Cedar Sanderson's Blog, page 250

Formatting a TP Cover

Mirror-posted over at Amazing Stories Magazine Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on launching my second novel, Pixie Noir. As I did with the first, I released the book through my imprint in both print and e-formats. It’s a lot of work, but very rewarding indeed to be able to hold […]

Pixie Noir: Snippet 12

Pixie Noir is now available for sale in print, and ebook. Enjoy, and let me know what you thought! If you want to read all the snippets first, start here, Sunday Snippets. ************ “Among other things.” “When can we start?” “Let’s go up on deck.” I stepped out into the hall and looked both ways, […]

Writing Process

It’s not the same for any of us, this process of creation, but I’ve found that sometimes I’ll read about what someone else is doing and it clicks for me. Over at Mad Genius Club this morning I elaborate on what I was thinking and doing as I wrote Pixie Noir, hoping that perhaps I […]

Review: Mistress of the Waves

Starships are meant to fly… So yes, I do listen to my daughter’s music from time to time. But that line caught me, and it came back as I finished Mistress of the Waves and started thinking more about the central premise of the story. George Phillies succeeded in doing something that rarely works out […]

It is written l…

It is written like this: “I checked out with K 19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the […]

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Reading Noir

I’m beginning to write Trickster Noir, the sequel to Pixie Noir. To get into the mood, I’m reading noir fiction. I’ve been looking for recommendations, and was given a nice list by friends. For Pixie, I was reading Spillane and Louis L’Amour’s detective stories. I’d been reading Hammett a few months before I started writing […]

Beautiful America: Thanksgiving

I give thanks for so many things. The beauty that surrounds me daily, my children, my loved ones, the opportunity to go back to school. I won’t be cooking a big meal this year, as there are only two of us to eat it, but I will be remembering the ones I have lovingly prepared before, while the kids helped.

This is a glimpse into my memories… Not just meals, but family, and cooking together, and the messes, and the torpor of a couch and a book after the meal!

Dad all dressed up to go create an anachronism: Franch and Indian War reenactors serving Thanksgiving Dinner.

Relaxing after Thanksgiving. And reading, of course!

Grandfather and grandson working together in the kitchen

Floury monster hands, Aaaah!

Not Thanksgiving dinner, but my red-head loves to cook!

The rare American teen who can really cook…

Ray Bradbury

A response to ‘symbol-hunting’ as conducted by the literature teachers of academia. (Click on the picture for great responses by famous authors to a young man’s questions on their work and symbolism.)

Bradbury finished his responses to the intrepid young scholar with ““Not much to say except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a writer of fiction in the future. If you intend to become a critic, that is a Whale of another color…Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story…humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels…Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing…and as unobtrusive.”

Learning and Writing

Mirror-posted from Amazing Stories this morning.

The perspective on life, through a book’s pages.

I have been pondering school, learning in general, and this past semester in particular as it is drawing to a close. I am taking a Composition and Literature class not for any other reason than the school requires it, and it’s been a mixed experience for me. But on the other hand, when we stop learning, we’re dead, especially as writers. For to become a good writer, you don’t need the credentials of “been to school’ but you do need to qualifications of ‘can do this proficiently’ and that’s something that can be conveyed as easily as your reader can absorb it. With my second novel coming out Dec. 1, I hope that I can show (again!) I am qualified to call myself a writer.

Etymology has always been an interest of mine, taking apart a word to see how it works, then putting it back together, and letting it go again, part of a sentence and working beautifully to illustrate my point. Another level of complexity up, and we see metaphor, cliche, tropes, memes, and stereotypes all lined up to carry that point home in fewer words than it would take to explore all of it fresh. Finally the whole picture becomes clear, with thesis, apologia, and plot to give the story, essay, or paper the bones all those words flesh out.

I gave my son, when he was six and old enough for them, my box of legos. He will sit and build endlessly with them, each block discrete, and yet full of possibilities. Words, adjectives, punctuation, similes: these are my lego blocks. I have more colors than he has to create with: mauve, puce, maroon, and chartreuse to begin with. Each part of a sentence goes together with a satisfying click, but there is nothing to stop me taking it all apart again to build something new with these same words and phrases.

So learning a new word is a bit of excitement in my life. Just recently in chemistry class I learned the word zwitterion. It’s a biomolecule that changes polarity based on pH level in the body, but that’s besides the point. It’s just a really cool word. I haven’t looked up the etymology of it yet, and it doesn’t sound either Greek or Latin, which are the languages I would suspect in any other science, but I am learning that chemistry has a language all its own. The English language is an entity all its own, prone to knocking up other languages and bearing their bastard children with words like “gesundheit” which I was highly amused to learn sounds to a non-native English speaking woman I once worked with as “goes in tight,” leaving her totally confused over why a sexual reference was made every time someone sneezed. I suspect most who use that old German word don’t even know what it means, any longer. When I was younger, and you could do such a thing, I would read the dictionary. Now, with the ability to type a word into google, I no longer have the pleasure of rabbit-trailing off from looking up one word to discovering others. Googling for the meaning of zwitterion yields that it comes from the Old High German root zwi-, which means twice. Makes sense, since it essentially has the capacity to switch back and forth.

I also get excited when I learn new techniques. In the Latino Literature class I am taking this semester I learned about found poetry, the art of plucking words and phrases from and existing text to create something new. Making a piece of word art resonate out of the dry depths of a syllabus awakened a sense of joy in writing poetry I had forgotten.

Contemporary echoes

with roots

Reflected

issues of identity

focus, touching, entangle

across ideas.

Collecting ideas for the Art of China, Japan, and Korea to write a paper, I came across the concept of the four treasures of study. Each component of the creation of a text was considered a work of art on its own. Paper, as I write this essay longhand on a college-ruled notebook, knowing it will be transcribed into an ephemeral document of pixels existing only in the cloud. Brushes, that feather-swift movement over paper or silk, now the blunt tapping of fingers on keys. Ink, once ground on a stone with just enough water to release the depth of color desired by the artist, from a pale shadow wash to the boldest black. Now, I make settings for colors, fonts, drop shadows, kerning, and scaling, my eyes fixed to the screen. The final treasure was the inkstone box, a work of art decorated with symbolic meaning, and object of meditation meant to inspire the artist, whether he be painter, poet, or author. My inkstone is my iMac, old and prone to overheating, but precious and full of memories, creations; in short, my life.

This semester, related to writing, has been more about rediscovery than learning anew. The time to stop, look hard at poetry and metaphor, to explore the whys or word usage, has been invaluable. This rest and refreshment is as good as filling my brain full of new concepts, allowing me to resume my work with a sense of energy and joy in it. I will write my next novel over winter break and I am eagerly ready to start in on it.