Finals Week

(What follows is a sleep-deprived rant. Be forewarned).

The strangest, weirdest, most mind-altering part of college is Finals Week. My writing time for an entire week has been consumed by papers about Native American museum exhibits and the structural aspects of postmodern fiction, so my novel and actual projects are languishing in a dank corner of my hard drive like unwanted puppies*. I have a Calculus exam tomorrow, a class that I am hoping to simply pass at this point, which is a position I have never before been in.

Finals never made much sense to me as a concept. School is supposed to be “real world” training wheels, and unless my career experience is grossly wrong, one’s boss doesn’t sit one down at the end of the year with a 25-page list of multiple-choice question. Cornell is actually offering a block system where students take one class every eighteen days and take their exam at the end of each class. I’m not sure if I’d like taking just one class at a time, but that system seems a lot better than this one. I know at least two people who have spent more than twenty-four hours in the library at a time. I don’t know how supporting an over-sugared, over-caffienated student body with free candy and coffee is going to lead to good exam scores. Frankly, my study system consists of writing essays up until the last second and then collapsing into a pile of exhaustion.

Currently, I’ve got this song playing on loop because it is depressing-hopeful and that is how I feel right now:

Here’s to all the college students. Let’s survive this week (or, if you’ve already had your Finals Week, I hate you).

*That was a sad metaphor. My apologies.

 

 

Summer Resolutions III

Every year I make these resolutions, and every year I get just a teensy bit closer to actually fulfilling them. Whether that’s because I’m reaching for less or because I’m trying harder isn’t something I’m going to contemplate. Anyway. 2013 hasn’t been the greatest year so far, for a multitude of reasons that I won’t go into, but partially because I didn’t achieve as much as I’d hoped. This summer, my overarching goal is to take the things that got put off this year and finally do them.

So, I’ve got three categories this year (because I’m nothing if not an organizational nutjob): Things I want to do, things I want to learn how to do, and subjects I want to read/learn about.

Things I Want To Do:

• Edit the two short stories I have finished
• Submit both of them (one is currently on submission to the Writers of the Future contest, but I’ll hear back on that in June)
• Finish the first draft of my novel, tentatively titled Life in Tights.

I don’t have as many “doing” goals this year as I have in years previous. I decided to pick just a few things to focus on, instead of trying to split my attention between five or six different projects. I have a couple of other things going right now–short stories I’m writing, ideas that are going through the brain-percolation process–but these three things are the ones that I’m going to spend my summer on. Everything else can happen later.

Things I Want to Learn How to Do:

• Learn to machine sew, and make either a skirt or a dress. I am awesome at hand-sewing but have only used a machine once or twice, and I would like to learn how. Also, I have the hardest damned time finding a skirt or dress in stores, and as I’d like to build up my closet, sewing it seems like a good way to go.
• Learn to embroider. This is for a small plushie project I’ve been wanting to do, and its something I’ve just never tried before. Might be fun.

Again, fewer goals than the last couple of years. I also decided to focus on one skill I wanted to improve (sewing) and gave up on a couple of things that, while they’re still things I someday want to do, just don’t seem like I have the time to do: quilting and learning a foreign language.

Things I Want to Learn About:

• African history, specifically Algeria and Morocco 1860-1920. This is for a possible writing project that I’ve been tossing around lately. I love steampunk and biopunk, but am getting rather bored of seeing everything set in London. It’d be fun to do a couple of short stories set in a steampunk colonial Africa, but that definitely requires tons of research on my part.
• African mythology (same region, same reasons).
• The Pinkertons. For non-American peeps, the Pinkertons were basically private police hired to break up strikes and police the railroads in the 19th and 20th centuries. They’ve got a very long and interesting history, and are a dark chapter of US labor. There’s no particular application for this knowledge yet, I just find them an interesting thing to learn about.
• Bartending. I don’t actually like to drink (the crappy wine at First Communion ruined me, I think) but I find the job of a bartender fascinating for some reason. There’s already way too many bartenders in literature, but my next large project might just need a snappy sidekick.

I find that as I get older my tastes in writing (meaning my own) are going more and more towards places and people I don’t know much about. Maybe this is just the growing out of YA phase (which wouldn’t be very good, considering that my current WIP is YA) or maybe its simply me expanding beyond the readily available subjects. I was never taught about Asian or African history in public school, and today those are two of the things that I would love to know more about.

The Great Panics of 2013

It’s been a day, people. One of those ridiculous days where everything that could possibly want to screw with you does.

Firstly, my Enter key stopped working. Given that a writer uses the Enter key about, oh, a gajillion-billion times a day, I had heart palpitations. My beautiful Macbook, which takes so much pounding from my caffeine-fueled fingers! Don’t fail me!

You see, this Macbook is only a year old. And while I do have AppleCare on it (computers do not like me, and I’m not going to pretend to be skilled enough to try and fix things) I would have to wait two weeks to get it to an Apple Store. And really, you do not know hell until you try to write a 15-page paper on the politics of Native American archaeology without a working Enter key.

So I stuck a butter knife into my beautiful, wonderful, very very very expensive laptop and pried off the key, which made a horribly tortured popping noise but actually came off. And proceeded to have to dig out three or four chips of paint from my horrible dorm room which had all decided to hide under my Enter key for some reason.

Just as I started feeling sweet relief, I reread the last chapter of my novel,  and I realized something horrible.

All of my main characters names rhyme.

In order of importance:

1. Leslie
2. Valerie
3. Charlie
4. Dani

Part of the problem is that all of these names, when read, look quite different. Dani especially made my eye skip right over, since that name has a different ending. But I can’t have the four biggest people in my book all have names with the same sound.That’s crazy. Could you imagine doing a reading like that? It’d sound like Dr. Seuss. Sure, the odds of me ever giving a public reading from this novel are slim-to-none, but it’s a valid concern, dammit.

Seriously, do you know how hard it is to name characters? And then to get those names ingrained in your head over 250+ pages? And then have to think up new ones? I’m not going to be able to give brainpower to anything actually productive for weeks.

He just sits on my desk and stares at me. It makes me quite productive.

Happy Birthdays

It’s been an exciting time here at Alphabetically Inclined (meaning: budget confetti and a cupcake, as opposed to leftover jerky from the back of the fridge).

As WordPress so kindly informed me, this week is the two-year anniversary of the blog. April 27th, to be exact. I suppose that means its time to go back, read my earliest posts, and then start embarrassment-deleting the most poorly written and overly-exclamation-pointed ones, but we’ll skip that for now. I’ve had several blogs before this, some personal, some comics- or writing-related, but none of them lasted more than a couple of months. I don’t know why this one stuck (well, I have my guesses) but I’m not going to question it.

Not that I’ve exactly been a consistent blogging presence.

More importantly (or perhaps less, depending on my frustration level) my current WIP has also turned a year old. Currently, it is about 260 pages long and 77,000 words. I’m estimating I’ve got about another 50 pages to go. I tend to write with a lot of fluff and cut later; I think it makes it easier. This book will definitely need it, because 90-100,000 words is simply too long for a comedic YA sci-fi novel. I have an idea of how the editing for this book is going to go, actually, and I don’t think it will be too painful. My plan is to read the novel (duh) then make an outline for how it should ideally look, and rearrange/cut to fit. Then, line edits.

My goal is to eventually be able to get at least a first draft done in a year, but seeing as how my last novel took over 3 years, many drafts, and a VERY crappy flashback scheme, I think 18 months (my estimate) will definitely be an improvement. When I’m home this summer, I’m hoping to do some serious work on this and also editing work on the short stories I’ve got written. That’s never how it happens, of course, but a gal can hope. Editing is definitely my weak point. i don’t mind doing it, actually–I actively enjoy critiques–but its so hard to pick up a piece again after your brain has said, “Yep, that’s the end!”

Anyway, here’s to more years (though not on the novel. That shit’s getting done).

 

Judging Books By Their Covers

I’ve always found the expression “Never judge a book by its cover” to be pretty stupid. Yes, I get that it’s about people rather than actual books (although honestly, that’s a bit silly too. I think its a fair bet to assume that a person  like me, with blue hair and a rather large collection of  sarcastic t-shirts, probably has a different personality than the lovely middle-aged woman with a crucifix hanging from her rearview mirror) but books are such a stupid example of things to not judge by appearances. The entire point of cover art is to inform a consumer as to the mood and a bit of the plot, and hopefully to entice the interested consumer to buy it.

Seeing as how the street outside is so flooded that the buses can’t get through, I think I’ll stick inside today and talk about books that I took off the shelf because of their covers, and why.

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, by Stephen Hunt

As an amateur typography nut, the font on the cover drew me first. The misaligned letters, the anachronistic look…it totally matched the maritime theme of the cover. The full teal cover with the sparse decoration also made it stand out.

As a steampunk fan, I always like the idea of an old-fashioned submarine. But I’m getting pretty tired of the regular Victoriana mystery-plot that every goddamn steampunk novel seems to have. This book, with the little diver, the sub (versus the over-used dirigible theme), and the tagline “Embark on the adventure of a lifetime…” definitely gave off more of a Boy’s Adventure vibe rather than a steam-powered parasol one.

I’ve already read this one (unlike the other two in this post…I’ve been lazy) and it is brilliant. While there is some steampunk, it certainly isn’t the kind you’re used to. And ohmygod, the worldbuilding is wonderful. I don’t know how Mr. Hunt manages to keep all of the lands and peoples apart, but I am eternally grateful for it.

 

Empire State by Adam Christopher

Just look at this cover.

It is amazing.

I love the art deco period, and the clean black/white/grey color scheme combined with that aesthetic is a definite win for me. Plus–who wouldn’t want to pick this book up? You have the two men on either side of the Empire State Building–one in a gas mask with a gun, one in a helmet that looks like Rocketman gone 80′s rogue–looking down in silence. Are they protecters? Conquerors? I don’t know, but it’s got my attention.

Then, down below, there’s the lone man walking between the figures. It isn’t a stretch to say that this must be the detective character–between the hate and his stance it’s pretty obvious. And the concentric circles around him look rather like a target.

I haven’t read this alternate-history superhero novel yet, but I’m excited to get to it.

 

Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

This book attracted me for much the same reasons that The Kingdom Beyond the Waves did.  I like the lithograph style of art, as opposed to digital art (not that digital art can’t be beautiful, but there’s something special about the line art style, especially when it’s coupled with a historical fantasy book. It also follows the simple color scheme formula of the aforementioned novels.

This looks a bit like something out of an old medical text, if old medical texts had a baby with absurdist theater. The grinning skull with the top hat and glasses isn’t an image easily skipped over.

The thick red X reminds me of the plagues of the Old Testament, when the Jewish families in Egypt drew red X’s over their doors in lamb’s blood to have the plague skip their homes. I’m not sure if this is what the cover was trying to invoke, but it is a striking allusion.

This cover doesn’t follow the formula of a regular book cover. The title is under the main image, as opposed to on top or centered, and the author’s name is in the upper left-hand corner. Certainly not a usual cover, but certainly an intriguing one.

Trunking: Not a Weird Sex Act

Well, I suppose it could be a real sex act (I have learned never to venture onto Urban Dictionary–too many words have been forever ruined for me), but the type of trunking I mean is “Taking the product of my blood, sweat, tears and love, and giving up on it.”

This week, I put away two stories that, for various reasons, I don’t think will ever have an audience larger than one. Usually, this doesn’t bother me at all–I’ve put away a whole novel that I spent two years on (and that was a plot that had been stuck in my head for many years before that) without needing more than a chocolate bar for an sadness balm. And honestly, it was less of a sadness balm and more of an “I really want a chocolate bar today” moment.

The two stories that I put away this week had been with me a long time. The first one never quite got right. I loved the premise–still do–but the ending and the beginning didn’t match up. Two different stories, maybe. They were this close to fitting together, but I never found the right bridge between them. Too many ideas? Who knows. I tried rewriting it about three times and all three times I still ended up with a mess. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll throw out this piece all together and try again with the same idea, but right now I’m done with it.

The second story was one I really believed in. One I was proud of, in fact. I submitted it to several different markets that trend towards the kookier end of fiction. It didn’t take. I wrote this piece awhile ago (like a two-years-ago while) and I do know that I have gotten better since then, thanks to regular writing and taking some workshops, among other things. Also, this piece is a second-person steampunk time travel story without any time travel actually being shown. So those are probably drawbacks, publishability-wise. This is another story that I may come back to for a complete rewrite, but at the moment I think it’s taken too much of my time and energy for me to be ready to throw myself back into it.

As much as I know why these stories have to be set aside, I can’t help feeling this creeping sadness. I’m about three-quarters through a novel, which will need editing when its done. I have two other stories in need of deep editing, and one more that I’m working on (without knowing the ending first, which is something I have never done before. Eek!), but I don’t have anything to show right now. It’s true that writing is a lonely profession, but it’s especially hard when you basically have to say, “I’m totally a writer, but there’s nothing done right now. There’s some old stuff, but it isn’t very good. So really, I don’t have anything at the moment.” I’ve done a lot of work, but none that I can hold up right now as a shining example of my craft. And writing is one of the few things that I actually feel I’m good at, so it’s strange not to be able to share that with anyone yet.

But hey–we persevere, right? After all, look how long it took Tolkien.

1 Week of NaNo, 20 Pages of Story, and 300 Days of Writing

We’re now a little over one week into NaNoWriMo and my great (greatgreatgreat) surprise, I haven’t failed yet! I’m a little behind, but only by a few hundred words. Nothing that I can’t make up on a weekend. This truly is the first year where I’ve felt good about NaNo. I feel like this is something that I can come to the end of and succeed at.

And speaking of succeeding when my former track record speaks otherwise, I’ve just hit three hundred days of The Year of Writing Daily! *Phew* Just another 65 days, and this grand experiment will be over. I’ll be honest, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to continue with the daily writing. On one hand, I’ve loved my output this year, and have definitely seen improvements in my writing just from the sheer force of practice making perfect. But there have been nights where I’ve gotten into my pajamas, had my tea and watched my late-night sitcoms, then gone to bed only to wake up half an hour later thinking, “Shit! I have to write!” It would be nice to have a day off on occasion, like maybe Mondays and Fridays (my busiest days). And yet, whenever I’ve tried to have that sort of schedule in the past I’ve failed miserably.

The projects that I’m doing for NaNoWriMo are humming along. I’m being a rebel this year (like usual–I’m not good with attention spans) and doing three short stories and finishing up my novel instead of doing one new novel. Other than one of the short stories turning into a novella (damn those talky characters!) its all according to plan.

Unless I just jinxed it, which is a distinct possibility.

So, anyone else having a surprisingly good NaNo year?

 

Missing Fanfic and NaNo Fears

It’s been sort of an icky week, writing wise. My novel progress is going well and I feel like I’m getting somewhere, but overall I’ve been having a bit of sadness over my writing life lately. Completely idiotic, unjustifiable sadness, but still.

Its been a good three months since I’ve written any fanfiction, and trust me all you good I-only-write-LitFic authors, you get seriously addicted to the automatic gratification of getting ten insta-reviews with every chapter you post. Also, there’s something easy and fun about fanfic. I don’t have to edit (I don’t put that much thought into it), or worry about characterization (trust me, I’ve internalized it by now), or bang my head against the wall while trying to figure out the world.

But mostly, its the community aspect. Writing is a lonely business. Writing a novel even more so, because its a long process (my current WIP is almost a year old, and I’m about halfway through) with no one else to share it with. You’re completely immersed in the people but nobody else gives a damn about Leslie North or what she’s up to on page 156. With fanfiction, there are forums to ask advice on tiny details, there are people who will co-bitch with you about the reboot of Character X, and with each chapter you get people who genuinely care about what you’re writing.

Also–November is coming.

I really want to put my all into NaNo this year, but I admit I’ve got some insecurities wrapped up in it. I’ve tried NaNo three or four times now, and never managed to get even halfway there. Part of it is being home during November–being around lots of people isn’t really conducive to speedwriting. Part of it is that even though I’ve got a high words-per-minute rate, that drops off a cliff when I’m trying to puzzle out a scene of dialogue. I know that NaNo is a silly, self-imposed goal with no tangible value besides a sense of pride and more words. Still, I would really, really like to do it this year. If only to prove to myself that my lack of a social life and obsessive fantasy world have a point to them. And between this and the lack of fanfic and a bad case of the middles, I’m feeling down lately.

Until they find a magic pill to cure the creativity/writing blues, I think I’ll just paint elaborate designs on my nails to cheer myself up.

Tiny tuxedos!

 

Sunday Sharing #1

Yet another idea I stole from Ari over at A Fuzzy Mango with Wings. Mostly because I don’t have enough to say about any of these things for a whole post yet they’re still all awesome. 

1. I’m kind of in love with spoken word, even though its something I have absolutely zero talent for (*cough* overbearingly shy *cough*). The gorgeous Sarah Kay has made this playlist of poets from the Bowery Poetry Club, a collection of videos of amazing NYC poets.

2. I tend to write a lot of pieces that have either tons of female characters or tons of male characters, which inevitably leads to sentences with two he‘s doing things together and no one can tell who’s who. One of the best discussions of this problem is on the NaNoWriMo erotica writers’ forum (oh, hush) but its applicable to even the most unsexy of fiction. Link here.

3. For the science fiction-ers out there, here’s the crazy and kind of beautiful picture (and story) of an opera singer who grew algae with her voice during her performance. By modulating her voice she can even change the color and taste of the algae. Isn’t that crazy cool?

Look at it!

4. Then there’s this article from Cracked, which is not for the faint of heart or the hypochondriacs. But there’s a story inside one of these unexplainable, brain-altering diseases. One of the buried ideas inside of it is that disease is oftentimes location-specific, and yet we don’t know why. Any new place humanity steps foot on has the potential to turn us to the lemming route and throw ourselves from cliffs. Or burrow deep into our brain, unknown and silent, until we come home and it makes us blind but suddenly able to hear every crick of an old house from a hundred meters away.

5. I just have to ask: Is there anyone on the House Science Committee who actually likes science?

6. Finally, 12 Novels is the project of a woman who is, basically, attempting to do NaNoWriMo every month of the goddamn year. The italics pretty much show the level to which my mind is blown. Part of her mission was to show that life doesn’t have to be perfectly arranged and convenient for you to be a writer, because that will never happen. A very neat read.

Before You Workshop…

Workshop series part 2!

The thing about reviewing unpublished fiction (and one of the reasons that my dreams of academia are slowly dying) is that you start to see the same set of problems over and over. Besides just flat-out bad writing or cliched plot lines, here’s a list of things to take a red pen to before you make your workshop group do it.

Question: Does your story contain any of the following elements?

-An angel named Angelo, a cat burglar named Gato or any other sort of overly obvious name? (I once wrote a short story with one character named Mercedes and another nicknamed Wheels. I will never live it down)

-Formatting that switches oddly halfway through the piece? Think very carefully before you try being postmodern.

-A Moral of the Story? There’s nothing wrong with your piece having a message, of course, but the first goal is to write something good and interesting. If you have the idea that this will be a story about “The evils of obesity” or “the havoc wreaked by an absent father,” then take a deep breath and start with a character. First character (who we have to connect with), then plot (which we have to be interested in) and then message. We’ve all progressed past Highlights Magazine. You don’t have a pulpit.

“We just met today! But she smells nice!”

-A romance that fails to mention why the characters love each other? Just because the brooding male has such pretty eyes the female shouldn’t fall all over herself imagining his sculpted abs. In real life, no one sees a random person on the streets and embarks on a torrid love affair to Last The Ages (well, rarely). There are awkward getting-to-know you dates, ups and downs, that weird moment where she realizes he can’t do dishes, etc. Show us why they stay together. Also, a pet peeve of mine: Just because two girls are the only lesbians in their schools does not mean they instantly have a grand connection. There still has to be a meaningful romance that has them attracted to each other for more than just sexuality alignment. Otherwise I’m more likely to think “Get out of this desperation-spiral and go to New York, girls” rather than “What a great love story!”

-A jump to a fantasy world with little-to-no transition? Explain, if you can.

-Adverbs? “Kill the adverbs,” she said angrily.

-A science fiction/fantasy world that you try to keep as mysterious as possible? Here’s the thing. If I don’t know why the hell are the Zoorbians are looking for a Glesspf (whatever the heck that is) by page 10, I don’t care anymore. Give us something.

-A set of previous chapters that no one else has read? A word of advice: if your novel is sixteen chapters long, start with chapter 1. If you give us chapter 15 no one will no what on earth is going on.

And finally, if you call it the Sahara Dessert I will kill you. Personally.