Sick days?

So I spent the entire weekend being sick, and now that I'm perking up a bit, I'm starting to feel the words revving up again. Does anybody else find that getting sick makes it hard to write? And if so, is there anything that seems to help?

Break it or burn it

I had an astonishing revelation today: I've got writing burn out. And I've had burnout for a while now, like since October. Not only have I rarely felt that words-straining-at-the-seams feeling that used to inflict me with an itchiness to write, but every single day I've been able to write fewer and fewer words, and I feel more tired after laying them on the page. Needless to say, I decided I needed to be more serious about taking break time from writing.

I spent the afternoon cleaning and reading out of an anthology of French reading exercises. Why? I'm not planning to go to France any time soon. I don't know anyone who speaks French. The only reason to try to read a book in French is just because it's something I always enjoyed and it was something I had no reason to do. Absolutely free goofing off.

I've still got plenty of editorial work to catch up on, but this weekend? I'm going to go nuts. I might even play VIDEO GAMES. Nothing says "slacker" like sitting in front of the tv shooting zombies.

Sometimes it's hard for me to admit that writing isn't the end-all and be-all of who I am. I will still exist if I turn off the word tap for a couple of days. There's no shame in it.

Right?

Rescue Remedy

Today was the kind of day that required some kind of serious pick-me-up: I had a blister, a stomach ache, a headache, and my brain was spinning in a post-work fog (this is the Noisy Season at work). A nap was out of the question, what with an influx of playful children racing around my front porch and yard (there's a reason I hate summer). I needed coffee and chocolate, stat.

I've reached a point in my life where I no longer like sticky-sweet chocolatey treats. More often than not, they leave me feeling queasy and unsatisfied, the bouquet of the chocolate overpowered by the fats and sugars. (Dear heavens, did I really just use the phrase "the bouquet of the chocolate"??) When I buy chocolate, I buy a Theo dark chocolate bar and nibble my way through a stick at a time. But I didn't have a chocolate bar handy. I had cocoa powder. So I whipped up a quick and dirty microwave cup of cocoa.

You've made cocoa a hundred billion times--or at least, I hope you have. There's something profoundly meditative about blending the dry ingredients (2 Tb cocoa powder, 2 tsp sugar, dash of salt, and if you're in our household, about a tsp of nondairy creamer) and slowly dripping in the liquid (I usually start with coffee). At first, the liquid beads up on the surface of the powders, finally seeping in and creating clumps. With a little stirring and a few more drops of coffee, everything turns into one awkward ball of fragrant mud. I always feel a little nervous at this point, because it feels like the ingredients will never come together, and I will have wasted all my efforts to make a lump of sludge.

But with a little more coffee and a bit more elbow grease, the lump becomes a paste, the paste becomes smoother, and soon there's something akin to chocolate syrup at the bottom of the mug. At that point I'll usually add a little more coffee or hot water, filling my mug halfway before topping off with soy milk and a spin in the microwave. A dash of vanilla--or better yet, a teaspoon of Kraken rum!--rounds off the flavor profiles.

I'm revising a story right now that's currently at the "lump of sludge" phase. I'm nervous and a little terrified that I've killed the poor thing. I can only hope that with a little more elbow grease, it will smooth out and turn into something delicious.

I might need a few more cups of Rescue Remedy first, though ...

Process & Practice: the Writer in Savasana

It's been the kind of busy week that makes a gal's head spin: an article due, revisions coming back from various editors, career opportunities throwing themselves in my path, changes at the day job, invitations to fun social events five days of the week. And behind it all, the constant pressing knowledge that queries and submissions are out there, my work under evaluation and my future on the line.

Hey, it sounds melodramatic, but dang it, that's how it feels! You know it. You've subbed to big things before, things that could have a significant effect on your life. If you let yourself think about it, your brain might explode. You can't work, because the pressure and excitement sucks the words out of your brain like a Dyson vacuum cleaner--and we all know those things never lose suction. The only solution is NOT to think about these things and try to focus on the work in progress.

But if you're anything like me, burying my thoughts is hard. They have a way of knotting inside me and settling like lead into my gut. I've always had a lot of issues with my thoughts bursting out as physical manifestations, and it's part of the reason I spent a lot of time being sick as a young person. Interest in the mind-body relationship took me to yoga and yogic philosophy, and at one time, I actually planned to be a yoga teacher.

That's right. Me. The lady who creaks when she tries to touch her toes, the lady whose Reubenesque physique is more aptly associated with Polynesian royalty than fitness instructors. I was a yoga junkie--Bendy Wendy, beloved children's yoga class leader! And I quit yoga for the same stupid reason a lot of people quit writing: I forgot to focus onprocess, not results.

You see, I've always been a chubby kid, and I've always been sensitive about being overweight. And one day, after two years of reading and studying and pretzeling, I saw a picture of myself and realized I looked nothing like what a yoga teacher should look like. My limbs were stocky, my ankles blocky. A predisposition toward a pear shape gave me the requisite prominent ribs, but my thighs never got the memo that I was supposed to be skinny. My confidence crumbled. And one day, I walked into my yoga class and realized that every woman in the room, put together, would fit into one pair of my pants. (Hey, it seemed completely possible at the time!) I ran out of the building crying.

Little by little, I left my yoga practice behind. Dropping into Downward Dog was just too emotionally exhausting, and it was easy to push yoga time out of my schedule: I'd made a commitment to writing more, and I could justify any amount of time sitting in front of the computer.

What I forgot is how great yoga feels when you're doing it and not thinking about anything else. Like writing, it's easy to fall into a magical space where your inner essence is perfectly aligned with your activity, where you're just you, and nothing else matters. Whatever happens once you roll up your mat or click that "submit" button doesn't really matter. That you you find when you hit that magical space? That's the gold. You have to let the crap--the recycled pop-bottle mat carrier that everybody else is carrying to the studio; the rejections from the agents; the good reviews of your latest story--fall away from that place. You can't let it touch the you you've worked so hard to find.

In the last few months, I've started to forgive my body for being itself. I had a realization one day, and Regina Spektor says it best in her song "Folding Chair:"

I’ve got a perfect body, though sometimes I forget
I’ve got a perfect body cause my eyelashes catch my sweat

My body is perfect because it does the things it's designed to do. Instead of resenting its shape, I've started treating my body better, revisiting the healthy recipes I used to love, taking those long walks. Setting up a standing workstation, like Christie did. Even doing some yoga. It's amazing how the old lessons come back, all the training for clearing the mind wiping away the tensions my writing life piles onto my mind and body. After doing something physical, it's usually much, much easier to come to the keyboard. The monkey mind, with its constant need for reward, is settled. Instead of feeling neurotic about seeing results, you can enjoy the process of writing.

Book giveaway: Way of the Wizard!

Mr. John Joseph Adams is giving away copies of The Way of the Wizard over on his Goodreads page! If you're interested in getting your hands on this fantastic anthology, featuring a story and a handful of headers by yours-truly, check it out!

How to Write a Bio--for SF/F/H writers

I realized something the other day: most of the writers I know hate writing their bios. Every time a friend makes a sale, I hear a round of misery and sympathy on Twitter as they share their struggles to create a concise blurb that will encapsulate their career and draw readers' interest. But it doesn't have to be that hard! Writing your own biography is one of the easiest tricks you can put in your nonfiction writing magic kit. (And just so you know--I'm going to focus on nonfiction tips and tricks for my next blog post over at Inkpunks.com. If there's anything in particular you'd like to know, let me know and I'll try to address it in that 5/20 post.)

Start by collecting your material.

Many spec fic writers like to begin exploring their work's characters by filling out a character sheet, very like the sheets role-playing gamers use to create their gaming character. When you begin writing your bio, you need to construct yourself as if you were the character. (If you think about it, your persona as a writer is a fictional character. You're drawing this persona out of your real life experiences, but you're not selling yourself. You're selling Writer You. It's like an alternate universe self!)

Check out the character sheet I've linked to and think over some of the answers. Answering someone else's questions can really help reinvigorate your sense of perception. When I think about my personal identity, I think of my family, my core values, my favorite activities. But honestly, these are really, really boring. A bio about me would include: "Wendy Wagner is a mom who is constantly riled up about social causes and therefore must restrict her consumption of all news, save for Vogue and Boing Boing. 80% of the time, Wagner is thinking about coffee or eating sweets." Kind of a dud.

But when I look at the character sheet questions, I come up with thoughts like:

I was born in Eastern Washington. Great. Nobody cares.

I grew up in a town so small the Bookmobile came only ever two weeks. Quirky--and life-changing.

Our house sat across the street from the cemetery. Hey, I can use that for horror markets!

I don't have any pets. I better leave that out or no one will believe I'm a writer.

I have practiced using a shotgun in order to better prepare myself for zombie attack. If I rephrase that, that could be perfect for horror markets!

I used to believe the back door of our house opened into Narnia. Hey, I can use that for fantasy markets!

Focus on audience and market.

You'll notice that many of my thoughts about my character material were focused around markets. That's because there are different kinds of bios, and they all their different size and tone, depending on where you'll be sending your work. Here are some examples:

• Basic bio, added to bottom of story or article. This bio usually runs 3-4 lines. It will have a clever opener, a line about your writing credits, a second line that includes any awards or critical praise, and a final line about where you live, where you blog, and/or something witty.

I write a new basic bio for every author spotlight I do for Fantasy Magazine, because I think it's fun and clever. My latest reads:

Wendy N. Wagner grew up in very rural Oregon, where she dreamed her family would abandon her to be raised by wolves. Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the anthologies The Way of the Wizard and Rigor Amortis; her interviews and poetry have run in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Horror-web.com, and Abyss and Apex. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very understanding husband and daughter, and blogs at www.inkpunks.com.

Because the author spotlight is nonfiction, I thought it was worthwhile to include my nonfiction writing credits in that second line. If I was doing a basic bio for a short story, I would leave that out. If I wanted to sound like a blow-hard, I could have said "Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (this piece is actually forthcoming, but it will be out before anyone reads the bio) and the anthologies Rigor Amortis and The Way of the Wizard. Publishers Weekly described Wagner's story 'The Secret of Calling Rabbits' as 'melancholy and deeply affecting.'"

I made sure that the hook--the clever first line--of that bio connected to the theme of my article. You don't have to do that, but I think it is a good idea to write a hook that is in the tenor of the market you're writing for. If it's a horror market, I'll usually reference growing up next door to the cemetery. If it's fantasy, I'll mention the Narnia connection. If it's for more general consumption, I'll talk about the summer I read 125 books in two weeks.

• "I am a human" bio. This is the bio you'll use on your blog or webpage to make people like you, and it can short or long. The master of the short human bio is Blake Charlton, whose "About" paragraph on his webpage says it all:

Debut novelist and medical student, Blake Charlton is a new face in both fields working to establish a dual career in fiction and medicine.

Currently, Blake is writing fantasy novels, science fiction short stories, and academic essays on medical education and biomedical ethics.

Blake's extended bio is also a great example of the human bio, although he leaves out his writing credits. He has a bibliography page--which you should have on your webpage, too--but your bio will often be lifted wholesale from the about section of your site. So do yourself and anyone writing about you a favor: have it put together tidily in one spot.

I need to update my human bio now that Her Dark Depths is no longer forthcoming, but you can still read it here. It mentions a bit more about my past and how I got interested in writing, and the hooks are less focused on the particular market, and more on general interest items in my life.

• The really big bio for guest appearances. You probably won't need this one until you win some awards and get invited to be the guest of honor at a convention or workshop. Most of these run 300-500 words, a full page about yourself. You'll want to focus on creating three or four paragraphs, instead of three or four lines. You can include more about your non-writing life, as well, so if you have an interesting day job that you feel okay talking about, this is a great place for that information. If you have a quirky hobby that has helped your writing career, mention it. If you were mentored by a famous author, mention it. If you went to an awesome workshop ... hey, you get it.

Now that you've got a sense of what each kind of bio requires, and you're certain about what flavor and tone your bio will need, it's time to begin crafting your piece. And like all nonfiction works, you'll need to focus on mechanical details. They are your only hope to be interesting.

What do I mean? Well, when we write spec fic, we have the advantage of creating a special, unique world populated by fascinating characters. When you're writing your bio, you are writing about a chump who can never, ever compete with the people you make up. I mean, think about it: who's more interesting, you or Wolverine? Or anybody from Game of Thrones? Even the most caricatured spec fic bad guy is about 95% more interesting than your average writer.* But you are lucky. Unlike that bad guy, you have words on your side. And there are some cheats that will can you sound much, much better those muscle-bound fictional heroes you're writing about right now.

• Use active verbs. It's the same advice you've been struggling with in your prose, but it can make a huge difference. Look at my bio. I've got grew, dreamed, appeared, runs, lives, and blogs. There's not a lot of "she was," "she is" action. And that's good. Those constructions aren't bad, but in a short space, you don't have room for not bad. You're trying to make people share their beds (hey, most folks read in bed!) and hearts with you. Rock them!
• Use a little colorful language. It's okay to sneak in a drop of alliteration or a fun idiom. In a short story, colorful language can be too distracting from the action. But remember, there's nothing going on in your bio. It's not an adventure. A dab of colorful language will not hurt. That's why I shared about being "raised by wolves" or I've talked about "preparing for the zombie apocalypse." These phrases sound fun. In real life, I'm not actually entertaining, but I'd really like my readers to think I am. Maybe I'll sound so fun to be with, my readers will buy me a drink at a con!
• Variate sentence constructions. Easily the most important factor. If you start every line of your bio with "He was xyz. He does abc. He likes def," your bio will be boring. Make sure you have a variety of sentence structures: "A constant thrill-seeker, John Remy finds himself drawn to high risk rock-climbing. His work draws on his adventurous life, and his thrilling short fiction has appeared in Y & W. He lives in Town X, State, and blogs at blah blah." That's variety. That's the spice of life.

It's not hard to write a bio and you shouldn't be frightened of the process. It's a simple matter of doing your research, focusing on your market & audience, and playing your best tricks--which are the three base-points of writing non-fiction. It's actually pretty fun!

* Average writer. People like Blake Charlton and Mary Robinette Kowal are not average. Their regular lives are actually cool. I mean, CNN did a feature on Blake. I totally wish I could write his bio instead of mine.

Super Heroes

Sometimes when I think about current events and the future of humanity, I get pretty damn depressed. Our natural resources are steeply depleted. We're overpopulating the globe. The weather just keeps worse. Sometimes I think that the future can only be a terrible god-awful hell, an apocalyptic wasteland full of bandits pillaging the earth for water and fuel. So ... basically Mad Max.

But the truth is that our world would already be in a state of war, starvation and hunger if it weren't for the brains of one man:

Fritz Haber.

Because he invented a process that would bind nitrogen from the atmosphere so it could be added back into soil, we were able to reinvent agriculture, radically increasing productivity. The agricultural boom has provided for the massive growth of the human population--population thinkers suggest that one-third to one-half the human beings currently alive on this planet would not have anything to eat without the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixing process. By stretching our nitrogen resources, we have pushed back the some of pressures which lead to fighting and misery in animal populations.

[Yes, I'm aware of the military applications of Haber's work. But I think his fertilizer work has probably had a larger effect on more people.]

In many portions of the world today, people lead better lives than they did in the Dark Ages. There's much less violence, especially in First World nations. People live longer. People have more opportunities to explore their world and to be creative. And that's not because we have more resources. It's because we've had more education. We've drawn on the brilliant ideas of scientists like Haber. We've nurtured thinkers of all stripes to create a cultural climate of innovation and curiosity. It takes experts in the arts and the sciences and the humanities to make a culture that can create a new future.

Our world is better because of the work of an elite team of Heroes. Super Heroes. Super Thinking Heroes. They're scientists and writers and painters and philosophers and other folks who are committed to feeding ideas, nurturing thought, and stimulating the world around them to be a better place.

Here are pictures of some of my favorite core members of this remarkable League of Extraordinary Thinkers. Can you name them all?

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

g.

h.

Names:

1. Jane Austen

2. Albert Einstein

3. Karl Marx

4. Charles Darwin

5. Jules Verne

6. Rachel Carson

7. Beatrix Potter

8. Benjamin Franklin

I'll put up the answers tomorrow. In the meantime, just imagine: who are the thinkers today working to change the world? Do you know them? Are you one of them?

Edited 5/6: I've had some problems with the answer post, so I'm just adding the answers here:

a-5, the pioneering SF & adventure writer Jules Verne, whose imagination has stimulated generations of explorers and dreamers ; b-2, Albert Einstein, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, one of the fundamental underpinnings of contemporary physics ; c-Beatrix Potter, whose illustrated children's books have been urging children to love nature and reading for more than a hundred years ; d-3, Karl Marx, a political philosopher whose realizations about the co-evolution of society and the economy led to the creation of the postmodern outlook--oh, and Communism; e-8, Benjamin Franklin, inventor, political philosopher and US Postal pioneer ; f-6, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist whose writings about pesticides' affects on the natural world challenged human ideas about the environment and our responsibilities within it; g-Jane Austen, a writer whose witty romantic novels skewered the social mores and structures of her times ; h-4, natural historian Charles Darwin, whose writings on natural selection changed our understanding of individuals within their environments ; i- .

Super big weekend

Gosh. I can't believe how tired I am. People tell you getting married is hard work, but I hadn't believed just how worn out it would leave me. Who knew being a hyper-emotional mess for an entire week would leave a girl so tuckered out?

I'm not really sure why I was such a crazy emotional disaster, although I feel certain impatience, nervousness (what if they don't like my chili?!?), and excitement played equal parts. After all, it's not every day that I get to see my parents or meet a really awesome friend (who proved to be just as awesome in person as in her near-daily emails) or marry the most excellent man alive.

Now I just want to take naps, hold toes with my new hubbie (yes, he really does hold toes. It's enchanting!), and try to recoup some of my brainpower. I have so much writing to catch up on, it's not even funny!

Soaking & siphoning

Have you ever noticed that once you commit to take a break from creative work and just focus on soaking up the world around you, everything is super-fascinating? Posters, stickers, photographs in Vogue, cheesy movies ... I'm not sure if I'm just hopped up on pre-wedding hormones or if the world is just being extra co-operative!

Off to sketch girls riding elephants and watch 80s horror flicks.

SFWA Northwest Reading Series!

Just a reminder that Tuesday marks the first event in SFWA's new reading series! (7pm, the Kennedy School--Jay Lake, Kay Kenyon, & Brent Weeks will reading, drinking, and having fun with folks.)

I'll be there, sucking down beer and tater tots. :D

Schedules, rituals, & routines

Last year I got to meet the fantastic, super-cool Blake Charlton. The man is an inspiration--he's going to Stanford medical school and putting out quality fantasy fiction. And he blogs and tweets and cracks up everybody around him, too.

Of course, the first thing everybody asks is: "How the heck do you manage to go to med school and still have time to write?" I asked it. He volleyed: "You're a mom. How do you do it?"

I honestly don't know how Blake does it, because medical school isn't like other school. Going to (normal!) school and raising kids are both lifestyles that can actually dovetail quite nicely with the writing life, because children and school both demand structure--a schedule, a regular routine.

A smart writer finds a way to settle into a regular writing schedule. You get used to writing at certain times, and your body helps remind you to sit down and pump out some words. It's a lot like the way that if you eat lunch every day at a certain time, you'll be hungry even if your schedule gets thrown off.

Kids thrive with routines. It's comforting for them to have clear expectations about their day. You can use that to your advantage if you're a writer. My daughter comes home from school and eats a snack--but then she very regularly takes some quiet time to herself. Sometimes she hangs out in her room and listens to a book on CD. Sometimes she watches a movie. Sometimes she just disappears into the basement and hides. But I can pretty much count on at least half an hour of downtime in the afternoon that I can use to catch up on weird writerly tasks (blogging or reading slush or something).

School kids often have a structured rhythm to their week, as well. I feel a sort of ticking clock during the week--a friendly pressure to get the bulk of my writing work done before the weekend. That nudging really encourages me to keep on top of my to-do lists.

Kids also need a certain amount of ritual. Rituals are related to routines; they help kids mark off time and make it meaningful. Rituals come at the small scale (the careful rite of bedtime activities, the same every single day) and the large scale (the comforting ritual of Thanksgiving family breakfast followed by time in nature) and even the sporadic (weddings and funerals).

Writers can use ritual to their benefit, too. Having a certain specified sequence at the beginning of your writing session can help you shift from the prosaic world into the creative realm. Doing something special when you start or complete a project can help you cut your ties to a project so you can move your energy into the next one.

For me, I can't imagine being a mom who wasn't a writer. In part, it's because in those brief months when The Midget and I lived alone, I realized that to be a good parent I would have to put aside all pretenses and be really and purely myself. If I was going to be psychologically healthy enough to take care of a kid, I was going to have to take care of myself and live my life purposefully, with intention and passion. I knew I was going to have to give her advice about pursuing her dreams, and I couldn't undermine those values by turning my back on hers.

Your children deserve parents who are the best possible people they can be. And if you are a writer, then you owe it to them and yourself to be the best possible writer you can be. It might sound overwhelming, but you can make it a part of your ordinary life. Getting the words out is just like remembering to brush your teeth before bed: a routine. A ritual.

What makes a murder?

I write science fiction and fantasy, but I have a background in philosophy. For me, the most obnoxious part of my philosophical training was my coursework in ethics. We had to discuss many hot-button topics, and a great deal of the conversation was compounded by an inability to agree on our terms. It's difficult to have effective discourse when people's different backgrounds have given common words very different connotations.

The hottest topic in ethics class was abortion. I think it's a topic that exemplarizes the fractured communications that come from word connotation.

• For some, abortion means murder. It's killing a person, and that's it.
• For some, abortion can't mean murder, because murder requires personhood, and some people don't feel as if unborn entities qualify as people. They tend to see abortion as a medical procedure, primarily affecting the mother.
• For some, abortion can't mean murder, because murder requires malicious intent, and some feel that the choice to end a pregnancy isn't a malicious one--it comes from some kind of hope to prevent suffering. These people often see abortion as euthanasia.

With these three major differences in word usage, how can people talk clearly about the same subject?

When you're writing fiction and ethical situations come up, think deeply about word usage. The words you choose and the attitudes your character has about them will deeply color your reader's experience of the work.

When it comes to murder, your characters will use the term in fascinating ways. Here are some possibilities:

• War involves killing, but depending your outlook, deaths in combat may or may not be murder. Someone who believes the battle is justified will not usually use the word "murder;" a peace advocate probably will.
• Killing animals for food is typically not considered murder, but if you're writing a character who is an animal empath, you'll almost certainly use that term.
• Assisted suicide might be called murder by someone with a set-fate religious belief, but a concerned grand-daughter who's spent time watching her grandma battle with cancer would probably use the term "euthanasia" or "assisted suicide."
• If a horrible accident happens--say your character's new invention explodes and kills a young child--the devastated family members might use the word "murder" if the accident was the result of particularly stupid behavior or if they don't like your character.

It's not always easy for us to step outside of our own word connotations to explore morality, but as writers, it's critical, especially if you're digging into unfamiliar cultures. If you're creating your own new planet full of its own fascinating cultural mores, you'll be glad you slowed down and dug deep.

Families We Choose

Family. It's a weird creation, isn't it? It's this notion that something fundamental can bind people together, a binding that transcends borders and distance and age. That no matter what happens to you or who you've become, you can turn to your family and they will be there for you.

Most of the people I know have had to build or prune or reshape their families. From the simple and traditional (marriage is the classic way to claim a new person as a family member; adoption another) to more intense and unusual, most of us claim family members who aren't related to us by blood or marriage, and many of us have cut bonds with people who are related in those traditional methods. Some of my friends were expelled from their circles of kinship for reasons of religion or sexuality.

Since I'm gearing up for my wedding, family is on my mind. One of the major reasons my partner and I are marrying is to help him adopt my daughter. He's the only father she's ever known and we understand that we need to protect their special relationship. Our marriage is the first step toward taking better care of our family.

And of course having a wedding means inviting friends and family to be a part of the ritual. Sometimes it's hard to know where "friend" ends and "family" begins, especially in families where relationships are sometimes strained. Or where friends are exceptionally closely bonded!

I'm lucky to have so many wonderful people joining me to celebrate the new direction my family is taking. I know there have been times in my life where I've dreamed of moving away and starting fresh, with no ties, floating like dandelion fluff along the wind. But there is a pleasant weight to family, no matter the bad memories, the difficult times, and the hard choices. I'm glad I've chosen to keep them.

Going BRIDEZILLA

Okay, I didn't think it could happen, but I have recently become that woman who only talks about "my wedding this, my wedding that, my wedding blah blah blah blah blah." OMG. It never stops. My kid has sprained her eyeballs rolling them about my wedding prattle. I am a marriage monster!

I can't really state anything in my defense, although I guess I understand how it happens. There are all these details about arranging this giant party, a party where everybody is going to be looking AT ME, wondering how my butt got so big. (Really. It's been a while since I saw Kaz's family, and I was a lot skinnier then.) That's actually kind of stressful!

And when I say there are a lot of details, I mean, there are a lot of details. Like, who knew these dresses required all these special undergarments? I didn't even buy a crazy foofy fancy one, but I'm still investing about a jillion dollars in Spanx. (Okay, the Target knock-off line. Jeez. I can't fool you guys for a second.) Apparently regular underwear makes a girl look "lumpy." I thought lumpy was just my natural look. But in order to minimize in-law mockery, I'm willing to go for the lycra.

As if restraining my bulges wasn't enough, there's restraining my house. My future in-laws plan to be in the Pacific Northwest for 9 days. Do you know how many family dinners that will mean? Do you know how clean my house will need to be? I can barely bring my kitchen up to safety standards, let alone Impress Your Mother-in-Law standards. Luckily, my mom and dad are short on time, so I don't think they'll make it over for any meals. My mom would eyeball the ceiling and push the food around on her plate, as if suspicious the over-looked cobwebs might have somehow contaminated it.

I might, perhaps, exaggerate slightly.

My family members are all wonderful, kind-hearted people. They won't judge or condemn me for spending more time noodling around on the internet and making up dirty fiction than cleaning my house and working out. They will have fun and help me have fun at my wedding.

Yeah ... still gonna invest in the lycra.

Housecleaning and stuff

Uff.

I spent the afternoon working on moving my main webpage over to a Wordpress design. The old set-up was really irritating, and since I wanted to rebuild my bibliography page, this seemed like perfect timing. I also got my POP settings fixed so I can finally receive business email (wendy at winniewoohoo.com)!

I feel like a smart techno-girl tonight!

Hear the Evil

The other day good chance brought me to an interesting blog post about sound, something that made me think about how we write about sounds.

As Rob points out in the post, we spend a great deal of energy getting rid of unimportant sounds in our world. Our brain is hard-wired for this task, and because of its hard work, the sounds that actually trickle into our conscious minds are highlighted for our attention. A sound might be attention-worthy because it's new and unusual, or at least something we haven't heard for a while. It might be attention-worthy because it's something we've learned is important. We've all had the experience of riding the bus and hearing someone else's phone ring--it's not worth getting worked up about unless the person has your same ring tone. You have habituated yourself to a quick response when you hear that sound, and your ears can pick it up even over the annoying chit-chat of fellow bus riders.

This has two effects on our perceptions of sound cues in fiction. For one, we automatically assume that a sound cue is meaningful. People don't reference sounds unless they really affect the narrative. If a character makes a noise, the reader will work hard to try to figure out how that noise changes the scene. As readers, we know that every sense reference is important, but because of our superior aural filtering systems (I think most people have very adept noise filtering powers, much stronger than our visual "ignoring" powers), sounds really pop for us.

Also, sounds stand out as more threatening. I'm not crazy here; we're hard-wired to be skittish about noise. Humans have weak night vision, and so night, our most vulnerable time, is also the time we have to most attune ourselves to our hearing. In the dark, every sound elicits a leery response. Every noise is analyzed for its threat quotient. When we force our readers to rely on auditory sense cues, we make them turn to their internal danger diagnostic and mull over their peril.

I think this is one reason why hearing is such an under-used sense in most fiction genres. Writers often limit themselves to auditory references that are linked solely with communication: sighs, grunts, purrs, groans. It's a method certain to keep readers in their comfort zones.

But what about writers who are eager to get their readers out of their comfort zones?

There is one genre that relies heavily on sound cues, and that's horror. There's a reason why haunted house stories are famous for their clanking chains and creaking floors: in real life, those sounds are actually scary. Writing them into our stories is one way to tap into simple, natural terror.

One way to take your creaks and groans and other eerie noises and give them a little extra mileage is to tinker with their placement in the text. Position your auditory references where your readers can't ignore them. Here's an example--a passage written with the same sentences, just reorganized.

I walked out to the front porch and realized night had fallen without my notice. The wind nudged the old swing, making it creak. Over the lawn, fireflies twinkled.

I could almost believe Mama wasn't dead.

vs

I walked out to the front porch and realized night had fallen without my notice. Over the lawn, fireflies twinkled. The wind nudged the old swing, making it creak.

I could almost believe Mama wasn't dead.

There's not much difference in the two passages, but I personally feel as if the sound cue--the cliched creaking!--is played up by its placement at the end of the paragraph in the second variant. The first version of the exercise feels more tender; the second, a little more spooky. Maybe Mom's a ghost!

Of course, it's easy to think about silence and spookiness right now. I just spent four nights in the Quinault Rainforest, a place heady with dark clouds and darker forests. And I might be thinking a little extra about writing because I was on a retreat with a number of incredibly talented writers.

I can't say enough about the beauty of the last weekend, but I can say: it was a great place to start writing a ghost story. :D

(Picture stolen from John Remy.)

Neglecting my blog!

If you're curious what exciting things have kept me away from the blog lately, brace yourself for excitement. My world has been rocking lately. Here goes:

Shopping for wedding stuff. Like corduroy pants--for Sweetie-Pie--and kraft paper. Plus, the top secret wedding favor shopping that involved a 45 mile drive and trips to 8 separate thrift stores. Including a Goodwill with a bins, where I thought we might be rendered for our parts by vicious shoppers.

Shopping for underwear. You wouldn't think this would be difficult, but you obviously don't live in my world. See, Sweetie-Pie remembered that his employer had a deal with Target that gave their employees 10% off purchases made on Target.com. So we thought we would make our annual bulk sock-underwear-tights purchase on the website and save a little scratch. Brilliant, right?

Apparently not! Target.com was out of children's underwear. They didn't carry the kind of undies my Sweetie likes. They not only didn't offer cotton briefs as an option in the women's department, but in response to a search for women's briefs (yeah, yeah, I know they're granny panties, but I like 'em!), the first item on their list were these Booty Pop Enhancing Panties.

Okay, I've seen myself in the mirror. My booty is popped. I don't need any more padding than I've grown myself--what I need are booty-shrinking panties. Or at least booty-restraining panties. But a search for that product brought up only the suggestion to check my typing. *sigh*

Eventually, we caved and went to a brick-and-mortar Target and bought underwear in person. Too bad I didn't check the package before Sweetie-pie washed them all. Turns out my 6-pack of undies was mislabeled, and when I started folding laundry, I was dismayed to find panties that could double as t-shirts in my laundry basket. They're only *4* sized too big!

Selling a story. In good news, I did sell a story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a really beautiful online fantasy magazine. The piece took a good chunk of re-writing, and I can't thank the editor, Scott Andrews, enough for his amazing advice, skills and patience. He might just be my new editorial hero.

I mean, editorial hero #2. Because obviously my boss is my hero. I'm not sure I ever want to put together anthologies or run a magazine, but if I find myself doing either, I want to do them just the way he does.

Which is why I'm pleased as punch to announce the re-launch of Fantasy Magazine! It's looks incredibly awesome!

Oh yeah. That kept me pretty busy, too.

But mostly, I've just been getting ready for the Rainforest Writers Retreat. If I was any more excited, I'd probably need adult diapers.

Which might be easier to shop for than cotton briefs...

Writer's Meh

Meh.

I typically hate that word, but I can't think of any better description of my feelings toward making words the last few days. What's the point?

Scared by the garden

I stepped out into the side yard today and took a look at my winter- and chicken-ravaged garden. YIKES! It's a disaster out there! Soil all over the place (because one old planter finally burst its seams and leaked dirt everywhere); chicken doodie landmines under every step and jet-launched leaves strewn about like the Nordstrom lingerie section after a white sale. Oof!

What is everybody else doing to get ready for the spring growing season? I haven't even glanced at any seed catalogs yet this winter!

Mogwais in Publishing

You remember what happens to a mogwai when it gets wet, right? Can anyone forget the bubbles of fur shooting out poor Gizmo's back? Or the dozens of giggling furball baby mogwai?

That's what happens to a normal person's to-do list when they step into editorial work. And that's not necessarily bad--I mean, who wouldn't want lots and lots of cute giggling furballs to snuggle and play with? It's all a matter of mindset.

Jaym Gates brought this idea up on Facebook: once you put on an editorial hat, the days of tidily checking tasks off a to-do list is out the door. There's no done in a magazine, not as long as the magazine is still operational. Like dishes and laundry, the tasks replenish themselves almost as soon as you wrap them up. That's because the quest for great literature is never over. Every time you find a great story, deep down, you're hoping there's another one, even better, just waiting to be discovered.

Being busy is part and parcel of the game. I think some editorial folks take an obscene joy in their over-worked, stressed-out attitude. But that's not any more help than pretending the work will do itself. I might have just started in this business, but it seems obvious that plugging along bit by bit is the only way not to burn myself out or feel resentful.

As a former serial procrastinator, this is a new lifestyle for me. In college, I lived for deadlines. Plowing through a slug of work at the last moment was my method operandi. But getting old changed me. Or maybe it's just doing work I actually like. But at any rate, I'm not scared of the multiplying duties in my inbox.

I just have to remember not to feed 'em after midnight.