The Confabulator Cafe

Author: apoland

  • The Waves Greet Us Home (Flash Fiction)

    Dr. Koldun’s office is like a living room, decorated with wide windows and soft lights. The other patients in the waiting room are a mixture of gorgeous and unfortunate. Every one of them stares down at a phone or book, utterly oblivious to her curious glances. What brings them to this place?

    “Muirgen Brady?”

    Gen winces at the mangled pronunciation — another bit of family history she tries to hide. Unfortunate family names, unfortunate family looks. None of the other patients even blink. She stands and crosses the room to shake Dr. Koldun’s hand. “Gen, please.”

    The doctor’s appraising glance is a bit too intense, her hand too tight — then she nods and releases Gen’s hand. “Of course. Follow me, please.”

    (more…)

  • I’ll Keep It Light, Thanks.

    I write in unrealistic genres — science fiction and urban fantasy being my favorites, though I’ve been playing with more traditional fantasy as well. I like a good touch of romance and bittersweet endings. What it comes down to is that there’s enough realism in real life, thank you very much.

    It sounds immature. In a way, it is. Reading is escapism, after all; for me, so is writing. I’m discovering my story just as much as the reader eventually will. It just takes me longer and not always in the right order. (Writers are a lot like The Doctor in that way. We’ll see the whole picture eventually, we just might end up starting in the middle.)

    Thing is, I’m not the wisest or most informed writer in the world. Not even on this blog. I’m not interested in tackling the big important social, political, and scientific questions of our age. I’m not going to be able to write one of those heavy, hard books. I’m going to leave that to better writers.

    I want to tell stories about people. I want to talk about technology that interests me.1 I want to write love stories that touch on my feminist interests. I want to write about the magic under the dark and gritty skin of a world that is in equal parts beautiful and cruel. Horror, suspense, thriller — shit, there’s already enough of all that in life. I don’t want it in my fiction too.

    This isn’t to say that I don’t let real world issues and concerns slip into my (optimistic) genre stories. It would be a flat world if I did. You need those little touches of realism when you reach for the fantastical — the reader needs to know where the ground is before you break it out from under them.

    And in some ways, writing from an optimistic angle is a way for me to filter my experiences, interests, and fears through a safe outlet. My fears of being economically abandoned certainly slipped into my NaNo novel, where an entire undesirable suburb(?) is physically cut off from the city that the citizens need to survive. DREAMING OF EDEN is colored by my thoughts on a false sense of bodily and social autonomy. My sky-pirate novel will (in theory) touch on parenting and religious institutions.2

    A writer can use any novel as a place to discuss (and even promote) ideas that they find important or interesting. The genre is the coating, the canvas to tell a story.

    1. Honestly, I wrote DREAMING OF EDEN at the same time I was falling in love with Linux, and it shows. Hoo, boy, my feelings on DRM and locked hardware are basically that whole novel.
    2. Not to be confused with religion itself. I don’t mind writing on matters of politics, but I’m not interested in touching matters of faith.

  • In 2012, I Took Every Challenge

    From a writing standpoint, 2012 rocked.

    I sent out a novel for the first time. Even though it got rejected twice, the “revise & resubmit” was pretty much the best thing that could have happened.

    I finally (finally!) understand passive voice in my writing. I don’t always see it, and I don’t always correct it, but its so much better now. I’ve also gotten more confidence in my writing. I’ve taken more challenges, I’ve tried new genres.

    But most of all, I just wrote more. I usually wrote NaNo every year. But beyond that, I didn’t do much. A couple pieces of fan fiction here, a drabble there.

    In 2012, I wrote 256,213 words of fiction alone. I’m sorry, I bolded that to brag. In years previous, I would probably write NaNoWriMo, maybe a handful of one-shots. This year I went for pretty much every challenge that came at me.

    Crossover challenge with a minimum of 20,000 words? Hell yes. Shipping challenge, another 20,000? Here, let me write 40,000. Wait, lets do both months of Camp NaNo! Why the hell not? Oh, and don’t forget how into NaNoWriMo we all are.

    Sometimes I drowned. August got stuck watching my son while I locked myself in the bedroom to finish Camp NaNo August. (I did more or less the same thing in Camp NaNo June, but my husband was home to manage the child.) But I damn well got it done. (Okay, except the two flash fiction assignments I totally dropped the ball on. Whoops.)

    With the flash fiction assignments, short story ideas, and the handful of ideas I wrote without any sort of prompting, its been a great year. Unfortunately, it means that 2013 is going to be a year of an awful lot of rewriting and editing. But I got so much done in 2012, that I’m pretty amped about 2013.

    And hey, this month I’m jumping in with Sara & Ted to finish my NaNo novel in January.

  • Post in Review – 2012

    I have to admit to something you might not know about me: I have a terrible memory for things I read and especially the things I write. It has to be exceptional for a detail to really stick out in my mind. Or I have to read it multiple times. So I’ve had to glance through my own posts to even remember what I’ve written.

    Of my own posts, my favorite is the character interview week from the second week of October — Everything In Its Place. It was fun to write from the point-of-view of my favorite minor characters, and to explore a post-novel scenario I hadn’t really given much thought.

    In fact, that was probably my favorite week to read. Check it out; it started October 8th with Jack’s Meeting With Mitch. We’ve discussed before how writers are sort of insular — I’ll write most of my novels while making every effort to avoid divulging concrete details. That particular assignment revealed a lot about not just what sort of writers we are, but the sort of characters we write.

    Generically, any assignment that gets into the depth of our processes and systems is fun to read. I like seeing not just how we’re all different as writers, but how we’re also the same. Even though some of the other writers tackle genres that I don’t usually read, the process that get us all to the end product isn’t so different.

    Its been a fun year, doing this with a writing family that’s supportive, fun, and talented. Here’s to another year!

  • An Atypical Year

    In the bumper at the start of the week, the amorphous management asked of us writers, “Do they love this time of year or hate it? Are the holidays a time of coming together or pulling apart?”

    And my heart broke, because this year, it’s all of that.

    I usually love holidays. I love visiting family. I love the frantic planning to make sure everyone is included. I love the food and the crafting and the wine and the sleepless nights. There’s nearly never drama, even though we divide our time between three families. (more…)

  • Four Shots

    Dining Room, Storm Shelter – 2000

    Cellar Door by Michael Chan
    Cellar Door by Michael Chan

    At midnight I head down to the dining room for a cup of tea. My textbooks are still piled in the corner of the dining room table, my notebook open. I tighten my robe around my waist before I sit down and curl my legs up under me.

    I read the same line about DNA four times before I slam the book shut and stand with my tea, pacing in front of the doors. Mother’s car isn’t in the driveway — odd, considering the hour. Pacing gives way to exhaustion, though I still feel too keyed up to sleep. Every time I started to fall asleep, I heard Uncle Al in my head.

    I’m dozing off in front of my biology textbook when the sound rips me out of it — the bang that feels like it’s stopped my heart and forced the breath from my lungs. I blink rapidly. I’m almost convinced that the noise came out of my dreams when I hear a second and third gunshot in rapid succession. (more…)

  • Books, Mostly.

    I don’t know that writers are all that harder (or easier) to shop for than real people. When you’re buying someone a gift, you either want to give them something they didn’t know they wanted (like the year we got my brother Storm Front) or you want to give them something they told you that they wanted.

    That said, a great go-to is a book. I don’t know a writer who doesn’t get a little giddy about a new book, be it an e-book or a new hardback. It can be a bit of fiction or a reference book. You can never have too many books, and there are so many different kinds.

    (more…)

  • Post-NaNo Blues

    NaNoWriMo went fine, and I’m still working on the novel — but now I’m trying to throw off the post-NaNo funk. (Ted wrote about this last week, and I pretty much just nodded along.)

    While writing is often a solitary experience, I am not a solitary person. I thrive on company, even if all we’re doing is drinking coffee and doing something inherently unsocial, like writing. Maybe it comes from small housing and lots of siblings; I’m just no good at being alone. I only sort of joke that I want to move my friends into one of those polygamist houses I once saw on Sister Wives — for the ease of company, not the sex, obviously.

    (more…)

  • Wait, Where Is This Train Headed?

    Since I’d already hit my word count goals for NaNo, I decided that I wanted to finish the novel before November closed for the year. I only had a few scenes left, so its been looking good.

    Then I did a quick outline and realized that my climatic explosion isn’t actually my climax; its the Big Push that changes my character.

    Um.

    Fuck.

    I knew a lot of my draft was background stuff that would get scrapped. I knew there were gaps in the story that would need to be told. I knew that some of my characters needed more screen time. That this draft was an incomplete creature was not news to me. But looking at it last night, I realized that the explosion is what reveals to my character that there is an antagonist. Its the shit in the aftermath that really allows Johnny to forge an identity and relationships, where he’s just been running for most of the novel.

    In the beginning of November I sat down to write a story about a kid who gets humbled by his new rival and has to learn how to not be a winner.

    I’m closing November with a novel about a depressed kid who takes risks because he doesn’t value his life. He’s slowly erasing his identity, until this big explosion forces him to confront the choices he’s made.

    Well then.

    I’m calling a good month.

  • Prepare for Your Weaknesses

    I’m sorry this is running a bit late in the day; my family just took off, and I’m only just now remembering that I have things to do on the computer. My bad, y’all.

    Thing is, I knew that the second my family hit town, I would forget to do anything online. My family doesn’t live too far — only about three or four hours away, depending on much of a lead foot you have — but I miss them dearly. They usually only come for a day or two, so I pretty much focus on doing things with them.

    Knowing this, I decided that I would hit 50K by Wednesday. It was sort of rough there for a while. I got tired. I got frustrated. But Christie and Jason were going along with it too, and all three of us hit 50K. (I got it done at 11PM on Wednesday, but damn it, it got done.)

    Of course, the novel isn’t done. I pretty much decided to validate and jump right back in to dinner prep. Which was worth it, as dinner was well-received, well-loved, and sent our family right into the throes of a food coma so intense, that I was nodding off at 10PM. It was a great night of delicious drinks and pleasant company. We played Cards Against Humanity, wherein we learned that while my mother might be too nice for it, she would occasionally just drop a vulgar card right when you weren’t expecting.

    Frankly, I would delete my whole novel for more nights just so good. Thankfully, no one expects that.

    That said, NaNoWriMo doesn’t end just because you hit 50K; it’d be against the spirit of it. There are still write-ins to attend, friends to cheer on. I still intend to make every effort to finish this novel before NaNoWriMo ends.

    There’s probably more real life to deal with now than there was pre-Thanksgiving. The mountain of dishes alone is staggering. But Week Four is worth the effort.