Christmas by the Bay

This post comes to you through several distractions: I'm writing on my sister's Mac (why is there no right click button? WHYYYY?); my niece is running around in her adorable lady bug outfit making bee noises, and the Big Red Chicken needs our help saying the magic word so he can perform his magic show for Dora the Explorer and her friends.

I'm up here for the week to celebrate Christmas with the family.  I've been enjoying everyone elses' posts about Christmas traditions, so I'll share some of our family's.

Mostly, our traditions revolve around food.  My family is of Armenian descent, and Christmas is our time to spend days cooking traditional dishes.  Armenian food is something of a mix between Greek and middle eastern cuisines.  We'll do cheese boereg (cheese wrapped in filo dough and baked until cripsy), paklava (similar to baklava), and kefta, which is (wait for it), lamb and bulghar stuffed with more lamb and spices, molded into a small football shape, and then deep fried. They're amazing, and completely worth all the effort they take.  I'll be spending several hours on Christmas Eve shaping them.

(Oh god, the map is singing again. Who came up with this show anyway? And why do they have to go through the castle instead of just walking around it? And why is Dora's monkey so creepy?)

Other assorted traditions include going out to look at nights on Christmas Eve with cups of hot cranberry cider (imagine boiling cranberry juice until its almost syrupy, and so tart that it'll practically take skin off the back of your throat. Good stuff).  And the reading of "A Night Before Christmas" on Christmas eve, by just the light of the Christmas tree.

(By the way, this post is going to be pictureless, unfortunately, because I honestly don't know how to download a picture if I can't right-click on it and hit 'save picture as'. Stupid Apple.)

 Again, none of that has much to do with writing.  But I've been frustrated with how little time I've spent writing lately.  I suppose I'm in one of those periods again where I try to get myself in the "mood" to write, and just end up spending an hour playing minesweeper. I have to remember that the best way to get me in the writing mood is to, you know, actually start writing. For something so obvious, it's amazing how hard it is for me to remember.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

It was a Dark and Enlightening Night

On Monday night our friends invited us to go for a walk in the freezing cold.

So, we bundled up the family in the car and sang Christmas carols - okay, dh and I sang, the children sat in sullen, or maybe pained silence – until we reached the walking trails next to the wide river that divides our town from the big city on the other side. As soon as we got out of the car the wind began to worm its way up our sleeves and through the buttonholes of our coats, causing no small murmuring among the munchkins.

The dark trail we followed by the water's edge was strangely surreal. The kids ran ahead, but I took the time to play voyeur (in a very G-rated way). Million dollar condos lined one side of the path, and, as far as I could tell, hardly any of the residents made use of curtains. Rooms were packed close and stacked three and four high, each spilling out little lighted vignettes for me to see. Elegant people toasted each other at holiday banquets, while more intimate gatherings looked out over the river toward the big city lights. A few rooms were empty, still lit, a few people ran on treadmills, plugged into iPods and oblivious to the world.

We and our friends laughed and talked and wrangled the kids, finally reaching a jetty stretching out into the river. Out in the open we pulled our coats tighter and talked louder to be heard over the wind. We were all growing a little numb by the time we caught sight of what we had come for - the Christmas ships parading down the river.

I imagine in daylight the fleet is a ragtag affair, old fishing boats, maybe a speedboat or two, or even a yacht. But at night - at Christmastime - the ships are transformed. Decked out with lights on masts and hulls, one ship became Santa in his sleigh and all eight reindeer, another a skier sliding down the slopes and crashing spectacularly before the light show reset and the skier began his plunge again. Trees and angels and toy fire trucks all floated by. We forgot about the cold for a little while.

When we did remember how frozen we were, we headed back to our friends' house, greeted by a warm fireplace and hot chocolate with a pinch of cinnamon.

What does this have to do with writing? Maybe not much. Except that I’ve been keeping my nose in a computer for so long that I think I forgot how wonderful full-throttle-all-five-senses living can be. I think we can let the wonder of the season (or any season) pass us by because we think something else is so much more important. Maybe we shouldn’t. Today is the gift we’ve been given for living. I hope you enjoy yours to the fullest!

Merry Christmas!

~ Susan

Christmas Chimes are Calling Santa

When I was a kid, we used to find a big calendar in the newspaper marking the day, time, and channel of all our favorite Christmas specials. We would highlight all the ones we wanted to watch and all gather around the TV and watch them together. It was part of Christmas.

Now my kids have the same Christmas specials either on DVD or Netflix and can watch them whenever they want. I think this takes away some of the magic. I don't think my children love these stories the way I loved them and still love them.

Every time they are on, they never fail to fill me with the Christmas Spirit.
Here are my favorites from when I was a kid.




1. Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer: I always love stories of misfits triumphing over odds. Doesn't everyone love to cheer for the underdog? The claymation characters are adorable, and the songs are fun too.

2. Frosty the Snowman: I love how they sing the song and tell the story at the same time, and the show has the best mustache twirling, evil antagonist of all time. "We evil magicians have to make a living too," and "Sorry to lose and run, but I've got to get busy writing. Busy! Busy! Busy!" Classic.

3. Charlie Brown Christmas: It really is one long Peanuts comic strip, but who doesn't love the Snoopy dance and everyone singing "Hark the Harold Angel's Sing" with their noses up in the air. Plus it is always nice to get a reminder of what Christmas is really about.

4. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: This is by far my favorite. Dr. Seuss is of course a genius, and the songs perfectly match the amazing characters and world Dr Seuss created. The adorable dog Max was always my family's favorite.

5. Twas the Night Before Christmas: This one has the opposite message of The Grinch. The whole town whines about how they’re not going to get any presents from Santa. But despite the materialistic message, I love this story. The songs are so fun, and Albert the mouse is so cute, and it ends with that beautiful, timeless poem.

There isn't much to these stories. They are mostly just fun with simple themes and little depth (except The Grinch of course). But they take me back to a time when everything was simpler. When Christmas wasn't about shopping and baking and cleaning and stressing about getting everything done, but about counting all the presents under the tree, trying so hard to fall asleep, getting up at five AM and looking out the window hoping to see Santa fly away. When everything about Christmas was magical. These little stories make me feel that again. Remind me of the wonder and excitement and joy of Christmas.

For a story to do that, to tap into those memories and emotions, to capture the essence of Christmas, is truly amazing. That is what makes these stories classics. That is good story telling.



Merry Christmas, everyone!!!
And to those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a very nice Dec. 25th.

~MaryAnn

Secrets from the Slush Pile.



Slush readers... They all live in New York, right? They work in  high-rise office buildings wearing high heels, or ties. They have definitely taken a shower. 

Those stories you submitted couldn't possibly be read at two in the afternoon by a woman still in her pajamas who keeps looking away from the screen to bargain with a four-year-old for the use of her own computer.

Editor of your dreams...



Slush reader of your reality.

  

I've recently learned that the above theory is falser than Kim Kardashian's marriage, or the myth that anyone cares about Kim Kardashian's marriage.

Here's how I learned that...

So... about the time Proser's started, I signed on to be a slush reader at a SFWA qualifying market. I'm not going to say which one, because anomininity and what not, and because then it's like an unopened Christmas present. Could be anything... even the market you just submitted to...

Dun, dun, dun...

Anyway, so for Christmas I thought I'd share some of the observations I've gleaned while working as a slush reader. 

Merry Christmas!

Secret number one. Slush readers are writers...thereby...slush readers are creative artistic types...thereby... fifty-fifty chance that the person who reads your story is on antidepressants. For that reason, and because ( I promise you) it will stand out of a crowd of dismal depressing stories, try to give your stories some string of hope.  Romeo and Juliet had a dismal tragic ending, but because the story is about the power of love (cue eighties flashback) it works brilliantly. On that note...

Secret number two. Endings aren't as important as beginnings, but they are dang important. One of the stories I read this last month was well written, had interesting characters, and interesting situation...and an ending that made "I woke up and it was all a dream" endings seem Shakespearean*. The ending undercut the powerful beginning, and it ultimately it got a no from me. Endings do matter. That should be a no-brainer, but use your brain, and make an ending that makes the story matter.

Secret number three. Keep your purple prose away from the first thirteen lines. The stories that do well have language that let's you fall into them. Keep the word choice simple. Give me a character I can care about in a situation that is clear, and be concise. Give me a chance to wade into your story.

Secret number four. Give me an awesome first sentence. There was a story I read this month with a great first sentence. The rest of the story wasn't anything that special, if I'm being honest, but the first sentence was so good the story got a yes from me. It probably wont go past the second gateway, but a good first sentence will get you half-way there. Follow it up with a good story and you have gold money in the bank.

Secret number five. Speaking of money in the bank, if you make me laugh once, you automatically get a yes from me. I've heard the advice that you should stay away from humor, because everyone has a different sense of humor, and it might offend the editors... The almighty editors who work in those high rise buildings and have showered... Those editors.

False. Was it Oscar Wilde who said, "if you want to tell the truth, make them laugh or else they will kill you."... Something like that. Use humor. Use it like you use hope. It'll make your story stand out.

Secret number six. I've also heard the theory that you shouldn't submit a story until your writing is publishable, because the editors (those editors) will remember a bad story and not like you anymore. And possibly kill your cat.

Let me tell you a secret... if I remember your story, then you are doing something right. If you can create a story that resonates enough that it stands out from the crowd , even for being horrible, then you are on your way to brilliance.

Also... I read blind. Yes, you read that right. I don't ever know who it is who wrote what. I get the title, the story, and yes no or maybe. That's it.

Secret number seven. When I started, I thought I would be the slush reader I would want my story to get. I read every story all the way through. Some stories I read twice, trying to get the nugget of gold out of it. But then, as more and more stories came into my Que, I stopped caring about the writer. Sorry, but it's true. I only care about the reader, and the magazine. I don't want the reader to read something that is less than great, because it would make the writer of the story happy to get a yes. The reader is king, and your stories are not your soul, they are your product.


Give me your best, and I will give you a yes.

And that's no secret.



* If you don't know why I'm giggling, go read more Shakespeare.

There Must be a Story Behind the Story

Once upon a time, a woman whose dark brown hair was streaked with gray stood in a pool of water. She wore damp capri jeans rolled up over her knees. Next to her, a great, green frog hunched in the water, its mouth open wide. The woman peered into the frog's cavernous mouth in some consternation. After several moments, she leaned forward and stuck her head inside. "Are you coming?" she asked. Her voice echoed, but no one answered her.

 Quickly, the woman splashed around the frog. Where the frog's back should have been, there was an empty set of stairs. Whirling around, the woman caught sight of a tiny pair of wet footprints leading toward another pool. "Not again!" she muttered and pulled herself out of the pool onto the rough concrete sidewalk.

She didn't need to follow the footprints to know where they went. She ran to the round kiddie pool with the whale and the turtle. Her three year old boy was already trying to climb onto the turtle's back. "You're a quick one," she said, and stepped into the cool pool. Already both sets of footprints were fading in the heat.

Day after day, the woman and the boy came to the pools. The average observer might have thought they were merely waiting for her other children while they took swimming lessons at the big pool. Though that was partially true, something much larger was going on, something that would eventually change that woman's life. She was turning into an author.

 The conditions were perfect for such a transformation. A beautiful spot with lots of sensory stimulation. The need for her brain to stay alert, but with plenty of downtime And a question...

 WHY? 

 That's the question that transforms me from your average ordinary woman into a super-being capable of creating whole worlds inside my mind. Why would a character interesting enough to be the main character of a novel be standing in a kiddie pool? 

 Obviously she's a fairy with an affinity for water.

 Well yes, but why is she here? In this place? 

She's, um...helping a friend, yeah. Taking her friend's daughter to swimming lessons. This place is great and everything, but it's obviously not magical.

Why is she here at all? 

Hmmm....maybe she's trapped on Earth, and she got a job taking care of an elderly woman. Yeah! And she's falling in love with the woman's grandson, and this is his sister's daughter. Yeah. 

Why is she on Earth? 

 Ooh. Good question, and I'm glad you asked. Because she was being hunted for her particularly strong magic on her own world. Once she got here, someone closed the gates between the worlds, and now she is trapped.


Why is she so sad? 

 And so on...day after day. By the time I noticed what was happening, I'd already been daydreaming about it for weeks. I backtracked so far that the book I wrote was all about Jenny's time in her own world, not on Earth. If I ever write a sequel, however, this scene will be in it, for sure.

 It won't be a major scene of course. In fact, it may only be there for sentimental purposes. (Yes, I know, I know, kill your darlings. But surely, there will be a way for me to work in the setting at least. Only time will tell.)

 Nearly every story I have ever created began with me outdoors, doing a physically repetitive activity. Last summer, I took up jogging. The place where I live has a lot of hills, so, being an inherently lazy person, I like to jog on the nice, flat track. It can get boring though, so I asked myself why a character interesting enough to be in a novel would run in circles day after day. I discovered a girl named Amye, living in the dungeon of a castle in a fantasy world. Luckily for Amye, this was a relatively humane dungeon, and the prisoners are allowed two hours of exercise time in an enclosed courtyard every day. She has discovered a plot to escape, and she spends her time running around the courtyard trying to prove she is strong enough to be included. Whenever Stephen, another prisoner, passes her, he trips her and sends her sprawling. Again I had to head backwards through the maze of story ideas...Why is she there? Why is Stephen treating her like that? The answers turned out to be very interesting. And so another book was born.

WHY are you telling us this, Melanie? 

 My way of imagining a random scene and using it to create a whole world is probably not the method you use to create a story, and I wonder if we could learn from each other. It's good to find many pathways to creativity.

 My particular method works well for creating strong characters and rich worlds. It's not usually so great at helping me with story arcs, and that's something I really struggle with. So tell me:

Where do your story ideas come from?

Finding Your Writing Voice

If I could give one gift to every writer I know, it would be a workshop with Jack Grapes. I can't, because writing workshops aren't cheap (though his are worth every penny and more) and I’m still saving up for my next one. So, you all are on your own.

In his Method Writing class, Jack has two fundamental rules:

1. Write like you talk.
2. Do the exercise.

Every day, open your journal, follow the instructions for that week’s exercise, write like you talk, and stop after 2 pages. Period. If you write crap, it won’t matter, because you were practicing a technique, not going after a Pulitzer. Through practice and process, you will find a product... eventually.
 

A Moment of Glory

Jack has an exercise for extending psychological time in a moment of tension, which he calls image/moment. The first week he assigned it, my husband was having a horrible time at work and the kids were needy and exhausting. I was too tired to think of anything interesting, but I did the exercise anyway.

I wrote about running in the rain at night, while listening to rock music about sex and drugs and other facets of the fast life I've never sampled. I wrote about the freedom that comes from being out on an empty street alone after dark. I wrote about coming home to find my stressed-out husband asleep in a lump on the bed when it wasn't even 9 yet, and about the moment I wished I could go back outside and run away from real life, but instead I turned off my iPod and did the dishes.

I did not use a single word that my second grader wouldn't know how to spell. There was not a single sentence I thought was beautiful. Reading it for the class, I fought not to cry, partly from the sadness I'd felt the night I wrote it and partly from embarrassment at exposing such a raw part of my life.

I finished, tear-free, and Jack said, “Raise your hand if you know how good that was.”

The whole class raised their hands. How much was peer pressure, I'll never know, but the response was positive.

Jack went on: “And do you know why it was so good? It’s not because Sarah’s a good writer.”

(I knew it! He never liked me...) It didn't matter. I was pleased as punch. Surely at least some of it was my writing. Right?

“It’s because she did the exercise,” he said. “She used the technique, she followed the instructions, and the result was powerful.”

Well, yes, okay. But I wanted to believe it was because I was a good writer. I really, really did.

The next week we repeated the same exercise. I was nervous. I needed to WOW the crowd. I needed to top what I did before. I wrote about an edgier topic, I was clever, and I edited until every word sang for me.

The group's reaction? “Meh.”

Hey, Macarena!

I never wrote another piece that was as noticed and remembered by my classmates as the running one. At our end-of-class party, everyone brought it up. I understood how Los Del Rio must feel when people start doing the Macarena.

They are crying on the inside. (From www.Billboard.com)

Two years later, I ran into a classmate I idolized. He was an accomplished screenwriter, and everything he wrote was effortlessly funny and poignant and brilliant.

He was with his wife, and I was with my husband. I introduced him, but he didn’t remember my name. (That’s okay. He’s a big deal. I’m a little deal.)

He turned to his wife and said, “She wrote that thing I told you about, remember? The one where she was running, and her husband was in bed, and his socks were on the floor?”

His wife smiled. “Oh, yes, I do remember.”

Oh my golly gosh they talked about me!?! My insides went smooshy.

Enter, stage left... Mixed Feelings:

• Positive: WOW, big-time screenwriter and king of cool remembered something I wrote and TOLD HIS WIFE about it!

• Negative: He doesn't remember a single other thing about me. 

I could tell you almost everything this guy read for the class, because it was ALL memorable.

The Answer to All Life's Questions, Except the Ones that Aren't Answered Here:

I re-read my one-hit wonder a while ago, expecting to be floored by my own brilliance. And... Not so much. It needs tightening. It wanders. Some lines are redundant, some flabby.

What was the magic, if it wasn't my talent? Jack was right - almost. The exercise was the core of what worked. But I did the exercise the next week, too, without the same result.

Years later, I think I know the answer. My writing was honest. It was pure, unadulterated truth. It was me, writing in the voice I’d use to talk to a friend, and not holding anything back. Not covering up a feeling with a clever turn of phrase. Just laying it out there.

Poetry and memoir have taught me the power of truth, but I struggle with how to apply it in fiction. After all, a novel is just lies I've made up about people who don't exist. That makes honesty hard to measure... but not impossible. Even in fiction, some lines have a ring of truth to them, and some don’t.

Often, as writers, we can’t hear when we are most honest and when we are writing what we want to sound like, instead of who we really are. The reader always knows. Listen to your feedback, listen to your heart, and be simple. Be honest. That’s how you write something that no one else can imitate, that makes readers fall in love. That's how you find your voice.

~Sarah

Edited: If Jack read this, I believe he would point out that everything I said about voice actually falls under Rule #1: Write like you talk. Which went hand in hand with doing the exercise. Which means Jack was, in fact, 100% right. He always is. I can't even win an argument with that man in my head.

In my other life, I'm a writer

I've known I wanted to be an ecologist since I was sixteen years old and participated in a career shadowing program.  We conducted legless lizard surveys, and did some nonnative vegetation removal. Basically, I was sitting there weeding the dune and thinking, "gosh, this is the most fun I've had in a while!" Which told me a couple of things:

1) I need a life.
2) I should look into doing this ecology thing as a career.


Yes, I said legless lizard, not snake.  I'm not making them up either!


Fast forward more than a decade, and I'm still an ecologist, now working for the federal government.  The particular job I applied for, and got, is an office job.  And despite the lack of field work, I love my job.  I sometimes feel like I should miss field work more, and I do miss it a lot.  But here's the thing.

I get to write all day long.

True fact: part of the reason I got the job was that I was smart enough to share with the interviewing official that I had fiction writing experience.  There are downsides, like the fact that I spend way too much time in front of my computer. So today, I'm going to share how these two writing aspects of my life collide, and what I've learned in the process.


How fiction has influenced my science
1)  Having a good grasp of skills as simple as good grammar and avoidance of run-on sentences has gained me points from my bosses.  In all honesty, a lot of great scientists are actually really, really terrible writers.
 2) Always present a logical flow of events so that your readers can follow you.  Don't add in side events – or scientific facts – that aren't part of your main plot (argument).   My bosses are actually forever instructing us to "tell the story."  :)
3) If I don't get something, just open up a blank sheet of paper and pour out my messy, jumbled thoughts onto paper.  I've found that it works just as well for constructing arguments as it does for constructing scenes.
4) I'm well-practiced at avoiding passive voice. Today we're instructed to use active voice in science writing, but passive voice actually used to be the standard for peer-reviewed scientific article.  It made for very awkward reading. Ugh)\.

How science has influenced my fiction
1) Succinctness is a good thing.  The Federal Register, publisher of government documents, calculates its costs by word. And as a person who tends to be rather verbose, it's amazing how many words I can cut out in a science document… and as a person who leans toward 10,000 word story ideas, it's important for me to learn to be concise.
2) Should I ever feel the need to use weak verbs,' to be' verbs, or adverbs, those things are totally allowed in science writing.  A little guilty thrill comes over me when I realize I don't have to go through removing them all!  But on the downside:
3) Science writing requires double spaces after a word rather than single spaces. This rule, frankly, drives me insane.  First I had to adjust from college writing to standard manuscript format, and now for work I have to double space?  My fingers have addressed the problem by putting out an unpredictable mixture of both if I'm not paying attention.  So no matter what document I'm in, I have to check every single sentence.  Fun!
4) Writing fiction really makes me appreciate not having to reference everything I say.  Imagine fiction writing under such a system:

Stephen stood at the edge of the cliff, facing the lairs of the dragons, a species known to be dangerous (Tolkien 1937).  It was going to take courage to face evil (Pierce 1988), but love was worth dying for (Shakespeare 1597; Bronte 1847; Wagner 1865; but see Wharton 1905 and 1911).

Just thinking about it hurts my head.