Update on the Research

Super excited because I spent my Friday night with a box of Kleenex (for the cold) sifting through four library databases (first searching WorldCat for the author's names that I have in Partners in Wonder as printing in Astounding and Amazing Stories pre-1940 and then searching through the two local libraries to make sure the books aren't just a few miles from them, then searching through the state database for the specific title because its general search function is abysmal and getting the books sent to me)and I did it! I found early women SF short story writers' work!

I probably shouldn't be, but I'm seriously impressed with my patience -- and my luck.

All this got going again because of the comment left on my last post asking if I'd found Leigh Brackett. I'd found scholars writing about her but none of her own writing. At least, not in this university library. Thus the four overlapping databases and, finally, success! So thanks for getting me rolling again.

Particularly, I'm excited for the Sci-Fi WOMANthology because someone out there thought to compile short fiction that was out of copyright into one anthology! Yay!

Project Gutenberg, btw, is practically useless on this line of inquiry.

I'll still likely have to make a pilgrimage to Bowling Green University's special library collection of pop culture goodness, but at least this way I can narrow my search down before I leave and therefore spend my time there more wisely.

An Ugly Friday

I've barreled into my research project -- American women writers in the tradition of early SF pulp magazines -- and I've discovered that while there were over 300 women writing SF between 1920 and 1960, producing roughly 1000 stories, almost none of them are anthologized. And those that are anthologized have gender ambiguous pen names such as C. L. Moore and Leslie F. Stone. Some of Judith Merril's work from the 50s makes it into anthologies but I'm looking for WWII and earlier and Merril was a Canadian. Bummer.

It's not until Merril starts working as an anthology editor in the 1960s that more women start appearing in anthologies. Because of this I'm going to have to voyage to places with collections of the original magazines. Several sources (rightly) argue that women and other minorities were not banned or blocked from SF before the Women's and Civil Rights Movements ... but my own research shows that they might not have been precluded from the money making side of the industry, but they were precluded from attempts at any sort of lasting recognition.

That's about all I have of what needs to be a 15-20 page essay. But I have a couple months so no worries on that yet.

I meant to spend today reading and researching, but I'm coming down with a cold, and -- since it's the first day of Spring Break here -- it's snowing. Not pretty, fluffy, fun snow, but bitter, nasty, cold, blowing snow. No way am I walking to the library feeling like this in weather like that. It's an ugly Friday.

As it pertains to recent discussions here, I thought I'd make mention of the article "What makes literary fiction 'literary'?" in the April issue of The Writer magazine. The writer's strategy is to ask editors to define the genre for her. She gets around to what about plot? and garners the following quote.

It starts off strong -- If literary fiction doesn't have a plot -- then she hedges -- or narrative movement -- then she really hedges -- (even just in the inner life of the character), it won't hold the attention of the reader, won't be effective.

So ... literary fiction must have a plot ... unless it has narrative movement ... and that movement doesn't have to be physical or known by any characters other than the narrator; it can be completely internal narrative movement.

No wonder people reading literary fiction -- and attempting to write it -- come to the conclusion that it doesn't need a plot. Narrative movement in the inner life of a character. Sheesh.

To it's credit, the article does later hit on the head the truth of the genre: it's more about the character's psychology than the situation.

In my opinion this is far more important than phrases like "character driven." Literary fiction can no longer claim that it is that which is character (not plot) driven, or that it is fiction which is not formulaic. Read what genre editors are looking to publish and you will always see the phrase "character driven stories." There is almost nothing that is getting published today that fits the definition of "formulaic."

Reading the early SF stories has shown me what formulaic is. For the 60s it was (1) introduce world/setting/character (2) introduce SF element that makes this world unique (3) demonstrate flaw of human nature which is exemplified by the SF element. Fin. Compared to reading short SF that's been published in the past couple of years it's easy to tell that there's nothing formulaic about today's SF literature; it is about as character driven as anything else.

Things I Love (story edition)

Recently I've done a lot of harping about things I don't love about fiction and particularly short fiction. So I wanted to point out a short story that I am absolutely in love with.

I recently got my hands on a copy of Interfictions 2 published by Small Beer Press. The stories in this anthology sort of defy genre categorization. The editors call them "interstitial fiction" although I really haven't quite grasped what they mean by that.

I hadn't gotten far into the collection when I read Will Ludwigsen's "Remembrance Is Something Like a House" and was swept away. I was actually tearing up -- possibly even crying -- by the end of this story and not because Ludwigsen kills puppies but because I found it moving. I cry at movies, I cry at novels -- occasionally I even cry at 30 second TV commercials -- but this was the first time that I have ever, ever cried at a short story. Bravo.

The story is about a house that "walks" from Ohio to Florida to confront the last family who lived within its walls. The story is narrated from the house's point of view, yet I'd like to make very clear that this is not a talking house.

Amazingly, when I went to look up Ludwigsen to see if there was a webpage to link to, I discovered that the entire story is available as a PDF. Joy!

Things I Love

Loved the comments from yesterday's post! Please, if you have further thoughts or experiences about workshops that deal with constructing novels (not just short fiction) I'd love to hear from you.

I did indeed find the nine step plotting via Emily J. Griffin's blog a heart on a wire. I am a fan of her reoccurring "open letter" posts. Good luck with all those applications!

I'd like to take Sam's comment to the next level and have all of us blame James Joyce. Despite stories like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and films like The Wickerman (the original) really disturbing me, I think what this situation needs is a scapegoat that we can all throw rocks at. Or stuff inside a giant wooden idol on a creepy island somewhere off of mainland England which we will then ritualistically torch while wearing animal masks and flowers in our hair. (I told you: creepy.)

And I am way freakin jealous that Margosita's MFA program offers workshop in the long form Every. Damn. Semester.

My program offers a novel workshop once every summer.

It's in Prague.

I got accepted into a program a few thousand miles away and I chose this program because it was a hundred miles from home. If I fly over an ocean I want to do things other than sit in a room and write.

Some of the things Margosita mentions about the novel workshop -- like having to write a synopsis of the novel and give it to your classmates to facilitate workshop -- sound like brilliant learning opportunities. I've read enough agent/editor blogs to know that it is the novel that makes the first sale, and the synopsis that makes every sale after that.

And I just now realized the reason that Margosita's been AWOL from her blog is because she put together a uber-spiffy dot com. So pretty. I love it.

Teaching/Learning to Write a Novel

I can't recall how I came across this blog post -- after a while I forget what linked to what -- but I recently came across C. J. Omololu's blog and, in particular, her blog post on the nine step plotting process she uses.

Among my fellow grad students it seems that almost everyone is trying to write a novel and, because we've been given the green light to do so, everyone is bringing pieces of these novels in to fiction workshop this semester. Here's where it gets interesting: I keep hearing the would-be-novelists saying different versions of I don't know how to write a novel or I'm trying to teach myself how to write a novel. I hear them fishing for answers or advice and I'm not hearing them get any.

Perhaps there is no advice to be had in my program because of our if you build a good sentence the rest will come philosophy that I described last week.

Perhaps the feeling is that how to write a novel is something that must be shown not described. Hopefully "shown" as in if you write it, we can fix it together and not just read the classics and trust in osmosis.

Perhaps (and god help us if this is what's going on) it's because no one believes it's important. This would be that ugly assumption that literary fiction has no plot/ should not bow to the hyper-importance of plot.

I've read too many short stories that are plotless or clockless and the end result is that they're just joyless. I've read contemporary novels that have done this as well and I'm still angry that I'll never get those hours of my life back. I hate ending a story and wondering if I could bring myself to care about anything that has just happened.

And so I turn to genre writers and YA writers and editors and literary agents to see what they have to say about constructing novels and even how to -- to use a four letter word -- plot.

I like this nine step plotting idea because it's loser than some of the other notions I've seen. Some plotting instructions are atrociously constricting (it's blatantly obvious that this is what has worked for the author in question and should it not work for you then you must be an idiot [ex: Holly Lisle]) and some are spin offs of Joseph Campbell's Hero Pattern. These nine boxes -- explained in C.J. Omololu's blog post -- loosely relate to one another, perfect for notions of foreshadowing and thinking both ahead and behind as you write, as well as nudge you in the direction of the traditional long tale.

Is this one tool the best? The be all end all of plotting? Gee, you have high expectations.

All I know is that I am madly collecting such information and trying to sort it all out in my mind as I work to write in the longer form.

I am far from the first to say so, but the weakness of the workshop based writing program is that it caters to the short story and almost completely lacks any apparatus for teaching the novel. I'm certain that someone will now post that their program has a novel-writing workshop that it offers. Please, if you've taken that workshop (that one single workshop among many that is probably offered once every other year if my guess is right) let me know how it works. How is it different from the "traditional" Iowa-style short story workshop?

Awesome Norwegian Pants

I'm a teensy bit addicted to the Olympics this month. It's served really well for getting literary history read: I mute the TV when they go to a medal count or a commercial, or when bobsledding is on (face it, the only part of bobsledding that seems to matter is the score at the end). I've even watched enough curling to know what the hell is going on.

The first day I watched curling I cursed the American-centric news cast. It's less obvious in other sports like figure skating because NBC shows all the Americans and the top foreign competitors. But curling it's only the Americans with airtime. This is annoying because when that crowd cheers, they're cheering for team Canada (and peaking my interest). And it's also annoying because sliding around in the background were men in these fabulous pants and no one would tell me who they were!

I knew that they had to be European because no other male could wander around in front of a huge crowd and a bevy of cameras looking so poised in brilliant Harlequin style duds -- but my attempts at searching them out were fruitless.

Finally, Sunday night, NBC showed the 10th end of the game between Norway and Sweden. It came down to the last stone of the game and Sweden upset the Norwegians by collecting the first steal that Norway allowed the entire Olympics.

But the first half of the tenth end was spent talking about the Norwegian Pants! And I don't blame them: these pants are awesome.

The pants have their own Facebook page (two of them actually) and I am a fan of both. And, should you want your own pair of awesomely Norwegian curling trousers you can buy them here. Supposedly, the pants were the choice of the team not any Olympic committee/costumer type.

I may have my organizations wrong but I believe that the North American curling association says that all competitors must wear boring, dull, black pants. But the Olympics has no specific rules on attire color. That, unfortunately, might change thanks to the Norwegians. That would be so sad. I think if you've got the guts to rock the pants, then you should rock the pants

New Material on the Website

Not too long ago Jud asked in the comments of a post if I was going to be putting up on my website any more audio files of readings. I had one recorded, but I was having trouble with my FTP system. This weekend I downloaded a new FTP client (it's the Cute FTP free trial -- anyone know of a free/shareware FTP client that's not buggy and lasts longer than a month?) and updated the site.

New: an audio file (.mp3) of yours truly reading "Just a Fantasy" an eight part short story about Dawn, a young woman who moves to Chicago with her boyfriend after college and then proceeds to encounter life, fantasy, regret, first graders and rock bands.

The recording quality is less than stellar but my equipment is also less than stellar. I read this piece on campus last fall but the recording was not done on site.

Ad of the Week

I've let Ad of the Week slip, but this was worth bringing it back for. I missed so many great ads by not watching the Superbowl. Le sigh.

Strange Bedfellows

I slept with a dictionary last night.

No, that's not sexual slang. I was reading in bed and after looking up a couple of words I just left the dictionary lying on the mattress. I practically fell asleep reading but I remembered to put the book on the nightstand. The dictionary, however, I forgot about.

The next morning there it was. It was a little disconcerting. And when the cats jumped on the bed to greet me in the morning they were like WTF? And had to stop to sniff it before coming up to be petted.

Must See TV

Why must all my favorite shows air on Thursday night? I admit TV addiction to very few shows. Project Runway, Grey's Anatomy and ABDC. They all air on Thursday nights! I can actually make it work courtesy of time slots and the fact that Project Runway gets run twice on Thursdays. But, now, we add on the winter Olympics.

I watched the regionals for America's Best Dance Crew and I'm really excited for the robot crew, and the jump rope crew. Then again I really want to see the American beat the Russian in men's figure skating. The Russian, Plushenko, has a persona that you can tell he loves. He's painted himself as the evil mastermind, and even when both he and the American, Lysacek, wear all black to skate their short program there was something so sinister about Plushenko and something so joyous about Lysacek that you just can't help but root for this kid.

I should be happy that this is the biggest drama in my life right now. I've worked hard to get rid of the rest of the drama and the silly-crazy-drama-making people, and I do not miss them.

The Promise of Poetry

Recently, I had lunch with a friend who is a poet in the same MFA program I'm in. She told me that for a while she had kept up a routine of reading a collection of poetry a day and therefore writing three or four poems a day.

I was interested to hear that she often writes poems "in response" to poems she has read and that reading a collection of poetry and not writing a handful of poems in response was beyond her imagining. I found the idea of a dialog of poetry -- even one where only one side can hear the response -- a fabulously romantic idea.

My literature class on American women writers tells me that this is in no way an isolated idea -- women (and men) publishing in periodicals in the 17th and 18th centuries frequently created a dialog in the periodical itself. Writer A would publish a several poems, and then writer B would respond with a poem that the periodical would also publish. Writer A would, usually, respond in kind. Then writer C would write a poem to A. A would respond as it was only polite, even if A's response was to tell C to tone down his adoration a few notches ... all of this in verse and printed in a subscriber based magazine/newspaper. Like very public fan-mail ... in metered sonnets.

My reading this past weekend, a how-to guide called Thanks, But This Isn't For Us by Jessica Page Morrell, gave Morrell's opinion that prose writers should be writing all the time and writing poetry all the time. She suggested The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. I subscribed (email and podcast).

Now I have the promise of poetry. In my in-box daily and hopefully I will learn to write in response.

And hopefully I will learn to think of "in response" as not parroting or theft -- notions that prose writers like to cling to and are therefore difficult to dislodge. In all the media mash up and slipstream of information that occurs today, I find it impossible to ever steal anything; even if I were to try, my mind makes it over into something new.

As of yet, I've written no new poems, "in response" or otherwise.

The Catch

I started a new novel -- a side side-project -- and it is totally the kind of novel I would read.

Therein lies the catch.

I don't really want to write this novel. But I would totally pay someone else eight bucks if they wrote it and let me read it. *grin*

So here's my question to everyone out there: what makes your novel worth writing? We often ask ourselves (or are told to ask ourselves) what about our novel makes it worth reading, but, jeez, what makes it worth you doing the writing?

Clarification: the answers I've gotten so far are not dealing with the question in the way I expected so I'll attempt to better explain what I was thinking when I asked the above.

I'm going to assume that whatever you're writing it is something that you would like to read -- god help you if it's not. But why should YOU be the one doing the writing?

If "I'd like to read a novel like this" is the only reason for writing a novel, then there are many of us who could save a lot of pain and suffering by just going out and buying said "novel like this." What makes it worth creating yourself? Kinda like... why make your own pasta from scratch when it's so much simpler (and most often better) to buy it from the store?

TIBAL: Can I Use Brand Names in My Writing?

The "Things I've Been Asked Lately" series of posts (TIBAL) is exactly what it sounds like. People ask me questions in real life, on the blog, or on the forums I follow and I endeavor to do my best to answer them.

Can I Use Brand Names in My Writing?

Yes.

No, Wal-Mart will not sue you. Coca-Cola will not sue you. Neither with 3M sue you for having a character who covers the walls of her entire apartment with Post-it notes. (Yes, the term "Post-it" is a registered trademark.)

Your characters can go Rollerblading instead of inline skating. They can Xerox files instead of copying them. They can even reach for a Kleenex instead of a tissue when their lovers are hit by cars the day they were supposed to run away with each other. (These are all trademarks that are likely to slip into common usage in the next few decades.) And they can drink all the Starbucks their caffeinated little bodies can hold. (Most likely not going to slip into common usage but the point is that it doesn't matter.)

There are no legal ramifications of adding these things into your writing. There are, however, craft ramifications: Consider whether using a product brand name will date your writing.

Maybe dating your writing is what you want -- you know you're not in the twenty-first century when your character reaches for an ice cold Nehi** -- and those sorts of details add authority to your voice and credibility to your setting.

But perhaps your writing loses out for including something that's trendy at the moment. I snicker when I read fiction that is supposed to be "contemporary" but the characters carry PDAs -- the term may have been hot when the novel was drafted, but no one still carries a PDA that isn't also a smart-phone ... and an mp3 player ... and a GPS device and ... you get the picture.

Is it worth having your characters carry cell phones? Yes. consider that the cell phone is now ubiquitous in American culture. You'd almost need to explain why your character doesn't carry a phone if you set the story in the present day.

What it comes down to is two things. One: do you want to "date" your writing to a certain time period, or do you want it to attempt at being "timeless" and ubiquitous? If you have no doubts that it is of a certain time period/year, go for those specifics that have change or will change. If you want to create a false sense of it-could-be-set-anytime-recently then go easy on the brand specifics.

Two: don't over do it. Examples: Curious, Rachel decided to turn on her iBook open Firefox and Google it. Blah. Brand name overload. It wreaks the same as someone who always has to name drop. (Do you like my purse? It's Kate Spade.) Choose not to over do the brand name dropping: Curious, Rachel decided to do some online research.

** Ten points to the first person to correctly identify TV's favorite lover of orange Nehi and the show that featured said character.

HAZARDOUS WEATHER...

From the national weather report:

* AN ADDITIONAL 3 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW IS EXPECTED OVERNIGHT WHICH WILL BRING STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL INTO THE 6 TO 10 INCH RANGE. ISOLATED LOCATIONS COULD SEE UP TO A FOOT OF SNOW.

Read: Isolated locations will soon find themselves isolated from the rest of the world.

Another Summer Writing Workshop I've been made aware of ...

CALLALOO CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS

Phillis Wheatley

Poetry and Fiction Writing

Director & Editor of Callaloo

Charles Henry Rowell

Workshop Faculty

Vievee Francis, poetry Gregory Pardlo, poetry

Thomas Glave, fiction Nelly Rosario, fiction

May 16-28, 2010

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

THE CALLALOO CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS, a two-week long project of the literary journal Callaloo, are designed to assist new and developing writers by providing intensive and individual instruction in the craft of poetry and fiction writing. Participants and faculty will work together for the duration of two weeks, as well as meet in groups each day and in individual conferences as needed.

The two poetry workshops each will admit eight to ten applicants, and each of the two fiction workshops will admit no more than six participants. During the first week, the faculty will give readings that are open to the general public. To celebrate the collective achievement in the workshops, the participants will select from among themselves two fiction writers and four poets to read for a small audience comprised of workshop participants and invited guests.

The workshops, along with required books, supplies, and lodging, are free to all participants, but all participants are responsible for their individual expenses for travel and board. Participants traveling from outside North America should plan to arrive one or two days before Sunday, May 16, when the workshops begin, and to depart not later than Sunday, May 30, 2010.

web: http://callaloo.tamu.edu

Rain Check on the Snow

Somehow ... I've avoided this snow storm.

A whopper hit the mid-Atlantic. Shut down all of D.C. and even caused Post Secret to be delayed by a day because Baltimore had no power on Sunday! But that didn't stop Frank Warren from posting a few shots of the snow from his cell phone -- now that's a good use of technology.

Now there appears to be another snow storm, this one hitting Michigan ...

For a few hours on Monday I got really excited. It seemed that the east side of the state would be hit harder than the west side. I didn't quite understand how this worked, but hey they had the storm watch and we didn't. The region that was going to get hit hard was defined by the highway fifty miles north of me.

By Monday night all that excitement was for nothing. The predictions had shifted and now my city did not have a watch we had a warning, and the highway corridor that was to be hit the hardest was not fifty miles north of me but less than five miles south. Bummer.

We will (supposedly) get 6 TO 12 INCHES OF SNOW IS EXPECTED FROM TUESDAY MORNING THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING.

Tuesday is my gotta-be-somewhere day so this will be ... difficult.

Prague Summer Program

The MFA at Western Michigan University is associated with the Prague Summer Program (PSP), and by associated I mean the thing is run out of an office in the English department by one of the writing faculty. MFA candidates are often TAs in the program but the enrollment is open to anyone who wishes to apply.

It's a month long intensive writing workshop in -- yes -- Prague. The faculty rotates each year but each year the big names and heavy hitters show up to teach writing to neophytes as well as the more advanced students of writing and English Studies generally. There are also classes in literature, the Czech language, and photography.

The writers I've talked to rarely do workshop and photography, because both are time consuming -- or perhaps just because their interests lie elsewhere. But I think that if I went that would be what I would want to do. I've never applied to go (money's been tight) but perhaps I will in 2011.

Everyone who comes back raves about the experience. One of my friends in the program is going back for a second summer even though she'll technically be done with her degree by the time she arrives in the Czech Republic.

TIBAL: (No) Simultaneous Submissions

The "Things I've Been Asked Lately" series of posts (TIBAL) is exactly what it sounds like. People ask me questions in real life, on the blog, or on the forums I follow and I endeavor to do my best to answer them. This is, of course, all IMHO.

What should I do when I find a market that says "no simultaneous submissions"?

I'm later getting around to this post than I thought I'd be but I did not forget about it! Last month I got into a discussion with a writer who was frustrated because her story had been tied up in a "no simultaneous submissions" market for the past four months. I'd be frustrated if I were her, too.

First off, the phrase "no simultaneous submissions" is one used by literary magazines and it means that if you submit your story to them then they don't want you to submit the story to any other magazine while they're deciding whether to accept or reject it.

Having your would-be partner demand an exclusive relationship right out of the gate is a bit daunting. Especially when you're trying to make your first sale. The good news is that very few markets make such strenuous demands.

Is it really a strenuous demand? Yes. I read in a Poets&Writers profile of an up and coming writer whose first story was rejected from forty markets before it was finally published. Last spring I had a member of faculty tell me that a story of mine was ready to send out and I "wasn't to change a thing until it's been rejected fifty times." A overheard a fellow student in my program congratulating another on his recent publication -- it was reject sixty-two times before the acceptance came and then twice more even though he'd withdrawn it from those markets. When you consider that stories are being rejected between 40 and 70 times before they find homes and should you only submit a story to one market at a time and each market takes 3-4 months to respond ... you're looking at your story getting published ten years after you begin the submission process (and that's the optimistic numbers).

For the most part, the only markets demanding you get exclusive are well respected, highly funded, highly ranked journals with long histories and name recognition in their favor. They're the kind of journals that get so many submissions in a year that they're only open for a few months anyway. My theory is that they ask for no simultaneous submissions to thin the herd. Their rate of rejection is already high, but if they can convince writers to not send them everything they've ever written then they're saving everyone a lot of heart ache and frustration.

Now, the big question: do you ignore the "no simultaneous submissions" request?

Ploughshares is one of those good reputation journals who says "no sim subs" and if you state in your cover letter that the story has been submitted elsewhere your story will be returned to you unread. And yet I've heard from those associated with the journal (when speaking as writers giving advice to other writers) to ignore the "no sim subs" request.

I've heard of people getting snarky letters when they withdraw work that was simultaneously submitted on the down low. And while I suppose that could damage your relationship with a magazine I have doubts that they're keeping blacklists.

So my answer is that there's no easy answer. It's all up to you same as it was before. Do you have a relationship with a magazine that you don't want to jeopardize? Do you really want to be published by one specific journal and are willing to wait? Are you absolutely unwilling to wait? Odds are that the "no sim sub" market will reject you anyway. Odds are that every submission you send out will come back as a rejection.

The advice that's been given to me by people better versed in the industry than I am has been to ignore the request. And my personal take on it is that any market that is going to hold your story for over a hundred days doesn't deserve the ability to command an exclusive relationship.

In Print

Yesterday I received my two contributor's copies of the North American Review issue that features my tiny little poem "Fireworks." I am a published poet now!



But little did I know that I'd been a published poet for the past nine months. The poem appeared in the May-Aug 2009 issue. Oh. Didn't know that.

But it's a very pretty cover isn't it?

My In-box Is Full

I have set up the two halves of a shirt-box that previously contained a Christmas gift on the floor by my desk. Ash has decided that if these are materials that need attention she should be at the top of the heap.

My in-box is, literally, full of cat.

I did catch Rosie sitting in the other box half (the orange one) but the moment she realized that I had seen her she jumped away, so I don't have a picture of that. Should I be amused that they have deligated who gets which box to sit in?