The Confabulator Cafe

Author: ajunge

  • No-drama Llama

    One of the most difficult challenges in writing for the Cafe is to come up with a monthly piece of short fiction. A thousand words with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is a writing skill I’ve wanted to gain, and I figured with the same discipline, work, and a lot of words on the page I’d figure out this short story stuff the same way I figured out how to win Nanowrimo every year I’ve participated.

    Sometimes it works. I’ve produced some pieces, published here at the Cafe, that I’m rather proud of. It wasn’t exactly easy, but I got in the zone, found a groove, and mixed metaphors like a boss and within a few hours I had something worth sharing with the world.

    But usually I got nothing.

    I’ve tried starting with prompts, with themes, with characters and situations and conflicts and a firm deadline. I can brainstorm, free write, take long walks and showers, make tripartate lists describing everything I can think of. But I can rarely find a character, a goal, obstacles to overcome, and a solution that fit within a thousand words. Mostly I can’t find an easy source of conflict, and if I try to force one for the sake of the story, it breaks the logic of the world. And, to misquote Elizabeth Bennett, I am unwilling to speak unless I expect to say something that will amaze the entire room.

    I have always told myself private stories to stave off boredom. But I realize all those stories have been at least novel-length. The characters aren’t dealing with short-term crises, they’re dealing with the problem of finding meaning within a life that can, in some circumstances, span centuries.

    Perhaps this reflects my own life, one I’ve managed to constructed to be remarkably free of drama. While some might bemoan my lack of passionate affairs, there also aren’t any fights, misunderstandings, abuse, or many sudden and traumatic losses. My life is pretty placid; possibly even boring, and I like it that way. Drama, to me, is a distraction.

    This perhaps explains why I’m not a big fan of chick-lit and romance. If everybody in those books would use their words and take one another seriously, well, the book would be a lot shorter.

    I guess that’s what they mean when they say to write what you know. Write your own journey. It’ll take as many words as it takes.

  • So Not Worried About This

    The question before me this week is about the future of publishing, and honestly, I couldn’t care less about the future of publishing [0].

    People are worried about the effects of Internet-mediated business cycle disruption. The thing about disruptive technologies is that they’re disruptive— they shake things up, move them about, force them to do the hokey-pokey when they’d really rather not dance. The people most likely to be hurt are those who are most invested in the old ways of doing things. They’ve built their business model on the tried and true and will not be moved, in the hope that past performance is a predictor of future success and all that. Above all, they want stability, predictability, and a steadily increasing cash flow.

    I am old enough to remember when the Internet was being hailed as the great bypasser of traditional gatekeepers (in this case, the publishers), giving artists the opportunity to market directly to the public. And to a certain extent, that happens quite a bit. You don’t have to get hired by a major metropolitan newspaper to get your opinions on the issues of the day in front of readers anymore— you just have to start a blog. You can turn your Nanowrimo novel into a .pdf or .mobi file and distribute it basically for free, and maybe even earn a few bucks in the process.

    But here’s the thing. Bypassing the gatekeepers— becoming your own publisher— has been happening for centuries. All you needed was access to a printing press/mimeograph/photocopier. You could create newsletters/fanzines/chapbooks to your heart’s content, in small press runs, at very low cost. And you could even make a few bucks selling them at the comic book shop/convention/paranoid conspiracy gun show. People still do that today. If you wanted a little more polish, you could hire or barter for editing and layout work, and pay for a hardbound vanity press edition. These days you set up a CafePress store or similar, and you won’t even have to clean out enough room in your garage to store boxes of books or haul them around in your trunk.

    What the publisher provides isn’t the physical (or these days, electronic) object. They don’t just stand between author and reader, collecting tolls. Publishers are middlemen, yes, but value-added middlemen. An author signs a contract (after reading it very carefully first, natch) that provides not only an audience for his work, but also quality control and marketing. The reader picks up the book expecting a certain baseline quality of story, grammar, and presentation. Furthermore, the publisher’s brand helps the reader find a book they’re likely to enjoy even if they’re not familiar with the author.

    That’s what a brand is, you see. A guarantee of a certain quality of a product line. You wouldn’t expect Proctor and Gamble, manufacturer of household cleaning supplies, to build a decent car, and you wouldn’t expect Ford Motor Company to know from a good horror story. So if you want a book about exploding spaceships or elves in the urban jungle, you’d buy something from Baen. If you want a steamy but traditional romance, Harlequin or Avon. And when you need to fall asleep easily with no nasty side effects, pick up something from Oxford University Press.

    There’s only one thing that matters, which is that writers want to make stories, and readers want to read stories, and somehow they’ll figure the rest of it out. Publishers of today don’t look a lot like publishers of 100 years ago, and certainly won’t look anything like publishers 100 years hence. I am fairly certain, though, that there will be some kind of middleman who helps the writer and reader find one another. Today it’s a publisher. Tomorrow it might be an expert system.

    [0] My opinion is privileged by the fact that I have no current intention of ever dipping my toe into the business end of literature, and especially not to earn a living at it. My fiction writing is a hobby and an exploration of art and craft. My nonfiction writing earns me a modest salary. My reading is wide-ranging and multi-sourced.

  • On the Proper Treatment of Plucky Girl Sidekicks

    Susie Safflower surreptitiously tested the ropes tying her to the chair. They seemed a little looser on the left. She’s have to keep that in mind.

    “Mwuaha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I, the Dark Nemesis, have you completely in my power!”

    Susie’s bosom heaved with agitation. A comely sweat bespangled her brow. “What… what do you intend to do with me?” she cried.

    “Why, I shall use you for my pleasure— as bait in my trap for Captain Awesome!” Dark Nemesis cackled again.

    “Oh!” Susie breathed. “You horrible, horrible villain! You would never harm a helpless woman!”
    “Well, of course not,” Dark Nemesis said in a more normal tone of voice. “I was raised never to hit girls. Mom always wanted me to be a gentleman, and she was right. Manners are so important, don’t you think?”

    Well, yes,” Susie agreed. “You do have lovely manners.”

    “Thank you, my dear. One does so hate to make a poor first impression.”

    “Why, only last week when I was held captive by the Avenger of Doom…”

    (more…)

  • Untitled (flash fiction)

    The server placed Melinda’s stack of strawberry and banana pancakes— with extra fruit and whipped cream— in front of her, and she prepared to dig in.

    “So what happened with Ryan last night?” Bella wanted to know from behind her own stack of cheesecake pancakes.

    “Well, I had called him to come over and help out, right? And when he shows, he’s dressed up really nicely and he’s holding a single red rose. When I answered the door, he was like, you’re not going out dressed like that are you? Dude thought we were going out on a date.”

    “But you weren’t?” Darlene asked. She sipped her diet soda.

    “Oh, come on! Ryan knows the score. There’s monsters to slay, and I’m supposed to do it in pantyhose and heels?” She took a bite of pancake. “I am starving. I’m always hungry after a kill.”

    “Hence the IHOP girls’ night and after action review,” Bella said. “So, Ryan didn’t approve of your outfit…”

    “I will have you know that I picked my outfit very carefully. Also, I did my hair special. I braided it and pinned it up on top of my head– there was no way any fiend from hell was going to be able to grab it.”

    “Good thinking,” Bella said, “especially after last time.”

    (more…)

  • The More Things Change

    I once got to spend a year reading 100-year old newspapers. Things haven’t changed as much as you think they have.

    Sure, now we’ve got the Internet and cable television and pictures of the Earth from the Moon, but as far as human nature goes, not to mention the things considered “newsworthy,” we’re pretty much the same as we ever have been.

    Stupid wars are the same— the justifications for getting into the Spanish American War sound an awful lot like the justifications for invading Iraq. They had patent medicine ads— we have weight loss tips. As far as celebrity gossip goes, only the names have changed. Political partisanship was just as rancorous— the other party’s candidate was always a lying cur and untrustworthy jackanape. If you had more than one paper in town, one would be the Democratic paper, the other the Republican one, and they’d have flame wars like you wouldn’t believe. Sensationalism sold, especially in crime stories— a ghastly murder on the other side of the country was always going to get published.

    A surprising amount of the news back then was very local. On a typical day there would be an announcement that Miss So-and-so has returned from visiting her aunt in Chicago. I always wondered how that got in there— did the newspapers employ roving gossip-teers to fill those column inches, or did Miss So-and-so visit the newspaper office herself to tell them? Was this the early 20th century equivalent of a Facebook update? Was the entire town on her friends list? Sometimes the newspaper would reprint parts of letters sent home from those who were traveling abroad, describing their adventures; a form of early blogging. I remember seeing ads placed by manufactured gas companies, saying that if enough households in town pledged to become customers, they would build a gas plant and bring modern heat and lighting to town— Kickstarter for the analog era. A major factory might have a daily or weekly column devoted to it, describing how good their business was and telling stories about the workers, announcing hiring or layoffs as appropriate. And you know how Facebook likes to sneak ads into your newsfeed? Newspapers would do the same, publish ads that looked like news until you read it closely.

    Things changed during WWI, though. The war news, the national news, began to crowd out the local news. The Associated Press and other news services had been around for fifty years, but now the invention of the teletype put news items into local newsrooms in almost real time. Soon there was usually only one newspaper per town, often only one per county. You couldn’t become a newspaperman by buying a secondhand press and a barrel of ink anymore. The local gossip stayed around for quite a while (you can sometimes still find it in rural small-town weeklies), but by the 1950s, the papers were more “professional,” more worldly, and much more staid. Syndicated columns by “experts” replaced locally sourced, seat of your pants content. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was almost no local content at all.

    Today hometown newspapers are going back to their roots and finding stories in the communities where they live. They’re also writing in a folksier, less polished voice. In an era where everybody knows what’s happening around the world in real time, the local stuff is what is unique and interesting again.

  • Voices

    Government and scientific writing is usually done in this really bizarre institutional voice. You know the one I mean; you’ve read it and struggled with it, even if you’ve never deliberately tried to write it. It’s a weird, hyper-formalized, passive-verbed, long-winded writing style that you discovered had invaded your own writing when you were just starting out. You were probably praised for it, too— told it was “good English.”

    Actually, it’s terrible English. Institutional Voice, aka Bureaucratese, avoids sentence subjects. All verbs are rendered in the passive. “It was discovered that…” “The decision was made that…” “The result was…” “The Department’s investigation demonstrated…” “The data show…”

    Removing the subject was supposed to discourage egotistical self-aggrandizement; the text would be the authority, not any particular author. What really happened is that removing the human subject removed any sense of humanity, that yes, there is a caring, feeling person behind the keyboard. Or, as sometimes happens, that there is a person behind the keyboard who doesn’t care, or in fact glories in your misery. Institutional voice functions to put distance between author and reader. The reader cannot judge the author’s intentions or morals, and the author can say the most horrible things without once considering his audience. [0]

    Part of our journey as writers is discovering our own authentic voices. Like glitter, Institutional Voice is pervasive, and as soon as you think you’ve removed the last of it from your writing, you’ll find it cropping up in the most bizarre and unexpected places. We spent our lives learning, “This is the Voice of Authority, this is the Voice of Somebody Who Knows What They’re Talking About,” and we’ll slip into it in order to disguise our own uncertainties about our prose.

    It sounds easy to stay away from Institutional Voice. “Just write the same way you speak!” they’ll tell you [1]. There’s two problems with that approach. First, have you ever read the transcript of a live interview? People speak in sentence fragments and run-ons and run-on sentence fragments all the time. And second, once you’ve been writing this crap for so long, you’ll start speaking that way, too.

    [0] “The contents of Boxcar 113 will be disposed of according to the standard procedures.” To be spoken in a funny German accent, because, hey, we’re all about stereotyping and the glory of Godwin in this blog.
    [1] “They” lie.

  • Enter the Dragon

    Renaissance festivals are somewhat odd places. Those who attend them, not to mention those of us who work them, are looking for something other, to see or hear or do or be something different than normal. At its best, Faire is where the world we have and the world that should be intersect. With corndogs and porta-potties.

    Crossroads are where magic happens.

    I’ve worked just about every job one can do at a Faire. I’ve squired the joust, sold sno-cones, been the Queen’s Lady-In-Waiting, hawked CDs and roses. I once did an entire seven week run playing a nun in the morning and pub wenching in the afternoon. Mostly these days I just fill in where I’m needed. I’ve considered business cards: Have Garb, Will Cover Privy Breaks. Which is how I ended up working the Helping Hounds Animal Shelter booth at the Lone Mountain Renaissance Faire. We provided bowls of water and treats for visiting dogs, showed off our adorably adoptable animals, handed out poop scoops, and solicited donations.

    (more…)

  • Embrace it!

    Lately I’ve been feeling the blahs. Fat. Inactive. Creatively null and void. Like I’m in a holding pattern.

    All of which means one thing: It is time to break out of my comfort zone [0].

    I’ve got several things I can do. I can go back to Contra dancing. I have a carpentry project planned, for which I have no appropriate tools or workspace. I’ll be taking my annual pilgrimage to Oklahoma City in a few weeks. As the weather gets warmer, I want to spend more time hiking through the woods or exploring some of the regional rail-trails on my bike.

    But for now, this minute, what I can do is start re-reading last year’s Nano novel.

    I had a plan last November [1]. I was going to take December off, let the novel chill a little, and look at it with fresh eyes January 1. Armed with a fresh cube of sticky notes, I would ruthlessly carve away the kruft until I had revealed What Exactly My Novel Was All About [2].

    Meanwhile I had some time to kill and did so by marathoning all fourteen of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels, plus the short stories. They say that Facebook is depressing because you’re comparing your gag reel to everybody else’s award winning performances. After reading Butcher, my own little urban fantasy looked like something the cat was trying to bury. Instead of a month of revisions, I quit after 20 minutes [3].

    I always advise new Wrimos to “embrace the suck,” because the zero draft of anything always sucks. Well, it’s time to eat my own dog food, because digging the diamond out of this dung heap is going to really, really… well, the metaphor rather speaks for itself.

    Embrace the suck, Aspen! You love the suck! And if I keep saying that, will it be true?

    [0] But I don’t want to leave my comfort zone! It’s so nice and comfortable!
    [1] You know what they say about plans and contact with the enemy….
    [2] And then rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
    [3] See prev. footnote re: Plans.

  • The Gracious Acceptance of Criticism is Part of the Job

    As I was thinking about this week’s topic, I was going to be all smug and smarmy and more-mature-than-thou about how much I love criticism and look at it as a chance to learn and improve my skills [0].

    Then I got reminded that some critiques really are just petty, nit-picky, bullshit.

    I try to come at critique with a humble mind aimed toward learning how to avoid mistakes in the future [1]. Is there a better approach for this audience? Is there another aspect of the issue that should be emphasized? Where was my writing unclear? How well did the structure work to guide and inform the reader? Are there any suggestions for improving my writing process? In that framework, the worst critique you can give me is, “I loved it! It’s super! You’re the best!” [2]

    The best critiques, on the other hand, turn into conversations about process and document design and information management theory. Every document I write I’ve usually done some pretty deep thinking about how the information should be gathered, curated, and packaged, and I’m perfectly happy to explain and defend my choices.

    Yeah. I sound like I’m polishing my halo a bit. But this is how professionals work. You put your ego away and get the job done, on time, within budget. That’s how to do a job well done, for which the reward is another (paid) job.

    [0] I’m sorry.
    [1] In real life, my reaction may involve going away for few minutes to curse the multiverse for putting such obvious idiots in my path. That out of my system, I can them come back and actually look for room for improvement.
    [2] Often followed by, “Just one little thing….” Just give it to me straight.

  • I have no idea how to effectively critique.

    Usually when somebody wants me to go over a piece of their writing, they have a question about grammar, or they just want me to quickly “fix” it so that it’s readable. They are far less interested in learning how to improve the artistry of their writing than they are in getting it done, ideally as painlessly as possible.

    I always come at a piece of writing with the reader in mind. What do they need to know? What are they likely to know already? Do they have the technical background to understand the scientific gobbledegook, or does it need to be simplified for clarity? Is there a story? How can we tell the story so that it is interesting? If we need to illustrate a concept or process, can we find a story that’s relevant to tell? Are there any photographs? Are there any interesting photographs? Are there any photographs of something other than the same technician standing next to the same very expensive piece of equipment that is in all the other photographs from all the other projects?

    I have rarely critiqued fiction, at least for another person. I do keep a journal of most of the books I have read, and what I thought about them (only some of these reviews end up on Goodreads). There are some books to which I wrote love letters. There are some to which I wrote hate mail. And there are some that I only finished reading because mocking all their flaws was so much fun [0].

    (more…)