Ethereal Ephemera

1) My new column is up at Forces of Geek. I like it, but I think it needs more development. Reading and commenting would be fabulous.

2) I am on the cusp of announcing another regular writing gig. As soon as everything is official I will reveal all! I'm very excited about it.

3) I am working on a new short story inspired by another writer's dream. If it turns out as well as it has started, I am going to make sure that it is OK with that writer that I try to get it published. I am enjoying the writing of it, and I like what is unfolding.

4) And here's an amusing discussion about a new movie trope: the Post-Apocalyptic iPod!

The Last Post!

Of the year, of course!

December has been rather unkind. Illness has plagued my footsteps, mostly of the "breathing sucks" variety. I've also gotten a temporary boost in hours at the bookstore (and am also running the store's Facebook page), which means more money, but less time to do stuff such as write. Now that the holiday season is over, my hours will magically be reduced, which means more time to write. I've managed to scribble my Forces of Geek columns, and do a bit of short story writing, but that's been it. I had really hoped to have my wacky take on the Four Horsemen ready by, well, today, but sadly the tale is unfinished. I will still finish it, because I'm enjoying the ideas that are coming up as I write it.

My New Year's resolution is a simple one: create more, consume less. I want to write more, improve my health, and make my life fuller and richer. I want to buy less stuff, own less stuff, and take in less bullshit. I think that is both an encompassing and simple goal for the coming year.

I wrote my latest Forces of Geek column on "13 Books for Doing Your Thinking About SF". It's not as in-depth as some of my other columns, but I wanted to respond to all of the "Best Of" lists coming out right now . I've thought about doing a "Best Of The Year" or "Decade" post here, but it seems so trite. I'd rather do something else to reflect on the decade, something that jibes more with the idea of "doing your thinking."

This idea comes from my college mentor, Dr. Thomas Buckley, who wrote an article with that title for Parabola some years back and gave it to us to read in a Native American religions course. It is essentially the notion that you need to combine appreciation, analysis, meditation, and reflection to not just critique an idea or a subject, but to understand it as fully as possible. He wrote about it in his excellent book on Yurok spirituality also. This is an idea that is about creating good thought and good action, not just consuming information. It is about learning all of the time, not just taking in and spitting out data. I'd like to enact this idea more in the coming year as well.

Happy New Year to all!

Blogity

My new column for Forces of Geek is up: http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2009/12/sf-writer-shaman-jester-paragon.html.

We have a sick child, so no more writing tonight. Until she falls asleep, at least :-).

Exit Light, Enter Night

The week went by too swiftly. Just. . . far too quickly. One reason for that is that I've been working a full 40-hour week to help out an ailing co-worker. Which means that other commitments have been taking up my writing time. Dang it.

I've made a little progress this week on "Skull-face. . . ." I added another 500 words to it and I have a better grasp of what I want it to say. I also re-read "A Fine Day to Watch the Dragons Die," and finally got a few folks to beta-read it for me. Good responses, but it needs some serious redrafting. I was thinking of sending it out this week, but given what my readers have told me, it needs more work before I do that.

I was quite inspired by a long discussion over on John Scalzi's blog WHATEVER. The discussion was explicitly about payment for writing, but I found the ideas underneath that theme worth analyzing. I think Scalzi's idea of "Aspiring Writer Stockholm Syndrome" makes a lot of sense. I certainly suffered from that the first time I tried writing, and it helped make my writing suck even more.

The conversation got me to thinking about how I view myself as a writer, and what I think I am capable of as an artist. It first off reminds me that I need to think of myself as an artist. That is odd to me. There isn't a good reason why it is odd, but I find it hard to declare myself an artist out in the open. Maybe because I don't have a sufficient body of work, or don't feel I deserve the appellation. But after reading this blog conversation, I felt much more secure about calling myself an artist, and about demanding sufficient respect and recompense for what I do. If you don't do that, you get nowhere. If you do not respect yourself AS an artist, you are not only at a disadvantage as a writer, but you do a disservice to yourself and what you produce.

More on this later.

Insert Catchy Title Here

Another week gone by, and still no good title for a links post! Oh well.

---Sadness is the main response I have to hearing that Robert Holdstock died suddenly today, after failing to fight off an E. Coli infection. Holdstock was a writer of deep matters who combined complex ideas and symbolism into his work. Mythago Wood, his most well-known work, was really a starting point for an extended literary meditation. I would have loved to see what else he was going to do with that.

---a snippet for WIP from my current story:

“You’re a Valley Boy,” First Jay said with a sneer. “Valley’s nice; don’t get the crickets much.” He swung his hawk at his side. “They don’t let other folks come around in times of trouble.”

West Wind shook his head. “The Valley is nothing now. They’ve given in to gluttony and envy. Hogtamer’s land now.” He tilted his head at First Jay’s scowl. “Nothing there for any of us now. Hogtamer's feasted it out.”

“And that’s why he’s coming here,” Third Jay said. The folks all turned to look at him. He fixed West Wind with his glaring white eye and lifted his staff a bit, let the tattered feathers and pieces of old flags shift in the breeze. “He’s on his creature of many backs headin’ this way.”

West Wind nodded. “And he’s not the only one.”

“Skull-face,” Little Kee whispered from the dust, and now everyone looked at her. She winced from the attention.

West Wind bent down towards her and inclined his chin. “Yep, true in one. He’s feeling the pinch and looking for new souls.”

---NPR did a story on fantasy fiction today, interviewing Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. It was fine, and it contained two good tidbits for further thought. The first was the idea of fantasy being a device for talking about things that could not be written out explicitly; the second, that all literature is, in some sense, fantasy. These are both compelling ideas for me. The latter has been a notion that I have contemplated a lot lately. I mean, all fiction is specifically a fantasy, a made-up story about things the author wants to describe to us. The grittiest mystery, the dourest contemporary tragedy, the flightiest romance are all fantasy tales. Unless you are just writing down exactly what you observe with no conjecture and no induction into a narrative, when you tell a story you are creating a fantasy. Some may have a stronger link to what they represent, but all are creations of the imagination as it makes sense of things, assigns meaning, and casts people and issues in a particular, subjective light.

I'd like to write more, but it is bedtime. Dream well, all!

A Little Ole Roundup

I guess I need a catchy name for blog posts that are a bunch of little tidbits. Hmmm.. . .

---I got a nice #followfriday twitter boost from @revolutionsf today. If you haven't checked out their website, do so! They're really trying to make SF, in all forms and permutations, fun AND thoughtful again. Today's Prisoner watercooler chat is a great example of that.

---Our child has fallen asleep before midnight for the SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW, and as soon as this bloggery is committed I am hitting the writing folder. Need to work on the Four Horsemen thing (I'll put up some WIP when I have something intriguing to share) and get a comic idea out of my head. One of the projects I've been developing is a comic book called THE FORCE! (yeah, it needs a better title), which is about a government superhero team full of misfits who turn out to have their own agendas, led by the smartest creature to ever walk the earth, who also has his own plans. I'm trying to combine superhero action with emotional realism, and poke a bit of fun at the genre as well. I have an 18-issue story arc laid out in the most basic terms, but got some great ideas for twists that need to get plunked into the file.

---I've been obsessing over Warren Ellis' latest T-Shirt of the Week. It's just so brutally perfect. Trying to figure out affordability, because with shipping the one I want (2x,charcoal gray) is $30. Grargh. But I love the idea of the shirt itself, and I love the DIY, POD aspect of the project. It shows some of the potential for creative use of the web on your own terms. That last part is so important; maintaining artistic and to some extent financial freedom is one of the more alluring aspects of putting your art and goods out on the web.

---I commented the other day on David Pomerico's post about the future and zombies. Given that I'm writing Aetas Nex, this is a topic near to my interests and to my slightly-swollen heart. Apocalypse and dystopia are great spaces for zombies to arise, and they have a versatility that can be exploited if you're willing to innovate and break a few rules. In the case of Aetas Nex,it becomes obvious that zombies are a symptom of a larger problem, and also themselves a dynamic force. For me, that was key: zombies cannot just all be brainless shamblers. Zombies develop, sometimes in lethal ways, sometimes in ways that are uncomfortable for the regular humans to face. Once they are a part of the world, and also harbingers of something bigger happening, they become more interesting as a subject themselves, and also a dynamic plot device that can throw a lot of surprises at the reader. I think there is still some potential for zombies to be useful in SF, and not just as lurching boogeymen.

And other boogeymen as well, but that is a post for another day.

New Column, New Ailments

First of all, my new Forces of Geek column is up. I forgot to change the title before sending it (the topic altered itself as I wrote it), but otherwise I like this column a lot. Do comment!

Second, I have been afflicted with a series of respiratory ailments, including some weird month-long coughing affliction, that have left me barely enough energy to write a tweet or two, never mind write stories and thoughtful blog posts. It is slowly getting under control and I hope to be back to the keyboard soon. In my decrepitude I have been able to do some thinking about writing, and hit on some good ideas for continuing Aetas Nex and fleshing out the background of the main elements of the "Skull-face" story.

Third, that damned Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece on "radical presentism" in SF that is full of notions to respond to and ideas to unpack. I share his conclusion, but I think that there is much more to say about how this works.

OK, running out of steam already. More later.