SMURGLE, ALL YE WATTABUPS

Time-Wasting

2012-02-02T13:55:00.001-08:00

I stole this from my friend Chas, and I love it. Take a famous poem and run it through an Internet translator three or four times, rendering it back into English, and then display the result. This is "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" through German and Spanish. The parantheses are amazing. They add this weird level of after-the-fact whispering.

Go carefully to this good night not,
The age should burn and be furious(storm) towards the end of the day;
The anger (the feeling), you are furious(storm) in the death in the light.

Though wise men (husbands) know (know) to his(her,your) (his(her,your)) end(final) mysteriously (they know (they know)), it(he) is correct,
Since his(her,your) (his(her,your)) words had not bifurcated on they no go (it)
Do not go carefully to this good night.

Good men (husbands), the last wave (wave) for, as intensely shouts
His(Her,Your) (His(Her,Your)) fragile acts might have danced in a green bay,
The anger (the feeling), you are furious(storm) in the death in the light.

The wild men (the husbands) who reached and sang the Sun in the flight,
And learn very late, they it saddened on his(her,your) (his(her,your))(she(it)) the way,
Do not go carefully to this good night.

Serious men (husbands), closing the death that it(he,she) sees with the screens of the sight
Blind eyes might burn on since(as,like) meteorites (and to be homosexuals) happy,
The anger

Impending Doom

2012-01-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

See these things?

They eat. A lot. Not what I set in front of them at dinner, mind, but they do eat stuff.

Unfortunately for this situation, my work has announced a round of impending layoffs. I think my chances are worse than many; I have less credentials than others and less experience. I have volunteered for a few dirty jobs; such a thing may redeem me or at least count for a good recommendation.

Right now I am trying to avoid the blues/the panic/the inevitable "but unemployment would mean so much writing time!" thoughts. (I already work from home. I have tons of writing time. It's just that lately I've used it to play the drums because HOLY CRAP THIS IS STRESSFUL.)

If you read this blog, you probably know me; if you don't, I have many years' experience teaching and tutoring with a major emphasis in online pedagogy, a Master's in English, a TESOL certification and a lot of experience with special-needs students. I worked for two years in publishing. I taught wilderness survival skills once (although I know eff-all about doing that stuff in the Northwest; drop me in a desert and I'd be fine).

We're trying to stay in the Northwest if possible. If you know of any steady, real jobs, holla.

Interview With Evil

2012-01-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

Today I have gone to a dark place.

I have decided to interview my nemesis, Jake Kerr. From the moment I met Jake at Viable Paradise 14, I knew he was pure evil. Maybe it was his evil eyes, his Easter Island-style head, or the kittens he was chomping down between lectures, but I knew that one day I would have to kill him. It seemed a shame to do so without giving him a chance to speak for himself.

Beware.

Me: Jake, tell us a little bit about yourself as a writer and an evil genius who must be stopped.

Jake: First of all, I think you can safely change the word "must" to "cannot." As to the "evil" part. That's all in the eye of the beholder now, isn't it?

I started in high school writing horrible Pern fan fiction in a desperate attempt to be Anne McAffrey. Only male.

After that failed attempt I went off to college and eventually spent fifteen years as a music industry and then technology columnist for various magazines. All of them subsequently folded after I left. A lesson for others, to be sure.

Me: Music? Hey, I play in a band. YOU killed the radio star.

Well, if I didn't kill it, the fact you are now in a band certainly will. But I thought we were talking about writing, painful as that topic may be to a failure like yourself.

Me: When I fail myself into a lecture circuit and a house on the coast of Italy, your definition of winning will be "cry like a toddler with no cookie."

Jake: Whatever helps you sleep at night. Anyway, a few years ago my former classmate, Laura Hillenbrand, wrote a book called Seabiscuit, and an email exchange with her inspired me to go back to the love of my youth--the stories of Bradbury, King, and Sturgeon; the novels of Philip K. Dick; the rollicking adventures of Piers Anthony and Edgar Rice Burroughs. So I sat down and started writing fiction again.

Me: Okay, that's actually a pretty cool story. You take this round.

Jake: I find it cute that you are keeping score.

Me: Out of pity, Jake, in the exact same way Bilbo pitied Gollum.

Jake: I can only assume you mean pity for yourself, which makes you both Bilbo and Gollum. I think from now on I'll call you "Gilbo." So, Gilbo, after some significant...

Me: Gilbo? Is that the best you can do? You'll never be a great writer, Jake. Never. It's sad, really.

Jake: After some significant critical work with the Writers Garret here in Dallas and a trip to the Viable Paradise writer's workshop, I sold my first story last year to Lightspeed Magazine. I understand you are still seething in jealousy over that, are you not?

Me: Pah! I do not deign to notice. In fact, when I read that issue of Lightspeed, my eyes skipped right over that story. I'm not even sure it's real. And definitely not eligible for Hugo and Nebula noms this year.

What kind of themes do you find yourself exploring in your writing? Are there topics or experiences that really interest you? (Besides eating kittens.)

Jake: I find any theme that causes pain to one Spencer Ellsworth particularly enriching. Beyond that, I really like to focus on the nature of the human experience and the emotions that it generates. To me the hard science is always a conduit to the real story. I'm particularly intrigued by two things: How people react and deal with situations outside their control and the nature of what it means to be human.

I should add that you are not human and you are, for the moment, outside my control. So I find you morbidly fascinating.

Me: I feel like ten thousand spiders just migrated up my spine.

Is there a work that has particularly influenced you with these themes? Can you name one (or a few works) that deal well with the issue of what it means to be human, and how people deal with situations beyond their control? How are you seeking to rip them off?

Jake: The obvious example for themes about what it is to be human would be the works of Philip K. Dick. Although SF is rich with this theme, from Matheson's I Am Legend to Bacigalupi's The Wind-Up Girl. Alfred Bester was a giant at examining themes of individuals thrust into situations that they must struggle with, much of which is their adapting to the reality or changing it themselves.

I would be remiss not to mention Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations," which was the inspiration for my story, "The Old Equations." While not very similar in structure or topic, they both address the concept of dealing with loss--an individual, through scientific situations entirely beyond his or her control, must deal with profound loss.

Me: It's interesting to me because I grew up reading Asimov and didn't discover Philip K. Dick until later, and I always thought they were more alike than people thought. At the core, as you said, their works are about people adapting redefining humanity to suit a new world.

Jake: I read a lot of Asimov, too. Science fiction from the latter half of the twentieth century has been incredibly influential to me. From the folksy Bradbury to the new wave stuff in the Dangerous Visions anthology, I really couldn't get enough.

Me: Are you just a straight-sf guy, or do you see any similar themes in fantasy?

Jake: That's a good question, which makes me wonder if you are having someone else actually write these.
I've read a ton of fantasy, from Tolkein to Stephen R. Donaldson to Piers Anthony. I don't think I ever found the kind of philosophical depth in fantasy that I found in science fiction. It is distinctly possible I just didn't read the right works, as I didn't read nearly as much fantasy as SF. That said, there is no doubt that there are great works of art in the fantasy genre, works that leave you emotionally drained at the end. And the imagination! Say what you will about Piers Anthony as a writer, he has one of the all-time great imaginations in the genre. Not to mention Gene Wolfe, whose imagination is further honed by his amazing use of language.

Me: Hypothetical situation: I am a writer and you are my biggest fan. You find me wrecked in the snow on the side of the road and take me home to nurse me back to health, only to discover that I have killed off your favorite character in my newest book. How do you react?

Jake: There are so many outrageous assumptions I can't even answer it. You're not a writer. I'd never remotely be your biggest fan. I'd never in a million years nurse you back to health. That said, I do believe you have the blackness of heart to kill off a favorite character of mine, so I think the only natural response would be to hobble you, chain you to a manual typewriter, and make you rewrite Twilight.

Me: Bella gazed longingly into Edward's eyes, and then Jake died. Horribly. Thrice.

Jake:See, I just KNEW you read Twilight. Multiple times.

Me: I was curious when I found out "Stephanie Meyer" was your pseudonym. (It explains how he funds all these space lasers and secret evil hideouts, folks.)

Your story is, as I pointed out through gritted teeth, eligible for Hugos and Nebulas and you yourself are eligible for the Campbell for Best New Writer. Why should people vote for someone who would gladly nuke Peoria from orbit if it served his evil plans?

Jake: I would hope that people would vote for others for the Campbell. I am entirely unworthy of that honor this year. As to the Hugo or Nebula, if someone finds that my novelette moved them more than others, then I would hope they would vote for me. But that is a highly personal decision. On the other hand, my winnning a Nebula or Hugo very well may drive Spencer to suicide, and ridding the Earth of his vileness is worthy enough a goal that you should perhaps vote for me whether you like my story or not.

Me: Please. My seppuku standards are much higher than that. I have faith that humanity will not make the mistake of recognizing your work.

But should it ever happen, I will form a resistance and google-bomb you with slashfic.

Jake: So what you're saying is you'll just redirect people to your site.

Me: I didn't say Autobot/Decepticon slashfic. My site is an entirely different animal (and by animal I mean what Megatron calls Optimus Prime in the throes of passion).

Hypothetical situation # 2: You discover that at my death, the timestream diverges into a horrific dystopian future where people are eaten alive by giant rats. With tentacles. Who are often confused with a political party because people call them "tentacrats." Only you can save me from this accidental death. Do you intervene for the good of the world, or do you take your chances with the tentacrats?

Jake: Since the dystopian future of tentacrats doesn't seem altogether that different than our current form of government, I think I'd take my chances with the rats rather than save you. Hell, who am I kidding? If saving you stopped Cthulhu from being unleashed on the world, leading to puppies and kittens dying and nothing but pain and suffering for all, I'd still not save you.

Jake Kerr, everyone! His vileness knows no bounds, and you should never read his story because it will corrupt you.

The Truth Is Revealed

2012-01-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

I used to tutor an eleven-year old with Asperger's who was also named Spencer.

We had a language called Spenzish.

Smurgle all ye wattabups meant "give me a cookie."

There. I have no more secrets.

Two Things!

2012-01-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

I found this old journal I used to write my stories in. It had some art in the sidebar by the amazing James C. Christensen, including this 16th-century-looking dude in a frilly doublet and hose, throwing up the peace sign.

I captioned it "Two things! Your cheese is rotten and your butt is huge!"

So, now that you know that, you can take care of your, y'know, problems.

I wanted to write a bit about depression and creativity. (Two things!) There's a fallacy out there that depression is linked to creativity. You have to be a little psychotic to be an artist. Chop off an ear when things get too dull.

This is a fairly powerful fallacy in medicated now because a lot of people get on antidepressants, get happy, feel better than ever before... and can't think of anything to write about. Still, better to have a dearth of ideas but be happy than have a dearth of motivation and sit on the floor crying. Right?

Ehh, it's more complicated than that. This book explains it better than I can. Depression is a by-product of our alienating and sedentary modern lifestyle. Our ancestors belonged to an incredibly nurturing community and were almost never sedentary.

Rumination is poison to the depressed. Give us too long to think and we'll start thinking about what failures we are. But Skipper, writers need time to ruminate! Writing IS sedentary and alienating by nature.

In order to fight my depression properly, I had to relearn how to write and not get depressed about it.

I took control of other things first. I got a therapist, started exercising, used a full-spectrum light in winter, and dropped some things from my massive priority list. That was when I dropped out of the publishing business. Writing works better if you know you have a few hours a day for it. I also got better meds. Right now I take what is politely referred to as a mood stabilizer, but I used to take an SSRI. It was a bad choice since I've got a form of bipolar disorder that is less crazy than the typical sort. The SSRI swung me toward mania instead of evening me out. I had to see an actual psychiatrist a few times, on top of the talk therapy, to identify these things.

I had found that the worse the depression got, the more likely I was to obsess over a piece. I rarely produced anything, and when I did, I scrutinized the juice out of it.

So I first wrote a novel I knew I couldn't sell. It was safe, like flirting with the hot girl who will only talk to you because you let her copy your homework.

I poured tons of first draft into it, just trying to tell a story. That helped me get my work ethic back, so I could tackle more reasonable goals. Revision was the toughest. I had to figure out a way to revise that did not resemble rumination. Stare at the same Word doc long enough, and you'll hate it and yourself.

Hard copies became my saviors. If I had to write a new chunk of a book, I would handwrite it. If I had to make major changes to a short story, I would print it out, scribble all over it, and actually retype the whole thing back into the computer.

The community of writers around you can really save you; I got connected to a writer's group that was ridiculously close-knit and welcoming, and, I think, still is.

I also had to make this my mantra: it's about telling a story. When I confused my professional identity, my self-worth and my desires for a "real writing career" with the joy of storytelling, I stopped cold. Let the id play, mean Mr. Superego.

I'd be curious to hear how other writers deal with depression and creativity. Can you actually write when you're depressed? Do meds make it better or worse? Is the cheese really rotten and the butt truly huge?

Me! Me! MEEEEEEEE

2012-01-09T14:28:00.001-08:00

I got some really nice responses around the Internet to the post on writing and depression. I'm going to write a little more on it, since it's something I've struggled to write about for years. But first...

I haven't been able to think of a snarky yet humble way to do this. So. I'm eligible for a few awards in the upcoming 2012 award season, including the Hugo for two novelettes I published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

To vote for the 2011 Hugo Awards, you need to have been a member of WorldCon 2011/Renovation SF, be a member of WorldCon 2012/Chicon 7, or become a supporting member of WorldCon 2012. To vote for the Nebulas, you need to be an active member of Science Fiction Writers of America.

Both magazines are also fantastic purveyors of fiction and deserve Hugos of their own, in the Best Semiprozine category. I'm particularly delighted to have appeared in BCS because of the way they are nurturing the rarely-seen form of short epic fantasy. I encourage you to read around in both and nom nom nom (as in nominate).

I also want to make special note of this post by editor Jennifer Brozek. Jen published a story of mine in the anthology Human Tales and is a really great editor and great person, and you ought to check out her anthos as well for fine stories.

Finally, I'm eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. For a New guy, I feel as though I've been here all along.

The Dumps

2012-01-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

On Mur Lafferty's response to Bloggess re: depression. Um, yeah. More so for writers.

I've been meaning for years to write about depression and writing, but it's a bit like trying to untangle that mess of cords behind the TV. Does this cord go to the muse, the depression, the superego, or... what does that one do?

In 2006, I would go to work in the special ed department of Inglemoor High School and get depressed around 9 in the morning. Thank God I worked with the kindest kids in the world, or it would have been even tougher. It lasted until right before I got off work, and when I got home and sat in the quiet, I felt so relieved that the black dog was gone... until I wanted to write or do something productive.

Then a different demon set in: The Why Aren't You Good Enough Beast.

It's my drunk superego, and he's a mean drunk. I would stare at a blank page, check Facebook, maybe doodle a bit, until it was time to cook dinner, then the Beast would scream about my worthlessness for an hour until my wife got home and found me crying into the chicken mole.

I would make unrealistic goals for myself, trying to jog my writing. Two thousand words a day! A story each week! Six stories this month! A novel done by a month from now! Pulitzers a-go-go! The redemption of the F word!

The ridiculous goals made me more depressed because I knew I couldn't meet them and the Beast was now screaming, screaming, screaming in my ear that I was supposed to break in (whatever that means) years ago, dammit!

I'd like to say that my writing is always an out for depression, a place to set my sad little soul free. When I lose myself in the story, I feel that way. I love to see something take an unexpected turn, to let a character do dumb things and write their consequences.

But it's just as often a source of the depression. My superego and id don't play well together. The superego is quite helpful. I am grateful for the type-A bastard and the stick up his ass. He makes me revise, he makes me submit, and he makes me keep some kind of goal, although I have to check his ambition.

I am grateful for the id, distractable little bugger that he is, and his stormy, gooey affair with the muse. He gives me the humor, the twists and turns, and the occasional moment of brilliance.

But both of them can make the depression worse, and they want different things. The id wants whatever the hell it wants at the moment--usually chocolate, the guitar, and old comics. The superego wants only to impress.

The clinically depressed tend to ruminate. We review recent events in our life looking for proof that we are worth something, and find only evidence that we are worthless.

For anyone who feels this way out there, you're not what your rumination leads you to believe. I mentioned the special ed kids. Some of them could only say a few words. Some of them were in diapers. But every day, they smiled at me and laughed at my dumb jokes and made it a little better. They won't do much for the advancement of society. Depression was a problem for them as well.

But they mattered. Don't fool yourself into thinking you don't.

The Arbitrary Set of Stupid Days Together In Review

2011-12-31T20:51:00.001-08:00

2011...

Writers, because we are all introspective and shit, like to write a "Best of" at the end of each year, detailing what we wrote, what we want to, and how 2012 is really the year we'll lose that "unnecessary exposition" around our collective waistlines.

But I have no Best Of, really. For the first time in for freaking ever, I had a real bust of a year for writing production.

Maybe it was the work situation. I started out the year working four part-time jobs, then I was hired on full-time at one of the jobs, and since it was a real career and all, I was a little keyed-up every time I got on the computer. I couldn't screw up (even when I screwed up). I have dental. DENTAL.

That's REAL!

Maybe it was the bad things, which among other stuff I won't detail in a blog, included my grandparents' deaths. In some ways it was very beautiful and fitting. My grandfather was an English professor. He treasured his mind, and his facility with language, and he never lost it, right until the end. My grandmother died four weeks to the day after him. She liked to say, as his cancer raged, "I want him to reach back and pull me after him."

They were in their mid-80s, part of the vanishing World War II generation and ready to go.

But it was tough because my grandfather was very Mormon and most of his pre-death urging for me was to stay as Mormon as possible. Of everyone in my family, he is the person I wish I could be the most honest with about my mixed feelings toward Mormonism, but I wasn't about to bring that up on his deathbed. And now he's gone.

I have a few mementos of him sitting here: his unfinished novel with his instructions to 'finish it and whoever's writing is least embarrassing, put his name on the cover.' I have his Henry James books, since one of our last conversations was about his love of Henry James, who I've never enjoyed much. One day I'll rewrite this book. And read Henry James. So far, that day isn't today.

Maybe it was just burnout from Viable Paradise and the burst of writing I did when I came home. I learned a ton at VP and I came home and did NaNoWriMo in fifteen days, and then... splat.

I've heard recently of a syndrome I will call "post-workshop malabsorption," in which the rewiring the workshop has done takes a while to settle, and the muse just decides to take some time off and let it sink in.

The muse is a lazy jerk.

It was definitely somehow related to the explosion on the music front. I was in one band that "took off," relatively, then my other disbanded band rebanded with a new singer. (Bands are here and here, for the two people who haven't heard me brag about them.) I played and recorded and mixed and played and played and played. Music is very enticing when I'm not writing: it's social, it's intuitive, and it requires very little generation and a lot of practice.

A few years ago, when I was feeling creatively blocked, I threw myself into cooking with similar zest. (Cooking... zest... ah!) Everything was about the instant satisfaction of seeing my wife go, "Oh, this is good! What the heck did you do?" Sometimes you don't want the year of headgames that a novel entails.

And maybe it was just that I have two small kids and my wife and I both work from home.

Regardless, I am still staring at a pile of undone goals, most recently listed as "Finish By End of the Year," after they were updated from "Finish By End of September."

But. Weirdly enough, this year I made two pro sales, and both stories were well into novelette territory. I had a story appear in the very awesome Human Tales anthology and the incredible Jen Brozek and her lovely house-elf Lillian scheduled me my first public reading outside of a con at Village Books, the magnificent used bookstore in Bellingham. I closed out the year with a yet-to-be-disclosed reprint sale.

So if I had just made New Year's resolutions for "more pro publications" and "get a real, respectable job in my field" and "become a minor rock star," I wouldn't feel so ashamed. With that in mind, my New Year's Resolution for 2012 is to sell a novel for a ridiculous advance.

For every one of us, living in this world
means waiting for our end. Let whoever can
win glory before death. When a warrior is gone,
that will be his best and only bulwark.

STORY!

2011-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

My novelette, "The Death of Roach," is up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

I'm very proud of this sale. Earlier this year I made my first pro sale to OSC's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I had just tossed off the story. The editor liked it, but we made quite a few deep changes to the heart of the story, and then more changes to the language. I liked the end result of the IGMS story, but I kind of felt like it was a fluke.

This particular story, chronicling the life of an assassin named Roach, was culled from years of drafts on a novel that I first wrote in 2004. That one bounced off every editor and agent in existence (that I sent it to)(which was actually a lot)(don't look at me like that).

So I cannibalized and rewrote it in 2008. Then rewrote that in 2009. Then threw that away and started over in 2010. Then decided that there was too much backstory, which is why you have a short story here of 10k backstory, and decided to just write a novel of the backstory in 2011, and use the 2010 version as Book Two.

Point being...

I worked on this for a long time. Roach is a hard character to really get my head around. I had to set a fairly horrible challenge for myself when I started writing it. Could I chronicle, compellingly, a change of heart for a terrorist? She'd always been interesting but not convincing. I spent years writing my way through different sets of motivation for such a killer. I hope to devote another blog post to it, once I get my head around what she will be doing in the novel series--she's still hard to write, the jerk!

On The Sacred Cow's Dry, Dry Teats

2011-12-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

I read something the other day that terrified me.

A writer who I respect and enjoy has taken a god's age to produce book two of his Big Fat Fantasy Series. Now, it's not as though the world is clamoring for more Big Fat Fantasies, which abound and are rich in Books Twos and Fives and Sevens. But, from someone who consumes the BFFs like milkshakes, this particular Book One had stood out for me, and so I was starting to get irked and wonder why in the world his second book hadn't come out.

I poked around his site and found his "Official Statement On Book Two."

What I saw there affected me. Actually, it affected two of me.

It affected the reader me, who said, "Oh, for f-wad's sake. I read Book One in 2009, people. Just put the damn thing out."

But it made writer me peed my pants in horror.

It seems that he had turned in his first draft, written quickly and dirtily, to the editor. The editor gave one of those responses that always show up in Hollywood writers' lives: "I can't do anything with this. It's terrible." Or something to that effect; he requested sweeping changes.

So said author, like the voice in Shel Silverstein's poem, wrote a new book. (If you don't like it, blame the goat. Or the editor.) But the new book, well over two hundred thousand words, was apparently too long. So he had to cut it down by twenty percent.

Now let us take a moment to realize that the BFF genre regularly plays host to monstrous books. Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings pushed four hundred thousand words, as did Patrick Rothfuss's Wise Man's Fear, and we won't even start on George R.R. Martin. Publishers don't want to put out huge books because they are a pain, but BFF readers associate big with quality.

This writer was, in fame and name, nowhere close to those guys, who bestride the BFF world with their girthiness. But he wrote a decent book. It sold, presumably, and it featured lots of happy reviews from fellow respectable authors. It garnered a few BFF fans and certainly didn't need a million drafts for people to read the second book.

This hits me where I live, brothers and sisters. I'm at the point where I've sold a few stories. I've even landed one meager little reprint sale. A few years ago I slavered over the thought of ANY sale, ANYWHERE. Now I scour message boards, reviews and anywhere that might display a decent (or indecent!) review of my work.

But I have no novel sale. No massive backlog of short stories. No Hollywood option and big piggybank and all those other great things.

Put simply: I got over that hurdle and now there is so very much that could still go wrong. This guy has slaved and sweated over Book Two, and hopefully the delay has given readers more time to discover the first book. But damn, the thought of having to write a second book, under contract, watching deadlines disappear, THREE times... that's a nightmare.

Excuse me while I cower in a corner, eating chocolate and possibly brandishing an M-16.

The Murky Bottom of Literary Algae-Fed Sulfuric Spring

2011-12-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

It's the end of December, so I'm rather late on this post, but I can only plead the fact that holy crap a lot of stuff goes by the wayside when you do NaNoWriMo and then you have to start holiday shopping.

So I did it. I won, although I was nowhere close to my record of fifteen days. I closed the deal on November 28th. I did little writing for one week in the middle of the month because I was visiting my parents' house in California, but I caught up easily enough.

The true tragedy (gasp!) is that I really haven't done much since. But that's another subject.

This novel was much more seat-of-the-pants than the last couple of times I did NaNo. In 2010, I had a very detailed outline, and in 2009, I wasn't far off in knowing "this needs to happen now." This time, I had a rather vague idea of where I was going and what would happen.

Which is good for NaNo. Not so good for now, when I've struggled to figure out where to go from here on this novel I really want to finish but that kind of took off by itself.

Some days I hate my brain. It seems focused on anything but writing lately. There are days when you can't wait to see where the stories go, when telling the stories seems to be your greatest joy. You natter on, convinced that you are writing yourself a Pulitzer and a house on the coast in Italy.

I haven't had one of those days in a loooong time. But we'll get there.

The Mistakes And The Glory of Doing NaNoWriMo in 15 Days

2011-11-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Mistakes and the Glory of Doing NaNoWriMo in 15 Days

I've only done NaNoWriMo a couple of times. Like a lot of long-time writers, I had my reservations when I heard about it. It seemed like an odd way of celebrating an amateurish attitude that I, clearly, had outgrown, with my maturity and monocle and all.

Once I got over my snooty self and realized writing should be fun, I flunked it in 2006, then won in 2009 on day 30. I had a blast in 2009. I loved the sense of achievement. I loved the camaraderie and the experience of checking in with friends, having write-ins, and comparing our frustrations.

Fast forward to October 2010, where I lay in bed at the Viable Paradise Writer's Workshop, and one feverish idea to salvage an old manuscript emerged in my brain.

This was no mere fancy. I HAD to write this thing. This was the kind of thing that keeps you up nights and makes you write 8k of effortless notes. The kind of thing that makes you wish you were thinking about something else, because it is ALL you can think of and you MUST write it to the point of being unable to relate to even the dude on the corner who thinks winking causing cancer.

So as of November 1st, I embarked upon it, determined not just to hit 50k, but to go even further, staking out a major piece of manuscript. 75k. 90k. Stuff like that. And on November 15th, I hit my 50k.

It was magical. Pink sparkly puppies cavorted with each other in joy. My adrenaline surged like a frothy wave of cream soda. (By now you have figured out how I can write 50k in 15 days. Similes, my friend. Similes like endless rows of dominoes up the face of Mount Doom, back down again, and up Mount Even Doomier.)

And then I actually rewrote some of it, and things were less sparkly and gushing.

What did I learn?

I'm still figuring that out. I've never written that much in such a small amount of time. Normal NaNo pace is just a hair over my productive periods; I prefer 1k a day when I'm even doing things daily.

The aftereffects were more severe than I thought they would be. Downright painful, actually. But I did learn a few things about how to have an EXTREMELY productive NaNo:

1- Make your writing time sacred, and set aside a lot of it. It must be the butternut squash tub you wallow in, the walrus you're stuck under, the thing that requires a lot of time but is kind of crazy.

If a person does any writing at all, said person has done this, but in 2010 I made it very specific. I planned out my big writing humps. I took days off from work, or scheduled write-ins with friends as often as possible. I would get a clear picture of exactly how much time I had and just go for that time. I would pack myself a lunch, hoof off to the local college campus where only students could access internet, and not come back until late.

It helps to work at home, by the way, and that was one reason I could do this. I had to budget work time very carefully though, too, making sure that I had enough time to finish everything. I did have two small kids, though, so don't think that I had an easy schedule.

2- Know what you're doing. Have something like a plan. Pantsers might be able to make it through 50k, but they'll do more revising than someone who has some form of outline or idea. There have to be specific scenes you are excited to write, and a plot that you can rely on when you run out of stuff to write about. An outline also means that you can skip ahead to the stuff you're excited for, and then back-fill.

3- Don't neglect your health. Eat well and exercise. This was one of my huge mistakes. I neglected both just to write for two weeks, but at the end of two weeks, I had a big battle to fight to get back in running shape, and stop eating so many sweets.

November is a terrible month for your health already. The month starts with a barrage of Halloween candy and ends with a tub of butter biscuits and pumpkin pie (in America, anyway). The weather is getting nasty (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), and you're less likely to go for a jog in cold rain or early snow.

To make it worse, food is usually the easiest, cheapest way to reward yourself. I'd love to go buy new books or new clothes each time I hit my daily goal, but a 40$ hoodie is a silly proposition, while a 2$ chocolate bar is a lovely way to end the writing session. Or start. Or get through it. Etc.

Don't make the mistake. If you want to ramp up your blood sugar and caffeine level to write, try a little meditation beforehand, or some yoga, and see how the natural adrenaline works.

4- Always leave the page wanting more; it leads you to write the next day. Save some of those juicy scenes you can't wait to write. If you're leaving the page painfully, take some time to figure out why. Remind yourself of the moments you want to get to and imagine the most vivid way to get there. Preparation time (which is what that exercise is good for as well) is half of writing.

Again, preparation is key, and preparation should make you more excited to do the book.

But, as you know, Bob, this is only if you want to really storm through NaNoWriMo quickly. A lot of people have fun discovering the story 1.8k at a time.

5- Consider your writing style as you NaNo, and rather than ignoring it to do NaNo, make the frenetic pace work for you. What kind of writer are you? I'm a born fiddler; I have to go back and add or subtract things from the earlier bits of the book. On a normal NaNo pace, this is doable if you keep it to a minimum, but if you really want to go ultra-marathon and crank out 60, 70, 100k in the month, you will have to avoid almost any meddling.

This is why, by November 30th last year, I had only made it up to 60k. I cut 5000 words the day after I won NaNo; it was all fluff I had saved for the sake of wordcount.
This has a good side, though; tis better to have 50k to meddle with than to be constantly trying to get the first chapter perfect. So either slow down and let yourself fiddle a bit, or decide that you won't fiddle until well after 50k.

And in the end, would I do it again?

Oh hell no.

In hindsight, it was awful for me. I have no idea why. I'm still trying to figure the reasons out. By Christmas, I burned out bigtime and lost nearly a year of my writing goals. I just didn't feel like writing. I didn't finish the novel. In fact, my NaNo 2011 is the same novel (thank you, Zokutou Clause) when I was hoping it would be the sequel.

I don't know, though, if I could have done it any other way. This was an idea that barreled into my mind, and I had some scenes pictured down to the exact wording that made it into the novel. The problem was, a novel on paper is a different animal than what you think it is.

No matter how well you think you know your fetus, the child will surprise you.

This NaNo I'm expanding and exploring the draft and writing what is so far a generous prequel section. I will learn some things.

I love NaNoWriMo. I've written six novels, thirtysomething short stories, and countless miscellaneous things, including a respectable amount of published columns and stories. I know writing. I can get in a rut faster than a chariot on a trolley track. At 1.8k a day or longer, you can't afford that rut.

That Comeback Album That Sinks Without A Trace (Also, Adventures in Eating)

2011-10-27T21:51:00.001-07:00

Has it really been since May? Shoooooot.

I've been playing a lot of music in two bands, a process that derailed a bit when both drummers had to depart. We've got leads on drummers for both bands, including my new favorite guy ever, who brings me pumpkins and compares Pawnbroker to Edie Brickel.

I have a story forthcoming in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, culled from my long, long, long-suffering Crusades novel. That is, it's the Crusades if the Muslims were telepaths and the Christians shapeshifters. Now if I could just finish writing the damned thing... This particular character, Roach, is a slight analogue to an Ismaili Assassin. Except, y'know, telepath. I've been working on this story for years and BCS was always my first choice market, so yay!

Version 5 of this novel is my NaNoWriMo this year. I'd like to blog sometime about the ever-growing cultural appropriation debate, but I'm going to skip that in favor of...

Adventures in Eating!

I'm gluten-intolerant. Have been ever since I was four. Celiac sprue is a rather nasty food intolerance in which certain simple storage proteins in wheat, rye and barley tear apart the workings of the small intestine. The storage proteins are generically referred to as "gluten," but it's a misnomer as that's a catchall phrase for storage proteins in general, which is why "corn gluten" is a food additive.

Because I wasn't careful enough and now my intestines have suffered a bit, I'm experiencing some bad side effects of prolonged gluten exposure. I'm lactose intolerant as well and I have trouble regulating my blood sugar, probably because of intense sugar cravings partially brought on by malabsorption, leading to some signs of prediabetes. Yeah. Sucks. I am glad my kids have more warning than me for celiac, and we have a wheat-free house.

Food additives are terrible for celiacs, though. Ever seen the phrase "Modified Food Starch?" That's gluten. MSG and all its various aliases, like Hydrolized Protein? Generally gluten. Oats? They are gluten-free on paper, but absorb gluten during processing, so unless they specify wheat-free, all oat products are out.

After the last few years of dairy sickness and sugar shock, something must give. So I've embarked on a quest to cut down sugar consumption and eat more whole food. Breakfast shall be fish and greens, lunch a raw tomato, etc. I'm looking for hidden sugars in a lot of food I eat, which means less bread, for one, but also means I must confront the most delicious thing ever with a skeptical eye.

My first, and most treacherous companion:

Trader Joe's Mediterranean Hummus. It is so good. And it's because of sugar.

Sugar isn't listed in the ingredients, but dextrose, a form of glucose, is. It's a convenient way to hide sugar in additives. It's also one of the bases for citric acid, which is in the hummus as well.

Weirdly enough, US troops in World War II received dextrose pills in their K-rations. It was to help keep up blood sugar, and dehydrated Marines on waterless Pacific atolls went through a lot of it.

I make my own hummus a lot, but it's generally a different animal without additives. Raw garlic, pure lemon, etc. It's good, but the after-breath tastes like you've eaten a sunflower. I went a quest to make mildly sweet hummus that was still full of lemony garlic goodness.

Experiment 1: Prep everything in the olive oil. Get the olive oil simmering and add lots of garlic, onions and spices. (Sorry, this is a stock photo since our cameras are broken.) I didn't have the oil popping, but it did get to a nice roiling boil. Once the onions and the garlic were semi-translucent, I tossed them in the food processor with the lemon juice, tahini and salt.

The result was a very nice mild hummus, but it was a bit too mild. It was a sweet in a very natural, baked-onion kind of way, but it was missing the bite of that citric acid. I'm thinking of adding more lemon zest next time. Or some other crucial acid. Ideas, Internet?

Hello, People of Earth!

2011-05-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

Musing on the word "mother****er."

Why is it that casual references to incest are, well, casual? Who decided that having sex with your mother made for a rather common term? Who wrote the book of love?

I think the answer is forty-two.

It is counterproductive to blog when you only want to vent. Sorry guys. But I'm a little bugged. Feel free to skip next part:

I am still writing-blocked. It's been a stressful week. Adia has pneumonia. We have a perfectly nice houseguest but we CAN. NOT. handle a houseguest and a kid with pneumonia at the same time. I had to drop out of an editing project I was excited about because work dumped a lot of stuff on me. It all combines with me being sick with her pre-pneumonia virus and working a lot. The singer in my band has the same virus, so we missed her keys and vocal skillz at practice. Also, my keyboard is still in the shop. And despite having a real job, I'm still a little broke. You see, food is expensive without food stamps and student loans are expensive once they make you pay them back.

Wah wah wah. Poor white middle-class me.

But the writing. It is tough with two kids. Having one kid was kind of like having a pet. When she was distracted, we had lots of time. When she needed love and attention, we had plenty to give. It's hard to split love, attention, lack of sleep and general parental skillz between two kids.

It adds up to this: when I go back to the novel I need to rewrite so it stops stinking up the house, I don't feel up to the job. This novel is, by my non-writing eyes, funny and brilliant. I love it.

[Those of you who skipped can start here.]

Other news I haven't blogged:

My band's recordings: reverbnation.com/pawnbroker.

An interview with me on the subject of music and spirituality, with some explanation of said band's lyrics: http://www.linescratchers.com/

My first pro sale (yay!), still up at IGMS: http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i21&article=_002

The antho with me in it, sharing once again a TOC with the amazing Cat Rambo. I love her work and you should too, and you'll get me in the bargain: http://www.amazon.com/Human-Tales-Jennifer-Brozek/dp/0983099332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305472639&sr=8-1

I actually read Things Fall Apart while I was sick, and that was great. I've never read it before. I will blog more about it and my ongoing reading project, but let me just say for now: wow. I have never read a book that worked on so many levels. It will survive because it juggles the contradictions of tragic character and tragic setting, and includes not a sense of right and wrong, but a sense of the inevitability in real tragedy.

Finally, my good friend ericjamesstone is up for a Hugo. You can read his really great story here:

http://www.ericjamesstone.com/blog/stories/that-leviathan-whom-thou-hast-made/

Grrrr

2010-12-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling blocked. Somehow I've vomited out all the word vomit I had in me, to the tune of 76k, and there ain't any more. Tired? Wha? No, not me.

On a related note, why do little kids kicked and thrash around so much while they sleep? Are there demons possessing them? Are they trying to get away from faeries who wish to replace them with changelings?

Have you ever thought about how Santa's elves are kind of like the faeries that steal away little kids?

Maybe all the naughty kids are just androids that the elves are testing out for the eventual takeover.

Maybe I don't even HAVE children. Just elfdroids.

I Am Not a Rock Star

2010-11-29T12:53:00.000-08:00

But I used to be. Our first rule was Never Tune Your Instrument.

I finished NaNoWriMo in fifteen days this month. Blahhhhhrhghlghglhgh.

I'm way less confident about my writing than I used to be. Nowadays, it's quite common for me to write a draft, scrap it, write another draft, handwrite a draft to incorporate into that draft... and then throw it all away again. NaNoWriMo is kind of a nice hearkening back to when I was a teenager and I thought that Robert Jordan imitations that dripped from my hands at 1800 words a day were pure gold.

Now I'm cutting, chopping, reworking... I've probably written 70,000 words total this month, but the draft just won't get past 60k, and I know I'm going to throw away the first three chapters.

For fifteen days, writing this mad, passionate whore of a novel, I was dripping gold again.

Adia fell on her face yesterday and scraped her nose, so she has been wearing a Band-Aid on her face.

I drilled her on what to say. "Adia, if anyone asks where you got that Band-Aid, what do you say?"

Adia: "I don't talk about Fight Club!"

At preschool, one of the other moms said, "Did you hurt yourself?"

She shoved her fist in her mouth and remained silent. For shame, Adia.

Thoughts For Vets' Day

2010-11-11T12:47:00.001-08:00

I was searching around for something to say about Veteran's Day and appreciating the troops and war is hell and and and... anyway, this is it.

"My memories of the last war haunted my dreams for years. Military service, to be plain, includes the threat of every temporal evil; pain and death, which is what we fear from sickness; isolation from those we love, which is what we fear from exile; toil under arbitrary masters, which is what we fear from slavery: hunger, thirst, and exposure, which is what we fear from poverty. I'm not a pacifist. If it's got to be it's got to be. But the flesh is weak and selfish, and I think death would be much better than to live through another war."- CS Lewis.

Amen, Jack.

My father has, for the last few years, been working in a military hospital as a psychologist. I used to look at veterans and simply think they were courageous, and wish I could be as proud of something that I did as they might be of what they did.

Now I'm both horrified and in awe. The stories my dad has told me have made me wonder how anyone could keep their sanity after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not just the horror of seeing your buddies die. It's knowing that any kid who asks you for candy could be wired with an IED. Knowing that any child who "accidentally" wanders out in front of your moving tank could be preparing to blow it up and himself in the process. Seeing those children die, for the lies adults have told them. Knowing that the opposition actually believes that it is worth it to murder these children and other civilians, all in order to take you out. Knowing that your very presence attracts these things, and yet knowing that you must do your job or more innocents, and more of your buddies, will die.

I don't wish I had served in the military anymore. My admiration for veterans, though, has grown by exponents. The vets of Iraq and Afghanistan have fought and died to try and restore some kind of justice, however misguided the original government intentions. I hope I can make the world they fought for better in my own way.

If This Is Word Vomit, I Must Have Had One Hell of a Word Drinking Night

2010-11-01T22:27:00.001-07:00

NaNoWriMo Day 1: 10,055 words. Brain: no.

My Hot Wife

2010-10-22T05:05:00.001-07:00

I subscribe to Dave Wolverton's Daily Kick in the Pants, which is a motivational email about writing. He wrote one the other day about writerly spouses. We are supposed to read the letter to our spouses. It begins thus:

"I’ve been a writer for thirty years, and I just realized that as a writer, for ages I’ve been trying to deal with a problem that I don’t have much control over: interruptions from my spouse.

If you’re married or have children, or if you’re in business, you probably have this problem, too.

With me it’s little innocent things. I may be writing, and my wife will come and ask, “So what do you think we should do about this problem?” It could be anything: Should we get the cat neutered? What do we do about our daughter’s tattoos? Do you like the new dress that I bought?"

Dave goes on to beg spouses to be supportive, which means being quiet.

Well, Dave...

Let's take a moment to talk about how awesome Chrissy is.

Not that she never interrupts me, or won't call me home from the library or coffee shop where I have camped out to write. And I must admit, when we were first married, she would sometimes test my commitment to writing by dressing... um, let's change the subject and keep this blog PG.

But Chrissy really doesn't interrupt save in case of emergency. Sometimes she puts Sam in the room with me, in a baby toy-thingie, and asks me to keep on eye on him, but she'll take him back if he cries too much. We have two kids. Someone is always crying. She deals with it while I'm writing, because she wants me to do it.

When we were first dating, Chrissy went through my room and stole all of my writing that she could find. She loved one particular story, and gave me a suggestion on the story that vastly improved it. Once I implemented her suggestion that story got me into Western, went on to be a finalist for Writers of the Future and then won me two hundred bucks in another contest.

Right after we were married, she read about Dave Wolverton's writing workshop in Salt Lake. "You're going," she told me, and when I asked her about the cost, she said, "I'll pay it. It's worth it."

At that workshop, I met Eric James Stone, who was almost as crucial as Chrissy in setting me on the path to a writing career. He showed me these strange things called "writer groups" and "cons." He became my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I guess that makes Chrissy my sexy Yoda.

Chrissy continues to read most of what I write. Now, it's a lot harder for her but she will still do it, as long as I can wrangle the kids while she does so. Her suggestions are almost always the best ones I get, because she knows what makes my writing work and what my major pitfalls are.

I can't imagine a better spouse. I love you, sexy Yoda.

What I Did At Camp

2010-10-10T22:03:00.001-07:00

[This post was originally started in the Seattle Airport. It is presented to you in real time. And 3D. Unrated.]

I am sitting in an airport and going on my nine thousandth set of words for the day. Yeah. That's what Viable Paradise has done to me. And I am writing this now, because tomorrow I intend to hold a lotta babies.

What is there to say about Viable Paradise 14 except this?

Also, Martha's Vineyard is beautiful. My classmates, whom I will list later, were amazing, except for Jake Kerr, who is now my nemesis. I can feel his evil eye upon me, like a wheel of fire. I can't count the number of amazing experiences even without writing involved, like learning to fence from Michelle, swimming in the middle of the night with a host of students including Sän, who went in fully clothed several times. Luminescent jellyfish! On Saturday I even got to ride a bike (thanks, Bill and Mary) all around the island. (I also got to find out that I had never changed my flight from the original Saturday I booked it for. Blehhh.)

[Picks it up a week later.]

Wow, time passes when there are babies crying. I've been catching up on work and furiously preparing to write for NaNoWriMo, a novel I am tentatively calling "The Phantom Menace." No, seriously. I'll explain it later.

As for actually writing at VP: Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden talked a lot about publishing, as one might expect. They were very excited about ebooks, Barnes & Noble's health and other related stuff, which was really cool, because we could hear them over the Internet screams of "Publishing is deaaaad!" Turns out it's not dead and Tor is even more not-dead than others. We got to go deeper into a conversation I've had with some authors and editors before, re how ebooks can bring back an author's out-of-print backlist, trade paperbacks and hardcovers, the shrinking paperback shelves in drugstores and grocery stores and what it means to the books publishers buy, and and and...

She kept the lowest profile, but Laura Mixon turned out to be VP's secret weapon for me. She lectured on the care and feeding of your Other, aka the Beast. We learned how to treat your subconscious nicely so that it will deliver, theme, resonance and humor, while your conscious mind is able to work on character and plot. My one-on-one with Laura was also really helpful, as she capped off the week by giving me some really good, simple and sound advice on the story, and then listened to me bitch about writing with screaming children.

On top of workshopping our submissions, we wrote stories until about 2 in the morning. I actually wrote "The End" and fell asleep right there with the laptop on, while next to me, Sän went on writing until he faced the same crux.

I thought my story was terrible. People liked it. Even Jake liked it, though he was only saying that to lure me into false calm so he could pierce my aorta with his vampiric tentacular appendages.

And a bunch of other stuff. Mac and the staff made amazing food and were house-elves to put Dobby to shame. Okay, Dobby was a crappy house-elf, but they put the other hard-working house-elves in Harry Potter to shame. Uncle Jim and Doyle were amazing mentors and teachers and high-energy the whole time. Steve Gould was a lot of fun and he and Scalzi discoursed on the joys of working with Hollywood. Bear and I sang a lot of songs, drank a lot (okay, well, she drank a lot while I had water and Coke Zero) and she looked over a portion of my long-suffering historical novel that I am intimidated to write because I've never been to the Middle East.

I also periodically said stupid things, which tend to fly out of my mouth if I keep it open enough, but at the end of the week the people liked me.

Over the last few years I've been shortlisted for Clarion and a finalist for Writers of the Future twice. So as you might imagine, I had workshop lust. I was like one of those BYU students who, still a virgin at 29 after two failed engagements, finally makes it to the wedding night afraid that it won't be all it was cracked up to be.

VP, you did me good.

My Young Ward in Short Pants

2010-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

Adia has discovered superheroes. I left some comics lying around, and she thumbed through them. Rather than being a "Mermaid Madeleine Princess" for Halloween, she wants to be a "Mermaid Madeleine Wonder Woman." Yesterday I got home from my daily run she met me at the top of the stairs.

"I'm Evil Batman and Mom is Wonder Woman."

"Cool," I said, expecting to be promptly informed that I was Superman or Good Batman or some complimentary hero.

"You're Evil Batman too. And we punch each other. Pyew Pyew Pyew!"

The last is meant to represent laser-gun noises. I have never been prouder of her than I am right now.

I was holding Sam later that day when she came in, still pyew-pyewing me. "Is Sam Robin?" I asked. Sam promptly cooed a cute little coo like he does. "Who is Robin?" Adia asked. "Batman's friend," I said.

Adia hugged Sam and kissed him. "Batman gives Robin lots of hugs and kisses because he loves him."

300-Word Book Review AKA How Can You Read This? There's No Pictures!

2010-09-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

Explanation: After I read a book I usually like to take down a few of my thoughts regarding the book, lest it disappear down the memory hole. I had a whole document full of these comments. I forgot to save it when my laptop got stolen. A few of the comments ended up in correspondence, though, like the following that I sent to John Brown, the author of Servant of a Dark God.

300 Words! Better Than Fail Blog!

I argue fine points of LDS doctrine with John Brown on Facebook, so I wanted to read his book. I was genuinely, deeply moved. This book feels real. The book started with a description of a pretty basic day on a farm. At one point, when two kids asked their brother to guard a fugitive, he said, “Who will do the farm chores?” I liked that. So real and so easily missed.

Brown doesn't have Sanderson's gaming-module glee in his confusing magic system, though his characters are more real. Any government-unauthorized magic identifies one as a Darkfriend (called Sleth, but it’s the same idea). One of the characters, Argoth, was a former Darkfriend. He had gone from stealing life from others to hoarding it in small increments from donations—I think?—from his Sekrit Order.

The best parts are the moments where children face up to their parents' problems. Talen, the main character, had to accept how his dad is, to all appearances, a dark wizard. It reminded me of conversations with my dad; he always told me that my rigid view of Mormonism needed more gray areas. I thought he was on the road to hell. The book might have been better if Talen had maintained his definition of wizardry and betrayed his dad.

For more baggage, the character Argoth challenges a corrupt ruling wizard. To do so, he draws strength from his son, almost killing the kid. Armed with his son's energy, Argoth battles bad guy , and the wizard makes him into a mental slave. He took his son's life-force to conquer this baddie, and it DIDN'T WORK. I would kill to pull that off in a book. Brown plays for keeps,; well done in a world of fantasy comfort-food.

[Lest ye wonder, this is the list of books I've read and lost my profound thoughts on:
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
The Book of Saladin by Tariq Ali
Manhood For Amateurs by Michael Chabon
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Lamentation by Ken Scholes
Canticle by Ken Scholes
Antiphon by Ken Scholes
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz
Water by Steven Solomon
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

That's since April. 3-4 books a month is pretty studly. Oh yeah. It turns you on.]

Lust For A Very Particular Book

2010-08-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

So when my backpack was stolen, besides my laptop, iPod, art supplies and deck of cards, I had an ARC of Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings.

I was really enjoying the book. It took me a while to get into it, but it was so very pretty that I could hardly resist. Here is the thing. I would buy the book again, but I hate hardbacks. I can't carry them anywhere because they weigh something like ten zillion pounds.

If anyone has or knows of someone who has an ARC of Way of Kings and is willing to sell it, tell me, children. I will pay postage and whatever reasonable price the person wants.

ARG! Yay ARG! Yay.

2010-08-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend has been bipolar. Along with the usual lack of sleep, I,

1) sold a story

2) got my laptop and iPod stolen.

On the first: I sold an elbow-rubbing story to Jen Brozek at Apex for her new anthology, "Human Tales." This particular antho is a bunch of faerie tales from the fey creature's point of view. Mine was an Arabian Nights pastiche, and well-received by my writing group, who promptly went home and died with their lives complete.

On the second: ARG. ARG. ARRRRRUGUGG.

We were at a potluck yesterday in Cornwall Park, aka Frisbee Golf Stonerville USA. Because we filled our arms with babies and baby stuff, we forgot to ensure that the trunk had closed properly.

Some ratfink who should catch leprosy and die opened the trunk and helped himself to my backpack, including a laptop, iPod, two notebooks full of stuff relating to my tutoring job, a deck of cards, and an ARC of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

Seriously now. Why do people do this? There was a box of diapers, two carseats, and a mess of kids' toys in that car.

What drives me crazy--oh oh--is knowing that the person can go through all my crap. None of it is interesting. Most of it is backed up on another computer. But they can read my lists of books I've read and read my journal entries and look at pictures of me and Chrissy throughout the years. They can see the Radiohead bootlegs that probably only a few other fanatics have. They can even read my stories. If they are a complete idiot, they can try to publish them, which would actually be a nice way to bust the thief. I'm changing everything online--passwords, security questions, everything. I'm calling every pawn shop (luckily we go to church with the cop who took the report, so he's doing more looking than usual) in this county and I'm trying the ISP to see if they can find the IP address. I just scored a circa 2009 laptop on eBay for way less than Mac would charge me.

But.

Some stoner idiot is out there looking through my pictures and my writing.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Comin Atcha From The Depths of the Diaper

2010-07-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hi.

I have not blogged in a bit. Nor have I written. Nor have I finished any of my career-oriented tasks within any more of an hour before they are due. Nor have I slept.

On the good side, though, nobody is literally drinking my bodily fluids that I know of. Chrissy often complains that "it's tough being a cow," to which I reply, "unutterably so."

I DO write, though. I tutor a kid who likes creative writing and we write together and swap stories. I get paid by the hour for it. My life is awesome.

This is not one of those stories. This is, instead, a story that awriter penned at a writing-group session, about me.

All Spencer wanted was to sleep. Between Samwise's 1:00 AM arias and Adia's new tendency to play Godzilla Death Metal Screamy Time at 5:00 in the morning, he wasn't getting more than one hour of sleep each night. It was starting to wear on him.

"Opium!" said Victorian Spider-Man, who looked exactly like modern Spider-Man, except he wore a black top hat, gloves and a monocle. "Opium will quiet those little scamps straightaway!"

"No, Victorian Spider-Man," Spencer said. "Opium will just warp their little minds and send them to rehab at age 5. What do you think, Housewife Superman?"

Housewife Superman adjusted his floral apron. "Send them to a different planet where they will be raised by a kindly elderly couple and grow up to be superheroes! Or give them warm milk."

"They don't have superpowers, Mrs. Kent. Tony Stark?"

Tony Stark gave him a skeptical look over the rim of his gin and tonic. "Do I really look like someone you'd want advice for your kids from?"

"Why not?"

Tony tossed back his drink. "I'd put them in an ice chamber and take them out when they were twenty-five."

A tiny voice from behind asked, "Daddy, why are you talking to the rice maker?"

It Is Done And Cannot Be Undone

2010-07-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

More or less.

He's Samwise, for good or bad. No doubt much of the Internet is pleased and a few of you are horrified. This is my favorite text on the subject: "When he is twenty, what will happen when he's trying to pick up on a girl and she finds out he is named after a hobbit?"

To the sender I point out: Sam is the only one of those hobbits who snatched himself a lady.

Just in case, though, I am starting a money jar to change his name when he's older if he really wants it.

I spent so much of my life trying to be "important." I wanted praise and recognition and I wanted to be brilliant and better than everyone.

And yet my literary hero was totally humble and even a little dumb, but he did what his upper-class, literate, smart and informed buddy couldn't do.

I want Sam to understand that you don't have to be brilliant, you just have to be brave and stouthearted.

IN OTHER AWESOME NEWS: This weekend was much better than it had any right to be, considering we were out of the house, stuck in Bothell, while the landlady is having the lead paint removed. I got to go to a Clarion party with the awesome criada . I would like to reiterate to everyone there that I Am Not A Cool Guy. I got a new contract position at work helping to design the curriculum for some online courses, which is really cool.

ANNNNND.... I got into Viable Paradise for this year along with aforementioned criada and plunderpuss . Represent, Bellingham! W00t!

Sam(wise?) German Ellsworth

2010-07-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

I started on Tuesday to write a blog post about how the baby was eight days overdue. It was snarkily called "Honey, BP Called And They Want Your Cervix To Plug The Oil Spill."

As of 8:00 that night, Chrissy proved that blog post unnecessary. After a small intervention by the midwives to help open said cervix, five hours of intense labor produced a nine-pound boy at 8 PM. True to his hobbit namesake, he proceeded to have two dinners, four midnight snacks, and three breakfasts.

Adia is much happier about having a brother than we thought. She wanted a sister and she was also afraid of getting replaced. But she is fascinated with Sam and constantly wants to hold him.

We are still waffling on whether or not to go all the way and name him Samwise. I love the idea of a special name no one else has that is based on a noble little hobbit. On the other hand, his teacher will read it aloud on the first day of school and somebody just might say "stupid fat hobbit!"

Of course, that would make said tormentor a schizophrenic fish-eating jewelry-addicted goblin.

What do you guys think? To Wise or not to Wise?

HE'S NOT DEAD!

2010-06-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not. I have for over a month now been very worked up about the Arizona law targeting ethnic studies classes. Having taught an ethnic studies class at Western, I really want to take the time to write a thoughtful blog post about the experience and how it might relate, for all that I was a privileged white kid teaching (mostly) privileged white kids. Funny stories.

But anytime I have a couple of hours to write, I've actually been writing. One day. Until then: Jan Brewer, you are a simpleton.

Here's an excerpt from what I've been writing. This one was called "Father's Day:"

They had just gotten into bed at one AM when someone—Jeff would later correct himself and say something—banged on the drum set.

Jeff stumbled to the garage door. Three Annas looked up at him, three sets of blonde curls, three sets of two teeth and three ice-blue eyes. They scattered, squealing with glee as the man they thought of as their daddy ran after them. “Fallon! Clones!”

The Particle Cannons of Kilimanjaro

2010-05-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

I meant to keep up on this blog. I really did. I was going to write such blog posts. Moments of great profundity. But at the moment I am laid up with severe pain in an uncomfortable place.

I have decided to play a game. To play this game you need one (1) copy of a Transformers comic book from the eighties and one (1) copy of The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway. Stir and allow to rise.

"Now taste high-frequency sonics, creep!" he said.

"I wish you wouldn't," she said.

"Fools! You are nothing to me--less than nothing!" He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds sat, their naked heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth planed down, to run quick-legged and then waddle slowly toward the others.

"I don't quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let's not quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get."

"For... this... infamy... I will tear you apart with my bare hands!"

"Oh for Christ sake stop bragging, will you?"

He looked at her and saw her crying.

"Listen," he said. "Do you think that it is fun to do this? Fool! Have you learnt so little from our previous battles? I am power incarnate! I cannot be stopped... and I cannot be destroyed!"

"Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?"

"I have only to wait for the volcano's imminent eruption. At that moment my power siphon will seize the raw, naked energy released... and convert it into limitless power for me to absorb! Nothing can stop me attaining my godhood now!" He turned his head and grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great high and unbelievably white, was the square top of Kilimanjaro.

"You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a middle-aged woman who loves you and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would you?"

"Why do you persist in this futile struggle?"

"Why, I loved you. That's not fair. I love you now. I'll always love you. Don't you love me?"

"Such a noble speech... such a waste of time. Deceptions, fire!"

A Plague of Babies

2010-04-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Collapse by Jared Diamond and The World Without Us by some bloke whose name escapes me. I put down three other books that I was reading at once and plowed through these two. I haven't been so affected by a pair of books in a while.

The initial idea of World Without Us didn't sound interesting to me: it was a cool thought experiment to talk about what would happen to the world if humans totally disappeared. But the book is about a lot more than that; it's a thorough environmental treatise of how we've ****ed the planet and how it might recover.

The most affecting part of World Without Us was about the trash collecting in the North Pacific Gyre, a dead low zone between all the currents circling the coasts of Alaska, Russia, Japan, Hawaii and the western coast of North America. Trash. Trash like crazy. Lots of little plastic bottles and plastic wrap and plastic bags and worst of all, little bits of plastic that have been ground up that little sea creatures are eating that stick in their gut and kill them.

Funny enough, the ending is kind of hopeful—a thought that if people vanished, plastic would end up as just another layer in the Earth’s crust and probably get squished into something else.

Collapse is about various societies, both ancient and modern, that have collapsed and totally stopped working. In almost every circumstance it is because they overestimated how much damage their environment could take. On Easter Island, for example, the island was deforested faster than other Polynesian islands and basically made into desert because the inhabitants didn’t realize how the thin, dry soil wouldn’t regrow trees quickly and how badly it would be affected by erosion. Crops were then affected.

(And they ate people out of lack of food. Common insult during the lean years: “your mother’s flesh sticks between my teeth.” Not kidding.)

Most of these societies were done in by their own prosperity. The Maya collapsed because they started farming the hillsides above the valleys where they were originally farming. The hillsides eroded; the soil washed down into the valley below. The Maya were just too populous; hence the need for higher farms.

Repulsively to us, a lot of societies maintained a better population balance through infanticide and late-term forced abortion, and by that I mean putting hot rocks on a third-trimester pregnant woman's belly. Of course in our world, with birth control a-plenty, there is no reason why people couldn't restrict their baby-making.

Diamond actually lauds a lot of businesses and business conglomerates for practicing an ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure. He talks about visiting the Chevron plant in New Guinea in which the environment was more pristine than most of Papua New Guinea's national parks because of the many, many cautions taken around drilling. Diamond has no easy solution but one of his theses is that people can use natural resources without raping the land. Mining companies, for example, have a bad environmental record because there is so little responsibility. I don’t know where the metal in this computer came from, but ChevronBP mines the oil and then sells me the gas. The chain of responsibility for Chevron goes all the way back.

I could go on about these books forever, but I think I will hold off except to say that there really are no easy answers.

Overpopulation is still the big factor. All of which lead to some worrisome reading. What kind of world am I giving Adia? It's clear that my grandparents and parents had no idea what they were doing to the environment. As far as my grandparents were concerned, there was tons of room to dump trash in the south end of Provo, and why would there one day be so many people that they would build shopping centers and houses on what used to be landfills there? It works on such a personal level. We want about three kids. My grandparents had eight kids because there was lots of room. Given the way First Worlders consume resources, our three will be equal to six or eight in the Third World, and probably use more resources than the eight kids my grandparents had.

Thing is, one reason I want kids is because "I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding." We live in an urban environment, walk almost everywhere, work mostly from home, compost and recycle. These are options that are available to a lot of people.

One possible solution would be adoption. There are lots of kids in orphanages. Why not legislate against big families (I know that will never work; it's a topic for another day) and encourage people who want big families to adopt instead. Our earth is getting overtaxed because of the American ideal of a house in the suburbs with 3.5 kids and an SUV. We could make a very simple change if we all thought about adoption as an equal or better option to home-baking.

In other news, Adia is sleeping in a big-kid bed and wearing underpants now. On paper, this is good. On not-paper (plastic?) this means that when she has a nightmare we no longer go to her. She crawls into bed with us. And kicks me. All night. Also a point against having kids.

Rejection Dejection Injection Correction

2010-04-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I called up the PhDs that rejected me to get some feedback on my submissions.

Whew.

That was a hard conversation to have.

The graduate director for U-Hawaii was very nice and friendly. She read, as gently as she could, what the admissions committee said about my submission: "it lacks complexity."

I politely refrained from pointing out that the admissions committee's mom lacked complexity last night. I smiled and said, "I've written enough and submitted enough that I'm used to rejection. I'll live."

And it's true. I will live, and I'm used to rejection. But I still loathe it.

I've written and sent out more stories in the past year than I have ever in years before. Thus I get more rejections than ever before; about one a week. I'm on track for April with one last week from Realms of Fantasy and one the week before from Writers of the Future.

I hate it. Every rejection guts me for the day. Some markets, like F&SF, only seems to publish from their house rotation of authors, so I don't feel quite as rotten. Others, like the aforementioned Writers of the Future, are all the worse because I have gotten personal encouragement in the past and now find myself staring at a form letter.

The problem is not the rejections themselves. By the ratio of personal rejects to form, I'm getting closer to salesville.

The problem is not that my life sucks and this makes it suck more. I have a job I enjoy, a beautiful and fun wife, and one cool kid, soon to be two. I live in a paradise.

The problem is that I know I'm brilliant.

And I know I'm crap.

I love my own stories. Despite all the evidence as I rewrite, deep within my brain I am convinced that my first drafts put Mark Twain and Toni Morrison to shame.

Yet in another murky part of my brain, I am convinced that my stuff is pretentious, annoying and overblown, and nobody wants to come to my birthday party.

I know this will never go away. When I am outselling Stephen King (that's "when," not "if"), I will still punch the wall in frustration because some random blogger has posted about how my books are crap. My current gregariousness notwithstanding, I was once a shy self-conscious kid who got sick a lot from food allergies. I didn't have a lot of friends, and I wasn't good at basketball, and (fill in the nerdy childhood stereotype here; I had it).

I love telling stories. Unfortunately, I can't detach my storytelling brain from my social brain. Nothing would make me happier at conventions than to go around beaming and saying, "Look! My book comes out from New And Brilliant Press in two weeks!" Every rejection is a nasty poke right in the squishy gray matter of my positive brain, and a part of me says, "If I were published, I know people would finally like me!"

It's stupid.

I doubt that my satisfaction over publication would be any more than it was when my sister Rebecca told me, referring to a currently trunked book, "I stayed up till three finishing it."

But nonetheless, rejection from a magazine feels just like getting turned down from a date.

How about all of you? What does rejection do to your squishy brain matter?

Welcome To The Dawn of a New Era!

2010-04-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

This is my new blog. My old blog at http:kikiandsquishy.com/spencer/blog was phased out by Blogger in a witch-hunt against FTP blogs. EDIT: Actually, it wasn't, but I want to use this one still as it is more user-friendly. If you want old Spencer posts, you can go there.

If you prefer livejournal, I post the same things over at spencimusprime.livejournal.com.

It's okay. I wanted to be like everyone else anyway.

So what does "Smurgle, all ye Wattabups" mean? It's actually an ancient call to prayer that has been translated, alternately, as "God is in the washing machine. Let's get him out" and "Give me some cookies."

My kid Adia features prominently in this blog. Last night she had a dream that "Prince wanted to dance with me.'

"But I said 'wait a minute.'"