Category: Writing

Not At All Innocent or Hypothetical Question of the Day

By:  TempestWriting
Not At All Innocent or Hypothetical Question of the Day

This is for the writers out there. If you were to get the urge to write on a mobile phone (not a whole novel, say, but whenever you needed to bust out some words and it wasn’t practical to do so on a netbook), what qualities would have phone have to have to make you comfortable doing so?

I would imagine a physical keyboard is a must, but that’s because I can’t type very fast with on-screen keyboards. Others are better at it. Regardless of whether it’s physical or not, I definitely feel like a qwerty-style keyboard is a must.

Do you agree? Also, what other aspects of a phone are important? Screen size, operating system, apps?

I turned it into a story but the hole in my heart is still there

By:  TempestReadings

Last year when I was a guest on Hour of the Wolf I read my 9/11-inspired story Until Forgiveness Comes on the air. Jim Freund liked it so much and liked the radio-y/NPR-esque-ness that he suggested we should record it as a radio play. I am all for that, so I wrote a script and we’ve been slowly, slowly working our way toward making that happen.

Jim will produce, we’ll likely get studio time at WBAI, and the fabulous Andrea Hairston will direct. She has some actors in mind, Jim keeps insisting I should do a part, and I am crossing my fingers for a guest appearance by Margo Adler (the original host of Hour of the Wolf and fancy NPR contributor). But I know we’ll need to bring in a few actors to read, and it would be nice if those actors could be paid. This is the part that’s holding up the works, unfortunately.

I’m hoping to get that all resolved because I would really love to have the play ready to go on next year’s anniversary. Despite the fact that many of us here in NYC are truly Not On about the spectacle that these anniversaries have become, it’s not likely to get any better next year due to the West’s love of base 10. So I’d like to make a small contribution to the conversation that isn’t about politics or publicity.

Somehow the money will emerge. That or we’ll find really excellent actors who don’t mind working for free. Still, I’d rather give everyone involved something for their time.

You can still read Until Forgiveness Comes at Strange Horizons or you can

      listen to the second half
of my appearance on HotW where I read the story then take calls.

I’ll be back on the show next Saturday with my writing group, Altered Fluid. They will be critiquing a story of mine live on the air. At 5am… Yes, there will be a podcast you can download later, but you’ll miss the call-in part!

(x-posted)

Let’s Talk About Writing Software

By:  TempestWriting
Let's Talk About Writing Software

This post reminded me that I’ve been wanting to poll folks about writing software lately. I know everyone talks about the wonders of Scrivener and how it changed everything for them and such, but there are other programs out there as well. I’m wondering how well they work for people.

I know some still prefer homespun methods of keeping track of stuff like plot threads, character traits, settings details, etc. Sometimes having it all in one program does help those who need a little guidance in order to be organized. I’m still int he process of finding the best way for myself, so I’m definitely intrigued by what others are up to.

So, if you use writing software that provides a bit more functionality than a word processor, let me know what you use and why you like it. Also what you wish it could do but doesn’t, and wish it wouldn’t do but does. Or, if you’ve cobbled something together from several different programs, I’d love to hear about that, too.

What I’m not interested in hearing is variations on: “Real writers don’t need fancy writing programs, you should JUST WRITE.” Because, honestly, everyone is different. Some of us do better with extra tools. And I’m sure everyone agrees that no matter how good a writing program, it cannot write something for you. So if you feel the urge to whip that out, kindly talk about puppies and kittens, instead.

Writing In Public

By:  TempestWriting
Writing In Public

I’m sitting in a new tea cafe that just opened up in the Village with my friend Nivair, just soaking up the cafe ambiance and drinking expensive tea. I love finding new cafes and other places to write in the city, especially since my ‘old’ haunts often go sour long before I’m done with them. This has been a constant source of annoyance for me since I moved back to the city four years ago. And I am on a constant hunt for good places to chill and write.

People often ask me why I can’t write at home, and I have no good answer for them. I can rarely get in the mood at home, can rarely even work up the energy. It could be that I don’t have an office space per se — my desk and such is in the living room — but it could just be that I am odd.

I like writing in cafes and other public spaces. I like the din of other people’s voices around me, which are often mixed with music. I guess I also dig the energy. I’m not one of those people who needs to be seen writing to feel like a real writer, I just need to be out of the house.

This is not always the best idea for my wallet. Sitting in a cafe or coffee house for hours means you have to pay to justify the space you’re taking up. Unless it’s a Starbucks. I never feel guilty for taking up space in a Starbucks. With an indie cafe I want to help them stay in business so I can keep coming there to write, so I buy stuff. A whole day can cost $20 if you’re not careful.

So in addition to cafes I also seek out good hotel lobbies, and I’m pretty talented at finding them. My current favorite hotel is the Ace on 29th street. They’ve got their lobby set up for laptop jockeys like me, with a long communal table with outlets in it, which is very convenient. And since it’s a lobby, they don’t mind if you don’t eat and they’re open all night and all day. It’s pretty perfect. Except on Friday and Saturday nights.

Anyway, my obsession for finding good places to write long ago led me to create this list on Yelp, which is an adjunct to this massive list of places with free wi-fi in the city. Every time I add something new to that list and it hits the front page of Yelp I get a new compliment as more people discover it. There are a ton of people like me who need the comfort of a public place to get their work done. Or to waste time on the Internet.

How many of you are like me and need to be out of the house to write? How many of you need to be in your house to write? And how many of you are lucky enough that it doesn’t matter?

How Do You Keep Track Of Submissions?

By:  TempestWriting
How Do You Keep Track Of Submissions?

A couple of years ago I brought up this topic as I was searching for a solution for myself. I decided on Sonar, and so far it’s serving me well. However, I’m researching submission trackers for another project, so I figured I’d open up the discussion again.

How do all you writer-types keep track of your submissions? I know some are still using the old Excel spreadsheet solution, but what else is out there?

And if you were going to build the perfect tracker, what features would it include?

When Writers Fail To Understand How Words Work

By:  TempestWriting
When Writers Fail To Understand How Words Work

It starts with Elizabeth Bear1 using the word (or tag) ‘deathmarch’ to describe difficulties in moving forward on wordcount with a novel. Apparently the word in the original post here has been removed due to concerns raised in this comment here:

The word I want to point out is “deathmarching”. I’m well aware that some people may use this to refer to a hard, exhausting, sometimes perilous struggle, but there’s history attached to that word, and thus it’s not one that ought to be used lightly.

Read the whole comment, as it makes some good points. And then be prepared to stab yourself in the eyes after reading Bear’s response:

I have very mixed emotions about political correctness in language: I believe that it’s our responsibility to be aware of the language we use, but I also have a sense that mythologizing language only gives it power.

I’m going to just say two things about this and the subsequent conversation in Bear’s journal and elsewhere.

  1. Every time I see someone (usually a white person) using the term ‘political correctness’ in this way it makes me want to get on a rocketship and leave this planet behind forever. It’s not all that shocking for me to see Bear waving around PC in a manner that would make Glen Beck proud given the racial politics she’d displayed lo these many years. But still, lady, what the hell? You’re a goddamn writer yet you wave off the very real consequences of using loaded words casually by complaining about political correctness? How much fail can possibly be contained in one person?
  2. I really don’t think that it should be up to people in positions of privilege to decide when it’s okay to make words mundane and erase their history of blood. I think it should be up to the people with the history and the people the word affects. Hint: that ain’t you, eBear.

And to be honest, it’s not me, either. It’s folks like this:

You see, in this story, by subsuming such outdated usages of “death march” into the mantle of the banal and the mundane — why, “imeldific” was such a success — we have embarked on the positive process of washing the blood out of our history. We have smoothed the jagged edges of our own psyches by repeatedly enduring the battering of the hardness and pain inherent in the stereotyping and prejudice we encounter. Saying and saying and saying, again and again: war, war, indio, savage, ladrones, blood, our little brown brethren, war, master, master, yes — until we accept the reality of it, and the repetition renders the reality common, banal, mundane, free of pain.

Why, look at us. We can even assume respectability now. Tayong hindi lumilingon sa pinanggalingan.

— ephemere (Trigger warning for descriptions of violence.)

And while we’re at it:

The background behind “deathmarch” is real. There is nothing mythic about respecting the experiences of those who have been systematically dehumanized and slaughtered or the people who belong to one or more cultures scarred by those experiences.

— manifesta

And then, AND THEN someone unearthed this blog post from 2006 which is actually, seriously called The Bataan Death-March of Merchandising. Because, you know, dealing with the Comicon dealer’s room is totally like unto a deathmarch.

Which all leads me to agree heartily with megwrites: fuck you, Elizabeth Bear, fuck you so, so, so, MUCH.

But, here’s the thing. As this post at Fiction Theory points out, this problem is not limited to Bear, it is vast. And the way to combat it, other than calling her and any other writer out on this stuff, is to do our best as writers or just as people not to contribute to it. You should go read.

Footnotes

  1. Yeah, I know, pretty much any sentence that begins this way can’t end well [⇧]

Honey And Tea Are Sacred

By:  TempestWriting
Honey And Tea Are Sacred

A few months ago I gave one of my bosses a small jar of my favorite honey from the farmer’s market because she was out of hers and looking for new honey to try. We often bond over just how good the honey is because local honey by skilled beekeepers is the bombdiggity! In fact, one of the sellers for this particular vendor gave me an appreciation for honey I never had before.

He taught me how honey has different flavors and why the stuff you buy in the store is often just flat and sweet instead of complicated and deep. Now I treat honey like fine wine and good chocolate. I need many jars of different flavors to match the different teas or foods I put the honey in or on.

I once told one of my co-workers that I spent a weekend pairing up my favorite teas with my favorite honeys looking for the perfect combination. Her response was priceless: “Girl, you need a boyfriend!” When I related this tale on Twitter, Amal El-Mohtar tweeted back that it seemed like an excellent way to spend a weekend to her, as tea and honey are sacred.

That they are.

Which is why I need to get my hands on her excellent book, The Honey Month. I have had peeks at it at various conventions but it always sells out before I get around to buying. Sadness! However, I am going to enter this fabulous contest and win a free copy so that I can enjoy the honey and tea prose and poetry goodness. You can, of course, also enter the contest. I won’t hold it against you if you win. Promise.

The Best Fiction is Always True

By:  TempestWriting

I, like Cat Valente, am confused by notion that a science fiction story can be too autobiographical to be fiction. Um, no. I can’t even really add to what Cat says here because there’s nothing extra to say. This notion is silliness.

I would never have written Elan Vital if I was under the impression that there was a hard separation between my life and my fiction. Black Feather as well.

Like I said. Silliness.

Magazine / eBook Coding Project Meetup At ReaderCon

By:  TempesteReaders
Magazine / eBook Coding Project Meetup At ReaderCon

Since a good number of the people who are interested in helping with and hammering out details on the eBook Magazine project I posed about will be at Readercon in a few weeks, I think it would be a good idea to have a meetup there. I know there are several of you interested who won’t be there, so hopefully I can get together with you online to make sure we know about the skill sets, availability, and ideas of everyone who wants to be involved.

For the peeps who’ll be at Readercon, how does meeting during the dinner break (yes, over actual dinner) on Saturday sound?

For the online component of this project, people seem to use Google Sites to good effect for organizing such things. Would anyone be interested in setting up one of those with both public and private areas?

If You Build This, Magazines Will Come

By:  TempestGeekitude
If You Build This, Magazines Will Come

During WisCon I had a brief conversation with Jed Hartman about my continued sadness that more online magazines don’t have an eBook version of their stories so I can easily load them on my eReader and thus read more fiction. He agreed that Things Must Be Done, but there are questions of logistics and reader/audience desires plus the technology to make it all happen. We came to the conclusion that making this work is about more than just creating an eBook version of the magazine, but also delivery and access. There’s a niche here that needs filling, but in order to do that, we’re going to need coders.

I want to propose an open source coding project and gather coders around me to make it happen, but I have no flippin’ idea how to do that. I also want to get some more feedback on this idea and work out the kinks. Luckily, I have a blog, so I totally know how to do that. So here are the questions, issues, problems, and goals I see surrounding all of this.

  1. Relatively easy eBook creation. Though programs like Calibre can create EPUB (and other eBook format) files, Tobias Buckell recently pointed out to me that this is not the optimal solution. He equated it to people using Microsoft Word to create web pages. Yes, the program can do it, but the code it generates is from hell. Not fit for anyone except really clueless newbies. We wouldn’t want that for these eBooks. So a primary aspect is to figure out who or what will generate clean code for EPUB.
  2. How many eBooks? Many online magazines do the monthly or semi-monthly thing, but for those that publish every week, do readers want an eBook for every story, or is one per month good?
  3. Free or Not Free? Many online magazines are free, which is a yay. Should their eBooks be free as well? I am personally in favor of charging a small amount for the files for the convenience of having the eBook format. The fiction will still be free on the website, of course. What are other people’s thoughts on this?
  4. Delivery System. Outfits like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony will deliver magazines to subscribers automatically, but only if you have a device that stays within their ecosystem. Like, if I subscribe to a magazine through B&N but use my Sony Reader to read it, it won’t show up each month on its own, I’d have to download then transfer it. Plus, I imagine that many online magazines would want to sell or make their eBook versions available through independent eBookstores or just from their site. I had an idea that I’d like to be able to embed and deliver eBooks with an RSS feed like you do with podcasts. That way, if you subscribe to the feed, you automatically get the file. It would be nice if this worked with paid eBook files as well. This is where the major coding work comes in. How do you set this kind of thing up? And would you need an accompanying program to then transfer the eBook to your eReader?
  5. Subscriptions or Individual Payments? Going along with the system I described above, will readers want to subscribe up front to many months worth of a magazine or would they be happier just paying per month?

This is what I’ve come up with so far, but please feel free to add anything else you think should be under consideration and please give your thoughts, solutions, etc. to the above. I feel that if this is done right, we may end up with a really cool program or online service that can handle all of these things. But, as I said, I’d want this to be open source and made available to magazines for little or no cost, if possible.

I’d love any suggestions on how to proceed from here.