Changing of the Guard

Last month, I announced that I was stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press, the speculative fiction small press I founded in 2012, to be succeeded by Sarena Ulibarri.

I am thrilled with what I've accomplished as Editor-in-Chief and by how far we've come in just under four years. My time as co-founder of the press has been fantastic, primarily because I've had the chance to work with such great authors crafting intensely interesting novels. I think that every reader of speculative fiction should pick up a World Weaver Press title, not because I published them, but because they are such damn engaging stories crafted by truly artful storytellers, each working in her own idiom.

I'm happy to be handing off the creative direction -- both for continuing the series we've started and to seek out new ones -- to someone who shares our vision and passion for speculative fiction and who can continue to drive World Weaver Press forward.

In her welcome post last week, Sarena Ulibarri writes:

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Ever since I became aware of World Weaver Press in 2013, I’ve known it was a special corner of the publishing world, brimming with talent. The gorgeous covers and professional presentation of these books made it clear the publisher truly cared about them, and the colorful, creative, and passionate stories between those gorgeous covers always exceeded my expectations. Each World Weaver Press book is a gem, and I am grateful Eileen Wiedbrauk was able to shine each of them up and put them on display.

I joined the World Weaver Press team as an Assistant Editor in late 2014, shortly after I had finished my MFA program and attended the 6-week Clarion Writers’ Workshop. For a few months after Clarion, I felt like I was in a constant freefall. World Weaver Press gave me a place to land — a place where all my skills and passions mattered. I’m a writer too, of course, but editing, whether at the developmental level or the copy editing stage, is deeply satisfying work for me. I have learned so much about great storytelling from Eileen and from the other World Weaver Press editors and anthologists.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with the World Weaver Press/Red Moon Romance authors and editors at a deeper level while we prepared for this transition, and let me tell you: these are amazing people. The stories we've published and will soon publish are stories that take you far from the mundane and weave bright and interesting new worlds. Our editors are fiercely in love with the projects they’ve chosen to work on, and that love comes through in every step of the publication process. ​

In a twist that may only appeal to me, I have to mention the absolutely adorable new graphic she's chosen for her "From the Editor's Desk" posts. It still features a cup of coffee, but it now has a tiny potted cactus -- appropriate as the press's management is now moving from the Midwest to Southwest. The original "From the Editor's Desk" graphic (above) was a shot of my actual desk at the creation of WWP. A lovely IKEA feature that has since been retired after extensive, shape-changing use. The pictured moleskine notebooks, Lamy pen, and coffee mug are still very much a part of my life, however.

But isn't that the crux of life? That we are more like shape-changing IKEA desks than quality fountain pens? That the course of use changes our shape, and shape changes our intent, and eventually, our use.

It was a fascinating journey, my time as Editor-in-Chief. Some of that time was indeed spent editing, but as any editor or small business owner knows, your primary job is project management regardless of the title you hold. I'm grateful for the experience. I'm met some great people. Grown through tackling the challenges. And I'm ready to face the next chapter of my life with great vigor and determination.

One thing I'm doing in the immediate present (as opposed to the near-future present, which is totally a thing -- I swear), is freelance book design. I am available on a for-hire basis to individuals and small presses to design cover art, format ebooks, and design interior paperback layouts. Information here.

Remember how I said an editor's job is a "project manager"? Well, at a small press that's only a few year's old, it's also book formatter and cover designer. I am responsible for crafting all of the books for WWP from early 2012 to the end of 2015. The move to doing this on a for-hire basis is a natural one for me. I'll even be continuing to do the occasional cover project or other project for WWP.

Later this spring (is it spring yet? I'm ready to be done with snow) I will be rolling out pre-designed book covers for purchase. I'll post another announcement when that happens. I'm really looking forward to the gallery of all the pretty covers!

Should You Kill Off Your Characters? (And When)

Not long ago, I was ask to participate as a panelist in the day-long event "Get Published! 2016" at the Herrick District Library in Holland, Michigan. The event was put on by MiFiWriters and was the first such event they've hosted. I spoke as editor of a small press alongside the editors of MiFiWriters and Caffeinated Press -- all Michigan-based small presses. I'm hopeful it was of use to those attending -- I know I was tickled to talk to a near-full room -- and I'm certain it will only become a better and stronger event if MiFiWriters choose to run another one in 2017.

The programming mainly focused on the mechanics of publication, so that's what I'd prepped for. But there were a couple of questions that arose from the interests of the audience that I hadn't prepped for and, consequently, really got me thinking.

One such was about killing off characters. Should you kill off characters or should you avoid it?

We live in a post-Game-of-Thrones world.

The immediate response from the panelists showed me one thing: We live in a post-GoT world.

We welcome Game of Thrones (GoT) being Game of Thrones, but anything else that's as savagely death-happy we're . . . well, we're over it. Which is funny when you consider that in Dexter (the TV show not the books) you had at least one murder per episode carried out by the protagonist and frequently another murder occurring under other circumstances. What Dexter didn't have was the continual, perpetual killing off of primary characters, characters we'd grown to care about, although many did eventually get the ax, it wasn't constant. That's pure GoT.

One panelist even said that he'd been all murdered out by GoT. So many interesting characters had been killed off on GoT that he'd lost the ability to bond with or care about any new character he met in that world. A perfectly normal coping reaction. If you're constantly being tragically abandoned, sooner or later you develop a defense mechanism and assume it's better to not get invested in anyone, because if you do, they're only going to leave you and hurt you in the process. Even if they're just a character in a book.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the sort of stories where everyone lives no matter what.

Stories where, as ridiculous and implausible as it might be for a person to live through Situation X, the characters miraculously do. Further, they tend to survive these scrapes without a scratch on them, certainly not without the months or years of medical treatment normally associated with living through a physically brutal event. So much so that by the next episode they don't even have a limp or a sling or a residual pain that leads them to a pill addiction. Nope. Everybody lives. Everybody's healthy. No need for "scraped and bruised" makeup in the next episode even though it's supposed to just happen a few days later.

Dude. Let me just say, I've had bruises from running into the coffee table that have lasted longer than most lived-through-a-car-accident-on-a-TV-show bruises.

If the above examples represent the two ends of the spectrum, where should a writer try to fit his or her story? 

The simplest answer I can give is: Probably somewhere in between the two extremes.

Of course, the nuanced answer is . . . well, nuanced.

It depends on your plot, world building, and character development. Don't kill off characters willy-nilly just because you can, or because you don't know what else to do with an extraneous character.

True story: I had a friend in high school who, whenever we were asked to write a creative story in English class, would kill off every single character by the end of the story. She wasn't a terribly macabre person -- actually, she was quite bubbly and cheerful -- she just didn't know how to end stories, and admitted as much. If everyone died, then the story had to be over, so everyone died. Honestly, next to her, GRRM looks like a spring pansy.

If a character dies in a story, it needs to serve the story. Or -- what I probably said at the conference this past weekend -- the death needs to serve the plot. 

Then -- boom! -- the following infographic appeared in one of my social media feeds a day or so after the conference. (Or maybe it wasn't serendipity, maybe it came to my attention because I was looking for it, consciously or subconsciously. Or is that in and of itself a precondition of serendipity? But I digress.)

Nifty infographic from helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com on what's a good or bad reason for killing off a character.

The infographic comes from the K.M. Weiland article "How to Successfully Kill a Character," and opens with the utterly provcative statement, "I love killing people."

On the panel we discussed how a character's death can re-frame a narrative. [Hunger Games spoilers, this paragraph only.] How nearly reaching the end of Hunger Games only to have Prim die -- when avoiding Prim's death was more or less the inciting incident of the trilogy -- helps solidify the ultimate narrative outcome as not one of triumph or accomplishment but one of futility and the cyclical nature of human greed and suffering, power and rebellion.

Proving you've got the chops to mete out death.

In a podcast, Carrie Vaughn has described her killing off of a character in Kitty and the Midnight Hour as an act of proving it wasn't another happy-go-lucky world where everybody lived. Indeed, it was more serious than that, more deadly, more dangerous. Like some sort of literary hazing ritual, killing off a character can be a moment when a writer decides they want to prove themselves as someone not to be taken lightly.

But tread cautiously. Carrie Vaughn was still using the character's death in service of the plot. She could have reworked the plot to not need that death. It would have been a different book if everybody lived. And what she's talking about is making that choice to not be the book where everybody lives . . . [read the full blog post on eileenwiedbrauk.com]

Don't Play It Safe

[Image/quote via Advice to Writers]

As a writer, you should fall in love with your characters at some point, even the dastardly ones. Perhaps the dastardly ones most of all because when else in life is it safe to love a psychopath? But what I often see is the more a writer writes about a set of characters, the less she is able to torture them. She cares about them now and wants to give them a happy life / happy ending.

But creating meaningful ways to torture your characters is important to the narrative. Extremely important.

It's easy to set up a character with a conflict when you haven't yet gotten to know them, but as you come to understand their complexities, you -- like a good parent -- want to smooth the road ahead of them instead of throwing giant obstacles in their way.

Think of the movie Twister. A simple enough plot: chase a series of tornadoes trying to get close enough to put a scientific instrument inside a twister, all while grappling with daddy-issues and a marriage that's fallen apart. I'm not saying that Twister is the perfect narrative -- I'm saying that as your characters drive down the country road of the plot, you need to throw stuff at them. Throw a crazed rival scientist at them. Throw a new fiancée at them. Throw a cow at them. Roll a runaway house directly into their path. And if driving through a tumbling house wasn't enough -- throw an oil tanker at them and make it explode.

Keep throwing stuff at your characters -- physical obstacles and emotional ones. Give 'em both barrels. Inflict pain and suffering. Make it hurt so good.

Because we love to read it when it hurts so good.

The Forgetful Kimchi Hypothesis

Last week, I gathered up some hope from the rubble, and took to heart a suggestion from a magazine that I "send again" by embarking on the final edits of a short story I'd left unfinished for months. It only took me one evening of work to come to the hypothesis that good stories are kimchi.

Kimchi is a spicy Korean food which, while different from sauerkraut in taste, is not so different in production: at its heart, Kimchi is just fermented cabbage. I know, who doesn't see decaying cabbage and think, now there's a metaphor for fiction writing, right? But I hold to my hypothesis: stories are kimchi.

Making kimchi involves chopping and combining raw ingredients including the all important napa cabbage. You combine it with other stuff. Then you wait. You don't touch the kimchi. You don't poke at it or check in on it daily. Traditionally, you put the kimchi in an earthenware jar and bury it in the backyard for months, if not a year, depending on the recipe and the seasonal temperature. The burying is to help provide consistency in temperature, although such jars often are stored above ground in courtyards. Most recipes you'll find on the internet suggest that refrigeration is probably the way to go, yet in Korea "you will still see rows of kimchi jars on top of the flat roofs of apartment buildings in the big cities." [source]

Is my hypothesis that writing is nothing more than a slow fermentation process? That's too simplistic a comparison for what I have in mind.

The drafting of a piece fiction does not need to be slow. The current editing project is a short story I dashed off in an evening because of a looming 8:00 AM workshop deadline. But following that quick trot, gathering ingredients, preparing, chopping, mixing, I received thoughtful feedback, and then I stuck it all in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for about eight months.

The story didn't need months to complete its drafting, but for me to go from the piece's writer to its editor I needed that time. It wasn't about the story, it was about me processing the feedback I'd been given and -- more importantly -- it was about me forgetting the process of writing it.

Forgetting is the most important part. When I take an idea from concept to plot to details to words on a page, I am wrapped up in all of it. I know what I meant to write even if it's not what I actually wrote. At the time of creation, I read what I've written and I anticipate my own next moves. I'm unsurprised. I'm unenthusiastic. I'm too in touch with the process of creation. So I have to take the time to forget everything save the vaguest sense of what the story was about.

Eight months after writing the short story, I hauled the jar back inside and revised. I got more feedback. I was much, much closer to being happy with the story. I'd resolved some of my own craft short comings. I'd figured out which parts of the story were too light, and which too weighty. Then I put it back in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for eighteen months. Eighteen.

This is not to say that I did not write during that year and a half. I just wrote other things. I filled other earthenware jars until my folder of Word Docs looked like a Korean courtyard. And on the eighteenth month when I opened this particular jar, I'd forgotten everything about drafting the piece. Finally I could read it as a reader would, as an editor would. Things which the creator in me thought were "necessary" to describe the world were readily apparent as flotsam to be skimmed off. The story found a new opening place. The first five pages were cut and the information therein condensed into a paragraph. The dispersal of information regarding the character's motivation was restructured. The main speculative element was previously nebulous to the reader -- as the writer I'd understood how it worked just fine -- so its description was reworked, condensed. Would you like some kimchi? It's ready.

I understand writing quickly. I think that deadline driven writing is superb, but then again, deadlines are my main source of inspiration. My advice -- if we must boil this down to advice -- is to write fast and edit slow. Give yourself time to forget so that you can meet your story again as a stranger. Play that game TV couples like to engage in, the let's-put-the-past-behind-us-and-pretend-this-is-the-first-time-we-ever-met game. You know the one, where they smile bittersweet smiles at each other and attempt to pick each other up for the first time in spite of their insider information.

Of course, no advice should be treated as sacrosanct. All writers write differently. Yet I am always astounded by those who begin rewriting a piece almost as soon as they've drafted it, those who can go from workshop to second draft within a week, if not a day. Not astounded because they're "doing it wrong" but that they're able to do so all. My memory is by no means a steel trap, but it needs a stretch of time before it can forget a story well enough to allow me to read it afresh, read it like a reader and not like its creator.

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More thoughts from other people: "Do You Practice Creative Contemplation?" an interesting essay on patience and listening, and while it poo-poos on NaNoWriMo, the mother of all deadlines, I believe that a NaNoWriMo draft, taken with a kimchi recipe approach, is potentially quite serviceable, so I'll cut the essayist a break.

Specter Spectacular takes on a special sale price

I recently edited a slim and spooky anthology of ghost stories, Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales. And for the month of November only, you (or anyone) can grab the ebook version for the never-will-it-be-this-low-again price of $2.99. (You can also order a print version from Amazon -- sadly, not available in stores.)

Copyediting

It's been about a year since I was asked to do serious copyediting. 

Oh sure, people have asked me to proofread this or that -- but mostly they just want to know if they sound like an idiot or not, and occasionally they want me to tell them if they need semicolons. (You know who you are and no, no matter how much you may want to add in some more semicolons, you don't need them.)

But this weekend I sat down to professionally copyedit a piece. This is a process that involves OCD-like attention to continuity of formatting, style, spacing, hypenation . . . So I spent some quality time with my copy of the Chicago Manual of Style. It's two inches thick and a thousand pages long and somehow I find the whole damn thing fascinating. 

Read it cover to cover? Never. But there's all these little sparkling jewels of duties of the editor in manuscript preparation and codified punctuation formatting and -- 

I should really stop before I bore everyone to tears.

Back to copyediting.

Dear Deadlines: I lovehate you.

I lovehate you, deadlines.  Rly, orly, lovehate you.

When I have oodles of time, I laze about on my ass.  I do all the things that are both precious to me and easy, like read novels upon novels.  I catch up on Top Chef.  I contact old friends and read every remotely interesting blog/article I find on the internet.  I enjoy these activities, yet I have little to show for them in terms of accomplishments.  (Although some could argue that gleaned knowledge and an increased usable vocabulary are accomplishments, they aren't things that bring much with them in the way of substantial reward.)

When I have deadlines, I sweat.  I stress.  I stay up too late, get up too early. Feel crazy tired and drink copious amounts of caffeine (the bean and the carbonated types) so that when I finally give up and carve out time for a nap I can't fall asleep for all the heart-palpitating stimulants swimming in my system.  I sit in the same chair for 12 hours a day.  I make microwave meals from boxes in my freezer that I'd forgotten I'd had because there's no time to go buy proper fresh food.

But damn do I love how much I get done when I have a fast approaching deadline to light a fire under my ass.

Yesterday I wrote somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words in order to get short story revisions done.  Lately I've been patting myself on the back for every 500 words written, so this feat was entirely the result of major MFA thesis deadlines creeping in.

Knowing how I am about deadlines -- that far off ones hold no pressure for me -- I've created a situation where I have work due every week.  Either a new short story or a short story revision.  And I have someone other than that good-intentions fairy of mine to hold me responsible / make me feel guilty for not getting it done.

And it's the revisions that are harder for me.  I lovehate them too.  I love some of the things that accidentally turn up when you're revising.  You've gotten feedback and formed an image of how to build a better mousetrap -- now all you have to do is build it!  And then little things pop up as you edit that smooth and connect things that you (and your feedback givers) had not even thought of.  It's the things popping up and clicking into place part I love.  It's also something I love about the writing the first draft.

I hate ripping the seams out of something you've already sewn only to resew it better.  It's why I say the seams give my quilts character.  (they're far from perfect)  But my quilts are just for me, and if I want anyone else to pay attention to my stories, then I have to pick up the stitch ripper, as much as I might hate it.  Revision's a bitch.  And I hate it, hate it, hate it.  I'd string it out over as long a time as I possibly could.  Unless I had a deadline to make me do what I lovehate.

And I lovehate you, deadlines, I really, really, lovehate you.*

Image by Nenyaki.
*You ever reference a movie without realizing it, then sit there thinking was that in a movie? what movie? and then you repeat the line again and again until finally hear the frustration/tears in voice and then suddenly you can see Meg Ryan in a poofy sleeved 80s cocktail dress?  Happens to me all the time.

Getting my mind around getting it done

I am a slow writer.  At least, I think I am.

I can write quickly if I must.  I usually write 20 page research papers in under 36 hours.  Okay, sometimes I go over deadline and it's 72 hours.  Someone once told me that a good formula was an hour a page plus one to proof read at the end.  Though that formula wasn't true when I was in college, it has been for the master's program.

But for fiction?  I churned out a story, 3000 words, start to finish in about seven hours one night at Odyssey last summer.  It had some problems, but it also had a beginning, middle, and end.  Then I let my subconcious tackle the edits and problems of that story for six months, finally sitting down to redraft.  I've been redrafting for the past 30 days.

I'll get stuck.  I'll take a bunch of notes.  I'll find something else to do (most likely not writing). Then the perfect phrasing or situation to get me unstuck bubbles up in my mind the next day.

It's taking forever.

And I'm looking for ways to make it happen quicker.  There has to be something better than a sentence or single idea bubbling up per day.  Come on, lots of bubbles.  Let's think carbonation here.

It's not just the revisions (although they're worse than anything else).  I've been putting off first drafts as well.  So I started reading Eat That Frog! a self-help book about time management.  Although, as theLiz told me, reading a book about how to not procrastinate sounds like a great form of procrastination.

Just read this interview with Julie Duffy of StoryADay.  It is indeed a month long write-a-story-each-day challenge.  Sounds intense.  Sounds like the pulp writers of yesteryear (but hold that though, it's tomorrow's post).  Sounds like something I'd really like to do.  Sounds like my sloooooooowness would either get kicked out or get me kicked out.  Hmm.

Duffy's advice:

Finish. Finish every story. Even if it's dragging and you hate it, learning how to work through that and get to to the good bit is all part of the craft. Just starting stories will never get you anywhere. Learning how to craft your ideas into finished stories is what it's all about.

I need to get over the starting and get on to the doing and the sticking.  Sticking with the doing.

Bestselling author Jenny Crusie writes:

There is a time before I begin a book that I panic. I can’t remember how I did it before, the first fifteen books must have been flukes, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen in the story, I don’t understand the characters, I’m a fake, the book is going to be a disaster, and my career is over. The fact that I do this before every book is not a comfort.

Then she found god collaging.

Hmm. Thanks -- tempting -- but no.  I'm already waist-deep in unfinished arts-n-crafts projects, I really don't need another excuse to buy and/or collect more of that stuff.  Although the whole panic notion does put me in mind of this absolutely spot on cartoon.

Is it really as simple as Ann Aguirre makes it out to be?  Find a group of people who want to write five thousand words a day and then you all write five thousand words a day?  She makes caveats that finding the right group of people is important -- and lordy do I know that: those groups where we all slacked off and secretly rejoiced that we'd failed together instead of failed alone, yeah, those groups weren't very helpful.  But she's big on there being no magic in the system.  There's no magic time, no magic aura, the stars do not align.  She just goes.  Does.  Is.

I guess I just need to go. Do. Be.  Get off my stupid starting block and keep going without tripping on it.  Of course, Aguirre's method is for the first draft, not the revisions.

Does your style slant toward slow or fast?  Slow and steady or (worse) slow and sporadic?

What processes and advice have worked for you?

New Year, New Frenzy

I'm the kind of person who's never happy with just one project. So it's not just at New Year's that I feel overwhelmed with a slew of things I want to do and want to do now.  Yesterday, it was novels.  Writing them.  Today it's academic papers for conferences.  Because I just got word that my portrayals of little red riding hood proposal was accepted for a conference on heroines in science fiction and fantasy conference.

I just need to get something finished.  I'll be very excited if I do.

Finishing means that all the piecemeal work I've been doing here at my desk, goes off into the world and interacts with people as it was intended to do, instead of growing the mountain here.  I should explain the "growing the mountain" reference.

I multi-task like a computer does. Say you ask your computer to perform five tasks at once: playing music, opening a file, IMing online, downloading something and you've also got a spreadsheet open.  The computer does not perform all those tasks at once.  It instead puts them into a cycle, performing a small bit of music playing, then a small bit of opening the file, a small bit of your chat conversation, a small bit of the download and a small bit of spreadsheet whatnot.  Then it cycles back.  It performs the bits so quickly that you (usually) don't notice when it's off performing another task.  However, when you have the computer doing five tasks and you ask it to open a file, that file is going to take longer than if you had the computer performing no tasks. I work like this too--except not as fast.

I'm always working on ten projects.  I think that's a conservative yet realistic number for what I'm doing.  I have four novel projects on the "this year" list. Ha. Other novel projects are chillin in the bread box.  I'm writing one academic paper, editing another.  I'm actively editing two short stories, and I've got another few who are patiently waiting their turn.  And then there's the teaching projects.  So ten seems about right.

The end result is that it seems like nothing gets done.  I work bit by bit, accomplishing a little bit more on each task daily.  But then I get frustrated for not finishing--much like I get frustrated when I over task my computer and slow it down.  (This was more of a problem on computers a few years back, but it's still been known to happen, especially when I'm in the Mac labs on campus.)

I'm beginning to think I need to streamline my process more.  Multi-task less.  Produce more finished items rather than switching projects.  Though I'm afraid this may not happen unless I re-wire my brain.  Hmm.

Non sequitur: And then I had store bought perogies for lunch. Which are never as good as homemade perogies. Of course, the only perogie recipe I have could feed an army or a small polish family.  Guess it's a good thing I had awesome Thai food for dinner.

Morning coffee

Morning coffee and editing.

I have a piece I want to edit again and get into the mail today.  So I give you this article which explains why I have to comb through this piece yet again: "In the Details," Writing Advice by Mette Ivie Harrison, published in the current issue of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Don't be so "serious"

Laura Miller addresses why writers shouldn't strive to be "serious," and makes other helpful noises from one reader to all those writers out there.

In another essay, I found out that the phrase "Writing is rewriting" is apparently an "old saying." While I agree with the sentiment, I can't say I've ever heard the phrase before, new, old or otherwise. Otherwise, this essay is full of good stuff to think about when editing. I know I mentioned recently that the "literary types" are horrible at teaching novel writing (they're more of if you build it, they will come which is fine when you're Kevin Costner, but when you're me? Not so much).  So I've been hunting down novel writing instruction from the genre people, which is better but not as good as what you'll find at the bottom of the article on editing.  Screenwriters.  I should have already known that screenwriters-turned-novelists are the gold standard for teaching structure in long-form storytelling.  Because they are.  And the only teacher I've ever had who was willing to tackle teaching novel writing was a screenwriter-turned-novelist.

But before the writer gets to that, she stars off the essay by listing all the things she was "before she was a writer," which makes me sad and frustrated. Lately I've been thinking about my own "before I was a writer" list of jobs and, honestly, I'd rather just get to the damn writing part. I'm coming up on some "free time" between semesters. I could spend it visiting friends and family, or I could get the damnwriting done.

I recently had an acquaintance who took a week off of work and in ten days she kicked out a 50,000 word first draft of the novel she's been toying with for months. It's ... well, it's many things, including crazy, but it's also inspiring.

I too have notes and notes and notes drafted for two different popular novel projects. Two weeks, fourteen days, 70,000 words between the end of April and the middle part of May.  I'd be crazy to do it. I'd be crazy not to do it. Better to do the damnwriting than keep adding bizarre jobs to my "before I was a writer" list.

On Process: Writing

I'm on deadline. Again. This one is an editing/revision deadline. Earlier in the month I went crazy over a workshop deadline because I didn't have a story finished and nothing I'd started wanted to let me finish it ... so I started over from scratch.

My writing process is usually quite organic. When I'm on a deadline it becomes a matter of manic work and some grocery store preparation. I lug home a brown bag full of "study food" which, for me, spells comfort and concentration. Gummy bears, sunflower seeds, coffee (of course), chocolate covered raisins, apples and peanut butter**, and liters and liters of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Everything else I can negotiate on -- location, atmosphere, the cleanliness of the kitchen, the flavor of the coffee, even which snack foods are purchased -- but the Diet Dr. Pepper is nonnegotiable.

What is your writing process? Is it an activity or a place, or is it a collection of goods?

**Ten points to the person who posts the name of the TV show whose characters work hard fueled by apples and peanut butter. (My dad got this right away so it's not that obscure, but I will hint that the show is off the air now.)

Around the Web

I may or may not have mentioned on this blog that I'm also working on the Third Coast magazine blog. I am very excited to have our latest feature up and running (at last!): literary guest bloggers!

Our first guest blogger is Erin Fitzgerald who writes the blog "Rarely Likable" and edits the Northville Review. She's written a lovely post for Third Coast about how (and where) to jump in to the world of literary magazines. It's chockablock with links to databases, sites and services for writers looking to learn and publish -- some of which I'd never heard of! (Very thorough.) Below Erin's guest blog entry is also a review of her short fiction.

I'm in contact with other writers/bloggers about future entries but, by all means, let me know if you have a nomination or suggestion.

The other nice thing that is going on over on the Third Coast blog is a series of monthly post by one of our fiction interns Nathan Norton. He's writing about some of the pitfalls of writing that he sees while reading slush and how writers can avoid them.

Editing Parties

Grades have been entered and the celebratory sushi has been consumed!

The cats and I are hanging out in Ann Arbor for a few days to see friends and family as well as relax. In preparation of our trip, I spent Sunday morning cleaning my apartment. It's looking pretty good now. Well, at least the living room/kitchen is, the bathroom and my bedroom are next on the list. The situation in those rooms never quite reached the crisis point.

It's amazing. My living room hasn't been that clean since Christmas ... basically since last semester ended and I went on a similar cleaning rampage. My coffee table is clean and clear of all paper. Since the end of January there's been at least a handful of student work on that table waiting to be graded. The cleanness was so pretty I had to leave it.

Sunday afternoon I went to an editing party -- a wonderful idea orchestrated by the Ms. Corey. Corey has written a young adult zombie novel, with a fresh (and really cool) new twist on "zombie." It's hilarious ... or at least the parts I've read are. She's gotten some interest in it from the publishing world but was asked to make edits -- which she has been furiously working on for the past month -- and this is where the editing party comes in.

She invited as many of us over as could fit in her apartment, gave us food and two chapters each to proofread. We sat with our diet Coke and our red pens and hunted out the last of the typos hiding out in the pages, flagged confusing phrases, and debated the usage of commas.

Dude, how many English grad students does it take to figure out comma rules? Apparently five and a librarian.

The thing about comma rules is that they become more rigid in formal academic work and they get more flexible in novels and then very flexible in commercial novels. So we're trying to find that sweet spot between confusion, proper English, style, and readability. It's a difficult place to find.

All in all, it was a really great idea and something I hope happens again and again while I'm at the writing program. We got to socialize, Corey got proofreaders, and we felt like we were helping. I believe Ms. Corey has been very smart about this. Particularly that she's asked lots of people to read very small amounts rather than begging us to read the whole thing from beginning to end. However, there's quite a bit of interest in reading the whole thing beginning to end now that we've gotten a taste of it!