The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Process

  • The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Written

    I haven’t participated in NaNoWriMo since 2012, but I’m still reaping the writing rewards of that one year.

    My fiction before that NaNoWriMo had been mostly successful. All of my plays were awarded staged readings and most of my short stories got published. Of course, I had only written two plays and three short stories over the course of 11 years. Five things total. I was a 29 year old woman who had wanted to write fiction all my life, but I just didn’t do it.

    It would have been embarrassing to turn out something from my own imagination that was imperfect and less than brilliant. And so I didn’t write fiction. I wrote news articles, academic papers, and grant proposals successfully. After all I could write, but those weren’t pieces of my Very Own Personal imagination on display, so I felt less exposed.

    In 2012 I could see my 30th birthday approaching and I had always thought that I would have finished my first novel before I was 30. Still just the two plays and three short stories. So I jumped on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon.

    Writing for a word count taught me to just keep going. My novel was wretched. I did have a couple of moments of brilliant extemporizing that were exhilarating, especially so since I am an avid plotter and in no way shape or form a seat-of-your-pants writer. But mostly it was horrible.

    I found it freeing to have written something horrible. Whatever I wrote next couldn’t possibly be the worst thing I’ve ever written. Nope. That was my NaNo Novel. Crown taken.

    So, I have learned to keep going through painful stories, through half formed ideas, bad plots, weak characters, etc. I have decided that I can learn nothing from stories I don’t write. And so, whenever I can make time for my fiction hobby, I write. I’m getting better, too.

  • Cheering from the sidelines

    I am not doing NaNoWriMo, and it feels like I’m opting out of a big party in order to study or something. (more…)

  • What the Finale of How I Met Your Mother Can Teach Us about Writing

    Monday night, CBS ended the long-running series How I Met Your Mother with a much-hyped finale. The way the series ended brought to mind a major point about writing.

    Series finales are always heavily-contested. For one, people have come to know and love the characters and will miss them. In the case of How I Met Your Mother, the finale is the entire narrative structure of the show, the meeting of the mother. Viewers are conflicted. They want to see the climax, but their relationship with the characters is over. It’s a tough position for a series writer, because there isn’t a follow-up episode to redeem any mistakes. This is the same situation you face as a fiction writer. If you haven’t seen the show yet, and spoilers matter to you, do not go any further. (more…)

  • All My Best Writing Starts Out as Fanfic

    I am scheduled to give you a flash fiction today. It’s not going to happen.

    About a month ago, I discovered the TV show Supernatural, and immediately became obsessed [0]. All of my non-work, non-sleep time has been spent catching up on the glory of all things Winchester. There’s eight and a half seasons just in canon, and I haven’t even started looking at fan sites yet.

    The upshot of all this is when I sat down to start outlining a flash fiction, the only story screaming to get out of my head was a Supernatural fanfic. Which I will not publish, post, or allow to see the light of day. Ever. Don’t ask. But I’m writing it anyway, because it needs to be written.

    The truth is, all my stories start as fanfic. Worse, they’re the most horribly self-indulgent, wish-fulfillment, Mary Sue-riffic kind of fanfic. Take every trope of bad fanfic, and it’s probably there. It’s frankly quite humiliating, which is why I refuse to release it into the wild.

    I’ll write it, though. I’ll write it to get it out of my head. I’ll write it for the daily discipline of writing. I’ll write it to hone my craft. I’ll write it because it’s making me absurdly happy. I’ll write it because it is naked, and raw, and true.

    And someday I will take it apart and use the pieces in something that is completely mine. I’ll never be able to use the name Winchester, or an iconic classic muscle car, or making deals with crossroads demons [1]. But I’ll be able to write the secondary characters I’m finding. I’ll be able to write a Wild Hunt emerging from a crystal cave in the mountains of northern New Mexico. I’ll be able to write three teen boys, drunk for glory, and thoughtless for it, too [2]. I’ll be able to write a Model 1913 Patton saber as an iconic weapon for a lady. I’ll be able to write the role of quartermaster in the war between good and evil. I’ll be able to write business cards sporting titles such as Senior Combat Folklorist [3] and Research Teleologician. I’ll be able to write a dog with sacred symbols marked in the brindle of her fur, where after you chant a blessing over her, drools demons to death. I’ll be able to write a hero who says, “I’m not saving you this time. You’re just going to have to suck it up that terrible, terrible things are going to happen to you because you are stupid and you make bad decisions.”

    These things are mine. They’re only inspired by intellectual property theft. This is how the creative process works for me. I steal stuff from other, better writers, edit out their characters and voice, throw it in the mixmaster with a couple dozen other similarly hijacked ‘verses, sign my name to the bottom, and there it is. An “original” piece of art.

    [0] Yes, I know. I’m way late to this particular party.
    [1] I am stealing one idea—using LARPing as a practical training in urban fantasy combat skills.
    [2] They are provisionally named Kenny, Kyle, and Kartman—Kenny dies, of course.
    [3] Hat tip also to Charles Stross on this one.

  • The Evolution of an Idea: Murph’s Law

    People often ask writers where they get their ideas. There are a lot of answers to that question. I think everyone does it a bit differently. A month ago, I published the story “Murph’s Law” on this site. You can find it here. A couple of readers wrote me and asked where it came from.

    On May 28th, 2013, I awoke with an opening line in my head. “When I pissed on Bobby Smith’s grave, I didn’t mean anything by it.” I logged in to Evernote on my phone and recorded it. For those of you who don’t know Evernote, it is a program that allows you to take notes, voice recordings, or pictures and access them from either your phone or your computer. It’s a wonderful program that I don’t use as much as I should.

    A good opening line is a baited hook for a pantser (someone who writes without any plan). I liked it, but I didn’t know what it could catch. I toyed with a couple ideas, including the vengeful spirit of Bobby Smith who wasn’t keen about getting pissed on. I tried a version of the “Resurrection Mary” story. I wrote a few opening paragraphs. It didn’t do enough for me. (more…)

  • Strange New Directions: The Importance of Research

    If fiction is the doorway to new and exciting worlds, then research is the door frame. No one ever notices it. They concentrate on the brass handle, the polished hinges, and the flawless paint, such a deep midnight blue that you expect to see constellations of stars bursting from the glossy surface. No one notices the door frame, but it supports the whole thing. It allows the doorway to exist.

    The simplest research is never noticed, unless you get it wrong. Small details that may not seem important can damage the illusion of reality. I read a book recently where a character slept with a gun under her pillow, specifically a Glock, with her finger “curled” around the trigger and the safety on. This was an important prop interaction because it showed severe contrast and character change from when compared to a similar bedtime scene early on in the story. There is just one problem. There aren’t any external safeties on a Glock. The slightest jerk in her sleep and the girl would have blown her brains all over her Aunt’s comforter set. (more…)

  • Books Are for Boring People, Not Ten Year Olds

    I’ve done research. I’ve spent hours in a library, flipping through books so dusty I couldn’t stop sneezing for weeks after touching them. I’ve gotten lost in the stacks of my University library, fearfully glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. The flickering lights and echoing silence of the building can’t help but make me feel like I’m trapped on the set of a horror film.

    I’ve done research. I’m familiar with what it takes. But that’s for writing boring papers. That sort of research is what you do when you have to worry about being factually correct.

    It isn’t the type of research that you do when you’re ten years old and you and your best friend decide you’re going to write a novel. (more…)

  • When I Do Research, I Try to Have Fun

    For many years, I didn’t write fiction that required a lot of research… on purpose. I wrote either short stories or fan fiction, and focused more on the characters and the situations than writing the sort of stories that needed research.

    I did the generic sort of stuff — checking Wikipedia for setting information, reading that one sex site everyone recommends for fan fiction writers — but until I started writing Real Adult Novels with Actual Stuff in them, I didn’t do a whole lot of factual research.

    I still haven’t done a ton. My NaNo’ing has left me in the habit of leaving notes and saving the research for stage two. I’ve only gotten one novel through that stage. There was a lot of boring research on diabetes and stuff. (I even called a medical professional friend!)

    However. There are a few memorable moments.

    (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.

  • In Search Of…

    Art by Sean Phillips from surebeatsworking.blogspot.com
    Art by Sean Phillips from surebeatsworking.blogspot.com

    Investigations are part and parcel of being a creative person especially a fiction writer. Something triggers a thought and that leads to one thing, which leads to another and likely to another.

    But what’s the trigger? A piece of conversation. A throwaway line of dialogue in a film. A song lyric. The way a sunbeam falls across a picture in the living room. The way a bird is perched in a tree. The snake that’s ready to steal the bird’s eggs.

    Any of these can lead me down an investigatory path.

    Like Sara, I love to learn and keep on learning. Like her I have learned to read and appreciate reading for information. I can’t read as much non-fiction as she does (One a month? That’s waaaay beyond me.) but I do read a couple of magazines that get delivered to the house, usually from cover to cover. I’m reading more fiction than ever before, though, and reading a wider range of genres (including literary fiction) more than ever before, too. (more…)