Category: Writing

My Brain is Untied…and Yours Could Be, Too!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

(Two posts in two days?  Whoa, he’s a juggernaut!)

One of my favorite feelings is to open up the mailbox and find a book inside.  Yum.  Even better is when said book is a contributor’s copy with my own story inside!  I got this feeling a couple days ago when the Untied Shoelaces of the Mind Anthology arrived.

Wow, there are a lot of stories in this book.  I counted 52, one for every week of the year (not how they were assembled, just works out that way).  It’s a touch overwhelming.  Most stories are fairly short, most under six pages.  Worth $7.99 for this trade paperback?  Probably.  Worth $1.99 for the electronic version?  Heck yeah.

My story “Not Rats” is a bonus that never appeared in the USotM ezine, so it ended up in the back third with the other bonuses.  It’s classified in the table of contents as a horror story (which is probably how I subbed it) but it’s really humor.  Fun stuff.

Buy book, read story.  You have your orders.  Dismissed.

 

Back to the drawing board and loving it

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

I’m not blogging as much as I’d prefer.  I’ve groaned about that recently and I groan here again.  The day job has become a bit more demanding of late with new evaluation protocols and such.  Add to that my daughter’s soccer schedule (which I help coach) and my time shrinks to teeny-tiny bits scattered randomly.  I like to use those bits for writing when I can.  But don’t give up on Chaos Out of Chaos; I’m still here, just more sporadic than I used to be.

I recently had a steampunk adaptation of a fairy tale rejected from an anthology for being too fairy tale and only superficially steampunk.  Ever gotten a rejection and nodded?  That’s what I did because it was right, the steampunk was mostly just window dressing.  Moreover, it wasn’t an adaptation so much as a retelling in different style.  Ping, two for two in the nod department.

The editor (both editors in concert, actually) offered this analogy:

Consider two movies based off gang-interpretations of Romeo and Juliet: West Side Story and Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrman).  West Side Story is an adaptation, twisting the skeleton of the story to make sense in the new setting with new characters and new events.  Romeo + Juliet simply used guns instead of swords and used a modern setting; they used the Shakespearean words, for crying out loud.  Not an adaptation, just a change of clothes.

The editor is looking for a new story that fits the mold of the fairy tale, the way Willow was really Star Wars or how Avatar is really Dances with Wolves.  O Brother, Where Art Thou is likely too perfectly like The Odyssey.  The (bad) movie Barb Wire is too perfectly Casablanca.

Anyway, I hit the drawing board with the same fairy tale but a new plan, to make a new story that fit the mold of the fairy tale.  It helped to take (most of) the fantasy aspects out of it.  Now I have a skeleton for a stand-alone story that is a true adaptation.  Character names will likely stay the same, but the rest is history.  Who people are will change, changing their interactions and motivations, changing the events, changing the final outcome.  Whole new story that will still mimic the original in concept.  All it took was a little suggestion from the editor on how to change a key character’s role to get this whole new story tumbling out.

I confess, I was pretty happy with the first story.  If someone wants a pure fairy tale dressed in steampunk, I think it’s a winner.  Still, I felt it was too loyal to the fairy tale structure and too far from the more modern storytelling style that I usually write in, so it wasn’t quite me.  This one will be more me and I like it that much better.  As soon as I figure out where to start it, I’ll get this thing written.  Still have a while before this new draft is due, but this idea is kicking hard and is taking precedence over my Codex contest story, which is almost done but needs a significant rewrite to insert theme and structure into the freeform glob I wrote on first pass.  The glob may get submitted to the contest in favor of time for this story.  We’ll see.  Hopefully I’ll have time to write SOMETHING soon.

Cutting jokes and other painful experiences

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

A couple hours ago, I put a shortened version of “Excuse Me” in the mail to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction Anthology.  I love Uncle John’s stuff and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.  (Subs must be postmarked today, by the way.)

The book will be all flash fiction.  “Excuse Me” was originally published at 1500 words, 50% beyond the flash fiction count.  And while I did have other flash stories lying around, none seemed quite right for a non-genre audience (captive though that audience might be).  “Excuse Me” seemed a good fit, particularly since there were bathroom-related functions involved in a less-than-gross utility.  So I set about trimming it to length.

It hurt.  It’s one thing to cut edgy character building or riveting backstory or eloquent description — those are all tough to do — but cutting genuinely funny jokes is like removing an appendage.  In my experience, only about one in ten of my jokes actually ends up being funny.  Occasionally I’ll string a few good laughs together and endure a long dry spell afterward to balance the universe, but one-in-ten about covers it.  So in a story with roughly twenty (alleged) jokes that are (allegedly) funny, I have to write 200 jokes.  Yes, really.  (Mostly it’s issues of rewording and timing, but there’s a distinct difference between funny and flat.)  So cutting a joke that is actually funny feels like cutting ten times as much.

So how did it end up?  Better?  Not in my opinion.  Dr. Kwack isn’t as zany and Gary doesn’t seem quite so disturbed.  And for purposes of plot continuity, I had to leave in some weaker jokes and remove some stronger ones.  I also cut the racier references to sex, diminishing Kwack’s Freud obsession.  But it’s still punchy (probably a little punchier) and still has the best bits of humor (snow cone maker, lingerie shop, Vaudevillesque stinger at the end), so I think it has a shot.  Humor is very subjective, after all.

Speaking of things that hurt, it looks like I’m missing Dragon*Con again this year.  The timing just sucks.  My wife is spending all this week working at the County Fair and I barely see her and I get to play both parental roles this week.  Exhausting.  Plus I have so much else to do and so little cash to fling around.  I wasn’t going to go down for more than a day anyway, so the loss is minimal, but it still sucks.

I haven’t been much of a writer the past few weeks.  The days have just been packed to the gills with stuff to do.  There have been small gaps that I didn’t exploit to their fullest — this one, for instance — but even those have been few and far between.  This evening represents the biggest clearing in the past two weeks and it’s being dedicated to catching up on the day job.  Must…write…soon…or…ex-…plode…

 

A Writerly Update

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Distracted as I am by the countdown and launch of the school year, I find myself pushing writing to the background. Even good news is being tossed to the wind (Twitter, Facebook, whatnot) and left to drift without much attention. So here’s an update.

*****

Poop. Technical difficulties truncated my multi-paragraph post to near nothing.  And I had links all through it.  Not happy.  Let’s try again.

The big news is that Daily Science Fiction just accepted a flash piece called “Ten Seconds”.  Happy.  DSF is a market I’ve wanted to break into for a while now.

“Leech Run” has received mostly positive comments at Escape Pod.  There is some debate over the quality of the read (which I am fond of) and a few folks that were less than fond of Titan’s character, but most people seemed to enjoy the story for the thrilling blockbuster it was meant to be.  (That’s right, blockbuster.  You Hollywood types listening?)

“Not Rats” is still scheduled to be in the Untied Shoelaces of the Mind Anthology, which was pushed back but should be out within a month or so.  Both those stories came from the Codex Weekend Warrior flash fiction contest.  Clearly worth doing again.

Another flash piece that I wrote during the Weekend Warrior contest but was not an entry got a rewrite request from Every Day Fiction, a little flash zine I am friendly with.  I rewrote the one little bit that (understandably) bothered them and now I suspect the rewrite will be accepted.  Small money, but a fun zine.

I have a few others out there: a steampunk story to an invitation-based antho that has fewer openings than previously anticipated, a zombie story that’s been lost in an editor’s shuffle, an old sale hoping for new life as an audio reprint, a zany story at a new and mysterious market.  They all have chances; none will stagger me if rejected.

All in all, a lot of good going on in my writing world.  I need to push more stories out of the stable so even more good can happen.  My cover letters are getting more impressive: WotF, Escape Pod, DSF.  I’m starting to feel like a real writer; makes me want to get back to that novel I’m supposed to be working on.  Where did I leave that thing?

Only a Day Away

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The weather is reflecting my psyche.  Orangish-brown clouds rolling in against the wind; the air is dark but the sky is bright.  Something ominous is coming.  Oh no, it’s…another school year!

By this point in the summer, I’m usually eager to go back.  This year is no exception.  I’m probably more ready this year than ever.  But there is always a dark side to it.  Waking up before dawn, the stress of a hundred simultaneous demands, papers to grade, students to train teach.  The ominous beauty outside is a lovely metaphor for what I am feeling.  It’s easy to see why writers lean on this device as heavily as they do.

My writing production has been about zero the last week or two, so going back to school may pump it back up for once.  I have a few stories that need submitting that will go out during my first inservice tomorrow (gotta do something).  And ideas always bubble up around this time, too.  So it’s time to saddle both horses — school and writing — and start riding for the horizon.  (Yeah, saw Cowboys & Aliens tonight.)  Hopefully I won’t get any saddle sores.

Hi-ho Laptop, and away!

Story up at Escape Pod

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

If you don’t listen to the Escape Pod podcast, you should.  I love audio fiction, and audio short fiction has the feel of a television episode on the radio.  They used to do that, back when radio was a thing people sat around and listened to in their homes.

So why am I advocating Escape Pod today?  Because my story “Leech Run” is their latest audio offering!  Go have a listen.  It runs about half an hour.

Alasdair Stuart reads it and does a great job.  I love the accent.  It’s my first story to get the audio treatment and I’m psyched at how it turned out.

“Leech Run” first appeared in Pill Hill Press‘s anthology Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space.  If you like the story, buy a copy.  Lots of good space adventure between those covers.

Has anyone seen a month lying around? I think I lost one.

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Time flies for teachers in the summer.  I can’t believe I haven’t posted here in a whole month.  I’ve been camping and fireworking and more camping and generally trying to enjoy the hiatus from that pesky real job.  It’s about time to get things in line for school again.  Yay?  Well, time waits for no man, so yay it is I guess.

Not a lot of action on the writing front, I regret to admit.  I’ve been putting a fair amount of focus on a slow long-shot project and I’ve allowed it to get in the way of more immediate enterprises.  I’ve lost steam on my most recent WIP, but at least I think I know why; I have an extraneous character and it’s making the conflict feel forced.  And the timeline is all wrong.  Sad to say it, but I need to approach this thing from a more Hollywood angle.  (I could see this being adapted as an episode of Eureka.  Hmmm…)  Perhaps I should bring another project to the front of the queue while my subconscious tinkers with the idea a bit more, since we’re looking at a total rewrite and  length change.

I have even less excuse for allowing my submission cycle collapse.  I have between 10 and 12 stories that are submission-ready, yet at one point I only had three out.  That’s up to six now (camping hindered the recovery effort) and that should hit double digits by August.  Yes, that’s still a couple weeks, but there are several slush piles that are closed until then and I’ve exhausted most of my quick-turn options, so it’s wait two weeks or risk missing the window.  Neither choice is great.

In happier news, I spent today at LibertyCon in Chattanooga.  As cons go, this was pretty low key; a Relax-a-con, if you will.  It was nice seeing some old friends and making a couple new ones.  It was just a day trip, alas.  I doubt I even pulled my money’s worth since I spent a lot more time jawing in the lobby than participating in con events.  I tried to eat my value from the nicely-managed ConSuite, but I doubt I pulled it off.  I may show next year, I may not.  We’ll see.  It’s a lot of the same folks as ChattaCon, which I enjoyed more, though that is biased since I stayed for all of that one and merited “guest” status.

So I guess posting’s been slow because writer-Scott has been slow.  Reader-Scott, on the other hand, has had a strong week, finishing GRRM’s A Clash of Kings and the audiobook of Gaiman’s American Gods in close proximity.  What to attack next?  The keyboard, that’s what!

First Foray into Steampunk

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

For reasons that have been hinted at previously and are still too underdeveloped to divulge, I have recently dipped my toe into the steampunk swimming pool.  For those that have never bathed in steampunk (yeah,I’ve already worn that metaphor out), you can get a crash course at the Wikipedia steampunk page.  I won’t overwhelm you with details here.  Just imagine that the Victorian Era (roughly 1840-1900; on this side of the pond, think a couple decades on each side of the Civil War) just kept progressing rather than being diverted by WWI.  Not helping?  Picure steam and clockwork-style machinery being responsible for a lot of what electricity and electronics do now.  (Not that steampunk is devoid of electricity; Tesla is a very important steampunk figure…but I digress.)  Got it?  Good.

Steampunk is very hot right now, particularly in the aesthetic world.  Interior design, con costuming, that one episode of Castle…but that’s all a very visual thing.  I am not a visual artist.  I do my painting with words on the mind’s canvas and all the blah-blah-blah we writers say about that.  Bottom line, I find myself doing a lot of describing of visuals.  I end up visualizing everything in brass and mahogany.  Fortunately, there are a LOT of steampunk images on the internet for me to scour before I decide on what to describe.  Lamps, tables, beds, lots of “computers” (which hasn’t come up for me, but they’re there), bathtubs, and clothes clothes clothes.  I keep looking for pictures for everything I want to describe, which slows the writing down, but I also keep finding the pictures.  I seldom use any single image I find, rather merging several.

So if I can find things so readily, what’s the problem?  Okay, there isn’t a problem per se, just a tricky balance.  As in any story, I don’t want to put in any details that aren’t useful.  I could give a character a steam powered artificial limb or a clockwork cat, but why?  Things need to have reasons to be steampunky.  As was mentioned on the steampunk panel at ConCarolinas, it’s not just “sci-fi in sepia” (that domain name is available if you want to buy it).  Things are falling together pretty well in the story, but I know the edit-fairy will be clocking overtime once I finish my draft.

Here’s the real problem: I am not a steampunk reader.  (Pauses for the gasps of horror and threats referencing the circles of hell reserved for those that write what they do not read.)  I’ve read some.  Gra Linnea’s story “Life in Steam” in WotF 25 was as steampunk as it gets.  And I’ve read Michael Moorecock to great enjoyment, particularly the Hawkmoon series, and steampunk discussions are not officially licensed as such until his name comes up at least twice.  Airships, gyrocopters, electricity guns, gears, steam…I know the basics.  I’ve also gotten a recent crash course in the importance of both social class and intellect in steampunk storytelling.  I just bought a steampunk novel on my Kindle (oxymoron?).  I am doing my homework, but it isn’t natural to me.  Maybe that’s why I feel like the story is shaping up so nicely: the construction is all very deliberate.  I just hope that won’t get in the way of flow and storytelling.

Anyway, it’s fun exploring this new (to me) subgenre and navigating its twists and turns.  I feel like it’s bringing some old fashioned spark back into my technique.  I’m probably half done with the first draft already (not a very long story) and I may have reason to follow up with another similar one.  I understand how people can get immersed into steampunk; it’s so visually striking.  I just hope I end up doing it justice.

Walking on the Respectable Side

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I’m off to ConCarolinas soon. (Hooray!) I actually leave Thursday for my parents’ place for a short visit and to hand off the kiddo, then on to Charlotte.

The con got me thinking about business cards.  I mocked up a design and may or may not distribute a few while I’m there.  Anyway, business cards got me thinking about my amateurish email address.  How juvenile is it to put an unpronounceable email on a business card?  So I set out to explore the options of receiving email through this site’s domain name.  Thanks to Google Apps, it turns out it’s easy.  So now I can be reached at writer@scottwbaker.net.  I have not abandoned my old addresses, osomuerte@gmail.com or osomuerte@hotmail.com, so there’s no need to alter any contact info you have for me.  I have simply added a small degree of legitimacy to my persona.

Is it that important to portray myself professionally?  Probably not.  But here;s a short list of things I have done over the past year or so to improve my apparent professionalism:

  • Purchase my domain name.  It’s cheap, like 15 bucks a year, if I recall.  I was too late to grab the .com name, but it’s tough to mistake me for a NYC photographer.
  • Abandoned my web handle.  I’m still “Oso” in a few circles, but mostly I use my name.  A handle from a character in a role playing game is not the way to present myself to the SF world.  Not that the SF world doesn’t get it (most do), just that the SF world knows that I should know better.
  • Cons.  I’ve been a guest at a con (thanks ChattaCon!) and am doing what I can to attend cons periodically.  Why?  Connections!  I made some great ones in Chattanooga in January and I hope to continue the trend this weekend.  The best way to do that?  So far my luck has been at the bar.  Just saying…

…and that’s about it.  I’ve done so little to seem like a pro.  The most important things to do are writing (which I need to do more of) and selling (which I need to do a LOT more of).  Until then I will present myself with dignity and competence, even though I’ll still do it in a Hawaiian shirt.

A Drizzle in a Drought

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

My zombie fairy tale story “Not Rats” just sol to the Untied Shoelaces of the Mind anthology.  Yay.

This was a 750-word flash that the editor asked to have rewritten, which lead to a growth spurt to 1300 words.  Very short story, semi-pro pay…my tax bracket isn’t changing, but it’s nice to have a sale.  I’m looking forward to the contributor’s copy more than the check.  (Not that I would never turn my nose up at a check.)

My story production has slowed waaaaayy down of late.  Summer should allow me to bring things back up, but a big chunk of that will be novel work.  I need to redouble my efforts to get my current stable of stories out into circulation.  Stories don’t sell from the hard drive.