, the thing they like least about this business.
For the happy extrovert who loves people, the fact that most book publishers not only expect, but demand, that authors do all or most of their own promotion is not a problem. They like people, they like the events, they don't mind blowing their own horns. I had to laugh at Worldcon, however, as a group of us authors were standing around catching up on all the news, when the subject turned (as it always does) to the state of the industry and the dreaded P word.
"I'm shy," was the refrain. "I hate this." "I'm a writer, not a marketer." "How are the publishers going to get new books if nobody has time to write?" And, "There are only x number of days in my lifetime to write the stories I can tell. Why should I have to waste them doing what I'm not good at?"
Over and over, I heard the same thing. Successful authors will snort and tell you to get over it; this is the state of the world and you need to just grit your teeth and do it. Yes. This is true.
It does not, however, make it more fun, or magically bestow the gift of self-promotion upon people who would far rather be holed up in a cubbyhole somewhere with a blank page and a pen.
The industry has always set the rules; it is a dreary fact of life. The current rule is "Thou shalt be thy own marketer. Don't look at us; we're broke." Authors are expected to arrange their own book or blog tours, show up at cons and book signings on their own dime, and in many cases, design and print their own marketing materials and generally carry the entire load of getting the word out. The house might help you with getting reviews and certainly will help with distribution, but marketing? That's your problem.
And we all hate it.
The advantage of an ebook, however, is that it has an infinite shelf life. Print books must be heavily promoted up front, with huge demands on the author's time, in order to stave off the dreaded strip and return death as the book stores heave out your book to make way for one that may or may not sell better. The ebook, however, is parked on Amazon pretty much forever, which gives you a chance to build a continuing campaign that does not demand you drop all your current projects (even those contracted, with deadlines) to promote the book that just came out. You do have to promote your book up front, but you can also build an audience over time if you are still learning the ropes, and adjust your marketing as you learn what works. Ebook publication provides some balance for the poor author who just wants to write, but needs that last book to sell.
The ebook, however, also has its drawbacks. You won't find it on the supermarket shelves, or in Costco or Walmart. It's much more difficult to arrange signings without a physical object in hand to sell and sign. And many people just don't want ebooks. But you still have to do the marketing.
And that still means being your own promoter, on the internet instead of tramping all over the country. It's still hard, you have to ask favors of friends, break all the taboos about screaming "Look at me!" your mother told you constituted bad manners, and generally be what you're not--the front man.
We're introverts. We admit it. But, like Mom shoving Junior out the door to check out the grass instead of the video games, we'll heave a martyred sigh and go do it. Because if we don't, no one will.
The thought of your book never being found or read is a powerful motivator. So don't hit me when I yack, yack, yack about Firedancer and all its brethren. I'm a writer. And I want to keep writing.
So lead me (reluctantly) to the promotion....
For the happy extrovert who loves people, the fact that most book publishers not only expect, but demand, that authors do all or most of their own promotion is not a problem. They like people, they like the events, they don't mind blowing their own horns. I had to laugh at Worldcon, however, as a group of us authors were standing around catching up on all the news, when the subject turned (as it always does) to the state of the industry and the dreaded P word.
"I'm shy," was the refrain. "I hate this." "I'm a writer, not a marketer." "How are the publishers going to get new books if nobody has time to write?" And, "There are only x number of days in my lifetime to write the stories I can tell. Why should I have to waste them doing what I'm not good at?"
Over and over, I heard the same thing. Successful authors will snort and tell you to get over it; this is the state of the world and you need to just grit your teeth and do it. Yes. This is true.
It does not, however, make it more fun, or magically bestow the gift of self-promotion upon people who would far rather be holed up in a cubbyhole somewhere with a blank page and a pen.
The industry has always set the rules; it is a dreary fact of life. The current rule is "Thou shalt be thy own marketer. Don't look at us; we're broke." Authors are expected to arrange their own book or blog tours, show up at cons and book signings on their own dime, and in many cases, design and print their own marketing materials and generally carry the entire load of getting the word out. The house might help you with getting reviews and certainly will help with distribution, but marketing? That's your problem.
And we all hate it.
The advantage of an ebook, however, is that it has an infinite shelf life. Print books must be heavily promoted up front, with huge demands on the author's time, in order to stave off the dreaded strip and return death as the book stores heave out your book to make way for one that may or may not sell better. The ebook, however, is parked on Amazon pretty much forever, which gives you a chance to build a continuing campaign that does not demand you drop all your current projects (even those contracted, with deadlines) to promote the book that just came out. You do have to promote your book up front, but you can also build an audience over time if you are still learning the ropes, and adjust your marketing as you learn what works. Ebook publication provides some balance for the poor author who just wants to write, but needs that last book to sell.
The ebook, however, also has its drawbacks. You won't find it on the supermarket shelves, or in Costco or Walmart. It's much more difficult to arrange signings without a physical object in hand to sell and sign. And many people just don't want ebooks. But you still have to do the marketing.
And that still means being your own promoter, on the internet instead of tramping all over the country. It's still hard, you have to ask favors of friends, break all the taboos about screaming "Look at me!" your mother told you constituted bad manners, and generally be what you're not--the front man.
We're introverts. We admit it. But, like Mom shoving Junior out the door to check out the grass instead of the video games, we'll heave a martyred sigh and go do it. Because if we don't, no one will.
The thought of your book never being found or read is a powerful motivator. So don't hit me when I yack, yack, yack about Firedancer and all its brethren. I'm a writer. And I want to keep writing.
So lead me (reluctantly) to the promotion....
August 30, 2011
Firedancer is Out!
Woohoo! Firedancer, my first published novel (not the first written, but the first to find its way into print) is now out! It's available as an ebook at Amazon, Smashwords, and soon will be downloadable to Barnes and Noble's Nook, Sony and Apple e-readers, and pretty much anywhere else ebooks are available.
It is awfully strange to see your work out in the big world, defenseless to unkind reviewers and the averted eyes of friends who may not have liked it. I do confess to some trepidation, but even if everyone hates it, I daresay it will not detract from the pleasure I derived in writing it. This was a fun book to write because it departed from so many comfort zones for me. It has a female protagonist (I usually write men). It has not a horse or a sword in sight (I like epic fantasy). It uses an other-world setting that is not Earth in any way (I'm a history major. I like grounding my stories somewhere in time). In other words it is different--which is good! If I have to read one more cover blurb about dragons I'll start throwing things. And I don't want to write the same story over and over.
Firedancer is about a woman battling an enemy she knows can never ultimately be defeated, only fought to a standstill. Like evil, the Ancient, the elemental fire at the heart of her world, will always be there. But is the Ancient evil, or merely desperate, a thinking creature confined to a stony prison who desperately wants out? Who has a right to exist the same as all other creatures created by Earth Mother? But how can the Fire Clans--or anyone--make standing room for a creature that must destroy to exist?
Fantasy fiction is often pooh-poohed by the mainstream as fluff, but fantasy just takes the very real issues that face us all and places them in more interesting settings than the mundane everyday world around us. What Jetta learns in the course of her long fight scars her, changes her, makes her reassess everything she thinks she knows--just as good fiction of every type makes the central character think and grow. She is forced to painful choices, the kind that may face us all unexpectedly, because each of us may be thrust without warning into the sort of life or death decisions that define our character. If a car flips over in front of you and starts to burn, do you rush to save the driver, or prudently keep out of danger? Which of three badly hurt people do you work on first? If a crisis hits, where do you focus your energy? Jetta faces such decisions in the context of her responsibility to the village she is tasked to protect.
And as the danger begins to grow intense, so too her personal life grows more complex and vexing, until she finally realizes that the two cannot be separated--answers to everything lie in how she approaches those around her. Isn't that real life in a nutshell?
I hope you'll check out Firedancer's possibilities. Edited by Irene Radford and published by Sky Warrior Books, it is both affordable and available--and a decent read, if I do say so myself. You can preview the first chapter right here and buy the entire book here.
Happy reading!
It is awfully strange to see your work out in the big world, defenseless to unkind reviewers and the averted eyes of friends who may not have liked it. I do confess to some trepidation, but even if everyone hates it, I daresay it will not detract from the pleasure I derived in writing it. This was a fun book to write because it departed from so many comfort zones for me. It has a female protagonist (I usually write men). It has not a horse or a sword in sight (I like epic fantasy). It uses an other-world setting that is not Earth in any way (I'm a history major. I like grounding my stories somewhere in time). In other words it is different--which is good! If I have to read one more cover blurb about dragons I'll start throwing things. And I don't want to write the same story over and over.
Firedancer is about a woman battling an enemy she knows can never ultimately be defeated, only fought to a standstill. Like evil, the Ancient, the elemental fire at the heart of her world, will always be there. But is the Ancient evil, or merely desperate, a thinking creature confined to a stony prison who desperately wants out? Who has a right to exist the same as all other creatures created by Earth Mother? But how can the Fire Clans--or anyone--make standing room for a creature that must destroy to exist?
Fantasy fiction is often pooh-poohed by the mainstream as fluff, but fantasy just takes the very real issues that face us all and places them in more interesting settings than the mundane everyday world around us. What Jetta learns in the course of her long fight scars her, changes her, makes her reassess everything she thinks she knows--just as good fiction of every type makes the central character think and grow. She is forced to painful choices, the kind that may face us all unexpectedly, because each of us may be thrust without warning into the sort of life or death decisions that define our character. If a car flips over in front of you and starts to burn, do you rush to save the driver, or prudently keep out of danger? Which of three badly hurt people do you work on first? If a crisis hits, where do you focus your energy? Jetta faces such decisions in the context of her responsibility to the village she is tasked to protect.
And as the danger begins to grow intense, so too her personal life grows more complex and vexing, until she finally realizes that the two cannot be separated--answers to everything lie in how she approaches those around her. Isn't that real life in a nutshell?
I hope you'll check out Firedancer's possibilities. Edited by Irene Radford and published by Sky Warrior Books, it is both affordable and available--and a decent read, if I do say so myself. You can preview the first chapter right here and buy the entire book here.
Happy reading!
August 27, 2011
Taming the Internal Editor
As I struggle to bring Windrider into being, whilst eagerly awaiting the publication of Firedancer (September 1st! Less than a week!) I find myself fighting the oldest trap of all--endless revision. One of the hardest things about slogging through writing a new novel is the constant urge to keep circling back to "fix" previous scenes, to make everything perfect before gritting your teeth and resuming the tough job of pulling words out of nothing. The constant nagging of the muse, like the monotone whining of a small child demanding attention, is so damned effective that the desire to give in is well nigh overpowering. And seductive. And so, so much easier than facing the blank page every day.
Don't go there.
Constant fiddling is death to forward progress. Some writers become so obsessed with perfection they never finish anything. Ergo, these people are not people you've ever heard of. They are not published. They are not really even writers, because writers finish things. They tell the story--the whole story. All of it, beginning, middle, and end. In other words, they keep writing, suppressing all the whining of the Muse to go fix that and that and oooh, just that one little thing, pleeeease??
No.
For those of you caught in this quicksand, here are a few quick tips for getting the upper hand on revisionitis:
Note down the things you want to change as they occur to you. This relieves the anxiety to remember them, and ensures you capture the idea while it's hot. Do NOT make a separate file, which drags you away into the seductive trap of expanding on your notes, ignoring the draft. Put those notes on the first page of the manuscript, right in front of the title. You cannot fail to see them when you start back through on the revision, but they are well away from where you're working. Out of sight, out of mind.
Pretend you made the changes earlier on, and continue writing new material as if it were grounded in the envisioned rewrite. Go ahead and give your character that funny accent halfway through, or add a quirk to a sidekick as it occurs to you, or shift your capital city from the mountains to the seaside because it works for the plot. Smoothing out the inconsistencies is a task of revision, not drafting. Note it, save it, work on it later.Give in gloriously to the urge to write stuff out of order. If that scene is burning in your head, write it! Append it to the end of the draft if the plot has not advanced that far yet, and feel the wonderful boost when you do battle your way up to it and discover 5 or 50 finished pages awaiting you. Or plug it into the previous material and utterly resist the urge to sand away around the edges to make it fit seamlessly. It. Will. Be. There. Revision after draft, remember?Read only the previous five pages of the manuscript when you sit down to work (or everything you wrote yesterday, if you absolutely must). Constantly rereading the previous stuff is just an excuse for not writing new stuff. Refresh your memory and start typing, bucko. It's the only way to finish.Stop each day with the next sentence in your head. This is a natural lead-in to the next day's writing, and encourages forward progress. If you write until the words dry up every day, it is much harder to jump start the story. Leave the Muse champing at the bit to get going again, and you will remain eager to write rather than revise.Like probably every other writer in the known universe, I keep a notebook beside the bed, and attempt to not spend all night writing the book in my head. And when I'm stuck, and the words won't come, I write anyway, because word processors are so wonderful with their cut/paste and delete functions. No actual trees die while I put drivel onto the screen attempting to blow up the figurative log jam. And from that drivel often comes the foundation for real scenes and powerful insights that revive the story and get me excited to write it again.
All novels stick in the middle, just about, as the first enthusiasm wears off and the writing becomes work instead of inspired pleasure. It's just the way it is. The only way to finish is to write new material, every time you sit down to work on the book. So turn off your internal editor and just get on with it. Hopefully these few tips will help, or you'll develop your own system of bribery and blackmail to get yours under control. Chocolate....yeah. Lead me to it!
Don't go there.
Constant fiddling is death to forward progress. Some writers become so obsessed with perfection they never finish anything. Ergo, these people are not people you've ever heard of. They are not published. They are not really even writers, because writers finish things. They tell the story--the whole story. All of it, beginning, middle, and end. In other words, they keep writing, suppressing all the whining of the Muse to go fix that and that and oooh, just that one little thing, pleeeease??
No.
For those of you caught in this quicksand, here are a few quick tips for getting the upper hand on revisionitis:
Note down the things you want to change as they occur to you. This relieves the anxiety to remember them, and ensures you capture the idea while it's hot. Do NOT make a separate file, which drags you away into the seductive trap of expanding on your notes, ignoring the draft. Put those notes on the first page of the manuscript, right in front of the title. You cannot fail to see them when you start back through on the revision, but they are well away from where you're working. Out of sight, out of mind.
Pretend you made the changes earlier on, and continue writing new material as if it were grounded in the envisioned rewrite. Go ahead and give your character that funny accent halfway through, or add a quirk to a sidekick as it occurs to you, or shift your capital city from the mountains to the seaside because it works for the plot. Smoothing out the inconsistencies is a task of revision, not drafting. Note it, save it, work on it later.Give in gloriously to the urge to write stuff out of order. If that scene is burning in your head, write it! Append it to the end of the draft if the plot has not advanced that far yet, and feel the wonderful boost when you do battle your way up to it and discover 5 or 50 finished pages awaiting you. Or plug it into the previous material and utterly resist the urge to sand away around the edges to make it fit seamlessly. It. Will. Be. There. Revision after draft, remember?Read only the previous five pages of the manuscript when you sit down to work (or everything you wrote yesterday, if you absolutely must). Constantly rereading the previous stuff is just an excuse for not writing new stuff. Refresh your memory and start typing, bucko. It's the only way to finish.Stop each day with the next sentence in your head. This is a natural lead-in to the next day's writing, and encourages forward progress. If you write until the words dry up every day, it is much harder to jump start the story. Leave the Muse champing at the bit to get going again, and you will remain eager to write rather than revise.Like probably every other writer in the known universe, I keep a notebook beside the bed, and attempt to not spend all night writing the book in my head. And when I'm stuck, and the words won't come, I write anyway, because word processors are so wonderful with their cut/paste and delete functions. No actual trees die while I put drivel onto the screen attempting to blow up the figurative log jam. And from that drivel often comes the foundation for real scenes and powerful insights that revive the story and get me excited to write it again.
All novels stick in the middle, just about, as the first enthusiasm wears off and the writing becomes work instead of inspired pleasure. It's just the way it is. The only way to finish is to write new material, every time you sit down to work on the book. So turn off your internal editor and just get on with it. Hopefully these few tips will help, or you'll develop your own system of bribery and blackmail to get yours under control. Chocolate....yeah. Lead me to it!
August 22, 2011
The Road to Worldcon
I traveled to my first Worldcon last week and got home yesterday. It was big, it was fun, I sold some books, gave away a lot of promos, talked to a lot of people and renewed acquaintances with friends. But it was the road trip that I enjoyed as much or more than the con itself, for reasons that go way back in my personal history.
I chose to drive the 800 miles to Reno rather than fly because a) I needed a road trip to clear out my head and b) I loathe TSA, boring layovers, and being stuffed into a flying sausage like a fourth-rate condiment. The Pacific Northwest offers some of the most beautiful and varied scenery on earth, and it had been a long time since I got to see parts of it. So...off I drove on Tuesday morning, southwest into Oregon to run down the eastern side of the Cascades.
I avoided the main roads for the most part, because back roads are so much more interesting. I love all those little towns where the altitude is 10 times the population. I love the freewheeling names awarded by our pioneer ancestors or drawn from Native American words, and the myriad historical markers that deal in the best kind of trivia for this history major. All those isolated little farms and ranches out in the middle of nowhere remind me how tough my ancestors were...and how tough Americans still are, deep down.
My great-great-grandmother came across the Plains in a covered wagon in 1864, all the way from Iowa to Oregon, which meant she passed through some of the very same country I drove through on the way to Reno and on the return. I looked at all those rocky, rough hills of central and eastern Oregon, the unforgiving sagebrush flats, the dust and the hot, dry gullies the wagons had to cross, and I don't wonder why they could only make 10-12 miles a day. For the first wagon trains through, who broke trail and found the routes, it must have been one hellish frustration after another.
Much of the route I drove on the way home shows little to no sign of man's meddling on the landscape, so it was easy to imagine the country as she must have seen it. I passed Farewell Bend, where the wagons left the good water and lush grass along the Snake and turned northwestward again into the harsher going toward the Columbia and the float downriver to the Willamette Valley that was their destination. I passed the grave of Sacajawea's son, who was born during the Lewis and Clark expedition as his parents guided them west, and served as a symbol of peace to suspicious tribes along the way. He ended up traveling the world, only to die in the middle of nowhere on his way to a gold strike in Montana. Perhaps it was natural he had itchy feet, a born traveling man.
I appreciate my ancestors who built a country--a great country. I fervently wish they had not been so focused on their own goals that they eliminated the native cultures who came before, but people who condemn them conveniently forget that migration and upheaval are the true constants of history. The Ojibwa pushed the Sioux out of the Great Lakes onto the Plains; the Comanches practiced slavery and torture and themselves cut a swathe southward from Wyoming to Texas; the Crows made constant war on other tribes. No culture is perfect or free from human vices, so dare I be politically incorrect and salute the courage of people who simply wanted a better life, and had the gumption to endure hardship and uncertainty to get it? Their generation was horrified by the excesses of the Reformation from which their ancestors had fled, as ours is horrified by the pioneers' indifference to people they considered of less worth than themselves. Our grandchildren will be horrified by things we do routinely and thoughtlessly. It behooves us to quit imposing our values on people who never heard of them and simply accept our ancestors as they were.
I know that those landscapes will wend their way into my writing. The smell of sage and the lazy wind blowing dust along the horizon will populate my pages. The shy green in the bottom of a draw and the empty vastness of the sky catching the snowy heads of the Cascades will delight my memory. I hope my characters end up with the same fortitude and inner steel found in my great-great-grandmother's generation. Egad...I hope I do.
'Til next time.
I chose to drive the 800 miles to Reno rather than fly because a) I needed a road trip to clear out my head and b) I loathe TSA, boring layovers, and being stuffed into a flying sausage like a fourth-rate condiment. The Pacific Northwest offers some of the most beautiful and varied scenery on earth, and it had been a long time since I got to see parts of it. So...off I drove on Tuesday morning, southwest into Oregon to run down the eastern side of the Cascades.
I avoided the main roads for the most part, because back roads are so much more interesting. I love all those little towns where the altitude is 10 times the population. I love the freewheeling names awarded by our pioneer ancestors or drawn from Native American words, and the myriad historical markers that deal in the best kind of trivia for this history major. All those isolated little farms and ranches out in the middle of nowhere remind me how tough my ancestors were...and how tough Americans still are, deep down.
My great-great-grandmother came across the Plains in a covered wagon in 1864, all the way from Iowa to Oregon, which meant she passed through some of the very same country I drove through on the way to Reno and on the return. I looked at all those rocky, rough hills of central and eastern Oregon, the unforgiving sagebrush flats, the dust and the hot, dry gullies the wagons had to cross, and I don't wonder why they could only make 10-12 miles a day. For the first wagon trains through, who broke trail and found the routes, it must have been one hellish frustration after another.
Much of the route I drove on the way home shows little to no sign of man's meddling on the landscape, so it was easy to imagine the country as she must have seen it. I passed Farewell Bend, where the wagons left the good water and lush grass along the Snake and turned northwestward again into the harsher going toward the Columbia and the float downriver to the Willamette Valley that was their destination. I passed the grave of Sacajawea's son, who was born during the Lewis and Clark expedition as his parents guided them west, and served as a symbol of peace to suspicious tribes along the way. He ended up traveling the world, only to die in the middle of nowhere on his way to a gold strike in Montana. Perhaps it was natural he had itchy feet, a born traveling man.
I appreciate my ancestors who built a country--a great country. I fervently wish they had not been so focused on their own goals that they eliminated the native cultures who came before, but people who condemn them conveniently forget that migration and upheaval are the true constants of history. The Ojibwa pushed the Sioux out of the Great Lakes onto the Plains; the Comanches practiced slavery and torture and themselves cut a swathe southward from Wyoming to Texas; the Crows made constant war on other tribes. No culture is perfect or free from human vices, so dare I be politically incorrect and salute the courage of people who simply wanted a better life, and had the gumption to endure hardship and uncertainty to get it? Their generation was horrified by the excesses of the Reformation from which their ancestors had fled, as ours is horrified by the pioneers' indifference to people they considered of less worth than themselves. Our grandchildren will be horrified by things we do routinely and thoughtlessly. It behooves us to quit imposing our values on people who never heard of them and simply accept our ancestors as they were.
I know that those landscapes will wend their way into my writing. The smell of sage and the lazy wind blowing dust along the horizon will populate my pages. The shy green in the bottom of a draw and the empty vastness of the sky catching the snowy heads of the Cascades will delight my memory. I hope my characters end up with the same fortitude and inner steel found in my great-great-grandmother's generation. Egad...I hope I do.
'Til next time.
July 12, 2011
The Endless Cycle of Worldbuilding
Writing fantasy is easy. Writing good fantasy is hard. A lot of writers don't really get how much work it is to build a believable world that is not Earth, Earth-normal, or based on "real" history, however skewed. The tired tropes of medieval worlds populated with pre-industrial tech, lords, ladies, petulant princesses and evil overlords are well-trodden, so much so that when you say "fantasy," that is what a lot of the prospective audience instantly thinks of.
I deliberately set out to make Firedancer, coming in September from Sky Warrior Books, something outside all those tropes. It is an alternate world fantasy, which means it isn't set on any version of "Earth" and the only thing familiar is that the people are human. Sort of. I greatly admire writers like C.J. Cherryh who can create wonderful non-human protagonists and make us not only sympathize with them but believe every word. I'm not quite up for creating truly alien protags, but I did create a fantasy world without the usual governing structures, no history of war as we know it, and not a horse, sword, dragon, elf, orc, or evil overlord in sight. The enemies of these people are elementals: Fire, Wind, Water. These human clans have no time to fight each other because their planet is trying to kill them. Constantly. Endlessly. Hungrily.
And that, oh that, is the wonder/beauty/thrill of writing fantasy, because you get to make it up. But...in accordance with the rules of plausibility and believability. I sort of got lucky in Firedancer because the location of the main action allows the setting to be quite Earthlike, with certain vivid exceptions. But the next novel, Windrider, set in an entirely different part of this world, forced me to delve immediately into the intricacies of ecology and evolution required to sustain life here. What special protective traits would the plants and animals evolve? How would they survive the constant influx of fire or the killing winds and storms? What customs evolve designed to keep our human inhabitants from quickly becoming extinct? Studying earth critters only gets me so far. After that it's up to the imagination.
Fascinating stuff, worldbuilding. Beginners have no clue how important it is to understand not only what the trees look like, but what the coinage looks like and how food is produced and transported and how law and order functions. In short, they usually fail to construct any sort of believable world because they fail to look around at how our own functions and translate the necessary bits into their made-up universe. Form follows function in everything from the design of tools, furniture, and transport to the shape of a beast's horns. Thus is it with "making up" worlds as well. The more fantasy you write, the more you realize the devil is in the details, and those details are why a lot of readers tune in. Not to be hit in the face with them, but to fall easily and painlessly into a place that feels real even as they are escaping "reality."
I foresee much research coming my way, but it's all to the good! Lead me to those adaptive traits, those strange trees, those interesting houses. Every one of them helps shape my world, and thereby my characters who exist in that world and are adapted to it. Heh heh. It's not every day you get to play God, is it?
I deliberately set out to make Firedancer, coming in September from Sky Warrior Books, something outside all those tropes. It is an alternate world fantasy, which means it isn't set on any version of "Earth" and the only thing familiar is that the people are human. Sort of. I greatly admire writers like C.J. Cherryh who can create wonderful non-human protagonists and make us not only sympathize with them but believe every word. I'm not quite up for creating truly alien protags, but I did create a fantasy world without the usual governing structures, no history of war as we know it, and not a horse, sword, dragon, elf, orc, or evil overlord in sight. The enemies of these people are elementals: Fire, Wind, Water. These human clans have no time to fight each other because their planet is trying to kill them. Constantly. Endlessly. Hungrily.
And that, oh that, is the wonder/beauty/thrill of writing fantasy, because you get to make it up. But...in accordance with the rules of plausibility and believability. I sort of got lucky in Firedancer because the location of the main action allows the setting to be quite Earthlike, with certain vivid exceptions. But the next novel, Windrider, set in an entirely different part of this world, forced me to delve immediately into the intricacies of ecology and evolution required to sustain life here. What special protective traits would the plants and animals evolve? How would they survive the constant influx of fire or the killing winds and storms? What customs evolve designed to keep our human inhabitants from quickly becoming extinct? Studying earth critters only gets me so far. After that it's up to the imagination.
Fascinating stuff, worldbuilding. Beginners have no clue how important it is to understand not only what the trees look like, but what the coinage looks like and how food is produced and transported and how law and order functions. In short, they usually fail to construct any sort of believable world because they fail to look around at how our own functions and translate the necessary bits into their made-up universe. Form follows function in everything from the design of tools, furniture, and transport to the shape of a beast's horns. Thus is it with "making up" worlds as well. The more fantasy you write, the more you realize the devil is in the details, and those details are why a lot of readers tune in. Not to be hit in the face with them, but to fall easily and painlessly into a place that feels real even as they are escaping "reality."
I foresee much research coming my way, but it's all to the good! Lead me to those adaptive traits, those strange trees, those interesting houses. Every one of them helps shape my world, and thereby my characters who exist in that world and are adapted to it. Heh heh. It's not every day you get to play God, is it?
June 18, 2011
Giving Scenes More Meaning
I am on the downhill slide of revisions for Firedancer, fine-tuning the major stuff I added, looking for places to tighten and cut. With the whole book slightly different and characters having acquired new facets, I took an hour to do something I never used to think about. I looked at every major scene from the perspective of "yes, but" and "no, and" to see if each scene really was integral to the plot. And guess what? It unlocked some new depths I had not previously suspected.
Being an organic writer, letting the story flow as it will onto the page, has the advantage of maintaining excitement about the writing process itself, as I find out as I go along what the story's about and what the characters' adventures are, just as a reader would. But the huge drawback to this method is that you risk having an action-oriented plot with few layers and no great planning to discover the meaning in each scene. I admire people who can outline to that level in advance; I really do. I just can't do it up front, so the work now must come after. As I progress as a writer, I discover myself looking more and more to such methods to enrich my work.
So, what did I discover? I created a table with one question at the top: Did the protagonist accomplish what she set out to do? I listed each major scene down the left side, plotted against "yes, but" and "no, and" to see what fell out of each. Most fell into the "yes, but" category. A few showed up weak, with little to no "but" consequences arising from the accomplishment. Strong plots need strong and continuing tension, which means nothing along the way can be an unqualified success. The two "no, and" answers really were enlightening, leading directly to greater character development in secondary characters affected by the scene. That was exciting, and really satisfying. It lent depths to the plot I didn't know it had.
Overall, every scene got richer in some way because of this exercise, and I am so grateful for the panel I sat in on at Radcon where I learned it. Never stop learning! Never stop pushing yourself as a writer. Adding 84 layers of meaning just to do it is pointless, but hunting for the real richness in every scene is a worthwhile exercise I highly recommend. Try it!
Being an organic writer, letting the story flow as it will onto the page, has the advantage of maintaining excitement about the writing process itself, as I find out as I go along what the story's about and what the characters' adventures are, just as a reader would. But the huge drawback to this method is that you risk having an action-oriented plot with few layers and no great planning to discover the meaning in each scene. I admire people who can outline to that level in advance; I really do. I just can't do it up front, so the work now must come after. As I progress as a writer, I discover myself looking more and more to such methods to enrich my work.
So, what did I discover? I created a table with one question at the top: Did the protagonist accomplish what she set out to do? I listed each major scene down the left side, plotted against "yes, but" and "no, and" to see what fell out of each. Most fell into the "yes, but" category. A few showed up weak, with little to no "but" consequences arising from the accomplishment. Strong plots need strong and continuing tension, which means nothing along the way can be an unqualified success. The two "no, and" answers really were enlightening, leading directly to greater character development in secondary characters affected by the scene. That was exciting, and really satisfying. It lent depths to the plot I didn't know it had.
Overall, every scene got richer in some way because of this exercise, and I am so grateful for the panel I sat in on at Radcon where I learned it. Never stop learning! Never stop pushing yourself as a writer. Adding 84 layers of meaning just to do it is pointless, but hunting for the real richness in every scene is a worthwhile exercise I highly recommend. Try it!
June 8, 2011
Thoughts on No Man's Land
The No Man's Land anthology is out at last, and I've been reading the other stories appearing along with my "Falling to Eternity." It is interesting to note how many ways there are to take "military science fiction with women protagonists" as a theme. All the stories I've read thus far are action-oriented (not unexpected) but there is a rich mix of occupations and settings and underlying technology. And there is a distinctly different flavor to the outcomes.SF has been such a "man's world" for so long that one wonders if there will ever be a true equality in the reader's mind, or if women will stop debating early in their careers whether to publish under their initials or just go for broke and put a female name on the cover. It is unfortunate that the bias is still there, no matter how enlightened we think we are. Yet I wonder how many readers are shocked--shocked!--to discover that Andre Norton, C.J. Cherryh, Leigh Brackett, D.C. Fontana (of so many wonderful Star Trek episodes), James Tiptree, and so many other "male" SF writers are really women.
Why do we even have to go to such lengths to have our work judged fairly on its merits? I know that to many, the name doesn't matter, yet there are those to whom it does, and I wonder where such expectations of lower quality or foofoo stories come from. And I wonder if women think they must inevitably use a "kickass" female heroine to overcome these notions. Most women (and men) are neither action heroes nor crybabies, but that middle-of-the-road ordinary Jane and Joe who somehow rise to the occasion. They react differently in bad moments, is all, and their creative solutions to problems may be profoundly different to counteract physical limitations or to accommodate the normal male/female differences in worldview.
To me, that makes for interesting stories. To others, it may wave red flags emblazoned with "Tears and bitching ahead!" Personally, I like stoic, stiff-upper lip heroes . . . but I also like the ones who scream and throw things and have private meltdowns--and then get on with the job.
Thank you, Dark Quest Books and Mike McPhail for publishing such a bold anthology, and many thanks to David Weber for the kind and thoughtful introduction to it. He's right. All of these stores are worth reading. I hope a whole lotta people actually do.
