S. K. Dunstall

Earlier this year Howard V. Hendrix, the then vice president of SFWA, created quite a storm when he wrote that he was

… opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free.

Howard Hendrix, posted on Will Shetterley’s Live Journal, 12 April 2007

Now I’m not going to talk about whether I agree with him or not. GalleyCat, over at mediabistro.com covered it pretty well for me. What I do want to talk about is where we find new authors, because I find a lot of mine on the web, at those very same sites of those people Hendrix calls webscabs.

When I was younger I discovered new authors through the pulp magazines—Asimov, Astounding, The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I discovered Connie Willis through FireWatch, A Letter From the Clearys and The Last of the Winnebagos. I discovered Vernor Vinge through a novelisation of Marooned in Real Time in Analog. I could go on and on.

If I found a good writer in the magazines I would buy their novels without even worrying about whether the book was any good or not. I was seldom disappointed.

Some of the magazines have disappeared, some have stayed (even if not in the same format), and new magazines—particularly the ezines —seem to come and go. Even so, I don’t read them any more.

I used to buy books on spec, too. I would go into the specialty science fiction/fantasy bookstores and just browse. I’d pick up anything that took my fancy, or that the bookseller recommended. Those old stores have gone now, forced out of business or online by the high cost of shopfront premises.

I go into the big chains like Borders—the only local bookstores left now—and there is nothing I want to read.

So where do I find new authors now?

The truth is, I don’t find as many as I used to. Of the new books I do find half come from personal recommendations of friends, or from a scoop-through at the library. (I’m sure you’ve done it. Go to the shelves and pick five books at random, or five whose covers you like, or five authors whose names begin with ‘C’. Take them home and you may get one book you like.)

The rest of them come from the web. I find an author whose blog I like, or someone who has posted a sample chapter or three on line. It draws me in, and I’ll go search out the book.

I think this is probably the way of the future.

Just because stereotypes exist in real life doesn’t mean you can put them into your novel.

The street is full of men in classy suits today. Black or dark charcoal is in. Not a navy suit among them.

The men wearing them are cocky, confident and loud. The single women—there is only ever one woman in each group, and they all wear smart black pant suits—never get a word in.

Some of the conversation I overhear is egotistical. Boasts about how they will exceed their targets, boasts about what they will do in the future.

They turn out to be real estate agents, here for training.

Of course they are, I realise. They behave exactly the way you would expect a group of real estate agents to act.

They were one big stereotype.

Had I written about them in a novel, of course, I would have to change many of the characteristics. Otherwise I would have been told to cut the stereotypes.

Warning: Minor spoiler alerts for Renegade’s Magic.

I just finished reading Renegade’s Magic, Robin Hobb’s third book in the Soldier Son series, I enjoyed it so much that I read it in one sitting. It’s a big book, it took all day and I hardly moved from the couch. I’m stiff now.

As I got into the story I couldn’t thinking, “Two people in one body. Oh, I wish I had thought of this idea first.”

Holly Lisle wrote that when she reads something wonderful, her reactions vary from …

“… huge envious green goose bumps, because I know there’s no way in hell I could have ever written that book or story … sometimes I am moved to unenvious rapture —I love what I’ve read, but I have no desire to emulate it …[and] sometimes I am filled with passion and wicked larceny—what I read thrills me and catches at my gut and at my imagination and I just have to steal some part of it for myself ”

Holly Lisle, How to (legally and ethically) steal ideas

While I doubt that we will ever write a story about two people in the same body—especially after this blog—Holly Lisle gives some good pointers on How to (legally and ethically) steal ideas. The key is to take the germ of the idea that really grabs you, just the germ, nothing else, and to change everything else so that it’s really unrecognisable.

And that’s fine by me. Most of Renegade’s Magic brings out in me the ‘unenvious rapture’ of loving the story, but I don’t want to emulate it. Sometimes, while I am reading I think, “How on earth can Robin Hobb think up ideas like that? Look what she’s doing to poor Nevare now. How can she take the story in that direction and still make it work?” I cannot even imagine doing it myself.

No. If we came up with a two people in one mind story I doubt it would even be a fantasy. It would be science fiction. (See how my mind is ticking over with possibilities, even though my head is saying no, we’ll never do it.)

Our two definitely wouldn’t be a mage asundered, nor would they be two parts of the same person. No, our shared body story would have two distinct individuals, somehow thrust together into one container. The only things they would have in common with Hobb’s book would be the two minds in one body, and the fact that neither of them really liked it.

It’s what Holly Lisle calls ‘ethical thievery’.

Some writers are organised. They create an outline and write their novel from that. While the story may deviate a little it is basically in place before they start.

Others just start writing, and end up with this big, overblown mess that’s full of holes. They have to chop and tweak and move things around and add extra bits.

We’re one of the messy ones.

As a result, we probably write three times as much as we need to (not all in the same draft). Our working out is done on the pages of the novel, rather than beforehand. What goes into the first draft may not remain in later drafts.

Even so, a lot of what you cut is not wasted. It ends up as back story. You know your characters and your worlds so much better because of this back story.

Occasionally that information even comes in useful in unexpected ways in later drafts.

In draft 1 of Barrain we had a sub-plot where Scott was fed a drug called casseye. It was odorless and tasteless. Barrainers fed it to their slaves to make them docile.

We got rid of the sub-plot in the second draft, and we got rid of the slaves. Neither were necessary to the story.

Then here we are in draft three, trying to work out how Caid and his group could possibly have committed the massacre that starts the story. And suddenly we have it.

Casseye. Of course.

So if you’re messy writers like us, don’t despair over those big chunks you have to cut. They’re still useful. And who knows, they may even come back into the story in a different guise in a later draft.

Music is important to me when I write. It helps set the mood for the story and makes it easier to start writing. It’s part of the routine of writing. I find I write better when I have music to listen to.

It has to be a particular type of music though, and the music is different for each novel. I know one novel I wrote way back when (one of those under the bed, never to see the light of day) was written to a combination of MeatLoaf’s Bat Out of Hell and seemingly the whole Chris de Burgh back catalogue. Another one had a lot of Carmina Burana in it.

Changing the music spoils the mood. No matter how much I think I can listen to something else, I have to introduce new music to the collection gradually, because if it doesn’t fit it spoils the writing flow, and then I have to get back into it.

One of the things I like is when a writer says in the introduction to their novel what music they listened to when they wrote it. Just for fun I thought I might list my own current writing music. This is for two novels —Barrain and Shared Memories, because we’re writing different drafts of these at the same time.

• Va Pensero, the Ten Tenors, from Bravo Act II
• Hoki Hoki Tona Mai, Yulia, from Bravo Act II
• Anthem, Anthony Warlow, from Chess
• Conquest of Paradise, Vangelis, from 1492
• Any Fool Could See, various, from Paris
• What Could Go Wrong?, Trevor White/John Parr, from Paris
• Trust in Your Heart, John Parr, from Paris
• Just Show Me How to Love You, Jose Cura/Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli/LSO, from Time to Say Goodbye
• The Medallion Calls, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• One Last Shot, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• He’s a Pirate, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• If Only, Original cast, Whistle Down the Wind
• Lakme H2O (Flower Duet), Opera Babes, from Beyond Imagination
• Silk Road, Kitaro (but I like the LSO’s version too), from Kitaro’s Silk Road Suite)
• Hymn to New England, John Williams, from An American Journey
• Just When I’d Given Up Dreaming, Ronan Keating, from Bring You Home

Some writers create elaborate worlds before they start writing their fantasy or science fiction novel. These writers create maps. They know of every creek and hilltop, the world history back to ten generations, particularly the lineage of their protagonist.

Other writers let the world evolve as they write the book.

We fall into the second category. We start with a character and a situation, and discover the world along with the story. We do this even with stories like Rainbow, where the world is so integral to the story it is almost a character in itself.

It has some problems.

Shared Memories started out as fantasy and morphed into science fiction. That took some world changes we were still fixing into the third draft. It also made it very soft science fiction (as distinct from hard science fiction, which has heavier doses of technology).

Given that we don’t plan out the world in advance, we then have to do it as part of the draft process. It’s usually part of draft two, closer to the start of the rewrite than the end.

Once we have a story we go through it and plot the locations on a map.

With Barrain, we would only map Barrain, not Earth.

We start the map with two points. Elna’s village, and Demon City. Elna’s village is in the mountains. Mark in some mountains. Demon City used to be known as the City Between Sea and Mountain —that makes us think it’s close to the coast, but also close to a mountain. Place it near the coast, but not on it, near more mountains with a narrow hinterland.

It takes weeks to get to the city. Do they walk the whole way? If so, how far can we walk in a day? These people are fitter than us, and younger, so they will walk maybe twice as far. (Right now we are horribly unfit.)

Multiply the kilometres walked per day by the number of days on the road and we get an idea of the scale.

We fill in other bits of the map from details of the journey as per the novel. Once we’re done we might fill in blank bits of the map if we feel like it, but mostly we don’t.

And that’s pretty much it. Our world map. We stick it in front of the draft and that’s the master, and only copy.

It was hand written on one of the Moving Poetry posters on the train. Wedged in between a poem about football parents and another reflecting how their home town had changed since they left it.

Ticket inspectors
you yearn for my ticket.
I yearn for your heart.

Anon

So perfectly placed in between two other poems of the same form (rooku, an Australian variant of haiku). So appropriate in the context. It was on a train; ticket inspectors patrol the trains; they are often accused of being heartless.

Nowadays most graffiti is modern art or tags, whose only function is to mark territory, much like a dog marks territory by lifting his leg at every lamp post.

Not much written graffiti survives, and what does is usually of the dial a sex service form.

The witty, entertaining social commentary is gone, except for the occasional hold-out like the one I saw on the train this morning.

It’s a sign of the times. We communicate in pictures now, rather than words. Furthermore, rather than providing social commentary, today’s graffiti seems to be created mostly to draw attention to the creator.

If you want to read the rooku Moving Poetry, you can find it here.

I was rereading some of the Wordplay Hall of Fame posts last night and came across this little gem from Seth:

Metaphorically speaking, an agent is not a fairy godmother. An agent is a virus. They are opportunistic parasites with no ability to survive without the presence of a host organism – namely you …

… So if you’ve got one blindingly good script and I’ve got three reasonably good scripts, chances are good I will get more notice than you … One big rock does not a career make – an agent needs to know that if he takes a pickaxe to you you’re likely to come up with a few more gems in the rough.

Seth, Stop acting like a diamond and start acting like a diamond mine, on Wordplay.

Love the analogy, love the message he was trying to get across. Agents rely on writers to make them money. No matter how good your one story is (Seth was talking about scripts, but it applies equally to novels), it just isn’t enough. You have to keep producing. Otherwise your agent will jump hosts.

There’s a well-known story about students who paid big money to attend a famous writer’s screenwriting class. The famous writer gets up at the start of the class and says, “You want to write screenplays. What are you all doing here? Go home and write.”

I don’t know if this story is true, or just a myth passed on by people like me who hear it from other people, who heard it in turn from other people. Still, it makes a valid point.

Everyone has times when writing has to take second place, but it’s what you do with the precious minutes you can spare that count.

This is the difference between someone who finishes a novel and someone who says, “One day I want to write a novel,” but gets nowhere.

For family reasons Sherylyn and I clocked up 700km for each of the last two weekends and will do it again for the next two.

I am working full-time at present, Sherylyn is studying three days per week. In the same two weeks she has had two major assignments to complete, plus a mid-semester test.

What did we do in our spare time? Sherylyn played Runescape while I read novels.

Neither of us did a scrap of work on any of our writing projects.

That’s fine, if we only do it for a week or two, but if we keep doing it for the whole month we need to take a long hard look at our writing habits and our writing dreams.

We will never get anywhere if we don’t continually make the effort to write. As Angela Booth says in a 2003 article on writing …

“You must practise … Use it, or lose it. Sports people know this. So do pianists, ballet dancers and artists.”
Angela Booth, Five easy ways to become a confident writer