Blogging and the City

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Many changes this weekend, and I decided that one of the associated changes I would try to make was to blog a bit more consistently as I dive back into working on Chiaroscuro for Novel in 90.

I don’t usually blog because I have little to say that I think is worth sitting down to actually say. There are subject-matter experts out there who explore their areas much better than I ever could, and a whole lot of people who know just enough to think they are subject-matter experts who yammer on in ways that are not nearly as useful or meaningful as they would like to believe.

Knowing that I have a tendency to be a know-it-all, I try to avoid being in the latter group. The signal-to-noise ratio on the internet is high (or would that be low? Low signal; high noise.) I’m not really interesting in making it worse, so I tend to maintain radio-silence unless I have something that I feel is worth saying.

Otherwise, I write stories. Given a choice between writing stories or yammering in a blog post, I’ll pick writing the story. Stories are things that I can say, and that only I can say in the way that I would say it. That seems like a much better use of my time.

Last week, I finished a massive revision on one story: my first novel manuscript, The Adventures of Mr. Mystic and the Dragons of Heaven. I submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and I sent it out to a bunch of friends and peers for beta-reading. Once I get comments back from people, I’ll give it a revision polish and send it out to the agent who said she’d take a look at a revised version. I’ll also revise my querying materials (especially the synopsis. Ugh.) and start querying agents and submitting to the slush piles.

The end of Dragons frees me up to move on to my next project: Chiaroscuro/The City of Light and Shadow. This is my Renaissance city fantasy that doesn’t really have a genre (I tend to call it Alchemy Realism, but only because that’s an anagram of my name.) I finished Part I (at 50k words) last November and set it aside to concentrate on the Dragons revision. This weekend, I re-read Part I of Chiaroscuro and compiled a list of character names and places (I already have more than 50 named characters, though most of them are only named in passing. Sigh). I made three ‘stacks’ of garbage-in media materials: research books, inspiration books, and visual media (movies and documentaries to get me in the mood). I listed everything I could think of that I want to do in Part II, made a story path and character paths/arcs for all the main PoV characters, and just generally got my plotting together.

Yesterday, I sat down to write. And I realized I’d been in Missy’s voice/head for so long that I’ve completely lost the voice for Chiaroscuro. This inspired a slight panic attack, because these days I sometimes feel like I’ve gotten worse as a writer. The more I learn about and practice writing techniques, the more I seem to lose the charm of my voice. The crap I wrote yesterday reads so mechanically, with none of the winsome appeal of the early parts of the book.

But I wrote, because if revising Dragons has made me realize one thing, it’s that I _can_ toss out and rewrite half a book. After that, 1k words doesn’t seem like much.

I am fretting over this writing voice thing, though. Especially since the bulk of my writing these days is RP-play where I don’t really push myself on plotting/structure/description/voice. But this morning I read an Ira Glass quote on Facebook that helped me recontextualize my anxiety:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” — Ira Glass

Back when I used to dance, I sometimes felt like delving into the nitty-gritty details of a dance – foot position, arm angles, the tiny things nobody but an expert (or a competition judge) would notice, actually made me a worse dancer. Like deconstructing the dance to perfect it ended up just leaving a shambles behind. But then I’d work on those details and get them right as the rest of the dance fell apart around me, walk away from the dance so I could internalize them, and come back later to a better over-all dance. Same thing with singing. And academics. Intense detail practice made me worse… until I got better. I gotta remember that this applies to writing, too.

I also need to retool my garbage-in process, which means reading things that inspire me at the language level. I’m going to hunt down some audiobooks of Dumas so I can listen to them during work, and I’ve added Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ to my list. Any suggestions for other media that invokes a lyrical/academic voice? Something… rich as honey drizzled over clockwork. And kinda goopy like that, too. Think… DaVinci Fairytale.

Some Assembly Required

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I’m starting this off with the disclaimer that I am not a legal scholar. This is the rant of a person whose main familiarity with the Constitution is that she read the Bill of Rights at some point in her academic career, and she was required to memorize a cheat sheet of the first ten Amendments in high school.

But apparently Mayor Bloomberg, with a team of legal scholars and advisors working for him, is less familiar with the First Amendment than I am.

In his prepared public statement regarding the recent eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park, Bloomberg made the following statement:

“The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out, but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others, nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here. The First Amendment protects speech. It does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bakdkvkBtw8 (starts at 4:22)

Now, here’s where the “I’m not a legal scholar, but…” part comes in. Because I’m pretty sure if Mayor Bloomberg had read a little further past the word ‘speech’, he would have run into this other word: Assembly.

Here’s what the First Amendment says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

My high school cheat sheet just said: Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, and Petition. Not bad, as cheat sheets go.

Now, I’m being disingenuous here. I’m certain Mayor Bloomberg does know about the Assembly bit, just as I’m sure he knows that these protections have been judicially extended to the state and city level (and don’t just apply to Congressional laws anymore). This means he purposely ignored the inclusion of Assembly in order to make a news-byte bon mot: the line about the tents. For me, that was Bloomberg’s ‘If they cannot eat bread, let them eat cake’ moment, where his power and privilege and position to disregard the Constitution and the people’s rights showed through like a dirty pair of knickers. (and yes, I realize Marie Antoinette’s quote is apocryphal. Mayor Bloomberg’s is not. Check it! There’s video.)

Here’s the thing. Tents and sleeping bags and merely inhabiting a public space and being cooperative about health and safety risks… none of these strike me as violent things, which means to me that the Occupiers are enacting their right to peaceably assemble. The First Amendment doesn’t say how long they’re allowed to assemble, or that they aren’t allowed to bring along items for their own comfort while they do so. In fact, it could be argued (and should be argued) that any tactics or laws designed to discourage assembly are unconstitutional, because they are state-sponsored ways of trying to legally infringe on that right.

This puts the eviction and other police actions in a new light. The bulk of violence that has occurred at the Occupy sites has been state-sponsored violence and intimidation tactics used against the Occupiers. Every raid, every removal, even the general use of police as intimidation, the arrests, the kettling, the whole debacle at the bridge back at the beginning of this, they all seem to be to be violations of that bit in the First Amendment that doesn’t get waved around as often as Speech, Press, and Religion.

The right of Assembly (and its little brother, Petition). We has it.

Okay, bring on the legal scholars and judicial cases. Tell me how I’m wrong, or how there is more nuance to this issue than that (I’m certain there is.) Use small words so that I’ll be sure to understand. Westley-style.

[Edit: Just letting people know that I've turned on comment moderation, not because I actually want to monitor people's comments, but because you would not believe the amount of spam I'm getting on WordPress. LiveJournal was never this bad! If anyone has advice on how to block it better, please let me know]

The real question is, where do Giant Squid fit into all of this?

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I love my job.

I work for the digital content side of a textbook publisher. This morning while I chatted with our Environmental Science content developer (Eliza) and one of my fellow content coordinators (Claire), Eliza mentioned she needed to build an invasive species question for the textbook she’s working on. I suggested doing one on mermaids and selkies, under the premise that due to global climate change, the gulf stream that runs up past Ireland has warmed the waters enough to allow mermaids to move into ecozones traditionally populated by selkies.

We proceeded to go through a list to see if mermaids have the characteristics to make them a successful invasive species in this environment:

Is there a lack of checks to mermaid population in the new environment (predators, diseases, etc.)?

  • Mermaids: Yes. Mermaids are top tier predators themselves. The main check to their population is depleted food sources (i.e., lack of sailors willing to jump overboard when hearing their alluring songs). As there are lots of unsuspecting sailors off the west coast of Ireland, and also many tourists who won’t really be missed, this is prime territory for mermaid expansion.
  • Selkies: No. Because selkies are shore breeders, humans are their main threat alongside loss of habitat. And dogs. Apparently, dogs are always getting up in selkie business. Selkies are also vulnerable to sharks, killer whales, and polar bears. Not that there are any polar bears in Ireland. Just saying. On the whole, mermaids win this one.

Do they produce offspring at a greater or more successful rate than native species?

  • Mermaids: Unknown. Mermaids appear to be solitary or at best small-group predators, and little is known about their procreative habits. They seem to be a mono-gendered species, although the appearance of femininity is likely a hunting adaptation, with males and females being indistinguishable.  Claire pointed out that in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the mermaids hunted in large packs, displayed additional dentition, and ‘angry face lines’. We agreed this needed further research to see if it was a regional adaptation or a widespread one.
  • Selkies, on the other hand, appear to depend on the human population for reproduction and the raising of offspring (see above re: shore breeders). Anecdotally, male selkies will mate with human women, who raise the selkie offspring through childhood. The grown children will then return to the sea at around age 7 after humans have expended time and resources to raise them during their most vulnerable years, protecting them from dogs and polar bears. Tales of female selkies mating with human men are less common, and often involve some sort of entrapment of the female selkie rather than choice. The moment she gets her seal-skin back, she’s out of there. It’s a crapshoot whether she takes the kids.

This devolved into a long discussion of the genetics of selkies, and questions of how they could mate with humans and not with each other. I pointed out that while there are no documented cases of selkies mating with each other, it doesn’t mean they can’t. They are a very private species, and little is known about them. We agreed that more research was needed to make a credible model of selkie reproduction and genetics.

At that point, we broke into individual research pods, but agreed to reconvene later to further discuss this issue and see if it was a suitable case to build a problem set around.

I love my job. Did I say that already?

The Root is “Communis”

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I’ve been thinking about communities, communication, and communion (also, Commons). One of the best unexpected things to come out of the recent publication of “And The” is that some people contacted me personally in reaction to the story. Rather than giving in to my usual social anxiety of ‘Omg people are talking to me… WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME?!’, I actually took the time to look at what they sent me and to respond to them.

What I’ve discovered is that there are so many cool people in the world. Like genre-breaking slipstream writers who tell medusa-as-metaphor stories, and anthro-geek essayists who are working on retellings of obscure Grimm tales — she had me at Jorinda and Joringel! (Story Boyle, you have got to meet my friend S.L. Knapp. She’s a Miami-based fantasist with a background in anthropology. You two have so much in common). Or awesome people who work for Powell’s and are Hermes-affiliated (and quote Camus).

Building a good writing community isn’t like building a dance community or a theater community or a gaming community. There isn’t the same geographical commons for everyone to use as a gathering place to sort out their sub-tribes. I meet so many writers who are good, but who don’t write the kind of stuff that really speaks to me.

I think our stories and writings and essays _are_ our Commons. They are how we find each other and know each other and speak to each other. Henry Glassie once gave a class lecture on art where he defined it as an act of communication. It doesn’t necessarily exist in the creation process or in the reception or in the work itself, but rather in the moment of communion when something that the artist puts out clicks with something the receiver sees/hears/feels. This definition resonates with me because it means that many acts and products that are marginalized by other definitions can be included and considered through the lens of this one. It’s a very… folkloric definition.

Schwag-tastic!

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So, here is the comprehensive list of Schwag I got from World Fantasy. Most of these were free. Some of them I’d been planning to buy, and a few I bought because I met the author and thought ‘hm, that person is cool. I’m gonna check out their book’.

Sensation, by Nick Mamatas. This sounds like a fun, weird one, about hyperintelligent spiders who control human development like the Illuminati to save themselves (and us) from their enemies, the wasps. It’s not actually schwag, but he did a reading of this at LitQuake a few weeks ago, and it was the only reading at the Sci-Fi panel that interested me.

The Gray Wolf Throne, by Cinda Williams Chima. This is the third book in an epic fantasy series, but it looks like it might have some interesting romantic elements, so I’m going to give it a shot.

Rock Paper Tiger, by Lisa Brackman. A mystery about an Iraq war vet and MMO hackers in Beijing. Also not technically schwag; I picked this up at the Mysterious Galaxy event because… dude… China and MMO hackers.

Mayan December, by Brenda Cooper. Time travel, a Mayan archaeoastronomer, and a 2012 story that doesn’t look stupid. Also, I’m always up for supporting non-eurocentric fantasy.

Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy, vol. 3. by Kevin Brockmeier. Just a bunch of stories by a bunch of awesome writers.

Amercian Gods, Author’s Preferred Text, by Neil Gaiman. Already owned and read, but I’m sort of curious about the ‘preferred text’ aspect.

The God Stalker Chronicles, by P.C. Hodgell. This is an epic fantasy duology in one book. The fantasy names are weird enough to have turned me off, and the flap copy is uninteresting, but it’s got good blurbs from Locus, Publisher’s Weekly, etc, so I’m not going to hold bad marketing and cover design against her.

The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle. Classic. And he signed it, while I fan-gushed all over him. I don’t usually care about author signatures, but… Peter S. Beagle. Dude.

A Fine & Private Place, by Peter S. Beagle. Never read this one, but Connie Willis said it was her favorite, and you can’t beat a rec like that. It looks like it’s about ghosts and death and love and choices.

Ash, by Malinda Lo. This sounds like so many kinds of awesome. It’s a YA queer Cinderella retelling where the heroine chooses the huntress rather than the prince. Boo-yah, grandma.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente. The title… kind of says it all? This wasn’t schwag, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to pick up for a while. Also, Cat sold me her ticket to WFC when she decided not to go, so it seemed fitting to pick this up.

Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente. Also not really schwag, but Allison Moon got this for me last week as a thank-you for working on her book, so it goes into the schwag-affiliated pile.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin. This _is_ schwag. It was also one of the nominees for the World Fantasy Award this year. Didn’t win, but I’m totally excited about reading it. It’s a city fantasy. I love those things.

The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells. This is a secondary world fantasy from Nightshade books, and supposedly the world-building is pretty good.

The Devil’s Diadem, by Sara Douglass. I’ve never read Sara Douglass, not for any particular reason, just never got around to it. This one sounds like it’s 12th century war in heaven, so that’s promising.

Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy, 2008, edited by Rich Horton. Another edited volume of awesome authors.

Eon, by Alison Goodman. Chinese-based fantasy about a girl masquerading as a boy to learn to kick ass. What is not to love?

Guardian of the Dead, by Karen Healey. Maori faeries and YA. Double wow.

The Hammer, by K.J. Parker. Another fantasy, possibly greek?, that turned me off with the names, but it had a great opening, so I kept it.

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt. A pulp western fantasy, so of course I’m interested. I actually picked this one up (not schwag) because Tim Pratt sat down and we chatted, and I was like, ‘he seems cool’. And then I went to the dealer room and saw he wrote pulp fantasy with a female MC, and I was all ‘SOLD’!

Den of Thieves, by David Chandler. Looks like a pretty typical thieves-guild gaming fantasy, but that’s cool. They can’t all be high-concept.

A Darkness Forged in Fire, by Chris Evans. Epic fantasy in the WoW vein, seems like, but it has ‘Iron Elves’. See above about they can’t all be high-concept.

Symir: The Drowning City, by Amanda Downum. This was on my wishlist because of great reviews. It’s a vaguely Turkish/Near Eastern city fantasy with assassins and necromancy and thieves. Sometimes, they’re better when they’re not high concept.

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer, by Jeff Vandermeer. Not schwag, but something I thought could be helpful to navigate the business elements of writing that still baffle me.

 

 

 

Back to Poughkeepsie

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Got back laaaate last night from my first World Fantasy conference. I’m exhausted, but happy with the experience. I went in knowing quite a few people for a first-timer, and came out having actually talked with a few more (I met even more than that, but there’s so much meeting going on that it becomes a blur). It’ll take me a few days to sort out the highlights, but one thing the experience did give me was a focus for this blog.

See, I want to write blog posts, but I can’t imagine anyone being interested in the minutiae of my daily life… including me. Most blogs on writing seem a little omphaloskeptic to me, and besides, I’d rather spend my writing energy actually writing rather than writing about writing. Lastly, a re-read of LeGuin’s “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” has reminded me that if I sink too deeply into political or academic ranting, it will occupy my entire being for days with impotent rage. So… that nixes the three things I’m most qualified to write about.

World Fantasy has inspired me, though. I got SO MUCH SCHWAG! I will be listing said schwag tomorrow, and then I figure I can go through and review the schwag, which will give me a reason to read all the schwag, not just the ones that directly appeal to my interests. Contrary to what a co-worker accused me of – (It’s always gender stuff with you, Alyc) – I will try to focus on other elements than gender representation. We’ll see how long that resolution lasts.

In the meantime, I have a story to approve for Daily Science Fiction, a proposal to put together for ICFA, a special Halloween Milk & Cookies tonight, a manuscript and five short stories to revise and send out, and a list of schwag to compile.

Pretty sure I’m missing something. Guess it’ll have to wait.

Meandering South

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We had a rare, sunny weekend in HMB (usually I feel more like I’m living in Scotland than California, what with all the coastal fog), so I took my camera on my bike ride. Let me give you a tour of the world seen through a teleidoplex:

Pic 1. The bike path starts about a block from my home, and you can see here why I keep making Scotland comparisons.  We even have purple thistles, though I neglected to take any pics of those.

Pic 2. A short way down the path (which is paralleled by a bridle path) is the world’s longest troll bridge.  It spans a fairly sizeable (for California) runoff stream, and my bike makes ‘trip trip trip’ sounds as I ride across it.  So far, I have avoided getting eaten.  I guess there’s always a bigger goat?

Pic 3. Beyond that is the campground, which always smells like campfires and cookouts. Every time I ride past, I have a yearning to go beach camping, which is hilarious as I’m not really a camping girl.

Pic 4. Then a lovely, long stretch of windy bike path along a slowly-rising cliff. There’s benches all along for people to sit and look out at the ocean, an lovely little ravines like this one leading down to the beach.

Pic 5. Bryn wondered if there were horseback riding stables nearby that took you down to the beach. I guess I can tell her that there are.

Pic 6. A smaller troll bridge, leading to my ‘magic grove’.

Pic 7. The magic grove. California Junipers are one of my top favorite trees (tied with sugar maples). I love the taffy-twisted trunks and limbs, and the way they give in to the wind shaping them.  These trees _get_ the whole zen ‘not-doing’ thing.

Pic 8. Beyond the magic grove is the raptor preserve. I like to think they mean velociraptors rather than birds, so I don’t venture that far. Instead, I come to this lovely little juniper to have a chat with the ocean before I head back.

Pic 9. My terminus tree. Sometimes there are sea lions in the water. Or selkies. I think this picture just has people, though.

Pic 10. The great expanse. My total ride is about 2.5 miles from home to terminus, along the coast you see here.  Pretty darn keen.

Of course, most of the time it’s cloudy, drizzly, and damp.  Scotland, I swear!  I’ll post cloudy pics next time. Or maybe my ride north, which has the faerie house. We’ll see.

Zombie Apocalypse

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I went for a wander around downtown Half Moon Bay today, and I discovered the most likely location for our Zombie Apocalypse ™ outbreak.  This is first step in determining your zombie survival plan, of course.  I will continue my reconnaissance over the weekend and return with a full report.

They thought they were so sneaky, but I caught them!

Why I write

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Top 10 reasons why I write:

1. I was told to do it by a pervy blue fairy with a New York accent and a penchant for showing up in my shower and distracting me into forgetting to rinse out my conditioner.

2. Because someday I want to save someone’s life the way Meredith Ann Pierce and Katherine Kurtz saved mine.

3. Because as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have shown me, it’s one of the most effective ways to do magic in the contemporary world.

4. Because as much as I appreciate paranormal romance, I think it can be done in a more responsible way in terms of gender representation.  Hermione should be the main character, not Harry, not Bella.

5. Because some of the plots from my dreams are too weird and cool *not* to share.

6. Because I made a deal with a meta-lingual reality hacker, and she’s counting on me to do my part to transform the metaverse.

7. Because I grew up on stories of girls without hands or voices who lived happily ever after because they were obedient and good, and I think that’s bullshit.

8. Because I can’t become a Zapatista, but I can be one of the Army of Dreamers.

9. Because someday I really want to win a prestigious writing award so that I can thank my first writing group, Scat Hardcore.

10. Because I can’t not write.