Madeleine E. Robins's Blog: Madeleine Robins: Journal, page 14

We are the World(con)

I am just back from Renovation, this year's World Science Fiction Convention.  It was a perfectly excellent six days; I saw people I don't see often enough; met people I hadn't known before; got to do improv (at 11pm, when by rights my brain should not have been working–but panic and good improv-mates pulled me through).  I was on two panels, had a kaffeesklatch, and did a reading from The Sleeping Partner.  Also ate a lot of good food, talked about long and deep about writing, publishing...

Goodwill, The Story Needs It

There are all sorts of promises a storyteller can make to her audience, but one of the cardinal ones is, I think, "I won't come between you and the entertainment."  By which I mean, during a dramatic moment I won't break the tension with silliness; I won't ask you to believe six impossible things before you know who the characters are; I won't present my story as intelligent and undercut it with dumb; I won't drag you through fascinating-to-me-alone arcana and forget where I was going in...

Cats and Boyfriends

[image error]I have been derelict, for which I apologize.  And I really ought to write a post for SarahTolerance.com first, but I'm mulling something over there, after several posts about Regency sewing (!) and here I can talk about less, um, historical things.  Like cats.  And old boyfriends.

I no longer have cats because we're all allergic to them.  While it was just me, and I was acclimated to my late cat Alexis, this didn't matter.  Then I got married and had a kid and, sixteen months into the kid's...

Conventional Wisdom

I did not post on Monday because I was in Massachusetts, at Readercon, which was just splendid.  What is a Readercon, some might ask?  It's an annual convention of readers and writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy; unlike many such, Readercon doesn't contain programming about anything but books, which makes it a very fun place for the reader.  Generally, an SF/F convention is not just a collection of loony people in Spock ears (despite local media's occasional "Oh, Look, the Crazy People...

Oscar Wilde said "a poet can survive everything but a mis...

Oscar Wilde said "a poet can survive everything but a missprint."  I suspect that that's a slight overstatement.  And yet, there's no denying that a typo can really mess with the rhythm, the weight, the meaning of your words.  And sometimes it can really stick in your craw.

Mumblety years ago Althea, my first Regency, was published.  In the fullness of time my editor called and said, do you want to write more?  And I said "yes please," and wrote My Dear Jenny. Reading Jenny now pleases me...

600 Miles Through Rough Country

Some days I swear that, writing-wise, I'm like Bart Simpson* muttering "can't sleep clowns will eat me."  Except, of course, I substitute write for sleep.  Why will the clowns eat me?  The temptation to be really really glib here is almost overpowering, but I'm going to try to play this one straight.

I'm trying to finish three short stories and start a new book.  I know what all four works are about; what I don't exactly have a handle on is some of the events in those stories. This is what...

Charlotte Is My Brontë

In high school I had a teacher who loved Wuthering Heights.  I was, I blush to say, a bit of a suck-up in English class because I loved the subject, I loved writing about books and writing, and I didn't see any reason to be all cool about it. Except when we read Wuthering Heights. Then I had to fake it: I read the book and took the test and did the essay, but all the time that I was paying attention to the fact that Nelly Dean is an unreliable narrator and Edgar Linton is Heathcliff's pale...

Ur Doing it Rite

My friend Janni Simner wrote a great piece last week on finding the writing process that works for you.  Go read it.  No, really.  It's terrific.  I'll just wait here.

I am one of those neurotic folks who thinks that everyone else was issued a full set of instructions at birth. For everything–friendship, clothes, housekeeping, parenting, business.   Mostly I've learned to background that assumption, or even forget it for long periods of time.  (I am always convinced that people I think are...

Obscenity

[image error]I missed last week's post (I really am trying to post weekly) because I was in Massachusetts for my father's memorial party.  Yes, I said party.  My father was a big believer in parties, and he left very specific instructions about this one: the Dixieland band that was to play us down to the river where his ashes were to be scattered (by plane) and then triumphantly back again afterward, a real New Orleans funeral; the specific locale; and no "memorial service" or religious overtones...

So, What Do You Write?

[image error]There are a list of questions that writers get fairly routinely, most of them springing from the GP (general population)'s odd ideas about the writing life, which seem to arise from years of TV and movies, prejudices for and against the "artistic life," and vague recollections of their own dislike of writing essays in school.  There are business questions ("so how much did you get paid for writing that book?" and its opposite-twin, "how much did you have to pay to get that book published?"), ...