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Blogging Q&A

Jan31
Via From Sand to Glass.

1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing this? If you aren’t anonymous, do you wish you started out anonymously so that you could be anonymous now?
I started off blogging anonymously and I had two reasons. Firstly, I was a little nervous of what reaction I might get. I wanted to get settled into my blogging voice before I went public about it. The second reason was that I have a presence on the web related to my paid employment and I wanted to keep the two separate. I still use BoudicaM as a pen name for some things but it is less anonymous than it was.
 
2. Describe an incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

Inner stubborn side? My stubborn side is quite outer, thank you. And it most often shows itself when people tell me what or who I’ll like. As in “you must see this film, you’ll love it”. Oh rly? I think not. I think you love it and want me to validate your opinion.
 
3. What do you really see when you look at yourself in the mirror?

Umm, I see me. Which is too much to explain in a couple of sentences. And I’m over the self-hate that makes you see a monster in the mirror (and it took a lot of work).
 
4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?

Diet coke. With ice and lemon. All year round.
 
5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

I write. I play computer games, watch movies, read, meditate. Look at LOLcats on the interweb. I take a lot of time for myself. And I want MOAR.
 
6. Is there something you still want to accomplish in your life?

Oh gods yes. I want to publish a novel. And then another one. And then some more. I want to read all of the books in the world. I want to perform Raqs Sharqi. I want to learn how to use a broadsword. I want… to do so much. And I’m sure there’s stuff I don’t even know about that I will want to do when I find out about it.  
 
7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the shy person, or always ditching?

School. Loved the learning, hated the socialising. I was the unpopular academic overachiever who never quite did as well as everyone thought she would and was rubbish at sport. I’ve never wanted children, but in the alternate universe where I did have them I am homeschooling.
 
8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what would you see?



Poignant: a keen sense of sadness or regret. Yeah, there are few things. I don’t want to share them here.
 
9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog, or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?

It’s not easy. This is a writing blog, not a personal blog, and while I like to do the occasional personal piece because, well, writing is pretty personal, that’s not what this space is for. Having said that, I think I have become more personal in my writing style (I guess that’s what voice is) over the time I’ve been blogging.
 
10. If you had the choice to sit down and read a book or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

Read a book! Because it’s more better than most things. And I have phone fear. But actually, it depends who the phone call is with, and when I last spoke to them, and what mood I’m in.
 
Your turn! Leave me the link in the comments if you do your own.

The problem of naming characters

Dec30

I submitted a short story to Electric Spec yesterday (keep your fingers crossed for me!) and one thing I had to do to get it ready was re-name all my characters.

I have such trouble picking names. I’ve managed to get past it enough to write first drafts, on the basis that I can pick any name and fix it later. But then at some point I have to pick names for the characters that aren’t silly, obvious or cheesy. That’s where I struggle. I find it really hard to just come up with names, whether they are mainstream, fantasy or science fiction type names.

So what makes it so hard? Partly it’s because I think many of my original choices are derivative. I’m easily influenced by what I’ve been reading lately, especially if it’s Iain M Banks or something. And some times they are just naff sounding. I also tend to pick names that begin with R, G, S and T, and have either one or two syllables. There is definitely a lack of variety.

In the end I do get to change them and with the help of a few random name generators I usually end up with names I like. How do you all pick names for your characters?

Learning from reading

Sep7

A lot of the posts on this blog are about the books I’ve read and what I’m learning from them. But it would be true to say that I don’t do this in any systematic way, other than thinking about it and making some vague notes on this blog.

Then I read a post on the Querytracker.net blog on learning from the masters. The idea is that you fold up the pages where a passage strikes you as being particularly effective. Simple, no? Except I’ve always believed that writing on books is sacrilege, and while I’ll fold down a little corner to mark my place and break a spine to read it more easily, the idea of folding over half a page seems less like turning a small corner and more like scibbling notes. Of course, when I write it out like this it sounds like the nonsense it is. So, folding up the pages is on.

The next steps are to transfer the passages that you marked into a dedicated notebook, then analyse them and look for patterns. So that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ve got a couple of books marked up already and just waiting for transfer into a notebook. What do you think?

I Write Like

Jul15

I Write Like is an hilarious widget which analyzes your writing and gives you a comparison to a famous author. I tried it a few times and my results were:

  • paragraphs from a business email – H.P. Lovecraft. I may have to think about how I’m writing to my colleagues!
  • paragraphs from the brand new opening scene of my work in progress (which I think is pretty good) – Dan Brown. Mixed feelings about this. On the one hand he sells loads, so yay. On the other, lots of people think he’s not that good, but I haven’t read so can’t comment. On balance, I think I’ll take it as a compliment.
  • paragraphs from the first draft of a fantasy short story I wrote a couple of months ago – James Fenimore Cooper. Well, I loved Last of the Mohicans.

Very amusing. What do you get?

Online Etymology Dictionary

Jul11

Under the category of things that I love is the Online Etymology Dictionary. It tells you where words come from and when they were first used. With words that have several senses, it lists when the word first acquired each meaning.

I always have in mind that Bernard Cornwell said he tried to only use words that would have been in use in the early 19th century when he was writing the Sharpe novels. Large parts of my work in progress are set in the 18th century and if a word sounds quite modern to me, then I’ll check it.

Besides, I just love words 🙂

The ten books that mean the most to me

Jul4

Identify ten books that have meant the most to you over your reading lifetime. These are not necessarily great literature or important or best-selling, just the one’s that have stuck in your mind and won’t let go. Mine are (in no particular order):

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Misplaced Legion by Harry Turtledove
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My Sweet Audrina by Virginia Andrews
Jerusalem Fire by R M Meluch
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin (technically this is a series)
The Hammer and the Cross by Harry Harrison
Posession by A S Byatt
Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock

There are others that might have made it on to this list: The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M Auel; The Player of Games by Iain M Banks; The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (another series where it’s hard to say a single book had an impact on me that the others didn’t); A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter; and The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. They didn’t but it was a hard choice. And there are many, many other books that I’ve loved.

Most of these books (not all) I read when I was a teenager and I have wondered if their hold on me was because I read them at such an emotionally charged time. However I’ve re-read Wuthering Heights and Elric of Melnibone recently, and their power is not rooted in time. It is in the books themselves. I fell in love with them all over again.

This is an exercise from the excellent Novelist’s Essential Guide to Creating Plot by J Madison Davis. The point is to see what the plots of these books might have in common and thus discover what kind of plot you might be good at writing. While I go off to do that, what are the books that are most important to you?

Thoughts on reading: The Hard Way

Jun27

Plot. I have issues with plot. I have a mental block when it comes to getting my characters from one big event to another via smaller events. Perhaps it’s just a confusion, a lack of being able to see the big picture, and the plot really is there and I just can’t see it. If it is there, it won’t be because I did it deliberately.

With this in mind, I picked up The Hard Way by Lee Child. It’s heavy on plot, one of those thrillers that’s all plot and not much else. In actual fact, it’s more of a detective novel with the emphasis on gathering the little clues and interpreting them to fnd out what really happened. The ending is sufficiently explosive with Jack Reacher dispatching the bad guys at a breakneck pace that makes it rather exciting.

Characterisation is on the light side. This is the second Jack Reacher novel I’ve read and I don’t think I know him any better than I did after reading the first one. The rest of the characters are fairly thin. The bad guys are bad and several of the seven-man crew have only names and a couple of physical features to describe them. Reacher hooks up with an ex-FBI agent turned PI, who is a woman in her fifties given an active role and is the love interest, so kudos to Lee Child for a positive, powerful representation of an older woman. Unfortunately, her role is limited to being a foil for Reacher and at the end she is tied up waiting to be rescued.

It is good to see that there isn’t a high body count amongst the female characters, and a theme of strong sisters fighting for their families runs through the book. It is done rather unsubtly but is a nice touch in a genre that is often misogynistic. There is also a drop of social commentary on the privatisation of the defence and security industries. It’s not great literature, but it is fun and is better than several thrillers I’ve read recently.

In non-fiction I turned for help to The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman. I got this because it was mentioned by a panelist at alt.fiction 2010 and I have been worrying about plot lately. It has some useful suggestions in it and a couple of things I hadn’t read before, so it was worth it’s purchase. What I didn’t like was the highly gendered use of pronouns when talking about characterisation techniques. At the beginning, Lukeman says he will use he as a generic term, which is lazy at best, but ok. Except that’s not what he does. He sometimes uses he and sometimes uses she. If he had just alternated that would have been ok, but he doesn’t. He only uses she when talking about things that are associated with women in traditional gender stereotypes and never uses she outside of talking about children, attractiveness and domesticity. Grating, and enough to spoil the book, especially as it was written in 2001.

Reflections on alt.fiction 2010

Jun12

Wow, what a difference two years makes. I’ve just got back from alt.fiction 2010 and it was thought-provoking and inspiring.

I went to alt.fiction 2008 and it was a fun event. I met some people and learnt some things about writing and getting published, but it wasn’t such an amazing experience that I was keen to come back again. The organisation and sessions had an amateurism that doesn’t appeal to me. I have some experience in professional event organisation, which may make me harsher than others, and the little things are important to the overall impression of the day. We all have our quirks, right?

2009 didn’t happen. I know what the reasons were; I think it had to do with funding and logistical support. Given an extra year, and the fact that I have friends in Derby, I thought it would be fun to go again. I wasn’t expecting too much.

This time round both the organisation and panels were better. The event seemed smoother and there were plenty of helpful staff on hand to keep things under control. The panellists (many of whom were the same as 2008) stepped up to the smarter venue and better organisation. The disucssions were erudite and intelligent and I was inspired by the conversations. It reminded me that there’s nothing that’s more fun than talking about books and writing, especially specultative fiction.

I couldn’t attend every session. From what I did attend, this is what I’m taking away with me:

  • Writing can be a career. You have to decide what you want from it and treat it in the same way you would any other career.
  • A web presence is essential.
  • Chasing the market doesn’t work. Write what you need to write – the market will catch up with you.
  • I have so much reading to do…

I’m definitely going next year. Maybe by then I’ll have worked up the courage to talk to a publisher about my novel.

Does lots of sex scenes mean bad books?

May17
I was reading ‘The “Tyranny of Sex” in the Saudi Novel over at MuslimahMediaWatch today and it got me thinking about sex and writing, or more specifically, writing sex scenes. While the MuslimahMediaWatch article is more focussed on reflecting on Saudi society, this caught my eye:

It was government cultural head Mahmoud Al-Watan who complained of “the
tyranny of sex in the Saudi novel,” saying it falls to those without talent to
slap some sex on to the page and “call it a novel”

Which got me thinking about Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins and the bonkbuster novels of the eighties that I devoured. Now, I’m not going to argue that these books were great literature – that would be too contrarian even for me – but I do think they occupied an important place at an important time.
Most of us don’t have that many sexual partners according to my highly unscientific analysis of all the people I’ve ever known that have told me anything about their sex lives. Either you are sexually adventurous (caveat: this includes all varieties of motivation, postive or negative) or you tend to have had roughly the same number of partners as you’ve had relationships, and
for most people that number seems to be between five and fifteen.
My point is that most of us don’t learn about sex by doing it with lots of different people. For me, reading glamourous, sexy novels as a teenager was exciting and a large part of that was reading the sex scenes. Proper erotica just seemed too daunting: too hard to get hold of, and harder to defend if someone were to question your choice of reading material. So Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins et al were a window on to the adult world of sex without the danger of getting into something you couldn’t handle.
It gave us an idea of what good sex could be like. Despite raunch culture and the ever-present sexual objectification of women, there is still an undercurrent of socialisation that insists women don’t and shouldn’t enjoy sex; that sex is really for men. Bonkbusters can be an antidote to this where they show women enjoying sex. They showed us how amazing it could be how good it could feel. Having had sex of varying qualities, I don’t think these depictions of sex were unattainable or fantastic. Sex can be as fun, exciting and fulfilling as the novels. And maybe more men should read them…
Storytelling is the way we share our interpretations of the world we live in. If Saudi novelists are writing about sex that’s because it’s vital to life and maybe it’s a little bit because it is reflecting how their society is changing.
The quote above rolls out the stereotypical connection between bad writing and lots of sex scenes. While it may be true that much erotica is poorly written, and it may be true that a thin plot can be padded out with sex scenes (not that I’ve ever done that myself, you understand), it is undeniably true that writing sex scenes is difficult. The Bad Sex in Fiction Award annually proves that all sorts of writers – the good, the bad and the indifferent – flounder when it comes to describing sex on the page. There is a lot of potential for getting it wrong.
There are also lots of writers getting it right. There are stories which have moments when having sex is absolutely the thing that your characters would do, and showing it to your reader demonstrates something about their relationship that is important. I can think of a number of books I’ve read recently in which the sex scenes were great. So, no, lots of sex scenes doesn’t equal bad writing.

Plotting with the Snowflake Method

Mar8

Yesterday I spent the day on the work-in-progress which now, for the first time ever, has an ending. It also has a new front-runner for the title.

I’ve been writing quite a bit of new material and had reached a point where I needed to get organised and put all my stuff in order. As I’ve mentioned before, the fact that I struggle to plan stories bothers me. I’m a planner. I like planning for things and I feel much happier if I know I’m prepared. I enjoy planning so much that sometimes I plan things I’ve no intention of actually doing. But I can’t plan a story. Maybe it comes from a totally different place in my brain. However, writing by the seat of my pants leaves me with a pile of material that is overwhelming and then I don’t know where to go next.

So yesterday I decided to get myself sorted out and that meant googling a method of plotting. How do you do a plot? What does that look like? No idea. The first link I clicked on was the Snowflake Method, which I had heard of before, and came with quite detailed instructions. I spent the day writing several summaries, first generally and then for each of my three main characters. Clearly articulating in this way really helped and in the course of doing it I discovered what the ending of the novel needs to be.

This is no small matter. From the start I’ve had no idea how it would end. There have always been options and at some point I narrowed it down to three possible endings. Naturally, the right and perfect ending that I found today is not one of those three options. I feel like lots of things have slid into place today. As added bonuses I have another idea for the title (I find titles so hard to come up with) and I have a good basis for a query letter when the time comes.

The Snowflake Method has been very helpful. I don’t think I could do it cold. Yesterday I was able to say what my characters wanted, were motivated by, and what got in their way only because I’ve spent so much time writing about them. But this hybrid of planning and seat of the pants writing seems to be working itself out. I only hope the next one doesn’t take as long.