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ISBW Special #37: AISFP #57 - Neil Gaiman

Adventures in SciFi Publishing

Neil Gaiman

How awesome!  This is what happened: I read my Holly Lisle newsletter yesterday, the last one, about how something was missing in her story and nothing she did brought a solution, and then in the shower, randomly, it came to her.

It took FOREVER yesterday to GET to the shower, but while I was there, I thought I might try to figure out a way to make worldbuilding fun, or at least a whole lot less like root canal or labor & delivery.  I begrudgingly built another typed out page, answering questions that I didn’t want to, knowing too well that a book that involves politics, a ruling monarchy and a coup needs to have it’s history, culture and foreign policy worked out.  Argh.

I finally got in the shower, plopped on the shampoo and let my mind wander back to Earth Science, a class I took 10 years ago, and thought about a planet accreting together from the dust in the cosmos.

Don’t ask me HOW, but that did it.  15 minutes later, I’d gotten all the way up to nearly modern times in my country, and even started to form the underpinning theology of the major religion, also critical to the book.  I still have big swatches to go through, like foreign affairs, but I went to bed, opened my notebook and let my world grow.  AWESOME!!

Ok, so recently I discussed “what” should I write as it relates to genre, and I did some thinkin’ today and realized that I may have been wrong.  A little.

I DO love to read literary fiction, true.  But it is true that I also love to read sf/fantasy.  Problem is, I’m a snob about it. It has to be amazing.  And that doesn’t necessarily mean Hugo winning or anything, Dune for example was pure torture for me.   Anything with time travel that’s GOOD and NOT romance is excellent, but let’s face it, time travel is tricky at best and ugly at it’s worst.  I surely won’t write it!

I can count the books that fall into this category that I love on 2 hands: The Sparrow (not its sequel) and Time Travellers Wife - neither written by sf/f authors.  Solitaire.  Kim Stanley Robinson’s first 2 Mars books (Red and I think Blue).  Neil Gaiman (oh hell anything by Neil).  Harry Potter series.  Used to love Diana Gabaldon but it became too romancy and too historical.  Loved Mysts of Avalon, but much of her books are depressing.  The Historian was fabulous, but it took me forever to read.  (Really I guess that’s horror though, hm more like Goth.)  Hm, what else?  Contact.  Cloud Atlas (not sure of genre with that one.)   Oh yea, and Jack Finney.  Former Anne Rice fan too,

That pretty  much covers it.  I haven’t much liked the other stuff, even the stuff I’m “supposed” to.  But let me give you a list of my ideas for novels:

-my work in progress, which has a 3 novel future, about a people who have race/class conflict over using mind powers - or as they see, them “magic” (fantasy)
-a woman doctor who falls in love with a killer (drama)
-a group of people who keep returning to life throughout the ages (fantasy)
-a woman who finds a ring that grants her the power to save lives (fantasy)

Add to that a few random ideas based on superhero themes (used to be a huge Xmen/Spiderman fan). So there. That’s it, that’s me.  Fantasy with some goth thrown in.  The scales weigh in at 3 to 4.  And if you look at my film and teleision preferences, you’d see more of this same trend times 10.

I GUESS my biggest issue with the fantasy genre is NOT that I don’t like it, it’s just that I can’t find BOOKS in it that I do like, or only rarely.  I don’t really like books with dragons or elves, or dwarves or hobbits or lycanthropes or too much magic - but demons and vampires are sometimes ok.  I like books in there here & now, or something that closely resembles the here & now, and have some twist to them that is fantastical.   If you have any recommendations on this, throw them at me.  Help!  I’m stuck in a genre I don’t read and can’t get out!

(Just kidding)

I’m up to page 199 of 266 in my editing of “Shapeshifters” (woefully mistitled!).  That is a good thing, but also a bad, because here’s the issue: I want this to be a novel but it’s only got 64,500 words.  You need like 100,000 for a novel.  Now it IS true that there is subplot that needs to developed, so that will add. And also that I need to move it from being as explicatory as it is to descriptive, but even so I’m not sure I can get there.  I’ll have to really think it over and decide.

I’ve been longed resolved to this thing having at least a 3rd rewrite/edit, but plotline and character emotions are coming together.

OK, now I’m off to write some backstory on a pivotal character that may in of itself be an interesting side-story.

Thought I’d post on my progress on different things.

1. Joined a local writer’s meetup group today, we’ll see how that goes.

2. Joined a writer’s group at writers.com, still waiting to hear about being accepted.

3. I’m 3 for 3 in terms of editing progress on my major fantasy novel.

4. Just started re-editing (and then need to complete) the serial scifi story I want to submit for pay. Edit what I have to, then continue - or should I just continue, THEN edit? Hmmm… Have to re-read the 8000+ words to get familiar. Maybe I should do my own nanowrimo type progress counter?? Wonder if WP has one??

So, tonight, for the first time since JUNE, I picked up on my fantasy story, and started to edit again. It’s good, really good, and my character makes a comment that at once was sad and poignant - to me:

“I don’t even know WHAT my mother is now,” I said between sobs.  “Is she alive?  Dead?  Superhuman?  I have no idea, but she can never be just my mother ever again.”

I wrote this, I think, inspired by my own mother’s slide into Alzheimer’s.  I wonder if the line will touch readers the way I want, the way I feel.  The mother’s slide from being a queen to being something other worldly does seem (to me) to mimic what I feel about Mom.

Wow.  It’s really a lovely story I’ve written here.  I NEED to finish it, all I needed to do was to get back to it.  I’ll commit now to at least work on it weekly, if not nightly, even for a little bit, and when I’m settled in my new home, I’ll look for a writer’s support group.

Or start one.  Good deal.

Well, no, I have NOT been writing. Work and Christmas and kids and sickness and duties have taken up all my time. I know there is a solution, but in the MEANTIME I’ve been giving heavy thoughts to my creative writing projects - my fantasy story and it’s underlying themes, the new novel I’d like to start as a tribute to my mother (who is in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s), and a guy I spoke to today reminded me of an online project I wanted to start where I write a story and visitors log in to read excerpts weekly. Or maybe I should find a place to submit it.

On my 2007 to do list, is finding time to write. Even if it’s only a few hours (yea right) minutes a day. My goal is the DAILY part - daily writing not on my blogs and business, but on my fiction. Habits develop in 21 days, so they say, so all I need is 3 weeks, a few minutes a day at scheduled times. Given my business and my 2 small children, 2007 will be the “year of the schedule”…

Wish me luck.

Last night I was too wiped out from my daughter’s 3rd birthday party to edit, but tonight I did 10 pages to make up. (I’m revising 3 pages a night.) Once again, I have Holly Lisle to thank for that.

I also booked the URL for my nonfiction spiritual book, we’ll see how that goes. I’m psyched. I’m also pooped, so off to bed I go.