Bright & Dark

About a month ago, I wrote a short post here that mentioned writing what feels dangerous. I didn’t go into any real detail at the time because I actually didn’t have the time, and because it felt like something I wanted to cogitate on a some more before I said anything else about it. Having had all this time to think, I still don’t know what’s going to come through my fingers on this topic, but it feels like it’s time to write about it. I’m talking about a piece of my own writing process here, not making general statements about what other folks should or should not do.

So, danger. What makes a topic dangerous? Risk.

It doesn’t have to be risk to life and limb, although for some people — reporters in war zones, people who tell the truth to power under repressive regimes, those who blow the whistle on wrongdoing in the wrong place at the wrong time — it is. Sometimes it’s a risk to livelihood – take the Dixie Chicks, for example, and their comments about George W. Bush at a time when those words evoked outrage in a politically polarized environment. I know, I know. These days, is there any other kind of political environment around here? Let’s face it, for writers like me it’s not any of those things. There is no danger, grave or otherwise, to me in the act of writing a story.

Now that that’s out of the way, I want to move on to what I mean.

In my personal experience, living the life of privilege that I do with mostly plenty of everything I need and some things I want, the risk is in revealing myself. In letting air and light into the family skeleton closet when those old bones and sinews have influenced me down to my molecules. Or worse, showing myself parts of me I don’t want to know about or examine, or possible didn’t even know existed in the first place.

To be clear, every piece of fiction I write is meant to be submitted into the wide world of markets for publication, so I’m aware that no matter what my experience is in writing a story or a novel, the goal is for somebody else (and hopefully a lot of someone elses) will read it. Am I worried about baring my soul (and the souls of my characters) to the world? No. Not for a second. What scares me is the act of baring my soul to myself.

I’ve had lots of practice doing it. It never gets old. And I never quite get used to it, especially when I draw back the curtain of my inner recesses and there’s some unexpected, gut-wrenching feeling or idea that demands to be explored in words.

The insidious shame of regret. (“Ashes,” just completed and mailed, about a runner-inner who rescues women and children from house fires as penance for not having rescued his own family, and the washed up theater janitor who learns to live by his example.)

Unexpected depth of outrage. (“Outcast,” published in Chizine, created from outrage over the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.)

Grief and loss. (“The Truth According to Margot Williams,” published in Fantasy Magazine, exploring grief over the loss of my grandmother.)

Or I could talk about the novel I’m percolating now and about to start work on, which story I won’t discuss because I don’t discuss works in progress. But I can say about it that the initial impulse of the book stems from the almost subconscious unwillingness to face certain kinds of loneliness in myself. “Almost” because, while it remained subconscious for a long time, I managed to unearth it with the help of a friend who poked me in the eye with a spear. After all, what are friends for?

You could say that all of these things are run-of-the-mill emotions, or just that everyone has them or some variation on them, and you’d be right. But it’s not acknowledging the emotion that I’m talking about here. I’m talking about digging into these things until what I’m feeling when I write is risky.

The common writing advice is “write what you know,” which most people take to mean “write about subjects you know.” That’s not it at all. If every writer wrote only about subjects they’re experts on or have experience with, there’d be a lot of stories that would never have been and would never be written. I don’t know anything about mountain climbing but I could make up a story about mountain climbing with a few details and I could make it riveting and vital because the story isn’t really about the mountain or the climbing. It’s about the people. Writers make shit up. Some of us make shit up with varying levels of research. Either way, it’s still creating a story out of whole cloth.

The more distilled version of the advice I’ve heard is “write what you’re passionate about,” to which I say, yes, absolutely. But I don’t think passion is entirely what I’m after when I write either, at least not all the time.

I want the occasional risk and the discovery, and the subtle and sometimes not so subtle shifts that come from them.

I don’t need it for every story. I don’t even want it for every story. That would be exhausting, as much as I’m writing, and frankly unnecessary. But having it pop up every so often reminds me that story can be a great revealer and changer of minds and hearts, especially my own.

Since I’ve been back from the coast, I’ve been pretty steadily focused down on keeping all my novels and short stories in the mail. One rejection comes back, one query or story goes out. I’m having to move from a more nebulous tracking system to something more systematic, like a spreadsheet, for the first time ever. I pronounce this a good development.

I did run myself into a wall of busy and have taken a few days off my regular writing. It’s time to get back to it. I have the start of a strange western hybrid, a sort of Firefly-flavored bounty hunter story. Since as usual I have no clue what’s going to happen yet, I’m excited to see where it will go.

I’m also neck-deep in reading for the upcoming Mystery workshop in May. My bookmark is somewhere around page 155 of Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo, which I’m enjoying the hell out of.

Other, non-reading happinesses:

1. The new season of In Plain Sight. This show hooked me half way through last season and hasn’t let go yet. Witness Protection marshals, you rock.

2. King Arthur Flour’s new gluten-free cake mixes. I’ll be making a couple of these in the next week for birthdays — mine and several folks in my immediate family (a ton of April birthdays).

3. The catalog that came with the King Arthur Flour cake mixes, from which I’m going to choose some really frivolous seeming birthday gift. Fun! In the kitchen!

4. The new Runaways movie opens in my town this weekend, and Sunday is popcorn in the dark with Joan Jett day. I can hardly wait.

Happiness!

I’m working on a short story this week. The idea came to me in a dream — exceedingly rare for me, that sort of thing — and I surrendered to the idea of waking up long enough to write it down on my bedside pad o’ paper.

The story is a mad wrangle. My critical voice, having been kicked out of my office for months upon months, storms the castle at least once every writing session, sometimes twice. Can we say annoying?

I can only come the conclusion that there’s something important trying to be expressed here (and by important, I don’t mean that I have or have not committed literature or an excuse for an award nomination, just that there’s something deep and imperative for me to express). In this case, important = dangerous.

As it happens, I’ve come across a link a few times in the past day or two on Facebook that leads to a letter David Mamet wrote to the writers of The Unit. The letter is specifically about writing for the screen, but IMO the text is a great refocusser no matter what medium you’re writing for. It’s certainly helping me with my current wrangle all of a sudden.

Thanks to my friend Thorn for sending the link directly to me so’s I could finally read it.

Here it is for your enjoyment and edification.

Back and finally settled some after having been on the Oregon coast for a week and a half in February. These trips have always been invaluable, and this one was no exception.

First up, novel workshop. I’ve been to these before, but this time there was a new method, moving from traditional Clarion workshop round-robin critique rules to more targeted comments about the marketability of the novels and spiffing up the proposal packages so that they really shone. It rocked. I found the whole experience eye-opening and very useful. And such a treat to read so many really great books.

I took The Heart of the World to this workshop. So well-received. And then mailed to editors, one of whom requested the full manuscript so far. Good stuff.

Next up, a couple of days off, which I mostly spent reading the first round of stories sent in for the second workshop and walking on the beach. Great reading, strenuous walking on that loop down to the beach and around to the inlet near Mo’s, then back up through the neighborhood via the Hill of Hell. Sunshine even graced us some.

And then the anthology workshop with Dean and Denise Little. This one, too, went as usual above and beyond my expectations as far as learning and networking. I wrote my first ever noir for the overnight short story at this workshop. What a blast! And I got to read and learn from the excellent overnight batch of stories and all of Denise’s and Dean’s comments.

Both my first and second story are out to markets.

Add to all this mix a shopping trip to North by Northwest Books and my first trip to Mo’s (no chowder for me unfortunately because of the glutens, but it smelled heavenly; and Mo’s surprised me with a bang-up bowl of chili) and lots of time with so many other professional writers and editors, and you have a recipe for amazingness.

So. Reading back over what I’ve just written, it strikes me that there is no real way to describe what I get out of these workshops and what it’s like to experience them. Because I’ve written about the logistics and mechanics, and that doesn’t include the way it feels to be among people who write professionally, who love it, who love story, who love learning. Or how it feels to completely immerse myself in writing and writing culture for at least a week. Or how it feels to bump up my craft and business knowledge in a way that fuels my work once I return home. You just have to have been there.

I’m betting you have a similar experience that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. Feel free to substitute words and phrases.

I take “vacation time” from work to do all this, usually a couple of times a year. Everyone, including me, knows that it’s not a real vacation. Not in a million years. I work my butt off. I get very little rest. It doesn’t matter, though. What does matter? Doing what I love. That feeds me in a different way than sunning on the beach or curling up in front a peat fire on a rainy Irish night. Without all those different kinds of nourishment, I feel like a starving woman.

Do what you love. Find a way. That’s my prescription.

How did it get to be February?

January was a whirlwind of travel and writing — the travel to Austin twice for long weekends with friends and the writing mostly running through draft number two of The Heart of the World in preparation for workshopping at this month’s novel workshop on the Oregon coast. First Reader loved it and had such good comments. The book is so much better for them.

There has also been short story writing — the first assignment for the other workshop I’m attending in Lincoln City. The theme was loads of fun and the writing a continuation of the one scene at a time, focus on the emotion experiment. I’m very happy with the story, and happy it’s done and turned in on time.

Now there’s an enormous amount of reading to do — proposal packages from the novel workshop and one full novel, then the anticipation of a slew of short stories next week. And somewhere in there I’ll be on an airplane heading northwest.

In anticipation, I give you the Inn at Spanish Head’s sky cam, which updates every 7 minutes. Live, from the Oregon coast!