October 2007 Archives
I have to admit that I really didn't know anything at all about Martha's Vineyard before I went there. I spent way more time excitedly researching details of the workshop and the instructors than I did the place it was held. (I completely failed to google my fellow students beforehand, unlike my cleverer compatriot Mark, who told me casually on a run to the Package Store, "oh, I saw your paintings" and thus must have found my moldy old Juliart site.) I knew it was supposed to be a lovely vacation place for East Coasters, and that it had something to do with Kennedys and other wealthy and powerful people. I had a vague image in my head of swanky touristy East Coast beach town, based on a single visit to Cape Cod back in my teenage years. I expected salt-weathered blue and grey houses with white trim, some fire-colored Fall foliage, maybe a few fish or lobster-related decorative items. But really that was about as far as I'd thought about the place I'd be spending a precious week of my time in.
And as it turns out, I really *still* don't know much about Martha's Vineyard. I have no sense of its history, its sociology, its economy or its residents. All that I know is what I was able to gather through my brief interactions with the physical environment beyond the Island Inn. I was right about the beaches, but that was about it. On our drive around the Island a few days previous (the day we went to the Bite for the infamous chowder), I'd discovered that the foliage hadn't turned yet, but the trees were slender-trunked, close together and footed by large clumps of underbrush. I learned that the people on this Island made incredibly beautiful stone walls, the mortar-less kind that relies on superior stacking skills to stay together. I'd seen new kinds of both wild and landscaped flora that I'd never known and wouldn't be able to name now without a great deal of research (and we all know how I feel about research: "why bother?"). And on this walk into the town of Oak Bluffs, I discovered that apparently one of the things that Martha's Vineyard (or at least, Oak Bluffs) specializes in are elaborately gingerbread-y Victorian homes. I had no idea that I'd find houses on an island off the East Coast to rival San Francisco's painted ladies, and I regret not having snapped a few more pictures (those that I did take will be posted someday, I swear...posting pix is next on my list after finishing this travelogue).
But back to lunch. Additional fried seafood was consumed (not as good as the seafood from the Bite had been, but tasty nonetheless), much writerly conversation was had and more bonding was accomplished. After lunch we dallied for a precious few minutes buying souvenirs, then strolled back to the Island Inn in the watery Fall sunshine, pausing for a few pictures of especially impressive houses. We arrived over an hour late for the post-lunch collegium, but despite feeling a pinch of regret over the lost opportunity to absorb more writerly bits of wisdom, I was really glad we'd taken the break.
Even given our lateness, the collegium still was valuable. There was no particular topic per se, but here are a few bits I wrote down:
-There are really only 3 reasons to join SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association): the grievance committee, the medical fund and the legal fund. But overall it has a "toxic internal argument culture" and it may be best to keep it at arm's length.
-Great West Coast cons to check out:
* Bay Con (Silicon Valley)
* Potlatch (up and down the West Coast)
* Norwescon (various West Coast cities)
* Orycon (Portland)
-Making mistakes in short fiction is cheap; making mistakes in novels is expensive
-Try a short story or novelette after VP as a "palate cleanser"
-"To double your success rate, triple your failure rate" (I forget whose quote this is)
-Editors don't get to pick the specific copyeditor who will work on your manuscript (neither do you)
-It really helps to do a style sheet for your copyeditor (when you get to that point)
Eventually the collegium conversation wound down and it was time for the official VP picture (yes, soon to be posted) and the official VP oath:
"I, ________ do solemnly swear:
I will write everyday.
I will finish what I write.
I will revise what I finish.
I will send out what I revise
To paying markets only.
I will continue to send out what I revise
(To paying markets only)
Until Hell won't have it.
And I will tell everyone I know
That Viable Paradise is a really great workshop.
(So consider yourselves told!)
There was also some silliness at the end with an addendum that went something like this: "And if I should ever drink too much and fall down, I will make sure that I pass out face up so that people will see my VP t-shirt and they won't think I went to Clarion."
The picture and oath marked the official end to the workshop, but since most of us weren't leaving until the following day, and no one wanted the experience to be over yet, most everyone transitioned into playing Thing in the common room. As afternoon faded into evening, and dinner came and went, people began to break off into smaller groups and the remains of the alcohol from Beer With Billy the night before came out. I remember having a great conversation with Cory and a few other students about Cory's upcoming wedding plans (such a fabulous and of course super-geeky event it will be, but I don't want to spoil it by giving any details here), and I remember that people started to break off and sing along to Patrick's guitar and Norm's ukulele (?) in the other room. Eventually, though, Kim and Dorothy and I grabbed some bottles and some people (Mark, Yeff, Ben, Laura, Marta, Eric and probably others) and headed up to our room for an after-party.
Little did we know that Room 50 had been the big party room for the VPX bunch the year before, but clearly some of that energy was still hanging around, waiting to pounce. Over the next few hours, what began as a few of us sitting around on the couches and chairs in the living room drinking and chatting grew into a standing room only group storytelling fest, where each of us took turns telling our relationship "origin stories" (e.g. how I met the one who broke/stole/captured my heart). It was vastly entertaining to me that most of us, when liberated by a few drinks, couldn't succinctly tell a story with clear narrative drive to save our lives (see, revisions really are the writer's friend!) And speaking of a few drinks, I have to admit that in my excitement I overindulged somewhat and found myself with the overwhelming need to pass out horizontally for a few minutes. Luckily it was our townhouse, so I just went in the bedroom and laid down on my bed until Kim came in to see if I was ok. Which I was, so I came back out for more origin stories. Perhaps I had been re-energized by my brief "nap", perhaps it was just the reluctance to have the experience end, perhaps it was just a hostess's instinct to not give up before the guests did, but one way or another, I wound up staying up until around 3:30 or 4:00 AM, which is when the last guests finally gave up and stumbled home themselves.
Despite my lack of sleep and burgeoning hangover the next morning, I was determined to cook the French toast I'd promised my roomies and the boys downstairs back on Day 1. And since our door was open, people kept dropping by--which is why I can say I have now cooked for famous (and soon-to-be famous) people. (Jim ate at least two pieces, if I recall, and even Patrick accepted a piece...but Cory just looked longingly at it, since he was on a "lose-weight-for-the-wedding" vegan diet.) Then it was time for packing and tearful farewells, capped by hugs and promises to keep in touch.
Yeff and I were both flying out to Boston on the same puddlejumper flight out of the Vineyard, so he drove me to the airport, and we spent some good end-of-the-event hangout time. We had glorious weather for our flight to Boston so the ride was fun (I got to sit next to the pilot!) but unfortunately it was too hazy for good pictures. I contented myself with taking pictures of the dials and levers "for research" purposes, in case I ever wanted to finish my foul-mouthed pilot story and needed a little realism. Once we reached Boston, we found we were in separate terminal for the flights out to our respective California airports, so we bid each other a fond farewell and I went off to find some food to sustain me for the long trip cross-continent.
And here we pretty much come to the end of the travelogue, since everything else was fairly uneventful. It was lovely to come home to my place and my family (my parents even kindly picked me up from the airport), and while it was maybe not so lovely to be abruptly thrust back into the hurly burly of my usual overfull life, I didn't mind, because I brought back with me something of immense value, something I am still unpacking and exploring because it affected me on so many levels.
I'm sure I have forgotten a few things, and failed to expand on others, but I'm done for now. It's time to let the VP experience go underground, and continue to work its transformations quietly beneath the surface. It is time to carry forward my new enthusiasm and commitment to making my writing better (not to mention a priority), and to simultaneously be okay with where I'm at. It is time to own what I need to own and drop the rest.
And most of all, it is time to stop blogging and go start writing more novel chapters!
Way back on Wednesday, I'd gotten up the gumption to ask Cory for an unscheduled meeting (I wish now that I'd asked Steve Gould and Laura Mixon too, but I didn't want to be greedy or presumptuous about their time, so sadly, I did not. On Thursday, in a fit of optimism, I asked Cory if I could have him critique my fledgling new short story rather than the submission piece of the novel. (Even with the motivation of knowing Cory would be reading it, I didn't manage to finish the foul-mouthed pilot story, but I figured it was more up Cory's alley than my fantasy novel chapters.) So Friday before lunch, we went up to Cory's room for a brief meeting that I wish I could have dragged out for hours, it was so helpful (and enjoyable). I found Cory really easy to talk to, and he always brought up interesting thoughts and thereby encouraged me to do the same. He started by asking me why I'd come to VP, how it had been going for me so far, and if I'd gotten what I wanted out of my VP experience. All interesting questions, and a great way to begin the process of reflection that I've been continuing here in this blog for the last 3 weeks.
Then we got into talking more specifically about my foul-mouthed pilot story (which for the record was called "What You Really Need As Much As A Hole In The Head"), and once again it was a great reinforcement for some of the specific writing craft I'd learned (or re-learned) over the last week. Many of issues as a writer, which I am now becoming intimately more familiar with, were reflected here as well: wandering beginnings with too much muddling about finding my way into the character and the story (the "your story doesn't begin until page 10" problem), characters without clear (to the reader) problems or motivations, run on sentences (even though I'd been trying to write short noir-like sentences, a few of my run-ons still came through). A couple specific pieces of advice:
-Tell what people do--and fail at--and not what they nearly do
-Plant seeds of sympathy for a character early on--if they're not redeemable, they're not sympathetic
-"As above, so below": try making the characters (microcosm) reflect the setting (macrocosm)
Most fun though was talking about cursing though (a subject I'd never considered in much depth before, but *now* I certainly have). Expanding on what I'd already learned from both Debra Doyle's lecture and the sample curses I'd collected earlier in the week, Cory taught me an incredibly valuable lesson, that cursing is more effective and interesting when it gets very specific. To wit: "The ocean below was as smooth as a teenage girl's ass" is decent, but more outrageous (and therefore more interesting and more indicative of character) would be "The ocean below was as smooth as a 14 year-old Thai hooker's ass." (And believe me, that was one of the more mildly offensive bits that came out of this character.) I may or may not put this new knowledge to use in my fantasy novel when I revise, we shall see!
Friday morning there was a "free-play" discussion in the common room instead of the usual group critique. I admit that, having burned the candle in multiple directions over the last few days, this exhausted writer slept in a little bit instead of attending. It's a good thing I did because the next thing up was Patrick Nielsen Hayden's lecture about The State of the Industry, which was a fascinating blend of historical and sociological analysis of the factors which have shaped publishing in general and genre publishing in specific over the last 50 years. Patrick, having a long and illustrious (and now award-winning!) career as an editor at Tor Books, one of the heavy hitters in the genre publishing field, knows of whereof he speaks, so all the wee little writers in the room sat up and *listened* when Patrick (assisted ably, of course, by Teresa, also a longterm and illustrious editor at Tor, even though at the moment she's moved on to other things) gave forth his wisdom. I share what little bits of said received wisdom I managed to capture (again, this is long so those of you not specifically interested in book publishing or writing, feel free to just skim right on down to the next part):
-"The hidden history of category publishing is a history of distribution."
-Magazine publishing (e.g. magazines which publish short fiction) still exists, but it's more our "R&D" lab than a valid paying market these days.
-The history of the F/SF book industry is completely tied up in the post-war emergence of the mass-market paperback. (Mass-market refers to the distribution system, not the size or content of the books themselves.)
-Before mass-market paperbacks, book stores were few and far between, and mostly found near or in urban centers. There were whole states without a single bookstore. This led to the system of bookstores buying books on a returnable basis.
-Now we are a culture with "ambient" books--books are everywhere, sold in a wide variety of places besides bookstores.
-The mass-market revolution had been resisted at first because of the difference in the price point of a paperpack and a hardcover
-The key point that Ballantine and the other early paperback publishers realized was that they could treat mass-market paperbacks like magazines, as far as distribution goes--they could sell them in the same channels and in the same ways (returnable, swappable). This worked so well that bookstores eventually said "ok, fine, we'll take them"
-There was a certain fixed amount of rack space in this mass-market paperback system for F/SF books, and so in these early days you got a bunch of not always top quality books published in order to make sure that rack space was always filled (and filled on time)
-From the 1920's through the 1980's, F/SF wasn't a particularly defined industry, but there were holes to fill in magazines and on racks--so what was sold was not necessarily the best of the best or the super rockstar writers, it was all mixed in: a robust ecology with many levels
-From the 1980's on, the greatest factor that affected both publishing and the F/SF field was distribution: there weren't many distributors and most of them were involved primarily in distributing magazines and newspapers, with paperbacks as mostly an afterthought
-In the 1980's all kinds of retail changed--chains went national, and there was much merging and acquisition, but also better IT and informational systems
-All this merging/scaling up to national levels was catastrophic to F/SF because those paperbacks had only been a little side biz in the first place
-BUT the bookstore chains were also wildly scaling up to hugeness levels at the same time, because they realized they could make more money if they expanded their square footage…and this saved F/SF because a lot of backlist was required to fill up the big shelves at Borders and B&N and the like
-But the big bookstore chains still get a better return on hardcover and trade paperbacks
-Trade publishing doesn't have the same pressure of having to "fill slots" like mass-market paperbacks does
-Now, industry is less and less focused on filling pre-reserved space and more interested in assessing audience/$ potential for individual authors and works (so the midlevel is increasingly hard to publish)
-So all this really does change the advice around how to have a genre writer career--it's most important now to be a "brand", to be unique and memorable in some way, or at least to appeal to some specific niche taste
-Practical tip: deliver your book on time or even early, and you might be able to grab a mass-market slot that someone else blew
-Books are part of a bigger discourse in literature: the more you read, the more you read
-Every book is both an advertisement for itself and for the concept of books (and reading) in general
-Much more information "travels" with the book now--the art on the cover, the flap or back copy--all give immediate information about what kind of book it is so that the target niche is clear
-Covers are an advertisement for the book--they represent a feeling about what it will be like to read the book, not necessarily any specific scene or character
-Bookstores have categories in order to help readers more easily select what they like to read in a new book--it's a sorting process
-The core activity of publishing is to make public (not copyediting, not printing)
-Publishers really are a brand too
-Publishers are authenticators
-Writers are not just a specific kind of storytellers--we deal in the virtual reality of fiction narrative as a particular art form
-Follow your muse but also pay very close attention to what your readers want (the readers that really like your stuff, anyway)
Mind full to bursting of new perspectives, it was now time to decompress and take that one last chance to go see something of the Vineyard. Kim, Dorothy, Marta, Eric and I decided to go out to lunch (all the other days we'd just made sandwiches or frozen pizza in our townhouses), so we walked along the beach into the scenic little town of Oak Bluffs, yakking all the way. I hadn't had much contact with either Eric or Marta up until then (although Marta had been the other writer in the hot seat with me for Wednesday's group critique), and I'm so glad we had a little space to connect, because both turned out to be very cool people. It makes me sad, looking back on this weeks later, that I didn't find a way (where are those space/time continuum manipulators when you need them?) to hang out in more direct ways with each and every one of the VPXI people--because I know that under the surface of each of them was probably a person I'd really like.
In fact (tangent alert), I have to say that one of the most amazing aspects of VP, and one that is really hard to translate effectively into words, is the way in which hanging around these people felt like finally coming home to tribe. Not the tribe I've written about before, the real one based on both affinity and personal history, but the more abstract one based on cultural preferences, which I riffed on here when I first went to Comic-Con and encountered the biggest gathering of geek tribe I'd ever seen. (And Cory Doctorow did an amazing job riffing on the concept of affinity tribe based on time zone in his book Eastern Standard Tribe--go download it or buy it and read it!) But the particular tribe at VP was a specific subset of that larger geek tribe: the storytellers. (The bards, if you will.) I didn't quite realize what a specific subset of geek culture I was part of until I hung around these folks for a week. Writers, serious writers (and I am forced to conclude that everyone who comes to a workshop like VP is, indeed, miles above the slush pile even if in our darkest hours we feel like we too are slushy) are a particular species. We're the people who care about story of all kind, but especially like to play with the "virtual reality of literature" art form as Patrick mentioned above. And not only do we like to play with words and tell stories as well as read them, we like asking "what if" questions, and exploring our own human realities and relationships from the perspective of other worlds, other times and other beings. (Honestly, how can you not love genre fiction? But I digress.)
Based on others' reports of their experiences at VP that I'd read before I'd applied, one of the main reasons I wanted to go to VP (well, other than to get my predilection for overly long sentences and parenthetical asides shamed out of me by professionals) was to get some of the "tribe" experience, or at least make a few more writerly friends. But what I found really went beyond my expectations. We storyteller geeks, we *get* each other. We share the same cultural references, like other geeks (not having to mutter Star Wars or Lord of the Rings references half under my breath as a self-indulgent aside during normal conversation: priceless). But we also quite excitedly wanted to talk about worldbuilding and story structure and character development, and on the struggles of living a writer's life while trying to make money and raise children and deal with "mundanes". There was an immediate acceptance there, which I think is indicative of geeks in general, but was heightened by the fact that we all had the same "I want to get serious and improve my writing" goals in coming to VP. Finding this tribe was transformative for me, and I am frantically trying to rearrange my life so as not to lose track of/touch with them. (Hence the staying up late reading others' LJ's, instead of working on my own or doing the sensible thing and going to bed already so I can get up and write my own stuff the next morning.) I *will* read (and comment on!) others' blogs. I *will* go to cons and try to meet up with people. I *will* try to keep up email correspondence. I will *not*, in the famous words of Toad the Wet Sprocket, take these things for granted.
All right, there was so much tangent there and there is still so much to tell about Friday's experiences, I think I'll end this entry here. (Besides I'm way late to go wake up the kids and get the morning routine rolling. Yikes!)
(The time between Travelogue parts is increasing, and the amount of detail is decreasing, the farther away I get from VP. It's been a bit over 2 weeks now and already the vividness--and the "dammitall" urge to steal sleep time away to write about it--is leaking away from me. Things are getting harder to remember, so I’m now entering the somewhat looser-with-the-truth realm of "memoir" rather than "journal". Argh. Must…finish….)
Thursday and its early morning group critique dawned far, far too soon for writers having gone to bed at nearly 3am the night before. Luckily, there was precedent (so my body didn't expect anything remotely resembling a full night's sleep). And there was coffee. I'd brought my own beloved Kauai Peaberry from home, and despite the absurdly tiny cups provided in the townhouse's kitchen that I was forced to drink it in, it made me oh so happy in the mornings.
Thursday's group critique was led by Cory Doctorow and Laura Mixon (this was the first time I'd really interacted much with Laura, and I was impressed by her quiet insight). Coffee plus the general boost of being a morning person got me through the critique, but either due to the sleep deprivation or to the fact that Thursday's writer in the hot seat was really quite talented, I didn't write down any particular notes from that critique.
After the group critique there was no rest for the wicked (or at least, the procrastinatory) and we all trooped over to the main room for the next set of lectures. Up today were Cory Doctorow and Steven Gould. I didn't write down the titles of either of their lectures. (Anyone else? Help!) Despite my layer of cottony exhaustion, both lectures were compelling and interesting and forced me to pay attention. Unfortunately, I didn't take nearly as many notes, so I refer you (and my future self) to Yeff's summary on his LJ for additional details. Below are some of the bits I did write down though.
Cory lectured on writing attitude/habits, composition and plotting, and being a 21st century writer. He's a high-energy (and highly interesting) person when he talks anyway, but he pours an extra jolt of voltage on when he's presenting to a group, so his lecture was not only incredibly helpful (like all the rest of the instructor lectures), but also incredibly entertaining. Some gems (those not reading these posts for the writing advice might want to skip this part, it gets kind of long):
Writing Attitude:
-Write with as little ceremony as possible. "Heroic" writing (pushing out work in giant chunks) makes everything harder--like climbing Mount Everest as opposed to going on your morning walk
-Rituals before writing (e.g. cleaning the desk, choosing the right music) accrete over time and make it harder to just get going and write
-Heroic, ceremonial writing makes for an unhappy writer
-Writing 20 minutes/1 page a day with no fuss and no drama is enough to get you roughly a novel a year
-Watch out for the "centipede's dilemma" ("How do you walk with all those legs?" "Gee, I never thought about it….CLUNK")--once you start closely examining your process, you might get stuck
-cheap writer tricks:
*add one sensory detail per page
*write on your books (the ones you read)--don't treat the pages as sacred, be an active reader, have a conversation with yourself while you read
*end your page a day with an unfinished sentence, so you can jump right in the next day (take advantage of built in momentum)
*blogging is a way to assemble pieces of the puzzle that you are trying to put together--keep assembling things that seem interesting or "backlit" to you, and put them in quick blog-bit form. Someday they will all start to click together in ways you never anticipated and may even self-assemble into the story
*initial pages are often "throat clearing" and can be cut (boy am I guilty of this)
*sometimes writers "overshoot" their endings--take the last sentence (or page!) off your story and see if it still works
Composition and plotting:
-Cory talked about his experience at Clarion (where he's now an instructor also), and how they were taught Algis Budrys' 7-point plot outline:
*person
*place
*problem (in an appropriate scale to start the story)
*characters try to solve the problem intelligently
*and fail
*and things get worse
*repeat until climax, then wrap it all up in the denouement (the shiny red bow on the package)
-This type of 7 point plot is an engine on a freight train, pulling the readers through the story--you can put whatever you want in the freight cars, but the engine drives the story and the readers want to go along.
-The 7-point plot is so ingrained in storytelling, it's "like a hack on our neurology"
-"We don't empathize with settings"
-When in doubt, figure out what you can do to make things worse for your characters
-When you're flailing around for the ending, go back to what you've already written and look to see if you've already given yourself some clues early on
-Nancy Kress says "a story is a transformation machine"--ask yourself, who changes the most in this story?
-Some great books for writers looking for info on how people work (or don't) how people can screw up social situations and how people can misinterpret each other: "Getting Things Done", "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and "The Feeling Good Handbook"
-"If you are going to use a cliché, use it with confidence and verve and move on quickly"
-Resist internet research--write "TK" and move on
-Download the US Census of names to use as a reference
Being a 21st Century Writer:
-With Creative Commons licenses you can pick the levels/options you want (e.g. commercial vs. non-commercial, remix OK or not OK, etc)
-Tim O'Reilly says in "Pirates Use Progressive Taxation" that most authors'/artists' problem is not piracy, it's obscurity
-A writer's concern should NOT be "how do we ensure that everyone who reads it pays for it" but "how do we make more money for it?"
-Screen time is really distracting for us as humans, which is why sometimes a simple interface (like a book) is better
-"It's not ever going to get any harder to copy stuff than it is right now"
-"Copyright protection" just winds up screwing up the social contract--it makes us all into criminals and makes us care less for the rule of law
-Telling stories and sharing information is an inherently anti-authoritarian act
-"The reason why authors are poorly compensated is because we lack leverage"
-Podcasting is an incredible way to get people to feel like you (the author/reader) are their buddy--it gives a certain level of intimacy
Steve Gould's lecture on "The Writer's Life" was so generally commonsensical and reasonable that I wound up mostly nodding along instead of writing down notes (and no, I don't think the sleep deprivation had anything to do with it). Here are the few little bits I *did* write down:
-"Control what you can control and don't worry about the rest" (words to live by)
-"Ubiquitous capture"--make sure you always have a way to capture an idea, because ideas come everywhere at every time
-Try an "idea jar" or "ideal drawer"--jot down ideas on slips of paper, put them in a jar or drawer and pull one (or several) out when you need it (this is similar to Cory's blog of interesting bits idea)
-"Rejectomancy"--the obsessive scholarship around rejection letters which tries to imbue meaning into things that have no meaning
-NEVER respond to bad reviews (and don't send thank you notes for good reviews)
-Don't drive yourself crazy with comparisons to other authors
-"Don't Be A Jerk"--not to anyone. The relationship between creators and fans is very close in the F/SF community, and it's a small community to begin with.
After lectures it was time for lunch, and instead of listening to Steve Gould's optional lecture "Adventures in Hollyweird" (where he talked about his experience with his book Jumper that's been turned into a big Hollywood movie only faintly similar to the original) I tried to squeeze out a little more homework writing before it was time to go share what we'd written. Unfortunately I was so generally muddled and befuddled by then that after a few minutes of trying, I just gave up and went over to the staff room to print what I'd managed to get done. Then it was back to the common room, where we broke down into small groups and shared what we'd written, and eventually came back together as a big group where each instructor gave an elevator pitch for what had been written by the students in their group. We taped our stories up to the walls, where they remained for perusal for the next couple days.
As for what I wrote--well, I'm not going to share the story online (because it does contain some pretty foul language), but if anyone truly is dying to read it, I'm happy to email it to you. Let me just say this about what I was trying to work with though: My story was supposed to be a fantasy with no magic or elves, "action with a noir feel" set in the 1950's somewhere other than the USA. My "person", "place" and "problem" were "bastard professor", "flying convenience store" and "hole in head", respectively. My toys that I had to work in were a pterodactyl foam glider and a "puny plane". My character that was someone whom I did not like/agree with, but had to paint as a sympathetic character turned out to be the main character, and he was a racist, sexist, foul-mouthed military pilot who loved flying with fierce intensity and eventually wound up Doing The Right Thing. I had a lot of fun writing it (not least because of the chance to do some really creative cursing and then read it out loud to people), and it certainly felt good to stretch and play a little with something that was just so out of my usual writing style and setting. I don't know as I'll ever finish it (well, at least not any time soon), but I'm glad I did it.
After the presentation of homework assignments, it was time for a well-deserved celebration, which took the form of some truly delicious pizza for dinner and the infamous "Beer With Billy" (reading a Shakespeare play while drinking). The play this year was Richard III, which is one I've never read or seen. I got the part of Queen Elizabeth (mostly because I wasn't paying attention to how big or small the parts were and just went for one that made the ex-Ren Faire geek in me go "oooo"). Unfortunately it was kind of a small and boring part overall, though it's always fun to read Shakespeare out loud. And by the time we got to the ending of the play, we were all tipsy and/or punchy enough to find unintentional double entendres hilarious (like stage directions that said "Enter [character name]" or "coming into tent"). There was a point where Cory started saying "ow" every time Jim read a stage direction that said "Enter [character name]" and then the rest of the group picked it up and ran with it for the rest of the play, getting sillier and sillier. I took a quick break during the fun to go call home for kid bedtime, so apparently I missed the most hilarious bits, but you can get Yeff's much better description of the whole thing here.
Eventually the tent and the word "ow" became VPXI's unofficial logo and tagline. (Pam even made a nifty LJ icon for VPXI based on this--and I'm hoping for t-shirts at some point. Viva the obscure in-joke!)
We were all pretty exhausted after all that hilarity (and I was only operating on 3ish hours of sleep anyway) so it was off to bed at that point.
With only one more official day to go in the workshop, will our Heroine ever get a chance to actually see anything on the island besides jellyfish, a seafood shack and a lovely pebbly beach? Will she have any final amazing experiences with overwhelmingly brilliant instructors? Why yes, she will…details next time.
(This is all being posted far more slowly than I wanted, and is disrupting the normal flow of writing, both on Parentheticals and on the novel. But I feel like it's important to get this all down in detail, for posterity. I want to be able to come back and read this myself, when the slogging gets tough and the tough just want a cookie and a pat on the head.)
Wednesday morning, the halfway point of the workshop, began like all the others at the ridiculously chirpy hour of 8am. This morning's group critique, which was led by Steve Gould and Debra Doyle, had me in the hot seat. Luckily, having been brillo'd by professionals over the previous two days, I was feeling much humbler and less attached. And actually there were some incredibly helpful things said. I won't go into all the specific details, but two overarching things stood out:
Most everyone agreed that in these opening chapters there was too much exposition and not enough tension--they wanted more action, less back story. It finally became clear to me that the real problem with these opening chapters is that, well, I wrote them first. And when I first started writing I was feeling my way through the characters and the world, so that's what I wrote down, in that overly detailed "let me explain" kind of writing. But given the observations of previous lectures and collegiums, what I now know is that I only need to provide details as the reader needs them, and not overdo it on the worldbuilding expositon. I need to subscribe to the "iceberg principle" and have most of the worldbuilding below the surface of the story, with only a few things showing above the surface, just enough for the reader to sense the larger and more complex world beneath. A few details, carefully chosen, and the rest in my head or in my notes, not in the story. ("Three points define a plane; three details--as long as they’re the right ones--define a room.") And if I need more exposition, I can always sugarcoat it with lots of action and tension to make it go down the reader's throat more easily.
I also need to be clearer up front about character goals and the ways they conflict, and about what makes this particular prophecy story different from all other prophecy stories. *I* know that one of my main themes is "things are not always as they seem", but a reader sure isn't able to tell that from these first few chapters. I need to bring that right up front. This dovetails with both Teresa's and Bear's comments that I need to find that uniqueness, that hook, and make it obvious right from the start. ("This ain't yo momma's prophecy story…!")
I emerged from the group critique (mostly) inspired and feeling like I wanted to jump right into writing (or rewriting, as the case may be), but instead it was time for another lecture. This time there was only one lecture instead of two, and up today was Laura Mixon.
I'm sad I never really got any critique time with Laura. She wasn't in any of the group critiques I had, and I never did get up the gumption to ask her for a non-scheduled one-on-one. Luckily I did get a brief fangirl moment with her later in the day, and I spent some really great social time with her Friday night, but more on that later.
Laura's lecture was on "The Care And Feeding of Your Beast", i.e. your inner writer, your muse, that deep place from which true story flows. I've written obliquely on this topic before, but Laura's take on it was really interesting. I think I took more notes during Laura's lecture than most others, and since I find it hard to edit the notes down, here are more than just a few nuggets:
-As a writer you are striking a balance between your analytical higher brain (your inner editor) and your non-verbal--and even sometimes non-mammalian--brain (your beast). What you write speaks to the reader's two brains as well. Stories must satisfy on both levels.
-Technique and craft are only the first level, the analytical level--and thus important but not sufficient.
-There needs to be an inner collaboration between the inner editor and the beast. The beast has no voice without the editor.
-You cannot control or command your beast, but you can listen to it and figure out what it is interested in. Too much info from the beast can always be pruned and shaped by the editor once it's out.
-In dry times, doing some other kind of non-verbal creativity (e.g. painting!) helps bring the beast back into communication
-Speaking things out loud literally helps us get in touch with our beasts (more so than just thinking about things), because auditory processing goes back to the earlier, more primitive brain. Music and pacing around the room help too, for the same reason.
-Routine can be your friend (Butt In Chair time!) and help you train the beast to show up on cue.
-Play 20 questions with your beast: ask it simple, declarative yes or no questions about a character or plot point.
-Each scene should either advance plot, illuminate character, provide sensory detail, or elucidate the theme (of course you can do several or all of these in a scene as well for maximum efficiency).
-Don't underestimate the power of a single, clean idea.
-Keep momentum going--finishing is important. Give yourself permission to write crap. Don't look down, just keep going.
-FINISH THE BOOK before revising. Avoid epicyclic revisions.
-There are four stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Those of us at VP generally leave somewhere between stages 2 and 3.
(I forgot to say this before but during Tuesday's collegium, one of the things that was said during a discussion of slush and how terrible most of it was, was that all of us at VP were among the top "6-8%" of the slush pile, a statement that nicely warmed the heart cockles of those of us hearing it--at least those of us who were not so neurotic as to immediately reject the praise out of hand as mere instructorly kiss-up to the paying students. And no, I'm not that cynical.)
After Laura's lecture there was another slot for one-on-one sessions, but I didn't have one. So it was free time for me until our group trip to The Bite in Menemsha for a late lunch. I tried to get started on my homework story, but mostly noodled around without too much success and wound up socializing with my roomies instead (I kept telling myself that socializing and bonding with my fellow writers was as important a professional activity as practicing more writer tricks). Then it was time to put on our new green VPXI t-shirts (which we'd been given the night before), pile into cars and head out to The Bite, a little seafood shack that supposedly had the best fried seafood on the island. You don't have to tell me twice to go eat delicious fried food! (The instructors had told us gravely how expensive lunch was going to be, and emphasized that we didn't have to go if we didn't want to--but "expensive" turned out to be roughly $10 lunches, which we Californians sneered at.)
Dorothy, Kim and I went with the downstairs boys (Mark and Yeff) in Yeff's car, and had a fun drive all around the Island to Menemsha. Right up front the boys decided not to follow everyone else, caravan style, but rather to chart our own, supposedly quicker course to Menemsha by following the map. Much to our delight we found that a car full of instructors, driven by Steve Gould, was following us, so we felt vindicated in our adventurousness. Hilarity briefly ensued when at one point Steve took a turn we didn't, and we pulled over in a panic to consult the map, wondering if we'd misread it. Just as we got back on the road, though, having assured ourselves that we were indeed still heading in the right direction, Steve's car flashed past us and we wound up following him the rest of the way.
Other than my drive from the airport to the Island Inn, and our brief jellyfish walk the night before, this was really the first time I'd seen much of the island, and it was, not surprisingly, beautiful. Much of the drive was more woodsy than beachy, with lots of undergrowth amongst the thin-trunked trees, and gorgeous hand-laid stone walls along the sides of the road. (I regret not having taken more pictures of those walls--they fascinate me in their intricate, mortar-less construction.) The leaves, sadly, were barely beginning to turn--I had expected much more color, but the season was starting later than usual this year, apparently. Still, it was lovely, and completely unlike tawny brown California (or any place else I've ever been, actually).
The Bite, when we got there, truly was a little seafood shack on the edge of a road leading up to a beach. Apparently it was a touristy beach, because there were lots of little gift stores and restaurants scattered along the road nearby. They had a little tripod and telescope out front with a hand-lettered cardboard sign taped to it that said "Welcome Martha's Vineyard Science Fiction Association 2007". There were also a little cardboard cut out of an alien and a flying saucer on top of the sign. Very cute. So all of us in our matching green t-shirts stood in line to order our fried scallops, shrimp, clams, popcorn chicken, or what have you.
But as I got close enough to read the menu, written in chalk on a rectangular black board leaning casually against the side of the shack, something indescribably exciting caught my eye: Quahog chowder. That's right! My distracted brain had forgotten that I was on the East Coast, home of my absolute favorite kind of soup (and one of my favorite food items period--I could wax rhapsodic about clam chowder and how I love it but I am already overwhelming this story with detail, so I will refrain for now). So much as I would have been happy with any of the plethora of excellent fried food choices, for me there was now only one clear course of action: eat clam chowder. Lots of clam chowder. They had three sizes: cup, pint and quart. I briefly considered ordering a pint and also getting some fried scallops, but then the, ahem, beast side of my brain said "hell no! All clam chowder, all the time!" So I ordered a quart. The man who gave it to me asked, "do you want some extra cups with that?" He was assuming, I think, that the quart was meant to be shared amongst several people. I told him no, but he asked me again--I guess he found it hard to believe that someone would want to eat the whole thing by themselves. But I did, oh how I did. (After all, in my family we joke that our motto is "too much is just enough".)
And faithful readers, let me just say this: it was extraordinary clam chowder. Creamy, rich broth, perfectly cooked potatoes, tender toothsome clams. Oh so delicious. But as I sat on the blue painted picnic table out front with my fellow writers, I began to be mocked for the very ambitiousness of ordering a quart of clam chowder for lunch. Never one to shy from a challenge, I (somewhat stupidly) announced that I had every intention of eating the whole damn quart, right there and then. No, I would not take the leftovers back to my room. The heckling turned challenging: dares were made, and bets were placed.
Of course I finished it. (Sometimes dares *do* really work on me.)
I was really really full though, so after collecting my money (I made $6, nearly enough to pay for the chowder) I decided to go for a digestive stroll down to the beach. Mark came with me, and we had a nice stroll and chat and rock-finding expedition until our car-mates came to find us so we could head back. On the way back to the car though, we passed a little gifty shack that looked fun, and did a brief detour through. I found a little metal frog statue that appealed to me, and which cost almost exactly the amount of my chowder winnings, so I bought it--both to remind me of that day and to be a sort of writing totem for my desk (frogs being a sign of fertility and creativity in the Zuni culture whose fetishes I casually collect). Then we piled into the car and headed back to the Inn, with brief stops to indulge me in photo-taking, and a stop at the grocery store and the "Package Store" (liquor store) for food and party supplies.
Once we got back to the Inn, there wasn't much time before dinner, but I dutifully tried to do some homework. Dinner was leftovers (and go figure, I wasn't all that hungry so that was fine) and then after dinner, people hung around avoiding their homework and chatting. I decided to do some procrastination of my own and started surveying people about their favorite outrageous curse words (my main character was turning out to be a nasty, foul-mouthed Air Force pilot, and I needed some good swearing samples). Jim MacDonald, with his military background, was incredibly helpful, but the other instructors as well as my fellow students proved to be no slouches at the art of cursing either. I certainly got over any lingering embarrassment or prudishness after the first few examples--I just told myself I was an anthropologist gathering data. (I did wind up incorporating a lot of the suggestions into my story, though--thanks everyone, I couldn't have done it without you!)
Eventually it was time to stop procrastinating and go do the writing. Dorothy was happily reading her book (since her attitude on homework assignments at VP was "make me"), but Kim and Mark and Jeff and I sat around writing and reading bits to each other from time to time. It was some of the most companionable writing I've ever done--we were all certainly focused on our own writing, but also gave encouragement and on-the-spot suggestions to each other as we went. A definite change of pace from the usual writerly solitude, and extroverted me enjoyed it.
We were getting kind of tired around 11:30 or midnight, when suddenly there was a commotion in the hallway. A somewhat tipsy Bear was gathering up all us homework-blurred writers and telling us to come down the common room for a special reading: The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr. Earbrass Writes A Novel, by Edward Gorey ("the only TRUE depiction of the literary life"). It was hilarious. It was true. It was Elizabeth Bear at her dramatic best. Lessons to live by. Then after that welcome break it was back to writing.
Eventually, it got to be around 2:30am, and only Yeff and I were left in the living room of Room 50, and I just couldn't cudgel any more prose out of my brain (no matter how foul mouthed). So I gave up on the idea of actually finishing the story, and finally went to bed.
Stay tuned for the next installment, in which homework is turned in, more mindblowing lectures are absorbed, additional incredible writerly conversation is indulged in, and Richard III rocks the house.
Tuesday morning started out the same way that Monday had, with a small group critique. Tuesday's was led by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden and Debra Doyle, and despite a mild hangover, once again I enjoyed it greatly (probably because I was not the writer on the hot seat). People really did give thoughtful, respectful comments, and it was such a pleasure being part of discussions about the craft of writing at such a high level. Interestingly, I found that I gained a far deeper appreciation of each of the stories (and each of the authors) after the critique. As a reader, I'm often impatient, and swallow big chunks of text at a time--so something either grabs me and pulls me in/through, or I get frustrated and put it down. But when forced to go slowly and consider the author's use of technique and craft to accomplish (or not) story flow, when I read with an eye towards the mechanics of every sentence and paragraph and the overarching questions of plot and character development, I have a lot more empathy for what the author was trying to do and therefore a better understanding of the story as a whole.
Anyway here are a few precious bits excavated from Tuesday morning's group critique (I didn't write down attributions, unfortunately, but chances are good that these are attributable either to Doyle or TNH):
"Whining and smirking are good ways to get a character killed--they make a character unsympathetic."
"The story starts when something irrevocable happens."
"Threshold crossings are points of great interest in fantasy, and are great opportunities for exposition."
"Two things never addressed enough in fantasy settings are heating and light sources."
After group critique we all trooped back to the main meeting room for that day's lectures by Doyle and Bear (for some reason both these instructors seemed to always be referred to by last name). Debra's lecture was on "This Sentence Goes Clunk, and Other Problems", which talked about, among other things, style and prose structure. A few selected points worth enshrining here:
-Know what your own style strengths are: know and refine your natural "voice". (TNH added: "Style is what you can't help doing")
-More details slow down the pace, fewer details speed it up.
-Paragraph and sentence structure affect pace as well (e.g. longer sentences with multiple connected clauses will slow a reader down)
-Cutting non-essential words will help gain momentum
-Know your habit words/phrases and make sure to change or excise them on the second draft
-Words contain within them buried history and buried text, so be careful in their use in a F/SF setting (e.g. "galvanized")
-Words have denotations and connotations; worldbuilding happens largely on connotations
Bear's lecture encompassed quite a bit of useful information--I'm not sure I could summarize what it was "all about" but again, here is a small selection of excellent advice on craft, both from Bear and from the comments of other instructors:
-Conflict is the engine that drives your plot; conflict can be internal (one person who wants two different things, often a difference between what a character wants and needs) or external (two people who want two different things, two people who want the same thing).
-Opposition and conflict can be moral/ethical; readers want characters to make moral decisions
-When a character wants something, and tries different ways to get it, the reader starts to root for that character
-Law of conservation of characters: use as few characters as you can to accomplish the acxtion
-"You have to keep tossing the reader cookies to get them to follow you off the cliff"
-The insistence on plots being original is a modern aberration (besides, don't worry, when you steal something you won't get it quite right anyway)
After lectures, it was lunchtime. On this day during lunch, Cory Doctorow (another individual for whom I have a minor case of hero worship after reading BoingBoing all these years) was giving a short talk on Blogging. Wild horses couldn't have drawn me away from that talk (not that there were any horses that I saw on the island, nor would they, being wild, have been very interested in coming down to the meeting room of the Island Inn, nor would they be able to drag anyone anywhere with just their teeth anyway…but I digress). Other than the very interesting history of BoingBoing itself, I didn't learn anything particularly new, but there were still a few points worth setting down here for posterity and as a reminder for myself when and if I ever get serious about blogging for a wider audience:
-Blog headlines are very important to pay attention to. They should be short, lucid, informative chunks that tell a reader instantly what the post is about and allow them to make a judgement as to whether or not they'd want to read your post (because most people will be looking at your posts on an RSS feed).
-Leads (the first sentence or so of your post) are crucial too, for the same reason
-Post frequently, but not too much
-We are in a historical moment that favors interaction with an audience, and that's why blogs work
After lunch, there was a collegium. Topics ranged from "dialogue" to "outlines and synopses" to "agents". It was getting hard to pay attention after so many hours of sitting in an underground room on uncomfortable chairs, but damn them if the instructors (and occasionally, the students) didn't keep saying fascinating and helpful things. Again, a small selection drawn from the smorgasbord of writerly advice:
-Idioms and levels of diction are a great way to indicate cultural background(s) of your characters
-If you take away the signifiers ("Joe said") from your dialogue, you should still be able to tell who's speaking
-Dialogue is an artificial convention--what it reads like is different than how it actually sounds
-Create a clean outline of a character with just enough clutter to make them believable (real humans are way too messy in real life)
-Don't over-describe--readers are really good at filling in details
-Character emotions are more effective when you show, not tell
-A synopsis is just an aerial snapshot of the book, that gives the reader a preview of what it will feel like to read the book, not the actual plot of the book
-A synopsis should NOT be marketing copy (or review copy)
-One way to write a synopsis: imagine you are writing an enthusiastic letter to a friend about why they should read this book--you can even zoom in and tell a couple of the really great bits, like you would tell a friend about a great movie they'll never see
-Less is more in a cover letter--only include details if they might help sell/market the book
-Do not include a giant catalog of sales to unimpressive markets (just a few selections is better)
-The number of really good agents is around a dozen or so specialists in F/SF, and about that many more non-specialists
-Most real/good agents will provide a client list
-Yog's Law: money flows toward the writer (not the agent or the publisher)
After collegium, there was a block of empty time before I had my next one-on-one. Did I spend it writing my homework assignment? Or even doing my critiques for the next day? I did not. I spent it chatting with my roomies and napping. And by God, I had a better attitude when I awoke. Imagine that.
Perhaps because of the better attitude (or perhaps because, having already been brillo'd, the new skin that had grown back was tougher and more flexible), I had a great one-one-one session with Elizabeth Bear. She was friendly and very entertaining to talk to, but also zeroed in on all the right issues and called me on them without beating around the bush. By the end of the session I'd gained even yet more respect for her craft savvy and found her a kindred soul, especially in her sense of humor.
Bear had lots of comments and gave me lots of homework: watch "The Usual Suspects" at least twice, read Guy Gavriel Kay's "Summer Tree" series (which in a stunning coincidence, I just had), Scott Lynch's "Lies of Lock Lamora" and Diana Wynne Jones' "Rough Guide to Fantasyland". She too wanted me to be less generic and find that style or subject twist that made me unique. ("Just looking at you, you clearly have flair and personal style," she said, "you ought to be able to put that into your work.") She too felt that my main characters were coming off as too perfect early on, and we talked about introducing their flaws sooner. She too noted that my infodumps were problematic, and in the case of the Whisper origin story, unnecessary. She pointed out that my characters needed to be more grounded in their physicality--the reader needs to know how things smell, sound, and feel to them, not just be given visual, cinematic information. She encouraged me to go to primary sources to get a good feel for things like politics (this was why Teresa had recommended Alan Clarke's diaries) and historically appropriate tech.
After the one-on-one, it was time for dinner in the main room, which I attended in a far happier space than the night before. I don't think I've said this yet, but the food they served us at VP was actually quite good--the staff there cooked a wide variety of creative and yummy things for us, not an easy feat considering they were cooking for approximately 40 people every time. After dinner it was time for our class field trip to the beach to go look at the jellyfish. Other people's accounts of VP had included many effusive descriptions of how great the luminescent jellyfish were, so there was no way I was going to miss out on this by staying in my townhouse and doing my homework. (As my roommate Dorothy "Doc" Winsor started saying about the homework assignment: "Make me!")
The jellyfish were awesome. I admit that I hadn't really known what to expect, even after reading other people's accounts. I've seen regular jellyfish, and I've seen some amazing luminescent jellyfish exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and in Hawaii, but this was in situ, not a result of clever black lighting. Most spectacular was the view from a bridge where we could stand and look down on the action. As the current flowed under the bridge, you could see several dozen greenish clouds of light the size of dessert plates blossoming in the water for a second or two, moving with the current and then fading away. Some light clouds were brighter than others, possibly because of the depth of the jelly in the water, possibly because of the particular type of jelly. Everything was very quiet, too, except for the exclamations (and explanations) of delighted writers. At one point I went down underneath the bridge with a couple other students and watched the jellies flow by from that view. It was there that Pam also discovered that running your hand through the water created a faint luminescence as well.
Truly it was a beautiful, alien sight that now can only be inadequately described in words. I wish I'd been able to record the experience somehow so I could show it to my family, but in the dark, there was no way a regular camera or video camera would be able to capture it. So it will just have to live in my memory.
I do believe that post-jellyfish there might have been some sort of attempt to work on critiques and homework assignments, but the rest of that night has vanished into memory along with the jellyfish, wavering slowly through the dark.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of overly detailed, self-focused travelogue, in which our Heroine finally becomes the writer in the hot seat and even does some new writing!
Well, clearly I tried to wrap up Part 2 too quickly before bedtime, because in figuring out the timeline again I realized that Monday night I did NOT go to bed on time, because after dinner and weepy brillo session, my roomies and I went down to Jeff and Mark's room for a Heroes-watching party. I don't watch Heroes, but I didn't want to miss out on the socializing, so I sat in a different part of the room next to the snacks and did my critiques for the next morning while chatting with Dorothy and other folks. After Heroes was over, Mark, Jeff, Dorothy, Kim and possibly some other folks I'm forgetting sat around for awhile after Heroes was over, laughing about the Evil Overlord plot concepts and riffing on possibilities for the story idea I was building for my homework assignment (professor with hole in his head investigates cargo cult on Polynesian island in the 1950s looking for powerful artifact). Socializing soothes the extrovert soul, so the combination of interesting people and wine made me feel much cheerier by the end of the evening.
Part 3 to come soon…and hopefully I will put up pictures in the next couple days too. Note that I am canny enough (and self-knowledgeable enough) not to promise anything more specific than that.
(Yes, I'm fully aware that spending my tiny half hour a day of BIC time blogging is also a clever way of avoiding the novel writing, but I am not quite ready to face the novel again yet. Soooooon.)
Monday, the first official day of the workshop opened with a small group critique at 8am. Luckily my roomies had bought some coffee and I had a breakfast bar with me in my computer bag, so even with having to skip toothbrushing and wear the same underwear again, I was ok. Monday's small group critique was led by Elizabeth Bear and Cory Doctorow, both of whom proved to be wildly insightful as well as kind in their critique comments (though, not being the writer in the hot seat that morning, perhaps kind was in the eye of the beholder). The stories we were critiquing were good, and the discussion around their strengths and weaknesses was civilized and helpful at a high level (none of this "you spelled this wrong/you need a comma here" kind of line edits.) A few great bits of general advice I wrote down:
"The reader asking questions is what pulls them forward through the story." (EB)
"Exposition is deadly to narrative pull." (CD)
"If things get worse for your characters, the reader will turn the page." (CD)
After the small group critique it was time to head down to the big meeting room for the lecture period of the day. First up was Jim MacDonald on plotting, followed by Teresa Nielsen Hayden on expository writing and world-building. So much here was helpful and interesting, and I took lots of notes (not as many as some of my smarter/more industrious classmates, who brought their laptops and tippy-tapped away during the lecture far faster than I could write--hey, any of you out there reading this want to send me some Word files of your lecture notes? Pretty please?) Here are a few paraphrased gems for posterity (those of you only interested in the travelogue can skip this section):
"Plotting is like a chess game. Before there is action, there is nothing. Get the pieces moving towards the center of the action. Don't distract from the center of the action by moving pieces around on the edges." (JMD)
"Early on, put interesting characters in interesting situations, and plot will take care of itself." (JMD)
"Make your characters umcomfortable and they will want/have to move. That will move the story forward." (JMD)
"Make it matter soon." (JMD)
"Never tell the reader something before they want to know about it. Avoid expository lumps." (TNH)
"If your audience is critiquing the scenery, your train is not moving fast enough." (TNH)
"Any possibilities you don't close off, you are requiring the reader to keep carrying forward in the story. As you go along, this load of possibilities can become too big a burden and frustrate the reader." (TNH)
"Law of Conservation of Weirdness: the reader can only handle so much weirdness at once--so don't throw complex action, new settings, weird names, big plot twists, etc at the reader all at once." (TNH)
"Cultivate people with areas of specialized expertise (guns, horses, botany) to be your beta readers so they can help you get your details right. When in doubt, use 'modified.'" (TNH)
"Times when things break or change, or when people disagree, are great times for exposition." (TNH)
"Don’t explain why something works--it only gives the reader a chance to argue with you." (TNH)
After the lectures, it was time for lunch, which my roomies kindly shared with me since I hadn't been to the grocery store yet to buy any supplies. After lunch was a collegium (a less formal discussion of writing-related topics), but all I remember about this particular one was that we got a whole pile of writing assignments from the instructors:
-write an opening sentence which included a person, place and problem picked from piles of randomly generated ones
-either write a climactic scene from a subgenre we normally disliked (e.g. military SF) or write a scene from the point of view of someone whom we did not like/agree with, but making them a sympathetic character
-write a 5000-9000 word story for a hypothetical anthology called "SET", in which the editor (who likes your "action stories with a noir feel") wants a fantasy story with no magic or elves, set in the 1950's somewhere other than the USA. Also, the first night of VP we were each given a bag with cheap novelty toys in it, and these had to be worked into the story (mine were a pterodactyl foam glider and a "puny plane")
-pick 3-6 entries from Murphy's Laws of Combat and The Evil Overlord Devises A Plot lists and work them into an existing story, a new one, or the SET one
-write a variety of versions of grammatically correct sentences in simple, complex and other forms
After the collegium it was time for individual one-on-one critique sessions with an instructor. Mine wasn't until late in the afternoon, so I took the opportunity to finish my manuscript critiques for the next day and do a quick run to the grocery store with my roomies, courtesy of our downstairs neighbor Jeff who had a car. My suitcase had also arrived by mid-afternoon (hooray!) so I was able to unpack, change my underwear and brush my teeth (thank goodness for small favors). All these were good distractions from my growing nervousness over my impending one-on-one session, which was with Teresa Nielsen-Hayden (an individual for whom I have had a minor case of heroine worship over the last several years of reading Making Light). But I was feeling pretty good about the first three chapters of my novel I'd submitted, and looking forward to some private conversation with someone whose opinion I greatly respect.
Looking back on that conversation now, from a week's distance, my first reaction is still to wince and draw back from the things that were said, to shield my tender writerly ego by just not thinking too hard and long about it. But what Teresa had to say was ultimately not only correct but incredibly helpful, once I got past the "ow" and into the "oh". I'm trying to stay in that "oh" stage now.
She started out by telling me that what I'd written was completely "center of the groove" straightforward traditional fantasy and that in her opinion (and given that she and her husband Patrick have decades as acquiring editors for Tor Books, and know the F/SF field deeply and personally, you have to respect her authoritah) there really wasn't much of a market for conventional fantasy stories any more. Not that people wouldn't read conventional fantasy, but that there were already plenty of people writing it (Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin came up several times). Teresa pushed me to think about what it was that differentiated my story, what my unique and memorable "hook" was, either in style or subject. We got into a discussion of what the trends in fantasy publishing might be, but even with Patrick's help (he wandered in while we were talking, since our meeting was in the living room of their townhouse) there seemed to be no consensus as to what type of fantasy was currently being acquired or what was likely to appeal in the future.
Then there were a variety of specific edits on the first two chapters (we never really made it to chapter 3), all of which were very sensible and illuminating. My main character was coming off as too perfect (apparently there's a name for this syndrome that comes from fanfic critical theory: Mary Sue-ism). My authority figures were one-dimensional (the cure for this is apparently to read Alan Clark's diaries). I needed to rename the Scythians since there was a real historical group already named that. The one compliment I got was one I shall hug to myself for the rest of time: she liked the scene where my high priestess character is praying after a big stressful meeting. I like that scene too, for a variety of reasons. I've had compliments on it before from other reviewers, but if Teresa liked it, it's a whole 'nother level.
So after my talk with Teresa, it was time for dinner. I wandered down to the big meeting room in somewhat of a state of shock. I could feel storm clouds of negative emotions begin to gather in my gut, but I didn't want to let them out before I got a chance to examine them in private. So I ate dinner and chatted a bit with my fellow students until the pressure of the storm clouds became a restlessness, and I got up and walked out.
I walked through the parking lot of the Inn towards the road into town, trying to take deep breaths and talk myself out of having a childish "everybody hates me/I suck" reaction. I stopped at the end of the parking lot where there happened to be a view of the spectacular sunset going on, sat on the fence that edged the lot, and burst into tears. Fountains of tears. Oh, how I felt sorry for myself. I'd spent all these years and all this work on something that would never be published. My heroine Teresa had completely failed to pat me on the head and tell me what a good little writer I was, like all my teachers used to in school. Clearly I would have to start over, or maybe just give up on writing completely and go back to painting. Or nothing.
Admittedly, sleep deprivation and PMS may have contributed to this breakdown, but we'd also been warned the first night that we might each of us experience this sort of self-loathing and despair at some point during the week, and that it was completely normal. I got mine out of the way that first day, and the rest of the week was easier for it. I had enough time for the real lessons to sink in, and the defensiveness to ease, so I could hear everything else that was said to/about me. Trial by fire: it really does work!
After I could finally compose myself, I headed back to my room. My lovely roomies could tell something was wrong, and asked me what was up, and I told them little bits but tried not to break down into a big drama-queen "poor me" session. We had an interesting discussion on the topic of "is there a market for conventional fantasy", which left me feeling somewhat better--in a stunning coincidence, both Kim and Dorothy are fantasy novelists too, and both like (and read) conventional fantasy too. As I recall, the rest of that night was spent doing critiques and going to bed relatively on time. (One of the few times I did.)
Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment in which our Heroine makes it through yet another one-on-one instructor critique, and emerges with a renewed sense of purpose!
Since I seem to still have a few stray neurons willing to fire up when asked, I thought I'd record the full, excessively detailed, diarist's version of my week at Viable Paradise. I realize that this travelogue may be only of interest to myself and possibly those who attended with me, but (say it with me now) it's *my* blog and I'll tell overly detailed stories if I want to.
Ahem.
Once upon a time…there was a woman who lived a life full of distractions and yet still fancied herself a writer.
Wait, that's too far back. How about this:
The day I left for Viable Paradise, I walked out of the hotel where the Cash Machine Workshop was held and into the waiting airport shuttle feeling sorry for Josh, who remained behind to pitch our newly formed business to our fellow attendees. (More on this full and exciting experience in a separate post, I hope.) But I was also finally able to let myself be excited about the fact that I was finally heading off to Viable Paradise--I'd been carefully compartmentalizing and trying not to think about it for the last few days, because my mind had to be in the entrepreneurial business space, not the creative writerly space.
But I was finally on my way, and holy Moses was I excited! I still wasn't sure exactly what would await me out on Martha's Vineyard…would everyone else be far more accomplished and talented than me? (Yes.) Would my room-mates be nice? (Yes. Like long-lost sisters.) Would I make some new connections, perhaps even a friend or two? (Yes. Far more than I'd imagined.) Would the instructors be kind, or at least sympathetic? (Yes. And helpful beyond measure.) Would the jellyfish really be all that great? (Yes.) Would I learn about writing, about craft, about profession, about great sweeping life lessons that could change the way I think about myself and my art? (Yes. But I am getting ahead of myself. Enough foreshadowing, back to the narrative.)
The flight from Washington DC to Boston was completely uneventful. Everything on time, forgettable seatmates, no weather to speak of. Tiny yet spunky Cape Air flew me out to the Vineyard in a practically toy-sized prop plane, and the view was amazing. Due to the fairly lackadaisical attitude of Cape Air when it comes to ontime departures, we arrived on the Island around 30 minutes or so late. All that was fine so far, but what was not fine was that my suitcase was nowhere to be found at the Martha's Vineyard airport. Luckily they are nothing if not friendly and helpful at Cape Air, and after extended fact-finding, we determined that my bag was very likely still in Boston. The last flight over to the Island might or might not have said bag on it, but it would definitely come over in the morning, they assured me. The friendly clerk (who clearly wanted to go home at this point) took my info and promised that I'd get a call when the bag arrived. Then she locked up the counter and walked out, leaving me in a pretty much empty airport with no suitcase, and more importantly, no ride.
I had thought the VP staff would be there to pick me up, but since I'd come in late, perhaps they'd already been and gone. I tried to call my room-mate, Kim, since she was the only person I had a cell number for, but no answer. I tried calling the Island Inn, but their office was also closed for the day. What was an intrepid writer to do? I was already late for the inaugural dinner, which had started half an hour ago. I walked outside and hired one of the two big minivan cabs lounging around the airport entrance to take me to the Island Inn.
Once we arrived at the Inn, there was a bit of confusion as I tried to figure out where on the sprawling, idyllic grounds a big group of science fiction and fantasy writers might be gathered. Finally we (the helpful cab driver and I) spotted a downward flight of steps and a sign that said "meeting rooms" and I went to investigate. As I pushed open the glass doors I could see a circle of chairs and people in the large open room beyond. This had to be it. I walked into the big room just as the person standing in the middle of the circle looked around and called out "Dvorin? Is Dvorin here?" I spread my arms as I walked up to the circle and said in my best theatrical entrance voice "Yes! I am here! I have arrived!"
I really am fond of dramatic entrances.
I told the cabbie to leave and paid him and then came back in to sit in the circle of strangers. I'd arrived just as they were passing out the materials for the week (a pile of manuscripts to critique, a folder full of helpful Xeroxed articles, a notebook, and a rubberbanded set of writing utensils--highlighter, red pen, black pen, mechanical pencil). Dinner had already been consumed but the leftovers were still sitting around and I managed to stuff some food while listening to the introductions and instructions. My roomies, Kim and Dorothy, waved and smiled at me from across the way.
After the introductions and instructions for the next day, I thought that perhaps we'd be released and I could go see the room I was to be staying in for the week and chill out a little from the travel. But such was not to be, for the agenda now turned to the important bonding activity of playing "Mafia" and "Thing". So I pushed away the cranky traveler's whininess that was stalking me, and sat down in a circle with a bunch of strangers and began to accuse them of lying and murder. No better way to get to know someone than to start arguing with them about why they should be tested for "Thing"-hood.
By the time the first couple of games were over, I'd learned the names of approximately half of my fellow attendees and had laughed enough to get over any lingering whininess. I was still a bit cranky over my missing suitcase, but Kate, the superheroic and supremely nice head staffer, graciously loaned me some pajamas and a shirt for the next day. I headed back to the room with Dorothy but Kim stayed for another round of Thing. After showing me around the townhouse we were sharing (complete with scenic and potentially dangerous windy spiral staircase that led up to Dorothy's bedroom on the 2nd floor), we sat down to do our first couple manuscript critiques for the following day's group critique. Kim came back and joined us and then it was finally time to wind down towards bed in anticipation of an 8am bright-n-early start time the next morning.
Stay tuned for Day 2, in which Our Heroine receives her first one-on-one critique from a professional and spends the rest of the evening wandering around raw and bloody with the outside of her skin scraped off (the technical term for this feeling is "Brillo'd"). Does she ever recover? Does blood wash out of couch upholstery? Is it really true that there is no market for "conventional" fantasy novels anymore? You'll have to wait for tomorrow's installment to find out.
(Sorry, couldn't resist the shout out to my hobbit peeps…)
Our Heroine has returneth from the great journey to the faraway coast, and lo, she is made anew.
Well, not *exactly*, but whooee, this last week and a half has been a crossroads time for me (and, I suspect, for Josh, but in fewer dimensions). I have returned to the same enormous overwhelm and anxiety load that I left behind, but at least for now, there is a post-life-changing-experience kind of glow that's keeping me warm inside while I rush from hither to yon in the cold harsh world of reality. (And the second cortisone shot before I left seemed to work, so at least the shoulder pain is now gone.) I hit the ground running last night when I got back from VP (tucked in kids, tried to unpack and triage household stuff), and yesterday despite my best intentions (and there were, as always, many) there was kid stuff to do, house stuff to do, and business stuff to do until well after midnight so the blogging about VP (and about the Cash Machine Workshop before that) never happened. Honestly, it's still not going to happen now since my precious half hour of Butt In Chair writing time I carved out of this morning's routine is nearly over (and my normally lazybones eldest child, perhaps sensing in his sleep my fledgling BIC resolve from across the hallway, awoke early and has already come in early to bug me with 6 year old questions about frog tongues and breakfast possibilities).
So the details will have to wait (I'm hoping to carve additional time out of the usual overwhelm later this evening, if at all possible) but let me just record a few very important points I came away from VP with:
I am a writer. I love writing. I will appear as a writer to others to the extent that I claim it, act like it, and keep acting like I believe it.
As a writer, I suck, and I don't. The more I put aside fear and ego, and incorporate all the magnificent high-level learning about the craft of genre writing this past week, the less I will suck.
Lack of sleep is something I can push through and work around, at least for short bursts (sleep deprivation sprinting!)
There is a F/SF writer community, and the people attracted to it or are part of it already are really cool. I need to stop worrying about whether or not it's ok to try to be part of the geeky writers' club and just go for it. I now have approximately 2 dozen friends who will jumpstart me into going to cons and commenting on blogs and creating new networks. Those fledgling friendships are an amazing gift and should not be wasted.
Writing will likely never pay me much money, but it needs to be treated as a profession as well as an artistic expression. Reading books in the field, going to cons, making relationships and keeping current with what's happening in the genre are important professional activities, not just self-indulgent fangirl activities.
Clam chowder, even the best clam chowder in the known universe, should not be consumed in quart-sized quantities in one sitting just to impress others. High fat content at high volume does unpleasant things to a middle-aged stomach.
Ok I'm way over time now and must stop and go supervise morning kid routines. More writing later, I hope, if the rush and push of the "first day back to work" day leaves me any energy left by the end of it.
