Archive for the ‘Writing About Writing’ Category

For all my multi-tasking and jack-of-all-trades-ness, I can be very single-minded at times. Almost everything that I learn in the Real World^TM is immediately translated into my ability to convey plausible fiction. New recipes spark ideas about how a species might season their food. Taking my motorcycle apart is incorporated into how an individual works on her magic-powered vehicle. The texture of my cat’s fur correlates to the texture of an alien animal’s soft, glossy pelt. The unspoken social hierarchy in a certain group of people brings up questions on how another culture might function in a similar situation. You get the idea.

I am greatly fascinated by natural sciences – zoology, anatomy/physiology, evolution, botany, geology, astrophysics, and more. I am passionate about these subjects because they’re incredibly interesting to me, because I like understanding this amazing world in which we live– and because I want to use that knowledge to enhance my geofiction and my writing. It’s good to have a seemingly unique, seemingly possible idea to incorporate into a piece of worldbuilding; it’s much, much better to have the education and knowledge to back up that theory.

As part of my current walk in life, I plan on self-educating myself on the sciences in much greater detail than I’ve so far learned them. Natural sciences come first, followed by social sciences (especially psychology, religion/mythology, and ancient history), and then whatever else I’m curious about and might put to use (such as mechanics). I’m not doing this solely for my writing, but it is one of the primary motivations to find some solid texts and teach myself some of the innumerable things that I don’t know yet. Plus, it’s awesome! These subjects, this world, this universe, are all bizarre and beautiful. Lessening my ignorance will only teach me how much more there is to appreciate in this life.

How far do you go in the name of your craft? Do you casually pick up shards of information as they become necessary, or do you eagerly dive in to study the pillars on which you stand?

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.

Oh, I have neglected this blog. Friends and readers, I apologize.

I have really enjoyed keeping this blog for the past few months, tossing up a variety of fiction, worldbuilding/critterbuilding, meta-writing, and slice-of-life posts. I have no intention of letting myself linger into infinite idleness. I confess, however, I have a bit of a quandary. You may have even tackled this one before, or you might be in the process of doing so now.

As a totally unknown author who’s trying to build a community of readers and creative folk, I can’t afford to walk away from the computer for weeks at a time. Networking via blogs, forums, Twitter, and other virtual gathering-places is vital to getting my name out and meeting great people. I’m a certified internet marketer, to boot – I know the ins and outs of self-marketing and social media, even if I happen to shun certain venues (like MySpace). If I want any kind of online community, I need to be interactive, dynamic, genuine, and present.

However, I want to unplug.

I’m finding myself feeling a little ungrounded these days. I’d love little more than to acquire an old electric typewriter – the new ones are too computer-like for my tastes – and an mp3 player that can hold some 20,000 songs, and simply turn the computers off for a week. The typewriter will let me continue to write, journal, and worldbuild, and the mp3 player will let me have all my music outside of my overloaded harddrives. My cell phone can keep me in touch with my good friends and family. I want, and need, a break from the overwhelming virtual side of my life.

I want to go outside, bundled up, and walk through the falling snow at dusk. I want to pick up the training sword that’s leaning against my bo in the corner of the room and practice until my arms want to fall off. I want to have hard copy of my creative works, and I want to hear the solid click-click-thud of a typewriter again. (I started on a manual typewriter, later got an electric, and got my first computer in 2000.) I want to play my guitar until my calluses are tough again. I want to sprawl in a pile of sleeping cats and read new books.

Ultimately, I just want to feel a little more real.

I’m not sure how to balance my authorly, internet-based goals with this desire to unplug and step away. This blog will not be abandoned, and I’ll return to my neglected Twitter account soon. But I need to live in order to write about living, and if I feel like I’m drifting, that’s only going to handicap my ability to create.

A healthy compromise must be found.

How have you managed to balance your internet activity with the rest of your hobbies and responsibilities? I’d be happy to hear about any tips or tricks you’ve found to be helpful.

Today, boys and girls, I’m here to talk to you about drugs.

–wait, don’t hit the X. I said talk, not lecture. This is a blog about fiction! C’mon.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to define ‘drug’ as any ingestible substance with physiological and/or psychological effects. Medicine, alcohol, and marijuana all fall under the drug heading here.

Almost every single person has an opinion about at least one drug. Drug A should be illegal, or Drug B should be legalized. Doing or distributing Drug C should put someone on death row, while doing or distributing Drug D should be considered saint’s work. Drug E should be used carefully; Drug F can be used willy-nilly. Drug G isn’t all that bad, but Drug H is hardcore. People who do Drug I are just looking to relax, but people who do Drug J are dangerous addicts. It’s socially acceptable to partake of Drug K at an event, but someone imbibing Drug L in public should get arrested. Drug M should always be done around people to be safe, while Drug N should only be done alone. Keep Drug O in the house, but Drug P can go on the streets, and Drug Q can even be done in the car without anyone dying.

You get my point.

Nearly every human culture has found a way to make alcohol, medicine, and narcotics. There’s a rich and fascinating history on drug production and use. My question to you is not a moral one, but a creative one: How do fictional cultures treat drugs? Not only fictional human cultures, but humanoid and non-human ones as well?

Is drug use so honed a science that the entire culture takes a variety of drugs for their every need, every day? Is drug use so horrifying a concept – loss of self-control a phobia – that the culture won’t even use medicine when it’s desperately needed? Which drugs are acceptable, and in what ways? Which drugs are unacceptable, and how is illegal use of them treated? What’s considered medicinal, and what’s considered recreational? Are drugs used for religious or spiritual purposes? Does military training include developing a high tolerance to certain common drugs, or even poisons?

How do the people in your stories deal with drugs? Get creative! Even human cultures have vastly different relationships with and opinions of mind-altering substances. You can drive home the alienness of a culture or race very easily by tweaking the place drugs have in that society.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.

Can’t blog, must write!

(Plus, I just moved to a new, lovely duplex with J! It does not have internet yet, so blog posts may be less regular than usual for a week or two. Bear with me!)

I’ve been mindspewing creature-designing and worldbuilding ideas in preparation for writing Oh, The Inhumanity!, and I think I feel the tiny little flicker of a would-be rant guttering in my chest.

See, I have a pet peeve. Non-humans should be non-humans. In science fiction and fantasy alike, most of your non-humans are what I would consider humanoids – symmetrical bipedal races with human-parallel physiology and psychology. Some different clothing, a bit taller or shorter (or skinnier or wider – hi, elves and dwarves), pointy ears, colorful skin, and an accented version of the common tongue, and voilà! You have a humanoid. We, as human readers, can relate to the humanity of the race and its individuals, while (hopefully) appreciating the differences in body and culture.

That’s fine, that’s cool. That’s a distinct class of non-humans that are purposefully similar to humans for very understandable reasons. They’re the easiest to work with in fiction and most relatable for our audience.

When a book introduces a giant quadrupedal predator who still thinks like a civilized, social human, I get my hackles up. C’mon, guys. They aren’t human. Give them a difference. Let’s broaden our minds, shall we?

Imagine, if you will, a human being born with a set of animal behaviors and instincts. This is still a human in body and will be raised as a human, in human society, but its base instincts are some animal instead of evolved monkey. This person – we’ll call him Bob – is inherently, innately, undeniably inhuman. If he’s a tiger, he’s going to have to balance social tendencies from his human rearing with completely antisocial tendencies from being a lone predator. There will be immutable qualities in the core of his psyche that are not human.

Imagine, if you will, a humanoid born into a human society. Even if she’s raised as a human, she’s going to have different base instincts and behavioral tendencies, as well as some moderately different physiological needs, depending on her specific race. Even though she will be effectively multicultural, she won’t lose her innate inhumanity that is her birthright as a non-human. She’ll likely experience internal (and possibly external) conflict over her adopted culture and her instinctual heritage.

Now, imagine a humanoid culture in its infancy. This species is now at the apex of their physical evolution and progressing into civilization and probably technology. For the sake of this example, say they have never met humans – they’re in a secluded land, or on a different planet. They don’t have our monkey instincts; they have their own. How differently would they develop, even if they have human-parallel bodies and neurological structures, when their core is unshakably inhuman?

Do I really need to ask you to imagine how different a non-humanoid race would be from us?

A Korat is not human. They do not have opposable thumbs; they do not stand on two legs. They have fur, claws, sharp teeth, and a predator’s set of movement-oriented senses. A human can gaze into a sunset and marvel at the incredible masterpiece of color and light; a Korat will look at a sunset and notice far less of the stationary detail. A human will see a blur of dull color in the underbrush and wonder if he imagined it; a Korat will watch a rabbit run and be able to count its strides out of the corner of his eye without even focusing. A human has different social needs than a Korat, different emotional and instinctual reactions to pain and fear and anger and sadness, and different ways of expressing himself. A human may react to danger with noisy aggression or cowering fear, while a Korat may react to the same situation by becoming completely still, alert, and poised to move – without any emotional investment.

Even when I find inhuman non-humans in fiction, I often find cases of human-envy. We are humans, so it’s natural that we’re human-centric. But Korats don’t pine for opposable thumbs or a bipedal gait. Korats don’t wish they were technologically advanced. In fact, Korats are Korat-centric – surprise! – and have a lot of racial pride. They like how their species is, and they don’t feel any inclination to become less like a Korat and more like anything else.

Humanoids certainly have a strong place in fiction, but I’d love to see more non-humanoids take a shining role with their differences and, yes, their incomprehensible alienness.

Have you ever created a non-human race that was truly inhuman? If not, why?

Of all the people in the world, a fiction writer seems to be one of the least qualified to tell you to live in your body. Especially one who works as a computer geek. I spend my work and play hours on a computer, sitting down and trying to avoid numb-butt syndrome by stretching every now and then. I type 119 words per minute without any particular effort. I can tell when a graphic-in-progress in Photoshop is a pixel or two off. I’m a certifiable dork.

Who am I to ask if you’re present in your physical flesh?

(Well, I’m A, but if you’re here, you know that already, right?)

Since we’re asking questions, how about this one: If you’re writing any sort of physical motion, how will you describe how it feels if you haven’t lived as a spine-flexing, muscle-contracting, blood-pumping body?

Everyone knows that writers can and do write things they haven’t personally experienced. “Write what you know” is a common adage, seemingly in contradiction to our immense imaginations. Take them both in moderation and consider this: how different would a short story about drag-racing be if the author had never even gotten his driver’s license? How would you write about a long cross-country journey if you’ve never walked through the woods? Sure, research and second-hand stories are great, but do they really replace personal experience?

Stephen R. Boyett wrote a great article about The One True Thing. He writes fantasy, but he gathers as much real-life experience pertaining to that fantasy as possible, so that he can include genuine details that make the unbelievable a little more real. Tiny things like road signs, the oft-overlooked decorations on large buildings, and that one tree that juts up from that hill over there when you’re driving down the highway. As a result of these True Things, his readers can suspend disbelief all the more easily.

And, really, can you write a story without ever having a physical body moving?

Are you present enough in your own skin to make it believable?

Give me the one true thing. The sudden rush of heat following a sharp pain; the sensitivity of your fingertip when a long nail is suddenly chopped short; the itch of a necklace chain on your collarbone. Make me believe that your character is just as alive as me – even if he’s the farthest thing from human you can get.

Live it, and let your stories benefit from your life.

I am a private person. I have locked and filtered my livejournals in the past and used an alias to firmly separate my name from my online presence. I’m still taking measures to keep that alias separated from this online presence, although anyone with some Google-fu could figure me out fairly easily. (No, that is not an invitation, thank you very much. I’m still talkin’ here! Put the search engine down and step away slowly…)

I’m a marketer, among other things. I understand personal branding, which is why my alias is so hard to cleave cleanly. I’ve been online since 2000. My fiction and worldbuilding is spattered all over the place, cohesively branded as me and mine – but I don’t link that name to this one.

I’m a bit of a weird person. A freak, if you will. I’d rather not have my legal name associated with my personal quirks, especially when it comes to employers and coworkers wandering the internet and potentially discovering too much. (I’m not talking about anything illegal or sexual here, just so you know.) I am not mainstream when it comes to religion and spirituality, to interpersonal relationships and humanity, to worldview and philosophy, or to hobbies and interests. I am a perfectly functional adult who leads an awesome life and does some good for people, and I certainly don’t lie about who and what I am, but I also don’t blatantly advertise it in settings where people might not want to know that I have sworn by the Flying Spaghetti Monster before.

Starting this blog and taking the first step towards professional authordom is making that balancing act increasingly difficult. I’ve showed a coworker this site (she asked about conlangs!) and put this site’s design on my resume, so I have a vested interest in blending personality and professionalism. All the same, I refuse to not be me. I’m a writer, for godssakes, and my eccentricity and imagination are absolutely vital to any success I have in storytelling.

At this point in my life, I don’t think conformity is worth it for me. Certainly not here, as a fiction writer, and not really in the 9-5 workforce, either. I’ve come a long way, and I’m done apologizing for being my own person. I’m living my life my way, and I love it – and if I can serve as proof that it can be done, maybe more people will follow their hearts and put away the plastic masks so many of us wear. I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I’m not, and I’m not afraid of whatever results my individualism earns.

This ain’t your mama’s fiction, kids, and I ain’t your typical author.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.

I have a veritable history with NaNoWriMo. I began participating in 2003 and, with one exception, have won every year since.

In 2003, I had written only one novel before; it was The Dark Wars, an unfinished Young Adult story about the most memorable and violent time in Lavana’s history. It spanned five spiral-bound notebooks – yes, I had written the entire thing by hand. But, in 2003, I was a fast typist, and my NaNovel was done on computer. It was entitled Seeker, a story about two gay boys in college trying to find themselves and finding each other instead. (Shh. It wasn’t a real romance, I swear.) While I got 50,000 words on the story, the plot arc was far from complete. This would set the norm for all NaNovels to come.

In 2004, I wrote Outcast, my first Korat-only novel. I got 80% finished with the story arc by the time I crossed the 50k finish line, which was the closest I’d come to completing an entire novel in my life. I even skipped ahead and wrote the ending scene (which, sadly, I later lost). Outcast followed the story of a lone striped female as she never stopped running for her life, even when she encountered three people who actually didn’t want to kill her.

In 2005, I wrote The Panthera Walkers: Peace as part of a Panthera Walkers trilogy (the second book, might I add – the first and third unwritten). Set in Ykinde, TPW:P chronicled the story of the growing Walker tribe and their aid in trying to establish peace between Lupos and Avans – trying to end the Elderwar – and how nothing is ever as black-and-white as it seems. I had a lot of trouble that year and took a major plot detour, then had to write feverishly to catch up and cross the finish line – at something like seven minutes ’til midnight on the last day. It was nuts.

In 2006, I failed. I did participate, and scanning back over my personal journal for November, I wrote that I’d gotten 21k on something. For the life of me, I can’t remember what it was, so I’m inclined to think it was a bunch of false starts and half-baked stories. My only excuse was that two great friends of mine were visiting for two weeks from Britain, and I was out and about with them almost every day they were here. (Sure, I was working full-time, too, but I’d been working every November except for 2003 – and in 2004, I was taking a few college classes as well as holding a job!)

In 2007, the miracle that was The Demon-God of Jubagh came to pass. By the time November rolled around, I’d already finished Book One; that year’s NaNoWriMo saw Book Two and half of Book Three completed before the 30th, and the rest of Book Three finished before the December holidays. I’ve already discussed TDGoJ previously on here (see the above link), but let me tell you – this was the first (and so far only) time I’d truly, totally, 100% finished a novel. I was gleeful.

In 2008, last year, I struggled to pick a direction for the first week or so. I first veered towards an anthology of myths and stories of Redwood, sidifir oerri, ageless mother of the Koratian race. I thought I could do two novels in one month, since I was on part-time at work and would never have that much free time ever again, so I tried to do a story about animetals on Ryarna in that world’s equivalent of the Wild West. Both petered out within days, and then – thanks in large part to some brainfodder and a great friend being a sounding board – I got inspired to do Into Fang Wood. I flew past the finish line, half-crazed and gibbering from the chaos of trying to wrangle that story in a month. (Later, of course, I found out how big it wanted to be, and I quailed, and then I began outlining…)

In 2009, this year, I have something very fun planned. The incredibly tentative working title is The Ghost In The Machine. (Asimov, I salute you, sir.) Set in the Gurhai universe, it will feature three corata, shapeshifting mammalian predators, who find themselves on Ryarna by chance or by fate. They encounter an impossible thing: a feral, instinct-smart herd of motorcycle-like wheeled vehicles that are, apparently, bound to and powered by animal ghosts. It’s illegal to fuse a ghost to anything but an animetal shell, however, and these wheelers are meant for personal transportation alone – not animation. Not only do the corata have to survive the largely-without-fleshy-animals desert, they have to figure out how to survive increasingly restless, doggedly stubborn aniwheelers.

It’s going to be so much fun.

Fellow WriMos, what are you planning for this lovely November?

And that’s putting it lightly. The work week was stressful and rather long, involving a 12-hour day and a 9.5-hour day among other days of normal length, and the rest of my time was spent out of the house – J’s kids got over the swine flu fairly quickly, thanks to the awesomeness of their mama, so I’ve been hanging out with them and their oh-my-gods-I’m-not-sick-anymore-HOORAY gleeful energy.

Needless to say, I fell behind on my blog posts. (I confess, I’m being moderately sinful and back-dating some posts to fill the gaps. Given the size of my readership at the moment, it’s not too annoying… Right, guys? Right? Um, guys…)

I don’t know about you, but when I fall behind, the build-up of inertia makes it hard to get going again. I had a lot of time yesterday to write, but I didn’t do more than login to my Wordpress admin panel and stare at my drafts blankly. I couldn’t get any mojo up, couldn’t think of what I wanted to say that would be worth reading. Today was shaping up in much the same boggy manner.

So, I went back and reread old writing posts and recent stories.

I smiled. I laughed. I nitpicked my sentence construction, word choice, and the flow of the paragraphs. I remembered the elation of writing stories I love with characters I love in places I love – and the feeling of accomplishment when I finished a section or a whole story.

Then I came back here, clicked on “Add New Post,” and started typing.

Now, granted, I still have two posts to make up. But I have a writing voice in me again, and ideas for topics, and at least two more hours before I have to wake J up to venture out into the wild desert yonder. I’m feelin’ the muse, and I’m happy.

How do you get back in the saddle again after stabling your creativity for too long?

You know what? It’s a mite difficult to post every other day when you’re sleep-deprived and heavily medicated for pain.

Just sayin’.

I’m debating on starting a series of worldbuilding creature development posts, using one of my own species as an example. The pros on this are the resource it would create for you, my reader, and the fun I’d get to have in exploring Olashi history and culture; the con is how inconclusive and patchwork it might be. To mitigate the con, I began doing a little bit of research on worldbuilding and discovered that my methodry is actually geofiction. Wikipedia describes it as “a hobby where people design imaginary cities, countries or entire worlds, including placenames, culture, social and political structures and even constructed languages (conlangs), primarily for personal enjoyment.” (You and I will talk about conlangs later, I promise.)

In my leisurely digging, I found several excellent worldbuilding resources to share with you, but most of these seem to assume that you’re working with a human or humanoid race. I haven’t found much talk about methane-breathers or wholly underwater sapients, except as monsters or figures of myth. Perhaps a little miniseries exploring how to go about expanding and deepening the culture and developmental history of your non-human race would be useful after all, eh?

While I continue my research and possibly begin outlining such a series of posts, have some worthwhile worldbuilding resources.

• Worldbuiling on Wikipedia – A standard, fairly thorough explanation of what worldbuilding is and how to do it.

• Fantasy World-Building Questions by Patricia C. Wrede – A good series of questions to ask yourself during the worldbuilding process, including a few about sapient culture development.
• 30 Days of Worldbuilding – A great miniseries from a NaNoWriMo enthusiast with thirty days of fifteen-minute exercises to broaden your world. The same author also produced the Magical World Builder’s Guide.
• Science Fiction Worldbuilding – A slightly sparse guide to building up a believable scifi setting.
• Worldbuilding Links – An immense directory of world-building resources for your perusal. I haven’t even had time to see them all yet!
• World Builder Projects – A well-organized list of worldbuilding resources, including forums, names, languages, and general guides.
• Fantasy Worldbuilding Resources – The biggest resource I’ve found yet. The page scrolls forever and has links to a multitude of useful sites, books, and images.
• Physical Geography – If you want to make a geographically-realistic world, check out this online resource on geography and make your world with real rules in mind.

I find designing worlds and their inhabitants – flora, fauna, and sapients all – to be the most enjoyable part of writing. What do you think about worldbuilding? Do you use any kind of tools to help you design, like a map generator, or do you go at it freestyle? Feel free to share links to resources on world-building or any aspect thereof!