Inkpunks

The last two months have not been easy. Long hours at the day job, unexpected travel, a major death in the family, stressful Christmas, several close friends in distress, and almost six full weeks of both of us being sick on top of that.

Muscle aches and joint pain can be caused by tension, as well as general poor health. Anxiety causes the muscles to tense up, which can lead to pain and stiffness in almost any area of the body, check over here to learn more from experts.

But I am not here to whine, not really. Everyone has days/weeks/months/years like that. (Too many people to count, if I judge by my social media feeds.)

What I wanted to talk about today is how the hell do you keep your writing mojo going in the face of so many disruptive life events?

The answer for me, is, I barely did. For most of the month of December, I couldn’t concentrate on fiction for more than a minute or two at a time. Even when I had the rare twenty minutes or so to myself.

The answer for others is, writing is that constant thing that gets them through all of life’s BS, from work stress, to souring relationships, and even through great personal struggles like serious illness. I have the deepest respect for people who manage to keep working in the face of that.

This post isn’t about “finding the time to write” in the middle of the usual ups and downs of life. If you’re going to write at all, you’re going to find some way to overcome the day-to-day distractions. (Plus, I think I’ve sort of written that post before! :P)

I wanted to talk about some strategies for writing through major disruptive periods of life. (Well, MY strategies, anyway. Like with all things process-related, these are intensely individual. YMMV.)

Don’t Write.

Sometimes, when you sprain that ankle, or break that leg, the best thing you can do is stay off of it. Under proper medical care, of course, you do everything you can to leave it alone. Let it heal. Let it rest.

Our creativity is like that, too. Sometimes it takes a blow that it needs time to recover from–like grief for a loved one who’s passed. For me, at least, I needed not to worry about the daily word count or untangling the plot of the short story I was working on before the craziness began. I couldn’t even imagine pulling out the novel. Well, I tried once, and stared at it like it was a big gray lump of wet dog hair.

I gave myself permission to rest. Of course, my writer-guilt brain cranked into overdrive every once in awhile, especially when I saw my friends and colleagues post about word counts, daily progress, and even sales, online. When I put my weight on my creativity though, it hurt. So I took a deep breath and did my best to ignore my writer-guilt brain.

Recharge.

Watch a bunch of movies. Good ones, bad ones. Genre. Documentaries. Oscar-bait. Read comics, books, interesting articles. Play some video games. Fill that Creative Well. It’s almost like creating something yourself. Kind of. You’ll absorb the energy, ideas, and they’ll be there when you need them later.

Spend time with people you love and that love you. This is probably the biggest part of recharging for me. Have a quiet dinner with friends. Play D&D with your sister who’s all of a sudden taken up the hobby and loving it (yay!). Plan and cook a special meal for your family. Be with them.

Sit on the riverbank (or beach, or mountain trail, or at a campfire) and stare into the beauty of this time, this moment and don’t think about anything at all. Exercise. Meditate. Pray. Any and all three, according to your desires and beliefs. You can also use CBD products at https://cbdarmour.co.uk/cbd-oil/raw-and-original-cbd-oil-5-500mg.html to help alleviate symptoms of stress and anxiety.

Do write. A little bit, anyway.

It was difficult for me to focus my efforts into a coherent beam of creativity. But I made notes when an idea struck. Or jotted down a phrase or two of dialogue that welled up from the depths of my brain. Don’t stifle or shut off all of your creative thoughts, but capture them for examination later. I had a couple of new story ideas come along while I wasn’t looking. There was no way I could write them right away, but the ideas are still there.

I knew that my log-jam began to break-up for me when I sketched out a hypothetical D&D game on the way back to L.A. I hadn’t played for over a year (not counting the Christmastime game), but the unrestrainable urge to plan out a campaign I may or may not ever play was the first trickle of a flood of creativity.

That kind of writing, the kind that doesn’t have word counts or deadlines, but only pure excitement and joy — can be the way back to to the keyboard. For me it was D&D. For you it might be fan-fic, or a blog post on your favorite movie, or album, comic book, or TV show.

(RPGs have always been my version of fan-fic. In fact, D&D is probably what got me into writing in the first place, but that’s a story for another blog post.)

You’ll find your way back. Give yourself permission to wander a bit.

I’d love to hear about your wanderings in the comments.

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Endings. Every story has one, but not every story has a good one. What makes some of them work and the rest of them fail? Well, let’s take a look at them.

If you do a quick Google search for “kinds of endings,” you find a lot of different ways to categorize the varieties of endings in stories, but it’s easiest to say that endings fall into two general categories: resolved and unresolved. In a resolved ending, the conflicts and issues are mostly tied up. In an unresolved ending, the issues are left open, and the reader is allowed to imagine how the characters and issues will carry forward. But within these two broad categories lies a lot of room to maneuver. Here are some good subcategories of ending:

• Resolved, positive: not only are the major problems solved, but the protagonist comes out ahead. A good example of this that I just watched was Penelope. It’s the story of a cursed girl born with a pig’s nose who thinks she must find an aristocratic mate to break her curse. But her real problems–her lack of knowledge of the real world, inability to function outside her cloistered existence, difficult relationship with her mother, and forced low self esteem–are actually all resolved through her own hard work. Also, a romance with a commoner becomes possible, and she gets to date a man who really loves her.  What makes this ending work is that the problems were carefully revealed throughout the film and that we cared about Penelope. Our emotional connection to the main character made us want her to have a happy ending.
• Resolved, negative: in this story ending, all the problems are resolved, but the protagonists find themselves worse off. Hamlet is a good example, because Hamlet succeeds in revealing the corruption of the court and wreaking vengeance on his uncle, but he himself dies. What makes this ending work is the character’s conviction. If we as readers really believe in what the character is fighting for,  we can’t help but appreciate their success even though they die. Similarly, this story might have the problems be revealed as solvable, but the character dies or is thwarted, with heart-breaking results. As long as the problem is revealed to have a solution, I think it’s safe to say the story is resolved.
• Unresolved A (stealth resolution): in this story line, we don’t see how the problems could actually be solved, but we have some solid ideas or certain hope that they will be. [The stealth resolution can have an unhappy variant: we have some solid ideas about how to solve the problem, but we can see the main character will never succeed.] For example, in Gone With the Wind, Scarlett is back at Tara and has just lost the man she spent years trying to pretend she didn’t love. But after all the plants and set-ups, the reader is pretty sure that if Scarlett sets her mind on getting him back, she will. The vast majority of “unresolved” endings are actually “stealth resolved.” There is a distinct satisfaction to this kind of ending, but it only works if the characters and the situations have been carefully painted and the reader feels like he or she can accurately predict their future. Another example might be Blade Runner, where many questions blossom at the end, but the main conflicts have worked themselves out, or The Giver, by Lois Lowry, where we don’t know if Jonas ever finds freedom, but we do know that he has made his choice to turn away from his community’s morality, thus resolving his painful internal conflict. In literary fiction, we often see the way people can have happy endings, but we know they will never achieve them, due their internal flaws. One example of this is The Pilgrim Hawk, by Glenway Wescott, where we know the couple who owned the hawk will never really sort out their marriage.
• Unresolved B (commentary of loose ends): in this story line, the problems are not actually solved and we either have no idea how they could be or have too many potential solutions. These stories are rare. A good example would probably be Mulholland Drive, a film that plays with dense layers of storyline and symbolism to create a puzzle. Just sorting out who is who is satisfying, let alone figuring out what everyone’s problem might be. In these stories, the ending is usually most pleasing when the story is a puzzle or when the lack of resolution reflects a philosophical outlook of a character or the author.

The key to any ending is look at the way problems and conflicts are established within your story. If your problems come from a deep character flaw or a broken social situation, those problems may not be surmountable. In that case, it makes sense to end your story with an unresolved ending — probably Unresolved A, because you want the reader to be able to make a clear judgment about your character or that social situation. (And if you’re not sure whether you want your reader to make judgments about characters and social situations, let me give you hint: yes. It’s okay for those judgments to fall outside of the strict realm of black-and-white, good-and-bad, cardboard cut-outs, but well-rounded does not mean wishy-washy.) The wonderful thing about having a story revolve around an insurmountable problem is that it can add a sense of scope to your story. A lot of the greatest works of literature–think Of Mice and Men, 1984, Mrs. Dalloway–have endings where the problems do not go away at the end of the book, and the main characters are left in worse shape than they began (or, you know, dead).

On the other hand, if your problems are surmountable, then the emotional resonance of your ending has to lie in the characters. If they can win in the end, we have to be able to root for them. Maybe they’re incredibly passionate about their cause. Maybe they’re really funny. Maybe they’re flawed in a way that we can’t help but identify with. Look at the film and novel About a Boy (by Nick Hornby). The main character is a rich, boring, bored ex-musician. His biggest concern is how to fill up each day until he dies, and if he did die, no one on Earth would really miss him. But the reader can’t help wanting him to change and become a better person–because he’s utterly self-aware that his life is hollow and he’s just wasting it away. He just doesn’t have any clue or incentive to do anything about it. And haven’t we all had those days, days where we can’t get off the couch, even though our eyes hurt and we’re really tired of watching reality tv, but what would even be the point of doing anything else? Don’t we totally understand? So when the story ends, and that main character has succeeded and is happy, it makes us happy. It’s like being a Northwesterner and seeing the Seahawks go to the Super Bowl: you can’t help but cheer a little.

So ask yourself, when you’re putting those final edits into place and you’re just about to add that magical “####” at the bottom of your manuscript: why did I make this ending the way I did? Is my story a big puzzle and my ending one last tantalizing clue that will leave my reader asking deep questions about humanity? Or is my story the gripping tale of a woman fighting for her life, and my ending is the triumphant success–or perhaps a heart-breaking failure? And most importantly, what the heck does your ending tell the reader about the most important conflict in your story?

If your story doesn’t help us understand the deepest and most central conflict in your story, than you’ve dropped the ball. You misfired. You didn’t stick your landing.

Every story — whether it’s a novel or a bit of flash fiction —  is a gymnastics routine. Your characters and conflicts are the muscles in your legs that will launch you into backflips and twists. Your prose is your posture and the movements of your hands, the tiny lines in your joints and your fingers. You can get everything right, but if you don’t stick your landing, you won’t come home with the gold medal.

So look carefully at your endings. Then go out there and nail ’em.

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So, you’ve brainstormed, written, and rewritten. The plot is sufficiently exciting, the theme powerful, the dialogue realistic, the characters complex and believable, the ending unpredictable yet perfectly fitting. Point-of-view and tense issues have been addressed, grammatical errors corrected, clichés banished. But yet…after reading your piece one last time, a lingering dissatisfaction remains. It doesn’t seem as good as the stuff published in your target market and you can’t identify why. Or, you’ve submitted and received back one or more personal rejections saying, “Close,” or “A near miss.”

If this sounds familiar, it may be that while you have no major structural, thematic, or believability problems, and no egregious errors, your line-to-line prose lacks polish. To stand out in a slush pile of hundreds not only do you need a very-good-to-great story, but your language needs to shine.

Mired in short story revisions of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about such things and jotted down a few points to remember while editing. My suggestions for improving prose can be lumped into three categories: brevity, clarity, and impact (which, of course, overlap to some degree).

I.          Brevity: concise expression (Google). Or as Strunk and White state, “Omit needless words.” (Elements of Style)

• If it’s possible to shorten sentences without sacrificing meaning or style, do so.

The princess was just waking up when she heard the door to her room open with a creak.

INSTEAD:

A creaking door woke the princess.

• Cut “stage direction” (uninteresting and unnecessary descriptions of action). The reader will fill in the blanks.

She swung her legs out of the bed and slid her feet into her slippers, then got up and walked over to the door to see who was there.

INSTEAD:

She jumped up and flung the door open.

• Avoid repetition.

• For example, describing the same thing multiple ways:

On the horizon the sun sat like an egg yolk, golden yellow and ripe with potential. Its amber rays reached across the fields with the promise of a new day. A beacon a hope, a call to morning, the harbinger of spring. And did I mention yellow?

While there’s nothing wrong with poetic language, each line should add something new—unless an idea’s so important it’s worthy of special emphasis (which usually isn’t the case). Otherwise, just pick the best line and go with it.

• Or repeating the same information at various points in the story:

Princess Bethany…  She was the king’s daughter… As princess, it was her duty… “But I’m a princess!”

We get it.

II.        Clarity: freedom from indistinctness and ambiguity (Dictionary.com).

• Be specific rather than generic.

The pub was in the poorest section of town.

INSTEAD:

The Smelly Badger sat in a rutted alley across from the docks, where the reek of fish guts hung heavy in the air and not even the Queen’s Guard dared venture except in numbers.

• Rework vague sentences.

It was all too much for him.

INSTEAD:

Jared sunk to the floor as the events of the last few months—the car accident, his wife’s cancer diagnosis, and now the accusations from his childhood friend—washed over him.

III.       Impact:  forceful contact (Dictionary.com) or, in a writing context, powerful or pithy language.

• Review each use of was/were or is/are and replace them if possible.

The wind was blowing so hard the shutters were rattling against the window frames.

INSTEAD:

Gusting wind rattled the shutters against the window frames.

• Replace bland verbs with more interesting and descriptive ones. (*Except for “said.” Fancy speech tags (e.g. “hissed,” “screeched,” “spat” etc.) draw unwarranted attention and create a sense of melodrama.)

He walked out.

INSTEAD:

He stomped out. / He tiptoed out. / He traipsed out. / He darted out.

• Avoid abstractions (e.g. loved, wanted, wished, felt, hated, etc.)—show rather than tell.

He wanted the puppy more than anything.

INSTEAD:

Risking a case of hives, a two-week grounding, or worse, Jared visited the puppy each afternoon, feeding it a corner of his lunchtime sandwich.

• Vary your sentence structure. Look for patterns (e.g. same length or construction, always opening with a proper noun or pronoun, etc.) and mix things up.

This is by no means a complete list, but covers the deficiencies I’m most likely to find in my own work and about which I need frequent reminders. I find it useful to do several editing passes looking for different things each time, as I have a hard time focusing on everything at once. It’s easy to get distracted by the content of the story; become enamored with my characters or an especially witty line of dialogue. So, I do one or more sweeps for content, then focus on the nitty-gritty: a sentence-by-sentence review coupled with liberal use of Word’s “Find” feature to root out weak language. Not fun work, but necessary, at least for me.

Two excellent resources for further reading are: The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, and The 10% Solution: Self-Editing for the Modern Writer by Ken Rand.

Have any further tips or hints? I’d love to hear them!

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I like the concept of the 10,000 Hour Rule, made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. Boiled down to its essence, it states that 10,000 hours of practice leads to expertise or mastery of a skill. The Rule is overly simplistic and not universally applicable, but it highlights the importance of hard work as a key factor in individual success.

Here’s how I break down and apply the 10,000 Hour Rule to my writing life:

10,000 hours: This is approximately 20 years at ten hours per week. This gives me some perspective of how much I need to invest in improving my skills and for how long. If I’m impatient, increasing my weekly hours to 20 per week will help me achieve mastery in 10 years. I see this as almost metaphorical, as opposed to an actual measure towards a specifically achievable goal. In other words, I’m in this for the long haul. If I want to get better faster, I need to sacrifice more of other things, and keep this up over a long period of time.

Practice: I define this as smart, deliberate, focused time spent improving my writing. I’m not just logging hours–I’m investing in activities designed to make me a better writer. I elaborate on this below.

Expertise: I want to be a strong enough writer that editors and readers find it difficult to pass over my work. I’m willing to invest 10,000 hours in achieving this level of storytelling mastery.

Here are five principles that I’m using to help me decide how to intelligently invest my 10,000 hours.

1. Seek out challenges:

Break out of those comfortable patterns! For example, I noticed recently that all my stories follow straightforward chronological structure, so I chose to write a story with several parallel narratives (my one story sale last year!). Along these lines, I write a lot of horror and urban fantasy, so I’m considering work on a police procedural and a hard SF story. I tend to write from close third-person or first-person POV, so maybe it’s time for me to try an omniscient narrator. The opportunity to experiment is one reason I prefer writing in the short form, at least during this early portion of my training. I know it’s scary to try new things. I’ve definitely made mistakes and embarrassed myself, but I believe the potential for growth is worth this risk over the long haul.

2. Attend workshops and classes:

We’re very lucky to be writers in the SF space. We have a strong culture of fostering and supporting aspiring writers. We’ve got the Clarion Workshops, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, Taos Toolbox, the CSSF Workshops, and many more–I don’t think that any other genre has as many respected opportunities for writers to learn directly from professionals in the field. As an undergrad, I attended creative writing classes taught by UC Irvine MFA students who offered valuable lessons and made me start thinking seriously about writing as a craft. And I’m scared now to even glance at stories that I wrote before I went to the Clarion West workshop.

3. Get feedback:

I’m slowly learning which of my first readers provide the critiques that teach me something new. They point out strengths as well as those things which not only improve a single story, but have the potential to make me a better writer overall. I’m in a writing group with some of the best authors in the business, and I’m striving to recognize this as as a tremendous opportunity and to submit stories to my group, even though some of these wonderful people intimidate the hell out of me. Treasure your best critiquers!

Side note: one might think that the majority of ones time at the Clarion West Workshop would be spent producing new stories, but we spent the equivalent of a full-time job–with overtime–reading, critiquing and listening to critiques of our stories.

4. Study fiction:

This emphasis is one of the biggest changes I’ve made in my writing life during the past year. First, I’m reading a number of books on craft. Instead of reading these works all at once, I read a bit at a time, in parallel with my own writing. This gives me the opportunity to both apply the new techniques I learn to my own stories. Second, I deliberately seek out and read the best works in the field and ask myself what their authors did differently that made many of us take note. My favorite stories to study are the ones that suck me in and make me forget to study, so that I have to go back and attempt to dissect them again. (And again, sometimes!)

My current craft reads are Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook and David Madden’s Revising Fiction. I strongly recommend both, for very different reasons.

5. Connect with peers and mentors:

First of all, attend conferences and writing retreats. The Rainforest Writers Village is one of my annual favorites, because you can write with other writers, which is hard to do at conferences.

My favorite idols aren’t the demigods of our field *cough*NeilGaiman*cough*, but my friends who are perhaps a year or three ahead of me (like my Tracie, and all of the inkpunks!). I know them and their lives well enough to know what I need to emulate to achieve success, which habits I need to break or adopt. I know what sacrifices they make and how they carve writing time out of their hectic, distraction-filled lives. My writing friends and colleagues are a source of endless encouragement and commiseration, both in-person and via twitter and Facebook and email. I depend on them–on you all–for the strength to keep pursuing my long-term writing goals.

FYI: 10,000 hours spent connecting with peers on Facebook will not make you a better writer. It may (if you challenge yourself in a deliberate, focused manner) make you better at connecting with your peers on Facebook.

I’d like to emphasize that nothing is a substitute for writing. Bottom line: If I want to become a better writer, I have to write. But like with any investment, I’d like to maximize my return, so I want to invest wisely.

I’d love to hear from you all–what do you think about the 10,000 hour Rule? Do you have any tips for smart and deliberate practice? Do you have any books on craft that you’d recommend?

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I’ve talked about it before, but it’s a useful topic and since my post is due on New Year’s Eve, I figured it was a pertinent topic well-worth repeating: responsible goalsetting for creative types (or, anyone, really).

Obviously setting goals will help you along with your creative career, or with anything else you hope to do. It’s hard to move forward when you don’t have a direction to run in, or an idea of how to get there. Setting a responsible goal comes down to two things: selecting a goal that is entirely within your control, and breaking that goal down into paceable, achievable steps.

Selecting a goal that’s entirely within your control may seem straightforward, but that’s when you’re consciously thinking about your goals. How many times have we said something like “I’m going to sell [the thing] this year?” or “I’ll get my book talked about on [the blog]” or some variation therein? Those goals, while great things to get, are not entirely within your control. What is in your control is how often you write, edit, and submit, and how you manage your own publicity and outreach. So, instead of saying “I’m going to write a story that sells this year” try something more like “I’m going to write one short story every month and submit those stories to the appropriate markets.” Achievable, and completely within your control.

Breaking a goal down into paceable, achievable steps may seem hard and tedious (for me it’s a sick and twisted little pleasure to do this, I love agendas, don’t judge me) but it’s well worth your time. Say your goal for 2014 is to become the kind of writer who writes 2K every day. But say you haven’t written anything in the last month (she types, guiltily). And say you’ve never been the type of writer who writes 2K every day. Say the most you’ve ever done in the past is maybe 500 words a day, with an occasional burst here and there. It’s going to be hard to jump right into 2K a day if you’re not used to it, and eventually you will burn out and drop the goal entirely. It’s like running a marathon or learning a new skill: you have to build your way up to it. Set challenging-but-achievable goals, and when you can, push yourself a little harder. Build every day until you’re at the place you want to be. And work on one big goal at a time — if you’re working on too many things at once, something will give, and it’s likely going to be your stamina.

There’s one method that’s quite useful for producing good creative work: the “Seinfeld method” aka “Don’t Break the Chain.” The theory here is that excellence is built on habit: keep working at something every day, and eventually something good will fall out. My personal writing-related goal is to work on writing every single day, regardless of what’s going on. This may be anything from wordcount to editing to re-reading to outlining to character development to writing exercises. As long as I’m doing something for writing, it counts. I’m using this free printable PDF of the Don’t Break the Chain calendar for 2014.

An important note about the “Don’t Break the Chain” method: you’re probably going to break the chain at some point. It’ll just happen. Maybe you got too sick to brain one day, or you’re simply in a situation where you absolutely cannot get time away to do the thing you set out to do. An additional rule I have seen, for those of us just starting our Chains, is “miss no more than one day.” If you miss a day for some reason, it’s your responsibility to get back on the Chain the very next day. Otherwise you’re going to start making a new chain of not-doing the thing.

I hope everybody reading this has a fun (and safe!) New Year’s Eve, and a productive New Year’s Day! I’m kicking off my personal JanNoWriMo tomorrow, with a few of my friends on twitter, and my goal is to finish my First Draft by the end of January. What’re your New Year goals?

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Once again we’re closing in on the end of the year. Another year of hard work, of hope and frustration, of trying desperately to balance our need to make cool stuff with our need to pay bills and feed kids. This has been a tough one for all of us here at Inkpunks, for one reason or another, and we’re all hoping for good change ahead in 2014.

We have at least one good omen for things to come, and we wanted to share it with you. We don’t do a ton of self-promoting around here–it’s awkward for us–but I think today we need to make an exception. Because for the first time, an Inkpunk has a novel coming out. An actual legit book from an established publisher. And we’re all giddy aunts and uncles cooing over our dear Wendy’s bookbaby and need to show pictures of it to everyone  whether they like it or not. (But honestly, how could you NOT like it? IT’S AMAZING. Illustration by Michael Ivan.)

Cover of Skinwalkers by Wendy W. Wagner

That, my friends, is the payoff. The fruit of years of hard work. The end result of submissions and rejections, of retreats and workshops and critiques, of novel drafts that never saw the light of day, of outlines and pitches that were sent back as not good enough, of finally having to learn the rules of someone else’s world (omg, I can’t even imagine, it’s hard enough when we get to make them up ourselves!). That’s two years of emails between Wendy and the rest of us, sometimes elated, sometimes despondent, but always in touch, always working, always setting an example for us.

That’s Wendy’s book, and we could not be any fucking prouder of her than we are.

Skinwalkers will be available from Paizo on March 1, 2014.

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It was at the Illustration Masters Class where I first heard Greg Manchess declare that there is no such thing as talent. A rather startling premise to tell a bunch of aspiring artists. But no, Greg stated that artistic skill “is built, not possessed”, created by hard work and training. I wonder about this idea, chew on it occasionally, still not sure what I think. It makes me think of films like Amadeus and Finding Forrester that portray bitter rivalries between merely adequate creators and their brilliant counterparts. I have no idea how historically accurate the portrayals are, but today Mozart is a household name while Salieri is mostly for history buffs. I itch and scratch away at what that thing is that makes one individual a superstar while another is just adequate.

In a recent conversation on facebook, art director Irene Gallo stated “I often tell students they need to find their own voice. There needs to be a reason to hire them  specifically and not any one of a dozen guys. I hire artists based on how smart they are, really. How do they answer the problem. The technique has to be there, sure, but I want someone smarter than me coming up with an answer to the problem better than I could. Otherwise, I can just ‘hire a wrist.’ (Which is useful at times but those aren’t the superstars.)”  Someone recently asked me if being an artist was a “higher calling, just or a craft like any other” and I found myself struggling to answer.  Gallo’s comment touched on that difference. Yes, there is a voice, a vision, something that separates one artist from another. Those artists who are good, who are really good, the ones that just blow your mind with what they can do, it is more than just being technically good at the craft. I find myself wondering how much of that voice is smarts vs. hard work and long hours practicing, vs things like personality and life circumstance and even luck.

 Here’s something else, Gallo’s comment was part of a discussion about Justin Landon’s insightful article on gender parity in SF cover art. (Seriously, drop everything and read that article NOW.)  It hit a few buttons for me: Awards like the Hugo and inclusion in art collections like Spectrum were a few of the guidelines Landon used to determine the plight of women artists working in the Speculative Fiction field today (hint, it’s kind of scary.) Ironically, this past year both of those things happened for me (which was personally INCREDIBLE). My Hugo was in the Fan Artist category, the one for un-paid or low-paid work and my inclusion in Spectrum 20 was in the Unpublished category, the one where Landon assumed there would be more gender equality because “no one has paid for the work.” (There was still less than two women artists for every ten illustrations.) I sometimes wonder if societal conditioning and the fact that a significant portion of my day is spent in cooking, cleaning, and helping a 4th grader with homework is what might prevent me from ever achieving “superstar” status. Or is that just a convenient red herring? Because many many amazing creators have regular life stuff that must be balanced with making their art.

I think Mark Manson, writing for the Huffington Post, is on to something when he asks; “what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up.” I have a lineup of awesome jobs for some amazing clients, the bathroom is atrocious, the kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes and if I don’t go for a run today I’ll go crazy. That’s just life. Sometimes creating art feels like magic. More often, creating art is agonizingly tired eyes, and loss of any free time. Occasionally it all comes together and I feel touched by the muse, other times I do feel like ‘just a wrist’. It doesn’t matter: I keep making art (and trying to get better at it) because whether or not it will win awards and make history (or money) is really besides the point. This is just what I do.

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As I sit here and compose my last Inkpunks post for 2013, I find myself reflecting on the past year with an uncomfortable mix of contentment and frustration. It was a very rough year, full of personal and professional setbacks.

These things are sharper than they look! (by ChaoticMind75 flickr)

In the wee, cold hours of these winter nights, my Writer’s Brain precipitates these frustrations into giant, cruelly-edged failure snowflakes. I see you nodding. You’re familiar with them, too. But wait–what are those shadows lurking in the snowdrifts along the dark treeline?

Oh, the evil Reindeer Games our writer brains play with us.

There were a lot of good things that happened this year, too, but the Writer Brain knows that play; tries to stamp down with its sharp, muddy hooves.

AND YET: a handful of sales (one this week!), completion of the first draft of my novel, some fun experiments with comic scripts, and a steady stream of (nonfiction) freelance writing that presented some interesting new challenges. I attended Rainforest Writers Retreat and had the good fortune to attend Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop this summer, too. All along the way there have been good times with friends and colleagues old and new.

In your face, Writer Brain! Ducks past the razor-sharp antlers of not having enough time to write!

When I tell my friends everything I’ve been up to (especially my non-writer ones) they are impressed with how busy I am! How come I haven’t been able to do more?

Shut Up, Writer Brain! A be-hooved kick sends me reeling into a snowdrift of abandoned drafts!

 As the year draws down, many of us start making lists of all the goals, plans, and resolutions we hope to accomplish in the new year. It’s always been my habit to explicitly write down a list of all the things I’ve done in the previous year (the good things, Writer Brain. I’m on to your plays.)

 This list of things is topped by the things I’m most proud of. The things that have given me the most joy. They don’t all have to be BIG accomplishments, (or necessarily completed) but each will have moved my writing life forward in some way. See my list above. What about you? Name three things you accomplished this year with your writing. I bet you could name five. Ten. Twenty.

A reindeer fires lasers from his glowy nose, but I leap nimbly behind an old, scraggly tree made of previous years’ lists!

Don’t let his placid gaze fool you. (Photo Courtesy Classic Media/CBS)

I have a lot going on in my life that has nothing to do with writing. We all do. Some days/months/years, it seems like writing takes a back seat to everything else. So I focus on my list of accomplishments (public or in-progress), my huge network of friendly fellow scriveners (that would be all of you reading this), and the close support of family and friends (much gratitude) who give me the space and encouragement to suit up and face those Reindeers and their Ninja Star Snowflakes of Death. Okay. I’ve probably tortured this analogy enough. But make your list. Check it twice.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday full of many words to light your way against the dark. Or at least against that pack of surly reindeer set free by your Writer Brain.

Time to get our game faces back on. 2014 is just around the corner.

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lists, reindeer, snowflakes

By freshtopia.net, via Wikimedia Commons
YUM YUM

My favorite part of Thanksgiving isn’t the big dinner. In fact, since we went veg, we’ve often abandoned the big dinner in order to enjoy wacky and fun meals we’d never eat any other time of year. 2011’s 1960’s Casserole Night was a blast, and this year’s Frozen Cheese Pizza Taste-Off promises to be the most exciting meal I’ve ever made!

No, because I’m a giant sap, my favorite part of Thanksgiving is listing all the things I have to be grateful for. This year’s is going to be the greatest Thanksgiving list ever. Sure, I lost my job and my husband was unemployed for six months, but this year has been one of the most amazing in my life! I’ve made new friends, gotten to see old ones, become a full-time writer, and written some really terrific pieces. I’ve also gotten to spend a lot of time with my brother, my husband, and my daughter that I wouldn’t normally get to enjoy. Talk about things to be grateful about!

Anyway, here are a few writing-related things I’m grateful for:

1. The amazing editors and publishing staff I’ve gotten to work with this year. I’ve loved all the people I’ve gotten to work with this year, which makes this year an exceptional one. In particular, I have to give a shout-out to the amazing folks at Paizo, especially my editor James Sutter. He is so fun to work with and is an incredibly smart editor. Three cheers for James!
2. Being invited to join a really great writing group. Dale Ivan Smith, thank you so much for creating the Masked Hucksters! The group’s sense of fellowship has really encouraged me these last few months.
3. I’m beyond thankful for my family, who are all so amazingly supportive. My husband never rolls his eyes at any of my crazy writing talk, either.
4. The people who make tutorial videos for Windows 8. No, seriously, thank you. Getting a new computer after seven years was really traumatic for this old fossil.
5. The staff of the Multnomah County and LINCC libraries. You feed every word I write and you take such good care of me while I’m visiting your workplaces.
6. The amazing con committee at Orycon, my home convention. Every year you create an amazing convention that has taught me new and fantastic things. Thanks for all your hard, unpaid work!
7. The support of amazing friends like the Inkpunks, who are always there when I need them. I’m also desperately grateful to Robyn Lupo and Minerva Zimmerman, twitter friends who are constantly helping me with research and reading. A billion hugs to my amazing novel beta readers, Jeffrey Petersen and Rebecca Stefoff. Without you guys, my books would probably suck.
8. The people who invented coffee, and to the staff of the Painted Lady Coffee Shop, who treat me so nicely.
9. Jane Austen, David Mitchell, Tamora Pierce, Diane Duane, Katherine Dunn, Jeff Vandermeer, Mark Doty, James S. A. Corey and Stephen King for filling my belly with the fire to write and to write better.
10. I’m thankful to poetry and music and the amazing grace that somehow one bunch of primates have somehow brought into this world. Humanity, when you don’t suck, you are amazing. We have this holiday just to reminder ourselves of this fact.

Who are some of the people who have inspired you this year? How can you tell them how grateful you are? Why don’t you go out there and tell them–you’ll feel great when you do.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday, full of gratitude and joy. And with a little luck, pie!

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