Long Night

I've had two long nights these past two, since I haven't been able to sleep because my bedroom is so muggy (yes, Erin, this will be another post where I rant about heat). Our apartment must have some major design flaw, since the others are nice and cool when the temperature drops in the evening. Not ours, no no no.

Right now it's sort of fine, at least in the livingroom where I am now. It's raining, so I'm hoping for a cool night. That's a win. The fail? I had left my windows open when we went to dinner tonight, so my bed is wet. D'oh.

Gary Braunbeck has been lecturing for us this week, and it's been really interesting. The subjects so far have been dialogue, subtext and emotional realism. He has 25 years experience as a writer, and has a lot of knowledge on the subject of writing.

What's easy to forget in a situation like this, with so many people offering excellent advice on various tools for writing and aspects of the industry, is that these things don't work for everyone. These are not truths we are being told, but rather an opinion on something born out years of experience. Each writer has their own truth. I need to find mine.

What has really stood out from Gary's lectures, so far, is this:

- Forget about genre. Concentrate on telling a story. Genre will emerge. Beginning with genre will limit you.

- Always ask the next question. When creating a character, begin with a question. What does he have in his pockets? Then keep asking, depending on what the answer is. Do this enough, and you will have a complete character. Ask until you reach an answer that has absolutely no relevance to the story.

- Give your antagonist/villain an emotional core. Something that shows why he is not a villain in his own eyes. This creates an emotional gray area, and enables you to steer away from the monologuing, moustache-twirling bad guy.

- What is lacking in genre fiction is a writer's trust in his readers to recognize subtext. Assume you're not writing for morons. Don't explain everything.

On Monday, I had a private critique with Gary on my story The Long Night. It has Vikings, werewolves and a bad-ass sorceress. Right now she is kinda moustache-twirling, unfortunately. But it's only the second draft, so things may change.

He really liked the story. A great ego boost. He had some minor suggestions for things I should change, and then listed a few places where he thought I could get it published. Sweet! So now I have two stories that two different authors have put their seal of approval on. Priority one when I get back home is polishing these stories and then sending them out.

Last night, I was over at the other house, writing, because it was cooler there. Well, not so much writing as goofing around and talking about our stories. In the midst of it, Narcomancer comes out of her room, looking exhausted. The following was said:

Palin: Do you need a hug?

Narcomancer: I need a new brain.

And on the same subject (sort of). The Commodore informed us about Friday night's cookout and said:

The Commodore: There's a slight chance of rain.

Werefox Ninja: Brain?

The Commodore: Yes. Brain is in season now. We could harvest some of that college student brain.

Bears, moose and other creatures

Stomach...full...of...burgers...

We just had our weekly barbecue. Well, it's been pizza twice because of rain, but tonight we barbecued. And ate strawberries with insane amounts of whipped cream. Nom nom nom.

Yesterday we talked about publishing. How we need to create a business person next to our writer person and editor person, so be able to separate the art of writing from the business of getting published. Evil Overlord, having worked as an editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, has great insights into the publishing world.

My business persona will be called Kecke, and will work at a very informal office where suit and tie are not required. Upon my return to Sweden, he will start researching markets for my stories, and list the various magazines, websites and other markets according to genre and importance. Once I have a story ready it goes to the first, most desirable market for that type of story. If they don't buy it, on to number two. And so on.

Embrace your rejections, Overlord said. Keep them in a drawer. She gave examples of Odyssey grads that had gotten well over 100 rejections before they sold a story. The lesson here is to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. Over 50 percent of Odyssey graduates go on to be published. Those that don't are those that give up, for whatever reason.

Last night, another late night walk. It's nice to get out of the apartment, if only to walk around campus. One of the campus security guards informed us that we might meet moose. Two moose had been caught on the security cameras the night before, in the baseball field. Eating? Practicing? No one knows.

Saw some more fireflies. So cool.

Today Elizabeth Bear was our guest lecturer. She lectured on plot structure, from the Aristotelean structure (inciting incident, crisis, conclusion, everything usually takes place in one place and in a very narrow window of time) to the epic structure (different characters and thematic arcs are intertwined and overlapping, there's always something going on for someone or something cathartic for someone else). It was very interesting, and especially so when we, as a group, created three Hollywood movie structures in less than 20 minutes

The best one:

A horror movie. Peter the plumber has to choose between his prized pumpkins and his son, while a goblin attempts to steal the pumpkins and turn the son into a pumpkin creature. In the end, Peter prevails against the goblin and chooses his son over the pumpkins (the Satisfying Ending). "I will never ignore you for a pumpkin patch again," he sobs as he hugs his son. After the credits, Peter walks through his garden, planting squash.

Quote of the day, related to the above:

Elizabeth: So we have Peter, a plumber who eats pumpkins. What's his problem?

Dundee: Alliteration.

In thirty minutes I will arm myself with laptop and headphones and head over to the other house for a write-athon. Whoever writes the most in an hour wins. I trounced Sarah Palin the other night, with 1100 words against her 600. Yeah! So I'm confident. Which probably means I'm going down in flames. We shall see.

Rudolph? Rambo? Research?

Yesterday, we talked about Showing vs Telling.

As in:

Martin was angry. "You useless bastard!" he screamed at the printer (telling).

vs

Martin's eyes bulged, his beard bristled and veins stood out on his fleshy neck. "You bastard!" he screamed at the printer (showing).

Showing is good. Telling is bad. In general. Teacher said a good mix may be 85 percent showing and 15 percent telling. But it all depends on the text.

I have a submission due next Friday, 0730, to be critiqued over the weekend, critiques presented on Monday. I thought I had a good text. I was confident. I felt strong. Then we did the Show vs Tell workshop. Not so confident anymore.

See, this is a potential problem with this workshop. We write texts and then we workshop problems which we then see in our own texts. Clarity of vision leads to whatever the opposite of peace of mind is.

Today we talked about originality. Are the any original stories left to tell?

Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer is shunned by his peers. John Rambo is shunned by his peers.

Oh Rudolph, it's snowing, we need your special talents to help us. Oh, Rambo, there's some prisoners that need rescuing, we need your special talents to help us.

Rudolph, you're a hero now! Rambo, you're a hero now!

Scary, ain't it? There were other examples too.

And today our first guest, Elaine Isaak, a former Odyssey graduate and published author, arrived. Each guest will arrive on Thursday night, when we hold a simple reception (popcorn, cookies, soda, oh the glories of the author's life) and ask questions for an hour. Then on Friday the guest holds a lecture and sits in on the critique session that afternoon.

The Q&A was interesting. We talked about research and publishing. Getting The Call.

A secret learned today was about the Barnes & Noble death spiral. So strange.

As a final note: today's critiqued stories included the first in-text casualty since we started. Nine stories critiqued, one death. Highly dissatisfying. In my admission story, I killed off 50+ people. I should write something like that to up the average here.