Category: blog

Story of my mother

I have lots of stories of my mom. But this one is pretty special… Michael Swanwick has Tuckerized my momma. No, it’s not like that, all you people with your minds in the gutter. It’s Michael’s personalized flash fiction in support of the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I ponied up $10 to the cause, gave him a few salient facts about my mother, and poof, he made a story that has left me slightly weepy and in search of a kleenex.

Isn’t it amazing, the things people do? The seemingly endless, inventive ways we find to please each other and ourselves, to help each other and ourselves?

——

Write-a-thon running total: 1,310 words out of 12,000.

Write-a-thon is on! Progress update…

The Clarion West Writers Workshop has begun, and the Write-a-thon is in progress! We have 79 writers signed up, and donations to support them are rolling in. Our goal is 200 donors. There are so many great writers to sponsor — please consider picking one and pledging. Any amount is welcome. Every single dollar helps. And we love our donors, and our love is strong (smile).

Here’s a particularly inventive and cool way to support the Write-a-thon and give a gift to yourself or someone you love. The fabulous Michael Swanwick is writing one piece of flash fiction every day for the next six weeks (I know, is this man awesome or what?). For a donation of $10, you can ask Michael to Tuckerize one of these stories for you or someone you know/love (no strangers, please!). What’s Tuckerization, you ask? Well, you provide your name and a few random details about yourself, and Michael puts you into one of his Write-a-thon stories. You can see the stories at Michael’s blog, and you can go to his Write-a-thon page to get on board the Tucker Train. It’s fun, it’s cool, and it’s in a great cause!

Part of my commitment is to blog regularly about my progress, so here you go: I’ve begun my YA novel. Beginnings are always slow for me, so I can currently report only 577 words of draft. Which really means I’ve probably written 1,000 words and then deleted/revised/fussed them down to 577. Although I’m in “push ahead” mode on this, I still always find that I need to fuss with beginnings. On some level, the beginning needs to feel right before I can move on. The details of the scene aren’t important — in many (many!) cases, the opening scene changes dramatically over the course of several drafts. But I’m a writer of character, and I use emotional events as my primary story anchor points: and so I have to know where I am to begin with. It’s best for me to put the time in up front to get squarely inside my character.

So the real progress is that I know where my protagonist is in space, time, action and most importantly, in her head and heart. In a coy and thoroughly unhelpful teaser, it has to do with pennies…

It’s been all screenplay all the time for me for quite a while, and so I’m especially excited to be working on new fiction! And I hope you’ll support me and Clarion West. Thanks to all who have already donated — I really appreciate it.

Kidnapped, kinda

So there’s a company in France offering a new kind of recreation adventure — for a fee, they will kidnap you. Now you too can experience the thrill of being taken off the street at some unexpected moment, thrown in a van or a car trunk, taken somewhere, tied up, terrorized just enough to get a taste of the “real thing,” and then turned loose after a preset number of hours. Or for a little more, you can even add in the entire ransom negotiation experience. Or customize your abduction (who knows, maybe you can be kidnapped by willing women in bikinis or men in tight pants, or something…)

Have you seen the movie The Game? I really enjoy that film, and I think it’s a cool movie idea. I find that I’m less sanguine about the reality. I’m fine with the general notion of folks paying for adventures in expensive role-playing games — what I don’t like is that a kind of violence that is visited on so many people in the world is now being turned into a Disney ride. Kidnapping is a brutal business with horrible consequences to victims and families. It’s not a game.

If I’m reading various blogs correctly, you can get one of these packages for about 1,000 GBP. Somewhere in the range of $1,500 – $2,000 USD, depending on the exchange rate. If that’s the case, then this moves from the realm of the uber-rich vacation into a realm that most people on an executive salary, for example, could easily afford. And it’s weird to me to think that this kind of “sport” might enter the mainstream/middle-class consciousness as an alternative to, I don’t know, going to the Grand Canyon or renting a beach cottage for a week, or all the other ways that people like to spend their leisure budget.

There are plenty of ways that people use their money that I find personally disturbing, and so I don’t spend my money that way. But when people do things I wouldn’t do, I mostly think Meh or Huh or even sometimes I wish I had the guts to do that too. But those are personal choices that affect only the people involved. This one seems… hmm, bigger than that. This seems like a choice about “visiting” other people’s pain. It feels like a bad idea on a social level.

I dunno. Am I just being a sensitive plant? Maybe it’s all just good fun and I should lighten up. Still, wouldn’t it be lovely if there was a company that could make a profit from taking people by force out of their office jobs and subjecting them to an entire afternoon of picnics and peace?

Eye to eye with germs

Okay, can I just say ewww?

I am not the Howard Hughes of my neighborhood: I shake hands and no one has to wear scrubs and latex to step through my door. But I am becoming less patient with other people’s ick. We were in a doctor’s waiting room the other day with a woman who proudly announced to the receptionist that she was pretty sure she had pneumonia (and she had the cough to back it up), but she had come anyway because it was so hard to get an appointment these days. Everyone else in the room spent the next 15 minutes trying to hold their breath. Why didn’t the receptionist send her home? I have no idea.

I am turning into a curmudgeon. I think things like Turn down your music! and Cover your mouth!, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I have my very own You kids get off my lawn! Clint-Eastwood-movie-moment. Is it possible to be more generally accepting of the fact that we’re all human at the same time as being less tolerant of the particulars? Because that’s where I think I am…

All work and no play…

… is never going to be my plan again.

It’s been great to have a break, and re-entry is going pretty well, partly because I’m finally understanding that work/rest is not a zero-sum game. I know, I know (*shakes head*). But I’ve always been the kind of person who hunkers down, gets stubborn and just works harder, just works more, just gets it done. That turns out to be a great strategy for maintaining straight A’s in the midst of family crisis, or driving 800 miles in a stickshift car with one’s injured and bandaged left foot propped on a box, or nerving oneself up for yet another revision of the screenplay…. but it’s not such a great strategy for long-term everyday life.

And so although re-entry requires that I once again embrace concepts like schedule and priority and portion control (sigh), I’m making damn sure that it holds tight as well to go to the park and watch a movie and drink tea in the sun with a book for 20 minutes. In service of this, I have scheduled my workload — wait for it — one project at a time ( I know! Is that an amazing idea, or what?).

I keep trying to learn this lesson. Let’s see how it plays out this time around.

In Seattle? Get your photo on…

Our fabulous photographer friend Jennifer Durham is currently running a special for individual or family portraits. If you or someone you know is in Seattle, considering giving yourself/them the gift of good pictures of themselves. It’s a great Father’s Day gift as well as a lovely idea for family portraits or special occasions.

Seriously, making people look great in photos is a talent. Jennifer has the ability to make us all look our best: call me vain, but, well, I like looking my best. It’s not that I want the map of my life airbrushed out of my face — I earned those lines and I have mostly liked the journey. But I do want to look like what I think of as myself — I want to see on the outside what I feel myself to be on the inside. Jennifer’s great at that. She took the photo that Nicola uses on Ask Nicola, and I think it looks just like her, outside and inside (and you can see it in the banner over at Jennifer’s special offer.

So. If you’re in town, go get you some of that. It’ll only take 15 minutes, and it will make you feel great.

I’ll be back next week with, you know, conversation (I know, it’s been ages). Enjoy your weekend.

Write-a-thon

The Clarion West Write-a-thon approaches!

The Write-a-thon raises money for CW. It runs in concert with the six weeks of the workshop, and is one of our most important fundraising events. As the chair of CW, a former CW instructor, a Clarion graduate, a writer whose work I hope you enjoy, and the sweetie of a writer whose work I hope you enjoy who is also a Clarion graduate…. well, I really hope that you and every single person you know will choose to support me in this year’s Write-a-thon.

    Here’s how it works:

  • I have promised to write 12,000 words of a YA novel in six weeks. I have been thinking about this for a couple of years: now it’s time!
  • I’ll make progress updates at the CW website and here on my blog.
  • You sponsor me in this goal by visiting my Write-a-thon page and clicking on the PayPal button to make your donation.
  • Spread the link to your friends and ask them to help.
  • Are you a writer? Join us in the Write-a-thon and work for six weeks with an incredibly supportive and cheerful group of folks.

Any amount — any amount — is wonderful. I will be grateful for every single dollar that anyone chooses to give Clarion West. Every dollar helps us make this workshop a supportive, challenging, transformational and potentially life-changing experience for emerging writers of speculative fiction.

And besides — being a Write-a-thon supporter or writer brings you good karma, extra sunshine, and automatically makes you the coolest person in the room. I promise.

Thank you all for your support.