The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Time in a Bottle (Week of February 10)

    I'm afraid my desire to write is interfering with the time I spend drinking.The one thing that all writers wish they had more of is time. Whether finding time to write, or re-write, or edit… it always seems that deadlines are looming and there’s not enough minutes or hours in the day.

    We all want to spend time writing, but most writers have obligations. We have work, families, and some even try to cultivate that rare, exotic flower called “a life.” So, time management and prioritization are critical skills to have. But what is the key to success? Is it having time or making time?

    Here at the Cafe, we’ve asked our writers to give us their tips for carving out chunks of time. In turn, we hope they provide you with good advice to help you make — or find — the time you need to write.

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management

  • Ephemera – What are you currently reading?

    This week at the Cafe we discussed the need or lack of need of stories in the world. Overall, as writers, of course we need stories. Most of us are voracious readers, so this for the week’s Ephemera we decided to check in and see what all of the Confabulators are reading right now.

    Ashley M. Poland

    My husband got me Anathem by Neil Stephenson. As with many Stephenson books, it doubles as a home defense device. I’m not very far into the book yet, because I’m one of those readers. Otherwise, I’ve been sort of just reading bits of things here and there.

    Kevin Wohler

    I’m currently reading several novels that I started last year. I made a New Year’s resolution to clean up my half-finished novels before starting any new ones. That said, I’m currently reading Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood — a good urban fantasy with a lot of geek cultural references thrown in, and Odd Hours by Dean Koontz — the fourth book in the author’s Odd Thomas series.

    Larry Jenkins

    My current reading rotation includes The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, and Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright. The last one’s an audiobook, but I still think it counts. I’ve listened to a lot of books while I’m doing something else, and it’s one of my preferred ways to study dialogue.

    Sara Lundberg

    I’m making my way through the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels right now, which is a bulk of my reading these days. But since I can never just read one book, I’m also reading Anticancer, A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber. I was reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I finally gave up. I’ll try again some other time. I’m also making my way through a couple of textbooks for my copyediting class. Chicago Manual of Style, anyone?

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    I’m currently reading several books. Fragile Things is a short story collection by the great Neil Gaiman. I always have high expectations for Gaiman, and I am sure I won’t be disappointed. Herniated Roots is a short story collection by Richard Thomas. Richard and I are part of the same online writer’s community, LitReactor. He’s a very talented transgressive, neo-noir, and horror writer. This collection is mostly neo-noir. The Writer’s Workshop of Horror is a collection of essays and interviews by horror writers on various aspects of craft. It won the Stoker Award for Non-Fiction in 2009, and has been very good, so far. Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul by Marie Corelli is the latest read in my Gothic Monsters class. There are a lot of Gothic writers, Poe for instance, who achieved greater success after their death. On the contrary, Corelli was very well-known and successful during her life, and fell into obscurity after her death.

  • Close Your Eyes and Tell a Story

    You get into a car with a stranger. Maybe she’s offered you a ride on a rainy day. Maybe you just make stupid life choices, who knows. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that during the ride you realize that you have no idea where the driver is taking you — and the doors have been sealed. You cannot get off this ride. You have no control.

    We are all in the car with a serial killer, and she’s going to kill each and every one of us. Welcome to life.

    So, that sucks. The good news is, we have these crazy brains that allow us to do creative and beautiful things. We create art. We invent new sexual positions. We make up a sort of magic known as language. We tell stories about the dark, about the journey, because the story is a linear. The story makes sense. It’s a pretty reprieve from a life that doesn’t.

    I don’t think the escapism and hope and control we, as humans, derive from storytelling is a bad thing. In fact, I think its remarkable. Its soothing to slip into a book and become the princess or the warrior for a while. Or maybe to become the monster; we are all dark and vicious animals on the inside, after all, with enough socialization to hide it.

    There are more benefits to the story, of course. We tell tales of “what if,” both good and bad. A great story can change thousands of minds. We influence strangers; we exert power over them with nothing but words. Have you ever written something that made a person cry? Let’s face it — you loved it. I sure as hell did.

    We explore our dreams and fears. We discover little bits of ourselves in both the reading and the writing. We empathize with the characters as people, so deeply and intensely that sometimes we create whole fandoms to cling to them, to keep them when the story is over and we’re left alone again.

    We close our eyes so we don’t see the countryside slip by. We whisper stories as our prayers, and we hope that maybe its a long way to the killer’s destination.

  • Getting Away

    tumblr_m6o8rdALXy1qhwhflI like to be entertained by stories. I want to be taken away to a place I’ve never been or to see place I’m familiar with in a new way.

    That’s not asking too much, is it?

    Now, don’t get me wrong – we need all kinds of stories. We learn from them, we are informed by them, hopefully we take them to heart and not too seriously. Except when we should. It’s complicated.

    But it shouldn’t be. We should be able to discern which stories are entertainment and which are informative. The blurred lines of our society right now make that sometimes very, very difficult.  (more…)

  • It’s All About Storytelling (Again)

    Humans are a storytelling species. Stories are how we make sense of the world. Stories turn raw data into intelligence. We cannot make decisions without telling ourselves what stories we would like to make true.

    My federal counterparts hire contractors to do the information collection and repackaging work that I do for the state. On occasion we share information on points of mutual interest, and I’ve seen some of these contractor-generated reports. And I gotta say, I’m much better at it than the feds are.

    Why? Because I never forget that I’m telling a story [0].

    I have a template that I follow which uses your basic inverted pyramid structure. We begin with generalities: what is the issue and why do we care about it? I’ll introduce the stakeholders and run through the issue history from a couple of different angles, and the deeper I get into the document, my descriptions get more specific. I wrap up with conclusions and recommendations. Pretty basic, right? By the end you know the story– what is the problem, how did it get there, who is to blame, and where do we go from here. You probably learned this in English class.

    On the federal level, though, it’s all about getting paid, and they’re not ashamed of it. The first page of the document usually describes the contract, and every section thereafter is in contract order [1]. The document is specifically designed so that you can lay it on the table side-by-side with the contract and check off that every contractual obligation has been satisfied, in order. Good job, well done, you’ll have a check in 30 days.

    The contractors work hard. They use the same resources I do, mostly, and collect the same data. They are without a doubt dedicated and passionate about their work. But the structure of the contract precludes their ability to tell the story, and they write a report as a series of unconnected collections of data. They never even see the story, which means they can’t identify and fill plot holes, they never ask, “What if?” and they end up missing out on critical insights and promising lines of inquiry.

    I feel sorry for the federal project managers who have to read the reports and try to make decisions based on them. All the information is there, but the serious skull work of making sense of it all is yet to be done. One of the reasons I am careful to tell stories is because I know my bosses are busy people. They don’t have the time or the attention span to do a lot of synthesis. I have to lay it out in plain language, and the best way I know to do that is to tell a story.

    [0] It’s a factual story, and every point in it has to be backed up in reality somewhere, which often means a six-page memo has 200 pages of attachments.
    [1] Which would be fine if whoever wrote the contract knew how to structure a story. But they don’t.

  • We Will Always Need Cautionary Tales

    Lighthouse
    Like a lighthouse, stories can guide us through some dark places and help us avoid dangers we would not see.

    After Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 — his dystopian novel of a world where books are burned — he reportedly told interviewers “I wasn’t trying to tell the future, I was trying to prevent it.”

    Fahrenheit 451 is a cautionary tale, like so many of my favorite stories. If you think about it, some of the best stories are those that warn us of some great danger — real or imagined.

    • Ancient literature — From dealing with the devil to receiving wishes from a djinn, we are advised to be careful when dealing with supernatural creatures. The outcome is often not what we want, and it may cost us our souls.
    • History — We know to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, because — as the people of Troy found out only too well — a gift from an enemy can be a trap.
    • Fairy tales — The stories of “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Hansel and Gretel,” tell children to stay out of the woods because they are filled with dangerous animals and dark-hearted crones.
    • Science fiction — Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein warns of the hubris of human scientific advancement. As does the more recent Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  Just because we can do something, does that mean we should?

    (more…)

  • There Are No Stories Here

    The world doesn’t need stories. Stories are purely entertainment, a way to fritter away time better No_booksspent being constructive.

    Think of the money we would all save without stories.

    Books, of course—that’s the obvious one. We could get rid of all the bookcases around our house, as well as the expensive e-readers.

    I know a lot of people have cancelled cable, but they still watch television shows through other avenues. Without stories, not only would we save on Netflix/Hulu/other sources of streaming content, we’d also save on the television itself. (more…)

  • Escaping Reality

    Every person has their own reason for picking up a book. Sometimes it is because a teacher has given them an assignment, other times it is because they need to escape to a fantasy world, and sometimes it is simply for the sheer delight of reading. The world needs stories. It needs people to come up with these tales and twist the words into phrases that will tease the imaginations of their audiences.

    For me, reading has always been an escape. It is a chance to immerse myself into the life of another person. I cry with them. I laugh with them. For the duration of the book, and usually hours after as well, my life revolves around theirs. I can set aside everything that troubles me in my life and live the life of another person and, when the book ends, I walk away with a new friend. A friend I know is always waiting for me whenever I need to escape from the stress of the real world. (more…)

  • Stories to Keep the Mind Engaged

    Because the human brain is what it is, we need stories.

    I think the first stories started as oral history – life lessons and wisdom passed down through generations. The history of our people is important. In theory, it helps prevent us making the same mistakes over again. Stories can impart morals by example – the Boy Who Cried Wolf being one of my favorite examples. Also, it seems easier to remember facts if they are presented as a tale rather than facts. People retain the enjoyable and interesting, not the dry and boring.

    Stories are also of value because they help people relate their experiences to one another. As humans, we all need validation. If we tell a story, and someone else has a similar story, we are affirmed and feel right. We can also share our stories so that our memories live on. Someday, I’d like the next generation – maybe my own children – to know what happened to me in my life, so in a way I am immortalized. (more…)

  • Stories of the Mind

    The world needs stories for a simple reason. Stories define us. Forget about the books you read or the movies you watch. Those aren’t the important stories. The important ones are the tales that never see the light of day. These stories exist only in the minds of every person everywhere, shaping our lives.

    I’m going to throw out a statistic here that I made up on the spot and is probably wrong. 99.9% of all stories will never been seen or heard by anyone other then the storyteller.. They’re the stories we tell ourselves, the fantasies we concoct when bored or the dreams we have in that awesome moment of sleep where we can kind of control what’s going on. They’re the lies we imagine about ourselves and others in order to stay sane. No one will ever hear them, no one will ever know them, but they are stories essential to the well-being of the mind.

    Stories are how we sort through our problems. When something goes wrong, this is how we cope. We make stories about difficult situations and potential resolutions. The point of these stories isn’t to find an actual solution, but to explore every possibility, and maybe relive some of the best ones, in order to get rid of the dredge so your problems don’t effect the rest of your life.

    The world doesn’t need stories as much as the individual needs stories. We need the narrative in our lives in order to get our way through the boring parts and relive the great parts. Unlike real life, stories almost always have happy endings. Even the ones that don’t end happily at least make sense and end with a purpose. Isn’t that something we all strive for in our own personal story?