The one and only thing I have to offer

Yesterday during a long walk through the park, I listened to a podcast called Writers on Writing. The host ended the program with a quote from author Barbara Kingsolver:

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

What we have to say is born of who we are. Who we really are, not who we think we are or who we want to be or who others want us to be. Scraping off all of that shit is what everyone over the age of three spends the rest of their life doing.

I started this blog so I could write about myself. Us bloggers don’t usually think about it in such narcissistic terms, but it’s true; we write about our own thoughts and feelings about things. And if we write honestly, we expose ourselves.¹

I thought writing about my abortion was scary until I started writing fiction again.

A fantastically fake world was the last place I ever thought I’d find Truth. I’m not writing a deep, subtle, lyrical literary gem; I’m writing a lurid tale of vampires and werewolves and ghosts (oh my!). I’m still as shocked as the proverbial deer in the headlights at the things coming at me.

In the same podcast, the host asked author Amy Bloom what advice she had for writers. She said she tells her students to make a list of the things they are afraid of. That way, at least they’ll be aware of what they’re avoiding in their writing.

There’s a scene in my novel that scared the crap out of me while I was writing it. I had sweaty palms, pounding heart, the whole bit. It describes in detail one of my greatest fears, something packed deep down in my heart that has nothing to do with vampires.

I nearly stopped writing this scene half way through, then realized that a story made of only the safe parts of me is no story at all. I had to go for the full monty.

Writing, or any form of expression, is like that if we want it to ring true. If all we have to offer is what we have to say, then we can’t be afraid of the truth.

Or rather, be afraid, be very afraid - but write it anyway.

Technorati Tags: writing, fiction, blogging

1. Hey! Stop that, you naughty thing. [↩]

Xena rocks Norwescon 2008

It’s not Lucy Lawless, but she might play her on T.V.

Not only did this Xena look the part from her jet-black bangs to her thigh-high boots, she had the husky voice and in-charge attitude. When I asked if I could take her photo, she said, “Sure. Let’s go find a blank wall,” and lead me around hotel until she found just the one she wanted.

My kinda girl. Er, woman.

Where did I meet this Amazon? Why, at my first-ever speculative fiction & art convention: Norwescon 2008.

Norwescon is a four-day orgy of everything sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Panel discussions, book signings, movies, costume displays, and fine art galleries - it has something for everyone.

I mostly attended the panel discussions for writers which were pretty good, though I had the feeling some of the panelists hadn’t really thought out the topics ahead of time.

For instance, in the discussion on “The Heroine’s Journey” (as opposed to the Hero’s Journey), a member of the audience asked the panel how they dealt with “women’s physical inferiority to men” when writing their action scenes. A panelist¹ answered by lecturing on how a certain type of metal armor can break an opponent’s sword.

Moving right along…

But the discussion on writing effective horror was good. The consensus among presenters and audience is that horror is not blood and guts. The essence of horror is psychological - specifically, dread. And there’s nothing people dread more than the unknown. As Neil Gaiman said on NPR last Halloween: the scariest things are those you cannot see.

In between panel discussions, I went sight-seeing. It’s pretty weird at first, but eventually you do get used to all the costumes.

Many of the costumes were amazing from an artistic perspective. I stalked quite a few of them until I could take their photo. I didn’t get to take as many as I wanted, though, as there was less hobnobbing than was convenient for it. Check them out on my Flickr page.

Besides Xena, this is another one of my favorites. I call it Death goes to lunch.

Technorati Tags: Norwescon, speculative fiction, writing

1. Yes, it was a guy. [↩]

Got cliche’?

The cool thing about writing speculative fiction is that it’s all in your head. The only rules are the ones you make up. With fantasy, you can be as creative as you wanna be.

Ironic how most of it is full of cliches.

Vampire fiction in particular seems prone to it, from the old fashioned wooden stakes ‘n holy water, to the newfangled demon-with-a-heart-of-gold.¹

As I write my own fantasy fic, I’m struck by how easy it is to think in stereotypes. Perfectly understandable, given the number of stories on the subject that I’ve consumed in my lifetime, but annoying nonetheless.

You think you’ve imagined a clever, unique twist on something, then remember you read it in an Anne Rice novel in 1987.

The only thing more vexing than a cliche is a stupid cliche. You know, the old chestnuts that have stayed popular, despite the fact that they carve plot holes a mile wide.

I hate it it when I’m reading about the vampire who got turned into crispy critter because he didn’t tell his minions to board up the windows in his basement lair. Sheesh!

Paranormal writers need a primer, a kind of Higher Common Sense for the modern vampire. Oh wait, that’s already been done.

3. The Hero will come armed with holy water, a cross and a stake. I will come armed with a 5.56 mm assault rifle and grenades. If the Hero has to cross open ground, there is no better way to reach out and touch someone than with a sniper rifle.

Technorati Tags: writing, vampires, speculative fiction, paranormal fiction

1. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some David Boreanaz. I wouldn’t kick that out of a coffin. [↩]

Friction Addiction

I haven’t been posting on Ye Olde Blog as much as usual, but I have the best excuse: I’ve been spending most of my spare time mapping out my novel.

As important as the experience of NaNoWriMo was for me, the finished product was not a masterpiece. It was, however, a jumping off point to what’s proving to be a wild, not to mention educational, ride.

While rewriting, I’ve consulted a good many books on writing and story. They’re all useful to some extent, but for whatever reason, they haven’t done much to stoke the fire in my belly.

I’ve always known that if I ever wrote fiction again, I would use mythic story structure, whether deliberately or not.  Myth, archetype, Jungian psychology, Jospeh Campbell - reading that stuff is like whacking a great big gong inside my body.

So a few years ago, when I heard of The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, the title of which is homage to Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, I was really excited.

Imagine my bummer when, a few weeks later, the book was on the shelf and I was searching again. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great book. But something about the somber,  Encyclopedic way it’s written doesn’t engage my creative mind.

Then last week I found The Key: How To Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth, by James N. Frey¹ and I haven’t stopped writing since. It’s the same information as in Vogler’s book, but Frey’s presentation of it is apparently tailor-made for my persnickity right brain.

Seriously, I couldn’t sleep last night for the non-stop brain babbling. This monomyth stuff is Muse crack.

Why did this book set on fire what others had left cold? Probably because it appeals to my nonlinear psyche, which is where creativity lies.

Most books instruct you thus: “Sit down at your desk and do the following in order: Pick an Idea. Create a Cast of Characters. Outline Your Plot’s Beginning, Middle and End. Write Out Each Scene. If you are consistent, you will eventually have a Novel.”

That kind of linear 1+2=3, while great for accounting, is a fiction flatline for me.

My creative process, I’ve learned, is not walking a line but riding a spiral. I grab the tail of an inspiration, a “germ of an idea,” and go where it takes me. I have to let it go wherever it wants; if I try to direct it, it sputters and stalls.

Mythic structure, apparently, is jet fuel. And the faster I go, the hotter it gets. My Muse says I’m spoiling her for other writers.

Technorati Tags: writing, creativity, James N. Frey, monomyth, The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell, archetypes

1. Not to be confused with disgraced James “Faker” Frey of A Million Easy Pieces. [↩]

The Female Gaze

This morning during my usual drink-coffee-read-feeds-become-human morning half hour, I spied with my little eye a post entitled “Can a feminist write romance novels?”

As a feminist and aspiring novelist, how could I resist that one?

In her post, writer Karen Kendal says that genre romances have a bad rap “because male fantasies are seen as legitimate in our society, while female fantasies are seen as ludicrous. Why?”

Because, continues Ms. Kendal, in a patriarchal (i.e., every) society, the vast majority of media, from Nobel Prize winning books to the Victoria Secret catalog, caters to the male gaze. They portray women - and, significantly, men - the way men want to see them.

Enter the uppity romance novel, in which the male is the subject, portrayed by and for the female gaze.

Not surprisingly, men do not like being the subject if they can’t control the product.

Just as we’d rather not compare ourselves physically with models, most men don’t want to be scrutinized next to body builders or romance heroes. What if they come up short? So they point and laugh at the guy on the novel’s cover and sneer that he’s only a stupid fantasy.

And because the male eye has become the norm, women diss romances, too, without even reading any.

I must admit I’ve done my share of dissing romance novels. I always chalked it up to being a literary snob and thought no further. How could I have missed this? Bad feminist, no biscuit!

I’ve read a few romance novels here and there, and while in general they’re still not my cup of tea, I must say it is clear that “bodice-ripper” is an outdated stereotype. Most modern romance protagonists are at least as feminist (if not more so) than those in their “literary” counterparts.

As Ms. Kendal puts it:

[Modern heroines] don’t shriek – they act. They engage in power struggles with the hero and often win. Along the way they have some great sex, and I happen to think that’s a good thing, since historically women – busy being the objects of male fantasy – have put up with a lot of bad sex, too.

Amen, sister. Amen.

Technorati Tags: feminism, literature, romance, writing

Happy Monday

Well, it’s Monday for me, back to work after a long weekend.

Like Dilbert, Savage Chickens know the truth: In offices across the globe, cubicles are routinely sprayed by midnight mercenaries with an invisible, odorless creativity-killing substance sold only to Inc.s and Corp.s.

This toxin seeps into the fabric on the walls, coats the chair seats, sticks to the the keyboard keys, hangs in the air like a noxious fog. Once you cross the threshold of a cube, it’s on you like white on rice. At this time, there is no known remover; it has to sort of wear off, like Superglue. (Don’t pick at it - you’ll just make it worse!)

Besides general zombification, other typical side effects include weight gain, compulsive internet surfing, and YouTube-addiction. A certain subset of cube-dwellers will also develop Buzz Tourette’s, a disorder characterized by uncontrollable regurgitation of such phrases as “think outside the box” and “moving forward” and “take it offline” and “customer centric.”

Several days into an extended period away from the cubicle, healing may begin. You may feel this substance begin to flake away, creativity slowly coming back to life…which, of course, is about when you have to go back to work.

But I’m not bitter. Moving forward…

Technorati Tags: Savage Chickens, creativity

Mr. Wrong and Mr. Write

One of the books I’m reading about writing is called Chapter After Chapter, by Heather Sellers. In Chapter 4, called “The Book 100,” Sellers recommends reading 100 books of the kind you want to write.

Surely any advice that gives one permission to buy more books is pure genius. So I’ve started amassing my Books 100, mostly in $8 paperback form so as to keep the complaints from Kevin to a dull roar.

I don’t care to pigeon-hole my own writing into one genre, as it seems to have elements of several. But in general, if you absolutely had to call it something, it would be Fantasy. So quite a few of my Books 100 are “urban fantasy,” some are thrillers, some are flat-out horror. All of them have a paranormal bent of some kind. ¹

Many authors read “in their genre” and some studiously avoid it. I can see the pros and cons.

On the one hand, if you have chosen a specific “genre” in which to write, it’s probably because you enjoy reading it. Enjoyment in itself is good enough reason to read something, but it has the added bonus of often being emotionally and creatively motivating.

I also think that the more you read something, the more you learn about it; thus if you read a lot of successful books in a genre, you’re probably going to learn (consciously or not) many things about what makes them so successful.²

On the other hand, there’s always the risk of burn-out. (I love Anne Rice’s world, but by the time I got to the 800th book, I was pretty done with vampires for a while.) It’s also possible to read so much fiction of a certain type that your imagination can unwittingly start to follow the crowd rather than take the road less traveled.

And sometimes, at about book 75 or so, you can begin to think that Everything Has Already Been Done.  This can be discouraging or challenging, depending on your attitude, but ultimately surmountable. It’s only catastrophic when one of those things is your idea.

One of my 100 is the first book of an urban fantasy-mystery series that took the genre by storm when it first came out. It’s original, funny, well-written and a darn good yarn.

Or at least, that’s what all the reviews tell me. I haven’t been able to get past the second page. That’s where I read that the book’s main character has exactly the same primary paranormal trait as my main character, and it’s messed up her life in precisely the same way, and it plays a large role in the rest of the plot.

Catastrophe.

I’m both flattered - “great minds” and all that - and incredibly disappointed.

I will get over it; I will think of something new. In fact, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe something about this part of my story was wrong for me, and letting it go, as agonizing as it is, will clear the way for what’s right.

It’s like no matter how certain you were that it had to be done, breaking up with Mr. Wrong was still painful. But later, when you are sighing in the arms of Mr. Right, you are so glad you did.

Technorati Tags: writing, fiction, creativity

1. If you really want to see the books I’m reading, click here to see my catalog on Library Thing. [↩]
2. Whether you can implement those things yourself is a different story, no pun intended. [↩]

On writing and the soul of murder

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Demon.

I read a funny article this morning by a writer who thinks of his resistance to creativity as Brenda, the earthy, red-lipped, fishnet-stocking-clad Anti-Muse.

Well, my anti-muse isn’t quite so much eye candy but she’s definitely from the same jar. I think of her Simone, Brenda’s darker, more neurotic distant cousin.

Simone has messy hair, wears too much black and smells of faintly of brimstone. She doesn’t smile much and thinks constantly.

She has been known to scare away my muse with a single, scathing glance.

Simone’s favorite past-time is engaging me in long, circular, unenlightening discussions about Art, Life, My Navel, and so on.

When she can’t appeal to my mind, she gets physical. Aren’t I hungry? Or, if I just ate, Wouldn’t tea be nice? Or Doesn’t a walk sound good? After all, I’ve been sitting here in this very same chair for at least five minutes. That can’t be good for my back.

And finally, when these things fail and I am dangerously close to writing, Simone sits down at the piano and plays a few bars of The Insecurity Rag. Pretty soon I’m perched beside her on the bench, warbling along like a gutless chanteuse.

One¹ would be tempted to say that Simone is not just an anti-muse, but truly a demon from the ninth circle of hell.

Which ain’t bad at all, according to Ray Bradbury, who’s made a career out of dancing with the devil.

If you must write of assassinations, rapes and Ophelia suicides, speak the speech, I pray thee, poetry in your breath, metaphors on your tongue. Remember how glad Iago was to think on Othello’s fall. How, with smiles, Hamlet prepared his uncle’s death.

Shakespeare and my Demon schooled me so: Be not afraid of happiness. It is often the soul of murder.²

Since my story has, in fact, assassinations, rapes, suicides and murder, I’d say Simone and I could be very happy there together.

Technorati Tags: Ray Bradbury, writing, creativity

1. OK, I. [↩]
2. From “My Demon, Not Afraid Of Happiness, in Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, essays by Ray Bradbury. [↩]

Sneaking up on the muse

A writer I know of believes that muses, on the whole, tend to be shy and skittish things. Ask the muse questions about plot, characters, etc., that are too direct and she’ll freeze up, give yes/no answers, start filing her nails.

If you keep pressing, she’ll suddenly remember an urgent appointment and take off, with no guarantee that she’ll return any time soon. One has to approach one’s muse indirectly if they are going to get them to spill the beans.

“So…how about those Mariners? And do you have tickets yet to the Storm opener in May? What’s that perfume you’re wearing, it’s great! And by the way, what do you think our heroine was doing at 3 am in the graveyard with mukluks and a shovel on New Years?”

This must be why all my best ideas for my story seem to come to me during work meetings. My mind begins to wander, half in the meeting and half in the world of my imagination. The muse shows up to see what’s going on, and eventually we’re giggling behind our hands like third graders.

I got a doozy of a back-story for one of my characters from my muse today. I tried to look like I was dutifully taking meeting notes while furiously transcribing our conversation.

I hope no one at work ever actually looks at my notebook, lest they wonder exactly which business projects I’m involved in that feature murder, insanity, and assorted occult hijinx…

Technorati Tags: writing, fantasy, occult, the muse

Here there be dragons

One of my resolutions for 2008 is to re-write the “novel” I wrote for NaNoWriMo. It has a great basic idea and I adore my characters and the world they live in. Still, the story lacks a certain something, a something that happens to be a requirement for a publishable novel: an ending.

Of course the manuscript ends - right around the 51K words that earned me the NaNo bragging rights. But I estimate that’s only half-way through the actual story. The main reason I stopped writing it after NaNo is because though I have a general idea of where I want my heroine to end up, I no longer know how she gets there.

I wish I were one of those people who could hop in the car and just go - thatta way! like Captain Kirk. But I’m not. Most of the time, I need to have at least some notion of where I’m headed and what the terrain may be like along the way. I need a map.

I adore maps. Old maps, new maps, computer generated, hand-drawn. The backseat of my car is strewn with all types. A well-made map is a thing of both beauty and utility.

Maps make me feel safe and, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, free.

I can go anywhere I want, by myself if I choose, if I have a map for it. There and back again, I am self-reliant, depending only on my own ability to know north from south.

One of my best memories is of a road trip a friend and I made to Alaska several years ago. Just me, Diana, all her worldly possessions and a cranky Siamese cat stuffed into a Suzuki Sidekick, racing the snow up the ALCAN from Seattle to Anchorage.

A two-thousand mile drive is a bit intimidating in itself, but doubly so when its the Alaskan-Canadian Highway. It cuts through the vast Yukon territory, and has long stretches of absolutely nothing resembling civilization. If you are lost in the Yukon, baby, you are fucking lost.

But we had a good car, an extra can of gas, water and a sweet map. As Diana likes to say, it was all good.¹

Plot outlines are maps for writers. At least, writers like me. Some writers can jump in the car and go, eschewing any kind of premeditated plan. They think maps stifle creativity, keep them from seeing the funky detours that might lead to amazing adventures. But that’s confusing planning with control.

Maps are not about control. On the contrary, they are about options. And that’s what makes them so great. The ability to plan a journey is often what gives us the courage to take it. Then we aren’t afraid of the detours because we know that if we don’t like them, our map can lead us back.

In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I read a few books on using plot outlines and then sketched one out for my story. Anxiety quelled and courage bolstered, I set off down the road.

My story started out as a light-hearted, almost farcical occult fantasy, with ironic characters and sarcastic one-liners. Somewhere along the way, though, my muse got a wild hair and took a hugely unexpected detour.

While she started out cruising down the sunny highway of the mind, she now finds herself navigating the dark alleys of the soul.

Thus the journey has halted for the time being, as my muse camps out at the side of the road to revisit the map. The good news is, its main road and final destination are fairly solid.

That and a can of gas in the trunk gives her the confidence to keep going.

Technorati Tags: writing, fiction, fantasy

1. Of course, anyone who’s every used MapQuest knows that all maps are not created equal. A bad map can turn a fun road trip into the Yukon into a foot-eating survival ordeal. Do your homework and find a map you trust. [↩]