Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

You can see the results and read the poems here.  They were fantastic sonnets that won and deserved the nod I thought.  It was a cool contest and I’m glad it got me to write something I may not otherwise have written. So, now to take those poems and see if I can’t submit them somewhere else. SFPA suggests entrants submit some of their poems to these markets.  If you have anything you’ve written, you might want to check them out.

In other news, I’m going to have a busy week this week so I may not have many blogs. Going to Disneyland today. If I have anything fun to share, I’ll let you know!

Received a another “No Thank You” in the mail today, for a story, not a poem. I was crossing my fingers, but oh well. Still haven’t heard about all the other things out there. Still crossing my fingers. Sent the story out again. We’ll see how long it is before it gets kicked back.

Got a packet in the mail from someone else and was really excited until I realized it was an information packet and not an acceptance packet. Ah, well, again.

My sister comes in tomorrow and I have clean my house. Put on a pot of coffee and need to find a good tv program to have on whilst doint it all. So, writing and revising and reviewing is probably not going to happen for the next week.  SO – in case I don’t have a chance to post it -

Get yourselves to the West Hollywood Book Fair!  I’ll be there with bells on at the California Writer’s Club helping to give out info and woman the booth and would love to see you!  It’s September 30, 10AM – 6PM at West Hollywood Park.

A few weeks ago? Months ago? Time goes so quickly! I reviewed a copy of Electric Velocipede here. And in that particular edition was a story by Brendan Connell. Though I didn’t get into some of the poetic bits of the story he wrote (they were nice, I just didn’t understand how they added to the story and for me, they took away from it), on the whole, I enjoyed the Herr Doktir. Well, time passed and one day I received an email from Brendan Connell thanking me for my review and asking if I’d read and review a book of his called The Translation of Father Torturo. So, I said Cool! Yes! and a little while later the book shows up and I say Cool! again and then put it down and promptly forget about it because life got busy.

So, time passes some more and then I realize, Shit! I have a book I said I was going read and review and I still haven’t cracked it open! So, I finally stick it in my book bag and begin to read it. And I’m captured by the second sentence, which is beautifully written and an entire paragraph long, so I won’t quote it here. After I finished reading the story, it took me a while to get to the review because I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach it. I’m still not sure. I can tell you that I did like it. That is for sure. And it’s a thinker’s story. That is for sure as well. This is not a typical action adventure. In this tale, the discussion is of right and wrong, authentic and fake, and whether the ends justifies the means, and especially about belief. Most specifically about belief. What do you believe? And how strongly do you believe it?

Father Torturo is the story of a bright, ambitious, sensitive man who makes his way in the ecclesiastic world in his own individualistic manner. He is charming, goodlooking, virile, and a bit of an alchemist so you really want to like him. He also really does want to do some good and on a certain level really does believe what he says he believes, but also has instances of stark nonbelief and crass ambition. He’s not always a very nice man. So, you’re not sure how to take him. But he does try to do what’s best and keep things equitable for all concerned.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because part of the charm of this book is reading what Father Torturo does next. I can say that it’s very heroic in scope. Father Torturo does travel in both the best and worst circles of his time, which is in the not so distant future, and it’s a very good story I thought.

This tale is NOT hard scifi or fantasy. It IS a bit gothic. Not sure if there is a term for it, but it’s like a speculative gothic horror tale, but it’s not really horror either. I would call it slipstream, because it doesn’t fall into any reader’s “category” easily but seems to have elements of several.

Basically, the story begins when a religious artifact, a tongue belonging to a saint, is stolen and then mysteriously reappeares again just when Father Torturo reappears on the scene as well. Then we are taken on a ride we will not soon forget.

Like I said, gothic, speculative, and a little out there, anyone reading this story will have an interesting time reading this book. Connell is very sensual in his detail. And is, in fact, very detailed in his storyline. I think in many ways, this story can be considered an education in all things ecclesiastic. One of the early questions I found myself pondering was what priests do with all the negative energy poured into their ears during years and years of confession. Think about it.

There were a few hiccups I noticed. One thing is that I think it could have used one more proof. There were some places where words were missing or just not used quite right or something. Something was off. I believe this is typical of small press and this book was put out by Prime Books. Small press publishers don’t have the battery of copyeditors and proofreaders that larger publishers do, so the writer needs to depend on themselves or their friends to make sure everything has been gone over before their book goes to press. That being said, none of the hiccups I found subtracted from the story. They were few and far between.

Another hiccup, though I think this is just part of the style of the tale, is that it is written in limited third person. On the one hand, this adds to the dark fairy tale like quality of Father Torturo. On the other hand, it creates space between the reader and the story so that sometimes it felt like there was too much distance between me and the tale. There was not enough immediacy. Yet, there were some bits that were difficult to read because they were very immediate and the detail and sensuality helped me feel, at those times, the very realness of what was going on in the tale.

One of the other things I wondered about was the name of the character. Xavier Torturo. Torturo does sound a bit close to tortured, so I wondered if there was supposed to be a reference to a tortured soul, though he is anything but most of the time. Looking up Xavier, it means New House. And in some ways, Father Torturo does go about trying to reconstruct the Catholic Church from the inside, into a new house of religion. And there could also be some alchemic meaning in having a name that means New House, but that is best left for the story.
But like I said at the beginning, this is a thinker’s story. Connell gives the reader something for their brain and soul to brood upon and spells nothing out, just laying it out for the reader to make his or her own decision about it. This isn’t candy. It’s food. And pretty thick. Father Torturo lives on espresso and Parisiennes cigarettes, so I imagine it at least has a mix of those in there.

1) Haven’t heard from the SFPA regarding winners of their contest, though their website has changed and it’s past the beginning of September. On the one hand I keep thinking that no news is good news. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking if they’ve changed their website, they’ve informed the winners and the rest of us will find out when it’s announced on the website.

2) Haven’t heard from a particular zine that is usual very punctual in its rejection slips. Normally I get one exactly 8 weeks after I have sent the story in. It’s been 10 weeks. I’m holding my breath. We’ll see. Again, no news is good news.

3) Another market I submitted to I haven’t heard from in so long, I resubmitted the story. To be fair, they don’t post any wait times on their website and the first time I submitted I got no confirmation email, this time I did. So, again, no news is good news.

4) For most everyone else, I am still waiting to hear, but the wait times are all within the stated parameters on their websites. So…. yes …. No news is good news.

5) Have been working on the Christmas story all week. Haven’t really had time to edit it down at work, so I’ve been trying to edit it at home little by little. Send it to myself at work to work on sporadically and then send that copy to myself at home. I have it down to 12,487 words. And as I’ve pointed out, I need it down to 8000 words or less. Oh well. Slow and steady wins the race.

6) On that note, apparently forgot to email myself a copy of that Christmas story from work to home this afternoon, so decided to edit the post apocolyptic story – Needs – as that was on the list of things to do anyway. Got it edited down to 8728 words. And I rearranged it. I think it reads better than before. I hope so. The idea was to build tension. That’s still longer than most places accept, though. There’s a place where I can submit it (I’ve already tried two that accept longer stories and been told “no thank you”), but I can’t decide whether to submit it as a contest entry or a regular submission. So, I’m going to sit on that and see what I decide.

Okay, been listening to Medieval Christmas all evening (remember, I was supposed to be editing the Christmas story). I’m tired and it’s past time for bed.

That’s my news.

I smelled Autumn today.

Saw her fair blue skies,

felt the kiss of her breeze on my cheek.

Read the Shadows on the wall.

And for the first time in months

wore shoes and socks.

Rachel V. Olivier

I don’t feel like going to work so I’m procrastinating getting ready.

Anyway, last night got a little less than halfway through the Christmas Story and have gotten it down to 12690 words so far. That feels good. Loading up my bookbag with reading material and saving the transcribing for when I’m at home, rather than trying to do it at work. But the editing, I’m still going to try to do at work.

And now, I’m going to actually make a move to go to work.

I’m toying with the idea of using Lulu to put out a book of my poems sometime next year, since I think that’s one of the only ways I’ll ever get my poetry published at all. For about $100 or so I could get a regular ISBN and distribution on places like Amazon.  What about you out there in Cyber Ether Land? Would you ever consider using a POD (Print on Demand) publisher? If so, in what case? If not, why not?

Well, finished werewolf story this evening whilst waiting for the bus. IT is much shorter. To give you an idea, in my Mead notebook, the Christmas story came to 54 pages (44 typed). My werewolf story came to 19 or 20 pages. Not very happy, but it felt good writing it.

Now, I am going to concentrate on all these revisions that need doing PLUS I have a plethora of reading to catch up on. ALMOST finished a book that was sent to me for review. Then there’s a zine (or three or four) I need to read. And also stuff my CPs have sent me that I have been horribly lax in reading.

And my email seems to be working again, so that’s good. And now if I don’t respond, you know it really is me not responding cuz I’m either busy or lazy. ;-P

They said it might rain tonight, but it’s not yet, darn it. Wish it would. It was chilly and I had hot cocoa as a treat.

This is kind of a stunted progress report as I’m having problems with my email and it’s suddenly busy at work just when I needed the time at work to edit some of my stories.  And I have an actual deadline for this story (September 30), plus time constraints for the stuff at work (everyone there wants it right now), plus I want to get all this done before out of town guests arrive (next week), so my indigestion is acting up and I have no time. But here goes.

Finally finished the Christmas paranormal romance story I’ve been working on but it came in at close to 13500 words, which is WAY over the word count it needs to be (the call for submissions wants stories 2000-8000 words) so I need to edit 6000 words out (or at least 5500), or about half, or if you count pages, about 20 pages, before I send it out to my critique partners.  I was going to try to edit it work, but NOW it’s decided to get busy and not steady busy, but that crazy busy as in everyone who calls has an emergency.  So, I’m trying to edit it from home, but but then I can only work on it about an hour or so at a time and believe me, it takes more than an hour or two to cut a story in half.  So, we are in the final stages of that story.

In the mean time, Karen sent me a call for submissions/contest for another zine that also has a deadline. At first I wasn’t going to work on it. I couldn’t think of anything and I have other stories I put on hold for the Christmas story, but now I have an idea and I’m putting it in the journal. The contest rules dictate a length of 1000-2500 words and as of this morning when I got off the bus at work, I was on the final scene. It is a bit shorter so it may not be as stressful to make the October 31 deadline.  The theme for this contest was the werewolf. I’ve never written a werewolf story before, so I wasn’t sure how to approach it freshly. The only ideas I had were old Red Riding Hood ideas I’d read somewhere else and as much as I enjoyed them, I didn’t want to reuse them.  Then got a character voice in my head telling me her story (her name is Karen, by the way, in honor of Karen who showed me the contest) and realized halfway through the story that while it was still a werewolf story, it was also yet another take on Red Riding Hood, which I don’t personally mind, but if this zine doesn’t like this story, it might be hard to find a home for it, we’ll see. A lot of editors tend to yawn as soon as they see a rewrite of a fairy tale or anything about werewolves or vampires.

Curse story is on hold at the present time. Santa story has been revised again (thank you to everyone who read and offered feed back on it. It really helped), and sent out again. Needs is on hold. I began to revise it, but I need to work on these other two for now.  And thank you to everyone who gave feedback on that as well. I have some good ideas now that I think will help increase the tension and make it stand out more.

And like I said, my email is acting up. I was able to get onto my blog, but I can’t check my email. So, if you send me something and I don’t respond soon, it’s not me, it’s Yahoo.

I’ve been thinking about my writing process lately. I wonder sometimes if I’m going about it at all in the right way. I don’t know if it is or isn’t, it’s just what *I* do for now, until, of course, I change. Karen asked if I would share a little bit of how I do things and at about the same time another friend of mine asked me to share with her how I come up with my characters and work with them. So, since I’m feeling restless tonight, I thought I’d blog a little bit about all that. Again – not sure if what I do is any good or if it works really. I mean for all the stories I’ve written, only three (and a handful of poems) have been published and those by small publishers. But here goes.

First, the theory. This was the email I sent to my friend last weekend:

My characters:

I usually begin with a line I remember from a dream, a
picture in my head of my character and something
they're doing, or just a nebulous idea.  I begin
writing from that, with their voice (if it's first
person) or POV (if it feels third person) in my head.
It's as if I am interviewing someone until they can
tell me their entire story.

It's almost as if I'm sketching. I sketch a line on a
page, not sure what belongs with that line, I just see
the line there, then after I've put that line down, I
might sketch another line curving into it, because my
eye seems to want to see that line there. And so on,
until I have a better idea of who the character is.

Once I have a more complete picture of who the
character is, I kind of know what kind of world they
live in and I just sort of follow them around as they
show me that world. When they've shown me that world,
then they begin telling me their story, and I can see
the story taking place from their eyes. I might do
things to encourage them like play certain music, seek
out similar people and ask them questions, or do a
little research.

What comes out is usually a very ugly and overly long
first draft, but by then I know the story and the
character well enough to understand what is and is not
needed and editing and rewriting begins.  This is a
longer process, probably, than other writers who have
a plot they write from, but I enjoy getting to know
the character first and having them tell me the story.
That's why I like writing. I enjoy story telling.
 

I can’t claim the interview idea as my own. My cousin, Simon, who’s also a writer, was the one who expressed that and I realized he was right, and that’s how it is with me, too. You just keep taking notes from the character until they’ve told you everything. You’re interviewing them, really. And like I said, sometimes I meet that character in a dream, and sometimes I just get a voice in my head that wants an expression. Sometimes it’s from a prompt someone has given me (as with the 500 word contests) or a call for submissions/contest I get a notice for. I take a look at what they’re asking for and at first I think “ah, I can’t think of anything” and then I’ll be turning a page in a book or walking down the street and the idea is right there.

A fascinating perspective, I think, on the writing process can be seen here, where Michael Dare explains how Tom Robbins does it. Personally, I don’t know that I could do that. There’s a single-mindedness – maybe even a kind of autism (?) about the way Robbins approaches his work. But I do get just putting a sentence down just because it’s in your head and has to be put on a page where you can see it and play with it until it says exactly what you want it to say.

So, what comes first? The Word? Or the Idea? In the Bible, in the Gospels, John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” using the equivalent in the Greek. Logos=God. Could the idea of God have existed before there was speech and communication? In the Old Testament, Isaiah’s lips and tongue were purified by a burning ember or lump of coal before he could speak the Word of the Lord. I’m using these examples because they are ones I am familiar with. But they are not the only traditions that talk about the importance of the Word to the Idea. In Native American tradition, Spider, the weaver, is the one who began the alphabet. Odin hung upside down for 9 days I believe and only then was given the runes to communicate by.

These days we know about the studies that have been done in linguistics, about how the languages we speak and think in influence the ideas in our heads. Certain languages cannot contain certain ideas, or have many words for one idea. Greek has at least three words for Love, and English only one. Inuit peoples have several words for ice and snow, and English only has ice or snow. Though if you live in northerly climes you might find that there are also a plethora of English words for rain or the wet, cold stuff that falls out of the sky at regular intervals.

I guess what I’m saying is that when I come up with my ideas for characters (and then discover the stories from there) I might begin with a picture, idea or just words, but then as I think about it, the words influence the picture, or the picture changes the words and how I use them.

For example, a few weeks ago I noticed what I assumed to be a mother and daughter of Asian or Southeast Asian descent waiting for the same bus I was. It was hot. The mother was in slacks, with a shoulder bag and carrying an umbrella to protect herself, but mostly her daughter, from the bright California sun. The mother was being especially solicitous of the daughter, who while not dressed up, was well put together, with a clean coif of dark hair pulled back, designer jeans, strappy sandals, jackie-o sunglasses and a nice handbag. In my head they were going to see the marriage broker.

But change the words slightly and a new picture emerges. The mother is overprotective of her only child, afraid because she’s always afraid now. She grew up afraid because she grew up around war and strife and has only been in this country for the last 18 years but it’s still not long enough to wipe away the memory of always being on the run from someone with a gun. So she always worries and always carries everything she needs in her capacious shoulder bag. The daughter, having grown up here, is sullen and can’t understand why her mother can’t just leave her alone and let her go to the mall by herself to shop with her friends. So they sit and wait for the bus in silence.

The picture is similar. If you had a camera, it would be very factual. But the words totally change the character of the picture. And I guess what I do is I wait for the characters in my head to emerge and tell me what that picture means.

Conversely, I have wakened from a dead sleep with a fully formed sentence in my head, or been walking down the street when a sentence or phrase pops into my head, that I have to write down. Sometimes I end up using that sentence and sometimes I don’t. But if I don’t write it down, I lose the chance of using it all.

One thing I DO know as that the more I am open to the stories, the more I am actively working on stories, the more they come to me. It is a truism, but to those who have much, much is given. Either use it or lose it. Those times in my life when I was “too busy” to write, the ideas would dry up and I’d wonder why I thought I could ever write. But the times in my life when I was willing to stop and put the ideas down are when the ideas kept coming and then suddenly I am the dam that is hold back the flood of ideas in the back of my consciousness and trying to let them out in a controlled manner so they can each have their day in the sun.

Now the practice and what I do practically speaking.

This is what works for me, for now, when it comes to the practical parts of writing. I have several Mead notebooks. I find I connect better with a character or a story at the beginning if I have the physical contact of pen to paper, scraping the ink across the page. For some reason I need that connection when it comes to the first draft. I don’t finish the first drafts begun on the computer, because I don’t know the character as well. I’m not in tight with them. So, what I do is start with my pen to the page, sometimes in the middle of the notebook, sometimes at then end and working backwards and upside down and sometimes from the beginning right side up. I prefer the use of purple pens, but enjoy blue as well. Green, if it’s dark enough so I can read it later. I prefer to NOT use black pens, but will if they feel good in my hand.

One of the things I enjoy the most is the clean white page with pulp fibers strong and straight from the mill. Then, as the pen scratches the ink across the page, it bends and molds and in some cases breaks the fiber to its inky will, creating lumps and bumps, even when using very fine pens. Then, you turn the page over and write on the OTHER side, creating more lumps and bumps and when you turn those written pages in your hand they crinkle and crack and rattle like old parchment. As bummed as I am about the spilled coffee on the notebook, I love the way it makes the paper crinkle and feel when I turn the pages.

When I am “done” with the story in the notebook (have a fairly complete story down that usually is very ugly, full of cross outs and lines redirecting bits and stuff and full of faults and will have massive changes by the time I reach the final draft), I transcribe it into the computer. The transciption becomes the second draft because I invariably change and edit what’s in the note book while I put it in the computer.

After that transcription I let it sit for a few days before going back to work on it again. This is usually the heavy duty read through and by the time I am done with that I feel like I can really say I am done. Though I’m not really. At that point is when I feel like it’s a masterpiece and I want to send it out. But that’s usually when I hold off from temptation long enough to send it out to my critique partners who come back with feed back. In the meantime, while I’ve waited to hear back from my CPs, I’ve begun another story, or begun revision on something else I have in the works. By the time the CPs come back with feedback and critique, I have gained distance from my story and take another look at my copy and go through it and find all sorts of mistakes that I didn’t see before, that even my CPs didn’t catch. So, it’s usually after this fourth draft that I actually send out my story. And then it gets rejected. And then I revise it again. And then I send it out again. And it gets rejected again. And I read through it and see more stuff that needs improvement and revise it again. And then send it out again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Ad Finitum.

And if it feels like it’s not going anywhere after all that, I let it sit for a while or send it to a friend of mine who hasn’t seen it to read to maybe get another angle on it.

And that’s how I do it. Not sure if it’s the right way to do it, but it’s the way I do it.

Fortunately, for whatever reason, none of this seems to be hitting me as acutely as it could.

1) Poems rejected – i.e. “no thank you” from a zine.

2) Lost my journal on the bus somewhere between home and work and it was only about half used and had stuff in there from 1994 and was soft like cloth and I’ll miss it. *sigh* But if I think of it too long it will really hurt so onto the next.

3) Dumped coffee all over my Mead notebook with the current story in it. I can still sorta read it, but I’m waiting for it to dry out before I try anything. *ugh* My first draft is usually the handwritten one. Then I copy that into the computer and that’s the second draft. I’ve got about 2/3 of the story into the computer, so at least that’s good.

But like I said, I’m not really feeling it right now. Just holding it all out there at bay.