It's clearly been quite a while since I've posted here. Mostly, it's because I haven't been as immersed in writing as I was this summer. I've been thinking a lot about the process of getting published, and my own relatively ambivalent relationship with traditional publishing, since I have been, for a long time in my work life, an open content advocate: that is, creating content that is open for people to get access to, change, remix, etc. A prime example of someone who does that is Cory Doctorow. So I have been thinking of creating an alternative avenue for SF writers to have their work read.

It made me think of the major reasons people want to be published:

• recognition
• broad audience
• potential income

and why readers buy published books:

• they know there has been a vettting process - so some level of quality is generally assumed
• it's in an easy-to-read form.

So I'm pondering an on-line community that can provide most (or all) of these for both authors and readers. Don't have many details yet, but it's in percolation mode.

So I finally wrote my first bona-fide science fiction short story. It's called A Trip to Orbit. Interestingly, it feels like hard (or semi-hard) sf that turned into somewhat of a family drama. But it was fun to do, and revising it, although it feels like a lot of work, feels so much more manageable than revising my novels!

I surprised myself. I thought that I couldn't come up with a believable plot, or interesting twists, within the confines of less than 8,000 words. But it worked! That was a relief, and, in fact, makes me think that I might work really hard over the next few months on a few short stories, and think about applying to Clarion for next summer. (I had basically assumed I couldn't do Clarion, because I couldn't do short stories.)

I've spent several hours on it so far, and I expect I'll be spending days and weeks on it before I feel like it's done. But I also feel interested and ready to write more stories!

My partner is on the faculty of a low-residency MFA program (she's a poet), and the next two weeks are her residency. I'm hanging out here for the first week - I'll go to craft talks, go to readings, and in between those, and a little bit of work, I'll be writing again.

I'm excited to be doing that - to get a chance to immerse myself again in my writing, and create whatever is next on my writing path. I have a few different places that I'd like to go, and I'd like to spend a little bit of time trying my hand at something that I've thought for a while I can't do - writing short stories.

I love writing (or thinking about) novels. Big sweeping plot lines, complex intertwining storylines, I love all of the space I get in a novel - all of the wide open pages to roam and ramble, and spin out a long story. The short story seems to me too confining. And I don't feel like I have the ability to come up with truly interesting endings - a way to wrap up a story at the same time as you leave space for questions.

But I'm going to try. I feel like writing short stories is a way to hone my craft in a way that will be useful, and can get lost in a novel. I need work on sentences and the use of words. I need work on filling out fully details in scenes. I need work on character development. So it feels like writing short stories will exercise those muscles.

And it's fun to be around writers, even though they are literary (said with a slightly ironic British accent) rather than sci-fi/fantasy writers. So far, though, they all seem to think that writing sci-fi is fun (which, of course, it is).

I got these from Melissa Scott's blog (one of my favorite SF authors). Somehow, I'm not surprised.

31 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

130 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

I decided, mostly because I am going to apply for an Astrea Foundation Lesbian Writer's Fund grant, which is due on June 30, to put the second book aside for a while, and concentrate for the next while on re-editing the first book. First, so that I can apply for this grant, and second, so that I can begin to shop the book around. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I'll have a manuscript that I'm happy with, and I can go back to #2, and, maybe even better, start #3, which has the stories already working their way through my head.

Today is Octavia Butler's birthday. She would have been 61 years old. There is no question that she has been an important influence in my writing. Her fascinating and brilliant concepts and ideas, her interesting characters, her braveness at tackling really difficult social issues - all are things that made her writing amazing. I hope, someday, that my writing can be 1/2 as good.

It's a good day to mention the Octavia Butler Scholarship that is administered by the Carl Brandon Society. It's a scholarship that pays the way for a writer to go to one of the Clarion Writers workshops. I have to admit that the existence of the two Clarion workshops certainly make me wish I wrote short fiction - but my brain seems not wired that way. But it is a great way for many writers to find their way into the craft of Science Fiction writing.

As I mentioned before, I'm working through the second novel - pointing out places where I need new scenes, and looking at the over all story arc. But I got a good piece of advice from my partner, who is a writer. It was about working on the settings of the individual scenes so that the reader feels like they are really there.

It's not something that is common in SF writing - some do it well, others don't really do it - it all goes to plot development. I'm thinking more about how to write so that my readers really feel themselves in a scene. Lots of work to do.

As I said before, I joined Critters, and just in the last week, when I critiqued 3 stories (actually 1 short story and 2 novel excerpts) I learned a lot. My partner says that she thinks writers learn more from critiquing other people's work than they do from getting their own work critiqued, and in just this short experience, I have to agree. So I'm pretty happy with this, and I look forward to critiquing more stories.

A long time ago, I joined Urbis, which is also a critique community, although it's bigger, and covers all genres. So I think I'll also wander back over there. A local friend of mine, who writes fantasy, and I had tried to start a women's science fiction and fantasy writing group, but there wasn't the critical mass here locally. Perhaps these online groups will be helpful.

Are there other online critique groups people belong to? What have your experiences been?

I've realized that I'm really good with the arc of a plot, laying it out, preparing for varied events that add to the plot, writing scenes that are pivitol to it. But I have a hard time with filling necessary (or at least useful) details,  building the tension, expanding on characters, and really doing good description. That's where I'm at right now with the second novel, sequel to the first.

It's actually a fun process - it's before the nitty gritty editing, but after the real creative juices have been flowing to build the world, and build thes story. I'm already pretty clear about the plot for book three, and it's hard to keep myself from plunging into another bout of plot and world-building (the details of a fourth planet get revealed in that book, even though action takes place on all four worlds.)

I'm hoping to finish the first draft of novel 2 soon. What the next question is - what do I do after that?

1) Go back to do edit #2 on the first novel
2) Do a full edit on the second novel
3) Stop writing for a while and start shopping this stuff around
4) Plunge in a write novel #3.

I know what I really *want* to do. I'm just not sure what I *should* do....

This is actually backstory for the sequel to my first novel that I'm writing. But I really like it - it's not quite enough for a short story (and I don't think I'm good at short stories anyway) but I kind of like the way it feels. So here it is ... drafty and all...

Pkygy's Grandmother

    She sat in the kitchen, the hearth glowing bright colors, the day's cooking and cleaning done. Now she could indulge in one of her favorite activities. She had always wanted to write, spinning her imagination out into words, bringing new worlds and new ideas into being. It was also her most preciously kept secret. She had been told, all of her life, that the highest, most exalted role for women were to keep the homestead comfortable for her man, bring new Kinder into the world, and raise those children to understand what Kinder culture was, and why it must be preserved as it is. It was what the Kinder Exalted King had meant.  

She never actively questioned this role. She listened all her life to the priests and chiefs that told it. She watched other women, and some men, who chafed in their roles be punished, knowing she would not ever meet that fate. Yet, always, from when she was very young, and knew how to count the moons, she imagined different worlds, other ways of being. When she learned how to write, it was as if whole new vistas opened up for her. She would spend hours sitting at a table, or at her desk, writing on stolen sheafs of paper.

She could never have a comp – women weren't allowed to use them, except for the crippled comps that gave recipes, or solutions to household problems, or what to do when your baby had colic. And if she had used a comp, her husband would have known she was writing. This way, she could hide the sheets of paper in places that he would not look – in a chest in her closet, under the undergarments.

She had thousands of sheets of writing – many, many stories, and epics. She had created dozens of new worlds, and imagined many new cultures.

One day, about 5 years ago, she decided she wanted to explore the Breft. The Breft were the cursed people who had broken from the Kinder thousands of years ago. The Breft who disliked order. The Breft who scoffed at the Exalted King's wishes for them – who, in fact, did not even believe in the Exalted King.

She had wondered what life would be like without the strictures of Kinder life. What would it mean if she could operate the farm machines? Or spend her time looking at the stars? She poured all of her longing for a different life into the pages, creating new characters.

One character that she loved she called “Elfer.” Elfer was a woman who chose not to marry or have children. Elfer was a healer and teacher. She imagined Elfer's education, and Elfer's life. She wondered whether or not Elfer would ever take lovers. She imagined Elfer traveling from town to town, city to city, healing those who needed her help, and teaching more to heal as she did.

...

 

Pkygy walked into the bedroom, that had started to gather dust after his gamma died. He put his bag on the bed, which had been stripped of it's sheets. He loved to spend time with her, helping her bake bread, bringing in wood for her hearth when she could not. Her husband had died many years before she did, and she had only daughters, so all of her children left home to join the households of their husbands, and she was left alone. Pkygy's mother lived the closest – only a few houses away, and his mother was happy to have Pkyky take care of gamma. Pkygy had a brother, so gamma's house was now his.

Pkygy had been with her in the last days of her life, and she had told him of her secret writing. He promised to burn all of the writing, and never tell anyone about it. He opened the closet, and pulled out the chest that was shoved into the corner, and opened it. A few undergarments were laid on top, but underneath he could see thousands of sheets of paper, of all sorts. He picked up the chest, and brought it into the living room.

He gathered up a few loads of wood, and started a roaring fire, and sat down at the table next to the fire, and took a few sheafs of paper, and started to read.

Many hours later, the fire was still burning, as he kept feeding it wood, not paper. He had tears running down his face. He couldn't possibly burn these. But he could do nothing with them. His family would be shamed horribly if anyone knew that his gamma had written all of this.

The stories felt like the door he had always been looking for, the way to find somehow else to feel, somewhere else to be, something else to do. He felt that these stories had to be heard, and read. The only way he knew how to do that, was to tell people that he had written them.

He decided to start with one of the most innocuous seeming of stories. This was the story of a Second Chief, and his loyalty to his First Chief, and the sacrifices that he makes. It seemed innocuous on the surface, but if you scratched it, it was a deep questioning of the way things are. He got out his comp, and started typing.

...

"Pkygy Hostro Gnova” He heard his voice called. He had been arrested. He had finally published the story that was too obvious, too damning for his local Second Chief to tolerate.

He stood up, walked to the front of the room, where the Second Chief sat high above on a raised desk.

“Is this story, called “Elfer” yours?

Pkygy nodded.
“Are you sure? Are you taking the blame for someone else? There is no reason to take the punishment of, say, a woman you know who wrote this. And don't take credit  just because some of the silly teachers think it is a masterpiece.”
  Pkygy felt torn. Not that he wanted to escape punishment. He wanted his family to escape shame for his gamma's stories. But he also wanted his gamma to be known. It was a masterpiece, and he had been gratified, before he was arrested, to hear that from a number of respected writers. But in the end, it was the secret that he had promised to keep that swayed him.
    “I wrote it. I wrote all of the stories. Just me.”
    The Second Chief sighed. “Alright then. 5 years on Rostron, the asteroid mine.” He signed some papers, then signaled to two of his guards to take Pkygy away.

I felt like I wanted to check out what it was like to be a part of a critique community, so I joined Critters. I'm looking forward to reading the two stories I picked. It's a good thing that I feel like I'm not quite ready to have my work critiqued by people I don't know well. But I'm getting there. The Friday writing workshop at WisCon was really useful.

And I'm continuing to explore the electronic SFF landscape, and see what might work for me.

I had a blast at WisCon - my first WisCon, my first con, my first time sitting in a big room full of people who love to read and/or write science fiction and fantasy. What a blast.

I came home tired, but fired up to write. And I did. I added a few thousand words to my second novel, which feels great. I ordered a bunch of new fiction writing books from Amazon - mostly about character and dialog and such. I'm really good at plot, story arc, and world building - I seem to have a knack for that, but it's the detail stuff that I need a lot of work on.

And I also have to start thinking about how to find a place to publish the first novel (first in a series of ...?)

Lots to do, lots to learn.

After finding at WisCon that so many women and feminist science fiction writers were on LiveJournal, I realized that one way to connect with this community was to start a LJ blog. I've been a blogger for years, and although I'd certainly heard lots about LJ, I hadn't really known very many people in the communities that I was a part of who used it, so I started on a totally different blogging platform.

It feels like I am just beginning life as a science fiction writer, and it seemed fitting that I would start out a new blog - that seems to actually be the way I do things. I started a spirituality blog when I went to seminary, I started a technology blog when I re-entered the nonprofit technology field after seminary ... so here is my writing blog after my first (hopefully of many) WisCons.

I look forward to making connections here, and talking about writing.