Finally free of the WIP...

I finally finished my WIP. I've been working on it since October, so it's taken me the better part of five months to write this thing. That's unusual for me. It's called Airborne at the moment and it involves a new cast of characters, a new universe, tackles new genres (for me) and wanted to be told from a new POV (for me).

Having said that, maybe five months isn't so bad after all.

"Omniscient" POV
I posted a sample scene from Airborne and got a little feedback on it. One of the aspects pointed out to me was that the POV is omniscient. The critiquer mentioned that omni needs to be done "really, really well" to work and didn't care for it in this sample.

OK, she didn't like my omni voice. That's fine. What nagged at me was that is has to be done "really, really well" -- for some reason, I've heard this un-useful bit of advice a thousand times -- and avoided like the plague otherwise.

How in the heck are you supposed to learn to write omniscient if you "can't" unless it's "really, really good"...? We all need to practice. We all need training wheels. And it's not like you have to sound like a 19th-century author if you're going to use an omniscient POV. What does 21st-century omniscience sound like anyways? (I'm willing to bet it sounds like social media.)

I have shelves of "how-to-write" books just like anyone else, though I'll admit I haven't cracked one open in years. The questions of what omniscient is and how it's done is sending be back to the shelves. Should I have done that before I wrote Airborne? No, I don't think so. Better to revise a shitty first draft than to analyze yourself into paralysis before writing it.

Misrepresentation?
The critiquer also pointed out that I billed Airborne as an "urban fantasy medical thriller" but there's nothing medical or thrilling going on in the scene. True. Guilty. But it is urban fantasy, at least. I'm fairly sure I got that part of the novel right though the rest is open to debate.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where this scene should go in the story but it does need to be somewhere near the front.

"I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must"

Feel free to grab this image and use it 

I don't particularly like Salman Rushdie. I haven't been a fan of crude, crass satire since I outgrew MAD magazine. But there's tremendous danger in keeping silent just because you aren't the immediate target.

Censorship is one of those things that can creep in on little cat feet. The nasty, rude, and badly written stuff on the fringes is easy to object to. It offends just about everybody. So it's easy to tell them to shut up, go away, you're just cluttering up the landscape.

Then the questions start about whether the better written satires are in poor taste. Whether offending anybody, or the chance of offending anybody, is a bad idea. Whether those offended people have guns and might kick in your door.

Jihadists? Maybe. Or maybe it will be governmentally sanctioned door-kickers.

Censorship is alive and well in the United States, of course. I first became aware of it as a comic book fan through the work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund -- why does such a thing even need to exist? Because the fringe stuff in the comic book world is nasty, rude, badly written, and offends just about everybody.

Does it have a right to exist? Absolutely. Should the creators be called out on their rudeness, use of awful stereotypes, misogyny, and bad writing? Absolutely.

And on a more personal note, I've been mildly censored myself. Self-publishers may remember the purge of incest, under-age, and other fringe pornography from the ebook shelves a year or two ago. In the midst of all that, Kobo.com quietly threw my Disciple, Part II out of their store and blocked it. They never said why. I can guess, but why bother? I took all of Disciple out of Kobo and I won't do any further business with them.

Fortunately, I can do business elsewhere. But as I said, censorship can creep in quietly. It doesn't take masked thugs with guns.

Just some thoughts. What have the Charlie Hebdo shootings made you think about?

ETA: the CBLDF is brave enough to post the images -- bless them.

The case of elusive mojo

And so this is the closing of 2014. It's been a good year for me on the whole, but there are parts I'm not wanting to repeat.

It's said many times, many ways: a writer must write. I've blogged about how important a writing habit is, whether daily or weekly. 2014 reinforced the truth of that for me.

My daily word counts get tweeted and I track my progress in the sidebar of my blog. Down at the bottom you can see word counts from previous years. My peak year was 2012. I blamed the drop-off in 2013 on time lost to self-publishing and promotions.

This year I simply fell off the bandwagon. Yeah, I can blame personal drama and late editors but it comes down to: I didn't write. As a result, I didn't even break 100,000 words this year.

(ducks thrown tomatoes)

Everybody's different. I wrote 95,800 words in 2014 and for me that's discouraging. A project that felt like a major undertaking was stillborn. I spent too much time waiting for things.

On the up side, I self-published two volumes of Disciple and sold Hawks & Rams. I did finish the story I was writing at the beginning of 2014 -- Callisto's Ghost -- and my current WIP has surprised me.

Will 2015 be better? worse? I have to wonder whether I am in a slump or if the years that I was writing Disciple were unnaturally fertile. That sort of question does not have an answer, since I will never be the person I was in 2012 again (if I have anything to say about it.) Whoever I am now, I need to work on my writing discipline as much as I ever did.

My old word counts still stand as proof to how much you can get done plugging away with less than a thousand words a day. That's right, even at my best the daily average works out to less than you'd think. Less than it takes to win NaNoWriMo.

Problematic horrors

Innocence and isolation
I've heard it said that the cornerstones of horror are innocence and isolation. The innocence aspect is supposed to encourage audience sympathy, but personally? I know I'm no innocent and I'm not invested in protecting innocence the way, say, a parent might be.

It seems to me the "innocence" aspect leads to a tendency of horror being inflicted on somebody just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time: they moved into a haunted house, their car broke down in the boonies, etc. I have never found that particularly compelling because the story is not about the characters, it's about a series of horrible things that happened.

Isolation can be physical, social, or psychological and ensures that the hero/ine faces the enemy alone. Often, they are outgunned by the villain(s) as well. This can lead to Bambi vs Godzilla syndrome, in my opinion, and solutions being handed down by the god in the machine (the author). Those aren't satisfying endings, since the heroine did not "earn" anything in the story.

This may be why I'm not a fan of horror -- on top of any additional writing problems manifesting in bad dialogue, illogical plot lines, and cardboard characters. Horror is as prone to those problems as any genre. Or perhaps it would be more fair to say that any genre is as prone to that as horror is.

A proverbial virgin being chased by a serial killer, or haunted by the angry ghost of some old house? That's just a cosmic misunderstanding. An oversized pain in the ass.

Darkness
In my opinion, a dab of gore will do ya in most situations. If you've read my stories you know I'm willing to get explicit and horrible when the characters are willing to do that. Horror as a genre is a different beast, though. I'm treading closer to it than usual in my current WIP, which is turning out to be a dark fantasy.

What makes the story dark, in my opinion, is not the gruesome things that happen but why those gruesome things happen. It's also the hero's temptation to let those whys infiltrate him and lead him to begin inflicting horrors himself. The drama of resisting corruption has a particular attraction to me.

If you were going to write a horror story, how would you make it compelling to yourself? What makes you shudder?

Eating the elephant update

I compared building a new story universe to eating an elephant, back in October. What I didn't mention, in hindsight, was that I was in fact sitting down to eat a new elephant just then. The muse had inflicted a large-feeling idea on me (the brutal muse) and I was just starting to put my teeth on it.

It's coming up on eight months later. Working on this idea (codename: Bloodmagic) has been squeezed in between other projects and has occasionally busted out and asserted itself. Things are getting to the point where I should start doing the writer's equivalent of 15-second sketches. If I were a mad scientist, I'd be watching the skies for the thunderstorm I'll need to jolt this monster to life.

Research
I love research. Over Thanksgiving, I read a couple strategically chosen books on the cultures that were providing a lot of the visual inspiration -- Aztec and Maya -- and tried to wrap my head around how such a culture becomes "normal" in the minds of the people living inside it. How does it mesh up with the reality around them?

There were also the ecology and technology aspects to work out. This will be a big change from the medieval New England world of Disciple and that's part of the elephant that I haven't chewed on too much yet. More research to do!

Trusting the universe
I've mentioned before that the universe will bring you what you need for your art. Lately, one thing that's been given to me is local music performed in small venues to small audiences. The DJ's know me as a regular, and they've often seen me scribbling down thoughts with pen and paper. For me, music is a shortcut to emotions and I collect those for each WIP.

I maintain playlists for my writing projects and yes, Bloodmagic's playlist did pick up some dark, hard-driving electronic music. It's turning out to be a dark story, so that's easy to understand. There are a few tracks whose reasons for being there isn't obvious, though. There always are a few of those. Keeps things interesting.

The universe also pointed me toward a couple horror influences: one old and familiar, and Hellraiser.

Guided brainstorming
Another way to "trust the universe" is to look at whatever the universe brings you and find a way to incorporate it into your art. So, sometimes I decide that I'm going to watch/read/do something and whatever it is, it will inform my WIP. How? Don't know. I'll roll with it, however irrelevant it seems.

I don't remember exactly why Hellraiser became an influence on Bloodmagic -- aside from being a classic horror franchise. I've watched several of the movies now and its influence has trickled into far more than the obvious blood and gore.

Well, the good movies have. The bad ones were just bad.

Applying craft

Piles of ideas are all well and good but this needs to be a story. Beginning, middle, end, rising tension, climax, character development, the whole nine yards. Unlike real life, fiction is supposed to make sense, as they say.

So I also used some tools in eating this elephant. The outline got built alongside the universe and the core characters. I've got a sense of the character arcs and the central theme. I've installed an engine: that abstract central question that these characters are wrestling with on my behalf. There will be sudden gear changes and a literary flourish or two. It'll be fun.

Don't wait too long
When is it time to start writing? That's always a tough question, but I've found that sooner works out better than later. Writing always clarifies things, and when you start earlier in the process it contributes to the WIP's development rather than potentially conflicting with what's already there.

Have you been working on a new elephant?

In the self-pub trenches: timing a series

I chatted with Will Hahn recently about a collection of issues related to publishing a multi-book series like my Disciple. He asked great questions and it seemed like a good basis for a blog post.

The first four books [of Disciple] have come out on a fairly regular schedule, about five months apart, yes? Did you follow some established wisdom regarding that schedule? Was it related to the size or price of the books?
The spacing is mostly related to the production costs, and partly to the idea that keeping them coming regularly but not too quickly will keep attention on them.

There's also the factor of how publishing breaks up your writing schedule. I'm monogamous when it comes to writing projects, so you can see the hit that my writing output has taken since I started self-pubbing (2012: 289k, 2013: 162.6k). When I've got something on my editor's desk, I don't want to dig into a major project and have to put it down to revise my manuscript.

Spacing them out a bit gives me time to grind out another story in between. So far, it's been working out.

I note you priced the first book way down, as I intend to do. Was that from the start and will it be permanent, or did you put it on sale as the later issues came out?

Part I's initial price was $4.99, which in hindsight was probably too high. $2.99 would have been better, IMO.

Currently, it's 99 cents with occasional free promotions. I took it down to that price around when Part III came out. If you can price it in the impulse-buy range (currently 99 cents, sure to change with time) you'll balance cheapness with people who will actually read it.

Because free stuff gets snapped up because it's free. Not necessarily because it's interesting. When I gave away Part I for free around New Year's, I gave away a bit short of two thousand copies. That resulted in about 25 sales of Part II. Maybe there will be later sales due to people getting around to that freebie they downloaded months ago... maybe not. My follow-up rate for sold copies of Part I has been much better.

I also think it's not entirely wise to price a first book too low and here's why: it's a reflection of what you think the series worth, when that book's sitting alone on the shelf. Once it's not a "free-standing" book anymore, then its price becomes less important. Part I is a loss leader now, and its job is to hook readers.

If it's not prying, do you have the entire Disciple story locked and loaded from the first book, or are you continuing to write as you go?
I had the first draft of Part VI (the ending) written before I published Part II. I wrote the series straight through with minor breaks in between the parts. Yes, I jokingly say that it's because I didn't want to be like GRRM and string my readers along... truth is, I can't afford to do that. If I drop the ball, there's no forgiveness in self-pubbing land.

So I wrote Disciple straight through and I intend to publish it straight through -- continuity of energy both ways.

Flashbacks in the story structure

I've been blog touring for two months and neglected this blog... my intent is to get back to my once a week habit. 

Flashbacks are something of unknown territory for me. They've turned up on occasion but mostly as isolated incidents. Those are simple to handle: they're like info-dumps. My science fiction stories (there are three of them) involve a lot more flashbacks and uses them for character development and backfilling earlier plot points.

What function does the flashback have?
No scene should have only one function. That applies to flashback scenes too.

Plot elements: Since you don't have to start telling your story at the beginning of the traditional plot structure (the inciting incident), it's entirely possible that a flashback scene contains an earlier plot point. Why not start the story there? Maybe it wasn't all that dramatic of an event (and stories should always start with dramatic events, as we know.) Maybe the reader needs the context of later events to see the significance of this earlier one. Maybe it wasn't a good scene to introduce the reader to the story's world.

Character development: Flashbacks are a chance to show-not-tell the reader about important aspects of a character's personality.

Info-dumping: Chunks of world-building can be worked into flashbacks, of course. The entire scene can serve to explain how things came to be in a particular situation, in your story.

When does the reader need to know this?
Connected to "current" events: Flashbacks are like info-dumps in that they always need to be relevant to the story. The best advice I have on when to info-dump is "just after the reader absolutely needed to know this." So the same goes for flashbacks.

Taking a break: If your story has been running hard and fast for a while, you can let it coast a bit while you flashback to something relevant but slower paced. Since flashbacks are in the story's past, they tend to reduce the tension -- the reader already has some sense of what might have happened and you're just filling in the particulars. (That's not to say you can't pack in some surprises, of course.)

When in doubt...
...keep writing, because once you reach the end of the story everything will be much clearer. And you can always fix it in revisions.

Top 5 Grammar Mistakes, supposedly

I got an email from Grammarly.com recently about the "top writing mistakes that even the most seasoned novelists make in their work." Now, their methods did not particularly impress me and they haven't even attempted to prove that the writers sampled were seasoned novelists... but their list incited a few thoughts because I'm putting the final polish on Disciple, Part IV.

1. Missing comma
2. Run-on sentences
3. Comma splice
4. Comma misuse
5. Definite vs. Indefinite article use

This list was generated by their auto-proofreading software, so another grain of salt is in order. Still, there are some interesting points. 

#1 and #4 -- in my opinion, commas can be argued about. They're a matter of personal style, to some degree. I view them as a pacing mechanism in a sentence and I use them to indicate a very slight pause in a thought or in dialogue. That's on top of their mechanical functions in separating out lists and parceling clauses. For example: 

The corner store opened on time that morning, which was a first, and I bought a six-pack of beer.

Commas in that sentence enclose a clause which could drop out of the sentence without impacting its readability at all. "Which was a first" is an aside, an editorial comment, and when I read it I hear a slight pause as the narrator turns to look me in the eye and snark for a moment. If you drop the clause out...

The corner store opened on time that morning and I bought a six-pack of beer. 

...you don't need a comma, but I'm not nit-picky enough to complain of someone put one before "and." 

#2 and #3 are two manifestations of the same problem: badly built sentences. Of all the bad ways to build sentences, run-ons and comma splices seem the most obvious and clunky to me so either Grammarly's software can't reliably detect the rest or first drafts are messier than I thought. 

That store never opens on time, the owner's out drunk every night and too hung-over to get up. 

His beer selection is good though he gets that much right. 

Both of those sentences are so easy to fix that I had some trouble writing them incorrectly. Are these really so common? 

Which leaves #5: "a" and "an" vs. "the." This one is actually a good point because there's a power in the definite article "the." It assumes foreknowledge. Insinuates importance.

He was the knight for the job. 

Conversely, "a/an" de-emphasizes. It can completely shift the meaning of the sentence.

He was a knight for a job.

These are very subtle, too, since they're tiny words and very common.

I've put text into Grammarly a few times and yes, it's much better than Word's auto-correct. It certainly has the impartiality that can be helpful when you've been staring at a story for too long.

Whether it's good enough to sift out the finer points of definite and indefinite articles... mmm, I'd have to try it out some more. Has anyone here used Grammarly? What was your impression?

Writing exercise #2: character via setting

Continuing my writing exercises, this one goes to the other main character in my sci-fi WIP. 

This exercise comes from Fiction Writer’s Workshop (ISBN 1884910394) by Josip Novakovich. Chapter 2: Setting. #12: One page. Make a character visible through her surroundings. (he lists some examples of how) Objective: to learn the power of setting as a means for character portraits. Bits of environment are your tubes of paint. 

Lena dropped into her VR recliner with a sigh. A few crumbs from the morning’s coffee cake lingered on the arm. She flicked them off one by one. Then she picked up her jack and plugged it into the socket under her left ear. Virtual reality slid down over what her meat eyes saw.

Green and amber status lights on her rig winked. Custom-built, of course. A steel rack of quantum processors, another of wireless hubs for various frequencies, the third rack for her secret-ingredient hardware, and a private bubble fusion plant so the draw on the station’s power grid wouldn’t give her away. Everything was cabled to reduce snooping and the extra wire color-tagged, neatly looped, and zip-tied.

The rest of her apartment’s front room was a tangle of dirty laundry waiting for the multi-washer and boxes from the grocery delivery service that she hadn’t broken down for the recycling chute yet. She had two tall stools that stood before the kitchenette counter — or at least two mountain peaks in the field of clutter.

Front door had a clear swath in front of it, though, and a second, vertical deadbolt that Lena had added well above the standard one. Wouldn’t stop anyone determined to get in, but it’d give her time to get out the fire door.

Writing exercise #1: inner peace

I've been writing this blog for over two years now and I find myself short on things to say... partly because I hate repeating myself and I've never liked short blog posts that don't say anything meaningful. So let's try something different this week.

The internet's full of writing prompts and exercises, and I've never used them. It hasn't been how I write: for me, it's a very deliberate process where the spontaneity is limited to the moments that I'm standing beside my characters writing down what they do. I thought I'd try a few in the context of my current (hard sci fi) WIP, which has been giving me some trouble. 

This writing prompt comes to us from Poets & Writers: Fiction writers know that conflict drives plot. Tension and drama imbue life into our characters and propel their stories forward. Human nature, however, craves tranquility and clarity. Write five hundred words describing your protagonist at peace—truly one with the universe, even if only for several seconds. Perhaps your character is sitting on a park bench and staring at a bruised cloud, or on a crowded subway car listening to the rails below, or walking out of a cemetery with a beer in hand. Peace is unique to everyone.

“Hang me, this time,” Shen said as he dropped to his knees. “Like you hang Radovan.”

Jezebel tossed down two of the skeins of rope and unwound the third slowly. She measured out several long loops before answering. “Are you ready for that? I’d have to bind your wrists.”

His nerves skittered under his skin. The snug embrace of rope, though, and the freedom of the air… it had been too long since he’d been in null gravity and felt that. “It’s the closest to zero gee I can get.”

The rope softly hissed, sliding through Jez’s dark hands. She nodded. “We’ll try it, then.”

Shen spread his arms and closed his eyes. The first loop of rope settling across the back of his neck released a sigh from him. First time Jez had bound him, she’d put a loop around one wrist and fear had lashed up out of him. Animal fear. Primal need to escape. He’d suffered too much while zip-tied by his wrists.

But the familiar progress of snug coils of rope looping around his chest and knots drawing them snug eased Shen’s mind. The gentle pressure evened out his breath and dropped his heart rate. His skittering nerves, still antsy at the thought of binding his wrists, slowed.

He could trust Jez. She only tied him as he asked. Checked on him to be sure he was comfortable. Freed him before there was any risk of limited circulation. It would be the same with his wrists. He was strong enough to let his hands be tied. Didn’t fear his own helplessness anymore.

Jez had never beaten him, even when she first bought his indenture and he was just “a pile of broken glass and frayed wire,” as Radovan had said. Shen trusted her.

When she reached Shen’s waist, Jez dropped the remaining rope and fetched a set of D-rings. Those had to be worked into the harness, one at the small of his back and one between his shoulder blades. Jez ran the ropes under the crotch of Shen’s shorts and up his back, lacing them into the coils there and anchoring the second ring.

“Let’s try a dragonfly sleeve, rather than Radovan’s arrangement,” Jez murmured. “Arms before you.”

Shen held out his long arms, fists touching. Jezebel began with loops over his shoulders and worked slowly. Fat knots anchored pairs of loops at precise intervals. The loops bound his upper arms together. Then his elbows.

He closed his eyes when a broken-glass blade of fear slid past him. Felt Jezebel hesitate. He held steady, safe in his snug harness, and she continued. Two more knots and loops, one for his forearms and one for his wrists.

Jagged bits of memories rumbled inside him. Pain from kickings, from tasers. The grind of hunger and fear. The rope stifled those bits. Dulled their edges.

Distantly, Shen felt the carabiners click into the two D-rings on his harness. A motor purred and lifted him off his knees. He rocked to horizontal, facing the floor, and swung gently with his bound arms hanging downward.

Zero gee, or close enough. Close enough to free.

Regaining discipline

My writing habit is the best skill I have. I've said that fairly often, and talked about how I have a two-hour block set aside each night for writing or working on projects. There was another two-hour block that I frequently added on, in the afternoon. Last year, I churned out a quarter million words using this system.

Because of publishing Disciple, personal life upheavals, and the reality that most people's free time is in the evening... my writing habit has taken a serious hit since July.

I've found myself falling prey to various forms of cat-vacuuming, aka cat-waxing and other amusing names. These are the semi-pointless things you do to avoid having to sit down at the computer and write. Not entirely pointless, of course, or you couldn't justify doing them at all. But they don't need to be done by any stretch of the imagination.

Checking email boxes. Wandering into Reddit, AW, or PersonalityCafe. Watching the year and a half of Law&Order SVU that I've got piled up in my Hulu queue. (Formulaic, rote, mental potato chips. Somebody stop me. Please.)

It's time to get my discipline back.

Eliminate distractions
Normally, I'd say "Quit out of the browser" but I really do need a Wikipedia page open for quick reference and I keep my photo pin boards at Linoit.com (check them out -- it's a real pin board unlike Pinterest, and it's private so fewer copyright worries.)

I need to toss all the other tabs, though. Log out of email accounts. Close other programs. Ignore the phone and the cats when they pester me for attention.

Focus on the rituals
These are the things I do just before sitting down to write. They tell my brain that we're going to write now. I pour myself a drink, take off my shoes, make a pit stop at the bathroom, and pick the music for today's writing. These have gotten a bit muddied, for various reasons, and I need to start doing them again.

Think outside the box
It may be that I need to move my writing block from after dinner to after lunch. I can write in the afternoon, but it will require juggling the things I've been doing then. It would free me up for social functions in the evening, though, and I'd still have the morning for errands and other daytime chores. Blogging and surfing the web would fill in the evenings that I don't go out (most of them.)

When do I start?
No time like the present. I've already put it off for too long.

How do you juggle your schedule to fit everything in?

Always learning more

It's been at least a year since I looked at my science fiction. When I put it down, I knew it needed work but I was fairly confident in the plot and the action. Well, I'm still confident in the action, but the work it needs is glaringly obvious now.

That's not unusual. If you haven't already heard the advice: you should put a story down for a while and work on something else, then come back to it with fresh eyes.

When I was writing in high school, I did all my revising on paper with a red pen and every single manuscript came away looking like a murder scene. Didn't matter how many drafts there had already been, it seemed. Red ink everywhere, rewriting, adding, deleting useless paragraphs.

My dad said it was because I'd learned so much more about writing since the last revision pass. Which was true.

It's also because when the story is fresh in your mind, you remember exactly what you meant to put on the page. Which isn't necessarily what got onto the page, of course. Things are always lost, in converting vivid hallucinations into little black symbols, but you're always learning new ways to translate.

These days, my revisions aren't so drastic as back in high school. There are a lot of reasons for that: awkward sentences get re-worked in progress, useless paragraphs don't get written in the first place, my outline and scene notes keep me on target, and my awareness of the vocab I'm using is much sharper. When my gut tells me something, it's easier to figure out what it's saying and whether I should trust it. (This has applications outside of writing.) All of that is the result of years of practice, years of writing, and there's no other way to earn those.

And after all these years of writing, I'm still learning the craft. Frankly, I hope I never feel like I've mastered it. If I did, I'd have to assume it would mean I've fallen into a rut or gotten my head stuck up my ass.

So I've been looking at the science fiction I put down a year ago and thinking about how to apply what I learned in the process of writing Disciple to it. I'm thinking this will be a murder-scene-level revision; time to get out that chainsaw.

What's the longest you've put a story down for? How did it look when you came back?

Things nobody wants to talk about

I follow KKR's business blog posts, because I'm serious about trying to make a living at this writing thing. This week, her post talked about the impact of personal disasters, health insurance, and how unpredictable a writer's income is. During this, she mentioned the terrible accident that befell David Farland's son and how people are trying to help with the enormous medical bills.

It just so happened that I had been semi-scheduled to appear on one of David Farland's conference-call writing chats when this disaster hit. Needless to say, that's on hold indefinitely. 

Nobody likes to think about disaster striking and how it can ruin you physically and financially. But these things happen. Having medical insurance, in America, doesn't mean you'll be able to walk out of a hospital financially intact. Personally, I pay too much for insurance that won't pay for anything useful -- I'm in debt because of it, don't get me started -- and I have no illusions about what would happen if I got hit by a bus. 

And speaking of getting hit by a bus, KKR's posts about estate planning for writers are something else that provoked a great deal of thought in me. I haven't drawn up a will yet, but I wanted to talk about part of it here for what it's worth. 

1. There isn't anybody I could bequeath my copyrights to who would be able to take care of them. At least, not as of July, 2013 -- who knows, that could change. 
2. A self-publisher's worst enemy isn't piracy, it's obscurity. Assuming I'm still obscure when I die, my copyrights may not be worth much.
3. I have a great deal of respect for the open-source movement, and I'm thankful for all the free software out there. 

Love this photo, let's use it again: Parisian catacombs.
Photo by Atif Gulzar, available at sxc.hu

So. Until further notice, if I am hit by a bus and they pull the plug on me -- they will have to, I'm poor -- then the contents of my "Scribblings" folder (currently over 2 gig, wow, didn't know it had gotten that big) will be made available in a public Dropbox folder under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Links will be posted here when I die. Not yet! 

If you want to write something in the Saints of War universe (or the Jovian Frontier, for that matter) before I die, hey, email me. We can talk. 

Have you made plans for your writing estate? You should. 

M/M romance: by women, for women

When I first heard about M/M romance (in the form of slash fanfic, IIRC it was X-files...) it didn't make much sense to me. Why would women both write and read gay romance/erotica?

Then I started reading it, of course, and got sucked in. Haven't tried writing it until now. But having read a fair chunk of slash fanfic, yaoi (both Japanse and American), and a little m/m original fiction, I had a list of things that made me uneasy about attempting to write it.

Heteros in disguise
This was the biggest elephant in the m/m room, for me. Particularly in Japanese yaoi, one of the men is a man and the other is a girl with a dick. This was glaringly obvious to me because I find most manga/anime female characters annoying. American-written yaoi tends to be better, and when I read one where the guys actually switched off on screwing each other, I cheered. A major reason for my love of Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series is because both the guys... are guys.

So when I started working on the boys for Hawks & Rams, I was very aware that I was already dangerously close to recreating something I really dislike. I wanted to challenge myself by working with a sensitive and emotional male character -- and I didn't want him to turn into a "girl with a dick." Meanwhile, the other love interest was a fairly traditional male who would be able to fly under most gaydar.

And then there's the politics of who's topping, who's bottoming... and at some point you have to take a step back.

It's two people falling in love
What does a hetero woman know about homosexual men? Well, what do I know about medieval peasant girls or high-tech thieves who grew up in zero gee? I know this much: they're people.

I'm a woman; what an erection feels like, I'll never know. But human emotions are universal, I believe. Whether it's fantasy or science fiction, whatever the technology level, whatever the culture, human emotions are experienced in the same ways. For different reasons, in different mixtures, but the same emotions. And desires.

Maybe you saw the gay sex scene I posted over at Shadow of the Unicorn. (It's a teaser of sorts for Hawks & Rams because it won't be in the final story. Caution! Graphic content!) I tried to write a true description of what it's like to be so desperately horny that you're taking risks with someone you barely know, in a place where you could get caught. I know what that feels like, even if I don't know what an erection feels like. The fact that this was two men in a fantasy setting... was just a matter of props and set-dressing, really. The emotional experience is the same.

All the "politics" inherent in any romantic relationship, hetero or homo, are something a writer should bear in mind. But having finished Disciple, as a romance, I think I can say that the zingy flavor of a romance is in the writer's personal blend of the expected and the unexpected.

Because you can go for "completely unexpected" -- the younger, more feminine, less-endowed boy topping the older, well-hung tough guy (sure, why not?) -- and you can be faithful to the existing stereotypes. Both are valid flavors of romance, and have their fans.

Mixing it up, though... that's fun. It keeps people guessing, and reading to see what will happen.

Housekeeping announcements
I'm going to go weekly with my blog posts here, with the occasional extra post. BUT, I'm going to add a monthly hangout over at Google+ to my schedule. It will be on Indie Life day (the second Wednesday of the month) from 10 - 11:30pm EST and you can drop by the hangout to chat about self-publishing, writing, research, knitting, cats, just brainstorm for a while, ask me to crit a page on the fly, whatever catches your fancy. Webcam optional! I will have mine on, but you can just chat in the sidebar if you prefer.

These will be On Air hangouts, posted on YouTube for future reference. If anybody shows up, that is -- if it's just me noodling around, I won't post that.

More info to come on Indie Life day.

Three elements of voice in POVs

I'm writing a romance, so that requires two characters -- well, at least two -- and the story is such that both characters need to be involved in the telling. I've been writing their POVs separately, and I'll shuffle them together later on.

Partly that's because plenty of significant events only happen to one of them. Partly because the contrast between them will let me frame their shared scenes in the most effective voice. The third "partly" is because Heathric and Adal are both "young" characters and their voices are still settling in. They need to differentiate themselves. Heathric's very sensitive to the people around him. Adal's a more action-oriented guy. This ought to be visible in how they narrate.

How can you tell one character's voice from another?

Photo reference for Adal, despite his
objections. (Zac Efron)

What they notice: A character walks into a party. What's the first thing they pick up on? Depending on which of my three Disciple characters it is, it might be: the top-ranking officers, the cute girls, or the familiar/friendly faces. Heathric would pick up on the room's mood. Adal would look for his shortlisted friends.

Other characters might notice what people are wearing, the decorations in the room, or be looking for a quiet corner to hide in. (That would be me.)

Level of detail: People pay more attention to the things that matter to them. Conversely, they'll spend less time on things that don't matter, or have difficulty addressing them. Some people are also more prone to long, complicated thoughts while others keep it terse and to-the-point.

Word choices: One's upbringing, personality, and formal training will also influence the vocabulary one uses. Since Heathric and Adal are both from low-tech, rural, agriculture-and-animal-husbandry cultures, their world is framed in terms of natural phenomena, animals, and a dash of superstition. In training, one is a shepherd and the other is a Ranger.

Add in their personalities and Heathric ends up with a vocabulary that leans towards animals, emotions, and a certain gentleness/acceptance/working with what he's given. Adal takes a more proactive tone, focusing on utility and seeing things in terms of hunting, pursuit, and discipline.

All of these are deeply entwined with character development and world-building, as you can see. What would you add to this list?

Breaking in the new story

I've started writing a new story, recently. When you've spent a long time working on one story, the transition to a new one can be jarring. Even when it's set in the same universe as your previous work.

It's sort of like a stiff new pair of sneakers; a new story needs some breaking in.

Different characters
My character development process, for all my talking about it, tends to be on the slow side. And even though I've built characters from scratch many times, it always has its awkward stages when I'm waiting for the character to talk to me but he just isn't up to that level yet.

Working with "old," deeply developed characters -- like Kate, Kiefan and Anders in Disciple -- spoils you to a certain degree. I know I can just give them a topic and a direction, and they'll spool out a scene on their own.

By comparison, newer characters need more notes and more steering. It feels ham-handed, at times. I have to trust, though, that with repetition and listening for the character's voice he'll quicken on his own.

Character reference photo for
Hawks & Rams - Heath Ledger, from
A Knight's Tale

Different voice
Heathric's voice is different from Kate's. He's a different person with different priorities, different sensitivities. In some ways, he's more sensitive than she is. (I'm trying to break that T/F barrier, for those of you who read the MBTI series.)

A different character means a different narrative, since I let my characters narrate -- something I don't usually make explicit, but there it is -- and that means a different view on the story. And that is, itself, a part of the story. Hawks & Rams is a much "smaller" story than Disciple, it's very personal and Heathric's more intimate voice should be a good fit.

Even though, yes, Disciple is a very personal story also but the scope is larger and Kate's more objective voice fit that.

It's a useful exercise, as an aside, to write the same scene from different characters' POVs. One should be able to see the difference in the word choice, the focus, the whole mood or the scene.

Different expectations
Genre comes into play, also. Hawks & Rams is a M/M fantasy romance -- I don't think there will be enough sex to qualify as erotica -- and chances are that people who pick it up will not have read Disciple. I need to explain the world, from scratch, in the context of this place and time that the story is happening. Being an M/M romance, I can bet that the audience for Hawks & Rams will be mostly female. I could stand to slow the pace down and do more emotional and sensual description (which fits into Heathric's more intimate voice, too.)

Which are not my strong suit, admittedly. This will be good practice.

The "breaking-in" process is mutual, after all. I'm fitting the story to my style, and the story's fitting me to its style.

MBTI #6: Sketching characters

The sixteen MBTI types fall into four groups of generally similar temperaments. When you have a vague sketch of a new character, these can help narrow down which type the character might be.

Intellectuals: the NTs
INTJ, INTP, ENTJ, ENTP. Kiersey's overview of the group.

Up side: NTs are idea- and logic-driven. Concepts, structure, and rationalizing come easy to them, and they apply their ideas practically to the world around them.

Down side: They can be socially inept, angsty, and arrogant. Often come across as chilly and indifferent. The more socially adept ones can be very manipulative of those around them. For women of this type, there's the extra challenge of being seen as a "cold-hearted bitch" because our culture expects women to be warm and nurturing.

Dreamers: the NFs
INFJ, INFP, ENFJ, ENFP. Kiersey's overview of the group.

Up side: The combination of Intuition and Feeling makes the NFs a sensitive and idealistic group. They want to communicate, understand, and empathize -- which can be difficult in an ugly world.

Down side: They can fall into their deep interior world of thoughts and feelings, and come across as spineless and out of touch. Men of this type can have an especially rough time, since our culture still frowns on men showing emotions, and they'll be told to "man up" and ignore their natural sensitivities.

Managers: the SJs
ISTJ, ISFJ, ESTJ, ESFJ, aka "the Guardians." Kiersey's overview of the group.

Up side: SJs are solid, reliable, ordinary folks. They get stuff done, they keep their promises, they don't rock the boat unless they feel they must.

Down side: They can be boring, boring, boring. At the extremes, they can be stiflingly straight-laced and dedicated to enforcing their brand of conformity on everyone.

Artisans: the SPs
ISTP, ISFP, ESTP, ESFP. Kiersey's overview of the group.

Up side: In general, the four SP types are people who like to work with their hands, do things, create things. They're practical, but they seek new ideas and fun. Lots of fun.

Down side: SPs can become shallow show-offs and thrill-seekers, either annoying the heck out of people or  leaving a swath of broken hearts in their wake -- because all that matters is their own pleasure.

Fleshing out
Most character-generating systems start with the surface appearance and behaviors -- their favorite things, their personal experiences, and such -- and works their way into the character from the outside. Using MBTI takes you in the opposite direction.

We're starting with what makes the character tick, here, and once that's been established you can start working out how a character's MBTI shaped how he experienced his personal history -- what parts of those events shaped him more than others -- why his favorite things are his favorite things.

In fleshing out my characters, I bring world-building and story plot into play here, weighing what the character needs to be with what my creative gut is telling me will be interesting. I try not to "assign" characters an MBTI, especially not major characters, but I narrow it down to two or three most likely and feel my way from there. As the character becomes real, they'll tell me what they are.

MBTI is innate. It's influenced by one's upbringing and maturity level, and if one doesn't have a strong preference in more than one dichotomy, one can be difficult to type -- but in general, your type sticks.

Age and function mastery 
As stated earlier, a character's two dominant functions will be the easiest, most comfortable modes of being for him. They are also the functions that manifest at a young age. There's a fair amount of discussion about how children "figure out" what type they are, but in general it's thought that the dominant function has settled in by the time you get to your teenage years.

The secondary function develops over the teen years, which then determines which are the tertiary and inferior functions. Since those two don't come easily to a person, how well they will be developed depends on what effort is put into them -- or not.

Twenty-somethings and those who don't develop further can be stereotypes of their MBTI. NTs, the fumbling nerds. SPs, the party animals. NFs, the starry-eyed idealists. SJs, the goody two-shoes.

The other two functions develop "later in life" (most sources say) which is deliberately vague because there's an element of voluntary effort in there. But as a 41-year-old who has put in some effort, I think I can say I'm comfortable with my lesser functions as an INTJ, and that it happened over the course of my thirties.

MBTI basics

Four dichotomies:
Intuitives/Sensors • Feelers/Thinkers • Introverts/Extroverts • Judgers/Perceivers

For writers: Sketching Characters • The Dark Side • Shadow & Resources

MBTI #5: Judgers and Percievers

Judgers vs. Perceivers is the trickiest dichotomy, IMO, to explain. It could be argued that it has the least impact of the four letters. Generally, it's another directional pair, like Introvert vs. Extrovert, but it has to structure vs. spontenaiety.

Over-simplification
Judgers are organized, efficient and get stuff done. Perceivers... well... stuff gets done eventually...

Stereotypes
"You know you're a judger when..."
"You know you're a perceiver when..."

Description
Judgers have an internal need for goals, deadlines, organization, are uncomfortable having something incomplete, and like to have decisions made rather than keep their options open. Sure, everyone likes to have a goal in mind, even perceivers, but judgers have a need to create structure.

Perceivers like unstructured environments, tend to be more disorganized, sit on ideas until they are sure they've reached the correct decision, and like keeping their options open, often feeling unsettled by the idea that they may have come to a conclusion too early.

Further thoughts
J/P indicates which of the top two functions is dominant, of the middle two letters. For example, for an INTJ it indicates the N is dominant. For an INTP, the T. Exactly why Intuition is a "judging" function and Thinking is a "perceiving" function -- it seems to me that should be the other way around -- I'm not entirely clear on. It seems to me that my Ni is exactly what keeps me from being an organized, goal-driven J. My Ni keeps me noodling around and it's my Te that keeps me focused.

But that is just my experience. I test as a Judger, but it's not a strong preference. This thread at PersonalityCafe talks about some J/P stereotypes vs. reality.

In the general population, Judgers (54%) are on fairly equal footing with Percievers (46%).

MBTI basics

Four dichotomies:
Intuitives/Sensors • Feelers/Thinkers • Introverts/Extroverts • Judgers/Perceivers

For writers: Sketching Characters • The Dark Side • Shadow & Resources

MBTI #1: the basics

I wrote a brief intro to using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicatior (MBTI) in character development for my April blog tour. It's available at Sharon Bayliss' blog.

This series of posts will try to introduce the basics of Myers-Briggs functions and personality types, with an eye toward using them to develop characters for fiction. Bear in mind that while two people may be the same MBTI type, their upbringing, experiences, culture, etc., will make them express their type in different ways. Maybe they'll get along famously. Maybe they'll just get on each other's nerves.

What they will have in common is what sorts of information they gather most easily, what they prioritize, how they make decisions, and the easiest ways for them to interact with other people.

There are many tests available online, but I'm recommending this one.

Four basic functions
Myers-Briggs defines four basic functions human use to gather, process, and act on information. "Information" can be anything -- data, sensory input, emotions -- and "process" and "act on" can take many different forms as well.

Important point: everyone uses all of their functions. There are no "better" or "worse" functions. What separates the personality types is which functions come naturally, and which are difficult for an individual to work with.

The four functions are: thinking, feeling, sensing and intuition. Abbreviated as: T, F, S, N.

Two orientations
Functions can be Introverted (i) or Extroverted (e), which indicates whether the function looks inward to the self or outward toward other people and the world. Therefore, the four functions become eight: Ti, Te, Fi, Fe, Si, Se, Ni, Ne.

Each of these has a specific definition, which I will go into more detail about in later posts.

Arrays by preference
If everyone uses four functions in a specific order from most preferred (coming the most naturally to that person) to least (those functions that don't come easy) then there are sixteen personality types. Chart of all sixteen and their preferences.

There are four dichotomies in this system -- you're either an I or E, an N or S, an F or T, a J or P. Each of those is actually a continuum between the two extremes. For example, I test as a strong Introvert with very little Extroversion. It's entirely possible to be "borderline" in any of the dichotomies and not have a strong preference for one or the other.

Dominant, secondary, tertiary and inferior
One's dominant function is the one that comes easiest. You're very comfortable using that function, you trust it. It's rarely "wrong." The secondary function supports and reinforces the dominant -- it's also very comfortable and reliable, for you.

For example, as an INTJ (hi, I'm an INTJ) I am very comfortable with my Ni and Te -- working with the abstract ideas that well up inside and translating them into external reality.

The third and fourth functions in one's array -- the tertiary and inferior functions -- don't come so easy. You don't feel so sure about what they bring you, they can be confusing, and you need to work at mastering them.

For INTJs like me, that's my Fi and Se. Since I'm a bit older and I've put in the practice working with my two inferior functions (so that I can use them in writing stories) I am more comfortable with my roiling internal feelings (Fi) and the wealth of sensory details (Se) I can tap into. When I was younger, I was much more angsty and timid in situations full of sensory overload.

What about the other four? 
If there are four-times-two functions and each type is an array of four, what about the other four? Definitions vary, but IMO those missing four functions make up what's called the shadow. Some theories call those your "demons," especially the opposite of your most inferior function. The missing four functions do not come easy to a given personality type, but they can still be used.

As an INTJ, for me those four are Ne, Ti, Fe and Si. This is a good place to repeat: everyone uses all the functions. I have been known to glean things using Ne and Ti, though I have to work at it. I'm still not so good at Fe (tend to use my Se and Ni to approximate.) And I agree, my Si is very much my "demon." Wrestling with that is never a happy thing.

This will all make more sense when I explain the eight functions in more detail. I will also lay out some of the theories about the shadow when I talk about stress.

MBTI basics

Four dichotomies:
Intuitives/Sensors • Feelers/Thinkers • Introverts/Extroverts • Judgers/Perceivers

For writers: Sketching Characters • The Dark Side • Shadow & Resources

Blogging: a waste of time?

This question has been making its way around the writing blogosphere -- since Google announced it was shutting down Reader, it seems. I've also read about how RSS feeds are, apparently, a service that only we Gen-Xers who got online before the mid 90s care about. (shrugs) I still like my RSS feeds, thank you very much. I moved all of mine over to Feedly with a minimum of fuss and muss.

But the question of whether blogging is useful to writers is a valid one. I've been doing this since... huh, it's been two years now. Shows you how good I am at tracking anniversaries. Jody Hedlund wrote about her thoughts most recently, and she refers to both Jane Friedman's advice to new writers and L.L. Barkat's advice to experienced writers.

By "experienced" I assume they mean "published through traditional channels" (or trade published, or industrial, or whatever we're calling the big conglomerates now.) I am neither a new writer nor traditionally published, so here's a third POV.

In the two years I've been blogging, I've written over 280 posts. I've read hundreds more and commented when I had something to say. Memes, the A-to-Z Challenge, and Rach Writes' Platform-Building Crusade have all appeared here. Here's why I don't think it was wasted time.

Improved my discipline
One argument is that new writers should focus on their craft instead of on blogging. New writers should always focus on their craft -- I think that goes without saying -- but part of that craft is discipline. My butt-in-chair habit is one of the most powerful tools I have. Let me bold that and point neon arrows at it. Blogging contributed to my discipline. It never interfered with my creative writing, but I have more free time than most people do.

Established an identity
I started this blog with zero identity. Do you know what it's like to self-publish with zero identity? I've done it, back when I was involved in tabletop RPGs -- it's a soul-crushing disaster. I'm no big voice in the blogosphere, I know that, but my name is out there and there's a body of work attached to it. Over the two years I've blogged, I built that body up and made sure it was a reasonably accurate portrait of me. (Yes, I really am this boring. :D)

Met friends and crit partners
I started this blog with no writing friends, real or online, and no critique partners. If the value of those needs to be explained... I trust it doesn't.

But: the more I know, the less I have to say
I've heard the blogosphere called the "world's biggest writing convention" -- well, a disorganized, repetitive one, maybe. For new writers, there is value in reading the blogosphere's posts and in wrestling with their own writing challenges through blogging about them. After a while, the new writer is going to notice that a lot of it is the same advice, in slightly different form, over and over. There's nothing wrong with that, but new writers don't stay new.

I came into blogging late in my writing apprenticeship. Maybe I was already over my first million words mark, maybe I wasn't -- I don't know the word counts on the stuff I wrote in high school -- but I'm well into my second million now. One's perspective changes, with time and experience. And I've been finding that the more I know about writing, the less I have to say.

I just want to sit and stare at the unicorn, not try to publicly dissect it. On a related note, I may be moving to blogging once a week...

Anyway
To wrap up: I think blogging has a value for the new and/or self-publishing author. There's a community here, and networking opportunities. Those can be difficult to find, especially for shy writers and those living in small towns. As one progresses in one's writing career, the usefulness of blogging may fade. Maybe it will shift into promotions for one's publications. Maybe one will move into a cave to devote oneself to The Art. But writing is never a waste of time, if you're striving to improve.

What has your experience been?