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Writing can soothe the soul…
I recently had the pleasure of reading one of Lilith Saintcrow’s amazing entries about how writing can, indeed, save our lives. Since I have been revisiting in a book that did much to soothe my own soul, I wanted to tell you a little about it. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that a little less than a year ago, my younger sister was diagnosed with cancer. Now, illness kind of runs in our family; mom’s had cancer and a series of other ailments, dad’s been fighting a mystery disease/heart disease and suffered a near-fatal staph infection the week before my wedding. And that heart surgery he had…
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Thoughts from a #dumbwriter
For every thing I learn about publishing, writing, and editing, there are about a dozen others that I’ve yet to figure out. No, I’m not an imbecile. (Though I sometimes walk into walls, I owe it mostly to my roving imagination and general lack of coordination.) I’m just a #dumbwriter. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing my best to get a full, bird’s eye view of Writing and How to Get Published in This Day and Age, but there are still instances where I just miss entire chunks of the geography. Those black holes on my map are where the #dumbwriter lives. Sometimes, it’s because I can be,…
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November approacheth…
And that means NaNoWriMo. You know, for years I avoided NaNoWriMo. I hated the idea, mostly, because people kept telling me to do it. I mean, damnit, I could write a book at my own pace and, by gods, I did. Ooh, the snark… But last year, right after I left my job, I found myself with a healthy amount of time and decided well, what the hell? Did I have anything to lose? No, not really. I had never really ramped up the writing, personally, always just sort of let loose when I wanted, never wrote to a schedule, etc. I mean, part of that was due to my…
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A year ago…
A year ago I decided that I’d had enough of working full time in a career I didn’t love. It wasn’t that I was bad at it, it was that it left no time for two of the most important things in my life: my son and my creativity. Writing, if if happened at all, oscillated between utter ease and utter drudgery. My son was misbehaving so badly that weekends in our house were battle zones, and we longed for Monday just to get away. That’s no way to live if you can help it. I left because I knew I couldn’t be my genuine self–first a foremost a mother…
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“Be patient, keep writing” and other things I tell myself.
Last night I finished chapter 20 of Peter of Windbourne, and am now approaching the part in the book in which a series of Very Bad Things happen. The draft is sitting at 101,122 words at this moment, with hopefully no more than five or six chapters remaining (generally my chapters hover between 4-5K). It’s a blind rewrite, as I’ve mentioned, so I’m giving myself some extra wiggle room. I know it’ll be edited down a bit next. I’ve got until November to get it done, because I’ve promised to do NaNoWriMo again this year. This chapter has been particularly difficult, mostly due to the influx of freelance work that’s…
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Becoming an atheist of the muse.
That’s it. I’m over it. I don’t believe in muses anymore. I’m sorry. Does that sound harsh? I know, we have such romantic notions about muses, how they lovingly whisper inspiration and buoy us along with creative power. But in the end, they’re just not worth the trouble. And you know what? They’re fickle, they’re never there when you want them to be, and you really can’t base a career on them. You’re silly to think that you can become a writer by relying on some magic alchemy. It’s not alchemy. It’s just work. That’s all there is. And sometimes, the work comes easy. But let’s face it: it’s you…
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Gatehouse Gazette #8, with Dr. Adderson’s Lens
Gatehouse Gazette #8 is out and, even more exciting than usual, contains my story, “Dr. Adderson’s Lens”. This little story was originally slated for a place in The Willows Magazine, but we all know how that ended. I don’t write short stories that often, but I really liked this weird little piece. I contacted the folks at the Gazette about the tale and they liked it enough to put it in their next issue! I’ve always loved the Gazette–as well as their fabulous forum and site–and it’s definitely exciting to be a part of it. It’s always nice to have a story find a home. This is also the Halloween…
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Where I’ve been all week
Well, hello again. A week has passed. And what a week it’s been. Last Monday’s post resulted in the formation of an entire organization: The Outer Alliance. Suffice it to say, that’s kept me quite busy. Coupled with a huge freelance (entirely non-creative) project, my brain’s a little on the fried side. Tripled with that, my husband and child and I accidentally took a two hour tour yesterday; our “little hike” ended up being an up-the-side-of-the-mountain-with-three-year-old-on-back kind of thing. My body is mad at me, I think… I worked on a piece that’s owed, which is an amusing concept to me. A short story. I have a very odd relationship…
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A SF/F writers LGBT alliance group?
I’m not going to talk about what happened this week. But I am going to talk about what should happen, and what needs to happen. Immediately after reading the rant by said individual, I went on a search. I wanted to find a group of SF/F writers, from all walks of life, who support LGBT issues, particularly in SF/F literature, and join up. I didn’t think this would be hard to find, and assumed that there was some magic place for support, celebration and the furthering of such material within the community already. I was surprised not to find anything. And it occurred to me that if we’re actually going…
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It’s not about the destination, it’s about the… lemurs?
(Warning: a late-night caffeine-infused post-word-binge rant.) I’ve had friends tell me that their favorite part about fantasy literature is the journey. The part when the characters are tromping through the forest, drinking from waterskins, gnawing on jerky, and sitting around campfires telling stories. Yes, there is a certain amount of charm in that but, well, let me tell you something. I seriously hate writing it. At the moment, ironically, it is just where my characters are. While much of the first half of the book is, technically, a journey, this point is where the marshmallow toasting and night watches come in. It’s the build-up to the big end, the culmination,…
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Falling in (and out of) love with fantasy
Occasionally, I still have moments where I look at a scrap of dialogue or a descriptive phrase, and I feel a little self-conscious, writing what I’m writing. It’s fantasy, sure. It is epic? Sometimes. It is heroic? Yeah, a bit. Does it have magic and all that? Of course. Am I way hung up on defining it? Not really. Okay, maybe a little. But it’s also not a lot of things. There are no elves, dwarves or, really, even wizards. Magic is… ordered, in a way. Effectively I’ve written out a great deal of the things that define the genre for other people, and even for me. Sometimes I forget…
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So, that finally happened…
If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll know I was on something of a writing binge this weekend. Every few months this happens. It’s like my own personal NaNoWriMo, where the book I’m writing takes on an absolutely powerful life of its own, and I’m kind of strung along. While it sounds kind of cool, and in some ways it is, it’s also quite exhausting. Usually, it means I can’t sleep, and every spare moment is at the MacBook, clacking away. Time slips, stars move, and I remain rooted to the keyboard. At any rate, after clocking just about 13K in a day and a half or so, my mind…
