Tag Archives: writing thoughts

August 28, 2014 · 9:05 am

And the title decision is….Shadow Harvest

Shadow Harvest. I’ve been agonizing over what to call Andrews Ranch for real, because otherwise it sounds too much like a Western instead of science fiction. While there are Western elements (a showdown at the OK Corral-type scene with a war machine in a barnyard), and a quasi-Westernish-theme (saving a ranch from corporate interests), at best it could be titled a Science Fiction Western. Yeah.

I kept thinking about its predecessor and twin story that I’m going to include to make up the omnibus I plan to publish in December, Winter Shadows. My original plans for that omnibus were to include Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Andrews Ranch. But while Dahlia is part of the whole Will and Diana sequence, it really doesn’t fit except as a precursor to the other two stories. What happens in Winter Shadows comes to fruition seven years later in Shadow Harvest. So I’ve decided that the omnibus will be those two stories instead. That’ll be plenty, and there’s a title and thematic connection (the omnibus will also come out in a CreateSpace version).

And I do have a cover pic. Just haven’t made the cover yet.

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Now it’s time to go back and discreetly insert some connections to Winter Shadows. Then off to the barn, meet up with a friend, then come home and work on an editorial project.

The days are just packed around here.

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May 10, 2014 · 7:22 pm

Noodling on writing plans–writing process post

I am using the period where I’m letting Andrews Ranch rest before the rewrite to take care of some writing organizational work. No, not the bookkeeping and organizational paperwork. Rather, I’m fiddling around with outline notes, organizing research, making research plans, and reviewing short stories.

I don’t know how many other writers review what they have currently in circulation on a periodic basis. It’s something I like to do every couple of years, when I have most of my stories in hand and I’m not working on a bigger project.

Like now. At this point in time, I have eleven short stories that are making the rounds, aged anywhere from eight years to one year old. Ten of them have come back since I last sat down and sent out stories, about three months ago. These stories were out this last go-round anywhere from two days to a year, so it was a matter of timing rather than any big flurry of submission and rejection. A perfect time to review stories.

Age of the story isn’t particularly relevant to whether I circulate the piece or not; I’ve sold some work that I wrote a few years back and I think it’s an issue of either anticipating a market or else the type of story I wrote has come back in favor. Most of these stories are good in and of themselves and just haven’t found their home market yet. If they aren’t very good, they get trunked during these review periods. Some stories get put aside to be expanded into larger works. Now that I’m self-publishing some work, taking the time to expand some stories into novelette or novella form is a viable alternative. Generally, I let my mental notes about rejection feedback guide whether I do that rewrite or not. I’ve only done it with a couple of stories. Most of the time, I shorten a story. Sometimes I cut a secondary plot line. Rarely do I need to do huge edits–mostly, it’s just looking at the story and refreshing it for the current marketplace.

I also use this process time to clean up the circulating MS and do quick and dirty continuing copyedits (even when other eyes have gone over a MS I can still find a blooper or two!). But there are other, closer copyedits to do. For example, an older MS might have gone through a couple of word processor iterations and have some right margin issues. I still have some MSs with two spaces between sentences instead of one. I’m cleaning out tabs in favor of auto-indents. Occasionally there’s a space between the period and the hard return. All nit-picky little stuff, but they’re all things that can hang up the readability of a MS across different platforms.

Also, because I tend to use short stories as a means of exploring other secondary worlds, this review gives me a fresh chance to look at the world that a particular story is set in. Do I want to do other stories in that universe? A novel? If I do have ongoing worldbuilding in that universe, what insight does this particular story provide for character motivation? A lot of the work which has gone into writing the Will and Diana relationship for Andrews Ranch has illuminated the factors that come into play later on in the Netwalk Sequence with their granddaughter Bess. Understandable because I’m explicitly writing a generational saga in that universe. But they are revelations that might not have come to me if I hadn’t written Andrews Ranch.

I’m also laying out the research plans for the rest of this year. I have some big non-Netwalk Sequence projects that I want to get going, including a Weird West novella/novel (Bearing Witness) and a contemporary alternate world fantasy (Becoming Solo) centered around my experiences in 4-H as member, parent, and leader (think of 4-H competition as magical competition. Whole new perspective on Style Revue, Showmanship, and cooking contests). I want to write five new short stories to add to the circulation list, with a goal of getting the circulation list back up to twenty stories. I have two nonfiction self-published books planned. I have an urban fantasy novel that needs to have significant worldbuilding done. I’ve taken a run at it in four different stories and it’s still not quite right.

I also want to start using Scrivener for features other than layout and Compile for ebook publishing. It’s a matter of taking the time to learn the features and play with them, but that means being able to take an hour or so out of multiple days to do that, rather than begrudge the learning curve time because learning the skill takes away from valuable writing time. I need to start thinking about a post-day job writing schedule, where I have a regular pattern set up for household, horse, writing, and research time.

So there’s a number of things to do in this time that I’m letting Andrews Ranch simmer (including thinking about a new title, how to market the dang novella, and just what the cover is going to be). But this down time isn’t just me getting ready to collapse at the end of the school year only to recharge for yet another year; it’s a time for me to prepare for a new way of doing things.

Quite the challenge.

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September 7, 2013 · 3:05 pm

Netwalk Sequence and environmentalism

It’s not always that I run into articles that summarize the foundation of the environmental politics behind the Netwalk Sequence so neatly, but this nails it in a nutshell.

One of the original triggers behind the horror novel that was the foundation of the Netwalk Sequence were the very real-life experiences I observed on the periphery of the environmental movement in the Reagan years. Naomi Klein’s observations about the tensions between the elite and the leadership of conservation/environmental groups are spot on. I saw this stuff growing and developing when I was doing a lot of research with a dear friend who was also politically active. She lived way out in Northeastern Oregon and didn’t have the information accesses I did, back in the pre-Internet era when if you couldn’t physically handle the information, you didn’t have it. I spent a lot of time in the local library’s business section looking up business stats, and tracking down interlocking corporate ownerships.

But I also heard stuff from my grunt-level positions in the Democratic Party. And what I heard, and what I saw, caused me to start writing a twisted little story about an environmental activist whose ill-fated romance with a timber baron’s son ends up destroying everything she ever thought or believed about her life. Kind of a romantic turn on some of the real-life co-optation I was seeing. No one would believe the real stories.

Sarah does get her own back. She is genuinely concerned and worried about the environment, and riding through the early rocky days of the explosion of climate change plus her status as a Stephens heir leads to the conditions which transform Stephens Timber into Stephens Reclamation. So far, I haven’t felt the need to write that story as part of the Sequence.

Maybe I’ll do it after I write Netwalking Space. We’ll see.

Nonetheless, go and read that Naomi Klein article. Like I said, it reflects a lot of my own observations.

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April 28, 2013 · 9:16 pm

Story is…done. Skiing…well, didn’t happen. And I think I did a Lake-plus.

So I woke up this morning at 5:30, groaned, told DH “I’m checking conditions and if they’re crappy I’m coming back to bed.”

Mid-thirties. Raining. Uh-uh, not a day for skiing, and besides, I wanted to sleep in after dragging out at oh-dark-o’clock yesterday and writing like a madwoman in the car all the way to Clatskanie before swapping over to the pickup and cruising to Hammond to dig clams. So I dragged my behind back to bed…and got up at 10:30. Huh. Guess I was tired after all. I haven’t slept in like that without it involving an illness or international date line travel for years….

Anyway, the day got spent writing. Some time got dedicated to feeding birds, doing a couple of small projects around the house, but…mostly writing. 3600-some words today, probably more when cuts get taken into consideration. And the story is finished. Not beautifully, but it’s a good enough rough draft. I went back over the story today and slipped in some pieces early on to make the front end fit the back end better because, really, the story evolved over the fury of writing that took place yesterday and today.

And while the story is not a thing of beauty yet–first drafts never are, especially ones written like this one was where I had deadline hanging over me and I HAD to figure out what came next in the story to get to the resolution I wanted, but the events and the logic and the characters didn’t quite want to play—but in a weird, twisted way, it fits. One thing about writing stuff like this, with a given theme, a deadline, and the editor’s need for something professional that fits–in one way or another, I can usually beat a story into submission somehow. The results may be somewhat warped, but they fit together. I can’t decide whether these stories are better than those that I just write in general because I got an idea. Some of these themed stories are better, some aren’t.

I don’t know if I can yet craft the final product to evoke the parts I want it to. I pulled on some very old and dear parts of my past experiences to put it together, but I’m not sure that all the references work. It’s a very Bradbury-esque piece in its own little way. Middle America…with a twist. Plus it’s an entirely new world for me, so I was building the world and its magical logic as I wrote. Worldbuilding on the fly, which can always be a bit of fun but requires either ruthless relentless notetaking as the magical system evolves throughout the story or else incredibly detailed continuity checks. I’m opting for the latter, though there are notes scattered on bits and pieces around the computer.

It does look like I’m going to need to write another story in this world. Darn it, I had to scrap my original title because it no longer fit the story. But I like that title, plus it’s the name of an honorary title within the story, so…gotta write a story with that title in this world.

And then a funny. I got a sweet little rejection from an editor who clearly liked one story, but just couldn’t make it fit editorially–editor kept raving about how it would make a wonderful novel, I really had novel material there, if I wanted editorial advice editor would love to help…I half-grinned to myself. Y’see, I know there’s a novel’s worth of material in there. It’s part of a novel worldbuilding process I was doing when the idea came to me. It’s just not ready yet–but it does give me a pleasant feeling that there might be a market for that novel. Once I get it figured out. That’s one of my quirky little worlds which requires a lot of PITA worldbuilding because the weird needs to be the right kind of weird, and that means also being considerate of existing weird cultures that I don’t know a lot about. Yet.

Plus hey, I have friends who are excellent editors and whose judgements I trust. But still, it was nice to get that kind of feedback on a world I’ve built. Am still building.

Hmm. Maybe I need to go back over my list of published short stories and note what’s sold in what genres.

And I felt even more justified about not going skiing when I checked on conditions later in the day. Rainy and slushy. Nope, not a ski day.

But it turned out to be one hell of a nice writing day. Writing for the win. Now if I could just plan to have a weekend a month like this…

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December 12, 2012 · 8:51 am

The Next Big Thing

Whew.  And now, after the Ranty McRantypants post, here’s my Next Big Thing.  I got tagged by Mary Victoria and–um–well, I think just about everyone else on my f-list has already been tagged.  So if you’re reading this and you haven’t been tagged, consider yourself to be tagged!

What is the working title of your next book?

Netwalker Uprising, which will (hopefully) be out in late December or early January.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

A followup to my Netwalk novel, part of The Netwalk Sequence.  I’ve been playing around with matriarchal dynasties for a while, so it’s matriarchal corporate future dynasties with cyberpunk and skiing.  And bioremediation geeks.

What genre does your book fall under?

Oh snap.  Let’s see.  SF action-adventure, or as I like to call it, ski bum neuropunk.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Dang, I don’t know.  Probably Scarlett Johansen for Melanie.  Maybe.  Gillian Andersen at the age she was when she played Scully in the early X-Files.  Meryl Streep for Sarah (in her The Devil Wears Prada bitch mode).  A younger Meryl or current Gillian Andersen for Diana.  For Marty?  There’s no clear image of a geekish Native American actor to play him, damn it, and that’s who I’d want.  Maybe Will Smith as a default.

Otherwise, I’d like the characters to be all unknowns, preferably ski bums who could act and are ready to move on from ski pr0n flicks.  I’d love it if one of the ski movie companies fell in love with Uprising and decided to try to make it.  I think they’d catch the right edginess of the work.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In a post-apocalypse recovery future, how can Melanie Fielding find a way to protect her family and her business from virtual attacks by opponents from beyond the grave?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’s ski bum neuropunk featuring a strong female protagonist and her family interactions.  What do you think?  Seriously, it’s going to be self-published, out in e-book and POD.  Just working on the final edits with my editor now.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The initial manuscript was whipped out in a passionate writing flurry after I finally figured out how to kill my internal editor, back in 2006 or so.  I wrote Netwalk, Netwalking Mars, and then Netwalker Uprising in a six month blaze.  Out of sequence and by all the rules I shouldn’t have written anything but the first one, then tried to sell it.  Shrug.  The stories rode me hard.  Uprising got whipped out in two months, rewritten, then set aside while I tried to sell Netwalk.  After I self-published Netwalk last fall, I started the intensive Uprising rewrite.  Had a major revelation about the nature of the world which led to massive revisions (along with input from the editor that the middle of the book was significantly broken and needed fixing).  Still doing final tweaks now.  This is a world in development, and man, is it ever mutating.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Some of Elizabeth Bear’s work, some of K.W. Jeter’s work, and C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen and Foreigner works.  Not all necessarily due to topic but to mood and pacing.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The initial idea came from a discussion with my husband about what it would be like to observe Hells Canyon through a hawk’s eyes.  I started imagining just what sort of implant interface that might take (this was long before GoPro cameras and I took the “through the hawk’s eyes” literally).  Subsequently, I started skiing and that really kicked off the story.  I stole the characters from an earlier noir novel I wrote and tried to sell in the 90s, A Madness in the Blood.  Some of the elements in Madness will come out at the very end of the Netwalk Sequence…as in, Sarah has a deep dark secret which has scarred her for her entire life and affected her in virtual life.  It takes her great-granddaughter to reconcile Sarah to that horrific secret.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

In Netwalker Uprising, I’m trying to integrate a degree of feminist consciousness with the conventions of sf thriller writing.  I want to show a strong female protagonist who also copes with the realities of family life.  Now she is rich, powerful, and privileged, so she has resources not available to ordinary people, but nonetheless…I wanted to have a strong woman protagonist who Has A Life, and really would like to get back to it, despite all the craziness that just seems to come her way.

Now…if you want to play and you haven’t yet…you’re tagged!

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June 25, 2012 · 8:15 am

Slowing down on the blogging because of Revision Deathmarch

I’m not sure why I’ve been slowing down on the blogging.  A lot of it is probably because I’m spending more time on actual writing these days, y’know, including some self-imposed deadlines on a really tough rewrite.

It’s not for lack of ideas.  I get them when I’m riding the horse, when I’m running errands around town, even when I’m working on, y’know, the rewrite.  But when I get to the computer, instead of opening up WordPress, I’m opening up Word and doing the writing thing.

We’ll see what happens when I get done with the rewrite.  I am devising a writing process post because I’m using a different technique that I couldn’t have done before the iMac came into my life, and I may end up adopting the process for future long-form works.  Having a chapter outline open while I work on the MS is turning out to be rather productive and I can make my notes about a rather complex plot structure and what I need to do in future chapters/modify outline right there and then rather than scribble ideas on PostIts and scraps of paper that I can never find when I need them.

But yeah.  Netwalker Uprising is possessing my brain right now.  When I’m not writing or doing house stuff, I’m reading Anathem.  For some reason I bounced off of it before (probably because like all Stephenson’s work except for Zodiac, the first third is world building and slow, and I tried to read it during the school year).  Between the two, there’s not a lot of extra stuff available at the moment.

The last Allan Schore seminar blew my socks off as well.

I am not quite at the point where I need to list posts I’m planning here.  For one thing, I’ll lose them.  But until July 1, I’m pretty much in the state of “possessed by Uprising” brain murble.

On to the Revision Deathmarch

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February 10, 2012 · 6:51 am

A reason not to support Writers of the Future any longer

Warning: may be triggery to follow the link below.

Summary: Deirdre is a former Scientologist and current sf writer.  She knows whereof she speaks.  She’s not openly opposed WotF until now…but after this testimony, well, yeah.

She’s asked those of us who post this link to warn you all that it’s triggery for bullying issues, amongst other things.

I stopped sending stuff to WotF a few years back after Deirdre’s first cautious postings.  I definitely won’t send things now.

Link here.

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February 9, 2012 · 8:03 am

Writing blather

I don’t have much this morning.  Generally I have a topic in mind that I think about throughout the day, then post.  But there’s been a lot stirring at work, to the degree that it’s pretty much work, horse, house, ski and that’s just about it.  Well, except for Netwalk’s Children.  That writing process is fascinating me even as I’m going through it.

Ironically enough, I got a batch of rewrites back from my series editor for The Netwalk Sequence (purchasing info here) for my latest planned upload, Netwalker Uprising.  Uprising is–uh–turning into a larger story.  It’s reflective of the greater arc of the entire Sequence, and I’m finding myself having to rethink the dang book as well as what I’m trying to do in Children.  Let’s just say that Children answers some questions that Uprising brings up, while bringing in a few bombshells of its own.  I–uh, well, there’s been some worldbuilding pieces I’ve been consciously avoiding and now I can’t.  Or, rather, I’ve been gathering data for several years and suddenly it’s starting to coalesce.  Fascinating how that happens.

OTOH, it’s interesting to be plotting one and creating the underpinnings for that connected story while working on this next one.  I already see the need for a transition story that will explain a couple of pieces between Children and already published stories as well as the book that follows Children.  It’s very fascinating doing this sort of building and creation on my own and hopefully something good will come of it.

Meanwhile, I have other writing tasks to do, a deadline to meet, etc.  I suspect that this month I’ll put up a short story, perhaps a prequel to the “Cold Dish” story published in M-Brane 9, that tells us a bit more about Kathy Miller and a bit about Melanie and Andrew’s backstory.  That one might be a freebie.

Thinking about it…and now, onward!

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February 2, 2012 · 7:21 am

On the writing process

Not a long post today, but I’ve been thinking about changes in my writing process as I go about getting ready to work on Netwalk’s Children.  For one thing, this indie publishing thing?  Means I have NO EXCUSES about delaying getting to the work.  Doesn’t write itself, doesn’t put itself up, can’t mutter about editors taking a long time to hold up the work while they decide whether it fits their line/publication.  I’ve gotta write it and send it to my copyeditor.  Then it gets rewritten and sent to my formatter.  And somewhere in there I’ve got to think abut stuff like, oh, covers and publicity and all that good pile o’stuff that is part of the whole process.

Lots of work.  But, on the other hand, one really cool thing?  I can jump directly from revisions on Netwalker Uprising to planning Netwalk’s Children.  I CAN HAZ KEWL WORLDBUILDING WHILE WORKING ON CONTINUITY!!!

Yeah.  Got a little excited there.

I’m also getting a bit excited about Children.  It’s been a while since I’ve done new drafting/planning for a novel.  In fact, it’s been two years since I’ve done new novel work (shudder, why so long?  Inventory and all that good stuff.  One reason The Netwalk Sequence came about was the opportunity to get niche material out of inventory, experiment with consciously putting together a whole sequence of related stories/novels, and get that whole world out for people to find and enjoy).

To that end, I’m finding myself spending more time outlining and preplanning than I have in the past.  In the past, I’ve been a pantser about long form writing.  I knew kind of where the story would end up, knew the main points of a two-page outline, but the details?  Nuh-uh.

Not so with Children.  One reason for that is a hard self-imposed deadline–I want it ready to go up in late April or early May.  That means that when I do start writing, I need to be able to start writing.  Hard and fast.  It’s something I know I can do, but I’m realizing that to keep the pieces together without having to do tons of rewriting for continuity’s sake/fixing plot holes/etc, I need to have a more detailed writing plan than I’ve done for past books.

Additionally, Children is the first Netwalk story to be written since I started studying Interpersonal Neurobiology.  It’s the first significantly neuroscientifically informed Netwalk story, which means I need to identify where I go out and do more research.  Plus, I want to try doing this sort of detailed outline to see how it affects my actual writing process.  Ideally, I’d like to get it up on Scrivener and use that tool to help me put things together.  I need to integrate more technology tools in my writing work simply because otherwise I’m drowning in paper, and I need to simplify everything so I’m not lugging around a ton of reference materials.

However…the initial outline is going on paper.  Annoying, but given the time constraints of the Day Jobbe, that part of the process has to happen this way because of learning curves and all that.  After Children, perhaps even with Netwalk’s Descendants, I’ll be putting together stuff on Scrivener or some other like tool that I can find to port hopefully across to my tablet as well as laptop and desktop.  I’m starting to integrate materials for my nonfiction writing in that manner; it would be awfully damned nice if I could do the same for fiction.

I’m still not sure what the next project will be once I finish the Netwalk Sequence.  I have three short stories outlined, plus ongoing nonfiction projects.  I have portions of half-finished novels lying around the hard drive.  I also have the Peter McLoughlin Weird West sequence that is crying out to be written.

We shall see what the summer brings.

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January 29, 2012 · 11:56 am

On aging and writing and other endeavors, sigh

Jim Van Pelt has an excellent reaction to one of those not-so-lovely screeds that proclaims that after a certain age, writers are all washed up.  Not going to link to the original blog, simply because I have to wonder if it wasn’t the result of a frustrated, newish writer old enough to know better who nonetheless fell prey to the temptation of smacking the face of an old-timer to get blog hits and, therefore, attention.  The middle school teacher in me doesn’t want to reward bad behavior, in the first place, and secondly, doesn’t want to continue to highlight something that the author will later most likely regret publishing.

But even as I read both Jim’s post and the original post, I kept thinking of exceptions to the rule, including George R.R. Martin himself.  Like the original blogger, I haven’t read the books in question.  My pleading, though, is simply that I don’t have the reading energy these days to dedicate to a series of books that big.  I read the first two or three books and, while I admire the intricacy of the plot threads and all, they were just too plain big and complex for me to read until the series was finished.  Now that may change, since I’ve managed to configure the Kindle reader on both my iTouch and my Asus Transformer (I love, love, love reading on the Transformer.  While I still have a huge pile of paper books to read down, I’m rapidly switching over to e-books for my new purchases, especially either hardcovers or mass markets in the genre).  The Song of Ice and Fire series might well be a better choice for e-book rather than paper.  I rocked my way through the latest Stephen King much more comfortably than I would the hard copy, so that’s what I’m thinking.

I follow GRRM’s blog.  Put simply, what I’m reading there and the commentary he puts forth about his writing doesn’t suggest a declining mind.  Rather, it suggests that instead of pumping out tons of quickly-written, not so-well-written prose, he’s putting in a lot of effort to craft his work more precisely and in greater detail, because he can.

The aging and creativity debate isn’t a new one.  Knee-jerk response suggests that aging means decline, that brain cells stop forming in early adulthood and it’s all downhill from there.  However, recent neuroscientific findings suggest that such isn’t necessarily the case.  We’re still forming neurons and connections well into our 50s; perhaps not as many as when we were younger, but it is still happening.

And unless you are subject to specific genetic conditions, much brain deterioration is preventable, as the article linked points out.  Preventing brain deterioration doesn’t require fancy exercises or special programs.   Rather, maintaining regular habits such as exercise, eating right and minimizing stress are all factors in keeping your brain healthy and productive well into your later years.

But what about this particular blogger’s argument?  He cites examples of authors for whom he believes their best work had been completed by their mid-50s, all within the genre.  He’d be supported by some writers outside the genre, who point to Nobel Literature prize-winners like Faulkner, Hemingway or Steinbeck whose greatest works were published in their early years.  Granted, in those three cases (as well as others), often the Nobel is a culmination based on many years of production rather than a single stellar work.

Counter this blogger’s assertions with the production of writers such as Robertson Davies, who was actively creating quality work in retirement.  What about Frederik Pohl?  What about Margaret Mead, or Ursula LeGuin, or other articulate, producing writers who continue their writing contributions well into their later life?

Age is what you make of it.  And despite what someone at the threshold of middle-aged panic might think, decline is not inevitable.  With age comes perspective and understanding.

I leave you with these words from William Faulker’s Nobel acceptance speech to consider:

He (insert from me, the young writer) must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Read the whole speech.  It’s a good thought.

ETA: After reading the comments on the post, including the latest, it’s clear the writer considered getting a lot of responses as a “win.”  So, not clearly thought out….simply written to provoke comment.

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