I Lost ... No! I WON!

Well a 72 hour work week will kill your NaNoWriMo word count, like dead. So for those who like to keep score, I "lost" at NaNoWriMo.

But when my raw output goes up by a multiple of four and I get a third of a book out in 6 weeks  (remember, I was cheating.) ... I'm calling that a personal best and moving on. 

If I keep that up, I'd still hammer out a novel in under 6 months. There was a time I'd go "phhhhhft. Never. Not from me." But now I can see there's a light at the end of the tunnel. 

I'm taking a break, though. I going to work on some self-published short stories that I'm aiming to have up early next year. ... which is like more like a month. 

And according the always crazy, beardthulu being, Chuck Wendig, it never hurts to get some space between you and your work.

So ready or not Behold!  The crazy wisdom of Chuck on NaNoWrimo!

The NaNoWriMo Dialogues:

Day One, Not So Ready

Organic Story Architecture

I Think I Suck And I'm Not A Real Writer

Stuck In The Mushy Middle With You

When Haters Give You Lemons

On Doubt, Talent, Failure and Quitting

This Is The End!  -- Well Almost

The Last Week

On The Language of Losing

Let Me Stop You Right There

What An Excellent Day For An Exorcism

The Month of No Dubious Writing Bloggerel

I took more than just an increased first draft writing speed away from this go around. 

• If you're doing NaNoWriMo right, you don't have time to kibitz with other writers about NaNoWriMo.
• Ergo, make any month your own personal NaNoWriMo
• That characters drive plot. That interesting characters with conflicts and drives that have to overcome a challenge creates plot.
• World building that the reader never sees is a safety net. Learn when you don't need it.
• Even people who support your writing sometimes just don't get it
• Writing is all mental, thus it's all mind games when your stuck.
• On the first draft, there is no right answer. It's the "right now" answer that keeps you writing.

So, I'm off. I got a lot of editing ahead of me.

Old Habits, how soon we go back to thee (NaNoWriMo)

GrrrrrrArrrghhuggh!

Nope, that was not me doing a drunk Chewbacca impression. 

Here I am hitting the keyboard for effin NaNoWhat'sit and it was going ... okay ... at first.

I had a lot more typos because I was sailing ahead on the whole "It's about the words. Rewrite later. When you like have a whole novel to rewrite." 

But this week, I find myself going back and tweaking and tweaking. Sure, the end result is better. But I could still be doing that next month. (Why is there no NaNoRe-WriMo?)

Okay. I could blog more about it. But then, that's less time writing, right?

Dang. I can't win, can I?

Feeling like a "real" writer

To be honest with myself, I've written thousands of words and had millions of people read my work. As an advertising copy guy, that's par for the course.
But yet I don't feel like a real writer. My heresy has always been in wanting to tell cool, fun stories. So even though I make a living writing, I'm still holding out on saying I am writer until I get a novel published.  Which the cynical grown up in me knows is silly.
That's changed a bit, lately.
I'm still shopping my latest novel around after World Con, have three shorts to edit and working on a first draft of my next novel. My fiction plate is heaped with the tasty.
I feel like I was on a diet back when I was doing one novel. Now I'm cooking with gas.
Speaking of, I wonder what's for dinner?

Cheating at NanoWriMo ... Your new S.O.

If your a beginning writer, have you heard of National Novel Writing Month? It's pretty much what it says on the tin, an organization that promotes writers of all stripes to try for 50,000 in one month.

Holy Spit! You do know that's like more than 10,000 words a week right? True. That makes it 5k in 2.5 days, That boils down to over 2,000 words a day or 250 words an hour if you clock in for 8 hours.

And to make you feel more like underachiever, there have been published novels that come out of this. 

But if you're focusing on that, you're missing the point. 

NanoWriMo is about stretching your limits, assessing your weaknesses and discovering something about yourself as a writer.

A great example of that is the common complaint that NWM is in November, like the "All the family is coming down to start eating me out of house and home for the next month" November. This also the "No one else in the office because they've got family in town and we're trying to squeeze two months of work into what's effectively four weeks of productivity. Long days, here I come" November.

The answer is that "There never is a perfect time to write, so write every day anyway."

That's a great lesson and all, but Auntie Melissa needs my kitchen and hands to make the best damn turduken lasagna you ever tasted. So here are my tips for cheating at NWM and hit your targets in November.

In no practical order:

Start two weeks early/Go for 40k words instead: The goal is get to a new place in your writing. If it makes the task less daunting, tweak your goals a bit. Some pro organizations accept writers who work in the 40k range.

Oh. Shit. I guess that means this is your week to start. Go!

No flat surface and no writing implement  is safe from you: Who said that your word count had to be on the keyboard. Quickly count those words you wrote on that napkin, or the notepad you always keep in your back pocket. Crayon, Japanese inkstick/brush, and monkey poo are allowed. All at once if that gets the job done.

I lied about the monkey poo -- what's wrong with you!?!

Realize this a personal marathon, not a race: The NWM board and forums are not the place to lie if you are full on cheating. But they are the place to find kindred souls are going through what your going through because by about week two there's no real difference except the final word counts. 

Keep in mind the real winners those who reach a new plateau. If NWM was your inspiration that's close enough.

Get brutal about your reality check: Been told constantly that you over plot your stories, give 10 page infodumps, or spend too much time shooting for a 200,000 epic all in 17th Century Urdu? 

Then listen and reassess what your story is going to be. Make your story simpler, stop beating yourself up for the perfect metaphor. If you do tons of world building, do a modern take on your story or embrace a more pop culture/pulpy style. 

I'm not saying that you should make it opposite day for your NWM project, but maybe it's time you really wrestled with that one howler monkey on your back that EVERYONE has told you  about, but you keep falling back on. And once you pulled that primate off your spine, beat it with a lead pipe ... in the library ... and then frame Col. Mustard for it.

Do what you do best, baby: On the other hand, if your workshop mates keep telling you that you shine at something, embrace it.

Your making cookie dough, not baking the cookies: Everyone loves the cookie dough, until they get food poisoning. The baking part not so much, there's the waiting, the watching and the judging if it's time to pull it out of the oven.

The goal here is volume because every first draft is shit, even if that first draft is the fun crazy part of creating. The real work, though is putting that draft through the hot oven hell of re-writing and editing. Or as one of my favorite writers succinctly said. "I spent one month writing it and a year editing it."

All those published novels that came out of NWM? I bet the finished product looked like a Lamborghini compared to that Kia first draft.

Fuck your toughest critic .... you!: Art is messy and it take time to be perfect. This month you have to turn off that inner critic/snooty adult/snide frienemy and just let it flow.

I'm going to try this challenge myself, we see how I do. My first cheat is lowering the word limit ... for now. The challenge will be to come up with a new concept for a novel this week for NWM. 

Gentlebeings, start your keyboards and GO!

Write Short To Write Long?

In my effort to procrastinate, this let to that advice from John Scalzi. So the advice he gave was Write Short To Write Long.

I tried to find where he's said that before, but didn't have any luck.

Right now (heh. I almost misspelled that in a very subconscious way), I'm taking a break from the final polish on my novel by banging out some short stories. The plan is that most of shorts will go up, self-publishing style to create that "critical mass" where if a reader enjoys one short, he can find a few others while he's still in a buying mood.

Sort of like offer another fudgey chocolate chip cookie while a friend is still holding a cold glass of milk. How can he say no?

 Ironically, these shorts are taking longer than expected. Each one has to have a new concept even if it shares the same characters. And the villain has to be different in each one.

At some point, I hit a stride in a novel. The characters seem fleshed out and the villain's vision is clear. From that point, the rest of the first draft is writing the fallout of all that. The rewrites patch holes in the continuity and certain events get a new focus or spin so that drama and character growth happen more consistently.

So not only does Mr. Scalzi's advice leave me non-plussed for now, it seems that I'm writing long for short.

Not my most productive month so far. :P

Write What You Know. Why Are You Taking That So Literal?

I've heard it, you heard it, that whole bit of advice that the best thing to do is write only what you personally know. 

Throughout history, this chestnut has come in and gone out of fashion, for every Mark Twain and Jack London that went West, there's been a Shakespeare and Edmund Spencer.that wrote of the fantastical while sitting at a desk.

Of course today there's a whole genre of Literature of thinly-veiled autobiographies with the serial numbers scrubbed off. These seem to also be the favored sons of several Literature awards.

For a time there was even a vanity publisher website that told prospective customers to  avoid any writing advice from genre writers since they know nothing about writing since they had the temerity to break this "cardinal" rule. 

You know what happens when you insult an entire industry of writers? Especially one whose livelihood  rests on their capacity for excess imagination and creativity? 

It it ain't pretty.

But why take that advice literally. Seriously, who does that?

That's why good genre writers spend so much time world building and researching. 

While they can't visit another planet or an alternate history where "Native American" tribes called on spirits to jettison the colonists, they can research the historical and scientific data to create a exotic and plausible setting. 

But an exotic setting, is only but part of a good story.

Beyond just a good setting, it needs to be filled with believable characters that act with an internal consistency.  And for that you can always write what you literally know, drawing inspiration and education from the people in your life.

This hits on the paradox of being a good writer. While you've got to sequester yourself away to be a keyboard monkey, you can't write about the human condition, regardless of the reality you're in, unless you meet and interact with people.

So in that case, when it comes to the heart of the story -- regardless  of the genre icing on the cake -- then you do need to write the characters you know.

Packing for your writing career ...

[A technical difficulty got this blog post out late, but learn what you can from it, padawan. You can also skip to the end for the dreaded Object Lesson.]

Let’s see, toothbrush, deodorant, breath mint, check.

I’m off to WordCon, where the legacy of Speculative Fiction is judged every year with the Hugos -- also known as the “People’s Choice” awards. Time to meet and network with fellow writers, editors and publishers.

I planned my trip in ninja mode, light and fast. That was until about 7pm the night before.

While I’ve linked and chatted about how your focus should be on building relationships, i.e. make friends and get to know people in the biz as human beans, instead of shilling your book, I admit that I find myself crumbling at the last minute when I pack.

Chuck Wendig says that even business cards are sort of passe, but I printed up a  few anyway. And now that the airlines charge for extra luggage, what agent wants to collect 50 page writing samples from this writer and that writer? I printed two sets … twice. I found a typo.

Maybe an editor or two will be happy to take the sample chapters on a thumbdrive? Maybe. I found two classy, tiny metal thumb drives and loaded them up. I let you know if that works.

And I’ve passed on this advice to my WorldCon roomie. He’s totally ignored it. Now we’re waiting for another  hour at the airport for baggage claim. I’m trying to look at anywhere else but in his direction. He has whole reams of manuscripts, a binder of factoids about his fictional world, business cards, and a dinner jacket.

Dear God, why did we do this? 

Because face it, when you’re still building those connections and cold pitching a book, you've got those huge, nagging doubts. You hope that if you go in extra prepared, that you have what you need when that golden opportunity presents itself.

So maybe I’m a little bit of a hypocrite here. … Nah. That just means I have more room for swag.

[Dreaded Object Lesson:

So what did I learn? I can home with all my hard copy and those two nifty thumb drives. I did get some great nibbles on my novel, but everyone would rather get emailed after the Con. 

As for new friends, they'd rather get in touch via FB or Twitter.

A few business cards went out, mostly to new friends so we don't have to waste time spelling out emails. I used up all ten cards, but I'd never take more than 20 to the next con.

Best yet, I still had room for great swag!]

Critical Mass is not for Nukes anymore ...

This is one of those "don't do it the way I was doing it" posts, which probably makes it a rarity out there in the blogosphere.

If I'm frank with myself, I've only really done one project at a time. I do a short story, send it out and I TRY to work on something else, but I'm really going back and looking at that same short story, wondering what I could have done better, wondering how lonely that little guy is sitting the huge unloving slush pile.

So my new angle is going to be what I call "critical mass." Instead of writing and sending out one short story at a time, I'm writing four or so right after each other, then submitting them to various pubs en mass. If one gets rejected, then its sister story is sent out the next day. The idea goes beyond just throwing something up against the wall. If editors keep seeing your name, they know that you passionate and trying. That puts you ahead of about 70 percent of the pack.

Even if you're self publishing, this a potential strategy. Think about what you -- and most other people do -- when they find a great new writer. The first thing they do is look for more of their work to buy. They've got an appetite and they want to feed it.

If they can't find anything, they go find something else they can sink their teeth into.

If they find that the next writer had more than one delectable stories, they'll buy more and gorge at the story buffet.

So it's time to get cracking at the keyboard! ... Right after lunch.

If you like that plot hole, hang a lantern on it. No, don't actually do that.

Call it an increasing level of cynicism, sophistication or meta-fiction, but there's a growing trend for movies to call out a plot hole than actually trying to pave it over.

This little trope, Hanging A Lantern, keeps growing because  film crews figured out that shooting a new line of dialogue is cheaper than re-shooting a scene of plot sealant.

So why do writer's end up Hanging the Lantern when they don't need a film crew?

Thinking about the workshops I've been to, there's three main reasons you have a plot hole.

Part Time Writer:
A person has to eat, so their fiction writing is done here and there, on the train, during lunch, late at night when everyone else is in bed.

Writing in chunks like this leads to the writing forget what ground they've covered before and/or what they have yet to explain.

The cure: A continuity re-draft. This a different kind of rewrite, you don't add a missing apostrophe, or delete an extra comma. You grab a pad of paper and take notes on the plot, character names/spellings and anything else that needs to maintain consistent throughout the story.

Idiot Plot:
The writer has a "vision" or doesn't know how to get to their great money shot of scene without taking a logical path to get there. You're biggest hint: If nine people tell you it doesn't make sense, then the issue might be the story, not your readers.

The cure: Readers you can trust. This is where a good workshop can help you understand that: a.) Your plot doesn't work; b.) How to get there in a believable way.

Lazy Researcher:
If your idea of military research is to watch more Hollywood blockbusters, then don't be surprised when your war story never makes it past the slush pile.

The cure: Too often the adage "Write what you know," is taken to literally. If that was a truth instead of a guideline, then The Wire's first season would have had drug dealing scriptwriters. And Elmore Leonord would have never written a crime novel ... or a Western. A little research or having a researcher helps fill in the gaps.

So it's almost midnight ... Do you know where your keyboard is?

Day job wise, it's been a rough week. It's going to be more beans and less meat next week if I want to still have some money for the writer's conference next month.

On the other hand, I managed to make a new personal record for fiction writing, 1K in 4 hours. I did real well writing this week -- and it had nothing to do with the extra free time.

In fact, I usually do lousy when I don't know when my next meal is coming. Writing is a machine that runs on mental gears you see, stress tends to gum up the works. This time, stress, family and general distractions could not detour me. Let's hope for the same next week.

But getting up early, putting my butt in the seat and typing away got some results. As it did for this Del Ray writer Jason M. Hough. Check out his story of "butt-in-seat-itude."

I've got a boycott question. Anyone got an answer?

Regardless of political affiliation, I get how boycotting the Ender's Game movie works. Card's listed a producer and stands to make a good profit from book reprints. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Boycotting WorldCon over what Texas politicians do? I don't see how the gesture sends a message that Texas politicians would notice or care about. My gut says that it punishes the fans more than anyone else.

Neil Gaiman's wisdom first hand.

For those who've read the whole blog, you know that I'm going on about writing advice from a more personal perspective than all of those generic writerly advice blogs. So of course that first sentence wasn't for you guys -- it was more of a backdoor way of getting anyone else reading up to speed. See what I did there?

I managed to get into the Miami book signing for Ocean At The End of the Lane, which was great all the way around. Even standing in line for hours wasn't so bad when you are surrounded by like people. I was also thrilled to find people half my age who knew who Douglas Adams was.

Before all that commiserating, though, Neil (after hearing him speak it's hard to say Mr. Gaiman) did a reading and held a Q&A -- moderated by Brad Meltzer. (again, awesome event.)

So one lightweight question thrown his way, what color of ink (black or blue) does he use to write his longhand first drafts, got a solid answer answer back.

"I like to see progress," he said. "I want to know if I've been slacking off. So every day I use a different ink than I did the day before. So I am as apt to use purple or pink as I am to use black or blue."

I also had my fanboy moment, getting a thrill that Neil write longhand like I do. How he barrels through the typing of it all eludes me. That's why Dragon Speak is starting to entice me.

It never hurts to read through my stuff. I always seem to catch things when I do. So to do a reading and get it typed at the same time sounds like a great way to multitask.

It's something to go on the holiday wishlist. Definitely not before WorldCon.

For want of a nail

... and the plans of mice and men.

I plan to go to WorldCon this year in hopes of making new friends and seeing if I can find a home for my Supernatural Western. The event is in San Antonio, it seems to be a fit.

I was hoping that by August I could say "Well, if you want to see what I already have out in the wild, then checkout this out:"

• A successful Kickstarter project that used my short story as their immediate thank you for pledging.
• An anthology that's got another short story of mine.
• A epublished short that links back to the anthology's web page.

All of which are either on hold or waiting for something on hold before I can pull the trigger.

The only solace I can take from this is that you never know how publisher and editors are going to react to things. Some of them could have seen these works (all of which have different flavors and audiences) and decided ironically to turn down the perfect novel for them. It's all subjective.

I'm still going, I just don't feel like I've got any ammo in my belt.

It's Con season ...

Some of them, like the Book Expo American, have already gone. Others, like World Con, are coming up. Whatever the event's name, it's an opportunity for writers to get out of their little dark rooms, fly across the nation, and then meet other professionals in dark little rooms. It's convention season.

Well, when it comes to people outside the field, I admit I'm a little weaselly about it all and call all of these shows "writer's conferences" regardless of how many T-shirts you can buy in the dealers room.

And as a professional, you need to go into a convention in that frame of mind. Of how you plan to expand your mastery of the craft, expand your business savvy and expand your network of friends.

Yep. Friends. Acting professional doesn't mean acting like a salesman. You will probably learn more sitting at the bar and using your mouth only for a moderate level of alcoholic intake than trying to impress people or constantly pitch your book.

A really great guy -- and a really great beard --- Chuck Wendig, has 25 good con going tips that you should check out. If you happen to bump into him this season, congratulate him on his Campbell nomination. Better yet, check out Mockingbird or Blue Blazes.

Doublecrazy week in epublishing

Doublecrazy week in epublishing
Two lessons learned. Survivors and success stories may not tell the whole story when it comes to epublishing:

Survivorship bias and Epublishing.

Amazon is not done surprising us with the way it will try to leverage its format  and cash to have others create content on the allure of getting paid for it.

Amazon's non-porn fanfic payment plan

Everyone that knows I write is telling me to jump on this one and start watching Vampire Diaries. I say that if Supernatural lasts another season, expect a meta episode where Mega fangirl is a pawn to the fanfic genie, Amazor.

Devil in the details

When you check out writing blogs, there's one subject that never seems to come up. Organization.

Story tracking
And if you're getting serious about your writing, organization becomes key. Short stories, for example, the industry standard is that you can not do simultaneous or multiple submissions. I.E., you can only send one unique short story to a magazine.

No shopping it around to three magazines at the same time and you can't throw three different stories up against the wall (three different stories to the same magazine at the same time) hoping  something sticks to the wall.

Now toss in the fact that it takes months for a magazine (print or online) to get back to you for a rejection, and you come to two conclusions:

1. You need to write a lot of short stories to get anywhere. (And that you can't live off short stories alone.)
2. You need a spreadsheet to track what you sent where and how long you should wait before you contact them.

Ebusiness
A similar spreadsheet could be used for your novel submissions as well. If you're an epub writer, you'll need a system to track sales individual stories across several platforms. And unless you're raking in the Hollywood money, every writer has to juggle their own royalties, payments and taxes.

Merciless Rewrites
"Kill your darlings" also means "patching up the huge gaping holes they left behind." Setting up actions scenes sooner or discovering that you have merge two character together means that chapters are shuffled and renumbered.

They sell writing software that helps take the sting out of that, but it's still a pain. So far, I've stuck to chopping up my 1st draft into chunks to help mitigate that problem, but it still can be confusing and time consuming if you don't pay attention.

The Art of Exposition

It's all in the details

There's a trend that been going on lately in all sort of literary circles, appendices. Whether it's list of technical terms that demonstrate the level of research that went on into the story or a list of fantastical terms and names to show the level of depth and detail in a fantasy world. Details, that's the crux of it. The appendices are merely the symptom. With the advent of having the world at our fingertips, we writers can research the f%$%k out of something without having to even go to the library. This has it's advantages, but for those who have gotten drunk on the data, it's like their skull exploded on the page. And without the use of hyperlinks in a paper book, that research is shoved on the reader in massive infodumps. Thus, the Art of Exposition. The rub is that most writers are rarely exposed to good examples of exposition: 

• In school, teachers spend more class time explaining the context of a classic story so the student can understand how history informed a piece. (That style has killed the passion for reading more than a million bad books.)
• For literary writers, this is all new so quite a few are still wrapping their head around it.
• Mysteries and Horror have exposition as key elements, but provides a plot structure that conveniently lets the writer slot it in an infodump.
• For other genre writers (Historical drama, thriller, fantasy:) People keep passing around 50 year old classics that come from a time when skillful exposition wasn't a priority.

Even those people who love Lord of the Rings, joke about how it's "The dwarf took a step, now this particular dwarf was named Gimmialhill, the son of PointyHill, in the halls of ... (30 pages later) and then Gimmi took another step." While there is some truth the cliche of "geek" fans loving their detail, it's less true than you think. Roger Zelazny was probably the best at exposition, In a sleek 175 pages, Zelanzy takes Carl Corey from being a amnesiac handcuffed to a bed into a set up and a plot that that some writers could spend 10 times more page count explaining and detailing. Tolkien would have never finished that same story in his lifetime. Some other good writers to look into for expositions examples are :Dan Simmons (most of his novels), Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon and Frank Herbert's Dune.

Red flags. Re:Exposition vs Story.

Look to trim if it takes longer than a manuscript page to tell Following standard manuscript formats (1 in. margins, Courier New Font - 12 pt., and double spaced) you end up with something that's about 2/3 the size of a published page -- give or take.  

If you're almost spending a page explaining something that doesn't also move the story or illuminate a character, then it needs to go. If you feel that it has to stay to there educate the reader, you need to rethink your timing at the very least. Repeating the same detail to hammer home authenticity Mentioning the same 18th Century style banister when ever someone takes the stairs makes the reader expect you're planting evidence. something special might happen (Col. Mustard did it on mezzanine with a banister.)

Is the detail relevant: Going with the banister again ... It's mention could hint at the long history of the house or the wealth of the family. Are the banisters in tip-top shape from expert care from a DIY expert, are the worm eaten from neglect like the rest of the madman's house? Again, a spin on the detail that not only fills out the world, but adds insight to the story. 

How people react to the banister could show character as the young and reckless slide down the railing or the old and cautious grip it firmly. 

Using the Chorus:

Explaining the scene before it happens in one sentence (or more), and then going on for pages about those events. Either show us or tells us, doing both demonstrates that you're not sure which one is right for the scene.

Needless action to introduce dialogue or evidence: 

To avoid using "she said" at the end of of a quote, most writers have their characters do an action instead:

1. So we avoid this ... "Watch out for that banister," Bob said.
2. To get this sort of substitution ... Bob tied his shoe laces. "Watch out for that banister."

Or in the most egregious version I read once. A character was working at an instrument panel and then he pointed at nothing and no one so the writer could describe a weird blurry special effect. The character is working an instrument panel. He's moving his arms to flip switches and pop buttons, why does he have to point! 

Why is your detail different? 

And do you need to spend pages explaining how these banisters where made and how they got to the house? 

You can if it's critical to the plot. The great movie, The Red Violin goes on about the history of a certain violin, not only as a device to tell smaller stories in the narrative, but also to set up a big reveal at the end.

Even better. There's a saying in the horror field right now. You no longer have to explain what a zombie or a vampire is anymore, you just have to explain why your zombies and vampires -- and banisters -- are different.

Okay. That last bit with the banister. I made it up.

Magic Realism? Where is my Science Realism? It's been here for ages

Yeah. March was a rough month. Extra shifts at work, moving and trying to stay on top of my novel re-edits. But moving on ...

In the last few years, there's been a phrase, magical realism, that's been bandied and recent blockbusters, like Life of Pi and Hugo, has been touted as a cinema magical realism. 

What I want to know is where is my Science Realism ... and is that even a thing?

To recap, most magical realism shares certain elements. (There are always exceptions of course.)

• The setting is either Contemporary, Historical or bounces between both via flashbacks: No near or far flung futures need apply

• Impoverished socioeconomics: The further from middle class suburbia, the better. Quite a few of these stories happen in Latin America and the Caribbean.

• The story involves the mythology of the culture, such as brouhas, the Dream Time or Vodun: These elements are usually subtle, but accepted by the characters as the natural order. If  the reader has trouble accepting that conceit then ....

• The supernatural is suspect: Did you really see any magic? Circumstances let readers wonder if those mystical elements were actually dreams, delusions or hallucinations. I call this the Skeptic's Safe House.

As an aside, both Urban Fantasy genre and Magical Realism share these elements and depending on who you talk to, one is seen as more commercial than the other. I'll leave that chat for another time.

So where does that leave Science Realism?

As I ruminated on that idea, I narrowed down the themes that would take shape in a such story:

• While it could be set in the future, it might be also set in the now.

• Impoverished socioeconomics: This isn't about dystopias and cyberpunk. Well, it could be, but this is the near future that happens to (or passes by), the people who can't buy zombie-killing machetes and mirror shades.

• The story involves culture: Whether we allow technology to homogenize or isolate us, there will be more than a suburban viewpoint of how that happens.

At that point I remembered several things. Or several someones to be more precise.

Octavia  Butler (Wild Seed, Kindred, Parable of the Sower, and many, many others)

Nalo Hopkins (Midnight Robber)

Walter Mosley (Blue Light)

Gerald Vizenor (Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles)

These are writers who have added desperately needed voices and viewpoints to speculative fiction field for decades.  You won't find bizarre laser tomahawks and Zulu force shields in these stories, but you will find the tough questions about religion, responsibility and the legacies we leave behind with our technology.

Looking at that list again, I realized that I've asking the wrong question.

The question is not when will people get to read Science Realism stories, but why haven't more people read them already?

Epilogue vs Denouement

After telling my son that I just wrapped up my novel's denouement (dā-ˌnü-ˈmäⁿ), he asked me what was the difference between a denouncement and an epilogue. 

Good question, good kid.

Like a good parent, I told him to look it up in a dictionary. You remember those? Like a tablet, but for word definitions. Better yet, no batteries.

He came back with:

·         Denouement: the final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work

·         EPILOGUE: a concluding section that rounds out the design of a literary work

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

So both sound similar  –  so much for the low tech solution.  In reaching out to the Internet hive mind, I got a more specific answer.

The denouement is a more immediate wrap up of the aftermath of the story. It's the "yes" to the hero’s proposal, the banishment if the traitor and the adulation of the tribe.

And the modern epilogue is usually clearly labeled and can be weeks, months or years later.  As the end credits roll, we see the final fates of friends and foes play out.

Yet for me, that makes the most succinct of classic endings, “... And they lived happily ever after,” in a gray area.

And while I admire the economy of the phrase, I've never been a fan.  It implies that the rest of their lives are so boring that the people we've rooted for aren't worth visiting again.  

Doesn't leave much room for a sequel.

Ground Floor,Baby!!

I just finished a first draft of a novel. Beyond the endless edits that I can look forward to, there is something mote terrifying.  

The next first draft.

I'm blessed in that my writers blocks come from HOW to write a story, not WHAT to write about.

I'd like to humblebrag about having an overactive imagination and an secret idea factory that throw out shooting star visions like so much metameme mana from heaven. 

Nope.  For me, I keep several books and files around so I can jot down some ideas. I don't judge them, I only record them.  I just wish mine were as cool looking as Guillermo Del Toro's sketchbook. Now there's a walking idea man!

When time opens up in my schedule, I look them over and see if any of them catch my eye. With some distance between inspiration and assessment, I find that my opinion changes over time. A lame dramatic idea might now be a fun comedy piece, or something great is just repeat idea that I covered somewhere else.

I'm not a slave to these note, though. Sometimes a good idea just spins out of a conversation or a daydream. It doesn't hurt that some of these conversations are with other creative people. I'm sure John Grisham finds his muse reading the Daily Business Review.

Me, not so much.

There are times when I take on a challenge and a deadline to see what I come up with. Submitting to an open call for a themed anthology has indefinably make you stretch your imaginary muscles.

And sometimes you have to have faith in yourself to go down the rabbit hole. Sometimes you have to figure out what works by actually putting in some elbow grease and crossing your fingers before you hit the switch.

Finish the book, not the senten–

Hemingway did this shit, so listen up.

Writing in a lot of ways is like exercise or gardening. Even if you enjoy it as a hobby, it's hard get in that harness and start pulling.

Sometimes I'm staring at a whole blank page, and other times it's the white space near the bottom. For me, it's been easier to pick up where I left off than start from scratch.  So what I do is try to leave a sentence half finished so when I get back, there's a jumping off point.

It's tough to do at first. I'm always afraid that I forget where I was going.

The preeminently talented Robert McCammon had this tip. "Someone asked me if I ever get “stuck”. No, I don’t. Here’s my secret: when I finish writing for the day, before I get up from my desk I always type one letter for the next line. The letter is random. D…H…K…B…whatever. So when I come back to work, I begin the next sentence with that letter. Might not work for everyone, but it does work for me." Side Note: If you haven't read Boy's Life, do yourself a favor as a writer and get it now.

So I've done a couple of different things. From dashing off a rough "Where I was going" note to having a "If it's cool enough, I'll remember it tomorrow" attitude.

Sometimes, I just finish off the damn sentence anyway.

The key is that I don't spend another 15 minutes thinking about it. I just go with my gut and close the file out.

For my workshop, I even do this with half a chapter. (So as not to drive my workshop mates crazy, I submit at least a full chapter. So this means I am always half a chapter ahead.) The five days that I'm critiquing my fellow writers' work, my hind brain is working out the rest of the chapter. This has been actually more helpful than the half sentence technique.

Yeah, detailed outlines are not my thing.

"Filmisms" in novels

A lot of us have grown up with at least four mediums, books, radio, tv, and video games. Now we've had about two generations start their lives wired to the internet.


All of these mediums have impacted us and molded the way we think of stories, how to process them and how to tell them.  Yet for all the ways people seem more savvy on how these related industries work, it's shocking how most are blissfully unaware of the limitations of each medium.

You've heard, "The book was better than the movie."*  On the flip side, a lot of film techniques suck for book writing.

My first sin in that regard was when I had a character close the door to her personal dojo. I described the sounds of  boards breaking, grunts, and mysterious chittering sounds. Then she opens the door and I went into the details of how things were sliced and diced, yet there wasn't a sword in the room or on her person.  I thought that sounded cool.

Everyone who read it thought it broke POV, and omniscient view broke the noir vibe I was going for. 

I've also tried ways of writing for flashes of vision when a character is getting trounced or spun around in a car. The closest I got to making that work was "And then he saw blue sky, then grass, then sky, then grass and then black." Any thing more elaborate was too jarring for a reader.

What got me thinking about this was a recent workshop meeting. Twice, a writer tried to pull of the literary trick of watching a desperate scene in the distance and evoke a feeling of doom and helplessness from the hero could only watch. His inspiration was a scene from a movie.

Now, there may be a way to do that in a book, but it will need internal dialogue. Just describing the visuals ain't gonna cut it. (stet. I wrote that way on purpose.)

The obvious moral to this story is that why you can have internal movies and visually stunning books, you need to know the techniques to pull those tricks off. Cutting and pasting from one medium is not the way to do it.

*Seriously, how can you not figure out that two hours are jamb packed when try to introduce,engage, and resolve the hero's dilemma.  All the time you get to know character in books (subplots and internal dialogue) comes with a budget you have to justify to the investors.

To short story or not to short story

There are some adages ing the writing biz that get consistent airplay. I’m going to tackle the one this week is that short stories you should start writing to hone your craft.

The wisdom is that you learn faster by writing short pieces. After that, things fall into place:

• You get those stories sold
• You get noticed
• You pitch your completed novel to an agent.

Then the agent sells novel for ludicrous advance, and the writer spends the rest of her days getting paid to write wonderful novels as she sits in her bathrobe while gnawing on a smoking pipe.

Cynicism aside, you should always take a story to the length that feels natural to you. Even the step child of story length, the novella, has gotten a new lease on life thanks to epublishing.

Actually selling a short, though, is still more alchemy and luck. Despite there now more online markets than ever, but it's still a tough market. I know pros who are still finding homes for stories that I critiqued years ago.

These days you need to either be a well-known author with a solid story or a new author that submits something that’s amazing and award-winning. So if you working on your stories for "exposure," you’ll be disappointed.

Even more confusing for me is that a lot of recently published stories aren’t stories with a plot. I'd classify these more as entertaining vignettes. They are good reading, but don’t have a true protagonist, real or metaphorical, no character arc, etc. Joe Hill's Last Breath is an example.

The talented Paolo Bacigalupi has his own anecdote about novels vs. Shorts. At first he tried shorts, but found himself writing a novel anyways, a huge sprawling novel.

In trimming down his Byzantine book, he found some nuggets that he polished into award winning stories and then put out a book that snagged a bucket of awards.

As for me, I tried to go the novel route for many years, but the biggest accomplishment of that project was to just finish it. Before that, I got very few stories done.

There were some other lessons that I got from that novel, but I seemed get more out of 6 months of short stories I wrote after that. Well, more like the year and half of rewrites after that round of first drafts.

My latest rough novel seems more confidant, yet more experimental than the last one.

I'm still frustrated that those shorts are still floating out there unsold and unloved by editors, but I don’t consider it a waste.