Phyllis Anne Duncan (P. A. Duncan)'s Blog, page 46

The Friday Fictioneers of October

Pumpkins have started to pop up everywhere. Leaves have begun to display color. The air is crisp… Well, our dog days of summer here in central Virginia arrived a bit late. We’ve been in the 80′s the past few days. Richmond hit 90 degrees a day or so ago. Eighties wouldn’t be so bad without humidity, but it’s the south. We have humidity.

Still, this is my favorite time of year. It’s as if I’ve been running all out up until this point, then I take a breath and wind down–as much as one can do that with Thanksgiving and Christmas looming. Something about the fall makes me begin to reflect on the previous part of the year. So, let’s have a look.

I entered a bunch of contests and made a bunch of submissions. I placed third in one contest, and all the submissions were rejections save one; but its notification date is March 2014 and could still be a rejection. (There will be twenty to twenty-five works in the collection, and the editor has already received more than 200 submissions; the odds aren’t great.) I’ve revised and rewritten a novel which a workshop instructor believes has definite promise for being picked up by an agent. I’ve edited and revised other manuscripts, participated in two weekly flash fiction events, and again amassed enough espionage short stories for another collection. I’ve been to ten writers conferences or workshops, participated in two on-line workshops, and taught one on-line workshop.

A busy writerly year, and I can’t even describe how fulfilling that is. As the go-to analyst/tech writer in my government job, I probably wrote a lot more than I do now on a daily basis, but the key difference is time. The deadlines I had in my job were rigid and often capricious, the whim of some congressional staffer with an overblown ego. Though the feedback was always good about a white paper or a report or a Q&A I did, I never felt as if that work were polished enough. I’d always come up with a better way of saying it. Now, thankfully, I have luxury of time to make certain what I write is the best it can be.

And I don’t take that for granted. I have too many writer friends with full-time jobs and families they juggle with their writing. I know how precious it is. I admire these writer friends so much for being dedicated enough to their writing that they make it a priority among all the other priorities they have. After all, that was I not that long ago, and I’m glad to have them in my writer life to keep me humble.

October is also a spooky month–it culminates in Hallowe’en, after all. So, it’s not surprising that today’s completely innocent-looking Friday Fictioneers photo prompt sent me into Stephen King-land. The fact I’m reading his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, may have something to do with my story, “White Noise,” as well. I’m going to see if I can’t make every Friday Fictioneers story this month have a little bit of horror going for it. Bwahahaha!

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title above, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

The Places We Write

This past weekend I spent a brief time in a place where I used to spend a lot of time–eastern Connecticut. My ex, before he was my ex, and I spent as many weekends and holidays as we could on a small lake that spanned the Connecticut/Rhode Island border. The lake is called Beach Pond, and up until a few years ago it had a small beach on the Rhode Island side; hence, the name. Our lake house on the Connecticut side had a small lakeside yard and dock, a large deck, and a great view, which looked across the lake onto the Acadia State Park in Rhode Island.

On the drive from Providence Airport to Preston, CT, where I stayed at my ex in-laws, I have to pass by Beach Pond. I’ve only done this three times since I was last there in 2005 before the ex became the ex. For some reason, last Friday on the third time, I recalled that I wrote most of the rough draft of what’s now a four-book series at the little gray house on the lake.

Now, I’m not much of a water person. I’m a pool swimmer, and bodies of water with fauna in it make me a bit nervous, but sitting beneath some good-sized oak trees with a beer at hand, and notebook or laptop with me, I was in writer heaven. On the weekends, the place was very active in the afternoons–water skiers, JetSki-ers, canoers, kayakers–but in the mornings, the place was quiet and still.

My ex had, as one of his many good qualities, an ability to understand what writing meant to me. He knew it went far beyond the fact I did technical writing for a living. He knew what I wanted to do with my writing, and he encouraged it. He never once complained about the fact a notebook accompanied every vacation we went on and that some part of the day had to have writing in it.

At Beach Pond, he would hop into a small row boat and explore all the various nooks and crannies of Beach Pond, and I would write–pages and pages, sometimes by hand, sometimes on a monstrosity of a laptop (This started in the late nineties.) After two years of these getaways, I had a complete rough (very, very rough) draft of a novel.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that until last Friday as I passed by Beach Pond and felt nostalgia for the happy times I’d had there, but the feeling was something like remembering where you had your first kiss or the first time you made love to someone. The place has an unending significance. This is where I wrote my first, real novel. This is the place whose quiet beauty helped inspire me to do that.

Now, inextricably, that place will always be associated with that particular manuscript. Someday, I’ll turn the pages of the books it has become, and I’ll hear the lap of wavelets against the bulkhead, the rhythmic splash of the oars on the row boat as my ex explored a place he’d known since he was a child all to give me the time to create.

Place, or setting, within a novel is often crucial to its plot, but don’t forget the place where you wrote it. That could be just as crucial–and special.

A Doorway to Friday Fictioneers

I normally post my Friday Fictioneers story on, well, Friday, because it ain’t Thursday Fictioneers. However, bright and early tomorrow I head to the airport for a weekend trip to New England to visit some old friends. I probably won’t get much writing done, but it’ll be fun.

After this weekend, the countdown to this year’s National Novel Writing Month begins, but in October I need to lock down that manuscript I had out to beta readers and get it ready to send off to my workshop instructor. Lots of nerves going on there. And I have two more Spy Flash stories to finish so I can get that next volume in a state to be edited and hopefully ready for publishing at the first of the year. In between all that will be Thanksgiving and Christmas. Oh, and a writing conference.

Yeah, retirements means sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Sure it does. Wouldn’t trade it for the world, or a job.

So, for a long-time Whovian (Google it), today’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt was just too tempting. Think of it not as fan faction but, rather, an homage with a twist. What else would you come up with after seeing the photo but a story about a door to nowhere, or maybe somewhere?

My story is “Time and Relative Dimension.” As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the top of the page, click on the tab for Friday Fictioneers, and select it from the drop-down list.

Defying a Ban

Today’s writing blog post crosses ever so slightly over into political commentary, so if you have qualms about my protesting the fact people want to ban books, you might want to skip this post.

Written work has probably been banned since the beginning of written communication. I’m sure some Cro-Magnon shaman who disagreed with the way a hunt was depicted on a cave wall forbad his or her tribe to view it. And, as it’s always been, forbidding someone from seeing something usually results in an overwhelming desire to see the forbidden thing.

Religion and political power always seems to raise their heads in these disputes. You can’t read this book because it goes against the Bible. Only if you’ve read the Old Testament do you appreciate that irony. People who look to the Bible as their moral guide in deciding which books you should and shouldn’t read conveniently overlook the fact that particular book is rife with rape, murder, infanticide, lust, political corruption, and incest among other distasteful things, which go largely unpunished. Governments have banned works–Stalin didn’t like the way Boris Pasternak portrayed the Soviet system and banned Doctor Zhivago; the Nazis held massive book-burnings designed to expunge the Reich of anything with a Jewish or Communist taint; Salman Rushdie had a fatwa issued against him by Islamic fundamentalists for The Satanic Verses.

Of course, Pasternak received a Nobel (for his poetry) two months after Doctor Zhivago was published outside the Soviet Union. The Nazis met their inevitable end in the spring of 1945. Rushdie, after being guarded in undisclosed locations for years, has a long (a very long) list of awards, including the Booker. All, as well as countless other examples, are testaments to the power of the written word and the fact people don’t like being told what they can and can’t read.

And lest you think this is a thing of the past or only occurs in regressive dictatorships, think again. A county in North Carolina recently banned 1952′s The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Considered one of the best books about racial identity and prejudice, The Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953 and has been a mainstay on high school reading lists since. Just not in a particular county in North Carolina, where a school board member said, “I didn’t find any literary value.” (Translation: Our precious white boys and girls do not need to read about the problems with racial identity; it might make them tolerant.) After that county’s decision, sales of The Invisible Man shot up, for which, I’m sure, the Ellison estate is truly grateful.

When we write–at least when I do–we don’t think about whether or not our work will be banned by some religious prig or overbearing politician. Self-censoring is just as bad as government or church censorship. It inhibits our craft. Do my fingers hesitate over the f-word when I’m writing? No, because if I drop the f-bomb, it’s because it’s central to the character using it. We have to write the story that’s in us. Anything we do to alter that means it’s not the right story and that we’re not truly writers.

This last week of September is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. Libraries around the country highlight books, which have been banned for various reasons, putting them on display and encouraging people to check them out. Librarians are quite often at the forefront of complaints about books, and it’s the courageous ones who stand up to the book-burners, whether literal or figurative. (Click here for a list of ALA’s most challenged books from 2000 – 2009. Some won’t surprise you; others will shock you.)

If you don’t want your child to read the Harry Potter series or R. L. Stine or Toni Morrison or Ralph Ellison, then don’t buy those books. Tell your child they’re not to be read. (Understand, though, that forbidding something makes it ever so much more desirable.) You’ll end up with an intellectually stunted child who won’t be able to handle the real world, but that’s your choice.

However, don’t tell me I can’t read them or that my child can’t read them. Is that limiting your First Amendment rights? No, because you’re free to opine all you want about what you find objectionable about a particular book, but you can’t force your narrow-minded opinion on others whose minds are open to knowledge.

There is no irony in the fact that the books people seek to ban are the ones which expand our knowledge, which challenge facts we shouldn’t accept on face value. Trust me, I never would have learned about the real facts of life (and not the confused mess my mother told me because she found sex disgusting) had one classmate not circulated a much-thumbed copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. I never would have learned to question authority without Animal Farm or 1984. I never would have understood the horrors of war if not for The Red Badge of Courage or All’s Quiet on the Western Front. I never would have learned about the negative aspects of letting money rule your life if not for The Great Gatsby or Bonfire of the Vanities. I would have followed my family into intolerance had I not read To Kill a Mockingbird or, yes, The Invisible Man. And, I never would have learned about the dangers of banning books if I hadn’t read Fahrenheit 451. Somewhere in America, at some point, all those books I mentioned have been banned, and, thank goodness, those bans didn’t work.

Even now, when I hear some puritanical school board has banned a book, I want to read it. I want to know what they’re afraid of so I can emulate the author. Yes, that’s how I’ll know I’ve “made it” as a writer–when some troglodyte bans a book I’ve written.

Celebrate Banned Books Week–read a banned book in public and piss off a book-burner. You’ll feel better for it.

Fall Friday Fictioneers

Sunday, September 22, is the first day of fall. Fall! Fall? How did that happen, I mean, besides the obvious motion of the Milky Way, our Sun, and our planet? Wasn’t it just January?

Fall happens to be my favorite time of year. I like the crisp, cool air and the wonderful colors. I like the shift of light and the constellations predominant in the fall-to-winter sky. I love it when my BFF Orion returns. The season just seems to energize me physically as well as creatively. National Novel Writing Month comes up in the middle of fall, and I’ve never had a problem coming up with those 50,000 words.

Fall makes me nostalgic as well, remembering Thanksgiving and time spent with my Dad. When he was still in the Army, I counted the days until he came home for the holidays, and I had some disappointments when politics meant he got deployed to West Germany too often.

I think nostalgia came to mind when I saw today’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt–a second-hand store, an out-of-date wedding dress, an elderly man. They led to the story, “Reminiscing,” something a little fluffier than I usually write. Yes, I can do fluff! As usual, if you can see the link on the story title, then scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

And a wish of happiness and love to Friday Fictioneers original founder, Madison Woods, for her wedding this weekend. Gotta love those happy endings.

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

When you cultivate a group of writer friends and ask them to read and critique stories and manuscripts, an important obligation as a good writer friend is to reciprocate. So, when one writer friend who gave me excellent feedback on my work in progress asked me to do the same for hers, I jumped at the chance. I’d seen the first two chapters of her WIP in my last two workshops at Tinker Mountain and had been eager to read more.

I was so eager, in fact, when I picked up the MS yesterday morning, I didn’t put it down all day–which is why Monday’s post is happening on Tuesday. But it’s great when something lives up to your expectations. When my friend’s book gets published–and it will–this will be my first experience with the evolution of someone’s work other than my own, and it’s a humbling experience. Humbling, in that I felt honored she asked me to read it, that she values my opinion.

Here’s the thing. She doesn’t expect sycophantic raving about how good it is. (Trust me, though, it is that good.) She wants a writer’s eye and honest criticism, which she’ll get from me. Again, I got that from her, and I’ll return it in kind. And I’ll get a little thrill when I buy my copy, knowing I helped in some small way. So looking forward to that.

And new topic. I’ve been working on the next set of stories for Spy Flash 2. (In case you didn’t know it, last year I published a collection of my espionage short stories, Spy Flash. To read all about it, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Published Works tab, then click on Spy Flash from the drop-down list. You can click through to purchase it from Amazon.com, and, oh, by the way, if you buy the paperback, you can download the Kindle version for free. Commercial over.) One thing which has stood out for me is the way odd words unconsciously work their way into a story.

One story had an inordinate use of the word “just” and not the adjective, as in a “just cause,” but the adverb, as in “at this moment” or “in the immediate past.” Okay, one or two usages, maybe, but I found this usage in a couple of sentences per paragraph. I don’t remember typing them; it was as if they “just” appeared. Of course, that’s not the case. The word popped into my head–quite a few times, apparently–and I wrote it. In most cases, there was no need to substitute a better word; deleting “just” made the sentence stronger.

A few weeks ago, I had the same thing happen with the word “always.” Ack! Where are these crutch words coming from?

I suspect because I do a lot of “pressure writing,” i.e., meeting deadlines and word count goals I’ve mostly set for myself, they filter in, and I let that happen because subconsciously I know they’ll come out in the wash, or edit. What surprises me, though, is how often they show up.

And now I’ll bring this back around to the original topic. This is why having a group of writers who’ll critique you with honesty is important. They won’t let you get away with “just” and “always” or whatever crutch word creeps into your work. If you don’t have a group, find one or create one. Social media are great for this. Part of the joy of writer conferences is meeting and networking with many different types of writers from all over. Social media allow you to form critique groups without having to be face-to-face, and, even then, there’s FaceTime and Skype.

Don’t fear the critique. Embrace it. And watch out for those crutch words.

Friday Fictioneers and Icons

We use icons in our writing all the time, especially so when place is critical to the plot. A cozy mystery set in London, and a mention of Big Ben or the Tower of London is obligatory. What would a Cold War thriller be without a mention of The Berlin Wall or The Kremlin? Central Park is the venue of many a murder in a crime procedural set in New York City. I’m sure you can think of many others.

Mentioning an icon is the quick, easy way to put the reader into exactly where in your world the action takes place. Trust me, say “Central Park,” and the average reader knows exactly where the story takes place. Even if he or she has never been to New York City, a reader has seen enough pictures or TV shows to be able to place the locale.

Writers who invent new worlds or use more obscure locales have to do more description of place and setting so the reader can “see” it. Especially if you make up your own town or city, you have to provide just the right balance of back story to make the place believable.  For example, The Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Hobbit wouldn’t be the same without the vivid, rich descriptions of Middle Earth or Mordor. We need to see all those different kingdoms in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice books because they are just as crucial to the story as any of the characters. Striking that balance can be difficult, because you can bog the reader down in minutia.

The photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers is one of those icons where just one glance at it, and you know exactly where you are. You may even know “when you are” by the type of picture or the other items in it. Juxtaposed as it was with the twelfth anniversary of September 11, 2001, it will likely evoke many emotionally charged 100-word stories this week. That’s a good thing, because we must never forget.

The picture prompted one of my rare forays into poetry, probably a good thing, the rarity, that is. We recently lost the great Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, and his poetry always had a strong sense of place, even for an American one generation removed from her Irish roots. His poems could put me in a peat bog, on a battlefield, in a thatched-roof hut, even though I’ve never seen those things with my own eyes. I’ve tried to do that in “The New Colossus.” As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tag, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Line Editing Blues

Well, not blues actually, but that caught your attention, didn’t it?

One of my beta readers for the novel I’ve been working on exclusively this summer not only sent comments back but a line-edit of the manuscript as well. And here’s the lesson learned: No matter how great an editor you are (and I have thirty-plus years’ experience editing other people), you cannot use yourself as your final editor. This beta reader didn’t find many typos (my bane), but she did find overuse of words, overextended dialogue, and over-explaining. However, those incidents of “overage” weren’t pervasive, just here and there, and I can make those fixes, easy-peasy.

Her general comments as well were good, and here’s another lesson. There is one suggestion she made, with which, right now, I disagree. It’s the merest hint of a new relationship for one of the characters at the very end of the work, and since I’m a sucker for happy endings (I didn’t get one), I don’t want to cut that. Don’t get me wrong. I respect this writer’s opinion, but for now I’m leaving it as is (maybe a little editing to make it even more subtle, though). I am, however, open to cutting it completely based on additional feedback.

When you’re open to feedback from others, especially people whose writing you respect and admire, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how their comments/edits improve your work. When I saw this beta reader’s line-edits, I smacked my forehead so often I may have given myself a concussion. They were obvious, so why didn’t I see them?

Duh, because it’s my work, and don’t you know my words are all gems?

Except when they aren’t. That’s why we’re word-blind for our own stuff. You can edit and revise, revise and edit, and then someone else still points out something you need to fix. These aren’t “happy to glad” edits; they tighten the work, they make the story more tense and intense, and they improve the overall product. I am forever grateful, and she and the other beta readers will be high on the list in the Acknowledgement section of the published work. When this novel gets published (I’m being positive, here), I know it will be in large part because these fellow writers helped make it publishable.

So, Indie authors, the next time you decry the use of professional editing and/or the use of beta readers because you think they’ll ruin your stellar work, think again. Let’s open our minds to the possibility they can make a good work brilliant.

September Friday Fictioneers

Try to remember the kind of September

When life was slow and oh so mellow.

Some lyrics from one of my favorite songs, “Try to Remember,” from the great musical The Fantasticks. Except that life has been anything but slow and mellow because, hey, it’s September already. How did that happen?

However, fall is my favorite time of year, with the colors changing and the air cooling. From my deck the mountains are crisp and clear, and you can see why they’re named the “Blue Ridge.” Fall is a great time of year for writing, for creativity in general. It must be the colors or the change in the angle of light or the unrelenting march of the need to do holiday shopping. I shift from writing in my office to writing on my screened-in porch or my deck. The air is fresh, the ragweed is annoying, but there’s just something about change in the air which makes for great writing.

A little progress report on the novel draft I sent out to beta readers: I’ve got three sets of comments back, and there are no major gaps and gaffes, just some great line-edit suggestions and some plot-enhancement comments. I’ll get started on that next week, and then I’ll have a decent third draft to send to my workshop instructor for his opinion. Exciting stuff, and I have a really good feeling about this manuscript.

As inspiring as the change of seasons can be, the photo prompt for Friday Fictioneers is downright rousing. One look and a lot of memories came back–packing up my grandmother’s knick-knacks from her apartment after she died. Because I lived in an apartment then a small townhouse, they stayed packed for almost forty years. When I moved into my new house, I had room for a curio cabinet, so I unwrapped them (great to read newspapers from 1973!), and they’re now on display in my guest room.

Each one has a story behind it–some were gifts from her husband, my stepgrandfather. Some she bought for herself. Some of them my brother and I gave her for birthdays or Christmas. I suspect the same is true of the tchotchkes in today’s photo prompt, which inspired me to write “Memory Lane.”

If you can’t see the link in the title in the paragraph above, scroll to the top of this page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Some Historical Friday Fictioneers

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres to read and to write. I have a degree in history and have maintained my love of history throughout my life. I write what the great Alan Furst calls the “historical thriller,” and I just finished reading a three-book series (with more to come) about a woman who becomes a spy for MI-5 in Britain during World War II. (It’s the Maggie Hope series by Susan Elia McNeal, and I highly recommend it for a glimpse into Britain during the Blitz and before the U.S. enters the war. Lots of accurate historical references and historical figures abound, behaving in ways you’d expect them to. McNeal has done her homework well.)

I have a couple of sticking points, though, with historical fiction. The history has to be accurate. You can take some dramatic license, yes, but it has to fit into the overall context of the history and the era. And the fiction within that context has to be believable. Am I a fan of the alternate history genre? Not particularly, though I have read some which have made the fictional version of history believable; otherwise, just call it fantasy and be done with it. Do I have a problem with the Steampunk genre? No. When it’s done well, the author takes the technology of a particular time period and creates perfectly believable machines, which may not appear in reality for another century. Is Steampunk truly historical fiction? Yes, in that the Steampunk author has to be well-grounded in the real history of the era to make his or her work believable.

So, accuracy and believability, and I’ve closed books and put them aside permanently when I’ve spotted an obvious historical gaffe. (And don’t get me started on aviation inaccuracies!)

Today’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt put me right smack in the middle of a rush of nostalgia. I worked not too far from Union Station in Washington, DC, for many years, and I always loved going into that building. Architecturally, it is a marvel, and it had seen so much history. By the 1970′s it was almost a ruin, just a giant pigeon roost, and it took an act of Congress, literally, to get it back on its pinnings. Today it’s a classy shopping mall with several great restaurants and still an operating train station. If you’re ever in DC, make sure it’s a tourist destination for you. DC’s Metro Subway system has a stop there, making it easy to get to.

Union Station has seen so much history, it was hard to pick something specific to write about, even harder to confine it to 100 words, but I focused on the Serviceman’s Canteen. Open between 1941 and 1946, twenty-four hours a day the Canteen offered coffee and good food mainly to servicemen passing through Union Station but also to any passenger or even people off the streets of DC. It averaged three million customers a year. I can remember my father and several uncles commenting about stopping there for a five-cent meal. It closed permanently in May of 1946 mainly because its typical customer–a G.I. on his way to be shipped out–no longer trooped through the station in large numbers.

The Canteen attracted even high-society women in DC, who wanted to do something for the war effort, and my story, “Good Service,” acknowledges one of them. Did this happen? Not that I know of, but in the context of this woman’s history, it’s completely believable she could have done something like this. I know this woman had left DC in 1945, but for something important to her, I could see her returning. What is historically accurate is that this woman did indeed sell food to servicemen from the Serviceman’s Canteen.

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title in the paragraph above, go to the top of the page and click on the Friday Fictioneers tab. Then, you can select the story from the drop-down menu.