Through the Worldgate

Oh, Rocketman!

2011-11-18T20:06:00.002-05:00

It's now official. My short story "Tell Me a Story" will be appearing in Rocket Science, an anthology of hard science fiction.

This story has a rather interesting genesis. I originally wrote it for the September 2001 On the Premises contest prompt. However, I apparently screwed up the submission process, because a completely different story showed up in the listing at Submishmash. Don't ask me how I managed to goof it up that bad. The other story sort of fit the prompt for that contest, but not as well. So I now had a story that needed to find a home.

Meanwhile, I had tried several different story ideas for Rocket Science, and none of them were working out. Worse, all of them seemed to fall into thematic zones that were already well covered by the existing submissions, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend a lot of time wrestling a story into shape only to have it rejected because it was too similar to stories already accepted.

In writing "Tell Me a Story" I drew upon my background as both a librarian and a historian, not to mention my own personal experience of being a small child and having my parents read to me. Telling the story through the eyes of successive generations of children gave me an opportunity to take a new look at humanity's future in space, not to mention showing how the historical memory can become confused as events recede into the past.

Rocket Science is scheduled to be released in April, with a big party at the UK convention Eastercon. It will be coinciding fairly closely with ConGlomeration, a convention in Louisville, Kentucky, which I'll be attending, so I may try to do some promotional activity for it there.

The Length Problem

2011-11-12T11:47:00.002-05:00

After getting a personalized rejection on "The Angry Astronaut Affair" (the first three were form rejects), I'm thinking that I need to give it a serious rewrite to expand it. When I originally wrote it, I was aiming it at a contest with a 4000-word length limit. In order to make it fit, I had to leave out several elements that I really wanted to get in, because I could tell that nips and tucks in the wording wouldn't bring it back down if I added those things.

However, on retrospect, I think that letting them fall by the wayside actually hurt the story more than I realized. Yes, people do miss them, even if they don't know what those specific things were supposed to be. There's still a gap that leaves the reader less than satisfied.

And I'm thinking that I really need more than one POV. Reggie Waite's a difficult character, and in this story he really comes off as a jerk, which is probably making it difficult for him to be the story's protagonist. But if he could be seen through other eyes, so that the reader gets more of a sense of his complexity, it might get past the reader sympathy problem. The Jerkass Hero is a recognized trope, after all, and it's common enough that it obviously does work.

And sometimes a story really does need to be allowed to find its own length, instead of being forcibly crushed down to an arbitrary length.

Well, Drat

2011-11-04T11:29:00.003-04:00

I just got a rejection from an anthology I'd really hoped I'd have a chance to get into. It looks like he got a lot of really good stories, to the point that it was really hard to pick between them.

Now I've got yet another story I'm going to need to send through the rounds in hopes of finding someplace it'll stay at. Which is getting harder as I have more and more stories circulating, because most markets don't want you to send more than one at a time. When you've got five or six stories, it's fairly easy to keep them all out at any given time. When you've got thirty or forty, it gets a lot more challenging.

Details

2011-10-28T22:16:00.002-04:00

I swear, some readers feel positively threatened by details. If they don't see an immediate purpose for the detail, it makes them anxious, like they need to take notes or they're going to have a quiz on them. They can't just let the details be part of the flavor of the story.

I wonder if some of them have had one of those nasty teachers who thought the best way of testing whether students actually read the story is to give quizzes on the minute trivial details of the story -- the sort that you're apt to read over if you're just reading normally, to absorb the gist of the story rather than to search for details you may be quizzed on.

Just Lovely

2011-10-24T22:25:00.002-04:00

As I'm trying to hash out the problem with "The Man I Love Is on the Moon," I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I'm going to have to completely tear out the existing beginning and redo it from scratch. I guess it's better that it's just three handwritten pages I need to toss. It could be 300 double-spaced MS pages on the computer, as happened to one writer I know.

And worse, I think I really need to give more thought to several of the characters before I can really push the story forward. Which means it may need some back-burner time to let the subconscious mind work on it.

At least that will give me some time to focus on getting "The Shadow of a Dead God" ready to send to its intended market.

The Proto-Draft

2011-10-22T19:33:00.002-04:00

Sometimes it's called scaffolding. It's that stuff that you've got to write to make part of a story clear in your own head, but doesn't work as finished story. Stuff dealing with the background of character relationships, or (in speculative genres) the hows and whys of the technology, magic or creepy stuff that's essential to making the story work.

In a novel, it may be possible to have an infodump work, especially in relatively hard sf. A lot of readers of Heinlein, Weber, Kratman, etc. actually enjoy those solid blocks of information about the hows and whys of the science, technology and political systems that make the world work. It makes the imagined world read more real for them.

But that's not true for all readers -- I know some readers who absolutely will not read some of my favorite authors because of their information-feed techniques. And a short story won't have room for all of that information, so you have to very carefully choose what's the absolutely essential parts that must be explicitly presented to the reader and find ways to salt them into the story.

As I'm working on "The Man I Love Is on the Moon," I'm running into that problem -- I've just written a lengthy passage in which the protagonist is reflecting upon how the current situation makes her think of a similar space disaster when she was a kid. It's important stuff, both the backstory (which is so critical to how Kitty Strowger became who and what she is) and the current events on the world scene. But it's just her telling the reader all this information directly (since it's written in first person), and I'm not sure that it works as a short story. I've seen plenty of first-person novels that stop the action so the protagonist can directly address the reader and tell about how he or she became interested in a line of work, or suchlike (the one I'm currently reading, Travis S. Taylor's Warp Speed, does, and it really gives you a feeling of this down-home sort of guy sitting there and telling you the story over a couple of beers). But when you've got only a few thousand words, can you spare the room for recollections?

I'm hoping that, as I get a completed text, I'll be able to see how to get the critical information woven into character interactions so it isn't just a big lump of the protagonist telling the reader Important Stuff.

Genre Expectations and the Problem of the Cross-Genre Story

2011-10-20T13:30:00.003-04:00

Recently I started writing a short story for a horror fiction contest. I decided to draw upon the image of a faceless colossus in an ancient desert from the list of HP Lovecraft's unused ideas in A Commonplace Book of the Weird: The Untold Stories of H.P. Lovecraft. To make my story distinctive from the one in that book, I decided not to set it on any earthly desert, but on the Moon.

But as I'm writing my story of my astronaut hero's desperate trek across the lunar regolith, heading toward his encounter with the ancient and menacing colossus, I realize that this story is reading more and more like hard science fiction rather than cosmic horror. But I really don't see any way around having the technical details of the problem at the mining outpost, the operation of the hopper he's supposed to be taking to get help from a larger settlement, or how he jerry-rigs parts of it with an old Apollo lunar rover -- it's essential to the growing sense of menace to understand why he's in deeper and deeper trouble, and I don't know how many horror readers are familiar enough with issues of astronautics to intuit how dangerous the lunar surface is, even for someone with equipment half a century more advanced than what the Apollo astronauts took to them, without it being explicitly laid out for them.

At the same time, I'm constantly aware that if it doesn't read like horror, a lot of the gatekeepers are apt to assume that someone sent a straight-up hard-sf story to them by mistake, or without bothering to read the guidelines, and never even get to the point where the protagonist encounters the terrible faceless colossus and all its existence implies, or the terrible effect it has upon his mind.

Of course at least part of this problem could be the problem of being a beginner. When one has established a reputation in the business, there's an implicit trust that one knows what one is doing, that just isn't there for a beginner. The established figure is assumed to know what he or she is about, and is trusted until it becomes clear the story is simply not suitable. By contrast, the beginner, or relative beginner, has to prove up front that yes, he or she is worth being given the time of day.

Wow

2011-02-02T11:33:00.002-05:00

Right now I have 26 short stories under consideration at various markets. I think that's a personal all-time high mark. I'd have 28, except that two sold in January.

And I have several others that are fairly close to being able to go out.

I wonder if I could get up to 30 stories under consideration by the end of the month, or if I'll end up with more stories than suitable markets.

My Story Is Now Live

2010-10-05T18:36:00.003-04:00

I've spent the last week wondering whether I had a sale or not, and just as I am about to query, I get a message that yes, they're ready to publish my story. Maybe I should've queried right after the message that looked like a server burp.

But the story is up now. It's The End of Her Line and it's at Every Day Fiction, which publishes a short-short of 1000 words or less every day of the year.

Do I Have a Sale?

2010-09-23T13:25:00.002-04:00

Last night I got a really weird e-mail from an online market to which I'd submitted a story. A single line of text rather like code, which looked more like a server burp than a rejection.

Today I get onto their website, and they're definitely having problems. A bunch of pages return me messages that look more like SQL database errors. But I was able to get onto their submission tracking page, and it looks like they may have accepted the story.

So now I wait to see whether it's true or it was an error. I so hope it's for real, and doesn't evaporate on me like so many other sales in the past.

Like I Need Another

2010-03-21T21:50:00.003-04:00

short story to write, that is. I just finished drafting "The Sound of One Child Crying" and was getting ready to make a major push on "A Brother's Love" when I come across a listing for an anthology of stories set in the Appalachians and dealing with magic. And now I'm thinking of how I could write a steampunk story, sort of along the lines of The Music Man but with a magician who thinks it's all flummery to better con the marks, but maybe there is some real magic in the world, whether supernatural or merely metaphorical.

At least the deadline on it isn't until June, and it looks like the editor isn't going to be making final decisions until sometime in July, so at least it's not like I've got to immediately plunge into it. So I can make a few notes and let it simmer.

But I'd really like to get back to work on Briar's Children, because I am really a natural novelist, and short stories don't come easy to me. Not to mention that novels are really where the money is.

So Much for That Plan

2009-10-10T16:04:00.002-04:00

I thought that I would be able to do one last polishing pass through one of my Okeanos novels and then send it to a publisher. However, when I sent it to some people who hadn't read it before, the response was very negative, and they basically want it completely torn apart and redone -- and they don't like several of the fundamental premises of the world.

So it looks like I'm going to set it aside for a while and continue working on Briar's Children, in hopes that a simpler storyline in a less-complex world will have a better chance of making that critical and so-difficult first sale. Which of course means having to get it moving again, since I seem to have gotten stuck while I was at Archon.

All Is Grist for the Mill

2009-08-13T19:32:00.002-04:00

I got into a lengthy and rather heated discussion on issues of race and privilege when I really should've been working on Children's Crusade, and as it rapidly went south, I realized that it's quite possible that some of these same patterns will come into play in the huge discussions after the Lankhidzist Revolution about the proper role of the various clones, especially those of Stalin's henchmen.

I can completely imagine Kolya Vornosky, faced with someone harping at him about the terrible crimes of Nikolai Yezhov and privilege derived from Yezhov's role in Stalin's crimes, firing back, "And what am I supposed to do about it?" And the other person becoming angry about his even asking, treating it as just this sort of affront, a presumtious demand based upon privilege, and assuming that he is acting in bad faith -- which is of course going to succeed only in getting his back up and ensuring that the discussion will devolve into an ugly confrontation that will resolve absolutely nothing and lead to even worse bad feelings.

The biggest question is whether this happens before or after his biggest and messiest political antic.

Do Two Wrongs Make a Right?

2009-07-29T22:59:00.003-04:00

The more I delve into the history of the Soviet cloning program in the Lanakhidzist Revolution universe, the more my stomach turns. I'd known that they were using the geneset of disgraced secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov as their primary test bed for biomods, and that it often involved making clones and testing them to destruction, sometimes as embryos or fetuses, but also as born babies.

But now I discover that the lab in Stalingrad was also cranking out enormous numbers of baby Yezhov clones for Soviet chemical and biowarfare programs, once they had artificial uterine environments. They'd ship the "little hedgehogs" (yozhika, a play on "Yezhov,") in huge crates like day-old baby chicks -- except human babies don't have a yolk to sustain them for that day of travel, so the labs in Siberia would often find a quarter to a half of the airlifted shipment dead or dying. But they were just Yezhovs, so they were disposable.

I'm no apologist for Stalin's terror -- Nikolai Yezhov crossed a moral event horizon when he accepted Stalin's commission to be NKVD chief and ran the Terror meatgrinder at frantic speed. But I can't buy into the Asiatic principle that the crimes, however terrible, of one member of a family could stain everybody else -- not even clones, who share 100% of their Senior's genetic material. The Enlightenment principle that we are each individually responsible for our good and evil deeds, that there should be no corruption of blood (as the Founding Fathers thankfully wrote into the US Constitution) is too strongly written in my mind and heart, and I can't see all these clones of Yezhov as anything but innocent children being murdered.

Is it any wonder Kolya Voronsky is not quite completely sane -- growing up there in the Stalingrad lab, knowing full well that thousands of his clone-brothers are being made every year and shipped off to their deaths, that he is spared that fate only because Vladilen Voronsky's adoption of him severed the legal link with Yezhov?

All I can say is thank heaven that in our timeline cloning is not going to be developed as a gigantic out-of-control black project with Cold War fears or their War on Terror equivalent. We've had good, solid public discussions about the ethical issues and why we shouldn't be doing human cloning, even of great leaders, generals, inventors or whatever. It's possible that some rogue nation or sub-national actors might do human cloning once the technology for doing it with animals becomes sufficiently cheap and generally available, but hopefully we'll be able to catch them soon enough and will have the wisdom and compassion to deal humanely with their victims, just as we would a child conceived naturally through rape or any other sexual crime.

Legacy Code

2009-07-01T23:43:00.003-04:00

In computer technology, legacy code is stuff left over from earlier generations -- sometimes from the earliest days of computer programming in the case of mainframes. However, even microcomputer operating systems such as Windows often have substantial amounts of legacy code. Usually it results from attempts to make sure that new versions of software remain backward-compatible with earlier hardware and software -- for instance, so that older versions of a program will still run on the new operating system. Other times it is simply the result of programmers carrying over old code unexamined, either out of laziness or more frequently the result of deadline pressure.

Because I've been working on the story of the Lanakhidzist Revolution since I was in Jr. High, I've got almost thirty years worth of layers upon layers of ideas. The earliest versions were quite crude and simplistic, with no real understanding or appreciation of the societies of which I was writing (for instance, I really didn't appreciate the difference between Georgians and Russians, and the scenes set in Gori had the characters having Russian names and eating typical Russian foods), and even in the late 80's when I was studying Russian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and had help from one of the professors, who read a lot of my manuscripts from that period, I still really didn't know how to use sources, or to weave details into the fabric of a story to bring it to life, so the writing was pretty bad.

Not to mention that a lot of the basic ideas still reflected a very youthful view of the world, one that hadn't been tempered with experience in the workplace. So now, as I'm working on Children's Crusade, my current version of the story of the Lanakhidzist Revolution, I'm constantly having to reconsider elements that I assumed would always be integral parts of the story. Should they remain, or is the legacy code a drag on the story that needs to go by the wayside?

For instance, I've corrected a lot of the mis-formed names that go back to the earliest layers of the story, figuring out what the proper forms of them should be (although in several places I've put visibly fake names in the place of the names of actual historical persons who are still living in our world and would obviously have a major role in that universe's fall of the Soviet Union too, such as Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev). But some of the relationships and the technologies that go back at least to the UIUC period now seem a little hard to support, at least not without some major changes in how they're presented.

Growing

2009-06-09T21:33:00.003-04:00

On looking back at some old notes from a version of the Lanakhidzist Revolution I wrote in the 1980's, I realize how a number of characters who have turned out to be very important had their beginnings as bit characters whose names were tossed off rather casually.

Tikhon Chalkov was just a friend who helped Iosebi Lanakhidze at a key point in one of the early versions of Children's Crusade. There was never any hint of his being unusual in any way, and he never really held any major postings. But when I returned to the story in 2001, he turns out to be an unusually small, fine-boned man -- and as I realized that the Soviet cloning project was far larger than just a few clones of Stalin, I realized who he almost had to be, even if his name didn't follow the usual pattern in the Soviet cloning program of having the same forename as the original. And now he's not only the Minister of Security, but he's also firmly within Iosebi Lanakhidze's inner circle and a major POV character who effects major changes.

In the novel that would become The Steel Breeds True, Sergei Gerasimov was originally the least important of the three brothers, almost an afterthought who hung around on the edges but didn't take part in any of the major action. But when I returned to the novel in 2001, I realized that his name had to be significant, rather than just a cool Russian name -- and I finally knew why he and his brothers had fled the Soviet Union. Suddenly he came to the fore, becoming one of the most important characters in the novel, not to mention a critical link with the Lanakhidzist inner circle, once he recovered his other-memories and accepted his identity.

Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle underwent an even more extensive transformation between a couple of early versions of The Steel Breeds True. In the earliest version in which she appears, she is just "the professor's wife," with little or nothing in the way of characterization beyond being named Amanda. But as the story continued unfolding, I suddenly discovered she was a poet and that she wore her hair in an unusual triple braid from a common root. And then she got to be the star of her own side-story, "She's Leaving Home" (yes, the title is taken from the song by the Beatles) -- although some of the backstory in the current version of The Steel Breeds True is difficult to square with details in it (in particular, there is no mention of Arthur Lordsley's alcoholism, which plays an extensive role in the current versions of both The Steel Breeds True and The Ballad of Katie Hart).

Surprise

2009-06-05T17:22:00.002-04:00

Isn't it interesting when a character finally comes clean and tells you the truth about something?

I'd been under the impression that Tisha Chalkov got his leg injury in the line of duty, in some kind of gunfight with a CIA agent. Yet it never quite squared with his having been an interrogator from the beginning of his KGB career.

Imagine my surprise when today he finally owned up to it being the result of an ordinary civilian accident. He was going to an outlying KGB office to pick up some papers needed at Lubyanka when the trolley car on which he was riding was struck by a truck driven by a drunk. Apparently he never talked about it, and when he came into prominence during the Lanakhidzist Revolution, someone fabricated a fanciful account of spycraft for an article.

Just a Slight Shift in Perspective

2009-04-19T23:04:00.002-04:00

I'd been stuck on a meeting scene in Chapter 7 of The Ballad of Katie Hart for ages. When I tried to move it forward, the dialog fell so flat that even the character in question commented upon the leadenness of his words.

And then I realized that the whole first part of it was solitary introspection on his part, which meant that there was no really good way to switch gears to interaction -- and it was made even worse by the first interaction being a formal address to the group as a whole, rather than interaction with any one individual.

Finally today I had a chance to sit down and rework it. After several false starts, I finally got a good beginning conversation going, and from then it was almost astonishingly easy to keep things moving forward. It also helped to have another character in the meeting scene burst out with a question, so that everyone started chiming in instead of politely waiting for the meeting leader to speak.

It's not perfect, and I need to see how it dovetails with another scene. But at least I think I finally have something I can work with.

At Least this Time I Caught It Early

2009-03-26T17:04:00.002-04:00

Recently I've been working on Children's Crusade again, and I had decided to jump ahead to the second book for working while standing in line, etc. However, I'd become stuck on the scene in which Grigory Semyonov is meeting with the Politburo, discussing the significance of the events at the end of the first book. I just couldn't seem to find a way to get it moving beyond the introductory paragraphs.

Today while I was standing in line at the grocery store, I realized that yet again I'd made the critical error of starting the scene with the principal character in isolated introspection, thinking about the situation but not talking to anyone -- and then I couldn't find a suitable bridge to get someone else into the scene with whom he could talk.

So there was nothing to do but throw the entire scene away and start afresh with Semyonov talking with his long-term assistant, Anton Dumar, about the things he'd been thinking about privately in the original version. We'll see if I can get it to go anywhere.

The Black Box

2009-03-04T19:04:00.004-05:00

A few days ago, after having several repetitive dreams dealing with someone I knew at the University of Illinois, I decided to pull out The Ballad of Katie Hart and get back to work on it. It had stalled out in the seventh chapter and I'd never been able to get it going again.

And as I was thinking about the scene in which Sergei Gerasimov's clone-brother is talking with two of the Stalin clones and one makes a scathing remark about just what Katie sees in Ferdinand Yabur, and I realized that I had a major logic hole. Never once have I established what exactly had led to Katie becoming so emotionally obsessed with a man who was actively disliked by at least one major POV character, and who was despised by several others because of his obliviousness to the strife his wife was sowing.

Once I saw that logic hole, I also realized that the characters of both Ferdinand and Marie Yabur were effectively black boxes. Their inner lives were completely opaque to the reader, with no evidence of their motivations except those attributed to them by POV characters who had absolutely no reason to think well of them.

I think at least part of the problem is that the novel had its beginnings as a roman a clef, and Marie Yabur in particular was based upon someone I regarded as an implacable enemy. But to make it work, I somehow have to get inside the headspace of these two characters and find a way to show what is making them go.

Reflections

2009-01-31T22:38:00.002-05:00

In the last month I've done very little fiction writing, instead concentrating on writing reviews of various science fiction and fantasy books. Rather than writing brief capsule reviews intended primarily to guide people's buying decisions, I've sought to delve deeper into the works, comparing and contrasting them, examining them in terms of literary antecedents. And I'm wondering how this work will help me when I do return once again to my various worlds. For after all I'm not abandoning my writing, simply allowing these fields of endeavor to lie fallow for a while, in hopes that I can return to them with renewed vigor.

Lying Fallow

2008-12-15T21:31:00.002-05:00

Recently I've been getting little or no progress on my writing. It seems as though my imagination has stalled, and I just can't seem to get the grasp on my story worlds any more.

I'm thinking that at least part of it is the simple fact that most of my creative energy is going to my Web design projects, getting my personal webpage and my book review site, The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf, up and running again. There just isn't any energy left over.

However, it may not mean that the process of story has stopped altogether, even if words aren't coming out. I've often found that these periods are rather like having a field lay fallow -- there's still stuff developing, just under the surface.

I just hope that it won't suddenly leap back up and grab me while I'm still busy with Web projects. This spring I had a character suddenly spring up and demand to have his story told, right while I was still struggling to get an enormous mass of backlogged projects cleared and had no time to spare.

Parallels

2008-12-07T19:07:00.002-05:00

As I'm working on Steam Heat, the story of the 708 Rebellion in Codyland, I'm noticing just how many parallels there are between it and the story of the young King Rene XIV of the Swamp Kingdom and his battles with his uncle Sebastien, who usurped the Cypress Throne.

In particular, I was fiddling with the question of just how important Archbishop Coquinael, the papal nuncio to Codyland at the time, was in the 708 Rebellion. Sidor, nuncio to the Swamp Kingdom, is a major figure in the novel of Rene and Sebastien, but I really didn't know how much Coquinael did in the 708 Rebellion, or if he was even nuncio yet. I just knew that by Where the Madwinds Blow, the planned sequel to Steam Heat, he and Ligo Rafferty do not get along well, but have to work together professionally.

However, I'm beginning to think that I will be finding out a lot more of him as I go along.

Intrusions and Discursions

2008-09-10T19:15:00.002-04:00

Over the Labor Day weekend I was making really good progress on Children's Crusade, outlining the scenes in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 that were holding me back. I was really looking forward to getting back home and developing them more fully.

And then, early in the morning of Labor Day, images started coming in from another of my worlds, one that's been in the back of my mind in various forms since I was in grade school but never seemed to be the sort of thing that would have any commercial potential. After all, it was a world so weird, so disturbing that especially when I was a kid I was very concerned that telling anybody about it (or even writing it down) would be apt to upset them so severely that they'd think I needed some serious mental help.

Of course now I've seen some horror and some cyberpunk that goes a lot further, so it's possible that trying to write it down and get it published wouldn't be a ticket to a little padded room where the nice people in white coats are here to help me. But it's still much more of a longshot world, not exactly the sort of thing that's likely to go on the first time out, from an unknown writer.

But it simply wouldn't let me go, so there was nothing to do but jot down the ideas in hopes of getting them out of my head. And after a week of this, I finally decided it had gone on long enough and it was time to get back to work on Children's Crusade. Except when I sit down to write, the images that seemed just ready to pour out now are dribbling out only reluctantly, and what does come out seems insipid and lifeless.

So I'm now working on a short story in the other universe, which is named for its rulers, the Madrians. "Broken Bird" is something of a side story, and we don't really see the transformation technology that could really disturb readers, but I'm having some real trouble figuring out where it's going. I've got the first part done easily enough, but now that I've gotten Addie introduced to Lord Rathgan and his daughter Venna, to whom she is to be a boon companion, I have no idea where it goes.

Of course it would help if I had some time to just throw ideas around and see how they form up. But it seems like time is always short, and there are far too many things to do with what little I have.

Swiss Cheese

2008-08-26T22:11:00.002-04:00

That is how my current project is feeling like -- riddled with holes.

Recently I had gone back to a project near and dear to my heart: Children's Crusade, the novel of the Lanakhidzist Revolution. It's a project that traces its history back to when I was in junior high, back in the days when the very idea that the Soviet Union could collapse internally was ridiculed as fantastical. Over the years I'd made various stabs at telling the story of of how Stalin's attempt to perpetuate himself and his inner circle for all time through cloning turned awry when the Stalin clone instead replicated his rebel youth. They were for the most part limited by the lack of perspective and general world-knowledge that is part and parcel of youth, particularly youth in a rural community in which library resources were scant at best, and attempting to obtain better ones through inter-library loan would have meant having to explain to disapproving adults why I should need such specialized materials on a subject regarded as suspect at best.

In 2003 I had actually begun a reasonably mature version of it, but events forced me to set it aside indefinitely after the first three chapters and half of a fourth, and the impetus was lost. But in these past few weeks, a friend had suggested that it might be one project that would actually have a reasonable chance of attracting the attention of an agent, and that I should resume work on it. So I got it back out and dusted it off again, and found that perhaps it wasn't quite as hopeless as I had thought.

However, as I got into Chapter 5, I began to lose momentum as I came upon scenes for which I had only the briefest of outlines. Although sometimes even a few sentences will evoke the entire scene such that I need only set fingers to keyboard and type, this was not the case. Hoping to keep moving forward, I decided to skip over the difficult scenes and move on to Chapter 6, and for a while I did get some fair movement. But I had to set it aside over the weekend in order to finish some articles on a deadline, and when I returned to it on Monday, I found that the point at which I had stopped did not lend itself to further forward motion.

Frustrated, I decided to jump forward to the next major scene, which takes the action to Moscow and the decision by the head of the KGB that Andropov and his fellows are not responding adequately to the disturbances in the Caucasus. However, when I actually started writing it, instead of unfolding properly it came out in awkward jerks, without the flow of supporting information that is really needed.

And then I realized that one of the biggest problems is that, since I have not written all of Chapter 5 yet, I do not really know exactly what information has been presented about KGB General Semyonov yet.

So it appears that it is going to be essential for me to go back to Chapter 5 and slowly force my way through each of those scenes, developing all the necessary information. Only then will I be able to go forward to the scenes that build upon it and not feel like the story is riddled with holes.

Reading from the Writer's Perspective

2008-08-10T23:35:00.002-04:00

One of the more interesting things about being a writer is how it affects the way you read. Even when you're reading someone else's writing, there's always the tendency to look at the more technical aspects of the work.

This is particularly true if you have had the opportunity to read draft versions of a work. The writing community is a rather small one, and we frequently read one another's works in progress. For instance, I originally read Sherwood Smith's latest novel, A Stranger to Command, in draft form in the Athanarel community on LiveJournal. As a result, I kept noticing differences between the finished novel and the versions I had read.

For instance, in at least one version there was some earlier material in the beginning, dealing with Vidanric's parents observing him fencing and discussing the state of the kingdom of Remalna. However, that appears to have vanished altogether in the final version, which begins with the abrupt introduction of the rather lost young Vidanric at the Marloven war academy. Although there is a certain loss of background, the reader now gets to share Vidanric's sense of being out of place, even a fish out of water, which in many ways increases the sense of identification with him.

Beginnings are always the trickiest part of stories, because the writer must introduce the reader quickly enough to engage their interest and not bore them, but not so quickly as to overwhelm them and thus lose them.

Father of the Man

2008-08-04T22:36:00.004-04:00

The child is the father of the man, the old saying goes. And it's always interesting to see familiar characters when they were younger than I've been accustomed to seeing them.

While I was messing around coming up with a new idea for next year for an annual anthology, I hit on a story of Robert Cardinal Dautery's youth. Probably one of the most notorious Heirs to Cody thanks to his extensive Outfit connections and the questions about his becoming Heir to Cody, he loomed large over the story of Julian Falconskirk and the Rebinding of the Isolated Worlds. But even in Anne's stories, in which he's still living, he's always a distant figure.

And now I'm outlining the story of his episcopal consecration, and how it became entangled with the murder of his mother in an attempt on his father's life that went terribly wrong (his father was consigliere to the Boss of Codyland, and thus a legitimate target for a rubout, but the code of honor prohibited the deliberate targeting of family members). And now I can see some of the family politics that have tangled and twisted his life, including an elopement that will have interesting consequences for Anne a generation later.

Now for the time to actually write all this stuff. Of course it would be easier to justify taking the time if someone out there would actually take some interest in my writing and buy some of it.

Bullies

2008-07-30T16:40:00.004-04:00

Recently I've pulled out Quest for Video, the first of a trilogy that I originally started planning way back in 1993 when I was working at Moraine Valley Community College and we had an exhibit on the early days of television. It's set in a world where an attempt to use genetic engineering to end sexism led to a catastrophic war that resulted in a rejection of technology. Four centuries have passed, and a few nations are slowly readopting various kinds of technology. However, electronics remains forbidden, although electricity has been readmitted for about a generation because of its general usefulness.

Trasin, an androgyne (medial sex that's a result of the ill-advised efforts to end sexism through genetics), dreams of re-creating television without the use of banned vacuum tubes or transistors. It's a tall order, particularly after sie had to flee hir native Gamorra for the more laid-back ac-Daithas. There, friendless and beset by both poverty and ill-health, sie struggles to keep the dream alive.

Sie is at the miserable day-job where sie has been ordered to work full-time to repay the debts that resulted from hir latest bout with life-threatening illness, trying to grab a few moments to jot down a diagram for a new design during the lunch break that is hir only free time. But a workplace bully grabs the notebook from hir hands and reads from it in a nasty voice, while his sycophants laugh in derision. Then they decide to play keep-away, tossing it back and forth over the head of poor Trasin, who tries desperately and fruitlessly to recapture it.

It's interesting to draw upon an actual incident that happened to me (although in my case the stolen item was a pair of shoes), and the feelings of helplessness and of fear of retribution that might come upon me by authority figures who either saw me as contributing to my own torment, or thought that bearing down on me might somehow force me to become stronger.

Drilling Into History

2008-06-24T20:11:00.004-04:00

I've been working on some of the family history of Rene XIV for his novel. As I did, I have broken into a whole new layer of the history of another of the major nations of Ixilon, New Avignon.

Now I'm discovering that their royal family has a very interesting history, torn by an accusation of adultery that may have been false. An embittered prince, certain that his mother has been falsely accused and wrongly executed, flees rather than submit to the king's command to enter a monastery.

Thus begins a pirate dynasty that troubles the Great Lakes for generations, until they finally displace the original royal family, thus vindicating the original prince's claims.

Of course the lake pirates are quite a bit different from your standard pirates of the Spanish Main. They're on fresh water in a temperate climate, so they're going to have to have safe harbors in which to hide when the lakes freeze over for the winter. And since there are several major waterfalls in the Great Lakes in Ixilon, just as there are in our world, they've got to be able to masquerade as respectable merchants in order to get through the locks.

One of these days I'm going to have to write the stories of the lake pirates. But of course first I need to have time.

Behind the Scenes

2008-05-08T14:36:00.003-04:00

Archbishop Zhakhaim Sidor, Apostolic nuncio to the Swamp Kingdom, was a relatively minor figure in Young Rene XIV. As the novel progressed, I knew that he would be dismissed for his less than stellar performance during the crisis of Sebastien's usurpation of the Cypress Throne. As I was planning some more stories in that sequence, I had a vision of him as an embittered exile in a minor diocese on his homeworld, Tharishon.

And now he's telling me the story of his exile. But it's not really a story that could ever go anywhere, because he never overcomes, just wallows in his bitterness and his resentment of those he perceives as having wronged him.

But there are some benefits of knowing that little piece of background, even if it never appears directly in any of the Ixilon novels.

Now I Know

2008-04-08T12:48:00.003-04:00

A while back I had mentioned suddenly knowing the name of Cardinal Griswold, one of the Heirs to Cody, but without any history or background behind the name.

Now I finally know -- he was Heir to Cody at the time of the attack on Rock Island. With the Archbishop of Vaildai, he was instrumental in forcing their respective heads of state and government to come to terms and make peace.

And of course I'd love to write the story of that incident, but there's just no time.

Past History

2008-03-07T19:17:00.003-05:00

One of the biggest questions in my mind is how Codyland's racketocracy came to be. After all, these people are supposed to be descendants of Americans, specifically from Chicago and downstate Illinois. Although the association of Chicago with gangsters has deep literary roots, and it's unsurprising that they might deliberately adopt motifs taken from the beer wars of the Roaring Twenties, it seemed odd that Americans would completely abandon the tradition of representative government and constitutional law in favor of one of hits and sit-downs, where being in famiglia can be as important as being right.

And today, as I was listening to the radio, I heard the old Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again." And immediately I've got images in my mind. I know that Peter Eisner, one of the early Heirs to Cody and source of so much of that particular tradition, was also a Who fan. So of course it's got to be during his lifetime.

Now if I just had the time to actually work it through and write it.

New Light on Old Stories

2008-03-02T19:09:00.003-05:00

Almost a year ago I gave up on the second Anne story when I got well and throroughly stuck. I knew more or less how the story needed to end, but I couldn't see how to get there. Worse, it was already too long for the market I wanted to send it to.

Then, while I was at the meeting of our local science fiction club, I pulled it back out and started messing with it. Suddenly things started to click and I could see several interesting twists that would not only complicate the situation, but actually help carry it to the end.

So now I'm franticly jotting down notes when I really ought to be working. But I want to capture all these ideas before they slip away.

The Fourth Estate

2008-02-25T19:02:00.001-05:00

I've been working on an article on the history of rotary printing presses, and as I was reading, I got to thinking about Codyland. They're the only truly industrial society in the Ixilon universe, and I know they have big daily newspapers, descendants of Chicago's daily papers.

And as I'm visualizing how they would adapt press and typesetting technology to their world, I began seeing how Anne (my half-arithrae detective) could become involved with it while one a case. And the next thing I knew, I was scribbling ideas down at a tremendous rate of speed. When I should've been working on my articles, too.

But now I have a fair idea for the story of what was going on as Cardinal Dautery lay dying. All I need is a chance to write it.

Better than Nothing -- Followup

2008-02-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

I heard back from Clockwork Phoenix today -- rejection. I hadn't really expected to have much chance, since I wasn't able to finish the story that I'd been writing specifically for it, and everything I had on hand was at best a very wide match. Still, it's rather annoying to lose out because of purely extraneous issues that had nothing whatsoever to do with my writing ability. I still want to have had a real opportunity with it, which would require having had the time to write the story that was specifically designed to match the anthology theme.

There is a reason that linear time is very high on my list of "things to get rid of once I become dictator of the Universe."

Returning to a Work After Time Away

2008-02-04T17:34:00.001-05:00

Recently I became involved in a discussion about students resubmitting work that had been done for an earlier class. I noted that even if there were no formal rule against it, I couldn't imagine resubmitting an essay without a minimum of one good polishing rewrite, and possibly some significant work to re-draft it. I find that if I have been away from a piece of writing for any substantial length of time, I start seeing all kinds of places where I could improve it.

For instance, over the weekend I was at a meeting, and it wasn't really feasible for me to take any of my articles with me. So I packed a story that I hadn't touched in several months. I'd figured I'd pick it back up where I'd left off, but as I reread the last page, I ended up tossing those last several paragraphs and rewriting the beginning of that scene entirely. As a result, I actually ended up writing only a couple of sentences of new text.

Of course it would be so much easier if I just had some more writing time. But unless we see some serious financial improvements, such that I can earn a lot more money in exchange for a lot less time, it's unlikely in the extreme that I'm going to have nice big chunks of writing time again in the foreseeable future.

Better than Nothing

2008-01-31T21:31:00.000-05:00

I ended up finally having to send an old story to Clockwork Phoenix. When I first heard about the anthology, I developed a story that was going to be a great fit for the theme. But writing it proved to be a slow process, and I knew that I'd have to work hard to get it done by the deadline.

Only I didn't get the time to finish it. In September our car's transmission went out on us, and it was going to cost more than the car was worth to fix it. So we ended up getting rid of the car and getting a new van for our business, and keeping our old van as a second vehicle. But that van came with one huge price tag, which meant that all my time had to go to non-fiction writing and to getting a teaching position. Thus my story still stands exactly where I stopped the afternoon of the day we actually bought the new van.

I'll still keep the half-written story, in hopes that maybe one of these days I can get my income to the level where I actually have some time to spare for writing fiction on spec. But it's frustrating to have to just look for something to send so that I can at least say I tried, when I had something so much better if only I'd had the time to get it finished.

Who Are You?

2008-01-29T15:29:00.000-05:00

The name "Cardinal Griswold" came to me recently, and I know he's going to be one of the Heirs to Cody. Since I know the names of those who lived in four key periods of Codyland's history, I know he's got to be from one of the gaps between them. However, beyond the name, I have no real history, no events, nothing to tell me whether he's one of the people about whom stories are told, or just a name in the history books for students to memorize.

Normally I'd have time to tease out some background, to pull and tug on the history of Codyland to see where he belongs. But right now I have no time to do anything but struggle to stay abreast with all my obligations. I barely have time to even jot down the name lest I forget it, and I really shouldn't be writing here.

Gotta get back to work.

Sir, May I Please Have a Little More?

2008-01-12T15:37:00.000-05:00

Time, that is. I've got some really cool ideas forming in my mind, but no time in which to write them. In fact, I really shouldn't even be taking the time to write this, because I have a whole list of things I need to get accomplished today and I haven't even gotten one done.

But it's so hard to have stories forming up in your mind and to have to tell them they will all have to just go stand in line. Heck, I'm even having to tell money-making projects to stand in line, for the simple reason that I have even more important projects that have to be allowed to cut in front of them.

Time to get back to work.

Stuck

2007-09-30T22:21:00.000-04:00

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. It's just that all my stories are stuck, and I have no time to get them past those sticking points.

Basically, I've reached a point in every one of them where the storyline is no longer clear, and I really need to have a good stretch of uninterrupted time to work through those problems. Unfortunately, due to the other obligations in my life, all I have to work with are bits and fragments of broken time. A few minutes standing in line here, a couple more while waiting on hold there. Never enough to really hold a complex story in my head long enough to sort through the difficulties.

So from time to time I start a new story, only to have it to reach a sticking point as well. And then there are the six stories that I've finished, but would like to find another set of eyes to look them over, but just can't.

Which leaves my writing pretty much at an impasse.

Mirror, Mirror

2007-01-24T22:35:00.000-05:00

As I'm working on Young Rene XIV, I'm realizing that the 708 Rebellion in Codyland is almost precisely contemporaneous with Sebastien's usurpation of the Cypress Throne and Rene's ouster of him. Which makes me want to work on Steam Heat in parallel with it.

There are strong parallels between the two novels, which make them an interesting study in contrasts. Both of them are about struggles against tyranny, and both stories are resolved by the restoration of a rightful leader. But what constitutes the rightful leader is very different in the two countries.

The Swamp Kingdom is a heriditary monarchy. Thus, Rene's primary claim to legitimacy rests upon his being the eldest son of the previous king. By contrast, Codyland traces its heritage to the United States and the tradition of popular sovreignty, even if formal republican government has been submerged. Thus, the legitimate ruler is the one who represents the people's will.

Entitlement

2006-11-19T21:22:00.000-05:00

But not in the sense of "I'm owed this."

I'm currently in the process of rewriting a number of stories, and have come to the conclusion that their titles simply don't work. Some of them give away the conclusion of the story. Others sound like something out of a standard genre cliche list, or just plain clunky and stupid.

A bad title can actually prejudice an editor or first reader against a story to the point that it simply won't get a fair reading. But you have to have something in that "title" slot -- to send a story in without a title would be considered about as unprofessional as sending it written in crayon on brown paper bags. Leaving a story untitled because you can't come up with a good one will pretty well guarantee that it will not be read.

But coming up with a new title is often an exercise in frustration. Ideally, a title should perfectly encapsulate the story, yet not spoil any surprises or destroy the tension of the story. It should be catchy and memorable, but not trite or cliched. It should resonate on several levels, and not clash in terms of culture: ie, a fantasy set in a quasi-European medieval setting probably shouldn't have a title that is drawn from Buddhist philosophy or Eastern martial arts, unless there is a very good reason for it. Similarly, a title in Latin, drawn from or even suggestive of medieval Catholicism, probably wouldn't be a good fit for a story set in medieval Japan or an analog thereof.

In other words, a title should fit. And that's what's hard.

Sometimes I'm lucky and the story comes with a clear and obvious title from the beginning. A few times, I've had the title come first and have to pull and tug at it until I was able to pull the story out. But far more frequent are the stories that languish for ages with working titles that are little more than the name of a major character, or a place. And when it comes time to get them ready to send out, the hardest part is often finding a suitable title for them.

Beginnings

2006-10-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

Recently I'd pulled a number of old short stories and decided to do some work on them and send them out again. One in particular, which belongs in the same sequence as "Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk" (it's about the son of the principal protagonists), seemed to be an easy fix.

However, as I got into it again, I began to wonder if I'd really started it too early, and whether the buildup to the shipwreck was really germane to the story. However, as I tried to find some way to excise it, I had the problem of creating a new beginning for it that would set up the situation sufficiently to make a reader care.

But then, beginnings are always tough, and beginnings of short stories doubly so. You've got to set up the situation quickly, yet not so much so that the reader becomes lost. Sometimes the hardest part is figuring out what bits of information are so critical they have to be presented upfront, and what bits can be saved for later without trouble.

On Writer's Block

2006-09-26T23:00:00.001-04:00

Recently I've been pulling out some of my old short stories, trying to decide what I want to do with them. However, it's proven harder than I'd anticipated.

In particular, I'm looking at several of them and trying to figure out what I even want to do with them. I wonder if I should completely redo them, or even toss them out altogether and start over, telling the stories afresh with completely new words.

And at the same time, I'm wondering if I'm becoming hypercritical, to the point that nothing looks good. There are points at which our awareness of writing craft outstrips our ability to actually produce, so we're left feeling like all our work is hopelessly inadequate.

In The Steel Breeds True, Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle is struggling with just such a period. Her internal editor, which has become externalized in her mind as a sort of miniature Yezhov, is continually telling her that every single word she puts on paper is trash. She is a published poet, who even has had her works picked up by textbooks and anthologies that pay her money, yet she is struggling with an overwhelming sense of complete inadequacy.

Is it any wonder that I, who have managed only occasional sales, should be wondering if everything I've written is a load of horse manure.

Points of View

2006-09-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

After years of letting it simmer on the back burner, I've finally taken The Dolphin-singer back out. It's an expansion of the short story "Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk" (published in Sherwood Smith's anthology Beyond the Farthest Star), and I'd originally started it way back in 2000, when it became increasingly clear that the story of Rissa and Admiral Shayell simply did not lend itself to a series of linked short stories. It's set during the Isolation, perhaps a century or so before Codyland Reunion, although there is almost no overlap in the characters, so it can certainly be left ambiguous until I actually need to fix the relative chronology.

As I'm outlining Chapter 2, I'm realizing increasingly that the intricate web of misunderstandings that are so critical to the story really need access to the heads of both Admiral Shayell and Lord Benton. It's just as important to see what each man meant as what they misunderstand the other as saying and doing. However, to try to do it in tight third-person POV would mean a whole series of tiny scenes, switching back and forth.

However, I'm not sure to what degree I can get away with switching to omniscient POV, particularly given that omniscient is severely out of favor right now. An established author can do it -- viz. Sherwood Smith's recent novel Inda, which uses omniscient to great effect in several scenes. But a first novel already faces a major hurdle just getting past the "read to reject" first readers, and burdening it with an unpopular POV choice could be just one too many issues.

Hopscotch

2006-08-29T23:15:00.000-04:00

Some people write novels by starting at the beginning and writing steadily through until they reach then end. Others jump around, doing the chapters that interest them, then going back and knitting everything together.

I find that different novels lend themselves to different approaches. Some, particularly those with multiple diverse threads that slowly draw together, are easy to write out of sequence. Others need to be written one chapter at a time, because I can only see each chapter as I come to it.

But whatever kind of novel I happen to be working on, I've learned that I can't be too rigidly wedded to a particular approach. If a novel that I'm working on by doing chapters all over the storyline starts to unravel in my hands, I may have to go back and actually write some of those chapters that I've been skipping over. Equally, if I get balked by a chapter in a novel I'm writing sequentially, but I have a clear view of the chapter that follows, it's often best to simply jump over the offending chapter, then come back and work it out once I have a clearer idea just where the novel is heading.

Young Rene XIV is something of a mix. I've been doing it largely sequentially, but more than once I've jumped over a problematic chapter, or scene within a chapter, in order to keep from being left stuck. Recently Chapter 10, which deals with events in the hinterland of the Swamp Kingdom, was giving me trouble. I just couldn't seem to get a feel for where it needed to go. However, I had a much clearer idea of what Chapter 11 should look like, so I decided to jump ahead and write it. So now the novel's moving again.

Milestones

2006-08-06T21:50:00.000-04:00

Today I broke 50,000 words on Young Rene XIV, which is a significant milestone. That's the number of words you try to produce in NaNoWriMo (although I have yet to be able to participate -- every November it seems some obligation always comes up to devour all my available time). I'm figuring that I'm somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way through the overall storyline, although the overall form of the novel is still shaky in my mind.

Still, it was cool to add up all the chapter wordcounts and realize that I'd made the mark -- and I still have scenes I need to add to or complete in both Chapter 3 and Chapter 5, and may be adding one more scene to Chapter 2. Not to mention that I'm still extremely dissatisfied with Chapter 1, at least partly because significant parts of it strike me as idiot plot as written. So it's quite possible that the 50,000 word mark may shift backward somewhat before I get a complete draft written.

How long that may take will probably depend upon what other obligations come my way. Although right now it seems that non-fiction projects are rather scarce on the ground.

Looking for a Key

2006-08-03T22:37:00.000-04:00

A key element, that is.

I'd been able to push the first scene of Chapter 3 of Young Rene XIV forward a few pages, only to run into a fresh block. This time it was a logical one -- I knew Benoit du Rocher needed a way to get a message to his wife, but couldn't take it himself. I'd originally thought to have him send a messenger, but if he did that, why didn't he order the messenger to accompany her and the children on the road?

Not to mention, if he couldn't get through, why did he think a messenger could get through in his place?

So I was stuck, trying to figure out how to logically bridge the gap. It was too short a distance for a carrier pigeon, but perhaps some other animal might be suitable -- and equally, not suitable for taking on the road, which would rule out a dog.

Did I want to go for something ordinary, if a little wild, like a raccoon? Or perhaps something exotic, like a small raptoral dinosaur or some really alien critter imported from the Outer Worlds?

And then I recalled that Ixilon's cats enjoy greater intelligence than those we're familiar with, and there are personal connections with a historical hero whom Benoit greatly admires. Suddenly everything came together and I knew how to take care of that critical juncture.

However, I'm now faced with the question of whether I need to have cats and their strange gifts in Ixilon figure again in the story.

Returning after Time Away from a Project

2006-07-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

I was happily surprised when I recently picked up the young Rene XIV novel after having set it aside for over a month, and discovered that the time working on other projects did indeed allow me to get a fresh perspective on it. Things that had been insurmountable barriers suddenly came clear to me, and I was able to outline a large number of chapters.

Unfortunately, I'm now getting to the point where I need to actually write the chapters in order to get the necessary perspective to push the outline forward to the end. Which of course means actually having the time to write, not always a commodity in great supply. But I've just finished one major non-fiction project, and I'm hoping that will translate into some more writing time than I've experienced of late.

On the other hand, it's also possible that my clearing my desk will be rapidly followed by someone else writing me and asking if I'd like to pick up a project for them, on a very short deadline. And there will go my fiction writing time again, because we need that money.

Perspectives

2006-07-03T22:20:00.000-04:00

As I'm working on Codyland Reunion, I'm having some serious misgivings on my choices for point of view in Chapter 7. Most of the book is written in tight third person, but in this one I've slipped out to something more closely approaching omniscient.

However, in this scene I really don't want to get too close to the two spies. Not only are they unsavory sorts that I don't want to bring too close to the reader, but I want to create a certain air of mystery and danger around them, which could be dispelled too early if I let the reader into their heads. At the same time, there's really no one else who will see them as they sneak their way into Crescent City for their meeting with Tony Yale.

This may end up being another of those things that I'll let stand until I finish writing the whole novel, then see whether it works in the matrix of the finished work.

Steady as She Goes

2006-06-20T22:22:00.000-04:00

Progress on Codyland Reunion remains painfully slow, largely because of other obligations that eat up my time. However, when I have been able to get a few paragraphs written, I've been discovering some interesting little techniques by which the Codylanders make more enjoyable the necessity of living underground.

Unfortunately, it's mostly just local color, rather than any real advancement of the story. Oh, for time to let go and write, instead of having to constantly hold it all in while I trudge through duty.

Sticking Points

2006-06-14T23:06:00.000-04:00

I've been working on the novel of the end of the Isolation (working title Codyland Reunion) for some time now, and I had been enjoying a fairly steady flood of ideas, working well ahead of the novel itself. Now that seems to have stopped.

In fact, I seem to be having a drought of ideas all across the board. None of the novels seem to be producing ideas, which is rather frustrating when I have a little spare time and would like to make good use of it jotting down ideas.

However, I think part of the problem may be that I simply need to write up the chapters I have outlined. Once I get them firmed up, I often start seeing the connections and can move onward from there.

Unfortunately, that assumes that the time is even available. And with all the obligations on my plate right now, time is in very short supply.

Building Bridges

2006-05-02T22:42:00.000-04:00

A lot of people have the impression that one writes a novel by starting at the beginning and writing straight through to the end. However, this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes writing a novel is rather like building a bridge, working from both banks at once and aiming to meet in the middle.

I'm doing that with Plausible Deniability right now. I've gotten to a sticking point in the early chapters, but I have a strong idea of the ending. So I jumped ahead and wrote those scenes, which simultaneously gave me the sense of progress that comes from having written, and gives me a clearer sense of where the first part of the novel is going. Just having those key scenes written allows me to consider what kind of foreshadowing and element planting I need to do in the early parts of the novel.

So now I'm not only working forward from the beginning, but also working backward from the end, adding the scenes that lead up to the ending scenes I've already written. Hopefully I can bring both ends together in the middle.

Of course if there are problems, there's always the rewrite to take care of them.

Placeholders

2006-04-09T12:20:00.000-04:00

I was working on The Crowns of the Martyrs, writing the scene in which Ligonier Cardinal Rafferty visits the Archbishop of Vaildai to congratulate him on being named to the sacred purple, and I knew Urdan was having some kind of emergency that kept him from being present at Ligo's arrival, as protocol would really require. However, I soon realized that I was writing around the nature of the problem, and the text was effectively a placeholder.

Placeholders can be tricky. Sometimes they can enable you to write around some minor bit of information, like the name of a minor character who'll only appear once, or some minor incident that isn't really critical to the story, so that you can keep the story energy flowing. Then, when you've got the whole novel written, you can look back and see what fits best into that odd little spot, and it's actually likely to have more resonance with the whole story than if you'd stopped and tried to force the right answer as you went.

But if it's actually a placeholder for something critical to the story, it can sap the story of life, or even keep you from reaching the conclusion the way it really needs to be done. And if you don't realize that you've got a placeholder for the real thing, you can end up with a limp, lifeless story.

Papers Please

2006-04-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

As I'm writing the story of young Rene XIV and Sebastien the Usurper, I'm getting steadily closer to the point where Rene's blasted into our world and falls in among a group of teenage skiffy fen who help him integrate into our world when they think the worldgate may well be a one-way, one-time event, and then defend him when Sebastien's goon comes hunting for him, and help him get back to his own world to regain his throne after it's obviously possible to reopen the gate.

But as I'm doing it, I'm discovering just how hard it would be to insert a kid into the school system who has absolutely no backtrail, no identity documents, no record whatsoever of his existence before the moment he appears in Cynthia's family's backyard in the middle of a pouring rainstorm. The obvious cover is that he's a refugee from the hurricane that's just torn up the Gulf (and probably is the source of the rainstorm he arrives in). This would explain why he has no documents -- he got up here with nothing but the clothes on his back, and was separated from his family and isn't even sure they survived.

However, there's the question of whether the school system would let him in on even a temporary basis with no documents without his putative guardian actually coming into the office to sign paperwork and speak with the administrators. The kids don't want to clue Cynthia's mom in on the situation because she runs a beauty shop and is a notorious gossip -- and the beauty shop also provides the obvious excuse as to why she can't come in for face time with the administration, since she can't just cancel her customers' appointments and close her beauty shop so she can go jump through bureaucratic hoops. That is supposed to give the opening for the late-twenties older sister of one of Cynthia's friends to call the administrative office on her cellphone, pretending to be Cynthia's mom in the middle of her beauty shop, and tell the administration to just send the necessary paperwork home with the kids and she'll sign it and send it back the next morning. But if they're going to insist on face time, it's going to get a lot tougher. Either Sandy comes up with fake ID with her face and Cynthia's mom's name on it (and thus commits criminal identity fraud), or she arrives as herself and then has to explain just how a Greek-American should be guardian to a Louisiana Cajun with a noticable French accent.

And even if I can get them over the initial hump and get Rene into school, eventually they're going to want to see some documentation. It's believable to say his school records and immunization records are irrevocably destroyed and there's no way to obtain copies, since schools and doctors' offices don't typically maintain offsite copies of their records, so if the schools and doctors' offices in question are completely destroyed by the hurricane, those records could be wiped out. Even a baptismal certificate could believably be impossible to obtain if parish churches don't routinely send their records on baptisms, marriages and deaths to the diocese to be kept in the central chancery archives. But believably claiming that his birth certificate has been irrevocably destroyed in this day and age is pretty close to impossible. Once there was a time when a fire in a county courthouse could wipe out all those vital records -- but at least in Indiana all hospitals send birth and death records to the central vital statistics bureau in the Department of Health on a daily basis (my husband works with the ISDH computers, and has told me how these things work). Louisiana probably follows a similar protocol, and since Baton Rouge is well inland, it'd be hard to believe that a hurricane could retain enough strength to destroy the state vital records center. And even if it did, with the practice of keeping duplicate data centers in remote locations, it's likely that even complete destruction of the one in Baton Rouge would still leave duplicate records in Montana or Wyoming or suchlike. And then there's the problem of a Social Security number -- and Social Security records are kept in Federal record centers in Washington DC, and probably duplicated in multiple secure locations, so even if his Social Security card was reduced to a pulp in his wallet, the record would be there in the Federal government's files -- and when the local Social Security office can't turn it up, there's going to be a major problem.

So if Rene's going to be on Earth for any length of time, either his teenage protectors are going to have to get involved in criminal identity fraud, or his story is going to fall apart for want of documents that can't plausibly have been irrevocably destroyed, and aren't going to be there.

Yes, we really are that tightly documented from birth to death these days, and every important step of our lives requires producing those documents, to the point that it's impossible to operate without them. The present is most definitely not a friendly place and time for a visitor from another universe.

Going Back

2006-03-27T21:25:00.000-05:00

As I'm writing the novel of young Rene XIV and Sebastien the usurper, I'm thinking ahead to the ending, and specifically to Cynthia Delacroix having to go back to Earth and her old life after she's had extraordinary adventures with the boy king.

It's something almost no world-crossing adventure novels address -- having to go back to the child role after having made adult decisions and shouldered adult responsibilities, and being given adult respect for doing so. When young people shoulder adult roles in an emergency in the mundane world that puts normal adult authority out of commission, at least they're recognized as heroes, and perhaps even accorded a little more respect, a little more latitude. People understand when they have trouble resuming the child role, if they aren't always quite as deferential, quite as quick to assume that adults are right by definition.

But if all those adventures have taken place in another world, and you're returned to your own world just moments after you left it, nobody knows what you've gone through. And you can't even try to explain, because it will only get you dismissed as delusional. If you have trouble slipping back into the child role after having been treated as an adult for what may have been months for you, it'll simply be assumed that you're being stubborn or sassy, as opposed to having trouble going back to ordinary life after extraordinary adventures.

Yet at the same time, I don't want to create a downer ending, in which Cynthia despairs of ever being able to fit into a world in which she is going to be but an insignificant, interchangable cog. Because realistically, there's no way she's ever going to rise in this world to anything comparable in status to what she briefly enjoyed in Ixilon, being a counselor to a king, helping him regain his throne from an evil usurper, and generally being one of the movers and shakers. Most likely she will be expected to slot herself into an ordinary, workaday job for the rest of her life, doing as she's told, perhaps rising to a middle-management position, but certainly never being one of the great decisionmakers.

I may be able to suggest at the end that somehow Rene did find a way to open a gate that would allow Cynthia to move permanently to Ixilon, but somehow that seems like sidestepping the very real problem of how can Cynthia ever return to ordinary life after her extraordinary adventure.

Hurrying

2006-03-25T21:11:00.000-05:00

As I'm working on the novel of young King Rene XIV and the usurper Sebastien (as of yet untitled), I'm beginning to get the feeling that there's simply too big of a jump from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3. At the close of Chapter 2, Rene and his brother Alexandre have made contact with Eigun Eiderveyen, who is going to help them get out of the capital as Sebastien's forces are rapidly taking it over. When Chapter 3 begins, Rene and Alexandre are on the royal flagship, well out to sea, and Rene is reflecting on their escape.

I'd originally thought that the process of getting to the flagship and getting it out of the harbor probably wasn't of that great of interest, and it would be best to jump ahead and cover it only in a brief flashback. But as I tried to get Chapter 3 moving, I realized that there's just too much material there to cover in a brief flashback, and it really does need to be covered properly.

So now Chapter 3 is going to become Chapter 4, moving everything that follows forward one chapter, and I add in another chapter of events in Ste. Genevieve as it's falling to Sebastien's forces. I'm hoping this will prove satisfactory, and I'll be able to move forward on this thing.

The Empty White Room

2006-03-21T21:54:00.000-05:00

When I was originally starting to write the story of young Rene XIV and the usurper Sebastien, I was moving right along with the brief prolog and started the first few paragraphs of the first chapter. Due to other responsibilities, I had to set it to the side for a while. When I came back to it the next day, I couldn't seem to get it going again. Since I had a strong image for the second chapter, I decided to jump ahead and write that one, then come back and tackle getting the first chapter moving.

So, after perhaps a month, some work on another novel later in the sequence, and other life events intervening, I came back and reread the abortive beginning of the first chapter. Immediately I realized what was wrong with it -- it might as well be happening in an empty white room.

We have the boy king and Cardinal Chartremont, but there's absolutely no sense of setting. There's none of the exotic environment of the Floating Palace, the court, any of the stuff that's going on. It's as if the interaction between them takes place in a vacuum.

So I have to try to give the scene a sense of place, which means backing up long enough to capture the image of the room in which they're standing, of the temperament of the people assembled there, all the things I need. And as I do that, I finally get another bit that's been eluding me -- a better sense of why the two men are even meeting in the first place, and what it all means.

But it's an easy trap to fall into -- to want to jump straight into action, and in the process fail to ground that action in any sort of surroundings, to the point that it might as well be taking place in an empty white room.

The Slow Uphill Struggle

2006-03-07T21:28:00.000-05:00

Last week, I seemed to be making fairly good progress on The Crowns of the Martyrs. The words were flowing fairly well, and I was filling Chapter 1 in quite nicely.

This week, things aren't going so smoothly. I'd moved up to Chapter 3, to the scene in which Ligonier Rafferty is dealing with the public response to the announcement that two other senior prelates from their world are to be given the red hat in the upcoming consistory. I thought it would be condusive to relatively rapid writing, but instead every word seems to be a chore to drag out. I've been working on it for two days now, and I'm still slowly and painfully dragging out the words of the opening paragraphs, introducing Ligo to the reader. I haven't even managed to get to the point where he discovers that he's got an incipient riot on his hands.

Needless to say, this is quite frustrating, after the energy with which the words were coming only last week.

After the Beginning

2006-03-05T20:33:00.000-05:00

Discovering the proper beginning point of a novel can be difficult, but even then, the problems aren't necessarily over. You still have to work out each step until you get to the end.

Right now I'm working on The Crowns of the Martyrs, and I'm beginning to wonder if I need another chapter between the first and second. I'd originally intended to start with Jan-Pawel's arrival in New Rome on the Lake called Bitter after the end of his disastrous mission in the Caliphate. But I decided to add another scene in front of it, then expanded that scene to an entire chapter, moving Jan-Pawel's first scene to the second chapter.

Now I'm starting to think that there's too big of a logical jump between the close of the first chapter and the beginning of the second. We end the first chapter with Witten laying his plans to have Jan-Pawel "kicked upstairs" to a position where he'll have prestige but little or no power, and in the second we have Jan-Pawel arriving to receive the news of his promotion. On one hand, it seems to me that there should be at least a little of the methods by which Witten persuaded his superiors to grant this promotion without realizing that, far from wishing to honor Jan-Pawel, Witten in fact intended to destroy his effectiveness, permanently. On the other hand, every chapter I add to the front delays Jan-Pawel's appearence further, and could lead to confusion as to just who the principal protagonist is.

The Problem of Evil

2006-02-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

Normally I stay away from fundamentalism, whether it's the typical Evangelical Protestant brand or radical-traditionalist and ultra-traditionalist Catholicism. But recently I came across a gem of an article series that I couldn't pass by just because of the writer's other intellectual positions.

The blog's called The American Inquisiton, and in among the railing against the republic is a most interesting set of articles on the portrayal of evil in the media, and particularly in the cinema. It starts with Narnia, and continues through The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, then closes with a final analysis.

Whether or not we agree with the blogger's conclusion that the problems in portraying evil in current films are the result of a loss of a religious sense of sin, as writers we have to take note of the issues he raises that these filmmakers have not adequately established that the antagonists in these films are indeed evil, and the protagonists are indeed justified in the actions they are taking against the antagonists.

As beginning writers we are cautioned against the danger of creating cardboard villains who are purely Eee-vil, without any beleivable motivations. We carefully study methods for giving our villains believable "tragic virtues" that show they are developed characters rather than merely types. Yet do we, in doing so, end up undercutting the sense that they are indeed villains, and end up sending the message that there is no such thing as evil, merely misunderstanding?

Part of the problem is of course the need in visual media such as the cinema and television to shy away from graphic violence in order to gain a rating that will garner the widest range of audiences. In this the novelist has an advantage, for there are many ways to describe atrocities in written media without becoming needlessly graphic, for instance, focusing on the trauma of the survivor, with the actual act kept in the past.

But there still seems to be a noticable misuse of the "tragic virtue," such that "he's not all that bad" becomes a process of excusing the villain's crimes, as though being kind in one area makes it all right to be vicious in others. To take a historical example, the fact that Joseph Stalin did seem to actually love his daughter Svetlana, while it makes him a human being rather than a cardboard cutout, does not diminish the magnitude of his crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union, whom he murdered by the job-lot in his pursuit of total control.

On Seizing the Moment

2006-02-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

So today I finally get some writing time, and decide to pull out the novel of King Rene XIV of the Swamp Kingdom and his wicked uncle Sebastien the Usurper. I'm figuring that the words are going to just come pouring out, since I know the story so well and it's a pretty straightforward action-adventure fantasy. Not a lot of intricate philosophy or social dance, just the slam-bam of a coup d'etat and a boy king fleeing for his life to another world and teenage allies.

But when I sit down to write, it's a real struggle to get the words flowing. I push out a few sentences, and then I'm wandering around the house before I can sit down and put out a little more. I did manage to turn out almost 1500 words, but I'd been hoping for so much more.

I think it's that old problem of holding in and letting out. After having to hold back so long because of the press of non-fiction deadlines, it's hard to let go and let myself write. There's the pull of multiple other novel and short story projects that all want my attention. But there's also the sense that I ought to be doing something else. I do have two other article projects, even if I don't have the right books for either of them right now. And this house is anything but spotless and ready for the realtor to show Right This Minute, so there's the guilty sense that I Really Ought to be busily cleaning and getting it Just Perfect.

All of which makes it difficult for me to make the best use of this wonderful chunk of time that suddenly presents itself for me to use. It's so frustrating to produce so little, when there's so much to be told and so dreadfully little time.

The Perfect Stranger Problem Again

2006-02-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

As I'm forging ahead on The Crowns of the Martyrs, I'm realizing how completely ad intra a novel it is. That is, it's a novel set almost entirely within the halls of the Catholic Church, dealing with its people and politics. Unlike the other novels like Cloak and Shadow, there's not the strong element of interaction with members of other traditions, both Christian and non-Christian, and particularly the Independent Churches of Christ and Christian Churches of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, my own religious background.

Since I'm not Catholic, I suddenly have to confront the question of whether I should be writing this book, or if it's a form of trespass. In Cloak and Shadow, the strong role of Paige McFarland and her Restoration-Movement faith as seen through Jan-Pawel's Catholic perspective becomes a form of "how others see us," a chance for reflection. However, there just isn't going to be that element in The Crowns of the Martyrs, due to its focus on internal Catholic Church politics.

On the other hand, The Crowns of the Martyrs is going to be near the end of the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence, so by the time it comes out (assuming any of this stuff ever gets published), my ecumenical credentials should be well established. However, each novel really needs to stand on its own merits, since there's no guarantee that any given reader will have read any of the previous books.

In the meantime, I keep writing, even as I consider the issues. I do my best to handle the material respectfully, with the same sort of consideration and reverence I'd want my own faith given by others.

Reconsideration

2006-02-01T22:26:00.000-05:00

As I'm working on the novel of Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski and the massacre at the consistory (tentative working title either The Martyrs' Crowns or The Crowns of the Martyrs), I'm becoming steadily more convinced that my original plan for the first two chapters is faulty. Instead of having Jan-Pawel appear in the second scene of the first chapter, I'm thinking it's best to delay it until the beginning of the second chapter. This will permit the first chapter to deal entirely with the political maneuvering that makes possible the massacre, and will connect Jan-Pawel's entry with the next scene, in which he's introduced to Siloan. This way it will flow better, instead of moving in jerks.

However, I'm not entirely satisfied that delaying Jan-Pawel's appearance until the second chapter is really that good of an idea. Most of the important characters who are now appearing in Chapter 1 will be killed when the ninjas strike, and play no role in the subsequent conclave. On one hand, it's possible that the massacre is well enough into the novel that their deaths will mean all the more, but on the other, it's possible that readers will feel cheated to lose what seemed to be significant characters midway through the novel, and may not realize that Jan-Pawel, along with Eigun Eiderveyen, is the principal protagonist.

Of course this may be just another case in which I really need to write the whole novel and see where it's going before I can get a real feel for what needs to be done.

Entry Points and Introductions

2006-01-25T21:48:00.000-05:00

As I'm working on Cloak and Shadow and on the as-of-yet-untitled novel of the massacre at the consistory, I'm struggling with whether the beginnings of them are any good, or if I need to start somewhere, or somehow, else.

Although these will probably be later novels in the series, I can't really assume that every reader who picks them will have read the previous novels. So I've got to make sure that new readers are brought up to speed quickly, without boring long-term readers to tears.

In Cloak and Shadow, I introduce Jan-Pawel and Paige both through meetings with their respective bosses, sending them on their diplomatic missions. The third is of the refugee priest being threatened both by one of the local auxiliary bishops and by agents from the dictatorship that took over his home country. Now that I'm looking back at it, the interviews both seem to be bland -- yet they convey necessary information, introducing the characters and establishing their diplomatic credentials.

In the novel of the massacre at the consistory, I'm starting with a top-level political strategy discussion, yet I'm still not sure if that's the best way to start this novel either. Yet I'm not sure what kind of "we've got a conspiracy here" scene would work best without producing a false start.

You know, the sort of novel that begins with a slam-bam action scene, and then it ends and the characters in it don't show up again for ages, as you drag through how things got into such a fix. It's pretty close to a bait and switch, to my mind.

Of course it may all be just more of the walking-through-fog phenomenon. Once I have the whole thing written, I'll be able to look back and see how everything fits together. Maybe I won't even be using the original opening scene as the beginning. Maybe it'll become a later chapter, or disappear altogether.

Ideas and Time

2006-01-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

Why is it that, whenever your idea hamster is really getting going and you think you're finally going to have some time to actually write, it all goes away?

Things are really coming together on Cloak and Shadow right now, and I'm starting to see the interconnections I need in order to write it. And after I finished the last big load of articles and wasn't finding any new assignments on H-net, I thought I was going to have some actual writing time.

Fat chance. Today I get an e-mail from an editor I've worked for before, telling me she needs help with a bunch of articles that other people wussed out on. And we need the money, so I can't really tell her no. So I'm going to be frantically pounding out these articles for the next month, and there goes all my writing time.

We'll see if I ever get any writing time, or if it always ends up vanishing as the next non-fiction project makes its appearance.

Fog and Confidence

2006-01-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

I often compare the process of writing a novel to walking through fog, with the confidence that, even if I can't see all the way to the horizon, I can always see far enough to keep writing. One of the things this means for me is that I can feel confident to plunge into writing when I know relatively little about the world in which the novel in question is set.

For instance, as I start writing Cloak and Shadow, I still know relatively little about a whole lot of key things. I haven't sat down and worked out the staff of each of the embassies that are important in the novel, or the chancery of the archdiocese of Raus-ceil-quein, or the court of Queen Catriel. I still don't know about the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement) congregation where Paige McFarland will be worshipping, other than they're refugees, rather than Salquari. Yet I feel confident that I will start seeing them as I get close enough to actually need to write about them.

Of course there are dangers in plunging ahead, but there are also dangers in meticulously planning every single thing. On one hand, one can go in the wrong direction without realizing it, and end up having to do major rewrites, simply because an element appears midway through that becomes so important that one must go back and lay in the necessary foreshadowing so that it doesn't pop up from nowhere. On the other hand, one can become so obsessed with working everything out in detail before hand that one never gets to writing the first page of actual story.

False Starts

2006-01-09T21:45:00.000-05:00

Today while I was standing in line at the post office, I got out my trusty old Palm VIIx and started writing a scene in one of the novels I'm working on. I got about a paragraph done by the time I got up to the clerk. But almost as soon as I got out of the post office and headed back to the car, I had an intense feeling that I'd begun that scene the wrong way, and was going to have to toss it out and start over.

It's not an uncommon experience. If you start a scene even a little slightly off, it's possible to end up in a completely wrong direction.

At least in this case, I didn't do as badly as one scene I started in the first draft of The Steel Breeds True, when I picked the wrong POV. I got almost three pages in it before I realized that I needed a completely different point of view. The only way I was able to rewrite that one was to print out the first version, then open a completely new file and, using the old version as a guide to the events, write the scene from the proper POV.

This one's just a matter of a faulty assumption. Fix that one, and I should be back on track very quickly. Of course that assumes that I'll actually have the time to do the writing any time soon.

Missing Person Found

2006-01-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

I'd been rather frustrated in the writing of Cloak and Shadow because I could tell I was missing someone, but had no real sense of who this person could be.

And then yesterday, while I was listening to an old Steely Dan song, it finally hit me. First I got the name (although I'm spelling her name Paige rather than Page), and then biographical details came pouring in. Now I think I can finally get this novel going again -- assuming I ever get some writing time between all these non-fiction articles I have to churn out to keep the income flowing.

Yet another perfect example of the walking-through-fog phenomenon.

Back to the Beginning

2006-01-04T22:24:00.000-05:00

I should be working on a set of articles that are due January 16, but I haven't been able to get back into it and get going again on it. Frustrated with my inability to find a new entry point into the project, I got some of the Ixilon materials out again.

However, I do think I finally found the proper entry point to the whole sequence that deals with Eigun Eiderveyen and Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski. It's the story of the boy-king of the swamps, Rene XIV, and how his wicked uncle Sebastien thrust him into exile on the yonder side of a worldgate in order to usurp the Cypress Throne. However, the world into which he was thrown is our own, and there young Rene found allies of a most surprising sort.

I've written the prolog, in which Sebastien sets forth his plans, and a few sentences of the first chapter. I'd really like to push ahead on this novel, but at the same time I know that Ihave a moral obligation to get to work on the article project, since I've signed a contract promising that I'd get them written and turned in on time. And it doesn't help that the pay is really lousy on these articles, so there's not really that much to help motivate me in the face of a thorough lack of inspiration on how to turn these assignments into finished articles.

Walking Through Fog

2006-01-03T22:34:00.000-05:00

I often compare writing the first draft of a novel to walking in heavy fog. When I begin, I can't see my way through to the end yet. But I can see just far enough to write the first chapter. As I write it, I begin to see where the second chapter will go, and the one after it. Sometimes the fog clears for a space so that I begin seeing how several chapters at once should fit together. However quickly or slowly it clears, it almost always pulls back fast enough to stay ahead of where I'm actually writing. If I suddenly run into it and lose my way, I've generally done the writing equivalent of overdriving one's headlights, and the best thing to do at that point is to slow down or to set the project aside altogether and work on something else for a while. When the project in question is ready to write again, it'll let me know.

Recently I ran into just that sort of problem with Cloak and Shadow, the story of Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski's first assignment as an actual Head of Mission. I was running into a feeling that something, or perhaps someone, was missing. However, I didn't have any idea what should go into those holes, or even exactly how big those holes were.

I've learned through bitter experience that trying to force things is apt to wrench the story out of shape. However, by setting it aside for a while and concentrating instead on some other parts of the chronology, I was able to gain insights on that novel. Now I'm starting to get a clearer idea of just who all I'm missing, and even beginning to see some of them.

Now to try to pull these threads together into some kind of coherent whole, and make sure that they don't go unravelling all over the place the way I had happen with Wyrm Rampant back in 2001. (That's one I've still never been able to get back to and sort out, although one of these days I really want to. It just doens't help that it is going to be a huge novel, big enough that I really don't know if any publisher is going to want to take the risk involved in publishing it from an unknown author).

The Myth that Refuses to Die

2006-01-01T14:28:00.000-05:00

Recently there has been considerable consternation about a television program on the old story of "Pope Joan," that is, a woman of the early Medieval period who supposedly masqueraded as a man in order to pursue her hunger for learning and ended up becoming so famous for her erudition that she was made a cardinal and ultimately elected pope, only to have her true gender revealed when she gave birth to a baby while on her way to her coronation. Supposedly she was then torn limb from limb by the outraged crowd and the embarassed Roman Curia covered the whole incident up, but her memory survived in the custom of all papal processions carefully avoiding the street upon which she met her doom.

There is not one shred of historical evidence for this story, yet it refuses to go away no matter how many times it's debunked. Part of it is pure ugly anti-Catholic glee at the Church heirarchy being made to look foolish, and in modern times feminist hopes that the exclusive masculine priesthood could eventually change, but because of the sheer persistance of the story in the face of fact there seems to be something more basic to human psychology at work here.

First, there is the element of the fear of infiltration, of the outsider sneaking into the inner circle. For those of us who remember the Cold War, the constant fear of Communist infiltration of American institutions was a constant feature of that era. Even today, one of the fears of the War on Terror is of American converts to radical Islamic fundamentalism becoming a sort of fifth column, indistinguishable from us save by their beliefs. But it's more basic than any particular conflict -- part of social cohesion is a clear understanding of who is a member of the group and who is an outsider, and thus the infiltrator threatens to destroy that distinction of us vs. them.

Second, there is the sense of delight at the underling outwitting authority, even if only for a time. Even as we fear the disruption of the social order, we don't want to let it become too rigid or too sure of itself, lest it become a tyranny. From this comes our love for figures such as Robin Hood who break the formal rules of society in order to serve a higher justice. It is also at the root of Trickster figures, who may outwit every power divine and mortal in one story, yet is outwitted and humiliated by a child in the next story. We want to be reassured that authority will be reined in if it should become overweeningly arrogant, yet we also want to be reassured that those who overturn authority will meet their own comeuppance in turn.

I'm not advocating the use or modern retelling of this particular story, since its historical use has generally been such as to be highly offensive to Catholics, and thus even a well-intentioned retelling will be colored by history. But understanding why the particular motif has proved so enduring can help us as writers tap into these sorts of basic narratives.

On Being a Perfect Stranger

2005-12-28T22:14:00.000-05:00

A recent article by Jimmy Akin about serious theological errors in Bram Stoker's Dracula made me think about the responsibilities the writer of fiction has when dealing with faith communities not one's own. Obviously, we do not want to deliberately slander or malign someone else's faith by repeating things we know to be false.

However, it is not enough to merely avoid deliberate slander. As Jimmy Akin demonstrates so ably, it is possible for a well-meaning writer who knows a little about another religion's practices and beliefs, but doesn't really understand them or the theology that underlies them, to produce scenes that are profoundly offensive to members of that faith. It is a perfect example of the old adage "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing."

How then can we as writers avoid such gaffes? Obviously extensive, careful research is essential -- but because we are not members of the faith community in question, we may well lack the knowledge necessary to distinguish authoritative sources from those that are perpetuating misconceptions or outright falsehoods. Even when working with authoritative sources, we may miss nuances, or get the sense of a term wrong when trying to understand it from context -- and it can easily come back to bite us in a story.

Often it comes down to being able to ask someone who has first-hand knowledge about the faith in question. Even then, one often may not know what questions to ask, since certain kinds of misunderstandings are often invisible because they deal with things assumed to be universal, when they are in fact peculiar to one's own religious background. If one's expert is willing, having them actually vet the entire manuscript with an eye to such blunders might be the best solution, although this is often more easily obtained with a short story than a novel.

Congratulations, Your Excellency, You've Been Redshirted

2005-12-24T11:27:00.000-05:00

For those who aren't familiar with the science fiction community, "redshirting" is the practice of giving the names of friends or associates to minor characters who are subsequently killed, often in absurd or memorable ways. Sometimes big-name writers will actually auction off the opportunity to have one's name mentioned in this fashion, and donate the proceeds to charity. The term comes from the original Star Trek series, in which the security personnel wore distinctive red shirts, and one could often recognize at first appearance the character who is going to be killed off solely to demonstrate to the viewer that This Is A Very Deadly Place.

I'm doing some planning for another of the stories of Eigun Eiderveyen, which is taking place at a meeting of Catholic bishops. There's an assassin among them, and after a series of murders of people of lesser rank, at least one bishop will be picked off before the assassin is identified and caught. Suddenly I realized that I had a perfect opportunity to redshirt the notorious Marcel Lefebvre, Rad-Trad extraordinaire. And since he can easily be considered a schismatic, the method of murder quickly became gruesomely obvious.

Now I just need time to actually write it.

Who Can It Be Now?

2005-12-23T11:24:00.000-05:00

I'd gone back to Cloak and Shadow, hoping to get some work done on it, and I'm becoming steadily aware that there's someone missing in it. I roughly know the sort of person I'm missing, but I still don't really have a sense of who this is yet.

And for me, it's very tricky to consciously think in terms of "OK, I need a character with these traits for this slot," because there's a constant danger that in doing so, I can end up killing the story. If the story becomes a made thing, instead of living in my mind, it just shrivels up and dies. It no longer matters, because it's not about people I care about any more, but just little wooden puppets to be moved from plot point to plot point. So what.

This issue has been a major sore point with several workshops I've been in. They couldn't understand why I couldn't look at a story in terms of structural elements like a machine that could be taken apart and reassembled at will, and would actually get angry with me and accuse me of willful unprofessionalism when I tried to explain that trying to do so kills stories for me, and that I had to protect my stories from being destroyed by this whole slot-based, mechanical plotting system they were trying to impose upon me.

For me, there has to be a world and people that exist for themselves, and only then can I tell stories about them. If I try to reduce them to just a collection of sets and hired actors playing roles, the story dies. I might be able to trudge through cranking out a story as an assignment, but it would be a hateful chore, and would probably end up looking like I did it as an assignment rather than something from the heart.

I'm Still Here

2005-12-12T21:17:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth,
nor have I given up on writing. It's just that I have
so many things to deal with that I simply haven't had
any spare time to speak of.

We've had another spate of thieves over Thanksgiving
weekend. This time they broke into our house, which
inflicted further mental strain.

And of course there's the constant drain of article
assignments, book shipping and being expected to be an
unpaid maid around this house, but keep it clean to
professional maid standards, for no pay.

Like I have time just lying around in piles waiting
for me to pick it up.

So writing is bits and slivers, a sentence here and a
sentence there while standing in various lines waiting
to do things. Maybe even a whole page into the Palm
Pilot while I'm at the laundromat or some other place
that keeps me for any length of time.

I just wish I could start having real, unbroken
writing time again. I've got more ideas than I ever
had, but less time to write.

At this rate I'm never going to be able to get
anything published, and I'll be writing work-for-hire
nonfiction for the rest of my life.

So Many Ideas, So Little Time

2005-11-20T19:58:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've got still more ideas. Things are
interconnecting and interesting backstory from one
character's earlier life is starting to look like
parts of another character's novel. It would be
interesting to see the first character from the
perspective of the second, and especially when he was
so much younger.

But I quite honestly don't know when I'm ever going to
get them written. I've got article assignments
stacking up one after another, and I somehow need to
do still more cleaning if I'm going to have any hope
of getting this house to sell. You simply can't write
a novel on the basis of a sentence here and a sentence
there, scribbled during the bits and slivers of time
found standing in line waiting for things to happen.
And as long as I'm having to write fiction on-spec, I
pretty much have to let everything else cut in front
of fiction writing time, no matter how many ideas are
burning in my head.

And with my luck, once time does finally loosen up,
the stories have gone cold in my mind and are no
longer so eager to be written, so I'm stuck sitting at
the keyboard remembering the white fire that's now
gone.

Of Holding Back and Letting Out

2005-11-06T21:08:00.000-05:00

One of the great frustrations of writing is that, once
you finally get time to write, you may discover that
the words simply won't come. All those wonderful
stories that had to be held back while other
obligations were discharged now seem jammed up there,
unwilling or unable to come forth. So you sit and
struggle while precious minutes and hours go by, all
too aware that the writing time will end all too soon
and that you'll have yet another Obligation come
plopping down to take away all the time that might
otherwise go to writing.

Or worse, you have so many stories and novels lined up
that you literally can't settle on any one of them.
Your mind is pulled a dozen ways at once by all the
different stories crying out, "Write me!" "No, write
me!" "Don't forget about MEEEE!"

And nothing gets accomplished, and before you know
what's happened, the precious respite is over and it's
time to buckle down to Duty once again. But the mind
that was so briefly released doesn't want to go back
to drudgerous work, and refuses to concentrate. So of
course work becomes an even more painful and
soul-draining process, and you know that next time
around it will be even more difficult to let go and
start writing.

On Beginnings

2005-11-04T22:14:00.000-05:00

As I'm working on the various novels of Jan-Pawel
Trzetrzelewski and Eigun Eiderveyen, I'm wondering if
some of them are starting in the right place. For
some, it's obvious where to begin. For instance, the
story of the rescue of the prelate whose name I still
haven't settled on should begin with the torturer
telling him that either he will break and deny his
faith, or they will grind his bones into powder. With
that threat established, I can move to his superiors
setting up the necessary circumstances for Eigun to
effect his rescue. And the first Jan-Pawel story,
working title In the Presence of Mine Enemies, starts
with a priest being set upon and beaten by thugs.
Jan-Pawel is then called upon to fill in for the
priest, which puts him in contact with other key
players and gets the storyline moving.

But with others, I'm not so confident. For instance, I
started Plausible Deniability with a scene of
Jan-Pawel reporting to receive his new assignment. I
also have a similar scene at the beginning of Cloak
and Shadow. Now, looking back at them, I find that
both of them seem rather weak, not to mention
repetitive. On the other hand, I can't yet think of
any good action bit to put at the front, that doesn't
give a false impression of just what the story is
about.

On the other hand, sometimes it's best to just forge
ahead and write the whole novel, and hope that
completing it will give the necessary perspective on
the overall shape of the novel to perform the
necessary front-end alignment. That was certainly the
case with The Steel Breeds True. The scene with
General Semyonov in the Lubyanka was one of the last
that I wrote, as I finally saw how to present the
story so that it would be immediately clear what was
at stake.

The Name Game

2005-11-03T22:05:00.000-05:00

I've got a character giving me fits. His name is
either Silan or Silor, and I can't figure out which
sounds right.

And he's a major figure in that new novel that just
cropped up, so I have to figure out what his name is.
I really don't want to get a huge way into it and then
have to laboriously go back through and change every
single instance of his name.

Breeding Like Rabbits

2005-11-02T21:49:00.000-05:00

What is it with story ideas? Right while I really
don't have enough time to write the stories I already
have, along come two more.

One's another story of the adventures of Eigun
Eiderveyen, and came from a minor character who was to
appear briefly in a couple of scenes in the novel
right before Plausible Deniability. Suddenly I started
seeing a bunch more of this character's background,
why he is so crippled when we meet him there, and who
did it to him. And that raised the question of just
how he got out from those people's clutches, and I
knew Eigun was involved in it, since Jan-Pawel had his
own fish to fry at that time.

The other is set further back in the timeline, and
could be left as purely backstory at the present. But
it does have a lot of interesting potential in it, and
I'd really like to write it someday.

I've got a series as big as David Weber's Honor
Harrington universe here, and I don't have the first
novel written, let alone sold. And to top it all off,
I hardly have time to do any writing on any of them,
between the demands of my non-fiction contracts and
shipping books for our online bookselling business.
Which makes the constant proliferation of ideas all
the more frustrating.

Thoughts on Thieves and Social Costs

2005-10-30T14:46:00.000-05:00

This month has not been a very productive one for me.
Not only have I lost a lot of writing time to two
conventions and major non-fiction writing projects,
but I have also had to deal with a thief who broke
into my car and tried to steal it. Not only did I have
to give up the time necessary to have what they broke
repaired, and deal with the cops, but I've had trouble
concentrating and thinking straight, which means a
major slow-down in everything I do.

It's certainly given me plenty of experience in just
how crime affects its victims, even if the victim
never actually encounters the perpetrator. We tend to
focus on violent crimes like rape, murder and armed
robbery, since they are so frightening and immediate.
But the loss of security which results from a break-in
like this are very real, and painful.

I know this is going to be coming out in my stories
soon. At the moment I don't know exactly how, because
I'm still processing the experience. I just know that
there will be effects in my writing.

Like I Need Another Story Right Now

2005-10-21T12:58:00.000-05:00

So I'm neck-deep in a contracted 10,000-word non-fiction project, and what should I get but a cool new idea for a novel. Like I need one more thing to distract me when I'm trudging through a project that is Duty, Duty, Duty the whole way through.

This one is sort of parallel with Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski's sequence, dealing with his colleague Eigun Eiderveyen. I'd originally visualized Eigun as a relatively minor figure, a personal connection who would help him get around an immediate supervisor who was stonewalling him out of spite. But I soon had a feeling that there was more to Eigun that this simple, defined role.

And now I know at least some of his backstory, and the cool adventures he had while still a roving diplomat without portfolio, throwing sand in the gears of the bad guys' machinations. And of course I have absolutely no time to write it.

For Want Of A Title

2005-10-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

Giving my stories a proper title is often the most frustrating part of writing. Often my stories go through most of the writing process with nothing but a descriptor like "Nadine's Story" or "Amanda's Story." But while such a descriptor is good enough for tracking a work in progress, it simply won't do for anything that purports to be the finished product.

Ideally, a title should evoke the story without giving it away. At the same time, one should avoid an overused title, since it has effectively lost its power to touch the reader, simply because it already has too many associations.

And that's what I'm facing with the entry-point novel to the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence. Originally I was going to title it In the Presence of Mine Enemies, which simultaneously gives the sense of the way in which Jan-Pawel is surrounded by enemies, both obvious and not, while at the same time, being a quotation from the Bible, helps give notice that he is a cleric. However, not only has a friend of mine used that title for an unpublished work of hers, but the noted alternate-history novelist Harry Turtledove has used that same title for his work of hidden Jews living in the cracks of a world taken over by the Nazis.

So while I may keep it as a working title, I really need to find something else as a final title.

Where to Begin

2005-09-29T16:06:00.000-05:00

Now that I've finally found the best entry point for the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence, I'm struggling with how to begin the first novel. I need to be able to give the reader a number of important facts about the world very quickly, particularly to make clear that this is a fantasy world and not a mundane novel, at the same time make the reader care about Jan-Pawel and his situation.

At the present I'm not entirely happy with my starting point, but I'm concerned that if I start a little later, when his boss actually confronts him about "wasting" time in recreation, it will require too much backfill and be confusing.

So I'm still thinking and pondering what I want to do with it.

There's a Hole in My Story...

2005-09-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

While copying some more notes that got soaked in the
recent blunder with the window, I discovered that one
novel has a major logic hole that I've got to plug --
particularly since it happens at the very beginning,
and everything follows from it.

The premise is that the mad king has his eldest son
executed on trumped-up charges of conspiracy to seize
the throne. However, if he's claiming a conspiracy,
why does he not also wipe out his son's staff, who
would presumably be considered co-conspirators?

Particularly given that one of these staffers proves
to be instrumental in avenging the murdered prince,
the oversight must be explained. It can't be merely a
lucky blunder.

And I quite honestly haven't the slightest idea of how
to go about plugging this hole.

Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time I plunged into
a novel and then had to go back and make major repairs
on the beginning after writing enough to get a better
sense of the direction the whole is taking.

I Didn't Know That

2005-09-25T22:23:00.000-05:00

Today I was recopying some pages of story notes that
had become wet and were starting to mildew. As I was
doing so, I took the opportunity to further reflect on
them, and expanded upon them with other considerations
and possibilities, including queries about things I'd
since discovered while writing other stories in the
same universe.

As I did, what initially appeared as a problem sparked
a connection with something I'd been wanting to
introduce during that period of the timeline. Suddenly
the apparent contradiction was instead evidence of
something even deeper, which explained why the
identity switch at the root of this particular story
was such a threat, and had to be resolved, even if the
protagonist might be enjoying her new identity. At the
same time, it also sets the stage for the "grand
finale" novels for that universe.

Amazing how these things work out sometimes. Now if I
could just get some serious writing time, instead of
having to spend most of my time grinding away at
articles.

Young Man on the Brink of Adventure

2005-09-24T22:42:00.000-05:00

As I procede with this new story of Jan-Pawel
Trzetrzelewski's youth, I'm running into one of the
most problematic issues in writing a story with a
young protagonist. One of the cardinal rules of
fiction states that the protagonist must solve his or
her own problem, not have it solved by an outside
agency. But when the protagonist is a minor, his or
her latitude of activity is constrained in many ways
by adult authority. How does one create a situation
such that is is believable that the protagonist does
not immediately turn to an adult and hand the problem
over to be solved?

One possibility is a disaster which incapacitates the
normal adult authorities, leaving one's youthful
protagonist without anyone to fall back on. However,
Jan-Pawel's stories are not disaster stories, but more
on the order of spy or international intrigue stories.
Adult authority has not been incapacitated, but is
being subtly undermined from within and without.

Which leads to the second possibility for eliminating
the easy out of simply handing the problem over to the
grownups to be fixed -- adult authority does not
believe that the problem exists, and dismisses out of
hand the evidence offered by the youthful protagonist.
But such a technique must be handled very carefully,
lest it veer in the direction of idiot plot. If the
adult authority figures are so willfully blind that
they refuse to see clear evidence of a problem, simply
because it is necessary to the plot for them to be out
of the loop in this way, the story will suffer for it.

Yet at the same time, it has to be believable that a
villain who can defeat intelligent adults can still be
defeated by a teenage boy.

So tough to find the right balance.

I Must Be Nuts

2005-09-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

Today I was supposed to have the whole afternoon to
finish up those articles that are due at the end of
the month. Instead, what do I do but start a story
about Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski when he was a teenager.
Like I need any more stories that I probably won't be
able to sell anyway.

And then I can't even manage to keep my mind on what
I'm reading because it keeps wanting to run back to
this first adventure of Jan-Pawel, long before he
entered the diplomatic service, when he was still
certain he wanted to be an actor and playwright.

I have got to get those last eight articles finished
for my September set on the long-term project, and
tidy up the four articles from the other project, and
get them all in the e-mail before we leave for Archon.
I really don't want to have to try to slide another
set of articles in after the deadline by pretending
that it doesn't matter because it's the weekend.

But it's so hard when my mind is full of this
Jan-Pawel story, and won't even stick to words right
in front of my eyes long enough to know what I'm
reading so I can write a coherent article.

It makes me almost wish the articles would just write
themselves and Go Away so I can write my stories in
peace.

That's Not What I Meant!

2005-09-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

Recently Jimmy Akin has been having an interesting discussion about the price of goods in emergencies. He argues that what many people have recently been calling "price gouging," for instance, the sudden steep rise in gas prices following the damage to oil refineries by Hurricane Katrina, are not motivated by greed, but in fact reflect a shift in the natural price point of the commodity due to changed circumstances. However, another writer, Scott Richart of ChroniclesMagazine.Org, has argued on the basis of the concept of a "just price" that this is not true, and that there is an objectively proper price, at least for vital necessities, that should not be exceeded no matter the economic situation.

Part of the problem here is the simple fact that money has multiple uses, among them a metric of economic choice ("you may have A or B, but not A and B, pick one"), and a long-term store of value. When goods are in short supply, raising prices enables the seller to restrict the buyer's range of economic choices, thus reducing the likelihood of panic buying on the part of the first few people to arrive, which would leave the seller without anything to sell to later customers, who might well be more truly needy than those people who simply happened to get there fastest and grab with the biggest hands. (Jimmy Akin's argument) Sounds quite rational -- except that money also functions as a long-term store of value. If the store owner doesn't have to use that money to buy goods at inflated prices, but can instead hold onto the money until after the crisis is over and prices return to normal, the store owner is now wealthier and the customers poorer, leading to feelings that the store owner has improperly gained at the expense of others' misfortune. (Scott Richart's argument) Once one realizes that each correspondent is looking primarily at a different function of money, but that neither is realizing this disparity, the argument takes on a whole new level of meaning.

So how does all this relate to writing? Often, there is a tendency for writers to create overly simplistic conflicts -- everything is on the surface, and arguments between characters really are about what they're arguing about and nothing more. But in life arguments are often about something other than what they really seem to be about -- which is often how arguments escalate far out of proportion to the apparent issue, simply because the unrecognized real issues at stake are far higher than the relatively trivial issue that started the fight. Awareness of the difference between surface and underlying conflicts can often make the difference between an idiot plot, in which the characters refuse to take the obvious steps to resolve the conflict solely so the author can keep the story going, and a story that has the potential to keep the reader thinking long after THE END has been reached.

Now That's Odd

2005-09-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my Tuesday post wasn't appearing on the blog
page, so I decided to rewrite it and send it again,
assuming that it had been lost in transmission. But as
soon as I sent the new version, the old version
appeared as well -- which looks really stupid.

I have no idea of what went wrong, unless it's
something to do with having to send my blog posts via
e-mail, since all my computers are so old that I can't
get into the regular Blogger tools with the browsers
I'm currently able to run. Eventually I'm hoping to
get the iMac upgraded so that I can run System X on
it, but if life doesn't slow down and give me a free
day or two to open up the computer and install the
equipment I need to put into it, that's going to be
indefinitely delayed.

An Entry Point at Last?

2005-09-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

I think I may actually have an entry point for the
Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence.

It's odd how these things work. I'd been struggling to
figure out how I could have a story in which he's
relatively junior, yet has enough authority to have
the latitude to actually do things. I knew that Cloak
and Shadow wasn't really the right place to start, but
it was the earliest that I could find.

Over the weekend, I had a very annoying person driving
me nuts with their overbearing, bossy manner. I was
getting sick of the way they'd let their new position
go to their head, and decided it was time to write
this offending person into a story -- and squash them.

Just like that, the whole story I needed came clear
for me. I finally understood what kind of a story I
needed. Jan-Pawel is dealing with this nasty boss,
trying not to get too annoyed -- and then the boss is
stricken, and Jan-Pawel has to pick up the pieces, in
a very messy political situation.

Now I just need to scrape together the time to write
it. Which, unfortunately, is often easier said than
done.

An Entry Point at Last?

2005-09-20T21:38:00.000-05:00

I think I may have finally found the elusive entry
point to the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski sequence.
Ironically enough, the discovery came from one of the
more unhappy parts of our campout last week.

One of the people in the organization that runs the
campground seems to have let their new authority go to
their head in a big way. Suddenly they're taking a
great joy at bossing us around, which was really
getting on my nerves (needless to say, I really don't
like bossy people).

So I decided it was time to get my revenge, by writing
this person into a novel and bringing them down, hard.

Suddenly all the pieces are falling together in my
mind. This person is Jan-Pawel's boss, and is driving
Jan-Pawel nuts -- and then gets incapacitated in the
middle of a crisis, so Jan-Pawel has no time to feel
any Schadenfreude at having been suddenly relieved of
the obnoxious boss, because he's having to pick up the
pieces before everything really goes down the drain.
So I've got just the right balance between being
juinor enough to be sympathetic and being senior
enough to have the latitude to acutally do something.

Now I just need the time to actually write the thing.

Here We Go

2005-09-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

So I'm starting writing Cloak and Shadow, preparing
Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski for his first independent
diplomatic assignment. Even as I'm writing, I'm
getting a steadily better sense of what will come
next.

I'm hoping that this weekend's camping trip will give
me the time I really need to make some serious
progress on it. After all, I did the first four
chapters of Plausible Deniability while at a campout
this past spring.

But morreso, when I get back Sunday, it's going to be
time to buckle back down on non-fiction writing, which
means less time for fiction. Best to take full
advantage of the time while I have it.

That Elusive Entry Point

2005-09-11T22:01:00.000-05:00

So I'm going to be starting writing on Cloak and
Shadow, even while I know quite well that it's not the
proper entry point for the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski
sequence. But I'm hoping that by writing it, or at
least a substantial portion of it, I can get a better
grasp on the early part of Jan-Pawel's life, and thus
a better sense of just where the best entry point is.

Of course I'll still be working on Plausible
Deniability, and some of the other novels between the
two of them. I'm hoping that by working on all of them
together, I'll get a better sense of the whole, and
thus be able to see where I'm starting from.

Not to mention the practical benefit of having several
novels close to completion when I do finish the first
one, so that I can present a publisher with the
possibility of having a whole series of books that can
be published in rapid succession, instead of having to
wait for sequels to dribble out, one by one.

Us and Them

2005-09-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

In watching the coverage of the recent Hurricane
Katrina disaster, particularly as it has unfolded in
New Orleans, I was struck by how quickly and easily
people redefined the people stranded in the city as
"them." No longer "us," no longer part of the
community, but irreconcilable others who only
understand force and must be dealt with a firm hand
lest they rise up and destroy everything.

Not that there wasn't significant wrongdoing going on,
particularly the armed gangs robbing, raping and
shooting at the people who were trying to help, but
among many observers there seems to be a loss of the
distinction between the real thugs and people who were
just trying to get safe food and water in a city where
all civil structure had broken down. It's particularly
noticable in certain online fora, but the behaviors of
the National Guard and other organizations actually on
the ground reveals just such a shift of attitude,
often to the point of a disturbing contempt for even
obvious innocents such as small children, the disabled
and the elderly.

As a writer, I ponder how often we quickly delineate a
simplified "us and them" characterization in our
works, so that we encourage our readers to look at
people as such oversimplified groups, rather than
individuals with their own needs and hopes and drives.
And just how much does such oversimplification bleed
into our attitudes toward people we actually deal
with?

Still Looking for the Entry Point

2005-09-07T23:26:00.000-05:00

I'm working steadily on an outline for the new novel
of Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski's first independent
diplomatic assignment, now tentatively entitled Cloak
and Shadow. However, the further I go, the more I
become convinced that it's not the right entry point
either. Even here, there are just too many things that
feel like they need to have been developed by an
earlier novel -- yet to go further back, I'd have to
get into parts in which he is a subordinate with much
less latitude for independent action.

Sometimes all you can do is feel your way along until
you find the right place to begin.

Still Searching for that Entry Point

2005-09-06T22:43:00.000-05:00

It looks like Triptych is definitely stuck, and just
jumping ahead a chapter or two isn't going to get it
moving. So it goes on the back burner to simmer for a
while, until I get some fresh insights on it.

Which means I'm back on Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski's
stories. I'm doing some further outlining on Plausible
Deniability, but at the same time I'm working on
outlining some novels dealing with his earlier life,
trying to find the proper entry point. One, dealing
with his first independent ambassadorial appointment,
is looking rather promising. However, I'm not entirely
satisfied with its suitability as the first novel in
the series, since it has some other issues that might
make the going rough for readers who have no previous
experience with my writing and particularly with
Jan-Pawel to make them willing to trust me until they
get into the story. On the other hand, if I go back to
a point before he had ambassadorial rank, when he was
still just a secretary, would he have enough seniority
and authority to do the things necessary to carry the
story?

Sometimes there's no way to be sure but to write the
story -- and hope that you don't end up burning hours
of scarce writing time to no good effect.

Balancing Projects

2005-09-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm bouncing back and forth between several different novels that are all wanting my attention. Tryptych seems to be stalled right now, although that may be as much because I need to do some more thinking about the world and how I'm going to bring my twenty-five-year-old vision of the story forward to work with my present skills. I'm pulling Plausible Deniability, the Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski novel, back out again, even while I know that it can't be the first in that sequence yet and I stll need to find the "On Basilisk Station" for it. And I'm wanting to get out some other novels that I've done various amounts of work on in the past.

Yet the more I divide my attention, the harder it is to get any one project finished. At the same time, if I stay too long with a project that has become stuck, I shut off the possibility that I could be making progress on a different project. It's a delicate balancing act to find the proper balance that keeps me moving forward, and hopefully results in completed novels that can be sent to a publisher, rather than a whole pile of half-completed works.

Bearing Witness

2005-09-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

Over the last several days I've been struggling to
assimilate the images I've seen of Hurricane Katrina,
of whole cities in ruins, of one of our oldest and
most famous cities turned into hell on earth. It's
disturbing to see just how slender the line between
civilization and savagery still is, and how quickly
things can come apart altogether. It's appalling to
watch one's own government standing around with its
collective thumb up its butt while people are
literally dying for want of the most basic necessities
of life: clean water, food, medicine.

We were all so proud of how well people behaved in the
collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
There was none of the panic that is such a frequent
image in disaster movies, and many hurried to say that
such panic is but a cliché, a bit of movie shorthand
not reflected in life.

But this time we have seen another disaster trope come
true: namely, the complete collapse of civil order.
Which leads me to ponder what makes the difference
between the two disasters, such that one produced
solidarity and humanity, while the other produced
dissolution and inhumanity.

Fiction of necessity must often deal with people in
extremis, facing life-or-death situations in which
there are no good answers, only degrees of bad ones.
I myself have often used severe weather as an element
in my writing, since I have long been fascinated with
such phenomena. However, I find now that I must
reconsider my use of them, and particularly whether I
have completely underestimated the social element of
truly major disasters that wipe out whole areas'
abilities to respond to them.