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Author Archives: Cat
Arguing on the Internet: The Dwarves are for the Dwarves
If you’re familiar with C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, you may know what I’m quoting in the title. In the final book of the series, The Last Battle, there is a group of dwarves who believe in their cause so strongly that they cannot perceive reality. There are multiple interpretations of the dwarves, particularly given how prone to Christian allegory Lewis’s work is, but I think they hold a lesson for those of us witnessing and/or participating in arguments on the Internet.
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Posted in 2013, blogging, daily life
Tagged arguing on the internet, c.s. lewis, communicaton, SFWA
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Clarion West Writeathon: 2013 Edition
This year, I’m again participating in the Clarion West Writeathon. A lot of people are driving pledges with backer incentives. Here’s mine: I plan to complete one story each week. At the end of the six weeks, all backers will … Continue reading
Posted in 2013, clarion west, write-a-thon
Tagged clarion west, free fiction, write-a-thon, writeathon
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Writing: Reading in Another Land
Recently — or perhaps not so recently — much has been made of women writing science fiction. Often it’s coupled with a complaint about “PC” behavior stifles creativity or how leftist writing “has no new ideas.”
Hmm. Speaking as an unabashed leftist and someone lacking a penis, which may bias me somewhat, in my experience the opposite is true. I find much more interesting stuff in those who are willing to question the status quo, rather than simply write fiction using the same old stories, but this time with lasers! or infinity drives! or whatever. As Patty Jansen put it recently in her blog post, “There are girl cooties on my spaceship — on women writing hard SF,” “There are many younger readers out there who do not want their SF with sauce of sexist golden age nostalgia.”
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Posted in 2013, feminism, Writing
Tagged david zindell, feminism, kelly link, patty jansen, remo the destroyer, seanan maguire, writing the other
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Writing at the Next Level: Getting Inside Your Character’s Head
Once you’ve mastered the basics of getting words on a page and moving characters around through situations, there’s some things that (in my experience) the majority of writers need to focus on. Examples are narrative grammar, paragraphing strategies, trimming excess from sentences, and getting inside a character’s head. Here, I’m going to discuss the last of those.
A lot of this is taken from correspondance with my student Hasnain. He’d asked about story structures, particularly Freitag’s Triangle, and we’d discussed where the triangle occurs in Junot Diaz’s story, Fiesta 1980. In looking at his most recent story, I’d said I thought he needed to get inside his main character’s head more.
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Posted in 2013, teaching, Writing
Tagged advanced techniques, jeff vandermeer, junot diaz, stephen king, worm within
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Giveaway: Near + Far Hardcover Edition, Plus Three Pieces of Jewelry
Huzzah! There’s now a hardcover edition of Near + Far, including a spiffy dust jacket designed by Tod McCoy.
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Recent Writing/Publishing Related Links, 4/11/2013
On some other boards I frequent, the question of how to make a publication more diverse has been coming up. Here’s a couple of pieces related to that. The editors of Tin House and Granta discuss how they worked to make their publications more diverse. Anne Finch talks about similar editorial practices. For a breakdown of what the gender ratio was of book reviewers and books reviewed, see the 2012 VIDA count.
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Posted in 2013, Books, lists
Tagged anne finch, deborah copaken kogan, diversity, granta, night shade books, tin house, vida
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Addendum to Night Shade
I blogged about Nightshade last week, and since then there’s been a number of developments, including modification of the contracts that were so crappy. Authors should be feeling a little happier, at least.
But, I wanted to point to another group that’s involved in this and which is getting worse treatment than the authors, which is the production crew.
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