Month: April 2024

When We Grow Up

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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We humans don’t yet know what we’re going to be when we grow up.

In my morning senryu, which I call zentao, I often close with the last line “not civilized yet.” Here’s an example:

We can do better.
We have the tools and knowledge.
Not civilized yet.
#zentao

A lot of those senryu are written in anger. If we were civilized, this thing wouldn’t happen. Or we know better than this; we could be civilized.

This is rooted in an idea I’ve had for many years that every established group of people – particularly the wealthy ones – thinks they are civilized. We are civilized, unlike the people from a thousand, a hundred, fifty years ago.

Or, more dangerously, we are more civilized than those people over there, which often becomes an excuse to kill them.

This is not a popular theory. Once on a science fiction convention panel I suggested we humans weren’t even close to civilized, and got a lot of pushback from everyone else.

Of course, it depends on what you mean by civilized. My own conception of that is long and complex, but the gist of it is a world in which we use what we know and can learn to make good lives for all in sustainable ways.

As we were driving across the country this past week, my sweetheart, having gone down a rabbit hole online based on something we’d noticed, told me that the horse was first domesticated by humans maybe 6,000 years ago.

(My sweetheart also suggests that teenage girls first domesticated the horse. It’s an interesting theory.)

And it suddenly dawned on me – because my mind goes down its own rabbit holes – that human beings are a very young species.

Of course we aren’t civilized. We haven’t been around long enough. Continue reading “When We Grow Up”…

Writer’s Round Table: Pros Give Advice on Writer’s Block

personby Deborah J. Ross
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A few years ago, a friend wrote poignantly about what it’s like to be blocked. I asked some pro writer friends for words of encouragement. This is from a well-known, NYTimes-best-selling author:

WRITER’S BLOCK

I am sitting here looking at a fic I have not touched since 2007.  I have 135K done, including the last scene…or, about 2/3 of the total fic.  I am ALSO sitting here looking at a novel that was due three years ago, for which I have something similar to an outline and the first 50K written (only 100K to go, right?)

I’ve been writing fanfic and profic since the 80s, and dealing with blocked, derailed, and MIA stories for most of that time.  Here are some of the strategies that have worked for me.  (NOTE: some of these ideas are mutually-exclusive, because every writer writes differently.)

  1. WELCOME TO THE GULAG: Block out a specific time and place where you do the same thing every day: sit in front of the screen and make words come.Doesn’t matter what you write, or even if you don’t write.  Just be there doing nothing else (no shopping, no reading AO3, no social media) for that one or two hours (no more) each and every day (same Bat-time, same Bat-channel).  Eventually your brain gives up and you get to write what you want to write.

1A. If absolutely nothing else will come to your fingers, choose a favorite book (or longfic) and retype it.

  1. FACE THE MUSIC: Between day job and commute (long) I was really bushed when Writing Time arrived in the evening.I just didn’t have the energy—but I did have a deadline.  Solution?  ROCK’N’ROLL BAY-BEE!!!  I wrote two novels to “Bad To The Bone”.  Just that one track.  On infinite repeat.  Loud.  So pick a piece of music, declare it your writing music, and hit “Repeat” on iTunes.

2A: Earphones are a great help.  Use the sport kind that leave your ears free.

  1. WELCOME TO THE MACHINE: When I would dry up working on a piece—and we are talking YEARS in some cases—it was often because I was trying to take it in the wrong direction.I learned to recognize that feeling when it came and take a step back.  (You can either wait for inspiration to come—I know! I know!—or try to negotiate with your subconscious.  Or, yanno, try to REASON your way through to the answer.)

3A. Sometimes switching to another project will help.

  1. PRESENT COMPANY: 95% of all fic is written in the present tense, for reasons that utterly escape me (even though I do it too).Try taking your blocked piece and changing it to past tense.  Or first person.  Anything to get The Muse—AKA your subconscious—awake and grumbling.  (When you have annoyed it enough it usually gets back to work.  Nobody knows how much annoying is the exact right amount, though.)
  1. THE WALLPAPER IS ALSO A CHARACTER: Back in the beginning, when typewriters ruled the earth. I made a solemn vow not to stop for the night before I had two pages (500 words).And when nothing else would come, I described the background.  Or the weather.  Or the furniture.  (Amazingly, all those descriptions didn’t look out of place when the book was done.)

5A: The corollary to this is THE MAGIC TCHOTCHKE: Every story needs one important and well-described item.  It might be a magic sword, a 1967 Chevy Impala hardtop, a big stone ring built by Ancient astronauts.  Find out which it is in your story and show it some love.  And if your story doesn’t have a magic tchotchke yet, consider adding it.

  1. INERTIA CREEPS (MOVING UP SLOWLY): If you know what comes next, tell yourself.Use any words you need to for writing down the information.  Sometime this is called a scene-by-scene breakdown.  It is very familiar to the “treatment” for a film (most good books on screenwriting will show examples of treatment style).  Once you have a version of what happens, you can poke at it to see if it’s the “real for true” version.  Then you are one step closer to finishing the story.
  1. EURIPEDES, YOUR PANTS ARE READY: There are essentially two kinds of writer: the Pantser, and the Outliner (I’m both.Sue me.)  The Pantser begins a work with a vague idea of where it might be going and an enthusiasm for the journey, and not much more.  The Outliner wants a roadmap, a GPS, and the location of every Rest Stop along the road before beginning.  The takeaway here is that BOTH METHODS WORK WONDERFULLY WELL.  Except if you’re a Pantser who’s trying to follow a detailed outline.  Or an Outliner who’s decided to just go with the whole Inspiration thing.  Figure out which kind you are, and nurture that writing-self.
  1. LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS (THE “I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP” REMIX): Writing takes emotional energy.So does talking about your WIP.  If you deny yourself the outlet of talking about your story while it’s in progress, you might just find that (since you are looking forward to all those lovely comments) this gives you enough oomph to unlock your Muse.

And don’t forget The Broccoli Test, The Bechdel Test, interviewing your characters, and the story’s Blooper Reel.  (I’m hoping somebody else will cover these in depth?)

Good Luck!

— Dejah Vue, Writer of Two Worlds

Introduction to the Next Three Months (or so)

personby Gillian Polack
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I have a doctorate to finish. The last six months of a PhD can be very intense. I may not have time to write posts every week. So that you don’t miss out, I’ve chosen a year of my life at random and will find you published pieces of prose I wrote in that year, and let you explore a year in the life of a Gillian. This won’t take us til July, so when those posts run out, I’ll choose another year, then one more year after that. Three random years. I may resort to the purple sparkly sorting hat…

The first year is 2016. I chose it because, near the end of the year, I was persuaded to try Patreon. My page there is still going strong and I love my patrons and the support they give me. They get (mostly historical, sometimes with commentary) recipes every fortnight and new fiction and sometimes strange drafts of old fiction, new essays, old essays, writing advice… Some of them just stick with the recipes. Some opt for recipes and fiction. Some brave souls read all the writing, every month. When I see them at events, it’s as if we’ve been in a continuing conversation about my life and my writing and my research. I’ve been very fortunate, and each and every one of them is a seriously cool person… and very patient. Next week I shall be celebrating them with the very first non-fiction piece I sent them. I’ll work my way back (erratically) to the beginning of 2016 and then I’ll find another year.

I’ll post them all ahead of time, and you get something new every week. Me, I get to spend my Mondays writing and editing furiously. When I submit my thesis, we can all heave a big sigh of relief.

 

PS This is not an April Fool’s joke. I so want to apologise for it not being one!