I write stories every week, and post them as part of #FridayFlash. Why?
Robert Heinlein famously gave five rules for writing. I'm not going to Google up a link for them, because I don't need a link, and neither do you. I memorized them a long time ago, and I'm happy to repeat them for you.
Rule #1. You must write. Rule #2. You must finish what you write. Rule #3. You must not go back and re-write that which you have written, except under editorial edict. Rule #4. You must place what you have written out in the marketplace. Rule #5. You must keep it in the marketplace until it sells.
Not too long ago, my fiction was, to put it mildly, crap. I'd started to follow Rule #1, but was failing at Rule #2. Much of what I wrote was fragmentary half-efforts. What I actually finished wasn't 10% as good as I thought it was. I didn't show it much, just wrote in isolation. After sending out some stories to some magazines, and collecting the expected rejections, it dawned on me that marvelous, gripping fiction would not be something I could just sit down and knock out. I would need to learn something about the craft and practice.
This blog was part of that effort, a place to interact, ask questions, learn, post my work and get feedback on it. I can't improve my writing if I don't know what works, and what's wrong with it. I don't get paid for any of the material I post here, so Heinlein might take issue with this approach. However, Mark Twain said that you should write for free until someone offers to pay you. I've been paid for my work since starting this fiction endeavor, so I'm going to defer to Twain on this one.
By this time, you might be asking, what does all of this have to do with #FridayFlash, and what it means to me?
Allow me to illustrate:
After I posted my first #FridayFlash story, "Nearer Comes the Moon", the readership of this blog more than tripled. That's a lot of eyeballs pointed at my writing. I'm happy with how the readership of this blog is growing. I shill and tout, but people come here (and keep coming back) because they like what they read. That's where #FridayFlash comes in.
I have no unique or novel insights to offer on the writing life, on technique or on anything else related to writing. I won't go into the sense of community, the great friends I've made, the private reassurances in fearful moments that I've given and received, the opportunities #FridayFlash has opened to me - both those I've chased after and those that came to me - or any of the other outward-looking benefits of being a regular #FridayFlasher.
No, I'm going to focus on what it's meant for my skills as a writer.
If you've not read my first #FridayFlash story, or you don't remember it, take a moment and give it a quick look. I've improved so much since then, it's hard to believe I ever let a story go up in that condition. For example, the word "Once" starts paragraphs 2 and 3, and "He" starts paragraphs 4, 5 and 6! Where the heck is the attention to detail? Well, when I started, I didn't know to look at such mechanicals. I was just making it up as I went.
It might have been John Wiswell who pointed that tweak out in a later piece, or maybe Lily Mulholland did. I forget, because I have gotten so much valuable advice and feedback on my stories since then. The ones that people went gaga over, the ones that fell flat, the scary ones, the funny ones, the confusing ones - I learned something from each and every one of them. On every piece, I read your comments, I listen to your opinions, I think about what you say and what you don't say.
The fact is, my writing is better because of #FridayFlash. I'm a better writer because of the commitment I've made to it.
I found a rhythm that works. I found a pacing that I like. I found a voice. Is it my Voice? Shoot, I don't know. All I know is, it sounds like me. It's a voice I feel comfortable in, rather than one I've clumsily sewn together from elements of my favorite authors.
There are rules I have yet to follow, and sharp-edged cliffs yet to scale in this writer's path.
You know what? Bring 'em on.
As I look back on where I've come from, I know what's brought me this far. It's #FridayFlash.
Even though the General knew the guy's real name, the name he had been born with, he didn't use it. That would have been disrespectful for one of the galaxy's top undercover agents. Nor did he refer to him by any of the multitude of code names the agent went by. Those changed daily, even hourly, depending on circumstances and according to a pattern that the General himself was not privy to. This was going to be a hard enough sell; the General did not want to risk losing any authority by using a compromised or outdated name.
"I've got a job for you, son. It's vital."
The agent didn't move, the fixed expression of boredom on his pale face betrayed by a slight flicker of his bright green eyes. He was interested.
Carefully, thought the General, carefully.
"The reports from the front aren't good. You've seen the scan imagery, gotten the briefing from Dr. Goldman. We're going to lose this war unless..." He let the thought hang, the hook baited. A pause, then green eyes swiveled to look directly into his own.
"Unless what?"
Gotcha.
The General didn't answer right away, but drummed his fingers on the table for dramatic effect. The agent was good, very good, but he wasn't the first of his kind the General had had to manage.
"We've been fighting the Bugs for thousands of years. We establish ourselves somewhere and as sure as night follows day, they try to move in. For almost all of our history, they have been attacking, and we've been essentially powerless against them."
"And if we were just to accept them? To leave them alone?"
"Don't get cute. It doesn't work that way, you know that. We can't reason with them, or negotiate a truce. They're mindless predators. They don't think, they just attack us, feed on us. It's in their nature. For us to live, they have to die."
"You mean wipe them out? Kill every Bug everywhere in the universe?"
The General sighed, packing a thousand generations of weariness into one long, drawn out sigh. Melodrama, he thought, they're always such suckers for melodrama.
"That's not possible," said the General. "The Bugs outnumber us ten million to one. In many ways, this is their universe and we're just a small part of it. We can't go out and eradicate them, but we can defend ourselves when they attack. It means constant vigilance, but we've come up with a couple of things that can hold them at bay. They just might turn the tide for us."
He slid a printout across the table.
The agent scanned across the page, lingering over the schematic diagrams and long chemical names. "I'm not a scientist, you know. What is this?"
"That is part of the strategy our top experts have developed. Right now, the best armor we have for our personnel is form of polymerized crystal, molded to fit and laced with molecular bonding to make it resist almost all forms of attack. It will even hold off the Bugs for a while, until the acid that they secrete allows them to penetrate it. After that, they feed on the flesh within."
The General saw the agent wince. Was that too much, too bloody a truth to lay out so flatly for him? No, the General thought, better keep up the pressure. I can't afford to have him refuse.
"However," he continued, "things are going to be different from now on. There's an advanced form of atomic deposition that will alter the molecular structure of the crystal. The procedure results in a hyper-dense armor that's worlds better than anything we've ever had."
"Let me guess - it blocks the Bugs completely, right?"
The General shook his head. "You've got a lot to learn about Bugs. The new armor is good, but it's not that good. It doesn't stop the Bugs; nothing can stop the Bugs. However, it slows them down considerably, long enough to deploy the kinetic weapons."
"Kinetic weapons?"
"They attack in waves. If the Bugs can't establish a firm toehold, we can knock down an entire assault force, assuming we have someone who knows what he's doing wielding the multi-filament weaponry. That buys us enough time to repair the armor and get ready for the next attack. Between the advanced defensive ability of the hyper-dense armor and the offensive capability of kinetics, we can live quite happily, right in the middle of their universe."
The agent was silent for a long time. Finally, he slid the printout back across the table. "So what is it you want me to do?"
"I want you to get trained on these tools, deploy them and show the Bugs what human technology is capable of."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then the Bugs win."
The General waited. The agent was good, had a decent poker face, but the General saw that he'd carried the day. There was enthusiasm for the job in those green eyes.
~~~~~~~~~~
The woman in blue silk pajamas asked, "Well? How did it go? Is he going to do it?"
"Of course. He's even eager to get started."
She smiled and came to him. He circled his arms around her as she pressed herself to him. She ran her fingernails up along his scalp, and kissed him, just the way he liked.
"You," she said, "are one devious, manipulative guy. I love that about you, did you know that?"
"Ha. Don't try to fool me, sweetheart. You love me for my body, first, last and always."
"That too. What did you say? How did you convince him? He's so much more stubborn and difficult than any of the others were. I used every trick in the book with this one and I couldn't get through to him."
He looked down into her pale face, her bright green eyes gleaming up at him. He linked his hands at the small of her back and kissed her.
"It's all in how you present it, babe. I just explained to him how cavities develop, how fluoride works and helped him to understand the importance of regular brushing. The next time he goes to see Dr. Goldman, I think his teeth are going to be very, very clean."
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Thank you! These two pieces represent two very different sides of my creative ability: dark and brutal vs. light and whimsical. I'd guess that anyone reading the two side by side might have a hard time believing that one person wrote them both. It's gratifying to hear that they both appeal.
I should note that Ganymeder introduced her son to creative writing and helps him put his work out on the Internet for people to read and comment upon. Sooner or later, the child welfare people will catch wind of this and put a stop to it. Where will the accountants, lawyers and politicians of the future come from if such efforts are not squashed? Until then, however, creativity abounds.
So, the guidelines for this award are that I am to reveal 7 things about myself, and pass the award along. I'm going to take a cue from Alan Baxter and hold off on the list of new nominees. I'll hold this as an option for the future.
The 7 things about me, all perfectly true:
1. When I was hit by a car in 1993, it meant a rather unnerving ambulance ride to the emergency room. The doctors assumed that I had massive bleeding in the brain, since one pupil was dilated significantly more than the other. The only thing that kept them from drilling a hole in my head to let the blood out was the fact that I was awake and articulate. It turns out I just have one weird eye.
2. I was an early adopter of OS/2 and used it as my primary operating system for most of the 1990s. (You don't have to tell me about losing causes.)
3. I bought my current watch primarily because it has a slide rule on the bezel.
4. I earned a Sharpshooter & Marksman's rating when I was 14. What does that mean? It means I could put 9 small holes in a quarter from 50 yards away. That makes me deadly in addition to beautiful.
5. Someone once said that talking to me was like talking to a rock star. I didn't even owe this person any money.
6. Even though I'm regularly asked to write funny things and be funny in public speaking situations, I'm always nervous about doing so.
7. There are a great many things that I'm very good at, but which I don't particularly enjoy doing.
There you have it - the life of a Beautiful Blogger!
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Myra McEntire wrote a blog post decrying Colleen Lindsay's decision to make public her correspondence with an abusive and insulting nitwit. I should note that Myra very carefully did not name any names, provide links, etc., but spoke in general terms about what to do when a nitwit comes calling. Personally, I think the best thing to do with a nitwit is ignore them.
Colleen, however, named the individual, encouraged her hundreds (perhaps thousands) of blog readers and her 17,903 Twitter followers to mock this person, write snarky poems about him, etc. I was aware of Colleen's blog post because it was linked in an RT of an RT. I can only guess how far those RTs spread.
In response to Myra, Colleen self-identified as the person being discussed, which is why I feel comfortable naming names. Colleen responded, in part:
"I treat everyone with the utmost professionalism and respect. Up until the moment that they no longer extend me the same courtesy."
Colleen was the guiding force behind #queryfail. If you don't know what that was, take a Google moment and form your own opinion as to the professionalism and respect of that episode.
What is most notable in Colleen's comment is the part where she denies being in a position of power, since she works evening and weekends and doesn't make a lot of money as an agent. Specifically, in this case:
I am *particularly* not in a position of power over [xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx] as an agent because I had already rejected him (on the basis of his query alone) before he chose to attack me.
And make no mistake - letters like the ones he sent me *are* an attack. It was the same as if he had walked into our offices and started shouting at me to my face.
When someone attacks me? I fight back. Period.
If she had ignored him, or written a nasty note back, or shouted in his face, that would have been fighting back. Even simply posting the correspondence on your blog and linking in your Twitter feed, with its 17,903 readers (and perhaps hundreds of thousands of 2nd order readers), would have been ugly but perhaps still professional.
Launching a vastly disproportionate counter-attack, recruiting those many thousands of people to help you, is irresponsible.
So:
How to behave like a professional: 3 easy steps
1. To the very best of their ability, professionals act like professionals all the time. However funny or clever or satisfying it might be to act like a snarky newbie, save yourself the hassle and don't. This is true in an ephemeral, impulsive environment like Twitter or in something that requires more effort like a blog.
2. Your reputation as a professional will be built up on your 1000 best days, and will be ruined on your 10 worst days. If you are having a bad day, the kind where you might say something damaging or insulting, try not saying anything at all. Turn off the computer and go do some work, or talk a walk or go to a movie.
3. Remember: notoriety is built on attention; reputation is built on respect. If all you have is notoriety, people will want to watch you for your amusing or outrageous antics, but they won't want to work with you. They'll want to work with a professional instead.
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Ricky Gao reached over and slapped Simon. The old man grunted and sucked in a hard breath as both lips split wide. Simon knew Ricky hadn't hit him very hard, but he bruised so easily these last few years, couldn't take a punch like in the old days. It took a long time for the burst of flashing lights to settle and fade, longer still before he could see clearly. He looked up at Tong, watched him try to hide his shock at the blood. No, Simon thought, you didn't intend to see this escalate so quickly, did you? Again, you're not in control of a situation of your own making? Idiot.
Simon moaned, let his head loll over. If they thought he was dying they might untie him. The ropes itched.
Ricky said, "Was she worth it? I really want to know. She always seemed like a pretty cold bitch to me, but if she got all wound up for you, she must have a thing for the grandpa look, huh?"
"That's enough, Ricky."
"But Mr. Tong, all I was -"
"Shut your mouth."
Simon wheezed, letting the blood and saliva spray onto his shirt with each exhalation. He didn't have that many cards to play, and since the blood clearly bothered Tong, Simon wasn't going to let it go to waste.
"Why did you warn her, Simon?"
"Does it matter?"
"Where is she?"
"The only thing I'm sure of is that she's not here. Not yet, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Simon sighed. There was no point in trying to spar with him. He lacked the subtlety to even try to hear what isn't being said. Simon felt a pang of grief that the Organization he'd worked so hard to protect and build was going to be run into the ground by this fool. Thank God he'd be dead soon and wouldn't have to see it all crumble.
"It means," he said, "that Lonnigan is a single-minded young woman and she likes her old Uncle Simon. I'm a thin, gray, spotted old teddy bear, a fond plaything of her youth with which she is loathe to part."
"Don't be a jackass, Simon."
"Don't ask stupid questions, Meng-Shiu. You were planning to kill her, yes?"
Tong maintained a carefully neutral face, but Ricky grinned.
"So, I warned her off. Ideally, I'd have wrapped up my affairs here and also gone into retirement, but life is not always as we would wish it to be, is it?"
"I grabbed the phone from him, Mr. Tong. I could tell he was doing something, but I didn't know what, so I -"
"Shut up, Ricky."
Squinting and jutting out a lower lip was, Simon knew, the Mouse's way of looking calculating. It also covered up a lot of mental wheel spinning when he didn't know what to do. It was pretty late in the day for Tong to realize that he now had no one to advise him, no one who could offer a course of action more subtle than a switchblade.
"What is it with you pre-Plague types?"
"I beg your pardon?" Simon forgot to spit blood, he was so surprised at this non sequitur.
"You. Uncle Qing-Mei. There's no rationality to it. No return on investment. No sense. Lonnigan is the same way, learned it from you, obviously. Why would she come back here just to rescue you? The sensible thing to do is cut her losses and try to disappear. I'll find her, of course, and string her skinny ass up as a trophy, right after I bolt a nanoblock collar on her. She's gonna be a lot of fun for as long as she lasts, but my question to you is, why? Why would she come right back here where she knows I'm waiting for her?"
An alien mind, Simon thought. A cold, wriggling, greedy little alien. Unbelievable.
"When the Silicon Plague hit," Simon said, "your Uncle and I both got lucky, survived without too much in the way of after-effects. With so many dead all up and down the chain, there was a power vacuum; he rose and I rose with him. That struggle taught us the value of loyalty, of trust and respect. When Lonnigan came to us, your Uncle and I both saw potential in her. She took to the instruction we offered. You didn't, as you recall."
"And why should I have listened to you? You sit in your office and push paper around. How would you know what it really takes to command respect in the world?"
"Because I'd already killed twenty-three men before I even met your Uncle, you little shit. When he came over from Beijing he was assigned to me so I could teach him how to be an assassin."
"You killed... wait a minute, you're older than Uncle Qing-Mei? I thought..."
Simon shook his head, wincing at the crick in his neck. Old bones.
"You don't even know the history of your own family, Meng-Shiu, let alone the institutional facts of the Organization. That's why you're such a lousy boss, because you're intellectually lazy."
In a spasm, Tong's Glock was in Simon's face, the barrel two inches from his face, close enough that Simon could smell the metal, traces of leather and gun oil underneath it. The safety was off.
Simon looked up at Tong. "You know," he said, "in all the years I worked for the Jade Prince, as a partner and adviser, we had countless disagreements, many of which led to heated discussions. Only once did he ever pull a gun on me. You can use a gun to end an argument, but that doesn't mean you've won it."
Tong frowned, beads of sweat on his red face as he squinted and puffed his lip. After a full minute, he straightened and put the gun back in its holster on his hip.
"Ricky, take Mr. Simon to the third bedroom on the left."
"Sure, boss." Ricky grabbed Simon under the right arm, jerked him to his feet. Tong's mouth opened as though he were about to say something, then closed again.
Simon stumbled as Ricky forced him along. The ropes dug and cut into the delicate, paper-like skin on his wrists, and he began to bleed underneath them.
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A little while ago, Anne Tyler Lord honored me with the Circle of Friends Award. Anne is one of the bright spots on Twitter, a positive, upbeat and supportive person. Thank you, Anne!
In considering whom to pass this award along to, I've decided to thanks some cities.
Cities?
Yes, cities. Visitors to this site come from all over the world, but in the last year, the top 10 cities have been, in order of frequency:
London, UK
New York, NY
Addison, TX
Bielefeld, Germany
Portland, OR
Gibsonton, FL
Telford, UK
Los Angeles, CA
Atlanta, GA
Batley, UK
All I can say is, if I can have visitors from such a diverse set of countries and cultures and have them come back for more, I must be doing something right. Thank you for all of your support, friends!
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Her glass of pinot gris is almost to her lips when he says it. She almost spills a drop when she stops it without taking her first sip.
"I, uh... I just wanted to ask, I mean, before you drink that, I wanted to ask..."
She lowers the glass, sets it back on the table next to her menu. Off to a poor start, the date is shaping up to be one of those where you drink too much. Now, when the drinks had arrived and they had something to do that would give a perfect excuse for not talking, he wants to talk. His beer sits untouched in front of him.
"Do you want this?"
Unaware and unintentionally comic looking, her eyebrows are up and her mouth is open in surprise. Does she want this? This? Another first date? Another evening wasted, spent dancing the same old stupid dance, circling, posturing? Another night of bad theater, playing the starring role of Single Woman against a fill-in-the-blank guy playing Single Man? Why would she want this?
"Because it looked like you really would have rather had the beer."
Oh. He was asking her if she wanted his beer. Good Lord.
"The only reason I ask is... well, look." He takes a deep breath, then rushes on. "The fact is, I don't really like beer. I ordered it because that's what guys are supposed to drink. Every time I go out on a date I drink beer when I'd really rather be drinking wine. It's stupid that there's a gender thing tied up in it, and maybe it's just me being too concerned with how I'm presenting myself here, and..."
She says nothing, lets him have his say.
"OK, and now I'm talking too much, even before drinking anything. It's just that I thought I saw you hesitate when ordering wine, and then when she brought the drinks, it looked like you would really rather have had the beer. The long and the short of it is, I think I could really get to like you, and I want to get off to a good start." His mouth twisted into a half-smile. "I'd like to get off to any kind of a start on a date without a bunch of b.s., to be perfectly honest. So, what I'm trying to say is, do you want to trade drinks?"
Her answer is not that long in coming, but long enough that it's obvious she is considering carefully how to respond.
"Actually," she says, "I don't really care for beer. I ordered the wine because I like wine."
"Oh. Ah, right. Well... right, sorry." For three seconds, a complicated swirl of emotions plays across his face, ultimately settling on a mixture of disappointment and grim resolution. Another one of those dates where you drink too much.
His bottle of Heineken is almost to his lips when she laughs out loud. He spills a bit onto his lap when he stops it without taking his first sip.
"I'm just kidding," she says. "I would really rather have the beer. I'm just... well, it's hard to admit that someone has you pegged so well."
He grins. She does the same.
The waitress, working up another check over at the cash register, hears the laughter and she smiles. First date. Thank God it seems to be going well. They always tip big when they laugh.
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In a comment on the second installment of "Just Enough Power", Anton Gully said something interesting:
"I find this kind of depressing because I should be reading it in a book not here."
Hmm.
This could mean, "Tony, your writing is so amazing and gripping, you shouldn't be giving it away here, you should get yourself a publisher and an agent who knows something about movie rights."
Or it could mean, "Tony, I hate having to wait to read a story this fantastic in installments, I just want to hoover the whole thing down in one bleary-eyed, stay-up-late-to-finish-it night."
Or it could mean, "Tony, I like short fiction; I don't come to your site to read serials."
I guess I should explain that this serial is born out of the happy marriage of a very well-received FridayFlash and a fully outlined novel that never got written. I was put under the gun by several readers of the first installment of "Just Enough Power" who were asking for a follow-up story in the same vein.
Look, I realize that you might be world-weary and blase about getting fan mail, but I am as yet quite susceptible. For various reasons, I needed to write the sequel early and fast; it occurred to me that I could recycle my novel plot for the purpose.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd abandoned that novel because it wasn't very original or interesting. It lacked something, a spark or freshness that I wasn't able to give it, no matter how jewel-like was my writing.
Enter the flash story. What my novel was missing was some of the sci-fi elements that would elevate a standard noir gangster novel from a regular cheeseburger and fries up to a full rack of ribs drenched in awesome.
The length I had planned for the novel was ~80K. That would mean 80 installments of 1K each. Will I really post that many? Probably not. For example, I don't think I'd be able to adequately lay out the sub-plot about the turncoat federal agent who is a decent enough sex-partner-of-convenience and who may (or may not) be a love interest.
My question to you is: if I were to present the main thread of the plot here, would you then go on to buy the much-expanded novel, with lots more sex, vastly more killing, a touching scene of separation, some Twinkies, and a handful of sharpened pencils used rather abruptly?
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Seven separate signs declared that Franny's Diner 'n Diesel served breakfast all day. Patricia Lonnigan assumed that the coffee was straight from the Diesel half of the establishment. Put on a big urn at sunrise and let it boil for the rest of the day - that was the only way to get a brew like this, thick enough to chew.
I've been waffling on making Just Enough Power into an ongoing serial. Ideally, I'd write the whole thing, then publish it in ~1K episodes, posting them weekly. So as not to interfere with the FridayFlash, Tuesday would be a good day for these.
Having left everyone with a cliff-hanger last week, I feel a sense of obligation to you to let you know what happens. It's not a story that can be told in a single post, believe me.
I'll be honest, though. As much as the idea of a serial, particularly this serial, appeals to me,
A thin cloud of old cigarette ash flew up as Meng-Shiu Tong slapped the newspaper onto his desk. "That fucking little bitch has gone too far this time, Simon. Too far!"
Jolian Simon lowered the sheaf of documents he'd come in to discuss and closed the door behind him. "You mean Lonnigan?"
Tong snatched the paper off his desk and threw it at the old man. "Of course I mean Lonnigan! I specifically told her to put the Acrobat in a coma, and what does she do? She screwed it up. One simple little assignment, and she screwed it up. Look at that, it says he's conscious. Conscious for Chrissakes! I wanted him dead in the first place, I never should have agreed to send in your goddamned prima donna for a simple gun job. Never!"
"She sent a full after action report. The Acrobat is taken care of."
"He's conscious and talking to his family! I wanted him out of action, and he's up kissing his wife!"
Simon shook his head. "The Acrobat is awake, but he's bewildered and terrified. He's not talking to anyone, and he doesn't even recognize his wife," he said. "The spy we planted in the household says the entire family is paralyzed with indecision about what to do."
"I ordered her to put him in a coma, goddamn it."
"Yes, you did. And I seem to recall saying at the time that a coma was no better than dead. If he were just in a coma, instead of shipping him off in a casket, he'd be shipped off to a quiet bed somewhere. Either way he's instantly out of the picture and one of his people would take over. This way, they don't know if he's going to get better or not. That whole organization is out of the picture for the weeks, maybe months for the medical testing, and we'll be able to solidify -"
"Don't you say one more fucking word in defense of her actions, Simon. I have just about had it with both of you."
On the muted television that hung in the place where the bookcases used to be, a smiling woman was excited about the forecast for the next five days. Clear and sunny, although there was a chance for some rain on the weekend.
"If my services are no longer required, Mr. Tong, I -"
"Don't give me that Mr. Tong bullshit, either. You worked for Uncle Quing-Mei until he died, now you work for me until you die, is that clear?"
Simon stooped to pick up the newspaper from the floor.
"Never threaten."
"What?"
"You should never threaten. If you're going to kill someone, just do it. A threat is a warning, and you should never give a warning to a target."
"Don't lecture me on how to run my show, Simon. It's exactly that kind of insubordination that I don't need. I don't want to kill you, I just want your little protege to do as she's told."
"Lonnigan is one of the best operatives this organization has. She's smart, experienced, talented, and fully capable of -"
"Her Talent is a joke. It's like the whole rest of the world has guns and knives and she had a sharpened paperclip."
Simon drew a deep breath before speaking. "It's precisely because it's a low-grade Talent that she's so effective. She's completely outside the arms race among the nanotech weaponry, the Talent booster implants and major native Talents. Those kinds of energies are too easy to detect and defend against, but Lonnigan always has the element of surprise. She's a formidable woman."
"She's a woman, and that's the problem. You can't trust women to do what they're told, they always think they know better than you. I say a coma, she doesn't listen, she gets fancy because she thinks she knows better than me."
"I don't think she intends to be insubordinate. She was just... using her best judgment."
"No! That's not what I want! I don't want people to use their fucking best judgment, I want people to do what the fuck they're told! Why can't she understand that? Why can't you, Simon? What, are you part woman, you gotta question every single goddamn thing I say?"
Simon set his reports on top of one of the piles on the desk. "Your uncle found my counsel useful."
"Counsel, yes. Argument and contradiction, no. It's been almost two years, Simon, what's the matter with you? Why can't you get it? Uncle Quing-Mei isn't running things around here. I am. You do what I tell you to do. Is that clear?"
Lips pursed, Simon squinted at the floor for a moment before speaking. "That's a contact from Sung Bo Kim."
"What is?"
"That." he said, indicating the papers he'd brought in. "Kim is one of Vincelli's biggest allies."
"I know who the fuck Sung Bo Kim is."
"Well, he's prepared to bargain. It seems he went to go visit the Acrobat. He found him healthy looking and conscious, but paralyzed from the waist down and unable to speak or think coherently. The fact that the Acrobat kept pissing himself in terror seems to have affected Kim rather profoundly."
Tong picked up the report, glanced at the first page, then threw it back onto the desk.
"Kim wants to make a deal with you." said Simon. "It's not a bad offer, but we can squeeze a lot more out of him than he's put forward. He's very upset."
"Where is she?"
Simon shrugged. "Not back yet. She's driving instead of flying. It's a security measure."
"I want to see her. Tell her to be here, Thursday night. Ten o'clock."
"Here? Your office?"
"Yes, here, goddamn you, now get the fuck out. You tell her, Simon. Tell her to be here at ten o'clock sharp. I want to debrief her personally about her assignment."
The councilor nodded, as if in thought. "Alright, I'll tell her." He turned to leave. When he was at the door, Tong said, "Oh, and you be here too. I think it would be best if you were here for that particular conversation."
As Simon left, before the door closed behind him, Tong picked up the phone.
Oh my God! I've been incredibly busy the last week or so, and I can FINALLY say why.
Last Thursday, I got an e.mail from the office of Kay Ryan, the Poet Laureate of the United States. As part of a program to re-orient the No Child Left Behind educational reforms, the Obama administration wanted to do away with, or at least de-emphasize, standardized testing. Don't get me started on standardized testing, but OK, fine.
That whole thing had to take a backseat to the health care fight, but now that the new bill on that has been signed into law, Obama apparently wants to come off that bounce and dive right into the education reforms.
So where do I come in? Well, in order to get any Republicans to sign onto this AT ALL, he has to promise a back-to-basics approach that the conservatives will agree to. As it was explained to me, part of that was to include reinstating rote memorization as an instructional tool.
Obama (who is certainly no dummy), wanted to encompass modern teaching methods, yet get Republicans to back the reforms. In what I think is a damned clever move, he is actually putting the Poet Laureate to work as part of this educational reform effort.
It's taken a thousand phone calls and a lot of faxing of contracts (tricky, since I don't have an agent), but to make a long story short, I will give you one guess, ONE GUESS, whose poem about semicolons will be read by Ms. Ryan in the kickoff ceremony at the White House TONIGHT as an example of the kind of teaching tools that can transform American education.
It was brought to her attention after my alma mater, the University of Chicago, featured it on National Grammar Day. Obama taught at the U of C, and apparently surrounds himself with fellow Maroons. I can't know if he himself actually read my "Ode to the Semicolon", but he'll hear it tonight.
I would be so very, VERY much more colloquial in expressing my excitement, were it not for the fact that my visitors have gone from ~20/day to ~9000 in the last 36 hours, since it was announced.
To all of the new guests, welcome! Feel free to check out the links at the top for more information about me and my writing!
For all of my regular readers, I'm sure you won't be surprised when I say that today, April 1, 2010, is a day that I will remember for a long, long time!
I just found out something incredible! =================== It is a day for rumination on the nature of mankind. My first tweet setting up this April Fool's day joke was read by people who follow me on Twitter. Through RTs, it was also read by my 2nd order followers, people who don't follow me directly, but who might be peripherally aware of me.
One of these 2nd order followers ("X") was fooled by the gag. As with everyone who I knew to have been taken in, I contacted X at the earliest possible moment to reveal it to be an April Fools joke. (I have no way of contacting the people who read it, believed it, and went away without commenting or tweeting about it, since I don't know who those people are.) Several of my followers had already publicly tweeted about it being a joke, so the cat was out of the bag, at least to an extent.
It turns out that X doesn't like April Fools day. The jokes, the gags, the attempts to lure people into believing things that aren't true - all of this makes this the worst day of the year for X. In fact, X feels that, in the case of a writer with a blog, an April Fool's joke is not just a silly piece of throw-away stupidity, as in the case of the iCade Arcade Cabinet.
The theory goes that, specifically for writers, running the risk of alienating forever a fraction of the people who read (and fall for) the joke. That fraction of people will now associate me with a stupid April Fool's joke, rather than with the deathless, inspiring prose for which I have heretofore been so widely admired. As a consequence, when my Great American Novel comes out, those people will think, "Ah, he's that jackass who pranked me. I will not buy this book!"
With respect to this lingering distaste for me and my work, X feels that the fault is not with X for X’s reaction, but rather with me for having put an April Fool’s joke on my blog. Or maybe it’s for having made the joke about my work, instead of about something unrelated. Or maybe it’s because the joke was too plausible. Hard to tell.
I follow X, but X doesn’t follow me. X expresses opinions in a forthright manner, and this is no exception. I will admit that such forthrightness directed at ME is a little uncomfortable, but such is life. I’d like to say two general things about X’s response.
First, X expressed these opinions about this joke, and about me, without naming names. There was no "that Tony Noland is an asshole". Rather, X used this episode as a starting point for a discussion about the impact of our actions in the public sphere, and how it could impact our careers as writers. That discussion is a useful one to have.
Second, this is not the first prank posting I've done, nor do I expect it to be the last. I didn't intend to be mean-spirited about this joke, and I made a reasonable effort to telegraph it as a gag. Perhaps those who don't know me and my sense of humor didn't catch on instantly. Many people did, and thought it funny, to one degree or another.
So, what conclusion do I draw? It's not that I need to stop making jokes, or change my sense of humor. It's that you can't please everyone, and changing your style in order to avoid offending a small percentage of potential readership will suck the life out of you and your writing.
It's raining in Philadelphia this morning, so I don't actually need this today. On other days, though, particularly rushed, crowed, horrible days, a session at RainyMood.com is perfect for relaxation and recovering focus.
This science fiction adventure ran as a serial on Twitter, March 24-26, 2010. Each episode was posted hourly, around the clock, tracked by the hashtag #run. This was an experiment in 24/7 engagement, author to reader. Did you see it on Twitter? Did it work? Feel free to leave a comment, brief or extensive, to let me know what you thought of the content, form or logistics. Suggestions for future serials are welcome.
Update: A special tip of the hat to @Doublelattemama and to @FutureNostalgic for their enthusiastic support of this story with RTs and the #runpancakes hashtag on Sunday, March 28, 2010. PJ and Sam, thank you! ========================
#run The sole of my right shoe flaps with every stride. I hadn't wanted to run barefoot so soon, but so be it. At least I'll be quieter.
#run I push the shoes into a snowdrift. The spies won't be able to get anything from them. The bugs are strictly intramuscular.
#run Rock salt digs into my heels, even through the calluses. Road crews must have been out prepping for the ice storm.
#run I've been running since midnight, but now I've got a strong, icy tailwind. Only another 35 miles to go. The wind chill feels great.
#run I know I won't really need to eat for another couple of days, but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break, even now. I miss coffee.
#run The gallon of molasses and rum I drank is keeping the bugs happy, thank God. So much easier and faster than eating four jars of jam.
#run I should get off this road before the sleet gets much worse. I don't want to be seen by someone pretending to be a simple jogger.
#run Gasping, grunting as they run, pushing through the pain of the wall, getting that sweet rush of a second wind. I remember it all.
#run The poisonous buildup of lactic acid in muscles pushed past the brink of failure - burning, tearing pain. I remember that, too.
#run Now, when it's too late, when I can't feel either pleasure or pain when I run, I wish yet again that I'd never taken that contract.
#run It was natural that they came to me. How many molecular biophysicists are also mammalian physiologists who run marathons?
#run Such a ridiculous idea. Nineteen separate grant proposals rejected! And then came the Army, with gobs of money and infinite patience.
#run "Sure, I can make your soldiers tireless and unstoppable. What's holding them back is how their muscles work." God, what a fool I was.
#run If the money had come from a company, they would have wanted results sooner, and I never would have been able to do it.
#run The nanoengineered retroviruses worked as my simulations predicted. Only on the forty-first round of testing on mice, but regardless.
#run The necropsies showed the virally-enhanced streptococci had invaded all of the muscles, and were happily degrading the lactic acid.
#run Without any buildup of metabolic toxins, the muscles could go at 140% forever, or until the cells started to tear themselves apart.
#run As long as their blood supplied their muscles with glucose and oxygen, the mice could happily run four mouse-marathons in a row.
#run Invasion of the cardiac muscle was a surprise, but their improved hearts turned out to be a complementary, even synergistic mutation.
#run Synergistic coordination of degradation. It amazes me that I used to talk like that. I had no idea what that would really mean.
#run The mice were willing, even eager to run for hours and hours. I was blind. I paid no attention to that eagerness, that compulsion.
#run Army doctors didn't understand what I'd done and were skeptical about the results. If only I hadn't been so arrogant, gotten so angry!
#run It was so childish, injecting myself with the culture, just so I could show them it worked on humans. I had no idea what I was doing.
#run None of the mice had shown any notable discomfort, let alone the kind of incredible agony that makes you wish for death.
#run Every muscle in my body, even the little ones in my feet, pulsing and throbbing like I'd been dipped in flaming kerosene.
#run When it stopped, it was like turning off a switch. I expected to be sore for days from those horrible muscle cramps. Instead… nothing.
#run That first run afterwards, the one I took to clear my head - that was like a dream. Ten miles in fifty-five minutes, and I felt great!
#run I was itching to show those smug Army guys how well it had worked, hungry to prove myself. Itching and hungry - that's how it started.
#run I was ravenous, but I vomited everything up. Steak, salad, even the toast and coffee. It was the last coffee I ever had…
#run The only thing that tasted good was maple syrup with vodka. I had five. My gut churned, but I felt no pain. Just the itch to run.
#run They doubted me, said they'd cut the funding. I blew off steam with fifteen miles in the morning, another eighteen that afternoon.
#run I know I sounded crazy in the final conference call. I was on my cell, talking as I ran. The itch was so bad, how could I *not* run?
#run My heart ached, my legs burned unbearably. Initially, a steady pace of 160 beats per minute scratched the itch. Then it took 170.
#run The sun rises, blocked by a thick mass of sleet-heavy clouds over my shoulder. My training watch says 205 bpm. Another 24 miles to go.
#run Every runner I see - they're all Army spies. They think I don't know that they're watching me, waiting for me to stop. But I know.
#run There's one, heavily swathed against the sleet. She stares at my bare feet, T-shirt and shorts as I sprint past. She is one of theirs.
#run No Army simpleton is going to pretend not to believe me, then take credit for my work! I burned down the lab at the University. Ha!
#run My order from the wholesaler arrived yesterday. Fourteen pallets of Briar Rose Black Molasses, thirty cases of generic 151 rum.
#run I have everything I need. Glucose, alcohol and space to run, to work, to sweat, to give the bugs the lactic acid they need.
#run The sleet is so thick now, I can barely see. The road is so slippery, I feel like I'm swimming. Faster… I have to go faster!
#run I'm right here, jerkface - get on your own side of the road. Hey, look out, you fool, look out! LOOK OUT!
#run Ahhh… what happened?… Blood? A car?... I have to get out of this ditch, must get up, must run, must… where is my left leg?
#run Somebody, please help me… no, not the blood, I have to get up… the pain is unbearable… the itching… please - help me run… please…
This concludes "The Running Bug". For more fiction, visit http://www.TonyNoland.com #run
============================= I really do want to know what you think, so please feel free to comment, ask a question, make a suggestion for next time, anything at all. Thanks!
On my computer, I have hundreds of thousands of words, encompassing a hundred stories in various genres (a handful of which were published), a dozen novel outlines (most of which were shelved after 10-15K of actual prose), two novels at ~50K completed first draft stage.
But no finished novel.
I think it's time I faced the fact that I haven't finished a novel - "finished" being defined as "written, re-written, edited, re-edited & polished" - for one simple reason. It's not that I don't have time (although I never have enough), or ideas or skills sufficient.
It's that I'm scared.
I'm not nearly so bold and confident a writer as I pretend to be. [Oh, don't act so surprised. I'm as human as you are.]
The first stuff I wrote was lousy, but at the time I thought it was great. I still feel the need to apologize to everyone on whom I forced my first NaNoWriMo effort. Having recognized that I needed to develop my skills, I stepped back to the short story, then to flash.
While I can't claim to have mastered the flash form, I can be confident that I'm pretty good at it. So, now that I've gotten good at driving around on quiet suburban streets, it's time to get out into real traffic. If you never buck up enough courage to get onto the freeway, you will forever be stuck in the sticks.
Everywhere that's interesting, enlightening or fascinating requires movement in order to get there.
Two inches of twenty year old scotch in a chipped glass. A twelve dollar cigar brought to life with a disposable plastic lighter. Aderesto "The Acrobat" Vincelli's big leather chair groaned as he leaned back. He squinted through the first clouds of gray-blue smoke at the woman in front of him. Unlike so many who had been on that hard wooden stool, she wasn't hiding utter terror with a pretense of calm. Her hands, her eyes, her neck: these told the Acrobat that she wasn't pretending. She truly wasn't scared, not of him nor of Benny's 9mm.
Which meant she was either crazy or powerful. The uncertainty was her protection for the next three minutes.
"Sounds like a load of crap to me."
She inclined her head before responding, as though he'd merely voiced an opinion instead of a death sentence.
"Oh? I'm surprised you take that position."
"Shut the fuck up. I had you scanned before you were brought in here, you know that?"
"I assumed as much."
"Then don't try to bullshit me. I know you got nothing. No weapons, either external or internal. No psi-booster circuitry, no nanotech, no artifacts of any kind. So don't tell me you're some kind of messenger assassin when you got nothing to do your killing with."
She nodded. "I see."
"Well? Is that all you got to say? Tell me why I shouldn't duct tape your face and give you to my boys for a week before I send what's left of you back to Meng-Shiu and tell him what he can do with his 'message', whatever it is."
"It's my job to deliver Mr. Tong's message. As it happens, I do have one minor native Talent."
One second later, Benny's nine was up and against her temple, pushing her head slightly to the right.
The tip of the Acrobat's cigar brightened and dimmed.
"Bullshit. The scanners would have spotted any significant concentration of native Talent organelles."
She shrugged with her eyebrows, not moving her head."Like I said, it's a very minor Talent, a rudimentary form of shielding."
Benny's finger pressed against the trigger, held taut and steady.
"Again, I call bullshit. If you had power sufficient to project a bulletproof shield, I'd know it."
"Oh, it's not bulletproof, not even close. However, it's more than strong enough for me to do my job."
The Acrobat's eyes flicked and Benny pulled the trigger. The guide rod shot forward on its spring and the firing pin struck, coming within one sixty-fourth of an inch of the round in the chamber. The impact made an echoing musical note, like that of a small bell rung at the bottom of a lake. The thug drew back his arm to smash the useless pistol across the bridge of her nose. His own momentum carried him backwards as the nerve impulses at the base of his brain met a barrier they could not cross. He hit the floor, twitching.
The woman stood gracefully, taking a moment to watch Benny's eyes widen and weep as his heart and lungs lost their coordination. To her side, the soft ringing echoed as the Acrobat pulled the trigger of the .38 revolver he'd yanked from his desk drawer. He threw the gun at her and missed. Ducking down, he stabbed again and again at the red alarm button under his desk, but the contacts would not close, the signals would not travel down the wires.
She stepped over Benny's twitching soon-to-be-corpse and came around the desk. The Acrobat had stopped moving. His head flopped over as he looked up at her.
"You're a healthy man, Mr. Vincelli. Even after I've finished paralyzing you from the waist down, in all likelihood you'll live another ten or fifteen years. Of course, you won't be aware of them. I'm also going to pinch off the blood supply to some of the more important centers of your brain. In a few minutes, you won't be able to process language, recognize faces or build long-term memories anymore. All of this will be accomplished with a single stroke, if you'll forgive the pun." She smiled.
Around a mouthful of drool, the Acrobat mumbled, "... kill me... instead..."
"I'm afraid I can't do that. Mr. Tong's instructions were quite specific about the message I'm to send."
Intelligence fading, his eyes formed the last question he would ever have the capacity to ask.
"Oh, the message isn't for you. It's for Mr. Tong's other competitors, the ones of actual significance. You are the message, one they'll be able to contemplate for a good long time. Goodbye, Mr. Vincelli."
I was going to post about the editing process for my Chinese Whisperings story. Versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. differentiate themselves with increasingly kaleidoscopic overlays of editor Jodi Cleghorn's additions, deletions, comments and notes, then my responding additions, deletions, comments and notes, all in various shades of red & blue. I had screenshots and everything.
Alas, when I composed the blog post, although the text in the screenshots was very blurry, you could just barely make out what it said. So, in the interests of keeping things secret until the book comes out later this year, no screenshots.
However, I will say that my first draft was 5000 words, which I cut to 4800, then to 4300. That's what I sent to Jodi. Notwithstanding the fact that she felt my text was "tight" and the dialogue "mesmerizing" (ahem: woot.), Jodi cut it to 4100, with suggestions for more cuts and a target of 3650. I'm now at 3747 and will try to shave off another 100 before returning it to Jodi.
As promised, it's not just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Somebody vomits, too.
UPDATE: Finished the cuts and edits, ending this round at 3636 words. Go me! What a remarkably kick-ass story this is!
UPDATE: This story has been published in the anthology, "100 Stories for Queensland", a collection published in 2011 to benefit the victims of devastating floods. You can find all the information necessary here.
Believe me, you want to go buy this anthology, not just because it's in service of a really good cause, but because my story is really sexy and funny. You should buy the book for my story alone. Seriously. Don't believe me? Just read the comments to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Over on Jim Wisneski's Soft Whisperings is a special anthology for today, "The UnLuck of the Irish". It features plenty of dark and disturbing twists on Irish folklore, including one by yours truly, entitled "What the Wind Knows, It Cannot Tell".
Half a sausage pizza and seven beers into the evening, Peters was bored. He put a DVD into his laptop, adjusted his headphones and started to watch a sermon on forgiveness and tolerance. He fast-forwarded, skipping to the middle.
“- for then as for now. Jesus was speaking to you! Reaching out over the centuries to put these words in YOUR heart! In today’s reading from Luke, the thirteenth chapter, Jesus tells a story of a tree that produces no good fruit. So what does the master do? He orders the gardener to cut it down, stop wasting the soil, get a better tree in there. He wants a return on his investment, doesn’t he?
But the gardener says, no sir, give that tree another chance, sir. I’ll feed it, and water it and take care of it, sir. Give it another chance, sir, another chance to produce. If it does, well and good. If not? Zip! Onto the fire! Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, when you hear that story, where are YOU? Where are YOU in that story?
I know what you’re going to say, you’ll say, Pastor Jim, that’s an easy one! I’m that sad and sorry tree, the one that’s letting everyone down. The master is God who’s ready to cut me down, and the gardener is Jesus who’s come to redeem and save me. And if I don’t do good, zip! Onto the fire I’ll go! And I’ll say good for you, that’s a good interpretation.
But hold the phone! I say, hold the phone just a minute, brothers and sisters. Is that all this gospel has for you? Not at all! There is more to this than meets the eye! What if you aren’t the tree? What if you, and I mean YOU, born a sinner the same as I was, what if YOU... are the gardener? What if Jesus is asking YOU to step up and feed your fellow man? Feed him and protect him and support him? To hold him accountable, sure, but to begin... with love?
Or what if YOU are the master? After all, what did the master do? He called it like he saw it, and was all set to do the right thing according to the world's values, the correct thing, the profitable thing! But what did he end up doing? Why, he stayed his hand! He tempered justice... with mercy. Mercy, brothers and sisters! He listened to the gardener who said, oh, no, give this poor wretched sinner of a tree just one more chance! The master turned aside from a straight profit and loss mentality, a return on investment mentality, a worldly mentality and accepted the notion of mercy that the gardener offered.
Don’t you see, brothers and sisters? We find so much in the Gospels if we only open our hearts to Jesus and let him –“
Peters paused the DVD, Pastor Jim Dennet frozen on-screen, open-mouthed and sweaty. The guy had more charisma than three politicians. These inspirational DVD sold plenty; between them, the books and subscribers to the newsletters and websites, Dennet’s ministries made more than thirty million dollars a year.
He looked over at Dennet's daughter, finally asleep on the bed. He'd give it another twelve hours, then call again with the next set of instructions.
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” – William Shakespeare
“You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want.” – Anon.
There is no shortage of writing advice out there. Books, websites, blogs a’plenty will give you all of the secrets of writing success. How to boost your productivity, improve your focus, raise your quality, etc., etc. One of the chestnuts I’ve come across more than once is “avoid skipping around genres”. Pick a genre and stick with it. If you write sweet and sappy, your readers will come to expect sweet and sappy. You need to keep writing sweet and sappy (and ONLY sweet and sappy) to develop a following.
If you should ever write anything weird and spacey, or sexy and scary, or (God forbid) something gruesome and ugly, you’ll just piss everyone off and alienate your readers. Your original readers will abandon you and you won't get any new ones because your body of work is too inconsistent.
Disembodied Voice of Reason: “Whoa, Tony, hold on, you really went off the rails there. Are you OK?”
Tony Noland: “Fine! I’m fine! Never better!”
DVR: “You don’t sound fine.”
TN: “I'm just getting a little frustrated with conflicting advice. I asked about writing in multiple genres in an #agentchat on Twitter. I got opposite advice from two different agents. I should say, from two people who identified themselves as agents. I’m trying to find my way as a writer, trying to find my voice, whatever the hell that means. I'd like to avoid making rookie mistakes that I'll just have to spend a bunch of time and energy correcting later on.”
DVR: “I know you, Tony. You want to avoid making any mistakes at all. That damned 'zero defects' standard of yours has gotten you into more trouble than your smart mouth. Regardless, what’s your problem here?”
TN: “The problem is that I’ve written a bunch of different stories in different genres, and several of them have gone over pretty well.”
DVR: “Why is that a problem? I would have thought you’d be happy with a positive response to your fiction.”
TN: “I am! It’s just that I don’t want to write in just one genre all the time. I get lots of ideas, see? Some of them are happy, some sad, some kind of scary or ugly. I don’t want to be pigeonholed.”
DVR: “Has that been a problem? Are people upset because you’re put up different types of writing?”
TN: “Not exactly, but every now and then someone says something like, ‘Tony, if you wrote stuff like this [i.e. this genre] all the time, I’d come back more’ or ‘Tony, you are very, very good at [specific genre], you should write more of it’ or ‘Gee, Tony, this is so much better than that [other genre] story you wrote last week, this is your true calling’. It just makes me worry that I get too many people who read one or two stories, but don’t come back because they get turned off by a story that’s not what they were expecting.”
DVR: “So, you aren’t happy with the loyalty of your readership? Or is it the growth rate of your readership?”
TN: “I’m just worried that I’m doing this wrong!”
DVR: “Doing what wrong? What exactly are you concerned about?”
TN: “Just… everything! All that advice that says don’t switch genres!”
DVR: “What advice? You mean the stuff at the top of this blog post?
Pick a genre and stick with it. If you write sweet and sappy, your readers will come to expect sweet and sappy. You need to keep writing sweet and sappy (and ONLY sweet and sappy) to develop a following. If you should ever write anything weird and spacey, or sexy and scary, or (God forbid) something gruesome and ugly, you’ll just piss everyone off and alienate your readers.
That advice?”
TN: “Yes, that advice. Look at me, look at this blog, then look at that advice, and tell me I’ve got nothing to worry about!
DVR: “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
TN: “Oh, thanks a lot. That helps tremendously, really, it does.”
DVR: “Relax, Shakespeare. Two things, OK? First, that advice is passed around by agents who are thinking of the marketability of their authors, not their creativity. It’s not intended to be a straightjacket to prevent you from exploring your writing wherever your imagination takes you. Some writers work exclusively in one color: butterfly-pastels, FM-red, bone bruise-purple or some other shade. Others jump around. One kind of writer isn’t necessarily better or more noble or talented than another. It’s just that people are different. If you want to write different things, why not?”
TN: “But the logic of that doesn’t hold up. If sticking to one genre supports the marketability of the writer, then by posting my variety of stories here, I’m working against myself!”
DVR: “Ah, that brings me to point number two. You aren’t understanding the advice properly.”
TN: “I’m not?”
DVR: “No. The advice shouldn’t be taken to read, ‘write only in one genre’. The advice is actually, ‘publish only in one genre’. They’re talking about publications. Putting stuff up on your own blog doesn't count. Have you published any of these stories?”
TN: “Well, a couple of them.”
DVR: “So don’t worry about it. This is a playground, for you to have fun and get some exercise. Finding your voice means getting comfortable with writing prose that sounds like YOU, not like you trying to channel Wodehouse or Asimov or Trollope or McPhee. You need some time and space to do that, to work out what direction you want to go in. You can write whatever you want; this advice applies only to material you’re publishing. Writing and publishing are two different things.”
TN: “So… I don’t need to worry about genre hopping until I want to publish my books?”
DVR: “Exactly. Even then, you can still write whatever you want; just give it some time and sit on the material that’s outside of your main racket. Publish it later, after you’re so famous with one kind of writing that the genre switch will be taken as a sign of your genius and flexibility, instead of a sign of your inability to concentrate.”
TN: “Wow. I guess I never thought about it that way before. I really shouldn’t stress out about this stuff so much, huh?”
DVR: “It’s OK, Tony. It just shows that you care, that you’re interested in doing good work.”
Flash fiction usually has a clever twist at the end. That's good, right? Not so fast, says PJ Kaiser.
A few weeks ago, I started perusing some of the magazines listed at Duotrope’s Digest and I came across several magazines and online sites that admonish writers to avoid O. Henry endings.
The first one or two times I saw this warning, I didn’t take much notice. But then as I began to see the same message over and over, I tried to interpret its meaning. I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t violating some sort of unwritten – or, in some cases, written – rule with my stories.
5. Reconsider the “Please comment!” request. “People are happy to comment on my fiction; less so on other posts/articles,” says writer and blogger Tony Noland. “My opinion and an open question helps prompt discussion. On fiction, I state clearly that comments and constructive criticism are welcome – such as on The Green Fields of Home." He adds that on other posts he’s not as overt, and thinks it seems desperate to say, ‘Please comment!’”
The other 7 tips are quite useful, too. Check them out.
Bear in mind, I make no claims to be an expert in how to get readers to comment on posts. All I can do is put up quality content, let people know about it and create conditions conducive for commenting.
Is that enough? Or should I do more? Would more encouragement to comment be inviting or annoying?
Please comment!
NOTE: I don't even know why I feel it necessary to point out that there's a joke at the end up there. You guys should be familiar with my sense of humor by now.
Eleven dead flies lay on the floor in front of the judge. Charlie Lund figured they were real, though no one else noticed them. Well, someone else might have noticed them, but had pretended not to. People frequently pretended not to see things, even things that were really, truly there. The more uppity the person, the more likely it was they would pretend not to see.
The flies made a kind of a pattern on the floor, with glowing blue and green lines connecting them. The lines were Not-Real, so they were all for him; he was sure no one else could see them. The lines jiggled in time with the voice of the lawyer They'd given him.
Popping and slipping, the lines moved from fly to fly like an electric connect-the-dots. At first they made different shapes dancing among the tiny corpses. After a bit, they settled down, the green lines making a bent sort of "C" and the blue lines that wove among them making a lopsided "L". He thought that was pretty funny, that the dead flies were spelling out his initials with their glowing lines.
It was like they were cheering him on, his own private fan club, shouting his name out in their buzzing little dead fly voices. He smiled at that, but the judge looked at him when he did. After that, he didn't smile, but used his paying-close-attention face. He looked from his lawyer to the judge and back, and only watched the cheering dead flies sidelong like.
The judge was a woman. That was the capper as far as Charlie was concerned. That was just the absolute cherry on top. It was bad enough he had a lawyer who was probably a fag. There had to be a dozen judges who could have sat as the head of his parole board, maybe a hundred. He knew why They had made sure he got a whore for a judge and a fag for a lawyer. It was because They liked seeing him squirm; he was a danger to Them and They knew it. He could see Them among normal people and he knew how much of society They controlled. They wanted him to crack, stay locked away. Well, he would show Them this time.
He would be cool cool cool, and he would get out. And then things would be different. Oh, yes. Very different.
Silence stretched out; the judge was waiting for him to speak. Charlie pursed his lips and got to his feet. As he did, the dead flies lifted up from the floor, swooping and calling his name. He was thrilled that they were Not-Real, too. Charlie faced the judge and folded his hands, holding his smile inside as the dead flies crawled all over the judge's snotty bitch face. The glowing strands flowing from them braided themselves into a spiky noose around her neck. The flies were chanting his name, saying Charlie-Charlie-pull-the-noose-tight, Charlie-Charlie-pull-the-noose-tight...
But he couldn't do that. Not here. Not yet. Not until later, after he found out where the judge lived.
With his serious-but-really-sorry look firmly fixed, Charlie drew a deep breath and began to ask for his freedom.
Happy Grammar Day! You, as a loyal (or not so loyal) reader can celebrate this occasion with my "Ode to the Semicolon" and... wait for it... THIS PARAGRAPH! That's right, I said, "This paragraph." This paragraph contains as many grammatical tricks - not to mention punctuation marks - as I can squeeze in. It's not that I'm merely wild about grammar; I love punctuation, too. I can even do an interrobang; isn't that cool‽ People who can join in the fun: you & all your friends.
Don't wait! Go hug a grammarian today! If you don't, you'll look back with regret; the time that you would have been spending doing so will have been worth it!
Right, this is more creative performance art and music than creative writing, but it's pretty cool. It's an astonishing Rube Goldberg machine, and it's terrific.
Final result: "In Defense of Flash Fiction", my essay for the "Why I Write" contest over at Editor Unleashed, finished with 27 votes and a score of 2.89, a bit below "Average".
This result puts me near the bottom of the field. I'd hoped to do better, but as of this writing, the essay got 559 views. Even if I assume that 70% (well, OK, 85%) of the people who read it think that I'm a no-talent hack (or worse), that still leaves a hundred people on the good side. That kind of exposure is a decent enough ROI for this contest.
Scoring/ranking by the community is part of the judging process. Winners will be announced later this week.
I offer my congratulations to the eventual winner, the runners-up and to everyone who participated.
