The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Night to Remember

    The following is an excerpt from my April Camp Nano project tentatively called Masochistic Tendencies.  Fortunately, it also fits one of the prompts for our Flash Fiction. 

     

    I never imagined I could lay next to a naked girl and not think of sex. How was that even possible, a younger me might ask, all the parts are right there! But here we were, her bare back pressed against my chest, my arms wrapped around her body, her hand holding mine between her breasts. Our legs were mingled together and my face rested against her shoulder. We were doing everything possible to make two separate people fit in the space of one. Despite that, being able to immediately transition into love-making of the finest caliber wasn’t even a blip on my personal radar. I don’t know what she was thinking, but my only thought was, “This is right. This is how everything should be.”

    It’s what I believed then, and it’s still what I believe now. Life is only worth living for moments like that, and that happiness is being so completely comfortable with someone that you are with them at your most vulnerable and still feel protected. Sure the sex was great and all that, especially at the time when we were going at it like rabbits every day, but sex can be had anywhere. At least in theory. Sex was more of a relief that our notions of attractiveness were compatible enough to generate a physical response. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. The peace of mind that came from that bed though was such a unique feeling in my life that I would have done anything to keep it.

    Strands of her hair danced against my face as I breathed her in. I nuzzled her slightly, that secret spot where her neck met her shoulder, and I felt her lips flex into a smile. Her hair on my cheeks was the only coarseness I felt against her smooth, cool skin, reminding me that this was real. Like when you pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming. It was a reminder that life had worked out, that all the bullshit in the past was worth it to spend this one night right here together.

    Amy muttered something in her half sleep, and I mumbled something back, my lips brushing against her skin with every half-realized word. The actual words weren’t important, just the confirmation that we were both still there for each other. Our mere touch wasn’t enough, I needed every sense to make sure she wouldn’t disappear in a puff of smoke. The shape of her bare shoulder loomed as a shadow beneath my heavy eyelids, the scent of her lilac shampoo overpowered me with each breath. Every twitch, every small movement, every breath was felt by each other, both of us relishing in the closeness of someone we loved absolutely and unconditionally.

    If there is a heaven, and if it’s the most perfect, happiest moment of my life, then I’ll spend eternity in that bed.

    I don’t remember the exact date this night happened. Hell, I might have it combined with a dozen similar nights. Or maybe I made half of it up without even realizing, going back into my memories and painting in the blanks the way they should have been colored. Maybe I’m giving into a wish fulfillment fantasy that didn’t exist.

    But the happiness was real. I know that. I’ve spent every minute since trying to get that feeling back.

  • A Shelf of Possibility

     

    from neatorama.com
    from neatorama.com

    (Rolls d20)

    Eighteen. Damn.

    That means I have to write this post in the first person.

    What’s really important when I’m choosing which story to write is how best to tell it. Whose Point of View is most important? Is that character reliable enough or not to tell the story? Because if not, that changes everything. I usually tell tales in the past tense because I dislike present tense. Not intensely but enough that it doesn’t appeal to me.

    See, for me, it’s about telling. That means one person is relating what has happened. That’s how we generally tell stories over lunch, having drinks, in any number of situations. I think that if a character is telling his reader or viewer what’s happening as it’s happening, then she’s not focused enough on the events of the story. Maybe that’s crap, I don’t know, but it’s how I feel about it.

    I just don’t like limiting myself to one narrator or point of view in a story. I want the reader to either a) want more by switching POV or narrator or b) want more because they really like the narrator or POV. So I have to be as interested as possible in what I’m writing.

    Random rolling of multi-sided dice isn’t how I decide these things but you probably already knew that. Rather what I do is look at the overarching story and figure out which of the seven stories told and retold it is:

     

    • Boy Meets Girl (Boy Loses Girl, Boy Finds Girl Again)
    • Man v. Nature
    • Man v. Machine
    • Man v. Society
    • Rags to Riches
    • Love Conquers All
    • Portrait of the Artist

     

    (Okay, I have to ‘fess up and say that I cannot find any sort of agreement on what the Seven Basic Plots are. Everyone seems to be referring back to a particular book that I don’t agree with. For the purposes of this post, let’s say this list is it. Afterwards you can argue as much as you like about how wrong I am. This is what I remember of the talk I heard Kurt Vonnegut give in the middle ’80s. All right?)

     

    So. Where does the story fit and who among the characters I’ve devised is best suited to tell the story? I have to look at where the character fits into the story itself then decide if I like that fit. If I don’t like it how could I expect the reader to? Next, since I don’t want to use first person (usually) I will decide who are the important characters to follow. No more than three, really, and if I can keep it to one or two I like that better. It’s fun as a reader to know what else is going on in a story that the ‘main’ character might not. Build up some suspense. Also gives ‘em a break. After all, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.

    Then it’s all about beginning to write. It may be that I’ve chosen wrongly and the character I want to follow isn’t interesting enough. That’s happened quite a bit. Happened with last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. It just does, I guess. So then I reassess if the story is worth pursuing if I change point of view or which character is the main one.

    I will look at my bookshelves for a story that’s similar to the one I want to tell. I may even pull it down off the shelf and skim through it, looking for a solution to present itself.

    And the process starts all over again.

     

  • Why the Willow Weeps

    Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a Princess. The Princess thought that she was a very ordinary girl, but she had a magic about her. Not only was she smart, beautiful, and strong-willed, she was also amazingly kind-hearted. Everyone she met instantly felt the warmth she exuded and fell in love with her.

    The Queen of the land, the Princess’s mother, was an evil queen. People couldn’t help disliking the Queen just as they couldn’t help the way they loved the Princess. The Princess grew up lonely, but despite her mother, or maybe because of her, she surrounded herself with those she loved, and made her own family.

    She also had a magical green thumb, something else that her mother, the Queen did not teach her. She treated nature – plants, trees, flowers, and anything that grew in the earth – with the same love she lavished on her friends.

    The Princess’s father died when she was barely grown, and with his passing, she felt even more alone. That was when she met the Court Jester. He was barely grown, himself, but from that first moment they met, she felt a connection to him. Even with how young they were, she knew that she had met her soul mate.

    (more…)

  • Why the Willow Weeps

    My flash fiction, Why the Willow Weeps, has been accepted for publication by Rose Red Review. It will arrive online April 22nd. To read it, please visit their website: Rose Red Review.

  • The Brave New Publishing World

    We stand on the edge of uncertainty. Publishing is changing, and for writers, that might as well be the apocalypse. The publishing industry as we know it is dissolving. The big publishers are merging, self-publishing and independent publishing have never had easier means of distribution. The writing world has changed.

    We should have known. It was only a matter of time. Publishing hadn’t changed much since the printing press was invented. Editors held the keys to the readers. If they didn’t want you to be read, you weren’t. Kate Chopin wrote the now-canonical novella The Awakening which stirred up such a controversy that she never had anything major published after and died a few years later. James Joyce had to rescue Dubliners from a fire after what seemed like the last interested publisher in Ireland decided to burn it rather than return the manuscript. Of course, both of those books found publishers willing to back them and became incredibly influential.

    Perhaps Chopin and Joyce would have turned to self-publishing if they lived in our era. Perhaps not. The path to publishing still isn’t easy, and while self-publishing gets you out there, really only gets you as far as the door, with no guarantee of readership.

    Still, it is exciting in many ways. For once, the readers, not the publishers, are the gatekeepers to a writer’s success, and that is an exciting thing for some people. Marxist literary theory believes that literature is a tool of bourgeois hegemonic control, because the bourgeois control the means of literary production, deciding what is read. One of the sparks for revolution, then, is the development of an alternative proletariat-based hegemony. Besides attempting to utilize terminology from my current class, I think it is interesting how the changes in publishing are going to affect everything from reading to writing to the very theories about the relationship between literature and society. Access to literature is no longer controlled solely by management in New York.

    The scary part is not knowing where I am going to land in this whole thing. I’ve had friends who self-published and had good experiences, better than some experiences of people who have had actual publishers. Then, there have been other friends who have basically gotten nowhere with it. Obviously, there have been stories of great self-publishing successes.

    My plan is to try traditional publishing, but I will probably be writing for the next sixty years or so. The very term “publishing” could mean anything by then. Still, the unknown can be exciting, and for those of us trying to make it as writers, the future of publishing is very unknown.

  • On Holiday

    It’s a little dark in here right now. The cups and saucers and plates and silverware are all cleaned

    http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=7947
    You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to — The Outer Limits.

    and put away. The tables are arranged in their proper order, chairs are set upside down on top. The coffee pots and espresso machine are unplugged.  The door’s locked and the lights are off.

    We’re closed for a bit. Not too long, though; only a couple of weeks while we all take a little breather.

    We’ve been writing here at the Café since the first week of January 2012 with two and sometimes three posts a day all week long on a wide range of topics. We started sharing our flash fiction in March of 2012 and we’ve all had a great time.

    We had a staff meeting recently and took a good look at what we’ve accomplished. We are the proud owners of an insightful resource and repository of personalized writing experiences and interesting flash fiction. It’s been one heckuva ride so far and the writers are getting published, finishing and submitting novels and there’s a clear path behind us to show for it. Now we’re ready to REALLY get things going.

    In fact, we’re more pumped up than ever.

    We’ll be back on April 1st with more great posts about a wide range of topics and MORE FREE FICTION than ever before.

    Every week our writers will tackle the topics we’ve asked ourselves about. Every day will be a single post allowing our faithful readers the chance to absorb and ponder the writing. You’ll have more chances to comment and keep up with what we’re doing. And every day will be different. Monday may be a Writer’s Life post while Tuesday is a Flash Fiction and Wednesday would be something about the writer’s process. If Tuesday is a Flash Fiction and Thursday is, too, it may be that the stories will be from different prompts, including our work in progress: Straeon Manor.

    We’re jazzed to bring you these changes. We hope you’ll find them as exciting as we do. Thank you so much for your patronage so far. Bear with us while we make things better.

    In the meantime, we asked the writers to share with you their favorite post of the last year or so. Feel free – in fact, PLEASE – check ‘em out and comment. Share your thoughts with the authors and stay tuned.

    The best is yet to come.

    _____________________________________________________

    Amanda is off doing what writers do best… Getting drunk. However she is around people, so check back in a few weeks when she manages to recover from a panic attack inspired by social anxiety.

    Kevin Wohler: “Trophies” — Although this story was written as part of our Straeon Manor stories, it was actually an excuse to work on a character I had wanted to write for some time. Setting the story in the late 1920s gave me an excuse to do some research on that decade.

    Sara Lundberg: My very favorite part of the Cafe is our monthly flash fiction assignments. I’m always so proud of what my fellow Confabulators come up with, and I’ve been pleased with the way the prompts have twisted my brain to produce some interesting stories. My favorite by far is the story I wrote called “Munitions Run.” Each word I put down begged even more backstory, so one of these days I’d like to flesh out the world. For now, here’s a teaser of what will hopefully someday be a full fledged novel.

    Ashley: I think one of my favorite posts was still the first flash fiction I did — “The Dock Worker“, that one where aliens eat babies. (ZOMG SPOILERS) It’s not that it was my best writing or even terribly good (not even my favorite story to come out of the flash fiction, really). There’s just something about the character Abra and the situation that I’ve always loved. I’ve always meant to write more about Abra.

    Jason Arnett: Picking just one favorite is difficult but there’s no need to go on about, I suppose. All of us have our darlings, our babies. The Straeon Manor stories were fun, especially the second one (“A Delicate Man“), and I enjoyed seeing how Ted Boone and Christie Holland both used bits of my first story. My favorite post, though, has to be my Revenge story, “What Is Best In Life“. That topic was my suggestion and everyone did great work on that one. I think all cylinders were firing for all of us then.

    Christie Holland: My favorite part of the Cafe has always been writing fiction.  While I love seeing my fellow Cafe members’ thoughts on different parts of writing, seeing how we interpret the same prompt is really fun.  My favorite short story that I’ve written is “A Certain Kind of Magic“.  It was the first story that I had in my head that came out exactly as I wanted it to.  It’s also one of the first stories that I thought was really good and I was proud to show it to all of my friends.

    Ted Boone: “Gravity” — The juxtaposition of ancient culture and far-flung future humanity was challenging, especially in light of the 1000 word flash-fiction limit. I’m really pleased with the end result.

  • Machete Meet Jungle

    Easy to get lost in here. Chrissy, bring me the big knife!
    Easy to get lost in here. Chrissy, bring me the big knife!

    When I’ve completed a draft of a manuscript, I have to get away from it for a while. Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a little more. During that time I’ll begin work on something else or pick up another manuscript that needs some attention.

    I like to sit down with a red pencil and a paper copy, but that’s not always possible.

    See, when I’m on the computer I have had a hard time in the past (and especially lately) getting distracted by the Internet. I refuse to buy software that I can turn on and off if I really want to be distracted. Doesn’t make any sense to install something I won’t use and can work around. All my writing, and editing, is about rhythm and desire. Forgive the digression.

    Am I ready to dive in? How much do I want this? Everything depends on the day job and its requirements of me and what’s going on with my family. I haven’t hit the lottery yet and I’m not daring enough to take the plunge on being a full-time writer. I need to make house payments and eat.

    So really, the first step is getting into the proper headspace to pull out the blade and begin excising the cancerous words and phrases, marking the bits for improvement or deletion.

    Then comes the cutting.

    Stuff has to go, stuff has to be reworked. Things have to change.

    Thank goodness it’s not all plot stuff any more. The last year has been spent mired in learning about passive voice and how awful it is. The ability to recognize it escaped me for so long that plowing through the novel to reshape those bits was daunting. I took several weeks off while doing that because I couldn’t believe how bad it was and how much I hated that I’d done it. Worse, I offered a couple of critiques where I pointed out passive voice that was obviously intentional in retrospect. I was so trapped in that mindset the crits were bad.

    Learning experiences, I suppose.

    But then my process for editing includes sending out the manuscript to others to read, if they have the time. Then waiting for notes back.

    So I pick up something else that needs attention or I write blog posts (like this one) or I veg out in front of the TV. (Which I know isn’t good for me but sometimes I need to hear or see other people’s stories.)

    And when the notes come back, it’s stepping onto square one and starting again. Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.

    In the end it’s good for me. I’m learning. Doing is learning as long as one isn’t repeating the same mistakes over and over. Spinning Wheels belong in songs, not in a writer’s process, right?

  • 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.

  • What Went Wrong

    It’s pretty obvious how you make your zero draft readable, right? You highlight everything and hit delete. Then you pretend that it never happened.

    Okay, so not really. At least not for me. Then again, I’ve only done NaNo once and therefore have only ever had one draft zero. I’m also pretty sure the process I did didn’t work out super well for me.

    My first mistake was that I started editing about five days after I finished the draft. Yes, I started with the sections that I’d written back in May, but that still meant that I didn’t ever actually take a break from it. (more…)

  • Writer’s Chores

    The short answer to this question is: I have no Earthly idea. Another short answer is: I wish I knew.

    I’ve written about eight Zero Drafts in the last ten years. Most are still unfinished, a few will never see the light of day, and a few are actually complete stories from start to finish and have some potential.

    But even the completed stories need work. Lots and lots of work. And the problem with that is, I am lazy. I don’t like work. Writing is one thing. Yes, writing is work, but it is also very freeing and therapeutic. And when you are writing a Zero Draft, nothing has to make sense. The writing part is fun. (more…)