Multiple exclamation marks!!!

Terry Pratchett described multiple exclamation marks as the sign of an unstable mind, and that has always cast any exclamation marks in a negative light to me. So even when I'm excited, I tend to avoid them in my writing. This can make my writing sound cold, analytical and heartless. It's probably something I need to get over.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or just stick my fingers in my ears and ignore it forever.
PPS - Which also seems like a sound strategy.

Predicting stories

I think, when I spent a year writing one flash fiction piece per week, I did get a little bit better at it, but one of the biggest effects was that I became a better reader/viewer/audience member. I paid more attention to what stories were doing and why. While it's certainly possible to just sit back, brain off, and let stories pass through you, I enjoy recognising these little pieces that the author is going to bring together ahead of time. If it is in the story, it matters, so how is it going to matter?

One other thing I've encountered is the fact that nothing ever goes smoothly for characters. The straight line plot leads straight from boredom to boredom through unbelievable dullness. If something is going right, it won't go right for long. If there's a plan, there will be a hitch. Things go wrong for characters that have to keep going forwards. That's what stories are. You can end with all of the wrongness turning on the villain in one glorious moment - where the wild babboon picks up the gun that the mental patient loaded with the silver bullet just as the werewolf comes through the door - or you can have it all go horribly wrong for your heroes so that nobody really wins, but unless something is going wrong, your story is not going right.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wish I could bring more of that to my stories.
PPS - I have plenty of ideas for settings and characters. What I need are plots.

On this day in the future

On this day in the future:

2084: The Olympic organising committee votes to allow traditional pole dancing as part of the female gymnastics program. Lobbying for male pole dancing inclusion begins immediately.
2123: The majestic Cadbury Creme Pigeon, source of all Cadbury Creme Eggs, is declared extinct. The last specimen goes on display at the Cadbury Natural History Museum in New Atlantis.
2191: A motorcycle with a horse's brain, called Grey Matter, wins the Melbourne Cup in 58 seconds. Muddy conditions the following year prevent Grey Matter from retaining the cup.
2208: After lengthy discussions between the Australian and New Zealand governments, The Commonwealth of Australia finally accepts statehood in New Zealand.
2253: Arnold Schwarzeneggar's brain dies at the age of 306. A stand-in brain is hired to complete filming of his 267th movie.
2288: Brazil successfully enters an ape in the Olympics for wrestling. Broadcasts are stopped mere seconds into the ape's first bout for undisclosed reasons.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wrote these all at different times, for different reasons.
PPS - There's more about the sports and brains than I remembered until I put them together.

A white featureless room

When I'm writing, I tend to leave out a lot of environmental descriptions. This might be because I want the action to move along quickly. Excitement! Explosions! People flying through the air! No time to tell you what colour the walls are, we're DOIN' STUFF over here!

This might be because I trained myself on flash fiction. Whatever the cause, I need to consciously practice writing those descriptions that I otherwise leave out of my work. I'm not yet sure how to do this, but I'm trying something at the moment where I take something I've written before and just write another version that is all environment and description. No dialogue allowed, so I can't get expositiony, and no character names, either. I'm not sure if the "no names" policy will work well, but trying to tell the same story with nothing but environment and explicit facial expressions or gestures - no interpretation - is much trickier than I'd expected.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm also not sure how to integrate it with the rest.
PPS - I guess that's a whole different struggle.

Published!

Today I'd just like to let you know that the good people of PodCastle, a weekly fantasy fiction podcast, have done me the great honour of publishing my story, "Lord Darq, Regis and the Orb of Power". You can find the audio file on their site. I've been a fan of PodCastle for ages now, so it's super-cool that they're the ones to publish my first ever sale!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's only 5 minutes long.
PPS - Go. Listen now.

Don't pre-reject your work

I read Chuck Wendig's (typically profanity-ridden) rant about "pre-rejection" which is what I've been doing to, well, everything I write, basically. Except the flash fiction I vomited straight to the web that one year when I was actually writing. I've been stowing away my pieces because they're "not good enough".

Well, Chuck would have some harsh words to say about that, and I really need to listen. The point is, I've got a couple of pieces I'm sitting on because I've pre-rejected them and I've decided they don't belong out in the world for whatever reason. It was some time ago that I promised to start submitting to real publishers, and it's high time I lived up to that promise, starting as soon as possible.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And that story I actually sold still hasn't run.
PPS - I'm kind of starting to think it won't, which is a demoralising thing to happen to your first sale.

Friday Flash Fiction: What does morning smell like?

What does morning smell like?

Linen a little less clean than the day before. The fading wisps of last night's cool breeze replaced by new dew on the grass. The bitter stale of morning breath.
Hot steam, cool tile. Vanilla soap and foaming shampoo. Egyptian cotton and lavender fabric softener.
Wholegrain toast, strawberry jam. Bitter plunger coffee. No, the home espresso machine. No, wait, barista cappucino, cream, caramel and chocolate! Warm, fresh-baked muffins.
Dusty concrete. Aged upholstery. The gagging sweat of unwashed strangers. Earbud plastic.
Thin carpet with a fine layer of dust. Pine-scented suface cleaner. Burnt ozone of electricity and flourescent lights.
Morning smells like the cycle of daily life.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This was the first and only writing prompt I picked up from there.
PPS - Maybe I should look for others when NaNoWriMo is over.

NaNoWriMo 2014

So I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year, as I have the past 3 years. Last year I finished, as I did the year before that, so I thought I had this thing down pat. Maybe not. I'm falling behind. As in previous years, my process has been to write like mad on the train to and from work and, as with previous years, there have been a few snags here and there. Some days are faster than others. When I have no pauses between words and it just flows easily, I write up to 1500 words each way on the train, which can make for a very productive day. That can happen maybe once per month. Most days I get a bit over half my quota done each way. I've got some time next week that I can use on my own to catch up, but catching up is not the way I want to go. Right now I'm at 24,007 words, and I should be up to 28,333 today. That's getting to be a big hill to climb.

The story itself isn't coming together the way I'd like. My characters lack agency. They're not making the story go, the story is making them go, and I have to keep making the story make them go, which gets boring for me. I have no idea how to get them where they need to go, so perhaps I need to switch gears, develop some character and figure out how they can work the quest instead of being worked over by it. Maybe that will work.

I'm using Scrivener this year, which I bought on discount from a previous year's voucher. It's pretty good, but I could be using it better. I have notes for myself for next year.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't really know if I'll make it this year.
PPS - Maybe I'll learn something from the journey, though.

Thing of the week is just a beginning

It's funny how many TV shows start out on "thing of the week" episodes that are relatively self-contained, but then they discover the overarching story that becomes their true focus. Supernatural started with monster of the week, but moved on to an ongoing story about the brothers' relationship against a background of angels and demons. The X-Files moved on from mystery of the week to the Mulder and Scully relationship against a huge government/alien conspiracy. Psych, even though they kept the case of the week format most of the time, explored several relationships, both friendly, family and romantic, as the main focus after a few seasons. Fringe moved on from weird-of-the-week to a battle between alternate realities. You get the idea. Thing of the week is just where the writers start, but eventually they find their real story.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's hard to see where you'll end up when you start.
PPS - I imagine it's a good feeling for those writers when they find their way.

Writing Letters to my Lost Children

Recently I wrote a short piece called "Six Letters to My Lost Children", about our experiences going through failed IVF cycles over the past five years. It's raw, it's very personal and it was quite emotional to write. I suppose it was part of my personal grieving process. I won't be posting it publicly anywhere, at least in its current form, mostly because it includes the names of our friends (just in passing, because they were there for us through the process) and I don't want to publish anything about them without their permission, nor do I really want to seek their permission to say even nice things about them in this context. It's mixed up in all that personal emotional stuff. I'm quite pleased with the writing, so I am simultaneously proud of it, wanting to show it off, and also rather guarded about it, because of its emotional weight.

So it raises a few questions. One, is it actually any good, or was it just very emotional for me, clouding my impression of it? Two, if it's any good, should I try to fictionalise it and have it published? Three, if I try to fictionalise it, changing the names and details to protect the innocent, will that bleach out all of the emotion, thereby rendering it into bland, unpublishable cardboard? It's a dilemma. If it's good because it's raw, then it needs to stay raw to stay good, but if it's too private to publish as-is, then it needs to be edited.

In the end, this is probably something that needs to stay private, unless I can find another way to write with the same emotion about it and still maintain the privacy of my friends, my family and myself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did show it to Debbie, though.
PPS - It was quite cathartic.

Writing and rewriting

Lately I've been trying and failing to write a longer version of a flash story that I finished over a year ago. The basic idea was that a guy got addicted to building little worlds in magical bowls and playing God with them. In the flash version, he is telling his story to a support group, called Worldbuilders Anonymous. Even though it was a small scene, I felt it could be more show, less tell if it were longer, so I set out to do that. It dragged on and had a lot of little scenes that worked well on their own, but I realised that instead of writing one flash story, now I had several and no real glue between them. So I replotted and came up with a different outline as a longer story ... but I haven't been able to finish that one either. It hasn't been a great week for writing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Actually, I think I've been working on this a lot longer than that.
PPS - It feels like a very long time.

Atypical writer

I feel like I might be a bit atypical as a writer. It's a common observation that writers have this kind of problem where they can't keep their word count down when it's required. They just write and write and before they know it they're 20,000 words into what started as an ad to sell their couch.

I'm not like that. Yes, I can be a bit wordy, but, to take up a horrible metaphor, my writing is more like constipation where other writers have diarrhoea. I have never written as much as I think, and every word comes slowly. My brain needs to slow down, stop and think about what I'm doing, and then the next word comes. It's painful and slow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Then again, every writer is atypical in some way.
PPS - Just like every human.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 3

I thought I was ready to rewrite this book. I was wrong.

I mean, that much became obvious from my outline pretty early on, but I'm talking about something deeper now. I'm not 100% sure I was ready to write anything this long and have a good result come out of the other end. Even a usable first draft.

My characters are flat. They have some characteristics, but the whole spaceship colony acts like a big hive mind. They're all tentacle appendages of the communal will. That was not the goal, though it might make an interesting setting if I can figure out a story to tell about it. The point is that, although I know where the story is going and I think I'm going to get there, I'm not happy with the results.

That's normal, I suppose. I mean, you're not supposed to be happy with a first rough draft. It's like the raw clay you smack down in the centre of the pottery wheel. It's not anything much yet. Maybe I'll be happier when I finish.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - As of right now, I'm about 1600 words behind schedule.
PPS - I've been behind this whole time.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 2

Last week I vowed to keep writing, even if I was putting down a steaming pile of words that would never amount to anything.

This week, I wondered a little bit why I am even doing this if I don't think it's good. The answer, in part, is to get better, and that led me to my second related thought for the week: I can write better than this. I don't have to just hammer out terrible words, get my daily count in and go home. I can, at the very barest minimum, practice my craft within the terribleness of my plot. So I started doing that. I took more time, I wrote scenes that might not suck. I brought a little more life to what I'm doing.

It felt better. Not great, just better.

In general, I'm still finding it hard to follow my outline, I think because the plain text format turns out to be awful for outlines, at least for me. I'm still behind on my word count, but slowly catching up, managing to write about 2000 words every weekday. If I can keep up over this weekend, I should be ahead next week. I want to win on novel words this year, rather than novel+notes like last year.

I've also been getting physical pain in my right shoulder, and it's been worse on some days than others. At work, I've moved my mouse to my left hand, and that seems to be helping a little.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably what I need is to get away from computers for a while.
PPS - Or get a work desk that doesn't contort my body into awful positions.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Week 1

I'm sick of rewriting my book. There, I said it. It's exhausting and it's stupid and it's not coming out any better than the barftastic first version that I wrote two years ago. This is disappointing and a little unexpected. I thought I had matured a lot since then, but I have not sat down like this to write a book in some time. It shows.

I'm behind schedule and I'm not catching up. My outline is hard to follow. It's full of major plot problems that aren't going away, because they're too big. Also, it's physically uncomfortable. I've been writing on the train to and from work, and hunching over in that cramped seat, trying to get the words out is pretty awkward. It wasn't that way when I started doing this. I have an appointment with a physiotherapist (or some equivalent) on Monday to try and help.

I'm going to keep going, though. Might as well. The disappointment has already set in, though. The first draft was far from perfect. This second draft is at least as far from perfect as that, but in different ways. So I guess that's what I'm taking away from NaNoWriMo this year: a second draft that proves there is more than one way for me to suck.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's good that I'm allowed to suck, though.
PPS - How else could I get better?

NaNoWriMo 2013 Day 1

As of this morning, I am embarking on my third National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I'm going to be attempting a rewrite of the book I finished two years ago, because, when I read it again, it was quite choppy and weird. Unpolished.

I treated the first effort as a first draft, turned it into an outline and edited that. I've changed some characters and some scenes, and I'm quite pleased with the outline as it currently stands. I still don't think it's quite perfect, but now I'm out of time. I'll be writing on the train to and from work, as I have before, because that worked out pretty well for me, but I'll also be getting some work done on the weekends this time around. On a good day, I get down about 800-1000 words each way, so the weekdays are covered. I'm not totally sure how I'll handle the weekends yet, but we'll see.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do feel like I should be attempting something totally new.
PPS - However, I also want to get this done to a point that I'm really proud of it.

Friday writing update - failing to write

For a couple of weeks now, I haven't been writing much. Except by "much", if I'm honest, I have to say I mean "at all". It's been a choice. I could have kept up exactly the same writing schedule as usual - my morning commute to work is still available - it's just that I've been filling my time with TV instead. Breaking Bad in particular. I guess, when I started, the plan was to power through every episode in time to watch (and comment on) the finale with coworkers who were into the show. I didn't make that deadline, despite devoting all my free time to it. Now that I've missed that deadline, however, I've continued to give up my writing time to fit in more episodes, and that's something I really shouldn't be doing.

With NaNoWriMo coming up, I had intended to plan out a second draft of my first novel, The Bones of Earth, so that I could write to that plan and get more than the 50,000 words done in the month. Now, however, I have 20 days left, no plan and I'm not even done with Breaking Bad. So here's the deal I'll make with myself: until November, I will write every day. I'll plan what I can of that novel draft, and I'll be ready for NaNoWriMo. That's my priority. If I have any time left over, maybe I'll allow myself an episode of Breaking Bad.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My friends warned me Breaking Bad would become an addiction.
PPS - They were right.

Friday Writing Update - Dealing with critiques

I've run a couple of stories through Critters writing workshop now, and I think I need a system for dealing with critiques. People are helpful and friendly, but the feedback can get overwhelming when there's a lot of it. After the first couple of critiques come in, I usually feel really good. People tend to like what I've written, they almost always want it to be longer, and they have good suggestions that I take on board immediately. Towards the end of the week, I'm getting into double digits of feedback and losing enthusiasm. I don't even get to reading the last few when they come in.

Here's how I want to try handling it from now on:
1. Read each critique once. Make small editing changes as you go.
2. Extract each major point into a list. If a point has been made before, mark it up as more important.
3. If clarification is needed, or if the critique was particularly helpful, write back.
4. Let the story sit for a while before reading the notes and trying to improve the work.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't tried it yet.
PPS - Next time.

Friday Writing Update - submission formatting

As I start looking into submitting some of my stories for publication, it strikes me that it would help authors in their submissions if there were some standard way of describing formatting requirements. Most publications have their own preferences for submissions, including fonts, spacing and such, but all are just slightly different. Rather than spending the time reading, interpreting and implementing each subtle difference for every submission, it would help a lot to have one basic format (say, MarkDown) that can be compiled into any publisher's preferred format as specified in a particular style sheet.

However, this might just be the programmer in me, wanting to reduce effort, recycle input and encode processes. Also, I believe this is the rabbit hole down which Knuth disappeared when he invented the TeX formatting tool and language.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Or a similar one, anyway.
PPS - I don't want to get lost or sidetracked on this.

Friday Writing Update - Confidence

I've been putting (almost) all my writing time lately into entries for the PodCastle flash fiction contest. This week I submitted my first entry of two (allowed and intended) and as soon as I hit "send" on that email, I lost confidence in the work. The twist is at the beginning, then it's awkward, awkward, bland and ends with stupid. I don't like it any more, but I suspect that's just ordinary lack of confidence as a writer in general. People have liked my work in these contests before, though not enough to win, so objectively I know the chances are that it will be well-received when it goes up for voting.

Still, there's that little voice in my head that says "This time, you've blown it. They liked everything else, but this? This one is rubbish." It will continue to undermine my confidence until proven otherwise, then it will go sulk in the corner until it gets another chance.

The important point is that, despite that self-doubt voice, I have written and submitted a story for judging by a small group of strangers. However well it goes, I've at least done that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, and I have the other one on the way.
PPS - Assuming I can compress it down another 150 words.