Friends and family:

As you know (or, at least, as I *think* you know), Paulette and I are both finishing up our final session of the Advanced Commercial Fiction Writing Program at the University of Washington, where we are each working on a novel. As a part of that class, we will be participating in a public reading of our works-in-progress at the University Bookstore in Bellevue on Thursday, May 24th.

Would you like to come see us read? Would you like to hear a snippet from our respective novels? Then, please come on down to cheer us on! (There will even be copies of New Voices IV with scenes from each of the class participants available for sale, too. Or, at least, that's the rumor.)

• What: Public reading of excerpts from Katrina's Touch and The Do Over
  
• Who: Paulette, Allan, and several other members of our writing class
  
• Where: The University Bookstore, 990 102nd Avenue NE, Bellevue WA 98004, (425-462-4500)
  
• When: 7:30pm, Thursday, May 24th
  
• Why: Because we like you!
  
• How much: Free!
  

I have only one week left at work -- and home -- before heading off to Clarion West 2001. This is my last free weekend for a while. As much as there is for me yet to do in preparation, I'm excited by the prospect of my upcoming adventure. Six weeks devoted to exercising the writing and story-telling poriton of my brain. Woo-hoo!

One of this year's instructors, Nalo Hopkinson, has just been nominated for a Hugo Award. The nomination is for her second novel. Not too shabby.

Awards are cool, and I'm all for recognition of doing good work. Perhaps, someday in my not-too-distant future, I might have the honor of standing alongside these wonderful writers at the winners podium... and that would be most excellent. The Hugo is particularly cool, because it's an award that is voted on by the fans.

I have to say, though, that there's another award that I'm much more interested in pursuing: the well-paying publishing contract. If the fans award my work with their hard earned cash, that's plenty award enough for me. I'm so easy-to-please.

Before I can pursue that, I have to finish the novel and get a few short stories under my belt. Writing is a very weird profession: you have to do all the work long before you find out if you'll ever get paid. Kinda risky. As a friend of mine has often pointed out, I seem to be a glutton for doing the most amount of work for the least amount of pay. C'est la vie.

Regardless, for six weeks I am going to be a dedicated writer. Should be quite an exciting time.

I'm having some difficulty advancing the many projects I'm working on these days. The problem is, they all demand a lot of time and attention, and I don't seem to have that much time or, quite frankly, that much attention.

What projects? There's finishing the novel (still tentatively entitled The Do Over, but that's likely to change), polishing several short stories that I want to send out, completing work on a new 10-foot-wide bookcase I've started building in my den, preparing the house for an upcoming house party, fixing up my car (needs a tune up and some maintenance work)... oh, and finding a new income stream with which to pay the mortgage.

That last one is a particularly tricky one. I'd assumed that once I left my place of employ, this could potentially mean more time for writing. Instead, it has had the net effect of *reducing* the amount of time I have to write. I'm not sure how that happens.

I still manage to write one new scene for the novel per week, but work on short stories has ground to a halt -- with the exception of getting one story sent out as a submission -- and the novel is not really any closer to being ready to send out to agents now than it was a month ago. October was originally when I'd hoped to send it out.

All I need to do, I have been reminded, it set aside time in my schedule each day to write. Set aside one hour. Everybody has an hour in their day... right?

Somehow, it's not working out that way.

I was able to be very productive at Clarion West because I'd managed to put pretty much my entire life on hold for four of those six weeks. Now, I can't get away with that.

Or... can I?

What if I took every other month and just disappeared to write? Hmmmm.

What are *your* thoughts? Any suggestions?

Help!

--Allan

So, a font walks into a bar.

The bartender looks up and says, "We don't serve your type here."

A friend of mine is taking a feminist theory course in grad school, and she plans to write a paper about feminism and science fiction. Toward that end, she has sent out a survey to several friends with the following questions:

1. Do the goals/ideals of feminism mesh well with the genre of science fiction? Why/why not? Does science fiction offer any special opportunities for feminist writers? Or, does it present any special difficulties?

2. Have you read any feminist works of science fiction that influenced your own political ideas? Do you think it is possible for a work of science fiction to change someone's mind about feminism/gender?

3. Do you see any difference between 'woman-centered' (ie, with a woman as the main character) science fiction and 'feminist' science fiction?

4. Do you think the field of science fiction has been welcoming to feminist authors?

What do *you* think? I'll be posting my answers here this week, but I'd love to hear yours, as well (and I'll be happy to pass them along to my friend).

1. Do the goals/ideals of feminism mesh well with the genre of science fiction? Why/why not? Does science fiction offer any special opportunities for feminist writers? Or, does it present any special difficulties?

The first part of the question assumes that there is a coherent set of goals/ideals associated with the term "feminism" -- an assumption that I think is dubious. The term is generally considered to describe "the doctrine advocating social and political rights for women equal to those of men." (This is the definition found in the Random House College Dictionary) I favor this definition.

However, Gloria Steinem and Camille Paglia, among many others, show just how divisive the moniker "feminism" can be. There are several major schools of thought pertaining to the advocacy of social/political equality for women, and they are often bitterly opposed. The legality of abortion, for example, is both fought and defended by camps claiming to defend feminist ideals. Some feminist camps deride the choice that some women make to become mothers or housewives, while other camps maintain that women do not have to pursue careers to the exclusion of family in order to become "equal".

Since (unlike my friend in grad school) I am not a student of feminist theory and am therefore not certain which aspect of feminism is being favored as the "true" school of thought, I'll simply refer to feminism as defined by Random House, above.

There is also the problem of defining science fiction. There is a very long and hard fought disagreement among those who discuss this field as to whether a story must rely exclusively upon scientific principles in order to count as sci-fi. For example, since several of Ray Bradbury's stories in The Martian Chronicles do not *have* to occur on Mars in order to still be coherent, do they count as sci-fi? Again, I'm going to defer to the definition I find in my dictionary, rather than go into this argument here. Random House defines science fiction as "a form of fiction that draws imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation." I read this to include the works of Ray Bradbury and Ursula LeGuinn, even though others may disagree.

The ideals of social and political equality for women clearly mesh well with the genre of science fiction. The genre encourages authors and readers to consider not only what life and human nature is like now, but what life *could* be like, given any number of opportunities, environments, or histories. It allows us to speculate on the good and bad results of living in a world where equality is supported or denied. It affords us the chance to consider "What if...?" As we imagine these different possibilities, it also allows us to imagine that they are possible, and that we might well pursue and attain them.

In general, stories in the genre tend to favor the ideal of a society in which women and men are socially and politically equal.

That said, while the genre meshes well with the ideals of feminism, it does not always conform to the ideals of feminism. Because this is a literature of speculation and free-thinking, it also includes stories that endorse or advocate views opposed to those of feminism. Given the definition that feminism is an advocacy for equality among the sexes, the fact that science fiction includes some works that do not share that point of view reveals that the goals of this genre *can* mesh well with those of feminism, but that doesn't mean they always do.

Science fiction does, however, offer many special opportunities for feminist writers. Like other genres of literature, it enables authors to tell stories that embody or challenge ideals of human relationships -- political, social, and otherwise. But, what is unique to this genre is the ability to extrapolate behaviors from settings; to distill ideals to their purist forms and tell stories that evoke much more vividly the concepts that are being presented.

While there are historical fiction stories that may display the grit and resourcefulness of a female protagonist, or mainstream novels in which equality is shown to be preferable for all concerned than inequality, science fiction can challenge our assumptions on a more basic level. For example, Ursula K. Leguinn's classic The Left Hand of Darkness takes us to a society were members are inherently equal with regard to gender because they do not express/embody gender except during mating season, and even then, they may change from one gender to another as they move from one mating season to the next. In a society where gender is not a given, we look look to other cues to explain characters' behavior.

When I'd begun writing this essay, it seemed to me that science fiction presents a particular difficulty to the feminist author, however, that other genres do not. There has long been a general precept in science fiction that something has to happen -- that action must take place -- in order for the story to move forward. This is not a requirement imposed by other genres, where it may suffice for a story or novel to simply describe a setting or a society without much activity on center stage.

Milan Kundera's literary novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being explores the social and sexual roles of men and women (and has a very strong female protagonist) against a backdrop of invasion and war... but, the characters never do much of anything. They talk a lot, and it is through these conversations that their gender roles are explored. But action? Forget it. I even learned recently that in the movie version, the director had to substantially cut back on the battle footage montage because it stole attention away from the non-action of the rest of the film. There could never be a science fiction equivalent to Kundera's work.

Science fiction, conventional wisdom states, requires action. This is not to say that lizards need to eat their way out of our favorite characters' bodies, or that kickboxing robots are necessary to blow up large buildings. Nonetheless, characters need to be going places and doing things.

The more I've considered this idea, however, the more I realize that it is not entirely accurate. There are counter-examples. Flowers for Algernon, one of the genre's best examples of an intensely personal exploration of the meaning of identity, is hardly action-packed. The conflict is ultimately, as it is in Unbearable Lightness, internal to the characters.

That said, I suspect it is nonetheless harder for a writer to present the "people talking" style of story within science fiction than in the more mainstream genres. Is this a "special difficulty"? Perhaps not. This tendency toward action within sci-fi has not discouraged writers from "talking" at length in their stories about the points they are trying to make (Robert A. Heinlein and Ayn Rand leap to mind).

---

Sheesh. I sure can leap into that stuffy old academic tone of voice when I want to, no?

Tune in tomorrow, when we address the second question in the series. :)

We had several friends over today (mostly writers, as well as one friend who used to work in the movie biz) for dinner and a critique session for the movie The Godfather. So, of course, we had to watch the movie in order to be able to critique it.

What I found fascinating in studying the structure of the movie is how completely rich every scene was with detail (setting and emotion) as well as with plot implications.

Having recently read the book, it was also very cool to see just how much of the detail in the movie related to parts of the book without being dwelt upon. Every gesture in the wedding scene that opens the movie, for example, is a significant reference to some scene in the book. Exquisite. The character of Al Neri from the book is actually present in every scene he's supposed to be in when you watch the movie, even though he isn't introduced by name to the audience. A nice touch that works well.

What was also cool was getting together with a bunch of friends to eat lasagna, garlic bread, and salad (plus a wonderful dessert!), and talk about the importance of family, the problems with job interviews, and the concern over the latest events in the news.

All in all, a pleasant way to spend an evening.

Saw parts of Rose Red on TV. The first hour of Sunday's installment, and maybe forty-five minutes or so of Monday's.

I dusted off the rabit-ears especially for this event. Our reception is pretty bad here, what with the mountains and all, and we kicked the cable company and the satellite providers out of our house with a vengeance. As a result, we don't watch much TV, and that's just fine with us.

But, as I said, I pulled out the rabbit ears and managed to tune in the ABC station across Lake Washington to get a somewhat fuzzy broadcast of ABC's televised premiere of Stephen King's Rose Red. I was under no delusion that it would be the pinnacle of television movie making. Rather, I had worked as a backgrounder during the filming in Seattle, and wanted to see how the final product of all that work. Not all my work, of course: I was just a backgrounder. But, after seeing all of the work of the cast and crew toiling away to make Pioneer Square into a believable 1907 version of Seattle, well... I was curious as to how well they pulled it off.

For all that, the flashback scenes to 1907 Seattle looked just fine. It was also nice to see my friend dressed up as the constable who clubbed a man in front of the saloon where I, dressed as a workman, was loading a coach with crates and barrels. Note: I do not appear in the final cut of that scene. But, it was still kind of cool to see three seconds of that footage finally make it onto the television screen after going through take after take after take. My friend the constable looked right good and menacing, so there's something.

(It's possible I appear in other scenes; I recognized many of the shots in which I was a backgrounder, but the reception was so fuzzy, I couldn't tell if I actually appeared in any of them.)

Given how little the flashback scenes in Seattle added to the final production of the mini-series, I'm curious as to why they bothered at all. Those were VERY expensive shots they took, and the computer work necessary to eliminate some of the buildings in the background and add some others, well, that couldn't have been cheap. Yet, those scenes felt like an afterthought, and it's hard to imagine why they thought they added to the telling of the story.

But that's not my big beef with what I saw of Rose Red. My big beef is: it's just plain awful! The character development for which Stephen King is known? Completely absent. The acting talent? Missing in action. Originality? None to speak of.

None of this surprised me in the least, of course. Previous ABC movies based upon Stephen King works -- including those with a screenplay written by the man himself -- have been near universally weak. Still...

We know that good movies can be made based upon SK's work. The Shining (Kubrick's version), The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and even The Dead Zone worked quite well. I'm told Stand By Me was also excellent, but I haven't seen it. Creepshow had some fine moments, even if it was primarily camp. Carrie remains a classic. And, as television mini-series go, the original Salem's Lot wasn't half bad.

Yet ABC manages to turn out one weak turn after another. The Tommyknockers. It. The Stand. The Shining (remake). Storm of the Century. All of these had the potential to be excellent. All of them failed.

(Although, truth be told, none of them are as bad as some of the worst theatrical releases made, such as Christine, Pet Semetary, Sometimes They Come Back, Children of the Corn... well, okay, there was one big stinker. The Langoliers. That one was pretty awful.)

So, what's the deal? If ABC is intent upon blowing the money to make a big production of a Stephen King story, why don't they do it right? One would think that The Stand or The Dead Zone or Hearts in Atlantis would make for excellent mini-series treatment.

I don't have an answer to this question. I don't know enough about how television movies are made, nor do I think it would matter even if I knew. But, sometimes, it's kinda nice to think...

What if Peter Jackson (director of the Lord of the Rings) filmed a trilogy of movies based upon The Stand?

What if Frank Darabont (director of The Green Mile) took a stab at a multi-part Hearts in Atlantis? (note: the recent movie "Hearts in Atlantis" is really only the film version of one of the five shorter works that comprise the book, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." It doesn't even contain any of the elements from the title short story.)

What if M. Night Shyamalan (director of The Sixth Sense) attempted The Dead Zone?

How about James Cameron directing The Running Man?

Mmmm. Those could be good.

Then again, what if Woody Allen directed Needful Things? Ack!

When I sell the movie rights to The Do Over, I'll have to be careful... to go to the highest bidder, of course.

:-)

Is this what it's like to give birth?

Early on in the gestation, you're not really sure that you've got something going on, but it seems that there might be. Increasingly, some of your energy is syphoned away. You're not as at ease as you used to be; there's some nagging idea at the back of your head that your time is not always your own, and you don't cut loose as much as you used to.

But, for all of that, you really have nothing to show for it.

Eventually, however, it becomes obvious that you're committed. It becomes a serious topic of conversation, and everyone has advice on what you should do. Professional examination reveals that things are starting to come together, that previously ambiguous blobs are now starting to coalesce into coherent and distinct parts. You are, at turns, excited and daunted by the possibilities.

You think about what to name it.

You reach a point, however, when you're ready for it to just be over with. Done. Finished. Sleep becomes a bit rarer, and anxiety becomes more common. Discomfort, even more so. Anybody brings it up, and you get cranky. Yet, it's something you really want to talk about, too, at times.

Gestation is long and uncomfortable, but in different ways throughout the process. Labor is shorter, and even more uncomfortable.

This is it. You're close. Very close, and you're really, really ready. But, oh, it's so much WORK! All of your energy is now focused on this one task. You can't help it; it's involuntary. If you're fortunate, you've got people who matter to you urging you on constructively. Push. Push. PUSH!

And then, finally, out it comes. All at once. Bwluoop, just like that, a big gushy mess. Slap it or tickle it to make sure it's alive, clean it up, and officially give it a name. But the hard part is over. Soon you'll be dressing it up to take it out into the real world, and you're gonna give it all the support you can.

Is that what it's like?

Let me describe the labor pains of delivering a novel. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Nothing else that I'm working on at this moment is occupying as much of my attention as the novel. Maybe that's not the way it's supposed to be, but that's the way it is. I do the things I gotta do when I must, but all available time is spent thinking about or working on the novel.

I've started to fall into a rhythm of sorts, where the pressure builds up all day long until sometime around 6pm or 8pm or so, and then I have no choice but to sit down and writewritewritewritewrite. I get tired, and I keep writing. I get a second wind,and I keep writing. Sometime around midnight, I fix myself a bowl of Campbell's Soup (one of the Cream ones), pop open a can of Dr Pepper (notice there's no period in that name) and writewritewritewritewrite some more. Most days, I write until about 4 or 5 in the morning.

This is not a labor of love. It's involuntary! I've come too far at this point and it's a little late to turn back.

Why the hell am I telling you this, anyway? I should be writing! Oh, I know why. I'm taking time to breathe before the next big PUSH, which will resume tonight sometime around 7.

I want to thank you all for your encouragement and support. It's close now; close to being done. How close? I have no idea. But I'm going to keep pushing until this thing is out and ready to meet the world.

As for a name, well... still working on that, too.

:-)

I kept saying that I was "done" with a first draft of this chapter, and "done" with the first draft of the next.

What is "done," anyway?

At 2:30am, local time, on Sunday morning, I was "done" with the first draft of my novel. Was I relieved? Did I party? Did I collapse, basking in the glow of a job well done?

Nope. Because this milestone was just a milestone, and I'm still cruisin' down the highway. As soon as I finished the first pass at my last original scene (at least, it's my last original scene in theory), I scanned through the document and noted, "Oh, I still need to clean up this," and added to my running list, "Don't forget to take care of that." I futzed around with the names of a couple minor characters, began some formatting work, and so on.

In short, work continued without so much as a hiccup.

I must confess, I did take Monday off of the project, entirely. And I haven't been driving myself as hard this week as maybe I should have. But, here is it 3:30 am on Friday morning, and I'm back at the old routine (of the past month). I've finished another polishing pass at the second chapter. Earlier this week, I gave Chapter 1 another polish. Later today, I'll ask for a sanity check of the novel so far, and I'll give Chapter 3 another pass.

There remains a possibility that I may still make my arbitrary deadline of sending out the first three chapters to my first agent of choice by the end of this month. Either way, it's going to happen soon... unless my sanity checkers get back to me and say that my novel is utter rubbish. Always possible. :-(

---

Thank you all for your occasional e-mails of encouragement!

---

A friend sent me e-mail a few days ago noting that Wil Wheaton -- of "Wesley saves the ship!" fame from Star Trek the Next Generation -- posted on his web journal that he auditioned for a role in the TV pilot, Do Over.

Too funny.

---

Another friend was kind enough to point out that there are at least two other novels that have been published directly to the web that have a similar premise and a similar title to my novel-near-completion. So, yeah, the title is going to have to be replaced. :-)

Possible contenders:

* John Carpenter's The Do Over

* Groundhog Life

* Wish Fulfillment Premise #3

* The One Where The Guy Lives His Life Over Again

* Ibid

I've always wanted to write a book called Ibid, just to see it referenced in footnotes.

---

Gotta rename my main character, too. Brian Williams, I've been told, is a popular news anchor on MSNBC. Did I just type "popular" and "MSNBC" in the same sentence?

Possible replacement names:

* William Bryant

* Ishmael

* Tyrone Poppolopodous (a great Buffalo name)

* Stephen King

---

I should go to bed. More later!

--Allan

So, the answer is: No, writing a novel has no meaningful analogy in the birth-giving process.

Why?

Because, you're never really done. I can now print out a document and say, "Here is a novel," but it's still not done. It needs a lot of work, and I'm doing that work. But I don't think it'll ever *stop* needing work. I guess, at some point, I simply stop working on it... but it'll still need work.

There is a definitive point when giving birth is over. That's when one job ends and another job begins. Not so with writing. Completing the first draft and then polishing it into a second draft and then editing it for submission or publication or whatever... it's all the same job.

It's like running a marathon that has no finish line. It's like Sysyphis (sp?) pushing that rock. It's like an Alanis Morrisette song on infinite repeat. It's a lot of work, at first, but then you realize that IT NEVER ENDS.

Actually, some would argue that the same would be true even if you just played the Alanis Morrisette song once.

Jeez, if I wanted to be in an environment where my work is never done and every day it's a question of just grinding, grinding, grinding... I could have stayed in the high tech industry!

More later. Got some work to catch up on.

I recently served as a judge for a writing contest. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was the final judge. I wasn't just selecting which short stories went on to the next level... I was picking the winners.

This is the second time I served as a judge for a writing contest. The first time was last year, for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference (PNWA). I wasn't a final judge that time, thank goodness. This year, it is for a different organization (but I shan't discuss details since the contest isn't officially over yet). Both experiences have been a major learning experience for me.

If you are a writer and you submit your work for consideration, here are a few things I learned by being a judge:

1) Write well. But, you already knew that. If you don't write well, you won't win.

2) Eight out of ten entries are awful. So, writing well gives you a big advantage.

3) Alas, two out of every ten entries are great, so writing well isn't enough. You know what else matters? The tastes of the judge who arbitrarily is selected to go through the pile where your submission happens to land. The mood of that judge on that day. And then...

4) There are some very tough calls. It can, and often does, come down to "I have three excellent stories for the last slot on the winners' circle, but I can only choose one." That kind of decision is excruciating to a judge. But, there's no science to how that decision will be made. You've cleared the first few hurdles... you've written well, you fit the judges' tastes, and your piece happens to fit with the mood of the judge who is reviewing it. But.

But.

You're playing musical chairs with one or two other excellent pieces, and there's only one chair left. Do you win? Depends upon when the music stops and where you are at the time that happens. It has little to do with your chair-snatching skills.

In short, that final decision between winning the contest and not winning can be pretty arbitrary, even if your work is excellent.

On the one hand, this is a message of hope. If you submitted and didn't win, that doesn't mean you weren't good enough to win. It's entirely possible that you made it to that last decision and luck simply didn't favor you on that occasion.

On the other hand, it's a message of disquiet. That while winning is worth something -- while it may validate that you're *among* the best -- it does not establish that you *are* the best. And at the same time, it's disquieting to know that you may well be amazingly good, but that a simple matter of whim or taste could keep you out of the winners' circle.

I dunno. I'm still going to submit to writing contests here and there. But I'm not so sure whether I want to judge so often.

I just returned from a business trip to Dallas. Before heading out, I had finally met my goal of sending out the first three chapters of my first novel to an agent. So, naturally, as I read on the plane, I was acutely aware of all the things I had not done as wonderfully as the author of the book I was reading.

The book in question was Hearts in Atlantis, and the author was Stephen King, and let us be clear on one point from the outset: I know he's had more practice than I have at this whole fiction writing thang. The premise of the five stories that comprise Hearts ("Low Men in Yellow Coats," "Hearts in Atlantis," "Blind Willie," "Why We're in Vietnam," and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling") is quite different from any of the story lines that run through the novel I just completed. There are, however, some similar themes (about how life passes by, about how good intentions don't always map to good behavior, et al) and there is a strong streak of nostalgia that runs through both books.

In my case, the nostalgia centers upon Buffalo during the early 1980's. Now, don't confuse nostalgia for romanticizing... evoking that town at that time means capturing the details of both the racism and the philanthropy, the pollution as well as the purity. My goal was to bring the reader to a specific moment in time at a specific location in place, so as to let the events of the story unfold against an understandable background. To paraphrase Dickens's excellent observation, they were the best of times and the worst of times because they were, in short, times much like these.

My novel may or may not be, in part, "about" the dawning of the age of Generation X; I guess that depends upon how you read it. While that wasn't one of my main points, however, Stephen King clearly set out to bring us through the coming of age of his generation, The Baby Boomers.

He did a fantastic job of grounding the reader in that time (particularly 1960 and 1966) and in that place (small town Connecticut, a college in Maine, Tam Boi in Vietnam, the streets of New York). The details, dropped with just the right frequency and just the right specificity, made the setting all the more real. It's not just what songs are playing on the radio or what movies are playing at The Empire Theater... it's the way the webbing on Bobby Garfield's Alvin Dark-model baseball glove was starting to come loose, the way Bobby's mother kept pronouncing Ted Brautigan's name as "Mr. Brattigan" in order to show her very New England disapproval of the man.

The two best stories in Mr. King's book are the first two. "Low Men" clocks in at 323 pages -- a novel in and of itself -- and captures the summer of 1960 as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old. And yet, King manages this without the story becoming a juvenile. I *loved* that. This is a very adult story about a kid. It was while reading this that I was most painfully aware of my concerns about the novel I've just sent off. My story, too, centers primarily in the world of twelve-year-olds, but I can only hope that it is seen as an adult story and not a young adult story.

King accomplishes this feat with apparent effortlessness. It all comes through.

His second story, "Hearts," is only slightly shorter than "Low Men," and it takes place on a college campus in 1966. The peace sign is only just beginning to make the rounds, and a young "Goldwater Republican" is beginning to contemplate Johnson's war in Vietnam. Against this backdrop, a group of college freshmen jeopardize their college scholarships (and, in turn, their place in college, which means they risk being drafted) on the altar of a long-standing card game in the lounge of their dormitory. Hence the title, "Hearts in Atlantis."

As an avid card player (including Hearts) who has been known to get caught up in a game or two, I was completely drawn into this story's excellent feel for how one can know what to do, know what the risk is of not doing it, and yet continue to not do it, anyway. The story also hints at the consequences of events that played out in the first story.

The third story centers upon a Vietnam War veteran who has picked a most interesting form of penance... not for whatever he may have done in Vietnam, but for what he did in 1960 as a high school student in that small town in Connecticut. This was refreshing, because while being a Vet is integral to Blind Willie's character, it is not the ultimate source of his personal hell. Thus is a very tired cliche avoided. And here, too, I can only hope to make a left turn when approaching cliche-ville the way Mr. King has, although only time will tell. (Har, har, har.)

The final two stories have an element of cuteness to them, but they don't ring true. Here, too, I can learn from Mr. King, albeit by way of counter-example. In "Why We're in Vietnam," King has a couple of Vets at the funeral of one of their buddies was philosophical while remembering nasty events in which they took part during the war. Welcome to cliche-ville. I was particularly disturbed to hear the one Vet bemoan to the other something along the lines of, "What happened to us? Our generation could have changed the world, we had it in our hands, but we sold out...." These are not the thoughts of a former soldier who did his time in Vietnam, but rather the thoughts of one of the flower children who had thought he/she knew better. I have known former flower children to talk in these terms (and I therefore assume that King may have been among them), but I have never heard former soldiers or former non-participants (either in the war or in the protests) say as much. Perhaps I haven't been privy to such conversations, but now I'm curious.

The final story ties together a few loose threads and tells us something about how the grown-ups owe their lives, for good or ill, to the children they once were. But it is otherwise inconsequential and not, in and of itself, a complete story.

I learned a lot from reading Hearts -- about writing, about one take on the sixties and the Baby Boomers, about the insidiousness of addiction, etc. -- and enjoyed it immensely, even with the hollow parts toward the end. It may well be some of King's best writing. And like all good writing, it also begs a lot of questions and issues a number of challenges... both for me as a writer, and for me as a child of my own generation.

Hey, any of you Baby Boomers out there: Do you feel like your generation could have changed the world and blew it's chance, instead? Did the Vietnam War define the way you look at the world and your role in it, or was it something that played out in the background? I'd love to hear from you.

So, I mailed off the first three chapters of my first complete novel to my first agent of choice on the morning of Thursday, May 16th. Yesterday, I had it back.

The agent's address had changed.

I knew this, of course. I had both his "old" (pre-move) business card and his "new" (post-move) business card. Lucky me, I just happened to use the wrong one to fetch the address. So, it was returned with a stamp "Moved, no forwarding address," and the postal carrier where I live managed to mangle the package pretty good by shoving it into our small mail cubby. It was so mangled as to be unusable to resend to the agent. So I printed it all up again (updating his address and the date) and mailed it out this morning. I called his office to verify that I was using the correct address, so I'm all set on that front.

Gotta reset the 6-8 week countdown for hearing back from the agent.

Because I managed to at least keep my commitment of sending out the manuscript by last Thursday (finally), I decided to practice making and keeping more commitments. This past Sunday, I committed myself to 1) beginning a brand new short story, and 2) sending out at least one short story -- both of which I committed to having done by Tuesday, May 28th.

I haven't written any new stories since I left Clarion last summer, although I have rewritten a couple and sent them out for consideration. I also didn't have any ideas for new stories I wanted to write. Thus the commitment to begin writing a new one wasn't trivial -- it's time to get the creativity engine engaged again.

Yesterday, I decided to allocate one hour to doing nothing but generate ideas for a new story. For ten minutes, I fidgeted. My eyes kept getting drawn to my bookshelf, and to a bunch of Dilbert books in particular. "Go ahead. Open up a Dilbert book at random. You'll find inspiration there," said a little voice in the back of my mind.

"Why?" I thought. "How could there possibly be inspiration in a three-panel comic strip?" Then I thought about The Dilbert Future, which contains a series of humorous essays about what the future might be like. There's one essay in there that was always my favorite, about how "The Future Will Not Be Like Star Trek." Scott Adams argues that if we ever invented such a thing as Holodecks, nobody would ever get work done ever again because we'd be too busy playing in simulated worlds... and that would be it for the human race.

...and *that* gave me an idea for a story. After fifteen minutes, I had it. I spent the next hour or so writing.

This is all by way of saying that there's power in making a commitment to yourself and then taking that commitment seriously. I'll write more on that subject (making and keeping commitments) soon. In the meantime, I'm going to have to decide which story I want to send out next....

Well, I didn't get ready the story that I'd hoped to send out this week. Nonetheless, I did mail out *a* short story which I sent to a science fiction monthly. Keeping commitments is a good thing.

Hmm. What commitment should I make next to further my writing career? I know. That new short story I began last week... I'll have it ready to submit to my writing critique group by Friday. How's that? A new short story completed by Friday.

I must be insane....

Sending out my first three chapters of my first completed novel was an important milestone. Sending out my first professional short story submission was another.

Today marks another important milestone in the career of a would-be professional writer: I received my first professional rejection. The short story I'd recently sent out, which also lost two prestigious contests, also failed to interest the slush-pile reader of a well known science fiction magazine. Yee-ha!

Time to send out another one... and to resend that first story. Hmmm. I wonder where to send it next.

The story that I submitted to my critique group last Friday receives its crits on Sunday. I'll polish it up and send it out next week. So there!

My first agent of choice sent me a very nice letter regarding the first three chapters of my novel I'd sent to him. He tells me that I've got some smooth prose in my manuscript, that he likes the way the novel opens without set up or a lot of back story. Alas, he would nonetheless prefer to see more of the central conflict right up front, and he is therefore passing on representing this novel.

This is probably the most professional and, at that, helpful kind of rejection letter one could hope to receive. Of course, I wasn't hoping to receive a rejection letter, but I'm nonetheless glad that he told me *why* he is choosing not to help me sell my novel. It gives me the opportunity to decide whether it's worth re-writing before I go to the streets with it again.

My current plan is to try, try again. I'll query another agent or two or fifty. Not all at once, of course. That's considered bad form. Fortunately, though, the response was quick from my first agent of choice. Given the two upcoming television shows that have a remarkably similar premise to my novel, I need to move as quickly as I can in order to still be "timely."

In the meantime, a number of short stories that I've started to circulate are coming back to me with "Good writing, but I'm going to pass" letters, as well. Nonetheless, I keep sending them out, and writing new ones to send out. My goal is to get another new one out into circulation tomorrow.

Writing is hard work. Getting published is proving to be at least as hard as writing.

For those of you following the saga of getting my novel to market, I'll also mention that the title "The Do Over" is now officially retired. I won't be posting the new title here until I have representation for it, owing to the fact that titles can't be copyrighted and also owing to my paranoia that has resulted after the WB decided to create a show with the same title as my novel (and the same general premise, set in the same year, etc., etc.). However, I had a chance to market test it at an author reading last night and it went over well. E-mail me in private if you'd like to know the new title. :-)

For the record, however, allow me to state that receiving a rejection letter or six hasn't deterred me... but it hasn't made me happy, either.

The baby is past due.

The "due date" for the baby was July 4th, but "Dependence Day" came and went and there's been no change in status. Paulette is still pregnant.

In other news...

* My stories keep coming back rejected. Haven't written anything new in a couple weeks.

* My Passat is still broken, and is likely to take about a month before it can get back on the road again.

* I've been doing a lot of research lately on certain aspects of philosophy and religion in general, the Bible and Judeo-Christianity in particular, rhetoric, and history. Much of this research is for my next novel, and much of it is simple intellectual curiosity. Alas, research shouldn't take the place of actual writing. However, I've been enjoying the thinking that goes with the research....

* A friend from Clarion West had an excellent story recently published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. Another friend, from Cornell, had a novella recently published in Analog. Yet another friend, from my high school days (although she didn't go to my high school), was also published in Analog a few months ago. I think this is all great. And/but I'm ready to join their ranks, durnit!

The weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.

No baby, yet.

But I did make some spicy jamalaya tonight, just in case that might help. :-)

In writing news: everything that I have that is ready to go out there is currently out there. The novel and several short stories are making the rounds. When they come back, I send them back out. I have another short story I hope to send out by the end of this week. It's probably the only pre-Clarion West story that I'll end up sending out any time soon.

Stories being out there means I'm opening my writing up for more rejection. Stories kept safely at home means I'm not going to get published. So, out they go!

It's been over two weeks since I sent out my writing to anyone. I have three or four short stories out there -- not much, by any means -- and my novel, and I haven't heard anything back from anyone regarding them.

Which means they haven't been rejected yet. Yee-ha!

Usually, the way it works is: I send out a story in the morning, and receive the rejection letter by that afternoon.

In the meantime, I have a short story to polish that I'd written at Clarion West and then I'll send it out, I have a pre-Clarion story to finish, and I also have an idea for a new story. I may have mentioned this... it's a horror story about stress, sleep deprivation, and a baby who starts talking long before he should be able to do so....

Sweet dreams!

It's been months since I've mentioned anything here about my various writing projects, but that doesn't mean nothing's happening.

Regarding the novel, it alternates between two different working titles as I send it out to different prospects. After the television series that recently began airing with the same title as the original working title of my novel, I'm a little hesitant to post the title until the book finds some traction with either an editor or an agent. Hmmm. I wonder if I could have worked the word "title" in that sentence a few more times. Anyway, I've sent it (the novel, not just the title) out to three agents so far, none of whom are interested in representing the project. I must send it out again, and will do so within the next two weeks. When I send it out, it'll go to at least an agent and an editor at the same time. Industry norms frown upon submitting to multiple agents or multiple editors at the same time, but the long lead time in getting a response seems unreasonable to perform the search for representation or publication serially.

I've had a few short stories out for consideration in 2002, and while none of them were picked up, the responses have generally been encouraging. I haven't sent anything out in the past month or so, and yesterday I just received the last story that was "in play" back with a rejection letter. The next week or two will involve me sending out each of the stories that have been in play back out for consideration, plus one more story that's almost ready.

It's frustrating to keep sending out stories and getting back rejection letters. I know many other writers who are more talented and prolific than I am who have been at this for decades with few, if any, publications to show for it, and that does little to take the sting out of my own lack of success (so far), even after only a year or so at it.

The most recent two projects I've completed were collaborations with a friend of mine who I met during my days at Amazon.com. As with all of the good collaborations I've enjoyed in the past, my work with James Osborne has helped to bring out the best of my abilities while downplaying those areas where I'm not so strong.

One of these projects is a television series "bible," outline, and pilot script. We completed the project just in time to submit it to a Hollywood scriptwriting contest, and we should hear back from that one in February. Initial feedback from James' friends in LA is favorable, and we'll be seeking representation for our scriptwriting talents soon.

I'm excited by the idea for the television series not only because it has been a fun collaborative effort, but also because it's given me a chance to explore possibilities with story telling that are not available in novel or short story writing. In many ways, it's a more compressed method of story telling that allows, to some extent, greater sweep.

The other project is a one minute parody commercial that Jamie came up with. While I contributed a few lines here and there to the script, the real collaboration was in the production of the commercial. James was the director, while I had a chance to perform on screen. In many ways, working on this project was like working on a number of collaborative parodies I did for radio back at WVBR in that it was synergistic and fun. Jamie has finished the post-production work on it; now we're preparing a corresponding web site around the concept. I'll be posting a link to the finished product here within a couple of weeks.

Hmmm. I keep saying "in a couple of weeks." Maybe I should check some of this stuff off of my list of "things to do" this weekend....

Been busy tonight. Spent much of the evening into the wee hours typing. I've been revising and otherwise cleaning up a short story of mine called "Suspicious Activity" that I'd first put to paper during my time at the Clarion West workshop two summers ago. (catching breath after such a long sentence.) I'm optimistic that this one might finally, uh, get me off the slush pile.

I'm beginning to see that the key to success in writing is to lower your expectations while you raise your standards. :-P

I love to sing solo, but I also love to harmonize. Singing with a group or with accompaniment offers a different kind of enjoyment from performing on your own. You have to be attentive to different things, more in tune with your fellows, which in some ways can limit where you can go but in other ways expands the reach of your performance.

Writing solo and writing collaboratively is much the same. I find writing alone to offer unlimited possibilities, but the discipline of writing with someone else helps me to hone skills that might otherwise go undeveloped. I've been fortunate to enjoy several strong writing partnerships in the past, so when a friend of mine who writes screenplays asked if I'd like to collaborate on a project, I said, "Yes."

Jamie and I mapped out a show "bible" and pilot episode for a proposed television series based upon some concepts he'd been wanting to explore. The work we did on the screenplay was a fantastic learning experience. Jamie and I squashed each others' weak points (mine is a tendency toward exposition, in case you couldn't guess) and played off each others' strengths. We were both happy with the results, as were a number of readers whose judgement we trust.

We had such a good time that now we're exploring the possibility of working together on a novel. We're also working on some humor projects together. While working on the television script, Jamie also pulled me into a project he was developing that pokes fun at the high-tech stock bubble and the current state of mutual funds.

We posted the finished product on a web site: The Mattress Fund. We're in the process of putting together a smaller version that will stream faster, but if you have a good connection and a few minutes to kill, please check it out and let me know what you think. Oh, and if you have any problems downloading, please let me know that, too.

Friends, Ropersons*, and Countrypersons*:

I have recently been declared a rat. A Webrat. The Webrats are a loose affiliation of speculative fiction writers who keep online journals. That, or they are an affiliation of loose speculative fiction writers. Or, they keep loose online journals. Or something.

To learn more about the order of the Webrats, click here. If you read it, you'll know at least as much as I do. About Webrats, that is. :-)

I think I was originally recommended to the rats by two of my Clarion West classmates about a year and a half ago. Wacky.

More soon,

--me

* I'm told that the politically correct replacement for "Romans" and "Countrymen" is "Roperchildren" and "Countryperchildren" because the word "person" has "son" in it, and must be replaced with "child", but I think that's going overboard, don't you? Wait a minute. Have I used this joke on my blog before? Hmmm.

In connection with one of my new writing projects, I have decided to dissect the structure of a couple of Stephen King novels. The project I'm working on is not horror, but my goal is to approach the structure of this new novel differently from the way I pursued the novel-formerly-known-as-The-Do-Over.

In the course of re-reading The Shining, I decided to rent the television mini-series version that King scripted a few years ago. While watching it, I was struck by how similar it was to Rose Red, that nasty mini-series (also scripted by King) in which I was a backgrounder.

Similarities:
* Well, they're haunted houses. Duh.
* The ghostly inhabitants desire the psychic powers of a young (alive) prodigy who is a guest there.
* The ghostly inhabitants pursue the young prodigy by attempting to get one of the other living occupants to go crazy and kill same.
* The living inhabitants all know that staying there is a bad idea, but are convinced by the crazy one that they should stay.
* When Glenn Miller is played, Very Bad Things happen.

There were many, many other similarities. But there were some key differences, too. For example, the third act in the Shining miniseries was actually well made and surprisingly scary. The horror arose from the brutality committed by a person, not the building or its ghostly inhabitants. It was scary because the director finally stopped showing parlor tricks (oooh, the chandelier moved, spooooky) and started showing real terror (Wendy finds that Jack is no longer locked in the pantry). The Shining also worked because, in the end, you can see that Jack is struggling to try to redeem himself. Rose Red had no such personal stakes. It's brutality was based in nothing real. It was all parlor tricks, from beginning to end.

For what it's worth, I still prefer the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining to King's own interpretation of his novel, but let's leave that for another day. Suffice it to say that as bad as the first two acts were, the third installment of the mini-series was profoundly good.

After having viewed this remake of King's story, I chatted with Paulette about Rose Red and The Shining. She pointed out that one was a hotel, and the other a house. "But," I noted, "Rose Red was a very big house."

"Of course," she said. "Nobody's going to be scared by a haunted cottage."

This led us to talk about the diminishing returns on haunted log cabins. And haunted outhouses. ("Well, that one might keep you on the edge of your seat, I suppose.")

Hmmm. Maybe there's a short story in that. Couldn't sustain a novel, of course, because there's only one act in an outhouse. Well, two. But I digress.

In summary: horror may be most effective when the personal stakes are high. Horror can also result from really, really bad puns.

A friend of mine forwarded a link to me, and my mind reels with the quality of writing. The verve! The simplicity of lines! My heart breaks to read such beautiful prose.

How can I hope to compete? How could I even conceive of attaining such mastery? I may as well give up all hope of becoming a well known (and well liked) author. I have met my match.

"Roy Orbison in clingfilm," indeed.

As part of a homework assignment for an upcoming writing workshop I'll be attending, I have a list of eleven books to read by the end of September. I received the homework assignment a few weeks ago, when there was still roughly ten weeks to go before the workshop. If I managed to read at least a book a week, I'd keep a steady pace and get the homework done on time.

There is another component to the homework assignment, which is to *not* talk about these books with our fellow workshop attendees, with whom we are all in contact via e-mail. This is a mild form of Chinese Water Torture for those of us in the group who love to talk about books after we've read them.

...Especially when we are all reading these books, and they all end up striking a nerve of one kind or another. There are so many things to talk about; a subplot about writing here, a theme about how people sell out their own best interests there, writing style, standout scenes. The instructors assure us that there is a good reason to wait until the workshop begins before we talk about these books with each other. Since I'm putting my faith in the instructors to help me improve my writing, I'd be foolish not to do the homework.

We're allowed to talk about books, just not with each other. There are many points I've thought about that I've wanted to post up here on my website, but now that my fellow workshoppers know about this house o' cards, I'm worried that if I post something and they read it, I'll be spoiling the purpose of the exercise we've been assigned.

So I guess my book reviews will have to wait. However, I want to share two things with you, in the meantime.

First, reading a book a week has proven to be absolutely exhilarating. I'm a very slow reader. I scrutinize fiction the way I *should* have read text books when I was in college. I know people who can read Stephen King's It in one day and answer questions (correctly) about it later. This is not a skill I have. For me, a book a week is an awful lot of work, not so much because it takes so much effort to read, as it takes so much *time*. Finding the hours has been very difficult, and that means I've had to sacrifice something else in my schedule.

Sleep.

And yet, this intense (for me) period of reading has boosted my energy level and enabled me to get by with less sleep quite easily. I am, in fact, rather an insomniac these days, but that doesn't bother me at all. More time to read. My head is filling up with all sorts of ideas, even when (perhaps especially when) the writing or the story isn't terribly great.

The second thing I want to share with you is a funny (not funny ha-ha) coincidence. In one of the books that I just read, a fictional serial killer had chopped up one of his fictional victims and stashed the fellow's remains in a dumpster right outside the very real building where a former girlfriend of mine used to live. It is bizarre to be reading a book that takes place in a large city you don't know all that well and have one of the few streets you *do* know well described rather specifically as part of a (fictional) crime scene.

Read enough stories that take place in a city you've spent time in, and I suppose something will eventually happen on a street with which you're familiar. In fact, that's already happened for me several times: I've lived all over New England, and I read a lot of Stephen King. But this one resonated a little bit more. It was about a crime that took place outside the building where someone whom I cared about used to live. (Last I heard, she didn't live there anymore, so I'm sure she's safe from the fictional "Curry Hill Carpenter".)

My advice to any of you who would like to avoid such serendipity in your own lives: don't date anyone who lives in New York City. The place is simply too ubiquitous. Date people from Buffalo or Cleveland. Nobody writes novels that take place in Buffalo or Cleveland.

But enough about that scene in NYC. I've finished that novel and it's time to move on to an ironclad at the close of the Civil War....

When I was writing the novel formerly known as The Do Over, I frequently recalled an idea that a friend of mine had asserted, that modern day America is a science fiction premise.

The friend in question was a grad school colleague, and he was referring specifically to the idea that any political scientist in 1959 who would have speculated upon the political ramifications of sending manned space flights to the moon would be laughed out of the Academe. Such fanciful notions were relegated to pulp science fiction because they could never be considered as a possibility in the real world. But once Kennedy gave his speech enjoining the nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely within the decade, the science fiction premise became, well, real.

While I was working on my novel about a man who travels to his own past -- his teen years in the mid 1980's -- I had fun exploring some of the anachronisms created by his memory of history and the reality of 1980's America. In one scene, he tries to confide in an old, dear friend about his plight, but his descriptions of the future do little to convince her. They have one such conversation while attending a hockey game, and the protagonist is asked by his friend if their team (the story takes place in Buffalo, so we're talking about the Sabres) will ever again be contenders for the Stanley Cup.

Imagine explaining to someone in the mid-1980's that your hometown hockey team will eventually make it to the playoff finals because they will have an amazing Czech goal tender named Dominic Hasek, who had also led the Czech team to take the Gold Medal that same year in the 1998 Olympic Games, but that Hasek and the Sabres ultimately lose the Cup to the Dallas Stars.

Your 1980's friend might point out that: a professional hockey player wouldn't be eligible to play in the Olympics, because only amateurs can play in the Olympics. Come to think of it, how could a Czech have enough time to win the Olympics, defect to the United States, go pro, join the NHL and then go to the playoffs? Oh, and why would anyone ever put a hockey team in Texas, given the recent collapse of professional hockey in Atlanta (remember, we're talking about the Atlanta Flames in the 1980's, not the Thrashers that play there now).

The whole idea is a science fiction premise.

But wait, you say. The player doesn't have to defect from Czechoslovakia to the US because there is no Czechoslovakia by the time all this happens (only fifteen years in the future), and the US by then will have had a long standing tradition of allowing players from former Iron Curtain countries to play in the US without having to change their citizenship. You explain that the Olympics will allow professional athletes to compete by then.

Your friend in the 1980's interrupts. The Olympics can't be held in 1998. Olympics are held during election years (as in, US Presidential elections). That would mean 1996 or 2000.

So you explain that the Olympics are now staggered, with winter games and summer games alternating every two years. And then you try to explain that the Dallas Stars came down from Minnesota, but before you can get into that, your friend realizes what you said about the Iron Curtain falling and that there's no longer a Czechoslovakia, and she asks you if there's going to be a war.

Well, yes, you say, but not between the US and Russia. The Cold War ends without bloodshed, you explain, and the Soviet Union just disappears.

And this is all just to explain about the Czech goalie who leads your team to the Stanley Cup finals in about fifteen years in the future. This story is the kind that any self-respecting science fiction writer would have a hard time coming up with: that in order to explain why one hockey team makes it to the playoff finals against an other team that doesn't yet exist, you would involve the radical redefinition of the Olympics, the bizarrely non-violent fall of the Iron Curtain and the peaceful end of the Cold War, the ensuing changes to US immigration law, and the inexplicable rise of hockey as a popular sport in hot-climate cities. And that all of that would happen within fifteen years.

Well, I just heard about something yesterday that sets a new standard for science fiction premises. It's a fundamental change to a cherished institution that would certainly have defied prediction by any prognosticator even as recently as a couple of years ago. You think the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union came out of nowhere? Try this on for size:

The libraries in King County, Washington (ie, Seattle, Redmond, et al) now feature coffee bars in the book section.

Yes. You can buy a coffee and drink it *IN THE LIBRARY*.

What's next for the libraries? Live jazz bands on Thursdays? Open mic poetry?

Although, in retrospect, I can see how this kind of change to our local libraries makes sense in the context of our evolving society, I'd have had a hard time predicting it could happen. The idea of Crystal Pepsi becoming popular was more likely than libraries opening cafes in the book section.

It's a crazy, crazy world in which we live, no?

Sorry I haven't written much lately. It's because I'm going off to write.

As many of you know, a couple of years ago I attended a six-week intensive writing workshop called Clarion West. I am now going to attend a two-week even-more-intensive writing workshop. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a bit of homework associated with preparing for this workshop, and I've spent the bulk of the last two weeks just getting ready to go.

Unlike my days at Clarion West, I won't be keeping a live journal of the workshop as it happens (although I may or may not keep a journal that I can post later) because I won't be accessing the Internet during the workshop. No e-mail, no web, no nothin'. This will be a bit of a test for me, insofar as it's hard for me to go so much as a couple *days* without Internet access. We'll see how it goes.

The things I do for my art.

There will be much to talk about upon my return to the Internet, so be sure to check back soon.

So I spent the first two weeks of October at the Oregon Coast Writers Workshop in Lincoln City, OR. OCWW offers a few different programs throughout the year, and I attended the two-week intensive "Master Class," which is targeted at people who want to pursue writing as their full-time career.

I had a great time.

The workshop features two main tracks: the business of writing, and the craft of writing. The typical day included lectures/discussions in the morning, homework assignments of vary degrees of complexity and effort, and an evening session called "The Game" where the participants play the simulated roles of professional writers trying to avoid having to go back to a day job. The evening sessions tend to focus mostly on the business and living aspects of being a professional writer, while the morning sessions spend time both on the business and the craft of writing.

The thing I appreciated most about the master class was the experiential nature of the training. I don't want to give too many examples -- well, actually, I *do* want to give too many examples, but doing so might spoil the effect for any of you who might be interested in taking the master class yourselves, so I will give away as little as I can.

But I will allude to one example of how and why I found this such a successful use of my time.

I've been told in many, many writing courses that when writing, one should learn to tune out "the critical voice". That's great advice. But how do you do it? Several of the assignments (plus the ability to talk about such issues directly with the instructors) helped me to figure out exactly how my critical voice was interfering, and *that* was what helped to figure out how to deal with the problem.

You can talk about theory all you want, but some things can't be figured out just by talking about them or taking notes on the subject. You have to stare a hard deadline in the face, sweat and strain with a problem, resist it, give in to it, and kick your own ass a few times before you finally get the point.

This particular issue (the critical voice) has been a stumbling block for me. The block hadn't been destroyed, but now that I recognize it, I have started to break through it. And this is only one of several examples where I gained valuable insight into how to improve my writing.

Anyone else taking this two week will probably find other issues that they are able to work on that I completely missed. This is, for me, the value of experiential "learning by doing." You learn what you most need to work on because you are working on specific targets against specific deadlines. The stuff you have no trouble with doesn't get your attention because the pressure naturally exposes those areas where you *are* having problems.

The exercises were all eye openers, but I particularly enjoyed the way they all came together toward the end. One exercise, in which we learned (note: not "we were told", but actually *learned*) part of the job of an editor made it much more clear to me what I need to do with my story openers to make them "pop."

This is not the kind of thing that I can get with lectures about how "your first page must grab the readers attention by setting the scene and the character and the conflict and juxtaposing and blah blahbity blah blah . . . ." No. Now that I've had a taste of the experience, I finally get it. (I think. :-)

One thing I should stress is that I resisted some of the lessons I most needed to learn. But once I got past them, I removed an incredible restraint in my writing. Woooooo-hooooooo!

If a writer is intent upon becoming a professional writer and is interested in learning new tools (or perfecting their existing tools) to get them there, I highly recommend this class.

But enough about the class. Let's get back to talking about me.

About two days into the class, I discovered that a pain in my right ear had gotten so bad that I could no longer ignore it. I took some time away on day three to go to the local emergency room where the doctor told me I had an ear infection *in both ears*. It was just so bad in my right ear that I didn't even notice the problem with my left.

So, I was given ear drop antibiotics (that would take ten days for the entire prescription) as well as prescription painkillers (which I was hoping I wouldn't have to use, but eventually found out that I very much need them . . . ear infections HURT). By some great grace of luck and timing, I managed not to miss any class time on that particular day.

Oh, and I called home to chat with Paulette almost every day (I think I missed only one or two days total), and we would talk for a half an hour to an hour.

I mention these two facts together because I wanted to note that even though going away to this workshop was supposed to, in part, get me away from the time constraints of my daily life, life still managed to intrude. I had to take time out of my day three to four times (for roughly twenty minutes to a half hour each time) to take care of the ear drops, another half hour to hour to talk with Paulette once a day, and then there was dealing with the pain of the earache for several days (almost a week) . . .

. . . and yet I still managed to do the homework. Dammit, I was going to grab this opportunity that the master class offered me and squeeze every last ounce from it that I could.

Yes, I did cut corners in the sleep department on a couple of occasions. But the point (for anyone entertaining the idea of taking the course) is that the course did not demand anything of us that couldn't be done even with unanticipated time-outs and distractions.

Oh, wait. That's not about me. That's about the master class again. :-)

I may post more about the master class in the future; if you have any questions in particular, please feel free to post them in the comments section of this site. In the meantime, I'll conclude by noting that I wrote well over 20,000 words in two weeks, read well over ten times that amount, took an entire legal pad's worth of notes, and made some great, great friends -- we are now all egging each other on to advance in our writing careers.

It was great to learn that I'm capable of pushing myself up to a higher level of both quality and quantity of output. Now that I've proven I *can* do it, the trick is going to be to sit the Germanic-slang-word down and Germanic-slang-word-ing do it.

"So, what are *you* doing up so late?" I typed.

"I am writing a really boring short story."

She continued: "I'm trying to get to 2750 words tonight to make it an even 500 words for today"

She doesn't like to use periods at the end of her sentences. At least, when we are instant messaging.

I tried to imagine how a boring short story would begin:

A Boring Short Story

by Author Withheld

It was the first paragraph, and very little was going on. The passive voice was used to kick off the first sentence, and then the obvious was stated in the follow-up.

The second paragraph, though shorter, was also bereft of action or punch.

She thinks I can extrapolate this into a full-length story. I'm not so sure....

We've all heard how Blahbity Blah famous novel was rejected eighty bazillion times before it was published, so you just have to hang in there as a writer and brave through those rejection letters, blah, blah, blah, and eventually, you, too, may find success.

Well.

Here's one such rejection letter of one such famous novel, posted on Ursula K. Le Guin's site. The novel in question, for those of you who might not be familiar with it, is considered a classic in science fiction -- one of the "must reads". You might agree with the editor, or you might disagree, but the novel nonetheless has survived the test of time.

So, you out there! If you're a writer . . . you gotta just keep on sending it out! All you gotta do is find that one editor who sees the genius in your work (or at least someone willing to give you a nice advance), even if the others don't. . . . :)

Joseph Haines put on his website an invitation to post made-up memories, taking the lead of a similar request on another website (Jed Hartman's). Joseph is a fellow writer, and was previously a police officer in Los Angeles.

He asked that the imagined memories be posted to his site in the comments section. I may have taken some liberties with the assignment. Here's what I posted:

I'll always remember the time Joseph and I got to know each other during that trial in LA. The FBI had me under witness protection because I was the star witness in a big money laundering scheme, and Joseph was one of the cops assigned to take care of me while I was hidden away at some flea-bag motel.

I remember the way we used to play cards until the wee hours of the morning. Joseph said he felt a little awkward, "playing" while on the payroll, but that kind of duty still takes away your time, does it not? As for me, I was playing with counterfeit money, so what did I care?

I remember Joseph's big hearty laugh as we would swap stories about life on both sides of the thin blue line. The raw intensity of his compassion for the people he worked so hard to help; his no-nonsense attitude toward the scum who would dare to harm them.

And I'll always remember the way he listened -- really listened -- whenever I told a story of my own. About the joys and perils of the outlaw life. About the outrageous things you'd get away with, and the small things that would trip you up. About the goofy things that crooks do, or the small but clever ways big crimes could be hidden in plain view; like the way we hid that large sack of money in a department store window for all to see.

And, of course, I'll never forget the time he was late for his shift that last Friday, and how someone had tipped off my former partners-in-crime, and how they tracked me down, and that big shoot-out in front of the hotel.

I'll always remember how I heard -- later, while I was recovering from multiple gunshot and stab wounds over at County -- that Joseph had retired from the force and just up and moved away to somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, never to be heard from by his fellow law enforcement officers again.

And I'll never forget how once I had finally healed enough to walk and talk again, and the trial finally concluded and I could once again walk the streets as a free man, how almost all of the places I'd stashed the money I'd been skimming off the top had turned up empty. Joseph had expressed his doubts about the wisdom of the hiding places I'd told him about, and I guess he was right. Funny that the one I'd forgotten to mention to him hadn't been touched. Maybe if he'd known about that one, he wouldn't have been so skeptical.

But mostly, I guess what I remember best about Joseph was the look on his face when I turned up at his doorstep three years later, and the way his face turned red with rage and the veins seemed to pop from his taut skin as he knocked me to the ground and stepped on my neck and told me to never, NEVER darken his door again.

That, and his exquisite taste in carpeting.

One particular bright spot this week came on Monday, in the form of a check in the mail for my writing.

My first professional fiction sale.

My short story "Band of Sisters" will appear in an anthology from DAW Books, although the publication details are still pending. Naturally, I'll post the title and release date once we get word on when, in fact, it's going to be published.

Other submissions to other editors appear to be getting more favorable notice, as well, even if they haven't yet generated more checks. I've finally made it off the slush pile for two pro markets I've been trying to crack for years (ie, I'm being personally rejected by the editor with a thoughtful note, rather than with a form rejection note or an assistant editor's bounce), and I'm pleased to note that it's taking longer, in some cases, for certain periodicals to bounce me than they used to. Yes, it's a funny sort of progress, but progress, nonetheless.

It's taken a while to get to this point. Do you know what happens next? Now, I need to work on my second sale. It's a long process, but this is how one builds a writing career.

A fellow writer is teaching a section on first lines for a creative writing class, and asked her colleagues for their thoughts on the role of first lines in fiction. I am not as well-published as the other folks in the group (yet), but I nonetheless have an opinion (doesn't everybody?).

It seems to me that the purpose of a first line is to get the reader (be he/she/it a consumer, an acquisitions editor, an agent, a student, a bookstore manager, or whatever) to want to read the next few sentences. That's it. Hook the reader enough to keep reading a few more sentences.

Whether the author accomplishes this by introducing and/or developing sympathy for a character, a setting, or a plot point is immaterial. The point is to get the reader to keep reading.

The purpose of the next few sentences, naturally, is to compel the reader to read the next few paragraphs. And those few paragraphs, in turn, should establish the kind of relationship with the reader such that the reader naturally wants to take in the rest of the book.

Now, the first few paragraphs typically must contain specific elements in order to accomplish the desired goal. But the first line, it seems to me, has an incredibly simple job and can accomplish it in a wide variety of ways. (That, of course, is why writing the first line is so hard.)

Typically, though, the successful first line compels readers to keep reading because they pose a question in the readers mind:

"He died."

Who did? How? Why?

"Call me Ishmael."

Why?

"It was a pleasure to burn."

It was? For whom? What's being burned? Why?

"Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."

Oh? How'd that happen?

Some of my favorite first lines can be found in William Gibson's Burning Chrome. Pick any story from that collection and read the first line. Lots of action, lots of drama packed into quick, compelling sentences that all beg the question: Why? They all establish a need in the reader to know more.

Most people think that the purpose of a resume is to get you the job. It isn't. The purpose of the resume is to get you the interview.

Likewise, the first sentence doesn't need to sell the story. It's entire purpose is to get you to read just a little bit more. Let the next few sentences establish a setting or a character or a problem (or all three). The compelling first line simply establishes one need in the reader: you want to know more.

Now, if I can only convert these pearls of wisdom into professional sales, I'll be all set....

One of the most influential American authors of the twentieth century, Robert A. Heinlein, was born on this day (that would be July 7th, for those of you not too sure of today's date) in 1907.

Insofar as my previous post was on the subject of first lines in fiction, I thought I'd celebrate in part by listing a few first lines from Heinlein short stories and novels. Not all of these may be of the "grab you by the lapels and shake vigorously" variety, but I think you'll agree that they at least suggest enough to make you want to see the line or two that follow. Favorites include:

from Beyond This Horizon, his first published novel:

Their problems were solved: the poor they no longer had with them; the sick, the lame, the halt, and the blind were historic memories; the ancient casues of war no longer obtained; they had more freedom than Man has ever enjoyed. All of them should have been happy --

from The Day After Tomorrow:

"What the hell goes on here?"

from "Waldo":

The act was billed as ballet tap -- which does not describe it.

from "Magic, Inc.":

"Whose spells are you using, buddy?"

from "The Roads Must Roll":

"Who makes the roads roll?"

from "Requiem":

On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave.

from "The Long Watch":

Johnny Dahlquist blew smoke at the Geiger counter.

from "The Green Hills of Earth":

This is the story of Rhysling, the blind singer of the Spaceways -- but not the official version.

from The Puppet Masters:

Were they truly intelligent?

from "Jerry Was a Man":

Don't blame the Martians.

from The Door Into Summer:

One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War my tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut.

from Have Space Suit -- Will Travel:

You see, I had this space suit.

from "The Year of the Jackpot":

At first Potiphar Breen did not notice the girl who was undressing.

from "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag":

"Is it blood, doctor?"

from Stranger in a Strange Land:

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.

from Time Enough for Love:

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- ie, none to speak of.

from The Number of the Beast:

"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter."

from The Cat Who Walks Through Walls:

"We need you to kill a man."

from To Sail Beyond the Sunset:

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.

And lastly, a first line that certainly makes *me* want to read more, from "It's Great to be Back!":

"Hurry up, Allan!"

I'm currently working on a novel (well, if I could make time to write, I'd be working on a novel) which takes a highly unlikely proposition that many people nonetheless believe and examines it along the lines of: what if it were actually true? What would that mean to our society, to the world, and how would it shape the way we look at our past and our future?

A friend of mine recently completed a novel that will appear very soon in print that works along similar lines. His novel asks: what if Sasquatch existed? What would that mean to our society? Who would be affected, and how? Because he brings such vivid scientific and forensic detail to his novel, the story is very compelling. If Sasquatch did exist today, then what does that imply about our past? About our future? What kind of evidence would be necessary to establish the existence as fact, and who would believe it even if it were available?

The medical, anthropological, historical, and zoological detail of the novel is fascinating. The author's understanding of the battles within academia are beyond reproach. And the inner workings of the government as depicted in the novel ring true, but who am I to say? And yet, the story doesn't get bogged down in detail. It sings along at a very fast pace.

So there. Your reading assignment is to pick up Cryptid when it comes out. Be sure to visit my friend's website at ericpenz.com. Tell him that his friend and critiquer Allan sent you.

As part of my high-tech whirlwind database life, I occasionally travel to locales far and wide to teach accountants and IT professionals at law firms how to use a database language called SQL (structured query language). Sounds exciting, doesn't it? This is excitement personified.

When a law firm hosts one of these classes -- which is to say, when they provide the training facilities and allow others to attend -- they are accorded a couple of "free" seats in the class. Typically, the employees of the host law firm who attend the class run the risk of getting less out of the class than their counterparts who travel from nearby towns to attend.

Why? Because when a person attends training within their own firm's offices, he or she is often called away for a quick-emergency-meeting or to put out this-one-little-fire or something along those lines. Their training time is not respected by their colleagues because -- Hey! -- they are there at the office anyway, so what harm could it be to pull them out of the class for one teensie-weensie-moment.

Attendees who pay full fare and come in from another firm are not at their office mate's (or boss's) beck and call, and therefore can't be pulled aside to attend to a quick little problem.

For lack of a better term, I'll call this the "locals' lament". It's convenient geographically and economically, at least, for you to be the host but the distractions of being on your home turf keep pulling you away.

So it is for me and this year's North American Science Fiction Convention. My wife and I attempt every year to attend the annual World Science Fiction Convention (typically held during the days leading into the Labor Day weekend) because it features a strong track for professional writers in the field. When "WorldCon" is held outside of North America (this year's was held in Scotland), there is a smaller version held on our home continent, the aforementioned "NASFiC". This year's NASFiC is being held in our home town.

Should be convenient, no? Should make our lives easier, because we don't have so much to arrange in terms of travel and taking care of the kids and all that stuff, right?

Nope. Just as we missed the World Horror Convention when it was held here a couple of years ago, we find our attendance at this year's NASFiC very, very challenging. Difficulties and distractions at the office and at home have led me to miss all of the ceremonies, panels, and parties thus far. Yesterday, I left work in time to make dinner with some friends in town for the Con, but that's the most I've managed so far. Instead of our annual week-long participation, it looks like Paulette and I will be able to get two days this weekend at the most.

Next year's WorldCon will be held in LA. We look forward to having it away from home again (as usual), so that we can once more take full advantage of it.

Funny thing. We finally got around to sending out year-end letters to friends and family, and for many of the news items we noted that the reader could find more details by visiting my website.

At around the time as we started preparing the letters, I stopped posting to the website. Which means that if anyone has been visiting my site of late, they've found nothing new except lame wishes for a pleasant end of the year.

It hasn't been for a lack of things on my mind. There's been more than enough subjects I've been wanting to comment on. The current bribe scandals unfolding in both houses of Congress, the continuing nonsense being referred to as "Teach the Debate", the idea that I should make up some New Years Resolutions, parallels between the war in Iraq and the Spanish-American War, the status of the Patriot Act, and possibly the most profound recent event, Jessica Simpson's pending divorce*.

No, it's been fear. All writers occasionally bump into a block of some sort. Some find themselves daunted by the blank page. Others find themselves bereft of ideas. Still others are thwarted by the internal censor. "No, don't write that. You could get into trouble for writing that." Therein lies my own block. The internal censor has been my bugaboo.

The internal censor has been warning me lately not to dive too far into the issues that touch upon religiosity. Don't want to offend any of my family or friends who feel passionately about their beliefs (or disbeliefs).

Likewise, because I find myself simply overcommitted with work and family commitments, I am not taking the time to be as well informed on contemporary political issues as I would like to be. So my internal censor cautions me against political punditry lest I make a fool of myself.

The problem has not been confined to my blog -- although, certainly there are many topics I'd like to present to you that discretion dictates I make just a wee bit less public than this House of Cards. But private and semi-private means of communication are also proving to be a challenge for me these days.

Having occasionally been chastised for being too informal in my dealings with clients and coworkers, I often find myself writing e-mail messages complete with very direct communication about how I feel regarding a certain course of action, only to delete that message and write something a little less forthright. (This kind of self-censorship might be referred to as "maturity".) This is probably as it should be, but it fits as part of a larger pattern: it has created a habit that has extended to my online journal entries. I've got about five posts I've written that currently reside in my content management system in "draft (unpublished)" mode because, after writing them, I thought better of making them public.

I'm on several listservs where participants have practically begged to be slapped upside the head, but after writing my little rejoinders... I delete them and simply let it go. Better to let someone else do the e-slapping, and take the resulting heat that follows.

What the hell is that all about? Who am I, and what did "they" do with the real me?

Someone on a listserv I'm on checked out this website after I'd mentioned that photos of Alexander and Nolan appear here, and they were kind enough to say that I'm "interesting." How messed up is this -- I've been afraid, ever since, that I might post something that is not interesting. The internal censor again:

"Dude. Don't talk about your 'Solipsist Manifesto'. It won't be interesting enough. No more baby pictures! They're not interesting enough!"

So, yeah. My writers block has been fear -- the Internal Censor that kills with a thousand paper cuts.

Okay. Now that I've admitted my insecurities, let's move on. At least I've posted something. I'll leave the task of posting something *interesting* for another day.

I'm on a listserv where someone sent out a link to a list of "best first lines" of novels. A few of us on the listserv noted that in some cases, lines were included because they were from great novels, not because they were great lines. (I might even take issue with the idea that some of those novels were great, but they certainly are all respected for one reason or another.)

As much as I thought several "best lines" were missing from the list, it was a great conversation starter. So, let's play! Before I go into a long list of best lines that should have been included from *my* favorite novels, let's start with just one author in particular. I've already played a similar game with Robert A. Heinlein. In fact, that had started with another essay I'd written about first lines in general (when a fellow writer posed the question of what a first line should accomplish).

Let's play "Best First Lines" with today's guest author, Stephen King. I've culled the list down to what I arbitrarily consider to be the "top twenty":

From Rage:

The morning I got it on was nice; a nice May morning.

From 'Salem's Lot:

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

From The Shining:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

From "Night Surf":

After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was on the air, we all went back down to the beach.

From "The Mangler":

Officer Hunton got to the laundry just as the ambulance was leaving -- slowly, with no sirens or flashing lights.

From "Trucks":

The guy's name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy.

From "The Ledge":

"Go on," Cressner said again. "Look in the bag."

From "The Lawnmower Man":

In previous years, Harold Parkette had always taken pride in his lawn.

From Cujo:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

From "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption":

There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess -- I'm the guy who can get it for you.

From Christine:

This is the story of a lover's triangle, I suppose you'd say -- Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and, of course, Christine.

From "The Mist":

This is what happened.

From It:

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years -- if it ever did end -- began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

From The Dark Tower:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

From "Secret Window, Secret Garden":

"You stole my story," the man on the doorstep said.

From "The Library Police":

Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat.

From "Dolan's Cadillac":

I waited and watched for seven years.

From "The Doctor's Case":

I believe there was only one occasion upon which I actually solved a crime before my slightly fabulous friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

From "Why We're in Vietnam":

When someone dies, you think about the past.

From "L.T.'s Theory of Pets":

My friend L.T. hardly ever talks about how his wife disappeared, or how she's probably dead, just another victim of the axe man, but he likes to tell the story of how she walked out on him.

I love these lines because they do what a first line should do: make you want to read the second line.

I'm happy to report that my first "professional" short fiction sale (as defined by SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; five cents per word or more, from "qualifying" publishers) is going to the presses. My short story "Band of Sisters" will appear in the anthology Hags, Sirens and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy edited by Denise Little and published by DAW Books. My story is the one about the Sirens.

Quoth Amazon.com: "This title will be released July 5, 2006." But naturally, you can buy it in advance now.

Sometime in July, several of the authors and I hope to be at a signing event to celebrate the release of the book. More news as it develops...

In the meantime, I have just recently learned that I've sold another short story at pro rates. I'll post the details once the publication info is finalized (it's for an anthology that is likely to be published in the second half of 2007, but titles, release dates, and other details can change quite a bit in that amount of time).

Now, if only I could find more time to write....