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Posts Tagged ‘Thoughts’

Gone Fishing

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , , , , on July 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Oh hello there! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, as apparently I have gone fishing. Not literally, at least not yet, but in the sense that my mind has decided that it’s time for a summer vacation. I’m still working, both on writing and other things, but it seems I needed a little break and I’m taking it here.

Remember what summer meant when the last school bell rang and the doors opened on whole months of freedom and possibility? I’m feeling a little of that right now, and dang it, I’m going to enjoy it. I hope you are too!

 

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Popcorn Means Love

Posted in Entertainment, Likes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I had a post in mind for today that I thought would be cool but, sadly, it’s not ready. Rather than go with something that’s not right, I’m setting it aside until I can do a good job or come up with something better. So in the end, what did I choose as Today’s Thing I Like? Popcorn:)

Here’s an excerpt from the family cookbook to tell you why.

Popcorn
My whole family can make this with their eyes closed, but Dad really deserves credit for setting new and higher standards for butter and salt consumption. He is blessed with a genetic tolerance for such unhealthy behavior; his blood pressure and cholesterol levels are lower than mine.

For years he’d head to the kitchen after dinner, and a few minutes later I’d hear pop pop! as hot oil turned the first kernels inside out. A few minutes more and we’d be piled on the couch with huge bowls of popcorn and masses of paper towels.

There was no television in the house growing up but at some point we acquired a copy of Star Wars and a video monitor. This was back before Blockbusters popped up down the street (or closed down, for that matter), and there were certainly no DVD players.

The tape was black and white and we watched it on a Beta machine. (Don’t remember Beta? That’s funny, no one else does either.) My brother and I watched that tape until it died, literally came apart from use. To this day I can still reel off an annoying amount of dialog and get excited when I see Star Wars in color. What could be better than a cold drink, a hot bowl of popcorn, and reciting C3PO’s lines with people you love?

 

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Working Hard?

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Ah, Wednesdays! That most glorious of days, when Monday’s want-to-do list meets Friday’s ruh-ro-must-do list in a big jumble of expectations, and it can all feel like a bit much. (Or is it just me?:)

Today I’m working on multiple fronts and happy to be making progress. That’s what I push for, most days, even when it’s not easy. On writing, I’m nibbling away at a novel, fixing up a couple of short stories to send out, and doing a workshop exercise. And oh yes, there’s the day job:)

When what I’m doing gets hard, it helps to remember that it’s not carrying a 50-pound boulder across the sea floor hard.

Color me impressed, and inspired.

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Nonfiction in General

Posted in Entertainment, Likes, Science!, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Today’s Thing I Like is nonfiction writing in general, and author Mary Roach in particular. If you aren’t familiar with her work, check out the books linked below or this interview with Seth Shostak at SETICon 2012.

Nonfiction can be a fiction writer’s best friend. At its best, it includes detailed, character-driven explorations of real-life situations and challenges, and can provide the sort of solid foundation a more speculative piece needs to succeed. I’ve mentioned this before, but avoiding abstractitis is key to good writing.

Specifically:

No matter how abstract your topic, how intangible, your first step is to find things you can drop on your foot.
— John Maguire

Nonfiction helps you do that, and Mary Roach is a great example of a quality nonfiction writer.

I have yet to read all of Roach’s books but Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void were terrific. Her books take a somewhat off-beat topic and delve in, deep. She’s also funny. The level of detail is satisfying and succeeds in painting an engaging portrait of her subject that is also educational. Packing for Mars, for example, is a great way for writers to familiarize themselves with the nitty gritty of space exploration, how we got to where we are now, and how we’ll get to where we’re going.

To note, if you’re interested in popular nonfiction about the intricacies of digestion or Mars exploration, check out Giulia Enders’ excellent Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ, and Steve Squyres’ Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet.

Read, then write:)

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Do It On Purpose

Posted in Funny, Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I realized that I have been trying to write a serious version of what is clearly a goofy, rollicking space pirate adventure. Obviously!

That led me to recall the following wisdom from a modern-day sage (who should know):

Figure out who you are. Then do it on purpose.
― Dolly Parton

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Stories Must Be Told

Posted in Holidays, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. We’ve been watching classic war movies all weekend, Patton and The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far. I’m thinking of my stepmother’s father, who campaigned in North Africa and Italy. I’m thinking of one uncle who served and came home with his humor and wits intact, and another who did not.

One set of parents is hosting a party to celebrate the hope of returning summer, another set is at the family plot cleaning graves and laying flowers. Both sides of memory are necessary, in my mind.

Part of what writers do is build creative narratives that interpret life, remember the past, reframe the present, and project into the future. Art is interpretation. Memory is selective. What we remember depends on who we are, and who we hope to be. When we stop telling stories, we start forgetting.

Today’s free fiction is Pamela Sargent’s “Too many memories” from Nature’s Futures division.

You already know what Dorothea’s most important insight was — that the reason our client had so much trouble with her memories was that she possessed no narrative structure on which to locate them.

“There’s no framework there,” Dorothea Singh said to me, “nothing to hang the memories on.”

Today, we are that framework.
 

 

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Brain on Holiday, Apparently

Posted in Holidays, Writing, tagged , , , , , on May 25, 2016| 1 Comment »

Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

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I Like… Learning Stuff!

Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Today’s Thing I Like is an online writing workshop from Cat Rambo. Now, I’m not affiliated with her in any way except for the fact that I’ve just gone and purchased this workshop for myself. Go me, investing in education:)

I discovered the workshop thanks to my favorite submissions tracking site, The Grinder.* Mizz Rambo is this month’s site sponsor.

Here’s the workshop:
Description and Delivering Information for Genre Writers: How to Deliver Information and Build a World Without Slowing Down Your Story

Check out that detailed curriculum. In fact, go ahead and take a gander at the Introduction and Description previews too. The course goes in depth on a wide range of topics and is seeded with useful exercises throughout. Rambo even provides additional exercises for overachievers.

The course is also a steal at $29, particularly when you consider the source. Who is this fabulously-named instructor, you may ask?

Cat Rambo is a prolific writer and editor of sci-fi and fantasy, with 200 short stories and more to her credit (including a cookbook, most excellent). She studied with Octavia Freaking Butler and other amazing writers at Clarion West. I’ll cite a bit of her blurb to fill in the picture:

She has been nominated for the Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award and is the former editor of Fantasy Magazine. Her own work includes over 200 short stories, several novels, and most recently a cookbook, co-edited with Fran Wilde, Ad Astra: The 50th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook. She is the current president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

I’m not a writing workshop junkie but I have gone through several. Now that I’m halfway through the Rambo course, I can say that this is the most useful one I’ve taken to date.

Power_of_Words_by_Antonio_Litterio.jpg: Antonio Litterio

Cat Rambo has four online workshops available at the moment, including the Description for Genre Writers cited above, as well as Literary Techniques for Genre Writers, Character Building for Genre Writers, and Reading to an Audience. She also gives live classes if you’re interested in a more personal touch.

Most days I’ll work through a chapter, then apply the exercises to my current work in progress. Very practical and the writing does double duty. If I do the overachiever exercise I get a cookie. Win win!

. . . . . .

* Yep, I’m putting in another plug for The Grinder guys as well (I’m a donor and sometime beta-tester but not otherwise affiliated), because it’s a great project and always free free free. Yet another one of the #ThingsILike!

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Keep Writing

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 18, 2016| 1 Comment »

It’s a beautiful day today, the birds are singing, the clover is growing and I’m plugging along, making progress on numerous fronts and feeling fine.

It isn’t always this way.

Some days I can’t get a thing done and nothing seems right no matter what I do. I’m not alone in this, as I was reminded by a recent discussion on one of my listserves. A member had finally had it up to there with the frequent failure to find editorial acceptance. Folks chimed in, discussions were discussed, and this particular writer hopefully left the thread more optimistic than when it began. I know I did.

What some call failure, I call pre-acceptance. Have I mentioned this before? I probably have, because it’s a fairly critical component to my writerly attitude.* No one is going to like everything you write, no matter who you are. There will be rejection.

And that’s ok.

That’s progress, that’s experience, that’s learning one more way not to make a lightbulb. All writers, all people, get rejected.

Let’s take words out of the equation for a moment. I’m on a cookie kick so let’s stick with that.

Are you handing out delicious cookies at work? Someone will say thanks, but no thanks. It may be that they aren’t keen on chocolate chip, or that they are lactose intolerant, or that their doctor just read them the riot act about Type 2 diabetes. You don’t know, and that’s ok.

This isn’t about them, it’s about you.

Do the best you can, of course, and keep bumping that line higher. Practice. Follow Angela Duckworth’s research and go on grit rather than talent. Go online, and find helpful pep talks like the one Neil Gaiman wrote for National Novel Writing Month:

One word after another.

That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it.

Whatever it takes. Your goals are worth it.

* I should mention that I didn’t start out this way. It took some time to be ok with rejection, and if I can do it, you can too. The 350+ pre-acceptances I have accumulated so far helped a lot:)

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This Is How You Do It

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.
― Neil Gaiman

Thankfully, I have cookies:)

 

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