Needless to say, it’s been snowing all day. Judging by the buildup on the cars parked across the street, I’d have to estimate we’ve gotten about six inches so far, but it’s a thick, wet snow this time around, so there’s no drifting like there was for the last storm. Can I just say here how silly it is that we’re now naming snow storms? I mean, naming hurricanes I get, but snow storms? Really? Is the sensationalism of modern media that desperate for hype that they need a proper noun to freak people out about a weather phenomenon that *might* be a bit dangerous? I mean, it’s snow, people. It’s slippery. It’s icy. It messes up traffic. It pulls down power lines. It’s a pain in the neck, and yes–at the wrong place, and at the wrong time, it can certainly be dangerous. But does giving it the name Nemo or whatever else they’ve named this one really done anything but waste time? Just saying…

Ok! I’m done ranting. It’s actually rather pretty, even knowing that I’ll soon have to go out and dig out the car, move it to one of the specified parking lots, and then hike back to the apartment in the sludge. The tree branches are just thick with snow. I’m a bit surprised we haven’t lost power. The snow is so sticky it’s actually lining the clotheslines with about two inches of snow, diametrically. Crazy!

Writing wise, though, I must say snow storms have proven to provide the absolute best conditions for unexpected productivity. Just yesterday, I whipped out 3.6k of a new (sort of) story draft, and today another 2.5k. That’s two Get Out of Writing Free cards in two days, which is a little crazy for me. Still, I’m more than happy to take it, whether I end up using those cards or not. I’m just ridiculously thrilled that the story I’m hammering out is going so smoothly so far. Maybe it’ll hang itself up at some point and it’ll become work again, but for now, it’s a delightful distraction. I find my fingers itching to write moreof it, to see where it goes, to meet new characters. Here’s hoping it keeps writing itself–it’s a good fifth of the way towards being a novella. Eeek! :)

***

Performance Review, Form #233-B

Date: 01.01.2013.14:02

Subject: M. Slater

Reviewing Officer: [redacted]

2012 REVIEW:

Let me begin by saying that the Subject has made some great strides in a variety of categories over the past year. While these lifestyle improvements may not seem all that important to her compared to the limited progress of her fiction pursuits, they have had something of a drastic impact on her well-being and mental status.

Not the least of these improvements is a change in her day-to-day work environment. Previously laboring in a field that did not compliment her personal strengths and heavily taxed upon weaker skill-sets, the Subject was listless, often frustrated, and in a perpetually pessimistic state of mind. The extent of this pessimism can be found in her private dossier, but needless to say it impacted almost every quarter of her private life, not the least of which was her fiction. I’m glad to report that in 2012, the Subject took some bold initiative and actively put herself in a better work environment which far better employs her strengths and downplays most of her weaknesses, while also giving her daily social interaction. This has greatly improved her mental state, and has had a positive impact on other ventures as well.

Another positive improvement was the Subject’s attendance of a painting class at The Maine College of Art, where she strengthened her grasp of acrylics and discovered a secondary form of artistic expression which has become a source of relaxation and counter-balance to the literary work on which she often fixates. It took some bravery on the Subject’s part to break out of her homebody routine and peer out into the world, but I’m pleased to report that all went well and at some point in the future, she might engage in more outside sources of personal development.

The Subject has also made great strides in her own intellectual growth. In the past year, she has re-engaged with reading more fiction and non-fiction on a regular basis and in doing so has opened herself up to subjects in Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and World History which previously she had held interest in, but with which she had not actively pursued further knowledge. She has read numerous classics over the past year, which have greatly enhanced her own verbal skills, as well as introduced her to some of the subjects mentioned above. In short: she has not been idle.

On the writing front, the Subject is still pessimistic, though we are working together for improvement. The primary source of disappointment is in the total lack of fiction sales, which she has come to associate with what it means to have a successful year. She has garnered a few positive and encouraging rejections, but rejections—at the end of the day—are still rejections. She forgets that in order to sell fiction, one must submit fiction, and 2012 saw very few submissions of older work, much less new work recently completed.

Her overall submissions have also been reduced due to our working to her shifting focus towards novel-length manuscripts, which have taken far more of her focus this year than any year previous. She has written over 70k new words towards the finale of her practice novel, and once she finishes an orienting re-read of past chapters, should make excellent progress towards its completion within the next few months. Our goal remains to keep her on track with that progress, so that once completed, she can turn her attention wholly on original works and move beyond some of the traps that have stalled her over the past decade.

The beginning of the year saw a great number of brand-new stories, over a dozen rough drafts, but unfortunately, these drafts have remained drafts and have not been improved upon enough to submit out to markets. Editing is one of the Subject’s weaknesses at this stage, and in the coming year, I would like to see a stronger effort to improve this skill, as it is a major hindrance to her progress at this stage.

However, the Subject has done a fantastic job keeping up on her daily word-count. Our initial goal was for her to produce 500 new words every day, including weekends, and of that she has hit most of those days, and has surpassed 1000 words regularly. We have created a reward system for hitting 2k words in a single session which should alleviate some stress found during travel or times of low flexibility by giving her “Get Out of Writing Free” cards which can be used to cover one day’s worth of words in a tight spot.

Her secondary—and more emotional—hang-up when considering the progress (or lack thereof) in her pursuit of the literary arts was an event which correlated rather closely with the shifting of her employment, and perhaps even sparked that shift. This event was the rejection from a well-respected writing workshop, the rejection from which seriously impacted her self-esteem. This was likely because she presented the one (now aged) story which she still, to-date, clings to as her best work of fiction, and the rejection of it clearly made her feel as if she had no grasp on how to judge her own work.

That said, from my position, the rejection from this workshop may have been the best thing for her. Immediately following the rejection, she seemed to realize that the betterment of her fiction was not going to come from some outside source, but from herself, and that if she truly wished to improve—as I believe she truly does—it would rest in her own hands and in her own determination to do so. This has led to a great improvement of effort in reading, both fiction for style and non-fiction for technique. She has become more engaged with her work, and more serious about learning who she is as a writer than she ever was before. In some ways—though the old method of measuring success still lingers—she has moved beyond wanting simply sales and bylines, but wanting more than anything to see her technique and style improve, whether the fiction produced sells or not. (Due to the general lack of editing, the latter is most certainly guaranteed for this past year.) But I do believe she recognizes the areas in which she needs improvement, and this—if nothing else—is the greatest thing she has taken away from 2012. She is the only one responsible for the quality of her fiction, and no class or workshop or advice from successful authors is going to make any difference if the buck doesn’t stop with her. To write-! That is the goal, and I believe wholeheartedly that it is something she is now more firmly set upon than ever before. The sand that once made up the foundations of her aspiration has been shifted to steady stonework, and the improvement is notable.

GOALS FOR 2013:

+ Continue 500 words a day goal with reward system for 2k+

+ Continue progress on practice novel, and preferably finish by March 31, 2013.

+ Begin draft of original novel, with goal to hit 60k by August 31, 2013, and finish the draft by December 31, 2013.

+ Practice editing, perhaps through the use of Ray Bradbury’s Story-Draft in One Week schedule to deliberately practice the editing process.

+ Continue to read prodigiously, particularly in Philosophy and Classics, with some focus on poetry for technique; aim for 60 books for the year.

+ Begin submitting again, with a goal of having a constant 2 works out to publishers at all times by June 31,2013, preferably moving to 3 out at all times by December 31, 2013.  

 ***

So there it is! The 2013 Goal List. It’s very much like the one I posted in September—it , in fact, ate the list from September, though if you notice, the initial September goals are still on track to be finished by September 2013—but I’ve added a few other things that I think would be really good pushes, too.

The next year will be what it will be, with all its delights and discouragements as always, but I can’t say I’m not looking forward to the challenge. I really am—a whole lot! :0)

I’ve been hedging–Oh, the hedging!–a lot these past weeks. Dragging my heels. Being non-committal. That little voice in the back of my head is whispering oh so many discouraging and annoying things, and I’m finally getting sick enough of it to do something about it.

Undoubtedly, I have a lot to learn. Undoubtedly, my writing-ego has taken some hits lately without a whole lot of good blocks or return volleys. But I can either sit around, moping, watching TV, bitching, “discussing,” planning, etc., or I can liberally apply butt-to-chair, put the head down, and dig deep to get through it. I’m tired of whining. I’m tired of waiting for something to magically “click” that will get things moving in a positive direction again. I’ve got work to do, and it sure as heck isn’t writing itself–in any form. I need to stop being a coward, and get my shit together, so here it is: the official list of goals for FY13 to be completed by August 31, 2013.

[    ] Finish The Thief Dilemma. Get it done and posted. I want it out of my hair by 28.

[    ] Have 60k minimum on a NEW NOVEL PROJECT (single-volume, no “multi-book” concepts), with a projected (and reasonable) “Due Date” assigned.

[    ] Write 500 words/1 hr every day, including weekends, no excuses.

That’s it. That’s the whole list. There are a million other things I’d like to do, like put together a short fiction collection, or work on editing the short stories I’ve piled up, or submit a bunch of stories to magazines/anthologies, or tinker around with a novel project that will *never* go anywhere while I let it think it’s my magnum opus, but everything else is on the side-burners until I can achieve even this limited amount by next year.

There is no reason at all why I cannot achieve the three things listed there, other than my own dawdling/whining/evasive maneuvering. It’s time to stop being scared of the work required and step up. No more stalling.

This, I know I can do. If I don’t, the only reason–outside of being hit by a bus/struck by lightning/[natural disaster of choice here]–is laziness and a lack of commitment.

I’m a bit peeved at myself. Can you tell? This time next year, I will have those three things checked off with big green X’s, and will hopefully have learned a lot about myself and my writing in the process. Time to open the floodgates. Hang on to something.

1. The No TV For A Week Policy – In which I cut myself off entirely from TV in order to devote more time to writing and reading. (FAILURE – Hello, my name is Maggie, and I am a TV-aholic. I go into withdrawal after two days, and crack with an all-day marathon of TLC shows I don’t even like. Fail. Major fail.)

2. The Reading Room For The Promotion of Reading Together Plan - In which we made a corner of our office into a mini library with two nice seats and good lighting, where Andy and I can read together. (FAILURE – The cats have invaded and covered the black cushioned seats (not my first choice of upholstry, but the only one available from IKEA at the time) and the chairs are now in serious need of a (daily) waxing to get all the hair off so they’re not disgusting to sit on.)

3. The Something Old & Something New Plan - In which I planned to read one older (4+ year old) SF novel and one brand new (this year or last year) SF novel in order to increase my knowledge of the SF cannon while simultaneously broadening my awareness of the stuff coming out currently (FAILURE – I ended up reading only non-fiction and classic lit).

4. The One Dish Set Policy - In which my husband and I have our own individual set of a bowl, a salad plate, and a dinner plate, with specific designs to differentiate them from each others. We can only use our own plates/bowls, which means we *must* wash them out ourselves before using any other dish, thus preventing dish-pileup in our no-dishwasher apartment, and training us to rinse out our dishes after use. (FAILURE – as of today, though it has worked in the past. We just need to start up again.<–optimism.)

Yup, this one’s totally going to work!

But does knowing the failure rate of my “awesome plans” ever stop me? Nope! So here we go with the latest of my amazing, cannot fail plans for improving my writing process (HA!).

New plan title?–The Author, Editor, Agent Split Plan (or AEASP for those who like acronyms).

The premise?–To try to better isolate the individual elements of the writing process, so the activities of each persona don’t overrun (and thus paralyze) the activities of the others.

Now there’s a story that goes along with this, at least a bit. I won’t go into the whole thing, because it’s long and arduous and navel gazing, etc., so I’ll summarize. The other day I was speaking to my mother (also a writer herself) about the oppressiveness of success ratios in fiction (particularly, my own current ratio, because I’m whiny sometimes, and she’s the only one other than myself and my husband who will listen to my high-pitched cyclical-logic rants for extended periods of time). And she asked me–because this is something she herself has been thinking about–this question: If you never, ever publish another thing ever again, if you never “make it”, if you are never “discovered”, would you still write?

My paranoid side immediately thought “OH G-D, I’M SO SHALLOW, I WOULDN’T, WOULD I?!” but after a momentary panic, I realized that was bupkis. I absolutely would keep writing. I might not ever edit anything, but I’d definitely keep writing. Which made me ask the question (with a little prodding–my mother’s doing her Masters in mental health counseling, so I like to think I’m helping when I dump my crazy on her), Why do I write? What draws me to write, what has always driven me to write? There have been times–mostly back in high school/college, with periodic depressive bouts–in which I thought “Frick it, I quit. Screw this. I suck at writing, and I’ll never be any good,” and actually tried to stop writing. Sometimes I’d succeed for a few months. Sometimes for a whole year or two. There was a long period between the 8th and 11th grades when I didn’t write much of anything. But I was ALWAYS thinking about writing. Even when I wasn’t putting a single word on the page, I was thinking up characters, plotting their successes and failures, obsessing about their personality traits and back-stories and sordid affairs.

So what was it that kept that alive, even when I wasn’t thinking about *being* a writer? I came up with this:

1. I love creating. I love making up worlds that don’t exist. I love developing characters out of nothing that I come to adore (or adore to hate). Which leads in to:

2. I love being absorbed into a fictional world. I love becoming consumed with the stories around the characters I come up with, and I adore losing myself in them. I love living vicariously through those characters–perhaps especially the ones who aren’t like me at all. I’m a relatively passive person in real life, but in fiction, I can be one heck of a troublemaker without any relational complications I can’t control. Yes: I’m a bit of a control freak, too.

This all came into account to help define what I should be trying to do when I write. Not worrying about everything stylistically or structurally wrong with a piece, not stressing over “to be” verbs (thanks Mr. Tulloch!), and not worrying about what will sell.

However, deep down, I don’t want to just write a bunch of rough drafts that just sit around languishing. I want them to be as clean and polished as they can be. So the obvious next question was this: If (all of the above = professional failure as a writer/dying without selling another word), why do I edit? What drives me to make a story better?

And I came up with this: I’m a tweaker. A nit-picker. A bug-fixer. I remember working with basic HTML when I was a tween (yes, I just used the word “tween”), and how much I LOVED working out the kinks in my code. I didn’t use any fancy programs, just a TXT file and DOS to upload (which made me feel like a hacker at the time, but you know tweens). I loved adjusting things, squinting at the screen in joyful irritability. Nothing was more gratifying than tweaking one table setting and having the whole page fall into place, just as I’d planned it. I don’t want to hate the thing I’m working on (which is what happens when I’m still in the “author” mindset and approach rewriting a relatively new story), but rather, I want to fix it up, polish its edges, give it a little love and care and turn it into the thing it could be, not become hitched-up on its multitude of flaws. You know that scene in Toy Story 2, when the vintage toy technician fixes up Woody?

*THAT’S* how I want to approach fixing my stories. I want to give them all the best fix and polish I can, and I’m learning a lot lately about structure and style that could be very applicable to many of my stories. Most of the fiction I’ve sold has been polished only with my own input–I need to trust my senses more, and worry less about what others (particularly markets) will think about them. When editing, I need to indulge my “fix it” side and just let that inner editor have a ball turning the poor, broken story with no character motivation and weak climax into something lovely that the author-side of me will later be able to look at and go “hey, you know, that’s not as bad as I remember it being…”

Likewise, as with the others, I had to also ask myself: so why do you submit? For the record, I haven’t submitted much at all this year. In fact, I’ve been very lax in that arena, something I mean (and need) to remedy. But to answer the question: I submit because in some dark, shadowy place in my soul, I’m a closet bureaucrat. I adore forms. I love files. Spreadsheets and graph paper make me a little giddy. Tracking things and labeling things are my secret delight. Considering how disorganized I am on a regular basis, it amuses me that I *do* have this neurotic neat-freak, form-filer side that lurks just outside my peripheral vision. Likewise, I’m also rather competitive. I like thinking about going head-to-head with other writers, of competing for those select, shiny spots in magazines and anthologies, like the drive and passion it brings out in me. I really enjoy researching new markets, reading magazines to gauge whether or not anything I write might fit with them, and feeling that when I submit something, I’m not just shooting in the dark. I also like the productive feeling I get when I know I’ve got two or more manuscripts out there searching for a home. Rejections, in large part, don’t actually bother me too badly, if I’ve got the next market lined up, and if I like the story myself. Shrug, and move on.

That’s my Agent side. Research, marketing, (promo blogging), and tracking submissions: I like it all.

HOWEVER: I do NOT like any of those three getting all up in each other’s business (says the crazy lady, referring to her multiple personalities in the third person). I HATE it when I can’t seem to write a word, because I’m hung up on some stylistic thing that isn’t working. I HATE it when I approach a story to edit it, and can’t help thinking that it’s not quite the right tone for X market, or doesn’t meet the word limits for X magazine. I HATE it when I let the creative side get all self-conscious, second-guessing, and depressed over a favored market’s form rejection, because I’m sure the piece is just GOLD, JUST GOLD, and how could they not love it, because it’s beautiful, just beautiful, I’m sure it’s beautiful–it’s beautiful, right?

Nope, all three–Author, Editor, and Agent–need to keep the heck out of each other’s business so I can do exactly what I love about each role: creating, fixing, and hunting.

So that’s WILD PLAN #32, otherwise known as The Author, Editor, Agent Split Plan. It may fail. But why not give it a try? If anything, all of my crazy wackadoo plans typically teach me a little something about myself and my process that I didn’t know before. And what could be bad about that? :D

And I apologize for talking your ear off. :0)

I do think I’m getting better. Slowly. But in the midst of a dry spell it’s sometimes hard to appreciate that past growth when the learning plateaus seem so steep up ahead, and hand and foot holds are few and far between. I’m missing something vital, I can feel that much rereading my own work, but just like the submissions I read that are “close, but not quite,” it’s equally hard to put my thumb down on what *specifically* is throwing it off. That, coupled with the paranoia of the dry spell is making it extremely tough to keep the chin up.

But taking a few days off writing to breathe and remember that life goes on beyond the blank page, I’m trying to climb–clumsily–back onto the old horse, starting with–you guessed it!–a list:

1. I’ve picked out a certain magazine that I’ve gotten several “close, but not quite” rejections recently. I’ve picked up a bunch of copies of it–backlog and current–and I’m going to read them cover to cover and study like crazy to figure out where I’m not quite hitting the right notes.

2. I’m going to jump back into working on the practice novel. Nothing can be hurt by my pushing to finish it, and it’ll give me something to hammer away at, regardless. Maybe it’ll even prove to me that I *can* in fact write a novel-length work with a comprehensible plot and multiple characters. :)

3. I’m going to pick out a few of my rough draft backlog stories that seem promising, and I’m going to rewrite and edit them as needed, hopefully to a point of being submittable.

That’s all for my list for now. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, because I’ve found that also lends itself to my personal resistance. The third one is in blue, because if one of them has to drop, I’d rather it was that one.

On a more positive, day-to-day note, I’m pretty excited by the few practical turns life has taken in the past month to get me in a slightly better frame of mind (the above excepted). I’m still settling into a routine with the new day job and Andy being on summer break from school, both of which–while very pleasant–means re-evaluating my writing schedule to accommodate. I used to write first thing in the morning, but with the day job starting at 7:30AM these days, I can’t kid myself that I’m anywhere near enough of a morning person to get up any earlier than I absolutely have to in order to arrive on time.

That leaves evenings, but that has its own sleepy/dinner/hang-out/etc. challenges. That plus this writing rut make it even harder to dedicate time to something that seems to be going in pointless circles. BUT-! I recognize that getting words on the page will not make my writing any worse, so we shall forge ahead just as if everything were turning out well.

Onward and (hopefully) upward! :)

I’m also extremely picky. There are a million and one books on How To Write out there, and in this realm, all are most decidedly NOT created equal. I typically gravitate toward the ones written by authors whose work I enjoy, because if I hate their stuff, why would I want to listen to their writing advice? (There’s a caveat here, of course: sometimes a writer I might consider terrible might in some strange way be an excellent teacher–they do say you learn as much or more from failure than you do from success, so there you go. Their advice might also be very insightful, even if they can’t put their own advice into practice.)

And it’s also true that just because you like an author’s work doesn’t mean they have any particular skill at *communicating* what they do or how they do it. Take Edith Wharton. Someday, I will force myself to slog through her tiny writing book. I swear I will. I love her books, adore her short fiction, but that writing book is killing me slowly with boredom. I want so badly to understand her approach to her own work, but every time I sit down to try to get through a few more pages, I find myself zoning out or getting sleepy. It may be that the book gets much better as it goes along, but I haven’t gotten to those parts yet. So case in point: Not all great writers are good teachers.

But there have been a handful of books that have really rocked my socks when it comes to putting me on the right track, re-energizing me, and giving me some tools to use when I approach my next story. These are the books I keep close at hand, on the few cherished bookshelf spaces in my roll-top desk, because just having them within eye-shot somehow makes me less shaky when approaching that blank page. Below is my list–and that’s not to say that there aren’t others that are amazing (I may just not have heard of them yet), or that these will impact everyone the same way they impacted me. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got one you can’t live without that I didn’t mention. I’m always glad to find new wells  of inspiration! :)

#5: The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

This is a book I picked up JUST YESTERDAY and I’m already finished with it. (Granted, it’s short, so I can’t really be all that smug.) I learned about it while reading an interview featuring Esperanza Spalding, and she mentioned she was reading it. It’s a book that is more than applicable to other artistic pursuits beyond writing, but the author himself is very well-established, so it does focus mostly on the authorial pursuit in its concrete examples. That said–I’ll admit, I’m breaking my rule from above–I’ve never actually read any of his books. They’re now on my list (re: stack) of To-Read, because DAMN. If he can be this gripping in non-fiction, I can’t help but want to see what he’s capable of in fiction.

I love the first 2/3 rds (the last third gets a bit overly metaphysical for my taste, but it *is* interesting, just had less impact on me personally). Pressfield is all about the grindstone and putting in your time and your words. Just do it. Fight your own Resistance. Stop whining and sit your butt down. That is the only way a book, a short story, a painting, or a symphony is going to be created. Period. No other way works, because no other way gets anything done. Kafka sat his butt down and wrote. Asimov sat his butt down and wrote. Wharton sat her butt down and wrote. Period. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Do it, or it’ll never be done. It may seem totally self-evident, but there are just so many ways to procrastinate, to *talk* about doing it, to *read* about doing it, or *blog* about doing it. But at the end of the day, you just gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

#4: Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg

I love this book. I LOVE this book. While it may be a bit too Zen for some folks (it’s all about writing from the heart, writing loads and loads and loads without any end-goal in mind, just capture that FEEL, that VERB, that SOUND), it sparks the creativity in me like crazy. One of the things she does is fill a spiral-bound notebook a month with writing. Any kind of writing. She calls it practice writing, just getting used to vomiting your whole soul on the page. Well, for those of you familiar with me, you know Staples is my dealer, and notebooks are my crack. I have dozens of notebooks, some filled, some not. Now that I’m getting back into writing by hand, these notebooks are actually starting to get some wear and tear. The idea of filling one a month with just WHATEVER gets my fingers itching for some college ruled paper, let me tell you!

But what’s more than just that she’s unwittingly supporting my notebook addiction, the chapters in Goldberg’s book are short, thoughtful, and engaging. They make you WANT to write, to just creatively overflow and see what happens. Write and get used to letting things go. As a self-admitted perfectionist, learning to let go is a big one for me. And she’s got some fascinating little exercises in there that just get the mind-grapes going wild with ideas.

#3: The Clockwork Muse – Eviatar Zerubavel

A tiny book with a big punch. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by a too-large project without any idea of how to not only wrestle it under control, but finish it in a reasonable time-frame, this is the book for you. I was assigned this book back in college, and subsequently skimmed it and tossed it aside without really paying attention to what it was saying. It’s very non-fiction oriented, but it could work (and has for me) just as well for fictional projects. It’s all about organization, planning, and scoping a project. It shows you how to set up a reasonable (and honest) time-line for how long something will take you to complete, so that ultimately, you’ll be able to determine whether or not you can get X project done and drafted by any given deadline.

It’s a practical guide to getting work done, and I love it. It appeals so much to the little bureaucrat in me that wants create files and labels and track my progress in my day planner. The process Zerubavel outlines in this book may be too rigid for some who like a bit more spontaneity, but for those of us paralyzed by the enormity of a project (like…hmm…a novel?), it’s the greatest comfort. Baby-steps, folks, it’s all about baby-steps. And for people like me who tend to bite off a lot more than they can chew in one go, it’s a good grounding tool, too.

#2: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers – Renni Brown & Dave King

If there’s one book that I’ve given to writer friends more than ANY other, it’s this one. Until I read this book, I could not for the life of me fully grasp the “Show Don’t Tell” shtick because so many would-be helpful advice-givers used terrible examples for “telling” verses “showing” and usually overemphasized the “NEVER EVER EVER TELL ANYTHING EVER” bit. Which, of course, is bullshit. You need to tell some things, or your readers are going to get bored to death. I know. I tend toward showing too much. “Lizzy thought she might have to go to the bathroom before they left for their road trip, so she opened her bedroom door, strolled down the hall, turned the bathroom door handle, and [...]” You get the picture. Definitely show the important scenes, but don’t over-bloat your story so much that you kill the pacing and lose the reader’s interest. This book taught me–with GOOD examples–how to differentiate those two things, and more importantly, how to look at stories I’d already gotten to rough draft with a critical eye for what needed to be shown verses what would be better skimmed over with a carefully applied “telling” moment.

I cannot praise this book enough. In fact, I think I’m going to start assigning this book to myself as required reading every six-months until I can recite the whole of the text backwards, because I think it’s THAT useful. It has helped me train my eye for evaluating my own work on an objective, editorial level like nothing–short of slush-editing–has ever been able to do for me. It’s big-picture stuff, not grammar or punctuation. Sure, you need to check for those things too, but as far as Brown and King are concerned, those are minor details to be checked before submitting. The big problems are the ones people so often don’t even see, which gets their work canned over and over again. I know. I’ve seen them in the slush pile. Repeatedly. They’re common problems–the kind you have a hard time putting your finger on, and can only really say, “Hmm, I’m not sure what it is, but this story just didn’t work for me.” This helped me vocalize what that mysterious IT is.

#1: About Writing – Samuel R. Delany

You want to learn about this mythical beast called the creative process? Read Dahlgren. Then read About Writing. Delany is one of the few authors whose book on writing I’ve picked up and immediately shouted (to the horror of my shocked husband), “YES! THIS IS IT! THIS IS HOW I FEEL!” Delany is a freaking genius.

This book scares the crap out of me. I’m not going to lie: some of what he says about talent and writing ability scares me to death because I’m so afraid I don’t have it. But if you can work through that and say–like I did–”Well, too bad! I’m doing it anyway! (and hope I’m not wasting my life–weee!)” then read this book.

This book. I love it. I keep it close at hand. I re-read chapters. The poor thing is getting rather beaten up. His philosophy on art and the creative process is brilliant and has inspired me so much to become a better writer. He’s got high demands for what it takes to do the “author” thing well, but you know what? It’s worth it. So worth it. In this book, he gives me heights to reach for that previously I hadn’t even realized existed up there in the mountain clouds. If you want to read more about my insane OMG LOVE ravings about this book, check out this blog post on the Inner Critic and the Inner Editor, which was originally up on the Apex Magazine blog, or read this post, originally posted here, about what not to do while doing NANOWRIMO.

So there you have it! My Top 5 writing-related books that rock my socks. Do you have some books you adore to pieces? What are they? What did you like about them?

So-! It’s been a while. In briefest summary: Still working the day job, still working slush/occasional-book-formatting for Apex, still writing (almost) daily, still trying to read a ton, still trying to quit TV, and still trying to make more time to cook better (re: healthier/vs. eating out) dinners. 

Instead of going into copious amounts of mundane detail regarding the past few months, I’ll just jump ahead to the present.

WRITING-WISE: I’m in the beginning of my second Chekhov week of the new system. After pulling out 14 rough drafts from November-January, I realized I was starting to slip into my “easy-mode” of waiting until the last minute to bang out a flash fiction piece under 1k without any serious thought. Since that pretty much defeated the purpose, I revised the system into alternating blocks–two months of Chekhov on top of the regular 500 words a day requirement I’ve set to try to finish a longer-term project, and two months of only 500 words a day (no Chekhov). If all goes well with this one, then I’ll still end up with 30 new drafts to edit by the end of this year’s cycle, plus a finished long project. Hoping this will also give me time to think ahead, refill my idea coffers before each two-month session, and get more useful drafts out of the process.

Also rejoined CRITTERS this month to get back on the editing wagon, so we’ll see how that goes! :0) 

READING-WISE: I just finished “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft, which has been on my “to read” list for ages, as well as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, and Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood.

If you’re looking for a short, wonderful, beautifully presented short story, read “On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning” by Haruki Murakami, layout by Stephanie Tai, found here: http://www.blueblanket.net/Steph/Make/Visual/Perfect/ .

LIFE-WISE: Finally got to the only IKEA in the New England area and picked up a pair of Poang chairs for me and Andy’s little reading/studying nook! Hooray! It’s so comfy and stylish now in that barren corner of the office! :D Now to get the rest of the house under control after Block Exam Week/Holidays/Guests. Even a back-to-back viewing of Hoarders didn’t kick us into full-clean gear just yet. EEK!

APEX-WISE: Apex Magazine just got nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine! Check it out here! And to think it was ever that thick paper digest I saw on the bookshelves in Barnes & Noble all those years ago and thought, “Hey. I should read more short fiction magazines. This one looks like fun!”

I’ve also been doing a few of the magazine interviews for Apex lately, as well as slushing per usual, so that keeps me plenty busy. :)

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All for now! I’m doing some brainstorming for the blog, so we’ll see what I do with it over the next few months. Stay tuned! :)

Saturday – 1/20 - As if I could come up with a more presumptuous title! :) No, no, but seriously folks–this is the first (other than *maybe* “Snap”) that qualifies as a non-genre short story. It’s not great, to be sure, but I did have fun writing it. Finished it yesterday, actually, but typed it up today and added it to my growing folder of new drafts for later review. Its final word count was about 1.9k.

Did go back back and re-read part of “Three Sisters” and “Swallow,” both of which I actually enjoyed immensely! Looking forward to possibly editing that one to a place where I could think about submitting it.

Twelve stories down, only forty more to go! :) That doesn’t sound *that* bad… O_o

I didn’t keep very diligent notes this week, but in the end, I did manage to finish the story. I was shooting for a 5k dark fantasy, and ended up with–still a dark fantasy-almost 11k story. This, I’m realizing very quickly, is something I am going to have to work on. Not only are stories above 7.5k much harder to place, they also commandeer a significantly larger chunk of my writing time, which seems to keep shrinking. I really need to get down to the 4k-5k range if I want to break into the fiction markets with any greater efficiency. It’s not that I haven’t sold stories that are 11.5k long–miraculously, I have–but it’s much more of an uphill battle, and I’d rather write an 11k novelette because I *want* to, not because that’s just how long my *short* stories run by accident. I need to move in to deliberate lengths, rather than “oops” lengths. Granted, a story will be however long it needs to be, but what that means is that I need to work on story conception and how many complications I put in/how many characters I want/how many scenes it’ll need to accomplish/etc. I’ve written 2.5-5k stories before, so I know I can do it. And I know I can come up with ideas that are still interesting even at that short of a length.

Either I need to shrink down, or I need to get bigger–I’m hedged in that demilitarized zone of 7.5k-25k. :( Too long to be a short story, too small to be a novel. *le sigh*

Friday – 1/6/2012 - SO. Didn’t realize until mid-day that yesterday was Thursday. DERP. [Dates in this journal are added post-week, for clarity.] Well, it’s official. I’ve written my first Big Bad Bear ending (and *no*, not Elizabeth BEAR, an actual bear, with teeth and claws and lots of fur). BBB endings came into effect in the first Chekhov year for those times when, after dutifully hacking away at a story, you suddenly realize that it is *way* bigger than a short story, and there’s no possible way you can complete it in time with a satisfying ending. In cases like this, to keep from having the urge to continue the story the following week and sneak in a short-short, I created the ending: “And then a bear came and ate [Character Name Here]. The End.” This doesn’t mean I won’t go back to this story and finish the ending when I’ve got time either this year or when I revisit it later in 2012, but it DOES mean I’ve given myself the OK to set it aside for now and ramp up for next week’s story guilt-free (or guilt-light, anyway). It was bound to happen one time or another, so at least this daunting fear is now out of the way. All that said, I actually rather like where this story is headed. I changed the plot mid-week, which revealed about a hundred other Hydra-head plot devices rearing their ugly–and interesting–mugs, so there’s plenty of fodder to use here. I could blame being sick on Sunday/Monday on the inability to officially finish this one on time, or I could blame the story idea being about ten characters and five scenes too big, or what-have-you. There are a million excuses. Disappointed that this one didn’t get to more than a summarized ending, but at least I’ve got it summarized, so when I come back to it, I’ll be able to wrap it up without too much trouble. And possibly expand it. Into a novella. Oh, boy. Week #10?–Not entirely successfully ended, but ended just the same. It happens.

ONWARD AND UPWARD.