Targets ahead of you may be closer than they appear.

So, I sat down this evening to get started on NaNoEdMo, and began reviewing some of the many critters.org critiques I got on Chapter 1 of ‘The Scroll.’ There were a lot of them, and a lot of mostly-good opinions in each critique, though I had to chuckle about the critter who was so certain that ‘pyjamas’ and ‘omelette’ were typos. Perhaps in the US they are, but I won’t apologize for using Canadian variants!

Anyway, after about half an hour of this, I realized that I could easily get drawn into trying to tweak the chapter so that it would please as many readers as possible, but that wasn’t what I really needed to do at this point. I want to have a sample chapter that will look promising enough to Kij Johnson that she’ll accept me for the workshop, but it doesn’t really need to be spotless for that, and spending a lot of time polishing beforehand might be counter-productive, in that if I go to Kansas convinced that my sample chapters are perfect, it’ll be harder for me to really listen to what other people tell me about them when I’m there. The responses I got from critters.org were very positive, overall, and that’s an important point.

And after that, I realized something else. I’d put a bunch of qualifiers in front of ‘what I needed to do before I was ready to apply for the Kansas workshop’, but most of it really isn’t necessary. I was getting confused between what I needed to send to Kij to apply for the workshop, and what I need to have ready in mid-May, assuming that I’m accepted, to send to all the other writers who’ll be coming to the workshop. So, I’m only a few days away from having my application all ready to go – one sample chapter and 5-10 pages of synopsis, and the synopsis is mostly ready. I just need to tweak it to make sure that somebody else can follow it, and not get confused about who one of the characters is, or something else like that I can smooth out with more description.

So, I’m in the interesting and fun position of not having to push to reach a goal because it’s not as distant a point on the horizon I thought. Cool!

Writing characters

Well, I just got back from the Brian Henry ‘Writing Great characters’ workshop in Dundas. It was a great day, even though I had a bit of a headache the whole time, and thus plan to put myself to bed very soon.

A lot of the discussion was about stuff that I’ve already gathered and been using, in terms of drawing characters partly from other literary models, partly from people you know in real life, and partly from your own imagination, and about what makes a good character, how to outline or interview a character before you write, how to describe a character or reveal their personality to the reader. I wrote two fun little exercises, both tied into ‘The Scroll’ universe, one a minor character based on an old work colleague of mine, and one discovery scene for Emelia Collins.

Jean Rae Baxter was there as a guest author, reading snippets from her stories and book, and I was interested enough to pick up a copy of her first short story collection, “A Twist of Malice”, and read one of the stories in full on the bus home. She was great answering questions, and had good points to make, although I’m not sure I’m with her 100% about not ever drawing from characters in literature/film/television when devising characters from your own writing.

And I met up with some other great student writers, including Christine, (who I ended up having lunch with,) Steve, and Grace, who I chatted with on the bus home.

Okay, head still throbbing a bit, so I’ll sign off. Must remember to cue up Six Sentence Sunday before I crash into bed.

First drafts…

We’ve been talking quite a bit about first drafts versus revisions here at the workshop, especially because a lot of the process is critiquing and revising. One thing that I thought was interesting was the notion that a lot of the participants, and apparently a lot of sci-fi/fantasy writers, prefer revising to writing a first draft.

I can’t really understand this. I usually have a lot of fun writing the first draft, and less so when revising – because the revising is where the hard stuff starts. (Not a hard and fast rule.) And Chris M said something to me when critiquing my scene yesterday that maybe I should try to concentrate on writing the best word, and not writing too many words. That’s good advice, but I’m not sure that I’ll worry about it too much in my first drafts. There’s plenty of time to focus on that level of detail with revisions.

Workshop scene assignment

Okay, one of the assignments we were given last week in this Short Stories workshop was to write a scene that would get critiqued by everybody, and we’re doing the critiques tomorrow. I thought I’d share it with you guys, and I’d love it if you let me know what you thought!

First, here’s the notes I took for the assignment:

Write a scene.
Do a number of these things:

• Introduce change
• build action
• complicate the plot
• increase tension and drama
• move the story along
• build conflict
• introduce characters
• create suspense
• Provide information
• use at least three senses
• create atmosphere. (weather, structures.)
• Develop theme.
• Movement in relationships (emotional)

Include at least three senses.
Conflict and resolutions
max of 1000 words, but the tighter the better.
Open it with a sentence that you could only use in spec fiction, or that means something different in spec fiction than mainstream.
each sentence should do something new, to progress the scene, and pull the reader along.
Include a hook.
Possibly an opening scene.

Some pictures from Kansas

Just sharing a few of the photos that I’ve managed to take since I’ve been here:

My dorm room

Dorm room desk

The blank-page rewrite

So, I’ve been working hard today on a quick rewrite of a 5900-word science fiction story. And, just because it’s supposed to be done by tomorrow – I’m starting fresh from a blank page.

In a weird way, devoting myself to writing and science fiction for nearly every waking hour all week has convinced me that such crazy feats are possible. And, also, they’ve convinced me that this story really needs a blank-page rewrite anyway, so I might as well start that way instead of going with the superficial patches that I’ll have to pave over anyway.

I’ve learned an incredible amount about writing so far in the workshop, and the effect on my self-esteem has been indeterminate – like a quantum particle, the act of measuring how I feel about my writing seems to change it these days.

I’ve more or less caught up on my critiques – still need to do some prep-work for Monday, though that can be after tomorrow at 5pm, (the deadline for the rewrite.) I got the new chapters written for the two Roswell crossovers that I wanted to finish in June – Children of the Molecule, which is Roswell/Doctor Who, and Dragon’s Prey, the Roswell/Pern one. The third fandom story that I wanted to update in June – just wasn’t going to happen, I didn’t leave myself enough time for it, though at least I started it before I left Ontario.

And I’ve actually managed to watch some fun science fiction television – I caught two ‘Torchwood’ episodes yesterday, and watched a ‘Sarah Jane Adventure’ and an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ in the dorm laundry room this morning, staring into my iphone while waiting out the wash and dry cycles.

Workshop critiques round 1 round-up

Well, at something like sixty-one hours since I arrived in Lawrence, I feel like I’m finally caught up and into the swing of things.

The short fiction group has done two afternoons of critiquing, which have been pretty interesting sessions – we’ve been taking about an hour per story, plus some side tracks, and I learned a lot about the first story that I had critiqued – especially that I had a promising theme buried in the plot that I hadn’t noticed. Four hours an afternoon doesn’t seem like that much of a time investment, but really, the organized activities part of the day so far seems to have gone something like:

• noon – gather for lunch and sometimes a lunch lecture
• 1pm – back from lunch, gather in the lounge for critiquing.
• 5:15 pm – critiques finish, discussion keeps on going.
• 5:30 pm – leave the lounge to quickly check email and a few other things online
• 6 pm – gather for dinner downtown
• 8:30 pm (approx) – back to campus after dinner.

And when you add the time that I’ve been putting in reading other people’s stories and figuring out what I want to say about them in my critiques… it definitely takes up a lot of the day, not to mention just sitting and talking with other writers.

I’m probably going to blow off the group dinner tonight, just because I’m not a fan of mexican, so probably that’ll mean a bit more time to myself to write this evening. I’ve almost got my critiques ready for today, and it’s only 10am, so that’s great. Aliens on Pern, here I come!

But I’ll tell a bit more about the critiquing process first. Everybody takes turns going clockwise from the person who wrote the story – there’s no reading out loud, since everybody’s had the stories to read by themselves – and can say whatever they like, as long as it’s constructive, though a lot of people have adopted a kind of ‘good news, bad news’ approach, starting with things they like, then the things that they think would improve the story, and maybe finishing off with one more nice compliment. Chris M, who runs the workshop, always goes last, and often takes a tangent to give us all some advice or present a resource like a list of senses to try appealing to in your writing.

The first day, I just came up with some synopses, (which I didn’t share with the group,) and my likes and issues list. Since then, I’ve actually been working off my printouts, mostly because I want some excuse to actually hand them back to the writers and not have to hang onto them, so they’ re mostly more filled with my reader reactions than copy-editing points, and anything that qualifies for the likes and issues list, I retype into a new file.

My second story is up today – I hope it goes pretty well. This one, I have slightly higher hopes in than the first day’s story, so it might be a bit harder to take if the criticisms are serious, but I think I just need to keep in mind that everything is usable, and nobody’s really trying to tell me off or put me down, just to help.

Looks like I’m in Kansas now

So, let’s see. The flight from Charlotte to Kansas City went okay – had my carry-on bag taken as checked luggage because I was in a late zone to board and the lady at the gate desk thought there wouldn’t be space in the overhead compartments. Ended up switching to the aisle seat because a couple had booked seats that were on either side of my original spot, and that worked out pretty well. Kept reading workshop stories off the Kindle for most of the trip, except when the ‘no electronic devices’ sign was on, when I read Harry Potter.

I called the Ground Transport people while the plane was taxi-ing up the gate to let them know that I was arriving, but hung up while the guy was still looking up my details, because I didn’t want to spend more than one ‘roaming minute’ on the call – they’re pricy enough as they are! It turns out that someone tried to call me back, and I didn’t hear the phone buzzing, but more on that later.

So, I waited a bit impatiently for my chance to rush off the plane with my laptop bag, just because I was excited, even though I suspected that I’d be waiting for a long time at baggage claim, which I was.

But eventually the medium-sized Royal blue suitcase that I’d checked in Buffalo came out, and then the matching carry-on. I put on my sunglasses, dropped the glasses case with my regular glasses, picked it up again, headed out towards the door, and nearly passed a large African-American gentleman asking a woman, “Are you by any chance Chris?”

So I turned and introduced myself, and sure enough, he was my towncar driver, and led me over to where he’d had to park, a little ways from the baggage carousel. We got the bags in the trunk, me with the laptop case in the back seat, and I went to switch from the prescription sunglasses back to the ordinary glasses.

Uh-oh! Something wasn’t right with the glasses. It turned out that somehow the left lens had popped out without disturbing the frame, which was a new one on me. I tried to pop it in a few times during the hour-long drive to Lawrence, then gave it up, spent some time chatting with the driver, and read more from “Sergeant Chip” on the Kindle – that’s a professional story that we’re going to be reading and discussing on Friday.

The driver dropped me off right outside Templin Hall,  got my signature, and I brought the suitcases up to the doors. Some people who were hanging out in the lobby let me in, and I headed up to the third floor in the elevator, and found the welcome workshop party in full swing. Met the workshop leaders, a few of my fellow short fiction workshoppers, had pizza and a can of diet orange pop. At around that point, I decided that I should head over to Lewis Hall and get myself checked into the residence room.

That went well enough, the girl behind the desk found my name, gave me the little envelope with the key-card for the residence front doors and a room key. Once I’d got back to Templin, I’d stowed the envelope and forgotten the room number, but when I dug the envelope and checked the room number, it turned out to be for a room that was already fully occupied.

So a larger group of us headed back to Lewis – Chris M, the short fiction workshop leader, one of the people who’d already moved into the room, (it was a married couple, so the husband decided to come,) and a workshop alum who was hanging around as a facilitator this year. Chris M also called Lydia, who was the person who’d taken all the applications online and made all the room assignments, but wasn’t around working on a Sunday evening.

It took a while to sort that out, and I ended up sitting over in the Lewis lobby and talking with the facilitator guy, who’s also been a Nanowrimo participant. Eventually I got moved into a suite that could take four at a pinch and had only one British man in it so far, so now we’ve each got a bunk bed room to ourselves, and are sharing a bathroom.

So what else? I got unpacked, including the box that I mailed to myself weeks ago, found out that the sheets I bought at Zellers aren’t really the type I thought they were, but got them to work anyway. Registered and paid the high price for residence internet – tried to get my old wireless router to work, but I think that they’re not going to play nice together. One of the guys in our workshop was really counting on sharing wireless internet, especially having it available in our classroom, but I think I’m just as happy having the resnet via cable.

So I hung around a bit longer, listening to conversations more than participating, put myself to bed, woke up pretty early with the morning light outside my window. Now I’ve had some of the leftover pizza for breakfast, and showered, and the first full day is stretching before me.

I’m so excited – I can’t wait!

Kansas stories have been sent in!

So, yesterday afternoon I emailed off three stories to the other student writers for the CSSF workshop in Kansas. It was fun and a little giddy stuff, finishing my rewrite of Harry and Mars, and going over my critique tracking spreadsheets for both Landing and Harry.

The third story, ‘Survey’, on the other hand, I just dug up the most recent draft from last September, checked to make sure that the formatting looked good, and sent it off. It’ll be interesting to see if anybody notices a different between that story and the ones that I’ve put more work into revising recently.

This evening, I booked a town car service to take me from the Kansas City airport to the University in Lawrence. I’m flying in fairly late in the afternoon, none of the shuttle schedules look like a good fit, and I don’t want to have to wait around the airport, so I’ll be making the trip in affluent style. Woot!

There’s no place like… Kansas?

So I got into the CSSF Short fiction workshop – I’ll be spending two weeks in Lawrence, Kansas this summer! I’m really excited, and you’ll definitely be hearing more from me about this.

In other travel and vacation news, I found a vacancy in an Atlanta hotel for Labor day weekend and registered for DragonCon 2011!

Been running around all evening, need to go to bed soon. Blog more tomorrow.