reading roundup

January 31, 2009 Leave a Comment

In January I read:

Hmm, I think I know why I didn’t get much writing done this month. Granted, five of these books came from the children’s section of the library and were quick reads. I especially enjoyed the Garth Nix books, the first of The Keys of the Kingdom series. It looks like six out of the seven books have been published. Good. I hate having to wait a year or more between books. I wish publishers would wait until they have most of a series, then bring the books out at six-month intervals. It probably doesn’t work from a financial standpoint (authors like to be paid and publishers want to guage how a series will do before committing to it), but I wonder how many readers are lost because they won’t pick up a series unless it’s complete or forget about it altogether because it’s been too long between books?

Cod, I was predisposed to like because I enjoy books that trace the impact of a commodity on history and culture. Though short, it did drag towards the end, and I found the “fish that changed the world” epithet far too grandiose for the reality (I’m from Asia and I failed to glean how cod changed my corner of the world). What made the book fascinating for me were the details that I could see using in a novel; fishing techniques, or the use of clay/cod oil mixture to protect coastal buildings from the salt, or wars over fishing grounds. I also skipped the appendix of cod recipes. Just not a big fan of old-style European cookery.

I do plan to pick up the Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History.

What have you been reading?

Filed Under: reading, reviews

mid-week ramblings

January 28, 2009 Leave a Comment

Got over 3K words on the new book. Can I just say that the romance in this story is going to be SO much fun to write?

I still get a warm fuzzy contented feeling when I think back on Saturday. D. took the older kids and went out the entire morning and early afternoon. Left to ourselves, the baby and I played, puttered around, wrote (well, I did that and A. offered moral support), had lunch, rested. It was great (and most of my wordage is from that morning).

I wish I had bought that secondhand piano when I had the chance. Ah well, there will be other pianos.

Can I say that synopses are darn hard to write? Yes? Okay:

Synopses. Are. Darn. Hard. To. Write!

I just reached the how-to-revise portion of How to Think Sideways course. I’m totally psyched! SoR needs major work and if I can fix it in just one more pass-through, I’ll be a happy camper.

Speaking of SoR, I have way too many irons in the fire. Kai’s book to write. SoR to revsie and submit. Several shorts waiting to have something done to (and with) them.

I need a plan.

No, make that A Plan. A Big Plan. With lists, deadlines and spreadsheets!

How’s your week going?

Filed Under: kai, season of rains, short stories

linkatopia

January 25, 2009 2 Comments

I’m going to try something new here on this blog. Once a week or so (I refuse to commit myself to just “once a week” because we all know what the road to hell is paved with), I’m going to put up a bunch of links to posts that amuse, delight, annoy, or make me think. Many will relate to writing, but not all. If anything I link to makes you feel like you didn’t actually waste your time/lose brain cells by reading it, let me know. I am delighted to help you procrastinate from whatever it is you ought to be doing.

QueryTracker, which I’m itching to use the next time I start querying agents in earnest, has a blog.

Author Cory Doctrow gives a few tips on how to squeeze in 20 minutes of writing time, in spite of the temptations of websites, chat, forums and other forms of Internet-related distractions. Oh, and despite kids, too, but take that with a grain of salt. It is far easier to ignore the chime of IM than the ear-splitting wails of a two-year-old. Hat tip: Jo.

Paperback Writer shares how to use a word cloud generator to come up with titles. I am so using that method the next time a story refuses to be named.

Author JA Konrath once again explains that you should not pay to be published. And follows that up with some pithy FREE advice.

Agent Kristin Nelson asks why the many readers of fantasy children’s literature don’t go on to read fantasy as adults. Some interesting speculation in the comments. I was an avid fantasy-reading child who went on to become an avid fantasy-reading adult, so I don’t have a personal “why I left the genre” story to share. I’ll take a stab at it, though. i think a lot of kids read fantasy because it gives them a sense of purpose and control. Childhood seems very long and it isn’t fun, at the age of ten or twelve or whatever, to look forward to X more years of school assignments. As a child I was often frustrated by the lack of purpose in my life and my lack of control over it. In fantasy, kids can and do take on adult responsibilities; they take risks and have opportunities to be heroes, to change things. Once we’re adults and sinking or swimming on our own, we have less need to turn to fantasy for a sense of empowerment.

And that’s my two cents. Agree or disagree?

Anything interesting/funny/whatever that you’ve seen floating around online that you’d like to share?

Filed Under: linktopia, writing process

52 books in 52 weeks

January 23, 2009 4 Comments

I’m a planner. I love lists, schedules, menus. I love having goals to tick off and challenges to complete.

In fact, the more, the better!

Since this is a new year and all, I signed up for a reading challenge: 52 books in 52 weeks. I started strong with a theology book (Tim Keller’s The Reason for God) and some kids’ books (Septimus Heap and The Mysterious Benedict Society). I was bogged down for over a week in Your Child’s Growing Mind, but finished up today with a chapter on encouraging the kidlets’ creativity. Good stuff, there.

Now to choose the next book.

In my library bag are:

  • tons of picture books (alas, those don’t count even though I spend about an hour a day reading them aloud)
  • Mister Monday and Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix
  • The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
  • Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

My reading is all over the place, but I’m trying to make sure to hit a few categories this year: American history (this is an ongoing course of study!), theology (I’m in a book discussion group focused on this topic), education (methods, philosophy, anything and everything that’ll help me be a better teacher), books about or set in other cultures and countries, and, of course, continuing to read widely in the spec fic genre.

And I’m leaving lots of room wide open for recommendations, books that catch my eye and the following of rabbit trails.

Do you have any books to recommend?

Filed Under: challenges, reading

writing: the early years

January 22, 2009 Leave a Comment

My writing buddy Jo has a post up about the first time she realized that she wanted to write stories. It got me thinking about my own first writing efforts and the meandering journey I took before I got serious about writing.

I don’t know when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. It was, I suppose, a natural progression from being a voracious reader to wanting to write stories of my own–or even just rewrite the endings of stories I thought the author had messed up, heh.

The earliest stories I remember writing all featured teenaged girls with names like Trudi and Randi and Debbi(e). All of these stories opened with the protagonist staring at herself in the mirror, which gave me the perfect excuse to describe eye color, hair color, build, complexion, outfit, accessories, shoes, tights, jewelry and makeup (think glitter and neon; I was an 80s child after all). These “stories” tended to fade out after the arrival of some annoying, noisy sibling or drama-queen friends.

I then moved on to the brave waif stage, which starred girls named Regina and Destiny, all orphans and heirs to great wealth and high positions. In one memorable story (also abandoned after a chapter or two), my heroine Destiny endures… wait for it!… a horrifyingly chilly carriage ride.

If only I had sent a pack of ravenous rabid werewolves after her. That would’ve given her something to really get concerned about.

Fast forward to high school, when I wrote an epistolatory story about the eldest of five adventurous sisters, pretending to be this mousy countrified little noble, when in reality she was trying to prevent the king’s assassination and falling a little in love with a prince. (Yes, even then my stories had to have some kind of romance).

At that point, writing seriously was something that kind of floated in the ether of the vague far-off future. It wasn’t a career plan. It was something to fit around the edges of my life–IF I had the time.

Then came college and marriage. Unemployed, I looked around for jobs for a bit and decided what I really wanted to do was to just write. I didn’t want to go to graduate school; I wasn’t the least bit interested in a 9-to-5 job (oh, the mornings, those detestable mornings!); and while working in a bookstore, or at a library, or as a teacher would’ve been fun, making up stories and entertaining my readers was even better. Luckily, my husband was ultra-supportive. He gets lots of credit for not blinking an eyelash and saying, “Sure” when I told him I wanted to stay home and write (all the while he was delivering pizzas to pay our bills). So I joined a crit group learned the difference between the vignettes and real stories, participated in NaNoWriMo, and here I am, with three novels under my belt and a handful of publications.

Not bad for someone who seemed to doomed to write lovingly detailed character studies of Mary Sues, eh?

And really? I wouldn’t be here writing all this if it weren’t for D. If you like my stories, thank him for his unwavering support of me. If you dislike my stories… well, you can blame him for that, too.  *grin*

Filed Under: personal, writing process

headspace

January 21, 2009 5 Comments

A week ago, I wrote about all the time I’ve spent not writing. Today I want to talk about another limited resource: the mental space in which my stories dwell, quietly gestating, until they’re ready to be written. I call this (quite cleverly) headspace.

All my stories need simmering, but there are only so many mental burners available. All too often, bossy overbearing thoughts shove the stories out of the way. If I’m lucky, the stories end up in the deep freezer, lying dormant next to structures of organic molecules, second order differential equations, the names of my elementary school teachers and mystery meat. Perhaps I’ll find those stories again some day. If I’m unlucky, the stories fall to the floor and fly apart in gushes of half-done soup and pot fragments, never to be reclaimed.

Sometimes, I wish my stories would shove back (and some do). Most, however, are quite shy and passive. The bullying thoughts are many, and come in many shapes and sizes, but fit in one of three not-story categories.

Category one is the minutiae of daily life. Planning meals. Making shopping lists. Juggling schedules. Returning calls. Writing emails. Checking Google Reader. All of these take up valuable headspace. Take planning meals, for example. It’s not enough for me to declare, “Tonight we are having pizza with scallions and peanut butter sauce.” Nope. I have to go through a list of questions, such as: Do we have scallions and peanut butter in the house? Do we have room in the budget to buy scallions? Will D. be able to find scallions at the grocery store? What the heck are scallions, anyhow? Can I find a picture online of scallions to show D.? And, will my family stage a revolt if I served them pizza with scallions and peanut butter sauce?

Yep, that one meal snitched about half the headspace required by the sequel to Out of Shape.

Category two: worries, concerns, anxiety. These range from the small (“If I let my kids out of the house in their current choice of clothing, will I be arrested by the fashion police?”) to the large (“Oh my. Our IRAs took quite a hit last year. Shall I sell an ovary now, or take a job as a Wal-Mart greeter when our youngest starts college?”).

There goes the second half.

Category three: My other interests. Theology. Homeschooling. Blogging. Giant squids. The endless quest for the perfect chocolate dessert. These can be the hardest to curtail because they too are worth pursuing. It’s just that my headspace, like my time, is a finite resource. Here is where I need to make hard choices.

I will probably never learn to knit. My crocheting will continue to be… interesting (as D. says, “Handmade is supposed to look handmade”). Riding horses may just happen in my imagination. And the writing will be slow during the years I’ll be teaching the kids at home.

This I know. But I am content.

Now. If I schedule chicken nuggets and fries for dinner every night of the week, do you think I can reclaim headspace for that sequel to Out of Shape??

Filed Under: challenges, creativity, writing process

Soulsong

January 16, 2009 4 Comments

Soulsong, featuring the bard Elinor, is now up at Mindflights! Read it here.

This is my second published Elinor story (here’s a link to the first one, for those interested). Elinor and I go back a long way. In her first incarnation, she was my twin-sword-wielding, monster-bashing bard in the Hellfire expansion of Diablo. Diablo was my very first RPG, which my now-husband introduced me to in college. Alas, Elinor’s electronic existence was subjected to the whims of D’s roommate on whose computer a bunch of us played the game. When F decided to clean up his hard drive, Elinor got deleted in the housekeeping frenzy. Too heartbroken to resurrect her as a game character, I promised that someday she would get her very own story.

At this point, a series of her very own stories. *grin*

I have the first draft of a third Elinor story written, and a fourth nibbling away at the edges of my mind. Also the laughable first chapters of the Elinor novel that I started and abandoned nearly six years ago. I hope those never see the light of day (they’re really that bad and I keep them around to keep me humble), but expect to see Elinor make her appearance in some other shorts!

Filed Under: inspiration, news, self-promotion, short stories

my husband, the enabler

January 14, 2009 1 Comment

The economy must not be doing so great. I didn’t get a single free calendar in the mail at the end of last year. Not from my alma mater. Nothing from our insurance agent. No calendar love at all.

Since I can’t function without a calendar (I’ve been scheduling everything in my head and if you’ve been around me for any length of time, you’d know that’s a risky risky thing), I asked D. to pick one up.

So, that man comes home last evening with a calendar featuring, in large gorgeous pictures, twelve months of opulent lusicious eye-opening, drool-inducing… CAKES!

With recipes.

As though I’m not enough of a chocoholic and dessert freak. Now I have to cook and clean in my kitchen while heavenly decadence stares me in the face. Creamy cheesecakes with edible flowers. Layered chocolate cakes slathered in yet more chocolate. Blueberry and sour cream treats. Oh my!

You know that I’m going to be baking up those yumm-a-licious desserts. Resistance is futile.

***

On the other hand, enabling is not always a bad thing.

Last night, I worked on more pre-planning for Kai’s book. I have a great MC with a dark past, in search of redemption. I have a love interest. I have some fun physics going on. I have a world in danger.

Except I didn’t quite know what the world was in danger from.

After making a list of all the usual suspects: wild magic, Dark Lords, mysterious plagues, foreign invasions, treachery from within, blah, blah, boring, been there, done that, ho-hum, I asked D. for input. He happily obliged and between the two of us, we managed to create way cool danger based on the special physics of the world. Everytime I brainstorm with D., I end up with these funky worlds. Quartz, for instance, was a flat world in eternal darkness. This one is… well, I’m going to hug the secret close for a bit.

Suffice it to say, I am excited about this story again!

Filed Under: inspiration, kai, random, writing process

I’m still here

January 12, 2009 2 Comments

A concerned email last night from a writing buddy alerted me to the fact that, gosh, I haven’t been online much.

That’s because I’ve been good about keeping my New Year’s resolution and spending less time on the Internet.

So, I’ve been doing other stuff. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing.

I have been: chauffering kids to gymnastics, preschool group, romp’n'stomp and the libray; researching, writing and ordering kindergarten-level curriculum; reading lots and lots to the kids; doing art and crafts with the kids; getting a good headstart on the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge I signed up for; crocheting a scarf for the Princess; watching Planet Earth (my Christmas present; wahoo!); and holding baby, lots. As usual.

Then there was the evening I took myself and my headache off to bed at 7 pm.

And our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday where I felt that it was important to spend time with D. instead of us working on our laptops (crazy, I know!).

And the sweeping of floors and the doing of dishes and the washing (and drying and folding) of clothes that must happen, or else we would be living naked and hungry in a pig sty.

The good thing is that I am being fairly productive.

The bad things is that I am being productive in ways that are not writing. And, what is even more concerning, is that I haven’t been thinking (much) about my stories either. They’ve been completely crowded out by the rest of my life and all its attendant thoughts.

Something that needs rectifying soon!

How have you all been?

Filed Under: goals, guilt, personal

Neverlands and Otherwheres

January 6, 2009 1 Comment

Neverlands and Otherwheres is out!

A note about my story Second Sight: This is the most autobiographical of all my stories. The Skeleton Man and Kaloo Baba are bogeys from my childhood (my little bro and cousin might recognize the latter!), and I actually lived next door to the Unpainted House. As for the rest, well, read the story and decide for yourself where the line between fantasy and reality is.

(Yes, I’m being purposefully enigmatic.)

Filed Under: news, self-promotion, short stories
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