Making use of recovery

I'm now into my third week of convalescence. Chaffing a bit. Feeling bored with baby steps and caution and sensibility. Needs must behave, allow myself to heal and fully recovery before leaping off into the great beyond.

So it is I find myself confined to the first and second floors of The Old Stone House, the loft which is my office banned for now. That means the majority of my day to day work routine is verboten, not just because of inability to access the space, but also to pace myself.

I've decided to take advantage of this forced confinement and finish the first draft of The Rose Guardian. Truthfully I'm almost there. All that's required is about another 30,000 words, which is the linking sections to tie together the three narratives of this story. Given I have another three to five weeks in my convalescence, I think it not unreasonable to be able to finish. Then off to Robert for first reading and editing.

We'll see how that plan plays out.

Progress report: The Rose Guardian

After many long months of cogitation, I have finally touched fingers to keyboard again and finished one of the narratives for my current work-in-progress, The Rose Guardian. 

This section was especially difficult for me, as the narrative is constructed entirely of journal entries, and so carrying plot and tension through a very focused voice took a great deal of restraint. I think, however, I have the bones of it done, am pleased with the overall tone, enough I can now move on to the dream-time narrative of the story, the dark fantasy.

I must be honest and admit I have never struggled so hard with a work as I have with this. Sometimes I've thought I'm perhaps being too caught up in technique and device. At others I've known my instinct to write this story through three distinct narratives is the right choice, albeit challenging.

But we'll see, won't we?

Still and all, I'm pleased.

The Rose Guardian progress

Finally back in the writer's chair after long weeks away. Have been searching for a work-around to the problem created by this frustrating D-Link router which won't let me access the main computer from the laptop.

So why not work from the office on the weekends? Well, cause the office is on the third floor, I'm arthritic, and want to be in the thick of what goes on in the house during the weekend, and don't want the temptation of doing work for the publishing house instead of writing.

Then, voila, lightning struck my brain! Doh! Why not use DropBox for The Rose Guardian files (thanks to J.W.Schnarr for this oblique epiphany) and access them remotely from the laptop on the main floor. Brilliant.

Did I say how much I love DropBox?

Was able to work in my favourite channel back chair in the dining-room. Bashed out nearly 1200 words of solid story. Very happy with that. And very much look forward to another wee go round after I put together green pea soup, and set rice pudding to baking.

So, months of cogitating have helped. DropBox has helped. Feeling very confidant this novel which has been in the works some three years now will finally come to fulfilment by end of February. Then my first reader will review and I'll set to a revision. Should have the revision to Robert Runte by fall I expect. Depending on his schedule, I may have a novel ready for publication by spring of 2015.

Anyone who thinks writing is easy is just plain insane.

Aiming the pistol at the foot

Despite all my bluster chivvying authors into brave faces, preaching that the un-achievable is attainable, when it comes to my own career as an author I tend to shrink back into the shadows. I have no idea why I do that. But I do. Always have. Call it a character flaw.

However, every now and again I emerge from my cave, or shell, or whatever, and decide, HEY! I can DO THIS! And I summon courage and analyze stories and send out submissions to magazines, collections and the like, keeping careful log of their journeys through an Excel spreadsheet (yes, yes, I know all about Obsessive Compulsion Disorder.)

The current attempt to shoot off my feet comes in the form of the call for submissions for the Tesseracts 18 anthology. I've been trying to break that market ever since Judy Merrill first launched it way back. No joy. And I doubt very much there will be joy this time, but the point is I've at least tried.

Lester B. Pearson, former Prime Minister of Canada, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, once said: The only failures are those who fail to try.

Hon. Lester B. Pearson

So Lester, ol' bean, old sport, I'm trying. I don't hold out much hope. But to the best of my knowledge I've targeted the right story for the right market.

Of course, this comes on the heels of finding out all the primary round of rejections for the Fearful Symmetries anthology have taken place, and the remaining 355 stories are either still being considered, or have now been forwarded to editor, Ellen Datlow. In this case, no news is good news.

Now, there is a synchronicity about the fact I haven't heard thing one as yet regarding my submission to that heady anthology, because back in the day when Omni was the nirvana of short speculative fiction (I was at Clarion the year Ted Chiang made his first short story sale with the first short story he'd ever written, which was to none other than Ellen Datlow at Omni) I had dreams of maybe, one day, breaking into that market, of having someone like Ellen Datlow pat me on the head and reward my closet scribblings with publication. Alas, it never happened.

Ellen Datlow

But here the gyre curves round again, and I find myself in six degrees of separation.

Dear god, there are days I truly wonder why I do this? Why do I peck at the keyboard, dreaming dreams of people and places, of hurt and triumph, of destinies and deeds? Why answer the sibilant whispers in my head who constantly narrate stories for which I am but a vehicle? I don't know.

But somewhere between editing other authors' stories, creating print layouts, rounds of meetings and discussions and all the trappings of being a publisher, I still pursue this calling of being a story-teller. Keep writing. Just keep writing. And the foot? Ack. It will heal.

All my life's a rejection

That mantra seems to be the life of a writer, or at least of this writer. My most recent addition to this remarkable collection of rejections is for a humourous little story I wrote, ostensibly for Tesseracts 16: Parnassus Unbound, called Occupational Hazards, a tale about drinking inappropriate quantities of tea at inappropriate times while trying to meet deadlines.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre, good egg and hugely knowledgeable fellow, wrote, among other things:

While, traditionally, this is a "rejection" you should know that your story stood above hundreds of others that were sent in and is something you should be proud of. I am honoured to have been able to seriously consider it and look forward to seeing where it ends up being published.

So, taking that encouragement to heart, I've sent it out to a large American magazine, submitted through their online form, and will wait the few days it's allegedly going to take to hear that 'no, sorry, not quite right for us.'

Positive attitude, eh?

Well, one thing good about having written a pack of short stories this past few months is that, if nothing else, I'll have another bunch to put together into a collection. And then I can have reviewers on Goodreads make comments like they did for And the Angels Sang:

• needlessly densely written.
• Stephens’ creations pool into a cooling diversion while being highly meromictic. (What the blazes does that mean?)
• The short, sci-fi stories contained in this book shuffled between really interesting and engrossing to boring and difficult to follow.
• dealt with some potentially controversial religious themes.

Yeah, definitely not feeling the love. My daughter says I need to dumb down my writing. I shake my head and think that sounds dumb.

Whatever. I keep writing in the closet and stuffing the pages out under the door.

Getting Down to the Business of Writing

Since my last post I've taken advantage of the lull between Five Rivers' publishing projects to work on my own writing. It's amazing what you can achieve with a little will power and discipline. In about 10 days I've:

• Finished the first revision of my novella, Caliban. This is a speculative fiction dealing with the concepts of reality and beauty, through the voice of an alien creature known as Tine. It has been challenging writing from an alien perspective about another alien, which has required a willingness on my part to set aside all human prejudices and become these other creatures, to imagine what life would be like confined to their realities. When I played let's pretend as a little girl, I had no idea that play would lead to a necessary skill as a spec-fic writer. So, first revision is done, but just when I thought the novella was ready to fire off to an editor, I realized I'd forgotten to weave in some key technical elements, and so will now go back over the story with a view to tightening up not only the technology, but the environment I've created. If you're going to build it, you have to make it real enough your reader will step through the looking glass with you.
• Spent some time researching markets and found a potential home for one of my speculative short stories, At Union. I particularly like this story. Think it's a new twist on an old theme, given to me in part through a nightmare of my daughter's, and deal with trains, resurrection and a father's love.
• In that research I found an anthology open for submission, with a theme that perfectly fits another short story, A Perfect Spell, I'd originally written for, and didn't submit to Tesseracts15. Hoping the story will find a home with this new anthology. I think it's a happy match, but I'm all too aware that my idea of perfection is often familiar.
• During all of that I managed to complete a new short story, Occupational Hazards, this one a bit of a departure for me because no one dies, no one cries, no meets tragedy and despair. In fact, I think it's quite humourous, written from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator. I've now sent it to Robert Runte for comment, as he's brutally honest and often sees things I don't. It's really awful of me to ask him to do this, as he's so ridiculously busy himself. Still, I'm hoping he'll find enough merit in the story that I can set to a small revision and then fire it off to the anthology for which I've targeted it.
• And today, while this lull lasts, I'll work on completing yet another short story, Haki's Song, which is a speculative fiction dealing with L'Anse aux Meadows, based partly on people from The Greenland Saga, and partly on the clash between slave and master, cultures and belief systems.

Am I still working on The Rose Guardian? Yes. But as I've written before, that novel is a challenge for me, requiring more of my skill as a writer than ever before. Consequently I've been spending a great deal of time preoccupied with it, letting it percolate in my subconscious where I'm working out voice, plot details, pacing. I still feel it will be the best thing I've written to date. It's just going to take me awhile to get there.

Of course late next week I'll have to put back on my publisher's hat and set to work on the next projects for Five Rivers. But while this sun shines, I'll make some hay of my own.

Switching Stories

My desk, where it all happens.

There is a bit of a lull between books at Five Rivers at the moment, allowing me some time to devote to my own writing. It's always a challenge to find time to write.

I've been thrashing around with a new novel for about two years now (blogged about that previously here), and tried returning to it now. To put it bluntly, I foundered. There's a huge emotional investment in that novel, and I find myself avoiding it. So rather than let this opportunity evaporate, I decided to unearth a novella I'd written 20 years ago.

Originally titled Dreamweaver, I decided to call it Caliban instead, given the nature of my main character and the theme of the story which questions what is reality? To my surprise the architecture of the story isn't half bad, certainly worth time and revision. So it looks like that's what I'm doing with the bulk of my time for the next few weeks, while I wait for other manuscripts to come back in from revision. There are a few submissions for me to read, but that's afternoon work.

If I'm at all successful with this revision, I should have the novella off to one of our editors for comment and criticism before the close of the year. We'll see.