Writing tips from Westerfeld and Chandler

Scott Westerfeld has some good advice at this blog posting:

The letter below reminds me of something Kingsley Amis said: “Sometimes the hardest part of writing is getting the characters out of the pub and into the cab.” Writers don’t just get stuck at the earth-shattering, life-changing decisions that our characters make; the little details of reality management are actually quite tricky and frustrating. Never assume you’re a crap writer just because you can’t get someone across a room—it happens to all of us.

This is exactly what I was saying the other day. You get characters into a place and time, and it's not yet to the action, but you just can't seem to move them out of there. It's very nice to hear that I'm not alone in this obnoxious problem.

The rest of Westerfeld's post is well worth reading. He's quoting the letters of Raymond Chandler on writing. All of them are interesting. One of them is the four-hour rule for writing. You set aside four hours every day. During those four hours, you can do nothing except write. If you don't feel like writing, you don't have to, but you can't do anything else either.

This seems like a perfect rule, something that would really make me work. But of course, I come up with excuses. "I don't have four hours a day to do this." Bullshit. I waste four hours every morning just looking at blogs. (For the record, I don't actually consider it a waste, but in comparison to my own writing growth, it certainly is.)

The second excuse is, "well does blog writing and e-mail writing count?" It does if I want to waste my time. I love blogging, and enjoy e-mailing, but they're not going to move me forward on writing and I know it.

Well, I did try this today, but only for an hour. Still, it was effective. I wrote more than 800 words and moved the story right along. I need to get more serious about it and use the full four hours. Although, on a daily basis maybe I'll only use 2 hours a day, and four on Friday (my day off). Either way, I think it's good advice.


Technorati Tags: writing, RaymondChandler, ScottWesterfeld

Sony Reader

So Sony has unveiled it's new e-book reader. It's new technology that is easy on the eyes and holds hundreds of hours of battery life. And, unlike the Japanese incarnation, they're allowing more than just the DRM protected files they offer. You can upload PDFs to the machine.

The price tag will be steep: $349.99. But then, the iPod I got for Christmas cost over $300. And I love reading, a lot. Wouldn't it be worth that much to me?

Now obviously, I don't want to jump at this thing with out getting some more information. I want user reviews and details on its use and exactly how I can get those PDFs to work. Also, I want to see what the competition is. There are a couple of other ereaders on the way that sound very exciting. I don't want to jump on Sony's bandwagon without hearing about the others. One of them is the Iliad from iRex. The iRex also notes it will support multiple formats and allow you to "write comments, mark or underline sections, for a true two-way paper experience." The third reader is from Jinke, called the Hanlin. It also claims to support multiple formats, including TXT, HTML and PDF.

The fact that probably the biggest name in electronics is getting behind a good ereader is good news to me. It means more to come. People are trying to make this thing work.

I want an ereader so I can then go to Project Gutenberg or Black Mask Online and pick out all kinds of public domain and out of print works and read them at work, waiting in line, or laying in bed. Whatever. I want it and I want it bad.

This makes me think about the portability of books. This is what makes mass market paperbacks and small hardcovers great, you can throw them in a jacket pocket or a bag and read them anywhere. But nowadays, most books I want to read come out in massive trade paperbacks and normal sized hardcovers. I want small books to carry around!

But the ereader solves that problem, by allowing you to put numerous books (and even better, short
stories! Imagine having all of SciFiction on a single device.) in one place in an easily portable package.

Ed Champion had a post about the Sony Reader in which he complains that the ereader will try to "supplant the reading experience." He says:

To me, reading involves stopping, perhaps writing key passages in a notebook, or rereading a particular paragraph or two, and sometimes skipping around. An academic or a student, for example, couldn’t compile information without this technique. Now that the sensation of flipping between, say, page 6 and page 125 has been lost, I’m wondering if the Sony Reader will cause the retention of information to dwindle. Assuming it succeeds, will the Sony Reader create a new generation of otiose readers?

I don't think so. First of all, why would an ereader limit you from stopping and rereading? Or even skipping around? I'm pretty sure these things would operate with page numbers, so you could flip from page 6 to page 125. Even if it doesn't I would be surprised if there wasn't some bookmarking program involved to let you jump back to key paragraphs. (It's certainly something that should be looked at when the product is released.)

And similarly why couldn't you write key paragraphs in a notebook? You couldn't write anything on the page, but I don't do that anyway. To me, I can't see Champion's complaints actually being a problem.

Anyway, I'm going to try and keep up with the news about these products. By spring, maybe I can have my own ereader.

Brain flexing, zeppelin stats and not reading

In yesterday's comments, caMoore said:

My editor tells me to not worry about what I am putting down just put the words down and look at it later. The exercise is to flex your brain.
Have you flexed your brain today?
:)

I like that attitude and it's one shared by a lot of self-help writing books: Bird by Bird, Writing Down the Bones, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop. You let it all come splatting out of your head and then you go back and fix it later. Reading interviews of Jeffrey Ford (like this one at his Live Journal) it appears he writes much this way and later "beats" a story into shape.

And yet, it's not the only way to write. Caitlin Kiernan often talks about how she writes. She keeps
working over the words she does on a given day until she's sure they are the right ones. She ends up doing
1,000 words a day, maybe, but when she is done with the book she only has to copyedit and fix any
logical or factual errors. (Apparently, this has changed for her in the last year.)

It's one of the many things I consider while I'm trying to figure out how I write, or rather how I should write. I do like just letting it all out on the page and then coming back to fix it up later. In fact, I don't think I could use Kiernan's method. I think it would drive me crazy.

I do want to try something differnt though. I want to try and write using a really detailed outline. I want to create a plot structure and all and follow it through. I think this would work best on a novel, so the next one I write (the next one I actually want to become something more than a dust collector) I will try this out.

In the meantime, I need to follow the current process through. I have to stop writing things and just letting them fall away, never to be looked at again. After I finish "Zeppelin Hijack," I'm going to pull out one of my older stories and figure out what is good about it and if the characters are worth something and then I'm going to rewrite it and form something better. That's my next step: true editing.

***
In the meantime, I'm still working on "Zeppelin Hijack." I wrote a couple of paragraphs today, I was much too easily distracted. I had a couple of important phone calls to make, but I still could have done more than I did. I really think I need to stop myself from reading blogs first thing. I think I need to write first and then start checking in. It's OK, if all those blogs remain unread in Bloglines, they aren't going anywhere.

I'm thinking in a revision of this story, a zeppelin can't work. How high can a zeppelin fly? There's a certain amount of realism I need to add to this story and maybe this first basic idea needs to be dropped. But I'm not worried about it now, it can be changed later. Right now, the plot and characters are of prime importance, I have to "discover" both of them.

***

At Views from Medina Road the editor of Locus Online talks about the many writers who are desperate to be published despite having no interest in what is happening in the field, or reading the best the field has had to offer. I can't understand a writer like that. Why would you want to write when you aren't interested in reading? Or, more fairly, why would you want to write in a field you are not interested in keeping up with.

If I wasn't constantly reading, I'd have no interest in writing. I want to write because I want to create these wonderful works that make me think and feel. If you don't read this stuff, why don't you make a TV show or a movie or a video game? There's nothing wrong with any of those and they pay a whole lot more. And if you just want to be creative, there are so many other ways.

On the other hand, if you're fascinated by words, stories and reading, please write. How can that enjoyment not show up in what you do? The more you care about it, the better it has to be.

Let me hear you say yeah!

Did you know it's DeLurking Week? So it's time you say hi! (Actually, so do I at a few blogs I've been visiting.) But I wouldn't be so cruel as to not give you a subject to talk about. Try this meme out: If you're someone who doesn't know me very well or at all, ask me a question. Anything you want to know, don't be afraid. And in return, you have to follow the Jay Lake variation and in the same comment you ask me a question, you have to tell me something about yourself.
I'll try to follow comments intermittently through the day. Enjoy.

Zeppelin Hijack

Today, I relearned the joy of writing. After yesterday's angst, today I jumped ahead and starting moving into the action of the story. And lo and behold! It became fun again. I wrote almost 600 words today. (So far, there's a chance I'll get back into it before the day is over.)
I actually wrote on the computer today as well. For the last week, I've been standing up in my kitchen writing on my Alphasmart. I don't know why I decided to write this way. Partially, I wanted to step away from the computer and the distractions from e-mail, blogs and the other things on my computer. I chose to stand up because I read that's how Hemingway used to write. (Yes, I know that's an idiot reason to do something, but it actually wasn't uncomfortable. Also, I haven't come to any decisions on the "right way" for me to write every day, so I'm trying different things.) I don't think writing this way hurt me, after all the first parts of the story were done that way too. Still, maybe it doesn't allow me to get totally into the story.
On the other hand, while I did that much writing today, I could have done more. I kept a writing file open on the computer and wrote for a while. Then I read blogs for a while. Then I wrote a little more. Then I sent out some e-mails. Then I wrote again. I do think I write in spurts, so I'm not sure this was bad, and it certainly was better than simply not writing at all. And like I said above, it was fun. So we'll see if I need to force myself to get more serious to it. I certainly think in a second draft I have put more concentration at one time on the job at hand.
I came up with a working title for the story. I just wrote for a name for the computer file, but I kind of like it. It's called "Zeppelin Hijack." It's probably too literal. Yes, the story does concern a zeppelin, at least for now it does. I keep thinking that's a bad idea since plenty of writers must now have left-over stories from their submissions to "All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories" being sent around. But I can't worry about that end of things yet. Right now, I just have to keep my thoughts on writing whatever story comes to me and completing it, making it worth something, regardless if anyone will buy it.
Anyway, I'm just overjoyed I've kept at this story and it feels like it's back on the tracks again.

Internet Review of Science Fiction

I haven't written much about the Internet Review of Science Fiction, and that's really too bad because it's a great Web site. They are beginning a new year with a new issue and it's got lots of great stuff. There's an interview with the publishers of Night Shade Books, Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold's "Notes to an Aspiring Writer," an article about Peter Jackson's films and much more great stuff.
And that's only this issue, they've had great interviews, essays and articles in the past two years that you should check out. You'll need to sign up with them. Fortunately, a subscription is free right now (it was only supposed to be free during the first year, but they haven't managed to start the pay thing up). Sign up now, it's well worth it.

Technorati Tags: sciencefiction, fantasy, webzines

Sticking with it

In a post yesterday, Caitlin Kiernan offered up an image of a page of her writing going through her editing process. This kind of thing doesn't teach me much -- I know how to edit, I know copyeditor marks and I have no idea what she's trying to achieve -- but I just love looking at the author's markings. I love seeing the raw text and the little notes for improvement. It gives some kind of insight into another person's writing, a process that is usually so solitary.

But as for my own process, I continue to struggle. What is happening to me now is exactly why I need to blog about it. I get to a point in any story where I just don't want to continue. I lose faith in it, I stumble as to where it's going and I feel like every word is tough pushing. And this is for the first draft! What's revision going to be like?
I need to get past these points. I need to keep pursuing the story, make it work, or at least finish it whether it works or not. Then I can look back and figure out what I need to do next time so a story does work.
Over the weekend, I wrote on Saturday but skipped it on Sunday. Today I wrote a couple of paragraphs. If I were keeping tracks of words, I'm sure I'd have done less words in the past four days than I did in the first two days of writing this.
On the other hand, I work on the story in my head all the time. Any spare second, I'm turning over the plot and the characters in my head, trying to figure out how to make it work, trying to figure out where it all goes and how it all fits together.
I've never written much out of order. I probably should. Transitioning from this opening of the story into the action is slowing me up, but I find it hard to just jump ahead. In fact, I feel like the reason I get tied up in a story and frustrated with it is linked to some kind of avoidance of the action. Like, I'm afraid of the main part of the story. I keep vamping where I am. The characters worry things over in their heads and look at scenery a lot.
Maybe I should just jump ahead, put my characters into the Super Sargasso Sea and see where that leads and then fill in the blank spots between.


Technorati Tags: writing

Quick update

I wrote today, a couple hundred words maybe. I still like the story and I think it's progressing, so there's a chance I can make it through this. I just hope I can dig up a little time to write over the weekend.

Beefheart history in pictures

There's an interesting comic book history of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band at Is This Tomorrow? The first six panels are here and the second six are here. (Links found at Up Sifter.)

House of Freaks singer and family killed

There's some sad news today that Bryan Harvey, singer and guitarist for the band of House of Freaks, and his whole family were killed in their Richmond, Va. home over the weekend. House of Freaks was a good, smart blues-country-rock band. They never had that one break-out song to take them over the top, but you could do a lot worse than listen to their albums.
Check out the Web site Invisible Jewel, there's many interesting things about the band and their music, including a section called "Ask Bryan" in which Harvey answers listeners' questions. If you're interested in the band, I own two albums and would recommend them both: Cakewalk and Tantilla.

Writing up to a wall and resolutions

So, again I wrote, and I hit a wall in this story. Not a tall wall, something I should be able to get over fairly easily. But with the way I am, any wall is a danger. I just get to points in stories where I don't know where to go, how to make the characters go on to the next part of the action. Maybe that's the problem, maybe I'm forcing them into some action they don't want to do. But I feel that if I don't move them along, the story will just die on the vine, get soaked up in characters doing nothing. Tomorrow I'll try to write more and see if I can't get beyond this.
There's been a couple of interesting posts lately about writing. Livia Llewellyn blogs about writing longhand and trusting the body to lead. Chris Roberson, meanwhile, writes about New Year's resolutions and how an epiphany led him to a resolution that helped him create his writing career. It's an inspirational piece.
Which makes me think about resolutions and think that I should make one. I never have made it a habit to take up New Year's resolutions, but there is always a good time to start.
This year, I resolve to write, send out and see a story published. At least one, but hopefully more.
Certainly, the first two parts of this resolution shouldn't be difficult. I'm already writing, now I just have to follow it through to finishing, editing and sending it out. Then it's out of my control, but if I work at it over a whole year, how could I not publish a story? Right?

RIP Infinite Matrix

I'm way late on this, but The Infinite Matrix is coming to an end. It was one of the great Web zines and it has posted some really interesting final stories. There's a lot of good Web zines for fiction out there, I hope this and SciFiction's end are just temporary glitches for online fiction.

Page 123 meme

Saw this meme at The Slush God Speaketh and decided to play along. Here's the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

All right, I'll reach over to my right and pick a book off the shelf without looking.

"I switched on the flashlight, hurried down the stairs and lifted one of the sabers from the wall."

I counted the first sentence on the page, which actually started on the page before it. The next sentence, which depending on how you interpret the rules may be the correct sentence, was "It was a heavy but well balanced weapon."
The Slush God sees the fun in people guessing who wrote the sentence, so guess in the comments. If no one comments, no one will know what the book is.

Pan's Labyrinth

Here is the Spanish trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's new film "Pan's Labyrinth." You won't find out much about the plot from it, but it certainly looks spooky and cool. You can find some information and links about the film at Counting Down. If this is anywhere near as good as "The Devil's Backbone," I'm going to be very happy.

Writing work

I'm trying out the Performancing extension on Firefox. It seems like a pretty cool blogging feature. We'll see how well it works after this post.
Anyway, I wrote again today. I'll probably do some more before I go to work as well. So far, I've written almost 400 words. It was a reboot of the story I started yesterday. I felt like I didn't know where to go with the plot. Now, the story has a stronger plot element and I have a better sense of the characters (the main character has completely changed, with a whole new voice that I'm enjoying.)
At the Den of Ego and Iniquity, Richard Parks has an interesting post about writing regularly and the benefits thereof. He mentions Jay Lake's writing plan, the idea that you should write at least one story a week, even if it's a piece of flash fiction. I would love to do that. Right now, I'm trying just to reach completing a story, sticking with a story until it's done.
Again, that's why I'm blogging about writing. I'm trying to analyze my process a little and make it better. One of the things I need to do is stick with a story, don't get bored with it. Keep writing it, no matter what. Today, as I said, I started the story over and it's now something completely different -- though the background and central idea remain much the same. As I continue writing, I have to develop the story and see if it works. It's important to remember that I can't know how well something works until I finish it.
Often, I stall on my stories because I spend some time away from it. I don't write over a weekend, or I just procrastinate. When I go back, I'm just not in the mindset of the story anymore and it's put away. (I don't throw anything away, but I've rarely gone back to those things either.) So, I really need to finish a first draft by Friday. That would be the best thing. Alternately, if I could fit in writing time over the weekend, I could keep going. But that could be hard to accomplish.
So my goal for the next two days is to finish a draft of this story. I need to write more today, so I'm going to get to that right now.

I wrote today

Whoopee, right? Well, this is the first day I'm trying to combine my blogging and writing with the hope that it will inspire me to keep it up and do it more. If I know I want to blog about it everyday (excluding weekends), than it, with any luck, will give me the kind of structure I need to keep me writing. (As discussed originally, here.)
Anyway, I wrote just over 500 words today on a fantasy story set in some kind of alternate history. I thumbed through Charles Fort's "The Book of the Damned" to get an idea and now I'm trying to form some story around it. The alternate history aspect was really the only way I could make the idea -- related to Fort's concept of a Super Sargasso Sea and the idea of air becoming denser the higher you go (obviously something that wouldn't work with modern day physics, not something Fort would care about) -- part of the story. In a way, I'm trying to explore my own fantasy world in the way Ted Chiang did in "Tower of Babylon" (not that I have any presumption that I could do anything as good.)
The first day's work was just writing into the first paragraphs, getting an idea of what characters I started out with. Tomorrow I will try to think more about plot and how the interior lives of the characters relate to the concept. Or maybe I'll just write on, unguided.

Toynbee tiles rise again

The Indy Star has a new article on the Toynbee Tiles. (Link found at the always interesting Professor Hex.) I wrote briefly about Toynbee Tiles back in Sept. 2003 (scroll down to the end of Sept. 9 entries). I think they are the most compelling modern weird mystery going. Who is putting these things in the ground and how are they doing it? Is it one person? What are they trying to say?
I keep trying to get to www.toynbee.net, probably the best site about the tiles, but the site seems to be down. However, the article does link to Resurrect Dead, another interesting page. Resurrect Dead has its own interesting set of links about the tiles. For concise introduction to the mystery of the tiles, check out the Wikipedia entry.

SciFiction's last

SciFiction's last original story has gone up. It's the end of an era. Celebrate that era at the EDSF Project, then pick a story and join the celebration.

Too cool not to be posted

A whole page devoted to putting SpongeBob SquarePants into Iron Maiden album covers. I especially like how they transform the eyes to look more like Eddie. (Link found at Making Light.)

Companies offer author blogs

Much work is being done to promote books. I did a review of Spin a while back after the book was sent to me from a publicist at Holtzbrinck Publishers, the company that owns book publishers like Tor. Now, Holtzbrinck has decided to create a Web presence. The site includes a blog about literary happenings, the latest books and other news. They plan on offering the first chapters of all their new novels at the site and through RSS feeds. Also, they say they'll be creating author blogs at the site. They could be offering some good stuff, so check it out.
Amazon has now started its own promotional programs as well. Amazon is letting authors blog as part of Amazon Connect. If you visit the page for Meg Wolitzer's novel "The Position", scroll down a bit and you can visit part of Wolitzer's blog. The blog is also published here. I'm not sure how you'd find other author blogs outside of stumbling across them on their pages.
Edward Champion has his doubts on the program and posts about it here.

But I can’t buy into the ethics of a retailer pushing a blog while simultaneously encouarging people to buy things. Whatever the merits of Wolitzer’s posts, however much she feels that “Anything that can get fiction on people’s radar is good,” I get the unsettling aura of Shirley Maclaine talking with the dead during an infomercial.

He certainly is asking the right questions about these ventures. Can the author really be free say what they want when their blog is a part of a huge corporation? I also agree with him that author's would be better off starting their own Web pages and blogs and keeping them updated. It's already proved itself as a marketing model (which is why these companies are pursuing it) and authors are free not to be tied down to any company's demands. Still, I'll keep a watch on them and see what comes up. At the very least, I'm looking forward to Holtzbrinck's first chapter plans.