What the heck do I write about?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I don’t like doing open threads — partly because they tend to crash the hits on the blog, partly because  it feels like I failed in my commitment to write a post a day, which is why you guys check this every day, right.

However — possibly because we’re still in a recovering city, possibly because our utility company is like that — I’ve been without power for most of the early morning.  Because the batteries have cr*pped ou–  er… gone off on all the laptops, I couldn’t even write a blog post to put up as soon as it came up.

And now, I don’t feel like it.  I just don’t.  Also, whatever idea I had for a post seems to have vanished in the mists, leaving only “What the heck do I write about?”

So, I’m throwing this out there for you.  Because last month was crazy, between health and local issues, I’m coming up completely dry on what to write during the week.  (And usually I have AT LEAST) a list of possible topics for the week, to guide me, in case (fifty percent of the time) I don’t write the post before bed and must face it in the cold light of morning, unwashed and uncaffeinated.

So, give me suggestions for things to write about next week.  (And please no “What kind of ice-cream do you like?”  Last I checked I wasn’t (alas) Miss America or (thank heavens) a favored presidential candidate.)

I’ll be by to answer and engage (and tease, and annoy you) in between the stuff-that-must-get-done-before-Monday-morning.

176 thoughts on “What the heck do I write about?”

  1. Write about some of your pet peeves. Or take a break from all the seriousness and maybe write about what peeves your pets? (After all, it’s good for the soul to get silly once-in-a-while.) :-)

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  2. It has been a while since you discussed Human Wave SF. Yes, most of your posts relate to it implicitly, but you haven’t addressed it explicityly.

    Also, you could discuss how cover editing is going for Naked Reader.

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    1. Oh yes – a good one – I would like to see a definition of Human Wave SF and how it works. My hubby and I were talking about the direction of SF. He thinks that the idea that we can program something to become smarter than us is preposterous… as in with our flawed math and science we would just be making the flaws wider and deeper. Something made by us cannot come up with a completely new math without negative numbers.

      The older SF crowd how more leeway with not knowing how computers and communication worked. It was Arthur Clarke that came up with satellites and the geosynchronous belt. I told him that I thought SF would go into more of the human behavior/ talent soft science. He thought that we might actually be maxed out as human beings. I kind of think that is a little sad. But it was a lively discussion and I couldn’t come up with something that would be beyond what we are doing now.

      I do think we should have already been in the stars… but that was sort of stopped by a lot of political maneuvering…

      I just don’t like dystopia – I detest it. It hasn’t been that I haven’t given it a good try. I have read a lot of it. I see it and I go meh. Plus I want some hope. (oh the hubby thought that dystopia was the natural spot for SF right now). PLUS he used to be a big reader. NOW he won’t read much. He just doesn’t like what is coming out now and since Terry Pratchett started to show his illness, the hubby is staying away the fantasy field.

      BTW he considers my writings pure fantasy with no hard science. I don’t mind since I do write pure fantasy–or supernatural because I am the one person that still believes in leprechauns. ;-)

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      1. I’m going to have to disagree with your husband here. Having learned the basics of Artificial Intelligence programming (and the main limitations), I’m thinking it’s entirely possible that we won’t be able to build something that is creative, but as far as being more intelligent in the everyday sense? Yeah, it’s going to happen in less than 30 years. I’m not sure it couldn’t be done now, except that the top-end supercomputers in current use are being used for things like genetic/medical research and weather predictions.

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        1. But do we have people who are supersmart and could equal a super computer? that is the question. They would be rare. But what technology would go past the world of today… (we are already in the future) or do you think it will be something so strange that we will not even consider it?

          For instance, no one even thought of personal computers.

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          1. My thoughts on AI are that no matter how fast, how “smart” the machine is, is their “someone” in there? Or will there always be just very good machinery?

            Just sold a novel to NR, in which I used the term Artificial Personality to distinguish the concept.

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          2. Again, creativity, I think, is key. Analyzing known things will be something that we can make computers do. I don’t know about making new things that no one has ever thought of before, though some things are probably logical extensions of known technology, but people are so generally illogical that they don’t see them.

            I’m seeing the relatively near future as being populated with brain/machine interfaces, such as the Brain Scanner that they are hoping will be able to help Stephen Hawking. I’m thinking that as such technologies get better, and are able to interface both ways, it’s going to really get scary.

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            1. Looking at the article the Brain Scanner does not so much function as a mind reader but as a more sensitive means to enable Mr. Hawking to communicate — he has had to learn to exercise control. From what The Daughter tells me we are not anywhere near enough in our understanding to create a computer that can analyze our brain waves and come up with what we are thinking. Even our previous understanding of the ‘clean’ regions of process have had to be discarded.

              I just read this to The Daughter and she says: “My understanding is that, currently, we have no expectation whatsoever of ever being capable of making a computer capable of reading your mind–except in the most specific sense (yours, singular, not plural) and this would require entraining it so it knows what each specific pattern of activity in your mind means in your very specific case. It would not be possible for it to take this knowledge and apply it to another person’s mind, except maybe in very general terms in which case a good (fake) psychic’s reading will be just as clear & specific…and cheaper.”

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              1. There ARE other technologies in the works, too, that’s just the one I remembered offhand, because it was the most recent one I saw. I saw another one a few months ago, which was able, in a limited way, to recognize images being looked at by the subject. Then there are the chips that can be used to pick up nerve transmissions and pass them on, which they are looking at to bridge damaged nerves, or else to control external machinery. It’s not a great leap to consider generating signals directly in the optic or aural nerves to provide input. Other senses may be a bit more tricky.

                It will take training, but I think it won’t be too long before we’re able to interface quite well with our electronic helpers.

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      1. Interesting. I enjoy my own writing most of the time, but I remember hating it once when I kept making my protagonists/heroes unsympathetic to the reader — in fact, when I once changed a secondary character into the protagonist (on excellent advice from my editor Jeff Hill), the net effect was that the new protagononist became instantly unlikeable. THAT caused me to hate my writing, and caused a TWO-YEAR hiatus.
        I’m better now.
        Incidentally, I’ve re-published my two earlier works on Kindle. Can I plug them here, or is that bad manners?
        And just as a P.S., Sarah, I had no idea that you’d ever heard of me.

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        1. Go ahead, plug. It’s okay with permission.

          I go through periods of hating my writing. Usually in retrospect, it’s the time I’m making the fastest progress towards whatever it is we progress towards. Perhaps as Pratchett suggests being ourselves as hard as we can.

          Changing a character can change the entire book and depending on how much it’s coming out of the subconscious — for me it varies — it can block you forever. This is why editing — even good editing — is an art best practiced carefully. ;)

          I’ve read you and we’ve bumped into each other on blogs now and then (though I was then under deep cover, because I was afraid my houses would drop me if they knew my unconventional politics. — Turned out I was right.) Also, we have at least one mutual friend.

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              1. They’re working for me. Maybe something in your browser settings?

                As I once observed (borrowing from Einstein): “A man with one browser knows what the Web looks like. A man with two browsers is never sure.”

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              2. Hmmm… they work when I click on them. Are you using a Mac or some non-IE browser? I don’t know if that’s the answer, but I tested the links on my other laptop, and they worked there too.

                Anyone else having the same problem as Sarah?

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                  1. I think it’s really your computer, because Firefox is showing the book on Amazon for me just fine.

                    Cheat – just go to Amazon’s main page and search for the title.

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              1. Cyn, I was born and grew up in Johannesburg, lived there for thirty years. I left in the mid-80s and came to Paradise. (That would be the U.S. of A., for those who might not know reality.)

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                  1. Oh wow – same time… I went back for three months and had a chance to go down to the Cape. That was my last time there … It was beautiful.

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        2. [Groucho] Actually, there was a rumor Sarah and you would team up on a novel, but folks worried it might be seen as Hoyt-y-Toit-y. [/Groucho]

          [running like hell for cover] :)

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            1. (Sneaks CF a sandwich and a drink) I thought it was funny. Be ready to duck, though, she throws a mean dead fish.

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      2. Also, drop me an email note, at your convenience. Need to talk to you offline, as it were.

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          1. I blame your computer troubles and my younger son for reading that as O.D.D. (Oppositional Defiant Disorder).

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    2. To be more precise: I had to re-read Darkship Thieves to write Darkship Renegades because I’d written five other books in between, and it was almost unbearable: all the askew sentences, the weird word choices, the plot I’d do differently. I had to remind myself it was published, loved, still selling very well AND award winning. I think it’s impossible not to hate one’s own writing after any time has passed/other stuff has been written. And you’re right, maybe I should write about that. It ties in with Kris Rusch’s last post too on “perfect” being the enemy of writers.

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      1. I alternate with hating my stuff and loving it possibly too much. There seems to be no in-between, although sometimes I can manage both at once.

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  5. I would like to see you discuss “voice”. As an adolescent I devoured Heinlein but rereading him as an older person. I saw him as having only one hero. I think he acknowledges that in the “Number of the Beast” (J. O.B. may be an exception) . Should an author strive to give each character a different voice or just write as the muse moves you?

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  6. Want some suggestions? Ok, here goes! These apply to SF
    —————
    How do you make your aliens seem real, and not just humans dressed up in funny suits? I’ve seen a lot of the latter, a few of the former. The former make for a better read.

    Faster-than-light space drives: realistic, or plot gimmick?

    How WOULD humans evolve? We’ve reached the point where we adopt our environment to us, not adapt to our environment. Does that mean the end of human evolution?

    How do you make a good novel better?

    How many times can you re-use the same tired old plot without getting caught?

    Keeping gimmicks out of your writing. How to do it, how to know when you’re using a gimmick, and whether or not it’s useful.

    The five essentials of a good indie novel: plot, character development, pacing, interest, ending. How do you develop them? How do you know when it’s “right”?

    Self-publishing headaches: editing, cover art, promotion. Any more?

    Working with others: a necessary evil, or just evil? Does it depend?
    ———————
    That’s all I can think of at the spur of the moment. I hope at least one of these clicks!

    BTW, I’ve finished the plot outline of the novel that was triggered by our mammoth-slaying party last week. I’ll be glad to share with anyone that wants it.

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    1. Aliens vs humans in suits . . . first it depends on your purposes in having aliens. If you want to explore human culture in a way that doesn’t push racial/sexual/whatever buttons, they’ll have to have a whole lot of human in them.

      But for Alien Aliens, I’ve seen other animals used as models. Moulusks and sea urchins and so forth are _very_ inhuman. I’ve got one in the back of my head that’s based (loosely) on the amphibian and insect transformations with advancing age.

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      1. I could write about that, but it won’t from experience. For reasons known only to my psychiatrist, (I plan to get one as soon as I can afford one) I CAN’T write aliens.

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    2. I’ve finished the plot outline of the novel that was triggered by our mammoth-slaying party last week.

      A whole novel? Aaaaaaaaaa!

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        1. Understood. Still, the idea inspired a whole novel? That’s a mammoth achievement from a side bar to a dream. ;-)

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  7. Cats. The perversity of small things, especially plumbing parts. More cats. What is genre, and how do we decide which one to market our work under if we’re blurring lines? Cats. If you’re just breaking in, do you write what people want, or follow your own twisted paths? More cats.

    Yes, I have cats on the brain. I just spent the weekend at the humane society searching for a lap warmer for my mother, but the one I wanted, a fat, placid torty that purred when you made eye contact, was already nabbed. I shall have to get in early to find a proper purring rug for my mother’s arthritic knees.

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    1. You have a proper understanding of your filial duties ;-) I’m sure the Secret Cat Council is just getting the right candidate sent in, just you wait.

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      1. I shall prove my worthiness to the council by turning up just as the doors open for business and dousing myself with eau de catnip.

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      2. Yes, indeed!
        perversity of small things: I need to run downstairs where I’m helping son and husband take apart a range hood that appears to have been here since… well, you know young Earth? That would be since forever, if they’re right. It’s the filthiest thing on Earth and when I tried to clean it, it broke. As we’re taking it apart we’re discovering why it’s bad to buy a house that was once flipped, even if it was over twenty years ago. (And those of you who were once hippies have to forgive my son for muttering “fricking hippies” as we take the thing apart. ) The wiring remains a mystery. My role is to remind the guys not to zap themselves and to clean everything they remove from there. If you hear an explosion from CS? It’s us. We still can’t figure out HOW that thing is wired.

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        1. I hate trying to figure out what someone else did, and I hate electrical problems, be they in houses or vehicles. Combine the two and I really hate it.

          I once lived in a house where you had to turn the bedroom light on in order to have power to the washmachine in the utility room. And vividly recall tearing into the wiring of a jet boat trying to figure out why we all of a sudden had no fire; while floating downstream in Hells Canyon ,IN THE DARK.

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          1. Ah, so this is more universal than I thought. A friend who taught in Afghanistan until last year rented a half of a duplex where the wiring somehow tied into the plumbing. You did not run the fan in one living room when you showered. Apparently the walls were such that you would have had to tear them down altogether to try and fix the problem. She took it in stride. The idea gave me the willies.

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            1. My house was built in the early 1960’s, and obviously the code inspector was drunk the day he inspected it. I’ve got two nephews that are licensed, professional electricians, and they won’t touch it. The first buyer did about 75% of the work himself, and as the house ages, we have problem after problem. We are going to have to repair the bathroom this year, money or not. The basement needs to be gutted and done over.

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              1. I am no electrician, but I can sit down with an instruction book and do wiring from scratch (I wired the house I live in when I built it). But I don’t know enough to look at someone else’s rat’s nest of wires and try to figure out what they did.

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          1. I assumed she meant repo’d, since I’m guessing their has has never been rolled.

            Anyways I haven’t seen many Victorian mobile homes :)

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            1. No, I mean “flipped” — someone buys the house, does flashy stuff to it and sells it for three times the price. I mean, they do needed repairs too, but a lot of what they do is corner cutting because they’re never going to live there and it just needs to “hold” till the house sells. Which is what happened to this house, twice. Hence little things, like no treated board behind the tile of the shower — and after the last family lived here 15 years… well. Robert slipped in the shower and brought down the wall. Which was good, since it was all black mold inside (three years ago) but repairing it was interesting. This oven hood was jury rigged and seed to be missing parts, which meant it didn’t work very well AND was impossible to clean. When I tried to clean it, it shorted. Hence, we disassembled it. It had to come out in five pieces JUST to get it out, and we unilaterally decided even if it CAN be fixed, it’s not going back in, period.

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              1. On the other hand I presently live in a house built in the 1980s which has turned out to be all icing and no cake. For example: when we re-roofed we found out that no felting had been used in the back of the house. This is only one of the peculiarities we have found so far. There has been more that needed repair in this house than in our first, a quirky, but solid, post war house in the University area. (Now sadly the property is a back drive to the ‘necessary’ baseball stadium.)

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          2. Flipped. When an investor buys a somewhat rundown house cheap, hires someone to do a quick remodel on it that emphasises cosmetic upgrades and hiding problems, then tries to sell the property as quickly as possible at a big profit.

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            1. Ugh. I never even thought about the “emphasises cosmetic upgrades and hiding problems” part of that. Being the son of a Carpenter (well, jack-of-all-trades, really) who is a massive perfectionist, I can’t even consider doing something like that.

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              1. You can’t buy a Victorian that doesn’t have that issue at least once. We didn’t realize this one had had that done twice TILL we’d bought it. (The last family lived here fifteen years.)
                I’m not particularly fond of Victorians, btw — though they’re okay — I just like the areas they’re in. I like being able to walk out the door and see PEOPLE. Just total strangers, going about their business. I am given to becoming convinced only the stuff inside my head exists, otherwise. I was telling Dan if we move, ideally, for the next house, we buy a vacant lot, or one with a small, run down house, and build our own. then I remembered my mom had a heart attack a month while building her house and… uh…

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            3. In fairness, “flipping” a house is not a necessarily bad thing. It merely means a person bought and fixed-up the house with the intention of resale, not residency. It can, and occasionally does, add significant value and quality to the property. Think of it as the housing equivalent of Dyce’s refinishing, restoring and selling of furniture. If done properly.

              Several years back we had the luxury of being able to be selective about house-buying and looked at one property that was an excellent example of proper flipping: a historic farmhouse built before 1820, lovingly restored with an addition at back to accommodate modern living. The original house was a classic built with 13-inch thick brick walls, two 13’X17′ (IIRC) rooms below and two above with a central hall running to the back … the library restored with superbly painted faux marble, faux bois yellow poplar. Alas, it would not fit us, and besides, we would never have learned to stifle the giggles arising from the property’s historic designation — The John B. Lowe House, named for the farmer who had first built it.

              Flipping a house is an excellent strategy for a couple who only expect to be in a community for a few years, with the skills and enjoyment required for restoration. They get the pleasure of living in a house that would be beyond their means, opportunity to employ their skills and anticipation of a nice return on their investment. The son of friends of ours is in the process of living in a duplex which he bought distressed, restoring it and hoping to flip or rent it. Having grown to adulthood in a family that worked construction he has the skills and knowledge required to rehab a property properly.

              OTOH, Massachusetts Senate hopeful Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren has reportedly flipped (aided by siblings) multiple properties to the tune of tidy profits, so perhaps it is in my political interest to deride the practice as always corrupt and exploitative.

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              2. I would have really liked to restore (not just rehab) the house I lived in 10 years ago. It was about 100 years old, had wood floors which had unfortunately been severely stained and then covered with carpet, 4-inch hardwood trim both for baseboards and around door-frames, which had been painted over, and the original plaster walls had been paneled over. I didn’t have the time or inclination then, but it could have been really beautiful if done right.

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              3. While I wasn’t familiar with the term, I had a Scoutmaster years ago who was a real estate agent, and he did this, moving every 2 years religiously. As a teenager I worked for him at times helping do various odd jobs, usually consisting of some type of remodel on his current house.

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    2. I stopped doing orphan kitten nursing for the humane society because they wouldn’t promise to let me adopt my nurselings if they didn’t find a home. I do think bottle feds tend to be sweetest, though.

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      1. What kind of evil little power nazis were running this “humane” society? This makes no sense.

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        1. Probably one’s that were related to those running the ‘no-kill’ shelter where I grew up. No-kill sounds good doesn’t it? Unfortunately the way they accomplished this was by only accepting those animals that they felt they could find homes for.

          I worked with a guy that lived across the road from this ‘no-kill’ shelter, he used to have kittens and puppies and occasionally adults dumped in his driveway. Because the shelter would turn away the people trying to get rid of them, so they would dump them in the first wide spot after leaving the shelter.

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          1. I hate to say it, but I have sympathy for that shelter. They’ve realized they can’t save everything, and they have limited resources, so they’ve clearly decided to spend those resources on the animals with the best chance. Heart-breaking decision to have to make, but they probably do more good in the long run. And people can be assured that if their animal makes it in, it’s safe. It’s not the shelter’s fault those creeps chose to dump their unwanted animals in the road.

            I had a co-worker who lived out in the country. She got all the dogs people dumped rather than take them to a shelter. She kept as many as she could, and then SHE had to take the others to the shelter, after they’d been starved and frightened half to death.

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            1. We used to get those dogs too when we were living way out in the country. My mom started to put out classifieds and would sell the dogs to other farmers who needed barking dogs, sporty dogs, even herd dogs. These people would be city folks with dogs who needed to run.

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              1. Also we had a female who was half Australian shepherd and half border collie. Her pups always turned out good. For years while she was still throwing pups ranchers would buy them for 50 dollars plus. They had good temperaments and were really good at herding. All mom did was put an ad that said Mitzi has pups again. We never were able to keep any.

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              2. Now that you mention I have not seen a dumped dog since I moved to Idaho; and only one cat. The cat was WAY OUT in the woods, and probably had grown up as a outside, barntype cat; anyways it looked slick and well fed, and where it was first thing in the spring it had to have wintered there.

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            2. I don’t argue with spending the resources on those animals with the best chance. But personally I think it is probably more humane to euthanize an animal than have it dumped to starve. Last anything was mentioned when I talked to someone around there, the shelter is now charging to take animals.

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              1. Different shelters have different models. Kill shelters take more animals, but euthanize a lot of them. No-kill shelters will be more picky and will charge to take an animal in. That’s the CAP model here, that’s not just your ordinary shelter, that’s a place that really tries to get good homes for its animals, but they will charge you. They need the funds – it’s expensive to do this. There are just too many people who will dump pets they get tired of, hoping someone else will take the responsibility. But CAP is the first place I’d try, if I were looking for a dog or cat, it would be the best chance of getting a good one. My sister got a wonderful little year old mutt terrier dog from CAP – already housebroken, smart, healthy, great personality.

                (We have parrots in the family, and we all worry that the birds might out-live us. I’ve already lined up a parrot re-home organization that is extremely picky about finding good homes for second-hand birds. And they will charge for it – it’s all volunteer and they don’t make a profit, but this kind of thing costs money – they have a facility, they keep a website, they have inspections.)

                All this reminded me of a friend’s neighbor who, every year, would get a kitten from the SPCA, and have it for the summer, then, in the winter, when the heater was on and the windows were closed, her son’s allergies would kick in and she’d dump it back on the SPCA (where it’s unlikely it would be adopted, since it was no longer a cute kitten, so probably was euthanized). Then, the next spring, she’d get another kitten, saying, well, this one might work out. She did this for years. She got mad when my friend wouldn’t let her have any of the kittens a stray had in her back yard. (I’d forgotten about this woman, and now I’m mad at her all over again.)

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                1. What people like that woman deserve is unprintable. I could understand it happening once, thinking of her kids health and happiness over the cats. But to make a reoccuring habit of it is inexcusable.

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    3. It is a pity that you probably can’t take your mother and a chair and set her up in the room, then bring cats in one-by-one to evaluate their Lap Appropriateness.

      (Being able to open up the cages and pet them is how we wound up with Ivan and, on a subsequent visit, Baxter. Baxter knocked down the then-toddler in a fit of HEY, ATTENTION! LUV ME!, and has never really forgotten that he was once Bigger…)

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  8. I would actually like to see more of your childhood. Some things you have alluded to intrigue me. I would really like to know more of your experiences during the revolution (most Americans probably don’t even know it happened) and the ghost experience you have mentioned but not talked about

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    1. um. The revolution unfortunately is not mine to tell. Oh, I’ll probably write it and leave for the kids to release when I’m long gone. I don’t want to publish any of that while it might hurt people I love and who were far more affected by it. I can nibble around the edges, is it.
      I have issues mentioning the paranormal. I think weird experiences in the not-quite-there cluster around writers, possibly because of what we do and every house where writers work a long time becomes “Haunted” — if that’s the word. Something clusters around. I was puzzled but relieved to find Heinlein had similar experiences. I don’t like talking about it because it edges into religion, although the “haunting” around houses where writing takes place seems more of a natural phenomenon connected to whatever the hell it is we do when we write.
      I’ve only seen a ghost, once. It was a very benign experience and it is a great source of comfort. I was between life and death and I might have been hallucinating, but I don’t THINK so, particularly because of a detail I couldn’t have known. It probably kept me alive for two hours or so, till Dan returned to the ICU, 15 and a half years ago now. Oh, and I heard SOMETHING once — not a ghost — just a very annoying voice I identified as “Father” though my father doesn’t speak English and I’ve never heard him swear. That was when I had concussion and breathing seemed to be voluntary and the voice made me keep breathing. I think it was perhaps(?) a part of me, like when Kip hears the suit in Have Spacesuit Will Travel. OTOH I could be nuts.

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      1. We lived in an old house in England, a two-story affair built somewhere in the mid-1700’s, but partially upgraded (we had electricity, and sort-of-hot water, but nothing to US standards). It still had a Jacobite “priest-hole”, an old cold room, and indoor plumbing, and the outhouse had been converted for indoor-type use. Our youngest daughter was four months when we arrived, and about 20 months when we left. She had her own bedroom. We frequently heard her giggling and playing for no reason, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. According to the local community, a young governess had died in our house, and her ghost was supposed to haunt the premises. We never saw a ghost, but somehow the night our daughter’s bedroom caught fire (electrical), our daughter suddenly appeared in my wife’s lap, downstairs. We do NOT know everything that exists in this world, or how it all works. It’s spooky at times.

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        2. Oh. We did experience ONE malevolent ghost in an apartment in SC — or at least one disturbed ghost. Mostly we smelled him (cigarettes) and we heard him whisper to our then 3 month old son, which made the kid screaming. So we had to sleep with Robert in our bed. This didn’t work well. We bit the remaining lease and moved out.

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  9. How do you sell and label a book that crosses genres or is not like anything currently on the top-seller lists? I ask because I was told that I “have” to tie my stuff to a similar top-selling current book and dang if I can find one in the current print lists.

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    1. “I was told that I “have” to tie my stuff to a similar top-selling current book ”

      For my next book, I’m going to market it as “The Hunger Games, except it’s not dystopian, and the heroine is an adult, and there aren’t any arenas, and oh, I guess it takes place in an alt-hist California in the 1930s, but it’s really The Hunger Games, trust me.”

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      1. I’ve been leaning indie (OK. I wrote off traditional after a few weeks of reading The Business Rusch), but it was strongly implied that I needed a “like this one that everyone else claims to be reading” connection for indie as well.

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        2. You need to read more of Kris Rusch, and also her husband Dean Wesley Smith. The “just like that one everyone’s buying” approach is only appropriate for people hoping for a quick cash-in. And while we all would enjoy a quick cash-in, the odds against it are long. Really, really long.

          A smarter indie strategy (at least according to Dean, Kris, Sarah, and a bunch of other authors I follow) is long-term investment. You’re not trying to sell 100,000 copies next month, because that’s likely beyond your control. Instead, you’re trying for a growing trickle of sales across multiple titles over months and years. And that is more likely to happen if loyal readers are looking for “the next TXRed book”, not “another Harry Potter book” (or Twilight, or whatever the “hot” trend is that you’ve been told to chase). For them to look for you by name, you have to have an honest, true voice of your own, telling your own stories that no one else can tell.

          That’s how I read Dean and Kris and Sarah. You’ll have to make up your own mind.

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        3. While it would be nice to be able to spin a “if you like X, try my Y,” it’s not necessary. I’m doing pretty well with my “fantasy world, deep fantasy tropes underlying it; romance (well, relationship, anyway) plotline” duology at the moment, and… Well, I wrote it ’cause there wasn’t anything like it.

          Just write a good book, and figure out what to tag it, either broadly or microscopically-fine, and then write another book. (Well, if you can get a detailed review from a reviewing blog, that is unlikely to hurt. But don’t sweat it, either.)

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  10. Assume for the sake of the exercise that you (me, any of us) write something fantastic…or maybe awful, but the phone still rings…and it’s your agent with a movie deal.

    Given that starting point, how much of a fight would you put up over your characters’ 1) gender 2) race 3) sexual orientation? Main characters, I think we would all agree, are non-negotiable, but are you really willing to kill a movie deal over it? How about your supporting characters?

    As an example, I was 10 when Battlestar Galactica was first out in 1980. When I heard they were doing a reboot, but that Starbuck was going to be a woman and Boomer was being changed from a black man to an asian woman, well, my ire was raised. While the actresses they got to play those two roles did magnificently, and while Boomer’s character switch didn’t have much of an effect on the difference between the two shows (Boomer, after all, was a secondary character…very secondary), the kickass, hard-drinking, hard-fighting, brig-regular female character in the reboot was a continual annoyance.

    So…how much of a fight would you put up if the studio suits started giving you notes in the name of marketability?

    For my part, the trilogy I’m working on is still in the detailed outline/research stage, but as of now, none of the major characters have told me that they are gay. While I have a sense of race, mostly because I’m basing them on people I know or know of, it’s really not that important to me personally nor the story I intend. For example, in the third book, one of the major characters is Scottish. It’s far more important to his backstory and decision-making process that there are fewer than five-thousand Scots left than it is that he’s a straight, white guy.

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    1. The best advice I’ve ever read (unfortunately not an experience I’ve ever had) was to take a much smaller percent of the _gross_ rather than the percent of _net_ in the first offer–because they can play with the expenses and make sure they never have to shell out another penny to you. KK Rusch, IIRC.

      Sign, then walk away. What they do with it from then on is out of your hands. Do not waste time, effort or emotion on it.

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    2. If it goes to movies, get as much monie as you can, cash the check, and move on. Hell, not even the SCREENWRITER has much control over those things. It’s who the producer can get associated and who the director is slee… er, who the director sees in the role.

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  12. I’m especially interested in everything about the writing process. One thing I’ve wondered about – in realistic drawing, there are stages that pretty much all beginning artists go through. The experienced teachers can look and say, ah, you’re here, now you need to work on this next (the inexperienced teachers tell you to work on everything, or the thing they just learned, which isn’t the best thing to tell the newbie who has a few more levels to master before they’re ready). Are there similar stages for writing? (My guess is no, or it’s too varied, but there have to be standard beginner things.) If nothing else, the common beginner screw-ups that we just have to learn to see.

    Other stuff – coming up with plots, or plot structures, and what makes them work or fail. You did a bit on foreshadowing recently that I found really fascinating.

    Plotting vs. Pantsing and all points in between (I’m a little of both, and I suspect most people are, too).

    What takes a book from that nothing’s-really-wrong-with-it to that top 1% that used to mean it would be pro published (or at least had a shot at it)? I’m not sure there’s a real answer to that.

    Otherwise, take Sunday off :-) (I’m only here on a Sunday because I’m postponing what I should be doing, which is plugging the ms page by page into the software that looks for repeated words and cliches and stuff like that, which is mind-numbingly boring).

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    1. Laurie, if you truly want to numb the mind without using chemicals, proofread footnotes for punctuation. 320 pages of footnotes for punctuation. Now I understand why copy-editors have been listed under the Endangered Species Act.

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        1. Ooo, that’s a hard choice. Hmm.

          I think I have to come down on the tax forms being worse. I can actually read most footnotes, but I cannot read the US Tax code at all.

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          1. Also Portuguese — and apparently the Brazilian variety — has NO standard dialect. This means sometimes a different word is used for “deductions” IN THE SAME FORM. Of course, they paid me 175 a page, in the early nineties. And numbers counted for the “page”. I shouldn’t complain.

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    2. Page by page? Why (I don’t know anything about this alleged software, but that sounds silly)? Is it printed (or typed), and you have to scan the pages, then let the OCR read them? Or is there some reason having to do with the things it is looking for relating to counts or appearances on a page-by-page basis? Or some other, but still logical, reason? Or is it just some quirk of the software?

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      1. Page by page was recommended. I thought it sounded silly, too, until I tried it with a full chapter (and thought I wanted to do the whole novel) and got hundreds of repeated common words, none of which were close to each other, which is what matters. I want to find repeats within a page, not chapters apart. And you have to go over a ms page by page anyway, so that’s what’s wound up working better for me. These things are mechanical, they always give you too much, most of what they come up with doesn’t apply, but I need to check it, because that 1 time out of 10 is something that needs to be fixed.

        I started with an inexpensive purchase, Masteredit, but my computer objects to it, so now I’m using an on-line freeware called ProWritingAid. (Masteredit is where I learned that small amounts work better – it can take a whole chapter at least. I’m not sure what ProWritingAid’s limit is.)

        Here’s the link:
        http://www.prowritingaid.com/Index.aspx

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        1. Ooh, I see a market for a piece of software, if I can discipline myself to make the time to work on it. I would design an “Expert System” which would start with basic rules, then be able to also learn its user’s preferences, based on feedback in the form of both accumulated decisions and some sort of rule-building interface. It would definitely ingest the MS in one gulp, but then could scan it in whatever size pieces the user wanted; even multiple passes for different types of language articles.

          Of course, I’d have to go learn what to make it look for in the base ruleset.

          Hmm…

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          2. Let me know if you do. There’s another one out there called AutoCrit, but it charges a $100 annual fee, which is kind of steep.

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    3. There are definitely “stages” that I’ve noticed, both in my old work and in the work of other “up-and-coming” writers or whatever you want to call those people who are serious enough to have actually written and finished stories, but who aren’t very experienced yet.

      In particular, it seems that at some point many people go through a dialogue story stage. 95% of the story will be dialogue. The characters may fight, but usually through words; there may also be some important discovery which Char A knows about and reveals to Char B and that’s the story. When writers are coming off this stage, there is much more description of setting and character movement, but fight scenes may fall into the traps of having weirdly monologging villains and heroes who must rail on for a while before actually acting.

      More often, though, there are certain characteristics that show up a lot in stories written by writers who have only recently started writing. One of the more obvious ones I’ve identified is overblown character description. So you get “The cheerful, clever, cunning princess was tall, dark, and brave, with muscles and bronzed healthy flawless skin, with amber eyes twinkling and shining, and she wore a dress of colorful ribbon and lace and imported silks as she turned to see the impressive brawny hero-chested champion approach.”

      Then there are the characters who get injured in Chapter 4 and are apparently fine in Chapter 5, even though only an hour has passed between the end of the one and the start of the other. But that’s not a newbie thing as much as “please consider having beta readers.” They’ll catch this stuff when you finished Chapter 4, were tackled by Life, and wrote Chapter 5 in bits and pieces three months later.

      … I’m still quite new to the field, though; I’d bet there are at least a dozen similar signs that tell you what that particular writer is currently learning how to do. (Dialogue, dialogue tags, conveying placement of characters and plot-relevant objects in relation to one another in dialogue scenes, conveying placement of characters and etc. in fight scenes which is a whole ‘nother animal, and so on.)

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      1. In my case, the over-description probably shows up second, after the “description? what is description?” book. Which, I eventually realized, is light on description because, for the most part, the viewpoint character does not care about description. At least, not like humans do.

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        1. EVERYONE does this. I got stuck in “describe everything” for about four novels. My first four published. Now I’m cutting back and hope I don’t cut back too much. I’m experimenting a lot.

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          1. I dearly love reading SM Stirling, but of late he seems to have gotten into describe everything…every song, every food, every aspect of everything everyone’s wearing, the lilies in the field…

            This is a personal thing, but I have never once, that I can remember, read an entire song that’s embedded in a work of fiction. My eyes go into scan-forward mode.

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            1. But it can really make a difference in the audio-book edition. Reading Tolkein my eyes would always glaze over at the poems and songs, but when I listened to the LoTR audio-books those songs and poems were really quite lovely.

              I leave the issue of whether this is an appropriate criterion as something for another day.

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              1. I can certainly see that, especially if it’s in the vein of the BBC-produced mass-cast renditions. As far as the straight-read audiobook, though, I think that’s really up to the range of the reader. If it’s someone truly gifted (listen to Roddy MacDowall’s “Battlefield Earth”…spectacular example of a wide, wide range of voices and accents).

                However, if it’s someone more monotone…well, is there an aural equivalent of glazing over? One that doesn’t involve mucus?

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            3. He does use a great deal of description in the “Island in the Sea of Time” trilogy and everything set in the “Dies the Fire” universe, although not in his other fiction. But then, the “Dies the Fire” series arguably needs more description to let modern city-dwellers like myself really understand what’s going on and why, and to get a feel for his world.

              As for the songs, eh. Many songs in fiction aren’t really singable, although Tolkien was pretty good about it, and Rothfuss is decent. As for Stirling, I’ve bought a fair number of the songs he’s mentioned in the books and I’ve sung a few of them in filk circles in cons, but I suspect they are good largely because experienced musicians / singers wrote most of them.

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              1. He does use a great deal of description in the “Island in the Sea of Time” trilogy and everything set in the “Dies the Fire” universe, although not in his other fiction.

                This is exactly what I was telling someone I was trying to convert last weekend. The first novel-length work by Stirling I read was “Stone Dogs” because it was the only remotely interesting-looking book in the Lowry AFB BX, I had just gotten out of Basic, and I was desperate for a good read among other, more tactile needs. Worse, it was the third book in the trilogy…don’t you hate that?

                Neither do his “Lords Of Creation” books, which I really hope he goes back to, have much in the way of drum circles…don’t you hate those?

                (insert pithy third paragraph that allows me to close with rhythm continuity)…don’t you hate them?

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      2. “The cheerful, clever, cunning princess was tall, dark, and brave, with muscles and bronzed healthy flawless skin, with amber eyes twinkling and shining, and she wore a dress of colorful ribbon and lace and imported silks as she turned to see the impressive brawny hero-chested champion approach.”

        Brilliant send up of yuck, but yuck just the same.

        Like

  13. Chicago had a nice sunny morning, then a 45 min thunderstorm with 90mph winds, then a nice sunny afternoon. 8 hours later and nearly 200,000 people are still without power in hundreds of small to large power outages across upper IL and in many areas there is at least one tree down per block. In my parent’s suburb the city just ran some front end loaders down all the streets to push the trees and major branches to the sides of the road to deal with later.

    8 hours after the storm and they still don’t have repair estimates for most of the electric outages, including the one for my office. My old UPSes died in the 10 minutes of power surges before power cut out, the new UPSes were ordered a month ago and are back ordered. I’m hoping my servers survived once we can get power again. and the desktops and printers that folks probably left plugged in and turned on over the weekend…

    Sigh.

    I request something light hearted like Pet stories. :)

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  14. You mentioned something about a secondary character stealing a chapter or something. Does that happen often? How can you tell, and what should you do about it? How about some of the most hilarious ideas you’ve come up with, whether you’ve tried to follow up or not. How do you trap wild story lines, and how do you keep them alive afterwards? What is the proper care and feeding of a good story idea that just hasn’t quite jelled yet? Or should you just let them die?

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    1. I can’t speak for Sarah, but I realized that a minor character was about to become pretty major when he needed backstory to explain his relationship to the MC. He knew too much about her, and she trusted him in ways that she did not trust anyone else. One thing led to another and he became one of the three primary characters in the series.

      I also keep a “snippits and bits” file for scenes and ideas that are floating without homes or frames yet. A couple dozen of those have turned into new stories, or have solved plot problems in other pieces. It is also a good repository for backstory scenes that I’m not ready (may never be ready) to show to readers, but that help me sort out characters or chronology.

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      1. Yeah, I have those too. I also have half a dozen scenes “no one is going to see” — some sex, most not. Sex? you say. I thought you didn’t write sex. Well… not for publication and weirdly, I don’t think the scenes are needed in the books (in one case it would be a “WHAT?” since it brings a minor character in, in another it would make the book unpublishable as what it is and catapult it into another genre.) They’re not needed FOR THE READER, but on my own, and for my own mind, I needed to know it because the characters, alone and intimate don’t behave AT ALL as I expected. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. I expected reserve and near-aggression, and instead there’s this sort of terrible tenderness. And that tenderness, or part of it bleeds through from the halfway point in the book — after the sex — though the sex is never mentioned in the book. And I NEEDED it to be able to finish the book. I hit the wall hard on that one, stopped writing for two weeks. This scene kept insisting it needed to be written, and I really didn’t WANT to. I don’t like looking in people’s bedrooms. I finally gave in and wrote it. And then I realized why. Sometimes I HATE my subconscious. (Yes, this means there’s a sex scene in my computer between two characters you probably love, and you’ll never see it. DEAL.)

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    1. I haven’t been to many foreign countries like some of those here, but from what I have seen it is pretty much just an American concept that people should do their job because it is their job; and not because someone greases the skids with bribes.

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  16. So, there’s something called the “Geek Zodiac” floating around and I saw it yesterday. I’m a “spy” according to that zodiac, and under the qualities for it, they said “Desenrascanço”. (Link for those reading in. http://languageshellyeah.tumblr.com/post/4311594962/awesome-foreign-word-of-the-day-desenrascanco )

    So, yes – I learned a new word yesterday, and for obvious reasons, the word made me think of you, and it was too little to email you over and seemed odd to hijack any other thread, so this one popping up seemed like a bit of a happy coincidence. xD;

    I suppose if I were to turn this bit of topic derailing into a possible writing topic for you, how about an open-ended, “What are some words/concepts from your Portuguese upbringing that somehow apply to writing?” (As I think Desenrascanço would. Certainly, I often have no idea what I’m doing, but monkey around until I reach a solution. >_>; )

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    1. yes, it certainly does. But it would never have occurred to me. I don’t think in Portuguese now, and talking to mom on the phone is an exercise in “uh” and “that thing, you know” and “ARGH, can’t remember word.”

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      1. (belated response, as I am totally off-schedule)
        Totally fair. xD I suppose it’s a topic for, “Oh hey, I just was reminded of this word again.”

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        1. I feel a little guilty about the state my Portuguese is in, but it was unfortunately a matter of choice. I can’t write fluently in English while using Portuguese.

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  17. It is always a worthwhile exercise to look at a market from the consumers’ point of view, so a column or two on what you, as a reader, want in a book might be suitable. (Why yes, I did watch Sullivan’s Travels recently – why do you ask?)

    I know that one of my habits upon finding an author I enjoy is to immediately look for other work by that author, determining whether the enjoyment was from one particular tale or is a generalized liking of the authorial style. I adore Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories but his other mysteries, even the Inspector Cramer novel (Red Threads, for those fanatical completists ) tend to leave me meh.

    If an author has written a series I like to start at the beginning, which can be a problem for an author whose series didn’t really find its footing until the second or third book (I almost balked at reading Cadfael for inability to find A Morbid Taste For Bones, but the bookseller (at the wonderful Whodunnit? in Philadelphia) persuaded me that the series was quite easily begun with One Corpse Too Many and, while I don’t quite share his opinion that it is the second book which truly launches the series I acknowledge that had I insisted on starting at book 1 I would have missed great pleasure.) Alternatively, if there is (are) clearly indicated jumping on points it helps overcome my reluctance (for example, a series may focus on a secondary character, such as Robert B. Parker writing a book with Hawk the lead, or Robert Crais shifting focus from Elvis Cole to Joe Pike.)

    With changes in distribution and sales, of course, no book need ever be out of print, so we might consider the marketing implications of that. Very useful for the author seeking to build her readership over time, I should think.

    And again I will express the opinion that not all blog posts need be new; a Hoyt’s Greatest Hits could allow later comers to this blog to see some of what was missed — and permit Hoyt to revisit a topic/conversation the following day to explore her subsequent thinking on the topic; call those secondary posts Human Growth Hoyt and reverse or revise or reiterate views you’ve since thought better of … or learned more about … or found stronger examples in support …

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    1. I think Sullivan’s Travels should be required viewing for anyone who wants to engage in any kind of storytelling for a living.

      And I second Hoyt’s Greatest Hits – some of us are more recent arrivals and have missed stuff. :-)

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      1. If by “greatest hits” you mean the ones with most hits, that’s usually where I lose my mind and do lay about with a broom held like a Samurai sword. It worries me a little when I do that, because people might think I’m this snarling furious person, and most of the time I’m pretty content and happy. There are things though that I will not countenance and which drive me over the edge.

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        1. Ummmm, no – i don’t think the two types of Hits ought be commingled. The “Fiction writers don’t need publishers because they can just pull stuff out their …” discussion may have gotten a ton of web-hits but it was not a significant post, not in the way that “Human Wave” or some of the others were. In fact, since the posts would be, by definition, from earlier days of the blog, before the audience had built up, they would have had fewer hits.

          Look (think) back over earlier posts to this blog and consider whether any of them are still relevant to the changed marketplace or which are worth revisiting in view of such changes. Or take a series of posts developing a topic and repost them in a regular sequence, such as every Saturday or perhaps each day for a week.

          Are there any topics such as character development or plotting that you think might be of lasting interest? Revisit them. I daresay the quibblers assembled here will find plenty to comment no matter what.

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            2. This could be especially convenient if you have a second post revisiting the “republished” one. That way you can expand, explain, expound, expiate and/or explain issues contained within the original post. Sunday being a “I said WHAT?” post leads naturally to a Monday “What I meant” or “On Further Consideration” exploration of concepts, exploiting your own work through recycling.

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                    1. I know I make mistakes. I even admit to many of them. The rest are buried along with the bodies. Isn’t it lovely that Colorado has all those abandoned gold mines? 8^)

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  18. whatever it is, i kind of keep hitting the like button and tweet button. sorry you seem to miss a tweet this. so i make a point to copy paste the subject line and link to my TL. Hope you would not mind that.

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  19. What the heck do I write about

    How about “Interesting ways to…”

    1) Level a city using small wormholes
    2) Get rich managing time-traveling rock/pop bands
    3) Convince your 14-year-old self that you’re you and somehow you got knocked back in time, but FOR GOD’S SAKE GET YOUR DAD TO INVEST IN WAL-MART STOCK NOW!!!!

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      1. Oh…well, I meant it in more of a way of you setting the discussion and then letting us go off to the races with it. Posing an open-ended question and then getting back to your oven hood :)

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        1. my idiot oven hood had to be discarded. Now I need to find the money to buy a new one, which considering we’re going to get hit with travel and hotel to Liberty con this month and that we just hit “reserve money” just makes me want to cry.

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          2. Yes, so sorry. Homes are just money pit black holes, aren’t they? You get one thing fixed and something else breaks.

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      2. My first thought was to use wormhole’s open in deep ocean water, using the unbelievable pressure to destroy things specifically (small, close wormholes, like an inch wide, six inches from someone’s temple) or a general deluge with hugely destructive currents.

        Otherwise, open a decent sized wormhole, say about 100 feet wide, at the bottom of a methane lake on Titan, aiming the exit terminus upward over Times Square, allowing gravity to spread and diffuse the methane. Then simply open a wormhole just large enough to take the lit zippo lighter you toss through… :)

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        1. In an interesting mix of magic and science, those kind of ideas were exploited in the Chronicles of the Raven. I believe it was in Noonshade, but I may be in error. I highly recommend the series, but with a warning: try your hardest not to care about any of the characters. Barclay’s stories tend to kill his characters often and with little or no warning.

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