Category: Writing

Nice Surprise

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I had a nice surprise waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home: WotF prize money!  Nevermind it’s already spent five times over.  It just makes things feel a little more real.

ADDED: I finally got around to subbing what was my WotF Q1 piece to another market (disqualified from the contest as I am).  I sent it to Clarkesworld.  We’ll see.

I could actually see this one breaking into Analog or something.  Wouldn’t that be sweet?  I don’t send much to Analog because I’m familiar with their tastes enough to know I typically fall outside them.  But I have a system; Clarkesworld and Lightspeed first (what could that take, a week?), then Strange Horizons, then on to others.  I will be banging on all the big doors with this one, not that it’s “so good” — I didn’t really expect much from WotF on this one — but because I now have enough pedigree that someone may give the story a shot.  Plus it’s a little experimental and could pull a wild card spot.  You never know.

Slowly but Surely

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is an Australian semi-pro market with a very good reputation.  I’ve been trying to break into that one for a while.  Usually their turnaround on stories is very fast, their Duotrope reported median response time is 9 days.  They’ve had one of my stories for something like 33.

Their slush process is fairly transparent with a listing of ms numbers in each of their rounds.  My story finally came out of the first round, the first-read level.  It’s probably a fluke of luck that left my story in round one limbo so long.  I am, happily, on now to round two.  I’ve never made it past round two.  Maybe this time.

Round two is the editor scoring round.  Round three is full of stories they would like to publish, a pool of “good enough” stories from which they fill their magazines.  Still, not all those stories are purchased.  Finding my way into that pool would be a good next step for me.  I wait to find out.  Hopefully that won’t take another month.  Even if it does, a two-month period isn’t so long in this business.  I’ve been waiting on Weird Tales longer than that.

Hello, fellow Clarion aspirant

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I seem to be very nostalgic about the chats that went on last year with Jordan, Randy, Jamie and so many others.  Some of those chatters went to the workshop, others did not.  There was a whole thread about sharing the biographical essays we sent to CW.  My essay from last year is here.  My current essay is below.

This was a neat insight into some of last year’s applicants, so I thought maybe we’d do it again.  (See new thread at CW 2010 forum.)  Participation is strictly voluntary, but it helped get to know people and appreciate how different our styles were, just from an essay.  Besides, I can’t post my application story since it’s sold awaiting publication.  Even if it hadn’t sold, I couldn’t share it and still hope to sell it.  But no one’s likely to buy my bio, so here it is.

*******************************************************

Scott W. Baker’s Clarion West Essay

One day I decided to write a novel.  I had just read the first three Harry Potter books (as a grown man) and decided if J.K. Rowling could do it, so could Scott Baker.  (That’s me.)  As it turns out, I was wrong.  While I haven’t totally abandoned that novel project, I’ve learned enough to realize how weak that first attempt really was.

It was eleven years ago that I started that novel.  A third of my life.  Since then, I graduated college, got married, accumulated two cats and two dogs, became a math teacher, and had a daughter (well, my wife did most of the having) that I just watched turn three.  Life is pretty good.

The stories keep coming as I live my good life.  Sometimes they come fast and easy, leaping from fingers to keyboard at the speed of hunt-and-peck.  Other times are slow, painful, empty.  Those times pass and the writing resumes.  I feel incomplete when the words won’t flow.  My life has three big pieces: family, teaching, and writing.  Take away one and I’m incomplete.

That will be the hard part of going to Clarion West, separation from my family.  My daughter is my world, my wife is my stars.  Luckily they love me, too.  Besides, how do I tell little Abigail that she can grow up to be anything she wants to be if I won’t pursue my own dream?  For eleven years I’ve had the same dream and I’ve never been closer to it.  Sure, I’ve been selling stories through those years, mostly to tiny markets for tiny money and the big thrill of seeing my name in print.  But who dreams of tiny?

Last year I was on the Clarion West waiting list.  A short list, to be sure, but no one dropped out and I missed out.  It was still the biggest validation my writing career had received.  A few days ago I received a second big validation when one of my stories became a finalist in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest (incidentally, my application story).  I will send this application before I know whether I place.  Place or not, this suggests I’m capable of writing a story at a professional level.  That’s just one story; I want all my work to be like that.  The time to make that transition has arrived.

I can do it alone, but it will take a long time.  Form rejections aren’t going to cut it.  I need high-value feedback now more than ever.  The more I can get, the more time I can focus on my writing, the faster I’m going to evolve.  I don’t want to wait another eleven years to achieve my dream.

The teacher in me wants to share all I have learned in my decade of writing.  No formal training outside of high school, but I’ve read umpteen writing books, participated in three different online workshops, and earned enough rejections to papier-mâché a large piñata full of chowder.  I want to lend my voice to others’ craft almost as much as I still need their voices to help shape mine.

What I may need most from the workshop is to escape the loneliness of being a writer.  I may well be the only speculative fiction writer for a fifty-mile radius.  I’ve never been to a convention (plans always fall through) and never been to a workshop.  I have writing friends online, but text and images aren’t quite people.  No man is an island; if I keep trying to be, I’ll drown.

I already know how I will celebrate my acceptance, should it happen.  I intend to go to Wal-Mart and purchase several Nerf dart guns.  I envision a dorm-wide dart war with assassinations and full-scale assaults…it will be glorious.  Hey, you can’t write all the time.  Of course I’ll have to buy replacement darts before June because my daughter and I will lose them all before then.  Losing things is one of my specialties.  Even as a child, my mother called me “The Absent Minded Professor”.  I’m still pursuing my personal flubber.

I’m a nice guy (unless I’m assassinating you with a piece of foam capped with a suction cup).  More importantly, I’m fun.  Not life-of-the-party fun, more math-teacher-imitating-an-applauding-tyrannosaurus fun, Hawaiian-shirt-to-work fun, laugh-at-my-own-flaws fun.  I get along with people and they tolerate the heck out of me.  Plus I’m housebroken.  Mostly.

So, howdy.  I’m pleased to make your acquaintance and I hope to see you this summer.  I hope Clarion West can be part of my writing journey.  I hope I can be a part of the legacy that is Clarion West.

Little Things

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

This is still the same blog it was last week.  My dashboard hasn’t changed, the domain name, title, and theme.  Old links still come to this site.  So why did I lose my existing OpenID information?  Grrr.

On the upside, I cleaned up the workshop page and I think it’s a lot cleaner looking than before, thanks in large part to the easy image saving my new PowerPoint provides.  Heck, the old PowerPoint might have done the same without me knowing.  But it made altering images a lot easier than what I was doing.  Of course my wife can do about anything I need done to a picture with all her photography software, but I like to do things myself.  You can see the difference between me doing things and her doing things by checking out her site. She’s so professional.

What else?  My bio is ready to be sent to WotF.  Maybe I’ll do that when I finish this post.  I also cleaned up the links, removing some blogs I no longer frequent from the blogroll and combining some categories.  I’d like to expand some sections, too, particularly Pros and Friends, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

I regret that I removed the link to Jordan Lapp’s blog because he hasn’t updated it since November.  He still has a great page dedicated to WotF links.  But with the subtractions come additions, one anyway.  Welcome to the blogroll, Clint.  I’d tell everyone about Clint, but you could just read his blog instead.

As I was setting up my new domain, I realized it was last February when I started this blog.  Just a year, twelve and a half months ago I recorded my first blog post.  (Okay, I had done a couple at MySpace, but no one read them.)  It’s interesting to see how little has changed.  The two stories in the post are still making the rounds and I’m still waiting to hear about Clarion.

Soeaking of Clarion, the deadline for both Clarion-SD and Clarion West is tomorrow!  (March 1st, that is.)  Just a friendly heads up.  If you get started applying electronically before say 10PM tomorrow, you’ll probably still get the app in on time.  (Don’t miss the invitation code for Clarion-SD on the screen after you pay the application fee.  I did.)

So the true waiting begins.  You can tell the time is getting close because the CW forum has gotten busy again.  It’s my goal to get all three of my pending stories finished and mailed out before I get my Clarion news.  I won’t be heartbroken if I don’t, but it’s my little goal.  One to Triangulation, two others yet to be determined.  I also need to get my Q1 story mailed out elsewhere…haven’t done that yet.  So lots to do.  I think I’ll get started.

Packing things up

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

It’s time to move.  I’ve enjoyed being at osomuerte.wordpress.com, but I’ve outgrown it.

First of all, I have decided to use my own name instead of any form of Oso as a byline.  I’m just good old Scott W. Baker.  I hope to one day be widely referred to as SWB the way George R. R. Martin is often GRRM.  I’ll probably keep the Oso persona online in some form, but I want to be more approachable to my fans (who I am attempting to amass…I think I have three or so).  I imagine I will be able to redirect visitors to my new blog once it exists.

I did a little domain name shopping today.  I regret that scottwbaker.com is currently occupied by a photographer.  Ironic considering my wife is the professional photographer in the family, not me.  So too is swbaker.com taken (though not in use).  A few other options were available: some with hyphens, resorting to a .net address, squeezing the word “blog” or “writer” in… I even checked out osomuerte.com and the more creative dontcallmeoso.com (both were unsurprisingly available).  I’m sure I could keep the wordpress in the address, but I was really hoping to break free a little.  It’s only like $15 a year for the domain, so it’s no biggie.  (Did I just say “no biggie”?)  Joining sff.net was also considered, but that was more than I wanted to spend with a name no easier to find than this one.

Perhaps I’ll think up a clever title to the blog and stick the .com on it.  It’s kind of where dontcallmeoso came from.  I’m still working on it.  Updates to come.

Movie Review: Shutter Island

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Scorsese teams with DiCaprio again in this  asylum mystery. Not everything is what it seems (shock!) and it doesn’t take long for hallucinations to start (double shock!).

Face it, the asylum mystery has been done to death.  Same old same old, right?  Wrong.  Well, a little right and wrong.  It’s hard to go all wrong with brilliant acting (DiCaprio will get an Oscar nod for this, and may win), brilliant dialogue, multi-layered yet seamless plot lines, and phenomenal cinematography.

Some of it gets a little heavy handed sometimes, I’ll admit.  Parts of the soundtrack were flashbacks to Kubrick and the main scene with the warden seemed a little off kilter, but all in all it was a brilliant film.  Make that brilliant and deeply disturbing.  Bad stuff has gone down that comes back to like in the flashbacks.  There was a mother with a ten-year-old kid there; she should be flogged for it.  I’ll have that kid in class one day and he will be too warped to learn math because he has too much Scor-psycho in his head.  But I digress…

This film is not for the faint of heart.  It’s one of those films you watch and say “that was brilliant,” then never watch it again because you just don’t want to go back down that dark road.  Every horror writer should watch it.  Suspense writers, too.  It’s dark; it’s disturbing; it’s excellent.

Now I’m going to bed with the nightlight on.

Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Wow, yesterday was huge on this blog.  I don’t recall ever receiving so many hits or so many comments.  I feel like a celebrity.  I know I’m not, but I feel like one.  I’m sure the curiosity over the new WotF stud (term used very loosely) will die down quickly.  I’m sure Laurie’s getting more of this than I am.  Lael would be getting a lot of attention, too, if anyone knew how to find him.

But with the incoming swarm, I decided I should offer a little more content than “me, me, me.”  I do that from time to time.  I should update my “useful posts” links so people know that.  Anyway, I decided — upon seeing it mentioned in blogs and message boards elsewhere — to comment on the perceived weakness of leaving stories unfinished.

Heinlein’s second rule of writing is to finish what you write.  Who am I to argue with Heinlein?  He’s Heinlein, for crying out loud.  So I won’t argue, rather offer my interpretation.  My slow, erosion-like interpretation.

I’ve discovered recently that I am susceptible to writer’s block.  I think I catch it from my students, though theirs seems to be a plague-caliber strain of homework block.  They need to vaccinate for this.  When it catches me, it usually means there’s something wrong with the story I’m trying to write and my subconscious writer is acting like a seeing eye dog and saving me from venturing further into danger.  (I’ve commented on specific cases in earlier posts.)  Those kinds of blocks are good for me.  They’re pains to get past, but they are good.  It suggests I’m an even better writer than I think I am (and with the swelled head I’ve gotten from WotF, that’s saying something).

For example, I intended my WotF story, “Poison Inside the Walls” to end with my protagonist making a huge discovery about the nature of her alien enemies and gain enlightenment and return home to try changing her society.  I kept stalling in the process.  It was a beautiful story idea, but it wasn’t the story I was writing.  The story wasn’t about the aliens, it was about the protagonist and her family.  Spending  four to five thousand words on the aliens at this point (which was what it was becoming) was going to rob the story of its power and bore whatever readers had been interested enough in the story to get that far.  So I set it aside while I stewed on it, eventually isolating the protag and letting the alien inspire her ultimate decisions.

Stewing on a story is like letting the dishes soak in the sink, it can soften things up but don’t leave it too long or it rusts.  I probably have a rusted story or two that have been stewing way too long.  I have others getting close.  I have a story on the complacency of religion that needs something I can’t quite place…maybe a stronger speculative aspect to suit my taste.  I have another that I’ve painted with too much culture and not enough theme, to the point that I’m having trouble recalling the theme.  (Maybe I’ll do a post on my definition of “theme” sometime soon.)  One of my most promising novels (yes, I have a half dozen brewing…shame on me) stalled out because I got to part of the story I didn’t really care about.  So why write that part?  Well, it’s an important part of the coming-of-age story; I just need to find a way to make me care about it.

So yes, it is important to finish a story.  If it ain’t finished, it ain’t a story.  If you have no stories, you ain’t a writer.  But it doesn’t have to get finished right away if you’re willing to return to it with fresh eyes later, be it a week or a month later.  It works for me, so far.  In the interest of full disclosure, I hate this system.  I want to be able to start the story, work on the story, finish the story, then move on to the next.  So far, my process doesn’t work that way.  I’m hoping the crucible of Clarion will help me with this.  But for now, I’m slowly cranking out stories I’m proud of, one postponement at at time.

Second Place, Baby!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 8 Comments

It’s official, I have a professional fiction sale.  Better than a sale, a win.  Writers of the Future XXVI, fourth quarter, second place.  (Oddly that sounds less impressive than it should.)  My story will be in a book in bookstores.  A book people will buy and read.  I get an all expense paid trip to California for a week long workshop and award ceremony.  My story will be illustrated by one of the talented winning artists.  How cool is that?  How cool is all of it?

I talked to Joni Labaqui, the contest coordinator, for about fifteen minutes.  She seems quite nice, even laughed at my jokes.  It’s not set as to when the workshop will be, but it’s a good bet I’ll have to take a week off school to attend.  No matter; I’m going to the workshop.  Meeting other winners, rubbing elbows with pros, making connections that are worth their weight in gouda…yeah, I’ll be there.

The best part of the whole thing is the sense that I am good at this writing thing.  Small press sales are nice, but I’d never sold a story somewhere that made me say, “that’s proof I have a future as a writer.”  Now I have.

Despite some suggestions that WotF’s workshop (combined with the status of the win) might be a sufficient repacement for Clarion, I am still planning to go if I’m accepted.  It has changed my mind about which to attend.  I had been heavily leaning one way (not to be revealed) if given the option, but now I think money will have more to do with the decision than anything.  CW is cheaper, but if there are scholarships to be had, I could go either way.  If things come out fairly even, I guess I resort to my old leanings.

It is eye-opening to see Clarion and Odyssey grads competing in WotF, many doing well time after time without winning.  My only workshops have been the online variety.  My winner, “Poison Inside the Walls”, was workshopped at SFF OWW as well as Baen’s Bar.  I have no MFA…no formal writing training at all.  I do have a decade of experience with token sales along the way (starting with the ProMartian turned Sam’s Dot Publishing zine, _The Fifth Di…_), a masters in math (which I don’t think came into play in the story), a bookcase shelf full of writing and science books, a deep vocabulary, a pretty solid mastery of punctuation and grammar, a solid if smallish list of SF readings, and enough humility to accept constructive criticism.  Oh, and the drive to keep doing this for a decade.

Winning WotF can be done.  It takes time and work, but the odds are a lot better than the lottery and the sense of accomplishment is much greater.  I’ve never been the guy that wins things.  This is a huge boon for me.  I just hope I can build off it.  I refuse to let this be the pinnacle of my career.

An ugly draft is still a draft

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I buried myself for an hour or two in the basement today and finished a first draft of my End of the Rainbow story.  It took some wild diversions from the original outline and feels a bit disjoint now, but it’s finished.  I’ll set it aside until the weekend and rework it then.   really need to trim it down.  It’s a pretty simple storyline.  I also need to do more with one of the important characters.

This is probably the sloppiest story I’ve written in quite a while.  Maybe that’s why it went so fast.  It still took the better part of two weeks.

No school tomorrow for me.  I stuck a rake in the snow out front; it sunk in eight inches.  I think I hit a deep spot, but still, that’s a lot of snow.  It’s enough that it’s over my miniature dachshund’s back.  I may be out all week.  We Tennesseans don’t cope well with snow.  No chains, no snow tires, few plows.  We stockpile salt, but that only does so much.  They usually clear the main roads pretty quickly, but it’s a backroad world here.

I’m going to scrounge up the notes I made at Starbucks the other day and see if I can grind out a flash story inside 24 hours.  (That reminds me, Jack Bauer’s on tonight!)  We’ll see if I can make those kinds of schedule holes.  After that I’ll target one of the two stories I have up at OWW.  Neither have gotten many comments, but enough that I have some direction to wander.  A character to cut out of the comedy; a transition summary to add to the tragedy, as well as a more defined character arc.

So much to do, so little time.  Oh, I have lots of time if you add up the three minute blocks my daughter gives me.  She summons again.  I must fetch a Fruit Roll-Up.  Bye for now.

Similes. Not to be confused with Smilies.

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I was rereading some writing advice at Nathan Bransford’s blog and stumbled across the old adage, “Don’t use too many similes.”  I can tell you now, don’t use too many anything.  But I suspect I am guilty of the “too many” similes offense.

I like comparisons.  I teach math by metaphor, using something as common as a stop sign to get across the importance of the order of operations.  (Dying to know?  Running that stop sign may be okay nineteen out of twenty times, but there’ll be that one time when a three-year-old rides her tricycle into the intersection and things aren’t all right any more.  Graphic but effective.)  So when I describe things, I tend toward metaphor and simile.

But I write speculative fiction.  If I say that Janine has a horse face, I may mean she has elongated features and large teeth or I might mean the front of her head is actually equine.  A simile is much safer and less confusing in this context; “her face was long like a horse’s with teeth that made me want to feed her an apple.”  In either case, the cliche is unforgivable.

I try to stay conscious of my similes.  Often a good simile is being used to make an unnecessary description.  But when it fits, it fits.  Sometimes I do have stories that require reworking to avoid sounding like a valley girl (like…like…like), an offense best discovered through reading aloud.

The best advice, though, is never to use a simile where it doesn’t feel necessary.  Similes do not spice up language, they don’t enhance imagery.  They actually do the opposite in my hands, giving abstract or tough to explain actions or images a very concrete and concise description through comparison.

A good simile subtracts words rather than adds them.  If he ran fast, don’t say he ran like a cheetah; more words.  If he ran with his arms flailing, elbows out, head bobbing, steps without cadence or consistency, maybe you just say he ran like a hyper kindergartener; fewer words.  And if the simile doesn’t quite describe it, axe it.  Better undescribed than ill-described.

That’s my expert treatise on similes.  They’re like donuts; I love them, but too many will cause bloating.  Oh, and unless you’re after the comedic effect, don’t use a simile that requires explanation.  (What made me think of that?)  Now go forth and compare cautiously.