Irons in the Fire

An author friend of mine once commented that he felt the need to keep many irons in the fire. It worked well for him to rotate through stories. When one wasn't speaking to him he'd rotate out and work on another in order to keep himself writing.

I love this analogy. There is a bit of a geek inside me that would love to work a forge, but that aside it speaks of something true. A story and a piece of metalwork have a lot of similar properties. Neither are going to be perfect on the first try. Both need to be tempered, cared for, and worked carefully under a watchful eye. What someone who has just written their first short story sees as beautiful, someone who has put his time in at the forge will say that it needs work and can point out flaws.

I think the part of the analogy that I like best though, is both can produce a thing of beauty. The finish product can be beautiful, terrible, useful, or elegant. But once they're forged you can have them until they sell to someone who will love and care for them.

I bring this up because I've got a lot of pieces of work out right now that I'm waiting to hear back on.  Nothing novel length, only short and flash fiction pieces that I've enjoyed writing.  I know that my odds of success and my odds of failure are pretty much the same.  But if I get rejected I can always comb over it again and try for another sale.

The hardest thing you can do is to keep producing though when nothing is selling.  To keep practicing when success hasn't been around in a while.  Eventually though, it's bound to turn up, I can only hope that I have what it's looking to buy when it does.

Also, check out the new chapter of "A Wolf in Patchwork Clothing" which was posted tonight.  Plus, if you'd like to read more by me check out the self-published short story collection "Escaping Sanity" on Amazon.  There are many irons in there that taught me something about writing.

A Change in Schedule

I've been struggling to work on my serial during the weekends as that is when I get the most writing time.  As a result I find myself distracted by bigger projects and tinkering away with A Wolf in Patchwork Clothing during the weekdays.  As a result I'll be moving updates to Friday's every other week until the story plays out.

Now without further ado, please go and read Chapter 8 here.

Delayed story

This is a quick post to anyone who is following my blog, there will be a delay in this weeks story.  I'm scrambling to get it done, but this weekend left me fighting to make sure I had the order of events for these chapters.  As a result of that it set back the progress and I've thrown away about three start's.  It is coming though and I haven't forgotten you.  I'll post on Facebook and Twitter when it's done.  Until then go read my friend Lee's story Silence in the Willow Fields.  He's working on getting a site updated for more stories and I'll be with you shortly.

Writers Groups

I am a couple days overdue on a blog post and I apologize for that. I was searching for a good topic and my mind like an arid desert. Nothing took root, nothing grew, so I waited.  I'm glad now that I did because I found a topic that I loved and will now happily write about: Writers Groups.

There is something enjoyable about getting together with like minded individuals which helps kindle the arts.  While this isn't true in all cases, sometimes amazing things occur when minds come together. When musical groups and writers get together ideas bounce around and great things happen. Best of all, in my point of view, the people come out of it feeling strengthened and the creative juices replenished.

An example that I like to use is the song Fame by David Bowie.  If you're not familiar with it please stop everything you're doing and go watch it here.  Now that we're all familiar with it you'll recognize the lovely and iconic guitar part. The story I've heard about this that John Lennon used to have a place in New York where different musicians would meet and jam. The output of one of these sessions when David Bowie was there was this guitar part, it was something that David Bowie was interested in and so he was told he could have it.

Now this isn't something for everyone and there comes a certain level of paranoia.  Letting someone into your creative circle can be both amazing and poisonous. When someone seems like a thief there to steal every gem of an idea it doesn't foster the creative spirit.  But when respect is shown, and the ideas of each person are treated with the reverence of a fine painting, it is an amazing experience.

I know this is shorter than my normal posts, but having had my first writers group meeting in almost six months was awesome.  If you're part of a writers group or circle, take a minute and thank those around you.  Thank them for taking your questions about "which household chemicals could cause a laxative effect without killing the person?" or "If the sun were white instead of yellow what color would things show?" seriously.  Also, should you want to know the answers to the questions, 1) Epsom Salt 2) I'm still working on a good way to figure that one out.

Thoughts on Writing

I was recently loaned a copy of "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Orson Scott Card.  As someone who enjoys writing and has read many of his novels I figured I would love to read what he had to say. I've enjoyed Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" and found David Farland's "Million Dollar Outlines" to be a great learning tool.  Going into this new book I secretly wanted to read more about Ender's Game.

I can honestly say that I haven't been disappointed and have learned something early on about the series I love.  The idea for the battle came to him in the mid-late sixties yet he didn't write it until the mid-seventies.  How many of us can't remember where we put our keys? How often do we misplace something we were just using? Yet to remember and develop an idea for over almost ten years is amazing.

I've had a few ideas which have stuck with me and developed for a while. The idea for the villain of my serial "A Wolf in Patchwork Clothing" came to me while I was driving to Oregon almost six years ago.  The villain, which started off as a truck driver/serial killer, felt stagnant.  It was an observation which came to me about the Twilight movies which gave the idea roots.  It was a complaint that I had due to the lack of variety in some of the classic horror movie monsters.

At that time the major horror bad guys seemed to be zombies, vampires (twilight being an exception to the horror part), and ghosts. As an avid D&D player I know that there are many different types of undead.  Ghouls, wights, liches, and other spectral menaces. This seemed to work well with the traveling serial killer, someone who was afraid to stay in one place for fear of being discovered.  A creature moving among us that none of us would like to meet in a dark alley. I was struck at how well his own ideas seemed to mirror my own, the idea needing time to get its own legs and develop before becoming a story.

Another thing which he said, and something that I can really agree with, is that you have to define the rules of your world. If there is something which can kill your villain, then you need to know it.  If there is a fantastic element whether it be magic, super science, or some perpetually reappearing monster, you need an explanation of how it works.  If you don't pay attention to these details the story won't hold water or carry the readers attention.

I have a novel which is currently unfinished with the working title Legacy.  In Legacy, there is a fantastic element that I was developing as I was writing.  I never sat down and defined it, I said it was a "trickster spirit" or a "creature of chaos" and left it at that.  Now I'm at a fulcrum point into the story where I will be building into the final climax of the book but it's stalled.  The problem is, these spirits were still fuzzy to me. It is hard to write what you don't understand.

It wasn't until I was reading this section of his book that I realized this was the problem. It has been two or three months where I've been unable to work on that and I couldn't figure out why.  But my writers block is due to my own negligence. Had I put my ducks in a row at the beginning of the story, then I wouldn't have suffered this now so close to the end.

The overall point that I was going for in this blog is a lesson I seem to need to learn again and again.  Sometimes we need to read something we normally wouldn't.  I consider myself a horror writer, so reading a book about Science Fiction and Fantasy didn't seem like a fit.  Yet by reading a book that a friend handed me I was able to solve a problem. It doesn't hurt to get out of your comfort zone, to take advice that you didn't know for certain if you'll need. I think I'll take this advice and look for other words of wisdom from other sources.  Perhaps read some non-fiction, or a cook book, or perhaps even some classic literature.  Something new to add to take me out of my comfort zone, who knows what I'll learn. Hopefully it will be something I can apply to make myself a better writer.

An overdue post

I haven't posted on the blog in a while because I've been busy working on the serial short story that I've been posting. There has also been editing and rewriting on the novel I'm working on right now.  I realize that some people care more about the stories than about the thoughts of a writer but I feel that I have neglected it.

What I'd like to address is that I've had several people point out typos in one of my stories that I published in Escaping Sanity.  The story is called, "Rapture" and it is the second story in the anthology.  I don't want to give spoilers but I wrote the story after I had just experienced a loss.

While I was dating the woman who is now my wife she adopted a dog.  The dog was just a beautiful animal and one that I came to love.  She was a part of our life in a way that I wouldn't have expected.  She was there for us during our wedding, for the birth of our first child, and she was an integral part of our family.  That was when she got sick, that was why that story is so hard.

I've tried reading through the story with intent to edit but it brings me to the verge of tears.  It is surprisingly hard to edit something so emotional, many friends have felt depressed after reading it.  There is something about the story which carries emotional weight I hadn't intended.  I want to go back, to fix the typos, but to open that story brings memories to light that I want to keep buried for now.

I'm happy that my writing was able to bring such emotion to a story.  I was able to present a story which could change a mood, even if it was to make someone sad, which was flattering.  But try as I might I'm not sure I'm willing to go fix it.

Also, I understand that i'm late on last weeks story.  I apologize for this, but I discovered that a sinus headache from a head cold is horrible for concentration. To make up for this expect two stories in the next week. I'll be cranking it into overdrive and hope to have the first up by Tuesday at Midnight MST.  So look forward to that.  If you haven't read any of "A Wolf in Patchwork Clothing" then start at the beginning and enjoy.

 

Short stories versus Novels

I love to write short stories. It seems that every time I want to try something new that is where I turn.  There is something that is lovely about a short sweet story that lets you explore a new idea or style.  When I wrote my short story Rapture it was to try to help cope with my recent loss of a beloved family pet. My story Save the Last Dance was a trial of meshing a dystopian story with a contrasting image.  In the case of this story it was the song and dance of Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly.

While I love to write short stories I have found that I struggle to read short story collections, anthologies, and even those in magazines.  I find it refreshing to sample something small without committing to an entire novel.  It's like the free samples at the grocery store, all the flavor with none of the obligation of buying a twenty pound box of frozen tacos.  Yet if you have too much of the same subject, writer, or style it can become stale rather quickly.  This is why I can go through a novel in a week yet it can take me up to a year to get through a short story collection.

So as I was sitting at home sick this last week, unable to write, unwilling to read for fear of my brain acting up with fever dreams, I had something to ponder.  I began to wonder why it was that the short story collection I was working on still had at least one hundred pages left, I'd only been reading it for about a year.  In the same time I had read probably at least twenty novels, if not more.

The conclusion that I came up with is that there is a thread of continuity in a novel which keeps us reading.  While a chocolate sampler is nice from time to time we generally have recipes and foods we eat weekly.  We go back to the same treats, cakes, or dishes that makes us happy time after time.  This is what the novel does, it prepares us something that we like just with some new developments, twists, or characters.

Let's use macaroni and cheese as our example as most people have polarizing feelings towards it.  There is something nostalgic about going back to our childhood with hot dogs and mac and cheese.  You can dress it up by making it from scratch, adding four, six, even eight types of cheese.  You can throw a curve ball at us by adding something like bell pepper, bacon, or even some sun dried tomatoes to the mix.  In the end though it is still something we know and are comfortable with deep down inside.

When you look at the stories of your favorite authors many of them fall into very similar plot patterns. These are our comfort foods, the foods for thought.  For Stephen King I'd say it's a slow burn horror, the story builds pressure like a pressure cooker, and in the end you are never sure if you'll find the ending really satisfying.  I know the characters are going to be well developed, and that I will find myself passionately questioning whether they really should have made key decisions.  I love Stephen King and when I'm in the mood for something like this it is the first place I turn.  Yet even when I find a collection of his like Four Past Midnight or Different Seasons I can't seem to read straight through it.

There is something to be said about the beauty of a novel.  When done right it'll make you turn pages in the way an anthology won't.  When it's done you feel satisfied and can walk away happy (most of the time) as though you'd just left an all-you-can-eat buffet.  You've had your meal and you don't have a bunch of stuff still on the plate, as it often is with anthologies.  The story is ready to be digested and you can start deciding what you want for dinner.

With this revelation I'll probably still read short story anthologies, but I won't plan to get through it as fast as I would a novel.  Sometimes you just want a sample, sometimes you want the full meal.