CODA

personby Madeleine Robins
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When I to went Clarion, waaaaaay back in the day, Algis Budrys taught a lesson on the five beat plot (variously the seven beat plot, the well-made plot, and I’m sure there’s another dozen names for it somewhere). The five beat plot boils down to: 1) the heroine has a problem; 2) the heroine attempts a solution; 3) an obstacle thwarts the solution; 4) the heroine solves the problem; 5) validation. (There are many different names for the five segments, but that’s the essence of the thing.)

Think of stories you’ve read, stories you’ve perhaps loved. I have this dread ring of power, see. I must destroy it! We gather our team. I hit obstacles (boy, do I hit obstacles). Eventually, through toil, danger, and blood, I destroy the ring. But not only have I destroyed the ring, the quest etc. has changed me on a fundamental level. I get to vanish into the West with the elves (and does anyone but me wonder if Bilbo ever felt homesick or bored, there among the elves?). I bet you can think of a zillion works, from Austen to Zelazny, which employ this bare-bones outline.

No, the five beat plot isn’t the only way to tell a story, Continue reading “CODA”…

Prophets and their Gifts

personby Gillian Polack
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Right now, a lot of my research is about food. Not recipes, nor food history, but how food and foodways creep into fiction. It’ll be a long time before I have research results that I’m willing to share. Right now, I change my mind from day to day as I discover new things. Still, it’s not at all fair to leave you out of my foodways entirely, so I’m going to share with you an old favourite of mine.

In 1552, two little books appeared in the French marketplace. In my perfect world, I would own an original copy of each, but they’re rare and the author is so famous that any copies that appeared would be snapped up for an impossible sum. I own a translation of the books, into English. I could read the original (historians have some handy language tools) but haven’t ever found a modern edition. I was in France in 1995 and found the English translation there. It’s not a big book, even though it rudely fits two old books into one.

Who is this well-known author? Michel Nostradamus, who is more known as a prophet and as a physician than as a cook. Whenever I’ve encountered people who get excited when they hear his name it’s because they want to argue about prophecy. Right now, though, his background as a plague doctor is more appropriate. He was one of the best known and possibly one of the most competent plague doctors in sixteenth century France.

I considered this when I was in the emergency department of the medical side of the university at Montpellier, for he studied there and I had a mysterious disease. I didn’t have plague. But I dreamed of my favourite recipe from Nostradamus’ cookbook as I rested after the appointment and slowly recovered from what turned out to be the side effects of being bitten by a tick. The doctor laughed merrily with his assistant, when they worked out I was Australian and yet had been infected by something in England. They looked up Australia on the computer and noted all the dangerous spiders here and all the snakes and then said “And she went to England for this. York, in the rain.” The actual diagnosis took maybe a minute, and they wrote out prescriptions and descriptions for treatment when they’d finished laughing. At that precise moment I wished I had less French because I could understand every joke they made at my expense.

Nostradamus’ quince recipe was my safe hiding place, I think.

I was in Montpellier researching Langue[dot]doc 1305, but I didn’t call on that incident at all for it. The illness meant I only had a few hours of research a day, because I really wasn’t that well.

I managed to complete all my work thanks to the kind help of people at desks. Two were the senior curators of museums, masquerading as sellers-of-tickets. I asked each of them where I could go in their museum to answer a couple of questions I had. We chatted a minute and they decided to talk me through everything I needed. Two hours, in each case, with people who knew more about the precise material I needed than were in any book. One also sold me a hard-to-find book I desperately needed, so I read that during my many hours of enforced rest.

Hearing the medical jokes at my expense was the downside of having enough French, but being able to talk the Middle Ages with experts was definitely the upside. It might also have helped that I knew a fair amount already: I was asking as an SF writer, but had a PhD in Medieval History backing it.

The third desk person was at the tourist office in the town I was setting the novel in. She had copies of unusual material hiding behind the desk and brought them out for me. In return, I told her how to make Nostradamus’ version of quince jelly.

I wish I had been able to go back one more time after I had digested all that material, because there are some questions I really wanted more answers to. I live on the other side of the world, and a return visit wasn’t possible. Still, Nostradamus and his recipes have an indelible link with Langue[dot]doc 1305.

I didn’t put even a single recipe for quince jelly in the novel. I regard this as neglectful, but I can tell you now, even my mother thinks that he had a very fine recipe. She tested it, some years back.

A Virtual Reading: Promo With a Few Thoughts

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Strong Women/Strange Worlds Third Thursday Quick Reads

As you can see from the picture above, I’m reading on St. Patrick’s Day (Thursday, March 17) with five other authors as part of the Strong Women/Strange Worlds online reading series. The reading runs an hour, starting at 7 pm US EDT, which is 4 pm out here on the U.S. West Coast, late morning on the 18th in Australia, and the middle of the night in the U.K.

You can register for this free event here. Each author is doing some form of giveaway as part of the reading. I’m offering a print copy of For the Good of the Realm to one person in the US and an e-copy for a person living in other places. (The cost of shipping books these days is beyond the means of most writers, especially when the shipping costs more than the book.)

The people behind this reading series started it after some of them did a Zoom reading at a virtual convention and realized they could do such things without the convention. They’ve put together an organized system, with a set of tips for readers, and they solicit applications from people who’d like to participate.

Virtual readings are one of the good things that have come from the complicated times of the pandemic. Many conventions were cancelled or held virtually and most bookstores and libraries stopped holding events.

I suspect virtual readings are going to stick around. They can draw a worldwide audience — though the time of day may be less convenient in some locales — which is a lot better than the crowd a writer can get at the local bookstore. And the audience can listen while doing other things. (I like to listen to readings while cooking or eating dinner.)

I did several last year. FOGcon, our local convention here in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been doing a series of both readings and panels to make up for not holding a convention. Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus do Story Hour each Wednesday, with two authors each reading a short story. I enjoyed reading both places.

The only drawback to the virtual reading is that you can’t see your audience while you’re reading. When I’m reading in person, I’m always attuned to audience reaction. I miss that in the virtual events.

I’m also a big fan of group readings, both online and in-person. For an author, it’s great because it expands the audience beyond the people who’ve heard of you. And when you listen to such readings, you often find a writer you want to check out.

And if you don’t like someone’s work, well, they’re only reading for a short period of time! In this case, we’re reading for 8 minutes each.

The main difference between the rules for doing virtual readings and the rules for doing in-person ones is that you focus on where your camera is, not on a sea of faces, and that you have to make sure your tech is working. Otherwise, it’s basically the same: be on time, don’t run over your time slot, make sure you can be heard and understood, and listen politely while the others read. (For online readings, listening politely includes making enthusiastic comments in the chat since no one will see your reactions otherwise.)

I’m hoping to go to a convention or two this year and read in person there. I’m also hoping bookstores around here will start holding more events and that the several Bay Area reading series will start back up on a permanent basis. However, I’m also one of those people who thinks we need to be stay vigilant about the pandemic, so I’m not going to push too hard for a return to indoor un-distanced socializing.

The good news remains that we’ve learned to do some things very effectively online. Readings are one of them.

Hope to “see” some of you at this one.

 

Guest Blog: B.A. Williamson on Being a Bipolar Writer

personby Deborah J. Ross
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On Being a Bipolar Writer

By B.A. Williamson

It’s pretty hard to write this right now. Each sentence is taking a conscious effort. Why? Well, I’m depressed. Unsurprisingly, given the current circumstances. Cancelling all my book launch events and conference panels didn’t help.

There’s not always a reason. Occasionally this just happens. But I can say this depression is “just a phase” without any hint of condescension, because for me, it’s true. I’m bipolar.

Sometimes I just want to lay on the couch and escape. Hours of video games are good for this, though not exactly healthy. I suffer from the emptiness and lethargy that is familiar to millions of sufferers of depression.

What’s less familiar is the other side of the coin—my manic episodes. I have unlimited energy and focus, and can dive into projects for hours on end, and the words just flow. Everything I write is the best thing anyone has ever written. (Impaired judgment is another symptom.)

Manic energy can be a superpower, if harnessed correctly. I can hit any deadline, tackle any obstacle, and breeze through it with the confidence of a narcissistic tiger owner. But as I said, it’s a double-edged sword. The crushing writer’s despair is even worse, and can wipe out all the progress I’ve made.

Writing helps. Getting things out on the page helps. During a depressive episode, it takes a monumental effort to sit down and get moving. But even as I type this, it has become easier. I do feel better. I’m not agonizing over every punctuation mark, and hey, I’ve produced about 250 words so far! Halfway there.

Routines help, too. And outlines. The less you have to think, the lower the energy it takes to get started. I don’t have to think, just check the outline, do what it says, and follow the routine. They also keep me moving at those times when I’m balanced, and don’t have that supply of manic energy to rely on.

Whenever I want to give up before I’ve even started, I tell myself to write three sentences. That’s the rule—three sentences, then you can quit. Anyone can write three sentences. My seven-year-old can write three sentences. And to this day, I’ve never stopped at three sentences. I may only get a few paragraphs, but that’s still overshooting my goal by quite a bit.

So when my precious (fictional) girl Gwendolyn Gray started showing the same symptoms, I was hardly surprised. In fact, it fit my story very well, and I had a compelling and unique character arc. I work with middle schoolers, and they suffer from depression and anxiety at alarming rates. Anyone shocked? Think back to middle school. It’s a terrifying, stressful, horrific experience for many of us. Now we have the awareness and language to properly describe the toll it takes on our kids. But conversations about mental health are all-too-often relegated to the land of Young Adult, while our adolescents are talked down to or treated as if their problems couldn’t possibly be all that bad.

I felt it was really important to show a story where a character grows up, and kids could see a reflection of their own struggles. As Gwendolyn struggles with larger-than-life monsters, readers can see a reflection of their own struggles that can feel so much bigger than themselves. And as her external struggles are a metaphorical mirror for their own, her internal struggles create a much more literal parallel. Her internal reactions give them something to relate to, and see themselves taken seriously. Continue reading “Guest Blog: B.A. Williamson on Being a Bipolar Writer”…

The Lessons Wombats Teach Me

personby Gillian Polack
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This week is far too full of crises. Every time there’s a crisis, people raise money to help everyone deal. When the Australian bushfires dominated my life (aeons ago: 2109-2020 – the fires were out just after the pandemic hit Australia) books were a good fundraiser. I often contribute to such books, because they give more than I can give, personally. The anthology I was in that helped save wildlife during that particular crisis was called Oz is Burning. It contains some remarkable stories, and I’m very pleased I could contribute and be in such company.

There was one fundraising book that stood head and shoulders above all the others. Jackie French lives in rural Australia and she’s currently dealing with floods. Her part of rural Australia was very badly hit by the fires, and she handled it in a very Jackie-ish fashion. During the crisis she reported to the rest of us what was happening in her local town. She was cut off for what felt like months (I don’t know what it felt like to her, but I was worried about her for over a year) and she compiled observations and reports and made sure the rest of the world knew what was going on.

She reported on wildlife as part of this. Also, as someone who knows wombats particularly well.

One of the wombats she helped had a particular story. She talked about this wombat on social media and we all wanted a happy outcome… but we weren’t sure that the wombat would survive.

Later in 2020, she turned the wombat’s experience into a book for children. The Fire Wombat became an instant classic (though not as classic as her earlier book, The Diary of a Wombat ) and raised money to help wombats. It talks children through the crisis and how those rare animals who survived were helped. It gave children a path to understanding the impossible and, at the same time, raised money to help wombats.

I have my copy in front of me now and have re-read it. The floods in Australia right now are hurting the same regions as the fires did just over two years ago. Jackie’s work reminds me that wombats need help, too.

When we’re both allowed to travel again, and when it’s safe (fire and pandemic and now floods) I’m going to feed her dinner and ask her to sign her book. Her work has helped me remember how to get through crises and how to look outside my small environment and see what I can do. I may not be able to do much, but if Jackie can write this amazing book when she’s confined to a very small piece of land for over two years then that opens the door for me. I just need to consider what I’m capable of. Step One is to not let the fear developed by over 30 months of sequential crises decide my actions.

PS Jackie writes about so much more than wombats. She’s one of Australia’s best writers. I wrote this piece because wombats bring me comfort.

A Few Words About the US Constitution

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Allow Me to RetortElie Mystal, who writes about legal matters for The Nation, has written an excellent book about what’s wrong with the U.S. Constitution: Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution. I reviewed this book for Washington Lawyer — the District of Columbia Bar magazine — and I recommend that everyone who is concerned about the future of the United States and our democracy read it.

I know a lot of people worry that if we try to fix the Constitution we’ll lose the good stuff in it, but the last few years have made it very clear that the flaws in it — both the ones built in by those who didn’t want true democracy and the ones that have been introduced by some very bad court decisions — are too damaging to ignore.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Mr. Mystal.

 

Some Thoughts on Commas and Rules

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I have a confession. I don’t care about the Oxford comma.

It’s OK with me if you want to use it. It’s also OK with me if you want to follow what I think of as the newspaper rule (because it’s in the AP stylebook) and only use it if the sentence would otherwise be confusing.

For those who are not of the writing or editing professions and who do not follow the heated debates about this issue on Twitter, the Oxford comma is the comma that appears just before “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items. It’s also called the serial comma.

Under the newspaper rule, you generally don’t put a comma there.

Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma:

I like persimmons, strawberries, and grapefruit.

Here’s the same sentence without it:

I like persimmons, strawberries and grapefruit.

As far as I’m concerned, either version is fine. There’s no confusion either way.

Generally, the only sentences where you need to deliberately include or omit that comma are ones where the words divided by the “and” could be taken as describing the previous words.

So for example:

“I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick, and Jane” does not mean the same thing as “I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick and Jane.”

In the first sentence, “cousins,” “Dick,” and “Jane” are all separate categories. In the second, Dick and Jane are the names of my cousins.

If you mean the first, you need that final comma. If you mean the second, that final comma is wrong.

Actually, this rule isn’t really about commas. It’s about the fact that sometimes something that looks like a list isn’t. And if it’s not a list, then you need to use commas differently. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Commas and Rules”…

Going to The Theater

personby Madeleine Robins
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I’m going to New York in June, and just bought tickets to see Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man. I am ridiculously excited about it.

The first show I saw on Broadway was Oliver! with the original cast: Georgia Brown, Clive Revill, Jed Allen, David Jones (pre-Monkees). I don’t remember who actually played Oliver.  I was… maybe nine? I already knew the score (we had cast albums by the dozens in my house, and I was sponge-like in my tendency to scoop up songs and commit them to memory). I dressed up to go to the theatre (which is what one did in those far-off days) and went with–my grandmother, I think. Or my grandmother and my parents, and my brother. Aside from the bragging rights and the pleasure of the show, seeing Oliver! marked my change from a pure consumer of theatre to a theatre kid. And while the performances were wonderful (Clive Revill’s Fagin was juicy in his evil glee) what really got me was the stagecraft.

By which I mean: I’d seen theatrical productions before–mostly kids’ shows–but this was full-blown Broadway, and this show did things I did not believe you could do live. Continue reading “Going to The Theater”…

Comfort reading and food for the stressed soul

personby Gillian Polack
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There are so many sayings that apply to weeks like this. They involve hope, sacrifice and cute concepts like the way the tough are expected to handle life. The trouble is that life can be too big to handle. This doesn’t mean I escape all the time. I don’t and I can’t. It does mean that I have certain types of comfort reading to remind me of what life can be like on other days. Or maybe in other decades.

Different types of crises require different types of comfort reading. When my father died, I re-read every Swallows and Amazons book – I was only 7 years removed from my teens and I needed to remind myself of who I had been as a child. When I was unable to type or do housework for 18 months, I read Regency romances. I would walk back from the library carrying as many as I could, and reading as I walked, to distract myself from the pain. When the bushfires dominated my life and then the pandemic began, I put up a list of (sometimes supportive and sometimes quite edgy) comfort reads for people who needed them . I have so many types of comfort reading and they all match my needs at a given time.

Today, with the war and the pandemic and Too Much Stuff Altogether, I wanted to find one single book that exemplified the kind of writing I am looking for right now. I thought that if I did this, maybe you would also find those single perfect volumes and we could share our comfort reading. If I get a big enough list, I’ll put up a 2022 comfort reading page on Bookshop.com.

It wasn’t that hard to find two perfect books, both by the same writer. I live in one of the world cities that’s plagued by demonstrators. Those demonstrators tell us to be kind to them and then proceed to hurt our lives. I was just getting out of lockdown and their careless for the health of others means that I can’t do quite a few things. They’re ensuring that this city is not COVID-safe for people like me, no matter how much care everyone else takes.

This means I needed quiet suburban joy. Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City and Tales from Outer Suburbia are that. My mind lives in a strange universe and Tan sees it and paints it and writes about it and I feel comfort. So much comfort.

Separation Anxiety (Human, not Dog’s)

personby Laura Anne Gilman
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It’s been a stressful week (month), even by the standards of the 2020’s. And in four days, I’m going to do something I swore I never would.  I am going to hand my dog over to a trainer, and walk away.  For three weeks.

Three. Weeks.

They call it “board and train.”  We’ve been referring to it as “puppy boot camp.”

I’m stressing out about it, hard.

I know that I’ve taken Max a long way in 20 months.  She’s a sweet, loving, playful girl with excellent leash manners, she knows all her commands (even if she still has trouble with her recall), she’s a great car-ride companion, and is A+ at letting me know when she has to go out (and holding it, if I can’t get to her right that second).  And she hasn’t destroyed a single thing other than her own toys since she finished teething. She’s practically perfect, and the not-perfect….well, that’s just a matter of fine-tuning.

But she still reacts with fear-aggression under certain circumstances, and while I can handle it, that’s beyond my current paygrade to fix.

Part of me feels like I’ve failed, that I wasn’t “good enough” or attentive enough to be and do everything Max needs.  That somehow it’s my fault she has that particular quirk.

It’s not.  I’ve had trainers reassure me on that fact: dog brains are mysterious things, same as human brains, and sometimes they just… get wired a certain way.

Part of me believes if I’d put in a little more time, studied a little more, done more exercises, I could have done the rewiring myself.

And maybe I could have.  Probably I could have.  I know the basics, it would just require, well, a lot of time.  Constant, dedicated time. And I have a job (several, in fact) and a real need for sleep.

I’m reminding myself that just as writers need editors and copyeditors, sometimes puppies need a little extra help, too. Nobody’s good at everything, and we don’t have to be.

And Max isn’t going to love me any less for it.

So she will go to Puppy Boot Camp, spending three weeks with S., who will give her the 24-hour professional care and training needed to erase old habits and build new ones.  And when we are reunited, S. will teach me how to maintain and build on those.

It’s a good thing. It’s also a bloody expensive thing, but it’s a good thing.

And maybe, rather than boot camp, it will turn out to have been Officer Training School.

I’m going to miss her, a lot. But I also suspect the time will be well-spent, reconnecting with (spoiling) Castiel the Kitten of Thursday, and also writing a LOT in the time not spent exercising and training.  Which is good, because  I’m supposed to be writing the follow-up to SOMETHING PERFECT next month….

But until then, Max and I are keeping each other chill.

cream-and-red dog at oceanside during low tide