Zhoq threw the switch which closed with a bang. The last of the couplings hummed to life and magnetically locked into place. “All right,” he said, shielding his eyes, “let ‘em know we’re good, Beanie.”
The mooring cable connected to the coupling extended as far as he could see and was as big around as him. Zhoq stepped just beyond the safe distance ring and turned. “Beanie? You hear me?”
“Roger, Zhoq.” The voice in his ear was amiable. “They’re advised.”
He shook his head. Beanie was likable, a character by any definition, but he damned well better be doing his job. “Good. Let me know when they’re close.”
While I’m not as fluent as the average protocol droid, I am constantly stating my positions on channels that more people seem to be tuning in on.
The witness will take the stand. Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth, so help you God?
I will.
Please say “I do.”
I do.
Be seated. Mr. Arnett you’re testifying today about your preferred genre. Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?
Thank you, your honor. I do.
The prosecutor approaches the witness box. He’s older than me, his hair grayer, and he’s clean-shaven. Respectable-looking. Good suit.
Mr. Arnett – I understand you consider yourself a — Science Fiction writer. Is that true?
Yes.
And why is that?
The prosecutor is prancing back and forth in front of me like he’s on TV or something. I can see him puffing his chest up and out for the benefit of the jury. He seems to be making a lot of eye contact with the forewoman. She’s definitely hot, not my type but she’s good-looking.
I guess it’s probably because I grew up watching TV like The Six Million Dollar Man, Time Tunnel, and Star Trek. Going to movies like Star Wars and special matinees of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I read a lot of SF, too. Heinlein, Asimov, and the like. Lots of Twilight Zone reruns, too. (more…)
Yeah, confidence is buried in there somewhere. Just has to be unearthed from the pile of insecurities. 2013 is about capitalizing on that.
Oh what a year 2012 was. In November 2011 I wrote the best thing I’d ever written and I intended to get it edited and submit it for consideration to publishers.
I did that.
I’m not talking about resolutions, I’m talking about what resolving to do that did to me.
There’s this theory that I have talked about in the past in other places about how everything is built on the simple concept of The Line: a connector between points A and B or S and T or whatever you want them to be. Once humans started connecting things we were fated to do things like write with pictures then letters or numbers. To build things with branches and stones, to connect one corner to another with a line of materials and then to keep building on those lines.
A Wandering Line is a connection that’s not made or that veers off away from point E to points unknown or undefined. A Dead Line is one that terminates before it reaches the intended connecting point.
Prior to 2012 there were a number of Dead Lines in my writing career. I have to acknowledge that some of those missed connections (aw, jeez, who’d’a thought I’d make THAT reference?) were simply from the fear of making that connection. Those Lines might, indeed, have died but at least they would have been natural deaths instead of just sort of falling off a cliff, dragged by a huge hairy wolf made of fear.
I’m talking about rejection.
No one wants to hear that their work isn’t ready or good or anything that isn’t positive.
But I’m not afraid of that rejection any more. Not at all. I’ve gotten several “thank you but no” emails after submitting short stories and I got one very nice “I like it but it’s not ready” note.
But I made those connections. Those points were joined and now they have to be built upon.
I got there by having the time to spend on the novel, making the effort to revise the thing and make it better.
So how have I changed as a writer this year? Quite simply I’ve identified some glaringly obvious (now they’re obvious) problems with my work and made myself better. Hopefully I’m good, but I’m definitely better than I was when I wrote that novel that I’m so proud of.
That “I like it but it’s not ready” note wasn’t at all troublesome. In fact it increased my resolve to continue the Line that would take me from enthusiastic amateur writer to published author.
2013 is the year of having the confidence to build on those Lines, make the connections, and get to the next point. It’s time and I know it. So improved writing skills and the confidence to keep after it are the major changes for the year.
I’m looking forward to making the connections that will allow me to garner readers. Then building on them to define a universe that pulls you in.
And crossing off those Dead Lines and not worrying about them any more.
Somewhere in there are the stories waiting to be discovered and told. Some of them are beyond me right now and that’s pretty exciting.
It’s been a year since we launched the Confabulator Cafe. The meetings we had leading up to this launch were fun and filled with lots of writers who were interested in contributing and some others who were looking for something different from the group. It took us a while to separate the Cafe from the writer’s group but that’s finally happening thanks in part to NaNoWriMo but that’s another story for others to tell.
Over the first year of the Cafe we’ve covered a ton of topics and done a lot of writing. By my count I’ve written well over 45,000 words for the site on everything from the politics of writing and storytelling to flash fiction to my influences and so many other things. I’ve unknowingly echoes thoughts of my fellow Confabulators and been far afield from the majority, too. I’ve learned a great deal about how I write, why I write and even when I write best.
As a storyteller, the monthly fiction assignments have been the most fun. I missed one assignment early on, but I’ve had the most fun writing every story. Being ‘forced’ to write short/flash fiction on a monthly basis has been sometimes nerve-wracking, but it’s always paid off. I’ve always gotten something I can be proud of despite the amount of sweat that’s gone into the writing.
Fortunately I don’t have to make the same kinds of hard decisions as Ned Stark, but Winter and the holidays don’t have to be grim.
There are quite a few words that can describe the beginning of Winter and the year-end holidays: dread, lonely, cold, snowy, warm, happy. I’ve run through the gamut in my time on Earth, and in general I find this time of year to be pretty nice.
That’s the most honest thing I can say about it. I like Thanksgiving and Christmas because there are good meals that go along with seeing family. (I like my family.) It’s not really about presents, or at least it hasn’t been for fifteen or twenty years. I like stuff, don’t get me wrong, stuff is good. It’s just that I’m in a position now where I can get almost any stuff I want when I want it. I don’t have to wait for the holiday or my birthday or Father’s Day.
I’m fortunate that the business I work in is closed during the holiday season, too. That means I get an extended vacation of a week or sometimes a little more every year beyond any time I take off in spring or summer. Again it’s time to spend with my family and do things like read or go to a movie.
Loyal Barstow chewed his fingernails and looked around. “Panic room,” he said. “Panic room. But I’m not panicked.” He patted his nonexistent pockets.
His bathrobe was open and he wore a tee shirt and sweats, both stained with red and brown. He hadn’t showered in several days, he wondered if there was any water. For two weeks now he’d been locked in a room originally provisioned for three or four days.
“They can’t get in,” he said and sprung across the bed, grabbed for a plastic bag and turned it inside out. Nothing in there. Loyal flung it away and sighed. “No one can get in. And I don’t want to get out.” He huffed and puffed and rolled onto his back. “I don’t want to get out.”
The guest bedroom had been converted during The Scare of ‘17, not to be confused with the Panic of ‘22. No, it wouldn’t do to confuse the two. The year after The Scare, there had even been a militarized assault with fourteen black-uniformed men wearing night vision goggles. Loyal’s father told the story with gusto, especially the end. (more…)
Though I didn’t write as many words as last year and I’m setting aside the manuscript to work on something else, I still won. So NaNoWriMo isn’t going to be over for a while.
Brought to you by:
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Enough of that silliness. Can you tell I’m a little slap-happy?
I let it sit for a while, got some very positive feedback that was encouraging and finally got around to editing it. Recently I sent the book to a publisher and got a great note back asking for some changes and to resubmit it.
That note came about ten days or so before the beginning of NaNoWriMo. It changed the whole month for me. I set some very modest goals of hitting the 50K mark by the end of the month, to average 2K words per day, then to write every day.
Since last we met, I haven’t written one word on my NaNoWriMo novel. Not one.
I’ve been thinking about it, working out some story problems and I sure haven’t been sitting on my hands. Instead, I went back and started editing (again!) and revising last year’s novel for passive-voice verbiage.
Hoo boy. That’s been a LOT of work. I wrote about that on my blog on Wednesday.
Why am I doing this? I don’t I’ve mentioned it here but I got feedback from the publisher I sent last year’s novel to ‘revise and resubmit’ it. Since I’m writing the sequel to that novel for this year’s NaNoWriMo, reaching the word count goal and then going back to edit made sense.
Because I’m seeing a lot of things I can clean up besides just the passive stuff. And once that’s done then I can clean up the passive stuff in the current work and make everything better going forward.
I’ll cover a lot of this in the postgame report post next week, and hopefully be able to tell you that I’ve finished the work.
But making it to 50K was a big deal. It always is. Yes, I made it to that goal a couple hours before Christie did but only because she let me. The push between her and Ashley and me was a lot of fun and made it a good challenge to get me to that point. I might not have done it without those two working alongside me. I’m grateful for the motivation.
So. That’s the update. Next week I’ll look back and give you my impressions of the entire month.
While I’m VERY proud of having done this for the second year in a row, I’m not done writing. My plan for this book was to get a good novel-length story told as quickly as possible in order to go back and edit it into something I could be even more proud of.
So I’m not done writing.
But because I finished early and there’s no one clamoring for this book (it’s a sequel to last year’s) I can slow down into a nice rhythm of writing about 2K per day. If I do that I will have written about 66,000 words for the month. And that would make me very, very proud indeed.
See, NaNo teaches you the mechanics of how to be a writer:
Sit down. (Or stand up if you’re Ernest Hemingway.)
Put your fingers on the keys.
WRITE. Make your daily word count and don’t whine about it.
Everything else, EVERYthing else, is secondary. Just get in the habit of writing, of putting one word after another into a line while making some sort of sense.
I’ll get more into this in the post-game when that comes up, but my biggest headaches so far this month have been making sure I don’t head-hop and trying to put some variety in my sentences, structure-wise.
But see, that’s just whining.
I’m enjoying the fact that I wrote 50,000 words so quickly, just as quickly as last year. I’m very happy with my story and how it’s coming along. I like it and it’s getting exciting. Stuff is happening. My goal this year was to write more in the month than I did last year. At one point I was on track to write nearly 75,000 words. I don’t thing I’ll make that but I could conceivably hit 70K+.
So I want to reward myself. I’m allowing that I have some other work that needs to be done now that this major milestone has been reached:
I have to revise last year’s novel for passivity and resubmit it.
There are plans to be made for the coming calendar year in regards to writing.
And yeah, some downtime.
It’s been a great NaNoWriMo so far, but it’s not over. I’ve got seven days left. A week is a long time. That’s at least 14,000 words.
Pretty sure I’m gonna make the goal I set for myself.
Zhoq threw the switch which closed with a bang. The last of the couplings hummed to life and magnetically locked into place. “All right,” he said, shielding his eyes, “let ‘em know we’re good, Beanie.”
