@dougk
Active 5 years, 3 months agoForum Replies Created
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Thanks, everyone. And Karen, well done on getting with an agent and Penguin Random House. For my part, I’ve rejoined Duotrope and will start the hunt for an independent small press. The challenge will be to find an honest one–from a rather extensive cautionary article from SFWA, it would seem like for every honest one, there are a dozen sharks out to eat authors! I’ll include the link here for anyone who’d like to see it:
If anyone else would like to weigh in, I’d welcome your feedback as well.
Regards
~DougLooks wonderful! I like the silhouettes in the foreground, and the misty tree branches. You’re lucky 🙂
Maybe I should also mention, that the timer I use is an online timer like a bomb with a fuse. You set the time, and the fuse slowly burns down while the clock ticks. When it runs out there’s a big “KABOOM!” I’ve been tempted to set the time, turn my speakers up on high, then try to write so many words before the thing goes off.
Maybe someone could write a yarn about a genius, someone dazzlingly smart but also lazy, who’s presented with such a timer. It sets itself, he can’t get away from it, and it gives him so much time to accomplish a certain task. Like, “Write a page in your journal in 15 minutes.” The only way to stop it is to get the task done. The tasks could then escalate.
“Sell three smoothies in the next 15 minutes.”
“Feed two homeless people in the next 20 minutes.”
Now solve world hunger in the next 20 minutes. Then the whole problem of good and evil. Then figure out a way to clean the world of pollution. He’d better get cracking, he’ll get blown sky-high!Maybe a flash yarn? Or an Asimov-style story, where two characters in the future golden age the guy brought about, see a statue of him and talk about his history.
Wondering what everyone thinks of this…
Thanks. I’ve found what helps for me, when it’s really getting *bad*, is to set a timer. For the next 15 minutes I look at nothing but the story! Writing or revising. Then I can goof off a bit if I want. Not too long. Then I set the timer again.
Doing this, I’m finding it helps get me into the mode where I’m safety into the story.
Congrats, Athelstone! Treat yourself to something nice. Raising a cup of writing fuel (coffee). 🙂
~Doug
Thanks for the replies. Crazy season? Well, who can deny it? As I type this it’s 6:50am in the eastern US, and folks are no doubt lining up outside the big-box stores, readying for the stampede.
And now, here’s my entry.
###
“I dreamt about you last night.”
“Excuse me, Ebenezer?”
“Yes, Jacob. I was possessed of a very strange dream, and it was about you.”
“Ah. Then it must have been a dream all of business, and that can only be a good dream. Did we foreclose on another poor wretch?”
“I’m afraid not Jacob, it wasn’t nearly that pleasant. In this dream, you had died.”
“What?”
“Yes. And that was only the beginning. This was seven years after that event, and your ghost had come to visit me. Fettered head to foot in chains.”
“What? Preposterous.”
“The whole dream must have been brought on by an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato. You informed me of impending visits from three more spirits, as if your own chain-clanking shade wasn’t unsettling enough, and–ugh!–I shudder to recall it. Especially how it all–echhh–ended!”
“How did it end, Ebenezer, how?”
“I…I raised Cratchit’s salary.”
“He was in the dream, too?–Wait. Did you say you had raised an employee’s salary? And this after you let him talk you into restoring that crippled son of his to health?”
“Jacob, your face is turning white, as white as my own, I’m sure.”
“Ah–but, Ebenezer, it was only a dream, ha ha, a silly dream about a sillier holiday! We’ll have a capital laugh about it come Christmas Day, when Cratchit and the others are here, toiling away. And no doubt complaining about the paucity of coal on the fire…”
“Jacob, you’re coughing! And look rather off-color. We will get you to a physician at once. I know that normally we ignore these little trifles, doctors being expensive, but I believe that if we clench our teeth now and force ourselves to hand over the fee, we’ll be glad we did.”
“Now, Ebenezer–”
“Jacob, I insist! If this is some rascally scheme of the supernatural, we must prevent it at all costs! Now come. Yes, I insist.”
###
This sort of popped out. A Christmas Carol is my favorite story of all time, but I’m saddened at how it’s been done to death, done to death again, done to death over and over every which way, and still done to death after that. Let it rest in peace, for pity’s sake! (Connie Willis even wrote a short yarn about this, called “Adaptation.”) So I liked the idea of Scrooge somehow able to prevent Marley from becoming “dead as a doornail” to prevent the whole thing from happening. Of course, this means old Scrooge goes on bah-humbugging his way through life. But at this point that looks better to me than all the done-to-deaths.
Since it also means poor Tiny Tim is doomed, I made a provision for that in the story.
Holiday cheers,
~DougI’ll post mine tomorrow. Couldn’t post it before then, for seasonal reasons.
A question for our members in Britain and other countries: Do you have a certain name for the start of Christmas season? I don’t know how it came to be “Black Friday” in the US, shopping frenzy or no. When I was a kid, that term was unheard of; it sounds like a horror movie title. It’d be better suited for the first Friday in October, kicking off our month of having to dodge zombies, ghoulies and beasties, and hopefully we’ll live to eat the candy rewards at the end. But, Christmas?
So anyway, just curious. I’ll add my entry here tomorrow when it’s…I don’t want to say that term. I’ll just say, First Day of the Season!
Something new I’d like to share. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts every day at my job, and every so often it occurs to me there’s some classic or another I somehow never read. So, why not spin it on audio while I type? So far I’ve listened to The Gulag Archipelago, Dracula, Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down, and Shakespearean plays.
And I’ve known about Asimov’s Foundation all my life. As a kid I started to read it. I liked it, but for some reason put it down and never finished it. (It was the same with Dracula.) So I determined to give it a listen next. When I finished, I thought it’d also be nice to hear some of his short stories. And so I checked this out.
Asimov: Science Fiction Favorites
He reads these himself! And does a pretty decent job. Strange how I’d never heard his voice before. Right off the bat I found myself reunited with a story called “Someday.” I read it as a schoolboy in an English textbook, and it made an impression on me. That story stayed with me my whole life, I never forgot it. And now I run right into it again, read by Asimov himself!
So if anyone would like to check it out…
BTW Jules, I’m finally listening to that audio of Hamlet! And yes, it lives up to its legend.
I wonder what literature would be like today, had there been no William Shakespeare? I’ve read that he inspired Hermann Melville to keep going with Moby Dick.
“Written in the Scars” 101 words
Some people left a scar, it was a vertical one, slashing straight down. Not on the skin, where anyone sees it; this is inside, where it leaves its mark on your mind.
Then, others cut another scar, a horizontal line across the top of the first, and another right below it following the same track. An F.
So it went, for years, more letters forming, until the whole message was revealed:
FLY SOLO. STEER CLEAR OF PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY GUYS.
And so I follow that.
So if, and when, they criticize me for my solitude (I think of it as minding my own business), I point to the message and say: You wrote that.
Yesterday I listened to the Dissecting Dragons podcast about writing for relaxation, enjoying the process of creating and not worrying so much about the outcome.
It reminded me of something shared once by Barry B. Longyear, a writer who skyrocketed to fame in the 80’s, and it almost killed him. Fortunately he survived to tell the tale. He wrote a writer’s prayer that’s always helped me, and I’d like to share it here.
The Writer’s Prayer, by Barry B. Longyear
God, grant me inspiration, relieve me of expectation, quiet that voice in me for which nothing is good enough.
When I research, lead me to the answers. When I plan, show me the path. When I write, allow me to enter in and live my story. And when the story is done, clear it and its future from my mind.If material success should come my way, remind me to thank you. However, if the only reward I obtain for my writing is the writing itself, let that be sufficient.
Hi Raine, thanks for asking. The story will appear in a Thirteen O’Clock Press anthology called “Chains,” about dealing with captivity, prisons and the like. Submissions are open until it’s full.
Stephen King, who’s described himself as a lazy researcher, has related the letters he’s gotten from people who caught him in research errors. The tone of the letters, he said, was invariably gleeful. I wonder if Boyne has gotten those too? “Hee-hee, you got this wrong, and that wrong!”
Such a great story! As a guitarist who at one time owned a Les Paul, I found it fascinating. I’d also like to add that, for one of the greatest all-time guitar leads–the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”–Eric Clapton knocked it out in one take, with a red Les Paul he called Lucille. Wonderful stuff.
An update. I’ve continued the revisions, but slowly, slowly. I’m now a hundred pages from the end, and I’ve decided enough of the nonsense, I’m getting all through it this weekend come hell or high water. Feel free to hold me to it.
Will check back in Sunday night, one way or the other.
I’ve been fortunate that I could keep going to my job as usual (I work for the state of Rhode Island). Though there are all kinds of safeguards, and Army & Air Force personnel about.
An acceptance last week for a new short story, reminds me that life goes on.
And a wise old saying reminds me that “This, too, shall pass.”
I start with the basic premise and the characters, and let the plot unfold as I go. I once learned at a writers’ conference that it makes a lot more sense to outline the whole thing in advance, and I agree with that, but it’s never worked that way for me. I can’t nail the thing down, it wants to take off in another direction once I’m writing it. It’s like the story’s not fooled; it won’t come out unless I’m actually in the process of putting words down.
Inevitably I hit roadblocks, so I stop and brainstorm where to go next. Before long I always hit upon some idea that excites me, and I run with that.
Hope this helps. I’m currently up to my neck in one of my own word farms!!!
Rewriting it has been on the back of my mind. I’ve felt this way about some of my short yarns before, and rewrote them into stories that were published and I’m now proud of. I didn’t think of it as rewriting, more like “extensive revisions,” maybe because that doesn’t sound so daunting as rewriting. That’s probably what I’ll end up doing with the novel.
I haven’t seen that character questionnaire, but I’d like to check it out just out of curiosity.
Thanks for all your replies! They are refreshing, helpful, and sharpen my perspective on things. They also bring things to mind that I’ve read in the past, like Ray Bradbury’s dashing off the whole first draft with the creative side of his brain, shutting off the editor side until the draft’s finished and cooled off.
Dean Koontz, who describes himself as OCD, writes one page, then revises and polishes it until it’s *exactly* the way he wants it, before allowing himself to move on to the next.
And in Stephen King’s book _On Writing,_ he includes part of a first draft that he revised with a pencil, showing what he changed and cut. And, not surprisingly, it wasn’t all that much.
Writing a first draft is a luxury. I scribble it in a notebook, never worrying about the final product because I always know I’m going to go over it several times (often many times) first. The most difficult time is the 2nd and 3rd drafts, when I have to be all editor and very little writer. Once I’m over that hump, for the final polish when I just have to tweak it a little here and there, the story becomes fun again.
For this Civil War novel, I wrote the first draft years ago, worked out the major kinks, had it critiqued, and shouldn’t have that far now to go. But my writing strikes me as dry, even amateurish. More than anything, it’s probably just a case of my fixating so much on all the trees that I’m missing the forest.
