Click on the thumbnail image to view the full size chart.  Did I miss any steps that you would have considered?  Do you think I am insane for drawing up a flowchart for something like this?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

On the one hand, my subconscious is the font of my best ideas.  Even when I writing something that has come mostly from ego-brain thinking, it inserts cool things, catches ideas that I missed the first time around.  It’s sometimes like having a better writer sitting on your shoulder catching your missed opportunities.

On the other hand,  my subconscious’s interests are not always marketable interests.  My subconscious feeds me stories about Kansas about once a week.  The state needs to start writing me checks for the PR.  Lord knows they need a positive face what with all the wackos that populate my home state.  So I write a lot of stories about Kansas or set in Kansas. I’ve yet to find a market for that stuff, and I doubt anyone wants to read about it.  And yet my subconscious persists.  I’m wrestling with Potatohead (that’s what I call my subconscious) right now about a story that involves mole men and Kansas.    Excited to read that one? Yeah, didn’t think so. I keep telling him, we need postsingularity stories that use the entire galaxy as their setting.  We need fantasy stories that take place in the New York subway system.  What does he feed me?   A story about a woman whose abusive dead husband comes back made out of potatoes after being buried int he garden.

Yeah, I actually wrote that one.  The rejection Nick gave it at Clarkesworld was enough to put me off writing for a year.  Not one you’ll probably ever read. There are a lot of these.

On rare occasions, one of us presents an  idea that the other finds just as fascinating.  My story “The Yeti Behind Me”  is a good example.  The idea of ghosts of extinct animals popped up in conversation.  I felt the indication of Potatohead’s interest in the form of an explosion just behind my right eye.  Potatohead is not subtle.   But if we agree on something straight away, I know it’s got legs.

Problem has been, lately, I have stopped trusting Potatohead.  He’s fixated on the same things much of the time.  He’s not giving me ideas that I can get excited about.  And vice versa.  I spend all day thinking of story ideas and asking “Hey, Potatohead, what do you think of this one?”  His response is generally a resounding “meh.”

I feel like the two parts of my brain are at war lately  Each one knows something useful about writing, but they are not agreeing on things nearly often enough for me to feel like I’m moving forward with my “career.”  I can write stories based primarily on the input of one half, but those stories are flat, and aren’t going to take me anywhere.

There’s one other, unrelated thing about Potatohead that ticks me off.  When I’m asleep, people can talk directly to Potatohead.  I have had long and varied conversations in my sleep that I conciously have no recollection of.  The thing that gets me into trouble is, Potatohead doesn’t know that I/we are married.

Sarah has come to bed late on several occasions, only to see me shoot upright in bed and demand “Who is that?”

“It’s me,” she says.

“Me WHO?” Potatohead asks.

“Sarah,” she says, beginning to be a bit more exasperated.

“Sarah WHO?”

And that’s the last straw.  “Your WIFE,” she snaps.  “Go back to sleep.”

“Oh.  Okay,” says Potatohead and down he goes back to where he came.  And the only indicator I have that this conversation ever happened is that my wife is pissed at me all morning for no apparent reason.

How does one force his or her two minds to sit down and come to some kind of amicable agreement?  We have crap that needs to get worked out if we are going to continue to make a career of working together.  This partnership is turning sour, and I need to straighten things out quickly.  I also need to get it through Potatohead’s half-brain that asking “Sarah WHO?” is not a good thing for either of us.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

The stories that *really* blow me away exude information and confidence. They are full of a richness of detail that is boggling. Telling details show up in nearly every sentence. The entire story works to convince you of this place, these characters, these events.

A great example of a story with amazing richness was David Moles’ “Finnisterra.” I think China Mieville’s novels demonstrate it pretty well too. I see it in many of the stories I have read by Gord Sellar as well. Basically, I see richness as one of the defining qualities of award-winning writing.

The rich telling details are rarely fabricated whole cloth. They’re believable because they draw from some real world knowledge. David uses multiple languages and cultures effortlessly because he knows them intimately. China writes about cities because he dwells in them completely. London is not so different from his fantastical cities. And Gord is so immersed in Korean culture it can’t help but ooze onto the page in a totally engaging way.

I struggle with richness in particular because I’m not sure there’s any way to learn richness other than to immerse yourself in a subject like they do. I think the reason many new writers work fall flat for me is because the only thing they are immersing themselves in is writing and SF/F. The mark of someone who really wants to get out there seems to be someone who takes passion for something else and really drives that home in a story.

There may be veins of richness to tap into from my life, but I’m not sure. It leaves me wishing I could pack up and do some foreign travel for six months all while reading travelogues and history books. I feel like I just don’t have enough packed into my brain that isn’t about computers and web design that can be used to enrich my work.

So that’s the next big thing I’m working on in improving my writing. What’s yours?

Here’s my experience of watching this in a nut shell:

For me at least, the guy looked like a fool!  What a crazy way of dancing, and dancing all by yourself like that?  How embarassing!  I could never do tha–oh wow, someone joined in. Hey,  here comes another.  Holy Shit.

I felt a shiver run down my spine when I realized what I was watching.  Then I started to grin.  And I’m still grinning about it.  This is one of the more uplifting things I have seen in a long time.  I’ve been pondering why that is.

It feels like a metaphor for every creative endeavour.   Writing especially, or blogging.  You’re on your own at first.  Dancing all by yourself in front of an indifferent crowd.   It’s harder than hell to get over the feeling that what you’re doing could be just a little ridiculous.  You keep doing it though, because it feels good.

Then someone starts paying attention.  Your friends, maybe.  Then their friends.  You accrete fans, or followers, or readers, whatever.  The next thing you know, you’ve started that.  It’s a brave damned thing to do, and it’s never struck me until watching this just now.

I hope this motivates you like it has me.  Keep dancing.  Just keep dancing,  no matter what.

Expedition Update

Wow, I have some amazing friends.  We’ve raised $160 towards my photographic expedition to Yellowstone.  Proving that I am the AntiChrist or something, I now only need to raise $666.   Please consider throwing a few bucks in the pot. The pictures are SO going to be worth it.

People in general (unless they’re your die-hard fans or you’re Oprah) don’t value your opinions about your own work. That’s why writing a review of your own book is frowned upon. Or why the opinions of a hundred strangers in Amazon have more bearing than your own, no matter how talented or knowledgeable you might be compared to them. Or simply why blurbs are used in promotion, and why they don’t come from yourself or your mom.

This generalization is what fuels book reviews and interviews (whether print or online). It’s one thing to be featured in your own site, it’s another to be featured elsewhere. This also prevents most authors from conducting interviews with themselves (it’s not quite taboo and some have actually done it but for the most part, it’s not practiced).

If you’re a novelist with a book you’re trying to promote, I heartily suggest you give this article a read.

Nearly every character has something weird and unlikable about them. No everymen or women in this show. Our teacher who restarts the Glee Club, ostensibly our main protagonist, is in a terrible marriage, longs for the days when he was in Glee Club in high school, and in order to convince a teen to join the club, plants drugs in his locker and pretends to bust him, offering him a choice of detention or Glee Club. All of the teachers are similarly flawed, but with likable traits as well.

Some of the student cast are fairly two dimensional, but the two teen lead characters are very mixed as well. The girl is literally insane, but sympathetic for being picked on so badly by her classmates (despite having accused the former Glee Club teacher of being gay because he didn’t give her the part she wanted). The boy is a jock who participates in torturing the teens lower on the social hierarchy of high school, including the other kids in the Glee Club.

As I watched the show, completely riveted, I asked myself what was it about the show that had my attention, and I decided it had to be these willingness to make its lead character complete assholes. Most sitcoms would never dare to make characters so borderline unlikable. The last TV show I can remember doing this well was Arrested Development. What is it about Fox that they’re willing to do this? Say what you will about these guys, but they generally are willing to take risks on shows that none of the other networks will?

I think it’s possible that simply unlikable characters would not be enough to get my attention. It’s that combination of sitcom with unlikable characters that seems to work here. The show plays with your expectations about sitcom characters, and while it’s obviously not the first to do so, I thought it was interesting, and that I would share it with you all.

What do you think about this technique? It seems like it would be much harder to pull off in a short story, where the pressure to have a sympathetic protagonist right away is fairly high. Do you know of any stories or novels that suceeded with this tactic for you? Mentioning your own stories if they’re published is cool too. I’d like to study the idea more.

I’ll be talking quite a bit about writing for the screen this week. Up later (no pun intended) will be some lessons about writing that I’ve gleaned from watching Pixar films, including the latest, er, Up. I consider Pixar to be some of the best storytellers working in any medium, and I think they have a lot to teach us about telling broadly accessible stories.  If you’re wondering if you should go see Up, and you liked earlier films, don’t even hesitate.  See the next show you can make time for.  It’s that good.

• Your rejection letters.  You can use them to illustrate a point, but blogging “rejected by F&SF, 8 days” isn’t very interesting.  Also, it makes you look kinda like a schlub when your blog is full of rejection letters.  Your readers only need to know when you have new work coming out. They don’t care how many agents turned you down, or how many rejections you gathered along the way before the sale.
• Your word count for the day.  Good for you, seriously.  I know some people use this as a kind of social reinforcement, but personally, I can’t stand looking at a blog and seeing nothing but a long list of short posts talking about what you wrote that day.
• Your favorite snippet from your work-in-progress.  Out of context, it isn’t nearly as neat or interesting as you think it is.  Publish the story and we’ll bask in the glow of your genius then.
• Grammar.  Snore.
• In general, the craft and daily travails of being a writer.

I firmly believe that writers should be interesting for something other than being a writer.  It’s a rare individual who can be scintillating to the general public while talking about the sausage-making of writing.*     If you’re a writer, surely you’re passionate about something other than writing.  Blog about whatever that is.

Look at it this way–who is your target audience?  The subject of writing is interesting to other writers and aspiring writers.  They are not necessarily the readers you want, because there are not very many of them.  If your goal is to collect a following greater than a few hundred people, then you need a subject of broader interest–even just the genre that you write in is more interesting than the act of writing itself.

Clearly I am not following the advice of the last point here. I write about writing for a good reason, and that’s because my freelance business caters to writers.   Writers are my target audience for these posts, so I am comfortable with it.  As I complete my business website, these kinds of advice posts will transition to that site, and my personal blog will become more, well, personal.

*Exempt from this advice are writers with staggering readerships, such as  Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi.

ETA:

Nick Mamatas has this to say in the comments, and it’s a strong point:

The subject of writing is interesting to other writers and aspiring writers. They are not necessarily the readers you want, because there are not very many of them.

Crazy talk. There are millions of aspiring writers, and thus an industry to service them—several monthly magazines, a plethora of how-to books, seminars and conferences, over 100 degree-granting programs in the subject, etc.

Aspiring writers also tend to read more widely (and deeply) than non-aspirants. Aspiring writers are certainly a large audience worth cultivating.

So I  took this advice much further than I should have.  And I should point out that my advice was aimed squarely not at writers who blog as a kind of personal journal.  I aim it at people who are looking to deliberately and methodically grow an audience.  If you’re writing a personal journal style blog, but want to use your blog to grow an audience, I thnk you need to think about transitioning the kind of content you post.

Here’s a problem: how does one go about finding a small crit group whose member have to give crits in less than 2–3 weeks? Or forming a crit group like that.

This is a good question.  I  have no idea how anyone managed to learn storycraft  in the age before the internet.  SF writers were probably spread over as much geography as they are today, so how did they critique each other?  Postal mail?  In-person workshops?    They’d have to meet somehow in the first place.  Ah, so they went to cons?  Those cost time and money.  Luckily,  we were born at a time where we could take advantage of nearly free, instantaneous global communications, and that means finding people willing to be in a critique group is the least of your problems.  Finding the right people is much more difficult.    Here are some techniques that have helped me.

Join one of the larger established workshop groups such as the Online Writer’s Workshop or Critters.    Personally, I’m an alumnus of the OWW.  So is Sarah Prineas, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Coleman Finlay, and many others.  There’s little doubt in my mind that the experience of putting your work thorugh the OWW will improve it.    Will it get you a book deal or a pro sale?  Maybe.  You’re doing most of the work, but if you listen to what people have to say, I think you will come closer sooner than you would have on your own.

When you first join these workshops, you’re just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.  You have no idea who is going to read your story and provide a critique, at least in the case of the OWW.  While you’re waiting, you should go find work that you think is at least at your level of skill, if not several levels higher.  Provide a thoughtful critique.  They won’t always return it, but sometimes they will see something they like in your work as well, and this is how you start building indvidiual relationships.

I no longer use the OWW, but I have kept in touch with many of the writers from that workshop for the purposes of critiquing and of course due to the fact that they’re my friends.   In any large group workshop, I think talent has a way of finding like talent.  Groups are formed within, and they can be exported easily from the larger workshop.  You will outgrow together the lower-level issues that workshops address particularly well.

Another option is to just ask authors who you admire if you could trade critiques with them.    This is how Jay Lake and I ended up trading comments on each other’s stories.

Jay taught me a very valuable notion, which was particularly helpful when I was writing a story a week or more and still looking for feedback.  That was to build a list of first readers/critiquers, but make sure they know you don’t expect them to read everything you send out.  And vice versa.  Sometimes people have time, sometimes they don’t.  In an ideal situation, you’ll have enough people on your list that each piece of writing you send out will get you several solid critiques that will help you revise or determine whether to send the story out at all.

I don’t really believe in forming groups persay anymore–although I have been part of them from time to time, and I suspect groups like Blue Heaven are really great for what they do.  For the way I write, I just prefer to build individual, one-on-one relationships.  Any time you get more than four writers in a group, you will have politics, and I have little tolerance for that myself.  Maybe you like it? If so, form a group, set up a list-serve for email and go to town.

Any of the methods above will help you with your ultimate goal, which is finding people with which to collaboratively improve your work.   Also, you’ll probably make good friends.  But I should point out, a good critiquer is not necessarily a good friend, and the opposite is often even less possible.  Depending on how you react to the criticism, you end up hating your best critiquers, but in a broccoli kind of way.

Good luck.  Anyone who is interested in trading critiques with me need only drop me a line.  I can’t agree to do so with everyone who asks, but I try to do so. I have a lot less time to critique now that I am editing Escape Pod.

The anthology of astronomy stories I’ve been working on for the last year or two, off and on, is finally completed and available: Diamonds in the Sky.

The anthology is free and you can go there now and read the stories, most of which are original but a few of which are reprints from Analog or Asimov’s. Contributors include Hugo and Nebula award winning authors. Each story focuses on one or two key ideas from astronomy and should have some educational value, but are hopefully first and foremost simply entertaining and good quality stories. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation as a public education and outreach effort, and I’d like to reach as many readers as possible so please spread the word!

via Mike Brotherton: SF Writer.

I did the website for Diamonds over a year ago.  This one has been a long time in the works, but it’s now finally live!

Lately, I have felt like I have to make a choice between writing and photography–that I only have enough time outside of my job to really master one of these two pursuits.  It’s probably not true, but I know that I split my energies among too many things.  I was feeling okay about maybe dipping my toe back into the writing waters, especially after seeing a great review of the Seeds of Change anthologies.  And then I saw some comments on a site about some of my work that was pretty brutal, and I lost what little motivation I had.

Until I can find a reason to write that can stand up to the whims of Joe Random Internet Commenter, then it’s best that I not do any writing.   This is one of the things I like about photography.  If people don’t like your photography, they rarely say anything.  If they like it, they do.  But when it comes to fiction, people seem to be compelled to tell you at length just how much you suck. It probably has something to do with the time investment it takes to consume a story vs look at a photo.

Sometimes I think that my photography would get better if it was critiqued to the same degree my fiction has been, but then, negative comments–comments of any sort–don’t really count as critique.  And maybe some of the fun of photography would be drained if I took it that seriously?

Earlier, I went for a photowalk down by the river to clear my head and just be in the now.  Lately, I am too busy thinking and the nature of my work doesn’t allow for me to get into the now very often.  By “the now” I mean, the groove,  the flow, whatever.  A state of being and doing, where time is meaningless and the ego slips beneath the surface.  I took a few decent shots, and stumbled upon a bunch of beaver chews.  I walked up and down the area looking for the dam, but I couldn’t find it.  I will probably go back the next time I want to take a walk and see if I can spot it.  It was very nice.

When I think about how pleasurable it is to go on a photowalk or take pictures in general, I wonder why I can’t have that much fun writing anymore.  At some point, it stopped being about fun and started being something else.  God knows I value my leisure time like it’s made out of diamonds since my Dad died, so maybe I take writing so seriously because I don’t want to waste anyone’s leisure time with crap writing.  Ahem.  Which I suppose I am kind of doing right now.  I command you not to read this unless you are stealing time from your employer!

There, I feel better.

One day I am going to look back at all the time I have spent agonizing over all this and I’m going to be angry at myself for not just shutting up and doing something.  I used to tell people that the key to writing was to “shut up and write” but I’ve gotten awful at following that particular advice.  But not tonight–I’m too tired to be angry with myself about it.