Category: Writing

Writing uphill through a blizzard

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I am still excited to be finally writing my Festival of the Naked Man story, but progress is taking forever.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided this should be set on an English-speaking planet founded by Japanese with a rich cross-section of cultures represented.  My main character has a Norse name and heritage but his family all believes in the planet’s Shinto-based religion.  The protag’s girlfriend is Chinese and the religious leaders are pretty much all Japanese.  I spent hours just researching the names.  A little slang follows each culture with the Japanese filtering in more than anything due to thir dominance of the population.  Considering the only language I have any background in (other than English) is Spanish, this language thing has been wearing out my Google.  Now watch me end up cutting half of those words in the end.  Grrr…

Even the parts in English are slow going due to my desire to really choose the right word.  I know it’s still a first draft, but I can’t just throw any word on the page.  (I recommend Flip Dictionary for this — an exceptional thesaurus for getting the right word out of a close miss.)

I dare say this will end up novella length, or at least novelette.  My pace is starting slow but there’s a lot to get out there early.

I really think this will be the first of my stories that could fit in Analog magazine.  There’s a lot of “soft science” wrapped in a shell of hard science.  I’m pretty sure I’ve buried some commentary about American organized religion in with my plot.  (For the record, I am a baptized-Catholic who attends a Methodist church where I deliver the children’s sermon each week.  You’ll have to read the story to find the message that comes out of that Christian crossover.)

Mostly I’m just happy to be writing again.  Now if I could just disconnect from all the other stuff I do (video games, television, parenting, teaching, sleeping, eating…blogging) I might have enough time to finish this story before my daughter goes to college.

-Oso

What’s good for the writer is murder on the teacher

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I spent a lot of this evening brainstorming characters for my next story (I’ve mentioned my Festival of the Naked Man idea beforel I just needed characters to get it going).  Now I have the bug to start writing it…now.  The problem?  It’s a quarter after twelve and I have to teach tomorrow at 7:45.

So what to do?  Blog about it, apparently.  Then I’ll sign off here and go tap away at it until about one.  If I get enough steam going, maybe I’ll take a day off this week to finish my first draft.  (Leaving a story dangling when I need to be writing really does make me ill.)

Okay, I have forty minutes left.  Time to write an opening scene.  Night all.

Clarion SD Instructors

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 7 Comments

I’m not sure when the list went public, but Clarion SD has posted the list of instructors for 2010.

  • Delia Sherman
  • George R. R. Martin
  • Dale Bailey
  • Samuel R. Delany
  • Jeff VanderMeer
  • Ann VanderMeer

You guessed it, I have not read any of them.  I suck.  I did recently buy Steampunk, a collection edited by the VanderMeers.  I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.  That’s got to count for something, doesn’t it?

So who are they?

Delia Sherman writes for both young and adult readers.  It appears I’ll have to do some research to get a goo feel for what unique contributions she might bring to the workshop, though her partnership with writer Ellen Kushner could turn into a double-team of instructors.  Both women write in the “fantasy of mnners” subgenre (a new one on me).

George R. R. Martin boasts a long career including a plethora of Hugo and Nebula awards, editing and production experience with The New Twilight Zone (1980s) and the CBS series Beauty and the Beast (which I recall my parents watching in the late 1980s).  His awards track record suggest he is a true arist in the medium of novellas.

Dale Bailey’s work seems to populate the biggest and best of anthologies (Year’s Best, Nebula Showcases, etc.)  I may well drive past his house every time I visit my parents (not quite, but I pass near his hometown of Hickory, NC) and he got his post-graduate degrees in my old hometown (Knoxville, TN).  Most of his work seems to be in the horror genre.

Samuel R. Delany has a unique perspective on life as a black, gay, dyslexic writer (a combination that inspired his Hugo-winning autobiography).  He has several Hugo wins and a stack of nominations (Hugo, Nebula, Locus, you name it).  He appears to have just a much success and notority as a literary critic as he does writing; now there’s a skill set that could benefit aspiring writers like me!

The VanderMeers are each successful in their own right.  Ann is fiction editor of Weird Tales magazine (for which she won a Hugo) and founder of Buzzcity Press.  Jeff won a World Fantasy Award and has been finalist for most of the other big awards.  I’d love to see the two of them imitate another Clarion married couple (Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight) by teaming up the last two weeks.  I suspect that ay be the plan.

All in all, a good lineup.  How does it compare to Clarion West’s dancecard?  I’m not sure.  Both are good.  I’m eager to apply to each.  I better get writing!

Getting out and pushing

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

brainlogoThe writing machine has run out of gas.  No words are pouring through the fingers to the keyboard, no stories are progressing.  So what do you do when you’re out of gas?  Get out and push.  And I’ve got a shove that will either gdet me going or get me run over by my own vehicle.

Several other writers have mentioned the flash fiction contest over at Brain Harvest.  I decided (yesterday) that I am going to write a new story and get into that contest by the deadline of…tomorrow.  How hard can it be to write a 750-word story in a day?  Ha!

It’s not so much about winning the contest, it’s about clearing the fuel lines so I can start producing again.  So far I am part wa through my first attempt, placing me at about 1500-words.  Yikes!  I had planned to write the story then go back through for heavy cutting, but I may have gone too far here.  It’s tough to put a unique twist on story’s from Strange Horizons’ dreaded cliche list in so few words.

So maybe I’ll wander back to the list and think a little more.  I will get this done.  I must.  Then I’ll repair a few other stories and get my submission list back up to snuff.  I don’t even have my WotF submission ready to go.  Not long ago I had a line of manuscripts ready for that envelope.  Time to be a writer again.  Otherwise, why am I here?

Blogger/Writer reported missing; teacher assumes identity

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

Been missing me?  Wait, don’t answer that…I probably don’t want to know.  But I have been absent due to school starting back up.  I’m trying to hit stride but feel a step slow.  It’s been a jerky start to the 2009-10 school year.  I’ll get going soon and my postings will become semi-regular again.

I have much to talk about, so I’ll spread it over a few different posts.  What to say first?  I know…movies.

It has been a while since I watched two movies back to back and could call them both good films.  For one of these films, the “experts” agree with me; the other, I seem to be in the minority.

Yesterday I saw DISTRICT 9.  It was very good.  But more than that, it was unique.  It reminded me of something you might read in Analog or Asimov’s, the way the aliens were characterized as no more or less human than the humans while still very different.  It was, on the surface, a dark action movie full of all the government greed (here the role of government played by a corporation) and bloodlust the cinema has taught us to expect.  But that was the surface.  This was a movie about people (some human, some not) interacting under extreme circumstances.

The leading actor did an excellent job that was not at all diminished by being utterly unknown.  The CGI was superb to the level one would expect with the name Peter Jackson attached to it.  Some of the science may have been a bit hinky, but who cares?  It was a groundbreaking film that bridges a gap between SF film and literature.  Still a lot of action, but a lot of story here, too.  Go see it.  Eat lots of popcorn.  And you have my permission to laugh when people and/or parts of their bodies are turned to wet red mist.  It is funny in a morbid way, so yuck it up.

The critics seem to agree with me on D-9.  They rave about it almost as much as they panned the movie I watched on BluRay a few nights before.  That’s right, I watched PUSH and I loved it.

Don’t get me wrong, PUSH is not the groundbreaking accomplishment that DISTRICT 9 is.  In fact, PUSH is a fantasy film in sci-fi clothing.  Not just because psionics have been so widely frowned upon in science fiction circles, but because a Mover, a Watcher, a Pusher, a Shadow, a Sniffer, and a Shifter teaming up to take down a bunch of Bleeders and a powerful government entity (Division) is not so different from a Human a Dwarf, an Elf, a Wizard. and some Hobbits teaming up to take down a bunch or Orcs and a dark empire.  Fortunately, PUSH had a lot of what Tolkein brought to LotR, namely the sense that the story’s universe was much larger than the film could possibly encompass.  I had the distinct feeling that the film was based in an RPG universe, but agin that did as much to heighten my enjoyment of the movie as to dampen it.

The main character’s story was rich and (mostly) believable.  I’ve liked Chris Evans (lead actor) since I saw him in the first Fantastic Four movie.  The guy has charisma and can become a character (maybe not in a Heath Ledger kind of way, but that may be asking too much).  And Dakota Fanning was excellent in her role.  No other actor managed to damage the performances of these two leads, though few added much either.

I do think the film suffered a bit in the editing room.  Perhaps that was just my desire for a fuller picture of things.  I was engulfed in the world the way I seldom am, more so than even watching DISTRICT 9.  Was it art?  No.  Was it good SF?  definitely.

I must confess to having a quirky appreciation for some odd movies.  Consider the only three films I have owned on both VHS and DVD: Clerks, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Spawn.  (Yes, that Spawn.)  I’ll stand behind Clerks to the end.  From Dusk Till Dawnstarts with damn good storytelling and characterization only to turn their world on its head (as an encounter with vampires probably would).  And Spawn…even poor scrit, overacting, and silly special effects couldn’t stifle the cool images and some badass nostalgia.

Anyway, I suggest you see both DISTRICT 9 and PUSH and make your own judgements.  Neither is flawless but both are entertaining.  One will become a classic, the other a cult hit.  We will surely see a DISTRICT 10 sometime soon.  And PUSH 2?  Its worldwide gross and productions cost seem to be about equal, so I have my doubts.  Oh well.

CW 2010 reading begins!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I just finished reading Maureen McHugh’s story “Presence” in a Year’s Best anthology from 2001.  While her style was remeniscent of much SF I’ve read — the POV character was an engineer, etc. — I found the story didn’t really feel like science fiction.  This is assuredly a good thing.

The story hinges around a fictional treatment for Alzheimer’s, so it is definitely SF, but the story was about the protagonist’s struggle with her husband as the disease pulls him under and about how the treatment affects her relationship with him.  It’s a story about a person, about people, about relationships.  The science takes a backseat, but without the science there is no story.  At least not this one.

Can Ms. McHugh teach that?  Probably not, but she can encourage it, adjust students’ focus.  Either the research involved was immense or she had already lived through supporting an Alheimer’s patient.  Either way, the story was credible and realistic and emotional.  And a bit of a downer all the way through. If my next read is like that, I’ll have to switch to humor for a little while.

Clarion West 2010 Instructors

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I just dropped by the Clarion West homepage and discovered the instructor lineup for next year:

  • Michael Bishop
  • Maureen McHugh
  • Nnedi Okorafor
  • Graham Joyce
  • Ellen Datlow
  • Ian McDonald

Confession time.  I look at these names and scratch my head.  I am familiar with Ellen Datlow by name but not by work (not generally a horror reader).

However, I found the same difficulty about ten months ago looking at the list of names for both Clarions.  I had no idea how sheltered I was.  I discovered John Kessel and am now a fan (I had unwittingly read him before).  I discovered Rudy Rucker and enjoyed his stories.  I discovered Robert Crais (C-SD) and loved the Elvis Cole novel I listened to (and I don’t usually enjoy straight mysteries).  I discovered I had already read and enjoyed several stories by Karen Joy Fowler.  I also have books and/or stories standing by from Kim Stanley Robinson, Elizabeth Bear, and Elizabeth Hand.  The instructors were a who’s-who of speculative fiction and I was a poorly-read wannabe.

Now I feel like a wannabe again.  Michael Bishop has been publishing and winning awards since before I was born.  (I need to do some research to see if I’ve read anything of his before.)  Maureen McHugh has been popping out short stories since I was in middle school; Graham Joyce, winning British Fiction Awards since I was in high school.  Nnedi Okorafor seems to be an up-and-coming author with YA experience and cites Donald Maass as one of her agents.  Ian McDonald has a list of awards that could choke a…well, whatever eats awards.

So my ignorance says nothing of the quality of the instructors for next year.  I intend to get started reading right away.  I bet I can find a McDonald novel at the Book Cellar and I bet I have some of Bishop’s stuff lying around the house if I look hard enough.  Others will require deeper exploration.

I will likely apply to both Clarions again next year, especially if the C-SD lineup is as promising as this one.  I’m hoping to see some of this year’s CW names show up there, but I’ll wait and see.  It will probably be a bit of a wait to find out that list.  (Insider information always appreciated.)

I also hope to see some familiar names from here show up on the student lists.

Read Me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

At long last, “How Quickly We Forget” is up at Every Day Fiction.  Please go by and have a read.  The comments there are overwhelmingly positive so far.  Read, rate, and comment.

I went for a brutal eight-mile (round trip) hike yesterday and now even typing is a challenge.  Ouch.  The falls were beautiful, but it was hard to appreciate them while dying of ouchiness.  More updates when I return to civilization more permanently.

-Oso

Rejection waiting for me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

I found a rejection waiting in my inbox when I got home.  It was from Every Day Fiction.

Honestly, I’m glad the story got the boot.  It was more of a scene from a teen horror movie than it was a real story.  I wrote it and felt like I needed to do something with it.  They were right to reject it.  Drivel.

I seldom feel like this when reading over a rejected story.  I sometimes think, “That could be better; I’ll fix it before I send it anywhere.”  But it is rare that I turn my nose up like this.

It was a themed contest entry and it rolled out of my head.  I will keep it in my what-was-I-thinking file along with the story about the doctor that turns into a horseman of the apocalypse, the one with sprites that make you stumble in the woods, and other ideas that were picked too green or perhaps even should have been composted.

I’ve run short of finished stories to submit places. “Poison Inside the Walls” has a new version up at Baen’s and will likely be my next WotF submission (unpleasant subjects aside).  I need to do something with “The Will of Roshambo” but I’m not sure what.  I may try to cut it to flash length; it may work better.  My untitled sound story needs an ending and a deep-tissue rewrite.  I have that Festival of the Naked Man story to start.  Time and I just aren’t getting together well this summer.